#( v. forbidden unions. )

[bluestar22x]

The Fallen Warrior: Prologue

Pairing: Jaoel (Joel Miller) x OFC!Eva (Prologue)

Other Characters: Sarah, Thomas (Tommy Miller)

Summary: His memories of them are like clips from a highlight reel

Rating: 18+ Series

Word Count: 6,700(ish)

Warnings: AU, butchered biblical lore for the sake of the plot, fowl language, violence, blood, smut (unprotected p in v), mild description of birth, death, grief, brief mention of rape and manipulative relationships by evil angels, mentions of suicidal thoughts, an almost attempt at suicide

Author’s Note: Thanks to @almostfoxglove for making the lovely moodboard for me!

xxx

The story of Adam and Eve is unarguably one of the most recognized stories from the Bible, if not the most. It tells of the first man and woman, and how they loss their immortality in exchange for tasting the forbidden fruit, lured by the snake that was Lucifer into yearning for its knowledge.

But Joel knew the truth behind the tale. The fruit was not a fruit at all, and the snake was not Lucifer, or even one of his minions.

No, the snake was love, and the fruit was pleasure.

x

Centuries later, he still dreams of them.

The memories containing them clipped like a highlight reel that he helplessly observes as he slumbers most nights.

It freshens the festering wounds on his soul; renews the agony he would do anything to numb permanently.

Almost anything.

He never would wish to forget the beginning. He only longed to erase the pain at the end.

x

Have you heard of Lucifer and how he and his aligned angels rebelled against God? How God banished them from Heaven for it and created Hell to be their prison?

Like any prison, Hell was not inescapable. Lucifer was able to influence humans from below, and his fellow fallen angels managed to slip through the exits, the gates of Hell, every once in a while. They influenced the humans, turned them from the light, from God, and the most sinful of the humans were punished too.

Their souls were sent to Hell, and with time, they became demons, Lucifer's minions. These demons were easier to summon to Earth, and became the biggest threat to humanity by sheer numbers.

God's angels were sent to Earth regularly to combat them. He also had a son who sacrificed himself in the hopes of saving as many souls as possible. The fight was still fairly matched.

Usually light and darkness balanced out, but every once in a while, usually when the fallen walked the Earth, darkness threatened all.

One of these times lasted decades. And in those decades the fallen fell into temptation, as were their natures. They saw the beauty of human women and sought them out, taking pleasure in them, tasting them, whether or not they were willing. Whether or not there was deception involved.

Inevitably, offspring resulted from these unions. Nephilim. Giants in the Bible, but deceptively human in truth. Dangerous all the same. They were overpowered and seen as a threat to humanity, so they were exterminated from the Earth.

A flood of blood was left in the wake of the war against them. Not since Lucifer's rebellion had the light been in such turmoil, for no matter how monstrous the nephilim were at times, they were still the children of their brethren.

Archangel Jaoel had been one of the many who struggled with the morality of the slaughter, advocating for imprisonment instead. But Archangel Michael, the leader of all angels in Heaven, God's right hand, held a zero tolerance. As far as he was concerned, nephilim were too big of a risk to let live. Better they die and let God and Lucifer decide where their souls ended up.

So all of Heaven's angels fell in line with his orders, even Jaoel.

Eventually the blood stains faded from his ethereal hands.

It didn't matter. He still remembered their faces.

x

There were many centuries of peace before the next battle between good and evil commenced. Demons were rising again in massive numbers, and many angels were sent to Earth to protect humans of interest. Humans that were important or going to be important someday.

Jaoel was amongst the angels sent down to play guardian angel, to his dismay. He was an archangel. He'd played messenger before, but never babysitter. He was a warrior. He wanted to fight, not stand around and observe a human for days on end in case a demon sought to extinguish their life.

He couldn't even comprehend how the human he was assigned could be important. Eva was a sheep farmer, living in the forest in seclusion, unusual for a woman of her time, but she had no qualities of a leader.

She was quiet, naturally so since she hardly ever interacted with other humans except to trade. She was soft, too emotional for her time. She mourned the animals she hunted; she sobbed for the lambs that never got to take their first breaths. She lived in her own little bubble, content with not knowing the outside world.

What demon would bother an attempt to corrupt her or take her life? They had no reason to harm a shepherd; no way to draw her towards the dark. Jaoel wasn't sure he'd ever seen a human so pure. Her eternal light an endearing companion to her God-given beauty. Her dark curls and rich bronze skin.

Her allure was sly, slinking slowly into the recesses of Jaeol's mind, igniting something deep within him that had never been awakened before. He felt it every time Eva talked kindly to her woolly wards. Every time she smiled. Every time she laughed or sang, her syrupy voice lulling him into temptation.

He was compelled to know her. For her to know him. He introduced himself to her as a human vagabond in need of work, using her kind heart against her, forcing proximity. She hired him and he began to help her mend fences and care for her sheep under the ruse. He had a lot to learn, but Eva was a patient teacher.

It was too late by the time he realized he'd gone too far; gotten too close, fallen into the trap many angels had before him. He'd convinced himself they could be friends, all the while the passions of human copulation dangerously plagued his daydreams. He knew enough of it, the science behind the physical act, to have a picture of it in mind, to understand it, though not the emotions and sensations linked to it.

He wished to experience it all with her, rational thought slowly losing its battle.

A battle that swiftly came to its pathetic end on a late summer morning almost a year to the day after he initiated their first interaction, six from the day he was assigned as her protector.

That day a demon made an attempt on her life and she'd witnessed his wrath in full glory as he easily plunged his angelic blade in its chest, smoky gray wings exposed for her to eyeball in great detail before he hid them away belatedly.

She was not afraid as he feared she would be, only grateful that a divine being was there to save her.

"Will you be leaving, now that the threat has been extinguished?" she inquired, her expression trained with the intention of hiding her warring emotions.

"I do not know," he answered honestly, allowing himself to brush his smooth fingertips along the contours of one of her cheeks, to touch her for the first time.

He drew in a sharp breath. Her skin was softer than he'd ever imagined.

Her warm brown eyes fluttered shut to his quiet affection finally expressed. She shared it with him.

"So what now?"

What now indeed. Was the demon her only threat or was there more to come? How soon would he be called back home if she was safe?

How much longer did they have?

Jaoel didn't want to wait to find out.

He pulled Eva to him, an iron grip on her upper arms, crushing his lips to hers with a ferocity that combated his inexperience. She melted in his hold, absorbing all of his need, accepting it, expressing her own in the form of a sweet moan that reverberated in his sensitive ears and etched itself permanently into his cerebrum.

He kissed her over and over again, unable to get enough of her divine taste. Years of longing, and she was finally his.

As he was hers.

Without spoken word they both expressed their yearning for more through those desperate kisses and touches to every part of each other they could easily reach without parting.

Eva slowly stepped backwards, leading him like a mythical siren into her home, a cottage perfect for two.

In the dim light of the stony dwelling they began to peel off their clothing, peppering kisses to each other's newly exposed skin as they did so.

"Have you ever done this before?" she asked between heaving breaths, her tone lacking judgement.

"Never," he replied, a drawn out groan accompanying his words as her right hand skimmed tantalizingly close to the waistline of his underwear, too close to the hardening bulge in his pants.

He could feel a heat blooming over his cheekbones. He had often prided himself with knowledge. To be as unsure as he was in their situation was humbling.

Eva smiled widely and placed a hand along his bearded jaw. "I will show you then."

He watched intensely as she removed his last garment then reached out for his right hand and guided it down her body, over the tops of her bared breasts and her soft stomach, not hesitating when his hand found the nest of dark hair between her hips, and only stopping when his fingers glided into her folds with her direction.

She was so warm and wet, more inviting than he could've hoped.

She gasped at the touch she'd instigated, swinging her head back, and Jaoel felt his stomach swoop at the sight of the sinful strain of her neck. He tugged her closer and sucked a bruise onto the skin over her vein there, and she hummed happily, basking in his affection.

"That's it," Eva murmured breathlessly. "Let what you see and feel guide you. I want it all, Jaoel. Everything you want. Everything you'll give."

With some men it would have been a dangerous promise, seen as permission to reveal their darkest desires, ones that shined a light on their cruelty, but she knew she could trust him. That he would take care of her. She'd known him well before she knew what he was, and what he was didn't matter. Only who he was. Her Jaoel. The man who tended to her sheep as attentively as she did. Who ate her every word. Who had never judged her for thinking out loud.

He hissed at her vow and rested his forehead against hers. "I want you all around me. I want to know exactly how it feels. But first I want to see how it feels."

He cupped her firmly where she'd left his hand and she got the message, silently showing him where her sensitive nub was and how to use his fingers to elicit a response from her.

He was mesmerized by what resulted - her quickening breaths, the unrestrained moans that tumbled out of her mouth, the pounding of her heart that sounded like thunder to his supernatural ears. Sweat glistened on her skin as she rocked herself into his touch, trying to get herself there faster, a desperate look on her face.

He found her hole with his index finger, without her help, and hooked it inside her, and that was what did her in. Her breath caught and she mewed into his face, slumping in his muscular arms as she did so.

"Faex!" she panted. "Are you sure you haven't done that before?"

Jaoel hardly heard her question, too caught up in the instant replay rolling in his mind. He'd always thought Eva was beautiful, but she was even more so when she came. And those sounds that she'd made, the way she'd leaned on him after, he'd almost been unable to control himself. He was aching so badly for her that it was all he could think about.

He messily covered her mouth with his and easily scooped her up off the ground, taking full advantage of his superior strength. She threw her arms around his neck and held on tightly as he pushed her up against the wall of the cottage's main room, ignoring the hardness of the stone pressed into her spine to focus on his, grinding her heat against his ready cock after securing her legs around his hips.

They worked together to ease her down onto him as he slowly pushed up inside her, not stopping until he was covered to the hilt.

The sensation of being confined by her warm, slick walls overwhelmed him. A feverish instinct he didn't know he had took over, urging him to drive into her repeatedly, seeking friction as she raked her delicate fingers through his thick wavy hair, encouraging him. "That's it. That's it. Jaoel!"

He'd set a pace not too fast or slow, but it didn't matter. There was no way for him to hold off long enough for her to come again, not with how good everything felt, even as it bordered pain. Not with how she writhed against him and whimpered.

"Can't take it anymore," he grunted out.

"Don't then," she gasped.

Several more deep snaps of his hips into her and his body stiffened as he filled her up with his seed. He shut his eyes as it happened, fully embracing the ecstasy and relief that paired perfectly with his release.

When he opened them again his eyes met hers, and they beamed at each other. His heart wanted to burst at the unabated joy in her expression. He knew he loved her then.

He set her down gently on her feet again and kissed her more sweetly than before, dipping two fingers into her heat as he did so and thrusting them in and out in the same manner as he had with his cock. Eva submitted, clinging to him as he wound her up again.

He didn't stop until she was crying out his name.

x

He'd been out with a bow and arrow hunting unsuccessfully for deer all morning the day his life unfathomably changed.

Jaoel arrived back home empty handed but not displeased. He and Eva still had plenty to eat from his last hunt and the garden, so some time alone to sort his thoughts on the back of a horse was reward enough.

His peace did not last for long when he discovered the cottage vacant of all life. Fear struck his soul as his mind drew the worst conclusion. That Eva had been discovered by his brethren and ripped away from him less than a full year after they first indulged in the passion that came with romantic love.

But then he remembered the spring nearby that ran tepid warm, the pool she loved to bathe in, and recalled her wishes to be in it.

But if she's there - Jaoel thought, freezing at the implication of her going there alone.

He dropped his bow at the door and raced for the cave where the warm body of water was contained. It was a little ways into it, but not so much so that darkness impended his sight - or anyone's for that matter. The sunlight still shone through.

He sucked in a deep breath of simultaneous relief and trepidation as he made out her naked form in the pool, arms bent over the edge with her forehead pressed to the backs of her splayed hands.

"Eva," he called out hesitantly.

She lifted her head to peer over at him and her shoulders relaxed at the same time as a corner of her mouth curled up. "Knew you'd remember. I wanted to wait for you, but it got to be too much. I wanted to make sure I could still walk here."

He kicked off his boots and sat beside her on the edge, letting his legs drop into the pleasantly warm liquid she was sitting in. "When did you start feeling the pains?"

"Almost immediately after you left," she informed him. "But not soon enough to flag you down."

"The whole morning?"

She nodded and he pulled his lips into a thin line, a subtle grimace. "I'm sorry, mulsa. If I had known I'd have never gone out."

"You couldn't have known," she said with a hitched breath. She tensed up and dug her nails into the gravel surrounding the natural pool. "You're here now."

Jaoel turned to place a hand on her shoulder in support as she rode out what people in later times would call a contraction.

"I should've alerted the midwife days ago when the baby dropped," he stated aloud.

"That was not my wish," she hissed.

It had been his.

When Eva had conceived his child in mid autumn the previous year, only a couple months after they began their passionate relationship, Jaoel had feared her being struck down by Heaven's army, but then she'd come up with the ridiculous idea of doing this on her own, no medical back up if something were to go wrong, as they did fairly often in her time, and then he'd feared that more.

She didn't like the local midwife though, and he had to admit he understood why. She was not very sympathetic and wasn't afraid to lecture her patients when they didn't perfectly follow the rules she had set in place, including a zero tolerance for manual labor outside the home. That included herding sheep.

The stern elderly woman would probably have an aneurysm if she knew Eva had forgone a bed for a pool of water. Water births were not typical, but a town friend had told her about the practice once when she was halfway through her pregnancy and Eva hadn't given up the dream since.

She'd been so determined to give birth in the spring that when Jaoel had brought up his concerns she'd pushed back. "Let me do it alone then!" she had shouted.

And he had gently turned her head to look him back in the eyes. "Not so long as I breathe."

The idea of being there through the entire birth was daunting, but he would not leave her without someone to comfort her and help usher their child into the world.

A child he'd once dreaded, but now nervously awaited.

It was not like he hadn't understood how he'd gotten Eva pregnant. He'd known fully well what repeated unprotected copulation with her would likely lead to, but she'd made him feel invincible for a time, and she'd wanted a family long before he entered her life. The combination of his recklessness and her care free attitude about it had made her pregnancy only a matter of time.

At the beginning he couldn't share the happiness she felt because he'd seen first hand the cards that were dealt to nephilim. He'd dealt some of the cards himself, to mostly mature ones who had actually deserved it, but still. It would be hypocritical to think his child would be above eradication; that his fellow angels would leave them alone just because he was the father.

