Chapter One: Bozeman or Bust (lots of bust)
I had done it once again, like so many other years before, by traveling north to one of the harshest and coldest states that a hobo could possibly go to during the dead of winter, late-January 2021: Mon-fucking-tana. Or as the locals jokingly say, "Montucky". (edit: Shout-out to Montucky Cold Snacks, the cheap horse-piss watered down beer that is Montana's equivalent of Washington's "Rainier Ale" or Oregon's "Session Lager"). I digress.
If I was a goose, I'd surely be the Jonathan Livingston Seagull of the flock…the black sheep shitshow of a goose flying in the completely wrong direction at the worst time of the year. As forementioned, this was not the first time, nor second time, that I've done this. In fact, it's become a habit, if not straight-up routine.
Laramie, Wyoming circa November 2016. Glendive, Montana circa January 2015 Minot, North Dakota circa January 2014. Yukon, Canada circa November 2013. Bellingham, Washington circa January 2006. The list goes on, and on, and on…
And here I am. Bozeman Fucking Montana, circa January-February 2021. The locals say it's an unusually warm winter, which by Montana's standards might include 5 inches of snow in the afternoon and temperatures dropping below 10F degrees at night. However, according to the high standards of a low-class hobo born and raised on the Gulf Coast of Alabama, this weather is colder than a witches tit.
Now, that's not to say that I ain't prepared though. I assure you that I am. Sixteen years of living on the road and rails has made this black goose a well-seasoned bird, with all the trimmings. I have a military sleeping bag that can keep me alive down to negative 30 temperatures. My military backpack is waterproof, and so are the snowboarding pants that I wear under my insulated Carharrt overalls. I have alpaca wool thermal pants, merino wool socks, thermolite waterproof boots, thinsulated gloves, and several wool and polyster beanie hats. My dual-layer mountaineering tent can withstand hurricane-force winds and all the snow that a blizzard can muster.
Winter? Montana? Bring it bitch. Hit me with your best shot. You know I like it. wink
Sigh. However, DESPITE the freezing temperatures and shit tons of snow, there's a lil secret that I've learned during my many years of traveling, and that secret is certainly DUE to these wintery conditions: Jobs! Lots and lots and lots and lots of jobs! Jobs here, jobs there, jobs every-fucking-where. Hotel jobs, restaurant jobs, retail jobs, construction jobs, maintenance jobs, driving jobs, even jobs just to help other people get more damn jobs!
You want a job during winter? Well they got jobs out northern Californie way, Oregonie way, Montanie way, Washingtonie way, North and South Dakotie way, and every which way can go above above the Mason-Dixon line!
If you can't find a damn job in the Northwestern United States of America during winter, you ain't fucking looking, and that's a fact. If you got one arm and you can swing a hammer, or punch a number on a cash register, then consider yourself hired on the spot and you can start today.
Before this chapter turns into an entire damn book of its own (A Hobo's Guide to Finding Jobs) let's get back to the story here: Bozeman or Bust.
As I begin this chapter, I have a red-wine hangover that is enough to drive me to a bullet in the head. I made a pot of coffee only to puke it back up on my hands and knees in front the porcelain thrown. I think it was good ole Earnest Hemingway that once said "Write Drunk, Edit Sober". Experienced words of wisdom from a fine man that knew everything a man could possibly know about drinking shit tons of wine and writing shit tons of stories. I wouldn't be lying if I was to confess that Mr. Hemingway, along with Mr. Steinbeck and Mr. Twain, are drunken heroes of mine that I could only hope someday to sit alongside in the bookstores of Hell and Hades with a gallon of cheap Merlot. Salut, gentleman.
After puking, rolling cigarettes, drinking coffee, and puking several times more, I was finally able to sit down to try and remember what-the-fuck happened yesterday; a solemn meditation technique that involves tons of coffee and contemplation; a time to worship the asinine achievements that are accompanied in both rejoice and regret.
Yesterday started off sober as a saint. I had a job interview at this place I had found on craigslist, some place looking for fresh warm bodies to fill up their production-assembly line. I took a bus to the address they had given me, which ended up being the adress to the Bozeman City Bank.
"A bank?", I thought, as I wondered around the parking lot dumbfounded and confused for a solid 5 minutes, checking the address several times on my phone, wondering why on earth I've been sent to a state bank. After circling the parking lot, I noticed a door on the side of the bank that said "Job Choices Employment Services: Second Floor".
Godammit. I had been fucking conned. Fucking craigslist. I know what's going on here…this a goddamn employment agency that wants to take 10-15 percent of my paycheck, take away my rights to healthcare and benefits, in the so-called promise of finding me a "great career path of opportunity".
Employment agencies. Just like rats. The only "opportunity" here was them: Creatures of opportunity, parasites hellbent on scavaging peoples money and benefits. "A not-even-close-to-great career path of 9-5 slave-labor bullshit involving years of suckling away your mind, body, and spirit", the sign on the door should have read.
This was definitely a mistake. And anyone that has ever had the unfortunate pleasure of being with me can you tell one thing about me: I fucking love mistakes. I love making them, and I love learning from them. I am a walking-talking connoisseur of mistakes. In fact, I just made a mistake trying to spell connoisseur, so I asked Google "Hey Google, spell connoisseur", and due to lack of interpreting my Alabama accent, Google made the mistake of showing me the word Coitus. I have now learned that the word "coitus" is another word for sex. As a writer and the son of an English teacher, I love learning new words. As a human male, I love sex. So learning a new word for "sex" is a fantastic trade-off for that fortunate mistake!
I digress.
I decided to walk into the bank, up the stairs to the second floor, and down the hall to the employment agency. A well-dressed and very sexy debutant by the name of Tracy stood up and greeted me with a smile that was formal, professional, and admittedly very sexy.
While my dirty mind started playing cheap porn music, along with vivid images of me and Tracy wrecking that office like wild alleycats, I was suddenly snapped back into reality with Tracy's sexy voice, saying:
"Hey, you must be Mr. Huck! Are you here for the 3:00 o'clock interview? Could you please start by filling out this application? You can have a seat over at the desk here"…
Godammit. This employment agency was GOOD. I was Tracy's submissive little slut. I walked right where Tracy told me to walk, sat right in the chair Tracy pulled out for me to sit in, and I started filling out the application with the ballpoint pen that Tracy had somehow put in my hand without me even realizing it. Tracy could have stolen my wallet and the 11 dollars inside of it as well, had she wanted to, and I wouldn't have even noticed. And even if I had noticed, I would have let her do it anyway. Godammit!
As I started to fill out the application, I got to the section I dreaded most: job references. Oh boy…allow me to tell you a little about Huck's references, or lacktherof:
At my last job, I was fired because of a fight that broke-out between my ex-girlfriend and myself, which began with lots of shouting and shoving, and ended with me getting a black-eye from being punched in the face twice. Fun fact: Italian women are fiery as they are fierce, and bold as they are beautiful. And just like their male Italian counterparts, such as Sylvester Stalone or Al Capone, they know how to land a solid right jab. This fight erupted in the worker's dormitory for all employees to hear and see. And although I was the one with the swollen black eye, I was the one they decided to fire. C'est la vie, such is life. Que sera sera, it be what it fucking be.
We can scratch that job off as a reference, without a doubt.
The job before that, I was at a marijuana farm called "Great American Cannabis", in which my managers and co-workers tried to recruit me into a far-right group of sexist and racist baboons called "The Proud Boys".
There was a pre-determining factor in why that farm had hired me, and assumed I would be interested in their idealogical gang. That pre-determing factor was the very same factor that led Google to teaching me the wrong word and definition: my Alabama accent.
Great American Cannabis had hired me based on a phone interview, in which they assumed my southern accent indicated two things, in which case one of their assumptions was right, and one was wrong:
Assumption Numero Uno: Huck has an Alabama accent, which therefore indicates that he has years of experience working on farms, growing plants, and being an honest and hard-worker.
Assumption Numero Dos: Huck has an Alabama accent, therefore he must be idealogically aligned with far-right beliefs including sexism and racism.
Welp, I am proud to say that even that although a 50% winning percentage may be fine and dandy with gambling in Vegas, and can be seen as half full or half empty based on however optimisitic or pessimistic you might be, in the case of Great American Cannabis and The Proud Boys, those odds ended pretty badly.
As it turns out, despite being raised by a racist father and surrounded by bigotry in the not-so-sweet home of Alabama, those very dispositions made this black sheep child rebel from such ass-backward beliefs, and I am staunchly pro-civil rights, which means I am pro-immigration, and a proud supporter of the sufferage movement for womens right.
Obviously, that did not go very well with my co-workers at the farm, and I was fired within the first month. But wait, theres more tragic humor to the story of this farm, which I'll organize in two keypoints:
Keypoint Numero Uno: The farm was owned by Iranian immigrants. I…shit…you…not. That's right. YOU DID READ THAT CORRECTLY. Not only was the farm owned and managed by a minority group of immigrants, those very immigrants came directly from the very country is at the VERY TOP of White-America's shitlist: Iran.
Keypoint Numeros Dos: After I was fired based almost entirely according to my leftist and progressive views on race and gender equality, within just a couple of weeks nearly everybody on the farm was fired and replaced by cheaper immigrant labor in the form of Laotian women. That's right…a white-blooded American-born legal-working male, was replaced by brown-blooded, foreign-born, mostly-illegal-working females, on a farm owned and managed by right-wing racists and sexists that were anti-immigration. Once again, I…shit…you…fucking…not...let THAT shit sink in.
I literally cannot make this shit up, and let it be forever proof that reality, however tragic or ironic it may be, is far greater than fiction. You can write that last sentence in a letter, shove that puppy in an envelope, slap that bitch with a stamp, and mail it to the fucking MOON. Or you can mail it to Iran, or Laos, whichever you prefer.
However, I digress.
So, being that I was fired from Great American Cannabis by a bunch of Iranian Proud Boys, you can scratch that job off of the "reference" list as well. Sigh.
So, how about the job before that? Well, that's a hell of a story too, but I'll make it quick and cut shorter to the chase:
I worked on a fishing boat for a Mormon captain. Although I loved him like a Dad, and he often treated me like a son, my job ended in these words:
"Huck, I really like you. You're one of the hardest working deckhands I've ever had, despite it being a very terrible year for fishing. However, as a man that is a Latter Day Saint of God, as a Mormon, I'm going to have to ask you to leave because of three reasons:
1) You smoke cigarettes, marijuana, and drink alcohol and coffee.
2) You curse worse than a sailor.
3) You are an atheist/agnostic."
And in case you, the reader did not know: Mormons HATE cigarettes, marijuana, alcohol, AND coffee. They are forbidden to curse, and they are not even allowed to tolerate the company of anyone that isn't a believer in God.
Well Godammit. How in the hell am I so goddamn misfortunate and unlucky, to be the must FIRST FUCKING PERSON in the entire HISTORY OF FISHING, that has gotten fired for using curse words and drinking whiskey. I couldn't even absorb the fact that my boss was firing me because I couldn't get over the fact that I was possibly the first sailor or fisherman in all of ocean-faring humanity that had gotten fired for doing what sailors and fisherman are guaranteed and known to do best: drinkin' and cursin'
We can also scratch THAT job off the possible reference list as well.
It was at this point in the office of Job Choices Bozeman that the porn music had long since stopped playing in my head, and that I suddenly and swiftly fell deeply into a full blown existential crisis right there in Tracy's office while simply trying to think of a single reference from my last 3 jobs. The unbelievable amount of misfortune, tragedy, irony, and utter insanity of my last 3 job experiences had truly started to sink in, and I was beginning to legitimately lose my temporary grasp on sanity along with my faith in humanity altogether in one great, big, sloppy sandwich of existential fucking crisis.
Allow me to self-diagnose this existential crisis sandwich by peeling off some of the layers of this enormous stinking onion that is in the middle of it all: Either that curse that was put on me a few years ago by a Mexican trainhopping gypsy from New Orleans is proof that curses are indeed fucking real, or either I am the unluckiest son of a bitch on this entire planet that is so very unlucky that I am slowly (or quickly) coming to the conclusion that this entire life is a simulation that is programmed by some sick comedic asshole that specializes in the tragedies of both irony AND misfortune. And though some people in this world call that programmer God or Allah or Jehovah, I call him Jeff. I call him "Jeff in Programming", with same amount of disdain and hatred that Michael Scott refers to "Toby in Human Resources" in the American version of the show "The Office".
(Sidenote: If you do not understand my last reference because you have not watched The Office, then you need to stop reading this book right now, go sign up for one month of Netflix, and spend that entire month binge-watching one of the greatest sitcoms ever made in the history of television: The Office (US Version). Go. Now!)
I digress.
As I collapsed into a full-blown existential crisis while thinking of job references on the second floor employment services office above Montana State Bank, my fantasy-based relationship with Tracy was also about to crumble into an existential crisis as well, based on two very important qualities:
Quality Numero Uno: Tracy and I had no relationship that actually existed outside of my head and a stupid job application form. We had never knocked over all of the filing cabinets, water-cooler, or broken the copying machine with tantric sex. That scenario never existed period.
Quality Numeros Dos: I was about to not only lie, but also commit non-existent adultery to Tracy, thus putting a very real end to a not-very-real relationship.
I stood up from the desk that me and Tracy had never fucked on, and I told Tracy that I had to use the bathroom. And though I did really have to use the bathroom, it wasn't for the purpose of pissing or taking a shit, it was for the purpose of throwing the application in the toilet and sneaking my way down the hallway and out of the employment agency. In which case, that is precisely what I did.
Upon stepping out of the door and back into the parking lot of Bozeman City Bank, I noticed another hot little woman across the street: A dazzling red-headed freckle-faced damsel by the name of Wendy, who promised in her fertile bosom the birth of two-dollar cheeseburgers and loaded baked potatoes. I went inside Wendy's house, and began to have an oral relationship by penetrating my mouth with nearly everything that was offered on Wendy's dollar-value menu.
Stop here, acquire coffee, booze, and cigarettes until I feel like writing again, which may be later tonight, tomorrow morning, or possibly fucking never

