#but he's still so conflicted

[allastoredeer]

*Raises hand*

I liked your first deep dive! Quick question though, how do you think Lucifer reconciles his rose-colored memories of heaven with his learned fear of it?

In the show he came across as largely exhausted by dealing with them up until More Than Anything where we see him imagine the bright silhouettes of his siblings and those of the exorcist weapons moving in on Charlie.

It seems like, on some level, he recognizes the danger and corruption there, but the superiority from being an angel is such a strong part of his psyche that he can't let himself acknowledge it outside of these small moments.

Thank you!

I think Lucifer is exhausted with dealing with Heaven, but I think most, if not all, of that exhaustion relates to having to deal with Adam during & after the Exterminations. Considering only a select few people know about the Exterminations, such as Adam and Sera (it didn't look like the rest of the jury/counsel during the Heaven episode knew about it, they all seemed surprised), it'd make sense if Lucifer was working with Adam most of the time, as I can't imagine Sera involved herself in the Exterminations outside of giving Adam the go-ahead.

When I think of Lucifer and his relationship with Heaven overall, I think of ✨religious trauma✨

Growing up in such a strict, religious household (for lack of a better word), however corrupt it was, doesn't take away the happy memories he made there. It doesn't wipe away what he was taught and the rules that he molded his life around.

I think, while Lucifer knows that Heaven isn't all sunshine and rainbows, when he reminisces about Heaven to himself, he lingers on the good times, like his memories with the other archangels, the wonder and awe of creation, watching the galaxy expand, and all the times he spent with his family. All those tender moments he misses having. The ones that make his heart ache with yearning.

It's easy to put people/concepts/things on a pedestal, especially in the privacy of one's own head where you're free to rationalize to your heart's content, and I think when Heaven cast Lucifer out, a part of him believes they were right to do so. He thinks he deserved it.

He didn't fall from Heaven first. He fell from his ego. He was so certain that giving Eve the apple was the right move. He believed, with all his heart (🎶or whatever angels have🎶) that he was doing what was best - for Lilith, for Eve, for Adam, for humanity.

But he didn't anticipate the consequences of his actions because, in giving Eve (and then Adam later) the fruit of knowledge, did shatter everything Heaven worked for. He shattered the order that the Seraphims, the other archangels, he, himself, had worked tirelessly to maintain. Evil, the entity that they've fought off since the beginning of existence, was now on Earth. In humanity.

And he did that. (And Lilith, technically, but I don't think Lucifer puts much of the blame on her).

Of course Heaven would cast him out. They had every right to. He ruined everything. He's the embodiment of pride because he believed he knew what was best for humanity, he thought he knew better than the Seraphims, the archangels, even God, and the shame he feels is in direct correlation of that pride because he realized he was wrong.

He was wrong.

I think when he was first cast out from Heaven, he was angry. He felt unjustly punished. He felt like Heaven was in the wrong. They were the ones making the mistake. So, he turned to the Sinners to learn about them, their lives, their choices, to prove that he was right, but all he saw was wickedness and cruelty.

Just like Heaven said.

He kept searching.

More wickedness. More cruelty. It got worse the more he looked, but he kept looking, and kept looking, desperate to prove that Heaven was mistaken. That they were the ones being harsh and excessive. But hundreds of years went by and his conviction started to fade and it was replaced by the biting, burning resignation that:

Heaven was right.

He was wrong.

His anger became shame. His confidence became humiliation. His inspiration became inhibition.

He tries to keep creating, to keep dreaming of a better world, to believe in humanity, but he's proved wrong time and time again until he just...loses hope. Loses his fire. Loses his will to dream. Loses himself in his memories, and shame, and humiliation, and homesickness.

Heaven was right.

He was wrong.

And he was foolish for thinking he knew better than them.

And the worst part is, he still misses his home. He misses the Seraphims. The other archangels. He misses the familiarity. Their rules were strict, but when you listened, when you abided by them, you were safe and secure and welcome. You belonged.

