#having a deep connection and interest with religions creates this kind of shit

[obita-wanita-kenobi]

The Old Guard ficlet?

Love that the fandom has decided that both nicolo and yusuf stay true to their own religion, and not try to convert each other. But this gave me an idea. Keep in mind that i havent read nor wrote a fic ever since the old days of 2013. So i have no idea what this is, wether its a ficlet or a prompt or whatever.

Anyway imagine this:

During mission, or long period of back to back mission, it's difficult for Joe to keep up with his five times a day-prayers. During mission there's often just no time nor opportunity to do so. Nicky and Nile often manage to sneak in some prayers during their travels from A to B. Sometimes alone or together, since they're both Christian/Catholic. Neither of them are really churchgoers anyway. For Joe its just difficult.

So whenever they're back at Safehouse HQ aka home Joe tries to make up for all his lost prayers. Him being absolutely not a morning person doesnt stop him from getting up early. Softly kissing Nicky's hair, who's pretending to still be asleep, silently leaving their bedroom to go pray in a different room. Nicky is awake the moment Joe lifts his head up from the pillow, but understands his husband's need for this moment alone with God. So he, and the others of the team, avoid the room Joe is praying in. Even Andy, who lost faith many millenia ago, respects this ofcourse. So none of them react to it whenever Joe disappears to pray throughout the day. Nicky keeps a close eye on Joe, knowing it can weigh heavy on him that he often misses out on prayer during missions.

So imagine, after they start working with Copley. A couple years into the new set-up with Copley they end up having pretty much back to back missions due to shit happening in the world. These back to back missions go on for years. Sometimes with barely even a day in between them. Like i said, Nile and Nicky pray on the road, if they feel the need to. During a couple of missions in Italy Nicky and Joe manage to find the time to go to a cathedral somewhere for Nicky to go to confession, Joe waits outside for him. 

During these years Joe keeps telling himself that he’ll catch up and make amends once they have some time in between missions. Obviously not expecting this back to back to last for years. Somewhere during these years Nicky notices a shift in Joe. It’s barely visible, the rest of the team doesnt pick up on it. But Nicky does, Nicky always does. He keeps an even closer eye on Joe and notices one day, while they’re in a safehouse packing and re-stocking for the next mission that Joe doesn’t pack his prayer mat. He’s deeply attatched to it and always brings it. So he can pray in whatever safehouse they are. After years of not having be able to, Joe figured it’s just extra and unnessacary weight to lift and leaves it behind. Being a religious man himself, and knowing Joe better than anyone, he has picked up on small signs before that Joe is straying from his faith. He’s less cheery, and awfully quiet for his doing. He stopped looking up to the sky when he’s thinking deeply or in stressful situations. It’s the small things like that. 

The red flags really start waving when they, weirdly enough, have two whole free days between missions. Nicky, like all the others, expects Joe to wake up early and go pray in a different room. But instead he stays in bed. When Nicky is sure the timewindow of him usually rising has passed he turns around in the bed and looks at Joe, who’s staring up at the ceiling, wide awake. That’s not good, Nicky acts immediately. 

He scoots closer to Joe in the bed and rests his chin on Joe’s chest, looking up at him. He starts talking softly, in his rough morning voice, to Joe.  ‘‘Habibi, shouldn’t you be praying? What time is it?’‘, he asks softly. He’s speaking Arabic. Despite being Joe’s mothertongue, not a language often spoken between them. When they still were getting to know each other at the beginning of their immortal lives, Nicky had trouble with the Arabic tongue. Joe, who’s amazing with languages, quickly picked up on Nicolo’s Italian and soon they spoke Italian with each other. Ever since it’s kinda been their default language, despite Nicky being fluent in Arabic aswell. But this, Nicky figured, needs to be spoken in Arabic. 

Joe doesn’t really reply to the question. He just kinda shrugs and wraps his arms around Nicky’s waist, holding him tightly.  ‘‘It doesn’t really matter’‘, he replies after a little while, in Nicky’s Italian. Joe’s religion is very important to him, so this worries Nicky. 

He goes to talk to the team about it. And they all agree, they have to talk to Copley. Not only Joe needs a break from the back to back missions, they could all use it. And so it is decided that after three more time sensitive missions they get to have a couple of months to a year off. 

Their last mission ends up being in Istanbul. Nicky couldn’t be happier. He packs Joe’s prayer mat with his gear and they head off. The mission goes smoothly and they’re back in the Istanbul safehouse in a couple of days. The next day, Nicky doesn’t press on it when Joe doesnt get up to pray in the morning. In fact, he’s still asleep. So Nicky just gently cuddles him. 

But that evening he drags Joe to the Hagia Sophia, for evening prayer. Prayer mat under his arm. Joe, knowing what his husband is trying to do for him, only insists once that they don’t have to. They can just go out for dinner, it’ll be more fun. Besides, they’re early for prayer anyway. In the courtyard of the Hagia they meet up with an Imam, who pulls Joe aside and takes a walk with him through the gardens. Afterwards Joe joins the evening-prayer. 

When Joe comes back late in the evening, he stayed talking to the Imam some more. Nicky has made friends with some people in the courtyard. It was there that he made the concious decision to converse with Joe more in Arabic, knowing how important the language is to the religion. And just overall wanting to be there for his hubby. 

After that the usual rituals find their way back. But Joe stays in contact with the Imam

[human-hetalia-imagines]

☆ Rules & Information ☆

This is a blog dedicated to doing imagines surrounding my original human au. Here’s a description for each character's place in the au and rules for requests — I’ll be adding more characters as I get more comfortable writing for them.

*I did change the names of some characters so that they would reflect the countries they come from

*Also: this shit long, so strap in and get ready

☆Rules for Imagines☆

I’ll do imagines, or a bullet point list of up to 6 characters at one time, or a written scenario for up to 3 characters

I’ll also do nyos and genderbends of each character (ngl, I simp after nyo!America), their placement in the au won't change.

I include South Italy and Prussia in the axis, and Canada in the Allies

I’ll write fluff, smut, angst, and everything in between

I absolutely won’t write: incest, explicit sexual assault or excessive gore

The only time I will do romantic/sexual imagines for the characters who canonically have the physical appearance of people under 18 is if you explicitly state that you want them aged up, or if the reader is also underage. If you request adult x minor, I will discard your ask & invert your rib cage.

☆Rules for Matchups☆ 

Before submitting, check if they’re open or not, they won’t always be due to not wanting my page cluttered with them

When requesting, include personality, interests, dislikes, any pets you have, fun facts about yourself, and possibly clothing style

Don’t bother to include physical features as those will not be taken into account when pairing you up with someone

Include whether you want the matchup to be romantic, platonic, or one of each

☆Character Au Placements☆

North America

America | Alfred Jones, age 19

A young man that's cheerful and strong, with a strong sense of justice. He often can't read situations and has a habit of ruining the mood, whatever mood that may be. While he’s usually labeled as “incompetent”, he’s attending college (or university, depending where you’re from) to obtain a bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering. He plays as the pitcher on his college’s baseball team, able to throw a devastating fastball. He lives in a two bedroom apartment with his twin brother, Matthew. He had a crush on Amelia Earhart when he was younger, and it’s something that Matthew teases him about on a weekly basis. 

Canada | Matthew Williams, age 19

On the surface, he's an easygoing, softhearted and gentle young man, around his twin brother and close friends, however, he can be quite sassy, nearly bordering on rude on occasion. He's in his first year of college for a degree in statistics. For the college, he plays as the Center on the hockey team, where he lets out steam on his opponents. He has a pure white rag-doll cat named Kumajirou that follows him around his and Alfred's apartment. He curses regularly in french. 

United Kingdom 

England | Arthur Kirkland, age 23

He's either a quick-witted, sarcastic and stubborn man, or the paragon of a perfect gentleman. He enjoys reading, writing (although he doesn’t show anyone his stories), and embroidering. He’s gotten so skillful at it, that he has a well-traversed Etsy shop. He’s currently in his last year of getting his Postsecondary Education degree and a minor in linguistics. When he was a teenager, he was a delinquent, going to loud concerts, fighting, dyeing his hair wild colors, and smoking. While he says he’s over it, he still keeps various CDs of OK Go and The Rolling Stones, as well as band t-shirts. It’s something that his 3 older brothers refuse to let go of.

Baltic

Estonia | Eduard von Bock, Age 19

He's a graduated honors student who has avoided many problems with wit. Usually in front of people he acts calm, logical, and businessman-like, but in private he’s actually pretty chill, albeit a bit quiet. He’s awesome with technology, and works part-time at his college as an IT advisor while he studies to get his Quality Control & Safety Technologies degree.

Latvia | Raivis Galante, age 15

He’s a boy who has been through quite a bit, making him an introvert, easily intimidated, and kind of a crybaby. He’s in his first year of high school, but due to him having an anxiety disorder, he does it digitally. The only problem is that he strives to have friends who are close to him and care for him unconditionally. He secretly likes to read cutesy romance novels from the young adult section.

Lithuania | Toris Laurinaitis, age 19

He's a patient, shy, and gentle person who has the ability to become pretty serious when he needs to be. He works as a librarian assistant while he decides between a degree in social work or education. He, unfortunately, usually over-thinks his decisions too much, causing him to have anxiety attacks. When he’s not working, he’s typically just dragged around by his close friend, Feliks, but he has a good time nonetheless.

Nordic

Denmark | Mathias Køhler, age, 19

He’s a genuine sweetheart who often accidentally always yells. While he is kind, he’s also a bit thick-headed, although he always has the best of intentions. He considers himself to be very close to his friends, especially to Lukas, although the other man’s opinion on the matter is about the opposite. He attends college for a master’s degree in, surprisingly enough, Business Administration. When he isn’t studying, he enjoys clinging to his friends and drinking. He has the habit of playing online video games with Alfred and Gilbert for way too long at a given time. He also gets oddly competitive over his degree with Tino. 

Finland | Tino Väinämöinen, Aged 20

He's a gentle, cheery young man with a tendency to like the more simplistic things in life. He seems very mature, yet can be childlike. He loves relaxing in saunas, especially with his close friends. He has a small Maltese pup named Hanatamago who attends dog shows. When he’s not attending dog shows, he does online college for a masters in Medical Assisting. 

Iceland | Emil Steilsson, age 17

He’s a mysterious boy with a cool exterior and a hot interior, being a bit easy to provoke with teasing. His older half-brother often insists that he was ‘born in his emo phase’. He taught his pet puffin (geniously named Mr. Puffin) a lot of profanity in Icelandic, Norwegian, and English. He attends high school, which he is absolutely over. On a side note, even though Lukas is his half-brother, he often refuses to have any connection to him whatsoever in public. 

Norway | Lukas Bondevik , age 18

He is, like his half-brother, very introverted. However, he is considerably more cold to strangers, but to his close friends, he can (sometimes) be very sweet. He just recently finished highschool, but intends on going straight into college for an Applied Data Science degree. He practices Modern Paganism, or Wicca, as his religion. 

Sweden | Berwald Oxenstierna, Aged 21

He’s a guy with an intimidating air who doesn’t talk much. On the inside he’s playful, but it doesn’t show at all and he just seems intimidating. He works as a carpenter after he went to a trade high school, a job that he greatly enjoys. Other than that, he likes decorative arts and being a part of debates on his free time. While he can create furniture out of wood scraps without any blueprints, he can’t put together IKEA furniture to save his life. 

Eastern Europe

Belarus | Natalia Arlovskaya, age 19

While she can be extremely possessive over her older brother and sister, she means well. She openly looks up to both of them, as they are the only two people in her life that have remained constants. She lives with both of them in a house and works part-time at her sister’s flower shop. She’s also a part-time online student with a pursuit of a criminology degree.

Russia | Ivan Braginski, age 21

He has the simplicity of a country bumpkin, an easy-going personality, and the cruelty of a child, all mixed together. Coupled with his personality traits and the fact that he’s well over 6 feet tall, he constantly (and accidentally) gives off an intimidating air. He attends college for a Avionics Technology bachelor's degree. Deep down, he’s incredibly passionate about ballet, more specifically Russian ballet, his favorite being Don Quixote, with Sleeping Beauty as a close second.

Ukraine | Katyusha Braginskaya, age 24

Ivan and Natalia’s older sister who always recklessly gets dragged into their messes. She's an absolute sweetheart who strives to make the people around her happy, even at her own expense. She can be very emotional. She owns a flower shop where she let’s her younger siblings work part-time while they go to school.

Central Europe

Germany | Ludwig Beilschmidt, age 20

He's a young man with an overly serious personality and a pessimistic nature. He's very by-the-book and has a pet peeve for a lack of cleanliness. He attends college for mechanical engineering and dorms with Feliciano and Kiku. His older brother, Gilbert, regularly breaks in and hangs out with them. His hobbies are reading, making sweets and taking walks with his dogs (that live with Gilbert). He’s in a garage band with the three aforementioned guys. He does, however, want to be a soldier like the other members in his family. Unfortunately, due to an injury to his leg that he sustained as a kid, he can’t. 

Hungary | Elizabeta Héderváry, age 26

She’s a sweet, reliable woman with a bit of a boyish streak. For a career, she works doing maintenance on a farm that belongs to a close friend, Basch (Switzerland). In her free time, she likes riding horses, going hiking and practicing instruments, one of which is the tekerőlant. She has a young child, Julian (Kugelmugel), from a previous relationship with her ex fiance, Roderich (Austria). Thankfully, things are civil between the two.

Liechtenstein | Lili Zwingli, age 15

She’s the darling, adoptive younger sister of Basch (Switzerland). She has a big heart and helps out on her brother’s farm wherever she can, and because she spends so much time on the farm, she’s gotten decently close to Elizabeta. She enjoys feeding, brushing, and cuddling her two angora rabbits on her free time, as well as knitting. Sometimes she’ll submit her bunnies to be participants in rabbit shows (Cocoa has 1 and Cinna-bun has 3).

Poland | Feliks Łukasiewicz, age 19

He has a fierce anxiety towards strangers, and upon a first meeting, he'll act very shy. Once he gets used to someone, he'll act goofy and a bit childish, clinging onto his closest friends. He attends college for a degree in fashion design and marketing. He is also very opinionated. He often drags his friends to Francis’ patisserie for cute aesthetic pictures. 

Prussia | Gilbert Beilschmidt, age 24

He comes off as rude, loud and self-centered, but he’s actually incredibly sweet and loyal almost to a fault. He’s catholic and takes his religion seriously to the point of keeping a cross necklace with him nearly all the time. While he wanted to join the army like the rest of his family, his albinism keeps him from being able to. Because of this, many members of the family see him as the Family Disappointment™, causing a strain between him and them. Unrelated, but when Ludwig lived with him, he caught Gilbert trying to play all three parts of Suite en trio, Op. 59: I. Serenade by himself with all three instruments at 2 in the morning.

Switzerland | Basch Zwingli, age 25

He’s an intimidating man with a soft heart. He owns a farm that has been in his family for generations, and it’s a job that he’s greatly proud of and fiercely protective over. He has technically adopted Lili as a daughter, but they both view each other as siblings. Regardless, Francis has still referred to him as a DILF before. He doesn’t understand what it means, and Elizabeta has assured him that he doesn't want to. On a more pure note, he enjoys attending rabbit shows whenever there’s any in the area, and has encouraged Lili to participate in them with hers.

Africa

Seychelles | Veronique Bonnefoy, age 17

She’s a southern country girl with a big heart. She's a bit sloppy and has the tendency to laze around when the weather gets warmer. She often laments over her being lonely to her friends, especially to Alfred and Matthew. She enjoys cooking, singing, and dancing. She takes after her brother figure (technically adoptive father), Francis, being a bit of a romantic herself. She’s in her senior year of high school, and is excited to be done with it. Once she ate pizza rolls in front of Francis and he almost cried. 

Asia

China | Yao Wang, age 19

He’s a (mostly) easy-going person, if not a bit of a hermit. He works as a waiter currently, but attends several courses in hopes of getting his food-handlers permit to, one day, open his own authentic Chinese food restaurant. He lives with his 5 other siblings, all of which jokingly refer to him as “grandpa” due to how often he complains about back pain and makes acupuncture appointments every 2 weeks. When his 6th sibling, Kiku, moved out for college, he was pretty salty. In his free time, he mostly plays Mahjong the practices the Érhù. He’s unabashedly likes and collects cute things such as small charms and plushies.

Japan | Kiku Honda, age 19

While, at first glance, he seems quiet and serious, he can actually be quite goofy and irresponsible with his money, buying anime memorabilia and American comic books. It’s something that one of his roommates, Ludwig, lectures him about quite a bit. His other roommate, Feliciano, sees nothing wrong with it. He attends college for a degree in animation. He enjoys messing with machines and drawing.

South Korea | Im Yong Soo, age 16

He’s a hyperactive young man with strong aspirations when it comes to schooling. He shows the upmost respect to strangers and his elders alike, but when he’s around friends and immediate family he tends to be more loud and silly. He’s currently knee deep in the K-pop wave sweeping the world and practices idol dances on tiktok. 

Taiwan | Mei Xiao, age 18

She is a strong-willed, fashionable young woman, but she's also said to have become more of a nervous type in recent times, unable to stop worrying. She has the tendency to be a bit smart-mouthed with a somewhat quick temper. Other than that, she has a sweet and cheerful disposition. She lives with all of her siblings (China, Japan, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Korea, and Thailand) and works as a hostess as a restaurant while she takes a break from schooling. 

Mediterranean

France | Francis Bonnefoy, age 24

He's someone who does things at his own pace and has an abundance of affectionate expressions for friends, family, and strangers alike. He owns his own patisserie which has become increasingly popular as a spot for dates and hipsters to eat cute, artfully made sweets and drink aesthetically pleasing coffees and teas. He loves culture and the arts, as well as paintings and clothing.

