World of Main Characters

RPGs get funny the more people you have involved, reaching a kind of critical level of foolery with MMORPGs.  The basic old skool unit of RPG is a few bozos and a GM, or in video games, a few bozos you control vs. designed world/story.  In the original Final Fantasy you control the prophesied ‘warriors of light’ who have come to save the world, because crystals.  A small number of important bozos can be main characters without pushing believability too much, but what happens when you have thousands, running around doing dances?  When everybody has one black wing and one white wing and an eyeball that leaks golden sparkles and the death scythe of wunkred +20?

Perhaps in response to that vibe, I wanted to make a character that looked like an NPC in the one MMO I ever played, The Secret World.  Unfortunately the name I wanted was out, so I gave up.  Just as well, it’s all wasted time.  Fine Paper Gifts the NPC-turned-PC was not meant to be.

But as I’ve been turning over a story idea in my head, this feeling was coming back to me.  When you have adventures, romances, thrillers filling the libraries and virtual storefronts of the world to the brim, you’ve got thousands and thousands and thousands of specialest people in the whole world.  Even when they try to cut against that grain, the circumstances surrounding them make it clear that isn’t true.  Just because you have brown hair doesn’t mean you’re not special, when all the sexiest dudes in the world want to make you their faerie queene, or when you have a certain set of skills that lets you save tha white house from nucular terrorizzin’.

This is a variation on “why write when there are already so many stories?  why does mine matter?”  Probably just the feels of any artist during some grey time between here and there, nothing deep.  But I’m kinda like this.  If I make another special bozo to launch like a solitary molecule into the specialbozosphere, they better not cloy.  They better not annoy.

Best way to avoid making people feel the teeming masses behind your characters, I think, is to have a better story.  You’re not going to out-batman Batman.  That problem solved, well, we just have to figure out how to tell a better story.  That shouldn’t be difficult, right?

–

Errol Flynn the Butcher

Content Warnings: Gore, Horror.

In my post-wokenment action movies have become a skosh more sour in my mind, contemplating how they could fuel the kind of national pysche that thinks war is good, that police need to be less restrained. But I’m usually thinking about that in terms of guns. What about rapiers and longbows?

American cinema and TV through most of the 20th century, when boomer opinions were being formed, violence was largely bloodless and consequence free.  Cowboys shoot people, they fall down, and afterwards we are not treated to the scene of bodies dangling from every surface around town square.  But likewise, Robin Hood or Ivanhoe pushes his sword at a guy and he just falls over the railing, body magically disappearing from consideration after the fact.

Obviously painting guns as harmless fun is the more problematic notion, as evidenced by the libertarian fantasia Adam is reviewing, and as those weapons can cause more damage more quickly.  But still, medieval weapons are nasty things.  Particularly longswords like you’d see wielded in Arthurian legend.  And medieval people didn’t have the same illusions about that.  Maybe it’s easy to forget the longer you go without a war, without print media, but I’ve seen medieval illustrations where guys are split in half, insides looking like salmon filets, blood flowing out in ribbons or sprays of droplets.  Not realistic style, but realistic damage.

I mentioned Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves recently.  That movie was more able to put a bloody slash on a sword victim than in Errol Flynn’s day, but still wasn’t quite there.  To be realistic, head should be flopping, blood shooting like a fire hose, limbs falling left and right, guts strewn across the battlements.  A few edgier movies have pushed in those directions.  Is that a good thing?  Hong Kong blood opera never really got me to “say no to guns” before, because it still showed one side as being a bunch of disposable nobodies, showed heroes as having the most hit points, by merit of their towering will and virtue.

But that’s not my point today.  Mostly, I’m just feeling darkly amused by imagining suave old time swashbucklers steeped in gore and still stepping lightly, being quippy.  Freddy Krueger liked quips too.  Let’s see Robin Hood ending entire human lives in brutal agony, slaying mother’s sons, fathers, and men of honor, just trying to defend the king.  Robin Hood laughing while you hold your guts in and fall onto a pile of your writhing and mutilated friends.  Let’s see Robin Hood and the Ocean of Blood.