And that's the picture Lucifer was painting for Charlie when he told her stories of Heaven. How beautiful it was up there. How everything seemed so perfect. You were always surrounded by good and right and light. Whereas down there, in Hell, it's nothing but wicked and evil and darkness.

The difference between Heaven and Hell is in such stark contrast in his mind, having lived in both, he can't help but yearn for what he knew. For what he remembers. Thinking about it, while it fills him with a bone-deep humiliation to ever face his peers again, he still wants to go back to them.

And, of course, he made a new home with Lilith and Charlie. He has friends. He has the Sins. He made a life for himself in Hell, and it's a good life.

The problem is the Sinners. The reminders of his mistake. The source of his pride and his shame. They are supposed to be his, but he doesn't want them. Their very existence is a blight.

His definition of right and wrong, while not exactly the same as Heaven's anymore, is similar enough that he does look down at Sinners for ending up in Hell. He looks down at them for the sins they committed, which is hypocritical, because he's in Hell for the sins he committed.

But he's different, you see. He did it for them. He was trying to give them a better life and they were the ones who ruined it. They abused the gift he gave them. He was cast out of Heaven for them. He'd lost so much for humanity, and they still have the gall to make all the wrong decisions. They have the gall to continue proving how wrong he was.

And he hates them for it. It's irrational. It's selfish. It's prideful. He's still got some of that holier-than-thou angel mentality, just like Sera when she first met Charlie and Vaggie. "You are blessed to be here." "Of course this is just temporary, I'm sorry you can't stay." Just like St. Peter when he automatically assumed they were in the wrong place, and then told them to "keep their brimstone off the floor" during his song -- however cheerfully and politely he sang it, it was still pompous.

They were all welcoming, but oh so condescending (except, perhaps, Emily, but even she, I think, has that internalized mentality, as she was telling Charlie she was going to love Heaven so much she wouldn't want to go back down to Hell, which I read as still seeing Heaven as superior, even if she doesn't consciously realize it. I mean, of course! It's Heaven! Who wouldn't want to stay, right? It's where everyone wants to be). That's the mentality Lucifer grew up with, and parts of that is still squirreled away inside him, though it's directed at the Sinners. It's not the Hellborns' fault they're in Hell, after all. They were born there. He has comradery with the Sins, they were all a circus troupe once, they're all in Hell together. Lilith and Charlie are his family, the light of his life. Why would he have any animosity towards them?

But the Sinners? Being in Hell is all their doing. It's their fault they ended up there. All they had to do was forsake evil and choose good, and they couldn't even do that.

And no, I don't think Lucifer's thinking IS that black-and-white, I think he can understand Lilith's compassion for Sinners on some level, but I think he tends to lose himself in his emotions when it comes to the Sinners and defaults into the mindset that Heaven = righteousness. And if Heaven, the pillars of good, deemed a Sinner wicked, then there has to be some truth to it, right?

The Sinners have certainty proved themselves to be wicked time and time again, so why would it change? Why should he assume that every Sinner is different when they have been deemed "bad" by the pinnacle of good? The pinnacle of good would know what bad is. It just makes sense.

When Lucifer talks about Heaven outwardly, especially when Charlie wants to set up a meeting with them, he gets nervous. Anxious. Fearful, even. Speaking the words out loud, he starts reliving his trauma, except this time, he sees it all happening to Charlie. Charlie has the same conviction in her dreams that he did. She has the same pride that he has. The same firm, unmovable belief that what she's doing is the right thing. That this is best for humanity.

He sees himself in her, and thus, the only way he sees this ending is her being humiliated. Torn down. Cast out. Left nothing but a husk of what she used to be. He imagines Charlie losing that fire in her. Of losing her will to dream.

He sees her becoming him, and that terrifies him.

He, at least, understands what he would be getting into if he went up to Heaven (the very thought of going back up paralyzes him with fear, but he would know what to expect at least, he's lived there for most of his existence). Charlie doesn't, though. She's only heard stories. The stories he told her about how beautiful and amazing Heaven is.

