#hell is not bad enough for these people and heaven is too populated by the dull droves who enjoyed this show

[fanofstuff01]

Second part! I guess you can consider this as more of Hell’s story in Adamsapple x Chaggie AU? Or maybe this is the first part? I honestly have no idea. Read the other one here

Tags: @talesfromawannabejournalist @rius-cave (hope you don’t mind)

I’ll post the full first episode tomorrow by the way

Long, long time ago, there were lots of angels. One of them was Lucifer, with shining dreams and thoughts, also with a closeness to the first humans. They considered him as a troublemaker, but harmless.

Lucifer was happy with his life, honestly. Both Lilith and Adam treated him nicely, even if they didn’t kind of like each other. He didn’t want anything to change.

But then, he made the biggest mistake of his life. He slept with one of them.

He remembered nothing. All he could recall was getting seriously drunk, and rest was fuzzy. Then he woke up in the Garden, completely naked. No one was there. The worst part? He somehow had a fucking child from whoever he had sex with. He knew he was fucked in a bad way when he saw the little kid coming out of his hat.

Before dealing with Lucifer, Heaven wanted to get rid of the child immediately. But Lucifer refused. He told them he’d do anything for them to not kill the girl. She didn’t deserve that just because he was not careful.

Heaven said they’d accept Lucifer’s offer, but at a cost. She would have no idea who her parents was. Heaven would raise her, he would only be able to see her once a year, without her knowing. Lucifer and the human who broke the rules, however, would be banished from Heaven.

They were going to question all of them, but Lilith, the first woman, claimed it was her. And fell to hell with Lucifer.

Lilith’s actions were enough for authorities to question humanity’s loyalty, and the new woman, Eve eating the apple was the sugar on the cream. They were also punished.

Meanwhile, in Hell, Lucifer fell in love with Lilith. This was how they were supposed to be like, right? Also Lilith returned his feelings. Somehow.

As Hell’s population grew more and more, Heaven’s concern of a rebel did too. They wanted to sign a deal with either King or Queen of Hell, and managed to do with Lilith. When Lucifer found out, he was shocked and pissed.

Their relationship started to crumble, more fights appearing. Lilith said this would be the best, meanwhile Lucifer defended their people. And then, she left, leaving a devastated, life meaningless Lucifer behind.

One day, he was walking down the streets, thinking to do the worst to himself. But he decided not to when he found a certain angel demon at there. Adam. The first man. Who was there as a sinner because he was against the genocide holy people doing.

Is this great? I hope so

[inconspicious-random-thoughts]

I always see people who think Adam was a good person before dying and only became bad after entering heaven. Considering that no one in the court could say why he was qualified to say how a souls gets to heaven I think it was more he was a jerk then to but he had no ability or opportunity to hurt people until the exterminations.

Hello there!

It is a possibly and likely correct.

People sin isn't limited to people who are just inherently terrible people and they want to. It's usually by people who are desperate enough and don't have other means to avoid it.

A starving person who was born into less ideal circumstances, doesn't steal bread for shits and giggles, they steal it because its necessary to survive. To expect the person to avoid the temptation to just stop the pain of hunger and live another day on the same 'test' as someone else that is well off is completely unfair. The starving person with no means only choice of avoiding sin was to accept death? What if the person was attempting to support a family. Condemn them too in hopes that eternal reward is real?

With that analogy, Adam is very much the better off soul with the means. There was no society, the only other humans was his wife and the children they had together. There's no one to be jealous of, no one to be tempted by or to, no one to steal from...basically there's no society, there's no crime that would come with it. I don't think Adam is going to just assault his family and such. So Adam automatically had a head start for things to go in his favor in the after life. He didn't really has people to sin against nor the motivation to do so. It aligns to what you suggested. he had no ability or opportunity to hurt people until the exterminations.

It possibly explains why Adam holds such disdain to Sinners. Adam had never once been in a situation or circumstance that would cause a person to take drastic measures. Adam just can't comprehend that they sin because it was necessary for survival. His lack of experience will view it as "If You didn't want to go to Hell, you should just accepted death instead of sinning" Heaven great, why not speed up the process to go to it by not sinning and dying to reach it? Adam simply has no means to understand empathy. So everything to him is black and white.

I think he thinks sinners do it mostly out of desire. Which to be fair, some do. But I personally believe a large chunk of the Hells population is out of necessary then desire. Or just place put in a bad situation and acted before thinking. The first episode Hellavah boss sort of touched upon this. The school teacher was a good person. But a crime of passion against her cheating husband damned her. She was obviously blinded by the betrayal and after the act was made, she sounded panicked when she realized what she had done. Frighten and remorseful of her actions she then ended herself promptly.

I am in favor have Adam being...a decent person before his death. I wouldn't say good because like the bad, and what you suggested : he had no ability or opportunity. He really didn't have a society to go spread good to. I think he was mostly decent person, he did some douche things and had bad days but overall, he was okay person. He provided and protected his family and taught and pass on the limited knowledge the first humans have acquired. I want to give Adam some credit for being somewhat inherently good. If he was throw in today society, I don't see him lying, stealing, raping and murdering. He just a rude, arrogant douche. He the guy that call a woman a 'filthy stupid whore of a bitch that he never wanted to fuck because she so ugly' when he was rejected type of guy but I wouldn't put him into committing crimes or huge dives in sin. (Maybe gluttony, he seems the type that binge away his issues) I also don't see him commit adultery considering the incident with Lucifer and Lilith. He would most likely develop more empathy (especially if he force to be in a working/labor class and realize how tough it can be just to get by).

In addition, he may have motivation to be good and follow the holy path as he more than likely witness or at least know about Lilith and her being cast to the pits. Lucifer took his wife (learning do not steal) and was casted down with her. He was given an example to what happens when you don't behave.

Adam definitely had already developed arrogants before his death. Being the first human, man, etc. He also made himself the de facto leader once Lilith was banished. Which continued into Heaven. He became such a symbol to Heaven. Adam just use to not answering to anyone beside high level angels and perhaps Go(o)d themselves. Which, I assume isn't often.

I'm positive his arrogance stems most of his not so decent moments on Earth.

I also think, some days, Adam was very bitter when thinking back at the past before his death. From Adam standpoint:

Lilith left him. So I assume in the Helliverse and guessing from Adam eating spare ribs, Eve was made from his rib (Selfless). He lost Lilith by not listening or compromises, so he listen to Eve when she offer the apple. He got punished for that. (He was made to choke on it, adam apple term, and banished from paradise according to the bible)

If he not eaten the apple in the helliverse as it wasnt confirm he eaten it, he was still banished from paradise in order to stay and protect his wife and have a family.

Let's talk about the apple of knowledge...How is it fair to punish those who ate it when they did not know right from wrong before they ate it?

Then learning to survive and defend on his own after being used to paradise with no worries, he had children. His first born murdering his 2nd born out of jealousy because the almighty ignored the first born offering. I sure Adam felt the loss and mourn and probably for his first as well because he sure he be cast to the pit for the act.

But Adam felt he stuck it to the man, Lucifer, who curse and seem to make Adam life harder, avoided temptation, ascended on death.

Nethertheless, I'm sure Adam were bitter some moments of his Earth life. He views the apple as a curse than a blessing or a gift. Life was so good before that damn apple!

Upon entering Heaven, it did seem Adam indulge in activities could consider sinful. He prideful for one. He seem he indulge in gluttony as siluette seemed fit before and he seem to grew a bit of belly as well often seen eating. He shown to wrathful towards Hell. I guess a bit of envy as he seem annoyed that a fan was looking to hook up with the drummer over Adam. Etc. I also goes full circle of Adam being terrible when there's a society for him to go against on.

The thing about Adam is he has great potential to be multi level and complex character. I don't think it will be explored but the potential is there.

Heaven is supposed to be eternal reward for good behavior but we learn that Heaven isn't all there is crack up to be. I think mostly decent Adam became a jaded over his long stay in Heaven.

He may feel like Lucifer and just heartbroken watching his descendants let the curse guide them away from paradise.

Lilith probably did start an uprising or something that looked like it. So Heaven appointed him as general. Who better to square off against the first woman then the first man?

He may have been told or t comforted himself for his acts, he is being merciful by exterminations. No matter how cruel it seem to end the soul life permanently, he's also ending those souls from being tormented and suffering for all eternity. Because Hell is forever and meant to suck a lot. He performing the act of putting a injured animal down. (He later became desensitized and stop feeling mournful of the lost souls and it became a game since the souls are going better place anyways. By better...meaning...nothingness is better then Hell.)

How deliciously angsty is this: He definitely felt conflicted and he faced his own children (Cain) and possibly wife Eve in the exterimations. How is one suppose to permanent kill his first born by divine retribution without feeling conflicted in his conscious.

How can Adam murder his own son trapped in hell, who there only because of murder that Cain committed . Talk about doubt standards.

But no matter how wrong it felt...its must be the right thing to do if Heaven deemed it necessary....He performing a mercy ending his son's life in Hell. End the suffering. It must be the right thing to do because Heaven said so and said it was necessary.

Only to find out that the blight of an soul, Lucifer. The soul that condem so many souls because of his temptation, had a daughter. Who Adam cant take retribution on, but force to smite his own children? THEN that daughter spouting ideals of redemption after Adam already permanently ended his children to have that chance.