–

Hulking Out and Kenning Gee

last night i had a dream the hulk was on a rampage and the only way to get him to stop was for some other super-guy with super duper strengths to cut open his chest and inject a sedative straight into his heart.  a bunch of super randos were making attempt after gory attempt.

at some point within the last forty-eight hours it has crept over me that i remember not one but two kenny g tunes.  there was that one, i think his first big hit?, that’s all like “badoodledoo, badoodledoo, badoody-doo.  badoodledoo, badoodledoo, badoody-doot-doot-doo!”  then there was this other one with a vocal sample in it, some ambiguous crowd of people saying “slip of the tongue” over and over again.  “slip of the tongue, badadoo badadoo doodoot Slip! moodledoodle.”

that shit sucked boy.

–

Brainjackin: Sad Endings

This one’s a little bit of a journey so bear with me.  There was a window in my twenties when I lived with my dad and his girlfriend and her two kids.  I don’t remember if this was before my brother went into the army and left the state, or after he got back to finish his last tour here, but he was around.  Hang on, was I twenty yet?  Whatever.  Throw in Bad-Moustache-Having Guy and My Tech Support Guy to round out the picture.  That lady -the girlfriend aforementioned- had a species of BPD that allowed her to run a very clean household – the kind of clean that facilitated parties.

So we arranged a movie night with big snacks and a lot of DVDs in the queue.  Or were they VHS?  Shit, I think they were VHS tapes.  Way back.  In the most memorable moment of the evening, some guy was being burned alive in Braveheart and two of the attendees said in unison, “and it stays crunchy, even in milk!”  How did they think of the same rude application of pop culture reference for that image?  We partook of all the same media, so not impossible, but it was unlikely enough to amuse.

The most consequential moment of the night came later.  I had the most staying power and after everyone else had left or gone to sleep, I feel like it was after two AM?, I popped in Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys.  I felt big feelings, beginning to end.  I’m mostly incapable of crying, but I cried a little.  I recognize now that you should not trust how you felt about a movie if you were watching it before dawn, but the damage was done.  I got a tattoo of the movie’s logo on my wrist.  At least it wasn’t Sister Act 2.

I still have that tattoo, but it’s gone through a few changes over the years.  First up, it was originally laid down in red ink, over the warnings of the tattoo artist.  Red is very prone to fading and fade it did.  Probably didn’t help that the heavy-handed ex-con put a lot of scar tissue into the cut, and some pigment came off with scabs.  But the symbol, where it appeared in the movie, was usually spattered and smeary.  Illegibility suited it, but years of fading later, an art school acquaintance of my husband was apprenticed to be a tattoo artist and needed victims for practice, so it seemed like time to get it touched up.

This was the friend who valiantly defended my husband and others from an art school clown attack, and she used to wear a t-shirt with JESUS IS A CUNT in giant lettering, so genial to us.  However, I cannot trust her taste in music since that occasion, because her mix at the tattoo parlor included post-Danzig Misfits – that is to say, christian Misfits, and they genuinely did sound christian.  I might be nearly tone deaf, but I can tell the difference between Creed and Nickelback.  They both suck, but the christianity of the former has a certain quality to it, better identifiable to musicians, but detectable to a discerning lay person, and I detected the shit out of it.

Anyway, the work was a little dubious and the tattoo is still a mess.  But the important thing, to my husband’s reckoning, is that it doesn’t look like a stamp from the club that I’d neglected to wash off the next day.

The important thing about all that is to say that 12 Monkeys had a sad ending and may have been the first sad ending I was ever able to appreciate.  I don’t think that speaks well to Terry Gilliam’s talents, because I was the kind of basic bitch that was not at all ready for genuinely sad endings.  He communicated this sense that Cole’s life in a time loop was a kind of immortality.  He had struggles and died young, but in the course of that life, he experienced love – and that somehow vindicated -or at least mitigated- the tragedy.  Basically, it was a fake sad ending.

