#and i have not taken one day for granted in four hundred years

[thebaldergatescandal]

my cleaving the What Astarion Sex is More Moral To Have discourse down the middle by saying of course I think he wants to be a slut again, and feels frustrated and limited and damaged by the effect his past still has on him, but I think he would be happiest with a long-lived character who's already had decades long relationships that flow naturally from friends to lovers to a weird undefinable middle ground to back again as they go through life, where waiting several years or more for emotions to turn again into something physical is not a remarkable or difficult length of time to wait.

[its-in-the-woods]

'Down the Rabbit Hole' Chapter 1

Chapter two chapter three Chapter four

Pairing: Walton Goggins x You

Rating: None for this chapter future ones will be adjusted.

Slow build like novel damn length okay, Very Fluffy, Pinch of Angst, Relationship Development, Hurt/Comfort, Older man/ Younger(30s) women, Alternative universe, fictional work (IDK WHY BUT I AM PUTTING IT) Probably more as I go.

Synopsis: Working in film as a make-up artist is hard enough, but then Walton Goggins requests you, well it's way too easy to fall down the rabbit hole.

Note: they are both single, all for fun.

WARNING I do not have this all written out, I do have it plotted out, but it may be a little slower for chapters to come out. Please bear with me. If you know a Beta to edit please send them to me.

Getting the phone call that you're working with Liz again is surprising. You had encountered Liz several times, mostly as a day call trying to get hundreds of extras through a small window of time. She was well-known in the industry as being a giant pain in the ass. Though you had gotten along somewhat well with her, you had never quite felt like the women would have picked you as a second.

Sitting down in the production office you start to fill in paperwork. There is always so much paperwork. Thankfully this would have you working for the next four months. Four months of not having to fill out forms or wonder when your next job would come. Granted you had made a favorable impression with several other heads of department. But if everyone was honest the biz was saturated with less skilled artists who would bend over backward, or forwards, just to get a day in. You flick over the paperwork refilling the same information for the fifth time. 

“Hey, can I talk to you for a second,” It's Liz, done up to the nines as always. Touches of grey hair starting to show against the dirty blonde. She wears all black with a horrid mix of silver and gold jewelry. 

You follow the woman back, completely prepared for her to tell you that you will not be seconded to her. That you'd be moved to 2nd unit or something much more fitting for someone with just “five years of experience”. 

Walking into the little office you place the paperwork on your lap as you sit across from her. The walls have headshots of cast along with information underneath.  You don't pay attention, if you're working a different unit chances are you'd never see them anyway.

“Nice to see you again,” Liz says, you get a feeling that she was putting on a bit of a show. She’s put on a weird smile that doesn’t meet her eyes, not that you could tell she won’t look at you. 

“Likewise, hope you've been doing well,” You reply, you can't stomach being a kiss ass.

Liz makes a humming noise as she flips through the large binder. One of the the few things you both agreed on, is hard copy beat digital work. 

“At the moment you're not going to be seconding with me, you've been requested by the lead.” She gestures over to the wall.

You look over and see Walton Goggins’ face staring back at you. You chew at your lip, you've worked with him twice. Mostly while doing smaller rolls, he had always been easy to work with and hilarious.  

“Ah, I see.” You reply, trying not to act a little flustered. You'd never had an actor request you, it was probably one of the biggest compliments you could get.

“You and Trevor will be working together with Mr. Goggins. I've taken you've read the script?” Liz looked at you through heavy mascara eyelashes. You nodded at the question. “Good. It's pretty straightforward, anything with large amounts of blood will be dealt with by the FX crew. You're basically babysitting and making sure he doesn't wander off covered in gore.”

You can't suppress the laugh at the comment. You could picture the man getting driven away looking like he had murdered a small town. The Teamster would have a fit about cleaning that.

“Sounds good, I am guessing I can increase my pay and kit rental?” You push, requested or not you knew your kit was far better stocked than most. Whether Liz agrees or not would be a moot point.  You could always approach production for a pay raise. Running it through Liz first just kept accounting from jumping down your throat.

Liz stares at you for a moment, her mouth a thin line. For a second you think she may try to argue the wage. Instead, she flicks her eyes back down to her binder.

“Yes, Production has already approved a pay raise for both. As well as sending in a small request for certain products he’d like.” Liz passes you the paper without looking up. On the top is your wage and kit fee, along with product allowance. It's much more than you anticipate, but you keep that to yourself.  

“You can drop your stuff off at the trailer and then go grab what you need. Start things off slow.” 

***

Paperwork done and handed in, you grab timesheets, start packs and, any other office stuff you think the trailer may need. Driving down the narrow alley you park your little Honda Accord beside the make-up trailer. You unload several bins beside the steps before parking. Inside the trailer is pretty sparse. You set out to fill your drawers, stocking the place with all the necessities. Trevor shows up as you're starting to finish up. 

“Heyyyy,” He chirps, coming in with his own kit. The man is tall, slim, with a wicked smile, green eyes, and a riot of brown curly hair. He is a major flirt who loves to chat about anything and everything.

“Hey, Trevor. How have you been?” You give him a hug. The two of you had both started out at the same time and he was as close to a friend as you had in the industry.  

“Oh yah know, just living the dream!” He rolls his eyes, waving his hands in the air.

“Nice we get some space to spread out. Feels homey” You smile as you place paperwork into holders. 

The trailer was a newer model, with four stations, four chairs, mirrors, lights, and shelving. There was also a sink and hair sink. It was nice to have your own space. Often times you were allotted a small tent and much else. But here you had access to everything and it was warm against the never-ending rain. 

“Not to mention getting requested.” Trevor wiggles his eyebrows. “Like I didn't think that would ever happen.”

You both chuckle at the situation. You finish up and make sure all your bits and pieces are laid out. You’d print any notes for tomorrow and get them into binders. Also, need to make sure you are connected with everyone’s clouds. Digital wasn’t your niche but it was necessary. 

“Do you want me to grab anything for you? I am hitting up the usual haunts for goodies.” You ask, grabbing your purse. Downtown would be a nut house but having all the requested products was important. 

Trevor pauses the comb on his chin. “How about I text you the list I need? I think I need like four things?”

“Yep, that sounds good. I will see you tomorrow for camera tests”

***

You do three days of camera testing and running over lighting making sure everyone looks their best. It’s always a flurry, trying to find an easy groove that you all could work with. Liz took the first chair, Katie took the second chair, you were in third, and fourth was slated for fx. It was tight once everyone was in there and warm, but it worked and that’s really all you could ask for. 

Now near the end of the week came the first shoot day. Liz barely makes eye contact with you besides a ‘Good Morning’. You didn’t care, you knew what you needed to do, a detailed email had been sent out last night. Besides Walton, you had three other actors to take care of. Not surprisingly they were all male, Liz’s actual second was Katie. A petite woman with pin-straight blonde hair, a heart-shaped face, and a big personality. She loved doing anything cute and fun. So you got stuck with the rough end of things, but if you were honest that was your wheelhouse. Bruises, cut lips, red-rimmed eyes, bloody noses, looking a bit more disheveled and run down. Yep, all things you could do quickly and efficiently. Hopefully, the AD wouldn’t be too pushy. The first two men are easy enough, you and Trevor fall into a rhythm. Blasting some 80s music as you both drink Red Bulls and dance away. Katie joins in the fun as you all pretend to sing karaoke

The third man doesn’t show, which is annoying as hair in cream blush. You radio the AD who already sounds annoyed. He tells you he will bring Walton over ASAP to you. You let out a sigh and rub your face. You crack open another redbull and take a deep sip. The trailer ran on redbull, which was the preferable alternative. 

“Stepping up!” Yells a familiar voice. Walton comes in with a flurry, coffee in hand, sunglasses pushed up. He wiggles his way through everyone with polite hellos and hugs. He comes over and squeezes you into a tight embrace. You hug back your cheeks going a little pink. The man is striking both in looks and presence, his aura is calm and confident. His hair was jet black with silver sideburns, deep-set hazel eyes, and an infectious smile.

“Oh, it is so good to be back filming. Finally!” He flops himself into your chair crossing his long legs. He is already in costume well fitting jeans and a green button-up. 

“Nice to see you again.” You smile and get to work, “How’s the day treating you so far?”

“It’s been lovely, though I do miss the sunshine. Does it ever stop raining here?.” He chatters on. 

You finish skincare and get down to covering minor blemishes and making sure his eyebrows aren’t too wild. Trevor chitters back with the man as he sorts his hair into something a little neater than the fluff it was before. 

“There you are looking fantastic as always,” You croon and step away from the mirror. The man makes a shocked sound and inspects his face.

“Darlin’ you always make me look as pretty as a painting,” Walton giggles in a higher feminine voice, looking himself over in the mirror. 

“Oh hush,” You giggle back, “get your tight butt to set.” You shooed him out the door, he wiggled his butt and gave you a kiss on the cheek before swishing out the door. 

“That man is hilarious, it’s going to be a fun show,” Trevor stated with a chuckle as he prepared his set bag. “Do you think number three will show?”

You let out a sigh,” Probably not at this point, the AD is going to murder us if we don’t get to set now.”

***

Number three was standing on set, you felt anger roll over your shoulder. He was of average height with a face that looked as if he had a permanent scowl. At least you had brought an extra set bag. You grab the man’s arm firmly, hauling him away to stand under a set light. Trevor immediately trailed after you. He huffs and stands mostly still. You can smell weed on him, and judging by his red eyes he was stoned out of his mind. You hand him eyedrops, and the man sneers at you but puts them in. Letting some of the liquid spills on his face, you sigh.

“Look, nerves are normal.” You mutter more to yourself than anyone. “But coming here stoned and avoiding makeup and hair is not going to win you any brownie points.”

“I don’t need a lecture from you,” The man bites out, walking away as you tuck your brush back into your bag. You grumble and move over to your chair, you make eye contact with one of the AD’s who scoots over to you. 

“I apologize about Arnold not coming to your trailer, I didn’t realize he was here.” The man lets out his own sigh, “It won’t happen again.”

“He doesn’t like us at all. Going to make things a little tricky.” You reply trying not to call him a complete ass about him. 

AD nods his head, “I know. It will be dealt with.”

You walk over to the video village peering at the screens as you say hello to familiar faces. Everyone looked good, even Arnold, at least his eyes weren’t completely bloodshot. You take a particular look at Walton who seems to be letting himself get into character. Something flits in your heart as he looks up at the camera from under his brow. 

***

The day ends and you cycle through secondary actors, Arnold all but running out the door once he is done. You can’t help but glare at the man, the least he could do was say thank you for cleaning his dirty mug. 

You flop down in the chair as the rest of your coworkers clean their things. The buzz of your coworkers is somehow relaxing, you take a sip of cold coffee and clean your brushes. Another knock and you turn to see Walton walking in, he has run his hands through his hair so that it stands straight up.

You let out a chuckle, “Did you stick a fork in a socket.” Getting up to let the leading man sit in the chair. 

“Oh, this?” He says pointing at his head, “I thought it was supposed to look like this.”

The room erupts in laughter as he makes his eyes cross and sticks his tongue out pretending to be electrocuted. Shaking your head you get to work, skincare was just as important as the actual makeup. You were ever grateful the man thoroughly enjoyed being pampered and preened by everyone. Made your job so much easier. 

*I am definitely nervous about posting this. But I hope it's fun and cute. It's going to be a slow build and a lot of back and forth. But I promise it will be fun cute and a little moody. Just a pinch of angst cause why not. *

Chapter two

[fandomsnstuff]

this just started as me wanting to complain about the work it takes to prep a house to sell but now it's kind of an au

@taznovembercelebration

Day 15: vampire au/last

Kravitz is moving for possibly the last time in his very, very long life, and he ruminates a little on what got him to this point.

Read it on AO3

Barry drops another cardboard box into the growing sea of stuff in the garage. “One thing I wish I'd considered before becoming immortal was all the moving.”

“Tell me about it,” Taako says, writing his name on a piece of painter's tape and slapping it on a garbage bag of clothes. “One second I'm joining my hot ancient vampire boyfriend in his immortal curse, and next thing I know, I've moved fifteen times in the last hundred years.”

“We haven't moved fifteen times,” Kravitz skirts around him with another box. “This is only number ten.”

“That's still too many.”

He drops the box on top of Barry's. “It wasn't nearly this much work when it was just me in apartments and such. But four times the people, four times the stuff.”

Taako points at him, “this is the last time. New vamps, new start, new system. Taako can't be doing all this physical labour every couple of years for eternity.”

Barry leans against a stack of boxes. “Maybe this is why you deemed immortality a curse. You've been spending your eternal life doing one of the worst chores an adult can do.” Kravitz just shrugs. Barry says, “this'll be good. The land's nice and far from any prying eyes, and the house Magnus and Julia designed is beautiful.”

“No! More! Moves!” Taako chants.

“Okay,” Lup comes into the garage, “Magnus is on his way with the truck and reinforcements, so he'll start taking loads of stuff to the new house. Stager comes tomorrow, carpets get cleaned Wednesday, pictures Thursday, and we're in business by the weekend.”

“Let's sell this bitch,” Taako says.

A few months later, the old house has sold, and they're settling into their new, custom-built home. Kravitz is sitting out back, watching Lup and Taako argue about toppings by the pizza oven. His heart swells.

He'd been alone for so long. As far as he knew, he was the only vampire left. His life became an exhausting, monotonous dance of isolation. Running from place to place the moment he felt any whiff of suspicion in his direction. But then he met Taako. Handsome, wondrous, stubborn Taako.

Kravitz had wanted to run the moment he realised Taako had taken an interest. But when he started packing his things and looking for a new place, for the first time in centuries, he hesitated. Taako was the first interesting thing to happen to him in ages. Maybe he deserved to have a little fun.

“A little fun” quickly turned into deep, unavoidable love. So Kravitz tried to blow it up. He told Taako they couldn't be together, he walked away and blocked his number and ran. But Taako isn't so easily swayed. Through avenues that Kravitz is still in the dark about, he tracked him down and banged on his door until he was granted entry and an explanation. So Kravitz told him what he was. He told him they couldn't be together because Taako would age and Kravitz wouldn't and after a few decades he would be alone again. He didn't want to know a life of companionship if he was going to lose it in the blink of an eye.

And Taako laughed. He laughed until he had tears trickling down his face. He said, “you thought I didn't know? Babe, the moment you brought me home I knew. I don't give a fuck, all my friends are freaks.”

Kravitz met Taako's friends, and they all seemed normal to him. “Magnus?”

“Werewolf. And Julia.”

“Davenport?”

“Shapeshifter.”

“Merle?”

“Fae.”

“Lucretia?”

“Merfolk.”

Kravitz hesitates, because there's no way he's anything but human, but he has to ask, “Barry?”

“I'll give you three guesses.”

“...no.” Taako smirked. Kravitz stared at him wide-eyed. “There's absolutely no way.”

“Full blooded vampire.”

“Full blooded?!”

“The man has never had a drop of human blood in his veins.”

Kravitz pushed his hands into his hair. “I thought I was the only one left.”

Taako patted his back, “you just didn't know where to look.”

He looked at Taako. “Are you…?”

“I'm the only full human in the group.”

“What about Lup?”

“We still don't really know what she did, but she kind of Danny Phantom-ed herself and has been able to willingly shift to a phantasmal form for a few years now, so,” he shrugs, “she's human, but also maybe half dead? I try not to think about it too much.”

That conversation, as… mind blowing as it was, was the start of the rest of Kravitz's life. Taako made some very compelling arguments and convinced him to come back and try again. It was just under a year after that when he turned Taako. He was hesitant to do it, but was convinced when Taako reminded him that all his friends were immortal, and if he wasn't going to do it, he'd go to Barry, “and I'm not into him like that, so I'd rather not.”

