#also Norm is literally his angel

[number1yisuchongfan]

I couldn’t help myself… I had to post this chapter a day earlier than I wanted to…

[tiktaalic]

s1 dean: it's not gay to suck a dick or three or ten you're just making sure you're not gay

s2 dean: getting notes from my team that sometimes it is gay to suck a dick . i would like to formally announce that i never did that. and i never would.and also i'm masc. i'm masc. i'm literally masc.

s3 dean: too busy with dying to think about being gay i'm pretty sure.

s4 dean: really enjoying that cas is unaware of social norms so that dean can oscillate between preening when he teaches him how to be a man (+1 masculinity for being more of a man than cas +1 masculinity for being so much of a man that you can teach others how to do it) and. taking advantage of the no social norms thing to rationalize his OWN behavior with cas because he knows cas isn't going to call him on it not being normal which MAKES it normal because there is no one to refute that.

s5 dean: much of the same but there are now emotional stakes in play because they Are friends he is now Emotionally attached in a real way to this man he was engaging in one way gay chicken with.

s6 dean: mfw my brother tells me to be normal so i marry a woman. ratchets him all the way back to i have never liked a man and i never will.

s7 dean: very similar emotionally to endverse dean / s14 dean in my mind. kind of in the same place as s6 dean but crucially s6 dean was sad and wet and s7 dean is walled off and apathetic. attraction to men does not factor into his worldview.

s8 dean: he literally was in a foxhole with benny and got a spraytan and had a gay thing. this man begrudgingly puts one (1) rainbow ornament on his christmas tree after sending out christmas cards of him embracing another man while their gay ass dog sits at their feet. the sticking point HERE is "cas doesn't feel stuff like that".

s9 dean: We Cannot Get Into All That but. they literallyyyyyyyyy had to make cas sleep with a woman and get banished forever to sidestep The Implications. which are. dean winchester would fuck the gay angel given the FIRST opportunity. i'd probably fuck cas but my brother is dying so idrc about that rn. etc. this is a man who is conscious of his attraction to 1) men and 2) cas and WOULD act on it given the chance.

s10 dean: this is where it gets love triangle-y with crowley and cas. this is because dean DID fuck crowley and WANTS to fuck cas. textually. this is where he stands. moc dean has sex with men and doesnt care because hes normal. POST moc dean is like. the same sex attraction was a metaphor to show that i was evil and corrupted by the mark.

s11 dean: i'll be honest. i remember fuck all about season 11.

s12 dean: his mom is around which means he will not be out. this is also. iirc? where dabb gets his grubby little showrunning hands on things. which of course. means dabbification. which of COURSE. means destiel eating plain toast and raising a baby domestically. which. of course. translates to dean using cas as a girlfriend stand in. which. imo. is reflected in dean's mindset. like s12 dean is aware that cas is the most important person in his life, and he is not interested in deviating from that formula with a woman at all.

s13 dean: gay man realizing the love of his life is dead and he never said or did anything -> gay man whose love of his life comes back so he doesnt have to grapple with the consequences of never saying anything and they can jump back into pseudo relationship.

s14 dean: this is a gay man coparenting with a gay man and telling his father that he has a family. has accepted his fate as a life long ambiguous bachelor who lives with a man and sometimes sleeps in his bed nonsexually. very much dead inside staring down the barrel of throwing himself on a grenade does not have Time to push the boundaries of his relationship.

s15 dean: too many twists and turns to get into in the stinger of a post.

[jalphisrealtrustme]

In defense of Jack Merridew (alternatively titled: my classmates did not read the book)

I don’t like it when people categorise any lord of the flies characters as “good” or “bad” (or in any other types of media, really) and it’s especially bad in class discussions. My classmates always say things like “Jack is crazy guys!” Or “Jack is evil!”, and it annoys me to no end. Are you trying to tell me that you read lotf off Sparksnotes? Anyways, these characters are too complex to be categorised into a single, black and white label, so I think picking up various traits based on the text is a better way of understanding the characters.

Two characters a lot of people like to put these labels on are Jack and Ralph. In my class Jack is seen as a batshit insane demon while Ralph is an angel with a shimmering halo. This is another time I ask them, “have you read the book with your eyes closed??”. When compared to Ralph, Jack does seem objectively, more chaotic, but that isn’t seeing the full picture yet. Today I’m going to clear up a few misunderstandings my classmates often have with Jack to prove that he is not in fact, evil.

1. Jack constantly bullies Piggy throughout the book

While it isn’t wrong to say this, he does bully Piggy quite a lot, I don’t think this is a valid point when discussing how he’s evil, because all of the boys, including Ralph, mistreated Piggy. This argument can’t be made solely for Jack. I would’ve gone on to explain how Ralph doesn’t treat Piggy that well either, but all this mistreatment is arguably a result of Piggy’s own decisions. Being a character that heavily relies on adults, Piggy decides to share the very name he doesn’t want people to call him to Ralph immediately. Since they’re Eton type school boys, of course this wouldn’t go piggy’s way. Him being bullied is a result of his own behaviour in the book, which doesn’t justify Jack’s actions, but explains it.

2. Jack is responsible for multiple deaths

This is another point my classmates often make. A pattern I’ve noticed is that they tend to weed out things that other characters are also guilty of, and direct it at only Jack. This is very frustrating because the main deaths in this book (Simon and Piggy) are results of the setting’s effect on all the boys. When discussing Piggy’s death in particular, Jack isn’t even the one who directly causes it, albeit he doesn’t seem very against it either. Anyhow, It’s not as if Jack purposefully intended these deaths, or even directly caused them, they are all at fault in some way or another. Jack is responsible, but not solely responsible for them. It’s just easier to point the blame to him because he’s the face of the hunters.

3. Jack is inherently evil

I think this is the most outrageous point by far. First off, this is literally proven wrong at the start of the book, where Jack struggled to kill any pigs. It’s shown when he, Ralph and Simon explore the island, in which he hesitates to do so, and another scene where he fails yet again when Ralph is building the shelters. Perhaps this is because British school boys were not taught how to hunt, but I believe it also shows how Jack is just another scared boy, and not inherently evil. There aren’t any other factors that stop him from it other than himself, making it different from Roger’s case where nothing other than societal norms stop him from throwing rocks at the littluns. I’m not saying that Jack is completely innocent, but he is most definitely not inherently evil. Despicable, apathetic characters that are evil at heart do not struggle to kill a pig.

Conclusion

Jack is as controversial as he is misunderstood. While he does harmful things in the book that lead to death and injuries, I believe that he shouldn’t be the only one responsible. Everything that happened on the island is a result of the setting’s effect on the boys, so we cannot direct the responsibility at a singular character. Jack is not inherently evil, nor is he a despicable villain (yes I’m talking to you villains wiki,) and if that’s what you got from the book please read again.

Side note

This is my first post ever so I hope I did okay and didn’t sound too arrogant. It’s mainly directed at my classmates. I know people can have different opinions, and you don’t have to agree with me, but please read the book at the very least. I might make a proper post about defending Jack in the future, but this is all I have for now. Thanks for reading!

[gothamcitycentral]

Hazbin establishes very strong parallels between Charlie and Vaggie’s relationship and Lucifer and Lilith’s.

Charlie being as to Lucifer, the fantastical dreamer discouraged and rejected by the world around them.

Vaggie being as to Lilith, someone who failed their assigned role and were driven out of ‘paradise’ (Heaven/Eden) by someone they should have been able to trust (Lute/Adam).

In their most vulnerable moments Lucifer and Charlie find them, love blossoming between each pair because they defied the norm, Lucifer and Lilith being rebellious in a world of order and Charlie and Vaggie being kind in a world of cruelty.

Though at the same time, Charlie is to Lilith while Vaggie is to Lucifer.

“This kingdom was something she really cared about. Something I care about.”

Charlie acknowledges she is the last thread of the hope her mother gave to Hell all those thousands of years ago. The responsibility to her home Charlie puts on her shoulders is born from the love Lilith had for it. She is directly following in her mother’s footsteps, truly believing her people deserve better and that they’re worth fighting for.

Then there is their partners, the fallen angels who don’t share their love’s connection to Hell. Lucifer saw sinners as horrible people who wasted the gift he went to Hell for giving them. Vaggie always kept everyone not named Charlie a spear’s distance away, treating them as people she tolerated but never trusted for a moment. Despite what Heaven had done, had done to them, they were still thinking like angels.

(Though, these mentalities would change throughout the first season, Lucifer choosing to support Charlie no matter what and Vaggie accepting the hotel crew as a part of the in-group which she wishes to protect)

Lucifer’s distaste for his people, not fighting alongside Lilith’s rebellion and instead agreeing to the exterminations, seems to be why they eventually split, despite the love they held for each other. In extreme contrast, Vaggie always supporting Charlie is what keeps them together despite bumps in their relationship. Vaggie always chose to believe in and support Charlie and that means the world and more to Charlie, who spent so much of her life unsupported.

The show also juxtaposes Lucifer’s parental love for Charlie with Vaggie’s romantic love for her, most prominently with Vaggie starting the reprise of More Than Anything to express her love as Lucifer did originally.

(They’re also just. Charlie and Lilith being these tall powerful demon women with Vaggie and Lucifer being their short and tiny fallen angel loves)

What becomes interesting is during the finale when Lucifer (very strongly, very tastefully) implies he ate out Adam’s first wife before fucking his second.

This seems to based on sexual interpretations of original sin. However, in Hazbin we are very much lead to believe the Fruit of Knowledge is a literal apple. Given that Lilith is said to have also offered the apple to Eve, I doubt the implication is that Luci had any sort of one night stand with Eve. Rather, I think Lilith, Eve, and him were once, or attempted to be, in a romantic relationship.

(Considering Eve was made to be Adam’s lesser and Lucifer and Lilith shared the gift of free will with her specifically, I do wonder if Eve had fallen in love with the two, but was unable to leave Adam. The Fruit of Knowledge being given to her so she would be able to be free and join their relationship, but ultimately resulted in their separation as Lucifer and Lilith were casted into Hell)

Which certainly has implications about the future of Charlie and Vaggie’s relationship.

I think the show has actually set very compelling parallels between Eve and Emily.

Much as Lucifer shared forbidden knowledge with Eve, it’s Charlie’s actions that revealed the hidden truth of Heaven’s exterminations. There’s the specific ‘free will’ which Eve was gifted, which fits with Charlie’s influence giving Emily the ‘free will’ to defy Sera and act against Heaven.

I’ve also talked before about the possibility Emily was brought into existence to fill Lucifer’s place in Heaven. Considering the protective relationship Sera has with Emily, along with her looks of genuine horror at her acting against Heaven, it brings to mind the idea Sera has been fearful that Emily would fall just as Lucifer did for Emily’s entire existence, and as such raised her to be more likely to never stray from Heaven as Lucifer did. Which could add to why Sera hid Heaven’s genocide from her despite Emily being a high ranking seraphim; she couldn’t risk giving Emily a reason to rebel.

Which would be a very striking analogue between the two. Both living replacements for the fallen, born into someone else’s shadow to take their place, intended to be the more docile and proper version of Lilith and Lucifer, less likely to stray from the roles they were created to fill. Though, of course, we know Eve fell to temptation and maybe-probably-definitely left or tried to leave Adam, and that Emily is walking the edge.

(Emily having ties to both Lucifer and Eve seems relevant with how Charlie and Vaggie each have parallels to Lucifer and Lilith. Perhaps in her fall, we’ll see Emily ‘thrive in Hell’ just as Lilith did, and similarities between Charlie and Vaggie to Eve will pop up the more we learn about her?)

What’s also interesting is that Eve ‘falling into temptation’ (choosing Lucifer and Lilith over her preordained role) is what separated her from them. However, if Emily were to choose supporting Charlie’s dream over her place in Heaven, then her falling would be what brought her to Charlie and Vaggie. Thereby their situation acts as a foil to the previous generation’s.

