#i just want to be hot and slutty in a non feminine way i guess

[redporkpadthai]

tmi

Question to my trans masc, nb, or other gender questioning moots...

So like I'm generally okay with the labels she/her, I'm neutral at least, and I can't say that I really vibe with he/him (but that may have more to do with like concepts of masculinity and less to do with actually being called masc pronouns bc being referred to has "him" has actually made me happy in the past???)

Anyway, I just really hate having breasts and menstruating but like I don't want facial hair or even necessarily a p*nis(although i do fantasize as having one when i m*sterbate, but I've heard that's not uncommon with cis women bc of like gendered power dynamics being carried over into s*xual fantasy)

When I've thought about transitioning, being wholey perceived as male doesn't sit right either? Like I've worn a binder out once and it didn't necessarily feel right. And I hate the constriction along my chest. Idk, but when I look in the mirror I think I'd be a lot more handsome as a man, like a pretty boy. Like I think I'd still wear lots of jewelry (which isn't necessarily gender ik), and dresses (I make clothing), and occasionally makeup, etc. The last time I really leaned into the trying the masc identity out, I couldn't definitively say that I felt like a man, and kind of just went "So i guess that means I'm woman then" like that's the only option. But here i am again like, I'm not vibing with this womanhood thing and this body. Maybe I'm just dumb and over thinking this.

I'm feeling like maybe I should start at a they/them? But in the area I live in, I don't know if it'd be worth the transition or safety in my irl daily life. But i already look like a very butch woman so idk if I'm fooling anybody currently either 😂😂

Idk where I was going with this. I guess i was just gonna ask y'all, do you think I might be trans?? lol.

ps. Oh and I've been wanting to like weight train and stuff to get a more masculine figure, there's a person on tiktok who I follow who does fitness stuff aimed at trans-masc ppl and I think she still goes by she/her, so like maybe that's the vibe? i don't know, her breasts are smaller and look like pecs, I don't think i can get mine that small thru exercise (but i want to ;_;)

Can you still get gender affirming surgery as a nb?

[theunlimitedskye]

30 to 37 on the ask thing. But you can do less if you’d like.

30: If by "like" you mean "fell in love with", I can't really say I have. There was one time when I was like eight, but I'm not sure if I "liked" them, as opposed to "this person isn't my best friend, they're my SUPER best friend".31: Listen up because I'm about to tell you four sure-fire ways to win me over.1 - McDonald's cheeseburgers 2 - Pokémon merchandise (cards, toys, DVDs, games, etc)3 - Anything relating to anime (toys, DVDs, games, manga, etc)4 -  SCZECHAUN SAUCE If you can supply me with these four things on a consistent basis, I'm all yours32: I'm a bit of a perv, and while I'm more virgin than virgin olive oil in real life, I'm into some very unusual shit in terms of pornography, so just bear with me. Hentai and bondage are the two big ones for me. I also have an incredibly unusual kink for sexy manly men in slutty or "feminine" clothing. Bear in mind these apply strictly to digital porn of fictional characters and not real people. Ironically, I find the stuff that invooves real people rather unattractive, so I guess I'm setting myself up for disappointment later in life, I dunno. Also, megane is a huge kink for me, too.33: Like I said, for some reason I have a weird aversion to porn stuffs involving real people. I also really don't like shit involving "older" characters (a certan sexy science grandpa is not incuded). In a non-pornographic sense, however, I really, REALLY don't like those guys (or girls, either way it's irritating) who constantly whine about how they're suuuuch a loser and how they're soooooo terrible at life. That shit is a real turn off for me. I also don't like those people who insist they deserve everything when they've done nothing. That's just no.34: Holy fuck yes35: I kinda have weird oppinions on this. Weird as opposed to what most women think. My definition of cheating is if you straight up make out with or fuck another person other than who you're with. That's cheating. A lot of other women (I've heard, anyway) pitch a fit if their guy looks at porn or dances with another girl at the club or if he even LOOKS at another girl. He's a man, god forbid he acknowledges someone else's beauty. In my opinions, if he wants to look at porn, let him. It's not cheating unless he specifically seeks out that girl in search of a hookup or something. If he wants to dance with another girl, let him dance. Still not cheating. He could get in a jacuzzi with 50 other women - if he's my man, I honestly don't give a shit as long as he's not feeling them up or having a fucking orgy in the damn hot tub. Honestly,  I'd probably ask to join them in the jacuzzi in this scenario, because that sounds fun as hell.36: Depends on the kind of betrayal. If you use my expensive china for greasy takeout after I specifically tell you not to, I could probably forgive that. If you immediately go after my ex after I break up with him, probably not so much.37: I've never even had a boyfriend yet, soooooo no??? Lol

