#glorious primer

[jellymish-art]

IT IS HAPPENING LADS!! SAM VIMES COSPLAY!!

I've dreamed of doing this for years and now that I've finally gained the Secret Knowledge of Foam Armour, I can finally go for it!

Jokes aside, I asked a couple of cosplay pros for advice at the last con and they were all super nice & answered every single one of my questions, in detail!

So far the breastplate, backplate and badge are done and I'm super happy. Detailed process under the cut!

How it went:

First, the pattern! Shoutout to the guys at cosplay-atelier for the recommendation. They pointed me to kamuicosplay, because they sell downloadable patterns for all sorts of things, including armour. Which is how I got to this:

Downloaded two of their breastplate patterns, smooshed them together and altered them to fit my body and the look I wanted. I did all of that with thick paper. Then I took it apart again and traced the bits onto 5mm EVA foam that I ordered from a cosplay store.

Then I numbered and cut all the pieces and glued them together! I used hot glue, cause it's more accessible and less intimidating for me than other types of glue. It isn't as strong as other recommended glues, but works fine for me. (used many pointers from this tutorial.)

However, safety point: I've seen it recommended to wear breathing protection when heating up foam in any way whatsoever, and that includes hot glue, heat shaping and heat sealing. Use a respirator or other breathing protection that is made specifically for chemical fumes & work outside or in a well ventilated area (i.e. open ALL the windows)! Ask at your local hardware store if you're unsure.

PSA over. Now to the painting stage!

The scratches I made with my fingernails and the tip of a pair of scissors. XD Then I covered everything in 2 layers of black flexipaint (which is a water-based flexible paint/primer that works really well on foam). After that, I worked with regular artist's acrylic paint. Above you can see the first layer being applied with dry-brushing.

Then I went over it with a dark brown wash to make it look dirty (mix black & brown acrylic paint with water & apply liberally)

Then I went over it again with bronze by applying the paint with my fingers, wearing a plastic glove. (Same tutorial as before.) making sure I don't get any paint in the scratches. And then finally, another dark brown wash to make it all look nicely weathered. I did accidentally remove some paint by going over it too often with the wash, but it wasn't too hard to fix.

And this is the costume test, after adding velcro! It's really easy to put on and take off. I'm a bit worried about the velcro on the sides, but I can always add straps on the outside if it doesn't hold up.

Next was the badge:

I referenced a pin badge that came out as a collectible a few years ago (sadly out of stock), cause I love the design! Carved in the letters and lines by drawing on it with a ballpoint pen and applying a lot of pressure. Then painted it with the same process as the breastplate, just with copper instead of bronze.

And just for funsies: here's the back of the breastplate in all its glorious mess XD

On the right side you can see how I attached the badge: By cutting a slit through the breastplate and making a velcro attachment. That way I can remove the badge and add, say, a sprig of lilac, should my fancy take me there. Reason being that our biggest con is in May.

If you know, you know.

Annnnd here it is; the finished breastplate with badge:

I'm honestly having the time of my life. It's a super fun project and I am very excited to see how it turns out! I'm already working on the cape with a good friend of mine (I despise sewing, she loves it XD) and have materials on the way to make some bits of chainmail.

[literary-illuminati]

2024 Book Review #6 – Exordia by Seth Dickinson

This is a book I have been looking forward to for quite literally years, from someone who is easily one of my favourite working authors. I also read the short story the book was expanded out from before I even knew it was going to be a book, and so went in spoiled on the broad strokes of what turned out to be the climax of the whole thing. All to say my opinion on this is unlikely to match that of the typical reader, I guess.

Anyway, Exordia is a glorious spectacular mess that has no right to cohere anywhere near as well as it does. It’s target audience is small, but I’m certainly somewhere in it. Please ignore all the marketing it’s so bad you have to wonder if someone at Tor just has it out for the author.

Exordia is a, well, a profoundly difficult book to give any sort of plot summary for. The first act involves Anna, a 30-something survivor of the Anfal Genocide now living a rather unimpressive life in New York City, until one day in the early 2010s she sees an alien eating the turtles in Central Park. Then there’s a cat-and-mouse hunt between terrifying alien snake-centaurs for the future of free will in the galaxy, and the plot jumping to kurdistan, and six more POV characters from as many different nations, and nuclear weapons, and oh so many people dying messily. The first act is an oddly domestic and endearing piece of table setting, the second is (to borrow the idiom of the book’s own marketing) Tom Clancy meets Jeff Vandermeer or Roadside Picnic, and the third is basically impossible to describe without a multipage synopsis, but mostly concerned with ethical dilemmas and moral injuries. It’s to the book’s credit that it never bats an eye at shifting focus and scale, but it does make coming to grips with it difficult.

This is, as they say, a thematically dense book, but it’s especially interested in the fallout of imperialism. The Obama-era ‘don’t do stupid shit’ precise and sterile form of it in particular – the book’s a period piece for a reason, after all. The ethics of complicity – of being offered the choice of murdering and betraying those around you or having an alien power with vastly superior destructive powers inflict an order of magnitude more misery to you, them, and everyone in the same general vicinity to punish you for the inconvenience – is one that gets a lot of wordcount. It is not an accident that the man most willing and able to collaborate with the overwhelming powerful alien empire in hopes of bargaining some future for humanity is the National Security Council ghoul who came out of organizing surveillance information for the drone wars. It’s also not a coincidence that the main (if only by a hair) protagonist is someone with a lot of bitter memories over how the US encouraged Iraq’s kurdish population to rebel in the ‘90s and then just washed their hands and let them be massacred (the book couldn’t actually ship with a historical primer on modern kurdish history, so it’s woven into the story in chunks with varying amount of grace. But it is in fact pretty thematically key here).

Speaking of complicity, the book’s other overriding preoccupation in (in the broadest sense) Trolley Problems. Is it better to directly kill a small number of people or, through your inaction, allow a larger number to die? Does it matter is the small number is your countrymen and the larger foreigners, or vice versa? What about humans and aliens? Does it matter whether the choice is submitting to subjugation or killing innocents as a means to resist it? What about letting people around you die to learn the fundamental truth of the cosmos? Does the calculus change when you learn that immortal souls (and hell) are real? This is the bone the story is really built around chewing on.

All that probably makes the text seem incredibly didactic, or at least like a philosophical dialogue disguised as a novel. Which really isn’t the case! The book definitely has opinions, but none of the characters are clear author-avatars, and all perspectives are given enough time and weight to come across as seriously considered and not just as cardboard cutouts to jeer at. Okay, with the exception of one of the two aliens who you get the very strong sense is hamming it up as a cartoon villain just for the of it (he spends much of the book speaking entirely in all caps). There definitely are a couple points where it feels like the books turning and lecturing directly at the reader, but they’re both few and fairly short.

The characters themselves are interesting. They’re all very flawed, but more than that they’re all very...embodied, I guess? Distracted with how hot someone is, concerned with what they ate that morning or the smell of something disgusting, still not over an ex from years ago. Several of them are also sincerely religious in a way that’s very true to life to actual people but you rarely see in books. The result is that basically comes as being far more like actual humans than I’m at all used to in most fiction (of course, a lot of those very human qualities get annoying or eye-roll inducing fairly quickly. But hey, that’s life). Though that’s all mostly the case at the start of the book – the fact that the main cast are slowly turning into caricatures of themselves as they’re exposed to the alien soul manipulation technology is actually a major plot point, which I’m like fifty/fifty on being commentary on what happens to the image and legacy of people as they’re caught up in grand narratives versus just being extended setup for a joke about male leads in technothrillers being fanfic shipbait.

Part of the characters seeming very human is that some (though by no means all) of the POVs are just incredibly funny, in that objectively fucked up and tasteless way that people get when coping with overwhelming shock or trauma. It’s specifically because the jokes are so in-your-face awful that they fit, I think? It manages to avoid the usual bathetic trap a lot of works mixing in humour with drama fall into, anyway.

Speaking of alien soul manipulation technology – okay, you know how above I said that the points where the book directly lectured the reader were few and far between. This is true for lectures about politics or morality. All the freed up space in this 530 page tome is instead used for technobabble about theoretical math. Also cellular biology, cryptography, entropics, the organization of the American security state, how black holes work, and a few dozen other things. This book was edited for accuracy by either a doctoral student from every physical science and an award winning mathematician, or else just by one spectacularly confident bullshitter with several hundred hours on wikipedia. Probably both, really. I did very much enjoy this book, but that is absolutely predicated on the fact that when I knew when to let my eyes glaze over and start skimming past the proper nouns.

The book has a fairly complete narrative arc in its own right, but the ending also screams out for a sequel, and quite a lot of the weight and meaning of the book’s climax does depend on followthrough and resolution in some future sequel. Problematically, the end of the book also includes a massive increase in scale, and any sequel would require a whole new setting and most of a new cast of characters, so I’m mildly worried how long it will be before we get it (if ever).

The book is also just very...I’m not sure flabby is the right word, but it is doing many many different things, and I found some of them far more interesting than others. I’m not sure whether Dickinson just isn’t great at extended action scenes or if I am just universally bored by drawn out Tom Clancy fantasies, but either way there were several dozen pages too many of them. The extended cultural digressions about the upbringing and backstories of each of the seven POVs were meanwhile very interesting! (Mostly, I got bored of the whole Erik-Clayton-Rosamaria love triangle Madonna complex thing about a tenth of the way into the book but it just kept going.) It did however leave the book very full of extended tangents and digressions, even beyond what the technobabble did. Anna herself, ostensibly the main protagonist, is both utterly thematically loadbearing but very often feels entirely vestigial to the actual, like, plot, brought along for the ride because she’s an alien terrorist’s favourite of our whole species of incest-monkeys. The end result is, if not necessarily unfocused, then at least incredibly messy, flitting back and forth across a dozen topics that on occasion mostly just seem unified by having caught the author’s interest as they wrote.