Eva would not let him stay detached. She convinced him to voice his concerns and to forgive himself for obeying his orders. She'd convinced him that they were safe at the farm for now, and when they weren't they'd move on. That it was going to be okay.

Then she'd pressed his hand to her swollen belly as the baby kicked and he'd lost all reason once more.

He thought of that tiny foot nudging against his palm through firm skin as Eva's contractions increased in strength and closed in on each other.

She clutched at him through it all, like he was a log floating down river rapids. Her salvation.

He held onto her comfortingly, drawing small circles on her back until she pulled herself away from him, towards a rock shelf on the north side of the pool, a shallow spot.

"Baby’s coming," she panted out, sitting up against the side of the pool and already bearing down with her whole body, her eyes squeezed shut.

All the lambings in the world couldn't have prepared him for this.

He followed her, kneeling in the water before her and nodding. "I have you both."

He did his best to stay stoic and encourage her as she worked to move the baby out of her, listening to her body, pushing with the contractions. He felt utterly helpless and impressed by her strength all at once as he waited with his arms open, at the ready.

He wasn't sure exactly how long it took, but one moment his arms were empty and the next he was holding an infant in them - their daughter.

He raised her up out of the water and studied her little face in wonder as she starred back up at him intensely. He could already tell she was going to look so much like her mother, but those dark brown eyes, those were all him.

The observation made his breath catch and he found himself transfixed, locked in that moment with her. Just looking.

Then she scrunched up her face and began to wail.

Jaoel thought he'd seen everything beautiful to see in the universe, but witnessing his daughter's first breath, first cry - a life beginning, one created out of the love he and Eva shared - he'd never seen anything more beautiful outside of his father's throne room.

“It’s alright, babygirl, you’re fine,” he soothed automatically. “Wanna meet your mama?”

He glanced over to Eva and her face lit up. She gestured for him to hand over their daughter almost desperately and he did so carefully so not to drop her back into the water.

A look of awe passed over Eva’s tired face and she started sobbing, her head pressed gently against her daughter’s.

“Are you alright my love?” Jaoel asked, concerned, touching the elbow of her right arm.

She nodded vigorously. “Yes, it’s just…she’s perfect, Jaoel. And she’s ours.”

The disbelief in her shaky voice made him smile. “Yes, she is. And she's just as perfect as her mother.”

Jaoel had never felt such overwhelming joy as he did then, not since standing in front of God himself, and even then it was a different kind of thrill.

He figures years later that he should have known better than to settle into it.

Everything is fleeting.

x

Jaoel.

One word, his name, and his world greyed.

He'd heard it said behind him, but he didn't want to turn around. He wanted to keep looking forward, watching his five year old daughter innocently play in a field of dandelions, not a care in the world.

He knew that voice. It might as well have been an axe.

"Jaoel, what have you done?" the voice hissed, outrage barely contained.

He swung around then, meeting eyes with a woman nearly his height and in a dark green tunic and sandals. Her hair was a stark pale blonde and her eyes were ghostly blue. Icy, just like her attitude.

"Jophiel," Jaoel said. "What are you doing here?"

"Gathering everyone," Jophiel replied. "The fight is over for now. The demons are controlled. The humans are safe. Or so we thought."

She jerked her head in his daughter's direction.

"She's not dangerous," Jaoel told her firmly. "She's just a child."

"Of course she's dangerous!" Jophiel screeched. "I can feel her power radiating out from here. She is an abomination!"

"She is mine!" Jaoel growled, taking a step forward, chest out. Furious and terrified but refusing to show the latter. "She is no abomination. You've shed enough blood. Leave us be."

"You know they won't do that," said another quieter, subdued voice.

Under other circumstances Jaoel would've been elated to hear it, but it that moment it pained him.

"Thomas," Jaoel whispered.

He craned his neck to see him to his right, dressed in a tunic as well, his cream. He looked younger than Jaoel by six years, around twenty-six years old based on human aging, but it was an allusion. Heaven's angels didn't age. Only the fallen, and even they aged very slowly.

Thomas was as close to a brother of blood as angels could get. Jaoel had been in charge of training him right after the lower angel had been created. They'd spent hundreds of years fighting the dark side by side. They'd cared about and trusted each other more than all their other fellow angels.

Jaoel had no idea where Thomas would fall in this argument. Thomas was as loyal to Heaven as he'd been and even if he did side with him, it meant he'd be banished from Heaven too. Most likely killed, if not thrown into Hell with the rest of the fallen who would eat him alive for not having sided with them, with Lucifer, when they rebelled.

For his daughter's sake he wanted Thomas on his side, but for his brother's sake he wished he'd never shown up.

Thomas looked torn. He had never agreed with the zero tolerance rule for the nephilim either. He'd slain one, a teenage boy, under Jophiel's direct orders once and had been haunted by it for decades. The boy had shown signs of delinquency but nothing atypical of a human his age. He'd begged for his life. Jophiel had promised a tortured death if Thomas didn't do it himself. She'd cornered him.

She'd never tried it with Jaoel before because they were both archangels, but in that dandelion field she changed that. There was a reason Jophiel had brought Thomas with her. Most likely she'd had her suspicions after Jaoel stopped checking in with his siblings, giving updates.

(In hindsight, it had been a poor decision, but he'd been afraid a fellow angel would see through his lies, the stories he made up to cover that he was no longer just guarding Eva.)

Jaoel could see what Jophiel was trying to do from a mile away.

"You belong with us, Jaoel," she stated stiffly. "I am not completely heartless. Let us dispose of her. Thomas will do it, quick and painless, and then you can come home. I will forgive your transgressions, convince Michael to give you a pass."

She only didn't want to face one of Heaven's most powerful warriors, fallen or not. A lesser angel would've never gotten any ounce of mercy.

"Over my dead body," Jaoel spat out, pulling his blade from one of his coat pockets.

"This won't end well for anyone if we fight him like this," Thomas told Jophiel. "You're a better leader, but Jaoel's a better fighter and he knows all my tricks."

Jophiel huffed, clearly not pleased that he'd pointed it out but smart enough to know not to be bull headed about it. "You're right. We need back up. Come along."

She spread her stunning golden brown wings that spanned ten feet and flew away without further do.

Thomas lingered, unable to look Jaoel straight in the eye.

He sighed. "Of all of our siblings, I'd have put you on the list of least likely to be tempted by a human woman. You've put me in an awkward position, big brother."

"I'm sorry," Jaoel said honestly. "It just happened. I cannot describe how I got here. Why she's here. But look at her, Thomas. Please."

Thomas glanced up, obeying, and Jaoel shifted to see what he was seeing.

His daughter, standing still in the middle of the field with a beautiful blue butterfly clinging to her tiny index finger, her chocolate eyes bright and curious.

When he turned back to Thomas he saw a softness in them. "She is beautiful," his brother admitted. "If it were up to me she would live. You wouldn't be forced away from this place. But alas, it is not my decision. If I argued, I'd be cast out too."

The last two sentences sounded bitter, an aged rage in the words, and Jaoel knew he was thinking of the boy.

Jaoel shook his head. "I'm not asking you to rebel. I'm asking you to disappear, busy yourself. Find a wayward demon on your way to gather others for our execution. Stay out of this."

Thomas gave him a small, bittersweet smile. "Always looking out for me." His expression turned solemn. "Even when I fail you."

Jaoel's stomach dropped and he realized then that Jophiel had never mentioned killing Eva, even though the mothers of the nephilim were always executed as well.

"No..."

"Jophiel has been observing you all morning," Thomas told him. "She waited until you left and struck herself. She found me after, said there was one last evil for me to dispatch. A nephilim. She never said it was your daughter. But she did say she already killed the mother."

Jaoel backed a few steps from him. "No...no...you're lying. Jophiel's put you up to it."

"I wish it was one of her elaborate plans, that I was lying. But I'm not."

"NO!" Jaoel snarled, charging forward to grab a fist full of the fabric just under his neck. "She can't be dead!"

"Take your daughter and run, now." Thomas said, more pleading than commanding. "I'll bury her."

"No! You're lying! I'm not leaving her behind."

It couldn't be true. She was his one. His soulmate, as the humans would say. Denial was all he had to keep himself from falling apart.

Thomas sought his eyes out. "Look me in the eyes, brother, you know I'm a bad liar."

Jaoel didn't want to, but he did, and he regretted it. There was no lie in his eyes. Only painful truth.

Thomas saw the change in his expression. The anguish. "I'm so sorry." He went to cup his face but Jaoel fell to his knees.

Thomas was already gathering him up and helping him back to his feet as soon as he hit the ground. "Go. Save your daughter while you still can. She won't take long."

He might have as well shoved a blade through his heart, it would've hurt less. But Jaoel knew Thomas was right. He had to leave with his daughter now. He couldn't go back to bury Eva. He couldn't go home to say goodbye.

Tears blinded him. "Bury her by the oak tree next to the barn. She loved lying in the shade there on sunny days."

Thomas gave him a curt nod. "It is done."

Jaoel started for his daughter on trembling legs.

"Jaoel," Thomas called out after he got a few feet.

He glanced back at him. "Her name was Eva."

"And your daughter's?" Thomas inquired.

"Sarah," Jaoel answered. "It was her grandmother's name."

He didn't waste anymore time after that, racing towards Sarah without checking if Thomas was leaving. He could take care of himself. Sarah could not.

"Daddy, what's wrong?" she asked, frowning at the way he'd rushed to her and at the pain in his expression.

"Daddy can't explain now," he told her, trying not to choke up. "Dangerous people are coming here. We have to go."

Her eyes rounded with fear. "What about Mommy?"

"I sent someone to get her," Jaoel replied. It was vague enough not to be a lie.

He would tell her the full truth later, after they put distance between them and Jophiel.

"We're going to fly to escape them," he said, trying to mask his grief as much as he could. "Come quick."

Sarah lit up. She had always loved flying. Flying made everything better.

She jumped into Jaoel's waiting arms and wrapped her arms around his neck as he unfurled his wings. She stared at them in awe as she always did, then Jaoel launched off the ground.

He flew her far away, not sure where to go, only knowing that no matter where they went, they'd never be safe for long.

x

The morning light shining through the open bedroom window of the abandoned cottage Jaoel had set up as a safehouse just before her birth bathed Sarah in gold as she slumbered, a sight that soothed Jaoel's ravaged, aching heart.

Finding out Eva was dead had been painful, telling Sarah the news had destroyed him.

She'd fallen asleep from utter exhaustion after all the tears she'd shed, but despite how weary Jaoel was, he'd been unable to catch any sleep himself.

He was too worried about his siblings finding them. Was too caught up in how open ended everything felt. He'd never be able to tell Eva goodbye. Would never have any idea what her final moments were like. He could only hope Jophiel had been merciful about it; something that had never been her strong suit.

He'd spent most of the night pacing or leaning on the door frame to the bedroom, watching his daughter, the rise and fall of her chest and the sound of her heart beating the only things keeping his despair at bay.

Then a striking blue butterfly, of the same species as the one that had been on Sarah's finger in the field flew into the room on a wind and landed softly on her forehead.

Something about its choice of a resting spot made Jaoel recall how sometimes butterflies were used as messengers by those who have passed on, and his breath hitched as he realized that Eva had died before the butterfly had settled onto their daughter's finger. That blue had been her favorite color.

"Eva?" he whispered. It couldn't be, could it? Was the butterfly a message to him?

It immediately flew off, back to the forest beyond the cottage, and Jaoel knew that was the answer to his question.

It gave him some solace.

She was still around, even if he, a fallen, couldn't see her.

x

It was almost mid morning and Sarah was still sound asleep when the door to the cottage quietly creaked open. A human would've missed it, but Jaoel didn't.

He dug out his blade from his coat and crept towards the main living space, every muscle in his body tensed in preparation for a fight.

He'd expected Jophiel or one of her closest allies to be waiting for him, but he found Thomas instead, standing by the fireplace.

"Thomas, what are you doing here?" he hissed. "How'd you find me?"

"I know you better than you may think," Thomas answered, the left side of his mouth quirking up slightly. "Luckily Jophiel has not cared to."

"You were supposed stay away," Jaoel told him, a flair of anger in his chest over his brother putting himself at risk for him. "You cannot be here long or you'll be cast out too."

Thomas approached him and lifted his right hand to squeeze his shoulder as he met his eyes. "I am staying. For far too long I have heeded their every order, sacrificed my morality in the name of their laws, for a father who has not let us see his face for centuries. I'm tired of cowering, brother. I am standing my ground. Your lover has been laid to rest, the animals rehomed, and you will not protect your daughter alone, no matter where we must go."

Jaoel felt tears stinging his eyes once more, and to his surprise Thomas' eyes were shining too.

"Thank you," he said, his words nearly getting caught in his throat.

There was no use arguing with Thomas once he'd firmly drawn a stick in the sand, so he accepted his help. It felt good too, the burden on his shoulders feeling slightly less heavy with his beloved brother pledging to be there.

He yanked Thomas into a spontaneous embrace and his brother flinched, caught off guard, but soon relaxed into it and patted his back.

"Daddy, who is he?"

Jaoel backed away from Thomas to turn to Sarah, who was standing just outside the door of the bedroom, staring at the younger angel curiously.

"Sarah, this is Thomas," Jaoel replied, glancing to him before meeting her eyes. "Your uncle."

x

For years Jaoel and Thomas traveled all over the world with Sarah, fearful that if they stopped moving their brethren would catch up. It kept her safe, but also built frustration up in her as she aged. She wanted to be with other children, to learn in the same environment as they did. She got tired of being so isolated, so cooped up. As much as she loved her father and uncle, they weren't enough. Safety was not enough.

She was just a teenager being a teenager when she crept out of the cabin they were staying in while they were both sleeping, having the intention of hanging out with a few other girls in the village for several hours.

She was just a teenager, fourteen years old, when she healed a serious head injury one of the girls acquired while they were flitting around the forest like nymphs of myth in the night.

It was an unfortunate matter of circumstance that an angel that hadn't even been searching for her sensed her power when she used it and found her before Jaoel and Thomas could.

They met her friends first, bawling and clinging to each other, hardly able to spit out enough intelligible words to let them know what had happened. They'd seen things their young human minds couldn't grasp and witnessed a girl their age being slain. They'd be haunted by it for the rest of their lives.

As soon as they got the location Jaoel was racing through the thick treeline to find his daughter, legs pumping as hard as they could, faster than any human's but still not fast enough because he was already too late. He knew that, but he was compelled forward anyway.

