#now flensing

[42flies]

I AM DOG NOW

[nabsthevulture]

Flensed the lady fox down this morning and now my garage smells like fox 😭

[miamicommune]

.

[smallgodseries]

What did he look like before a beloved family fantasy classic appeared in theaters and gave him a whole new face?  Better not to ask.  Better not to even wonder.  He is now who he has always been, who he will always be, even as he watches the ebb and flow of the collective consciousness and waits, as he always does, to be flensed and made anew, reskinned as someone he wasn’t a moment before.  But once the edit is done, he has never changed.  You see?  You understand?

No?  We will summarize.

Indigo is the small god of misunderstandings and malapropisms (although not, it should be stressed, of mondegreens: the Lady Mondegreen does not share her narrow protectorate).  He guards the definition of things, both technical and colloquial, and he will not hesitate to correct, although his corrections are essentially kind.  He would rather improve than embarrass, and he often speaks in privacy, through the mouth of a beloved friend or through distant memories of dictionary pages.

Confused?  Not sure what you said was what you meant?  Fumbling for meaning?  Indigo is with you.  He will always care more for your wounded heart than for your words, as long as your intent is generous.  He does not think well of the cruel, or of the uncharitable.  He will aid them as little as he possibly can.

But he is a god and we are merely men, and he cannot always choose who he comes to aid.  Remember this, when he seems to extend his hand to the undeserving.  Remember that we do not, will not, and cannot always understand.

Indigo will understand it for us.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

An excerpt from The Bezzle

I'm on tour with my new novel The Bezzle! Catch me next in SALT LAKE CITY (Feb 21, Weller Book Works) and SAN DIEGO (Feb 22, Mysterious Galaxy). After that, it's LA, Seattle, Portland, Phoenix and more!

Today, I'm bringing you part one of an excerpt from Chapter 14 of The Bezzle, my next novel, which drops on Feb 20. It's an ice-cold revenge technothriller starring Martin Hench, a two-fisted forensic accountant specialized in high-tech fraud:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

Hench is the Zelig of high-tech fraud, a character who's spent 40 years in Silicon Valley unwinding every tortured scheme hatched by tech-bros who view the spreadsheet as a teleporter that whisks other peoples' money into their own bank-accounts. This setup is allowing me to write a whole string of these books, each of which unwinds a different scam from tech's past, present and future, starting with last year's Red Team Blues (now in paperback!), a novel that whose high-intensity thriller plotline is also a masterclass in why cryptocurrency is a scam:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865854/redteamblues

Turning financial scams into entertainment is important work. Finance's most devastating defense is the Shield Of Boringness (h/t Dana Clare) – tactically deployed complexity designed to induce the state that finance bros call "MEGO" ("my eyes glaze over"). By combining jargon and obfuscation, the most monstrous criminals of our age have been able to repeatedly bring our civilization to the brink of collapse (remember 2008?) and then spin their way out of it.

Turning these schemes into entertainment is hard, necessary work, because it incinerates the respectable suit and tie and leaves the naked dishonesty of the finance sector on display for all to see. In The Big Short, they recruited Margot Robbie to explain synthetic CDOs from a bubble-bath. And John Oliver does this every week on Last Week Tonight, coming up with endlessly imaginative stunts and gags to flense the bullshit, laying the scam economy open to the bone.

This was my inspiration for the Hench novels (I've written and sold three of these, of which The Bezzle is number two; I've got at least two more planned). Could I use the same narrative tactics I used to explain mass surveillance, cryptography and infosec in the Little Brother books to turn scams into entertainment, and entertainment into the necessary, informed outrage that might precipitate change?

The main storyline in The Bezzle concerns one of the most gruesome scams in today's America: prison-tech, which sees America's vast army of prisoners being stripped of letters, calls, in-person visits, parcels, libraries and continuing ed in favor of cheap tablets that bilk prisoners and their families of eye-watering sums for every click they make:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/14/minnesota-nice/#shitty-technology-adoption-curve

But each Hench novel has a variety of side-quests that work to expose different kinds of financial chicanery. The Bezzle also contains explainers on the workings of MLMs/Ponzis (and how Gerry Ford and Betsy DeVos's father-in-law legalized one of the most destructive forces in America) and the way that oligarchs, foreign and domestic, use Real Estate Investment Trusts to hide their money and destroy our cities.

And there's a subplot about music-royalty theft, a form of pernicious wage theft that is present up and down the music industry supply-chain. This is a subject that came up a lot when Rebecca Giblin and I were researching and writing Chokepoint Capitalism, our 2022 book about creative labor markets:

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

Two of the standout cases from that research formed the nucleus of the subplot in The Bezzle, the case of Leonard Cohen's batshit manager who stole millions from him and then went to prison for stalking him, leaving him virtually penniless and forced to keep touring to keep himself fed:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2012/apr/19/leonard-cohen-former-manager-jailed

The other was George Clinton, whose manager forged his signature on a royalty assignment, then used the stolen money to defend himself against Clinton's attempts to wrestle his rights back and even to sue Clinton for defamation for writing about the caper in his memoir:

https://www.musicconnection.com/the-legal-beat-george-clinton-wins-defamation-case/

That's the tale that this excerpt – which I'll be serializing in six parts over the coming week – tells, in fictionalized form. It's not Margot Robbie in a bubble-bath, it's not a John Oliver monologue, but I think it's pretty goddamned good.

