#ace of angels packs

[ecile]

 ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀you won't forget my kiss.

[kawaiisushi06]

[malcriada]

Help Shahed and her family!

i want to create a post about @shahednhall whose fundraiser has not been getting the attention it deserves. Shahed's campaign has been verified by @/nabulsi here so please don't hesitate to share this and give to her campaign generously. the associated account here was her old one before it got terminated. if your eyes are currently glazing over because this is yet another fundraising post, STOP AND DON'T SCROLL! PLEASE GIVE ME A MINUTE OF YOUR TIME!

Shahed is a 20-year old accounting student who has been through unimaginable horrors, along with her family of 15. her father suffers from a heart condition and two of her younger sisters have contracted hepatitis from the polluted water in Gaza.

not only is there no medical treatment available for any of them, with the prices of food skyrocketing, there is also no way for them to buy enough food for everyone, leaving them starving and malnourished. at 20 years old, Shahed is the oldest in her family. with her parents both battling illnesses and being too sick to take care of their children, she is solely responsible for her family at the moment. she has 5 younger siblings to look after, the youngest one Bilal being just a baby.

their home was completely destroyed and they were displaced multiple times. please imagine having to flee so many times, while packing up your few belongings as fast as you can and not having had enough food to eat.

i want to emphasize that her campaign has been running since February of this year and her fundraiser is still only at 22%

$11,019 USD / $50,000 USD raised so far. follow @shahednhall for updates on her situation, share her posts and leave her nice words of encouragement. please be there for her, as she needs our support urgently. we cannot let her down.

tagging for visibility under the cut

@brutaliakhoa @appsa @buttercuparry @three-croissants @aces-and-angels

@turian @communistchilchuck @northgazaupdates @northgazaupdates2 @commissions4aid-international

@dykesbat @feluka @terroristiraqi @transmutationisms @sawasawako

@neechees @mangocheesecakes @stuckinapril @socalgal @sayruq

@irhabiya @meaganfoster @timetravellingkitty @briarhips @rhubarbspring

[adhesive-animations]

Do y’all know what we’re missing in the Overlord Husk AU genre?

A fic (or fics ; 3 ) where Angel goes to Overlord Husk himself to get free from Valentino.

Imagine: Angel is fed up with Valentino, the studio, the clients, the whole Valentino & Vox thing, the entirety of the Vee’s operation.

So one day, after he gets off work, Angel disguises himself, expertly swipes a pack of cards from Husk’s casino as he walks in, sweet talks his way into learning what room Husker’s in, sneaks his way into a meeting with Husker.

He takes off bits of his disguise, You know who I am?

Doesn’t everyone, kid? Your face is plastered everywhere.

Angel grins, Most everyone, but never hurts to ask.

Angel starts shuffling the deck and Husk thinks Angel wants to play a round, but Angel’s playing an entirely different game.

He tells Husker what he knows about him, his casino, how he plays in soul contracts. Doesn’t bother with his sob story, Husker knows who he is, he can put the pieces together himself. Angel pulls out the King of Hearts from the deck.

You’re the King of Souls, baby.

And what? You’re trying to become my Queen? Because I’m not interested-

No, don’t be silly, Sweetheart, I wanna be your ace.

Husk raises an eyebrow, mildly interested.

Angel starts dealing out cards for a round of poker.

Do you realize how many people can’t shut up after a night with me? It’s like their brain turns to mush or something and they can’t remember why they shouldn’t be talking ‘bout certain stuff. I know things about Overlords and their operations and their right hands and their subordinates, etc etc that no one else does.

Husker stares at Angel. He’s considering everything he’s heard.

Husk flips over his cards, he has a pair of Kings.

I can get you any information you seek, help you with expansion, provided additional in-house appeal. I can make you so much money, bring in so much business, make sure you always have the right cards to play, all you have to do…

Angel flips over his hand to show a pair of aces.

is win my soul.

Husker grins at him, thrilled by the game and intrigued by the proposal.

Angel grins back.

Do we have a deal?

And then later they fall in love, he frees Angel, and they become THE power couple of hell 💋

[rimunagenius]

I Could Die For you

ʚ pairing: Kate Martin x reader

ʚ word count: 1.2k

ʚ warnings: RPF!! , fluff, fluff, literal fluff, so much love that it’s sickening

ʚ rimunagenius speaks: to make up for that last post about emily because what the flip!! also the first Kate fic i’ve released that hasn’t been in a series!! yay! also ofc i had to write Kate to one of my favorite love songs!!💕 if you guys do not listen to this song and love it, i’m quitting writing and reporting everyone’s blog…

| Women’s Basketball Masterlist |

Something inside the cards I know is right

Don't wanna live somebody else's life

Kate was so happy. She knew her life was exactly where she wanted it to be. Cold mornings like this, wrapped in the bed sheets, both your bodies wrapped together to create the most perfect fit to a puzzle.

With your head resting on her body, your nose nuzzling perfectly into her neck, your soft snores and exhales ticking her skin and leaving goosebumps in their wake.

The way your hand rested on her chest, and the way Kate's hand rested on your waist from the way she was holding you into her body. She knew she didn't want to be anywhere else but here. Lying here, wide awake admiring you and thanking god or whoever was out there, that she was able to do this, and do it with you.

This is what I want to be

And this is what I give to you because I get it free

"Oh my god, Kate." You stood in shock in your guys' kitchen. You had a rough day at work, letting Kate know that while you sat in your office, counting down the minutes until you could come home. So when you walked through the door and wandered into the living room where Kate was watching the NBA finals, she got up to greet you and took you to the kitchen, giving you the flowers and chocolate she picked up on her way home from practice today. 

You had a new adjustments to make since leaving Iowa. Picking up your life and moving to Las Vegas with Kate when she found out she made the roster officially, after living in a hotel room during training camp. You loved her so much, and you had so much faith in the person she was and the skills she had, you knew moving across states wasn't going to be a regret you had years down the line. 

Tears welled in your eyes, the overwhelming feeling of love and appreciation radiating from the blonde who stood a few feet away. "Aw, don't cry. Why are you crying, baby?" Kate walked up to you, wrapping her arms around your neck so you buried your face into her chest. 

"Because. You do this for me just for having a bad day. Your days are full of stress with basketball, still proving yourself, and tired from your work. I don't deserve you, Kate." You were a mess. You missed a lot of things. You missed your old friends, how close your guys' family used to be, and you missed Kate while she was gone. You missed a lot of things—you've longed for those things, but you loved your life here with Kate. You two away from what you knew and grew accustomed to, to independently make what you want and need. 

You loved it but you couldn't help but long for what used to be your life sometimes. "You deserve everything. You deserve the world and more because you packed your life up just because you believed in me. This is the very least I could do for you. I will continue to show you how important you are to me and who I am. You make me better so I'm going to show you every day til I can't anymore. I love you. You work hard and you deserve to be appreciated and seen." 

That made the tears fall harder, but you looked up at Kate, and couldn't believe this was your girl. The woman you got to spend and do life with. You kissed her lips chastely, hugging her close again. You two stood there, looking at the pretty flowers and sharing some of your chocolate. 

She smiles while I do my time

It was so early in the morning. Kate waking you up for a travel day for the Aces. It was an away game to Los Angeles and you wanted to make this game so you took the days off. 

You hated getting up early, and the stress that came with traveling was truly not a great time. Kate knew it, but she loved that you were willing to do it for her.  You didn't like most things, but the look on your girlfriend's face when you watched her do the thing she loves most, play the game that gave her many of the amazing opportunities she's had, it was all worth it. 

Kate walked onto to the court, looking at you behind the Aces bench, and smiled. You already smiling right back at her. She knew that no matter how early she woke you up, or how many times she did it, you'd be there, lift her up, and cheer her on. You knew this was where you wanted to be. 

I could die for you

It was the day after Kate had won the WNBA Finals, and you two had been lying in bed since last night. You couldn't believe that she had come so far from the little girl who idolized the Iowa Hawkeyes Women's Basketball team, to a woman who's grown into the most tremendously courageous and strong woman who won her first WNBA Championship. It was so surreal. 

"You know I love you so much, right?" Kate whispered. One arm wrapped around you, pulling you close to her body, while her other hand held your thigh that lay across her hip. 

"I would hope so." You giggled softly, looking up at the blonde above you, your hand went from her chest to the side of her face, resting against her cheek. You looked into her eyes, the blue of them convincing you more by the second that they were better looking than the sky outside. 

"No, I'm serious. You are the love of my life. I would be so lost without you. I don't think I could live without you—let alone do what I've done this past year without you." Her voice wavered, you could tell her emotions still running high after the night she had last night. 

"Kate, my love." You chuckled nervously, the confession making you giddy, but also overwhelmingly more in love with Kate, if that was even possible. It brought tears to your eyes.

"You make me so happy. Just being right here, with you, is more important to me than winning another ring." 

"Oh my god Kate, stop it. You're going to make me cry. I'm so in love with you." You wiped a small tear that fell down your cheek. Kate smiled down at you, willing herself to not close her eyes and just die happy right here with you. 

"I'm so in love with you, I could die." Kate giggled softly, wiping her eyes before leaning down and kissing your lips softly. You smiled into the kiss. You smiled so hard you couldn't even kiss properly. A fit of giggles came from the both of you. 

"Ah! Kate, stop it! Oh my god, Kate!" You screamed and giggled as she left kisses and tickles everywhere she could reach, especially in your most ticklish spots. You two couldn't be anymore happier. Kate wouldn't want to be anywhere else unless you were there, under her arms or wrapped in them. 

Oh, this life I choose.