North Italy | Feliciano Vargas, age 20

He's a cheerful guy who can be a little bit of a crybaby. While he relies on his friends a lot, he deeply cares for them. He's attending college for a fine arts degree where he shares a dorm room with Ludwig and Kiku. He enjoys painting, singing and designing clothes. Also, while only a few people know this, he can play both acoustic and electric guitar. He’s in a garage band with Ludwig, Kiku, and Gilbert

South Italy | Lovino Vargas, age 22

He constantly starts arguments and fights, however he’s also a bit of a coward. He has the ability to be hardworking, but often doesn’t out of laziness. While he’ll never admit it, he’s quite the hopeless romantic, striving to find someone who will love him despite his flaws. He’s in college to obtain a bachelor's in agricultural studies with a minor in history, but absolutely refused to share a dorm with his younger brother, who he often teases about choosing to get a ‘useless art degree.’ He enjoys gardening, dancing, and playing the acoustic guitar in his free time. He also likes sketching, but due to feeling insecure, he never shows people his work, or even tells them that he does it.

Spain | Antonio Fernandez Carriedo, age 24

While he can be oblivious and even insensitive, he’s a generally friendly person with a cheerful deposition. He works as a bartender in a decently popular bar in the downtown of his city that’s within walking distance of his house. When he’s not working, he enjoys playing the flamenco guitar and practicing dancing. Since he’s very sociable, before work, he typically stops by Francis’ pastry shop to talk to him as he closes up.

Also, did you know that, in canon, Feliciano can play electric guitar and Ludwig can play the drums?? What I’m saying is: punk garage band w/ Kiku on vocals. Thank you for coming to my TEDtalk.  

[ashbelero]

Obey Me!

~Theology Corner 2

✨Seven Princes✨

You guys seemed to really enjoy my last theology exploration into Obey Me! So I thought maybe I’d do a little more. Part 1 - https://otomeman.tumblr.com/post/618068151319543808/obey-me-theology-corner-so-we-already-know

First, why am I into theology/what qualifies me to talk about it? Not a lot. My dad’s a pastor but I don’t practice, and a lot of this comes from Catholic canon, which I’m also not associated with. But I find the whole thing fascinating and I’ve read a lot about it because quite frankly, this shit is an aesthetic. Anyway, let’s move on to deep dive #2.

We’re all very familiar with the seven brothers of the Devildom and the story that says they were angels who fell from heaven (except Satan who is made of rage and angst). Now, that IS true about Lucifer, the eldest... But I found myself wondering why the others were chosen for that role. Had Beelzebub ever been an angel in church canon? Why were these demons chosen for the seven seats out of hundreds of others? Was it just because they had cool names? And were they really associated with their respective capital sins?

Let’s start with the idea of the seven brothers first. Yes, there are seven demons considered to be the seven Princes of Hell. Specifically, the model that Obey Me! uses is from classifications of demons written in the 16th century.

Around this time period, theologists were very into the idea of creating a hierarchy of demons in hell, with most agreeing that Lucifer is definitely their leader. Originally, I thought they had gone slightly off of the text The Lanterne of Light, written in the early 15th century, which is among the first that names the princes of hell and their associated sins. The Lanterne’s princes are:

Lucifer (Pride)

Beelzebub (Envy)

Satan (Wrath)

Abaddon (Sloth)

Mammon (Greed)

Belphegor (Gluttony)

Asmodeus (Lust)

Seeing this, my first thought was that they’d taken this model and worked off of that. We can see some of them (Lucifer, Mammon, Satan, and Asmodeus) are in line with the game, but Beelzebub and Belphegor have different sins associated with them, and Abaddon is nowhere to be seen.

But after further digging, we find that there’s a later, although apparently less-used, text written in 1589 by Peter Binsfeld, a German bishop and witch hunter (badass, but he was actually kind of nuts). Binsfeld’s classification, known as The Princes of Hell, not only names the seven that we know but also the same sins they’re written with, in this order:

Lucifer (Pride)

Mammon (Greed)

Asmodeus (Lust)

Leviathan (Envy)

Beelzebub (Gluttony)

Satan (Wrath)

Belphegor (Sloth)

Okay, so this is clearly the source material they used - the only slight difference is the brothers’ birth order/seat order. Interestingly enough, this also seems to be the material used in Supernatural season 3 and on (which I haven’t seen). Could the developers have picked it up from there? It’s entirely possible.

Now what does Binsfeld’s classification say about the demons, and were any of them ever considered angels at some point?

First of all, the demons were not just representative of their respective sins, but also the primary source of temptation to those sins. Their entire job is to tempt humans and get their souls into hell. That doesn’t necessarily seem to be a concern to the Obey Me! crew, but then again... we are the ones coming back to play this game every day. Maybe they’re on to something after all.

Now we’ll go one by one through how the Princes of Hell are represented. This is a bit more difficult because not only are translations of Binsfeld’s work rare, but it’s hard to track down the original texts at all. Some of this is speculation, some is based on similar writings of the time.

- Lucifer -

Lucifer is the easiest to find info on, and the one who most canons seem to agree on. Some biblical texts use Lucifer as another word for Satan or the Devil, but considering Satan is a separate entity in Binsfeld’s text, we can assume that’s not the case here. I’m not gonna go into history or origins at the moment; that a story for another day. But the parallels between the game and mythos are pretty basic: Lucifer was the first angel to fall from heaven after attempting to restructure power, and is now the ruler of all demons in hell. This is close to our lore, with the only difference being that Lucifer actually serves Diavolo - but there can’t be any doubt who’s in charge among the brothers.

- Mammon -

Mammon is an interesting demon in that he wasn’t personified as an actual demon until much later in theological history; the word “mammon” simply means money or wealth. I’d love to go further into mentions of Mammon as a concept and sin in the bible, both old and new testament, but let’s stick to this for now. However, we can find stories that describe Mammon as a fallen angel - the reason for his fall being his obsession with the gold paving Heaven’s streets over his love of God. As a demon, he tempted humans to sin through promises of wealth. Our Mammon doesn’t seem to be very good at that.

- Asmodeus -

Asmodeus, or Asmodai in some translations, was almost always a demon of lust in Judeo-Christian theology, and featured prominently in the stories of Tobit and Solomon - Ooh, sound familiar? We’re not going into Solomon’s connection to the game today, but later. It’s not altogether clear how Asmodeus tempted humans to sin (aside from a lot of interrupting weddings by killing the groom), but later depictions show him as a beautiful young man with a limp... this limp being caused by the fact that one of his legs is a rooster’s. (Yeah. Can you imagine? I assume our Asmo got this fixed up somehow.) He’s only ever mentioned as being an angel once, however - by Pope Gregory in the 6th century. There’s no other implication that he was ever fallen. So that’s an interesting note.

- Leviathan -

The most interesting thing to me in Leviathan’s appearances is that the gigantic sea-dwelling demon is often considered not only the water parallel to the land-dwelling Behemoth, but also... female. But while this is in a number of depictions, there’s also hundreds of others. Leviathan was a figure in many religions, although these all seem to simply point towards the sea serpent rather than the demon or Prince of Hell. In catholic theology, he was said to pose a threat to all of God’s creation by devouring it, or swallowing it up in the waters of chaos. It wasn’t until the 13th century that Leviathan was given the role as a demon of envy by St. Thomas Aquinas; this was the version used by Binsfeld, placing Leviathan in charge of punishing the envious.

- Beelzebub -

Beelzebub is another one whose lore is pretty expansive, known by many names and titles. He was commonly associated with disease, though some biblical references to him as a Philistine god say that his title as Lord of the Flies was because he kept the flies away from the sacrifices laid out for him. He’s incredibly prominent in theology and tends to take on the roles of many other demons depending on the text, even being synonymous with Lucifer, Satan, and Mammon at times. Binsfeld’s classification is the first and one of few that assigns him to gluttony, where in others he represented envy or pride more commonly. The idea of him being a fallen angel seems to originate from the Testament of Solomon, but this also associates him with the morning star and appears to be another that interchanges him with Lucifer.

- Satan -

Fittingly, there is a massive amount of overlap between Satan and Lucifer in theological records. Both are described as a fallen angel that rebelled against God and subsequently was cast into hell to rule there in numerous different records. But there’s a lot more references to Satan in the bible than there are to Lucifer - possibly because satan was simply a Hebrew word meaning “accuser” or “adversary”, where ha-satan was more of a definite article to refer to the demon prince himself. In Christian translations, these were usually merged into one. Surprisingly, it’s hard to find any specific descriptions of Satan as a prince of hell; at the time of Binsfeld’s writings, he was mostly viewed as an object of witchcraft, a generalized devil, and often a subject of mockery in a good deal of entertainment media. Not hard to understand why he’d be associated with wrath in this case, as he was by many other classifications.

- Belphegor -

Belphegor’s lore is all over the place. He’s originally described as a demon who seduces people to him by suggesting ideas for inventions to get rich off of, though Binsfeld writes of him as one who tempts with laziness. His etymology is similar to Beelzebub’s, sometimes written as Beelphegor, roughly translated to “Lord of the Gap/Opening”, though it’s not abundantly clear exactly what this title means. It’s possibly because of this naming connection that he and Beel were written as twins. He’s also another one of the princes who was commonly depicted as a beautiful young woman when he appeared in the human world. Looking into beliefs around Belphegor outside of Christian theology turns up some... interesting details, but we’ll gloss over those for now. In a rare depiction of him as a prominent figure of hell, he was sent out to the human world by Lucifer to confirm whether or not it was possible for humans to live in married happiness; ultimately, Belphegor decided this was a groundless rumor. This could be something referenced in his hatred of humans in the game.

So that’s what we know about the brothers based off of one of the more obvious source materials for Obey Me! In future Theology Corners, we’ll explore the demons as depicted in the Testament of Solomon and what the King of Israel has to do with our highly suspicious bishie sorcerer.

[theplumsoldier]

NO KISSES

Summary: y/n is a guest at the red sea diving resort and is down to fuck the hot guy in the reception. also again i tagged some sweet people that i thought might be interested—do let me know if you are not, i dont wish to inconvenience anyone. as always, feedback is most appreciated!:)

Pairing: ari levinson x reader

Word count: 3227

Warnings: smut, vulgar language.

Truly and in all certainty, the man behind the counter had to be created by the meticulous hands of God himself—hell, if that was not Jesus standing right there in trunks and a buttoned-down shirt you swore the Earth might as well be off and be flat. But then again, religion was ancient and so was that bird-brained belief, and the man you had come to know as Guy, he too appeared to belong to the ‘archaic’ variety of men who had caught your interest.

He was not old. You did not think so, at least, still, he certainly was the kind to age with grace, much like wine and although you never had found yourself able to appreciate a good glass, this man seemed to be the ideal type to drink a bottle with.

Chest hair peeked from behind his open shirt, a fine glow that the sun had left on his skin made the beads of sweat glisten so beautifully in the yellow light. The Magen David pendant hung in swaying motion from his neck and you had to curse yourself for imagining it jumping from his chest while he pounded into you. Undoubtedly this was a vacation and you were going to have fun now that you finally were single, only you could not imagine this was a vacation to him, this was work. As a woman working in a bar, you were widely familiar with those late-at-night-attempts to get some, and therefore you had more respect for both Guy and yourself than to hint towards the conspicuous sin.

The hour was late, and the resort deserted. You figured most had gone to sleep or were out by the beach for a late-night drink, considering there were few places in the vicinity providing leisure of that kind. The friends you were at the retreat with had retired to the bedrooms you shared. As the day had consisted of little besides ample writing, you were nowhere near tired enough to sleep and the humid weather did nothing but make you toss in the sheets.

And that was why you had yet to join your friend, thinking it better to leave her be to doze off while you could tire yourself out some. So, sitting in the foyer, you were leaned in over papers, some with and some without writing, a pen spinning between your fingers and half a bottle of exotic, combustible liquor.

Guy had been wandering about for some time, disappearing and reappearing every now and then, taking care of his late-night resort business, you supposed. The next time he was away was a little while longer than the last, making you wonder just what he was occupied with, missing the sight of his fine figure.

By the time he returned, you were too caught up in your paper to take notice of his approach. However, once he cleared his throat your head lifted and you could not help but smirk at the cocksure man, holding a pot of coffee and two cups.

You leaned back in your seat, pushing at the chair opposite you with your foot under the table, gesturing for him to take a seat. “I was wondering when you were going to stop playing hard to get.”

Guy let out a laugh on took you up on the invitation.

“I hope it’s that paper keeping you up this late and not your room,” said he and tilted his head curiously to the side, as if asking a question and you caught on.

“Oh, no the room is very accommodating. It’s really just my friend’s snores that are rather offensive.”

“Ah,” Guy chuckled as he got comfortable, pouring the coffee and speculated what it would feel like to have a large man such as himself to pin you down, or in good hap, pound you, even. “Mind my asking what you’re working on?”

“It’s an article. About the prosperous lands of the African savannah.”

“Really?” ticked he, nonplussed.

“No. At this point, this—” you held the smaller stack of papers into the air, “is just a bunch of zany scribblings of a drunk. You know, it was my friends that picked this place and planned the whole trip. Just, like, a getaway, ‘cause apparently their actuary- and retail jobs are so fucking stressing, and I got curious, you know? Of all the places in the world, they settled on Sudan. I mean, now that I’m here, this is nice, I guess, it’s nice! But they must have spelled something wrong somewhere and fortuitously got us shipped off to this desert, and—shit, I’m sorry, I’m maundering.”

Guy held out a cup for you. Accepting, you leaned over the table and you swore your heartrate increased the moment his fingers brushed yours. You almost knocked the bottle of liquor over when you pulled back, cheeks flushed.

“No, please—continue. I have been wondering what brings people so far out.”

“Well, to begin, your brochure was extremely tantalizing,” deadpanned you and inhaled the smell of the steaming java. “Also, I figured heck, so I did some research about Sudan and ended up on some wild goose chase, somehow stuck on fucking Mossad.”

Candidly, your words ignited a spark of fear in Ari, his azure composed eyes widening for a split-second, though you did not take notice of the change before he shifted and regained composure. Circumspect he observed you warily and shifted in his seat, trying to read you but you were not as much of an open book as he would have preferred. This made you interesting, yet perilous for a man of his taste.

“Anyway, I ended up with more questions than I had to begin with and decided it might be an interesting place to spend some time. Though I have to admit, I thought there would be more of a chance of getting a taste of the culture, but this is nice too.”

Coming to understand you were no threat, he soon relaxed in his place. You were no more than a tourist. He decided it was safe to let down his guard and be a nosy parker, asking where you got with “that Mossad story”.

“In retrospect, I can honestly say not far. I mean it was more of a conspiracy theory than anything. Still, I had the audacity to, on a whim—” you were chuckling by now, taunting yourself as you now could see why your boss had allowed you to take some time off, clear your mind. “—run it by my editor, but he turned me down. Our paper just made a deal to have a column-collab with CNN, which he wants me to be in charge of, so he’d rather have me go with something, said “more appropriate”, like a tribute to John Lennon or fucking post-its. Can you believe that? I didn’t get into journalism to gossip; I write to make people feel something; incite revolution; I wouldn’t mind that now.”

“Huh,” hummed he fairly entertained, curiously eyeing you as he lifted the cup to his lips. “Well, I have to admit, I’m a bit of a sucker for conspiracy theories myself, so, I mean, I’d love to read it sometime.”

You chuckled and shook your head, leaning over the table. “Oh no, I fed that garbage to a shredder long ago.”

Guy’s face dropped, seemingly contorting into a mix of disappointment and concentration as he was deep in thought.

“Trust me, you did not miss out,” said you and eyed the trepidation in his entangled fingers. “This piece, however, now that would be worth your while! Nothing that’s ever going to see the light of day but it’s a fine review of this corner of the world, complimenting your superlative resort here.”

“Is that so?” uttered he with a sly smirk and you nodded your head, taking a sip of the coffee.

“Aha! Also, I needed something to distract my mind with, seeing as I have been going at whatever the hell this is for hours now. I can assure you; a sleep-deprived drunken state is the circumstances a writer could ask for.”

He clicked his tongue and his head tilted back, mind going elsewhere. “Doesn’t sound very healthy, though. I could think of other sufficient ways if it’s a distraction you’re seeking.”

A coy smile curled your lip upward, needing no more to assimilate the overt hint and had it not been for the alcohol, your face would have been red as the sunburnt Germans on the tour.

“You know, if you want to fuck, all you have to do is say so.”

He seemed taken aback, but his pacific eyes flashed only a glimpse of surprise before he felt himself break from the daze. “And here I thought I was being bold.”

Humming in reply, you suppressed your smirk and wet your lips, trying to read his face.

Then he spoke up again, “it was Y/N, yeah?”

Nodding your head slowly, you felt your heartbeat increase and your legs’ position shifted as you struggled to tend to the tingle fluttering between your legs.

“Good.”

“And Guy?”

A short moment passed by in silence until he uttered a low “yeah” in reply. Then another passed, one where you took the time to wonder if you really were going to have sex with a complete stranger. The thought, although you never would have considered yourself so adventurous, was appealing to you and the heating sensation only stirred in you. You watched as Guy took you in and he hurriedly looked around him, the sound of his chair’s legs screeching against the floor.

“So, let’s do this.”

And Guy set marching.

His pace was moderate, something for you to keep up with, still, he did not walk five feet without casting a glance across his shoulder to make sure you still were at his tail. You were, of course, and like an eager dog following the food of that. In the end, he ended up reaching for your hand to pull you along, faster and you could not help but grin at the hurry he seemed to be in.

Finding yourself in his company, in his room, you looked around you, though he gave you little chance as he quickly had you caught against the shut door. Dipping down to connect your lips, Guy never got further than grazing your plump, soft lips, ever so slightly and he gave you a questioning look, a funny smirk tugging at his features and you explained, naming your one condition.

“No kissing.”

Guy pouted like a child finding coal rather than candy in his stocking on Christmas morning. “But that’s half the fun, darling.”

And you laughed at him, one hand teasingly sliding down his chest to unbutton the rest of his shirt. “Well, I’ll try my best to make up for it then.”

