#cult imma be honest you do not want to know how excited i was when i saw this ask

[hanahaki-disease]

Random thoughts.

1• - Ra's Al Ghul values loyalty, Percy's fatal flaw is excessive personal loyalty.

2• - The parallels are Tim-Jason and Damian-Percy.

3• - Percy is surprisingly calm about the fact that he does not belong to his parents by blood [this boy has too much life experience, which no child should have, and even a person in principle] - Sally is his mother, Poseidon, his father, the only thing he feels for his biological parents is gratitude... Well, that's until he found out exactly how he was born and where Poseidon got him from and brought him to Sally.

4• - The relationship of Percy and Dusan. It's really something intriguing and exciting, the perfect son and heir and someone who, because of what he couldn't control, was considered a disappointing failure. I am very interested to hear your thoughts about these brothers.

5• - Sally really feels a lot about having raised Percy without his heritage. Talia is still here and her offer is still valid.

6• - Percy and Talia move almost identically during combat, gracefully, intimidating and mesmerizing. except that Percy is more chaotic and unpredictable like a Sea wave, and Talia is more of an elegant panther.

7• - The first time Percy met the League of Assassins and his father and sister was when they kidnapped Annabeth [to lure him out] and put the best assassins the league had against him on the way to Annabeth, Percy of course defeated them. Ra's Al Ghul was more than delighted, his son really grew up to be a wonderful warrior.

Ooohh!! Long ask!!!

Percy has the one thing Ra’s wishes all his children and his kin had— unyielding loyalty towards those they cared for, especially if that loyalty was to him. It is bittersweet (and he is slightly angered by it) that the only child of him that has it, is the one who spent their whole life away from him.

Ngl slightly confused on the parallels, I’m sure if you explained I would understand, but I don’t >_<

There are multiple kids in Camp Half-Blood who are adopted into mortal families who have absolutely no idea who their parents are, and Percy was very surprised to learn that he was (technically) adopted too, but that doesn’t change his view of who his parents are. His mom is Sally, his Dad is Poseidon, and if he has a son/half-brother thing and a sister/mom-thing in a ninja assassin cult, oh well. He’s not the first demigod from a place like that, and he sure won’t be the last.

Imma be honest…I don’t know much about Dusan. I’m sorry!!! I’m working my way through the comics and, I’ll be honest again, most of my lore comes from fanfics and just deep diving into DC wiki. So I can really expand upon their connection—I’m sure there’s a big link between them and their relationship in this au, but I don’t know it ＿|￣|○"

& 6 because these can go hand in hand. Once Sally learns where Percy is from, and once they get into contact with Talia, she wants to do immerse herself and Percy in this culture she didn’t know he had. And part of that is letting Percy bond/get to know Talia as more than just “genetic originator/pseudo-incubator mother.”

So, to keep things interesting, and because this is one of the few ways Talia can express herself truly without outside influences, she teaches him traditional League fighting techniques. Once a month, for a whole weekend, Percy and Talia spar and learn and how to adapt Percy’s Greek fluidity and quick-thinking to the sharp and powerful attacks of the League.

I’d say that was the first time Percy met Ra’s because as stated above, Percy’s don Talia already know of each other. Talia kept Per y from Ra’s as long as she could because, while she loves her father, she knows what can happen to a person when Ra’s enters their life. They are no longer the same as they once were and her father will stop at nothing if he wants Percy to return to Nanda Parbat. So is she selfish by keeping him all to herself? Yes, but she does not regret it.

Hope this was what you were hoping for!! Again, I’m sorry I couldn’t give a good reply to #2 and #4!! But I hope the rest can make up for it!!

Thank you so much for the ask!!!

[kennieswrld]

I Know What They Did Last Summer.

[TW: Mentions of sexual violence]

This piece was written for my creative writing class my sophomore year of college. My life was in ruins, I had to check myself into a psych ward, could barely care for myself at home or in public, and had intense paranoia of running into the people who traumatized me in public. Though it has been a full year since this event, I still feel as though no one heard of the true pain it caused me and will continue to cause me until the day my eye’s close for the final time. Please if you are in college/are about to begin college read this and take the advice given. The experience you are about to read is true and honest and just a way to release the feelings and frustrations brought onto me that I never asked for in the first place. Whether you believe it was my own fault for falling into this situation or not, it should have never happened the way it did. Thank you for reading.

