#but id say thats all the more reason to go????

[ivysprophecy]

Am I Okay? Chapter Two

a/n: hi!! so i know im a eensy bit behind on writing these because this takes place *during* part seven which is linked if you need a bit of a refresher however the next chapter will be up soon hopefully and i can tell you it will take place after part twelve! maybe you can guess what it will be ;)

warnings: i dont think there are any?

word count: 594

i kick my sandy boots off before walking through the door. trying to keep as much sand out of the house as possible.

"your house is gorgeous..." i bend over shaking any loose sand out of my hair before stepping into the kitchen. i see a picture frame on the counter. its what i assume to be a picture of his family. or what it used to be.

he told me something had happened with his dad's death and rose had left for some reason or another but...

"this is a nice picture... cute. i like the longer hair."

he looks over at me with an odd expression on his face, some mix of a melancholy tone to it. but he knows i mean well, no harm.

"thank you... but yea i was a lot younger then, i think i was a junior in high school there. making wheezie about fifth grade? sarah a freshman... different times."

"ya know she talks about you a lot. misses you. and a lot more but its not my business," all he can do is nod towards me, acknowledging what i said. "well i should be heading home..."

"are you sure? you dont have to go you know, you could stay. get dinner or something."

you chuckle running a hand through your tangly, gross hair. "im not exactly in going out attire," you gesture to your unkempt hair and bikini clinging to your skin.

"well youre welcome to make yourself at home here. im sure there are some clothes i can lend you."

"if its alright actually do you mind if i grab a quick shower? sands got me all itchy and stuff-"

"yea of course- ill find you some clothes and show you where the gust room is."

following him up the stairs i continue to take in his house, its real nice. but i guess thats how it goes when you own cameron development. or most of it.

"so just in here," he opens a door thats obviously a bathroom, "im gonna grab some clothes, sarah has a box or two left here but ill see what i can find."

"thanks so much- youre sweet as sugar," i lean up and press a friendly(?) kiss to his cheek.

his smile is subtle, but there, as he walks off heading to find the clothes previously mentioned. and its not long before i have the shower running and he leaves them outside the door before he goes to take care of himself.

after i get out of the shower i see my phones blown up with texts from sarah and the groupchat sending off a few responses before finally getting dressed. seeing he found some of sarahs jeans, but one of his shirts.

it smells like him.

and im kinda mad at myself for liking it.

i walk back down the stairs after throwing my hair up and out of the way since its still a little damp. and i see rafe watching me as i walk down and he hurriedly hides his phone in his pocket.

guess he likes me wearing his shirt too.

"you uh- you clean up nice."

i cant hide my smile and blush as i walk over to him, "could say the same about you. where are we headed?"

"i figured id let you pick where we eat."

"well im still new around here so why dont you take me to your favorite place?"

"i can do that... lead the way," he gestures to the door after grabbing his keys with a grin.

[ masterlist ]

[bowtiestash]

i genuinely don't understand why booktokers/booktubers just don't normalize going to the library more?? a lot of them talk abt buying books and then they end up unhauling a chunk of them later, and im just here thinkin its a waste of money. why buy a book you havent read before??? am i just too fucking boomer to understand it

[puppyeared]

act 4 :(

@chipper-smol and i came to a realization

[xxplastic-cubexx]

you open my Super Important Documents and its just pictures of charles xavier

[birb--birb]

Soooooo I did lich emmrich...for science..

AND IM SORRY I DONT LIKE IT HOW IS IT MORE COMON THAN SAVING MANFRED??????????

[lorillee]

im really normal about them <- lie

[autisticlee]

sometimes I think about how when I went to college for a year before I dropped out (basically failed out,) the counselors/dean told me they can't help me at all or give any accommodations unless I have an official autism/adhd diagnosis. that might sound logical at first, but when you think about it more, it's actually quite fucked up. if someone is struggling really bad, what's the harm in helping them? why do they require a paper to get even the smallest amount of help? people who don't need help aren't going to be failing miserably without help! even NTs could benefit from some adjustments to the horrible school system! (but changing the entire system is a whole other conversation that the school system isnt ready for)

but even if you do agree to jump through their hoops, you realize it's even more fucked up that the diagnosis process requires YEARS in most cases (in my case it took 4 or 5 years, can't recall exactly now, for autism/adhd diagnosis, which would have meant i finished school before getting it if i managed to mot fail out, or i wait that long before going back, which is a whole struggle itself) and they also tried billing me for THOUSANDS of dollars because of insurance issues!!

so you put a ton of time and money into this, and then get told the only accommodation they are willing to give you for autism and adhd is "a little extra time on tests"

....

my test scores were the best part of my whole class experience. that was NOT what I struggled with!!!!! those tests were all online and could be done in the comfort of your home where you can accommodate yourself and have plenty of time left over when you finish them because you are comfy in your own space, (and also, no one was stopping you from having your notes/books/google open to find the answers,) and you don't even need a time consuming, expensive diagnosis for that!

SO WHAT'S THE POINT!!!!!!!

[ghosts-devilman-wip]

Dumping out devilman thoughts today.

I know I'm far from the first person to think about this, but I don't feel like it's given enough attention. What I'm talking about is the really noticeable lack of discussion about god as a character/driving force throughout the story (and I mean the lack of discussion on the fandom's end as well as within the stories.)

Like, you really have the all-powerful being who is the only thing in existence with the true ability to completely stop the war - to completely halt the cycle of violence. But they never intervene. Not until humans and devils have all destroyed one another. Not until Lucifer has finally killed Akira, and he's all that's left, alone on a rock on a decimated earth, watching the stars and expounding on the concept of love to a cooling corpse.