From excitement, Guy emitted a begging whine and his head dropped back, knowing all too well what you implied, and he had grown impatient even before you could rid him of his shorts. Reimbursing him with a teasing kiss just below his navel, you pulled down the cover. Springing free from strains, his cock stood tall and proud, saluting you and you gaped at the size and thickness of his girth. Surely, that was a mouthful, but you did not let yourself scare and rather blinked up at him, breaking a coy smile, before wrapping your hand around him. Feeling him, your fingers curled him and ran up his shaft, enjoying the sounds you pulled from him at the simple action. He was so responsive, and his cock twitched when your lips brushed his mushroom head. Darting out your tongue to teasingly swirl around him, you set at the base and licked along the prominent vein, humming a sweet sound for him as you complacently watched his blissed expression. Wetting your lips, you wrapped your lips around the tip, tasting the hint of salt he had to offer and for balance, your hands steadied you on his thighs while he moved the hair from your face. Taking a few inches, you dragged yourself up and down his cock, drawing back to spit on him and then fit more. While accustoming your throat to the considerable size of him, your one hand worked on what you had yet to fit, squeezing around him. Guy moaned your name as your tongue massaged against him, reveling in the pleasing sensation in which you provided.

Working on him for minutes, you could feel yourself wet at the very idea of him down your throat and you had to bring your hand down between your legs to take care of yourself all the while. The sound escaping you was almost pornographic, gagging around his cock as his hips bucked forward, fucking your face.

Hissing, Guy was ready to burst at any given time and urged you deeper on his cock, when you shifted. You received a questioning gaze through his daze when your lips left his cock and you merely grinned for yourself. Never in your wildest dreams would you have thought a man such as himself would so easily be wrapped around your finger, but here he was, wanting you more than anything, making you feel divine as you stood from your knees.

You never had been one to stride from an honest challenge in this time was no different, although it proved none at all when he so complaisantly fell under your curse. Thus it was nothing but nature for you to take what you wanted, and knowing you had to be dripping down your thighs by now, you reached to suck on his neck, pushing him onto the bed.

Feeling him rock hard against your clothed cunt, he elicited a moan from you the had him groan low in his chest. Desperately Guy wanted to take control of the moment and set a bruising pace, only he could not recall a time where he had felt so small, not to mention the part of him enjoying a woman in power.

Straddling him, your dress hiked up you fevered skin and his rough hands helped you pull it over your head, exposing your body for the humid air to embrace. Exploring hands admired your bare chest, tugged you down by your waist, grinding against him and his large hands fell to your bottom. Adroit fingers rid you off your garments in seconds and he hoisted you closer to him. It was then he got a sense of just how wet you were for him. All for him and he grunted, smirking to himself at the thought of how slippery you had gotten from sucking him off.

Driving yourself crazy by running your sex up and down his pulsing shaft, you spread your wetness across his cock and made a mess when you decided you had kept him waiting long enough. Steadying yourself with a hand flat on his heavily heaving chest, you lifted yourself and lined his head with your slick entrance, before sliding down.

Guy winced, pleasure engulfing him as your warmth swallowed him whole. Panting a faint moan, you heaved yourself unsteadily and the precariousness of a lady, eyes squinting shut at the all too missed feel of a man filling you.

Alleviating hands kneaded the soft spots of your body, holding you by the waist to guide you up and down him. His azure eyes were fixated on where you met, head craned out of comfort, pulled off the pillow to watch how well you took him. The sounds you made were hushed but pornographic and became more so when he pulled you down, close to his face and he could smell himself on you as you coveted climax.

“You hear that?” mutters he into your skin, voice husky and responsible for the shivers sparking through your bones. While your head was long gone in a state of ecstasy, the taunting slap of his balls on your skin echoed through your mind and you whined in response, nearly collapsing as you failed to keep up with him. Fucking up into your clenching cunt, Guy grunted against you, his one hand lifting your chin, forcing eye contact and you moaned at the sight. With all but his glorious, damp expression and the resonating, squelching sounds from between your thighs blocked out, you shuddered, hoping to God, not a soul had heard, for your frolic affairs could not be mistaken. “Fuck, you’re taking me so well, Y/N.”

And barely in the mental state to keep yourself composed; Guy stripped you from all chances of keeping quiet as his hand snaked between sweaty bodies to toy with your clit. Whimpering, you harshly bit down on your lip, your own hand tentatively, shakingly clasping against his and he can do nothing but watch keenly in wonderment as you came around his cock. Ponding you through your orgasm, he did not heed the thumping sound on a fist on the wall, refusing to let the face of Max ruin his orgasm. Squeezing around him, Guy felt himself unable to restrain any longer, and he pulled out, his thick load painting your stomach and pussy.

Moaning an elongated cry at the absence of his bruising thrusts, you ground out your fading orgasm on his stomach, his cock twitching beneath you, still spurting. Fragile as glass, you were collapsed on Guy, breath hitched in your hoarse throat, nuzzling your head in the crook of his neck as you attempted to pacify your rapid breathing. Moments passed, recalibrating your respiration and his soothing fingers kneading the spots where marks had been left.

Drawing in a deep breath, you gently lifted your head, shifting and leaning your cheek on your open palm. Simpering and with a hint of thoroughly-fucked in your kittenish eyes, you stole his half-lidded gaze, catching a peaceful smile.

“I should go,” breathed you, catching yourself lick your lips when your eyes darted to his.

Lips parted, Guy moved a little beneath you, hand resting on the small of your back while his thumb still drawing circled patterns.

“You don’t have to,” muttered he with a short pause, only after voiced, realizing his words may have sounded importunate. And that was the last thing he wanted to paint himself as, but he had scant to worry about—after all, he had just fucked a stunning stranger and not one of the two was in rue. “Not yet, at least.”

And you hummed with a smile, one that later would make an appearance in his deviant thoughts. Softly placing your hand on his chest, you leaned in close and ghosted your lips over his, hungry for more but tantalizing in essence.

“This was fun.” Lightly tapping his sturdy chest, you pecked him on his bearded cheek and cast him a smile before making your entrancing exit. “We should do it some other time.”

And just like that, you left him in his room with nothing but his mind to replay the previous scene of wanton happening, his cock hardening only at the notion of sweetest gasps and sinful pants you had offered him. He fucked his hand one last time before he drifted off, off into the deepest slumber he had had in a long time.

TAGLIST: @patzammit @draeluna @chibi-crazy @coincidence-ithinknots-blog @tanyam93 @valentina-booth @peach-acid @jeanily3000 @jamesgiuseppe @loilko

[cloudyfm]

ok yes i’m here with lilia’s info ur resident demon have fun pals<3

family background - yes this is copy pasted myob<3

ya’ll ever read one of those drug ring ao3 fanfics where y/n is dating the sexy drug cartel leader? well that’s their family!

generational family blood money because that’s how cartels work i think. started running + dealing three generations back with their great-grandparents in order for them to make a living. it wasn’t until the so-called business was handed down to their grandparents that they wanted to expand and generate more money. the big pharma cover was created in order for them to manufacture, distribute, and supply at a larger scale. present day, their family name has notoriety with other cartel and mafia families.

basically avery was supposed to take over because he was the oldest right, but lilia did not want that at all. their parents started favoring avery and schmoozing up to him a little bit to get him to say yes (even though avery was fully prepared to give lilia the position) and lilia was like! what the fuck! so she told their parents about this one time that avery accidentally blabbed the family secret to a stranger at a party which broke their one rule of keeping it a secret. their parents wanted nothing to do with him anymore and completely cut avery off and kicked him out of the family.

everyone knows that avery and lilia are siblings, even though they don’t really know the actual details about their past together because avery doesn’t say anything about his family and the cartel is a secret. now that they are both at yale and in the elites together they are just kinda like haha awkward <3 they basically would just tell everyone that they grew apart if other characters tried to pry but also lilia is now telling people that avery fucked up a business decision which is why he left the family and avery is like alright but good luck trying to get other info out of them! xo, the jeongs

personal background

a legacy and a member of the yale's elite, they're twenty-one and a junior undergrad student majoring in pharmacology. they are as zealous as they are vain.

blackmails: and yes ik we only needed 2 i got pressed and stubborn (drugs tw):

blackmailing vanity fair to keep them from speaking negatively about her and her family by dealing to their reporters. she’s more so doing this to protect herself and her brother than her parents.

is aware of annie and violet’s work arrangements with her family’s drug business. she refuses to involve herself by mentioning that the family they work for is hers and is currently turning a blind eye to the questionable tasks that are asked of them.

purposely sent an ex boyfriend to prison when she was 18 due to her being tired of being in a consistently toxic relationship. she set him up to be found with various bags of illicit drugs (of which were owned by her family) and framed him with possession with intent to distribute and supply to garner a felony charge as an adult.

ok moving to present day stuff<3

ever since avery left the family, her parents have basically put immense pressure on her to fill his spot - the spot she wanted, and since her loyalty is with them and herself, she accepted it and did whatever had to be done. she was 16 when it became her job to take over, so whatever parts of her childhood she had left kind of just left when they began to prime her.

at 18, her mom finally revealed to her that avery had the intentions to give her control of the family when she came of age - something that she didn’t know until 2 years after she fucked up ! her guilt eats her alive to this day, but rather than mending her relationship with him personally, she sends him money anonymously through shorting her parents. 

she actually loves being in the elites ... it gives her such a sense of importance whether or not she is considered a legacy. was kind of excited to join actually and frankly that bit her in the ass with the blackmailer out here but its fine.

her college years have frankly been quiet like .. she’s studious to the point she needs to be but she really is not a partier, doesn’t do drugs because she’s seen first hand the shit that her parents are involved in, and barely drinks. when she does she literally doesn’t know how to handle it and fears losing control. literally if you wanna manipulate her this is how u do it lmao.

this is mentioned in the personality section but yes she is in the classics book club at yale ... she loves her classics</3

she’s actually easy to get along with ok just don’t cross her i promise my god im going to lose it

i don’t know im blanking so bad and this is alrdy almost 1500 words i cant do this anymore. UGHGHH more of her personal stuff is in the personality section im heaving

personality

ridiculously cut throat and has no issues stepping on people to get to where she needs to be. like if it came down to saving herself or saving someone else who she doesn’t have a close connection to? she will always pick herself. 

makes a game out of other people one - upping her<3 if she knows she can win, and sometimes even when she can’t, she will purposely cause a problem just to see them fall and grow her own ego.

also will start problems casually and then just sit back and watch them unfold while drinking wine out a mug.

literally ... and i mean literally obsessed with being perceived as beautiful and pretty. she’s so mf vain that it’s actually a problem, and i can promise you if you call her ugly miss girl will cry. this mostly has to do with her self esteem issues and the pressure put onto her by her parents after avery left. yes she did this to herself dni.

loyal only to those who she cares about otherwise they can frankly rot<3 and there are times where she will break that loyalty if it benefits her.

ik this may not be believable but she actually is extremely insecure and anxious deep down lmao like she has such an obsession with proving that she’s the best to her peers and her family that it flat out consumes her consistently. this is what causes her to act out most of the time and if someone was to become close to her it would be plainly evident. yes - she can be soft.

has an overt persona of positivity and carries herself as someone who doesn’t have negative intentions and sometimes makes it hard to believe that she’s actually capable of doing the things that people accuse her of.

yes she is calculating and manipulative and miss girly will look for faults only to make them worse.

she literally wasn’t always like this but when her and avery’s relationship started to fracture, she kind of let her own selfishness consume her.

she plays stupid a lot KLNDFKNDLKFSD  will pretend to be interested in random men in her classes so they will baby her and do shit for her that she could have easily done herself. it’s not that she’s lazy but she’s only studying pharma because of her family. she has an obsession with classical lit and would have rather majored in that if given the chance. 

has a fear of emotional intimacy </3 went through a really toxic relationship from the ages of 16-18 that was basically more done to bring her family and another together for a business deal and it just ... did not end well for her and basically she was treated like shit. literally the only way she could get out of it was to frame him and then bribe people to make sure the felony charge wasn’t dropped. her family doesn’t know she did this so<33333 

statistics

full name: lilia iris jung.

nicknames: lili or lia.

age: 21.

date of birth: august 02, 1999.

siblings: avery ( older brother ).

birthplace: new york city, new york, united states.

current location: new haven, connecticut, united states.

astrological sign: leo sun / capricorn moon / virgo rising.

gender: cis female.

pronouns: she / her / hers.

height: 5′1″.

sexuality: bisexual.

religion: atheist.

piercings: double lobe on her right ear, triple lobe on her left ear, tragus on her right ear, and a helix on both her left and right and ears.

tattoos: this on her inner, right bicep, and this behind her left ear.

haircolor: brunette.

literally for wanted connections i want 2 things: (1) someone to rock her shit bc that is deserved, and (2) idk she’s wearing a mask like 80% of the time so someone who she is close enough to actual b real with :\ if this doesn’t make sense myob im taking a nap

[vagrantblvrd]

Hmmmmm for the not!fic prompts, how about some soft FAHC Jack/Geoff at the end of the world? Could be immortals au or just whatever, I'm just in the mood for soft 💛 (p.s. you're amazing)

Oooh, okay.

SO.

I love this so much and have a few ~scenarios for it.

First is to do with the Sky Factory AU where they’re all gods creating worlds (that Ryan tends to have a hand in destroying at some point because wow, okay, guy just cannot help himself) before moving on?

Maybe they go back to visit a world they created together way back when, when they were just as young and stupid as the others are. (Before meeting Ryan and the rest of their unruly and unpredictable pantheon, and one they definitely told said pantheon to never set foot near or there would be consequences, okay.)

This world whose people have been allowed to learn and grown on their own once Geoff and Jack left to create other worlds, nurture life along until they weren’t needed any longer.

Civilizations have risen and fallen along with various religions and the like and when they hear the world itself it dying they go back to see what happened after the left.

The people who lived there are either dying out (have died out) or reached a level of technology to leave their world for a new home among the stars and so on, leaving traces of themselves behind on their journey and very epic to be sure, right?

But Geoff and Jack, they’re more interested in the world itself, the histories left behind that they manage to learn (because gods and the whatnot) and there’s pride and sadness, regret that perhaps they didn’t give the people they left behind enough guidance Maybe they were mistaken in leaving at all, could have stayed and nudged the people in the right direction if they happened to stray towards dangerous and/or ill-advised actions, but!

There are these rules for beings like them, right? Things about free will and the whatnot and how others like them went too far in nurturing the lives that sprang up on the worlds they created, became terrible monsters and whose worlds met even worse fates and it’s all murky and unknowable and never any “right answers” when bias and the whatnot come into play.

SO.

They watch over the world as it breathes its last, this place where beautiful and terrible things happened. Where they themselves lived and learned for a time and helped form them into who they are now. (Along with the others worlds they’ve created, the idiots they’ve taken on as family and so on.)

And.

Wander the land for a while, point out things they bickered and bantered and full-out argued over – how deep that ocean should be, how high that mountain range. How dry the plains in the summer months and a million, billion other little things that add up to an entire world over time.

Pluck up a small stone – so very small, but worn smooth over the years – eons – and tuck it away because this was one of their first worlds and flawed as it may seem in comparison to those they’ve created since it holds a great amount of sentiment for them, you know?

And maybe, definitely, they stop under the branches of an old, old tree. One of the first Jack ever created, run their hands over the rough back and hear the stories its heard over the years. Lovers and friends taking shelter there when it rained, or resting in the shade on a warm summer day.

Watch the rain falling now, the last this world will see before it ends and lean on one another because this world has seen so much, hasn’t it? Endured so long and all that, and now it’s time has come and they’re there to witness it, and just.

Yes.

Like, idk, your prompt is super amazing and so bittersweet to me, because wow yes, but also, also, okay.

As to the immortal AU (no gods in sight, just like, because reasons kind of dealio) and the same basic kind of scenario?

The two of them being around for centuries, living through who even knows how many of those – claim they lost count along the way but you know they know how long they’ve been alive, of course they do.

Still.

Born who knows when and lived through centuries, millennium even, and the world is finally dying and technology is to the point humanity left (is leaving) for a new home elsewhere.

The others have gone on ahead, but Geoff and Jack wanted a little longer to say goodbye to the world they’ve known for so long? (Only one, really, but technicalities and the whatnot.)

They go on a road trip of sorts, best they can, given how time fuzzes up memories especially for those as long-lived as them.

The spot where they were born, grew up the first few years. Where they lived (and died, because going with the immortals who can be “killed” but it doesn’t stick kind of AU).

First place they died, and share stories as they go. (All the while the planet is dying around them, storm-dark skies and raging winds and such and just Very Drama.)

First loves and everything they’ve told one another over the years – where they met for the first time, where they found out the other was an immortal for the first time, and wow would that have been a doozy.

Violent death, perhaps, or maybe just an accident and the shock of running into them not too long afterwards, or maybe even years, decades later and the :O moment.

Geoff absolutely trying to pass himself off as the great-however many times-grandson of himself to Jack. (Whether he knew didn’t immediately recognize Jack at first, thought something was weird because that’s totally that guy he met however many years ago, but cover story first!!1!, or just ~panicked and cover-storied even though he knew Jack wasn’t buying it and oh, hey, is he like Geoff???)

Place where they had their first real Argument, one that caused a rift between them that lasted for fifty years or more before some series of events brought them back together.

Mutual Pining that lasted for (at least) another fifty years before someone told them to get their shit together as it was painful to watch and seriously you two, seriously.

And, like.

Everything since then.

World-changing events that separated them for years – a few or too many, it doesn’t matter because any amount of time was too long even for people like them – and times where they just.

Needed time apart because forever is a bit. Yeah, you know? Sometimes it’s nice to have time apart and when they met up again however long afterwards was lovely.

Where they met the others, one by one or in groups and the chaos that followed. (Times that were never, ever boring, and even is occasionally headache inducing, because yes.)

And, like.

I kind of love the idea of everyone as “normal” immortals?

But also, also?

This thing where people become immortal over time?

