
Null: ...running supernaturally fast errands for rich jerks? Well, the virgin blood stuff tends to upset people.
Wand Scum is a Webcomic by Sylvan Migdal (most known for their fan-favorite comic Curvy), under the pseudonym of "M. Magdalene". The comic is way too NSFW to link due to its sexual content, but the comic is free to read on his website.
Null, Mistress of the Cosmos, is a occultist fresh out of college who is trying to make a name for herself in the sorcerer's community. Until that day comes, she's stuck delivering things and doing odd tasks across the multiverse. When an accident gives her a demotion, she'll really need to up the ante and do something particularly evil, lest she's stripped of her powers and thrown in the gutter.
The widowed Pemineth Fanwoud is a Lady in the thriving Duopolis, but she's stuck with an unfortunate curse that causes her to switch genders at random. Worse yet, she finds herself seduced by Mistress Null and now has the extra problem of fending off her own Gayngst while trying to keep her unfortunate shapeshifting a secret.
This comic shows examples of:
- Ambiguously Christian: Duopolis is vaguely Baroque-European and while people get up to a lot of sexual shenanigans in private, the aristocracy at least tries to uphold chastity as a virtue in theory. Their religious iconography includes preying to the Heavenly Lords "Rastrum, who masters evil" and "Rallyx, who endures suffering", a Holy Twinity representing themes of spiritual warfare and redemptive suffering prevalent in a lot of Real Life Christian denominations. Clients in this world will sometimes invite Null to their house to pray for her soul, and the culture mostly has a bias against demons and witchcraft. Pemineth is even seen praying to a personal alter resembling a nativity alter... featuring a naked figure prostrating in the other direction. It's basically a Crystal Dragon Jesus religion, emphasis on "Jesus", with BDSM undertones.
- Art Imitates Art: When Null defaces the restored Chastity Unbesmirched, the new version includes the Venus de Milo with Marcel Duchamp's The Fountain for a head (with "M. Null" as its signature), and part of Pemineth's velocipede repurposed into a remake of Duchamp's Bicycle Wheel.
- Artifact of Doom: Athrexia's big evil task is to reassemble the seven shards of the Stone of Malice. Turns out it's a bigger task than first thought, Athrexia having only managed to assemble one by the time the meeting starts.
- Bad Boss: The Satanic Archetype that runs SWEEAT is shown to be of little help when it comes to the logistically nightmare of running an Evil, Inc., doing nothing but complain and demoralize them. Their group assigns each member an imp familiar who is of no help, and it's even implied that they are forced to buy those familiars themselves with their student loans. She tasks Athrexia with assembling an Artifact of Doom and then complains when she's not doing it fast enough. She assigns the Necromancer the task of amassing an army of skeletons, but won't hear him out when he points out that skeletons need joints to move, and thus rendering the plan impractical. She ignores the complaints about GigWeasel being bogged down by requests of mundane tasks. When a member complains that all of the familiars they are assigned are useless, she comments that it's "absurd" to give their members better demons to work with because they wouldn't "meet [their] growth targets" if she did. When Null loses a pentacle from her perfect five-pentacle rating (a mishap caused by her sub-par familiar), she threatens to fire her over it if she doesn't do something big.
- Being Evil Sucks:
- Null is an occultist who works for an Evil, Inc. run by a Satanic Archetype to spread wickedness throughout the multiverse. What does this entail? Basically doing odd jobs on a Uber-esq app for crap pay while a company-mandated Shoulder Devil insults her, encourages her to slack off by appealing to her lust towards her clients, or just straight up makes her job harder. When an accident causes her to lose a pentacle on her 5-Pentacle Rating, the company app deliberately handicaps her.
- The meeting of the Society of Warlocks, Evildoers, Enchanters, Adepts & Thaumaturges (SWEEAT) deconstructs the idea of an Evil, Inc. to illustrate how much it sucks. They are expected to sow sin and wickedness throughout the multiverse, but the tasks given to them are either impractical (amassing a skeleton army, but they are useless without joints to move with), fail to work as intended (GigWeasel being used to request mundane tasks), or do nothing but inconvenience their members (having familiars who are no help). It also doesn't help that their Bad Boss does nothing but demoralize them.
- But Not Too Gay: Null is shown to have a preference towards women, whether it's doing it with female clients, or just having lesbian porn on her off-hours. However, she's also willing to do it with Pemineth when they're in their masculine form.