Charlie has to be wrong because she in Hell. Hell is full of terrible souls. Terrible souls that lie. Charlie has to be wrong because otherwise all the souls he taken, including his first born son Cain, all of them perished for nothing. Perished before receiving their second chance.

THEN have Adam have the irony timing by becoming a sinner and find out, yes sinners can be redeemed after all. If Adam not throwing himself a pity party, he had to go to Lucifer and his daughter...the reason why he died and trapped in Hell, and just the souls that started all his problems and issues,...he has to go to them for help for home to have a chance at redemption. Going to Lucifer (and his kin) who damn humanity, for a chance at redemption. It all feel like a cruel joke.

Seriously, wasn't that a delicious drama and angst storyline? Adam can be made to be soooo much. Just add a few more ingredients, stir the pot and let it simmer and Adam can become a delicious meal of a story line. But I don't think it be explore at all.

The other idea I been mulling about, one I haven't thought about long and is unlikely: Adam doesn't know right from wrong. In the Bible he ate the apple. But in the Helliverse its not conform.

He may very well be the only human who never gain knowledge from that fruit, which included knowing right from wrong.

He just follows orders from Heaven. Blindly faithful that the orders are right. Adam is in Heaven, therefore everything he does is the right thing. Being made general, and heading the exterminations is the right and merciful thing to do. It explains why he views things as black and white. He just gets told what's right and what's wrong by the higher angles. He doesn't understand there are grey areas. It also full circle he had no ability or opportunity, to figure it out.

I didn't have that thought train for long so I'm sure it has a lot of holes in it but its something to consider.

Either way, I think its shame that Adam is likely not will be explored more.

That's my two cents, I hope there's more value in it then what's it worth. Im sure theres a million typos and spelling errors but i'm sleepy now. So goodnight.

[ink-flavored]

Reworking Justice

BTS Series: ⬅ Table of Contents - Introducing the Antagonists ➡ Also available on Neocities! P&J Taglist (Check out my Google form to get added): @elegant-paper-collection @auroblaze@zeenimf @vacantgodling @foxys-fantasy-tales Banner art by @auroblaze

There can be no evil without good, no Hell without Heaven, and no demon without an angel. Last time, I took you through my process of developing Pride’s new appearance and personality. Today, we’re going to do the same with Justice.

I won’t rehash everything I said in that post, but the long story short is I need to make original-Justice a distinct entity, in both appearance and personality, from fanfiction-Justice in order for the rest of the story to work. I’ll be documenting the process I went through to get from Point A to Point B, taking you through my thought process as a creative and discussing the changes I made.

In hindsight, I don’t think the outfit I chose completely fits his personality. I hadn’t come up with his personal style, so I’ll cut my past self some slack and pretend they’re his church clothes.

The first thing that’s obviously different is that I’ve made this Justice Black instead of Egyptian, which is a choice I made deliberately (I’ll get into it). I gave him long dreadlocks because they require a lot of maintenance and care, which is already a good indicator that he’s neat and dedicates himself. I also wanted to compare and contrast him with Pride as much as possible—they both keep their hair half-up, for example, but Justice has a neat bun and Pride has a messy ponytail. I gave him freckles on a whim, but since Heaven is in the sky, close to the sun and God, it makes for a cool “kissed by the sun/touched by God” symbol. The tiny wings and halo were the only angelic details available, and not at all what I had in mind, but they’re cute, so I included them. The apple was a little bit of wink-nudge for his role in the story—the Forbidden Fruit, disobeying God—since he abandons Heaven to help a demon escape his death sentence.

So, addressing that switch in ethnicity. Pride & Justice is going to take place in America, because I’m American and I know how to write it better, and will include explicit criticism of American Evangelical Christianity, among other things. However, I do want to make sure I’m not childishly positing that all religion is inherently bad, on purpose or on accident. Not all religions are Christianity, and a lot of Christians in America are not Evangelical, and demographically speaking, Black Americans are one of the most devout populations in the country. It would be extremely disingenuous of me not to include them in this conversation I’m having about the ways the (majority white) Evangelicals cause harm, because while their most obvious target these days is queer and trans people, it’s well known that they harm many people of color with their rhetoric too. I knew from the beginning I wanted to address this, and Justice is how I’m going to do that.

I chose him because there aren’t enough Black angels in media, and far, far too many Black demons—the reasons I’m not continuing that trend are, I hope, obvious. Justice deliberately leaves Heaven at the beginning of the story because of the harm it’s causing to innocent people (unjustly, one might say), but he remains devout from start to finish, finding his own path and using his faith to try and make things better. It’s going to be character building for him, and it’s going to be me gesturing to the fact that Evangelicals are choosing to act the way they do, and you can make different choices that don’t harm people. And finally, while a lot of queer people have divested from religion for plenty of very good reasons, not all of them do. There are plenty of religious queer people, and that reality is very often ignored or treated as strange—or worse, a betrayal. It’s not something that should be dismissed, especially because it harms a lot of already vulnerable people, closing them off from a community that’s supposed to be there for them.

Justice won’t be the only character who represents this position, of course. On Earth, he attends a Black church, and there will be multiple side characters in the form of his friends (including an overlap with Pride’s friends), regular church-goers, people he volunteers with, things like that. This means I will be doing a lot of research about historically Black churches, the people who attend them, and the communities they build. And hiring a sensitivity reader, but that won’t happen until I have a manuscript.

Onto some other details! I decided not to go with the traditional floating donut-shaped halo. Instead, a halo is a ring of light always shining behind the angel’s head—no matter which way they turn, it’s like a bright spotlight is hitting them from the other side, eternally glowing. I also love wings, so massive wings are also a required factor. I’ve thrown around the idea of making each angel have different shaped wings based on their role. So, for example, Justice is part of Heaven’s army, defending the Kingdom of God. His wings would be elliptical, the best shape for control and maneuverability, so he can fight in the air.

Like I mentioned in Pride’s post, this body belongs to Justice and Justice alone. Unlike the fanfiction, this version of the story gives them their own bodies that they always look like. It makes more sense for the rest of the story, and saves me the headache of having to come up with a reason why he’d even need to do that in the first place.

Next, his personality. I’m going to come right out and say I don’t think my depiction of fanfiction-Justice was in the best taste. While I was taking inspiration from the canon arc of Atem in Yu-Gi-Oh! where he develops a less vindictive sense of justice and learns compassion, I also recognize that making a Middle Eastern man be angry, violent, and be super ready to kill in the name of God is not a good depiction at all, and I should have been able to recognize that while I was writing it. So that’s totally on me.

Because of that mistake, I’m being extremely conscious about how I characterize Justice in the rework, considering that Black men have similarly dangerous stereotypes regarding violence, anger, and aggression. Not to mention that if I kept him exactly the same, I would be writing a white character explaining to a Black character why he shouldn’t be violent. That definitely falls into White Savior bullshit, as well as a lot of worse racism, so that needed to change right away.

The first thing I considered when making this change was what Justice’s role in Heaven would actually be. He’s the embodiment of God’s justice, the things that God has determined is right and wrong, what people deserve and what they don’t. He’s basically a holy lawyer, knowing all the ins and outs of what is worth forgiving and what isn’t. Justice has a very strong moral code—he was created for it—but is ultimately very kind. Love thy neighbor is one of God’s most absolute laws, after all, so it would only be just to love often and unconditionally. He’s quick to offer aid and forgiveness, above and beyond what’s required of him.

When it comes to the punishment aspect of his job, Justice only moves to enact it if it falls under the rules God has set out. This is also a point of tension for him. Justice seems to be the only angel in all of Heaven who thinks killing Pride would be unreasonably cruel—he’s a demon, but he’s ferrying one of God’s children, one that belongs in Heaven. Despite his protests that smiting Pride would be unjust, even if he’s a demon, nobody else cares.

EDITOR’S NOTE: I know I said that the soul Pride has with him is “supposed” to be in Heaven, but I’m changing it to be a little more ambiguous—with a reason! Justice will defend this soul that may not belong in Heaven, he would defend even the worst of humanity, because the right to a just life doesn’t discriminate on whether you’re a good or bad person. This is another reason he doesn’t get along with a ton of angels, which I’ll get into right now.

In that way, Justice is the odd one out among his angelic brethren. He follows his moral code—God’s moral code, that he was created to serve—almost too well, against the interests of the structure of Heaven as an institution. The other angels are happy to follow along, turn a blind eye to the way they might be hurting innocent people by mistake, but Justice isn’t. A lot of his superiors dislike him for that, and he’s had plenty of arguments with them about his ideas. Fortunately for Justice, he loves a good, healthy debate, and arguing his point in good faith is like a fun puzzle. Ironically, his opponents are hardly ever arguing in good faith.

Because Justice is basically purpose-built to serve God and follow the rules, he’s very paranoid about being perfect. Following God’s commands to the letter is all he knows, and retribution from Heaven is swift if he ever steps out of line. For centuries, he hasn’t been allowed to make a mistake, so when he gets to Earth after breaking a ton of those Heavenly rules… he has a bit of a crisis!

