#slum evictions

[indizombie]

There has been evidence of stress and poorer mental health associated with evictions. The stress arises from the anticipation of dislocation, lack of opportunity to negotiate with authority as well as loss of community. This experience is not limited to developing world only. An ecological study of the 1975 – 79 demolition of low income housing in the South Bronx in New York City found a sudden increase in high risk behaviour such as substance abuse and violence. Additionally, there was an increase in HIV and tuberculosis among displaced residents and the communities which received displaced residents.

‘Changes in Social Determinant Following Forced Evictions and Their Health Consequences- Economically Weaker Sections (Ews_ Quarters, Ejipura, Bangalore)’, Samyukta

[aetherictree]

I love how the two authors most brought up in the reblogs are Tolkien and Pratchett. I submit that they were the key English fantasy writers of their generation and we are adrift without someone to take up their pen.

So obviously, the most obnoxious and useless sort of science fiction criticism is provided by angry dumb guys screaming into microphones about things being "woke"; but I also get annoyed by the people who insist on applying a sort of "roman-á-clé" reading, where everything in the story is merely a disguised stand-in for some real-world human political issue. Like, yes, obviously, sf is used for social and political commentary a lot of the time; but it's *also* used to just kind of play around on the frontiers of possibility. And it frankly seems kind of demeaning to the genre to pretend that its alien, its bizarre, and its inhuman features are necessarily just stand-ins for some mundane, real-world concept. Like, yes, clearly The War of the Worlds is about colonialism; but it's also about alien life; it's also about evolution and ecology; and it's also about "Wouldn't it be fucked up if THIS happened!?" And all of these are irreducible from the genre. Is your robot autistic? Well, maybe you can read it that way. Maybe it's a sincere attempt to imagine a nonhuman mechanical intelligence. Maybe it's both. Sometimes, you write a story strictly for "Wouldn't it be fucked-up if..." purposes and it ends up shedding a whole new light on the human condition; in fact, I think that, if you're taking your concept seriously, it should do this by default. But you have to take the bizarre on its own terms or you might as well be reading realism.

[yanderenightmare]

TW: yandere, classism, degradation, possessiveness, obsessiveness, blackmail

gn reader - feminine clothing (jewelry: earrings, necklace)

Thinking about your rich boyfriend…

Rich boyfriend – who buys you clothes and jewelry every time you have a date, even when you tell him you feel bad receiving them all – that you have nowhere to wear such nice things – that a simple date is really more than enough. 

Rich boyfriend – who ignores you with a smile and shake of his head, asking you how you expect him to stop when you’re just the absolute cutest? Looking at him with those moon-big eyes, humble crinkle between your brows, and your lip tucked nervously between your teeth to keep from gawking. 

Rich boyfriend – who orders for you at all the restaurants he takes you to because he knows you’ve never been anywhere like it. Looking so adorably lost in your seat, flushed when staring at the menu written in a language you can’t read – knowing even if you could, you still wouldn't know what any of it meant. You’re so, so, so precious – eyes peeled like you’re a pet who’s just been allowed at the table for the first time.

Rich boyfriend – who plays four instruments, speaks five languages, went to an Ivy League institution, and will inherit his entire family’s business being the spoiled only child that he is.

Rich boyfriend – who just loves the messy household you grew up in – loves how you and your siblings interact with each other, looking like a bundle of pups all crammed in the same cage at a pet store – how your childhood bedroom is the size of his closet – filled with all sorts of trinkets you’ve kept growing up – stuff that would usually wind up in the trash at his house – polaroids of you as a teenager, past boyfriends in kissing booths, prom pictures, concert tickets, and old rusty friendship lockets. 

It’s all so… He scoffs. The word for it escapes him.

Suppose he doesn’t quite recognize the pricelessness of sentimental value as opposed to something actually sellable – but he finds it cute that you do. 

Though, it bothers him to some degree as well… that you would value an old pair of earrings gifted you by your grandmother instead of the actual antique diamond pair he’d procured for you. After all, one was a real historic piece worth a fortune a Russian duchess had snuck into England during the war, and the other was old junk made by a noname jeweler.

Rich boyfriend – who chokes on his spit when you sit him down and tell him you want to break up – who thinks he’s misheard – that you’re joking, playing some uncultured game he’s never been exposed to, some ill-taste past-time only poor people do to escape their bitter reality. 

But you’re not joking… 

You’re breaking up with him…You.. You… broke trash of worker-class scum… you’re breaking up with him?

You give him back all his gifts in a cardboard box – telling him you’re grateful but that you truly don’t have any use for such things – that you think your worlds are too different to coincide. 

Of course, you refrain from telling him you think he’s a classist snob. You have a feeling it would have gone completely over his head if you’d tried anyway, so there really was no point to it.

Rich ex-boyfriend – who’s never been told no in his entire life…

Rich ex-boyfriend – who buys your street and plans on scrapping it to make brand new mansions in a project he dubs “cleaning up the slums” – evicting and putting you and your entire family out of the home you’d spent your entire life growing up in.

Rich ex-boyfriend – who thinks you’re crawling back to him when you schedule an appointment at his office – who thinks you’re going to come in with bleary wet eyes and grovel like the lowly peasant you are – let him save you from poverty and homelessness, make you his charity case – his pretty diamond in the rough who’s never quite able to wash all the coal off.

Rich ex-boyfriend – who trashes that same office when you leave after having given him the address to the pawnshop you sold the one pearl necklace you’d kept as a token of your relationship – telling him he should feel free to go down there and get it back – that you’re using the money to buy a better house and you just wanted to come and thank him for that. 

Of course, you wanted to slap him too – spit on his tie or maybe just take a piss on his desk – but you left it at that.

Rich ex-boyfriend – whose next move is to buy your family business, who hires a private eye to dig up dirt on you and all your family, burying you in fines from age-old petty crimes, gets you kicked from your scholarship.

Rich ex-boyfriend – who goes to that pawnshop and reports the pearl necklace as a stolen item and has the police arrest you. Spinning a story about how he thought you were this humble sweet thing, only for you to rob him behind his back.

