#seriously writers RUIN their search history

[youwontlikethisblog]

She's Ugly!

In a previous post I briefly touch on the subject of Armando and his belief of love. Here I will be going into more detail on my personal experiences as a writer who has written complex OC's with a very similar nature to that of Armando. I will be talking about some pretty heavy topics here so this is your warning if they make you uncomfortable or trigger you.

As a writer you spend most of your time doing research. You don't really spend it writing as more than 75% of the time is dedicated to researching the entirety of your story and it's characters. That means you research on mental health, social behaviors, addictions, learned behavior, coping mechanisms, ect... to create an authentic and realistic character.

When I was doing research for my OC, based on the past I wrote for them I had to look into the consequences that it carried into adulthood. I had to do a lot of research on coping mechanism and seggs addiction(I write really sad characters um but that's besides the point. Also try explaining your search history when you've got tabs and tabs about centers that deal with that addiction and so on).

[Below this I will talk about Seggsual Addiction and such. if it makes you uncomfortable skip to the next [RED]].

Doing that research I found out that many people who do have that addiction often use it as a form of escapism, control, or due to a lot more severe trauma. Sometimes it's just the feeling you get from that. Some have this addiction because of low self-esteem, feelings of worthlessness, and also because it's something they can control, or at the very least in their denial stage they believe that they can.

Seggs Addiction is when someone cannot function without it. When it becomes a problem in that person's life and ruins friendships, relationships, and their professional life. It can range from content watching to actual action of the addiction. This is a serious problem as it often leaves the people feeling helpless, dirty, lowers the quality of life and they feel a lot of shame due to it and it's something that they need professional help to be able to control and overcome, just like drug addiction.

[Now I will be talking about Armando and why this relates to this breakdown. You may proceed.]

Do I believe Armando has that? Not necessarily. I am not a professional so I cannot diagnose someone with that. I just know a lot about the subject because I had to do research on the topic in the past.

Armando is a complex character. The reason I bring this up is because he does show traits of it. Do his affairs get in the way of his professional life? Somewhat. Does it ruin friendships? Yes. Does it ruin relationships? Yes, mainly his.

We know Armando has had an array of women in his life. He is desired by a lot of women(I seriously do however believe that Mario is a s. addict).

I've thought about this part of his character for a while. I really don't know what Fernando Gaitan researched or what inspired him to write Armando's character so this is really just my own personal speculation and is not a fact of the show.

From the start we are told that Armando is a man with refined taste and high standards for his women. The secretaries tells this to Betty, if I'm not mistaken Marcela mentioned it once, and Mario tells him all the time.

A poster here in the tag made a post about the situation of Mario and Aura Maria and they did a really good job at breaking down this side of Armando; that he doesn't have a refined taste or high standards for women but rather he doesn't like involving himself with women who are not in the same social statues and circles as him because of the abuse of power that it entitles.

When he told Mario he wanted to fire Claudia for being crazy Mario reminded him of what he told him when he wanted Armando to fire Aura Maria and because of that Armando decides not to personally fire Claudia, it wasn't until Marcela asked for her head that he asked Hugo to fire her.

Now let me step away from the story and explain why I have this speculation.

Armando's parents aren't very active in his life. They're only there when it comes to the company or his relationship with Marcela(I already talked about his parents in The Art of Subtly in YSBLF post) now imagine that as you're growing up. That your parents aren't actively in your life unless you're achieving or accomplishing something. We know Armando has a sister that doesn't talk to their parents and is only in contact with him. That their mother possibly ruined her marriage to a man because he was poor. This tells us that his parents aren't the best.

A child who grows up having to overcompensate and over achieve grows up with low self-esteem, feelings of worthlessness, and other problems. They grow up believing that the only way they are worthy of love is by being perfect and they become obsessed with achieving perfection.

Due to this upbringing Armando is a control freak, neurotic, egocentric, and obsessed with perfection. He gets stressed out when things don't go his way. He has grown up in the fashion world and beauty has been fed to him that it is tall, thin, and above all has to be perfect.

A child is a product of their environment.

This has molded Armando into the person he is today.

On top of that Armando basically has his entire life planned out by his parents as a child who grew up hearing about the desire for him to be with Marcela to honor his parents best friends, for the good of the company, ect.

To receive his parents love he must do what his parents tell him, no exceptions. He must be the best at everything so he always aims high. In his proposal to be president he did exactly that.

Ironically Armando too is a people pleaser and feels like he has little to no control over his destiny.

So flings with Models become a form to cope. Though for a long time he enjoys those flings and what it entitles as it makes him feel good about himself, he is able to decide who he has a fling with but then it no longer is that.

My OC's addiction is driven by the desire of feeling wanted and needed. It boost her self-esteem though when it's over with she feels empty and hollow inside and we get a scene of Armando expressing those exact feelings to Mario the night he meets Ms. Colombia.

As they are leaving the cocktail Mario is upset that he[Armando] was leaving because he was so close to closing in on Ms. Colombia being his next conquest and that he couldn't change her for Marcela, who was always going to be there. Armando goes to explain something to him. He tells him that though at first he does get excited over the women and he does want to sleep with them that as soon as it's over he feels nothing anymore, that he doesn't enjoy it anymore.

This is part of a cycle and we see that.

Armando, before Betty, has the idea that if he falls in love it will be with a physically perfect woman who knows where she's standing and the only person that is like that is Marcela. He's got three reasons to marry her: He wanted her vote, his parents, and because she's what is mentioned above.

When Betty is introduce into his life she isn't what he expects in his dream woman. He expects perfection in a physical sense. However Betty has everything he wants in his dream woman in substance and personality.

He knows he likes Betty's personality but because she isn't physically perfect, he believes he isn't interested in her or attracted to her but because he likes her personality so much he believes he's entitled to her which is what drives his jealousy, it is not love.

Armando isn't in love with Betty here or at least not yet.

Betty embodies everything he wants and desires in a woman. She is humble, kind, respectful, unconditional, faithful, smart, like really smart and he likes that about her a lot, submissive and selfless.

However because the package isn't what he thinks is perfect, he cancels out. He denies that he likes her and he denies that he cares about her because of it.

So when Mario suggest for Armando to make Betty fall in love, Armando is apprehensive and disgusted by it.

Let's be honest, Betty isn't ugly! She's adorable! I will fight anyone who disagrees with this. Betty is cute and has always been cute.

I have spoken about Armando's emotional confusion a lot in the past few days but I haven't spoken about the mechanics of the confusion he is dealing with.

Denial is a strong defense mechanism. Subconsciously he has feelings for Betty and is attracted to her because of her personality but consciously he isn't. The mystery of the mind is never ending.

sub·con·scious /səbˈkänSHəs/

adjective of or concerning the part of the mind of which one is not fully aware but which influences one's actions and feelings. "my subconscious fear"

Armando's behavior towards finding out that Betty is in love has been dominated by his subconscious. However when it comes to facing those feelings he enters denial, therefore he cannot fathom the idea of ever being involved with someone so "ugly".

con·scious /ˈkän(t)SHəs/

adjective aware of and responding to one's surroundings; awake.

Armando is aware that Betty isn't his ideal of the type of women he is physically attracted to. He is aware the she isn't the standard of beauty.

Due to this he is refusing to listen to Mario.

Now that we understand this we can continue with the episode breakdown.

After Betty leaves, Armando is upset because Nicolas is the General Manager of Terra Moda(it feeds his paranoia talked about in the Betty, My Betty Part 3 post) .

Once again Armando and Mario switch roles. Armando is now aware of his conscious desires and he's sticking by them. Mario however is aware of Armando's subconscious desires.

Mario tries to level with him. He tells him that they can tell Betty to fire him but Armando rejects that by telling him that he does a good job and that Betty says he's important for Terra Moda, therefore Eco Moda, again this shows that Armando doesn't distrust of them in a professional sense. So they both agree that they shouldn't tell Betty to fire him. Mario first suggested that they reverse the seizure against Eco Moda and Armando goes on to reject that and explain why they can't do that. So Mario tells Armando that they need to think of something because it is a business deal involving them three; Armando, Himself, and Betty.

They agree that asking Betty to fire or take away so much responsibility from Nic could give way to Betty becoming hostile and resentful. Mario tells him that it would also be unfair since she's always been so unconditional with the both, Armando agrees.

We get to divides here. Two sides of the nickel.

Mario's priority and main concern is keeping Eco Moda and Armando as president for what it gives him.

Armando's priority is Betty's love life(Why else would he be so worried about her love life? A normal boss wouldn't care about your love life. Armando knows that Betty is a good and trustworthy employee and he said so himself).

Mario as always watched Armando carefully. The third and best option would have been to simply talk to Betty and be professionals and leave things alone and not doing anything about Betty's love life.

Mario tells Armando "Well the best option is to make Betty fall in love with you."

Armando goes on to say that he would never do that because he doesn't have the desire to and doesn't want to because Betty is ugly(this is why I said what I did above). Mario stops using the fear of losing Eco Moda and goes for the emotional because he knows that it will affect Armando's subconscious that will dominate him like it had been all day long.

"You're the perfect candidate because if it weren't for Nicolas showing up, I could have sworn she was in love with you. No, seriously, look at the way she looks at you, she's always been unconditional with you(he knows this is one of the qualities that Armando likes about Betty as he always lists it). My friend, if there's anyone that is capable of fighting against Nicolas Mora, it's the president of Eco Moda(here he is appealing to Armando's ego)."

What does Mario get out of all of this? Reputation in tact which allows him to continue living his best single life, which he said himself is his most prized possession. So it is important to him that Armando does whatever it takes to keep Betty from doing anything to get a husband(post Betty, My Betty! Part 3).

Fast forward Armando is in Marcela's apartment after the new collection launch and they're fighting because Armando let Betty into the event.

He not only defends his decision of inviting her as his guest but Betty's job and her role in the new collection. Marcela scoffs and they continue to argue.

What captured my attention though is that Armando tells Marcela that she can't be in a competing so absurd with a woman like Betty and shouldn't be in a feminine competition with her.

Armando is now go to the otherside of the room so we get his back as Marcela starts to speak ("You're wrong Armando I don't view her as a woman")and as she says "I am offended that you would think I feel she's a feminine competition-" Armando now looks at her confused.

Either he is confused because he doesn't understand what Marcela is trying to say or once again his subconscious is dominating him here.

The takeaway is that in Armando's mind Betty is a woman, ugly, but a woman nonetheless. He is confused as to why Marcela doesn't view her as a woman but still behaves the way she does.

We again get a classic scene of Betty writing in her diary as we hear her dialogue and get scenes of Armando in Marcela's bed.

We see Armando thinking about what Mario told him earlier that night.

When Mario told him that he would've sworm that Betty was in love with him[Armando] in that scene we didn't really get a reaction from him. He had a poke face but here, as he is thinking about it all he has a different look.

We stop getting a visual flashback, only an auditory one after Mario told him "I could've sworn she was in love with you." and the frame we're getting is Armando's face while laying in bed. He seems hopeful. The exact same expression he had when Betty told him that she didn't have anything with Nicolas.

We hear Mario's voice when he told him "If there's anyone who can fight Nicolas for Betty's love, it's the president of Eco Moda." Armando shifts in bed and covers his face. We then fade to Betty asleep on her bed and get another fade to Armando, this allows us to know that they are about to have another shared dream.

Armando is the mvp of this dream ss the camera focuses on him right away.

He seems happy in this dream as he runs around with Betty in a field with bright green grass and trees. He continues turns to look at Betty or allows Betty to lead him. Then in the dream Betty disappears and Armando is left alone, searching around him with a scared expression on his face until Betty finally appears in front of him. She nears him with her lips slightly puckered and Armando smiles and as well moves in closer until Betty runs away from him again.

The dreams shows us this two more times where Betty runs from him until the final time when Armando finds her and they near for a kiss we then get a real world Armando in bed shaking his head mumbling no, we can assume they are kissing in the dream.

This foretells what is to come. In Betty's eyes this is a good dream but we also know that due to her past Betty is afraid to love again which we're told this by her constant running away from Armando in the dream.

Armando's fear is brought to light in this dream that is of him losing Betty as it reoccurs more than once and each time he goes out to find her. There is times when he does want to kiss her but Betty pulls away and runs and then on the final one he becomes conscious in his dream(yes that happens, it's called lucid dreaming and sometimes it randomly happens).

The fact we kept getting fades from both Armando and Betty sleeping lets us know this was a dream simontainsly happening at the same time and it isn't until after they actually kiss that Armando's conscious starts to wake him up.

Marcela then finishes waking him up in the real world and asks Armando what he was dreaming, he tells her a horrible nightmare.

Again, Armando is aware that he doesn't find Betty to be his ideal perfect woman or the beauty standard. You know, she's "ugly" so having something physical even in a dream is a nightmare to him. The thing to take note of is that he was enjoying the beginning of that dream and it demonstrates his subconscious feelings.

We already Betty loved that dream.

The next morning Marcela mentions that if he doesn't talk about the dream he must secretly want it to come true.

His coping mechanism towards this entire situation has been denial. It protects him from having to face his true feelings and fears. It protects him from something he isn't ready to deal with yet.

He starts choking on his juice and coughing as Marcela watches him.

Marcela telling him this pushes him to face those fears of his, the fear that he does like Betty and that he does care about her more than just his employee however again, he is in denial therefore unable to understand this.

[You know I will write a post about how Aura Maria and Freddy are a parallel of Betty and Armando.]

Neither Betty or Armando talk about their dream to anyone, or at least the real content of said dream, which based on what Marcela insinuated, Armando secretly wants that dream to come true.

This is a fact because later on when Armando has that nightmare of Betty making out with Nicolas inside the new car they got, he tells Marcela about the nightmare or at least some distorted version of it, because he doesn't want that nightmare to come true. This time though he doesn't talk about it.

Betty clarifies the situation between Nicola and her roll in Terra Moda and Armando thanks her for it.

When she goes into her office Armando tells Mario that he's right about making Betty fall in love.

This next scene I already broke down in another post. Armando suggest Mario for the job because he knows that Mario would never fall in love with Betty but at least it would secure the company. However since Mario would never fall in love with Betty that would mean that he wouldn't have competition since you know these two pigs share everything.

Not only that but it would mean that he gets to avoid and deny his feelings without the worry of Nicolas and Betty ending up together and Nicolas turning her against him.

Armando tells Mario that he gets that it's the more logical thing that he[Armando] is the one to make Betty fall in love but that it's not morally correct.

He gets angry as he tells him that he can't do that to her, a woman who has been very special to him, too special towards him. Again this shows that Armando takes notice and likes that Betty treats him the way she does and because of that he doesn't want to hurt her and he knows that she doesn't deserve that.

However Mario then pulls the "your parents will be so disappointed and angry at you if you lose the company. So do you have to decide whether you'll be a rat to your parents or Betty."

As they discuss the sinister plan they solely based the problem in the physicality. As Armando even said himself the only bad thing about the plan was that Betty was ugly. If Betty wasn't ugly Armando wouldn't be afraid to face his feelings therefore be upfront about them.

However because she is it clashes with all his other traits. His ego, vanity, obsession with perfection and the fact he was unable to be in control over who he ends up falling in love with or liking.

I don't know what worse, Armando knowing how selfish the plan is against Betty and still going along with the it for the sake of the company and his unwillingness to admit to his parents that he was wrong or Mario knowing exactly what's going and how to manipulate Armando to do this and not caring about his best friends feelings and the guilt he will carry on as long as Armando remains president for his own greed.

In the next post I will breakdown the scene in which Armando drunkenly confesses somewhat his very confused feelings.

'Til next time :)

Ps. Sorry for all this typos! I'm an insomniac so I usually write these sleep deprived lol.

#armando mendoza #don armando #armando ysblf #beatriz pinzón solano #beatriz pinzon solano #betty la fea #betty ysblf #yo soy betty la fea #mario calderon #marcela valencia #betty pinzón solano

[citylightsbooks]

5 Questions with Kate Crawford, author of Atlas of AI

Kate Crawford is a leading scholar of the social and political implications of artificial intelligence. She is a research professor at USC Annenberg, a senior principal researcher at Microsoft Research, and the inaugural chair of AI and Justice at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris.

Katie Crawford will be discussing her new book, Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence (published by Yale University Press) with Trevor Paglen in our City Lights LIVE! discussion series on Friday April 30th, presented with Gray Area!

*****

Where are you writing to us from?

Sydney, Australia. I normally live in New York, so visiting here is like being in a parallel universe where COVID-19 was taken seriously from the beginning and history played out differently.

What’s kept you sane during the pandemic?

Cooking through every cookbook I own, talking to good friends, listening to records, and trying to improve my sub-par surfing skills.

What books are you reading right now? Which books do you return to?

Right now I’m reading Jer Thorp’s Living in Data: Citizen's Guide to a Better Information Future, the excellent collection Your Computer is On Fire from the MIT Press, Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future, and The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey Into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein. Yes, I have a problem - I never just read one book at a time.

In terms of books that I return to, there's a long list. Here’s just a few: 

- Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star's Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences

- Ursula M. Franklin's The Real World of Technology

- Simone Browne’s Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness

- James C. Scott’s Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

- Gray Brechin’s Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin

- Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower

- Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison's Objectivity

- Oscar H. Gandy’s The Panoptic Sort: A Political Economy of Personal Information. Critical Studies in Communication and in the Cultural Industries - such a prescient book about classification, discrimination and technology, published back in 1993!

Which writers, artists, and others influence your work in general, and this book, specifically?

Atlas of AI was influenced by so many writers and artists, across different centuries - from Georgius Agricola to Jorge Luis Borges to Margaret Mead. More recently, there’s been an extraordinary set of books published on the politics of technology in just the last five years. For example:

- Meredith Broussard’s Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World

- Ruha Benjmain’s Race After Technology

- Julie E. Cohen’s Between Truth and Power: The Legal Constructions of Informational Capitalism

- Sasha Costanza-Chock’s Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need

- Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein’s Data Feminism

- Virginia Eubanks’ Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor

- Tarleton Gillespie’s Custodians of the Internet: Platforms, Content Moderation, and the Hidden Decisions That Shape Social Media

- Sarah T Roberts’ Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media

- Safiya Noble’s Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism

- Tung-Hui Hu’s A Prehistory of the Cloud

And that’s just for starters - it’s an incredible time for books that make us contend with the consequences of the technologies we use every day.

I’m also influenced by the artists I’ve had the privilege of working with over the years, including Trevor Paglen, Vladan Joler, and Heather Dewey-Hagborg. Vladan and I collaborated on Anatomy of an AI System a few years ago, and he designed the cover and illustrations in Atlas of AI, which I love.

If you opened a bookstore, where would it be located, what would it be called, and what would your bestseller be?

This may not be the most practical choice, but I’d open a library for rare and antiquarian books near Mono Lake. I’d call it Labyrinths, after Borges’ infinite library of volumes. One of its treasures would be a copy of John Wilkins’ An Essay Towards a Real Character, and a Philosophical Language (1668), where Wilkins tries to create a classification scheme for every possible thing and notion in the universe. It would be a cryptic joke for the occasional passer-by.

#kate crawford #5 questions #atlas of ai #author interviews #yale press

[fyrapartnersearch]

summer partners wanted!!!

Hey fellow writers, my name is Louise! <3 I’m an avid roleplayer, legal adult, and on the search for some new partners (obviously). For the sake of brevity, I’m going to try to keep this ad short, but just know I’m chatty when it comes to OOC talk! I’m your girl when it comes to creativity and plot twists, fun headcanons, world building, playlists, aesthetics, fanart, so on!

I write in third person, past tense. I’m also willing to write in present tense if that’s your style.

Quality of quantity. I mirror replies and comfortable with most lengths, ranging from a few paragraphs to a full-on essay. Nothing scares me, so if you’re verbose and love flowery prose, I’m not going to run the opposite direction. I can also do lazy lit, for all you Tumblr ~aesthetic~ people out there.

Proper grammar is a necessity. Anything goes for outside of roleplay in the OOC chat, though! 