He found her on her back, innocent brown eyes open and empty, staring blankly up at nothing. Her shirt was caked with blood that was beginning to dry. There was a stab wound to her abdomen, one clearly made by an angel's blade.

Jaoel dropped to his knees and gathered her already cool body into his arms, holding her close, his head in the crook of her neck.

"No, no, come on, come on babygirl, wake up, wake up!"

He was rocking her body, in total devastation, when Thomas caught up. He fell to the ground at the heartbreaking sight before him, weeping alongside his brother.

They did not notice the ugly grey moth that fluttered down to sit on Joel's hunched back, by his right shoulder, a symbol of what he'd become.

x

Thomas was burying Sarah just outside the cabin but Jaoel could not bare to help. Instead he was sitting in a chair in the bedroom she'd been occupying just a few hours before, flipping his blade between his calloused fingers.

He paused to point it at his heart and tried to muster up the strength it would take to shove it in, knowing there would be prolonged pain if he did it wrong. But maybe that's what he deserved, subjecting Eva and then their daughter to the wrath of his family. It had been selfish. He should have stayed a distant observer. Saved Eva and moved on.

"Jaoel."

He flinched and his eyes darted up to see his brother standing in the doorway.

"Don't do it," he pleaded. "We can heal together. We can find a new home."

"I cannot go on without her, Thomas," Jaoel murmured, struggling to breathe as he spoke. "Go."

"You would leave me to fend for myself?" his brother asked.

Jaoel wanted to punch him for it. "You're nearly as old as I am; you can take care of yourself!"

Eyes downcast, Thomas nodded. "You are right. But I wish not to. I have already buried a niece tonight; do not make me bury you too."

Bastard.

Jaoel wanted nothing more than to end the unbearable weight that had fallen over him since he'd found Sarah's body, but the hand gripping the blade loosened its hold without his consent and it tumbled to the floor.

For as much as he was in pain, he could not leave his brother to mourn alone, to live alone. Not when he'd fallen because of him.

x

Joel Miller wakes up from the dream turned nightmare and swipes at the sticky tear track on his cheek.

When will it end? He wonders silently in the dark of his second story bedroom.

He can't help but think, far from the first time, that maybe he should've used the blade after all.

xxx

Latin Translations:

Faex = shit

Mulsa = honey

xxx

Tagged: @harriedandharassed

xxx

Series Masterlist

Main Masterlist

xxx

[dameronscopilot]

sO I've quite always been Feral for Cassian Andor, and with his new show out I'm even more feral, especially after reading your Cassian stuff which is *chef's kiss* literal perfection.

I'd like to submit a Kinktober request, and if I do it wrong just, like, literally yeet me into the sun.

Can I get a breeding + floor sex + "Shhh. There's people in the other room." with a Mr. Captain Cassian Andor, please and thank you? 🥺

(hi hi thank you so much 🧡! i hope you enjoy this!)

Crossing Lines

(sequel to Off Limits)

Cassian Andor x f!reader

Summary: With the promise of your long-awaited freedom from the Empire just on the horizon, you and Cassian have a risky celebration the evening before your escape.

Word Count: 1.3k

Rating: 18+ EXPLICIT

Content: NSFW, smut, floor sex, forbidden relationship, established relationship, unprotected p in v, creampie, fingering, dirty talk, cassian's filthy mouth, breeding kink, cockwarming

A/N: This is a sequel to Off Limits. I'd suggest reading that first for full context if you want to understand the plot!

MASTERLIST || MORE KINKTOBER

Cassian Andor.

His name was Cassian Andor.

Though he was initially hesitant to tell you much of anything at all, countless nights spent together after your first dalliance loosened his lips considerably. Your suspicions that something seemed off about your Imperial guard were proven to be correct—he was a spy for the Rebel Alliance. And if you were both lucky, you’d be escaping this miserable planet with him when all was said and done. 

While Cassian was well aware of your disdain for the Empire, something which you’d made abundantly clear long before his mouth laid claim to yours, he was surprised when you whispered to him in the darkness of your room one evening, asking if you could join the Rebellion. He’d been planning to pilfer you from the clutches of your Imperial general father one way or another before taking his leave, but he’d expected that you’d want to take off on your own to find a quiet planet on the Outer Rim to disappear into anonymity. 

But no, you wanted to fight.

And Cassian could hardly turn down the opportunity not to let you slip through his stained, battered hands.

The union of your bodies brought you together, and you continued to tread a dangerous path as Cassian discreetly took you to bed each evening, taking his duties as your “assigned guard” a bit more literally than your father had likely intended as he fucked you deep and slow until you were a trembling mess in his arms. But it’s what came after that found him nestling deep into the crevices of your heart—the hushed, soft conversation across the expanse of your pillow as Cassian gradually dropped down the walls of his hardened exterior bit by bit and let you see inside. 

After his name came his story—from his heartbreaking childhood to all of the harrowing, traumatic, and tumultuous years that eventually found him rooted deep in the heart of the Rebellion, a cause that, while he hadn’t believed in it at first, was now the one thing that kept him standing despite the demons of his past that chased him. The memories of the blood on his hands, the choices he’d had to make.

“You’re a good man, Cassian,” you’d told him, letting your nose brush against his. 

“I’m glad you think so,” he’d breathed out, cupping your cheek and running a thumb across your jaw.

–

Cassian had already managed to gather a goldmine of information while stationed a room away from where your father often discussed Imperial tactics and planning with his fellow officers, but with your added help, the information you left the planet with would be priceless. 

The night before you were both set to flee, you and Cassian took a chance at sneaking into a building where you were convinced your father had stored several crucial files that could change the game entirely for the Rebellion. Your hunch ended up being correct, and while you both still kneeled on the floor after working together to pry the hard drive from the computer sitting beside you, Cassian surged forward and kissed you as you both laughed in elation at your success.

Perhaps it was the taste of freedom on the tip of your tongue that let you grow reckless, but as Cassian’s stubble brushed against your cheek, you couldn’t help but relax your jaw to deepen the kiss, inviting his tongue to probe further into your mouth. Rather than pull away and find a more inconspicuous place to continue, you let yourself slowly sink to the floor, grabbing the front of Cassian’s uniform to pull him down on top of you.

“Right here?” he asked breathlessly as he broke the kiss, both of you all too aware of the sounds of footsteps echoing down the hallways and muffled voices nearby. While you’d barricaded the door the moment you entered the room, it was risky nonetheless. 

“We can’t go anywhere until the shift changeover, anyway. Might as well get comfortable,” you responded with a smirk.

Cassian shook his head, grinning, before he leaned in to nip at your bottom lip. Your hands trailed a familiar path down his chest, slipping his straining erection from his pants. In turn, he tugged down your bottoms, helping you pull one leg free so you could spread your thighs wide for him. He teased your damp entrance with two digits before thrusting them inside, and you moaned.

“Shhh,” Cassian hushed you. “There are people in the other room.”

You snapped your mouth shut, but when the silence was then punctuated by the wet, lewd sounds of his digits plunging in and out of your fluttering cunt, a bitten off whine managed to escape your lips.

“But I bet you want them to hear...don’t you? You want them to walk in here and see you, the general’s daughter, spread out on the floor for me, whimpering and desperate to be fucked and filled.”

Lining himself up with your entrance, Cassian wiped the head of his shaft through your slick folds.

“You want them to watch while I stuff my cock into your tight little cunt, a dirty, filthy Rebel fucking the Empire’s finest.”

“Cassian—” his name punched out of you as he buried himself in you to the hilt, your tight walls stretching to accommodate his length.

“You want them to know how filthy you are, too. How you beg me to pump my cum into you every single night. How nobody knows you sit at that table for dinner with your family while my seed still drips from your messy little hole.”

He drug his shaft from you slowly, only to penetrate you once more with a swift, brutal snap of his hips, and you gasped as he slammed into your cervix. The floor was hard and cold beneath you, but you couldn't bring yourself to care.

“I watch you drink that tea every morning, but I know you want those bastards to see just how badly you want to be bred, your belly full and round for the Alliance. For me.”

Heat pooled in your gut as Cassian’s cock massaged your inner walls at a relentless pace, and you arched your back up into his thrusts, wrapping your legs firmly around his waist.

“You want the whole Empire to know you’re mine.”

He sought out your mouth in a bruising kiss, licking across the seam of your mouth and taking claim of your bottom lip with his teeth, and you threaded a hand into his messy hair while fisting another in the front of his shirt.

“Yes,” you managed to get out in between the stilted moans you were doing your best to swallow down. 

For all the tenderness that Cassian regarded you with normally, he quickly learned exactly what his filthy mouth did to you, and he used it to his advantage to consistently turn you into a simpering mess in his arms. 

“When I get you back to the base, I’ll fuck you properly, and you can scream as loud as you want while your tight little cunt gushes all over my cock.”

With the promise of what was still to come lingering between you, Cassian clapped a hand over your mouth as he felt you clench down on him, muffling your choked out sob as the ache between your thighs bloomed white-hot and exploded, your entire body writhing with the force of your orgasm. He dropped his head down to mouth at your collarbone as his shaft began to pulse, painting your inner walls with his hot seed.

Even after the last of his cum finished pouring into your womb, you kept your legs wrapped tightly around Cassian’s waist, relishing the feeling of his softening cock nestled inside of you. He pressed an affectionate flurry of kisses across the curve of your jaw.

Turning your head slightly to capture his mouth with your own, you asked, “I mean…do we have to wait until we get back to the base? You do have a ship.”

---

[full-on-sam]

16 :v

If you have worldbuilding, what worldbuilding detail are you most proud of and why?

The Magic system! It is based on 8 elements that are inspired to the 8 elements of Taoism. I researched the meaning of the 8 elements, and tried to associate each one to a specific power. For example fire is associated to change, so people who are well versed in fire magic are able to transmute certain objects. Wind is associated to movement, so people who are versed in wind magic can fly/teleport/make objects move, and so on. Lake in Taoism symbolises Union (it reflects sky but is on earth), so people who want to practice this magic must be closely united to a god to succeed.

There is also a 9th type of magic, not derivata from Taoism or anything else. It is blood magic and it is forbidden, but will play an important role in book two.

[fideidefenswhore]

Okay I’ve been thinking about this as an alternate history thing but do you think there was a way the country/court could have sided decisively with Anne and Henry in The Great Matter? <3

Decisively? I mean, they weren't decisively against either, in the wash. There's been a real push towards rehabilitating Chapuys as a credible source, and I wouldn't go as far as to say no credence should be given towards his dispatches at all, but what's elided in this push is that the reason he's not treated as one is he so often spoke in absolutes, and the world simply does not, and did not, exist in absolutes.

To speak to one example of how history is spoken of in absolutes that weren't there...this idea that Tudor England was universally pious or 'more religious' than we are today. Granted, in general terms, we live in a more secularized society, but you look at things like parish records from the time and church attendance was at times, stunningly low, people fined for such absences, frequently. The world then was much like it was today, there were people of different denominations that were extremely devout, moderately devout, passably devout, and there were even people that didn't believe in God, or were apathetic about whether or not there was one.

As such, that's also the terms of which we should discuss the GM. There were people that were very invested, people that would Die On Their Hills, but odds are a wide swath didn't care too particularly much; it's dissent that's recorded because it's dissent that was punished, not compliance. Many that speak of the 'tyranny' of the creation of the Church of England, Henry's title as supreme authority of such, the investment of Anne as Queen and Elizabeth as heiress, elide that all of these were affirmed by Parliament. That means they had representative sanction by majority. It's the same, for that matter, to the disinheritance and illegitimacy of Mary & Elizabeth in much firmer language in 1536 than of 1534.

Anyway, for Chapuys, his absolutes also (because, well...of course they do) always have evidence to the contrary (often, even contradicted by himself):

Every man of any position here is in despair that the Pope does not proceed against the King, and that commerce is not forbidden in Flanders and Spain, knowing that if speedy remedy is not taken, nothing can be done either for the good ladies, whose lives are in danger, or for religion.

But elsewhere, Chapuys speaks of men that are in 'the Lady's party' (an earlier one was Nicholas Harvey, the husband of Bridget Wingfield, her friend, another was Nicholas Hawkins, a cleric and diplomat, just to name some outside her family). These men had titles ('of any position'). Thus, it does not compute that "every man of any position [in England]" wished for the Pope to enforce an interdict in England, for certainly those of 'the Lady's party' would not. 'Most men of any position' could be exaggeration, but 'every man' is demonstrably false.

Anyway, to answer the counterfactual of it all:

Certainly it was unpopular in some quarters regardless, so as far as I see it, there's two ways it could have been less so 1527-32:

Dark, but...Catherine dies. There's still going to some nose-holding from council even if Henry gives respectable measure to a period of mourning, those that want Henry to wed for another foreign alliance, but no one can contend that he's risking Imperial invasion by his repudiation of Charles V's aunt.

Well, the most obvious one: Clement declares the union invalid on the grounds of some flaw in the dispensation, etc. This might not actually make Henry feel totally secure, though (he was still hoping for this as possibility as late as 1533); and there is an intriguing possibility that we would still see similar political moves regardless as an 'insurance policy' of sorts. There was a precedent for Popes reversing annulments, so there was always a chance that could happen.

[corallapis]

Henry ‘Chips’ Channon: The Diaries (Vol. 1), 1918-38, entry for 14th April 1923

—

Saturday 14th April

We dined at three tables this evening at the Grafton Galleries, we being the Carlisles, the Prince of Wales,¹ Poppy Baring,² Mrs Coats,³ Alice Astor, Prince Henry⁴ and a little woman he is flirting [with], Prince George,⁵ Lady Alexandra Curzon,⁶ Serge Obolensky and Paul of Serbia. Paul Whiteman,⁷ an American, conducted his fabulous orchestra with intoxicating skill on hearing who was in the room. At about 11.30 the Prince of Wales decided to commandeer the band and we left . . . but where to go? We agreed on the Curzons’ house (which is closed for repairs). The Prince of Wales sent to St James Palace for a great deal of champagne: the band of twenty-eight musicians arrived and we all crept stealthily into the darkened house. But no glasses! Prince Henry and I searched the bedrooms and collected every available toothbrush glass . . . . At dawn we went out on the balcony and at last when the band was ready to collapse and we were exhausted we sadly separated. It was 7.30 Sunday morning. We walked up Pall Mall in our evening dress hunting taxis. The guard at Marlborough House⁸ recognised the young pink princes and presented arms. We have all sworn to secrecy about this hush party but I wonder how long it will be before all of London knows and gossips. I shan’t say a word.

