#if not i will simply copy it into a doc and post a link

[writer-logbook]

5 tips for proofreading & their pros and cons

Define your objectives for each chapter. In my case, some of my chapters are better written than others. My objectives for them will differ. Before starting my proofreading, I list my needs and areas of improvements, and I write them down somewhere so I have them in front of me rather than in my head alone.

Pros : allows you to know which points you need to focus on ; provides a guideline adapted to your needs.

Cons : risk of losing homogeneity and fluidity + flaws may be shifted to other chapters that didn't have them before due to a sudden imbalance.

Plan several proofreading sessions, each one of them addressing ONE NEED AT A TIME. (E.g., one for grammar, another for style, and a final one for coherence. ) And I insist on the "one need at a time" part. Even for those who can multitask (unlike me), I really don't recommend settling for a single proofreading session. It could interfere with your concentration and let you skip some flaws. And please, always give your chapter a final read after your edits to ensure that the elements make sense as a whole, and are not repeated every two paragraphs (I plead guilty, your honor)

Pros: allows you to focus precisely on each point, and give it dedicated attention.

Cons: you can quickly get confused and risk multiple re-readings + significant time investment.

I make my corrections on a separate file. Whatever you do, it's always better to have a backup and therefore to save your files (don't blindly trust autosave) to create archives. I think it's a two-ways process : 1) you open two files simultaneously, one with your V1 and one, blank, where you'll rewrite your chapter as you make changes. Eventually, this new doc will become your V2 ; 2) you copy the parts to proofread into a new document and edit directly in there.

Pros: allows you to rewrite as you wish without being discouraged by the following paragraphs - especially in case of the first way.

Cons: requires multiple files (maybe multiple screens to be at ease) and better organization.

Change the typography. I don't know about you, but after a while, I'm struck by semantic satiation (click on the link - it's Wikipedia -, it's very interesting) and nothing makes sense anymore. After the 52,846th proofreading, I might as well read in another language. I've found a relatively effective trick - not as effective as a complete break, but sometimes you need to move forward - which consists of changing the typography. I can't remember who gave me this advice though, but be sure they've been thanked more than enough in my mind. In any case, seeing words change their shape significantly helps my brain to stay focused and attentive. (Maybe it's just my mind playing tricks on me but I only see the results.)

Pros: it's simple to implement.

Cons: I don't know if this trick works for everyone or if I'm the only weirdo (you can tell me in the comment section).

Take notes. This is a very personal tip but I keep a proofreading logbook. Like, I record in a few sentences the first time an element is mentioned, how it's describes, and most importantly… I MENTION THE DATES. The story I'm currently writing is heavily governed by a chronological system, so I have an absolute need to keep the day count up to date.

Pros: helps avoid inconsistencies and oversights.

Cons: very tedious to maintain and creates (a lot) of extra work.

I've started my prooreading journey yesterday and I already want to die. If I find in the edits something that is worth making a post, be sure that I will. Or let me know if you're simply curious.

Gentle reminder : Best is the worst enemy of good so, at some point, you'll have to let it go and let your chapter live its life to its fullest. Don't be hard on yourself and be proud of your work - or know that I am.

[xxlemon-chanxx]

Important. PLEASE READ!!

For those of you who may not know, which I suspect is probably most of you, I had an interaction with a pro/comship blog (@toh-proship-positivity) about three weeks ago that ended in them accusing a fellow artist, a-magpie-in-gravesfield, of extremely heinous things. I originally was not going to respond to them simply because I didn't want to be bothered with such drama during the holidays. Still, these claims irritated me because, even just from my conversations with this blog and witnessing their behavior firsthand, I knew their claims were likely untrue or, at the very least, exaggerations. I am happy to announce that my intuition was correct and that the claims made about Magpie WERE NOT TRUE.

Several people approached me regarding this, and I also sought a few individuals out myself to look for answers. They provided ample proof, including screenshots, receipts, and conversations between the accuser and the accused, that prove without a shadow of a doubt in my mind that Magpie is innocent of all claims levied against him.

I, along with the help of a few others, gathered as much information as I could find, organized it, and created a master list of evidence to combat every accusation. I am going to share the folder that holds the drama overview as well as every document that was used as an external link. Here are the links to the folder and overview, respectively.

This folder with all related documents will also be downloadable as a zip file on Dropbox to anyone who wishes to have a copy for themself. DM me asking for the download link, and I will provide it to you.

This is not meant to be an attack on the person who levied the claims against Magpie, and this is NOT a call to harassment. This needs to be put out into the open so that this drama inside the Wittebane community can cease.

Here is a direct message from Magpie regarding the situation:

"I just wanted to clarify that I had no hand in making the document itself. I was approached by multiple people asking for my side of the evidence / answering questions about the timeline of things / etc. I myself never look at Horse's posts because I don't want to give any of my time to things like this (and tbh I thought they would have stopped by now). Please don't message me about this. This has been going on for over a year now, and I don't want to focus on negativity. I have already provided a lot of information to the people who made this doc. I also DO NOT condone any kind of harassment towards anyone, including anyone mentioned in this document. I did not ask for this document to be made (actually, for a long time I actively discouraged people from doing it because I thought it wasn't necessary), but because multiple slanderous accusations that included my name were recently brought up to me by people I had never interacted with before as well as friends, and Horse does not seem to have stopped, I figured I would provide my side of things to people who asked as to give answers to anyone who might have heard of this situation. This document was in no way meant to encourage bullying of any kind. Please stay safe everyone!"

[toximblee]

hello smeefo nation ,,, new fic alert ???

ao3 has yet to send me an invite email so ill be posting this fic here :3 very inspired by 'feral love' by bdoubleds on ao3 !!! i wouldnt say its to the point of a rewrite but i thought the fire metaphor was too good not to try out ,,, absolutely open to criticism, but pls try to keep it polite :D i copied the text str8 from my word doc so the formatting is a little off in some areas for some reason :( word count : 967

              Etho was burning. He was being swallowed by it. Flames licking at every bit of his body, consuming. The red and yellow of his bone marrow was blackening, charring with the outside, crumbling off in pieces.

              Being red was smoldering him alive, and he wanted more. Uncontrollable. The forest fire in him would engulf everything in its path, taking him with it.

              The flame in his chest didn’t start out blue-hot and rising. Episode 1, as he was spawned into the Game, something was gnawing at his upper torso like someone had taken a diamond pick between his pecs and hollowed him out. Then he met Joel in the mines. Playing around, joking about how he was so disappointed. Beside the hole, a small, supine red candle-flame flourished to life.

              Then Joel built him the ‘Relation’ ship. The fire swelled, crackling orange and marigold. Joel’s hand fit perfectly in his as he dragged him along, and so did he himself inside the soulmate-shaped cave in his chest. With Joel above him that night, Etho took to memorizing every mole and freckle on his skin, and all the constellations they linked together to make. Committing to memory very scar and discolouration, and the sandy beaches and crashing, rolling, foamy waves that consisted of them.

              Etho began to fall in love with everything Joel did. With Joel. With the green streak in his bangs, how he stuck out his tongue in concentration while belatedly redying the clump of hair yellow in the Relation after their Joel-enderman caused death. With his little cackle-giggles. With how he softened the ‘th’ in Etho’s name to a ‘f’ as a result of his lisp.

He too, softened around Joel, trusting him so far as to close his eyes as his soulbound would pluck arrows out of his body from the pillagers and smear an herbal ointment stretched with an awkward potion over the openings. Relaxed as he woke in the early mornings to Joel beside him. Thanked his mask for hiding any sort of embarrassing emotion after Joel traced the scar across his one red eye with tender, feather-light fingertips. Not that it did too much for him, as the tips of his pointed ears would flush pink-red occasionally. Traitorous things.

The transparent string of the fishing rod wrapped around Joel as he was tugged up. Unable to clutch, he plummeted.

<Smallishbeans> fell from a high place

<Etho died>               Joel’s eyes had turned to red after they respawned.

“They killed me, Etho. They killed me.”

Red. Red. They were Red.

Yellow. Canary. White-hot.

Joel chased Pearl down, who was clutching his chestplate. He sliced at her with his diamond axe before she died and her items exploded out across the moonlit grass, the blue-teal of the head of his axe shimmering with red.

Red.

“Shouldn’t have messed with us, Pearl! Shouldn’t have messed with us!” Joel cried as he laughed and took his items back.

The others started scrambling and fleeing. Cowards. Etho’s gaze connected with one before they’d left.               ‘You really let him do that?’

Etho’s eyes conveyed a message of their own.

‘You think I can control anything he does?’

Nah. He was just along for the ride. Joel was an unstoppable force. No immoveable object would even slow him. He didn’t let Joel do anything. He simply watched, strapped into the rollercoaster that was his soulmate. The most he could do was throw his arms up and laugh along.

“You do have it, we’ve been- we’ve been told you have it, you just lied through your teeth to us,” manic, frenzied red eyes focused in on Scar as Joel cornered him, diamond axe to his throat, “do you wanna lie to a red-name, Scar?”

Nervous laughs, attempted de-escalation from Grian.

“Oh, you don’t have any sugarcane, huh, Grian?” Etho felt the red curse biting as he walked towards Grian, “No sugarcane?”

He reveled at the laugh and hiss through his teeth he heard Joel make, teeth bared under his mask mirroring the sharp grin of his soulbound’s that he knew was boring into his back. Joel had changed him, or perhaps it was the curse, or both, and he had to tug himself back from slicing at Grian, from watching the crimson flower bloom and blossom and pour out.

Etho had never been red for long before in the Life Games. His series always ended soon after. This, this was different. He was with the infamous Red Joel. He was alive, and the red curse was swirling in his brain, and he’d wake up in the middle of the night, crazed for blood.

The Games tinkered with everyone’s brains, especially when the end of them were close. Everything became more lucid, nothing seemed real. It made people do stupid things. Too stupid.

They burned the ship.

Blue. Perano.

“The ship burns, everything burns! The ship burns, everything burns!” Joel yelled, chanting hysterically as he sprinted across the server, flint and steel in hand as he set fire to anything in his path.

The ship had burned. Everything would burn.

The yellow streak in Joel’s hair was red. Smeared, having been dyed from soaking up the blood of his kills.

Joel screamed, groaning, growling after he’d killed Scott. His red eyes glowed. If Etho looked too long, too hard, he could spot the flames flickering behind them.

“Etho, they trapped it, get back through!” Joel’s voice was shaky for once, not with mania, but with fear. He sputtered incoherently as his hands scrambled, latching onto Etho.

And they laughed. Foreheads pressed together. Laughed.

<Etho> tried to swim in lava

<Smallishbeans> burned to death

The flame in Etho’s chest mixed with the lava, dwindling, flickering out, as did the ones behind Joel’s irises.

After all.

The ship burns, everything burns. Including them.

[soul-controller]

Commissions Now Available!

Hey everyone!

I've recently moved into a new apartment and the increased costs of rent and utilities has caused me to run dangerously low to having no money in my bank account. Given the fact that I can't get more hours at my job right now despite my best attempts, I thought I'd open up commissions again to see if I can help get some extra money for these upcoming bills.

Cost

In terms of the cost, it's $25 per 1k words and payment would be required upfront due to the aforementioned pressing issue of bills.

With this cost / pricing breakdown, please be realistic with the idea you'd like to see written in tandem with the cost you'd like to pay. I can admit that my writing is relatively lengthy and descriptive, so if you would like a fully detailed transformation, it would most likely be something that is 3k words minimum.

Despite my longer writing style though, I can certainly do a shorter vignette-style transformation that range from 1-2k words. If you'd like examples of these, my most recent posts on Tumblr would best fit that description!

Writing Themes

Things I Can Do

Possessions

Body Swaps

Muscle Growth

Age Progression

Weight Gain

Gender Swaps (Male to Female or Female to Male)

Twink TFs

Animal TFs

Celebrity / Character TFs

Things I Won't Do

Underage (everything must be 18+)

Hypnosis

Hyper Muscle

Anything Violent (especially in a sexual manner like rape)

Bathroom Stuff (water sports or anything like that)

Wait Time & Delivery

In order to not disappoint anyone by overpromising and underdelivering, my quoted wait time from finalizing the outline to completing the story is usually a month long. If a story is longer than 3k words or much more intricate, that time will most certainly be increased a bit.

Once the story is completed though, you will receive a link to a Google Doc that will remain open and accessible for a month to allow the commissioner to have ample time to download the story for themselves. If desired, a copy can also be emailed additionally!

If you're interested in potentially commissioning a story, please feel free to reach out via DMs here (no asks). Although I'm in need of money, I must state that I reserve the right to refuse any idea proposed. Whether it's simply the fact that I believe I'm not the right person for the idea or I'm just not meshing with the concept, this decision is final. Even if one idea is rejected though, you can still offer up other ideas!

Thanks for reading and I look forward to working with some of y'all in the future!

-- Soul-Controller

[copperbadge]

Amateur Translation Programs

So I had a lot of imaginative and informative responses to my post about looking for an amateur translation program -- something where I could load in a foreign language and it would insert a box where I could add a translation every-other-line. The idea was that this way I could practice translation with more advanced texts, and texts I chose, and thus move away from Duolingo, which at this point is good for drilling and daily practice but not for more advanced learning.

I didn't find precisely what was needed but I did get some inspiration for further explanation, and I also learned that adding the term "glossing" (thank you @thewalrus-said) into my searches helped a great deal in terms of weeding out programs that were either "Let this AI translate for you" or just endless promotional links for Babbel and Duolingo and such. I thought I'd collect up the suggestions and post them here; at the end I'm including my best swing at designing what I wanted, and why it doesn't work yet.

