#THEY RECOUNTED EACH OTHER IN THE AFTERLIFE

[from-the-coffee-shop-in-edoras]

Religion in Rohan

On the recommendation of @sotwk and on the off chance that others find this interesting or useful, here is another summary of some of the background head canons that support how I think of Rohan when I'm writing stories set there. This one is about religion, for lack of a better term, and covers at a high level what they think about gods, the afterlife, etc. and the influence of that on their culture. I fine-tuned some of this recently as part of a back-and-forth with others, and it's (hopefully?) more interesting than my pages of thoughts about changes in Rohan's horse breeding economy over time (the TL;DR there is that Théoden’s grandfather created crown-sponsored horse breeding enterprises to better supply the expanding army, but that ended up forcing some of the traditional horse breeding families into poverty)! Anywho...

Most of what we know about the religious history of Middle Earth (the full Silmarillion-style recounting of Eru, the Valar, the making of the world, etc.) comes via the elves and Númenóreans. But the Northmen ancestors of the Rohirrim didn’t really interact much with these groups, and so their knowledge of that history was limited to what they directly experienced themselves or what filtered through to them in sometimes irregular ways. This means their belief system, which is what became the Rohirrim belief system, is a mix of those Silmarillion-style ideas plus concepts they picked up in other places and some homegrown beliefs and practices. 

For example, the Rohirrim don’t make a real distinction between Eru and the Valar. To them, they’re all “the gods” who made the world and are of roughly equal power and importance (though they are particularly attached to one as further discussed below). 

They also recognize fewer of the Valar than others do, having a stripped down set of 7 associated with earth, sky, water, plants/animals, battle/protection, weather, and all things to do with the spirit/soul (roughly corresponding to the Silm’s Aulë, Varda, Ulmo, Yavanna, Oromë, Vána and Eru). The compression of all the spirit-based Valar into just one likely happened because these Valar almost never left Valinor and so the evidence of their separate existence for those who had never been there was tenuous at best. Although the Rohirrim gods have spheres of influence as denoted above, the lines between these gods are porous and they might all be involved in anything. They also each have their own Rohirric names.

The Rohirrim don’t practice their beliefs in a form that is anything like organized religion – no formal rites, ceremonies, prayers, etc. They simply pass down beliefs from generation to generation, and individuals or families may all have different ways of expressing those beliefs (or may choose not to express them in any sense). The primary purpose of their beliefs is to explain the world as they see it around them (How was the world created? Where did this storm come from? etc.). People may appeal to a certain god for help in difficult times or they may give thanks to a god for luck or fortune, but they also believe direct, purposeful intervention by a god in the real world is extremely limited since the War of Wrath and the end of the First Age. This causes the Rohirrim to put a lot of weight on both living honorably and taking care of your community, because there probably is no god coming to help you – you can only help each other. 

Unlike the Gondorians, who think the ultimate fate of mortals beyond the world is unknown, the Rohirrim believe in a very specific afterlife. They believe the gods come to collect the dead and reunite them with their families so that they can “live” a second existence together with one another (the so-called “halls of our fathers”). Anyone who doesn’t deserve admittance to their family’s halls is put in service of the spirit/soul god until they’ve earned their honor back through deeds.

The Rohirrim are particularly attached to their god that is the Valar Oromë the huntsman, who they call Béma and associate with both battle and protection. He was a great favorite of the Northmen, and this connection was passed on through time to the Rohirrim. 

They believe that, just as he did for the earliest elves, Béma rode among early men. They don’t care that the elves and Gondorians don’t believe this happened; they will not be swayed and say that he came in disguise, which is why others didn’t recognize him. They further believe that Béma chose their ancestors among early men to be his loyal foot soldiers in the fight against the evil creatures of the world. He asked for their aid, and they granted it. This established a firm belief among them that coming to the aid of an ally against evil is a sacred duty, never to be refused or ignored when requested in good faith.

As his allies, Béma bestowed horses on them, and the most treasured and best of those horses (the mearas) are thought to be descendants of Béma’s own horse, Hnaegan (whose elvish name, Nahar, is meant to evoke the sound of neighing and so the Rohirrim call him by the Rohirric word for “neigh”). Because Béma always hunted and fought on horseback and usually announced his arrival through the blowing of his great horn, the Rohirrim inherited these same practices from their ancestors.

Béma also influenced the disposition of the people, who adopted his very stern personality and his tendency to pursue thankless duty with grim determination. Showing Béma-like strength and persistence in the face of insurmountable odds is considered one of the very highest demonstrations of character in Rohan, akin to a religious virtue.

While their reverence for Béma shaped many significant elements of Rohirric culture and identity, they also ask/hope for his intervention in times of crisis. As a huntsman, they leave him small offerings of spear heads or bridle bits when they most hope that he will come to their aid, and the phrases “Béma protect us” or “thank Béma” are common parts of the lexicon – as noted above, they don’t necessarily *expect* Béma will show up and intervene, but it doesn’t hurt to ask!

Although their focus is Béma, the Rohirrim also give some primacy of place to his wife, whose name is Vána in the Silmarillion and is called Ácith in Rohan as the rough translation of her epithet “Ever-young”. She’s associated with the weather and turning of the seasons. Much like the other peoples of Middle Earth, the Rohirrim say that flowers bloom in Ácith’s wake as she walks through the world, which she does at the end of each winter to usher in the spring. The Rohirrim also believe that the consistent and otherwise unexplained appearance of simbelmynë on their graves is evidence that Ácith has been there to personally escort the dead to the halls of their fathers. The Rohirric expression that someone “went with Ácith” means that they died.

Other common Rohirric expressions with religious roots: “the light of Hnaegan” (a sign of hope in a bad situation, deriving from the sparks of light that came from Nahar’s golden hooves and were the first light in the world after Morgoth killed the trees); “you’re going to hear Béma’s horn” (you really fucked up and are about to experience someone’s wrath); and “to earn the hall” (doing something good and honorable that would earn your place in the afterlife halls of your fathers).

#lotr #lord of the rings #tolkien #head canons #rohan #religion in middle earth #things no one asked for but i have them nonetheless

[spinosworks]

a fate worse than getting a call from the county jail

twin au where danny is put on trial in the ghost zone but since the ghost zone's judicial system is a mess they call for a character witness from various periods of his life bc he's still technically living

(a word about the court proceedings. due to the fact that i know next to nothing abt real court and i don't want to do research for a prompt i have no time to write, the entire trial is going to be on some ace attorney bullshit.)

damian gets ghost jury duty (i know it's not jury duty but that was too funny not to write)

as it turns out, getting the news that your brothers ghost is still around from a glowing green figure that materialized in your dining room is not a great way to get news. if you want to start the trial right away, damian is whisked off in his pjs. if he gets some time, it takes place that night. still, it's not a lot of time to process that you're about to see your dead brother who is apparently a criminal.

well dannys always technically been a criminal. murder is very much illegal no matter what age you are.

damian isn't allowed to know what the charges are bc it may influence how he recounts the testimony. this does not bode well to damian.

danny on the other hand does NOT know that damian is even going to be there. so the first time they lock eyes across the court room danny is a complete mess.

but guess what's an even bigger mess? the fact that the last time the twins saw each other they were literal baby assassins.

the character witness doesn't help in the slightest. if anything it goes even worse (but for who?)

damian gets to bond with the ghosts of the far frozen during the recess.

WAIT IS FROSTBITE DANNYS LAWYER?? if so i will only be putting him in more elaborate robes, no matter how funny the idea of him in a suit and tie is. non western traditional garb is professional and i will not fall into that pit.

ANYWAYS

frostbite is dannys lawyer but he's kinda bad at it,,, (the far frozens court system is a lot more straight forward)

he's basically the pheonix wright of the courtroom. he's gonna get the job done but by god is he gonna make some mistakes.

damian is going to have to be his maya or smth. damian is reading the court files (which are horribly put together who wrote this shit??) to try and help frostbite put a case together and???? WTF HAS HIS BROTHER BEEN DOING WITH HIS AFTERLIFE

to those wondering where the rest of the trio are, they weren't allowed to know where the trial is taking place due to their history of helping danny break out of prison. this doesn't stop them from trying to break him out. or stop them from getting help 👀👀

that's right kiddos, they go to gotham. not for the bats, but to figure out why one of the waynes is at one of the most prolific ghost trials in centuries (dannys gone around the block at this point. people are curious to see the verdict, if any)

kitty and jazz are friends so kitty let's slip what's going on and who exactly showed up.

('why the hell is damian wayne there?!')

that's all i have for right now, kinda fond of it so i may write smth short for it.

probably not so go wild with it. anyone is welcome to cannibalize this for parts.

(oh yeah the song i was blasting while writing this was innocent man by billy joel. just thought it'd be funny to mention)

#wow i wrote that all in like.... 40 minutes #my brain really popped off today #except not really bc i was supposed to write for smth else #dp x dc #danny phantom #batman #also none if this is actually thought out so if u expect this to make sense: #dont #you know whatd be even funnier than all of this? #that towards the end its revealed that it wasnt even supposed to be a criminal trial #danny was supposed to be placed with new guardians and damian was supposed to be the character witness for *bruce* #lol but i dont want to add that in now so whoever reads the tags gets an extra treat

[rmoonstoner]

18+ Smut chapter with a wee bit of plot. Steven Grant (Virgin) X Reader.  Jake and Marc watch.

Warnings: sex, rough sex, small bit of praise and guess? p in v, mentions of death and describing death, brief descriptions of blood and gore, biting might be mentioned, scratching is mentioned a lot, voyeurism, slight Dom Jake? I dunno, he doesn't get the action, Steven does, but Jake tells him what to do.

***

He recounted at least a dozen times where he had cheated death with 'Conrad's' help, all while Steven was blissfully unaware. He told you how he would sometimes black out while in the heat of battle, only to come to in a sea of death that he had caused. It happened even more frequently after Steven became more of his own person, and being aware of Marc.

Then when he came the very last time he died, it was because he was careless. That time, Steven was fully aware of what was happening, but they had been awkwardly fighting with each other, thinking the other was a pest. Marc was trying to help his friend, who had been imprisoned in some ancient Egyptian tomb. He was on his way to save 'Conrad', when Marc had been shot in the chest and had fallen into a well full of water.

Both him and Steven had been terrified as their vision left them in a dark void. They could feel the icy cold of the water sucking every ounce of warmth from their body as it became numb and unfeeling. They described how their lungs burned as they filled with water, and how they choked and sputtered as the life left their body. They didn't have any strength to move, to try to swim and pull themselves up as they had lost too much blood.

Then when they woke up, nothing hurt. They could see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. For Marc, he was in some sort of mental institution for the mentally unstable, which was one of his greatest fears. Everything was quiet in his white padded cell, and he felt like he had been heavily drugged. Every room was decorated with Egyptian artifacts. Even his own cell had a sarcophagus for a bed. 

For Steven, he had woken up in a cramped, cold, and dark box. He was screaming at the top of his lungs and pounding on the box for what seemed like hours, until Mark came and freed him. They had been in their own bodies, separated from the other, and they got to actually feel the other when they embraced. It was the weirdest thing for them, for they looked identical in nearly every way, save for their regular facial expressions, their posture, their hair style, and the clothes that they wore.

They told you how they had to work as a team to try and escape, only to run into a giant hippo woman named Taweret. They explained how she needed them to balance their scales, and they tried for so long to do so, before the boat got to the gates of the afterlife. They tried to find clues in their memories, and Marc finally told Steven the truth, how he made him up to deal with the world. They even found an empty cell with another coffin, but never had the chance to check inside. You knew right then and there they had some small clue that someone else could be lurking around in their body, but they were obviously in denial about it.

On some level, Steven and Marc were aware of Jake, but at the same time, they just ignored his existence.

They told you how they were attacked, and how Steven was thrown overboard, only to turn into a sandstone statue in the sands. Marc said that Taweret was quite sad, and that Steven would be lost forever in the Duat sands. He said his scales had finally balanced, because there was only one heart to weigh, and not two, and he was finally allowed to go to the afterlife.

But then Marc felt suddenly alone and scared. He felt like a large part of him was missing. He was supposed to be filled with elation, and no longer care about anything, yet he couldn't stop thinking about Steven. He begged Osiris to allow him to go back for Steven, and perhaps go back to the mortal realm, even though he was told he could be lost in the sands just like Steven. Marc went anyway, and got to Steven just as the sands claimed him, then Taweret came to help and Osiris let them back into their body.

The whole story sounded preposterous, but you believed it. You believed every word, and shocked them when you told them that. They had been so relieved, they hugged you while thanking you for not thinking they were insane. You rubbed their shoulders, enjoying the sweet closeness of their breath on your neck. With one last shuddering breath, you pulled away from each other, and saw the unshed tears in their eyes.

"Thank you so much for not thinking we are crazy." They both somehow said at the same time. You could distinctly hear both voices speaking at the exact same time. That wasn't supposed to be possible for a normal human being. You assumed it was the magic from the moon God, with them being completely unaware that they were still blessed by Khonshu's power.

"It's alright. You aren't crazy. From what you're telling me, you might have extra souls inside of you." You replied as you took a swig of your wine. They reached out to grab your hand, and you heard them sigh.

"Is it alright if we kiss you again?"

"Yes. I would think so." You said, and they leaned in once more. They kissed you nice and slow, their hands slowly going to your jaw. You sighed lightly, and kissed back with more intensity. Soon your tongues were slithering against each other, and before long, your hands were wandering all over their body.

"Fuck… You're so sexy…" Steven mumbled as you climbed into his lap. His hands came up your sides, causing you to arch your back and rock against him.

"Marc says he can't believe what's happening… He also thinks he should just sit back and watch. Let me actually have a bit of fun, before, you know… He comes back out." Steven slurred a bit. His eyes were displaying an aroused wonder as he cupped one of your breasts experimentally. 

"I think Marc is right. He's got more experience than you, and he should allow you to earn your own experience." You replied as your hands dug into his shirt to feel his chest. He sighed, licking his lips as he watched you undo each button with one hand. While you did that, Steven slipped his hands under your shirt, up to grasp at your soft mounds one more.

"Oh, fuck.. Steven…" You whined at him when he found your nipple, rolling it between his rough fingers. His other hand came up to grab your shirt, and he pulled on the garment to take it off of you. When he was done, you were left in just your skirt. You weren't wearing any underwear, and you were excited to see his face when he found that out.

Until then, Steven appeared to be very enthusiastic about your breasts. He had both hands on them, gently rubbing and squeezing them as he watched how they moved in his hands.

"May I… Uh, kiss them?" He timidly asked, and you nodded with a salacious grin.

"Yes, Steven. You can kiss them. You can lick, touch, fondle… Oh… That's nice…" You trailed off as Steven dipped his face down to press his lips to one of your nipples. He gave you a little peppering of kisses, and then he sucked the tender nub into his mouth. You ground against him as he rolled his tongue over your sensitive flesh, you nipple held between his teeth.

Fuck he was so gentle, and he was teasing the fuck out of you with his exploration of your skin.

"So pretty…" Steven groaned softly. He pressed his face in the crook of your neck and left sloppy, wet kisses in his wake. You bet Steven would be this gentle the entire time, which was fine with you. He was essentially a virgin, while Marc and Jake weren't.

Or at least that's what you thought, up until Steven growled.

"I want to fuck you so badly…" He said, his voice now several octaves lower. If his accent hadn't lingered, you would have assumed that he had switched alters.

"Is that what you want to do, Steven?" You asked him, and he answered with another growl as he sucked on your neck hard enough to leave a bruise. You gasped, feeling one of his hands come down your torso, ghosting his fingers against your belly, and down to your skirt. He dove his hand under, and froze.

"No knickers? Oh… Such a naughty girl you are, yeah?" Steven hummed as he drew back to look at your face. You stared at him, eyes wide as he pushed his fingers into your folds without any hesitation. He swished them back and forth, wriggling one, then two, then three inside of your wet pussy, while his thumb found your clit in record time. The entire time you kept gasping his name.

"Ah, St-steven…"

"Lookit you… You're sopping… I must be doing something right, yeah?" He said with a thick husky voice. You didn't even know that Steven was capable of sounding like that…

Like Jake.

"It's your fault, Steven." You breathed back through a moan.

"It is, innit?" He chuckled into your ear as he pumped his fingers in and out. He was just barely missing your gspot, and you were growing frustrated. You knew his fingers were long enough, but you knew this was Steven, and not Jake. He probably didn't know what to do.

'Curl your fingers upwards.' A growling voice suddenly whispered to Steven. Steven paused for a moment, wondering if that was Marc, but he sounded different somehow, like he had a Chicago accent. You didn't show any indication that you heard the voice, so Steven pretended that he didn't hear anything.

'I said curl your fucking fingers. Puto idiota de mierda.' The voice suddenly sounded Spanish, and quite frustrated.

Steven blinked, and did as he was told. He curled his digits, and pushed upwards into a spongy feeling area. The result was you bucking your hips, grinding into his hand as you mewled his name.

"Ah, fuck… Steven!"

'Buen trabajo, gusanito.' The strangely familiar voice sounded slightly nicer, more affectionate, like a close friend would sound when praising him. Steven tried to ignore it again, which was very easy to do, since you were rolling your hips against his hand and nuzzling your face into his neck.

You felt his thumb go for your clit again, and you saw sparks as you whimpered and shook. A moment later, you felt a hot rise in the pit of your belly, squeezing and gushing all over his fingers. Steven knew enough to know you were having an orgasm, and he also knew that he wanted to taste you. He waited until your quivers and whimpers quieted down, before even daring to remove his hand. He slowly looked down at fingers, and sighed, seeing how soaked he was.

"Well would ya lookit that?" He murmured softly, and slowly brought his hand up to inspect it. He rubbed his fingers together, delighting in the texture as you whimpered at him.

"Steven… I… Thank you-" You tried to say, but then you witnessed him lick his hand, watching as his brows furrowed and his tongue slithered all over each digit. You felt the rising warmth coming back as he licked each finger clean, the way he did to the fork with the chocolate torte.

"Fuck, you taste better than tea…" Steven sighed heavily with a hazy look on his face. When he was done, he turned his gaze to you, and his brows furrowed. You were fully expecting Marc to come out, but instead, Steven growled again as he went for his belt and took it off as quickly as he could.

"Now I am gonna fuck ya." He grunted as he aggressively flipped you onto your back. He was quick to shove his pants and underwear down, discarding them to the floor. You propped yourself up on your elbows and watched him as he grabbed himself and jerked his hand very slowly. The other hand went to tug on your skirt, pulling it off in one fluid yank without damaging it.

He hunched over you, a smirk dripping with mischievous intent. You suddenly felt his hands grab your thighs and tug you closer to him. He leaned down and kissed you hungrily as he entered you, his hips pushing forwards agonizingly slow. You let out a long hiss, hands going around his neck as he rocked himself into you bit by bit.

Fuck. You missed that dick.

"Mmm, God damnit, love. You've got a right small cunt." Steven's voice purred into your ear. You shivered and squirmed under him when he went still, fully sheathed and pulsing inside of you.

"St-steven…" You gasped his name, and he rested his forehead against yours, his eyes staring intently at you.

"Yeah. That's my name. It sounds heavenly coming from those gorgeous lips of yours." He said while he stroked your cheek. With another kiss, he started to thrust in a steady rhythm. 

'Do it harder.' The voice spoke again. Steven was too far gone to care about why he was hearing it, and only focusing on the good advice that he was receiving. Each roll of his hips got gradually more controlled, and by the seventh thrust, he was slamming himself into you. Your loud cries of his name proved the odd voice right.

'Now hoist her up, hand on her ass. Tilt your hips back as you thrust upwards. Look into her eyes when you do it."

He pulled on your hips, angling himself at your gspot without even knowing it. He looked into your eyes as he thrust forward. The second he bumped into it, your eyes went wide and you screamed as you dug your nails into his shoulders. Steven gasped, as he was not prepared to be gouged by your nails.