—

1. Prince Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David (1894-1972), elder son of King George V and Queen Mary, created Prince of Wales 1911; succeeded his father in January 1936 as King Edward VIII, abdicated December 1936; created Duke of Windsor on his abdication; married Wallis Warfield Simpson (1896-1986), of Baltimore, in 1937.

2. Helen Azalea ‘Poppy’ Baring (1901-80), daughter of Sir Godfrey Baring Bt, and Eva Hermione Mackintosh: the Duke of York had proposed to her in 1921 but his mother, Queen Mary, had forbidden the union because of her supposed unsuitability. She was also vetoed as a bride for Prince George, whose mistress she became. She married William Piers Thursby (1904-77) in 1928. She ran a dress shop in Down Street, off Piccadilly in London.

3. Audrey Evelyn James (1902-68), daughter of William Dodge James, married in 1922 Captain Muir Dudley Coats MC (1897-1927) of the Scots Guards. Having been widowed she married in 1930 Marshall James Field (1893-1956), an American department-store heir, investment banker and newspaper proprietor. They divorced in 1934.

4. Prince Henry William Frederick Albert (1900-74), third son of King George V and Queen Mary, created Duke of Gloucester 1928; married in 1935 Lady Alice Christabel Montagu Douglas Scott (1901-2004), daughter of the 7th Duke of Buccleuch.

5. Prince George Edward Alexander Edmund (1902-42), fourth son of King George V and Queen Mary, created Duke of Kent 1934; married in 1934 Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark (1906-68). Although known before his marriage to have had a number of mistresses he was also believed to be bisexual, and became one of Channon’s closest friends. He was killed on active service with the RAF when his flying boat crashed into a hillside in Caithness.

6. Lady Alexandra Naldera ‘Baba’ Curzon (1904-95), Lord Curzon’s youngest daughter by his first marriage. In 1925 she married Major Edward Dudley ‘Fruity’ Metcalfe (1887-1957), confidant and equerry of the future King Edward VIII, but conducted a number of affairs with men in high society, notably Lord Halifax, between the wars. Because of her flirtations with various fascists in the 1930s her nickname morphed into ‘Baba Blackshirt’.

7. Paul Samuel Whiteman (1890-1967) was one of America’s most famous band leaders.

8. Residence of Queen Alexandra in her widowhood.

[broadcastbabe]

An unprecedented snow fall brings us both outdoors onto our adjoining patios at dawn. The air is crisp and smells of a cleansing freshness, the scant fall of snowflakes barely frosts the yard beyond the bricks, as we test our exhales into visible puffs of vapor. I had grabbed an old flannel coat to cover myself from the chill, draped loosely over my shoulders, for a warmth I thought I would need. Once our eyes meet, instantly raising an aroused perspiration on my gooseflesh, I open it to cool and expose myself for your inspection. Standing shirtless, the cold snap has hardened your nipples, but I am fascinated by how your low-slung sweats defy the gravity that teases them past the V of your sculpted hips. Both of our smiles broaden at the unexpected treat and I sense a twitch between your thighs as we linger in our unspoken gaze. Our solo expeditions have left exhausted lovers asleep just steps away, and they are all but forgotten with this chance encounter. Slowly, we edge toward each other, magnetized by a desire for contact and an inate assurance that the other will be an ultimate pleasure not to be missed. This will need to be silent and swift in its execution for fear of waking our abandoned partners, or losing the moment to any moral hesitation. As our faux-smoky breaths mingle in the intimate closeness between us, becoming quicker with anticipation, we reach to grasp a fistful of each other’s flesh to caress as we kiss. It is a gloriously forbidden, threshold-crossing kiss that deepens as our lips part so our tongues can intertwine. I am further thrilled by my grip of your twitching manhood, knowing it has recently inhabited another, quite deeply I surmise. Your hand has found a rump cheek to knead and grind as you search the cleave for other arousal triggers. Then just as suddenly, we step back from each other, breathless with need, recognizing more time… much more than we have presently, will be needed for this union of promising perfection. My body drips in readiness and I can see your excitement is nearing full growth beneath your sweat pants. A telepathic vow is made to meet again, under more opportune circumstances, to resume this mercurial meeting. We dutifully return to our oblivious others, revitalized by the taste of a stranger still on our lips to savor amidst the wintery backdrop.

[shadowspellchecker]

Hold my beer...

1. 1. Anyone would be a better teacher

#Crossover #Open-fandom #Harry_Potter

2. 1. Lost in Space AU

#Fusion #Open-fandom #Lost_In_Space

3. 2. Main Character is raised Imperial 

#Canon_Divergence #Fusion #Fandom_Specific #Star_Wars

7. 6. North and South AU

8. 7. Timer AU

#True_AU #Open_fandom

9. 8. Roman Empire AU

10. 9. Male lead is Cohortes Urbanae 

11. 10. The obligatory Ghosts (USA) AU.

12. 11. They are your coworkers

Write a scenario where they work wherever it is that You, IRL, work. What do they do? Do any of them like the job? Who do you most get along with?

13. 12. New in Town AU

X is an ambitious upcoming corporate executive coming to shut down a factory. Y is the union representative. Featuring Z as Blanche Gunderson.

14. 13. New in Town AU… in SPACE!

15. 14. Hospital Procedural 

16. 15. Civil War AU

16b. Gone with the Wind-inspired AU 

17. 16. Civil War Hospital AU

Because Mercy Street is Awesome

18. 17. Spanish American War AU

19. 18. Western

20. 19. Dragons AU

21. 20. Pern AU

22. 21. American revolution 

23. 22. Braveheart AU

25. 24. Naruto AU

26. 25. Deathworlders AU

28. 27. Zealot AU

29. 28. Atlantis the Lost Empire AU

30. 29. NCIS AU

31. 29. DnD AU

33. 31. The one where they're the Tabletop RPG players and canon is an RPG

34. 32. Raiders of the Lost Ark AU

36. 33. Raiders of the Lost Art AU (not a duplicate)

42. 39. Napolitano Vampire AU

Watch Commissario Ricciardi and you'll understand where this idea is from. Really, it's all about the mood. 

43. 40. Moody Victorian Crime Solving Drama AU

See above, but set in Victorian or early Edwardian England. You might even have a variant of Miss Scarlet and the Duke. 

44. 41. Epistolary Victorian AU

Any excuse for Flower language 

45. 42. Green grocer AU

46. 43. Weed distributors AU 

…your One Stop Shop for legal Marijuana!

47. 44. Beauty and the Beast AU. 

48. 45. The Lawn Ornament AU.

Like Toy Story but with lawn ornaments. 

Featuring Benny the Gnome, Cleo the Flamingo, Shaibel as one of those ceramic tree faces… 

49. 46. The Honest Star Wars AU: TQG in Star Wars

50. Covid AU

Main Characters. Covid lock down. Go.

51. Corvid AU

They might be crows. They might be ornithologists. If you want to get adventurous, they might be both. If you're really adventurous (or out for heartbreak), there's one of each.

52. 49. Redwall AU

53. 50. Wizard of Oz remixes

54. 51. Manifest / Twilight Zone Odyssey of Flight 33 AU

They're all passengers on this flight. What happens next is up to you.

55. 52. Wildcats AU

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/WildCats1986

This, but Beth is the main character and Shaibel was the one raising her. 

57. 54. The Cleanup Crew

Set in the universe of Indiana Jones. After Adventure Archaeologists like Indiana and Aphra go busting through ancient secrets and forbidden temples, your main characters are the team that goes in to smooth things over with the local governments, silence strategically unsafe witnesses, set up cover stories, replace death traps and transport eldritch objects into high security. While living in hope that maybe, just maybe, the paperwork will be finished sometime this century. 

58. 55. Animal shelter AU

59. 56. Main Character is in Make Way For Ducklings

Reasoning:

Benny Watts is in New York

Make Way for Ducklings is in New York

New York traffic jam caused by duckling train

Benny reacting to being stuck in said traffic jam

Why is he upset 

Traffic jam from ducks keeping him from a chess game

Ducks block Benny from chess game

Ducks land on Benny's chess game in Central Park 

Benny sues duck 

Chess Federation sues Ducks

Chess Federation v. Duck et al, 1970. 

59b. 56b. Your main character places a frivolous lawsuit.

60. 57. ATLA AU

Beth Harmon as Azula. Azula as Beth Harmon

63. 59. Pokemon Red AU

64. 60. Or a more general Pokémon AU

65. 61. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon AU. Pick your version. 

66. 62. Kanto AU, but they're all pokemon. 

67. 63. The Rookie (2002) AU (skip, too similar)

68. 64. Renaissance AU

69. 65. Edwardian AU

70. 66. Edwardian silverware AU

The characters are sentient silverware commenting on the behaviors of the people eating the meal. That's it. That's the fic. 

71. 67. Victorian-style Toy Story AU

72. 68. Antiques Roadshow AU

Pick two media. The mains for one are hosts and antiques experts on the show; the other are the guests. Who gets what specialty? Who brings in what? How do they react?

73. 69. Things [your fandom main characters] are no longer allowed to do

74. 70. House AU. 

75. 71. The Death Star and the Executor are both sentient. And the Executor is either Territorial or Jealous.

76. 72. Darth Vader's Suit

...has a mind of it's own

77. 73. Your favorite Main Characters decide to passive-aggressively install a gazebo on someone's lawn. 

78. 74. The Sannin in Star Wars

79. 75. Group of Main Characters vs Paperwork

80. 76. Vienna Blood AU

81. 77. And then there were none AU

82. 78. In a kinder universe…

The mains never meet because they live very different lives

83. But say in a slightly less kind universe…

But say in a slightly less kind universe, still miles kinder than Canon. 

84. Period Piece Fight Club

Your MCs all come from different historical settings. They are kidnapped by… something and forced to duke it out in a tournament or round-robin to decide which setting they get to be dropped off. Not all of them are even fighters! From whence does each character come, what was their occupation, how do they fight, are they even able to fight given their circumstances at the time of kidnap (i.e. are they injured, do they have ammo, are they sworn never to touch a blade?), who wins. Fill in blanks in the premise: can the characters communicate, is it to the death, can they communicate with each other (i.e. translator microbes), is there healing, can they communicate with each other off the field and/or without being observed, what are the tournament runners motivations and what are the rules?

86. Wacky marriage proposal

87. Galactic food blog AU (for space operas)

88. Ghosts + Downton Abbey + 3rd fandom

Your MCs are in a modern AU and staying at Downton Abbey, which has been refurbished as a B&B. One of your characters sees ghosts. Downton has a lot of them. 

Bonus corollary: if your MCs are from Downton Abbey how do they handle meeting themselves?

91. Crossdresser Zorro remix.

92. Conventional Zorro remix

93. "Where is New Jersey?!" 1776 crossover 

94. Name your time Lord. 

95. Amnesia au

96. Warring states au

97. Warrior cats au

Pictures would be great. 

I know I got my statistical human to cat coat color correspondence chart somewhere…

98. Labyrinth AU

99. Jack Ryan but with your mains instead of Jack. 

100. They are superheroes

101. You Got Mail remix

102. Middle Ages au

103. The mains recognize each other from their dreams 

104. Soulmate geese transformation 

105. Your mains are the leads in Mythbusters-style TV show 

106. Poker AU

107. Turn left at Kirk's Rock…

Even if they are in Star Wars

109. Designated Survivor au

110. Pirates and privateers

111. Jurassic park au

112. Jurassic Parking; all your mains use the same car park. It's dinosaur themed. 

Bonus: "And then someone just shows up and buries a dead king under it."

113. Main Character is Cursed by angry old woman. Any time he swears, he is mobbed by seagulls. 

116. A heavily-armored X lands on Palpatine. Yes, you know which fic I'm cribbing here. Yes, this is the plot. Everything else is just icing.

117. A clear and meaningful assessment of your main character group's alcohol tolerances.

118. Young Tom Riddle is raised by Main

119. Main Character is a fairy-doctor

121. /Anyone/ showing up in The Martian 

122. Police Academy AU 

As inspired by Lucillia

123. My Little Pony Fusion

124. Zombie apocalypse strikes your canonverse

125. Main Character, olympian runner

126 - Dreamingverse

Everyone had a second set of false memories that grow with them as they age. We call this one's Dreaming. These false memories depict another life, superficially similar to one's own circumstances or even resemblant of historical figures – but they are false indeed, in truth quite unreliable in history, personages, and even natural laws (please don't test this; even now children regularly die trying to fly if left unsupervised before becoming acquainted with the Waking). It would be an untruth to equate the dream-self to the self; they can be quite different people. Similarity can be quite random. Often people who strongly affect each other may find their Dreamings overlap, even recognizing each other from drawings if one is of an artistic bent. We call this sharing a Dreaming. 

Key characters are born with the memories of other lives and another world. What do they do with them?

Rule:

Memories they have access to correspond with equivalent physical age.

129. House Hunters AU

130. How to Winnebago without even trying.

[theblogofruth]

"Zachob." From the Book of Ruth 4: 9-12.

The Book of Ruth, which is a coda on the Book of Judges, llustrates how to have good taste when deciding the future. The best of the best can only be discerned if one is willing to search and create a lasting solution that contains none of the potential for the mistakes of the past.

Ruth, a blooming prophetess shags every farm boy in town and still can't find a new coatrack, so her mother in law, the church elders, the mayor, the community decide to collude to tie this whore down themselves. God Himself finally intervenes in the present tense and says it is time for Ruth a "vision of friendship" to marry with Boaz, "man's personal vigor."

The union of the two means a restart for all of Israel explained below. Its re-enactment is explained as the result of four turns:

9 Then Boaz announced to the elders and all the people, “Today you are witnesses that I have bought from Naomi all the property of Elimelek, Kilion and Mahlon.

10 I have also acquired Ruth the Moabite, Mahlon’s widow, as my wife, in order to maintain the name of the dead with his property, so that his name will not disappear from among his family or from his hometown. Today you are witnesses!”

11 Then the elders and all the people at the gate said, “We are witnesses. May the Lord make the woman who is coming into your home like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the family of Israel. May you have standing in Ephrathah and be famous in Bethlehem. 

12 Through the offspring the Lord gives you by this young woman, may your family be like that of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah.”

The Values in Gematria are:

v. 9: The First Turn is always into uncertainty. In this case it involves an announcement and witnesses= a legal proceeding. The regal question is, "Who is God?" and the next is "What is man?"

If we witness God's power, and there is no way to avoid this, why are we subjecting ourselves to the obvious attempts of wicked men to usurp a power they cannot hope to possess?