Suggestion one, from many people, was various ways to generate a page that is simply fixed Italian text with space underneath each line to add in a translation. This is pretty simple as a process and there are sites that will do it for you, such as this one that @ame-kage suggested. However, most of these don't allow for movement in the Italian text, and many produce a PDF which you would need to print out in order to write on unless you're willing to open it in Acrobat (and deal with Acrobat). A good solution for some but not what I'm looking for purely because I'm trying to make this super frictionless so that (knowing myself as I do) I will actually do it.

I did find this version interesting, suggested by @drivemetogeek: Have one word doc saved as your "template" doc and set the line spacing as 2.0 or higher. Select your text from source and paste it into the template doc as text-only. Ctrl a, ctrl c to select all and copy, then open a new document and "paste special" as picture. Right click and set the "wrap text" as behind text. Now you have a document where you can, basically, type over the existing text because it's the background of the page. This seems like the most frictionless version, because you could set up a bunch of them ahead of time. If you wanted to move between desktop and mobile, however, you'd need to ensure that the pasted image was fairly narrow so that you don't have to sideways-scroll.

Relatedly, people suggested generating a document that is simply the Italian text with empty space beneath it for typing in of the translation. This can be done either semi-automated, using a macro or a language like Python, or find-and-replace on, say, the stops at the ends of sentences. It basically outputs the same as above but with a more digitally accessible format, without any more effort than above. If you were to do this in Google Sheets you could also fix the column width so that it didn't do anything weird when you opened it on your phone. But it is still very friction-y, and does not allow for easy shifting of the Italian as needed. There's high probability of the translation breaking weirdly across the page. Still a top option in terms of simplicity and access.

@smokeandholograms suggested another variation illustrated here where essentially you're converting the text to a series of tables, with each paragraph a row, and an empty cell next to it for the translation. I might play around more with this one eventually, since I think I could possibly make it a three-column and put the Italian in one, the translation in the next, and the auto-translate to let me know where I might be slipping in the third. (Not that I trust auto-translate but comparing a hand translation to an auto translation can be useful in terms of working out when I've messed up the way a tense or mood is read. I tend to read indirect verbs as automatically imperative because I'm a weirdo.)

@wynjara linked to an add-in for Word specifically designed for translators, known as TransTools; this appears to employ a macro to do the same thing, though it does have a format where you can place the translation next to each sentence directly rather than in a separate cell. The full suite of tools is only $45 which is reasonable for my budget, but for what I need I think I could also just create the macro.

Using LaTeX as a tool specially designed for glossing was an option on offer, but I don't know enough about LaTeX to figure out the pros of this one, which is in itself the major con -- there's a learning curve that I think varies widely by person but for me is unfortunately a wall. It came out of a discussion on Reddit about trying to find something like what I want; also in that discussion is a link to a code generator that allows you to…do something…to the initial language, but it's not entirely clear to me (I'm sure it's clear to people who understand coding) what you would then do with it that would allow it to be output in the way I'm hoping for. Like, I could turn a paragraph of text into HTML, I understand that far, but any Italian I find is already on a website.

Moving more into apps that might work, Redditors on the LaTeX discussion suggested SIL Fieldworks, which is a professional language tech tool. Fieldworks isn't a program I'd previously encountered but much as with the ones I had, it looks like the learning curve is fairly steep and it is definitely overkill generally for what I need, though it might also harbor within it the thing I want. It is free, so I may download and play around with it.

@brightwanderer suggested using note-taking or "whiteboard" apps such as Freeform or Nebo; these are generally a kind of "infinite canvas" in which you can drop objects, text boxes, or handwriting. I don't know that Freeform would be measurably different to just using Word and a macro, since I'd still have to input/format all the text and then be stuck with the same "fixed text" setup -- and it's also iOS only -- but for some folks it might be more helpful. Nebo is a similar infinite-canvas with unfortunately the same issues, though on the plus it's available for Android, which is where most of my mobile property resides.

@bloodbright suggested that I was looking for a CAT tool, a professional translation tool mainly used by translators working in the field. This was a concept I'd encountered, but I hadn't found a good starting place. They suggested Smartcat and OmegaT. Smartcat bills itself as an AI translation platform and is HARD pushing the "don't translate it yourself, hire a translator or let AI do it" angle, so it's difficult to tell what it offers in terms of actual tools for translators, and it's also cagey about pricing, so I can't really evaluate it. OmegaT is free and gives off big "some weirdo homebrewed this in their basement" vibe (which I am here for) but I also recognized it from screengrabs that were the reason I veered away from professional-grade software: it looked too complex. Realistically, the major downside of OmegaT is that I don't think I can put it on my phone. One thing I did find interesting is that once you translate a portion of the text, the original language goes away, though I assume you can turn that off if needed. I do kind of like that because it means my distractable brain is looking at Less Stuff.

So where did I end up?

Well, it looked like I was going to have to try a homebrew myself. I had the idea of trying some of the initial suggestions but in reverse -- designing a document where every other line was a single-cell table fixed to the page. You could paste in the Italian, which would wrap around the cells, and then enter the English in the cells.

You can fix a table in place in Google Docs -- you click on the table, then under Table > Style select Wrap Text, Both Sides, and Fix On Page. Getting the whole page set up is a little labor intensive but once you did that, you could just save it as a template and make a duplicate of it each time. And this actually works….on desktop.

Unfortunately, if you open it in the mobile Docs app, the app can't handle the fixed tables and automatically moves them all to after the text that's been pasted in. I tried redesigning it so that it's a table within a table -- one for the Italian, then within that a series of them for the English -- but when you nest a table in Google Docs, it doesn't let you fix the second table in place. And you are also still dealing with the wrap issue, although you can resize the page and add a large right-hand margin as a kludge of a fix for that.

You can build this same kind of document in Word, so I tried building one in Word and then uploading it to Drive, but when you open the Word file in Docs (or in Microsoft Word for Android), it still strips the fixed positioning -- there's just some functionality missing from both apps that doesn't allow them to handle fixed-position tables.

So, the design is sound, just not the final execution. If I could program an app, I could probably remedy the issues with it -- it's simply a series of text boxes nested inside one another with different formatting. I would imagine that's relatively basic to set up, although given that neither Docs nor Word can handle fixed tables in mobile, perhaps I've stumbled on a much bigger problem that everyone is ignoring because nobody actually needs or wants fixed tables in mobile. :D

Experimentation is ongoing, anyway. I might simply have to resign myself to the fact that my translation study is going to have to be in front of a computer, which might be for the best anyway when I inevitably want to compare my translation to an auto-translate to see where I might have read something wrong.

[sadlybeans]

❛﹒𝖇𝖑𝖔𝖔𝖉 & 𝖈𝖗𝖆𝖈𝖐𝖊𝖉 𝖇𝖔𝖓𝖊𝖘

❛﹒𝖇𝖑𝖔𝖔𝖉 & 𝖈𝖗𝖆𝖈𝖐𝖊𝖉 𝖇𝖔𝖓𝖊𝖘

Single muse template! Once again, I made this for a character of mine in my personal fantasy rp server, but I was proud of it so I decided to post it. As you can see, it's much simpler and easier to navigate than my first one. All the symbolism is for my character, and if you're interested to know about it; Cherry blossoms symbolise warriors and the sacrifices made for your country. Tigers in Chinese mythology mean strength, courage and protection. Bamboo symbolizes resilience, flexibility, and strength. Lotus flowers: purity, enlightenment, and rebirth. And finally, cranes represent high military rank. (Or longevity). Dragons, as you may already know, represent the emperor and power.

How to download:

Link to the doc found here.

Go to files and select 'copy'.

Edit the filler text, headers and images. In this doc all headers are drawings, simply double click to edit.

There is an extra page in the doc that can be modified to be used as you wish.

[crownmemes]

Advice; Where to Make Rules and About Pages

If you've read my advice post about the difference between about and rules pages and why they're both important, you may not be wondering the best way to make them. The good news is, there are plenty of options!

Tumblr

The simplest choice. In the past, people would make custom pages on their theme. However, since dash view has become popular (and you can't view custom pages via it, nor can you view them on mobile), most people simply post their about/rules page as a normal text post, and link to it in their pinned post. If you have a custom theme, make sure to link the pages in the navigation bar too!

Using a plain Tumblr post increases your page's readability, but reduces the amount of formatting you can do. If you make your pages elsewhere, you will be able to customise them a lot more.

Carrd

A free website maker. You can make a small site with a free account, and the prices are pretty reasonable if you need to make a bigger site. Carrd has a minimalist aesthetic, and it will also adjust what you make to fit a mobile browser (though this may break your formatting if you have designed something complicated).

Carrd is easy to use, but it is best used for simple designs. If you want to do something more complicated than a basic Carrd layout, you're going to spend a lot of time trying to make the formatting work. If you want multiple pages for your site, you're also going to spend a lot of time formatting as you can't clone pages, therefore have to recreate each one every time instead.

It uses markdown for formatting text. If you're familiar with it, this can speed up writing, but it may slow you down if you've never used it before.

One of the benefits of Carrd is that there are lots of free templates available within the rpc! Here are resources I found with a quick Google search, but there are plenty more out there if you look for them: [x] [x] [x]

Weebly

Another free website maker. You can make more for free here than you can on Carrd. Weebly sites should adapt to work on a mobile browser.

I've never seen anybody use Weebly for about/rules pages, but I do recommend it! It's very easy to use, and, unlike Carrd, you can copy and paste entire pages. This makes it ideal if you have lots of muses that you want to make individual about pages for.

It uses a more typical text editor than Carrd. Instead of markdown, it's more like Microsoft Word - where you highlight text and click buttons to add formatting. You also have HTML/CSS options.

Weebly does offer some free templates, but you're likely to want to edit them to suit your needs more. This is okay! It isn't difficult to do!

Google Docs

A popular, completely free option. As with Carrd, there are plenty of templates and resources within the rpc (here are three examples: [x] [x] [x]). These pages will be viewable on a mobile browser, but the theme may not translate well. Keep readability in mind if you use this option.

If you use this option, also make sure the link you share is viewer only and doesn't have editor permissions!

Other Options (WordPress, Self-Hosting, etc)

Don't feel you have to follow the crowd. If you like to use WordPress, use WordPress. You could also use Neocities, or any other website builder!

Personally, I already own a web domain because I have websites for other online activities, so I use about pages that I've coded from scratch and host them myself. For my rules page, I just use a Tumblr text post that's linked in my pinned post. In the past, I've used Carrd and Tumblr pages for about pages.

If you want to write your site using HTML, some free website hosters will allow you to do this (Neocities, for example). If you're interested in coding, I do recommend this! It allows you to have full customisability, and coding can be a really useful skill. However, one downside of this is it can make your pages hard to read on a mobile browser. It's up to you to decide how important this is.

If you're interested in learning HTML (as well as CSS, JavaScript, and other coding languages), this site is a great resource!

[showtoonzfan]

So to sum up, here’s what Viv did to Ken regarding the document:

1. Saw their fanart of Cherri Bomb, asked if she could use their pose as a reference for Cherri’s character sheet, but instead traced the pose and despite saying she’d give credit, never did.

2. Excuses the fact that her idea for Sir Pentious’s third eye being an emote to him was a copy of Ken’s character they refer to as “TF”. Ken mentions it made them uncomfortable and suggested that his hat be an AI or something Pen created himself, but obliviously in the final product of the pilot, it was never explained what Sir Pen’s hat was or why he had it.

3. MOST importantly, NEVER credited Ken for their involvement with writing the Hazbin pilot. Viv goes to Ken multiple instances, admitting she isn’t the best at writing and only comedy, and needs help. She shares some ideas with Ken, and here are the following ideas and scenes that Ken came up with THEMSELVES that appeared in the final product of the pilot:

The joke scene where everyone laughs at Charlie, but Angel dust is brought up with her proudly saying he’s making great progress, only to cut to him on the news helping Cherri out and everything being screwed up for her, saying “oh shit” or “oh fuck”.

Angel being the only patron of the hotel, and only being there for a free room, with Vaggie and Charlie scolding him that he would change and him not caring

LITERALLY WAS THE ONE WHO CAME UP WITH ALASTOR APPEARING IN THE PILOT AND WANTING TO INVEST IN THE HOTEL BECAUSE HE’S BORED.

Alastor and Husk knowing each other PERSONALLY and Alastor being the one who hired Husk to help

The joke scene where someone brings up that they’re trying to help sinners not encourage this stuff and Angel immediately says “shut up we’re keeping this”-

The joke scene of Angel telling Al he can do the deed and Al immediately going “haha! No!”.

Came up with the idea that Al’s introduction on who he is should be through Angel asking Vaggie and came up with the “wait you don’t know him?” - “eh not big on politics”- dialogue.

Alastor’s line of “If I wanted to hurt anyone here, I would have done so already”-

And yet, despite being responsible for these jokes and plot threads, when Erin had confronted Viv about being credited, Viv had all this bs to say:

At first she rambles on about how she didn’t credit because apparently the stuff Ken came up with was early draft shit? Despite the fact that everything I listed above was in the actual pilot? And then didn’t want to credit them because she wanted to make a “promotional” post despite Spindlehorse not even being created yet and Ken had every right to ask for credit since it’s true that people DO assume that Viv does all this stuff by herself. And apparently telling everyone what members did what is too much for Viv, because Ken’s getting paid anyway so that makes it okay! Then Viv being Viv thinks Ken is attacking her and pulls the poor pity me card simply because she couldn’t understand what Ken was asking her I guess, but I suggest y’all read the entire doc because I’m scratching the surface, I just bring this up because the writing was the most important part.