On the back porch, watching the twins, Kravitz finally understands the concept of a forever home. Why spend eternity running when you could travel and have fun and do much more pleasant things than packing? And why not give yourself a soft place to land when you need to rest?

Barry comes outside and sits next to him, holding out a drink. “They're still at it?”

Kravitz takes it. “Yeah. Though they've moved from olives to anchovies.”

Barry chuckles and shakes his head. “I think they'll still be arguing about it when the next ice age comes around.”

Kravitz laughs, and they sit in a comfortable silence for a while. “Hey Barry. You've been around a while.”

“Sure have.”

“So you've been navigating life as an immortal for a long time. Like, almost as long as I have.”

“You've got maybe two hundred years on me, but yeah.”

“Then why the fuck did you let me move the four of us through ten houses in the last hundred years?!”

Barry laughs long and loud. He sighs. “Oh, my god,” he wipes a stray tear away, “I was wondering if you'd put that together.”

“Well?!”

“Oh, man,” he clears his throat. “You'd been on your own for so long, and set in your ways, and so afraid of being discovered, we thought it'd be best to do things your way for a while. To let you get used to us and the group and what have you.”

Kravitz narrows his eyes. Barry bites his lip like he's trying not to laugh again. “There's more. Spill it, Bluejeans.”

“Lup and I made a bet on how many moves Taako could go through before it got to him.” He takes a sip of his drink. “I won, for once.”

Kravitz considers this. “What'd you win?”

He smirks. “You don't want to know.”

“Ugh!” Kravitz stands. “Gross, I don't want to know about your sex bets.”

“I didn't say anything about sex!”

“A non answer is still an answer,” he turns to go back inside, “next time just lie and say money!”

Barry shouts after him, “this is your life forever now!”

[apprenticestanheight]

Hey can I request some fluff with the reader comforting Adam after the bathroom game? Like one of his nightmares wakes reader up and they fall back asleep cuddling and his face in the crook of readers neck. I’m really soft for hurt/comfort

Stories

Promise- A.S x gn! reader

Hi!! I'm totally a sucker for hurt/comfort too--it's been one of my favorite fic genres to write in since I started writing fic during the first quarantine! Thank you for sending this in, I had a lot of fun writing it and I hope you enjoy!

Fic type- hurt/comfort

Warnings- Adam has PTSD, which, while not actually named, the symptoms of it are discussed and those symptoms are listed as follows: anxiety, avoidance in relation to the anxiety and also just avoidance in the general sense, nightmares. Blood is mentioned and weed is also talked about a bit (I headcanon Adam as a casual lover of the devils lettuce and that slipped its way through the cracks here)

Adam had escaped the bathroom trap six months before. Lawrence had been true to his word to call for help, and Adam had gotten out after a grand total of four days in the trap.

Lawrence had called the police and got in contact with you, who was worried because you'd scheduled a date for the night after the first day of his being missing, and Adam had skipped it without a word.

Thanks to yours and Lawrences putting the pressure on the police, the fact that Lawrence recognized the exterior of the building where the bathroom was and the buildings surrounding it, four days after he went missing and was placed in the trap Adam returned home.

Granted, he'd returned home with a bullet wound and intense pain in his shoulder from the bullet being left there too long, but he was grateful to be out of the bathroom at all.

Half a year had gone by. One hundred and eighty two days. One hundred and eighty two nights. He thought, well enough, he'd have gotten through it by then, but he hadn't.

He thought he would've gotten through it--the flashbacks that came up whenever he heard Jigsaws name in the news, the jittering anxiety, the memories that came up and the ones he refused to think about, the fact that he was easily startled and hated the idea of going to the hospital for the risk of seeing Lawrence, the relentlessness with which he avoided the part of town wherein the bathroom trap was located, the nightmares that he'd been dealing with in the aftermath--but he had not. One hundred and eighty two days and nights gone by, and he had not pushed past it like he'd once thought himself capable.

His nightmares and the aftermath of them when he woke up varied a lot--sometimes he woke up screaming that he wanted to live, that he was grateful for his life. Other nights, he woke up shaking and turned his head to feel a wet spot against his pillow and realized he'd been crying in his sleep. Sometimes he woke in a cold sweat, body shaking, his clothes almost drenched, tears cascading down his cheeks in a free fall.

Whenever he was spending the night at your place or you were at his, his reaction was different. He would have the nightmare, wake up, realize where he was and who he was with, and his heart and his mind would still.

He would reconcile that he was not in the bathroom, not gripping onto Lawrence like Lawrence would save his life while his hands were slick with his own blood, but that he was in his apartment or yours.

Jigsaw had moved on, Adam had stopped being a freelance photographer who willingly stalked and took photos of men and their affair partners to make the rent, and he didn't smoke enough for it to make him irredeemable in the eyes of the infamous killer--smokes had triggered his anxiety, so he only smoked those with nicotine whenever the cravings got too bad, and while he liked a bit of weed from time to time, he only smoked it when the anxiety got to be too much or he couldn't sleep.

He reconciled that he was safe, the burn in his shoulder had been because of the fact that they'd taken the bullet out and the pain was to be expected, and you were okay, too. Jigsaw was not going to hunt you down next and you were right there beside him, ready to embrace his awkward flirting with genuine laughter at a moments notice.

But that night was different. Adam had smoked two bowls to take the edge of a particularly anxious day off and to help him sleep, which they did, just not for as long as Adam and the bags that had developed beneath his eyes would've liked.

That nightmare was no different to all of the others--the help that Lawrence had called hadn't come, one of Jigsaws apprentices had come back around to finish the job off and had done so by drowning him in the murky bath water he'd woken up in, half conscious and unable to fight them off.

His bodily reaction to the nightmare was different, though. He woke with a loud, terrified scream and found that he was in a cold sweat, his shoulder burning like it had been set on fire.

"Adam," you whispered, voice groggy, pulling him closer to you. "Adam."

Adam sat up, taking a few deep breaths in and out to try to calm his nerves.

I'm at home, he thought. I'm in my own bed--my partner is right next to me, and I woke them up like a fucking dickhead. I'm not in the bathroom, I'm not with Lawrence, I made it out and everything is okay.

"Adam," you whispered again. "Adam, are you okay?"

Adam let himself fall back against the mattress, head hitting the pillow as he gave a nod.

"Mm," he hummed, giving into his desire to be close to you. "Just a nightmare, Y/N. Get them all the time."

"You're okay," you whispered, hugging him close as you could, too tired to care about the sweat. "Everything is fine. You're not in the trap anymore."

"I don't usually react that badly," he did, it was just that the reactions took place separately--the scream and the cold sweat never happened together. "Read a story about his newest vic. Think it spurred me on a little bit."

"I'd be scared, too," you whispered. "I know I can't relate, but--I understand the nightmares. What you went through is traumatic, and Jigsaw is a self righteous prick. What happened to you isn't your fault."

"I stalked a guy to make the rent," Adam whispered.

You shrugged as Adam buried his face into the crook of your neck, breathing you in as he did so.

"People have done worse," you said. "You were in a tight spot, baby. Everyone gets themselves stuck in those eventually."

Adam hummed, pulling you as close as your body and his own could allow.

You started running a hand through the hair that'd grown out a little since he was taken, pressing a kiss against his shoulder as he hummed a bit.

"'M so in love with you," he whispered against your neck. "Thank you for being here, Y/N. Thank you for helping me through this."

"Love you too," you whispered. "I love you so much. I'm always gonna be here when you need me, Adam. Promise."

Adam hummed, falling asleep as you carded your hands through his hair. You fell asleep not long after he did, the warmth of his hands on your back and the sound of New Jersey as it woke up and started the day lulling you into it.

[littleststarfighter]

Frerard fic recs part two

I have some more Frerard fic recs to share. Part one can be found here. If anyone has any recs I’d love to hear back. Please, as always these are just things I like, so they might not be to everyone's taste. I’m a bit of a fan of slow burn, pining and angst so that tends to pop up a lot. More to come as I’m reading so much lately.

This Tornado Loves You by theopteryx

1933. Frank's been on the run a long time and he's forced to stop in his old hometown. At first things are about what he expects - old friends, unpleasant memories, and a less-than-desirable home life. Everything changes one night when he stumbles on an old hedge maze hidden in the woods. It's not the hedge maze that intrigues him the most, though, but the secrets of the house hidden inside.

his ruins were beautiful by Softlyforgotten

A post-apocalyptic AU. "There's a boy in the next town," Toro says, "but people say he's crazy."

Heaven's Grief= Hell's Rain by Honestmouse

Gerard's your typical college drop out. He lives in his parent's basement. His best friend is his little brother. He has a whole truck load of shit wrong with his head and a past he doesn't want to talk about.

While Frank, on the other hand, isn't quite as average. He's a demon, hundreds of years old. He loves his job, really he does. He's on Hell's Guard, after all.

So, how hard would the world shake if the two meet?

Septicemia by Orphan_account

Gerard keeps ruining things, but he never means it. Frank keeps getting hurt, but he never feels it.

living for the knife By drunkonyou

Ten years ago Frank fell victim to a knife-wielding serial killer and not only walked away with his life, but with a set of comic-book-like abilities that he’s tried to make the best of.

Four years ago Gerard fell victim to that same killer, and not only walked away with his life, but with the inspiration to start a radio show dedicated to the man in the mask who saved him.

Growing tired of his role as New York’s resident vigilante, Frank is more than ready to retire the act — until he discovers that the man who tried to kill him has somehow escaped a life sentence and is now terrorizing Gerard live on air.

Who’s to say history doesn’t repeat itself?

Desecrated Kids by wellthisisprettyrisque (brainwitchletty)

Everyone moves into a new town and thinks it's strange. Stepping out of the car with a weird feeling tingling down the back of your neck isn't actually that unheard of, but finding that unmarked grave in the woods behind your house is.

Frank Iero wonders if his mother moved him here so he'd disappear off the face of the planet, or if she actually wants the body to be found. All he knows is that this town has some horrible things happening to it, and no one seems to care enough to lift their heads and actually see. He has no idea what's going on, and is one of the few people that wants to find out.

Luckily, Gerard is a few steps ahead of him.

24 Frames Per Second - The Belleville Fright Night Experiment of 1984 by Leandra

The 1984-Movie!AU: 1984: With new multiplexes opening up all over America, the run-down Belleville Film Palace is probably the least exciting place to work at for a teenager. Except if you’re a movie nut like projectionist Gerard and his closely knit circle of loser friends. When cocky and confident Frank joins their team as an usher, Gerard really doesn't think he'll stick around. Besides, there's something about Frank that just rubs Gerard the wrong way. Then an unforeseen event threatens the future of the movie theater and Gerard starts to questions things he's always taken for granted…

Remember Me as a Time of Day by cedarbranch

When it came to Frank's senior year of high school, he was prepared for the worst.

But he definitely wasn't prepared for a crash course on the supernatural world, a new school ruled by gossip, or a guy called Gerard with more sadness in his eyes than any living soul could take.

White Scars on the Necks of Teen Angels by wellthisisprettyrisque (brainwitchletty)

In the blazing month of April of 1958, Frank Iero considered himself a greaser punk old enough and wise enough to truly understand just how under appreciated and underestimated he was, as an eighteen year old teen writhing in the black leather world of greasers and subterraneans, freaks and reds. He could think ten more original thoughts by his first lazy jack off in the morning than half these assholes had in the whole damn school year, and Frank knew it.

On the outside, Frank was cool and aloof, and that was how he was meant to be. But inside, he was a god damn fream of a kid who had too many genius thoughts tumbling around than could be healthy. Ignorance was bliss, but Frank Iero? He was wide awake.

Gerard Way was that artsy kid that would have never caught his eye if he hadn't seen the kid walk out of the hospital covered in bruises. But now that Frank knew he existed, he couldn't look away.

I'm Just The Boy Who's Had Too Many Chances by MCRmyGeneral

Gerard knows his town. He knows his school, his classmates. He knows his family, and his dark, isolated room. He knows he's an artist, he knows he loves metal and punk music, he knows he likes horror maybe a little too much. And he knows he's gay, though he's never even whispered it out loud, not with his parents. He knows where he stands, he's got life figured out. High school, then art school, then hopefully comic book writer.

Until the cute new neighbor boy, Frank is thrown into the mix. Frnak also knows just where he stands in life; he's an impulsive little bastard that doesn't care about consequences; he just wants to have fun. Frank is the exact opposite of Gerard; he's not afraid to stand up for himself, he's loud, he's unafraid, and he's openly gay.

Gerard thought he had life all figured out. Then he met Frank. It's safe to say that Belleville, Belleville High, and most importantly, Gerard, will never be the same.

The Mess We've Made by ViciousVenin

Gerard isn't sure where his life is going. It feels like the world is shifting and changing around him and he's stuck in place, unable to move forward. But when he meets a guy at a club who tells him he's meant for something better, Gerard wants to believe him, and suddenly he's taking steps he never thought he would.

Somewhere In Neverland by chimneythunder

Gerard Way is living back at his parent’s house as a 28 year-old in recovery from alcoholism and severe depression. He’s supposed to be looking after Pete Wentz, the brattiest eight-year old he’s ever had the misfortune to meet, when Pete gets kidnapped by none other than Captain Hook and taken to Neverland. Before you can say “clap your hands if you believe in fairies”, Gerard’s been whisked off to Neverland by his old not-so-imaginary friend Peter Pan to save the kid and have some wonderful adventures of his own.

However, things are never as simple as they should be, and if Gerard ever wants to save Pete and get back home, he’s going to have to confront some very adult truths about himself, and in the meantime, he's also going to have to delve into the Peter Pan mythology and discover the truth about the boy who never grew up.

Harder Harmonies by melanch0licpumpkin WIP

Gerard finds himself trying to juggle touring nationally with his band and navigating his confusing and complicated relationship with one of his bandmates. With the band starting to make waves and gaining more attention, the idea of actual success and fame terrifies Gerard in a way he never expected, leaving him with the distinct sensation of drowning with no safe harbor in sight. He has also fallen hopelessly in love with Frank, an energetic and chaotic guitarist with a big heart and glaring commitment issues.

Nobody cares if you're losing yourself. Am I losing myself?

[mightymizora]

I adore adore adore your tressemlings snippits: could i request two more?

-the first time gale sees them do that squirmy wiggle walk very new kittens do/their first words

-the last time gale says goodbye to them before they head of on their journeys, does he cry?

Love all your writing!

"Oh, but that is ridiculously cute."

Eyrini is the first to try to move by herself, because of course she is, first born and always looking for her siblings, making sure they can see her and follow her. She totters forward, her small wings outstretched for balance, and she is so very determined. He is overwhelmed at the concentration, the little noises as she manages four whole steps before she is on the floor.

"An excellent attempt, my darling," coos Tara from his side. "What a clever thing you are."

He's taken back to her saying the same thing to him, when he was slightly older granted, always so full of encouragement for all of the old achievements that seemed so grand at the time but had faded into the recesses of his memory in the shade of the past few years. She had always been there for him. What would life be when she wasn't anymore?

Eyrini blinks slowly at both of them and tries again with a little chirp, and he feels a burst of pride.

"You could be watching your own little ones taking their first steps you know."

"We've talked about this, Tara."

"Oh, I know. But I can't describe it. The feeling of it. You have done so well with them, you know."

Eyrini walks towards them again with a steadier pace. It really is quite something.

___

"Well, I suppose it's time."

"I suppose it is."

Eyrini is the last to leave to start her life away from the tower, because of course she is. She had to make sure all of her siblings found suitable places, and she had to be sure that the person she chose was the right person, and she had to make sure her mother was going to be alright. She was slower on her feet these days, and he knew he had to convince her that Tara was in good hands. Which she was, of course.