God is a legal authority He is the landowner. This is undisputed. We are tenants. So why on earth have I been seeing Geoff Tunicliffe and Sandra Blatte, very well known child molesters in public alongside Donald Trump and walking talking mishap as he illegally campaigns for a second term in the White House?

God has forbidden sex between adults and kids, He has forbidden corruption, stealing, lying, murdering, and worship of other men, and but nonetheless, this happens in color on TV every single day in front of a dumbstruck world.

There is no way to ask this globally interconnected mankind to accept this, not after these very same persons collaborated on that attack on Israel on October 7. The evidence is pure, it has been given to the public. By allowing Donald Trump etc. to campaign, the US Government is in serious arrears in the performance of its duty and this must not be allowed. Because the White House has hesitated, and lives were lost, the penalties on all involved must be the most severe possible.

This message is contained in the Kabbalah formed by the four Hebrew terms above: Naomi Elimelech Kilion Mahlon "Find the most pleasant view from the highest window."

Height in the Torah is "the most ethical, the greatest enlightenment."

Why can't the US Government understand this?

The Number is 7651, ז‎וה‎‎א‎, "This is it."

v. 10: =The Second Turn is towards awakening. "I have acquired the friendly part of the Moabite, the tradition so it will not die." The Number is 11735, יאזג‎ה, yazga, "like pure olive oil or very fine frankincense=conduct that is pure."

This involves what is known as Chochmah:

"The verb זכך (zakak) means to be pure or clean. It occurs less the half a dozen times in the Bible (Job 9:30, 15:15, 25:5, Lamentations 4:7). Its derivations are:

The adjective זך (zak), meaning pure or clean. This word is used to describe olive oil that is free from foreign substances (Exodus 27:20, Leviticus 24:2) or frankincense of that same quality (Exodus 30:34, Leviticus 24:7). The same word may describe a man (Job 8:6), a man's ways (Proverbs 16:2), conduct (Proverbs 20:11), philosophy (Job 11:4) or prayer (Job 16:17).

The feminine noun זכוכית (zekokit), meaning glass. This noun occurs only once, in Job 28:17, where Job prizes it next to gold but both as less valuable than wisdom (see our article on the name Hochma)."

v. 11: The Third Turn is towards understanding. Awareness desires are not enough. One can chant Namah Shivaya all day long for example in order to awaken the mind to the possibility of the reality of a Greater God, but one must become Shiva if one wants to understand the personage of the Supreme Being, and Jews are forbidden by the Torah to settle for less.

The verse concludes, May you have standing in Ephrathah and be famous in Bethlehem, "may you have many branches of understanding in the House of War."

= Jews are expected to split the creation into mini-disciplines, understand each one down to their primary particles and maintain this knowledge so the process nor its fruits are ever lost. Especially where the religion is concerned.

"Verb פרה (para) means to bear fruit or be fruitful. Noun פרי (peri) means fruit in its broadest sense. Noun פר (par) means young bull and פרה (para) means young heifer. Note that the first letter א (aleph) is believed to denote an ox-head, while its name derives from the verb אלף (aleph), to learn or to produce thousands.

The second letter, ב (beth) is also the word for house (or temple or stable). The familiar word "alphabet," therefore literally means "stable of bulls" or "house of divisions" or "temple of fruitful learning".

Noun פרא (para') is a word for wild donkey. The young bovines were probably known as fruits-of-the-herd, but donkeys in the Bible mostly symbolize lone wanderings and humility."

A fine education is the primary weapon of the House of Israel in the fulfillment of the Covenant God made with Abraham.

The Number is 11531, יאהגא‎‎, yahaga, "you have to go all the way."

"The verb חגג (hagag) describes a gathering up of people in order to celebrate or hold a feast, specifically any of the three main pilgrimage feasts that Israel was to celebrate (Exodus 23:14-16).

These feasts were huge affairs that caused the entire daily economy to cease for many days and pretty much the whole population to be on the move; this to the great delight of the Israelites but much to the chagrin and bewilderment of the various occupying forces (who had trouble enough with the Hebrew insistence on a whole day off per every seven). The three main feasts were:

The Feast of Unleavened Bread, better known as Pesah or Passover. This feast was held at the beginning of the agricultural year.

The Feast of the Ingathering of First Fruits. This feast was held at the beginning of the productive season.

The Feast of the Harvest, to be held when the harvest was done.

Our verb may also denote festive behavior as if one was at a feast (1 Samuel 30:16). The Arabic equivalent means "to betake oneself to or towards an object of reverence" (says BDB Theological Dictionary) and this verb returns in the prescribed pilgrimage to Mecca: the Hadj.

In Psalm 107:27 our verb is used in the meaning of to reel; to whirl around. Since the object of the verb is sailors in a storm, the connection to festive swirling may not seem very clear.

Here at Abarim Publications we surmise that our verb deals with the same kind of circular and symbiotic dependency as does the verb זבח (zabah), meaning to sacrifice. The action of the verb then describes the transition from a large and slow circular motion to a concentrated, small and fast one; the large circular motion would constitute life in its daily symbiotic synchronicity, whereas the smaller, faster one would result from people gathered for their feast.

This verb demonstrates that feasts and storms form virtually in the same way and for the same reason: to alleviate tension and release energy."

v. 12: The Fourth Turn is towards enlightenment: May your family live in peace. The Number is 9862, ץחו‎ב‎‎, "jump out, jump in again."

=

"Politely, grab the golden one by the testicles."

"The noun עקב ('aqeb) most literally means heel, but — since the word for foot, namely רגל (regel), euphemizes the male genitalia — is closely associated to a man's testicles, and hence his inner motivations and intentions (when wearing a long robe, the heel was the most obvious part of one's largely invisible legs).

Just like the noun for knee yields the verb to kneel (i.e. to be blessed: to be so safe and well stocked as to sit in repose), so the verb עקב ('aqab), "to heel", tells of either (a) having someone "by the balls", i.e. manipulating them, taking control over their subconscious motivations, and (b) discretely covering one's own intentions, will and sentiments.

In the Bible, one's enlightened ratio was considered solar, whereas one's conscious feelings were lunar — and the sun, of course, was the quintessential revealer of the moon.

Both having a grip on someone's else's instincts and hiding one's own intentions could be alarming signs of deceitfulness, but in modern times one's ability to retain one's composure irrespective of one's feelings became a telling sign of one's gentility.

The rise of polite society, unfortunately, went hand in hand with the rise of mass manipulation and propaganda, which the general public tends to frown upon (also because the general public rarely considers the alternative: a world without a uniform subliminal guidance).

In Biblical times, the virtues of manipulation and politeness were obviously not clear to everyone and our root was mostly associated with trickery and scheming: adjective עקב ('aqeb) means beguiling; adjective עקב ('aqob), insidious or deceitful; adjective עקב ('aqob), tricky or treacherous (of terrain). Noun עקבה ('aqeba) means deceitfulness and noun עקב ('eqeb), consequence."

It all boils down to how the universe works. If the love of money is the root of all evil, then the love of giving it away is the root of all that is good."

[jamesjbkim]

The Watchers are a class of biblical angels mentioned in various ancient texts. In the Book of Enoch, they are depicted as angels sent to watch over humans who eventually succumb to lust for human women. Their illicit unions produced the Nephilim, a race of giants who caused chaos on Earth[2][3]. The Watchers imparted forbidden knowledge to humanity, leading to their eventual punishment by God, who bound them until Judgment Day[2].

The Nephilim, resulting from these unions, are described as giants and mighty men of renown in Genesis 6:1-4[5]. Their existence and impact are also explored in various religious and mythological texts[3].

Sources

[1] Amazon.com: The Resurgent of The Watchers and Nephilim eBook https://www.amazon.com/Resurgent-Watchers-Nephilim-Michael-Wayne-ebook/dp/B0CQRXS4BW

[2] Watcher (angel) - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watcher_%28angel%29

[3] Watchers/ Nephilim - Deliriums Realm https://www.deliriumsrealm.com/watchers/

[4] Angels & Giants, the Watchers & The Nephilim (2023) - IMDb https://www.imdb.com/title/tt29579696/

[5] Watchers, Nephilim, and other Bizarre Bible Stuff - Gina Detwiler https://www.ginadetwiler.com/ginas-blog/watchers-nephilim-and-other-bizarre-bible-stuff

[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uBU27JfHCY

[7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGNTDZ2Wius

[thestudentpoet]

WIP Wednesday

It’s WIP Wednesday, time for a little accountability, sharing your work, and getting a kick in the pants.

Here’s how it woks:

Post up to five (5) filenames of your WIPs; not titles, file names.

Post a snippet from one of them. Snippet must be words you wrote in the last 7 days. We’re posting progress here. If you haven’t made any, go make some and come back to post.

After you’ve posted, people can send you an ask with one of your file names. You must then write 3 sentences in that file.

That’s it! You can invite others to join in or just post.

If you’re reading this, you’re invited!

If you see someone posting a WIP Wednesday Game snippet, send them an ask! Make them write.

WIPS:

Through the Fire and Flames

Summer Nights are often Coldest

The Twitching Hand

Excerpt:

The interior of the Student’s Union had taken the same vintage design cue as its exterior. Men in fishbowl helmets with ray guns defended scantily clad damsels on the posters lining the wall. The furniture was a mix of fifties diners and the retro-futuristic style that any fan of The Forbidden Planet would appreciate. The fake leather covering of the cushions was cracked with age and the once bright red dye had faded into a patchy pink. As Benjie entered, he had to think about taking his steps because his shoes stuck to the floor. Decades of spilt drinks and vomit had seeped into the linoleum. There was a sweet scent of bleach mixing with those of alcohol and cheap food that Benjie registered with an affectionate smile. He’d only been going there a few months and he already thought of it as a second home. Beyond cursory glances at the sound of the door opening, no one stared at him the way they did at his “real” home.

No one knew anything about him except what he presented, there was freedom in that.

Benjie followed Siobhan to the bar, picking up flashes of conversation amongst the undercurrent of noise. An early war rock song played on the speakers, from the period where revolutionary furore had yet to be replaced by a dull complacency to the forever war. The consequence of a civilisation that spanned solar systems was that conflict moved quickly but peace moved at a sluggish pace. Benjie recognised it as a song that his mum used to listen to and he tapped his foot with the beat.

“What’ll you have?” Siobhan asked once they’d arrived to the front of the bar.

“Hmm?” Benjie replied, before hearing the question anyway. “Oh, a pint of First Landing, please.”

“You got it.”

“Are we at our usual table?”

“Of course.”

“Will you order me some Mozzarella sticks and I’ll send you the money?”

“No problem, I owe you for last Friday anyway so we’ll call it even.”

Benjie frowned, unable to remember what had happened last Friday night but figured that was probably why she owed him. There were vague recollections of a table getting knocked over and someone getting their boobs out. A standard night out for Siobhan, in other words.

Pint in hand, Benjie followed Siobhan to the group of gender freaks and sexual deviants that had laid claim to the large booth at the back of the Student’s Union. It was a source of pride for them that there wasn’t a member of the group who was cisgender or heterosexual. Except for Alan, unfortunately, who was a lot of fun anyway so they let him get away with it.

James was sat with his back to them, leaning forward as Naomi and Reva argued and looking uncomfortably amused at the exchange.

“-what do you mean you don’t believe it? Do you even watch the news?” Naomi said.

Reva sat back and shrugged. “All I’m saying is they’ve been pushing toward us for centuries. They take some planets, we take them back the next year and Aphora remains perfectly safe. Why will this time be any different?”

Naomi let out a groan of frustration. “Reva, babe, this isn’t just another border skirmish. The Tsardom is pushing, hard. I heard the black prince is leading the–”

“Oh don’t tell me you believe those fairytales. The black prince is propaganda. If… and that’s a very big if, he exists, he’s just another member of the incestuous royal family. No worse or better than the rest of them.”

“I can’t with you sometimes,” Naomi replied before turning to James. “Will you tell her?”

James’ face fell, and any trace of amusement was destroyed by being put on the spot. He cleared his throat uncomfortably and said, “Well I don’t know about all that but I can tell you you won’t see any Tsardom thugs on Aphora if I have anything to say about it.”

“Our hero,” Siobhan said, taking a vacant seat that had her pink fluffy coat on it.

Benjie looked around for somewhere to sit and was dejected to see none.

“You can sit here,” James said and Benjie saw that he’d budged up to make enough room for him to sit on the edge.

Benjie reddend and squeezed into the seat. Without thinking, James wrapped an arm around him to keep him from falling over.

“Thanks,” Benjie mumbled, trying to find a perfect balance between enjoying the contact without letting anyone see that he was enjoying it. The effort of suppressing his blissful smile and the hyperventilating was the last thing he needed on top of the binder constricting his breath.

“That was intense,” James muttered.

“Yeah? Were they a bit much?”

“Nothing I didn’t expect. Naomi and Reva haven’t changed much.”

Benjie sighed. “No, they haven’t.”

Allowing himself to look up at James, Benjie saw there was a tensity in his jaw and a distant look in his eyes. In all the years he’d known James he’d never seen a look like that. He felt a sudden urge to take his hand and squeeze it.

“Are you all right?” Benjie asked.

James snapped out of it, smiling again. “Of course, was just in my head for a bit. Don’t worry your pretty little head,” he said, ruffling Benjie’s hair.

Benjie pushed his hand away, laughing despite himself. “Fuck off, James,” he said leaning into James’ body a little further to take advantage of the contact.

James desisted and put his arm around Benjie again and they all went back into the rhythm of reunion. While everyone asked James about his time in bootcamp, Benjie sat there thinking with increasing concern about the fact that James’ reply didn’t sound genuine at all. It wasn’t like him to hide anything, so what was wrong.

As Benjie ruminated on this, a waitress brought over his mozzarella sticks. They were cooked to golden perfection in the industrial microwave that all the student union’s food was cooked in. It wasn’t exactly gourmet but neither were mozzarella sticks in general and he was starving after a full day of seminars followed by his shift. There was food at his dorm for him to eat but he needed something now or he’d waste away. The mozzarella sticks were widely known to be the best on the menu so it was the logical choice. Before he could take one Siobhan snatched one from the little basket they were kept in. Benjie shot an incredulous look at her and she shot a smug one back as she took a bite.

“Tax,” she said as she chewed with her mouth open.

Benjie grimaced at the sight but decided not to press the matter. When he turned back to his food he could feel James staring at them. Pushing the basket over to him he asked, “Do you want one?”

James face softened and he stared at Benjie as if he’d offered his last sip of water in a desert. “Really? You don’t mind?”

