#The Bible tells many of its followers to go fuck themselves

[marlowe1-blog]

Job Chapter 22

Eliphaz the Temanite gets nasty

A few years ago, I was writing a story where religious fanatics participate in a genocide and before they start, they spend the night talking about Eliphaz the Temanite. At the time, I was unfamiliar with this guy. He was just one of those Bible characters that pops up in trivia questions. In the story, he was a worldbuilding tool. The story takes place in the future where not only is there a group that practices three way marriages in regards to the trinity, but there's a currently obscure Bible character who becomes as famous as King David or Jesus. At least for these awful people.

In retrospect, I'm even more happy to have included that detail (hell, maybe I'll sell the story one of these days) because Eliphaz is nasty. His first message to Job was the ever shitty "Everything happens for a reason" followed by a tone deaf "the wicked will suffer, just you wait" and now because Job has annoyed him, he outright tells Job that he's wicked.

So here's how it starts. "Can a man be of use to God, A wise man benefit Him?" (JPS). Other translations read that second line as a wise man benefiting himself. Either way, this is a very strange way to start the argument. Eliphaz is saying that God doesn't care either way if you are righteous. Give money to the orphans. Apologize to your aunt for that thing you did. See a stranger's gofundme and just give them money even though you don't like them? Good for you. God doesn't get much out of it, but good for you.

So it seems like Eliphaz is saying that Job shouldn't be so concerned with his righteous deeds, but if he really wants to think of himself as righteous, he can fuck off because Job also exacted pledges, calls in debt, refuses to give food to the hungry, etc.

Eliphaz doesn't know if he's telling the truth, but going by the average behavior, sure he probably is telling the truth. I mean who gives money to every homeless person who asks for it? Do you grow your own food? Eliphaz is working off Good Place rules where every infraction (intentional or unintentional) is a point taken away and another reason to end up in the Bad Place (only there's really no after life in this book. All the afterlife stuff comes when Xianity co-opts it).

"A flood of waters covers you" (11) which seems like a reference to the Flood. Certainly several of the commentators saw it in this way. Which brings us to God being lofty and the insinuation that Job saying that God seemed to be ignoring everyone meant that he didn't think that God was paying attention.

God's away. God's away. God's away on business.

So part 2 of this harangue seems like a departure from "surely you did something wrong, and I know that you aren't feeding all the widows that ask for bread" and gets right into the God is lofty and runs the world in a just way. Just look at the older wicked generations. They didn't believe that God had anything to do with them (deists! We got some deists in this book) and look what happened. They didn't appreciate anything and boom, they got consumed with fire.

So Eliphaz has reference the Flood and Sodom. Damn, Eliphaz, it's like you know this book enough to be making references.

Part three is the sermon. Yeah, I know. You're a wicked sinner. God is big and powerful and smashes the wicked sinners. But part three is the "be close to him and wholehearted and good things will come" These are all just promises of how things will be great when Job "returns" to Shaddai. Job should disregard silver and ophir gold and only regard God as treasure.

Then you will pay your vows, and feel the light of God and everything will be brilliant. Isn't that nice? Even Job will be cleansed of his guilt.

Seriously, Eliphaz the Temanite sounds like the worst kind of Christian (or Muslim or Jew, but you see a lot more of this chatter in Christianity) with the GUILT GUILT GUILT you must have done something wrong all pushed on the person. And only by accepting this GUILT will you be able to see how God is AMAZING and how you'll be totally happy.

This kind of thinking has fucked up so many people. Hell, I even got hung up on this bullshit in my 20s after breaking up with a long term girlfriend and finally getting serious about becoming Jewish only ending up in a community that was very concerned with conformity and self-righteousness and wearing the uniform. I was suddenly ashamed of everything that I had ever done in my life.

Not the usual shame and guilt that I had as a child trying to negotiate Mom's moods and her neediness and the fact that she put everything on me at a young age to where I was trying to take care of her long before I could take care of myself (and convincing myself that love should be painful to be worthwhile. I was so stupid) but that certainly prepared me for the rightwing Orthodox Judaism I was trying to go along with.

But this isn't just a religious thing. One of the scariest chapters in Mao's biography is when he had all of his followers "confess their sins" repeatedly and also inform on their fellow Communists. After months of this treatment, lively intelligent idealists became brainwashed foot soldiers, unwilling to think anything that might be "counterrevolutionary" and that's only an extreme example of one type of thinking. I worry more about tankies than i do about fascists, only because I'm leftwing and even a socialist when I don't see what other Socialists are saying about Jews, religious Jews or Zionists.

Eliphaz the Temanite is a shithead. He's a fucking evil bastard who is trying to make Job feel like shit before telling Job that there is hope. That's the brainwashing way. It goes easier if the people coming to the cult are already messed up and insecure, but whatever self-worth they might have must be destroyed before they can be "built up" into whatever their abusers want them to be.

Of course, abused spouses experience this on a smaller scale. And one of the things that domestic violence centers hear is "I don't really think I need your services because they aren't that bad..." but then tell about the relationship in a way that let's everyone but them know that they really are that bad.

One criticism of Christianity is that a God who is so angry at people that he sends them to eternal damnation UNLESS they believe exactly the same way that he wants them to believe is an abusive husband. That's not entirely true, but I'm sure it's true enough to hurt (just like when I told a friend that Wiccans are just white people who saw Dances with Wolves one too many times).

But as far as Eliphaz the Temanite is concerned, God really is that kind of abusive prick. Eliphaz truly is taking his last shot at destroying Job's faith in himself and his perspective and sense of self-worth in order to make him completely dependent on God, particularly the God that Eliphaz envisions.

Thankfully Job tells Eliphaz to fuck off again. And happily, Eliphaz really does fuck off. This is Eliphaz's last speech in the book. At least that's what Wikipedia told me.

[ithisatanytime]

xavier wulf - pedals to the metal(slowed)

“ there is no longer gentile or jew, man nor woman, for all are one in christ jesus”

this is a bible quote you will be hearing a lot about in the coming days, let me give you some context though, paul unlike many of the other apostles was not a close personal friend of jesus, paul was literally a pharisee who persecuted and killed christians, that bit of acts that i shared the other day where a “certain synagogue” makes trouble for stephen and stephen hits them with the truth do you remember that? well they killed stephen not long after those quoted passages and paul, or saul back then, was among them and picked up stephens cloak personally after they murdered him, he encountered an apparition of christ on the road to damascus and the rest is history. for a thousand years or more, the hebrews were gods chosen people, of whom paul belonged (or so he thought) and then jesus came along and said to their faces “ye are not of abraham”and they killed him about it, thats where paul is coming from when he says “theres no longer gentile or jew but all are one in christ jesus” he was himself a so called jew, christ had JUST come and said basically that these were NOT jews and he came for the lost sheep of the house of israel who were considered at that time gentiles, they were unaware of their true identity BUT they still followed christ because his sheep know to follow his voice. that is the context, so its like if the jews were japanese instead lets say the japanese were gods chosen people and he sent his emmisary to earth to say the high priests arent even japanese anymore they are korean, in fact its so bad i have to go to korea and china to find unmixxed japanese whos parents were taken in exile hundreds of years ago, theyve remained pure and kept my commandments, now as a japanese high priest this would be upsetting to say the least, you might even kill this mans followers for a time, but then he appears to you from beyond the dead and says “takeshi why do you persecute me so?” then you might say there is no longer japanese or korean but all are one in christ jesus.

 to ignore the racial component of the bible is to read the book with your eyes fucking closed, it is interlaced throughout the entirety of the bible and anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is a fucking liar, dont believe me? read it yourself! that being said, there is no longer gentile or jew and all are one in christ jesus, and his sheep will be known BY THEIR FRUITS, which ought to be love at the very least. race is very important (obviously) but if there is real genuine love in your heart than you are gods own. but if there no longer be gentiles or jews, than who are these people who claim to be jews? it will never get that far, that quote will only be used as a prybar to separate gods people from the truth, but the fact of the matter is paul himself had a great deal to say about these so called jews, that they were contrary (enemy) to all mankind, that they persecuted the early christians constantly, they are LITERALLY the thorn in pauls side ive heard the thorn called everything but what it is, even implications that the thorn was pauls homosexuality, lmao go read it for yourself it is LITERALLY the so called jews attacking him constantly, and paul says that there be a BLOOD CURSE on them forever for killing the christ and furthermore in revelation it says “beware them who say they are jews but are not, but do lie and are the synagogue of satan” it says it TWICE almost verbatim in the very last book of the bible thats meant to prophesy far into the future.

  i know it can be hard to know what to believe about the bible, but notice i am CONSTANTLY encouraging people to read it for themselves or posting entire chapters of context at a time, something they will not do because they are liars and when they lie they speak of their own.

[pleasantanathema]

Pleasant’s Writer Recs!

I’ve gotten a few asks in my inbox over the past few weeks asking me for writer recs, so I thought the best way to do this was to compile a list of my fav authors on tumblr and rec my favorite fic of theirs! A lot of these amazing authors are moots—I’m very lucky to call many of them close friends. This list could be much longer, and I could go on for days about every single author, but I’ll try to keep it brief. Most all of these authors, like myself, write 18+ only content. Hopefully this can be a useful tool for authors and readers alike looking for amazing fanfic 💕

@bakatenshii | Angel is so phenomenal with her writing that I almost can’t put her style and amazing ability into words (but I’ll try). Angel’s work is beautiful, masterful, full of poetry, elegance, and smut that will all leave you gasping. Fav Fic: Blitz [Ushijima x Reader]

@blahkugo | Sunnt, Thunnth, Sunny, whatever you call her, she is brilliant. No one writes Tsukishima quite like she does. She is beyond creative and her writing style flows like the sexiest water, it’ll make you thirsty and quench your aches. Fav Fic: Tower [Tsukishima x Reader]

@deathcab4daddy | Tay is all about details, details, details. She fills in every gap and paints gorgeous, sexy pictures and situations for the reader to feel immersed in. Fav Fic: Cerulean Blue [Akaashi x Reader]

@dymphnasprose | Dymphna is all about fun, sex, and slowly filling out her holy bible of smut. She’s amazing at creating realistic sub/dom relationships and her smut almost always comes with a healthy dose of build-up. Fav Fic: Green Scrunchies [Ukai x Reader]

@enjifuckersupreme | Ketsl reigns supreme over pure, unadulterated porn. They are phenomenal at making me the reader wet, and every fic is crafted with so much care. Enji fuckers should bow down at their feet, no one loves and writes Enji like Ketsl. Fav Fic: Attitude Adjustment [Enji x Reader]

@hisoknen | Raph is one of the first dark blogs I ever started reading, and she never, ever disappoints. She writes pieces that chill you to the bone, but warms your sex- her writing is casual, smooth, and realistic, always giving you everything you need, but leaving you wanting a little more. Fav Fic: Sleeping Beauty [Dabi x Reader]

@hoe-doroki | Ana is one of the sweetest writers I know. Every time I talk to her, she’s working on comfort requests or beta-reading for other people. Her writing is such a pleasure to read, as you can tell she pours love and consideration into every fic for her readers. Fav Fic: Can’t Find My Breath [Bakugou x Reader]

@joyousandverywarlike | Zo...holy fucking shit. Zo is a writer who consistently blows me out of the water with her skill. This woman is a novelist blessing us with juicy, rich smut and love stories like no one else can. She is incredibly poetic and her writing is an absolute joy to read; she also writes amazing fics for black readers and has an amazing voice that she uses for asmr audios! Fav Fic: How We Met [Ushijima x Reader]

@lemonlordleah-shinzawa-kitten | Leah is an author who takes immense care with her work. She works incredibly hard to craft sexy, healthy bdsm fics for bnha. She is a great blog to go to for bdsm education, and she’s also got a side blog @lemonlordleah-extra-sour for all you extra naughty readers who like the darker side of fanfic. You should also check out her Patreon! Fav Fic: Between the Evergreen [Aizawa x Reader]

@linestrider | Nyki’s work is like smooth water, it’s calming, refreshing, but she also adds a nice, chill bite to it as well with her darker style. Nyki puts such an impressive amount of care into her work; a word is never out of place, every sentence has meaning, every paragraph gives you something new. It was very hard to choose just one fic to recommend. Fav Fic: What’s Said is Said [Hawks x Reader]

@lookslikeleese | Leese is one of the most fun writers on Tumblr, and by that I mean you just have a shitload of fun reading her fics. They are like little, sexy treats to take in right before bed and feel a little more full than you were before. She is also the Cucking Queen. Fav Fic: Cola [Enji x Reader] 

@messwriting | Lee is also another fun writer! Her writing is exhilarating to read, and you’d never guess she’s a sexy Brazilian whose second language is English based on how well she writes. She’s a little sex goddess who will give you everything you want and more in every fic. Fav Fic: What We Could’ve Been [Tsukishima x Reader]

@mindninjax | Marquie is a full on sweetie with a sexy side. She. Is. So. Creative. Every fic of hers is so unique and her masterlist is a whole reading experience. She writes Bakugou Katsuki so damn well, she’s a master at characterization, even in au’s. She also writes beautiful fics for black readers. Fav Fic: Bound to You [Bakugou x Reader]

@nekokoafanfictions | I first found Ai on Ao3, and then was fortunate enough to come across their blog here on Tumblr! I’ve said this before in previous rec lists, and I’ll say it again, I still read their fics some nights to fall asleep to, they are just that good, every fic will have you coming back at some point to read it again. Fav Fic: City Lights [Enji x Reader]

@present-mel | The. Queen. Of. Dialogue. Mel is a master at making her fanfic feel real, gritty, sexy, and beautiful all at the same time. This woman pours her heart and soul into fanfic, especially into her Erwin series Fragments of Memories. I was so captivated by her work that I just had to become her friend, her work is enchanting and thrilling. Fav Fic: Until the Fire Played [Enji x Reader]

@rat-suki | Annie makes me horny. Like, real horny. Her smut is fantastic and are often little thrill rides within themselves. Fuck rollercoasters, just go to Annie’s masterlist to find a joy ride. Fav Fic: Hell Fire [Enji x Reader]

@rivendell101 | I’m such a big fan of Alisha, that I sent her a request months ago before we even became friends. This author knows how to craft a story, her work is very meticulous with details and her plots are always so spot on. Fav Fic: Sweet Thing [Natsuo x Reader]

@smutbardpeach | Smutbard is the most accurate title for Peach, as her fics read like poetry and song, filled with beautiful language, imagery, and allusions to the brim. If you’re ever looking for something romantic, sensual, delightful, and just overall magnificent to read, this is the blog to go to. Peach’s work is like reading poetry and classics right off the shelf. Fav Fic: Truth in Wine [Hizashi x Reader]

@spicyness | Are you thirsty? Do you like fun, sexy headcanons? Ness is the author for you. Ness is so, so fun and sweet, and is active with her followers and is always posting something new and creative for us to nibble at. Her blog is full of fun thirsts and she’s always a joy to see pop-up on my dash. Fav Fic: Pride [Bakugou x Reader]

@sugardaddykenma | Lin has the most amazing brain. I wish I could just...see and understand how she thinks. Her blog is full to the brim with hilarious, iconic, and down right fucking true headcanons for haikyuu characters. Many nights I have stayed up laughing my ass off and saying “why is that so true?” while reading through her astonishingly creative work. Fav Fic: Haikyuu on Drugs

@thewheezingwyvern | Wyv is a writer who gets straight to the point; her words are poignant, meaningful, and always paint a very clear picture. She is a Shinsou and Aizawa lover/fucker all the way to her core, and she’s amazing at bringing those characters to life in her work. Fav Fic: Salt Lines [Aizawa & Shinsou x Reader]

@thisisthehardestthing | Claudia is one of the most talented writers I have ever met. Period. She has a vocabulary, a depth, an ability to craft the most intense, alluring, and magnificent fanfic you’ve ever read. Most of her work doesn’t even seem like fanfic, it reads like love letters stuffed into the pages of a book that stand the test of time with her marvelous writing abilities. She always awes me, as every single fic is unique and powerful it its own way. Fav Fic: Tocka [Tanaka x Reader]

@tomurasprincess | The Queen of Darkness herself, Mari is amazing at fulfilling all of your dark desires. I’ve never met anyone else who is as active as she is with her followers, as she’s constantly pushing herself to answer requests and give people exactly what they want to see. She has such an expansive masterlist, any dark fic lover can find something worthwhile from her! She’s almost made a Shigaraki fucker out of me, almost. Fav Fic: Wraith’s Touch [Shigaraki x Reader]

@undermattsun | Miki taught me what a skate rat is. Do I understand it yet? Not really, but I fucking like it. Miki is so much fun and is always active with her followers, giving out awesome thirsts, visuals, and headcanons for her fav haikyuu characters. Fav Fic: Flavor of the Month [Matsukawa x Reader]

@vixen-scribbles | Vixen is someone who cares about everyone around her, and her blog reflects that. Amongst all her amazing writing, you’ll always find her recommending her friends and supporting other writers. Her writing is fucking sexy, she knows her way around the bedroom when it comes to fics, and she’s got a lengthy masterlist to fawn over. Fav Fic: Take All of Me [Ushijima x Reader]

@whats-her-quirk | Truly, the best has been saved for last. June’s work is the heart and soul of classic, fucking amazing fanfic. I can’t even explain how much I love her fics, like they will put the biggest smile on your face and have your thighs rubbing together in anticipation. June is writing her fantasies and having fun, and we are privileged to enjoy the ride with her. She knocked kinktober out of the fucking park, with each fic being a new, fresh delight. Fav Fic: Once in a Blue Moon [Karasuno x Reader Gangbang]

This list could honestly be twice as long, and perhaps in the future I’ll make a companion to it as I meet new authors and read more amazing fanfic. Please give all these authors a follow or at least check out their blogs. 💖

[little-diable]

A Preacher's Punishment - Preacher James Barnes (smut)

Here we go again, another super filthy Preacher imagine. Hell's awaiting us. Remember that your feedback and your comments are very much appreciated. Enjoy my loves. xxx

Summary: She has always been rebellious and even months after first joining the convent the reader is still a trouble maker. Her case calls for Preacher James Barnes, hopefully his punishment will put her back in her place.

Warnings: 18+, unprotected sex, oral (m), degrading, dom!Bucky, sex with a preacher, wrong use of a bible, religious connotations

Pairing: Preacher!James Barnes x nun!reader (around 3k)

„Don’t you dare look away from me now.” Sister Jane cried out as (y/n) rolled her eyes, trying to shift her weight back onto her toes, away from her aching knees. She had been forced to kneel in front of her, having to apologise for her reckless behaviour, her careless ways.

For months she had been part of the convent, dressed in black and white attires, with a big cross around her neck. (Y/n) detested each morning and evening, having to follow rules she couldn’t care less about, speaking prayers she felt burning on her tongue.

“What shall I do with you?” The sister circled the still kneeling girl, trying to fight against the urge to slap the young woman’s face. But just as her eyes found hers once again, a smile began to tug on her lips, arms falling to her sides.

“I will send you to Preacher Barnes, he will know how to put you back in line.” (Y/n)‘s breath hitched in her throat, saliva pooling in her mouth as she thought of the Preacher she was helplessly crushing on. If anything sister Jane was doing her a favour, allowing her to spend some time alone with him.