This is where his main character arc comes in. The ingrained dogma Justice was trained under, to follow the word of God to the letter with no exceptions, is at odds with his purpose of deciding what’s right and wrong. Through the course of the story, he develops his own sense of justice, still based on God’s word, but with the caveat that he will do what’s right and just before what’s ”correct.”

My wonderful girlfriend, AuroBlaze, helped me once again to solidify Justice’s final character design. While not shown here, another silly idea got added to his design. I’m taking inspiration from Good Omens for this story (you should read it if you haven’t), and I wanted to give a little nod to Aziraphale’s bookshop by having Justice attend a book club semi-regularly throughout the story. As a joke, I mentioned Justice would probably think humans with reading glasses were so cute that he’d get some for himself—even though his vision is perfect, and he’d have no reason to ever need glasses. I made it canon because not only is it adorable and hilarious, it also demonstrates Justice’s genuine love for humanity. He adores God’s children and wants to do right by them—which is why leaving Heaven was so hard. He thought Heaven was doing right by humanity, and was faced with stunning evidence to the contrary.

[Tumblr version] [Instagram version]

Welcome to the world, Justice! You’re such a sweetheart, I promise that sharing your existence with Pride won’t be exhausting forever.

Here are a few more fun facts I want to mention before the end of this post: Justice, like Pride, can choose to show or hide his wings, but his halo is on forever. It glows by absorbing nearby light, so it’s automatically dim in the dark because there’s no light for it to use. He also has his flaming wheel of fire and eyes form, but he doesn’t use it very often and can’t partially transform like Pride can. What he can do is summon a holy sword whenever he wants, as well as play a really sick harp solo.

Like last time, I won’t leave his queerness merely implied—Justice is bisexual, and it will be stated in-text without room for debate. This time, though, Justice has been kind enough to let me know he’s cis! So I don’t have a second Mystery Gender situation on my hands, though I do consider Justice’s cis-ness to be as important as any other aspect of him. Having a cis Black man be unabashedly gentle and kind, while still giving him the capacity to be angry without making it his entire personality, is something I’m trying to do on purpose in this story. Men of any race have trouble being depicted as soft and sweet, and men of color especially risk any show of negative emotion branding them as dangerous or predatory, and I want to do my best not to perpetuate those harmful ideas here. There are trans Black characters in the story, because I’m definitely not leaving that gaping hole of representation missing, but creating a spectrum is my ultimate goal.

Another huge post for you all! I invite any comments about anything I’m doing here, because it requires a lot of stepping outside my comfort zone, a million hours of research, and fucking up a few dozen times before I get it right.

Thanks for your support, and see you next time for more Behind The Scenes action!

— Annika

[adacatlovelace]

I feel like the whole point of 40k is that "there are no good factions" becuase eternal conflict brings out the worst in everyone and violence only leads to more violence.

The Old ones refused to help the Necrontyr, who, in desperation and anger, turned to the C'tan to destroy the old ones and what they got was slavery to new gods and biotransferance robbing them of their souls followed by the bloodiest war in the galaxy.

As a result of the war in heaven, the eldar began to populate as far and wide as possible to survive but their numbers were so great their collective psychic energy gave birth to a new entity of the warp (which likely wouldve still happened had they not been full murderfuck mode, if not slaanesh than some other chaos god) which resulting in the fall of their empire

As a result of this, the Dark Age of technology came to an end and old night began. I want to note that human colonies are found all over the galaxy, implying a level of coexistance with xenos. Hualmanity is then at its lowest point, when The Big Golden Fascist appears and subjugates Terra with his big mutant army. Like, think of that for a moment, in most other scifi, usually this dude would be main antagonist.

Then, not content with just "uniting" Terra, he creates even more powerful supersoldiers and 20, I mean 18 sons. (Keep this in mind, this will be important later)

To understand WHY the Horus Heresy happened, lets look at the Orks. They are a race recklessly made by the old ones exclusively for battle, with no regard for how they will exist after the fighting is done. Sound familiar? Like the 20,000 mutant monster people the emporer made?

I commonly see "The Emporer is a bad dad" but I disagree. He wasnt a father at all, he was a master with the rest of humanity as his slaves. A "Master of Mankind" if you will. At no poimt did he ever form a paternal relationship with anyone EXCEPT Horus.

Look at what he did the thunder warriors. Did he try to use his genius to help cure them? No he threw them away.

Look at what he did to Magnus, Pertarabo, Mortarian, Angron, Fulgrim, and Lorgar.

Look at what he did to The Lost and Forgotten.

Look at how Konrad Curze is TERRIFIED of him and what he would do if he found out about his visions.

Are these the actions of a father or a slaver? Horus KNEW this and was desperate to fimd another way after watching so many of his sons die on Murder and the failed diplomacy with the Interex. And that was all chaos needed, as thats what Chaos does, preys on the desperate. And as a result, the galaxy burned, the emporer was slain, and after the horrors of The Horus Heresy and the sudden abscence of the figure who held so much power of them, the imperial cult began to rise to power, leading to the modern imperium and all its evil.

Chaos itself is just a reflection of the galaxy, full of violence, lies, death and pain. The only differance is A. They prey on the material plane and B. They can put aside "The Great Game" for a few moments and work together to seriously fuck up the galaxy.

If this wasnt bad enough, the tyranids began to invade the galaxy. They are a true threat to not only the imperium, but the galaxy as a whole who are too busy fighting each other to deal with them.

Then you have the Tau, who may be the best morally, but they are such a new species that they are basically a tiny speck in the galaxy surrounded by Tyranids, Orks, The Imperium, The Forces of Chaos, Eldar, and Dark Eldar, all of which either dont use diplomacy or arr so violent and mistrusting that any diplomatic action that happens is cut shortand as a result they have almost no influence on the galaxy

Its not "There are no good guys in 40k" its "There cannot be good guys when there is only war."

Like imagine how quickly the fighting would be over the necrons, imperium, eldar and dark eldar realized how fucked they are and that they NEED to band together to defend their home before they are consumed by the tyranids and chaos. Hell they could even get the orks on board just for the chance to be a part of the biggest goddamn WAAAAGH the galaxy has ever known.

[occult-castiel]

Just thinking about the fact that they had the biggest ressurection set up in the whole show -- every demon and angel sleeping in the empty, had Cas wake up from there, had Heaven about to turn the lights off cause there weren't enough angels in heaven, had narratively forced Cas to go back there, and just... didn't do any??thing?? With the obvious solution?

What was to stop them from going in there, Dean grabbing Cas, and then have Cas, barely awake, grabbing into Dean cause he can barely stand after his second Empty wake up, stopping them and saying they can't leave the others.

And then they wake everyone up. We get cameos (could be singular shots cause it was filmed during covid) from everyone favs or the more past plot point relevant people, and now Heaven will be fine and maybe they have an army to help fight Chuck. And then that happens Amara becomes God so Jack can be a kid and not lose his personality to become creepy and God.

And then when everything is quited down, Dean and Cas get a soft moment where words are said, on screen kiss, Sam gets to be a little brother and interrupts to have them come out of the room for something. Cas leaves, and when he does maybe Sam makes a face at dean over the kiss, but then smiles and pats dean on the back and says he's happy for him.

Shot of them all walking to the main room together, and everyone they've ever cared about is there and it's time to celebrate. We get a nice Hello boys from Crowley. Rowena, queen of hell, gets to say something about being pleased women are on top in heaven and hell. Shots of other characters smiling. Donna brought food, Jody brought beer. Wayward sisters appearance. We don't get to see those that died, but everyone living is there. Of course Sam gravitated toward Eileen.

And idk maybe Amara shows up and says her brother was responsible for the amount of monsters in the world, and under her care the population will dwindle, and she hopes that that's a nice parting gift for them.

And then Tema free will gets to look at each other and day something like "well, if that's true, guess we'll have to remodle." Or some shit idk. Just something to make it clear that they don't have to hunt anymore.

Theres good finale shots of everyone. Rowena hugging Crowley. Donna and Jody chit chating having a nice time. Jacks hanging out with the wayward sisters. Last shots we see of the brothers is Sam being bad at flirting with Eileen, Dean leaning in to whisper something to Cas, smiling. They're holding hands.

It goes to the table, where the initials are. We see either cas and Jack added, or everyone there has taken turns adding their name.

It fades to black.

At least that's my ideal ending, that doesn't tip toe too far into more fanfic-like things.

[repentarium]

the truth is i've been dreaming of this tired, tranquil place tag 14/??

ao3

interlude - a line allows progress, a circle does not

Eddie stays. He couldn’t not stay, but he doesn’t sleep. He may have been drunk enough to suppress the little voice that said kissing Steve was the worst idea he’d ever had in a long and storied career of bad ideas, but he wasn’t drunk enough to turn off his damned brain. 

Steve was smokin’ hot and so so kind and good to him. Also, importantly? Vitally? So straight. Ladykiller King Steve, straight as an arrow, handsome babysitter extraordinaire with truly the best hair that you’ve ever seen, who was also sad and lonely and had a little too much to drink. It happens to the best of ‘em, Eddie figures, and not to toot his own horn but he was kind of pretty, even with the scars and the hyperactive nerdiness and the alleged satanic tendencies. Hell, if you squint he’s mostly hair and hips and jacket (by design). What’s not to like?