Like.

I don’t even know how/why, but this reincarnation bit where they live normal lives over and over again until they’ve somehow earned a chance at immortality?

A whole Thing as to how that would work, but omg, yes?

Good deeds/karma they’d have to do/earn and a reward of immortality/godhood??? ( – or the inverse where it’s a punishment, chance for them to atone for what they’ve done in past lives, idk.

Whichever it is, Geoff and Jack are the oldest and have been around for a while, and then they meet all these little assholes.

Have to watch them die, which – yikes, regarding the angstiness and all? But then however many years later run into them again, and they're just like, oh, and realize there’s a reason they met them at all, you know?

And the cycle repeats until the others gain their immortality and it’s like.

Reward or punishment, but they’re not the only ones like them out there anymore, you know? And while they’re not always together – reasons and the whatnot where one or more of the others take off for a while – they’re all connected and, just. Yes.

(Seriously, I love immortal AUs but wow do they give me FEELS.)

And like.

Okay, immortal Geoff and Jack being all Sentimental about the end of the world, but knowing their family is out there waiting for them to get their shit together before they go off to shenanigate somewhere else for a while.

If they did a stint as a crew of notorious criminals in this Los Santos place for a while, maybe they decide to try their hand at being space pirates for a while, or idk. Just a bunch of assholes in space because reasons and I’ve totally lost the thread here, but yes. XD

ALSO.

In all of these scenarios there’s the bit where they lean against one another, heads on shoulders and holding hands and st least one (1) smooch.

Also a lot of assholishness, because Geoff and Jack, but tempered by this centuries long love of theirs that’s managed to outlive at least one (1) world, and stands to keep on going for a good while longer.

[your-turn-to-role]

So I just got round to watching ep 75, and god, I’m in love with the way Caduceus talks about religion? Because it’s potentially the only story I’ve seen where a character’s spiritual beliefs resonate with my own, and also it fits really beautifully into the story as a whole.

Overwhelmingly when people talk about gods, at least in stories, they all come from the same sort of concept. It’s the general understanding that gods are all powerful beings. Some people want to serve these beings, some people are afraid of them, some people feel these beings created the universe and thus own it, some feel protected by them, some scorn their very existence. But however you feel about it, it’s generally understood in these sorts of settings that gods are beings of power beyond comprehension, that rule over a certain domain.

And that’s sort of where Fjord is coming from here, too. He sees that gods grant people power, has heard stories of the various gods and everything they’ve done. He’s dealt with Uk’otoa, knows how those kind of deals work. He’s going into this expecting a being, something with a personality and goals, something that may be feared or bargained with or trusted depending on who you are, but by and large, something much more powerful than he is.

But that’s not really how the Wildmother works. I haven’t listened to enough of campaign one to speak for that too, but at least in campaign two, that’s not how any god we’ve seen works. Melora isn’t a deity of nature, she is nature. That’s what Caduceus means when he says he talks to her all the time, every word out of his mouth is talking to her, because everything is nature. Sure, she has magic, and a voice, but so do most things, more things than we often realise. We’re not talking about an all powerful woman, we’re talking about life given to the very concept of every tiny piece of the universe that all moves as one.

There were a lot of really good Caduceus quotes in this episode. We’re really getting to the heart of who he is, and two of the big themes around him have been the interconnectedness of all things, and the fact that if you need proof to have faith, it's not faith.

The Clays are connected to the Wildmother, and also to the Raven Queen, and through that to all the gods. Caduceus serves nature, and by serving nature he serves life, and also death, and through that knowledge, and civilisation, and magic, and stories, and so on. He has a very strong concept of destiny, and he trusts in what the Wildmother wants, but he knows that equally she trusts him. What Fjord doesn’t seem to grasp is that Caduceus having faith in her and Caduceus having faith in himself are the same thing.

Because that’s how divine intervention works. And not just in this story, this concept comes up a lot when it comes to religions, but people have a hard time grasping it, because again, they expect an all powerful being to intervene. There is no all powerful being to intervene, just the pieces of that god’s domain working together. And the biggest pieces are people. People affect change. People are the intervention. We serve the gods by making our own destinies.

Which then relates back to the whole game they're playing, because like... people have made jokes that by Taliesin creating Caduceus he's made a character that can basically say "let's go this way bc it's where the DM wants us to go" without metagaming, and that has an element of truth to it, but at the same time, Matt's not writing this story.

Matt's making a world for them, and guiding their hands a little, sometimes, but its their choices that define it. And sometimes things happen outside of their control. Molly's death was entirely unplanned and just a combination of various bad outcomes, but it also became a pivotal point in the story that has defined so much after it, and without it Caduceus wouldn't even exist to say this.

Which is how this stuff goes, and defines perfectly the influence the gods have on the world. Sure, they create it, sure, they can cause problems for players sometimes, but they're not the ones moving this story. All the power is in the players' hands. (Honestly, the way Taliesin has folded so much game meta into his deep rooted ideas on religion absolutely delights me, this works all the way down)

Which comes back to why I like it. Because my problem with religion was always that as soon as you give the world to the gods it stops being your world.

If you say all of these facets of nature belong to specific people, you hand the power of that thing to those people. And that's why people rebel against it a lot, what fuels a lot of angry atheism, because they don't want beings like that to have that power, and honestly that's perfectly valid of them.

And I like the concept of there being gods in the world. Everything in this world is so interconnected, I feel like there has to be, not in the traditional sense of the word god, but just in that force that keeps things running. Because really, what is an ecosystem if not just a vast living being?

But it's not my job to protect it, or to serve it, or to fear it. I can't affect change on that massive a level, no one can. It can't do it itself either, except in the sense that each part within it moves at its own pace, in its own way, to affect change. Caduceus has also said that his role as a follower of the Wildmother is to give gifts, both to her and from her. And I think that's a nice way of looking at it. I bring gifts to the world with every decision I make and every goal I work towards, because that's how it functions. And if I ask the sky a question and it responds with the wind swirling around my feet, if I'm in a bad mood but it starts raining and I feel better, if a good song comes on the radio at the right time, those are gifts back.

And sometimes that puts me in the right place at the right time to help people and some people could call that divine intervention and they'd probably be right, and the path that led me there was mine, because of my faith that that would happen.

This is what Caduceus is trying to grant to Fjord. The power to walk his own path. Fjord’s entire character arc has been centered around the fact that he, at his core, does not know who he is. Fjord knows who he can be, is excellent at molding himself to become someone else, but he, as a person? He doesn’t know his history, he barely knows his interests, he definitely doesn’t know what he wants. Every goal he’s had has been to try and learn more about himself and the situation he’s in. And so far, he’s defined himself by his circumstances, and his use to other people, which is why he’s flailing now. The safety net of “I know I am worth something to these people for as long as they can use me” is gone. He needs a strength that doesn’t come from an external source.

Fjord thinks that by Caduceus doing all this, Caduceus is trying to make Fjord a Wildmother cleric. Caduceus isn’t doing anything of the sort. Fjord thinks that if he chooses a god, they’ll grant him powers. That’s not a deal that can be made, not with any good entity. Fjord thinks that the Wildmother needs a reason to accept him. Fjord doesn’t realise that she’s already made her offering.

Caduceus does, because Caduceus is the offering. Fjord needs help in knowing who he is, so she sends him a friend with a +9 to insight. Fjord needs faith in himself, so Caduceus teaches him what faith is actually about. And he’s learning, even if he hasn’t realised it yet. If faith needs proof, it isn’t faith. Fjord doesn’t have any proof right now that he has any worth to the team. But he stuck with them anyway. And they’ve accepted him, and he’s continued helping them, even though he doesn’t believe he’s capable.

And he does have strengths, which is what the two of them are on this mission to find out. Everyone’s expecting Fjord to multiclass, but Fjord’s not at the point yet where he can make that decision. He’s viewing the gods as a menu, waiting for someone to tell him the right thing to choose. But the strength comes with the decision. He’s not going to magically gain new powers. But when he decides on his next path, when he’s ready to commit to it, with faith it won’t fail, that’s when he’s going to gain the ability to see it through

(And, to go back to the whole “Taliesin how the fuck have you wrapped this perfectly into game mechanics holy shit” thing, that’s exactly how it’s going to work, because he’ll multiclass when he’s ready, and gain the benefits of whatever he chooses next)

[focsle]

3/3 Character bios for Occult Telemarketer Bug Comic!

Basics Name: Alice Aubrey Nickname: None Age: 32 Gender: Woman Zodiac: Capricorn sun, scorpio moon, sagittarius rising

Physical Characteristics Height: 5’6” Weight: 120 lbs Distinctive features: She’s often got paint on her somewhere and carries the faint smell of turpentine around with her. Mannerisms:  She has very good posture, and often does body check ins for herself and also reminds others to do so too so they’re not crumpled in some weird position. She moves in a very deliberate way, with intention. Doesn’t needlessly expend a lot of energy. Voice: Deep and carries well, though she rarely raises her voice. She’s got a smooth-spoken ‘I could read audiobooks’ sort of vibe. Fashion: The look of someone who was a very gaudy goth in high school who went into high-end art sales as an adult and couldn’t keep up the look. She still wears almost entirely black, but in an understated dressy way save for some kind of unique jewelry statement piece. Also still fond of intense boots and never gave up her labret piercing. Fancy goth-lite.

Lifestyle Current place of residence: A small city in Upper World 247. The setting is like, US-Coastal-City-Adjacent, but isn’t a specific real-world location. She has a studio apartment that she lives in on her own with two cats.

Occupation: She’s a painter with work that leans heavily into surrealist horror. While she has gotten a number of gigs designing book covers and tends to have frequent gallery showings, it wasn’t enough to pay the bills so she also worked as an art handler ranging from installing in homes and galleries to transporting museum-quality work for very fancy auctions. That’s how she met Roth when he was two steps away from a nervous breakdown at the auction house they both used to work at. After he quit and got involved in his weird cult marketing scheme he reached out to her first, knowing of her art. She was intrigued and signed on shortly after.

Habits: Sort of like above, she does little physical exercises from time to time. Hand exercises, things like that. She’s also a big doodler, scribbling in the margins of notes or receipts, ripping up napkins in artful ways while waiting for a food order, etc.

Hobbies: Outside of her painting which is a career, she’s also a bit of a maker and does small runs of little sculpts and things. Going to museums but usually for specific shows rather than wandering. She wants to practice being a psychic, mostly in trying to talk to her cats, but hasn’t had any luck. Also helps out at a feral cat sanctuary sometimes. Also tries to be psychic at them.

Emotional Traits Personality: Alice is someone who has a great poker face, and it can be hard for strangers to get a read on her. She’s very measured in her interactions with people, so it’s hard to tell at first if she likes or dislikes someone. She is warm towards her friends, in a way that appears reserved but is always thoughtful, and is good at knowing what individual people need the most when she extends her friendship. She’s a bit no-nonsense, but is also quite open to new experiences. She is pretty much very interested in the possibility of Weird Shit, while also being very pragmatic about Weird Shit.

Positive traits: Attuned to people’s needs, extremely detail-oriented, trustworthy, frank

Negative traits: Falls into the trap of having to ’suffer for her art’, often appears aloof, sometimes her frankness can be cutting, can be impatient

Religion/belief system: She’ll believe it herself when she sees it, but isn’t about to dismiss anyone else’s beliefs. She’s interested in esoteric stuff in that she’s curious, doesn’t necessarily believe in it outright, but is willing to experiment.

Likes: Weird coffee-table art books, ambient music playlists, maker’s markets, finding time for herself, dream analysis.

Dislikes: Parties, hearing her own customer service voice because she can’t live on her art alone, people who don’t give her space, having to drive an art van...scary.

Goals: She’s really devoted to her art in a way that is sometimes hard to separate her own identity from it. She’s interested in capturing images and feelings outside of her own waking experience, and is always pushing her own visual perceptions to create something new. Bringing new things into the world and sharing them with other people, and hopefully having other people connect with them on some visceral level is her big thing.

Relationships Parents: Helen and Gregory Aubrey Siblings: None Orientation: Bi ace Relationship status: Single Notable relationships: Helen and Gregory Aubrey: Her parents who live out in the suburbs and Do Not Understand her art career. They’re mildly supportive of her in that they will come to a gallery opening from time to time and have a polite but visibly confused smile for the entire time. They were REAL EXCITED when she started working as an art handler at the Big Name auction house because it was something they could brag about on her behalf. She hasn’t told them she’s quit yet because she’s enjoyed them not asking after her work life and don’t want them to start up again. But she’s cordial with them and doesn’t really have a bad relationship with them. She just knows what is less frustrating to talk to them about.

Hypnos and Thanatos: Her two sphynx cats who are her BEST FRIENDS. Anyone who trashes her cats are on her shitlist. They have their own social media accounts. Her studio is half covered in artsy cat-shelves. Roth fuckin loves them which is how she decided he was Good People. 

Roth Maxilla: She met him at the auction house when he was already kind of frayed and eccentric, nearing his midlife crisis, and giving less and less of a fuck about propriety. She thought he was weird but cordial, and enjoyed his cutting remarks about the sort of customers they both had to work with (even though she had to be mum about her own ideas for the sake of professionalism). They got to talking about her art, Roth was quite interested in it to the point that he came to her next opening and was fairly ecstatic about it. It surprised her, but pleasantly so. After he quit in his dramatic fashion she found the auction house far more dull, and was fascinated when he reached out to her again to talk about his new spooky job. She didn’t believe him at first but wryly went along with it until he literally showed her how he summoned things in this living room and she was sold. Multi-Dimensional Art Inspiration.

[viktcrr-alt]

MAXENCE DANET FAUVAL / NONBINARY — don’t look now, but is that viktor samuels i see? the 24 year old visual arts student is in their senior year and he/they are a rochester alum. i hear they can be observant, ingenious, reticent and dependent, so maybe keep that in mind. i bet he/they will make a name for themselves living in garcia row. ( james. 20. est. she/they. )

LAST INTRO WOOOO !! u know what to mf DO !!

TW DEATH, HEAVY GRIEF, OVERDOSE / DRUG ADDICTION, HOSPITALIZATION, HYPERSEXUALITY, RELIGION MENTIONS, MENTAL ILLNESS

a e s t h e t i c s

old tvs and their static, worn tapes, horror movie screams, spilled ink, a sculptor’s hands, clay-stained, chicken scratch handwriting, messy notes, messy hair, scoffs and eye-rolls, bruised knuckles, sore throats, funeral homes and a crying preacher, shattered ceramics, knife fights, high ledges, vertically-striped pants, red lights, the moon shrouded in clouds, cigarette butts.

general info !!

full name: viktor phillip samuels

nickname(s): icky vicky :/

b.o.d. - jan 2nd

label(s): the black hole, the crepehanger, the impious, the opaque, the tempest, etc.

height: 6′0″

hometown: rochester, new york

sexuality: uuuhhh god … probably pan tbh

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biography !!

okay so … born and raised in rochester, new york to the well known samuels family. preacher father, a mother, a twin sister born 15 minutes before him - aka tatiana samuels, who died back in january.

kinda … grew up as a really awkward, quiet kid? like … just didn’t really interact with other kids super well, preferred being alone and like … digging up bugs in the dirt. only friend was like … his own sister.

grew out of this as they got older, instead sort of … becoming a bit of a dick? to compensate for years of awkwardness? will bite the hand that feeds him. was a full on nuisance by middle school. tatiana was not, at least, noticeably.

has always been a fan of darker materials, y’know - grim and creepy, morbid shit. big fan of tim burton ever since he was a kid, which isn’t … a good look for a preacher’s son, but he’s never really felt ~in~ with the rest of his family, anyway.

drew disturbing pictures as a kid probably tbh that prompted one or two or five phone calls home 2 assure everything was fine.

has always been really … good at art, in general - from drawing to painting to playing with clay, that’s always been viktor’s Thing.

aNyWaYs. being tatiana’s twin brother was kinda hard sometimes. tatiana and him were near opposites besides their same mean-spirited trait. she was better in the public than he was, but viktor was arguably more talented than tatiana. they both loved each other deeply and found each other as competition for their parents’ attention - a rivalry, of sorts.

high school is when viktor really started to act out - started extreme, like losing his virginity in their church and vandalism around the neighborhoods. faked being possessed in the middle of sunday service. almost had an exorcism performed on him, probably.

the only redeemable trait was like … his sheer talent with art. was in a 3d art AP course, specialized in sculpting - could pretty much create anything he wanted with enough dedication.

because his parents would be focused on disciplining him for his antics, tatiana could sneak away and get away with stuff easier. so like, y’know, that’s on the bright-side of things.

never been particularly motivated to do much - wasn’t planning on attending lockwood but his parents kinda … did and sent in his application for him b/c they were Not on board with him Wasting Away (wanted him out of the house asap)

actually pretty smart !! just doesn’t like … want to apply himself ever. double majoring in english and visual arts because they’re like … two of his only interests :/ plus he wants to write and illustrate his own series of children books with a style similar to tim burton’s

he’d been experimenting since high school but college is where he really started to like … crack down on himself and figure himself out. was out as pan & nonbinary by his sophomore year of college, just … not to his family, necessarily. thinks tatiana always knew, but didn’t … really use it against him, blessedly enough

always felt like the whole twin - connection thing was … both wack and also not-wack? sometimes it felt believable but sometimes he had no idea what was going on in tatiana’s head. but he felt oddly transparent to her, always - like he was predictable to no one but her.

( TW DEATH, GRIEF, OVERDOSE / HOSPITALIZATION BEYOND THIS POINT )

but when tatiana disappeared - it was like, like viktor knew. the moment she had been kidnapped - felt something deeply wrong in his gut. and when tatiana died - viktor felt something cut so severely in him. he knew, he always knew exactly when. he couldn’t put his finger on how - but he knew. even when everybody else held out hope for her to be found - he knew.

went on a bender around the same time, had always struggled w/ drug addiction but it got worse the longer tatiana went without being found.