She sits on the balcony looking over the rising sun, her wings flapping slightly in the anticipation of her journey. "Will you be alright, Mr Dekarios? You're certain you are up to running the household without me?"

"Well, I shall have to cope." Truthfully he would miss her, not only for her organisation, her determination, but just for the shadow she cast at the window, the hundred little memories she had imprinted onto the tower.

"You shall be fine. You're my mother's son, after all."

She nuzzles his hand one last time before she flies up and over the harbour, and he feels something fly away with her. There is something that stills in the tower, something he wasn't sure he felt before, and as he walks back through the rooms it feels as if the colours have muted.

[fatehbaz]

In 1741, the Russian ship St. Peter, part of Vitus Bering’s expedition of discovery, shipwrecked on one of the islands while returning from the first European exploration of Alaska. Bering’s scurvy-wracked men spent a miserable winter, killing marine mammals for food and warding off the fearless arctic foxes (Alopex lagopus) that tried to eat the dying. Georg Wilhelm Steller, the expedition’s naturalist, devoted much of his time to a study of the island’s fauna, later published to great interest in Europe. Few Europeans had ever experienced the numbers and variety of marine mammals that the men encountered on these islands. “If I were required to state how many [fur seals] I saw on Bering Island,” Steller wrote, “I should truthfully say that I could not guess -- they were countless, they covered the whole shore.” [...]

---

When the remnants of the expedition arrived in Kamchatka in the summer of 1742, their tales of the abundant sea otters, fur seals, and sea cows sent Russian fur traders (promyshlenniki) from Siberia to hunt in the newly discovered waters. [...] Initially, the promyshlenniki found the animals to be as unbelievably numerous as Steller had reported them to be. The first hunters killed as many as fifty sea otters per day, several gigantic sea cows (used for food and leather) per season, and thousands of the arctic foxes that had once eaten Russians. [...]

---

Beginning with Steller’s two-year visit, hunting had been carried out at an unsustainable rate. The sea otter population entered a serious crash seven years after Steller’s shipwreck -- in 1749 and 1750 -- when at least four crews hunted in the Commanders. In what must have been a vast and ceaseless slaughter, hunters killed at least 1,380 sea otters (roughly a quarter of the entire estimated population) in these two years alone. By 1754 the population had probably dropped below eight hundred animals spread across the two islands -- a decline of 85 percent over twelve years -- numbers low enough that hunters would have had trouble locating the animals at all. In 1757, hunters suddenly began bypassing the Commanders for the Aleutian Islands [...]. Nearly forty years later, Commander Islands’ sea otters still had not recovered from the onslaught of 1749 − 1750. [...]

---

The Russian fur trade in the Pacific differed from the New World European terrestrial fur trades in another way. The Russians, besides trading for furs with the Aleuts, also demanded from them a yearly tribute of furs (called yasak), as they had with all conquered Siberian peoples. The fur traders forced compliance by taking some members of the community hostage and promising their safety only upon delivery of furs. As more and more Aleut communities fell under promyshlennik domination in the course of the eighteenth century, yasak collection naturally increased. At the same time that the supply of sea otters was in steep decline, tribute demands increased. [...]

---

By then, all involved in the trade expected sea otters to disappear rapidly; they no longer expected sea otters to behave like sables. Irkutsk governor Ivan Iakobii reported to Catherine II in 1787 that “we know from many examples that the hunting has decreased substantially each year. There is absolutely no doubt, when one realizes that millions of animals have been taken [in the North Pacific]. One can therefore suppose that in a few years the animals will be completely depleted [...].” By the time the Russian American Company (RAC) was granted a monopoly on the trade in 1799, it too was forced to begin looking immediately for new hunting grounds in southeastern Alaska. [...]

---

Text by: Ryan Tucker Jones. “A ‘Havock Made among Them’: Animals, Empire, and Extinction in the Russian North Pacific, 1741-1810.” Environmental History Vol. 16, No. 4. October 2011. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

[seekinghelp-adhd]

Uhhhh... Avatar AU I just made up.

Basically I used to have this idea for a continuation of Avatar where the next Avatar in the cycle bent Chi instead of the other elements because Aang learned that new bending from the lionturtle and it got added to the cycle. Naturally, they'd all be looking for a water bender after Aang, and it would take them forever to figure this out. Anyway, then Korra came out and I forgot about it until I remembered it out of nowhere literally yesterday. I changed a few things, added a lot of concepts from Korra that I really liked, and boom. New AU idea.

Water.

Earth.

Fire.

Air.

In ancient times, a few mortals were granted a gift by the spirits to bend one of these four elements to their will. After a time, the spirits fled to another realm, and their gifts were left behind to pass down through the generations. Four nations founded on the elements were established, and for a time, there was peace. Then, everything changed when the world fell out of balance. Fire Lord Sozin used powerful bending, enhanced by a passing comet, to wipe out the peaceful Air Nomads and strike the flames of a hundred year war. The world was ravaged by death and destruction until a young boy named Aang, the last of the Air Nomads and the Avatar himself, joined the fight. Although his bending was powerful, Aang’s fight was anything but simple. The Air Nomads were pacifists who believed in the sanctity of all life, and Aang struggled with the idea of bringing even Fire Lord Ozai to an end.

Days before the comet was said to return, the Avatar was drawn to an ancient lionturtle, who shared with him a powerful gift, capable of ending the war while sparing the Fire Lord’s life: the power to bend Chi itself, as they had in the time of the spirits. With this incredible new ability, the Avatar confronted the Fire Lord and removed the gift of his bending entirely. In the moments after the battle, however, the terrifying power of this ability was realized. Fearing that this new power would be abused, the choice was made to deal with the matter in secret. The true fate of Fire Lord Ozai was hidden from the world, and the Avatar’s abilities were never displayed or spoken of again, outside of his most trusted allies.

Years passed, and the world slowly recovered. The Fire Nation, under the new leadership of Fire Lord Zuko, was almost completely undone. Those that supported the war were removed from power, and steps were taken to make amends with the rest of the world. The Earth Kingdom was similarly restructured after the betrayal of Long Feng and the Dai Li, and the colonies founded during the war were established as an independent region of mixed nationals, paving the way for a future of harmony and unity between the four nations. The Southern Water Tribe was able to rebuild after over a century of raids, while the Northern Tribe opened their borders to the world for the first time in over a century. In the midst of it all, the Avatar focused on restoring his people and their homes. Balance had been restored, and the nations lived in relative peace. It came as a shock to everyone, because of this, when Avatar Aang was murdered.

The world was sent into turmoil and despair as all four nations came together once again to grieve the one who had saved countless lives. It didn’t take long for someone to take credit. Apparently, a small group of non-benders felt as though they had been slighted. Fire bending powered new steam engines. Water bending made crops thrive and could heal almost any injury with the right skill set. Earth bending build entire cities in days, and Air bending made transportation easy and inconvenient. A non-bender was always at a disadvantage. This small terrorist group claimed to seek an equal world, but they sought to do so by forcing benders to serve the people. Their proposed solution walked the line between servitude and slavery.

Their plan to kill the Avatar, as it turned out, had simply been in order to prove that they could. All the pain they’d caused – all the damage they’d done to the fragile peace as the people blamed the Fire Nation for the death – had simply been to prove a point. Their ranks were trained in Chi blocking. All they had to do was keep themselves anonymous, get in close, and place a few precise jabs to leave a person paralyzed. Taking the life after would be simple. People lived in fear and suspicion, and everyone waited with baited breath for the next Avatar to arrive and ease the tensions. To everyone’s shock and dismay though, they never did.

The Order of the White Lotus searched the world far and wide for years, hoping to find someone the elements called to, but to no avail. When they’d grown weary of looking for water benders after years, they moved on to search for earth benders, hoping the poor Avatar had simply died soon after birth. This turned up nothing yet again. When even the Fire Nation and the independent colonies turned up nothing in their search, it was Fire Lord Zuko that found the solution. They couldn’t find the Avatar among benders of water, earth, fire, and air because they were looking in the wrong places. The Avatar didn’t just bend those four elements anymore. Aang had added another to his ranks when he met the lionturtle, and if Zuko was right, this added a step to the cycle as well. They needed to start searching for a Chi bender.

It was in the capitol of the independent colonies that they finally found some hope – a young non-bender with a reputation for fortune telling, using a method that looked remarkably similar to Aang’s demonstration of his new skills. Zuko suspected that the new bender was ignorant of the power they truly possessed. It was likely that through Chi bending, they could access the chakra throughout the body; Water, Earth, Fire, Air, Sound, Light, and Thought. If they were looking into a person’s Light chakra, strengthening the connection between the two, a prediction of their future would be simple reason and probability. Shrouded in a disguise and flanked by a few members of the White Lotus, Fire Lord Zuko arrived in Yu Dao to have his fortune told.

The young Avatar ripped his hands away from Zuko a mere moment after the connection had been formed, as though he’d been burned. In an instant, the fortune teller was in a deep bow, shaking with nerves. The room was deadly quiet as Zuko and the White Lotus members waited for a response.

“Fire Lord Zuko, it’s an honor, but I must admit that I’m confused by your visit.”

“I understand. If I’m right, though, I I’m afraid you will only grow more confused by the answers you seek. Rise, please. Let’s take a seat.”

Zuko was the first to speak again once they’d all taken their place around a small table with a cup of tea.

“What did you see in your reading?”

The young Avatar was stunned and confused. “Uh… You really just came here for a reading?”

Zuko smiled. “I hope not. Tell me, what did you see?”

“Nothing you don’t already know I’m afraid. I saw that you were the Fire Lord, here to seek out the Avatar as you’ve been doing since the loss of Avatar Aang. I saw that you were determined to achieve your goals, and that you had sought a new path – a new way of looking for the Avatar. I wish you great success, my Lord, but I cannot know if you will succeed.”

Zuko hummed in thought, bringing the cup of jasmine to his lips with a sigh. After a long sip, he met the young Avatar’s eyes. “What do you know of Chi?”

“Chi?” They frowned in confusion. “Not much. It’s the energy that allowed benders to control their elements, right?”

“It’s much more than that. Chi is life energy. It surrounds us all and flows within every living thing. It is through Chi that benders are given their gifts, yes, but it is capable of much more than that. It is through Chi that you have just attempted to read my fortune.”

“How?”

“Chi flows in the body through seven chakras.” Zuko laid a finger in the center of the Avatar’s forehead. “The Light chakra is insight – a third eye. It is the bridges the connection between all things. You may recognize its position on the body from your technique.”

“So – that connection between all living things – that’s how I’ve been able to look into a person?”

Zuko nodded.

“Then… This is something anyone could do? Why haven’t I heard of more people like me, if it comes so naturally to everyone?”

“That’s because it doesn’t come naturally to everyone. Even your skills, as impressive as they are, still only scratch the surface of what you could do with more training. In fact, you are only the second person I’ve ever encountered who was capable of such a thing.”

Zuko watched the eyes across from him go wide with realization.

“No. No, I’m sorry, Fire Lord Zuko, but I can’t be the Avatar. I’m not even a bender!”

“Not a bender of water, earth, fire, or air. No, you are a bender of Chi itself. It is something only Avatar Aang was gifted with, after an encounter with a wise and ancient being. When we could not find the Avatar among the four elements, I began to suspect that Chi bending was more than simply a new technique. A fifth element had been granted to Avatar Aang, and through him it has been added to the Avatar Cycle.”

There was a long silence before the Avatar would meet Zuko’s gaze again. “I’m having a hard time coming to grips with this; it’s difficult to understand. Is there any way to test your idea – to know for certain?”

Zuko held his palm up, gesturing for the Avatar to take his hand, then pulled it to his chest. “The Fire chakra is here, near a person’s heart. It is their will and their life, but it is also a fire bender’s inner flame. Reach out and find it, but be careful not to interfere.” Zuko stared sternly into the Avatar’s eyes. “Your bending is capable of far more than you think.”

The Avatar nodded slowly, taking in the severity of Zuko’s words. Eyes closed, they reached out, finding the flame Zuko had talked about. Zuko continued to speak as they grew familiar with the feeling.

“Feel the fire pulse and waver. It breathes and grows as if alive. It can bring death and destruction as it has in years passed, but it can also bring warmth and light and life. Find that feeling within yourself. Focus on it. Take slow, deep breaths, and feel it breathe with you.”

The Avatar barely noticed as Zuko took his other hand and cupped it in his own, facing the palm up. A small flame came alive above their joined hands. Sensing a change, the Avatar opened his eyes and began to panic. Zuko placed a firm hand on their shoulder, and continued to take steady breaths loudly, encouraging the Avatar to imitate him.

After a short time, the Avatar calmed down and closed their eyes again. Zuko carefully removed his hands from the Avatar, and watched as the Flame remained, growing and shrinking with each breath. The Avatar opened their eyes once again, staring down at the small flame with awe and wonder. Gently, Zuko brought his hand over the Avatar’s and extinguished the flame.

“It’s important that you not create another open flame until you have studied fire bending more thoroughly. Breathing and control are very important. Fire is just as dangerous as it is beautiful. A truly skilled fire bender is one who can dance in a forest and not light a single leaf.”

The Avatar continued staring at the hand where the fire had been.

“I’m a fire bender.”

“You are.”

“I’m a Chi bender.”

Zuko smiled, stifling a laugh. “Yes.”

“I’m… I really am the Avatar, aren’t I?”

Zuko stood from his seat and bowed deeply. “It’s an honor to finally meet you in this life, Avatar.”

[stesierra]

Do you ever write a book and have no idea who it's for? Do you ever wonder what you were thinking because you're pretty sure no one wants to read about a down on his luck elf adopting a little girl? If so, we should be friends. Anyway, Triangle Park is that book for me. If you find it at all interesting please tell me, because I don't know what to do with it.

(Also any Spanish speakers who want to correct my Spanish would be welcome! He's sort of Spanish although "born" in the USA.)

TRIANGLE PARK

CHAPTER ONE

A century ago, Adam had been a champion, fighting for the honor and protection of his court with sword and shield. Today, Adam was buried in bushes, fighting trees with a branch lopper that had seen better days. Not so unlike himself.

He threw his weight against the handle of the lopper until the wood groaned in protest, and the tree limb parted with a crack. It tumbled to the ground, crushing a maple sapling underneath, and he felt like a butcher. From the faint complaints he felt, the trees agreed. The complaints would have been stronger, but the forest here wasn't very alive. Not the way faeries measured things.

He stepped back, tool in one hand, and examined the hickory tree. It looked better, at least, or would once the wound healed. Another step, and only his reflexes kept him from falling backwards into a hawthorn. A hawthorn that didn't need to be there. He went back to pruning.

He kept working when the sun fell behind the long short mountain above him. The moon and stars were as good to his eyes. And he did not tire easily. It was nearly four in the morning before the labors of the day wore at him, and he picked his way through the forest towards the trail he'd carved into the wilderness. Once he stepped onto it, his hike down was far easier. He passed through ten acres of carefully manicured forest. The brush was cleared away to leave space between broadleaf trees that had been been cut and staked and pruned until they were almost beautiful. These ten acres had taken him thirty years.

Only three hundred to go.

Adam reached the bottom of the ridge and emerged from the forest onto the patchy field at the center of his holdings. As usual he stopped and stared down at his domain. It brought him no joy.

"Pedazo de mierda," he said.

His queen had granted him these lands, a sizable chunk of Buffalo Mountain, bordered by farms to the east and west and state game land to the south. It wasn't until he was exiled there that he realized how much a joke that gift had been.