She doesn't know the rules. She doesn't know how strict they can be, and him not being there with her to protect her from it scares him. He truly doesn't want her to be hurt by them like he was, because he now knows just how capable of hurting someone Heaven is. He'd rather be hurt again, then let what happened to him happen to Charlie.

He REFUSES to let Charlie turn out like him, especially for beings as detestable and vile as Sinners.

I think at the end of the day, Lucifer sees himself as the problem. He's the source of all the conflict (another aspect of his pride!)

Not Heaven. While they abandoned him and cast him out, he still thinks they were right to do so. It hurt, it humiliated him, it fills him with so much pain just thinking about it, but in his mind, they were right.

And he was wrong.

That, and keeping Charlie from making the same mistakes he did, is all that matters. 

[miscellaneousrenaissant]

Ep 3 AU in which Evan succeeded on his death save but lost his arm, so K made him a prosthesis while the group was still on Galamanis

[choccy-milky]

sometimes you gotta lure your overly-studious ravenclaw gf into spending time with you 🥰 📚 ( from 'Every Teardrop is a Waterfall' by Kat_12739 on ao3, GO READ IT!!! the first story is about seb falling sick and still pushing himself/not admitting he's sick until he ends up in the hospital, the second story is about the birth of seb and clora's daughter and seb's reaction to clora almost dying in childbirth, and the third is about dealing with a fussy newborn lewis😭🥹THEY'RE SO GOOD AND SWEET AND SOMEWHAT SAD (not to mention beautifully written) so go check it out!!💖💖 )

[sainz100]

2024 Brazilian GP | x

[raevenswritingdesk]

Wanting to leave the council (and Mel) at the drop of a hat because he realised his place is in the lab (and with Viktor), but realising just too late and loosing him in the process due to the repercussions of not choosing him earlier (what happened with Skye and his night with Mel). Jayce Talis the bisexual disaster you are.

[shinedoitsulikeabright]

Manwhore AU headcanon

I like to believe Manwhore Ody got home shortly after the war ended because he didn't have to deal with any of the bullshit that canon Ody has to deal with.

Like imagine: if only he seduced his way out of the whole Polyphemus situation, he wouldn't have pissed off Poseidon, meaning he would've got home pretty much immediately.

I'm not even saying he had to fuck Poly (he'd die), but he could've used his babygirl looks or something. Be like "I'm sorry about your sheep, pookie *bats eyelashes*", but no. He just had to abandon all reason and blind the cyclops before telling him his full legal name and address.

[bet-on-me-13]

Desperate Villain Danny AU

(this is a 17 yr old danny)

It started out slowly.

First, a few of Danny's less active Rouges stopped showing up at all. He didn't really notice, and just assumed that they had finally had their Fill of their Obsession for a while and would simmer down for a bit.

Then, some more of his Rouges stopped showing up. No big deal, but he is getting a little concerned for them. They had definitely not had their fill of their Obsessions yet, why did they stop?

Then, the worst started happen. All of his actual Ghost Friends start to disappear. Ember, Kitty, Johnny, even Amorpho, they all start to not show up at all in the Living World.

He goes looking for them in Realms, but he can't find any of them whatsoever. He tries asking around, but everybody else noticed the disappearances much earlier than him and began to hide away from whatever was taking all of the strong Ghosts. He can't find anybody, and the ones he does find won't tell him anything (or don't know themselves)

It takes weeks of searching, but eventually he gets his answer.

The GIW show up in Amity again after a period of absolutely no activity. They have stepped up their operations HARD. Advanced Ghost Hunting Equipment, Much more Competent Agents, and most worrying of all, they seem to know that Phantom is friends with Sam, Tucker, and Danny Fenton.

The GIW comes to his house for a Meeting with his parents, where he overhears them offering his parents a position in their Organization as Head Scientists. While there they also manage to plant Bugs in Danny's room somehow. Although he finds them quickly enough and destroys them.