Flash forward to the earliest days of going out with my husband, when he introduced me to the works of Kiyoshi Kurosawa – particularly the movies Cure and Sakebi.  Those movies show horrible events ending horribly, but still work as art, because they’re the sad mask in that ancient symbol of drama.  Tragedy is a legitimate art form that I never appreciated.  Even when first introduced to Kurosawa, I wasn’t ready for it.  I told him as much – “I recognize the artistic power of this work, but it feels like it isn’t for me.”  I wanted to see stories about heroes overcoming hardship, lovers getting to love.  Happy Endings, basically.  One of those drama masks was The Grim and Grimy One, and I wanted nothing to do with it.

But the movies stayed with me, in my mind.  I couldn’t forget them because they had that power, and from the memories of them alone, I came to appreciate tragedy in a way that I never had before.  The culmination of this came a few years ago, the first time that I ever wrote a tragic ending.  Did it work?  Was it as good as the work of Kiyoshi Kurosawa?

Surely not, but it made more sense for the piece than a happy ending would have.  I served the story at the expense of the happiness of my little babies.  That’s artistic growth, and I owe it to my husband, which makes this another instance of Brainjackin’™.  Thanks man!

–

Everything I do, I do it 4 U

Hey Americans.  Yeah, you.  Remember how much you loved Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, starring the Kevin of Costner and the Mary Elizabeth of Master and Tonio?  You know it’s true.  Everything I do, I do it for you…  Bryan Adams at the top of his game.  Christian Slater doing a cockney accent.  Kevin inspiring Eddie Izzard’s bit about American Robin Hoods and Mel Brooks’s Men in Tights.  Morgan Freeman rocketing to fame.  Kevin Costner’s entire booty ass.  “I’ve never seen a noblewoman’s breasts before.”

I’m remembering this because I’ve been saying “huzzah” to low-key good news for long enough that my husband and mother-in-law have noticed, without me noticing I was doing this weird thing.  And I wondered if I got it from the episode of China, IL where Baby Cakes started thinking he was Kevin Hood, which consisted of medieval violence and saying “huzzah” whenever he appeared.  Then I just remembered that moment.

My family watching the shit out of that movie on VHS.  The soundtrack dominating the airwaves.  Not a negative word in sight.  Everybody was hyped for that goofy shit, and then it was gone, leaving a hole in our little hearts.  Dredge up your VHS player and watch it again.  You know you wanna.  Huzzah!

–

Just Doesn’t Hit the Same

There was some debate as to the validity of my notion that Dobald Upchuck Scump is an atheist, but you know, shitler and I at least have this much in common – we are blasphemies in motion.  But with his hand on the bible and mine on the atheist bloge network, it just doesn’t hit the same when I make like him.  I’ll hafta try harder next time.

**EDIT, important note below the image**

** i know some people would feel weird about saying anything positive to ai art, so in case it wasn’t clear from how fast this very detailed and rendered image was produced, i did the same thing tvfnk did, and had ai assist my iconoclasm.

midjourney did a terrible job of it, chatgpt’s thing was crashing.  google gemini was the winner, producing almost exactly this image in one try.  i’d fed it two photos of me.

anyway i am in favor of ai art being a thing, so ideally do not be trying to wage that war in my particular comments.  mano has a topical post to do that with.

–

Trump is Clearly an Atheist

Atheism is not an intellectual achievement.  Maybe for some people it can be, people who grew up in an environment completely drenched in god sauce, atheism and doubt never being allowed a voice.  And in that void, they had to rebuild atheism from scratch, using the power of reason to give voice to and justification for rejecting everything they’d ever been told to believe about the universe.

But my cat is nigh-thoughtless and he’s an atheist, no need for any of that.  He never had the power to understand the lie of religion in the first place.