I like to have at least two mains to write, as I found only focusing on one can be a bit too boring. As for side characters, I like having a diverse cast to bring to life that we can sometimes share.

I love grey morality, tragic backstories, slow burn romances, unexpected plot twists, backstabbing, political and ideological conflicts, emotional intensity—anything that will have us screaming in the OOC chat. My writing is fueled by my passion for drama because I am 100% a messy bitch.

World building is something I LOVE, so never, ever be afraid to delve into that with me or want to bend/ignore canon in favor for our own set-up. 

As for what I wish to roleplay, I have quite a few canon-verse I’d like to explore, as well as original ideas. Please note for canon-verses, I wish to only use original characters. I’m also fond of bending canon and implementing headcanons in place of certain things that we agree on.

  HARRY POTTER. I’ve been in love with the wizarding world ever since elementary school and I’m afraid I’ll never tire of it. I would love to expand on lore and supplement the roleplay with our own, unique takes. I would love to either follow our own group of Hogwart (or Ilvermorny!) students over the course of several years, including their adult life in the magical world. While the premise is basic, perhaps we could replace Voldemort with our own source of conflict and reshape Hogwarts history to our liking. This plot would be open-ended and heavily character-driven! Something else I’d be interested in is taking the Triwizard Tournament and twisting it to be more inclusive to where the magical school of our choice would host one champion from every magical academy. I don’t have much else behind this idea, but I think it’d be fun to do!

ASOIAF: By far my biggest guilty pleasure, I wouldn’t be a true messy bitch if I didn’t want to take the Iron Throne for myself. (Before you ask, yes, I love Cersei.) I love ye olde fantasy, with cunning houses sprawled throughout our own land of fantasy and wonder. My main desire it to take the concept of ASOIAF/GOT where various houses and regions are all fighting a bloodied, dirty war full of political and personal drama. If you’re down to make our own royal houses, heirs, and backstabbing puppetmasters, I’m eagerly awaiting your email.

GOTHIC SUBURBIA: Remember that feeling you got while reading IT and watching Stranger Things for the first time? That’s a high I’m desperately trying to chase. Some other sources of aesthetic/plot inspiration can be drawn from Twin Peaks, Edward Scissorhands, Carrie, etc.. Think of a humdrum town where nothing extraordinary happens… until, well, something does. And that something is horrifying. I’m open to exploring anything creepy, ranging from the supernatural to killer cults. For this verse, I’d love to play with time and jump between our characters being kids/teens and adults. Whatever driving plot force we decide on, how did it change our characters overtime? What relationships are ruined, what are things they never got to say? What memories are skewed? What brought them all back together? This plot would be heavily character-driven!

HUNGER GAMES: What year is it? But seriously, I got this idea from an old roleplay partner that unfortunately ghosted, and I’ve been craving to do it again ever since. This verse would focus on our own, original victors of the Hunger Games and focus on their lives in the Capitol. I’d love to explore the trauma from the games and living in poverty to suddenly becoming a celebrity to rich, privileged people that see you as nothing more than a character. (Yes, Capitol citizens absolutely write self-insert fanfics about Victors, you cannot convince me otherwise.) There’s so much untapped depth to Victors! I’d also love to add more lore to the districts and create our own rebellion.

  If any of these caught your attention, send me something at [email protected]! Please tell me what ideas you’re interested in and some information about yourself. I can’t wait to hear from you! ♡

#oc rp #multiple paragraph #para #long term #email #submission

[mobius-prime]

99. Sonic the Hedgehog #60

Arsenal of the Iron King

Writer/Pencils: Frank Strom Colors: Barry Grossman

This is another one of those issues that introduces someone who would appear to be a one-off character, but ends up later becoming a major player. I won't spoil it for those who don't already know, but just go ahead and pay attention to some of the people introduced here and see if you can guess.

Sonic and Tails are continuing their adventure, this time flying not by plane but by Tails' namesakes, when they encounter a mountain that is completely engulfed in flame, yet somehow isn't burning the forest around it. They quickly become exhausted by the heat and land in a nearby village, hoping to get some water and answers.

Seeing the dire state of things in this land, Sonic suggests the residents of the village simply pack up and leave, but an old Mobian lion nearby shoots that idea down. He introduces himself as Li Yuen, and the girl as Li Moon (the whole area is given a very Chinese flavor, and indeed was revealed to be in not-Asia later in the comic), and explains why the mountain is burning like this.

Truer words have never spoken of thyself, Sonic. They begin heading towards the Iron King and Queen's fortress to retrieve the fan, but the two see them coming - the Iron King appears to be a massive Mobian bull, while the Iron Queen is a normal human (er, Overlander) woman, making this comic years ahead of Sonic '06 as far as portraying interspecies relationships. The king and queen send out a pawn of theirs to intercept Sonic and Tails, and the pawn turns out to be none other than Monkey Khan himself, brainwashed to do their bidding!

I really like Sonic's line about Monkey Khan being a "harmless psycho," honestly. I don't know, something about it strikes me as hilarious, especially because it does basically describe Monkey Khan in these earlier issues. Anyway, the Iron Queen makes the mistake of showing up in person to egg Monkey Khan on and taunt Sonic, and while Khan is distracted cornering Sonic at the edge of a cliff while the queen heeheehees  maliciously, Tails dives for her staff, knocking the magic crystal off of it and robbing her of her control over Khan. She flies away on her cool-ass floating tech platform in anger as Khan comes to, and Tails points out that it appears she was using the power of some magic rings to exert control.

Now with Monkey Khan along to help their mission, they head into the imposing-looking fortress to search for the king's arsenal. They find it fairly easily, but of course, the king arrives to try to beat them down. Tails goes searching while Sonic and Monkey Khan fight back against the king, and soon, sure enough, Tails finds the thing they're looking for.

Wow, it's that easy? You'd think this guy would have had it better locked up if it's this powerful, man. With the Iron King blown away, Khan gives Sonic a ride above the mountain on his magic cloud, and despite the queen reappearing to try to stop them with more magic, Sonic blows the fan onto the mountain, putting out the entire fire at once without issue. The queen flies away promising future revenge, and the three heroes return to the village to let Li Yuen and Moon know about their success. And apparently, Monkey Khan's a pretty special guy!

You don't say, Sonic! Seriously, everyone in the comic at this point has some kind of mystical prophecy surrounding them except Sonic. But then again, you could say that's what makes him so special and interesting as a main character - that in a world of prophecies and chosen ones, he's just an ordinary guy with extraordinary powers, who's determined to keep saving the world even though he doesn't necessarily have to. Just another reason why I love Sonic as a character, man.

The Ultimatum

Writer/Colors: Ken Penders Pencils: Manny Galan

All right, ready to see Sally's night ruined, everyone? Her father calls her into his room, and he mentions how she's been avoiding him lately, admonishing her for "questioning his judgment" ever since the "let's dismantle all the Robians" incident. Despite her protestations, which are totally, 100% reasonable considering that she had witnessed her father calling for the Robians' mass murder not once but twice not too long ago, he opens a closet and leads her into the secret passage hidden within, much to her amazement.

Sure enough, he leads her into the room containing the pool of the Source of All, mentioning that she should have undergone this ritual when she was ten years old, but due to the war he was unable to ensure such - but now that he's back, he intends to have her complete the ritual now. Also, apparently she'd be the first female Acorn to undergo the rite, a detail which seems a little unnecessary to include. I mean, there's been really no indication within the worldbuilding of this universe so far that sexism is really an issue, no one's ever questioned any female character's abilities just because of their gender (barring that one really bizarre issue that made Robotnik out to be a misogynist, also penned by Penders, shockingly enough), so what, did the Acorn line just have a general propensity towards having male babies or something until now? Penders wrote this into the Guardians' history as well, with Janelle-Li being the only female Guardian in the line's unbroken history, again with no real precedent in the worldbuilding. It just seems odd and I don't really have a good explanation for it other than Penders' own unacknowledged biases.

But I digress. Sally is immediately ready to fulfill her duties until the king interrupts her to say that once she undergoes the rite, she will need to think about marriage so she will have a suitable king to rule alongside her one day. She waffles a little, mentioning how she's not ready to get married yet and how "Sonic would run for the hills if I even mentioned the subject," and the king practically explodes, yelling at her about how Sonic is absolutely out of the question. Apparently, the Acorn line just loooooves arranged marriage, with the king's own wife having been chosen for him when he was eleven and their marriage commencing on his eighteenth birthday. Sally is still a bit confused and uncertain until her father mentions Antoine being a good fit for her husband, at which point she loses it and starts shouting at him in anger.

Okay, honestly? Good for her. I mentioned before how this whole thing seems incredibly cult-like, and I fully believe that the only reason this thing has been going on for so long without any issues is because all the future monarchs are essentially tricked into bonding with the Source of All when they're too young to understand what such a thing would entail. King Acorn even mentioned this to Dr. Quack in that earlier issue, that at the time he was just instructed to dunk himself under the surface of the liquid, but that he "didn't know at the time" that he'd bonded with the Source. Now the king is facing resistance from his daughter, and I'd wager the reason is because she's actually had it explained to her what such a thing would mean, not to mention that she's been an independent and strong leader from the very beginning without him, since he was lost at the beginning of the war. She's had almost her entire childhood to make her own decisions and grow into her own vision of a leader, and now that her father is back and trying to exert his more traditionalist control over her, she's fighting back. She's being put into a very hard situation, torn between her traditional duties and her belief in her own independence - ironically, in a way, life was easier for her when her father was still missing.

Furthermore, that last line of the king's is a little bizarre and ominous - his "other option"? Who or what could he be referring to? I wouldn't be surprised if some people thought that the other option was Geoffrey given the "Next: Geoffrey" text right next to him, but no, it's not him. He doesn't have the precious royal blood, after all. *sigh* *grumble* Stupid monarchy…

#nala reads archie sonic preboot #archie sonic #archie sonic preboot #sonic the hedgehog #sth 60 #writer: frank strom #writer: ken penders #pencils: frank strom #pencils: manny galan #colors: barry grossman #colors: ken penders

[malliebuu]

Mallie’s Reylo Fanfic Rec List:

This is in no particular order and not limited to! There are so many talented writers out there! These are stories that have really stuck with me, so I am sharing them with you all! I will add as I go.

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The Inheritance of the Resistance by @waterlilyrose

Rating: Explicit

Summary: The discovery of a new unknown Duchess of the House of Kenobi brings new life to the Rebellion Court. Having lost their old Queen Leia, Rey and Han are forced into a deeply unconventional but quietly happy marriage. Having never had a family of her own, Rey sees Han as the father figure she always longed for.

So when the disgraced Prince returns to court to make amends with his aging King, how will he take to the girl who is now effectively his stepmother?

Medieval/Tudor Reylo.

Review: This has Tudor vibes - it is unreal. I love history, so naturally historically AUs are right up my ally. I was quite impressed by the setup and dynamic. The author uses Star Wars terms in place for the historical ones. This doesn’t follow the Tudor chain of events, but veers in it’s own original direction. Ben and Rey for this interesting relationship and it is quite troubled because Rey is actually married to Ben’s father ::gasp::. Love this fiction. So beautifully heartbreaking! (complete) 

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There Shall I Be By philcollins

Rating: Not Rated (Mature if anything)

Summary: AU in which Rey, our lonely scavenger from The Force Awakens, meets Kylo Ren under very different circumstances - he's a shepherd on Jakku. Rey inherits an estate on the moon Ceathea and Kylo follows her there, works for her there, and soon encounters his hated old foe, Uncle Luke Skywalker. Will Rey ever accept Kylo's love? Will crusty old Luke Skywalker come between Rey and her true love? More familiar faces will make an appearance in this Force-free story of love, longing, angst, and anger.

Review: This story was so heartbreaking, but so good. A mix of pining, angst, drama and uncertainty. This story I read nonstop and was quite heart broken, but these two stubborn people just need a little extra time in order to figure out they were meant for one another. This story had me sighing and talking aloud with frustration! So well-written! (Complete)

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The End of Father Kylo By Sweet_Solitude

Rating: Explicit

Summary: After a filthy youth and almost suffering a great loss, Kylo turns to priesthood and leads a virtuous life. That is until he meets a girl who turns his world upside down and reminds him that he has a functioning body below his waist.

Review: Again, this one was found during my priest Kylo fazes. Don’t judge me! This has everything you would think when you think of the church and priests, though there is a little bit of something else. Yes, I am going to hell. I know this. Smut, smut! Love this kinky one-shot. If you aren’t offended by this, give it a read. ::fans face:: (one-shot)

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Fault Lines By Devil Betty

Rating: Explicit

Summary: Rey has always dreamed of a family. She starts to believe she could have it when she moves in with her new foster mother, Leia Organa. Then Leia’s son, Ben, moves back home and threatens to ruin the life Rey is trying to build. Nothing will prepare either of them for the truth. Some family secrets should stay hidden.

Review: This story is a “page-turner”. It has a simple setting, but so much happens and the dialogue between both Kylo and Rey are so intriguing. The chemistry is unmistakable and the lemons are to die for. Unfortunately, this is one minor thing that has a draw back, and both character experience a major revelation that hurts them both. Please read warnings before reading!!

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Spit and Sweat by bunnystealsyourcarrots

Rating: Explicit

Summary: In 1975, Finalizer played a gig at CBGB. The punk band gave their best, the crowd went wild, but a young girl named Rey wanted more.

God Save Them All.

Review: AH! This AU I really couldn’t get enough of because it involves our lovely Kylo and Rey, but is also peppered with sex, drugs and rock-n-roll! I mean...no on the drugs, but in all seriousness, I LOVE Rock-n-roll! So, naturally I honed in on this like no one’s tomorrow! The chemistry between Kylo and Rey is off the damn charts! Ugh, the sexual tension! I absolutely love how this starts as a childhood crush and as she gets older Kylo sees her and is completely blown away! (Uncomplete)

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Love and Comfort, Sex and Wondering If This Could Be Our Turn By AquaWolfGirl

Rating: Explicit

Summary: Anonymous Prompt: Ben and Rey are in college and best friends, and very much in love, they just don't realize it. Rey is tired of people making jokes about her being a virgin, so she asks Ben to help her out.

Review: Virgin Rey has a little delima. Ben is there to help guide her. This is actually a very sweet and sexy story! Give it a read! The author is a fantastic writer! (One-Shot)

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nolite te bastardes carborundorum By SaintHeretical

Rating: Explicit

Summary: Born on the fringes of a dystopian dictatorship, Rey has lived most of her life in the shadows until desperation drives her into the hands of the government. Her unblemished womb is her only salvation, which leads to her being placed as a Handmaid in the household of Commander Kylo Ren and his infertile wife.

Her task? Produce a healthy child for the Commander, or be banished to a life of hardship and almost certain death. A Reylo Handmaid’s Tale AU

Review: I loved The Handmaid's Tale, so naturally when I visited this story, I was drawn to that aspect. There is non-con in this, so please beware when reading. If you do not know the Hulu original series, refer to their site for a detailed description. The author, in response to this TV show, stays true, but brings originality and this is really a wonderfully written piece. The author is extremely talented! (Unfinished)

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Innocents Lost By Pontmercy44

Rating: Explicit

Summary: “That’ll scar.” Han stood behind him, nervously. He’d always been nervous around him, first, because he was a baby, and Han didn’t understand babies, and then, because he had the Force, and Han didn’t understand the Force. “Girls like scars.”

“It’s not like it matters.” Ben looked out at the thousands of spires. “I’m going to be a Jedi.”

Han grunted in sympathy, and then sat next to him, swinging his legs off the side of the tower. The urge to feel alive, to take risks and taste danger – that was what he’d inherited from his father. “Heard you got off the hook.”

“Not exactly. Community service.”

“Better than a detention block.” Han leaned back on his hands.

Ben scoffed. “It’s asinine.”

His father shifted, looking up at the stars, through the hazy, translucent atmosphere of Hosnian Prime. “What do they have you doing? Picking up orbit pollution, or something?”

“Worse.” Ben snorted. “Teaching orphans to read and write Basic. On Jakku.”

Han winced. “Only slightly better than a detention block.”

Review: Love this story! I flew through it. Very well-written! Ben has to do community service as punishment and meets little Rey on Jakku. This forbidden relationship is beautiful and bittersweet at the same time. I love this first love adaptation! The author went above and beyond with these two! (complete)

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Daddy Dearest By AquaWolfGirl

Rating: Explicit

Summary: When single father Ben Solo moves into his new apartment in Bespin with 5-month old daughter Amy in tow, he hopes to hell and back that this life will be better than the one they left behind in upstate New York. It's not long before his life becomes a cycle of work, Amy, work, Amy. One night, while trying to fish his keys from his pocket without waking his infant daughter, Rey, his next door neighbor, offers a helping hand.

Review: Daddy Ben! He is a great dad who falls for the babysitter. Interesting read; well written! You feel so sorry for Ben, but also Rey is a God send! Sweet interactions! Give it a read if you want some light hearted, fluffy interactions. Not much for fluff, but this was really a nice read! :3

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Stigmata By SaintHeretical

Rating: Explicit

Summary: Fifteen years after tragedy tore them apart, a priest and his sister band together to protect a homeless girl who appears to have been touched by God. Too bad his excommunicated nephew seems to have other plans for her.

A Reylo slow burn Modern/Religious AU.

Review: After the priest hype came out, I searched merely to humor myself. I found a few fictions that really had an interesting plot. This is one of them. Focused on Christianity and different groups within. Kylo and Leia are curious about this young girl who turns out to be homeless and has a curious development. She has formed the stigmata. This really is different than anything I have experienced. I usually don’t go for stuff like this, but there is enough angst and romance to fill my needs. LOVE it!

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World In My Eyes By Sasstasticmad

Rated: Explicit

Summary: "The bond should be dead," Rey says through gritted teeth. "Just like you.”

"The bond is only this strong because of you," Kylo Ren tells her. "You're the one who touched me. You took my hand and let me hold yours. This is your fault, not mine. (A post-TLJ force bond fic)

Review: This is after TLJ. I was obsessed for a while, which I am sure comes to no shock to anyone! Everyone was wrapped up in the force bond, which sasstasticmad delivers VERY well! There is so much continued tension between Rey and Kylo. It is quite interesting to see these two continue their interaction from opposite groups. The Resistance Vs First Order. (incomplete)

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Wolves By @albastargazer

Rated: Explicit

Summary: Rey Kenobi is a human beta until one fatal night and everything changes. With the existence of werewolves turning her world upside down, she is left with only her boss, Ben Solo, to help. Little did she know he is an Alpha wolf and the next leader of his pack, intent on claiming his rare omega.

Review: A/O/B dynamic. This story really is amazing. I have always had a soft spot for werewolves and I haven’t really had the pleasure of finding one that really stuck yet, of course, that was until I stumbled upon this little number. The dynamic between Ben and Rey is quite interesting. A horrible event leads Rey down an interesting path. Ben takes charge and attempts to help Rey. Interesting revelations emerge, however. (incomplete)

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Hatchling By g_girl143 @gwendy85

Rated: Teen

Summary: Rey's leads a predictable life as a general labourer at Niima Junkyard until an unexpected visit from the daughter she doesn't even know exists turns her world into a tailspin.

Review: This is simply the sweetest story. I binged it in one sitting. So sad that it doesn’t update as frequently, but when I do get an e-mail I am jumping for joy! This author really is talented. Love the way this dynamic is set up. There are so many intriguing questions-- you are left wanting more. So bitter sweet it isn’t complete! It really is something I haven’t seen done before. Really hope that it is completed someday! So much potential! I cannot wait to see what becomes of this new found family knit that develops on a whim, no thanks for Rey’s surprise daughter! ;)

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Kismet by @ladylionhart

Rated: Mature

Summary: Sometimes, what seems like a simple mistake is truly the first step of a fateful journey.

- Or the one where a single text message sent to the wrong number completely changes the lives of two people and those around them.

