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makeste · 3 years

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BnHA Chapter 316: We've Had One, Yes, But What About Second Explosion

Previously on BnHA: Deku was all “[powers up like whoa because it’s time to end the fight]”, and he saved Overhaul from getting not-shot, and then smashed up Nagant’s arm with the power of his new rechargeable super knees. Nagant was all “yoooo this kid is crazy strong whaaaat, it’s like he’s some kind of protagonist or something.” Deku was all “I AM A PROTAGONIST, ACTUALLY, DO YOU WANT TO JOIN FORCES AND FIGHT BAD GUYS WITH ME?” Nagant was all “ah shit why the hell no -- ” and then AFO was all “SURPRISE” and everyone was all “?!?!?!” and AFO was all “TIME TO EXPLODE NOW” and made Nagant explode because he’s an absolute fucking dick. And then Hawks showed up, because Horikoshi just wanted to stuff as many plot points as humanly possible into a single chapter I guess.

Today on BnHA: Hawks is all “good job giving motivational shounen redemption speeches Deku but I’ll take it from here” and screams very earnestly right in Nagant’s face until she finally wakes up. Nagant is all “oh hey it’s my successor, you seem surprisingly unfucked-up from your own HPSC tenure, how did you manage that?” Hawks is all “fandom is going to love hearing this one, but basically it’s because I’m very upbeat and also I had the world’s best role model Endeavor to look up to,” and I swear this man stirs the pot on purpose, but damn it I still love him so damn much. Overhaul is all “HELLO AGAIN, JUST A REMINDER THAT, THE BOSS!!” and Deku is all “MAYBE TAKE TWO SECONDS TO REFLECT ON HOW YOU TORTURED A LITTLE GIRL,” which, thank you, lol. Nagant is all “btw AFO’s hiding in a house in the woods”, and so Deku and the gang go to the house in the woods. Video recording!AFO is all “hi I’m AFO welcome to Jackass” and blows up the house. Sometimes I wonder if this manga is just a weird dream.

I am once again reading the Bean version because I think it was actually the best out of all three translations last week. and that is surprisingly including Viz’s. “faux” is not nearly as entertaining as “knockoff”, and also I have literally no idea why Caleb thought Deku was saying the Third’s lines lol

oh hey, Endeavor’s here too! not that you’d ever be able to tell from this first panel lmao

glad you received All Might’s call, mysterious unidentified glowing smudge

oh snap he says he’s weaker in the rain. is that why AFO told Nagant to attack then?? except that as we discussed the other day, I believe that AFO fully intended for Nagant to lose the fight, so him giving her info that would give her an advantage doesn’t really fit in with that. maybe he wanted Deku to be separated from Endeavor and the rest for maximum angst, though

btw Deku’s eyes are unsurprisingly back to the new normal here

alas, the angst continues. I say, pretending like I’m not totally eating it up each and every week and writing essay after essay about it lol

anyway so apparently Hawks can’t actually fly lmao. he was just yeeting himself with style

for some reason this is the funniest fucking thing I’ve ever seen omfg. wave to Hawks, kids! say “bye, Hawks!”

j/k of course Deku is catching them. -- except???

wow so he was just running on fumes there at the end. well, good to know there is actually a limit to his shenanigans, particularly regarding this new “knockoff” 100% OFA. it will definitely not alleviate any of the discourse, but it’s good for my own peace of mind because it’s solid confirmation that he still needs his pals in order to win this thing

anyway, but on to the rest of this conversation, which is basically Deku deducing what we all deduced last week -- AFO implanted some sort of trap into Nagant when he gave her Air Walk. though I’d still like to get the actual details from AFO and/or Horikoshi, because this was particularly wild even by quirk standards lol

omgggggg

she still has a face after all!! so it’s confirmed, Horikoshi has no idea what “blowing up” actually means. we might have guessed, based on what happened to Toga in the MVA arc, and also based on everything Katsuki does ever, but shhh

so now Hawks is all “NAGANT PLEASE WAKE UP, IF I SHOUT MY NAME AT YOU WILL THAT DO THE TRICK”

this is actually kind of touching though because even though we all know (or most of us acknowledge at any rate) that Hawks is a pretty caring person, it’s rare to see him actually panic over someone’s welfare like this

oh shit Horikoshi is really doubling down on it

I wonder how much Hawks knew about what really happened between Nagant and the HPSC. regardless, he probably sees her as a kindred spirit of sorts, and I’m more than happy for Deku to pass the redemption torch onto him now that he’s on the scene. like no offense Deku but they actually know each other and stuff lol

DAMMIT NAGANT CAN’T YOU SEE HOW LOUD HE IS YELLING

apparently being freed from his HPSC shackles has finally given Hawks the space to embrace his own inner shounen protagonist. is there anything more shounen than trying to motivationally scream someone awake when they’re lying in your arms inches from death?? 100% guaranteed to work

!!! IS THIS NAGANT’S POV OMG

SO SHE IS ALIVE. THANK GOD. Horikoshi doesn’t want to meet with my emotional distress lawyer today after all

love how she’s all “just gonna stir up the weekly Hawks Discourse pot here by implying that he probably committed a lot of Atrocities just like I did, so now people can get all hopped up about that, even though there’s no evidence he’s ever killed anyone aside from that one horrible ‘damned-if-you-do...’ situation with Twice.” no one asked for your provocative speculation young lady!! trust me Nagant, our rabbles don’t need the rousing lol

but nice save there with the “so how are your eyes so untainted” well you see it’s because even when he was following the HPSC’s orders he always went to great lengths never to go against his own moral compass. which just to be clear was incredibly difficult, and led to a ton of pain and suffering on his part, because the life of a spy is basically just one impossible situation after another. but in spite of that he never stopped trying to do his best to help people. I don’t really know where this tangent came from or is leading to, lol, but anyway p.s.a. I love Hawks a lot and he’s a good kid dammit

oh shit??!?

how is the League always able to swing all these fancy forest mansions. where do they find them. how many do they have

so Deku’s dropping them -- very roughly, not sure if he was reacting to finally getting AFO’s location, or if his energy really is giving out -- and now Nagant’s saying that AFO hired other villains as well. well of course he did. gotta keep chipping away at OFA’s ninth successor little by little

now Nagant is asking Hawks how he’s able to keep making “that” face. I assume she’s again talking about the fact that he somehow didn’t let the HPSC wear down his spirit

oh my god???

thanks for stuffing this chapter to the brim with good nutritional Hawks Feels, Horikoshi. what a good. he just keeps on trudging forward undeterred no matter what bullshit comes his way. what a steadfast little guy. I WILL PROTECT YOU FROM DISCOURSE MY SWEET SUNSHINE

lmaoooo

“SPOTTED THIS DUDE JUST CHILLING OUT THERE ON THE ROOF WITH NO ARMS, SEEMED PRETTY SUS” good job Endeavor

anyway so you don’t really need me to tell you that Overhaul is immediately starting in with the “BUT THE BOSS WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO TAKE ME TO THE BOSS YOU PROMISED YOU WOULD TAKE ME TO THE BOSS” stuff again. but I will go ahead and tell you anyway. so yeah. he’s doing that

OMG YOU GUYS LOOK AT DEKU’S “of all the fucking assholes to just randomly drop in on my life once again why did it have to be you” FACE THOUGH, OMG

fun fact, if you go back to chapters 124 through 160, there was an entire story arc where Overhaul imprisoned and tortured a little girl. yeah, I know!! suuuuuuuuper evil. anyways just an interesting little anecdote for you all that’s somewhat relevant to the current situation

OMG, YES. FUCK YES, DEKU

THEN WHAT ABOUT SPARING ONE FOR HER!!! YES!!! EXACTLY!!! JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, SOMEONE GETS IT

HERE’S THE PANEL OF DEKU SAYING THE EXACT SAME THING I’M SAYING LOL

(ETA: so apparently there’s some discourse about this because some people are interpreting this as Deku saying “you should apologize to Eri”, which would obviously be a terrible idea even if Overhaul actually wanted to do that, because Eri shouldn’t ever have to see him again. however I just want to point out that there is a HUGE difference between saying “it would be nice if you could direct that feeling of regret/being sorry towards Eri as well”, vs saying “you should also apologize to her.” all Deku is doing is rightfully pointing out that Overhaul has hurt way more people than just his boss, and if he really is remorseful, then he should extend those feelings of remorse to Eri and the rest as well. it’s not a directive to take any specific action, and I’m 1000% sure no one at U.A. would let Overhaul within 100 miles of Eri ever again.

tl;dr “try feeling remorse sometime” =/= “do you want me to fly you over to U.A. right now to surprise the little girl you traumatized”, lol.)

[slings an arm around Deku’s shoulders] you’re a good kid. I like you. I don’t know if I tell you that enough, but it’s true

meanwhile here is Overhaul’s “spare... a thought... for Eri...???????” face sigh

the struggle is real y’all

(ETA: and that’s... the last we ever saw of Overhaul, I guess? well all right then. I assume Deku will make good on his promise, so we know he’ll get that little bit of closure before going back to jail or whatever, and I confess I’m more than fine with leaving the rest of it open-ended, especially given his character’s history. I think this was pretty generous all things considered.)

lmao holy shit

All Might what did you do to those tiki torch guys?? did you thrash them. did you give ‘em those hands. did you deliver their own asses to them complete with a sticker reminding them Amazon Prime Day is on June 21. we missed out goddammit

so Endeavor, who wasn’t the one he was asking, is telling him that they captured (well let’s be real, Deku captured, give the credit where it’s due) Nagant and Overhaul. and so I guess they’re going to take Nagant to the ER now

fire is no one’s weakness

-- oh my GOD I scrolled down and audibly gasped

[is politely but firmly approached and asked to remove my arm from Deku’s shoulder by the physical manifestation of all this Dekuangst] “we’re sorry, he’s not allowed to have visitors right now” oh shit, my bad. [goes to stand behind a police barricade]

lmao what. did you run out of room on the previous page

what an exaggerated fade to black lmao

-- AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

I actually can’t see what he’s reacting to so maybe I’m just seriously jumping the gun here lol, but THE HELL WITH IT. the next panel appears to be a cut to Haibori Forest, so I’m just gonna go ahead and declare that Deku ran off on his own all wounded to go have more Dekuangst, just like I manifested. now go call Katsuki goddammit

[scrolls three more inches down] oh

yeah so like I said, Deku is walking very slowly a few feet in front of Endeavor, who’s telling him to wait up. yep. we’ve all gotta be so careful to not just jump to conclusions. I know we’re excited but still

anyway, so! welcome back to Mt. Lady and Kamui Woods (ARE YOU GUYS DATING) and Edgeshot! have fun walking into this obvious trap lol

dammit Deku why are you so determined to tempt fate

[monkey puppet meme faces]

OH MY GOD THIS IS PURE GRADE-A CHEESY COMIC BOOK VILLAIN 101 SHIT AND I’M HERE FOR IT

that’s such a weird way of clapping who claps like that

unlike certain other people who shan’t be named, AFO doesn’t feel the need to inexplicably take his shirt off when recording sinister villain monologues. I think we’re all pretty grateful for that

high fives to everyone who called it!! yep yep

anyway so this whole scene has major booby-trap vibes, which I’m enjoying immensely even though I don’t think anything is really going to come of it lol. probably just another long-winded AFO Speech. but wouldn’t it be funny if like the ceiling started lowering down to try and squish Deku afterwards lol

(ETA: well the explosion was still pretty funny too ngl.)

ffff

[“Dekuangst is the trap” intensifies]

anyway so yeah. he’s just hitting up all of his usual villain talking points. we get it, you’re so smart and you see right through the thin veneers of society and people who don’t conform are left to fend for themselves and labeled as villains and history is written by the victors, and blah blah blah dude are you just jumping randomly from one soundbyte to another lol. literally what are you talking about. what does this have to do with you blowing up Nagant

-- holy shit??

[”Dekuangst is the trap” intensifies MORE?????]

LOL WHAT

BRO. WHAT IS WITH YOU. DON’T YOU KNOW HOW TO LAY ANY OTHER KIND OF FUCKING TRAP GOOD LORD

“YOU’RE NEXT” THE CALLBACK?? THE PARALLELS?? THOUGH WHEN ALL MIGHT POINTED HE MADE IT LOOK WAY COOLER. AFO’S POINTING JUST LOOKS LIKE SMOKEY THE BEAR

HAS ANYONE CHECKED IN ON KAMUI WOODS I HEAR HE IS WEAK TO FIRE?? THE ONLY ONE WHO IS, APPARENTLY

r.i.p. to this particular forest mansion. don’t worry they have a ton of backups

remember last week when I said maybe AFO thinks explosions are gauche. well never mind. he fucking loves explosions

anyway so that’s the end of BnHA, everyone. hope you enjoyed. it was a good ride while it lasted. see you all, good luck in your travels

#bnha 316 #hawks #takami keigo #lady nagant #midoriya izuku #all for one #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha #manifesting 317 opening with a slightly modified version of my previous fantasy scenario lmao #'WHADDYA MEAN THEY BLEW UP THE NERD'#that's *his* job #sorry lol I kid I kid

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jiminrings · 3 years

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what happened to mc after that?? JUNGKOOK I WILL WHOOP YO FUCKING ASS

cold senior!y/n x stem major!koo masterlist :D

the aftermath of stem koo breaking senior!y/n's heart

"do you need anything from us?"

yoongi asks you for the fifth time in the twenty minutes you've been home, heart breaking from the inside out when you haven't moved a single inch

he is begging that the thing you need from him and jin is to go beat j*ngkook up

HE CAN'T EVEN SAY HIS NAME WITHOUT BEING ANGRY AT HIM!!!!!!!

anything. anything to atleast make you sleep in peace tonight.

or them honestly,, either way

your body's facing the backrest of the couch and maybe that's for the better, because that way, seokjin won't feel the need to cry looking at the coldest person he's known to be openly vulnerable

you're still wearing your jersey!!! your stained dirty jersey that you've been in for the past three hours and the reason that it's still wet was that you've been using it to wipe your tears all the way to the dorm

"no. i'll be alright."

you mumble for the fifth time out of the five times you've been asked, and yoongi just has to grapple at his fist because he knows that being frustrated wouldn't help

you are the fURTHEST thing from okay

to be honest, it was only a miracle that you told the two of them what happened in the first place

it was in between sobs that you asked them why they were friends with you and they couldn't be anymore dumbfounded

it was in between violent tears that you mentioned hyeji that seokjin looked for a box of tissues because you've been intentionally rubbing your eyes raw

it was in between heaving that you said that no one wants to go the extra mile for me that yoongi started holding your cheeks and trying to get you to breathe with him in his panic too

it was in between hiccups that you uttered that no one wants to walk me home and that's when both of yoongi's and seokjin's throats started tightening, the dots hazy yet aligning nonetheless

it was in silence when you told that jungkook said that no one likes me, and that's when out of the three of you in the room – you're the one who's the calmest.

"okay. i'll bring you a blanket."

yoongi leaves it at that, standing from his spot on the floor to walk over to the kitchen where the blankets cLEARLY aren't there

no one really prepared yoongs for this

no one really is

there isn't a manual on how to act when the dearest friend that you have is crying their guts out for the first time

he can't explain his close bond with you and he's always seen you as his platonic girlfriend!!! his platonic girlfriend who has a bond with him that's closer than a sister's, more understanding than a mother's, and the utter admiration more than a friend's

you r literally yoongi's (platonic) soulmate and he would die on that hill

he would rather subject himself to torture via having to stay in a freshman's dorm equipped with the de facto led strip lights everyday!!! every single day, than to see you like this :(((

"what do you have on the bitch?" yoongi doesn't spare his words when he sits on the kitchen stool next to jin's figure

the dude is sTANDING and that means business

jin doesn't feel a single ounce of regret fetching his work laptop and scrolling through the files and tabs he has on every single student on campus, eyes only looking for one lee hyeji that's contributed to your anguish rn

jungkook is atleast 3/4 in this equation and seokjin will get to him of course

no one makes his emotional support best friend cry and nOT pay the consequences for it!!!!

in another life, vincenzo cassano's character is based on seokjin and the events in his life that definitely happened >:(

"she's daddy's money. can't fucking believe that sHE'S representing the school," he sighs in genuine annoyance, but not loud enough to pique your attention as he turns the screen so yoongi could clearly see her headshots, "must be a diversity hire. every university needs a fucking bimbo, apparently."

you see,,, yoongi would've SNORTED at that but now is not the time!!! he is still planning discreet retribution to avenge you!!!!

jin lets yoongi look at hyeji's entire file, wanting to get even the smallest bits even if the information he's taking in is against his will

he'll immediately delete whatever he learns about her right after it's served its purpose

"just messaged the faculty groupchat," seokjin himself didn't imagine the words coming out from his lips determinedly, but he knows that he's willing to do anything for the sake of this, "been crushing on jeon ever since the start of last semester. philosophy professor thinks it's because he once saw jungkook lending her a pen when they were in the topic of soulmates."

jesus christ

now THAT'S just annoying ://

this

whatever this is

seokjin and yoongi don't know what they're digging all this information for

they don't know what this unspoken plan is for, or if they even have a plan in the first place

if jin were to tell the faculty gc about this???

absolute mayhem

but he knows for a fact that they'd hate star student jungkook easily within a tap of a finger

the philosophy prof would lose all sense of rationality and reasoning and INSTANTLY point to jungkook as an asshole!!! no questions asked!!!! no elaborations!!!!

"i could get jeon eliminated from all the academic listings he's in."

jin pipes in at the silence that he and yoongi share, both listless in this situation that they never expected to encounter with you

"i could always spread a rumor and make him unlikeable."

yoongi toys with the rings that he wears, a heavy exhale tearing away from him

they could think of a thousand other ways to get back at jungkook!!! they literally can

seokjin knows a contract guy who leaves shredded paper with his contract's initials written on red ink (for a base fee of three dollars, he can switch up the ink for you!!!) right next to their side on the bed

yoongi knows a guy whose modus operandi is to discreetly follow people, have subliminals playing in the background (for an extra fee of ten dollars, he'll use wireless bass-boosted speakers), and continue doing so until the desired message is achieved!!!!

none of the people they have connections to could employ the same amount of pain he's caused on you

there's literally nothing that could hit home with jungkook besides you.

but there's no way to do that and even in your state of anger and sadness tHEN utter vulnerability, you can't even really think of hurting jungkook in the way he did

because you know and yoongi knows and seokjin knows and everyone knows that you aren't the type to wish ill

you admit that sometimes you're unavailable but you don't want that to be an asshole-reason to make everyone else around you suffer in the same way you do

the people around you aren't your shock absorbers!!!! that's why you hang out a teddy bear on your doorknob when you're mad so that neither yoongi or jin would have the possibility to be caught in your rage

that's why you call for a break when your soccer team is out of their game and make everyone drink their electrolytes before they speak to you!!!!

that's why you have the old heart of your even older build-a-bear stuffie in your pocket, one of the only reminders that your childhood even happened, one that you'd squeeze between your fingers in any remotely anxious instances that you find yourself in

jungkook's words hit home and it put you into a spiral if you even had one in the first place

your parents divorced when you were young and it's just that,,, no one from the two of them wanted you because you were the reminder of the other parent

you're a place marker for when a commitment started and ended and god did it make you grow up quickly

your aunt raised you!!!! she's an angel and she's the maternal figure in your life that you'd always be grateful for

you love her all the same and as much as you didn't wanna relate yourself to your parents in the same way that they don't, the feelings of being unliked hit you ever so often

lol it's quite a dashing mindset you have but you can't see any other interpretation you should employ

you leave before they could leave you.

it's not really as dramatic as it sounds

BUT IT COULD BE

there's always obligatory groupchats for projects and you're the first one to leave it instead of awkwardly waiting out for the conversation to dwindle and then leave one by one

when you and yoongi argue, you leave before he attempts to get the last word in

when jin is about to ask if you want to split the bill, you're already putting more than half of your share on the table

it's a nagging feeling of not wanting be unwanted in every situation you're in, but you aren't all that sure of wHAT you'd do to be liked

the only thing you could think of are lunchboxes, and even that gets taken away from you.

does no one really like you??

you're shifting in your position before you know it and the lone sound makes jin and yoongs come to your side immediately, looking at you in concern

you're looking up and you could just fEEL your eyes are puffy and even the light's hurting them

"i need to sleep."

"o-oh! m'kay, sure. i'll carry you to bed, let's go," seokjin wastes no time in responding, about to hook his arms underneath you when you repeat yourself again

you only chuckle but it's the driest and most painful they've ever heard, wincing when they can hear how breathless it was

"no. i mean i need to sleep."

jin blinks once

yoongi blinks twice

right

they get it now

you don't want to sleep, and you really can't, but you need it

"i'll get it!!" jin volunteers to grab what you need, leaving yoongi with you

oh god you could fEEL that he's going to cry

what a big baby ://

seokjin comes bearing the joint :D

he's about to light it for you because he knows that three specific short hits would lull you to slumber then knock you out cold for like a day lmao

he minored in chemistry actually but he cAN'T explain shit on why that's your body's reaction

you're all-good for literally anything besides three short hits lmao

yoongi was about to scold jin because he lights it and tHEN he's the one who takes the first drag, but there's an assuring wave of his hand

how romantic

jin just blew you a heart

they can't get anything from you besides the slight crinkling from your eyes but they don't mind at all — your eyes are atleast one degree less sad

you take your turn and even pass it to yoongi but he rEFUSES,,,,, not the least bit dejected that he decided not to because he wants to watch over you instead and not see every inanimate object with cartoon eyes on them while watching over you

"bake her a cookie if in case she suddenly gets hungry in the middle of her sleep. sneak a carrot in it or something," jin reminds yoongi and he's sERIOUS about the recipe, holding you in tow as he makes the way to your room

yoongi's about to break out the bowls, freezing in his steps when he hears the doorbell frantically ring

oh god

the ONE time that they didn't plug the door with a wet towel and now it's probably the hall manager outside about to do an inspection

that is not..... the hall monitor

that is a fucking asshole

jungkook's been pacing on his heels, his knocking loud enough to wake up the entire hallway at this point

he's SWEATING and he's not even wearing his hoodie

the door finally opens and the words start tumbling out of his mouth

"good evening. i-i wanna explain myself and-..."

that is not,,,,, you

it's his senior that he's disrespected probably too many times

yoongi leans to the door, a sickeningly sweet smile on his face that the junior's never seen before

"you ever had a sandwich before, jungkook?"

"w-what?"

the younger boy stammers, his eyes following yoongi's actions of looking behind him out of worry and then going outside to join him by closing the door softly without noise

yoongi only snorts, not even sure if he's up for conversation

"hyeji's never packed you a sandwich before?"

jungkook pales at the mention, mouth drying when he sees yoongi bring up the soft smile that doesn't comfort him at all

"the one that's all knuckle?"