“Sure, I’m not too hungry,” Benjie said.

Siobhan went to protest but he shot her a glare that shut her up. Then he shot her a second one to tell her to stop eavesdropping.

“I’ll only have one,” James said, making his selection with hungry eyes.

“Have more. I really don’t mind,” Benjie said, suppressing the rumbles in his stomach so that no one would hear.

James took a bite and his whole body seemed to melt, he let out a groan of pleasure that seemed to shake him to the core and his whole self trembled with satisfaction.

Benjie laughed. “They’re not that good.”

James shook his head. “You have no idea how hard it’s been surviving on army rations for a year and a half. This is a five-star meal as far as I care.”

Benjie took a stick and began to chew on it. The cheese was a bit rubbery and the breadcrumbs burnt but it tasted fine. The tomato dip helped but it was clear James would appreciate them more.

“Help yourself,” Benjie said, pushing the basket closer to him again.

“Are you sure?” James replied, struggling to find the strength to refuse him.

“Sure,” Benjie said. He’d already decided to let him have the lot. He’d just eat when he got home, whenever that was. It wasn’t all bad, at least he wouldn’t throw up when he inevitably got drunk, he thought as he sipped his cider.

[neil-gaiman]

How Did you come up with the first eve in the story about adams wives? I haven’t been able to find anything about her after I read it and I want to know if she’s an actual biblical character or just someone you made

She's from the Midrash. I learned about her as a 12 year old, from my barmitzvah teacher. There was a point in there, long after I'd put her into Sandman, where I was starting to think I'd imagined her, when I ran across her in Robert Graves's Hebrew Myths....

Excerpt from: The Hebrew Myths by Robert Graves and Raphael Patai (New York:  Doubleday, 1964), pp 65-69

Chapter 10: Adam's Helpmeets

(a) Having decided to give Adam a helpmeet lest he should be alone of his kind, God put him into a deep sleep, removed one of his ribs, formed it into a woman, and closed up the wound, Adam awoke and said: 'This being shall be named "Woman", because she has been taken out of man. A man and a woman shall be one flesh.' The title he gave her was Eve, 'the Mother of All Living''. [1]

(b) Some say that God created man and woman in His own image on the Sixth Day, giving them charge over the world; [2]  but that Eve did not yet exist. Now, God had set Adam to name every beast, bird and other living thing. When they passed before him in pairs, male and female, Adam-being already like a twenty-year-old man-felt jealous of their loves, and though he tried coupling with each female in turn, found no satisfaction in the act. He therefore cried: 'Every creature but I has a proper mate', and prayed God would remedy this injustice. [3]

(c) God then formed Lilith, the first woman, just as He had formed Adam, except that He used filth and sediment instead of pure dust. From Adam's union with this demoness, and with another like her named Naamah, Tubal Cain's sister, sprang Asmodeus and innumerable demons that still plague mankind. Many generations later, Lilith and Naamah came to Solomon's judgement seat, disguised as harlots of Jerusalem'. [4]

(d) Adam and Lilith never found peace together; for when he wished to lie with her, she took offence at the recumbent posture he demanded. 'Why must I lie beneath you?' she asked. 'I also was made from dust, and am therefore your equal.' Because Adam tried to compel her obedience by force, Lilith, in a rage, uttered the magic name of God, rose into the air and left him.

Adam complained to God: 'I have been deserted by my helpmeet' God at once sent the angels Senoy, Sansenoy and Semangelof to fetch Lilith back. They found her beside the Red Sea, a region abounding in lascivious demons, to whom she bore lilim at the rate of more than one hundred a day. 'Return to Adam without delay,' the angels said, `or we will drown you!' Lilith asked: `How can I return to Adam and live like an honest housewife, after my stay beside the Red Sea?? 'It will be death to refuse!' they answered. `How can I die,' Lilith asked again, `when God has ordered me to take charge of all newborn children: boys up to the eighth day of life, that of circumcision; girls up to the twentieth day. None the less, if ever I see your three names or likenesses displayed in an amulet above a newborn child, I promise to spare it.' To this they agreed; but God punished Lilith by making one hundred of her demon children perish daily; [5] and if she could not destroy a human infant, because of the angelic amulet, she would spitefully turn against her own. [6]

(e) Some say that Lilith ruled as queen in Zmargad, and again in Sheba; and was the demoness who destroyed job's sons. [7] Yet she escaped the curse of death which overtook Adam, since they had parted long before the Fall. Lilith and Naamah not only strangle infants but also seduce dreaming men, any one of whom, sleeping alone, may become their victim. [8]

(f) Undismayed by His failure to give Adam a suitable helpmeet, God tried again, and let him watch while he built up a woman's anatomy: using bones, tissues, muscles, blood and glandular secretions, then covering the whole with skin and adding tufts of hair in places. The sight caused Adam such disgust that even when this woman, the First Eve, stood there in her full beauty, he felt an invincible repugnance. God knew that He had failed once more, and took the First Eve away. Where she went, nobody knows for certain. [9]

(g) God tried a third time, and acted more circumspectly. Having taken a rib from Adam's side in his sleep, He formed it into a woman; then plaited her hair and adorned her, like a bride, with twenty-four pieces of jewellery, before waking him. Adam was entranced. [10]

(h) Some say that God created Eve not from Adam's rib, but from a tail ending in a sting which had been part of his body. God cut this off, and the stump-now a useless coccyx-is still carried by Adam's descendants. [11]

(i) Others say that God's original thought had been to create two human beings, male and female; but instead He designed a single one with a male face looking forward, and a female face looking back. Again He changed His mind, removed Adam's backward-looking face, and built a woman's body for it. [12]

(j) Still others hold that Adam was originally created as an androgyne of male and female bodies joined back to back. Since this posture made locomotion difficult, and conversation awkward, God divided the androgyne and gave each half a new rear. These separate beings He placed in Eden, forbidding them to couple. [13]

Notes on sources:

1. Genesis II. 18-25; III. 20.

2. Genesis I. 26-28.

3. Gen. Rab. 17.4; B. Yebamot 632.

4. Yalqut Reubeni ad. Gen. II. 21; IV. 8.

5. Alpha Beta diBen Sira, 47; Gaster, MGWJ, 29 (1880), 553 ff.

6. Num. Rab. 16.25.

7. Targum ad job 1. 15.

8. B. Shabbat 151b; Ginzberg, LJ, V. 147-48.

9. Gen. Rab. 158, 163-64; Mid. Abkir 133, 135; Abot diR. Nathan 24; B. Sanhedrin 39a.

10. Gen. II. 21-22; Gen. Rab. 161.

11. Gen. Rab. 134; B. Erubin 18a.

12. B. Erubin 18a.

13. Gen. Rab. 55; Lev. Rab. 14.1: Abot diR. Nathan 1.8; B. Berakhot 61a; B. Erubin 18a; Tanhuma Tazri'a 1; Yalchut Gen. 20; Tanh. Buber iii.33; Mid. Tehillim 139, 529.

Authors’ Comments on the Myth:

1. The tradition that man's first sexual intercourse was with animals, not women, may be due to the widely spread practice of bestiality among herdsmen of the Middle East, which is still condoned by custom, although figuring three times in the Pentateuch as a capital crime. In the Akkadian Gilgamesh Epic, Enkidu is said to have lived with gazelles and jostled other wild beasts at the watering place, until civilized by Aruru's priestess. Having enjoyed her embraces for six days and seven nights, he wished to rejoin the wild beasts but, to his surprise, they fled from him. Enkidu then knew that he had gained understanding, and the priestess said: 'Thou art wise, Enkidu, like unto a godl'

2. Primeval man was held by the Babylonians to have been androgynous. Thus the Gilgamesh Epic gives Enkidu androgynous features: `the hair of his head like a woman's, with locks that sprout like those of Nisaba, the Grain-goddess.' The Hebrew tradition evidently derives from Greek sources, because both terms used in a Tannaitic midrash to describe the bisexual Adam are Greek: androgynos, 'man-woman', and diprosopon, 'twofaced'. Philo of Alexandria, the Hellenistic philosopher and commentator on the Bible, contemporary with Jesus, held that man was at first bisexual; so did the Gnostics. This belief is clearly borrowed from Plato. Yet the myth of two bodies placed back to back may well have been founded on observation of Siamese twins, which are sometimes joined in this awkward manner. The two-faced Adam appears to be a fancy derived from coins or statues of Janus, the Roman New Year god.

3. Divergences between the Creation myths of Genesis r and n, which allow Lilith to be presumed as Adam's first mate, result from a careless weaving together of an early Judaean and a late priestly tradition. The older version contains the rib incident. Lilith typifies the Anath-worshipping Canaanite women, who were permitted pre-nuptial promiscuity. Time after time the prophets denounced Israelite women for following Canaanite practices; at first, apparently, with the priests' approval-since their habit of dedicating to God the fees thus earned is expressly forbidden in Deuteronomy xxIII. I8. Lilith's flight to the Red Sea recalls the ancient Hebrew view that water attracts demons. 'Tortured and rebellious demons' also found safe harbourage in Egypt. Thus Asmodeus, who had strangled Sarah's first six husbands, fled 'to the uttermost parts of Egypt' (Tobit viii. 3), when Tobias burned the heart and liver of a fish on their wedding night.

4. Lilith's bargain with the angels has its ritual counterpart in an apotropaic rite once performed in many Jewish communities. To protect the newborn child against Lilith-and especially a male, until he could be permanently safeguarded by circumcision-a ring was drawn with natron, or charcoal, on the wall of the birthroom, and inside it were written the words: 'Adam and Eve. Out, Lilith!' Also the names Senoy, Sansenoy and Semangelof (meanings uncertain) were inscribed on the door. If Lilith nevertheless succeeded in approaching the child and fondling him, he would laugh in his sleep. To avert danger, it was held wise to strike the sleeping child's lips with one finger-whereupon Lilith would vanish.

5. 'Lilith' is usually derived from the Babylonian-Assyrian word lilitu, ,a female demon, or wind-spirit'-one of a triad mentioned in Babylonian spells. But she appears earlier as 'Lillake' on a 2000 B.G. Sumerian tablet from Ur containing the tale of Gilgamesh and the Willow Tree. There she is a demoness dwelling in the trunk of a willow-tree tended by the Goddess Inanna (Anath) on the banks of the Euphrates. Popular Hebrew etymology seems to have derived 'Lilith' from layil, 'night'; and she therefore often appears as a hairy night-monster, as she also does in Arabian folklore. Solomon suspected the Queen of Sheba of being Lilith, because she had hairy legs. His judgement on the two harlots is recorded in I Kings III. 16 ff. According to Isaiah xxxiv. I4-I5, Lilith dwells among the desolate ruins in the Edomite Desert where satyrs (se'ir), reems, pelicans, owls, jackals, ostriches, arrow-snakes and kites keep her company.

6. Lilith's children are called lilim. In the Targum Yerushalmi, the priestly blessing of Numbers vi. 26 becomes: 'The Lord bless thee in all thy doings, and preserve thee from the Lilim!' The fourth-century A.D. commentator Hieronymus identified Lilith with the Greek Lamia, a Libyan queen deserted by Zeus, whom his wife Hera robbed of her children. She took revenge by robbing other women of theirs.

7. The Lamiae, who seduced sleeping men, sucked their blood and ate their flesh, as Lilith and her fellow-demonesses did, were also known as Empusae, 'forcers-in'; or Mormolyceia, 'frightening wolves'; and described as 'Children of Hecate'. A Hellenistic relief shows a naked Lamia straddling a traveller asleep on his back. It is characteristic of civilizations where women are treated as chattels that they must adopt the recumbent posture during intercourse, which Lilith refused. That Greek witches who worshipped Hecate favoured the superior posture, we know from Apuleius; and it occurs in early Sumerian representations of the sexual act, though not in the Hittite. Malinowski writes that Melanesian girls ridicule what they call `the missionary position', which demands that they should lie passive and recumbent.

8. Naamah, 'pleasant', is explained as meaning that 'the demoness sang pleasant songs to idols'. Zmargad suggest smaragdos, the semi-precious aquamarine; and may therefore be her submarine dwelling. A demon named Smaragos occurs in the Homeric Epigrams.

9. Eve's creation by God from Adam's rib-a myth establishing male supremacy and disguising Eve's divinity-lacks parallels in Mediterranean or early Middle-Eastern myth. The story perhaps derives iconotropically from an ancient relief, or painting, which showed the naked Goddess Anath poised in the air, watching her lover Mot murder his twin Aliyan; Mot (mistaken by the mythographer for Yahweh) was driving a curved dagger under Aliyan's fifth rib, not removing a sixth one. The familiar story is helped by a hidden pun on tsela, the Hebrew for 'rib': Eve, though designed to be Adam's helpmeet, proved to be a tsela, a 'stumbling', or 'misfortune'. Eve's formation from Adam's tail is an even more damaging myth; perhaps suggested by the birth of a child with a vestigial tail instead of a coccyx-a not infrequent occurrence.

10. The story of Lilith's escape to the East and of Adam's subsequent marriage to Eve may, however, record an early historical incident: nomad herdsmen, admitted into Lilith's Canaanite queendom as guests (see 16. 1), suddenly seize power and, when the royal household thereupon flees, occupy a second queendom which owes allegiance to the Hittite Goddess Heba.

The meaning of 'Eve' is disputed. Hawwah is explained in Genesis III. 20 as 'mother of all living'; but this may well be a Hebraicized form of the divine name Heba, Hebat, Khebat or Khiba. This goddess, wife of the Hittite Storm-god, is shown riding a lion in a rock-sculpture at Hattusaswhich equates her with Anath-and appears as a form of Ishtar in Hurrian texts. She was worshipped at Jerusalem (see 27. 6). Her Greek name was Hebe, Heracles's goddess-wife.

[dagwolf]

On March 22, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a seemingly minor labor-law dispute with potentially sweeping ramifications. Although the case itself concerns a mundane California agricultural regulation, a decision could threaten fundamental laws governing organized labor, child safety, nursing-home inspections — and even laws forbidding stores and restaurants from discriminating.

The case, Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, involves a decades-old California regulation that grants union organizers temporary access to an agricultural employer’s property — during non-working hours — to communicate with workers about their right to organize.

A pair of California fruit producers are challenging this access in the Supreme Court, contending that it amounts to an uncompensated “taking” of their property, forbidden under the Fifth Amendment. But California is not taking their property at all. Unlike the paradigmatic situation where government appropriates private property for its own use, California’s regulation merely grants union organizers a narrow license to meet with workers — without interrupting the employer’s operations.