Review: Easily one of my all time favs! This is such an amazingly written, intriguing AU. It really begins like none other via text. Both parties, shockingly, continue their witty bouts of conversation until they both begin to develop feelings for one another without actually seeing one another. When they finally begin to interact on a level far from platonic, it heats up fast and you are left needing more! LOVE!

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Summer Heat By @isharan

Rating: Explicit

Summary: A lonely young woman arrives at the cottage she inherited from her grandfather on a remote lake in northern Ontario, to find her neighbor is a rare Alpha, a relic of the old days when humans were ruled by their designation. Across a long hot summer, they connect over their shared history, and she finds that the past may not be as far away as she assumed.

Review: ::Bats lashes:: What can I say about this one? Well, I am slowly dying because man is this a slow burn! This is an A/O/B dynamic, but it is so well written that it isn’t just a heat and commence screwing each other’s brains out. No, this really has amazing storyline that has you asking questions or attempting to figure out the author’s train of thought. Gosh, there are so many good things to say about this fic! Ben is absolutely a dream in this fiction too. I cannot even begin to describe because I just wouldn’t do it justice. This fiction killed me in a good way! (Incomplete)

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Serotonin and Dopamine By Pontmercy44

Rating: Explicit

Summary: He could lie and say it was because he was gentleman, but that wasn’t quite true. “I – well, I want to take advantage of you. But I know better.”

Rey looked at him for a long moment, and Ben thought she might slap him. She didn’t. She started to laugh, shaking her head as if she couldn’t quite believe it. Finally, she said, smiling, “Goodnight, Ben.”

Ben turned and walked slowly back to his car. He heard her door creak open, but he didn’t hear it slam shut. It felt as if he was walking away from his chance, from his chance to have something good and uncomplicated and nice.

Ben turned around, and went back to the door. Rey waited for him, biting her lip. He took off his stocking cap and held it in his hands in front of himself. His ears were cold without his hat, but he was in the posture of remorse and penance. "I'm sorry. I'm an ass. Can I kiss you again?"

Review: This fiction was different and reeled me in because Ben was different. In this fiction he has mental disorder that makes it difficult to form relationships. Though, Rey takes to him and Ben to her in the sweetest of ways! I really liked the development in this story. The author delivers fluffy feels too. I am not usually one that enjoys a ton of fluff, but they did right by it! (Complete)

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An empire to be won By Bitterbones @dvrksister

Rating: Explicit

Summary: The grin of satisfaction that split Rey’s face was utterly demented. “In three days time I will be wed to her son.” Rose blanched at the word son, apparently having been unaware of the familial relationship between her beloved general and the scourge of the galaxy.

Rey chuckled and continued, “It will be televised across the galaxy, and I’m certain that she will be watching; supportive mother that she is. Tell her to look on her son’s face, and see that he is gone. Tell her that the mark she sees there is my own, that it is an engagement gift from myself. And tell her that where she failed to save Ben Solo, I will raise Kylo Ren.”

[In which Kylo and Rey are betrothed as children and separated for their respective darkside trainings. Their reintroduction as adults is explosive, to say the least.]

Review: Cold Showers. I swear, these two, from the beginning, have so much sexual chemistry I had to fan myself when reading. Holy shit, this was tense. I LOVE her Kylo. This is an arranged marriage fiction, but even so there is so much going on in the world she so wonderfully weaved as well as the character interactions. You will be flying through each chapter begging for more! (Incomplete)

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Eunoia By MalevolantReverie @malevolent-reverie @meth-lab-shenanigans

Rate: Explicit

Summary: Rey Kenobi, an underachieving college student becomes tangled in a twisted web with her astronomy professor, Kylo Ren, who is hiding a dark secret. (Unfinished)

Review: Violent, dark, heart wrenching, Eunoia is the cream of the crop for dark fictions. I am a huge horror fan, so naturally I was curious to read something dark and dreary in regards to Reylo. The author doesn’t hope back, which I am quite pleased about. She really builds her word and characters fantastically. The dark character of Kylo really stays completely vile. Please only read if you can hand reading explicit content. Contains non-con!

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The Quietest Evening By MalevolantReverie @malevolent-reverie @meth-lab-shenanigans

Rated: Mature

Summary: Every so often, a girl disappears. No one knows where they go or why they’re taken, but they're never seen alive again. Rey, the police chief’s daughter, is next.

Review: This story is one of my favorites from MR. This one wasn’t nearly as graphic as the others she has written, but I really like the storyline she has built here. It was dark, contained secrets and revelations that had my jaw dropping. I really was at the edge of my seat for this one. It really got my heart pumping! If you are looking for a dark, angsty thriller this is the story for you. Please be aware there are triggers and non-con! (Completed)

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Nobody Knows By hernamewasalice @hernamewasalicewriter

Rated: Explicit

Summary: Nobody knows that the loving wife of Ben Solo was kidnapped as a teenager. Nobody knows. Not their family or closest friends. Not even their twelve year old son, Benny.

Review: Amazing story! This is another extremely dark fic, but more so the past that is associated with Rey and Kylo. Kylo has so many secrets, so does Rey. They look like the perfect couple, but really they have a more sinister start. There are parts that are tender and sweet, but the reality and hard truth of it all is quite painful. Author has an extremely fantastic beginning where she pulls you in. It is seen through the eyes of their son! So good! Recommend! Please be warned, however, there is non-con and violence! (Unfinished)

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#reylo #reylo fanfiction rec #rey x kylo ren #ben solo x rey

[pinkletterday]

Prelude: Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo

Pairing: Barry Allen/ Iris West

Rating: All Audiences

Summary: “Aw hell, no!” says Linda. “Iris, you’ve been planning yourself this big white wedding for weeks. This is your dream, you guys. If you give up now, the Nazis win. We can’t let them win, yo. You gotta have your wedding. For truth, justice and the American way!” 

Tags: Iris West goes wedding dress shopping with her girls, Sara Lance is the Westallen fairygodmother, the wedding my babies deserved, apologies for the lack of Felicity, author was really mad at the time

Notes: Am I procrastinating life by posting old fics on tumblr? Why yes I am. 

This was my oldest fic for this fandom and my first in ten years. 

Part 1 of the Westallen Wedding Album

It is seven in the morning and someone is ringing the doorbell. The universe really does hate them. Iris is too demoralized to care at this point.

“Go away,” calls Barry from under the covers, clutching Iris like a security blanket.

“It’s me, Caitlin. It’s urgent, open up!”

This is why they can’t ever turn their phones off. Et tu, Cait?

They shuffle fatalistically to the door in their pyjamas to let her in and Caitlin looks apologetically at the sleep-rumpled duo. “I’m sorry, guys, but they insisted.”

“Who -”

Sara bursts into the loft. “All right, everyone get dressed. Wedding’s back on, bitches!” she hollers, in full captain mode, as Catilin grimaces away. “The time is oh seven hundred hours and we have fuckton of work to do so. Ass in gear, folks!”

Barry and Iris blink at her like injured meerkats. “...What?” They notice a flustered Cecile trailing in after Sara, followed by an offensively bright-eyed and bushy tailed Kara, and… “Linda?”

“What up, girl,” greets Linda Park, hugging a stunned Iris. She appears to have a distinctly fresh-from-airport-hell brand of dishevelment and the vibrating energy of a sports writer on Redbull.

“How are you here?" asks Barry in confusion. "You said in your RSVP that you’d be at your family thing in Oklahoma-,”

“Yeah so I did and I was and then I got a hysterical call from the kidterns at CCPN that your wedding had been bombed by Nazis. Followed by news footage of Central City being attacked by actual, honest-to-God Nazis and then beaten back by a mess of leather fetish-types...you get the idea. In conclusion: Nazis. Seriously, guys, what the hell!” Linda throws her hands up at them with a bewildered expression.

Barry slumps onto the couch with a groan and Iris drops wearily beside him, making a helpless gesture that is somehow supposed to convey “we couldn’t tell you if we knew/ the universe hates us/ it is written/ this is our life now". They lean against each other like sad puppies.

“Anyway, the point is, you guys are getting married today. Properly.” presses Sara.

“Can’t,” grunts Barry.

“What d’you mean, can’t?”

“Lost all our deposits. Tux ruined. Guests flew home after martial law was declared. Fire. Murder. Plague.”

“My dress survived but I frankly don’t even want to see it again,” says Iris sadly. “That thing cost five thousand dollars and now all I remember when I see it is our minister getting vaporized. Oh God.” She hides her face in Barry’s shoulder, stifling a sob, as he puts a comforting arm around her.

“Ok, yes, we figured,” interjects Kara, advancing with a "hear-me-out" demeanor. “But guys. This is all fixable! And we’re gonna fix it! You still want to get married, right?” She looked expectantly at them, a golden retreiver puppy convinced of the world's innate goodness.

“Well yeah,” says Barry, scratching his head. “But Iris and I are just thinking to going to a Justice of Peace-”

“Aw hell, no!” cries Linda, making Barry jump. Redbull and sports are just not a good combination for this early in the morning. “Iris, you’ve been planning yourself this big white wedding for weeks. This is your dream, you guys. If you give up now, the Nazis win. We can’t let them win, yo. You gotta have your wedding. For truth, justice and the American way!”

The other women all nod, appearing to agree on the connection between propping up the wedding industry and patriotism. “She���s right,” says Caitlin the Betrayer, staunchly.

“And exactly how are we supposed to do that?” asks Iris with some asperity. She doesn’t particularly care about truth or justice or whatever the American way is supposed to be right now, unless the American way involves a bubble bath with Barry, sex and some post-coital Netflix.

“You leave that to us,” says Cecile firmly, sitting herself next to Iris. She takes her hand with a maternal air. “Iris, you and Barry aren’t alone in any of this. You have your family. Your friends. We have resources. Let us do this for you.”

“Cecile, that’s really sweet, believe me, but we’re just too tired-”

“That’s why you don’t have to lift a finger,” says Linda determinedly. “Except to put a ring on it. Look, I used to work part time as a wedding co-ordinator in college. I still have contacts. Just give me and Cecile your wedding binder and go find a dress. We can throw you the shindig of your dreams and get you married off before tomorrow morning.”

There is a chorus of "yeahs!" and "all rights!" and even a "whoo!" from Caitlin, who immediately looks embarrassed and subsides mid hand-pump.

“Where do I find a dress to get married in this evening?” says Iris hopelessly.

Sara smirks. “Did you know the Waverider has a fabrication room?”

“What’s a fabrication room?” asks Barry, Iris and Caitlin

“What’s a Waverider?” asks Linda and Cecile.

Sara grins smugly at Iris. “Just call me your fairy godmother, Cinderella.”

___

“I’m in a timeship,” Iris hears Linda say aloud to herself for the umpteenth time. “A timeship with a giant dress up room. With superheroes. Shopping for bridal gowns. For the Flash’s fiancee.”

Iris is the dressing cubicle and can't see anyone, but can picture Linda swigging her third glass of champagne, fluffing the white feather boa she had wound around her shoulders. She had decided that she didn't feel right drinking champagne in a fancy dressing room without a wearing one.

“Linda, honey, you’ve been saying that since we got here,” sighs Cecile, relegated to sparkling grape juice, but seated comfortably on the Persian rug. “It’s not really helping.”

They are in the Waverider's fabrication room, which Gideon had science babbled at them about reconstructing garments and accessories via subatomic teleportation and reassembly, and what Sara had simply described as "the Waverider communal closet". Except the "communal" part being all of time and history, apparently. It honestly just looks like a hi-tech walk-in closet from Dr. Who, only with outfits atomizing into being inside a cubicle once its design is selected from a 3D holographic projection.

"Anyone want more cake?” Ray Palmer, ex-billionaire and apparently current time traveller, calls out sunnily.

“Ooh, me me me!” says Kara enthusiastically from where she has been vamping in a crinoline in front of the mirror. “Oh my God, Ray, is that whipped cream frosting? And these strawberries taste so real!"

"The Waverider molecularly restructures any food stuffs we want," Ray says in proud tones. "Although, I usually prefer to get the raw ingredients and make recipes by hand. The champagne is all Gideon's work, though."

"That’s so cool, Gideon!" enthuses Kara.

“Thank you Miss Zor-El,” Gideon's disembodied voice resounds around the room. “This is high praise coming from a race as advanced as the Kryptonians.”

“You’re welcome and thank you!” Kara says happily. “My ship has an A.I but it has my mother’s personality imprint, so it can be kind of a bummer sometimes. Allura definitely hasn’t made me alcohol,” then mutters more quietly, “despite trying to drive me to it.”

“Wait, you have a ship too?” Cecile and Caitlin chorus in surprise.

“What’s a Kryptonian?” wonders Linda.

“Yeah, I have a ship. It’s how I got to earth. Krypton is my home planet,” Kara explains casually. Cecile and Linda are obviously still bemused. “I’m an alien,” Kara clarifies.

There is a stunned silence.

“I’m in a talking timeship,” intones Linda, swigging her drink, “with an alien. Eating cake. Shopping for dresses for-” she’s cut off when Iris throws a cloud of tulle on her head.

“Knock it off, Park,” Iris says, stepping out of the dressing room. “How do I look?” she smoothes down the sugar white confection expectantly, which somehow manages to be both creamy and frothy.

There is some diplomatic hemming and hawwing from the crowd. “Well, it’s a bit…,” Caitlin hesitates and pulls at the back of the synthetic white sheathe.

“Like someone dipped you in a vat of Ray’s frosting,” says Sara bluntly, looking up at her upside down from where she's sprawled on the floor. “And before that you looked like something from a Lady Gaga music video. Really, Iris, are you even taking this seriously?”

“I thought it was funny!” protests Iris, returning to searching through the ship’s dress archive on the holographic display. “What about the one before that?”

“You looked like Queen Elizabeth,” says Linda, flatly. “Present day Queen Elizabeth. What was with the hat?”

“Wow, tough crowd," Iris tries to laugh it off only to be met with skeptical stares. She sags.

“I just. It feels like tempting fate again, you know?” she says quietly. “Ever since I was a kid, I really wanted to dress like a princess at my wedding and it almost came true...three times. I just feel like the minute I put on a wedding dress again, I’m going to bring giant killer robots down on us, or one of us is going to get kidnapped by an evil megalomaniac and replaced by a frog-eating clone-”

“What’d you mean frog-eating clones?” interjects Linda in panic, clutching her boa. “Oh my God, is that an actual thing too?”

“Probably,” says Sara with supreme unconcern from the floor. She pulls herself upright and looks at Iris seriously in the eyes. “Look, I understand what you’re saying. You don’t have to wear a wedding dress if you don’t want to. You can wear a pantsuit or a gunny sack and none of us will care.

But I think you really do want that princess dress. This is all about saving your dream. You can’t let fear make you make decisions that you’ll regret down the line.” There is a murmur of sympathy and assent from the others.

“You only get married once,” says Caitlin, looking at Iris with a deep understanding.

“Well, I mean, actually-,” Linda starts, but is cut off by Cecile who sternly takes her champagne glass away.

"I mean you will only marry your soulmate once,” says Caitlin, looking at Iris steadily. “He’s the love of your life, Iris. You’re not going to lose him. We won’t let you. I promise.” Iris thinks she sees Caitlin’s eyes flash silver.

A solemnity descends on the group. Iris pulls Caitlin into a hug, feeling touched and grateful.

“You know, you could settle for a middle ground,” pipes up the ubiquitous Ray, making everyone start because they had forgotten he was there. “Personally, I think you’d be able to carry off a Galia Lahav like nobody’s business, but if you wanted something a little more classic, a little less elaborate, you could look to something boho like Ru De Seine or vintage feel like Amanda Garrett. Her beading is amazing. I’ve always thought ivory lace is really the thing for a fall wedding myself. Oh! And A-lines are so under-appreciated. You can always get them to flare out almost as well as a ballgown.”

There is a silence as everyone stares at Ray.

“What?” he says uncertainly. “Mick and I watch Say Yes To The Dress.”

A collective “ooh” of understanding ripples through the ladies and they turn back to Iris. “I hate that you all just came to the most obvious conclusion right now,” mutters Sara, chewing bitterly on a strawberry.

“Ray’s right,” says Kara, elbowing in front of the display screen and rifling through the database. “There’s more than one way to look like a princess. You might not be comfortable going for the full Cinderella anymore, but there’s Rapunzel and Snow White or even Greek-style like Megara-”

“Who?”

“Hercules’ girlfriend. I never understood why that movie flopped, my cousin loves it.”

"Oh, hey, me too!" exclaims Ray.

In the end, after a heated debate about Disney between Kara and Ray, a decimated whipped cream cake and a large pile of discarded lace, tulle and chiffon, Iris finds the perfect fit. It's an ivory A-line overlaid in lace. The assymetrical drop waist flares to the ground in a fall of tulle, the deep sweetheart neckline, ruched bodice and delicate cap sleeves covered in exquisite crystal beading. It's sweet and summery and simple. Safe. It makes her feel right.

There is a hush of approval, broken by Sara’s irreverent wolf-whistle.

"I would call that a Snow White look," pronounced Kara.

“Nice one, West,” Linda concurs as Cecile coos over it and Caitlin inspects the beading.

“By the way, Iris, Barry called,” informs Caitlin, as she pulls on Iris' skirts. “He said to tell you he’s decided to include Harry and Wally in the bridal party this time around, and I quote, “Tag, you’re it!”

“It? What are you?” asks Linda in confusion.

“Down three bridesmaids, that’s what I am!" huffs Iris, hands on her hips. She surveys her current retinue. “Okay, then. Sara, Kara, Linda, you’re up!”

The three women’s heads jerk up at Iris’ authoritative tone. “Up for what?”

“You’re in my bridal party now. Best find dresses!” grins Iris, “That’s what happens when you save a girl’s planet and her wedding. I mean,”  she suddenly feels a little uncertain, “if you are up for it?”

In answer, Kara, Linda and Sara cheer and surround Iris, pulling her into a group hug, while Caitlin and Cecile raise their glasses at her proudly.

____

Iris doesn’t see them again for hours after sorting out the bridal wear, being summarily banished to her father’s house. She would have preferred to go home but found that her fiancé had banned her from the premises. Iris objects.

“Are we doing the groom not seeing the bride before the ceremony thing again? Because a lot of good that did us last time,” Iris huffs into the phone, going downstairs to intrepidly investigate the delicious smells wafting from the kitchen.

“No, I just don’t want you here cause I’m working on a wedding gift for you,” says Barry, over a mysterious banging of pots and pans. “And you may not crack a joke about my family jewels.”

“I would never joke about those, Barry,” says Iris seriously. "Your family jewels are very important to me." She hears the distinctive ding of- “wait, are you baking?”

“...damn it.”

“Bartholomew! Are you baking brownies in our apartment on our wedding day without me?” exclaims Iris in indignation.

“How do you know they’re brownies?” Barry hedges in his damage control voice.

“'Cause you banned me from the loft! I know you, you duplicitous, conniving-,”

“Look, we both know you are fundamentally untrustworthy around things with chocolate in them,” says Barry firmly. “You’re like the Leonard Snart of baked goods.”

“But why can’t I have brownies on my wedding day?” Iris whines. She nearly collides with her father, who is bustling about the kitchen in an apron.

“You can,” says Barry patiently. “It’s for the wedding.”

“I thought Oliver was taking care of the catering?” says Iris, confused.

“Yes, he’s footing the bill for the entire thing, so I told him to keep it simple and homely. He feels really bad about what happened to us.”

“Why?” Iris shrugs, “He didn’t crash our wedding.”

“He’s a rich kid, they throw money at people’s problems until they feel better,” snarks Barry and Iris giggles. “So I heard your Dad and Clarissa and some others are making it a kind of potluck, as much to reign Oliver in as anything, and...I wanted you to have your mother’s brownies on your special day.”

Iris melts. “Awww, babe. That is so sweet. And frustrating. Now I don’t know who I want to eat more," she purrs seductively, "you or the brownies.”

“You do know I can hear you, right?” Joe pops up from behind the kitchen counter with an unimpressed expression, making Iris jump.