- Do Wrong, Right: Null's tendency to sleep with her clients (and in Pemineth's case, being her Closet Key) isn't discouraged, but it's considered a very low-tier form of corruption not worth acknowledging in terms of work ethic.
- Easily Scattered Skeleton: The Necromancer was tasked by his Satanic Archetype of a boss with amassing a skeleton army, but he has yet to figure out how to get them to march without knee-joints.
- Forced Transformation: Through unknown means, Pemineth has a bad habit of shapeshifting between male and female forms. She has no idea why it happens, but she's struggled hard to keep it a secret, and soon makes a deal with Null to make it stop.
- Fun with Acronyms: GigWeasel is run by the Society of Warlocks, Evildoers, Enchanters, Adepts & Thaumaturges (SWEEAT).
- Idiosyncratic Ratings Scale: The comic began with Null having a five-pentacle rating on her profile. After an accident involving Null slipping and her shoulder devil literally spitting one of the pentacles out, public opinion on her profile does a total 180 and she loses all of her work. The app even deliberately alters all of her profile's details (makes her profile picture less appealing, mispelling her name, describing her as "late" and "ride, sweaty", etc) just to rub salt in the wound.
- MacGuffin Delivery Service: While GigWeasel was meant to be a vehicle for SWEEAT to sow evil into the multiverse, this is what it winds up being used for, something that the staff complain about to the deaf ears of their Bad Boss.
- Mugged for Disguise: Null knocks out a gardener (throwing Hekhxion at him after tricking him into saying "Bonkus of the Konkus"), to steal his clothes so that she can get close to and sabotage the new statue at the arboretum.
- Never My Fault: The various Evil Plans SWEEAT were all assigned to them by their Satanic Archetype boss, who does nothing but complain and demoralize them for not getting their jobs done fast enough. Never mind if her ideas are impractical, or that the familiars assigned to help them are dumber than rocks.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain!: After all the chaos from stealing Chastity Unbesmirched and various factions fighting over ownership of it, Null gives Pemineth "her cut" of the resulting profits, presuming she would use it to fix her roof. Instead, Pemineth donates the money to provide clean water for an orphanage, having proposed using the budget used to restore Chastity Unbesmirched for that before she was outvoted. Unfortunately for Null, the whole scheme was meant for her to restore her Villain Cred, instead losing a pentacle on her GigWeasel profile because her actions made her an accomplice to a Robin Hood-esq redistribution of wealth.
- Poke the Poodle: When Null is told to up her Villain Cred after losing a pentacle, she starts by smashing one of Pemineth's vases (after denying her sex). She then goes on to replace the unveiling of the restored Chastity Unbesmirched into a Dada-esq parody of itself, planning on selling the original sculpture on the Black Market.
- Rich Bitch: The Philomental Hygienical League of Ethically Guided Matrons are composed primarily of ladies of high-society focusing on philanthropy, though most members would rather spend the budget on tacky things for themselves instead of things people actually need, like a new sculpture for their botanical gardens instead of clean water restoration for the orphanage.Member 1: If loose women see that orphanage is finer than their own lodgings, it will merely encourage them to have even more babies than they can't afford.
Lady de Gula: Morally enriching art will do far more for those luxuries of the flesh. - Sheet of Glass: Parodied. When Null is running late for a delivery, she accidentally runs into a nude painting being carried across the street by two handlers. In the following panel, it's shows the woman in the painting having fallen over as if Null bumped into a real person.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: The people know about GigWeasel, and while a lot of people in Duopolis are strongly religious and know that it's involved with demons and witches, people still use it anyway and the most reaction people have towards her is to pray for her. Not only that, but Duopolis is primarily an Edwardian/Baroque world, but no one really acknowledges the purple-haired chick doing errands in modern-wear and roller-skates.
- Visual Pun: When Pemineth transforms between their male and female aspect, it usually involves them melting into a puddle of goo, making them literally gender-fluid.
- Vulval Flora: The Virgin-of-the-Wood (Clitoria vulgaris) is a flower native to the world of Duopolis. The flower's appearance gets its name from its passing resemblance to a woman's lady-bits (including small tufts of pubic hair), and it's implied that people have been known to "[attempt] pleasures of the flesh" with them.