You two were just simply two girls in love and wouldn't have it any other way. 

[lexirosewrites]

O!Steve who was cheer captain & was enrolled in ballet before tht running away to some city somewhere w A!Robin (probably LA) to avoid the mating his parents were demanding of him, they struggled to find work for awhile till they see help wanted for a strip club looking for a bar tender & a new dancer they decide why the hell not

Except when they arrive for their interviews it's a rlly upscale club tht is clearly frequented by the rich & powerful & famous but well in for a penny in for a pound so they go in & ace their interviews. Robin is surprisingly graceful behind a bar, even performing tricks, & Steve dances the pole as if it was his destiny. They're hired.

They quickly build a reputation within the club. Robin as the young sexy alpha bartender, & Steve as the new angel of the pole. They're both making more money than they ever had before & can afford a nice enough apartment with 2 bedrooms.

Rules of no touching r strictly enforced, but the other dancers tell Steve there r 3 individuals who r an exception to tht rule. One is the mystery club owner who rarely requests a private dance, one is a blonde alpha who is rumored to run a significant drug operation, & the last is a powerful mafia boss alpha everyone only knows as Kas...

Well Steve is eventually requested to give a private dance to this blonde alpha (Billy) who's handsome but has a terrible personality, he groped Steve & tried to get him to come back w him to his private residence offering him a ridiculous amount of money for a week together. Steve is able to turn him down using the rules of the club. But Billy clearly wasn't happy.

Then the mystery club owner has Steve give him a dance (Hopper? Idk) but all he has Steve do is sit w him, drink water, & chat abt how he's settling into the club. It's a pleasant interaction & the other dancers confirm for him tht the owner doesn't care for a dance just to have someone sit & spend time w him.

Then one night the club is packed. Steve gives his performance, collects more tips than usual, & goes backstage to drink water & rest for a bit. Well then he's being told Kas has requested a private dance from him. Kas is obviously Eddie, & his scent is irresistible & the dance goes well Kas doesn't grope steve like Billy did & he only touches Steve enough to help him stay balanced & connected & at the end Kas tips Steve more than he’d make in 5 months working at the club

Blah blah blah

Steve sees Kas semi regularly after tht, eventually being approached by one of Kas' men to attend a date w the mafia boss, no expectations except for his company & he'd get paid A LOT of money

He agrees, goes on the date, it goes rlly well, Kas is a gentleman & a sweet alpha, & Steve agrees to see him again this time without a paycheck waiting.

They fuck nasty after the third date😜

No other thoughts in my head just stripper Steve being wooed & fucked by scary with a heart of gold mafia boss Eddie

we need more stripper Steve in this fandom. that boy was made to work a pole tbh😌 and you know omega Steve would require extra security being hired at the club because everyone wants a piece of him!!

[pupsmailbox]

GOTH ID PACK

NAMES ⌇　abby. ace. addam. alister. amelia. amoret. ange. angel. angelo. anubis. arch. archette. ash. aslan. aspen. astor. astoria. astrophel. atticus. axelle. azazel. azrael. bael. bat. batsy. bella. bellatrix. blade. blair. blanchette. brahms. branwen. cain. callan. calliope. cannibelle. caskeite. casketta. caskette. caspian. celeste. celestia. chaos. charlotte. cherry. chira. chiraelle. chiro. chiroptairre. chiroptelle. chiropteranne. choir. christian. cofette. coffin. coffine. constantine. corbin. corpse. crimson. crow. crowley. damian. damien. demonesse. divina. dorian. draven. edgar. elatha. elijah. elix. elwin, elwin. elwood. ember. emmaline. etienne. evan. evangeline. eve. faith. forest. forrest. frill. frille. frilleine. frilliette. frilly. genesis. ghost. gothita. gothitelle. gothitess. gothitesse. grey. gwen. gypsy. hades. hawthorne. hecate. hemlock. imortalle. imortella. iris. israel. jakob. jet. jett. johnas. josiah. judas. kain. kane. kedi. keir. lacey. laciene. laciette. lazarus. leo. lilith. lilithe. lolita. lucid. lucien. lucifer. lucius. luscious. lynx. maeve. malice. mana. martyr. max. melancholy. merle. micah. michael. misery. mordred. morris. mors. morte. mortis. mourge. mourgette. myrette. nightshade. noah. noctre. nocturne. noir. obsidian. oleander. omen. onyx. orion. orpheus. ozul. ozzy. prince. prophet. raven. ravenie. raveniette. rook. rowan. ruby. saber. saint. salem. samael. samuel. scarlet. secrette. seraph. serenity. shilo. shiloh. silas. silver. silvester. skelly. skulliene. skulliette. skully. sorrow. sylvester. syn. thorn. thorne. tobias. tommy. trix. umbriel. valkyrie. valo. vervain. vesper. victoria. ville. violetta. vito. vlad. woundie. zeon. zephyrine.

PRONOUNS ⌇　abby/abby. ae/aer. ash/ash. bat/bat. bleed/bleed. blood/blood. book/book. bug/bug. burn/burn. chain/chain. chap/chapel. chill/chill. claw/claw. cloud/cloud. cob/cobweb. cof/coffin. coffin/coffin. corps/corpse. creep/creep. cri/cross. cro/cros. cross/cross. cross/crosse. da/dark. dae/dae. dae/daem. dark/dark. decay/decay. dee/dark. des/despair. devout/devout. div/divine. dust/dust. echo/echo. edge/edgy. en/envie. fae/fang. fang/fang. fe/fear. fie/fiend. fog/fog. fri/frill. frill/frill. ghost/ghost. ghoul/ghoul. gore/gore. goth/goth. goth/gothic. gra/grave. grave/grave. ha/haunt. halo/halo. hie/hiem. ho/holy. holy/holy. horn/horn. hx/hxm. hy/hym. ink/ink. lace/lace. lae/lace. lost/lost. mist/mist. moon/moon. net/fishnet. ni/night. night/night. null/null. par/parasol. parasol/parasol. pray/pray. pray/prayer. proph/prophet. ro/rose. rose/rose. rot/rot. rust/rust. sac/sacrifice. saint/saint. scar/scar. shx/hxr. shy/hyr. si/sinister. sin/sin. sku/skull. skull/skull. snake/snake. spider/spider. spike/spike. sto/storm. stud/stud. thou/thorn. thron/thorn. thxy/thxm. vae/vaer. ve/ver. velvet/velvet. vo/void. whis/whisper. whisper/whisper. witch/witch. wood/wood. x/x. xae/xaer. × . ♠️ . ♣️ . ⚰️ . ⛓️ . 🌑 . 💀 . 🕯 . 🕷 . 🕸 . 🖤 . 🥀 . 🦇 .

[mellonieee]

Every single time Foop/Irep has ever interacted with and/or mentioned his parents

(OG FOP only because he hasn't talked about them once in A New Wish. That might change in season 2 if they decide to include the antifairies more. I love this family and their non-existent relationship ♥️)

I go into quite a bit of detail here so I'll put the rest under the cut!

1. Anti Poof (Season 7, episode 1)

This was the only episode his parents showed up on screen with him. But it's important to note how Anti Wanda and Anti Cosmo react to his existence in the first place. They're excited!

They both want this child! Anti Cosmo starts the episode bemoaning the fact that there isn't an anti-poof and that he wants equality for antifairies. (Poof/Peri has existed for an entire season at this point.)

I'm assuming it's just the case of antifairy pregnancy possibly being longer than fairy pregnancy and the fact Poof/Peri was made through a magic wish unlike Foop/Irep that they weren't born around the same time, but who knows how any of that even works. But regardless of that, his parents are both overjoyed when Foop/Irep is born--Anti Wanda's love for her son is out of the question, and Anti Cosmo only gets mad at his son once Foop/Irep goes out and ruins anti fairy world, not in any other instance does Anti Cosmo act mean to Foop/Irep, even when he gets zapped twice by him, AC merely reprimands Foop/Irep by telling him that he needs a nap.

Gotta love the ending where his parents get him a cake and want to break him out of jail. Baby's first jail time!

Irep/Foop's second appearance Playdate of Doom (Season 7, Episode 22) doesn't have any mention to his parents, sadly. And oddly enough, this goes both ways with his parents. Anti Cosmo and Anti Wanda appear in Balance of Flour (season 7, episode 29), which was their last and final on screen appearance in the original show, and they dont mention their son at all. It's noticably weird because Poof/Peri was there the entire time. Despite his parents disappearing off screen, the start of Anti Cosmo and Anti Wanda getting mentioned does start the next season after.

2. Love Triangle (season 8, episode 1)

(I'm going to just refer to Irep and Peri as their current names from now on instead of using both because it gets tedious.)

Irep's Kelly Clarkson lunchbox aside--in this scene he states that his Mother packed Anti Venom in his lunch as well as his chicken nuggets. I like to think this means Anti Wanda packs his school lunch regularly because that's cute.

These constant mentions of his parents from here on out are notable because it means that even though they don't show up, heck, they don't even show up in the episode Spellmentary School is introduced despite Cosmo and Wanda being there and that being the perfect opportunity to use Anti Cosmo and Anti Wanda, it's being implied and shown that Irep is still in the care and custody of his mother and father.

Despite showing up in season 9 by himself, Irep does not mention either of his parents again after the first episode of season 8, but it's still shown that he lives with his parents in their castle.

(image fromThe Terrible Twosome, Season 9, Episode 6)

3.Return of the L.O.S.E.R.S. (Season 10, Episode 7)

Irep starts mentioning his parents again starting in season 10. In this scene he states that he's in timeout for now because he put spiders in his father's food. If I wanted to get nitpicky about this, Love Triangle implies antifairies actually eat spiders and don't seem to mind.