[manifestoonmoralmanlove]

I think I have found an alternative to His Most Favorite?? It's a webtoon called Never Understand and the dynamic is also "ugly" shorty (I think he's cute) and handsome guy. I'm only at ch 18 so I can't say much yet, handome guy is only just in the process of falling in love, but it's nice so far :) (There is some non-con between side characters, but the perpetrator is very clearly shown as an asshole and the victim clearly isn't into it) I hope I'm not gonna get let down...

That’s very sweet, and I’m sorry to say that it did turn tocrap and fast.  But ahhh are we not usedto things being ruined for us?

Never Understand is a series of gay romances that unfold ina high school setting.  This high schoolsetting is a bit darker than most I’ve read without a paranormal twist.  It’s not like edgelord grimdark like CasteHevan.  The dark elements here are a bitmore suited for a high school setting.

We start off with supposed stubborn doofus Jaerim and coldasshole pretty-boy Yuri.  Jaerim joinsthe student council and Yuri is a cock to him because he’s “ugly.”  Oh god damnit are you already getting on yourhigh horse Faps step the fuck down. YOU CAN’T STOP ME!

The thing is…no BL author is going to ACTUALLY get away withmaking any of their characters ACTUALLY unappealing.  The genre is so homogenized that if you givea guy a classically handsome strong jaw instead of a guitar pick for a facepeople will screech about how UGLY they are.

Isn’t that right Maiden Rose?

Jaerim isn’t even that unique from regular ukes in myopinion.  The main thing I notice is thehairstyle is a bit different for being so flat and with no bangs.  So what the fuck ever!

MAYBE LET’S ACTUALLY TALK STORY FAPS! HMPH WELL MAYBE JUSTTHIS ONCE!

So Yuri begins to develop feelings for Jaerim.  I’m not entirely sure why to be honest.  There’s a point where Jaerim is passionatelyfighting for an underdog cause but Yuri pretty much does his best to ignore howviolently Jaerim is getting bullied for it. He doesn’t particularly seem to respect, admire, or feel protective ofJaerim. There’s just haphazard SEXUAL TENSIONNNNNNNN!!!  I particularly despised the 100 or so pageswhere Yuri is trying to grapple with his feelings after the whole bullyarc.  

Why?

1.) I’m just fucking tired of the ~do I like him or don’t~conundrum in BL.  Cause they’re superfucking cliché, boring, and we know exactly where all of this is going, don’tbe so fucking coy.

2.) The arc is superdefensive about how it’s not about Yuri being gay. He just romantically andsexually likes a dude but like for his personality (which he seems to hate mostof the time.) Which just PHEW makes me piles of angry.

There’s then a lot of IGNORE HIS COMPLAINTS BECAUSE HE’S JUSTTSUNDERE creepiness.  This includes suchclassic rape cultures hits of,

We then get a clusterfuck of an arc about Yuri and Jaerimbeing blackmailed by pointless jealousy fodder with a picture of Yuri sexuallyassaulting Jaerim.  Jealousy fodder isout to get Yuri and there’s no real explanation for it.  This also introduces a character I’m justgoing to call “Lying scumbag” who is in a relationship with jealousy fodder butwants Jealousy fodder to be OPEN about their relationship instead of hidingit.  I’m not even really going to getinto it because I don’t have the patience to write out its many, many, MANYlayers of bullshit.  Basically Yuri triesto prevent it from getting out.  It getsout but they manage to play it off as non-legit but immediately afterwards Yurisexually assaults Jaerim while people are looking for them.  So the author forgot the whole point of thearc cause she wanted to get to the non-consensual make-outs.  This somehow magics the two of them onconsensual terms afterwards.  Also wetotally forget about jealousy fodder and his relationship to lying scumbag.  You know what we’re going to do though? Makelying scumbag a main character.  Ithought, “People can’t care about this objectively awful person outside ofseeing a dick up his ass!”  I GUESS I WASWRONG AS HELL!