And then, one night during dinner while his parents are ranting about the GIWs Labs, they mention something that cinches it for Danny.

"And today we even got to Dissect one of the Spooks! It was that Mind Controlly one, you know the one with the blue firey hair stuff that sang a bunch! We're going back tomorrow to continue our Study, this time we'll see how long it'll pretend to experience pain before it decides to give up on tricking us!"

That night, Danny packed up all his things, destroyed the Ghost Portal alongside everything else in his parents Lab, and left his house.

He tracked down the GIW Base, saved Ember from her Cell, and decimated the surrounding Area. No survivors, none of the research is preserved, and he left the Site Director alive to question him.

Turns out, the GIW had managed to Reverse Engineer the Ghost Portal from that brief period of time where they had taken control of Fenton Works. They had been using their own Portal to kidnap any Ghost they could get their hands on. Using the research from those subjects, they perfected their Ghost Hunting Tech and started going after the bigger fish.

"But good luck finding it, Ecto Scum! The Portals location was hidden to everybody, even me!" He said.

"Where are the others!" Danny cried. He was losing control of his appearance by this point. After seeing what they had done to Ember, he was too angry to maintain his Humanoid Form successfully. Even now, with most of his control, he could hear the Static in the air around him, and see the Glitching of his hands as they clenched this Monsters clothes.

"Scattered!" He said with a crazed laugh, "We knew we couldn't contain all of them, so we send them to all of our sites across the Country! You'll never find them!"

Without another word, Danny plowed his arm through the man's chest.

He turned around, picking up Embers weakened Body, before beginning his long flight to Wisconsin. Vlad still owed him a few Favors after all, and honestly his mentorship offers seemed VERY Tempting right now.

(Why reject him if you don't care about keeping your dad alive anymore?)

...

The JLA had recently received a distress signal from somewhere in the middle of some random Forest in Illinois, but when they got to the location, all they found was a crater filled with the ruins of some kind of Military Base, and so so many Bodies.

They had managed to figure out that this was a Government Site owned by an organization called the GIW. A Paranormal Investigation Wing of the Government focused on the study and capture of Supernatural Beings called Ecto-Entities, otherwise referred to as Ghosts.

As it turns out, an Ecto-Entity that had been terrorizing the local town for a few years now had made a drastic change in normal behavior and had attacked the GIW Base that had been posted there.

They would have destroyed it years ago, but this one was unnaturally powerful. It had eluded their capture and terrorized the Town for years, but they had too much pride to contact the JLA and admit that they needed help. And honestly until now, they didn't really need it. The Entity had been entirely confined to the singular town, and had not strayed from that behavioral Pattern in the 3 years since it's inital sighting. They had made the difficult choice to leave it there, sacrificing one town in exchange for the rest of the country.

But now they did need their help. This Entity, this Phantom, was one of the most powerful beings that had ever recorded, maybe even The Most Powerful. The fact that it had left the Secluded town it usually frequented meant that it was loose to wreak havoc across the rest of the world.

The JLA Needed to Find this thing, and Fast.

[bunnieswithknives]

I feel bad for neglecting Hazel so much, I do have many thoughts about her.. and also a mermaid au that im probably not going to do anything with

[notherpuppet]

Any characters you're most excited about seeing that we haven't met yet? Baxter, Crymini, Molly, etc?

LILITH, I know we got a sneak peek but I want to meet her very badly

[bacchuschucklefuck]

space sweepers but they're delivery people and are at no point on screen through the entire movie

[maplemaplemaplemaplemaple]

a mind of bauhaus principles

[veinsfullofstars]

“Are… they gonna be okay?” “Probably.”

(ID: Kirby series fanart comic of Shadow Kirby showing off his fighting skills to the Wave 2 gang, prompting rather… mixed reactions. Transcript in Alt Text. END ID.)

Started 11/23/24, finished 12/14/24.