President for Short-ass Rest of His Life Donlad Pumpkinhead Shitler IV possesses the atheism of a cat.  He will never fear death because he is incapable of grasping the reality of it on an emotional level.  It means nothing to him.  Should we really expect that he has anything like a conception of life beyond his own, enough to imagine a creator that came before him, a creator that would have any opinion that matters regarding his worldly conduct?

The people who trust that he is christian are the same as the people who believe he is honest.  On at least this one issue, we gotta admit, he’s one of ours.  Likewise most of us in the atheist community are “culturally christian,” carrying with us the patriarchal and zealously conformist baggage that entails.  Unsurprising in hindsight to see our “thought leaders” in the same sordid company as hair fuhrer.

When I say these things, on some level you know it’s just to court controversy in my scene.  But also I feel a need to distinguish myself from the shitbird hypocrites of the right wing by not playing the no true scotsman game.  If that sack of shit wants to say he’s an atheist – which he won’t – he has as much right to the word as DickDawk, Spam Hairish, and the rest.

…and the rest, here on Epstein’s Iiiiiisle!

–

Al Jolson

I can think of non-KKK reasons why a person might feel motivated to delete any reference to blackface from Al Jolson’s wikipedia page.  If you’re USian, I bet you can picture the guy.  Not a racist bone in his body™, just got a lot of joy from that man’s body of work and can’t stand to see that one thing overshadow his legacy.  Right?  But still, KKK reasons outweigh the non-KKK by a damn sight (ironic because yes, he was jewish).  This has made his wikipedia page* a long-running battleground.

For a time the page made no mention of blackface, and now that it does, that’s footnoted to hell with “this was totally fine,” “no it wasn’t,” “yes it was,” “no it wasn’t,” in the wikipedia-rules-acceptable version of quotes and references to what other people have said (citation needed).  The end result of all of this:  The Number One Historic Guy Associated with Blackface has a wikipedia page longer than Napoleon Bonaparte, which mostly consists of hagiography.

Not that the big little emperor deserves shit, but he might be slightly more notable than the minstrel act, right?  Wikipedia’s struggles to define the limits of “notability” have had some odd results.  A massively influential musician might be a red link while every boy in every soccer team since the dawn of time is listed.  This odd result, I’d argue, is more embarrassing than most.

–

*I wanted to get a snapshot of where it’s at right now on the wayback machine but the most current one on there has nothing but apologia in the blackface section.  By the time you read this article, will all the “this kinda sucks” notes have been deleted again?  As white people, I feel a lil uncomfortable when people throw hate at us in a broad and unqualified way, but this wikipedia page kinda makes me wanna smash the delete all white people button.

No Nukes

If shitler and his “warfighter” get up their dicks enough to nuke somebody, I’d like to just be on the record here as saying whatever reprisal happens to this country will be justified.  I hope first and foremost that the fucking clown posse doesn’t do it, because fuck nukes, but if they do?  I hope the reprisal is a decapitating strike that doesn’t kill any of the civilians of Washington DC, who are mostly descended from the slaves who built the place.  We’ve done enough decapitating strikes lately to more than earn one of our own.

I am obliged by my “no doomerism” policy (please don’t forget it in my comments) to say I sincerely do not believe a full-scale nuclear conflict will result from whatever these horrific fuckups do.  It has been inevitable since the Cold War that at some point somebody is going to use smaller-scale nukes in a war scenario.  The technology exists to make a crater of small country, but restricting the scope of the blast to the size of a city is more “economically” sensible – preserve the value of more of the real estate.

Whoever ends up taking out the trash here, don’t miss newt gingler.  I like the version of him from this video better than reality…

–

JnBvtWoI II:X

Nothing as naughty as the last chapter, time to be boring again.  The emotions run high in this one.  If you want to read this novel from the beginning, see this article, read it, and hit the next button until you see more entries, stopping with II:V, then starting again at this one.  And stopping again here at II:X, because I have had a terrible time writing lately, and that time is over!  I might pick this beast up again in July.

