#And also that second one was v much inspired by a passage in the book. Except it was less. Yknow. Sexy?

[tapeworrmart]

Man's best friend (parasites) 🩸🪱

[rumblelibrary]

I need a very loving Laszlo smut, either top or switch with him, take it any direction you want, any build up, any kinks. But I just... my soul needs this V I need to see this man happy and satisfied

Coming Back Home [Dr Laszlo Kreizler x Wife!Reader]

Word count: 3k

Warnings: SMUT (fingering, mild victorian dirty talk)

Author’s note: I am weak to see this man happy, my mind went a bit overboard, but I just couldn't hold it back, to see him happy and fulfilled in all his means, professional and private. Thank you so much for feeding my obsession and being my supporter @cazzyimagines <3

The cold air hit him as a welcome back in the moment he exited the carriage, he was back in New York after six months of study and hard work in Wien, he hated and loved it: he learned a lot and got the chance to talk with some of the best alienists in the field granting himself some valuable resources and upcoming publications, the city was amazing and romantic. But all day, every day, he was with his mind on the life he left here, on you and your baby boy waiting at home patiently, easing his pains with letters and little colourful sketches, reassuring him that he would come back to the same house he left.

It was late, he could see the light in baby’s room was off already and it pained him to be late for the goodnight story.

The driver dropped his belongings beside the door with a huff before taking his money with a big thank you.

Laszlo nodded, a sense of tension taking over him, what if something indeed changed? What if you hate him for leaving for his own interest? Will his son remember him? 

The silliest questions took over him and he just rang the bell before the spiral would take over and make him sleep in the garden out of his imaginary shame.

Stevie opened the door and his face lighted up instantly, Laszlo’s hand moved close to his own face with a finger up to signal him to keep quiet. The young lad nodded opening the door more, but a loud whine came out of his lips when he saw the heavy trucks beside Laszlo. 

“Stevie? Who is it?”

Your voice vibrated through the walls enveloping Laszlo like a distant memory and a fresh breath of air at the same time.

Stevie mumbled something “Nobody Madam, only some funny head playing with bells at night” he said as Laszlo nodded at him.

He left the coat at Stevie with his gloves and hat making his way to the bedroom upstairs trying to be as quiet as possible, your vanity the first thing that appeared to his sight, he shifted lightly so he could spot your figure reflected in the mirror without being seen.

You were already in your white night dress, hair down wrapped in a braid that rested on your shoulder, his own dark blue night gown draped over you making you appear even smaller, a book resting in your hand, the other hand toying with the fabric of his gown. A soft sigh left your lips and a little smile, you are liking the book. You turn the page with your features lighting up by interest, he felt almost guilty to interrupt you.

“Guten Abend, my love”

Your head shot up, eyes wide in surprise, a smile growing on your lips as he walked inside the room revealing his presence. A sense of nervousness still on him.

“Laszlo” you called rushing to him, discarding the book and throwing the covers onside,  closing the distance between the two of you by jumping out the bed like an excited child. Your hands wrapped quickly around his neck, you pulled him in, lips clashing against one another. He smiled in the kiss, eyes a bit teary as the happiness you were able to blossom into his chest since the first time he met you was still there. He cupped your cheek with his left hand, the kiss being long and followed by little short ones, and then again a long one.

“You should have told me” You whispered and he smiled at you noticing how you also got a bit of tears streaming down your cheeks, but all due to happiness. You picked his right hand kissing it lovingly, oh that ritual of yours, that mindless action you always did to kiss the part of him he despised the most.

“Welcome home, my love”

He smiled widely, so wide he felt his cheeks and jaw hurt, while he leaned his forehead against yours and you closed your eyes enjoying it. Your little telepathy thing, like he could pour his thoughts to you and vice versa.

In the meanwhile Stevie kept himself far from the two of you not wanting to interrupt or witness anything he shouldn’t. Laszlo pulled back from that position as he stared down at you, your eyes met again as you gulped down a little, his eyes travelling onto your neck as none of you seemed able to pick what words to let out first, too many informations gathered in six months that letters couldn’t covert.

His eyes raising up to yours, you moved first guiding his right hand still safe in your grasp inside that warm robe hiding your body, his fingers meeting with the obscenely thin fabric of your night dress, the shape of your breast clear under his touch, his thumb brushing over your nipple earning an immediate reaction from you. 

His breath itched, his tongue wetting his lips as you kept supporting his weak arm while his hand discovered once more what hidden treasure was the body of his wife.

His left hand undoing the silky bow around your neck that kept that useless piece of clothing closed, your breasts being exposed as he leaned his head down lacing his lips with you nipple and giving it a tempting suck, his tongue roaming over it as a sense of home and comfort surged into his stomach, then he spoke and his hot breath against your wet nipple made you shiver.

“Have you done the exercises that I gave you?”

“No”

His eyes shoot up at you, a mix between the need to scold you and desire in them.

“I could do it only with your letters” you added.

“Not touching yourself enough must have been painful, exasperating, you could have brought yourself to hysteria”

“I know, but I was waiting for this moment”

He smirked, the idea to be a vital part of your sexual expression turning him on immensely.

“Which letter was your favourite?”

“The one where you described your fingers inside me, I could imagine it so clearly while I was doing it to myself”

He almost let out a groan only by the sound of your words, the need to go knuckles deep inside you now almost impossible to hold back as the image of your distressed figure rolling onto the sheets trying to emulate that pleasure he only can give you clouded his mind.

His left hand almost angrily undoing the fabric belt the nightgown around your waist before moving behind your back to pull it off your shoulders, you gently let go of his right hand helping him in the task, your hands now tugging his jacket, his waistcoat, beginning already with his shirt buttons, you were so in need, but he was the same. He tugged his shirt off probably ripping off some buttons, the urgency you both felt filling the air.

His eyes trying to take in all your figure as you finally let go of that white dress.

“Oh, meine Frau, no statue or artwork or inspiration I have seen in this travel equals your beauty” he groaned as he felt like he almost forgot how he worshipped your body, how your only presence triggered obscene desires through him.

There was almost a moment of suspense before he leaned his warm body against yours, skin on skin again.

His erection already brushing over your lower stomach as you guided him onto the bed with you laying down for him. “Laszlo” you were about to beg him not to make you wait, not to tease you but his left hand fingers were already between you legs and a yelp of pleasure left you lips immediately.

“Soaked wet without me even touching you”

He was so pleased, you didn’t need to look at his face to know, but you whimpered when his long finger pushed inside you, he knew it, he knew exactly how to touch you, how to manipulate all of you. His lips laced to your neck, he sucked on it, bit it, hickeys soon will follow the passage of him. He is back.

To see your own neck pale and empty from his marks pained you everyday, but now he is at home and there won’t be a single centimetre of you spared. Another moan followed as his mouth found your nipples again, your legs trembling as a second finger joined the first one making you gasp for air. The ultimate pleasure approaching in you too quickly, abnormally quickly, but you missed him so much and six months without his care on you was a torment.

His prideful smile gave you the freedom not to restrain your pleasure, your hips jolting up and trembling, more wetness gathering on his fingers before he pulled them out knowing that it would make you feel empty.

He punished you with distance as he sat down on the bed, you crawled over him, legs still feeling like jelly as you forced yourself to straddle him. You didn’t need to rest, you wanted him to bring you to exhaustion and he knew it, he knew you won’t wait anymore. So you aligned him with your folds, his hard cock opening his way into you easily thanks to your recent orgasm, a loud growl leaving Laszlo’s lips.

“My wife, it appears to me that you’re back being a virgin after only six months away from me” 

You blushed because his words made you sensitive and proud in a very peculiar way, you moaned slowly beginning to ride him as he kept muffling how tight you’re pressing his forehead against your chest, his left arm wrapping around you. You voiced your pleasure freely, fingers tangling to the back of his head, now it was your turn to guide his pleasure, to set the rhythm, but the pace was slow and deep, the desire still feverish in you, but the closeness inspiring you tenderness. 

“How horrible to rest in the cold Wien without you, how empty to walk without your presence” he spoke directly to your chest, to your heart “every achievement was not an achievement if I couldn’t share it with you” he confessed, his hot breath against your breasts.

“You’re back now, next time we will come with you”

You smiled as his eyes shone looking up at you “my wife”

He loved to call you that, he always did, the pride in his voice when he asked you  to be his wife the first time came back to your memory. You didn’t need many nicknames, wife and husband, the holy duo, the balance, the symmetry.

“I love you, my husband”

You moaned against him, his fingers digging into your skin, his right hand settling over your hip.

You couldn’t guess how much it lasted, you impaled deliciously yourself over him, he loved to stare at you going on your own on top of him, love it, express fully your feminine power. His left hand teasing your clit sapiently mimicking your movements making it nauseatingly perfect, your mind clouded by pleasure. He cursed, he growled biting onto the side of your breast when filling you up and gaining another moan from you, he held you down as he kept rubbing your clit until he felt your walls clasp deliciously around him, he still didn’t want to move.

He loved to see you helpless, washed over by pleasure, legs jerking aimlessly and fingers pulling onto him and his hair.

You didn’t take time to recover from that second orgasm, his skilled fingers knowing their ways around you, you bowed your head joining your lips again, you still couldn’t believe it.

“I am such a lucky man to have you”

You smiled kissing his forehead “I am lucky with such a husband like you”

You stayed like this, hugging, the time to talk will come, the time to exchange gifts and come back to routine. But not now. After countless minutes you slowly shifted from that position, freeing his hard on from you but slowly moving beside his sitting figure staying on your all fours, the braid that held your hair almost completely loose.

“Come my husband, you only had one orgasm, I know you love even numbers”

The next morning the light from the window hit his eyes, he frowned stirring as he blinked tiredly. Your figure tangled to his in bed, the covers over the both of you. He kissed your forehead out of habit, the marks already forming on your neck made him proud, your regular breathing and gentle perfume mixed with the sweat of sex made his senses alive. You felt him move and woke up pretty easily, probably due to have slept alone for so long. You smiled at each other, no words yet needed, a soft kiss placed on each others lips.

The a soft sound, more like little sounds following one another, little feet rushing down the hallway.

“Mama” being whispered by a very shy boy, his clear brown hair peaking up from the doors.You smirked covering Laszlo completely with the duvets.

“My baby” you said sitting up holding the covers over your body.

“Mami!” He gasped surprised “what happened to your neck?”

“Oh, it is normal my baby, is it so late?”

He nodded and you smiled as he hopped on top of the messy bed, Laszlo smirked from underneath the covers, it seems like somebody took a habit of sneaking into the big bed.

You smiled as your boy resembled so much his father, he crawled to move to your lap and that’s when Laszlo sat up with a loud “Who’s in my bed?” holding his hand up like a claw.

The boy squared but soon threw himself against his father’s chest.

“Apa visszatért!!!” He shouted so loud at you like you didn’t notice Laszlo at all and you chuckled finding the two of them so adorable.

“I am going to get some breakfast done” you said willing to leave them their space. Laszlo nodded at you as you wrapped yourself into your dress and then the thick nightgown. You could hear them talk softly, Laszlo was all about speaking to him in his mother’s language but also in German, so your boy was always mixing the three. “Have you being a good master of the house while I was away?” “Yes Papa, I have been extra good and mommy was happy too, but it is not like when you’re here” Laszlo’s little chuckle won you over even by distance. You had to learn Hungarian through Laszlo, even if you were lucky enough to know German already. But how sweet it was to learn along with your boy.

“Little Andrea woke you up, mrs Kreizler?” The cook, a very nice and good hearted woman asked once you reached the kitchen still wrapped in your night clothes and redoing your braid.

“He did, but his father is back, I couldn’t detain him in any way” You assured as you instructed about the breakfast to make something special. When everything was ready and settled you saw the two of them coming downstairs together, Andrea holding his father’s weak hand into his, still babbling in German to him. The two of them still in their night clothes, you loved to be unruly with them, half of the world outside would be shocked to see a family have breakfast in their night clothes, but who cares. You sat all together as Laszlo begun narrating about his travel, Andrea almost forgetting to eat as he sat down staring at his dad with shiny eyes like he could disappear any time.

“Andrea, at least the juice” you said and he nodded vehemently in particular after you whispered something to his ear.

“Do you have secrets with me?” Laszlo inquired with a smirk, his messy hair a blessing in such bright day.

“Always had” you said with a smirk and he chuckled softly before standing up and leaving for a moment coming back with some boxes.

He handed his boy one and two to you, while Andrea was busy unwrapping the gift Laszlo moved behind your sitting figure “open the small one first”

You obeyed quietly as the box was clearly hinting it was jewellery, inside you found some white gold and blue sapphires earrings.

“Laszlo, you ..” He shushed you softly “come on, wear them for me, jewellery over night dress, a new fashion from Europe” He joked softly but you obliged his wishes putting them on, Andrea making happy cheering sounds as he found the model train of his dreams. The earrings dropped beautifully on you, framing the new Laszlo loved so much “I knew only a Venus like you could sport them” he said making you blush, he always spoke in a way that made you feel like courting never ended.

“What about this?” You asked about the second box and Laszlo smirked just gesturing you to go on. Inside there was a study for a portrait, your portrait, clearly inspired by the picture Laszlo had with himself of you.

“I met this young painter in Wien, a bit struggling with money but extremely talented as you can see, a craftsman that works with gold, I invited him to come here next month and work on your portrait, he fell in love with your figure already, I already know I will have to guard your safety.”

“What is his name?”

“Oh, he is not famous, Gustav Klimt”

“Well, we can make him famous then” you said and Laszlo just smiled more as you kissed his lips to thank him for the beautiful gifts, knowing Laszlo he probably had way more hidden in his trucks “I knew you’d say something this kind of sweet”

“Mama, you look beautiful” Andrea called you staring like he was waiting for you to say something and you smiled nodding “yes, now it is the perfect time”

“For what?” Laszlo asked as you took his hand guiding him to the living room.

“Please, take a sit now” you said slowly guiding him to his armchair, the comfort of the familiar place relaxed him, the fresh flowers in the vase, the books laid on the table.

“Andrea has a surprise for you” you said leaning to sit on the arm of the chair looking up a his confused face, but he was unable to let go of that smile creeping on his lips.

“Come inside darling” you called “we are ready”

You took Laszlo’s right hand guiding it on your lap, the curiosity already eating him alive as little Andrea came holding his little violin, still looking extra cute in that night dress that made him resemble some cute baby penguin. He puffed his chest blushing as you gave him a nod of encouragement, Laszlo’s eyes shining to see his son like this and the chemistry you two have.

“I have learned this piece to welcome you back home” he announced as his shaky voice betrayed a bit his nervousness.

He placed the violin carefully onto his shoulder resting his cheek on it, your hands holding Laszlo’s while tapping with you finger to keep the tempo for Andrea. The melody was simple, but quite impressive for such a young player, Laszlo was unable to look away from his son, from the way he relaxed while playing, for the way you clearly helped him to gain the confidence to do this little performance.

He looked up at you as you two shared that look of complicity.

Life was bright over Kreizler’s household. 

Tagged @cazzyimagines​ @lieutenantn​ @handmaiden-of-mischief​ @thesunflowersutra​ @zemomybeloved​​ @fictionlandslanddreams​ @charistory​ @greeneyedblondie44​ @apparrio​ @hb8301​ @whatawildone​ @rhymerhymerhyme

Let me know if you want to get tagged too <3

[cappymightwrite]

ASOIAF & Norse Mythology

PART 2: The ‘Long Night’ and the Fimbulvetr

In PART 1 of this meta, from looking at just a few fan question answers, it seems rather clear to me that GRRM has more than just a passing interest in Norse mythology. One of the most fascinating and haunting myths in the Norse canon is the lead up to and resulting fallout of Ragnarök. In the show, the ‘Long Night’ appears to be just that, one night, and not even an awfully long one. In the books, however, it seems likely this will play out very differently. As a Norse nerd, the similarities to Ragnarök are just too obvious not to sit up and take notice, in particular, the similarities between the ‘Long Night’ and what is called the Fimbelvetr — which in my Old Icelandic dictionary translates to ‘the great and awful winter.’

Before I really get things rolling, lets take a moment to go over which Old Norse-Icelandic sources are traditionally used by medievalists to reconstruct the pagan conception of Ragnarök:

The Eddic poems Völuspá ‘The prophecy of the seeress’ (st. 40–51) and Vafþrúðnismál ‘The lay of Vafþrúðnir’ (st. 44–53) — these two poems provide us with quite a lot of information, with some sections being more comprehensive than others. Additionally, other Eddic poems, such as Lokasenna, Hyndluljóð, Grímnismál, and a few others hint at motifs, stemming from the ideas of Ragnarök.

In the Gylfaginning section of the Prose Edda (ch. 51–53), Snorri quotes many of the relevant stanzas from Völuspá in support of his own writing, though he also adds information that is unknown to us from other sources.

There are also a few skaldic* poems which give us minor hints regarding the incidents that will take places during Ragnarök.

NB: Eddic poetry is the term given to the poems primarily contained within the Icelandic Codex Regius manuscript, known as the Poetic Edda (written c. 1270, but arguably containing remnants of an older oral tradition). These poems are of unknown authorship. As for Skaldic poetry, these poems were written by known Icelandic skalds (ONI: skáld, ‘poet’), often in the courts of foreign kings, typically Norwegian, praising their patrons in exchange for royal favour; they span approx. c. 800–1300, so in some cases predate the recording (though not necessarily the composition or oral origins) of the Eddic poems.

According to Jens Peter Schødt, the Gylfaginning and Völuspá ‘are certainly the most extensive’ written sources we have on the Norse myths, as they ‘have played the most crucial role in the history of research.’ It is quite possible that GRRM has read much of the available textual sources on Ragnarök to help inspire his own work. That being said, if I had to bet on one being the touchstone source for him, it would be the Gylfaginning, since not only does it include detailed prose accounts of the events leading up to, during, and following Ragnarök, it also includes relevant Eddic poetry (notably Völuspá) in order to authenticate those descriptions. It really is a one of kind, unique source.

So, how about we begin with chapter 51 of Gylfaginning, where it is asked outright by Gangleri (aka King Gylfi) ‘what is to be said about Ragnarök?’ to which High answers:

There are many important things to be said about it. First will come the winter called Fimbulvetr [Extreme Winter]. Snow will drive in from all directions; the cold will be severe and the winds will be fierce. The sun will be of no use. Three of these winters will come, one after the other, with no summer in between. But before that there will have been another three winters with great battles taking place throughout the world. Brothers will kill brothers for the sake of greed, and neither father nor son will be spared in the killings and the collapse of kinship.* So it is said in The Sibyl’s Prophecy:

Brothers will fight,

bringing death to each other.

Sons of sisters

will split their kin bonds.

Hard times for men,

rampant depravity

age of axes, age of swords

shields split,

wind age, wolf age,

until the world falls into ruin.

The above translation is by Jesse Byock from the Penguin Classics Prose Edda — the translations in square brackets are his and included in the text, and he also uses a translated title for the Eddic poems, in this case, ‘The Sibyl’s Prophecy’ in place of Old Norse-Icelandic: Völuspá.

Several things are striking about this passage, chief among them, the fact that the precursor to Ragnarök is the Fimbulvetr, ‘the great and awful winter’ or ‘Extreme Winter.’ But before that, ‘another three winters’ in which much social upheaval will take place, circumstances that feel quite at home in ASOIAF. I would be hesitant to argue that GRRM is using the above description as an exact blueprint, but that being said, some of the circumstances described do feel very familiar to readers of his series:

‘Brothers will kill brothers for the sake of greed’ / ‘Brothers will fight’

This is perhaps suggestive of the Baratheon brothers, Stannis and Renly. Although, I’d say that the motivations/cause of the latter’s death is a little more nuanced than just ‘greed.’ But this is worth noting: the Norse source might offer us the seed of an idea, but it is GRRM who then “waters” it, effectively imbuing these dynamics with a deeper meaning and complexity.

Also, if we think of ‘brothers’ in a less literal sense, this could also apply to the ‘killing’ of Jon Snow by the black brothers of the Night’s Watch.

‘Neither father nor son will be spared in the killings’

Ned and Robb Stark fit into this category quite well, as both their deaths are gut-wrenching moments in the series. But also, more generally, this highlights that anyone, even beloved family, even heroes, can fall.

‘The collapse of kinship’ / ‘Rampant depravity’

In his footnotes, Byock observes the word sifjaslit to mean ‘the breaking of kinship bonds, but there is also the connotation of incest.’ In my ONI dictionary, sifja-slit translates to ‘adultery,’ since it is a compound of the nouns sifjar ‘affinity, connection by marriage’ and slit ‘rupture, breach’ — the latter most likely derives from the verb slitna, meaning ‘to break’ or ‘snap.’

The breaking of marriage bonds is present in ASOIAF, as in the case of Robert and Cersei’s respective adulteries. But we could also view Robb Stark’s marriage to Jeyne Westerling as a breaking of a betrothal bond as well.

Overall, I would say that there is room for both interpretations, and as we know, GRRM is pretty found of incest, prime cases currently present in canon being Jaime and Cersei Lannister, as well as the Targaryens.

‘Wolf-age’

Wolves feature a lot in Norse mythology, so it is interesting that the Starks, who are really the heart of ASOIAF, are so heavily associated with them.

Furthermore, the provisional title for the last book in the series, A Dream of Spring, was A Time for Wolves. The phrasing of this is just another way of saying ‘Wolf-age’, as found in Völuspá. But to potentially understand GRRM’s change in titles, it should be remembered that wolves in Norse mythology are often associated with war and violence — see, for instance, the kennings ‘wolf-wine’, ‘the river of Fenrir’, ‘the warm ale of the wolf’, which all mean blood. As someone familiar with Old Norse poetry, A Time for Wolves suggests to me a period of violence, whereas A Dream of Spring offers more hope and the potential for rejuvenation, perhaps paralleling the events that follow Ragnarök, as described in the Prose Edda and Völuspá (which I might get into further down the line).

‘Until the world falls into ruin’

It is strongly predicted, and alluded in the text itself, that the Wall will at some point fall, an event that will act as a precursor to the second ‘Long Night.’ The Wall is also considered by some people to be the end of the known world, so its destruction is strongly linked with the collapse of the social structure of Westeros as a whole.

As we can see, certain parallels can be made, though it is also worth noting that there are instances where they can’t be. For example, ‘sons of sisters will split their kin bonds’— I can’t really think of a relationship to compare this to in ASOIAF, unless it hasn’t happened in the text yet, and then who would it be? Robert ‘Sweetrobin’ Arryn and…Bran Stark? There are obvious similarities and ways in which we can link these descriptions to GRRM’s text, but we should be cautious to avoid shoehorning.

Indeed, it is fun to make these comparisons, but I think the main take away from this chapter of the Gylfaginning is that during the time closely preceding the Fimbulvetr, there will be ‘hard times for men’ with much social upheaval, including bloodshed, betrayals, and incest. In my opinion, the ‘Long Night’ has been heavily inspired by the Norse Fimbulvetr, and this is reflected in the way ASOIAF characters describe the ‘Long Night’, closely paralleling its Norse source.

To summarise from the above quotation, during the Fimbulvetr:

‘Snow will drive in from all directions; the cold will be severe and the winds will be fierce.’ (Gylf)

‘The sun will be of no use.’ (Gylf)

‘Three of these winters will come, one after the other, with no summer in between.’ (Gylf)

In ASOIAF, the earliest mention of the ‘Long Night’ is in AGOT, Bran I, in which Bran recalls the ‘the hearth tales of Old Nan’ detailing the apparent savagery and cultural difference between the northerners and the wildings, noting that ‘their women lay with the Others in the Long Night to sire terrible half-human children’. This evokes the above quotation from Völuspá, the reference to ‘rampant depravity’ in particular. But it is later, in Tyrion III, that we get the first real parallel between the Long Night and the Fimbulvetr:

Lord Mormont moved to the window and stared out into the night. “These are old bones, Lannister, but they have never felt a chill like this. Tell the king what I say, I pray you. Winter is coming, and when the Long Night falls, only the Night’s Watch will stand between the realm and the darkness that sweeps from the north. The gods help us all if we are not ready.

From the description in Gylfaginning, we know that the Fimbulvetr is preceded by three winters, ‘one after the other, with no summer in between’. Without taking it too literally, this description at the very least suggests that a move towards cold weather will herald the coming of the ‘Extreme Winter’, as this is foreshadowed as early as AGOT in this Tyrion chapter when Jeor Mormont states that he has ‘never felt a chill like this […] Winter is coming’. Directly following this statement is the foreknowledge that the Long Night is indeed on its way.

The reference to a ‘darkness that sweeps from the north’ is noteworthy too, as although most often associated with freezing weather, the Fimbulvetr is also crucially connected with the disappearing of the sun (‘the sun will be of no use’, Gylf). Indeed, the very name the Long Night suggests much the same phenomenon, as explained to Bran by Old Nan later in AGOT, in Bran IV:

Fear is for the winter, my little lord, when the snows fall a hundred feet deep and the ice wind comes howling out of the north. Fear is for the long night, when the sun hides its face for years at a time, and little children are born and live and die all in darkness while the direwolves grow gaunt and hungry, and the white walkers move through the woods.

[…]

Thousands and thousands of years ago, a winter fell that was cold and hard and endless beyond all memory of man. There came a night that lasted a generation, and kings shivered and died in their castles even as the swineherds in their hovels. Women smothered their children rather than see them starve, and cried, and felt their tears freeze on their cheeks.

I mean…this might as well be a description for the Fimbulvetr, it is THAT similar! Indeed, as we know, in the world of ASOIAF the seasons work a bit differently, as alluded to by Old Nan when she refers to ‘a night [i.e. a winter] that lasted a generation’. Similarly, the Fimbulvetr is unusual in that it is preceded by ‘three winters’, which suggests an extended winter lasting up four years, culminating in the ‘Extreme Winter’, aka the Fimbulvetr. It seems likely that the timespan of ‘a generation’ has been exaggerated for the sake of myth making. That being said, we would expect the Long Night to still be noteworthy in its duration. So, perhaps it is possible that, were GRRM to emulate the Norse source, his Long Night could potentially last for a similar amount of time (four years). Either way, I think we all expect it to last longer than it did in the show!