Rich ex-boyfriend – who comes to visit you in the custody suite where you sit cooped up with all the other wretched mutts on the cold concrete floors – scolding you for making him come down to a dirty police precinct, for having him breathe the same air as all the lowlives held up there.

Rich ex-boyfriend – who tells you he’ll make it all go away.

He’ll drop the charges, let your family keep their house – or buy them an even better one, whichever you prefer – he’ll even promote your family business and pay for all your siblings' education – he’ll give you everything. 

Anything you want, it’s yours.

But he owns you.

BNHA – Bakugou, Shoto, Dabi, Hawks, Overhaul

JJK – Sukuna, Gojo, Naoya

HQ – Oikawa, Sakusa, Miya twins

BLLK – Reo, Rin

HxH – Illumi

[3liza]

sociopathic capitalist urban developers as a class have managed to fool an entire generation of self-identified leftist "YIMBYs" into bulldozing currently-occupied low income housing and functioning green space including the mature, carbon-sequestering, heat-protectant trees everyone is always crying about to build cardboard "luxury" slums for the Seattle ruling class to use as barbie houses and everyone gets mad at me when i suggest disrupting steady occupancy, neighborhood social support networks, and more intangible established occupancy benefits like not having to deal with packing and unpacking etc which takes at least a year for anyone with any level of dysfunction to recover from, might be bad, and that developers are lying to us about specifically the "need" for destructive new building construction, and that planting their shitty non native decorative trees will replace the mature native growth they had to rip up to build it. like what is it specifically about housing barons that makes leftists so happy to abandon the principles of "believe the capitalists when they tell you their goal is to make a profit above all else". you can literally go on reddit, type in 5-over-1, and find developers and people who work with developers going "yeah we use the cheapest possible materials and cut as many corners as we can make appear 'legal' to build these things, because it makes money". look up "low income housing closing", no one ever shows me numbers on how much low income housing is being lost because those aren't the cool numbers of grim, forward-thinking internet leftist stoicism but actual project housing is constantly being shut down and everyone kicked out because it turns out people who have a lot of problems sometimes have those problems visibly in public and this offends the Bainbridge Island parasites.

sorry folks we had to evict 20 poors who had been living in the Sundew Arms garbage apartment block from 1960 with below-market rent in order to build the new and improved condo, which will actually house fewer people per square foot regardless of the number of units because the rent will be higher and high income people don't have roommates or live with family and well all these shiny new amenities and the Peloton in the communal gym and the mini dog piss park and so on....we have to charge at least $2500. you understand. it's the market stupid. we're Building Housing you can't criticize us for Building Housing. there's a Housing Shortage.

well the government says we have to earmark 10% of the new building to Low Income Housing which means we will probably just pay the nominal fine instead or possibly a single unit will maybe at some point be gingerly allotted to someone who has been on the Section 8 waiting list for hang on let me look it up..."randomly via lottery or several years during which you will be continually means tested and/or kicked off the waiting list without notification or explanation". great. i love urban density. this is so walkable. this cheap carpet offgassing is so identity. are we really that stupid

[ae-neon]

I'm not joking when I say book 1 Feyre would guillotine HL Feyre because

what do you mean you accepted free property in a war torn city with slums?

What do mean you tore down a whole low income apartment building just to evict your sister from one room??

WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU'RE BUILDING YOUR 5TH HOUSE MONTHS AFTER THE WAR ENDED???

Oh your husband is powerful enough to confidently run around lying to and stealing from other courts but can't enforce civil laws like the ban on wing clipping in his own?

Oh the people of the CoN and Illyria fought and died for the safety of Velaris but weren't allowed in it or even knew it existed for most of history??

Oh Velaris is on the West Coast of Prythian so the only country they could have been doing trade with all this time was HYBERN???

Like she went from liberator to oppressor sjm you brain rotted colonialist freak why couldn't you at least give Feyre the Valkyrie storyline so she could do something useful for at least a few of the most vulnerable ppl in the nation she now rules

[tamamita]

hey sal feel free to ignore this but i got into an argument with a zionist who claimed that arabs sold their lands to them, is this true

This is interesting, because it ignores a lot of context. Keywords to remember is the Ottoman capitulation, the Felaheen, the Sursock purchase and the eviction of Palestinians that inhabited the area at that time.

The Sursock family was a family of Aristocratic landlords with strong ties to the Turkish and European nobility dating back to the 19th century. The Sursocks were known to have mass purchased land in Palestine from the Ottoman Turks. While they were absentee landlords, they hired Arab labours who inhabited the purchased land at that time. When the Turks capitulated following WW1, the Turks were pressured into allowing the land to be sold to the PLDC, the Palestinan (later Israeli) Land Development Company. The PLDC sought to purchase the Jezreel valley, which consisted of 20-25 Arab villages, from the Sursock. . Keep in mind that the Jezreel valley was the most fertile land of Palestine and close to the economic city of Haifa. Following the mass purchase of land by the PLDC, the Jewish landbuyers expelled Arab tenants and depopulated the Arab villages despite their usufruct, and right to toll on the land. This all came as a surprise to the Arab inhabitants. This was all part of the idea that cheap Arab labour should be replaced with Jewish labour, this despite the fact that Arab labourers had greater expertise on the agricultural field; the settlers were unfamiliar with the land. Keep in mind that according to JNF, the Jewish national fund, only 3% of the Palestinian land were uncultivated, destroying the myth that the land bloomed as a result of its settler colonizers. The Hashomer Hatzaeer would come to be the center of these kibbutzim and would establish over 30 kibbutzim built ontop of the Arab villages before 1948. As a result, the Arabs, or Felaheen (The Arab peasant class) put up a resistance against the JNF out of concrete material reasons and attempted to fight back against the expansion of these kibbutzim. This was the first instance of Arab resistance against Zionism.