In my freshman year of college, I was recruited to work as a summer camp counselor for my school’s alumni campgrounds. I hadn’t met a lot of other students that year and the job was only for students attending my school who wanted to make connections with established alumni. I wanted to find a way to put myself out there and was excited to spend my summer in Lake Arrowhead with 50 new friends for 11 weeks. I also really wanted to use the money to buy a kitten. My recruitment was during the last quarter of the school year and returning camp staffers began hosting events to get the newly hired staff to get to know one another and learn about the camp experience before arriving at the camp. At the time, this was exciting and new for me as I'd never had luck with making a lot of friends. All I could think about was how I was going to experience the Wet Hot American Summer I'd seen in the media! But I didn’t think about a lot of other things during this period. Like the amount of alcohol we were being given during those camp staff mixers, or how the camp program was nicknamed a “campus cult” by the student body. I brushed it off as quirky facts that made the group more exciting to be around.

It wasn’t until I went through a messy breakup with my boyfriend at the time that I began to become more involved with the camp staff bubble. I would attend the mixers religiously attempting to form bonds with other staffers before the summer began and drinking until I became sick. I was counting down the days until I could step foot on the campgrounds. But because of my cursed fate of being an introvert at heart, I became too observant of my surroundings. Slowly, my rose-tinted glasses began to rise. Why were returning staffers seeming to quit before the summer even started? Why do they keep playing ‘Imma Be’ by the Black Eyed Peas at every single mixer? Why do I keep being told I will sleep with another staffer before the end of the summer because it's unavoidable? Why do all of the returning staffers speak like parrots and repeat the same phrases over and over? Well, after giving it a ponder or two I decided

to put my glasses back on. I was newly single again and wanted to experience a summer like the ones depicted in movies, and boy was that a terrible decision to make.

During these parties, I met a lot of the main staff, both sober and blacked out. I had never been a huge fan of alcohol but it seemed that inhaling a can of Miller Lite was the best way to assimilate myself into their culture. With the glasses on, I ignored their treatment of blacked-out underaged staff members as they let them stumble and groan to themselves back to their homes. I ignored how a returner grabbed and felt my body as he introduced himself to me at a mixer. And again, I pushed the glasses up my nose so I could see through them better. When I would come home from the mixers plastered out of my mind, my roommate would comment how it was concerning how much they would have us drink (e.g. every mixer would start with around 10 handles of liquor and a gallon of jungle juice only to be empty by the end of the event) and I would dismiss her very valid concerns as her shoving her Christian ways down my throat. But I really should’ve been listening.

Now on to the interesting part, the camp. I honestly don’t remember much, there are things I remember clearly and others that I have blocked out, and some that I couldn’t reimagine if I wanted to. The first day I stepped foot on the campgrounds, I was drunk out of my mind. I had participated in a staff tradition of chugging a Four Loko (which are banned in some states of the USA for literally killing people by the way) up Arrowhead mountain. I remember putting away my bags in the frat house-like housing that the student staff workers all lived in called Cedar and immediately finding out a staffer was raped a night before in the room I was staying in. As some staff came up earlier than the rest for extra training they carried the tradition of partying, from this party a female staffer I was close with drank so much she blacked out and went upstairs to sleep it off. As she slept, a male staffer followed behind. Nothing was said about this event to this day. The bosses quietly let him go and we were told he just needed to ‘go home early’ and that we needed to drink more responsibly and watch ourselves.

The Cedar experience came with an odd set of rules, you couldn’t open your windows or even look outside of them as they require you to tape over the windows so families couldn’t see or hear what we were doing, and you weren’t allowed to take any photos of the interior of the house nor were you encouraged to have your phone around if we had group meetings in the big room, you were not allowed to lock your door for any reason at all- if you were changing or taking a shower you just had to be comfortable and ready for people to come inside and see you.

And once I began training the rules became even weirder, we were required to eat with the families during lunch and dinner and were not allowed to eat with each other during this time, and we were highly encouraged to not respond or contact our families while being at the camp as the staffers were our new family for the summer. My routine for the days would go in the following order; Wake up at 7:30 am, get breakfast and listen to the staff meeting, work in training groups for around 3 hours, eat lunch and have another staff meeting, work in training groups for another 3 hours, have dinner with the last staff meeting of the night, have rehearsal for the opening and closing show performances we put on for the attending families until around 10 pm, go to Cedar and sit through another small staff meeting and then get drunk and ‘party’ until 4 am and do it all over again for 6 days consecutively. I was being hazed and didn’t know it at the time.