It’s interesting to compare the book to Anna Saves It All, the short story it was based on – quite a lot changed! But that’s beyond the scope of this already overlong review. So I guess I’ll just say make sure to read the book first, if you’re going to.

[gussypatatasfritas]

I save dick by giving it CPR

MINORS DO NOT INTERACT

Toru is so sad and you just want to make him feel better!!!!

Ambos son mayores de edad, sexo oral, el lector tiene pezones y "aprieta hasta la nada", así que el inglés no es mi primer idioma y no dudes en corregirme.

Después de que Toru perdió contra Karasuno, fue a llorarte, ahora se frustra rebotando una pelota contra el techo de tu habitación, de vez en cuando le cae en la cara y se queja de lo estúpido que es Ushiwaka y lo engreído que es Kageyama, escucha con atención. , respondiendo con palabras cortas porque sabes que en ese momento no quiere consejos, solo quiere que le escuches.

And you know you're ovulating, because seeing him with that expression of frustration makes you feel so hot.

"Don't worry Toru, you have your whole life ahead of you, you are such an excellent setter, intelligent, agile, handsome..." you murmur against his ear, now you're on top of him. "You have nothing to envy them."

He is stunned for a few seconds and his cheeks heat up, finally he leaves that ball alone and takes you by the hips.

"Do you think so?" he quickly regains his composure and responds to your flirting.

"Let me take some of your frustration away, okay?" you say fluttering your eyelashes and slowly lowering until your face is against his sports shorts.

Now you press your cheek against his semi-hard bulge, you turn to look at him and now his face is completely red, he half opens his lips and licks them trying to remove the dryness, he leans on his elbows to be able to look at you.

Tomas sus pantalones cortos y ropa interior, los bajas lentamente, liberando su polla que gotea, él traga con fuerza y ​​respira con dificultad, cada respiración hace que su polla se contraiga.

"BASTA TORU, DEJA DE MOVERLA", lo regañas cuando te das cuenta que está siendo gracioso y está moviendo la polla, ya que para él es el pináculo de la comedia.

Escuchas su fuerte risa y pones los ojos en blanco, te ajustas el cabello detrás de la oreja y sacas la lengua, lames primero la punta, luego haces círculos y te deleitas con los gemidos de tu ruidoso novio.

You play a little with his balls, kiss his thighs and the tip of his cock, completely hard, with veins bulging, you know he's desperate as he moves his hips against your mouth trying to enter it.

Then you take half of it in your mouth, sucking, letting saliva drip and lubricate what's underneath, your hands masturbate the other half of his 23 centimeters, while your mouth takes care of the other half.

You take his cock out of your mouth sucking the saliva and then swallow, you hear him moan loudly your name, now with both hands you masturbate his penis, with your saliva lubricating and making every movement fluid, the sound of his cock against your hands is glorious, you look him straight in the eyes without stopping masturbating him.

"Fuck, fuck, i-i love you so much."

He moans with his face contorted with pleasure, he throws his head back and continues moaning, his Adam's apple goes up and down with each breath, his jaw clenched and his team shirt fits perfectly to his toned body, his chest heaving, his veins standing out every time he squeezes the sheet beneath him.

You moan at the beautiful sight and continue with your work, the air is thick and you breathe the excitement of both, you are completely soaked, your pussy tightens to nothing and your nipples hurt from how hard they are, you breathe heavily completely aroused.

You go back to sucking his cock, from top to bottom, rubbing the head of his cock against the inside of your cheek one, two, three times, you stroke his balls and pull his cock up a bit to be able to lick the separation of his balls to the tip of his dick.

Oikawa shudders completely, a laugh bursts from his chest, he is enjoying it like never before, if that's his prize for losing, he knows he could lose all his matches from now on.

You scream against his cock, you really need him to touch you but you don't want to stop sucking him, you squeeze your trembling legs trying to relieve the excitement.

"Ah, if you want it inside just do it," he moans with a smile, he closes his eyes and moans pulling his head back again.

You lick that mole he has on his thighs, you shake your head and look him directly in the eyes.

"I want to make you feel good."

You murmur before continuing with your work, you feel his tense thighs under your hands, it always makes you nervous when you know he's about to come, because you want to do everything at once and you're afraid of ruining his orgasm.

This time you decide to just keep going and going until his thick cum splashes against your face.

The sound of pre-cum and your saliva makes a clack clack every time your hand goes up and down, you suck every time you take it out and put it back in your mouth, Toru writhes beneath you and occasionally fucks your throat moving his hips.

One and two gags make you try to escape, but he stops you with his hand and teases you with a smile, moving his hips against your mouth, your jaw hurts and saliva drips from the corners of your lips, every time you try to swallow his cock goes deeper, both of you have tears on the edge of your eyes.

He lets you go and falls back on his elbows, tilts his head to his right side, closes his eyes and lets you continue taking care of him.

With an almost painful moan he comes, his chest rises and falls rapidly, his hair sticks to his forehead and he has a completely lost look against the ceiling, his mouth half open and his face tense, almost like a work of art.

He complains when you leave his cock alone again sucking it, he closes his eyes and then opens them to look at you, a silly smile appears on his face.

[ganymedesclock]

So that #Syrin the Dread Blade tag, thats a new one. Seems like a interesting character, a sentient sword, how did Tyler happen upon them? What does the sword look like, and does it have any special magical abilities? How do they like the other members of the party? Do they actually speak or do they have a telepathic voice?

Technically it's just a tagging misconception; I haven't tagged Syrin reliably before because his nature as a sword does mean he's kind of attached to Taylor. But he is his own dude!

A short primer: magic items in this setting tend towards a level of awareness. Magic is essentially what souls are made of, ergo, if you stuff enough magic in anything, it starts to have a soul, and behaves accordingly. Entities as fully developed and chatty as Syrin are rare; far more common is that magic items tend to feel just a little bit haunted, inclined towards some things and away from others. It's a bit creepy if you're not used to it; enchantments are commonplace and widely accessible, so that 'not being used to it' is more a statement on if the individual is used to handling a particular thing.

Syrin himself is the ostensible opus of the previous Lord of Darkness, a Dark Sword that was meant to contest and cancel out the legendary sword of light wielded by the hero. Ostensibly, because for unknown reasons Syrin was left in storage the eve of the fateful battle. Being groomed exclusively for this purpose by someone he regarded as a father and then abandoned for ten years definitely wasn't traumatic or terrifying for someone with the cognitive level of a child, we promise. Especially since Syrin needs to eat.

Syrin's construction, and what leads Taylor to point out he's a bit like a 'needle', is a crystal-bladed thrusting sword with a hollow core. Despite its delicate looks, the blade is actually both quite sharp and highly durable; the thin tube at the center being essentially his mouth, by which he is supposed to drink blood. His victims', if he can get it, or, failing that, magically drawn from his host. As a result his blade itself ranges from grayish translucence to dark red if he's gorged to fullness.

From there, he has the power to generate and shape a kind of magical flesh, allowing him to weave more elaborate forms around his core body, the sword.

As you can guess, this gives Syrin a somewhat unpleasant and brutish first impression on people, as he has no verbal filters, was raised by a would-be conqueror of the world, and is dependent on blood and thus interested in more fights than not. I've described him before as like a preteen on xbox live who talks up a nasty game mostly out of loneliness and a need to be liked, where you can tell the kid themselves is not as bad as the people who taught them all those words and that they were "funny".

Deep down (and not all that deep, like I said, no filters), Syrin is a vulnerable child who was groomed to do violence and got no experience with it until strangers came to loot the dangerous ruins he was held in, at which point he did what you'd expect a strong but sheltered child to do faced with a home intruder, and killed/devoured that individual in a panic. His first kill being no glorious conflict or victory approved by his father, but essentially a desperate scramble in the dark with himself on the edge of fatal starvation messed him up even more than ten years of silence.

Enter Taylor and party, who happen to pass through those same environments. Syrin makes an attempt to body-snatch Taylor that fails due to the latter's particular properties, and Taylor, being both a good-hearted person and a stubborn busybody, feels obligated to bring this chatterbox with them and attempt to bully him into developing some sense of tact while Syrin attempts to Corrupt His New Wielder To Violence.

This doesn't work because Syrin has no real ideas how to go about corrupting someone besides loudly telling them to stab things more, while Taylor is an apprentice surgeon and mortician who is a lot more desensitized to bodies and their workings such that if they have a weapon, they'll at least consider it as a solution to most problems. So the punchline is that Syrin is more often thrown/flabbergasted by Taylor than vice versa, while the latter just sees him as a sort of annoying kid who's easily talked into almost anything as long as you compliment him first.

[tallerthantale]

What Does Aziraphale Actually Believe, Part 7: Armageddidn’t Begins

This is a series of my takes on what Aziraphale believes through the timeline of the show. It is all my personal interpretation, and I am happy to hear others. You don’t need to read them all in order, but know that I am coming from a perspective on Aziraphale’s machinations that can be difficult for people without a psychology background to follow without the first two as a primer. The quick version is that Aziraphale has a set of beliefs that exist in some form or another within his mind. However, at any given moment, only some of them exist ‘with awareness’ or as I am putting it here, conscious!Aziraphale only has access to the beliefs that the rest of his mind, veil!Aziraphale, allows him to know about. The context of the moment will determine what lives on the surface and what stays buried behind the veil, whatever arrangement best prevents a threat to Aziraphale’s sense of self and makes whatever he is inclined to do feel right.

This post covers modern Season 1 up to the end of the Bandstand, with the bulk of it on that fight. Its too long. I can't stop myself. I apologise profusely. About 3.3k words.