All of these lands were purchased before 1948 and the Arabs were expelled and depopulated only for the kibbutzim to be established with the help of the money provided by the Jewish Colonization association and its organs. However, the British mandate did not require the landowners to compensate for the expelled Arab tenants. The Arabs were forced to migrate to slums and towns. In one of these towns, a notable Syrian resistance fighter would rise up, namely, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, and declare jihad on the British. When the Arabs resisted their dispossession by every means necessary, even violence, the Zionists used this as an excuse to fortify their colonizers and expand them due to "escalating security needs". Since the colonizers were too weak to face the resistance, they turned themselves to the British to gain their support in an attempt to expand their lands as means of security for the Kibbutzim. In a memondarium written by the Kibbutz Hazora (a settlement in Jezreel) to the Jewish Agency in 1936: "Our basic demand is for our own instutions to help us ugently in getting the British authorities to expand our territory--this is a vital issue for us.". A similar pretext is used whenever the colonized put up resistance against their colonizers, in which the same excuse is used to further expand and colonize the lands. This is the logic of the oppressor in any context, whether it is colonial or in the class struggle.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Union pensions are funding private equity attacks on workers

On October 7–8, I'm in Milan to keynote Wired Nextfest.

If end-stage capitalism has a motto, it's this: "Stop hitting yourself." The great failure of "voting with your wallet" is that you're casting ballots in a one party system (The Capitalism Party), and the people with the thickest wallets get the most votes.

During the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese state would bill the families of executed dissidents for the ammunition used to execute their loved ones:

https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-the-Chinese-government-makes-the-families-of-executed-people-pay-for-the-cost-of-bullets

In end-stage capitalism, the dollars we spend to feed ourselves are used to capture the food supply and corrupt our political process:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/04/dont-let-your-meat-loaf/#meaty-beaty-big-and-bouncy

And the dollars we save for retirement are flushed into the stock market casino, a game that is rigged against us, where we are always the suckers at the table:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/25/derechos-humanos/#are-there-no-poorhouses

Everywhere and always, we are financing our own destruction. It's quite a Mr Gotcha moment:

https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/

Now, anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. We are living through a broad, multi-front counter-revolution to Reaganomics and neoliberal Democratic Party sellouts. The FTC and DOJ Antitrust Division are dragging Big Tech and Big Meat and Big Publishing into court. We're seeing bans on noncompete clauses, and high-profile government enforcers are publicly pledging never to work for corporate law-firms when they quit public service:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/09/nein-nein/#everything-is-miscellaneous

And of course, there's the reinvigoration of the labor movement! Hot Labor Summer is now Perpetual Labor September, with 75,000 Kaiser workers walking out alongside the UAW, SAG-AFTRA and 2,350 other groups of workers picketing, striking or protesting:

https://striketracker.ilr.cornell.edu/

But capitalism still gets a lick in. Union pension plans are some of the most important investors in private equity funds. Your union pension dollars are probably funding the union-busting, child-labor-employing, civilization-destroying Gordon Gecko LARPers who are also evicting you from the rental they bought and turned into a slum, and will then murder you in a hospice that they bought and turned into a slaughterhouse:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/26/death-panels/#what-the-heck-is-going-on-with-CMS

Writing for The American Prospect, Rachel Phua rounds up the past, present and future of union pension funds backing private equity monsters:

https://prospect.org/labor/2023-10-04-workers-funding-misery-private-equity-pension-funds/

Private equity and hedge funds have destroyed 1.3 million US jobs:

https://united4respect.org/press-release/people-who-work-at-walmart-sears-amazon-formerly-toys-r-us-more-join-forces-together-as-united-for-respect-2-2-2-2-5-3/

They buy companies and then illegally staff them with children:

https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/whd/whd20230217-1

They lobby against the minimum wage:

https://pestakeholder.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Insire-Brands-memo-on-15-wage.pdf

They illegally retaliate against workers seeking to unionize their jobsite:

https://www.hoteldive.com/news/dc-hotel-workers-enlist-us-representatives-to-fight-sofitel-union-busting/650396/

And they couldn't do it without union pension funds. Public service union pensions have invested $650 million with PE funds. In 2001, the share of public union pensions invested in PE was 3.5%; today, it's 13%:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1B0vv26VEFmwtfw5ur6dSDMY8NftvZKij/

Giant public union funds like CalPERS are planning massive increases in their contributions to PE:

https://www.calpers.ca.gov/page/newsroom/calpers-news/2023/calpers-preliminary-investment-return-fiscal-year-2022-23

This results in some ghastly and ironic situations. Aramark used funds from a custodian's union to bid against that union's members for contracts, in an attempt to break the union and force the workers to take a paycut to $11/hour:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-11-20/pension-fund-gains-mean-worker-pain-as-aramark-cuts-pay

Blackstone's investors include the California State Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS). The PE ghouls who sucked Toys R Us dry were funded by Texas teachers.

Then there's KKR, one of the most rapacious predators of the PE world. Half of the investors in KKR's Global Infrastructure Investors IV fund are public sector pension funds. Those workers' money were spent to buy up Refresco (Arizona Iced Tea, Tropicana juices, etc), a transaction that immediately precipitated a huge spike in on-the-job accidents as KKR cut safety and increased tempo:

https://www.osha.gov/ords/imis/establishment.inspection_detail?id=1675674.015

Petsmart is the poster-child for PE predation. The company uses TRAPs ("TrainingRepaymentAgreementProvision") clauses to recreate indentured servitude, forcing workers to pay thousands of dollars to quit their jobs:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/04/its-a-trap/#a-little-on-the-nose

Why would a Petsmart employee want to quit? Petsmart's PE owner is BC Partners, and under BC's management, workers have been forced to work impossible hours while overseeing cruel animal abuse, including starving sick animals to death rather than euthanizing them, and then being made to sneak them into dumpsters on the way home from work so Petsmart doesn't have to pay for cremation. 24 of BC Partners' backers are public pension funds, including CalSTRS and the NYC Employees' Retirement System:

https://prospect.org/culture/books/2023-06-02-days-of-plunder-morgenson-rosner-ballou-review/

PE buyouts are immediately followed by layoffs. One in five PE acquisitions goes bankrupt. Unions should not be investing in PE. But the managers of these funds defend the practice, saying they "facilitate dialog" with the PE bosses on workers' behalf.