4. Blacklisted and talked horrible of Ken behind their back. Ken was hesitant and late into signing the document, but eventually Viv had started to speak negatively of Ken to other members, calling them an abuser ect:

Again, read the document for full context, but this is just fucking awful, especially since at the same time when this was happening, Viv had been talking to Ken at the time and being all nice. It’s just amazing how awful Viv sounds, how she thinks Ken is out to get her and her show, all for wanting credit and wanting to make sure they didn’t sign their rights and characters away. Someone who had literally helped Viv on the pilot and was there for her in a vulnerable time of need, got treated like dirt, and it is NOT okay.

Please spread the document link:

[thecynthh]

do you not find it a bit disrespectful to repost/rewrite other peoples fics? i understand that you’re doing it because people really liked them, or whatever, but i also feel like it’s kind of rude to do so.

personally, if i left this app or deleted my account and came back to find someone was posting my hard work, i would be genuinely upset.

if the og writer gave you permission then that’s a completely different story.

not at all hating, just wondering.

so lemme give u my perspective, i am just like everyone else a consumer, meaning i read and i comment and i like and twiddle my thumbs scroll on this app for at least 2 hours a day.

i have favourite accounts and stories with aspirations to write better and more overall and without the inspiration from the friends and writers that have deactivated i would’ve never began writing and posting my own shit

i was just as happy to find out that i could save old stories from deactivated accounts as much as people were happy to find out that i was reposting them. so coming from a writer and a consumer i don’t see that much of a problem considering my terms.

the way that i’ve made my links is if i wanted too, i could delete the whole thing unless that person tries to copy and paste it into something else entirely. so i have control and moderation about how much it can spread.

i have stated multiple times that if the author or someone close to them reaches out to me specifically asking or demanding for me to take it down i will happily comply. I have stated this MULTIPLE TIMES and in every single post that includes the actual link to any of the stories.

then again i’m not personally close with any of the writers but if they say the word it’ll all be gone in seconds. i would understand as a writer, the frustration and seeing it from an outside perspective that it is indeed disrespectful.

would i be butt hurt if someone did do that to me personally? no, because in the end yes it is someone’s personal work but it’s still just a fan fiction about a 21 year old man who will probably have moved on with their life in a couple of years.

mind you all of these fics still exist somewhere on tumblr, all of it is for the public to find. i have simply compiled it into a couple google docs while STILL CREDITING THEM.

what about u anon? are you using the links? do u enjoy the fics ive collected?

as a matter of fact who does use the links and think it’s morally wrong of me to be doing this. because in the end it’s majorities favour.

sorry for the rant/ if this came off bitchy/ i could’ve phrased this whole thing better but thank u if u even read a single paragraph.

[darkreflections-zine]

Dark Reflections is now accepting submissions!

Dark Reflections is an all-Trek zine focusing on the Mirror Universe and other dark universes. We welcome the dark, the macabre, the unsavoury and the morally dubious.

Please read the FAQ under the cut before submitting anything. Feel free to join our Discord server for quick answers to questions, hanging out with other submitters, beta reader requests, and work reminders.

Submissions close October 10th. Send submissions to ollieaster@gmail.com

FAQ

What counts as a mirror universe?

According to Fanlore, a mirror universe is any alternate universe which is a dark reflection (pun intended) of the original. Whether this is the mirror universe we see in the shows or in beta canon, or a completely new universe that is simply not as kind to our characters as the original is up to you. Keep in mind that this zine focuses on and embraces the more "evil" aspects of those universes.

What can I submit to the zine?

Writing (fic and poetry) and art (traditional or digital, including comics) can all be submitted. We don't accept manips, meta essays (essays written in-universe may be allowed), mood boards, or anything that can't be printed, such as vids and podfics. Fics must not exceed 25,000 words, though depending on quality and number of submissions we may choose more, shorter works over fewer, longer ones. There is no lower limit for writing. Art must be completed, which means no sketches. Traditional art should be scanned, 300p. Written files should be .docx or .pdf, and art files should be .png, .jpg or .tiff. Links to Google Docs are also accepted.

Is there anything I can't write about?

Despite this zine embracing and encouraging potentially controversial subject matters, there are a few things we won't accept. Generally speaking, though, unless you're writing nazi roleplay erotica (for example) we're not likely to reject your fic on subject matter alone.

What show/ship/characters does the zine focus on?

Ideally, all of them. We'd like for this to be an all-Trek zine. However, if we get an overwhelming majority of one series we may end up rejecting a single work from a different one, even if it normally would have gotten in, just to keep everything cohesive. Either way, we will not accept OC-centric works.

Can I submit a work that has been published somewhere else? e.g. AO3, another zine, ect.

No. We only accept new works.

Does my work need to be beta read before submission?

Preferably, yes. We will edit works which have been accepted and which require it. All works in the zine will match in editing style, though we'll try to keep the author's style intact.

If I submit multiple works, how many are likely to get in?

We would prefer to give as many creators an opportunity to participate as possible, but if there is room or your works are particularly fitting, we will include multiple.

Do I need experience to submit works?

No. We will gladly accept works from new creators.

Do I need to join the discord server to participate?

No. The server gives you easier access to the editor, granting quicker answers to any questions you may have, as well as general accountability and greater sense of community, but that is all.

How do you match fic and art?

Ideally, we will have some solid matches from the get-go. If necessary, we will ask submitters who have volunteered to pinch hit for fics with no art. Art with no matches will separate poems or end up on one of the covers.

Will there be merch?

Possibly.

After the zine is published, can I post my work to AO3/social media?

We reserve printing rights for six months after publication (the day printed zines will be shipped). After that, you may do with your work as you wish.

How much will the zine cost?

This depends on a number of factors. However, we will endeavour to keep the zine as cheap as possible. We cannot legally make money off of fanworks, nor do we wish to. A free pdf copy of the zine will be sent to everyone who has purchased a physical copy, and these digital copies will be available to purchase at a much discounted price.

I have another question that isn't listed here.

Shoot us an ask! All asks are tagged #qna to make finding them easier. Please check if we have answered your question there before sending a new one.

[buthowboutno]

🕸

(asking this one because I know the answer and others should be made aware lmao)

🎱🔥🧼

Also, tell your mother I said hello.

i'll eat you

🕸: Do you outline? How detailed?

I LOVE MY SPREADSHEETS!! i live and die by my fucking plot chart. you shall not shame me today /aff

^^ example of previous chapters in the chart

I have every chapter organized in a table, basically acting as my overarching timeline for ATWLP. the left column is summary/ideas i have for the plot of the fic/any conversations i think would be funny and the right column is the link for the corresponding doc (because any doc over 30 pages long makes me want to chew concrete)

I also have an excel sheet to keep track of word counts and to calculate the projected total word count of atwlp with respect to the total chapter number and average word count per chapter.

every chapter starts with bullet points and the losers tell me how it goes down from there.

the voices, ya know?

🎱: Have you ever had readers correctly guess a twist or reveal in the comments?

yes. and i cannot for the life of me remember what it was lol

🔥: What's a piece of writing advice you consider bad advice?

might be the adhd talking, but the whole "sit down and dont get up until you've written x amount of words" never worked for me. simply designating a time to write is nice, but that pressure ultimately made me freeze up and dread every minute i was writing.

also the whole "show don't tell" thing. there is a time for both.

🧼: Do you ever go back to edit fics or chapters after they've already been posted?

All the time lmao. I added two whole ass chapters to the middle of "Days of a Past Future" (which y'all should read, i'm so proud of that one)

it is my plan when i am finally finished with atwlp to go back and edit the entire fic so i can make a physical copy of it.

[in-death-we-fall]

Fell In Love With A ghoul

Some people spend their whole lives searching for their soulmate. But as Murderdolls prepare to gatecrash the charts with their cover of ‘White Wedding’, Joey Jordison and Wednesday 13 explain why they’re made for one another…

Words: Dave Everley Photos: Roxy Erickson

(docs link) (Clown article x x)

Wednesday 13, frontman with the Murderdolls, is an avowed Mötley Crüe fan. He owns all 11 of their albums; he'll even defend their traditionally indefensible later, minor works with all the passion of a man who has divested large chunks of his earnings into the band's output at one time or another. He has, he estimates, read their infamous biography 'The Dirt' eight times.

    Now Mötley Crüe were undoubtedly dunderheaded arse-clowns of the highest order — and you can't help feeling that Wednesday 13, despite his unshakeable affection for the band, knows this. But they were also absolutely fantastic, if only for one particular reason: in the midst of the soulless, self-obsessed circle jerk that was the '80s rock scene, they were utterly, gloriously unique. Yes, they were as dumb as fence posts; yes, their behaviour veered between the mischievous and the truly cretinous; yes, they spawned a whole shower of shit that took years to mop up. But they were out there on their own.

It wouldn’t be inaccurate to call Murderdolls a Mötley Crüe for the ‘90s, if only for the reason that, in the midst of the soulless, self-obsessed circle jerk that is today’s rock scene, they too are utterly, gloriously unique. Whether you’re of the opinion that they’re a knowing tribute to the days when bands’ agendas extended no further than having as much fun as possible as often as possible, or simply the latest in a long line of shit-kicking party bands that began with the New York Dolls, there’s no debating the fact that they’re out there on their own as much as Mötley Crüe ever were.

And for that reason alone, the Murderdolls deserve your attention.

On paper, Murderdolls shouldn’t really exist. Or at least, they shouldn’t exist on the scale that they do. A modern day cock rock outfit put together by the drummer from Slipknot, a band who, love them or loathe them, at least managed to sneak a form of extreme metal to the top of the charts? Riiight.

Except the Murderdolls do exist, and they are successful. Their sole album to date, last year’s glam-Goth opus ‘Beyond The Valley Of The Murderdolls’, has sold 50,000 copies in the UK – half of what Slipknot sell, admittedly, but done with only a fraction of the hype the latter band has been fuelled with over the past few years. Their new single, a snarling version of Billy Idol’s ‘80s hit ‘White Wedding’ looks set to bust their B-movie indebted noise out to the masses.

In a sparse but stylishly furnished room deep in the warren of corridors that make up the West London headquarters of Sanctuary Management – handlers of Murderdolls, as well as Iron Maiden, Guns N’Roses and dozens of others – Wednesday 13 sinks into an expensive leather sofa and proceeds to empty the contents of his less expensive leather trousers onto the glass-topped table in front of him.

“Man, too many pounds in my pocket,” he says good-naturedly, his attempt at an English accent as successful as that of most visiting American musicians (that is, not at all).

Two days ago, Murderdolls played the main stage of the Download festival. They hung around the site for another 24 hours, soaking up the atmosphere and generally drinking themselves senseless. Wednesday started “partying” at three o’clock yesterday afternoon. He didn’t stop until the small hours of the morning. He woke up at eight o’clock. It’s now two in the afternoon. There’s not even a whiff of a hangover. Bastard.

“I don’t get them,” is his cheery response. “Never have.”

The Wednesday 13 sitting here, laid-back and grinning, couldn’t be further removed from the sneering, spiky, B-movie anti-hero that appears on Murderdolls records. That Wednesday 13 is a sneering, spiky B-movie anti-hero with arsenic and embalming fluid running through his veins. This Wednesday 13 is Joseph Poole, a 26-year-old Mid-Westerner who still lives in the same “tiny as fuck” North Carolina town where he’s spent most of his life and who hadn’t so much as set foot on an aeroplane until Joey Jordison paid for him to fly to Des Moines to join the Murderdolls.

He looks nothing like you’d imagine him to. He’s fleshier for a start – not fat in the slightest, but not the sunken-faced cadaver that leers out from photos. He looks younger too, though that could well be on account of the fact that he’s not made up to resemble death warmed over. Only the array of tattoos that adorn his arms – “horror movie shit” like Bela Ludosi, Linda Blair, the Bride Of Frankenstein, Herman and Lily Munster, ‘Hellraiser’ – equate the man sipping Diet Coke and beaming effusively with the dreadlocked ghoul who fronts the Murderdolls.

Actually, Wednesday 13 isn’t really anything like you’d expect him to be, full-stop. Back home in Landis, he lives in a suburban home with his longtime girlfriend and his five-year-old daughter, Zoe (“We’re like ‘The Addams Family’,” he smirks). He admits that he’s shy, that “when I talk to people, I don’t really look them in the eye” (this is true). He’s not embarrassed to admit that his relationship with his parents is “awesome – my parents were always super-cool”.

What was your childhood like? “Dude, I lived in a trailer until I was 13 years old. I didn’t even have my own room until I was 10 or 11.”

And how were you supporting your family before that call came from Joey? “Delivering magazines. I had to drive an hour to my job, so I’d get up at 4:30 in the morning, leave at five and be there at six. I drove a big delivery truck. I had to go to grocery stores and put ‘National Enquirer’ and ‘TV Guide’ and all that shit in there. That sucked.”

Ever think of jacking it in and moving to New York or LA to get closer to the action? “I always thought it’d be cool to live in New York, but I never had the money, and I never had a band that was willing to pack up and move. I really lucked out when I got a call from Joey. The last fucking dude on earth I thought would call me would be the drummer from Slipknot.”

Before Joey Jordison entered his life, Wednesday 13 fronted the Frankenstein Drag Queens From Planet 13. Formed when he was 19 years old, the Drag Queens combined the twin influences of Alice Cooper and Ed Wood. Between 1996 and 2001, they released four albums of schlocky, snotty punk rock (several songs from these records would be reworked and re-recorded for ‘Beyond The Valley Of The Murderdolls’). Their schtik – wigs, dresses and zombie make-up – was as becoming as it was dumb. Still, in North Carolina – a pig’s squeal away from Bible Belt country – that’s one hell of a statement to make.