The Modern Era

We come into the modern era with an Aziraphale who knows he is in love with a demon, knows heaven is run by morally bankrupt stooges, is willing to accept he is represented by shades of light grey, but will still say with a straight face that Armageddon will be heaven’s glorious triumph over evil and it will all be rather lovely.

Crowley doesn’t believe Azriraphale really believes that, and after getting drunk Aziraphale admits he doesn’t like it either. He was trying to convince himself, and it worked for a short time, like some of his temporary beliefs at Uz. Just like he can’t maintain the idea that he is suited to a life in hell, he can’t maintain the idea that Armageddon is good. He still has conflicting feelings about working with Crowley. “Get thee behind me foul fiend” is a joke. “We’re hereditary enemies” isn’t.

Aziraphale agrees to go along with raising the antichrist towards good as long as he can frame it as thwarting evil, and present it to his supervisors as part of his official duties. Once that rationalisation is in place he is practically beaming about the idea of stopping Armageddon by getting to be a positive influence godfather. I think at this point he has convinced himself that the ineffable plan is to prevent the great plan. He is so invested that he is surprised and frustrated that the other angels consider his work doomed to failure.

Doomsweek

The kid's grown up, and Aziraphale and Crowley are workshopping a backup plan. Crowley wants Aziraphale to kill the antichrist. He makes a greater good argument because he knows Aziraphale responds to those sometimes. Aziraphale still insists that he has never killed anything before. The executioner doesn't count. The meat doesn't count. There's no blood on his hands literally, there's no blood on his hands figuratively. Aziraphale doesn't disagree that it would be for the greater good, but he still isn't willing to do it. Neither is Crowley.

On the way to the ex-nunnery Aziraphale gives a whole ass speech about evil containing the seeds of its own destruction. It is very self righteous, and the speech does ingroup Crowley into that evil. He is the one who botched the baby switch over. It's a way for Aziraphale to not worry about the prospect of hell winning the war, as he is trying to accept the inevitability of the great plan. At the same time, I think it was an attempt from Aziraphale to argue that to the extent Crowley was involved in things going wrong, the blame was with the role he was playing as an employee of hell, for which he is not responsible. As in, it wasn't that you were a low quality employee of hell, hell's plans are inherently doomed to failure. I think from Crowley’s perspective it reads as ‘demons will inevitably fuck everything up, it’s what you do.’ Not that different to Aziraphale’s ”you’re a demon, that's [lying] what you do,” from the previous night. 

Paintball

I could pretend like we are going to talk about guns giving weight to a moral argument, but honestly their positions here are more for exposition of the way Aziraphale and Crowley’s paired traits often subvert expectations. Aziraphale the angel is more willing to consider violence or the threat of violence worthwhile than Crowley the demon is. The actual merits and disadvantages of absolutist pacifism aren't really something they are hashing out. We’re here for the saucy bits.

While I did enjoy reading the theory that Aziraphale had Crowley time miracle the coat so that it never had the paint in it in the first place, whilst also eliminating Aziraphale’s memory of the paint, I don’t buy it. There was no reason Aziraphale couldn’t just miracle the paint away himself. He still remembers that the paint was there and that Crowley miracled it away. When he rambles about “but I would always know it was there… “ He is spouting nonsense. The pivotal part of the communication is not his flimsy words, it’s him slowly hopping his shoulder towards Crowley’s face while making puppy eyes. ‘But would Aziraphale really just make up obvious lies to Crowley like that?’ you ask. “Is that a travel sweet?” I retort. See this gif breakdown of the paint miracle scene.

Why the act? Because as much as Aziraphale knows he is in love with a demon, he wants Crowley to do all the romancing bits. It’s mirroring the Bastille nonsense, baiting Crowley to come to the rescue. Before he was still lying to himself about his motivations, now he knows them, but can’t speak them. Here there are enough clues for Crowley to figure out what Aziraphale wants him to do, but not necessarily why he wants it, and Aziraphale isn’t ready to have that conversation.  See the spicy meta.

Aziraphale continues to regard Crowley to be a nice and good person, who is living in the transient condition of being existentially evil due to his current demonic status. This is pretty out of step with how Crowley views himself, which is its own complicated mess, and it’s something he is touchy about. Enough to make him angry and 'slam' Aziraphale into a wall. Not that Aziraphale regrets any of it for a second. Maybe he regrets getting interrupted. 

We get another glimpse at Aziraphale’s conceptualisation of angels and demons. Crowley refers to them both together as occult forces. Entities that are basically the same thing. Aziraphale takes offence to being described as occult, and insists that as an angel he is ethereal. I think these descriptions follow their metaphysical properties, not their professional role. Crowley might call himself a former demon after getting fired, Michael might call Aziraphale a former angel after Aziraphale is sacked, but Crowley is still occult, and Aziraphale is still ethereal. Aziraphale’s concept of abstract existential alignment with good and evil goes to the occult / ethereal distinction, not the professional one. 

Aziraphale doesn't tell Crowley he has found the antichrist. In my opinion, this is 100% because he knows Crowley will respond by telling him to kill the antichrist, and Aziraphale already knows he isn't willing to do that. He wants to have his own alternative plan before he tells Crowley. Unfortunately, he's often not very good at the coming up with his own plan part, so the strategy doesn't really work out for him.

Crowley Gives Mixed Messages Too

I think it has been and continues to be Aziraphale’s hope to bring Crowley back to angelic status. And I think there are reasons why he believes Crowley wants that too.

Crowley and Aziraphale are often speaking not quite the same language. They’ve got different exactlys. The Bandstand scene starts right off the bat with a small example.

“Have you found the missing antichrist’s name, address, and shoe size yet?”

“His shoe size, why would I have his shoe size?”

If Crowley spoke Aziraphale’s language a bit better he might have noticed Aziraphale just admitted to knowing the antichrist’s name and address. If he hadn't found any of the facts, he would have just said no. Crowley takes it as sass because that's what it would have been if he had said it himself. This will be the theme of the Bandstand, they each interpret what has been said to them as if it meant what they would have meant if they had personally said it. 

Crowley gets shouty about the Great blasted Plan. When Aziraphale responds, “May you be forgiven,” it isn’t just about shaming Crowley for lashing out, Aziraphale is starting to be resigned to the idea that Armageddon will happen, he believes heaven will win, and he doesn’t want Crowley destroyed. Aziraphale is saying 'may you be spared from the destruction of the great plan.'

Crowley responds, “I won’t be forgiven. Not ever. Part of a demon’s job description. Unforgivable, that’s what I am.” Crowley is making a philosophical incision. Aziraphale’s phrasing called to mind forgiveness from an authority outside himself, presumably God. Crowley is commenting that were God to grant that forgiveness, it would create a paradox. When God made Crowley a demon, She declared him unforgivable. God is infallible, so She can’t forgive him without being wrong, and She can’t be wrong. It isn’t meant as a representation of Crowley’s actual opinion, he isn't being self deprecating, it's a statement presented for the sake of argument, to make a dig at something Aziraphale said.

The dig doesn’t land though, because Aziraphale doesn’t parse God with formal logic, She’s motherfucking ineffable. Who said demons are unforgivable? Did they say it with words? Even if it was God Herself, Aziraphale has long understood that God plays messed up games, he just believes there is a greater good at the end. He could believe that God chose to cast Crowley out, proclaim that means he is forever unforgivable, and then later go, 'just kidding, welcome back lol.' It could be a lesson for the other angels, a lesson for the other demons, it could be about putting Crowley in the right place at the right time, it doesn't matter. God is ineffable, and that means Aziraphale can't be told what God thinks by anyone, including God. "That's ridiculous, you're ridiculous, I don't even know why I'm still talking to you." 

As he is wont to do, Aziraphale is very quick to take Crowley’s facetious statements at face value if it gets him somewhere he wants to go. Recall, “Oh, you’re an angel, I don’t think you can do the wrong thing.” Now we have Crowley bitterly, resentfully, describing himself as unforgivable specifically because he is a demon. If taken at face value out of context it isn’t that much of a stretch to read it as Crowley essentialising himself as evil, resenting being unforgiven, and thinking being a demon is the evidence that he is unforgivable. Right after Crowley states “unforgivable, that’s what I am,” Aziraphale brings up that he used to be an angel. Crowley brushes it off as having been a long time ago, but never specifies that he wouldn’t want to be one again. 

Aziraphale can see as much as the audience can that Crowley likes being able to have the opportunity to do kind things for people but is curtailed by the expectations of his position as a demon. What Aziraphale doesn't see is that the good deeds Aziraphale does for heaven are probably not what Crowley likes doing either.

One of the points that comes up in The Bastille is that Aziraphale gets in trouble for doing too many frivolous miracles. While I don't think that's the real reason he won't miracle himself free, I do believe that the strongly worded note happened. We see modern Aziraphale doing miracles as favours for humans pretty often, fairly recklessly, and I wouldn't be surprised if Aziraphale regularly got in trouble for doing unsanctioned good deeds. We also don’t see him have the same enthusiasm for his tedious assignments that he is given from heaven that he has for spontaneous favours.

If they actually talked it through I think Aziraphale could understand that what Crowley wants is more about the freedom to do specifically the good and mischievous deeds that he wants to do, rather than being forced to follow management's checklists. If they talked through it, Aziraphale might be able to realise that's also what he wants for himself.

Holierly Than Thou

At the Bandstand fight Crowley again raises the option to kill the antichrist. Aziraphale argues Crowley is the more appropriate choice for executioner, that way "heaven won’t have blood on its hands." He means his own angelic hands, that he still believes are mostly aligned with his intuition of God’s will. While he knows it is often God’s will for things to die, he doesn’t tend to believe it’s God’s will for him to kill someone or something directly. Aziraphale knows God and heaven have the blood of billions on their hands, though he is very good at avoiding paying attention to that fact. He also is still trying to maintain the appearance of being on team heaven, and by starting to think that the great plan is going to happen, he's feeling the need to lean into that more.