And Emily supporting Charlie is very relevant. In More Than Anything we get the exchange of:

“I’ll support your dream whatever lies in store.”

“And who could ask for more?”

Because Charlie can’t think of anything more she could ask. Charlie’s idea of love and being loved is so heavily based on support and being supported. It’s a part of the conflict in Hell’s Greatest Dad, that Lucifer is being genuine and Alastor manipulative, but Alastor is the one actually providing Charlie with what she asks of him, which Lucifer never has. Charlie shows her love for Hell by believing in them, that they can improve, they deserve safety, and they have worth. It’s why Vaggie’s love is so important to Charlie, because for a long time, she was the only one believing in her.

And what does Emily do?

“I don’t know-”

“Yeah, let’s give him a chance!”

She supports Charlie! She believes and trusts her and argues on her behalf. She’s the only angel in Heaven to have faith in Charlie’s dream. Having Emily in the position of a fallen angel, falling right into Charlie’s arms, Charlie caring for her and nursing her back to health, with her being someone who very deeply believes in her, would be the same conditions that made Charlie fall in love with Vaggie three years ago.

Then for Vaggie, Emily also has a lot of the textbook traits that she loves Charlie for. The overexcited-ness, the care she has for others, even the way she doesn’t pull rank. And what she hasn’t expressed, that being seeing value in Vaggie where she herself does not, it feels natural that Emily would express that in the way Charlie does upon learning Vaggie’s history. We’ve seen her sense of justice and her horror at Heaven’s actions, so her deeply sympathizing with Vaggie would be entirely expected, and would be a very easy way for Vaggie to catch feelings for Emily.

However, there is this:

Which suggests the direction of a jealous Vaggie. I think that works, at least initially, with Vaggie feeling insecure in her relationship with Charlie after Emily falling and being cared for by Charlie in the way she was all that time ago. Those feelings heavily changing however, at the realization that Emily is crushing on her just as much as she is Charlie and how deeply relatable to her Emily’s circumstances and trauma would be.

Then on Emily’s side, not only would she have very much been thinking and focusing on Charlie prior to her fall, once she does, she lands in a very emotionally volatile situation where Charlie and Vaggie are supporting her so much and caring for her so deeply. It makes sense that this would translate to her developing feelings for the both of them.

(Now, this is a bit less definitive, but with Emily’s design, the long hair and dress that covers every inch of her short of her fingers, and Heaven being a stand in for the imperialist church, I do read the coming-of-age story the show has set up for her to be one of a conservative christian raised girl striking out of the doctrine she grew up in and finding community in the people her home had demonized, or at least an allegory for such. So having her develop romantic feelings for two ‘vile and blasphemous’ women in a very non-monogamous way would be very thematically relevant I think)

I would say this all works great as an analogue to Lucifer, Lilith, and Eve. Eve being in the unfortunate situation of Adam’s wife but finding comfort in Lucifer and Lilith and falling for the both of them as Emily would as a fallen angel being comforted by Charlie and Vaggie. Lucifer seeing Lilith reflected in Eve and caring for and helping her as he did before being parallel to Charlie helping Emily as she did Vaggie. Lilith initially feeling negativity towards the woman made to replace her bond so closely with her new love, only to realize Eve is falling for her just as much as she is for Lucifer and empathizing with Eve’s situation so deeply, just like Vaggie.

Then, there’s Adam and Lute. I already mentioned that they play parallel with forcing Lilith and Vaggie out of their respective paradises. Their dynamics are built on Adam and Lute punishing, and their domination over, Lilith and Vaggie, because they need to know their place: beneath them. (There’s also the interpretation of that Lute had or has romantic feelings for Vaggie, which is certainly relevant) The show is being very clear with Lute being Adam’s successor I feel, with her taking on his position as leader of the exorcists following his death.

Then, her line: “Your brat is threatening the very foundation of Heaven.” Personally, that makes me think of a sediment Adam would feel towards Lucifer. That’s he is the source of every problem, that he stole his wives (ignoring that Lilith left him before even meeting Luci), and that he destroyed paradise, Eden. Now that Vaggie and Lute’s conflict has seemingly come to a close, I think the show will be shifting to a Lute vs Charlie conflict, much as Adam shifted from Lilith to his hatred for Lucifer.

Now, if the show wants to push a Adam-Eve dynamic with Lute and Emily, what I could imagine is Lute protecting onto Emily in a very one sided way, where she thinks Charlie has ‘corrupted’ the seraphim (threatening heaven’s foundation) and she must personally ‘save’ her, which would very much align with how Adam would feel towards Lucifer’s influence on Eve.

Now, we can tell that Lucifer, Lilith, and Eve’s relationship Did Not pan out particularly well. So I think much like how Charlie and Vaggie have succeeded where Lilith and Lucifer failed, Charlie, Vaggie, and Emily is going to be the successful foil to their attempted relationship. Then for Lute, I think it becomes a question of: does she accept the olive branch Adam did not, does she eventually understand that she is doing wrong, does she accept mercy, or does she continue down Adam’s path, digging her own grave as he did; except that unlike Adam, there won’t be anyone to cry for her?

And y’know, the angel and 3 immortal humans versus the demon/half immortal human and 3 angels serves as a nice counter.

[tripthelightfandomtastic]

happy wild wednesday! okay so picture this — josh is hot; no like literally he’s always running warm or overheating. which also leads to jokes about him being the sun. this means hes always walking around your shared home half naked (and sometimes even fully nude as well with a nonchalant “humans were meant to be naked, societal norms are what keep us from doing so”). you’ve grown used to seeing your lover’s beauty bared to you in the most casual of ways, but theres times where the sun hits him just right or the gleam of the ambient lighting in your house casts the most perfect shadows over his toned figure that you feel yourself growing needy for him. josh is so in tuned to you that he immediately knows what you wants and takes you right then and there. on the sofa. on the soft rug. on the cool hardwood floor. over and over again until you’re satisfied. which lets be honest, when it comes to josh, you never really are.

I think it would be so beautiful to see him glow in the morning sun outside in the garden, watering his plants and smiling to you as he takes in the cool breeze. You approach him with a smile and kiss him, his warm skin made only warmer by the sunlight on his tanned skin. Hands resting on his shoulder and one on his chest as you feel the muscle beneath your fingertips.

You can feel his erection against your thin silk nightgown from his briefs, your fingers running gently along the waistband. Dipping your fingers below to touch his hardened cock, which pulses softly in your palm. Josh sighs against your lips.

"Lay down." You say softly. Josh's eyes gleam, he's surprised, but too cool to let on anymore. "Yes ma'am," he smiles charmingly. You grin before following his lead to the soft grass beneath you. His curls gently lay against the grassy carpet, looking at ease as you bring his underwear below his hips until you pull them completely down and toss to some azaleas beside you.

You straddle his waist, feeling his hardened cock lay between your thighs, you grind against it, your soaked panties rolling gently against the length of him as you kiss. His hands travel down your arms and to your chest, hands groping at your silk covered breasts, gently pinching your hardened nipples beneath the white material. You feel like an angel in the garden of Eden.

Josh's fingers slip your panties to the side, your own hands pulling your nightgown off to join Josh's discarded briefs. The breeze and the sun on your skin makes you feel so alive, so soft and warm. You help yourself down onto Josh's length, savouring every inch as you take him in. Josh sighs as you do, your eyes closing gently as you tentatively begin to grind down on him. "You look so beautiful," Josh whispers, your eyes back on him. His hands resting on your thighs, feeling the soft expanse of your body. You begin to bounce, his cock inside you making you moan. You can't help but watch the way your body moves, lit by the morning light, you're turned on by the way your soft stomach and breasts move in time with you, Josh's fingers come to your clit and gently play with it. You clench around him as you softly call out his name. This feels like a dream.

"Oh baby, mm, feels so good." Josh moans, eyes hardly open as he feels you completely surrender to him. You can't help it, you just feel so good you can't keep from smiling, sighing and moaning as you continue to bounce on his cock. You can hear just how soaked you are. The sounds of your bodies together makes you melt.

Josh's fingertips press into your hips, his hands helping to move you even faster and harder. "Oh baby, oh i- I'm gonna cum-" "Me too, lover. Cum with me-" "I want you to cum in me, please baby," you beg. "Anything, anything for you." Josh smiles as his hips collide with yours.

He pulls you into a kiss as he slams up inside of you, your thighs quivering as you cum hard around him. Josh's arms holding your waist tightly, your name rolling off of his lips so tenderly you feel your heart skip. Your moans and whimpers against his neck as he cums deep inside of you, his breath fanning your cheek as he presses deep and still into you.

You roll off of him and onto the grass beneath, cool and welcoming to your exhausted body. You both search for breath, hand in hand as you take in the flowers and trees that hang around you. "Wow." Josh sighs. "Yeah," you exhale with a smile. Josh turns to look at you, you grin back, "I think you're a goddess." He whispers, making you giggle and blush in a way only he can. "I just can't get enough of you." You confess. His hand caresses your cheek, "I don’t think I ever will."

[max1461]

@deaths-accountant I will, if I remember, think carefully about your thought experiment and respond to it soon (although I will probably change some details so that it is less similar to current events because I don't want people to misunderstand the nature of the discussion and get mad at me), but, in the mean time, here is a counter-thought-experiment for you:

Suppose there is a guy Bob, currently hanging out in the heavenly realm or whatever, and he is presented by an angel with the following choice:

Bob will be born into the world, and live an ordinary-seeming life. Over the course of his life, the net utility (under whatever form of utilitarianism you endorse; hedonic, preferential, etc.) which he contributes to everyone else in the world besides himself will be 0. In other words, the people of the world (not including him) will be no better off nor worse off for his being born. However, he himself, under the same conception of utility, will receive -ε net utils. He will have N (for reasonable large N) utils worth of joys, triumphs, etc., and -(N+ε) utils worth of pains, failures and so on. Thus, he will live a net-negative life.

Bob will not be born into the world, he will cease to exist.

Implicitly I'm discounting here all the thoughts and feelings that Bob experiences here in the heavenly realm before he is born (or not) as irrelevant, but if you don't feel comfortable with this you can just adjust the numbers so that the net utility of each choice comes out as intended above.

It is possible, I think, that in light of the above choice, Bob would select (2) and cease to exist. But I think it's also possible that Bob would say "no, I'll take (1), I want to have the joys and triumphs even if there turn out also to be a greater number of failures and losses". In particular, I am almost certain that I would choose (1), and not just for fear of death (the above scenario is an abstraction of choices that I have actually made, where no risk of death was involved).

The question is: would it be moral for the angel to override Bob here, "for his own good", and choose (2) for him?

By construction a utilitarian has to say yes. If ε is small the utilitarian might say "well, it's not a very big deal; the normative force behind overriding Bob and choosing (2) is low". But I can think of scenarios in which I would chose (1) even if (I believed that) ε was pretty significant, where this excuse doesn't work.

Also consider for instance... the archetype of the starving artist. The man who is committed to producing his Great Work even at significant cost to himself. Suppose that he has made many sacrifices in order to hone his craft, he's given up financial success and a social life, he lives in the mountains and, you know, carves statue after statue in pursuit of perfection. Suppose that he can rationally conclude that, when (if) he does complete his masterpiece, the satisfaction will be relatively small in the face of all the sacrifices he's made. I mean, yeah, he'll be happy, he'll feel fulfilled and genuinely, deeply satisfied. But on a literal, summative level, that just won't add up to the lifetime of late nights, missed opportunities for social connection, etc., either in terms of net pleasure or net preference satisfaction or whatever. But suppose also that on the day to day level he doesn't feel miserable, he's not suffering. He's toiling in pursuit of a deeply held personal goal, and it feels... well, "good" isn't always the word. But he is plenty motivated to keep going; he's out here in the mountains of his own accord. The fact that he judges that at the end of his life the utility tally won't come up positive for him doesn't weigh on him much. "Why should I care about some number?" he says. "Maybe I'd be net happier if I went out on the town and found a wife and settled down, but I don't want to do that. I want to complete my Great Work."