#WHAT DO WE THINK BESTIES :D WHAT'S HAPPENING NEXT #stem koo #jungkook imagine #jungkook imagines #jungkook oneshot #jungkook oneshots #jungkook drabbles #jungkook x reader #jungkook x y/n #jungkook au #jungkook angst #jungkook angst imagine

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colour-outside-the-liness · 3 years

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Hi Colour! This is going to be a long one, so buckle up!

Oh wow, that's so precious! You've definitely earned the "real life Dani" nickname haha I wish I could find something meaningful like that to do with my life. I'm actually autistic and have ADHD so hearing you do this kind of work makes me really happy! Keep up the good work Ms. Clayton! 😁 Haha

You sound like a lot of fun to hang out with at pubs! Haha I'm glad you identify with that bit of info on your star placements. I had a lot of fun doing it too!

The thing about Hozier is that some of his lyrics are incredibly sapphic to me for some reason, I'm still trying to figure it out. NFWMB is one of the songs that feels like that to me. Don't know if you've heard it before but give it a try if you haven't. If you close your eyes it sounds like you're in an epic romantic story and there are swords, pretty gowns, and rooms lit by torches. Haha

The beginning of this song was inspired by a poem written by W.B Yeats called "The Second Coming" in 1920, and it talks about an apocalypse of sorts, alluding to all of the horrors men inflicted upon the world which ends up awakening this beast that goes to Jesus's place of birth in the Bible (Bethlehem) to be born. The last lines being:

"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

So the song starts with:

"When I first saw you

The end was soon

To Bethlehem it slouched

And then, it must've caught a good look at you"

And oh boy do I think of Dani when I hear that. Especially bc of that scene where Viola accepts Dani's invitation to live inside her. And nobody knows why she accepts it (but I do!).

And yeah at first glance you might not think much of Dani. in the beginning she's just a tiny frail small-town girl with a lot of anxiety, running away from her past traumas. But she proves us wrong again and again and again. She moves to a country she's never been before entirely by herself, sees an opportunity, and doesn't let go of it even when it looks like it went wrong. Then is very loving and tender with these children who have gone through so much and are still going through so much. Tries to fight (with a fire poker!!) the threatening man that keeps harassing her, the children, and her friends. THEN manages to soften the angry, grumpy lesbian who's given up on people after A LOT of trauma (too much in my opinion) and doesn't give up on her when she rejects her either. Freaking exorcises her ex and makes him stop haunting her so she can be with the love of her life. And then finally as if all of that didn't make her the bravest hero in this story, she literally stops an apocalypse from happening and saves everyone from this beast by sacrificing herself without even thinking twice. Saves everyone that came before her and then the ones who'll come after for the rest of eternity. I mean the P-O-W-E-R this girl has. 💪 so hell yeah the lady in the lake wanted to take her.

When Hozier says:

"Ain't it a gentle sound, the rollin' in the graves?

Ain't it like thunder under earth, the sound it makes?

Ain't it exciting you, the rumble where you lay?

Ain't you my baby? ain't you my baby?"

I can only think of Dani at the bottom of the lake laying on top of all the bones of the people Viola killed and how she's at peace living forever in a dark place like that. That's kinda hardcore y'know?

After the first verses, Hozier goes on to talk abt his lover, someone so utterly terrifying even the beast of the end of the world can't stand to look at them. But this song is also about being proud to be this person's lover bc nothing can fuck with them, not bc you are there to protect them and wouldn't let anyone harm them, but bc they're more than capable of protecting themselves and you too. So in my head, this song is Jamie's declaration of love to Dani.

And then I think of Jamie's devotion to Dani when she said "If you can't feel anything, then I'll feel everything for the both of us." shown in this verse:

"If I was born as a blackthorn tree

I'd wanna be felled by you

Held by you

Fuel the pyre of your enemies"

And the fact that she took what she could get just to be with Dani. She knew she'd have to suffer for/bc of her at some point, but chose to be with her anyway. I have no doubts in my mind she'd want to be anything for her as long as they could be together in any way, shape, or form. In all the lives they happened to meet one another too.

Wouldn't it be cool to see them in an AU where Dani is like a medieval princess who's supposed to marry Edmund to form an alliance between kingdoms or something and Jamie is an assassin who is hired to kill the princess so she has to pretend to be Dani's personal guard or wtever but they fall in love and run away together and Jamie teaches her how to fight so Dani becomes this warrior but turns out Dani is naturally good at it and then she becomes a legend? Hahaha I can see her riding a horse in the winter with paint on her face and her blonde hair falling over this fur-lined cloak, fierce look on her face, and Jamie riding next to her (always). Then they come across Viola who's a witch and puts a curse on Dani and then Dani and Jamie have to travel to all sorts of places and fight all sorts of people and go on this whole adventure to rid Dani of this curse. Maybe Dani has to go back to her kingdom bc her father dies and there are other people trying to take her kingdom so there's a lot of angst and suffering but then they win at the end after a lot of sweat and tears and they live happily ever after! 😎Hahaha

Anyway, I hope you're having a great week so far and hope you had fun with your niece today! (I know if I was her and you had us make fudge and paint I'd worship you haha) I'm sorry for the very (very) long ask, but I've been obsessing over this idea for months and I just had to share it with someone! ✌️✨

(And you can call me Libby or wtever since I'm not anon anymore 🤗)

Awwh thank you so much for saying I have earned my 'real life Dani' title is means a lot to me that you guys see that in me!! I am sure you do so many meaningful things in life without even realising it!! I honestly just want to make a difference and I love helping people so going into a career like this just seemed so natural to me and I really do love what I do!! Thank you so much I really hope I can keep up the good work!! I hope I'm a lot of fun- I know I have helped win a few pub quizzes and there's been a few times I've won games of trivial pursuit as well so that really did make so much sense to me and learning about all the placements of my chart was so much fun and was so interesting so thank you very much!! I have heard some of Hozier's lyrics are quite sapphic and I always mean to look into more of his songs and then just never do but I will definitely look in to NFWMB because the lyrics you have sent me here are incredible and definitely give of Dani x Jamie vibes I definitely agree with you in everything you have said about why Viola accepted Dani's invitation- Dani and Viola are similar in some ways and this was something I was explaining to my niece when she watched it with me. I explained to her that both Viola and Dani are strong willed, and stubborn, and would do anything to fiercely protect the people they care about. We saw that time and time again with Dani, how within days of knowing Miles and Flora she was out with a fire poker trying to protect them from a strange man that she kept seeing around the manor. And how Viola would've done anything to protect her daughter. One major difference between them though is that Viola seemed to have a slight selfish streak where as Dani is entirely selfless, she was selfless for the longest time in even agreeing to marry Eddie so she wouldn't hurt him, she was selfless in protecting Miles and Flora, and even more selfless in saving Flora's life and freeing all the trapped spirits of Bly Manor and then she is selfless in the fact that she won't drag anyone down and won't hurt anyone else at Bly ever again. The one thing she did for herself was being with Jamie- and she was able to make Jamie open up and trust people in way she probably hadn't for the longest time. Dani is a truly strong person as was Viola and I can see why she would accept Dani's invitation. I will have to listen to this song to see it from a Jamie perspective which I will definitely do tomorrow but from the lyrics you have sent me I can definitely see it being a love declaration to Dani from Jamie. Jamie knew in the end she would suffer because she knew she wouldn't be able to keep Dani forever, and knew that one day she would have to leave her- but she knew loving Dani for as long as she was allowed to would be worth that pain in the end and Jamie is a truly strong person as well for knowing this and staying by Dani's side anyway when that must have been such a hard thing for Jamie to ever have to accept. Jamie would've been anything for Dani and would've one anything for her as Dani would've for Jamie and that's why I love them so much. They loved each other so purely and without conditions and so wholeheartedly and it really was such a lovely thing to watch play out in front of us (even if it did hurt us all at the end). I think it would be so cool to see an AU like that I think medieval stuff is always so fun and so interesting and a good enemies to lovers start never fails either because there's so much tension there between them. And Jamie being undercover as someone to get close to Dani and them slowly falling in love with each other would just be a great thing to see!! And I am all for warrior Dani and Jamie (women with weapons is a little bit of a weakness of mine)!! This whole AU just sounds incredible I love a good curse in fantasy stories and the curse slowly taking over and you thinking they're going to run out of time but everything works out in the end!! Dani going back to her kingdom because of her sick Dad dying would be great for angst because it would look

like she would have to marry someone to create an alliance and that she would have to take over a kingdom (perhaps something she never wanted to do in the first place)!! I think this could be a very angsty one shot and could be so interesting and fun and the happy ending would definitely make all the angst worth it in the end!! I am having a good week so far thank you and I had so much fun with my niece today, making fudge went great and she was happy that I was able to show her how to do it because she'd never made it before so now that's something she knows how to do (I think she thinks I'm way cooler than I actually am haha thank you for saying you'd worship me though if you were my niece haha 😂) but tomorrow she is teaching me how to do something because I taught her how to make fudge today... she's gonna teach me how to draw in an anime style- which is something she is really into and even though I'm not she loves drawing so I've asked if she can teach me since I taught her something today!! There's no need to apologise I loved this long angst and I loved this idea I think it's really great and interesting and that song just seems amazing and I am definitely gonna listen to it tomorrow when I get chance!! Thank you for sharing this idea with me I loved it!! ☺️ Haha oki doki then as long as that's alright with you Libby is what I'll call you!! Like I said you can seriously call me anything!! ☺️

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religioused · 3 years

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Church Flies First Class

PIE Day Sermon

by Gary Simpson

Hebrew Scriptures:

Numbers 21:4-9 (CEV)

The Israelites had to go around the territory of Edom, so when they left Mount Hor, they headed south toward the Red Sea. But along the way, the people became so impatient that they complained against God and said to Moses, "Did you bring us out of Egypt, just to let us die in the desert? There's no water out here, and we can't stand this awful food!"

6 Then the LORD sent poisonous snakes that bit and killed many of them. Some of the people went to Moses and admitted, "It was wrong of us to insult you and the LORD. Now please ask him to make these snakes go away." Moses prayed, and the LORD answered, "Make a snake out of bronze and place it on top of a pole. Anyone who gets bitten can look at the snake and won't die."

9 Moses obeyed the LORD. And all of those who looked at the bronze snake lived, even though they had been bitten by the poisonous snakes.

John 3:14-21 (CEV)

And the Son of Man must be lifted up, just as that metal snake was lifted up by Moses in the desert. Then everyone who has faith in the Son of Man will have eternal life.

For God So Loved the World God loved the people of this world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who has faith in him will have eternal life and never really die.

17 God did not send his Son into the world to condemn its people. He sent him to save them! No one who has faith in God's Son will be condemned. But everyone who doesn't have faith in him has already been condemned for not having faith in God's only Son.

19 The light has come into the world, and people who do evil things are judged guilty because they love the dark more than the light. People who do evil hate the light and won't come to the light, because it clearly shows what they have done. But everyone who lives by the truth will come to the light, because they want others to know that God is really the one doing what they do.

Reflection:

Our Lectionary readings include one of the best known and most quoted and loved passages of the Christian Scriptures, John 3:16. The King James Version resonates for me because I have heard it so often. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. I am not sure if John 3:16 is why the Gospel of St. John is loved so much. For "many people," John's Gospel is "the most precious book in the Bible." (1) Scholar William Barclay observes that John can be "read and loved without any commentary." (2)

John 10:17-18 needs to be considered as we reflect on John Chapter 3. "The Father loves me, because I give up my life, so that I might receive it back again. No one takes my life from me. I give it up willingly!" This means Jewish people are in no way responsible for Jesus' death, and you can tell that to people who dislike Jewish people because of Jesus' death.

To some people, John 3:16 is problematic because it sounds so bad - that Parent God would send the Son to die for humanity. Looking at this from a Trinitarian perspective might help. John O'Donnell sees the "death of Jesus as a Trinitarian event." (3) O'Donnell believes Jesus' death was "an event between God and God." (4) Both God, the Parent, and God, the Son suffer.(5) I think the idea of God and the Son suffering catches some people's attention. The cross "shatters our ideas about God." (6) We confront the theological problem that God suffers. "God literally takes suffering into" God's "own life." (7) Renowned Swiss Catholic theologian Hans Urs Von Balthasar notes that the division between God the Parent and God the Son at the cross "rends the heart of God." (8) The general sense from theologians who view salvation from a Trinitarian perspective is that God takes upon God the weight of human sin and mistakes. I think a takeaway from these Catholic theologians is this: "The Being of God cannot be separated from God's acts." (9) God's impressive acts of love are an integral part of God.

While I grew up with a sense that Jesus loved people, I was less certain if God loved people. This passage helps establish a very different sense of God. According to the passage, redemption and the saving of humanity started with God. "It was God who sent" the Son, because God loves humanity.(10) I believe that John 3:16 is a universalist text because it shows the breadth of God's love. According to the text, God's love is not limited to a nation, to good people, and to people who love God. God's love is so extensive that it includes the entire world.(11) God's love embraces people we like. People we either dislike or fear are surrounded by God's love, just as surrounded by love as we are. People from every class, occupation, ability, ethnicity, race, sexuality, and gender are included in God's love. John 3:16 includes people who do not think that they deserve to be treated with love and kindness.

John 3:16 might be the perfect passage for PIE Day. Whosoever is an inclusive term, so inclusive that one of the largest and most popular pioneering LGBT+ Christian website is named Whosoever. The website used to receive over 500 thousand visitors a year.(12) The commission Jesus gave the disciples in the Gospel of Matthew is to take the Gospel to the entire world.

In the Numbers narrative, people are bitten by poisonous snakes, and they become very sick. The people admit that they made a mistake, and they cry to Moses for help so Moses prays. God tells Moses to make a bronze snake and to put it on a pole. Anyone who is sick from a snake bite can look at the snake, and they are healed.

Sadly, in contemporary Canada, many people are bitten by the poisonous snake of internalized societal self-hate. Because of the hate, the violence, and discrimination they experience, they believe that they are deeply flawed, that something dreadful is wrong with them. And they come to believe that they do not deserve what other people have.

The Hebrew Scriptures reading contains a narrative that perplexes some Jewish people. God forbids graven images, and God turns around and commands Moses to make an image of a snake. All of the people are to look at the snake and they are healed.(13) There are times when the only way we can find healing and the ability to move on is to face our problems. PIE Day is a day when Affirming Ministries tell their stories about their Public, Intentional, and Explicit work for members of sexual and gender minority people. By telling our stories, we face the problems of homophobia and transphobia. As we face the problems, we are able to work to help reduce homophobia and transphobia so that queer and trans people feel more accepted and welcome in society and in our churches. When we name the groups of people churches and society marginalizes, we can address the problems and find healing.

Troy Perry founded the largely LGBT+ denomination, the Metropolitan Community Churches. Anita Bryant had a job promoting Florida orange juice. In 1977, Anita Bryant successfully campaigned for the repeal of legislation prohibiting discrimination against gay people. As a result of her public campaigns against gay rights, gay bars across North America replaced screwdrivers with an "Anita Bryant Cocktail" made from vodka and apple juice.(14)

Troy Perry was on a late-night plane flight. When they brought him breakfast, he noticed there was orange juice. Troy Perry asked what kind of orange juice it was. He asked if it was Florida orange juice. The Stewardess replied, "Well, it's Minute Maid." Troy said that he could not drink the orange juice because it contained Florida orange juice. He said, "I'm a homosexual," and "we are boycotting Florida orange juice because of what Anita Bryant is doing to us." He says people started eating about "90 miles an hour." (15) A few minutes later, a smiling male flight attendant approached Troy and said, "Reverend Perry would you come with us. We're going to move you up to first class." (16) Troy flew first class because he faced the problem.

How can we live out PIE Day? On PIE Day, we are reminded of our need to extend a Public, Intentional, and Explicit welcome to members of all gender and minority groups and to members of all other groups who historically face discrimination and exclusion. On PIE Day, I hear Troy Perry challenging our church to go first class.

Notes:

(1) William Barclay. The Daily Study Bible: The Gospel of John. Vol. 1. (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1956), ix.

(2) Barclay (1956), ix.

(3) John O'Donnell. The Mystery of the Triune God. (London: Sheed and Ward, 1988), 60.

(4) O'Donnell (1988), 62.

(5) O'Donnell (1988), 63.

(6) O'Donnell (1988), 63.-

(7) O'Donnell (1988), 63-64.

(8) O'Donnell (1988), 65.

(9) Dick Eugenio. Communion with God: the Trinitarian Soteriology of Thomas. F. Torrance. Ph.D. Thesis. (Manchester: Nazarene Theological College, 2001), 10.

(10) Barclay (1956), 128.

(11) Barclay (1956), 129.

(12) Candace Chellew-Hodge. “Rev. Candace Chellew-Hodge Profile.” LGBT Religious Archives. July, 2005, 21 February 2021. <https://lgbtqreligiousarchives.org/profiles/candace-chellew-hodge>.

(13) Barclay (1956), 124.

(14) "Anita Bryant." Wikipedia. 24 February 2021, 03 March 2021. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Bryant>.

(15)"Call Me Troy." Movie on Frameline YouTube. 2007, 03 March 2012. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RD0h7BNIJI>.

(16) "Call Me Troy." <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RD0h7BNIJI>.

#christian #sermon #bible #progressive christian #love #self-esteem #value #jesus #inclusive #church #pie day #LGBT #LGBTQ

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zankivich · 5 years

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Neighbors: Shawn x Plus Size Reader Chapter 12

a/n: hi friends. I really liked writing this chapter. Idk I wanted to explore some themes that aren’t sunshines and rainbows. But I also wanted to explore what communication looks like and what a healthy relationship can look like. I’m trying to figure out what this relationship would genuinely look like through long distance. How do you make it work? How do you create a healthy dynamic with your partner?

Warnings: smut, little angsty with some fighting.

*Shawn’s point of view*

The first time they get in a fight post actually being in a relationship is pretty terrible. It’s the worst because they’re not physically together. Instead they’re thousands of miles away from each other. At least after the fact. After the grammys, he goes home for a few more weeks before it’s time to start preparing for tour. And in that time they’re fine. They go out with their friends. They watch netflix when she comes home from work. They go to art museums and taking really sappy selfies in front of the artwork. They make love constantly. Usually the second she walks into the door. And it’s the best it’s ever been. It’s the best they’ve ever been. So good in fact that it never occurs to him that anything could go wrong. What could possibly go wrong?

They’re in the bedroom going through his closet as he packs again, only this time he’s feeling a little giddy because they’re packing to leave together. They’re supposed to be leaving together.

“I got you something.” He murmured moving to the section of his closet that he’d kept it hidden in.

“Shawn, you have got to stop buying me things.” She whined. “I’m gonna run out of places to put them.”

He rolled his eyes. “You’re so incredibly dramatic. I barely buy you anything, and you know it. If every time I wanted to get you something and you didn’t turn down my undying, unwavering love for you, maybe then we could talk.”

“Yes, I’m the dramatic one in this relationship. As long as we’re on the same page.”

Despite the fact that his girlfriend was mean to him, he still brought out her present. It was a suitcase. A tommy hilfiger suitcase to be more specific. It was sleek and pretty, and he was buying one for himself anyway, so why not get matching ones? He even stuck a bow on it, like a good ass boyfriend should. So, when he rolled it out in front of her and did a sort of ta-da moment, only for her face to fall, excuse him for being a little taken aback.

He peered down at his gift.

“It uh--it’s for our trip. I thought that it might be cute for us to have matching suitcases.” He sighed. “Maybe not?”

“No. It uh--it’s really sweet, baby; thank you.”

“But?”

She winced. “But uh...I’m not coming with you to London.”

“What?”

She scooted along to the edge of the bed reaching out for his hands, but he kept them perched on his hips.

“I just… I’ve been thinking about it, and I think it might be good for us, if I stay here.”

“What does that mean? Why would being away from each other be good for us?” He asked. “And when exactly were you gonna tell me you weren’t coming, y/n?”

“Well, we’ve been more or less together every single day since we became friends, Shawn. When you’re not at work we’re either in my apartment, or yours, or at one of our favorite restaurants. Or watching movies.”

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize you were suffering in silence this whole time. I kind of thought my girlfriend might want to hang out with me. My mistake.”

She sighed. “You’re getting defensive. Can you just try to listen to me for a second, please?”

“To be fair, you’re telling me you don’t want to be around me anymore. This is literally coming out of nowhere, y/n.”

“Look, fucking relax for a minute. I’m not saying I don’t want to be around you. I am saying I just need to take a step back for a second. I need to refocus myself. It’s got nothing to do with you.”

He could feel his face heating up, and he really didn’t have any idea how he was going to calm down. In all of the time they’d been at home she had never said anything. And it wasn’t like he was refusing to leave her apartment. She would always come home from work and knock on his door. She called him during lunch to complain about someone who sucked at her job. She loved cuddling for hours on end in bed and talking about the most random shit. It wasn’t just that he was angry, which quite frankly that was certainly part of it. It was that if he could go weeks and weeks on end thinking that they were okay, that they were better than okay, while she was feeling something completely different? What the hell did that say about him?

He took a deep breath his hands twitching anxiously at his sides. He hadn’t felt so far away from her in such a long time.

“S--so what is it then? Is it a break? Are we taking a break?”

“No! No, that is not what I’m saying, Shawn. Jesus.” She paused and took another deep breath. “I’m saying that I’m gonna be in Toronto. You’re gonna be in London. We’re still together. We’re still everything that we’ve been this whole entire time. I’m just not going to London with you. This is an opportunity for you to go do rehearsals, to be with your friends, to have a good time. This is not a death sentence.”

“What else could it possibly be? I’m gonna be away for the majority of the fucking year and now you pull this? Now all of a sudden, you want space? I’ve done this before, y/n. I’m not stupid. I know what this is!”

They’ve both got pretty out there personality types. His was a little more reserved, but once he got there in terms of emotion, he was usually there for a minute. And she fed off the energy of those around her. So, when he raises his voice it’s like an instant response from her. And all of a sudden they’re having this blow up argument that neither of them saw coming.

“What the fuck are you even talking about right now?! You’re not being rational, Shawn! This is absolutely ridiculous. It’s like I’m speaking to a crazy person!”

“I’m not fucking crazy! This is about the grammys isn’t it? And the carpet and the photos. And how you looked. You can’t handle it, and now you’re scared, and now you’re just trying to let me down easy! I’m not some soft baby. I’m a grown ass man, and you can be honest with me!”

“What the hell do you mean, ‘how I looked’? What was wrong with how I looked?”

“I don’t know y/n, what the hell was wrong with how you looked?! I mean you’re so confident no one can touch you one second, and the next you're staring at Miley on the carpet like a lost puppy just because of her physical appearance. I am doing everything that I can to make things easier for you, but there’s only so much that I can do.”