Steve didn’t deserve this though, for his friend to take advantage of the drinks because he (of course) had a debilitating crush on him, just like everyone else. He should be able to trust a friend, and yeah, it took him a bit of (obscenely hot, Christ) kissing and stumbling home and semi-nudity to shake his head and stabilize himself, but look, he’s only a man. 

This wouldn’t have been the first time some straight guy kissed him and then decked him or vanished from his life or whatever, and Steve would have done it kindly sure but damn if Eddie couldn’t handle his only real grown up friend (who again was somehow Steve fucking Harrington) keeping away from him or being afraid to sit next to him, especially not when Eddie’s own heart was so prone to histrionics and pining and daydreaming and suffering. 

He’s just grateful he managed to shake some sense into himself before it went too far. Unless it already had, which is what he’s thinking and overthinking and rethinking with an angry whale of a head while Steve snores lightly and grumbles against him. 

Sure the whole night was like magic, like fizzy drinks and sparkly lights and awful sweet tooth romantic comedies, and there was a long and interlinked series of the best kisses in his (admittedly very short) history of kissing, all with Steve so it was better than he could have ever dreamed. Which, okay, sounds sad and cheesy and dramatic but after all Eddie is like if you had a theater major who didn’t go to college and instead ran tabletop roleplaying games for teens and also fronted a metal band on top of being maybe the only gay man in Hawkins, Indiana, population 15 people and 16 churches, who by the way has a very stupid unrequited crush on his best (only) friend who is a jock and an actual angel from heaven and also so fucking straight. Yeah, it’s exactly like that. Anyways, all that to say, he regrets it. It’s fucking complicated! A bad, bad idea. And dangerous. 

It’s dangerous, like sirens and alarms and flashing lights, like every warning sign all jumbled together into an explosion of fire and just the worst vibes. 

Because he’s his best friend. And yeah Eddie used to like danger and adventure but either the almost-dying and the nightmares that followed or the full reliance on this dork of a guy and his place in his life has him wanting to put the fire out, turn off the lights, go back in time to when he was just looking at him with moon eyes and pretending like he could maybe one day like him back. It was too much, too close to the sun, wax wings slain et cetera et cetera. 

And it’s so immensely screwed up because if he didn’t care about Steve at all, or if he was just a regular friend or a jock acquaintance, they could have maybe fucked and gotten it out of their systems. But Steve, like… Steve deserves the world actually, okay, he’s going to marry some hot girl and have a bunch of kids and go on weird vacations and say things like ‘let’s blow this popsicle stand’ and sure that’s not the world to everyone per se, it’s certainly not the world for Eddie, but it’s the world for Steve. Eddie’s gonna maybe take the band on a mini-tour to a couple of shitty local bars that smell like vomit and stale beer and cigarettes, maybe hook up with a bunch of strangers, chasing the high of even just kissing Harrington, and probably fucking drink himself to death or end up in jail or somehow both like his dear old dad. 

So yeah, self-preservation, Eddie running like always, blah blah blah, but this was maybe for a good reason because it was also Steve-preservation. 

It’s all depressing and cyclical and borderline boring. Eddie feels like he’s in high school again except he’s got an arm around Steve and he’s in his bed and so it’s somehow unbelievably worse. He can smell leftover traces of booze and Steve’s stupid hair products and there’s a smear of eyeliner on Eddie’s arm where his annoyingly perfect face has been pressed. He’s got a headache brewing behind his eyes, and an early shift at the shop tomorrow, and god really must exist because somebody fucking hates him. He can’t wait to pretend to be asleep when Steve wakes up and sneaks out of his own bed, really looks forward to it. It’s gonna be the highlight of his day, for sure.

(with the ao3 Darkness tm, it's a great time for me to catch up on these chapters here. xoxo)

[pwblogarchive]

May 2014

May 22, 2014

10:08 PM

“the giant white unicorn in the room.”

so some stray thoughts on YBC. i will be brief here and SPOILER ALERT- i will not be answering any questions that are not answered by the videos themselves.

one of the few things we agreed on as a band growing up were these stories that united you with others in imagination- films where there is a sense of something beyond- something that forced you to think, to consider that maybe it is something darker or bigger or stranger than you had seen before… we thought of the unicorn in blade runner or the alien in alien (who is possibly more terrifying because of what you dont know rather than what you do (in the first film)). i love the idea of “the force” in star wars- it cant really be explained yet it fully consumed my youth- then when they came out in the prequels and described the midichlorians - it kind of stole the magic for me- it was less than i had imagined, not more.  that is why we decided not to make what was being carried so literal and tangible- it would mean if you  thought of something else we wouldve literally taken that away from you… ‘brad pitt voice’ “whats in the box, whats in the box?!” that being said we also knew that it couldnt be something like “oh they were carrying around "hope” all along or something that had no face or visceral quality"…

enter Xibalba 

we thought of the world that the young blood chronicles had created- there arent true “heroes” in the traditional sense of the word. there are people who are forced to make heroic decisions and the people that make them often make other decisions that are not heroic or are often in fact anti-heroic. there is a gray scale to this story. one mans salvation is, and often creates another mans despair. the idea that the past can trap us- all of us… and the only way to escape that is to break the pattern. at what point are we saved? at what point have we done enough good to erase all the bad from our ledger? can someone who has been terrible their entire life change it with one heroic turn? can a hero make a terrible decision and cast themselves into hell?

the idea that we carry around what we fear most… that we protect that thing we fear… that maybe in order to destroy something terrible we must become something more terrible. and can we love something that is both great and terrible? what is our threshold? at what point do we stop protecting the person or idea we fear the most, cast them aside and step into the light? the answer is different for everyone and so it was different for every character in YBC.

another idea that we focused on was that sometimes in order to fight something so big and dark you need to get your hands dirty- fighting fire with fire (as was explored in films like terminator 2 and dark knight)… the world we chose to create and populate for YBC is not too dissimilar to the one that exists as far as the complexities surrounding morality. when is it ok to accept the lesser of two evils? when do we draw the line? when do we say someone is too broken to be fixed? all of these questions are interesting to explore and i think have analogs in the real world.

all of the images in the YBC were choices, decisions that were made to add depth and texture to the story… I'm not sure that heaven and hell were meant to be real- but they both allowed the viewer to see alternate universes with in the world and allowed or forced characters to undergo drastic transformations… to me it is akin to having humans travel to another planet (as in pandora in avatar or the planetoid in Aliens)… it pressurizes the drama and allowed it to take place in a vacuum.

this was never supposed to be simple. it was never supposed to be easy to swallow. in much of frank darabonts work it is not the terror of the end that is people undoing- it is in fact the human conflict- jealousy/prejudice/anxiety that tears the group a part…. what we decided to focus on was what could bring a group like that back together.

that which tears friends apart can drive them back together.

in the end it all flows pretty easily in my head whether it be different metaphors (biblical, entertainment industry, etc) or just a simple story. but maybe thats cause we wrote it, because i was there. in the end whatever it means to you is the right answer- i have nothing that trumps that.

i think this is all i really have to say about any of this. thanks for coming on this journey with us.

never silence the noise.

some films/stories/music i would suggest checking out that inspired us:

bladerunner (directors cut specifically)

dark city

the lost boys

do androids dream of electric sheep (book)

Drive (film)

Stand By Me

the fall (film)

terminator 2 

over the edge (movie)

the mist

the lanoliers (stephen king- short story)

kavinsky- OutRun (lp)

[mangodestroyer]

Well, I'm sure Aziraphale never experienced torture. But I think him being a principality would also give him a high pain tolerance. He may seem soft, but I'm sure he's been trained up to be tough if he needs to be (and was created to be a naturally strong individual). I'm not sure how they train principalities, but he's basically a Heavenly military unit. And yeah, I know. It's not what he wanted to be. It was decided for him. I imagine that can be its own kind of trauma. Human military training sucks ass from the sounds of it (I mean, I hear it can be pretty rough). Imagine how fucking cold and strict Heaven military training is?

Well, Crowley by contrast started off as such a sweet, open, and creative soul. An innocent angel who probably had more privileges and thought the universe was just a fun sandbox to play around in. And that other people were, um, reasonable. At least, not evil. Not strict enough either to toss him out for having questions and for being an "imperfect" angel (although, according to Neil, he's not always a reliable narrator and probably actually did something bad to warrant the fall).

And yeah, I know, he still has that sweet side to him. It's just been so repressed by years of trauma. I mean, he's been through a LOT. And forty years of torture is just... unimaginable! I mean, from Hell of all places too! And for something that would REALLY piss them off (he actually got off light for stumbling so badly as a demon; saving a soul from eternal damnation).

Idk, they say the humans can be surprisingly cruel by themselves. And they are! I learned the hard way, thanks to the internet, what some fucked up humans can do to each other (even in modern times, for which my teachers in grade school insisted when we were studying the dark ages, "We aren't like that anymore! Humanity evolved!", pft, yeah right!) But that's just the mortal plane. In Hell, they probably have all these magical tools for their "craft." And 6000 years to come up with some messed up shit. With demons who probably do this as their passion. And they can keep you alive and wide awake. Forever.