I'm leaving for a long, multi-city, multi-country, multi-continent tour with The Bezzle next Wednesday, starting with an event at Weller Bookworks in Salt Lake City on the 21st:

https://www.wellerbookworks.com/event/store-cory-doctorow-feb-21-630-pm

I'll in be in San Diego on the 22nd at Mysterious Galaxy:

https://www.mystgalaxy.com/22224Doctorow

And then it's on to LA (with Adam Conover), Seattle (with Neal Stephenson), Portland, Phoenix and beyond:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/16/narrative-capitalism/#bezzle-tour

I hope you'll come out for the tour (and bring your friends)!

Between 1972 and 1978, Steve Soul (a.k.a. Stefon Magner) had a string of sixteen Billboard Hot 100 singles, one of which cracked the Top 10 and won him an appearance on Soul Train. He is largely forgotten today, except by hip-­hop producers who prize his tracks as a source of deep, funky grooves. They sampled the hell out of him, not least because his rights were controlled by Inglewood Jams, a clearinghouse for obscure funk tracks that charged less than half of what the Big Three labels extracted for each sample license.

Even at that lower rate, those license payments would have set Stefon up for a comfortable retirement, especially when added to his Social Security and the disability check from Dodgers Stadium, where he cleaned floors for more than a decade before he fell down a beer-­slicked bleacher and cracked two of his lumbar discs. But Stefon didn’t get a dime. His former manager, Chuy Flores, forged his signature on a copyright assignment in 1976. Stefon didn’t discover this fact until 1979, because Chuy kept cutting him royalty checks, even as Stefon’s band broke up and those royalties trickled off. In Stefon’s telling, the band broke up because the rest of the act—­especially the three-­piece rhythm section of two percussionists and a beautiful bass player with a natural afro and a wild, infectious hip-­wiggle while she played—­were too coked up to make it to rehearsal, making their performances into shambling wreckages and their studio sessions into vicious bickerfests. To hear the band tell of it, Stefon had bad LSD (“Lead Singer Disease”) and decided he didn’t need the rest of them. One thing they all agreed on: there was no way Stefon would have signed over the band’s earnings to Chuy, who was little more than a glorified bookkeeper, with Stefon hustling all their bookings and even ordering taxis to his bandmates’ houses to make sure they showed up at the studio or the club on time. Stefon remembered October of ’79 well. He’d been waiting with dread for the envelope from Chuy. The previous royalty check, in July, had been under $250. The previous quarter’s had been over $1,000. This quarter’s might have zero. Stefon needed the money. His 1972 Ford Galaxie needed a new transmission. He couldn’t keep driving it in first.

The envelope arrived late, the day before Halloween, and for a brief moment, Stefon was overcome by an incredible, unbelieving elation: Chuy’s laboriously typewritten royalty statement ended with the miraculous figure of $7,421.16. Seven thousand dollars! It was more than two years’ royalties, all in one go! He could fix the Galaxie’s transmission and get the ragtop patched, and still have money left over for his back rent, his bar tab, his child support, and a fine steak dinner, and even then, he’d end the month with money in his savings account.

But there was no check in the envelope. Stefon shook the envelope, carefully unfolded the royalty statement to ensure that there was no check stapled to its back, went downstairs to the apartment building lobby and rechecked his mailbox.

Finally, he called Chuy.

“Chuy, man, you forgot to put a check in the envelope.”

“I didn’t forget, Steve. Read the paperwork again. You gotta send me a check.”

“What the fuck? That’s not funny, Chuy.”

“I ain’t joking, Steve. I been advancing you royalties for more than three years, but you haven’t earned nothing new since then—­no new recordings. I can’t afford to carry you no more.”

“Say what?”

Chuy explained it to him like he was a toddler. “Remember when you signed over your royalties to me in ’76? Every dime I’ve sent you since then was an advance on your future recordings, only you haven’t had none of those, so I’m cutting you off and calling in your note. I’m sorry, Steve, but I ain’t a charity. You don’t work, you don’t earn. This is America, brother. No free lunches.”

“After I did what in ’76?”

“Steve, in 1976 you signed over all your royalties to me. We agreed, man! I can’t believe you don’t remember this! You came over to my spot and I told you how it was and you said you needed money to cover the extra horns for the studio session on Fight Fire with Water. I told you I’d cover them and you’d sign over all your royalties to me.”

Stefon was briefly speechless. Chuy had paid the sidemen on that session, but that was because Chuy owed him a thousand bucks for a string of private parties they’d played for some of Chuy’s cronies. Chuy had been stiffing him for months and Stefon had agreed to swap the session fees for the horn players in exchange for wiping out the debt, which had been getting in the way of their professional relationship.