We get like one chapter of them being a happy couple andthen Yuri remembers his tragic and mysterious backstory and falls into anincurable angst coma.  This is nauseatingfor many reasons. The big problem is the fact that the author tries to cram severalcontradicting slices of sad pie in our mouth at the same time.

1.)   Yuri tragic past involves how he hates how hisfriend was bullied but recently he was totally cool with his crush beingbullied for months.

2.)   Yuri, that cinnamon roll, currently violentlyhates somebody who has nothing to do with what happened to his family and heKNOWS THIS.  But you can’t like confronthim about that because he has special PTSD psychosis.  You wouldn’t want to like damage him furtherby making sure he doesn’t kick the shit out of an innocent person would you?

3.)   Yuri is tragic because he must be a perfect facefor his now deceased rich family but OH like also he has to work 80 jobs causehe’s poor.  People both envy his richnessand despise how he gets the special privilege of working a part-time jobbecause he’s poor.

THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING HERE!?!?!??!

This is only compounded by two major pieces of themost unsubtle bad as fuck writing. Yuri’s PTSD flashbacks ONLY hit when he is putin a position to defend Jaerim.  Eventhough there should logically be absolutely no connection between the two. HOWFUCKING CONVENIENT!  Also the reason whyYuri was conflicted in the beginning about rubbing his dick all over Jaerim isbecause his parents were killed by an ugly person.  Fuckity piss I just….ughhhhh.

We can’t even imply that Yuri is a shallow shit-head he’sgotta have a tragic backstory for every fault and mistake he makes.  MY PARENTS WEREN’T EATEN ALIVE BY A PACK OFRABID BAD BL MANGAS BUT I STILL HATE BAD BL!

ANYHOO

Eventually Jaerim breaks through Yuri’s coma through aseries of super unromantic phrases disguised as romance. Including the smashhits of:

Meanwhile, despite being ~flagrantly ugly~ a new hot guy isinterested in Jaerim but like just so he can fuck a girl. Turns out there isthis super evil slutty girly-girl who is out to destroy Jaerim cause her crushon Yuri is extreme.  I thought at firstshe was one of the most pathetic 1-D misogynist attempts at creating a villainI have ever seen.  Then we get some ofher backstory where she was bullied because she tried to defend the superpopular Yuri from….this one girl who inexplicably didn’t like the super popularhandsome Yuri????  However the storymakes it look as if she was a shallow sociopath who learned how to be violentand feminine (in the same stroke case popular????) in order to achieve her aims.  She did this not to defend a defenseless Yuribut to get a taste of that sweeeeeeet dick. So after these scenes I thought she was one of the most pathetic 1-Dmisogynist attempts at creating a villain with a flaccid pointless backstorythat does nothing to make her sympathetic.

I mean…I’m kinda glad they tried avoiding making her astrawman but it did nothing to help the situation at all.

So she manipulates a dude into trying to drive Jaerim andYuri apart through guess what? FILMED RAPE DISGUISED AS CHEATING? HAHA!

Yuri sees Jaerim crying, covered in bruises, it looks likepretty obviously forced assault.  WhenJaerim sees Yuri he even looks relieved. But, of course, Yuri runs off weeping that he cheated.  However a friend magics to his spot and tellsYuri to trust Jaerim.  So Yuri runs backand tells everybody they’re totes dating and that there is nothing NOTHINGJaerim could do to ~escape~ from him. Rapist then beats the shit out of his love interest and Yuri for a whileand I guess the day is saved?

What I do like about this story is Yuri is called out on hiscrappy behavior and he apologizes for it which seems like a low bar but HAHAwe’re talking BL here.  I also like howthey don’t try to blame anything on Jaerim because Jaerim never does anythingwrong.  Perhaps it’s my soft-spot forukes but I do genuinely like Jaerim. He’s thoughtful, determined, and sweet.

What I don’t like about the comic is well pretty much allthe story events.