Is this artist doing something immoral by living his life the way he has? Would it be moral for a third party to step in and prevent him from pursuing his endeavors?

In both of these thought experiments, my extremely strong intuition is that the answer is "no", making choices for other people "for their own good" in this way is not moral. But this seems like a necessary consequence of any kind of utilitarianism, so I can't get behind utilitarianism.

The starving artist example gets to a more fundamental issue, too. I kept saying things like "he really wants to complete his Great Work, and it will make him very satisfied, but he will be more net satisfied if he gives up on that and lives a normal life". Well... what the hell does "net satisfied" mean? How do you measure the strength of a preference? He "really wants" to complete his Great Work, and materially that corresponds to a certain neural state, but how do you put a number on that neural state which is fungible with the numbers you put on all the other neural states of human life? You run into this problem in both hedonic and preference utilitarianism, because "preference" is a neural phenomenon. Is there even a well-defined abstraction here, is there even a coherent thing to which "preference strength" can possibly refer? Maybe, but I don't know that there is. And the problem is that if you pick the wrong abstraction, if you pick the wrong way of getting a fungible quantity out of a fundamentally non-numerical arrangement of matter, then what you have doesn't correspond to "ethics" anymore, right, it lacks normative force. It's just some number.

This is why I say that utilitarian-ish ethics are fine on the large scale, they're fine for the policy maker or the economist, who for methodological reasons simply needs to pick an ok enough abstraction on run with it. But on the scale of individual humans, individual minds, and what it "really means" to treat people right, I don't think utilitarianism can possibly hold up.

I might have made this exact post before somewhere, if so apologies for repeating myself.

[pillowbugs]

so uh. that poto au i did just over a week ago.

was playing around with some ships to figure out who would fit the roles of the other characters, and landed on airplaneshipping for christine and raoul. preferably ignore all the plot that would have to happen to lead to this point. (the scene where the phantom shoots fireballs, except in the pokémon universe it's a full on battle against the phantom and his chandelure. for an added bonus, look up the name of the 'song' sung during this part of the musical.)

unmasked ver. (additional design notes under cut)

elesa:

christine's dress in this scene is light blue, which is a colour that is indeed present in elesa's design (her bw2 outfit moreso). elesa not wearing any yellow felt wrong though, which is why the layers underneath are yellow-tinted.

went with her bw1 hair colour because christine was blonde in the original book.

her cloak is mostly based off her bw2 jacket in shape; it's black with a red clasp, which makes it not only similar to the cloak donned by christine in the musical but also retains the same idea of the cloak being a visual representation of the phantom's (who wears mostly black) hold over them. (+ the other colour ingo is most associated with is red.)

however, because of the lighting, said cloak appears yellow on the side closer to skyla - more similar to her canon design, and being close to skyla in a way rids her of the darkness.

she gets to change her hairstyle as a treat.

skyla:

it wasn't common for women to wear waistcoats at the time (1900s), but sapphics in history quite famously fucked with a lot of gender norms.

actually both of these lovebirds are blue now. sets up a colour contrast between the lighter, friendlier blues of the couple and the darkness and reds of the phantom. (blue = friend and red = foe like it's fire emblem)

the way swanna is placed is intentional, to set up a more angelic imagery mirroring the phantom's darker version (more on that in a bit).

both women wear matching white roses in their hair. something something flower symbolism. but skyla does also have feathers in her hair, for obvious reasons.

swoobat because hearts :D

ingo:

was debating on whether to make him actually more deformed in this au, but didn't really feel in the mood to sit down and design it in detail for this piece.

there isn't much i can say about his outfit design given it's literally just mashing his usual uniform together with his butler alt from masters. though upon actually looking up the phantom's outfit, the end result is actually surprisingly close. not surprising given both wear victorian suits and primarily wear black.

my original concept for the au was that he still works with the subway, he just does it from the shadows instead of being a public figure - hence he still wears a train conductor's hat. though since the battle subway isn't a thing (or at least not in the form we know it) he doesn't have its logo.

his cloak is intentionally flared up in this scene, for a few reasons: 1) it looks cool, 2) it resembles gliscor (albeit it isn't present here) and 3) mirrors skyla with a darker angelic imagery - the original musical had the whole "angel of music / death" thing.

i actually went through quite a few variations of his mask before settling on this one, and even then i'm not entirely satisfied with it.

version 1: exactly the same as the one used in most advertising for the musical - decently terrifying, but considering ingo's main 'issue' is his mouth, which this (and the one actually used within the musical) doesn't cover, this would be completely useless aside from probably hiding his identity and especially his resemblance to emmet.

version 2: leaned more into the angle of trying to alter his expression, particularly to be smiling instead - to be more similar to his brother. also suitably unsettling, but this specific style wouldn't work if you looked at him from any angle besides this one though. also, from this angle, because his actual mouth is obscured, i was worried he would actually be mistaken for emmet instead (given generally fandom tends to make emmet the unhinged one - let ingo have some fun too, guys).

version 3, the one i went with: has patterns at the cheeks simulating the edges of a smile (and also has the black-on-white contrast); his actual mouth is hidden but visible through the cloth.

why is there a litwick on the gravestone? good question!

in all honesty, this was part me drawing blorbos into an au and part me conceptualising what the pokémon universe version of POTO would look like.

[sastielsmanuscript-draft]

Sastiel Take:

-(more like sam take but i’ll include cas too) Sam is more Pink Pony Club coded 😭 not dean. actually-scratch that, the rise n fall of a midwest princess is literally Sam. After Midnight being a late night drunk bisexual realization? yes. Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl being him on multiple dates and realizing he wants to have fun? Yes. Casual being unrequited sastiel? YES. Picture You being Sam pining for Cas, wanting his divine gaze-the same one Cas gives to Dean-on him, even for a split second. YES! I could name a lot more perspectives about each song, not only being sad unrequitedness. Red Wine Supernove being a full on confession to Cas is my favorite daydream. But in all, I feel like both Sam and Cas relate to Pink Pony Club. The feeling of not fitting in your family’s image of you and not fitting into certain norms of the society is a quality they both share. To feel indifferent in a place where everybody is the same. But you want to feel like star! To show everybody what you’re made of and not just being evil reincarnated or an angel that needs to follow orders.

-The whole album is sastiel coded with too many coincidental ties that is somewhat canon and not at all. Like how both are essentially the black sheep of the “family.” Were created to fit in a mold made by their “fathers.”

-This is just to say, I agree with yall under my “Sam listening to Chappel Roan” post 😭. Dean has so many songs that describe him, but I don’t see much for Sam (or Cas). That might be me. Though Roan’s fun but somber album is a great mixture of wanting freedom and releasing inner emotions! Perfect way to also decribe Sam!

[alicedrawslesmis]

I know I just said I didn't want to just be complaining about everything so I'll try to word this in a more constructive way asdfghjkl

It's hard to be an Eponine fan in a world where the musical -and On My Own specifically- is sooooo mainstream. Because imo as much as On My Own itself is kind of a half-decent, if simplified, encapsulation of Eponine's struggle with her love for Marius if you analise the lyrics in isolation, the musical as a whole, her role in the narrative as the unrequited love diva (I'm also simplifying here. I don't think this is super fair to the anglo musical, but compared to the book there's no question of how they reworked her into a glamorous 80s diva contralto because musical theatre has usually very strict gender roles), did her so dirty. So dirty. And imo often her character is reduced to her pining in fandom as a result. And I don't like that, personally.

I love that girl so much. I love that she is just young enough to still be a child but adult enough to be aware of her social role. She has one foot in the gamin life and one foot in the adult world. I love the tragedy that is the fact that she likes the beauty and pomp of high society girls and wish she could have silk shoes but knowing she can't.

And also being super resigned to her class despite it, she doesn't believe she ever will have any of that. She resents that too, somewhat. The tragedy of her knowing that she couldn't be with Marius because of his social class and her accepting that (angrily? sadly?). I love her self-banishment as his guard dog because of this. I love her drunk sailor voice. I love how manipulative she is and that she isn't Marius's friend at all. He's just her one neighbor who wasn't a total asshole one time. He was, later. But not at first. And she can't be in his head and know he thinks she's kinda despicable because crime because Marius is a judgemental little shithead.

And Eponine isn't an idealist, she's resigned to her position. I understand why she gets paired with grantaire in fics but her canon narrative parallel is Javert, they both believe they are excluded from society from their outcast position and so become the watchdogs for it. Eponine a kind of guardian (in her own words a devil, not an angel) and Javert the same. That's why he's the one person who sees her in the barricade, he's the same as her. Marius saw her but that's only cause he had a use for her in that moment, as soon as she didn't he forgot all about it.

I think also Gavroche, with his ability to be kind of a figure above the narrative, with his gamin skills of being almost omnipresent is something Eponine used to have, but with her age she's starting to lose that. She's starting to grown old enough that she's required to be IN the world and not supercede it. Gavroche is also almost there, if he had been allowed to grow up he would've lost that ability too. They both inhabit this sort of magical surreal world superimposed on our own.

A lot of Les Mis and Notre Dame de Paris can be kinda described as magical realism, I would go so far as calling them urban fantasy. And characters like Babet, Thenardier sometimes, Gavroche, Eponine (and Javert sometimes as well) are inhabiting this magically charged layer. This reality that's imposed Over the real world.

Talking about that One Series Of Wizard Books is a bit passé rn so uh. Doctor Who. Particularly the initial New Who seasons before they got that huge budget. That's a good parallel to what I'm getting at. The real world is still the same but there are certain characters that inhabit this mystical overlayer and are able to transverse from one to the other (Javert can't really because he is stuck forever outside and the second he understands that you CAN'T be an unbiased outsider who only enforces the norm without participating he freaks out and literally dies about it). Eponine is right in the eye of the storm tho. She manipulates reality to get her way, to die with Marius, because that's as close as she can get to being with him. And she manipulates reality to protect him too. Contradictions be damned. She has many contradictory feelings that make her complex and cool and an awesome character whom I love and wish would stop being reduced to the glamurous mysical theatre role with a single black stain on her face and a beautiful actor and a big unrequited love song about a random boy (whose personality was also changed for the musical and I argue is probably the character that was most fucked up by it in the public perception because he's such an weird little self-insert of an even weirder guy. But I get it, the musical is long enough as it is).

Anyway, I wish eponine could be more of a mongrel, a little gremlin. A little rat child that's just beginning to grow into an adult and is self aware of her role in the narrative society. She's a teenage girl which already sucks to go through when you're not constantly starving and cold and being forced by your father to work and do con jobs. Marius is the object she attaches herself to, but it could've been literally anything. Javert did that with the social order, he protects and guards it. She just chose Some Guy instead. Which, we all have that one friend who does that too. Like girl you're too good for him. Come on let's get you sone ice cream. And clean clothes and a roof. Literally anything. Bread.

I think if Eponine had a roof over her head and like, food on the regular she would forget Marius exists. Same as Cosette if she had moved to England. Like he'd be that one intense crush they had as teenagers. Can't say the same for him tho. He would hold onto that for the rest of time.

[sighed-the-snake]

Gun LOADED!

Many people are looking to the bullet catch scene to theorize that Aziraphale is going to fake Crowley's death in the next season, but I think there's another compelling scene from S1 that we should be looking at.

The one with the paintball guns, from S1.

Norm, from management, has a YELLOW cloth tied around his arm, as does the rest of his platoon. Yellow is known to be associated with Aziraphale, and by extension, angels. But I don't think this manager is representing Aziraphale. I think he is meant to represent Crowley.

"I wanted to be a graphics designer," he says. "Design LPs for the Rolling Stones."

Crowley was a graphics designer, of a sort. He made beautiful nebulas. I also think Crowley worked for management and held a high position.

"But the careers teacher said he hadn't heard of them. So I spent 36 years double-checking form BF-18."