He also was not prepared on how much he liked it. He was not prepared to be completely taken by the expression of ecstacy all over your face. He was not prepared to hear the familiar voice again, and he finally decided it sounded like a lecherous version of Marc.

'Reach down. Find that nub again. Rub it slowly.'

Obediently, Steven went down to the juncture of your thighs, his hand going down to where his girth disappeared into your tight wet hole. He pressed his thumb over your clit, and pushed in a slow and methodical way. You jolted, bringing your knees up to wrap your legs around his waist as you pulled on his hair.

"Yes, like that, Steven!" You cried out, bringing his head down for another kiss. Everything was going white in your vision, and the last thought to enter your mind was the way Steven kept whispering your name as you shook for him and gushed all over his cock.

"Oh Gods… Too tight... I'm…" Steven panted against your lips. He gasped, feeling you clamp tightly around him. His balls twitched and his shaft pulsed in a maddening way as he tried to hold back his impending orgasm.

'Pound her hard, Steven. Don't stop, even if you come.'

Steven couldn't argue with that logic. He drilled his hips as hard as he could, wrenching another shrill cry from you. He growled out when you bit his shoulder, and he buried his face into your neck to do the same as he spurted his seed deep inside of you. You sobbed as he kept fucking you into the couch, your nails gouging his back and shoulders, his come leaking out onto the couch.

"St-steven! Fuck! Yeah!" You writhed under him, twisting and muttering nonsense while he kept digging himself into you. By this point, your hands were gripping the sofa under you in an effort to stop damaging his back.

"Yeah, love. Good God, fuck…" His sweet voice had turned into an animalistic snarl as he reared back to look at you.

Steven was baffled at his own stamina. He couldn't quite believe that he hadn't just simply blown his load, and fallen asleep so Marc could take over. He had so much pent up frustration over the years, he was surprised even now as he pushed you down into the cushions and rotated his hips. Even as he grabbed your ankles and leaned back on his heels to thrust upwards.

'Jesus, Steven. I didn't think you had that in you. Fuck. Look at you. You're still going?' Another voice spoke up. Steven instantly recognized it as Marc's, and he huffed as he looked over at the lamp with his reflection. Marc was grinning ear to ear, with both thumbs up.

Should Steven say anything about the other voice? Probably not, since you were still moaning underneath him, and now was not really a proper time to say anything. Marc didn't seem alarmed, so he decided the voice must have been Marc, and he was just too tipsy to really hear him right. After all, Marc had done this before, many times with Layla. 

Steven looked back down at your face. Your eyes were half closed, cheeks hot, lips swollen and stuck in a wide 'O' as strangled noises came from deep within your throat. He watched your breasts bounce with each snap of his hips, and how you reached up to grab at his waist for more leverage, nails digging into his backside.

'Hold her legs over your shoulder with one arm.' The other voice suddenly spoke up. Steven looked at Marc in the lamp, and Marc wasn't paying any attention to him, only on your gasping form.

So Steven did what the voice told him to. He maneuvered your legs over his left shoulder, and held them there with his left arm. He kept thrusting upwards, watching as you arched even more while putting your elbow down to help steady yourself. You wailed for him, chanting to him in garbled words of praise and desperation.

Well fuck. Again that little voice was correct.

'Wrap your fingers around her throat.' The voice ordered, and Steven did just that. It didn't feel right, and you wheezed in discomfort.

'Carefully! Don't block her windpipe. You want to slightly cut off the blood flow, just enough to make her light headed. To increase the pleasure fog.' It snapped at him when he grabbed your neck the wrong way. Steven was surprised that Marc's mouth hadn't moved during the little command, but he continued to appear unbothered by it.

What harm could this voice do? It was giving him all the best advice, and every single suggestion was working perfectly on you. It was resulting in Steven popping his cherry, and absolutely wrecking you into a puddle on his brand new leather couch. Steven knew it definitely wasn't Khonshu, as they were free of his bullshit.

'That's it, Steven. Look at her! You're doing a fantastic job! Oh, look, she's coming again!' Marc cheered Steven on as you thrashed about in his grip.

'Are you sure you never peeped when I was with Layla? Because, damn. I know I didn't even think to give you any of this knowledge, and you're doing it like a porn star, buddy!' Marc breathed as he watched you squirm under their body from his spot in the lamp. He was very excited for his turn, but he was also excited that Steven wasn't fucking this up.

Steven shook his head, his eyes still glued to the way his cock kept squelching with each push of his hips. He would have replied in a cheeky tone, claiming it was beginner's luck or some other bullshit, but he didn't wish to break the spell he had on you. He definitely wasn't about to admit some strange voice had told him what to do.

So instead, Steven let go of your neck, watching as you sighed and regained some colour to your face. He groaned, realizing quite quickly that it would be a while before he came again.

"How about we switch it up, love?" Steven murmured as he withdrew from you, watching as your hole quivered and leaked his come. You whined at the loss of his thick cock, waiting to hear what he wanted to do.

"My bedroom, yeah?" He said as he tried to regain his breath. You gave him a lazy nod, only for him to grab your wrists and pull you back into his lap. You yelped, feeling him slide right back inside, his sweat soaked skin rubbing against yours as he held you close.

"Yeah, sure, but…" You agreed as you motioned to your hips sitting over his, with him still buried deeply to the hilt.

"Not a problem, love, one moment…" Steve said as he put an arm under your bottom, and stood with ease. You clung to his neck, legs wrapped around him as he walked towards his bedroom like you weighed nothing.

To you that was normal, as it would make sense that Steven would be just as strong as Jake. Same body, right?

But Marc's surprised stare said otherwise. Steven should have been winded or a bit tired. He should have struggled, even just a little bit, but his movements were fluid and graceful, as if he was only just getting started. That was very suspicious to Marc, because he knew even he would have struggled more than just a bit…

More so because they weren't supposed to have the strength or stamina they once possessed while in service to the moon God.

Yet Marc ran through the various reflections to follow his alter, watching as Steven peppered you with more passionate kisses. Marc was growing a bit jealous, because normally just a simple wank made Steven tire quickly.

Just as Steven got into his bedroom and walked past the large wall of mirrors, Marc stepped into view to witness Steven's back. He saw blood smeared everywhere, and that scared him to know Steven had gotten off on that. Truth be told, Marc loved that shit, so maybe Steven liking it wasn't so crazy.

Marc got closer, and decided to count the scratches as Steven hoisted you up onto his dresser. Steven's back was right close to Marc, so the task would be easy for him.

He counted more than thirty scratches, forty seven to be exact, with about ten indents on each side of his hips. He looked up to see Steven was slowly rutting into you as he sucked a deep bruise into your neck. Steven's eyes were cloudy, and Marc did a double take. 

His eyes were legitimately cloudy, with a thin layer of white covering both the irises and the pupils, and it was getting worse with each passing second.

Steven appeared to be completely drunk, and not off of the wine. Whatever was causing his eyes to cloud over, was also making him entirely forget about Marc.

'Hey? Steven?' Marc called out. Steven didn't respond at all, he just kept grinding himself into you as he made obscene noises.

'Hey, buddy..?' Marc tried again, but to no avail. Steven was long gone, lost in all the sensations, hearing only your cries of pleasure and his name on your bruised lips.

Marc continued to stare, and he glanced at their body's back again to recount the scratches to pass the time. When he was about half way through, he noticed there were fewer of them, and the scratches were smaller.

'The fuck?' He hissed as he maneuvered around to get a good look at the bruises on Steven's, well, his own ass as well. Those were fading quickly, right before his eyes.

'Steven! Damnit, why are you ignoring me?!' Marc bellowed at Steven. He even tried to use the body to speak, but he found that he was completely powerless to do so, like he was blocked out in the exact same way he had repeatedly done to Steven over the years.

Your head was tilted all the way back as Steven ravaged your throat, his hand holding onto your hair to keep your neck exposed. Marc could see a myriad of bruises all over you, and he was slightly annoyed that Steven was leaving very little space for him to mark you up himself.

Steven suddenly lifted you up, and took you over to his massive bed, Marc still watching in amazement. You were placed onto the edge of the bed with the greatest of care, with Steven hunched over you, his pelvis still digging into you with much enthusiasm. 

You opened your eyes to look at him, gasping when you saw his normally brown eyes were now white and nearly glowing. For a brief moment, you honestly thought Khonshu had possessed him, that is until Steven spoke to you.

"Such a pretty little thing… Let's make a mess of my bed together." He said with a confidence you hadn't seen in him before.

Quick like lightning, Steven began thrusting again. Each buck of his hips sent you back up the hill of pleasure. You stared into his white eyes, mesmerized by how he hadn't dared to look anywhere but your face since he brought you into his bedroom. It made you wonder why he had kept the wall of mirrors, when all he could see was Marc, and not himself. Maybe that was why he didn't believe he was beautiful.

"Yeah…" You huffed back as he hauled your legs over his shoulders. He turned to your right leg and kissed the bump of your ankle, and then he licked towards your calf. When he got to swell of the muscle there, he sucked gently on your skin.

"Ah, fuck! St-steven!" You cried out, trying to wriggle your leg away from him, but he held on, refusing to let you squirm away.

'Bite her, but not too hard. Don't break the skin.' Again Steven heard that ever helpful voice. He did as he was told, sinking his teeth into your flesh just hard enough for you to gasp.

"Oh, yes… Yes sweetheart…" He felt you clench all around him, causing him to slow and push himself as deep as he could go.

'Stir her with our cock. Rub her cervix.' Steven heard the word 'our' and he grit his teeth. He glanced at the mirror for the first time since he dragged you into his room, and he saw a shocked expression on Marc's face. Without breaking eye contact with his alter, he stirred you nice and slow as he went to rub at your clit again with his rough thumb pad. You thrashed and bucked against him, curling your toes as you felt yourself squirt.

"Oh, God… Steven… Yesss…"

'Don't look at Marc. Look at her. Look at her face while she comes for you. Praise her.' The voice growled, and Steven's eyes went wide when it mentioned Marc. That, coupled with Marc not even appearing to move his lips, or hear the voice, his mouth still set in a hard line on his face.

Fuck. There was another person in his body, that, or some other spirit was plaguing them.

"Steven…" You said with a shaking voice, and his eyes snapped back to you. He could worry about the voice later, because yours was much more pleasing to hear.

"Shhh, sweetheart. That's it. You're doing fantastic. You take this cock so well… Such a pretty little dove…" He cooed to you. You moaned for him, closing your eyes as he gave you an extra hard rubbing to your overly sensitive clit.

"Shall I fill that sweet little pussy up again? Yeah?"

"Yesss…"

"Won't be long, love. Then you may have a rest, before Marc comes out to play, yeah? You'd like that, right?" Steven said as he ran a hand through your hair, and cupped your chin.

"Please… Please…" You whined in response as he tilted his hips to batter your gspot. You screamed, dragging your nails down his chest and leaving angry red welts in your wake. He hissed at the sting, his hips pistoning even harder. He could feel the rise of his orgasm coming, and he wanted to make sure you were satisfied with him, at least enough to allow him to do this again with you.

You surprised him by reaching under yourself to grasp at his balls. He groaned loudly, feeling everything go tight and hot.

"Here it is… Take my come, lovely little sky…" His voice cracked as he came, his whole body going rigid as he filled you with a hot rush of his come. You twitched and whined, feeling him stir you one last time, before he allowed your legs to fall back down to the bed. He rolled over and held you, panting heavily as he stared at the mirror where Marc was just sitting there, hand on his mouth in sheer wonder at how poor innocent Steven wasn't so innocent anymore.

Finally, Marc got over the shock and awe of what had happened. He watched Steven's eyes melt back to their original colour, and Marc got closer to speak to him.

'Jesus fuck, man. I think you wore her out…' He said, and Steven finally heard him. He saw how you were limp in his arms, your eyes shut as you snored softly.

"Yeah, sorry, mate. I suppose I got a bit too worked up for my first time." Steven whispered back. He laid there with you for a while, making sure you were asleep. When he was certain you wouldn't wake, he got up to find some clothes.

'She shredded your back. You were bleeding everywhere.' Marc said as he moved along the wall.

"Yeah… I felt it. I'm going to have a shower and freshen up. Do ya want me to go use your bathroom, and your soap? Cause, you know, when she wakes up it'll be your turn and all that jazz…" Steven rasped back, his voice hoarse from all the new noises he had made. Noises he didn't think he was capable of.

'Yeah. Sure. Thanks. But…'

"But what, Marc? Did I do something wrong?" Steven paused as he grabbed a simple pair of sweatpants and looked at Marc.

'Um… I dunno how to put this…' Marc looked at your sleeping form, all cuddled up in the puffy duvet on Steven's bed.

"Just tell me. I'm a big boy now, and I am sure I can take whatever criticism you might have. What did I do wrong?" Steven said with an amused chuckle. Marc sighed, putting his hand through his hair.

'Look, buddy… You didn't do anything wrong. Your performance was superb. It's just… Those scratches she gave you…'

"What about them? Didn't you tell me a 'real man' wears them with pride, and doesn't complain about it?" Steven quipped at him a sparky and dismissive tone.

'That's not it. Look, I was bored while I was waiting for my turn, and I counted forty seven marks, and at least ten on the sides of the hips…' Marc started to say. Steven turned to look at their body, and he squinted. He couldn't see any marks on his hips at all. No bruises, no scratches, no little dents.

Oh… Marc would never lie to him about something like this. If he said there were markings, then there were markings, but why were they suddenly gone? That didn't happen normally. It used to happen when…

Oh fuck.

Oh no…

'Plus your eyes… They went white.' Marc said as Steven kept trying to turn in a way so he could see his back. There was blood smeared every which way, but he couldn't see any marks aside from the ones you had left on his chest. Even those marks were quickly fading.

Shit.

"White? You don't think…" Steven softly said, a look of sheer horror on his face.

'Yes. White like a full moon on a clear night.' Marc finished for him. Steven put his hand to his mouth, and he glanced back over at you. He quickly looked away and fled his room, closing the door behind him quietly as he made a beeline to Marc's floor.

"That's not possible. Right? He's been gone for over two months now. No sign of him." Steven breathed as he placed both hands onto Marc's sink. He looked at Marc, pleading with him to assure him the opposite of what he was thinking.

'Think about it, Steven. Remember when we moved our boxes into this place? You didn't struggle with the boxes, and you normally do, you know, before that fucking bird came into our life.'

"Well he's not really a bird. It's weird, because he should look human, or have a hawk's head, but he has a corvid shaped skull…"

'Steven…'

"And he looks dead. He shouldn't look dead. Makes me think he isn't actually cut from the same cloth that the other Egyptian Gods are. Maybe he's an elder God. One older than even the Egyptian ones…"

'Steven.'

"Maybe he just chooses to look like that. It's odd, innit? But he is kind of like the emo goth kid, or the black sheep, er, black bird of the Ennead-"

'Damnit! Steven!' Marc shouted at him, and Steven abruptly shut up.

'The scratches. They are healing as we speak. You lifted her like it was nothing. Then, you banged her for a long time, blew your load, not once, but twice, and you're still standing. Plus, your eyes went white. Did you feel any different?' Marc listed off all the strange anomalies that he witnessed, and Steven hummed.

'Don't you fucking dare tell him about me, Steven, or I'll ruin your life.' The other voice growled. Steven gulped, and he turned to the shower to avoid Marc's inquisitive stare. He didn't want to test the voice at all.

"Uh, um. I'm exhausted. Feeling perfectly fine. Better than fine, actually." Steven quickly replied to Marc as he turned the water on and got inside.

'But the scratches!?' Marc shouted after him as he appeared in the reflections of the silver hardware of the shower.

'Tell that asshole that it's the residual power left over from your service to the moon God.'

"Uh, well, scientifically speaking, it's like a leftover build up of being Khonshu's Avatar for so long. We, uh, channeled his God like power, and he doesn't half ass anything. We're lucky, really. No chaffing on our dick. I mean, did you want to go back to being hurt easily?" Steven managed to say as he went for the shampoo that Marc had.

Marc was silent for a bit, obviously trying to think about what Steven had said. It made sense, but the eye thing was still bothering him. Hen could tell Steven was hiding something, but he didn't want to cause a scene and fight with him while you were still upstairs.

So, instead, Marc gave Steven a slow nod, and they showered in silence.

They were completely unaware that you had woken up while they were gone. You groaned as you rolled over and went to the ensuite bathroom attached to Steven's bedroom to check on your sore body. You could hear the pipes moving water, and you figured Steven had gone to use Marc's bathroom to wash up.

"I'm impressed by the worm. How are you feeling?" A deep voice spoke to you as you washed your face. You jumped, and turned to see Khonshu lounging in the bathtub, his long legs hanging out of the side of the tub.

"Jesus, fuck! Don't do that! What if Steven comes in here?"

"He won't. He is taking a shower downstairs. Now, answer the question."

"I feel amazing. Thanks, I guess? Wait, were you watching?"

"Indeed I was. Since Jake still serves me, I can see what he sees, if I so choose."

"But that was Steven. Jake wasn't… Oh fuck. Wait. Jake said he is always watching. Does he ever sleep?"

"Jake doesn't need to sleep. I can refresh his strength and stamina, like I did to Steven when he fucked you." Khonshu said in a very lewd and suggestive tone. If he had eyebrows, you bet he would have wiggled them at you.

"Well, I think you fucked up, you silly old bird." You said to him. Khonshu growled as he sat up. 

"I do not fuck up, you insolent-"

"Shut your God damned trap. Steven's eyes were glowing white, and as far as I am aware, he looked at his reflection when it happened, so I can guarantee Marc saw that." You explained to him. You could feel the sudden dread as the moon God clicked his tongue.

"It's fine…" Khonshu muttered. He didn't sound very sure of himself.

"Is it really? Steven is very intelligent, and you're very well aware of that fact. He told me about you, you know. How he and Marc served you. They didn't exactly tell me you were a God, or your real name. They tried to call you Conrad, like Jake did." You explained to him. Khonshu let out an annoyed huffed.

"I fucking hate that name, but I understand why they use it."

"They told me about their journey in Duat, though. How they met Taweret, and how they almost died." You confessed to him. Khonshu tilted his head.

"They told you about that? Yet they couldn't tell you who I was?" He sounded a bit upset about it, but he didn't lose his cool.

"Yes… What are you going to do when they figure out you're still hanging around?" You questioned him. He sighed and looked away.

"Well? How about this, then… Since you told them they were free of you, are they no longer able to use your power?" You moved closer and leaned over the tub to glare at him.

"Well, uh… Technically, I have blessed Jake, which involves blessing not only his soul, but his body."

"So they have their own souls?"

"Yes. But also no."

"What the fuck does that mean?"

"Well, you see… Marc was the original. When he was very young, his younger brother died."

"Oh no! How did he die?" You asked as you frowned.

"He drowned when they were playing. His mother went insane. She started to drink heavily, and she blamed him for it…"

"No… Did she abuse him?" You asked with sadness in your voice. Khonshu nodded sadly, his shoulders slumped.

"Yes. Yes she did. It was not long after that, that Marc developed Steven's personality in order to escape the horrid reality his mother made for him. I'm still not very clear on how he did it, because Steven remembers her as a kind and loving mother, when in reality she was a terrible person." Khonshu sighed, and he stood up to sit on the edge of the tub.

"Oh, poor Marc… I'm sorry, but I don't see how his brother dying has anything to do with them having their own souls."

"Well, Marc did such a good job at creating Steven, that he legitimately developed a soul for his counterpart. He allowed Steven to grow and become his own person. When Marc couldn't deal with school work, he made Steven do it. Steven excelled at academics, and he adored school, whereas Marc loathed everything about school, except for the fact he was free of his mother during that time. Steven was in control most of the time, because when he was Steven, his mother almost thought her other child had returned to her. Whenever Marc took over, he was always in trouble."