“When we started out, it was complete war,” is his memory of the Drag Queens’ early days. “We didn’t want to be friends with anybody. Every show was a fucking battle. I’d just say shit to the audience to get a rise – if they were drinking beer, I’d shout, ‘Beer is for fags!’. Then they’d start throwing shit at us, and I’d take my guitar off and jump into the crowd.”

Did it ever get physical? “All the time. At one gig, a guy in the audience threw a beer at me. I dived in the audience and tackled him, and started beating the shit out of him. I was wearing a pink dress and platforms at the time. This was in a new town and there were 100 or so people there. I thought they’d beat the shit out of me, but they ended up cheering me on.”

Remarkably, Wednesday managed to survive those early shows relatively unscathed. Even more remarkably, local club owners seemed to like the band’s mixture of outrage and antagonism. The buzz around the Drag Queens began to spread across the state.

“Everybody in town hated us, because we actually got gigs. The club owners kinda dug us. They were like, ‘We’re sick of all that other shit – this is fucking entertaining, let’s book them’. All the other bands hated us for that – ‘They’re fags, they’re wearing dresses, they don’t know how to play music’.”

What did your parents think of what you were doing? “My mom always sewed my clothes for me. She sewed all my dresses up.”

And your dad? “I dunno. I’m sure any man doesn’t want to walk around a corner and see his son standing there going, ‘Hey Dad, I got this new dress. Like it?’. But now I think he’s proud – he’s seen that I’ve stuck to my guns with it all.”

What was the best thing about being in the Frankenstein Drag Queens? “The very beginning was awesome because it was so fresh – I was working in a furniture store, making five bucks an hour, so I took out a loan to pay for the recording of the first record. The record came out, and we felt like we were above everybody else. Then two months later, the drummer quit. But by the end, nobody gave a shit – where I lived, it had really died. That’s why when Joey called I thought, ‘Fuck it, I’m going to do this Murderdolls thing’.”

There’s a track on the ‘White Wedding’ single called ‘I Take Drugs’. In reality, Wednesday 13’s recreational pursuits extend no further than an impressive capacity for alcohol.

“I’ve never done drugs in my life,” he says with a shrug that says ‘Why should I have done?’. “I guess I’m chickenshit. I’ve taken aspirin, but that’s all. I’ve never taken coke or E. I’ve probably smoked six cigarettes in my whole life. I don’t need it.”

It’s a strange admission from a man who shamelessly admits to a lifelong obsession with the most debauched of genres, cock rock. In fact, Wednesday 13 is so obsessed with cock rock that he’s possibly the only person on the planet right now who could not only namecheck long-forgotten Welsh glam tarts Tigertailz, but also take the time to describe their logo (he does both today). He might not be Mötley Crüe material, but he might just have sneaked into fell Sunset Strip darlings Faster Pussycat.

Have you ever dated a stripper, Wednesday? “Yeah, and it was one of the worst things I’ve ever done too. She tried to kill herself in front of me. I broke up with her, so she ran into my kitchen, pulled out a butcher’s knife and cut her arm open in front of me. I grabbed the knife and grabbed her arm – my fingers went into the cut, and I actually touched her bone. I threw her into the car and drove her to hospital. When we got there, there happened to be a cop in the waiting room. There was some very quick explaining done.”

Ever filmed yourself having sex? “Never. But mirrors are cool.”

Ever been arrested? “No. And I don’t want to. I’m not the kind of guy who walked around going, ‘Fuck the police’. I’m totally pro-cop. I’m so pro-cop, it’s actually ridiculous.”

That’s not a very rock ‘n’ roll thing to say. “Fuck that. I think that being a cop is one of the bravest jobs ever. I couldn’t imagine pulling over some car at three o’clock in the morning, knocking on the window, not knowing who’s in there – you’re fucking with death. I’d never have the balls to do that job. I’m pro-cop all the way. And I don’t care what anyone says.”

What do your neighbours in North Carolina think of you? “Well, the guy on the left is a priest. He’s a nice guy. He helped me take my garbage out the other day, then tried to persuade me to come to church. I had to tell him no, in the politest possible way. The guy on the other side, I just know to say hi to.”

What’s it like being a father? “It changes you. I never planned to have a kid that young, but I would never take it back. My kid is my life. I’d do anything to protect her. I never forget who I am and that I’ve got responsibilities back home. When you go on the road, you turn into a monster, then you come back home and you’re back to normal, Mr Nice Guy.”

What does your girlfriend think of what you do? “She’s known me since I was 15. She’s got bright red hair and more tattoos than I do. She loves it. But when I get home it’s different. I’m just the family guy.”

Unlike Wednesday 13, Nathan Jonas Jordison – Joey to the rest of the world – is everything you expect him to be. Thanks to the phenomenal rise of Slipknot, and the volumes of press that have been written in its wake, it’s difficult to shake the feeling that you already know him inside out.

You don’t so much interview Joey Jordison as try to keep up with him.Sitting in the same position on the same sofa that was, until 20 minutes ago, occupied by Wednesday 13, the drummer and guitarist (he played both on ‘Beyond The Valley Of The Murderdolls’) will spend the next half hour machine-gunning out answers to a barrage of questions as quickly as they come in. He’s loud, assured, articulate and passionate. In fact, the only thing that’s surprising is that he still lives with his mother, in the same house in Iowa that he’s been in since he was two years old.

“It’s a real humble place out in the country,” he says. “I like the quiet. I like getting away from the busy streets and the noise and the chaos. It’s nice to go home to some peace and quiet, cos there’s none of that on the road.”

As we speak, Jordison has at least three projects on the go (there’s Slipknot and Murderdolls, plus an unnamed extreme metal project he’s working on with Necrophagia frontman Killjoy). His explanation is that he gets bored “very fucking easily”. Back home, he has three guitars placed strategically around the house (“one in my room, one in the bathroom and one downstairs”). Ask him what his greatest obsession is, and he replies, “music”. Ask him how he switches off from music, and he looks puzzled.

“What do you mean?”

Do you ever stop thinking about music? “No. It’s the only thing I know how to do well. I can spin upside down on a drum riser in front of 20,000 people with Slipknot, but I can’t go to the mailbox and figure out my mail. I have no sense of normal reality at all. Today I went out shopping. I walked to the fucking store, then I couldn’t figure how to get back. I have to be pointed in the right direction. That’s why I have to have an assistant with me all the time.”

As much as the Murderdolls are an equal partnership – and both Joey Jordison and Wednesday 13 are adamant that it is – there’s no doubt that it’s Jordison who provided the initial impetus. He’s the one who took the raw materials – specifically The Rejects, the glam-punk band he played guitar with intermittently during the ‘90s – and shaped it into something new. He’s the one who marshalled the personnel, calling Wednesday out of the blue and flying him to Des Moines to see if his dream could work. He’s also the one who, by dint of his status as a member of one of the biggest metal bands on the planet, gave the Murderdolls an instant profile.

Are you a control freak, Joey? “Yeah. Well, maybe not a control freak, but I definitely like to have my opinions. People respect me because I have strong opinions. But it’s not about ego – it’s about the end result. That’s all I'm concerned with.”

Are you friends with the people in your bands? “Every one of them. The Slipknot dudes are like my brothers. We’ve been through everything together – we started with jack shit and we became one of the biggest metal bands around. With this band, I don’t know everybody like I know the guys in Slipknot, but I love them all to fucking pieces.”

Does it bother you that the Murderdolls are still seen by some as ‘Joey from Slipknot’s band’? “I don’t think people see it that way anymore. When we first toured, all you’d see is Slipknot shirts. You don’t see that now. Now it’s kids all in red and black. Murderdolls is a fun band.”

What about a party band? As in a band who like to party? “Oh yeah.”

How much alcohol do you get through a week? “Wednesday got through a bottle-and-a-half of Jägermeister last night.”

What about the other trappings of rock ‘n’ roll? The sex, the drugs… “Certain guys in the band like the groupie thing. I don’t necessarily. Wednesday certainly doesn’t.”

Why don’t you like it? “I’ve kind of gone through it already. It’s not even really that good. It doesn’t… (pause) I mean, I’m into making girls do weird shit.”

Such as? “If a girl’s got a cool trick, she can come on the bus for entertainment purposes rather than sexual purposes.”

Give me an example of the sort of entertainment you’re talking about here. “A girl came on the bus once and fucking smoked a cigarette through her pussy, then blew it out of her mouth. I was, like, ‘I wanna see that’.”

You’re friends with Marilyn Manson. What does a night out with the two of you involve? “Actually it’s not as crazy as you might imagine. We might be round his house, watching TV, having a couple of drinks, talking about music. It’s not like you think – chicks and drugs and shit.”

The most common misconception about the Murderdolls, usually held by people who either don’t like the Murderdolls or have never heard them, is that they’re stupid. Murderdolls aren’t stupid. They’re stoopid, like Kiss were stoopid, like Mötley Crüe were stoopid. Yes, that might occasionally involve what Wednesday 13 calls “our idiot tendencies”, whether that means getting cross-eyed drunk on red wine and falling asleep in the lavatory of an airplane (as Wednesday recently did on a flight back from Japan) or starting a bar brawl in Germany (as Joey did when the band were last in Europe).

But ultimately, the Murderdolls are a rock ‘n’ roll band, and that’s precisely what rock ‘n’ roll bands are supposed to do. And now, more than ever before, we need rock ‘n’ roll bands who are willing to do rock ‘n’ roll things.

And that, once again, is why the Murderdolls deserve your attention.

Murderdolls are currently touring the UK with Stone Sour. Check Out There for details. Their new single, ‘White Wedding’, is released on July 14 via Roadrunner.

Gig Of The Week

Murderdolls/Stone Sour

Dates: Birmingham Academy July 9, Glasgow Barrowland 10, Manchester Apollo 11, London Brixton Academy 12. Admission: £16, London £18. Support: Elviss.

Some and see us because… Corey Taylor (vocals, Stone Sour): “Where else can you see five idiots kicking ass and getting naked? It’s going to be great playing with the Murderdolls, they’re a great live band. We can’t wait to get back because Donington was awesome. I got some comments about looking like Joe Elliot backstage, and it was weird playing with Metallica in the background. But that was crazy shit, and I got very drunk.” Wednesday 13 (vocals, Murderdolls): “You will see a rock show, not a nu-metal show with baggy pants, and you will see a group of pretty guys – us. It’ll be cool to play with Stone Sour. I sat down with Corey for the first time at Donington and we talked about movies and shit.”

Look out for… Corey: “A couple of songs that aren’t on the album, and Jim doing his weird goose-step walk. I’ll say no more about that.” Wednesday: “Toothpaste and toothbrushes. Fire and blood. That’s all just part of our show.”

Don’t go to the toilet when… Corey: “We’re playing. Hold your fucking piss. If you go while we’re onstage, I’ll fucking kill you.” Wednesday: “We’re playing. You could miss anything. There’s no telling what we’ll do. You could miss my big, giant gun. Which, incidentally, I don’t think we’ll have any trouble getting through customs. I know people.”

If you see me in the bar afterwards… Corey: ���Buy me a Jack and Coke. Everyone knows that. We love hanging out and goofing off, when we’re not getting drunk and stripping.” Wednesday: “Buy me a shot of Jägermeister. Absolutely definitely come and say hello. I always hang out with the kids.”

Brett Callwood

[lunawlw]

To accuse every message you get from Palestinians as spam & non legit is so evil but it’s also so stupid. It can be easily proven (on tumblr that is) to see if they are legit. And the secret to that is simply following Palestinians. Most of the Palestinians I follow let you know publicly by answering a question, replying, or posting if something is a scam or not. There is a whole google doc filled with legit fundraiser (and guess what, many of those people have a tumblr account too!!!)

Literally if you get an ask in your inbox, copy the url and search in the tumblr search bar. Chances are you will see someone who also got asked by that account who went on to confirm or deny if the account is legit and links proof (be it to the google doc or to one of the Palestinian blogs providing proof)

Then you yourself can check the google doc as well for the gofundme.

Every ask I’ve gotten so far has been legit.

[ktarsims]

K’tar reverts to 1.67: Some notes...

So in the wake of EA forcing everyone to update from the Origin App to the EA App, which sporadically seems to cause even more problems than the Origin App for many TS3 players, I decided it was finally time to take the plunge and stop playing on 1.69. Below the cut, What I did, how I did it, issues and questions I ran into, and some notes.

First, I started off using this tutorial here: https://sims3tutorialhub.tumblr.com/post/176328544696/installing-sims-via-torrent Simply using the NoCD mod would not have worked for me, as I only own a few of the TS3 expansions and stuff packs via disc, and own most of them digitally. By the time I realized this might be an issue for me later, I already owned them all, and I don’t believe in paying for an entire franchise a second time just because game companies like EA will bleed you dry if they can.

Question #1: Do I need to uninstall first? After backing up the EA folder in my docs folder and the everything in the program files folder as well, per the suggestion in the above tutorial, and having already downloaded all the needed files, this was the first question that popped up for me. I don’t actually know the answer, but I decided that since my current installation was in Origin, which I hope not to use again (at least for TS3), I would uninstall everything from Origin, so I did so.

After that, I abandoned the above tutorial and instead followed the instructions that came with the downloaded files. They’re fairly concise and easy to follow. I went back and checked eventually and they’re basically the same as the ones in the above tutorial, except you’ve no need for further downloads, because everything is already included in what you’ve downloaded. If you are following the above tutorial to download the 1.67 super patch, be aware that you may have to copy and paste the link into a new browser tab to get the download to work. (I did.) This took me to having completed step 7 in the above tutorial.