His small corner of the Ridge and Valley region had been slated to be a county park, presumably before someone had actually visited the place. It was named Triangle Park after the angular lake that sat in the center. But that lake, which wasn't much more than twenty acres to begin with, had been fed by a spring that had been dry for a hundred years. It was now merely a boggy hole in the ground that filled with a foot or two of muddy water whenever it rained. And the forest here had been logged too many times, leaving timber as ugly as it was new. As soon as the park planners had taken a look at it, the land had been quietly sold off. At some point it had come into Queen Millicent's hands, and now his.

He went down to his trailer at the edge of his empty lake. As he squeezed through the door, he pulled off his ugly brown coat, whose only redeeming quality was being impervious to sticks, and then his white undershirt. His chest was as pale as if it had never seen the sun, but he knew from experience that no amount of tanning would fix it.

On his bed, too small for his long frame, he sought dreams strong enough to make him forget the joke his life had become. But sleep evaded him all night.

---

In the morning, he took up his shears and went back up into the hills. He really had nothing better to do. Even if it meant his days amounted to no more than endless yard work.

He took a different path this time, deep into the untended forest. He trod through the dense underbrush, stepping around overcrowded saplings and bushes and wading through poison ivy when it tangled across his path. A benefit of his less than human nature: he didn't have to worry about little things like rashes.

He picked a spot at random for the day's work. The trees disliked him, but that was fine. He didn't like them either.

"I ought to cut you down," he told a young oak as he struggled to lash it upright. "And plant a sapling that can figure out how to grow towards the sun."

The tree rustled its leaves at him resentfully. The half that had leaves, anyway.

He snapped off a leafless branch. It was dry as paper.

"You can't even die right."

The tree reached for his pale hair, which shone near-white in the sunlight, but he kept it braided back tightly for just that reason. Its twigs glanced off, but he tied the tree upright with a vicious yank anyway.

"It isn't too late for me to get that saw," he threatened, which silenced the oak. It didn't even complain when his trimmers lopped off its dead branches.

"Aurug. Aurug," something called from the brush. The throaty bark made him lower his tools.

"Aurug. Aurug," the unseen animal cried, perhaps fifty feet away. Not a dog. Not a bear. And pumas and wolves didn't live much in the east. But something big, to have a voice that deep.

He turned silently towards the noise. His sword was in his trailer down by the lake, buried under his mattress. And his pruners made a poor substitute. But he would not leave some beast uninvestigated in his forest.

He ghosted over the obstacles he'd crashed through at dawn. Outcast or not, he was a faerie knight, he had been on innumerable hunts, and he had not yet forgotten all of his grace. If he could have turned invisible, he would have, but that had never numbered among Adam's talents.

The voice fell silent. But Adam prowled towards it anyway. Nothing had thrashed through the brush, so it should still be there. Just there...

He rounded a thicket of young oaks. A black beast crouched in the leaf litter. Clippers at the ready, Adam approached. Animals did not fear faeries the way they feared man, but the animal still should have bolted, for wildlife had never taken to Adam. His shape -- what humans might label an elf --was too man-like. But it watched him instead, its tail still, its claws sheathed.

A faerie, clearly. Adam didn't need the curling, tendril-like ears, or its swirling eyes, to tell him that. A great black cat, elegant and sleek, looked as out of place in this dumpy third-growth forest as he did. But it wasn't that that made him lower his weapon. It wasn't that that made him stare.

"Espíritu guíame," he breathed.

A little girl was curled around the beast, all great black eyes and leaf-brown hair and long pointed ears. She was dressed in the ragged cloth of dreams, half imagination, half nightgown. The child -- the child queen -- looked at Adam and shrank into the side of the panther, her little hands closing on its fur. If she had been human, Adam would have said she was perhaps six years old. But she was faerie, and Adam knew -- knew! -- that she had not existed ten minutes ago. Even though she should never have been born here. Queens were born in beautiful glades and on the shores of mirror-like lakes, amid wild hills and towering trees. They weren't born in ugly rural park rejects. And they were born adult, or adolescent at least. Adam had never heard of a queen born a child. And yet a queen she undeniably was. The cat sealed it. Her firstborn, come into existence beside her, the first faerie her dreams had brought to life.

Adam laid the pruners down in the litter. And he approached barehanded, for one did not carry a weapon into the presence of a queen without her leave.

The panther rose, and the queen rose with it, one hand resting against its side. But neither ran.

Five feet away, Adam dropped to one knee, offering a queen the obeisance she was due. The little faerie considered him. He considered her back. She was tiny but lanky, her limbs thin and graceful. Her square face had a tiny, delicate nose and a tiny, delicate chin. Her round pink lips sported a pronounced cupid's bow. And her eyebrows were so fine they were barely visible.

She let go of her firstborn and crept forward. Adam held still, wondering if she knew she was supposed to tell him to rise. But she didn't tell him anything. She reached him and threw her arms around his neck.

Adam startled. Slowly, he lifted a hand to cradle her small back. He had stolen human children before -- children wriggling and shrieking to go back to their own families -- but not in decades. Not without orders. This child did not try to escape him. But then, she was a faerie, and how odd that was! Most faeries were born adult, so they would immediately be useful, or at least born older than this.

He said into a long ear, "Do you have a name? My lady?" The title was hers by right of her nature. It still fell awkwardly from his lips.

"Rabbit," she said, leaning her forehead against his shoulder.

Adam nodded. Rabbit was as good a name as any, among faeries. Queen Lía, who had birthed Adam, had fancied human names, but that was an affectation on her part, not some inherent part of their culture. In his few centuries of life, Adam had met plenty of faeries with names that were no more than meaningless, inhuman noise. He said, "My name is Adam, my lady Rabbit. I am the guardian of these lands." He asked, of the panther, "And who is this?"

Rabbit leaned back in his arms and considered her firstborn. She said, finally, "He's Sniffer."

Sniffer growled, low and deep in his throat. Adam could almost feel the vibrations. The cat circled them, his alien eyes fixed on Adam. They were as vivid green as Adam's.

"I mean your mistress no harm," Adam told the panther, although he hadn't yet decided if it were true. He let go of Rabbit and rose, offering her his hand. "You are here alone in the wilds, and you will meet no other than myself. If I were you, I'd not be so quick to reject my company."

Sniffer considered him, his ears twitching. And when Rabbit took Adam's hand, he followed them down the mountain.

--

He only kept a hold of the queen for the first mile. After that she ran ahead of him like her namesake, her hair flying out behind her. But his legs were longer. He could keep pace without breaking into an undignified sprint. Sniffer trotted at her side, his tail waving like a banner.

The child was out of breath by the time they emerged from the tree line and out onto the field. But she arrowed for his trailer anyway. It was a travel trailer, the kind meant to be hauled behind vigorous pickup trucks, and it hadn't been new when Queen Millicent dreamed it up for his use thirty years back. It was on the smaller end, as trailers went, but he had never needed more. Not to survive. And surviving was all he did.

He jogged after and caught the girl as she went up to stare at it. She turned to gaze up at him, her wide eyes reflecting the clouds above.

He put a hand on her shoulder, to keep her from running again, and asked her, "What is so alarming, my lady Rabbit?"

She wrinkled her nose at him. "Do you live here?"

"I do," he admitted.

"It's ugly," she said. And it was. It was rusty all along the tow frame. The ribbed aluminum siding had accumulated black discoloration in the dips, leaving the formerly-white trailer a hideous shade of mottled gray, like it suffered from some sort of fungal disease. And he'd replaced its flattened tires with jack stands decades ago -- he had nothing to haul it out of this place with, anyhow.

Life hadn't left Adam much beyond his beauty and his perfect teeth. But it had left him his pride. He said, "It is serviceable, which is what matters. If it offends you, you need not look at it."

Rabbit's lip wobbled alarmingly. Adam stared at it. But Rabbit did not burst into tears. She said plaintively, "I don't like ugly things."

No. She wouldn't. Queens almost never did. That was why faeries were almost uniformly fair, and those monstrous banished from their queen's sight as soon as they were born. Without thought, Adam said, "I know a beautiful place you might go."

Rabbit perked up, her long ears lifting. She looked at him expectantly.

But the words caught in his throat. Glory Woods. A beautiful place, yes. Fit for a queen far grander than this one. But that was the problem. A greater queen already called it home.

But perhaps that was not a problem but an opportunity.

Queen Millicent would not be happy to have a new court growing up on the border of hers. She would reward Adam, surely, if he brought the girl to her to be dealt with. Maybe she would be pleased enough to give back all she had stripped from him. And he had delivered children, human children, to her in the past. How was this any different?

He had always felt guilty about those children.

He glanced back at Rabbit. But this child was different. She had no one to miss and no one to miss her. Besides. Millicent was fascinated by children. She kept the human ones in some comfort. She might not even kill Rabbit. Maybe she would simply adopt Rabbit as her own.

"But I don't want to leave this place," Rabbit said while he was still contemplating her. "This is home."

He lifted a brow. "My trailer?"

She looked at him as if he were daft and waved her arms in every direction.

"Ah," Adam said softly. "The forest is ugly here, too. And the meadow, and the lake. All of it is really dreadfully ugly."

"But it's mine," Rabbit said.

Hers? It belonged to Adam, all he had to show for abandoning the court of his birth to swear fealty to Millicent. But a queen had a higher claim to the land than a piece of paper inherited by one fake identity after another, surely. He shook his head. He was thinking about this as if she were staying. If she went to live with Millicent, no one would contest his ownership of the land. No one would want to.

But then he wouldn't care about the land either if Millicent let him rejoin her court. Rabbit could have it if he could just be home again.

"I could make everything prettier, maybe," Rabbit said, squirming out from under his hand. Freed, she ran up to touch the trailer and its weathered siding.

Maybe she could. The powers of queens were frequently unclear. Maybe she could turn his three hundred acres into a paradise worthy of a court. Maybe she could dream up a court worthy of a paradise.

His next glance at her was more thoughtful. She was a queen. If he raised her, if he gained her loyalty, he would be a queen's adviser when she was grown. And that was not something to lightly throw away.

But to raise a queen would be to cement his exile from Glory Woods forever.

"Can we go inside?" Rabbit asked, running little hands across the trailer door.

Adam shook himself and pushed thoughts of Millicent and advisers and stolen children down. He didn't have to make up his mind right away. "Yes, of course."

--

Inside, the generator still worked well enough to give them some dim light, enough for faerie eyes. Enough to illuminate peeling linoleum, off-white walls and the brightly patterned fabric of the dinette seats that was probably the only attractive thing in the place. Rabbit rattled through his kitchenette cupboards, pulling out pots and pans as if she had never seen them, which on second thought she almost certainly never had. She climbed onto the counters, using the drawers as steps, and tipped over and smashed his radio. Adam didn't mind. It hadn't worked in a decade. She poked into his one large closet and puzzled over his worn-out jeans, which were as ugly as everything else in this place. What use did Adam have for fine court raiment, when he might never be part of a court again?

While she explored, Sniffer settled himself across the threshold, barring exit and entry. Adam eyed the cat warily as Rabbit scampered into the back of the trailer and jumped on his bed. If Rabbit's firstborn realized that Adam was considering handing Rabbit off to another queen, they might come to blows, and just because the faerie was newborn did not mean he was born unable to fight. And Adam's sword was buried under his mattress. Where Rabbit, of course, found it.

She came back up to him dragging the blade behind her. It was still sheathed, thank the sun and stars, and didn't blunt itself or destroy his floor. He still went quickly to retrieve it from her.

The sight of it provoked mixed feelings in Adam. Adam had come from an immigrant Andalusian queen who must be some seven hundred and twenty years old now, a queen who had lived when swords were the weapons of champions. He had been born with a sword in his hand, literally, and even as he'd watched humans shoot each other, he'd never seen a reason to lay it down. Guns were loud and dirty, out of tune with nature. They were how humans fought, not faeries. He had held onto his sword all his life. Until Queen Millicent sent him away.

"Give that here," Adam told her. "It's rather too large for you to use."

The little faerie didn't relinquish her grip. "What's this?" Rabbit demanded.

"A weapon. And you have no need for weapons, for your firstborn and I will guard you against all dangers." For now.

Her brow furrowed. "What does a weapon do?"

"It hurts people," he said bluntly as he pried her fingers off the hilt. "Generally to prevent them from hurting you first." He was tempted, irrationally, to draw it. He settled for running a hand down its sheath. It was a standard longsword, except it tapered to a very fine and sharp point. The sort of point that rammed through weaknesses in armor when slashing wouldn't do.

Rabbit mulled over this. "It's for safety."

"Yes," he lied. There was too much blood on his hands for that to be true.

She nodded once, brushing her long brown hair behind one pointed ear. "I want to learn."

"How to use a sword?" Adam asked incredulously. Queens didn't fight. They had knights for that, and fierce beasts that sat at the foot of their thrones. He had never heard of a queen taking up fighting beyond, perhaps, the use of a small dagger for emergencies.

She nodded again.

"No. You are tiny, and I have no practice weapons." Besides, he had not trained anyone in decades, and his last students had been full-grown faeries.

Her face screwed up. Tears beaded dramatically in her eyes. He was almost certain she was doing that on purpose. But her voice wavered convincingly when she said, "I want to be safe, too. If Sniffer and you are away."

Training her... it would be a good way to get to know her. To help him make up his mind as to whether to shelter or betray her. So Adam relented and said, "Very well. I have a shortage of swords. But I do have an excess of sticks."

And when they went out to look for some, he buckled his sword around his waist for the first time in thirty years.

--

They spent the afternoon going in and out of the forest, collecting stout, straight sticks of the right size for Rabbit and Adam to use. Sniffer carried a bundle of them in his mouth, showing off his impressive fangs. Adam was glad to be properly armed again. He was certain he could take the cat. Almost certain. It had been too long since he had fought anything. He had grown rather pathetic over the years.

When the dusk came, Rabbit complained of the cold, although the June night was warm enough to Adam. Still, he ushered her inside the trailer, where at least the wind could not reach. Done for the day, and tired from all the drama, he shrugged off his coat and went and laid down in his bed without thought, setting his sword aside but within reach. He nearly jumped out again when Rabbit crawled in and snuggled up against him. His heart rate leveled off. He shouldn't have been surprised. She had nowhere else to sleep and he was at the very least warm. Sniffer didn't attempt to join them. Thank the sun and stars.

Rabbit drifted off immediately. He lay awake in the dark, thinking, her body a warm little weight pressed against his side. If he could go back to Glory Woods, if he could see Madeline again... But who was to say that she had waited for him? Thirty years was a blink of an eye, but Madeline was still young, little over a century, and the young were impatient. And who was to say that if he chose to sacrifice Rabbit Millicent would not laugh and take the child and banish him all over again?

He fell asleep and he dreamed of Glory Woods, and Madeline's hand in his, and the warm glow of Queen Millicent's approval.

@anonymousfoz

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[thezeinterviews]

The Sun: PIERS MORGAN Ukrainians are tired but this is a matter of survival & we must continue fighting for our lives, says Olena Zelenska

Watch Piers' inspiring interview with Ukraine's First Lady tomorrow at 5pm on Piers Morgan Uncensored's YouTube channel

Piers Morgan

Published: 21:00, 3 Mar 2024 | Updated: 21:01, 3 Mar 2024

IT had been 20 months since I’d last seen Olena Zelenska, the First Lady Ukraine, in Kyiv with her husband President Volodymyr Zelensky just four months after Russia brutally invaded her country. But the timescale confused her.

" I thought we met more recently?" she replied with a quizzical expression. 

"Not so long ago?  My feeling was that not so much time has passed, so from this feeling, I can understand that for us, time has stopped in some way.  In one way, things are happening very quickly, things are changing. But at the same time, we feel that time is static."