In conclusion, the way in which the Fimbulvetr is described in the Norse sources bears a striking resemblance to the descriptions of the Long Night in ASOIAF. Futhermore, and most interestingly to me, it seems entirely possible that, like the Fimbulvetr, and like the first Long Night that went before it, the next Long Night will include the disappearing of the sun...an important feature that I will discuss further next time! So stay tuned!

References/Bibliography (excluding ASOIAF):

Snorri Sturluson, The Prose Edda, trans. and intr. by Jesse Byock, (London: Penguin Classics, 2005)

Jens Peter Schødt, ‘The Ragnarök Myth in Scandinavia’, in Finding, Inheriting and Borrowing?: The Construction and Transfer of Knowledge in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, 2019, Vol.39, p.365-384

END OF PART 2…

I haven’t quite decided if I will include my stuff about the sun disappearing in Ragnarök and the ‘Red Comet’, or if I’ll give it its own separate part...we’ll see! I would also like to talk a bit about the significance of storytelling as a way of recording history in ASOIAF... Basically, I have a lot of thoughts on things!

[v-vrintage]

JONAS KAHNWALD X OC; short story, english version.

(n/a): find me in wattpad as @v-vrintage or @-sugarshadow . Sorry for my english. ♡

-

Romanova's classes had never been your favorite, and this time wasn’t the exception. In itself you were not very good at that subject, and otherwise your bad mood did not help much when such an occasion was involved.

You were sitting right in the middle of the classroom, deep in your thoughts, with your head down and your strands of hair falling like waterfalls above your ears. You were wondering about really meaningless things, your mind remained blank, until a "Pst!" completely distracted you.

You turned around and realized that the one who had called you was nothing more and nothing less than your best friend, Jonas Kahnwald. The blond boy smiled when he saw that you had looked at him, and it was impossible for you to deny that you had seen a peculiar sparkle in his eyes. As best he could, he handed you a small piece of cut paper, apparently the corner of a sheet ripped fiercely from the notebook. There, with a wavy calligraphy, it said:

"Do you want to come with me to the woods after school? I'll bring food. "

A picnic proposal in the middle of history class.

You smiled at the idea and turned to your friend, who looked at you intently for an answer; He received an affirmative one, accompanied by a radiant smile from you. He nodded and they both went on to continue the class.

[...]

After about twenty minutes, the school ring bell rang suddenly and Romanova almost finished his speech. They all got up from their seats and the chatter among the students soon appeared, not only in the classroom but also in the wide corridors of Winden High School. Like everyone else, you picked up your book and your pencil case, ready to leave the classroom, but suddenly a hand rested on your shoulder; he was Jonas.

“Hey.” He looked at you smiling and narrowing his eyes a little, a gesture you returned.

"Do you have food here?" You asked raising an eyebrow and they both laughed.

"No, but I left it ready at home." You formed a tiny but perfect "O" with your lips and nodded; “I can go get it right now.” He suggested and you raised your eyebrows.

"Uh, I'll go with you." You wrinkled your nose.

“Nah, not necessary. It won't take long, alright? Wait for me in the parking lot, they aren’t many minutes.” He denied and you relented.

"Okay, I'll wait for you there."

They left the classroom and accompanied each other to their lockers, it didn't take many seconds because they were a short distance away. Then, they did as they had planned, and with a knowing look it was enough to affirm that the plan was underway. You watched Jonas as he put on his classic yellow raincoat and left for his house on a bicycle, so you decided to go sit on the edge of some stonecutters who were outside the institution.

The weather may be better, but it was ok. It was neither hot nor cold, but the sky was surprisingly cloudy; and considering the fact that they had predicted an excellent climate for that day. Still, it was quite typical in Winden, being such a humid place that it seems to possess a ghost soul. Curious.

You leaned on the edge of the stonemasons and crossed your arms with your eyes downcast, at those moments you did not feel like checking out what's new on Instagram or seeing if they updated any Twitter thread. Maybe you were just wishing that your best friend would make his way back soon, but knowing him, he would never make you wait too long.

A few minutes passed and Kahnwald had already parked his bike in front of you. Tied up in the front, a small basket became present, you guessed it was the food so you didn't ask about its contents. You quickly managed to settle down next to Jonas, trying to find a balanced space for both of them.

"Hug me." He snapped.

"What?" You blushed and hated yourself a little because of that. You didn't even know why you did it, Jonas was your best friend and he was your whole all life.

"Hug me, so you don't fall away from the bike." He replied.

"Ah, alright." You shook your head and gave in, circling his body with delicacy and clinging to his body. You weren't staring at him at the moment, but you were sure that a slight grimace had appeared on his face.

Without further detours, they made their way to a pleasant section of the Winden Forest, choosing a point neither too deep but neither close to the city. During the journey, there were no words, although it is worth admitting that the glances had never been missing. You kept hugging Jonas, it was a light grip because you didn't want to make him uncomfortable in one way or another, since perhaps the most cloying hugs appeared once in a while.

You don't really know why you did it, or how or when, but you took advantage of the moment when they stopped at a stoplight to wrap your arms around Kahnwald's waist, tightening him closer to your body and resting your chin on his shoulder , without realizing that your friend had blushed noticeably when noticing the touch. To your surprise, he acted; With a slow movement, full of tenderness and gentleness, he caressed your hand with his fingertips, almost affirming the grip that you both had at that moment.

A light breeze visited you two, but not a single hair of you moved.

[...]

Jonas parked the bicycle with delicacy and got off of it, an action that you imitated after a few seconds. He started to pick up the basket, but in a slight rush, his gaze met yours and completely merged into each other. For a few ephemeral seconds, the world had ceased to exist, time had stopped, all the others had vanished.

It was you and Jonas.

But nothing lasts forever, so with red cheeks like tomatoes, you both looked away and pretended that nothing happened. They still didn't make a sound. Back to reality, you and Jonas walked to the chosen place, stopping dead in the shade of all those slender pines that made up the Winden forest. The blonde boy opened the basket and spread an extensive cloth on the ground, later resting the basket on top of it and observing the landscape. You just layed down on the cloth and decided not to say much at the moment.

"All good?" said Jonas, sitting next to you and looking at you with a straight face.

"Yes, all good. Why do you ask?" You replied naturally.

"Just asking."

"You are?" You looked at him and focused your attention on him.

"Why wouldn't I be?" He replied with a smile and shrugged.

"I do not know." You imitated his actions and chose to sit next to him, he contemplated each of your actions and you his. You looked away and saw a family of birds living high above, the mother seemed to be feeding the chicks.

"What is there to eat?" You blurted out, looking at your friend and tapping your foot against the ground of the place.

"Uh, well ... there are many things; apples, grapes, sandwiches ... what would you like to eat? He took the basket in his hands and brought it to you, opening the lid of the basket so that you could see its contents: what a variety!

"For now a sandwich ... Have you prepared all this by yourself?" You took the first one you saw and laughed with an eyebrow raised, taking a bite out of the tuna sandwich you had grabbed.

"It came from an afternoon of inspiration, so yes, i did." He showed his teeth and you couldn't deny that being happy was undoubtedly his best facet.

"This is delicious!" You exclaimed with a nod of approval.

Jonas just laughed.

[...]

You and your partner been talking on various topics of conversation throughout the afternoon, the basket began to empty more and more over time. The sandwich, plus an apple and a couple of grapes had already given you enormous satisfaction. Again you had lain down on the cloth, now putting your arms behind your head and lying it on your hands, while Jonas was walking in circles around the picnic.

Silence. He broke it.

"Hey." He murmured in the distance.

"Yes?" You answered.

"Look at me." He sat next to you and you raised an eyebrow.

"What happens?"

"May I hug you?" He whispered. That question had taken you by surprise from the blonde boy, who was still staring at you.

"Yeah, s-sure." He didn't say anything else and little by little he came closer until he was lying next to you. With the passage of seconds, you both were getting closer to each other, till your breath began to collide with the hairs on his nape.

The sweetness began to take hold of both of them and in a moment Jonas had already rested his head on your chest. Again the world had stopped, not even the squirrels that were walking there dared to make even the smallest noise. He put his arm around your waist and snuggled in, you could feel his breathing getting more relaxed than before. You took one of your hands to his hair and started stroking those golden strands that you liked so much.

"(Y / N) ... " he said in a whisper.

"Tell me." You answered in the same low tone as him.

"I love you."

"How much?"

"Too much, perhaps." He looked up at you and put on that puppy-like expression, his eyes flashing delicately and small smiles beginning to streak across your faces.

"Jonas, I love you too."

[handsofdarkness]

Within Temptation – “I wanted to see how far I could take it with plugins only”

Even after 24 years as a band, 2020 was shaping up to be a big year for Within Temptation, including a co-headlining tour of European arenas with Evanescence that was already halfway sold out, as well as a fully stacked summer festival run, bringing them neatly into their 25th anniversary year of 2021.

Of course, as with everything 2020, the best laid plans took a turn for the worst.

However, the band has still managed to have a very successful 2020 with a “Together At Home” live stream that racked up hundreds of thousands of views followed by the release of the first two singles from their still in-progress eighth album. First single Entertain You quickly racked up two million plays on YouTube, followed by the just released single “The Purge” which in just a few days already passed the half a million mark.

2021 looks even brighter for the band as the Evanescence tour has been mostly rescheduled, and plans for the band’s anniversary well under way.

We caught up with guitarists Stefan Helleblad and Robert Westerholt as well as singer Sharon den Adel to get the lowdown on the band’s gear in 2020 and how to keep songwriting fresh after seven albums and 24 years as a band.

You guys had a pretty busy 2020 lined up, what was the feeling in the Within Temptation camp as things got pushed back?

Sharon: We’ve got an unexpected break from everything, but luckily for us the tour with Evanescence and the festival shows were postponed and not cancelled. In the meantime, the positive outcome of the current situation is that we now have a lot of time to write and release new music.

“Entertain You” was a huge success for you this year, was it at all bittersweet to put the single out there and not be able to support it in person (with tours, promo appearances etc)?

Sharon: In one way of course, but on the other side it was also really nice to have something to look forward to during a time when everything was on lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic – during a time that we couldn’t be on the road, be with fans. It’s good to have a purpose in life and this was a nice purpose to have at that time.

With seven albums in the Within Temptation catalog across 24 years, how do you approach writing new material without falling into the trap of resting on what has already worked for you? Do you ever catch yourself doing something predictable?

Sharon: I think that you always have a certain way of working and that makes you Within Temptation of course. But our aim is to always write our best song yet to come – in the hope that we’ll surprise ourselves and hopefully also eventually the people who like our music. Our inspiration is different every time. In the past it has been history, fantasy books or movie that inspired us. Nowadays we gain inspiration from our daily lives because there’s so much happening around the world on different levels!

I understand you already have a number of demos for your next record beyond the singles Entertain You and The Purge. What should people expect from the next Within Temptation record?

Sharon: It’s going to be different than the first two songs that we’ve released. But I can only tell you how it’s going to be when it’s finished, because demos can change a lot over time still!

You’ve used a lot of different gear over the years, tell me about the gear you used on the new singles? What is in the 2020 Within Temptation gear arsenal?

Stefan: Well, on the previous albums (before ”Resist”) we used amps and Marshall 4x12 jcm900 cabinets, mostly the Diezel VH4 but also Marshalls and Mesas – but on Resist we went from using amps to recording almost everything with a Kemper, something we did on ”Entertain you” as well.

On ”Entertain You” the main guitar sound was a Kemper profile that I made from my Diezel VH4 slightly blended with a UAD Marshall Plexi Plug-in.  The guitars I used were mostly a Jackson 7-string B7 Deluxe with Bare Knuckle ‘Painkiller’ pickups and a Gibson SG for the other guitar parts, and Ruud (Jolie) uses Mayones with Bare Knuckles too and often a telecaster for those extra guitar parts.

This time around, with ”The Purge” we went even one step further and recorded everything with plugins only – the Neural DSP plugins to be specific. Robert and Daniel wanted a different sound than we had done previously and I wanted to see how far I could take it with the plugins only – if I could get all the way, so I went for that and everyone was happy, it really worked out great.

The main guitar sound was the Neural DSP Abasi fed into the Plini, to get a crushing sound. That’s a very nice thing about these plugins that you can combine them and use maybe the cabinet and microphones from one plugin and the amp n fx from another.

After that I think Daniel (Gibson – the producer) added a little Diezel emulation on my side and a little Marshall on Ruuds.

For the rest of the guitar parts, Neural DSP was used as well: Plini, Nolly and Abasi.

When it comes to guitars: for the main rhythms i used my Jackson 8-string with Bare Knuckle pickups in it (Ruud used his Mayones guitar 8-string), tuned as low as it goes, and for the verse riff and arpeggios in the second verse I used my 7-string Jackson b7 (fitted with true temperament system and Bare Knuckle ‘Black Hawk’) and a Jackson Kelly 6-string.

Sharon: I’ve found the best microphone ever. I used vintage Neumann microphones before, but this time around I’ve been using the WA47 from Warm Audio and it works so much better for my voice!

What is one piece of guitar gear you can’t do without, be it a specific amp, or pedal, or guitar?

Robert: I will forever keep my Gibson Flying V for life.

If someone that wasn’t super familiar with the entire Within Temptation discography wanted to learn one of your songs, what would you suggest they start with? Is there any one lick or passage that’s particularly fun or challenging to learn that you think might be fun for people?

Robert: I would start with either ‘Faster’ or the opening riff of ‘Entertain You’!

2021 is the 25th anniversary of the band – assuming the current talks of various vaccines come through, what do you have planned?

Sharon: Most of all we’ve got the whole festival season full and the tour with Evanescence coming up in September and October 2021. At this point everything is still insecure, but we sure will celebrate the first show we’re going to play again. Furthermore, we will continue to write and release new music.

[spiritmaiden23]

CHARACTER SHEET FOR ZELDA!! 

This is a headcanon sheet that will go deep into the depths of Sky Zel, namely for fantasy verse because I do have another post to dissect Zel’s character as a whole coming up! Fantasy verse I feel needs more info than what I have for her character sheet this way more people can understand her and hopefully play around in that verse because hunny witch zel is an excellent concept I refuse to go to waste. I’d love to rp with more people in this verse because it’s refreshing as well. Anyhow! Bear was kind enough to provide the sheet and now here I am taking advantage of it! Be warned fellas, it’s gonna be a long. Like very long, this took like an hour or two to complete. With all dat juicy details. Feel free to copy and paste this if you want, it’s good for main characters or OCs. But it is long as hell! Let’s jump into it! 

Character’s Name: Zelda Lockewood  Character’s nicknames: Zel, Zellie, Zeldy, witch of the woods, Hylia’s apprentice Gender: Female  Righty or Lefty: Righty  Age: 19-20  Height: 5′3 around 161 cm  Weight: 104 lbs  Eye Color: Light blue, similar to the skies. They twinkle with mischief intent yet benevolence is within her gaze. Hair color: Golden blonde, often tied with ribbons and in a very low ponytail  Distinguishing marks: She has a scar on her chest below the collarbone and at the end of her ribcage where the scar has a slight turn to it towards the left, right above her heart. After a summoning spell gone wrong, she was stabbed there by the creature, thankfully miss OP Hylia was there to save her from dying.  Describe physical traits in one passage: Whew, ok I sound like a broken record but here we go. She often has red cheeks that tend to grow redder when angry or embarrassed or shy or when she has the dokis. Very long ears that also can grow red towards the tips, as such people have mistaken her for an elf which is why she wears the witch’s hat in the first place. She likes to tie her hair in a low ponytail in order to work without it getting in the way but out of her hair is super long to the waist. She has blunt bangs or hime cut as I like to call it! And is petite but don’t let that fool you, she does have monster strength much like main verse.  FAMILY/ RELIGION  Parents: Hylia is her biological mother within this verse, she’s unaware of the fact and believes her mother to be dead. She lives with her adoptive father, Gaepora.  Siblings: An only child  Significant Other: None thus far! But I’m open to shipping here ;v;  Children: Again, none but it’s something she’d want in the future!  Other relatives: Gaepora keeps his family at an arms length, though jolly and wise he tends to be a bit of an introvert at times as such Zelda doesn’t really get to meet with her family too much or get to know them.  Pets: Her familiar, the Loftwing Indigo! Black cats seem to like her as they surround her though! Friends: Tons! But well in case future RPers are interested I can’t really fill it out.  Enemies: Sorceresses are typical enemies to a witch, she tends to avoid other witches too due to their cold-hearted nature.  Relationships (other): It’s tough to put Wylan in a category so this might be best. Though he is an annoyance and she finds him a bit of a troll slowly she’s starting to get to know him bit by bit.  Ethnicity: A witch! With connection to the gods thanks to her mother being the Goddess of Witches who goes by the name Circe to mortal realm and witches, her true name is Hylia though so don’t be confused by this. She comes from a nation called Lanayru, so prehaps Lanayruen if you wanna call her that! Religion: Most witches tend to follow something akin to Wiccan belief, Zelda follows that! Superstitions: When making a potion, she often likes to pray to the Goddess of Witches and sing a small tune while making sad potions as a means to break the silence. She doesn’t look at mirrors in the dark or but two mirrors opposite of each other as it’s believe it could make a portal of sorts for demons and other evil beings, as such she often covers her mirrors and doesn’t look at them too much aside from when she has to get ready. It’s silly, she knows, but it’s trauma from opening the portal when summoning a being far beyond her skill.  Diction, Accent, ETC.: So, she has a light accent that’s typical for those coming from Lanayru. Certain words, you can hear it spilling out. It’s best to describe it as a sing-songy accent where certain vowel sounds are stretched out. She’s learned to shorten the vowels though, trying to fit in with the nation she lives in now! Which is Hyrule a land far more bigger than her humble homelands with advancements in magic and certain technology. They have a more... I wanna say North american accent that can range from Canadian to the typical eastern accent for USA to southern accent from again, USA.  SCHOOL/ WORK / HOME  Education (Highest): Hmm, college equivalent of fantasy world? She was a fast learner and skipped a few grades which is why she graduated so early (it helps being the daughter of the Goddess of Witches too, demi god to be exact haha) she and had a natural affinity for magic, also she was studious as well and often aced tests.  Degrees: Oh damn... well she doesn’t have the title Hylia’s Golden Apprentice for nothing. So let’s consider that a degree, or maybe a degree in magic pft! Vocation/Occupation: A potions seller! Employment History: Let’s explain how she has experience in this! She worked with a brewing master, who owned a shop that was full of wares and while some cursed and forbidden, as well as the owner being sketchy, she learned about how the potions business works while working for him from 14 to 18. Four short years! Nice! Upon moving to Hyrule, she kept her potions making a bit lowkey. Selling her wares in the small town near the lost woods known as Tarrey Town. Under the guise as a merchant, it was soon discovered that she was a witch and while certain residents tend to avoid her due to low reputation of witches as a whole, many are attracted by her refreshingly friendly nature and excellent quality in potions. Rumors begin to spread out and she does tend to travel to the big city, Castle Town, from time to time to sell her wares. Though she’s still learning the ropes, and though her business isn’t really that big, she’s doing not too bad. Salary: Potions aren’t cheap, she’s her own boss as well. So, let’s put it that way. HWEOH  Status and money: Despite how well her business is doing, she’s not exactly rich but she’s not too worried about her money situation either. Resourceful, she tends to save her money by collecting her own ingredients in the Lost Woods, though if she has to she will go out to get the ones she couldn’t find within the forest and while some are expensive, she tends to barging with cheapening the price somewhat.  Own or Rent: OWN! She made her little hut deep within the woods through magic of course, it’s hard to find unless you know how to navigate within the ever changing nature of the Lost Woods. It’s a bit like OOT in that regard, ALTTP with the mysterious fog you can get lost in, and well... I’m also taking small inspiration from Paper Mario 64 with the spooky forest in one level since the Lost Woods here is a bit... well, spooky!  Living Space: It’s a small, humble sized cottage crafted with grey bricks for the chimney and front entrance sticking out with some tudor elements to the building where the house is half-timbered walls! The outside has a white little gate with a plant arch full of roses, and there is a garden full of flowers and herbs, with ivy crawling up the building towards the back of the house along with a weeping willow within her large yard, a lake is nearby and there is a lovely waterfall but beware of the creatures lurking within! The window in the kitchen is the biggest window in the house, almost like a bay window of sorts but you can’t exactly open that window yet there is a another on the lower floor where you can, while her bedroom has a slightly smaller window where they are opened outwards and always opened in the daytime, there is a large window seat, large enough to sleep on it with comforting pink cushion as well as little pillows she’s knitted herself. There are drawers underneath where she stores extra stuff. Now, as for the inside, aside from the kitchen and her bedroom along with the bathroom, it’s a big mess! The small space is cluttered with tons of books and tomes, some on the millions of shelves (along with tons and tons of potion battles) she has and some on the floor with pages scattered throughout the wood flowering. She has plants like wisteria hanging on the walls and several others like witch’s herb among other examples hanging from the celling. There’s a small sitting area with a wooden desk and stool and that’s where she often works with her research. It’s pretty much well lived in and is the result of working too much to notice the mess. It’s two stories, with a small attic being the second floor. Her bedroom is located on the first floor and despite the window seat, she has a nice slightly small queen sized sleigh bed in the center and up against the wall, it looks super comfy, like you can sink into it and well it’s possible! Along with a vanity mirror with brushes for light makeup she wears for special events, and a small bottle filled with flowers, her knitting area with a small basket full of yarn balls and a wooden wardrobe to keep her clothing in. There is a cute rug on the floor to bring the room together. Along with book shelves. It’s a cute yet ery simple style.  Work Space: As described above, it’s a wooden desk within the main hub area of the house. It’s in the corner of the room, near a window as a means to get sunlight and fresh air! Her cauldron is not too far from the desk and once again, she has tons of flowers. There’s always her research papers and books on it, a quill with a feather, annnnd a small candle stand in case she’s working late in the night! Main Mode of Transportation: Either her “broom” which is an enchanted feather from her Loftwing or her Loftwing himself! She thinks it’s silly to ride on a broom and wanted to be more creative! PSYCHOLOGY  Fears: Well when you face near death and actually saw the reaper’s scythe coming at you hot, you tend to not fear much. She doesn’t really like to summon things though due to that accident, so there’s nervousness whenever she absolutely has to. Mirrors there’s a slight fear due to how they can act as portals into the other realm. And losing loved ones, failing to protect them. Perhaps knowing the truth about her birth is also a fear, as she will deny being a demi god let along to the Goddess of Witches. There’s this feeling she has where she knows she’s not an ordinary witch but out of fear she does not investigate too much with a slight hint of curiosity.  Secrets: Much like main verse she can hear the gods and spirits of the realm, something she denies and keeps to herself. While she can do wandless magic, a feat only known to Hylia, it’s a bit hard and her spells tend to go wild so it’s why she likes to stick to tomes as it better handles her powers. Whenever mana blockage happens, she tends to get embarrassed and will only reveal it if she has to.  IQ: VERY HIGH as expected of someone with a lot of wisdom despite her age. That is all for this one... Eating Habits: NOT VERY GOOD!!! She just throws together anything that’s edible enough and eats it, while it doesn’t taste good she’s always in a rush to get back to work because she’s a bit of a workaholic in this verse! Sometimes, she’ll take elixirs to suppress her hunger if she’s working very hard on something like research or recipe hunting, at times she doesn’t always get the potion right so she tends to try again and again until she does. Neglecting her need to eat. Pretty much, it’s like putting fried rice, egg, and leftovers in a blender and eating that disgusting mess. And though she can cook mainly simple enough dishes, she tends to not do it too much. Someone get this girl some food.  Sleeping Habits: AGAIN NOT VERY GOOD THIS POOR BABY!! When cramming in the night, she gets so focused she tends to stay up until four o’ clock by drinking lots and lots of coffee... and that’s when the sleepiness tends to hit her once that caffeine is all gone, you’ll most likely see her asleep at her desk. Being an early bird though means she won’t get much sleep so ;v; That said when not cramming, she tends to get sleepy once the sun’s down so she does get normal hours of sleep mostly. She loves the morning and always wakes up to the sun greeting her as she tends to leave the curtains open, not at all afraid to do that since like... no one goes deep into Lost Woods aside from Wylan pft.  Book Preferences: She loves reading research and recipe books! It’s always fun for her to learn new things and as such she always has her head buried in a book that discusses tons and tons of research. When not learning and sitting back to relax, she likes tales of adventures and will sometimes read romance novels as well.  Music Preferences: Harp and lyre along with other string instruments! She tends to love folklore as there is a history behind it and she does find that super interesting. Though she can somewhat play the harp/lyre she’s not as talented as say the bard Kina! Groups or Alone: While good enough in a group as she does like teamwork, she’d rather do things on her own. Blame being responsible to a fault for that one alongside slight hero complex for more dangerous things she has to face HJKA! Leader or Follower: Are you kidding? Leader all the freaking way! She has a natural charm about her and is ambitious in a sense, she would make a good leader because she’s wise enough to make good decisions when in a pinch. That said she can be a little bossy when worry wart tendencies pops up and will def assume that you need her help. She’s just trying to be a good friend who believes in you and your potential, don’t mind her. Just... her supportive attitude is pretty strong haha!  Planned Out or Spontaneous: With her carefree nature, you’d think she’d be spontaneous and while she can be at times because adventure is fun, she tends to plan a lot of things out... of course, her plans never work out. But again, she’s resourceful enough to work around the issue she may come across.  Journal Entires (Do they keep one?) YES OF COURSE MY GIRL LOVES TO WRITE!! She actually has a few, four in total. One for researching plants and other things, another to keep track of her inventory, one for folklore and ghosts/monsters findings perhaps, and one for her personal feelings. If you find the last one, she will end your life.  Hobbies, Recreation: Girl loves to knit! It’s very relaxing and she’s really good at it along with sewing her own clothing! She loves flying, and collecting plants in case that wasn’t obvious already. She also loves monster hunting despite how dangerous it can be, but due to how unique the monsters are in Hyrule she just can’t help it! Catch her taking pictures whenever she comes across one while a friend grabs her and runs for dear life. Jam making is a fun things she enjoys and gardening. Overall, really good hobbies she has! How Do They Relax: A nice bath filled with floral oils that’s meant to relax you and certain flowers as well. It’s how she’s got that flowery scent after all. She tends to read in the bath, and well reading in general along with writing is how she unwinds! She loves knitting and gardening and jam making is relaxing from time to time. Drinking tea while sitting underneath the weeping willow. She does love practicing her magic and hexes too!    What Excites Them?: MONSTERS DESPITE HOW DANGEROUS THEY ARE AND SNAPPING PHOTOS TO RECORD THEM, finding new spells, new tomes and other books! Seeing friends will make her super happy, flowers, wild plant life never seen before. Whenever other people from distant cities learn about her potions shop, new cauldrons, successfully making a new potion, exploring new cities and towns, traveling, flying, learning new things because she’s a nerd with a thirst for knowledge... pretty much she’s very excited over tons of things, it doesn’t take much to excite her, actually haha! Pet Peeves: Wylan breaking into her house, she has tons of charms in the place so it’s a bit worrying and annoying to find him in there doing whatever, messing up with a spell or burning potions, hunger pains when she’s deep at work along with her natural sleepiness once it’s dark out, prideful hero types mayhaps where they’re all talk and no action more like (she does value bravery though), bullying since strong sense of justice, and finally gossip and judgement.  Prejudices: She... doesn’t really have one? Aside from not liking bullies and again prideful hero types who are all talk and no action... liars too? And creeps who flirt with her. Flirting is fun but not when it’s unwanted. Yeah... that’s about it I think! Attitudes: Very determined and ready to face the day and is a hard worker! She’s a cheery girl through and through and very kind but don’t let her kindness fool you as she’s not afraid to put her foot down and call you out. She’s charming and a playful girl who has a love for learning. And is very supportive but can be a busybody if she worries for you. And though somewhat scared about the truth of her origins, once the time comes she’s ready to face those fears. She tends to get either angry or embarrassed (it’s ambiguous really) whenever Wylan is around doing... Wylan things actually haha! Stressors: I guess failure or deadlines that she can’t make if the recipe for the potion is too hard. As well as vague customers too because what sorta potion do you want from her she can’t read minds? Tarot cards and palm reading, while she knows how to do these things as it’s natural for all witches, knowing the future is scary and she’d rather live in the now while looking forward to the what the future has in store without knowing of her fate. Also, dark magic. She tends to stay away from it, corruption is a thing that can happen causing her to become a mindless yet very OP being known as sorceress.  Obsessions: WORK. Very much a hard worker to a fault actually due to her high sense of responsibilities playing into that. It’d be cash money if someone could help with relaxing her.  Addictions: Book collecting, along with flower collecting too and finally she has a super bad sweet tooth. That’s about it.  Ambitions: Right now, she wants to become a bigger name in order to help out people as she loves helping others, and well, the extra money doesn’t hurt either. She wishes to become a bit more powerful as she already is, up to the Grand Witch Hylia levels and wishes to increase her mana, not that it’s low but just in case! As Seen by Others: A cutie pie! Who’s kind though sometimes people do avoid her since Witch.  As Seen by Self: She’s cute and she knows it haha! Aside from that she doesn’t see herself as kind but someone who wants to do the right thing, there’s no reason behind this aside from it’s natural for her to be this way. That said she wants to work harder than she already is someone stop her. ASTROLOGY/PHISIOLOGY (hoo boi i know shit about that but let’s go) Birth Date: March 20 Time of Birth: 3:07 AM, right during witching hours with the magic number seven in it, that’s why Hylia went “oh crap she’s gonna be powerful like me and make poor life decisions if she sticks with me time to yeet this baby outta here” Western Astrological Sign: Pisces  Traits Associated with Western Sign: I’m lifting this from a sight but strengths are Compassion, artistic, intuitive, gentle, wise, musical. While weakness is fearful (not really she’s pretty brave but does have some fears) overly trusting, sad, desire to escape reality, can be a victim or a martyr. Some traits don’t really fit her, I guess you can say she’s the odd man out with typical pisces haha!  Chinese Zodiac Sign: That’s a little difficult since it goes by year rather than date but I’ll try! Year of the Monkey! It fits her best I feel! Traits Associated with Chinese Zodiac: according to this site monkeys are fast learners and crafty, they tend to have many interests, they are clever and creative and love to accept challenges. They tend to have magnetic personalities are witty and intelligent but can be naughty aka playful. I feel this fits her better than Pisces... or maybe a mixture of both haha! Handwriting: DOCTOR’S WRITING!! SHE... HAS SLOPPY CURSIVE THAT ONLY SHE CAN READ HWEOH but she can write neat cursive it’s just she’s always in a rush to get her thoughts out there.  Sexual History: Girl was too focused in her studies she did not date anyone. She’s not one for ahem “hooking up either” So... no history there I guess pft.   General Health: Healthy as can be! Medical History: Aside from that one time where she almost died, her medical history is really not that interesting. She does get mana blockage from time to time and they hurt hard and makes it harder to use magic. Her spells going haywire.  Allergies: Hmm... I don’t think she has any. Chronic Illnesses: Nope again! Handicaps: And again no on that either.  OBJECTS Purse / Bag: She has a leather bag around her waist, it’s charmed to be a hammer space of sorts so like... tons of things. Books, tomes, scrolls, diary for ingredients gathering, another journal for folklore and monster tracking, pictograph/camera athame knife just in case because you never know, wallet and plenty of others stuff Wallet: Well, it’s a pouch that’s full of money, a lot just in case. That is also a hammer space of sorts! Fridge: NOT A DAMN THING she’s better at storing bird food for her loftwing and cat food for any stray cats hanging around her area but her fridge is like... leftovers from the little meals she makes from time to time, jam, potions that need to be stored in cold place, veggies, and one battle of water that’s it.  Medicine Cabinet: While she knows some healing spells it doesn’t hurt to have bandages just in case! Along with medical brews that’ll help with things such as colds and other illnesses. Tooth brush and paste of course... and uh the little makeup she has because this girl a goddess and doesn’t wear it too much.  Glove Compartment: CARS DON’T EXIST BUT ACCORDING TO BOTW MOTORCYCLES DO, that said she doesn’t have a motorcycle so like... nothing! Junk Drawer: Utensils, knives for food... for one draw. As for the other real junk drawer full of papers, dried and pressed flowers, journals, and extra quills alongside some cute jewelry! Kitchen Cabinets: Plates, bowls, and glasses of course with spices in another and any food to help with cooking!  Bedroom Hiding Place: Underneath her bed is where the personal journal is... for the most part. Closets: Clothing, it’s a small closet along side other junk like her old wand, and anything relating to her school memories such as supplies.  Backback: Isn’t that the same thing as purse/bag? Either way, read above! Locker: None Desk: WEEPS DO I HAVE TO REPEAT MYSELF ON THIS? Read above with living situation.  Clothes pocket: Mostly letters for her father... a pocket watch, and sometimes she’ll have the athame knife in there too. There’s not much she can store with her dress apron! 