( also struggled heavily with his mental health, too ?? has manic and depressive episodes. will fixate on a sculpting project for six months and then purposely knock it off the table and destroy it in the matter of seconds once it’s finished for. no fucking reason. impulse spends A Lot. )

when her body was found, viktor went off the rails. ended up overdosing and being hospitalized where he spent the next like … however long months … until they deemed him better.

has been back since the beginning of fall semester in an attempt to finish his senior year - mostly out of his parents’ insistence that he did, because he very much did not want to. 

is still dealing with a lot of trauma & grief, which was only amplified with dean lockwood’s death - causing him to spiral and be unpredictable with his mental health. some days are good, and some days are very bad.

personality !!

the human embodiment of a gremlin, fed after midnight. a goblin, if u will. one of those cats with a narrow head and big ass ears. that’s him.

b i g horror & halloween enthusiast. loves the old campy horror movies. probably has an abundance of masks from different movies. dresses like a grimy millennial beetlejuice more than he should. love those vertically striped pants!

fashion alternates between e-boy (would b tik tok famous if he were like … 17), millennial beetlejuice, and like … goth in a crop top and sweatpants. big fan of crop tops. big fan of sweatpants.

he can be fucking mean. petty, aggressive, instigator. will literally spit in ur face or no reason. kind of person who’ll stick his gum into other ppl’s hair. other than that he’s like … pretty okay. he’s not always mean, he’s just a dick like … 70% of the time lmao

i mean yeah okay he’ll call someone a stinky bitch for no reason except He Feels Like It And Believes It. it’s fine he’s fine, we’re fine.

despite the fact tht he’s probably getting into fights whenever - considers himself 2 be a lover n not a fighter but that’s just because he Fucks a lot. kind of uses it like a coping mechanism, like he’s this big fancy carnival show that’s like ‘come one, come all! fuck the dead girl’s twin brother!’ may have a problem w/ hypersexuality but it’s nothing he’s fully. aware of.

the preacher’s whore son, basically

like i said he’s pan & nb, switches between he and they pronouns but like … he has such a fragile grip on his identity that u could call him ‘dog-faced bitch’ and he’d turn like hey wassup :)

vastly impulsive, like i’ve mentioned … destroys his own creations 4 the fun of it, spends all his money on useless shit, will cheat on someone bc he feels like it. screams into the night sky frequently, like a cat in heat.

i mean he also creates useless shit for no reason too. spent six months sculpting a hollowed out tree the size of him and then took a sledgehammer to it.

dramatic fuck. used to play the organ at the church like … when no one was looking after him and service was about to start. just these creepy as melodies. would do the same thing at home on his keyboard w/ the organ setting whenever he got grounded until his parents took away his keyboard sadjfkg

won’t talk about his time away b/c it’s not rly anybody’s business but ofc nothing is sacred to the watershed app, y’know, nothing’s private.

still like - he absolutely refuses to talk about tatiana’s death and like, his mental health or his addiction (he’s fallen back into it tbh but it hasn’t gotten bad again … yet) or like … anything involving his own emotions

will literally just change the topic! abruptly, no warning, asks about the jonas brothers instead.

that being said he’s obsessed with tatiana’s death. tatiana was very much a rock for him, kinda dependent on her in a way? just … being there, y’know, kept him grounded.

so he obv became a shepherd bc he wants to know Everything there is abt the app, wants to be deep inside it, wanted to know Who Exactly Killed Tatiana and like … not saying he wants 2 commit murder but :/ yknow. he’s very upset.

emotionally unavailable while also like crying twice a day.

will tell you straight up what he wants from you, no bullshit, no beating around the bush - just blunt. if he wants to just fuck, nothing else, then that’s that. if he feels deviation he’ll ghost in like. less than a second. kinda awful like that! feels no shame.

but like … also is emotional ?? as shit ?? it’s confusing. he’ll cry on a whim and then flip u off if u try to console him or like. ask him anything. will bite you.

he goes to therapy but he generally fucks around and wastes most of the time until the therapist threatens to like … idk what therapists r allowed to threaten. to send him off to another therapist? idk.

likes being intimidating but like … not with his body or nothing ‘cos he’s a TWIG, but like … uses his love for horror n creepy shit to his advantage. has an abundance of fake blood. has channeled the energy of jack nicholson and used it on tatiana’s boyfriends before.

( also a big fan of sfx makeup, has dabbled in it)

probably chases kids with a chainsaw (w/o the like … chain … or w/e … so it’s not actually Dangerous) around halloween

he’s generally never doing good, both mental health wise and morally.

would probably steal candy from a baby for the fun of it.

i don’t know if there’s a good to him, deep down, and i don’t know if he sees any issues with himself either !! nothing really breaks through to him anymore, the only person who ever really made him stop and Think about his actions was tatiana.

kinda introverted, recluse type who doesn’t rly like most people or going out, but he’ll go to parties if it means he’ll be high as shit.

pretty observant. likes to analyze people even though he’s probably not … fully right.

wanted connections !!

he lives alone currently but like … ex - roommates where viktor was just. a nightmare to live with.

feel like a lot of enemies is also a possibility !! viktor’s messy.

people that like … knew tatiana. dated tatiana, even, and viktor would pretty much try to intimidate / scare them at any given chance :/

close friends of tatiana too

people who hated tatiana but liked viktor. people who hated viktor but liked tatiana

people who take pity on him and he Hates it viciously and vocally.

a band of hooligan gremlin kids who do drugs and fuck shit up around town like they’re edgy teenagers even though they’re all early to mid 20s.

the girl he lost his virginity 2 in high school lmao … a distant memory

fellow rochester locals, from church or school or whatever

exes from the past !! good terms and bad terms, but i love bad terms a whole lot mainly b/c viktor’s a jackass.

don’t know if he’s soft towards anybody but we can try. we can Try.

friends, old friends, new friends, bad friends, good friends, close friends, frenemies, etc. etc. all of it

hookups !! so many hookups. fwbs, one night stands, whatever.

uuhhhh god. i don’t know. im so sleepy rn. people in the same major or similar majors.

maybe a ride or die.

people he’s a bad influence on / an enabler towards / all around toxic for them / each other.

people he’s fought !! people who’ve seen him get into random fights and were like ‘uh wtf’

fellow shepherds !!

literally anything im not picky.

[baconpal]

talkin bout fire force

shit boys it’s been too long time for another unprompted juvenile rant about manga, click keep reading if you’re insane and keep scrolling if you aren’t 

So Fire Force anime starts in just about a week and I decided to just read it all instead of waiting for any anime. It took a while to read all of it and now I just kind of have a lot to say about the manga, the anime, and the author. So here we go. 

I actually have a lot of good things to talk about, but I’ll get the bad shit out of the way first:

THE WRITING

idk his name it doesn’t really matter since he’s made like 2 things he’s just the soul eater guy; his art style has always been charming and the action scenes keep improving but his actual narrative writing is real bad. I’ll talk about the characters themselves since I actually think FF’s characters are a ridiculous improvement from soul eater, and the setting/aesthetic are on point as well but the plot is just as bad if not worse than whatever soul eater was.

The story is riddled with what should obviously be throwaway characters that keep being brought back and doing something evil and unexpected because it’s a shounen manga and if you aren’t being betrayed then the plot isn’t moving forward, or someone introduced as an obviously villainous character just kind of agrees to be friends in a couple chapters. This is used as a constant cycle of introducing both a set of “evil” and “good” characters, then one of the old “good” sets of characters does something evil and the newest “evil” guys turn out to be good. It’s not interesting or shocking to have a character you can’t even remember come back and act like they’re important, especially if it’s repeated over and over.

FF pretends to have some kind of politic overtones where religions and businesses and such act as their own entities and betray each other and prey on the civilians, but you see absolutely none of the impact anybody’s actions have on the world despite ridiculous things constantly happening and world shaking truths being brought to light over and over, nothing happens. Villains will also  have ridiculous unbeatable abilities but then just be ignored, such as making zombie apocalypses or controlling minds and such. This is also likely a concession of being a shounen manga, where you can’t expect readers to read every single chapter, and usually on a week to week basis, so every chapter needs to have its own big shit happening, even if there’s no plans to follow through on anything. 

The worst part about the writing is how much stuff that the reader didn’t know about and has no idea what it is is passed of as some shocking twist when it’s introduced. This mostly happens with powers and with new factions. There’s a ridiculous amount of times where a new group steps in as the bad guy like mentioned earlier. But for the powers, there’s so many things layered on top of an actually acceptable power system that just seem to cause a DBZ type of escalation of power without the fight scenes actually becoming that much crazier at all. On top of the simple 2nd/3rd generation fire fighter powers, the main character is meant to utilize the adolla burst, the adolla link, the preacher’s divine protection, the okay hand emoji that makes you go fast, the breath of life, and superfire fighting. None of that means anything to anyone and are just used as “MC needs to be better at something but only temporarily” over and over. It’s similar to Maka and Soul’s deals with the devil in soul eater except much more common and with absolutely no downsides.

Also not the fault of the writer himself but there is not ANY good translation of this manga out there holy shit. There’s so many incredibly obvious puns and connections and choices of words to be made that are just entirely ignored, the typesetting is always awful, and no name for moves, characters, or even the title are ever agreed upon. It took until the official release titled “Fire Force” before people stopped trying to call the manga “Burning Firefighter Squad of Fire”.

THE ANIME

Just a bit more bad to say before I go into all the shit about this manga i actually like. The anime looks awful. A lot of anime does right now, very little of note has been coming out or seems to be coming in the future, which is usually the case but its not getting better and that sucks! 

But specifically the fire force anime, following up after soul eater, has absolutely none of the visual charm translated from the manga to anime, the voice casting is absolutely abysmal, and there’s nothing to give me hope in it, not enough to even give it an episode most likely. People might try to defend David productions because woah man I love jojo!!! but they’re pretty fucking bad at animating anything. The choice of color is gross and the visual effects are bland, which is a bad place to start for a show that will contain tons of fire and other bombastic effects. Big shame.

OKAY ONTO THAT GOOD SHIT

CHARACTER DESIGN

The visual designs in soul eater were cool if a bit janky, and the actual concepts for characters were far from astounding, usually being able to fully describe characters in single words and not having much development outside of combat abilities. But Fire Force has some of the most tight characters I’ve seen in a while, they’re all simple and focused with strong thematic elements.

Ya’ll know me, hopefully. I really appreciate simple designs and simple characters. Complicated does not equal deep, and simple does not equal shallow. The characters in fire force will usually embody a concept, or a concept and its exact opposite, and be never waver from their design. I’ll talk about em for specific characters when I get to em but even lots of minor characters are very well focused and I appreciate it.

SHINRA

The main character, and while his grocery list of special abilities and “chosen one” kinda shit is annoying, he starts of as a very strong introspective of the weight of your actions vs the impression you give of in the eyes of society. The easiest way to describe it is through the very obvious identity struggle he goes through of wanting to be known as a “Hero” but instead being “The Devil”. All Shinra ever does is selflessly save peoples lives and put himself at extreme risk, he tells everyone and their grandma that they can call on him when they need a hero, and yet his visuals consist of a dark haired punk who constantly smiles a sharp toothy smile, his ability that he uses to fly in and do kamen rider kicks with spews fire from his feet in the shape of pointy wings, and this fire puts a heavy shadow over his face, giving him a monsterous siloutte. It’s not at all subtle that he just looks as evil and menacing as possible, and so his reputation is constantly negative no matter how kind he is. It’s not explored all that deeply but it is still a strong contrast.

ARTHUR

What a fucking idiot. What an absolute buffoon. This stupid fuck functions as a very simple gag character by being nearly too dumb to function and living in a made up reality as a fantasy knight, but is also able to exist as one of the strongest characters in combat. His ridiculous power is handled in a much more engaging way than Shinra’s. As instead of layering multiple chosen one abilities on him, he becomes weaker or stronger depending on his suspension of disbelief. The more in character as a powerful knight he becomes, the stronger he is. It’s a clean way to make a funny delusional characters struggle actually mean something to the people around them, instead of being left to his own devices or constantly told to fuck off. And while I said the plot isn’t very good, the smaller character beats can be very powerful. For example, It was already pretty easy to just accept Arthur as he was, but his family situation is explored late into the manga, and it’s shown that he began to live in fantasy to escape from his families arguments and poor living conditions. His parents take advantage of his disconnect and abandon their home with him in it, leaving all their responsibilities to him with a note saying he’s now the king and has inherited their castle. This pushes him to an even more absurd degree of fantasy in order to just live out his life knowing he was unloved and unwanted. It very understated how you can make a character that’s mostly used for jokes still be very easy to connect to and empathize. 

TAMAKI 

This one is likely to be the hottest take made from me here today, but this is the most interesting character in this series for a variety of reasons. 

Visuals out of the way, the fire fighter outfits everyone wears already look cool as shit and big puffy coats just get me goin, this girl absolutely rocks it on top of having twintails and a cute face. That’s not objective in anyway this is just a character designed to bait specifically me and its fucking working, okay? The writing is the actually interesting part.

So something that’s usually not even worth talking about is fan service. Show of a girls titties cus its what dudes in their teens want to see, its free (You)s for shounen manga, and soul eater was full of it. It was pretty bad in soul eater and could come at jarring and unneeded times for characters that didn’t seem to exist for any sexual reasons. It was a very poor way to include fan service. 

Fire Force also begins in a similar spot, the 3 main girls that are around in the beginning chapters are occasionally seen changing or in a bath or covered in water or whatever, with one particularly bad spread of them with the classic no nipple no vagina bodies all standing together in a shower. Its awkward and stiff and even as a fan of anime tiddie it just wasn’t worth having. 

But then that wildman just does it. He creates one single character to put literally every single ounce of horny energy in to. A character who exists to fall over and get her tits pushed into someones face, but pushed to a cartoonish extreme. It sounds silly to try to pass off fanservice as funny, but it is. It’s so ridiculously intended and impossible and always varied that its actually fun to see her do something stupid and for something to happen. Sometimes its just her ass landing on a dudes face (god i wish that were me) or her body being exposed and drawn in pretty high detail. Sometimes instead they get an entire dude stuck in her shirt after just tripping in a way that is not not being sexual to the reader at all since you see absolutely no skin. She’s simply destined to be put into lewd situations in universe, not in regards to the manga itself. For an example, here she is just standing completely still, and suddenly becoming naked, drawn in a distant, goofy way: 

It’s stupid. It’s definitely still fan service, but it’s just ridiculous. And that’s way more interesting than having every girl in your series randomly get naked at some point. Despite being insane it still works on boys, as Tamaki is the most popular girl in the series by far, ranked as the second most popular character consistently. 

Tamaki also leads to the single best chapter of the manga where a horribly designed throw-away assassin who was beaten by her returns for revenge, but just ends up as a short, self contained, well paced comedic story of love. 

And guess what, she’s still interesting outside of being funny and having fan service. Her cartoonish luck is essentially treated as her actual power, and her fire cat abilities aren’t explored too deeply during most of the series, but this is done for a greater purpose of essentially spitting in the face of high stakes. Tamaki easily witnesses the most deaths in the series, and most of them are cruel and unusual. She witnesses children being killed by a man who inspired her, she sees people she just met be beheaded in some gruesome shots that aren’t anywhere else in the series, and she gets involved in all sorts of life threatening situations. She still just falls over and gets naked. She’ll have fairly serious fights where she tries her hardest or the people around her are completely serious, and without bringing any direct attention to it she still ends up showing skin. There’s a point where every single character is at risk of dying at once to a trap set by the enemy, and Tamaki quietly laments over how she’ll be the only one to survive. She is completely aware of her ridiculous luck and her complete immunity to stakes, which is honestly just great.

Even beyond that, Tamaki is slowly being built up as more and more of an actual character, she has a short backstory section where her own hard work and effort is basically ignored by everyone around her, as if her success in life is only a result of her good luck, which is a feeling that hits very close to home to me (fuck you if you’ve ever discredited someones hard work because they’re “””””talented””””). And in the most recent couple of chapters, shes made an active effort to train alongside Shinra and Arthur, who both value the improvements they can make to themselves through hard work. No other characters in the cast make conscious efforts to improve from their status in the way Tamaki does. She moves up from a joke character to now trying to stand along side the main character as a useful and though out character. It’s a genuinely wonderful character to have been developed and the best thing I’ve gotten from this author.

VISUALS AND COMPOSITION

Okay enough about the characters, the last little thing I wanna touch on is just some of the absolutely bonkers kinds of compositions in this manga. One of the villains has an ability that is explained incredibly poorly. Pretty sure it’s just a time slowing ability that has nothing to do with fire but whatever. The pages where he uses the ability have this absolutely sick warped look to them that plays with the panels in a way that couldn’t be depicted in any other medium. Just look at this shit.

Every panel has a different background and yet still describes a single cut in time. It might not really mean anything, but that’s fucking sick dude.

Another pretty interesting one is this one kid named Nataku, who has an ability forced onto him by a maniac with a motif of stars for eyes, who dies immediately after. This event is shown to have absolutely traumatized him not because its directly said, but because this dead character appears constantly in panels with this kid, sometimes taking up the entire background to yell at him, or being an almost impossible to see spec lingering behind him. Nataku is also drawn in this strange sketchy style where he seems to be melting, and sometimes melds into shapes that resemble this dead character, such Nataku’s mouth becoming the fucking eyeball of the dead guy, star pupil and everything. It’s just such a specific and horrific way to depict that kind of identity trauma and it really stuck out to me.

I’LL SHUT UP NOW

And ye that’s about it. It was a lot of rambling and there are still lots of little things i like about the manga, good designs and cool fights and stuff but i just wanted to talk about the things that were really noteworthy to me. 

It’s been a long time since I’ve spent 4 hours just typing about stuff but if you actually read any of this, on this dead website of all places, you’re cool. Hope you found something interesting too.