BUT WAIT there are 3 more couples I can talk about!  I’m not going to touch on lying scumbag andjealousy fodder because the story devotes very little time to them.

The two other couples are Bully/Victim and….bully/victim.Ugh good god.

The first I’ll talkabout is Yumin and Doohon.

Yumin and Doohon used to be anime buddies.  However as they get older Doohon realizesthat people look down upon anime fanatics so he decides he wants to be popularinstead.  This, of course, has to bepaired with Doohon verbally, and physically bullying those he can with theBONUS of sexually assaulting Yumin. Later, thanks to Jaerim, Doohon learns the error of his ways andapologizes to Yumin and returns to accepting his own anime nerd ways.  When Doohon is hesitant about starting arelationship with Yumin after all the unspeakable shit he put him through theytreat it as Doohon OVERTHINKING things because Yumin immediately wants to hopon his dick again.  In most situations inthis story they treat bullying as serious and fucked up.  However when your crush does it, it’s fine!HAHA!

Ugh

Next I’ll talk aboutAyeon and a character I’ll call aDONTis like Adonis but….DON’T HAHA! …Okaythat’s not very good but neither is this blog SO IT’S FINE!

Ayeon was a chubby guy who was infatuated with the shinning,gloriously attractive Adontis.  Ayeonasks Adontis out and Adontis responds with some of the most disgustinglyhateful tripe I’ve seen in a BL manga.  Adontis says how he should know better than to treat those lesser thanhim with kindness because they get the wrong idea.  That he’d never date an ANIMAL a PIG likeAyeon and that he is so disgusted at the prospect he can’t even finish an applethat Ayeon gifted him.

Damn! What a good antagonist for this story most readerswould think.  However all hope is lostwhen reminded that this is a BL story.

Adontis later finds out there is this cold but hot dude whodoes archery and throws himself in wholeheartedly into trying to bang him.  Why yes that is Ayeon after he lost weightand Adontis not only doesn’t realize this but he never does and is never calledout on his previous treatment of Ayeon. Adontis is a hyperactive brat, whose obviously stalker antics are playedoff as cute and endearing.  Ayeon ishesitant and already has a dude who treats him well as a love interest.  However Ayeon eventually succumbs toAdontis.  Ayeon acknowledges that Adontisis objectively a shallow, hateful fucker but like AYEON IS A SHALLOW PERSON TOOBECAUSE HE IS GOING TO GO OUT WITH ADONTIS FOR HIS LOOKS ALONE TOO!  I’m glad they accept that this is actuallykinda crappy situation.  However this hasthe effect of equating “A human monster” and “Someone with no spine” on thesame level of crappiness.  A bully and avictim are not equally terrible.

If you think so, just swallow a handful of lit M80s please!

Also their bonus chapter makesAyeon a slutty cat-boy for reasons and Adontis cheats on Ayeon just to test tosee if it’ll make him upset or not.  Idon’t like the other couples but this one is fucking sprinting to get to thebottom.

TL;DR

Never Understand is like His Favorite except darker and way worse and actually not like His Favorite at all.  The art is fine, Jaerim is decentbut the rest of the characters are pretty unlikable, and the story borders onstupid to repellent.   The upside beingthat (at least in the main couple) if a seme does something crappy they’llacknowledge it as bad and he’ll actually apologize for it.  Otherwise don’t waste your time.  I’ll never understand, never understand.

[airmidtheawakened]

Sharp, Pointy Things, Part 3

Welcome back to the clusterfuck! Now that I’ve had that drink I promised myself (well, several drinks. It’s been a bit) we can get back to what is probably one of the worst jobs my cabal as ever worked. We didn’t stay at the bar long; Abraham came to pick us up before the police got there. We all went back to his place, Dave in tow, to try and figure out just what the hell was going on.

I tried getting information out of Dave. He kept talking about wanted to talk to a “Matthew.” He said that “Matthew would fix this. Matthew would protect him.” Whoever this Matthew guy was seemed like he must have been in charge of the meth thing, and thus a good candidate for having offed Dead Big Bro. Here I was hoping this would just be a normal, mundane, non-supernatural druggie dispute. But then we saw a tattoo on Dave’s back that proved otherwise. It was some sort of insignia that belonged to a vampire… group, I guess? Some sort of social club or whatever.