Crowley responds, “That's a bit holier than thou, isn't it?”

Aziraphale answers, “I am. A good deal holier than thou, that's the whole point.” 

He means that when he says it. This is not a joke, it is not said flippantly. Aziraphale is ethereal and Crowley is occult. He cannot let go of the idea that angels are inherently 'good' in comparison to demons even if it's mostly reduced to an abstract quality that is unrelated to an entity's character or actions. It is still what he believes, it’s still connected to his sense of his role in the universe. It’s not what he sees himself believing when he’s staring at Crowley’s lips, but just because the belief isn’t always visible to conscious!Aziraphale doesn’t mean it’s gone. 

When Crowley says 'holier than thou' he means it figuratively. He is accusing Aziraphale of being pretentious. It is a fair accusation, but not quite what Aziraphale is trying to mean. When Aziraphale responds that he is 'holier' he is referring to his ethereal status, not his personality. He can view Crowley as being the better person, and still consider himself more holy. Aziraphale reads the accusation from Crowley literally. To him Crowley might as well have said, 'what, do you think you're some kind of angel?' What can he say to that but '...Yes?'

Crowley’s response is my inner philosopher’s favourite line in the whole show, “You should kill the boy yourself, holierly.” If Aziraphale is good and holy by definition, and everything he does is a good and holy thing by definition because he is an angel, wouldn’t him murdering an 11 year old boy whilst being an angel be definitionally good and holy?

Aziraphale can’t go that far and Crowley knows it. That’s why Aziraphale is refusing to do the killing in such a pretentious way. Which ought to mean that Aziraphale understands the moral goodness or badness of his actions are not defined by his angelic status. Crowley is trying to get Aziraphale to put that together and admit it. However, Aziraphale did not reason himself into his position, and that means Crowley can’t reason him out of it.

The main driving force for Aziraphale here is he knows it would feel wrong to kill the child, and therefore he won't do it. It gets him defensive because there is a clear and obvious moral greater good argument for killing the kid, and he's been rationalising various atrocities of God with greater good arguments for a long time. He ought to be persuaded by the greater good, but he can feel that he isn't. That friction is making him get bitchy. Aziraphale is the one more ok with guns. Aziraphale is the one who disparages himself for being soft. Aziraphale is ok with the ends justifying the means. I don't think he sees his personal unwillingness to kill the kid as moral superiority, he might even see it as a moral failing. His comments on holiness are about angel esthetics, not morals.

Killing the antichrist wouldn’t feel right to Aziraphale, therefore it isn’t God’s will for him to do that, and there must be another solution. Through no fault of his own, Aziraphale is correct. Unfortunately for Crowley, this exchange comes across as Aziraphale insisting he is too morally superior to Crowley to be expected to be personally involved in preventing Armageddon. Aziraphale doesn’t actually want Crowley to kill the antichrist instead, he is mostly pointing out that there is some hypocrisy to Crowley being deeply invested in the kill the antichrist plan whilst being unwilling to personally do it. Aziraphale isn’t willing to do it either, but he isn’t the one pushing the plan. It’s been Crowley’s plan every time.

The Bandstand argument is also where Aziraphale says “We’re not friends, we’re an angel and a demon. We have nothing whatsoever in common. I don’t even like you.” This is tonally distinct from his other problematic statements, and mostly rubbish. Crowley responds to Aziraphale’s assertions with the level of dignity they deserve: “You dooooooo.” But there are traces of authenticity to Aziraphale still struggling to conceptualise them as being properly friends as long as they are designated an angel and a demon. It’s been an issue this whole time. However, there is one major sign of the issue finally lifting, in the least expected place.

“Even if I did know something I wouldn’t tell you, we’re on opposite sides!” 

“We’re on our own side.” 

“Not anymore. It’s over.”

Not anymore.

We have never seen Aziraphale acknowledge that he and Crowley are on each other’s side. He once asked if Crowley saw it that way, but he didn’t agree to seeing it that way himself. He never lets himself say it as a statement, I don’t think he has let himself believe it or think it. Veil!Aziraphale cannot allow conscious!Aziraphale to perceive himself as being currently on the same side as a demon, working together against God, that is too terrifying to consider. But when he convinces himself that they aren’t working together anymore, he can let himself see that they were on the same side together in the past. It’s less threatening that way. I think in Aziraphale’s mind, they were on the same side insofar as Crowley was helping him bring the universe towards his idea of God’s ineffable plan, and not that he was deviating from God’s ineffable plan. He didn’t see himself as leaving God for Crowley, he imagined Crowley had joined him in being aligned with God intuitively, even if Crowley would disagree with that description.

This exchange is remarkably honest from Aziraphale, but spoken in a language Crowley doesn’t quite understand. Aziraphale has effectively said he does know where the antichrist is, but is unwilling to tell Crowley, because while he had started to consider himself and Crowley on their own side together, he doesn’t any more, because Aziraphale won’t accept either running away or child murder as solutions.

I think Crowley mostly just hears “Fuck you.” And to be honest, that's valid.

Post 7/10

[emmedoesntdomath]

favorite non-newsies fanfic list? (holds hands out for marvel/rw&rb crumbs)

FAVORITE NON-NEWSIES LIST LMAOOO

guys, if you want content for other fandoms besides incorrect quotes, all you got to do is ask. I just get a shit ton newsies asks.

okay, so I have a lot of favorite fics (I dare you to look at my bookmarks on ao3), but my favorites and my favorite recommendations are two VERY different things. so I’ll give you a little of both.

ALSO- I NEVER RECOMMEND WIPS. NOT BECAUSE I DON’T LIKE THEM, NOT BECAUSE SOME OF THEM AREN’T THE GREATEST THING TO GRACE THIS EARTH SINCE CHOCOLATE, BUT BECAUSE I WOULD HATE IF SOMEONE DID THAT TO ME. SORRY NOT SORRY.

WHAT I WOULD RECOMMEND OF MY FAVORITES (marvel and rw&rb edition):

it’ll be over (and I’ll still be asking when) by JBS_Forever- a literal masterpiece retelling of the typical irondad and spiderson relationship, honestly. tony’s a little ooc, but the way they wrote peter??? genius. inspired. would definitely recommend. 

it’s the thing we’re missing most by lavenade- one of my favorite depictions of parkner in the history of ever, it beautifully showcases both the friendship and the relationship. perfect for a feel-good moment. 

The Guiding of Death by RayShippouUchila- even if you’re not a winteriron fan (like, at all), it’s still very much a must-read. I make ALL of the exceptions for this one. 

you’re stuck in my head (stuck on my heart, stuck on my body) by notcaycepollard- this was my first introduction to sam/bucky, and I have no regrets. their relationship is so gorgeous in this story. an easy favorite. 

art of the game by volantium- perfection. harley is glorious, peter is anxious, and they’re perfect for each other. also, natasha. 

Words May Fail (The Body Remains) by ladyflowdi- I know this isn’t really a common ship at this point, but you HAVE to read this. non-negotiable. I will find you. you can vent to me about it afterwards. 

told you i’m on the way, i’m like an exit away by quidhitch- this might as well be canon, okay? it’s sweet, it’s angst-less, will make you grin so hard your cheeks hurt. I want to give the author a hug of gratitude. 

~~~

Faster, Higher, Stronger by everwitch- basically follows the actual plot, but make it olympics. also, it’s nice and long. I have no criticisms to give. 

Rule Number Nine by clottedcreamfudge- okay, honest moment here- I will unflinchingly recommend literally everything this author has written ever, but this is by far and away my favorite of their works. I’ve read it at least ten times. 

We’ll Invite Something In by smc_27- so good. so sweet. also, it’s a little bit fluffier than most rw&rb fics, so if you’re looking for that, this one’s your guy. 

and nowwwwww

MY FAVORITES OF ALL TIME THAT ARE JUST A LIL TOO UNHINGED TO MAKE THE FIRST REC LIST

Text Me Quarantine by ProsperDemeter- honestly, I don’t remember reading this one for the first time. it’s just a haze of pure euphoria. 

a primer for the small weird loves by babyloveparkner- feature me SOBBING my heart out in the corner. I love this fic so much. honestly, top three of all of my favorites for any fandom. (warning: your heart will hurt)

The (Not So) Great Pretender by RayShippouUchila- I’m actually not willing to apologize for putting this author on here twice. this one is hilarious. also, fluffy avengers. 

For the First Time, Eye to Eye by Sarah_Sandwich- I have never been so mad at harley keener than when I read this for the first time. one of the author’s greatest works, and so angst-ridden you’ll start seeing it in your sleep. 

Catch Your Voice by lavvyan- this one’s for after you read the first non-negotiable fic. trust me. 

~~~

A Sporting Chance by clottedcreamfudge- again, I will loudly proclaim this author’s greatness. their works make me really happy. alex is just so alex. 

Made the Right Selection by clottedcreamfudge- alex is a cheerleader. henry’s learning all about football. that’s it. 

Clue Me In by bleedingballroomfloor- you KNOW I’m here for the june/nora content. I shall never stop screaming about them. 

okay, thank you for coming to my ted talk.

[crosbyism]

Your primers make me think you are from NRW, vielleicht sogar aus'm Pott?

haha, this is a great compliment! i like to think i’ve got a bit of that attitude, and i love my friends from there. some of the most based, down to earth people i know tbh.

aber nee, nicht aus’m pott. knapp vorbei. bin in (wie’s so schön auf einheimisch heisst) krankfurt am main aufgewachsen, oder mainhatten (still the most cringe city nickname of all time) wenn man’s so will.

the best thing about that is that i get to say that my hometown hockey team is sponsored by a sex shop on main. it’s glorious

[saviolum-sanguineus]

encore

A woman meets another for lunch; the latter's hair is the same color as the coat of the first. Something crystallises between them.