“Er, yeah okay. So," Iris awkwardly skitters around, to notice - "Hey, is that why Dad’s making Grandma Esther’s sweet potato pie?” She starts to break off a bit of crust, only to be whacked decisively on the knuckles with a spoon. “OW!”

“Those are for the guests this evening, missy!” reprimands Joe, “Out of my kitchen! Git!”

“But it’s my wedding!” Iris wails fruitlessly into the phone as her father chases her out of the room with a spatula.

____

In the afternoon, Iris gets dressed in her new wedding gown, ignoring the flutter of trepidation she feels as Caitlin buttons her up. Cecile and Linda sweep her hair into a high messy bun that lets soft curls spill around her face and neck, pinning a single full-blown crimson rose on the side of her head right above the cascade of her grandmother’s veil.

She wears her great-grandma Esther’s pearl earrings and her mother’s replica wedding bands on a gold chain that Barry had given her (so very long ago now and not long ago at all) around her neck. Cecile kisses her cheek and fastens her little turquoise bracelet around Iris’ wrist “for something both borrowed and blue”. She laughs as she slips her feet into the pair of transparent “glass” heels that Kara had found for her.

Her bridesmaids are in dusty rose gowns gathered at the waist, with skirts that swish playfully around their calves. Delicate aster and camellia flower crowns nestle on their loose waves of hair and they all carry small posies of riotously colourful wildflowers that speak of the fall.

Barry is waiting with his groomsmen downstairs as they descend. Wally, Cisco, Harry and Oliver are in sport coats with matching autumn boutonnieres. Barry has also ditched the tux in favour of a grey suit with a crisp white shirt unbuttoned at the collar and is holding her bouquet of crimson and spray roses. He looked so very dashing in his tux, but Iris is glad that he looks more casual today, slightly mussed, more her geeky, pretty, boyish Barry.

He does not look at her as though he would cry, as he had the first time she had walked down the aisle to him. Instead his expression is open and soft, steady, like he knows how afraid she is and he is right there with her, waiting to catch her and keep her safe. It’s a look that makes her feel like he’s holding her in his arms from across a room.

Iris’ father carefully pulls her into a hug, engulfing her one last time in his solid, reassuring warmth and Dad-scent before he takes her hand and puts it in Barry’s. It’s an acknowledgement of putting something where it has always belonged, rather than entrusting it all over again to another. Iris is fleetingly amused by the thought that Joe may have accepted Barry as her son-in-law when they were first married by a giant dinosaur at the age of ten.

Barry gives her her bouquet and pulls her to him, “Hey.”

“Hi,” she smiles. "I see you got my present." She fingers the small gold bolts of lightning on his shirt cuffs.  

"I did," Barry says with a pleased grin. "They're awesome. Thanks, honey. But I think I still win with the brownies."

"Damn it, you're right," grumbles Iris. "Why are you so competitive all the time?"

Barry gives her a sardonic look and draws her into his arms as she giggles. His expression turns reverent as he gazes down at her.

“God, you're beautiful,” he breathes, looking at her like he can't believe she's real. Iris feels cocooned in happiness. “How do you make me want you more every day?”

She focuses on pinning a crimson rose next to his lapel and blinks back tears. “I bet you say that to all the girls you marry,” Iris quips.

“Yes,” he teases back, “since you are all the girls I’m ever going to marry.”

Iris laughs, and smooths his coat. “So, want to give this thing one last try, Mr. Allen?”

Barry's eyes are resolute and tender. “I’ll never stop trying until you’re mine, Miss West.”