Next, a step that isn’t mentioned in the tutorial, or the instructions in the download. Copy over your GraphicsCards.sgr and GraphicsRules.sgr from your old Program Files x86/.../Bin folder to your new one. This way your game will still recognize your graphics card and any changes you previously made to the graphics rules will remain.

Then I installed the proper version of @lazyduchess ’s Smooth patch into the same Bin folder. Thanks again for making it work with 1.67!  I had a bit of trouble editing the TS3Patch.txt file, because the Bin folder properties had been set such that it wouldn’t let me edit the file directly. I ended up creating a copy of the file on my desktop, editing that, deleting the one in the Bin folder, and then moved the edited file into the Bin folder and gave the admin permission confirmation required.

As a last step, I installed the Nraas No CD mod to my mods/packages folder with the rest of my nraas mods and discovered that all of my game folders were still present, complete with logs, saved games, mods, everything. I wasn’t expecting that, as I thought everything would have been deleted when I uninstalled things, but nope. Everything was present and accounted for and I didn’t need to retrieve anything from the backup I’d made of that folder.

My game started up just fine. Nothing was missing, all mods seem to be working fine and are present. The game seems to take just a tad longer to start up than what I’ve been used to lately, but it’s like... maybe an extra minute, which is completely worth no longer having to deal with Origin and/or whatever online DRM crap EA may come up with in the future. Now I can play... with NO INTERNET. FREEDOM! My graphics were perfect, I didn’t need to adjust any settings at all, and everything was good to go.

Edit to add: If you’ve only ever played on 1.69, be aware that 1.67 does not have a built-in easy way to enable/disable expansions and stuff packs. However, someone shared with me this link to a mod that someone created to do precisely that! You can find it here: https://modthesims.info/d/499140/sim-game-selector-3-0-support-for-quot-into-the-future-quot-and-quot-movie-stuff-quot.html 

Of course, your experience may vary... I’m running on a desktop computer with Windows 10, with all expansions and stuff packs installed, nearly 25k individual pieces of CC installed via CCMagic, plus a couple hundred other un-merged script mods and default replacement files installed in my Mods/Packages folder. (In case that helps at all.)

Cheers! I’m off to play my game!

[nomorefstogive]

Through Love, Perfection. r/PrimarchGF and Female Primarch AU inspired story.

Hello all, this is a ficlet I made recently that I thought I would share here, I copy pasted it from the word doc hence the author's notes and such, that said please enjoy and let me know what you think of this mess of an idea.

P.S. Muse is the fan name given to female Fulgrim's lover by the community at r/PrimarchGF. I have gone ahead and made them gender neutral for this fic, though I might make them female in future ones.

Author’s Note: Well, this is certainly a surprise, we have to admit that we never thought the day would come when we would write for the 40k fandom as, despite our own fondness for the setting, we lack an enormous amount of knowledge on it and simply did not know where to start with ideas for it.

And then we saw a most interesting post on the r/GrimDank Subreddit, a post that  opened doors to vistas untouched and undreamdt of by us, each one bringing forth more and more ideas as we watched a new setting grow. 

Ladies, gentlemen, non-gendered individuals, those between, and all those others, we welcome you one and all to our first fic for the PrimarchGF AU!

Created by the wonderful community of the namesake subreddit, after we began to grow a little too large to be contained on r/GrimDank, and with the foundations of it having been laid down by the wonderfully talented u/Sweet_Older-Sister, this is a setting that has such potential for angst and wholesomeness, that we would be foolish to not throw our hat into the ring. 

This particular ficlet, is inspired by the reddit post found at https://www.reddit.com/r/Grimdank/comments/1cr6hfl/it_would_work_and_you_know_it/ made by: AAABIXIX. All credit to this idea goes to them, though I feel my own take on it is vastly different than what they, or myself from when I initially thought of it, had in mind.

We also have to thank the community of the PrimarchGF Subreddit and of Cryptek-01, who has gathered a list of the communities names, for the names used for the female Primarchs, link to post: https://www.reddit.com/r/PrimarchGFs/comments/1cypo6g/i_made_a_list_of_names_for_femprimarchs_and_their/

Yet, as with all our tales, it seems that it has a mind of its own, what started as a simple tale of vanity being both bane and hero, became something else entirely, and while we are yet confused as to how we got here, we hope you all enjoy this mess of a tale.

That said, we feel we should make clear that we are quite inexperienced with the characters of 40k, at least in terms of writing their personalities and such, and so we have given our own twist to some of them in this tale. 

Similarly, we have also taken the liberty of altering the timeline, and editing the events that took place across said timeline to better fit with the image present within our mind for the setting of this short tale.

If such heavy OOCness and AU disturbs your reading experience we apologize, and hope that you at least take a quick look at the r/PrimarchGF subreddit and at its illustrious prophetess’ profile, please go and show her some love my friends she deserves it for blessing us with this. 

If you are yet here, and have steeled yourself for whatever form of atrocity against literature it is that we have written, then we thank you for giving us a chance and hope you enjoy our little tale of-

Through Love, Perfection. 

TW for Implied Sexual content and mentions of blood and gore, along with a few mentions of violent thoughts. I think that is all.

“In All Things, Perfection.” Thus was the Creed of the Empress's Daughters, and of the Matriarch who led them forth across the stars to fulfill the great vision her mother had shown to her children once all had been gathered and their crusade readied, to usher forth a perfect golden age for mankind once more. 

Yet this creed did not just extent to the fields of war, upon which they left tableau’s of horror and vistas of carnage of such grandeur that none could deny that their talents in war were of sublime status, but also to all other such things that their Matriarch had taught them.

Poetry, sculpture, painting, dance, singing, it was easier to list a field within which the Matriarch of the Empress’s Daughters did not excel, and which she had taught her children to similarly excel, the Phoenician having guided her progeny to such a degree that were one not to see them in their armor, or the sanguine wake left behind them, they would be scarce to believe such marvelous artisans were instruments of hellish carnage.  

Yet, for all that she aspired to perfection ever did it elude her reaching hands, slipping free as an oil coated serpent, stalling but long enough to mock her with its flickering forked tongue before once more eluding her despite how hard she had pursued it. 

‘Never enough, always better, always better, it could always be better’, such were the thoughts that echoed within her head near to every hour of each day, mocking her with coy and pompous voices that drove her ever forward, desperate to at last achieve that which had eluded her.

And perhaps, in another, much darker timeline, it would have been that which had lead to her fall from grace and descent into wanton hedonism and debauchery, her mind warping and being rent asunder under the seductive whispers of the servants of Chaos. 

Yet, not in this one. 

For as she rose from her bed, skin bare of cover but the bites and scratches that she had willed to not heal for she wished to relish in their delightful aches and stings a bit longer, the saint mix of painful pleasure being enough to help her awaken swiftly as she sat about her preparations for what was to come. 

Below the great fleet that was her children’s armada, there laid a world that they had recently brought back into the fold of the Imperium, no blood having need be shed as the people below, long alone and afraid, had welcomed them as heroes and saviors, having rid them of long standing oppressors of the nearby worlds before their arrival.

And thus they had brought the world into the fold much sooner than they had expected to, indeed, they had anticipated much steeper resistance given the neighboring worlds own acts of futile rebellion, though they were not complaining for now they not only had time to rest and relax before they resumed their campaign, but also to indulge in celebrations due to commence the next day. 

So it was that across the ships that made up their fleet, not only were preparations for their next push forward commencing, but so were preparations for the celebration to come as the Astartes chose their outfits and and cosmetics for the party, or relaxed and allowed for themselves to indulge in their arts for a while before they had to depart to the world below and then forward once more. 

With fingers more dexterous than one would assume given their size, and an equally startling silence, the Phoenician opened the great dark wooden wardrobe in which she had carefully arranged a pair of clothes for the celebration to come, looking over them and making certain that they were in immaculate condition.

Upon her satisfaction of their status of being free of flaw, Fulgrim closed the doors to her dresser and turned towards her vanity, swiftly and silently striding towards it as she looked over the gathered cosmetic items and jewelry, each perfectly arranged and neatly ordered for their usage in the coming days. 

Everything was prepared, their clothes were selected and sealed up such that they would not acquire any wrinkles before the day of the celebration on the planet below them, cosmetics and jewelry neatly ordered, and yet still…

Even as she looked over the clothes that she had so meticulously selected, the makeup designed to make her already striking features even more radiant, and the jewelry meant to make her and her other half as radiant as the stars, she could still feel as though something was missing.

A sigh slipped past her lips as she brought her hand to her forehead, fingers gently kneading the skin as she closed her eyes and tried to focus on what it was that would complete their outfits, what it was that would make them perfect. 

Violet eyes slowly opened, and raked over the room, pausing but to alight with a warm glow of joy as she saw her darling’s form concealed by blankets and pillows laying on their bed, no doubt yet still worn out from their actions the night previous.

Unbidden, a chuckle slipped past her lips as the image of her lover, adorned with bites and bruises looking up at her with a pouting face as they weakly beat on her chest with their hands.

“You said…my turn to top…” Her hand had to cover her lips to prevent her chuckles from growing in volume as she recalled the absolutely adorable way her lover had tried and failed to convince her to let them continue so they could have their chance on top even as they drifted off to sleep beneath her as she watched with smug delight.

She truly had meant to let them be on top, but they were just so adorable as they writhed beneath her, how could she have passed up the opportunity to savor their expressions, their taste, their-

Fulgrim shook her head, while normally she would take the chance to revel in the memories of last night, and perhaps to give her lover something beautiful to wake up to as her moans brought them into wakefulness and into her arms, she yet still felt that nagging sensation and so she instead allowed her gaze to wander once more. 

Faintly, she felt a sensation, as though a gentle caress upon her cheek by a silken hand unseen, that bid her to turn to look at the display case that rested across the room from her, and the treasure held within it.

A prize won through blood and tears and misery, and one that she had taken quite the fancy to at first sight, even if her darling disagreed with her on its beauty, claiming that it clashed horribly with her armor and that the flaming blade she had forged with Ferrus long ago made her much more radiant, indeed it was because of that disagreement, and the threat of involuntary abstinence for several weeks, that she had not taken to wearing the blade as she had wished. 

Of course, there was reason beyond mere vanity that lent credence to her darling’s desire for her to avoid the blade, as not only was it of Xeno origin, but it also gave off a sensation that, while to her was appealing, was to her beloved revolting, and thus her caution on the matter. 

In truth, she had meant to have it sealed in the storage bay, but she had decided that it was safest where she could see it, no one could get into her chambers without her or her Muse knowing, and even if they did, they would find quite the marvelous surprise awaiting them when they did open the container without the proper key.

Something she had no interest in contending with, as she unconsciously began to open  the container and reach out her hand, a part of her yearn, begging her in silent desperation, to touch the hilt of the sword, to give in to that hypnotic allure that so sweetly beckoned her to-

“What did I say would happen if you touched that sword before it got looked at?” The Matriarch of the Empress’s Children jolted slightly at the voice that came from the corner of the room, her hand recoiling from the case she had been reaching for as eyes the color of violet lightning turning to alight upon the form that sat upon the bed, swaddled in blankets of silken cloth and rich fur, and surrounded by plush pillows easily double the length of their body as they leaned against the headboard of the titanic bed. 

The Matriarch's lips curled up into a smile as she saw her Muse adjusting themselves ever so slightly, a low groan slipping from their lips as they did so, eyes keen beyond all form of human understanding easily able to pierce through the shadows that concealed their face from the blankets draped over them and to meet the pair of rather tired looking eyes that stared back at her with no small amount of irritation present.

She could not help but allow her smile to grow a little bit as she recalled exactly why it was that her other half was so weary and covering themself in their blankets to ward off the chill of her room, and more importantly gazing at her with such a delicious look upon their face. 

Truly it was no fault of hers that her lover was so breathtaking, and what kind of connoisseur of art would she be if she did not show such a marvelous piece of artwork the reverence it was due as she laid mark upon mark of affirmation and adoration upon her lover’s bare form until no longer could they deny their own beauty and worth. 

So deep was the Matriarch's recollection of the previous evening’s events, or perhaps it had been the entire day, neither of them could reliably tell and none of the Matriarch’s daughters would dare to interrupt them during a moment of passion unless it was absolutely necessary, several bolter rounds and a flaming sword flung at them the first and only time they had done so insuring their privacy from then on, that she missed her lover reiterating their question to her several times.

Beneath the cloak of silk, fur, and cloth eyes narrowed in irritation as once more the Muse of the Phoenician repeated their query to their lover, taking acute notice of the both the absence of a forthcoming reply and of just where it was that their lover’s eyes were lingering on as they calmly took a deep breath before-

“Fulgrim.” 

They called out again, this time their tone was coated in both no small amount of exasperation, a faint undercurrent of irritation further making clear their feelings on the matter of their lover having lost herself to her own fantasies as opposed to answering them.

The Matriarch felt a not so small chill run down her spine, mind racing as she tried to  recall just what it was her lover had said, though much to her despair there came no light of clarity or spark of realization, something which her lover quickly registered as well as they began to shift and stir.

The Matriarch could not stop herself from licking her lips at the scene of her lover wearing silken blankets as a gown to cover themself as they began to stride towards her, their movements slow and, at least to the Matriarch, ominous in their approach, as the formation of a thunder head afore a storm, or the faintest hum of wrongness that heralded the Materium and Immaterium being rent asunder as Chaos sallied forth to assault them once more.