Yeah, I've never been a fan of Biblical Hell. No one deserves that. Not even the worst human beings to ever exist. But the thing is, it's not even just reserved for the "worst of the worst." It's for everyone Heaven doesn't approve of. And that would be the majority of the human population. And most people, while imperfect, aren't straight up evil (evil is when you ENJOY hurting others, yes, that kind of person does exist).

So yeah, no wonder Crowley is just... never really okay again after that forty years! No wonder he just goes straight to begging for holy water! That theory has to be one of the most disturbing GO theories imo (and this universe can be surprisingly disturbing if you think about it a lot). I don't really blame Crowley for being super scared of Hell and the other demons when he pisses them off. Or for wanting to always run off or avoid problems when they become too much. He's hit his breaking point a long time ago.

In fact, I think he's just straight up broken now. And seems very mentally ill at this point. I think the mental illness thing was more apparent in season two. He kind of comes off as someone who's just trying to live a normal life, but just can't. Idk, I kind of had a hard time watching season two because of it. Might be able to do so if I tried again, now that I'm used to it. And Aziraphale seemed a bit out of touch with it. I'm not saying that makes him bad or anything. He probably hasn't processed his own shit yet. It just seems obvious that Crowley is, um, not well?

Again, I just can't fathom 40 years of torture in Hell. How the fuck would anyone recover from that? In the real world, people can become super fucked up over far less. For life. I mean, if they intended on sending him out to be an agent again, would they have really gone all out with him? They need him to still be able to do his job and all. What good would a catatonic agent be? I mean, if he got sent back out after the fact, then that was probably a "warning." His only warning, I would assume. Something to really get the message through. But not "the worst."

Needless to say, I kind of hope that weird time skip is at least addressed a little in season three. It's leaving me with lots of questions and speculation. Maybe I'm overthinking it, idk. I just feel like it's kind of important though. I mean, it seems like it plays a huge role with Azicrow too. If that's the reason Crowley asked for holy water. Or why Crowley seems more avoidant now (well, more so after that 60's scene). I mean, Aziraphale was being more affection to him, and he was a little responsive. But he actually seemed kind of... not that responsive to it. Almost a little oblivious to it. And also had a weird resource guarding moment over letting Azi use his car (an angel he loves more than anyone, and I know cars are very treasured possessions, but the Bentley is sentient and very capable, and Azi is also capable). And also chose to live in his car despite not liking it (when he could have just lived in the bookshop).

I'm way too into this. I agree. Crowley needs so many hugs! Actually, I sometimes just want to take him somewhere safe where he can never be hurt again. And so he doesn't have to deal with that fucked up world he lives in anymore.

I will never tire to watch this scene.

Aziraphale acts like a normal person but Crowley reacts like he has been shot by a bloody shotgun or a fucking sniper. He is so damn dramatic, my poor bitch

It's just a lil ball of paint, love 😭 please chill

[hazbinheadcanons]

Hey! I don’t know if you know the answer to this question. I am sorry in advance if this is a bother. How do you think sinners are punished in this world? Yes, I know that this hell is a horrible place. Vivziepop has stated that this hell is full of horrible people who torture each other. Keep in mind that Helluva Boss take place in the same world. However, when watching Helluva Boss, I don’t see how this hell is so bad. Sinners seem fairly content most of the time. This world does not even seem like it is over-populated. The only sinners who seem like they are suffering are Angel and Alastor. Am I missing something? Can you help understand? Thank you for your time and have a nice day!

When sinners arrive in hell their apparence changes to reflect their sins and crimes, for example angel is a spider because of his Web of crime and Alastor was killed by a deer hunter so his demon form is mocking his death. As miss mayberry stated in helluva boss "You do everything right in life. Play by all the rules and still get sent down here with all the Hitlers and Epsteins of the world." this shows how strict heaven is and how few humans are actually being allowed in heaven compared to hell where sinners are constantly arriving. Sinners can only live in the pride ring and cannot leave, this is what leads to the over population in hell.

Too many sinners and not enough space in the pride ring. Sinners who are content living in hell have climbed hells hierarchy such as the Overlords. Weaker sinners however won't be as content because they are surrounded by murderers, thiefs, cannibals, liars etc. It's stressful and impossible for them to be happy. When watching the hazbin pilot and addicted music video you can see how sinners turn to negative coping mechanisms. Vaggie's always paranoid, Husk is constantly drinking to deal with stress, and  Angel has been sexually abused and cries himself to sleep so he turned to drugs. Alastor is bored and he finds others suffering entertaining to watch. He knows that he won't be redeemed and is content in hell.

The exterminators come down from heaven to kill sinners and lower the over population in the pride ring. Charlie believes in redemption to stop the over population and sees it as a way to stop heaven from killing her people in the future. As we only have the pilot and a few scenes of sinners in helluva boss I can't say how the other sinners live as there's not enough information.

[singthesongsofsin]

It all feels, a bit, like dealing with a frat boy version of Vox. He's like if her Vox, at his worst, had just kept falling. He's... she hesitates to say good at hiding it all. The fact that she's still here, despite the complaining sort of says everything. He's free to laugh and smile all he wants, but she knows all the tips and tricks of that screen. The glitches, the slight differences in the way that the smile looks between forced and genuine-- a few decades of interacting with it on a daily basis had given her that much.

"I think Vark was a winning point in your favour," She admits. Hellaina had never really understood Velvette, nor Vox's friendship with her, but she's always suspected at least part of it might have been when she came into his life. They'd interacted of course, civilly even. A few times she had found Velvette watching things on Vox's TV in the middle of the day, and his cupboards had been, aside from shark food, populated by the two of them. "I don't think it's luck, just a different relationship."

"It's not breaking and entering when if I don't actually break anything. Also I don't want to rob you." That sounded like far too much effort for not enough reward. It was more like... teleportation. From a street on the end of an Exterminator's spear to his living room. She hasn't even looked out the window properly, but she doubts it's the Blue Light District she's used to. She shrugs. "Well we were both human once upon a time-- can you tell me you've ever seen one in Hell before? Vox or not he's an anomaly."

She recognizes the Voxtagram page, almost immediately. Some things, she thinks fondly, never change. The one she's used to tends to be interspersed with Dia or his partners, but in a world where that wasn't reality, then this feels accurate enough. How Astor of all people, had become her touchstone to reality, she isn't sure, but she's grateful for it either way. She won't mention it, that would be giving up the ulterior motives too easily, but knowing is a victory either way. "You wish," she says, blowing him a kiss.

And then the mood changes again, and dear god, it just gets worse. Angel, she's sure, made for a fine friend, but he, like Velvette, like everyone else in this Vox's life was in Valentino's pocket before his. No wonder he seemed so... stuck in place. "Might be fuzzier, but," she lifts one of her snakes, on the edge of her fingers. They're still hanging as limply as snakes can, asleep, from the crash through into another universe she assumes. "His hair doesn't bite."

She grins, living into the smile that makes the underlings worry. it's cute he thinks he ever had a choice in the matter. "I mean yes, though some clothes might be nice too. My closet, like everything else, is stuck back in another version of Hell," And while she would steal something of his in order to do her own laundry, she'd really rather not have to do it every single day for as long as she was stuck here. Especially considering it's not like her bank account would be any good here. "Business casual makes for good day wear, but I don't much fancy living in this one outfit."

And so long as she had a room and clothes, food wasn't a problem if he had to eat too. Better than actually signing any sort of contract to be on his payroll, no, no that wasn't happening. She doesn't think she even could with her soul technically on the line to someone else. And oh that's reassuring, another universe, but not dead, so Vox would know, and could tell Dia, that she was alive.

The grin settles into something more smug and self-satisfied as he drops the phone. Fabulous. One inconvenient, bad idea subverted. Now to just... try and keep him from making more. Whenever she got home, if one of the Princess's sinners ever got to heaven, she'd have to ask them to pass on a message to Heaven. A nice, eloquent 'fuck you'.

"That sounds sad," she says, flat. She was too sober for this, all of this, and then the idea hits. If he could drink then this could actually be fun. And if it meant stretching the truth a little? Well it wasn't like a sin could bring her even more to Hell than she was already. "Well considering I just died, or at least my wife probably assumes I did, and I know more about you than you know about me, I propose a game: Never Have I Ever. It's not like being lonely on your couch and waiting for an apology can be invigorating."

[zenithrpg]

☽ — site premise

The year is 2322.

100 years ago the city of New Zenith was built on what remained of the post-nuclear ruins of Chicago: one of the few surviving cities of the Third World War. In the time that it has taken society to become semi-civilized in the aftermath of nuclear winter, megacorporations led by the ultra rich have risen into leadership, having their hands in food and agriculture, medical and technological innovation, and even going so far as to place their figureheads into political office, solidifying the marriage between corporate tycoons and the so-called democratic government as walls were erected around the city to keep the citizens in and a force field to keep the radiation out.