As the sun rose and fell, my glasses slowly began to fall from my face. It started with the Juneteenth-inspired drinking game they named the “3/5th compromise” where we had to shotgun a beer, drink some of a liquor handle, and shotgun a Four Loko to end it off. They never forced anyone to drink, but they never made you feel comfortable if you chose not to. Returning staffers would taunt me, trying to get me to join in on their version of ‘fun’. With each nightly event, they grew more and more uncomfortable and forceful. We had a toga party where we were berated in a room with pillowcases over our heads and our arms up in the air for around 45 minutes to prove our loyalty to the camp. Then there was a scoot your booty drinking game where completely inappropriate questions were being asked and shared as we drank more and more. We even had a skinny dipping event they called “Nakey Lakey” where we all jumped in the lake and came back to Cedar to “party” where some if not most of the people there were fully naked from the lake experience.

But nothing beats the tropical-themed night. That day, I desperately wanted to just go to bed after the rehearsal as I had been getting 3 hours of sleep for 5 days. But, I fell for the peer pressure beaten onto me and decided to check out the party. Everyone wore their swimsuits as they lined up in the hallway drunkenly awaiting our group walk over to the warehouse that we would party inside of. As we entered the warehouse it was dark and we stood in front of a closed door with a staffer manning the door. He told us something that stuck with me forever. “Don’t tell anyone about what you are about to experience, it is our biggest camp secret and we want to keep this beautiful tradition between us only”. His tone was firm and serious, and my heart had somehow found itself falling slowly as the doors opened. Something felt off.

The room was lit with red LED lights and had two foldable tables with a big soapy catch pool covered in a black tarp. As I stumbled into the bass-booming room I kept telling myself I was overreacting and nothing weird was happening. I remember turning my head to tell a coworker about how odd the setup was before turning my head back and seeing every returning staff member naked. Not half naked, fully nude. Full frontal some may even say. And I guess my heart had run outside the room because I ran to catch it. I had never felt a feeling as I did then. I sobbed outside of the warehouse until I threw up. My rose-tinted glasses lay beneath my feet, shattered and broken.

After collecting myself I went back inside and braved the sight of my coworkers and peers fully nude without even telling me it would happen in the first place. They even began running back up to Cedar in groups to jump in showers together and burst into people who didn’t attend the events rooms. My mind was running on a million thoughts at once, do I stay and join in? Or do I go home and tell my mom to pick me up? It seemed that the older staffers noticed my situation and tried to explain to me that the event was a trust exercise between everyone and that I didn’t have to join in their nudity. But their words were muted to me, all I could think of was how fucked up this event would make me in the future.

After this event, I left. I called my mother in the middle of the night after walking far away from the campgrounds in fear that the other staffers would try and convince me of how the event wasn’t a complete autonomy-ripping moment. My parents came the next afternoon and I had to leave in silence out of fear of being caught by other staffers. The ride home from the camp was a doozy. I knew in my soul that I had done the right thing, but in my heart, I felt that I was making a mistake. That I had lost the only friends who seemed to want to be with me. Nevertheless, I never turned back. I found out later that week another drunk female staffer had been raped the night of the tropical-themed party. I had the worst summer of my life, and I’m only 20 years young. I felt hopeless, depressed, useless, and objectified. I didn’t know what to do with myself after experiencing that. I still don’t honestly.

But, oddly, I’m glad that I had to brave myself through that torment. I never knew how strong I was until making a literal James Bond-like plan with my mother over the phone on how I was going to escape that place that night. I hate that everything happened the way it did, and I feel strongly about that place being burnt to the ground, but if I didn’t experience that summer I wouldn’t be able to know my power of not being a follower with no reward. Out of the 50- something people hired for the summer only 5 of us left, including myself. The rest stayed the entirety of the summer and pretended nothing happened to this very day. I see some of the people I worked with as I walk to classes and school events and it’s weird knowing we sit on two different sides of a scale. It’s weird knowing the lengths people will go to for the sake of “friendship” and it’s sad. But, hey! I got the cat.

