witchpassing

[witchpassing]

they got rid of the classical elements & replaced it with something called the 'four harmonious insects' so now instead of fire, water, etc we have moth, spider, leech and worm.

[witchpassing]

listen. you're all going to have to stop sending me fully-formed dollposts via the enquiries section. they're perfectly good but you must post them yourselves. my inbox is for offerings, questions, and *incomplete* dollposts that i can yes-and in enriching ways.

[witchpassing]

and baby, they're calling me Haementeria ghilianii

failing to seed one's torrents is a matter for corporal punishment. it is simply, inexcusably unladylike behaviour.

[witchpassing]

failing to seed one's torrents is a matter for corporal punishment. it is simply, inexcusably unladylike behaviour.

[witchpassing]

failing to seed one's torrents is a matter for corporal punishment. it is simply, inexcusably unladylike behaviour.

[witchpassing]

and regarding your second ask, anon, which you have asked me not to publish: i agree with your assessment that you might have [ ] [ ]. it's worth looking into, at the very least.

[witchpassing]

sorry i don't know where else to ask this so i just arbitrarily picked someone out of the tag who has anonymous asks on (i do not want to make a post on my main about it). is empty spaces explicitly a yuri tag, or is it just popular among lesbians? i don't want to crosstag by accident, so i have been trying to find an answer to this without asking anyone because i know it's probably a stupid question. haven't been able to find anything, though.

i am also not a trans woman, so my second question is about whether empty spaces (or in a more general sense, identifying with some of the ideas presented) is 'culturally closed' as it were. if it is supposed to be a space for trans women, i do not want to intrude into that.

i get that these are probably incredibly stupid questions, and my only excuse is that i am a bit stupid and bad at demographic research. i am aware that the fact i do not already know the answers to these questions may indicate that i should not be asking them, but i don't know this for sure either. i am not looking for any specific answer, and with regards to my second question, if i should not be engaging with the tag, i will promptly add it to my filter list. i only ask because i feel like some of my thoughts might be of interest to the tag's residents; if not, i am perfectly capable of having those thoughts in a more appropriate space, or discarding them entirely if no appropriate space exists.

thank you for your patience. you are under no obligation to answer, and i'm very sorry for wasting your time.

good day, anonymous, and thank you for your question. i'll preface my answer by stating that empty spaces, especially in its contemporary form, is many things to many people*; i can only speak here on my personal understanding of it and my preferred approach thereto.

to address your first question first: no, ES is not an intrinsically lesbian subgenre. there has always been a strong orientation towards f/f, yuri, whatever one might like to call it, but it is not a hard rule. there are no hard rules; except, perhaps, 'we'll know empty spaces is dead when someone makes a wiki.'

to your second question, the roots of the movement are in the exploration of themes of disposability, identity, and abuse through a transfeminine lens; in what i consider to be the most valuable fruits of the movement, the dolls and the witches and all the rest are a troupe of archetypes, a flash-fiction sicko's commedia dell'arte, through which these bitter, wrenching feelings may be articulated in sharp relief. does this constitute a closed space, a transfeminine closed practice? if it was, could we hold such a line against those outside it? can i hold it against you, in any way that matters?

plainly, no, i cannot. perhaps it was possible, once, before subculture became subgenre and ES spilled and shattered a thousand ways, but what is to be gained by playing at purity now? i will neither forbid you nor permit you entrance. speak, and see who listens.

[witchpassing]

Twice a day, between meals, the lady's body is examined for teethmarks. Procuring the next offering takes time, and we have weaned her off opportunistic feeding for the most part, as it was proving unsustainable; thus starved, the distemper tends invariably to turn upon itself. Muzzling has been proposed, but, as yet, never tried; perhaps because to see her wander the halls or skulk the dark ends of the garden with a hound's basket strapped to her face would flense away all pretense as to who holds the reins of this house, and then one might commence to wonder how long we have been in power here and not her, and then—

Well, too many bones in the garden for that sort of thinking. You understand.