Day to day life for citizens of New Zenith can be heaven or hell depending on their position in life. Those with the guts or talent to make their way to the top find themselves able to live a life of luxury in the Elysium Towers amongst the elite of New Zenithian society: celebrities and modern day warlords alike. The elites in society have access to the best food, cyberware, and healthcare, often living a life that can seem completely out of touch from reality. The mass majority though live off of corporate scraps barely making enough to skirt by in life, and oftentimes working multiple jobs to earn enough money to keep a roof over their head and synthfood on the table. All people have access to plastic surgery and cybernetic technology, as body modification has become something of a way of life as industrialism and technology took over. In fact, in New Zenith it is now more uncommon to find an “off-grid and unmodded” person than it is to find someone who is nearly completely cyborg. To pass the time, many people turn to virtual reality, colloquially called “braindances” in order to find some respite from the harshness of their day to day life. Some turn to drugs as well, and with that comes a robust black market through which people can acquire all sorts of contraband, antiques, back-alley cyberware, and procure the services of local mercenaries and private detectives for jobs both big and small.

Between eating synthetic food and the after effects of radiation, it is a common problem for citizens of New Zenith to experience organ failures, especially if they are migrating to the city from bunker communities outside of the city in search of a better life. Transplants are accessible to all as developments in medical technology has enabled the mass production of synthetic organs to be readily available, oftentimes coming as a package with cosmetic surgeries to further drive home the idea that one can conquer their genetics and become the portrait of perfection that they’ve always dreamed of being. However, many find themselves signing contracts before reading the fine print of their loans, and with the unstable economy many of New Zenith’s lower class find themselves falling into debt, placing them in bad standing with the Lazarus Corporation which means that they become candidates for repossession: a barbaric practice that is akin to bounty hunting where the indebted are stalked, tracked down, and butchered to reclaim their organs on behalf of the corporate giant. This is a hot topic of debate amongst the citizens of New Zenith as many have been rallying to get organ repossessions banned for decades now, but with the corruption running rampant in the government, legislation has been slow moving.

Still, New Zenith in true corporate fashion keeps everything all smiles on the surface as much as possible, the shiny new tech and robust entertainment industry helping to keep the majority of the population distracted and content enough with the current environment to avoid too much  conflict as of yet. But as time goes on, cracks just might be beginning to form in the facade of this growing society.

[cherrysha]

Atonement

feitan is back!! because he lives in my head rent free. for some reason when i write him i just be thinkin of moral and ethical struggle... prolly cuz the idea that a man who tortures for fun can also love is a concept that is kinda weird to think abt. BUT!! its possible, so i write. Also i had to take a break from pwp and this just popped into my head.

Summary: Feitan has a moment of introspection

word count: 1130

My requests are open atm

Warnings: torture, death, blood, yandere themes, kidnapping, a reference to drugs, religious imagery

Does he know its wrong? He’s been in the business of theft, of murder, for years now. The misconception most have about what is wrong and what is right, is that it’s not subjective. There’s wrong and then there’s right, maybe a shade of gray in between. But who was he to decide which was which? And the general population was so enraptured by the ethical ideals of modern-day society, blatantly ignoring any hypocrisy that came along with it, that their opinion didn’t matter much either. They believed what everyone else believed. Nothing more than brainless sheep.

You’d probably wake in the next few hours, maybe even sooner, he couldn’t tell. What was different from this? Theft was theft, and if society already condemned him for his previous actions, then this was something that was acceptable for him to do.

A human can bite off their own finger with so little resistance it’d be like biting through a carrot, but our minds have restrained us from ever even trying. Is that how it worked? Fear of damnation too much to even try to have heaven here on earth? Temptation was the sin of Eve, but it was just a natural consequence of the human condition. Something as normal as breathing, and part of him couldn’t help but to feel bad for her. He leaves to finalize his spot in hell; To make his own heaven. It’d be worth any pain in the supposed afterlife.

Feitan watches the man struggle, grunts coming from his taped mouth as he tries to get away. The idea of engagement, of marriage, was enough to make him scoff as well. The blade sinks in effortlessly when he finally plunges it into the man’s side. He screams against the tape, of course. If it weren’t for the pure hatred in his heart, or the notion that this man had at one point claimed you, he wouldn’t have bothered with someone so weak. There was no sport in hunting easy prey. It’s a task that must be done, but right now it serves as a way to pass the time until you eventually woke up.

When Feitan has him bound to the table, he finally speaks

“There is this misconception,” he says, slowly maneuvering around the table to his tools, “That sharper knives are more dangerous.”

His eyes are wide with panic. Feitan’s already forgotten his name, he’s hoping you would as well with time.

“But in truth, the duller ones are what you should fear.” Feitan slowly drives a blade into the meat of the man’s exposed shoulder, as if to demonstrate how it fails to even cut through the skin. It only finds its way into his body when the right amount of pressure has been applied. He screams again, and Feitan can see what you liked about him. The deep baritone was manly, his physique was as well, but it was all just surface level. He couldn’t fault someone as trusting as you to fall for the ruse.

“The duller the blade, the more jagged the cut.” He sighs, as if he’s giving a lecture in a room full of unworthy students.

“It takes longer to heal. But you don’t have to worry about that.”

He shouldn’t be wasting his breathe, he knows that. But there’s this desperate need to prove something. To prove that he, himself, is stronger in every way.

This man wouldn’t even last Feitan an hour and, in truth, it wasn’t much fun to flay the skin off of someone that’d already given up hope of any salvation. He did it anyway, taking a sharper knife and sliding it under the taut skin of his stomach. Just to satisfy his curiosity. Would the blood loss win, or would he die from shock first?

He’s sweating from the pure agony he’s in, panting heavily through his nose. Feitan takes a break just to watch. As always, his mind drifts to you. He’d felt love in small doses in his life; he knew what it was. A warmth in the heart that didn’t present itself as the squelch of his knife into something firm. A happiness that wasn’t caused by the light dimming from his opponent’s eyes. Your smile, the softness of your skin, the glow that radiated from your very being in the summertime. His summer sun in all its glory, and yet he knew better. He gets up, curiosity pulling him to his feet once more.

Deftly, he rips the tape from the man’s mouth and he weakly stares up in confusion.

“Would you rather me kill you, or the girl in the other room?” his voice is sharp, full of an authority someone as weak as him held no power against.

“What d’you-“

“You were engaged right? Would you rather I slit her throat or yours? There’d be no pain.”

Its in his eyes, Feitan can see the choice as clear as day. The shock morphs into guilt, and before his dirty lips can finish speaking your name his throat is gushing like an open faucet.

Feitan bends down, as if to tell him a secret he’s only capable of learning on his deathbed. “I’ll use the fifteen seconds that you have left to tell you that you are nothing more than a coward. A blemish to society, and your death is just as meaningless as your life.”

Feitan stands straight again and patiently waits for the blood to finish pouring out of the wound. Its not his best work, or even his most satisfying, but its enjoyable nonetheless.

He washes it from his hands, scrubs the red stains to rid himself of any traces of the dead body. Two hours maybe? He’s not exactly sure when you’ll wake, but he comes to you anyway. Just to watch as you peacefully slept on his bed. He knew better than this; To love and be loved was a weakness. But he discovered that maybe it was just fear that held him back. A fear of loss, of rejection, a blanket fear of the unknown consequences loving you would have. Men like him served a purpose in society, a separate entity from the normal everyday citizens on the street.

You stirred as the drugs started to finally dissipate. Lashes fluttering as you sleepily opened your eyes.

People like him couldn’t afford to be cowards. Fear was a construct, and it served little purpose with the lifestyle he chose to lead. He’s enraptured by you, soul irrevocably woven with yours, even if you don’t know it yet. If you rejected him, it was just fear. Not of him, but of the unknown. That was to be expected of someone as fragile as you.

He watches as you try to sit up, body falling limply to the bed when your arm gives out. In time you’d know him, love him the same way he did you.

[edge-lorde]

the religion of the galactic horde

“You seem reluctant to help me. But I only wish to use your weapon to bring peace to the darkest corners of the universe. (Glimmer: Peace? If you activate the Heart of Etheria, there will be no one left.) Yes. No war, no pain. Old worlds swept aside, a new beginning for the universe.” --Horde Prime explaining his motivations to Glimmer

the horde in shera was definitely inspired by Christianity and uses a lot of its imagery, the most iconic being the baptism scene. it certainly gives off the vibes of a christian or christian adjacent cult, but what is its actual doctrine? i have some thoughts about that. 

first here are what i consider to be the 3 main differences between real christianity and the horde: 

Their jesus didn't ascend to heaven. He's still with them.

They don't have a larger creator god. They worship horde prime like he is a living god but they don't believe that he created the universe.

They have no focus on the afterlife

this is going to be long.

before i begin heres the sparknotes version of christianity for anyone not familiar. I am not evangelizing this, just think of it as LORE. 

Once upon a time there was a guy named Jesus. He was the son of the one true god, who both created everything in the universe, is everywhere and knows everything, and controls the afterlife. Jesus is god born as a mortal person, sent by god to teach all of humanity the errors of their evil ways so they can repent and go to the good afterlife when they die. There're two afterlives, a good one and a bad one, heaven is the good one and its run by god and his army of angels, which are divine beings that god can send to earth to do things. The bad one is called hell. 

Anyway, in his time on earth jesus was the only person ever to never do anything bad ever (called sin). He tried to teach people how to be good but was Too Good for this Cruel World and was killed. 3 days later he came back from the dead, proving his divinity. Some time after that however, he ascended into heaven without dying, telling his followers to spread the word because hes going to be coming back. Christians today are still awaiting his return. In the meantime, christians follow his teachings left behind in holy texts. 