OTHER (bitch we almost done!!)  Halloween Costumes: SHEET GHOST!! She won’t go as a witch since well she is one, sheet ghost is probably meant for laughs really. Also she’d make her own black cat costume due to her affinity with them. A black dress, with cat ears and whiskers drawn on... yeah that seems good! Tricks: Little things like charming you to float! Or having giant rabbits chase after you before they cuddle you! Spiders crawling out from your ears! Bats following you. See? Nothing harmful but something funny to witches yet not so much to mortals or other supernatural beings for that matter.  Talents: Magic, she’s insanely talented but it helps having a Goddess mother who created magic and witches/mages in the first place! She’s good at knitting as we established and sewing, very good at brewing all sorts of potions as they’re always high quality, very good at researching stuff. ETC ETC.  Politics: Hmm well,,, Hyrule is absolute monarchy where the king and royal family lie about being descendants of gods so... yeah! Not much to say there since she’s not one who’s tied to mortal virtues.  Flaws: Worrywart which turns to her assuming things and taking the wheel so to speak she’s trying her best to support friends but well being nosy and like this isn’t always the best, sometimes while good with words and advice to comfort someone she doesn’t always say the right thing to comfort said person, she works too hard and is responsible to a fault, she often likes to give others the benefit of the doubt despite being screwed over. And perhaps... she doesn’t worry about herself so much as she worries about others. Not only does she think she can handle most things but also it’s a bit of a hero complex or something similar to that where she always sacrifices herself for others. Because, it’s the right thing to do. She tends to get embarrassed easily and has a bit of a nasty temper at times but it doesn’t take long for her to get overall as she’s not one to hold grudges.  Strengths: Very joyful and charming, many find themselves drawn to her as the result of this. Kind as well to everyone, aside from mentioned above in prejudice section and dislikes, she likes to treat everyone equally as best as she can. Reasonability is her middle name and tends to always get things done. She’s also very wise for her age and someone who encourages you to do your very best because she believes in you and sees this great light in you that gives you great potential for the bright future. She can be a little flirty towards someone she likes once she gets over her initial shyness upon discovering her feelings but well romance is new to her so sometimes she’ll miss certain romantic intentions. And playful girl who’s a bit witty too. She has talents for magic and is a fast learner for the most part. Also love learning too and is a nerd. She has a creative side to her! Drugs/Alcohol: Nope! Passwords: Probably her birthday for like things that require numbers such as safes and the like! Email Address, Home Page, Blogs, etc.: Well none pft Time and place: Very vague middle ages that takes inspiration from the Magic Technology BOTW has along with other games too such as TP and SS.  Special Places: The sky... does that count? And the Haunted Grove deep within the Lost Woods.  Special Memories: Meeting her familiar for the first time, any time spent with her dad as he was loving and kind, getting accepted to become a student for Hylia despite her wanting to keep a distance but takes her under her wing just in case. 

[scvereignty]

introduction i.

A D E L A I D E  W I N D S O R (  p r i n c e s s  o f  e n g l a n d  )

bespoke houndstooth blazers, watching your mare come second place, exposed lace garters, sipping from a bottle of warm champagne, grey skies, french erotica, a wet slip dress with nothing underneath, white roses, reciting passages by heart at parties, mascara-stained sheets, sitting by open windows despite the cold, black velvet, heavy books by pretentious authors, jewels at the breakfast table, the dirty hem of a long dress, hidden gardens, purple hickeys on pale thigh, smoking in secret, sleeping naked, perfect tennis whites & an immaculate backhand, bows in tangled hair, audrey hepburn films & grace kelly sensibility, placing their hand over your neck mid-kiss and squeezing hard, oversized sunglasses paired with red eyes and dark circles, never wearing the same coat twice, the weight of history, the shot that puts down a lame horse, perfect posture, lingerie and silk in the library, sucking whip cream off of strawberries, making love in the stable, watching the sunrise from the garden in an evening gown.

age: twenty-one

nicknames: di, rosie, little princess

sexuality: heterosexual ( publicly ) / bisexual ( private, exploring )

gender: cisgender female

title: her royal highness

( + ) elegant, graceful, intelligent, clever, intuitive, adaptable, creative, impulsive, sensual, motivated, self-confident, hard-working, mature, modest, reliable, outspoken ( - ) pretentious, aloof, melancholy, judgemental, private, elusive, deceptive, guarded, secretive, unforgiving, sensitive, affected, mistrusting, self-destructive, changeable, indecipherable

UNDER THE CUT : HISTORY, TRIVIA, & CONNECTIONS !

A BRIEF HISTORY ;

the youngest windsor & only princess of england!

i’m currently keeping her actual childhood/family background undecided until i get the chance to plot with her brother(s), but as per the connection description: the siblings were initially v close while their parents were rather absent

notably, adelaide & her brother james had an extremely special relationship. as the eldest and youngest of the brood, from the time adelaide was born, james’s affection for her was almost paternal in many ways — and she loved him to pieces.

literally, like, there are shots of james walking adelaide hand-in-hand into her primary school, and even as they got older, she considered him her best friend and biggest protector. this is highkey inspired by my own grandmother & how she describes her relationship w her own late brother uwu

a charming, odd child, who was labelled as an old soul very early in life. very well mannered and mature, but prone to somewhat unusual flights of fancy 

a lowkey trouble maker -- or rather, incredible adept at being subtle. with at least one wild elder brother, it was both easy to learn from their mistakes and appear innocent in comparison

as adelaide got older, that old soul developed some of the troubles they’re ought to. she craved art, passion, love, justice, intense emotion, experience. she engaged in these behaviours moderately and with subtlety, particularly in comparison to silas. she was/is less about wild partying and more about deep experiences, and as such there have rarely been any stories about the little princess and drinking/inappropriate behaviour

she had always had a changeable nature and was susceptible to bouts of depression, but the death of james hit her in a way she has yet to recover from. while the whole family was devastated, no one took it harder than adelaide, who to this day calls him the love of her life

for the two years since his murder, adelaide has been in a poor mental and emotional place. unable to fully move on despite the time that has passed, she has both retreated further into herself and sought out unhealthy methods of coping ( ie. the usual -- alcohol, travel, and occasionally drugs )

hence she’s chosen to come to genovia, a decision that surprised even her parents. remaining in london has kept her in the throes of mourning, so she hopes to let go of some of her grief by arriving somewhere new and attempting self care

reputation & aesthetics tend to be very immaculate and proper, so it’s often a surprise to those that find out the young princess has that darker, troubled, sensual side to her - that she can drink gin straight without wincing, or has bruises and hickeys beneath her silk blouse

has never had any desire to rule/never considered it an option, but instead focuses her life on the betterment of people but domestic to the uk and worldwide through charity & philanthropy

TRIVIA ; 

the nickname for her in the uk is “the english rose,” or several variants (“the little rose,” etc) due to her fair complexion & nature. her reputation is very princess diana-esque: a modern, classy woman who devotes her time to philanthropy & charity

considered a fashion icon! 

an extremely accomplished horse rider, considered one of the best competitors in britain despite not actively competing in years. she’s down showmanship, jumping, dressage, & eventing. yes, she is the horse girl

despite her tiny height, form, and general fairylike facial features, this girl can drink a surprising amount of people under the table. is this a sign of a Problem? CERTAINLY

if you think you are the most beautiful and/or incredible thing to walk this earth, she thinks you are incredibly stupid. she’ll name 14 pieces of art right NOW that are more interesting than ur looks 

makes a habit of calling out those that are arrogant/rude

she started smoking when she was fourteen. her parents still don’t know.

camilla macaulay, grace kelly, and princess diana are probably her biggest inspos

very accomplished liar - she has an incredible poker face

she wears a locket james gave her every day. he had it specially made with an inscription (either a quote from a little princess or the secret garden, i haven’t decided), but since then she’s had the other side inlaid with a photo of him :c

her favourite disney movie is alice in wonderland, which is also one of her favourite novels

PLOTS & CONNECTIONS ;

the best friend: self explanatory! very open to how their friendship came about and when, but someone who knows adelaide intimately, and one of the few that can still read her even when she’s putting on her otherwise immaculate facade

the no-good: someone that would have been her corrupter, perhaps, or thought to be -- until they realized she was not the delicate thing one would seem. could be friends with benefits, drinking buddies, someone who encourages self-destructive behaviours, or any combination of this.

the counsel: young as she is, adelaide knows herself intimately, and as such knows a great deal about women in general -- this muse is coming to her for advice on how to court mignonette (or another lady)!

the lionheart: a dear friend, and someone similar to adelaide insomuch as her old soul, maturity, devotion to philanthropy, etc. someone to either decry or poke fun at the triviality of so much around them

the skinny love: it’s been the wrong time since childhood. but it’s always been the right time to hold terrible affection for each other. how heartbreaking, to keep on watching but never kissing.

the charged: inspired by this gif set. the true terrible influence, unhealthy relationship, disaster in a glass bottle. they infuriate each other, say the worst things that can be said. then they let it out in bed -- or almost go. getting closer every time

the antagonist: preferably a princess or someone of noble enough birth that they could have attended the same academy in their teen years. alternatively, could just be a pair that runs into each other frequently at those fancy aristocratic events. ( x ) is someone that leans into that queen B(itch) trope, or otherwise is confident to the point of arrogance/is unphased by potentially offending others by saying what they want, when they want. adelaide, blank-faced over her glass, calls this person out for their behaviour. as such, an intense dislike starts to brood between the two

the affair: we talking sex, we talking scandal, we talking familial outrage. we can talk more about specific circumstances, but i am very solid on the aesthetic of That Scene in atonement: aka green dress, up against the library walls during a dinner party, walked in on at the perfectly terrible moment. my initial thought was that these two met for the first time when the windsor’s were hosting a dinner/ball/celebration or something in honour of this royal/important family, and adelaide and ( x ) had incredible chemistry -- or at least sexual attraction. it only takes a few hours and several glasses of champagne for them to end up in the library in an entirely compromising position before someone walks in on them and snitches to the family. the whole evening is absolutely ruined, both sets of parents in disarray, and while the press never hear why the night was the fiasco, there are now rumours of tension between the two families/nations. alternatively, this could have been started some time long ago and wasn’t 100% a one-off

the young love: adelaide’s longest relationship, which began sometime in late high school or early college and lasted several years. preferably someone of royal blood, because this was in many ways - especially aesthetically - the Perfect Relationship. not only was adelaide wildly in love with them, but their relationship was public, and the press considered it an incredible feat that a prince and princess would naturally begin dating. this kind of aesthetic, ja feel? everyone that knew them felt they would get married, including adelaide. but for whatever reasons you like, this little prince broke up with her, and subsequently broke her heart & dashed her dreams. prior to james’s death, this was the greatest pain she ever endured. still do this day if she references “my ex,” or compares a man to someone, it’s this guy. despite whatever time has passed between break-up and now, adelaide still treats him with some disdain -- she’s both still hurt, and still harbouring lingering affection for him.

the exploration: the first woman that made adelaide question her sexuality !! i’m open as to what this is, how it happened etc; whether anything physical occurred or they were merely flirtatious and physically close; if it was one-sided or reciprocated, etc.

[ciathyzareposts]

Game 324: The Keys of Acheron (1981)

As an expansion of Hellfire Warrior, the game has no main title screen.

           The Keys of Acheron

United States

Automated Simulations, Inc. (developer and publisher)

Released in 1981 for Apple II and TRS-80, 1982 for Atari 800

Date Started: 5 April 2019

Date Ended: 5 April 2019

Total Hours: 5

Difficulty: Easy-Medium (2.5/5), but heavily adjustable by player

Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at Time of Posting: (to come later)

Every once in a while, it’s a good idea to remember that the Dunjonquest series existed. Its first edition, The Temple of Apshai, released in 1979, gets my vote for the first true commercial RPG. Sure, Beneath Apple Manor, Dungeon Campaign, and Space technically preceded it in 1978, but none of them are what we would consider fully-featured RPGs. Temple of Apshai and is paragraph book, full of evocative descriptions of rooms and treasures, was the first earnest attempt to bring the essence of a tabletop RPG module to the computer. Co-creators Jeffrey A. Johnson and Jon Freeman should be names that we invoke as frequently as Richard Garriott or Brian Fargo.           

A typical Acheron screen has me fighting a fungusman in a twisty cavern. A treasure can be seen beyond him.

           The Temple of Apshai was a huge success, ported to nearly every platform that existed at the time, and it naturally generated a slew of sequels. Oddly, Epyx released several different sets of sequels for the original game. The first set began with Hellfire Warrior (1980; link to my review), which added Levels 5-8 to Temple’s Level 1-3. This series continued with The Keys of Acheron (1981) and Danger in Drindisti (1982). At the same time, Temple continued onto a different set of dungeon levels with Upper Reaches of Apshai (1981) and Curse of Ra (1982). In between these titles, Epyx published a few “microquests” using the Dunjonquest engine but with a fixed character: Morloc’s Tower (1979), The Datestones of Ryn (1979), and Sorcerer of Siva (1981). The engine also spun off two horrid action games with no RPG elements: StarQuest: Rescue at Rigel (1980) and Star Warrior (1980). The whole series wrapped up with the terrible Gateway to Apshai (1983), which couldn’t even spell its own name right on the title screen. Dunjonquest also inspired a series of simplified diskmag and shareware titles, including Quest 1 (1981), Super Quest (1983), Dungeons, Dragons, and Other Perils (1984), and Cavequest (1985).

I bypassed Acheron in 2014, claiming that I couldn’t find it, but I must not have tried very hard because the Azimov archive says that it’s been uploaded there for at least a decade. (And thanks to commenters J.D. and metallik for helping me get it running.) I probably just thought of it as an expansion to Hellfire Warrior, which I’d already covered. But I figure it’s worth taking a second look now, partly to remember the Dunjonquest series, but mostly because it was the first CRPG scenario designed by Paul Reiche III, co-founder of Toys for Bob, and co-creator of, yes, Star Control and Star Control II.

This was Reiche’s first computer game credit after a couple of years designing tabletop Dungeons & Dragons modules for TSR, and his experience can be seen in the quality of the backstory and in-game descriptions. The setup is that the character has been asked by the wizard Abosandrus to recover four magical gems–emerald, amethyst, ruby, and sapphire–from the dungeon. The gems, known as the “Keys of Acheron,” have the power to open or close rifts between worlds, and Abosandrus wants to use them to prevent the immortal demon lord Kronus from invading. The dungeon takes up four levels, labeled “Abode of the Dragon,” “The Temple in the Jungle,” “The Crystal Caves,” and “The Shadowland of Kronus.” The game does the same weird thing that Hellfire Warrior did where the first and third levels have room numbers (and associated descriptions in the book) but the second and fourth don’t.             

Kronus himself appears randomly throughout the game’s levels and cannot be killed.

          The game is a bit tricky to get going because it requires the original Hellfire Warrior disk for booting, character creation, and shopping. The Acheron manual tells you bluntly that you’ll screw everything up if you don’t follow its instructions to the letter, and for a while I couldn’t find the instructions. Fortunately, as usual, a helpful commenter came through.            

My character at the beginning of this session. I created him as a veteran of Hellfire Warrior.

           Character creation thus precedes exactly as Hellfire Warrior, where you can randomly roll a Level 1 amateur or manually enter your own statistics and create an indomitable titan right away. After you buy your melee weapon, armor, bow, and arrows, you can choose to spend excess money on various draughts and elixirs. These modify your statistics and abilities for the next dungeon session only. You can also stop by Malaclypse the Mage and get your weapon or armor enchanted (up to +9) and buy a few magic items that only last the duration of the adventure.            

Available magic items.

         In one last screen before you enter, you can donate money to Benedic the Cleric’s mission, which seems to increase the chance that Benedic is the one that finds and resurrects you when you die. Otherwise, you may be found by Lowenthal the Wizard, who takes all magic items that you own before returning you to the town for resurrection; or Olias the Dwarf, who takes all your items; or a random monster, who just eats you.        

I confess I reloaded save states in such circumstances.

        Once inside the dungeon, the game behaves just like the earlier incarnations. You use “R,” “L,” and “V” to turn and rotate the character and then type a number from 1 to 9 indicating how many steps to move in your facing direction. “S” searches for traps, “E” searches for secret doors (you have to be pretty close to the door), and “O” opens them.               

Finding a secret door.

           When monsters appear, you can try to shoot them at a distance with a regular arrow (“F”) or a magic arrow (“M”), or wait until they get close and use “A,” “T,” and “P” for attack, thrust, and parry. When the monsters get your hit points down, you can heal with a salve (“H”), nectar (“N”), or elixir (“Y”) if you’ve purchased them. If the room has a treasure, you grab it with “G.” The controls are all quite intuitive except for movement, which never stops being clunky.           

Melee combat with a grifffin. There are, alas, no spells in the game.

           You have to be careful about stamina. The game tracks encumbrance (including weapons, armor, and found treasures), and the faster you move with more weight, the faster your stamina depletes. Standing still causes it to (slowly) recharge, and you don’t want to be caught in combat in such situations. I had fewer problems with it here than in the original Hellfire Warrior.

The rooms and corridors are all uniformly dull–the top-down equivalent of Wizardry‘s wireframes from the same year. (There are mild icon animations but nothing to get excited about.) This is where the Dunjonquest series is greatly enhanced by the monster, trap, room, and treasure descriptions in the accompanying manual. On the screen, you may enter Room 16, but with the manual, you know you’ve entered a cave where:           

The air is intolerably hot. To the west you can see roaring flames. As you make your way through the passage, you stumble over something. Looking down, you see the fragments of a huge egg. It would seem that the Dragon has borne young ones.

            If you meet one of the baby dragons, you consult the manual to see that:           

Although this creature resembles its parent closely in its scaled, wormlike form, it is fortunately much smaller, typically 6-8 feet in length. Even though the immature beast cannot breathe flame (and luckily so!), it will attack anything it meets with ferocity.

             You defeat him and head down the corridor, only to accidentally stumble in a dragonfire trap! The manual has you covered there, too:        ��  

With a titanic roar, the corridor fills with the burning flame of the Dragon’s breath. You should have been quieter, more careful. Now it knows you are here.

            But eventually you defeat your foes and pick up the treasure in the room. The screen tells you that you’ve acquired Treasure #8:           

A quaint piece of giantish artwork, a skull carved from a huge agate. Surely some collector of such things would buy it, but for how much?

                    As noted, levels 2 and 4 don’t have any room descriptions–some limitation imposed by the game basically faking the Hellfire Warrior application into thinking it’s playing Hellfire Warrior levels. But to compensate, Reiche used treasure descriptions more as encounter flags rather than literal treasures. Sometimes, you find healing items that can be repeatedly taken. Other times, you find a clue, as in “a severed hand . . . clutching spasmodically” that eventually “points north, up the corridor.” And still other times, it’s just flavor text, as in “the floating remains of one of the kraken’s more recent meals.”