There’s a moment in every argument where the entire tone shifts. Where it’s no longer just throwing loud words at one another. A point of no return, where you’ve been hurt and so you lash out, and you say the wrong thing. It’s that point where you’re no longer yelling to make yourself feel better, you’re yelling to hurt that person. Even if you don’t recognize it in that moment. And the second that she pauses, her eyes widening in shock, he knows that this thing just got worse. That they’re not gonna fix this tonight.

“You’ve got a hell of a lot of nerve.” She hissed immediately climbing out of his bed. “I don’t know who the fuck you think you are, but I don’t do relationships with people who don’t respect me. It is not my fault you’re so fucking insecure about how everyone views you and what everyone thinks about you. Not everything is layered in double meaning. I just wanted to stay the fuck home. Which is where I’ll be going tonight, because I can actually not even stand to look at you right now.”

“Wait. Wait--fuck! Don’t leave.”

“No! Go fuck yourself.”

She shoves past him and slams his bedroom door shut. A few moments later he can hear the door to his apartment give a similar slam. Just like that he’s alone with this ugly thing inside of him. It’s anger and fear and hurt and sadness. And the one person in the world who had consistently been around to fix it is suddenly gone. Just like that.

***

He woke up the next day in a terrible mood. His back hurt. He’d grown so use to wrapping his body around the softness that was his girlfriend, that a night apart was hell on his sleep cycle. The wake up call from Andrew telling him to get his ass to the airport, surely didn’t help things. He rushed to pull all of his clothes together into a new bag, because his tommy hilfiger suitcase no longer had the same feel. On his way out of the door, he peered over at her door. Since she wasn’t going anymore this was usually time she went to work. He couldn’t forget the hurt in her eyes when he’d said what he said last night. And he’d never forgive himself if he left without apologizing.

He knocked gently, biting his lip anxiously as he waited for her. It only took maybe forty-five seconds for him to figure out that she knew he was on the other side, and that she had zero intentions of answering.

“Babe,” He sighed knocking again. “y/n, please open the door.”

Silence.

“I...I know I fucked up, okay? I know that I hurt you. And I’m so sorry. I--I never meant to disrespect you. I just was hurt and I lashed out, and I just--fuck. Fuck, baby please open the door.”

He stays outside her door much longer than he has time for. He calls her and can hear her press ignore on his phone call, before turning her phone off all together. It’s not until the driver who was taking him to the airport called to tell him he had to leave, or he’d miss his flight, that he can find the will to move away from the door. Leaving is the hardest thing he’s ever done. And knowing that he couldn’t take it back, wasn’t gonna be able to fix it left him with his heart sad and hurting on his sleeve.

Brian’s in the car already waiting on him, and he’s got nothing to offer his best friend except for a shitty mood and a complete inability to hold a conversation as he tries desperately to text his girlfriend. It’s an absolute shit show. Go tour.

***

People quickly start to notice that he’s not happy. He’s not sure what gives it away, because he’s been trying like to hell to keep a smile on his face, but if the worried glances of Andrew, Cez, and Brian simultaneously hovering over him as he sits by himself between rehearsals are anything to go off of, clearly he’s doing it wrong. But, he was a little preoccupied trying to craft another text message to his girlfriend who seemed to hate his guts.

Meanwhile huddled in the corner, his team was trying to figure out what the hell to do with him.

“Brian, you flew with him here, what the hell’s been going on?” Andrew asked peering over as he moped quite pathetically.

“At first I thought it was because he just hadn’t slept much the night before, but then y/n wasn’t there to go to the airport with us, so I’m assuming it has something to do with that.” Brian explained.

“Shawn’s never this down for this long though.” Cez interrupted. “You really think he’s this broken up over her not being here?”

“Who the hell knows anymore?” Andrew sighed. “Sometime’s the kid is ready to bite my head off if I suggest they take different cars to and from the hotel. He’s protective as all get out over her.”

Brian snorted. “We went to a bar in Toronto a couple weeks ago, and they literally sat in the booth sharing a pitcher of long island with two straws and then making out until they ditched us to go hook up in a bathroom I think. Dude’s completely head over heels. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Tell us about it.” The rest of them said in unison.

“Does anyone know why y/n didn’t end up coming?” Andrew asked.

When even Brian shrugged, he figured it was time for his tour dad persona to make a re--appearance because apparently Shawn wasn’t talking to anyone about what was going on in his head.

He waited until their meeting that they had two times a day: one to go over everything for the day, and another to talk about the rest of the week/tomorrow. It’s always the only time where it’s just him and Shawn and it seems like the best way to go about things. When they sit down and Shawn’s leg is bouncing, and he keeps eyeing his phone on the table, and crossing and uncrossing his arms, Andrew couldn’t help but wonder if his client had ever been subtle a day in his life.

“Hey, so I figured we could skip the usual meeting and do something a little different today.”

Shawn shrugged. “Yea? How come?”

“I don’t know. I guess I thought there might be something you wanted to talk about, get off your chest maybe?”

“Oh Andrew, no. Please, don’t do the tour dad bit!” He immediately groaned. “I’m not sixteen anymore.”

“I know you’re not, bud. I do. It doesn’t mean you have to handle the entire world on your shoulders without ever asking for help, though.”

“I know that. I--I always reach out when I need it, don’t I?” He mumbled picking at nothing on his jeans.

“Usually you do. But, we’ve been in london for about a week now. I don’t like to pry at all, but you had me arrange for housing accomodations separate from the rest of us only to show up here and room with Brian in his hotel room. I also can’t help but notice that y/n isn’t here. And that except for when we’re running rehearsals or meeting fans, you’re not really here either. From the looks of it you’re not talking to anyone about it. So, yea, I’m a little concerned. I think we all are. But, it’s only because we care about you.”

Shawn seems to sink even lower into the couch, his shoulders slumping in on themselves. He wipes a hand over his mouth and then went to playing with his helix piercing with one hand while the other tangled up in his swallow necklace. Finding something physically to touch, always made him feel a little less anxious.

“Fine. We had a fight.” He sniffed. “Our first fight, actually.”

“Okay. That’s rough. What happened?”

He immediately groaned and covered his face with his hands.

“I’m a piece of shit, that’s what happened.”

“Do you wanna unpack that a little more for me?”

“It’s just like male fragile fucking ego right? Like I’m so insecure in myself and I don’t want to be alone, and you telling me that you don’t want to be with me in this moment, must mean that you don’t want to be with me at all. And I’m freaking out right? Because maybe it never made sense for you to want me in the first place.”

He’d been thinking about it a lot obviously.

“She just...she didn’t want to come to London with me.” He sighed completely deflated and defeated. “She said we’ve been spending all of our time together...and we have but I--I don’t want anything else when I’m with her. There was one day we were lying in bed all day. Like we genuinely never got out of bed except to like pee or grab snacks so that we could get back into the bed. I missed the gym for the first time in four months. But, it was the happiest I’d been in so long. And then you and I keep having these fights about me being too into her and not being focused...and then she tells me twelve hours before the flight that we need space apart, because we’ve spent every second together but like, I’m gonna be gone for the year. And I can’t help but be so fucking terrified that she’s not gonna want me anymore. That it won’t be worth it. That I’m not worth it.”

“Hey. Hey, you know that’s not true.”

He chuckled sadly. “I couldn’t convince my girlfriend to come to london for free and spend time with me, Andrew. She’d rather be at work.”

He’s sitting there so clearly hurting and running over the situation again and again in his head. Andrew hadn’t seen him like this over a woman maybe ever, and his willingness to find fault in himself was as startling as it was concerning.

“I really don’t think that’s it. I’m sure that it feels that way, and I get why it’s hard for you, I mean none of this is exactly the usual way of going about things. And maybe it’s your normal, and maybe you know exactly what things should be like, but just because it’s your normal doesn’t mean it’s her’s yet ya know? Did you ever actually sit down and talk to her about how she felt about your being away for so long?”

He shook his head softly. “N--No. Not exactly.”

“And we’ve talked about it before, she likes to internalize things right?”

“Yea. She does.”

“So maybe this is her way of doing that. Instead of talking to you about how much she misses you, she’s isolating herself instead cause it’s what she knows. I’m not sure what was said during your fight obviously, but I think it might do you both a little good to try and see things from the other’s perspective.”

So. Great. Andrew’s a genius, and he’s the dumbest fucker alive. There’s a shock.

“Fuck….Well she’s not answering my phone calls, texts, emails, instagram dms, or facetime requests. So, that’s gonna be a bit of a stretch there, but your suggestion sounds wonderful.”

They sat in silence for a minute, Shawn still glum and upset while Andrew stared on in empathy.

“Do you wanna fly back to her?”

Shawn’s head shot up at that. “Excuse me?”

“I know you think I’m out to get you and ruin all your fun sometimes, but I do actually care about your happiness and wellbeing. We’ve got just under a month to prepare. If you don’t mind taking the hit then neither do I. I’d rather have you at home and come back happy then sit here and be miserable.”

“A--Are you sure? Andrew, my whole job is to be here right now. To get ready for this live show.”

“Yes. But if this is what you need to do in order to do that then tell me, and I’ll the book the flight myself.”

It’s a total catch twenty-two. He wanted to apologize, needed to make things better between the two of them. But, she wasn’t answering his messages. And if he flew back maybe it would be helpful, but what if it wasn’t? What if it made her hate him even more because he hadn’t done the one fucking thing she asked of him--to stay away? And on the other end, if he didn’t go back, if he didn’t make things right, would the damage to their relationship be fixable thousands of miles apart?

“I just need a day. A day to check in, and talk to her and I’ll come right back I swear. This isn’t gonna be like this forever, Andrew, I promise.” He sighed.

“It’s fine. Let’s just get you the flight picked out as soon as we can okay?”

“Okay. Okay, thank you.”

“No problem. It’s what I’m here for.”

***

*y/n’s point of view*

You were standing at your desk, shoes off, hair pulled down, and a headache the size of vancouver. You hadn’t been sleeping well. You hadn’t been working well. There was tension swelling up in your shoulders and neck, which tended to happen when you felt like you were suffocating under the weight of the world. And that’s exactly how you felt.

Not returning Shawn’s calls was incredibly difficult. You missed the sound of his voice, and the feel of his hands on your hips, and the tickle of his hair on your neck. But, everytime the phone rang and you even thought about responding, you heard the words he said to you that night play back into your head. He had made you feel like a burden, had taken your genuine concerns and fears and held them completely against you. And so had you, you weren’t immature enough to think that you hadn’t. You knew you both were hurting. You just...felt a little more stubborn at first. And then as the first week of being a part was coming to an end, and the red hot anger had begun to cool, you didn’t know how to end the fight. It was your first one ever afterall.

You were standing there so wrapped up in your own thoughts that you didn’t even notice when you started searching for plane tickets, until you found one that left at eleven o'clock that night. You peered up at the clock on your wall to see that it was already a little after seven. Your boss would kill you if she found out…

“Hey, are you still fucking sitting at work?” Stu’s loud ass voice entered the room, as his face came up on the screen of your phone. “Sis, we have got to find you some better coping mechanisms.”

“Thank you Oprah, now can we get back to why I actually called you, or would you like to comment on the bags under my eyes too?”

He sighed. “Well I do have a cream for that, but please continue.”

“I need you to talk me out of buying a plane ticket tonight.”

“A plane ticket? Where to?”

You bit your lip anxiously. “To London?”

“To London?! You mean to see Shawn and stop being a little whiny, stressed out asshole. You called me, your best friend, to talk you out of the healthiest decision I’ve heard from you in weeks? I think not!”

You simply needed to get better friends.

“Shit.” You groaned mouse rolling over the button that would secure the purchase. “What if he doesn’t want to see me? We had a really bad fight Stu.”

“That man has been calling you twenty times a day. He emailed me for Christ’s sake. All he wants is to see you. Go to him please?”

“But--But what about work? I’m overseen by Gina now, if she found out I flew to London in the middle of the week?”

“She’d probably pay for the flight herself if she saw how stressed out you’ve been.” Stu snorted. “Look it’s Wednesday. We’ve already had our cross-collaboration meeting for the week. You’re allowed to take off Fridays as it. What’s one more day, if it means you come back happier?”

Perhaps that’s why you called all along. Stu had a way of clearing your mind. He was persuasive as fuck, and it usually got you into trouble, but you couldn’t help but trust him with your life.

“Fuck. Okay I’m gonna do it.”

“THANK GOD! Go get your mans!”

It’s complete and utter mayhem after that point. There’s the running home to shove things into a suitcase. You couldn’t even plan your outfits around what you might do as was usually your go to, because there was always the option that your boyfriend was gonna kick you out onto the streets. You did sneak into his apartment with the key he’d given you for when he wasn’t home to find your gift still sitting sadly at the foot of his bed. It seemed like a nice enough peace offering on your behalf. You were just hopeful that he wouldn’t hate you.

***

The place that Shawn had the both of you stay was maybe the cutest place in the world. It was a tiny cottage nestled away from the chaos of the city. You knew it was a thirty minute drive from the hotel where the rest of the crew was staying, and that that had been purposeful. When you went to check-in you were slightly nervous that it would be under Shawn’s name, and that they would think you were just a crazed fan. But, sure enough Andrew had listed you on the reservation. He really did think of everything.

Inside the cottage, everything was completely untouched. It was all hardwood and soft everything else with blankets and pillows galore. There was a fireplace and a breakfast nook, and a kitchen that you never would have had time to use. It looked like a little oasis. Like maybe you could have forgotten about everything here together. You imagined Shawn planning everything to a tea. He would’ve wanted to take you sightseeing, would’ve insisted on the two of you driving to the cottage separate from everyone else so that it felt like going home. He always thought of things like that. He always wanted you to be happy over everything else, and you guess you had kind of trampled all over that and spat it into his hand.

It only takes two walkthroughs of the cottage for you to figure out that Shawn hadn’t slept here at all. His toiletries were missing from the bathroom. His humidifier wasn’t by the bed. You couldn’t even smell him in the sheets. You plopped down gently on the bed and pulled your phone out to three new missed calls from Shawn. You’d wanted it to be a surprise but you figured now was as good as any. If he was at another hotel, you’d have to talk to him to find out anyway.

“Hello?” You murmured gently into the phone as he picked up on the first ring.

“Y/n? H--Hi! Hi. Uh...wow I’m sorry, I didn’t think you were gonna pick up.”

“Yea. Sorry for ghosting, I just...I don’t know actually. I don’t know.”

He swallowed. “It’s okay.”

“Not really though.”

“Listen, are you still at work right now?”

“No. I’m not.”

Shawn sighed. “Okay well uh... where are you?”

“I’m sitting on a bed in the cottage that you got us. I guess I kinda thought you might be here, but maybe rehearsals are still going on?”

“Excuse me?”

You winced. “I came to London. To like apologize, and to try and fix things.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake.”

You close your eyes ready for him to start laying in on you for being the worst girlfriend ever. And then he starts to laugh. And you’re not sure whether to be offended or scared.

“What the hell is so funny?” You muttered.

“You’re not gonna believe this but I’m in Canada. In front of your apartment door to be more precise.”

“What?!”

“Yea. Andrew gave me the greenlight to fly home and try and fix things. Apparently I’ve been a bit of a dick lately.”

You collapsed back on the bed and brought your arm up to cover your face.

“We are genuinely idiots.”

“Little bit.” He chuckled. “But uh--this is the first time I’ve talked to you in a week and I have to say I really missed the sound of your voice.”

“Yea. I really missed yours too.” You whispered. “Shawn, I’m s--”

“No, stop. Don’t say anything until we’re together. I’m gonna get on the first flight back, and I’ll come to you okay? Let’s just, let’s save it all for in person.”

You smiled a little bit. “Okay. I guess I can do that.”

“I love you more than anything okay? And I’ll see you soon.”

“I love you too.”

You hung up the phone before peering aimlessly around the room. What the hell was a girl to do for her first time in a different country without anyone to show her around?

***

*Third point of view*

Shawn felt way too large in the tiny cottage. His shoulders barely cleared the door and then he tripped into the dark room, his luggage and feet getting twisted together. What a shit show. Two back to back flights with 5 hours of time difference between the two places was more than hell on his body but what was he to do when his girlfriend needed him?

The fireplace was lit and his girlfriend was wrapped up cozily in a blanket, dead asleep in her chair. He thought that she might love a place like this, but he couldn’t have imagined just how right she might look nestled softly into this image before him. She was perfect.

He reached gently for her as a means to not startle her, his heart swelling dramatically when her nose scrunched as she yawned and stretched herself awake.

“Shawn?” She mumbled sleepily. “You’re here?”

He dropped to his knees in front of her, hands moving everywhere to touch her.

“I’m here, baby. I’m right here.”

She runs her fingers through his hair having missed the touch of him. He practically purrs beneath her. They really sucked at being apart. And being mad at each other while they were apart? They were downright awful at that one.

He hugs her waist from where’s she sitting and she bends over to grab at as much at him as she can. They both are emotional and tired and so a few tears at this point is nothing because suddenly their other half is there to wipe them away. It’s the most healing thing in the world to both of them.

“Are you tired? We can talk in the morning.” She murmured rubbing soothingly at his cheeks as the final tears dried away.

He shook his head. “I’ve been thinking about this moment all week. I wanna talk now, if that’s okay with you?”

“Sure.” She breathed.

Shawn tugged at y/n’s hands bringing them both to the dining room table. In some ways it’s good that they have the cottage. It acts as a neutral space for the both of them, the memories of Shawn’s bedroom a couple thousand miles away impossible to taint the moment. They sit at the table facing each other and immediately link fingers. It’s their first fight, but even a first fight comes with a first makeup, a first chance to learn and grow from the hurt.

“I’d like to start, if that’s okay?” He asked waiting for her to give the okay before he continued speaking. “I know that I overreacted. It didn’t feel that way at the time. It felt like...it felt like every fear I’ve ever had about our relationships coming true right in front of me. And those weeks together before that were so indescribably perfect that I just never saw it coming. You never gave me any sort of indication that you were unhappy, or that you needed space. I’m not going to pretend like I would’ve taken it any better. I mean I--I don’t know, honestly, but I think it would have helped a lot.”

“Yea, I . . . I was trying not to hurt you. Which, sounds ridiculous given the fight we ended up having but...I should have told you. I should have told you the second I knew. The thing is, I wanted to come, Shawn; I did. I just, after the grammys, and after the hanging out with your friends, and going on dates every day of the week, and the sex four times a day I got...lonely?”

“Lonely?”

She sighed and tugged frustratingly at her hair as she tried to reorganize her thoughts. It looked like it hurt, so he reached for her hands again to let her steady them on his.

“Hey, it’s okay. I just want to understand. Help me understand.”

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, before letting her lips move.

“It’s like, I was going to bed every night in your arms, but I couldn’t help but remember that for the rest of the year we weren’t gonna be together. And my body couldn’t register anything else. It felt like my soul was clinging to you or something--I’m sorry that sounds so sappy. I mean that my body just wanted to be with you but it knew that you were gonna leave. And the buildup of that was killing me. It hurt. It hurt worse than anything. And I just thought that the only way I was gonna be able to live through it was to get ahead of the pain. It was selfish. I know that but, I didn’t know what else to do.”

“Talk to me. You can always talk to me, and we can work through this shit together. You’re not in this alone. I’m right there with you. And the thought of being without you is absolutely terrifying. It kills me. There’s no one else in the world I can talk to about that, but you. You have to trust me.”

“I do. I do trust you. I promise that’s not what it was about. I didn’t want you wasting any time worrying about me. It--it’s not like it was gonna fix anything. This is where we’re at Shawn.”

“It doesn’t have to be so pessimistic. This is my fault, I should have taken more time to talk to you about it. I should have...I should have done more. I’m sorry.”

“What more could you have possibly done?” She chuckled dryly.

“We can sit down and schedule out the whole year. When you’re gonna visit. When my breaks are, and when I can come home to you. We can pencil in face time dates. It’s not gonna be the same. I know that but...it doesn’t have to be all or nothing, right? We can make it work if we’re both willing. Are you--are you willing?”

She squeezed down on his fingers making him feel more deeply rooted to the ground. His heart was hammering beneath his sternum. And she knew it was his greatest fear, so she did everything in her power to reassure him.

“Yes. I promise I am. I don’t want to be without you, so I’ll take anything I can get.”

He frowned at that knowing that all he wanted was to give her the world. The thought of her settling made his chest feel tight. But, they were just finally getting over their argument, so he lets it settle deep in the back of his mind for now.

“I need to apologize for the rest of what I said that night.” He mumbled.

She shook her head. “It’s fine.”

“It’s so far from fine, it’s not even funny y/n. Don’t ever try and give me an out like that. You were right. I--I disrespected you, and the bare minimum you deserve is an apology.”

She nods softly at the fire in his eyes and holds tighter onto his hand as he attempts to explain.

“It...It’s hard to find security in something when I don’t have control over it. When I’m away from home for so long and I can’t lie with you when you’re having a bad day, or rub your back when you’re cramping, it makes me feel unworthy of calling you mine. And that--that’s on me. That’s my own shit, and that doesn’t mean I get to lash out and say hurtful things to you. You deserve so much more than that. I’m deeply and truly sorry that I hurt you. I love you so much, and I’m never going to do that to you again. Okay? I swear to you.”

“Okay. Okay, I forgive you.” She whispers. “As long as you forgive me. I should never use your anxiety or your mental health against you. That’s totally fucking uncalled for. I’ll never do it again.”

“I forgive you.” He whispered affectionately back. “I love you, so much. Can I kiss you now?”

“Yes. Of course you can.”

He knows that there's not an ounce of anger left in his body when she kisses him, because surely anger couldn’t feel this soft. He loves her and he loves the feel of her arms on his shoulders and the hum of her vocal chords when he sucks her bottom lip into his mouth. But even if the anger has melted, there’s still a bit of a struggle there for him, a struggle to be understood and to be heard. And he didn’t want to leave this moment without it.

“I just...I’m scared okay?” He admits softly as she holds him close. “I know I’ve never said it before but, you terrify me.”

She frowns softly at him fingers twirling aimlessly in his curls.

“In what way?”

“In all of them.” he chuckled before peering seriously into her eyes. “I’ve never been in love like this before. I’ve never felt so out of control of my feelings and my emotions before. I’m afraid that one day someone’s gonna say the wrong thing. We’ll be out in public and they’ll say something to upset us, or an interviewer will ask a question they shouldn’t on air, or someone might get you in trouble at work. And I’m afraid that one day you’re gonna look around and ask yourself what the hell do you get out of us. I just feel like I love you more than anything and I guess it just hurts that I come with all this baggage. I can’t help but think one day it might not be enough to keep you with me.”