–

Josefina took advantage of the secrecy of her existence to sink into despair.  The difficulties of their situation were obvious enough, but her feelings went beyond that.  Perhaps it was the melancholy nature that had followed her since childhood, momentarily forgotten in the wake of her time in the Torre Alucine and reunion with Ximura, finally returning.  The wisdom of her crucible had not cured the depression, only allowed her to briefly forget it.

Or it was something else.  She muddled through leading meditations, but was losing whatever spell she had cast on the students.  Her hair was a mess, her clothing disheveled.  Ombonculita refused to entertain the children anymore, scowling at everyone as she clung to Josefina’s breast.

Umbrifer lost track of its own lessons, focused on cleaning up after her messes and social missteps.  It would make nice with anyone she had bothered, then follow after her and do whatever it could to help her feel better.

On one such occasion, with white afternoon sun filling the guest suite, Umbrifer followed her in and closed the doors behind her.  As it turned back to face her again, it seemed her steps had slowed, almost like the sunlight was stairs that she was about to ascend.  Instead she collapsed to a couch there, almost crushing Ombunculita, who crawled free of the mess squawking.

It came to them, laid fuzzy black paws on her arms, and rolled her over to face the world.  “I try not to impose on humans, not ever, but this is starting to look risky to me personally.  Is there anything I can do to get you playing nice with the Alishers again?  Or at least less of this…”  It gestured at her as if she was a pig sty that needed cleaning.

The anger in her tiny dark eyes increased her resemblance to Blasfemia, which successfully intimidated the spirit.  Long dark hair half-concealed her face.

Umbrifer slow-blinked that big pink eye and tried again, gently.  “You deserve to feel as well as you can, Josefina.  I don’t like to see this.  Can you at least tell me what is happening to you?”

“No.”  She shook her head.  “I don’t know the answer.”  She bit her lip and looked off to the side, lost in thought.  “Maybe I just need a hug, heh.”

“I can go find your sister.”

She looked at him wryly.  “Why not hug me yourself?  Afraid you’ll fall in love?”

Umbrifer’s eye was too big to conceal thoughts or feelings.  It darted to the side and back.

“What is it?”  Her face went slack, eyes piercing.

“I don’t want you to…  Don’t make me say it.”

“What,” she spat.

Umbrifer threw up its hands and stood up to flee if it needed to.  “I saw the video, alright?  I’m sorry!”

Her face stiffened in horror.  By then the spirit was halfway to the door.  Suddenly, Ombonculita opened her mouth and roared like a lion.  But instead of a roar, some eldritch ball of sound waves erupted and struck Umbrifer in the chest.  It flew back, tumbling over furniture and crashing into the wall.

The spirit scrambled to its feet and looked at the homunculus in alarm.  She was propped up on her arms at full extension, body rigid, thorned head trembling.  Distortions in reality dripped from her silently screaming mouth like foam from a sick dog.  Her eyes were livid with hate.

Josefina wanted to apologize, to do something to reprimand her Abuelita for this violence, but she was still in the grip of sorrow and horror, trembling.

Umbrifer gave her one last sad look and fled the room.

It had to find Blasfemia.  Only her sister had any chance of seeing this right.

–
Darter slumped against a post, wishing he was more capable of getting drunk.  He was slowly sinking further into the snow, not melting it as much as a living person would.  It was like he was daring anyone to notice.  A shadow loomed above him.

“Boy, you need to get back to work.”  It was his old boss, Graldon.

“They need me.”

“Alish needs you, needs all hands on the machinery.  I am shocked the Bugaster hasn’t sent you back to the works yet.”

“I’m translating Corazono and Lenko, man.  Get off my back.”

“I see you translating alcohol into stupor while we’re working on a double ransom.”

Don’t blow it, he thought, his secret eye seething.  “I’ll talk to Mallor.  If he still needs me for something, I’ll do it.  Otherwise, Ill help.  Alright?”

“Alright, boy.  Fair enough.”  His words faltered at the end as he was distracted by Traders laughing across the street.  He didn’t want to cause trouble either, and hurried on his way.