New Headcanon: Anti Cosmo is the antifairy version of vegan or whatever and that's why he had issue with it.

Irep continues to mention his parents in a few season 10 episodes after this.

4. Blue Angel (season 10, episode 13)

Irep mentions that he took his rich father's credit card and used it to buy a bunch of cars to destroy the environment. I don't doubt Anti Cosmo has a ton of money considering he's the leader of the antifairies, but there's no way he actually gave Irep that card willingly lol. Outside of that the Chloe and Irep interaction in this was nice, the only part of the episode I really liked.

Irep continues to show up in season 10 after this episode and does not mention his parents in any other appearances outside of his last one. Which is episode 35...

5.Certifiable Super Sitter (season 10, episode 35)

Certifiable Super Sitter is that one episode with the Vicky chainsaw image that people keep ragging on because it breaks every established rule. Peri doesn't show up at all for this entire season until this episode. The in-universe reason is because he was at school the entire time, the writing reason being because of too many characters. Despite this, Irep shows up more often than his own counterpart.

Irep states the reason he came over is because "his parents left without leaving him a forwarding address again."

Again? What does he mean by again? He's literally been living in Anti-Cosmo's Castle the entire time. These screenshots are from the exact same season. And there has been nothing to imply that Anti Wanda and Anti Cosmo even moved out of the castle in the first place. The castle in literally still in Anti-Cosmo's name. Even after they stopped appearing, Irep's mentions of them implied that they all still lived in Anti-Cosmo's Castle. How else would Irep be getting his lunches packed by his mother, how else would Irep have gotten in trouble for putting spiders in his father's pasghetti?

Anti Wanda attached herself to her son as soon as he was born and called him "Sweetie." (Anti Poof) Anti Cosmo literally cried over not being able to have a godchild. (The Fairly Oddlympics) I don't think they would purposely do that.

If Irep never mentioned his parents outside of Anti Poof, then I guess that could be a way to explain their absence? But it just doesn't make sense. He kept bringing them up. His parents were in his life. Like I'd even take the explanation of 'Anti Cosmo and Anti Wanda had an offscreen 3 season side plot where they get hunted down' or something crazy like that. What happened???

[stories-and-chaos]

Shrike: How to Train Your Exorcist

[Hazbin Hotel reader insert as Alastor’s “darling life and death partner” Ace x ace relationship, both parties are moderately sex favorable.]

[One shot, word count 1425, Cw: mild cursing]

—————

There was barely a month before Extermination Day. The Hazbin Hotel was packed for the first time with residents; cannibals and your avian demons, preparing to defend against the exorcists. The cannibals were used to ripping their prey to shreds. They needed practice hitting weak spots and wielding angelic weapons instead of their teeth and claws.

Your flock had flight and agility but the majority relied on hit and run tactics. They needed to learn not to dash off but continue their attack. Fortunately a couple of your followers had a more hawk-like design and the hunting ability to match. And you of course had the look of a butcher bird; you had plenty of experience taking down opponents.

“Alright you lot! We’ve got techniques you need to learn if you’re going to last longer than thirty seconds on extermination day. Angels are used to being unopposed in the air; they fly down, attack, then fly off to their next victim. So we take advantage of that.” You paced in front of the gathered demons.

You were short, but most of your people weren’t much bigger. “Exorcists aren’t going to be looking above themselves for targets. Even a small fighter diving at high speed can knock their target out of the sky. If we can grab and spin them, we might even break bones when they hit the ground.”

Some of the more delicate members of the group looked at each other dubiously. “Not to mention, they don’t fight together. They hunt down targets individually. Which means we can team up against them.” Now they looked more curious. “We don’t even have to make direct contact; two or more of us diving right next to them at top speed is going to hit them with our wakes. Knock them off balance and they’ll be easy targets for Pentious’ ranged weapons.

“We’re all going to have angelic steel weapons. Slash at them as you dive by, you might hit limbs or a wing. If you’re lucky, you’ll hit the neck. Ultimately, our goal is to disrupt them in the sky and get them to where the cannibals can finish them off. Now, let’s start with diving runs.”

You ended up holding multiple target dummies aloft with little whirlwinds. The demons weren’t very accurate at first, but they picked up the concept quickly. Before the week was out, more than half were knocking the dummies off their perches and almost all were trying weapons during their dives.

Alastor was doing his own preparations, but he did help setting up the targets. His tentacles held them in place when you needed a break. He also amused himself by making surprise attacks to keep the fliers on their toes.

You hauled Husk over at least once a day to join the flight group. He still didn’t like having wings, but you pointed out he needed every advantage he could get. And you knew how rusty the former Overlord was. So you shoved him right into the lot for practice.

The one you couldn’t get a hold of was Vaggie. She was spending all her time instructing the cannibals, then working with Charlie after. You’d seen her new wings and according to her royal girlfriend, the former exorcist had been in Hell for years. If Husk was rusty, Vaggie likely was too.

Ten days before the early Extermination, you walked up to Vaggie after the group’s lunch break. “Let’s leave the troops to Charlie for the afternoon, ma petite. You’re overdue for some time with me.” You linked your arm in hers and essentially dragged her with you. Charlie tried to come with you, but you waved her off. “Not to worry princess, I’ll give her back in one piece!”

“What the hell are you doing?” Vaggie didn’t really sound angry, just annoyed at your pushiness.

“I am giving you something you badly need.” You brought her to a patch of grass near your flock’s training area. You had told everyone to clear out of the sky in this area; this wasn’t a group session. “You’ve got those pretty new wings, cher. Let’s prove they’re not decorative, hm?”

With that you launched into the sky, hovering about twenty feet above the ground. “I know how to fly, Y/N.” Her voice turned harsher than usual as she joined you. “And Carmilla already showed me how to fight angels.”

You smiled, got a bit more altitude, and raced past her in a dive that sent her spinning in the air. “Carmilla, for all her skill and charm, is sadly limited by gravity,” you said, pulling out of your dive. You grabbed Vaggie’s arm as you passed her again, this time pulling her up with you. You brought her face close to your own. “We are not.” Before she could respond, you grabbed her shirt, spun her in the air and threw her toward the ground.

She managed to get control and brake before she hit the ground. “Allons’y cher. You know how to beat angels?” You summoned a stiletto in each hand. “Let’s make sure you can beat them where they feel strongest; the sky.” Vaggie pulled out her spear before launching herself at you.

She was right; she did know how to fly and fly well. It seemed flying was like riding a bike, you never really forgot. But she was also out of practice and had never sparred with someone like you. Someone willing to fight dirty, with tooth, talon, wings, and every bit of strength in your small frame.

That first day, she could barely touch you. But by the end of the day you could tell she was getting more fluid before the tiredness set in. She had a grin on her face as she begrudgingly said, “Okay, you’ve got a point. I need practice.”

“So you’ll be here tomorrow afternoon?” She rolled her eye and agreed before finding Charlie. You stretched your wings out and Alastor manifested behind you. “Looking like you were enjoying yourself today my dear.”

“I did, cher. Husk refuses to spar with me and none of our followers can quite keep up. Despite the situation, it’s fun to find someone who can.” You smiled up at him and placed your hand in his outstretched one. His shadows enveloped you, delivering you to the hotel suite.

Alastor led you to the table and pulled out your chair. “We’ve hardly been able to spend time together recently. Will you let me have your attention for the night my dear?”

“Gladly, darling.” After dinner (gumbo that reminded you of quiet nights both in the living world and Hell), the two of you relaxed on the couch together. You each had a book to read; the only sounds were the turning of pages and the chirps and drones from the bayou. Just being in each other’s presence helped calm your nerves about the upcoming battle.

The following week was packed with training and preparing the hotel’s grounds for the attack. Vaggie showed up every day after lunch to practice with you. As a former exorcist, she was experienced with various weapons already. She picked up on your style without too much difficulty.

Two days before the deadline, she grappled you in midair. Her remaining eye glowed as she continued her movement, spinning you with her own body as the axis. Like you had to her the first day, she flung you to the ground, her rotation giving the throw more force.

Too close to brake, you resorted to cushioning your fall with wind. Once your head stopped spinning, you looked up at her and started clapping. “Well done, cher!” You rustled your feathers, getting everything back into place before taking to the air again. “Now, let’s make sure you can do it again.”

It turned out she could. Neither of you could manage too many in a row without getting a wicked headache. But Vaggie had a grasp of everything you could show her in those ten days. Much of what you had practiced together was new for her, meaning it was one more way to catch the angels off guard.

Inevitably, Extermination Day arrived. You waited with the rest of the defenders. Vaggie had her wings hidden for now; none of her former comrades knew she could fly again and she wanted it to be a trump card.

Golden light rained down, Vaggie rallied those around her with Charlie, you and yours took to the sky to teach the rest of the exorcists a lesson.