The crux of christianity is to get to heaven when you die, and this can only be done by following the teachings of jesus christ, believing in god, and believing that jesus was the son of god. Its a given that everyone will do bad things at some point in their lives so you're supposed to pray to god and ask for forgiveness regularly and if you really mean it then god will forgive you. 

thats the basics. 

to my first main point from above, if we posit that horde prime is the jesus equivalent of the horde religion, because hes treated as a living god, his goal is to spread his philosophy throughout the universe, then in the horde religions jesus never ascended into heaven. this would be like if jesus in our world rose from the dead and just picked up where he left off, and never died after that and was alive today. that would be pretty good proof of divinity. 

to my 2nd point, theres nothing in the show that suggests that horde prime thinks that he created the universe. this means that he did not get his divinity from anywhere but inside himself, hes not claiming that hes the rightful ruler of the known universe for any other reason besides his ideas are the best. 

the 3rd point is that the show does show horde prime or the horde caring one bit about the afterlife, save for one line from wrong hordak.

"Brother, I hope you, too, are full of only love for Horde Prime and have no crippling doubt eating at your soul."

meaning that they have the concept of the soul. which is very interesting and ill get to it, but on the whole the hordes focus seems to be on the here and now. this is a huge departure from christianity because chrisitanity is all about getting to the afterlife. that is the reason that christians are supposed to follow christ and recruit as many people as possible to do the same, because if they dont, they or other people will supposedly go to hell when they die. i say supposedly because at funerals, even if the person who died wasnt a believer, in my experience no christian would ever ever ever insinuate that someone went to hell. 

but the difference still stands. following real christian ideology is supposed to have benefits for the individual in the afterlife, while in the horde religion salvation seems to only be found by submitting to prime in this life and being either a tool that he can use to further his goal of purifying the universe or by letting him remove you from it. 

on top of all that, horde prime has the hive mind, which he uses to control the thoughts of all his followers. this means that theres no room for a bible study, no need of a holy text at all in fact, and no room for interpretation. horde prime delivers orders to your brain directly and can tell if you think anything out of line. real Christianity does have the idea that a sin that you just think about doing is as bad as actually doing it, but in the horde these thoughts can be easily discovered and punished. 

the horde religion seems to me to be a strangely secular version of christianity with only the bad parts remaining; the control, the blind faith, the certainty that you are right and everyone else is wrong, the not questioning authority. with none of the good aspects like community, and good deeds. it is a cult in the truest sense of the word, a religion that begins and ends with one person only, that person being horde prime.

so, if you take horde prime out of the equation, what, if anything, would be left? 

i find the plight of the horde clones here to be the most interesting. we know that they do have thoughts about their religion, as it was hordaks belief that he could earn his way back into horde primes god graces that kept him going all those years in despondos, and wrong hordak is distraught when he discovers that horde prime lied about krytis. 

unlike both the chipped people we see in the show and real religious converts, the clones were born into this cult that values blind obedience only, and have no prior ideology or cultural identity to fall back on when they are taken out of it. 

so to answer this question, i must add some conjecture to horde primes backstory and how the clones see themselves in horde primes universe. I already wrote up a brief backstory idea for horde prime/the clones and have it posted on here somewhere. I'm not going to dig it up but you could probably find it in the #horde prime tag on my blog if you dig hard enough. 

To summarize it though, I have it as horde prime was once a regular (bad) dude who became a cult leader under the premise of preaching peace --> he becomes disillusioned with people and even his own followers because he doesn't actually like people, he likes manipulating them. --> this and the power of being a cult leader go to his head and he starts to think that he is the only person in existence capable of living a moral life and everyone else needs to be saved from themselves, the world would be a better place if he could just make everyone's decisions for them. --> he somehow gets a hold of the technology needed to set up the hive mind, be it by inventing it himself, stealing it, finding it, or being gifted it. 

I'll pause here to address the theory that horde prime was originally an eldritch being that simply possessed a dude who would become the template for the clones. I think there's enough stuff in the show that this is a valid read and might even be canon but i don't really care for it. For me, what makes horde prime a compelling villain is that he's a very human evil, so having him actually be an evil demon thing instead of a really bad but believable dude who got near ultimate power weakens his character. BUT, i’m not going to address it in my comic so i'll leave it open as to whether he's got that going on or not. If he is, the clones don’t know about it and neither they nor the other characters have any way of discovering it. IF he is though, it would happen here. I could see it being a cool idea for him to get the hive mind from the eldritch being that would then possess him and haunt his lineage for time immemorial as a deal with the devil sort of thing, but he has to be a bad person before that.

Anyway he gets the hive mind--> he gets all of his followers to chip themselves --> gets those people to chip everyone else on his home planet --> use his planet wide army to harvest all resources on the planet and build his first space fleet and take to the skies and start his conquest--> realize that if he is to succeed hes going to need to both become immortal and find a steady source of new followers because chipped people die eventually and he doesnt care about people enough to figure out a way to keep a self sufficient population of followers alive, he just wants people around to adore him and do his bidding--> invents his cloning system-->

and heres the big one,

his original body has to die so he can upload his consciousness into a new clone.  

and THAT, to the clones, would be the moment that horde prime becomes a god.

his reliance on the hive mind and vast network of followers are what give him his godly abilities, but just as the horde clones could not exist without being cloned from horde prime, so too could horde prime not exist as he does in the show without them. 

i see it as both a christlike sacrifice and a cyclical system of debt and sacrifice. horde prime dies for our sins, so that he might continue to purify the universe so that there will be no more death and more clones will be born, while the clone hes possessing has to essentially die by giving himself up entirely to become the new prime so all this can happen too, and to repay primes death. not all clones can become the next prime however, but all must be ready to die for him, hence horde prime having clone infantries despite also having robots he could send instead. 

i dont have clear thoughts about what the green goo is, but horde primes words about his brothers lending him their life force go along with this idea. the clones give him theyre life force, so he can give it back to them.

another interesting aspect of this is that prime always portrays himself as a brother to his followers, never a father as christ is portrayed as in christianity. i know this is from hordak and horde prime being actual brothers in the 80s show but ive seen this trope come up a few times in media before, where a man raises a kid but has them call him their brother instead of dad. it seems so deliberate. because a parents job is to take care of you, but a sibling, might take care of you sure, but thats not their job. its like hes deliberately trying to place himself on the same level as his ‘sibling’ so he can demand the same amount of respect you would give to a parent without taking on the responsibility to not... ya know... screw them over in the head? idk it seems very slimy to me. but that says more about prime as a character than how the clones see him.

and we still have the concept of the soul to fit in here somehow, and do they have an afterlife? im going to say no to the afterlife. theres just not enough in the show to go off of and everything that we do know about horde prime points to him only caring about himself in life. HOWEVER, there is nothing more quintessentially christian than the concept of hell and i think that will be of use here. 

since the creation of the clones is tied with the creation of their religion, this would put the clones themselves less as allegories of people who need to be saved and more as the horde version of angels. in my telling here, horde prime views all people who do not submit to his will as net negatives to the universe who have to be removed for peace to exist, so by this view the chipped people are the saved, the people that horde prime kills are the sinners, and his military campaign is one long apocalypse slowly working its way through the universe, with the clones carrying out his righteous judgement. but the afterlife isnt involved in this, so even if some chipped people are left alive, eventually they will all die out, and then it will be just horde prime and is clones in a perfect, peaceful starless sky, and thats what heaven is. 

getting to heaven is the main goal of real christianity and it is the same in horde religion, but heaven isnt a place in the horde cosmology, its a physical goal that has to be created. not all clones will make it to heaven of course, because most will die before they reach total destruction of the universe but the clones arent supposed to think of themselves as individuals anyway. they have to be willing to die for horde prime and die for the cause or be cast out and thats hell. 

i dont see prime as someone who would kill his own followers outright too often even though he could. plus they arent supposed to value their individual lives the same way normal people do anyway it doesnt seem like a real punishment, they need something worse than simple death to fear. so by my view hell for the clones is separation from prime. it can be in life or death. no matter how bad it is in the horde being on the outside of it has to seem worse, and thats where the concept of the soul comes in. when one is a part of the hive mine, their soul is with prime. they are not supposed to have a will or any thoughts beyond love for prime, its essentially the same as not having a soul but they think of it as being at peace. being cast out is to be never at peace and would be told to them as being the worst possible thing that could ever happen to someone because it corrupts the soul. 

“a lot of unpleasant things happen in the horde so just imagine how terrible it must be outside of it! you cant because i protect you from that. now get in the goo, this is for your own good” - horde prime probably 

this is why outsiders are so resistant to submitting to primes light and also why its ok to kill them, in the hordes view. 

so, to start wrapping thigs up, there is no horde without horde prime. the religion starts and ends with him. because he is supposed to be the only person ever to be able to make true moral and just decisions, without him is followers cant take any actions without worrying that they are going against primes will. since they have no holy text they cant extrapolate and try to figure it out either. its up in the air whether or not they are going to find a way to get the horde to make the jump from cult to regular religion.

its late i got to go to bed now

[nanoland]

new chapter (lucifer fic)

(earlier parts are here; whole thing is here) 

Ponder on the Narrow House, part 3 

Mazikeen + Eve + Michael, gen fic (for now), warning for gun violence 

0   

Along the California coastline, the cruise ship Illustrious Voyager bore four thousand three hundred and ten passengers, one thousand two hundred and ninety-six crewmembers, and two guide dogs.