Watch the full interview from 5pm tomorrow at the Piers Morgan Uncensored YouTube channel here

We met again at the Great Scotland Yard Hotel in Westminster, just a few hundred yards from Downing Street, and half a mile from Buckingham Palace.

She was at the end of a whirlwind 2-day trip to the UK in which she met Queen Camilla, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his wife Akshata, and Foreign Secretary David Cameron.

Ms Zelenska arrived for our exclusive interview for Piers Morgan Uncensored - the only one she granted during the visit - with her team including the bodyguards who protect her everywhere she goes.

She looked immaculately elegant in a black two-piece suit and cream blouse, clutching an iPhone, and greeting me in English with a warm smile: "Hi Piers, it’s good to see you again!"

"You must be exhausted?" I suggested.

"I’m a little tired," she admitted. "But it's OK. I don’t want to complain."

Her sad eyes indicated a weariness at the sheer relentless hell of war and when we began the interview, which she preferred to conduct in Ukrainian to avoid any misinterpretation, I asked a simple question: "How are you?"

"It's difficult," she conceded.

"It's not a sprint, it’s a marathon.

"You can't get distracted from the war. 

"You can't forget about the war, go on holiday for a week away from the war. 

"You're constantly in this state and you cannot fully recharge. Ever. 

"But the objective is to have enough energy. 

"Enough to continue living, to carry on with life."

Her spirits had been rallied during the latest of many trips to the UK, a place very dear to her heart due to the stalwart support Ukraine has received from our government, led first by Boris Johnson and now Sunak, from the British people who’ve selflessly taken 200,000 Ukrainians into their homes, and from our Royal Family who themselves are going through a turbulent time.

First Lady of Ukraine, Olena Zelenska, tells Piers Morgan how the war has affected her marriage to President Zelensky

 Last week, on the second anniversary of the invasion, King Charles, who is suffering from cancer, issued a message saying: ‘The determination and strength of the Ukrainian people continues to inspire, as the unprovoked attack on their land, their lives and livelihoods enters a third, tragic, year.

"Despite the tremendous hardship and pain inflicted upon them, Ukrainians continue to show the heroism with which the world associates them so closely.  Theirs is true valour, in the face of indescribable aggression."

"It was a great privilege to meet with Her Majesty," said Ms Zelenska about her 30-minute chat at Clarence House, "and we passed our greetings to His Majesty as well and our best wishes for his health from the President of Ukraine and from the Ukrainian nation. We were moved by his address.

"We really feel the support with the Royal Family and through them, also the support from the British Nation. I have to say thank you to the British people, we feel your support.

"It's sincere, it's warm, and it's not just a declaration. It's a feeling of sincere and powerful support, and it really inspires us. Every time I come back from London, I feel inspired.  Just as if I had a holiday, as if I recharged my batteries, and so once again, thank you."

It's very good to know that we have very sincere and powerful friends here in the Royal Family

Olena Zelenska

Did she feel a ‘the-show-must-go-on’ affinity with Queen Camilla?

"It would be difficult to compare our activities, but there are expectations from the public and you feel that, and you have to rise to those expectations.  And in this sense, I guess, there's an affinity.

"She told me how many letters she's getting, addressed to His Majesty. And she tries to respond to most of them.

"And it was very good to hear that many Ukrainians wrote support towards His Majesty because of his health. It's very good to know that we have very sincere and powerful friends here in the Royal Family."

The Prince and Princess of Wales went to the Ukrainian Cultural Centre in London soon after the war started – something Ms Zelenska greatly appreciated.

"Those were shocking days after the start of the large-scale invasion," she said, "and every sign of support was very important to us, for us to understand that we were not alone in this tragedy.

"I don’t know what would have happened if we hadn’t seen signs like that. I think we would have been more lost and disoriented.

"People in the world talk a lot about Ukrainian resilience and the way we were coping in the first days.  But this resilience, I can say also depended on the support from the outside. So, we are very grateful for this, and we don’t forget this."

Did she have a chance to speak to her friend Catherine, the Princess of Wales who is recovering from abdominal surgery? 

"Unfortunately, no. I know that the Princess needs rest. She has a very active social calendar, and she needs a pause.  I hope she will have time for this and I'm not going to disturb her but I'm sure she knows we support her, and we wish her all the best as well."

Ms Zelenska also paid tribute to our late, great Queen, saying: "I think that, in general, the standard for support of Ukraine was set by the leadership of Queen Elizabeth II. In every process of support, there needs to be a leader, a person who will set an example, and then, everyone who cares will follow this example.

"And if there had not been such a leader, I guess, the response from the public would not have been as powerful or would have been slower. So, we are grateful. We remember those times very warmly and for us, she is a very important historic figure, I think for the whole world as well."

How grateful is she to the British people who’ve taken in Ukrainian families?

KIDS' STRUGGLES

"I'm not just grateful, I am sincerely surprised at what a noble thing it is to do, to take a stranger into your home. Especially when I speak to our refugees and they tell me their stories of how they were welcomed, and how they have become friends with the British people who are looking after them.

"It's very good to hear. It's great. I think it's a unique story. It's very British, a very British thing that so many people are taking other people into their homes, into their families.

"Not just give them some help or provide some support. No. They've taken these people in, into their homes. I think that's a unique, British thing."

As for her own family, the Zelenskys’ two children, a 19-year-old daughter Okelsandra and 11-year-old son Kyrylo, have struggled like all Ukrainian kids with years of pandemic and now war. 

"It would not be right to complain because the situation for our family is not that different from other families in Ukraine," she said. "But it's painful for me that they're losing these years of childhood… it's difficult when you can’t plan anything for your children.

"You can’t dream together with them, to fill their lives with positive emotions. So, everything is on pause. No holidays, no rest.

"Everyone thinks about the war. My son talks constantly, and it’s very difficult to explain this to children. When your child asks you, 'When will the war be over? Can you tell me?' 

"There is no answer. Nobody has this answer. We all want for this horrible time in our lives to be over."

 How often do the kids see Volodymyr?

My job is to keep smiling, to keep talking to people, to inspire people, regardless of whether or not I have the energy for that

Olena Zelenska

"About once a week for a few hours. Sometimes less frequently when he has foreign visits, or he cannot meet us for other reasons. Never more frequent.

"Of course, it's a very difficult time for him.  He gets very tired.  But he has his own ways to recharge.  The children always help.  And he can have a silly time with them, to sing silly songs, laugh with them, and that also helps him to recharge."

Does she ever get overwhelmed by the horror?

"It is a tragedy to live in the situation that we find ourselves and to see casualties every day. You cannot switch off your emotions. Recently, I was shaken by the story of a whole family killed by missile strike, a mother together with her two sons. 

"One of them was younger than one year old. They burned alive. These things don’t allow you to be happy or calm, ever, and there are some things that just finish you off, when you just start crying, and sobbing. But you need to cry.

"My job is to keep smiling, to keep talking to people, to inspire people, regardless of whether or not I have the energy for that. So, I try to keep my emotions inside.  And these things are a way for me to let go for at least a few minutes."

KEEP SMILING

To lighten her mood, I read a tribute Volodymyr had paid to her in Vogue Magazine, when he said: "She is my love. She is my greatest friend.  Olena really is my best friend.  She's also a patriot, and she deeply loves Ukraine, and she's an excellent mother."

Ms Zelenska’s face instantly lit up into a beaming grin.

"Fortunately, he tells me this very often.  But we are really friends and I think that's the secret of our relationship. We understand each other and we support each other.

"It's not just the words, well done, keep working, I believe in you. No, we can make each other laugh when it's needed or we can tell each other, 'Get a grip, go get your job done'. We feel each other."

President Zelensky has come under increasing criticism in Ukraine where political opponents have accused him of corruption and becoming an autocrat, and this has led to falling approval ratings.

The Mayor of Kyiv, former World Heavyweight Boxing Champion Vitali Klitschko, sniped recently: "Zelensky is paying for mistakes he's made.  At some point, we will no longer be any different from Russia, where everything depends on the whim of one man."

Ms Zelenska admitted: "I would very much like for the person who is responsible for everything to be somebody else, not my husband. He will take any criticism. For me, it's more difficult emotionally because I take offence sometimes, I get upset. All of these things are hurtful when it's being said about the person you love and respect, it's never nice."

Zelenksy’s most vocal critic has been Putin who warned in his State of the Nation address in Moscow last week of nuclear retaliation if any other country tried to put boots on the ground to help Ukraine - as French president Emmanuel Macron suggested might be an option.

When I ask Ms Zelenska if she has a message for the Russian dictator, her face tenses in visible disgust.

Don’t tire. If you’re tired you’re not our allies

Olena Zelenska

"To be honest, I wouldn’t even want to say this name. When we were children in the Soviet Union, sometimes children would write letters and put them in a time capsule and send them to space. 

"And maybe somebody, sometime an alien will find this capsule and will read this message from these Soviet children from the 1970s.

"It's the same thing. Why would I write this message to nowhere? Nobody will hear it. Nobody will pay any attention.  It's just addressed to nowhere."

But when I pressed her again, she said: "I just don't know what this is for? I could never understand this. I do not understand any of the answers that he gives. I do not understand it, and I don’t know how a normal person can live with this?"

Should Putin face war crime charges?

"Behind every crime, there is a person who carried out the crime and a person who commissioned the crime and we don’t know every person that carried out the crime, but we definitely know who commissioned the crime, who ordered the crime. And there needs to be punishment for every crime."

The British government has called for the transfer of Russian assets to pay for the recovery of Ukraine.

UKRAINE'S RECOVERY

Ms Zelenska agreed: "Russia has to pay financially, for the damage done to Ukraine. For the destruction of our infrastructure. And we understand that we may never see any financial compensation directly, so it would be fair for these financial assets that Russia has in our partner countries to be frozen and to be spent on the renewal of our infrastructure.

"Why should our partners help us to rebuild? Why shouldn’t it be the people who destroyed it?"

One of Ukraine’s biggest problems is global ‘war fatigue’ with the media’s attention drifting away to other conflicts like the Israel and Hamas war in Gaza.

"We need to understand that more wars can start in other places," she said, "but it doesn’t mean that the war in Ukraine will stop. And this fatigue from the war, well, of course, it's hurtful to hear for us.

"The Ukrainians have much more fatigue! Ukrainians are tired, but we have to hold on, because this is a matter of our survival.

"Don’t get tired. If you're tired, you're not our allies.  We cannot allow you to get tired. We cannot say, 'Don’t look at us.  Don’t look at us suffering.'

"If you're tired, you're not our friends.  It's sad but that's life and we're going to continue fighting for our lives, for the lives of our children, and we will not get tired doing this."

And with that final passionate clarion call, First Lady Olena Zelenska bid me farewell and hurried away to start the long 20-hour plane-train-car journey back home to Kyiv, and the war that never ends.

Watch the full interview from 5pm tomorrow at the Piers Morgan Uncensored YouTube channel here

Article

[tanadrin]

A modestly amended U.S. Constitution

I’ve been listening to a lot of 5-4 (the podcast) lately, which has me in a Legal Mood. This is how I might amend the U.S. Constitution, if 1) I was given unlimited scope to propose reforms, and I could somehow magically persuade the entire country to pass them, and 2) if I wanted to preserve as much as possible the spirit, style, and structure of the original, while still importing certain major structural fixes. Amendments are inserted into the text in modern style, rather than being appended at the end; major changes are noted in bold. Reasons for changes, when given, are given as footnotes.

Obviously there are a lot of other ways you could go about major constitutional reform--heck, taking the constitution of Germany or France and filing the serial numbers off would probably work fine. Most liberal-democratic constitutions are fine, and most are better than the U.S. constitution if only because they’re more up-to-date and easier to amend. But if you’re not rewriting the thing from scratch, it’s interesting to think about what you could do from the current form as a starting point.

The biggest changes are 1) a unicameral Congress, 2) a semi-Presidential system along French lines, and 3) expanding major rights and incorporating them into the main body of the text. SCOTUS reform and making amendments easier are also included.

Preamble

The following Constitution is instituted in order to provide a framework for government for the union of states and the citizens which constitute the United States of America;[1] to establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. The union herein established is perpetual, and not to be dissolved without the common consent of the people of the United States.[2]

Article I - Congress

Section 1: All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a single house of representatives.

Section 2: Congress shall be composed of members chosen by direct popular election. Elections shall be free, equal, and secret.[3] Any citizen who has attained the age of majority may stand for election.[4] Congress shall be elected not less than every four years. Its term shall end when a new Congress convenes. New elections shall be held no sooner than 46 months and no later than 48 months after the electoral term begins. If Congress is dissolved, new elections shall be held within sixty days. [5]

Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states, territories, and other districts according to their respective numbers. The census shall be taken not less than every ten years, in such manner as Congress shall by law direct. All states, territories, and other districts shall have at least one representative, and Congress may, if it so chooses, provide for members of federally recognized Native tribes to elect representatives directly to Congress.[6]

When vacancies happen in the representation from any state, territory, or district, the executive authority thereof shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies.

Congress shall choose its speaker and other officers; and shall have the sole power of impeachment.[7]

Section 3: The times, places, and manner of holding elections to Congress shall be regulated by federal law.[8] All citizens shall be entitled to vote in elections for the representatives of the state, territory, or district in which they reside.[9]

Elections shall use the single-vote mixed-member proprotional representation system. The boundaries of electoral constituencies shall be determined by a nonpartisian and politically neutral redistricting comission, which shall use the criteria of compactness and contiguity to form districts, which so far as possible follow preexisting political boundaries. There shall not be less than one member for every four hundred thousand persons, not counting additional seats allocated for the sake of proportionality.[10]

Section 4: Congress shall be the judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members, and a majority shall constitute a quorum to do business; but a smaller number may adjourn from day to day, and may be authorized to compel the attendance of absent members, in such manner, and under such penalties as provided.

Congress may determine the rules of its proceedings, punish its members for disorderly behaviour, and, with the concurrence of two thirds, expel a member.

Congress shall keep a journal of its proceedings, and from time to time publish the same, excepting such parts as may in their judgement require  secrecy; and the yeas and nays of the members on any question shall, at the desire of one fifth of those present, be entered into the journal.

Section 5: Members of Congress shall receive a compensation for their services, to be ascertained by ;aw, and paid out of the treasury of the United States. They shall in all cases, except treason, felony and breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest during their attendance at a congressional session, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any speech or debate, they shall not be questioned in any other place. No member shall, during the time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil office under the authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the emoluments whereof shall have been increased during such time; and no person holding any office under the United States, shall be a member of Congress during their continuance in office.

Section 6: Every bill which shall have passed Congress shall, before it become a law, be presented to the President of the United States: If they approve it, they shall sign it, but if not they shall return it, with their objections, to Congress, who shall enter the objections at large on their journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such reconsideration two thirds shall agree to pass the bill, it shall become a Law. But in all such cases the votes shall be determined by yeas and nays, and the names of the persons voting for and against the bill shall be entered on the congressional journal. If any bill shall not be returned by the President within ten days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the same shall be a law, in like manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their adjournment prevent its return, in which case it shall not be a law. Every order, resolution, or vote to which the concurrence of Congress may be necessary (except on a question of adjournment) shall be presented to the President of the United States; and before the same shall take Effect, shall be approved by them, or being disapproved by him, shall be repassed by two thirds of Congress, according to the rules and limitations prescribed in the case of a bill. [11]

Section 7: Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes (including income taxes), duties, imposts, and excises; to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts, and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States, its territories, and other districts.

Congress shall have the power to borrow money on the credit of the United States; to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states; to establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws of bankruptcy throughout the United States; to coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin; and fix the standard of weights and measures; to provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States; and to establish post offices and post roads.