——————

@whitewolfsoldat @edgyboi10000 @ch3sire-blu3 @clearly-awkward @badatpunz @bengewatch @chewbrry

[mcondance]

lights just went out at my house so ofc i’ve gotta fuck jj about it. this is new for me so. bare with me 😁🩵

i’m thinking about… a blackout with jj.

she’s a little prepared, of course, pretty girl is an organizer and planner obviously. battery packs are charged, and candles are lit (they’re yours, she likes your mini passion for candles, and she’s got her own for when you don’t wanna use your good ones.)

with the battery packs running low and your phones moving slowly for the lack of wi-fi, there’s not much to do but lie there and pace yourself on shows to conserve battery power. she’s a little warm against you, both of you in shorts and tanks, legs curled up with the others.

there’s not much to do.

it’s only natural that your minds move to one thing to do; each other.

her hand starts to roam as you pull her ever closer, whispering over your temple and cheek, until she’s placing her hand right over your tit and nodding all knowing, a sparkle in her eyes as you both lean in.

it’s getting warm, but the hot kiss feels so good you barely care. you’re already growing wet, and jj’s palming your tit through the thin little cami you’ve got on, and your legs part to allow one of her legs in between.

she grabs your tit just right, sending a little sparkle of feeling shooting from your nipple through your chest. you whine, a pathetic sound, all broken and ruined for her, and she craves and chases that sound like air.

air. air exists.

both of you separate and suck in said air, faces still close enough to feel the other’s breath ghosting against your face. her lips are slick with your spit and her nipples are hard, peeking through her shirt.

“we’re in a blackout and you’re still trying to get in my pants,” she jokes.

“i’m bored. nothin’ to do. i’d say you’re bored to, but it looks like you’ve found some entertainment.”

she shrugs and her eyes sparkle again. you kiss her again.

in the dark, her fingers find their home inside you and your squeaks and whines echo through the quiet home, and it’s fucking hot but she’s hotter, burning you from the inside out. the spit trailed from your shoulders to your neck is the only cold thing about you. your breath is ragged and rough and stuttered.

she can see where her fingers are stuffed inside your shorts that she disregarded in her pursuit of getting her fingers inside you. her hair is messy in the prettiest way and her blue eyes are dark and beautiful, and she glows even in the dim room. she’s a fucking dream, a princess as you like to call her, and she makes you feel angelic and depraved all at once.

your head lowers between her thighs at one point, her shorts discarded, and her spread wide for your tongue and fingers and eyes, a trinity working together in divine harmony that has her stomach caving in. one of the straps of her cami slides down her shoulder, the other one slides down when she reaches for your hair, threading her fingers into your curls.

you shake your head from side to side and it’s so much for her. she almost cries in response, the sparks resonating from your tongue on her clit fuck her mind and body up so bad. when she cums, she sounds like the princess you claim her to be, a melodic whine and a gasped “fuck,” all mixed up with her breaths as her eyebrows furrow and her thighs close around your head.

you’d think the temperature wasn’t rising with the way you two do everything but sit still. maybe it wouldn’t have even gotten so hot if you’d just resigned to reading a book or playing a board game.

when the lights finally flicker back on, and the soft whir of electricity and the ac kicking back on fill the house, you’d say you handled the blackout pretty well.

[lonniemachin]

HELP AHMED, MARAM, AND THEIR THREE LITTLE CHILDREN ESCAPE GENOCIDE

Here are some new photos provided by Ahmed of his children Habiba (4), Kareem (2), and baby Muhammad (1), showing what life was like before the past 300 days of zionist aggression.

And another photo of his children in the building they've been displaced to, the rubble of a destroyed city their only view from the window.

Please, please give what you can to help them reach their goal of €40,000. Every euro is needed to register to evacuate, travel across the border, and receive treatment, housing, and basic necessities once outside of Gaza. Maram, the children's mother, has been battling potentially fatal liver disease, unable to provide milk for Muhammad due to malnutrition, and he's suffered as a result. The family has been forced to pack up and move once they'd found a place to settle upwards of 10-11 times, under the constant threat of death by shelling. Ahmed sends me videos, photos, and recordings of bombs falling only hundreds of feet from where he is with his family. Every second, every contribution counts towards SAVING THEIR LIVES. And there have been no donations in 19 HOURS.

CAN WE REACH €21,000 BY THE END OF THE WEEK, 08/04/2024?

ONLY €821 NEEDED!

Tagging for reach:

@commissions4aid-international @brutaliakhoa @dykesbat @aita-blorbos @batmanego

@magnus-rhymes-with-swagness @palentonga @malcriada @appsa @watermotif @terroristiraqi

@sayruq @northgazaupdates @aces-and-angels @rhubarbspring @stuckinapril @schoolhater @ot3

[ecile]

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀that's my girl!

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀that's my girl, girl.

[sycamorelibrary754]

Guardian Angel

Chapter 2: My Guardian Angel

Summary: Your first day back at work after recovering from your sprained ankle was normal, until it wasn’t. It turns out your first encounter with Wanda wasn’t your last.

Warnings: None

Word Count: 1.2k

A/N: This is the last purely fluffy chapter for a bit. Angst and adversity is on the way.

Guardian Angel Masterlist

Once your doctor confirmed the sprain, you found yourself hobbling around your apartment for the rest of the week, with a small ice bag or a heat pack wrapped around your swollen ankle. Being cooped up inside your apartment was not your cup of tea, and you grew restless with each passing day. You tried to distract yourself by streaming every movie you could think of, but the boredom persisted. Finally, when you were able to walk more comfortably with the help of an Ace bandage, you felt a sense of relief. By the following Monday, you were eager to get back to work and resume your normal routine.

After graduating from college, you decided to open up The Candy Bar, an old-fashioned sweet shop that seemed like a dream come true. Your shop sold every kind of candy you could imagine, various ice creams, and had a soda fountain on site. In addition, you also made a handful of homemade treats inspired by candy recipes passed down from your great-grandfather, such as caramel-covered chocolate turtles, peanut brittle, and fudge.

"Would you like to tell me what happened again?" Your friend and business partner Harper asked you with a gentle tone while restocking the ice cream bins. The dark-haired girl with freckles had been your closest friend since college.

“I walked up to the counter to get my coffee, and suddenly, these two boys crashed into me. Before I knew it, a redhead rushed up and started talking non-stop. Honestly, I have no recollection of what she said. I think they were words. She was so beautiful that I blacked out.”

“This could only happen to you,” Harper teased.

“She helped me back to my apartment, got me some ice, and left. Then I sat there speechless for the next ten minutes.”

“She’s like your guardian angel! Like those stories you hear about mysterious strangers showing up in your hour of need and then disappearing as quickly as they came.”

You always admired Harper's optimism and belief in fate, even if you didn't believe it yourself.

“It doesn’t count if the guardian angel’s kids initiate your hour of need,” you replied.

*^~^*

Throughout the day, you diligently tended to your quaint little shop as a steady stream of customers flowed in and out, filling the air with the irresistible aroma of chocolate and sugar. The vibrant interior was a feast for the eyes, with a mesmerizing display of candy in every color of the rainbow, swirling and twirling around the store. As you looked down, the black and white tiled floor seemed to beckon visitors, guiding them like a yellow brick road toward the front counter. Here, an impressive arrangement of fudge and peanut brittle awaited, flanked by the refreshing soda fountain to the right and the tempting ice cream display freezers to the left. Finally, your customers' eyes would inevitably fall upon the charming vintage sweets display, which sat proudly on the back wall just beneath the menu.

In the late afternoon, the rush subsided, and you started preparing the homemade soda syrup for the soda fountain. Although it was a tedious process, it was still one of your favorite activities. While in the back kitchen, you heard the bell ring above the entrance.

“I’ll be right with you!” you shouted.

You wipe your hands off on a towel and walk back to the front of the shop.

“Welcome to The Candy Bar! How can I—”

As you turned around, your eyes fell upon the customer, who instantly caught your attention. She stood there wearing a pair of sleek black leather Chelsea boots that hugged her feet, complementing her light wash jeans and a white cable knit sweater. The long brown heather overcoat draped over her shoulders added a touch of sophistication to her ensemble. Her fiery red hair cascaded down her back, framing her face perfectly. The sight was nothing short of mesmerizing.

“Help you,” you trailed off softly. “Wanda?”

“Y/N? Oh my gosh, what are you doing here? I thought about you all week! Are you okay? How is your ankle?” She rambled. It's so adorable that you want to squeeze her.

"This is my shop," you said proudly. "Thanks to your help, my ankle is much better now. I can't thank you enough for your assistance the other day," you added with a self-assured tone. Despite feeling a bit nervous, you managed to express yourself clearly and coherently.

“It's amazing!” Wanda exclaimed. “It reminds me of the candy stores from old TV shows.”

“As a child, I loved watching TV shows that featured charming, sweet shops where the characters would gather for root beer floats and candy.”

Wanda slowly turned around, admiring every inch of the decor as she exclaimed, "I love it!"

"Thank you. How may I assist you today?" you said with a professional tone and a raised eyebrow.

“I am searching for a sweet treat for my boys' birthday,” Wanda said

“Ah, the junior middle linebackers,” you joked. “How are they doing?”

They're good," she giggled. "I think they're finally starting to feel comfortable here.

“You just moved to New York?” you inquired.

“Actually, we just moved back to New York from a small town in New Jersey," Wanda said hesitantly. "I used to live here for work, but this is a new experience for Billy and Tommy. It's been challenging for us all to adjust to the change.”

You thought to yourself, 'The three of them.' You decided to file that information away for later.

“Well, welcome back!” you declared. What business are you in?”

“Public service,” she said, rubbing the back of her neck nervously.

“I'm not surprised! You've come to the right place, Wanda. Let's find something special for the birthday boys,” you said, rubbing your hands together. “How old will they be turning?”

"Eleven, I can't believe it," she said while running her hands gently through her hair.

“Let me think for a moment," you said, scanning the shop before guiding her towards the candy displays at the front. Your gaze moved over the colorful containers of candy, and you relished this part of your job. You picked out an assortment of sweets that you thought Billy and Tommy would like, including malted milk balls, jelly beans, peanut butter cups, chocolate-covered gummy bears, whirly pops, and some of your homemade fudge. As you began to package the candy, you offered a few pieces to Wanda to try.