Her eyebrows knitted together and she stared at him with those big ole eyes like she could see all of him, like she was the only one who saw all of him.

“How come you’ve never told me that before?”

“I think I might have been afraid to speak into existence. So, I figured if I just did everything in my being to make things perfect, you might forget that I’m a singer with about forty five million people worth of baggage, if my instagram is anything to go off of.”

She giggled and his heart squeezed delicately in his chest.

“I don’t think I could quite manage to forget that.” She murmured. “Shawn, you can’t try and do it all on your own. You can’t try to hide them from me as much as it might seem nice at first. It’s unsustainable, and you already work too hard to add the impossible to your plate. I knew what I was getting myself into. It’s hard. We both know that but...I love you. And I love you enough for it to be hard. Let that be enough.”

“I’m trying.” He whispered softly. “You’re more than enough. You’re more than I could have ever asked for you, you know that?”

“I love you.” She murmured and kissed his forehead.

“I love you too.”

Making up is a very emotionally draining thing, especially when one is mature enough to admit their own wrong doings in the situation. So, after a lot of kissing and hugging, they each make their way to bed. Y/n reached for Shawn immediately pulling his body on top of hers until they were intrinsically intertwined together. Shawn pressed his face against her neck kissing and humming nibbling at the skin. They don’t speak much, just enjoy each other’s company. And for the night, that’s all that matters.

*y/n’s point of view*

Your phone going off is what wakes you up. You were nestled into Shawn’s arms and the thought of leaving that warmth was incredibly offensive. You reached hazardly for the phone only to see that it was Stu. This meant that either someone was dying or he was about to completely waste your time. There was no inbetween with him.

“How dare you not tell me!” Stu screamed.

Completely waste your time it was.

Shawn began to stir and whined softly at the prospect of you not being fully in his arms. He quickly readjusted his weight to be more firmly pressed against you, and then kissed stubbornly at your jaw.

“Babe, come back to bed.”

“Shh.” You murmured as the two men in your life nagged you. “What in the hell are you talking about?”

“I am looking at your boyfriend giving me ‘come suck me off eyes’ and I have never been so offended in my whole gay ass life!

Your mind immediately went to the worse thinking that somehow a nude or something had leaked, and so you sat straight up in bed, Shawn flailing helplessly to the side.

“What the fuck? What is it?!”

“Woops. I can see now that you truly have no idea what I’m talking about in which case this may be a little disconcerting. Your boyfriend is the new face of calvin klein and baby is serving more than face! He is serving ‘bend me over in the middle of the grocery story’ . Which leads me to my next question, how have we never talked about his dick before? Brian and I have questions.”

“What in the absolute hell is going on?” Shawn groaned now fully up and awake.

You rolled your eyes. “It sounds like you may have done an underwear ad and neglected to tell your GIRLFRIEND. And now my very gay best friend is calling me at the crack ass of dawn in toronto to complain about me not telling him.”

“Shit. Did that go out today?”

“Are you two about to start fighting again? We hate it when mom and dad fight.”

“Goodbye Stu! I will talk to you later.”

You tossed your phone off to the side peering over at your groggy boyfriend with messy curls and red patchy cheeks to match. His cuteness almost made you forget about how annoyed you were at the prospect of him forgetting to mention such incredibly important information. Almost.

He smiled dopely. “Sorry?”

“We’re in a fight again.”

“No! No more fighting please.” He whined quickly tackling you down to the sheets.

You squealed and giggled as he placed playful kisses over any part of your skin he could find.

“I’m sorry I didn’t mention it. I was a little nervous about it. I will show you every picture if you want. It’s just me in my underwear, which to be fair you can see that anytime you want.”

You hummed softly wrapping your legs tightly around his hips.

“Anytime?” You murmured. “You saying you’d model for me if I asked?”

“No, that was not at all what I was saying! You don’t want me to model for you. I’d be horrible.”

“I think you would do just fine. I think you’re sexy and beautiful and wonderful, and I can’t imagine a reason why you shouldn’t project that out into the world.”

He brought his head out of the crook of your neck and peered down at you with wide and honest eyes. His thumb caressed gently at your cheek and it kind of made you melt.

“The wild thing is when you say shit like that I really believe it.” He mumbled. “You’re sort of perfect, you know that?”

“Yes. Yes I do. You’re perfect too.” You reminded him softly.

He captured your lips quickly in a kiss that had your whole body thrumming beneath him. His fingers pulled at the hair tie of your bun, quickly getting lost in the strands. You had no idea what time it was, where Shawn needed to be or when, and it suddenly didn’t seem to matter. You needed this moment, needed to feel each other a new after all the bullshit of the last week.

“Haven’t felt you in so long.” Shawn whispered letting his hands map your body so intimately it brought goosebumps to your skin. “Need to touch you. Need to taste you. Please?”

“Y--Yes. God, yes.”

He shoves the blankets away leaving you exposed as he tugs at your t-shirt and bra until your body is laid out for his eyes to feed on. And it’s kind of wild how he can make you feel worshipped and like his own personal prey all at once. Because his eyes are so loving, so giving in the way that he kisses at the bulge of skin where your hip and stomach meet because your tummy isn’t flat. But there’s a heat there too when he takes a nipple into his mouth, teeth sharp and purposeful in the way they make your back arch. It doesn’t matter to you either way. You’d give yourself to him endlessly. And he seems willing to take you up on the offer.

When he tugs at your underwear and sits back on his knees with a cocky ass smirk on his lips, the confidence coming off this man in waves you are struck with a realization. A very important one.

“Wait, I need to suck your dick.”

His eyes widened, persona faltering slightly.

“Huh?”

“You’re so hot right now I really need to have your dick in my mouth.”

“Shit. Well I kind of had my heart set on eating you out.”

He grabbed at the meat of your thigh to drive his point home. This only solidified your dick sucking need though.

“Well I guess we’re gonna have to sixty-nine it, then.”

“Fine, but only if you’re on top. Kinda want your ass on my face anyway.”

It was your turn for your eyes to widen. How dare he just say some wild ass shit like that.

When in London try out new sex positions, or something like that.

Shawn rid of himself of his boxers and quickly tugged at your hips until you were straddling his body from the opposite direction. His fingers melded to the curve of your ass and something happened that truly neither of you could have expected. Shawn, in all of his fascination with your ass all of a sudden let his hand come down with some movement against you. It wasn’t a slap, but it was enough to jolt your body entirely. Who would’ve thought you’d like your ass slapped? Certainly not you.

“Wait, could you...could you do that again?” You murmured peering down at him between your legs.

“Do what?”

You bit your lip. “Smack my ass.”

“Oh... Yea.” He raises his hand and comes down more firmly on your right cheek with that palm of his that’s too big for its own good. “Like that?”

Your back arches involuntarily and you slid down further on the bed, ass poised in the air as a moan passes your lips.

“Fuck, baby.” He whined. “You look so good right now.”

Your thighs squeezed together and he moved to push at your knees with his elbow, spreading you all the more for him.

“Need you on my face.” He whispered. “Give it to me.”

And then he pulled you right where he needed you to go to lick into you fully and deeply. It is by far the most intoxicating thing you’ve ever felt. They don’t tell you how difficult it is to focus on sucking a dick when your boyfriend’s eating your pussy like it’s the last coke in the desert. Porn really could have prepared you better for life in a host of different ways.

Eventually when you get used to your heart pounding you reach between his legs to guide his hard on between your lips. It’s takes a second to get used to angle, but once you find your rhythm it’s kind of magical. His thighs tense and his hips buck up as you let the flat of your tongue coat him perfectly. Your fingers wrap delicately around the shaft as your mouth focuses exclusively on the head, lips tight and wet with every pull.

“Fuck!” Shawn whined collapsing back against the sheets. “You have no idea how good that feels.”

His hand comes down on you again, but you can tell he’s in a sex fueled haze, because it’s much sharper than normal Shawn would’ve ever allowed himself to give. It drives you absolutely wild. You moan and then he moans and you’re both just a mess of sweaty limbs and near orgasms. He slips two fingers into you and something about the angle has him pressing right where you could ever possibly need him. Your hips begin to pulse and rotate and you have to pull off of his dick because the sounds coming out of your mouth are unruly.

“Fuck! Oh my god!” You gasped. “Deeper. Deeper, please.”

He slaps your ass again and shifts his fingers against a spot inside of you that makes your eyes roll back in your head as your orgasm rips through your body. There’s a squelching sound as Shawn’s fingers plunge you into at the same time that you begin to squirt all over his chest. It’s so overwhelming that your vision cuts out and you collapse is a wet, sticky heap.

“Jesus Christ. Look at you.” He mumbled thumb still flicking at your overstimulated clit.

You wiggle out of his grasp, tired, and in desperate need to get your boyfriend off. Because equality.

You straddled his hips one hand directing his hard on inside of you while the other worked to get your hair out of your face.

“You’re amazing.” He huffed into the air as you rode him fast and dirty into the mattress. “So fucking amazing.”

His hands on your hips made you feel like you were on fire. It was so good. And maybe it was because of the fight, maybe it was just not seeing each other for so long, but whatever it was you were bringing each other somewhere completely new. A high that had yet to been reached for the two of you. It was magic. It was hot and sensual. It was...about to be interrupted.

You were leaning over his body hips slapping roughly against his when a knock rang out on the door. Shawn reached impulsively for your hips to keep you moving on top of him.

“Don’t stop. They’ll go away.”

They did not go away. They simply knocked again.

“Goddammit.” He huffed looking over towards the door. “We don’t need any towels! Thank you!”

His voice was raw and it was clearly up a higher octave than he usually spoke, so you couldn’t help but giggle as your hips moved.

“It’s Brian and Connor jackass! Andrew sent us to get you. You’re not answering your phone!”

“You have got to be kidding me.” You sighed.

“Go away! I’ll be there in an hour!”

“...Are you two banging in there?!”

“Brian I am going to kill you! Get out of here!”

“Shit, bro I think they’re actually banging.”

“Can we try and stay focused here?” You whined leaning your hand back on his thigh and giving a gentle rock of your hips.

He leaned up on his arm, the other coming to wrap gingerly around your waist.

“What you just wanna keep going?”

“I’ve had my orgasm already here, I’m simply wanting to reciprocate. It’s up to you.”

His eyes raked over your body once more before looking over hesitantly at the door. Then, before you could even realize what was happening, he was bucking upwards with his hips to get you to lie back on the bed. He immediately fell back between your thighs and settled on a rhythm that must be doing wonderful things for him if the sounds from his lips was anything to go off of.

“You feel so fucking good.” He grunted grinding against you in tight circles. “God I love you so much.”

“Show me.” You hummed teeth grazing his ear. “Show me how much.”

There’s a slight squeak in the bed as it rattles on its posts, and you can’t help but tighten your thighs around his hips in a desperate attempt to stave off this feeling he seems to be able to give you in abundance. His hands on your neck as his lips dominated your mouth. Those fucking hips that could create magic with every snap against the back of your thighs. How could he always make it feel so good? You thought you might never understand it.

“I’m gonna cum.” He whined biting down hard on your lips. “Fuck, I’m gonna cum.”

Your fingers turned to fists in his hair and you moved roughly at your hips to meet every one of his thrusts.

“Cum for me.” You whispered.

He thrust once, twice, three times, and then a fourth final lunge that had your bodies locking together in the most intimate way imaginable. When he filled you infinitely, his breath painting your sweaty neck, you fell in love all over again. He was everything in that moment. Everything.

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#Shawn mendes fic #Shawn mendes fanfic #shawn mendes #Shawn mendes fanfiction #shawn mendes smut #Shawn mendes x you #Shawn mendes x y/n #Shawn mendes x reader #Shawn mendes angst #Shawn mendes fluff #Shawn mendes series #Shawn mendes one shot #Shawn mendes blurb #neighbors fic #shawn mendes x fem

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itsclydebitches · 5 years

Link

Car - Even after 6,000 years they still need a bit of a nudge. Maybe the Bentley can help with that.

***

Everything went to shit the morning Crowley parked the Bentley across from the shop, music blaring so loud that it shook the panes of every window a block down and drew him a record number of dirty looks. Crowley grinned at all the little humans, enjoying the feeling of hot metal against his arm and the vibrating base. When Aziraphale stuck his head out the door with a comically offended expression, well. Crowley most certainly enjoyed that too.

“Hello, Aziraphale!” he called. His voice had to rise past the capabilities of normal vocal cords to be heard.

“Turn that down!”

“Sorry?”

“Turn it down, Crowley!” Azirphale’s arms did a funny kind of pressing motion.

“Yeah, no, really didn’t catch that. You’ll have to speak a bit louder!”

Which resulted in Aziraphale puttering across the street to join him because the day his angel raised his voice above a gentlemanly reprimand was the day the world ended.

And as they now both knew, that was permanently on hold.

“Enough,” he growled, reaching across the steering wheel to press uselessly at all the knobs. Crowley shut the music off himself with a secretive snap. “Are you trying to deafen every one of my neighbors? Or summon the cops? Really, Crowley, the last thing we need is them poking about when I still have texts whose placement here I can’t exactly explain in writing. Do you want to tell them why there is a Georgian Bible without a paper trail?”

Crowley just grinned and set himself to the task of enjoying this interaction. It was all a little goldmine: Aziraphale’s arm pressed against his chest in an effort to reach the controls. How his hair lifted slightly at the tips because he tended to unfurl his wings when annoyed and even across dimensions those could produce a breeze. The way he still, after centuries, had no real idea how the police force worked. Yes, Zira. They’re going to respond to a noise complaint and then segue into breaking down your door, terrorizing a pouty bookshop owner purely for the fun of it.

...actually, that sounded like a lot of coppers Crowley knew. Maybe Aziraphale understood more than he gave him credit for.

“Sorry, angel. Just got real into that song.” Crowley wouldn’t have been able to name the song if his immortal life depended on it. He’d just let the Bentley pick whatever on the way here. “Up for a spot of lunch?”

It was their routine. A planned interaction that Crowley knew by heart and was thus safe to indulge in. He’d show up ‘unexpectedly’ outside the shop. Do something to invoke Aziraphale’s ire. He’d then spend a few moments memorizing his reactions like after 6,000 years there was anything left to learn (there was). Then Aziraphale would make his token protests, cave, and off they’d go. In the face of change—of the biblical sort. Of the “We’re on our own side now” sort—Crowley sometimes felt like routine was the only thing holding him together.

So something cracked when Aziraphale ignored his question entirely.

“Zira?” Crowley leaned out the window to get a better look. Aziraphale was now circling the car with a staggeringly guilty expression, hands twisting at the lowest button of his vest. Crowley was a second away from tumbling out and finding whatever had put that look on his angel’s face when he began to speak.

Not to Crowley though.

“I am so very sorry, my dear,” he said, seeming to address the Bentley’s hood. “I was quite cruel to you the other day, wasn’t I? Hardly sparing you a glance when you went up in flames like that. Yelling at Crowley to hurry things along. Oh... it must have hurt. Did it hurt? I’d imagine so. But please know that wasn’t at all an accurate representation of my feelings for you. Those were some rather extreme circumstances and I fear I was a bit out of my depth at the time. You see, I was forced to possess a woman by the name of Madam Tracy—a rather harrowing experience, all things considered—and there was an angry man pointing a gun at us, and the world was just about to end, you see, though I suppose you probably already knew that part—”

Crowley stared. Aziraphale was apologizing to his car.

Aziraphale. Was apologizing. To his car.

By the time he was done (finishing with a kiss to the front left light) Crowley had slithered down into his seat and was desperately trying to remember how to function.

“Crowley?”

“Hngg.”

“Whatever are you doing?”

“Suffering.”

“Suf—? Really. You show up here doing damage to all our eardrums and have the nerve to talk about suffering? Are you taking me to lunch or not?”

He’s perfect, Crowley thought, fumbling with his keys. He’s perfect and he just gave my car a more passionate love confession than I could ever hope to get.

If the Bentley seemed to have more of a purr to its engine that day Crowley chalked it up to his damaged hearing.

***

Scratch that, everything went to shit the day his Bentley realized they’d escaped the end of the world.

“It’s not alive,” a child had once told him, staring as Crowley yelled at the car for daring to stall on him. That was in the early days of their relationship. Winter of 1926, before they’d crossed many thousands of miles together, outrun other demons, discovered a shared love of music, had that wonderful romp across the Thames. Walking on water? Please. Try driving on it. Watch and weep, Jesus Christ.

That was far in the future though. Crowley had grown soft in his old age—really—and 1920s him wasn’t quite as forgiving. He’d figured a good reprimand was better than just magic-ing the problem away. This new Bentley needed to learn who was boss.

And here was this kid saying the stupidest things.

Crowley had looked her over. Wealthy little thing if that coat and frock was any indication. She’d been sucking a lolly and watching him like she’d ditched her shopping-obsessed mother and now had nothing better to do. Which was probably exactly what had occurred.

“How old are you?” he’d asked.

“Twelve.”

“Twelve years old and you’re saying nonsense like that?”

She’d gone so far as to stamp her foot, cheeks bulging from candy and indignation. “It’s not nonsense!”

So Crowley made a faulty approach—damn ice patches—and knelt down in front of her. He pointed upwards at a chaffinch. “That bird alive?”

“Well of course,” she’d said.

“Don’t ‘of course’ me, I’m about to blow your mind. Is the tree it’s in alive?”

“Uh huh.”

“Yeah, right, both agreeing on that. Okay, how ‘bout the sun shining through its branches?”

For the first time the girl had hesitated. Crowley jumped on it.

“Ah ha!” he crowed. “Bit tricker, eh? Lots of science folks out there who might try to make that case. Is a river alive? Maybe not, but if it is does that make the rain alive too? All the pretty things it freezes into?” Crowley scooped up a handful of snow, dumping it over the girl’s head. She had jumped and squeaked but didn’t run. “Life’s a messy thing, kid. All those blurry lines for metal and heat and water and light. So if I take those blurry things and change them up until they’re a car—” he waved both arms at the Bentley. “Don’t you think the car’s a bit of a blurry thing too?”

The girl had bit into her lip. It was red with cold and nibbled raw. “...Maybe.”

Crowley nodded. “Last question: am I a man or a snake?”

“A man!”

“And that’s why you don’t go telling strangers their cars aren’t alive.” Crowley stood. He made a sound like a buzzer in the back of his throat. “Wrong answer, kid. But you’re asking questions so I guess you’re not all bad.” He’d miracled up another lolly and shooed her off. “Go find your mum.”

Crowley never had the slightest doubt that his Bentley was alive. Maybe it appreciated that certainty because their relationship got a whole lot better after that. Ninety-three years and no more stalling.

Today, in 2019, Crowley wished dearly that the Bentley was just a hunk of metal.

“Surely this is bebop,” Aziraphale said. Crowley resisted the urge to lay his head on the steering wheel and just give up completely.

Actually, who was he to deny himself anything?

“Please watch the road!”

“You watch the road,” Crowley mocked, swatting Aziraphale’s hand away as he attempted to gain control. During it all Diana Ross crooned from the speakers.

Two hearts, Two hearts that beat as one Our lives have just begun...

He didn’t own any Diana Ross. He hadn’t turned on the radio. The song was just there as soon as they’d started off and Crowley was this close to selling the Bentley for scrap metal.

Because it had been doing this for days now. Anything Crowley wanted to listen to while out and about on his own? Sure. That was just fine. When Aziraphale decided to join them?

Cheesy love songs galore. Crowley’s hands tightened until his knuckles went white. He hoped the Bentley could feel it.

“Angel, do you have any concept of what bebop actually is?”

“Well...” Aziraphale faltered. “I know all the young kids are into it and this woman’s voice is quite risqué.”

“Literally none of that is right. Not a lick of sense. It’s 2019 how do you even function?”

The music increased in volume.

'Cause no one can deny This love I have inside And I'll give it all to you My love, my love, my love My endless love

“I’m setting you on fire again,” Crowley growled and pretended like he couldn’t hear Aziraphale humming along as the song repeated.

***

The next day Crowley opened the Bentley to find a bedazzled BEBOP charm hanging from his rearview mirror. The tacky monstrosity caught all the light as it slowly, spitefully rotated.

With a yell he chucked it into oncoming traffic. It was back again by lunch.

Aziraphale loved it.

(So fine, yeah, he guessed it could stay.)

***

After that more changes started to appear. Things that Crowley had never even thought about, let alone purposefully brought into existence. His Bentley suddenly had a cupholder for Aziraphale’s mugs of tea. There was extra space in the back for transporting books. One minor, throwaway comment about the sun being too bright and suddenly there were tinted windows, for heaven’s sake.

Crowley understood that his Bentley was alive, but it wasn’t supposed to have agency. Theoretically none of this stuff was bad, but who the fuck did the Bentley think it was, coming up with it all first?

By the time Aziraphale was commenting on how soft the seats were Crowley had had enough. He drove the blessed machine out to Tadfield with the express purpose of accosting an eleven-year-old.

“Did you give my car free will?!”

Adam was, objectively, the child most used to dealing with weird shit in his life. (Outmatched only (perhaps) by a young man named Warlock who’d had the dubious honor of growing up with a literal angel and demon over his shoulder. Both of whom were fools.) After coming into unfathomable power, nearly bringing about the end of the world, watching your not-Dad rise from the Earth in a fiery display, and then re-writing said world back to its basics, having a scrawny man yelling about free will while you were trying to eat ice cream didn’t even make the list of Top Ten Things I’m Dealing With Right Now.

So Adam dug more forcefully into his soft-serve. “Hey, Crowley.”

“Yeah. Hey. Nice day I guess.” It had occurred to Crowley right after he’d nearly hit the low wall of the Madisons’ garden and started shrieking at a group of children that this display would, perhaps, not be well received by the locals. And who wanted to deal with locals? So he reigned it in a bit and tried for a cheery wave at Mrs. Madison.

She scowled like a pissed-off peacock.

“Aren’t you going to say hello to us too?” Pepper demanded. She sat on the grass between Adam and Brian, the three of them trading ice creams every few moments. Adam now had the popsicle while Pepper had the soft serve and Crowley was decidedly not imagining him and a certain angel doing the same.

Wensleydale was off collecting ants to do Things with later.

Crowley sighed. “Hey, Piper.”

“Pepper.”

“What was your name again? No wait, never-mind, really don’t care. You. Antichrist—”

“Adam.”

“Adam. Did you mess with my car or not?”

Adam took the cup of cookie dough from Brain and exchanged a Look. The sort of Look that only children could pull off after numerous adventures together, filled with an hour’s worth of conversation boiled down to just a few ticks and movements of the mouth. He then exchanged the same with Pepper. Wensleydale was still too far off to hear the conversation, but he looked back as if hearing an unvoiced call, giving Adam a thumbs up. Throughout it all Crowley stood with hands halfway mashed into his pockets, shifting weight from foot to foot. He could feel Mrs. Madison boring into his back.