“Chuy, you know it didn’t happen that way. What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about when you signed over all your royalties to me. And you know what? I don’t like your tone. I’ve carried your ass for years now, sent you all that money out of my own pocket, and now you gotta pay up. My generosity’s run out. When you gonna send me a check?”

Of course, it was a gambit. It put Stefon on tilt, got him to say a lot of ill-­advised things over the phone, which Chuy secretly recorded. It also prompted Stefon to take a swing at Chuy, which Chuy dived on, shamming that he’d had a soft-­tissue injury in his neck, bringing suit for damages and pressing an aggravated-­assault charge.

He dropped all that once Stefon agreed not to keep on with any claims about the forged signature; Stefon went on to become a good husband, a good father, and a hard worker. And if cleaning floors at Dodgers Stadium wasn’t what he’d dreamed of when he was headlining on Soul Train, at least he never missed a game, and his boy came most weekends and watched with him. Stefon’s supervisor didn’t care.

But the stolen royalties ate at him, especially when he started hearing his licks every time he turned on the radio. His voice, even. Chuy Flores had a fully paid-­off three-­bedroom in Eagle Rock and two cars and two ex-­wives and three kids he was paying child support on, and Stefon sometimes drove past Chuy Flores’s house to look at his fancy palm trees all wrapped up in strings of Christmas lights and think about who paid for them.

ETA: Here's part two!

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/17/the-steve-soul-caper/#lead-singer-disease

[oinonsana]

my ongoing bladepunk dharmacore new weird fantasy web serial THE KNIGHT VAGRANT just updated and it's got a good chunk of reading material to get through now. its slow going: the maximalist maritime asia inspired fantasy world system of WANDERING is filled with physics and concepts that must be unraveled, and i'm drip feeding info like an elden ring item description

check it out here!

here's the blurb if you're interested!

Death held them, once, for the quickest second. Until the Adamantine Path reaped its due.

Raxri Uttara the Once-Dead walks again, rejuvenated by the Medicine Awoken. Arisen, without memory, they must wander again this Wheel of Wandering. They must seek revelation from their past, understand again the vaunted world of the Utter Islands, and choose, ultimately, between vengeance or enlightenment.

And within that moment, let their enlightenment be that such a duality is delusion.

Follow now RAXRI UTTARA, a once swordgendered swordstress and mystic now shorn of their accumulations. Now they must needs wield the God-Dissolving Darkness to flense away the forgetting's dirt, so that they may arrive again at the truth. In so doing they must recover their lost magicks and martial arts... and attain yet more to enact vengeant enlightenment upon those that wronged them.

If they could remember who or what wronged them...

Upon that peak, will they choose the right blade? The Termagant Buddha watches closely.

Giant cats turned into apartment complexes, ghost horse steeds that tire not, walking giant mechanical armors turned into public transportation, charnel wizards summoning the long-dead, witches wielding the Pureflame of Creation, the Machine God beginning its slick advance into forever progress... the Age of Furor is upon us.

The Latter Day of the Law.

As you walk your Path, Kill God Yourself. Until all beings are free.

THE KNIGHT VAGRANT is a new weird progression fantasy web novel in the universe of WANDERING, a world wrought from Highest Fantasy, Esoteric Buddhism and Maritime Asia.

* Follow warriors who cultivate good merit and meditate upon deities so that they themselves can gain access to paranormal powers, ritual magics, and other means to exercise power over the phenomenal world through enlightenment to their Awoken Nature.

* Inspired by the likes of Abhorsen, Demigods and Semidevils, Return of the Blossoming Blade, Florante at Laura, Elden Ring, Breath of the Wild, Wuxia, Westerns, and Vagrant Story.

* The web novel explores themes of vengeance, memory, being, violence, peace, forgiveness, and emptiness in the face of betrayal, wrath, and war.

* If you liked Dragon Ball Z, Naruto, Jin Yong, China Mieville, Return of the Blossoming Blade or Thousand Autumns, you might enjoy this!

[leadflowers]

Unclean unclean unclean!

Niobe bit into her lower lip, her fingers flexing against Heinrix’s back. His presence, his solidity was an anchor for her sanity, and she clung to him, afraid to let go. 

Afraid that he would turn out to be just another illusion conjured up by that hellish place, as before. A never-ending succession of nightmares spilling over into fresh torments, taunting her with promises of hope before it was cruelly snatched away. 

Again and again. 

But this time it was real. He was real. Niobe’s breath spilled over his neck, inhaling the stench of sweat and blood that clung to them both. Her limbs felt leaden with fatigue, and fresh red stains bloomed on her filthy clothes as she moved. She didn’t care; they were alive, and they were reunited. That was all that mattered. She mouthed a prayer of thanks to the God-Emperor for surely He must have been with them, even in that forsaken city. 

Heinrix would never know the price she had paid for his freedom.

Niobe made the silent promise to herself, and as she did so the memory surfaced, unbidden. 