This isn't total nonsense. Once upon a time, public pension fund managers put pressure on investees to force them to divest from Apartheid South Africa and tobacco companies. Even today, public pensions have successfully applied leverage to get fund managers to drop Russian investments after the invasion of Ukraine. And public pensions pulled out of the private prison sector, tanking the valuation of some of the largest players.

But there's no evidence that this leverage is being applied to pensions' PE billions. It's not like PE is a great deal for these pensions. PE funds don't reliably outperform the market, especially after PE bosses' sky-high fees are clawed back:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3623820

Pension funds could match or beat their PE returns by sticking the money in a low-load Vanguard index tracker. What's more, PE is getting worse, pioneering new scams like inflating the value of companies after they buy and strip-mine them, even though there's no reason to think anyone would buy these hollow companies at the price that the PE companies assign to them for bookkeeping purposes:

https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/2bstqfcskz9o72ospzlds/opinion/why-does-private-equity-get-to-play-make-believe-with-prices

To inject a little verisimilitude into this obvious fantasy, PE companies sell their portfolio companies to themselves at inflated prices, in a patently fraudulent shell-game:

https://www.ft.com/content/646d00f4-af5d-4267-a436-54fb3bc1697b

What's more, PE funds aren't just bad bosses, they're also bad landlords. PE-backed funds have scooped up an appreciable fraction of America's housing stock, transforming good rentals into slums:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/27/extraordinary-popular-delusions/#wall-street-slumlords

PE is really pioneering a literal cradle-to-grave immiseration strategy. First, they gouge you on your kids' birth:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/27/crossing-a-line/#zero-fucks-given

Then, they slash your wages and steal from your paycheck:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3465723

Then, they evict you from your home:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/05/vulture-capitalism/#distressed-assets

And then they murder you as part of a scam they're running on Medicare:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/05/any-metric-becomes-a-target/#hca

As the labor movement flexes its muscle, it needs to break this connection. Workers should not be paying for the bullet that their bosses put through their skulls.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/05/mr-gotcha/#no-ethical-consumption-under-capitalism

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

[the-inkwell-variable]

Hi! I'm Kit, and my penname is Talia Wynters (she/they). I'm absolutely dying for people to interact with my stuff, and then I realized -- I don't have an introduction page! Let's fix that, shall we?

I write mainly horror, fantasy, and romance. I also write fluff, though I'm not very good at it - forgive me!

MY CURRENT WIPS ARE:

dauntless - - - horror novel, rated r

as a strange illness sweeps the nation, ashlee bennett finds herself quarantined in ground zero: bluegrass, kansas. can she escape the walls to untold dangers without? does she even want to?

priestess without honor - - - paranormal fantasy romance, rated pg-13

In the land of Tykra, werewolves cannot bear children. There are no female werewolves, and normal humans cannot survive the strain of carrying a pup. In desperation, the wolf clans turned to the Sisters of the Silver Thread, and a pact was made.

Astaria is a Sister reaching the end of the spell that allows her to carry pups. She hasn't been Chosen, and this will be her last Ceremony. If she isn't Chosen by the Alpha or his Beta today, she will be severed from magic forever and sent to be the Keeper of a small remote village.

Dom is the fresh Alpha of Thorny Claws, the largest pack in Tykra. He doesn't want to get married or to have pups, but the pack will evict him if he doesn't. Frustrated with his Fate, he arrives at the Sisters' castle to pick up his preselected mate, Aspen.

But Fate has other plans, and Aspen does not take kindly to being the second choice...

chosen without honor - - - mafia romance, rated pg-13

Lilly needs a job. Any job. She doesn't look back when a sketchy restaurant offers her a position as a waitress, even as it becomes increasingly clear that she's now working for the mafia. What she doesn't expect is to catch the eye of Lino, the don's son. What she expects even less is to find herself swept up in a torrid affair with him in the very restaurant that employs her. When she discovers his biggest secret, she is heartbroken. Will she turn her back on the man she loves most, or will she fight to reclaim what she has decided is hers and no other's?

the corpse and the killer - - - batman/train to busan fanfiction, rated r

𝘢𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘴𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘳𝘰𝘸 𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘦𝘴 𝘢 𝘴𝘮𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘥𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘧𝘦𝘢𝘳 𝘵𝘰𝘹𝘪𝘯 𝘪𝘯 𝘢 𝘴𝘮𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘳, 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘶𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘦𝘷𝘢𝘤𝘶𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘪𝘵𝘺. 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘥𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘢𝘪𝘯 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘶𝘨𝘴, 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘰𝘨𝘶𝘦'𝘴 𝘨𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘳𝘺, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘢 𝘯𝘦𝘸 𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘷𝘢𝘭 - 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘢 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘬𝘩𝘢𝘮 𝘬𝘯𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵. 𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘥𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘢𝘺, 𝘣𝘢𝘵𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘴 𝘲𝘶𝘪𝘵𝘦 𝘧𝘶𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘰𝘯𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵. 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘭𝘰𝘶𝘥𝘣𝘶𝘳𝘴𝘵 𝘤𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘪𝘯 𝘢 𝘵𝘰𝘹𝘪𝘤 𝘰𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦 𝘤𝘭𝘰𝘶𝘥, 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘨𝘢𝘴 𝘪𝘴𝘯'𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘦𝘢𝘳 𝘵𝘰𝘹𝘪𝘯 𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘦𝘥. 𝘪𝘵'𝘴 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘯𝘦𝘸. 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘧𝘢𝘳 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘴𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘯 𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘥. 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘢𝘧𝘧𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘢𝘧𝘳𝘢𝘪𝘥. 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺'𝘳𝘦 𝘩𝘶𝘯𝘨𝘳𝘺. 𝘩𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨. 𝘶𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘱𝘱𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦.