With aching knees (y/n) rose from the floor, tugging on her habit. Her mind raced, her palms were getting sweatier, heart jumping in accelerating beats. Would he punish her? Or would he just sit down with her and talk about her wrongdoings?

Her parents had always struggled to keep her in line, forcing her to stay at home, away from alcohol and young boys that could lure her in. But a locked door had never managed to stop her from sneaking out of her home. She had been a regular at parties of her friends, drinking till the morning would bleed red, telling her that it was time to go home.

Though the second police officers had dragged her home with her hands bound together, her parents had snapped. The next morning she had been forced to pack her bags, driving across the country to join a convent of nuns that lived in celibacy.

As (y/n) stepped back into the room she shared with sister May, her eyes fell upon her bag, the one she had tried to hide. Her fingers ached for her to unzip it, to thumb through the lacy panties and bras she had taken with her, not knowing where her parents were driving her to. How naive she had been, bringing her finest clothes to a home filled with women that only dressed in black and white.

Slowly she walked closer, studying the black fabric of her bag, the silvery zipper she wanted to tug on. Before she could stop herself she had opened her bag, smiling at the red lace panties her eyes fell upon. Maybe tonight she could finally wear them, maybe tonight would be her only chance to break free, turning back into the woman she once had been.

Hours later, after a shower and some tea to calm her stomach, she walked behind sister Jane. The red lace she wore stuck to her skin, wrapping itself around her like a warm embrace to keep her warm. She felt adventurous, a rebel nobody could stop from breaking out and running away.

“You will only speak if he allows it, you won’t look at him and you won’t roll your eyes at me. Do you understand?” The sister grasped (y/n)’s chin, waiting for the girl to nod her head, piercing her fingernails into her palm - a simple habit she lived with to stop herself from talking back.

“Please come in.” His soft voice ripped the two women out of their staring contest, eyes meeting his tall frame, the body hidden behind his black suit. Preacher Barnes was undeniably handsome, every nun would dream about him, even the ones that would punish the younger girls for crushing on a man twice their age.

(Y/n) stepped into his office with wobbly knees, she had never seen the room before, had only walked past his office once or twice, wondering what he was doing behind closed doors. She jumped as he placed his hand on her lower back, guiding her to the chair vis-a-vis his.

Sister Jane left the two after shooting another hateful glance (y/n)’s way, hoping that the girl wouldn’t embarrass her and the other nuns.

“Don’t worry about Jane, she has always been a bit harsh. Tea? Coffee?” The preacher turned away from her, giving (y/n) an opportunity to let her eyes wander down his frame, the long legs that carried his broad frame. On instinct her thighs pressed themselves tightly together, trying to stop herself from moaning out in pleasure as her mind began to paint a picture of her laying on his table, legs spread for him to nestle in between.

“Coffee, please.” Heat clashed through her, she would melt away like ice cream on a summer morning, like a burning candle in the heat of the desert. He placed their cups down on the table, settling next to her with a smile on his lips. For a few seconds he studied her with interlaced fingers placed in his lap.

“Tell me something about you, (y/n).” The way he spoke her name left her sweating, low and raspy, though soft and sweet, a written poem in the words only he knew.

“Uhm,” she had to clear her throat, eyes wandering around his room. “I joined the convent in August, I guess my parents couldn’t stay around me any longer.” A pained chuckle left her lips, eyes shamefully sticking to her hands, waiting for the Preacher to speak his mind.

“Do you believe in God?” He took a sip off his coffee, cleaning his lips with his tongue as his gaze burned into her soul. (Y/n) could only shake her head, her mouth felt dry, tongue not able to wet her lips.

“Let me tell you something, doll.” Preacher Barnes leaned back in his chair, combing one hand through his hair. “I have seen more prisons from inside than churches, my rebellious ways have pushed me into misery, just like you. But then I found God and I knew that something better was waiting for me, something worth fighting for.”

The moment felt like a déjà-vu, she had heard those words too many times before, and could swear that they had all studied them, knowing them by heart. Sister Jane’s words rang in her ears as she rolled her eyes in frustration, biting her lip to stop herself from talking back.

His chuckles filled the room, head thrown back. “Just as bratty as sister Jane has told me. Maybe words won’t do the job, stand up for me.”

She followed his command, standing on her feet with quivering limbs. Slowly he rose from his chair, fronts about to touch, (y/n) could smell his cologne, the musky scent that reminded her of the most sinful days she has lived through. His dark eyes ran up and down her body, leaving her waiting for his following order.

“Unbutton your habit.” She didn’t move, hands sticking to her sides, not daring to move even close to the buttons that kept her red underwear hidden. Now she cursed herself for being that stupid, not even a shirt had found its way beneath her habit, too confident and cocky for her own good.

“Do I need to do it for you? Are you that dumb, can’t even unbutton her own clothes.” His breath crashed against her lips, tingling on her skin. She felt her arousal dripping into her panties, wetting the skin with every word he spoke. Preacher Barnes placed a hand on her waist, pulling her even closer to reach the black buttons.

One button after another popped open, exposing more of her red lace, the tits she had pushed together with her tight bra. He clicked his tongue, eyes admiring the view. Since the day he had met her, there had been something simmering deep inside of him, threatening to spill, to fill his every vein and vessel. God was testing him, he was sending the most sinful woman his way, wondering if he would give into the devil’s calling.

“Onto your knees, open on page 225.” He placed the bible down in front of her, falling back in his chair once again. (Y/n), now dressed in only her bra and panties, dropped to her knees, opening the holy book with trembling fingers.

She couldn’t find the page, fingers too sweaty, eyes too glassy to concentrate on the bible. But the Preacher didn’t move, he waited and waited, a sadistic man that found pleasure in her struggling.

“First your habit and now the bible? I guess Jane was right, we need to find something else to shut you up with.” Her eyes followed his hand, down to his trousers, the silvery zip that twinkled in the faint light. It took three long breaths for him to undo his trousers, bulge clearly pressed against his underwear.

(Y/n) wasn’t sure whether to run away and hide or to open her mouth like the greedy girl she was. Her lips parted, exposing her tongue to the chuckling man, ready to swallow him all. But James wasn’t ready to give in just yet, he palmed his cock, stared at her face, the mouth she had opened for his heavy length.

Her eyes screamed at him to fuck her, to fuck her bratty ways right out of her, right on his table. Perhaps he could battle the devil in the dance he’d lure her into, how he would sway her with his cock sitting between her walls, perfectly ripping her in half. She was doing him a favour, was a figure in his play to find redemption.

“You know what you’re doing, that much I have to give you.” James panted, eyes fighting to stay open, holding onto the feeling of his calloused fingers pumping his velvety skin. (Y/n) used his short moment of distraction, pushing the bible closer to his frame, using it as a pillow for her aching knees.

Her hand met his, carefully pushing his fingers away to replace them with her own. For a second she felt lost with his hard length in her grasp, wondering what the hell she was doing on her knees for a preacher, but the moan that spilled from his lips pushed her back into her headspace, lowering her head to run her tongue across his tip.

James’ head rolled back, exposing his neck to her hungry eyes. Slowly she pushed herself down on his cock, trying not to choke around him. He twitched, she panted. (Y/n) hallowed her cheeks for him, pumping what she couldn’t reach with her trembling hands, using his thighs to keep her balance.

“You’re such a needy slut, choking on my dick while kneeling on a bible, there’s nothing I can do for you. You’re lost.” She didn’t pay any attention to his words, kept pushing herself to her limits, trying to swallow around him. Her tongue traced his veins, danced around his girth, trying to tease him for as long as humanly possible.

“And since you’re already lost, I won’t have any problems with doing this.” The tip of his shoe met her chest, pushing her onto her back with a cry falling from her lips. James grasped her hair, tugging on her roots to force her gaze upon his, grinning down on the shuddering girl.

He grasped his cock and kept on pumping his length, growling her name with sweat pearling on his forehead. She could tell that he was close, about to cum with her cowering away on the floor. No dignity was left in her body, not one single drop of confidence, just a puppet thrown away after its owner got bored with her.

His cum met her cheeks and the floor, making a mess on the holy ground, the office he would lock himself into as the devil was calling his name. She opened her mouth, desperate to catch some drops of his release, moaning at the taste.

“Clean the floor for me and then I want you out of my office, our time is over. I will see you next week.”

----

Each following day he would make sure that she would stumble across him, smiling at her with a dark look laced in his gaze. He was testing her, waiting for her to snap, but she didn’t.

(Y/n) kept to herself, not once did she dare talk back, wondering if the other girls had received a similar treatment from him. She even had called out the almighty father’s name, begging him for his guidance, a sign that would tell her what to do.

But the nights stayed dark and the days stayed calm, nothing that could push her onto the right path. She was lost and desperate to be found, no longer could she worry about sneaking out and finding places to explore, she was cowering away in her room, not daring to lift her gaze.

Seven days after their last meeting she found herself in front of him again. Naked without any fabrics hiding her skin from his eyes. James didn’t speak to her, not opening his mouth once as he watched her undress, placing herself on her knees.

He didn’t let go of her head as he pulled her towards his table, tugging her across the floor like a bag he didn’t care about. (Y/n) got pushed down on the table, watching him step out of his black trousers, pumping his already hard cock as he moved closer.

As she called out his name, hoping that he would snap into motion, James spat onto her exposed cunt, watching his saliva run down her folds, pooling on the wooden ground between her legs. Things you would only see in the movies the sisters would blush at naming seemed to be set in motion, primitive things you could only dream of.

“I-” she wanted to ask him for a second to breathe, her head was spinning, lungs burning from her rapid breathing. But the look he shot her seemed to shut (y/n) up, body tingling in anticipation, wondering how a man of God could be that dark and twisted.

“You won’t say a word, I promise if you go against me I won’t let you cum. Sluts like you don’t deserve to have their own will.” Her eyes rolled into her head, she gasped at the feeling of his cock stretching her walls, pounding into her like she was already used to his size.

She whimpered, she cried, she struggled to keep on breathing. James couldn’t help but admire her, looking fucked out, ready to drown in his embrace. With each stroke he managed to push deeper into her tightness, fucking her like she deserved to be fucked, ruthless and rough. (Y/n) wouldn't have a chance to stop him, could cry for help, though nobody would ever help her, they all knew better than to interrupt a preacher’s punishment.

“Only a sinner like you could take my cock, after tonight you will respect your sisters and you will thank God for each day he lets you live.” He pushed his fingers into her mouth, pressing down on her tongue, forcing her to swallow down the cry that threatened to claw through her.

Her back rubbed against the wooden table, skin scratched open, bleeding onto the surface. James cradled her head in his hands, softening each blow against the table, making sure that she’d stay conscious.

But (y/n) felt herself slipping into another dimension, away from the convent, from the preacher that fucked her like she was a regular coming to visit on a Friday afternoon. He was getting his fill, using her for his satanic pleasure and lust. And she didn’t mind.

“Tell me, how does it feel to be fucked by your Preacher?” Tears ran down her cheeks, swollen lips parted to let her words flow from them.

“So good, feels so good. I’m so close, can I cum? Please let me cum.” (Y/n) cried out, making sure that every nun could hear her begging. He replied with another ferocious thrust, tip meeting her swollen spot, pushing her further into the burning flames of hell.

“Cum on my cock, scream my name. God won’t help you this time.” And she came so powerful that the angels fell from their comfortable seats on the clouds above. Her cunt fluttered around his length, squeezing him tightly as if he would push her away any moment now.

James fucked her through her high, cupping her burning cheeks with his big hand. It took him three more thrusts to relieve himself into her tightness, forcing her to take every single drop of his cum.

“Tonight you will apologise to sister Jane and you will thank her for bringing you to me.” He pulled out of her with a groan rumbling through him, throwing her habit down onto her frame, making sure that she would dress herself. James didn’t give (y/n) any time to wipe away her smudged mascara nor could she untangle her hair.

Embarrassment flooded through her as she walked through the church with his cum dripping down her legs. But perhaps she still hadn’t learned her lesson yet, because with a smile on her face she ran her thumb up her thigh, licking her skin clean.

Follow my sideblog @little-diableswriting for taglist reblogs

[androgynepositivity]

Rejoice! Salvation Is Free, Just Accept Jesus Into Your Life Today!

Wow, hello!

I'm going to make an example of you since you've so kindly wandered into my asks. I'm 99% sure that this is either a bot or some sort of copy/paste, but heck, you've given me a unique opportunity.

I've wanted to talk about my experiences with faith and religion (separate things) for a while now, but haven't really been able to think of a reason to bring it up. Of course I don't NEED a reason, but it's just one of those things that's not very fun to just drop on people unannounced. So, without further ado, please make sure you read this post slowly and carefully, as I don't intend to repeat myself.

I am an ex-xtian who has good faith in xtians regardless of my trauma. (xtian = abbreviation of christian)

This is to say, I myself do not have any good faith left untoward xtianity as a whole. I believe that the organized religion in itself is corrupt from the core, and has effectively lost sight of what truths it actually has within itself in favor of worldly pursuits and powers. What I have good faith in, however, is xtian people who actually practice what their holy texts preach. There are xtian people who do this, and as a former xtian, I know exactly what I'm looking for when it comes to this assessment.

So, if there are any xtians among my tumblr followers here, (especially queer ones), I'd like to kindly request your attention, because I am hoping that you will find this post refreshing in terms of non-xtians having reviews/critiques of the behavior of xtian things, as opposed to yet another queer post about how religious trauma has made them a hater of xtians and xtianity (which most of the time, if I may be frank, are valid).

If you are to follow the teachings of Yeshua of Nazareth, the "Christ", the "Messiah", you are to fully disregard the teachings of the old testament as little more than old lessons; perhaps looking to them as guides, but no more as religious law. As he has said, the old is done away with. "I am the new word/law." depending upon your translation of the verse, at least.

This is to say... there are many xtians that seem to ignore this in favor of using ancient text to support their shitty world views. As a person who has read the bible cover to cover twice, -and took notes-, I can tell you for certain that there are just... SO many verses I am tired of hearing upon the lips of bigoted xtians who want to use their religious practice as a sheepskin to cover their hateful ways in some sort of 'valid' excuse. But we've all dealt with that at one time or another as queer people.

No, the folks that are fine in my book are the ones that read the damn book for themselves, or absorb the information in some way that is not some prewritten adventure guide (bible study). This isn't to say that xtians who haven't or can't read the bible in its entirety aren't "real" xtians or something, but I mean to say that if you ever get the chance to, you really should, because it'll really help you fully understand what the faith aught to be about and what you, as a xitian, aught to focus on as a xtian. Not to mention... Lutherans literally fought for your right to be able to READ the damn thing, since catholics were absolutely fine with the arrangement of hoarding the knowledge to themselves so they could take advantage of the message and use that power to manipulate the masses, so fucking read it? (Lutherans of course are not based or perfect in any way, Martin Luther himself was hellishly racist and had all kinds of problematic takes, but you know what I mean).

So, little bot or random copy/paster, this is me telling you outright that no, I will not be accepting any saviors into my heart, yada yada. I had at one time done that whole song and dance, and I paid my nickle to the cause. I've read the book twice, I've studied, I know what I'm doing in terms of saying, "No, I don't believe this to be the one and only truth in the world." and so I am an ex-xtian, and will happily remain so.

And I had momentarily considered making this response into some sort of short, throw-away dunk on xtians with a meme or something, but I decided instead to make a long-form statement so I hopefully don't have to do it ever again. And if any of you have read this far down, thanks, first of all! I know this is a long one.

I have not yet read the book, but if there are any xtians among my followers, I want to recommend the book "Christians Against Christianity" by Obery M. Hendricks Jr. as a little side-study you can conduct. I think you'll find it refreshing to see that people within your own faith are just as disenfranchised with it as you may be at times, but that there is of course, hope. "Hope," I say, for xtians who actually practice the faith instead of using it as a thinly veiled excuse to be bigoted fuckwads to others.

So, finally, this is my overall message I wish to convey:

I am not xtian, and will never again be xtian. If I identify as anything, I am an omnist (not omnitheist, it's different); I believe that there are truths and wisdoms that can be found among all faiths, and so I aim to instead study all faiths as a way to better understand my fellow humans, humanity, and my own understanding of the world as a whole. I wish good fate upon anyone who practices something in its entirety, but I also deeply encourage others to study other faiths if ever you find yourself not understanding something. Ask questions. Look deeper. For example, there are just so many people who have thoughts and opinions on Judaism and Islam without having even once looked into what these faiths are about at their cores, so... you know, go and read about them? Learn? Be a good neighbor, damn you.

If folks have more specific questions they want to ask me, feel free! But I will not be making any more posts in regards to folks trying to evangelize me via motherfucking tumblr anon. Lmfao

-Admin (Cake/Arthur)

[shadowfae]

We’re all pretty aware that the tumblr otherkin community is at a huge decline; I was wondering if you have any theories as to why that is?

American Protestantism, the decline of queer oppression in North America and the AIDS crisis, helicopter parenting, web 3.0, morality politics, and  Tumblr’s porn ban; roughly in that order and rolled up into one bombshell that was a few years in the coming but nobody really saw it and understood it until it was far too late.

That was a mouthful and probably only made sense if you follow current cyberpolitical theory. For some of you reading this, as with every other hot take I have this has a chance of being passed around, that alone is enough. But for others who had no idea what I just said and need the ELI5 version, let me explain that. Buckle up, this’ll be a long one, and will go into fandom history a bit as well because it is actually relevant.

As we know, tumblr is a very American-centric platform. Twitter is also this way, but less so, but tumblr has it bad. Now, I’m ‘lucky’ in the fact that I’m Canadian and a twenty minute drive from the American border, so that puts me in the ‘privileged’ majority. (I say privileged because I’m not really sure what else to call it. Most of the information going around about politics either directly affects me or indirectly affects me approximately one or two links of contact away. Someone who’s only influenced by American politics because it makes their sister’s online friends sad is not going to be privileged in that way.)

This means that American politics and their social climate overwhelmingly affects tumblr’s social climate. This also bleeds through into other fandom spaces, on twitter, instagram, and Pixiv to name a few places; but here’s where I spend the majority of my time so here’s what I’ve witnessed.

America’s main religion, as far as I understand (from the raised agnostic and currently neopagan view I have), is some weirdass capitalistic-Protestantism that is so many miles from what the actual Bible says that if I were a betting man and knew more about cults than I did, I’d say it’s some weird fucking cult and never set foot in the country again for any reason that isn’t gaming free shipping through a PO box. If you have no idea what I just said but are at least vaguely familiar with Christianity, this graphic explains it pretty well. So we can see there’s some glaring issues with that ideal.

The decline of queer oppression and the rise of queer rights in North America, which is to tenderly include my own country but we all know when people say ‘in NA’ they mean ‘America, and Canada where it applies because the right-wing Republicans are really good in the propaganda department to convince everyone that Mexico is a drug-lords-and-anarchy wasteland to the point where even I don’t actually know what’s down there other than bad drivers and heat’; means two things. One, it’s a good thing by a long shot and do not mistake this as me thinking queer oppression being lessened is a bad thing. But two, it means that thanks to the AIDS crisis, queer folks lost a lot of first-person sources as history.