She presses the rose stem against his heart, and his hand covers hers over it. They follow their wedding party and walk out of their childhood home, hand in hand.

~~~~

#the westallen wedding album #westallen #barry allen x iris west #myfic #fanfic #the flash

[praphit]

Slender Man: They hate him cuz they ain't him

It was a big weekend in movies! We were torn between two films. There was of course "BlackkKlansman" - this movie has strong acting, the amazing and quite possibly the angriest director out there Spike Lee, and even that Adam Driver guy I feel has been on the come up. Tons of social commentary: important thangs to talk about concerning race, this nations history with slavery, and the current state of our government... good stuff! Hittin all of the issues! -  BUT, that's not the movie we chose to see.

We naturally went with "Slender Man" instead.

You might say "But, John Praphit, BlackkKlansman has Denzel Washington's son, important issues, and powerful directing... what were you thinking?"

Hey, don't sell The Slender Man short - he has with him... um... Joey King! And... Julia Goldani Telles.

You say "Who the hell are they?"

Yeah, idk. I've also never heard of the production companies or the director, BUT that might only mean they haven't had their fair shot; this could be it! And maybe Slender Man is also filled with the social issues of the day; you don't know! - but I'm here to tell you:)

Let's take a look at SM here -

He's really rockin that no face thing isn't he?? See, many might try hair with the lack of a face. I think no hair is a good call. Imagine Slender Man with an afro;

he'd look ridiculous. And that suit - are you kiddin me??! YES! I mean, idk why he needs a nice suit when he only hangs out in the woods, but... he's prepared. We all have that friend who's always overdressed; though we may make fun of them, part of us kinda wants to be them. Idk what's going on with those tentacles/ tree limbs growing out from behind him... he must be self-sonscious of them though, because whenever they start to show in this film, they cut away. He's got too much style to be a horror movie monster. Perhaps this well dressed creature is simply misunderstood.

Despite his dreaminess, this movie stars more than SM, but these fine what's-their-name actresses. The movie starts off with four girls, who have been close friends for a while, who have a hangout featuring vodka, porn, and occult stuff. One thing I appreciate about this movie is that they get into the horror quickly. There's a lil build up to show how close they all are, and some family atmosphere, but then we're right into the scary.

I have to mention the family dinner :) It must be an art form to capture genuine dinner scenes, cuz this one didn't have it. One of the daughters in the dinner scene only drank water... I mean no eating of anything... she had food, why just the drinking of water... curious. And there's a dad in the beginning dinner scene who's buttering his bread for like 5 mins. I was thinking at the moment "Is anyone going to bring up daddy's butter problem?" He was just buttering and buttering and asking the kids about their days, and right back to buttering.

(the war ain't over for this family)

Sooooo, back to the vodka, porn, and occult.

THAT, my friends is a hell of a weekday (school night) hangout. The gathering around the Tv for pornography and summoning of demonic beings are to be expected - their kids, let them have fun! BUT, the drinking! - Parents, be better! Their ruined teenage livers are on you.

It's straight forward. They watch some weird vid (kinda like "The Ring") and the craziness begins. Apparently, after watching this vid, you may start to see The Slender Man; if you do he's got you. You will either end up missing or go crazy... or both, I guess. One of their friends goes missing, and they begin their search for answers. They end up asking some stranger that they met on the internet for advice, and this stranger tells them to offer Slender Man something of value to them in exchange for their friend.

Ok, so let's rewind. They follow a STRANGER'S advice to go into the woods and sacrifice things of value to some supernatural being. They do this dumb thing, but they kinda half-ass it. Their "things of value" end up being a photograph, something one of them made in arts & crafts... and like a lucky T-shirt or something. Your friend has just been kidnapped! You may want to dig a lil deeper. "Here Slender Man, let me offer you my last chicken nugget. I'm full anyway. Can I have my friend back?" 

The Slender Man must have thought to himself "Arts & Crafts? Really? These girls must be trying to punk me." He then spends the rest of the movie making them regret their poor sacrificial decisions.

When the cool and creepy gets going, it doesn't stop, and it's very effective. I love how they mess with the audiences heads with the imagery. You'll start seeing Slender Man everywhere. They don't rely on cheap gore scenes and jump scares, which I also appreciated about this movie. They even use scenes that lead you to believe something horrific is about to happen, but then it won't... not in a disappointing way, but it's intense. Well done!

The two actresses that I mentioned earlier are also good in this movie.

One of them has that glassy-I-could-cry-at-any-moment-eyes. She'll make you feel her pain.

There's another actress in here who does a good job at making us believe she's scared. It's like they gave her hallucinogens and filmed her having a bad reaction.

This is another one of those supernatural monster movies when everyone just kinda has to guess what to do. Sometimes, in these types of movies there's an expert of sorts, but the only "experts" here are strangers online.

I enjoyed this movie:)

Though, when I say they had to figure things out (and I understand that), there are things they should have known to do and to not do. There are plenty of things that the writers either didn't think about or didn't care about.

The kids for example, run out into the middle of the woods AT NIGHT to sacrifice their items, which no one told them to do. Literally, the middle of the woods! Forget Slender Man, there are all kinds of things that could happen out there. Which again, parents, you're bleeping up!

And about these parents, where the hell were they?! Some of these parents are barely around (buttering bread), while others are never around. One of your kids was just abducted! More of them are losing their minds! WHERE ARE YOU?!

There is one slight spoiler I'll throw in - one of their friends (who happens to be black)... something happens to her, and when her friends find out the state that she's in, they simply say "I knew something was up with her", and keep going! They could have helped her, but NOPE.

What about the teachers? These kids are in highschool. One of the kids actually gets lost on a school trip. No help from the school. No accountability, apparently and no concern. Some of these kids are losing their minds on school property. Those teachers just kept on with the lessons. Not even the other students help out these main girls or are even concerned. We're all just going to pretend like students are going crazy and missing?

Lastly, the police! Almost no police in this movie. No one questioned, no protection, no investigation. It's kinda like kids get screwed over so much in this town that the police have given up.

This all sounds like a lot bad writing ( and it is), but it also kinda adds to the fun. There will be those who will heavily downgrade this movie, because they are Slender Man lore purists, and apparently on that level this movie doesn't begin to measure up. Idk nothing about that, soooo I went in fresh, and enjoyed my new friend Slender Man. That's right, he's my buddy. I still say he's misunderstood. I mean, he IS out in the woods, and we DO see him coming after the kids, but what does that prove?. Maybe SM is a nicely dressed homeless man just trying to get by in the woods. Maybe these kids are just out in the woods doing shrooms (way to go, parents) and falling into holes never to be seen again. Live the Slender Man alone! The man doesn't have a face! - I'm sure his life is hard enough as it is.

Or maybe he's murdering kids out there, idk. You be the judge. Though I admit that certain pics you'll find on the internet aren't helping me prove his case.

Grade: B

Everyone who factored into this movie's 15% rating on RT are just haters. They're just jealous of my main man SM and his fly suits. They hatem cuz they ain't him.

Some of you might be saying, "But, Praphit, I'm sure this movie is aiight, but BlackkKlansman had those important social topics!"

I could argue that "Slender Man" does as well.

#1 - The black girl that her friends just kinda leave behind. I mean, seriously, what the hell? #blacklivesmatter

#2 - Lesbians - two of the friends in the group sure were close... like real close. Some may think I'm reading into things that aren't there, but I say these characters were forced to remain in the closet. But, maybe their parents found out... maybe that's why none of them are ever around. They couldn't bear that forbidden love. Apparently, The Slender Man does his thing around the bible belt.

#3 - Missing Kids! Not something I used to think about, but now whenever I go into a new town, I check to see how many kids go missing there and how often. If it's an alarming rate, I'm out! When SM is done with the kids he might start on the adults. Besides, if the cops are letting this many lost kids slide without an investigation, what else would they turn a blind eye to?

#4 Mental Illness - perhaps people we label as mentally ill are the ones in the know. Maybe we should all start listening a little more.

Y'all can come to me. I'm here for you. I'll listen. The next time you're out in the middle of the woods (because a stranger online told you to) and you notice a man with no face, wearing awesome suits, with trees growing out of his ass you can tell me. I'll listen and get you the help you need:)

#slender man #john praphit #praphitproductions.com #horror monsters #Horror Movies #Movie Reviews #praphit #butter

[christianstevefinnell]

THE MAN OF SINPART II: THE HISTORYby David Vaughn Elliott    Paul warned that "the mystery of lawlessness is already at work" (2 Thessalonians 2:7). Thus the fulfillment of this prophecy began in the first century. Something was already working in Paul's day which in time produced "the man of sin... the son of perdition... the lawless one."   "ALL ROADS LEAD TO ROME"    Most students of prophecy, from Paul's day to this, understand that the little horn of Daniel 7 and the beasts of Revelation 13 and 17 are related to Rome. Today there are three major views about when Rome is involved. The preterists place the fulfillment in our past. The historicists place it in our present. The futurists place it in our future.      Most agree that 2 Thessalonians 2 is part of the same prophetic picture. This means that "the man of sin" will be found in Rome. The evidence studied in Part I: The Prophecypoints to the conclusion that "the man of sin," "the son of perdition" refers to the most outstanding apostate church. Add Rome to the equation and the fulfillment of the prophecy becomes obvious. "I TOLD YOU... YOU KNOW"    The Bible was not sealed in a vacuum as soon as it was written, to be untouched by human hands until it reached each of us in the 21st century. To ignore the intervening centuries is shortsighted and egotistical. If we do not learn from others, why should we expect others to learn from us?    "I told you... you know," said Paul, "what is restraining" (2 Thessalonians 2:5,6). This is amazing. The saints in Thessalonica knew. Paul had taught them in person. But the Holy Spirit prevented Paul from writing it down. Is there any other place in Scripture like this? The writer says his readers know what he is talking about, but he shrinks from writing it down. It becomes irresistible to scan early Christian writers to learn what they can tell us. Can you conceive that the first-century Christians would not pass the information on?      Before examining early Christian writers, we need to be aware of three things.   ��1) They were not inspired. Therefore, they express many contradictory views on prophecy as well as other matters.    2) Before a particular prophecy is fulfilled, we cannot expect Christians to understand it all. The apostles, for example, with Jesus in their midst, did not have correct views of many messianic prophecies.    3) After a prophecy is fulfilled, there will always be those who will deny its fulfillment. The Jews, for example, to this very day, deny that Jesus of Nazareth is the promised Messiah.      With these precautions in mind, it is still very enlightening to discover what Christians through the ages have believed regarding various prophecies. Especially is this true in this case in which Paul said, "You know... "   NOT FULFILLED IN THE FIRST CENTURY    The preterist view teaches that "the man of sin" appeared in the first century. They apply all the details of 2 Thessalonians 2 to events surrounding the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. They quote authorities with identical views, but never anyone earlier than the seventeenth century. Why not earlier? The reason is simple. There are no earlier authorities.      Not one writer prior to 1600 A.D. ever mentions anybody who believed that "the man of sin" prophecy was fulfilled in the first century. Notice:      1) The Thessalonians knew who was restraining.    2) Many Christian writers in the second to fifth centuries wrote in detail about this prophecy.    3) Not one early writer thought "the man of sin" prophecy was fulfilled in the first century.      4) The early writers often discuss views contrary to their own. None of them mention anyone who applied this prophecy to the first century.      In the 18th century, Thomas Newton, in his famous "Dissertations on the Prophecies," discusses 2 Thessalonians 2 at length. He mentions five recent writers who claimed that "the man of sin" prophecy was fulfilled in the first century. He points out that they disagree with the majority of interpreters, and indeed disagree with each other as well as with all who were before them.    Then he remarks: "If this prophecy [2 Thessalonians 2] was fulfilled, as these critics conceive, before the destruction of Jerusalem, it is surprising that none of the fathers [early Christian writers] should agree with any of them in the same application, and that the discovery should first be made sixteen or seventeen hundred years after the completion. The fathers might differ and be mistaken in the circumstances of a prophecy which was yet to be fulfilled; but that a prophecy should be remarkably accomplished before their time, and they be totally ignorant of it, and speak of the accomplishment as still future, is not very credible" (page 400).   THE EARLY CHRISTIANS SPEAK    A search into early Christian writings reveals that many believers had a definite view as to what was restraining or withholding the appearance of "the man of sin." No, there is no writer who claims to quote the apostle Paul or one who heard the apostle Paul saying what was restraining. Nevertheless, these early Christians lived infinitely closer to the source than we do. They were thus in a far better position than we are today of being in touch with the information which Paul imparted to the saints in Thessalonica. What early Christian writers thought Paul was talking about should surely be seriously investigated before considering novel interpretations of the 21st century.      In light of the many divergent views on prophecy which we find among the early Christian writers, it is impressive that there is so much agreement on the question of what was restraining-withholding-hindering. In the end, of course, their view has to be tested both by Scripture and history. But as we follow their view and watch history develop, we cannot help but be impressed with the fact that the early Christians were on the right track in regard to much of this prophecy--well before it was fulfilled. IRENAEUS: 130 to 202 A.D.     Irenaeus was born about 30 years after the apostle John died. In his extensive work, "Against Heresies," Irenaeus devoted several chapters to Daniel 7, Revelation 13 and 2 Thessalonians 2. Typical of believers in all ages, he understood that the three prophecies are related. Irenaeus wrote:    "Daniel too, looking forward to the end of the last kingdom, i.e., the ten last kings, amongst whom the kingdom of those men shall be partitioned, and upon whom the son of perdition shall come, declares that ten horns shall spring from the beast, and that another little horn shall arise in the midst of them."    "In a still clearer light has John, in the Apocalypse, indicated to the Lord's disciples what shall happen in the last times, and concerning the ten kings who shall then arise, among whom the empire which now rules [Rome] shall be partitioned" ("Against Heresies," book 5, chapter 25, paragraph 3; chapter 26, paragraph 1). TERTULLIAN: 145 to 220 A.D.     Not many years later, Tertullian, quoting and commenting on 2 Thessalonians 2, wrote the following. He blends "the man of sin" prophecy with the prophecies of the ten-horned beast.    "Again, in the second epistle he [Paul] addresses them with even greater earnestness: 'For that day shall not come, unless indeed there first come a falling away,' he means indeed of this present empire, 'and that man of sin be revealed,' that is to say, Antichrist, 'the son of perdition, who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God... And now ye know what detaineth, that he might be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work; only he who now hinders must hinder, until he be taken out of the way.' What obstacle is there but the Roman state, the falling away of which, by being scattered into ten kingdoms, shall introduce Antichrist upon (its own ruins)?" ("Of the Resurrection of the Flesh," chapter 24).   HIPPOLYTUS: 170 to 236 A.D.     A few years later yet, Hippolytus wrote "A Treatise on Christ and Antichrist." While discussing Daniel 2 and 7, he wrote:    "The golden head of the image and the lioness denoted the Babylonians; the shoulders and arms of silver, and the bear, represented the Persians and Medes; the belly and thighs of brass, and the leopard, meant the Greeks, who held the sovereignty from Alexander's time; the legs of iron, and the beast dreadful and terrible, expressed the Romans, who hold the sovereignty at present; the toes of the feet which were part clay and part iron, and the ten horns, were emblems of the kingdoms that are yet to rise; the other little horn that grows up among them meant the Antichrist in their midst" (paragraph 28).   CYRIL OF JERUSALEM: 315 to 386 A.D.     Moving to the fourth century, Cyril, after quoting 2 Thessalonians 2, said the following:    "Thus wrote Paul, and now is the 'falling away'... now the Church is filled with heretics in disguise. For men have fallen away from the truth, and 'have itching ears'... This therefore is 'the falling away,' and the enemy is soon to be looked for...      "But this aforesaid Antichrist is to come when the times of the Roman empire shall have been fulfilled, and the end of the world is now drawing near. There shall rise up together ten kings of the Romans, reigning in different parts perhaps, but all about the same time; and after these an eleventh, the Antichrist, who by his magical craft shall seize upon the Roman power...      " 'So that he seateth himself in the temple of God.' What temple then? He means, the Temple of the Jews which has been destroyed. For God forbid that it should be the one in which we are!" (Lecture 15, paragraphs 9,12,15).    Cyril, living before the fulfillment, preferred to think that "temple of God" meant the temple of the Jews. He recoiled from the idea of "the man of sin" sitting in the church. Nevertheless, the way he expresses himself shows that he understood that "temple of God" could well refer to the church. Many today miss this point. CHRYSOSTOM: 347 to 407 A.D.     Later in the fourth century, Chrysostom wrote multitudes of homilies based on Scripture texts. In his Homily on 2 Thessalonians 2:6-9, he says:    "What then is it that withholdeth, that is, hindereth him from being revealed? Some indeed say, the grace of the Spirit, but others the Roman empire, to whom I most of all accede. Wherefore? Because if he meant to say the Spirit, he would not have spoken obscurely, but plainly... But because he said this of the Roman empire, he naturally glanced at it, and speaks covertly and darkly. For he did not wish to bring upon himself superfluous enmities, and useless dangers...      " 'Only there is one that restraineth now, until he be taken out of the way,' that is, when the Roman empire is taken out of the way, then he shall come. And naturally. For as long as the fear of this empire lasts, no one will willingly exit himself, but when that is dissolved, he will attack the anarchy, and endeavor to seize upon the government both of man and of God" (paragraphs 1-2). JEROME: 340 to 420 A.D.     Jerome wrote this first letter in 396 A.D. and the second in 409 A.D. Already the Roman Empire was in deep trouble from the barbarians.    "I shudder when I think of the catastrophes of our time... The Roman world is falling: yet we hold up our heads instead of bowing them...      "Rome's army, once victor and Lord of the world, now trembles with terror at the sight of the foe" (Letter #60 to Heliodorus, paragraphs 16,17).      "But what am I doing? Whilst I talk about the cargo, the vessel itself founders. He that letteth [restrains] is taken out of the way, and yet we do not realize that Antichrist is near. Yes, Antichrist is near whom the Lord Jesus Christ 'shall consume with the spirit of his mouth'...      "For thirty years the barbarians burst the barrier of the Danube and fought in the heart of the Roman Empire... Rome has to fight within her own borders not for glory but for bare life" (Letter #123 to Ageruchia, paragraphs 16, 17). AUGUSTINE: 345 to 430 A.D.     In his famous "City of God," Augustine wrote: "I can on no account omit what the Apostle Paul says, in writing to the Thessalonians, 'We beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,' etc.      "No one can doubt that he wrote this of Antichrist and of the day of judgment, which he here calls the day of the Lord, nor that he declared that this day should not come unless he first came who is called the apostate... Then as for the words, 'And now ye know what withholdeth,' i.e., ye know what hindrance or cause of delay there is, 'that he might be revealed in his own time;' they show that he was unwilling to make an explicit statement, because he said that they knew... I frankly confess I do not know what he means. I will nevertheless mention such conjectures as I have heard or read.      "Some think that the Apostle Paul referred to the Roman empire, and that he was unwilling to use language more explicit, lest he should incur the calumnious charge of wishing ill to the empire which it was hoped would be eternal... But others think that the words, 'Ye know what withholdeth,' and 'The mystery of iniquity worketh,' refer only to the wicked and the hypocrites who are in the Church, until they reach a number so great as to furnish Antichrist with a great people, and that this is the mystery of iniquity" (book 20, chapter 19, paragraphs 1-3).    Christian writers of the second, third and fourth centuries have spoken. From these brief excerpts, we can make the following general observations of what was widely believed:    1) that Daniel 7, 2 Thessalonians 2, and Revelation 13 and 17 are interrelated, all prophesying about Rome.    2) that the little horn of Daniel 7 and the "man of sin" of 2 Thessalonians 2 refer to a future (to them) "antichrist."    3) that the antichrist would appear when Rome fell; that the Roman Empire was that which, in their time, was restraining the rise of the "man of sin." A TINY WORD REGARDING THE "DARK AGES"    Before historical fulfillment, it was impossible for the early Christians to understand exactly what was going to transpire. But what is very impressive is that, being students of God's prophetic Word, many of them rightly understood that the "man of sin" would appear when Rome fell.    Rome fell in 476 A.D. The bishop of Rome stepped into the vacuum and took the place of the Emperor. As the years went by, the popes gained incredible powers over the bodies and souls of men. Popes crowned emperors. In a clash between Emperor Henry IV and Pope Gregory VII, the Emperor was left standing barefoot in the snow for three days in January 1077, until Gregory withdrew his excommunication. This style of power lasted for centuries. The entire history of this period is well covered in the history books and is beyond the scope of this article. THE REFORMERS KNEW THE TRUTH ABOUT ROME    Nearly a millennium after the last writers quoted--as early as the 13th century, if not before--one voice after another began to cry: "The pope of Rome is antichrist"; "the pope is the man of sin." The voices grew louder and louder until a full-blown Reformation Movement took shape. From that day until recent times, Protestants have been united in calling the Roman Pontiff "the man of sin."      Rather than prove this with endless quotations from Protestants over the centuries, let us rather see that both preterists and futurists admit this historical fact.    Gary DeMar, a modern preterist, totally rejects the idea that the pope is "the man of sin." He thinks 2 Thessalonians 2 and related prophecies were fulfilled in the first century by Nero and the Jews. Nevertheless he admits:    "For centuries the papacy was the unanimous candidate for the Antichrist. The papal system was identified as 'both "the man of sin" and the Babylonian whore of which Scripture forewarns (2 Thessalonians 2; Revelation 19). In the conviction of the sixteenth-century Protestants, Rome was the great Anti-Christ, and so firmly did this belief become established that it was not until the nineteenth century that it was seriously questioned by evangelicals' " ("Last Days Madness," page 207,208).    Again: "The Reformers, almost without exception, believed the 'man of lawlessness' to be the Roman Pontiff. In their dedication to the King James Version of the Bible (1611) the translators identified the Pope as the 'man of sin' of 2 Thessalonians 2: 'The zeal of your majesty [King James] toward the house of God doth not slack or go backward but is more and more kindled, manifesting itself abroad in the farthest parts of Christendom by writing a defence of the truth which hath given such a blow to that man of sin as will not be healed' " (page 330). You will find this in the "Dedicatory" in the front of your King James Bible. Later in the same "Dedicatory," the translators speak of "Popish Persons" on one hand and "Brethren" on the other hand.    Dave Hunt is a well-known futurist. He does believe that the Roman Catholic Church is the "whore" called Babylon in Revelation 17. However, being a futurist, he believes that the beasts of Revelation 13 and 17 are in the future, as are also the little horns of Daniel 7 and 8 and "the man of sin" of 2 Thessalonians 2. He believes the antichrist is probably alive now but will not be revealed until during "the tribulation" after "the rapture." With all these beliefs, he yet admits:    "Early Protestant creeds unanimously called the Pope Antichrist."      "It is only after the Russian Revolution that Christians began to view Communism as the Antichrist system. Yet for 400 years before 1917, Catholicism was so identified by Protestants" ("Global Peace and the Rise of Antichrist," pages 108, 136). TURNING THEIR BACKS ON HISTORY    History shows that the early Christians understood that the antichrist would arise when Rome fell. History shows that they were right. History shows that when the Reformation came, preachers, politicians and the populace declared that the pope was "the man of sin," the antichrist. History shows that the vast majority of Bible believers continued in this conviction until recent times. History shows that modern evangelicals are preaching a new doctrine when they refuse to believe that the pope is "the man of sin."      To reject the pope of Rome as "the man of sin" is to forget those who were burned at the stake because they dared translate or even possess a Bible in any language but Latin! To deny that the pope is "the son of perdition" is to turn one's back on the thousands of martyrs whose bodies were twisted and wrenched by the "Holy" Inquisition. To deny that the Roman Church is "the falling away" (apostasy) is to minimize the gross perversion of sound doctrine that still emanates from the Vatican.    Among the hottest items in the religious marketplace today are the sensational books and videos about "the rapture," "the tribulation" and the "antichrist," which the producers openly advertise as fiction. Instead of prophecy-fiction, it would be a far more beneficial use of time, money and energy to produce historical documentaries on the church of the Middle Ages. Truth is stranger and more startling than fiction. Those who think that a mere seven years of tribulation in our future could possibly be worse than the realities of the Dark Ages need to brush the dust off their history books.    (Scripture in the preceding article is taken from the New King James Version. Copyright (c) 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.)