The careers teacher is probably God. I get the feeling people in Heaven did not understand or appreciate Crowley's cleverness, didn't understand his work. Crowley was more of an artist than a bureaucracy guy. I wonder if becoming friends with 'Lucifer and the Guys' afforded him some professional freedom, a way to get away from form BF-18, as it were. Maybe Lucifer was his boss and allowed him to do whatever his little heart desired because having a clever subordinate who pulled off such complex work made him look good.

"They couldn't just say, 'Oh, Norman, we're giving you early retirement. Have a watch, bugger off and tend to your marigolds."

The mention of tending to marigolds is interesting here.

The British have something called gardening leave.

From wikipedia, "Garden leave (also known as gardening leave) is the practice whereby an employee leaving a job – having resigned or otherwise had their employment terminated – is instructed to stay away from work during the notice period, while still remaining on the payroll."

It's a sort of limbo period between leaving the company and no longer working for them. You don't go into the office, you're not allowed to contact your former business associates, but you're still getting paid, and you're expected to respond if they call you for assistance. Gardening leave could be a short period of weeks or months to let things calm down before you return because you screwed up, or it could be a prelude to getting fired, or forced into retirement.

Gardening leave sounds an awful lot like what Crowley has on Earth. He was literally sent to a garden to do a job, and he does not return to Hell after. He remains. He lives a posh life with a expense account and a lot of freedom compared to other demons. Furfur remarks on the unfairness of it. Crowley appears to be given assignments once in a while but otherwise I don't think much is expected of him - again, compared to other demons. We've seen the way they're crammed in down there.

(Why he's on gardening leave is a speculation for another day.)

"Well, if they want war," Norm says, knotting his RED necktie around his head, "we're going to give them war. Okay, guys, let's get the bastards."

Clearly, this is when Crowley in Heaven says to himself, "Fuck it, I hate these guys, let's brawl."

And then he turns around and is promptly shot in the heart by the RED team.

He staggers dramatically. He falls. We see the life leave his eyes.

Except it's a trick. One that Norm is not privy to. He thought he was dead as much as everyone else.

But Norm raises his head and looks, bewildered, at the bullet hole in his pocket. He's made a miraculous escape. It mirrors the age-old TV trope of having some hard metal thing in his pocket to deflect the bullet.

In a way, I think this is supposed to represent Crowley's fall from Heaven that he did not see coming, but with S2 and the bullet catch adding context, I think this entire scene holds more meaning.

The thing is, part of writing a good story is including echoes of your theme.

Every single romantic relationship in Good Omens mirrors Crowley and Aziraphale in some way (I'll write more on that later, probably).

Adam and his friends being reflections of the Four Horsemen.

The bookshop being an echo of Eden. The repetition of the "leaving the garden" theme at the end of both seasons, with S1 burning down the bookshop, and S2 with Crowley and Aziraphale leaving it behind.

Twice now, once in each season, there has been a theme of bullets, of getting shot, of miraculously not dying, and no one expecting it.

I'm pretty confident that in S3, Supreme Archangel Aziraphale is going to have his hand forced. He's going to have to execute Crowley for something he has done to meddle with Heaven's plans. And I think Aziraphale is going to have to pull a fast one with very little planning to fake his boyfriend's death.

I can picture it now, with Aziraphale saying something ridiculous to the crowd of witnesses like, "FLAMING SWORD LOADED!" to drop the hint, and the crowd sighs inwardly over what an idiot Aziraphale is, but Crowley looks at him like, "What the fu- oh, we're doing a bullet catch."

[yaeggravate]

Theory: Kaeya's Vision was Given to Him by The Sinner and his Vision Gives us a Major Hint as to The Sinner's Identity.

can we talk about kaeya's vision? i've been dying to talk about kaeya's vision again.

(spoilers for everything up until 4.2)

good news, we finally got some more insight on what visions are! according to neuvilette's character story, when a person's desire reaches the heavens, archons are dutybound to put aside a shard of their mastery for them. this "mastery" originally belongs to the seven sovereigns.

To continue to subdue and control the resentments and loathing of the world, the usurper and one who came after created the Gnoses together. So it came to be that an order was made to be upheld, and thus did humans come to only possess these seven remembrances, and all fragments of the primordial were driven to devour each other. From that day on, whenever a person's wishes reached the heavens, the seven overseers of the material realm were duty-bound to grant them a gift. Though they might know nothing of who or what wish had stepped into the threshold of the sacred, the Seven Archons still had to impart a shattered shard of their mastery to that person.

after focalors destroyed the throne of the hydro archon, neuvilette gained complete authority over the hydro element. because he's a nice guy, he decided to also put aside some of his mastery to grant visions to people.

furina is one such person.

here's the cool part; her vision looks different from other fontainians. the decoration combines ousia and pneuma elements and there are four little fangs holding the vision in place.

KAEYA'S VISION

that brings me back to the conundrum that is kaeya's vision. before furina, he was the only character with a vision that deviated from the norm.

there are two unique oddities about his standard vision: it's missing two wings; the strings on the back are on the other side: this is an indication that it's mirrored.

(for simplicity's sake i will ignore the vision on his other outfit since it's essentially modified to match zosimos' design.)

what if kaeya's situation is similar to furina's? and i'm not just talking about their never-ending masquerade… what if his vision was granted by someone else?

WHY ARE THE STRINGS ON THE RIGHT SIDE?

i have briefly talked about this before but mirrors are associated with the abyss. this lead me to believe that it's possible that kaeya's vision might have been given by the abyss/the sinner.

note how the strings on furina's gem also switch sides when she changes from pneuma to ousia. (pneuma (light) on the left and ousia (dark) on the right.)

it's relatively common knowledge by now that kaeya's kit shares similarities with abyss mages and heralds and that many khaenri'ahns were turned into abyssal creatures, (possibly due to them being in a similar situation as jakob ingold who possessed a "bit of the dark cold cosmos's power").

Paimon: And you said the people turned into monsters... You're trying to tell Paimon that the Abyss Order is not only related to Khaenri'ah but is actually the people of Khaenri'ah themselves!?

with the new information given, this theory seems more plausible. if neuvilette can give out visions, why not mr. purple crystal as well? if wishes can reach the "heavens", couldn't they also reach the abyss? we saw the crystal respond to clothar's praying and display a bit of creepy omniscience so you know it's powerful.

WHY IS THE VISION MISSING WINGS?

consider that the fangs on furina's vision is neuvilette's tongue-in-cheek way of hinting at him being a dragon, as his own personal touch. then could clipped wings hint towards the identity of whoever gave kaeya his vision? what do clipped wings indicate? fallen angels. what's a fallen angel? a sinner. 😏💯

Fallen angels are angels who were expelled from heaven. The literal term "fallen angel" does not appear in any Abrahamic religious texts, but is used to describe angels cast out of heaven or angels who sinned. Such angels often tempt humans to sin.

fun fact, the abyss mages are always chanting in ENOCHIAN which is popularized as the language of the angels.

The script for this language appears while Abyss Mages are chanting to regenerate their shields as well as over their heads when performing spells outside of combat. […] The script also appears in the yellow protective runes around the weak points of Automatons, where the mirrored glyphs for B, L, and G circle around the core. Ruin Guards are known to have been made by the people of Khaenri'ah, many of whom turned into "monsters of the Abyss," so this script was possibly used in Khaenri'ah as well.

way back in the first archon quest, an abyss mage speaks to kaeya in enochian. it's significant enough that they give us a subtitle to imply kaeya can understand this angelic language; we have been shown he knows other ancient languages as well, like the language of the hilichurls and a strange script in the manga.

Kaeya: There's no way hilichurls organized an ambush like this themselves — not with their limited mental capacity... Kaeya: Thus YOU were behind this. Hydro Abyss Mage: Gohus, Chiso Vonph.

perhaps a reach but kaeya has one giant wing on his outfit, possibly a reference to the most famous video game villain in history, sephiroth, the one-winged angel?

this one is not a reach because kaeya also owns a book called the adventures of angelos. angelos is from greek ἄγγελος which means angel.

Between the pages of "The Adventures of Angelos," you find a list of names written on a sheet of official Knights of Favonius letterhead paper.

a book named angel containing a list of names, just to show the traveler he has eyes everywhere is a little on the nose if you ask me.

*edit: i forgot to include the most obvious hint, kaeya's favorite hangout: angel's share. and in the book of revelation there is a star or angel that fell to earth known as wormwood, (apsinthion in greek), which is the name of a plant used to make absinthe, which in turn is thee main ingredient of death (in the) afternoon, kaeya's favorite drink. dainsleif also likes this drink.

Wormwood (ἀψίνθιον apsinthion or ἄψινθος apsinthos in Greek) is a star or angel which appears in the Book of Revelation.

another fun fact, nabu malikata's last name malikata, besides meaning queen, could also mean angels.

In Islam, angels (Arabic: ملاك٬ ملك‎, romanized: malāk; plural: ملائِكة‎, malāʾik/malāʾikah) are believed to be heavenly beings.

nabu malikata is a survivor of the seelie race who were abandoned by the heavens; they are heavily implied to be angels. she is also the originator of the jinn. huh, i wonder why kaeya gifted us a seemingly random lamp which is said to have housed a powerful jinni...

all this is pointing to the sinner being a fallen angel which makes sense since the archons have demonic names from the ars goetia, it stands to reason that higher abyssal beings should have angelic names.

in islam, there is a fallen angel named iblis who had four wings (like kaeya's vision) and who was chained up in the deepest part of hell (like the sinner), whose original name was azazil. khaenri'ah has some ties to arabic mythology, so who knows? this is just one possibility. interestingly enough, the names of four of the archangels ARE referenced in mona's magic circle but not azazil.

the interesting part about the crystal is that he denies being a god and addresses the traveller as "creature"… there has been some speculation that the dragon king nibelung is the sinner, but we honestly don't have enough information to make that leap.

**edit: the domain we find the sinner in is located inside the chasm. thousands of years ago, back when zhongli was still young, an entity known as the sun or solar chariot fell to teyvat forming the chasm. this was during the time the moon sisters fell.

according to one legend, they refer to the entity as a fallen star. the star stayed in the chasm until the archon war, but before it returned to the sky it permanently left a piece of itself behind.

also, the sinner's domain has enkanomiyan statues and architecture. in enkanomiya, there is an achievement you can get called phosphorus' guidance, which you get by following seelies. phosphorus is the greek name for the morning star. the latin name for the morning star is lucifer, now best known as the name of a fallen angel.

The Ancient Greeks called the morning star Φωσφόρος, Phosphoros, the "Bringer of Light". Another Greek name for the morning star was Heosphoros, meaning "Dawn-Bringer".

dawn-bringer, you say? reminds me of the harbinger of dawn kaeya gives you in the very beginning of the game. what are you trying to tell us, bud?

lastly, the traveler notes the upside down defiled statue of the anemo archon is similar to the sinner. the statue, of course, has wings. it's funny because when we meet kaeya for the very first time, it's in front of the anemo god statue in front of the cathedral... notably, both dainsleif, and kaeya in his hangout route do not go inside the cathedral.

Kaeya: Perfect. (Traveler), why don't you head into the Cathedral and invite Sister Barbara to join us? I'll look for another friend who's interested in helping us.

Dainsleif: When a non-believer steps onto holy ground, the result is never pretty.

WHY DOES THE VISION HAVE A MONDSTADT CASING?

khaenri'ah was outside of the rule of the seven, hidden from the gaze of the gods. we don't know yet if in days of old khaenri'ahns could receive visions but we do have dainsleif's character card to give us a clue.