The overall dungeon designs are superior to the earlier games in the series. You start in the “Abode of the Dragon,” a classic dungeon of rooms and passages featuring trolls, ogres, giants, grues, and the titular dragon. These are not Level 1 monsters, so you’re expected to bring an experienced character. The room descriptions have you begin in a field and (depending on the way you go) either enter a tunnel immediately or follow a shoreline around to a cave entrance. They both converge on the dragon’s lair, one via a straight path through monsters and treasures and the other taking a shortcut through a secret door. A side area leads to a unicorn’s grove, where a non-hostile unicorn lets you take an opal necklace. Other treasures found throughout the area include a magic sword and a healing potion; I think this is the first Dunjonquest game where any of the found treasures can remain a permanent part of your character.          

The game’s take on a “grue.”

           The demon Kronus occasionally pops up in all of the levels, and there’s nothing to do but run away. The manual says that he cannot be killed, and my experience bears that out.

The first Key of Acheron, a “spherical ruby gem as large as your fist,” is found beyond the slain dragon. Overall, the level has more valuable treasures than the others, and if you thoroughly explore, by the time you return to the surface, you’ll have enough money to enchant your sword and armor and drink every elixir in the apothecary’s shop before your next trip.          

The first key lies beyond the dragon.

         “The Temple in the Jungle” offers no room descriptions and simply has you navigating a fairly open level with different types of dinosaurs, giant dragonflies, and Sserpa (snake god) shamans. For the first time in the series, this level has an adventure game-like quality where the “rooms” don’t lie in consistent directions, and the map warps on itself. You have to create a little node map to find your way through. You eventually find the “amethyst key” in a room occupied by a giant tarantula.            

Fighting a giant dragonfly in what we have to imagine is a trackless jungle.

           “The Crystal Caves” puts you in an extinct volcano. There are some interesting “trap” areas that the game suggests are deep pools full of piranhas from which you have to climb your way out. Mechanically, you do this by searching for secret doors, but a player with an imagination will appreciate the game’s attempts to do something clever with limited mechanics.

Battling lava beasts, lizards, fungus men, salt slimes and dodging earthquakes and cave-ins (again, all described in detail in the manual), you eventually find your way through secret doors and recover the “emerald key” in a cavern.             

I collect the third gem.

           The last level is called “The Shadowland of Kronus.” Like the jungle, it lacks room descriptions, but here almost none of the treasures are actually treasures. Instead, they generally contain clues or taunts from Kronus.            

Some of the treasure descriptions from the final level.

          The level takes the longest to explore. Eventually, you find your way through a secret door to a large, open water area, where the game uses a treasure encounter to suggest you’re paddling around on a boat. Waves and “black rain” do damage to the character while you’re attacked by shadow bats, fiends, and krakens. Another node map is necessary to chart a path through the area.           

Release the kraken!

            You arrive ultimately on the shores of a citadel (this is all related via treasure paragraphs) and a walkway where numerous gaps suggest a “broken railing”; going through these gaps leads to instant death. Eventually, you come to Kronus’s chambers with side-rooms for a torture chamber, library, and bedroom. Each room has appropriate monsters, like wraiths, astral skulls, and automatons. I particularly enjoyed the treasure encounter in the library, with its Lovecraftian allusions:             

You stand in a library filled with books, scrolls, and tablets of arcane and eldritch knowledge. Looking around, you find such titles as De Mysteriis Vermis, The King in Yellow, and a complete edition of the Pnatonik Manuscripts. Resting on a nearby table you find a particularly interesting volume entitled The Necronomicon. When you open the book you find it filled with incomprehensible writings, and you feel an unholy chill pass through your body. Perhaps some wizard will buy this strange librum.

                  A secret door leads from Kronus’s chambers to the final area. You pass through a room of fake sapphire keys (and lots of monsters) before arriving in a room with Kronus himself guarding the real final key. As before, there’s no point in fighting Kronus. You have to dart up, grab the key, find a secret door in the north wall, and escape the dungeon before he kills you.           

The final encounter.

        Alas, just like its predecessor, the game is disappointing in its lack of acknowledgement that you’ve completed the main quest. Treasures are ephemeral things; they disappear, converted to gold, the moment the game transitions from the dungeon disk to the program disk. Thus, there isn’t even any way for it to record the fact that you’ve found each of the four keys on their appropriate levels. Even if there was, it wouldn’t matter, because the moment you leave the Acheron dungeon disk, you’re back in the Hellfire Warrior program, which doesn’t even know that Acheron exists. As with so many other places in the Dunjonquest series, you have to use your imagination to return the gems to the wizard Abosandrus and seal Kronus in his own dimension.

           The appearance of Treasure #1 four times in a row (this is the last) is the only “proof” that I’ve won.

           The Dunjonquest entries have always evoked tabletop modules, but this is perhaps the most sophisticated of the lot–a testament to Reiche’s prowess as a dungeon master. In a GIMLET,  I rated it 24, two points higher than Hellfire Warrior, apparently feeling better about both encounters and the economy.

I’ll try to check out Danger in Drindisti in the future. After that, the Dunjonquest series falls apart, perhaps more from the breakup of  Automated Simulations (and its rebranding as Epyx) than from anything to do with the quality of the series. If the Dunjonquest series had continued and grown, we might have enjoyed Gold Box-quality games before the Gold Box.

****

I’d like to ask a favor of my U.S. readers. I’m looking for places across the United States that sell Diet Coke with Ginger Lime in 20-ounce bottles. Exactly that–no other flavors, please, and no cans. Just Diet Coke with Ginger Lime in 20-ounce bottles. If you happen to see them at a local convenience store, drug store, or whatever, I would appreciate an e-mail to crpgaddict@gmail.com. Thank you!

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/game-324-the-keys-of-acheron-1981/

[bironism]

Hi, Em! Hope your Grand Tour is going well. 😊 I'm planning to spend a week in Bratislava in September. Can you give some advice on what to visit/where to eat?

hello, dear, & thank you for your kind wishes!! ah, the Grand Tour.. *giggle* i’m freshly returned from its French part and impatiently awaiting Italy in late August;;

i’d love to! — but i must admit that my knowledge of Bratislava is not that profound: i mostly visited for errands connected to it being our capital [hello, Russian Embassy!] and for that one wine-drowned honeymoon, plus there’s this thing about us easterners not caring much for Bratislava, so all of my cultural experience there has been in this by the way manner.

that being said, i believe you may like the following:

i. check out the exhibitions in Bratislava City Gallery (link), i happened upon a nice Rodin sketches one a while ago there, [i’m an old person okay, it was over a year ago] & you might have similar luck with the current ones! Nedbalka Gallery was also an ultrapleasant surprise!

ii. Michalská street: sitting down for a drink [my personal fav is Casa del Havana but that’s largely bc i have a thing for places cigars are seen more often than people my age lmao] and watching the busy street buzz as the sun is fading away can be ever so calming — and it certainly doesn’t hurt that it’s also one of the prettiest streets with a monument gate finish.

iii. the city castle! i haven’t been to the indoors exhibit since i was a child [my Czech pals tell me that the temporary exhibitions aren’t worth much] but the location alone is definitely worth it, the garden by the bulwark is a great hangout with some views, too! [also, once upon a time there was a book deposit my then-dearest stole some titles for me from] also St Martin’s [nearby] and the Blue Church are lovely!

iv. as for places to eat/have coffee etc: there’s a plethora of insta-friendly bistros, a couple of which i’ve been to — and the food is good, don’t think that this is to deter you from trying some because they are ultimately pleasant: they’re just a tad generic. [and yet, generic as it is, i tend to end up in those, and what’s worse, my work mindset actually likes it] // a couple establishments i had good experience with: Geisha sushi, the restaurant in the Roset hotel [although it is ironic to be recommending an Italian-inspired menu to an Italian, erm., but i fear it would be even more so if i mentioned places like Antica Toscana et al., there truly are quite a lot of ‘Italian’ places], Jasmin restaurant, Drak&Finch,The Taste winery [second to mine and my father’s favourite winery in Bratislava which, sadly, was recently closed], Meštiansky Pivovar [if you don’t mind beer] and Nobile restaurant — though of course, i cannot guarantee if these deliver the same qualities they did at the time of my visits // as for Slovak cuisine, i’d wholeheartedly recommend trying the pierogi [i think this is the preferred spelling in English?] - sweet or cheese-/potato-filled, both are good - or potato bannocks with cabbage. i have mixed feelings about the national food you’ll see advertised anywhere Slovak cuisine-related - which is dumplings with sheep cheese - it just… doesn’t look appetising and general consensus has it that the best is made in Central Slovakia anyway. and then there’s tartar steak, which i think is a way more interesting combination… [as you know, i’m a cowardly vegetarian, but it does look interesting!] in autumn there’ll also be peak duck season and a lot of restaurants set up a special menu and/or events but i’m [again, cowardly vegetarian] not really sure if that doesn’t happen closer to October.. // in general, i’d say the food scene is quite good, albeit at times uninspired.

v. maybe a boat trip on the Danube river? i know of there being ones to Vienna and the Devin castle, if you’re so inclined;

vi. but speaking of the Danube, a stroll by the riverbank can be ever so nice, and for the summer and early autumn even more so as the Eurovea passage et al. are sure to put even more effort into making their outdoor terraces perfectly sociable [though i personally found it a try-hard and preferred the quieter parts]

vii. if you’re after views: the UFO observation deck provides the bird perspective cityscape; and there’s also the Slavin monument [which is kinda ugly and, incidentally, also a popular spot to light a spliff but one must arrive before the highschoolers do so]

additional advice:

be careful with taxis, especially at the airport [i’m assuming you’ll be flying there; and i sincerely hope you’ll avoid the train station, aka the Dreariest Place in the entire country, no kidding here;;] and those without a prior price arrangement — taxis have a bad rep for ripping tourists off!!

and lastly, though most importantly: enjoy your trip & please feel free to ask if anything’s unclear! ~~*

i’d also like to invite my better informed Slovak followers to add on their advice! [i have an inkling there might be more of you than i know of!]

[themodernpuritan]

The Scriptural Regulative Principle of Worship by G.I. Williamson

How are we to worship God? That is the question. And the answer is already implied in our firm adherence to the Bible as the inspired word of God — the only infallible rule of faith and practice. The remainder of my presentation will therefore be an attempt to demonstrate two things from the Scriptures: [1] The first is the fact that there is a regulative principle taught in the Bible, and [2] the second is what that principle means — and how it ought to be applied — today, in our churches.

In a paper on this subject a few years ago Professor Norman Shepherd referred to the already existent literature on the subject of the regulative principle. He correctly stated that this literature “abounds with references” to certain “Biblical examples.” “There is therefore” he said, “no need to discuss these examples in detail . . . .”1 Well, I could agree with that statement in the context of a gathering of well-informed scholars. But my concern is not so much with the scholars as it is with the rank and file membership of our churches. Are they familiar with what the scripture says on this subject? It is my experience, after nearly forty years in the pastoral ministry, in four Reformed denominations, that they are not.2 Without apology, therefore, I center my attention today on a few of these once well-known examples.

A. The Old Testament

We begin, then, by considering a few examples of what the Old Testament teaches.

[1] And the first is found in Genesis 4, where we read of the worship of Cain and Abel.

The passage tells us that Cain’s worship was rejected by God, while that of Abel was accepted. It also tells us that God’s reason for rejecting Cain and accepting Abel was not only a difference within the two brothers. It was not only the fact that something was wrong with the subjective attitude of Cain, as compared with the attitude of Abel. There was also a vital difference in the objective content of their worship. That is why God had respect not only to Abel but also to his offering.3 Abel offered what God was pleased to accept, whereas Cain did not. The reason for this, in my view, is that Abel gave serious consideration to the revelation that God had given up to that time in history, while Cain treated it lightly. It is possible, of course, that God gave direct revelation to Abel. But I think it more likely that he acted on the basis of the same revelational data that we ourselves have in the first three chapters of Genesis. When God covered the nakedness of Adam and Eve with animal skins, it is self-evident that the animals must have first been killed for this purpose (Gen. 3:21). From this Abel could have deduced4 that his only hope of acceptance with God was by the sacrifice of a dying substitute. But even if we take the view that Abel just happened to hit on ‘the right way of worship’ by intuition, it still leads to the same conclusion. For as soon as God accepted Abel and his sacrifice — while rejecting Cain and his offering — by that very fact He made it perfectly clear that the acceptable way of worship was the way of Abel. But even though Cain knew this, he wasn’t willing to worship God in that acceptable way. It is no exaggeration at all, then, to say that this was Cain’s downfall: he was not willing to limit himself to worship that had God’s approval.5 We therefore see a clear principle: worship which is not sanctioned by God is forbidden.

[2] As a second example I would ask you to consider the second commandment.

This commandment reads: “You shall not make for yourself any carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.” In the first commandment God declares himself to be the only true God, who alone ought to be worshipped. In the second He informs us of “the kind of worship with which he ought to be honored, that we may not dare to form any carnal conceptions of him.”6 For as Calvin has said: “although Moses only speaks of idolatry [here], yet there is no doubt that by synecdoche, as in all the rest of the Law, he condemns all fictitious services which men in their ingenuity have invented.”7

[3] We find a third example in the construction of the tabernacle in the time of Moses.

And here let me say that it would be hard to think of a way to give greater weight to this regulative principle, than what we find in this account. Every student of the five books of Moses knows how detailed this revelation was. It is no exaggeration to say that every aspect of the construction of the tabernacle was prescribed by God, and that nothing was left to man’s imagination. Did not God say to Moses: “See that you make them” — and by them he means everything in the Tabernacle — “according to the pattern shown you on the mountain” (Ex. 25:40)? It is true, of course, that God made use of men in the construction of the Tabernacle. But it is not true, as is commonly assumed, that the Tabernacle was a product of the mere natural creative and artistic impulse of the people God used to construct it. No doubt these men did have natural creative talent. But that was not enough; the Bible is very clear about that. The things that went into the Tabernacle were produced (like the Bible itself) by a special divine inspiration: “See, I have chosen Bezaleel son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with skill, ability and knowledge in all kinds of crafts. . . . I have appointed Aholiab son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan, to help him. Also I have given skill to all the craftsmen to make everything I have commanded. . . . They are to make them just as I commanded you.” (Ex. 31:2-11) How remote this is from the argument so often heard, today, to the effect that art work by people in the Church is justified (and sanctified!) by the ‘art work’ in the Tabernacle of Moses! The truth is that there was no ‘art work’ in the Tabernacle, unless by ‘art work’ we mean a uniquely inspired and infallible kind; and that kind of art is no longer given.

What we have said about the Tabernacle is also true of the more elaborate Temple. Nothing was left to man’s innovation. When “David gave Solomon his son the pattern of the porch of the temple, its buildings, its storehouses, its upper rooms, its inner rooms, and the room of the mercy seat, and the plan of all that he had by the Spirit” (I Chron. 28:11), there was nothing in it of his own concoction. To the contrary, “all this, said David, have I been made to understand in writing from the hand of the Lord, even all the works of this pattern” (v. 19).

Now why was this so important? Why did everything have to conform to a pattern revealed (first to Moses, and later to David)? We believe the reason is self-evident: God may not be worshipped in any way that He has not commanded. As Calvin once said: “I am not unaware how difficult it is to persuade the world that God rejects and even abominates everything relating to His worship that is devised by human reason.”8 But the fact is that “there is nothing more perilous to our salvation than a preposterous and perverse worship of God.”9

[4] We find another instructive example in Leviticus 10 — in the story of Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron.

They died, we read, when “fire went out from the Lord and devoured them” (Lev. 10:2). But why did this dreadful thing happen? The Bible says it happened because they “offered strange fire before the Lord, which he had not commanded” (v. 1).10 Now it does not say this happened because they were not sincere — or because they lacked ‘good intentions’; it doesn’t even say it happened because they did something God had expressly forbidden. No, what it says is that they did this without first making sure they had a warrant to do it. So, again we see that worship not commanded by God himself is, therefore, forbidden.

[5] And what about the Rebellion of Korah?

Moses and Aaron were appointed by the Lord to mediate between God and his people. But Korah — and those who followed him — abhorred this exclusive appointment.11 They wanted to break out of this ‘narrow’ idea that there is only one right way — the way that God has appointed. So they rebelled against the restriction. But, again, the well known result demonstrates how offensive this was to Jehovah.

These are only a few examples of the many we find in the Old Testament Scriptures. But I think you can see that there is, indeed, a regulative principle for God’s Worship. Whenever men were not satisfied to worship God in the way that He had appointed — whenever they brought in their own inventions — He always made it perfectly clear that He did not accept it.

[6] Take King Saul, for example.

Saul had no authority from God to partake of the priestly office (I Sam. 13:11ff.). Yet he claimed that — because of the pressure of circumstance — he “felt compelled to offer the burnt offering” at Gilgal (v. 12). It may well be, for all we know, that he acted with what many today would call ‘the best of intentions’. Yet we are informed that God was offended. Samuel said Saul “acted foolishly” because he did not limit himself to what God had commanded (v. 13). Because of this, God took the kingdom from him in order to give it to David (v. 14). Does this not show, again, that this principle holds a place of the highest importance with the God of the Bible?

[7] And consider what happened to Uzzah.

When David first tried to bring the ark back to Jerusalem, the oxen suddenly stumbled. At that moment Uzzah put out his hand to steady the ark in order to keep it from falling. How very natural, we might be inclined to say, and what an innocent action. But the Bible says “God struck him down there for his irreverence” (II Sam. 6:7). The reason may not be appealing to us, but it is clearly stated in Scripture. Uzzah died because — as David explained later on — “we did not inquire of [God] about how to do it in the prescribed way” (I Chron. 15:13). It happened, in other words, because they failed to limit themselves to what God had expressly commanded.12 But how different it was when “the Levites carried the ark of God . . . as Moses had commanded in accordance with the word of the Lord” (I Chron. 15:14). Again we see the same principle clearly revealed: the only thing that pleases God is what He has commanded.13

[8] And consider King Jeroboam.

When he became king his first concern was to consolidate his hold on the ten tribes that rebelled against the house of David. In order to do this the scripture says he “appointed “ or “instituted” worship of “his own choosing” (I Kings 12:32-33). For this reason a man of God from Judah was sent to denounce this unauthorized worship. And that is not all. Jeroboam was always spoken of, after that time, as the one who “caused Israel to sin” (as a corporate body) (I Kings 15:30). We hardly exaggerate, then, when we say that this was a major source of Israel’s ultimate downfall. Worship which had been appointed by God was replaced by a new form of worship. But because this worship was not commanded by God it was therefore rejected.

[9] And recall the sin of King Uzziah.

The Scripture says “he entered the temple of the Lord to burn incense on the altar” (II Chron. 26:16). Azariah the high-priest courageously intervened to oppose Uzziah’s act of invented worship. And he was vindicated by the intervention of God, for the King was instantly smitten with leprosy, as a sign of God’s judgment. Again, it is clear that what is not commanded by God is an abomination to him.

[10] And then there is King Ahaz.

The Bible says Ahaz “burned sacrifices in the Valley of Ben Hinnom and sacrificed his sons in the fire, following the detestable ways of the nations”  (II Chron. 28:3). The thing that probably makes us cringe, as we read this story, is the fact that they were killing helpless little children. But that was not the main reason why this practice was condemned by God, through Jeremiah the prophet. No, the primary reason — which is far more important — was stated in this way by the prophet: “they have built the high places of Topheth in the Valley of Ben Hinnom to burn their sons and daughters in the fire — something I did not command nor did it enter my mind” (Jer. 7:31).14 How could God make it any clearer? Worship which has not been commanded by God is therefore forbidden.

Here, then, is the uniform principle taught in the Old Testament Scriptures, summed up in these words of Moses: “Do not add to what I command you and do not subtract from it, but keep the commands of the Lord your God that I give you” (Deut. 4:2).

B. The New Testament

But the question that we must now consider is this: is this also New Testament teaching?

[1] I begin with the words of our Lord Himself concerning Jewish tradition.

He denounced the Scribes and Pharisees because they had “a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe [their] own traditions” (Mark. 7:9). And because of this fact our Lord went on to say this concerning their worship: “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain: their teachings are but rules taught by men.” (Mark. 7:6-7, quoted from Jer. 29:13) No doubt they were offended by this, but that is not what matters. What matters is that God was offended and, according to Jesus, there were two reasons: first, there was a setting aside of what God had commanded, and second, there was a diligent observance of what God had not commanded at all, but was only from man-made tradition. So, even traditions — highly esteemed among men — are offensive to God unless they are what He has commanded.15

[2] The second example I want to consider is Christ and the Samaritan Woman.

No one ever expounded the regulative principle with greater force and clarity than Jesus did, in his meeting with the Samaritan woman (John 4:22-26). Here, as Calvin points out, our Lord “divides the subject into two parts. First, he condemns the forms of worshipping God which the Samaritans used as superstitious and false, and declares that the acceptable and lawful form was with the Jews. And he puts the reason for the difference that the Jews received assurance from the Word of God about his worship, whereas the Samaritans had no certainty from God’s lips. Secondly, he declares that the ceremonies observed by the Jews hitherto would soon be ended.” Concerning the first point — where our Lord said “you Samaritans worship what you do not know” — Calvin drew this conclusion: “all so-called good intentions are struck by this thunderbolt, which tells us that men can do nothing but err when they are guided by their own opinion without the Word or command of God.” He then goes on to the second point, saying: “we differ from the fathers only in the outward form [of worship], because in their worship of God [in Old Testament times] they were bound to ceremonies which were abolished by the coming of Christ.” So, if we ask what it means to worship God “in spirit and in truth,” this is the answer of Calvin: “it is to remove the coverings of the ancient ceremonies and retain simply what is spiritual in the worship . . . .” The trouble is that “since men are flesh . . . they delight in what corresponds to their natures. That is why they invent many things in the worship of God . . . [when] they should consider that they are dealing with God, who no more agrees with the flesh than fire does with water.” To worship God in spirit and in truth, in other words, is to worship God as He now commands us. And “it is simply unbearable,” as Calvin says, “that the rule laid down by Christ should be violated.”16 Those who want to worship the true God acceptably must do so in spirit and in truth — because that, and only that, is what He has commanded.17

[3] Consider the Great Commission.

The regulative principle is clearly implied in these words of Jesus: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples . . . baptizing them . . . and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:18-20).18 This, in our view, is exactly what the Apostles did. They taught what Christ had commanded them, not what He had commanded plus their own inventions. Knowing that all authority belonged to Him, they knew there was no place for their own innovations. In the words of Calvin, “he sends away the Apostles with this reservation, that they shall not bring forward their own inventions, but shall purely and faithfully deliver, from hand to hand (as we say), what he has entrusted to them.”19 Now of course it can be argued that these words apply to the whole life of the Christian (and we do not object to that way of speaking). But even if that is so, the fact remains that nothing concerns God more than the worship He has commanded.

[4] Paul’s View of the Scriptures.

This principle is also clearly implied in Paul’s view of the Scriptures: “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work” (II Tim. 3:16-17). It is not our contention that when Paul wrote these words he was thinking, specifically, about worship. But surely it is self-evident that the Apostle’s statement would not be true if there is any aspect of worship which is not clearly — and fully — revealed to us in the Bible.

There is no need to labor the point. But perhaps it will not be superfluous to briefly consider what the Apostles did in the Apostolic Church when this principle was disregarded, or threatened.

[5] Paul’s rebuke of the Galatians.

In Paul’s letter to the Galatians there is a clear mention of unauthorized worship. “But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how is it that you turn back again to the weak and worthless elemental things, to which you desire to be enslaved all over again? You observe days and months and seasons and years. I fear for you, that perhaps I have labored over you in vain” (Gal. 4:9-11). The people to whom Paul wrote this letter were probably observing the special days and seasons appointed by God in the Old Testament ceremonial system (Ex. 23:14-17, 34:18, etc.). But, if that is the case, it only makes the force of the Apostle’s objection all the stronger when applied to special days that God never commanded. When Christ came the Old Testament ceremonial system of worship was superseded. Included in this were the annual sacred days, and even the Jewish Sabbaths. For the Galatians to go on celebrating these days was to act as if they were still waiting for the advent of the Messiah. You can readily see the application. If the Apostle found it necessary to say this to people who continued to observe days which had once been commanded, but were now obsolete, what would he say to people, today, who observe special holy days that God never commanded?20

At this point — in order to avoid misunderstanding — we also need to take note of Paul’s teaching in Romans 14. Here the Apostle instructed the strong to be patient with the weak, because the weak did not yet understand the liberty they had in Jesus. As a matter of fact they were no longer under any obligation to observe even the special days that God had once appointed through Moses. But the problem was that some of the members of the Church in Rome did not yet understand this. And, as long as it was only a particular member of the Church who was afflicted with this lamentable weakness, Paul was willing to patiently bear with him. He was willing, in other words, to tolerate church membership for a person who felt constrained — by a misinformed conscience — to observe these days. In Galatians 4, however, the Apostle had a different concern in view. In this instance the Church as a whole had submitted itself to a yoke of bondage. The Galatian church, as a corporate body, had yielded to the demands of ‘the weak’ by observing these days. And when this happened the Apostle was quite uncompromising in his opposition. The reason is that it is wrong for the Church to include in its corporate worship anything that Christ has not commanded. It is one thing, in other words, to tolerate weakness in individual members. But it is something else again when this errant view is imposed on the whole congregation. Yet this is exactly what we see today in most Reformed Churches.

[6] Paul’s warning to the Colossians.

Consider also the Church of Colossae. To this Church the Apostle wrote: “Let no one act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath” (2:16). He warned them not to be defrauded by those who sought to induce them to delight “in self-abasement and the worship of angels” (2:18). “These things,” says Paul “have, to be sure, the appearance21 of wisdom in self-made religion.” But the reality is that these things are “of no value” (v. 23). Here again, we have an application of the principle which says ‘what is not commanded is therefore forbidden.’

[7] The Book of Hebrews.