The moment was a short one, but what passed within it was given a great deal of consideration and weight. See, the Them hadn’t the slightest clue what Crowley was on about and Crowley, it seemed, was working under a number of assumptions that led to him not explaining himself one bit. Cars? Free will? Adam’s eyes strayed to the Bentley and while he could admit that it was a very nice looking car—if old—that was really all he had to say about the thing. He hadn’t exactly composed an itemized list of everything he’d wanted during the confrontation at the airbase. The only thing he’d been able to articulate within his mind was a Dad, Daddy, my Daddy in a voice that had sounded far younger than he actually was. Everything else had just been a ripple coming off of that. Now Adam experienced the same feeling as when Mr. Fell had called him up to thank him for the new books and Adam had responded with a “Wut?”

What the Them did know was that this was all very important to Crowley. Adam’s potential involvement got him riled.

So Adam gave the only logical answer he could in that moment.

“Yes,” he said.

The result was, to use a phrase, bloody spectacular.

Adam got back his original soft-serve. Pepper had the cookie dough. Brian the strawberry pop. They ate contentedly as Crowley went on a surprisingly creative rant about how kids could not and should not and in the future would not be messing with his car. Off to the side Wensleydale pulled out his phone to record the display, taking time to zoom in on Mrs. Madison’s expression.

Adam was still pretty out of his depth, but after a detailed account of all the Bentley’s new behaviors he felt a niggling suspicion and was compelled to say, “Kinda sounds like it’s trying to tell you something. Maybe you should listen?”

Crowley turned the same shade as his hair and Wensleydale, cackling, started uploading to Youtube.

***

“Dear, Adam tells me there’s a record of you on one of these social media sites. Would you perhaps show me how to—”

“Don’t click that!”

***

One week later the Bentley stalled.

Crowley stared in shock as it inched a couple feet, a couple more, and then stopped completely, out in the middle of goddamn nowhere. Well, not really. After hearing a highly edited version of Crowley’s visit to Adam, Aziraphale had insisted on a proper get-together the weekend following. Now here they were, partway between rural visit and urban home. There’d been food and drinks and piling far too many people into Anathema’s little cottage, all the things that might have interested a demon if Crowely had been able to focus on anything other than the smell of Aziraphale’s skin.

Another new cologne.

“Ah, Crowley...?” He spoke now, light and hesitant. “Did you mean to stop here?”

‘Here’ was a deserted stretch at 9:13pm, the stars their only light for miles.

“No.”

“Can you—?”

“No.”

Crowley knew it with a certainty that set his teeth on edge. He couldn’t just miracle them going again. The Bentley wouldn’t allow it. Maybe it really was the influence of a kid capable of warping reality in ways no angel or demon ever could. Maybe it was just the result of decades spent in the presence of occult and celestial entities, soaking up a bit of power then and there until it had something worthwhile. (And if that was the case Crowley was terrified to think about what Zira’s bookshop might be turning into.) All he knew for sure was that his Bentley was different now.

Acting like a goddamn, meddlesome brat.

Aziraphale had shifted this way in his seat, that way, perhaps finally acknowledging to himself that he knew nothing about cars and therefore could do very little to help. Crowley heard a few more noises on his left and then, “The doors are locked.”

Of course they were.

“Angel—”

“Dear—”

Something about Aziraphale’s tone made Crowley pause. Swallow down the rising excuse and finally look at him.

It was quite the sight. Aziraphale’s cheeks were pink from Anathema’s wine and one of his curls was plastered to his forehead, a victim of the heat. Through the window Crowley could see the play of shadows along the fields, the stars he’d help hang, the moon nearly full. All of it paled in comparison to Aziraphale’s eyes though. Crowley figured 6,000 years, an unknowable amount of time before that... he’d still never seen anything like them. Most days he chalked it up to Aziraphale being all angel-y. On rare occasions he acknowledged that none of the other wank-wings’ eyes looked like that.

Love had a tendency to color the things it touched.

“Are you perhaps trying to tell me something?” Aziraphale whispered, a soft smile playing at his lips. It drew Crowley’s gaze.

He swallowed. “Not me.”

“No?”

“Uh-uh. It’s the Bentley’s doing...”

“Ah, I see. Well, we wouldn’t want to disappoint your precious Bentley now would we?”

Aziraphale moved first. Six goddamn millennia and now he crossed the divide, pushing himself into the driver’s seat and half into Crowley’s lap. His hands made a beeline for his hair and cheek—one thumb tracing up towards the tattoo—and Aziraphale only paused for one more moment, six millennia plus one, his expression one of absolute rapture. Then he sighed and closed the gap.

Their first kiss tasted like something ineffable.

The Bentley began slowly making its way back towards London, leaving its occupants free to continue what they’d finally begun.

“I think,” Aziraphale laughed, pulling back as the scenery flashed by. “That this is the perfect speed for us.”

#good omens #ineffable husbands #air conditioning #good omens fic #figured I'd upload the whole thing here too #when I have the energy #in case people prefer reading here instead of AO3

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scotianostra · 4 years

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On January 8th 1697 Thomas Aikenhead was executed in Edinburgh.

This is a crackin, if sad tale, and shows you how religious beliefs can be a blight on our history.

So who was oor Thomas, a villain?, a murderer?, a smuggler?, or some enemy of the state? No Thomas's crime was blasphemy who took the lord's name in vain.......this would be comic if it wasn't for the tragic fact that he was executed, unlike the man in Life of Brian, who uttered the words Jehova, Thomas complained that he wished he was warming himself in hell rather than that chilly night walking past the recently built Tron Kirk on Edinburgh's Royal Mile. Well that's the simple story that the tour guides that take you round the Old Town will tell you, there is a bit more to it so I will bore you with a bit more of the detail. Thomas Aikenhead came from a well-to-do family in Edinburgh, his father being listed as a surgeon but more probably an apothecary, a dispenser of herbs and potions. Both his parents were dead by the time he became a student at Edinburgh University at the age of 16 or 17.

His mother had been a daughter of the manse, and you would think that would have made Aikenhead wary of challenging the established religion of the time, namely the all-powerful Church of Scotland, especially while still a student and under the constant gaze of professors, lecturers and, as it turned out, his fellow students.

These were the dying days of a curious period in Scottish history. Aikenhead would have been four when the ‘Wizard of the West Bow’ Major Thomas Weir was executed in 1670. Weir was by day an extreme Calvinist but by night an incestuous Satanist and it takes no great leap of reason to see that an impressionable young boy might well have been affected by the trial and execution of a local celebrity that lived not far from him.

The 1680s was also the ‘killing time’ for the Covenanters when many died because of they worshipped their same god in differing ways!

Thomas was a keen student and an avid reader, he may or may not have known and Edinburgh bookseller, John Frazer, who had been prosecuted after admitting either reading, or being in possession of Charles Blount’s Oracles of Reason a book I know nothing about but gather it relates to Deism, which questioned the existence or more importanyly, non-existence of God or Satan, Frazer had repented ad as it was a first offence was sackclothed and jailed in the old Tolbooth for a number of months.

Anyway, Thomas had a friend, well he thought he had a friend, Murdo Craig, but Murdo, on the sly had been keeping notes on Aitkenhead, and his dalliances with blasphemous ideals, we know that because they formed a large part of the indictment against Aikenhead.

“Nevertheless it is of verity, that you Thomas Aikenhead, shakeing off all fear of God and regaird to his majesties lawes, have now for more than a twelvemoneth by past, and upon severall of the dayes within the said space, and ane or other of the same, made it as it were your endeavour and work in severall compainies to vent your wicked blasphemies against God and our Saviour Jesus Christ, and against the holy Scriptures, and all revealled religione, in soe far as upon ane or other of the dayes forsaid, you said and affirmed, that divinity or the doctrine of theologie was a rapsidie of faigned and ill-invented nonsense, patched up partly of the morall doctrine of philosophers, and pairtly of poeticall fictions and extravagant chimeras, or words to this effect or purpose, with severall other such reproachfull expressions.”

That was just for starters. Sir James Stewart of Goodtrees, the Lord Advocate of the day, had taken a personal interest in the case and he decided to throw the whole lot of Craig’s testimony at Aikenhead who was arrested in November, 1696, and charged under the Blasphemy Act of 1661 which carried the death penalty. He also charged Aikenhead under a more recent act, which made it a criminal offence to ‘deny, impugn or quarrel’ about the existence of God.The prosecution papers go on to record

“You have lykwayes in discourse preferred Mahomet to the blessed Jesus, and you have said that you hoped to see Christianity greatly weakened, and that you are confident that in a short tyme it will be utterly extirpate.”

For Mahomet, read Muhammad, could young Thomas be an Islam convert in 17th century Edinburgh, I very much doubt it, they just needed to make an example of the young student, and he knew by now knew that he was in very great trouble and protested in effect that he was guilty only of the sin of being youthful and had been led astray by the books he had read. He claimed to have repented of his anti-Christian beliefs and was once again a good Presbyterian. In this way he seems to have thrown himself upon the mercy of the court, but there was no mercy. On Christmas Eve, 1696, a jury found him guilty. Sir James Stewart asked for the death penalty and it was granted and “pronounced for doom,” as Scottish judges were still saying well into the 20th century in capital punishment cases. Aikenhead pleaded for his life to the Privy Council emphasising his youth, his dire circumstances, and the fact that he was reconciled to the Protestant religion. There was some support for the death sentence to be commuted from at least two councillors and two Church of Scotland ministers, but the General Assembly of the Kirk intervened, demanding that Aikenhead suffer

“vigorous execution to curb the abounding of impiety and profanity in this land”.

In his last letter to friends, written in the Tolbooth prison in Edinburgh as he awaited execution, Aikenhead at last gave a plausible explanation for his conduct – that he had been a disappointed seeker after truth. He wrote:

“It is a principle innate and co-natural to every man to have an insatiable inclination to the truth and to seek for it as for hid treasure. So I proceeded until the more I thought thereon, the further I was from finding the verity I desired.” In truth, in a repressed society the student had just gone too far in rejecting the doctrines of Christianity calling it “feigned and ill-invented nonsense”

Aikenhead went to his death on January 8, 1697, hanged on the scaffold at Shrubhill between Edinburgh and Leith. It is said that before he died he proclaimed that moral laws were the work of governments and men. In his hand as the noose was plced around his neck was the Holy Bible. The execution angered many people for many years afterwards. The great English historian Thomas Babington Macaulay wrote an account of the hanging and called the execution “a crime such has never since polluted the island.”He continued: “The preachers who were the boy’s murderers crowded round him at the gallows, and, while he was struggling in the last agony, insulted Heaven with prayers more blasphemous than any thing that he had ever uttered.”

There was other evidence of church authorities being present as Aikenhead died. He was the last man in Britain to be hanged for blasphemy.

According to Arthur Herman in his book "How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe’s Poorest Nation Created Our World and Everything in It", the execution of Aikenhead was “the last hurrah of Scotland’s Calvinist ayatollahs” before the dawning of the age of reason in the Enlightenment.

Now we can all rejoice in The Enlightenment but a full 30 years later in the small town of Dornoch in Sutherland, Janet Horne was put on trial for the “crime” of having a daughter whose feet and hands were misshapen and who had herself given birth to a son with disabilities. She was the last woman in Britain to be burned at the stake for being a witch, her death bringing to an end the “burning time” when perhaps 4000 Scottish women were executed for the crime of witchcraft.

I thought I would add a wee bit more about Shrubhill in Leith, as most of us usually only regard Edinburgh's Old Town, The Tolbooth, and Grassmarket as sites where executions took place. I can't find out why Aikenhead was taken to, at what at the time, was a different town for his executions I did however find records of several taking place at the site, now student accommodation, but the site of Edinburghs tram workshops and powerstation, but beforehand not many know that it was the site of he gibbet known as the Gallow Lee, literally the "field with the gallows",

Bodies were buried at the base of the gallows or their ashes scattered if burnt. The most famous of those that met their end here was perhaps Major Weir, the Wizard of the West Bow.

1570- Two criminals strangled and burned to death.

1570 (4 October)- Rev. John Kelloe minister of Spott, East Lothian (near Dunbar) strangled and burnt for the murder of his wife

1664- Nine witches strangled and burnt

1670- Major Thomas Weir, the self-confessed warlock, strangled and burnt for witchcraft (almost the only self-confessed witch executed).

1678- Five witches strangled and burnt

1680- Part of the body of Covenanter David Hackston was hung in chains after his execution at the mercat cross in Edinburgh for the murder of Archbishop Sharp in 1679.

1681 (10 October)- Covenanters Garnock, Foreman, Russel, Ferrie and Stewart hanged and beheaded. Their headless bodies were buried at the site and their heads placed on the Cowgate Port at the foot of the Pleasance. Friends reburied the bodies in the graveyard of the West Kirk (St. Cuthberts). The heads were retrieved, placed in a box and then buried in garden ground at Lauriston. They lay there until 7 October 1726 when the then owner, Mr Shaw, had them exhumed and reburied near the Martyrs' Monument in Greyfriars Kirkyard.

1697 (8 January)- Thomas Aikenhead, a 19-year-old theology student at Edinburgh University became the last person to be executed under Scotland's blasphemy laws (and the last in Britain to be executed for that crime).

1752 (10 January)- Norman Ross, a footman, hanged for the murder of Lady Baillie, sister of Home, Laird of Wedderburn. The body was left to hang in a gibbet cage "for many a year" and became a local ghoulish tourist attraction.

Post mid 18th Century the Nor’ Loch was drained and the city expanded to the north by the building of the New Town with stone quarried from nearby Craigleith quarry. In such building sand was needed to add to the lime mortar and Gallow Lee proved to be just what was needed. The owner of Gallow Lee charged the builders to cart away the sand, containing the ashes and other remains of thousands of victims. The sandy mound of the Gallow Lee has gone I wonder how many New Town residents are aware that the very fabric of their building is bound together with the remains of these poor women convicted of being witches, covenanters and criminals?

#scotland #scottish #history #blasphemy #execution #zealots #religious history #leith

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neriad13 · 5 years

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The Dororo manga is something that has been very dear to me for a long time. The entire time I was watching the anime, I was mentally weighing it against the manga, trying to decide on which one I thought was better. For the most part, it was a pretty even competition...but then an inciting event happened which significantly tipped me in favor of one over the other. But first, a comparison!

Plot Arcs

- Bandai: There’s a bit more intrigue in the manga, but on the whole, I think it’s about even here. Bandai’s monster form is freaking beautiful in both of them.

- The Cursed Sword: The anime wins, by a nose. The mood, the tension, the symbolism, the much more obvious love of Tanosuke for his sister - I think this is one of the best put together episodes in the series.

However, what it was missing from the manga was Dororo’s anger at the world in general and the reason that he wanted a sword so bad. Anime Dororo picks it up by accident, isn’t following Hyakki around to steal one of his swords to begin with and isn’t a person who gets terribly angry. It’s more of a matter of differently written characters.

Would I have liked to see Anime Dororo get angry though? ...maybe. But that wasn’t what the episode was about.

- Mio: Point goes to the anime. I love how Mio’s story is expanded and how much more personality she’s given. Hyakki’s rampage is my favorite bit of animation in the entire show.

It’s also interesting how the placement of Mio’s arc affects what Hyakki’s character is like too. In the manga, by the time he’s telling the story as a flashback, he’s world-weary and his heart has turned to ice. In the anime, his heartbreak is fresh.

- Dororo’s Backstory: Point to the manga by a wide margin. Dororo’s parents are much less complex and interesting in the anime and the whole episode felt a bit rushed. Of course, that’s a lot of backstory to fit in one episode though.

- Banmon: Hmmmmm. This arc serves a much different thematic purpose in the anime, though it (somewhat) follows the events of the manga.

On one hand, the sequence in which Tahoumaru dies is one of my favorite in comics, period. It feels so dreamlike and disconnected from reality and in a manga which doesn’t shy away from showing fountains of blood, it’s shocking in that it doesn’t show a drop.

On the other hand, OH MY GOD Nui’s near-suicide was heartbreaking, the fact that they gave a backstory for Tahoumaru’s eye was phenomenal and I was utterly shocked and elated that Sukeroku actually found his family.

It’s a draw.

- Fair Fudo - The anime. The fact that I’m having a hard time remembering how it went down in the manga says it all. Also having Dororo be the one to rescue Hyakkimaru this time was an excellent decision.

- Sabame: Oh my god, the manga. Bad. Bad anime.

- Shiranui: Gonna go with the manga here. I am forever salty that the anime left out the “I’m a boy” line.

However, the anime also gets half a point for ACTUALLY PUTTING TREASURE IN THE TREASURE HOARD and not rendering that entire storyline pointless. -.-

- Nue: There’s not really a point of comparison here. It’s the same monster transplanted in a totally different storyline. But, with that said...

Do I give a single shit about Manga Nue?

Nope.

Do I give a shit about Anime Nue?

Yes.

- Midoro: Hmm. Another toss-up.

I found Midoro’s death in the manga much more affecting. The image of a dying horse, riddled with arrows, spending her last moments wandering among the fallen - that says something more about the grimness of war and the innocents caught in the middle of it than turning her into a horse bomb ever could.

However...I was so freaking THRILLED that Hyakkimaru got to ride her in the anime. My desktop’s background still contains a screenshot from the episode 22 preview of him doing that. Their stories are not so different and in this adaptation, it felt so eerily natural for them to end up together. Their partnership was utterly horrifying and glorious to watch.

Characters

- Hyakkimaru: There’s a lot to unpack here. The differences between characterizations are like night and day. So, I’ll start by taking you on a journey.

I loved Manga Hyakki’s snark. I loved his aloofness, his sarcasm, his arsenal of ridiculous weapons, his terror at the thought of having a mother who abandoned him, his rage at the thought of other children being abandoned, the way he hated the fox for telling him who Tahoumaru was more than he hated himself for killing him.

Watching the first few episodes of the anime was kind of difficult for me. It felt like the snark had been surgically removed and thus, was not there to lighten up the intense drama of the rest of the story.

But, as time went on and I got to see more of who Anime Hyakki was, he grew on me like nothing else. The stark contrast between his gentleness and his seething hatred of all beings who would take advantage of another, human or demonic. His insistent desire to be heard, to be listened to, even if he has to scream to get the point across. His unshakable resolve in the face of an entire world against him. The fact that his disability is something that actually limits him - that he can’t read minds or use telepathy and that learning to speak is something that takes the entire runtime of the show to accomplish - that is compelling. And so amazingly refreshing.

This one’s a draw.

- Dororo: The World’s Greatest Thief really doesn’t do a whole lot of thieving in this anime (once. literally once. offscreen. unless you count the attempted theft of Hyakki’s reforged swords). But then again, Dororo is also a way different character in this adaptation.

In the manga, he’s much more of a little snot. He’s furious with the world and constantly looking for ways to get back at it. He travels with Hyakki because he wants to steal from him. He’s not welcome in some villages because he’s such an awful kleptomaniac of a child. I do not have trouble believing that this Dororo has a demon in him that Hyakki has to kill if he wants his arm back.

Anime Dororo...is the complete opposite of that. He’s the kindest, most loving character in the entire show. He looks at a horrible world and doesn’t shake his fist at the sky - he tries his damnedest to make it better.

Both characterizations have their high points and their low ones. Manga Dororo is an entertaining little monster. Anime Dororo is an angel and the prevailing voice of reason. I think it would have been pretty interesting to end up with a character somewhere in between those two extremes, but, alas.

Manga Dororo’s arc is about taking responsibility and figuring out how to be someone better.

Anime Dororo’s arc is about raising someone else up to be better.

Also calling this one a draw.

- Tahoumaru: THE ANIME, by a mile. Or more. Way more! It’s not even a question. His depth and complexity, his compassion and anger, his deep love for his land, his people and his friends - HOT DAMN IS THIS A WELL WRITTEN CHARACTER. Manga Tahoumaru looks like a missed opportunity compared to him.

- Jukai: I wasn’t terribly fond of Anime Jukai at first. My first thought upon seeing the Jukai-centered episode was “Jukai’s an asshole =(”

Like, Jesus Christ, please give him a leg. He limped so far looking for you.

But, over time, I came to understand him better. He is a character in stasis, one who has “given up all power”, responsibility and desire. If he does nothing, if he devotes his life to pointless pursuits for those who can no longer benefit from them, then he can hurt no one.

Anime Jukai is one of my favorite characters now. The kind, fatherly figure of the manga who was delighted to know that Hyakki loves him has his place, but the point goes to the anime here.

- Nui no Kata: ANIME. Another character whose role was fantastically expanded, to great affect. Her story feels like the chapter that was left out of the manga.

- Saburota: Anime Saburota is Saburota in name only. Can’t really compare here.

- Daigo: To be honest, I don’t find either version of Daigo to be particularly compelling. He’s more important as a plot device than as a person. It’s a draw...unless Daigo’s ending from the stage play makes it to the anime, at which point Anime Daigo would win.

Stage Play Daigo gave me chills, man.

- Biwamaru: Our resident cryptic shit and spirit guide might be the only character who made the transition unchanged. He’s exactly like his manga self personality-wise and is the only character whose design was not significantly changed.

- Shiranui: I really like that anime Shiranui actually fed his arm to the sharks! It’s like he took Manga Shiranui’s desire to be eaten by them and actually acted on it. Anime wins.

- Itachi: Manga all the way. His sole redeeming features were that he felt badly for stripping Dororo and how he subsequently chose to respect his gender identity. Lacking those features...he’s a much less sympathetic and interesting character. He also went down screaming battle cries at the samurai who were attacking him and defending Dororo.

Overarching Themes

- Manga: I believe that the overarching theme of the manga is that of otherness and how the world reacts to it. The hardest hitting scenes for me are the ones in which Hyakki and Dororo are thrown out of a village they saved by villagers unable to understand that they’re just as human as them. Hyakkimaru doesn’t struggle to regain his body because it’d be better than a prosthetic one (acid gun leg! c’mon! the heck would you need a flesh one for?? if it gets shot you can just build another) - he does it because he wants to be seen as human, however long he has to fight to do it.

- Anime: Individual vs. collective responsibility. Anime Hyakki actually suffered long term harm because of the demon deal. His prostheses and abilities have considerably more limits. He wants to regain his body because he wants to live and experience all the things he’s been missing. But...in this case there’s a cost. The fact that his actions directly cause calamities in Daigo - that’s a fantastic choice that makes the story bigger than just one person fighting to be human. As much as I love the manga and its themes, I think the anime’s central conflict is slightly more compelling.

The Tipping Point

It was this scene specifically.

The desperation, the futility, the love so strong it destroys - these aren’t things that happen in the manga.