[girls-scenarios]

You Should Stay The Night

Idols: Jiwoo and Somin (KARD)

Prompt: scenario I guess for poly relationship with reader and kards somin and jiwoo

Writer: Admin Kiwi

A/N: Please excuse my title skills. It’s a little short a sweet, but it’s what I came up with. Also, the three of you are in college in this scenario. I hope everyone enjoys!

“Your bed is too small, Somin. I’m gonna fall off.” Jiwoo lay on the very end of the bed, barely managing to hold on and glaring as you and Somin tried to stifle your laughter. “This isn’t funny, you two! This is why I say we should go to my place instead.”

“If you lay on top of me, there’s room,” Somin said, winking multiple times and scooting closer to you in an attempt to give Jiwoo more room. You were already pressed up against the wall, and made a little sound of protest when Somin squished you even closer.

“I’m going to suffocate over here, you guys.” Jiwoo locked eyes with you and grinned, letting it spread over her face slowly as she began to lean more towards Somin.

“Then let’s suffocate Somin instead, since she insisted on coming to her house and laying in her small bed.” Somin’s eyes widened, but by the time she lifted her hands, it was too late. Jiwoo rolled on top of her with you right behind her. Somin made a muffled cry for help before she burst into laughter, leaning away from both of your smiling faces only centimeters away from her own.

“Okay, okay, we’ll go to Jiwoo’s, I give.”

“What,” Jiwoo said, leaning closer. “Are you suddenly too shy to give either of us a kiss?” You tilted your head so that you were facing Jiwoo, and she jerked her head to kiss you instead, not having to lean in at all to capture your lips. From beneath the two of you, Somin whined.

“You guys are squishing me, if you’re going to leave me out at least let me get up.” With a giggle, Jiwoo broke away from her kiss with you to give Somin a quick peck on the lips.

“No more forcing us to get onto your tiny bed?”

“No more. I promise.” Even as you rolled off, you scoffed and rolled your eyes.

“What a lie. Next week you’ll be like ‘guys, let’s go watch Netflix at my place’.” Jiwoo pressed another kiss to Somin’s lips before finally rolling off herself, feet immediately hitting the floor as she twisted, and Somin sat up, sucking in a deep breath.

“Why do you guys like to pick on me so much?” She asked, wrinkling her nose and crossing her arms over her chest, still refusing to get off the bed. You sat up yourself, stretching your already-cramped arms over your head and watching as Jiwoo shuffled over to where her pants had been discarded on the floor.

“You’re cute when you’re angry,” she cooed, turning back to give Somin the same wink the other girl had given her earlier. Somin just stuck out her tongue at her girlfriend, making you laugh as you crawled off the bed. 

Somin still lived in a dorm room, and although it was a single room, there was still only so much space for three people. Especially since Jiwoo liked to sleep spread out. Because of the tiny bed, and the paper thin walls that hid absolutely nothing from her neighbors (not that they cared any), you and Jiwoo didn’t spend much time at her place.

“You could always move in with us and we could stop arguing over who’s place to stay at,” you said as you stood from the bed, looking back at Somin over your shoulder. She nodded and chewed on her lip. You and Jiwoo had put the idea on the table when the three of you had started dating, but Somin had been used to the idea of having her own space and had declined. That had been a full year ago.

“(Y/N) is right, Somin. We could have sleepovers every night. And you wouldn’t have to live off ramen from the common area. We have a kitchen, Somin.” Jiwoo shrugged her hoodie over her shoulders as she spoke, and you had your head down searching for your shoes, so the two of you almost missed her answer.

“Sure, why not. When the semester ends.”

“Really?” Jiwoo stumbled over to the bed, her hood still crooked over her messy hair and her eyes wide, sparkling. “You’ll move in with us?” You sat with your mouth open, shoe halfway on your foot, staring at your girlfriends. You’d gotten so used to her saying no that this answer stunned the words right out of your mouth.

“Yeah. I’ve wanted to move in with you guys for a while now, but I’d already payed for this dorm room, I couldn’t move out mid-semester.” Jiwoo blinked her eyes rapidly and let out an ecstatic laugh, tackling Somin over onto the bed in a hug.

“Finally! Forget watching Netflix, we need to go get the place ready for you to move in to!” Somin managed to pull out of Jiwoo’s hold enough to breathe and speak.

“The semester isn’t over for two weeks though-.”

“Doesn’t matter. I’m excited. Let’s get ready.” You finally got over your shock enough to put on your shoe and stand up, walking over to pull Jiwoo and Somin up from the bed, letting Somin gasp in air as Jiwoo let go of her. 

“How much getting ready is there to do, though? It’s only a two bedroom apartment, and you guys share one bedroom.”

“We have to make room for your desk, your clothes, and everything else, of course,” you said, checking the time on your phone. “If we head over there now and get a look at where we might want everything, we might still have time for that movie.” Jiwoo stood up and clapped her hands, hopping up and down on the balls of her feet and making Somin burst into laughter.

“With how happy you are, you’d think I’d just proposed or something.”

“Moving in is the first step, Somin,” Jiwoo said, skipping over to grab her girlfriend’s hoodie. The other girl choked in shock at her statement as she stood up as well.

“We’re nowhere near marriage. We still have to finish college, Jiwoo.”

“I know. I’m just teasing.” You picked up the backpacks from where they had been haphazardly thrown into a heap at the end of the bed and glanced at the calendar as Jiwoo grinned at a blushing Somin.

“You know, guys, we should probably start studying seriously for finals.” Jiwoo groaned and made a face at you as she tugged Somin’s hoodie over her head, despite the muffled agreement with you from the other girl.

“You ruined a cute moment, (Y/N). I don’t wanna think about finals.” You snorted and heaved the backpacks onto Somin’s bed, picking out your own and putting it on before grabbing your girlfriends’ backpacks in each hand.

“I know, but we only have two weeks of classes yet. I have a really awful paper for a final.” Somin poked her head out of the hoodie and shook her hair out of her face before turning to look at you.

“Me too. Art history might actually kill me.” Jiwoo huffed and let Somin get into her own hoodie from then on, stepping away and crossing her arms.

“Somin deciding to move in with us is a big deal too. And so is watching Tangled.”

“We’ve watched Tangled at least 6 times,” Somin reminded her, running her fingers through her hair to try and get it under control. “I doubt we need to watch it again right now.” Jiwoo made a face and took her backpack away from you.

“How about this, Jiwoo. If we all do well on finals, we adopt a puppy together when Somin moves in.” Immediately, Jiwoo perked up, eyebrows skyrocketing.

“A puppy? That’s at least step two.” Somin cleared her throat.

“Um, guys. Does your apartment building even allow dogs?” Jiwoo waved her hand in dismissal.

“Not important. We’re getting a puppy and naming her together and mothering her together.” You laughed, linking your arm with Jiwoo’s, and after a moment, Somin gave in and did the same, reaching over to ruffle Jiwoo’s hair.

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll move in with you guys and we’ll adopt a puppy.”

“Look at us,” Jiwoo said, pulling you both closer to her and pressing a kiss to your cheeks. “All together like a family.” You glanced at the time on your phone.

“Well, if we want to have time to watch that movie, we’d better be a family at our place instead. I have an 8am class and I’m not going to stay up that late.” Jiwoo rolled her eyes at you, but leaned her head on your shoulder.

“Fine. We’ll go be a family at our place.” As Somin stepped forward to pull open the door, Jiwoo spoke again. “I love you guys.” You shared a look with Somin, who had stopped in her tracks and looked back at the two of you. You both smiled before speaking the obvious and pressing kisses to Jiwoo’s cheeks and forehead.

“I love you too.”

#kard #jiwoo #somin #sowoo #kard scenarios #jiwoo scenario #somin scenario #poly sowoo #poly kard #girl groups #girl group scenarios #kpop scenario #t:collegeau

[wisdomfish]

A Royal Ruin: Pascal's Argument from Humanity to Christianity

The Bible is God's anthropology rather than man's theology. ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel [1]

We humans often puzzle over our own humanity, scanning our heights and our depths, wondering about and worrying over the meaning of our good and our evil. No other animal reflects on its species like this. Here, and in so many other ways, we stand unique among living creatures. Why does a young student go on a homicidal rampage at Virginia Tech, murdering dozens of innocent people and then killing himself? Why does such evil strike so hard and so erratically?

In spite of these upsurges of human evil, we are also struck by the beauty, courage and genius wrought by human minds, hearts and hands. After every tragedy (on September 11, 2001 or at Virginia Tech), heroes emerge who rescue the living, comfort the dying, and put others above themselves in spontaneous acts of altruism.

Singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn ponders the complexities and contradictions of humanity in "The Burden of the Angel/Beast" — the distinctively human discomfort with being human and not understanding the origin and meaning of our own humanness:

What sort of freak then is man! How novel, how monstrous, how chaotic, how paradoxical, how prodigious! Judge of all things, feeble earthworm, repository of truth, sink of doubt and error, the glory and refuse of the universe! [2]

Yet this was no mere marveling. Any worldview worth its rational salt needs to offer a sufficient explanation for both human greatness and debauchery. Pascal goes on: "Man's greatness and wretchedness are so evident that the true religion must necessarily teach us that there is in man some great principle of greatness and some great principle of wretchedness." [3]

Pascal believed the answers were found in the Bible. We find greatness in humanity because we are made in the divine image (Genesis 1:27). However, that image has been defaced (but not erased) through the fall (Genesis 3; Romans 3). There is something wrong with every aspect of our being, but we remain noble in our origin. There are, to invoke Cockburn again, "rumors of glory" found in humanity.

From the greatness and wretchedness of humanity, Pascal developed an argument for the truth and rationality of Christianity. While his ingenious argument has been reconstructed in more detail elsewhere, [4] we will consider its basic structure, which provides a fruitful point of discussion with seeking and questioning people today.

Two Extremes

The genius of the Christian perspective is that it explains both greatness and misery without exalting one above the other. Our nobility, expressed in the achievements of thought, for example, is due to our divine image. Because of this, we transcend the rest of creation. Yet we abuse our greatest endowments, wasting our God-given skills on trivia and diversions, because we know we will die and do not know what to do about it. We are the corruption of a former original. Pascal says:

The point is that if man had never been corrupted, he would, in his innocence, confidently enjoy both truth and felicity, and, if man had never been anything but corrupt, he would have no idea either of truth or bliss. But unhappy as we are (and we should be less so if there were no element of greatness in our condition) we have an idea of happiness but we cannot attain it. We perceive an image of the truth and possess nothing but falsehood. [5]

In other words, we are royal ruins: We possess some truth, but we cannot rest content in what we naturally know; we feel our own corruption, and in so doing, we realize the human condition is somehow abnormal, flawed and degenerate. In the context of surveying human greatness and misery in many dimensions of life, Pascal says: "It is the wretchedness of a great lord, the wretchedness of a dispossessed king." [6]

In surveying human philosophies and non-Christian religions, Pascal notes that they either exalt humans at the expense of taking seriously their weaknesses or reduce humans to nothing at the expense of their significance. In Pascal's day, many were impressed by the philosophy of the Stoics, who asserted that humans were great in reason and courage and partook of the divine essence of the universe. Yet these Stoics made little allowance for human weakness, cruelty, uncertainty and fragility. Thus, they exalted greatness at the expense of misery.

On the other hand, various skeptics, such as Michel Montaigne (1533-1592), delighted in showing the weakness of human reason and the arrogance of our pretensions. Yet the skeptics downplayed our ability to reason properly and the significance of human achievements in science, art and elsewhere. As Pascal said, they should have been more skeptical of their skepticism. [7]

The New Spirituality, India's Caste System

While the specific writers that Pascal addressed are not commonly discussed today, the tendency either to overrate or underrate humanity is still with us. Many examples abound, but I will briefly inspect one worldview that overrates humanity: the New Spirituality. [8]

The New Spirituality is an amalgamation of ideas drawn from many sources. But whether it is the best-selling book, The Secret (hawked by Oprah Winfrey), or the movie, What the Bleep Do We (K)now!?, the New Spirituality claims we are divine beings who can tap into unlimited potential through a change in consciousness. (In this way, it is similar to Stoicism.) We are limited not by our sinful condition, but only by negative thought patterns. The "secret" of The Secret is "the law of attraction" — we attract good things to ourselves through positive thoughts and negative things to ourselves through negative thoughts.

This blind optimism and inflation of human abilities appeals to our pride and the American "can-do" attitude, but it is radically out of alignment with reality. Yes, humans achieve much of what they conceive, but there are limits. Thought does not create reality ex nihilo. Moreover, humans inflict evil on others willfully and repeatedly. We cannot explain this away on the basis of the negative thoughts of those who are victimized.

Consider the untouchables (or Dalits) of India. Their 3,000 years of subjugation by the upper Hindu castes cannot be explained on the basis of low self-esteem among the Dalits. That would be to blame the victim unjustly. Rather, human beings, given their fallen propensity to exalt themselves over others artificially, have unjustly oppressed fellow image-bearers of God for three millennia. "Man's inhumanity to man" is a fact of human history, in India and everywhere else under the sun. Even a "royal ruin" should be able to see that and search for an answer.

Finding a Balance: The Christian Perspective

But the Christian worldview conserves both our greatness and our wretchedness in a profound revelation, something not available to unaided human reason, as Pascal points out: Know then, proud man, what a paradox you are to yourself. Be humble, impotent reason! Be silent, feeble nature! Learn that man infinitely transcends man, hear from your master your true condition, which is unknown to you. Listen to God. [9] The biblical account of our creation and fall best fits the facts of human reality. However, we must "listen to God" — that is, attend to what God has spoken in the Bible — to discover this liberating truth.

Pascal further counsels us that the biblical account reveals that there is a Redeemer for royal ruins — Himself, a King, who became a man in order to rescue those who are "east of Eden" and standing at the brink of eternity. Pascal says that in Him we find hope for our deposed condition: "Jesus is a God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without despair." [10]

Though we are royal ruins, we can find total forgiveness, redemption and eternal life through the one who truly understands our condition. (See John 3:16-18; 10:10; and Romans 5:1-8.) [11]

~ Douglas Groothuis, Ph.D.

________________________________________ Notes [1] Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Girox, 1976), p. 412. [2] Blaise Pascal, Pensées. Trans. A. J. Krailsheimer. (New York: Penguin Books, 1995), p. 34. [3] Pascal, p. 46. [4] See Douglas Groothuis, On Pascal (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2003), Chapter 8. For a more in depth treatment, see Douglas Groothuis, "Deposed Royalty: Pascal's Anthropological Argument," Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 41/2 (June 1998), pp. 297-313. [5] Pascal, p. 35. [6] Pascal, p. 29. For more on Pascal's canvassing of the human condition, see Groothuis, On Pascal, Chapter 8. [7] See Groothuis, On Pascal, pp. 65-66. [8] See my article, "The New Age Worldview: Is It Believable?" [9] Pascal, p. 35. [10] Pascal, p. 69; see also Groothuis, On Pascal, pp. 90-93. [11] Pascal's argument summarized in this essay is brilliant and essentially biblical. But for a more balanced and biblical understanding of Christianity as a whole, see John Stott's classic, Basic Christianity (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007).

#Douglas Groothuis Ph.D. #Christianity #Oprah #The Secret #What the Bleep Do We (K)now!?

[vankoya]

Work In Progress Tag.

I was tagged by my sweetest @dailydoseofdia so thank you very much, my honey! Now, I am going to explicitly expose all of my WIPs, some of which are not known about or displayed on my story schedule as I have no hecking clue in the slightest as to when I will finish writing all of them. Rest in peace, me. (I really went on a spree with the previews.)

I am going to tag: @tayegi / @versigny / @inktae / @trbld-writer!

The Devil Skates On Thin Ice | Twoshot, Part Two

→ Rivalry & Sports AU • Min Yoongi & Reader

Status: First priority. 6K words currently written. Twenty-five percent complete.

Preview: The number ’31’ is salient in large, bold white lettering at the centre of the hockey jersey. Though it is most certainly not as prominent as the ‘MIN’ that stands out inches above it, the three letters setting off screeching alarm bells within your mind that have you bolting upright on the mattress in a state of suffocating panic, cracking your elbow against the sill of the window in the process.

“Shit!” You yelp, cringing from the sharp pain that shoots up your arm, cradling it to your chest as you keel over your knees and dramatically collapse back onto the bed like the world just could not help but dig your hell hole of a situation all the deeper.

You are in Yoongi’s room. Of all the fucking people it could have been, it had to be him.

Amidst the anguish, a succession of thumping footsteps steadily becomes apparent as they grow louder, nearer, almost as though they are jogging. Then, the door is histrionically thrown open and a wide-eyed, flustered Yoongi comes into view within the frame, panting a little like he had ran from the other side of the apartment at the voicing of your distress. Honestly, you surprise yourself by holding back the lurching urge to hurl up the contents of last night at the sheer sight of him.

An Oath For Sinners | Series, Part Three

→ Vampire & Escort AU • Min Yoongi & Reader

Status: 10K words currently written. Fifty percent complete.

Preview: There are two and a half hours remaining until she is supposed to be knocking at his front door, and Yoongi is still holed up in his office, signing a stack of papers inked with paragraphs of information that he is barely processing due to the simple fact that he has caved to the torment of hardly restrained lechery. For all he knows, he could be signing his life over to the devil since the sole thought that he cannot tear his disgracefully crude attention from is what divine facial expression she is going to pull the moment his dick slides into her dripping cunt.

At that, his mind blanks completely, eyes glazing over and muddling the page before him into a blur of white smeared with black, the nib of the pen drooling an expanding spot of ink on the paper where he distractedly presses it. Shit. Yoongi’s lips part to create an airless sound, his imagination ravaging his sanity as he pieces together the image of her underneath him in completely nude glory, her warm, mundane skin glittering with a sheen of perspiration, wide eyes crazed with ferocious desire, the pupils blown like dark moons, always watching him. She looks excited, afraid, utterly ravishing. 

The Heart’s Variable | Oneshot

→ Hacker AU • Kim Taehyung & Reader

Status: 2K words currently written. Ten percent complete.

Preview: Roommates tend to walk in on a lot of shit that they would much rather have scrubbed from their field of vision by a wire sponge, but such visual torment is an unspoken given when it comes to share-housing. Most especially when one of the aforementioned roommates is the one and only Kim Taehyung. So when Park Jimin, a law student of baby soft features that no courtroom can ever take seriously because he somewhat appears like an irritated child when he is trying to defend his case, knocks on Taehyung’s bedroom door at ten in the morning and is given the sole response of dead silence, he, without thinking, twists the handle and thrusts it open with a determination to give the guy the grandest, loudest wake-up call possible. 

At least, that was Jimin’s plan until his gaze fell upon Taehyung slouched facedown over his keyboard, surrounding monitors dulled to sleep just as he is. Except, unlike him, the computer does not have its soft dick nestled on unadulterated display in its lap like a lifeless, pink sea cucumber, sweatpants uselessly shoved halfway down the defined curve of its ass.

A Ticket To The Sun | Series, Part Three

→ Dystopia AU • Min Yoongi & Reader

Status: 5.5K words currently written. Twenty percent complete.

Preview: The countdown is in full swing. Seventeen days until doom reaches his doorstep, until the truth will be revealed and Yoongi will be framed as a goddamn coward for never telling her from the very start. He deserves to die like that, at least, with shame stuffed in his pockets, with a knife of regret slicing through his back. Horrible, truly such a gruesome excuse of a human being, he is.

I could tell her right now, he blankly considers, but knows he never would. It is close to two in the morning, and she is swaying gently, making an order at the diner counter with a blurred smile, eyes glazed. I could tell her right now and make pancakes taste like my death, make vanilla cling like my blood to the back of her throat. I could do it, I could do it.

She, with wobbly grace, turns on her heel to face him. Her drooping gaze lands on the divot between his collarbones that kisses the collar of his navy shirt before it lazily trails up, up, up to meet his own eyes, a grin lighting up on her lips as if caught redhanded staring where she should not. The breathtaking culprit to their exceptional crime.

Yoongi could never do it. 

Paroxysm of Repulsion | Oneshot

→ Single Dad / Teacher AU • Jeon Jeongguk & Kim Taehyung

Status: Still drafting and plotting. 1.7K words currently written.

Preview: The guy of long honey limbs and deftly mussed hair wears an expression fit for murder, which would have been entirely convincing if he was not wearing the most repulsive sweater to ever have the misfortune of existing on this very earth. Traffic cone orange and fluorescent violet striped, like Halloween just threw up on his chest and this is the mouldy aftermath a week later. Jeongguk decides the guy deserved such an insult for wearing an atrocity to mankind.

“Uh,” he cannot even form a coherent sentence, it is that disgusting. 

“Uh?” The Serial Killer In The Ugliest Sweater To Exist offers brusquely, face unchanging. “That’s all you have to say? Uh?”

Jeongguk gulps. “Uh–“

“Is that the only word in your vocabulary?”

“Well–“

“Amazing! He knows more than one word!” He throws his hands enthusiastically in the air, slatted eyes still fresh with intent to kill. Before Jeongguk can stammer out another vocalisation of unintelligence forced by sheer repugnance, the guy accusingly jabs a finger at him. “Kids need to learn manners at an early stage in life if they want to grow up to be good adults. Get on that fuckin’ shit, man.”

Fight Blood With Blood | ATM Drabble

→ Witch Hunter AU • Jeon Jeongguk & Reader

Status: 3.8K words currently written. Eighty-five percent complete.

Preview: Jeongguk wants to ask more, wishes to pick apart her bones and search the marrow for the answers, more truths, to learn of the genuine honesty about herself and who she is. But whatever he wishes to say becomes lodged in his mouth when he watches her bring the blade to her palm and cut a clean slice through the flesh, crimson that looks like liquid black beneath the moonless sky instantly bubbling to the surface and spilling into the clear patch of dirt that the very same knife carved out.

The witch stays quiet and calm, dropping the now tarnished blade to the snow and dipping her fingertips into the sticky, red mess accumulating in her other palm. They come away dripping, soaked in the colour of her very own coat, and Jeongguk observes with his lips parted, shoulders rigid while she draws nonsensical script into the frozen surface of the dirt she has cleared. Witch language, looking twisted and evil, like it is going to reach out and bite him if he dares to look away.

Gateway to Gehenna | Oneshot

→ Witch / Demon AU • Kim Taehyung & Reader

Status: Still drafting and plotting. 2K words currently written. Ten percent complete.

Preview: For the first twenty years, the door is avoided at all costs. 

Nestled between the library and the living quarters, it is alike any other door within the cottage. A thick slab of mahogany lacquered in rich syrup that still holds its woodsy scent beyond decades since its construction, a brass handle which glints in the afternoon sunlight that manages to trickle down the hallway, much less worn or touched than any other knob. It finds its differences in the dense carvings that are inscribed on the surface, a variation of symbols and words as old as time itself, not even belonging to history, for the language has surpassed such limitations.

They start at the centre of the door and bloom in an enormous wooden rose, the petals fanning out to the very edges where the inscriptions become smaller, near frantic, as though the incantations were bordering incomplete yet the space was quick to be eaten up; desperation embedding urgency into the grain. Because if there was not enough room to finish, all efforts would have been entirely fruitless. The plan would be torn to shreds, the earth would be brought to ruin.

You see, it is not the door itself that is necessarily the problem. It merely keeps it contained. Instead, it is what is held within that should be feared.

Rather he who should not be released.

There’s A Rainbow (Always, After The Rain) | Oneshot

→ Soulmate AU • Jeon Jeongguk & Kim Taehyung

Status: 1.3K words currently written. Fifteen percent complete.

Preview: The barista, as if realising what he has just done, clamps a palm over his mouth, eyes still remaining to roundly stare at Jeongguk like he has just stripped naked in the middle of the cafe. On the other hand, Jeongguk is about ready to turn on his heel and flee, or fold his body like origami until he can fit into the linoleum cracks beneath his feet. Instead, by sheer force of will and his ferocious desire to have a double shot long mac after The Worst Day of His Existence, Jeongguk stands statuesque until the barista seems to get his shit together and drops his hand away from his face.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” the barista, who’s name tag reads Jimin babbles, baby cheeks flaring with muted fuchsia. “I-I didn’t mean to react that way, I swear! It’s just that– Holy shit, how long– When did it change like that?” The colour of his face ripens. “Oh– Or maybe, did you do that yourself–“

“Does it look like I would have done this–“ Jeongguk aggressively points at the rainbow monstrosity sprouting from his roots, biting down on his urge to scream the words, rather than hiss them under his breath– “To myself? Why the fuck?”

Lips of Divinity | Oneshot

→ Daitengu AU • Min Yoongi & Jeon Jeongguk

Status: Still drafting and plotting. 780 words currently written.

Preview: there is purpose behind this trek, not just a measly, careless adventure into the unknown of a forest deemed dangerous by the town at its feet. jeongguk absently wonders, if he were to trip over an unforeseen rock or jutted stick, whether the fall would have him tumbling down to the very base, crashing him back upon square one that he last stood upon just before midday.