MY CURRENT OC's!

kia marie flaye - - - rambunctious, stubborn, and a damn good mechanic, kia grew up on the streets of gotham city after being orphaned by two-face. she works for both penguin and black mask, bouncing between their odd jobs and strange demands. she doesn't care about batman, just like he doesn't care about her and her people in the slums.

ashlee bennett - - - after a failed college career and an even shorter marriage, ashlee was too exhausted to care that she needed to move back to bluegrass, kansas. she lives with her sister, ana, and ana's four children, and works at the clinic, where the doctor just so happens to be her boyfriend. but things are about to go absolutely sideways as a new disease sweeps through town, taking normal with it...

kira leonore - - - the last leonin of ycaea (and damn good at hiding it thanks to granny's little charm), kira is an ice mage that grew up in the wild untamed ruins of the former, forest-overgrown country of ycaea. she spends her life tending to the few villagers that remain scattered through the forests and running from the inquisitors that hunt witches like her.

tiatha y'l'nyx - - - tiatha was sold as a child to the inquisition of the topaz star, in exchange for the order to stay out of the drow lands. gregorious, the head of the order, experimented on her, twisting her body to its limits and torturing her until her mind snapped. now she serves as his right hand, overseeing the inquisitors' duties and searching for more mages to subjugate.

xaente marlowe - - - an inquisitor of the topaz star, she is quite happy with her lot in life. she gets to hunt the scum of the earth - mages who do not submit to the order's rule - and use her own intrinsic magical powers as she pleases. what more could a girl want?

neia silverthorne - - - a lord of the rings AU elf! a thousand years ago, she and 99 other children, including her older brother, were taken in a massive raid by dol guldur. she and six others were the only survivors - and as time crept steadily on, the others died as well. a hundred years ago, she was kidnapped - err, reclaimed by the elves and has been relearning how elven society works against her will. she's very cranky about this.

amara - - - i created her for legends of avantris's once upon a witchlight but i can't bring myself to interject her in their shenanigans even for my own amusement, so here you go! she is half-tiefling, half-drow - she looks like a drow, save for a long tail and curved gray horns. as a teenager, she accidentally killed a matron's daughter and was forced to flee to the surface, where she was taken in by a certain carnival as both a secretary and a smaller act. she is quite skilled with shadows and illusions. she cannot lie with her words to save her life, but she absolutely can cook the books and spread falsehoods through writing and illusion images.

astaria - - - astaria is a witch with seemingly no magic. she fully expected to be sent away to be a keeper of a random village on the outskirts of tykra, but it seems fate had other plans. now she is keeper to a werewolf/shifter pack and the shy wife of the alpha himself. she struggles with self esteem issues thanks to her lack of magic and is terrible at hiding it.

ask me any questions! send me ask games! please scoob i'm dying

[xxgoblin-dumplingxx]

Did reader meet batman or Bruce first in the doting husband series? I feel like almost all of our readers meet them out of cape then in cape. Might be fun to play a reverse uno on them at some point

"Mr. Wayne-"

Bruce turned to see a woman looking at him very intently. Not a glare. But- It was intense. You were furious.

He'd never met you before. Never seen you before in his entire life- but he'd swear that you were one of those women that really was beautiful when you were angry. The fire in your eyes and the set of your jaw- the way it all enhanced your coloring.

And if he didn't think you'd slap him, he'd ask you to dinner.

"Yes, Miss-"

"Y/N," you tell him. Not breaking your stride. Not breaking your concentration. "I work for legal aid-"

"Pleased to meet-"

"Save it. Did you know you're new development is eing headed by a slum lord who evicts tenants that complain about black mold? Or that last winter-"

"I'd be happy to discuss this in my office," he said, aware that people were watching.

"So you can buy me off?" you scoff. "Because you did know and you don't care?"

Passion. He could see the passion and the anger. And he realized that it was righteous fury. That you'd seen the suffering. You were in the trenches. And in your mind you were facing a dragon. Another monster who was content to let people suffer to save their bottom line.

"No," he said, forcing himself to relax. "So I can see your proof- not that I think you're lying I just want to know-"

"I have files," you tell him, gesturing to your bag. "Photos, medical bills-"

"Show me," he demanded, frowning. Not at you. But- if you had that much, you'd been at it for a while. And he was grateful you'd been willing to make a scene. It looked like he had work to do.

[ninjago-drabbles]

Y'all we don't talk about how wild it is that Wu is the First Spinjitsu Master's son enough. He's the son of literal GOD, who existed CENTURIES ago. That's his Dad. What. And he's just messing around and picking random young adults up off the streets for kicks and giggles and ninja training. Imagine if actual Jesus was just walking around your city and opening up failing tea shops. Imagine that you deliver mail to him. You just hand him his bills and his waxing coupons from the town over. You evict him from his property when his tea shop gets destroyed and send Jesus to the slums.

What the fuck.

[indizombie]

A study on evictions at Ambedkar Nagar slum in Mumbai, found profound effects on health. Stunting and wasting were identified in the children with skin and hair changes suggestive of kwashiorkor and rickets. Two-third of the children had obvious pallor (signifying anemia) and a quarter of them showed signs of hypovitaminosis-A including conjunctivalxerosis, Bitot spots and corneal xerosis. Additionally, there was evidence of widespread infection: diarrhoea, respiratory infections including pneumonia, and skin infections.

‘Changes in Social Determinant Following Forced Evictions and Their Health Consequences- Economically Weaker Sections (Ews_ Quarters, Ejipura, Bangalore)’, Samyukta

[brave-little-pauper]

In your most recent art, does the bros not wearing shoes as children mean they grew up on the streets?

Mario and Luigi grew up in the slums. They were fortunate enough to have a roof over their heads, but there was always the knowledge that it wouldn't be permanent (evictions, moving in with relatives, staying outside due to overcrowding, etc). The two also spent a majority of their time on the streets, exploring, playing, and finding any form of work.

For reference, I tried looking up images and illustrations of victorian era London.

As for shoes, I initially had it where Mario was the only one barefoot as a way to establish him as the more 'rough-and-tumble' of the two, but then I realized that Luigi would've felt guilty.

There was another idea of there being just one pair and they each wore a half, but I wasn't certain if it looked goofy in execution or not. These ideas can still happen in the story, but for this piece, I omitted them.

Thank you for the question. I hope I explained it well.

[cuckoldbootslave]

Sipping her champagne, she gazes out of the limousine window at the slums passing by, a smug smile on her face. "They’re being evicted to make room for elegant estates," she says casually. "There are five thousand of them, and we’re making room for about 100 wealthy people to live in the same space."