“These are delicious, Y/N. I’ll have to stop them from eating it all in one sitting.”

"Wow, that's the best compliment you could give me," you said with a wink.

Wanda observed you working and couldn't help but smile. You were fully engaged in the deceptively simple task with unwavering focus, exuding the unmistakable radiance of someone who loves their job. It was magnetic.

You eagerly revealed your surprise with a broad smile by exclaiming, "Tada!" Wanda's eyes lit up with excitement as she saw the two beautifully crafted gift bags you held out to her. The bags were adorned with bold red and white stripes, and each one was elegantly personalized with the names of Wanda's boys written in a stunning gold calligraphic font.

“Wow, this is amazing! How much do I owe you?” she asked, reaching for her purse.

You waved your hand dismissively and said, "It's on the house.

“Oh no, that's very kind of you, but I couldn't,” Wanda said.

“I made one for you, too, as a way of returning the favor for helping me last week,” you said, placing a third bag in front of her.

You could feel your heart beating rapidly against your ribcage as you extended your hand towards her with the small gift. She looked up at you with a grateful expression, her warm touch on your hand making you feel appreciated. "This is so generous, y/n," she said, her voice filled with gratitude. "Thank you so much. I won't forget this." Despite your nervousness, you managed to smile back at her, hoping she couldn't hear the sound of your heart pounding inside your chest. The moment was etched in your memory, a testament to the power of a kind gesture.

It's my pleasure," you smiled. "Please tell the boys I said happy birthday.

"I will," Wanda assured, locking her gaze with yours. Her beautiful green eyes caught your attention once again.

I hope… I hope I see you again soon,” you stammered.

“I hope so, too,” Wanda smiled. Your eyes lingered on her as she picked up the three candy bags and left your shop.

For the second time in two weeks, you watched the woman leave. A few moments later, Harper joined you at the front counter.

“Who was that?” she asked.

“My guardian angel.”

*Chapter 3 coming soon*

Tag: @automaticdinosaurtaco

[seraphim-coinz]

Hello! I was wondering if you'd be willing to do an ID pack for us :D if it's too hard, then maybe an ID pack around heaven / divine, roses, and that feel elegant - The Lovers

System Names: The Poets. The Rose Covered Angels. The Divine Thorns. The Holy Roses. The Rising Roses. The Blooms. The Rose Collective. The Thorned System.

Names: Rosie. Rosamund. Briar. Rosemarie. Roisin. Belladonna. Astrid. Casey. Ibara. Thorne. Alouette. Cosette. Romeo. Acacia. Bryony. Sparrow. Winter.

Pronouns: Ethe/Ethereals. Rose/Roses. Love/Loves. Divi/Divines. Wing/Wings. Ange/Angels. Ser/Seraphs. Halo/Halos. Dei/Deities. Grace/Graces. Bloom/Blooms. Flor/Florals. La/Laces. Th♡y/Th♡m. Ho/Holies. H⯎/H⯎m. Sh☆/H☆r.

Usernames: rosycheeks. divineflowers. the-thorned-cherub. wingedroses. prettypetals. vinehalo. pureroses. sacrificingroses. a-rose-covered-heaven. gardenguardianangel.

Titles: The Angel Who is Covered In Roses. [prn] whose Wings are Thorned. [prn] with the Halo made of Vines. The Garden's Guardian. [prn] who Created Heaven Out of Roses.

Genders: 🥀emojic/Wiltedfloweremojic. Transmascrose. Filthangelic. Angeldream. Eledeoangelic. Angelancient/Archangelancient. Wealidollic. Seraphimlexic. Punkstelpinkial.

Labels: Angelic System. Angel BPD. Angel Lesboy. Angelibian. Angelboyic. Angelcoreaestelic. Camellian. Rose Lesbian. Rose Gay. Aro/Ace Rose.

[caltropspress]

Earl Sweatshirt: A Geography of Grief and Growth

I made myself the poet of the world. The white man had found a poetry in which there was nothing poetic….I had soon to change my tune.

—Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (1952)

I suggest that we do not necessarily need to hear and know what is stated in its entirety, that we do not need to “master” or conquer the narrative as a whole, that we may know in fragments.

—bell hooks, “Teaching New Worlds/New Words” (1994)

Breakin’ ’em down to micro-fragments.

—Saafir, “Battle Drill” (1994)

What is asked of me is not to ascend but to descend.

—Robert Bly (1990)

1.

Earl Sweatshirt’s arc, swerving and dervishy, isn’t difficult to see, as we’ve witnessed it with him—we’re either interlocutors or interlopers, both with questionable motives. So when Earl looks back on school daze, as he does on “OD,” we look back with him (though ours is often an imperial gaze [HOW COULD IT NOT BE?]). We tee-hee and titter as we hear that “somebody tooted in the student commons,” tooted being the most puerile word for gas he could have chosen. An array of scatological options were ignored. It’s a deliberate gesture toward juvenilia. He doesn’t want his expression to be too mature, ha. He wants to welcome you to the romper room, ha. Remaining a kid until the moment he expires, apparently. So he sets the adolescent scene: the student commons. “The bell rang,” and the accused student was spared the prolonged opprobrium. In about four seconds, the student will begin to post. He “went home and argued in the comments,” channeling his embarrassment elsewhere, talking shit (shit) on the internet behind the safety and quasi-anonymity of a screen—an odd facade. He can walk right up to your avi and diss you. That’s his philosophy. The public humiliation replaced with a private self-possession. The discomfort of the crowd exchanged for the solace of solitude.

2.  DID AN ANGEL SPEAK?

The sonics of “tooted” and “student” are twee, giggle-inducing. We laugh along with the concatenation of m and n phonemes [somebody | student | commons | rang | went | home | then | in | comments]. The near-homophonous commons and comments scan hysterical. With “OD,” it’s easy to confuse adolescence with adulthood. That “somebody” committed this social transgression seems defensive. Maybe it was him—the subject, Earl, Thebe—seeing as how the rest of the song is delivered in the first-person. Embrace the Age of Immaturity. Channel the Fat Boys: Darren Robinson’s flatulent beatbox. Place it beside the disorderly lyrics that Bobbito spits: “I write my own shit from finish to start, / Diminish the heart, / I eat a knish and then I fart.” Like the Cenobites, Earl kicks a dope verse, and only that. “I keep my sentences short,” he says on “EAST.” Beauty is brevity, brevity beauty. A “brevity pack,” as Earl has referred to the Feet of Clay songs. He strives to be live ’cause he got no choice. He runs his own business like James Joyce. In A Portrait of the Artists as a Young Man, a similar flatus incident unravels. At Clongowes Wood College (Stephen Dedalus’s Coral Reef Academy), a “stout student who stood below…on the steps” by the name of Goggins “farted briefly.” Sonically, the sentence shares much with Earl’s opening line. Dixon asks, in a “soft voice,” “Did an angel speak?” But the others react with bellicosity and name-calling (stinkpot; flamingest dirty devil). Goggins doesn’t retreat home; he simply asks, “It did no one any harm, did it?” You still bet that you can harm me, but you don’t alarm me, Goggins might say another way, reprising Del the Funky Homosapien, echoplexing Masta Ace. 

3. 

Earl “watched the doppler move,” the wavelength shift—the siren song of the “toot,” something insidious—or maybe it’s just the tremors we’re feeling. Woop, woop: that’s the sound of the beast, KRS would say. The frequency shivers. The shift, the movéd doppler, means Earl is immediately older, he’s the child who “get[s] introduced to violence,” even if he acknowledges the line was inspired by his nephew on a playground in South Africa, experiencing apartheid reincarnate as a whiteboy cuts him in line for the slide. Cranly, bullying Goggins, “shove[s] him violently down the steps.” The doppler moves. It slides into violence—like the violence visited upon the MOVE compound located at 6221 Osage Avenue in Philly in 1985. Gradations of black/white. ELUCID mentions the “gray on [his] face showing age” on his Osage (2016) project. Isn’t it strange—how the youngins can turn cold, hoarfrosty, in an instant? The grayscale cover to ELUCID’s tape is graced by a photograph of Birdie Africa, the sole child survivor of the siege. The bone fragments of the MOVE children have since been used in anthropology courses at UPenn and Princeton—case studies. It’s a good trope. Fascinating stuff.

4.  TRYIN’ TO TRANSFORM YOU BOYS TO MEN LIKE DAYCARE

When JuJu of the Beatnuts asked, You want pain?, he wasn’t referencing the dramatical-traumatical pain Earl negotiates—JuJu’s question posed a ruffneck and ruffian pain on “Watch Out Now.” Somewhere closer to Marcy, where Jay-Z’s streets was watching. Earl clocks minutes, anaphoric with what he watches (I watched the doppler… / I watched a child…), much like Dylan’s portentous hard rain in which he saw endless racialized visions: “I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it”; “I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin’”; “I saw a white ladder all covered with water.” For Earl, the ladder is a slide. The saw is watched. Witnesses all.

5.

In “Theory as Liberatory Practice,” bell hooks writes that she “came to theory because [she] was hurting”: “I wanted to make the hurt go away. I saw in theory then a location for healing.” hooks says that she “came to theory young, when [she] was still a child,” citing Terry Eagleton who argues that “[c]hildren make the best theorists.” Children, Eagleton insists, possess “a wondering estrangement.” No wonder, then, that “since a jit” Earl has found no use in “giving up.” He rather make it make sense. 

6.