[witchpassing]

The royal surgeon apologizes, but the assassin's blade has done its work; he cannot save me from this wound. In a rage—my last rage—I strike, fangs in his neck, and he falls to the floor of the surgery choking on venom.

I leave a trail of bodies, refusing to distinguish friend from foe, as I limp, shuffle, drag myself to my chambers, bleeding from my side. My revolver runs empty. With a glare, I petrify my own terrified chambermaid as I slam the door shut and bar myself in my room.

I hear shouts and screams from outside, boots at double march in the corridors of my palace. I lie back on my bed and blood colors the sheets. I hear gunfire and idly I wonder whose coup this is.

My consort emerges from a secret door. She looks me up and down and, with wordless grief, kneels to embrace me.

She'd rather not be taken alive in the coup, she tells me. I nod in understanding and gesture to my empty gun. She shakes her head.

"You know," she says, "it's a hell of a thing never getting to look my wife in the eye."

"Well, you can do it exactly once," I say, "are you sure?"

"Yes," she promises, as earnest as wedding vows.

I bid her put on a record and help me up from the mattress. I step in to meet her, arm around her waist, closed position. The quartet is in 3/4, loud enough to mask the shouting.

We whirl together, there's blood on the carpet, I'm dizzy.

And the dance comes to a close, and I turn my chin up to her, eyes shut, and steal a kiss as we always have.

"Do it," she whispers, "I love you."

I open my eyes, inches from hers.

When the soldiers force down my door, muskets leveled, they find the corpse of their Empress still standing, supported in the stone arms of her consort.

[witchpassing]

The trouble starts after the mutual aid open table,

when the anarchist goes off about Russia and the communist says none of that happened except when it was good. Inevitably “maybe they were right to put anarchists up against the wall” and whoa whoa take five restorative justice accountability session.

The communist leaves angrier at herself than anyone. She feared for a second the anarchist would take the fall: her skin’s a shade darker. Would’ve had to step in and defend her, point out who started it. And maybe that would’ve been a less humiliating way to get banned from giving mutual aid. Now she can only receive. Hooray for empowering trans women.

Two months later, the communist comes back, haggard and hungry. Her hair is in knots. The muscle under her washed-out band tee refuses to waste away, but only just. She stands upright and, as a matter of personal principle, looks everyone in the eye. The anarchist serves her soup grown in her own garden.

They don’t speak that day, or for half a year, until the anarchist attends a queer self-defense workshop: the communist says “put your hand here,” and the anarchist learns to force unwitting opponents on their back. She cracks wise about defending herself from the communist, and the communist looks at her with sudden dullness, says, devoid of affect or intent, that it would take years of effort for the anarchist to survive one minute. The anarchist tries to focus on class.

At a punk show the communist says something about ‘fake metal’ and that’s what makes the anarchist hit the table and ask what her fucking problem is. The communist smiles for the first time, sly, knowing. Before the anarchist can hate that, the horizontal nonhierarchical mutualist de facto leader tells them to take it away from the harm redux handout table. They leave in the same direction.

The communist has drugs. The anarchist is already high. The communist would’ve liked to go pro in MMA, if not for the being transgender. The anarchist was hoping to farm forever but the way things are going, the communist doesn’t want to think about the way things are going so she kisses her neck until the anarchist stops them from grinding crotches. The communist says what the fuck was that about, then: the anarchist says she’s horny, she just doesn’t like sex. She likes getting hurt.

The communist grabs her hard by the jaw, pulls her down to level. Is she serious about that? Mmmmfhhfmmh. Knee straight up the solar plexus. The anarchist bounces off the wall. Trapped air stifles in her lungs, increasing in PSI like shaken soda. Sun in her eyes, shadow of the communist moving behind her, punch to the liver, doesn’t even hurt. So why is she on the floor? She can’t scream, her nervous system is so overloaded. She looks up at the communist, head cocked, unmoving, and feels inexplicably avenged.

From there to the car before either can give in to their worst instincts. Only in the apartment does the anarchist realize she’s locked in with a stranger who said she’d like to kill her. She almost pisses herself.