Congress shall have the power to promote the progress of science and the useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive rights to their respective writings and discoveries; to regulate the size, number, and jurisdiction of inferior courts; to define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offences against the law of nations, and crimes against humanity, wherever they occur;[12] to declare war;[13] to develop and support the armed forces of the United States, and to make rules for their government and regulation;[14] and to suppress insurrections and repel invasions.

All powers of Congress shall be limited by the rights and privileges protected by this Constitution.

Congress shall have the power to create federal districts, over which it shall exercise exclusive jurisdiction, from territories, or from the territory formed from the voluntary cession of particular states; and to exercise like authority over all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the state in which the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, parklands, military bases, and other needful buildings; and to make all laws, or to derogate to such departments and agencies it shall authorize the authority to make such laws and regulations in its stead,[15a] which shall be necessary and proper for the carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.

Section 8: The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.

No bill of attainder or ex post facto law shall be passed.

No tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any state.

No preference shall be given by any regulation of commerce or revenue to the ports of one state over those of another; nor shall vessels bound to, or from, one state be obliged to enter, clear, or pay duties in another. The right to free movement from state to state shall not be inhibited by Congress, or by any state.

No money shall be drawn from the treasury, but in consequence of an appropriation made by law; and a regular statement and account of the receipts and expenditures of all public money shall be published from time to time.[15b]

No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States. No person holding any office of profit or trust under the United States shall, without the consent of Congress, accept any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state. No citizen of the United States may accept a title of nobility from a foreign power.

Section 9: No state shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; grant letters of marque and reprisal; coin money; emit bills of credit; make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts; pass any bill of attainder or ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts, or grant any title of nobility.

No state shall without the consent of congress lay any imposts or duties on imports or exports; lay any duty of tonnage; keep troops or ships of war in time of peace, enter into any agreement or compact with a foreign state or power, or engage in war.[16]

Article II - The executive

Section 1: The head of state shall be the President of the United States. They shall ensure respect for the principles of the Constitution, the proper functioning of public authorities, and the continuity of the state; and shall be the guarantor of territorial integrity and due respect for the treaties entered into by the United States.[17]

The President shall be elected for a term of four years by direct, universal, equal, and secret elections, using the single transferable vote. No one shall hold the office of President for more than two consecutive terms. The election of the new President shall be held no more than thirty days before the expiry of the term of President in office; or in the case of death or removal from office, no more than sixty days from the end of the previous President’s term. During the vacancy, the Speaker of the House shall exercise the duties of President.

All citizens of the United States of the age of majority are eligible to stand for election to the Presidency.

The President shall appoint the First Secretary. On the recommendation of the First Secretary, he shall appoint the other members of the Government and terminate their appointments. The President shall preside over the Cabinet.

The President shall, at stated times, receive for his services, a compensation, which shall neither be increased nor diminished during the Period for which they shall have been elected, and they shall not receive within that period any other emolument from the United States, or any of them.

Before they enter on the execution of their office, he shall take the following oath or affirmation:—“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Section 2: The President shall be the Commander in Chief of the armed forces of the United States. The President or First Secretary may require the opinion, in writing, of the principal officer in each of the executive departments, upon any subject relating to the duties of their respective offices, and they shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offences against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.

They shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of Congress, to make treaties, provided six tenths of members present concur; and they shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of Congress, shall appoint ambassadors.[18]

The President shall have power to fill up all vacancies that may happen during the recess of Congress, by granting commissions which shall expire at the end of their next session.

Section 3: They shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary occasions, convene Congress; he shall receive ambassadors and other public ministers; he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed, and shall commission all the officers of the United States.

Section 4: The Cabinet of the United States shall determine and conduct the policy of the government. It shall have at its disposal the civil service and the armed forces. It shall be accountable to Congress in accordance with the terms and procedures set out below. It shall consist of the First Secretary, the Secretaries of each executive department, and other cabinet-level officers provided for by legislation.

The First Secretary shall direct the actions of the cabinet. They shall ensure the implementation of legislation, and, with the approval of Congress, appoint judges, public ministers, consuls, and other officers of the United States, except those appointed by the President; and all other officers of the United States, whose appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by law: but the Congress may by law vest the appointment of such inferior officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the courts of law, or in the heads of departments .

Membership in the cabinet shall be incompatible with holding any Congressional office, or any other position of public employment.[19]

The First Secretary may, after deliberation by the Cabinet, make a bill, program, or statement of policy an issue of confidence before Congress; Congress may likewise pass a motion of no confidence in the Cabinet. The failure of a motion of confidence, as proposed by the First Secretary, or the passage of a motion of no confidence by an absolute majority of Congress, shall result in the resignation of the Cabinet.

Section 5: The President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for and conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.

Article III - The judiciary

Section 1: The judicial power of the United States shall be vested in the Supreme Court of the United States, and in such inferior courts as Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The judges, both of the Supreme and inferior courts, shall hold their offices for a term established by Congress, of not less than ten years for inferior courts, or twenty for the Supreme Court.[20]

The justices of the Supreme Court shall be elected by Congress, with their appointment subject to the veto of the President; this veto may be overruled by a vote of two thirds of members present. The Supreme Court shall consist of not less than thirty members, of whom seven shall be selected at random to hear any case; and Congress may provide for a greater number of justices as necessary to adequately address the business of the court.[21]

Section 2: The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority; to all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers, and consuls; to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction; to controversies to which the United States shall be a party; to controversies between two or more states; between a state and a citizen of another state; between citizens of different states; between citizens of the same state claiming lands under grants of different states; and between a state, or the citizens thereof, and foreign states, citizens, or subjects.

In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, and those in which a state shall be a party, the Supreme Court shall have original jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions and under such regulations as Congress shall make.

The trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall be by jury, and such trial shall be held in the state, district, or territory where the said crimes shall have been committed.

Section 3: Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort; no person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court. Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture except during the life of the person attained.

Article IV - States

Section 1: Full faith and credit shall be given in each state to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state, including adoptions and marriages. And Congress may by general laws prescribe the manner in which such acts, records, and proceedings shall be proved, and the effect thereof.

Section 2: The citizens of each state shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states. A person charged in any state with treason, felony, or other crime, who shall flee from justice, and be found in another state, shall on demand of the executive authority of the state from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the state having jurisdiction of the crime.

Section 3: New states may be admitted by Congress into this Union, but no new state shall be formed or erected within the jursidiction of any other state, or any state be formed by the junction of two or more states or parts of states, without the consent of the legislatures of the states concerned, as well as that of Congress.

The Constitution applies in full to all territories or districts under the jurisdiction of the United States. No territory or insular area which is the exclusive possession of the United States or of its states or territories, shall be construed to lie outside the United States proper for the purposes of this Constitution. All persons under the jurisdiction or power of the United States are entitled to the rights which this Constitution protects.[22]

Congress shall make provision for the inhabited territories and districts, which do not belong to any state, to have organized self-government to all reasonable extent; and Congress shall protect the traditional rights, obligations, and privileges afforded by treaties to native tribes and nations within the territory of the United States, including but not limited to the right to exclusive jurisdiction over their territory, and the right of native children not to adopted or fostered by not-native parents.[23]

Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to prejudice any claims of the United States, or of any particular state.

Section 4: The United States shall guarantee to every state, territory, and district in this union a democratic, free, egalitarian, and republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion; and, on the application of the legislature or of the executive (when the legislature cannot be convened) against domestic violence.

Article V - Amendment

Amendments to the Constitution may be effected by a vote of four-fifths of Congress; or by the ratification of two-thirds of the legislatures of the several states and a majority vote of Congress.[24]

Article VI - Citizenship; constitutional scope; other

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, or any state, territory, or district within them, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, nor shall any statae deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or deny to any person within their jurisdiction the equal protection of laws.

This constitution, the laws made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land, and judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the laws or constitution of the states notwithstanding.

The members of congress and of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation to support this constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States or any state.

Article VII - Individual rights and obligations[25]

Both the United States and the several States are obligated to protect human dignity and civil rights. The following rights shall bind the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary, both of the United States and the individual states, districts, and territories, as directly applicable by law.

All persons shall be equal before the law, regardless of sex, race, religion, language, place of birth or origin, or political opinions; no person shall be disfavored because of disability. The right of citizens to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, or any state, for any reason.

Every person shall have the right to freedom of conscience and the free exercise of religion; nor shall Congress or any state establish an official religion. No person shall be compelled against their conscience to render military service involving the use of arms.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, effects, communications, private spaces, and regarding their private conduct shall not be violated; and no searches or seizures shall occur, or warrants be issued, except upon probable cause supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Every person shall have the right to freely express and disseminate their opinions, and to inform themselves without hindrance from generally accessible sources. Freedom of the press, of reporting by means of broadcast or films, and by digital communication, shall be guaranteed. There shall be no censorship. The right to assemble, to free association, and to petition the government for redress of grievances shall not be abridged.

Children shall be entitled to the support, to protection from parental neglect and abuse, and to education.

No person may be held to involuntary work or servitude; slavery or the interest of property in persons is prohibited.

No person shall be subject to capital punishment, nor to any cruel or unusual punishment; nor to any kind of torture, mutilation, deprivation of food, water, or sleep, or to the threat of physical harm. No person shall be subject to trial for the same offense twice, nor compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against themselves; nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, except for public goods and amenities,[26] and with just compensation.

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial,[27] which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense. Any person subject to arrest must be informed of their rights. Persons subject to trial who cannot afford counsel shall have counsel provided. No one shall be held on condition of bail, nor shall any plea bargain be permitted.[28]

No one may be deprived of citizenship without their consent.

Persecuted persons have the right to political asylum within the United States.

The right to bring suit against officers of the law or government, who violate the rights laid out herein, and the right to redress of such violations, is protected.[29]

The enumeration in this Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage other rights retained by the people. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively or to the people.

-----------------

[1] Simply making clear that the U.S. is no longer merely a “union of states,” and that the rights and obligations a constitution establishes apply equally to territories and outlying possessions.

[2] Unilateral secession should be clearly illegal.

[3] All citizens are entitled to representation, not just citizens residing within states.

[4] Omitted: the requirement to be a resident of the state one represents. I do not think this is a very important requirement in the modern day, and people should have the right to choose whomever they want as a representative, but I would restore this requirement if it proved to be very popular.

[5] Cf. Article 39 of the German Basic Law.

[6] Large native reservations, like the Navajo Nation, should be entitled to elect members to Congress rather than being represented through state delegations.

[7] There are a lot of more specific requirements that could--and arguably should--be explicitly laid out in a constitution about the operation of a legislature; but the U.S. constitution is fairly light on details about the legislature’s internal workings, and the goal here is to fix only the most obvious problems, so issues like committee structures are omitted here.

[8] The federal government should have oversight of federal elections.

[9] Universal suffrage baybee.

[10] There are lots of voting systems that would improve on first-past-the-post--indeed, almost all of them. Single-vote MMP gets you a reasonably proportionate system, while being, for the voter, as functionally close as possible to the current FPTP system. Congress is also by most measures much too small for a country of the U.S.’s population.

[11] This section and the previous two are amended only to the extent required to account for a unicameral Congress.

[12] Universal jurisdiction for crimes against humanity.

[13] The power to issue letters of marque is omitted.

[14] Mentions of the “militia” are also omitted, since the organized militia doesn’t exist anymore.

[15a] Explicit repudiation of certain conservative legal doctrines which would make the modern regulatory state impossible.

[15b] If you were going to include a balanced budget rule, you could put it here. I wouldn’t. But that’s sure a thing you could do.

[16] Edited slightly to make clear that state defense forces are no bueno.

[17] Cf. Title II of the French constitution.

[18] Ambassadors are appointed by the President; other officers are appointed by the First Secretary (see next section). SCOTUS is no longer appointed by the executive (see Article III).

[19] Besides making Congress unicameral, this is one of the biggest changes: moving to a semi-presidential system. In this system, the First Secretary (who is sort of like the Vice President) runs the day-to-day domestic business of the government, while the President is the head of state and commander-in-chief of the armed forces. The system is approximately based on the French constitution. As in France (but unlike, say, Britain), members of the government (”Cabinet” in American usage) are not members of the legislature.

[20] Term limits are legal, but not mandatory.

[21] Having a large number of judges, from whom a particular panel is drawn to hear an individual case, is a common procedure in modern supreme and constitutional courts elsewhere in the world: it ensures that you don’t have cases not being heard for lack of time (because you can always add more judges to the court of it’s overly busy), and it makes the ideological position of any one member of the court much less important. Indeed, many appellate courts in the U.S. already function like this.

I think there is actually a very good argument to separate out the “constitutional court” role of the Supreme Court on the one hand, and the “court of final appeal/court which arbitrates between federal entities” roles (which themselves could even be broken up into more courts, to streamline judicial business further), but I think the most defective features of the court are fixed here. Still, if there is one more change I would add, a separate constitutional court (and the ability for individuals and federal bodies to make direct applications to it) in the style of Germany would be it.

[22] Essentially repeals the idea of “unincorporated territory” created by the Insular Cases, U.S. territory to which the Constitution doesn’t apply in full. Also makes sure non-citizens are entitled to legal protections like due process.

[23] The goal here includes (among others) to constitutionally enshrine some of the protections of the ICWA.

[24] The U.S. constitution is stupidly hard to amend; this fixes that (though still sets the threshold for amendment quite high). Congressional approval is required for a state-led amendment process to ensure residents of non-states aren’t getting totally screwed.

[25] This section borrows heavily from both the German constitution and the bill of rights.

Virtually unchanged from the First Amendment, except to reflect two minor points of jurisprudence; the Second Amendment is, however, omitted.

[26] Explicitly repudiating Kelo v New London

[27] I don’t think “jury trial” is that important in this day and age, given the ability of prosecutors to exert control over the shape of the jury; but I could be convinced that it’s worth restoring that right explicitly.

[28] Constitutionally enshrining Miranda rights and the right of the indigent to counsel; also banning cash bail and plea bargaining.

[29] Explicit repudiation of qualified immunity; you have the right to sue the government if they violate your rights.

[mahou-furbies]

It is time for

This year the event will be hosted by Snow Miku! Not exactly magical girls but close enough design wise.

Here is the magical girl media consumed on this blog this year:

(Delicious Party Precure, Futari wa Precure Max Heart, Magia Record s3, Machikado Mazoku s2, Tokyo Mew Mew New, Magic Users' Club! (OVA), Magic User's Club! (Tv), Tropical Rouge! Precure season movie, Futari wa Precure Max Heart season movies 1 & 2)

At first it looked like I barely read any magical girl manga this year, but then ended up reading a couple in the final few weeks of the year:

(Magilumiere co ltd, Time Stranger Kyoko (reread), The Life After Retirement of Magical Girls, No Match for Aoi-kun, Magical Lollipop)

Also I read a lot of magical girl webcomics!

(Magical Mom, Sleepless Domain, Cloudy Wondrous, Apricot Cookie(s)!, Miss Guillotine, Strawberry Seafoam)

Then let's go through the events that happened this year. We had a tournament for the favourite Precure, and Cure Milky was the winner! This time it has taken even longer to draw the celebratory art for the winners than last year and I'm still not done, but I guess nobody but me really cares about that so all is well.

We also had a poll for most/least favourite magical girl elements, which I used to compile the most liked and least liked magical girls (though I think the least liked one turned out to be more popular). I really liked this idea and would like to do something more with it one day, or at least just get statistics on people's opinions on different magical girl tropes for fun.