Darter dragged his corpse upright, swayed lightly in place, and wondered.  What was the point of prolonging an existence where he could no longer enjoy any of the things he had once lived for?  Rage at the injustice of dying young, or just animal panic, had driven him to reanimate in this unnatural way, but neither of those feelings remained in him.  Maybe all that he had left was the half-assed ambition to make his death interesting.

A few Traders noticed him and walked over.  “Oy!  Why are you staring at us, kid?”  “And why are you blue?  It’s nasty,” said another.

“I’m sick.  Probably not a good idea to touch me.”

That did bring them up short.  “Well, just mind your eyes, fool.”  A few gestured at their weapons.  They didn’t have to touch him to hurt him.

“Mmhm.”  He was already distracted by the sight of Umbrifer crossing the street a few blocks away, so averting his eyes was easy.

–
In the tavern, Blasfemia was on Kottor-sitting duty.  She figured that alone should be worth the cost of the Leveret’s fuel — keep the old goat entertained so he didn’t get any more dangerous ideas for extracting diversion from the Alishers.  By then his favorite lieutenants also had translators, and spent most of their hours reading her words and carousing.

“I kill duendes, what can I say?  Everybody has to do some kind of job.  You find out stuff about them, like, which ones talk with each other and which ones are just stupid animals.  You can’t always tell just to look at them.”

“And the hellhound?  Just a stupid animal?”  Kottor’s voice was thick with a plug of chewing algae in his mouth, slowly releasing a mild intoxicant.  Probably best to keep a clear head instead of doing every drug in sight, but he couldn’t resist having a little taste of each.

She tipped her computer down.  “The stupidest.  Now cañacorbos, they look like a bird with a little goblin face, they seem like they’d just be a dumb animal, but one time I cleared a field of ’em and the next time I saw some, they knew.  One must’ve gotten away and squealed.  Watch out for the girl with the knives.”

“What’s a bird?,” one of the lieutenants asked.

Kottor said, “Like acrife, from Catedra 3.  I’m more interested in what you didn’t tell us about the time you broke out of jail.”

No one asked about goblins, knowing that was what she sometimes called Umbrifer.

The goblin itself appeared at the door, looking agitated.  “Ursula, I need your help with something at the Bugaster’s house.  If you can excuse us, good people.”

They laughed at the polite description.  Every time they laughed, the servers and their guards braced for something unamusing to happen.

Blasfemia said, “Well.  Sounds urgent.  I’ll be right back.”  She was glad for the reprieve, but felt the importance of hypnotizing the jerks with her bullshit, every time she saw a young Alish lady flinch at them.

Kottor waved her off and went into some rapid patter of Lenko.  The translator on Blasfemia’s computer worked on it, but she paid it no attention.  Umbrifer was glad they hadn’t made an issue of the interruption.

Out in the street it hustled her away from the nearest Traders that were milling around, and said, “It came out that I saw that horrible video.  I never told her before.”

“You never told me before, puto!”  She slapped it in the chest with both hands.  “What the fuck?  How is she?”

“Bad, or I wouldn’t have gotten you, would I?”

“Is she hurting herself?  Somebody else?”

“I don’t know what to expect.  Maybe I shouldn’t’ve left her with Ombonculita.  I don’t know what she’s capable of!”

“You’ve known us for months now, come on.”

“So she wouldn’t hurt the homunculus?”

“Duh.”  They never stopped walking, getting to the house quickly in the small village.

“Ombonculita might hurt you.  Be careful.”

“You’re coming with me, goblin.”

Under normal circumstances the doors would only open for family members and people with temporary permission, but while the Traders were in town, they would open for anyone without a Trader within six paces.  They had to wait for some Traders to move down the street, and flashed fake smiles at them as they went.