The listed name of his Vision's element, as announced on his Chinese Character Card, is a set of indecipherable symbols.

so dainsleif does have a vision; it's just that it has manifested as something else, possibly because unlike kaeya-seemingly a normal human-he is cursed.

in any case, we've seen wanderer receive a complete sumeru vision despite not even being from there and arlecchino has a shneznayan casing despite loving her homeland fontaine. (although there might be some other shit going on with her.)

this means vision casings are tied to the region the receiver is in and has nothing to do with where a person is born. if neuvilette were to gift someone from outside fontaine a hydro vision, they would receive a casing from the region they're in. fontainians have pneuma or ousia alignments but arlecchino's shneznayan vision has no indication of what she is aligned with. though again, arlecchino is not a normal human being, who knows what's going on there.

Along with Divinity: Prologue [...] we should be conscious of the fact that what shapes our thinking, logic, culture, philosophy and aesthetics is not the archons themselves, but the objective environment that exists around us. This world around us is what we have inherited, and what this book shows is that the people of Teyvat have always been, and always will be, heirs to a divine legacy — but not to divinity itself.

(also thought it was pretty interesting how capitano calls the gnosis, the gnosis from inazuma instead of "the electro gnosis" or the "gnosis from the electro archon".)

aaand scene. please note that this is all kind of jumbled wild speculation and should not be taken as fact! this is all in good fun.

[nanaminokanojo]

THAWING ICE QUEEN (bonus chapter #1)

–one night of fooling around with the annoying campus king gojo satoru (he thinks so), turns into...well, something else more long term

CHARACTERS: gojo satoru x you | geto suguru | jjk characters GENRE: college au | eventual smut | smau | smau + prose | everything in between | ons | fubus to lovers | aged-up characters | idk where this is going

WORD COUNT: 5.5k of pure filth

⚠️ TW/CW: strong/mature language | 🔞 | mentions of alcohol | vaginal sex | fingering | overstimulation | oral fem receiving | fingering

MASTERLIST | CHAPTER INDEX

<<back to part 14 - bonus chapter

~*~

You’ve all but gone through half the bottle of the wine you have been drinking when you heard the sound of the shower from the adjoining bathroom stop. All the while, you sat by the nightstand, your senses heightened as you listened to every nuance of sounds around you. Somehow, you felt jittery, which you’ve chalked up to the anticipation of literally consummating the deal you’ve struck with the menace that was Gojo Satoru. It wasn’t as if you were doing it with him for the first time. Still, one way or another, this time felt different. 

But you soon forgot about your apprehension, replaced by amusement when you heard him listening to music, his choice in it in particular, and how he would try to sing along some of the lines. It was silly, and while you knew just what a shallow goofball he could be, the image seemed out of place somehow. 

Satoru was the campus king, and for all the right reasons, according to the supposed norms society ran on. One thing everyone knows and immediately thinks of when his name is mentioned is that he is rich. And it wasn’t as if he was the typical kind of rich with just money. His ancestry consisted of historically significant people dating back to the first century AD, and his family still held that high status. Talk about preserving their legacy. 

And as if that wasn’t enough, Satoru was painfully gorgeous and much too aware of it, aggravated by the fact that everyone else fawned over him and thought he was the most extraordinary person on the planet, thus further inflating his head and ego. 

“Can I kiss you?”

Those were the first words Satoru ever uttered to you when Suguru introduced him to you two years ago, his voice crisp in the harsh winter air. He had no sense of decorum regardless of his so-called pedigree, and he thought he could bend people to his will just by looking at them with those deceptive, blue eyes which were like treacherous vortices than tranquil seas under a perfectly clear sky.

You didn’t know much about him then, merely hearing about him through Sukuna. You did not exactly get what people saw in him apart from his face. Sure, he was blessed with looks that precisely fit the lyrics of that one Carpenters song, speaking about angels sprinkling moon dust in his hair of platinum, not gold, and starlight in his eyes of blue. He seemed to have everything underneath all that borderline idiotic façade and penchant for debauchery.

But regardless of the great things people had to say about him – one of them being the fact that he was extremely intelligent, which turned out to be true much to your dismay as it would be easier to hate on him if he was otherwise – somehow, he was just another person to you.

“Sure, I’ve seen him,” you remembered telling Suguru, whom you shared an advanced class with, when he asked if you knew Satoru.

“And?”

“And what?”

Suguru had merely blinked at you while Ieiri, who was also listening to your conversation, said, “Are you sure you’ve seen him?”

“Hard to miss with that head of white hair,” you stated, making the two of them exchange glances, the gesture injected with meaning as they high-fived. “You’re immune to him. That’s great!”

That seemed to have become the basis of your friendship with them, your seeming lack of susceptibility to their unusual friend. Among other things anyway, but that’s where it started. Still, their perception of you wasn’t entirely true. Satoru was very attractive, and his charms do work on you. You were just able to keep him at bay better than anyone else until that one drunken night a month ago when you finally caved. Maybe it was the alcohol, or maybe his lips just looked too kissable that night. You couldn’t be sure, but giving him the opportunity brought you to your current circumstances.

The door to the shower opened, pulling you out of your reverie, your head slowly turning in that direction. The view didn’t disappoint, and you shamelessly watched as Satoru padded barefoot into the bedroom clad in nothing but a pair of black Calvin Klein boxers. You let your eyes roam his solid form, taking in every sinew of his musculature, your tongue unconsciously darting across your lips as you lingered a little longer over his iliac furrows.

Satoru met your gaze from the reflection in the wall mirror after he was done toweling his hair, winking at you as he continued his after-shower rituals. “Like what you see, sweet cheeks?”

Taking your time to respond, you took a sip from your half-empty glass, leaning back to leisurely feast your eyes on him. “I never not like what I see when it’s you, Gojo.”

He looked surprised, but it soon turned into open amusement. “That’s quite the admission, Y/N.”

“That’s a given, don’t you think?”

“Not with you, sweetheart.” He glanced at you from over his shoulder. “I’m glad to know that, although you never failed to make me feel unwanted for as long as we’ve known each other.”

A scoff escaped your lips at his feigned offense. “What’s my opinion against that of the multitude of your adoring fans anyway?”

Satoru didn’t answer your question, his expression changing into something less playful as he tossed his towel to a nearby ottoman and turned to face you, sounding commanding as he said, “Come here.”

With a smirk swathed on your face, you strutted towards him, nursing your drink against your chest. When you were just a foot away from him, you tilted your head to the side, meeting his gaze squarely, making it very clear to him that he doesn’t necessarily have the upper hand, and your physical submission didn’t indicate anything remotely close to that. “Well?”

He took your glass away from you, gently pulled you closer, turned you towards the mirror, and stood behind you. His hands moved towards your front, fingers gingerly fiddling with the sash of your robe. Those blue eyes seemed to be luminous in the ambient lighting of his bedroom even through the mirror, and they never left your form even as he chastely kissed you on the temple.

“May I unwrap my treat now?” he softly spoke near your ear.

“Of course.”

Satoru didn’t waste any time, tugging at the sash before letting the robe slide off your shoulders, falling on the floor just behind your feet with the softest rustles and without any resistance.

“Damn…” He pinched the bridge of his nose, groaning as he looked at you appreciatively through your reflection. “Happy birthday to me, I guess? Holy fucking shit, Y/N.”

“Indeed,” you agreed in jest but kept a straight face. “I was equally surprised.”

“It’s illegal for you to wear anything else, baby.” He chuckled, sounding breathless as he raked his eyes all over your figure, making your face grow a bit hot, as was evident in how your cheeks pinked, something you could blame the wine for if he noticed. “Second to you being naked anyway. But I made the right choice going ham with buying you lingerie. No doubt about that.”

You were about to give him a clever retort, but you noticed how his hands were just hovering over you, close enough for you to be aware of them but not really touching. “Are we just gonna admire the lingerie or what?” At your question, he visibly stiffened, meeting your gaze as you looked away from the mirror and directly at him instead. You reached up, placing a hand on the side of his face. “Touch me.”

Satoru’s lips crashed onto yours before you could even blink, the kiss starting intense and just incrementally becoming so as you pulled him close by the nape and let your head fall back on him. He held you tight by the hips like the last time he kissed you, pressing your back onto his body, your flesh pliant where his muscles were firm. As much as you hate to admit it, Satoru can kiss, and he does it so well. He was literally kissing you stupid, keeping all your attention to the taste and sensation of his probing tongue, skilled in his movements and pulling out the most delicious little notes out of you.

You’ve heard many things about Satoru as a bed partner, and you wondered how your experience differed so much from everyone else’s. You’ve always thought he was one of those men who didn’t give a damn about their partner as long as they got what they wanted, zero technique, just hard fucking. Those who have slept with him prior to you would always say he was good – something you chalked up to them not wanting to get on his bad side – but he wasn’t one to indulge anyone apart from himself.

However, he had been one of the best for you, taking his time to explore your body and getting himself acquainted to what made you feel good. He was gentle as if he was afraid he would break you, remembering how you had to prompt him to go harder, faster. You couldn’t help but agree with what he said regarding your sexual compatibility with one another, not that he had to know. That was the first time, and maybe it was just a courtesy he extended to you as someone he considers his friend, but you want to know just how he really is now that you’ve given him free rein.

You tilted your neck, sucking in a deep breath when he started leaving open-mouthed kisses on the spot just below your ear. His mouth was such a sensual part of him, the plush softness of his lips and the hungry way his tongue licked at your skin, causing you to shiver from the bottom of your spine. That, coupled with the way his fingers started creating a titillating trail from your waist to your midsection and up your chest, stirred you alive.

He started moving his mouth down to your shoulder, leaving a lingering kiss on the slope going down your arm. He opened his eyes and looked at you through the mirror, also gently making you face your reflection. “Look at you,” he whispered, nipping at the shell of your ear.

You did as you were told, taking in the person before you, flushed wherever he had touched you. The glazed look in your hazy eyes spoke volumes of just how he was making you feel if your heaving chest wasn’t enough of a testament of how much he was taking your breath away without doing that much yet.

“You’re so damn pretty for me.” Satoru kissed you on the cheek before pressing his against it as he props his chin on your shoulder, his eyes appearing like blue flames with how heated he was observing you through the mirror. “Sweetheart, I want you to watch what exactly I’m doing to you.”

His hands moved to cup your breasts over the crimson bra you were wearing, giving them a tentative squeeze and then a more deliberate one after. “They’re perfect,” he murmured absently before tugging the lacey material of the bra upwards and releasing your succulent mounds out of their confinement, replacing the garment with his large hands. He began to knead, rolling your nipples between his fingers, making your breath hitch in your throat.

Heat pooled in your nether region as he started kissing your neck again. You kept your eyes open despite wanting to close them every single time he would circle his index fingers over your hardening nubs, pressing and swirling, or when he would lick and bite down the side of your neck, all while watching you unravel.

“G-gojo –” you whined, abruptly cutting yourself short when he bit on the junction of your neck and shoulder a tad harder. And as he was doing that, he started moving one hand downwards, making the anticipation in your chest grow with the deliberate slowness of his fingers, which traced their way down your belly. He played with the elastic of your underwear, lightly dipping the tip of his fingers through it but only to tease you.

Suddenly, he brought both hands down to your hips, pulling your ass flush against the growing predicament between his legs. You felt the outline of his shaft nestling between your butt, warm and stiff through the fabric of his boxers. He moved slowly, rubbing his length against you. “See how you make me feel?”

“Should I be flattered?” You smirked at him through the mirror, but that was short-lived as he cupped your sex with one hand, his fingers deftly rubbing your clit over the flimsy lingerie. “Nnggh...”

“What a shame, sweetheart. You’ve soiled this pretty little thing. I haven’t even touched you here, and yet you’re this wet?” he cooed into your ear as ​he dry-humped you from the back and moved to insert his whole hand into your panties, tracing the length of your slit before continuing to stimulate your clit with more vigor this time.

“Ah!”

You couldn’t figure out whether it was the act itself or seeing it from the mirror that was making you sensitive and very reactive to Satoru’s ministrations.

“You like that?” He moved his other hand from your hips to the side of your underwear, also inserting it from there and seeking your quivering hole, immediately inserting two of his fingers.