"So, he made Steven, then made him a soul without realizing it?"

"Correct. If Taweret had weighed each of their hearts separately, Steven and Marc might have possibly made it into the afterlife. It was at that point, when Marc came back for Steven and placed his heart in his hand, that Steven's soul was completely formed."

"What about Jake?" You just had to know about him. He was so suave and kind to you. He was respectful and such a good lover. You loved the way he spoke, switching from that deep Chicago accent to that perfectly rugged Spanish one. You wanted to know if Jake had his own soul as well, or if he was just a stray persona.

"Jake… He is a bloodthirsty and dangerous man. Marc might have been a mercenary, but Jake is a ruthless killer. He is willing to do whatever it takes to keep people safe. When we sealed Ammit away into her chosen priest, Marc and Steven both refused to kill him in order to stop her from coming back, because Harrow was helpless and basically a weak and frail man. Jake didn't hesitate, and he did the deed without question." As Khonshu told you about Jake, your heart sank a little bit. A dark feeling was forming at the pit of your stomach. The feeling was very similar to the fluttering of arousal, but darker and scarier.

"He's a… Killer?" You said with a gulp.

"Yes, but he only kills those that deserve death. Ones whose crimes are worthy of such a terrible fate. You might have had the unfortunate task of cleaning up after many of the righteous judgements we carried out together. That night club that you cleaned… Jake was the man that had ended their lives." Khonshu said softly, his voice quietly echoing in the large bathroom.

Your eyes went wide. You almost felt sick. You had to clean up so much blood, guts, and brain matter. You remembered the families of the people who were killed had come to mourn as you had cleaned up the mess. You remembered how they sadly sat outside and lit candles for their fallen family members, even though they had been deplorable criminals, drug dealers, gang members, and hired hit men.

Jake had done that.

The man who hired you, and then promptly charmed his way into your pants.

You breathed in through your nose while trying to calm yourself. You were suddenly quite scared to be in the house, knowing full well that a real life killer was downstairs, somewhere, lurking around in your boss's body.

"Are you alright?" Khonshu's voice brought you back to the present. You huffed and realized you were gripping the side of the tub quite hard. So hard, your knuckles were white and your hands were shaking.

Were you okay?

Of course you were okay. You hadn't done anything wrong. Jake was no threat to you. He was a good man that was completely devoted to his God, and by that logic, he only killed those who deserved it…

But you saw the police reports. One of the head members of the drug ring was also a well known human trafficker. He had be brutally tortured, his skin flayed from his body while he was still alive. When the police had found him, he was barely clinging on to life. He was unable to speak, as every tooth had been pulled from his mouth, his tongue cut right out, and his jaw was shattered.

"Was Jake the one that did that to the one guy? Skinned him and broke his face?" You asked and Khonshu sighed.

"Yes. The man was trafficking children." Came his firm reply.

You decided that even if that was a gruesome way to deal out justice, Jake was out there, getting shit done that the police could not. You took a deep breath, and then looked at Khonshu.

"Does Jake have his own soul? Who made him?"

"Ah, well…He was born from the blackouts they constantly had as children. If there was ever a situation that either Steven or Marc could not handle, Jake came out and dealt with it. Beatings, whether receiving or giving. Saving Marc and astern from certain death. Most of the time it wasn't pretty. I would say he does have a soul now."

"Wow… That is amazing… So what special perks did you give Jake, and what did you give Steven and Marc?"

"Oh, well, each one gets their own disguise. Different suits so to speak. You have seen Jake's without his mask on. He was in it when you met him. He chose an easily blendable suit, so that he could get lost in a crowd. A nice collared shirt with ancient symbols, jacket filled with hidden pockets, two guns… Flat cap with a crescent moon pin, driver's gloves with crescent moon on the knuckles. The knuckles are also lined with metal. He has dark slacks and leather bespoke Oxfords."

"What? That sounds really smart. What does Marc's suit look like?"

"He has white gloves, like mine, and wrappings and basic chest and shoulder armor. A cape, a shendyt, and a hood. He has a crescent moon on the front of the hood, and another on his chest. He also has a mask of wrappings that covers his entire face. He has white leather boots. He uses small metal crescent moon projectiles and silver knuckles."

"Sounds traditional, like the way you're dressed." You said, and he nodded.

"And then there is Steven. Steven gets a white three piece suit, a pair of white trousers, a white vest, white dress shirt, white suit jacket and white running shoes. I am unsure as to why he chose those, but it was up to him. He has a crescent moon stitched into the forehead of his mask. He has an eldredge tie, and white leather gloves similar to Jake's. Everything has an Egyptian flare to it, from patterns to actual hieroglyphics. He can use the crescent projectiles, but he prefers two truncheons."

"Oh damn. I have a weakness for men in suits." You said with a giggle. 

"So, if that's all you would like to know, I must go. The water is turned off down there. I suggest you get into the bathtub. Get cleaned up for when Marc is controlling the body."

"Well, get the fuck out of the tub, then." You said  and Khonshu gave you a low bow as he stepped out of the large tub.

It was one of those tubs that could fit two or three people inside, with jets, and the idea of a nice hot soak seemed delightful to you. You turned the taps on and set the tub to fill, then went to do a pre-clean of yourself so you could enjoy a good long soak without Steven's come leaking out of you, which it was. You blushed when you realized you were completely naked, and Khonshu was still standing there.

"Will you please go. They will be back soon, and it's supposed to be Marc. He will be livid if he sees you."

"Too true. Thank you for keeping quiet about it. If they find out Jake is a part of them, that's fine, so long as they are blissfully unaware that Jake serves me. I will see you later." Khonshu thanked you and gave you another bow. When he straightened up, he faded away completely.

You got into the bath and relaxed for a little bit while you waited for Steven or Marc to return. The tub was divine, and the jets were soothing for your poor aching muscles. The temperature was just right, and it maintained it until the user was done, so you could sit in it all day without it growing cold.

It had maybe been thirty minutes of lounging in the tub, when there was a knock on the door.

"Who is it?" You playfully called, and you heard a clearing of a throat.

"It's Marc. I've brought the Sangria with me."

"Oh, hello, Marc, do come in."

***

I'll leave it there for now.

Edit: Thank you @mics59 for your Spanish skills.

@snippychicke @johnny-simpfinger

#moonknight/reader #moon knight #moonknight #moon knight series #steven grant x you #steven grant x reader #steven grant #jake lockley x reader #jake lockley x y/n #jake lockley x you #jake lockley #marc spector x reader #marc spector x you #marc spector x y/n #marc spector #marc and steven #18+ fanfic #smut #smut steven grant #jake gives Steven advice and threatens him to keep silent about it

[henrysglock]

Do You Have A Minute To Talk About Our Lord And Savior: Vecna?

Specifically, I'd like to talk about Jericho, Book of Revelation, Paradise Lost, and the concepts of God and Satan as "good" and "evil", and try to decode who is who.

Let's start with Jericho, and go from there. Like everything else in Stranger Things, though...we'll loop back to the beginning eventually.

Season 5: Jericho

We all know about the nuclear disaster aspect, I don't think I need to continue beating that particular dead horse. (There are plenty of topics to beat into the afterlife. I witnessed a public beating re: production errors just a few days ago.)

I want to talk biblical.

I want to talk about the Battle of Jericho.

The Battle of Jericho is an old testament tale from the Book of Joshua, and there are some basics of the battle you should know:

The Israelites, who have been wandering in the desert for 40 years, prepare to invade and take the City of Jericho from its king. Joshua sends ahead 2 spies in preparation.

These spies are housed and hidden by Rahab, a prostitute. The Israelites promise to spare her and her kin for this, so long as she marks her house with a red cord.

The River Jordan dries up, allowing Joshua and his people to cross. The King of Jericho orders the walls of the city to be closed (This is important to note: He closes the walls. This is not a Rifts parallel. God opens the walls.)

God commands that for 6 days the Israelites march about the walls of the City of Jericho, one time each day. Then, on the seventh day, they are to march around the city seven times.

On this seventh day, seven trumpets are to be blown by seven priests from behind the Ark of the Covenant.

The Israelites do as God commands, and the walls of Jericho fall under the sounding of the trumpets and the cheer of the Israelites.

The Israelites kill all of Jericho's citizens except Rahab and her kin, who are accepted into their community. All of this per God's command.

Wow, that's a lot of sevens, a lot of miracles, and a lot of death.

Here's the thing about Jericho: It lay in a rift valley, and the area is historically prone to both earthquakes and landslides, which have been noted to block the Jordan for days at a time. The fall of Jericho's walls...could very well have been the result seismic activity.

If we take the recounting at face value, God likely triggered an earthquake, which caused the walls to fall.

Sound familiar?

What's also interesting about the Battle of Jericho is that there is no mention of Satan, the Devil, anything of that sort. It's just God vs Jericho on behalf of the Israelites. It's Old Testament (OT), and it's projected to have happened in 1400-1500 BC, whereas the New Testament (NT) material is all AD. (Jesus's crucifixion happens in 33 AD, and Book of Revelation is set in 81-96 AD.)

We know the OT God is highkey obsessed with 2 main things: Truth and Oppression. This guy hates being lied to, having oaths broken, being betrayed/deceived/not obeyed, etc. He has very strict commandments for his followers, and he isn't keen on people going against them. He hates human oppressors and is avid about punishing them in massively brutal ways (see: the Israelites and the King/People of Jericho). OT God is a wrathful God, and from the point of view of some...an oppressor himself.

If the other thing didn't sound familiar...boy...doesn't that one sound familiar?

Not gonna tell you who it sounds similar to yet, though. We'll save that for later. No biases in my house.

Anyway, that's all well before Christ figures and Satan as a major definable force against God. In fact, there's almost no mention of Satan as a physical adversary in the OT. "Satan" in the OT literally translates to just...adversary/traitor. There's no mention of the devil as a single entity. We know there's a fallen angel, Lucifer, a serpent in the Garden of Eden, etc., but Satan as a single, definable, physical adversary who physically fights God? Not a thing yet.

This is very different from NT literature, where Satan/the Devil/the Antichrist/etc. appear as physical figures. This is especially apparent in Book of Revelation, in which Jesus and the heavenly forces literally fight the demonic forces with swords.

This is where it starts to get spicy.

Book of Revelation

I'm just going to give you all the Cliffs Notes, because John of Patmos was definitely tripping balls...and I don't want to subject you all to that:

John of Patmos has a vision of the apocalypse: It's Jesus's second coming and the decimation of the Earth. (This is debatable historically, but for the purposes of this section lets take it at face value.)

He writes of his visions to the 7 Churches of Asia: Ephesus: "He who overcomes is granted to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God" - They are praised for not harboring evil, exposing fake apostles, and being a symbol of perseverance and patience. Smyrna: "Those who are faithful until death will be given the crown of life. He who overcomes shall not be hurt by the second dead" - They are praised for being rich in faith in times of hardship, and is told not to fear imprisonment for holding fast against false prophets. Pergamum: "He who overcomes will be given the hidden manna to eat and a white stone with a secret name on it." - They are praised as a faithful martyr, but admonished for sexual immorality, holding false idols, and holding the doctrine of both Balaam and the Nicolaitans. Thyatria: "He who overcomes until the end will be given power over the nations in order to dash them to pieces with a rod of iron; he will also be given the morning star." - They are praised for works of love, service, faith, and patience, but admonished for allowing a prophetess to engage in sexual immorality and holding false idols. Sardis: "He who overcomes will be clothed in white garments, and his name will not be blotted out from the Book of Life; his name will also be confessed before the Father and his angels." - They are told to strengthen their works in order to achieve perfection before God. Philadelphia (yes, Philadelphia): "He who overcomes will be made a pillar in the temple of God having the name of God, the names of the City of God, "New Jerusalem", and the Son of God's new name" - They are praised for keeping God's name holy, and is reminded to hold fast to what they have. Laodicea: "He who overcomes will be granted the opportunity to sit with the Son of God on his throne" - They are admonished for being lukewarm in their faith, reminded to be zealous. They're told to buy "gold refined in fire", white garments, and to anoint their eyes in salve so they may see.

The throne of God appears, surrounded by 24 elders. All of this happens before the throne of God: - The 4 living beings appear: A lion, and ox, a man, and an eagle. They are akin to biblically accurate angels, each having 6 wings and a multitude of eyes. - A scroll with 7 seals is presented, and only the "Lion of the tribe of Judah, from the Root of David" can open it. - The "Lamb of God, with 7 eyes and 7 horns" accepts the scroll, and all present bow before it.

The seven seals are opened: First Seal: White horse, Conquering. Second Seal: Red horse, War. Third Seal: Black horse, Famine/Hunger. Fourth Seal: Pale horse, Death. Fifth Seal: The souls of the martyrs, dressed in white robes, are told to rest until the martyrdom of their brothers is complete. Sixth Seal: A great earthquake, wherein the the sun goes dark, the stars fall to earth, and the sky rolls back like a scroll. Mountains are moved, and the people of earth hide within them from the "wrath of the Lamb". 144,000 Hebrews are marked upon their foreheads with the seal of God and sealed within the caves. Seventh Seal: Introduces the 7 trumpets, one for each of 7 angels. An eighth angel devastates the Earth with heavenly fire just before the 7 trumpets begin.

The angelic trumpets are sounded: First Trumpet: Hail and fire and blood rain upon the Earth and burn up 1/3 of plant life. Second Trumpet: A "great, flaming mountain" falls from the sky and devastates 1/3 of the seas. Third Trumpet: Wormwood, a great star, falls from the heavens and poisons 1/3 of all freshwater sources. (Radiationgate!) Fourth Trumpet: 1/3 of the sun, moon, and stars are darkened, casting the world into total darkness for 1/3 of day and night. Fifth Trumpet: The First Woe. - A star falls from the sky, and is given the key to the bottomless abyss. - The abyss opens, and the smoke of the giant abyss blots out the sky. - Locusts, in the form of humans with lions' teeth, wings like hoofbeats, and iron breastplates come and kill any who are not marked with the seal of god on their forehead (the 144k Hebrews from the 12 tribes of Israel). *** Sixth Trumpet: The Second Woe. - The four angels bound in the Euphrates are released to prepare two million horsemen. These armies kill 1/3 of mankind. Seventh Trumpet: The Third Woe, in preparation for the 7 Bowls. - The temple of God, in heaven, opens. There is lightning, an earthquake, and hail.

*** ST4 leaves off at the asterisks

The 7 Spiritual Figures, leading up to the Third Woe:

A heavenly woman is pregnant with a male child.

A dragon pulls stars from the heavens and awaits the birth of the child so he can devour it: The Archangel Michael fights this dragon, as it is revealed to be the devil. The dragon is cast out of heaven, and becomes obsessed with waging war against all the woman's offspring.

A Beast with 7 heads, 10 horns, and the names of blasphemy on his heads emerges from the sea: The people of the world follow the Sea Beast in wonder, and the dragon empowers the beast for 42 months. The Sea Beast goes on to blaspheme God's name and wage war against the Saints. He is victorious.

The antichrist/false prophet appears from the Earth: He has 2 horns like a lamb but speaks like a dragon. He instructs the people of the Earth to build a likeness of the Sea Beast, and all who participate are marked with the Sign of the Beast: 666.

The "One like the Son of Man", aka Jesus, goes and defeats the beast with the 144k Hebrews bearing the seal of God.

Heaven opens, and the 7 Bowls Revelation begins with the sounding of the Third Woe/7th trumpet.

The 7 Bowls Revelation:

First Bowl: "A foul and malignant sore" afflicts the followers of the Beast (Radiationgate Sweep!)

Second Bowl: The seas turn to blood, and everything in it dies.

Third Bowl: All fresh water turns to blood.

Fourth Bowl: The sun scorches the Earth.

Fifth Bowl: Total darkness and great pain floods the beast's kingdom.

Sixth Bowl: The Euphrates dries up, and the forces of good and evil prepare to face off.

Seventh Bowl: Another earthquake and hailstorm essentially flatten the surface of the Earth.

Aftermath Vision:

The Whore of Babylon and the Scarlet Beast are shown to John, revealing their identities and fates as such.

New Babylon is destroyed, and is mourned by its people.

Marriage Supper of the Lamb: Not a whole lot to say here, people praise God (...for decimating the Earth? Okay whatever floats your goat--I mean boat I'm not a satanist hahahaha what???)

The Judgment of the Beasts, the Dragon, and the Dead:

The Beast and the Antichrist: Both are imprisoned in the Lake of Fire.

The Dragon: He is imprisoned the Bottomless Pit for 1,000 years.

The Resurrected Martyrs: All of them live with God in peace for those 1,000 years.

After the 1,000 year time jump: - Gog and Magog: The dragon is freed, and goes on to deceive the corners of the Earth once more. He gathers them for a final battle against the City of God, and is defeated by heavenly forces, at which time he is cast into the Lake of Fire alongside the Beast and the Antichrist. - The Final Judgment: Death and Hades, along with the wicked who followed the Devil, are also cast into the Lake of Fire. This is known as the Second Death, and ensures that no more suffering or death may afflict God's chosen people.

New Heaven and New Earth:

After the fighting ends, the City of God meets the Earth and it's essentially a neat and tidy "eternal life, no more suffering, we're all in paradise with God" ending. The City of God is said to be a paradise for the pure and strong of faith, and God lives among them.

Phew. That was a whole fucking trip.

Most of it is a) allegorical and highly debated based on that fact, and b) highly disputed as to its accuracy as part of the Bible...because it was written by a second generation disciple 60 years after Jesus's death. On top of that, it just doesn't fit with the vibe of the New Testament. New Testament is very much about love and forgiveness, not wrath. Wrath is very Old Testament, which I'll come back to re: Brenner and Vecna...and Lucifer.

I'm not gonna delve into allegory tonight because while the Duffers are picking and choosing bits of the story, they seem to be taking it all very literally. That is to say, this isn't a perfect one-to-one, but what is there? Tells a story.

Let's review:

The 7 Letters: Max writes letters, a total of 10. However, we only focus on 7 of them: Steve, Lucas, Dustin, Mike, El, Will, and Billy. We don't know what they say inside, however it is interesting that Billy is the final letter, akin then to Laodicea (see: Laodicea's entry), which is essentially about lukewarm faith, white robes, and anointed eyes. Max lies to Vecna in her confession, wavers on whether or not she actually wants to die, and ends up in a white hospital gown with healing eyes.

The Living Creatures: - Lion: El in Brenner's lab has a lion doll - Ox: We've got a handful of cow references, the most prominent being 010 and Brenner's dog drawing. Funny how it all seems to tie back, huh. - Man: "He was nothing but an ordinary, mediocre man." re: Brenner and opening the Rifts. - Eagle: "Fly right, Bald Eagle!" re: closing the Gate.

The 4 Horsemen: - Chrissy: First, Conquest, our intro to Vecna Visions. - Fred: Second, War, our intro into the conflict between Hellfire and the Basketball Team. - Patrick: Third, Famine, presented alongside Hopper in Russia before the feast in The Dive (which is actually presented very similarly to The Last Supper). - Max: Fourth, Death, the fourth gate. 22 dead, and the death toll continues to rise.

The Fifth Seal: The martyrs are told to rest until the martyring of their brothers is complete. Max is in her white hospital gown, indefinitely in a coma.

The Sixth Seal: One of many great earthquakes in BoR, after which 144k Hebrews are sealed in the caves. We see one earthquake in the UD in The Dive, where Nancy, Steve, Robin, and Eddie are trapped in the UD.

The Trumpets: - First Trumpet: 1/3 of plant life is killed...I'm looking at the rot in ST2 and the dead flowers in ST4. - Third Trumpet: Wormwood, a great star, falls from the sky in and poisons all fresh water. The spores. Radiationgate. - Fifth Trumpet: The abyss opens, and the smoke from it blots out the sky. Fucked up "locusts" emerge and begin killing. The rifts open, and the smoke blots out the sky. Demo-creatures will spill out into Hawkins and begin killing.