At that point I was absolutely done. Fisher and Aces showed up, so I left the rest of the interrogation to them while I went outside for some air.

I felt so… so helpless. I’d worked my entire life to be the strong one. The one who works hard, takes care of herself, doesn’t need help from anyone. And all that meant jack when it came to keeping Saki safe. I should have been keeping a better eye on him. We should have stuck together.

Lipsy came out a few minutes later. I don’t like people seeing me when I’m upset. I tried to pull myself together but it didn’t work. I ended up sobbing into his shoulder for a good five minutes. It was nice. I mean the situation sucked, but having someone there for me when I’m an absolute wreck is something I wouldn’t trade for anything.

Of course the moment was ruined when Fisher came storming out of Abe’s shop, murder written all over his face, Aces and SiSi hot on his heels. Fisher took off in En’s car. Aces was shouting in our heads that he was gonna kill En. I was so confused. Before I knew it I was being dragged into Abe’s car, then we were speeding out of Quincey towards En’s place… Really the whole night was a blur after that. I’ll try to remember as best I can but we were all so caught up in everything going on that nothing really stuck, you know? Your brain can’t commit anything to memory if it doesn’t have time to actually process what’s going on.

We got to En’s place just after Fisher, who had our dear professor pinned against a wall and was shouting at him. Lipsy and I tried to get him off and failed miserably. I don’t know what spell he threw at us but it made our limbs stopped listening to our brains. SiSi seemed to know what was going on and told us to back off, but we just wanted to find Saki and the whole situation was NOT helping us find Saki. Aces was having a breakdown on the sidelines, I was shouting at Fisher, Lipsy was… you know what I don’t remember what Lipsy was doing. Probably still being discombobulated from whatever spell Fisher used to keep us off of him. And then somehow another lady showed up to take En away to the Consilium. I think Fisher summoned her out of a book? Like I said, it’s all kind of blurry.

It was at this point that Fisher agreed to help us look for Saki. Finally. So off we trot (well, drive, actually) to Dreamboat Vampire’s club because we’re convinced he knows who took Saki. Fisher explained what was going on with En on the way there. Here’s the cliffnotes version:

1. En was like, hot shit it his youth. A bonafide magical genius from a long line of magical badasses.

2. En got cocky and tried to become an archmage. A word which here means “force your way through the Abyss until you kick in the gates of the Supernal Realms and make reality your bitch.” The Consilium tried to forbid him from doing that cuz it’s suuuuuper dangerous but he went ahead and did it anyway. In a theater. With witnesses.

I’m going to take a moment here to ask why the fuck didn’t the Consilium actually stop him? Like, it’s gotta be within their power to do so. It’d be one thing if En did it in secret but COME ON. He made a damn spectacle of the thing! There were some serious levels of incompetence going on there, if you ask me.

(Also let’s just keep that little aside between us, okay? My master would have my head if he heard me talking like that. Who’s my master? You’ll find out soon enough, darlings, so sit tight.)

Anyways, cliffnotes:

3. Predictably, En fails. He becomes an magical monster fueled by Abyss and Hatred. Slaughters almost everyone in the theater. 80 people in total.

4. Unpredictably, the part of him that was still En beat back the Abyss and un-abominationed himself. Which has like, never happened in the history of magic ever. Color everyone who was not dead super surprised.

5. Instead of killing him for fucking up so hard, the Consilium decided to put En under house arrest instead. They assigned Fisher to be a glorified babysitter and make sure he didn’t fuck up any harder. Oh yeah, Fisher’s a sentinel by the way. That’s gonna be important later.

6. En spent his remaining days helping wee babby mages like me and my cabal find our place in the world, hoping to make up for all the people he killed.

Which brings us to Sam. That poor, vengeful, lost little soul who just wanted to find out what happened to his brother. See, En wanted to help the kid, but he couldn’t do so directly without violating the terms of his house arrest. So he went and made a psychic manifestation of Sam’s desire for vengeance so the kid could get results himself.

Talk about stupid.