“Fuck! Gojo...ah...”

He started pumping into your pussy with just the tips at first, going deeper every time he thrusts in until they were knuckles-deep. Your panties constricted his movements, but when you tried to push them down, he stopped you.

“No, sweetheart. I want to fuck you later while wearing this,” he said, his words punctuated by the wet squelching over his fingers in your pussy. “You’re squeezing my fingers so tight.”

He continued to probe even as your legs started to shake, looking for that sensitive spot he knew would drive you to the edge. And when he did, you let out such a wanton moan that had him grinding against you harder, his quiet pants audible to your ears alone.

“There you are.” He continuously rubbed the pads of his fingers against that same spot, making you cry out, “I-I’m close.” You panted, eyes focused on his hand moving under the lace.

He chuckled shakily. “Cum for me then.”

And as if with a push of a button, you did his bidding and came around his finger, but he didn’t stop, moving your legs further apart as he continued to finger-fuck you.

"Gojo, I just –​ ah, ah!" He thrust his fingers even faster, this time slightly pulling down your underwear so he could rub your clit. They easily slid in and out of you with your cum dripping from your pussy to his knuckles while your clit throbbed from his ministrations. Again, that familiar feeling of coming undone settled at the pit of your stomach, trickling down to where he was touching you.

“You’re gonna cum for me as many times as I can make you tonight,” he rasped, forcing you to look at yourself in the mirror. “You’re so fucking pretty when you’re cumming.”

And just like that, he brought you to your second high, making a panting, moaning mess out of you. He had to hold you up since your knees buckled, but even as you were already unraveling, he still moved his fingers, albeit slowly.

“Gojo...p-please stop for a sec.”

“Satoru.”

You looked at him from behind you. “Huh?”

“Call me by my name, sweetheart.” He started tracing figure eights on your clit again, making you tremble and almost fall to your knees again. “Come on, say it.”

“S-sa–Satoru!” You came again before the feeling could even register in your head. “Fuck,” you breathed out, holding onto his arm to keep yourself upright. He helped you up, quiet laughter registering in your ears as he hoisted you in his arms, carrying you bridal style.

You were still shaking from the three orgasms he managed to pull out of you, but you smacked him on the chest, making him giggle all the more. “Ow?”

“I told you to hold on for a moment, you nut!”

He laid you on the bed, propping you up on the multitude of pillows set up against the headboard. “No can do, Y/N. You signed up for this. You’re mine tonight.” He kissed you on the forehead, poking your cheek despite the glare you threw his way. “As much as I want to just shove my cock inside you, I want you to feel so good you won’t think of anything else the whole week.”

You covered your face. “Oh my god, Gojo, shut up.”

He clucked his tongue. “I told you to call me Satoru. It’s weird when you call on my whole clan when I’m the only one here.”

At that, you finally let out a quiet laugh. 

“Specifics, right?”

“Now you’re speaking my language?”

He slotted himself between your legs, peppering your face with kisses. “Yes.” He pecked you on the nose. “I want you to scream my name and no one else’s. Now let’s try that.”

“Satoru,” you said in all but a whisper, and then a bit louder and sounding needier. “Satoru.”

As if you’ve bewitched him, his usually bright eyes turned dark, and he was stealing the air out of your lungs again by kissing you, his tongue sliding past your lips. This was what you meant when you said his kisses could be so all-consuming it muddles any coherent thought in your brain.

He then moved to your chest, his mouth latching onto your right nipple and sucking and licking. At the same time, he busied his hands roaming the topography of your body, momentarily making their way to your ass to squeeze possessively before moving downward.

“Change of plans,” he muttered, his voice followed by ripping sounds as he yanked at your panties.

“What the hell?”

He let go of your nipple with a lewd pop. “What? You’ve got more in your closet.”

You grew quiet when he mentioned your ownership of that part of his place. It’s still his closet with things he bought for you. It made sense if he wanted to destroy all of them. “It’s your closet, Satoru.”

“It’s all yours if you want it.” He tossed the ruined lace somewhere behind him before taking possession of your thighs and spreading them apart. “Looking absolutely mouth-watering.”

You rolled your eyes but bit your lip when he slumped down on the bed, face mere centimeters from your slick-laden cunt. “Don’t stare at it –”

Satoru pecked your clit before nudging it with the tip of his nose. “Mine,” he growled, running his tongue through the length of your opening. You bucked your hips, still sensitive from earlier. “I want you to sit on my face next time. But for now…”

Anchoring your legs on the bed with his arms to keep them open for him, Satoru licked another stripe over your cunt, assaulting your clit with licks in quick successions before putting his lips to work, sucking on your sensitive bundle of nerves while he pushed his tongue into you. A needy moan ripped out of your throat, a combination of incoherent syllables of his name and senseless babbling. You gripped onto the sheets and whatever you could get your hands on, unable to process all the sensations wreaking havoc in your system, making every cell in your body sing.

Your legs threatened to close as you thrashed on the bed, entirely under Satoru’s mercy, unable to figure out whether you were feeling too much or nothing at all as you melted underneath him, spasms assailing your whole body.

“T-too much,” you babbled as your fingers raked through his silvery locks. You didn’t know if you wanted to pull him closer or push him away, but all the same, you earned an approving hum, choking out a high-pitched scream from the way his voice thrummed against you, catapulting you to a whole new different kind of high.  

Satoru groaned, hearing your pleasured delectations when you climaxed, your juices spilling past his mouth, which he tasted and licked despite your overwhelmed state. His name spilled out of your lips like a broken mantra, each complete utterance of it a stroke to his growing pride at the fact that he was the one winding you up to your current state, that he was the one who was bringing you to heights you’ve never experienced with anyone else.

It was worth it, the wait. You were worth it. The way you looked – all messed up and sobbing, tears spangling your eyelashes, your skin tickled pink, lips parted in quiet sighs, and your chest rising and falling, your breath hitching all at the same time – was something he saw as a reward after all those times you turned him down. Good things happen to those who wait; this was beyond good, even better than what he had imagined.

He couldn’t really put a finger as to what it was about you that drew him in since the first time he Suguru introduced you to him. It was a challenge, the way you seemed to be impermeable to his charms that no matter what he did to catch your attention, you didn’t give him the time of day. You’d scoff at him, treat him as if he wasn’t of any consequence, laugh it off or threaten him when he thinks he had gotten a step closer. The best fruits sure hung at the highest branches of a tree, but he had a ladder and wasn’t hesitant to use it.

And the moment you gave him an opening, he knew he couldn’t bear the thought of you being with anyone else apart from him. His attraction for you which he thought was something that would stop the moment he had a taste of you, grew into covetousness instead. When he said you ruined him for anyone else, there wasn’t a better permutation of words that would describe what you did to him. He wanted to own you, make sure that no one else gets to you, monopolize you in every which way he could think of, and keep you all to himself.

Fuck consequences. He would take what he could. He didn’t like the feeling of being denied. What Gojo Satoru wants, he gets. That was the case for everyone else he had been with, but he knew he could never play by the same rules, not with you. You’re one of those rare things he knew he would never wholly own, but that didn’t mean he would let it go without a fight, nor did that imply that he wasn’t ever going to try. He wanted you, and though you will never ever level the playing ground with him, enjoying your advantage over him, his desperation for you, and the fact that he needed you more than you needed him, he still wanted any part of you that he could concretely say was his.

Your agreement with him was just a step towards that goal.

You were made for him; no one can convince him otherwise. He had never felt the way he did for anyone else, and he didn’t think he ever will again. Looking at you now, all fucked out and laid out for him to feast on, he couldn’t help the laughter that bubbled up his throat. He meant it when he said he would make it worth your while. This night was about you. He intended it to be that way, but what he didn’t anticipate was the immense pleasure he felt while giving you what you wanted.

With his lips and chin shining with your arousal, he rose to his knees as if surveying his dominion, you being the conquered land and him the ruler of it all, beauty and ruin all wrapped up into one to create a masterpiece in his will and liking. He swiped at the edge of his mouth with his fingers before licking it off. His eyes caught yours, clear and sparkling with open lust, while yours reflected them in the haze of your blown-out pupils.

Satoru playfully crawled on top of you, randomly planting kisses on your body before he pressed his lips onto your pliant yet unresponsive ones, making you taste yourself. You slowly blinked up at him, a dazed smile drawing itself across your mouth as you tried to even out your breathing. He kissed your cheek, propping himself up on his elbow while his other hand brushed away stray strands of hair from your face.

“Hey, sweet cheeks,” he whispered as he nuzzled your nose with his.

“Just give me a moment,” you responded, voice breathy.

“Okay.” He got off you, comically rolling onto the mattress to reach for the drawer, rummaging through stuff in there, rubbers, you surmised. “Want anything?”

You shook your head, snickering weakly as you covered your eyes with your arm. You didn’t know what was funnier: him being all long-limbed and pure muscle moving the way he did just then, or if it’s just the whole situation.

“What’s so amusing, sweetheart?” he asked as he moved closer to you, sitting up against the plush headboard beside you. You shook your head, but you were still unable to wipe the smile on your lips. “Okay…Think you can sit up?”

You rolled your eyes at him as you did just that, pausing when you noticed that he had forgone his boxers from earlier. Once again, you found yourself staring at him. It wasn’t a luxury you had the first time you had sex with him, given that it was at a party held at a frat house. You didn’t even know whose room you messed up that night, and you didn’t really stop and actually observe him that night, both of you caught up in a rush.

Everything about Gojo Satoru was pretty, that much you could say, and if it was a matter of being endowed, he wasn’t lacking in that either. You knew precisely just how his cock felt like inside of you, and you already knew you wouldn’t be disappointed. No. That had been the least of your worries, but it was somehow like finally putting a face to something responsible for a mysterious encounter.

Daring to be bold despite how he made you surrender earlier, you crawled towards him like a feline, flashing him a sultry look as you came closer. He smirked as you kneeled astride him, running your fingers through your hair to push it back before sitting your plush ass on his lap. You leveled your expression with his when you saw how his jaw went slack, his dick twitching against his abs even without being touched. You slid closer, rubbing your pussy on one of his muscular thighs. He gulped audibly, seeing as how your eyes had taken a different look from earlier, but he didn’t dislike it one bit.

“Close your mouth, sweet thing,” you said, referring to him with one of the nicknames he gave you. His teeth clacked as he did your bidding without even realizing it. You rewarded him with a peck on the cheek, tapping the other with your manicured fingers. “Good.”

You turned your attention to his throbbing cock, prolonging his agony as you ran one hand down his body before finally touching it. You felt his breath picking up pace when you traced one prominent vein that ended just by the pink tip, which was leaking with his own impending arousal. The tables seemed to have turned when you ran your thumb over his slit, smearing his precum. He was becoming harder, hotter in your hand, and you couldn’t help but feel excited as well, seeing your effect on him. 

You took the condom packet from him, tearing it open and tossing the wrapper aside. He watched with bated breath as you slid over his length, deliberately tightening your fingers around him, making him hiss. You interrupted his preoccupation with your hand by claiming his lips as you slid the condom the rest of the way, drawing out a salacious moan from him. 

“I like how you sound like this,” you murmured against his mouth, chuckling when he let out an exaggerated keen, distracting you enough not to notice when he unclasped your bra. You let the garment slide off of your arm while he pulled on it, getting rid of it like he did with its pair. You couldn’t care less as you wrapped your arms around his shoulder for support, your mouth remaining connected as he lifted you by the back of your thighs, aligning himself to your entrance.

You both gasped when the tip of his cock nudged through your folds, your breaths mingling in the sparse space between your lips. Ever so slowly, you sank down onto him, feeling yourself being stretched further open until he bottomed out. 

Overwhelmed by his size and how he made you feel, you placed your forehead against his shoulder, neither of you moving except for the seemingly in-sync rise and fall of your chests. He was in so deep that you felt so full, even breathing seems difficult to do.

“Fuck, Y/N, sweetheart, you feel so good.”