The queer elders in NA who survived are typically either a) bitter anarchists who are often POC, probably still dirt poor and do recreational drugs or b) university-tenured TERFs (trans exclusionary radical feminists). Category A are the people who Republicans have deemed worthless in every way, because racism, queerphobia, ableism, and all the other ways to be wrong and different and Evil that they can’t handle, because Jeezus would never want them to actually learn to love someone who wasn’t just like them, and they don’t have the compassion to do better. Category B are the people who want to be different in just a teensie little bit, typically with TERFs they want to be lesbians, but they don’t want to challenge the status quo. They’re fine with the way things work, they just want to be on top oppressing others over ripping the whole damn thing down and building a more forgiving system.

Now, due to all those ‘isms and the cheerfully malicious aid of the Republicans, pun not intended but drives home the cruelty of it all, we also see the rise of helicopter parenting. The invention of the internet did not really help this. Basically what you’ve got is a whole bunch of parents who saw the civil rights movement, just got access to the internet and things going viral, know the world is changing, and like all parents, they’re scared for their children. Now instead of parents knowing one or two people in their classes who just went missing one day and everyone assumed they ran away, they hear about eight homicides in the city of kids going to parks at night and dying. The Satanic Panic was another event around this time that contributed to that, but I’ll let you research that one.

This means that all of these parents, instead of doing what their parents typically did and let their kids wander off for the day so long as they’re back by sundown, they can’t let their children out of their sight. There might be a freak accident where their child is decapitated on the playground swing! Their baby might get murdered by an evil Satanist walking home from school! Their dearest darling might go online and tell their address to someone who’s got a 100% chance of being a pedophile who will show up and kidnap them in the night!

…You get the idea. 

Combine those three things I just established, what we’ve got is a lot of queer kids who have a lot of internalized shame for being different and wrong, because they’re queer, and they can’t find spaces offline to be themselves, because all of the elders who would do that are dead and/or inaccessible and their parents won’t let them go to any clubs that aren’t school-related, which they’ll never find a GSA or queer club because Republicans, ‘isms, propaganda, and the war on Category A queer adults have all done their best to ensure that those spaces don’t exist.

So you have a generation of kids who I am the youngest of. The first generation on the internet. The late Web 1.0 (usenets and Geocities) and early Web 2.0 (livejournal was the big one, ff.net too, also 4chan but fuck those guys) generation. What we were taught was: trust nobody on the internet with your real info no matter how much you like them, this is a wilderness and any crimes that happen won’t be punished or seen so don’t put yourself in a position where you’re going to be the victim of one, and everything you put online is never getting taken down so don’t put anything up that you’re not willing to have on the front page of your local newspaper.

This worked out pretty well, actually! You had kids who knew that if they got in trouble, there was no backup coming to save them. Because the form that backup might take - parents and police - wasn’t going to help. Best case, they’d be banned from their friends and online support groups for being queer. Worst case, they’d be jailed and put in juvie and conversion therapy and turn to drugs and become evil Satanists just like everyone says they secretly are already. So they learned very quickly to take care of themselves. Nobody was going to save them, so they learned to not need saving.

And then, well, Web 2.0 shifted to Web 3.0. Livejournal died because parents - the Warriors for Innocence was the big name - went “gasp how horrible my children are being exposed to the evil pedos and homosexuals they’re going to do drugs and die of AIDS!”. Which is uh. It’s filled with a lot of bigotry, and I’m not excusing them - absolutely I am not - but you can kind of see where they’re coming from, if you tilt your head and squint.

Either way, LJ died, tumblr took its place, Facebook was fast taking off, and the fandom folks who had seen mailing lists go inactive, web admins take their fanfic sites down due to copyright, entire fandoms burnt to the ground in flame wars, said ‘fuck that we’re making our own place’ and that’s how AO3 got made.

That’s important. A lot of folks move to AO3, because well, the rules let them. The rules say ‘you can throw literally anything up here so long as it’s fan content and is not literally illegal, so we don’t get taken down’. It’s a swing for the first generation internet users, those kids who know this place is a wilderness and are carving out our own sanctuary.

But. The children under us. The children for whom AIDS is a nightmarish fairy tale, for whom the ghost stories are conversion therapy, for whom know they can’t really talk to their parents about being queer but can trust they probably won’t get kicked out over it. The children who haven’t spent ten seconds without supervision except online, and their reaction isn’t ‘oh thank god I’m finally free to express myself’ but ‘if I get in trouble, who will protect me?’.

And there’s nobody there. Because we went in knowing there was no backup. And that was fine. But now, the actual adults have figured out that hey uh, maybe we should make cyber laws? Maybe we should make revenge porn and grooming children over the internet crimes? And they grew up with that. They grew up learning that no, even if your parents are suffocating and controlling, they’re always be there for you! Some adult will always be there to protect you!

That isn’t the case. It’s not. But they expect it, because it’s always been done for them. They don’t really want to change the status quo, because that means doing it themselves. They can’t do that, because they don’t know how, they’ve been controlled for every single part of their lives thanks to helicopter parenting and without that control, they don’t know how to keep their lives together, and they demand someone come and control it for them, without restraining them.

Effectively, they want someone to ensure they never face the consequences of their actions. Helicopter parents will rescue you from whatever you did, because you’re their precious baby and it doesn’t matter if you punched a kid, you can do no wrong and the other kid clearly started it.

But being queer is doing wrong. Being queer is something Jeezus doesn’t approve of. So they want to make it something he could approve of! But if it’s too off what they consider to be okay, if it’s too different and weird and wrong and evil, that can’t do, that’s still bad, and they’re precious angels, and children, and minors, why are we the adults not protecting them and letting them see it? Why aren’t we being just like their parents  but queer-friendly, why aren’t we protecting the children?

The adults who taught us were the children of those who died as a result of AIDS. The eldest of my generation knew some of them personally. My therapist’s younger brother died at 20 of AIDS, and she told me what it was like. But they don’t have that. These kids of web 3.0, they don’t have that. What they have is over-controlling parents, and the expectation that someone will always be there to protect them but hopefully in ways that don’t hurt them this time, no real understanding of why Category A queer elders are the way they are, and so much internalized shame that they have to do some pretty fancy logic-leaping to keep them from collapsing entirely.

They can’t turn into Category A queer youngsters, because they don’t know how to unravel the system around them, because they’ve never had to actually make choices in their lives and live with the consequences, because they don’t have the example of how to do it. They can’t unravel their internalized shame because again, that’s hard and they don’t have their parents to take away the consequences and pain. It doesn’t come easy to them, so it may as well not come at all.

But, you ask, if Category A queer elders aren’t around to teach the kids, then how are they learning anything positive at all? Well, Category B, our university-tenured TERFs, who don’t want to change the status quo but want to just be at the top of it instead.

For a lot of kids who don’t know how to make hard choices but want to be queer, this is an extremely attractive option. But when they go online to queer spaces, a lot of them say fuck terfs, we don’t support your hate, and they go ‘yeah okay that makes sense’. They can say fuck terfs without ever actually questioning why terfs are bad. They’re Bad and Evil, just like drug addicts, just like fairytale nazis, just like the evil homophobes.

And we saw them say ‘yeah fuck terfs’ and we were like, ‘aight you got it’ and we never questioned if they actually understood us. They didn’t. They didn’t, and we didn’t do enough to fix it, because not enough of us realized the problem. So terfs got a little sneaky. They hid behind dogwhistles and easy little comments, hiding their rhetoric in queer theory that you’ll absolutely miss if you just memorize it and never actually question it and understand why that point is being made.

This goes back to America sucking, because their school system is far more focused on rote memorization over actual logic and understanding of the text. They’re engaging with queer theory the way they’ve been taught, which is memorize and don’t think, don’t question. Besides, questioning and understanding is hard. Being shown different points of view and asked what they think is not only hard but requires them to go against all of the conditioning that says to just listen and agree and never question it, which goes back to tearing the system and internalized shame down, and we’ve established they can’t do that so naturally they don’t do that.

This begets, then, the rise of exclusionary politics. They’re turning into Category B queer youngsters, because we told them ‘hey that’s a terf talking point what are you doing’ and they never questioned why. They learned you can do all sorts of things, just don’t say X, Y, or Z, because they never thought deeply about it.

The children who have grown on Web 3.0 do not want to do any heavy lifting to make things easier for themselves long-run. They want to do as little as possible and have things get better for them. There isn’t enough of us left in Category A, because Category B terfs are very good at recruiting young folks and Cat. A is overwhelming poor, dead, and easily dismissed in the system as evil and bad, so we can’t exactly convince the young folks to listen. If all of the young kids could agree to tear down the system, a lot more older folks might listen. Change always starts with the young, and there’s a reason for that.

But Republicans have figured out, if you get people fighting, they never put together a force that can actually stop you. TERFs, who want the exact same thing as Republicans but with themselves on top, are doing this to queer youth, and Cat. A elders can’t fight back because there isn’t enough of them and the odds are against them, and the young folk like me who follow their lead.

People can kinda handle gay people. It’s not so far from the acceptable normal that it’s impassable. But you want them to handle kinky people? Gay people of colour? Kinky gay people of colour? Trans people? Those are bridges too far to step across. The original idea was to get the foot in the door with marriage equality and inch our way through with racial equality, sex positivity, dismantling ableism and perisexism (forgive me if that isn’t the word for anti-intersex ‘ism), and see if we can’t patch up the system instead of inciting a civil war over this and have to tear down the system entirely.

Well, we might’ve managed that if not for AIDS being the perfect ‘Jeezus is killing all the evil gay people for being sinners’ propaganda machine. As it stands now, not a chance in hell. So long as Republicans and terfs keep everyone fighting, nobody has the power to dismantle their empire, and they stay in power.

So then, you ask me, “Lu what the fuck does that have to do with the decline of otherkinity on tumblr???” and now that you’ve got all that background knowledge, here is your answer.

Those children who want their experiences curated for them and the evil icky content they don’t like to be gone because it disgusts them and anything that disgusts them is clearly sinful problematic and should be destroyed, are what we call ‘antishippers’, or anti for short.

They like being progressive. Sort of. They learned what Republicans and terfs have honed to a fine talent: keep people fighting, hold them to a bar they have to constantly make or risk being ostracized, and harass the people who don’t play along into getting out of your sight forever. Sound familiar?

They learned of otherkinity, and particularly fictionkind, because web 3.0 means if something goes viral on one site, it doesn’t just go viral on that site, it makes it to worldwide newspapers and twitter and nobody ever, ever fucking forgets it. They realized the following: “Hey wait, if I’m this character for realsies, not only does it help me deal with the internalized shame I’ve done nothing to actually fix because that takes work, I can also tell these people who draw gross content I don’t like they’re hurting me personally, and that actually sounds credible, and I can shame them into stopping”.

If this is your first time here and that sounds sickening, it damn well should, and I am so, so sorry that any of us had to witness this, and I am more sorry I and everyone else who personally witnessed this didn’t realize what was going on and put a stop to it. I answer asks and browse the tags and clear up misinformation and it isn’t just a genuine desire to help. It’s damage control, and my own way of trying to deal with the guilt of not stopping this. I’m well aware I couldn’t have seen it coming, I was a teenager myself still learning and no one person has that much power. I still feel like I should have done more, and I’ll do what I can to fix what’s within my power to fix.

So back to the story. This all culminates around 2016 or so. Trump wins the election, and every queer person ever knows they’re fucked, and the younger generation’s only ever heard horror stories, never seen actual oppression that this could bring. We’re all scared. We all don’t know what to do. Nobody has any answers or any control over the situation.

So they lash out. They attack others for drawing things they don’t like, for challenging them in literally any way, for asking them to reconsider the vile shit they just said, for so much as defending themselves from the harassment they just got. And when challenged, they yell “But I’m a minor! A literal child! How dare you attack me, clearly you get off on this, you evil pedophile!” and they sling around every insult in the book until one sticks. Pedophile is a pretty good one, so is abuser, and sometimes zoophile works out too. Freak is great, everyone gets right pissed off about it.

The fact that Category A queer elders were called pedophiles and freaks is not a fact they know or care about. The fact that they are quickly making every fandom community super toxic is also not a fact they care about. The fact that the ‘kin community has words and terminology and they actually mean shit, and the fact that they’re spreading misinformation faster than we can keep up with, are not facts they care about.

So they come in, take our terms, make it impossible for us to find new folks. They realize our anger is easily a power trip, because we’re already made fun of, so they get off on the little power they can find and make fun of us too, and then when we get rightfully annoyed and pissed off, they can hide behind being minors.

Then tumblr implements their porn ban, because nobody’s stopping them, because it isn’t profitable to have porn on here. Considering most of the otherkin community, and most fandom communities, are full of adults who do occasionally talk about NSFW things, and the fact that they’re just banning everyone who so much as breathes wrong, this begins the start of a mass exodus, scattering already fragile communities to twitter, pillowfort, dreamwidth, and a few other places. Largely, twitter, where you can’t make a post longer than a snappy comeback and where the algorithm is literally designed to piss you off as much as possible.

So community elders have largely left, because they can’t stand the drama and the pain of what’s happened, and that’s if they didn’t get banned for being kinky furries who do talk about how their kintypes merge with their sexuality. Most community members have also left or stopped talking about being ‘kin, because they get associated with antishippers and toxicity and it’s just not worth it. Those of us who are left get drowned out by misinformation and trolls and wishkin and antishippers who appropriate our terminology because it supports them getting a power trip, and whenever we argue, we get called pedophiles and freaks and worse.

And now there isn’t much left. I hope we get to find a better place. Othercon was a good place to talk about it, I did a whole panel (it’s on Youtube!) about what we want to do about it. But I don’t really have any answers. 

But to sum it all up... America’s political climate ultimately culminated in destroying queer spaces, and we survived, and then people who wanted to destroy smaller communities to get on top showed up and we were all but defenseless against something we had never, ever dealt with before on this scale.

One of my twitter mutuals mentioned how kinning and otherkin are now completely separate communities. It’s really the best I can do to keep hoping that continues, until nobody realizes the words are at all connected to each other. It’s the best anyone can hope for, now. I hate it. I hate every part of this. But maybe we can salvage what’s left.

[lady-divine-writes]

Kurtbastian - “Always and Forever” Chapter 2

After the death of their daughter Grace, Kurt and Sebastian drift apart. Kurt wraps himself up in his grief so tightly he starts to push Sebastian away, and Sebastian, feeling himself shoved aside when he needs Kurt most, cheats. They make the decision to start over, to leave New York City and their pain behind, and start over again in a house Upstate. Sebastian buys Kurt a "fixer upper" and gives him free reign. While redecorating the room that will be his studio, Kurt comes across something interesting underneath the wallpaper. It starts to become an obsession for Kurt - an obsession that begins to replace Kurt's love for his husband, which Sebastian is holding on to by a thread. Can Kurt and Sebastian break through the pain and the hurt and find a way to fall in love again?

Read on AO3

Chapter 2 (5061 words)

The first evening in their new house becomes a long, exhaustive dance of unpacking and cleaning in preparation for the movers to arrive in the morning. What, in the past, would have been an upbeat two-step of flirting in the hallways while lugging in suitcases, punctuated by the occasional stop, dip, and smooch, is now a formal, boxy waltz, with Sebastian giving Kurt a wide-berth whenever he hears his husband coming, and Kurt pausing in doorways, eyes darting elsewhere when Sebastian passes by.

The rush to clear the dirt away and make things suitable for the furniture they chose to bring with them affords Kurt ample opportunities to send Sebastian on a host of errands, ensuring him stretches of time that he can spend alone to reflect and think.

Consider the past and plan for the future.

Even after the furniture arrives, they should have tons of space left. They had decided not to bring everything they own with them. They aren’t selling their penthouse. Keeping it furnished for the odd trip back seems like the practical thing to do. So, they only packed those things that they absolutely could not live without. 

They didn’t bring any of the furniture from Grace's room. That Kurt donated to the Salvation Army with the exception of one item – a Winnie the Pooh lamp that he had found in mint condition, ironically, at the Salvation Army, on the day he and Sebastian found out their surrogate was pregnant. It's ceramic, hand-painted, with Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh sitting back to back as the base, each holding a handful of balloons. One red balloon, larger than the rest, contains the bulb, the colored plastic lending a rosy tint to its glow. Along the bottom edge are written the words: “If there ever comes a day when we can’t be together, keep me in your heart, I’ll stay there forever.”

Kurt’s mother had read him Winnie the Pooh books his entire childhood. He could recite most of A. A. Milne’s writings by the time he turned eight.

The year his mother passed away.

He'd read those same books to his daughter. She’d had them mostly memorized, too.

Seven hours of scrubbing, sanitizing, and (for Sebastian) racing around town wipe the two of them out, to the point where falling asleep is simply a matter of inflating an air mattress and putting heads down on pillows. They had picked up a Queen size one at a JCPenney along the way. It’s nowhere near as luxurious as the custom-made King size bed currently stuck in the back of an Allied Moving Truck, waiting to take a journey on the 495. This mattress is a tighter fit than they’re used to. It doesn’t help that the thing sinks in the middle whenever one of them rolls over. With the both of them measuring six-foot-plus tall, they have to lie in the fetal position to fit comfortably, which would require them to spoon. But Kurt finds a way to keep himself out of his husband’s arms.

The material the mattress is made out of seems perpetually ice-cold, not warming up a touch with their combined body heat, which Kurt didn’t anticipate. They have the gas and electricity switched on, but there’s something wrong with the central heating. They don’t have the requisite amount of blankets to keep from freezing, which adds to the misery. Despite being pissed at Sebastian, Kurt doesn’t have the heart to send him out at one a.m. to the 24-hour Walmart, so he closes his eyes and resigns himself to suffering until dawn.

For the next five hours, Kurt’s mind stays blank. No noise, no dreams, and no flashbacks, thank God. It’s not restful, but it’s the best he could have hoped for. The last half a year has not been conducive to dreaming. The nightmares keep coming, one after the other, the next one worse than the last, shaking him to his core until he jars awake with a pain in his chest like someone had tried, in steel boots, to stomp him into the dirt. But waking up doesn’t solve the problem. He doesn’t know what he hates worse – waking up weeping in his husband’s arms or waking up weeping alone.

Kurt’s feelings for Sebastian are complicated when he thinks they shouldn’t be. Kurt should either love him and forgive him or hate him and move on. But he loves him and hates him. His hands itch to hold him, but a second later, he wants to shove him away. He wants to go, but he can’t imagine leaving.

As much as it sucks, Kurt can’t imagine living without him.

He would prefer to go back to being shamelessly and hopelessly in love with him. Hating him has become a crutch. But it’s enough to get him through. Regardless of that fact, which should tie up the loose ends, mend the hurts and cool the hate, it doesn’t, because Kurt can’t find a way to forgive him.

A well-meaning Facebook friend had told Kurt over Messenger that the problem was Kurt’s pride had been hurt by Sebastian cheating. Push the pride aside and get over it. Ultimately, the marriage is more important. Then he said something about Kurt putting on his “big boy” pants, mentioned God, and quoted the Bible.

A minute later, Kurt blocked him.

That’s another blessing of moving - leaving behind the get over it already crowd. He hates them more than the forever sorry folks. The people who tell him to move on, to get over it, to put it behind him, don’t really care about him. They want him to stop complaining, as if they’re obligated to follow him on social media, and that puts the burden on him, in turn, to make them feel comfortable.

Maybe some of them do care, but not enough to put themselves in his shoes and understand that it’s just not that easy. Being on the outside of the swamp and looking in at a man who’s drowning, yelling at him to grab a branch and pull himself free, is different than being the man stuck hip-deep in mud that feels like cement and losing a fight that’s beyond his control.