So yeah, Sam was the one who killed his brother’s friend and attempted to kill Dave. At the tender young age of… eleven? Twelve? Whatever. He was in middle school at best, and sending a mental projection called an Esoteric to take the shape of his victims’ worst fears as it killed them.

 But we’ll get back to that later. We’ve got to finish up with the vampires first.

We weren’t sure how we’d get Dreamboat Vampire to talk to us again, let alone in a situation where we’d have the advantage. I volunteered to lure him out with my feminine wiles. SiSi and Lipsy weren’t too keen on the idea, but neither had anything better. So we’re sitting there for like… three or four minutes trying to hash this out when Fisher decides to make a suggestion. He gave us a token of parley that Sentinels use with other supernatural types. Lipsy asked why he didn’t suggest that to start. And what does Fisher say? What does he say?

That he wanted to see how far I’d go with my “slutty” routine.

What. A. Dick.

I responded by jamming my knee into his groin. Was it smart? No. No it wasn’t. But was it satisfying? Hell. Fucking. Yes.

While Fisher was on the ground nursing his injured manhood, SiSi and Lipsy and I made our way into the club. It was clear pretty early on that we weren’t getting past the bouncer – Dreamboat Vampire had told him we weren’t allowed upstairs. Fortunately, there’s one of us who doesn’t need permission to get from one place to another.

Edgar’s such a good doggo.

We decided it would be best if we skedaddled outside once we heard the screaming and barking coming from upstairs. After a few minutes, Dreamboat Vampire came down looking considerably unhappy but willing to parlay. He and Fisher exchanged the formalities and we showed him the picture from Dave’s back, telling him that we needed to find Matthew.

Oh, also, turns out Dreamboat Vampire totally wears these old silver-rimmed glasses to read. Ugh.

Anyway, long and the short of it is Dreamboat Vampire was willing to take us to Matthew, who he already had in custody. He was being kept under the same fucking club we were in the first night we went looking for answers. Matthew was about as freaky a dude as you might expect. He looked almost feral and acted the same way. We asked him about Sam’s brother and he told us the truth: he was the head of the meth ring and recruited this group of morons to help him push it. Turns out, Sam’s brother got a taste for the junk and Matthew went over to his place to straighten him out. The brother got enraged and charged him and Matthew grabbed the first thing he could to defend himself with.

And what was that thing, you ask? A barbecue fork. A fucking. Barbecue fork. So it turns out Sam was right: a vampire really did kill his brother. But these particular sharp, pointy things just so happened to be attached to something that anybody could have used. After the brother died and was bleeding all over the place, Matthew drank from him, I guess not to let things go to waste. We left, pretty disgusted, and Dreamboat Vampire told us that Matthew was going to be taken care of and that we were, under no circumstances, ever to go to his bar ever again.

So now we had two problems. Saki was still missing, but we also had to deal with Sam, who had all these really intense powers and was still trying to off all his brother’s friends. It turns out earlier while I was questioning Dave, SiSi and Lipsy talked to Abraham about the tarot card Saki left behind, asking if it was possible to use that card to track down the rest of the deck, which presumably would lead us to Saki. Abraham said that it conceivably could be possible: the card was one of a deck and the deck wanted to be together, so we might be able to trace it to the origin.

The problem became how to figure out what we needed to do to actually make that tracking possible. The deck wasn’t actually alive, but it wasn’t really dead either. To top it off, we had to figure out what we needed to do to locate the rest of the deck. After some trial and error, we came up with something that worked. So sit back for a second while I learn you a thing. When you start to understand the very basics of a certain arcana, you learn how to see the world in a way that filters other things out and just focuses on that particular form of magic. As you advance, you gain the ability to grant that sight to others. I was able to use my Spirit sight to see the spiritual energy of the cards, so then I had to grant that ability to SiSi. Once she had it (“This is really weird,” she said. Hmph.) she was able to use her Space magic to scry and figure out where the trail was leading. She figured out it was somewhere in Quincy, which meant Saki wasn’t too far away.

Pretty cool, huh?

Lipsy wanted to drop everything and go find Saki. He was really anxious the whole time about Saki – we all were, but he really was. The problem was it was getting really, really late and a couple of us had been without sleep for close to 48 hours at that point. As much as I wanted to go find Saki, I knew if it was a dangerous situation we had to be completely at the ready, and if we went in half-cocked, we might end up just making things worse. Lipsy didn’t really want to hear it, but eventually he agreed that we should get at least a little sleep before we try to find Saki.