(1930s/pre-war AU)

Taran never sorted out his own mail, but whoever had been working at it was good enough at it to read the invisible currents of the city. They slid the envelope between a postcard from a friend somewhere in Spain and the riveting gossip hiding between the lines of this month’s issue from his Club.

—Something for you.

The vaguely bemused interest in his voice—I was still his little secret, traced out in the shape of winks and coy allusions to whatever domesticated animal he was feeling most metaphorically allured by that day, and not at all in the position of being written to by anyone with casual access to the expense clothing this missive—faded at the more immediately tantalizing letterhead from his Club. He handed the letter over without looking up, his other hand moving to slit open the Club envelope with the silver opener at his side.

It was addressed to Miss Esme Odile. Starting at ‘O’, the slant of the letters became slightly more capital, as if to highlight the awkwardness of it against the easy richness of twenty-dollar paper. I could have taken it as the slight it was meant to be, but this city made certain things cheap, like closing my eyes to the generosity of Taran’s mouth, and other things free, like rearranging your name until it fit like a second skin under bright lights.

Taran took a sip of his martini and I opened the letter.

The mother of Taran’s son took me out to lunch at Veselka. It had occurred to me on the walk over that she could derive no small amount of pleasure from watching me flounder at ordering—Taran’s habits and dictation were painfully obvious to the both of us, even in his absence—but two platters of varenyky were already on the table when I arrived, neat piles of golden-brown onions nestled beside dollops of sour cream along the cerulean pattern edging the plates.

Her son was noticeably absent, and for a moment I wasn’t sure if it was relief or dread that panged through me at the realization. Dahlia and I shared a vital commonality: our individual relationships to a very specific man were very well-defined, but to each other? I thought suddenly of Andrey, as if a tenuous alliance might bolster my spirits, but just as suddenly I remembered our first meeting. The uptick in morale was therefore short-lived.

—So good to see you again! Esther, isn’t it? Charming name, it suits you.

—You wrote it correctly. Lovely handwriting. Just like the primers.

Dahlia smiled thinly. In the restaurant’s clear light, the coldness of it turned her hazel eyes into something like the Hudson. It made sense why she’d be wearing a fur coat in October then: the thing lay over the back of a third chair at the table in a quiet, glorious rustle of tawny fox fur and soft ostentation.

She watched me sit, still smiling, and offered: Cassius is off with his father today—and isn’t it nice that we could chat?

Of course, she waited until I had taken a sip of water (brunch’s mimosas were too generous a mercy for Dahlia, apparently) to speak, so I kept her waiting with another, crossing my legs beneath the table and relishing the tiny flicker of annoyance in her eyes.

—Lovely of Taran to take him out to a show. It must be a treat for Cassius to spend time with him, I said with a smile.

Those came cheap in the city too.

—Mm. I heard he keeps you entertained the same way.

The barbed irritation in Dahlia’s voice went well with my forkful of varenyky; almost too rich. She watched me eat in silence for another breath, the corners of her mouth taut. Just as I began to swallow, Dahlia took a minuscule, impossibly dainty bite of her own, swallowed like a smug cat, and dabbed feathers of sour cream off her lower lip.

—You must feel like you’ve accustomed yourself to the city very well.

I looked at her and felt my fingers start to curl hard into the swell of my palms, leftover defenses that didn’t care about French tips or keeping up appearances. Dahlia smiled at me, hazel eyes sparkling. My patience shriveled, all dry husk and jagged edge against the soft rustle of her fur coat.

—Well, once you start receiving mail at a place, it really does become home, I said. I find the city suits me well.

—Is that what he told you? Very sweet.

Neither of us were smiling anymore, but somehow I preferred it that way. This felt realer than all the performances Taran and his circle demanded of me: more tangible and genuinely enticing. As much as I embraced the ease of leaning into the image of a willowy enigma ricocheting as desired between ingenue and seductress, there was meat here to sink my teeth into, an itch that could stand to be scratched instead of aching.

Dahlia took another bite, then laced her bare fingers together in front of her. She paused, ostensibly to give me the chance to pluck low-hanging fruit off the bough she’d offered.

My smirk pulled unexpectedly dry. The weight of it grated my tongue against teeth like cogs in a machine finally realizing how far the rust had crept. All the bright crystalline light surrounding us suddenly smelt of a circus. For the first time in my life, the thought of dancing under a spotlight was not an exciting one.

—You ought to know better than me that he doesn’t say anything for other people’s sake. What do you think I’m here for, Dahlia?

Her lips twitched and for a very serious second I thought she might slap me. Part of me wished she would. That would be familiar. That would be known.

—You don’t belong here, Esme.

And there it was, the elephant slain and skinned on the table between us and our naked hands.

Dahlia took a deep breath and pressed one slim palm flat against her temple. It was the sort of pose Mary took in the windows of St. Patrick’s, immaculate sufferance on display for the world to see.

—It’s not just you, Dahlia said in a voice that suggested she was angling for the patience of a saint. There are plenty of girls like you—you know, they come here from some plains town in Iowa or Georgia or wherever, and they think the dream is coming true. You wanted to be a star, didn’t you? Make it big, land the albatross.

She studied my face for a while. Whatever Dahlia found, it introduced a soft, squirming streak of dismay to her expression.

—I’m trying to save you some heartbreak. Yours, whatever family you’ve got hoping to hear from you back home, whoever you care about enough to lie to yourself about. Certainly not his, don’t mistake me. This isn’t the life for you.

—And what makes us so different?

I had played into her hands without realizing it, but Dahlia didn’t take the easy, immediate kill. She lifted her hand from her head and set it over mine.

—I think you know.

I could not move her. I could not move myself. For all the things seething under my skin, the only thing I could do was unclench my jaw and release my bite to bark.

—I wish he’d mentioned you. I’d have known to ask for advice. That coat brings out your eyes so well.

Dahlia matched my desperate spite, which made my own less desperate. An accidental kindness on her part, no doubt, but one all the same.

—Nothing stopping you in the future! He always did like my eyes, loved the lashes especially. And Portia has such beautiful hair. She keeps it long, you know, like the milkmaid girls in those God-awful European pictures. But it suits her.

Dahlia’s eyes flicked over me: up, down, and back up again. We smiled at the same time and in the same way, and she released my hand.

—Seems like he’s trying out a new flavor. On a diet, maybe.

She laughed: high, clear, glassy. I tasted it in the back of my own throat, the same phantom ache. The waiter came over from the wings of the circus tent and refilled our glasses without a word.

Another one of the city’s whimsies: watering the animals became a thankless task.

[terrainofheartfelt]

Lit™ Opera Lit - Abridged

for @clarasamelia

Jo enabled me into doing this though I’ve been tempted to for a WHILE, so here, have an Opera Primer Playlist, by me. A few notes before we begin:

This says Abridged, because the original Lit™ Opera Lit on my spotify is….5 ½ hours long, and I didn’t want to throw ALL that at someone new to the genre. So. (It is public on my spotify if you wanna take a peek)

Also, this is not a music history survey, and is therefore very biased to my tastes as a lover of romantic opera and as a trained mezzo soprano. #lowvoicesupremacy

And there is sooooooooooooooooooo much more I want to share so if anyone has any questions or wants a rec of something else please feel free to ask and I would be happy to answer! 

Actually, new ask game time: send me a pop culture media thing and I can relate it back to opera in 6 degrees or less. 

*means I’ve sung it before!

Okay, onto the playlist

Overture – La forza del destino, Verdi

You gotta start off an opera with a good overture right???? And this one is a fave, BY a fave. Overtures are sort of a…musical trailer of everything you’re going to hear in the show before it starts. It’s a sneak peek, it’s the opening credits, it’s a goddamn shame we don’t do them anymore. For real I went to a concert earlier this fall and the orchestra played the overture to The Sound of Music and it was glorious and I remember thinking “they don’t make em like this anymore!” Anyways, idk much about Forza because there’s no mezzos, but it’s a gutwrenching tragedy with glorious music, and this overture FUCKS

“Gira la cote!”* — Turandot, Puccini

First things first, lemme just say this outright, yes, this opera is racist. All white European composers were perpetrators of Orientalism in their music, Puccini being one of the more notorious. As such, opera is a thing that you have to engage with critically, but I don’t want to make that sound like it’s “work,” because I don’ twant to prolong this thing that you have to perform some sort of intellectual labor before you can enjoy opera, but you have to give it the same grace and critical eye you give other media, fuck I run a gossip girl blog, it’s like that, you know? Okay, sermon out of the way, this opera is about a Chinese princess, who vows to never marry because, honestly men have given her very little reason to want to, so she poses this challenge: if a man wants to marry her, he must answer three riddles, and if he gets even one of them wrong, she takes his head. This chorus is the opening of the show, when her latest failed suitor is about to get his head chopped off, the chorus of her subjects love the free show, and are shouting “gira la cote! / sharpen the blade!” and, reader, it fucks. 

“Měsíčku na nebi hlubokém (Song to the Moon)” — Rusalka, Dvořák

It’s the little mermaid!!!!!!!!! No, seriously, it’s based on the same myth. From my sweet Czech prince, Tony, this masterpiece tells its own spin on a Slavic version of the fairytale. This is, effectively, the “part of your world” song, Rusalka begs the moon to pass on a message of love to her human prince. And it is…one of the most glorious arias ever, to the point that sometimes I’m like “ugh, overdone” but really, it’s gorgeous, and when sung right, transcendent. 

“Čury mury fuk” — Rusalka, Dvořák

Ježibaba, aka Baba Yaga, aka Ursula, sings about how she’s gonna poison the beautiful sprite Rusalka. Fun fact: the saying for mezzo roles is: witches, bitches, and britches, because the archetypes low-voiced women always sing in opera are always either witches, bitches, or pants roles (women playing a male character, usually a teenaged boy). I was more a Mistresses and Princesses mezzo meself, so really…just bitches….