There was a time when I loved the forest. Now, I can’t stand to be near them. The very mention of them causes me to shudder. But once, I would have run unchecked through the coppery expenses of near skeletal trees kicking leaves up in a shower of colours and smells. If I try, I imagine I can remember what that felt like for the sake of this book. It would have been the aroma of moss and lichen, earth and stagnant water. I lost hours in the forest. I was an only child and often alone in my woodland playground. I built forts and imagined great battles with trolls and elves, I, the only warrior brave enough would win the day.
But, that was a boy’s dream, and I’m no longer a boy. That boy died the moment I set foot into the Crow’s tree. The local kids call it that because it looked like a huge crow poised ready to devour your soul. The tree was long dead. Some say it was a disease that infected the whole forest only it didn’t survive like the others and instead curled in on itself to the shame of the other trees. Other mundane renditions are that it was struck by lightning twenty times. Whichever the case it’s the only tree I picture when I close my eyes now.
The centre of the Crow’s tree is split and the top half bends over like the wings of a crow. The base, although intact, forms what looks like a podium. It is a harsh hacking creature straight out of a nightmare.
Where the two halves of the trunk meet, there’s a hollow that is perpetually full of water no matter the time of year or season. I was careful when climbing it because if disturbed it would reek for hours. A cloying, stagnant aroma of death and wooded decay. I often played around the trunk not believing in the stories or the rumours. It was just another tree to launch my defence against the troll army. Until I fell.
Do you know that feeling when you miss the last step and your foot falls through the air where you thought the step was? It was the reverse for me. I saw the water in that hollow and expected to stop and get covered with foul-smelling water. I knew my mother would scream at me for never being able to get the stench out of my clothes, but I didn’t. I fell through the inky blackness and kept on falling.
When I stopped, the world around me had changed. I tasted blood. I couldn’t tell if it was my own or the taste of iron in the dirt that filled my mouth. My vision swam when I sat up. A disillusioned shamble of fractal images and odd sounds that the inadvertent impact had caused. The air around me was hot and oppressive. It was like I was in a sauna and not the English countryside. I wanted to rip my clothes off there and then. It had a full, punchy feeling, a cloying stickiness and an underlying feeling of dread.
The ground was coated in black sand. As if the world had spewed forth a shower of broken black glass so fine it was a powder. I pushed my fingers into it and was rewarded with instant pain. Blood flecked on my fingers from the tiny perforations. I didn’t recognise my whereabouts. Everything was different. Even the trees. When I raised my head to the sky nothing showed but a canvas of grey. It was like the world had been washed out.
Tired, hurt and feeling that I was either dead or transported to another dimension, I decided that I had to try and find a way back. I walked for miles that day. I would stop whenever I saw a puddle or pooling of water but it never satisfied my uncontrollable thirst. I never ate. The land was barren of animals in my hours of trekking, barren of seeds, nuts or berries. Hunger gnawed at me. Thirst pulled at me. My mind clawed at me.
After many hours of searching for anything remotely familiar, I stopped and collapsed out of sheer desperation. I was twelve-years-old god damn it. I didn’t know how to survive! And I was cast into a realm of torture, of trial and incalculable punishment. It was then that I knew the rumours to be true. The Crow’s tree was a pathway to Hell.
Tears wet my face and dried instantly. Even my grief had no place in a land like this. I wrapped myself into a ball by a fallen tree and wished my life away. Wished with all my heart that I could see my home again. See the people who loved me as I loved them. Give anything to run through those coppery leaves and play imaginary wars with trolls.
A sound cut through my nightmare. A hacking, sawing sound. The sound of metal on metal, the sharp scrap of machines and immovable objects. My interest piqued I ventured forward. I saw men, or what I took for men working against the crooked trees. They were large and oddly shaped. Like a puppeteer had pulled a copious amount of dummies apart and built a monstrosity out of the pieces. Stitching sewed them together down lines of jagged flesh red with their rawness. Overlong arms ending in iron stumps or mean-looking saws worked against fallen trees. Two would cut them down, two more would put the trunk in a machine that would divide it. It would then progress through the malformed hand-tools and machines until wafer-thin stacks of paper laid virgin on the floor.
If I was where I knew I was, then this was paper made from the trees of Hell. Any twelve-year-old would kill to have this as a textbook. In my adolescence I didn’t realise men would kill for it too, but for different reasons. I crept forward silently, always keeping the demons in sight. I drew near the chopping machine. The steady rhythm of the saw grating on my ears. The blade twanged with every stroke. The sound worse than nails on a chalkboard.
When I came to the papers, I hadn’t seen another demon working crouched over them. Its bent form wasn’t from years of toil but rather the skilful insertion of a blade. The demon had been cut numerous times across its chest and stomach allowing it to bend over like the leaves of an accordion.
I slunk back, afraid I had been seen. But I hadn’t. The demon, grossly warped and disfigured, worked plying the pages together into a book. When it was done it cast them haphazardly over its shoulder neither caring nor watching where they fell. I followed one to a spot on the ground where it should have landed but all I found was sand. I waited in the shadows of an old withered tree like a catcher in a cricket game until he tossed another book. With speed I never knew I possessed I darted out and caught it with deft hands and ran back to my sanctuary.
The book was an iridescent white and oddly warm to the touch. The moment I caught it I knew I had done wrong. I could never be apart from the book as much as my head could be apart from my body. It was mine and I was its. I ran then. Ran and didn’t stop. I didn't know how long, maybe hours or days. I ran and ran and ran until I came to a barren patch of land. The ground was mottled. The black sand giving way to shards of pale green and festering red.
Exhausted, elated, and petrified that my deed had been found out, I collapsed. The buttery smell of fresh grass brought me back from tiredness. The aroma of earth and dirt, moss and stagnant water perked me up. I was so close to home. All I had to do was fall back through the water on the hollow and my nightmare would end.
And so, I climbed. I climbed high enough so that my fall would penetrate the water and propel me back to my woodland battlefield.
Things often happen the way you envision them, and sometimes they don’t. I pushed off the split trunk. My feet aiming for the pool of blackness. But when I made contact, I didn’t sail back to my woods or to the loved ones that were surely missing me every second I was away. No, I didn't go home. I stayed in Hell.
The book, nestled in the crook of my arm forced its way out of my grip. The pages flew open like a hurricane blowing open the roof Dorthy’s house. I screamed then. A primal, fear-induced vocal assault that did nothing. The book swallowed me. First my feet then my body, and finally my mind.
Do you know what it is like to be a book? Neither did I. I had so many leaves I felt like the Constantina man hunched over those evil pages. I was trapped in darkness, walled in by a book I could never read or write in.
Time moved on. My twelve years doubled, and then tripled, time and time again. I grew insane, haunted by phantoms of my own imagination. Hell perpetuated the book, filling me with unimaginable horrors until I no longer had a shred of goodness.
And then there was movement. Someone had found me. Light, dizzyingly bright castaway the horrors that feasted on my soul. A young girl peered curiously within my bindings, and unbeknownst to her, I peered back.
I found a strange comfort in her hands and in her words. Her simple scribbled ‘Hello’ brought unbinding pain to my personified skin. Inwardly, I cried out and the mark of her words vanished replaced with my own jarred scrawl. For a moment, we both drew in shuddering breaths while she flipped to the next page looking for her elusive salutation and only finding my fading scream. Tentatively she placed the nib of the pen on my surface and wrote again.
Hello, I’m Lucy.
This time I was ready for the pain and greeted it with grim resolution. I would come to relish the pain, relish the words that caused me anguish and lust and torment and greed.
˙ʎɔnl 'olləɥ
She paused for a moment. I saw her lip tremble and thought she wouldn’t go on.
What are you?
səɯıʇ ʇsəʞɹɐp ɹnoʎ ɹoɟ uoıuɐdɯoɔ ɐ ˙puəıɹɟ ɐ ɯɐ ı
She contemplated my words and seemed to settle on their honesty.
¿ʎɔnl 'noʎ ʇ’uop 'buıɥʇəɯos əɯ lləʇ oʇ ʇuɐʍ op noʎ ˙ʇəɹɔəs ɐ ʇı dəəʞ llıʍ ı puɐ buıɥʇʎuɐ əɯ lləʇ uɐɔ noʎ
Yes, I do.
She sat in the shadow of the Crow’s tree and wrote ‘Lucy’s Diary’ large and bold at the top. Each letter a desolation of verbatim.
John hit me again today.
¿uɥoɾ si oɥʍ
John’s my stepfather, not my real dad; he died when I was two.
Her first sentence was clumsy and hesitant but I willed her on with my own compulsion. Lucy soon gained momentum and wrote until nightfall caused her to stop.
˙əɹəɥ sʎɐʍlɐ ˙noʎ ɹoɟ əɹəɥ ɯɐ ı ˙ʎɔnl 'pəuəddɐɥ ʇɐɥʍ əɯ lləʇ
He was beating mum again for not knowing where his favourite beer glass was. Can I tell you a secret? I suppose I can as no one will read this but me, and you wouldn’t share my secret, would you?
˙ɹəʌəN
I know where it is. I smashed it accidentally when I was washing up. I didn’t tell mum because I didn’t want her to get into trouble. I was scared that he would hit her again. And I was right.
Day after day she poured her soul onto my pages and I ate them up urging her on with my companionship. The scratch of her pen soon divulged the extent of her abusive step father and neglectful mother. I let her ramble while I poured some of myself into the ink, staining her wrist as she brashly wrote her accounts . My poison would be her salvation.
I love you diary. You’re the only one I can talk to without feeling stupid or fearful. If John found you I know he would tear you up in front of me just out of spite. Mum has started drinking again. She is worse than ever before. I asked her today what was for dinner and she didn’t even reply. She just gave me a cold stare like I was dead to her and turned away. Her eyes were still dark from bruising John gave her over the glass. I think she blames me for the glass.
˙pəɥsıund əq oʇ səʌɹəsəp ʇɐɥʇ uɐɯ pəʞɔıʍ ɐ sı əɥ ˙ʇlnɐɟ ɹnoʎ ʇ’usı ʎʇıʌɐɹdəp s’uɥoɾ
But I can’t punish him. He’s my step-father and an adult. He will kill me or mum if he finds out it was me.
˙ʎsɐə əq llıʍ ʇı ˙dəəls ʎəɥʇ əlıɥʍ ʇı op ˙noʎ pəsnɐɔ əʌɐɥ ʎəɥʇ uıɐd əɥʇ ɹoɟ əıp oʇ əʌɹəsəp ɥʇoq ʎəɥʇ
I did not know when she would do what we planned for her to do. Every day she fought against those that should have loved her unconditionally. I poured more and more of my malice into Lucy hoping that she could use it to free herself.
I never slept. Instead, I was always ready to receive her words on my skin. Always ready to feel those harrowing verbs. Lucy opened my bent spine and scratched away so fast that I couldn’t get over the pain to read the words. Wave after wave numbed me until I felt my being on fire. And then a new feeling broke through the pain. The cold splash of tears. I felt the first like a drop of rain in a drought. The cool sensation nullifying my pain and anger. Through bated breaths, I read her transgression and revelled in her liberation. She had not only killed her step father but her mother too
I was elated.
Her words darkened further. A conviction. A confession. A note to those who would find her. Blood, sweet blood dripped onto my pages. Lucy took her life under the Crow’s tree. Her blood welled in the shallows of my bindings while I drank away her repentance leaving nothing behind but stained pages devoid of words.
I wept then. A slither of humanity still left inside of me after all the years bound to the damn pages and its Hellish origins. I gazed up at Lucy’s slack face. Peace finally finding her where life could not. She had gone and a piece of me with her.
I knew the world to be a cruel place. The whispers of my oblivion convinced me of such things. Endless years laid bare to the atrocities of Hell and man alike educated a twelve year old boy to a twelve hundred year old demon. In Lucy’s lap I waited for my next charge.
I came to be held by multiple hands until I was left untouched in a plastic bag. I knew darkness again. Lucy’s words hiddened to those who gazed at my skin blended with my own into a motley of toxic text until I became liberated from my confines.
The warmth of a touch broke through the darkness.
Something new graced my pages. Numbers. Hundreds of them in neat tidy columns. I wondered what I had become? Who held me, and why?
So I took those numbers away from the page and wrote some of my own with unfleeting corruption.
896 Ɛㄥᄅ 9ㄣ6
I wanted to feel the agony of this man, know his pains, his desires, his terrible dark secrets so I could exploit them. But instead, I felt his trembling hands discard me like the leaves of an autumn tree. I fell through the air and landed with a shocking blow on the side of a road. The man, in his fright, had cast me out the window like a bad smell. Angry and frustrated I dwelled in my punishment.
However, new hands, soft and supple with youth, picked me up and turned me over. The curiosity of a child again found us winging through the streets on his bicycle. I knew his elation at his discovery as I pressed against the inside of his coat. He took me home and wrapped me up as a present. Anxiously I waited in my new skin for my new owner to behold me. But I cautioned myself to not be rash this time. I had scared the man with my numeral outburst and spoilt my fun. This time I would treat the new person like I did Lucy.
I waited for days until I felt the stir of hands and unbound joy. Disgusted I barely held back my contemptuous lines from forming on my pages as a man peered inside. His bushy eyebrows wrinkled with wonder at my unique pages until he closed the cover and was gone.
That night, he opened my folds and traced fingers down my leaves. In the brief touch, I knew of his debauchery and countless infidelities. I had found someone warranting my embrace. The man began to write and I drew in a shuddering breath. Maybe he thought debasing himself within my covers would exalt his deeds. Perhaps it was to unload his glorification so he could immortalize his action, whichever the case I loathed and worshipped each passing sentence.
This man, David, needed no encouragement from me despite a loving family and a respected position within society. He soaked up my pernicious essence and laid bare his soul. I took a gamble and wrote back to him in clumsy lines.
˙pıʌɐp 'noʎ əʞıl əuo əɯos ˙uoıʇəɹɔsıp ʎɯ ɟo ʎɥʇɹoʍ əuoəɯos ˙noʎ əʞıl əuoəɯos ɹoɟ əɯıʇ buol ɐ pəɥɔɹɐəs əʌ’ı
The pen stopped and trembled. Out of fear or surprise, I do not know. But it did touch down again and responded. We conversed for a time. Him wanting to know what I was and how such a thing could be, I divulged my origin and my malice and greed for attention. A pact formed, one where I would ease his burden of grief and morbid curiosities by consuming his words so no one would find them. And he would bring others to me and make them write their anguish on my rough pages before he tortured and killed them.
For many years our symbiotic relationship existed until David grew ill. His end of our agreement waived and finally stopped. David was no longer able to grace my pages with blood or words. I wrote him a way out.
˙ʎʇıuɹəʇə ɹoɟ əɯ oʇuı ʞɐos puɐ uıʞs ɹnoʎ ssoɹɔɐ əɟıuʞ ɐ llnd
I had the means and the will for both. I had already consumed his essence and deeds in the words he scrawled in his killing sprees. David made one last request before his parting. A request I would have never known possible from him. He wanted me cast into a fire. Obliterated from this plane.
And he was obliged.
I was taken to the very forest where it all began. I could sense the Crow’s tree calling me like a magnet pulling his brother from afar. But my destination wasn’t the fires of Hell but the inferno of a bonfire. I was cast, unyielding, unfettered across the night sky into a furnace of nature and I burnt along with my brothers and sisters.
Our bark blistered, our skin melted, our essence smouldered to the embrace of ashen skies and curling smoke on a winter breeze. I knew pain like a lover but this? This was far worse. I cried out so loud that the fire repelled around me. I withered in phenomenal pain until I fell to the bottom of the pyre. My brothers and sister martyred themselves to protect what little I had left. My pages, cover and spine melting in the fire.
I laid smouldering for hours, prostrated to the world and its fickle emotions. Time collapsed around me. Seasons changed. A tide of rain, snow, leaves, and decay in an endless circle of death, birth and regrowth. Until new hands scratched away the soil covering my disfigured cover and held me up to the light.
Yes, that’s right. You hold me now, broken and forsaken. Do with me what you must. I no longer care where or whom I’m bound to. I only seek a few words within my bindings so I may know you again. So I may feel alive.