–
Mallor patrolled Alish end to end, watching for any scene that might erupt into violence with the Traders and defusing them.  This was his life during their visits, a task he entrusted to few others in the village.  Only the coolest heads with the most experience of the brigands could deal with all the possibilities – to the extent no situation cropped up that was truly impossible.  All it would take was a power-drunk whim from one of the violent characters.  The patrol duty was whim management.

He’d passed Darter a few times, but didn’t feel free to spend a minute on the kid.  Maybe the Traders were being exceptionally well behaved, because he’d run out of situations to deal with, and stopped to bother him this time.  “Darter.”

The boy had been leaning on a post, hanging his head, underdressed for the weather.  “Oh, I was supposed to talk to you.”

“What’s the matter?  Why aren’t you with Umbrifer?  You were thick as thieves a month ago.”

“It’s personal.  Anyway, Graldon wants me back on the machines.  Is there anything I can do for you instead?  You know I’m not the best worker.”

“I know.  As luck would have it, I can use you.  But only if you can keep your act together.  Look at you out here, in your indoor pants.  Absurd.”

“Sorry, please.  Tell me what the job is.”

“Pretend to be a drunk.  Hang out at the tavern.  Listen for anything important they say in Lenko, and for your own sake as much as ours, do not let them know you understand the language.  Can you do it?”

He bobbled in place, unsure of himself.  Could he avoid giving a subtle look of recognition at any of their words?  Would he even be able to sit close enough to understand them without arousing suspicion?  “I can.  I swear I can.”

“Good boy…”

–
Blasfemia and Umbrifer came into the big central lounge of the second floor and had to shoo some ladies who were wrapped in furious rumor.  Earlier it had told them to stay away from Josefina for their own sakes, now it had to tell them again, get away from the door to the guest suite, out of sight altogether if they could.  Then they took up positions on either side of the door, like cops about to do a raid.

“Josie!  I’d like to come in, Hermana.  Is it safe for me to do that?”

There was no response.  Umbrifer gestured for her to just go in.  She gestured after you, and it rolled its eye.

“Josie, I’m coming in now.”  She grabbed Umbrifer’s collar and dragged it in with her.  The creature was reasonably strong for its size but its inhumanly low weight made it easy to push around.

Josefina and Ombonculita were out of sight.  The suite had a few rooms, and she must have retreated to a bedroom, or a bath.  They heard no water dripping and headed to her preferred bedroom.  This time Blasfemia let Umbrifer stay outside, but insisted it stay close to her door.

“Josie, I’m coming in.  Don’t blow me up, OK?”  The door was not locked.

A massive decorative wardrobe was blocking the window, no doubt moved by sorcery, clothing falling out of it in a landslide.  The room would have been pitch black but for a halo that escaped the edges of that barrier, and one small skylight.  It was still dark enough to make it hard to tell where the bedding ended and her sister began.

“Eyy, um…  I don’t know what to say.  You know my usual answer is killing somebody.  Want me to kill the Corsario?”

A soft golden light bloomed on the bed, in contrast to the pale white light from outside.  It was in the hands of Ombonculita, illuminating her feral face.

“Come on, Hermana, don’t let this thing burn the house down.”

A hand snaked out of the blankets and touched the little creature’s thorny head, and the light went out.

“I’m really glad to see that.  It means you’re still thinking, not totally loco.”  Blasfemia picked her way through the darkness and came to Josefina’s side of the bed, avoiding her little Abuelita.  She felt around until she was touching something she recognized, then got an arm all the way around her.

“I love you.  Don’t be alone anymore.  I can’t stand it.”

Josefina pulled away, making room for her sister in the big bed, and Blasfemia got in, put a hand around, assuming the role of the big spoon.  The homunculus was not of a mind to be the littlest cucharadita, and held herself up on Josefina’s arm, staring at Blasfemia in the dark.

She squeezed her sister and tried to give her some mental room by waiting to talk again.  She could not be as patient as she preferred.  “You don’t hafta do anything for these ding-dongs.  I’ll do it all, OK?  And whenever I can I’ll come see you wherever you hide, and I’ll hold you just like this, until you feel better.”