“Amami, Alfredo” — La Traviata, Verdi

Verdi is my absolute favorite, my opera blorbo, I love him so very much. The way he writes emotion into his orchestra is just hnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng. Anyways. Traviata is perhaps the most popular opera in the world (tied with Carmen). If you don’t think you know it, you do. It’s based off Dumas’ La Dame aux Camellias, and the direct inspiration for the film Moulin Rouge! (though not the musical, evidently, it’s fine I’ve ranted about that elsewhere). AND, it’s featured in the garden party scene in Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement! What you here Anne Hathaway listening to there is the grand ending to the famous aria “Sempre libera,” but to me, the most sublime moment in the opera is this one, in Act II, Violetta’s lover’s father comes to plead with her to leave his son, Alfredo, because Violetta is a courtesan and therefore a detriment to the noble family’s reputation…yeah. And Violetta agrees, not wanting to send Alfredo’s family into poverty or ruin the reputation of his little sister (that she’s never met btw, fuckin catholics), plus, it’s hinted that Violetta already knows that she is dying of tuberculosis (consumption), so she decides to leave and go back to her old life, and when Alfredo returns as she’s trying to write him a farewell letter, she has this outburst of emotion. It’s brief, but, jesus christ—

Amami, Alfredo, quant'io t'amo. Addio. / Love me, Alfredo, how I love you. Goodbye.

"Bevo al tuo fresco sorriso" — La Rondine, Puccini

Another opera based of the lady of the camellias! (She was indeed a real person, Marie Duplessis, I read a biography about her! It’s so fascinating!) This one has a bit of a different plot and play out, but the theme is the same. There’s actually some dispute about there being multiple endings to this opera (Turandot too I guess, but I digress) Magda, a glamorous courtesan of Paris, bored of her gilded cage, puts on a disguise and goes out for the night, and meets up again with the hot young poet who came to her house party earlier that night, they share a drink, meanwhile Magda’s maid has a drink in the same bar with her tenor lover, what results is this, what me and my friends call The Best Quartet Ever. it sounds exactly like falling in love in Paris. No offense, but tswift could never.

"È amabile invero cotal giovinotto” — Rigoletto, Verdi†

Hi, it’s me with my low voice supremacy agenda again. There’s a much more famous quartet, but. My house.  Based off of a play by Victor Hugo, Rigoletto is a jester who has enough of his boss’ bullshit. His boss being the Duke. What puts him over the edge? The scumbag of a Duke seduces Rig’s daughter, Gilda, and now Gilda thinks she’s in love, but Rig has worked for the Duke long enough to know that, best case, she’ll have her heartbroken.  But that is all just BACKGROUND for this scene. Rigoletto hires an assassin-slash-bartender to take care of the Duke for him, so this guy, Sparafucile, gets the Duke drunk, but now, unfortunately, the assasin’s sister, Maddalena, has a crush on the fuck. She demands that her brother spare the duke’s life, but Sparafucile promised Rigoletto a body. So while a storm hits, Spara tells his sister “fine, the next person that knocks on the door, i’ll kill instead.” Gilda, of course, overhears all of this, and decides that what she has to do his take the place of the man she loves, and knocks on the door (babygirl, it’s NOT WORTH IT) †I’ve never done one of these roles, but I have been in the opera!

“Pourquoi me réveiller” — Werther, Massenet

An underrated, imho, French tragedy. Is it because the heroine is a mezzo? Who’s to say.  Based off Goethe’s Die Leiden des jungen Werther, it follows the tragic star-crossed love of Werther, the poet, and Charlotte, the woman who loves him, but for ehr family’s financial security and stature marries another man she doesn’t love. This moment in the opera comes after Charlotte’s two barn-burner arias, when she looks over her letters from Werther and realizes the depth of her feelings, Werther comes to see her in this moment of vulnerability, and recites this piece of poetry. It’s sexy and angsty and the build-up to the explosion of emotion that’s about to take place.  And because I’m me, I’ll just say: it’s dair-coded.

“Pietà! perdon!...O don fatale” — Don Carlos, Verdi†

Verdi wrote this opera for the bisexuals!!!! So, there’s a big ol’ convoluted love pentagon going on in the court of Phillip II of Spain, but what you need to know in this scene is: Eboli, a courtier and friend of the queen Elisabeth de Valois (daughter of Catherine de Medici, fun fact), frames Elisabeth for cheating on her husband with her stepson (complicated, I know). And Eboli is acting out of homoerotic jealousy because she wanted Carlo (the stepson) herself, and what is a rival if not a crush you’re mad about having? After her subterfuge blows up in her face, Eboli throws herself at Elisabeth’s feet begging for mercy (“pietà”), and confesses to setting Elisabeth up, and even, sleeping with the king. Elisabeth is heartbroken and furious at the betrayal, and banishes Eboli to a convent. Once alone, Eboli curses the beauty she was born with that brought her here, and laments that she’ll never see Elisabeth again (GAY). And then, she realizes there’s still a chance to save Carlo, who’s been jailed for treason.  This opera is in my top 5 favorites, and this excerpt has one of my top 5 favorite musical moments, the low strings after Eboli confesses, the pain and betrayal you can FEEL in the strings and it’s so !!!!! I am not capable of being normal about it. I’m listening while writing this and CHILLS (Also, I saw this live very recently and it was extraordinary! And they did something interesting with the supertitles and the acting that implied that – rather than a presumed consensual encounter – Phillip assaulted Eboli, which paints her aria cursing her looks in an entirely new light!!!!!) †I’ve not done this publicly, but it was in my repertoire

“E qual via scegliete?” — Tosca, Puccini†

I tried to keep this brief and not put on too many things, but I can’t not put Tosca on here! This is my second favorite part of the opera (my first favorite is the finale, but that’s like, only 30 seconds, so), and it fucks. Floria Tosca, a famous singer in Rome, is put in an impossible position by absolute dirtbag Scarpia, who takes her lover Mario Cavaradossi political prisoner. Cavaradossi, a republican and therefore enemy of the Italian state, is sentenced to death, but Scarpia promises he’ll set C free if Tosca spends a night with him. She’s heartbroken by this choice, but she agrees. She insists that Scarpia sign the paperwork granting the both of them safe passage out of Rome, and he also promises that the firing squad will fake C’s death to give them a cover to escape. The tension in this scene is delicious, and it builds and builds, and the STRINGS. While Scarpia is writing, Tosca takes a knife from his dinner table. When it’s done and her and her lover’s escape is promised (Scarpia will actually betray her one more time, but she doesn’t know that yet), Scarpia moves to put his arms around her (gross, I know), and says “Tosca, finalmente e mio! / Tosca is finally mine!” and she STABS him. Rather than being raped by this absolute toilet plunger of a man, she KILLS him. She stabs him, and he cries out and goes down, and she taunts him, telling him to “feel the kiss of Tosca” and she stands over him saying “Muori, muori,” in this raw, low voice like die, bitch! It is sooooo thrilling to watch. This is a scene I will never get tired of. In a genre where women characters are too frequently brutalized for nothing, seeing a woman kill her would-be rapist is just — so satisfying.  †I’ve only been in the chorus of this opera

“Ohimè!... morir mi sento!”(Scena del giudizio) — Aida, Verdi

Regrettably, my favorite mezzo recording of this (Dolora Zajick) involves both James Levine and Placido Domingo, both of whom are pieces of shit! I’ve selected Cossotto’s instead, but if you come away from this playlist knowing one thing, it’s that James Levine and Placido Domingo are pieces of shit whose supposed skill is not worth all the pain and misery they caused. And now back to the music! Also, this opera has a racist history that companies are still working to move away from. They could work a little bit faster, tbh. A favorite opera and a dream role for me, tbh. Amneris, daughter of the king, gets carried away with jealousy when she discovers the man of her affection, Radames, is in love with her servant Aida, a prisoner of war who turns out to be a princess of an enemy nation. Amneris’ fury gets Radames and Aida caught. Taken by regret and pain and, let’s face it, more homoerotic angst, Amneris eavesdrops on Radames’ trial before the elders, and her dread builds as Radames refuses to speak in his defense. He’s sentenced to death—buried alive—and Amneris and the orchestra react viscerally to the sentence. Like her pleas for mercy when the scene hits its climax, those pietas…

“O furibonda iena…Quest’ultimo bacio”* — La Gioconda, Ponchielli

UNDERRATED OPERA OF ALL TIME. No but really. This is just…everything. This is a grand opera masterwork by this guy, Amilcare, who was Puccini’s teacher, and so few people know about it which is a SHAME. But, understandable, it’s notoriously hard to produce, and expensive, since the finale of Act II involves sinking a pirate ship…but the MUSIC.  It’s another convoluted and vaguely homoerotic love triangle. Laura and Enzo were in love, then pulled apart. Enzo sought comfort in a singer, known only as La Gioconda, and she is madly in love with him, but when Laura comes back into his life, that’s it for him. There’s ship burnings and evil husbands and a ballet (which you may know as the K-9 Advantix commercial song), but it all comes to this finale. Though she vowed Laura was her rival, Gioconda learns that Laura saved her mother once, and was under her mother’s blessing, noted by the rosary Gioconda’s mother gave her, that Laura always carries with her. So, bound by honor to her mother and desire to see her ex Enzo happy, Gioconda schemes to help Laura fake her death to escape her abusive husband, and gets Enzo to come to them just as Laura’s waking up from her sleeping draught (think R&J, but happier ending).  Enzo comes in spitting mad, thinking Gioconda is responsible for his Laura’s death, and Gio—who’s going through some shit of her own—is ready to let him kill her, and then Laura wakes, and calls Enzo’s name, and the relief in the orchestra is PALPABLE, while Gioconda sings quietly to herself “oh darkness, hide me.” After they’ve reunited, Gioconda tells them the rest of her plan, she’s got a boat to get them out of the city, and from there they can start a new life. Through her own pain and grief, in an act of unbridled selflessness and compassion, she tells them: “Amatevi. Siate felici. / Love each other. Be happy.” and they thank her and promise to remember her. And, I mean, how often does the mezzo get to win like that?