Manga Hyakki is constantly trying to get rid of Dororo, belittling him, forcibly reading his mind and fighting over something stupid more often than not. He cares about him, in his way, but would his heart crack in two if Dororo died and there was no way he could have prevented it? Probably. For a bit, anyway. Then it would harden again and he’d go back to doing what he was doing without Dororo.

Their bond in the anime is something else. It is the beating heart of the entire story. It’s the reason why Hyakki is so desperate to get his final pieces back. He wants to be able to save Dororo with hands that can lift a rock. He wants to see the fall colors with him.

Episode 20 was the one that pushed me over the edge into finding the anime superior to the manga...which is an amazing accomplishment, considering how dear the manga has been to me for so long.

I cannot believe how excited I am for the final episode.

#dororo #dororo 2019 #hyakkimaru #jukai #tahoumaru #daigo #personal essay #a thought

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somarysueme · 5 years

Text

WicDiv Thoughts, some overly personal

stiiiiiillllll can’t really put together my feelings about the end and epilogue. I will say that I liked the ending and epilogue more than I expected to*, and the longer I sit on it, I find more things to like about it.

(* Except for everything about Baal and Mini)

That said, there’s still that huge, unpleasant gap between what I wanted/expected this comic was supposed to be, and what it actually intended/was. I wrote this post after 43 (the “everyone does the thing” chapter), using bits of a half-written reaction to 39 ("Laura did the thing” chapter) to talk about that gap. I decided to sit on it til everything was said and done Just In Case, but I mostly still agree with what I’d written.

So Here Are My Thoughts

The full pantheon abdicating! This is basically where I expected us to go. Since 39 it seems like the natural place for the story to be headed. Laura’s revelations, along with the Daddy Forgive Us special made it clear that the only way out of the game was not to play it. I was kinda luke warm on that concept, but it made sense for where the story was at that point. I was waiting to see how it actually played out before getting fussy about it.

I give him a C for execution here. Maybe a C+.

I thought Dio’s moment was great. Jon’s was beautiful. Inanna’s I definitely could have gotten behind if he’d actually gotten to have any of that arc on the page instead of getting put on a bus 30 chapters ago.

The rest range from “meh” to “yikes.”

I could have liked this, I wanted to like this. Given how much “OKAY” has been miles more thoughtful than Mothering Invention, I was genuinely hoping to like this. I would have loved to see these kids find something more important than godhood to live for. But that’s not what we got.

We did get them realizing that being a god is not worth dying for. Which is good! And essential! And basically the central conceit of this comic!

But.

But...

I really wanted to see our cast value their lives period. And while there was some of that, there was far more of seeing them be humbled. We saw them beaten down until they had no choice but to admit they Were Not Special (or at least, were not as special as they thought). I was hoping for them to find a capacity to value their lives because their lives have value whether or not they are special, but instead it was a story about being humbled, and I guess to me, I just can’t see that what young queer artists need is help being humbled. They need help being valued as people, they need the internal presence of self to command that value be respected, and they need the external support to give them a fighting chance at that. And not to be That Fan, but that fighting chance doesn’t come from individual actions. It comes from worker solidarity and respect for labor as labor. It just doesn’t work for me to have a series around the exploitation and consumption of young talent and leave anything material about money and labor practices out of the material.

(McKelvie’s My (6000 F) pantheon has unionized joke, but unironically.)

Anyway this comic was all about Don’t Let This Happen To You. And that’s a good start, but I was hoping for it to be so much more than that. It could be that this is me looking at WicDiv and wanting it to say something broader about specialness and creativity and mental illness and exploitation.

(There’s a lot to be unpacked wrt presenting itself as a story about the whole world through all of human history, while also intending to be psuedoautobiographical for a very specific set of circumstances. But that’s not this post.)

It’s weird because like, Fandemonium already delivered masterfully on Laura learning to value herself outside of godhood. Laura’s last pre-apoptheosis soliloquy about “I can’t save any of them, but I can still help them” was one of those wham moments that really cemented this book’s place in my heart. Living through Fandemonium and realizing that the gods were people, and needed actual love and support from people who cared about them as people, and that just being a decent friend is something worth living for, fuck!! That’s good shit!! That’s fucking excellent!!

And for the rest of WicDiv’s run, I was always waiting for the story to get back to that place, but it never really did.

(ETA AFTER 45 IS OUT: ok fine I fucking love that Laura saved Luci. Big Gay Hero Girl drags naughty non-devil out of hell and they kiss, fucking A+. But “can’t save but CAN help” is still something I wish the comic had followed up on more. The friendship thing got touched on a little bit too, but never in a way I found as satisfying as Fandemonium.)

So anyway Luci going Full Diva. Her future is this and her future is nothing.

The longer I chew on it, the more I like it, and the more it seems like the inevitable place for Elanor Rigby’s story to go. It’s a good continuation from where we last saw her have any scrap of agency, but also frustrating in that “the lat time we saw her have any scrap of agency” was basically the entire comic ago. It was jarring to have her go from [One Sassy Line Per Issue] to [Maybe I’m The Final Boss]. Her story suffered deeply suffered from all the time she spent off screen. But despite all that, I’m very much really looking forward to whatever the fuck Laura Wilson’s going to do about this.

I’m trying not to get my hopes up for Talk Her Down ending. It seems perfectly in line with this series to end with the moral of “sometimes, no matter how kind or brave or caring you are, people you love pick their addictions over living.” That’s a song I’ve already heard live and in person, and I don’t really want or need to hear anyone else’s studio cover.

Uh final thought on 43 is.... Minanke DOES seem to count herself as part of the 12, which still lines up with my Emily Was Also A Fake God theory (Fauxmaterasu theory? Nokami hypothesis? Amaterasuspicion?) but it does seem unlikely to actually be a Thing between now and the epilogue. shrug.

(ETA AGAIN: I had to write out my feelings on 39 and Laura’s own abdication (unpotheosis?) to properly respond to 43. So here’s a draft of another unpublished post that I fleshed out.)

I have extremely mixed feelings about chapter 39.

First Feeling: thank fuck the pregnancy plot is over.

Second feeling: establishing abdication as an option established a nice overarching shape to this book. Things have felt directionless for many chapters, but this does make it seem like we are back on some kind of track.

Third Feeling: kinda liking abdication as a general direction for endgame. For most of the series, I was hoping the whole that there actually was Something Important about the recurrence, but since it's clear now that it’s basically all lies, I like this this angle well enough.

Strongest Feeling: hell fucking yes to Laura’s shaved head.

(Tangential Feeling: buzzing your own head is good and you should think about doing it. Doing it for catharsis in a moment of crisis is A-OK, but I did it once just because I felt like it and it was fucking great. banishing your high maintenance hair does not cure depression, but it does give you back an hour of personal upkeep every day and the fuzzy head is wonderful to touch.)

Contrary to most of the fandom, though, I absolutely loathed Laura’s monologue here, and the context that it puts around her not-choice. There’s a lot of shitty Hot Takes out there about how mental illness and addition and creation intersect. A lot of people will suggest that being unhealthy makes you a better artist, and what’s more that being a better artist is worth being unhealthy. This series is unambiguously and steadfastly against that message, which is one of the absolute best and most important things about it! I don’t want to diminish that.

But that all said, seeing Laura alone in the dark describing “an addicts moment of clarity” was... jesus it was all kinds of personally painful and upsetting. It hurt real bad, and not in the way I though I had agreed to be hurt. And I’m not sure how to spell out why.

I have thousands and thousands of words on why it struck such a sour cord in me, but a lions share can be summed up with “fuck absolutely every story where a Troubled Girl just needed to get traumatized/humiliated/humbled enough to Realize How Bad She Was Being.” Double fuck this one in particular for showing the girl getting over addiction/mental illness by literally sitting alone in the dark thinking about how much she fucked up. That story is tired, and cruel, and dangerous, and thank Christ I encountered this comic at 30 and not 19 because I would have swallowed it down with all the other poison that Helpful Adults fed me.

But yeah though, her shaved look is fucking adorable as shit. Neither she nor Britany made any hair mistakes.

ETA ULTIMATE: That last bit is the one thing in this post I don’t quite still stand by. By the end, it’s clear that the above wasn’t at all the story this book was trying to tell at all. I thought WicDiv was trying to tell some Epic Truths, Hard-Facts-About-Human-Nature shit. But despite the sweeping setup (All Across The World and Through All Of History) the book was using a complex allegory for a very specific situation (Selling Your Soul and Name and Life To Creative-Industrial Machines), and that made it muddy.

(Insert Principal Skinner meme here “Am I out of touch? Was I simply interrogating the text from the wrong perspective? No, it’s the original creators who are wrong!”)

I’m from a family of mentally ill, addiction-prone, recovering-Catholic artists. Laura is in my blood. Half the people I love are Laura. I have Laura’s painting on my wall and her books on my shelf. I’ve sat with Laura’s mother a few years after Laura’s death, as her father now slowly dying in the next room, and listened to her music for the first time. (It was good. It was really good. And I never even knew.)

These experiences colored my read, but how could they not?

I do now, I think, understand what Gillen was trying to say- the addiction he was talking about was to stardom, the attention and accolades, and free pass to make your own shit be everyone else’s problem. I understand now that the “art” that the gods made was always supposed to be Not Real Art, that there was no true “message” from their songs- all noise, no signal. It was never about Laura’s art, or even Laura as an artist. And that was unpleasant to reconcile.

Because when you're Laura, or Elanor, or any of them, life doesn’t have to grant your ill-advised wish before it fucks your head and kills you. Sometimes you fight as hard as you can with every fiber of your being and you’re still in Hell. Sometimes you’re doing all the Meetings and self-reflection and therapy you can manage and you’re still a Destroyer. But the shit you create while you’re down there is worthy of creating. What you do with your too-short, too-fucked time matters. A fucked up life was still worth living because it was your life to live. And... I guess, from the story presented in Faust Act and Fandemonium, I sort of thought that this was what WicDiv was supposed to be talking about. I thought it was going to be about doing something good even when life is fucking you. But instead it is a cautionary tale that that suggests you could have stopped getting fucked at any time if you had just gotten over yourself and said the magic words.

We spent half the comic watching Laura drag herself through the mud. Half the comic was focused on Her Mistakes, when so little of her circumstances were actually her fault. “Punish Ophelia until she gets over herself” is not at all what WicDiv meant to be about. I imagine the creators would be aghast to hear that’s what I got out of it. But the text is what the text is. While it is intended (and successful!) at being many other very good things, this one really bad thing is still part of that mix, and that sucks.

Maybe I should have picked up on the discrepancy between my read and the intent sooner. Probably I should have just done myself a favor and stop reading once I did.

2016, 2017 while my life was going a bit to shit, this comic was exactly what I needed. Being in the fandom made my life better and helped me meet cool new friends and get through some of the hardest shit to happen to me since I was a kid. Then in 2018, it slid into source of frustration and soured promise. Now at the end I have no idea if I liked it or not.

But that’s fine, now that it’s done. The ink is dry, the ritual is over. It’s just a comic book now. Some pictures I still love and some words I don’t always agree with. A lot of noise, arguable amounts of signal, but not a song I want to play on loop anymore.

I have no real conclusion to draw here. I respect at how firmly WicDiv rejects dark and unhealthy parts of being a professional creator- especially unhealthy things that are generally just accepted as Common Wisdom. I don’t think it took enough care in spelling out what it was rejecting, though, and I do think it was remiss in not finding good healthy things to embrace as an alternative.

All of the above notwithstanding, I have to give it credit for delivering almost exactly what I wanted in terms of lesbian nonsense. That ain’t nothing.

I give this series ?????/∞ and am happy to be safely clear of Kieron Gillen’s Wild Ride

#wicdiv #wicdiv spoilers #somewhat negative #its a mixed bag tbh

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monikafilefan · 5 years

Text

Dead End Road ch2

This is ch 2 of 5 and this one has angst, hurt/comfort, more dialogue, SEX.

Mulder and Scully continue to navigate through the pain. They find a way to open up and heal some of their emotional darkness, but is it a bandaid or will it open up an opportunity for them they never saw coming?

Tagging @peacenik0 @skullsmuldon @scully-eats-sushi @baronessblixen @today-in-fic @2plumsandagherkin @postmodernpromartheus

“But pain's like water. It finds a way to push through any seal. There's no way to stop it. Sometimes you have to let yourself sink inside of it before you can learn how to swim to the surface.” ― Katie Kacvinsky

----------

They had been on the road for a few hours now with little conversation between them. Everything that needed to be said had been at the time in the motel, and everything that wasn’t, was surely being thought about. After shedding their tears and consoling one another for a long time, they had pulled themselves together long enough to shower and get on the road again. It was their fourth night spent in that little motel and since the beginning of life-on-the-run , they had never stayed in one place for longer than that.

Scully stared out the window without really looking at anything specific, and Mulder chomped on seeds while he stewed in his own mental juices after hearing her response to his question.

As he tapped his fingers along the steering wheel, he wondered when or if either of them could ever find any sense of fulfillment on a day like today. Two and a half years of being on the run had actually served them well. No more unrelenting cases to obsess over, no more time spent stressing and sifting through the lies to find the truth. No more sleepless nights filled with wondering if the other is safe in their own bed miles away, protected from mutants, psychic killers or reincarnates of evil. Now, they were together in every respect, but together as a family of three with one missing.

They were still Mulder and Scully. Just a Mulder and Scully with nowhere to be but with each other. The same Mulder and Scully that took the good with the bad and were still in love. He smirked to himself as he realized the meaning of his musings. For better or worse, since 1992.

Scully turned to look at Mulder’s distinguished profile while he chewed on a mouthful of sunflower seeds, lost in his thoughts. She squirmed in her seat and fidgeted with her hands in her lap, trying to ascertain how Mulder had received her reply to his question. She knew her anger and inner turmoil really had nothing to do with Mulder. She stared at her restless hands as the small part of her soul that she’d tucked her raw emotions attached to their son into, stirred down deep inside her making her sick to her stomach for the second time.

On this day in the past, today, and every day that marked their son’s day of birth in the foreseeable future, will set the limit on exactly how much anguish she can withstand before it devours her from the inside out.

She pressed her lips together in a tight line to hold back a groan when a sudden memory of her mother’s words came to mind. They were said just two months before she had rocked William to sleep in his nursery for the very last time...

“You should trust in the Lord for protection, Dana,” her Mother explained, pressing a kiss to Williams forehead.

She had turned her face away from them, shaking it while swiping at her tear stained cheeks and said, “Mom, my son will be protected! I’ll make it so. No matter what. Even if it kills me.”

And it was killing her, killing them both by slowly eating her and Mulder alive like a disease.

She clenched her teeth in frustration. Her torment boiled up through her chest, burning the chunk of her heart that belonged to solely William. She only blamed herself for forcing Mulder to leave them and hide himself away to suffer alone. She only blamed herself for not being home with her baby more, to spend every waking moment touching his sweet, soft skin. She only blamed herself for not being able to keep their son safe. And she only blamed herself for not begging Mulder to come home to save them both from making a soul crushing decision; she’d hidden that from him which only added to her guilt.

Currently, she’d added culpability for inflicting more pain onto Mulder to her list of reasons to feel self-degradation. She felt guilty for feeling happiness with the man she loved more than anything when she had not one fucking clue whether their own son was happy, too.

And on any other day, she truly was happy. But on this day, she was anything but.

Scully had finally just shut her eyes, head still leaning against the cool window during her inner monologue torture session, but popped them open when Mulder suddenly pulled the car onto the side of the road and had finally spoken, “get out of the car.”

“What?” she turned toward him, confused and staring at his still forward facing profile.

Mulder had spent the last few minutes putting his psychology degree to good use and knew what she needed, what he needed to do with her, together. Even if it was on the side of a dirt road surrounded by nothing but a rusted playground right next to a barely standing Dead End road sign. Oh it was a sign alright, and he was going to tell it, and the irony of it all to fuck off; literally.

Turning his eyes to lock onto her, he planned to repeat himself in a way that would not go unnoticed to Scully. He opened his door and spat out the leftover seed shells and repeated in a gritty voice, “get out of the car, Scully.” He felt his eyes narrow in on that goddamn pink tongue that poked out of the side of her mouth, making the edge glisten.

She knew that tone. Her body perked up instantly from one set of lips to the other, recognizing the seductive baritone of the man who sent shocks of pleasure through it every time he used it. She obeyed willingly as she felt herself flush with excitement, her arousal trickled in slowly as she climbed out of the car.

Scully protested briefly with her eyes as she searched the location in which she were about to be ravaged, but she knew she would need no actual coaxing from Mulder to welcome him back inside her body and soul. The place where she needed him most at the moment.

“You’re right, Scully, we do all those things that you listed so honestly. I wanted more for you and more for our life,” he said, swallowing down a lump that formed in his throat as he stepped closer. “I begged you to stay in DC and let me weather the shitstorm instead of you living on the run as a fugitive, yet here we are, together.” Walking around the the hood, he reached out to her waist as she met him halfway.

Scully narrowed her eyes at him for his comment about leaving her behind, pissed off that he was bringing it up again but she understood his protest. But there was no way in hell was she going to let him out of her sight ever again.

She would rather die a slow and painful death—much like her cancer—than go through being separated from him while his life was on the line, wondering if he was alive or dead and he knew it!

Mulder brushed her now wind blown hair away from Scully’s face to cover her mouth with his, kissing her firmly and cutting off any complaint she might’ve had.

After pulling away reluctantly, he needed to reply to her earlier answer. “We do drive, but we take turns. We do eat, but we dine together. We do fuck, but we fuck and make amazing love coming together as one. We do sleep, but we sleep in the same bed with our bodies wrapped around one another.”

He felt her fingers tighten around his bicep and watched her as she bit her lip and fluttered her lashes. Mulder reached up and placed his thumb and forefinger around her chin so she couldn’t hide her eyes. “Every day were together, I understand the fact that we never get out of the damn car and never end up on a road that’s free of dead ends and dark shadows, but I am happy, Scully,” he choked out, fighting off tears. “I’m happy just being with you; having my other half walk through life right along with me!” He said it adamantly, but it came out as a whisper while she pulled his forehead to meet hers.

“Oh, I feel the same way. Really, and I can’t forget. It’s just…I need to feel good today, Mulder,” she admitted, breathless as his mouth inched closer to her jaw.

“Jesus, me too, Scully! Me too,” he mumbled into the skin of her neck, making her breath catch. He skimmed his teeth along the artery above her collar bone, making her moan.

This wouldn't be an attentive sensual act of love, not this time. They needed to feel physical pleasure to dull the emotional pain. And as his hands smoothed up her thighs and caught the lusty need in her gaze, he knew this would be an aggressive fuck that they both demanded.

She groaned out, “make me feel something better. Make us both feel better, Mulder.”

The honesty and truth in her words broke open what was remaining of the exterior veneer guarding their hearts and the last of their control seeped out.

Mulder took a step back and realized that they were both suddenly crying silently; again. Their emotions battling with the intense need of release. Having the knowledge that he was helpless to fight back against it, he let his tears come so his body could as well.

Aching for him in more ways than one, Scully pulled up his shirt and ran her hands all over his chest and down to loosen the button of his jeans. Mulder quickly reached down to her thighs and grabbed fist fulls of her thin flowing cotton sundress, bunching it up above her hips. He ignored his t-shirt and her button down camisole which only added to the haste to fulfill one anothers need for pleasure. As she unzipped his fly and pushed down his pants and boxers for them to fall to his ankles, he hooked his fingers into her panties and swiftly yanked them down and off of her creamy pale legs, tossing them on the hood.

Anticipation was thrumming through them like an electric current, and they welcomed it and each other with open arms.

Their mouths collided in a rush to connect along with their tongues, as they licked salty tears off of one anothers lips, soothing each others hurt. Scully whimpered softly into his mouth while she wrapped her arms around his shoulders in order to brace herself for the familiar breadth of pleasure about to pound into her lithe body.

Mulder’s breathing grew rapid along with his heart rate as he ground his hips up into hers, pressing her against the car. Pulling his chest into hers, she bounced her toes off of the gravely dirt road and kicked her sandals off as she hooked her ankles around his narrow hips for leverage. A throaty growl erupted when he gripped her waist with one hand and clutched her flesh between his fingers, knowing exactly how dark the bruises would be later. Then, he slapped his other hand along the hot hood of the car, his self-control waning.

Scully brushed her lips along his prickly jaw, taking another stray tear into her mouth and pleaded, “ please , Mulder…”

He obliged and rubbed the tip of his erection into her wet folds and then pushed into her with one long hard thrust, causing her to cry out expletives that she rarely uttered outside of the bedroom. Her eyes drew away from his face as her head bent down at an angle to watch the desperate race to reach euphoria between them. Gliding in and out of her at an already frantic pace, and hearing the familiar sounds of her rising to her peak, made him pump into her center even harder. He nudged her cheek with his nose, tilted her face up to meet his heavy lidded gaze and never looked away from her bright blue wet eyes, sending her love deep into his soul.

They were completely enraptured as their bodies rocked up and down at an accelerated stride. He crashed back into her and she couldn’t help but yelp. He withdrew and crashed again and again, digging his feet into the dirt. Sweat trickled down their foreheads and around their thighs, sticking their skin together with every movement. Mulder watched her body as it bounced in rhythm to his hips while her eyes rolled back into her head.

Right then, he felt his face slacken as pleasure took over to win the battle with his emotions. “Ahh, yes!”

Nothing could touch them when they were in their own bubble, the rest of the world faded away along with the shared blanket of anguish that the memories of the now three year old William suffocated them in.

The only sounds that surrounded them were the soft breeze ruffling through the palm trees, brushing along their revealed skin while the grunts and groans which overpowered the wet slapping sounds of their bodies ramming together echoed in the air.

“Oh, fuck…oh God!” she shrieked, after a particularly rough plunge of his hips and received a long moan from deep within his chest in return.

Scully dug her nails into the meat of Mulder’s back, tearing at his shirt and crushing his entire upper body into her own while she rode out her pleasure with an open mouth. Mulder clung onto the underside of her shaking thigh with one hand and squeezed at the back of her damp neck with the other as he bit down on her bottom lip, drawing her face closer in encouragement for her to let go.

Three vigorous thrusts later, she wailed out her pain mingled with pleasure into his mouth as he came undone right along with her. His hips slammed the back of her pelvis against the hard surface of the car while he jerked and chanted her name like a prayer. Scully’s limbs shook along with Mulder’s trembling hands that ran all over her sweaty exposed skin. Both of them disheveled and spent, she couldn’t help but fall boneless in the cradle of his arms as they released their emotional pain into each others bodies.

Still breathing hard, Mulder held onto Scully’s waist and pushed off of the car while he nuzzled her face with his nose. “Scully…” he gasped out.

“Yeah, I’m here. I’m okay, Mulder,” she assured, pressing a gentle kiss to his swollen lips.