The whole book of Hebrews is, among other things, an extended application of the regulative principle. It argues that the whole system of worship, commanded by God under the Mosaic administration of God’s covenant, is now obsolete (8:13). And what do we have in its place? The answer is that we have ‘the real thing’ — not the old “copies” of heavenly things, but — “the heavenly things themselves” (9:23). Whereas the people of God, in the time of Moses, came to an earthly mountain (12:18), we “come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem,” and so on (12:22). The church today, in other words, is supposed to live in the realm of heavenly realities, and not any longer in the realm of shadowy symbols. What would we think of a mother who neglected her own real baby to go up to the attic to play with the dolls of her childhood? Yet that is exactly what we are seeing in many once-great Reformed denominations — as they go back to the weak and beggarly elements of ceremonial and symbolic worship. As believers under the New Covenant we are supposed to worship in the realm of ‘spirit and truth’, not in the realm of the material and representational, as our Old Testament brothers and sisters did.

Many churches today, that call themselves Reformed, are clamoring for a return to ceremonial worship. They call this ‘liturgical revival’. If such churches were really serious in their claim to be Biblical, they would be consistent enough to go all the way, by adopting the whole Old Testament system. They would then have a choir made up of people from the tribe of Levi. They would gather an entire orchestra instead of just a combo of their own choice. They would even advocate the rebuilding of the Jerusalem temple. And if they did, I could at least respect them for being consistent. But, of course, the truth is that these ‘weak and beggarly elements’ have no legitimate place in new covenant worship. We have no need of choirs, orchestras, robes, candles, incense, dancing, or dramatic performance. Why? Because these shadowy representations only obscure the reality of our New Testament privilege; the privilege of going each Lord’s Day — in the faithful observance of the commanded exercises of God’s worship — right into the heavenly places and the presence of Jesus. May the Lord revive and reform His church again so that it will stop going back to the weak and beggarly elements of Old Testament worship, and recover again the simplicity and beauty of spiritual worship.

What then should our attitude be in the face of this awesome privilege? Are we at liberty to do as we please, to fashion our own ‘style’ of worship, whereas the people of God in Old Testament times had to be sure that they worshipped God only as He commanded? No, the truth lies in the opposite direction: we — above all — should abhor and shun all these innovations. Is this not what underlies the following warning? “See that you do not refuse Him who speaks. For if they did not escape who refused Him who spoke on earth, much more shall we not escape if we turn away from Him who speaks from heaven. . . . Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. For our God is a consuming fire.” (12:25, 28-29) If we dare to invent our own way of worship, when God has told us from heaven what He requires, our sin will be much greater than that of Israelites under the old covenant. The way of worship under the new covenant has now been instituted by the Lord Jesus. Unlike the shadowy worship of old, this worship will never be superseded until our Lord’s second coming. How audacious and daring for any of us, then, to presume to change what He has commanded!

We rest our case — primarily — on the kind of Biblical data that we have tried to summarize briefly above. But it is worthy of notice that the regulative principle also agrees with many other vital Biblical principles of the Reformed Faith. We therefore include, at this point, a very brief statement of these principles as they bear on this issue.

C. Other Biblical Principles

[1] The ‘Sola Scriptura’ principle.

It is the teaching of the Reformed Confessions that the holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the inspired Word of God, ‘the only infallible rule of faith and practice,’ and that the Bible, alone, is sufficient. This clearly implies that everything we do in the worship of God must be authorized in the Scriptures.

[2] The doctrine of Christ’s headship.

Christ is the only King and head of the Church, and therefore the only lawgiver. This clearly implies that He alone has the right to determine the content of worship. The regulative principle is the application of the principle of the sole headship of Christ within the realm of worship.

[3] The doctrine of liberty.

It is the teaching of the Bible — and the Reformed Confessions — that “God alone is Lord of the conscience, and that He has left it free from doctrines and commandments of men, which are, in anything, contrary to His word, or beside it, if matters of faith or worship.”22 Whenever a Reformed Church imposes any practice which is not commanded by God a tyranny is imposed on God’s people.

[4] The doctrine of man’s total depravity.

Man, by nature (and on account of the fall), is corrupt (or depraved) in every aspect of his being. Even in the regenerate man the motions of sin remain in his members. Therefore, nothing that man invents for himself can possibly be free of contamination, or worthy of being offered to the Lord in worship. Even the Apostles (who were divinely inspired) did not presume to originate anything in the worship of God themselves, but passed on to us exactly what they were given.23 How, then, could we possibly be so vain as to think that we could improve on what they conveyed to us?

It is our conviction that these doctrines are true, and that they are central to the Church’s faithful Biblical witness. It is also self-evident that they imply the regulative principle of worship. If we hold to the regulative principle of worship, we can do justice to these Biblical teachings. Without this regulative principle, we do not even begin to do justice to these Scriptural doctrines.

Appendix A: How This Principle Was Originally Applied in the Reformed Churches

It is clear, from the great Reformed Confessions and Catechisms, that the Reformed Churches — in the fervor that characterized them in the beginning — were determined to worship God in the way that He has commanded, without any additions invented by men, and without any subtractions. What, then, were some of the ways in which this principle came to expression? What were some of the corruptions found in the worship of the medieval church which now were excluded?

[1] The observance of days other than the Lord’s Day.

“During the early days of the Reformation some Reformed localities observed only Sunday. All special days sanctioned and revered by Rome were set aside. Zwingli and Calvin both encouraged the rejection of all ecclesiastical festive days. In Geneva all special days were discontinued as soon as the Reformation took a firm hold in that city. Already before the arrival of Calvin in Geneva this had been accomplished under the leadership of Farel and Viret. But Calvin agreed heartily.”24 In the light of the position of the Reformers, “we are not surprised that the Synod of Dort, 1574, held that the weekly Sabbath alone should be observed.”25 The same position was also taken by John Knox, and the Reformed Church of Scotland. However, in the Netherlands “early Reformed Synods yielded increasingly to pressure from without regarding the observation of ‘Christian festivals.’ The government of the Netherlands made something like legal holidays out of these festivals, and so the Churches, although not favoring the observation of these days, for practical reasons ruled as they did. To prevent people from spending these days in worldliness they introduced Church services for these festive occasions.”26

It was, in other words, the intention and desire of the Reformed Churches, at first, to faithfully adhere to the regulative principle in this matter. But then because of pressure from without the principle was compromised for ‘expedient’ reasons.

[2] The use of the Psalter.

It cannot be argued that the exclusive use of the Psalms, in worship, was ever entirely universal in the Reformed Churches. Some, including Calvin’s church in Geneva, sang at least a few other songs (such as a version of the Ten Commandments, and the Lord’s Prayer). But even so, the centrality of the inspired psalms in Reformed worship was such that they received the overwhelming emphasis. And to this day, in some churches of the Reformed family, it is still the inspired Psalter which is sung exclusively, on the ground that these alone are commanded.

This is a subject that I began to study many years ago, and from my research two things have greatly impressed me. First, I have never seen any exegetical proof that God wants us to produce our own hymns in order to sing them in worship instead of the inspired psalms He has provided. As a matter of fact the arguments that I have seen, defending the prevailing practice today, always seem to me to stand on a Lutheran foundation. Instead of attempting to prove that present practice is commanded by God, there is usually a subtle shift to the argument that ‘it is not forbidden.’ But I believe this utterly fails to meet the criterion set down in the Scripture. In the second place it is simply an historical fact that the great change, in substituting uninspired hymns for the inspired psalms, was not the result of new discoveries in the content of Scripture. It was not a reluctant change compelled by careful exegesis. At least this is true in the several instances of this innovation in the history of the Reformed Churches known to the writer. No, the change came, rather, by way of giving in to increasing popular demand — it was a change made to please the people. I once had opportunity to discuss this subject with an elderly minister of the old United Presbyterian denomination. I asked him what brought that church to change its stand on the exclusive use of psalms in worship, as it did in the 1925 creedal revision. His answer was both interesting and revealing. He said the church had already started, some years before, to celebrate such days as Christmas. After these had become well-entrenched, he said, the pressure began to grow to bring in ‘appropriate’ music.

[3] Pictures and visual symbols.

We should certainly mention the use of religious statues, pictures and symbols. These were also rejected firmly by Reformers such as Knox, Zwingli and Calvin. The Heidelberg Catechism says: “God neither can nor may be visibly represented,” and that “we must not be wiser than God, who will not have His people taught by dumb images, but by the living preaching of His Word.” (Question and Answer 97 and 98) Even so recently as a hundred years ago, Reformed people still understood the regulative principle enough to remain negative toward these representations. However, in an address entitled “The Antithesis between Symbolism and Revelation,” presented to the Presbyterian Historical Society, Abraham Kuyper warned of a subtle trend already at work then, which was weakening this sense of awareness. Kuyper spoke of “the symbolical tide . . . undermining in the most dangerous way the very foundation of all Calvinistic Churches.” Kuyper put it like this: “the principle of Symbolism and that of Calvinism are just the reverse of one another.” We would add only this comment: the regulative principle taught in the Word of God is the only safeguard against it.

Appendix B: The Defense of Present-Day Practice in Reformed Churches

I came to feel the weight of the biblical, confessional and historical data supporting the regulative principle soon after I graduated from seminary in 1952. But, for many years, it was almost impossible to interest anyone in a serious discussion of the regulative principle of divine worship. I believe the primary reason for this has been, quite simply, inertia. When people are comfortable with things as they are, it is hard to get them to reconsider. After all, why create problems? For many, therefore, the strongest possible argument on this subject is an emotional statement affirming the status quo. In the face of this kind of argument, I was forced to the reluctant conclusion that the regulative principle was quite dead in most Reformed denominations. Churches still gave lip service to it. But what convinced me that the principle no longer ‘lived’ in most Reformed Churches was the kind of reasons — or arguments — put forth in defense of present-day practice. Some did not even pretend to rest on biblical data. Others appealed, in a more general way, to the ‘broad teaching’ of Scripture.

First, we may consider the argument from analogy. An example of this kind of argument is that since we are not given certain prescribed prayers in the Bible, neither should we feel confined to the inspired psalms. The problem I have with this argument is that I find no basis for it in Scripture. To the contrary, what I find is that God has given a different command for each of the elements of authorized worship. Our Lord did not leave us without specific instruction concerning prayer, just as He did not leave us without such instruction concerning our singing. What He did was to teach what is commonly called ‘the Lord’s Prayer,’ saying that we should pray “in this manner” (Matt. 6:9). The prayer, in other words, is a pattern for us, which we are commanded to follow. And that is not all. For as Paul the Apostle reminds us, “We do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God.” (Rom. 8:26-27) So we not only have a general pattern that we are commanded to follow, but we also have a specific promise of the help of the Spirit — on the spot, so to speak — as we follow that pattern. But there is no such provision for ‘on the spot help’ in composing our own songs for worship. To the contrary, the same Apostle commanded the Ephesian and Colossian believers — not to compose their own spiritual psalms, hymns and songs, but — to sing the ones they already had in the Bible.27

The argument from analogy is not valid. We may not argue, for instance, that all may preach because all may sing in divine worship. Or, for that matter, neither may we argue that only a few may sing because only a few are permitted to preach the Word to God’s people. The argument is made that since in preaching the preacher does not confine himself to the very words of Scripture, there is no need to do so when it comes to singing. What this overlooks is the fact that ministers are commanded to expound — or to explain — the text of the Scripture in preaching. But nowhere is the same command given with respect to singing.

Perhaps the most attractive argument against the exclusive use of psalms in worship, and for the production and use of modern hymns, is the argument from the history of salvation. It is argued that, in the past, whenever there was a great new era of revelation, it called forth an outpouring of new songs. This being the case, it is argued, there is today also a great need for new songs, additional to those in the Psalter, to celebrate the content of the greatest revelation of all, which came in the incarnation of Christ. My problem with this argument is that if this was true the New Testament itself would have just such a new book of praise. After all, if there was need for such, surely the Apostles would have been the first to realize it. And, being divinely inspired men, they would have been the best qualified to supply that need. Yet the undeniable fact is that we do not have a New Testament book of psalms. Instead, we have Paul’s instruction to sing the pneumatic psalms, hymns and songs that they already had the Apostolic Churches, in their Septuagint version of the Bible.

This argument from the history of salvation is erroneous. It assumes the very thing that needs to be proven. It assumes that the Old Testament Psalter is inadequate for God’s new covenant people. It assumes the need for something better. And then, further, it also assumes the competence of uninspired men today to supply what is supposedly need. I cannot see that any of these assumptions are valid.

Conclusion

Does all this sound discouraging? Well, it certainly would be if there was no improvement in sight. But there is. In recent years — in my experience at least — not a few younger Christian people seem to sense that something is seriously wrong. Being confronted with ‘the chaos of modern worship practices’ they have come to see the need for a valid principle of discrimination, by which to distinguish between things that are holy and good, and things that are worthless and vile. What really is pleasing to God, and what should be rejected? When people want to innovate this, or that, in the worship of God, how are we to give them a convincing answer? My point is that the situation today is driving many — willingly or unwillingly — to reconsider the stand of our fathers. Could it be that they were right after all, when they stressed this principle so strongly? The encouraging thing is that there are not a few in the rising generation who are taking a new and serious look at this question. May the Lord enable many to come back to this Biblical standard.

Things not commanded by God are now deeply entrenched in most of the Reformed Churches. It will take a new reformation to change this. But that day will not come unless we who are Reformed pastors at least begin raising the issue.

Notes

                                           The Biblical Doctrine of Worship (Pittsburgh: Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America, 1974), p. 50.

                       How many Presbyterians today are aware of the fact that the Westminster Confession of Faith (XXI.iv), prescribes “the singing of psalms” in public worship?

                       “And the Lord respected Abel and his offering.” (Gen. 4:4) “By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain . . . .” (Heb. 11:4)

                       The Westminster Confession of Faith speaks of those truths which “by good and necessary inference may be deduced from Scripture” (I.vi). We see no reason why the same principle would not have been operative in Abel’s time, too, on the basis of such revelation as had been given by God.

                       “For since the Apostle refers the dignity of Abel’s accepted sacrifice to faith, it follows, first, that he had not offered it without the command of God (Heb. 11:4). Secondly, it has been true from the beginning of the world, that obedience is better than sacrifices (I Sam. 15:22), and is the parent of all virtues. Hence it also follows, that man had been taught by God what was pleasing to Him.” John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentaries, (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1984), 1:192-93).

                       John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, II.viii.

                       John Calvin, Commentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses, 2:107.

                       John Calvin, Selected Works, 1:34.

                       Ibid., p. 115.

                       Calvin: “Their crime is specified, viz., that they offered incense in a different way from that which God had prescribed, and consequently, although they may have erred from ignorance, still they were convicted by God’s commandment of having negligently set about what was worthy of greater attention. . . . Let us learn, therefore, so to attend to God’s command as not to corrupt His worship by any strange inventions.” Calvin’s Commentaries, 2:431-32.

                       “Four worthless men wickedly endeavor to overthrow Moses and Aaron; and straightway two hundred and fifty persons are ready to follow them . . . hence we must be the more cautious, lest any bugbears (larvae) should deceive us into making rash innovations.” Calvin’s Commentaries, 3:100.

                       “The Levites, or more particularly the Kohathites, were expressly commanded to bear the ark. The manner of bearing it was also commanded. . . . They were forbidden to touch the ark upon pain of death. . . . And it deserves consideration that those heathen had not been killed for handling the ark, while for doing the same thing God’s people, who should have known better, were taught an awful lesson.” John Girardeau, Instrumental Music in the Public Worship of the Church, p. 18.

                       “David’s intention was right enough, no fault can be found with that; but right things must be done in a right way. . . . All the way through this incident, we see that there was no taking heed to the commands of God, and to the rules which He had laid down. The people brought will-worship to God, instead of that which He had ordained. What do I mean by will-worship? I mean, any kind of worship which is not prescribed in God’s own Word. . . . Inasmuch, therefore, as these people did not show any reverence for God by consulting His record of the rules which He had laid down for their guidance, — seeming to think that, whatever pleased them must please Him,—whatever kind of worship they chose to make up would be quite sufficient for the Lord God of Israel, — therefore, it ended in failure. . . . How I wish that all religious denominations would bring their ordinances and forms of worship to the supreme test of the New Testament. . . . But, alas! they know that so much would have to be put away that is now delightful to the flesh, that, I fear me, we shall be long before we bring all to worship God after His own order.” C. H. Spurgeon, a sermon on “The Lesson of Uzzah.”

                       Commenting on this statement, Calvin says: “There is then no other argument needed to condemn superstitions, than that they are not commanded by God: for when men allow themselves to worship God according to their own fancies, and attend not to His commands, they pervert true religion.” Calvin’s Commentaries, 9:414.

                       “By these words [“in vain do they worship me,” etc.], all kinds of will-worship (ethelothreskeia), as Paul calls it (Col. 2:23), are plainly condemned. For, as we have said, since God chooses to be worshipped in no other way than according to his own appointment, he cannot endure new modes of worship to be devised.” Calvin’s Commentaries, 16:253.

                       Calvin’s Commentaries, 17:150-164.

                       “If worship must be consonant with the nature of God, it must be in accord with what God has revealed himself to be and regulated as to content and mode by the revelation God has given in holy Scripture. The sanction enunciated (‘in spirit and truth’) excludes all human invention and imagination and warns us against the offense and peril of offering strange fire unto the Lord.” John Murray, “The Worship of God in the Four Gospels,” in The Biblical Doctrine of Worship, p. 93.

                       “Jesus does not suggest in these words . . . that we are permitted to teach what he has not forbidden, but rather implies that we will neither add to nor take from what He has commanded.” Norman Shepherd, “The Biblical Basis for the Regulative Principle of Worship,” in The Biblical Doctrine of Worship, p. 44.

                       Calvin, loc. cit., p. 390.

                       “Do we wonder that Paul should be afraid that he had labored in vain, that the gospel would henceforth be of no service? And since that very description of impiety is now supported by Popery, what sort of Christ or what sort of gospel does it retain? So far as respects the binding of consciences, they enforce the observance of days with not less severity than was done by Moses. They consider holidays, not less than the false prophets did, to be a part of the worship of God. . . . The Papists must therefore be held equally censurable with the false apostles; and with this additional aggravation, that, while the former proposed to keep those days which had been appointed by the law of God, the latter enjoy days, rashly stamped with their own seal, to be observed as most holy.” Calvin’s Commentaries, 21:125.

                       “Observe,” says Calvin “of what colors this show consists, according to Paul. He makes mention of three — self-invented worship, humidity, and neglect of the body. . . . Paul, however, bids farewell to those disguises, for what is in high esteem among men is often an abomination in the sight of God. (Luke 16:15) . . . . For it should be a settled point among all the pious, that the worship of God ought not to be measured according to our views; and that . . . any kind of service is not lawful, simply on the ground that it is agreeable to us.” Calvin’s Commentaries, 21:201-02.

                       Westminster Confession of Faith, XX.ii.

                       Note, for example, Paul’s statement in I Cor. 11:23, “For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you . . . .”

                       Monsma and Van Dellen, The Church Order Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing Company, 1941), p. 273).

                       Ibid.

                       Ibid., p 274.

                       It is a noteworthy fact that these three terms (psalmos, hymnois, and odais) were used in the titles of the Psalms in the Septuagint version of the Old Testament, which was the Bible used in the Apostolic Churches.

                                 The website of G.I. Williamson can be accessed                here.

[davidjjohnston3]

1. Others' innocence can make us feel more alive and cleanly but we have sooner or later to 'cleanse the inside of your own cup' (Jesus).

2. I miss 'sis.'  That's all. I'm not married at 36.5 but someone did say, 'as a sister.'

3. I listened to Sowon's cover of 'Happy' and wrote a letter to Taeyeon on Instagram that she said something nice to.

4. I have several wishes pace Pope Francis' 'Come Let Us Dream' in the Covid era.  One of these is to move to Korea of course again, another to move to LA, and another to publish under the imprint of (Mrs.) Catherine Cho's literary imprint as 'Inferno' was terrifying to me in a good way and I too encountered both racism, antagonism towards introverts and quiet people, warehousing by TV, and other forms of evil and crime in the mental healthcare system from people who just want money or, worse in a way, fun and PRIDE.  I also think now that the mental healthcare system in Milwaukee Conuty was designed to give nursing school graduates either an 'easy money' job or exposure to a new Nazi-like system pace abortion-culture under the Democratic Party (including at least one Asian sadly; Andrew Yang), in which the mentally abnormal are considered second-class citizens if not Hitlerian 'life unworthy of life.' My parents are Democrats incidentally and fully support this.

5. I am pro-life 100%; I was going to be aborted and my biological 'father in law' still wants to post-partum-abort me; I could describe the spiritual realization but it's anatomical as well as literally electric.  I hope and pray the pro-life movement will be able to present a living paradigm whereby the value of orphan life can be demonstrated and God glorifide in a literal 'spirit of adoption' or at least a very good orphanage.  This has been part of my dream or 'ghost' since at least 2010.

6. I was driving to see Bethlehem Baptist Church + Bethlehem College and Seminary in Minneapolis and felt a crucifying energy from the church; I also thought about Monica and the 'white garments' of righteousness and covered sin ('white as snow' - Isaiah).  

7. I don't want to 'nuke the Johnston clan' but as I was brutally attacked by both my parents in a campaign involving widespread exaggeration lying to both biomedical professionals / sci-tech establishment as well as civil authority (police) I have written some notes and passages of a 'purple and gold' project, 'Johnston Family Promises; or How Easter Became April Fools,' which could be characterized as a parody of self-destruction, specifically self-post-partum-abortion by reversing the fact that medical doctor brain trust thought I'd be born on April Fool's but was actually born on Easter Sunday in Los Angeles, CA.  

8. I just want a future at this point however as my biological 'family' turned violently against me and I am in the position of 'gathering in the summer' (Proverbs).

9. I thought, 'an authentic love'... I love Changrae Lee also but it took me a long time to understand the spiritual 'Requiem' sense of his best book, by far, 'The Surrendered.'  Koreans I sometimes think are the one race or rather _ _ now taking the past seriously without throwing away the future.  With Secretary Pompeo I feel America could fall in on itself or at least on people like me, including many vulnerable loved ones of all of yours, my Facebook friends.

10. On a lighter note I like (Ms. / Artist) Kim Taeyeon's 'Cover Up' - 'I can't cover up my heart.'  

11. I still like Baskin Robbins Pineapple Coconut thoguh for some reason it makes me think of being a billionaire world-saving commerce-warrior in financial triller Michael Kim's 'Offerings.''

12. I gave the wrong things to the wrong people and made them worse; I expect to be judged by Moses as well as my former teacher-trainers and mentors for being 's/Sensei' who failed his students in both senses of fail (gave them F's and failed to teach them things that made them 'better').  It was a traumatic experience that made me feel demoted from EdAdmin that I had just been offered to wanting to assist-teach K4 or Spec/ExcepEd.  That's what you get for 'adult education' / being honest with Boomers about your thoughts, feelings, and decades of study.  I think Confuciu would say you can't teach constructively who have no sense of shame (old American whites), and moreover participate in a rape-culture including both literal rape, sex-traficking, university campus-culture, porneia,

13. I haven't yet had an EKG but could have experienced acute idiopathic cardiac distress from the Pfizer vaccine since too many beautiful women ages 11-80 all love me.  I thought a while back at 36, 'How to use my last half of my life.'  Then suddenly with pericardial effusion on my mind I thought, 'What to do with 3 months to 2.8 years.'  I wanted to go to Korea; I saw a Servants of Christ video where she was in Korea walking by a river to 'I Need Thee Every Hour' a Christian hymn to Jesus about absolute dependency, 'most precious Lord.'  I remembered Psalm 23 and a time I just wanted to be buried in a certain cemetery in Incheon.  Some other things happened involving my marital future, 'Skinship,' but now I am hoping for at least 5-10 years as the acute issues have mostly settled down and I am a clever self-dietician.  Honestly though with the state of healthcare in Wisconsin I thought about purchasing a needle myself for a pericardocentesis to drain the H2O.  

14. I have one writing-project I might not complete but I feel a solid start that could / should be published about abortion-culture and based on 'Love in Color,' a popular song by a no-longer-pop-idol.  

15. I still think about expositing American literature but suddenly 'The Old New World' means more to me; the old Midwestern novel, 'Winterlight,' 'My Soul at Night.'  And, 'The Magnificent Ambersons,' destined love.  I had a student in Korea who would be the card-carrying image of Lucy Morgan if they adapted it in addition to Mark Helprin's 'In Sunlight and in Shadow.'  

16. I am (too?) afraid of the Cross of Gold.  America getting rich.  China's 'moderately prosperous nation' i.e. Get Middle Class or Die (and Take World w/ Us) Tryinng.'  I want to be poor and poor-in-spirit except that I love some people who could use the money.  That is part of why I think about Michael B. Kim.

17. I like green peas, peanut butter, and blueberries.

18. The best audiobook I read lately is almost holy to me, 'Inferno' by Catherine Cho but 'Forgotten God' by Francis Chan is also incredible.  I listen to it while sleeping on audio and it always seems to wake me up at the perfect moment.  

19. I finally figured out an 'audience' as well.  If I could finally write a couple novels with a 'professional' utterance in addition to 'Love in Color' my 'caritas et amor' homage to a beautiful song and also something on the Covid era and old and young.  Like Pastor John MacArthur, or with him / following him I just feel like the whole point of Covid was to give people a chance to do better by / with kids.  'We plant the trees; our children enjoy the shade' - a Chinese proverb that the orthodox preacher / shepherd John MacArthur cites nonetheless. The American Families Plan.  Also even more (AUTHENTIC, non-guru-guff, non-fetishistic, non-trends-based) professionalization and humane policing and children's rights within the South Korean public and private schooling sectors.

20. I had one grand project as well called 'The Distant Lights of Seoul' that is kind of my take on 'In Sunlight and in Shadow' but it evolved in to something more personal that that's all... a trip I thought of taking, in the days when I was unsure whether to be the new or old.

21. I remember the most anguished summer of my life till now was 2003.  'Deep Inside of You' by 3EB.  'I would change myself if I could / I would walk with my people if I could find them / and I'd say I'm sorry to you.'  Coincidentally I went on an 'icy-hot' date with a hyper-beautiful woman at the cafe-bar where Jenkins wrote 'Motorcycle Driveby.'

22. I made a 'partial audiobook' of the early Psalms - particularly 5, about God defending - and had a beautiful experience like reading to children.