LITTLE WOMEN* (2005) MY BELOVED. It’s not on spotify, but I couldn’t not put this opera on this playlist for you, Jo <333 so, please see below for youtube links. the story is already important to me, and being in the opera when I was in college only made it even more so, and it’s a forever favorite and forever special in my heart. This is the only contemporary opera on this list, and it’s a wide and varied field, but in many ways, it’s a host unto itself (but if anyone wants to hear more contemporary stuff, I’d be happy to share!) Now, LW has a mixed reputation amongst operaphiles, who’s to say why? Misogyny, misogyny is why. But more than that, LW is such a domestic drama in a way that is not really conventional in opera, with its fantasy plots and royal characters and otherworldliness about it, but LW has always been about the small intricacies of family, which is why when Greta Gerwig put in that line about domestic struggles and joys in her film I felt so fucking SEEN. It is a technically challenging work, rife with lots of 21st century music toughness that makes the music hard to learn, but it’s absolutely not inaccessible to listen to. But, you know, call a spade what it is, a goddamn shovel, and LW is an opera with a majority women cast. You can count the men in the show on one hand, and that combined with its lack of a typical “operatic” story, and it’s challenging 21st century sound, makes lots of people keen to dismiss it. But those people, are WRONG. It’s a beautiful opera, meaningful and powerful and it sounds pretty, and I will die on that hill. 

“Perfect as we are” — Little Women, Adamo

Jo has a total of…three? arias in the show, and this is the second. After a meeting of the pickwick club and a chat with Laurie, Jo is in her attic trying to write her next “potboiler,” but keeps getting distracted by what she and Laurie were talking about, mainly, the possibility of Meg being in love with Laurie’s tutor, Brooke. It’s another hint at the main conflict of the opera (which is plainly stated in the next selection). Jo is happy with her family and her best friend, and she doesn’t see why any of it has to change. But it won’t be up to her. I love this one because it goes back and forth between Jo trying to write and find the right words for her story, and monologuing at an invisible Laurie, and her monologue helps her find that word and then she’s back in it. It’s so whimsical and just very her. I love it so much. Low voice supremacy

“Things change, Jo”

THIS ARIA!!!!!! Jo is so upset when Meg decides to marry John Brooke, and she plaintively sings “Why don’t you love me anymore?” and her big sister says, “Of course I love you!....but once I saw him, once he looked at me….I can’t explain it, Jo. I love you. Things end – no,” and that’s the lead in to the aria. She’s trying to explain her heart to her sister, and the poetry of it is glorious and the MUSIC. It’s a plea, really, a begging for Jo to understand her side: childhood was always going to end, and what a happy ending. The “Things change, Jo,” leitmotif is repeated over and over again. It’s the central conflict: Jo versus Change. Laurie repeats the motif when he proposes to Jo, Beth repeats it as she’s dying (her death aria is EXQUISITE I just can’t include it here because it makes me too emotional), and interestingly, when Laurie and Amy are abroad together, he sings the dissonant three-note motif, and then Amy resolves it. “Things change, Amy.” / “And a good thing too.” GENIUS. Adamo is a genius. 

My best friend from college sings this aria and also preaches the gospel of Adamo’s LW to me, and she texted me out of the blue the other day: If someone doesn’t like Things Change Jo…they’re misogynist. I don’t make the rules. And she’s right. It may sound like I’m coming down hard but I have heard so many people (mostly cismen) talk down at this opera and at people for liking it, and I’m over it. It’s good!!!!!! This isn’t me trying to say “you better like this or ELSE” but “I have so much love for this and it means so much to me personally and so I dearly hope you’ll give yourself a chance to like it too.”

“Let me look at you”* (Quartet)

THEE finale! Jo is alone in her attic again, and she finally surrenders, to her grief, to the current of change running through her life. Surrounded by the ghosts of her sisters, she makes peace with each of them, and they sing about how life has pulled them to separate goals, but they will always still have the love between them. I want to cry even as I’m writing this, it’s so beautiful and so meaningful. Jo ends the quartet with the exact same line as the end of her aria above “how grateful I am,” but it means something different now!!!! And she echoes the melody of “perfect as we are” a minute later, when Bhaer knocks on the door and asks if now is a good time, she sings “Now is all there is.” best finale ever. Except tosca, maybe.

I sang the role of Marmee when I was in the opera, but on my senior recital, this was my closer, and I sang it with 3 of my closest friends who were also graduating that year. Our groupchat is still called the March Sisters. And. AND. my friend who sang Meg is getting married next summer, and we are all bridesmaids. She really did find her knight 😭😭😭😭😭

[copperbora]

Gonda is ever so slowly progressing; all of this roaning, except for the weird looking bits on his ears and muzzle, was done with a black Staedtler pencil crayon.

And damn, am I loving Staedtler! This is my first time using anything from this brand and I am really enjoying the nice hard lead which actually sharpens up to a really proper point. I'm used to Prismacolor crayons whose leads break constantly so this Staedtler pencil crayon is a freakin' dream.

The weird discolouration on Gonda's nose and ears is from me using a Tombow pen there - turns out Tombow ink doesn't adhere very well at all to Vallejo primer; lesson learned!

Next (after I finish roaning Gonda's right side,) I will be nicening up Gonda's coat with chalk pastels because it turns out that I am not as good at roaning hair by hair with pencil crayons as I am at rendering dapples that way. So, hopefully I can get him looking nice; right now I am in the phase of a piece where I kinda hate it a little but I am nudging myself onwards anyway because I know that if I can get past this fugly stage the piece'll be glorious when I am done!

Lady Blue.

Gonda is to be a dark blue roan when he is done, somewhat similar to a Breyer Stablemate that I previously customized, Lady Blue. He is a Breyer Cigar (Traditional scale thoroughbred,) that I have given an entirely new tail to as well as feathers, a forelock and some mane details. Gonda will not be for sale.

I'm really laser focusing my attention on Gonda at the moment because for my digital art I am waiting on new nibs for my Apple Pencil to arrive. Inking has been far too frustrating lately and I finally comprehended that the problem was my Apple Pencil's nib. You are apparently supposed to replace them every two years but I'm still using the same one from when I first got both my iPad Air and Apple Pencil four years ago. Oof.

This has made my pen pressure absolute shit. I've gotten by by 'carving' the ends of my lines with eraser but cat gods it's annoying, plus it takes longer than it should! So I am very eagerly awaiting those new nibs and hoping that they will solve the problem so that I can get back to producing Knife Edge happily.

☘️☘️☘️Happy Saint Patrick's Day!☘️☘️☘️

[queeniegalore]

Queenie I just needed to come over here and tell you your COD fic just rocked my socks off. I have never played a second of a COD game, I have never watched a second, I have no clue who any of those men were... and yet I found it to be GLORIOUS please excuse the tiny pun. It also made me recall something I may have never informed you of, that the reason I started to play DA:I was due to your fic, I found you originally as a Gen Kill fan. and dragon age is now a part of my personality I love it so much and that is all due to you. I, however, believe I may resist playing COD... but I may now need to study up on a bit in order to enjoy more fic though. Anyways, all this to say thank you and I love every word you ever write and the latest was BEAUITFUL!

Oh man, I don’t even know how to explain how much this means to me 😭💖 the fact that people have liked my writing enough to follow me through some truly bizarre fandom escapades is actually incredible, and it makes me so, so happy. I’m so grateful that you gave this one a try! And LIKED it! I’m genuinely so happy and appreciative that I’ve managed to somehow trick awesome people like you into not only sticking around, but buy into my nonsense.

But really, the coolest thing about this is I made you a Dragon Age fan. I’m gonna cry. That game series changed my life, and I got into it through a fic as well, and the fact that I passed that on to someone else is BLOWING my MIND 😭 it’s amazing, you’re amazing, thank you!!

(I haven’t played much of CoD either lol but I’m enjoying the campaign…I need to put together a primer on Ghost/Soap or something to condense all the good stuff for my non-cod girlies)

[musicgoon]

Book Review: You Must Be Born Again

How does regeneration happen? In You Must Be Born Again, Jonathan Master how the Christian experiences new life in Christ.

The book begins with the problem of sin, and Master makes his readers come to terms with the need for a Savior. He goes on to explain how God offers transformation by the Holy Spirit. In a memorable way, he states that Scripture is what the Holy Spirit, our soul surgeon, uses to accomplish his work on our hearts.

Our Glorious Gospel

And the good news for Christians is that we have the kingdom, eternity, and an end to suffering. We are transformed from slaves to sons and able to bear spiritual fruit, as well as the holiness and comfort that only Christ can offer. Master offers the Gospel as rightly glorious and magnificent.

This short yet sharp book is filled with Scripture. It is clear and compelling, a perfect primer for those new to or interested in the faith. Keep a copy on hand to give out, and one to keep close to refresh and warm your soul.

I received a media copy of You Must Be Born Again and this is my honest review. Find more of my book reviews and follow Dive In, Dig Deep on Instagram - my account dedicated to Bibles and books to see the beauty of the Bible and the role of reading in the Christian life. To read all of my book reviews and to receive all of the free eBooks I find on the web, subscribe to my free newsletter.

[neorablog]

Fall In to Radiance: Neora's Ultimate Guide to Autumn Beauty and Skin Care

The heat of summer is gone, but winter winds haven’t arrived yet. Neora knows just how to handle in-between beauty needs.