You didn’t trust yourself to speak. Your senses were on overdrive that even the slightest movements of Satoru’s fingers against your skin made you squirm and lose your breath.

“So, so good...” he said softly, utterly out of it, but his words spurred you on. Bracing your hands on his shoulders, you moved your hips, raising halfway through his length before taking the entirety of his shaft again. “Yes, baby, that’s it.”

You repeated the same thing over and over again, going closer towards his tip with each time until you found your rhythm. Starting off slow, you picked up your pace, bouncing on Satoru’s cock, your head slightly thrown back as you maneuvered the angles that best suited your desires.

“You’re s-so damn hot, sweet cheeks. Come on. Give me more,” he egged you on, hands finding their way to your breasts and squeezing possessively.

You were close again, feeling the continuous drag of his dick inside your walls, obscene moans coming from your mouth as you moved your hips to your liking. Seeing the same degree of desire overflowing from Satoru’s eyes made you clench tightly around him as the coil in the pit of your guts tightened. Your movements became sloppy as you burned out all your energy, all worth it hearing the way Satoru groaned and lost his mind because of you.

You rode him like no one’s business, feeling him becoming more engorged inside you. He started meeting you halfway with his own thrusts, seeing as how you’re growing more tired. 

“Ah...Satoru, right there,” you said when he shifted and thrust up into you a particular way, keeping that same bruising pace until you were a shaking mess, going limp in his arms as you reached your nth high.

But he wasn’t done with you just yet. Carrying you, he easily rolled the two of you on the sheets. He pulled out of you, propping you on your side, the sudden emptiness making you whimper. But that was short-lived as he pulled you close, your back against his chest. Satoru slid a hand between your thighs, propping your right leg over his. From behind you, he shoved his cock into you, making you scream.

The sound of skin slapping on skin as he fucked you hard and fast filled the room along with his own moans mingling with your pants as your mouth went slack.

“Y/N, I’m c-close. Cum with me, hmm? Give me one more,” he told you in frenzied tones.

Your brain was way too fried for you to respond to his words, merely sobbing when you felt him reaching down to where your clit was, abusing it at the same unforgiving pace at which he pumped his dick inside you.

Right when you came undone, he pulled out up to the tip before ramming back all the way in, staying there as he emptied his load into the condom, his semen coming out in hot spurts that had him seeing stars.

For a while, the pair of you lay there in silence with nothing but your heavy breaths filling up the room, blissfully spent as he held you in his arms.

When he was calm enough, he carefully pulled out of you, discarding the condom and coming back to find you dead to the world. He smiled to himself as he leaned down on your still form, kissing you on the cheek, his head filled with nothing but the thought of how amazing you were.

~*~

My sister be like: え、���当に1つのエロいシーンで5000語以上も？マジで？ And I'm like: わかんないな、なんかおかしくなってるんだよ。 It was Patricia.

TAGS LIST: @arxliana @neeneee @charlie-xo @aelynaneedsalottathing @arizzu @cloudxp @justpuddinglol

© ORIGINAL WORK BY nanaminokanojo. CHARACTERS ARE INSPIRED BY GEGE AKUTAMI'S JUJUTSU KAISEN. [20230724]

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Music Monday, Last Line/s & What's the Colour Palette of Your Name?

Tagged by @aceghosts @titiagls @imogenkol @raresvtm and @strafethesesinners

Tagging @inafieldofdaisies @icecutioner @derelictheretic @shallow-gravy @softtidesworld @socially-awkward-skeleton @josephseedismyfather @voidika @direwombat @strangefable @rhettsabbott @josephslittledeputy @cloudofbutterflies92 @skoll-sun-eater @cassietrn @carlosoliveiraa @adelaidedrubman @g0dspeeed @wrathfulrook @afarcryfrommymain @turbo-virgins @shellibisshe @deputy-morgan-malone @starsandskies @ladyoriza @la-grosse-patate @florbelles @sleepyconfusedpotato @minilev @yokobai @thewanderer-000 @omen-speaker @justasmolbard @alypink @thesingularityseries and @nightwingshero + anyone else who wants to join. Taglist here.

Late Music Monday for The UnTitledverse, specifically for the last three chapters of my A Blast In The Past WIP, and a Last Line for WIPs for The Silver Chronicles and Life, Despair & Monsters and a colour palette results for my username. Colour Palette can be found here. Anyway, you can find these below the cut:

Chapter 3 of my A Blast In The Past WIP, called "Absolutely Anything" continues with Calvin being denied his POV, and the Narrator continuing to slander his name, in spite of Calvin's actions. Also more introduction to allies and enemies, as well as Calvin being desperate to just... leave. Hence the chapter's title. Sure his actions are warped by the Narrator to seem more incompetent/selfish than he actually is, but yeah. Not only is Calvin's character twisted by the Narrator's words, it's also literally everyone else, but Calvin gets the Narrator's hate boner the most.

"I used to be so beautiful, now look at me My actions are undutiful, it's clear to see Come on and step out of that cage There's a new chapter, turn the page I'll take my place up on the stage All eyes on me!"

"I can hear you calling Calling up to me I'm falling down, I'm falling Won't you set me free?

I'll do anything, anything Anything that you need me to do Absolutely anything for you I will be aware of the ink, swim or sink Watching out for anything out of the blue But this nightmare's coming true What have I got myself into?"

"Have you ever wondered what heaven is like? I like to dream that it is quite beautiful A soft valley of green grass blanketed by a warm sun I don't think I'll ever get to see it Are you ready to ascend, my little errand boy? The heavens are waiting."

"You'll do anything, anything Anything that I ask you to do But you don't have a clue 'Cause I can guarantee, guarantee That demon's always after me and you But this nightmare is coming true Look what you've got yourself into."

Chapter 4's the darkest chapter, hence given the name "Art Of Darkness". Calvin's got his hands full with subtracting the number of foes he's got to deal with, meanwhile being psychologically tormented by the Narrator and the environment around that's sole purpose is to beat the shit out of him. Calvin gets closer to finding his exit... or at least, what the Narrator states is a lead.

"So sing along to the bouncing ball Wave your flag and renounce these halls You may have been sacked from this pantomime But a pal of mine wants you recalled

So march along to the count of four Astound at the scoundrel crowd you've drawn Left stranded and damned to this mangled form To abandon us here was an act of war."

"It's laughable to think you'll bring back the norm." "We've ink, but no malpractice forms." ""But Henry! You never gave a crap before?" 'Til we trapped you down 'neath the factory floor."

"Clap along to the rapturous score Three rounds down and back for more To find the keys in chapter four." "Remind me, where've you heard that before?"

"If you thought that demons were your problem right now Well, the angel's on the stage so pipe down If there are secrets that you want to find out Hop on the ink machine and ride those pipes down

So you're on the path of the starving artist But at the heart, well the art is heartless Ever seen a masterpiece get discarded? Start and depart for the art of darkness."

Chapter Five "Clearer" marks the finale of A Blast In The Past, the culmination of Calvin's journey and the mystery of his circumstances being revealed with the help of two intruders who the Narrator doesn't want anywhere near his playground. For Calvin, everything becomes... "clearer" in a way.

"Wake up in the wrong place at the wrong time Got to run away, no way out Thought I had new friends, new allies, but they won't let me escape

I pray that we make it out alive

I see the writing on the wall again Breaking out of here Everything's clearer We haven't even reached the end, but we make our own way And we are not gonna stay

Almost took all our blood, sweat, and tears to take down all our fears We're brave, but I pray that we make it out alive

I see the writing on the wall again Breaking out of here Everything's clearer We haven't even reached the end, but we make our own way

I have conquered demons of every kind But I wish that we could rewind all the years Power and justice, it was everything he wanted But despite it all, he could never find what he was looking for Now here we are at the end

I see the writing on the wall again Breaking out of here Everything's clearer We haven't even reached the end, but we make our own way And we are not gonna stay-ay-ay-ay

We'll never stay We will escape."

You can find the Last Line/s for The Silver Chronicles and Life, Despair & Monsters below.

Still got my Coroner!Silva AU WIP No Snake, Only A Boa In The Garden from The Silver Chronicles. Anyway, have some Faith Seed POV as she falls for Coroner!Silva and falls hard (not that she already wasn't in an earlier scene where Silva charmed her with her strange hyper-fixations on the science behind corpses):

Faith wasn't sure if her words were making any sense to Silva. Botany was vastly different from forensic science. It'd help to prepare the coroner for when she eventually joined their family, especially as "the Mother" like Joseph had proclaimed. As she continued to speak, she took a chance to glance at her bench mate.

The first thing Faith noticed was Silva's eyes. Usually they were a dulled grey, without a light of life in them. There seemed to be a glow in the rings of her irises; a burning intensity, like molten silver. She held a dedicated gaze, absorbing and absorbed by every word that spilled from Faith's mouth, even as she began to slow and falter in her observation. The acute stare was different from Joseph's; his held a power that felt like he was judging a person's soul. Silva's though held no judgemental scrutiny; only a warm admiration that passed over her soul like an embrace. It almost felt like Silva was actually hearing every word Faith blurted out of her lips.

Faith swears she's seen this look before, or something close to it. Yes, right, Nadi. This expression was a similar kind she noticed on Nadi whenever John was around or even mentioned, which was often. Faith had often shaken her head at the Sinclair women's transitioned from a "dutiful bodyguard" to a "lovesick puppy" the moment John entered the frame; something Faith would combat with a teasing smile and an eye roll at the silly display, always finding herself satisfied that such antics would never happen with her, that level of attention unnecessary compared to the Father's approval.

And yet, Faith found herself breathless and unfairly unprepared in the face of the level of attention Silva's given her. Though she recognized just how contrasting the coroner's was from Nadi's own. The sharpshooter's was rooted in a kind of inexperienced love; a childish crush really, an envisioned idolized image Nadi built around the few virtues John displays, ignoring the glaring flaws John has. But Silva's gaze was more grounded, a reserved devotion almost saved for Faith; a maturity and experience Faith often laments not being given a chance to have herself. Just as she listened to Faith, it felt as if Silva was seeing Faith as well. Not as the Siren. Not as a herald. Not even as Rachel. Just... her. Just as she is now.

By now, Faith had ceased talking, just entrapped in the eyes of the woman next to her. Heart pounding, a red flushing on her face as she managed to ask Silva with a wavering smile, "Why are you staring at me like that?"

The Sheriff's coroner leaned against the support of her arm, gloved knuckles against under her cheek. Faith noticed her lips were slightly ajar, glistened with a natural shine as Silva seemed to think of an answer. She observed as Silva's expression shifted, displaying a coy smirk that was almost sly of amorous. The ridiculous thought caused her heart to flutter as anticipation coiled in her innards. Silva shuffled and leaned a shy bit closer to Faith, the recipient trying to swallow her nerves at the change of atmosphere, awaiting Silva's answer.

And here's a Last Line Tag for my Sonya's Push WIP from my Life, Despair & Monsters series. Enjoy the little snippet of one of the most toxic w|w couples I've made thus far:

A steam of hot air blew pass the clenched jaw of the mechanical Beastie, its optic shining a red hue onto her flesh. Jennifer sucked in a breath and shuddered as the heat stung her exposed shoulders. The Apex, Sonya, whatever name Malvolio's Beastie crowned itself with, hadn't immediately given her an answer. She tried to struggle against the tail's curled hold around her legs, waist, and arms.

Just like last time, she only succeeded in causing the tail to coil tighter, effectively pinning her hands to her tattered and dirty golden dress. The fear of her body's circulation being cut off suddenly occurred, so she ceased the struggle, hoping to gain the Apex's favour as it inspected her from the ground, circling as the panic and fear rumbled in her stomach. Jennifer was unsure what fate awaited her. She hoped her words made an effort in appealing to whatever human desire remained in the Beastie, but if she were to die, she'd wish it to be quicker than what Dicko received.