23. I don't want to broaden myself out too much physically or experientially; I'm afraid of becoming mentally American.  'Leaving Babylon, Leaving America, Leaving Milwaukee, Leaving.'  My homage to Madison Kwon Eunbi as well, theme-music 'Eraser.'  But I have to be a better man to approach my new _.

24. My original 'Korea project' was called 'Transferring to Line Zero' and like many Millennial writers in 2010 I tried to sound like a Haruki Murakami narrator but my experience turned out to be more like Kazuo Ishiguro, Marcel Proust.  I aimed for whisky but got wine.  I wish I could write this as I know for whom.  IDK if anyone cares though as Millennials almost all had 'these.'  I just wish I could make something of it instead of seeming like 'Acute Fangirl's No. 1 Fanboy.'  There wasn't a 'zero.'  

25. I had a crush on Dreamcatcher JiU 'Lily Kim' I saw once in Chicago - 'prettier in real life' is a good way to zonk people out into falling in love with a picture - but I saw a picture of her in traditional Joseon garment and just thought, 'cordial neighbor.'  That's all.

26. I used to write 'nuke Harvard' self-hyper-fanfiction about me v. the more customary winners and my ideal project is 'The Chinaman (or Chinese Poet) at American-Korean Thanksgiving.'

27. remembering my 2003 self / poet persona

akaka soru no

I thought about snow falling on velvet.  I got in trouble in the neighborhood. I liked Red Velvet's 'Wish Tree.'  I liked Wendy Son and Kim Yerim. A noble name, Son Seungwan, I'll say it once.

Maoists.  I read 'Wild Swans.'   I wanted to join you in your sadness and your beauty but I wasn't being Kawabata Yasunari. I don't want to generalize about my love for you but I don't believe in things either; Time disappears; mathematics inspires my disbelief; I think it can change.

'I love other people.'

What is it when parents grow old Do they go in to a new world They go to Heaven before us They know about being young

Wine, Elizabeth Strout novel 'Protestant endurance' in the old Midwest 'We are different from everybody'

The only question a bomb-threat at the school after 9.11 'Sospiro' fioritura In those days they were innocent 'I would take you seriously' (if I were a teacher) Now they try to be like New Yorkers I am not home

The poem that belonged to everyone flower a flower Can the passive-aggressive therapist Chinese girlfriend tea in the morning 'If I had to live with you'

the children of tomorrow where understanding ends require a world

a walk by the river i was old then carrying something i knew how to cook i knew how to live you sang 'dream' i said something like someone once said to me my old love contacted me via e-mail she said she had become materialistic and Republican she looked really good / happy married with kid after Covid-19 anaesthesiologist

28. Dov Danilov had abjected himself; he was known; on one cared.  The only decisive or critical factor... There was that armored 'girlfriend of steel' or perhaps better-than-girlfriend, the trial by ordeal, the one-look judgmentality, but it was all the past.  There was 'When You Are Old' and there had always been the presence of the Other like in 'The New World' with Pocahontas and John Smith; 'Who are you that haunts my dreams?'  That was a gooood movie.  He watched 'The Last Samurai' back in the day and didn't take it seriously but believed it contained good 'advices.'  There was Manheim Wagner's 'Korea: How You Feel' that had a great photo that seemed to mean something about the author's feelings but the book was all about illegal narcotics and sex-trafficking.  There was 'Brother One Fell' but it was all about masturbation and poor diet and illegal narcotics and what the Native Amerrian Indian shepherd-scholar hda called 'Mental Europeanness.'   The shepherd-scholar called himself a 'sheep-rancher.'  It was RU, 2005 autumn. 'Being known and ont cared for,' like HAndong from Dreamcatcher.  Maybe, it was the beginning of the end of the nightmare. - I could eat again a little if I got another love-letter from a female student... or even another bouquet from a gay male student... Maybe I'll mrary a North Korean woman after reunification... Remember 'Honey and Clover?' - Good song. - It's an anime-drama.  Originally it was a dorama.  Pramodh liked it before BLM stole his soul and he death-threated me with Cannibal COrpse and hate.  'Moon River' on pianoforte.  

- 'The Remains of DJ.'  'LA Dream.'  'Red Mansion Dream.'  'Pandemic of Honesty.'  'At the End of the Winter-Light; the Last of the Good Old Wisconsin Blue.'  'John Updike R

and I am not ashamed while my love is near me and I know it will be so till it's time to go So count the storms of winter and then the birds in spring again

'doctrine of unconditional evil'

29. My father acted in a really scary obsessive fashion toward me lately and now suddenly he is just eating and drinking.  

30. Jesus Himself said in the Gospel not to curse your parents.

31. I thought something about 'Sentimental Education' lately.

32. A while ago I wanted to write or read 'stories about families.'

33. I want to return to my '2003' project that predicted bioweapons and stuff but not really.

If I were redoing it I might just make it about 'Honesty' and instead of magic assassins it would be the medical doctor charged with mitigating bioweapon magic damage and the FBI agent investigating the bad guys.  Psalm 5.

34. Wanting to be the spiritual-intellectual successor to Bruce Cumings (hyper-meta historiography of the Korean War and, by extension, Covid, the world, Christ / CHristology, and the problems with non-Asia-based E. Asian Studies academicians or anyone who lacks Confucian scholar-gentleman / 'sunbi' / Scholar in Kingdom of Heaven sincerity).  China buries corrrput intellectuals alive.

35. 'Final Offer' in Time (on Pres. Moon Jaein).  'Peace in Our Time?'  Blessed are the peacemakers; blessed are the pure in heart.  

36. IDK if it's worth saying but - dept. of Anti-Christology or study of Antichrist - the 'first world' as it used to be called by and large seemed to be trending towards Imperium.  I honestly feel as if Barack Obama could be pulling the strings from within the CIA building and David Cameron adn Angela Merkel are in charge of all of Europe, while POpe Francis holds suzerainty of influence if not command-authority over the Spanish-speaking world.  IDK if there is meaningful dissent outside of a few republic-nations such as Poland and South Korea, who paradoxically take on a posture of what Park Chunghee callde 'itnernational responsiblity' despite a history of atrocious suffering and monoethnic somewhat xenophobic traditional social makeup.

37. Flaubert's notes to his supreme masterpiece 'Sentimental Education'... I'll just say... How he taught Frederic Moureau to fall in love with Marie Arnoux; taught himself how to LOVE Marie both before the beginning and after the end of being 'in love' with this mother-paramour.  

That said, I still remember the days when I had 'optimism' and someone said, '[woman] is happy because of you.'

38. I can't write more but do have specific goals, chiefly, master Korean and learn all the basic facts.  Professionals and experts believe in facts; as my Russian Yale MBA friend used to say, 'I am a scientist.'

I wish I had a profession... 'literary criticism of life?'  I am interested in 'the condition of fiction' and 'the logic of pulverization' but I just track John MacArthur.  I need to reconstitute my body and mind then maybe...

Dreams of [doctoral degrees].

39. 2 Timothy, Acts 2, Thessalonians, Revelation, in the Covid era.

40. Dreaming of Bethlehem College and Seminary.

41. Dov Danilov had abjected himself; he was known; on one cared.  The only decisive or critical factor... There was that armored 'girlfriend of steel' or perhaps better-than-girlfriend, the trial by ordeal, the one-look judgmentality, but it was all the past.  There was 'When You Are Old' and there had always been the presence of the Other like in 'The New World' with Pocahontas and John Smith; 'Who are you that haunts my dreams?'  That was a gooood movie.  He watched 'The Last Samurai' back in the day and didn't take it seriously but believed it contained good 'advices.'  There was Manheim Wagner's 'Korea: How You Feel' that had a great photo that seemed to mean something about the author's feelings but the book was all about illegal narcotics and sex-trafficking.  There was 'Brother One Fell' but it was all about masturbation and poor diet and illegal narcotics and what the Native Amerrian Indian shepherd-scholar hda called 'Mental Europeanness.'   The shepherd-scholar called himself a 'sheep-rancher.'  It was RU, 2005 autumn. 'Being known and ont cared for,' like HAndong from Dreamcatcher.  Maybe, it was the beginning of the end of the nightmare. - I could eat again a little if I got another love-letter from a female student... or even another bouquet from a gay male student... Maybe I'll mrary a North Korean woman after reunification... Remember 'Honey and Clover?' - Good song. - It's an anime-drama.  Originally it was a dorama.  Pramodh liked it before BLM stole his soul and he death-threated me with Cannibal COrpse and hate.  'Moon River' on pianoforte.  

- 'The Remains of DJ.'  'LA Dream.'  'Red Mansion Dream.'  'Pandemic of Honesty.'  'At the End of the Winter-Light; the Last of the Good Old Wisconsin Blue.'  'John Updike R

and I am not ashamed while my love is near me and I know it will be so till it's time to go So count the storms of winter and then the birds in spring again

'doctrine of unconditional evil' - humans mistaking themselves for God the Father - abortion-culture - Pope Saint John Paul II 'Humana Vitae'

42. Ideas of Christianity versus praxis and parataxis of Christianity

43. I was fond of Becca on Xanga but not as much as 'Clover' People open so much they can't but close off like a French novel 'humanity-rule' though their psychology of women is 'unconvincing' Glenn Gould ate a lot of eggs he was a hypochrondriac I want to drink 'Delta Covid Winter Summer Wine' and think of Mary HK Choi 'Yolk,' Lear's Cordelia and the real one, caritas / a'ga'pe I hope I don't get kilt with a _ _ _

44. Side- / mini-project 'My Brother's Type' about anti-Asian racism.

45. Ideal YA novel / counter to all corrupt YAL books, 'Clover' from the Promise / Fromis song.  It's beautiful, beauteous, 'fragrance from life to life.'  'I kept wishing for luck until I realized that which I wanted was happiness, yes?'

46. They were bored psychopathic Boomers; retirement had made them cannibal sociopaths.  His mom was like Volumnia in Coriolanus.  He didn't want to think about it.  He remembered Shan by the Han River, 'Fair Love.'  It was ten years ago; he weighed 25 pounds less but his mentality was the same. People were different.  Children were different.  In Wisconsin they evinced a... He was tired of being a bridge between West and East.  No one was curious.

47. I approached something really intense and pure and holy - and absolutely specific - and can't back off or back down without harm to myself.  This might be my last FBI.

48. I was 'boring guy.'

49. Summer rain.

50. That holiness... but also... CVA ('Charity edifieth')...

51. I want to read Korean poetry again as well.  Better poetry than ever, I imagine, better people.  'Perfect Children.'

52. 'And When We Are Older' - A Poem for Someone about My Age

And when we are old it won't necessarily get easier or fall into place or smooth into bonhomie or grow delicate as papery exquisite autumn leaves like the face of Jennifer Aniston and sometimes at the gym my smaller shoulder-muscles push harder but they remind me in this cute, precious way of some kind knowing amid Cross and sword that ever valor is a risk and God has got his hour writ. I thought that by now I would know what it's like to be one flesh with a wife, to watch a daughter practicing pianoforte, play catch with a son in the yard of a house by New Jersey reedy ponds.  That dream began in 1994 and there it stays, between the 'cello-clabbered music-room and gildered auditorium and still, in these institutions, nowhere to confess my love, nowhere to begin, just papers to plan on or wise. I used to love book-reviews, the language of dictionaries that could seem to get life so right, "Validity in Interpretation," the days when newspapers seemed to love me more than my own teachers, Colossians 4:6, editing sprinkled with salt, giving reason for hope, appropriate, apt, jeongdokhada. They get old and old and much is made of the things we can experience; sometimes I think that my dear friend quit Samsung too soon to know how to build his own team and I quit at least three jobs too soon and didn't stay in hot pursuit and now feel almost as if only my thoughts are as brightly alive with a love-light as your face once was. I get so lost at shopping malls, drowning; I don't get what anyone is up to. There was a Monsignor who composed or redacted this immense ethnography of all Korea but it must have broken his heart too, man who never took a wife, knitting red, his memory, the kind of person who arrives as I, watching Pompeo et al, in the hope of a benevolent ruler both forever and for the time being too... My friend used to say I could lead but I couldn't even shut down the snark-machine and Reddit had a field day with me and honestly maybe I've never loved anyone adequately. Let's be young a while more and though I didn't like this as a kid we can talk to the TV like at my grandparents' house long ago and again born on the new day, maybe we'll spend some time married.

53. 'Happy Days'

54. I miss the good K-dramas from Dramafever days though I don't watch television anymore... I wish I did just to rest my eyes... I miss 'Please Come Back Ahjusshi'... He's on the flying aerospace train to Heaven with his tears of contrition but decidees to return to Earth to delete his porn-collection for his wife and daughter surviving him... I deleted my biological father's literary porn collection ('daddy'-stepdaughter coercive / rape; adulterous housewife)... but he tried to send me to death and Hell.

55. It was like autumn in Korea this morning with the lamps and air-moisture; it was like Korean summer this early evening with August rain.

56. I want to regain my purity of literary style but hopefully God willing write something profitable / fruitful.   I might just teach again for pay..

[pamphletstoinspire]

The Second Book Of Esdras - Also Known As - THE BOOK OF NEHEMIAS - From The Douay-Rheims Bible - Latin Vulgate

Chapter 12

INTRODUCTION.

This Book takes its name from the writer, who was cup-bearer to Artaxerxes, (surnamed Longimanus) king of Persia, and was sent by him with a commission to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. It is also called the Second Book of Esdras, because it is a continuation of the history begun by Esdras, of the state of the people of God after their return from captivity. Ch. --- Genebrard believes that the latter wrote the work. But how long must he thus have lived? and how come the lists to vary so much? C. --- We may allow that these variations are owing to the mistakes of transcribers, (1 Esd. ii. 1.) for the writer of both works was certainly inspired. Esdras lived a long time along with Nehemias; (C. xii. 35.) and he may have left memorials, as well as the latter, from which the present work seems to be compiled. H. --- Some additions have been made since the days of Nehemias, articularly C. xii. to v. 26, or at least (C.) the five last of these verses. Capel. Chron. --- The passage cited from the commentaries of Nehemias, (2 Mac. ii. 13.) is not to be found here; which shews that we have not his entire work, but only an abridgment, in which the author has adopted his words, with some few alterations. The fifth chapter seems to be out of its place, and also the dedication of the walls. C. xii. 27. Nehemias was a person in great favour at the court of Persia; and of high birth, probably of the royal family, (Euseb. Isid. Genebrard in Chron.) as most of the ancients believe that all who governed, till the time of the Asmoneans, were of the tribe of Juda. Hence he styles Hanani his brother, (C. i. 2.) and declines entering into the temple. C. vi. 11. His name never occurs among the priests; and though we read 2 Mac. i. 18. 21, jussit sacerdos Nehemias, (T.) the Greek has, "Nehemias order the priests;" iereiV: (C. Huet. D.) and the title of priest sometimes is given to laymen at the head of affairs. H. --- In this character Nehemias appeared, by order of Artaxerxes: and notwithstanding the obstructions of the enemies of Juda, rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem, and returned after twelve years to court, making a second visit to his own country, a little before the death of the king, whom he probably survived only one year, dying A. 3580, about thirty years after he had been appointed governor. C. --- In the two first chapters, we behold his solicitude for the welfare of his country, in the ten following his success, and in the last what abuses he corrected. W. --- He renewed the covenant with God, (C. ix. and x.) sent for the sacred fire, and established a library at Jerusalem. 2 Mac. i. 19. 34. and ii. 13. H.

The additional Notes in this Edition of the New Testament will be marked with the letter A. Such as are taken from various Interpreters and Commentators, will be marked as in the Old Testament. B. Bristow, C. Calmet, Ch. Challoner, D. Du Hamel, E. Estius, J. Jansenius, M. Menochius, Po. Polus, P. Pastorini, T. Tirinus, V. Bible de Vence, W. Worthington, Wi. Witham. — The names of other authors, who may be occasionally consulted, will be given at full length.

Verses are in English and Latin. HAYDOCK CATHOLIC BIBLE COMMENTARY

This Catholic commentary on the Old Testament, following the Douay-Rheims Bible text, was originally compiled by Catholic priest and biblical scholar Rev. George Leo Haydock (1774-1849). This transcription is based on Haydock's notes as they appear in the 1859 edition of Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary printed by Edward Dunigan and Brother, New York, New York.

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES

Changes made to the original text for this transcription include the following:

Greek letters. The original text sometimes includes Greek expressions spelled out in Greek letters. In this transcription, those expressions have been transliterated from Greek letters to English letters, put in italics, and underlined. The following substitution scheme has been used: A for Alpha; B for Beta; G for Gamma; D for Delta; E for Epsilon; Z for Zeta; E for Eta; Th for Theta; I for Iota; K for Kappa; L for Lamda; M for Mu; N for Nu; X for Xi; O for Omicron; P for Pi; R for Rho; S for Sigma; T for Tau; U for Upsilon; Ph for Phi; Ch for Chi; Ps for Psi; O for Omega. For example, where the name, Jesus, is spelled out in the original text in Greek letters, Iota-eta-sigma-omicron-upsilon-sigma, it is transliterated in this transcription as, Iesous. Greek diacritical marks have not been represented in this transcription.

Footnotes. The original text indicates footnotes with special characters, including the astrisk (*) and printers' marks, such as the dagger mark, the double dagger mark, the section mark, the parallels mark, and the paragraph mark. In this transcription all these special characters have been replaced by numbers in square brackets, such as [1], [2], [3], etc.

Accent marks. The original text contains some English letters represented with accent marks. In this transcription, those letters have been rendered in this transcription without their accent marks.

Other special characters.

Solid horizontal lines of various lengths that appear in the original text have been represented as a series of consecutive hyphens of approximately the same length, such as ---.

Ligatures, single characters containing two letters united, in the original text in some Latin expressions have been represented in this transcription as separate letters. The ligature formed by uniting A and E is represented as Ae, that of a and e as ae, that of O and E as Oe, and that of o and e as oe.

Monetary sums in the original text represented with a preceding British pound sterling symbol (a stylized L, transected by a short horizontal line) are represented in this transcription with a following pound symbol, l.

The half symbol (1/2) and three-quarters symbol (3/4) in the original text have been represented in this transcription with their decimal equivalent, (.5) and (.75) respectively.

Unreadable text. Places where the transcriber's copy of the original text is unreadable have been indicated in this transcription by an empty set of square brackets, [].

Chapter 12

The priests, and Levites that came up with Zorobabel. The succession of high priests: the solemnity of the dedication of the wall.

[1] Now these are the priests and the Levites, that went up with Zorobabel the son of Salathiel, and Josue: Saraia, Jeremias, Esdras,

Hi sunt autem sacerdotes et Levitae, qui ascenderunt cum Zorobabel filio Salathiel, et Josue : Saraia, Jeremias, Esdras,

[2] Amaria, Melluch, Hattus,

Amaria, Melluch, Hattus,

[3] Sebenias, Rheum, Merimuth,

Sebenias, Rheum, Merimuth,

[4] Addo, Genthon, Abia,

Addo, Genthon, Abia,

[5] Miamin, Madia, Belga,

Miamin, Madia, Belga,

[6] Semeia, and Joiarib, Idaia, Sellum, Amoc, Helcias,

Semeia, et Jojarib, Idaia, Sellum, Amoc, Helcias,

[7] Idaia. These were the chief of the priests, and of their brethren in the days of Josue.

Idaia. Isti principes sacerdotum, et fratres eorum in diebus Josue.

[8] And the Levites, Jesua, Bennui, Cedmihel, Sarebia, Juda, Mathanias, they and their brethren were over the hymns:

Porro Levitae, Jesua, Bennui, Cedmihel, Sarebia, Juda, Mathanias, super hymnos ipsi et fratres eorum :

[9] And Becbecia, and Hanni, and their brethren every one in his office.

et Becbecia atque Hanni, et fratres eorum, unusquisque in officio suo.

[10] And Josue beget Joacim, and Joacim beget Eliasib, and Eliasib beget Joiada,

Josue autem genuit Joacim, et Joacim genuit Eliasib, et Eliasib genuit Jojada,

[11] And Joiada beget Jonathan, and Jonathan beget Jeddoa.

et Jojada genuit Jonathan, et Jonathan genuit Jeddoa.

[12] And in the days of Joacim the priests and heads of the families were: Of Saraia, Maraia: of Jeremias, Hanania:

In diebus autem Joacim erant sacerdotes et principes familiarum : Saraiae, Maraia : Jeremiae, Hanania :

[13] Of Esdras, Mosollam: and of Amaria, Johanan:

Esdrae, Mosollam : Amariae, Johanan :

[14] Of Milicho, Jonathan: of Sebenia, Joseph:

Milicho, Jonathan : Sebeniae, Joseph :

[15] Of Haram, Edna: of Maraioth, Helci:

Haram, Edna : Maraioth, Helci :

[16] Of Adaia, Zacharia: of Genthon, Mosollam:

Adaiae, Zacharia : Genthon, Mosollam :

[17] Of Abia, Zechri: of Miamin and Moadia, Phelti:

Abiae, Zechri : Miamin et Moadiae, Phelti :

[18] Of Belga, Sammua of Semaia, Jonathan:

Belgae, Sammua : Semaiae, Jonathan :

[19] Of Joiarib, Mathanai: of Jodaia, Azzi:

Jojarib, Mathanai : Jodaiae, Azzi :

[20] Of Sellai, Celai: of Amoc, Heber:

Sellai, Celai : Amoc, Heber :

[21] Of Helcias, Hasebia: of Idaia, Nathanael.

Helciae, Hasebia : Idaiae, Nathanael.

[22] The Levites the chiefs of the families in the days of Eliasib, and Joiada, and Johanan, and Jeddoa, were recorded, and the priests in the reign of Darius the Persian.

Levitae in diebus Eliasib, et Jojada, et Johanan, et Jeddoa, scripti principes familiarum, et sacerdotes in regno Darii Persae.

[23] The sons of Levi, heads of the families were written in the book of Chronicles, even unto the days of Jonathan the son of Eliasib.

Filii Levi principes familiarum, scripti in libro verborum dierum, et usque ad dies Jonathan, filii Eliasib.

[24] Now the chief of the Levites were Hasebia, Serebia, and Josue the son of Cedmihel: and their brethren by their courses, to praise and to give thanks according to the commandment of David the man of God, and to wait equally in order.

Et principes Levitarum, Hasebia, Serebia, et Josue filius Cedmihel : et fratres eorum per vices suas, ut laudarent et confiterentur juxta praeceptum David viri Dei, et observarent aeque per ordinem.

[25] Mathania, and Becbecia, Obedia, and Mosollam, Telmon, Accub, were keepers of the gates and of the entrances before the gates.

Mathania, et Becbecia, Obedia, Mosollam, Telmon, Accub, custodes portarum et vestibulorum ante portas.

[26] These were in the days of Joacim the son of Josue, the son of Josedec, and in the days of Nehemias the governor, and of Esdras the priest and scribe.

Hi in diebus Joacim filii Josue, filii Josedec, et in diebus Nehemiae ducis, et Esdrae sacerdotis scribaeque.

[27] And at the dedication of the wall of Jerusalem they sought the Levites out of all their places, to bring them to Jerusalem, and to keep the dedication, and to rejoice with thanksgiving, and with singing, and with cymbals, and psalteries and harps.

In dedicatione autem muri Jerusalem, requisierunt Levitas de omnibus locis suis ut adducerent eos in Jerusalem, et facerent dedicationem et laetitiam in actione gratiarum, et cantico, et in cymbalis, psalteriis, et citharis.

[28] And the sons of the singing men were gathered together out of the plain country about Jerusalem, and out of the villages of Nethuphati,

Congregati sunt autem filii cantorum de campestribus circa Jerusalem, et de villis Nethuphathi,

[29] And from the house of Galgal, and from the countries of Geba and Azmaveth: for the singing men had built themselves villages round about Jerusalem.

et de domo Galgal, et de regionibus Geba et Azmaveth : quoniam villas aedificaverunt sibi cantores in circuitu Jerusalem.

[30] And the priests and the Levites purified, and they purified the people, and the gates, and the wall.

Et mundati sunt sacerdotes et Levitae, et mundaverunt populum, et portas, et murum.

[31] And I made the princes of Juda go up upon the wall, and I appointed two great choirs to give praise. And they went on the right hand upon the wall toward the dunghill gate.

Ascendere autem feci principes Juda super murum, et statui duos magnos choros laudantium. Et ierunt ad dexteram super murum ad portam sterquilinii.

[32] And after them went Osaias, and half of the princes of Juda,

Et ivit post eos Osaias, et media pars principum Juda,

[33] And Azarias, Esdras, and Mosollam, Judas, and Benjamin, and Semeia, and Jeremias.

et Azarias, Esdras, et Mosollam, Judas, et Benjamin, et Semeia, et Jeremias.

[34] And of the sons of the priests with trumpets, Zacharias the son of Jonathan. the son of Semeia, the son of Mathania; the son of Michaia, the son of Zechur, the son of Asaph,

Et de filiis sacerdotum in tubis, Zacharias filius Jonathan, filius Semeiae, filius Mathaniae, filius Michaiae, filius Zechur, filius Asaph,

[35] And his brethren Semeia, and Azareel Malalai, Galalai, Maai, Nathanael, and Judas, and Hanani, with the musical instruments of David the man of God: and Esdras the scribe before them at the fountain gate.

et fratres ejus Semeia, et Azareel, Malalai, Galalai, Maai, Nathanael, et Judas, et Hanani, in vasis cantici David viri Dei : et Esdras scriba ante eos in porta fontis.

[36] And they went up over against them by the stairs of the city of David, at the going up of the wall of the house of David, and to the water gate eastward:

Et contra eos ascenderunt in gradibus civitatis David in ascensu muri super domum David, et usque ad portam aquarum ad orientem.