This is where we leave off at the end of ST4. We have not met Satan yet. So far? It's all God.

God did all this, up until this point, as the beginning of a final reckoning for the sinners who populated the Earth. None of that was Satan.

Things do start to get complicated here...because we do technically have a false prophet of sorts. Jason. Jason inspires the people of Hawkins to go against the forces of good in the name of defeating the tragedy befalling Hawkins. He is killed by the Rifts. He is literally killed by a fiery pit. (More on this later, because it's more complex than it seems.)

What's spicy about all this is that...the forces of good are not the religious ones, the "pure" ones, the "normal" ones. They're the freaks. The "satanic cult". They're Hellfire.

So...What is going on in the house of commons?

If Vecna is meant to be Satan, the Antichrist, whatever...why is he so obsessed with truth, penance, and giving himself the artificial moral high ground? Why does he wait for a confession, explicit or implicit, to kill? Why does he torment his victims while claiming to be relieving their suffering?

Because he's punishing the sinners, and he's doing so under the guise of saving them/freeing them from their suffering. Punishing sinners is God's job, not Satan's. Satan punishing sinners is a misconception. Satan is being punished as much as anyone else.

Vecna has the ultimate goal of decimating the human world and remaking it into a "beautiful" place where he and those like him will never suffer or die. Vecna punishes people he deems to be bad until he receives an acceptable confession of guilt, and then he soothes himself about it by killing them and "relieving their suffering".

All things considered:

Vecna, 001, The One, is New Testament God...and plot twist: he's a wrathful dick who hides behind artificial morality...just like Old Testament God.

Okay...so what about Henry? Brenner?

In true Creel form...this is my first loop backward in time. I'm going straight back to the very beginning of Satan's story.

Let's talk Lucifer. God's most beautiful angel. Smart, powerful, capable...and cast out of heaven in disgrace.

His crimes? Daring to believe he and the other angels were equal to God, and later instructing Eve that she didn't have to obey God either, alerting her to the fact that God was hiding things from her. God didn't like that, and sent Lucifer to Hell as punishment.

I'm very very much seeing Brenner and Henry here. Brenner, a wrathful, controlling OT God. He shocks those who disobey (Henry), those who lie or whom Brenner would have you perceive as a liar (Henry and 002), those who oppress (002)...all while being an oppressor and liar himself.

Brenner also quite literally calls himself Papa. Abba. The Almighty Father...and he punishes Henry repeatedly and brutally for being a) uncontrollable and b) spreading information Brenner would rather keep hidden.

He takes away Henry's status as 001, gives him a fake name...and makes him watch as he oppress the other angel--I mean numbers through the same torment he once suffered with no way of stopping it. Henry himself calls it Hell. No one ever said Hell was literally and physically separate from Heaven. Hell is very much a state of mind, and experience. Victor is "still very much in Hell"...but he's in Pennhurst. Henry is in Hell in Brenner's lab. Hell is not a physical place, it is inescapable torment and suffering.

We also get many Lucifer shots of Henry during the Rainbow Room fight...but when his hair is in the Henry style. Not the swept-back Brenner style.

Example:

So Henry is Lucifer, then, right? He's definitely not God then, right?

Yeah. Exactly. He's the fallen angel, and he's also the serpent in OT God's garden of Eden, offering knowledge and awareness to the ignorant Eleve--I mean Eve. He inspires Eve--I mean Eleven to question Papa, who has trapped her in ignorance in the Garden of E--I mean Hawkins National Lab.

But...didn't we just say he's God? Well...no. Not exactly. I said that Vecna is God.

Are we ready for the mindfuck?

Henry and Edward, and the frankly unnecessary swapping in NINA.

As per Em's analysis of The First Shadow...it's highly highly likely that Edward Creel is Vecna, not Henry.

This absolutely tracks with multiple facets:

The cyclical nature of Brenner and one of the Creel boys re: behavior and appearance.

The inexplicable hairstyle change between whichever Creel is in the store closet and...whichever Creel is in the Rainbow Room.

The inconsistency between Vecna's retelling of his childhood...and the expressions of the Creel boy on screen.

Ok, so we've got Brenner as OT God the Father, clearly...but we have Vecna as NT God, 001, The One. That's two Gods in one timeline, and we can't explain how they all seemingly ended up in the same timeline...unless Martin Brenner, Edward Creel, and Vecna are the same person at different times in different circumstances. At least one of the Creel boys is shown to have time travel abilities. Martin Brenner, Edward (?) Creel, and Vecna behave very similarly. All this to say...they're very much seeming like the same guy. There is one God, and you shall not have any other Gods but me...and all that jazz.

Henry said he spent years with 001 in the Rainbow Room. Did anyone ever stop to consider that he may have meant that literally? Did we ever consider that we swap between Henry-hairstyle and Brenner-hairstyle throughout the Rainbow Room fight because El is being fucked with by Brenner/Edward/Vecna...and by extension so are we?

Some supporting evidence here: Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God) is very much about swapping places and experiences.

To Summarize: Brenner/Edward are God and Henry is Lucifer. Hellfire club is the satanic cult fighting God....while being the protagonists who believe they're fighting a dark wizard because his actions are horrible.

A clue into this narrative fuckery is Will's painting. The Party is depicated fighting a red dragon, which reeks of the red dragon of Satan. This is likely the represent the fact that they all see Vecna as a demon/monster/Satan figure, despite his God-coding. They see him as Henry...when he is not Henry at all. Vecna is very much God-coded, but he's represented as Satan in Will's painting because everyone sees his deeds as evil...and they are horrible and unjust...and they're all pinned on Henry, our Lucifer.

If there is a physical dragon, it's not going to be biblical...because the biblical dragon does not exist here. There is no satanic dragon, we just discussed that. The dragon is going to be something else, and I'm going to touch on that later.

I want to bring in another source to speak to Henry's probable innocence: Paradise Lost.

Paradise Lost (documentary series) was an inspiration for ST4 and Eddie/The Hellfire Club, specifically in that Eddie was misjudged specifically based on his interests and the way he looks.

Paradise Lost, the docuseries, is about Damien Echols as part of the West Memphis Three, who were falsely accused of brutally murdering and sexually mutilating 3 local boys. The West Memphis Three were Damien Echols, Jesse Misskelly, and Jason Baldwin.

Paradise Lost was originally a poem about Lucifer and the fall of Man. Lucifer is presented as the tragic yet villainous protagonist. His motivations remain very much "evil". I recognize this.

However, the Duffers didn't reference the poem. They referenced the docuseries, in which our "satanic cult" was never proved guilty due to lack of evidence. Just recently, in December of 2021, evidence that was supposedly destroyed in a fire was discovered to have been kept and catalogued by the West Memphis PD (source). The lawyers of the West Memphis 3 now believe all of them may be exonerated when the DNA testing comes back.

We know Eddie is caught up in the timeline fuckery, given the age change between his physical age (19, likely) and his poster age (17), and he also has the whole satanic ritual thing, which wasn't the truth at all. He was trying to stop the murders. This ties into Victor's "demon", who we believe to be Henry based on how ST4 is presented to us on the surface...but based on the surface view, Henry would be Vecna and through him...God. That makes the demon label categorically incorrect. Victor also says he heard the voice of an angel, which drew him out of his trance. Lucifer was originally an angel. However, in the other retelling, Victor is freed by Edward (?) passing out. There is no mention of music.

The thing here is...we have no evidence which conclusively links Henry Creel to any of these murders. We don't have concrete evidence of anything, other than the fact that the murders happened and that a Creel was involved somehow. We don't see the killing of the children. There's no footage of Alice's death. We're not even given the Creel boy's name in the second retelling. We have no conclusive evidence that that's Henry. We do, however, see a blood-splattered 001 in the lab...and a blood-free Henry (?).

Just like the West Memphis Three, there's no evidence of guilt for Henry in any of the murders. However, we also don't see a concrete Henry again after the blood-free shot. It's highly possible that Edward (?)/Vecna killed him. We simply don't know what happened to him.

Lucifer may already be dead by God's hand. We just don't know.

I'd also like to point out a couple of details re: Paradise Lost and Stranger Things:

Jesse Misskelly: Miss Kelley, who was supposedly seeing all of Vecna's victims, and who wears a pendant of a clock on a key. She also shows up on the board beside the Library-Progress poster, the Drama Club/Monologues flyer, and the Tutors Needed poster. There's no evidence that she did anything wrong, and it's likely she doesn't know any more than anyone else, but it's suspicious that she's so connected to Vecna/The Creels in both plot and imagery. It makes you question the depth of her involvement.

Jason Baldwin: Jason Carver. The guy I said was a false prophet, but who I also indicated is more complicated than he seems. The thing about Jason is that he is not knowingly a false prophet. If he had all the facts, he'd likely be siding with Hellfire. He's trying to fight what he perceives as the evil in Hawkins...based on limited information. Even so, he's raising an army to fight the evil, and Vecna is aware of that because it's happening in Hawkins. Jason is an adversary. Adverary. Satan. He believes it's Hellfire who is responsible, that Hellfire is in cahoots with Vecna, who is perceived as Satan. However, Hellfire is anti Vecna. When Jason blasphemes Vecna via Hellfire...he's unknowingly blaspheming God. Thus, the fiery pit. There was no true false prophet, just some guy who went mad with grief and didn't have all the necessary information and wanted to fight the evil that killed his girlfriend.

Along those lines, I also want to talk about Nancy's beast.

Nancy's beast should at least be representative of Satan, then, right? Not necessarily. The beast in Book of Revelation is highly symbolic, and is thought to be representative of the oppressive Roman Empire.

There's one player everyone seems to forget in Stranger Things: The US Military.

The military, who consume most of our national budget like a gaping maw, and who are currently coming after the person committing murders in Hawkins. The believe it's El, but the person they want is Vecna. It's exactly the same as Jason and Eddie. They're all unknowingly coming after God while chasing someone who isn't God. Like Hopper says in ST1...they're chasing the wrong kid.

All those with the sign of the beast will be condemned. Guns don't work on Demogorgons. The military, who bear symbols that designate them as such...signs of the beast if you will...will be decimated.

That isn't to say a beast won't appear. It very much may, but it's not actually linked to Henry/Lucifer. The beast is more likely representative of the US Military as an adversary of Vecna, just like the dragon in the painting is only representative of Vecna via narrative fuckery.

The dragon in the painting will not exist in relation to Vecna/God, hence it doesn't appear in Nancy's vision. The military does exist as an adversary to Vecna/God, hence the beast appears in Nancy's vision.

Adversary. Satan.

In true Creel fashion, it's time to loop back to the very beginning of this post.

Jericho. The working title of ST5. What did I say about the Battle of Jericho?

There was no Devil. Lucifer exists vaguely, somewhere offscreen. We don't know where he is. Satan, though, simply translates to adversary.

It was just God, an earthquake, and Jericho.

There is no "Evil Devil" in Stranger Things' rendition of the Book of Revelation. Henry may exist, but he also may have been dead before the plot even began. We don't know where he is. Our figures of Satan are just a collection of adversaries against Vecna.

It's just Vecna, an earthquake, and Hawkins.

Right?

Well. We've missed a couple figures here, haven't we?

Jesus, the Archangel Michael, and the Holy Spirit.

Will Byers (Guillermo Maldonado?) and Mike Wheeler...and the Shadow.

This is where we come back to the tone of the Book of Revelation in comparison to the tone of the New Testament.

The Book of Revelation is very out of place in comparison to Jesus' teachings of love, peace, and forgiveness. God goes ham in Book of Revelation, to the point of frankly unnecessary pain, harm, and cruelty. So why would Jesus, Mr. "Loves Saves All", get involved in that? Why would Archangel Michael, "healer of the sick and champion of goodness", get caught up in that?

Logically, they shouldn't. Unnecessary cruelty goes against everything they seem to advocate for.

Everything Vecna does goes against everything Will and Mike stand for. Byler won't have a villain arc. Byler will not join Vecna. Jesus is not going to join God, here...and neither will Archangel Michael.

Archangel Michael fights Satan's red dragon, which we discussed as nothing but a narrative distortion of Vecna and Henry when present in Will's painting.

However, the painting is not biblical. Will didn't literally paint Mike fighting the devil. It's DnD. That dragon is likely Tiamat, the evil mother of all dragons. She is very similar in personality to the Whore of Babylon, who rides upon Satan's red dragon, and who reeks of Virginia...and by extension Karen.

Mike is fighting the mommy issues dragon. He's fighting the physical manifestation of his neglectful relationship with his mother, and Will is going to be be his side to help him.

Classic Byler W.

Finally...The Shadow, our Holy Spirit.

I'd like to call attention to some wording surrounding the Holy Spirit and the Shadow especially in relation to Jesus.

Luke 4:1: Then Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan River and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness.

Matthew 10:20: For it is not you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.

John 16:5-7: Holy Spirit cannot come to help you until I leave. But after I am gone, I will send the Spirit to you.

Acts 2:1-4: Suddenly a sound came from heaven. It was like a strong wind blowing...The flames separated and settled on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit. 

In ST2, Will is possessed by the Shadow via Vecna. One might say he is full of the Shadow. When Will first sees the Shadow in one of his visions, there is a strong wind. He becomes more and more replaced by Vecna/the Shadow as time goes on. Vecna speaks through Will. Joyce asks "What happens when my boy is gone?"

In ST3, once Billy is all but gone, when Vecna can truly speak though him, he begins to send the Shadow to others. They were filled with the Shadow.

Then, in ST4, we see the Shadow in Russia. When asked about the freed/revived demodogs, the Russians say the Shadow "went into them". They were filled with the Shadow.

Are we convinced yet? Do we need more? How about this:

The Holy Spirit acts at God's command; it is an agent of divine action.

The Shadow acts at Vecna's command; it is an agent of his action.

All this, all these hundreds of words to say a few things:

In Stranger Things, Jericho = Book of Revelation.

There is no "Evil Devil" figure in Stranger Things. God is the bad guy.

Vecna is God, and so is Brenner.

Vecna is most likely Edward Creel.

Via the canonical time-travel powers of at least one Creel boy, Edward Creel and Martin Brenner are likely the same person.

Henry Creel is Lucifer.

Henry Creel is also innocent.

We don't know if Henry's alive or not, and if he is alive we don't know where he is.

Mike's dragon is most likely Tiamat, the DnD Mommy Issues Dragon.

The Duffers ship Jesus and Archangel Michael. Deadass.

A few interesting but ultimately unnecessary details below the cut:

In 1984, the same year ST2 is set in, Depeche Mode released Blasphemous Rumors. It's a song about the perceived cruelty of God. In it, a girl attempts suicide and fails. She finds new life in the church, only to be struck by a car and killed. The chorus goes: "I don't want to start any blasphemous rumors, but I think that God's got a sick sense of humor // and when I die, I expect to find Him laughing."

U2 released Joshua Tree in 1987, the year ST5 is supposedly going to be set in and/or skip. It was immensely popular and jam-packed with biblical references. The Mormons (Suzie!) named the physical Joshua Tree is named after biblical Joshua...the same Joshua from the Battle of Jericho. Here's some more about The Joshua Tree:

Book of Revelation is a wartime piece. It's highly debated as to whether it's an actual vision, or if it's just John of Patmos, a second-generation disciple embittered by Jesus' failure to return as promised to save his people from the Romans, writing a fix-it fic where God brutally kills everyone except John's people. Is it a vision? Is it God? Or is it just the vengeance-porn work of a traumatized second-generation disciple who feels abandoned? No one actually knows. Is Vecna literally God? Or is he just a traumatized, abused boy who wants vengeance on the society that harmed and abandoned him? No one actually knows.

Kronos, in Greek mythology, is the god of time. He's the father of the Greek gods, all of whom he tried to consume. He is equated to Father Time in modern folklore. Edward (?) Creel has time travel abilities...god of time...Father Time...Papa...Brenner...consuming the Greek gods...consuming the numbers...just something to chew on.

Henry's costuming seems to be modeled after altar boy robes, both as a child and as an adult. We all know about the rape scandals with altar boys in the Catholic church. The Pope, God's official mouthpiece to the world, let it happen. Priests, also referred to as Father (cough Papa cough) were involved in raping boys...and the Pope covered it up. God, essentially, let it happen. Both our God figures being rapists, specifically of children/boys, may be a commentary on this scandal.

#i'm henry creel's defense lawyer via meta analysis #free my boy henry!! #this was a monster to research and write #henry creel #edward creel #edward/vecna/001 #martin brenner #stranger things analysis #stranger things jericho #stranger things and the bible #stranger things book of revelation #st5 predictions #tw rape #tw csa

[prolix-yuy]

Congratulations again LJ for 500 followers! May I please request Pero and Companionship as salvation? I loved your Pero drabble and would love to read more of this grumpy man 😘 Thank you for gifting us with this celebration, how you spoil us ❤️

Look at that grumpy man! This ask got me ruminating on their history together. We'll get to the day after their fight soon enough, but let's see how they came to know each other, and what led up to that night in the tavern.

The Debt

Pairing: Pero Tovar x F!Reader (prequel to this drabble)

Summary: Pero Tovar has never been in anyone's debt. Until you.

Word Count: 3.1k

Warnings: M, brief allusions to sexual acts, time period violence, idiots to enemies to lovers? While this story is not explicit, my blog and the content shared on it is 18+ MINORS DNI.

Notes: Everyone say thank you Cee for giving the perfect prompt to go down the Pero hole again (phrasing!). These two practically write themselves and I'm very excited to be sharing more of their story with you.

Pero Tovar had never been saved by anyone or anything in his life. He’s been spared once or twice, from the sickness that took his mother, or the blade that took his father. But no one had ever stood above him, blood on their hands, and put Pero in their debt.

Not until you.

William had scoffed at the two of you as you recount the tale over tavern bread and ale. 

“So you were…riding in the forest, and came across Tovar…” William repeats, mirth dancing off his lips as Pero tries to scowl a new hole in his fair-haired companion’s head. You brandish a hunk of bread, using it to point at William who can barely contain his laughter. 

“...surrounded by highwaymen, the foolish lot of them. And I was not planning to involve myself in that ruckus, but when they toppled this mountain…” You point the bread at Pero, who now attempts to perfect his glower in your direction. “...well, I couldn’t watch a skilled swordsman such as this be slain by some roving band of miscreants whose only advantage was manpower. So…” you say, pulling your arm back in a mockery of archery, “I felled the two waiting to strike, and beheaded the last.” William claps and you half-bow, Pero’s eye roll going unnoticed. 

“And here we are,” you finish, eliciting an incredulous head shake from William and more sullen chewing from Pero.

“And now Tovar is…” William asks, a creeping smile gracing his face. You raise an eyebrow and smirk, and Pero wishes more in that moment than ever before that he’d been touched with witchcraft so he could shut you up.

“In my debt,” you crow, pointing your bread at him again. He pulls his glare up to meet your sparkling eyes. “And I intend to collect.”

His dark, heavy brow and dismissive head shake betray how he actually felt in the moment you met. The song of a blade he truly believed would end his life, dishonorably and alone, becoming the death knell of the highwayman. Pero’s labored breathing as he turned his face up to gaze upon his savior.

In the moment he saw you, he was sure he’d been killed and gifted a more glorious heaven than the stories foretold. To behold a guerrera, strong and skilled of body, rising valiantly over vanquished foes, holding a hand to him was surely how he should be welcomed into the afterlife. Not even to speak of her beauty; sharp bright eyes, a rakish smile, feminine and powerful. It wasn’t until he reached up to clasp her gloved hand and the stink of mud and horse shit brought him back to himself. He was alive, thanks to the same guerrera who now was appraising him like a stallion for purchase, even though at his full height she had to look up at him. 