I beat you to the point. Having gained experience, there’s nothing you can tell Earl that he doesn’t already know, that he hasn’t already seen. He’s seen enough, had enough. He doesn’t await the mob’s pursuit; he places the noose on himself, he RE: DEFines it within his own lexicon. His noose, therefore, “is golden.” He’s a young youth, rockin’ the gold [noose], DEATHWORLD goose. He speaks with criminal slang, with a split tongue like ELUCID. Where ELUCID was “true and living, actual—no dull axes, owner of all heads,” Earl is “true and living, lonesome,” with no skulls to keep him company. He has to square up with the “pugilistic moments” on his own. 

7.  I AM OLDER THAN I ONCE WAS AND YOUNGER THAN I’LL BE

I’m thinking of “The Pugilist at Rest” (1991) by Thom Jones, whose epileptic protag describes a “grainy black-and-white photograph” of the bronze statue called The Pugilist at Rest. The pugilist, with a pocketful of mumbles, has “slanted, drooping brows that bespeak torn nerves” and a forehead “piled with scar tissue.” Torn nerves and scar tissue—sounds like the physical manifestations of grief. And, yes, Earl has grieved, and he continues to grieve—as listeners, we’re accustomed to his grief pedigree, as per Ka. In the past, Earl was “panicking a lot”—he just “want[ed] [his] time and [his] mind intact.” That’s a cold fact.

The narrator of “The Pugilist at Rest” readies himself for a cingulotomy—a psychosurgical procedure that will “cauterize a small spot in a nerve bundle in [his] brain.” In other words, he wants to keep his mind intact. The neurosurgeon promises the operation will lift “the heaviness of a heart blackened by sin,” which is what convinces the narrator to agree to it. Good grief, he thinks, he’s been reaping what he sowed. He “can’t go on like this,” barely living “with a deadening sense of languor,” a phrase which calls to mind Earl’s lethargic, slugabed flow. Feeling insane in the membrane, like he’s a Soul Assassinated, exploring the depths beneath his whooligan behaviors. 376 was a brothel. “Good and evil are only illusions,” Jones writes. In anticipation of the surgery, the protag considers the worst-case [so what, so what] scenario: “If they fuck up the operation, I hope I get to keep my dogs somehow.”

8.  MOURNING & MEDICINE FOR MELANCHOLIA

Grief carries its own antidote along with it.

—Charles Brockden Brown, Wieland (1798)

“Grief is the door to feeling,” Robert Bly says. But Earl, on “Grief,” told us he “ain’t been outside in a minute”—and that minute, whether we’re speaking with criminal slang like Nas on “It Ain’t Hard To Tell” or not, is an eternity. Earl hadn’t crossed that threshold, hadn’t kicked in that door. MIKE would realize it much later on “No Curse Lifted (rivers of love),” how you “had to walk through the grief,” even if it “was the worst feeling.” In 2015, though, Earl found these passageways distorted. Like the undulating photograph on the cover of his first mixtape. Like the blur-obscured selfie on the cover of Some Rap Songs. Like the static-scrambled cover of I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside. Earl’s dealt in fragmentary confuzzled noise for a full career. He’s been standing on the corner, red burnt, moving down alien lanes paved by GBV, greenthinking to himself. It ain’t hard to tell that Earl “don’t act hard” and yet is a “hard act to follow.” The density or opacity of his exterior notwithstanding, grief don’t come easy. “As men,” Bly says, “we’re taught not to feel pain and grief as children.” So Earl spits somnolent, numb-tongued and slack-jawed. Like he said on “Cold Summers”: muffle my pain and muzzle my brain up. 

“I’ve been alone in my shit for the longest,” he spit on “Grief,” and in work as recent as “Vin Skully,” he’s still figuring out “how to stay afloat in a bottomless pit.” Bly says that “we receive something from our father by standing close to him—something moves over that can’t be described in material terms.” Bly speaks of being in a “conspiracy with his mother” from early on. Earl finds himself “thinking ’bout [his] grandmama” while he wallows and lies in a bottle. “Grief” catalogs all the things his mama taught him. Earl’s work, of late, is autodestructive. He peels away and pastes back haphazardly. He vibes with this Bly shit: “If you can deny something so fundamental as grief in the whole family, you can deny anything. And then how can you write poetry if you’re involved in that much denial?”

Bly goes on to quote Alice Miller, the psychoanalyst who gave us The Drama of the Gifted Child (1979): “When you were young, you needed something you did not receive, and you will never receive it. And the proper attitude is mourning.” Mourning is the proper attitude, not blame—mourning. Mourning makes its way through moaning and mumbling—Earl’s current intonation. On “Grief,” he “cut the grass off the surface [and] pray[s] the lawnmower blade catch the back of a serpent.” Philip Larkin’s poem “The Mower” (1979) leans more literal: “The mower stalled, twice; I found / A hedgehog jammed up against the blades, / Killed. It had been in the long grass.” Larkin’s speaker genuflects before the innocent critter, recalling how he “fed it, once.” Now, he mourns how he has “mauled its unobtrusive world, / Unmendably. Burial was no help.” Earl, of course, is less forgiving of the serpents in the grass. They’re threats, not friends. Still, a void opens up when the mower—(and let’s not forget the lawnmower is a modernized scythe)—does its mowing. Grief is the door to feeling, and on the other side:

Next morning I got up and it did not. The first day after a death, the new absence Is always the same; we should be careful Of each other, we should be kind While there is still time.

9.  NOBODY KNOW WHO MADE THIS WELL, FOR IT WAS HERE WHEN I WAS BORN

“Come get to know me at my innermost…”

Riveting, Earl raps. Earl raps are riveting. We fix to the flow—riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s. We’re invited to know Earl, to become familiar, and his “innermost” is a constant vacillation between optimism and [afro]pessimism. The sudden switches—these switches on bitches like fixed with hydraulics—establish what Danny Schwartz, writing for Rolling Stone, called an “uneven terrain.”

Earl’s “family business [is] anguished,” and that’s recognizable. We’ve known Earl (on “Chum”) with the “pendulum swinging slow” and low. He holed up, hostage-like, in his “heart’s bottomless pit.” Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum” (1842) brand of captivity. “I was sick,” that narrator says, “—sick unto death with that long agony.” Something tells me there should be an exclamation point there (SICK!). Earl Sweatshirt was down, down, down. “I was in the fucking pits for like 10 months post my pops dying,” he said in an interview. The Spanish Inquisition ain’t shit.

But for these countless downs, “OD” tracks the ups like naloxone in the nasal membrane. “Now I need atonement,” Earl notes—he makes a case for reparations. He “sets the goal[s]” like some motivational speaker. If “half [his] wings is broken,” he can “spread the other for [his] brodie OD.” Somewhat circumspect as he’s “tiptoeing,” yet the approach is laden with “too much love.” Even when his “sister showed in a rut,” he’s joining arms with her and “getting over, sending up.” That rut she walks—like Eudora Welty’s worn path (1941)—is a path through the pinewoods, and she’s suddenly Phoenix Jackson. “She was very old and small,” Welty writes, and she moves “with the balanced heaviness and lightness of a pendulum in a grandfather clock.” Even with her pentium processing and pendulum low, she swings back up—the rise of her namesake. She screams phoenix, her feathers and flames are one skin. “Living in the moment,” Earl raps, and his craft is bars. “You been corrupt”—and, sure, who hasn’t?—but you recover with “some ginabot.” Welty’s Old Phoenix surveys a spring “silently flowing through a hollow log.” She bends and drinks and says, “Sweet gum makes the water sweet.” It’s the equivalent to Earl putting “shilajit in his sippy cup,” which is “healing cuts revealingly.” And, yes, from a “sippy cup,” so we’re back to toddling around again (“Since a jit,” he says). “I can’t give enough,” Earl raps, his last winding-sheet made of nard and myrrh. 

10.

We crouch and teeter, caterwauling along the ledges, for we’ve got these clumsy feet of clay. This is the intended effect[/defect]; this is the rubble of what Earl calls the “crumbling empire.” This is us feeling the violent vibes of the “death throes” he speaks of. Why would we expect anything to resemble traditional song or rhyme structure when the earth quakes, civilization trembles, and Earl’s dungeon shakes? His chains have fallen off. The tenor is tremors. He’s living the trife life—hell on earth—but still living. Earl’s done trying to not look down—he embraces an outer appearance which scans dour; he deliberately gazes into the pit, inviting the vertigo, for it “haunts the whole of existence,” as Fanon says. But Frank B. Wilderson III promises a “vengeance of vertigo.”

11.

Gallons of rubbing alcohol flow through the strip, and Earl’s lips. He’s “refilling the pump”—his heart, yeah—but with a sawed-off shotgun, hand-on-the-pump posture. There’s “no concealing it,” not even with a concealed carry permit. He brandishes right back at “the enemy up in arms bearing snubs.” The mood swings; been down so long it looks like up to him. The turns require tourniquets. This is some Battle of Dak To torture—somewhere between Retaliation and the Heavenly Divine. Emotional turmoil seems violent by design, and Earl’s “memory [is] really leaking blood.” Fear not, the blood is “congealing, stuck.” Like Havoc says, “The Mobb rollin’ thicker.” Prodigy cites it, too: “This ain’t rap—it’s bloodsport.” But Earl has known that all along—he’s been “mobbin’ deep as ’96 Havoc and Prodigy did” since 2013.

12.

HipHopDX’s Kevin Cortez referred to listeners having to “sift through the muddle” in order to appreciate the bars, but where muddle suggests a disorderly conduct, a kaos network, Earl’s style, more appropriately, models. The woozy, wavy, and inner-conflict-war-torn vocals model an abstraction that anticipates the listener’s loyalty. This is what I’ve got, brief and cryptic as the gesture may be, the model says. Writing for NME, Dhruva Balram described Earl’s lyrics as “slurred,” but slurry is the form.