Sometimes, as a matter of self-preservation, you simply give up.

Kurt doesn’t know who Sebastian slept with. He has his suspicions, but he doesn’t know for sure, and Sebastian won’t confirm. He says it’s because he wants to put it behind him, forget it ever happened, and that infuriates Kurt. If sleeping with another man was something Sebastian would need to put behind him, why even do it? Or (and Kurt hates himself for thinking like this), if Sebastian didn’t want Kurt to dwell on it, why not take steps to ensure that Kurt wouldn’t find out? Sebastian, of all people, should have known that this would eat Kurt up inside. It’s the kind of thing he’d never let go of. Yes, Kurt would be devastated if he discovered the cheating and the cover-up years after the fact, but he’d be in a better place to mourn his marriage apart from mourning his daughter.

What Sebastian did was selfish on so many levels.

Kurt knows that sex isn’t love, but he can't help wondering – was there a moment in the middle of all of it, caught up in the kissing and the fucking, where it felt like love?

Kurt met Sebastian in high school. Kurt wasn’t just a virgin back then. Oh, no. He had created his own category of virgin for which he could have had a cape and costume custom made – Captain Super Prude. Sex was a taboo topic for him, so much so that his high school’s chastity club hated him. 

Apparently, he set the bar too high, made them look loose in comparison. 

As much as he had fantasized about finding a special someone who would sweep him off his feet, gently usher him into manhood by making soulful but passionate love to him, he preferred not to think about it too often or too in-depth. The "talk” between him and his father was a mortifying experience.

There were pamphlets involved. 

He still has some of them.

When it came to finding a boyfriend, Sebastian wasn’t what Kurt had planned on at all. Where Kurt was attracted to debonair, old-school, gentlemanly types a few years older than himself, Sebastian was crass, rude, explicit, and a year younger. On top of that, he was (to coin a phrase stolen from one of Kurt’s best friends, Quinn) the biggest French whore of them all. Sebastian didn’t care for romance and he didn’t attach emotions to sex, but he definitely had a way of making men fall in love with him. Kurt Hummel and Sebastian Smythe were the two people in the world least likely to fall in love with one another. But according to Sebastian, he fell in love with Kurt long before Kurt fell in love with him.

Sebastian claimed that Kurt was the first man he had ever fallen in love with, and at first sight, no less.

He whispered those words in Kurt’s ear the first time they made love.

He said those exact words during his toast at their wedding.

He wrote them in every birthday, Christmas, and anniversary card he ever gave to Kurt.

He said them over Grace’s crib the night they brought her home.

“Look at this little thing, Kurt,” Sebastian had sighed, reaching out to stroke Grace’s cheek. “Our daughter. Is it ridiculous that I’ve only known her for two days and I’m already in love with her?

“Technically, nine months and two days. But, no. It’s not ridiculous.”

“I never thought I could fall so fast in love with another human being before I met you.”

“Really?” 

“A-ha.” Sebastian smiled when Grace yawned, her whole mouth moving in a complete circle before she settled down again. “I fell in love with you the second I laid eyes on you. And then, well, it was all over for me.”

Those words, the memory of that happiness, breaks Kurt’s heart. Could it be possible that, after close to twenty years of marriage, after reciting those words so many times, they didn’t mean anything anymore? Had Sebastian found someone else he could fall in love with?

Kurt has asked, but Sebastian won’t answer that question. He says it’s insulting.

Whatever the answer, he probably thinks he’s doing his husband a kindness. What he’s really doing is prolonging the torture, not giving Kurt the information he needs to make a decision that he can stand behind. Every time Kurt looks at his husband, he sees touches on his skin that don’t belong to him, kisses on his lips that he didn’t put there.

Kurt doesn’t know how to make himself see past them.

Instead, he looks away.

The second Kurt feels sunlight on his face, he’s out of bed. He grabs his messenger bag and pads down the hall to his studio before Sebastian can stir.

The room looks different with blurry morning sunlight bleeding through the windows. Kurt didn’t put black-out curtains up, and the sheer curtains that came with the house let fingers of light poke through, bouncing off the wallpaper and brightening the floor. 

Yikes.

Kurt examines the floor now that he sees it clearly. It’s a mess - the wood warped as if someone had paced it incessantly. It had been varnished at one time. Spots of resin dot the boards like oily puddles. The wood itself (some variety of walnut, Kurt suspects) has blackened to a morbid pitch with age. It sucks up the light and gives little back.

“Oh, yeah,” Kurt murmurs, pressing around the brittle edge of one spot with his toe, watching it crackle into shards. “This has to be completely redone.”

He gets stuck on the idea that this room could have been his daughter’s if she were still alive. He and Sebastian had talked about raising Grace in a suburban environment, and as much as he regrets not giving her a house with a yard and room to grow, Kurt leaned heavily on the side of staying in the city. Some of his motives were selfish. He loved Manhattan. It had been his lifelong dream to end up there. He wanted his daughter to grow up with all of the things he didn’t – culture, diversity, theaters and libraries and museums a train ride away. He didn’t want her raised around the closed, narrow minds of small-town folk. He wanted her to be an independent thinker – liberated, rational, intelligent. But he also wanted her to be compassionate and kind. He wanted her to know the world, its wonders and its failings, the way it truly was, not the way it looked on a movie screen, and long to change it for the better. They participated in fundraisers, gathered donations for the homeless, and volunteered in soup kitchens.

Grace was a pure light, a driving force that, at her age, Kurt didn’t get the chance to be.

So in honor of her, he wants his workroom to be bright and colorful - a mixture of his vintage aesthetic and her fun-loving personality. He’ll paint the walls her favorite colors, put homages to her in the details, choose the furnishings she would have preferred.

Since this will be the room he spends most of his time in, he wants it to be everything about his daughter that he adored.

He opens his bag and pulls out his phone, checking the time. 6:08. The movers are supposed to arrive between eight a.m. and ten. But movers, electricians, plumbers, and cable guys never arrive on time. He fishes out his sketchbook, sits on the floor, and gets to work jotting down a layout. First things first, he decides where his drafting table will go, where he’ll store his bolts, where he’ll put his sewing machine, a spot for a work chair, marking places here and there for personal touches like his mother’s vanity, his first-ever dress form, a few of his awards...

And photographs. Lots and lots of photographs.

He didn’t keep photographs in his studio at Vogue. He had an obsession with keeping his private life private, which he doesn’t apologize for. Since he met clients there, he liked to keep that space impersonal. Nothing to get in the way, spark a conversation that might derail the job at hand. 

Unlike Sebastian, who hung candids galore. He stuffed the most Godawful photographs from their high school and college years into collage frames and nailed them to every wall of his office, squeezing things like his degrees and diplomas into far corners so that those pictures could be prominently displayed. He said that people knew the Smythes by name and reputation. If anyone wanted to see his credentials, they could Google them. But when people walked into his office, he wanted them to know that first and foremost, he was a family man.

Sebastian knew from childhood that he would become a lawyer. He never dreamed he would be a father. 

Or a husband.

Those were the two accomplishments he seemed the proudest of.

Kurt regrets not having more pictures of Grace hanging on his studio walls, her smiling face to look at every hour of every day, watching his meetings, overseeing his layouts. She was his good-luck charm, his missing puzzle piece. She deserved a place of honor.

Now, he’ll give her one.

His stomach growls as he works. A smell from somewhere tickles his nose, and he groans. Just a few more seconds of sketching on the hard ground, and he’ll grab a bite to eat… maybe. With his ass numb, he doesn’t see a reason to get up, and bedsides, he’s on a roll. Car doors closing and constant banging echo in, and he winces, his head throbbing from lack of sleep. Dammit! If it would just stop till he finishes! It’s hard enough to concentrate as is! He hopes this is a one-time-only thing. He’d hate to wake up to that cacophony every morning. If he ever decides to go outside and meet the neighbors, he’ll have to find a polite way of asking them not to do whatever that is before he has his morning coffee.

Of course, soundproofing is also an option.

“Kurt? Kurt, are you… ?”

Kurt shifts his legs underneath him. He lifts a hand to massage his shoulders. That mattress must have killed his back. His arms ache something fierce. Sitting on this floor doesn’t help, the uneven boards digging into his legs, but it’s not an impetus for him to stop.

Just one more minute.

One more minute of sketching out this room, and he’ll join the world. One more minute to get his thoughts straight. One more minute to brush aside the things that like to torture him. Forget that his mother died when he was eight, his stepbrother when he was eighteen. Forget that his father passed away three years ago and his daughter six months ago.

Not too long after, his husband cheated.

Five.

That’s how many things he had loved in this world more than himself.

Those are the things that he’d lost.

They were the things he needed to forget in order to make it through till the evening.

He’ll replace the insulation and the drywall, smother everything in a noise-proofing compound, then paint the walls in swirls of pink and gold. He’ll do the ceiling in shades of blue, indigo, and violet, like the sky at night, and cover it in crystals to represent stars the way Grace had wanted to do with her bedroom. Kurt had promised her he would the second everything was over, when they could risk her being around the debris and the fumes.

He has never broken a promise to Grace. He isn’t about to start.

He scribbles those notes in sloppy script in the margin of his paper, wipes tears with the back of his shaking hand. He tries to focus on specifics to bring himself back from the brink of a breakdown. He needs a good cry, but he doesn’t want the comforting that will go with it if Sebastian hears him. He can’t right now. Sebastian comforting Kurt turns into Kurt comforting him back, and Kurt only has the strength to handle one outburst.

“Kurt? Did you want to… ?”

Kurt waves a hand to shoo away the buzzing beside his ear, relieved when it doesn’t take much more than that.

In order to paint the walls, he’ll have to take the wallpaper down.

That brings to mind the corner of torn paper over by the window and the word written underneath.

Darling.

That corner offends him. Kurt keeps entertaining the thought that that word has nothing to do with Sebastian, that there is another layer of wallpaper underneath festooned with line art of flowers, along with quotes from various love poems sprinkled throughout, circa 1800s. But then that would make that one tear and that one word an incredible coincidence since darling is the pet name Sebastian has called Kurt since day one. When he started doing it, every time he said it, Kurt had an urge to sock him on the jaw.

He was a pain in the ass, even back then.

Did Sebastian actually think Kurt would fall for writing darling on the wall? After the things he said? After what he did?

Kurt’s hand trembles so badly, he smudges the ink on his page. He stops writing, takes a deep breath, and counts to ten. He closes his eyes and concentrates on the sun warming his face. It’s gone now when it was there a second ago, which is disconcerting, but he has to ignore that and calm down.

He has to relax.

He promised he’d give this marriage a chance, that he’d try to make this work. Sebastian, so far, has held up his part of the bargain. He’s given Kurt space. He’s listened to him vent uncontested. He’s let Kurt keep tabs on him – where he goes, when he’ll be back, with photo texts in between to prove that he is where he said he would be. Kurt has to give him the benefit of the doubt. If Sebastian extends an olive branch, Kurt should take it.

But did he want to?

“I didn’t hear you when you got up this morning.” Sebastian’s voice starts Kurt’s hand up again. He wants to look busy. He doesn’t want to be caught in a position where he has to give his husband his full attention.

He hasn’t forgotten everything yet.

“Well, you were dead to the world,” Kurt replies, distracted.

“I’m just saying, see? You won’t disturb me. You don’t need to put a bed in here.”

Kurt bobs his head back and forth, adding a place in his layout for a foldout out of spite. “We’ll see. It’s only been the one day.”

“That’s true.” The way Sebastian says it, it sounds like a challenge. A tired challenge. Like Sebastian knows he’s already lost. “So, you like the room?”

“Yeah. I think I do.”

“And what about the rest of the house?”

He doesn’t know why Sebastian sounds like he’s asking. It’s a done deal. They both agreed on a new house. Sebastian found one he thought Kurt would like and bought it. What? Are they going to back out now and magically move somewhere else?

Will moving around from house to house solve what’s wrong between them?

“It’s fine, I guess. I don’t know. I think it’s hard for me to visualize without taking the grand tour. I’ll be able to tell better when I get started decorating.”

“Are you gonna hire that guru guy to help you with the yin and yang stuff?” Sebastian jokes cautiously. “That Kung Fu guy… what’s his name… ?” Sebastian snaps his fingers as if he’s seriously trying to remember.

“He’s a Feng shui practitioner, and his name is Carl.”

“His name's Carl?” Sebastian laughs. “No no no, his name is not Carl. Carl is the name of a dentist. He’s not a guy you call to Wang Chung your house.”

“Feng shui,” Kurt corrects again. “I hired him to help me create balance in our home.” He chuckles despite the fact he doesn’t want to find Sebastian funny. He doesn’t want Sebastian to affect him. But he’s right. The man’s name irked Kurt, too, when Isabelle referred him. “Ridiculous name or not, he seemed like a knowledgeable guy.”

“Do you think that Shaolin stuff could work here?”

Kurt pauses to give the matter some thought, and that kills the moment. The levity becomes saturated by the pain hanging in the room, and Kurt coils further into his sketch.

“That remains to be seen. But I think I’m going to try doing it for myself this time. Of course, the overall effect is going to be completely thrown to heck when you hire whoever never to decorate your office.” Kurt throws a derisive scowl over his shoulder. It misses its mark when Kurt won’t look Sebastian in the eyes.

Sebastian swallows Kurt’s scowl without thinking of a comeback. They’ve had that argument before when Kurt redecorated their penthouse. Kurt felt the need to redecorate whenever something big happened in their lives, but Sebastian’s office was off-limits, so it stayed the same. Kurt tried to find one or two things to put into his design scheme that would bring a theme from Sebastian’s office out so that the penthouse would blend, but whatever the thing he chose was – a print, a vase, an ottoman, or a coffee table – it stuck out like a sore thumb, until Kurt tried less and less.

“Can’t fight City Hall,” he’d say, returning to the business of finishing the rest of the space. Things changed around them, and yet, in Sebastian’s carefully curated world, life stood still. The last time Kurt redecorated was before Grace was born. Nothing in the penthouse matched Sebastian’s office after that.

“I want you to do it.”

Kurt stops scribbling. “Me?”

“Yeah.”

Kurt almost looks back to see if Sebastian is serious. He stares at the paper in front of him, the surface more ink than white. “Are you… are you sure? You always said that we need our separate spaces.”

“That’s only because you’re a little heavy-handed with the pastels. I trust you. Just don’t go making it all shabby chic.”

Kurt is speechless. This is the opportunity he has been waiting for their entire marriage – to decorate Sebastian’s office. Once upon a time, he saw it as the ultimate gesture of trust.

Back when he was naïve and fairly stupid.

“Don’t worry. I won’t.” Kurt debates standing up and giving Sebastian a hug or a handshake. This seems like a time that would warrant it. But when he rolls an inch to his knees, his entire body screams with pain. God, he feels old. How can he be this stiff after just half an hour?

Kurt returns to his planning. Even though he doesn’t feel prepared to leave his sanctuary, he fixes on that solid mask he’s been wearing for weeks around Sebastian. Just one more minute. One more minute, and he’ll go downstairs. He thinks he says it out loud. He expects Sebastian to go back to their room and get ready for the day, but he stays in place like a statue, watching Kurt draw, huddled over his sketchbook with his back turned to him and the door.

Kurt waits to hear the sound of footsteps retreat the way they came, but they don’t. His pencil stops above a square drawn in the corner meant to represent his stereo. He can’t continue his drawing with his husband watching, so he bites the bullet.

“Was there something else you needed?” he asks.

“They’ve… uh… got the bed in,” Sebastian says. “And the TV.”

Kurt scrunches his nose and lifts his head. What does he mean? The bed and the TV are on the moving truck. Kurt looks at his phone, resting on the floor by his knee.

“What are you talking about?” Kurt scoffs. “The movers haven’t even arrived yet. It’s only 7:15.”

“That’s right.” Sebastian speaks slowly, the way he does when he’s explaining something to Kurt that he thinks Kurt might explode over. He leans forward like he wants to come in but doesn’t without an invitation. “It is 7:15. In the evening.”

Kurt's head snaps up, eyes rolling because Sebastian is crazy.

There’s no way.

He's ready to object, but with his gaze away from his page, he notices something different about the light in the room. Instead of a soft, diffused blue, it has become a thicker yellow. Shadows stretch across the floor that weren’t there before. The room is warmer than he remembers, and the skin of his left shin, folded over his right, feels hot and irritated, like he might have gotten a sunburn.

“Evening?” Kurt shakes his head. “How can it… ? But… why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you come get me?”

“I tried. I told you when the movers arrived. I asked you what you wanted for lunch. I brought you the portable heater and put a lamp in here when it started to get dark.”

Kurt looks around. In the emptiness of the room, they’re easy to see - a plug-in heater behind him, and, in the corner of the room to the left of the door, standing straight and tall like a structural support beam, a brass lamp without a shade, filling the room with artificial light.

The first two pieces of furniture in his new studio, and Sebastian put them there.

Kurt doesn’t want them. He’d rather be cold and alone in the dark.

“We don’t have WiFi or cable yet, but I set up the Blu-ray player,” Sebastian continues. “I thought I could go get some take-out, and we could have a picnic dinner on the bed. Maybe watch a movie?”

Kurt does a 180 on his sore ass and looks at his husband (which is to say he looks at a spot over Sebastian’s head) with a mildly confused expression. He’s not really thinking about the bed or the movie or dinner at all. Even though he was hungry earlier, apparently hours earlier, he’s not hungry now. He couldn’t be less hungry. His desire to eat simply evaporated. It's been waning for weeks. Sometimes he forgets to eat until Sebastian sticks a sandwich in his face. Sebastian has become devoted to keeping Kurt's stomach full. He knows better than to comment on his weight loss, but he keeps a stock of temptable foods on hand.

He’s keeping Kurt on life support.

Sebastian stuck a spear into the heart of what they had together. Now he’s keeping Kurt alive to help him fix it.

Kurt hates that he didn’t see it that way until just now.

“Kurt? Please?”

Here’s the olive branch, Kurt thinks. He has to decide whether he’s going to take it or toss it aside.

He had promised Sebastian he’d try, and Kurt has never broken a promise to Sebastian.

No matter how much he hurts, he’s not going to start tonight.

His father always said that a man is only as good as his word.

Kurt closes his sketchbook. “Alright. I’m coming.” He tries to unfold his legs, but his knees lock up on him, and he rushes to massage the beginnings of a cramp. Sebastian looks like he’s about to spring in and help, but Kurt puts up a hand. “I’ll be a minute.”

Nodding, Sebastian takes a step back. Even with that rejection, he looks happier, more hopeful. He takes his phone out of his pocket and leaves the room. The grateful smile on his lips should fill Kurt with warmth. It used to.

But it doesn’t.

After a meal of Szechuan from a questionable establishment (not questionably clean, just questionably Chinese) and The Devil Wears Prada (a movie Sebastian swore up and down he’d never watch again), Sebastian falls asleep with his head on Kurt’s chest. And Kurt lets him, even if he himself barely gets a minute of peace.

[shirtlesssammy]

1x02: Wendigo

Then:

No Chick Flick Moments

Now:

In Blackwater Ridge, Colorado, three dudes enjoy the wilderness by gaming inside their tent. Something stalks their campsite from the shadows but the unattended fire that’s dangerously close to their flammable homes must be keeping it at bay, right? Erm, well, one dude heads out to the little boy’s room (a nearby tree) and gets snatched. 