I also did both Mermay and Witchtober this year (and Adorkastock Draw Everything June which I've done every year since its inception), which included a lot of magical girl content. I like these monthly drawing challenges since I enjoy drawing a set of themed characters, and usually the results are a lot more varied than the stuff I usually draw. So next year I'd like to do some more, but I'll have to find different challenges so it won't get repetitive, this was the second Mermay I did and while it mostly involved characters I never draw otherwise, I'd still like to give that spot to something else next time.

Saban Moon was unleashed to the public this year, which did not affect me that much since I have very little relationship with Sailor Moon, but I can still appreciate unearthing a secret alternative version of a well known character (also it was my most popular drawing this year)

This year I started and exercise project by trying to motivate myself with the reward of buying a Miku Nendoroid each time I exercise a certain amount of times. It has been mostly successful, or there are breaks but they are a lot shorter than they would ever be without a prize looming in the future. Much recommended!

Finally one thing that's different from last year that I didn't draw a lot of characters for my magical girl chibi series, because I was busy drawing a different kind of chibi series (hundreds of Pokemon chibis on my other blog). And this chibi style spread to several of my other fandoms too, I used it on the Witchtober, and I've done four (I think) sets of requests in it.

Finally a mention to my frustration on the lack of green Precures culminating in a series of green Precure OCs. 

Then onto the awards!

Best Henshin Design goes to Cloudy Wondrous! A solid design where everything works together (I’m especially a fan of the cloud motif used in different places), and the unique details (crown, wing eyepatch thing) make it more memorable.

Best Team Design goes to Tokyo Mew Mew New! Granted I think I like the original designs more, but TMM team design is still strong here as well, it's recognisable as TMM but highly customisable for OCs.

Best Powerup Design goes to Strawberry Seafoam! Or they should probably rather be called separate forms on the same level with different purposes rather than increasing in power, but who's counting. They are all pretty (as are the other mermaids' transformations) but let's say the jellyfish one is my favourite, it has such warm glowing palette (but also an illuminated dark mode!) and it creates a unique silhouette.

Also a shoutout to Cure Spicy's Party Up Style "hat".

Best Civilian Design goes to Amane's winter look from Delicious Party Precure! It just looks so comfy...

Best Hair goes to Sae from Magic User's Club! It's pretty simple compared to the usual absurd magical girl hairstyles, but I like how the angular shapes make it memorable.

Best Magical Item goes to Bijou's pen from Strawberry Seafoam! It looks pretty, and I like magic where you actually draw your spells. And it's fun to see her style evolve!

Best Henshin Scene goes to the dresser henshin in Magilumiere! Overall it has a lot of creative henshin and I really hope it gets animated some day!

Best Fan Creation is the catch-all award for everything that's not from, like, a big corporation, and this year the competition is really tough with all these highly polished webcomics, on a normal year any one of them would have been the winner but now I have to pick one. And it is also this year's Best Work, so more on that later! 

Best Relationship goes to the group in Magic Users' Club! Their relationships feel very natural, and everyone has something different going on with the other characters. And while there is a little drama, the overall vibe is delightfully positive.

Best Mascot goes to Kome-Kome from Delicious Party Precure! Personality or plot-wise there's nothing that interests me about her, but it must be said that I'm a sucker for progressively aging designs and she's also stupidly cute.

Best Supporting Character goes to the 4th wall breaking Director of Darkness, from Apricot Cookie(s)! He just cracks me up every time he is on panel with his friendly and welcoming attitude. 

Honourable mention to Mari-chan from Precure who is the best character in the season but who unfortunately doesn’t get to do much.

Best Visual goes to the art style of Strawberry Seafoam! Bold and unique glowing saturated colours that somehow feel nostalgic. Special mention to all the swirly magic.

Honourable mention to the art style shifts Apricot Cookie(s)!, sometimes the art goes to retro manga or anime or 3d idol dance models for fun. And another honourable mention to the visual presentation of the Apricot Cookies website.

Best Audio goes to the Shiny Luminous / Queen theme in Futari wa Precure Splash Star (not the henshin one but the one when she’s doing something epic). Feels very majestic.  

For the Best Scene I don’t have anything specific that comes to mind over everything else this year, so let’s say Kuroe’s fate in MagiReco, Shiny Luminous in the Max Heart finale and Grandma’s fate in Apricot Cookie(s)! can share it.

Innovation Award is for honouring a work doing something new and refreshing for the magical girl genre. This year I read several webcomics (that generally get to be more innovative than commercial anime) and even one actual manga that focused on "magical girls as a job", but each with a little different angle. So a shoutout to Magilumiere Co ltd, Sleepless Domain, Cloudy Wondrous, Apricot Cookie(s)!, Miss Guillotine and Magical Mom! With this many of them it'd feel a little weird to pick any for the "innovation award" over the same topic, so let's reward Magical Mom, for having, well, the magical mom! Magical girls whose mother is also a magical girl are of course a thing, but this time the child is a boy, and the mother also is an active and prominent character (and not just a background mentor), so that is new to me.

Then the Golden Mana Award, that is the dishonourable mention awarded to one thing I didn't like this year! 

This year it goes to Porun from Futari wa Precure Max Heart. Frankly he was probably more annoying in the original Futari wa but I had something else to complain about that year so now it's his turn. For the life of me I can't understand how this would be an appealing character concept even for children, like don't even 5-year-olds get annoyed at a toddler sibling's tantrums interrupting their big kid play? Even his less overtly irritating scenes don't do much for me, since they rely on "aww isn't it cute how the baby wants to be with you" mushiness.

Also another dishonourable mention to downgrading Pudding’s jumpsuit into a dress.

Best Character goes to Kuroe! (from MagiReco) I really like her design (especially how it mirrors Iroha’s), her quiet and hesitant personality and her melancholic story that felt fresh among all the magical girls who excitedly jump into saving every passerby. Or I don’t really like how she fit in the larger narrative, but in isolation I think her story was interesting.

Best Work goes to Apricot Cookie(s)! It's really funny and the art is great, and the character designs are memorable. The heroine is charmingly dumb and everyone in her family is great. And it took a while to grow on me, but in the end the weeb references make me feel at home.

Plans for 2023

I didn't manage to get any of the shorter mg shows from last year's list (though I did watch Magic User’s Club which wasn’t on the list) so those are still there. I'd also like to watch two series from the Precure backlog, this year I only managed one.

Art-wise I plan to do more for the chibi series, and do another "x colour Precure oc" series. And I'd really like to draw more art that has, like, a background or a mood or a composition, but let's see if that goes anywhere.

(also hopefully more Miku Nendoroids)

[inscrutable-shadow]

Mediwhump May Day 4 - Pain

@mediwhumpmay

This is canon-compatible with the current version of the ieiunus-verse (the current name of the universe in which my vampire stories take place) and therefore uses the main WIP tag. Thanatos is, obviously, a vampire. Born in Athens in 421 BC, he is currently working as a therapist in a modern-day city while living with his lover, the physical manifestation of Reality itself. The Archfey just thinks he's cute, and the vampire sex is a plus, too. The only content warning is I guess skip this one if you don't want to see PG-13 flirting, lol.

Thanatos was used to waking up and wishing he hadn’t. This was usually due to laziness. He would never have purported to be a hardworking sort of man, and immortality had not inspired in him any sort of work ethic. He preferred to spend his days either reading philosophy, writing his own essays, or systematically destroying the worldviews of his therapy clients, none of which he considered “work“, but rather entertainment. Today, however, he’d be unable to do any of those things. Getting out of bed was a challenge when his curse ached like this.

As much as most vampires would like you to forget it, vampirism is, in fact, a curse. Since Lord Cain Umbra had forged his contract with the Shadow on a distant planet tens of thousands of years ago, each vampire has been forced to abide by the terms of not only his original agreement, but their own contract: offer up blood and death to the Shadow in exchange for power and eternal life.

Well. Not life exactly. A vampire wasn’t technically dead, only mostly so, the natural ties that bound the soul to the body replaced by threads of dark magic. It felt just as if someone had taken real thread and stitched it throughout your body, and the pain never went away. It wasn’t as bad after four thousand years as it had been when he’d freshly turned, with the wounds on his soul just as fresh as the memory of life without pain, but it was still known to flare up from time to time. 

Why today of all days? It wasn’t as if he’d been derelict in his duty to the Shadow. He’d just hunted two days ago, and he was barely hungry. Nor could he recall any contact with high levels of light magic such as a seraph or a revenant would be able to wield: his life had been rather peaceful of late. He couldn’t ponder it any further, though, distracted as he was by the Archfey materialising under the covers next to him. It was so strange how ae did that.

“Good afternoon, slug-a-bed, if you have no pressing work to drag you from your sheets, perhaps you will consider pressing something else...?” ae whispered in his ear, and he realised ae wasn’t wearing aer robes, the coolness of aer skin granting him the smallest relief from his curse. 

As much as he wanted to make love to aer, with aer eyes like the sun and smile like the hearth, the thought of doing that much exercise made him want to lock himself into a coffin and not come out for a few hundred years. “Forgive me, my love,” his voice was faint and strained with effort. “I don’t think I’ll have the energy today…”

The Archfey’s forehead wrinkled as ae rested aer chin on his shoulder. “Are you unwell, Thanatos? Tell me what ails you. Shall I conjure blood for you? Or is the house too cool? Have you grown tired of the wallpaper or the carpeting? I can change-“

“No, my dear heart, you needn’t change the furniture. The curse is quite painful today, is all.” He wanted nothing less than for the Archfey to conjure blood for him. Even after the thousands of years they’d spent together, ae was still as bad as it as ae’d been when they met. He cupped aer cheek affectionately, trying not to focus on the edges of his soul burning. 

Ae thought for a moment, leaning into his touch. “Would... drinking my magic help?”

Thanatos shook his head. If anything, that would probably make it worse: it had just occurred to him that his close proximity to the literal manifestation of reality, a being composed of pure magic, likely disagreed with his soul stitching and caused these flares to begin with. “I just need to rest, Rea. Don’t fret over me.”

The Archfey seemed to have come to a decision. “Yes. You can drink your fill later.” Flirting with him? Now? Ae kissed him on the cheek and teleported away, leaving him to wonder what ae was up to.

Than had just started trying to go back to sleep when his lover returned clothed and bearing a tray, upon which sat a bowl of hot water and some towels. “I watched mortals do this recently. A ‘warm compress’ relieves muscle tightness and reduces pain. This will help you.” He didn’t think it would, but he thought the whole thing was adorable, so he didn’t argue.

To his surprise, as the Archfey packed the hot cloths around him, the pain receded slightly. Even if, by the end, he looked like a mummy and was just as immobile as when they’d started, he felt much better. He groaned as he relaxed into the pillows, letting the heat sink into his bones. It wasn’t as if his vampiric body was producing much of its own. 

“How is that, darling? Any better?”

“Mhm,” he mumbled with his eyes shut, already dropping off again. The Archfey smiled and tucked aerself in next to him.

Perhaps the curse wasn’t so bad after all.

Tagging @albatris because we are vampire mutuals now :) lmk if you'd rather not get tagged in ieiunusverse content!

[depressedhatakekakashi]

God of Storms Masterlist: Children Of the Gods.

Obito's Children

Hanako- Daughter of Obito and a mortal Princess. Adventurous and wild in nature Hanako packs her bags at age 18 and decides to travel the world. She lived for four hundred years and is known as the Demigod who never fought, but changed the world with all the knowledge she gathered.

Hina- Daughter of Obito and a farmer girl he spent three months with. Hina is a strong demi-god who enjoys getting into scraps and earning a title for herself as a great hero. She also bears the Henohenomoheji on her back as a small rebellion against her father. When he asks about it she says that it's because she's a farmer's daughter and a scarecrow protects the farmer's land. Obito will absolutely never hear the end of this from Kakashi.

Kimiko - Daughter of Obito and a male lover, Kimiko was born from the ground (much like Obito) and had life gifted to her by her Immortal father. Kimiko is not one to get herself into danger purposefully, but holds to the belief that 'if you start something, I will finish it'. She's known as a great warrior among mortals and is the youngest of Obito's children to die, only 97 when she falls in battle against a rival kingdom.

Kakashi's Children

Nakano: Daughter of the God of Storms and the Moral Prince Maito Gai. Nakano wasn't made in the same way as her demi-god cousins but was created from the passion shared between her fathers. Coming to life on the night before Gai's wedding, Nakano burst forward as a river right beside her papa's (Gai's) village. The following day when the villagers woke up they were surprised to find a brand new river had magically formed, and although they could not see her Nakano was there. Sitting by the water with a few turtles that had found their way there overnight, as if they'd known her river would be there. Nakano is known as the Goddess of Rivers.

Koji: Son of the God of storms (Kakashi) and the god of Justice (Ibiki), Koji was crafted by his father's passions. Except, unlike his half-sister, Koji was not created by positive passions. It was his father's anger and hurt that brought him to life. The way that the two of them stood together and brought down punishment on an entire village for their hand in destroying the life of a child, Koji burst from the River nearby and used the water that he came in on to wipe the village right off of the face of the earth. Calm and stern like Ibiki, Koji has a goofy nature that he keeps hidden. The only people he willingly shows that side to are his sister Nakano, his fathers, and Obito and Rin, who love trying to make him laugh.

Itachi and Hana's Child

Daisuke: Son of The god of honourable death (Itachi) and the Goddess of Animals (Hana), Daisuke is one of few full-fledged gods who was born in a more mortal way. Grown inside of his mother, Daisuke came out a teenager and was granted the position of God of Lost Animals. His job is to lead the soul of animals to the afterlife where they can play with the mortal souls that were taken in by his Father and Uncle. Daisuke is viewed as a wild child by mortals, running around the forests playing with animals and rescuing them from a terrible death by saving their souls before they pass. The truth, however, is that Daisuke is very down-to-earth and calm. With his father's relaxed personality and his mother's love for animals, Daisuke spends his days playing with the animals his mother cares for. He's also known for hanging around Hana most often because she cannot always save the animals she takes in. Everywhere he goes, Daisuke is followed by a black crow and a small white dog. Both animals are gifts to him from his parents and are the things that Mortals have come to recognize him by.

Rin's Kids

Most of Rin's children are created with Kisame. From the Mermaids that live inside of the ocean to the lower goddess' that tend to all of the sea creatures. There's no one child between the two and to list all of them would take forever.

Rin does have children with others, however. A fact that doesn't always go over well with Kisame.

Danuja: The son of the Goddess Sea (Rin) and a Mortal king. Danuja is a Demi-god destined to lead his village to a prosperous four hundred years. During his reign, his people excel at defense so much that no other kingdom is able to break down the walls of the kingdom until the day after Danuja passes. Kind and full of wisdom, he excels at Politics, always able to find a way to end a war peacefully. Danuja has multiple children of his own who go on to make their mark in the world, and his lineage is often used to 'prove' future kings' rights to the throne.

Hiroki: Son of Rin and the Mortal Maito Gai. Hiroki’s birth was controversial at first, specifically with Kakashi. Although Kakashi was upset about the union that created Hiroki, as soon as the child was born and left with Gai he found himself unable to do anything but love him as much as he would his own child. Hiroki is born a demi-god and lives amongst mortals for four-hundred years until his death, at which point Kakashi chooses to go against custom and turn him into a god. The move receives a lot of backlash from the other gods and earns Kakashi quite the lecture from Hashirama, Madara and Mito, but it’s the only time he doesn’t care about upsetting them. Both because Rin is happy when she sees her son alive and immortal, and because Hiroki is just as much as soon to Kakashi at this point as he is Rin and Gai. The god of Pediatrics, Hiroki is the first mortal to introduce the concept of medicine and medical practices specific to children. He does this after losing his child to an Illness that they had no knowledge about, at which point he dedicates the rest of his life to doing all he can to ensure no other parent has to experience the pain that he does. Born before Nakano was created, Hiroki acts as a big brother to the goddess of rivers. So much so that when he lost his child, Nakano was the one to retrieve her spirit and turn her into a river spirit that spends her days playing with the river otters. 