Her boyfriend raises an eyebrow. "Where will they go?"

She laughs, her voice dripping with cold amusement. "To beg, to starve in the streets. Then we’ll make it illegal to be homeless, and they’ll end up in work prisons—where they’ll make me millions."

[helly-watermelonsmellinfellon]

So, I presently need to go to the dentist and get 4 teeth just completely removed. And they're all my furthest back molars. And so my secret little headcanon is that, since everybody just insists that we all have wisdom teeth, maybe my body's trying to get rid of some teeth to make room for these other teeth magically floating in the unknown for the past 3 decades(let me live in delusion).

On the left side, both top and bottom molars started with small holes that eventually got bigger over time and now half of both are missing. On the right side, part of my top molar broke and my filling fell out, so the hole is from the bottom and has exposed everything to anything that goes in my mouth. And the bottom molar feels like the top left molar did when I first noticed the tiny hole in it.

When you get evicted, spend a year in the country with no transportation, spend 3 years in a slum with no transportation(public or personal) 30+ miles away from the nearest store(and thrice that for your dentist), then a year in a new state with no healthcare(cuz the poor ppl healthcare kept changing for several months), and then spending 2 years homeless and unable to get reliable transportation to any doctor appointment you can get with your new but shifty healthcare(I have gone through 4 changes since moving to this state in 2021), it's hard to get your teeth proper treatment.

Especially when there's co-pay that I can't afford for dentist visits.

[fatehbaz]

The New York State Urban Development Corporation saw in the piers a sacrificial milieu of impurity and devaluation. Rivera described the event as follows: “It’s called a sweep. Not even a fucking eviction. A sweep, like we’re trash.” [...]

The clearance operation of the piers took place under the New York Slum Clearance Commission and Law and its frothy utopian verbiage of “sanitizing” an environment [...] unsuitable for human life. [...] The demolition of the piers showed the violent clash of two confronting forms of urbanism. [...] [Manhattan’s] working class industrial base was transformed into a corporate and service-based economy and New York State Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller, together with city planners, implemented policies to frame Manhattan as a place for work, but not living. [...] The rhetoric used by public and private officials to get rid of the piers was embedded in medical metaphors, [...] "blight" [...]. At the same time, these discussions were imbricated with racial depictions and xenophobic targets: most of the constructions beleaguered in this operation were inhabited or used by black people, Latin Americans, migrants, and displaced communities. [...]

---

The piers thrived with life. [...]

The notion of the piers as insalubrious areas that needed to be wiped out gained traction in the 1980s - during the peak of the HIV/AIDS crisis [...]. This narrative concerning the piers was active in New York City until the early 2000s, until Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Governor George Pataki opened the Greenwich Village segment of Hudson River Park on May 30, 2003. The highway was finally demolished [...] and a series of gates were erected to keep Pier 45 closed after 1am [...]. The previous residents of these spaces were just routine casualties. The new proposal opted for a unitary, straightforward, apparently open but constantly surveilled set of facilities, where constant circulation (by car, skate, bike, foot) was central, and framed the conception of the piers as a passing point. This contrasted the labyrinthic and fragmented former setting, with multitudes of hidden spaces that provided a sense of privacy and safety [...].

---

The history of the piers runs parallel to the history of the LGBTQIA+ movement in New York. This is where Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson decided to locate the first installment of [...] (STAR) in 1970 [...], a year after the Stonewall riots. [...] [D]uring the 1973 Gay Pride Rally [...], [Rivera] asked the movement to support [racialized, trans, gender non-conforming, homeless, and incarcerated people] [...] instead of just focusing on cis "men and women that belong to a white middle class club" [...] [which entailed] the negation of alternative forms of living [...].

Members of these groups were ostracized and deprived of typical considerations during the outbreak of an epidemic: protocols of announcement, transparency in information, research, and measure-taking. Meanwhile, the communities that congregated around the piers, and the piers themselves, helped spread information about AIDS, made transparent the available data, and offered care among affected communities. Groups and associations like STAR, Gay Men's Health Crisis, and Gran Fury were essential in this effort. [...] This environmental activism, where kin was formed [...], happened in places like the piers. [...] They were an escape from the constant scrutiny of authorities and from homophobic attacks [...].

---

AIDS' first name, GRID (Gay Related Immune Deficiency), as well as the common “gay plague” and “gay cancer” epithets, strengthened the idea of a specifically gay disease related to a certain environment-specific villain. Journalists, following the views of public health authorities, blamed the epidemic on [...] the places gay people frequented. [...] Physicians thus described a spatial configuration located in downtown Manhattan [...] which [...] posed a threat [...]. This claim had terrible consequences for the activist spaces and urban fabrics that confronted the epidemic [...]. The remnants of Pier 45 were demolished. The activist history of these places was “cleared.” [...]

---

When Sylvia Rivera shouted to the authorities “stay away from my house!” while being evicted, “house” not only referred to the physical construction of her home. She was confronting teleological progress with the project of a[n] [...] assemblage based on [...] mutual caring [...] and defying colonial narratives of race, sex, gender, and nature. The territorialization of epidemics, identities, and citizenship not only shape the built environment, but the built environment shapes them in return. Architecture thereby assumed the form of an expanded spatial practice [...].

When Rivera was trying to save her home from demolition, she said, “there’s so many fucking buildings in this fucking Manhattan.” What New York City was losing with the demolition of Pier 45 was not just a series of dwellings. It was losing a complex ecosystem of coexistence.

---

All text above by: Iván López Munuera. “Lands of Contagion”. e-flux Architecture (Sick Architecture series). November 2020. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

[stesierra]

Since I'm trying to share something every day to motivate myself to write again, here's the first chapter of one of my adult fantasy books. At one point I loved it but I had a critique partner read the whole thing and now it embarrasses me. So this is probably terrible but give it a chance maybe? Trigger warning: magical seizures.

Please tell me if you want to be removed from the taglist. Or added, I guess.

Stitches and Memories

(WHY DID I PICK SUCH A TERRIBLE TITLE?)