Another one pops his head out the tent door and gets snatched as well. The third dude kills his light and watches the shadow of a very fast creature circle his tent until it slashes the side and snatches him as well. 

Palo Alto, California

Sam’s visiting Jessica’s grave. It really didn’t affect me the first time I watched this. It’s devastating to watch now though. Knowing Sam now --knowing how he doesn’t let people in, knowing how he didn’t even really let Jess in but loved her and wanted this world he could never have with her. Knowing that it’s fifteen years later and he’s had no one to really be with (Amelia was a construct of his damaged brain when forced to face the supernatural without Dean or Cas. I will not be taking questions at this time.) (But I guess he gets a blurry wife so ALLS GOOD FOR SAMMY.) He tells Jessica, “I should have protected you. I should have told you the truth.” Gah. Nothing could have saved her, and he has to go another fifteen years before he realizes this for good. 

Psych! He was actually dreaming, but I hold firm with my thoughts on the dream scene. 

Dean asks if Sam is okay. 

Sam says yes and clears his throat. Classic! Then Dean asks if Sam wants to drive for a while. GAH. Like, Dean’s looking out for his little bro in the only way he knows right now --letting him drive. 

They discuss leaving Palo Alto, and Dean points out that if they’re going to find the thing that killed Jess, they have to find their dad. He’s sending them to Colorado. Specifically to a National Forest in Lost Creek, Colorado. 

They get to the warden’s station and introduce themselves as Environmental Study majors from UC-Boulder. “Recycle, man.” Bbys. The ranger sees right through their bullshit though. He asks if they’re friends with “that Hailey girl.” Dean sees his chance to learn more and leans into it. Hayley apparently has a brother that’s on Blackwater Ridge. He isn’t technically missing but she knows something is up. 

Dean gets the brother’s camping permit. And now I need to process the next couple of lines. Sam asks if Dean wants a hook up with Hailey. Like, fuck you Sam for not knowing your brother at all, but also I guess you’re forgiven because your brother does do everything in his power to project that kind of energy. However, Dean is working the case and wants to know what they’re dealing with on this mountain. 

Dean and Sam head over to Hailey’s to ask her about her brother, Tommy. They say they’re rangers.

Hailey gets on Dean’s good side by complementing his car. Hailey tells the brothers that she feels something is wrong because Tommy checks in every day via his cell and satellite phone. Hailey’s heading out first thing in the morning to try and find him. 

Later at a bar, Sam “NERD” Winchester pulls out his extensive research on the area. People disappear on the ridge every 23 years. There was one survivor in 1959. They go to interview him. He tries to stick to the grizzly bear story, but eventually admits that they won’t believe him since no one else ever did. He said it moved fast and came into their cabin. It took his parents and left him with a horrible scar. 

The next morning, Sam and Dean meet up with Hayley, her brother Ben, and the guide, Roy. The guide is skeptical but Dean just wants to help find her brother. 

Cut to Tommy tied up in a cave. He wakes just in time to watch one of his friends get chomped to pieces by the monster. 

Dean and Roy try to out alpha each other. Roy finds a bear trap and saves Dean from a nasty injury. I’m over here wondering wtf that’s doing in the middle of a national forest. 

Hayley calls Dean out on their lack of provisions and wants to know who they are. He comes clean and tells her that they’re brothers looking for their father. But also, uh, Dean wearing jeans and boots is way more practical than SHORTS when hiking. Who wants to fuck around with ticks and poison ivy? All these years we thought Dean was just posturing about shorts when he was actually being a practical son of a bitch. 

They reach the ridge and hear absolutely nothing. Roy decides he’s going to wander off alone. Solid choice, dude. The rest stick together. Soon they hear Roy call for Hailey. They run to him. They find her brother’s destroyed campsite. They find tracks of where the bodies were dragged and Tommy’s destroyed phone.

They explore the campsite, which is torn to absolute bits. Dean tracks the struggle to just outside of the campsite, where the trail quickly grows cold. Everyone gets lured further into the woods by desperate cries for help but it gets them nowhere. When they return to the destroyed camp, Sam pulls out their dad’s journal and they use it to pinpoint the monster: it’s a wendigo. 

They hunker down for the night at the camp, and Dean protects them with Anasazi symbols drawn in the dirt. Soooooooooo in one breath you’re telling me that wendigo are found around the upper midwest / Canada, and in the next you’re telling me that the Anasazi (Southwestern/Western US) created widely-established protections against the wendigo? STARES DIRECTLY INTO THE CAMERA. The timelines! The geographic areas! Sigh...Supernatural ain’t ever had that good of a track record.

Dean tries to unpack Sam’s gourd. Sam doesn’t want to waste time hunting a wendigo when he can find their dad and hunt for what killed Jess instead. Dean holds out John Winchester’s journal like it’s a friggin’ (gags a little) bible and delivers the now-iconic line: “I think he wants us to pick up where he left off. You know, saving people, hunting things. The family business.”

Sam wants to know why John doesn’t just call his boys and give them an update - “It makes no sense.” OMG RIGHT, SAM? #JohnWinchester’sA+Parenting 

Dean tells Sam that helping other people and other families is what helps him make it through each day. We cry in Dean’s face a little, even when he immediately attempts to mask his empathy in his very next (also iconic) line: “Let me tell you what else helps. Killing as many evil sons of bitches as I possibly can.”

Pleas for help start to echo through the woods again. Roy fires indiscriminately into the trees and races after his prey, sight unseen. Hands grab him by the head and haul him up into the trees. Everyone else makes it through the night safely and Roy’s demise reminds us that toxic masculinity KILLS.

The next morning, Sam’s moodily staring at their dad’s journal while Dean chats with Haley about the hunt. 

For LOOK AT THIS BEAN Science:

We get info-dumped a truly mixed bag of lore, attributing wendigo tales to the Cree people (right region, at least!) and saying that wendigo are created by cannibalistic acts gone into overdrive. The implication here is that cannibalism equals power but alas, it also turns one into a monster. Wendigo like to squirrel away humans like nuts, so Haley’s brother might be alive and trapped for later snacking. And they can kill it! Kill it with fire. 

Cut to Dean striding through the woods with a molotov cocktail in hand. THAT’S MY BOY. They follow an easy trail of bloody claw marks along the trees. Too late, Sam realizes it was TOO EASY.  Roy’s body drops from the canopy and the group splinters as they flee. Dean and Haley get nabbed, leaving Sam and Ben to find their missing siblings. Ben finally gets some lines, alerting Sam to Dean’s breadcrumb trail of peanut M&Ms.

They head into a defunct mine. (Speak friend and enter?) Growls echo through the darkened tunnels, but Sam and Ben discover the body storage by accident when they fall through floor boards into a lower level. They discover Haley and Dean trussed up and free them. Tommy’s there too! And still alive! 

Dean finds some flare guns and they make their way out of the tunnels. Dean tries to lure the wendigo away from the siblings and Sam. All his attempts are for naught, because the wendigo tries to attack Sam, and the three siblings. It’s okay, though! Dean fires a flare gun right into its gut and it burns into embers.

Later at the ranger’s station, they spin tales to the cops about a grizzly. 

Haley thanks Dean with a gentle kiss, and Dean watches the siblings leave with a fond and wistful expression. JENSEN ACKLES YOUR FACE IS A MENACE!

The Winchesters hit the road, Sam behind the wheel of the Impala. Time to hunt some evil sons of bitches and play some classic rock!

Oh sweetheart, I don’t do quotes:

Recycle, man

Nobody likes a skeptic

I think he wants us to pick up where he left off. You know, saving people, hunting things. The family business

Man, I hate camping

Want to read more? Check out our Recap Archive! 

[fortunamuta]

Pt.3 Devilman Crybaby Post (anime spoilers)

Alright so this is the last post and honestly i forgot to talk about the last episodes 7-10. Can u feel my depression while writing this, bro the sadness is never ending. I have become one with the mf void, and within it there is no self, no thoughts, no emotions just darkness.

Also TW alot of this stuff is extremely gory and dark (lots of horrible deaths that I may talk about, so tread lightly)

Lets just say things took a turn for the......first of all WTAF Homeskillet NOOOOOOOOOOO (if u haven’t read part 1 of this post homeskillet is Taro Makimura) HE ATE HIS FREAKING MOM, AND WHEN I TELL U I GAGGED AND FELT MY EYES TEARING UP. THAT WAS THE MOST TWISTED THING I EVER SAW AND THE DAD FOUND THEM. Basically the mom had taken Taro away from the family when she learned that he was a demon, also i thought he was a devilman but he didn’t win against the demon so he was taken over. But in the scene when he’s slowly eating his mother, and his dad is screaming why pointing a gun at his son, who he now realizes is his son. Taro’s demon begins to tear up making me believe that Taro was conscious but not in control of his actions. And thats when the tears begin to fall, and the dad was screaming and crying at how unfair the world was and how disgusting the sight in front of him was he couldn’t bring himself to shoot. So then the army guys who kill demons came and the dad begged them not to kill his son, but without hesitation they fired on dad and Taro, subsequently killing both. Akira tried to save them but was ultimately too late and ended up atleast grabbing the bodies and burying them.

The next scene in the episode shows Akira crying while on his knees infront of three graves (with crosses) on what looks like a hill. And I wondered if this was alluding to the three crosses who stood on Golgatha’s hill. This definetly marked a turning point for Akira and how he felt about Ryo. Anyway demons from everywhere popped up and tried to kill Akira at the instructions of Psycho Jenny, but then Miko saves him.

OH SCHNAPP I FORGOT TO TELL YALL Miko is a devilman and sis ate MY KING OF SPOKEN WORD and I think she ate her grandmother too. Anyway she really uses her new abilities to her advantage and wants to be better than Miki M. She later confesses that her jealousy and hate was just her inability to come to terms that she loved Miki and looked up to her, she didn’t like being outdone when she was used to being the best. Anyway she saves Akira from the demons trying to kill him. At this same moment Ryo is having a come to jesus moment (more like come to satan moment) he realizes that he is SATAN. I FUCKING KNEW IT. Anyway he goes on air, and stirs chaos by OUTING AKIRA. If i could throw hands and get my grandma to pray the mess outta that fool I would, damn he really didn’t have to do him like that so the whole worlds now knows that humans can become demons, so people begin to openly attack everybody. Anyway that public call out puts a target on Akira. 

Akira and Miki have a moment where shes like even as a devilman he’s still the crybaby she’s always known and love. oh btw Miki now knows her parents are dead and so is her little brother. Let me tell u her screams of anguish THAT SHIT HURTED. Anyway The Spoken Word Squad is now friends with Miki because the main dude gotta crush on her, and THEY ARE SO MF LOYAL THE REAL MVP’S of THE SHOW. (except shorty he really played us) Anyway Akira goes to get answers and confront Ryo and u can see the betrayal on his face he truly still believed Ryo was trying to make the world a better place. Anyway a mob descends on the Makimura household and the Spoken Word Squad says to leave it to them. At this point I am bawling my eyes out, and i’m slowly being pulled apart by the void. Miko takes Miki on her back to try and escape from the mob but those hoes mad angry and for what reason, anyway before this Miki made a twitter post talking about how much she loved Akira i think in the familial since tho, and how even though he is a devilman he is still who he used to be and that the humans are capable of loving them even though they are different. He’s not the enemy they should be focusing on. 

So as u may have guesses SPOKEN WORD SQUAD DIED, eversingle one of them, but not without being the baddest bitches every before going out. Seriously Homeslice with the dread had that crowbar and my boi was swinging and taking hoes out, but homie ended up getting over powered and visciously stabbed to death. The same happen to the dude who was crushing on Miki M basically there were just too many people(those people were the real monsters, giving into raw fear to tear into children like that) 

Anyway Miko and Miki are making there escape and they end up on their old running path, and its really sad. A jeep comes out of nowhere and everybody a motherfucking automated weapons. And they continue shooting at Miko and Miki until they bring them down, Miko urges Miki to run and continue running until she’s safe and to leave her behind. Miki runs and then the show the screen with them as kids running and passing the baton. Miko passes Miki the baton signaling her death, then Miki continues to run with the baton she’s trying to catch up to Akira who in front of her but she can’t seem to and then someone in real life shoots her in the legs, but she keeps moving and finally she’s able to pass the baton to Akira. At this moment (not me tearing up as I write this) she is tackled by some guy who stabs her and she screams out, calling out for Akira. But he never makes it.

Akira goes to this place where humans have crucified other humans and there are throwing stuff at them. Akira comes and shields them, and cries out that if they should kill someone kill him. In the midst of his crying, a voice over of miki’s letter is played. And like in the bible a little child shall lead them, which a little boy goes up to Akira to hug his leg and other kids follow the mob stops throwing stuff and now some adults are coming up to Akira to apologize hugging him and crying and they help the people they had crucified. In the midst of this the demons convince Track Homie to betray Akira even though Akira was helping him. So he impales Akira with his horn thing, in the process trampling many of the humans who had been standing near, causing a panic. Demons come out of nowhere and Akira gets away.

Now Akira has made it back to Miki’s house after a big fight with Ryo promising to defeat the other. He gets there to find the house up in flames and a mob surrounding it all whooping and cheering. He focuses on the mob and almost throws up finding that Miki, Miko and the Spoken Word Squad had all been decapitated and amputated and their limbs where pushed down on spikes which were being lifted and waved around for all to see by the mob. In a fit of rage and sadness at the fact that humans had done this he releases a fiery blaze crisping the humans in the mob. He swiftly leaves and the final strand attaching him to Ryo breaks. In Ryo’s tranformation to satan they now are naked, full breast and genetalia on display with big white wings. Ryo tells Akira that he doesn’t want to fight him, he did all of this so they could be together. But Akira said he has enough spite and anger for both of then and charges, they have a midair battle and the demons back up Ryo, in the end other Devilman come to help Akira lending him limbs so that he may continue fighting sacrificing themselves. 

The fight is long and sad, you can tell immediately that Akira is no match for Ryo. The scene changes to when they were younger as children, playing in the snow and going to hotsprings, exploring and just enjoying each others company. It shows just how pure and adorable Akira was and how Ryo always showed sign of not having any regards for life and believing that the weak deserved to die. Then it changes scenes to the baton passing scene showing the baton being passed from miko to miki then to akira and finally akira trying to pass the baton to Ryo but the baton keeps dropping between then, it happens several time until it drops one last time and the new scene is of the sky. Ryo’s voice is speaking to Akira as he stares at the sky, we see the side profile of Akira and his eyes are open but he’s not responding. 

Ryo continues to speak about them as children, then the screen pans to the sky showing broken planets and the earth around them is destroyed all that remains are broken pieces and the heel they are on. No other signs of life. Ryo asks Akira a question, and believes him to just still be mad at him but then he touches his face and says he’s been so quiet. Finally he cries and he exclaims how he doesn’t understand these feeling and asks Akira what these feelings are. 

Akira finally hands Ryo the baton.

The scene pans to show us Akira missing half of his body and dead. Ryo cries out to Akira pleading with him to say something, then he pleads that Akira not leave him alone. He continues to sob into Akira and plead to not be left alone as the screen moves further away from them, showing the actual destruction caused by their fight which basically destroyed the solar system. 

So yeah, i am one with the void, devoid of emotions, thoughts, and feelings. I belong to the darkness, how tf am i supposed to feel after that. I-i just wanted Akira to be happy, but apparently that was too much to ask. Goddamn THE WHOLE MF SOLAR SYSTEM. I cried so hard my brother was actually worried about me, I had puffy red eyes and couldn’t stop my mf hiccups. and warning i do no cute cry, that shit was really ugly. 

So yeah, I thought it was really good, definitely not for everybody though. Imma need to watch some Ouran Highschool Host Club. Also prayed with my grandma the other day for extra protection. But umm somebody please tell me what the relationship between Akira and Ryo because the end scene got me confused. I think it Ryo realizing his feeling for Akira because he didn’t want him to die and realized Akira had always been there for him. So this was def a wild ride, Miki was honeslty a pretty solid person except when she was modeling for that creepy dude. And then sis went to his house and asked for a shower, I was like sis are u DumbDDumbDDDDumb, luckily Akira was there because Ryo out here killing grandmas and was ready to kill Miki back then too. 

Also FLY HIGH SPOKEN WORD SQUAD and MY KING OF SPOKEN WORD.

and Taro really was bestboi led astray.

My pain level is astronomical might as well be numb. 10/10 probably won’t watch again unless I need a good cry and psychological trauma. But it was really good all in all.

[adevotedappraisal]

Magdalene by FKA Twigs, a review.

I’ve been learning some shit from women from as long as I’ve been alive. Always some other shit that I never asked for but I got told it.  I used to treat them things they said as laws as a child, but I never saw them in a book, so then I stopped believing them.  They were always hushed laws though, laws told with squinted eyes and italicized whispers, laws told when no one else was around.

I mean, now of course men make the real laws that we know and live by.  Well come on now, we write them on parchment, and display them on lights, we code them into computers, inscribe them on coins and stone. But these women…man women tell you some other shit, like glue shit, in low, muttered tones in the quiet part of the house.  Like advice on… well not how the world works, but how to deal with the world when it works against you, and how to make it work for you. But you see, I’ve come to believe that the fairer sex tells you different laws than the vaunted laws and advice of our fathers because they all around see the world differently than men do.  They may, in fact, have been harbouring different goals than us all along.  

I mean for christssakes us men have our hero’s journey as clear as day, writ large and indelible across history books and entertainment.  You could take that Joseph Campbell mono-myth theory and see it expressed in Arthurian swash-buckle, the middle earth ring-slaying of Tolkien, or in the recently concluded tri-trilogy of Star Wars galactic clashes.  We’re in the empire business, as Breaking Bad’s Walter White infamously said.  But still, the question always lingered to me: what is the heroine’s journey? Is it really just a lady in a knight’s armour? Or some tough-as-nails spy for some interloping government’s intelligence agency, delivering kidney kicks in a designer pencil skirt?

Well, I’ve come to believe that the heroine’s journey is navigating the waves of history we imperial and trans-national men make from our railroads and pipelines, our satellites and wars, them at once preserving a culture and sparking a path and creating a bond between cultures in order for them and their (il)legitimate brood to survive.  That old chestnut about how behind every successful man is a woman always unnerved me by its easy adoption. I kept thinking ‘bout that woman.  I kept thinking, what the fuck was she thinking?

You see women’s heroes, they ain’t as clear as day to me.  They don’t kill the dragon, they don’t save the townspeople, they don’t shoot the Sherriff, or the deputy, or anyone most times. When I ask people in public at my job what super power they would like, most men go for strength, flight, and regenerative abilities (my pick).  Most women went with mind reading and flight. In late night conversations though, with the moonlight coming through the white blinds and resting soft on us like so, I sometimes manage to hear that women’s heroes heal and clean the sick of the nation, in sneakers with heels as round as a childhood eraser; they feed a family with one fish and five slices of wonder bread; they would run gambling spots in the back of their house, putting the needle back on the Commodores record and patrolling the perimeter of the smoked-out room with a black .45 nested by their love handles; they climb up flag poles and speak out loud in public for the disposed and teach children those unwritten, floating laws while cloistered in the quiet part of the house.  