As bare feet glided delicately across the richly carpeted floor, the silken sheets shifting and swaying in a spectral breeze, the delicate motions of silk upon bare skin making Fulgrim swallow once more as she watched with dreadful anticipation as her lover drew near, each second an eternity as her lover’s eyes met her own with veiled intentions that made the Matriarch’s heart thunder. 

The thundering of her heart and the racing of her blood did not to drown out the siren song of silken sin that caressed her ears as her lover at last drew to stand before her, barely a third of the towering Matriarch’s height and yet somehow managing to project such a presence that even she, the most beautiful and most might Phoenician, felt as though it were her that was the smaller of the pair.

With hands so impossibly small in comparison to her own that barely could the delicate fingers wrap around but two of her fingers, let alone her entire hand, her lover gripped her hands and directed them to where they belonged, one to their shoulder and one to their hip as they bid her lean down such that their lips could meet, the Muse assuming the role of conductor and director of this intimate dance for several moments, lasting far longer than a normal mortal should have been able to without breaking for breath before they at last parted.

Eyes of violet and eyes concealed in shade both alighted on the thin strand of saliva that linked their lips for but the briefest of moments before it parted, the pair taking a moment to regain themselves before their gazes met once more, Fulgrim’s apologetic and her Muse’s own somewhat calmed in their irritation, though yet still narrowed.

“Apologies darling, I lost myself in marveling at the wonder befo-” Fulgrim found her words cut off as a hand lifted to place itself against her face, index finger gently coming to rest against her lips in a gesture of silence, shadowed eyes narrowing further as the Matriarch was unable to fight her urge to take the tip of the finger into her lips and begin to suckle upon it as her lover heaved a sigh before speaking.

“Why is it that everything that comes out of your mouth is either flirtatious or horribly annoying dear?” The Muse murmured to themself in question, the towering Matriarch merely smirking once more at the query as she indulged herself in suckling on the finger between her lips  for a moment longer before she released it as she pulled her lover close to her, the hands not resting on each others hips moving to intertwine as they looked into one another’s eyes. 

“I don’t hear you complaining, my dear.” The Phoenician said as her smirk turned to a smile as she saw her lover sigh once more, the corners of their own lips curling up into a small smile of their own as they leaned in to rest their forehead against their lovers own, their eyes drifting shut for several moments as the pair basked in the silent affirmation of their bond. 

Yet, even as she held the one so dear to her oh so close, humming a melodious if nonsensical tune low in her throat as she idly swayed along with her darling Muse, their came to the Phoenician a sensation of something missing, a nagging and itching sensation that made her feel no small amount of unease, though she allowed none of it to permeate through her as she held her love close. 

It would not do to frighten her Muse, least of all over what could more than likely be nothing but her forgetting something once again, something she felt had begun to do more commonly of late…hmm…perhaps she should consider taking some time off and taking her lover to visit one of the worlds in the Imperium, she had heard that one was soon to be celebrating a festival of some kind, surely she cou-

“If you keep thinking so hard, you’re going to hurt yourself and miss the party tomorrow my love.” Fulgrim sighed as she opened her eyes to look at her lover, faux hurt coloring her face for a moment as she watched her lover arch and eyebrow at her, their gaze daring her to speak up, a dare she could not possibly turn down.

“Oh? But if I get hurt then surely you would stay with me my Muse. Afterall, who would be there to nurse me back to health if not you my dear?” Fulgrim asked her lover with a delicate and pleading tone, eyes wide and innocent, or at least as innocent as she could make them, though her lover only blinked at the scene before them before the leveled an expression as flat as the plains her sister had taken to riding with her children and lover across of late.

“Hmm, perhaps I should ask Bile to take a look at you after all. If you think I am going to miss watching your sisters making fools of themselves as they try to court their lovers, then you are madder than those fools who think Rus is the dominant one in her relationship.” The Muse could not stop the low chuckle that slipped past their lips as they saw Fulgrim look at them with a faintly betrayed expression on her face, though soon she joined them in their chuckling as she thought of the spectacles that were sure to occur at the party to come.

Indeed she could not fault them for wishing to not miss the spectacles to come, especially given the whispers she had heard regarding the disaster that was Regalia Dorn being drug their by her own lover, well that and her Muse had a valid point regarding her wild sister, the woman wore a damn collar under her armor wherever she went for their Mother’s sake! 

Soon it was that their chuckles tapered off into a comfortable silence as the pair leaned against one another in silence, unconsciously moving to rest their foreheads against one another in a somewhat awkward pose, though neither cared for how they looked so long as they could enjoy the feeling of one another's warmth.

Yet eventually there came the time when the Muse pulled back with a low sigh once more slipping past their lips, Fulgrim letting out a low whimper as she chased them once more, only to be halted by a finger resting itself against her forehead as her lover spoke up once more. 

“And speaking of the party, I thought you were going to be dressing to impress, especially given how Ferrus has been boasting about the beauty of the set of armor her assistant and her have forged. Or have you decided to take pity on your sister and allow her this victory my love?” The words came with a slightly teasing lilt to them, though there was an underlying seriousness to the words that lent weight enough to them for the Matriarch to focus on them. 

 The words prompted Fulgrim to blink at her lover in confusion as she turned to look over her attire once more in the mirror, standing to her full height as she pulled her lover against her as she pictured what they would look like at the gala.

“I don’t understand darling. With what I have in mind you and I will certainly be the ones to steal the show, assuming Mother does not deign to show up.” The Pheonician said as she mentally pictured the attire she had in mind over her lover, a perfect match for her own attire, and one that she had enjoyed the challenge of making, especially given that it had one the approval of the critic that her Muse could be. 

Indeed, it was that critical nature that lead her to lending her ears to her lover’s words, the very nature that had drawn her to them when they had critiqued one of her works before her as her daughters watched on in shock at the scene of the fragile mortal critiquing their perfectionist mother’s work to her own face. 

They had expected her to snap at them, to yell and curse or draw her blade and decapitate them, and instead had been rewarded with the sight of their mother asking for the counsel of the smaller figure in regards to how to improve her next work, something which had heralded the start of their relationship. 

And now she once more welcomed their judgment, though she had to bite down the urge to snap at them, something which made her brow furrow further, she must be more stressed than she had previously thought. 

‘Yes,’ Fulgrim thought to herself. ‘Once this gala is done, we'll take some time off to rest and unwind, maybe we’ll even be able to see that play we have been looking at, I’ll have tickets for the three of…no two of us booked.’ A hand came to rest upon her brow as she heaved another sigh, yes a break would do her good, especially if she was starting to think like that. 

Perhaps she should corner Sanguinia, Volkana, and Magna and ask them their counsel on just what it was that could be plaguing her, the three had long proven themselves the most adept at helping their sisters find what it was that was plaguing them in terms of emotions and thoughts. 

“Fulgrim!” The uncharacteristically sharp tone of her Muse’s voice caused the Matriarch to jolt once more, her head shaking from side to side as she re-focused herself on the present and her lover, who was now gazing at her with open concern on their face.

“Sorry dear, my mind wandered for a moment.” The Matriarch said as she offered her lover a smile, trying to reassure them and herself at the same time, the unease she had been feeling rapidly vanishing as she took in the concern and care in her lover’s eyes as they reached up and delicately laid their hand against her cheek.

“That…has been happening too much of late.” Her Muse narrowed their eyes at her as they gently rubbed their thumb against her cheek for several moments before they closed their own eyes and offered up a weary sigh as they shook their head and took a moment to compose themself before speaking up once more. 

“Once this is done we’re taking vacation, our children can handle any matters that come up, and if it comes to it Ferrus and her brats owe us enough favors that we could have them take over any campaigns that crop up while we are off for months to come.” Fulgrim could not stop a chuckle from slipping past her lips at the last bit of her lover’s statement as she leaned down to rest her forehead against her lover’s once more, sighing as her Muse let out a low hum as the pair allowed their eyes to drift shut for a moment before they parted once more. 

“I was just considering the same thing my dear, we could visit your home world and see what new travesties they have allowed into their ‘Grand Gallery’ surely it would be an entertaining visit.” Fulgrim could not stop herself from chuckling once more as her lover narrowed her eyes at her in a scathing glare at the remark about both her homeworld and their gallery.

“I hope for your sake my dear,” Fulgrim could not stop the shiver that ran down her at the delicious sensations that hearing that voice turn from gentle silk to a frigid whip crack, “that you solely mean my coworkers allowed travesties into the gallery, I would hate to have to discipline you otherwise.” 

Fulgrim could not stop the smile that began to form on her face as she looked down at the narrowed glare her lover was giving her, a gaze of such frigid sharpness that it would drive any normal being to quake in unease and dread, she had even seen it make her daughters feel unease and that was no small feat, that left a shudder of desire wracking her frame. 

Though soon it was that the smile that adorned the Matriarch’s face twisted in a look of faux hurt as her lover reached up to flick her forehead as their own lips curled into a slightly vengeful smirk as they spoke up once more.

“Besides, idiots they may have been, and likely still are, at least they know what style is, something you seem to have forgotten my dear.” Fulgrim pouted at her lover’s words as she locked eyes with her, noting the way her lover let their gaze travel from her violet eyes to the blade that rested on the stand beside her mirror, the target of her comment being readily apparent. 

“Oh? And what does that mean, my Muse?” Fulgrim spoke up, her tone much sharper and colder than she had any intention of allowing it to be, though it seemed to do not to her lover but make their lips purse into a thin frown as their eyes narrowed into a frigid glare for several moment before they sighed and spoke up. 

“Look in the mirror, take a decent look at what you have in mind for tomorrow,” Fulgrim did so, her eyes closing slightly as she pictured the rich violet and cream colored dress she would wear, adorned with the sapphire and golden filigree designs she had spent so long designing, and the dark sapphire and cream colored clothing of her lover that they had both worked on for so long. 

Try as she might, she could not picture what it was that was making her lover so concerned for the coming gala, at least that was until her lover once more spoke up to her as they walked off towards their closet and began to rummage through it.

“You’re picturing the clothing, the cosmetics and jewelry correct? Likely imagining how you would look with that tasteless piece of metal at your side, again a flush of unbidden irritation that made the Matriarch have to bite her lip to still her tongue, but why should you settle for a simple metal blade when you could show off something like this…Oh, and happy early anniversary my love.” 

Her Muse finished their statement as they pulled out a rather lengthy container that had been kept concealed in the depths of their closet, with both hands, they pulled out what appeared to be the base of a blade, the pommel a sapphire colored gem adorned with specks of silver and violet within it, the grip adorned with cream colored leather, each strand of the binding having been carefully inscribed with designs such that when layered together upon the finished product they gave the appearance of thunderbolts striking a sapphire sea that laid above the jeweled pommel. 

Above the leather grip there was the guard of the blade, granted it was a rather unconventional one, not due to it being styled to resemble a pair of great wings made out of silver and gold with violets and sapphires carefully carved to form elegant sloping rings and bands, alongside of being used as highlights for the many feathers upon the great wings.

But rather the guards was odd, for the fact that its center most portion was shaped to resemble the form of the Muse themself, the great wings erupting from their back, their form being adorned with minute carvings and etching to make it as lifelike as possible, their lips spread into a loving smile that would gaze up at the women who wielded the blade. 

And as for the blade itself, which, while upon first glance appeared to be already a masterwork of platinum and silver colored metal, each inch engraved with ornate designs and flowing markings, though of a far too slender a shape for such a sized hilt, there was yet one other facet to cement its wonder in those that beheld it.

It took but the faintest caress upon a hidden mechanism for their to come a humming and crackling sound, one that soon grew in intensity to such an extent that it would be hard to think, and if that was not enough than the brilliant radiance that came forth in the shape of a near blinding light of violet and sapphire electricity that formed into a blade of thunder and lightning that enveloped the smaller metal blade, the electricity triggering hidden mechanisms forged by Petra herself at their behest which made the blade hum and vibrate at such a frequency that not could stop the blade once it was swung.

For a moment longer the Muse gazed upon the blade, their lips curling upwards into a smile as they disabled the lightning of the blade as they turned to present the weapon to Fulgrim, a low chuckle leaving their lips as they saw the Matriarch gape in slight shock at what was being presented to her. 

“This is-!” Fulgrim said nothing more as she immediately devoted all of her attention to the blade being held out to her, eyes wide and hungering as she ravenously took in all of the details of the weapon she was being presented with, her heart beginning to hammer as her thoughts raced at the masterwork she was being presented with.

“You would not believe how hard it was to make that thing without you figuring it out, even with so many of us working on it.” Their words made Fulgrim look at them in silent question as they smiled before they continued. 

“I had each of your sisters help me with it, Petra, Hestia, Ferrus, helped with forging it, then Petra and Ferrus made the motors and engines for the lightning while Hathor, Aurelia, and oddly enough Kassandra and Morrigan helped with the more intricate designs on the leather and carvings on it…their lovers largely just provided moral support and ideas for them.” Fulgrim’s lips had already parted into a gape of shock before her lover continued, their own lips having widened into a smile as they continued. 

“The materials were located by Magna and Juno, and then they were retrieved by Freya, Alakhi, Volkana, and Corra, she was the one to provide the jewel for the pommel, while Magna and Aurelia blessed the sword with some rather powerful enchantments and wards to make sure no one but us can touch it and that is would not dull or rust.” And now her Muse’s smile reached blinding proportions as they continued yet again.

“Lastly, we had Atlanta stress test it by sparring with Freya, Morrigan, Leona, Regalia, and Cora to see if their differing styles would damage it, while the Twins helped with coming up with a way of hiding it from you, they were the ones running interference for most of the time we were making it, and when they weren't Sanguinia was, she is also the one who came up with the idea of the angel motif for the guard.” Her Muse finished, their own eyes shining with mirthful delight as they saw their lover’s silent gape as she looked over the blade she had been presented with.