[37] And the second choir of them that gave thanks went on the opposite side, and I after them, and the half of the people upon the wall, and upon the tower of the furnaces, even to the broad wall,

Et chorus secundus gratias referentium ibat ex adverso, et ego post eum, et media pars populi super murum, et super turrim furnorum, et usque ad murum latissimum,

[38] And above the gate of Ephraim, and above the old gate, and above the fish gate and the tower of Hananeel, and the tower of Emath, and even to the flock gate: and they stood still in the watch gate.

et super portam Ephraim, et super portam antiquam, et super portam piscium et turrim Hananeel, et turrim Emath, et usque ad portam gregis : et steterunt in porta custodiae,

[39] And the two choirs of them that gave praise stood still at the house of God, and I and the half of the magistrates with me.

steteruntque duo chori laudantium in domo Dei, et ego, et dimidia pars magistratuum mecum.

[40] And the priests, Eliachim, Maasia, Miamin, Michea, Elioenai, Zacharia, Hanania with trumpets,

Et sacerdotes, Eliachim, Maasia, Miamin, Michea, Elioenai, Zacharia, Hanania in tubis,

[41] And Maasia, and Semeia, and Eleazar, and Azzi, and Johanan, and Melchia, and Elam, and Ezer. And the singers sung loud, and Jezraia was their overseer:

et Maasia, et Semeia, et Eleazar, et Azzi, et Johanan, et Melchia, et Aelam, et Ezer. Et clare cecinerunt cantores, et Jezraia praepositus :

[42] And they sacrificed on that day great sacrifices, and they rejoiced: for God had made them joyful with great joy: their wives also and their children rejoiced, and the joy of Jerusalem was heard afar off.

et immolaverunt in die illa victimas magnas, et laetati sunt : Deus enim laetificaverat eos laetitia magna : sed et uxores eorum, et liberi gavisi sunt, et audita est laetitia Jerusalem procul.

[43] They appointed also in that day men over the storehouses of the treasure, for the libations, and for the firstfruits, and for the tithes, that the rulers of the city might bring them in by them in honour of thanksgiving, for the priests and Levites: for Juda was joyful in the priests and Levites that assisted.

Recensuerunt quoque in die illa viros super gazophylacia thesauri ad libamina, et ad primitias, et ad decimas, ut introferrent per eos principes civitatis in decore gratiarum actionis, sacerdotes et Levitas : quia laetificatus est Juda in sacerdotibus et Levitis adstantibus.

[44] And they kept the watch of their God, and the observance of expiation, and the singing men, and the porters, according to the commandment of David, and of Solomon his son.

Et custodierunt observationem Dei sui, et observationem expiationis, et cantores, et janitores juxta praeceptum David, et Salomonis filii ejus,

[45] For in the days of David and Asaph from the beginning there were chief singers appointed, to praise with canticles, and give thanks to God.

quia in diebus David et Asaph ab exordio erant principes constituti cantorum in carmine laudantium et confitentium Deo.

[46] And all Israel, in the days of Zorobabel, and in the days of Nehemias gave portions to the singing men, and to the porters, day by day, and they sanctified the Levites, and the Levites sanctified the sons of Aaron.

Et omnis Israel, in diebus Zorobabel, et in diebus Nehemiae, dabant partes cantoribus et janitoribus per dies singulos, et sanctificabant Levitas, et Levitae sanctificabant filios Aaron.

Commentary:

Ver. 1. Priests. But not all, as some are omitted. See v. 7. 22, &c. --- Josue, or Jesus, the high priest. --- Esdras, the famous scribe, who is supposed to have returned to Babylon, and to have been living under Nehemias, who came to Jerusalem 81 years after Zorobabel. If, therefore, Esdras was only 20 years old at the former period, he must have lived above 100 years, (C.) which is not improbable. Lyran. T. &c. --- He returned again with many of his countrymen, by the king's leave. W.

Ver. 7. Chief. Heads of the 24 great families. 1 Par. xxiv. 18.

Ver. 8. Hymns. To preside over the bands. C. xi. 17. C.

Ver. 9. Office. Heb. "in the watches," each in his turn, (Vatab.) "daily." Sept. M.

Ver. 10. Joacim. These are some of the successors of Josue, (M.) who were high priests till the time of Jeddoa, or Jaddus. W.

Ver. 11. Jonathan, is called Johanan by S. Jerom, (in Dan.) Josephus, &c. --- Jeddoa. The Jaddus, who went to meet Alexander, in his pontifical attire, and was graciously received by him; as the monarch revered in his person the God of the Hebrews, who had formerly appeared to him in this manner, to encourage him to undertake the conquests of Asia. Josephus xi. 8. --- Some think that the names of Jonathan and Jeddoa, and the v. 22, 23, and 24, have been inserted since the time of Nehemias; as he must have lived 140 years, to see the conquests of Alexander. T. Petau. N. Alex. T. 2 Dis. 7. --- He could not be less than 20, when he returned in 3550. Jaddus met Alexander in 3672; consequently, at that time, Nehemias was 142 years old. But if he died at the commencement of the reign of Darius Codomannus 3668, he would still be 138. C. --- Yet this longevity is by no means incredible, v. 1. C. xiii. 28. H. --- Usher (A. 3602) maintains that Johanan was pontiff under Memnon.

Ver. 12. Saraia had given his name to one of the principal families, at the head of which was Maraia, at this time. The Latin MSS. Sept. and Syr. style him Amaria.

Ver. 17. Phelti was chief of two families, (C.) or perhaps the name of the head of Miamin (H.) is lost. Vatable. --- And, is not in Heb. "of Miniamin, of Moadiah, Pittai," Prot. H.

Ver. 19. Jodaia. The same name is written Idaia, v. 6, and 21.

Ver. 22. Persian. Surnamed Codomannus, (H.) Condomanus, (Grot. C.) or Natus, under whom Jaddus was born, though he was pontiff under the former. Usher, A. 3553.

Ver. 23. Chronicles. Not those which are now extant: but some records which regarded the families of the priests. See 1 Esd. ii. 61. --- The son, or grandson of Eliasib. The author refers to others records, v. 26. C.

Ver. 24. Order. Heb. "ward over-against ward." One company kept guard while another retired. M.

Ver. 25. Entrances. These are not distinctly mentioned before. See 1 Par. xxvi. 15. 17. Ezec. xl. 8. C. --- Sept. have only, after order, or him, v. 25. "When I assembled the door-keepers, (v. 26,) in the days of Joakeim." H.

Ver. 26. Scribe. Could these records have any greater authority than Nehemias himself? It seems, therefore, that this had been added by a later hand, whose testimony is perfectly authentic and inspired. C. --- Nehemias might also refer to some records which he, or some other, had drawn up. H.

Ver. 27. Wall. Some time before, (Usher. C.) or now, when the houses were completed. V. Bede. T. --- Places, for greater solemnity. The ancients deemed "the walls and gates sacred things, the property of no man." Justinian, l. sacra loca. --- Ovid describes the superstitious rites, with which the Romans laid the foundations of their cities, on some lucky day.

             Fossa fit ad solidum, fruges jaciuntur in imâ, &c. Fast. iv.

Ver. 30. Were purified first, that they might purify the rest. H. --- Priests were obliged to abstain from wine, and from their wives, while they were on duty. See 2 Par. xxix. 34, and xxxv. 2, &c. Levites were to wash their garments. Lev. viii. 21. All lepers, &c. required a certain purification, ib. v. 2. 6. and Num. xix. 16. Care was taken that no dead body was found on the walls. These were probably sprinkled with water, &c. like the tabernacle. Lev. viii. 11.

Ver. 31. Choirs. This is not expressed in Heb. and Sept. but must be understood. Prot. "great companies of them that gave thanks. Whereof one went." H. --- The princes led the way, then the priests sounded the trumpets, (Num. x. 8.) the Levites sung, and were followed by the people. All were divided into two equal parts, and went round half the city. C. --- They set out from the dunghill-gate, on the west, and proceeded to the watch-gate, on the east, v. 38. M.

Ver. 35. Esdras, mentioned v. 33, was the chief personage, at the head of this company. H.

Ver. 37. And, &c. Prot. "And the other company of them that gave thanks." --- And upon. Heb. "beyond." This company (H.) proceeded northward. C.

Ver. 38. Watch-gate. Syr. and Arab. "great gate," by which they came down.

Ver. 42. Great. Numerous, or victims of a large size, oxen, &c.

Ver. 43. Thanksgiving. S. Jerom, Sept. and Syr. have read in a different manner from the present Heb. (C.) which has, "for the tithes to gather into them out of the fields of the cities, the portions of (or by) the law assigned to the priests, &c. Tora, "law," has been read, toda, "thanksgiving," by S. Jerom; and sarim, "princes," has been substituted for sadim, "fields." H. --- The Syriac admits the second reading. C. --- Sept. omit the first entirely. "For the tithes, and for the collections in them, brought to the princes of the cities, being the portions for the priests," &c. H.

Ver. 44. Expiation. Or the legal purifications, (M.) when necessary. H.

Ver. 45. Asaph was master of music in the reign of David. M.

Ver. 46. Sanctified. That is, they gave them that which by the law was set aside, and sanctified for their use. Ch. - The Levites paid a tithe to the priests, (C. x. 38. and Num. xviii. 26. C.) as the people did to them. W.

[vicdougherty]

Some months ago, I was talking to my friend, Karen, about this epic romance I’m writing. You know, the one I can’t shut up about because it’s been consuming me for about three years. Karen is a writer, too. A huge talent, in fact, and one of the best readers I’ve ever come across. She also knows me pretty well.

She knows how much I love Raymond Chandler, for instance. The way I’m in awe of his skill at weaving humor into the lives of some gritty characters with pretty depressing outcomes.

“She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.”

“He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.”

“Alcohol is like love. The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl’s clothes off.” –all by Raymond Chandler

But we were talking about romance, as I said. Not thrillers. And the kind of romance with a lot of history in it. Maybe some fantasy and sci-fi mixed in to make the story more like an Indian chutney than a fancy ketchup. And I was just squeaking towards the finish line of my first draft, complaining that it was about as rough as Richard Nixon’s five o’clock shadow.

“You’ve got to read Diana Gabaldon,” she said. “Not only because your series has a historical component,” she told me. “But you have a strong point of view on humor, and I think you’ll find a like mind and some inspiration in her books.”

She was right, of course. My friend Karen is right about a lot of things: feminism, our Founding Fathers, Emily Dickinson and any kind of editorial advice, just to name a few.

There’s a lot to be in awe of when reading the Outlander novels. Their length and subsequent ability to hold our interest, the fact that men and women can both enjoy them (swear!), that she doesn’t shy away from sex or violence, yet doesn’t make either gratuitous. That she writes character-driven books with great atmospherics. And yes, that she writes with a heavy dose of humor.

Humor isn’t just something meant to make us feel good. It is defiant, subversive and smarter than we are. Through humor we can say things we’re too afraid to say. It allows us to speak truths that polite society won’t tolerate and reminds us that no word or circumstance can hold power over us. Humor is such an essential element to getting us through the hard times, to making us more resilient, more compelling.  It brings us together, makes us closer, foments friendships. A sense of humor will make a potential lover want to introduce you to his friends, take you in a twirling, spinning hug, kiss you with joy.

Such is its power. More than beauty, because it outlasts our youth. More than sorrow, because it gives us a reason to keep going.

As a reader, I can’t imagine sticking with a series if it didn’t employ a sense of humor that bonded me to characters and their worlds. As a writer, I find humorless prose exhausting and depleting. Often sanctimonious, or uninspired. It drains me to read such passages, let alone have to conjure them.

The best authors weave humor through the fabric of even the most heart wrenching, serious stories. They may do it subtly, through irony perhaps, but they do it. I think of Orwell’s 1984, anything by Ernest Hemingway, The Great Gatsby, Shakespeare, Twain, whose humor is often wrongly mistaken for racism, and even Herodotus.

That’s why, as I was reading the Outlander series, I was especially struck by one part that illustrated to me why it’s crucial to maintain a sense of humor, even when you’re writing about a topic or event that’s downright horrifying.

In this particular segment of the story, one of Gabaldon’s characters is being raped. And potentially by more than one man.

Not. Funny.

However, Gabaldon uses humor in such a graceful way, that she not only keeps from degrading or making light of the severity of the situation, but actually gives it greater meaning. As her heroine is being abused by this group of very bad men, one of these desperados fails miserably in his quest to rape her. The heroine actually quips to herself about his complete sexual incompetence, then remarks upon her own good fortune of this having happened to her in middle age. “Twenty years ago, there would’ve been a much longer line,” she says to herself.

That bit of humor brings humanity and hope to a soul-crushing set of circumstances. As a reader, it lends me a hand in getting through a terrible incident with a character I’ve grown to love. I want to believe that our heroine will prevail, or at least emerge from her ordeal intact somehow; it’s her sense of humor that helps me look what is happening right in the eye.

Because that’s what humor does for us in our own lives.

“Oh, please,” you might say. “No one can have a sense of humor while when they’re about to be raped.”

Allow me to step out of the realm of fiction and back into real life in order to answer that.

“While one of his men held me down, this Russian officer took out a mirror and leaned it against a rock. Removing a brush and cake of soap from his canvas bag, he began to lather, spreading this luxurious foam all over his chin and jaw. He took his time. Then he pulled a razor from his belt and began to shave. Ah, a sophisticated rapist, I thought to myself. Isn’t that the height of cosmic sarcasm?” –Dina Babbit, holocaust survivor, on the prospect of being raped by a Russian officer, only days after her liberation from Auschwitz.

This is why, as I embark on editing my romance – the one filled with war and passion and heartbreak and history and pitiless violence perpetrated by corrupt individuals – my writer’s eye is trained on giving my characters a balls-out sense of the absurd. Bringing a dark bit of crackpot levity into a situation – even when there doesn’t seem to be room for anything but tears and screams.

[faithfulnews]

Why do so many atheist historians think that 1 Corinthians 15 is reliable history?

Investigation in progress

Which passage of the Bible is the favorite of Christians who like to defend the Christian worldview? I don’t mean which one is most inspirational… I mean “which one is the most useful for winning arguments?” Well, when it comes to the historical Jesus, the most important passage has to be 1 Corinthians 15:3-7.

The tradition in 1 Corinthians 15 is an early creed that was received from the eyewitnesses Peter and John when Paul visited them several times in Jerusalem, as documented in Galatians 1 and 2, where Paul meets the eyewitnesses. And of course, Paul records his own eyewitness experience, documented in 1 Cor 15:8.

So, is this passage accepted as historically reliable by all ancient historians? Or only by the Bible-believing ones?

Here’s something posted by Dr. William Lane Craig about the 1 Corinthians 15 passage:

The evidence that Paul is not writing in his own hand in I Cor. 15.3-5 is so powerful that all New Testament scholars recognize that Paul is here passing on a prior tradition. In addition to the fact that Paul explicitly says as much, the passage is replete with non-Pauline characteristics, including, in order of appearance: (i) the phrase “for our sins” using the genitive case and plural noun is unusual for Paul; (ii) the phrase “according to the Scriptures” is unparalleled in Paul, who introduces Scriptural citations by “as it is written”; (iii) the perfect passive verb “has been raised” appears only in this chapter and in a pre-Pauline confessional formula in II Tim. 2.8; (iv) the phrase “on the third day” with its ordinal number following the noun in Greek is non-Pauline; (v) the word “appeared” is found only here and in the confessional formula in I Tim. 3.16; and (vi) “the Twelve” is not Paul’s nomenclature, for he always speaks of the twelve disciples as “the apostles.”

Now the visit during which Paul may have received this tradition is the visit you mention three years after his conversion on the road to Damascus (Gal. 1.18). This puts the tradition back to within the first five years after Jesus’ death in AD 30. So there’s not even an apparent inconsistency with Paul’s appropriating the language of the formula to encapsulate the Gospel he was already preaching during those first three years in Damascus.

Ancient historian Gary Habermas loves to read non-Christian scholars… and then he writes about what THEY think about Jesus in peer-reviewed articles, published in academic journals. Let’s look at this one: Dialog: A Journal of Theology, Vol. 45; No. 3 (Fall, 2006), pp. 288-297; published by Blackwell Publishing, UK.

He writes:

(1) Contemporary critical scholars agree that the apostle Paul is the primary witness to the early resurrection experiences. A former opponent (1 Cor. 15:9; Gal. 1:13-14; Phil. 3:4-7), Paul states that the risen Jesus appeared personally to him (1 Cor. 9:1; 15:8; Gal. 1:16). The scholarly consensus here is attested by atheist Michael Martin, who avers: “However, we have only one contemporary eyewitness account of a postresurrection appearance of Jesus, namely Paul’s.”[3]

(2) In addition to Paul’s own experience, few conclusions are more widely recognized than that, in 1 Corinthians 15:3ff., Paul records an ancient oral tradition(s). This pre-Pauline report summarizes the early Gospel content, that Christ died for human sin, was buried, rose from the dead, and then appeared to many witnesses, both individuals and groups.

Paul is clear that this material was not his own but that he had passed on to others what he had received earlier, as the center of his message (15:3). There are many textual indications that the material pre-dates Paul. Most directly, the apostle employs paredoka and parelabon, the equivalent Greek terms for delivering and receiving rabbinic tradition (cf. 1 Cor. 11:23). Indirect indications of a traditional text(s) include the sentence structure and verbal parallelism, diction, and the triple sequence of kai hoti Further, several non-Pauline words, the proper names of Cephas (cf. Lk. 24:34) and James, and the possibility of an Aramaic original are all significant. Fuller attests to the unanimity of scholarship here: “It is almost universally agreed today that Paul is here citing tradition.”[4] Critical scholars agree that Paul received the material well before this book was written.[5]

This is important:

The most popular view is that Paul received this material during his trip to Jerusalem just three years after his conversion, to visit Peter and James, the brother of Jesus (Gal. 1:18-19), both of whose names appear in the appearance list (1 Cor. 15:5; 7). An important hint here is Paul’s use of the verb historesai (1:18), a term that indicates the investigation of a topic.[6] The immediate context both before and after reveals this subject matter: Paul was inquiring concerning the nature of the Gospel proclamation (Gal. 1:11-2:10), of which Jesus’ resurrection was the center (1 Cor. 15:3-4, 14, 17; Gal. 1:11, 16).

He’s an eyewitness (verse 8), and he met with the other eyewitnesses, James and Peter. 1 Corinthians is early. Galatians is early. The creed is extremely early – right after the events occurred. There was no time for legends to develop.

And atheistic / critical historians agree, the creed is reliable:

Critical scholars generally agree that this pre-Pauline creed(s) may be the earliest in the New Testament. Ulrich Wilckens asserts that it “indubitably goes back to the oldest phase of all in the history of primitive Christianity.”[7] Joachim Jeremias agrees that it is, “the earliest tradition of all.”[8] Perhaps a bit too optimistically, Walter Kasper even thinks that it was possibly even “in use by the end of 30 AD . . . .”[9]

Indicating the wide approval on this subject, even more skeptical scholars frequently agree. Gerd Ludemann maintains that “the elements in the tradition are to be dated to the first two years after the crucifixion of Jesus. . . . not later than three years. . . . the formation of the appearance traditions mentioned in I Cor.15.3-8 falls into the time between 30 and 33 CE. . . .”[10] Similarly, Michael Goulder thinks that it “goes back at least to what Paul was taught when he was converted, a couple of years after the crucifixion.”[11] Thomas Sheehan agrees that this tradition “probably goes back to at least 32-34 C.E., that is, to within two to four years of the crucifixion.”[12] Others clearly consent.[13]

Overall, my recent overview of critical sources mentioned above indicates that those who provide a date generally opt for Paul’s reception of this report relatively soon after Jesus’ death, by the early to mid-30s A.D.[14] This provides an additional source that appears just a half step removed from eyewitness testimony.

(3) Paul was so careful to assure the content of his Gospel message, that he made a second trip to Jerusalem (Gal. 2:1-10) specifically to be absolutely sure that he had not been mistaken (2:2). The first time he met with Peter and James (Gal. 1:18-20). On this occasion, the same two men were there, plus the apostle John (2:9). Paul was clearly doing his research by seeking out the chief apostles. As Martin Hengel notes, “Evidently the tradition of I Cor. 15.3 had been subjected to many tests” by Paul.[15]

These four apostles were the chief authorities in the early church, and each is represented in the list of those who had seen the resurrected Jesus (1 Cor. 15:5-7). So their confirmation of Paul’s Gospel preaching (Gal. 2:9), especially given the apostolic concern to insure doctrinal truth in the early church, is certainly significant. On Paul’s word, we are again just a short distance from a firsthand report.

(4) Not only do we have Paul’s account that the other major apostles confirmed his Gospel message, but he provides the reverse testimony, too. After listing Jesus’ resurrection appearances, Paul tells us he also knew what the other apostles were preaching regarding Jesus’ appearances, and it was the same as his own teaching on this subject (1 Cor. 15:11). As one, they proclaimed that Jesus was raised from the dead (15:12, 15). So Paul narrates both the more indirect confirmation of his Gospel message by the apostolic leaders, plus his firsthand, direct approval of their resurrection message.

Now, some of the people he lists are really biased against the supernatural, and they really hate the idea that the claims of Christianity exclude other religions. And yet they don’t deny the historical reliability of 1 Corinthians 15, or that it is based on eyewitness testimony.

That’s why when you watch debates about the historical Jesus, you see skeptical historians like Bart Ehrman, Gerd Ludemann, James Crossley, Michael Goulder, etc. accepting that the disciples thought they saw Jesus after his death. They’re not just being nice to Dr. Craig when they give him that. They are forced to accept it, because it passes the historical tests. Every Christian ought to be aware of which passages of the New Testament are seen by the broad spectrum of ancient historians as “historical”, regardless of their various biases. You can believe everything in the Bible. But when you debate non-Christians, you have to use the historical core of Christianity which successfully passes historical analysis.

You can see the creed used as evidence in the debate between James Crossley and William Lane Craig.

Go to the article

[ohwhatamessiam]

Give  -Part 5

Summary: Bucky and (Y/N) had an amazing yet brief relationship in Bucharest before all hell broke loose. Two years later they reconnect in a bar in Brooklyn, but things have changed and neither are the same as they were before. Will their relationship survive or is a break up inevitable?

Pairing: Bucky Barnes X Reader

Word Count: 4.8k (I’m so sorry, I only meant for it to be 2k but sometimes I can’t stop myself.)

Warnings: Language, still in flashback-landia with lots of fluff and quite a bit of angst. A small physical altercation, followed by sexy and cuddly time. This chapter is NSFW, although it does not actually feature sex. Please be mature (and 18+) if you’re going to read this. I don’t want to get in trouble y’all.

Author’s Note: Hey again guys! This is part 5 of my submission to @bladebarnes‘s #bladehits2kchallenge inspired by the song Give by You Me At Six. First person reader insert as usual, I’m so so sorry for making some of you guys wait for this one but work and family stuff got in the way. I also didn’t have a beta for this, so I’m sorry if it sucks. Here’s my Spotify playlist to listen to while reading the entire fic. Hopefully this turned out okay, and as always let me know if you enjoy it or want to be tagged in the next couple parts.

If you haven’t yet, check out Part 1, 2, 3, and 4.

Three days later, Bucky spent another evening with me, but he came over much later and we were on very different terms than we’d been when he’d last entered my apartment. After a brief flirtation in his doorway the day before, he agreed to help me finish the cheesecake and wine. Unsurprisingly, he showed up with a fresh bouquet of flowers and I almost hit him with them. It was an amazingly sweet gesture, but it wasn’t necessary after the heated moment we shared in my hallway.

We both dressed much more casually than we had on our last date, and I opened the door to find him in a grey henley, black undershirt, blue jeans, and his hair tied into a low bun. He wore only one glove on his left hand, and the second I closed my door he was pulling it off. I’d opted for a pair of grey jeans with busted knees and a black v-neck. I popped the bottle of wine, pouring it into the pair of cheap wine glasses I’d found, and set out the plate of leftover cheesecake with two forks. After dumping the rest of the plum and berry topping onto the dessert, we both dug in, eating directly from the same plate. The sound of forks scraping against ceramic and clinking against each other filled the air with our laughter and relaxed conversation.

Unlike our previous date, this one was spent discussing the present and the future. We’d dwelled enough on our pasts, and I didn’t want to bring up anything that would change this easy-going, confident, and happy Bucky into anything else. He revealed that he wanted to move back to the US one day, but considering he was a wanted fugitive for his involvement in the fall of SHIELD, that was probably going to have to wait.

When I asked him about marriage and a family he shrugged, his pleasant mood waning slightly, “I wanted those things when I was young, before all this.” Lifting his left hand, he stared at it, calculating how it would appear to a family, to children. “But I haven’t thought about those things in a long time, and I don’t even know if I’m still capable of that.”

Attempting to lighten the mood, I yanked his metal hand out of the air and warmed it in mine, “Babe, I know you’re technically like 100 years old, but physically you’re barely pushing 30 so you’re definitely still capable of that.”

His brows furrowed as he tried to understand what I’d meant, and as he did his mouth opened, letting out a small “ohhh” and a chuckle. “That wasn’t what I was saying, but you’re probably right.” I swallowed my last bite of cheesecake, giving his metal fingers one more squeeze and then pushed the plate his way to finish. Looking up from under his lashes, he gave me a small smirk, “I kinda like when you call me babe.”

“You do, huh?” I asked as I emptied the last of the wine into both of our glasses.

“I really do doll,” a blush was creeping across his cheeks, and I couldn’t help but bite my lip at how good he looked sitting across from me. I wanted his hands on me, wanted his body pressed against mine but he remained on the other side of my table, glancing up from his fork every few seconds to see how I’d reacted to his words.

Sitting back in my chair and crossing my legs, I cocked my head to the side and smiled, “Well, I’ll have to keep that in mind.”

After he finished the cheesecake and we both emptied our wine glasses I placed the dishes in the sink and turned to find him standing over my coffee table, flipping through the couple books sitting there. “Do you read anything?” I asked, resting my elbows against the counter as I watched him.

“Yeah, a little.” He picked up the largest book I had with me, Paradise Lost, and sat down on my couch with it. “I finished 1984 a few months ago, but it hit a little too close to home with how my memories of everything I did and was done to me like to slip in and out. I started The Count of Monte Cristo last month and I’m trying to get through it.”

I sighed, still leaning on the counter, “That’s a long ass book, but it’s definitely better for your mental health.” After skimming a few more pages, he patted the cushion next to him, motioning for me to sit. I moved reluctantly, wishing I could keep my distance and just watch him flip through a book as he chewed on his lip.