The fruit producers are thus left to make a different — and far more sweeping — argument. They assert that the access regulation is a taking because it prevents them from excluding people that they just don’t like. And this “right to exclude unwanted persons,” they contend, is “so universally held to be a fundamental element of the property right that it cannot be infringed without compensation.” If the Supreme Court agrees, the upshot would be staggering.

Start with the effects on union organizing across the nation. The ability to access employer property is vital not only to California agricultural unions but also to millions of employees who enjoy the right to organize under the National Labor Relations Act. In 1945, the Supreme Court held that this law grants pro-union employees the same right at issue here: the ability to access an employer’s property outside of work hours for the narrow purpose of union organizing. Yet if the court holds that the takings clause permits property owners to exclude any unwanted person, employers could cripple unions by blocking employees from organizing on their premises.

The dispute threatens havoc just as great outside the union context. Consider state laws that permit child protection inspectors to make unannounced home visits. Now suppose a homeowner suspected of abuse or neglect wants to keep the inspector out. Under the challengers’ logic, such individuals would have a Fifth Amendment right to do so — unless the government paid the suspected abuser to access the property. The same problem would ensnare nursing home visits and food safety inspections.

Perhaps most glaring of all, the case threatens to blast a giant hole through the heart of anti-discrimination law. Federal law forbids stores, restaurants and other public accommodations to refuse service on the basis of a customer’s race. A number of states protect LGBTQ persons from similar discrimination.

[3wisellamas]

More Boxbot / Voxman Family Headcanons, Jumbo Bonus Edition!

Because I'm still here, dangit!

-Shannon's holographic "phone" is an actual thing that people in the OK KO universe have, but usually it comes built into a watch rather than their wrist. It's a super-expensive model, that she likes to show off to her siblings who are still stuck with regular smartphones.

-Since Ernesto is hollow, he likes to hide things from his siblings inside himself, and forgets about them. It's not an uncommon occurrence for him to split apart during a plaza fight only for confiscated magazines to spill out, or for the Bodegamen to explode him and have snacks fall out like a robot piñata.

-It's also the best hiding place for his diary. Which the Bodegamen always return to him at Boxmore, after reading it cover to cover (and even writing feedback in the margins) of course.

-ALL of the robots have issues sometimes with thinking out loud, and even blurting out embarrassing things or straight-up Boxmore corporate secrets -- the bigger the hivemind, the more likely this is to happen, with Darrell and Ernesto being the worst offenders. With hundreds of mouths to keep shut, sometimes they just miss one.

-Things the Boxbots are forbidden from eating/drinking, since they can melt, get stuck in their inner workings, or otherwise cause serious malfunctions: Marshmallows, chocolate, peanut butter, all varieties of cheese, WD-40, lit matches, dish soap, gummy worms, live worms (Raymond found this one out the hard way on a dare), live birds (ditto for Mikayla), glue, wet cement, broken glass, water.

-Things the Boxbots will eat/drink anyway, and just reboot themselves right after: All of the above.

-The main exception to this is the peanut butter -- Professor Venomous is allergic to peanuts, just like his son, and Boxman threw out everything in the factory containing them the day he moved in. The bots all miss their peanut butter and (petroleum) jelly sandwiches, but not enough to potentially hurt their stepdaddy!

-(They do still keep one last jar of the stuff hidden in their playroom, however, just in case. And so does Boxman, in his office.)

-Also, Mikayla doesn't care what it does to her, she LOVES chocolate -- it's her catnip.

-Mr Logic likes hip hop, and will actually get up on stage and freestyle sometimes when he and Gar go to open mic nights together. He's surprisingly good at it!

-Since he's just as embarrassed about his human feet as Shannon, if not more so, Darrell's got an extensive collection of cute patterned socks to cover them up, and wears a different pair underneath his boots every day that NO ONE is allowed to see but him. His favorite pair have tiny horses on them.

-The robots all wake up at 6AM, on the dot. They have to, in fact, since it's programmed into them -- they're physically incapable of sleeping in, though they can take short naps in the afternoon. They're also programmed to start feeling sleepy at 10PM, though their bedtime is a couple of hours earlier, and they are able to stay up if needed (for instance, if Boxman decides to do a late-night plaza attack...)

-And that line about having to "recharge every night" was accurate -- glorbs naturally replenish their spent energy when not in use, so the robots need to get a full nights' sleep every night or their glorbs could eventually burn out on them!

-Boxman also gets up at 6, or around there, because he MUST crow at the sunrise, every morning. Raymond sometimes joins him.

-Darrell gets migraines, a side effect of having to convert and process all of his electronic thoughts on an organic brain. There's an entire protocol to swap him out for Shannons and Raymonds on the factory floor so he can shut down his hivemind and rest -- however, it can be tough to get him to admit he's in pain and to stop trying to work through it. (He hates the idea of his family having to go through so much trouble for him...)

-When PV found out, as a fellow migraine sufferer, he and Darrell actually bonded over it, and he got a little less resistant to taking "sick days" with his stepdaddy's encouragement.

-After he was upgraded to a robo-adult, Ernesto started refusing to celebrate his birthday, so that the other three quadruplets could have it all to themselves. However, they'll always throw him a small surprise party of his own a week later.

-For their dad's birthday one year, the bots got him a pet goldfish, since he used to be so into aquatic creatures. Boxman ADORED that fish, even if he claimed otherwise, and gave it the prettiest tank decor and fanciest fishy flakes he could. However, sadly, it didn't last long, with the robots doing the cleaning and water changes for him -- fish and rust don't mix. ;-;

-Though it's INCREDIBLY humiliating for them, you can in fact plug all six of the bots into a wall outlet if there aren't any glorbs available for them to run off of. Except for Mikayla, their AC adaptors are sold separately.

-Fink keeps trying to flush cherry bombs down the Boxmore toilets, Bart Simpson-style. It helps that she can just escape down them into the pipes if she gets caught (though, she's also blown herself up this way once or twice...)

-Leggy Jethro did eventually trust all his siblings enough to let them know he was still around, and they helped hide him from Boxman, reattached his limbs, invited him to their dance parties (the one in The KO Trap was him), and even got him out of there when things started getting bad with Shadowy -- though, since all they did was shove him into a waste pipe during one of their stepdaddy's and stepbrother's rampages, they never were sure if he made it or not until he showed up with Boxman at the Plaza Tournament.

-Post-reset, he's allowed to openly be himself as a member of the family! No labor uprisings or union talk at the dinner table, though.

-This was originally posted by someone else, but I love it so I'm stealing it: "Deathro" from Thank You For Watching the Show is actually just Jethro's edgy robo-teen phase. It lasted only a week before everyone else got sick of it, just like Ernesto's.

-The Boxman family is Corn-tholic (Corn Catholic), though Boxman himself doesn't really practice it too seriously. In fact, he didn't practice at all until the kids came along, and he started going to Corn Church again for them.

-He dragged PV along with the rest of the family one week, but the whole "corn-fessing your sins" aspect didn't go too well for our favorite professor, who already has problems facing and dealing with his checkered past...

-The robots are EXTREMELY multilingual, since they can just switch their language settings. However, Shannon and Raymond did try to legitimately learn French together once, though they eventually gave up. The only thing they can really say is "omelette du fromage."

-Sadly, this does not include sign language for the four original bots, though Raymond and Mikayla were updated to include it, and they'll sign to each other to in order to speak privately or hide things from / trash-talk their older siblings.

-Lord Boxman has no idea where Darrell got the Daddy belt, and it haunts him, as does whether his innocent baby boy knows the full meaning behind it. Darrell actually pulled it out of Boxman's old college stuff -- there may or may not have been a LOT of alcohol consumed the night he procured that belt, and he'd long since forgotten it.

-And Darrell does know exactly what it means. The fact that everyone, especially his dad, expects Darrell to act an innocent baby boy forever due to his personality, and expresses shock whenever he displays knowledge or behavior more appropriate to the teenager/young adult he is, really annoys him sometimes. Not that he'll voice his complaints, especially not to his father, but he does rebel in small ways, like his graffiti habit, and brute-forcing his way past the parental block on the TV to watch the PG-13 movie channels. (He absolutely can say fuck, and in fact has done so in private, he just chooses not to.)

-After he and Boxman reconnected, Mr Logic did eventually start visiting his family at Boxmore again, though only on rare/special occasions. And after a LOT of time and consideration, he agreed to let Boxman perform a few upgrades, and bring his construction more in line with the newer robots.

-Logic refuses to have a hivemind set up, though, or any copies of himself made, not even just as a safety precaution in case he's ever damaged or destroyed.

-Boxman made a copy of Logic anyway, and a backup of his memory during one upgrade, and just never told him about it. It's set to activate if something ever does happen to the original Mr Logic, even long after Boxman retires.

-Shannon LOVES roller blading, but is banned from every skating rink in the Neutral Zone, since she keeps trying to use her saws instead of actual skates.

-There's a villain-oriented equivalent to Sidekick Scouts, for minions-in-training, that PV took Fink to a few times, before she decided her own style of minion-ing was superior.

-She first learned how to blackmail people from their annual cookie drives, and even got a badge for it!

-In addition to robots, Boxman is a HUGE car guy, and can give you engine specs on any make/model from memory, as well as ways to tweak them for maximum horsepower. He originally went to Evil Engineering College for automotive stuff, but switched to robotics instead.

-He's actually trying to pass on his mechanic skills to Darrell, who he trusts to do all his own car's upkeep as well as that of the Boxmore trucks, and Raymond, who...can barely change a tire. (He tries, he really does, but it's just not going well in his case)

-Raymond actually does have his motorcycle from that one mobile game, and enjoys riding around the Danger Zone! However, since he stinks at maintaining it, it's almost always breaking down, and he keeps having to go to either his dad or Darrell to fix it.

-He passes it down to Robbie later on, who thankfully DID get the Mechanic Skills. ;v;

-Ernesto once tried to teach PV how to make a spreadsheet in Excel. He somehow managed to crash the entire factory computer system, including poor Ernesto's hivemind server, while trying to add two cells together.

[dweemeister]

The complete list of films featured in 2021′s “31 Days of Oscar” marathon

What follows is the exhaustive list of all 403 short- and feature-length films featured on this blog over the last thirty-one days for the 31 Days of Oscar marathon. This number is up from last year’s count of 327 and is the second-highest number of films I have ever featured in this marathon (behind the 410 films from 2016). Despite the number, this remains only a fraction of the nearly 5,000 films that have been nominated for Academy Awards. This year’s marathon was harder to plan than usual due to the fact it was presented in alphabetical order - with the exception of any write-ups I did.

BREAKDOWN BY DECADE 1927-1929: 7 1930s: 44 1940s: 63 1950s: 63 1960s: 46 1970s: 25 1980s: 29 1990s: 28 2000s: 25 2010s: 43 2020s: 30

Year with most representation (2020 excluded): 1940 (ten films) Median year: 1964

And now, the list. Best Picture winners and the one (and only) winner for Unique and Artistic Production are in bold. Asterisked (*) films are films I haven’t seen in their entirety as of the publishing of this post.

A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)

Ace in the Hole (1951)

Adam’s Rib (1949)*

The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)

After the Thin Man (1936)*

Airport (1970)*

Aladdin (1992)

Albert Nobbs (2011)

Alexander’s Ragtime Band (1938)

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

Almost Famous (2000)

An American in Paris (1951)

Anastasia (1956)

Anatomy of a Murder (1959)

Annie (1982)

Around the World in Eighty Days (1956)

Arrival (2016)

Au Revoir Les Enfants (1987, France)

The Awful Truth (1937)

Babe (1995)

Baby Doll (1956)*

Ballad of a Soldier (1959, Soviet Union)*

The Band Wagon (1953)

Bao (2018 short)

Ben-Hur (1959)

Berkeley Square (1933)

The Best Man (1964)

Better Days (2019, Hong Kong)*

The Big Chill (1983)*

The Birds (1963)

Birds Anonymous (1957 short)

Black Orpheus (1959, Brazil)

BlacKkKlansman (2018)

Blue Velvet (1986)

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)*

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2020)*

The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

Brief Encounter (1945)

Brotherhood (2018 short, Tunisia/Canada/Qatar/Sweden)

Cabin in the Sky (1943)

Calamity Jane (1953)

Carol (2015)*

Casablanca (1942)

Casino (1995)*

Charade (1963)

The Circus (1928)

Citizen Kane (1941)

City of God (2002, Brazil)*

Claudine (1974)*

Closely Watched Trains (1966, Czechoslovakia)

Coraline (2009)*

Da 5 Bloods (2020)*

Dances with Wolves (1990)

Death in Venice (1971)*

Destination Moon (1950)*

The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941)

Down Argentine Way (1940)

Dunkirk (2017)

Easter Parade (1948)

The Edge of Democracy (2019, Brazil)*

Educated Fish (1937 short)*

El Cid (1961)*

Elmer Gantry (1960)

The End of the Affair (1999)*

Ernest & Celestine (2012, France/Belgium)

Face to Face (1976, Sweden)*

The Fallen Idol (1948)

Fantasia (1940)

A Fantastic Woman (2017, Chile)*

Far from the Madding Crowd (1967)*

A Farewell to Arms (1932)*

A Few Good Men (1992)*

Five Easy Pieces (1970)*

The Five Pennies (1959)

The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. (1953)

Flower Drum Song (1961)

Flowers and Trees (1932 short)

Flying Down to Rio (1933)*

For All Mankind (1989)

For Sama (2019)*

Forbidden Planet (1956)

Forrest Gump (1994)

42nd Street (1933)

Four Days in November (1964)*

The Four Feathers (1939)

The 400 Blows (1959, France)

Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994)*

From Here to Eternity (1953)

Funny Face (1957)

Funny Girl (1968)

Fury (1936)*

Gandhi (1982)

The Garden of Allah (1936)

Garden Party (2017 short, France)

Gaslight (1944)

Giant (1956)

Gigi (1958)

Gladiator (2000)

The Godfather (1972)

The Godfather, Part II (1974)

Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939)

Gorillas in the Mist (1988)*

Gosford Park (2001)

Grand Hotel (1932)

Grand Prix (1966)*

The Great Beauty (2013, Italy)

The Great Race (1965)

The Great Ziegfeld (1936)

Green Book (2018)

Green Dolphin Street (1947)*

The Green Mile (1999)*

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967)

Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957)

Gunga Din (1939)

Hair Love (2019 short)

Hallelujah (1929)*

Hamlet (1948)