[etoilebinaire]

OC profile meme

I got tagged by @aeducanka / @reverienne !! thank you! My darling Revan/Jess Ashley ❤️

PHYSICAL

Name: Jess Ashley/Revan    She chose the name Revan when she was pretty young, after dropping her deadname. The jedi council gave her the name Jess Ashley along with her fake memories, but it stuck and she doesn’t mind being called either.

Nickname: Rev, Jessie

Age: 30 at the start of kotor1

Morality: Neutral Evil     I always have a hard time choosing an accurate alignment for my characters since I feel like they’re always in between somewhere. Jess is definitely neutral, since she does defy laws and rules if it’s in her best interest, but doesn’t go out of her way to break any. She certainly isn’t “good”, either. Neutral evil is being capable of anything as long as it advances the character or their goals and I feel like that fits quite well. (also she was on the red morality side ingame) PERSONAL

Religion: does the force count?    Jess doesn’t follow either the jedi or the sith code closely, but she’s very attuned and connected to the force and has created her own religion-like thinking around it. She definitely believes the force has a certain predetermined destiny for anyone and anything, and that she is able to sense that destiny. This has quite gone to her head, as she believes she’s some kind of prophet who can see the force’s will. However, she doesn’t dare going against that destiny(and if she does; it’s only reserved for the people she loves most in the universe). 

Sins: greed/gluttony/sloth/lust/pride/envy/wrath

Virtues: chastity/charity/dilligence/humility/kindness/patience/justice

Known languages: common, wookiee, and since she has the force power comprehend speech, a lot more (even if she can’t remember how she got the ability to speak those languages)

Build: scrawny/bony/slender/fit/athletic/curvy/herculean/pudgy/plus size/average

Height: ~1.70m?

Scars/Birthmarks: Claw scars on her lower back    Headcanon time! She and some other padawans were stationed on Hoth for some training in the snow and of course she wandered off cause she was bored. Alek was right on her heels cause he was always the more responsible of the two and he was worried. They got sneak attacked by some big creature, which left Revan with scars on her lower back (since she was too embarrassed to go to a proper healer) and from then on they both hated Hoth, and even disliked the cold. Even after her memory loss, Jess had an unexplainable reluctance to go to Hoth, and still disliked the cold. ABILITIES/POWERS

1. She is able to sense the “will of the force”, and sees destined outcomes through the force. However, these destinies can be pretty vague and have to be interpreted by Jess herself.

2. Jess has an incredible amount of patience, mostly because she can see the humour in almost every situation and she doesn’t mind waiting if she is amused in the meantime.

3. She is a skilled warrior with double blades, both lightsaber(red and yellow) and vibroblades. She can handle herself in hand to hand combat too.

4. If she truly wants something, almost nothing will stop her from reaching her goals, and she is not above using any powers possible or playing dirty if it is convenient for her. However, this rarely happens as she is cocky enough to believe she can do most things with half her effort. 

5. Jess is very good at swoop racing and is NOT afraid of going fast. Mostly cause she doesn’t care if she hits anything on the way.

6. She is also a pretty skilled mechanic, she can fix any swoop bike and do small repairs/improvements on ships and other machinery.

RESTRICTIONS

1. Because she thinks she can sense the “will of the force”, she often blames the force for stuff that she alone is to blame for. She also uses it as an excuse, which is infuriating for her friends.

2. She strongly believes that people do not change; they can only realize potentials or go ‘off track’ on their destiny. If people change drastically, they either have always been like that without realizing or they are just plain wrong. So, if she has made her mind up about you, she rarely ever changes her perspective. For example: in her opinion, Bastila’s true destiny was being a jedi, so she was not very concerned when she ‘turned to the dark side’. 

3. This makes her very stubborn and stuck in her thinking. Once you get to know her, she is actually pretty predictable and sometimes really frustrating.

4. Jess is really arrogant and believes she is practically unbeatable, and that her ideals/ideas are always right. She cannot wrap her head around being wrong about something or someone.

5. She cannot cook for shit, which is why she likes making soups best (can’t burn that!)

6. Jess gets.. ‘moods’. These ‘moods’ are difficult to describe but the best similar thing I know is PMS, but different and very aggressive. During these moods, everything feels wrong and she’s like a spring full of tension about to jump up and blind someone. It’s like an accumulation of all the wrong things in her life (and there are A LOT) that sometimes just needs to… get out. She usually solves them by getting into a fight or physically destroying something, and then just waiting for it to get out of her system. Nobody really knows where these moods come from or how to solve them in a nonviolent way, but meditating with Jolee seems to lessen the aggression a little.  

FAVOURITES

Food: Creamed Rishi corn soup (there is a lot of food on wookieepedia omg)

Pizza topping: Peppers 

Colour: Red!

Music genre: Electronic Dance Music    F.E.M.M. would be her fave artists

Movie genre: Heist movies or like... fast & furious stuff 

Curse words: Jess is one of those casual cursers who doesn’t even think about it anymore. So her fav is probably just “kriff” which she uses every other sentence. However, being around Mission (and Bastila tbh) would make her more cautious with her cursing. She also definitely picked up some Mando’a curses from Canderous.

Scents: The scent swoop bikes leave behind after speeding away, Kashyyyk after a rainy day, the smokey smell that’s present in the shady part of bars, the oily smell at the work bench, the black tea she likes to drink with Juhani. FUN STUFF

Bottom or top: Top but she also doesn’t mind switching

Sings in the shower: No, she absolutely hates her singing voice even after assurations from her friends that it’s fine. She doesn’t mind her normal talking voice anymore, but singing is just too deep and masculine and wrong and not her.

Likes puns: Yes. The worse the better. She would have the worst shit-eating grin on her face after telling one and she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from smiling.

TAGGING

I’m tagging @aeducanka back cause I know you got a lot more ocs and i want to hear about them all 👀. Also @lesbianvisas @jediisapphic @lady--revan @lordmalak @theebonhawke if you feel like filling this out I’d love to read it!! But no pressure of course :D 

[cinnbar-bun]

Gakuen Fantasy

A/n: Hi did you know I like making AU’s at 11 PM??? Also this was inspired by me playing too many otomes. 

Edit: thank you Discord for helping me with Siegfriend, Lancey, and Seruel. 

Welcome to Phantagrande High, where people of all shapes, sizes, and powers are invited to hone in their skills and talents. As the new Language Arts teacher recruited to the school, you must adjust to the hectic lifestyle of some of the most insane personalities you have ever met. Although...maybe you could learn a thing or two from those romantic stories you’ve been teaching and spice up your love life? 

Romanceable Options~

The Wise and Calm Principal, Lucifer: The man who started this whole new mess for you. Ever the diplomat, he has a way with words and can seemingly diffuse any situation with one phrase alone. All the faculty and students respect him dearly, and in turn, he respects them as well. But he hasn’t been known to get too close to anyone romantically, perhaps you could change all that? 

The Blunt and Fearless Vice-Principal, Sandalphon: Although he may act like he hates his job, he takes it quite seriously. Many students fear him for the simple fact he has such a short fuse and will blow up on anything. The faculty isn’t all too scared, knowing he’s just a sensitive guy on the inside (and they can’t help but make jabs at him after he took the coffee machine into his office). Ever the hard-head, he’s never experienced love before, and he sure as hell will never admit that aloud (even though it’s quite obvious). But that can change once he softens up with a bit of your love. 

The Sadistic and Ruthless Biology Teacher, Lucilius: This man is one that EVERYONE fears. Even Lucifer has been trying to get him fired. Rumors spread around that he eats children who fail his class or dissects those who chew gum in his class. He has a fascination with the world around him and loves conducting research over everything he can get his hands on. He also gets a bit too excited over dissections. It also doesn’t help that he has a short temper and expects perfection from his students, who all cry at least three times in his class. He takes no shit and hands out insults like greetings, so if he tends to take a jab at you, ignore him. But what’s hiding under that cold front he puts up (answer: an even bigger asshole)

The Raunchy and Suave A&P Teacher, Belial: If shameless was ever a person, it would be Belial. He has no qualms about flirting with everything that breathes (DON’T WORRY HE’S NOT FLIRTING WITH THE CHILDREN!! HE HAS SOME BOUNDARIES OVER HERE!!) but he seems to have taken a liking to you. He’s quite popular with some of the female students (for some inexplicable reason) and he loves messing with the other three men on top. What’s the point of life without taking some risks? But are you prepared to handle this absolute demon of a man? Maybe you’ll find something worthy under the messy persona he plays up? 

The Kind and Sweet Home Ec Teacher, Vane: This man is absolutely perfect, every girl (and guy) will admit. Although he’s not too bright, he makes up for it with his big heart (that really accentuates his chest) and warm smile. He’s very fair and forgiving, and every student that walks in walks out with a better understanding of how to manage day by day activities. He’s eager to become great friends with you, but maybe you could be something more? 

The Bubbly and Clutzy Home Ec Teacher, Beatrix: One of the other Home Ec teachers who seems to have quite the reputation for being an adorable clutz. The male populous tends to take her class for an easy a but can’t help it when she drops things. The students think she’s very funny and sweet, and her food is great (when it actually is cooked). She usually complains about her ‘absolutely boring’ life in the teacher’s lounge and wishes for a day when she’s whisked off into a sweeping romance. You might not be a prince from another country, but you could give her the love she needs, right? 

The Cold and Stern Economics Teacher, Aglovale: No one knows he’s also the CEO of a very popular business, and he knows economics like the back of his hand. The general consensus in him is a very respected one, and he makes sure to always keep a good light on him. He pretends he doesn’t care for the kids, but all the teachers know better. A very good bonus, he has glasses and his voice has been known to be extremely pleasing to the ears. He may act aloof around you, but do you think you have what it takes to melt his cold heart? 

The Fiery and Hotheaded Math Teacher, Percival: The younger brother of Aglovale, who also helps him occasionally with running the business. He’s a lot more open than his brother and tends to give attitude back though. The students love him a lot and go absolutely nuts when he’s roasting a kid who likes to mouth off. He’s exceptionally by the book and has certain expectations he wishes of people. You may have caught his eye, newbie, but can you really keep its hold? 

The Loud and Militaristic PE Teacher, Ilsa: A rather scary lady on the outside who takes her job as a PE teacher a bit too seriously. A lot of people will complain about how hard she is, but the athletes worship her like she’s their goddess. Seriously, they’ve never one as many times as they had until she’s come along. Her form of tough love tends to grate people the wrong way, but deep down, she’s really trying to find someone who will look past the ‘scary’ her.

The Hardworking yet Princely Engineering Teacher, Yurius: A man of many talents regarding creating anything, who tends to be more of a behind the scenes worker. He isn’t too flashy, and makes up for his more quiet behavior with cheeky jokes and genuine concern. Hopefully you make a good impression with him, and learn just how much a goof he really is inside. 

The Thunderstruck and Loyal Physics Teacher, Albert: A man who’s best friends with Yurius, and happens to love teaching about electricity. Physics is practically coursing through his veins and he makes sure his students are all on the same page. Not that much of a surprise, but him and Yurius run the robotics club and they seem to always win. He may look rather cold, but he is a really nice guy and will gladly show you the ropes or give you the best advice on some of the students and faculty. Maybe you two could teach each other a thing or two about love? 

The Seductive and Sweet Horticulture Teacher, Rosetta: This woman is the envy of all. Her sweet words can coax anyone to her beck and call. The greenhouse where she teaches at has become her new home, and many grow to love nature and plants due to her beautiful and poetic lessons and demonstrations. She can get quite flirty and beat around the bush, but know this, every rose has its thorns. If you mess with her, prepare for a life of hell. But otherwise, she’ll be a wonderful companion in your life if you manage to look deep inside and find the true beauty within her. 

The Patient and Inspirational Music Teacher, Caro: A rather young man who has been with the academy since day one. He lives for the creative endeavors of his students and has no problems with helping them step by step. To him, the most beautiful thing ever is not gold or jewels, but the sounds people can create. He was really interested by your presence and wishes to get closer to you, although he is rather shy about doing so. The sound his heart makes when he’s around you makes him absolutely smitten, and he hopes to get closer to experience all of what love has to offer. 

The Curious and Eccentric World Religions Teacher, Shiva: His appearance might startle some, but they quickly learn that he is passionate about his subject. He is always curious about what humans believe and how they go about their faith, and it makes him smile knowing the beauty of humanity. Some might call him a weirdo for being so in love with that, but he pays no mind. He is his own person, and he craves more and more. Although he hates being selfish, for some reason, he can’t help but want to know more about you. You’ve been a peculiar person, and he thinks he’d like to learn more. 

The Lazy and Rowdy Chemistry Teacher, Elmott: A man who is a self proclaimed pyromanic, who takes far too much pleasure in setting things on fire. He is unafraid of speaking his mind and will let everyone know what he’s thinking, whether they’re a student or faculty member. He can get mouthy, but he truly cares about his students and their education, and is the first to defend them if something is wrong. He quickly earns the respect of his students and fellow teachers, even if he pretends he doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Trust us, he isn’t a bad guy, no matter what he says. 

The Mysterious and Unknown Cryptid, Siegfried: A man who does... well know one really knows? Even Lucifer can’t give a straight answer. But it doesn’t matter since he tends to do the odd jobs or the ones no one really wants to do. Some kids claim he lives in a dungeon under the school. Others say the big shadow they saw trimming the bushes is secretly a lizard monster who is trying to infiltrate the government. Again, no one really knows. But the gentle giant who helped you with the copier machine certainly can’t be that bad, right? 

The Helpful and Stressed Counselor, Lancelot: The most reliable counselor the school’s ever seen. The kids absolutely adore him, and his job ranges from settling disputes between the students to helping them with their college applications. This man has connections and could probably hook you up with something wonderful. Because he can never say ‘no’, he stresses himself beyond belief. Of course, his best buddy Vane is always there to help him remember to eat and not drown himself with alcohol. Maybe you could show him that he is capable of taking a break and not dying?

The Smartass and Stoic Librarian, Seruel: A man of culture who really hates noises. He gets a bad reputation for telling the louder kids to be quiet, but really, he’s just trying to do his job. A lot of kids think he’s kinda scary because of his face, but if you ask him for help locating a book or some information on a subject (because he’s a walking encyclopedia) he’d be more than happy to help. He tends to remember frequent library-goers and likes to discuss books with them and what they thought of it. He’s read way too many trashy romance novels recommended to him by some sophomores, but he’s more than ready to start a real romance with you. If you can get past the rude jabs at first. 

A splendid array of options indeed. Are you ready to tackle your new job and try your luck at a love life? 

[viktcrr-archive]

MAXENCE DANET FAUVEL / NONBINARY. — viktor samuels is really making a name for themselves as a tier 3 shepherd. i think that he/they are studying english + visual arts in their senior year at lockwood, living in peregrinis. originally from rochester, new york, viktor is known to be observant & ingenious, but can also be reticent & dependent. — james / 20 / est / she/they.

3/5 !!! once again ... little edits

TW DEATH, HEAVY GRIEF, OVERDOSE / DRUG ADDICTION, HOSPITALIZATION, HYPERSEXUALITY, RELIGION MENTIONS, MENTAL ILLNESS

a e s t h e t i c s

old tvs and their static, worn tapes, horror movie screams, spilled ink, a sculptor’s hands, clay-stained, chicken scratch handwriting, messy notes, messy hair, scoffs and eye-rolls, bruised knuckles, sore throats, funeral homes and a crying preacher, shattered ceramics, knife fights, high ledges, vertically-striped pants, red lights, the moon shrouded in clouds, cigarette butts.

general info !!

full name: viktor phillip samuels

nickname(s): icky vicky :/

b.o.d. - jan 2nd

label(s): the black hole, the crepehanger, the impious, the opaque, the tempest, etc.

height: 6′0″

hometown: rochester, new york

sexuality: uuuhhh god … probably pan tbh

pinterest

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biography !!

okay so … born and raised in rochester, new york to the well known samuels family. preacher father, a mother, a twin sister born 15 minutes before him - aka tatiana samuels, who died back in january.

kinda … grew up as a really awkward, quiet kid? like … just didn’t really interact with other kids super well, preferred being alone and like … digging up bugs in the dirt. only friend was like … his own sister.

grew out of this as they got older, instead sort of … becoming a bit of a dick? to compensate for years of awkwardness? will bite the hand that feeds him. was a full on nuisance by middle school. tatiana was not, at least, noticeably.

has always been a fan of darker materials, y’know - grim and creepy, morbid shit. big fan of tim burton ever since he was a kid, which isn’t … a good look for a preacher’s son, but he’s never really felt ~in~ with the rest of his family, anyway.

drew disturbing pictures as a kid probably tbh that prompted one or two or five phone calls home 2 assure everything was fine.

has always been really … good at art, in general - from drawing to painting to playing with clay, that’s always been viktor’s Thing.

aNyWaYs. being tatiana’s twin brother was kinda hard sometimes. tatiana and him were near opposites besides their same mean-spirited trait. she was better in the public than he was, but viktor was arguably more talented than tatiana. they both loved each other deeply and found each other as competition for their parents’ attention - a rivalry, of sorts.

high school is when viktor really started to act out - started extreme, like losing his virginity in their church and vandalism around the neighborhoods. faked being possessed in the middle of sunday service. almost had an exorcism performed on him, probably.

the only redeemable trait was like … his sheer talent with art. was in a 3d art AP course, specialized in sculpting - could pretty much create anything he wanted with enough dedication.

because his parents would be focused on disciplining him for his antics, tatiana could sneak away and get away with stuff easier. so like, y’know, that’s on the bright-side of things.

never been particularly motivated to do much - wasn’t planning on attending lockwood but his parents kinda … did and sent in his application for him b/c they were Not on board with him Wasting Away (wanted him out of the house asap)

actually pretty smart !! just doesn’t like … want to apply himself ever. double majoring in english and visual arts because they’re like … two of his only interests :/ plus he wants to write and illustrate his own series of children books with a style similar to tim burton’s

he’d been experimenting since high school but college is where he really started to like … crack down on himself and figure himself out. was out as pan & nonbinary by his sophomore year of college, just … not to his family, necessarily. thinks tatiana always knew, but didn’t … really use it against him, blessedly enough

always felt like the whole twin - connection thing was … both wack and also not-wack? sometimes it felt believable but sometimes he had no idea what was going on in tatiana’s head. but he felt oddly transparent to her, always - like he was predictable to no one but her.