In the first edition of Russian AFFC (published in Feb. 2007), the translation of the last two Brienne chapters is based on an earlier draft, thus allowing us to see GRRM's initial take of Brienne's storyline. And there are HUGE differences!
Basically, in the Russian version Brienne VII and VIII are one chapter, and many plots like Brienne fighting Rorge & Biter, Thoros's talk with Brienne are not present. There are also some interesting details about BWB's plan, including monologue of a Red Wedding survivor. Last but not the least, Brienne's cliffhanger moment is also entirely different.
So let's take a look at this not-so-well-known draft chapter from Russia. The following quotes are all translated from Russian, using sentences from GRRM's dictionary whenever possible, in order to "reconstruct" his original writing. My translation is mostly based on Flighty's translation back in 2013 and only has a few small improvements. You can also view the original Russian version here, and please tell me if you find any translation errors!
The chapter begins with "They came upon the first corpse a mile from the crossroads" and the first half is almost the same as what we read in AFFC Brienne VII except in a few tiny places. The only not-so-tiny difference in this part is the exchange with Willow:

“She’s dead,” the boy said. “The lions hanged her.”
“And who hanged all the others?” asked Ser Hyle Hunt. “You have here gallows grow like mushrooms.”
“The other outlaws,” explained the girl Willow. “By which road did you come?”
“Along the river, from Saltpans,” said Brienne.
“Then you saw it. These hanged men have killed and burned there. Only there were more of them.” Willow was staring at her, in a way that she knew well. “If you’re a lady, why are you wearing chainmail?”

Compare with the version in English book:

“She’s dead,” the boy said. “The lions hanged her.”
“Hanging seems your favorite sport in these parts,” said Ser Hyle Hunt. “Would that I had some land hereabouts. I’d plant hemp, sell rope, and make my fortune.”
“All these children,” Brienne said to the girl Willow. “Are they your … sisters? Brothers? Kin and cousins?”
“No.” Willow was staring at her, in a way that she knew well. “They’re just … I don’t know … the sparrows bring them here, sometimes. Others find their own way. If you’re a woman, why are you dressed up like a man?”

The real interesting thing happens when Brienne heard someone is coming at the inn. And the outlaws coming were not Rorge & Biter...

They are not his sons. Stannis told it true, that day he met with Renly. Joffrey and Tommen were never Robert’s sons. This boy, though …
“There's nothing to stare at me,” said Gendry.
“You do not understand. Maybe you…” But then she heard Dog barking, loud and frantic. “Put out the fire,” she told Gendry. “We have guests.” Without looking whether he obeyed her or not, she took up her sword and came to the door of the smithy. The first riders came splashing through the puddles into the yard, two in a row. Beneath the patter of the rain and Dog’s barking, she could hear the faint clink of swords and mail from beneath their ragged cloaks. Bending down behind a broken cart, she began to count them. Lightning sparkled when she counted to twenty, illuminating a shiny dog’s head with pressed ears and steel teeth shining.
It can't be the Hound, but the one who wears his helmet is probably no less dangerous than the real one. Remembering what she saw at Saltpans, she unsheathed Oathkeeper. The children, she thought. The thunder boomed, and in the following silence she heard the splashes behind her back. “To arms,” she said quietly. “It’s the outlaws.”
“So are we.” Turning around, Brienne had only time to see the club a heartbeat before it fell.
The lightning struck again, this time in her head. Rain, the inn, the riders, Gendry…the darkness absorbed everything and then sucked it into its funnel.
The rest was a nightmare.
She was in Renly’s tent again, seeing how the candles are guttering out, feeling the wind from nowhere, shivering at the sudden cold.
“Cold,” Renly said, and a shadow moved without a man to cast it, and the king’s blood came washing through the green steel of his gorget.
She was twelve again, sweating in a silk gown, waiting to meet the boy arranged for her to marry. They’d never met before, but everyone was saying he’s a brave boy and sure to be a famous champion when he becomes a knight. He was older than Brienne, but father had told her it was even better. He was approaching, holding a rose in his hand, red as his hair. When he saw Brienne, his face went red too. She tried to greet him as she had been instructed, to thank him for his visit and invite him to the castle, but the words stuck in her throat. Finally she managed to ask whether the rose is meant for her. “I’ve brought it to my bride,” he answered, “but I see a cow. Do cows eat flowers? Take it then.” He tossed the rose at her feet and galloped away. The griffins on his cloak rippled behind his shoulders, and her lord father was sending curses to his back.
Again she saw the ruined castle at the Whispers, that she’d been dreaming so much lately, and once again she was fighting the Bloody Mummers, but now there weren’t three of them but the whole thirty. As soon as she killed one, two more crawled out of the well. After Shagwell, Timeon and Pyg came Richard Farrow, Big Ben Bushy, Will the Stork and the others, even Mark Mullendore with his monkey. When she killed them, the bloody-red roses grew from their wounds and reached out to her with thorns.
She was riding through a gloomy wood, laying facedown across a horse with her wrists and ankles lashed together. The air was damp, the ground cloaked in mist. Her head pounded with every step. She could hear voices, but all she could see was the earth beneath the horse’s hooves. When the shafts of pale dawn light started to slant through the trees some people dragged her down from the horse, put her on her feet, slipped a noose about her neck, and tossed the other end of the rope over a thick limb.
“She’s waking up,” said someone, a girl, judging by the voice.
I am looking for a girl, Brienne remembered. A highborn maid of three-and-ten, with blue eyes and auburn hair. But the girl before her was nothing like that. Very tall, thin as a skeleton, and much older. Brown hair, brown eyes, plain. Willow, six years older. “You’re the sister, ” Brienne said. It was painful to talk, thunder rolled over her head. “The innkeep.”
“Yes, I’m Long Jeyne Heddle. So what?”
“My companions,” said Brienne, barely moving her tongue. Someone stuffed her mouth with wet wool. Maybe she’s still dreaming? “Septon Meribald is an honest, holy man. Podrick is just a boy, and Ser Hyle has never harmed you. And Dog. What did you do with Dog?” Only then did she realize she had not heard the barking for a long time.
“The dog is fine and goes upon its way, so do the others,” said the girl. “We need only you.”
“Do you think we would harm a septon’s dog?” asked the one-eyed man in a rusted helm. “Who do you take us for?”
“Robbers and murderers.” Brienne tried to slip free from the ropes, but the effort only made her headache worse. “I saw the helm when the lightning flashed…the snarling dog’s head.”
“You can have another look, if you wish,” said the brawny men with a hard face of a soldier. His thick brown beard was spangled with raindrops. He was clad in rusted rings. Longsword and dirk hung on a studded leather belt. Top of all that he wore a torn, dirty yellow cloak. Holding a helm in the crook of his arm, he put in onto his head and stared at Brienne through the eyeholes. “That’s the last thing you see in this world, traitor. If you believe in gods, pray to them.”
I will not beg, Brienne told herself, but the desperate will to live has driven her to address the girl, Long Jeyne. She is too young to be so hard.…
“I was a guest under your roof. We broke bread with your sister.”
Jeyne was untouched. “After the Red Wedding guest right don’t mean much in the riverlands.”
“Yes… I know about the Red Wedding.”
“Do you?” A aged northerner in a sheepskin cloak moved closer to Brienne. “I doubt it. Only those who were there know. It was raining then… just as now. The Freys put up tents for us, three huge feast tents. And they rolled out casks of mead, ale, and wine. We had ridden a long way, soaked and frozen, so we crowded in those tents, to get warm and have a drink… and the Freys were drinking with us, and laughing and singing and gambling. Outside the rain was lashing down, and it was warm and cozy in the tent, and the Freys were rolling up more and more casks…”
Tears were streaming down the northerner’s face. “Gods forgive me. Ale on an empty belly went straight to my head, and the Freys wouldn’t stop proposing toasts - to Lord Edmure, to the Young Wolf, to Queen Jeyne… Lord Bolton placed his men around the edges of the camp, so that no foe would take us unawares. It was hot and stuffy, I remember, everyone was jostling around those casks. I felt an urge to take a piss so I went into the rain, plodded down to the river, and relived myself in the reeds. Then I slipped in the mud and fell – that saved my life. So I lay there, listening to the music from the castles, drums, horns, pipes, over the water the sound was so clear. I must have dozed off then, for it was the screams that woke me up. I clambered up the bank, and what did I see – the tents were all brought down and burning. All three, and there were hundreds of people inside. I saw, and it was the Freys who’d set fire to them and now were shooting at every bulge on the canvas. A few escaped and took the fight, and it was Bolton’s men who came slashing at them, along with the Freys. That's when I realized we were doomed. I hid in the reeds, may the gods forgive me. And the whole time the music was playing, and so loud, louder than the screams of men burning alive. So don’t tell me about the Red Wedding. Nobody can know except those who have heard this music.”
His bitter voice made Brienne shiver. “I’m sorry for all who died there, but what does it have to do with me? I wasn’t anywhere near.”
“It’s your masters the Lannisters who made that mess,” said the one-eyed man. “With the Boltons and the Freys.”
“They are not my masters.”
“Of course not. They just gave you this sword for no reason. And the parchment with the seal of the boy king, too.”
“The name of this sword is Oathkeeper. I’m looking for…” She almost said my sister, but something told her she shouldn’t lie to these people. “A highborn maid of three-and-ten. She has blue eyes and auburn hair.”
“We are looking for her too,” said another man, younger than the others. His voice was frosted with the accents of the north. “We know who you are, Lady Brienne. We know who you are looking for and whom you serve. You’d never believe how many friends we have – at Duskendale, Maidenpool, King’s Landing, even at the Twins. When the news about your quest reached us…it's no coincidence that you're standing here with a noose about your neck, milady. You shall answer for your crimes.”
“Crimes? What have I done?”
“You are a traitor and an oathbreaker.”
“That’s not true!” All her life she’s strived only for one thing – to be a perfect knight, valiant and true. “To whom have I been false?”
“To her.”
Everyone parted, and the grey-cloaked woman came forward, with only her eyes visible under the hood.
“Are you the Silent Sister?” Brienne spoke. “Then I beg you – send my bones to Evenfall, to my lord father…” The last courage has left her. Silent Sisters are the handmaidens of the Stranger, the servants of the death itself.
“Bugger you lord father,” said the man in the yellow cloak. “You’ll rot with the others. As for m’lady, sometimes she’s called the Silent Sister, but she has the other names as well – Stoneheart, Mother Merciless, The Hangwoman…”
The grey woman grasped her neck with a milk-white hand, as if she meant to throttle herself. Instead she spoke . . . if these sounds could be called a speech. The halting voice seemed to come not from her mouth, but from her throat.
“She’s hard to understand without a habit,” said the man in the yellow cloak. “She’s asking do you remember her.”
“Remember? But I…”
The woman lowered her hood and unwound the grey wool scarf from her face. Her hair was dry and brittle. Her skin was the color of sour milk with corpse spots. One cheek was rotten through, revealing the teeth inside the hole, but that was not the worst part. Her whole face, from eyes to jaw, was torn sharply by the claws of some beast. Black oil oozed from the unhealed wounds. She took up her throat again, with her fingers pinched a monstrous scar on it, and squeezed out some more sounds.“She’s asking do you recognize her now.”
Brienne nodded, shocked by the terrible, monstrous, unbelievable sight. She was so beautiful… Mother have mercy, what did they do to her? Brienne couldn’t look at her but didn’t dare to take her eyes away.
“Lady Catelyn,” she said, with tears in her eyes. “What… what did they do to you?”
“They killed her,” said the northerner. Brienne has never heard so much sorrow in a man’s voice. “Slashed her throat from ear to ear, so the head hardly held in place.”
“Death and striving for a noble cause,” muttered Long Jeyne, “they don’t mean so much as they used to.”
“When we found her by the river Lady Catelyn was three days dead. Thoros said it had been too long and refused to give her the kiss of life, so Lord Beric put his lips to hers instead, and the flame of life passed from him to her, and our brotherhood fell apart… but the war goes on.”
“Enough, Harwin. Do we mean to hang the ugly bitch or talk her to death?” The one-eyed man snatched the end of the rope from the other outlaw and gave a yank. The rope dug into skin, lifting Brienne upward. If this is another dream, it is time for me to awaken. If this is real, it is time for me to die. From somewhere afar she heard the clapping of wings. The carrion crows are coming to feast at her corpse. About a dozen already are circling over her head, but for carrion crows these birds are too large. Ravens, smiled Brienne. How odd. No, it is a dream, and now she will awake.

So that's the end, which completely blows my mind! A simple summary of the differences:

• Brienne didn't meet Rorge & Biter. It's unclear who raided Saltpans. Probably still Rorge, but could also be Lemoncloak. If it's still Rorge raided Saltpans, then Lemoncloak probably killed him off stage and claimed Hound's helm.
  
• Gendry knocked Brienne out.
  
• Brienne's face and body didn't get hurt.
  
• Pod and Ser Hyle were released together with Septon Meribald. Them, Thoros and Gendry didn't appear in the second half, as we've seen in AFFC Brienne VIII.
  
• Brienne didn't dream of Jaime in her fevre dream.
  
• Long Jeyne Heddle was unkind to her since there was no Brienne saving the children action.
  
• There's no Thoros's talking about the fall of BWB, only a single description "our brotherhood broke...but the war goes on".
  
• A survivor talked about the details of Red Wedding. Bolton men were arranged around the camp as guards.
  
• According to Harwin, BWB have friends at Duskendale, Maidenpool, King’s Landing, and even the Twins. They heard Brienne was searching for Sansa and captured her intentionally.
  
• Lady Stoneheart's face was more terrible in the draft.
  
• Lady Stoneheart didn't have Robb's crown.
  