[papa-rhys]

Trial: Day 1 (Justice AU)

Note: Okay, it’s here! Part 1 of my justice au! I haven’t finished it yet, but I have a solid first few parts, so imma start uploading it now. I’ve worked myself to the bone doing research for this and thinking about where certain characters would be after the events of the game, but I’m not a lawyer and I’m only human, so if there’s any mistakes/continuity errors, I’m sorry! Anyways, I’m so excited for this and I hope people like it as much as I do! Enjoy!

Summary: After a war comes what is arguably the most difficult part: recovery. And a big part of that recovery - for both the deputies and Hope County residents alike - is justice. Jacob Seed and John Seed - exactly 1 half of the guilty party - must stand trial and face the consequences for what they’ve done. After being promoted to the position of sheriff, the Deputy (reader) must now guide their recovering friends through the difficulties that a very public trial brings about; all whilst reliving the horrors of what they faced in that small county in Montana.

Word count: 1584

Characters: Reader, John Seed, Jacob Seed, Joey Hudson, Staci Pratt, Earl Whitehorse

Warnings: None that I can think of!

| Other parts to this series |  | Find more of my stuff here! |  | Ko-fi |

You make your way through the hall of the courthouse, your shoes clicking against the polished marble floor as you walk. Today is the first day of the Seed trial, where John Seed and Jacob Seed will be put in front of a jury. That jury will be the first anyone outside of Hope County has heard of the atrocities that the Seeds committed; finally, after almost a decade of suffering and isolation, the outside world will know what the citizens of Hope County have endured.

To say you’re nervous is an understatement. Quite frankly, you’re shitting bricks. You’d only been a rookie for a grand total of 8 months before you swooped into Hope County in that goddamn helicopter. You’d only just been cleared to have a firearm at the time and never in your wildest dreams did you think that you’d be using anytime soon. But you did. And that guilt consumes you to this day – following you around like a thick, black fog, looming over your head. You’ll carry that body count with you until your dying day; some weighing heavier than others, but all of them burdening you to a great extent.

Among those who’re testifying – including yourself, of course – are Hudson and Pratt, who are waiting in the corridor outside the courtroom, dressed up in their best suits and shaking violently with nerves.

You head directly towards them, passing by the door to the courtroom and joining their huddle. “What’re you guys doin’ here? You’re not on the stand today, are you?”

“No,” Hudson replies. “We came to wait outside. We didn’t wanna be at home while everyone was here. We’re not allowed in the courtroom until we’ve testified, but we wanted to feel like we were doin’ somethin’, y’know?”

“Yeah, I get that,” you tell her. Hudson pinches the bridge of her nose and begins to cry. “Hey, it’ll be okay,” you assure her, placing a hand on each of their shoulders. “You’re both gonna do great.”

“I dunno,” Hudson whimpers. “I don’t know if I can take the stand. I don’t know if I can face John again.”

You rub her shoulder. “Yes, you can,” you tell her. “You both can,” you add, turning to look at Pratt. He’s extremely pale and looks as though he may vomit at any second. “How’re you holdin’ up, Pratt? You ain’t gonna puke on my nice, new shoes, are ya?”

Pratt gives a weak smile and quickly shakes his head. “I’m g - good, I’m good.”

“Are you gonna be here all the way through?” Hudson asks you. “I definitely can’t do it without you here.”

“I’m gonna be here for the whole thing; don’t worry. I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

Hudson gives a small sigh of relief, dries her eyes, and nods. “Okay.”

You lean backwards and crane your neck to peek into the courtroom. “Listen, they’ll be starting soon. I gotta go in and find a seat. You’ll be fine, okay?” They nod grimly and you make your way into the courtroom.

You politely move through the crowds and find a seat. The jury is already in their seats and the room is bustling with people, all chattering among themselves about the case and what outcome they hope for. Once news got out about Eden’s Gate being a cult, the case had quickly turned into an international one, attracting reporters from all over the world. If only this many people had cared about Hope County before, you think. Maybe this wouldn’t have happened in the first place.

You take your seat and fiddle with the collar of your shirt. The number of bodies in the room are making it swelteringly hot and you haven’t been all that good with crowds since returning from Hope County.

As you look around the room, trying to calm your raging nerves, Earl Whitehorse slides into the seat next to you. He’s wearing a tailored suit and looks a lot more relaxed after his recent vacation to the Bahamas; although you think the next few months will undo that calm demeanour pretty quickly.