Josefina finally spoke, quiet, hoarse.  “Don’t kill that duende.  I still like it.”

“When you don’t like it, can I kill it?”

“Mmhm.”

They stayed there quiet a moment longer, before Blasfemia’s impatience got the best of her again.  “I brought it.  Umbrifer’s probably waiting outside the door there.”

“I can’t…  I can’t stand it.”

“Don’t be sad; I can get rid of it without killing it.  It’s real easy to push.”

Josefina shuddered and Blasfemia hushed, waiting her out.

“Does it really think I would try to have sex with it, just because of that video?”

“Did it say that?  I’ll smush it like a motherfucking bug.”

“Don’t, don’t…”

“Yeah, yeah.  You don’t make it easy.  You know, it had to have seen that video before the first time you ever met, right?  So it’s no different now than it was before, with you.  And it’s been all nice to you and stuff, right?”

“I guess.”  She sobbed.  “But that means this whole time I thought it was cool, it was afraid of me, feeling weird about me, looking at me like that.”

“But it was being nice to you because it liked you anyways.  You know Umbrifer always liked you a lot more than me.  You know why.”

“I just wasn’t ready to think about anybody…  anybody who saw that, seeing me…  I can’t do anything.  It’s all too crazy.”

“I don’t know what to do about that!  I don’t!  It’s the kind of thing like, if I could cut the memory out of everybody’s head one at a time, go door to door with these knives, I’d spend the rest of my life doing that.  I wish I could!”

Josefina rolled onto her back, so she could hold Blasfemia and Ombonculita at the same time, and kissed Blasfemia on the head.  “Hush, hush, Ximura.  You did everything you know how to do, and that’s all we have to do.  I’m the one who has to figure out how to deal with this.”

“Maybe it would help if the Corsario promised to not be weird about it with you?”

“Oh I don’t know.  Maybe…  I just wish I could…  I don’t know, hug it.  Like a normal person.”

“Is that all it would take?  I could bully him into that, no problem.”

“It’s ruined.  Umbrifer can only see me as a crazy sucia who wants to fuck it.  I’m ruined.”

“That goblin has been watching you with its bug eye for months now, and never once has this come up.  It has to be able to trust you by now, or it wouldn’t have got me to help, wouldn’t have tried to help you even when I’m not around, so many times.”

“You think so?”

–
Umbrifer wondered for the thousandth time how its life had come to this, when suddenly there was a whistle from inside the room.  It had to be Blasfemia.  She called it in.

It came in and switched on the light.  The ladies winced and it turned the light back off.  “I can see just as well without it, just a habit, I’m sorry.”  It stepped in a short way, and looked at the weirdos on the bed.

Blasfemia stood up and came to it.  “Listen.  If you are OK with Josie hugging you, it would make her feel a lot better.  She would never wanna do anything to make you feel uncomfortable though, so only say yes if that’s true.  But it would really help her, y’know?”

Umbrifer crossed its arms and looked sadly at Josefina’s tear-dappled face.

She said, “I promise, I’ll never ever come onto you.  Really.  I just need you in my life as a friend.  It’s just too…”  She broke out crying again.

“Hey,” it said.  “I’ll do it.  I do care about you, Josefina.  Life is crazy; you never know what’s going to happen.  All I ever wanted to care about was the Leveret, but now I care about you too, OK?”  It came to the bed and got in beside her, and then awkwardly put an arm around her.

She embraced it back and cried herself out, leaning on the weird thin duende for comfort.  Its body was warm, everywhere that was not covered by clothing bristling with stiff fur.

Josefina knew she could keep her promise not to come onto Umbrifer, but to her surprise, she really did feel a romantic impulse.  She really did want to fuck it.

Suddenly, all three of their computers buzzed to life with a message.  They checked them out.

The screens were filled with bold block lettering in Borlante, and the phones took a moment to catch up and letter in the translation.

//Surrender to the Celestial Hierarchy the one known as Blasfemia or face destruction.//

–