• Brienne didn't have the choice of sword or noose. It seems she was to be saved by the Old Gods.
  

All in all, this chapter reads like a parallel world of "what if Lemoncloak return to the Inn before Rorge?"
Thanks to Flighty at jaimebrienne.org for translation, and Narwen at 7kingdoms.ru for information. Minor updates thanks to weedw1zard420

This is the last story chapter. There is an epilogue about Aaron, but that's something different. I'll still translate it later.
This is important to mention. The Japanese to Spanish translators did not use MTL. They took their time. I in turn, MTL'd the spanish, and then proofread the result. Please be aware that Spanish to English MTL is 100x better than Japanese to English MTL. Also, I edited everything to the degree that it makes much more sense than what it may sound like sometimes if you just read the flat MTL versions.
This was fun!
Chapter 12
The truth about the House of Lespinasse
A few days had passed since Leon’s Sky Pirates incident.
Clement appeared at Emile's mansion.
"Miss Lelia, the Six Families have finished speaking with the Kingdom's diplomats." Clement, who served the House of Lespinasse in the past, was now a professor at the Academy. Lelia sat on the couch to listen to the report.
She looked out the window and saw that it was snowing.
-And so? How will Leon and others be judged?
Leon and the others who acted in a fight with the Republic would be brought to justice, of course.
That's what she thought, but actually Lelia's prediction was wrong.
"None of that, they have been cleared of all charges."
"W-Why !? Maybe they could have gotten the sentence reduced, but they won't sentence them after all they've done !?”
Dressed as pirates of the sky, they destroyed a Republic ship.
That alone is a serious crime.
And furthermore, they were hurting the people involved with the six noble families. "What do you mean by nothing?" That was Lelia's honest feeling.
"A diplomat from the kingdom was a great negotiator." And it seems the Raults are still working. Clement's gaze sharpened.
For the Lespinasse family, the Rault family is the enemy.
Knowing that the Raults are on the move must have bothered Clement as well.
"The Raults again?"
Are they really going to join forces with the Raults? Teaming up with the enemy is the worst thing you can do.
From Lelia's point of view, it felt like she had been betrayed.
Although they promised to protect the Sacred Tree and restore peace to the Republic, Leon and Marie joined the scoundrel Alberg.
However, Clement also had other information.
"Furthermore, the heads of the six great noble families have officially announced that this sacrificial fiasco was not the will of the Holy Tree."
-… Yes they are very honest. I heard it was different, but is it something you can believe so quickly?
The subject related to the Sacred Tree was very sensitive in the Republic.
And yet, it was hard to believe that just because Leon said, "That's a foreign object attached to the Sacred Tree."
She wondered if Clement agreed with him.
"I did not foresee this result." What if they had been persuaded by the Raults?
Lelia had no idea what was going on.
"I'll go talk to Leon and the others."
"Miss Lelia, Leon and the others are a danger now. It is very likely that they have been misled by House Rault.”
"But I'll still talk to them."
Also, we have Ideal around here.
She already had a power equivalent to that of Leon and the others.
This made Lelia feel more secure.
Then Emile came back from outside and came to the room they were in.
Emile, dressed in a suit and with his coat under his arm, greeted Clement.
"Clement-San, it's been a long time."
"Emile, you look good too. More importantly, what is happening today? They called me at my parents' house. There was a problem with the Rault house."
-Problem?
Lelia got up and urged a tired-looking Emile to tell her what was going on. "Emile, what was the problem with the Rault family?"
"Are you interested? I haven't heard the details yet, but for some reason, Mr. Alberg thinks Serge doesn't have the qualifications to be the head of his family.”
Lelia overreacted to the story of Serge's lack of qualities.
-What is happening!?
"Calm down, Lelia." It is still a rumor. It has been suggested that Serge could be removed from office and Louise's future husband could be the next head of the family. I have a fiancee, so I just ended up listening to that conversation. I'm sure single men will approach Louise from now on.
If Serge is removed from office, then the seat to the future head of the House of Rault is waiting.
It was a great opportunity for men.
But Lelia wasn't convinced.
Why will Serge be fired? Could that be involved with Leon and the others?
◇
Winter break was almost over and the day Anjie and Livia would return had arrived.
When we got to the port, the wind was cold and unpleasant.
"Be careful, you two."
Anjie was in awe in front of me, who was about to cry.
"That's our line. You're going to have a hard time in this strange place.”
Livia smiled at me, she was a little worried.
"I'm glad that we could be of help this time. And, Leon ... you must not fool around on us.”
Hey? Are you going to say it here?
It was a misunderstanding.
Seeing the subtle look on my face, Anjie asked Luxon to keep an eye on me.
"Luxon, make sure Leon doesn't fool around on us."
[Leave it to me. If I see any signs of infidelity, I'll let you know right away.] How about obvious signs?
"Will you judge if I have an affair, depending on the amount of suspicion I make?"
[Yes. So please be very careful what you do.]
"... Not exactly the kind of thing an observer would say."
Livia looked at Noelle, who had come to see them off.
"Leon, can I speak to Noelle? It's an important conversation between women, so don't listen.”
Should I answer yes with a smile?
I nodded repeatedly and agreed.
◇
Noelle felt very uncomfortable when they approached her.
She had a general idea of ​​what Livia and Anjie were thinking.
I thought they didn't feel anything for me, but they are more jealous than I imagined. She felt that when she entered the spirit world to help Louise.
It was Anjie's rage and Livia's awkward jealousy.
They had a pretty face and both were very scary inside.
She tried not to look at him in the spirit world, but the emotions they had against her were horrible.
Anjie's eyes on Noelle were stern.
"I'm not going to try to fix it now. You know how we feel, right?”
Noelle nodded.
She feared that Livia's emotions were too careless.
Livia was smiling, and Anjie spoke to her.
"I am so jealous, Livia is a sweetie. You are too cute, Livia."
"Anjie, Noelle is in front of us."
And Noelle looked concerned about their relationship.
These two --- if it weren't for Leon, they probably would have ended up together.
Aren't they supposed to be interested in men since they're with Leon?
The two are so attracted to each other that it seems so.
Livia gave Noelle a serious look.
"Noelle, let's talk about Leon."
"L-Like I said I am not having an affair with him. I'm moving into Marie's house soon. "
“No, that doesn't matter anymore."
-Wha...?
Anjie, who would normally be furious if she messed with Leon, crossed her arms and revealed her feelings to Noelle.
"It doesn't make me feel good, but go ahead. If you can get Leon, I'd rather say go for it.”
"... Wha ... what? Are you saying you don’t think I can do it?”
Provoked and annoyed, Noelle spoke sharply.
"If you underestimate me too much, I'll be Leon's number 1. There may only be a few months left, but you will be in big trouble if you relax too much."
Livia clasped her hands and smiled.
However, her eyes were not smiling.
-Do as you like. If you think you can get Leon with that attitude, we would have no problem. Yes, really.
In the midst of that, Livia seemed a bit tired remembering something.
The same thing happened with Anjie.
"That idiot ... he was atrocious last night."
◇
It happened last night.
About to return to the kingdom the next day, Anjie and Livia visited Leon's room on their last night.
They wanted to sleep in the same bed as Leon.
Leon is also a man, and naturally he was driven by sexual desire… "W-Wait." Which one should I touch first?
The two of them pretended to be asleep and watched Leon.
Anjie, Leon has his hands on your head.
This Leon, did we get here and he's not going to touch us?
He stared for a while, but Leon stayed still.
"W-Which one should I start with?" Anjie? Livia? No, first of all, this situation is strange, right? They both trusted me to come to my room, putting my hands on top of them would be bad, right ?!
This is what Leon concluded to.
"I think it would be bad if I put a hand on them here." If that is. This does not mean that I am incompetent or something, I am a gentleman. Yes, I am a gentleman, so I will honestly go to sleep. Luxon!
When he whispered to Luxon, he handed Leon a sleep aid.
[You are truly incompetent]
-Shut up. I protected my image from the both of them. I can't sleep like this, so I'll take my sleep medicine.
[Drink fast and sleep.]
"What an agile mind."
[I knew from the beginning that this would happen. You are as incompetent as I expected you to be. I hope you get a little disappointed.]
"I'm the type of man who is never disappointed."
Just like that, Leon took the medicine and lay down on the bed to sleep.
When Anjie and Livia got up, Luxon called out to them.
[Unfortunately, Master's incompetence was not corrected by studying abroad.]
◇
Noelle heard the story and felt a little sorry for both of them.
"Leon… isn't that horrible?"
But it would be a dilemma if they appeared together.
At the same time, she wondered about Anjie and Livia's actions.
The problem was that they both did not realize that.
"You should have created a better environment."
"What will we do now Anjie?"
Noelle thought.
Why not visit the room one by one? This is going to be difficult for Leon.
It felt out of place somehow.
A young lady and a girl of pure innocence.
She could see that combination.
Anjie brought her attention back to Noelle and gave her a complex look.
"Well, it's like an impregnable castle. If you can breach it, do what you want."
"… I don't think it's normal to instigate a woman to get ahead of her fiancee." Livia laughed.
"Yes, that is true. But at that moment, when I also connected with you, we talked about it together. If anyone else could do it, it was you, Noelle.”
Noelle was stunned.
"I'm not going to touch a man with a fiancee!"
But Anjie seemed to see right through her.
"Then go ahead and find another one if you want. But I don’t think it’s possible when deep down, you only have eyes for him.”
Noelle regretted the mental connection she had made with them.
It's not really funny that they saw the whole thing.
Anjie said it was time to go and tried to get onto Licorn.
"Well, I was joking about conquering Leon. You have to find your own way. But don't forget it.”
Noelle looked down with her hands in her pockets.
-I know. There are a lot of people who want to use me, right?
-Yes. If you come to the kingdom, we can help you. But not anywhere else.
Livia was also worried about Noelle.
"If you need anything, you can count on Leon. He's too reckless, but I'm sure he can help you.”
Noelle, who had already been helped many times, smiled.
-I know.
Once the two of them made their way over to where Leon was, they boarded Licorn.
◇
Anjie and Livia had returned to the kingdom.
And when I got back to the mansion, I saw Marie crying at the door.
"They don't really mature, do they?"
I was surprised, but now Marie is bawling since quite some ago. She was shedding tears.
-Its not true! I don’t believe it!
It was Jilk who was dismayed to see Marie.
"Try to control yourself, Marie."
However, right beside Jilk and Marie… there was a pile of antiques that did not sell. Marie looked up and yelled at Jilk.
"Don't say thaaaaaaaat!"
-I'm sorry!
I saw a pile of antiques… or a pile of junk that looked real, but was all fake. Luxon looked at them and was impressed.
[Everything is fake. I'm surprised that so far you can only collect fakes. The Master must have spent a lot of money to collect them, but with all these purchases, it would be nice to have one or two real antiques.]
Yes, they are all well made fakes.
Jilk had an excuse, and said that they were all a masterpiece.
"While choosing my merchandise, I couldn't help but imagine Marie's face and I couldn't help but choose what to sell to others."
If he chose seriously for Marie's sake, all that would come out were well-made fakes. I wonder what Marie would think if she said that.
"You damn fool! What is that? You're saying that these fake things are suitable for a woman like me, right? You, I already told you before, right? You can send something that the person will be happy with! Hey, what's the point in giving me falsehoods to make me happy as a cheap woman ?!”
Jilk couldn't find an answer when Marie got up and grabbed him by the neck. I was laughing with Luxon.
This was more because Marie herself is a fake saint.
[Master, I can hear you. But even so, if you only take fake products like this, you will give off that kind of impression. Did you do this on purpose?]
Marie burst into tears again.
-What will we do!? I have spent all my money. How am I going to live now? I thought it was okay for Jilk to take all the money! I was going to keep half of the winningggggsssss !!
This garbage ... no, Jilk had apparently taken all the money on his own. He is still the same as rubbish.
The problem is with Marie.
Surprisingly, Marie did not like to gamble, but in this case she thought it was a good deal and invested in it.
To those around her, however, it seems like a gamble.
"You have what you deserve."
[Why don't you learn to manage your money?]
Marie looked up and held onto my leg.
-I need help. I just need money to live for the next three months!
-Do not bother! It's your fault for spending so much money.
"I didn't think this would happen! Also, I didn't think this guy was going to take all my money!” As he made a noise at the front door, the five idiots, plus Jilk, came out.
"Marie, what is happening !?"
When Julian, on behalf of the group, asked what was going on, the four of them looked at the scrap heap, followed by a cold glance at Jilk.
Julian responded as if he were going to spit.
"I'm ashamed to be your brother."
Brad also adjusted his bangs and said a few harsh words.
"I didn't think this guy had an eye for this from the start."
Greg spat a few words too.
"I won't let you make Marie cry."
Chris's glasses were glowing suspiciously.
-Human waste.
Jilk was dragged by the four idiots to the backyard of the mansion.
Marie looked up at the sky.
-Hahaha! Now I am free from the simple life, and it is the beginning of a life of poverty again! It was a short dream!
She had a tight smile with the pupils of her eyes losing their shine.
It was a tough sight to see.
Then Cara appeared.
"Marie-sama, don't worry."
-But it was expensive?
"I've been saving my money. It's not much, but I thought we could survive a month with this.”
When Cara handed her the money, Marie was desperately trying to take advantage of it. I struggle to keep her extended right hand in place with my left.
"T-That's your money, Cara, so take it back."
-But!
-I said no! Hurry while I keep my sanity ... I won't be able to keep it for long. Please Cara ... Keep that money away from me. Don't let me see it.
"Marieeee-samaaaaaaa!"
It's like watching a sad scene of a person about to turn into a zombie saying to their friends, “Stop me! I don't want to attack them. Kill me while I'm still human! "
No, it's actually different. Completely different.
A little later, Noelle returned to the mansion.
She was carrying a shopping bag in her hand, so she appears to have been shopping on the way home.
-I'm here! What happened to Marie and the others? And what is that pile of antiques? "Oh, this?" Actually…
I told Noelle what happened.
Then Noelle, understanding the situation, gave Marie an understanding look.
"Marie, I can give you some money. When I became the priestess, I got some money to live on. I'm in your debt and I can pay your rent or something."
Noelle's suggestion had made Marie cry.
"Rent ... what a precious word."
Precious? I don't understand Marie's values.
"You and I get along well. You can count on me without fail.”
"Thank you, Noelleeeeeeeeee!"
I started to think when I saw Marie hugging Noelle.
Ah, this will be a problem if I do not lend you money.
◇
"I gave her that much money for summer vacation, but she melted brilliantly." It was night.
I was talking to Luxon about today's events in my room.
In the end, he remembered that I would loan Marie three months of living expenses. As it was, Cara was going to give all her money to Marie.
If Marie is the only one suffering, I can leave her alone, but I have no choice. I really had no choice but to lend her money.
And Noelle ...
I had a feeling that if the loan of money kept happening between Marie and Noelle, it would eventually become a problem, so I stopped her.
Because money problems are a terrible thing.
Friendship or not, that's easy to destroy.
I feel sorry for Marie's few friends, and I feel sorry for her for reducing them further. Because there are more bastards to feed than friends.
I'm starting to feel a little sorry for her.
You may feel a little sorry for Marie for having to take care of five such idiots. But I was laughing because it was fun to watch.
[You really have a soft spot for Marie, don't you, Master?]
"It's not that easy. I hate her. But don't you think I can feel a little sympathy for her? She will continue to feed waste like Jilk.”
[As a third party, don’t you look like you’re somewhat picky?]
"What do you mean, I'm a little fussy about my little sister?"
I do not know what that means. Is it a made up word or something?
Do you think a younger sister is a bit of a target?
I do not get it.
[On the other hand, can I make a report of my findings?]
-... How did it go?
After the jokes, I decided to listen to Luxon's report.
There were many questions this time.
[Now, I would like to talk about the decisions of the six families that have upset you. The fact is that they so readily accepted our reports.]
"That is a real mystery to me." Alberg-Sama made a move, but there was no resistance at all. Only the Faiviel resisted, right?
[Yes. Regarding that, it seems that the heads of the six great noble families knew that the Sacred Tree could be manipulated by a third party.]
-They knew it?
[I heard that there was a house that did such research in the past. It no longer exists.] "What do you mean?”
I have a bad feeling about this. I hate when this happens as my intuition is always correct.
"The one who has been investigating the use of the Sacred Tree is the Lespinasse family."
-You're lying. Is this a case where the Lespinasse family were working behind the scenes?
[That is not possible.]
-It is not?
But there are more things that I did not understand.
[The House of Lespinasse, in the days when they called themselves the Seven Great Nobles, was the representative house of the Republic.]
Was this house researching how to manipulate the Sacred Tree that is considered sacred in the Republic?
[I don't know the details of the situation, but I can deduce it up to a point. I have been told that, thanks to this, our claims were accepted without problems. Of course, we couldn't have done it without Alberg's cooperation.]
"Maybe I should bring him some candy to thank him tomorrow? ... So what are you thinking?"
Gathering the information Luxon has been collecting, I had a bad feeling about this.
Alberg-Sama, who is supposed to be the last boss, is a nice guy, and Louise, the villainess, is actually a nice person.
To make matters worse, there was the Lespinasse family who was making strange moves behind the scenes.
It was a huge difference from the setting of this second Otome game.
[I guess from Marie and Lelia's stories, this story was wrong from the beginning.]
-The beginning?
[You said it would start with the first scene of the destruction of the House of Lespinasse.]
-Yes. The Raults destroyed it and the main character, Noelle, saw the mansion on fire ... and they both said that's how it started.
And Luxon had previously said that was the problem.
It was impossible for the Lespinasse family, who had a higher blessing, to lose to the Rault family, who had only a lower blessing.
In fact, the blessings given by the Sacred Tree are overpowered.
Even if the lower ranks go against the higher ranks, they cannot win.
[After hearing Louise's story as well, I made a prediction. Didn't the Lespinasse family lose the blessing of the Sacred Tree long ago? That's why he didn't even attend the funeral of the Rault heir.]
-Why? They could at least show themselves ... No, wait. There is something here. Was it a rule for a great person to wear their crest?
[Yes. At ceremonies and so forth, it was customary for the highest ranking person to display his crest to those around him.]
Such a thing existed in the rules of the Republic.
"Does that mean that the Lespinasse family, Noelle's parents, couldn't show their faces without showing off their crests?"
[They studied to bring the Holy Tree under control and were stripped of its blessing, perhaps because the tree was angry. That makes sense. I also believe that the six great nobles who were angry at this forgave the Rault family that destroyed the Lespinasse family.]
"Suddenly the premise was broken. In other words, the first one to do bad things was…”
[Probably the Lespinasse family. But only from the perspective of the Republic.]
—Of the Republic?
[It is not clear what they were thinking when trying to control the Sacred Tree. What if I explained to Master in plain language that they were actually trying to save the world from a crisis?]
"That sounds like justice for the Lespinasse family."
[I'm afraid there are some facts that are not discussed in the game.]
We don't need that kind of setting!
Why isn't it a fluffier setting?
There is evil and there is justice, it can be as simple as that, right?
No wait. It's a fluffy setting, so is it such a terrible world?
It's just that no matter how much you think about it, it's useless.
Because I'm not that smart!
"What do you think would happen if I told this story to Lelia?"
[She won’t believe it? You distrust Lelia.]
"Won't she be more than me? You are a dangerous artificial intelligence who doesn't even think of his master as a master and says he will destroy everything in the blink of an eye. I would suspect it too.”
[You are a small degree of Master to ignore and doubt everything I have done so far.]
"I don't need a great title. For an average man, a moderate amount is sufficient. Well, let's stop talking about stupid things.”
"So can you get along with Ideal?"
[… I do not think so.]