[choccy-milky]

(ominis is already on his family's plan but he's there to annoy seb anyway)

[waitineedaname]

MXTX protagonists ranked by how bad their mommy/daddy issues are

Luo Binghe: absolutely nuclear level of mommy/daddy issues. this is the consequence of giving your protagonist two deadbeat dads and two dead moms, and then letting him project all those issues onto his overly indulgent teacher

Wei Wuxian: he could've had perfectly normal orphan levels of parent trauma, but what's that?? IT'S THE JIANG PARENTS WITH A STEEL CHAIR!!! the combo of fear and respect he had for Yu Ziyuan is already bad enough, but then there's also the feeling of responsibility for the Jiang siblings that they put on him, which then leads to, you know, all the Yunmeng sibling problems

Lan Wangji: this dude is so haunted by his father potentially kidnapping his mother and then locking her up and putting himself in seclusion, and this significantly shapes his relationship with Wei Wuxian. plus he took his mother's death really, really badly :(

Shen Qingqiu: he like never mentions his parents?? which is weird, but at least he's not haunted by it. however, he gets the special privilege of being the person exacerbating someone else's mommy/daddy issues. he brought this on himself. he doesn't get to walk out of a confession involving a metaphor where he'd be pregnant with his partner and act like that's normal

Xie Lian: he definitely has trauma surrounding his parents for sure, but they don't seem to have manifested as specifically mommy/daddy issues? it's just, you know. normal grief. honestly, there's so much shit going on with his trauma and baggage that he can't be defined by this one thing

Hua Cheng: does not seem to care about his parents?? at all???? he's presumably an orphan and they're probably the origin of his self worth issues, but like. in the grand scheme of things, they do not seem to be that big of a concern for him. who needs mommy issues when you have devotion to dianxia i guess

[addicted-to-the-knife]

he's so important to me

[senseearly]

For a moment, imagine yourself in Mithrun's brother shoes.

Your brother - stronger, prettier, more charismatic, but also distrustful and disdainful of everyone especially you - is to be sent to the Canaries. It is the rule, it is the duty of all noble houses. But you know what goes on there, Mithrun knows what happens there. Yet you see him off, bidding a temporary farewell as you do, because someone from the House has to go and it won't be definitely you. Mithrun knows this, you know this. And you wonder, very briefly, if Mithrun hates you now more than he does already.

Your brother - powerful, agile, a good soldier just as he is as an heir, if he could only be an heir - suddenly disappears. The unit he belonged to suddenly disappeared. And you're speechless because - how? why? No one wants to answer you; they will instead try to bring back a body, they promise to you. But that is not what you want. You grieve for your brother. but your own family doesn't grieve with you. Wasn't Mithrun family too?

Then you found out: MIthrun is alive.

Your brother - now weak, despondent, his eyes always looking for something that is not here nor there - is to be sent home where people can take care of him. It is not your first choice, you want him home. But he is - sick. Not quite there. He needs someone who can look after him and you look at yourself - your gait, your constitution - and you know it can't be you. So, you follow the advice of your family and pour out all your resources to find him the best of healers and caretakers. You ask yourself, almost daily, if Mithrun would ever return to who he once was.

Your brother - strong, pretty, uninterested of anything and anyone else aside from what he calls 'the demon' - is now better. He can walk on his own now, eats without throwing up on himself. The color on his skin is back and the scars of his injuries have faded into thick bumps and discolored skin. But he still isn't quite there; still needs help and probably will for the rest of his life. And you can live with that. You can provide that. Just as long as he comes home.

But doesn't. Your brother - now a husk of his former self, and you hate thinking of him that way, but you can't help yourself, the Mithrun you knew is gone - runs straight back to the Canaries. His mission is not over, he says. He doesn't care how long it takes, he says. And you see him off, again, because someone from the House has to go and it still can't be you. Mithrun knows this, you know this, and you can't help but wish, very briefly, if things would've been different if you went instead of him.