( TW DEATH, GRIEF, OVERDOSE / HOSPITALIZATION BEYOND THIS POINT )

but when tatiana disappeared - it was like, like viktor knew. the moment she had been kidnapped - felt something deeply wrong in his gut. and when tatiana died - viktor felt something cut so severely in him. he knew, he always knew exactly when. he couldn’t put his finger on how - but he knew. even when everybody else held out hope for her to be found - he knew.

went on a bender around the same time, had always struggled w/ drug addiction but it got worse the longer tatiana went without being found.

( also struggled heavily with his mental health, too ?? has manic and depressive episodes. will fixate on a sculpting project for six months and then purposely knock it off the table and destroy it in the matter of seconds once it’s finished for. no fucking reason. impulse spends A Lot. )

when her body was found, viktor went off the rails. ended up overdosing and being hospitalized where he spent the next like … however long months … until they deemed him better.

stayed out of school until very recently b/c he just … didn’t want to go back. didn’t want to deal with it. didn’t want to be known as the dead girl’s twin. but then his mom kinda just was like ‘u go back 2 school or god so help me’ n he was like FINE.

so ya !! viktor’s back after being gone since tatiana’s body was found. that’s it, that’s him, a lil glimpse of his life.

trying to finish his senior year b/c he … obviously left before he could.

finding out that it was george who killed tatiana has ultimately ... caused viktor to spiral. his lows are some of his lowest, his highs are ... very high, but very bad. unstable & unpredictable in his actions it’s ... a whole thing :/

personality !!

the human embodiment of a gremlin, fed after midnight. a goblin, if u will. one of those cats with a narrow head and big ass ears. that’s him.

b i g horror & halloween enthusiast. loves the old campy horror movies. probably has an abundance of masks from different movies. dresses like a grimy millennial beetlejuice more than he should. love those vertically striped pants!

fashion alternates between e-boy (would b tik tok famous if he were like … 17), millennial beetlejuice, and like … goth in a crop top and sweatpants. big fan of crop tops. big fan of sweatpants.

he can be fucking mean. petty, aggressive, instigator. will literally spit in ur face or no reason. kind of person who’ll stick his gum into other ppl’s hair. other than that he’s like … pretty okay. he’s not always mean, he’s just a dick like … 70% of the time lmao

i mean yeah okay he’ll call someone a stinky bitch for no reason except He Feels Like It And Believes It. it’s fine he’s fine, we’re fine.

despite the fact tht he’s probably getting into fights whenever - considers himself 2 be a lover n not a fighter but that’s just because he Fucks a lot. kind of uses it like a coping mechanism, like he’s this big fancy carnival show that’s like ‘come one, come all! fuck the dead girl’s twin brother!’ may have a problem w/ hypersexuality but it’s nothing he’s fully. aware of.

the preacher’s whore son, basically

like i said he’s pan & nb, switches between he and they pronouns but like … he has such a fragile grip on his identity that u could call him ‘dog-faced bitch’ and he’d turn like hey wassup :)

vastly impulsive, like i’ve mentioned … destroys his own creations 4 the fun of it, spends all his money on useless shit, will cheat on someone bc he feels like it. screams into the night sky frequently, like a cat in heat.

i mean he also creates useless shit for no reason too. spent six months sculpting a hollowed out tree the size of him and then took a sledgehammer to it.

dramatic fuck. used to play the organ at the church like … when no one was looking after him and service was about to start. just these creepy as melodies. would do the same thing at home on his keyboard w/ the organ setting whenever he got grounded until his parents took away his keyboard sadjfkg

won’t talk about his time away b/c it’s not rly anybody’s business but ofc nothing is sacred to the watershed app, y’know, nothing’s private.

still like - he absolutely refuses to talk about tatiana’s death and like, his mental health or his addiction (he’s fallen back into it tbh but it hasn’t gotten bad again … yet) or like … anything involving his own emotions

will literally just change the topic! abruptly, no warning, asks about the jonas brothers instead.

that being said he’s obsessed with tatiana’s death. tatiana was very much a rock for him, kinda dependent on her in a way? just … being there, y’know, kept him grounded.

so he obv became a shepherd bc he wants to know Everything there is abt the app, wants to be deep inside it, wanted to know Who Exactly Killed Tatiana and like … not saying he wants 2 commit murder but :/ yknow. he’s very upset.

emotionally unavailable while also like crying twice a day.

will tell you straight up what he wants from you, no bullshit, no beating around the bush - just blunt. if he wants to just fuck, nothing else, then that’s that. if he feels deviation he’ll ghost in like. less than a second. kinda awful like that! feels no shame.

but like … also is emotional ?? as shit ?? it’s confusing. he’ll cry on a whim and then flip u off if u try to console him or like. ask him anything. will bite you.

he goes to therapy but he generally fucks around and wastes most of the time until the therapist threatens to like … idk what therapists r allowed to threaten. to send him off to another therapist? idk.

likes being intimidating but like … not with his body or nothing ‘cos he’s a TWIG, but like … uses his love for horror n creepy shit to his advantage. has an abundance of fake blood. has channeled the energy of jack nicholson and used it on tatiana’s boyfriends before.

( also a big fan of sfx makeup, has dabbled in it)

probably chases kids with a chainsaw (w/o the like … chain … or w/e … so it’s not actually Dangerous) around halloween

he’s generally never doing good, both mental health wise and morally.

would probably steal candy from a baby for the fun of it.

i don’t know if there’s a good to him, deep down, and i don’t know if he sees any issues with himself either !! nothing really breaks through to him anymore, the only person who ever really made him stop and Think about his actions was tatiana.

kinda introverted, recluse type who doesn’t rly like most people or going out, but he’ll go to parties if it means he’ll be high as shit.

pretty observant. likes to analyze people even though he’s probably not … fully right.

connections to the victims !!

tatiana samuels / his twin sister, other half - the only one able to control viktor.

george craig iii / close family friends ... they could appreciate each other, when viktor wasn’t being an outright asshole.

hana williams / ‘friends’ with benefits, their relationship was rocky at best but she was a good lay. have often fought due to their clash in personalities and viktor’s history with christoph.

christoph wainwright / an ex-hook up, an infrequent occasion whenever christoph wanted to tick off hana. viktor was often on board, never the one to consider others’ feelings.

wanted connections !!

he lives alone currently but like … ex - roommates where viktor was just. a nightmare to live with.

feel like a lot of enemies is also a possibility !! viktor’s messy.

people that like … knew tatiana. dated tatiana, even, and viktor would pretty much try to intimidate / scare them at any given chance :/

close friends of tatiana too

people who hated tatiana but liked viktor. people who hated viktor but liked tatiana

people who take pity on him and he Hates it viciously and vocally.

a band of hooligan gremlin kids who do drugs and fuck shit up around town like they’re edgy teenagers even though they’re all early to mid 20s.

the girl he lost his virginity 2 in high school lmao … a distant memory

fellow rochester locals, from church or school or whatever

exes from the past !! good terms and bad terms, but i love bad terms a whole lot mainly b/c viktor’s a jackass.

don’t know if he’s soft towards anybody but we can try. we can Try.

friends, old friends, new friends, bad friends, good friends, close friends, frenemies, etc. etc. all of it

hookups !! so many hookups. fwbs, one night stands, whatever.

uuhhhh god. i don’t know. im so sleepy rn. people in the same major or similar majors.

maybe a ride or die.

people he’s a bad influence on / an enabler towards / all around toxic for them / each other.

people he’s fought !! people who’ve seen him get into random fights and were like ‘uh wtf’

fellow shepherds !!

literally anything im not picky.

[canonicallyanxious]

Reading Recap: May 2019

In an attempt to document my efforts in completing my New Year’s resolution of reading at least one book every two weeks, every month I’m going to be doing a brief write-up of the books I read to keep myself accountable and share this journey with you all.

Hmmm so i guess my count this month would be 8 but two of them were issues of the Sandman series, which is a comic, and one of them I only read 50 pages of before my e-copy from the library expired so?? not a very accurate count??? Wish i’d managed to read more diverse stuff in may but 1. i spent about half of it completely wrapped up in my whopper of a davenzi “fix it” fic and 2. toward the end i started a relationship which had me EXTREMELY distracted skdfnsdfkns. so... could have read more, but was definitely very preoccupied this month with other things! it be like that sometimes!! Annual count is 38, which is more like 36.75 LOL but it’s fine

The books I read, alongside ratings out of 5 stars [5 for favorites; 1 for books I unreservedly dislike] and some of my thoughts:

Giovanni’s Room - James Baldwin | 4.5/5

This one is an EXCELLENT read. Holy fucking shit. James Baldwin’s writing is absolutely to die for and I really need to read more of his stuff! Also I didn’t expect this book to be nearly as explicitly gay as it was for some reason?? because of when it was published??? but w o w it’s gay! the protagonist isn’t very likeable but you get the sense that he’s not supposed to be, so I appreciate the intentionality of Baldwin’s writing here. Just, like, the deftness of hand in crafting David and Giovanni’s relationship, the organic development of it from something sweet and tender to something really quite volatile and dangerous, how well he gets into the psychology of what it’s like for them to create their own space in Giovanni’s room and why it was unsustainable from the start. In short I absolutely loved this one!

Crazy Rich Asians - Kevin Kwan | 4/5

No I haven’t watched the movie but this is quite an entertaining read! Part of me is, like, not that interested in reading about the excesses of the grossly wealthy in such detail lol but if you treat it as the fun, not-that-deep comedy it is, it’s very enjoyable! especially love rachel and astrid, of course, but just getting to see how the story unfolds is a lot of fun. Good for if you don’t want to think too hard about what you’re reading!

Autoboyography - Christina Lauren | 3.5/5

So this is a book about a bisexual boy who moves with his progressive family to a Mormon town in Utah. Lots of interesting stuff about sexuality v religion, etc. etc. I thought this was a sweet read, although I feel like since I don’t really have a strong connection to any sort of religious background it was kind of harder for me to connect to the characters and the conflict than it might have been for someone else. Also the tropes and stuff in this story weren’t necessarily my favorite but again I think that’s mostly down to a personal thing. Check this one out if you want a heartfelt story about a bisexual kid finding love!

Darius the Great Is Not Okay - Adib Khorram | 4/5

An extremely compelling read, this one! It’s about a mixed race kid with a complicated relationship with his family who goes to Iran to visit grandparents he’s never met before. Love what this book does with race and identity, LOVE the development of the friendship between Sohrab and Darius, really love the threads of family that binds this book together. Darius is an extremely relatable protagonist to me! I think my own criticism of the book is maybe some minor stylistic things, like I found the short and frequent one-sentence paragraphs to be somewhat jarring at times, but overall, loved this one!

Frankenstein - Mary Shelley | 3/5

Honestly... don’t have much to say about this book lol i thought it was kind of slow and almost?? boring at parts????? The best part of the story for me was getting to hear from the monster’s pov. And of course Shelley is an incredibly talented writer. Mostly I was just really distracted while trying to read this book sdkjfnskd

Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes / Sandman: The Doll’s House - Neil Gaiman | 4.5/5

So yes, this is two issues from the same series, but I’m grouping them together for obvious reasons lol. I’ve been wanting to read Sandman FOREVER and am only just now getting the opportunity thanks to a very kind coworker at my new workplace, and god it’s really meeting all my expectations and even exceeding them!! Gaiman is SO so good at the dark and twisted, and it really shines in this series when his brilliant writing is juxtaposed with the absolutely bonkers art. The artists that work on this series do some really really interesting things with the layout and composition, the colors are so vibrant and an almost jarring juxtaposition to the dark tone of the story at times, and the characterization is just so wonderfully vivid, as Gaiman’s usually is. Love Morpheus/Dream as a protagonist, LOVE Death, love the secondary cast of human characters too especially in The Doll’s House. I can’t wait to read the rest of this series!

Catch 22 - Joseph Heller | No rating

I’m honestly so sad I didn’t get to finish this book =[ unfortunately for Joseph Heller satirical world war II angst isn’t exactly the kind of thing I’m emotionally prepared for when I’m just starting a relationship sdfkjndskfjdsn but what I read of this book was really, really good! Heller has an addictive writing style and really interesting characters, maybe one day I’ll get to finish it but that day is not today sdkjfksnd

[dear-wormwoods]

Eddie Kaspbrak and Faith

A stupidly long essay about religious guilt and acceptance for @eddiekasprzak.

Okay, so I’ll start by saying that I feel as though Eddie’s religious guilt is a fundamental part of his character and his growth arc, but it’s only explicitly referenced a few times - once in passing, once in depth, and once in a more spiritual way. Each of these moments is paired with something having to do with Richie, and I think that was intentional on Stephen King’s part, to include that sort of juxtaposition multiple times. So I’ll do my best to explain a part of Eddie’s character that I don’t think is talked about all too often.

I.

The first appearance of Eddie’s religious thoughts being juxtaposed with thoughts of, or interactions with, Richie happens in Ch. 7, pt. 1. This is the ‘cursing the faithful’ moment that original post was about. Eddie is on his way back to Derry and thinks of Richie (not for the first time), “He laughs seldom these days, and he certainly did not expect to find many chucks (Richie’s word, meaning chuckles, as in “You had any good chucks today, Eds?”) on this black pilgrimage. But, he supposes, if God is dirty-mean enough to curse the faithful with what they want most in life, He’s maybe quirky enough to deal you a good chuck or two along the way.” First of all, Eddie chooses his words very carefully, more than any other Loser, I think. Richie chooses his words carefully in order to conceal the truth in full, during his chapters, but Eddie’s word choice is used to carefully construct certain imagery. Eddie’s inner monologues are FULL of poetic imagery, often spiritual, and very descriptive - and the things he describes and the words he chooses to use are very significant. In this case, the words pilgrimage and curse stand out. Pilgrimages are journeys of spiritual significance, and that’s how he views this journey back to Derry - although it’s ‘black’ because the thing drawing him in is evil, it is nonetheless spiritual. Eddie is almost more willing than Bev to abandon his life to fulfill the 27-year promise, because he has spent his entire adulthood denying himself happiness, and living in an abuse cycle he thinks he deserves (more on that later), so to him, going back to Derry is spiritual because it’s his only hope of finding an answer to his misery - finding what he’s spent his adult life deprived of. In addition, his use of the word ‘curse’ implies that the thing EDDIE wants most in life is NOT something that he sees God approving of. He’s been cursed, by God, in spite of his faithfulness, with wanting something that goes against the religious beliefs he was raised to follow. So at the very least, he hopes God will allow him to take pleasure in laughter - something he hardly experiences in his adulthood, but something he associates heavily with Richie.

That this very quick glimpse into Eddie’s religious struggles is placed right next to a moment of him waxing poetic about Richie allowing him to assume an alternate identity away from his mother is… telling. “Man, he had hated it when Richie called him Eds . . . but he had sort of liked it, too... It was something . . . like a secret name. A secret identity. A way to be people that had nothing to do with their parents’ fears, hopes, constant demands.” Here we have both Eddie admitting to liking Richie’s pet name for him, as well as his appreciation for that “secret identity”. The way this is phrased seems to give Richie credit for allowing Eddie to be himself, but that it had to be secret, because Eddie’s true self had to be hidden from his mother and by extension God (because it was his mother who pushed religion on him so much - her chapter in Eddie’s Bad Break is riddled with her using God as justification for the way she treats Eddie). These two moments happening in the same couple of paragraphs establishes, early on in the book, something very major: that Eddie, at least subconsciously, sees his faith and Richie as almost opposing forces - he can’t be himself and still be faithful to God, but he CAN be himself around Richie.

II.

The most in depth explanation of Eddie’s religious conflict happens in Ch. 19 pt. 10, sandwiched in between the two chapters where he deals with Henry Bowers as an adult (which is significant placement because of the way Henry constantly calls Eddie a f*g during their fight). This chapter alone is like… one of my favorites, because it just says so much about Eddie as a character. In this scene, Eddie, Richie, and Stan are hanging out and start talking about religion, but the chapter starts off with probably one of the most blatant double entendres in the entire book. Eddie says “How about a lick on your Rocket?” to Richie, and this is already questionable on SK’s part because of how utterly phallic those rocket ice creams are, but then Richie responds with, “Your mom wouldn’t approve, Eddie.” Of course, the ‘reason’ he gives for saying that is germs, but the WAY SK wrote this exchange implies that there’s something deeper than germs at play here, especially since Sonia is a confirmed homophobe. Eddie says he’ll chance it, and Richie - instead of just giving Eddie the ice cream, holds it up to his mouth and watches him lick it. The placement of this memory is significant because their subsequent conversation about religion triggers a page and a half of Eddie extrapolating on why he thinks he’s going to Hell, basically.

So after Richie makes a comment about going to ‘the Hot Place’, Eddie thinks about a story a church lady named Mrs. Portleigh told his Sunday school class, about a little boy who put communion bread in the toilet and the water turned red with the Blood of Christ because he committed blasphemy and damned himself to Hell. This story really hits home with Eddie, and he starts dreading Communion and having panic attacks every time he has to do it at church. He becomes SO SURE that each time he picks up a piece of Communion bread, something horrible will happen or some disembodied voice will start chanting that he’s “Not worthy! Not worthy! Damned to Hell! Damned to Hell!”. This intense fear, despite never having done anything wrong in his LIFE, would send Eddie into a panic and he would need to use his inhaler after every act of Communion. He literally loses sleep over this intense fear that he will be labeled as ‘not worthy’ by God and sentenced to Hell, but he never once says what he thinks he did wrong. He simply thinks he is inherently wrong. He works himself up to the point where he eventually decides that he needs to just repeat what that boy did, to see what happens, because he’s already resigned himself to his fate of going to Hell so he has nothing to lose. Of course, he chickens out, but this whole story is SO SO important to Eddie’s character, because it showcases how deeply unclean Eddie feels. 