Longpost® 3: Electric Squeedlee.
Reductio ad absurdum in classic and modern satirical prose.
The main relevance of this topic to experimentalism concerns the incorporation of internet-culture prose conventions into modern fiction
In honour of this commitment I submit the below Longpost® for consideration.
Foreseeably, if not avoidably, this full essay had to be halved to fit the Reddit-post character limit.
Here is the full essay as a Google Doc with more authors, extracts, more of my examples, and better formatting.
I chose this prose style as a topic because I notice that most people have an instinctive sensibility for it, to the point where it is often much more of a 'first language', literarily speaking, than more classic literary prose.
For perhaps this reason, it appears extensively in both low- and high-effort user-generated content. You will be most familiar with it from meme content such as copypasta and montage parodies, but its history is longer than that of the modern novel, and it appears abundantly in both classical and modern satirical prose.
Some of the below texts follow the technique somewhat loosely, seeking less to disprove an argument than to follow a line of thinking to an extreme in order to demonstrate that it leads somewhere insane. This is most obvious in texts owing stylistic debt to Jonathan Swift, and in 'Boléro-style' passages which accelerate to a catastrophic climax.
Another aim in choosing this topic is to introduce contemporary satirical writers to objects and styles of contemporary satire, having largely to do with the relationship between humans and technology. Identity politics is also a popular favourite, but produces some of the more dubious content, and to those who operate on the quite valid perception that party-political satire is impotent if not dead, I present the former avenue for consideration.
Introduction
Reductio ad absurdum is a feature of Aristotelian logic, most commonly used in satire, rhetoric and debate.
According to Wikipedia:

'In logic, reductio ad absurdum (Latin for '"reduction to absurdity"')...is the form of argument that attempts to establish a claim by showing that the opposite scenario would lead to absurdity or contradiction.'

Classic rhetorical examples include:

'There is no smallest positive rational number because, if there were, then it could be divided by two to get a smaller one.'

A modern example:

'Olive oil on your salad is not going to make you fat, otherwise people on the Mediterranean would all be morbidly obese.'

In literature, this rhetorical technique commonly manifests itself in a writer adopting an absurd article of rhetoric or worldview, and playing it out over the course of a passage or text to its absurd logical conclusion.
In this essay we will refer to the following authors:

• Cervantes
• Jonathan Swift
• Voltaire
• William S. Burroughs

We will also discuss the influence of this tradition on modern visual media and user-generated internet content, with regard to:

• Tim & Eric
• Copypasta

Finally, I include an example of my own attempts to incorporate the above influences into contemporary satirical fiction:

• The Merciless Current

We will then conclude with some brief comments on the applicability of all this bullshit.
I thank you in advance for your endurance.
Cervantes - Don Quixote (1605)
One of the most famous early examples of modern literary satire is Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote. The text is essentially an exercise in sustained sympathetic embarrassment over a 16th-Century gentleman LARPing as a knight. It is explicitly stated to be an attack on the then-enormous influence of chivalric romances on the popular conscience.
An introduction to the novel quotes the perhaps hyperbolic…

'...words of one of his own countrymen, Don Felix Pacheco, as reported by Captain George Carleton, in his "Military Memoirs from 1672 to 1713." ... "it was next to an impossibility for a man to walk the streets with any delight or without danger. There were seen so many cavaliers prancing and curvetting before the windows of their mistresses, that a stranger would have imagined the whole nation to have been nothing less than a race of knight-errants"'

An introductory note describes Don Quixote as:

'a tale setting forth the ludicrous results that might be expected to follow the attempt of a crazy gentleman to act the part of a knight-errant in modern life.'

An early example of such socially noxious conduct occurs when the then-aspiring knight, for the business of ceremonially 'watching' his armour - some part of the ritual of being knighted - chooses as a spot a trough which the inn's peasant guests require for the watering of their animals. When the peasants take exception to the obstruction of this essential utility, Don Quixote interprets this as a villainous attack on his armour, and behaves accordingly:

'Meanwhile one of the carriers who were in the inn thought fit to water his team, and it was necessary to remove Don Quixote's armour as it lay on the trough; but he seeing the other approach hailed him in a loud voice, "O thou, whoever thou art, rash knight that comest to lay hands on the armour of the most valorous errant that ever girt on sword, have a care what thou dost; touch it not unless thou wouldst lay down thy life as the penalty of thy rashness." The carrier gave no heed to these words (and he would have done better to heed them if he had been heedful of his health), but seizing it by the straps flung the armour some distance from him. Seeing this, Don Quixote raised his eyes to heaven, and fixing his thoughts, apparently, upon his lady Dulcinea, exclaimed, "Aid me, lady mine, in this the first encounter that presents itself to this breast which thou holdest in subjection; let not thy favour and protection fail me in this first jeopardy;" and, with these words and others to the same purpose, dropping his buckler he lifted his lance with both hands and with it smote such a blow on the carrier's head that he stretched him on the ground, so stunned that had he followed it up with a second there would have been no need of a surgeon to cure him. This done, he picked up his armour and returned to his beat with the same serenity as before.'

The whole novel is essentially a longform satirical experiment in playing the above ludicrousness out, ad absurdum, and is well worth the attention of any aspiring satirist.
Jonathan Swift - A Modest Proposal (1729)
A Modest Proposal For preventing the Children of Poor People From being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and For making them Beneficial to the Publick is one of the most illustrious stylistic ancestors of the modern technical shitpost.
It was released as a rhetorical pamphlet during the Irish Potato Famine, and parodied the style of similar such pamphlets, in whose production it was then the fashion for any lettered and leisured individual to participate.
This tradition of social engineering is perhaps the same which gave birth to Marx and socialism. However, from the primordial sulphur column of undifferentiated social theory, grotesque and unviable mutant candidates for alternative life were extruding themselves, thrashing in deformed agony, and expiring to decompose on its slopes.
A note on the Proposal's relation to this tradition from Wikipedia (Under 'Population Solutions' heading):

'George Wittkowsky argued that Swift's main target in A Modest Proposal was not the conditions in Ireland, but rather the can-do spirit of the times that led people to devise a number of illogical schemes that would purportedly solve social and economic ills.[2] Swift was especially attacking projects that tried to fix population and labour issues with a simple cure-all solution.[3] A memorable example of these sorts of schemes "involved the idea of running the poor through a joint-stock company".[3] In response, Swift's Modest Proposal was "a burlesque of projects concerning the poor"[4] that were in vogue during the early 18th century.'
'A Modest Proposal also targets the calculating way people perceived the poor in designing their projects. The pamphlet targets reformers who "regard people as commodities".[5] In the piece, Swift adopts the "technique of a political arithmetician"[6] to show the utter ridiculousness of trying to prove any proposal with dispassionate statistics.'

Some extracts which caricature the pompous, deadpan mathematical logic of contemporary rhetorical pamphleteering are as follows:

'I have reckoned upon a medium, that a child just born will weigh 12 pounds, and in a solar year, if tolerably nursed, encreaseth to 28 pounds.'
…
'I have already computed the charge of nursing a beggar's child (in which list I reckon all cottagers, labourers, and four-fifths of the farmers) to be about two shillings per annum, rags included; and I believe no gentleman would repine to give ten shillings for the carcass of a good fat child, which, as I have said, will make four dishes of excellent nutritive meat, when he hath only some particular friend, or his own family to dine with him. Thus the squire will learn to be a good landlord, and grow popular among his tenants, the mother will have eight shillings neat profit, and be fit for work till she produces another child.'

Voltaire - Candide (1759)
Candide, ou l'Optimisme was a satirical text written in the buildup to the French Revolution, attacking the then-popular philosophical doctrine of Leibnizian Optimism. This doctrine was in essence an attempt to reconcile Catholic dogma with the logical reasoning of the Enlightenment.
Its most salient feature is its attempt to reconcile the existence of evil with the belief in an omnipotent, benevolent deity. It does this by claiming that, for reasons little-understood, but understandable through logical reasoning, the present world is the best that God could possibly have chosen to create.
Candide performs a sustained reductio ad absurdum argument against Optimism by confronting a simple, unquestioning character with an onslaught of the world's atrocities and challenging him to accept the necessary conclusions that, among other things, natural disaster, mutilation and slavery are logically at home in the best of all possible worlds.
From Wikipedia:

'Voltaire actively rejected Leibnizian optimism after the natural disaster, convinced that if this were the best possible world, it should surely be better than it is. In both Candide and Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne ("Poem on the Lisbon Disaster"), Voltaire attacks this optimist belief. He makes use of the Lisbon earthquake in both Candide and his Poème to argue this point, sarcastically describing the catastrophe as one of the most horrible disasters "in the best of all possible worlds"'

How Voltaire plays out the logic of Optimism ad absurdum is best illustrated by the various repetitions of the phrase 'all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds', confronting the reader with the insane prospect that such events be considered compatible with such a world:

'The entertainment began by a discharge of cannon, which, in the twinkling of an eye, laid flat about 6,000 men on each side. The musket bullets swept away, out of the best of all possible worlds, nine or ten thousand scoundrels that infested its surface. The bayonet was next the sufficient reason of the deaths of several thousands. The whole might amount to thirty thousand souls. Candide trembled like a philosopher, and concealed himself as well as he could during this heroic butchery.'
...
'Candide fainted away, and Pangloss fetched him some water from a neighboring spring. The next day, in searching among the ruins, they found some eatables with which they repaired their exhausted strength.After this they assisted the inhabitants in relieving the distressed and wounded. Some, whom they had humanely assisted, gave them as good a dinner as could be expected under such terrible circumstances. The repast, indeed, was mournful, and the company moistened their bread with their tears; but Pangloss endeavored to comfort them under this affliction by affirming that things could not be otherwise that they were.
'“For,” said he, “all this is for the very best end, for if there is a volcano at Lisbon it could be in no other spot; and it is impossible but things should be as they are, for everything is for the best.”'