Sinking down on the spot furthest from him, I tucked my legs under me and sat facing him. He closed the paperback in his left hand, his right snaking out to my ankle and gently rubbing up my calf until he reached my knee. I tried not to react too obviously but his hand on me, even through the layer of my jeans, made my insides warm and fluttery. “Read to me?” he asked, his fingers hooked under my knee as he carefully pulled me across the couch and my legs over his lap.

“You want me to read an epic poem to you?” I asked incredulously. I wanted to separate our limbs to give me more space to think and control my urges.

“Well, obviously not the whole thing,” he shrugged as he dropped the book into my lap. “But whatever part you want to. I’ve never read it and this way I’ll be able to just listen and enjoy it.”

His metal hand hovered loosely over my calf as his flesh hand slid slightly over my knee and up my thigh, before inching back down to my joint. Squeezing my eyes shut, I held my breath in my lungs, trying not to gasp or react to his hands on me. “I don’t know if I can do Milton justice.”

“I don’t believe that,” he shook his head, causing a piece of hair to loosen near his face. “I like your voice, it’s calming to me and I could use more of that in my life.”

I let out a sigh and opened my eyes, “Okay.” Before laying back against the couch I reached out for his cheek, softly brushing my fingers against his scruff and tucking the piece of hair behind his ear, “But only for you.” He smirked victoriously at me as I tried not to melt inside.

Several pages into my favorite passage in book 5, where Satan watches Adam and Eve in Eden, I got uncomfortable laying back to read to him and sat up. His right hand left my legs to wrap around my back and pull me into him. I lost my place in the poem and stared up at him, catching the way he was watching me. The softness of his eyes, the scent of his aftershave, the warmth radiating through his clothes, all pulled me closer to his mouth.

I moved quickly, pushing the book off the couch and grabbing his jaw between my hands. Tilting his mouth toward mine, I closed the space between our lips, needing to taste him, to feel more of him. He jerked under me in shock as my lips crushed his. As his surprise wore off, his flesh hand slipped into my hair while his metal one gripped my thigh. He kissed me back, pushing my lips apart hungrily for only a second before his fingers met the back of my neck. Pulling away from my lips, he pressed his forehead against mine.

His grip on my thigh loosened, and I felt the coolness of his hand leave my leg but I still tingled where the metal had been. The problem with forcing me away from his mouth was that I could still see his pink lips as he caught his breath. My hands stayed on his face, shifting it upward the slightest bit, allowing access to his jaw and neck. Kissing softly against his cheek first, I felt his smile against my skin, and as I trailed my lips down to his jaw he tilted his head back even more, encouraging me to continue. My lips scratched against his scruff as I kissed under his jaw, and hearing the arm of my loveseat squeak under his metal grip only encouraged me to keep going.

Knotting my hands into his hair as I reached his neck, I opened my mouth and nipped at his skin before smoothing over the bite with a gentle kiss and a flick of my tongue. His groan felt like it erupted from his entire body, and it tickled my lips as I freed a hand to tug at his shirt collar. Moving closer to his collarbone, I nipped at him harder, eliciting a small gasp from his lips. As I pressed my lips against his shoulder his fingers tightened around my neck. Translating the reaction as positive, I moved my legs so that I could slip down his body easier and continued to pull at his shirt so my lips could reach his chest.

His metal hand grabbed my legs, forcing them back into their original position and his flesh hand firmly pulled my mouth from his skin. I pouted as he pressed his forehead against mine and gave me a quick peck. “Doll, I think we should get back to reading,” he murmured, his breath ghosting against my lips.

Straightening against him, I pulled my hands and face from his, and sat back, “Sorry, I-, I got caught up in the moment.”

“Don’t apologize,” he cut in, his thumb brushing over my bottom lip. “Your lips, your mouth, that felt amazing but I think it’s best I take things, uh, slower.” Nodding into his hand, I planted a small kiss on his palm, causing him to grin. The crinkles around his eyes made my heart race and my stomach do somersaults.

Planting one more tender kiss on his lips, I swung my legs away from his and tucked them underneath me before I picked up the book. As I paged back through to find where I’d left off, Bucky pulled me into his side, wrapping his arm around my waist. I rested my head on his shoulder as I read the rest of the passage, and we stayed cuddled on the couch until he decided to leave. His goodbye was nowhere near as passionate as our brief hallway make out, but it was emotional and warm, and his way of letting me know how much he cared about me.

Someone was screaming.

I bolted up from my bed, breath coming quick from being startled. A thud came from the floor above me, and then another loud shout. It sounded scared but angry, and as more thuds came from Bucky’s apartment I figured out who was screaming. In a wave of panic I hopped out of bed, searching for a pair of shorts and shoes to slide on. I grabbed my keys and a kitchen knife before I rushed up the stairs.

Pounding on his door with an open palm, I slipped the handle of the knife behind my back in the waistband of my shorts. When no one answered I hit the door even harder, needing any kind of answer. Did Hydra find him and take him? Was he fighting a group of their agents now? Was Bucky already dead?

Just as my hand came down on the wood again the door whipped open. Bucky’s eyes, gray and haunted, met mine before checking the hallway behind me. As he shifted his focus back to me, I heard what sounded like a metal clashing against the ground and his flesh arm signaled for me to come inside. The second his defensive posture wavered, I threw myself at him. Hands gripping his face, I inspected every inch of his flesh I could see in the tiny amount of light that leaked through his windows.

“Are you okay?” I whispered, feeling his warm fingers rest against my shoulder. He nodded, only half of his face visible from the light. “Did someone find you?”

The graveness of his features shifted to surprise as he answered, “No.” Letting out a deep breath, I took a step back, letting relief flood my limbs. “What would you do if I had been found?”

I could have laughed at that question. Obviously I wasn’t a weapons trained super soldier, but I’d taken enough self-defense classes to help a little. Pulling the knife from my shorts, I waved it in the light for him to see it glint before I dropped it on the floor behind me, “I would have fought for you.”

A small yet proud smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, but he refused to enjoy my confession. “I’m fine, it was just a bad dream. You can go back to your apartment.”

“A dream had you screaming like that?” I moved to him, resting my hands on his shoulders. “That must have been a different kind of nightmare.”

“It was.” He took another step away from me, trying to keep distance between us. As he stepped through another crack of light I caught that he was only wearing a white t-shirt and boxers. I’d never seen his metal arm higher than just above his wrist, but it shined in the light and I reached for it. “Don’t,” he warned, pulling away from me.

“Bucky, what’s wrong?” I asked, keeping my distance as a chill crept down my spine. I crossed my arms, trying to hold onto a shred of warmth.

“Nothing, I just think you should go.”

“I’m not going anywhere, you just woke up screaming.” I stared him down, needing him to react, to just say something. “And I’m not moving until you tell me why you’re acting like this.”

He shifted in the light, his clenched jaw and metal arm becoming visible. “Don’t make me move you,” he warned, his voice was nearly a growl.

“I’d like to see you try, babe,” I snapped back, his metal hand tightened into a fist at the pet name. I stood still, watching as his feet spread apart, his body preparing for an attack, except I wasn’t going to make the first move and we both knew that.

He moved quickly and light on his feet, but I anticipated his actions. His right hand reached out for my shoulder and I swatted it away while extending my other hand out to keep him back. With an open palm, I pressed against his chest gently and watched as his face changed for only a second, shifting to a pained expression at my touch. His metal arm stayed down, fist clenched, and we both knew he wouldn’t raise it to me. The hand I’d swatted away pushed against my elbow before it pressed against my back, pulling me to him. I placed both my hands against him, attempting to create distance between us. Being this close wouldn’t allow me to think clearly. His arm tightened, as if he was going to lift me off the ground, but I dug my heel into his foot, throwing off his balance. Pushing against him hard, I forced him to tumble to the ground. He grunted as he fell, but his grip never loosened around me and I yelped out “shit” as I crashed with him.

He scrambled to pin me but he still refused to use his metal arm, so I took my advantage and used my legs to pin him. My feet hooked around his knees, my hips holding down his torso, and yanking at his flesh hand quickly, I moved it above his head. He tried to shift under me but I continued to force all my weight against his lower half, fully aware that the majority of his strength was kept in his upper body. Yet he couldn’t flip me over if he couldn’t move his hips.

But I also knew that even his wiggling to get out from under me was half-assed. If he’d intended to do damage he would have flipped me over his head using both arms or incapacitated me with a metal hand wrapped around my throat. “Bucky, tell me what’s wrong,” I begged, hovering close to his face.

He screwed his eyes shut, refusing to let me see him break. “(Y/N),” he sighed shakily.

“Bucky please,” I gave up pinning him and instead moved my hands to his face.

“It’s me,” he whispered as his breath hit my face, hot and uneven. He opened his eyes as his jaw set in a hardline. “I’m what’s wrong.” His hand gripped my hip, pushing me off of him, before he stood up swiftly and turned his back to me.

I staggered to my feet, trying to understand what he meant. He rested his hands against the counter, his shoulders hunching. “They, they put all this shit in my head. They made me a tool, a killing machine and it’s still in me.” He turned to face me, a hand knotted in his hair. “It’s all still here, and I can’t get rid of it. It doesn’t matter that I know who I am again, the asset is still me.”

“I don’t care about that,” I spoke as I moved towards him, taking his face in my hands, shifting his head so that he would look at me. “That’s not who you are now, that’s what you were forced to be then.”

“I killed you,” he whispered, his gaze holding mine, tears pooling in his eyes. “That’s why I was screaming, I killed you in my dream. And if somehow I lose control, if I become that thing again, I can’t bear the thought of hurting you.”

I stood on my toes and gripped his chin so he’d look at me as I spoke. “You won’t hurt me because that’s not you anymore. What you were doesn’t matter to me, only who you are now. That’s the person I love.” 

The words slipped out before I could fully comprehend what I was saying, but once they hung in the air between us, I knew I meant every word. His eyes went wide and lips fell open, causing nerves to rise from my gut. I pulled my hands from him, “I’m sorry, that was too soon. I-, I shouldn’t have said that-.”

This time he cut me off, his flesh hand grabbing my elbow and pulling me back to him. My eyes met his and for the first time that night, the Bucky who’d cuddled with me three nights ago came through. “I-, I think I love you too.” His hand cradled my cheek, and as I smiled at him he pulled me closer.

He kissed me softly and slowly, as though he was trying to savor the moment. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders, deepening the kiss. He took his mouth from mine too quickly, “This doesn’t change the fact that I’m still a partially brainwashed assassin.”

“No it doesn’t, but you’re not going to hurt me, babe.” Nudging his nose with my own, I kept my hands together behind his head, keeping him close to me.

“But I could kill you if something happened,” his voice grew louder, his fear continuing to claw at him.

“I’d be more than willing to go that way,” I joked, trailing my lips against his jaw softly, trying to soothe him. Instead it only made him more worried.

“Don’t say that.”

“Bucky,” I whispered, taking one of my hands from his neck to hold his face to mine. “You can worry all you want, but I’m not going to.” He opened his mouth, about to complain again but I didn’t let him get a word in. “Please just shut up and kiss me.”

He hesitated for only second before he kissed me again. Unlike his earlier efforts to be tender and move slowly, his mouth worked hungrily against mine. Tracing the edge of my bottom lip with his tongue, I moaned into his. His hand slid to my hip, grasping me against him. I knotted a hand into his loose hair, tugging on it carefully as I pushed my own tongue past his lips. His response was to dig his fingers into my flesh, inadvertently pushing the hem of my shirt up and sending tingles throughout my entire body.

Slowly maneuvering me so that we were closer to his bed, I felt his metal shoulder shift under my elbow, and his cold hand ghosted over my lower back. He wouldn’t touch me with it, but I was well past fearing any part of him. I ran my fingers down his spine before grasping his metal wrist in my hand. He pulled away from my mouth and before he could object I reassured him, “I’m not afraid of this. You’re in control now.” I pressed his hand against my skin. “You can touch me, use this to your advantage,” I whispered near his ear. I tugged on his earlobe with my teeth before kissing the skin directly below it. I shifted, speaking against the side of his mouth, “You’re not gonna break me.”

His lips met mine clumsily, kissing only my top lip before moving to my bottom one. His scruff scratched my skin as his lips pressed against my cheek and then my jaw. The metal arm wrapped around my body, moving lower with every brush of his lips down my neck. His arm settled just below my ass, fingers gripping my thigh. Lips and beard ghosted my collarbone and I let out a breathy whimper as his teeth sunk into my skin.

“Wrap your legs around me,” he instructed, his arm lifting me off the ground. His flesh hand held my chest against him, and I widened my hips, allowing his torso to push between my legs. As I clenched my legs around him, hooking my ankles together to keep myself in place, his metal hand left my body. He took a few steps, moving us closer to his bed, and bracing myself on his shoulders I hoisted myself higher against him. His flesh fingers slipped under the back of my shirt as his metal arm stretched out past my body. Our mouths reconnected as our bodies began to tilt, and I gasped as I realized we were falling. Not a second later we stopped moving, a metallic thud sounding next to my head.

Lowering us against his mattress, I grinned up at him, turning my head to see he’d used his arm to catch our weight. “See, that was good.” He returned my smile, holding my face with his warm fingers, while his cool ones flattened against my thigh.

Pressing his hips against mine I pulled his mouth down, taking his sharp gasp from my lips as I dug my nails into his back. My fingers slipped down his shirt and I bunched up the material, needing less clothing between us. He separated our mouths to help me yank his shirt over his head, and as he threw it to the floor, I outlined the planes of his chest with my fingers. He always felt so firm and warm under his clothes, but without his usual layers, his skin burned against mine setting the sparks already running through my body on fire.

Metal fingertips massaged my hip as his flesh hand inched beneath my shirt, skimming my side and brushing against my bralette. His tongue pushed past my lips and I tightened my legs around him. Smiling against his lips, I rolled him onto his back. I tugged my tank top over my head and tossed it to the side before I traced the outline of his abs with my nails. Accidentally tickling him forced a giggle from his lips, bouncing me slightly as his stomach moved.

The way the light illuminated his grin set a bittersweet pang off in my heart, reminding me this was my last week in Bucharest. He was so beautiful, so sweet and gentle, so lonely and cautious. He’d been a prisoner for more of his life than not. Beaten, experimented on, and forced to commit murder against his will, yet he was still kind hearted. I cupped his cheek in my hand, thumb brushing his lips as he stared up at me with adoration. The moment felt perfect, and I knew this was the Bucky I’d always keep with me.

His metal hand rubbed against my thigh as his flesh hand ran over my side. “You’re so soft,” he whispered, giving me a gentle squeeze with his hands. If we hadn’t discussed it, I was sure he would have taken his hands off me in fear.

“And you’re not,” I answered as I sunk my fingers into his bicep and his pecs. “I think that’s a good thing.”

Leaning up to my mouth to kiss me, he agreed, “It’s a great thing.” And as his lips pulled me down to him, his hands moved my hips against his, creating friction between our already heated limbs. He groaned into my mouth, sending a chill of excitement up my spine. As much as I loved sweet and careful Bucky, I was more than ready to meet aroused and needy Bucky. After grinding a figure eight against his already hard bulge, I trailed my lips to his scruff, his neck, and finally his chest. I nipped at his skin as I ran a knuckle under the waistband of his boxers. An excited gasp left his lips, only encouraging me to move further south. As I kissed and licked his stomach, I started tugging his underwear down.

His flesh hand knotted in my hair as his metal one grasped at my hand. He guided my face back up to his and my hand away from his cock. My brows furrowed as he kissed me softly. “Do you want to do this, babe?” I asked as I kept my face close to his. Nodding against my cheek, his beard scratching at my skin, felt like an answer to me but he kept me away from his lower body.

“Yes, badly,” he breathed, nudging my nose with his own. “But I think the part of me who needs you right now is the James from before the war and the impulses of the asset. And they’re not in charge anymore, I am.” He spoke against my cheek, “My body desperately wants this, but my heart’s telling me to wait. I don’t think I’m ready yet.”

“Okay,” I nodded, moving both my hands to his chest. “I don’t want to do anything you don’t want me to.”

His hand reached for mine, holding it to his mouth as he kissed my palm, “Thank you.” I inched my body away from his and then swung my leg away from him, allowing me to lay at his side. He kissed me gently again, as if I’d shatter any second and he’d wake up from a dream. I kissed him back, slowly and softly, hoping he could feel how happy I was to just be with him. His fingers found my hips and he rolled me onto my side so my back was against his chest and he could hold me. I helped him close the distance, but felt his hard on press against my ass.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to help you out here?” I rested my hand on his hip, giving it a squeeze so he’d understand what I meant.

He chuckled into my shoulder, “Doll, you don’t need to worry about it. This is not the first awkward erection I’ve had, and it’ll go away.” I nodded, feeling his forehead rest against neck as his right arm hooked around my waist. Yet, the more I tried to relax, the less I was able to ignore it.

“Roll over,” I instructed, letting a deep sigh out.

“What?”

“Just roll over.” After a moment of hesitation, he did as I asked. I slipped an arm under his pillow and another around his torso. I pressed a kiss on his neck, and then his shoulder where his scar tissue remained from his accident and his prosthetic. “See, this works.”

His metal hand rested over my hand on his waist, “Yeah, it does.”

As his body relaxed into mine and his breathing evened out, I knew he felt safe. And I felt more at home than I’d felt in months. 

It was all because of him.

Tags: @irishdancr24 @suz-123 @fangirlisms-22 @lostboyinneverland

[thirstyfortom]

How would do the RFA +V + Unknown react to MC being an journal keeper, she's been writing down her thoughts and the day's happenings in her journal. This happened since she was very young so there a huge stack of journals in her room. And her new journal entries is almost most of the time about her feelings for them, their sweet moments together and how much she loves and treasures them. Plus MC writes like a true novelist.

Such an interesting request! I hope I did justice to it! ^^

RFA + Saeran and V react to MC being a journalkeeper

TW: Mentions of LGBTQphobia and depression

Zen

When you moved in together, you brought this huge box filled with notebooks

Noticing his curiosity, you tell him these are your old journals, you have one for each year of your life since you’re 10.

He thinks it’s adorable, and he’s so curious! How were you like during your teenage years?

You’re so embarrassed to show him, so you pick the ones you consider slightly decent, when you were 18 and the hormones weren’t taking control of your mind anymore

When he starts reading, he’s shocked: did an 18 years old girl really write this? It sounds like those really good monologues he’s only seen on cult theatre pieces.

Seriously, just say the word and he’ll introduce you to producers and make all your thoughts turn into a musical, a TV show, maybe a movie! Easy there, Zen…

And if he wasn’t impressed enough, he sees the most recent journal, and it’s filled with sweet things about him, like, not even himself could think of this kind of sweet things to tell you.

The way you describe him, not only his looks, but all of his features, even the ones that aren’t that good… it’s so passionate, yet so honest.  Not even a narcissist like him sees himself as highly as you do.

He doesn’t understand why you would keep these sweet words only to yourself, but won’t pressure you, he knows you are really good at showing your affection, as it is vividly described on that page you tell about the first time you two made love.

Yoosung

He tried keeping journals, but they all ended forgotten somewhere

So he really admires your care for your journals, he wish he could be like that

He’s a little curious about your high school crushes, he would love to see the way you describe them, he would feel a little jealous, but he really wants to meet you as a teenager in love.

But when you show him… he feels… futile? Because it’s all so deep and meaningful, and it’s filled with intricate thoughts about your relationship with your parents, things he could never think by himself…

There’s a brief mention about a guy you dated, but he feels how meaningless it was and how he was clearly not that into you by the way you describe it, and now he hates this guy so much!

When it comes to him, he’s legitimately crying for the way you write him. He thought he was in despair when he hurt his eye? Now he knows your agony, and it’s so… painful.

And when he reads about your first date, he’s giggling so much, as if he is reading some comic book about another person, like he wasn’t even there.

Also, he feels a little stupid for not understanding some passages, like this one you wrote a couple of weeks ago. He shyly asks and shyly he stays when you explain you’re describing an orgasm. “Seriously…? I… I… did all this to your body? Whoa…”

Jaehee

She thought about having journals, she had so much to express! However, so little time to actually do it…

So she’s impressed about your diligence, since, generally, you’re not that organized about things (and that’s just one of the things you hate in yourself, but she freaking loves it!)

She knows how personal these things can be, and it’s totally okay if you don’t want her to read. When you say you don’t really mind, she can hold back her enthusiasm…  yes, she really wanted this, she just wouldn’t admit it.

The one with your last year of high school draws her attention immediately, since it looks like is the one with most written pages.

And she quickly understands why when she starts reading it. So much worries about the future, not even her was so concerned about her own future like you sounded there.

Thoughts that almost every young person has, but the way you describe it makes it feel like it’s something so different, as if your doubts and insecurities were so unique…

She cries when she gets to the part you tell how you were dragged out of the closet as bisexual when a girl you trusted told the whole neighborhood about it.

And then it comes to when you met, the way you describe every chat you had on the app, every thought you had beneath every word you send… she knew how much it meant for both of you, but this was on a whole another level now.

She blushes reading the way you describe her and touches you, but what really makes her heart flutter is the description about the first time you tasted a cup of coffee made by her… seriously, it’s just… too much!

She feels so inspired after that. Maybe now she has a lot more of free time, she could start writing her own journal? There’s a lot about you she needs to learn how to put in words…

Jumin

Well, a journal could be a great help for him during all those years, now he knows that.

So he’s glad at least you didn’t have to struggle so much like he did

He won’t say it loud, but he’s curious! Soooooo curious! You can see it on his eyes, so you allow him to take a look, his soft smile giving away how much he wanted you to allow it…

He loves it, he wants to take all the journals out of the box and put them on his personal library.

He also wants to introduce you to publishers and editors, he’ll do whatever it takes for you to be a best-seller. Jumin, please chill

If he had tangled knots inside his heart, you were apparently trapped on thick ropes of problems. The way you describe your parent’s divorce and how it affected most of your teenage years make him ache deep inside. You’ve come a long way…

He’s afraid of reading about himself, especially those long and confusing three days he locked you up in his penthouse…

And yes, you’re very honest about how scared you were, but only because you knew that confused and anxious guy wasn’t the man you’ve fallen in love with, and the way you describe your love for him… he had no idea it was this overwhelming.

He loves the way you write your interactions with Elizabeth the 3rd, and can’t hold back a grin when he reads your description about the first time you had sex.

Now everytime you two start getting heated, he tells you he’ll give you enough material for your journal…

Saeyoung

He dug all he could during your background check, except for that private blog (which wasn’t private for him if he didn’t want to)

He knew how personal it was, so he wouldn’t dare to dig on that. No… if he knows something, is about letting some thoughts only to yourself.

But when you tell him he can read if he wants, he quickly changes his mind. This is the closest he ever gonna get to hack into you.

He wants to print everything and turns into books he can hang at his personal library, “The Expert Playboy” would gain such a more refined and delicate company in that shelf.

Or make this public and monetize it somehow, because you deserve earning money on this, it’s… all… so… good!

The funny parts are HILARIOUS, your writing is so on point about embarrassing situations, he feels as if it happened to him. You should write scripts for sitcoms, you have this amazing ability to turn trivial situations into witty jokes, the type of jokes he would never be able to think of it.

And the sad things, your mother’s death… he never could care about his mother the way you did for yours, but somehow… he feels extremely sympathetic.

When it comes to him… he’s blushing. Your description about his hair and eyes… god, it’s basically a thesis on why it’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen.

And he feels guilty all over again reading about the way he pushed you away, but then again… you turned this into a bittersweet kind of thing, mixing comedy and tragedy in a way only someone like you could do it.

He cries when you describe the moment he found Saeran, he wasn’t this thrilled not even when the actual thing happened back then.

He’s blushing so much when you compare the first orgasm he gave you to the mixture of salty and sweet taste of Honey Budha Chips and Dr. Pepper… because he feels exactly the same way.

Saeran

He actually is keeping one because of therapy, so he asks you for help.

But he had no idea how in love you are for this, you’re more excited than him about his own journal.

He’s not sure if he really wants to read your teenage girl whining about boys and prom, but he really wants to know how to do this!

When he starts reading it… he’s addicted to it. You catch him binge reading all of them all the time.

You’re so sarcastic! Everything in your life seemed so bittersweet, he’s rooting for you to ditch the asshole you were dating and find happiness on yourself, because you’re so great! And he celebrates when finds you actually did!

He’s reading this and imagining as if it was a TV show… a very cliché one, but still, the kind of cliché you can’t take your eyes off!

He wishes he could deal with his problems the way you did, you were so screwed when your found about your father’s second family, yet… here you are, this amazingly sweet and bright person dealing with struggle with so much fierceness and kindness

When you told him that you were never scared of him, he didn’t believe it. Reading on the journal, he starts to believe.

He’s embarrassed when he reads about himself, you portray him as this adorable anti-hero, and he doesn’t think he deserves it, your description about his eyes makes him shiver…

Feels really good about the way you describe sex with him, and when you wrote it’s like all the flavors of ice cream combined, he’s gone!

V

I guess he has sight for this one

He used to have a dream journal, and stopped when most of the dreams were about Rika

He admires your commitment to write every day, even when apparently nothing special happened.

But when he gets to read it, he understands: your writing make every day sound special and amazing.

He gets more and more mesmerized at every page, he pictures the scenes on his mind, putting himself at your place. It takes a lot of talent to transport people to your own universe with just some words well put together, and you have this talent!

Personally, your descriptions about first times are the most impressive ones, the first time you saw snow, your first date with your first boyfriend, the first time you touched yourself…  he almost can feel what you felt.

And the struggles and self-loathing, dealing with depression with a family who doesn’t seem to understand you were sick… he feels your pain on his own skin and mind.

He’s so flattered about the way you see him. Is his voice that soothing? His eyes that beautiful? He wishes he could see the world through your eyes, his photos would be even better with such a unique and sweet vision like yours.

He was impressed about the first time you touched yourself, just imagine when he got to the part about sex with him. Your words seem like little magic spells, hypnotizing more and more.