It’s not just about germs or getting sick, or about his mother calling him a bad son whenever he wants to do anything she doesn’t like. Eddie’s deepest fear is that the thing inside him that makes him inherently bad and inherently unclean and sick will come to the surface, that he’ll be found out and labeled as bad, as blasphemous, and everyone will know how rotten he is. This is shown also in his interactions with the hobo and IT’s leper - he specifically fears catching a disease that will physically manifest what he thinks is happening to him anyway - that he’s rotting from the inside-out. Eddie thinks there is something so deeply wrong with him that he doesn’t actually NEED to do anything in order to be damned to hell or deemed not worthy of Communion. He never explicitly says what this thing is - it’s clear that due to his sheltered upbringing, he doesn’t consciously know what it is yet. All he knows is that he’s bad. And what’s more, being too afraid to follow through on the toilet ‘experiment’ sets up a really prominent trend in his adulthood - being too afraid to want anything, to discover anything about himself, or pursue ANY kind of desire, for fear of what will happen, and because he feels he doesn’t deserve it. 

III.

THEN!! THEN!!!! As if it isn’t enough that Stephen King chose to juxtapose this long explanation of Eddie’s deep religiously based guilt with a lighthearted but subtext-laden exchange with Richie, he ALSO includes a very interesting parallel that Eddie makes. After thinking a lot about his fear of the toilet water turning red if he tries to replicate the other boy’s experiment, “He began to think about the thing they had seen on Neibolt Street, and for the first time he saw a crazy parallel—the Werewolf had, after all, come out of the toilet.” This is where Richie comes into play again, but only if you really analyze the shit out of the werewolf symbolism. The werewolf is IT’s most frequent manifestation for Richie, that and the eyeball, and people besides myself have done some great analysis on what the werewolf means for Richie. Basically, Eddie, although he doesn’t know it, is drawing a parallel between his fear of damnation and Richie’s fear of being a monster, and not JUST drawing a parallel, but connecting the two things together almost like one would result from the other.

Richie’s werewolf is a representation of his fear of being ostracized by his peers for something he can’t help, something that makes him a monster. Subconsciously, he relates to the teen werewolf, and IT recognizes this, which is why Richie’s NAME is stitched into the werewolf’s jacket. Richie is the only Loser that IT does this to - using his name to label some of the monsters it creates for him. Because unlike Eddie, who thinks he is diseased and being consumed by some evil that he has contracted somehow, Richie thinks he IS the evil. So the werewolf represents Richie, and Eddie draws the connection that the werewolf came out of the toilet at Neibolt street. The toilet represents his fear of being damned for something that is inherently wrong with him, and the werewolf coming forth from the toilet represents Richie being a cause of - or maybe perhaps a result of - the thing that Eddie fears is wrong with him. I know this seems like reaching, but there’s a reason Stephen King literally fed the reader this parallel. Eddie doesn’t explain WHY it’s a parallel, just that it IS one - the reason why is left up to the reader to decide.

As a side note - this chapter ends with another telling exchange between Richie, Eddie, and this time including Bill. Richie doesn’t want Eddie to go into the sewers with the rest of them because of his arm (imagine omg - they would have ALL died without Eddie let’s be real here), and Bill firmly says that he’ll have Eddie stick with him and keep an eye on him. Two interesting things follow this - first, Eddie blatantly thinks that Bill’s face is “lovely and well-loved” and thinks, “I’d die for him, I guess, if he told me to. What kind of power is that?” Because, in his sheltered naivety, he doesn’t realize that the power IS love. And while Eddie is inwardly expressing his devotion to Bill’s lovely face, Richie responds to Bill’s vow to protect Eddie by… making fun of him. This is rare for Richie, who typically also idolizes Bill - something about disagreeing over what’s best for Eddie set him off.

Right after this, we switch back to the present day and Henry storms into Eddie’s hotel room to kill him, repeatedly calling him a f*g. Again, I don’t think it’s accidental that Stephen King would write in a subtextual double entendre between Richie and Eddie, a long description of Eddie’s seemingly inexplicable religious guilt, a parallel between this and Richie’s werewolf, another arguably subtext-filled moment, and Henry Bowers explicitly accusing Eddie OF being gay as an adult while trying to actually murder him. Especially since, in the beginning of the novel, the bully who is meant to parallel Henry Bowers spearheads the assault on Adrian Mellon, who is meant to parallel Eddie in at least five different ways. I really think that the conclusion the reader is meant to come to from that part of the overall chapter is that Eddie’s guilt comes from his sexuality, and that Richie (and Bill, though only really on the surface) is connected to that.

IV.

The final, and perhaps most important, moment in which Eddie’s faith and his interactions with Richie are heavily connected, is in his death scene. I know everyone always talks about the “But there was something else he had to say first” and “Eddie closed his eyes, thinking how to finish”, but there’s so much more to this scene, and all of the inner monologuing leading up to those lines is SO IMPORTANT.

So, first off, I need to reiterate that Eddie’s word choice matters, especially as an adult. As a child, he’s so naive and sheltered that his inner monologues are pretty simplistic (though very telling in their own way) and more like a stream of consciousness. But as an adult, everything Eddie thinks has a purpose, right up until - perhaps especially during - his dying moment. Eddie’s death is extremely spiritual, though it does not directly reference his religious upbringing. The imagery he uses to describe how he feels as he’s dying references light and cleansing, despite being in a dark and dirty place. Fuck, even the manner of his death has religious symbolism to it. Because Eddie is a martyr, in the end - he dies for people he loves, for the friends he only just reconnected with, and for the greater good. It’s a selfless sacrifice, and even the image of Beverly cradling his body in her arms brings to mind Michelangelo’s Pieta, of Mary holding the body of Jesus after his crucifixion. The whole thing is just… well, there’s a reason Eddie’s chapters tend to have more spiritual overtones, in spite of his deep guilt and shame over it.

But as far as the text goes, this is the moment when Eddie finally accepts himself. It’s not the moment when he realizes he’s in love with Richie (personally I think he subconsciously knew it all along), but it IS the moment in which he realizes it’s OKAY to love Richie. This is also the moment when he lets go of his mother once and for all (just before sacrificing himself), as she was deeply connected to and largely responsible for his guilt and shame. When he first realizes he’s dying, as Richie stumbles toward him, he thinks, “He could feel everything running out of him along with his life’s blood . . . all the rage, all the pain, all the fear, all the confusion and hurt.” I think it’s easy to write off rage, pain, and fear as just the result of being in the presence of IT, of fighting IT, and of having his arm bitten off. Like… of course he’s afraid, of course he’s angry, of course he’s in pain. But the confusion and hurt, that’s where it becomes about something bigger. He uses pain and hurt, normally interchangeable, in the same sentence, which gives the word ‘hurt’ a more emotional feel. Along with the other negative feelings leaving his body, so goes his confusion about himself, and so goes the deep hurt he’s been harboring for his entire life over the damage his mother did to him. 

“God, he felt so lucid, so clear, like a window-pane which has been washed clean and now lets in all the gloriously frightening light… the light, oh God, that perfect rational light.” Eddie’s last moments are experienced with perfect clarity - for the first time in his life, he’s seeing and feeling his own light. He’s not being washed clean of sin, per se - I don’t think that’s it at all. He’s being washed clean of everything that made him feel dirty - of his mother, of Myra, of his own denial. He has spent his adulthood depriving himself of happiness because he felt too unclean to have it, because his happiness would have conflicted with his religious background, and because he simply didn’t think it was deserved. He resigned himself to a lifetime of misery because he was too afraid to find out what would happen to him if he broke away from that, and only as he’s dying does he realize that breaking away from that misery is exactly what would have let him feel light and clean all this time. Like his inability to perform the Communion bread in the toilet ‘experiment’ out of fear of damnation, Eddie was unable to pursue ANY of his desires for his entire life due to that same fear. Because in his mind, being himself was ungodly, and there was no one in his life to combat this mentality... the only person who gave him permission to be himself - gave him his secret identity - disappeared from his life way too early, and for far too long.

Eddie spent his whole life thinking there was something festering inside him that made him sick, and dirty, and bad, but he realizes, too late, and as he’s looking at Richie, that he was never dirty at all. “Then he looked at Richie and licked his lips. Fading, fading back. Becoming clearer and clearer, emptying out, all of the impurities flowing out of him.” In these last moments, Eddie lets every negative influence in his life leave him, so the only things left are Richie’s face and his newfound clarity. The ‘sickness’ he’d been trying to cure with a medicine cabinet full of sedatives and a wife who was just like his mother, is no sickness at all, and it isn’t Eddie that’s impure, it’s everything else in his life. Those are the impurities that are flowing out of him - his mother’s influence, his denial, his misery. He’s left clear headed, clean, and most importantly, himself, and he realizes, for the first time since the summer of 1958, that being himself isn’t a bad thing. “... and if he had had time enough he could have preached on this, he could have sermonized: Not bad, he would begin. This is not bad at all.” In the most direct reference to actual religious practice, as opposed to spiritual metaphors, Eddie thinks that if he had the chance, he would want to preach about this newfound clarity he has - he wants to tell people that he’s really okay, that being himself is not bad, that being like him isn’t bad. And that’s when he decides he needs to say something to Richie. Whether or not it was going to be a love confession is subjective and irrelevant (though I personally think it was) - the fact of the matter is that it was Richie’s presence that gave him clarity - both as a kid and an adult - and looking into Richie’s face in his last moments is what allowed him to let go of everything that was holding him back and finally find peace with himself.

It isn’t an accident that Stephen King painted Eddie’s death with references to spirituality and faith, and it isn’t an accident that Richie is the one he’s connecting to in those moments, because it was a small but significant theme in the novel. At first, Eddie saw engaging with Richie’s ‘chucks’ and his secret identities as going against what was morally okay, and he thought deeply about his fear of hell because of something Richie said, but in the end it’s also Richie who is present for the moment when Eddie reconciles his faith with his sense of self. 

I know I’m almost certainly overanalyzing it and I’m PROBABLY giving King way too much credit by saying that all of this was intentional, but I just can’t fathom that this part of Eddie’s character and its proximity to Richie is just there for no reason.

(As an aside, this is why I really like Sufjan Stevens and Iron & Wine for Eddie bands, because they use a lot of religious imagery the way he does when he thinks. Especially The Trapeze Swinger, which I could also write a separate essay about in terms of how it relates to Eddie. I just think about his deal with religion A LOT.)

[curestardust]

this is a seperate sequel to Aikatsu with a new cast and story | more character and plot focused

Aikatsu Stars! changes some things up compared to its previous season, for better or worse. 

Aikatsu S1 seemed to focus on introducing as many new girls as possible. This worked for making sure that everyone found their “best girl” but was also a drawback as basically as soon as a specific girl’s arc ended you may not see them perform again for the next 50 episodes. Stars is vastly different. We have a set cast of characters and only get a few new ones introduced when the anime has spent enough time fleshing out the original ones. Almost none of the important characters get forgotten and dissappear for long periods of time. Which is great if you found a favourite character. IF, you did.

In Aikatsu S1, we didn’t have anyone with an “offensive” personality. They were all tolerable and you could easily get used to them. Stars! is different and starts out on the wrong foot. We get our main, Yume, who is a typical ditzy blonde. This immediately made me uncomfortable because the reason I loved Ichigo was because they didn’t force her into those typical main character tropes. Then we have her best friend Koharu, who basically gets showed into the back, making her somewhat irrelevant for the first half of the anime. And then we get introduced to the rest of the main cast; Laura, Ako and Mahiru. The problem? All 3 are a certain level of tsundere. Ako is 100% one, Mahiru is like 50% and Laura 30%. This was NOT a good decision. As I said, the first half of the anime mainly focuses on these 4 and as someone who doesn’t like the tsundere character type I got annoyed by their behaviour numerous times. 

Fortunately, this gets better as the anime goes on. As we enter the second arc, the attention somewhat shifts on a new group fo characters and everyone goes through a lot of character growth. Still, I feel like they spent way too much time before committing. For example, Ako’s main character development happens around episode 80...of the 100 episodes. Like...

There’s also a bigger focus on the overarching plot. In Aikatsu, the story mostly consisted of smaller challenges like auditions and units with there not really being a bigger end goal. In the first half of Stars! the main plot is preparing for the S4 Selection and in the second half for the Aikatsu Rankings. There’re plenty of side stories and fillers but in the end the anime always comes back to advancing towards the main plot.

There are less songs and performances in Stars! which is kind of a bummer, however the songs are all amazing as usual and their performance dresses and stages are even prettier and more detailed than in Aikatsu.

The original season was a simple weekly wind down with minimal stakes, cute characters and pretty performances. Aikatsu Stars! becomes more of an actual story. If you go into this right after the 170 episodes of Aikatsu, it’ll be kinda weird. But as the anime goes on, the characters grow and form friendships and the plot keeps you interested. You don’t need to watch Aikatsu to enjoy this season as they’re almost completely seperate. [7/10] (x)

Recommend: HELL Yeah! | Yes | Eh??? | Nope | This anime killed my parents 

if you want: MICROBIOLOGY / to know the inner workings of the body / charming cast of characters / creative writing

I’m finally delving into the plentiful Summer Season offering, starting with “Cells at Work!”

I didn’t even take me a second to add this to my PTW. Science? Hell yeah. Overly dramatic portrayal of science in anime form? HELL YEAH. I’ve always been a sucker for stuff like this and I just couldn’t skip it.

So, how was it? Eh...there’s good and bad and seeing how popular this anime is, this review might get me killed but here we go anyway.

First off, let us get the small stuff out of the way. The music is fine but nothing remarkable. The animation is uh....questionable. The artstyle itself is a bit weird but it is not something I judge but the movements of the characters is so...uncanny at some places? Just watch the opening where it opens on the 2 main characters running and there’s just something wrong there. Fortunately, this problem isn’t very noticable most of the time as the anime uses a lot of quick cuts between dramatic stills and short action sequences. Still, the animation and the art is, also, just fine. 

There’s no overarching plot, which is neither good or bad. The episodes are well....episodical. Very much so. One episode ends with a seemingly deadly antigen invading the body but the next episodes don’t even mention it. 

I feel like it is also important to mention that if you’ve never studied biology in depth IN ENGLISH then some episodes can get insanely hectic. Whenever there’s something happening with the body, there’s a new antigen or a new cell showing up, the show stops and a very nice female voice explains what they are and what they do. However, there’s so much science lingo in these explanations that 50% of the time I was like ???????? BUT this doesn’t mean that the anime is completely incromprehensible, especially if you don’t particularly care about the real life explanations and just want to see some action.

So, why is Hataraku Saibou so popular? From what I’ve seen, there are mainly 2 reasons: the cast and the creativity. It is clear that the writers have a deep knowledge of the base material and they also love it. I see some fans reading about microbiology, trying to connect the things that appear in the anime with their real life equivalents. From just one look, “Cells at work” looks like some mindless fun somewhat based on the inner workings of the body but, no, this shit is DETAILED. 

And the cast. People seem to be in love with the 2 main characters’ personalities and relationship (oh the shipping!). There’s also a nice secondary cast of characters surrounding them. The designs are all very distinct; White Blood Cell  U-1146′s full on white body gear and Red Blood Cell AE3803′s Red cap and jacket are already quite iconic and easily recognizable.

Listen, I personally didn’t get into Hataraku Saibou. It was a fun, educational albeit somewhat mediocre one time watch for me. BUT I’ve been part of big fandoms before and I can see the appeal. The cast is charming, the world is vast and the writing is full of creativity. If you’re even slightly interested in this anime, watch it! And hey, maybe it will suck you in just like it did with a bunch of other people. [6/10] (x)

Recommend: HELL Yeah! | Yes | Eh??? | Nope | This anime killed my parents

if you want: (quite weak) horror/thriller / RPG maker game adaptation / unique chemistry between main characters / somewhat religion themed??

Gotta say that it’s been a while since I’ve seen something as incompetent as Satsuriku no Tenshi. This anime is an adaptation of a “horror” game that was created with RPG Maker. Now...people are capable of creating some great games with RPG Maker, I’ll not deny that. However, I’m pretty sure that everything that was lacking in the game got transferred over to the anime itself. I watched some short gameplay videos and the first thing most will notice is the quite weak dialogue. 

I’ll start with the few positives I found. The story itself is quite intriguing, as it is the reason I gave this a watch. The chemistry between the main characters are unique and I didn’t find it sexualized either however the fandom generally seems to ship them which makes me wanna vomit as Rachel is 13 and Zack is 20 so it’s....ughhghghgh.

The Opening and especially the Ending track are quite nice and uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh... yeah. Now let’s talk about the BAD.

Character designs are incredibly generic and resemble a 12 year old’s DeviantArt OCs. The OST would be alright however the same tracks repeat over and over and over again and it drived me up the wall! The dialogue is incredibly bad. The characters have the exact same conversation at least every episode if not multiple times in an episode. And they lack pauses. As soon as the action stops someone starts talking even if what they’re saying is irrelevant and could’ve been left unsaid. 

However, the worst offender is the pacing. The creaters of this anime completely failed in adapting a video game into a series. If you’ve played RPGs you’ll immediately notice the patterns the characters follow. Enter Room. Dialogue prompt which gives you quest. Go somewhere. Pick item/push button. Go back. Dialogue prompt. Repeat. There’s even a segment where they are solving a puzzle and while that part of the story was quite tense as important information was being revealed, I can imagine this working SO MUCH better in the game itself, where YOU are the one solving the puzzle while YOU are under pressure. In the anime version a huge part of the appeal is lost and it’s basically like watching an animated gameplay. 

I’m seeing people praising this anime. I don’t get it this time, at all but whatever. Personally, I’d not recommend this anime. It’s a drag and a waste of time. (3/10) (3/10) (x) (x)

Recommend: HELL Yeah! | Yes | Eh??? | Nope | This anime killed my parents