but the boy should not think so soon, his eyesight is getting worse with every stretch that night begins to make across the daylight, almost as if it wishes to put his theory to the test.

he whistles a tune unheard of, one that bounds through the trees, echoing on and on. to set the pace of his tread, to fend off the eerie quiet that otherwise lulls the mountain. the birds are no longer near to pick it up, to carry on the sound in their own chirp, flourish it into something entirely different that belongs to them, and them only; started by a boy who never listens.

#tagvory

[maddie-grove]

The Top Twenty Books I Read in 2016

Oh, 2016. The year that gave me a promising new life with one hand and ripped up what peace of mind I had left with the other. What better way to deal with such a confusing emotional state than to read a bunch of wonderful books, many about incredibly tough subjects? Arguably, there are many better ways, but I like reading.

20. Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock by Matthew Quick (2013)

Traumatized seventeen-year-old Leonard Peacock makes a plan to kill his former abuser and then himself, but first he needs to visit four people who are important to him and say goodbye (without, of course, letting them know he’s saying goodbye). Throughout the day, he’s caught between trying to talk himself out of his horrible goal and feeling he has no other option. This is an affecting, compulsively readable novel with experimental bits that really pay off (especially Leonard’s letters to himself from a semi-dystopian future).

19. Swamplandia! by Karen Russell (2011)

After her mother’s untimely death, thirteen-year-old Ava Bigtree’s family falls apart, along with their Floridian gator-wrestling theme park. Her senile grandfather is sent to a nursing home, her brother runs away to another theme park, and her father departs for the mainland for an indefinite time, leaving Ava alone with her séance-obsessed older sister Osceola. Then Osceola elopes with a ghost, driving Ava to take a perilous journey into the swamp.  At turns fanciful and brutal, this is a fascinating and spooky story about grief and how scary nature is.

18. Sweetest Scoundrel by Elizabeth Hoyt (2015)

In 1740s London, withdrawn Eve Dinwoody is appointed by her half-brother to sort out the accounts of his investment, a pleasure garden owned by the boisterous middle-class Asa Makepeace. Eve and Asa are complete opposites who disagree about all matters financial, but they also have chemistry and actually turn out to care about each other’s problems. The family relationships in this romance are particularly strong, plus I liked that the aristocratic characters were so tangential to the story; it’s mostly a story about theatre people.

17. Duke of Pleasure by Elizabeth Hoyt (2016)

Alf is a messenger/informant by day, a masked vigilante by night, and, unbeknownst to everyone she’s met since early childhood, a woman. Hugh Fitzroy, the Duke of Kyle, is a widowed father of two bent on bringing down a ridiculously depraved secret society. When Alf gets beaten up while in his employ, Hugh persuades her to stay in his home for protection…which leads to some complicated feelings for Alf (and Hugh, once he realizes she’s not a teenage boy). Like Sweetest Scoundrel, this is a part of the Maiden Lane series, and it’s a fine installment: tightly plotted and prettily written, with a delightfully unusual heroine and a protective hero of the best type.

16. Silver Deceptions by Sabrina Jeffries (1994, revised for 2016 reissue)

During the height of the English Restoration, Annabelle Taylor takes to the London stage and purposefully cultivates a bad reputation with the goal of finding out and shaming the aristocratic father who abandoned her.  Unfortunately, her discreet inquiries about his identity lead the king’s spies to think she has an anti-Royalist agenda. Colin Jeffreys, Lord Hampden, is sent to find out what her deal is, only to get caught up in something way more risky than a Roundhead plot (to his heart, anyway). This is easily the best Restoration romance I’ve read, with a beautifully realized setting, a fast-moving plot, and multilayered protagonists.

15. Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier (1938)

An unnamed narrator, young and awkward and alone in the world, marries the handsome, haunted Maxime de Winter after a whirlwind courtship in Monte Carlo. The problem is that she has trouble adjusting to being lady of the manor, plus he seems just shattered over the death of his beautiful, accomplished late wife…but is that what’s really going on? Kind of! I loved the weird, funny narrator, and the initial romance between her and Maxime is so sweet that its devolution once they get to Manderley hit me hard.

14. Sylvester, or the Wicked Uncle by Georgette Heyer (1957)

Sylvester Rayne, the Duke of Salford, does not want to marry Phoebe Marlow, the mousy granddaughter of his godmother…but he’s still miffed when she flees her father’s house in order to avoid marrying him. Then he finds out that she wrote a popular gothic novel whose hero bears a striking resemblance to him, and he’s really annoyed. This is a terrific comedy—the two unplanned road trips are particularly delightful. I also liked the heroine and how she comes into her own after years of being cowed by her stepmother.

13. Duke of Sin by Elizabeth Hoyt (2016)

Valentine Napier, the Duke of Montgomery (and half-brother to Eve Dinwoody), is a bad, bad man. He blackmails his peers, tries to abduct heiresses (he’s not that great at it), and pretends that he’s done even worse. Bridget Crumb, his housekeeper, is working in his household in hopes of helping her mother. She has every reason to hate and fear him…but instead she thinks he’s full of shit but kind of likes him anyway. In turn, he’s intrigued by the fact that she has morals and wears a huge mobcap to hide her hair. This is a balls-out ludicrous romance novel in the best possible sense, with enough emotional pathos to keep me seriously invested.

12. Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein (2013)

Rose Justice, a young American flying planes for the British Air Transport Auxiliary during WWII, is captured by the Germans during a mission in France. Sent to Ravensbrück, she barely manages to survive the experience with the help of her fellow political prisoners and poetry. This book is less twist-driven than its companion Code Name Verity—the reader isn’t kept in much suspense about Rose’s eventual escape, let alone surprised with any revelation—but it has every good thing in common with the other novel: a complex and human narrator, a focus on women’s contributions to WWII, and a message of steely hope in the face of evil.

11. Crispin: The End of Time by Avi (2010)

In the third and final installment of the starkly beautiful medieval-set Crispin trilogy, thirteen-year-old Crispin finds himself bereft and unable to speak the language in war-torn France. He tries to get to Iceland, where everyone is free according to his late mentor, but he falls into bad company and has existential crises along the way. If you enjoy the most heart-shattering parts of A Song of Ice and Fire but wish the series had a smidge less violence and a lot less sex, this series might be for you! The ending is satisfying and holds the hope of hope, but good lord does it put you through the wringer.

10. The Study of Seduction by Sabrina Jeffries (2016)

When Lady Clarissa Lindsey finds herself being stalked by a sleazy French diplomat, family friend Lord Blakesborough agrees to help her out. They tend to clash—she’s gregarious and fun-loving, while he’s reserved to the point of stuffiness—but she wants the best for him, too, and tries to teach him how to talk to ladies so he can find a wife. Of course, everything goes wrong and they end up marrying each other for convenience…only it’s not so convenient, because they want to bang each other something fierce, plus they both have sad pasts they can’t talk about easily. A beautiful, hopeful romance with two extremely endearing protagonists.

9. A Scandalous Countess by Jo Beverley (2009)

Georgia, Lady Maybury, was the toast of society…until her beloved young husband was killed in a duel and everyone (wrongly) thought it was with her lover. Now she’s coming out of mourning, but someone has resurrected the most vicious rumors about her. She finds an unexpected ally in Lord Dracy, an awkward, badly scarred ex-naval officer who secretly wants to marry her for her money (at first). This novel is a glorious melodrama with an intriguing mystery and a wonderfully complex heroine.

8. Once Upon a Marquess by Courtney Milan (2015)

Lady Judith Worth used to have everything, but then her father was exposed as a traitor and committed suicide. Now she can barely pay rent on her shabby London home and all her siblings are either missing or in distress, but she’s still loathe to accept help from Lord Ashford, an old friend whose investigations helped bring about her family’s ruin. His charm, willingness to assist her, and ready acknowledgment that she has a right to be angry make it a bit easier, though. Courtney Milan is a National Treasure, and this complex series debut, alternately hilarious and heartrending, is among her best.

7. Emma by Jane Austen (1815)

Emma Woodhouse, rich and pretty and beloved by most, tries to be a good person, but that turns out to be a confusing business. I was frequently irritated by this novel, but honestly that made me love it more. On several occasions, Emma actually shocked me with her bad judgment, callousness, and even malice. At the same time, I saw that she was genuinely trying to do the right thing, even though she was severely hampered by classism and a lack of self-awareness. The contrast and the questions it raises are fascinating.

6. The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher by Hilary Mantel (2014)

This gorgeously written, endlessly unnerving anthology includes “The School of English” (the heartbreaking, infuriating tale of a London housekeeper starting a new job), “How Shall I Know You?” (the story of a pitying, pitiable writer on a miserable book tour), and the title story (a snapshot of an alternate history). Every story has excellent style and atmosphere; Mantel has a particular talent for making the reader feel queasy and excited at the same time.

5. Fortune Favors the Wicked by Theresa Romain (2016)

World-weary courtesan Charlotte Perry returns to her hometown in search of a stolen hoard, hoping that the reward will allow her to build a new life for herself and her “niece.” Lieutenant Benedict Frost, recently blinded and restless, travels to the same location in hopes of establishing a household where he can live with his younger sister. They should be adversaries…but perhaps they will not be? This was a nearly perfect romance; the central relationship was delicious, all the side characters were great, and the plot was very well-constructed.

4. The Way I Used to Be by Amber Smith (2016)

After her brother’s best friend rapes her in her own bedroom, high school freshman Eden’s primary reaction is rage—not only at her rapist, but at the parents who overlook her, at the brother she’s sure wouldn’t believe her, and at herself for being quiet and trusting. Over the next few years, she builds a new identity for herself; unfortunately, it comes with self-destructive behavior and a tendency to push everyone away. This story is ultimately a hopeful one, but it’s a damn hard read. I cried like a tiny baby girl, and I often felt incredibly angry. Eden is a wonderful narrator, clear-eyed but still unable to extract herself from a morass of silence and self-punishment without help.

3. Room by Emma Donoghue (2010)

Five-year-old Jack has never left the room where he was born to his captive mother, or even learned that the outside world they see on television is real. All he knows is Room and Ma…until she tells him there’s a whole universe outside and shares her desperate escape plan. Room is an absolutely beautiful story, and it’s all the more wonderful because the characters are so individualized. Jack is a sweetheart, but he also does weird kid stuff, from the adorable (declaring broccoli his “enemy food”) to the dangerously inconvenient (getting angry at his mom when she tries to explain the outside world). Ma is even more complex, and it’s truly impressive how Donoghue can convey her anger, compassion, youthfulness, maturity, and everything else when she’s filtered entirely through her five-year-old son’s perspective. I also appreciated how much the novel is about recovery, with all its attendant joys and difficulties.

2. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (1969)

In her classic first memoir, Angelou shares the story of her childhood in Arkansas and then California. I loved this book almost as much as its sequel Gather Together in My Name; it’s just as funny, heartbreaking, and sharply insightful. It can also be a much tougher read, due to the trauma she experiences in her childhood and the near-constant racism she faces, but her exploration of these issues just makes the book more powerful.

1. Gather Together in My Name by Maya Angelou (1974)

In this memoir, Angelou relates her experiences as a young woman in post-WWII California. She tries to care for her new baby, find a purpose in life, and look for someone to love, but she runs into many obstacles: bad boyfriends, racism, anti-Communist paranoia, an unfaithful dance partner, and an unplanned foray into running a brothel, just to name a few. Angelou’s second memoir is glorious, funny and poignant and righteously angry at turns. Even though my experiences are very different from hers, I related hard to her loneliness, lack of direction, and premature regret. The best book I read all year.

#gather together in my name #i know why the caged bird sings #maya angelou #room #emma donoghue #the way i used to be #amber smith #fortune favors the wicked #theresa romain #the assassination of margaret thatcher #hilary mantel #emma #jane austen #once upon a marquess #courtney milan #a scandalous countess #jo beverley #the study of seduction #silver deceptions #sabrina jeffries #crispin #avi #rose under fire #elizabeth wein #duke of sin #duke of pleasure #sweetest scoundrel #elizabeth hoyt #sylvester or the wicked uncle #georgette heyer

[ucflibrary]

The national celebration of African American History was started by Carter G. Woodson, a Harvard-trained historian and the founder of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, and first celebrated as a weeklong event in February of 1926. After a half century of overwhelming popularity, the event was expanded to a full month in 1976 by President Gerald Ford.

Here at the UCF library we are passionate about celebrating African American culture and history (no seriously, I got a massive amount of emails with suggestions). We are proud to present our top 22 favorite books by, and/or about, African Americans, plus two streaming films.

Click the keep reading link for full descriptions and catalog links.

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates Framed as a letter to the author’s teenage son, this chronicle of race in America works as memoir, meditation, and call to action. Suggested by Megan Haught, Teaching & Engagement/Research & Information Services

Blood at the root : a racial cleansing in America by Patrick Phillips Forsyth County, Georgia, at the turn of the twentieth century was home to a large African American community that included ministers and teachers, farmers and field hands, tradesmen, servants, and children. Many black residents were poor sharecroppers, but others owned their own farms and the land on which they'd founded the county's thriving black churches. But then in September of 1912, three young black laborers were accused of raping and murdering a white girl. Soon bands of white 'night riders' launched a coordinated campaign of arson and terror, driving all 1,098 black citizens out of the county. In the wake of the expulsions, whites harvested the crops and took over the livestock of their former neighbors, and quietly laid claim to 'abandoned' land. The charred ruins of homes and churches disappeared into the weeds, until the people and places of black Forsyth were forgotten, as locals kept Forsyth 'all white' well into the 1990s. Blood at the Root is a sweeping American tale that spans the Cherokee removals of the 1830s, the hope and promise of Reconstruction, and the crushing injustice of Forsyth's racial cleansing. With bold storytelling and lyrical prose, Phillips breaks a century-long silence and uncovers a history of racial terrorism that continues to shape America in the twenty-first century Suggested by Mary Page, Administration

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement. Touching and powerful, each poem is both accessible and emotionally charged, each line a glimpse into a child's soul as she searches for her place in the world. Woodson's poetry also reflects the joy of finding her voice through writing stories, despite the fact that she struggled with reading as a child. Her love of stories inspired her and stayed with her, creating the first sparks of the gifted writer she was to become. Suggested by Min Tong, Regional Librarian

Dreaming Me: An African-American Woman's Buddhist Journey by Janice Dean Willis In the fall of 1969, in the wake of a widening racial divide in the United States, Jan Willis began what would become a life-changing sojourn. By the time Willis left her home in an Alabama mining camp for undergraduate studies at Cornell University, the harsh reality of life in the segregated South of the 1950s and 1960s had left an indelible stain on her consciousness. Confronted then with the decision to either arm herself in the struggle for human rights at home or search for the possibility of a more humane existence abroad, Willis ultimately chose peace among the burgundy and saffron robes of a Tibetan Buddhist monastery over the black berets of the Black Panther Party. What she discovered, living in a narrow temple amid sixty Tibetan monks, was the healing place she had sought but not found in her Southern Baptist town of Docena. Suggested by Sandy Avila, Subject Librarian

Dust Tracks on the Road by Zora Neal Hurston First published in 1942 at the height of her popularity, Dust Tracks on a Road is Zora Neale Hurston's autobiography, an account of her rise from childhood poverty in the rural South to a prominent place among the leading artists and intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance. Hurston's personal literary self-portrait offers a revealing, often audacious glimpse into the life -- public and private -- of an artist, anthropologist, chronicler, and champion of the black experience in America. Suggested by Susan MacDuffee, Acquisitions & Collections

Evicted: poverty and profit in the American city by Matthew Desmond In this brilliant, heartbreaking book, Matthew Desmond takes us into the poorest neighborhoods of Milwaukee to tell the story of eight families on the edge. Arleen is a single mother trying to raise her two sons on the 20 dollars a month she has left after paying for their rundown apartment. Scott is a gentle nurse consumed by a heroin addiction. Lamar, a man with no legs and a neighborhood full of boys to look after, tries to work his way out of debt. Vanetta participates in a botched stickup after her hours are cut. All are spending almost everything they have on rent, and all have fallen behind. The fates of these families are in the hands of two landlords: Sherrena Tarver, a former schoolteacher turned inner-city entrepreneur, and Tobin Charney, who runs one of the worst trailer parks in Milwaukee. They loathe some of their tenants and are fond of others, but as Sherrena puts it, "Love don't pay the bills." She moves to evict Arleen and her boys a few days before Christmas. Even in the most desolate areas of American cities, evictions used to be rare. But today, most poor renting families are spending more than half of their income on housing, and eviction has become ordinary, especially for single mothers. In vivid, intimate prose, Desmond provides a ground-level view of one of the most urgent issues facing America today. As we see families forced into shelters, squalid apartments, or more dangerous neighborhoods, we bear witness to the human cost of America's vast inequality ; and to people's determination and intelligence in the face of hardship. Suggested by Mary Page, Administration

Eyes on the Prize: America's civil rights years, 1954-1965 by Juan Williams This compelling oral history of the first ten years of the Civil Rights movement is a tribute to the men and women, both black and white, who took part in the fight for justice and kept their eyes on the prize of freedom. Companion to the highly acclaimed PBS television series.  Suggested by Rebecca Hammond, Special Collections & University Archives

Fences by August Wilson From legendary playwright August Wilson, the powerful, stunning dramatic work that won him critical acclaim, including the Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize. Troy Maxson is a strong man, a hard man. He has had to be to survive. Troy Maxson has gone through life in an America where to be proud and black is to face pressures that could crush a man, body and soul. But the 1950s are yielding to the new spirit of liberation in the 1960s, a spirit that is changing the world Troy Maxson has learned to deal with the only way he can, a spirit that is making him a stranger, angry and afraid, in a world he never knew and to a wife and son he understands less and less. Suggested by Mary Page, Administration

Freedom Seekers: Stories From The Western Underground Railroad by Gary Jenkins, filmmaker Freedom Seekers brings an understanding of the regional issues relating to antebellum slavery and the antislavery movement that helped shape the western Underground Railroad. Slaves, with the help of stationmasters and conductors, had to dodge professional slave catchers, federal marshals, and slaveholders on a grueling thousand-mile journey to freedom. Viewers will learn how the Kansas/Missouri political conditions created the opportunity for the perhaps less known escape route along the western frontier. This film uses primary source documents, historians, interviews with slave descendants, moving readings and dramatic depictions to tell exciting stories of Underground Railroad activities. (online streaming video through Kanopy) Suggested by Mary Page, Administration

Hidden figures: the American dream and the untold story of the Black women mathematicians who helped win the space race by Margot Lee Shetterly Before John Glenn orbited the earth or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as "human computers" used pencils, slide rules and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space. Among these problem-solvers were a group of exceptionally talented African American women, some of the brightest minds of their generation. Originally relegated to teaching math in the South's segregated public schools, they were called into service during the labor shortages of World War II, when America's aeronautics industry was in dire need of anyone who had the right stuff. Suddenly, these overlooked math whizzes had a shot at jobs worthy of their skills, and they answered Uncle Sam's call, moving to Hampton, Virginia, and the fascinating, high-energy world of the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory. Even as Virginia's Jim Crow laws required them to be segregated from their white counterparts, the women of Langley's all-black "West Computing" group helped America achieve one of the things it desired most: a decisive victory over the Soviet Union in the Cold War, and complete domination of the heavens. Suggested by Megan Haught, Teaching & Engagement/Research & Information Services

Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable This biography of Malcolm X draws on new research to trace his life from his troubled youth through his involvement in the Nation of Islam, his activism in the world of Black Nationalism, and his assassination. Years in the making, it is a definitive biography of the legendary black activist. Of the great figures in twentieth-century American history perhaps none is more complex and controversial than Malcolm X. Constantly rewriting his own story, he became a criminal, a minister, a leader, and an icon, all before being felled by assassins' bullets at age thirty-nine. Through his tireless work and countless speeches, he empowered hundreds of thousands of black Americans to create better lives and stronger communities while establishing the template for the self-actualized, independent African American man. In death he became a broad symbol of both resistance and reconciliation for millions around the world. Filled with new information and shocking revelations that go beyond the Autobiography of Malcolm X, this work unfolds a story of race and class in America, from the rise of Marcus Garvey and the Ku Klux Klan to the struggles of the civil rights movement in the fifties and sixties. Reaching into Malcolm's troubled youth, it traces a path from his parents' activism through his own engagement with the Nation of Islam, charting his astronomical rise in the world of Black Nationalism and culminating in the never-before-told true story of his assassination. This work captures the story of one of the most singular forces for social change, a man who constantly strove, in the great American tradition, to remake himself anew. Suggested by Larry Cooperman, Research & Information Services

March. Book One. by John Lewis This graphic novel is Congressman John Lewis' first-hand account of his lifelong struggle for civil and human rights, meditating in the modern age on the distance traveled since the days of Jim Crow and segregation. Rooted in Lewis' personal story, it also reflects on the highs and lows of the broader civil rights movement. Book One spans Lewis' youth in rural Alabama, his life-changing meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr., the birth of the Nashville Student Movement, and their battle to tear down segregation through nonviolent lunch counter sit-ins, building to a climax on the steps of City Hall. His commitment to justice and nonviolence has taken him from an Alabama sharecropper's farm to the halls of Congress, from a segregated schoolroom to the 1963 March on Washington D.C., and from receiving beatings from state troopers, to receiving the Medal of Freedom awarded to him by Barack Obama, the first African-American president. (Book Two and Book Three are also available at the UCF Curriculum Materials Center in the Education complex) Suggested by Cindy Dancel, Research & Information Services

Native Son by Richard Wright The novel tells the story of 20-year old Bigger Thomas, an African American living in poverty in Chicago’s South Side ghettos during the 1930s. Suggested by Megan Haught, Teaching & Engagement/Research & Information Services

Negroland: a memoir by Margo Jefferson At once incendiary and icy, mischievous, and provocative, celebratory and elegiac, a deeply felt meditation on race, sex, and American culture through the prism of the author's rarefied upbringing and education among a black elite concerned to distance itself from whites and the black generality, while tirelessly measuring itself against both. Born in 1947 in upper-crust black Chicago--her father was for years head of pediatrics at Provident, at the time the nation's oldest black hospital; her mother was a socialite--Margo Jefferson has spent most of her life among (call them what you will) the colored aristocracy, the colored elite, the blue-vein society. Since the nineteenth century they have stood apart, these inhabitants of Negroland, "a small region of Negro America where residents were sheltered by a certain amount of privilege and plenty." Reckoning with the strictures and demands of Negroland at crucial historical moments--the civil rights movement, the dawn of feminism, the fallacy of post-racial America--Jefferson brilliantly charts the twists and turns of a life informed by psychological and moral contradictions. Aware as it is of heart-wrenching despair and depression, this book is a triumphant paean to the grace of perseverance. (With 8 pages of black-and-white illustrations.) Suggested by Richard Harrison, Subject Librarian

Roots: The saga of an American family by Alex Haley This poignant and powerful narrative tells the dramatic story of Kunta Kinte, snatched from freedom in Africa and brought by ship to America and slavery, and his descendants. Drawing on the oral traditions handed down in his family for generations, the author traces his origins back to the seventeen-year-old Kunta Kinte, who was abducted from his home in Gambia and transported as a slave to colonial America. In this account Haley provides an imaginative rendering of the lives of seven generations of black men and women. Suggested by Peggy Nuhn, Regional Librarian