Hiroki’s animal is the eel, which becomes a symbol of medicine down the line (in some places it’s warped into being a snake, but the origins are of an eel). He especially loves electric eels, which always seem to swarm to him when he’s nearby them. 

His symbols include a mask which is always drawn/depicted over his face, and a red hair clip that was gifted to him by his mother. The hair clip is a gift that keeps Hiroki protected from all mortal illnesses, allowing him to work in any condition. His death ultimately came because the hairclip was broken, removing his protection and resulting in Hiroki being hit with an illness that his immune system was not prepared to fight.

[mariacallous]

Oleksandr Kosovan remembers vividly the morning he left his home to go to work and didn’t know if it would still be there when he returned. He was jolted awake at 4 am by the sound of rockets striking Kyiv, and his immediate thought was, “I’ll probably never come back to my home. Mentally, I said goodbye to all of my belongings. And then I went to the office.” It was February 25, 2022, the day after Russian forces launched a large-scale invasion of Ukraine, escalating a conflict that had simmered since Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.

Kosovan made his way into Kyiv’s center, near the Olympic National Sports Complex. He was headed to the office of his 15-year-old software company MacPaw, which makes applications for Macs and iPhones. As CEO, he had urged some of his 500 staff to flee the city when the threat of war escalated. But hundreds had opted to stay. His first task that day was to convert the office into a temporary shelter for MacPaw employees.

“I didn’t think my body was even capable of lasting four or five days without sleep and real food, but it was running on adrenaline and pure rage,” he says of those first days of the war. A year later, MacPaw has kept the lights on, and Kosovan’s home still stands. The company’s staffers have been more unified than scattered by the war’s steep challenges and have even managed to maintain a sense of normalcy, exchanging Ukrainian memes via Twitter and Telegram and still keeping in high spirits. 

Kosovan is far from the only Ukrainian startup founder with tales of resilience and unexpected wartime productivity over the past year. Even as coders and entrepreneurs worked from underground bomb shelters and through rolling electrical blackouts, many managed to ship software updates. But Ukraine’s future is still unclear, adding to the risks that already come with keeping a technology startup alive. 

Hacking in the Dark

I first met Julia Petryk by chance last June, after she had traveled 15 hours by train from Kyiv to Poland and then taken an international flight to attend Apple’s WWDC conference in Cupertino, California. We spoke outside Apple’s sleek, glass-walled coffee shop, standing in glaring sunlight, the idyllic scene a stark contrast from the war-torn parts of Ukraine. Since then I’ve kept in touch with Petryk and recently spoke to or corresponded with half a dozen tech founders and workers from Ukrainian companies, asking about life in Ukraine’s startup scene over the past year. 

Petryk runs communications at MacPaw and is a cofounder of the Ukrainian PR Army, an ad hoc group of Ukrainian PR and marketing professionals trying to combat Russian propaganda by sending out pro-Ukranian missives to journalists and governments. She describes a year of severe disruption, and not the kind that Silicon Valley founders typically laud. She has worked from bomb shelters and coffee shops with backup generators, and has walked home through Kyiv in pitch-black darkness, decked in reflective gear. 

“When you have all this news trickling in every day, it can be a bit depressing. But people keep adapting,” Petryk says. “There’s no way out except to work for the future and fight for the future.” 

On October 10, Petryk emailed me from a bomb shelter in Kyiv: “Russians hit dozens of missiles at Ukraine this morning. Civilians killed again.” 

Prior to this, she and I had been chatting about a Slack plugin that MacPaw engineers had built called TogetherApp, which enables quick check-ins and location drops between colleagues. The pings flew among the MacPaw team that day.

Thousands of Ukrainian tech workers ended up relocating to neighboring Poland or to Portugal, which granted temporary protection permits to Ukrainian refugees in the early days of the war. Many more stayed behind.

In the days following the invasion, Alyona Mysko, the founder and chief executive of an accounting startup called Fuelfinance, temporarily relocated her company’s home base from Kyiv to a bomb shelter in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, some 500 kilometers away, and encouraged remote work. But many did not want to leave Ukraine. “We all have this understanding that when you stay in this country, you support the economy,” she says. “And a lot of our team members have families and homes here.”

By October, Fuelfinance had eschewed remote work and pivoted back to office life, toiling from a coworking space in Kyiv called LIFT99. Mysko had made the same journey Petryk had back in June—traveling 15 hours by train to Poland before flying to a tech conference in California—when news broke that Russia had unleashed a massive attack on Ukraine’s power grid, resulting in widespread blackouts.

“It was impossible to connect with my family,” Mysko says. “But in the office we had alternative sources of energy, and we had Starlink, so we were still able to connect for work. It made us realize how important it was to have backup generators, which really sped up the end of remote work for us,” she says with a wry laugh. 

Backup generators and SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service—every founder who spoke to WIRED said they were now critical to their operations. Some had the foresight to purchase generators before the invasion. 

Others, like Sofiia Shvets and Vlad Pranskevičius, who jointly founded an AI image editing startup called Let’s Enhance, raced to supply their staffers after the fact, purchasing several large power banks for employees scattered around Ukraine for around €550 (about $580) a piece. Each can supply six to seven hours of power to personal devices, though not enough for home appliances. 

“It’s all very strange sometimes,” says Shvets, who is now based in San Francisco. “We’ll have a video call with one of our product managers who has Starlink internet, so he can join the call, but he’s in total darkness, surrounded by candles, because he doesn’t have electricity. And I’m like, ‘Um, Dennis, how’s it going?’”

Since the spring of 2022, Ukraine has relied heavily on Starlink satellite internet terminals, tens of thousands of which were donated by SpaceX, with some support from the US government. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said in October that the company would no longer fund Starlink service in Ukraine, and he asked the Pentagon to pick up more of the cost before reversing himself in a tweet.

“Many people here and across the world were pissed off about some of his posts,” says Pranskevičius, who is based in Kyiv. “But what we’ve seen is that Starlink has continued to work. It’s been invaluable to most individuals and also to people on the front line, where there might be no connectivity at all.” 

An Uncertain Future

Let’s Enhance has continued to grow, despite the challenges its founders and staff face. One colleague left to go fight on the front lines, and another signed up to work on military technology, joining the approximately 7,000 tech professionals who joined the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. One year ago, the company had 27 employees; now, it says it has more than 40.

But Let’s Enhance is in the minority. According to a 2022 report from TechUkraine, an organization that supports startups in the country, companies are feeling the heat of war. While 43 percent of teams surveyed remained the same size, 37 percent of founders say they’ve had to reduce headcount. And more than 90 percent of Ukrainian startups have indicated they would need more financial support in order to survive the war.

Data from research firm PitchBook shows that early-stage startups in Ukraine raised a collective $17 million in seed or Series A funding in 2022, compared to $14.1 million in 2021. Early-stage funding this year has already surpassed that in the last quarter of 2022, including $1 million recently raised by Fuelfinance.

But despite promising signs, the broader prospects for Ukraine’s businesses are murkier. In September, The Wall Street Journal reported that, while Ukrainian companies in 2021 raised a total of $832 million in venture capital and from private equity, which typically invests larger sums, one analyst has estimated that the number of Ukrainian VC deals was down by at least 50 percent in 2022.

Let’s Enhance’s last fundraising round was for $3 million in October 2021, and its founders planned to stretch that throughout 2022 as they focused on a new product. They may try to raise more funding this year, taking on macroeconomic headwinds, in addition to the instability of war, that have slowed startup investment.

Still, Shvets is optimistic about fundraising. Several funds have cropped up in support of Ukrainian tech companies, both in the private sector and from governments. Last year the European Commission pledged €20 million (about $21 million) in support of tech companies in Ukraine. Some private investors are bolstered by the fact that many Ukrainian startups sell their software in the US.

“I would say the narrative has definitely changed since last year. When the war started, we were all in shock, and so were our investors,” Shvets says. “They were asking, ‘What’s going to happen with Ukraine?’ But we haven’t had any production issues, and right now I actually feel like we have a lot of support.”  

Dmitry Dontov, the chief executive and founder of data protection company Spin Technology, also says investors seem comfortable to keep working with startups with a heavy Ukrainian presence. Shortly after the invasion, Dontov, a Moldovan based in Silicon Valley, supplied his Ukrainian research and development team with generators and set up a safe house for them in the village of Koncha-Zaspa, about 33 kilometers from Kyiv. He relocated a third of the staff to an office in Portugal. 

“Initially, investors were worried. They were asking, ‘How many lines of code have been written last month?’” Dontov says. “But over time, I think investors saw that we were taking all the actions necessary to maintain performance.”

Not all startups have fared so well. Oleksandr Kosovan, the MacPaw cofounder, also invests in other startups through a fund called SMRK. It invested $1.5 million in a Ukrainian robotics startup just this week. But Kosovan says that at least two of the fund’s portfolio companies shut down within the past year. 

One of them was Seadora Seafood, a Kyiv-based fish delivery startup founded in 2019. The company transported some of its cargo by air and could no longer operate within Ukrainian air space. Another startup selling casual clothing is still operating but is struggling; as soon as the war began, Kosovan says, “the demand for such things was reduced to almost zero.”

In the context of war, necessities come into sharper focus. So do borders, and bonds with coworkers, and glimpses of the future, even if they appear in the form of a candlelit Zoom call or a flash of reflective clothing on a dark city street.

[ausetkmt]

From private “clubstaurants” to NFT reservation tokens to concierge services, getting a table is a lot easier if you’ve got the money.

Credit...Jonathan Carlson

Published Oct. 15, 2022Updated Oct. 18, 2022

As long as there have been high-status, celebrity-studded restaurants, there have been people clamoring to get into them, working contacts, making phone calls, greasing palms. Lately, though, it can seem like every restaurant in New York is that kind of restaurant.

In the pandemic era — with hours cut back in many cases, and a public eager to eat out once again — the competition for tables has reached a frenzied pitch on electronic reservation platforms.

“Without over-embellishing, within five seconds basically all reservations are taken,” said Steve Saed, who started #FreeRezy, a free electronic forum where people could swap reservations among themselves. “It’s like winning the lottery to eat at these places,” he added.

But a new generation of tactics have emerged to help would-be diners jump the line, including latter-day concierge services, NFTs granting holders special privileges, members-only credit card perks and private “clubstaurants.” What they all have in common is that they will cost you.

“However many years ago, it was slip the host or hostess $20 and bypass the line,” said Alex Lee, the chief executive of Resy and vice president of American Express Dining. He runs the companies’ Global Dining Network, a program that offers a select group of Amex members (Amex owns Resy) access to certain restaurant perks through the reservation platform.

The program, he suggested, is just the natural evolution of that furtive $20. For an annual credit card fee in the hundreds or sometimes thousands, Global Dining Access members can obtain priority reservations at hot restaurants across the United States. “The first thing customers want is access, right?” Mr. Lee said.

But at certain members-only restaurants, a reservation alone is not enough.

Haiku, a private Japanese restaurant in Miami, makes a slightly different calculation. The restaurant accepts members by invitation only, for an annual fee, and asks them to commit to at least four reservations annually for a 10-to-12-course kaiseki-inspired omakase menu. The restaurant declined to discuss either the application process or the price.

Jeff Zalaznick, a partner at Major Food Group, was only slightly more forthcoming about plans for the New York debut of ZZ’s Club, which will feature a members-only Carbone. Like the first ZZ’s in Miami, which offers members access to a Japanese restaurant, a sushi bar, a bar and lounge and a cigar terrace, ZZ’s Club New York will bring the Major Food Group experience to the financial and social elite. (Like Haiku, Major Food Group would not disclose the fee or the application process.)

But given that the original Carbone — which recently lost its Michelin star — is already impossible to get into, is it really necessary to have an even more exclusive version just two miles away?

“One of the great things about being a private member’s club, is the fact that you really can tailor everything on the food and beverage side to your customers at an even higher level than you can, obviously, when you’re just a public restaurant,” Mr. Zalaznick said.

This means knowing what members want, and how exactly they want it: How do they take their steak? Do they prefer still or sparkling water? What is their standing order, and with which modifications?

Diners can have all those things at the London import Casa Cruz, on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, but for a stratospheric price tag. The top-floor dining room there is reserved for the 99 members of the restaurant’s “investor group of partners” who have paid between $250,000 and $500,000 to join.

“I think there’s a demand for curation,” said Noah Tepperberg, the co-CEO of Tao Group Hospitality, which next year is opening a private club in the River North neighborhood of Chicago, in collaboration with the restaurant group Lettuce Entertain You.

In the grand tradition of private clubs — from New York City’s Union Club to San Francisco’s Bohemian Club to the recently rebranded ’Quin House in Boston — these exclusive clubstaurants require not only cash but status.

“Restaurants began as places to show off status,” said Andrew P. Haley, an associate professor of history at the University of Southern Mississippi. Generally, this took place in public, where discerning diners could be seen demonstrating their discernment.

The members-only clubstaurant, on the other hand, confers another kind of status, suggested Megan J. Elias, the director of the gastronomy program at Boston University: “You can be a connoisseur among a very small number of connoisseurs.”

Mr. Saed said he’s not surprised that access is being monetized.

“Part of it tracks to the types of people that are renting in New York now,” he said. “With rents pushing over $4,000 to $5,000, I think that the proportion of people that are living here that have the discretionary income to spend are kind of more here.”

Still other restaurants — the public kind — are leaning into patronage-style programs, aiming to give certain customers premier access, while remaining open to the rest of us.

Under normal circumstances, it can take weeks or months to get into Dame, the West Village fish-and-chips sensation. But there is a workaround: Front of House, a platform designed to help restaurants sell “digital collectibles,” also known as NFTs, that grant holders special access.

Instead of lining up at 4:30 p.m. on a Monday, the one day Dame takes walk-in diners, a devoted diner could pay $1,000, which buys them the ability, with at least 24 hours notice, to book a table once a week through the end of 2022. (20 such tokens have been created; 11 have been sold so far.)

Stephanie Dumanian, a cosmetic dentist in Manhattan and a fan of the restaurant, was trying without success to make a reservation for her husband’s birthday when she found Front of House. She bought a token in July, and has been three times since. “It’s been great,” she said. “I feel like I’m supporting a local business.”

Colin Camac, a co-founder of Front of House, said the platform is simply expediting intimacy.

“I think one of the best things in the world is going into a place just like Cheers, where everybody knows your name, where they know what you like, where your martini is sitting there as soon as you walk in,” said Mr. Camac, who is also a regional director at Resy. “It’s an easier way to be part of that community if you don’t have the time to really invest in it.” In other words, anyone can be a regular, for a price.

“It’s kind of a trade secret in the concierge space that you have to build relationships, and spend a lot of time doing it, in order to deliver these very hard to get reservations,” said Peter Adams, the founder of Table Concierge.

His start-up is for people with money but not time, and a would-be diner doesn’t actually have to be a regular to get treated like one. “You could do this on your own,” he said, but he streamlines the process “so you don’t have to wake up at 8 a.m. or book at midnight.”

For a price — usually $50 per reservation per person, but it depends on the difficulty — Mr. Adams works his connections to open doors that appear closed to the rest of us. (White glove service means he will go as far as going to a restaurant in person to negotiate on a client’s behalf.)

With a week or so warning, he puts his success rate at 90 percent. You want Lilia? He’ll get you Lilia, nevermind what Resy says. “We can get you in anywhere other than Rao’s,” he said of the exclusive Italian restaurant in East Harlem.

Though he added: “But if you want to give me $10,000, I can find a way to get you into Rao’s.”