Two almost-gentle touches from the communist and the anarchist is on the floor, how did she do that? The kindness doesn’t last. For too long the communist feared she would lose herself in the moment: in fact it turns out to be perversely, satisfyingly boring. Kill resistance here, move hands out of the way, elbow skin open there. When she’s done her knuckles throb and her mind is still as a lake. She rests on the anarchist’s chest, listening to the unsteady rags of her breath, and purrs.

Morning is a shower and phones buzzing with news of immigrant sweeps. The communist decides to go down fighting rather than get deported. The anarchist figures pretty soon they’ll find an excuse to sweep up Asians too.

A warehouse is not the most defensible structure, not even with all the furniture inside turned to barricades: too many flimsy pull-down garage doors. Still, there’s plenty of space to house a couple dozen people with their loose mattresses, food, water, ammunition and cigarettes.

The anarchist is the first to chance peeking over the barricades, armed with her own lever-action. Nine milimeters brush her bangs. She replies with her own shot, kneels back down, reeking of smoke, with a mad first-kill smile. The communist licks her lips and drags her away for a beatdown: it’s all she can do to hold back, keep her comrade fighting-fit. Woozy and drunk on her own blood, the anarchist says she wants more, and the communist asks how much, and the anarchist says how much and the communist goes to splash water on her face.

Police turns to National Guard. They only don’t bomb the warehouse because it’s close to the airport. They do send in tanks, for show at first, stoppered at the fences, but the threat is clear: there’s no leaving. The communist isn’t sure what she would leave for anyway. In the moment’s trepidation, the anarchist holds her hand. The communist smells the anarchist’s hair, and an awful dark twists inside her.

The walls come down one bright, shockingly dry summer morning. Yelling and fire and a comrade jumpscaring backwards through a side door, eyes crystal-wide fixed on the ceiling, one big hole in the forehead. The communist says what they both always already knew: their personal investment won’t turn the tide. The anarchist tries to go to the barricade anyway, but the communist holds her tight to the floor until the fight leaves her, until the sobs subside and she looks up with a dead man's eyes and says yeah, okay, yeah, I’m ready.

In the unlit bathrooms (who’s pissing at a time like this?), the communist knocks the anarchist’s head into the impossibly intact mirror. No concussion, not yet. She wants lucidity for this: locking the anarchist’s shoulder behind her back, twisting. The anarchist taps out on instinct. The communist ignores her. There is a pop like an elastic band and the communist shudders with the release of decades. The anarchist says it doesn’t even hurt and the communist says that’s the adrenaline, but here: holding her victim by the ruined arm, the communist brings her down on her knee, until she cries, until she begs to stop, until she pukes. A rib cracks, which the communist honestly hadn’t expected.

The communist hurls the anarchist to the floor, a wrecked ball, and puts all her weight on her knee, levers her foot away from gravity. ACL and meniscus compound tear: plus the shoulder, a year minimum just to heal, then six months of physical therapy. As if. The communist slips behind the anarchist’s head, and puts her in a chokehold.

The last thing the anarchist feels is the smile of the communist counting ten. The communist holds on for fifty more Mississippi, then inherits the anarchist’s gun. The only exit out of the bathroom glows warm orange. She is a terrible shot though an excellent runner. In the chaos she might yet have a chance to slip unnoticed, and anyway there is no one to hold her accountable for teamkilling. She decides, instead, to do what she does best: test her fighting chances.

--reproduced with permission from the original; the tribute is as-ever gratefully received, friend

[witchpassing]

yes, miss comrade - i mean comrade miss - i mean your ladyship - i mean madame commissar - oh god please do put me up against a wall it'd be a mercy at this point

[witchpassing]

stuck on the sofa for anemia reasons, taking the opportunity to write up a reading recommendation —

there is no allegory is an urban fantasy siscon manifesto about growing up as a changeling, sleeping with your little sister, and figuring out what to do when you and everyone you love are completely, unambiguously fucked. it's been running serially for quite a while now and, while it's only improved with time, serial fiction circulates poorly on sites like this one, so i thought i'd bring it to the attention of my loyal cadre of perverts in a more direct and holistic manner. you can find it here, on the author's blog, or off-site on ao3 here.