William S. Burroughs - Naked Lunch (1959)
William Burroughs employs reductio and absurdum and similar satirical techniques so extensively in Naked Lunch, that reading it with this in mind goes a long way toward illuminating its more obscure passages.
One of its recurrent motifs - Lobotomy - was abundantly practiced at the time of Naked Lunch's writing.
Burroughs evidently finds the idea that the frontal cortex may be considered superfluous, and the apparent compulsion of many physicists to remedy this evolutionary extravagance, to be absurd and abhorrent.
He presents his physicians as motivated by an out-of-control fixation with efficiency, as well as a compulsive urge to practice their profession whether helpful to the patient or not; presents lobotomy as an extension of the removal of other arguably redundant organs, like the appendix.

'...and the German practitioner of Technological Medicine who removed his appendix with a rusty can opener and a pair of tin snips (he considered the germ theory "a nonsense"). Flushed with success he then began snipping and cutting out everything in sight: "The human body is filled up vit unnecessitated parts. You can get by vit vone kidney. Vy have two? Yes dot is a kidney … The inside parts should not be so close in together crowded. They need Lebensraum like the Vaterland."'
...
Meeting of International Conference of Technological Psychiatry
'Doctor "Fingers" Schafer, the Lobotomy Kid, rises and turns on the Conference the cold blue blast of his gaze:
'"Gentlemen, the human nervous system can be reduced to a compact and abbreviated spinal column. The brain, front, middle and rear must follow the adenoid, the wisdom tooth, the appendix … I give you my master work: The Complete All American Deanxietized Man …"
...
'Schafer is not listening. "You know," he says impulsively, "I think I'll go back to plain old-fashioned surgery. The human body is scandalously inefficient. Instead of a mouth and an abyss to get out of order why not have one all-purpose hole to eat and eliminate? We could seal up nose and mouth, fill in the stomach, make an air hole direct into the lungs where it should have been in the first place …"
'BENWAY: "Why not one all-purpose blob? Did I ever tell you about the man who taught his asshole to talk? ..."' Full routine for the interested.

We will shortly touch on another Burroughs example, but must make a brief aside to introduce the concept of the 'bolero structure'.
Boléro, by Maurice Ravel, is a piece of music which begins at a low volume and builds in a continuous crescendo to arrive at an explosive climax.
A modern example of a similar track is that of Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit.
Along with volume, other elements may be steadily increased, including tempo.
The use of this structure abounds in satirical user-generated internet content, such as the following Steve Harvey copypasta:

'Steve Harvey: "We asked 100 people, what is the male reproductive organ?" Contestant: "The penis" SH: "A WUH... HUH??" audience erupts into laughter Steve Harvey grabs onto podium to support himself laughter gets even louder SH: O lordy... one man goes into cardiac arrest and many others begin vomiting profusely from laughing too hard SH: YOU PEOPLE NEED HELP the Earth shatters and Satan rises from the underworld to claim unworthy souls the universe begins rapidly closing in on itself SH: (putting on a weary voice) Survey says... the board shows 100 for "penis" Harvey is able to get off one more shocked look before existence as we know it comes to an end.'

It is also abundant in skit comedy, including much of Tim & Eric's work, as we will see below.
Burroughs, in Naked Lunch, employs a similar structure gratuitously, and in a somewhat Swiftian manner. One example occurs in the chapter Hospital, in which an impression is introduced in the opening lines of a paragraph, and riffed on in the course of a crescendo toward an insane climax:

'I am passing room 10 they moved me out of yesterday … Maternity case J assume … Bedpans full of blood and Kotex and nameless female substances, enough to pollute a continent … If someone comes to visit me in my old room he will think I gave birth to s monster and the State Department is trying to hush it up …
'Music from I Am an American … An elderly man in the striped pants and cutaway of a diplomat stands on a platform draped with an American flag. A decayed, corseted tenor--bursting out of a Daniel Boone costume--is singing "The Star-Spangled Banner," accompanied by a full orchestra. He sings with a slight lisp …
'THE DIPLOMAT (reading from a great scroll of ticker tape that keeps growing and tangling around his feet): "And we categorically deny that any male citizen of the United States of America …"
'TENOR: "Oh thay can you thee …" His voice breaks and shoots up to a high falsetto.
'In the control room the Technician mixes a bicarbonate of soda and belches into his hand: "God damned tenor's a brown artist!" he mutters sourly. "Mike! rumph," the shout ends in a belch. "Cut that swish fart off the air and give him his purple slip. He's through as of right now … Put in that sex-chanhed Liz athlete … She's a full-time tenor at least … Costume! How in the fuck should I know? I'm no dr de designer swish from the costume department! What's that? The entire costume department occluded as a security risk? What am I, an octopus? Let's see … How about an Indian routine? Pocahontas or Hiawatha? … No, that's not right. Some citizen cracks wise about giving it back to the Indians … A Civil War uniform, the coat North and the pants South like it show they got together again? She can come on like Buffalo Bill or Paul Revere or that citizen wouldn't give up the shit, I mean the ship, or a GI or a Doughboy or the Unknown Soldier … That's the best deal … Cover her with a monument, that way nobody has to look at her …"
'The Lesbian, concealed in a papier-mâché Arc de Triomphe, fills her great lungs and looses a tremendous bellow.
'Oh say do that Star-Spangled Banner yet wave …"
'A great rent rips the Arc de Triomphe from top to bottom. The Diplomat puts a hand to his forehead …
'THE DIPLOMAT: "That any make citizen of the United States has given birth in Interzone or at any other place …"
'"O'er the land of the FREEEEEEEEEE …"
'The Diplomat's mouth is moving but no one can hear him. The Technician clasps his hand over his ears: "Mother of God!" he screams. His plate begins to vibrate like a Jew's harp, suddenly flies out of his mouth … He snaps at it irritably, misses and covers his mouth with one hand.
'The Arc Dr Triomphe falls with a ripping, splintering crash, reveals the Lesbian standing on a pedestal clad only in a leopard-skin jockstrap with enormous falsie basket … She stands there smiling stupidly and flexing her huge muscles … The Technician is crawling around on the control room floor looking for his plate and shouting unintelligible orders: "Thess thupper thonic!! Thut ur oth thu thair!"
'THE DIPLOMAT (wiping sweat from his brow): "To any creature of any type or description …"
*'"And the home of the brave."
'The Diplomat's face is grey. He staggers, trips in the scroll, sags against the rail, blood pouring from eyes, nose and mouth, dying of cerebral hemorrhage.
'THE DIPLOMAT (barely audible): "The Department denies … un-American … It's been destroyed … I mean it never was … Categor …" Dies.
'In the Control Room instrument panels are blowing out … Great streamers of electricity crackle through the room … The Technician, naked, his body burned black, staggers about like a figure in Götterdämmerung, screaming: "Thubber thonic!! Oth thu thair!!!" A final blast reduces the Technician to a cinder.'

This format runs parallel to reductio ad absurdum, but is distinct from it in that it does not necessarily seek to disprove an argument, merely to demonstrate the ridiculousness of its subject matter via hyperbole. In this case, Burroughs uses the initial impression of the State Department trying to hush up the fact of a male citizen having given birth as synecdoche for his contemporary America's desperate attempts to downplay its own ugly realities, and incorporates these realities - colonial history, homosexuality, and as is implicit in the final explosion - and clearer with reference to other passages featuring The Technician - the atomic bomb.
This parallel ad absurdum, not wanting to embarrass myself by attempting to christen it in Latin, I will refer to in English throughout the rest of this essay as escalation to absurdity.
Many of the later examples we will touch on employ this structure.
Tim & Eric - Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job (2007-10)
A large number of Tim and Eric's skits, most notably those involving adverts for unwantable products, suggest the output of a market-research team operating on a bafflingly one-dimensional concept of what consumers want, at the expense of any commonsense notion of the unpleasant.
A number of their fictional commodities bear conspicuous resemblances to real products - B'Owl ressembles Furby - and the exaggerated design blunders built on in the skits reflect real design choices applied to those products.
iJammer
This skit overapplies a similar design philosophy to that satirised by the typical Montage Parody, or YouTube Poop, that more stimulation is unconditionally better.
It features a product whose sole application is the production of a dubiously-calibrated audio-haptic reward cue, which are traditionally auxiliary to the user-experience of a device. A parallel commodity is that of Jim&Derrick's Flavor Dust™. The escalation to absurdity structure is followed to the point of equating the device's stimulation effect and addictive potential to that of cocaine:

"I just need one more bump!"

The former skit anticipates the fixation with gambling-originated audio-visual reward cues in the development of tackier PC, console and mobile games, particularly those marketed to children.
Considering that the Montage Parody staple: airhorn.mpg has gone sufficiently mainstream to be featured at a record-scratch rhythm as a recurring transition on my local radio station, what might seem like implausibly excessive satire has in-fact proven fairly prescient.
Discount Prices
This skit involves the idea that the price is replacing the commodity as the object of promotion, played out according to the structure of an ordinary advert.
Like the i-Jammer skit, this segment follows a Boléro structure, increasing in the extremity and pacing of the accusations exchanged by the competing businessmen. Escalation structures around the driving force of one-upmanship are fairly common and intuitive to implement.
"Remove the Teeth"
A number of the advertisements feature highly intimate and crude integration of technology with the human body.
Products like the Cinco Food Tube, and Eye Tanning System, and the total-immersion Schlaaang Super Seat all represent grossly distasteful examples of body-technology interaction in the service of absurd manufactured needs.
These products are all extreme hypothetical outcomes of the uncritical assumption that human integration with technology will necessarily be life-enhancing and comfortable.
This is a parallel strain of satire to that expressed in Naked Lunch on the subject of the modern American tendency towards being swaddled in appliances as a product of Fordian manufactured demand:

'AMERICAN HOUSEWIFE: (opening a box of Lux): "Why don't it have an electric eye the box open when it see me and hand itself to the Automat Handy Man he should put it in a water already … The Handy Man is outa control since Thursday, he been getting physical with me and I didn't put it in his combination at all … And the Garbage Disposal Unit snapping at me, and the nasty old Mixmaster keep trying to get up under my dress … I got the most awful cold, and my intestines is all constipated … I'm gone*** put it in the Handy Man's combination he should administer me a high colonic awready.'*
...
'"It was K.E. put out the Octopus Kit for Massage Parlours, Barber Shops and Turkish Baths, with which you can administer a high colonic, an unethical massage, a shampoo, whilst cutting the client's toenails and removing his blackheads. And the M.D.'s Can Do Kit for busy practitioners will take out your appendix, tuck in a hernia, pull out a wisdom tooth, ectomize your piles and circumcise you. Well, K.E. is such an atomic salesman if he runs out of Octopus Kits he is subject, by sheer charge, to sell an M.D. Can Do to a barber shop and some citizen wakes up with his piles cut out …'

Of the three Cinco products, the Super Seat is perhaps the most recognisable as relating to a real product category, though it's worth noting that various highly dubious tanning 'solutions' do currently exist.
Another iteration on dubious ergonomics comes in the Cinco Privacy Helmet. This skit follows a similar line to the i-Jammer product and the Montage-Parody airhorn.mpg: the presentation of extreme auditory stimulation uncalibrated for tolerability.
Copypasta

"And I strongly suspect that when this revolution takes place, art will no longer be distinguished by its rarity, or its expense, or its inaccessibility, or the extraordinary way in which it is marketed, it will be the prerogative of all of us, and we will do it as those artists did whom Freud understood not at all, the artists who made the Cathedral of Chartres, or the mosaics of Byzantium, the artists who had no Ego, and no name." - Germaine Greer Town Bloody Hall.

I don't think that when Greer said this what she thought she meant was:

'Hey guys, did you know that in terms of male human and female Pokémon breeding, Vaporeon is the most compatible Pokémon for humans? Not only are they in the field egg group, which is mostly comprised of mammals, Vaporeon are an average of 3"03' tall and 63.9 pounds. this means they're large enough to be able to handle human dicks, and with their impressive Base Stats for HP and access to Acid Armor, you can be rough with one. Due to their mostly water based biology, there's no doubt in my mind that an aroused Vaporeon would be incredibly wet, so wet that you could easily have sex with one for hours without getting sore. They can also learn the moves Attract, Baby-Doll Eyes, Captivate, Charm, and Tail Whip, along with not having fur to hide nipples, so it'd be incredibly easy for one to get you in the mood. With their abilities Water Absorb and Hydration, they can easily recover from fatigue with enough water. No other Pokémon comes close to this level of compatibility. Also, fun fact, if you pull out enough, you can make your Vaporeon turn white'

However, she appears to have been thoroughly prescient as regards the democratisation of certain varieties of art. Whether this has necessitated in a transformation of what 'art' is, and whether or not such a transformation represents a quantitative degeneration, or qualitative perversion, is outside the scope of this already inexcusably long essay.
Considering that as early as the 1700s, when A Modest Proposal was written, there already existed a laughable tradition of pseudoacademic rhetorical contribution among non-academic sectors of high society, this democratisation may be seen as a simple expansion of a process that has been ongoing since the Enlightenment.
The above Vaporeon pasta forms part of a tradition which owes a sizeable indirect debt to Jonathan Swift. It addresses its subject - that of absurdly high-effort attempts to justify Rule-34 waifu culture with dubious linear and/or moral reasoning - in the same way Swift addressed flippant social engineering around the Irish Potato Famine: by adopting the voice of the person who 'did the math'.
Next we go back to some more traditional reductio ad absurdum arguments, which consist in playing out a dubious logical position and demonstrating that it is consistent with an absurd one.
A popular example is to caricature the precarious, tangentially linear argument style of Republican pundit Ben Shapiro, by demonstrating that it can be used to justify absolutely anything. The same 'let's say, hypothetically…' structure is used in many different examples:

'Let's say, you've been a bad girl. Let's say, hypothetically, you've been a naughty girl even. Ok, and if you were a naughty girl you would also be my dirty little slut right? Then hypothetically speaking you would be my little cumslut. Now; let's say that you're also daddy's girl. Now that we've established you're both a bad girl and daddy's girl, then I believe you'd agree with me when I say you deserve a spanking. Am I not correct? A bad girl deserves a spanking, and as I am daddy; you are my girl, so I am the one who must provide punishment.'
...
'Now, lets say, hypothetically, that somebody once told me that the world would proceed to roll me, and made the claim that I was not, the smartest tool in the shed. Which would lead us to look at the facts and see that she was looking kind of dumb, due to the fact that she had placed her finger and her thumb, in the shape of the letter L, located on her forehead. This would mean that the years would start coming, and logically wont stop coming, that I was, hypothetically, fed to the rules, which would proceed with me hitting the ground running. Which didn’t make sense, to live for fun, in a way that your brain gets smart, yet your head gets dumb, seeing as there’s so much to do, and so much to see, so now I must pose the question, what is wrong with taking the backseat? This is due to the fact that you’ll never know if you don’t go, nor you will shine if you don’t glow. For you see, you are, at this moment, an All-Star, so get your game on, and proceed to go play, indeed, you’re an All-Star, get the show on, which would entitled you to get paid. That would mean that all that glitters, is indeed gold, and that only shooting stars, can participate in the process of breaking the mold.'