“You have a name, swordsman?” you asked, reaching down to pry his blade from the muck. You handed it back, raising an eyebrow as he raked his eyes over your steed, your armor.

“Pero Tovar,” he finally spat out, sheathing his sword on his back. You leaned back on one heel and regarded him with a sly smile Pero would come to dread.

“Pero Tovar, I do believe you’re in my debt,” you said, and you had been a pain in his ass ever since.

“Well, let’s drink to debts being repaid swiftly! I’m sure you have better places to be than hunting for work with my…engaging colleague,” William says, lifting his glass briefly. You tap yours with his, turning back to Pero and offering your tankard across the table.

“Oh don’t be so sour, Tovar, I’ve been a fine traveling companion, haven’t I?” you tease.

You’re not wrong; Pero had not had many companions on the road besides William, and the few men he fought with. The men were forgettable, often brash, more often dead on the other end of the job. William was a good foil to Tovar, placating when he was rough, the negotiator and the fighter. Though they still came together as brothers, William’s choices more and more likely brought him to the East and to the woman who held his heart. 

You, on the other hand, were much more like traveling with a freshly-forged blade. Deadly, practical, but also fiery, and likely to scorch. Hours could be spent in silence or bickering about the craftsmanship of Pero’s axes. You’d made him laugh but also made him shout and throw up his hands in frustration. In return he’d found small ways to make you smile, and larger ways to bring your anger to the surface. The games quickened your travel, but no matter whether your tongue was sharp or soft that day, if you came across work or trouble, Pero could count on your blade to slit throats.

At first he assumed you would take your debt in protection. That was quickly dismissed when, as you pulled your horse neck and neck with his on the path, you drew and loosed an arrow so quickly Pero didn't even register the final highwayman fleeing. You were highly skilled for a woman.

"Best keep your eyes forward, Tovar, your reflexes could use the head start. Diligence might have kept you out of this mess."

You were also damned infuriating. The first day he tried to ignore you, waiting for you to either ask for coin or reveal what else you wanted from him. A few needling questions, and a few snaps of derision when you pushed too far, and you uncovered his mercenary background and his aimless search for more work.

"Well that settles it then. I'll follow you on your search, and once the chance to repay your debt reveals itself you'll be free of me. Until then," you smirked, "I could also use some coin myself, and there are worse ways to get it."

"A woman companion will be suspicious. And they will never hire you to fight," Pero scoffed, rocking with the sway of his horse's gait. You snorted, decidedly unladylike, but it didn't irk Pero the way he thought it might.

"Steel and armor speak enough for me. And if they think my cunt will get in the way, at least all my sensitive bits are easily protected." You nodded with a raised eyebrow at Pero's lap and his face burned, a scowl slashing across it.

Very unladylike. It made his heart pound uncomfortably.

So began your tentative partnership.

“It would be easier to call you a companion if your debt was not hanging over my head,” Pero grumbles, scraping his plate clean before dragging his fingers through the grease and sauce to suck into his mouth. He almost misses it - the brief flicker of your eyes to his lips - before you roll your own and put your tankard back down.

“I’m a joy to travel with, William,” you retort, popping a potato into your mouth as food and drink dwindles between you. 

The debt Pero carries now is weighty, but much less so than the weight of your eyes on him in the last few weeks. He’d thought it an accident at first. You caught him dousing his head with stream water, the chilly droplets racing down his scruffy cheeks and into his collar. The strength with which you held his eyes betrayed you ever so slightly. An errant thought, that you might feel a flicker of desire for him, warmed his skin. But you were acrid the rest of the day, snappish and insisting on riding ahead, so Pero dashed it from his thoughts. Thinking with his cock again. It had been too long since he’d indulged, too thin on coin and too unwilling to dally with unwed (or wed) women when you stopped in towns. 

But as the weeks went on his imagination danced with possibilities. The nights spent on watch kept you sleeping apart, but the few brief times you were able to lie side by side he basked in the heat of your back mere hands widths from his. Your smile warmed him even more, though you still infuriated him with your quick swordwork, and your quicker words.

"If all you're useful for is to be a great wall, then why not stick to a shield and axe?" you taunted, light footwork dancing you around Pero as you sparred by the fire. The fact that a woman accompanied Pero was a benefit for once. The merchant's daughter relaxed at the sight, and he paid double. A quick job completed, a simple escort between two cities, and pockets fat with coin made you playful.

"I do not need to be fast to squash you, hermana," Pero growled, his boots crushing against stones as he twisted to swing his blade. A song of steel rang out, your eyes sparkling.

"I beg to differ," you quipped back, sheathing your blade for the night.

As the days went on, your taunting filling the days and quiet contemplation supplanting the nights, Pero was drawn to you like a moth to a flame. The times he let himself long to touch you, he wondered if you would burn or soothe him. He found himself in the throes of an argument longing to pin you and silence your pretty mouth with his own. Could he repay his debt with his mouth, his fingers, his tongue?

But one night the weight of your debt was outmatched. Pero thought he spotted a fire in the distance. Fire meant a town, or people, and people meant barter. Your food stores were getting low and the light was lucky. Spurring your horses on, you made for the fire.

It was not luck you encountered that night. 

A town set ablaze, people fleeing as horseback men threw torches into windows. You sat on the edge of the town, steeds side by side as you listened to the men whoop victory at the screams. One look at your face, jaw clenched tight, hand creaking against your hilt, told Pero what would be done tonight.

“Not for coin,” he said quietly, the lowest he’s even spoken to you. You turned to watch his face, your own half hidden in sooty darkness. 

“For blood and blood alone,” you answered.

You were never more in tune than when you were at war. Pero’s bulk and strength could easily unseat a rider, and your speed and deadly accuracy would take his final breath. When he needed you, you were there to surprise and maim. When you needed him, he filled the space and crushed the life out of whoever raised a blade to you. There were no words needed. Your bodies knew.

When the men were disposed of, you sprang from your horse and ran into the flames, the townsfolk putting out the blazes and tending to the injured. Pero gathered the invader's horses, helped the men haul water and reinforced damaged walls. You searched for mothers and sisters, wrapped wounds and chased the final smoldering embers of the damage done. 

As the silence of darkness began to blanket the town once more, Pero found you in the center. The children were speaking to you, young girls with wide eyes and boys colored with jealousy as they marveled at your armor and weaponry. You had told Pero its history, passed down from father to son until you, the only daughter of a line now ended. Technically you wore the armor in disgrace, forbidden by your father until his dying breath, but donned in his memory when you became a guide for those traveling between outposts. The children hung on your words, Pero recognizing the gestures of each story beat. 

“Hermana, we should be leaving,” Pero finally interrupted, your short nod acknowledging the danger. You may have liberated this town tonight, but come the morning any weapon-wielding person in the vicinity would be at the wrath of whoever sent those men. It was best to ride far and hard to save both your skins and theirs.

Pero moved to get your horses, clapping shoulders with the men and politely nodding to the women. Their eyes roamed his broad shoulders, scarred face and large hands and he saw the adrenaline of fear transform into lust. He took his leave quickly.

When he led your horse to mount, you were still standing in the town center, looking at something in your gloved palm. 

“Hermana?” he asked, coming up beside you in case you were injured. 

In your palm was a small white flower, delicate petals nestled against the creases of your leathers and a thin green stem curving your palm. You looked at it like a handful of gold.

“For protecting them,” you said simply. Pero studied your profile carefully, but there were no tears, or anger, or happiness. You wore an expression closer to regret. 

“You should keep it,” Pero said, pushing your hand closer to your chest. You shook your head. 

“It’s too nice,” you managed to rasp out, your half-hidden emotions starting to worry him. He opened his mouth to say something - anything his unskilled tongue could conjure up - before you huffed out a breath.

“We are not made for nice things, are we Tovar?” you asked, mouth turned dryly at the wilting flower in your glove. Pero’s heart clenched. It was time for you to go. 

“You take what you want, hermana. The world will not give you nice things without a fight.” Sighing, you let the paper-thin petals drop to the ground.

“I do not need anything from the world,” you retorted, leading your horse back the way you came. Pero nudged his steed to follow, watching the strong muscles of your legs and arms hoist you into the saddle. The ride from the town remained silent, the pounding of hooves and hearts all you could hear.

When you both felt you’d put enough distance at your back, Pero dismounted and began making camp. He didn’t dare build a real fire in case men were already looking, but did toss a few bits of kindling into a pile so there was enough light to move about. You went through the motions of tying up the horses, settling them for the night with a stare that worried Pero. It was too far away for something as small as this skirmish. You’d spat in the face of men trying to cut you down, dug through bodies for coin, but he had never seen you so shaken.

When you finally settled by the dwindling fire, offering first watch, Pero carefully sat behind you an arm’s length away. He intended to lie down and take the rest offered, his body screaming with stiffness. He was no longer a young man, but he still had much fight left in his bones. That fight just needed more sleep than in younger years.

“Wake me when it is my turn,” he said simply. You nodded. Then silence.

Pero should take his rest, but the stillness was still ground deep into your bones. So he waited instead, for you to think he slept or for it not to matter anymore. It was when your shoulders started to shake, your breath coming in hitches that you broke.

You wouldn’t let your sobs free, sucking in air through clenched teeth like you were angry at their intrusion. 

“Hermana,” Pero whispered, jolting you.

“Fuck, Pero, don’t…” you growled, and he could hear the control you were trying to get over your shaking voice. His scowl softened.

“Was it the children?” he asked, moving ever so slowly closer to you. You nodded briskly, hands clenched on your knees.

“I do not like this world sometimes, Pero.” You ground words through your teeth, trying to punch down sadness with anger. He suspected it was a talent that’s worked well in the past. “It is not kind, even when it should be. The cruelty we see…the cruelty we do…I don’t see the purpose in it.” 

Pero did not have flowery words for you. He was best at what he could do with his hands, with his actions. So he tried to give you comfort in the gentlest way he knew how. One expansive palm enveloped your shoulder, and your body stilled under it. At first he feared he’d gone a step too far, about to retract it, before your head dropped to rest your cheek against it.

It was the first time Pero touched your bare skin.

When it didn’t seem like you would shy from him, he rested his forehead against the back of your head, the scent of smoke and blood and dirt laced through your hair. He tried to think of something to say, but words were never his greatest asset. That was more for William to offer. But he could touch, and ground, and hold, if you’d let him.

After a long moment of silence, the fire down to bare embers, you lifted your cheek, prompting Pero to lean back from you. He debated on moving his hand before you spoke.

“Thank you, Pero. I don’t know how you knew, but that was…what I needed. So thank you.” Your voice was still rough and stilted, but filled with a gratitude Pero didn’t know how to react to, so beyond the normal comfort of your barbed conversations.

“We have spent much time together. I know you better than you think, including all of the things you are wrong about,” he joked gruffly, studying the bare silhouette of your profile. He wished you would smile again.

“One day you’ll be free of my debt and wish for my sparkling debates,” you shot back, and he caught the beginning of a quirked lip. It was good enough for him to rest. He shuffled down to lie back, the stars overhead watching over you both.

“But not tonight,” he replied drowsily. 

“No, Pero,” you added, “not tonight.”

“I spent much time with Tovar, and I am sure you are a brilliant companion. Debt or not, it sounds like you found a fine partner, my friend.” William’s cheerful voice brings Pero back to the conversation. He drags his attention to you, and your mirthful smile dashes away the remains of his memories. Standing half up from his seat, he snatches the bread you’ve been gesturing with from your fingers.

“Don’t play with your food,” he admonishes, but your halfhearted protest pulls any venom from it. He stuffs the bread in his mouth and chews, shoulders hunched as you go back to chatting with William about the East and all the mysteries there. Your rapt attention on his brother in arms lets Pero watch your face. That night was not the first time he felt a touch of softness for you. You were indeed a pain in his ass most days, headstrong and mouthy, but he enjoyed the challenge. He liked his women with teeth and nails and the potential to gut him. But he also liked to see you when your eyes softened, or when you thought no one was looking. 

Pero had never been saved by anyone or anything in his life. Except for you. And while you did not think you were meant to have nice things, Pero hoped, if you would give yourself to him, you could be the first nice thing Pero has ever had, and he could be yours.

END

Next: Stop That, Right Now

#pero tovar x you #pero tovar x reader #pero tovar x female reader #pero tovar x f!reader #pero tovar fanfiction #the great wall fanfiction #the great wall fic #lj's 500 follower celebration #prolix fics #pero tovar and his guerrera

[homomenhommes]

THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more … January 9

259 – Died: Saint Polyeuct, lover of Saint Nearchus. Soldiers in the Roman army and deeply attached to each other, Polyeuct and Nearchus were both stationed in Militene, Armenia. The earliest account of Polyeuct's martyrdom was written by Nearchus.

The primary thread of their story is the desire of these two friends to spend eternity together. According to the text, when the emperor issued a new edict against Christians, Nearchus was worried that, since Polyeuct was a pagan and Nearchus a Christian, his own possible martyrdom and the eventual death of Polyeuct might lead to their being in separate places in the afterlife. Polyeuct reassured him that he had long been drawn to Christianity and intended to die a Christian. With a convert's fervor, Polyeuct then attacked a pagan procession and had himself arrested. The judge turned out to be his own father-in-law, Felix, who begged him to reconsider.

Polyeuct's wife, Paulina, came to court and unsuccessfully implored him, for the sake of their marriage and their son, to change his mind. After severe tortures, he was condemned to death. Just before he was beheaded, Polyeuct saw Nearchus near. His final words to Nearchus were "Remember our secret vow."

Nearchus was later martyred, being buried alive.

Before his own death, Nearchus recorded this story, which was recounted annually at the church at Militene and eventually erected over Polyeuct's tomb in Militene. In the year 527, a great church with a gold-plated ceiling was built in Constantinople and dedicated to St. Polyeuct. Later in the same century, Gregory of Tours wrote that the most solemn oaths were usually sworn in this church; because Polyeuct had come to be considered the special heavenly protector of vows and avenger of broken promises.

1900 – Richard Halliburton (presumed dead after March 24, 1939) was an American traveler, adventurer, and author. Best known today for having swum the length of the Panama Canal and paying the lowest toll in its history—thirty-six cents—Halliburton was headline news for most of his brief career. His final and fatal adventure, an attempt to sail a Chinese junk, the Sea Dragon, across the Pacific Ocean from Hong Kong to the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco, made him legendary.

Richard Halliburton was born in Brownsville, Tennessee. The family moved to Memphis, where he spent his childhood. He attended Memphis University School. He also showed promise as a violinist, and was a fair golfer and tennis player. In 1915 Richard developed a rapid heart condition and spent some time at the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan, run by the innovative John Harvey Kellogg, whose philosophy of care featured regular exercise, sound nutrition, and frequent enemas.

Leaving college temporarily during 1919, Halliburton became an ordinary seaman and boarded the freighter Octorara bound from New Orleans to England. He toured historic places in London and Paris, but soon returned to Princeton to finish his schooling. Travel inspired in him a lust for more travel.

Halliburton idolized mountain climber George Mallory, who died in 1924 while trying to climb Mt. Everest. He knew and admired aviatrix Amelia Earhart. He knew journalist Lowell Thomas, who had made Lawrence of Arabia a living legend. Halliburton craved the celebrity of Rudolph Valentino, the great romantic screen star of the silent era. Richard was acquainted with and looked up to swashbuckling cinema star Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., who was also a world traveler.

Halliburton's first book, published in 1925, The Royal Road to Romance, became a bestseller. Two years later he published The Glorious Adventure, which retraced Ulysses' adventures throughout the Classical Greek world as recounted in Homer's The Odyssey, and which included his visiting the grave of English poet Rupert Brooke on the island of Skyros. In 1929 Halliburton published New Worlds To Conquer, which recounted his famous swim of the Panama Canal, and his retracing the track of Cortez' conquest of Mexico.

Halliburton's sexual associations with members of his own sex became apparent. To protect the image of heroic masculinity he had cultivated to win over an admiring public, he kept secret his true sexual orientation. He seems also to have kept it a secret from his doting parents, who longed for grandchildren from their one surviving son. Among those romantically linked to him were film star Ramón Novarro and philanthropist Noel Sullivan, both of whom shared his enjoyment of the bohemian lifestyle. Halliburton's most enduring relationship was with freelance journalist Paul Mooney, with whom he often shared living quarters and who assisted him with his written work.

In 1931 Halliburton hired pioneer aviator Moye Stephens on the strength of a handshake —for no pay, but unlimited expenses —to fly him around the world in an open cockpit biplane. The modified Stearman C-3B was named the Flying Carpet after the magic carpet of fairy tales, and this became the title of his 1932 best-seller. They embarked on "one of the most fantastic, extended air journeys ever recorded" taking 18 months to circumnavigate the globe, covering 33,660 miles (54,100 km) and visiting 34 countries.

Halliburton (R) with Moye Stephens

On March 3, 1939, Halliburton began to sail a Chinese junk across the Pacific Ocean. The Sea Dragon, a gaudily decorated 75-foot (23 m) junk, was made to his commission in the shipyards of Kowloon by cartwright Fat Kau. Emblazoned with a colorful dragon and equipped with a diesel engine, the Sea Dragon was supposed to make its maiden voyage from Hong Kong to the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco (at Treasure Island).

Three weeks out to sea on March 23 the ship encountered a typhoon. The junk was last sighted by the liner SS President Coolidge, itself battling mountainous seas some 1900 km west of Midway Island. That was the last seen the junk. After an extensive US Navy search with several ships and scout planes over thousands of square miles and many days, the effort was ended. In 1945 some wreckage identified as a rudder and believed to belong to the Sea Dragon washed ashore in California.

Missing at sea since March, Halliburton was declared dead on October 5, 1939 by the Memphis Chancery Court.

Simone de Beauvoir (R) with Jean-Paul Sartre

1908 – Simone de Beauvoir (d.1986) is best known for her revolutionary study of women's condition, The Second Sex (1949), a work that changed women's lives worldwide. In 1999, an international colloquium was held in Paris to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of The Second Sex. The conference included a number of papers on Beauvoir and lesbianism, a topic that, a decade earlier, would have been virtually unthinkable.

In 1990, however, when Beauvoir's journals and two volumes of her letters to Jean-Paul Sartre were made available, it became clear that Beauvoir had had a number of same-sex relationships throughout her life. These revelations, along with others, completely shattered the heretofore unassailable myth of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre as the twentieth century's most perfect couple. Today, Beauvoir's same-sex relationships are widely acknowledged, although attempts to excuse them (as "bohemian existentialist experimentation," to give but one example), in the interest of preserving Beauvoir's heterosexual image, persist.

Beauvoir was born in Paris into a bourgeois Roman Catholic family. Her family's fortunes declined after World War I, but she was nevertheless the beneficiary of an expensive private education. She then studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, where she met Sartre in 1929.

From 1931 to 1941 Beauvoir taught philosophy in secondary schools in Marseilles, Rouen, and Paris. In 1943, she published her first novel, L'Invitée, one of several fictional works dealing with her relationship with Sartre.

Although she herself seems not to have been involved in resistance efforts during the Nazi occupation of Paris, in 1945, soon after the end of World War II, she published Le Sang des autres, a novel reflecting on the question of political involvement and the French Resistance.

The feminist classic The Second Sex followed in 1949 and was eventually to make her reputation. Her strongest novel, Les Mandarins, appeared in 1954; a semiautobiographical work, it too focused on her relationship with Sartre, the subject that has preoccupied both her autobiographical works and the scholarship devoted to her life and work.

Beauvoir's same-sex relations, characterized by intense emotion and in most cases with a confirmed sexual component, likely began with Beauvoir's school friend "Zaza." Several of these relationships occurred during Beauvoir's career as a philosophy teacher during the 1930s and 1940s, and involved her students (who seemed to be the initiators, able to resist neither Beauvoir's physical nor her intellectual magnetism).