Although their heroines are sometimes from the top strata of society –a Pharaoh here, an Eleanor Roosevelt there, an Oprah over there—they also name a healthy mix of radicals and weirdos with modest music success, people like Susan B. Anthony, Frida Kahlo, Virginia Woolf, or Nikki Giovanni, I mean did Nina Simone or Janis Joplin even crack the Billboard top ten? Yet there they are, up on the walls of a thousand college dorms across the country.  So even though I couldn’t’ve foreseen it, it makes sense that of all the ultra-natural creatures, of all the great conquering kings and divining prophets of the Holy Bible, Mary Magdalene ends up the spirit animal for the album of the year for 2019.

Mary Magdalene was a follower of Jewish Rabbi Jesus during the first century, according to the four Gospels of the New Testament of the Bible, a figure who was present for his miracles, his crucifixion and was the first to witness him after his resurrection.  From Pope Gregory I in the sixth century to Pope Paul VI in 1969, the Roman Catholic Church portrayed her as a prostitute, a sinful woman who had seven demons exorcised from her.  Medieval legends of the thirteenth century describe her as a wealthy woman who went to France and performed miracles, while in the apocryphal text The Gospel of Mary, translated in the mid-twentieth century, she is Jesus’ most trusted disciple who teaches the other apostles of the savior’s private philosophies.

Due to this range of description from varying figures in society, she gets portrayed in differing ways, by all types of women, each finding a part of Magdalene to explain themselves through.  Barbra Hershey, in the first half of Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) plays her as a firm and mysterious guide, a rebellious older cousin almost, while Yvonne Elliman, in Norman Jewison’s 1973 film adaptation of Lloyd Weber’s Jesus Christ Superstar is lovelorn and tender throughout, a proud witness of the Word being written for the first time.  In “Mary Magdalene,” FKA Twigs, the Birmingham UK alt-soul singer, describes the woman as a “creature of desire”, and she talks about possessing a “sacred geometry,” and later on in the song she tells us of “a nurturing breath that could stroke you/ divine confidence, a woman’s war, unoccupied history.” Her vocals that sound glassy and spectral in the solemn echoes of the acapella first third, co-produced by Benny Blanco, turn sensual and emotive when the blocky groove kicks in.  That groove comes into its own on the Nicolas Jaar produced back third, and when this all is adorned with plucked arpeggios it sounds like an autumnal sister to the wintry prowl of Bjork’s “Hidden Place” from her still excellent Vespertine (2001). 

This blending of the affairs of the body and of Christian theology is found in the moody “Holy Terrain” as well.  While it is too hermetic and subdued to have been an effective single, it still works really well as an album track.  In this arena, Future is not the hopped up king of the club, but a vulnerable star, with shaded eyes and a heart wrapped up in love and chemicals, sending his girl to church with drug money to pay tithes.  Over a domesticated trap beat he shows a vulnerable bond that can exist, wailing his sins and his devotion like a tipsy boyfriend does in the middle of a party, or perhaps like John the Baptist did, during one of his frenzied sermons, possessed and wailing “if you pray for me I know you play for keeps, calling my name, calling my name/ taking the feeling of promethazine away.”

Magdalene, the singer’s sophomore release, takes the mysterious power and resonance of this biblical anti-heroine, and involves its songs with her, these emotional, multi-textured songs about fame, pain and the break up with movie star boyfriend Robert Pattinson.  With “Sad Day,” Twigs sings with a delicate yet emotional yearning, imbued with a Kate Bush domesticity. The synth pads are a pulsing murmur, and the vocal samples are chopped and rendered into lonely, twisting figures.  The drums crash in only every once in a while, just enough to reset the tension and carve out an electronic groove, while the rest of the thing is an exercise in mood and restraint, the production by twigs, Jaar and Blanco, along with Cashmere Cat and Skrillex, leaves her laments cosseted in a floating sound, distant yet dense and tumultuous, the way approaching storm clouds can feel.   Meanwhile “Thousand Eyes” is a choir of Twigs, some voices cluttered and glittering, some others echoed and filled with dolour. “If you walk away it starts a thousand eyes,” she sings, the line starting off as pleading advice and by the close of the song ending up a warning in reverb, the vintage synths and updated DAWs used to create these sparse, aural haunts where the choral of shes and the digital ghosts of memory can echo around her whispered confessional.

In many of these divorce albums, the other party’s role in the conflict is laid bare in scathing terms: the wife that “didn’t have to use the son of mine, to keep me in line” from Marvin Gaye’s Here My Dear from 1979; the players who “only love you when they’re playin’” as Stevie Nicks sang on Fleetwood Macs Rumours (1977); or as Beyonce’s Lemonade (2017) charges, the husband that needs “to call Becky with the good hair.”   At first though, Twigs is diplomatic, like in “Home with me,” where she lays the conflict on both sides here, expressing the rigours of fame, the miscommunication –accidental or intentional –that fracture relationships, and the violent, tenuous silence of a house where one of the members is in some another country doing god knows what, physically or mentally. “I didn’t know you were lonely, if you’d just told me I’d be home with you,” she sings in the chorus over a lonely piano, while the verse sections have the piano chords flanked by blocks of glitch, and littered with flitched-off synths. Then, the last chorus swirls the words again, along with the strings and horns and everything into a rising crescendo of regret.

Later in the album however, her anger once smoldering is set alight, in the dramatic highlight “Fallen Alien.” Twigs sings with an increasing tension, as her agile voice morphs from confused, pouting girlfriend to towering lady of the manor, launching imprecations towards a past lover and perhaps fame itself. “I was waiting for you, on the outside, don’t tell me what you want ‘cuz I know you lie,” she sings, and, after the tension ratchets up becomes “when the lights are on, I know you, see you’re grey from all the lies you tell,” and then later on we have her sneering out loud “now hold me close, so tender, when you fall asleep I’ll kick you down.”  All while pondering pianos drop like rain from an awning, tick-tocking mini-snares and skittering noises flit across the beat like summer insects, the kicks of which are like an insistent, inquisitive knocking at the door, and then there’s that sample, filtered into an incandescent flame, crackling an  I FEEL THE LIGHTNING BLAST! all over the song like the arc of a Tesla coil. The song is a shocking rebuke, and it becomes apparent upon replays that the songs are sequenced to lead up to and away from it, the gravitational weight giving a shape and pace to the whole album.  Because of this, the other songs on Magdalene have more tempered, subtle electronic hues and tones, as if the seductive future soul of 2013s “Water Me” from EP2, and the inventive, booming experimentation of ��Glass & Patron” from 2015s M3LL1SSX, were pursed back and restrained until it was needed most, and this results in an album more accomplished, nuanced and focused than her impressive but inconsistent debut LP1 (reviewed here).  

This technique of electronic restraint has shown up in the most recent albums by experimental pioneers, with the sparse, mournful tension of Radiohead’s A Moon Shaped Pool (2017), it’s cold, analog synths and digital embellishments cresting on the periphery of the song, and with Wilco’s Ode to Joy from last year, an album bereft of their lauded static and electric scrawl, mostly embossed in acoustic solitude and brittle, wintery guitar licks.  Twigs and her co-producers take the same knack for the most part throughout the album, like with closer “Cellophane,” where the dramatic voice and piano are in the forefront, while effects crunch lightly in the background like static electricity in a stretched sweater, and elsewhere, as the synths of “Daybed” slowly intensify into a sparkling soundscape, as if manufacturing an awakening sunrise through a bedroom window.  And it is this seamless melding of organic and electronic instruments, to express these wretched and fleeting emotions of heartbreak that makes this the album of the year.

It makes sense that an artist like FKA Twigs would be drawn to a figure like Mary Magdalene.  Of the many Marys in the New Testament, she stuck out as palpably different, or rather, she depicted a differing part of womanhood than the other two.  She wasn’t the chaste, life-giving mother of Jesus, or the dutiful Mary of Clopas. Instead, Magdalene was this mixture of sexuality and spirituality, one of those figures that managed to know men and women in equal measure, wrapped up with the blood as well as the flesh.  Twigs also played with this enrapturing sexuality in her work, writhing around in bed begging some papi to pacify her and fuck her while she stared at the sun, then making you identify with the lamentations of video girls, and then telling you in two weeks you won’t even recognize who you were seeing before.  There was something mysterious and layered to her millennial art-chick sexpot act though, layers that have begun to be revealed with this album.  

We realise now, that what she was depicting all along was more like the sexual heat that lays underneath devotion, as opposed to fleeting, mayfly lust, and that she now understands the weight and half-life of love.  That is, that beyond the sex and patron and fame there is a near sacred love we build between each other for a while in time, lasting as long as both hands can bear to hold it, and also that the death of a relationship still has the memory of the love created warm within it that then radiates off slow into the air.  A love that then falls into our minds for safekeeping dark and unobstructed now, the way Jesus’ blood fell from his wound into Joseph of Arimathea’s grail held aloft.  

“I never met a hero like me in a sci-fi,” FKA Twigs sings, an evocative line less so for the hegemonic patriarchy of the worldwide movie and comic book industry suggested by ‘the sci-fi’ here, and more for the ‘hero like me’ part, which suggests she had to make her hero origin story all up, without the scaffolding of centuries of relatable mythologies, presenting us with an avatar of millennial love, in all of its tortured luster.  And you hear this type of love in her voice, no longer changed up and ran through a filter for Future Soul sophistication most times, but out in the open now, to express particular emotions, whether it’s in that swooping, falling ‘I’ in the heart-break closer “Cellophane,” or her assured realisation, later on “Home With Me” where she says “But I’d save a life if I thought it belonged to you/ Mary Magdalene would never let her loved ones down.”  

It’s never about how to conquer with these women you see.  In the end of all relationships it’s how they find their way out after us temporarily embarrassed conquerors are about to leave, jacket slung over shoulder, standing by the door. You squint your eyes back at her this time, and you listen this time, while she tells you, or tells the ground in front of you, what parts of love to let go of, and what parts are worth holding on to in this age of Satan, the parts that will help you become yourself. “I wonder if you think that I could never help you fly,” the song tells you then, one of those stinging admissions that only women come up with, and you wisely stay silent, and then the piano chords part, the synths subside. And for a while there as she looks at you, as the breathy sortilege in the song keeps going, it all sounds like something worth believing in again.  And then, the words she says to you start to come across like laws.

[aclassiguy]

nobody’s gonna read this but i’m gonna rant a little as an ex-fundie kid with a perspective on unconscious bias re: thedas’ religions. (i’ll grant you i do not have encyclopedic knowledge of dragon age, so i’m commenting based off what 90% of people know - the games)

If we’re assuming that every interaction concerning the religions in Thedas is intentional, it’s genius. It represents real world religious dynamics so well. But that’s also assuming we’re going to be allowed to confront those religions; otherwise, it’s just a carbon copy with no purpose but to reflect reality. You’re duplicating problems, without offering avenues for solutions or even criticism.

I want to leave this uncut in case a piece of it actually caught someone’s eye for some reason, but I’d feel bad if I did that.

I’m actively agnostic. I have no problem with other people being religious. I react quite negatively to both active and passive attempts at conversion. I know a LOT about Christianity. I know some, though not as much, about other world religions.

We can pretend all we like that Thedas is a world completely separated from reality. “Lighten up, it’s just a game.” I can, however, point to direct parallels between game concepts and real world concepts that I find quite troubling (Blackwall’s plot, certain wartable missions, Descent DLC), I can expound on those at length as well. And of course it’s just a game, and you can stab people with no consequences and all that - that’s fine. Stabbing people in a game isn’t likely to make you think it’s OK to stab people IRL. But a game has the power to subtly reinforce existing biases which can cause real harm.

Christianity is a dominant world religion. In fundamentalist circles, one of the tenets is to spread it to as many people as possible, to save them from themselves. Even casual Christians adopt this attitude when they tell you how sad they are that you’re not Christian, because they think you’ll be happier as one and can’t fathom how you’d be happy without god. I can get REAL deep into Christian psychology, but I’ll spare you. The thing is, this is an insidious train of thought that has been beaten into the world by its victors. Monotheistic religions are treated more seriously than pantheons. The Bible is held as separate and more holy than “myths,” which are treated as little better than Harry Potter novels. Religions that encourage non-Western behaviors are treated as scary, deviant, and oppressive - to be obliterated before they dare to try converting precious Christians - DESPITE Christians actively trying to lure those believers away from their “scary” faith and into Christianity. They think their own religion is more normal, or their own culture is more normal. All of this leads to many, many Christians (as well as your average Westerner) holding really racist, xenophobic views they don’t perceive as racist or xenophobic.

SO LIKE - I’ll just make a bulletpoint list:

Andrastianism = Christianity (esp. Western brand)

Evanuris = Pantheistic religions

Qun = Eastern philosophies

The familiarity and diversity is fine. There’s pros and cons to each religion, just like real life. Thedas is fun because it takes aspects of discrimination like racism and sexuality and pretzels it to be same-but-different. No matter your background, you have the chance to get really involved in the ethical dilemmas provided, the visceral experience of being insulted and responding to insults with pride, and it’s fun to read something new and feel some kind of vindication if you had a suspicion before.

What irritates me currently about the religions is that every time I get a little taste of “Okay, finally, we’re acknowledging the damage a religion like this can do,” I get kicked right the fuck back. I spent so long hating the Chantry more and more because it started to become clear to me the intentional abuse being directed at literally anyone who wasn’t a non-mage human, and even then they abused their own followers to exert further control over mages for personal gain. (Seriously, FUCK the Chantry.) FINALLY, Exalted Plains acknowledged that the Chantry steamrolled over the elves in a brutal slaughter, where Sister Whatserface tried to blame the elves for being “too far from the Maker” but she was a good person for “showing them more mercy than they deserved.” Clear signals that Bioware intended it to be taken as it was - an unjust crusade. Then what do they throw in my face? Some documents intending to show that the elves were “also at fault.” Excuse me? I’m sorry, excuse me?!

Elves had already been the subject of extensive oppression at that point, and given the racist goddamn teachings of Sister Whatserface and ALL THE DIVINES, I can hardly blame the elves for being just a little testy with the humans sticking their noses into their lands trying to force them to convert to Andrastianism. “Equally to blame” my ass. This is a pebble against a boulder. And yet I’m supposed to treat it like some kind of shocking revelation. Ooo - should I turn these documents in to the Chantry to exploit the elves some more, or should I give them to the Dalish, who then react with shame? There’s no just option: have the Dalish explain why maybe elves would be just a little angry, and have my Inquisitor go “oh yeah, that makes sense. kbye”

Finishing up with the Dalish, we get told by some pride demon ass lying fucker that all the Dalish gods that these poor widdle uneducated primitive elves worship were essentially slavers. Hahah. WHAT. Sorry. WHAT. You’re going to make me play through a game with my character’s religion shat on or flat out ignored at literally every turn, and my vindication is to be told it’s all fake and my ancestors were idiots for ever believing? Canonically? Really? When do we get told that we checked the Fade and the Maker wasn’t there and don’t these humans look pretty dumb now?! Or is that too risque because Andrastianism is a little too close to Christianity?

Then there’s the reaction to the Qun. I have loved Qunari since Sten. I honestly think it’s a really cool concept and I would love to explore it more deeply. I also LOVE Sten. Sten seemed so calm and generally fairly accepting, although he had his own flaws. He also had hidden depths - push aside the fronting and you get his cookies and chocolate loving sweetness. (If people hate him, again, come see me after class so we can have a chat on why you stan Blackwall but not Sten?)

But it seems like the Qun is falling victim to the world needing a reliable villain. What was once a mysterious system of beliefs existing outside the concept of the Maker or Dalish gods is increasingly this Scary religion that oppresses women and mages in barbaric ways, and is treated as horrible for trying to spread their religion to other lands (allow me to remind you of Exalted Plains and why every person in the game seems to be Andrastian by default, or at least Andrastian-sympathetic). It’s essentially playing up the fears that makes people uncomfortable with Eastern religions, relying on xenophobia to make them hateable enough that you don’t accidentally end up with too many Qun sympathizers in the playerbase. Even though you can play as a Qunari in Inquisition (hell yeah), you aren’t allowed any kind of Qun background. It’s understandable in some ways, plot-wise, but baffling in others. How much cooler would it be to have access to Qun beliefs like the Dalish has access to the Evanuris?

And now they have the Qunari poised to be the result of doing horrible dragon-blood experiments on elves by MORE slavers, and their religion’s entire purpose is to limit their horrible dragony desires to murder people, but now they want to subjugate others to live under their rule of law to make a horrifying monotone culture. Aren’t these scary-looking Qunari even more scary? There’s a reason to hate them now, they’re canonically more violent, just like the dragons! (Do not get me started on how dragons are treated. Actually, do, I have a lot of thoughts on that too. lmao) REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Then you have the Tal-Vashoth, not only defectors who found fault with the philosophy who are then hunted relentlessly by the believers, but also twisting back on themselves to be crazy violent, therefore simultaneously a condemnation of the Qun and an affirmation of its necessity to keep Qunari from being violent. Where are the defectors from Andrastianism? Literally every ex-fundie Christian kid I know has had a sex and/or drug-fueled meltdown period after having their core beliefs and foundation obliterated. Why do we have all these pure innocent Chantry Virgins, but no defectors? The only atheist you get to meet is your own Inquisitor, and you have a HELL of a time through the whole game as a result of it. (Though I will say the payoff at the very end of the game is so very worth it.) Almost ALL of your companions nag you about why you don’t believe you’re Chosen. I have yet to play as a believer, but I haven’t seen any indications I would be criticized for it.

And so what of Andrastianism? Is it fakery? Lies? Canonically brought into existence to oppress people? The product of slavers?

NOT YET.

Any criticism brought against Andrastianism is neatly and shortly thereafter countered, not by an untrustworthy member of the Chantry but by some word-of-god canon itself. The Maker stands, silent, valid, unchallenged.

There’s nothing wrong with presenting these complex scenarios, but if you don’t have the time, resources, or courage to REALLY plumb these depths, give everyone fair criticism (and it is not fair to ding the predominant world religion with the same criticisms as you level against a dying minority religion), don’t bother. You make the real world problems worse.

[domesticandlovingmonsters]

A Friend In Devilish Places

This story does contain SPOILERS for Hellboy. Below is the description of the story which contains SPOILERS!!!

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After the world is thrown into chaos and monsters and devils lay waste to the city, you and a group of survivors manage to make it to the outskirts of the war-zone. But an old friend has been looking for you. And he’s much more than you remember.

It was the heat that woke you up. A gust of volcanic wind that blasted through the empty windows of your shelter.  Your group of survivors cowered, whimpering as something huge roared.  A thunderous bellow that shook the foundations of the building and made dust rain down from the ceiling. You sighed, what little rest you could manage to get could be forgotten now. 

“It’s the Devil...” The elderly man croaked. Terrified eyes wide as another tidal wave of heat blasted against the shelter. “He’s come to kill us.” 

You ignored him. Letting the others deal with his ramblings as you crawled over to the window. The city was in ruins. Flames and rubble was all that remained. Smoke choked the sky and the armies of monsters controlled the streets with an iron fist and blood claws. You were almost out. So close to the outskirts of the city that you could practically taste the safety of the wilderness. You had only a few more blocks to go and then the urban areas. Then the vast countryside where the army was currently uniting in to attack, and hopefully reclaim the city. Your groups plan was to scavenge and get out before any of the bombing started. 

But with that thing flying over head, there was no way the group would be able to leave without being seen. 