13.

If the empire can deploy Orwellian technologies of repression, its outcasts have the gods of chaos on their side…

—Mike Davis, Planet of Slums (2005)

So if we’re giving ourselves over to the woozes and waves, we’ll just as well find ourselves lost. Let’s go—like those tourist books run by students—and let’s wander eastward. Follow our napkin-scrawled directions and disorientations to a somewhere elsewhere. Let’s go east for a second, for a spell, on a lark, in the dark (word to AKAI SOLO). Earl’s bloodwork contains “pieces of slums”—or more aptly, [sLUms]. He’s hand-to-hand with that Jungle Boy MIKE, but also the god Mike Davis. “[T]he cities of the future,” Davis wrote, would be “constructed out of crude brick, straw, recycled plastic, cement blocks, and scrap wood.” Just the same as an Earl Sweatshirt verse is built—under the tutelage and overstanding-sharing, symbiotically, with MIKE. Davis says our cities aren’t “cities of light soaring toward heaven,” but a world that “squats in squalor, surrounded by pollution, excrement, and decay.” Smells like somebody tooted in the student commons. Smells like a slum village, something we’ve smelled before—possibly coming straight from the slums of Shaolin. 

14.  ACID EASTERNS

Earl trekked to the East and squinted into “one beacon in the dust weaving”—like Clint Eastwood arriving out of the hazy horizon ether of High Plains Drifter (1973). But Earl is heading to the East, blackwards. And though Brother J claimed you can’t define what’s direct from the East, Jeru told us on The Sun Rises in the East that you can’t stop the prophet either. So on “EAST,” Earl traverses a tricky terrain—it’s tricky, tricky, tricky because it’s an acid western landscape: an acid eastern.

The path isn’t direct or linear—it zigs and zags like rolling papers, and stimulates the same. “Double back when you got it made,” Earl says at the start of his journey “EAST.” The objective is to talk sense condensed into the form of a poem like Special Ed once did on “I Got It Made.” Instead, Earl’s poems—his L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poems—skew [non]sense, go form[less], and vaporize rather than condense. Lyn Hejinian in cinnamon Timbs: “constant change figures / the time we sense.” The narrative is hallucinogenic (note: “how the story careen against the bars”). Earl’s bindle contains “thirty racks and weed [with] no fat in the collard greens.” That’s how he gets funky on the mic like an old batch. That’s how he gets sincerity on the mic: “Off top it’s me—no cap, / I don’t bottle things.” That buck that bought a bottle could’ve struck the lotto, maybe. But Earl’s “canteen was full of the poison [he] need[s].” He gets where he’s going like El Topo, bereft. The “trip was long and steep”—that being an acid trip—so let me see you try to ride a horse into the chasms of the canyon.

“EAST” is a death meditation, a grand duel between Dantean and Donneian lyric voices [he damn-near well should’ve double-tracked the vocals]. In a 2015 interview with SPIN, Earl is asked about the worst thing he did that year, to which he replies: “Umm…acid?” He elaborates: “I took it at a time when I really didn’t need to be taking acid. I had like a fucking existential crisis at, like, four in the morning. But it was tight. We reeled it back.” Jodorowsky called El Topo (1970) an “eastern” in that it “incorporat[ed] ancient eastern wisdom in the materiality of American cowboys.” For Earl, it’s more a rhinestone cowboy—he holds the cold one like he holds an old gun (as evidenced in the “EAST” music video). DOOM was no stranger to grief, of course, and the rumors persist regarding the bad acid that precipitated Subroc’s early demise (“Bad Acid” also being the original title for “December 24”).

Estranged Earl, alienated—a high plains drifter (not Clint Eastwood, though) who rechristens a town “Hell” through a baptism of blood. Like the Beastie Boys’ version, Earl pulls out a pair of pliers and pulls a bullet out of his chest. He pulls through, true and living. “I’m long distance from my girl,” Mike D raps, so he’s “talking on the cellular,” but Earl is more alienated than that—beyond racking up roaming charges, immersed in dead zones. He “lost [his] phone and consequently all the feelings [he] caught for [his] GF.” Relationships can’t be sustained in these bleak and barren locations. All the blood has been drained from the ruddy faces—sanguine scenery. In his essay “On the Acid Western,” Jonathan Rosenbaum discusses how the subgenre “refuses to respect or valorize bloodshed.” Memory really leaking blood. Congealing. Stuck. To paraphrase Rosenbaum, Earl’s acid eastern “formulat[es] a chilling, savage frontier poetry to justify [his] hallucinated agenda—a view at once clear-eyed and visionary, exalted and laconic, moral and unsentimental, witty and beautiful, frightening and placid.” Earl’s “innocence was lost in the East,” and obsessives speculate whether this refers to Samoa or New York City—how far east we going? Countless spirit-questers pit-stopping at ashrams, searching for that Gifted Unlimited Rhymes Universal guide. 

“I wait a beat,” Earl says. His canteen stays filled, auto-replenishes. His “cognitive dissonance shattered” and the “necessary venom restored.” Jodorowsky reportedly once taped snakes to his chest for an experimental theater performance. As if it matters if you think it matters anymore. Or, as ELUCID says, “Words mean things but don’t have to.” Acids and bases. Occident and Orient. Western and Eastern. Up is down.

15.  NOTHING LIKE US EVER WAS

Earl’s “EAST” accordion beat—or whatever Orkes Gambus Al Fata instrumentation is at work—is more madcap than madvillainous. In my head is Erick Sermon, though, speaking about how “the flow slow…like a jazz player, or someone on the accordion” on “Knick Knack Patty Wack.” But I’m less concerned with the flow of air through bellows—compressing and expanding—than I am with Earl’s rendering of wind. (Somebody tooted.)

“Let the dead be dead,” Carl Sandburg says at stanza’s end in “Four Preludes on the Playthings of the Wind” (1920). Later, he reports, “The only singers now are crows crying.” And so Earl, a lonesome crow, reminds us—and himself—that “the wind get the ashes in the end” on “December 24.” The whining, wheezing consonance of /-nd/ in “wind” and “end” manages to evoke both the wind itself and the circularity of life. The bar whooshes and whips until we’re at our end, the terminus. That circularity, that full circle: ashes to ashes. “We are the greatest city,” Sandburg repeats, “the greatest nation: / nothing like us ever was.”

Global winds be blowin’—[Of the Soul]—and so billy woods cites that same line on “Haarlem”: “Thebe said the wind get the ashes in the end, bruv.” Check the configuration of the rhime: 

The wind | gets | the ashes | in | the end   {birth}                    {life}                {death}

Even that get does work—whether it’s the violence of Death Grips’ “get got”; Too $hort threatening you to “get in where you fit in”; or the satirical sadism of Keenen Ivory Wayans’ I’m Gonna Git You Sucka. The wind wins out—it gets what it wants. On “EAST,” the wind—infinitely personified—“whispered to [Earl], ‘Ain’t it hard?’” It ain’t hard to tell that it is. How about some hardcore? Yeah, we like it raw like M.O.P. But those burns yield ashes. In Adrienne Rich’s poem “The Burning of Paper Instead of Children” (1989), she struggles with the words she uses, knowing “[t]his is the oppressor’s language / yet [she] needs to talk to you.” I know it hurts to burn, she writes, but writing is no less ardent. “The typewriter is overheated, my mouth is burning.”

Let me bring it back to Robert Bly. “In the ancient times,” Bly says, “the movement for the men was downward—a descent into grief. It’s referred to in the fairytale as ‘the time of ashes.’” Ashes, he explains, is the “code word for the ‘out of it’ time.” 

We know what it is like to take ashes in our hands. How light they are! The fingertips experience them as a kind of powder… Ashes, we note, find their way into the whorls of our fingertips, cling there, make the whorls more noticeable, more visible, more clear to us. We can take our own fingerprints with ashes.

Ashes, then, aren’t simply for the wind’s taking—ashes are for us, are necessary for us to transcend the grief the boys, the men, and the man-child experience. Bly points to the various cultures that have used ashes in initiation rites: “Ashes Time is a time set aside for the death of that ego-bound boy.” Ready to give up, so you seek the Old Earth. The elders cover your face—even your whole body—with ashes “to make [you] the color of dead people and to remind [you] of the inner death about to come.” Consider Earl’s ashen white face produced in the negative imagery of the “Grief” music video.” “The word ashes contains in it a dark feeling for death,” Bly says. “Ashes when put on the face whiten as death does.”

Earl Sweatshirt is a far cry from knocking blunt ashes into caskets.

16.

Feet of clay, hands of light…

—Moor Mother and billy woods, “Furies” (2020)

For Cheryl I. Harris, Earl’s mother, the feet of clay refer to a vulnerability we all possess no matter how formidable we may appear to become. Earl invokes the King of Babylon’s dream, a dream of an idol “meant to represent all the empires of the world,” echoing Sandburg’s imperious “greatest nation.” Earl believes “we at the feet of clay right now…We posted up live from burning Rome.” Imagine the ash pile. So Earl is here, ostensibly, to turn the disco into something dismal—how Mtume becomes “MTOMB” with its entombed sonics, as if he’s rapping from within a wall, the victim of some Poe immurement. 

17.

“I remember woods,” Earl raps on “OD.” “I remember Endom when he wasn’t remembering much, / I remember love healing the ruptures.” I remember is also the refrain and title of Joe Brainard’s poem-memoir, a term which aptly describes much of Earl’s recent output. Brainard’s memories bum-rush into the present:

I remember a dream I used to have a lot of a beautiful red and yellow and black snake in bright green grass. I remember painting “I HATE TED BERRIGAN” in big black letters all over my white wall. I remember liver.