Early examples of these pieces play around a demonstration that Shapiro's argument style is tenuous since it can be used to 'prove' absurd points with just as much soundness as believable ones - i.e. none. More recent examples, like the Smash Mouth All Star one, use these now-familiar format as the backbone of a meme, parodying its tokenistic intellectual jargon by applying it to what is obviously not a logical argument.
Another popular application of satirical pasta is to parse legitimate support for progressive policies from an intuitive sense that corporate support for the same policies is often disingenuous and condescending. The Steve Buscemi How do you do, fellow Kids meme, often applied to dubious corporate attempts to appear relatable to a young demographic, has been adapted into a longer format for the purpose:

'Hello, fellow homosexuals. It is us, [MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR CORPORATION]. Here to remind you that we support your lifestyle now that it has been federally legalised and it is completely socially safe, allowing for us to capitalise on your existence now it's mainstream. Look, we even changed the colours of [LOGO]! Why did we wait this long to come out and 'support' you? Haha, no more questions, homosexual. Buy our product. Buy our product. BUY OUR PRODUCT.'

This is the logical outcome of applying the ingenuous tone of corporate support for progressive issues with their conspicuous lack of support for the same issues when they were at a more vulnerable stage. The suggestion is that if one is to perceive corporate progressivism as sincere, one must accept that for unstated reasons, presumably cowardice, corporates choose not to adopt these practices until they become mainstream, this being of similar plausibility to the alternative hypothesis that progressivism simply now adds value to a brand.
My own example - The Merciless Current
This piece is an auxiliary media sequence forming part of a novel.

'A procession of TV chefs await judgement on their food. The first of them takes two polite steps up onto a raised plateau before a panel of minor celebrities at a three-place dining table decked with chequered red bistro cloth. The ranking panelist has delivered their preliminary summary of the contestant's menu, as well as a narrative of their endeavours, and is preparing to pass sentence. We are anticipating two and a half minutes of cuts to faces, food and furniture before the score swells from a blend of NASA-pre-launch-countdown and sneak themes into despair or reconciliation harmony as the revelation is made.
'All these shots are indeed presented, but compressed into a single second's runtime, after which the judge delivers a concise and helpful assessment of the food.
'"Thank you Chef." [Departs]
'The next contestant steps meekly up. As the judge begins to summarise, her monologue speeds up beyond comprehensibility, the cuts to faces, food and flashback are strobed through, the chef judged and dismissed in the course of a half-second - the audio slowing as she departs from the stand just enough to make audible her helium-pitched "Thank you Chef".
'White VHS fast-forward lines begin to tear across the shot as the queue of three remaining chefs are suctioned almost simultaneously up to the podium, their individual retrospectives coalescing into a single sequence of almost superimposed images, and drawn immediately off-set by the merciless current of accelerated time.
'The perspective cuts to that of a boom-mounted camera tracking backwards over the heads of the audience, whose babbling pitches up to a note of urgent complaint as they are magnetised out of the space like iron filings and replaced with an identical crowd and a cast of interchangeable chefs is processed in seconds, dismissed, and relieved by another. As the camera reaches the back corner of the seating area, the shot slips out the back of it through its workings and recedes up and away from the boom crane over the isometrically-oriented set.
'Chefs and audience are now arriving and departing in continuous flow, as the widening shot reveals a procession of 1940s German steam engines discharging batches of cast and crowd backstage-right. Backstage-left the retired cast are stripped and dismantled by multiarmed factory machines; incinerated in a conveyor-belt procession of coffins now resembling a time-lapse shot of a highway. Sound-effects of industrial chaos.
'Alternative sets are now visible in an animated polyptych of Inferno, booms windscreen-wiping over the sets, generations of cast and audience discharged by an elaborate network of heavy and light rail, busses, ferries, light aircraft, blimps and hot-air balloons; variations on cast disposal: full-body mincing like cattle, dissolution in cauldrons of acid - chorus of autotuned medieval agony; remains pumped, carted, airlifted back in the direction from which the vehicles come. Roar of engine-Doppler in all directions.
'A volcano booms over the spectacle, its flare illuminating the blackened steel rigging of a cavernous warehouse. A billion helium-pitched screams knit into a continuous, wavering ring.
'The warehouse spectacle fizzes grey-white and fades to a purple-and-white text banner:
'YOU ASKED FOR THIS
'DONATE NOW'

An elaboration on the meaning and construction of this peace had to be relegated to the Google Doc.
So how can I actually benefit from this shit?
The chill thing about this style is it seems to be very intuitive to assimilate.
It's also highly likely that you're familiar with examples of it already.
The most obvious barrier is that of considering a style often encountered as part of a 'trash medium' - i.e. meme culture, to be off-limits for the purpose of literary prose. This barrier is easily enough surmounted by exposure to established prose using similar styles.
Copypasta as a style has one specific application I'd like to highlight, which applies as much to non-satirical prose as to satirical. This has to do with an alternative, but convergent definition of the word 'copy'.
'Copy', as in 'copywriting', refers often to non-literary body text suiting the demands of various industries, and informed by their best-practice guidelines. Legal copy, advertising copy, user-manual and hazard-warning copy, newsreel and documentary copy, academic and scientific writing, journalistic writing, political and economic commentary and rhetoric, jargon, vernacular, and so-on.
Where this converges with 'copypasta' is that the latter has often to do with imitating and parodying 'typical' styles. Performing this as an exercise is an excellent way of gaining an intuitive familiarity with the style and standards of an alternative way of writing, which for someone somewhere is enough of a first language that they can produce it on-demand.
Almost all dialogue and a significant portion of prose-writing involve at least some degree of voice-borrowing. As with languages, learning to borrow a new voice is markedly easier after one becomes familiar with the acquisition process. Accordingly, flippant pastiches of advertising copy may form an accessible steppingstone for writers attempting to develop the versatility of their voice.
If you are anxious to eliminate borrowed voices from your prose in an effort to approach pure self-expression, I refer you to this quotation from Rudyard Kipling:

'What should they know of England who only England know?'

The significance of this is that in stepping away from and back to your instinctive style, you may gain a crisper, more critical appreciation of what your habits actually are, and may return to their exercise with an improved sense of their strengths and avenues for expansion.

EDIT: Please also look here for an updated version with a lot more details and information than here: https://www.reddit.com/DnDBehindTheScreen/comments/isnbft/the_nine_hells_of_baator_i_made_the_layers_unique/
---------------------------------
Before I start, let me mention that this is the first time that I wrote something like this in English. While I think that my English is quite good, it still isn't my first language and so I lack the knowledge and cultural understanding of some words and their meanings. This is important as I try to use single words to describe themes and ideas related to every layer of Baator. Some might fit, some might be off. So please comment if you know how to improve my choice of words and if you see mistakes that need correction.
---------------------------------
So, recently I had the idea to base my next campaign partially in the Nine Hells of Baator, which are my favorite place in all of DnD. Some years ago, I read all the supplements but then I focused on other stuff. Since then, things have changed. So I grabbed the Dungeon Master Guide, Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes and searched through the web. I came across some really nice summaries, (special thanks to kami1996 who did a fantastic work bringing the nine hells to life in the Atlas of the Planes). But rereading the information again, I struggled with some of the ideas. The layers seemed so ... samey. Starless red sky, hot, fire. And then there was Stygia and Malbolge.
Stygia as the place where devils train their martial prowess against animals? This just felt so wrong. Devils are immortal outside of Baator. They can only be killed in the hells. Why would they train in Stygia instead of just sending the troops to Acheron or Hades, or even the Abyss itself? So that the devils respawn back home instead of ending their existence? I think that here is room for improvement.
Malbolge had a different problem: it read and felt like a poor mans Phlegetos. Fierna is so similar to Glaysia. And having the infernal court and torment in Phlegetos while the prisons and lawyers searching for loopholes sit in Malbolge is just ... unimaginative.
So, first I wanted to give every layer a certain distinct look. So I came up with the following 2 tables (had to split them for formatting reasons):
​

Layer	General look	Earth	Elevations	Water	Vegetation
Avernus	Battling waste	Basalt/bones/skulls	Meteor Craters	Rivers/lakes of blood	Thorn bushes
Dis	City	Metal and Concrete	Skyscrappers	acid	None
Minaurus	Nature	Clay, humus, peat	Thick jungles/giant trees	oily brown swamps	rotten trees/bushes
Phelgetos	Fire	Obsidian/Brimstone	Volcanoes	Rivers of lava/ fire
Stygia	Cold Water	Ice	Icebergs	Dark blue Ocean	Algae and seaweed
Malbolge	Living	slate covered by flesh	giant bones, abscesses	bodily secretions	Hair, bones, teeth
Maladomini	Decay	Marble	Ruins	filth, excrement	withered plants
Cania	Freezing Mountains	glaciers and snow	Mountain ranges	Ice	Crystaline trees
Nessus	Hot Deep Pit	Limestone	Giant Stalagmite	Deepest Black	Fungus

​

Layer	Air	Smells	Sounds	Precipitation	Sky
Avernus	brown smoke	Dead bodies	Eternal fighting	Meteor showers	red
Dis	Thick grey smog	Exhausts	Construction	Acid rain	no sky visible
Minaurus	humid green fog	Pestilence	Animals dying	Oily razor-sharp hail	very bright yellow
Phelgetos	yellow haze	Sulphur, burned flesh	Screams	firestorms, lightning	black
Stygia	clear	salty water	Silence	none	clear blue
Malbolge	Very humid	sweat/blood	wet gurgling/munching	bodily secretions	pink
Maladomini	swarms of insects	stench of filth	flies buzzing	thick black droplets	green
Cania	thin air, white fog	Ice and snow	Wind blowing	Blizzards	White with a blue sun
Nessus	Mirages	Moist caves	Rattle of chains	Hot rain	Deep purple

The nice thing is that every layer looks and feels unique. Also, most layers are in direct opposition to their next one: City vs. Nature, Fire vs. Water, Living vs. Decay, Mountains vs. Pit. I struggled a little bit with Nessus but came up with hot Cave/Pit theme. If somebody has better ideas, please comment. I feel like Nessus changed from every edition to the next.
Next I thought of themes that could be used to describe what these layers are about. Why do these layers exist, what is their purpose in the grand scheme of things? Everything in the nine hells is there for a reason. Every layer should have something that the others want and can be sold. I also like to think that every layer prefers its own devils. It is easy to see why ice devils feel most at home in Cania. But I think that other devils also deserve a kind of "birthplace", something where they might belong a little more than on other planes. And If I am already there, I added common non-devils as well that fit the theme I was going for:
​

Layer	Theme	Purpose	Basis of Economy	Home of	Common Non-Devils
Avernus	Battlefield	Defense	Mercenaries	Bearded Devils	All different kinds
Dis	Technology	Industry	Weapons	Bone devils	Constructs
Minaurus	Exploitation	Trade	Resources	Barbed devils	Wererats
Phelgetos	Pleasure and Punishment	Justice	Entertainment	Chain devils	Succubi and Incubi
Stygia	Memories	Graveyard	Archives	Amnizu	Hydroloths
Malbolge	Addiction	Nourishment	Narcotics	Erynnies	Othyugh
Maladomini	Bureaucracy	Accounting	Waste Disposal	Horned devils	Oozes
Cania	Arcane Research	Education	Magic	Ice devils	Frost giants
Nessus	Dominion	Government	Tithe	Pit fiends	None

​
Next were the Archdevils. They all promise things to their cults, but while they all pretend to be perfekt and boast of their power, they themselves are deeply flawed individuals. They rarely succeed with what they wanted to obtain. I like to think that every Archdevil represents one major sin (therefore I added 3 new sins that are a lot older than the 7 mentioned in the divine comedy). I also thought how to connect their personalities and flaws with the chults described in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes. While most stay the same, I had to switch a few around. For Glasya, I still have to find something:
​

Layer	Archdevils	Promises	Sin	Fitting cult in MTF
Avernus	Zariel	Conquest	Wrath	Cult of Zariel
Dis	Dispater	Blackmail	Envy	Cult of Dispater
Minaurus	Mammon	Wealth	Greed	Cult of Mammon
Phelgetos	Fierna	Control of emotion of others	Vanity	Cult of Fierna
	Belial	Finding legal loopholes	Lust	Cult of Glasya
Stygia	Levistus	Freedom	Despair	Cult of Levistus
Malbolge	Glasya	Bliss	Gluttony	tba
Maladomini	Baalzebul	Restoring honor	Sloth	Cult of Baalzebul
Cania	Mephistopheles	Magic	Pride	Cult of Mephistopheles
Nessus	Asmodeus	Power	Faithlessness	-

For the Cult of Glasya, I think of princess that wants to eat but still stay look pretty, of a gambler that wants to cheat and rig the game, of drug addicts that want to fell the bliss of their first hit. But with every time their cravings get satisfied, they just get deeper into their addiction. they need the next fix. And Glasya will provide, if you pay the price. I just don't know what fitting spells or boons would be.
​
So, now that we have the foundations, how does this all work together?

Avernus

In contrast to Phelegtos, the layer of infernal fire and damnation, Avernus is a black waste where rocks, stones and meteors fall like rain from the sky. Huge Craters dominate the landscape. The styx mixes itself with the blood of the victims and runs like veins through the layer. Zariel rules here and she promises conquest and martial prowess to her followers. Still, the irony is not lost: Avernus is the only layer not united and fully controlled by their Lord. Independent warbands roam the layer in infernal machines and try to carve dukedoms out for themselves. The reason she cannot succeed is that her wrath consumes and blinds her. All she wants is to strike down demons and has no mind for logistics and political intricacies. An former angel herself, she doesn't understand that devils don't want to fight in Baator if they can avoid it. Why risk your immortality in some meat grinder when you can use yugoloths or hags? Of course, devils do what they are ordered. But they stick to the letter not the intention. Hold the position at any cost is a very malleable phrase. Nevertheless, her soldiers are well trained and disciplined. As such, they are highly sought after by the other lords of the nine. Which is a good thing as she needs all the money she can get to keep the machines of war running.