Anyway here's the results for the colour palette name game:

Nice to see I got some blues and purples and even a bit of greys. I can live with the reds and the darker/paler colours I guess but what's that lone random greenish-blue doing there, poor sod.

[starrysharks]

okkkk i watched the first episode of hazbin hotel and i think it has a lot of missed potential. there are actually quite a few goods - the animation for the most part is nice, the voice acting is great (especially keith david as the cat thing), and the songs are alright. the show brings up interesting concepts but the main problem is that it doesn't really execute them in an interesting way, mainly due to the way the characters are written.

every character - with the exception of alastor, charlie and nifty - has a generally "vulgar" personality, ranging from that being a primary trait to basically the entire character (based on the 1st episode alone). they're all written in a similar way, which means that character interactions are very basic funnyman/straightman endeavors with little variation - angel dust says something dumb and vaggie chatises him, or angel dust says something sexual and husk chatises him. that formula basically extends to most if not all of their interactions so far, so the dynamics between characters are similar and frankly uninteresting. angel dust especially (i really don't like him sorry) is so far just a vessel for sexual jokes, and we don't really get anything from his character other than "he's horny", which isn't really good for your first episode imo. the language the characters use is also similar so there's little humorous contrast. there aren't really "jokes" with setup and payoff - just characters saying and doing out of pocket things.

the worst example of this is with the angels, particularly adam. i think that the angel with him (lute i think?) would actually serve his purpose in the story better based on her character - somewhat regal, orderly, but most importantly uses a completely different language to the devils. this sort of contrast would've been way more interesting imo - have the angels be holier-than-thou (quite literally), talk charlie down, make her feel less than or even like a "sinner" - which would be cool because as far as i can tell charlie tries her best to be as good as possible! that would be a unique way to bring out her angry side but instead adam just acts like any other devil, even worse than them, and maybe that's on purpose but i don't think it's very cool...... it would be fun to play off the watcher's preconceived notions and ideas on angels and devils after establishing how charlie deviates from the norm, maybe even having the angels be like "wow you lashing out proves devils are all evil", but now i'm rambling...

other than that, i think the story introduces its main plot points too early. give the concept some time to breathe and establish itself before dropping the bombshell that the extermination is to be 6 months early, damn,,, but i'd have to watch every episode to give an opinion on how they handle that, which i likely won't do. i have some small nitpicks, like the weird lack of buildup to most songs and the kind of weird pacing, but in short, based on the first episode, it's just a compilation of missed opportunities and edgy swear-humor offset by some genuinely interesting and good ideas. this isn't a review of the entire series, by the way - just a "initial thoughts" thing. if you really are interested in the concept, i'd say give it a chance, but please be aware of the creator's actions before you support it monetarily. (i watched the first episode through other means as i genuinely dislike the creator due to her bigotry, of which others have described more eloquently than me - it's very easy to find "call-outs" and critiques of her actions). 4/10, where is verblase :/

[dragon-communion]

Headcanon time for each of the Empyrean children.

Ranni did present strange physical traits related to her moon when she had flesh. However: the dark moon thrives on subtlety, and chiefly presents its influence through frost at the most dramatic. Ranni probably had an easier time than the other two of keeping her uncanny abilities under wraps, and after she shed her flesh it wasn't a concern anymore. I guesstimate she used to passively make the temperature drop just by existing, judging by Blaidd's armor. She can quite literally just be the cold now. She only has four arms because her new body is technically a modified combat marionette. It's unclear what her rune might have been, but I wonder if it was literally just Destined Death and she didn't so much "cast it away" as "call dibs and never collect".

Malenia is the Empyrean we know best. Her benefactor is the Scarlet Rot, whether she likes it or not, which manifests as a scorpion. She passively and uncontrollably rots the people around her, though she can actively choose to let more rot out it seems. The rot also changes the landscape around her- I imagine her bed might've grown a lot of mushrooms that the staff were in endless war with, and the laundresses had a high turnover rate. In her goddess form, in addition to utilizing a giant lotus flower, she has wings made of butterflies and her own hair. Vaguely angelic wings seem out of the norm for the insect-like rot god, and I'm tempted to say they're a deliberate mockery of whatever Malenia could have been if left alone. Her rune allows the bearer to heal every time they do damage, which thematically fits both a goddess of victory or a goddess of rot, taking life in order to flourish.

Miquella is where the fun begins. Headcanons exponentially increase beyond this point.

The two previous Empyreans were chosen by a specific god. The Dark Moon, and the Scarlet Rot. Miquella is uniquely notable for his complete and utter aversion to gods, and the ability to reject their influence. In-game we mostly use this to reject the Flame of Frenzy, though I find it interesting that his alter ego also dabbled in directly fighting off Frenzy. Was Miquella ever selected by an outer god? If so, did he just invent a way to reject them the same way he worked on rejecting the Rot?

It's hard to say, and I've been trying to make inferences based on Miquella's powers, abilities, and implied abilities. This includes but is not limited to:

dominion over Sleep via St. Trina

an affinity for holy damage in weapons and spells he personally invents (what exactly is holy damage? is it specifically Erdtree related or more of an expression of pure faith?), and his soldiers exploding with holy damage

eternal youth and abundance, definition unclear on that though

affinity for trees and flowers

advanced smithing skills and the production of unalloyed gold (how? maybe from his blood?)

lots of references to his blood (is that where the abundance is?)

divine curse/ability to passively make people love him, and potentially the ability to directly amp that up at will

cocoons. possibly as a form of baptizing people into his cycle of life, possibly as a form of immunizing people to the scarlet rot. the Cleanrot Knights have insect wings where their tassets should be. is Miquella capable of turning people into bugs? are his cocoons a way to meddle with the makeup of their blood, which he seems to have an affinity for? is he injecting people with his blood a la Mohg and then wrapping them up to wait? where does the silk come from

unalloyed gold. potentially meaning white-gold, which would be thematically interesting concerning the albinaurics. Haligtree tabards are white and gold

possibly related, but he spends his life conveying a message of hope and belonging that i've always blamed partially on his extremely absent and emotionally distant mother. he's trying to literally do her job but better in all ways.

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Miquella's outer god had actually been Frenzy. I'm not hard set on it, but I do like the idea- hope versus despair, plenty versus oneness. He definitely had some reasons to feel despair, and he seems determined to offer a second chance to everyone maligned by the Golden Order who can actually feel it. I don't think the living dead really have emotions anymore, just perpetual motion.

Sometime I should try writing my full crack theory pitch for Miquella, god of Frenzy.

If I examine some of his more uncanny abilities, they seem to divvy up into two subcategories: psychic damage and physical growth. Trina is/was a part of him, and she got dominion over induced sleep and flowers. Miquella has charm and flowers. I think part of his affinity for plants comes from the core concept in Elden Ring that kids in general come from plants, at least under the dominion of the Erdtree. Malenia had flower kids via the rot. Births are implied to come from the amber dripping from the Erdtree. Miquella, cursed with youth, is stuck in this state of perpetual growth with nowhere to go- so that could mean he's constantly growing things around him, and part of the quality of being nascent is being somewhat flowerlike. I like the idea that he just has too much blood, either because his body overproduces it or he trained it to overproduce blood because he's an Empyrean and his body just adapts to excessive bloodletting.

When he was removed half-formed from his cocoon, he had four insect wings. Which is why I think the wings on the Cleanrot Knights are his fault somehow.

(I have not played the DLC and I am ignoring it right now, I was spoiled on his appearance and I didn't like it at all, which is why I'm writing this)

I think that, like Malenia, his apotheosis would involve wings somehow. Maybe insect wings, maybe flower petal wings, maybe something else. I don't know what his great rune is beyond abundance or what it would have done- maybe something to do with healing, like Malenia's- but while Malenia has always been visually associated with the valkyries, Miquella is incredibly fae to me. Or angelic, if you want to go that route, but the flowers and the treehouse with a secret entrance and the charm ability all scream fae even without the uncanny subtle insect theming. Not a changeling child, but there's definitely a theme present in some fairy tales of changelings being fae children that can never grow up.

Most of the outer gods are expressions of Death in some way, possibly because Marika outlawed death and the cosmic order got a bit fucked up. Miquella's main association with death is through Sleep- while there is no obvious outer god associated with that, it could just be a comparatively young god. People haven't really needed to get drunk and forget on such a massive scale before, until the Shattering- before that is was mostly oppressed and chronically ill people. One could argue Trina was actually the part of him meant to become a god, since Empyreans seem to be meant to be female or at least alchemically represent the feminine aspect.

If I snag that imagery for a second- white queen, red king- while Miquella seems to visually be very blatantly the white queen, if I squint at him and then look at Trina I can see a way for him to be the red king. Mostly the repeated references to his power coming from his blood. Godfrey counts visually because his second phase is literally covered in blood. No reason Miquella couldn't be the same.

Both Miquella and Trina are selling a world of peace and love, so it's an interesting idea. Especially since the white queen seems to wear the matriarchal pants of the relationship in Elden Ring- I wonder what it would look like, for Trina to be the dominant force in their little binary system.

I digress.

If I use the format I used with the other two Empyreans, we get: Miquella's benefactor is (???) whose symbolism is (???) and whose effect is (???). He passively and uncontrollably (charms people/grows things) around him. His god form involves lilies, fairy wings, and some sort of insect somehow. His rune probably had something to do with abundance, effect unknown but maybe involving healing somehow.

His ability to grow things and make them flourish might have something to do thematically with his ability to make cocoons. I still want to know how he does it. Spinnerets? His blood, somehow? Maybe he's like a queen bee but for silkmoths.

I'm very distracted by the hypothetical AU where Trina wins god-paper-scissors and has Miquella become her consort, now.

I'm still not entirely sure what Miquella's god form would look like, but it absolutely needs flowers and wings and maybe weird eyes, judging by the rest of the Empyreans and Marika. It'd probably be gold, which is boring considering Marika already has that covered, but maybe he could do something fun with the color white. And some purple. Maybe his hair's made of flowers and he's got a third eye or something, to contrast Malenia being made of butterflies and having no eyes.

[newleaf92]

Hazbin Questions,Thoughts , and Theories:

What if part of the reason Adam finds the exterminations fun is because it’s something he’s in control of as he’s the leader of the exterminations? He couldn’t control Lilith or Eve so having something he can be in charge of/control is why he finds it fun.

Valentino didn’t get the reaction he wanted from Vox when he was bitching about Angel Dust moving. So in order to get a reaction, he decided to bring up Alastor’s return. There’s so a mutual dynamic where they’re condescending to each other—Vox treating Val like a child when he wanted to storm after Angel Dust, and Val digging up an old memory of Alastor almost beating Vox with a “just saying” when Vox cussed him out.

Angel Dust acts overly flirty with Husk because he’s not getting the reactions/responses he’s used to from others. Angel expects to be used and abused as that’s been his norm since selling his soul to Valentino. So when Husk doesn’t do that, Angel is left wondering what his angle is—which results in him pushing Husk’s boundaries. Failure to get that from him and the attempt from Charlie to talk to Val led him to his break.

“I didn’t ask for Charlie to save me!” Well…you kinda did, Angel or at least planted the seed in her head that she could successfully do so. Yes, she may have had good intentions be implemented the wrong way, but you also put the idea there—along with Vaggie.

The way Lucifer keeps glancing at the family portrait with the 🥺 face. The man had his dreams crushed, his wife left him, doesn’t have the relationship he wants with Charlie…it’s obvious that he thinks Charlie doesn’t want to see him so he uses his calls to ask her to do things as that excuse to talk to her. Charlie herself could have tried more too in order to have a relationship with him. It’s a two way street, but Lucifer’s 🥺 face makes me sad

I find it kinda funny and ironic that the first thing on Adam’s checklist on what gets someone into heaven is “be selfless” when he quite literally one of the most selfish people in the show

The way Vox hops around when Alastor retreats after Adam dealt that blow 😂😂😂😂 he totally runs on back up Energizer Bunny batteries