If Earl recalls love “healing the ruptures,” then he also likely recalls Fanon: It is essential to convey to the black man that an attitude of rupture has never saved anyone. But Fanon also speaks of young Black men “maintain[ing] their alterity. Alterity of rupture, of conflict, of battle.” Earl, “feeling rushed, grew up quick.” He echoes Biggie, who “grew up a fucking screw-up,” and Raekwon, who “grew up on the crime side” (though Earl’s mama taught him, as we know from “Grief,” how to avoid the pigs, persecution, and prosecution). Eyes on the clock, Earl acknowledges this “trip around the sun” is his “25th,” so “give it up”—his survival alone deserving of a standing [on the corner] ovation. He celebrates life with “gin and rum.” Again, notably not gin and juice—murder was never the case. The only death is the inner death, the death of the ego-bound boy, that Bly describes. Earl’s gin is the drink of be[gin]ning, of genesis (“Light them Phillies up then…”), of Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, when I was dead-broke, man… “We wasn’t supposed to be alive,” Earl says, yet here he stands.

18.  RUMINANT

Stare at the Feet of Clay album cover—an evocation of folkloric imagery: a Grimm forest with gnarled tree branches—and the enchanted, diabolic goat lying in wait. Earl’s parasocial following speculate G.O.A.T., of course, but I’m more inclined to mythopoeic possibilities. The Feet of Clay goat glares like Baphomet but frolics like a faun over fractured beats. “OD,” Earl has stated, “brought [him] up out of [his] little wreck”—a wreck of wracked nerves. Adrienne Rich encourages “diving into the wreck” (1973).

I am blacking out and yet my mask is powerful it pumps my blood with power.

Earl’s right there with her, submerged and blacking out, but still surviving: Really leaking blood, but refilling the pump.

In her essay “Teaching New Worlds/New Words,” bell hooks invokes Rich’s struggle to navigate the “oppressor’s language.” For hooks, as a Black writer, managing that is even more difficult and historical. “I think now of the grief of displaced ‘homeless’ Africans, forced to inhabit a world where they saw folks like themselves, inhabiting the same skin, the same condition, but who had no shared language to talk with one another, who needed ‘the oppressor’s language.’” hooks explains how Black folks have “remade that language so that it would speak beyond the boundaries of conquest and domination.”

Earl Sweatshirt, especially in his later work, has “altered [and] transformed” English, just as “enslaved Black people took broken bits of English and made of them a counter-language.” The emotional wreckage is also a linguistic heap of fragments—micro-fragments, if we’ve learned anything from Saafir. Earl, in the tradition of his ancestors, “put[s] together [his] words in such a way that the colonizer ha[s] to rethink the meaning of the English language.” “The grammatical construction of sentences in these songs” by Earl, just as by the spirituals of hundreds of years prior, “reflect[s] the broken, ruptured world of the slave.” That crumbling empire Earl mentions was faulted by feet of clay.

At the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in 2019, sharing a dais with his mother, Cherly I. Harris, Earl spoke to this lineage directly: “Rap music is slave music—the modern-day iteration of it. Slave communication had to be encrypted. You got a code.” He shifted: “If I know what I’m saying…I can teach it to you.” On Feet of Clay, Earl is teaching to transgress. “I’m cracking my own code,” he says to an audience member during the Q&A, “how it comes out garbled…,” and then he trails off, as if making a deliberate effort to keep his answer cryptic.

hooks always saw language as “a site of resistance.” This included the incorrect usage and placement of words—she called such practices a “rebellion.” Weaponizing syntax. hooks recognized rap music as a continuation of this fight—the latest [sound]clash, hip-hop artists as rebels without a pause—while still acknowledging the collateral damage it might cause.

Rap music has become one of the spaces where black vernacular speech is used in a manner that invites dominant mainstream culture to listen—to hear—and, to some extent, be transformed. However, one of the risks of this attempt at cultural translation is that it will trivialize black vernacular speech. When young white kids imitate this speech in ways that suggest it is the speech of those who are stupid or who are only interested in entertaining or being funny, then the subversive power of this speech is undermined.

Or, as Earl once said on “Chum,” “Too Black for the white kids and too white for the Blacks,” an axiom he’s come to loathe. Perhaps Fanon had the better bar on this subject: “The white man had the anguished feeling that I was escaping from him and that I was taking something with me. He went through my pockets. He thrust probes into the least circumvolution of my brain. Everywhere he found only the obvious. So it was obvious that I had a secret.”

Despite the pitfalls (and, yeah, the pit is bottomless), Earl’s words play [wordplay] a part in retraining minds, all while exorcizing his own demons through a steady diet of ashes and fractures. hooks promises us that “in the patient act of listening to another tongue we may subvert that culture of capitalist frenzy and consumption that demands all desire must be satisfied immediately.” Through his embrace of a language that indulges in passion and cerebral coding, Earl “heal[s] the splitting of mind and body” so common within Western metaphysical thought. Earl Sweatshirt speaks “words that do more than simply mirror or address the dominant reality”; he builds blips into a reality that is worth the rewind.

Images: Dead Man, dir. Jim Jarmusch, 1995 (screenshot) | Teen at 1990s computer photograph, Unknown (c. 1996) | James Joyce, Age 2, Unknown | ELUCID, Osage album cover (2016), photo by Michael Mally, Philadelphia Inquirer | The Boxer at Rest, bronze statue, Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, Rome, Italy (330-50 BC) | Alphonse Legros, The Pit and the Pendulum, second Plate (1861) | High Plains Drifter, dir. Clint Eastwood, 1973 (screenshot) | Subroc on an Apple IIc, Unknown (c. 1987) | Earl Sweatshirt, “Grief” music video, 2015 (screenshot) | Arthur Rackham, The Water of Life, Grimms Fairy Tales (1916) | Dead Man, dir. Jim Jarmusch, 1995 (screenshot)

[strayheartless]

I want to talk about Genesis when he’s angry with his friends. Not his performative flying off the handle but his actual anger.

I’m imagining the first time Angeal comes into contact with it is just before they sign up for SOLDIER. Maybe he tells Gen that he’s too sickly to be a SOLDIER. Maybe he doesn’t expect Gen to go silent (he doesn’t do that usually.) he expects yelling and throwing things and being generally Genesis about it.

He doesn’t expect Genesis to go stone faced and silent, to look Angeal dead in the eye and to keep looking him in the eye until Angeal can’t keep looking at him. He doesn’t expect Genesis to stand solid and immovable nor did he expect the swift, soft and extremely final “get out”.

Angeal has talked to his mother and to Sephiroth about how devastating Genesis’s rage can be.

Sephiroth doesn’t really pay it much mind. He thinks he’s seen all that Gens anger has to give. He thinks he’s seen Genesis “rage”.

But then they are eighteen and Gen and Angeal are on the cusp of becoming Firsts. They are training together all three and Sephiroth gets fustrated with Genesis’s form, his lack of adherence to direction and order. He ends up yelling that Genesis has no place as a first class soldier, that he is a disgrace to the rank of soldier.

Angeal stops moving and goes to look fearfully at Gen. he expects silence and unblinking anger, but there’s a woosh sound and as he finally looks over he sees Sephiroth’s head has snapped to the side and a deep cut trickles blood on his cheek bone.

Gen isn’t breathing heavy. Hes not yelling or getting in Sephs face. Angeal isn’t even sure Genesis has registered his own movement. But his eyes are fire. His posture is what it had been that day Angeal had questioned his ability too, but he’d never struck Angeal. Genesis never would strike Angeal, he knows that. Gen is many things but he’s not that…

Sephiroth puts his hand to his cheek and sees the blood, notices that the strike has sliced hair from his bangs. Seph is in shock, because in all the time they’ve been training Genesis has never gotten a hit on him like that. NOBODY has ever gotten a hit on him like that except Hojo, and that is only because it would be more then Sephs life was worth to fight the man back.

He starts shaking. Genesis stares at him in silent unrelenting rage and says “How weak I must be. To make a God bleed.” And then turns and leaves.

The first time Zack ever sees Genesis Rage, it isn’t directed at him. Its in Wutai and technically Zack wasn’t even part of Gens company; he was part of Angeals. Except Angeals been Cut down, and Sephiroth is further up the battlefield cutting a way through the lines of soldiers.

Genesis watches Angeal go down. He watches Zack knee slide towards the man and pack his wound as the Medic struggles to get to them.

Zack sees Genesis face Angeal’s would be executioner. He watches him cut down the man with brutal efficiency that would give post Nibelheim Sephiroth a run for his money. He tries to keep up with the swing of Rapier, but suddenly the battles over and Angeals been taken off his hands and Genesis is stood above a sea of bodies.

Zack sees Sephiroth come towards them. He sees him check on Angeal, watches his Mentor grab Sephs hand and pull him down to tell him something from the stretcher. He watches Sephiroth nod and move to Genesis, placing a hand on the man’s cheek to clean the blood that’s flecked there.

And there the two of them stand.

The demon of Wutai and his angel of death. Beautiful in their terribleness.

Zack thinks later, when Genesis has deserted that Shinra does not have a clue what they have unleashed.

Zack KNOWS after Nibelheim that it is only by the grace of Gaia that Genesis and Sephiroth did not choose to inflict their rage together.

Cloud knows upon seeing Genesis rage after the events of AC that it is only by the Grace of Genesis himself that they do not fall to his mercy. Sephiroth will always be the distroyer of worlds. But Genesis has true potential to be a vengful god.