“Can you hear him, specimen? Such sweet music he makes!” the monster crooned, a vox-like device pinned between its talons. From it issued the sound of a human voice, babbling incoherently before it sharpened into howls of agony which petered out into desultory sobs. There were few intelligible words amid the gibberish, but one stood out. 

Her name. Heinrix was desperately calling her name. 

“Please,” she begged. “Let him go. I’ll do anything you ask if you just let him go.”

The xenos abomination towering over her tilted its head to one side, regarding her with amused contempt. Niobe could feel the intensity of the malice radiating from its black, beady eyes. 

“Anything…but you have nothing left to give me. I’ve already taken everything.”

Involuntarily, Niobe’s eyes cut to the metal table in the middle of the laboratory, stained with the blood of countless victims, her own among them. She remembered the needles and the drills, the flensing knives peeling apart helpless, quivering flesh. It had taken its time with her, though after a while time had lost any meaning. Only the agony was real.

On that table, she had been rendered down to her base components: meat, bone, blood. Niobe had longed for death but the creature would not grant it, revelling in its debased experiments and savouring her misery like a fine wine. As it now savoured Henrix’s.

As a fresh wail pierced her ears, Niobe’s legs gave way and she sank to her knees on the filthy floor. Pain flared along her spine, white-hot flashes exploding behind her eyes. 

“Yes,” she croaked, defeated. “You’ve taken everything. So I beg you for this one thing.”

A vicious smile twisted the haemonculus’s mutilated lips.

“Convince me, then. Beg well, specimen, and I might grant your request. Offend me and I will make you watch while I take him apart.”

It was toying with her, and yet what choice did she have but to play its game? If there was even a chance…

Abandoning what remained of her dignity, Niobe did the unthinkable. She inched closer to the monster’s feet, crawling on hands and knees like an animal, and pressed her lips to the tip of its boot. Hot tears spilled down her cheeks, tracing grooves down her dirty skin. 

“Very good, mon-keigh” chuckled the haemonculus. Its voice was like the buzzing of a saw across bone. “Now lick it.”

Niobe obeyed, almost retching as the taste of viscera and other, even fouler substances curdled on her tongue. Sweat beaded her forehead, trickling into her eyes, mingling with her tears of humiliation and rage. Her entire body was ablaze with it, like fever.

Unclean!

Debasing herself before that fiend had tarnished her, leaving an indelible stain on her very soul. She had allowed herself to be broken by the enemies of mankind. It made her unfit to be counted among the God-Emperor’s loyal subjects.

A heavy price to pay, yet she had paid it willingly. For him. He need never know of her shame. 

It was her burden to bear. 

[defira85]

OC Deep Dive Questions

Thank you @adorablebanite for the tag! I think you've tagged nearly everyone in the Gortash fandom so I won't double inflict it on people 🤣

We'll shock absolutely everyone and do Kassara

What common/uncommon fear do they have?

I think I've said before that her greatest fear is being alone - Daddy's plan for her to be the last one left at the end of the world is a fucking nightmare for her. That's his fault by making her a twin though, she's never been alone ever in her life even before Gorty Boy came on the scene

Uncommon fear, hmm... I don't know what constitutes uncommon for Toril and for a Bhaalspawn... there's a vain little piece of her that's terrified that Gortash won't find her attractive one day, that he'll wise up to her being a weirdly unnatural sentient blob of goo made from gore and not, you know, a person and he'll tell her she's disgusting... she got the Bhaalspawn breeding urges wrong and she's terrified of being a bad mother, do either of those count?

Do they have any pet peeves?

She hates cryptic bullshit. Withers is SO lucky Carmela and the rest of the extended party were around to moderate her temper. That's what you get after a decade or more of Sarevok and Sceleritas just mysteriously telling her she'll know what to do in order to resurrect Bhaal without giving her any fucking help in the matter at all. Be frank with her, or shut up

What are 3 items you can find in their bedroom?

Soap - old habits die hard but she's always got some sort of rubbing alcohol or hand soap or something to get the worst off her hands. Lube - listen. She's in her late 30s at the time of the game. It's good to have a little help. Moisturiser - again, she's in her late 30s, her skin isn't as bouncy as it was 15 years ago, and that was before she underwent multiple autopsies and flensings at the hands of Kressa.

What do they notice first in a person?

Their pulse

On a scale from 1-10, how high is their pain tolerance?

Oh it's so high. Baby girl was born to relish in pain, her own and other peoples, but now she's older and spent six months on an autopsy table and now she has what the kids call chronic pain and so she's a little slower on the uptake than she used to be. Still a titan though, no matter what Ao says.

Do they go into fight or flight mode when under pressure?

It depends on the situation? If it's an active danger situation, she's fight all the way. If it's an emotional confrontation, you know she's going to burst into angry tears and run away

Do they come from a big family/are they a family person?

TWINSIES. Sarevok wasn't entirely sure that the ritual that created her in the Throne of Blood was foolproof, so he made a backup, and she got herself a twin brother. She and Heron were inseparable up until they got to the Bhaalist temple in their teens, at which point Sarevok instructed Orin and Sceleritas to immediately separate them and try to drive a wedge between them.