With a trembling hand, the Matriarch reached out and gently plucked the blade from their hand, the instant her hand wrapped around the grip of the blade there came forth, unseen by the pair, the faintest hint of golden wisps of light that ever so softly brushed against her skin, bringing forth a sensation of calm and clarity that drove away the unseen hands groping at the Matriarchs essence.

Though neither saw this, for they were too enveloped in the moment as the Muse stared into her lover’s eyes, a low chuckle slipping past their lips as they reached out their hand and delicately wiped away the tears, smiling as Fulgrim looked up at them from where she had been inspecting the blade.

“I…I have…I think I need to sit down.” Fulgrim finished as she moved over to their shared bed, sitting down on it as she continued to look over the blade that her lover had presented to her as her mind raced with thoughts as she took in the weapon she held, her hand softly caressing the angel design on the guard for several moments before she lifted her head to look at her lover.

Her vision slightly blurry as she tried to choke out something, anything to say, only for nothing but a low whine to come out as her lover approached her, swaying their hips to the sides as they allowed for their cloak of blankets to fall and reveal their bare form. 

With a smirk on their face, the Muse moved towards Fulgrim, prompting the Matriarch to set her new found sword on a nearby night stand as her Muse straddled her lap, their eyes shining with delight as they saw the Phoenician look at them with tears in her eyes and a slight quiver to her lips. 

“What do you think my love? Not only does it go wonderfully with your dress, but you can also show it off to everyone else and boast about your lover and your sister's talents.” Her Muse leaned in once more, gently pulling Fulgrim down as they allowed their lips to delicately graze her ear, lightly blowing into it before they continued.

“Well, what’s your answer my love? That piece of metal that clashes with your attire, or something that shows off the talents of those who love you and compliments your attire perfectly, which one do you feel like taking now?” The Muse knew what answer they would receive, especially when they felt Fulgrim gently lay her hands on their hips. 

For a moment, Fulgrim’s gaze flickered over to the Laer Blade, the pull normally tugging at her mind gone and allowing her to truly look at it, seeing the blade for the tasteless piece of sharpened metal that her lover had claimed it to be.

So her choice was already made when she allowed her gaze to flicker to the sword she had been gifted with before she returned her gaze to her lover, a silent nod giving her answer as her lover smiled in triumph as they leaned down to seize her lips with their own.

As hands began to wander, and lips hungrily devoured one another once more, the Muse allowed themself to smile as they thought of the faces of not only the poor fools that would be present at the Gala, but also of their homeworld's artisans when they saw a genuine masterpiece during their visit.

‘Oh yes,’ They thought as they felt their lover shift to be laying on her back as she pulled them atop her, hungrily pawing at their bare flesh, ‘we’ll show them what real beauty is.’ And with that last thought, they allowed themself to cease thinking as they indulged in their shared passion with their lover. 

Line Break

The day of the Gala was, as with any celebration that Fulgrim and her legion were involved with, a day of semi-ordered madness and chaos across the entirety of the legion as the Astartes raced to and fro as they tried to make themselves ready for the celebration, their desire to one-up their fellow Astartes matched but by their desire to impress their mother and her lover. 

It was amidst this scene of organized chaos that a particular example of lunacy took place, for the bedchambers of the Matriarch could be best likened to being caught within the embrace of a mad tempest as Fulgrim and her liver dashed to and fro to make sure they were properly prepared for the party to come, the pair having slightly overslept due to the previous day’s activities. 

“Damnit, where did I put my necklace!?” The Muse called out from where they were busy searching through each of the drawers and shelves they could while Fulgrim herself was putting on her makeup, watching the scene out of the corner of her eye. 

“Were you wearing it yesterday?” The Matriarch asked her lover as she finished placing her lipstick on, her gaze flickering over to where her make-up kit lay as she began to search for her eye-liner, though she paused when she noticed something out of-

“Aha!” Her darling called out from behind her as they at last spotted their platinum and sapphire necklace…atop a cabinet that was much too tall for them to reach, the sight making their left eye twitch as they tried to jump up to reach the chain, only to fail as they missed the chain by several inches. 

“Could you help me get this damn thing when you’re done?” The Muse called out as they diverted their attention from their necklace and towards getting the last of their attire on, though they did pause when they realized that Fulgrim had not answered them.

The Muse lifted their head to see their lover looking over her cabinets and displays with a confused look upon her face, her brow furrowed as she seemed to be attempting to locate something for several moments before they called out once more and caused her to jolt her awake from her reverie.

“What’s wrong?” They asked of her as they began to put on the last few articles of clothing that Fulgrim had laid out for them as they awaited their lover’s reply, a low curse slipping past their lips as they messed up a knot for one of their shoes and had to redo it. 

“Did you move that sword from Laer? I was going to have it sent to mother, but I can’t find it.” Fulgrim asked her liver as she glanced about in confusion, a sensation at the back of her mind telling her to search for it, to rend the room asunder to recover it, yet the feeling was fading with each passing second, diminishing in the time it took for her lover to offer her a confused look before they spoke up. 

“My love, I wouldn’t have touched that damn thing if you had begged me on your hands and knees. I have standards after all.” Fulgrim rolled her eyes even as a fond smile crossed her face at her dear’s usual demeanor, the Matriarch shaking her head slightly as she quipped back to her lover.

“Standards? You? Didn’t you tell me that you would have to abandon those when we started dating my love?” Fulgrim could not stop herself from chuckling at the end of her reply as she recalled the thoroughly dumbfounded looks on the faces of those around them, well most of them as Ferrus had been too busy laughing herself into near unconsciousness as her own lover doubled over beside her.

“I did, and I stand by that I have had to drop many of them, such as my standards for getting enough sleep to awaken on time for something,” her Muse gave her a faux glare as their lips twitched upwards as they continued, “and also my standard for not waking up sore and covered in bruises and bites my dear.” 

Fulgrim could not stop the laugh that slipped past her lips as she pushed aside the nagging sensation in her mind as she rose to her feet and approached her lover, smiling as she saw them narrow their eyes at her with suspicion, already planning any and all methods of avoiding her doing something that would make them any later than they would already likely be if the clamor breaking out across the ship was any indication. 

Though the Muse found themself pleasantly surprised as their lover merely reached up and pulled their necklace from where it rested atop the cabinet, slowly striding towards them as the Muse reached out their hand for their necklace, only to be denied as Fulgrim held it out of their reach with a smirk on her face.

“Let me my dear,” Fulgrim said, a chuckle slipping past her lips as her lover once more narrowed their eyes at her wariness coming alight for several seconds before they offered a nod to the Matriarch, lifting up their hair so that she could clip the necklace on.

They realized their mistake the moment they saw Fulgrim’s eyes gleaming with mirth, her lips curling ever so slightly as she mouthed the words ‘Payback dear,’ to them as she leaned in and-.

“Fulgrim, don’t you-!” Their words were cut off as the Matriarch latched her lips onto their neck, targeting an area that would be concealed by their attire, provided it did not shift enough, as she began to suckle and nibble on the skin, her actions prompting a low moan and a shudder of pleasure to rack her lover’s frame as their hands, that had been trying to push her away, instead reached up to entangle themselves in her hair and pull her in-

Fulgrim pulled back, smirking as she heard a low whine slip from her lover’s lips, both at being denied further pleasure and at the Phoenician's actions, their eyes narrowing into a slightly clouded glare even as they pouted up at her. 

Chuckling once more, Fulgrim placed their necklace on them before she turned to head back to her vanity and finish her own preparations, her lover’s murmurs of promises of vengeance for her unbidden attack upon their neck only serving to make her smile and chuckle, already anticipating what was to come both at the party and afterwards. 

Though, she still wished she knew what became of that sword. Perhaps it had been knocked from its perch during her and her Muse’s actions last night, struck by some article of clothing or knocked down when their passions became such that they were tackling one another across the room and taking one another upon each surface they could. 

Idly she shrugged to herself, she could search for it when they returned from the party, the worst case scenario being that she would have to find another gift for her mother and that she might one day find it collecting dust under a piece of furniture. 

Still, as she finished putting on the last of her makeup, all while being given a gaze that promised vengeance by her Muse, she could not shake the feeling that something, some great and irrevocable change had occurred, yet for the life of her she could not figure out what it was.

‘A concern for another day,’ She thought to herself as she rose to her feet, her new sword finding its place at her side as she outstretched her arm to her lover, watching with a smirk as they yet glared at her as they took her hand and rose from the bed to walk with her.

She chuckled to herself as she saw her Muse fidgeting ever so slightly as they adjusted their clothes to try and hide the mark she had left upon them, already aware that the Matriarch would not let them cover it with concealer, her pride at showing off such a mark to others, and her lover’s own pride at it being shown off as well, preventing such an act. 

“Come my dear, let’s make sure everyone else is ready.” Fulgrim said as the pair left their chambers and began to wander down to the shuttle bay of the ship, all thoughts of a missing blade soon being swept aside as they began the laborious task of ordering their children and making ready to depart for the celebration taking place on the world below them.

It was as they were waiting for the shuttles to take them down to the planet below that a thought struck Fulgrim, prompting her to turn to where her lover was working with several of their children to try and force some form of make up onto Bile’s face, the Apothecary fighting tooth and nail as they did so as she hurled curse and abuse upon them for their efforts, her lover eventually pulling back with a nod of approval as she motioned for them to let Bile go.

With a withering glare to the team before her, the Apothecary stalked off to seek asylum in the dark corners of the hanger, the Astartes parting to mingle with their sisters as they noted their Mother drawing near to her lover, the Matriarch chuckling as she saw her liver putting her makeup kit back into her purse before she looked at her. 

“I knew she wasn’t going to be wearing any when she was dragged out of her room, so I came prepared.” Her Muse answered her questioning gaze, her words prompting a chuckle from the Matriarch as she met her gaze once more before she asked her the question that had been on her mind for some time. 

“Actually darling, I was more curious as to what it was you offered my sisters to get their help with making this sword, nothing too precious I hope?” Fulgrim found herself surprised as her lover winced slightly at her words, their hands rising to cup their face as they let out a low groan before they let their hand fall to their side as they mumbled something under their breath.

Fulgrim blinked, already she could hear some of her daughters beginning to snicker at what they had just heard, and while she was tempted to join them, she wanted to be absolutely certain as to what it was she had just heard.

“What was that my love? I’m afraid you’ll have to speak up.” Fulgrim saw her lover narrow a glare at her for a moment before, for but a fleeting instant, a gleam came to inhabit their eyes, one that Fulgrim had come to both anticipate and dread, a gleam of mischief that typically ended with the words ‘I want to try something new,’ or ‘They wanted my opinion’.

A slight chill ran down Fulgrim’s spine as she looked at her lover, watching as the gleam faded and an exasperated look crossed their face as they spoke up, once more, their words prompting many to choke out chuckles or look at her in incredulous shock. 

“Dating Advice. I had to offer those Ceramite headed fools you call family advice on dating, because apparently them and their daughters are all idiots on the subject, and by the fucking Empress was it fun,” The way she spat the word fun, as though it were the most vile thing she had ever tasted caused chuckles to begin to break out once more, Fulgrim finding herself fighting her own laughter as she looked at her lover.

“Surely it couldn’t have been that bad, right my dear?” Fulgrim asked, watching as her lover went still such that they could have been mistaken for a particularly breathtaking statue of lifelike design beyond anything else, that is if one were not to see the way their eyes shifted to lock directly with Fulgrim’s own, molten wrath blazing within them.

‘Oh dear, I think I made a mistake.’ Fulgrim had time to think before her lover’s lips parted, and a volcano of exasperated vitriol emerged, the gathered Astartes being treated to a front row seat for the cataclysmic eruption alongside of their mother as her Muse snapped. 

“Not that bad? Not that fucking bad!? I had to coach Regalia on how the fucking guide book her daughters got her did not cover everything, oh and turns out no one had ever bothered to explain to her what sex is!” Fulgrim was not the only one to gape at the Muse as they continued on, their hands clenching tightly as their lips spread into a perversion of a smile.

“I had to have Aurelia help me explain what it was to her because everyone else was too busy laughing, then I had to try and get Aurelia to stop helping me before she made Regalia’s head pop from how much blood was rushing to it.” Fulgrim felt the chuckles slipping past her lips at the image that played across her mind, though she felt said laughter slip past her lips in greater quantity as the Muse continued with-

“Then I had to tell Morrigan that maybe the reason her lover is constantly emptying  buckets of perfume on her is because she refuses to bathe, that ended up becoming a fucking hour long argument that only ended when Aurelia gave her that pleading look of hers and convinced her to at least try it and see what happens.” Her Muse’s jaw clenched as they took a deep breath before they resumed, seemingly unaware of the laughter and awe filling the room. 

“Sanguinia, Empress bless that woman, all she needed was advice on how to approach her love and how to broach the topics of her curses to them, that was simple enough. Corva? She had the same issues, though instead of curses she wanted to know how to get more comfortable with physical contact. Hestia, another fairly simple one, she just needed advice on how to stop her love interest from running away every time they see her, preferably without traumatizing them.” The laughter grew greater still, many turning gazes of genuine respect to their Matriarchs lover as they took a deep breath, seemingly trying to calm themself before they resumed.

“Aurelia…dear fuck…”The Muse paused for several moments, a thousand mile stare gracing their face as though they were reliving a particularly traumatic experience, their lips moving silently for a few moments longer before Fulgrim;s hand on their shoulder made them look up at her. 