He sighed and cupped her face with his warm palm and whispered, “feel better yet, Scully?” he asked as he watched her wipe his sweat streaked hair from his brow.

“Yes, good. I feel good, Mulder,” she answered with a sated smirk as her eyes bounced between his. With a furrowed brow, she held his gaze to gage his state of mind. “Do you?” she asked, her voice laced with concern.

As he kept eye contact, he slowly left her body causing them both to hiss from the loss. Mulder gently pulled the bottom of her dress down over her exposed bottom half while she held onto the side mirror for balance. Her still quivering legs fell like stones away from his hips and her bare feet landed in the hot dirt and gravel, but she didn’t care. All she cared about was the man standing in front of her.

Bent down, he yanked up his pants and zipped up his fly. He cupped her chin and rubbed his thumb along her jawline. With complete honesty he explained, “I feel , Scully. I’m happy to feel and not be either numb with grief, or stricken with so much anger and pain that I can barely function every time my son’s birthday comes around. I’m just happy he’s safe and I’m happy with you,” he reminded her while running his fingers through her hair.

Scully nodded and closed her eyes as Mulder wrapped his arms around her, smiling for the first time today into her hair.

“I love you, Mulder. Sickeningly so,” she told him, with her face pressed to his sternum. “I just…I miss him so damn much. And on his third birthday, a day that should be celebrated, I feel nothing but sadness,” she barely forced her words out without the lump in her throat taking over.

Mulder squeezed her tighter into his chest and relished in the feel of her hands gripping him back. He reassured her that he was there for her, always. “Oh, honey I know you do, me too,” he noted wistfully that missing his son he’d barely had the chance to know didn’t lessen his pain. He ran his fingers through her long, thick hair and crooned to her, “we’ll get through this, Scully. We will.”

There he stood on the side of a road, physically and emotionally comforting a barefooted Scully who was still missing her panties after he had just fucked the hell out of her against the side of their car.

And he hadn’t regretted a goddamn second of it.

----------

#emotional pain #comfort #only together #it gets happier #reblog if you still want more

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vaguely-concerned · 5 years

Text

empire of ivory here we go!

previous temeraire let’s read here

- um excuuuuse me I have waited two books for us to come back home to britain to see everyone again and now everything is awful and shitty and scary and my fave is leaving and nothing’s how it should be??? no??? this is unfair??????

- tharkay NO please don’t go everything provably goes to hell whenever you leave D:D:D:

(to be fair to him I guess it’s understandable to want some time alone to process the absolute outrageous bullshit he just pulled for a guy he’s known for like four months)

he used his page time well tho; instantly convincing roland of his worth and making her laugh... giving laurence his cup of tea b/c he looked like he needed it more... telling laurence that he’s leaving because he promised to do that much at least... truly the best boy, off to fetch more dragons apparently because it wasn’t quite crazy enough the first time

- god I love jane roland, I’m so glad my two faves got along instantly, between them they could... maybe protect laurence from himself? at least a little??? I can but dream

- I think this is the most emotionally invested I’ve been in a piece of media since that time I spent a few months completely incoherent over uncharted, and naughty dog very kindly held my heart in their hands and chose to be gentle with it in the end but I am not so sure that is how it’s going to be for this series and I am Not Prepared for the suffering

- I love whenever laurence thinks uncomfortably about one of the various and sundry atrocities committed by the government he’s still pledged all his loyalty to. yes william maybe the british empire... is in fact not good and has enough blood on their hands to dye the ocean red. I can’t wait until he connects the dots here (and presumably has a pretty intense crisis if faith about it because it seems like one of the loadbearing structures of his character... actually no wait I’m not ready to see this D:D:D:)

- the little details like the fact that he just calls bb!roland ‘emily’ and harcourt becomes ‘catherine’ so easily in his narration now are so so sweet

- lord allendale is one of those dudes who have good politics but is a shitheel to his family and I want to smack him

laurence being the mortified poster boy of this party, though? priceless, imagine coming up with a protagonist this effortlessly involuntarily hilarious, it’s the mark of true genius

- I don’t usually quibble over things like this, but I think the edit for this fourth book specifically is a bit lacking? I’ve come across a lot of mistakes even my dumb ass can pick up on already, and I’m only a hundred pages or so in

- caught between crying and cackling at this part b/c like laurence I’m d e v a s t a t e d at the thought of temeraire getting sick but also temeraire is just like cheerfully getting laid the whole time

also how did none of the aviators think to give laurence The Talk about giving his dragon The Talk, you all know what he’s like

- oh thank god

- I have spent half of today crying about dragons coughing, how are you this fine evening good reader

- btw this series fills a hole in my soul left by jkr giving me all those tantalizing hints of different types of dragons in ‘fantastic beasts’ and never following up on it

- tharkay may not be here but laurence just mentioned him like once in his narration so let’s take the excuse to reminisce about the good old days (when tharkay was here)... remember that time when the one of his own jokes he laughed openly at was about lawyers and laurence frankly should have responded better b/c it was kind of funny and sadly temeraire doesn’t have the worldly experience to know it yet.... aaah precious, he truly is a sardonic blessing to my heart and deserves the world

okay back to our regularly scheduled content

- riley why u gotta b such a bitch about this

(I love how laurence is constantly doubting himself over this tho, as if he’s done something wrong in this situation... like honey baby if there’s one thing worth breaking a friendship over it’s probably them being cool with slavery lol. it shows how much laurence has grown, considering that this disagreement has always existed between them but he used to be willing to just overlook it... I’m so proud of you laurence)

also lol @ berkely coming in to tell them everyone can hear them, I have a desperately soft spot for him and maximus. just the image of both of them turning to him ‘united in appalled indignation’ like ‘excuse you???’ and him giving exactly zero fucks... *chef kiss emoji*

- most important information revealed in this book: a) dragons are not widely considered to have committed original sin, thank you reverend erasmus and b) laurence has taken time out of his day at some point to worry about it b/c he’s a dork

(this is the sort of world building I am hopelessly weak to lol)

- gong su tricking temeraire into eating in the most melodramatic way possible... god bless you chef

- fkjhsadkjfhsdkjalhfaskjldhf laurence judging chenery for what he’s wearing while going out into the jungle in full uniform hat included himself... I caaaaan’t

- demane has only appeared on three pages so far but if anything happens to him I’ll kill everyone in this book and then myself

- ‘average dragon speaks one million languages’ factoid actualy statistical error. Temeraire Linguist Georg, who wants a pavilion thank you very much & learns over 10,000 languages each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted <3<3<3

(I love that temeraire is like... a nerd dragon with a hopelessly jock captain)

- laurence effortlessly rating the relative hotness of the other male aviators to try to suss out who harcourt has slept with fjsaldfhsdkljafh do you ever hear yourself think william

like this is the thing about him it’s so easy to headcanon him as bi b/c he can be so mindbogglingly oblivious it’s entirely possible he literally wouldn’t even have noticed until someone smacked him over the head with it

- see I’m very happy they found the cure but I don’t fucking trust it b/c the pattern of these books tends to be to give you one moment of ‘oh phew everything is going to be okay’ about 2/3 into the story and THEN everything goes to hell and fifty pages later laurence is dissociating and napoleon has conquered prussia

- THERE WE GO RIGHT ON SCHEDULE

temeraire is never going to let laurence go anywhere without him again and rightly so

- hasn’t mrs erasmus been through enough. can’t she just be allowed to chill

- this is really cool world building but I’m too stressed out to appreciate it

really enjoy the description of architecture tho this sounds so awesome

- sfahdfklsahdfksjda laurence making sure his clothes are as washed and presentable as possible... I can’t with you you beautiful idiot

- TEMERAIRE OH MY GOD IS HE HERE IS LAURENCE HALLUCINATING PLS SAY HE’S ACTUALLY HERE

- ...well I mean if anyone has a freudian excuse for being kind of dickish I guess it would be these guys? it’s actually pretty chill of them to only flog one of them (laurence, because he just can’t play it any way but stupid lawful good at every turn) and not just killing them all I guess, they kept them fed and stuff

- oh thank god

- temeraire you are the most darling dragon boy and I love you

I was really really worried for a moment there that the reference to the Colosseum was a not-so-subtle hint they would have to gladiator fight to the death but thankfully they were basically just calling in a parliament

- DID THIS MOTHERFUCKER JUST STAB A CHILD IN THE STOMACH?? I HOPE HE ACCIDENTALLY SHOOTS HIMSELF IN THE DICK AND DIES pls say demane is going to be okay

- aw okay finally something good for mrs erasmus I will take it

- laurence you useless fool of a narrator is demane okay??

- god roland is just so cool naomi novik really gave us a jovial butch silver fox aviator lady huh... she did that for us and I for one am full of gratitude

- oh thank GOD (hm I sense a running theme here lol) the kid is going to be okay I can breathe again

- iskierka the pirate captain + temeraire’s reaction... perfect

- ;____________; I would lay down my life for temeraire and also that’s a gutpunch of a moodswing... the perfect hilarity of ‘that is an ugly hill’ immediately followed by That... jesus

- awww every time volly shows up again is a joy (temrer!!!)

- laurence... laurence you need to stop asking people to marry you because you never actually really fucking mean it!!!!! have you learned nothing about yourself since book 1, trust your goddamn instincts for once in your life you and roland have been doing perfectly okay thus far as like... affectionate fuckbuddies right?

(her reaction was priceless tho god bless)

- aaaah there we go the british government is looking more like itself... welcome to the world of realpolitik laurence I’m really sorry :(

- “It is only dragons, you know” JANE ROLAND WTF DID YOU JUST SAY

- “This government is not of my party; my king is ill and mad; but still I am his subject. You have sworn no oath, but I have.” He paused. “I have given my word.”

:) this is... fine

(like. I know this is necessary character growth and he’s basically been a waste of a good man in service to a government like this the whole time and the writing’s been on the wall since book 1 but I don’t want this to be happening to hiiiiim)

- tfw... ur dragon boi is so good... that being anything less than good for him in turn is unthinkable...................... b o i

- ...jane doesn’t really know him very well if she didn’t see this coming from a mile off tho does she

I mean I guess she has other stuff to think about but this shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone

- remember when he thought the entire corps was weird and now he’s finally at home there... and has to leave it behind :):):) super extra fine is what this is

- yeah okay laurence definitely has a crush on ol’ bonaparte noting that down lol he’s all but blushing after that kiss on the cheek

also... if you just overlook the dictator thing for a moment is napoleon wrong about what he’s saying tho. (no and not even laurence is prepared to say so he’s just going to go back there and get murdered anyway b/c idk lawful good is dumb as fuck sometimes I guess)

It’s really cool how the author shows that napoleon has a better handle on laurence’s psychology after barely meeting him than a lot of people he’s known for years now, though, really adds to his menace and appeal as a character

- wow uh that’s one way to end a book... it’s actually tipped over from tragedy into a strange sort of hilarity for me now: he literally got sued out of his life’s earnings for being a decent human being, committed treason for the same reason and is about to be hanged for thinking genocide might have been a step too far -- in the span of thirty pages. I believe ‘that escalated quickly’ is not too much of an exaggeration here

- SIPHO IS GONNA WRITE BOOKS ONE DAY YOU GUYS!!!! I PROUDLY WELCOME OUR SECOND NERD TO THE CREW

- I think this one might be my least favorite so far? not that I disliked it, it’s just the one that’s hit the worst by the fact that there’s not always that much time spent with the cultures central to the book; tswana seems really interesting but because of the way the plot played out and our limited perspective though laurence it just didn’t work for me? the cool shit comes in sipho’s book at the end, like how thoroughly they kicked the europeans out of the coast of africa, which is very cathartic (I will say that most of the second book being set on the ship and then only a sliver of it is actually in china annoyed me too haha)

I have the distinct feeling this book is setting up for some Misery and breaking of the pattern a bit in the next one though, which will be interesting! ONWARDS TO MORE PAIN AND LAURENCE IS ALREADY PASSIVELY SUICIDAL FROM THE OUTSET SO LIKE... I’M SURE THIS WILL BE REAL FUN :)

maybe my boy will be back tho? silver linings silver linings clinging to some silver linings

#temeraire #empire of ivory #meta

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dailyaudiobible · 5 years

Text

09/16/2019 DAB Transcript

Isaiah 22:1-24:23, Galatians 2:17-3:9, Psalms 60:1-12, Proverbs 23:15-16

Today is the 16th day of the month of September. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian, and it is a joy to be here right now with you as we all just kind of come in around the global campfire, exhale, and, yeah, we’re moving into a new workweek, lots of stuff's gonna happen, but we have this time every day to just step away from it all and let God speak through his Word. So that's we’ll do. We’re reading from the New English Translation this week and we will continue our journey through the book of Isaiah today. Chapters 22 through 24.

Commentary:

Okay. So, what we’re reading as we read through the letter to the Galatians today brought us back some of the things that we were exploring as we journeyed through the letter to the Romans. But now we've got the benefit of a little bit of context. We’ve come some miles since then, so we’re beginning to get completely familiar with the struggle that was happening in the early church. And even in today's reading we can see pretty clearly…I mean…we can look at the apostle Paul and revere him, but we can see pretty clearly why he was hated so badly by the religious Jews and why this even spilled over into conflict between the Jewish people and the Gentile believers - so, like Hebrew believers in Jesus and Gentile believers in Jesus, which is the reason for this letter. So, Paul said something very, very famous today, very quoted, one of the most famous verses in the Bible. “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” And it’s famous because it succinctly declares our reality as believers and that’s what we’re living into. But why did he say that? Like, it's a pretty audacious thing…like…you don't just walk up to somebody and go, “hey, I've been crucified with Christ. I don't live anymore. Actually, I'm not living. This is Christ living in me.” Right? Like, is a pretty audacious thing to say. We say it all the time and it's famous and we understand it, but why did he say it? This is Paul's disassembly of the Mosaic law as a means to be justified before God. And that kind of language was the very thing that had so many people literally wanting Paul dead. So, we look around at the religious wars and theological debates and…that are happening today, and we realize, “oh, this kind of things been going on all along.” So, Paul's argument was that the law only could lead to death, right, that it could only reveal how you failed. So, there's a rule and you can obey that rule and obey that rule and obey that rule until you break that rule. But once you broke that rule you failed the law. And nobody had been able to just like live into the law and never break the law and therefore be able to declare themselves righteous before God outside of Jesus. So, the law shows your failures and condemns you. So, for Paul, the only…the only way to respond then was to die to the law so that he could find a way to actually live for God and this was accomplished by completely releasing, letting go of everything that he thought that he was, all that he was without Christ, to die to that, surrendering to the life of Christ within by faith. Now, like I seriously understand that this is kinda like Christianity 101. Like, these are fundamental things, but you gotta zoom back, like step away, or zoom up and get a birds eye view, just step back for a second from all of the tradition and all of the theology and all that you think that you know and just put yourself in the position of hearing Paul but not having been raised in this tradition, right? So, let’s say you’re a Hebrew person and your entire life you have been told to obey the Mosaic law. Like, that's the purpose of your life, it’s to try to obey the Mosaic law. This is how you will find right standing before God. And, so, you will go through all of the rituals and sacrifices and traditions so that you can…so that you can be right with God and have a sense of community. And somebody from your group…and this is Paul…like..so a pharisee…like a leading person in your group that teaches people comes along and says, “it's…it's different than this, we’re never gonna get there from here. None of us can fulfill the law.” And He’s simply speaking to a frustration that’s bubbling under the culture. Like, everybody knows that. And, so, Paul’s like, “we’re never gonna get there but somebody did, and that was Jesus, and you crucified him. You could…he was right in front of your face fulfilling the law right before your eyes and you killed him. But God raised him from the dead. And, so, now we don't have to obey the law anymore. We don’t have to do that stuff anymore. We’re dying to that because all it was ever intended to do was to show us that we couldn't live up to it. Its purpose was to show us that in our own strength we could only ever fail at becoming righteous before God. But then Jesus came and obeyed. The son of God came and died for the sins of the world. And now, if you are willing to let go of who you were and believe in Jesus then you will have fulfilled the law.” This is a bit of a tough sell for people who never heard this before. And, so…and because Paul had been a religious Pharisee, like he’s considered an apostate, like a heretic. And, so, the other religious leaders who are trying to live into and live up to this law, they think what he's saying is absolutely off the rails because, I mean, because Paul’s basically subverting a belief system that he was raised in and suggesting that it was replaced by a new covenant that could only be found in Jesus and this covenant wasn’t a covenant of judgment, but one of grace and faith rather than trying to obey a set of rules and regulations and traditions and customs, which…I mean…this unnerved the Hebrew people that are listening to Paul. You can only imagine how this would unnerve you. So, most of us…I mean…the Daily Audio Bible is a vast community around the world. Most of us would say that we are following Christ, we are Christian people, we are following Jesus. So, what…what would it take…like…who would that person have to be the come along and go like, “it's not the way you think it is, it's a completely different way.” I mean, who could sit down and actually have a rational conversation and explain this to you without you getting angry, unnerved, upset, upside down, calling all your friends, having these conversations, posting all this stuff on social media. Like, Paul was a lightning rod and he wasn't trying to invite people into a new religion. The bridge that was so hard for people to cross with Paul was that Paul was trying to say, “this has always been the Hebrew story. Like…like we just missed some key, really important factors. So, we’ve been living toward certain things and trying to use them in ways that they were never going to work. And, so God in His kindness, sent His Son to show us what life is supposed to look like and to reinterpret what is…what is become nothing more than a cage for us.” But that was a pretty, pretty, pretty far bridge for people to cross. And, so, the Gentiles had a much easier time of understanding this, whereas Jewish people…even Hebrew people who believed in Jesus, but believed they were to continue to practice what they had all always practiced as a Jewish person. They had a hard time wrapping their minds…like this is why the Jerusalem Council came to be. They had a hard time wrapping their minds around what my…what life might even look like without the law, because the Mosaic law was like the centerpiece of it all. It's their Bible, it's the Torah, it's how they're supposed to live. So, for Paul to kinda come along and say, “all that was supposed to do is to show you that you cannot achieve righteousness on your own.” Like, they had never lived any other way. And, so, this is a really hard thing for them to get their minds around or even how to live it. But Paul believed that Jesus had revealed this to him personally and that's what he said and that's why he wouldn't back down. God had done too many things to reveal this to him, too many Gentiles were receiving the power of the Holy Spirit in their lives with no…with no prior understanding whatsoever of the law, right? So, Paul could look at this and go, “God is doing something here and it's outside the law, it's happening, I'm witnessing it, I'm seeing it. So, the way to righteousness can’t be through the law. The law can’t have anything to do with it. These people have never even heard of the law.” And, so, that's why Paul's like…I'm…I'm quoting Paul here, “The only thing I want to learn from you is this, did you receive the Spirit by doing the works of the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? Although you began with the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by human effort. Have you suffered so many things for nothing if indeed it was for nothing? Does God then give you the Spirit and work miracles among you by your doing the works of the law or by your believing what you heard?” Again…I mean…this is stuff…like we could take it as an encouragement. Like…we wouldn’t…we wouldn't take those words necessarily as some kind of confrontation because we believe. But…and…I mean…the reason that I'm spending so much time here right now is this...this is Paul's theological position, this is his argument, everything that he's talking about hinges on this. And for Paul to begin to unpack and unravel his own faith he had to go back to the beginning, not Moses but Abraham, which…which put people in theological dilemma when they began to argue against Paul in favor of the law because Abraham didn't have any law to believe in or obey either. There was nothing he was supposed to follow and obey to be made right with God. God viewed Abraham's faith and saw him as righteous because of it. And, so for Paul, he’s saying to his fellow Hebrew brothers and sisters and for that matter to all Gentiles, “look there is a way and does make sense. We forgot the plot. Like…we've been in this law thing for so long that we forgot that things were happening before God ever gave the law and people were being made righteousness before God because…because of their faith. And, so…and so there must be a way through faith to be made right with God instead of us trying to spend our whole lives trying to obey these rules that we cannot obey. There must be a way. And there is. It’s through Christ our Savior, who came here in plain sight and lived this out in front of us and we killed him.” So, for Paul, the religious leaders of which he was one had transformed the covenantal relationship God offered into a set of rules that controlled the people. And since everything boiled down to whether or not one was obeying the law than there was no freedom to be in any kind of relationship with God. The law was this constant reminder that they could never be righteous. So, we have plenty, plenty of ground to cover in the book of Galatians. But this gives us again, a good chance to get the back story to…to really live into what's really going on here when we read these letters and understand how unsettling and disruptive, and for that matter how massive the gospel of Jesus, the Good News is, and was.

Prayer:

Father, we invite You into that as we continue to make the journey through Your word this year. We invite Your Holy Spirit as we explore all these avenues all these little trails that we get to go down all the things we could talk about begin to understand in in our Bibles. So, as always, we invite Your Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth, and we pray that expectantly, that's what You’ve promised You would do, and we open ourselves to You. In the same way that the apostle Paul was inviting his Hebrew brothers and sisters to set aside what they thought that they knew, we do the same and invite Your Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth. Come Holy Spirit we pray. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

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So, the last couple of weeks we've had some new resources that we've finally been able to bring to the light of day, and that includes our new portable coffee solution. Our Windfarm brand of coffee and tea is something we’ve had going for well over a decade here, but we could never…I mean…we got the invitations for K-cups and all this kind of stuff but we could never find a way to keep coffee fresh because those solutions, they get stale really quick. And we finally found a portable solution where you can steep your coffee. And, so, the coffee's freshly roasted and then nitro sealed so it gets the oxygen out of the container and then slow the deterioration process down, which allows them to last a long time. And, yeah, we finally found what we were looking for on that. So, those are available in the Daily Audio Bible Shop in the coffee and tea section.

And we released the new Daily Audio Bible Journal 2.0 where we just tweaked some things on the bindings so it would lay better and tweaked the think a little bit and just dialed it in. So, those are available in the lifestyle section of the Daily Audio Bible shop along with all the writing paraphernalia, all of the Black Wing pencils. And it’s the stuff that I use every day.

But we also released the Global Campfire line last week and that…that is something really really excited about because I we wanted to create a logo that represented our community. We have a Daily Audio Bible logo. We use it all the time, obviously, and we wanted to create something that represented the community aspect of what we do. And, so, we did that. And, so, we’ve created a number of resources that are lifestyle in nature, things that you use and that you see and that bring a sense of connection.