(Spoilers for KTMTB but she does want a big family, desperately. And she gets one, in the end)

What animal represents them best?

I vaguely recall answering this on another meme at some point and saying she was a white tiger, but I also think polar bear. Both big, chunky animals, plenty of fat on them, but you wouldn't question for a moment that they're wildly muscular and incredibly dangerous. Also, not uncommon to see a wild pale white woman covered in blood in the Lower City like a polar bear covered in seal blood running across the tundra

What is a smell they dislike?

Mint. She hates mint

Have they broken any bones?

Defira the Author has a Thing about broken bones (not quite a trigger, but bluh) so I tend to avoid writing them in my fics because they make me. Dizzy and such. But I am fairly certain that Bane broke one of her wing bones in Banehold when she turned up to fight him for Gortash's soul (she's got Ansur's soul, she's a draconic valkyrie at that point)

How would a stranger likely describe them?

Incredibly attractive but wildly unsettling. A smile that's bordering on unhinged at times. A stillness that makes you want to break into a sprint. You can tell you're in the presence of a predator.

Are they a night owl, or morning bird?

That's a good question, I never thought about it before, but I'm going to say Night Owl by necessity

What’s a flavour they hate and a flavour they love?

She hates mint. She loves vanilla and cherry blossom

Do they have any hobbies?

She really enjoys learning, and she'd probably be a career student if she could. She particularly loves the sciences and even some of her more dense volumes on astrophysics made the mathematician in Gortash bewildered

Boom, surprise birthday party! How do they react to surprise?

She'd be delighted! To some extent. Bhaalspawn are naturally inclined to avoid too much attention but she was always a diva. She loves having people fawn over her

Do they like to wear jewellery?

Her wedding ring almost never comes off post canon, and lbr she was wearing it constantly in the last few years before the game too (before it was technically a wedding ring). She's a glam bitch and she always did love to dress up so you know she's got entire cabinets full of stolen jewellery from her victims, she mixes and matches for her next gala appearance

Do they have neat or messy handwriting?

Immaculate handwriting, perfect calligraphy. She can replicate and imitate almost any handwriting she comes across though, she's a natural forger and mimic (well, we SAY natural, but it was drilled into her by repetition)

What are the two emotions they feel the most?

Pre-game canon: The urge versus a frustrated sense of yearning for a kind of normalcy that she could never have because that's not what she was made for

Game canon: A bubbling, seething, angry frustration because her body and her impulses scare her! They frustrate her!! What the fuck is her body doing!! As well as a yawning sense of horror and dread as the void in her head where her memories should be begins to look less like a void and more like a gaping chasm with something horrific at the bottom

Post-game canon: That lingering sense of dread and doubt that she has herself under control, far and away outweighed by her blissful delight at the happy ending she found

Do they have a favourite fabric?

I don't think she does actually... I think she likes Gortash's jacket, the texture of it and the smell of it... the way worn-in leather feels when it's been worn for years, and the layers and layers of body odour and sweat (my girl likes his musk, what can I say)

What kind of accent do they have?

I don't actually know what her real voice sounds like - there's so many layers to how she presents herself, the lives she's had to live from her first family to the orphanage to the second family to living on the streets to the Bhaalist temple... she's just a natural mimic, switching herself up to match the environment she's in.

She has a naturally very soft, higher pitched voice. Very girlish. It's another one of those things that makes people underestimate her. After waking up on the nautiloid she has a few months where she's quite husky because she's spent six months having her vocal chords either a) not used or b) being carefully flayed by Kressa to see how fast they regenerate with her titan blood so she sounds a bit more vampish after that. Still very soft spoken though

[sangueredenzione]

Membranes

Flensed from reality

Excoriated from the fabric at the back of my head

Purged from existence by the lurid flames that only serve to lick the rancid flesh

Now clean of profanity

Yet defiled by blood

Running cold from my mistakes

Everyone I failed becomes a phantom

They were people once

Don't know what they are now

-G.M

[forgottenlunarium]

Quick one hour sketch of a newly discovered locale in our Pathfinder campaign- the Screaming Dunes!

Far below the golden lands of Aurínellir, within the dream-tangled morass of the Deep Abyss, the Screaming Dunes lie at the heart of the Realm of Dust. Taking up the entirety of a single titanic cavern, dunes of arcane sand slowly churn like waves at sea, whipped along by hurricane force winds. Sandstorms- fast enough to shred steel and flense flesh from bone- roil in predictable patterns through the cavern, each successive storm changing the dunes forever. However, life in the Abyss is nothing if not adaptable. The aethapirs, masters of engineering and light magic, have forged aetheric flotillas of light-powered ships, sailing above the blazing heats of the sands, forever evading the storms. Though these fleets often fall prey to monstrous wyverns which nest in the gloom of the cavern's roof, the aethapirs see such adversity as nothing less than a divine challenge- to survive in a place as inhospitable as the Screaming Dunes is to find spiritual peace. The Fire Trolls, formed from the volcanic blood of Firequeen Volsfyrsamar, have also found a home in the dunes, hunting the titanic beasts that dwell beneath the sands. In Fire Troll culture, after all, an individual's value is measured in the trophies of the beasts the individual has hunted- and so it is that glory hunters flock to hunt the deadly sand sharks and bore worms of the Dunes. Rumours abound that something more than mere sword-toothed monsters dwell beneath the sand. Fleeting sightings of stoneworks spotted in the shadowed nadirs of the tallest dunes arouse curiosity across the Abyss, as storytellers speak of forgotten vestiges of an era of light and abundance. Even now, in this time of prophecy, there are many who brave the Dunes in search of fabled treasure, heeding not the warnings of the skybound aethapirs- to disturb what lies beneath the sands is to invite doom on all...