Suddenly, the house shook and the walls creaked as the sun was blacked out from the sky and a massive beast soared overhead with another mighty roar.  The children screamed and their mothers covered their heads as bits of the foundations fell down on them.  You ducked away from the window as flames bathed the adjacent house in fire. 

“Fuck...” You hissed. Covering your head and looking between your group. They looked to you for guidance. You got them this far, even got them through the worse parts of the city due to your knowledge in non-human language. You were their hero and right now, you had no idea how to get them past what was turning the city to ash.

“It’s been following us for two days!” A woman whispered. Clutching a bible to her chest. It was singed at the corners but otherwise intact. “It must know we’re here.” 

“It’s tracking us.” The elderly man mumbled. “It has to be.” 

As much as you didn’t want to admit it, you knew they were right. It was too coincidental that the massive beast was burning down buildings in the same area as the group.  It disappeared for some time, but it always returned. It was a damn miracle none of you managed to get burned or even spotted by the thing.

You peered back over the window sill. It had gone eerily quiet.  The house across the road had given in on itself, the flames eating away at the wooden structure. Beginning to spread to the next house. But the sky was clear and the heat had somehow dulled.  You waited for another volcanic blast, and when none came, you turned back to the group. Ushering them closer so they could hear you more clearly.

“Alright, now’s our chance. We’ll split up into smaller groups and make our way through-”  You didn’t get to finish your sentence. An earthquake made the ground tremble as something huge plummeted into the earth a mere few feet away from your shelter.  Everyone ducked. The tsunami of dust and air tore over the house like a storm as this thing hit the ground with a heavy, rock like crack.

When everything quietened and the air settled again, you looked up from your arms and glanced outside.  A beast, monstrous in every sense of the word, lay dead in the middle of the street. It’s once glowing eyes were nothing but pits of black; empty and still. Its wing crumpled and burnt beneath its heavy mass. However, what made you gasp and stand from your cover, the thing that made your heart stop in your chest and cause your blood to run cold; was the being standing on the head of the creature.

Tall and muscular, with skin as red as rubies and a stone right hand that grasped a flaming sword, you almost didn’t want to believe it was him.  His horns had grown more than you have ever seen them and the emotion in his gaze was nothing you could expect to see in Hellboy.  Everything about him looked so different. So dangerous and monstrous. But it was still him. Still the man you knew. 

“H-Hellboy...” You called out. Your voice catching in your throat as the fiery eyes set themselves on you.  Ignoring your fellow survivors, you clambered through the window and stepped towards Hellboy. The flaming sword was stuck in the centre of the creatures skull, and with a heavy tug, it came free. The blood sizzled from the blade’s heat and Hellboy swung it with ease up onto his shoulder. It didn’t seem to burn him. His eyes never strayed from you for more than a few seconds. 

“Y-Your alive...” You continued. So many emotions running through you.  Relief.  Confusion.  Horror.  “How? How are you alive? Those monsters destroyed the central part of the city. I haven’t heard anything from you in days! Where have you-” 

Hellboy stepped off the beast’s neck. Falling to the ground to land with a heavy thud. His silence unnerved you. Causing even more uncertainty as he started towards you. Sword still lifted and the unwavering gaze fixed on you.  Your body started to back away, your fight or flight reflexes choosing the latter as Hellboy marched towards you.  He was on you immediately. His human hand flew up and wrapped his fingers around your throat. You yelped, kicking out as you were lifted up to eye level with Hellboy.

“H-B, it’s...me...” You croaked. Clawing at his wrist, hoping to pry his fingers open enough to let some air through your throat. “Hell..boy...please...” 

A low rumble rippled through Hellboy. He pulled you closer. So close you could feel the heat from the flaming crown on his head against your face.  “Anung Un Rama....” His voice growled. 

“W-What?” 

“My name... is Anung Un Rama.” Hellboy replied. Tilting his head a little to the side, like he was observing you. “I thought you were dead.” 

You dropped like a sack of potatoes. His fingers left bruises on your neck, but you were thankful for air and the solid ground beneath your crumpled legs.  You coughed until the stiffness left your airway and you were able to breath again.  Looking up at.... Anung Un Rama, you were filled with a sense of dread. You didn’t know why, but that name was filled with darkness. With a devastating aftertaste on your tongue as you muttered it.  

“What happened to you?” You asked. Standing on wobbly legs as you leaned against the house. You could hear everyone inside, cowering but not leaving. You weren’t exactly sure if that was a good thing or not. 

Anung Un Rama lowered the sword from his shoulder. Piercing the ground with the flaming blade before closing the space between you.  You flinched as his rock-like hand reached up and scraped along your jawline. Following your skin to your chin until he could tilt your face up to look him in the eye. He was so close. The flames crackled above him like a bonfire, framing the crown in orange and red. Whipping wisps of his hair in the vortex of heat and wind. 

“I was...reborn.” He murmured. His eyes dimmed, showing some colour from his previous form as they dipped with grief. “Father is... dead. I couldn’t save him.” 

Your heart broke. Trevor was...had been your friend and mentor. He was there when no one had been, and for Hellboy to lose him, it would have been world-shattering.  “Red, I’m so sorry.” You whispered. Lifting your arms up to embrace him, but the Demon moved away. Only a step. It was obvious he didn’t want to be touched. 

“I came looking for you.” He said. The hellish hue returning to his gaze. “The Human world is no more, you will not survive this war. Come with me and I’ll make sure you’re comfortable. Until I finish what I started, you will be kept safe beside me.” 

You looked up at him in confusion.  ‘Finish what he started?’ War on the Human world? This was everything that Hellboy had been fighting all his life to keep from happening. But whoever this was, it wasn’t Hellboy. Not anymore. “I don’t understand...” You muttered, and the Demon chuckled. He leaned closer, lips grazing over the skin of your hairline. His hot breath bathing you in his scent.

“You will.” He growled. And then, he tilted your head back more sharply and captured your lips with his.  It was slow, but hungry. Like he was savouring the touch, but wanted so much more than what was currently being offered. And when he pulled away, his rock hand had travelled down your neck, to your shoulder, to finally grasp your elbow. “Come. Now.” 

You were yanked out of your flustered stupor as Anung tugged you into walking beside him.  He walked quickly, with purpose down the street path. Sword snatched up from the dirt and held in a way that was defensive by his side. You tried to pull your arm back, stop him in his tracks but he didn’t seem to notice. You almost had to jog to keep up with him.

It was only when a loud bang echoed through the neighbourhood, did he stop. He turned slowly. Eyes framed with fury as blood trickled down his left shoulder. The bullet had pierced him deeply. But you couldn’t tell if he felt any pain. You only saw the anger, the irritation, as your group of survivors all hurried out onto the street.  Axes, guns and basic kitchen knives all drawn out as they huddled up behind the shooter. The elderly man held his gun out in front of him, he was shaking. Wide eyes trained on where he had shot Anung. Already the wound was healing. The bullet dropped out from the injury as the skin closed up around it.

“Let...them...go....” The elderly man spat through clenched teeth. “You cannot take them!” 

Anung tsked. Blade changing to his other hand as he released your arm. Your eyes flew open and you lunged forward as Anung started to walk towards the group. Sword beginning to swing in preparation for the kill. “No! No, please don’t!” 

Anung attempted to shove you aside. But you managed to wrap your arms around his bicep tightly enough that you could not be moved. Clinging to his armed hand, crying out as the flames off the blade bite through your clothes and singed your skin.  You didn’t care, the pain was nothing when it made Anung pause. Staring down at you as he angled the sword away from your leg. He grumbled in frustration. Turning his eyes back to the group. 

“Go. Or I will fertilise the lawn with your corpses.” Anung snarled. Fire dancing in the pupils of his gaze. 

The Humans looked terrified. But they stood their ground, switching between you and the Demon you were holding at bay.  “Go.” You called to them. “Keep going until you reach the countryside. Don’t stop moving.” 

You could see their internal debates. You’ve stuck with them throughout the city. You would have been better off without them. But you fought for them. Protected them. Negotiated passage through the sewers for them. And now, they had a chance to help you from a threat they knew nothing about. But they would lose. They would be slaughtered.  “Please.. just go.”  You begged them, stepping in front of Anung. Still holding a hand to his scarred arm.  It was the youngest of the group that managed to tug the elderly man away from the pathway. Pulling him into the house, and beginning the slow migration of your group away from Anung.  You smiled sadly to the young person, they were only 16 years of age. And they nodded in return, giving you a subtle wave before disappearing after the others. 

Behind you, Anung huffed and you felt his free hand glide up your arm. Almost soothing in his slow grasp of your elbow.  “Come. Now.” He ordered. And Anung didn’t wait for an answer, he merely tugged you into walking beside him. And led the way back into the city. 

------------------------- 

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[prayforthemantis]

Espada Parodies

Something I literally just made up while thinking of many an abridged series.

Aaroniero

Forced to sit in Aizen’s bedroom every night since Szayel ‘customised’ him and made his head glow like a lava lamp. Is angry about this, but can’t say anything.

Has taken the form of women to fuck with Nnoitra and Szayel, who are two of very few Arrancar who engage in sexual activity.

Likes to do impressions while he talks. Very few people actually get the references. Fewer still care.

Stays away from Yammy, as the last time he was in range, Yammy threw a tantrum which almost killed him.

Szayel

The one man nobody wants to touch, not even as a joke. It is an unspoken belief that every inch of this man is filthy due to his sexual and scientific exploits. 

Another unspoken rule among the Espada is to ‘never ask Szayel what he is doing’, because the explanation with be very long and very disgusting. He is also far too willing to reveal experiments he has conducted on his fellow Espada without their knowledge. They quickly realised that not only was it hideously disgusting, there was nothing they could do about it.

Szayel especially likes to hang around Nnoitra, due to their dealings regarding Neliel. Nnoitra tolerates this when cornered but otherwise tries to avoid it.

Aizen tried to have Szayel censored during the time when Szayel accidentally froze his sex face. Unfortunately, it failed.

Zommari

Fancies himself the guru of the Espada, and offers advice at every opportunity. This effort goes unappreciated by all of his comrades, and often earns him a sound beating. Unfortunately, this makes him try harder.

Conducts weekly yoga and meditation classes in the palace, although only a few low-ranked staff actually attend.

He has a shipping ‘conspiracy wall’ for all his Espada comrades, which he updates with religious enthusiasm. When things are going slow - in his eyes - Zommari attempts to ‘influence’ proceedings. This ends badly.

The Espada are often woken by Zommari’s morning prayer chants. Again, this ends badly.

Grimmjow

Behaves angrily to hide the fact that he sleeps with a stuffed kitty toy. So far it has worked, but Ulquiorra is onto him.

Spends most of his time lounging about in corners looking cool and insulting people. Sometimes he insults the wrong person, and gets beaten up.

Is still angry about Hueco Mundo’s ‘Spanish theme’, on which he was out-voted. He sprays the palace walls with Spanish expletives in a bid to change Aizen’s mind. So far, he has failed.

If he doesn’t have a genuine grudge against someone, he will make something up to begrudge them for. He’s that petty.

Rumour has it that he doesn’t even eat for show, so fueled is he by hatred.

Nnoitra

The Bible-thumper of Las Noches. As fervent as he is, Nnoitra is smart enough to keep a low profile. He only starts off on a religious tirade when he gets excited.

Aizen regrets giving him a Bible from the world of the living. Now Nnoitra has a Bible quote for every situation.

Believes in a coming Apocalypse that will destroy Hueco Mundo and its inhabitants. It is more a manifestation of his greatest desire than anything else.

Tries to avoid Szayel, who he sees as devil spawn bound for Hell, but once cornered can do little to evade him.

Tesla is his greatest and most loyal follower. Nnoitra enjoys preaching to him when no one is around to be angered by it.

Ulquiorra

Ulquiorra's only purpose in life is to loudly declare the pointlessness of the activities of his fellow Espada, seemingly in a bid to bring them in line with his nihilistic beliefs. This frequently gets him into arguments and fights, mainly with Nnoitra, whom he regards with the most contempt.

Doesn't sleep. He lies in bed with his eyes open, pondering his own pointlessness. It is the reason Szayel doesn't have a camera installed in Ulquiorra's room anymore. It scared him too much.

Almost every sentence he utters ends with a sigh.

Grimmjow keeps trying to fight him, but Ulquiorra repeatedly repels his assaults and carries on his day.

The other Espada suspect him to be a fraud who uses nihilism as an excuse to avoid Aizen's chores. They have yet to prove themselves right.

Harribel

The only woman Espada, and very annoyed about it. The fact that only those she considers the creepy ones are actually interested in her (Nnoitra, Szayel, Aaroniero, Barragan) makes Harribel even angrier.

She is the only Espada to actually enjoy Aizen's tea, something that confounds her comrades. Aizen's tea is terrible.

Sings songs she made up herself before joining Aizen whenever she can. Unfortunately, she has no concept of pitch regulation. Szayel tried to have her voice box removed, but was almost killed in the process.

Sunbathes under the fake sun even though it doesn't generate any heat.

Initially thought both Szayel and Nnoitra were women, something they will never let her forget.

Barragan

Very old, and lets his comrades know it with infuriating frequency, with loud old man noises, rambles and demands.

Uses his age to force Las Noches staff, and occasionally his comrades, to do menial tasks for him. Threats of death follow any refusal attempts.

Gets into frequent arguments with Nnoitra over the subject of God - offended and disgusted that he would worship any other than himself.

His arrogance his such than he can often be seen trying to reshape the desert dunes with his mind, and shouting at them when they don't budge.

Lusts after Harribel, with ends badly.

His snores are so loud that the first night together the other Espada thought an earthquake had hit them. Szayel quickly intervened to fix the problem.

Starrk

Is not actually sleeping. Secretly he plots all of their deaths. The plan is progressing very slowly.

Sings whiny duets with Harribel every Tuesday of the month. Everyone makes plans to be elsewhere for that date.

Likes to complain about how tired he is, when in reality he gets the most sleep of all the Espada. He simply likes to complain.

Lillinette dresses him up in a different outfit each day. He likes it. His comrades' mockery only further deepens his hatred for them.

Yammy

A man-child that gives Grimmjow a run for his money. A demanding giant who regards Harribel as a mother figure and Ulquiorra as a distant and unwilling father.

Eats the trees of Hueco Mundo like candy. Somehow gets withdrawal symptoms if he doesn't eat his recommended daily intake. An entire team of Arrancars are tasked with gathering them. The last time they failed caused Yammy to almost obliterate Las Noches.

Has a hundred Hollow puppies, all of which have names, all of which he can tell apart.

Is one of the few people who will actually listen to Nnoitra's religious ravings. He doesn't understand any of it, but it sounds funny.

[unchartedterritoria]

Dangerous (Sam Drake x OC) - Chapter 28

*NEW CHAPTER*

Previous Chapters: Chapter 1 * Chapter 2 * Chapter 3 * Chapter 4 * Chapter 5* Chapter 6 * Chapter 7 * Chapter 8 * Chapter 9 * Chapter 10 * Chapter 11 * Chapter 12 * Chapter 13 * Chapter 14 * Chapter 15 * Chapter 16 * Chapter 17 * Chapter 18 * Chapter 19 * Chapter 20 * Chapter 21 * Chapter 22 * Chapter 23* Chapter 24 * Chapter 25 * Chapter 26 * Chapter 27

As always, you can read the story thus far on A03  HERE

Tags: @jodiereedus22, @shambhalala, @missdictatorme

Reviews and comments are always appreciated!

You are a Mudd after all.

The words fell like cement bricks and with each word, crushing and taking the life out of anything she had ever known about herself. Her only solace, the unwavering loyalty to her mother that expanded well beyond Susan Spencer's death. Surely her mother would have told her if she was related to a person mixed up with one of the most famous assassinations in history. Being the adult she was, Faith responded to the suspicious accusation with a solid opening argument.

“Am not!”

"I may be many things Miss Spencer, but I assure you a liar is not one of them," Jasper informed her, his hands clasped together solemnly in front of him.

Faith shook her head.

“Not possible.”

Jasper circled her chair, bending down to grab the item on the floor behind Faith. Once in front of her, he held it in front of her face.

"I'm sure by now, you're familiar with this little piece of history here."

 The Bible she had found in her mother's hope chest. The dull gold lettering still carried enough luster to glint in the late afternoon sun. Faith stared at it her jaw set tight. That little book that had led up to now, to everything that had come to pass in the last 38 days. She couldn't decide if she coveted it or despised it.

She turned her cold glare to Jasper.

“I'll take that as a yes then,” He said, cradling the book in his lame hand while he flipped through the aged pages with the other.

"Did you know Miss Spencer that Bibles served as a family ledger? Marriages, births, deaths, all recorded right here," Jasper patted the open pages gently. Without waiting for her reply, he flipped casually to the back cover. Faith drew in a nervous breath as Jasper produced a small penknife from the pocket of his pants. With the delicateness of a heart surgeon, he ran the sharp edge along the seam. The substance holding the page against the back gave way, emitting that crackling sound only old glue can make, revealing the true last page of the Bible.

“Now my dear, what was your father's name?” Jasper asked.

No, I'm done. I'm not playing this game, Faith thought stubbornly. She hated when anyone brought up her father. It made her body feel like hot, heavy, angry steel ready to singe anyone that broached the topic with her. So the last person on this earth she was going to let bring her to that level was her captor.

Jasper rounded Faith and slammed his hand around her forearm, gripping it tightly to the arm of the chair. Holding the penknife, he brought the point to the soft hollow under her arm atop her elbow. Faith felt the zing down her arm as the knife tip hit the tendon lying beneath her skin.

“His name dear,” He asked again, his face close enough to her ear that he need only speak in that soft southern drawl barely above a whisper.

Faith muttered under her breath.

Jasper slid the penknife into her skin, not with a quick jab of a person only looking to get a response but with a slow, deliberate push, he meant not only inflict pain but to relish in the pleasure Faith's scream gave him.

She bit down on her bottom lip to stop herself.

“His name?” He asked, his voice taking on a breezy, lithe tone.

"Everett. Everett Spencer," She acquiesced. Her eyes screwed shut to stop the tears brought on by the searing pain in her arm.

"Everett!" Jasper said with a flourish, snapping the little blade closed and turning his attention back to the book.  

"You see my dear, not only do we have a list of genealogy here but also a line of ownership. Did you know that you were the only firstborn girl in the Mudd family in almost 150 years?"

Jasper held the Bible's last page open for Faith to see.

The men back then had such pretty penmanship, she thought. The list of names started in such an elegant script, the names leaving the swelling dots and faded trail of ink that only a fountain pen could produce. The line of names progressed as the sophistication of the signatures declined. The last two names made her stomach churn. Her mother did always say her father had the handwriting of a kindergartener.

Samuel Alexander Mudd

Thomas Samuel Mudd

Spencer Thomas Mudd

Alexander Spencer

Everett Alexander Spencer

Faith Evelyn Spencer

"Do you see the pattern? The firstborns received their father's name as their middle name, to honor the family lineage no doubt," Jasper spoke with the certainty of knowledge that Faith wished she had.

"Then your grandfather, after years of having generations of his family the target of persecution, casually dropped the notorious last name. From himself on, they were simply Spencers. As you can see, though, the tradition did continue. I'm sure having a girl did throw a wrench into the works, but Evelyn is a very fine replacement for Everett." Nox clicked his heel against the other one as his pacing drew to a stop quickly in front of her. "Am I being clear enough, Miss Spencer? I know timelines and names can be difficult to follow," Jasper concluded, talking as a person would to a slow child.