THEN god intervenes. To scorch it all and start it over again, only for the same story to play out time and time again. The only consistent exception to this, really, is whenever divine force is shot down in the beginning phases of the war. Though usually, this just ends up causing destruction in a different way. It never saves anyone, it just overpowers a show of force from the devil's side.

You could make the argument that god isn't the same all-powerful being here that he's seen as being in a larger cultural sense outside of this story. But I'd both disagree and say that's a bad take. He clearly carries more power than anyone else, as again, when he does intervene it overpowers everything else. And yeah there's the idea that he didn't make devils, but that doesn't make sense to me either. So much of this story is based both on christian mythology (or dantes inferno, but still).

To rewrite the concept of god in this way. And to practically ignore this character's existence. ESPECIALLY in a story that is so much about the cycle of violence and the failings of humanity. It does the whole thing such an injustice.

In devilman, the war between devils and humans is ultimately constructed by god himself. Because it all comes back to the fact that he had to have created the devils in some manner - how else would they have come about? - and then tossed them aside to make room for humans. Running parallel to the way he tossed aside one of his own angels for going against god's authority. An angel who then went to the devils, joined with them and led them toward liberation.

What else were the devils supposed to do? What else was Lucifer supposed to do?

God is absent from the story until there's nothing left. Then he does it all over again. For what? To punish lucifer and the devils? Again and again for their refusal to lay down and die quietly? And it's not to protect humans - how many human lives are destroyed in the process?

God is absent from this story and we continue to let him be. We focus so much on Akira and Ryo, and on trying to save them and rewrite their connection into something that can be saved. We try to rewrite it so Miki lives, and the war is averted. But that doesn't make sense to me.

This story has already been written to be a tragedy. The omniscient, all-powerful god of the story has decided that's what it's meant to be.

As long as lucifer lives to the end of the story, it will be scrapped and retold again and again. And if lucifer were to die? That would still be a tragedy, let's be honest.

The cycle of violence has already been set in motion, and it will not be stopped so easily. That's important to me. Because ultimately, erasing the tragedy of it suggests there would be an easy solution to the world's problems - that escaping oppression is as simple as being kind and quiet in the face of your own eradication, that stopping a war is as simple as crying in front of the right person, and that making the right choices are as easy as listening to what you're told is "good."

Devilman is a tragedy, but I don't think that's inherently nihilistic. I think it can make you think and ask questions and consider layers to the problem. It will not give answers, because it's not that easy - because if we had those answers then the world wouldn't be the way it is. What we see at the end isn't meant to be a prediction, or even a threat. It's simply null - this is complex and painful, and our characters were not able to figure it out, because of that. Possibly, very likely, because they were not able to see outside of their own perspectives and drives (who could? At a certain point, that would mean abandoning feeling. There's a reason Michael is the most unsettling character in any of the stories to me.)

I mean, sure. God always had an easy answer. He probably wants the story to go this way.

[void-chara]

ohh so itz one of Those days for me today huh.

[orcelito]

Actually we r at 6 months now without any major deaths in my life, which is great! That's the longest I've gone without any major deaths since last May! The second longest was 4 months between July and November last year. Wow !

[floralovebot]

@redemptionarcsucker

NO CAUSE LITERALLY HELIA IS ANYTHING BUT THE POET

I know it would be really easy to assume that Helia is a poet, most obviously due to him actually being a literal poet and yknow. writing poems. Add on that he is genuinely good with his words and it's like! Duh! BUT NO!! A huge part of his character is that he wants to be the poet but he isn't. Helia acts like a poet. He makes a great first impression, he watches people carefully and responds in whatever way will move the situation best, he can be bitterly truthful and secretive all at once. But while that is still part of him, it's also so, so small in comparison to how he feels inside and how he actually acts.

While I have pondered Helia being the soldier, I gravitate much more toward the King. The king archetype is all about the responsibility that you don't want, that you don't deserve, but still feeling so loyal to it that you can't get away. No matter what they truly want in life, the kings will always go back to that responsibility because it's become them, and leaving literally feels like part of them is gone. They believe they have an intense duty to that responsibility and that leaving would make them the worst person in the world. And like,,, anyone with Helia Brain knows that this is him!! It's everything he feels about Red Fountain!!

Being the poet is all about embracing freedom and that's the one thing Helia refuses to do. He can't do it. He feels so intensely loyal to Red Fountain, and now to his friends, that any other option feels like betrayal to him. His own freedom feels like a betrayal. And that's just such a sad king move,,,

[puppyeared]

AND I MET THE CHANGE GOD TOO. OKAY. COOL OKAY

[xxplastic-cubexx]

maybe controversial take, but i like to think of erik being mostly a huge ladies’ man (look at all the bitches he gets canonically, he can’t NOT love the ladies) but charles is just...... this HUGE exception, lmfao. for a while he was totally oblivious to the fact that he was into charles like that but then one day it smacked him HARD across the face that their Very Special Friendship is actually romantic. he’s since embraced being a bisexual disaster but before charles he had no clue.

would be even funnier if erik and charles had already fooled around a couple times before erik actually realized he was attracted to him. who among us hasn’t fucked their completely platonic bro??

it cant be a controversial take if youre onto something my friend .....

[kathrynmjaneway]

.

[kohakhearts]

well folks its been a good two months of denial but i am finally ready to admit that the reason everything sucks is because of major depression relapse. if i werent so depressed id make this everyone elses problem by projecting it on to blorbo but alas

[nexttothelamp]

...