[moorishflower]

Hello hello moorishflower,

If you ever feel so inclined, would you please tell us a bit more about Cats Eating Bodies from Beautiful Strange And New? I love them and think about them quite a lot, possibly my favorite Sandman-type oc ever, just a delightful concept and also shares the trait of subconscious Eye Stuff from their creator with the Corinthian as an added bonus.

Many thanks!

Hello friend! Of course I can!

In the very beginning, Cats Eating Bodies was a jungle cat. She was fashioned in the shape of the lion and the leopard and the cougar, all the large, prowling night-beasts that humans feared in forest, plains, and jungle. She had a tiger's huge, muscular body, and a lion's golden paws, and a jaguar's head, and the cougar's wailing cry. She didn't need to be any more monstrous than she already was, because humans already feared the natural world, and feared what they couldn't tame.

And then, 10,000 to 12,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent, a wildcat discovered that, if it hung about a grain silo long enough, and didn't run at the first sign of humans, it could eat as many rats as it wanted.

After humans began to domesticate cats, Cats Eating Bodies was somehow less fierce. She was pretty, now, instead of majestic, and she was soft. So Dream of the Endless gave her a new form to wear: the size of a tiger still, but this time she wore a housecat's familiar face, with a wildcat's unnerving stare. In her mouth were a thousand teeth, all of them needles, and her claws were no longer scythes, but precise daggers with which to flense neat strips of flesh. She took to wearing a collar around her throat, with a little bell on it, and her tail was made to be long and luxurious and beautiful, and the very ends of her fur always red, like she had dragged them through blood.

Ultimately, there was not a lot of creativity needed to make her terrifying. Cats manage that well enough on their own. All Dream of the Endless had needed to do was to give her a form in the first place, and hunting grounds to patrol. Cats did all the rest of the work herself. She's a very simple nightmare; she takes joy in the hunt and the kill, and even if every nightmare ends with her prey waking up, she still gets to enjoy them while they last. She, like her namesake, lives in the moment, and has no interest in past or future. When she isn't hunting, she likes to be warm and safe, and in these modern times she likes to watch the dreams of Snoop Dogg, because she likes the way his voice sounds.

[werechicken]

God I love my bunny girl character in Changeling: the Lost and how she’s actually a person whose name was eaten from her spirit, her skin flensed to pieces off of her body with knives, and the pelt of a previous rabbit girl sewn onto her steaming exposed meat and now she’s bnuny.

She’s mostly all better now from the trauma of being chased as prey and is now part of a motley, or adventuring party, comprised of a potted plant woman mystic, a shark woman MMA amateur, and a gingerbread cookie weapons expert who Carries a shotgun pistol filled with cold iron pellets.

Her name is Esther Bonnie. It’s a pun.

[acephysicskarkat]

I don't know if I'm even the right person to talk about this, but one thing I've noticed as a non-American is that even Americans in disenfranchised groups have a weird kind of privilege in global discussions of disenfranchisement because of America's global political and cultural reach.

Like, let's take slurs. If I came up with something that abbreviated to the N-word, I would be flensed. I'd deserve it, most likely, but I would still be flensed. You're not supposed to not know that the N-word is a really bad racial slur. It's common knowledge.

This is not, in itself, a problem! It's good to be knowledgeable about these things.

But.

Let me give you a case study.

The most common abbreviation I've seen for the weird fanfic alpha-beta-omega trope thing is the first letters of those words. It's a logical abbreviation. Sometimes there are slashes between them, or they're in caps.

I've also seen them written all lower case, no slashes. Just "oba" backwards.

Now, you may have noticed that over the course of those last two paragraphs I've gone to some considerable lengths to avoid actually writing those three letters in the established order, and the reason I've gone to considerable lengths to avoid writing it is that those letters in that order are a nasty racial slur against Australian First Nations people. I do not want to say it, I try not to associate with people who do say it, and it threw me for a fucking loop when I saw a post a couple of years back that just read "yeah the ab* fic is just about done" being circulated on tumblr like this was a normal thing to say.

I don't have any recommendations about this or anything. Just a thought I've had percolating for a while now.

[songoftrillium]

What are your opinions on the invasive species of deciduous perennial vine called Kudzu?