Faith balled her fists, her thumbnail cutting into the skin of her fingers.

“I got it,” She said flatly, her far away stare fixed on the sand that dusted the concrete floor.

"So, as I have said, just tell me where I can find the Booth diary and the confession, and I will be on my way."

“I can't tell you what I don't know,” Faith spat at him. Jasper pursed his lips and pinched the bridge of his thin nose.

"My dear, you are tryin' my patience," He said with his eyes shut. He produced a monogrammed linen handkerchief for the pocket of his white jacket. Lavender initials stitched into delicate the fabric that hung heavily with dampness and emitting a strange, fruity aroma.

"My father's been dead over ten fucking years, how could he tell me where it was?" She yelled, her frustration reaching its peak while Jasper wiped the head of his cane, the smell coming from it growing more pungent.

Jumping the cane up in his hand, he grasped the shaft and swung it across Faith's face. The eagle top slammed into her cheek, the beak tearing her skin as her head snapped to the side. The jagged cut welled up immediately with blood.

Faith began to tremble as she hung her head. Tears of pain bloomed in the corner of her eyes and threatened to flow.

Jasper plucked at the front of his pants before hunkering down in front of Faith.

"Now what did I say about language?" He said mildly, tipping up Faith's chin with the head of his cane to make sure that her eyes could meet his. Her tear-streaked cheeks served as a suitable answer for Nox.

"Whether you love them or hate them, my dear, family is important and back then all a man had at the end of the day was his good name to hang his hat on. And once that good name is thoroughly sullied, it could take years, decades to bring it back into the good graces of society. Repentance be damned," Jasper spat angrily, turning on his heel towards the ocean, his fury clamped lips disappearing under his red mustache.  

Only family can make someone that angry, Faith recognized. Her brown eyes crinkled with realization, “You're an Atzerodt.”

Jasper turned to face her. "While some families had to live with the dirt that stained the pages of their legacy, some just removed the pages entirely. Gave themselves a new last name," He continued with contempt but without acknowledgment of her statement. "It may have taken over a century, but my family name will be cleared, I will not have a Mudd get in the way yet again. Now please, I implore you,"  he said as he wiped the head of his cane again, "tell me where it is."

"I don't know. I wish I did! I would tell you. I don't know. Sam doesn't know. We don't know!" Faith pleaded.

“We? We? Has this become a permanent partnership?” Jasper gasped, his eyes green and alight with a renewed excitement and sounding very much to Faith's ears like that of a teenage girl at a slumber party.

“None of your fu-freakin' business,” She said, catching herself.

Thwack.

“I said freaking!”

"Too close, Miss Spencer and I will take that as a yes." He said, putting his cane back by his side. I must know," Jasper continued, bringing his face close to hers, "Are you in love with Mr. Drake?"

Faith remained silent while the blood dripped steadily from her nose.

Jasper Nox began to howl with laughter, the randomness of it making Faith start in her chair.

"Now this is just too rich, too rich for words!" He said delighted, his hands clenched to his chest. "And I thought Mrs. Lincoln to be a forgiving woman. You take the cake on this subject, my dear."

Faith's eyes darted quickly towards Jasper, giving away her position of confusion, even if just for a moment, before staring back at the growing ocean waves.

Jasper's gaze softened as he knelt in front of her. With his good hand, he took her chin between his fingers.

“You have no idea who he is, do you?” He said softly.

[arthurmorganthings]

Heavenly Bodies

Pastor!Dutch x Sinner!femReader

Summary: “In Thessalonians chapter four, verse three, states that It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the pagans, who do not know God.”

Explicit content: +18

Pastor Dutch commenced his sermon with vigor upon preaching the truths of civilization. He was faithful about the idea of progressive behavior would soon come to the forefront, and you’d find deliverance—according to the word of God. You come from a sheltered family that stemmed off of biblical truths, and fables, in your eyes at least. Your mother believed in conception after marriage, and your father was strict on making Sundays the day of holy obligation.

Not to mention your father was some retired gunslinging fuck that hit the gold-mine, and ran away with some prostitute. They suddenly find God somehow, and here they were.

You seemed, indifferent to what the Bible taught. You still drank with friends in your graduating cohort, you’ve laid with men you found attractive, would that beset you for damnation? Probably.

Once mass was over, your mother rushed to Pastor Dutch, whom was outside greeting other folks, and encouraging them to redeem themselves how they know how.

“Father, Father please a moment of your time.” She begs, as Dutch smiles warmly to her.

“Mrs. Smith! It’s always good to see you. What seems to be the problem.” Your mother looks around to see who could be tuned in, God forbid someone she knows.

“It’s, it’s my daughter. S-she isn’t well and I fear she’s possessed by the devi-“

“Mother!” You grit, embarrassed at such an accusation. Father Dutch notices the exchange, offering that this be settled inside. Upon entering, he placed himself on the pews —both of you following in tandem.

“Help me, help you. You mean to tell me, that you think your daughter is possessed?” His inquiry laced with amusement as you pressed your knees together and looked down in shame.

“Yes, I do. Since she graduated school, the girl’s been spiraling out of control. Going to saloons to drink, coming home past her cewfew.” Your mother drops her voice a few octaves. “Forgive me father for what I say but, I think she’s been making a stitch with several me-“

“I can speak for myself!” You yell. “You’ve embarrassed me enough I don’t think I can look at you.”

“And you think I can at you? You’ve brought shame upon our family. How do you think I feel?to know I’ve raised a trollop!”

“Well it takes one to know one.” You spit right back in your mother’s face. Dutch’s patience grows thin.

“Okay, I understand what is going on. You see, Mrs. Smith—your daughter is just a kid, how old is she now, nineteen?”

“Twenty.”

“It’s common for adolescents to want to experience life to the fullest, however this doesn’t condon her sins.” His tone grew suggestive as he stares down at you, your core grew drenched at the idea of lusting for a man of sacred practice. Pastor Dutch was always handsome, not to mention the crowd he attracted were always women.

“I’ll take her to the confession room ma’dam if that’s alright with you.”

Your mother’s eyes brightened, “Yes! By all means, take all the time you need.”

A smirk creeps on his face, standing up so his limbs had room. “Rest assured, your daughter won’t want to cause shame to your family once I’m through with her.”

Your mother missed the innuendo, but you weren’t naive as you let on. Pastor Dutch was a man of many things, charm seemed to be an attribute he prides himself on. Your mother didn’t care, for all she knows, being fucked by a man of God would grant her daughter passage to heaven’s gates.

Dutch nods. “Very well then, follow me.”

You don’t know why your heart dropped to your stomach, the words couldn’t come out of your mouth so your legs did—trudging past religious artifacts such as the mosaic that overlooked the cathedral. Your tight-lipped frown was prominent at your mother embarrassing you so lowly in front of Dutch. So shameful that you were embarrassed to speak. So Pastor Dutch began for you.

“In Thessalonians chapter four, verse three, states that It is God’s will is that in order to be sanctified: you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the pagans, who do not know God.”

“I’m sure.” Sarcasm found you as you mosey on in the confession room. It was secluded for the most part, and all of the employees and alter-servers went home for the day.

You sit down, the creases of your skirt bunched up at the palms as you sit nervously, awaiting your punishment.

“You know the rules, sweetheart.’”

Oh, you definitely did. Now on your knees in front of his black trousers, he wraps his crucifix around your neck, cutting off air supply in that brief moment.

“How dare you spew blasphemy in the presence of the lord. Prying your legs open to other sinners?” Dutch spoke with such contempt as his hands found your thick locks of hair, pulling downward so you looked at his gaze.

“I’m not sure if you deserve repentance at all. God frowns upon those who are eager.”

You shiver, asphyxiating on father’s cross as you gag upon his hard length protruding the mouth. The statue Mary of Guatalupe stares at you, the virgin mother of Jesus. The idea of impurity around a pure woman wettens your core beyond relief.

“There we go darlin,’ just like that.” His breath gasps, you stare angrily as a slew of spit dare escape your lips. Your eyes watered as his tip hit the back of your esophagus savagely. He groans, simultaneously fucking your face as you gag, and choke.

Dutch withdraws his cock from your mouth, allowing you an interval of rest, the crucifix wrapped idly around your throat now, hanging like a necklace. He chuckles darkly at your appearance—lips smothered with saliva, mascara tears, and unruly tufts of hair.

You looked ravashing to Pastor Dutch, like his personal whore. “Bend over.”

The projection in his voice is enough to obey his comand, as you remove your Sunday skirt alongside your bloomers down, your slick essence–offering temptation to any man privileged enough to lay with you. A cool air and sounds of russelling filled the confession room—Then you felt it, a hard swat to the rear by application of a paddle, enough to cause abrasions as you yelp in pain.

Dutch tuts, applying another swat, sitting aimlessly on a wooden chair next to you. “Atone for the shame you cause your parents.” SWAT.

You cry out again, on the brim of tears. “Repeat after me.”

You nod, another hard swat as Dutch places your stomach over his lap. He massages each cheek softly, lessening the irritation applied by force. “Bless me Father.”

You gulp. “B-bless me Father.”

SWAT. “For I have sinned.”

You couldn’t handle the severe pain before replying silently, voice high above pitch. “For I have sinned.”

He continued his onslaught, labored breathing at how your core dropped in lust of your punishment. Flinging the paddle to across the table, it takes no time at all for Father Dutch take you in all of his glory.

It had been so long since your last confession, you’d hope this wouldn’t be the last. His tempo was hard, and rough. Pulling at the crucifix used for stations of the cross to cut off your breathing thrice more, your eyes roll back in pleasure. Pastor Dutch grunts, the firmness of his hand made its way to your cheek.

Wincing at the rough play, his lips make contact to the shell of your ear. “I’ll make sure you bask in this, no other man can fuck you like I can.”

“Yes.” You moan back, angering him. He tugs at your hair, making you look at him as he grazes your g-spot with his tip.

“Yes, who?”

“Yes, Father.”

“That’s right. I’m the only one that can grant you deliverance. The Pandora’s box to heaven’s gates.” He moans softly, his thick fingers in your mouth as you imply willingly. “I’m the only one you think of at night, when you touch yourself.”

You were so close to the precipice of getting there, your orgasm would be intense. Until Dutch removes himself, flipping you over your back. He lined at your folds again, continuing his work on getting himself to his peak.

“A-ah, Yes Father, please.” You beg underneath the cross the hung over you—contempt at your whoring. His voice grunting deeply into you.

“Please what, my darling.”

“Please, forgive me. I’m so close.” Your cries could be heard throughout the room. The pad of his thumb rubbed circles at your clit to emphasize his dominance—he could only make you feel this good, he’d been the one that always assured you’d repent, and deliver yourself from evil.

How? When evil took shape of man that spoke about the goodness in everyone? The same man that was deeply thrusting Your cervix, making you come undone—was a devil that took the shape of a deity.

“Come, come for me darling. Let God know that power of his creation.”

Dutch’s cock twitched, indicating he was at his peek. Not long after, your body convulsed, letting out a soft cry before his warm seed entered you,milking himself dry.

You laid there for a couple of minutes, watching him clean himself before neatly placing his cock back in his pants. He helps you with your bloomers and skirt—cum threatening to leak every step you walked.

Your hair back to its normal ponytail as you rejoin your mother.

She smiles at both of you before speaking, “How’d it go sweetpea?”

“Good, she is to recite the nicene creed before bed for two nights.”

You look back at Dutch as he shoots you a wink, sauntering back into the church building.

Staring into your mother’s eyes in guilt, you force a smile.

You both enter the stagecoach, returning to the bustling city of Saint Denis. With cum stained bloomers.

The whole ride home brimmed with shame, and eagerness in awaiting your next confession.

-

Nothing too long today. I was playing fc5 and this justskskfkn

This for @mollyohshea, @spacecharizard, and @songofproserpine 🌚

[itwill-comeback]

Some things to note

Alright, so this is my work's blog, a side blog inside a bog, don't mind me. Nickname's Casper or Cas for now. I'm 20, a Capricorn, a decent writer, huge Hozier fan. This is where I'll be putting the stuff that I write as well as on AO3 which to be fair, I'm not as good at using since I just started using it.

About my writing:

I'm an absolute mess of a writer, zero update consistency, sorry. No editor, unless you count Grammarly. I'll probably only ever post my COVT works here and AO3 so there's that.

× I love the COVT just the way it is, but I crave some new things in it. In my writing you'll probably find the following

× Vlad not being bad at like everything, boy needs some skills and hobbies dang it!

× Vlad having motivations and in some way resembling his father when that motivation is what's driving his decisions, don't worry he won't become his old man, but lord outside of physically resembling Tomas he needs to have some of his traits.

× You don't know where we are canonically in my works? Join the club babes. Call it an AU or post-canon if it makes you feel better cause I'm just writing for the fuck of it, and you're in my candy cottage now kids.

× Vlad has ADHD canonically I'm almost certain, so don't be surprised if it's in my works. He's on adderall and Henry reminds him often to take his medication so he's not the Big Forgetful.

× Vlad is willing to flex on people about being the Pravus because he's aware it tricks vampires out and he finds that funny.

× Henry has an Attitude™ and does Not tolerate shit from vampires. Thank those Slayer Genetics.

× Vlad schemes. No context just,, be aware.

× Dorian is ostracized in Elysia, but he's not actually that creepy, people just really don't like that he's powerful and has a penchant for playing the Cheshire Cat. Cryptic soft boi with a grin that claims madness, promise he's just lonely.

× Vlad is far less awkward in my writing, he's clued in to social and psychological influences.

× D'Ablo has gotten a fucking redemption arc. Will I write it? Unlikely. (I did) But you see in my head canon he's faced off with Tomas and Vikas, and being the incredibly hard to kill bastard that he is, got out of it alive despite their best attempts to be rid of him. Pravus blood will take you so far. He lied low, got bored, came back to Stokerton and basically told Vlad "You're the Pravus, we been knew, want my job back, idc bout u or ur uncle or the Elder Council, like being President tho so tell Otis to scoot." And Vlad was like "yeah sure, Otis wants to go back to being principal anyway & the Elder Council doesn't take up near as much time as the Stokerton Council cause it hardly ever convenes, don't fuck wit me again, my dad's dead btw, oh and Vikas too. Let's just be chill." And that was that.

× Vlad has vampire friends and empathizes with other orphans. Not far fetched. Like at all.

× Vlad has a few jobs, gets that bread... for a college aged kid at least.

× Did I say bread? D'Ablo is rich af. Stunts on everybody in Armani suits and wears Red Bottoms. He's the President of a Council, you know that job pays. Old rich Italian vampire rolls in mad cash and has taste, surprise surprise ?

× Know who else is an old rich Italian vampire? Dorian Ciotti, his family uses stocks and real estate as monopoly money. And you thought they were just a humble family with a small business, jokes on you they haven't been humble for hundreds of years. Dorian is known to travel all the time, where did y'all think he got the money for that? You better believe he spoils Cecile, she's his baby girl. A rich single dad who thinks he might fuck up at any moment, he's doing great at raising her. Your fav could never.

× Elysian Councils are mostly afraid and indignant towards Vlad, but don't worry, he can see through them quite well at this point. (Read: he was raised by Tomas fucking Tod, the king of liars, other vampires don't have shit on him.)

× Elysia is not entirely the Councils, Elysia is a world of vampires full of pocket communities and niche tribes all tied by the same undead thread.

× Otis and Vlad share the issue of having a terrible sweet tooth, and now that Nelly's gone they have to figure out how to bake for themselves. Also blood candy and blood mixed baked goods exist and Vlad is really wanting to try some.

× Vlad has the most powerful weapon against vampires on him at all times now, is curious to find out how it works and what it runs on. Elysia knows he doesn't leave it anywhere, if he's somewhere the Lucius is there with him.

× I will be inventing a few of my own charms (like the tego charm) with latin words so you can always ask Google what the charm does before I tell you. (I.e. Tego = to cloak, to hide. This charm is used to allow the vampire who creates it to have a lock down on any humans they place it near.) Tomas places these around the citizens of Bathory to keep other vampires from reading their minds and discovering his location, he closes their minds in a way.

× Vlad has more complex hidy-holes for his things these days.

× Remember that key in the first book that looked like head of a woman that was described in detail and then left behind and never mentioned again? Remember it. I'm gonna use it. Red herring? Who?

× Henry has not forgotten the time he saved Otis' life. He's gonna call in that favor someday, Otis, you know he will.

× Otis has a lot more faith in Vlad to not act like a child and will treat him like an adult.

× Vlad has a huge crush on somebody. Not saying who.

× Vlad's a big hippie. On god, he loves the earth, hates conflict, and wants to tell D'Ablo about how many slave children worked to create his outfit, but wants to keep their peace more.

× Vlad has at long last, filled out and isn't the lanky child he once was, could throw you through a wall but is probably too nice for that. Probably.

× Vlad and the Pravus are separate entities sharing the same vessel. Pravus isn't a ghost though, he's the Adam of the vampire species and died a long ass time ago and wanted to live again after a while. Much like D'Ablo, he lied low, got bored and wanted his place in the world back. Had to create a new form of life to exist in, created the vessel (Vlad's body), could've gotten rid of Vlad's soul and just worn his body, but kind of ended up adoring him before he was even born and, entranced with the concept of this new existence, decided to share the body with him, which sort of forces him to stay hidden in Vlad's subconscious or divide their body into two bodies. Which he can totally do, but it's kind of a lot of trouble and would hurt Vlad badly so he doesn't bother. He really adores this dumb kid and doesn't want him to be lonely, but that'll present its own issues in its own time.

× Dorian is aware of all of this. Pravus can fix his mind and his cravings for vampire blood, but he can't force this from the two of them because it would kind of fuck Vlad up. Oh you mean that fox in the back of my mind isn't my mental support animal, it's an ancient vampire and kind of absurdly powerful? Cool cool.

× Eddie Poe becomes a bigger problem than ever before! Fun!!

× The Slayer Society becomes a bigger problem than ever before!

× As far as I'm concerned, Em is not being manipulated by D'Ablo in the books, he answers to her, she's autographed bible old, you think he could pull one over on her? Tomas Tod couldn't even manage that. (Canonically I know Vlad insinuates that D'Ablo is holding some power over Em but I just can't see that realistically being true.)

× Em went home to Europe after that Slayer cleanse nonsense, she's still President of her Council, but she is no longer on the Council of Elders. Kind of in hiding because she suspects Vlad's about to take over the entire world.

× D'Ablo's cult is still a thing, they send Vlad gifts sometimes. Sometimes it's a dead bird, sometimes it's an envelope full of cash. D'Ablo doesn't care either way what they give him, Vlad prays it's not a dead animal every time tho soo.

× Remember how Mellina was never said to have any family? Turns out her family were just religious nutcases and promptly disowned her (and her child) upon finding out she was having a child out of wedlock.

× Vlad is in touch with the Tod clan in Scotland cause he wanted to get in touch with some part of his family and prove to himself that his dad's side isn't all bad, they kind of give him Evil Dad War Flashbacks™, but they're good people. A few are vampires and they think Vlad's a cool kid.

× There's always gonna be magic in my writing, don't worry though, I'm not gonna make Vlad OP.