The Black Seminoles : history of a freedom-seeking people by Kenneth W. Porter This is the story of a remarkable people, the Black Seminoles, and their charismatic leader, Chief John Horse, chronicles their heroic struggle for freedom. Beginning with the early 1800s, small groups of fugitive slaves living in Florida joined the Seminole Indians (an association that thrived for decades on reciprocal respect and affection). Kenneth Porter traces their fortunes and exploits as they moved across the country and attempted to live first beyond the law, then as loyal servants of it. He examines the Black Seminole role in the bloody Second Seminole War, when John Horse and his men distinguished themselves as fierce warriors, and their forced removal to the Oklahoma Indian Territory in the 1840s, where John's leadership ability emerged. The account includes the Black Seminole exodus in the 1850s to Mexico, their service as border troops for the Mexican government, and their return to Texas in the 1870s, where many of the men scouted for the U.S. Army. A powerful and stirring story, The Black Seminoles will appeal especially to readers interested in black history, Indian history, Florida history, and U.S. military history. Suggested by Megan Haught, Teaching & Engagement/Research & Information Services

The Block by Langston Hughes A collection of thirteen of Langston Hughes poems on African American themes. For both Langston Hughes and Romare Bearden, the New York City neighborhood of Harlem was a source of inspiration, and its sights and sounds are reflected in the art that each created. Now 13 of Hughes's most beloved poems are paired with Bearden's painting, "The Block", in a dazzling celebration of city life. Suggested by Susan MacDuffee, Acquisitions & Collections

The half has never been told: slavery and the making of American capitalism by Edward E. Baptist As historian Edward Baptist reveals in The Half Has Never Been Told, the expansion of slavery in the first eight decades after American independence drove the evolution and modernization of the United States. In the span of a single lifetime, the South grew from a narrow coastal strip of worn-out tobacco plantations to a continental cotton empire, and the United States grew into a modern, industrial, and capitalist economy. Until the Civil War, Baptist explains, the most important American economic innovations were ways to make slavery ever more profitable. Through forced migration and torture, slave owners extracted continual increases in efficiency from enslaved African Americans. Thus the United States seized control of the world market for cotton, the key raw material of the Industrial Revolution, and became a wealthy nation with global influence. Told through intimate slave narratives, plantation records, newspapers, and the words of politicians, entrepreneurs, and escaped slaves, The Half Has Never Been Told offers a radical new interpretation of American history. It forces readers to reckon with the violence at the root of American supremacy, but also with the survival and resistance that brought about slavery's end—and created a culture that sustains America's deepest dreams of freedom. Suggested by Peggy Nuhn, Regional Librarian

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor black tobacco farmer whose cells—taken without her knowledge in 1951—became one of the most important tools in medicine, vital for developing the polio vaccine, cloning, gene mapping, and more. Henrietta's cells have been bought and sold by the billions, yet she remains virtually unknown, and her family can't afford health insurance. This phenomenal New York Times bestseller tells a riveting story of the collision between ethics, race, and medicine; of scientific discovery and faith healing; and of a daughter consumed with questions about the mother she never knew. Suggested by Megan Haught, Teaching & Engagement/Research & Information Services

The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl by Issa Rae In the bestselling tradition of Mindy Kaling's Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?, a collection of humorous essays on what it's like to be unabashedly awkward in a world that regards introverts as hapless misfits, and Black as cool. My name is 'J' and I'm awkward--and Black. Someone once told me those were the two worst things anyone could be. That someone was right. Where do I start? Being an introvert in a world that glorifies cool isn't easy. But when Issa Rae, the creator of the Shorty Award-winning hit series The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, is that introvert--whether she's navigating love, work, friendships, or 'rapping'--it sure is entertaining. Now, in this debut collection of essays written in her witty and self-deprecating voice, Rae covers everything from cybersexing in the early days of the Internet to deflecting unsolicited comments on weight gain, from navigating the perils of eating out alone and public displays of affection to learning to accept yourself--natural hair and all. Suggested by Martha Cloutier, Circulation

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hell for all the slaves, but especially bad for Cora; an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is coming into womanhood—where even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Matters do not go as planned—Cora kills a young white boy who tries to capture her. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted. In Whitehead’s ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor—engineers and conductors operate a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora and Caesar’s first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city’s placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom. Suggested by Mary Page, Administration

The Women of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor Gloria Naylor weaves together the stories of seven women living in Brewster Place, a bleak inner-city sanctuary, creating a powerful, moving portrait of the strengths, struggles, and hopes of black women in America. Vulnerable and resilient, openhanded and open-hearted, these women forge their lives in a place that in turn threatens and protects—a common prison and a shared home. Naylor renders both loving and painful human experiences with simple eloquence and uncommon intuition. Her remarkable sense of community and history makes The Women of Brewster Place a contemporary classic—and a touching and unforgettable read. Suggested by Rebecca Hammond, Special Collections & University Archives

We are not Afraid: the story of Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney, and the civil rights campaign for Mississippi by Seth Cagin and Philip Dray The infamous murder of three civil rights workers by a Ku Klux Klan mob and Mississippi law-enforcement officers in 1964 takes on the dimensions of a personal, political and national tragedy in this riveting account. The drama of the triocollege students Michael Schwerner and Andy Goodman, both white Northerners, and James Chaney, a young black activist from Mississippipits their faith in nonviolence against a murderous rage fueled by racism. Cagin and Dray, who coauthored Hollywood Films of the Seventies, have done their homework: interviews, news reports, FBI documents and trial transcripts undergird their brilliant re-creation of the incident, interwoven with a full-scale history of the civil rights movement. The search for the bodies turned up many black corpses, purported victims of police/Klan violence; the Klan conspirators were paroled before serving their full sentences; in the aftermath, Lyndon Johnson questionably maneuvered to defuse the situation. Suggested by Rebecca Hammond, Special Collections & University Archives

Whispers of Angels: A Story of the Underground Railroad by Sharon Kelly Baker, filmmaker Defiant, brave and free, the great abolitionists Thomas Garrett, William Still and Harriet Tubman, along with hundreds of lesser known and nameless opponents of slavery, formed a Corridor of Courage stretching from Maryland's eastern shore through the length of Delaware to Philadelphia and beyond -- making the Underground Railroad a real route to freedom for enslaved Americans before the Civil War. Long-format interviews with prominent historians blend with dramatic reenactment to create a powerful story about the fight to end slavery. Actors Edward Asner and Blair Underwood portray the two most prominent abolitionists on the eastern line of the Underground Railroad, Thomas Garrett and William Still. Bearing a remarkable resemblance to Thomas Garrett, Asner reenacts the famous courtroom scene in 1848 in which Garrett foreshadows the Civil War and firmly declares to redouble his efforts in fighting for true freedom in America. In spite of the court's imposition of a crippling financial punishment, Garrett's ideals were not altered; his clandestine activities continued for many years even during the War. Reading documented text in the form of letters exchanged by Thomas Garrett and William Still (a free black abolitionist in Philadelphia), Asner and Underwood bring to life the fascinating working relationship between the two men and those they helped. Underwood, as William Still, meets in secret with the frightened fugitives who pass through his Anti-Slavery Society Offices in Philadelphia on their dangerous journeys to the north. (online streaming film through Kanopy) Suggested by Mary Page, Administration

#ucf libraries bookshelf #ucf library #book recommendations #black history month #african american history #ta-nehisi coates #patrick phillips #jacqueline woodson #janice dean willis #zora neale hurston #matthew desmond #juan williams #august wilson #gary jenkins #margot lee shetterly #manning marable #john lewis #richard wright #margo jefferson #alex haley #kenneth w porter #langston hughes #edward e baptist #rebecca skloot #issa rae #colson whitehead #gloria naylor #seth cagin #philip dray #sharon kelly baker

[stevefinnellp-blog]

THE MAN OF SINPART II: THE HISTORYby David Vaughn Elliott    Paul warned that "the mystery of lawlessness is already at work" (2 Thessalonians 2:7). Thus the fulfillment of this prophecy began in the first century. Something was already working in Paul's day which in time produced "the man of sin... the son of perdition... the lawless one."   "ALL ROADS LEAD TO ROME"    Most students of prophecy, from Paul's day to this, understand that the little horn of Daniel 7 and the beasts of Revelation 13 and 17 are related to Rome. Today there are three major views about when Rome is involved. The preterists place the fulfillment in our past. The historicists place it in our present. The futurists place it in our future.      Most agree that 2 Thessalonians 2 is part of the same prophetic picture. This means that "the man of sin" will be found in Rome. The evidence studied in Part I: The Prophecypoints to the conclusion that "the man of sin," "the son of perdition" refers to the most outstanding apostate church. Add Rome to the equation and the fulfillment of the prophecy becomes obvious. "I TOLD YOU... YOU KNOW"    The Bible was not sealed in a vacuum as soon as it was written, to be untouched by human hands until it reached each of us in the 21st century. To ignore the intervening centuries is shortsighted and egotistical. If we do not learn from others, why should we expect others to learn from us?    "I told you... you know," said Paul, "what is restraining" (2 Thessalonians 2:5,6). This is amazing. The saints in Thessalonica knew. Paul had taught them in person. But the Holy Spirit prevented Paul from writing it down. Is there any other place in Scripture like this? The writer says his readers know what he is talking about, but he shrinks from writing it down. It becomes irresistible to scan early Christian writers to learn what they can tell us. Can you conceive that the first-century Christians would not pass the information on?      Before examining early Christian writers, we need to be aware of three things.    1) They were not inspired. Therefore, they express many contradictory views on prophecy as well as other matters.    2) Before a particular prophecy is fulfilled, we cannot expect Christians to understand it all. The apostles, for example, with Jesus in their midst, did not have correct views of many messianic prophecies.    3) After a prophecy is fulfilled, there will always be those who will deny its fulfillment. The Jews, for example, to this very day, deny that Jesus of Nazareth is the promised Messiah.      With these precautions in mind, it is still very enlightening to discover what Christians through the ages have believed regarding various prophecies. Especially is this true in this case in which Paul said, "You know... "   NOT FULFILLED IN THE FIRST CENTURY    The preterist view teaches that "the man of sin" appeared in the first century. They apply all the details of 2 Thessalonians 2 to events surrounding the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. They quote authorities with identical views, but never anyone earlier than the seventeenth century. Why not earlier? The reason is simple. There are no earlier authorities.      Not one writer prior to 1600 A.D. ever mentions anybody who believed that "the man of sin" prophecy was fulfilled in the first century. Notice:      1) The Thessalonians knew who was restraining.    2) Many Christian writers in the second to fifth centuries wrote in detail about this prophecy.    3) Not one early writer thought "the man of sin" prophecy was fulfilled in the first century.      4) The early writers often discuss views contrary to their own. None of them mention anyone who applied this prophecy to the first century.      In the 18th century, Thomas Newton, in his famous "Dissertations on the Prophecies," discusses 2 Thessalonians 2 at length. He mentions five recent writers who claimed that "the man of sin" prophecy was fulfilled in the first century. He points out that they disagree with the majority of interpreters, and indeed disagree with each other as well as with all who were before them.    Then he remarks: "If this prophecy [2 Thessalonians 2] was fulfilled, as these critics conceive, before the destruction of Jerusalem, it is surprising that none of the fathers [early Christian writers] should agree with any of them in the same application, and that the discovery should first be made sixteen or seventeen hundred years after the completion. The fathers might differ and be mistaken in the circumstances of a prophecy which was yet to be fulfilled; but that a prophecy should be remarkably accomplished before their time, and they be totally ignorant of it, and speak of the accomplishment as still future, is not very credible" (page 400).   THE EARLY CHRISTIANS SPEAK    A search into early Christian writings reveals that many believers had a definite view as to what was restraining or withholding the appearance of "the man of sin." No, there is no writer who claims to quote the apostle Paul or one who heard the apostle Paul saying what was restraining. Nevertheless, these early Christians lived infinitely closer to the source than we do. They were thus in a far better position than we are today of being in touch with the information which Paul imparted to the saints in Thessalonica. What early Christian writers thought Paul was talking about should surely be seriously investigated before considering novel interpretations of the 21st century.      In light of the many divergent views on prophecy which we find among the early Christian writers, it is impressive that there is so much agreement on the question of what was restraining-withholding-hindering. In the end, of course, their view has to be tested both by Scripture and history. But as we follow their view and watch history develop, we cannot help but be impressed with the fact that the early Christians were on the right track in regard to much of this prophecy--well before it was fulfilled. IRENAEUS: 130 to 202 A.D.     Irenaeus was born about 30 years after the apostle John died. In his extensive work, "Against Heresies," Irenaeus devoted several chapters to Daniel 7, Revelation 13 and 2 Thessalonians 2. Typical of believers in all ages, he understood that the three prophecies are related. Irenaeus wrote:    "Daniel too, looking forward to the end of the last kingdom, i.e., the ten last kings, amongst whom the kingdom of those men shall be partitioned, and upon whom the son of perdition shall come, declares that ten horns shall spring from the beast, and that another little horn shall arise in the midst of them."    "In a still clearer light has John, in the Apocalypse, indicated to the Lord's disciples what shall happen in the last times, and concerning the ten kings who shall then arise, among whom the empire which now rules [Rome] shall be partitioned" ("Against Heresies," book 5, chapter 25, paragraph 3; chapter 26, paragraph 1). TERTULLIAN: 145 to 220 A.D.     Not many years later, Tertullian, quoting and commenting on 2 Thessalonians 2, wrote the following. He blends "the man of sin" prophecy with the prophecies of the ten-horned beast.    "Again, in the second epistle he [Paul] addresses them with even greater earnestness: 'For that day shall not come, unless indeed there first come a falling away,' he means indeed of this present empire, 'and that man of sin be revealed,' that is to say, Antichrist, 'the son of perdition, who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God... And now ye know what detaineth, that he might be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work; only he who now hinders must hinder, until he be taken out of the way.' What obstacle is there but the Roman state, the falling away of which, by being scattered into ten kingdoms, shall introduce Antichrist upon (its own ruins)?" ("Of the Resurrection of the Flesh," chapter 24).   HIPPOLYTUS: 170 to 236 A.D.     A few years later yet, Hippolytus wrote "A Treatise on Christ and Antichrist." While discussing Daniel 2 and 7, he wrote:    "The golden head of the image and the lioness denoted the Babylonians; the shoulders and arms of silver, and the bear, represented the Persians and Medes; the belly and thighs of brass, and the leopard, meant the Greeks, who held the sovereignty from Alexander's time; the legs of iron, and the beast dreadful and terrible, expressed the Romans, who hold the sovereignty at present; the toes of the feet which were part clay and part iron, and the ten horns, were emblems of the kingdoms that are yet to rise; the other little horn that grows up among them meant the Antichrist in their midst" (paragraph 28).   CYRIL OF JERUSALEM: 315 to 386 A.D.     Moving to the fourth century, Cyril, after quoting 2 Thessalonians 2, said the following:    "Thus wrote Paul, and now is the 'falling away'... now the Church is filled with heretics in disguise. For men have fallen away from the truth, and 'have itching ears'... This therefore is 'the falling away,' and the enemy is soon to be looked for...      "But this aforesaid Antichrist is to come when the times of the Roman empire shall have been fulfilled, and the end of the world is now drawing near. There shall rise up together ten kings of the Romans, reigning in different parts perhaps, but all about the same time; and after these an eleventh, the Antichrist, who by his magical craft shall seize upon the Roman power...      " 'So that he seateth himself in the temple of God.' What temple then? He means, the Temple of the Jews which has been destroyed. For God forbid that it should be the one in which we are!" (Lecture 15, paragraphs 9,12,15).    Cyril, living before the fulfillment, preferred to think that "temple of God" meant the temple of the Jews. He recoiled from the idea of "the man of sin" sitting in the church. Nevertheless, the way he expresses himself shows that he understood that "temple of God" could well refer to the church. Many today miss this point. CHRYSOSTOM: 347 to 407 A.D.     Later in the fourth century, Chrysostom wrote multitudes of homilies based on Scripture texts. In his Homily on 2 Thessalonians 2:6-9, he says:    "What then is it that withholdeth, that is, hindereth him from being revealed? Some indeed say, the grace of the Spirit, but others the Roman empire, to whom I most of all accede. Wherefore? Because if he meant to say the Spirit, he would not have spoken obscurely, but plainly... But because he said this of the Roman empire, he naturally glanced at it, and speaks covertly and darkly. For he did not wish to bring upon himself superfluous enmities, and useless dangers...      " 'Only there is one that restraineth now, until he be taken out of the way,' that is, when the Roman empire is taken out of the way, then he shall come. And naturally. For as long as the fear of this empire lasts, no one will willingly exit himself, but when that is dissolved, he will attack the anarchy, and endeavor to seize upon the government both of man and of God" (paragraphs 1-2). JEROME: 340 to 420 A.D.     Jerome wrote this first letter in 396 A.D. and the second in 409 A.D. Already the Roman Empire was in deep trouble from the barbarians.    "I shudder when I think of the catastrophes of our time... The Roman world is falling: yet we hold up our heads instead of bowing them...      "Rome's army, once victor and Lord of the world, now trembles with terror at the sight of the foe" (Letter #60 to Heliodorus, paragraphs 16,17).      "But what am I doing? Whilst I talk about the cargo, the vessel itself founders. He that letteth [restrains] is taken out of the way, and yet we do not realize that Antichrist is near. Yes, Antichrist is near whom the Lord Jesus Christ 'shall consume with the spirit of his mouth'...      "For thirty years the barbarians burst the barrier of the Danube and fought in the heart of the Roman Empire... Rome has to fight within her own borders not for glory but for bare life" (Letter #123 to Ageruchia, paragraphs 16, 17). AUGUSTINE: 345 to 430 A.D.     In his famous "City of God," Augustine wrote: "I can on no account omit what the Apostle Paul says, in writing to the Thessalonians, 'We beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,' etc.      "No one can doubt that he wrote this of Antichrist and of the day of judgment, which he here calls the day of the Lord, nor that he declared that this day should not come unless he first came who is called the apostate... Then as for the words, 'And now ye know what withholdeth,' i.e., ye know what hindrance or cause of delay there is, 'that he might be revealed in his own time;' they show that he was unwilling to make an explicit statement, because he said that they knew... I frankly confess I do not know what he means. I will nevertheless mention such conjectures as I have heard or read.      "Some think that the Apostle Paul referred to the Roman empire, and that he was unwilling to use language more explicit, lest he should incur the calumnious charge of wishing ill to the empire which it was hoped would be eternal... But others think that the words, 'Ye know what withholdeth,' and 'The mystery of iniquity worketh,' refer only to the wicked and the hypocrites who are in the Church, until they reach a number so great as to furnish Antichrist with a great people, and that this is the mystery of iniquity" (book 20, chapter 19, paragraphs 1-3).    Christian writers of the second, third and fourth centuries have spoken. From these brief excerpts, we can make the following general observations of what was widely believed:    1) that Daniel 7, 2 Thessalonians 2, and Revelation 13 and 17 are interrelated, all prophesying about Rome.    2) that the little horn of Daniel 7 and the "man of sin" of 2 Thessalonians 2 refer to a future (to them) "antichrist."    3) that the antichrist would appear when Rome fell; that the Roman Empire was that which, in their time, was restraining the rise of the "man of sin." A TINY WORD REGARDING THE "DARK AGES"    Before historical fulfillment, it was impossible for the early Christians to understand exactly what was going to transpire. But what is very impressive is that, being students of God's prophetic Word, many of them rightly understood that the "man of sin" would appear when Rome fell.    Rome fell in 476 A.D. The bishop of Rome stepped into the vacuum and took the place of the Emperor. As the years went by, the popes gained incredible powers over the bodies and souls of men. Popes crowned emperors. In a clash between Emperor Henry IV and Pope Gregory VII, the Emperor was left standing barefoot in the snow for three days in January 1077, until Gregory withdrew his excommunication. This style of power lasted for centuries. The entire history of this period is well covered in the history books and is beyond the scope of this article. THE REFORMERS KNEW THE TRUTH ABOUT ROME    Nearly a millennium after the last writers quoted--as early as the 13th century, if not before--one voice after another began to cry: "The pope of Rome is antichrist"; "the pope is the man of sin." The voices grew louder and louder until a full-blown Reformation Movement took shape. From that day until recent times, Protestants have been united in calling the Roman Pontiff "the man of sin."      Rather than prove this with endless quotations from Protestants over the centuries, let us rather see that both preterists and futurists admit this historical fact.    Gary DeMar, a modern preterist, totally rejects the idea that the pope is "the man of sin." He thinks 2 Thessalonians 2 and related prophecies were fulfilled in the first century by Nero and the Jews. Nevertheless he admits:    "For centuries the papacy was the unanimous candidate for the Antichrist. The papal system was identified as 'both "the man of sin" and the Babylonian whore of which Scripture forewarns (2 Thessalonians 2; Revelation 19). In the conviction of the sixteenth-century Protestants, Rome was the great Anti-Christ, and so firmly did this belief become established that it was not until the nineteenth century that it was seriously questioned by evangelicals' " ("Last Days Madness," page 207,208).    Again: "The Reformers, almost without exception, believed the 'man of lawlessness' to be the Roman Pontiff. In their dedication to the King James Version of the Bible (1611) the translators identified the Pope as the 'man of sin' of 2 Thessalonians 2: 'The zeal of your majesty [King James] toward the house of God doth not slack or go backward but is more and more kindled, manifesting itself abroad in the farthest parts of Christendom by writing a defence of the truth which hath given such a blow to that man of sin as will not be healed' " (page 330). You will find this in the "Dedicatory" in the front of your King James Bible. Later in the same "Dedicatory," the translators speak of "Popish Persons" on one hand and "Brethren" on the other hand.    Dave Hunt is a well-known futurist. He does believe that the Roman Catholic Church is the "whore" called Babylon in Revelation 17. However, being a futurist, he believes that the beasts of Revelation 13 and 17 are in the future, as are also the little horns of Daniel 7 and 8 and "the man of sin" of 2 Thessalonians 2. He believes the antichrist is probably alive now but will not be revealed until during "the tribulation" after "the rapture." With all these beliefs, he yet admits:    "Early Protestant creeds unanimously called the Pope Antichrist."      "It is only after the Russian Revolution that Christians began to view Communism as the Antichrist system. Yet for 400 years before 1917, Catholicism was so identified by Protestants" ("Global Peace and the Rise of Antichrist," pages 108, 136). TURNING THEIR BACKS ON HISTORY    History shows that the early Christians understood that the antichrist would arise when Rome fell. History shows that they were right. History shows that when the Reformation came, preachers, politicians and the populace declared that the pope was "the man of sin," the antichrist. History shows that the vast majority of Bible believers continued in this conviction until recent times. History shows that modern evangelicals are preaching a new doctrine when they refuse to believe that the pope is "the man of sin."      To reject the pope of Rome as "the man of sin" is to forget those who were burned at the stake because they dared translate or even possess a Bible in any language but Latin! To deny that the pope is "the son of perdition" is to turn one's back on the thousands of martyrs whose bodies were twisted and wrenched by the "Holy" Inquisition. To deny that the Roman Church is "the falling away" (apostasy) is to minimize the gross perversion of sound doctrine that still emanates from the Vatican.    Among the hottest items in the religious marketplace today are the sensational books and videos about "the rapture," "the tribulation" and the "antichrist," which the producers openly advertise as fiction. Instead of prophecy-fiction, it would be a far more beneficial use of time, money and energy to produce historical documentaries on the church of the Middle Ages. Truth is stranger and more startling than fiction. Those who think that a mere seven years of tribulation in our future could possibly be worse than the realities of the Dark Ages need to brush the dust off their history books.    (Scripture in the preceding article is taken from the New King James Version. Copyright (c) 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserve

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