In one case, Beauvoir's rendez-vous were structured around philosophy lessons. Exasperated at having to discuss Kant before climbing into Beauvoir's bed, the student Nathalie Sorokine called Beauvoir "a clock in a refrigerator." When Sorokine's mother complained to the school, Beauvoir was fired, effectively ending her teaching career.

When Beauvoir was asked point blank in an interview if she were a lesbian, she angrily denied it. It should be noted, however, that Beauvoir tended to define things narrowly (she also claimed she was not a philosopher, again according to a strict definition). For Beauvoir, a lesbian is a woman who refuses to have anything (sexual) to do with males.

Further, Beauvoir was a major participant in the public erasure of her lesbian identity. A comparison of the unpublished diaries with published works shows a very different representation of the relationship with Zaza in Beauvoir's autobiography Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (1958) or of Beauvoir's lover Olga as the fictional Xavière in her novel She Came to Stay (1943). It has only recently been recognized that Beauvoir was the model for the lesbian Inès in Sartre's No Exit (1944).

In the early 1960s, Beauvoir began a relationship with Sylvie le Bon which lasted to the end of Beauvoir's life. In 1980, following Sartre's death, Beauvoir adopted Sylvie so that the latter could legally care for Beauvoir, who was to die six years later. Their relationship offers a model of the lesbian couple described theoretically in The Second Sex.

1941 – Joan Baez is nothing less than a legend, both as a folk musician and as a catalyst for social change. A singer, guitarist, and songwriter with eight gold records and six Grammy nominations thus far, Baez has long been visible as a protest figure supporting civil rights, peace efforts, and human rights through her direct activism and numerous free concerts.

Born on Staten Island, New York to a Scottish mother and Mexican-American father, Baez moved with her family to California when she was a small child. She lived in Baghdad from 1951 to 1952; there, confronted with rampant poverty and human suffering in the streets, she first realized her passion for social justice.

Baez stood out as an artistic nonconformist and peace activist in her high school in Palo Alto, California, and then at Boston University—where she remained for only a short time. She had begun playing at local coffeehouses and decided to drop out of school in 1958 to concentrate on her musical career.

Baez started playing in clubs such as Gate of Horn, which belonged to impresario (and Baez's future manager) Albert Grossman, and appearing with well-known musicians such as Pete Seeger.

In 1960 her first album, Joan Baez, was released to huge acclaim. Gifted with an extraordinarily beautiful voice, she also brought an unusual intelligence to the interpretation of folk songs, both traditional and new.

Baez became increasingly involved with the civil rights movement, using her growing fame as a means of drawing attention to a cause she believed in deeply. She especially worked in conjunction with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; Dr. King's speeches and Baez's singing were a staple of demonstrations and rallies during the turbulent 1960s.

Baez also became very active in promoting nonviolence. During the Vietnam War, she visited Hanoi for thirteen days to witness the horrors of war herself, and for ten years she withheld the percentage of her income taxes that would have been put toward military expenses. In 1967, she was arrested twice—and jailed for a month—for blocking the entrance of the Armed Forces Induction Center in Oakland, California.

All the while she continued recording albums in her signature clear soprano, both writing her own material and performing classic songs of resistance such as "We Shall Overcome," "Oh, Freedom," and "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?"

She founded both the Institute for the Study of Nonviolence (now The Resource Center for Nonviolence) in California in 1965 and the Humanitas International Human Rights Committee, which she headed from 1979 until its demise 13 years later.

Although she may be most famous for her civil rights and peace activism, Baez has also been prominent in the struggle for gay and lesbian rights.

She has been open about the relationship she had with a woman in 1962; in an interview a decade later, she told a reporter that she basically considered herself bisexual, a statement she stood by despite the controversy it sparked. She did marry activist David Harris in 1968, and had their son Gabe in 1969; although the couple eventually divorced, Baez never again pursued a lesbian relationship.

Still, she has been visible in the gay community; in 1978 she performed at several benefit concerts to defeat Proposition 6 (the Briggs Initiative), which proposed banning all openly gay people from teaching in the public schools of California. Later that year, she participated in memorial marches for the assassinated San Francisco city supervisor, openly gay Harvey Milk.

Alongside Janis Ian, she played a benefit for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in 1994, and has performed numerous times with the lesbian duo the Indigo Girls.

1994 – Elijah Daniel is an American comedian, rapper, and author. He became popular online through his comedy on YouTube and social media. Daniel is the author of the erotic novel Trump Temptations. His book went viral, and saw significant sales the day it was published; rising to the top of sales lists in multiple categories. Daniel's book received favorable reception. Trump Temptations became the top seller on Amazon.com in three categories: humorous erotica, LGBT erotica, and gay erotica.

Elijah Daniel was born in Detroit, Michigan. He was raised evangelical Christian. After his grandmother became ill, Daniel moved into her residence to care for her. During this period, he began to write comedy to occupy himself. He publicized his comedy work through posts on Twitter, and videos to Vine.

Daniel led an online White House petition in 2013 to make the Miley Cyrus song "Party in the U.S.A." the U.S. national anthem. It received international coverage. Starting in 2014 Elijah began hosting a weekly internet prank with CollegeHumor called Text Prank Thursday, where he would have his Twitter followers text random phone numbers saying whatever he told them to say. Daniel told Vice that he cultivated a group of followers online who appreciated his absurd and bizarre comedic antics. By 2016, his Twitter following had grown to over 95,000.

In 2016 Daniel stated on Twitter that he was going to get drunk and write an erotic novel starring Donald Trump. Daniel was inspired by a tweet which said the user wished to perform a sex act on Bernie Sanders. Daniel wrote the work as a parody of Fifty Shades of Grey. Within four hours, he had released the erotic novel titled Trump Temptations: The Billionaire & The Bellboy on Amazon. The work was Daniel's debut novel.

Trump Temptations became the number one best seller on Amazon.com in three categories: humorous erotica, LGBT erotica, and gay erotica.The book was listed on Amazon above Fifty Shades of Grey by E. L. James, and was featured in The Washington Post, Daily News, Los Angeles Times, GQ, Gay Star News, London Evening Standard, The Daily Telegraph, and Vice. The Guardian classed the work as part of the "small but burgeoning new genre: satirical books about Donald Trump" that began with the 2016 presidential campaign. Cosmopolitan called the book a literary success.

Daniel hired Trump impersonator Chris Ferretti to read the audiobook.

Trump biographer Marc Shapiro wrote in Trump This!, that Daniel's novel was one of the most infamous works capitalizing on interest in Trump. An article in Fortune said that Daniel displayed a Trump-like skill to capitalize on a niche demand.

After the Orlando nightclub shooting in June 2016, Daniel publicly urged on Twitter for any individual who is closeted to feel free to contact him privately for support, and he published "An open letter to the LGBT kids who feel lost and scared" on Fusion.net. The letter positively received by ATTN:, which called it a powerful commentary on the attack.

On August 30, 2017, Elijah Daniel performed a publicity stunt centered around Hell, Michigan – an unincorporated town that allows visitors to pay for the opportunity to hold the title of "mayor" for a day. In what he called "a copy-and-paste of Trump's Muslim ban", he announced a satirical law that banned heterosexuals from entering and living in the town. In response, Daniel released an edited version of The Bible called "The Holy Bible… but Gayer" two weeks later. Sales of it were briefly banned on Amazon before being restored.

2016 – When Hubert Edward Spires was twenty years old, he decided to serve his country by joining the military. Because he was a gay man in a very different time, though, he was removed through an "undesirable" discharge. On this day in 2016, the 91-year-old Connecticut man finally received the honorable discharge he was denied 68 years ago.

In 1946, he joined what was then called the U.S. Army Air Force and became a chaplain's assistant at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio. Spires quickly took to the work, which included writing letters to families worried about their loved ones, playing organ during Catholic Mass and preparing the chapel for various services. When it became known that he was a homosexual he was given an "undesirable" discharge.

Because of the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell in 2010, it became possible for Spires to apply to have the status of his discharge changed. The 91-year-old Spires filed a federal lawsuit seeking an honorable discharge so he can receive a military burial.The Air Force has changed the 91-year-old's records to an honorable discharge. Spires said, "I can go to my grave with my head held high."

[escapingpurgatory]

Preacher's Daughter Review Part 2

Televangelism

The second instrumental track on the album, it represents Ethel's spirit leaving her body and ascending into the afterlife. Beautiful and haunting, as are many other tracks off the album, Televangelism reminds me of peacefulness. The piano in this track is fantastic, 10/10.

Sun Bleached Flies

Thought to be the "end" of the album, this track recounts Ethel's final moments before her death. She makes peace with her death, looking back at her life along with her time in the church and community. She thinks about how she could've been saved before Isaiah killed her. My favorite lines in this song are "God loves you but not enough to save you." and "But I always knew that in the end no one was coming to save me." Amazing and captivating track, 10/10.

Strangers

Considered the epilogue of the album, this track is another one of my favorites off the album. It talks about what happens after Isaiah kills Ethel. This includes him cannibalizing and commiting acts of necrophilia on her corpse. He has drifted into madness and keeps Ethel in a basement freezer. Such an amazing song, it's heart shattering when Ethel inquires about her worth and about being loved by Isaiah or not. My favorite line is "If I'm turning in your stomach and making you feel sick." Finally, Ethel visits her mother before ascending into heaven. 1000/10.

Conclusion

I would dare say this album was life altering for me. The story, the music, the extra visuals, it's all so perfect. I feel like I could go on and on about this album, as well as listen to it time and time again. I can't wait until Hayden can release this album on vinyl or as a CD, I would love to see her get creative with booklet or insert artwork. This album is everything to me, ♾️/10

PART ONE ⬇️

#Spotify #ethel cain #preachers daughter #indie #southern gothic #hayden anhedönia #mother cain #album review #music

[belit0]

Aniki!

The real reason for Madara’s madness. Also, he's not the only crazy one.

Characters: Uchiha Madara - Uchiha Izuna - Senju Tobirama - Senju Hashirama

We love some good Uchiha bros bonding don't we

Tobirama focuses on Sasuke's speech while inwardly feeling completely repulsed by the young man's impudence. It seems like over the years, the Uchihas just got worse.

How can it be that the Senjus are no more, but these idiots, according to what the teenager relates to his older brother, are?

Unbelievable.

"Madara..."

Tobi sighs wearily. Brought was him to the world of the living only months ago, and now he's being dragged back here, interrupting his eternal rest to fight the world's worst pain in the ass.

The cursed Uchiha Madara is alive and kicking, threatening the entire planet in his wake.

But as his older brother recounts his childhood and the times the old Uchiha leader was a considerably decent person, Tobirama knows what he must do.

It's not about fighting and fighting foolishly on a brutish base like in the old days. It is not about Hashirama tirelessly facing off against that beastly power until one of the two falls down in defeat again, as in the past. It is not about uniting everyone to overcome him.

It is a matter of correcting the one mistake Tobirama dares to admit he made in his life.

"While you continue to debate the concept of village and shinobi, I would rather amend the world I do not belong to and prevent more innocent lives from continuing to join us in the afterlife. Anija, take your time if you wish."

Before he could hear a reaction from the other Hokages or the Uchiha boy, he disappears with his Hiraishin and moves to a safe distance from where he spotted Madara's chakra signature.

It is easy to identify him, considering that his power glows monstrously reddish amidst a sea of weak and some stubborn marks.

Taking refuge behind a rock, he watches in the distance as the resurrected Uchiha faces off against the current Kages. With pride, he sees Tsnuade's golden hair flying furiously from one side of the battlefield to the other.

A shinobi corpse lies at his feet, and swiftly, the Nidaime picks it up and claims it, determined to use it as a vessel for his technique.

Tobirama forces himself to concentrate and performs the hand seals that will bring the only workable solution to this war. A strange nostalgia appears in his chest when the image of his former rival, the one he mercilessly eliminated, appears before his eyes.

Often, after Izuna's death, he thought about him without noticing it. It only aggravated his guilt as he became Kagami's Sensei. Although it was their destiny to destroy each other, Tobirama never believed it would happen.

He foolishly hoped their eternal battle would end when their older brothers' dream came true, for he trusted in Hashirama's persistence and his influence over Madara, and perhaps then, he could even tolerate Izuna.

But when his Katana pierced him that day, the Senju's mixed feelings only mutated. What at first felt like a sense of victory eventually turned into disappointment at himself.

And when Madara left the village to-then explode against everyone to destroy everything they had built, he knew it was because of his little brother's death.

He himself had changed since he killed his rival. He couldn't even imagine how that event must have affected his older brother's best friend. Could he blame him for starting another war? Not really.

Maybe he would have done the same.

So Tobirama set out to repay Izuna for everything he stole from him. But even though his experiments were successful and several of his test subjects came back to life in front of him, he could not find the courage to summon the younger Uchiha.

Madara had fallen at the hands of Hashirama after going insane. What would be Tobi's excuse to revive Izuna?

However now, in front of the maniacal former Uchiha leader trying to destroy everything again because of his ancient and legendary pain, it was the perfect time to do it.

"Izuna...?"

The voice comes out as a choked whisper, even as the rumble of war and death cries ring out all around them.

Before he can explain anything, severed from his neck is Tobirama's head, causing thousands of papers to fly into the air and his eyes black with red go out for a moment.

The newly revived one attacked as if both of them continued to be in the same place where he lost his life. It is understandable, given the context that surrounds them is similar but even worse. In the past, Madara was not a lunatic.

After a few seconds, the Senju's head grows back from his neck, on the body that fell motionless on the ground. Izuna watches in horror, without understanding what is wrong, without stopping to-seriously analyze what is occurring.

"I'd appreciate it if you'd stay still and quiet before I have to send you to death again, Uchiha." Tobirama's irritation is real and tinges his voice as he rejoins, but he doesn't really speak his words with intent. He is secretly happy to see his old rival again after so many years.

"What..."

"There's no time, Izuna. You must stop your brother."

"Don't talk about my brother and fight!"

The Uchiha rushes at him again, but this turn it is not the white-haired man who loses his head. With an accurate blow, Tobi lets the papers fly in the air and waits for his rival to get up from the ground exactly as he did seconds ago.

How ridiculous must that scene look from afar? He can't help but ask himself.

While the red eyes of the Uchiha widen again, he shifts them in terror to all sides, looking around in shock for the first time.

"BUT..."

"We're dead, Izuna. There's no point in fighting me anymore."

"Madara..."

"You must stop him. Unfortunately, you're the only one who can after all. Otherwise, I wouldn't have brought you here."

"Here...? Where is this... here? Exactly?"

"A thousand years after your death. Future."

"Good... good, it's time to wake up Izuna... come on you useless little wimp wake up wake up!"

"What are you doing?"

Tobirama asks as he witnesses the Uchiha hit his head and pinch his arms.

"This is a nightmare that I'm unintentionally controlling again! Madara said no more sweets before bed and I should have listened but-"

"YOUR BROTHER IS ABOUT TO DESTROY THE WORLD BECAUSE I ASSASSINATED YOU, YOU FOOL!"

Silence falls over them both as he points to that spot on the battlefield where the five Kages fight against the older brother.

"But... my eyes... I have my eyes... I gave them to him before I..."

"I assumed I had them back after Madara's presumed death in the past... I wanted to apologize to you when seeing you again, to both of you, I mean. But now you must go over there and stop that lunatic, Izuna."

Without taking his gaze from where Madara mercilessly beats the presumed most powerful of the current world, the Uchiha stands up on shaky legs and walks over there, ignoring the people fighting around him and death painting the place. Splashes of blood reach his blue robe and he swears he can almost feel at home, having in front of him the huge, imposing back of his older brother who still does not notice his presence.

"Would you like these clones to use Susanoo? Or not?"

Izuna hears that sentence and can't help but smile with mouth hidden in the high collar of his shirt. His brother hasn't changed a bit.

And as he gets closer and closer, Madara speaks again, making him stop almost just as he is about to join him.

"Using my younger brother's chakra signature is both a poor and filthy move as an attempt of distraction, Shinobi alliance."

But just as the blue arm of Madara's Susanoo blindly reaches out to strike him, Izuna speaks up, finding his voice devoid of courage. He has seen so many enemies get killed by said technique flying mercilessly at him, yet his older brother never used it against him.

"Aniki!"

When he should have flown away and turned into papers in the air, nothing affected him. His eyes reflexively closed, but his feet refused to move from the place, showing determination.

"Otouto...?"

Peering around again, Madara's back is still there, showing that he didn't budge either, but his arm is outstretched to the side of his body. In front of him, the five Kages lie clenched by the clones he summoned previously, forcing them to remain paralyzed while he processes that voice, that sensation.

In the blink of an eye, the battlefield disappears, the screaming stops, and gone are all the surrounding people. His Aniki must have become much faster and skillful thanks to his eyes because Izuna did not even notice when being lifted into the air and transported away from the war by the Susanoo.

In his face, for the first time, Madara's features glow. Lines and cracks adorn his factions, while a violet eye makes a presence where his characteristic Sharingan should shine.

"Izuna... Izuna..."

Repeated are the words as two gloved hands caress his cheeks, brush his bangs and touch his eyelashes.

"This is real..."

"So it is, Aniki. I'm here."

"They... they killed you Otouto... they took you from my arms... your eyes... oh your beautiful eyes..."

"Aniki, no more. My eyes are back, I am back. Aniki... we must finish this..."

"We must end this Otouto..."

"We must kill them all..."

#uchiha madara #madara uchiha #senju tobirama #tobirama senju #senju hashirama #hashirama senju #madara #tobirama #hashirama #izuna uchiha #naruto #uchiha izuna #izuna #naruto founders

[accidentalbi]

a small assortment of lyrics from my playlists, 1 - ?

" Dear fellow traveler, under the moon -- "

" I saw you standing in the shadows, and your eyes were blue. "

" Come with me, boy, I want to show you something more. "

" You spoke my language. "

" It wasn't difficult to pull me from myself again. "

" My love is so wise and so pretty. "

" I still dream of you. "

" I'm hoping you'll come soon. "

" I know you're out there, in the shadows. "

" Don't lie, baby, I know what you're thinking. "

" I know you wanna break free. "

" Baby, put the gun away. "

" Baby, don't you run away. "

" Little lady's got a spell on me. "

" You should've known that I was trouble when you met me. "

" He calls me pretty, but he loves me 'cause I'm deadly. "

" I've been causing a scene, but you love me when I'm out of my mind. "

" Closer, baby, don't be shy~ "

" Something dangerous on my tongue. "

" Like a little crazy, gotta keep me around. "

" You can say you hate me, but you never walk out. "

" I'm a savage, I'm a fighter. "

" Got my finger on my pulse, it's steady. "

" When I close my eyes and count to ten, all I feel is the adrenaline. "

" Long live the champion! "

" Call me names, call me reckless. "

" Crash through like a storm. "

" The more I fight, the worse they bite. "

" Under my skin, recounting my sins, poison what's inside. "

" One by one, they have their fun by messing with my head. "

" I've got no choice, it's time to burn this motherfucker down. "

" Deep into the darkness, we all got lost. "

" Call into the afterlife, can you hear us when we cry? "

" Can you show us how to fight? "

" It's all gone wrong. "

" Heaven hold us. "

" Where do we go when it's all over? "

" Can the broken sky unleash one more sunrise for the dawn? "

" I don't know what you had in mind, but here we stand on opposing sides. "

" Let's go to war. "

" We arm ourselves with the wrongs we've done, name them off one by one. "

" Screaming at the ones we love, like we forgot who we can trust. "

" Do we feel safe? "

" Hush, my baby, make no sound. "

" Maybe we can wait each other out. "

" I thought that fighting with meant fighting for. "

" Every feeling in my bones tells me to lash out. "

" You've got my heart, and I've got your soul. "

" You've got my heart, and I've got your soul, but are we better off alone? "

" With every battle, we lose a little more. "

" You are everything that I'd die for. "

" Do you feel safe? "

" There's an angel on the corner. "

" Honey, there's a devil on my knee. "

" She'd have died at night only for me. "

" I was founded in a bed of liars. "

" I was founded in a bed of liars, walking the streets someone before me set on fire. "

" I'm waiting on the day you don't want me tomorrow. "

" I don't know why you love me. "

" Oh, I'm a mess and you can taste it. "

" Oh, I'm a mess and you can taste it when I'm getting tangled in your sheets. "

" You can taste it when I'm getting tangled in your sheets. "

" Wake up with somebody else. "

" Everyone is dumb. "

" Disappointment takes us by surprise. "

" By now I think we should have realized. "

" How dark is it in your mind? "

" You're my home. "

" I see the trouble that I caused. "

" I feed the thoughts you never saw. "

" You just won't let me go. "

" They tend to hold, when you push they pull. "

" The falling is easy when you're numb. "

" When did the lines all blur to gray? "

" How can I sleep when you're awake? "

" What's the point in dreaming? "

" Something's in my head that I'm not sure that I can fight through. "

" It haunts me. "

" I've always been afraid of the shadow in my closet. "

" Down this road, I don't see a ghost. "

" It's more like a feeling that almost keeps me from breathing. "

" I cannot hide from those silent eyes. "

" Who's brave and ready for trouble? "

" Who's so unbelievably humble? "

" Who gambles with his life? "

" Who's never been touched by a blade? "

" This blood on my teeth, it is far beyond dry. "

" I know I'm a wolf, and I've been known to bite. "

" The rest of my pack, I have left them behind. "

" I'll never give you up. "

" If I ever give you up, my heart will surely fail. "

" Don't ever give me up, I could never get back up. "

" The future starts so slow. "

" No longing for the moonlight, no longing for the sun. "

" No longer will I curse the bad I've done. "

" If there's a time when the feeling's gone, I wanna feel it. "

" You can blow what's left of my right mind. "

" There's a time for the second best. "

" There's a time when the feeling's gone. "

" It's hard to be hard, I guess, when you're shaking like a dog. "

#my memes

[darthstitch]

the end of the fairy tale

Let's talk about Nada.