“Congratulations… sheriff.” He greets you with a warm smile. “We wouldn’t be here without you, kid. You earned that promotion, that’s for sure.”

“How’s retirement treatin’ you, Earl?” You smile.

“Not bad, not bad. I’ve been a little bored, but I’m not gettin’ shot at anymore, so I can’t complain.”

You chuckle, but your eyes scan the room, nervously; constantly looking for danger that’s never there. “Boredom is a welcomed change after the year we’ve had.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” he laughs.

The room falls silent around you and it takes a few seconds before you realise that John and Jacob have entered the room.

“Oh shit,” Earl mutters, leaning back in his seat. “And so it begins.”

You stay silent, glaring at John and Jacob as they both search for you in the crowd. The way they hunt for you makes you wonder if they can sense you – maybe even smell you, like a pair of predators sniffing out their prey. It would explain why they always seemed to know where you were back in Hope County. You think of them on all fours, snarling at the woodland creatures in the forests of the Whitetail Mountains and the image makes the corners of your mouth curl up ever so slightly.

They’re both dressed in swanky suits with silk ties and polished shoes. However, all the fresh haircuts and hot showers in the world wouldn’t be enough to scrub away the look of defeat on their faces as the guard directs them towards their seats at the front of the room. Approaching their table and pulling their chairs out from under it, John pauses and looks directly at you. He nudges Jacob and the two of them stare at you for a moment before being told to sit down. You swallow the hard lump in your throat and shift in your seat.

“You alright?” Earl asks.

“I’ll be a lot better when those fuckers are behind bars.”

“All rise,” a mans voice calls.

You and Earl rise to your feet, along with the rest of the room. The judge enters the room; a big woman with kind eyes hidden underneath a stern face.

“That’s Judge Anderson,” Earl whispers. “She’s a nice woman – real fair and always knows when people are talkin’ shit.”

“That’s handy. Lord knows John and Jacob are gonna be doin’ a lot of that,” you reply.

The judge takes her seat at the bench and everyone else does the same as two guards close the main doors.

“Okay,” the judge speaks. “We have a long few weeks ahead of us, so let’s begin with the opening statements. Prosecution, if you please.”

The prosecutor, Wayne Stevens, stands up and leaves his table, approaching the jury. “Thanks, Your Honour. Members of the jury, we all know that as Americans, we value our freedom. It is the defining feature of our country. However, there are people – people like the Seed family – who want to take that freedom away from us.”

You glance over to John and Jacob. Jacob watches Stevens carefully as he speaks, whilst John simply shakes his head, looking bemused as to why people would think he was doing anything other than helping people.

“The men you see before you today wished to control people. They wished to own them. They inflicted harm on the citizens of Hope county, and in doing so, they inflicted harm on the people of America. Over the course of the next few weeks, you will hear troubling accounts from witnesses; not only civilians who were caught up in a whirlwind of bloodshed but also officers of the law who were held and tortured for weeks for simply trying to protect us. These accounts will be difficult to hear, but we have a duty to the people of Hope County to finally hear what they have to say. Those people – those good, honest, hard-working people – deserve justice. It’s our duty, as a nation that values freedom, to give them that justice. Thank you.”

Stevens returns to his seat and the judge calls for the defence to take her turn addressing the jury.

“That’s Hazel Warner,” Earl whispers. “She’s young blood, but don’t underestimate her. She’ll go for your throat.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Hazel Warner and I’m here to represent two innocent men who have been targeted by law enforcement.”

“Oh, Christ,” you groan, rolling your eyes and sinking into your seat.

“The prosecution will spin you a story about how these men are violent. Evil. Monsters. But these men were simply lead astray by their brother – the brother, in fact, that the very same officers that you will see in this courtroom killed earlier this year. John and Jacob Seed are honest members of their community.” She gestures towards John and Jacob. “A veteran and a highly skilled lawyer. Both are ordinary people caught up in extraordinary circumstances, and law enforcement now wishes to punish them for something that they had no say in. That is why, at the end of this trial, we will ask you to deliver the only verdict that makes sense; a not guilty verdict. Thank you.”

“What a load of shit,” Earl scoffs quietly.

“You think the jury will buy any of it?” You ask.

He turns his head to look at you and shrugs. “Well, I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?”