“I think you need to spend some more time with her before she gets her lover…because I don’t think they’ll be leaving their bedroom till the next damn Golden Age starts once the Crusade is done…and bring a notebook…some of her ideas sounded very…interesting.” Fulgrim’s mouth fell into a silent gape of shock, her children joining her for several moments before the Muse seemed to try and shake themself from their stupor by focusing on another subject. 

“Juno, all we really needed was to try and work out how she could approach them and how they could schedule their dates, simple enough. Hathor was pretty much the same, though we also had to figure out how to make the one she wants notice her feelings, not the worst one though it was a challenge.” Here the Muse paused to take a breath, sighing softly for a moment, before they resumed, their eye twitching slightly as they spoke up again.

“Petra really just needs to be honest with her feelings, that’s really all I could offer for advice for her…that and to remember to take off her armor when she tries to do anything with them.” Fulgrim nodded, smiling slightly at the mental image of Petra, sans her armor, trying and failing to flirt with someone, it would be an amusing spectacle to see, hopefully she would get to witness it tonight.

“Ferrus, just needed a reminder that not everyone can endure the heat of a blast furnace like she can…or endure sparks from molten metal hitting them like she can…really she just needs to remember that the one she’s interested in is a lot more fragile than her.” Fulgrim nodded once more, her smile growing softer at the thought of her closest sister finally getting with someone, she would have to send her a gift…hmmm…maybe she could find a copy of her…’educational’ book on intercourse and send it to her, Ferrus could certainly use the material in it for ‘educational purposes’ for when things reached the bedroom…or maybe…

The Muse paused, registering the mischievous glint in their lovers eyes, and while they were tempted to try and quash whatever form of torment she was dreaming up for her sister, she would try and see if she should warn Ferrus later on, for now she had to continue to feed the gossip mill of the Empress’s Daughters as they continued.

“Freya, that was a basket case. First we had to work out that no, you cannot just walk up to someone, hand them a leash and collar and say you are dating now,” Fulgrim’s hand flew to her mouth to muffle her cackles, her daughters trying and failing to follow her example as her lover continued. 

“Then! Then we had to work out that no, you cannot growl at everyone that looks at them before you are even dating, nor can you leave hunting trophies outside their door as gifts, I can only hope that she did not leave some beasts head outside their door beforehand…though…given the look on her face. And don’t even get me started on her asking if it was okay for her to p-ut her scent on their clothes to mark them…I pity them so much.” The Muse sighed as they shook their head, visibly holding back on saying more on the matter as they shifted to another one of her sisters.

“Atlanta…was a surprise, all she really wanted was advice on how to plan out dates with them that don’t involve battle, and on what flowers she should give her Rose,” The incredulous looks they received was enough to make them offer a shrug in response as the Astartes and their Matriarch shared glances of shock and awe with one another. 

“Leona was…not as bad as I thought, really just has to work on working up the nerve to confess and not scaring the hell out of them…or stalking them…Alakhi was pretty simple, she just wanted to know what she should do to make them feel more comfortable around her and not like they had to meet some imaginary standards.” Fulgrim nodded to herself absently, that was about what she expected.

“The Twins…yeah that is a mess of trust issues, fixation, and who knows what else they decided to keep to themselves, the big thing was getting them to admit their feelings to themselves and then try and guide them away from whatever hairbrained plan they came up with to wrangle a confession out of their target…and yes that includes tapping their Vox, assassinating potential rivals,” Fulgrim’s eyes widened as she opened her mouth again, “drugging them to kidnap them, blackmailing potential rivals, framing their target to get them put under their care…the list goes on.” The Muse at last stopped with a tired sigh, taking a moment to catch their breath before resuming. 

“Magna, I’m going to be honest with you if it weren't for her daughters dragging her out of the library I think she would just keep using her warpcraft to spy on her love and not even try and confront them. Anxiety aside, I feel that she won’t really have any issues when she is finally able to come out of her shell…and stop scrying on them constantly…or stalking them with astral projection.” The Muse paused, once more taking a deep breath as they seemed to try and steel themself for what was to come, the slight shudder that wracked their frame as they announced the last name making all of those present gape in shock at them.

“Kassandra…where in the hell do I even…no…you know what, I’m not drunk enough to discuss that Warp Storm, wait till I have a few bottles in me and then try and get that out of me because that…that is something beyond me.” Fulgrim shared in the respect her daughters were directing towards her lover, especially as she saw them seem to collapse in on themself, sagging in exhaustion as they recalled exactly what they had to deal with to get her new sword.

With a smile on her face, Fulgrim walked forward and embraced her lover, chuckling as she felt them go limp and let their head fall against her body, her breasts resting atop their head as they mumbled into her abdomen.

“Your sisters…are exhausting, and not in the good way.” Fulgrim could no longer hold back her laughter at that remark, throwing back her head and laughing merrily at the way her lover sounded, her laughter stopping when she noticed the shuttles arriving as she reached down and lifted her lover up and into her arms. 

“Come on my love, let’s try and bury those bothersome memories with some happier ones.” The Phoenician said as she began to stride towards the shuttles, chuckling to herself once more at the mental images her lover’s words had crafted in her mind, she could already picture the looks that would cross her sisters faces as she-

“Oh, and Fulgrim.” The thoughts of the Matriarch paused as she looked at her lover out of the corner of her eye, mischievous violet eyes watching as her lover looked up at her with a mischievous look of their own, lips curled into a smile that made the Matriarch shudder in unease..

“If they find out that I told you all that information, from you or one of the Astartes, then you will have to make do with your own hand and toys for a month.” Fulgrim went still, her eyes snapping wide open as she gaped at her lover, her daughters having gone similarly still, Eidolon nearly tripping over her own feet as Bile froze in her own tirade against some of her kin, the Apothecaries lips beginning to twitch upwards as she processed what she had just heard.

“You-!” Fulgrim was cut off as her lover lifted up a hand and began to pat her head, a coy smile on their face as they leaned in such that their breath tickled her ear as she purred to her in a tone of satin and sin-

“But, if you can keep it a secret for the whole party, then you can do whatever you want with me tonight, I still have some stress to deal with afterall. What do you say, up for the challenge?” Fulgrim snapped her gaze down to her lover, violet eyes darkening as she unconsciously licked her lips, a hunger welling up inside of her as she looked at her Muse.

“Anything?” She asked in a husky tone, heart beginning to pound as she began to plan and scheme as her Muse chuckled before they leaned in once more, their tongue lightly caressing her ear as they answered with the word that cemented their fate. 

“Yes.” A low squeal slipped past their lips as Fulgrim shifted them just so that her hand was beginning to grope at them, the hunger in her eyes now an all consuming blackness as she licked her lips once more, a shudder of delight at the thoughts racing through her mind racking the Matriarch’s frame as she lifted her gaze to look over her children, a knife cut smile appearing on her face as violet eyes blazed like thunderbolts.

The gathered Astartes looked at one another, several silently vowing to work with their mother, if for no other reason than their own safety, while others, such as a silently cackling Florencia Bile, vowing to do all they could to make the coming party as exciting as they could for their Mother and their kin. 

And so it was that as the shuttle wound its way down to the planet below, the Muse leaned back their head and let out a low chuckle, delighting in the merry chaos that was sure to unfurl, and at the prospect of watching Fulgrim do all she can to earn her reward. 

‘This is going to be one hell of a party,’ They thought to themself as they closed their eyes and relaxed in their lover’s arms, eagerly awaiting planetfall and the beginning of a night full of merriment.

As the Shuttles wound their way down to the planet, a figure emerged as a stygian vessel arrived in silence, the figure swiftly moving aboard the vessel as it began to spirit them away from the fleet, unseen by any and all, the figure that had climbed aboard swiftly sitting their package down and placing it within a vault, the faint light of the ships interior lights alighting for but a brief moment upon a container layered in seals and wards before it was locked away.

Line Break

Silence hung heavy and loud in the halls, broken not by the footfalls of the robe clad figure that maneuvered through the darkness of the black stone halls, navigating not by physical sight but by memory and senses far keener than their ancient form would make apparent. 

With impossible ease they held with one hand a case of dark metal, engraved with rune and symbol of warding magics and barriers, and in the other they carried a staff of metal adorned with a golden eagle upon its top, the flames that normally blazed to illuminate the great bird of prey having faded to not even smoldering embers.

For how long they walked none could say, for in the darkness of the depths of this most antiquated and stygian of vaults, time seemed to hold fast its breath, field with both wariness and awe of the horrors sealed behind great walls of stone and doors of ancient and terrible might, yet even where time dared not to tread, the cloaked figure did.

Unhurried they strode down the halls, the chill that hung so heavy in the air doing not to impede them as they approached their destination, a great door of stygian metal, layered in sigils of warding and restraining, flanked on either side by guards clad in sable with skulls of ivory and lone optics of baleful blue, the twin figures did not to impede the robed figure as it lifted a hand and, with an errant gesture, bid the door to open.

And open it did, great slabs of metal layered over one another parting as mechanisms unseen activated at the command of the figure that now strode forth into the room, the darkness of which hung in the air as though it were the ocean itself, fit to swallow, fit to crush and devour the one that had dared to intrude upon its sanctum.

Coldness such that frost coated the room struck at the figure, though it did not to deter them as they approached the center of the room, whereupon a great monolith of onyx metal loomed, shackles of ivory metal holding it fast to the ground as though it were a beast in need of binding and not an inert piece of metal.

Or perhaps they were there to restrain a different beast.

With practiced ease the figure lifted the package into the air, powers ancient and mighty holding it aloft as the figure lifted their hand and began to tap at the unseen keypad upon the surface of the great monolith, the sequence of numbers and letters, of symbols of languages ancient and dead, taking but a handful of moments for a hand that moved with speed that it should not have possessed. 

The sequence completed, the figure stepped back as there came a silent pulse across the surface of the monolith as it silently slid open, parting such that a slot large enough for the container and that which was held within could be fitted, runes of even greater power glowed from within, these of burning gold that hummed with power mightier than even that which the ancient figure held.

The container rattled, that which was within attempting to flee from the power of that most ancient and terrible of foes, though no ground could it gain in its bid for flight, for the ancient figure seized the container with a lone hand and moved it within the space, slotting it such that the runes pressed against the container.

Faintly, a sound not unlike an agonized scream could be heard. 

With deft movements the ancient figure tapped upon the keypad once more, this time to seal the great vault, and to allow the runes of power to do their long work, they would bleed the object of its power, scorching and searing and maiming that which was held within till not remained of its great might and with ease it could be unmade.

As the robed figure began to depart the room, he thought to himself how the runes had been arranged, of the intent and power held within them, of the tranquil fury that had been upon the face of his ancient friend as they had carved them, the radiance of her power such that the room around her had nearly melted under its might as it was directed into the runes. 

‘I suppose the old saying is true then,’ the ancient figure thought to himself as he left the room, a rap of his staff upon the ground bidding the great doors to seal shut behind him as the figures of its guards blended back into the shadow as a wall of stone rose from the ground to further conceal the entrance to the cell. 

‘No greater force there is, than a mother shielding her young.’(1) The thought in his mind, and his mission complete for a time, the ancient lord began to wind his way through the antiquated chambers.

He would be ash in the wind before he allowed his old friends children, and his nieces, to be lost to the madness that was the 4 and their twisted designs, and so it was that as he wound his way through the halls and back to the surface, the one known as the Cursed Wanderer, began to plan his next moves in the Great Game.

Fin

We hope you all enjoyed this mess of a ficlet of ours, it is our first time delving into writing in the 40k setting, and our first time writing for this marvelous AU for that matter, so please let us know just how badly we screwed up in the comments. 

That said, stay safe and take care all.  

[melonpalooza]

DUDE DUDE I AM FREAKING AMAZED BY YOUR CODING SKILLS ON AO3 (Is it coding? EITHER WAY-) How do you make it look like discord? Does it take lots of time to do? Did you copy the code for how it's set up from discord itself? How do you do it?! (not exactly asking for a step by step but a gen overview?) I'm super curious >:3

Hello, Anon!

Thank you for the ask! I've always wanted to info dump about my process lol

Okay, so I use a workskin that I hobbled together from multiple sources, sometimes adding my own elements by tweaking some things here and there.

Credits verbatim from my author notes (every link and user listed is from AO3):

Discord Workskin from unpredictableArtist (wovenstarlight). Extra code from BookKeep.

iOS Workskin from CodenameCarrot, La_Temperanza. All I did was augment the borders and colors to make it “dark mode”.

"Email" Workskin lifted and repurposed from La_Temperanza for the sake of looking like the Notepad app instead.

If you want the (current) workskin code, I can upload it in another post! Because the original codes are already a free resource, I don't see why not in sharing the full code that I use, y'know?

Once that is set as the workskin, however, all the chapters simply have to be written in raw HTML format! To make it easier for myself, I write everything in an app called "Notepad++" that highlights the syntax, making it easier for me to read/spot mistakes! I have a "master list" of usernames and commonly used code and I copy and paste it to the chapter with the messages. I also test the code on a site called jsbin to make sure it looks alright (sometimes I don't though, and just "update" the draft on AO3 like 50 times lol)

Basically, I have prompts on a google doc -> notepad++ -> ao3

If you are curious this is what the beginning of Ch. 21 looks like in its "raw" state in notepad++:

There is actually a lot of extra coding in this (all of the "hide" classes), so that it is still readable even if a reader has "Creator Style" off.

But yeah, all of that above is for the first three messages of the chapter:

But trust me, it's not as intimidating as you think, especially with my master list file (I'll even post it if you're interested and you can test it out for yourself!). And that's basically it? Not sure if I answered your question, but there you go! Of course, if anyone wants to do something similar on AO3, feel free to ask and I will assist! :)