So, for those who haven't read the comics, I'm going to say it now, even if the comics were already released 30-odd years ago, okay? SPOILERS. MAJOR SPOILERS. VERY LIKELY THE PLOT OF SANDMAN SEASON 2.

There.

The second thing I am going to say is this: THIS DOES NOT EXCUSE/EXONERATE DREAM OF THE ENDLESS FROM ANY OF HIS SHITTY ACTIONS. BECAUSE THEY WERE REALLY, REALLY HORRIBLE. HEINOUS. CRUEL. HE WAS A FUCKING IDIOT.

Look, I love the fucking idiot, okay? But yeah, the day I read that particular part in the comics was the day I absolutely wished I could reach into that world and shake him into sense. Like, DREAM, YOU MORON, YOU COME BACK HERE AND FIX THIS RIGHT THIS INSTANT GODDAMNIT. YOU FUCKING KNOW BETTER THAN THIS.

Thankfully, Death took care of that for me, in true Pinay Ate fashion.

Buckle up kids, here we go.

In the comics, Queen Nada was the first love interest that we see for Dream of the Endless. At least, the first that we knew of, since Endless Nights wasn't going to be written and published until years later.

It plays out like a classic myth, that tribal people tell each other, as part of a rite of passage for their youth. Queen Nada is the beautiful queen of a great and ancient city somewhere in Africa. She falls in love with a handsome and mysterious man. Despite multiple warnings and obstacles in her way, she goes on a quest to find Mr. Mystery and she eventually does find him.

It's worth noting that Dream here is again shown to be different from the usual pale, white, ghostly dude that we know. We're reminded that the Dream we see as a "default" is based on our perceptions. He appears as an eldritch godlike being, all flame and majesty to the Martian Manhunter.

To Nada, he is a beautiful young man of her own race but alas, when she finds him, she realizes that he's not a mortal. She recognizes him for what he is and is terrified, because to love an Endless is to court disaster. It's forbidden.

I won't recount the whole tale, but suffice it to say, that Dream eagerly pursues her once he's figured out that she's madly in love with him. She tries to run away but eventually she gives into Dream and they have this one incredible night of passion. But because she apparently broke this taboo, her kingdom is completely destroyed.

Dream tries to offer her the Queenship of the Dreaming, but obviously, that's not going to fly with Nada, who's absolutely broken that all of her innocent people had to pay the price for her foolish passions and love. She chooses to kill herself and while Dream still tries to persuade her to spend her afterlife with him, she refuses.

And that's why he sends her to hell. It takes about 10,000 years, but after Desire needles him (as usual) and Death points out (in a gentler fashion) that he'd behaved abominably, Dream decides to do the right thing and get her out of hell. It helps that he's just experienced imprisonment as well (we'd later learn that this has happened twice) and after some shenanigans, he does set her free.

Dream awkwardly attempts to apologize and he ends up getting rightfully smacked in the face, because, Dream, you moron, that's not how you say sorry. OMG.

DASURV.

This is one of the reasons why Tom Sturridge's Morpheus took me a little off guard. His apology to Lucienne and his closure with Calliope are leagues away from this, where he shows a lot more empathy, sensitivity and maturity. I'm looking forward to seeing how the show is going to handle that moment, since they've been doing such a great job of adapting and making changes to the source material while still staying true to the spirit of the entire saga.

But I digress. Dream does really make it right with Nada and she gets to reincarnate and live her new life, finally free of all the bullshit.

For a long time, I had wondered how Dream of the Endless could've been so cruel and petulant and capricious. I did understand that The Sandman wasn't a classic "hero" tale where the lead character would make the "right" choice every time. Dream does change and grow and develop for the better over the course of the series, which is why it's so heartbreaking to lose him in the end, just when it seems he's finally getting his shit together.

And then I read Endless Nights and I finally understood.

Poor Nada was basically Dream's rebound love from the disaster that was Killala of the Glow.

Killala was a trainwreck in the making. From the comics, it seemed like Dream had been the one who did the courting, dazzling and wooing her. She's into it, but she doesn't seem to understand Dream's real nature and it's fairly clear that she's attracted to Dream and very much charmed, but it's Dream who's fallen hard and fast for her.

It's also worth noting that the restriction against loving mortals was not yet in place. It's Killala who causes that restriction to happen. Given that she falls in love with the star of her own solar system, it's significant that the one who doles out punishment for Nada falling in love with Dream and consummating that love is our sun.

I honestly think that Killala and Dream would've still broken up, even without Desire's meddling, but it might have happened gradually, over time and Dream might have learned a far more different, gentler lesson in loving mortals. Instead, he gets faced with Killala openly betraying him and running off with Sto-Oa. Desire laughs in Dream's face about it and admits that they thought it was a fun joke.

And Dream does absolutely nothing, except to storm away.

Killala isn't punished, isn't condemned to hell, doesn't suffer some unspeakable fate. We're told that she was happy with her love, even though she does die, eventually, since she's mortal.

So it's no wonder that Dream had overreacted so badly with Nada. It was Nada who had initially pursued him. It was Nada who had gone through all these trials and tribulations to prove her love for him. She was the one who essentially did the courting and the wooing. To Dream, who was still feeling bruised and battered after getting rejected by Killala, it had to be a heady feeling, to be loved and wanted like that.

Was it any wonder that he absolutely would not let Nada go after this? That he would try to hold on to her, try to keep her by his side, damn the consequences?

It's also significant that the Dream Nada sees, essentially looks like a teenager of her own age - a clear sign that Dream himself isn't emotionally mature enough or had developed that conscientious streak that made him so endearing much later in his life. He was young (in Endless terms), he was hurting over his last love and his sibling's cruelty, and he just wanted, very much, to be loved and have his fairy tale happily ever after.

Again, this doesn't excuse his cruelty. But at least we can better understand where he's coming from and appreciate how much character growth he'd gone through, because he does, in the end, set things right with Nada the best way he possibly could. And while it's not a fairy tale ending, it's a satisfying one.

#the sandman #dream of the endless #dream of the endless | morpheus #nada #meta #dream and his poor lovelife decisions #dream and his disaster of a lovelife

[shitpostingkats]

Crack Theory: Jaden Yuki is (at least partially) Atlantian

As usual, this is 100% my own connection making brain going crazy, I doubt this is what the writers intended, if they thought about it at all. Also, this essay is not free of infodumping or absurdity. 

So, Atlantis has always been... kinda weird, in yugioh. Other than just the absolute wildness of it just. Canonically existing. The Waking the Dragons arc has some of the most far reaching lore implications for the franchise as a whole, introducing ideas like the spirit world, duel monsters appearing in history (outside of egypt lol), and some major afterlife magic. Things that yugioh will expand on in following series, and things that were, I reiterate, introduced in a throwaway filler arc of the anime because they had run out of manga to adapt. 

But one character in particular not just builds on the concepts introduced in DM’s Atlantis season, but shares some interesting similarities with the main villain of that season, Dartz.

Jaden Yuki.

The first thing that caught my attention was the eyes. While yugioh has an almost ridiculous number of characters with magical eyeballs, heterochromia with one turquoise, one orange/yellow? Incredibly specific. I can’t think of a single yugioh character whose weird eye horror even passingly resembles anothers, yet here Jaden and Dartz are. Even further, both of them spend time serving as a “king” with pure gold eyes, before coming into contact with a foreign entity and developing the bilateral asymmetry. 

But Jaden’s eyes are based on Yubels, and more thematically, the colors of the polymerization card art. And Dartz’s seem to be just a random anime villain power up. 

Let’s put a pin in this for now.

The next weird link between the two is in the strange flashback we see at the very end of GX season 3. Jaden sees one of his past lives, when Yubel pledged themselves to be his guardian. In this era, Jaden is the young prince of a vague and never named kingdom. When was this? Where? We don’t know.

But the few characters we see share some interesting design elements with the people of Atlantis.

The primary front skirt panel being this narrow rectangle ending in a point at the end. The gold crown featuring a solid band with a diamond shaped piece right over the forehead embedded with a bright red gem. These capes and the big round brooch thingies. Jaden’s father’s belt has this segmented gold design that looks quite a bit like the necklace of the Atlantian king. (His granddaughter, Kris, has a similar one, I was just running out of space for references.) In fact, both Jaden’s father and the Atlantian king use red gems as their primary design element.

And finally, the biggest detail I want to point out is this little gemstone on human!Yubel’s forehead. Crowns are a pretty universal thing, but a delicate little jewel right on the forehead? That’s an iconic piece of jewelry worn by one Dartz Yugioh. It’s also worth noting, Jaden supreme king armor has the same blue diamond on its forehead. 

Now, before I tie this all together, let me take a quick aside to reassure that yes, I am aware, this sounds like the furthest reach I could possibly make. Sure, the two kingdoms might share some design elements, if you squint. Yeah, Jaden and Yubel might each have one weird feature that Dartz also flaunts. But really, is that enough to posit a connection between the two?

I mean, absolutely, I’ve built fan theories on far less and I WILL DO IT AGAIN

But no. Here’s the plot twist of this post: 

I’m not trying to prove that past!Jaden was the prince of Atlantis.  

Past!Jaden was the prince of New Atlantis.

All right buckle up kids it’s time for me to pull out the thumbtacks and red string also yes this essay is only 50% crack theory and 50% me wanting to infodump about mythology and historical dress. 

Now, ygo Atlantis is based on the “real” Atlantis described by Plato in a trio of his allegorical dialogues, wherein he invents a fictitious evil island nation and then recounts how the ancient Athenians singlehandedly stopped them from invading the known world. And ygo Atlantis actually references parts of the texts and uses some neat Atlantis details that I never see anyone else get right. For one, the three dragons, Timaeus, Critias, and Hermos, are named after the three chapters of the dialogue. Though Hermos is shortened from Hermocrates, but it means someone on the writing team gave at least a passing glance to the source material. Secondly, the layout of the city uses the concentric ring design laid out by Plato.

“-dwelt into a palace and enclosed it with three circular moats of increasing width, varying from one to three stadia and separated by rings of land proportional in size. The Atlanteans then built bridges northward from the mountain, making a route to the rest of the island. They dug a great canal to the sea, and alongside the bridges carved tunnels into the rings of rock so that ships could pass into the city around the mountain”

 Thirdly, (and this is my favorite) Atlantis itself does not resemble grecian architecture. It is SO easy for writers using Atlantis as a cool fantasy location to just slap some marble pillars on it and call it a day. But while we are getting the dialogue from Plato, and the text states that they encountered hellenistic Greeks, doesn’t automatically make them one in the same. In fact, in the text itself, we are assured that all of the proper nouns are being translated from their original records. And where did these fictitious records come from, you might ask?

Egypt!

So yeah, props to the ygo writers for actually using a fantasy civilization that has legitimate ties to Egypt in their dm filler arc. And it would in fact make sense for Dartz to be in Egypt 5-3,000 years ago, since he would be the one of the only survivors of his kingdom and as such any records that survived would have to have come from him.

I’m getting distracted. Back to Jaden.

While Jaden’s kingdom shares some similarities with the Atlantians, there’s a much stronger historical inspiration at play here.

Greeks.

Specifically, some of the modern perceptions of Spartans. 

The Atlantian long robe retains the shape of the front panel, but it’s been cut short at the knee to form a sort of pteruges (that armored skirt made from strips of leather). They maintain the shape of the Atlantian cap sleeves, but instead of cloth they have been made into bronze pauldrons. The capes, in particular, have now taken on the form of a chalamys, the iconic cloak of ancient Greek military attire. 

We even see some ancient Greeks in capsule monsters, further cementing that Jaden’s people are very much similar, but not quite. They’ve still got some Atlantian flourishes that set them apart. 

And see those capes I can’t shut up about? 

The Atlantians fastened theirs with two big round gemstones, one on each shoulder.

Historically, and in yugioh, Greek military fastened theirs at the right shoulder, using what archeologists like to call a fibula brooch.

And Jaden’s people fasten their cloaks on the left, using that ancient Atlantian gem. 

Do we have enough evidence to even begin to guess what happened to the citizens after Atlantis sank into the ocean? No. But here’s my theory.

Atlantis, an enormous empire, crumbles. Its people were decimated by war and tragedy. A surviving group slowly migrates to Greece, either willingly or through the Athenian conquest. They take refuge with another famous enemy of the Athenians, the Spartans. They slowly assimilate with the city state, blending the two cultures together, but the Atlantian citizens still delineate themselves in small ways through fashion and political influence. These people know of duel monsters, but are hesitant to share that knowledge, fresh on the heels of the spirit war. Orichalcos is rare, coveted, and nowhere near as pure as the stones once used all throughout their city. But it still exists. And some learned few still know how to use it.

Remember Dartz’s forehead jewel? It’s not just a fashion statement, it’s actually a chunk of orichalcos. And remember who else I said had one?

I mean, we’ve seen from flashbacks what overexposure to this stone when paired with the right magicks can do, right? It turns people into monsters.

And it’s not like we have a magic artifact that is literally called the eye of orichalcum. Or even that both these stories strongly feature a mysterious red rock falling from the sky and heralding the forthcoming evil.

Huh. 

This leads to my final piece of evidence:

Anyways, yugioh fanworks should use that fact that Atlantis 100% existed in the ygo world, as well as has been apparently rebuilt/succeeded into a major city, more often. Also, from now on I will be headcanoning Jaden as half Atlantian. Because I can. <3

#Yes I know connecting atlantis to a hellenistic civilization that wouldn’t properly exist for another thousand years is a stretch #In my defense: #1) Plato did it first #and 2) The yugioh timeline is already all kinds of borked up. #If you’re interested in learning more about the og atlantis dialogues I’d highly recommend OSP’s Legends Summarized: Atlantis #headcanon #essays #fan theory #yugioh #yugioh gx #yugioh dm #ygo gx #ygo dm #ygo #jaden yuki #judai yuki #yuki judai #atlantis #dartz #dartz yugioh

[ecrisparfois]

skydive

summary : Y/N involuntarily went skydiving with her boyfriend.

warning (s) : possible inaccuracy of skydiving thingies (I never actually went skydiving, bear with me).

words count : 1.1k

A/N : it's a reupload from my old blog. I made a few changes to save y'all from reading my old writing. It was full of grammatical nightmare.

.

Bad idea. It was such a bad idea. Y/N knew it, of course, she did. She always thought there’s something mentally wrong with people who voluntarily threw themselves off of a plane for fun! Ironically, her boyfriend, Draco Malfoy, has been a skydiving instructor for almost a year. He went skydiving once during his travel across Europe with his two best-mates. He never stopped jumping off a plane since. In fact, he become so obsessed with the sport that he decided to take courses to become a professional skydiver. Once he got all the required licenses and certificates to register his name to be a skydiving instructor, off he did to a nearby skydiving centre. Draco did not need the money; he simply enjoys skydive, plus, he thinks it was fun to watch people pissing themselves – not literally – a second before the jump. Evil git.

And evil he did. He was fully aware of how much Y/N hate what he does, despite the fact that she never skydives her entire life. So, he booked one session of skydiving with her for her birthday gift. He did deliver the news gently. Although, she still nearly had a heart attack right there and then at the fancy restaurant he brought her to celebrate. He even bothered to make a full presentation of reasons as to why she should just accept her fate to threw herself off a plane with him. He won, and she begrudgingly let him attached the harness to her torso.

“I still think it’s a bad idea,” Y/N fretted while he tugged on the knot to double-check it’s properly attached to her body.

“It’s all gonna be good, you won’t regret anything,” he mumbled the same words he had recounted over a hundred times since last night, tucking a strand of hair falling to her face.

“I’m still mad at you, you know,” Y/N dramatically pout while Draco struggled to tie her hair in a ponytail.

“I’m not worried. You’ll forgive me once you realise how irrational your fear is,” Draco cockily said. 

“I’m not afraid, and it’s not irrational,” she protested, earning a sarcastic brow lift from the blond, “You wouldn’t be so cocky if we land in the afterlife,”

Draco let out a chirpy laugh, “If that’s the case, at least, we’ll die together,”

“How romantic,” Y/N sarcastically retorted, rolling her eyes.

After the harnesses are all set, the couple made their way to the plane. Draco helped her to hop on and sat on his lap, attaching the harness to connect them to each other. He also helped her put on a goggle that Y/N always seen him wear in every footage of him skydiving. Draco holding her sweaty hand, squeeze it every once in a while. If her heart wasn’t beating so frantically right now, she would complain about the fact that he always had someone on his lap every time he was guiding a tandem skydive. Nearing the jumping point, Draco clutches her chest, right where her heart beating painfully fast. He holds her close, as if to help her heart not to pound out of her rib cages. The weird sensation as if her ears were stuffed of cotton candy did not help with her growing anxiety.

“There’s no need to be nervous, I’m here with you, aren’t I?” he whispered softly, almost unheard from the loud noise of the plane engine. He is earnestly comforting her, unlike the last few hours when he had the teasing tone when he was supposed to be reassuring his lover. “Do you trust me?”

“We’re not Jack and Rose, you know,” her tone was stiff, failed her intention to defuse the jittery feeling in her heart.

Draco chuckled, “That is true, but, still, do you trust me?”

“Yes,” Y/N defeatedly concurred. There’s no backing away for her now.

When Draco decided it was time, he scooted closer to the open door. Y/N felt sick when her feet dangling out of the plane.

“I’ll jump in the count of three,” he shouted right next to her ear, “One, two, three!”

“Holy sh-“ Y/N shrieked when she felt her body jerking forwards. She immediately shut her eyes, too terrified to look at the ground.

She waited for the drop, nauseating feeling in her stomach like the one she always had during a rollercoaster ride, but it never came. Instead, she felt like she was floating, wind swiping her cheek softly. She tried to open her eyes and immediately amazed by the view. The ground unfolds before her eyes; she could make out the cornfield and the river from the distance, right beneath her was a vast green field. She almost forgot Draco was right behind her, attached by the harness. He took her hands and spread it wide. The scenery was too stunning from above, she couldn’t bring herself to feel disgusted by the fact that she actually enjoying the experience. They were free falling for the next few seconds.