From a Werewolf: the Apocalypse standpoint, I believe they've greatly benefitted from the spiritual and physical destruction of the wild spaces in the southern United States, making it a formidable opponent to the Garou, and an excellent patron for the Black Spiral Dancers. If one were to look at how it destroys environments, the umbral influence would be many magnitudes worse, so I can imagine it having animated vines with many spirits ensnared and being strangled, leaving them as easy pickings for BSD Fetishes/Talismans.

W:tE's setting in the Pacific Northwest doesn't have nearly as strong a presence of Kudzu. Like the climate where Kudzu originates, it gets quite cold here, causing it to seasonally die back. Himalayan Blackberry however is equally destructive, choking out competing native plant life and benefitting from fire in ways their neighboring plants don't. This has left it to form many large brambles, and you'll be seeing Himalayan Blackberry in action in the book's opening comic: Cracking the Bone.

Here are the stats we'll be using for Himalayan Blackberry:

Himalayan Blackberry (7) Patron of Strength

“Sleep strong little seed Choke the Wyld and Weaver Berries for your grave” Ranko “Comfort-Crusher” -Takeda, Khan Histpah

Once thought to be a useful fruit, humanity’s hubris led to cultivation getting out of hand. Now this plant is throttling the common plants around its growing habitats. Sadly for the majority of overgrowth found in the western part of the Americas, this plant is highly flammable when dry but has roots deep enough to survive when other plants get flensed. Those roots help drain their neighbors by going deeper than they ever hoped. The Wyrm saw the way this Patron was denying both Wyld and Weaver, the potential for more power to drown out any rivals they had was too alluring for Himalayan Blackberry to deny. Now his children spread him to places that are sacred to Gaia and the basic human population, driving them to deal with infestations or suffer.

Individual Traits: Bastards of Himalayan Blackberry gain 1 dot of Strength even if this takes them above 5 in Homid form. They also gain 2 dots of Power renown (or its equivalent for the corrupted Fera).

Pack Traits: The group can share the Gift Falcon’s Grasp and 2 dots of Survival and Primal-Urge. Some say that those truly blessed by Himalayan Blackberry will always breed a true shifter with a Kinfolk, though the Patron himself has not accepted or denied these claims.

Ban: Whenever the pack kills an impressive enemy or one of their members falls, they must either bury the being with handfuls of Himalayan Blackberry seeds or cremate them to start a wildfire. Failure to do so brings the enmity of this Patron down upon the pack.

[nevesmose]

From birth, it seemed, all Nostramans understood the concept of a protection racket. In her more introspective moments - rare, now, and getting rarer with every mission - Revila thought this was perhaps what made her people such effective warriors in the Great Crusade.

She sat, flight helmet on and spinal plugs engaged, cocooned in the silent near-darkness of her cockpit. Around her, the hangar bay of the VIII Legion strike cruiser Acerodon was as calm and quiet as she had ever known it. Only a few servitors, techpriests and legion serfs still moved around, making last-minute checks and benedictions to either her own vessel, a sleek Wrath fighter craft, or the single midnight-blue Thunderhawk being readied nearby.

Only two vessels would take to the void this night.

The planet they orbited, Revila knew, had been first brought to compliance by the Ultramarines. A reasonable show of force and reasonable discussion between reasonable fellow humans had won the day. 

Yet another leaf was added to the XIII Legion's heaving laurels and the world's tithes had been meticulously provided. For a time, at least.

Then, just as reasonably, the inhabitants decided that they would, on balance, rather not take part in the Great Crusade. Pict-captures had been broadcast across the sector showing a statue of Guilliman being craned down from its plinth in the planetary capital and the new planetary governor, if the title still applied, making an address to his people.

It was this footage that had captured the interest of the Night Lords - the Astartes had found it so compelling that they watched it over and over again, the same loop of the Thirteenth Primarch being hoisted up into the air to rotate stoically in the background of the governor's speech.

In mortal humans, Revila thought, this could be seen as uncharitably crowing over another's ill fortune. Of course it would be singularly unhealthy to be overheard accusing the Astartes of such pettiness, and when asked about it they merely insisted they were being conscientious warriors in the mould of the Ultramarines themselves, making sure to take in every detail of the enemy before making their attack.

On Nostramo, people who developed stiff spines about their gang debts tended to find themselves losing their kneecaps, or fingers, or eyes, or family members until they changed their minds. The same concept applied here, she thought.

But you can't kneecap or flense or blind a whole planet, some people said. Revila agreed up to a point - your arms would get tired eventually - but she knew, had seen herself, that the VIII Legion could and would if they felt it necessary.

In this case they didn't feel it necessary. A more merciful, exemplary act was planned instead. The Night Lords would give the rebel governor one last appearance on all of his planet's pict and vox channels, putting their trust in his world's inhabitants to choose the correct course of action afterwards. Few other Legions would show such benevolence.

The Wrath was ratcheted into launch position and Revila found herself looking directly down at the pristine blue-green orb below. She realised distantly that she didn't even know what the planet was called.