We got back to En’s house, where Aces had managed to calm down a bit. She’d been doing some research herself and found out about how to deal with the Esoteric. The first thing we had to do was somehow get Sam to get near us and destroy this form of the Esoteric. Physical damage, like what I did to the mummy in the bar, would be totally fine. Then we had to knock Sam out before he could summon it again, and then we had one of two bad options.

The first option was to kill Sam. It was certainly the simpler option, but all three of us felt sick at doing it. No matter how much trouble he’d been causing, he was still a kid trying to avenge his brother’s death. The second, much more complicated option, was for us to enter a trance state and actually proceed through some magical realms. Once we did that, we’d be able to properly destroy the Esoteric and stop Sam from summoning it in the future.

I’ll be the first to admit I know jack about meditation. Even if I’ve done it several times by now I can never remember the way the astral realms work. We had to go like, three or four levels deep or something? To the collective dreaming consciousness of the world.  

At any rate, we were just completely spent and weren’t in any shape to go diving into it that night. Aces said that if we wanted to try the second option, the meditation room in the house would be the best spot to do it. That meant we had to lure Sam to En’s house no matter what, and then, because none of us felt like murdering a sixth grader, knock him out and try to banish the Esoteric, and then wake up and find Saki.

No problem. Noooooooooo problem.

We got a few fitful hours sleep and in the morning (Lipsy wanted this done fast – “We’re done with this by lunch and then we find Saki”) we decided to try and get it taken care of. I called Sam at the number we had for him. It took a few rings before someone picked up and I didn’t hear someone on the other end. I tried talking anyway and he asked me what I wanted. I told him that we had some information about who killed his brother and that we wanted to talk to him. He asked where we were and I told him En’s house. He hung up right away and we tried to get ready. We didn’t know what was going to happen.

Turns out, none of us could have quite prepared for it. About 15 minutes after the phone call, we heard the sound of breaking glass. But it wasn’t Sam. It was this tall, creepy dude with black, black hair, a white, white suit, and the blankest, creepiest expression I’d ever seen in my entire life. The same one Sisi saw raising a knife over an unconscious Saki when she was scrying in the sports bar. We’d met the Esoteric.

Lipsy sent Edgar after it, and because he’s a good Doggo, Edgar fucking demolished the stupid thing. He charged, sank his teeth into it, and before you know it the Esoteric went *poof!* and started fading back into the Astral Plane.

As he disappeared, however, the Esoteric turned to us and said something that chilled us all, “If you want your friend, come find me.” We didn’t know what to do – did he have Saki? Was he responsible for Saki disappearing? Was Saki dead and he knew where his body was? We didn’t know, but it made the knot in my stomach even tighter.

After we dispatched the Esoteric, we heard someone screaming, “NO! WHAT DID YOU DO?!” We turned and there was Sam. By this point, we’d all had our fill of that little shit, so we quickly turned to him and pinned him down. He was raging at us and let slip that he sent the Esoteric to kill Saki because he thought we were double-crossing him. He’d been following us the whole time we were trying to help him and thought that since we were meeting with the vampires and his brother’s friends that we were going to betray him. Saki could have been dead and it would have been his fault.

So the next part, I took particular pleasure in. I hit him in the head as hard as I could and used my Life magic to explode melatonin in his brain while I yelled, “Sleep!” It took a couple tries, but eventually worked. I got a little magic blowback – the universe doesn’t like it when you use obvious magic in front of Sleepers – but it was well worth it to knock out that stupid little twerp.

The only thing to do at this point was finish it: go meditate, find the Esoteric, and finish him off. But I’m starting to feel a little too sober right now, so if you don’t mind, I’m going to get another drink and then when I get back, we’ll finish this. Next time, you’ll find out just what happened to Saki, but I’m warning you: just like we weren’t happy when we found out, you’re not going to be happy either.

Airmid, out.

(I’d like to extend a heartfelt “Thank you!” to Saki’s player for helping me with the recaps for this chapter. Give him a hand, will you?)