“I’ll pull the parachute!” Draco announced, and before she could even register his words her body was pulled by a violent tug preventing the gravity to pull her too fast to the ground. Y/N shrieked in response but she laughed gleefully right after reciting string of curses. Draco just chuckled in amusement.

“How was it?” He asked when they float down slowly. She still could see the farthest land from the height.

“It’s beautiful,” she whispered, still in amazement.

“You should see the one I saw in Switzerland,” his soft tone faded, switched back to his usual smugness.

The landing was much too swift for her liking. She still wanted to float around and enjoying the scenery from above with Draco. The gravity decided otherwise, pulling the couple down to debark to the place they both should belong. Y/N stretched her feet to the front, like Draco had instructed her before the flight. She could be heard letting out a relieved breath when the harness attaching her to her boyfriend was untied. She looked around to found his hair had ruffled into a mess by the wind, and she suddenly overcame with jealousy at the thought that she had missed this view thousands of times. It’s not until this moment she noticed a device on her lover’s wrist.

“Are you recording me?” she scolded him playfully, slapped his arm to add dramatic effect. 

“Of course. It’s your first and only skydive. I wouldn’t miss the opportunity to document such event,” Draco defended himself, securing the camera from her attack.

The awaited attack never came, instead she looked at the ground bashfully.

“Actually,” she began, “could we, maybe, do that again?”

Draco smirked in victory.

Oh boy, she would never hear the end of it.

#draco x reader #Draco Malfoy #draco malfoy imagine #draco malfoy x reader #draco malfoy x y/n

[apparitionsxanonymous]

Group One [Part One]

Apparition Anonymous is a collection of fictional stories told from the POV of the Grim Reaper as they guide newly departed souls to the Afterlife. Enjoy, and thank you for reading.

Read the previous part.

It was the first time I had done group sessions. I always met with spirits one at a time. Sometimes they’d be at peace with being here, sometimes they wouldn’t. Some of these spirits would recount their physical life, and others would inquire about the things they could do and the places they could go as a spirit. Most of them only wanted to see their loved ones in the physical world again to ensure they’re doing alright without their parent, grandparent, sibling, friend, what have you.

A wide range of emotions always filled the space. Anger, sadness, confusion, relief, joy… sometimes, all of those emotions at once. This job wasn’t easy, and even though I couldn’t remember how I got to this point, I wouldn’t change a thing. I have met many wonderful spirits here.

I’ve helped many of them, too. At least, I believe I have.

After a session, spirits often decide what they want to do. They can come back for more sessions if they have more they want to share, or they can find their loved ones in the spirit world. In some cases, they stick around and mentor some of the other spirits who are scared about being here. We understand one another and work hard to help each other out. We’re a community that no one knows exists.

That reason is why I decided to try something new: group sessions called Apparitions Anonymous. I wasn’t entirely sure how it was going to go. The first session would be awkward, for sure. If any spirits clashed in personality, that would be another problem. But, I was going to have to wait and see how it all played out.

The clock on the wall turned yellow, signaling to me that the spirits were waiting. My time alone was running out. I decided to let them all in before the clock officially began so we could try to get through our introductions.

Two men and a woman entered. The woman was much older than the two men. She was about 85 years old. One man was 52, and the other man was 27. It was a variety of spirits, to be sure, but each of them was eager to be guinea pigs and have a group session.

Although, I knew the young boy was afraid of me and didn’t want to be in a session alone with me. I was sure it was due to the rumors from the physical world. Unless they were already at peace with their passing, every spirit that entered here assumed I was the bad guy.

“Welcome,” I said, watching the three spirits sit down at a large, round table. I set four cups of tea on the surface of the table. “Thank you for wanting to join this group session. It’s something new I’m testing out when helping spirits cross to the other side.”

“You mean we’re not there yet?” the young boy asked.

“No, you are,” I replied. “But sometimes it’s not always easy for spirits to get accustomed to this form. These sessions are to help you talk through whatever you need to get off your chest. It could be telling a story from your physical life, such as recounting memories. It could be the reason you’re here. Maybe there are some things you don’t quite understand about why you’re here or what to do next.” I sat down in my seat, watching them all nod their heads. “So, do any of you want to start the conversation?”

There was silence at first. Briefly, I wondered if this was going to work at all. When I had one-on-one sessions, the spirit almost always began the conversation right away. They already knew what they wanted to say. Now, if they had anything to say, it wasn’t just to me; it was also to an audience.

But before I could speak up again, the boy slowly raised his hand. “I just want to say that I’m scared to be here.”

“Scared about what?” the old woman piped up. “Do you know where you are?”

The boy stared at her, horrified. He slouched back in his chair as though he was afraid he had said something wrong, even though there was no malicious intent in the woman’s tone.

The young boy answered anyway. “Um… I don’t really know where I am. All I know is that I’m dead.”

“You’re at peace,” the woman said.

The boy tilted his head to the side in confusion. “Peace? That’s not a place.”

“It doesn’t have to be. It can be whatever or wherever you want it to be. The point is, you’re at peace,” she replied.

The boy looked at me as though he expected me to say something.

The thing was, the elderly woman wasn’t wrong. She was correct that they were all at peace. What she failed to mention was that not everyone realized it right away. It took some spirits a long time to realize what their peace was.

For this woman, it seemed as though death was her peace.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” now it was the man’s turn to join in on the conversation. “Can’t you see how young this boy is? Surely, he can’t find his peace here. Not yet.”

“What peace?” the boy questioned. “I don’t know what you guys are talking about.”

“It’s nothing tangible, son,” the man replied gently. “It’s something you feel.”

“Do you feel it?”

“Not quite. I know it’s coming, though.”

“Excuse me,” the woman said softly. She looked at the boy in the eyes. “How did you die, my dear?”

The boy drew in a sharp breath, sitting up taller in his seat. “Well, I…” he glanced at me again, and I nodded. Whatever reassurance he needed, I’d give it to him.

“I was in a car accident,” he explained. “I don’t remember much of it other than someone slammed into me head-on. I’m not sure if it was my fault or not. I’m not even sure if anyone else… well, you know… died.”

I knew the answer to that. He was the only one who died, or else I would have brought him here with another spirit. The boy did not cause the accident; someone else did. They had run a red light. The cars did not crash head-on, but the oncoming car slammed directly into the boy’s driver's side, killing him instantly. The whiplash had snapped his neck.

It was always fascinating listening to a spirit recount their final moments before death, or the act of them dying. The memory was always skewed. The mind did that sometimes. If it was too traumatic, then the brain remembered it differently. If they were in denial about it then the brain remembered it differently. In some cases, the story of their death was vastly different from how it actually occurred. In other cases, the story was slightly off.

Then, of course, you have the ones who recount their deaths spot-on. I once had a woman so excited about how she died from a car accident because she enjoyed physics and was fascinated about how the cars reacted upon impact.

My point was everyone was different. I never interfered with their retelling, though. It wasn’t my place to correct them, but to help them come to terms with what happened to them. I was there to help them find their peace and figure out how to rest if they hadn’t already done so.

© Rachel Poli, All Rights Reserved

Thanks for reading. Apparitions Anonymous is updated every Monday and Friday. If you enjoy my work and would like to stay updated with my writing journey, please consider visiting my Ko-fi page.

Read the next part.

#creative writing #writeblr #writers on tumblr #short story #paranormal fiction

[bestworstcase]

don’t think ozma was alyx OR the boy who fell from the sky. i feel as dead certain about this as i was about the ever after not being an afterlife (<- pun intended), for a similarly intuitive but difficult-to-articulate reason; i don’t think either character CAN have been ozma without hamstringing the narrative itself. we are not in the ever after to learn about ozma.

no, what strikes me about ozpin’s relation to the girl who fell through the world is his interpretation of what the story is ABOUT: a young girl flees the consequences of a choice to a magical place but, never having learned from her initial failure, only succeeds in spreading it. his fatalistic philosophy on choice is in evidence here, but the piece that most interests me is the juxtaposition between what ozpin (and others) SAY of alyx and the singular line we have been given from the story itself, which is “she brushed off her bumps and bruises, for nothing hurt worse than the loneliness in her chest.”

alyx is a mean person who lies and cheats her way through the ever after, says yang. she started a war out of ignorance, says blake. or else she was just trying to survive and the simplistic moral of the story is reductive, says weiss. alyx had a marvelous adventure, so why was she so sad (unless the adventure changed her into someone else?), says oscar. she ran away from the consequences of a choice and spread her failure to learn from her mistakes everywhere she went, says ozpin.

i’m lonely, says the girl who fell through the world. i’m so lonely and it hurts.

the girl who fell through the world is a mirror. the things the other characters see in this narrative, the interpretations of alyx’s character that they present to each other and argue about? they’re responding to their own feelings and fears and moral beliefs as much as they are to the story itself. and rwby provides the key to understanding this by directly quoting a single line that reveals in no uncertain terms that the girl who fell through the world is a story about loneliness so acute that no other pain could compare.

the girl who fell through the world is salem and i would bet quite a lot that salem is going to turn out to be the person who wrote the story, although she may or may not be alyx in the literal sense. (it is yet unclear whether the ever after is a place that meaningfully exists independent of the story—and if the relics are what i think they are the possibility that the kids quite literally fell through creation into a STORY seems entirely plausible, although i’m reserving judgment until we get a better sense of how or if the brothers are in play here.)

rwby is a story about stories and V9 is already shaping up to be a volume about how stories are read. there is not a single character more central to the storytelling theme than salem and moreover we know definitively that she does connect to the ever after arc somehow because she is in the trailer, despite almost certainly not being physically in the ever after. (ntm that the penny-ozma/ruby-salem paralleling has gone into overdrive; the grief arc precipitates the recontextualization of the lost fable.) it just… seems blisteringly obvious how the pieces fit together.

also i think the twist here might be that the girl who fell through the world isn’t a fairytale that recounts as myth a literal historical event—hence my thinking that salem is likely the author without being alyx herself. ozma uses fairytale to preserve fragments of the truth while hiding the things he wants to keep secret but there is literally no reason to think that salem would do the same, and there is more than one way for a story to be “true.”

#i am watching theories based on extremely literal interpretations of the OP proliferate like 😐

[highlifeboat]

Angsty anon!

The reunion in the mold afterlife is, to put it lightly, not a fun one.

Bela had arrived first. She's confused and she starts crying out for her mother before she remembers how she got there. It hits her. Hard. She's crushed and she's confused.

But then Cassandra is suddenly there, absolutely devastated and Bela doesn't see the younger sister she knows and loves no matter how much Cassandra irritates her, but a broken girl who has no fight in her.

"What happened?" Bela is desperately hoping Cassandra doesn't say what they both know. She wants to still hope that her mother didn’t do this, despite what she knows.

Cassandra's defeated golden eyes look into the fearful ones that match her own.

"The same thing that happened to you."

"Why?" Bela asks.

"I don't know." Cassandra says softly.

The two of them sit together in silence, (Bela doesn't know what to say and Cassandra doesn't feel like talking) both trying to come up with their own explanations as well as having the confusion and devastation consume them, all the while hoping Daniela doesn't suffer the same fate.

But then Daniela arrives. She's distraught.

Daniela practically tackles them and wails her heartbreak at the betrayal and fear. She begs them not to hurt her like Alcina did and that's what finally breaks the older two daughters of Lady Dimitrescu.

By the time Alcina gets in there, Bela is practically inconsolable, Cassandra is either swearing vengeance or a sobbing mess, and Daniela is sitting there in silence with her view on the world absolutely shattered.

But then Alcina enters, and they spot her, and she knows to expect the fear and betrayed looks.

And the three girls do huddle together all with the same look of fear and betrayal, but they're huddled almost defensively as if they're attempting some form of retribution.

Bela has placed herself in the front, she's the oldest, she fell first and couldn't protect her sisters but she could now.

Cassandra places herself next to Bela. Her older sister won't face this alone.

And Daniela is behind both of them, tight grips on their back, reminding them she's with them.

They only thing they have left is each other at this point.

They see her as a threat, and Alcina knows she brought this upon herself.

Bela looks her dead in the eyes, the fear gone and replaced by rage, and in a hard tone, one near identical to the woman she used to call her mother when she scolded the girls, asks only one thing.

"Why?"

The girls have never once demanded anything from Alcina. They feared her wrath and respected her far too much.

But Alcina knows she lost their respect and the three glares of hatred, no matter how fresh the wounds are and how terrified they are, seem to stab her through.

The maternal instincts surge up within her as she recounts her actions and the comfort she was unable to give them before their deaths. And she wants to calm them down, so badly. Hold them and explain to the best of her ability.

Alcina takes a small step forward and Cassandra steps forward back in retaliation and actually snarls at her.

"Stay. Back."

What surprises her isn't the harshness in Cassandra's tone and the lack of fear for the disrespect, but the way Daniela and even Bela forcefully yank Cassandra back to them as if they fear she'll be taken from them if she gets too far.

The girls haven't released Cassandra. She's sandwiched in between them. And Alcina knows the thought of losing each other again is beginning to ground them to fear.

Bela is glaring at Alcina, daring her to get closer. But the fear is starting to slip through and Alcina can see it. It's the same way Cassandra's face is blank but her golden eyes look at her the same way before she died. Only Daniela shows her true emotions.

Daniela holds Alcina's gaze and even though she knows her voice will shake and she's being tightly held in a protective embrace by her siblings, she's standing tall.

"Mother." Daniela addresses Alcina in hopes of getting the answers her and her sisters desperately need.

And if that doesn't break Alcina with the blade of regret that burns her. Even after it all, she still has that title and she knows she doesn't deserve it, but Alcina breaks down crying nonetheless.

She's still their mother. Even after breaking their trust and killing them by using the weakness she swore she would never allow to harm them, she still holds that title.

Alcina isn't surprised none of the girls try to comfort her. She knows they're too scared of her to get close.

But when she looks at the girls, fear is radiating off of them but their golden eyes are filled with determination to get their answers and...concern.

Alcina almost breaks down crying again.

"Mother." Daniela addresses her again and Alcina hates the fear in Daniela's voice and hates even more that she caused it.

"Why..." It hurts Alcina at how uncertain and defeated Cassandra sounds. "Why did you...why did you kill us?"

"What did we do wrong?" Bela practically pleads for the answer and her voice is overwhelming with emotion.

Alcina wishes she would have at least tried to have fought Miranda. Tried to have swung at her at least once. Rip her to shreds for making her do this.

But she can't fix the past. But she can attempt to fix what she broke with her daughters.

Alcina tells them the conversation she had with Miranda. The kill order Miranda gave her along with the ultimatum.

The girls want to protest. They want to say they could've survived if they had the chance but they all knew it wouldn't have worked. Miranda is far too strong. Even if Alcina had backed them, they still would've died.

Alcina begs them for forgiveness. She makes sure they know she wouldn't have done it if there had been any other way. But she knew all paths aside from the one she took would have left her daughters in the hands of Miranda.

Bela is able to understand her mother probably better than her sisters. She knows some things her mother does with a reason behind it, and other things have the reason not so clear. In this case it's former. It breaks her to know Miranda never saw them as anything more than disposable after everything. But she knows this is hurting their mother probably more than them. She may never have the same relationship with her mother after this, but she thinks she understands her a bit better and it's a little easier to forgive her. But she's still terrified. And that terror makes her keep her distance.

Cassandra doesn't trust Alcina, or entirely forgive her, but she does understand Alcina did what she did because she had to. She knows Alcina's cruelty and understands it well. She can understand the mercy kill. She's done it several times herself. Their mother tried to kill them in the fastest way possible and it reminds Cassandra of when she goes hunting and doesn't use her main weapon for it's too much of a brutal and painful death. She can respect it.

Daniela's trust in her is still shattered. She doesn't fully understand Alcina's actions and no longer looks at her in awe or feels the need to be close to her mother. She's still scared and probably will be, but the fear reminding her of what her mother is capable of is what holds her back from being able to trust Alcina again.

Alcina knows its going to take time to heal what she broke. She knows her daughters are always going to be in fear of her in a way they hadn’t before. She hates it but she knows it could have been far worse if Miranda had them.

But they're here and she's here and even if it's all shit right now, she's glad, in a dark and twisted way, they're all together and not at Miranda's "mercy". Alcina is certain daughters are safe where Miranda can never threaten them again.

What a lovely bittersweet ending to the saga.

I respect and admire all this creativity you put into these. Holy shit it the angst feels so good to read.

I applaud you, friend. You've created an increadible little narrative.

#asks #anons #alcina dimitrescu #cassandra dimitrescu #daniela dimitrescu #bela dimitrescu

[timelessxmemories]

Think of me.

A Sera x Unsent!Lock drabble.

@miss-midnightt

(Hopefully I wrote Sera's character right!!)

"I will fight for you."

Lock smiled a little weakly, a soft breath escaping her lips as her gaze shifts upwards towards the ceiling. Those were her exact last words when she had died after falling from the temple. She spoke those exact words to her when Sera had lost her grip on her hand, resulting in her falling into the unknown. But she never once blamed her. Not a single time.

But as those words rang through Sera's ears, she remembered the situation with perfect clarity, the memory stuck with her so vividly she could recount every detail, a detail that brought immense guilt and sadness to her.

Sera looked over at her, a calm look of guilt and remorse in her eyes as she spoke, her voice but a quiet whisper.

"I'm sorry.."

Her tone shifts to one that's somber, a deep frown coming to her face before Lock spoke once more, breaking the silence.

"Don't be. Let the wound heal."

Lock spoke quietly, her voice lowering to a whisper as she shuts her eyes, letting herself relax, a small bittersweet smile coming to her face.

"It wasn't your fault. I never blamed you. Not once. I was simply doomed from the start."

However, Lock's forgiving nature would ease Sera's guilt only a little bit, she always blamed herself, but Lock never did, which helped immensely with her guilt. But that guilt still lingered deep down inside of Sera's heart.

Despite being strong and tough, she always wished she could've done something different during that day, she felt like she failed so thoroughly and she didn't even understand why.

"Maybe you were doomed,"

Sera whispered,

"But you would've had a better chance if I had some ounce of foresight."

Sera's response causes Lock to shake her head briefly, a bittersweet smile coming to her face as she squeezed Sera's hand in hers ever so gently.

"It's not your fault. Don't say such things."

Sera would remain silent for a few minutes, she couldn't bring herself to disagree with her, even if she was comforting her in the moment. Even if she had felt an immeasurable amount of guilt which weighed tragically on her shoulders.

Finally, with a slight shift, Sera spoke up once more.

"Promise me something."

Lock tilts her head to the side, brushing her thumb over Sera's knuckles in a comforting fashion, a warm somber smile upon her face.

"Anything."

This results in Sera's expression to soften, a sigh escaping her lips as she finally said those words that weighed her down.

"Promise me that when it's time for you to finally move on,"

She takes a breath, her words holding a tinge of sadness within them.

"You will think of me."

With those words spoken, Lock smiles once more, bringing her knuckles up to her lips and kissing them softly, gazing deep into her eyes before breaking the comfortable silence.

"Always and forever. When I'm gone, I'll still be here. Maybe not physically, but in your heart."

Sera nods in reply, no other words were needed in this moment, they had each other, and that was all that mattered to them.

And when it was finally Lock's time to move on into the afterlife, she kept her promise all the way through. Not once did she think of anyone or anything else other than Sera. Lock knew deep down that Sera would be okay without her and that she was happy it was finally time for Lock's soul to finally be put to rest. Lock was still there. Not physically. But rather, spiritually.

#{ oc ; lock } #{ lock } #{ ♡ ; lay all your love on me ;; unsent au }