(and do let her know if you enjoy the work. it's important to water your writers every once in a while.)

[witchpassing]

“You disgust me. With your heroics.” She makes a fist in your hair and deliberately lifts you off the floor. The tip of your sword clatters against the polished marble. Your side hurts. She must have kicked you while you were down. The sun is beginning to set.

“So the world is ending, and evil is in power,” She spits each word with venom, as if she resents having been made to put them in such an unreasonable sequence. Made by you to put them in that sequence. Her grip tightens. The cut on your forehead opens again.

“And you feel that you personally have to fix it?” The bitter laugh at the end is the most galling part of her delivery to you. She lifts you to her eye level now. Her expression is hard to read, your vision was already blurry from being knocked down, and the blood in your eyes doesn’t help. You thrash weakly and gasp something defiant. If she heard, she gives no indication.

“And now you lash out violently against” Now she releases her grip on your hair, and you fall to your knees. You look up again and catch the moment just before her boot connects with your cheek, knocking you flat on your back.

“All perceived injustices.” She takes a few steps over to where you settled in a heap, and delivers another kick to your side. She breaks a rib this time. Now she looms over you, waiting for your writhing in pain to quiet a bit before she continues.

“You want Evil to be something you can crush.” You find her boot pressing against your sternum as she begins again, dirtying your cute, almost princely, blouse. She isn’t digging her heel in yet, although you don’t count on that lasting.

“But you will never crush Evil.” The boot forces the breath and any possibility of a response from your lungs. You helplessly paw for your sword, which is just beyond your reach. You don’t look up at her. You don’t need to. You know the hatred in her eyes, and you would know it even if she blinded you.

“So you are going to choose.” She digs her heel in harder. It hurts. She is doing this to hurt you now. Your head now turns to the vaulted ceiling. You can’t make out any of the ornamentation any more. The confrontation with her seemed so dramatic. She made her declarations and you made your speech. You fought, and you were supposed to win.

“Are you going to die without compromising once” You know that question was rhetorical, but you still try to answer her. She kicks you again to make you stop. She wasn’t finished with her question yet.

“Or swallow lies that give you personal satisfaction?” Despite the stabbing pain in your side, despite the threat of being kicked again, you rise to your elbows. Your blood is staining your blouse and skirt. You’re dizzy. She squats down and looks you in the eyes. You turn away from her.

“Because we both know you will not be a tool for” She grabs your chin and twists you to face her. You’re too weak to stop her now. You can’t make out her expression at all. She sounds almost sad.

“Anything less than ideal.” Pity. It’s pity in her voice. After half-killing you, the truth of the matter is that she thinks you’re a stupid little girl. She feels bad for you. You spit blood in her face.

“And that makes me sick.” She releases your chin and forces you back to the ground. Out of the corner of your eye you see her blurry shape turn away from you. The sun has set.

[witchpassing]

say@メイドロボットましろパパ@A_says_

[witchpassing]

Girls are such useful things to own. For just a few bowls of rice a day, a cattle prod, and a little box to store it in whole you're asleep or away you get a thing that you can use for nearly everything. Cooking, cleaning, sex, a convenient torture toy, electrical work, farming. Really anything you think you can train it to do while keeping it chained up and unable to escape.

[witchpassing]

much to be said about the political underpinnings of omegaverse but you can't deny that it's cute when a girl gets all fuzzy-headed and starts exhibiting nesting behaviours

[witchpassing]

It really makes you think. Do heavymachinerygirls have erotic fantasies about the idealized form of a massive excavatorgirl, her arm rugged and her teeth weathered. Or do they daydream about the work performed, of highwaygirls and bridgegirls and damgirls, mother and work and god all in one.

Please help! my editor needs a new erotica pitch by the end of the month and he already shot down my truckgirl romeo and juliet pastiche!