"Thirty seconds to launch, Violator One-Seven," the voice of Acerodon's flight controller grated through her helmet vox feed. "Good hunting."

Not important, she supposed. It would have a new name by sunrise.

[smolcuriouskitten]

[ Empathy... Which Is to Say, Milk ]

( Eddie Brock / Venom )

The muffled screams of the misguided mob enforcer who'd thought to threaten a wandering San Francisco journalist in the middle of the night had been so viscerally satisfying to Venom. There was nothing quite like the sound of a bad guy knowing he was being eaten alive right as it was happening. Of course, They couldn't allow the sound to reach anyone else's ears, but They were all too happy to have it for Themselves -- along with the enforcer himself.

But as They had flensed him down to his skeleton and then discarded him, along with his tacky suit, to one side of the alleyway, a sound on the opposing side caught Their attention. A sound issuing from a closed dumpster. Unmistakable and sad. It was the sound of a kitten mewling.

A guttural grunt issued from the black-skinned behemoth as They swept across the alley and ripped the lid open. Inside, They were confronted with the sight of a clearly injured feline lying atop a pile of bags that hadn't quite been stacked high enough to reach the top. There was no way the little black coffee-colored cat would have been able to escape on its own.

"Oh. Oh, you poor thing."

The threatening rumble of Their contrabass voice and the vicious talons on the ends of Their fingertips were in direct contrast to the way They gently offered Their enormous arm down to the kitten, palm up and open, scooping it gingerly up into Their palm. After a cursory check (female, no collar, no obviously horrid injuries, and oddly trusting of such a creature as They), They brought the little quadruped to Their broad chest and stroked its head with Their opposing hand.

"Who would toss such a wondrous creature aside?" They mused. Then They scoffed. "Never mind. A considerable, yet truly pathetic cross-section of this diseased world would do exactly that." With another stroke of the kitten's ears, They looked down at Their new minuscule friend. "You have nothing to fear now, girl. We will take care of you."

A scant few minutes later, atop a downtown apartment building not so far from the Golden Gate, the Lethal Protector was nowhere to be seen -- but Eddie Brock was leaving behind the nighttime chill of the rooftop in favor of the descending stairwell, with the stray kitten still in hand. "Getcha all set up," he murmured, not expecting she would understand a word of it, but hoping that she would understand his intent.

Eddie's entry into his apartment was apparently not fast enough for his Other's liking, however, as the moment the human had the door open, a thick black tentacle was already extruding from his shoulder and pulling open the refrigerator door. From it, the tendril withdrew a jug, while another tentacle sought out a bowl to pour it into. A veritable river of milk splashed into the vessel.

"Hey, take it easy with that," Eddie protested, "she's small, we don't wanna overwhelm her, right? She's not gonna drink her body weight. Sides, I need some'uh that to keep the edge off all the chocolate You eat."

The voice of his Other echoed in his mind rather than aloud. It is a gift, Eddie, and the more volume and mass of a gift one sees, the less one suspects entrapment or other ill intent. This is important especially when one is frightened and alone.

Before the Klyntar was even finished with His returned admonition, He was already setting the bowl on the floor, and Eddie was kneeling beside it to set the kitten down. He gave her another affectionate stroke across her head. "Well... hope you like whole milk, girl, 'cause it's what We got, an' apparently plenty to spare."

How she loves her sister and being the guinea pig but she will be damned if it isnt inconvient at times. Renelle normally does certain magicks on her sister that doesnt result in any drastic change, maybe longer nails, eyelashes, or even a hair color change. This time, it locked Rocky in her kitty form and now she had to navigate back home. Ren lived in a city and she offered for her sister to stay but she refused.

The way home would be easy to navigate, after all, whats the worse that could happen? Next thing she knew as shes walking back home, some adults began to yank and throw her about in painful ways, it ended with her in a trashcan when they got bored. Her leg was broken but other than that she was okay. She could only muster a few meows since she couldnt get out of the can herself.

Just when she thought the night couldnt get any worse, she heard a commotion coming. What the hell is going on?! After awhile, the noise stops but she would be damned if the lid being ripped away didnt scare her. She meows loudly at the big black blob thing with big teeth, scared and immediately on edge. This was until she could smell a person and they werent hostile despite their appearance. Slowly she calms down once a blob hand is offered to her, which she sniffs and slowly moves onto it. She hears their voice and meows as a 'thank you', trying to ignore the 'stickiness' of the person. Or thing.

The head strokes made her forget momentarily, closing her eyes as she purrs. Now she just hopes this thing wont eat her or hurt her, even if they were nice. Soon arriving at an apartment, she was surprised to see a human take its place with a soft mew nose. So her assumption was correct! A few bumps from her nose as thanks for the help, she watches as a tentacle thing grabs a bowl with milk.

Her heart was warmed and she was thankful for the help given to her, a soft meow left her lips as shes let down. Slowly approaching the milk and sniffing it, once assuming it was safe, she began to lap away at it. Her ears fluttered and her tail waved happily at the treat, purrs filling the air. Now how was she going to tell them what she was?