Chapter One

The 4th Day of Spring, 502 King's Rule

Antea didn't spend her thirtieth birthday celebrating with the few people who called her acquaintance. She spent it dying. Again.

A normal woman wouldn't be on the floor of her bathroom, occasionally spasming hard enough to slam her head into the wooden tub. All she was doing was reliving her first kiss at age seventeen. It was just a memory. It was just a memory, brain, get it together.

But her brain did not get it together. It flooded her with memories of the boy's pink lips -- too wet and too large -- at the same time as it slammed a pickax through her eyes over and over again. She'd blacked out too much to see the room around her, but she felt it when her legs spiked straight and slammed her into the wall. She came away with splinters in her arm and cheek.

"Shut up over there!" her neighbor bellowed from the next apartment over. "Keep pounding on the walls and I'll report this to the constables!"

He probably would, too, the bastard.

In her mind, the boy drew back and beamed at her. The memory ended there, but the pickax didn't stop for another twenty minutes.

When the agony died down, she dragged herself over to the chamber pot and threw up.

When she finally eased her eyes open, a partly digested pasty stared up at her. The pounding on her door registered then. Thump. Thump. Thump. The sound raised dread in her heart. Only one type of person knocked like that in Drazen. With that terrible implacability.

When she wrenched the door open, hinges squealing, a broad man in green stared down at her over his posh black mustache. Some seamstress had embroidered his doublet with the king's symbol, a golden lion biting its tail. The gold thread was real, which meant she'd gotten an up-city constable somehow, which was deeply unfair since she lived in the slums.

He frowned at her. She could guess what he was seeing: a barefoot, brown-skinned woman who had just grown out of being pretty, wearing a dress that had been mended too many times. Her golden hair was mashed in a nest on one side of her head. She smelled of a few days of sweat and dirt.

Her black hair had turned metallic gold when she was eighteen. No, she didn't know why. There was a lot about being eighteen that she didn't know.

She bowed deeply. "May I help you, sir?"

He said, "I've had a noise complaint here. Pounding on the walls. Disrupting the peace."

"I had a fit of convulsions in my bathroom."

He frowned at her, his whole face drooping. "We have had a lot of complaints about these convulsions."

Antea resisted the urge to wrap her hands around his fat neck. "Yes. That's because it's a medical condition." And it was true, even if they weren't the normal sort of fits, not normal at all. As far as she understood it, normal people with convulsions thrashed around less and passed out and sometimes forgot the whole thing. She wasn't normal. She was awake through the fire in her head and every twitch and spasm, and she remembered everything.

The constable leaned in close. "Have you been praying for healing?"

"Yes."

"If I go and check your records, will I find you tithing regularly to at least one of the gods?"

"Yes," she lied.

"Because if I check and you haven't, then you aren't really trying to be healed, and you will be held wholly responsible for remaining ill."

"Which entails?"

He sniffed. "After all this commotion, I would think eviction, at least."

Her rentals always ended in eviction, but she had hoped this one would last out the year. "Sir, the Stag God teaches mercy to the infirm and poor. Seeing as I'm both, I would be most grateful for your understanding."

"There are many such deserving citizens in Drazen. But with your extensive record--"

"Of what? Running into walls in the night? That's not even a crime."

The man straightened to his full height, towering over her like the Eagle God over his foes. "If a constable of the law says you have committed a crime, then you have. Gather your things if you have any. I will speak with your landlord, and it will go poorly for you if you are still here tonight."

Antea sagged against the doorframe. "Yes, sir."

He smiled at her, wide and smug. "Oh, and remember the curfew."

It took all her willpower not to punch him. She turned sharply instead and shut the door in his face.

She didn't have much to gather. Her ragged haversack weighed nothing when she slung it over her shoulder. Her leather shoes were hiding under the bed. Even though the seams on the sides were giving way, they covered her toes at least. One change of clothes and a wool blanket lay on the mattress. The blanket served as a blanket, but her extra dress was her only pillow. She wrapped one inside the other and tied them to the bottom of her haversack.

One last thing remained. A letter. When she'd moved in, she had shoved it under the mattress where she wouldn't have to look at it. She pulled it out now and thought about throwing it on the fire. It would burst into flames, burning fast and hot, the dry paper shrinking into black curls before they crumbled away into white ash. If she burnt the letter, she would never have to read those words again. The pain in her head might always be with her, but that pain she could leave behind.

She read the letter. It said:

"My beloved daughter, I write this for my own sake, for you will never read it. Forgive me. What I tore from your mind was necessary, but with that wound, I know that I have killed you. May the gods have mercy on my soul."

She ran her fingertips over his signature. Then she put the letter in her bag and walked out of the tenement never to return.

--

It was two hours before the doleful tones of the curfew bell would ring across the city, two hours for Antea to find shelter for the night. She didn't have the coin for an inn. She had just paid the damn landlord the next month's rent money, not that he would ever consider a refund. If she asked he would laugh in her face, and the law would be on his side, too, like it always was.

With no other option, she headed for the nice part of the city. Not the nicest because that was up near the royal castle and the queen's spire, and people like her weren't allowed there. No, she went to the parts frequented by merchants and the new rich, where no one would care that she was there.

In the dimming light, the nice quarter was all faded stone edges and empty streets. Even the rich had to follow curfew. But even in the twilight, the library stood out as the biggest building in the district. Pilgrims that followed the Crow God visited from all over Ritalia. Its marble facade was hidden under red leather prayer offerings. When it rained the entire building stank like a wet dog.

She slipped between the leaving patrons and headed for the front desk. Zoren, the head librarian, raised his eyebrows at her. He was a pleasantly overweight man in a long black robe, with large spectacles sitting on top of his bulbous nose. The blue mage light beside him shone off his bald head. "Antea? This is quite the departure from the norm. What's going on, then?"

She flushed and hiked her haversack higher on her shoulder. "I got evicted. I was wondering--

"If you can sleep in one of the back rooms tonight?"

She nodded.

The librarian's voice was gentle but unyielding. "If we were caught housing people in a building not zoned for it, we could get into a great deal of trouble with the constables."