Ah, fall — that curious in-between season where your skin (and, let's face it, your entire being) seems caught in a bit of an identity crisis. Gone are the days of slathering on sunscreen for beach outings, but we're not quite at the point of battling harsh winter winds and the perpetual indoor heating that turns our skin into a desert. So, what's a beauty enthusiast to do?

You might find yourself standing in front of your bathroom mirror, holding your summer gel moisturizer in one hand and your heavy-duty winter cream in the other, thinking, "What on earth should I be using right now?" It's like trying to decide whether to wear a sweater or a T-shirt when the weather can't make up its mind. Welcome to the autumn skin care conundrum. Lucky for you, Neora is here to help.

Neora’s Autumnal Solutions

Here's the thing — fall skin care isn't just about solving a seasonal puzzle. It's about preparing your skin for the harsher months ahead while repairing any damage from those glorious (but perhaps a tad too sunny) summer days. Think of it as a reset button for your skin, a chance to recalibrate and fortify before winter comes knocking.

So, how do we navigate this autumnal beauty landscape? How do we transition our skin care, body care, and wellness routines to embrace the fall season and gently usher ourselves toward winter? That's where Neora comes in. With its innovative products and expert insights, combined with advice from top dermatologists, we're about to embark on a journey through the very best of fall beauty and wellness.

Neora’s Elizabeth Hisey emphasizes, "We should wear SPF all year round to protect from the aging rays of the sun, which are damaging in all seasons. Our InvisiBloc is a perfect primer to wear under makeup, and is blurring to perfect your skin." This aligns with advice from the American Academy of Dermatology, which advises, “Due to the drop in temperature and lack of humidity, our skin can have a difficult time retaining moisture, leading to itchy, dry skin and cracked lips … When the weather gets colder, the humidity drops outside and inside our homes. Turning up the furnace or lighting the fireplace creates dry heat and takes moisture out of the air, causing your skin to become dry and irritated.”

This makes using a heavier moisturizing cream like Neora’s a great defense.

Hisey also recommends, "Exfoliation, both chemically (salicylic acid) and texturized, is important. Our Complexion Treatment Pads and IllumaBoost help to remove dead skin, revealing better texture, while the vitamin C helps brighten and fade damage."

Skin Care During Seasonal Transitions

Let's talk about the benefits of focusing on skin care during this transitional time. It's not just about looking good (though who doesn't want that autumn glow?). It's about feeling good in your skin, literally. Properly cared-for skin is more resilient, more comfortable, and better equipped to handle whatever the changing weather throws at it. Plus, there's something incredibly soothing about the ritual of skin care as the world outside gets a bit more hectic with back-to-school and holiday preparations looming on the horizon.

But autumn care goes beyond just your face. It's a time to consider your whole body and overall wellness as we gracefully pirouette into winter. How do we nurture ourselves holistically during this season of change? It's about finding that perfect balance — like a well-orchestrated fall symphony — where we're caring for our skin, nourishing our bodies, and soothing our minds.

Hisey offers a Neora solution: "Definitely keep skin hydrated, as that helps nourish and keep the effects going longer. Our Firm [Body Contour Cream] is a great addition."

As the leaves begin their spectacular color show, it's our cue to adapt and evolve our self-care routines. We're not just preparing our wardrobes for cooler days; we're preparing our entire selves. It's about embracing the cozy, indulgent aspects of fall while still maintaining the vibrant energy we cultivated during summer.

Just as we adjust our skin care to meet the changing needs of our skin in fall, we're also called to adjust our perspective on life and wellness. Neora’s Hisey reminds us, "A beach body is made all year round," and this wisdom extends beyond just physical appearance. It speaks to the continuous nurturing of our whole selves — body, mind, and spirit.

Heavier and More Nourishing

As we embrace heavier moisturizers and more nourishing skin care routines, we're also encouraged to delve deeper into self-care practices that nourish our souls. The exfoliation we do for our skin — removing dead cells to reveal fresh, glowing skin beneath — can be a metaphor for shedding outdated beliefs or habits that no longer serve us, revealing our authentic selves.

The transition to fall skin care, with its focus on repair and protection, mirrors the internal work we might do during this season of life. It's a time to repair any damage from our "summer" — our younger years — and protect ourselves as we move forward. This could mean investing in our mental health, nurturing important relationships, or pursuing passions we may have set aside.

Just as we don't abandon sun protection in fall, reminding ourselves that UV rays are "damaging in all seasons," as Hisey points out, we shouldn't abandon our dreams or personal growth as we age. Instead, we can view this season as an opportunity to refine our approach, much like we refine our skin care routines.

[asunsetgrace16]

Ok. SO. I know that I shouldn't be starting a new au at this point, but I just remembered the glorious Brandt Clarke/Luke Hughes primer that @three-headed-monster put together and thus an idea was born: Brandt Clarke x Hughes!sister.

A Hughes sister who remembers the beef and snark between Brandt and Luke after they lost the few snippets of childhood friendship they once had. Who has always been fascinated with the one person who can truly get under her brother's skin.

Are we interested?

[ritunn]

Short Primer On Sword & Board Commander

I really liked the Commander playtest for PF2e that came out yesterday, so I've already gone and updated my Sword & Board Fighter Defender I played 3 years back to one. Overall, the build is meant to excell at three things: positioning, defending, and support.

The base is pretty simple, we invest into the Bastion archetype so we can always raise our shield, even when we spend our turn on tactics and so we can pick up Quick Shield Block and Shield Salvation later, both of which combo really well with Shield Warden which Commander has baseline. Combat Medic, Shielded Recovery, and Desperate Resuscitation make us great at Medicine but also allow us to use Battle Medicine despite having a shield occupying our off-hand as soon as level 4! This gives us some extra healing to help out our Divine caster as a support. Lastly, positioning tactics, such as Defensive Retreat and Form Up allow us to command others to come closer to us for healing, while End It, Strike Hard, and Stupefying Raid let them get close to enemies and/or take them down once they reach our foe.

If you're looking to play a Sword & Board Commander (I use a longsword, but there's lots of great swords), I can't recommend this build more than enough! It has solid utility outside of combat as well with Alchemical Crafting and all those languages to help translate for the rest of the party. The ancestry and some other choices are more for flavor than anything, but the class feats are quite synergistic.

The Build

Ancestry: Nephilim Kitsune Background: Cook Class: Commander (11th Level) Deity: Daikitsu / Halcamora Stats: Str +4, Dex +0, Con +3, Int +5, Wis +3, Cha +1 Skills: Acrobatics, Arcana, Athletics, Crafting (Master), Diplomacy, Medicine (Master), Nature (Expert), Occultism, Performance, Religion, Society (Expert), Survival Lores: Alcohol Lore (Master), Cooking Lore, Warfare Lore (Master) Languages: Common, Draconic, Dwarven, Elven, Empyrean, Fey, Jotun, Orcish, Skald, Tengu, Tien Skill Feats: 1st: Battle Medicine, Multilingual, Seasoned 2nd: Additional Lore (Alcohol) 4th: Alchemical Crafting 6th: Continual Recovery 8th: Robust Recovery 10th: Bless Tonic 12th: Master of Apprentice 14th: Morphic Manipulation 16th: Craft Anything 18th: Legendary Medic 20th: Legendary Professional General Feats: 3rd: Toughness 7th: Prescient Planner 8th: Fleet 11th: Prescient Consumable 15th: Supertaster 19th: Canny Acumen (Fortitude) Ancestry Feats: 1st: Angelkin 5th: Extraplanner Supplication 9th: Divine Wings 13th: Divine Countermeasures 17th: Eternal Wings Tactics: Mobility: Defensive Retreat, Form Up Offensive: End It, Strike Hard, Stupefying Raid Class Feats: 1st: Combat Medic 2nd: Bastion Dedication 4th: Shielded Recovery 6th: Shield Warden 8th: Officer's Education 10th: Quick Shield Block 12th: Shield Salvation 14th: Desperate Resuscitation 16th: Undaunted Discipline 18th: Demand Surrender 20th: Glorious Banner

[lustrng]

❛ . . . 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝐃𝐈𝐄. 𝗱𝗼𝗻'𝘁 𝗮𝗰𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗳𝗶𝗴𝘂𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗼𝘂𝘁. ❜ ⸺ @xluciifer

THE  SCENT  OF  THE  RED  SMOKE  lingers against the fur of valentino’s fluffed wings ; a scent of artificial fruit and sugar and vodka, far too sweet but intoxicating in its means. anyone who knows of the man knows this is  PURPOSEFUL.  the smoke that danced around him, around the cigarette pulled between three claws and out his parted lips, was meant to E N T I C E.  and he’d known that. it was why valentino was exhaling heart - shaped, rosey rings into the air with every puff he took.  (  if the words were not enough, the smoke certainly would be.  )

❝   oh,  but  your  majesty  .  .  .    ❞    valentino crooned, shaking a bit of ash from the cigarette onto the ground beneath.       ❝   this wasn’t just a person, was it  ?   el primer hombre , in fact .   ❞ 

THE  BATTLE  WITH  ADAM  was fresh in valentino’s mind  ;  how glorious it had been witnessing it from the safety of an overlord’s tower, where no angelic blade could ever touch him. something in the moth  perked  up  witnessing the king of hell take down such a being of  POWER  as adam himself.  (  and perhaps it was the same way he would have perked up seeing  an opportunity.  the same way he’d perked up when a certain  SPIDER DEMON  had first walked into hell.  )

valentino traced expert fingers up the flesh of lucifer’s arm, one hand wrapped securely around the other’s wrist. he bent at the waist to face the man, exhaling another mouthful of sweet smoke as he did. 

❝   what was it like, mi rey   ?    destroying a being of such power . . .     ❞    he smiled, and his gold tooth glimmered like a precious gem between his lips.        ❝   you must be much more powerful than i once thought.   ❞