Hamlet (1990)

Hamlet (1996)

Hangmen Also Die! (1943)*

The Happiest Millionaire (1967)

A Hard Day’s Night (1964)

Harlan County U.S.A. (1976)

The Harvey Girls (1946)

Heartbreak Ridge (1986)*

The Heiress (1949)

Hell’s Angels (1930)*

Henry V (1989)

Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941)

Hero (2002, China)*

Hidden Figures (2016)

The High and the Mighty (1954)*

High Noon (1952)

High Society (1956)

Himalaya (1999, France/Switzerland/United Kingdom/Nepal)*

Home Alone (1990)

Honeysuckle Rose (1980)*

Hoosiers (1986)

The House on 92nd Street (1945)*

How the West Was Won (1962)

How to Survive a Plague (2012)*

I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932)

I Married a Witch (1942)*

I Never Sang for My Father (1970)

I Vitelloni (1953, Italy)*

I Wanted Wings (1941)*

I, Tonya (2017)*

Ida (2013, Poland)

Imitation of Life (1959)

In Cold Blood (1967)

In the Absence (2018 short, South Korea)

In the Heat of the Night (1967)

Inherit the Wind (1960)

Inside Daisy Clover (1965)*

Inside Moves (1980)*

It Happened One Night (1934)

It Happened Tomorrow (1944)*

It Should Happen to You (1954)*

It’s Always Fair Weather (1955)

Jackie Brown (1997)*

Jammin’ the Blues (1944 short)*

Jaws (1975)

The Jazz Singer (1927)

Jerry’s Cousin (1951 short)

Jesus Camp (2006)*

Jezebel (1938)

Jim: The James Foley Story (2016)*

Joe’s Violin (2016 short)

The Journey of Natty Gann (1985)

Joyeux Noel (2005, France)

Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)

Julia (1977)*

Juliet of the Spirits (1965, Italy)

Kagemusha (1980, Japan)

The Karate Kid (1984)

The Killers (1946)*

The King and I (1956)

The King’s Speech (2010)

The Kite Runner (2007)

Knights of the Round Table (1953)*

Knives Out (2019)

Kundun (1997)*

La Ronde (1950, France)*

La Strada (1954, Italy)

La Traviata (1982, Italy)*

Lady Be Good (1941)*

The Lady Eve (1941)

The Ladykillers (1955)*

The Last Emperor (1987)

A Letter to Three Wives (1949)

The Life Ahead (2020, Italy)*

Life is Beautiful (1997, Italy)

Life with Feathers (1945 short)

Lili (1953)

Lilies of the Field (1963)

The Lion in Winter (1968)*

Little Caesar (1931)

A Little Romance (1979)

Little Women (2019)

Logan (2017)

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

Lost Horizon (1937)

Love Affair (1939)*

Love Story (1970)*

Loving Vincent (2017)

The Magic Flute (1975, Sweden)

The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)

Malcolm X (1992)

The Maltese Falcon (1941)

A Man for All Seasons (1966)

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)

The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

Maria Full of Grace (2004, Colombia)*

Meet Me in Las Vegas (1956)*

Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)

Mighty Joe Young (1949)*

Milk (2008)

Million Dollar Mermaid (1952)*

The Miracle Worker (1962)*

Mon Oncle (1958, France)

Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday (1953, France)*

Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)

My Fair Lady (1964)

My Favorite Wife (1940)

My Favorite Year (1982)

My Night at Maud’s (1969)*

The Narrow Margin (1952)

The Natural (1984)

Nebraska (2013)

Network (1976)

Night Must Fall (1937)*

Nightcrawler (2014)*

The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

Ninotchka (1939)

Nowhere in Africa (2001, Germany)*

Odd Man Out (1947)*

The Official Story (1985, Argentina)*

Oklahoma! (1955)*

Oliver! (1968)

On Golden Pond (1981)*

On the Riviera (1951)*

On the Waterfront (1954)

One Day in September (1999)*

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)

One Foot in Heaven (1941)

One Hour with You (1932)

One Potato, Two Potato (1964)*

Only Angels Have Wings (1939)*

Our Town (1940)

Paisan (1946, Italy)

Pal Joey (1957)*

Pan’s Labyrinth (2006, Mexico)

Paper Moon (1973)*

Parasite (2019, South Korea)

The Parent Trap (1961)

A Passage to India (1984)*

Patton (1970)

Pelle the Conqueror (1987, Denmark)*

Period. End of Sentence. (2018 short)

Persepolis (2007, France)

The Philadelphia Story (1940)

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)

Pigs in a Polka (1943 short)*

Pillow Talk (1959)*

Pinocchio (1940)

Places in the Heart (1984)*

Poltergeist (1982)

Portrait of Jennie (1948)

Precious (2009)*

The Prisoner of Zenda (1937)

The Private Life of Helen of Troy (1927)*

The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939)*

The Producers (1967)

Psycho (1960)

Pulp Fiction (1994)

Purple Rain (1984)

Puss Gets the Boot (1940 short)

Pygmalion (1938)

Quiet Please! (1945 short)

Quo Vadis, Aida? (2020, Bosnia-Herzegovina)*

Rachel, Rachel (1968)*

Ran (1985, Japan)

Random Harvest (1942)

Rashômon (1950, Japan)

Rasputin and the Empress (1932)*

Rear Window (1954)

Rebecca (1940)

Red River (1948)

The Red Shoes (1948)

A River Runs Through It (1992)

Road to Perdition (2002)

Roma (2018, Mexico)

Saludos Amigos (1942)

Same Time, Next Year (1978)*

The Secret of Kells (2009)

Sense and Sensibility (1995)*

Sergeant York (1941)

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954)

Seven Samurai (1954, Japan)

Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

The Shape of Water (2017)

Shaun the Sheep Movie (2015)*

She Done Him Wrong (1933)*

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949)

The Shootist (1976)

The Shop on Main Street (1965, Czechoslovakia)

The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Silverado (1985)

Singin’ in the Rain (1952)

Sleeping Beauty (1959)

The Smiling Lieutenant (1931)

The Snake Pit (1948)*

Song of the Sea (2014)

Sounder (1972)

The Sound of Music (1965)

The Spanish Main (1945)*

Speedy (1928)

Speedy Gonzales (1955 short)

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

Spirited Away (2001, Japan)

Stagecoach (1939)

A Star is Born (1937)

A Star is Born (1954)

A Star is Born (1976)*

A Star is Born (2018)

Star Trek: First Contact (1996)

Star Wars (1977)

Starship Troopers (1997)

The Sting (1973)

A Stolen Life (1946)*

The Story of Three Loves (1953)*

The Story of the Weeping Camel (2003, Mongolia)*

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946)*

The Stranger (1946)*

A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)

Strike Up the Band (1940)

Strings (1991 short)*

The Sundowners (1960)*

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)

Superman (1978)

Sweet Bird of Youth (1962)

Swing Time (1936)

T-Men (1947)*

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013, Japan)

Tangerines (2013, Estonia)*

Tenet (2020)

Them! (1954)

Theodora Goes Wild (1936)*

Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944)*

This is Cinerama (1952)*

The Three Musketeers (1948)

Three Orphan Kittens (1935 short)

Time (2020)*

Timecode (2016 short, Spain)

Tom Jones (1963)

Toni Erdmann (2016, Germany)*

Top Hat (1935)

The Triplets of Belleville (2003, France)*

The Truman Show (1998)*

12 Angry Men (1957)

Twilight of Honor (1963)*

Two Girls and a Sailor (1944)*

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Umberto D. (1952, Italy)

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964, France)

Unforgiven (1992)

Up (2009)

Vertigo (1958)

Victor/Victoria (1982)

WALL-E (2008)

Watch on the Rhine (1943)*

Waterloo Bridge (1940)

Weary River (1929)*

West Side Story (1961)

Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day (1968 short)

The Wizard of Oz (1939)

Wolfwalkers (2020)

X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

You Can’t Take It with You (1938)

Zorba the Greek (1964)*

The 15 nominated short films for the 93rd Academy Awards

The 8 nominees for Best Picture at the 93rd Academy Awards, including the winner, Nomadland

Until next year’s ceremony, folks - February will be here before we know it!

[rockislandadultreads]

A Variety of Women’s History Titles: Essential Picks

Sister Queens: The Noble, Tragic Lives of Katherine of Aragon and Juana, Queen of Castile by Julia Fox

The history books have cast Katherine of Aragon, the first queen of King Henry VIII of England, as the ultimate symbol of the Betrayed Woman, cruelly tossed aside in favor of her husband’s seductive mistress, Anne Boleyn. Katherine’s sister, Juana of Castile, wife of Philip of Burgundy and mother of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, is portrayed as “Juana the Mad,” whose erratic behavior included keeping her beloved late husband’s coffin beside her for years. But historian Julia Fox, whose previous work painted an unprecedented portrait of Jane Boleyn, Anne’s sister, offers deeper insight in this first dual biography of Katherine and Juana, the daughters of Spain’s Ferdinand and Isabella, whose family ties remained strong despite their separation. Looking through the lens of their Spanish origins, Fox reveals these queens as flesh-and-blood women—equipped with character, intelligence, and conviction—who are worthy historical figures in their own right. When they were young, Juana’s and Katherine’s futures appeared promising. They had secured politically advantageous marriages, but their dreams of love and power quickly dissolved, and the unions for which they’d spent their whole lives preparing were fraught with duplicity and betrayal. Juana, the elder sister, unexpectedly became Spain’s sovereign, but her authority was continually usurped, first by her husband and later by her son. Katherine, a young widow after the death of Prince Arthur of Wales, soon remarried his doting brother Henry and later became a key figure in a drama that altered England’s religious landscape. Ousted from the positions of power and influence they had been groomed for and separated from their children, Katherine and Juana each turned to their rich and abiding faith and deep personal belief in their family’s dynastic legacy to cope with their enduring hardships.

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi

Every Thursday morning for two years in the Islamic Republic of Iran, a bold and inspired teacher named Azar Nafisi secretly gathered seven of her most committed female students to read forbidden Western classics. As Islamic morality squads staged arbitrary raids in Tehran, fundamentalists seized hold of the universities, and a blind censor stifled artistic expression, the girls in Azar Nafisi's living room risked removing their veils and immersed themselves in the worlds of Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, and Vladimir Nabokov. In this extraordinary memoir, their stories become intertwined with the ones they are reading. Reading Lolita in Tehran is a remarkable exploration of resilience in the face of tyranny and a celebration of the liberating power of literature.

Black Girl, Call Home by Jasmine Mans

From spoken word poet Jasmine Mans comes an unforgettable poetry collection about race, feminism, and queer identity. With echoes of Gwendolyn Brooks and Sonia Sanchez, Mans writes to call herself—and us—home. Each poem explores what it means to be a daughter of Newark, and America--and the painful, joyous path to adulthood as a young, queer Black woman. Black Girl, Call Home is a love letter to the wandering Black girl and a vital companion to any woman on a journey to find truth, belonging, and healing.

The Secret History of Home Economics: How Trailblazing Women Harnessed the Power of Home and Changed the Way We Live by Danielle Dreilinger

The term “home economics” may conjure traumatic memories of lopsided hand-sewn pillows or sunken muffins. But common conception obscures the story of the revolutionary science of better living. The field exploded opportunities for women in the twentieth century by reducing domestic work and providing jobs as professors, engineers, chemists, and businesspeople. And it has something to teach us today. In the surprising, often fiercely feminist and always fascinating The Secret History of Home Economics, Danielle Dreilinger traces the field’s history from Black colleges to Eleanor Roosevelt to Okinawa, from a Betty Crocker brigade to DIY techies. These women—and they were mostly women—became chemists and marketers, studied nutrition, health, and exercise, tested parachutes, created astronaut food, and took bold steps in childhood development and education. Home economics followed the currents of American culture even as it shaped them. Dreilinger brings forward the racism within the movement along with the strides taken by women of color who were influential leaders and innovators. She also looks at the personal lives of home economics’ women, as they chose to be single, share lives with other women, or try for egalitarian marriages. This groundbreaking and engaging history restores a denigrated subject to its rightful importance, as it reminds us that everyone should learn how to cook a meal, balance their account, and fight for a better world.

[valasaraei]

Legalized suppression of religious freedom in Iran; A misconception for Western societies

When we talk about the suppression of religious freedom in Iran, the image presented to contemporary modern people in Western societies is often fundamentally different from the reality lived in Western secular country. When it comes to religious repression, a confusing perception is the starting point for many misunderstandings. The common misconception is that in theocratic premodern nation-states like Pakistan, Afghanistan and Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI), in the absence of the rule of law, a person or group of people has formed a totalitarian mechanism based on an ideology to suppress religious minorities. This image which is more like George Orwell's 1984 novel or “V for Vendetta” movie directed by James McTeigue makes it harder for us to understand the depth of catastrophe. The farther we go from the objective reality in such societies, the more we lose the possibility of correct interpretation, and as a result of not understanding the problem accurately, we move away from moving towards an efficient solution. In the Iranian legal system, the method of suppressing religious minorities is embedded in a completely legal way, while in some other sources of this legal system, emphasis is placed on respect for individual freedoms and the freedom of individuals to perform religious acts. This hypocritical dichotomy in the legal texts allows a corrupt and inhumane regime like IRI to suppress and kill religious minorities in a completely legal way, and at the same time, it can rely on a number of hand-picked rules among the legal sources, to justify itself in the international community. The Constitution of IRI states that "the investigation of individuals' beliefs is forbidden" and that "no one may be molested or taken to task simply for holding a certain belief." Also IRI always insists that Iran’s Penal Code has no provisions criminalizing apostasy. But this silence of the law against the criminalisation of apostasy seems pleasant only to someone who has never practised in the Iranian legal system and has no understanding of other statutes. Article 214 of Iran’s Criminal Procedure Code states: “...The court is obliged to find the verdict of each case in the written laws and if there is no law in the case, it will issue the verdict based on valid Fiqh sources or valid Fatwas, and the courts cannot refuse to handle complaints and lawsuits and issue a verdict by the excuse of silence or defect or conciseness or conflict or ambiguity of written laws”. The decisive fatwa of all Islamic scholars, especially Shia’s, is clear to anyone with a minimal knowledge of Shari'a system; execution of Muslim-born apostate. Legalizing the suppression of religious minorities and autonomous criminalisation of religious conversion in the Iranian legal system is a clear example of the unholy union of religion and law that has emerged objectively in IRI. 

Cartoon by Sharok Heidari on Iranian Christians’ resistance to the state's securitization of their status.