"That's a no?"

"I'm sorry, Antea. Good luck finding shelter tonight."

She bowed to him and slumped out of the library. But she stopped on the front steps and straightened up. She wasn't giving up that easily. The constable who had evicted her thought he'd catch her for breaking curfew, and that he'd see her locked up and the key thrown away. But Antea had planned for this, even if she had hoped the day would never come.

All her worldly possessions on her shoulder, she walked half a mile to the Shrine of the Gods.

The Shrine of the Gods was not one shrine but many, all marked by white marble columns that thrust up from the city streets. At its base, each pillar bore the painted statue of one of the gods. When you approached a statue, you were isolated from the others by head-high circular walls around each column. They carved out a little bubble of space so that it was just you and whatever god you had chosen, and anyone else who wanted to pray had to wait in line. Those lines sometimes stretched out for miles, but at this time of night, every statue she passed was alone.

An overnight vigil was the one thing the constables couldn't complain about. She wouldn't get any sleep that night, but she wouldn't end up in jail.

Antea paced around, refreshing her memory about which god's statue stood where. There were thirty-two gods to choose from. Some of them were so minor no one worshipped them, but the Shrine represented all gods. Leaving one out just because they were as popular as moldy cheese was unthinkable.

Antea picked the Dog Goddess because she'd always been fond of bitches, and who didn't need a little guidance in their lives? She sat cross-legged on the braided wool mat spread out before the goddess's marble toes. The Dog Goddess stood in two forms next to herself. One was a rearing limer with floppy ears, painted black and brown, the other a small-breasted naked woman, painted with dark skin and white hair. The woman's hand was outstretched in benediction. It shone white at the tips, the details of her fingers worn smooth from the touch of too many worshipers.

Antea leaned close and said, "Hi."

The goddess did not reply.

"It's been a while since I talked to one of you gods. I'm not very pious, I know."

The dog statue of the goddess had its head tilted as if Antea had done something peculiar.

Antea drew her knees up to her chest. "It's funny, you know. I used to be very pious. Ready to do anything any god asked of me. Thirteen years ago." Thirteen years ago, she'd been a lot of things.

In the twilight, the goddess's expression looked sympathetic, but Antea had had twelve years to learn how little the gods cared.

She said, "I think I'm supposed to ask you for a gift. It's traditional, or something."

Someone passed by outside, and Antea forced herself to stay relaxed. Go away. She was communing with her god, like a good little citizen. Go away.

She stayed silent until the footsteps had faded. Then she said, "So, demanding things. I can't think of what I want. I mean, I want to be healed. But you've all said no to that." Thousands upon thousands of prayers, all unanswered. She'd even tried the gods no one prayed to anymore. And nothing.

Beyond the shelter of the shrine walls, the constables were ringing curfew. They'd start searching the streets soon, looking for beggars and troublemakers and other unwanteds. People like her who hadn't been smart enough to hide out at the Shrine. She needed to look prayerful, but it was early enough spring that the nights were still cold. Surely it couldn't hurt to pull out her blanket and cover her lap. The devout didn't have to freeze, did they?

"I'll ask for food and a place to sleep. That's nice and humble, right?" She undid the ties at the bottom of her haversack and yanked her blanket loose. When her spare dress clung to it, she stuffed it in the bag. And the letter fell out and fluttered to the stones.

Antea froze. She stared down at where it lay, heavy with its words. When she sat back down, blanket hugged against her chest, her movement bumped the letter a few inches away, but it didn't disappear.

She buried her face in wool and said, "You can't be serious. That's not a reasonable suggestion."

It wasn't, but the Dog Goddess wasn't suggesting anything. Antea was just talking to herself again. If the goddess had actually been present, the statue would have lit up with bright light, perfectly white the way mage lights never managed. Antea had seen the gods answer petitioners before. She used to watch her father-- Never mind. Forget it.

But she didn't forget it in time. Stabbing pains made her squeeze her eyes shut.

Someone cleared his throat behind her. She spun around, and the headache and the motion nearly made her vomit.

A Shrine worker stood there in his modest tunic and apron, both glowing white. He bowed his curly head and said, "You're here very late, daughter."

Antea kept her head high and clasped her hands together on her lap. "I'm keeping a vigil."

"I thought that perhaps that was the case. We do permit vigils, despite the curfew, but I must ask what you pray for tonight. The constabulary has us keep records, you see."

Of course they did. And if she didn't tell him something worthy of a goddess's guidance, he would call the constables. And she couldn't say she was asking for healing because the Dog Goddess wasn't a healer.

The letter lay innocently on the stone beside her. She picked it up and held it in her hand. Words flowed from her lips as if someone else was doing the talking. "My father hurt me and left me for dead, twelve years ago. I don't know what happened to him after that. He never came back to the city."

The worker's brows lifted, and his lips pursed as he took a step towards her. "That is... troubling. What guidance do you hope the Dog Goddess will grant you?"

Antea slumped, letting the letter trail against the ground. "I just... I need to know why. Why he did it. But he's the only one who knows, and there's no way I could afford a passport to even leave the city, much less to go to all the places he might be. That's why I've never found him."

The Shrine worker nodded. "That is a difficult problem, and one I fear I cannot help you with. But keep your vigil, daughter, and perhaps the goddess will grant you her wisdom." He swept his hands in a sign of blessing, and he walked on.

Antea let her breath out in a rush. She shoved the letter back in her haversack with shaky hands and wrapped herself up in the blanket.

"Close one, huh?" she said to the goddess's statue. "Maybe give me some guidance if you feel like it. Because I would like to know what he ruined my life for."

The goddess's statues stayed dark. If the goddess intended to guide her, it wouldn't be directly.

She sighed and rocked back and forth. "I know I'm very stupid. What am I hoping for? To remember? Trying to remember makes it worse." Even remembering something near to that day threatened to tear her mind apart.

The cloudy heavens overhead split and spilled out a thousand stars, winking and sparkling like candlelight seen from far away. Her brain throbbing with its usual rhythm, Antea sank down in her blanket, shut her mouth, and closed her eyes.

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