Dis

This is the great city of Dis. Surrounded by impossible high walls, it is a city of skycrappers whos tops can never be seen. They are covered by smog clouds that hang in the air and make it nearly impossible to breath. From time to time acidic rain clears some of the constant fog that is created by the exhausts of burning furnaces and factories. Here, the weapons for the blood war and the giant infernal war machines are created, technological marvels that rival those of Mechanus. In this strangely calculated realm, everything bows to the iron rule of Dispater. Loyal bone devils, iron golems and flying sensors patrol the streets, looking for signs of disobedience. Paranoid, he doesn't trust anyone but his automatons and his most loyal devils. For Dispater, Flesh is weak. Steel is strong. While he upgrades his underlings with artificial limbs, those that have broken his laws are implanted pain chips and thrown in the bellies of the factories, where they shovel coal to fire the hungry furnaces. Dispater dreams of the perfect city, of progress and scientific discoveries. So he takes the greatest engineers, the best inventors that the mortal plane has to offer and uses them for his purposes. But envy runs deep in his veins. No one is allowed to have anything that is not Dispaters. Even the idea that someone might think a thought that was not his first is devastating to the Iron Duke. A tragedy, for free thinking is the basis for every research and creativity, the things he craves so much. He wants others to marvel at his achievements and feel their envy. But instead, they laugh at him. Or at least, that is what he thinks. For Dispater fells every friendly jab as a deep burn. So he retires in solitude and barricades himself behind iron gates and metal walls.

Minaurus

Contrasting the artificiality of Dis is the nature of Minaurus. The layer is covered in giant swamps and bogs surrounded by impassable thicket and jungles. Undead or sick animals roam under rotten trees and attack intruders that have not already been consumed by flesh eating plants. Here, Mammon reigns supreme, the archdevil of wealth and greed. He seeks to possess all the coins, jewels, art, and magic items that exist only to store them deep within his palace. And his layer is the same. Below, under all the fiendish and deadly nature, lie resources of unknown wealth: coal, oil, metals, gemstones of every kind and size can be found. But Minaurus doesn't let you get them. Plants regrow at an alarming rate and cover up your progress. Razor-sharp hail will tear your flesh from your bones or destroy your digging machines. Many have tried to access the wealth below but only one constantly manages to succeed: Dispaters engines, for the Iron City hungers! Giant Machines with pumps and flamethrowers drink the swamps and burn the plants while colossal drills tear massive wounds in the layers crust. But do not worry, Mammon gets his fair share. But one must be careful. If something breaks and the engines stop, nature is taking its revenge. So is the layer littered with carcasses of these colossal excavators, half swallowed by the moors.
But Minaurus is not only a place of nature. In the middle of the largest swamp, fixed by massive chains to surrounding trees is the city of Minaurus. There, the coin mint is located and the largest Bazaar of all the lower planes.Here, everything can be bought for gold: slaves and even souls. As long as you pay Mammon first. Rumors are that there exists a group of rat-folk that live deep within Minaurus under the protection of Mammon. These vermin of the planes burrow tunnels from their city of blight through the astral sea and ambush all the planes that they may reach. Their goal is to get all the valuables they can get and trade it for souls. Why they need the souls is not quite clear. But Maybe this is just a myth.

Phlegetos

This is the layer of eternal damnation, of fire and brimstone, of pain and punishment. Here, the souls of those petitioners are brought that do not follow the lawful evil ideals. They are tortured till only obedience and hate remain. Only then are they thrown into the Styx to forget every memory they ever possessed. Later they leave the river on their assigned plane, reborn as lemures. While the torture is not really necessary, it increases the quality of the product and the patrons, with whom these doomed individuals signed their contracts, persist on this service. Besides, it makes for good entertainment. Especially the Chain Devils of the jingling hiter love this custom. Once located in Minaurus, are these now relocated to Phlegetos, where they relish the cries of the tormented and think of new ways to hurt their victims. Devils from all over the planes watch them carry out their duty. Like a sadistic amusement park, it is the main diversion for the devils. But punishment is not reserved for mortals. Some devils want to participate as victims and feel the bliss of pain themselves. But not only mortals get punished here. Also devils that broke the law need to be corrected. The severity of their sentence is judged by Belial, the infernal judge, who knows the laws of devils and the planes better than any being except Asmodeus. He decides about demotions, exile, torture, death, or the worst of all punishments: the deletion of their achievements from the records of Stygia. Because devils might get killed, but if they are also forgotten, then they are truly dead.
Like all other Archdevils, also Belial falls victim to his sin, his lust. It is so easy to abuse your position to sentence some a little less than others. It is well known that those who visit him in his chambers before a trial get a slightly more favorable judgment than the others. Especially those of beauty. And the most beautiful is his own daugther, Fierna. Oh, and she knows. Vanity made flesh, she uses her advantage every time they meet. She loves how Belial falls victim to her games and how easy she can manipulate the old devil to get every one of her wishes. But not every devil is so easily controlled. Most Archdevils see her for the shallow being she is. A spoiled brat that tries its best to stay on top and would long be gone if Belial was not her plaything.

Stygia

The river Styx erases the memories of all that drink from him. And nowhere in the nine hells is its magic as strong as in the great ocean of Stygia. It is hard to concentrate and to remember why you came here. Quiet and silent, the layer is filled with a special kind of melancholy. A feeling of hopelessness with no way out. How easy it would be to end it all, to fall into the dark depths and forget that you ever were. Drown your sorrows. Escape it all. Like all of the petitioners did. All except one, Levistus, the eternally imprisoned. Deep in his block of ice with no change of ever escaping, even the sweet embrace of death is denied to him. Once he envied all others for their freedom. But this is gone. There is nothing to hope for. There is just despair. Sometimes when he helps one of his petitioners to escape his doom, he feels a glimpse of freedom himself. Only to be crushed again by the reality of his sentence. He wished that Geryon would find a way to break the ice and kill him once for all. So all that is left to Levistus is the past.
It is said that at the bottom of the styx you can find all the memories that it took away. In case of Stygia this might be true. Amnizu, the Styx devils, are immune to its touch and built with the help of Hydroloths giant floating structures deep within the oceans. There, large archives of all the signed contracts and of all the deeds and misdeeds of the devils, living and dead, are collected. In addition, all available knowledge of their enemies or the mortals planes is here stored. This is the great Memory of Baator. To gain entry is nearly impossible. To gain access to the files, an application form has to be sent and signed. Next, Amnizu will copy the documents and blacken all confidential information before transporting it to the surface. Only then is it possible to view the information. But information is power and a reason why devils from other layers must visit this place every once in a while.
And when they visit, they have no choice but to see the great monuments placed on the Field of Glory. Located at the entry of Tantlin, every devil is allowed to sponsor a statue sculptured after his own liking and place it there. Some are made of ice that will soon melt and is the cheapest material, some are made of wood, clay, gold, marble or steel. The most expensive ones are made of diamond and last forever. Created by the best artists from all kind of planes, these sculptures are monuments to the achievement of the sponsor. Engraved are their mortal origin an selected deeds that show their greatness. For devils fear death, but the statues will persist. The more costly the material, the longer the devil may be remembered even after death. No one may destroy or touch them, except Belial decrees it. Which is the worst sentence imaginable.

Malbolge

When you first set foot on this layer, your impression is quite different. You might think you found a portal to the fields of Elysium. Rivers made of milk and honey flow between lush green fields where baked chickens run. Talking Swine that eat themselves and invite you to do the same. Fountains of wine and beer are a welcome distraction for the weary traveler. Especially here, where hunger and thirst are stronger than normal. So, you might as well try one of the presented meals or drinks. Or play a game of cards? Test your luck on a slot machine? Where is the harm. You will win, I assure you. Bliss lances through your body and you experience unknown happiness. You need more. And while you continue, the magic slowly fades and the true face of Malbolge is revealed.
Because once, the hag countess ruled this layer. But then, she was consumed by hunger. Not able to control her urges, she started to feast on everything she got in her hands. Until only the layer itself remained. Giving in to gluttony, she lost her mind and grew to gigantic proportions. Cancerous tumors and abscesses started to grow on her skin and, today, it is not quite clear were the hag begins and the layer starts. Flesh and skin cover the earth that once was rock, teeth and nails grow at random spots and clusters of hair act as foliage. Eyes without eyelids follow your every step while ears growing everywhere listen. But the worst thing on this horrible layer are the devils and petitioners alike. Bloated figures, half fused to the layer they are on, they eat the flesh, suck on teats and nipples and drink rancid smelling pools of secretions while frolicking blissfully. For every new bite is a new sensation and a new high. Forgotten are all your sorrows, only happiness remains. But also those that gamble, hoard items, or cannot stop playing games find here their home. This is the layer of addiction. Whatever your obsession, you won't be judged.
And in the middle of it lives Glasya, daughter of Asmodeus. She has her chambers in a gigantic skull surrounded by walls of bone. She looks down on her subjects in disgust. How weak they are to give in so easily. How they would do everything for the next fix. And she is in control of it. They would do whatever she wants, if she just asked. All their attention, all their love. Directed solely on her. What feeling of power. And she enjoys it. Craves it. She needs how her masses hail their queen! It is not vanity, not pride, it is adoration that is her addiction. And she fell for it a long time ago.

Maladomini

Once it was the crown jewel of all the layers. A place of ambition and pride. Still, Baalzebul was not content. He wanted more. But perfection is unattainable. The more he pressed, the less motivated his subjects became. They knew that no matter how good their work, they had to redo it all tomorrow. So why try. And they gave in to sloth. What you can do today, you can easily do whenever. Now the layer is a disgusting place full of ruins and filth. The stench of excrement fills the air and stirges fly around in swarms. It is the dumpster of the layers. They pay a high price to unload all their waste into Maladomini. And it would be filled to the brink if not for the layer above. Huge tentacles from Malbolge suck up what they can get to sustain its cancerous life.
The only working structure is the city of Malagard. There adminstration and bureaucracy of the hells is located. Forms are filled, applications are accepted or denied. Also, the numbers are run by the accountants. How many souls does every Lord possess? Who fails in his duties? But there is no hurry. Legions of lazy horned devils are in charge and do only somewhat care for efficiency. Rules are rules. So they work along regulations. Surely not more. For here, they are in charge. And it is nearly impossible to punish a devil for lazyness as long as he obyes the law. And Baalzebul? the years have not been kind to him. Transformed into a giant slug as punishment during the reckoning, he revels in his hate. He plans his revenge on the other lords and especially Asmodeus. And how to finally regain his honor! But for that, he would have to move. Or do something. Which, lets face it, is really exhausting. Maybe tomorrow. Or, you know, whatever.

Cania

The air is thin and hard to breath. Freezing cold fills your lungs while you stare in the white-out in front of you. Below you snow, above you white sky, razor-sharp ice crystals blow ito your face and no amount of clothing can remove the feeling of numbness that crawls under your skin. Welcome to Cania. Miles deep glaciers on top of giant mountains ranges cover this layer. It is so cold that every source of water freezes. Even the styx is frozen. So it is impossible for the lemures to reach the river bank. Instead, the get covered by even more ice. So, Mephistopheles, the Lord of this layer, has to employ harvesting companies. In small towns, located in the middle of nowhere, they search for hidden veins of the river, which they try to reach with heated picks and axes. Some of the bigger companies even employ mechanical machines from Dis. The frozen lemures are then often brought to the capital Mephistar by frost giants. The work is laborious but very well paid. For the Lord of Cania does not lack in wealth. His is the arcane research is well known even beyond the borders of the Nine Hells. He only seeks the souls of the most powerful mortals. Sorcerers, Magicians, Wizards, Warlocks. His goal is to uncover all the hideen truths, for he is already the most intelligent of all devils. Is he not the one to which the devils are sent to unravel the mystery of the arcane? It is pure circumstance that Asmodeus is still in charge. Asmodeus, he is nothing to the almighty wielder of Hellfire and the best Baator ever had to offer! Yes, it is pride that has taken its hold in mighty Mephistopheles. He dreams of grandiour but is unable to see his faults. Hubris is his undoing in every single plot against his master. And Asmodeus is quite entertained.

Nessus

If Cania resembles the highest mountain ranges on the mortal realms, Nessus represents the deepest pits. Hot and humid, the place stinks of rust and stale water. Made of limestone, a cragged surface surrounds the pit where, according to legend, Asmodeus fell from the heavens. Today, there is a huge hollowed-out Stalagmite, the mighty Citadel of Malsheem that serves as the seat of Government to the Nine Hells. Run by Pit fiends, a non-devil is a very rare sight. Only with special allowance by the Lord of the Devils himself, are such creatures allowed to touch the layers unholy surface. Asmodeus, whos amibition is so far above the others. He is the dark paragon for every devil. His schemes have allowed him to become a god! The god of Heresy. The god of Unbelief. The god of Atheism. What an irony. He forbids worship from his worshipers, instead has to bind them with contracts, still. Unable to brake the shackles that bind him to this plane, for all his power, he will never know true freedom. Like all the other Archdevils and Lords of the layers, Asmodeus is not the jailer, he is just the most powerful prisoner. And it is his sin of faithlessness that will forever bind him here.
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Ok, that is all I got for now. It is still work in progress and I will change stuff if somebody has better ideas here and there. But for now, I am quite happy how it turned out. If somebody can help me with the Cult of Glasya, that would be incredibly nice.
Thanks.
Edit: may original idea was to make Stygia some kind of graveyard. But then I could not make it work. But I think I just had a nice idea so the graveyard is back.
Edit2: I had an idea for a
New cult of Glasya, focused on addiction:
Goals: Addictions of any kind, make others depend and control the supply
Typical Cultists: bandit captain, thieve, thug, noble, cult fanatic, cultist, addicts of any kind
Signature Spells: Guidance (cantrip), heroism (1st level), Enhance Ability (2nd level), haste (3rd level)
Members of the cult of Glasya think that everyone has to find their own path to happiness. But what is happiness compared to the bliss hidden in excesses? The cult members promote every possible addiction, from gambling to substance abuse or the search for adrenaline. And they control the supply.
Members of the cult can gain the Substance Abuse trait. Cult leaders can also gain the Numbness trait.
Substance Abuse (Recharges after a Short or Long Rest). As a bonus action, this creature gains advantage on all ability checks and attack rolls it makes until the end of the current turn.
Numbness (Recharge 5–6). As a reaction when this creature takes damage, it can roll a d10 and subtract the number rolled from the damage.
What do you think?
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