For example, we created a Global Campfire commemorative coin. I don't know about you…like…I'm like a national…national Park card-carrying lover. So, like, I have an annual national Park pass and all this and I love to visit our national parks here in the United States because just they’re…they’re treasures of beauty. But when you go there, and you go to a ranger station or whatever there’s all kinds of stuff you can get but they have these little coins or pins or things like that that commemorate your visit. And I'm a sucker for that stuff. I have a whole bowl full of all the places that I've been with these little commemorative coins and pins and stuff. So, it’s like…I can't be the only one…I can’t be the only one in the world who loves this kind of thing, these reminders. And, so we created the Global Campfire commemorative coin for a couple of reasons. One for just that, as a…as a collectors thing…like a thing that you see and it reminds you, “I went through the Bible. I went through the Bible in community or…and I'm still going through the Bible in community.” But also, it’s just a touch point. It's the kind of thing that you can put in your pocket and it’s just a little bit bigger than…here in the United States…I can only speak of our currency…like I’ve got all kinds of currency from all over the world, but I don’t event know what it’s all called. But if you have like a quarter, like a quarter dollar here in the United States, you know, about the size of a quarter. And this is more like the size of, say, a half-dollar. So, it's easy to kinda carry around in your pocket. And whenever you reach in your pocket and you feel it, it reminds you, “I'm not talking alone. I’m not by myself. I’ve got brothers and sisters all over the world who are going through the same things I am just like the Bible says.” And it's a touch point when you…when you touch it or when you’re holding…holding it to pray, pray for the community or pray for your brothers and sisters that we pray for every day. So, it's a beautiful reminder and those are available in the Shop.

We printed Global Campfire postcards. We have always been in the habit as a community of leaving little business cards or postcards places all around the world…all around the world in all kinds of random places…wherever we go. And since we were launching this Global Campfire logo, we created these beautiful postcards, really eye-catching, really hefty…weighty…weighty…they’re like good postcards and they’re eye-catching. So, if you leave one sitting somewhere, it's gonna draw someone's eye to the Global Campfire but when they flip it over, they’ll see, “oh, this is the Daily Audio Bible and how to get it and how to listen.”

So, that's a couple of the other items in the Global Campfire line…I guess it’s line. I don’t know that we really have a line of products, but I guess we do now. And I wasn’t really thinking of it in that way, but these are the resources that we have identified. Like these things, we can carry with us, these things, they'll be constant reminders. And it seems like we constantly need to be reminded that we’re not alone because it doesn't matter how great of a time we have in the Scriptures or whatever. Life then comes rushing…the world comes rushing at us and…and asks us to give us its complete devotion, like we have to completely focus on all the different things that we’re doing and so very easily we forget. We forget that there's something greater, something bigger, something larger happening that we’re a part of and that is that we are the children of the most-high God, revealing His kingdom in this world. So, we’ve tried to create some reminders. And you can find them in the Daily Audio Bible Shop. There’s a whole section called Global Campfire. You can find all that there.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, if the mission that we share in common to bring the spoken word of God and offer it to anyone who will listen to it anywhere on this planet any time of day or night no matter when it is and to build community around that rhythm, if that is meaningful to you then thank you for your partnership. There’s a link on the homepage at dailyaudiobible.com. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or, if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or comment 877-942-4253 is the number to dial.

And that's it for today. I'm Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

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mattelektras · 6 years

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GIRL HEY I LOVE YOU and your blog and just all your marvel thoughts and opinions and your recs tag WOW you got me into comics like THANK YOU AND YOUR SOUL and so i am so curious to know like what are your issues with mcu? like everything i want to know EVERYTHING, every little detail that's bothered you to the shitty casting to the whitewashing to the lack of development LET ME HEAR IT PLEASE

OH HOW LONG DO YOU HAVE. pretty much all of this excludes black panther and ragnarok. nothing but respect for my mcu

it took them literally 10 years and like 20 movies to have anyone that wasn't a white man lead a solo film. like. that is a LONG ASS TIME

not to mention the straight people EVERYWHERE until valkyrie who they didn't SHOW is bi. trust only tessa thompson and taika watiti. let that be the lesson here

and the women and people of colour they DID have in their movies were done incredibly dirty like rhodey (who could absolutely have held a solo movie following iron man 2. or even 1 like. they just slipped in that he’s become a superhero n didn't do anything with it like... really????????) gets shot in the fuckin spine by that piece of shit robot. sharon was set up so well and now doesn't exist. mcu nat i dont even know where to begin

mcu maximoffs/dr strange/iron fist. the whitewashing trifecta. they went for the hatrick and they nailed it. thanks i hate it

but with the maximoffs specifically like. GOD theyre bad. wendy has gone from ‘moves things with her mind’ (not wanda’s actual powers but whatevs we’ll get to that bit) to literally being able to destroy an infinity stone. she’s everything mr whedon wants in a female character. and mcu pietro??? a weak bitch. pietro maximoff would die of spite before he sacrificed himself for clint fucking barton

so many of the movies dont line up with one another like PLEASE marvel directors watch each other’s movies. the russos basically turned up at taika watiti’s house and told him to go fuck himself

or just... hire good directors.... the russos fooled everyone into thinking they were good with cap 2 but what the ever loving fuck was civil war and infinity war

stop with the war shit no one likes superheroes vs superheroes

this is petty and i KNOW movies dont have to follow the comics like. i know that and sometimes its a very good thing, but with marvel they wanna take parts from the comics, sometimes GOOD parts and they wanna fuck it all up and force it to fit into their shitty narrative. like. civil war for example.. had a PURPOSE in comics. it was a genuine grey area and, well written, it could've been a nuanced scenario about how different types of people might have benefited or suffered from it (re: mutants etc). in the mcu, civil war was uuuuuh wendy blew up some people and she used to be a nazi but we’re all gonna defend her because im steve rogers and i do what the fuck i like regardless of literally everything else.

they based the mcu on the ultimates universe???? TAKE THE GOOD BITS THEN!!!! like take miles morales instead of just giving peter his life and his friends

get better actors jesus christ. just. better as people would be a start. ms substitute asian johansson and mr Gun Rights pratt. perish

the chris x3 jokes really arent endearing either. some of em have gotta go

please hire someone with real eyes for your costume department!!!!!! say what you like about dc movies, but they all WORK together. their suits have the same tone/materials/overall look. the avengers look like a bunch of people who have never met before

speaking of, i physically cannot buy the ‘friendship’ the avengers supposedly have. they dont talk!!!!!! there’s too many of them to actually get any solid team development!!! you want me to believe thor even knows hawkeye’s real name??? he doesn't!! and he doesn't give a shit either!!

if you're gonna do a romantic relationship......... fucking stick with it or actually end it. steve/sharon could have been SO GOOD but where has that gone. nat/hulk was hideous and thank god it died but WHERE has it gone.

not to mention the fact that gamora has literally shown no interest towards peter but she loves him in infinity war somehow

peggy carter is really NOT THAT IMPORTANT!!!! people are still out here shittalking sharon, the LEADING CAP COMICS WOMAN, STEVE’S MAIN AND PRETTY MUCH SOLE LOVE INTEREST, because she's not peggy carter and she doesn't talk about girl power whilst wearing winged eyeliner. steve and peggy kissed once like if thats your standard for a life long relationship then im married to like 8 people i knew when i was 15

the general need marvel has to own all of their properties. homecoming was a good movie, but did we need it??? like really???? people have seen so many spider man movies but no one had seen a black panther or captain marvel movie and they both got shoved back to accommodate the 3rd peter parker ive seen in my lifetime

SPEAKING OF REPETITION.... snarky movies led by white men alongside a woman who is clearly more capable than they are but dont get any recognition for it are the same. the exact fucking same

CAN POST CREDITS SCENES PLEASE DIE im not sitting around for 20 minutes waiting for something cool like a hint of a new hero only to see steve fucking rogers doing his ironing or some shit. if its not worth it, dont do it maybe

the colour grading is ugly as sin. if it’s got some over saturated primary colours in it... its a marvel movie

marvel movies are just.... straight up not funny at this point lmao like im not a 13 year old boy i dont find dick and whore jokes funny try again

‘it’ll kill you’ ‘only if i die’ ‘yes thats what killing you means’ is supposed to be funny and i get that but uuuuuh its just bad dialogue and there are so many lines like that. write a good fucking movie and then MAYBE you won't have to fill scenes with empty conversations to take up the time

fuck the mcu guardians of the galaxy, to put it finely. mcu peter is a dick and his altered back story makes him even more of a dick. drax isn't a dumbass, gamora would rather die than touch peter. mantis is a literal celestial goddess, not some old white dude’s sleep time therapist

mostly what it comes down to with me though is that marvel literally does not have to make good movies. they can make any old shit and make literally millions of dollars. barely anyone gave a fuck about ant man or doctor strange, and if you didn't read comics, you likely wouldn't have even KNOWN who they were but everyone went to see them because they had marvel on the posters. and thats pretty much marvel’s entire deal. ALL they do is get credit for things they havent done

oh and fuck vision too

#i could go on #anonymous #q & a

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frmartinshomiliesandreflections · 5 years

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10th March >> Fr. Martin's Gospel Reflections / Homilies on Luke 4:1-13 for the First Sunday in Lent, Year C: 'The devil left him to return at the opportune time.'

First Sunday of Lent, Year C.

Gospel (Europe, Africa, New Zealand, Australia & Canada)

Luke 4:1-13

The temptation in the wilderness

Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit through the wilderness, being tempted there by the devil for forty days. During that time he ate nothing and at the end he was hungry. Then the devil said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to turn into a loaf.’ But Jesus replied, ‘Scripture says: Man does not live on bread alone.’

Then leading him to a height, the devil showed him in a moment of time all the kingdoms of the world and said to him, ‘I will give you all this power and the glory of these kingdoms, for it has been committed to me and I give it to anyone I choose. Worship me, then, and it shall all be yours.’ But Jesus answered him, ‘Scripture says:

You must worship the Lord your God,

and serve him alone.’

Then he led him to Jerusalem and made him stand on the parapet of the Temple. ‘If you are the Son of God,’ he said to him ‘throw yourself down from here, for scripture says:

He will put his angels in charge of you

to guard you,

and again:

They will hold you up on their hands

in case you hurt your foot against a stone.’

But Jesus answered him, ‘It has been said:

You must not put the Lord your God to the test.’

Having exhausted all these ways of tempting him, the devil left him, to return at the appointed time.

Gospel (USA)

Luke 4:1–13

Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert and was tempted.

Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days, to be tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and when they were over he was hungry. The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” Jesus answered him, “It is written, One does not live on bread alone.” Then he took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a single instant. The devil said to him, “I shall give to you all this power and glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I may give it to whomever I wish. All this will be yours, if you worship me.” Jesus said to him in reply, “It is written:

You shall worship the Lord, your God,

and him alone shall you serve.”

Then he led him to Jerusalem, made him stand on the parapet of the temple, and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written:

He will command his angels concerning you,

to guard you,

and:

With their hands they will support you,

lest you dash your foot against a stone.”

Jesus said to him in reply, “It also says,

You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.”

When the devil had finished every temptation, he departed from him for a time.

Reflections (3)

(i) First Sunday of Lent

We all get a certain satisfaction out of discovering shortcuts. In the fast-moving world in which we live, the question that often arises is: ‘What is the fastest way from A to B? What is the quickest way to get this done?’ We have got used to doing some things much more quickly than we would ever have done them in the past. In no area of life is this truer than in that of communications. Communications that once took days or even weeks now take seconds. We have come to benefit greatly from the fact that some things happen much more quickly than they used to in the past. However, we also know that when it comes to the more important things in life there are no shortcuts. Time and patience, faithfulness and application, are required and cannot be substituted for.

In today’s gospel reading Jesus is tempted to take a variety of shortcuts. His mission was to lead people to God. Satan suggests a number of shortcuts Jesus could take to ensure that his mission gets quick results. He could use his power to turn stones into bread and thereby become a kind of one-man bread basket for the people of Palestine. He would have people eating out of his hand, literally, and he could then lead them anywhere he wanted. Alternatively, if Jesus were to worship Satan, he would be given authority and power over all the kingdoms of the world. From such a position of power, he could influence and control people in any way he wished. Or else, knowing that God would protect him, he could perform a series of heroic feats without getting hurt, like throwing himself down from the pinnacle of the Temple. Such circus-like acts would be great entertainment and would have people flocking to him in large numbers.

Jesus resisted those temptations because he knew that there was no shortcut for what God had sent him to do. There was no easy way of doing God’s work. Indeed, Jesus was well aware that his mission of revealing God’s love and justice to Jews and pagans, of gathering people together into a new family under God, would necessitate the way of the cross, the way of suffering, rejection, humiliation and death. There was no other way, if he was to be faithful to the mission that God had given him.

The temptations that we find in today’s gospel reading were somewhat unique to Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God. Yet, they are not without relevance to all of us. Like Jesus we too have been baptized, and like him we too received a calling and a mission on the day of our baptism. We are called to follow Jesus and to reveal him to others. That involves setting out on a journey that does not lend itself to shortcuts or to easy options. Following Jesus today will often mean taking the road less travelled, saying ‘no’ to what seems very attractive and beguiling. When Jesus was saying ‘no’ to the shortcuts that Satan was suggesting to him, he was really saying ‘no’ to putting himself first. Rather than putting himself first, he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant. That is our calling too. As we begin Lent we are asked to look at ways we might become less self-serving and more the servant of others. In today’s second reading Paul reminds us that our baptismal calling is to confess Jesus as Lord, not just on our lips but in our hearts, with our lives. To confess Jesus as Lord is to live as his servants, to empty ourselves for others as he did. This will often mean going the long way around for the sake of others rather than taking the shortcut, going the extra mile with someone who needs our companionship and support.

In today’s gospel reading, Jesus was saying ‘no’ to the temptation to compromise himself for the sake of getting quick results. He would, instead, set out on a path that would not bring quick results. On the contrary, as he hung dying from the cross, it appeared that his mission would have very little, if any, results. Yet, he had sown a small seed and it would go on to become a large shrub. His life would ultimately bear rich fruit. Jesus, thereby, teaches us that faithfulness to God’s calling is a more important value than instant success, as this world measures success. If we allow Jesus to be Lord of our lives, then our lives too will bear rich fruit, both for ourselves and for others, even if they don’t appear to be successful in the way that success is often measured today. In our struggle with temptation, we have the same resource to help us that Jesus had. According to the gospel reading, Jesus entered the wilderness ‘filled with the Holy Spirit’. That same Spirit has been poured into our hearts at our baptism. In the wilderness, Jesus drew inspiration from the word of God every time he was put to the test by Satan. That same word of God has been given to us, a word which, according to Paul in the second reading, ‘is very near to you’. In our own testing times, we can pray in the words of today’s psalmist, ‘My refuge, my stronghold, my God in whom I trust!’

And/Or

(ii) First Sunday of Lent

We have all experienced testing times in the course of our lives. School and college examinations test our knowledge. Our patience can be tested by someone whom we experience as annoying or troublesome. Our courage can be put to the test by the onset of serious illness. Our integrity can be tested when an opportunity comes along to make easy money at other people’s expense. Our fidelity to someone can be tested, when that relationship proves more demanding that we had anticipated. Our faith in God can be put to the test when, finding ourselves in a dark valley, our prayers seem to go unanswered.

Jesus knew what it was to be tested. The gospels tell us that, from time to time, individuals or groups deliberately set out to test him. Today’s gospel reading describes how Jesus endured a very difficult test immediately after his baptism. He left the river Jordan where he had been baptized and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness where he was tested or tempted for forty days. The gospel reading suggests that during these forty days Jesus was tested in a very fundamental way. His very baptismal identity was put to the test. Who he was and what his life was about was at issue. Will he use his power to satisfy his own physical appetites or will he use it to serve others? Will he compromise on his worship of God so as to gain worldly power and honours for himself? Will he take the short cut to gaining followers by relying on spectacular stunts, thereby putting God to the test? Jesus came through that testing time because he did not face it alone. God was with him in the test. He was supported by the word of God, and he was strengthened by the Spirit of God, whom he had received at his baptism. In the wilderness of temptation, he remained true to his baptismal identity.

Like Jesus, we have all been baptized. We have each received the Holy Spirit at our baptism, as he did. Our own baptismal identity will certainly be put to the test from time to time, as his was. Our baptism has made us sons and daughters of God, brothers and sisters of Christ, temples of the Holy Spirit, members of Christ’s body the church. Because of our baptism, we have a certain set of beliefs. In the words of today’s second reading, we believe in our hearts that God raised Jesus from the dead, we confess with our lips that Jesus is Lord. Who we are as baptized Christians and what we believe will often be put to the test. We may not be led into the physical wilderness as Jesus was after his baptism, but the world in which we live can be experienced as something of a wilderness when it comes to living out our baptism and being true to our baptismal identity. We often experience pressure from our culture to be someone other than what our baptism calls us to be; our peers can tempt us to live in a way that is at odds with our baptismal calling. As he was tempted to take various paths that were contrary to what God wanted for him, we will be tempted in a similar way. As his faithfulness to God’s call was severely tested, so also will our faithfulness be tested.

We are at the beginning of the seven week season of Lent. Lent is a season when we face the reality that our baptismal identity is always being put to the test, when we remind ourselves of the struggle we are always engaged in to be faithful to the call of our baptism. If remaining faithful to his baptism was a struggle for Jesus, it will certainly be a struggle for us. You could say that Lent is a season when we look temptation in the eye as it were, when we try to identity the particular ways in which we are being pulled away from the path the Lord is asking us to take. It is a season when we try to grow in our freedom to say ‘no’ to the subtle, and not-so-subtle, seductions of every day living. It is a time when we take an honest look at ourselves, and at the direction our lives are taking. This is not something we can do overnight. The season of Lent is nearly seven weeks long. We are given time, because when it comes to getting the basics right, like who we want to be and how we want to live, we need time.

The same resources that were available to Jesus in the wilderness are available to us as we enter this Lenten time. When Jesus was tempted, he fell back on the word of God to help him through. That same word of God has been given to us as a resource in coping with the various assaults on our baptismal identity. Lent is a good time to make greater use of that resource. Perhaps one Lenten exercise we might consider is to take away the Sunday Mass leaflet, and each day of the week to read the readings of the previous Sunday in a prayerful way for a few minutes, inviting the Lord to speak to us through them. We might begin our daily reading of those readings with the prayer, ‘Speak Lord, your servant is listening’. The Holy Spirit also helped Jesus to be faithful to his baptismal call. We might conclude our prayerful reading of the Sunday readings with the prayer, ‘Come Holy Spirit; keep me faithful to my baptismal calling’. As we begin our Lenten journey together, we ask the Lord to help us to travel it well, so that when Easter comes we can wholeheartedly renew our baptismal promises together.

And/Or

(iii) First Sunday of Lent

We all get a certain satisfaction out of discovering shortcuts. If we have a journey to make on foot or by car and one day we discover a shortcut we are delighted. In the fast moving world in which we live, the question that often arises is: ‘What is the quickest way from A to B? What is the fastest way to get this done?’ Instant this, that or the other has become commonplace. We have got used to doing some things much more quickly than we would ever have done them in the past. In no area of life is this truer than in that of communications. Communications that once took days or even weeks now take seconds. We have come to benefit greatly from the fact that some things happen much quickly than they used to in the past. We are also very aware that more speed in one area of life has been counterbalanced by less speed in other areas. It takes much longer to drive across the city than it used to, which is why the discovery of the shortcut has become so important. However, we also know that when it comes to the more important things in life there are no shortcuts. Time and patience, faithfulness and application, are required and cannot be substituted for.

In today’s gospel reading Jesus is tempted to take a variety of shortcuts or easy options. His mission was to reveal God to people and to lead people to God. This was the mission Jesus publicly undertook at the moment of his baptism. In the gospel reading, Satan suggests a number of shortcuts Jesus could take to ensure that his mission gets quick results. He could use his power to turn stones into bread and thereby become a kind of one man bread basket for the people of Palestine. He would have people eating out of his hand, literally, and he could then lead them anywhere he wanted. Alternatively, if Jesus were to worship Satan, he would be given authority and power over all the kingdoms of the world. From such a position of power, he could influence and control people in any way he wished. Or else he could perform a whole series of heroic feats without getting hurt, knowing that God would protect him, like throwing himself down from the pinnacle of the Temple. Such circus-like acts would be great entertainment and would have people flocking to him in large numbers.

Jesus resisted those temptations because he knew that there was no shortcut for what God had sent him to do. There was no easy way of doing God’s work. Indeed, Jesus was well aware that his mission of revealing God’s love and justice to Jews and pagans, of gathering people together into a new family under God, would involve the long haul, necessitating the way of the cross, the way of suffering, rejection, humiliation and death. There was no other way, if he was to be faithful to the mission that God had given him.

The temptations that we find in today’s gospel reading were somewhat unique to Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God. Yet, they are not without relevance to all of us. Like Jesus we too have been baptized, and like him we too received a calling and a mission on the day of our baptism. We are called to follow Jesus, to take the path that he took, to set out on a journey that does not lend itself to shortcuts or to easy options. Following Jesus today will often mean taking the road less travelled, saying ‘no’ to what a lot of our contemporaries are saying ‘yes’ to. When Jesus was saying ‘no’ to the shortcuts that Satan was suggesting to him, he was really saying ‘no’ to putting himself first. Rather than putting himself first, he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant. That is our calling too. As we begin Lent we are asked to look at ways we might become less self-serving and more the servant of others. In today’s second reading Paul reminds us that our baptismal faith finds expression in confessing Jesus as Lord, not just with our lips but with our lives. To confess Jesus as Lord is to acknowledge ourselves as his servants, called to serve as he did, to empty ourselves for others as he did. This is our baptismal calling that we try to say ‘yes’ to everyday of our lives. It will often mean going the long way round for the sake of the other rather than taking the shortcut, going the extra mile with someone who needs our companionship and support.

In today’s gospel reading, Jesus was saying ‘no’ to the temptation to compromise himself for the sake of getting quick results. He would, instead, set out on a path that would not bring quick results. On the contrary, as he hung dying from the cross, it appeared that his mission would have very little, if any, results. Yet, he had sown a mustard seed that would become a large shrub. His life would ultimately bear rich fruit. Jesus, thereby, teaches us that faithfulness to God’s calling is a more important value than success, as this world measures success. If we are rooted in the gospel, if we allow Jesus to be Lord of our lives, to shape how we live, then our lives too will bear rich fruit, both for ourselves and for others, even if they do not appear to be successful in the way that success is often measured today. In our struggle with the temptation to sell ourselves short as the Lord’s followers, we have the same resource to help us as Jesus had in the wilderness, the Holy Spirit who came down upon us at our baptism, as he came down upon him as his baptism.

Fr. Martin Hogan, Saint John the Baptist Parish, Clontarf, Dublin, D03 AO62, Ireland.

Email: [email protected] or [email protected]

Parish Website: www.stjohnsclontarf.ie Please join us via our webcam.

Twitter: @SJtBClontarfRC.

Facebook: St John the Baptist RC Parish, Clontarf.

Tumblr: Saint John the Baptist Parish, Clontarf, Dublin

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