Five thousand six hundred and eight souls, in total.

At around 4pm, without anyone noticing, that number became five thousand six hundred and nine.

Hands clasped behind her back, Eve strolled down the promenade, admiring the vessel’s size and beauty. This fresh new millennium’s wealth astonished her. Sickened, sometimes. Entranced, sometimes. But always astonished.

Back in the garden, they’d slept on and under rocks. When it rained, they got wet. When large animals came by, they hid. No weapons. No shelter. No blankets. The only resource they’d had in abundance was food. Good grief – so much food. God had been so proud of all the different fruits and nuts and mushrooms he’d made available to them, and Adam had been so grateful. Eve supposed she had been, too.

It hadn’t stopped her from one day approaching her husband and the plump rabbits resting in his lap – two of several dozen pets – and asking if he didn’t think the cold nights would be much more endurable if they each had a warm pair of fur slippers.

Then she’d met Lucifer. Fallen in love. Bitten the apple. Learned how powerful he and his Father truly were. That was when the real questions, the sticky, prickly questions, had come bubbling up.

If Lucifer has such a vast family, with so many siblings, why can’t I have even one? she’d asked the sky. Why is Adam all I get?

And later: If You can simply bring people into existence, why must I scream and bleed and shit myself in order to have children? Am I doing it wrong? Is there another way? If there isn’t, why not?

And later: Why is nothing fair?

And, most recently, after meeting Mazikeen: Why isn’t everything at least equally unfair? Why do humans get a world of options while Maze and her family are expected to serve angels from birth to death? Why isn’t Maze allowed into Heaven, even after an eternity of loyalty and hard work?

“Sorry,” she said, flashing white teeth at a passing crewmember. “I’m trying to find a friend of mine. Can you tell me how to get to Room 835?”

Half an hour later, there was a splash and the ship’s population dropped to five thousand six hundred and seven.

Before binding his arms and legs, Eve had secured Andrew Bismarck’s lifejacket and gagged him. Furious and helpless, he bobbed alongside her as the ship moved on and Mazikeen rowed up in her inflatable raft, wearing a sunset-orange swimsuit.

“Should I be worried about those, babe?” she asked as she gripped Bismarck’s lifejacket and hauled him out of the water.

Eve smiled at the dolphin pod swimming in playful loops around her, and patted the nearest one’s nose. “No. They’re my friends.”

The inflatable wasn’t big enough for three people, so Eve held on to a friend’s dorsal fin and let him drag her back to The Choronzon.

Michael stood on the deck, looking bored. As they climbed aboard, their prisoner slung over Mazikeen’s shoulder, he drawled, “Seriously? This sad specimen’s worth two million dollars?”

“Actually, his net worth is eight hundred million,” said Mazikeen, dumping him down. “Two million is just what his ex-wife is willing and able to pay.”

Wringing out her hair, Eve added, “She took half his money in the divorce but she gave almost all of it to a chimpanzee shelter. I really like her!”

His lip curled. “How delightfully sordid. Isn’t this all a little beneath you, Ms Mazikeen? I mean, you’re a big deal in Hell. High Commander of Lucifer’s legions, head advisor to the king himself. Aren’t you worried taking jobs like this diminishes you?”

Busy handcuffing Bismarck to the railing, Mazikeen said, “Eve, honey? Do me a favour?”

“Boop!” Eve chirped, having already snuck up behind Michael, and pushed him overboard.

“I know it’s your whole gimmick,” Mazikeen called down as he splashed and spluttered, his face red with princely indignation. “And I know you don’t have a lot else going for you. But the next time you try that on me, I will stop being nice. Kapish?”

“Kapish,” he muttered.

The Choronzon had barely travelled a mile before Eve spotted Bismarck’s henchmen coming after them.

“Someone gimme details!” shouted Mazikeen, busy putting a bulletproof vest on over her bikini and opening up the box she’d told Dan contained a fishing rod, not a halberd.

Eve peered through her binoculars. “Two speedboats. Twelve guys on jet skis. Guns everywhere.”

“Heh. Awesome. Mickey – move that tight ass to the front and make like a nice juicy target.”

“Wait, what about-…” Michael began, trailing off as Mazikeen dove gracefully into the sea.

Bouncing from foot to foot, Eve shot him a grin. “Don’t look so glum, sourpuss. This is the fun part.”

She’d never spoken to Michael in Heaven, despite the millennia they’d both resided only two miles apart, her in a lakeside cottage on the outskirts of the Silver City, him in the crystal palace in its centre.

Granted, she’d not exactly had a warm and fuzzy relationship with any of Lucifer’s siblings. They all knew what had happened in the garden. Some had been nice – Amenadiel had visited often, even though he’d never had much to say and they’d spent their time together skipping stones across the lake’s surface. But the others had kept her at a distance. She was a bad influence.

Michael, however, was the only angel she’d not ever said one word to.

She’d seen him, now and then, in the early days, when she was the only human in Heaven and, as such, grudgingly invited to divine family get-togethers. On those occasions, she’d spent too much time feeling awkward and out-of-place to pay attention to the sullen figure lurking in whatever shadows were available. The one time she’d glanced his way, it had been to marvel at the stories of people getting the twins mixed up; beyond the raw basics of bone structure, Michael couldn’t have looked less like her old lover.

Bullets sprayed across the hull. Humming, Eve stepped daintily into Michael’s shadow, seconds before they started bouncing off his shoulders and chest.

“It is beneath her,” he muttered.

She made an ambiguous noise. “How d’you figure?”

There came a shout and a splash from the nearest jet ski. The bullets stopped.

“C’mon. She’s Mazikeen. Everyone in the Silver City knows about Mazikeen. Ordinarily, we couldn’t give two dry shits about Lucifer’s minions, but her? She’s a minor celebrity. The power behind Hell’s throne. Christ, it’s no secret my beloved twin couldn’t govern his way out of a paper bag.”

“Yeah,” she said, smiling fondly. “He’s kind of bad at everything. Except music. He’s a great musician.”

More shouting. More shooting. More bullets bouncing off Michael’s torso. Mazikeen rode by, one hand gripping her newly-acquired jet ski’s throttle lever, the other clutching her bloodstained halberd. Watching her circle the enemy, Eve was reminded of a sheep dog.

Michael went on: “And then there’s the fact that for a while, everyone thought Lucifer was going to marry her. It was all anyone could talk about. Jophiel was taking bets on when the proposal would happen. She’d have been High Commander and the Queen of Hell. Instead? All of a sudden, Lucifer takes an indefinite vacay to the mortal realm, drags her with him, and next thing anyone knows, she’s working behind a bar.”

The remaining jet skis and their terrified, wounded riders had been neatly rounded up, which meant it was time for Eve to open her purse.

“Um – how long have those been in there?” asked Michael, watching her take out three grenades.

“You want one?” she offered. “Don’t forget to take the pin out before you throw it. I did that my first time.”  

One thing to be said for millions of dull, dull years spent sitting next to God’s Greatest Warrior, skipping stones across a lake; your aim got good.

The first blast was a warning, not close enough to actually kill any of Bismarck’s men, though the resultant waves did knock several into the water. They tried to retreat, turning their vehicles around, only to remember Mazikeen, corralling them single-handed and now armed with machine guns she’d confiscated from those already bested.

When they saw the second and third grenade incoming, they gave up and abandoned the jet skis, jumping into the sea and swimming for their lives.

“Fuck!” Michael yelped, blocking his ears at the concomitant explosions.

Gazing past the debris and smoke, Eve saw Mazikeen head for the nearest of the two speedboats. Its occupants, preoccupied with aiming a rocket launcher at The Choronzon, saw her coming far too late.

“I get your point,” said Eve, as her girlfriend and her halberd made short work of the crew. “But that’s a really… how can I put this? It’s a really angelic way of looking at things. Maze doesn’t consider anything ‘beneath her’.”

“Wow. Sick burn. You’re basically admitting she has no pride.”

“Oh, she’s got pride. Tons of pride. Her pride’s just dependant on how well she does a job, not on the type of job she has. She wasn’t happy working at Lux, but that wasn’t because she thought bartending was ‘beneath her’; it was because she prefers doing things she’s good at. Customer service isn’t really one of her strengths.”

The second speedboat was abandoned by its crew mere seconds before Mazikeen rammed the first speedboat into it, cackling victoriously.

“Actually,” Eve said, moving from Michael’s shadow to where Mazikeen had earlier set a crate of peach soda – her favourite – out on the deck, “now that you mention it, I guess I’m the one with no pride. Haven’t really ever had anything to be proud of. Your Dad never gave me the chance. I was never meant to do things. I was just meant to be.”

Michael snorted. “Lucky you. Trust me; he may have softened in his later years, but back in the day he never, ever stopped riding our asses. You think Lucy really rebelled because he had better plans for how the universe should be run? Because he was an innovator? Nope. Lazy dick just hated being told to do his chores.”

By the time Mazikeen swam back to them, saltwater had washed off the blood and her ponytail had come loose.

“Oh, hey,” said Eve, gripping her hand and pulling her up. “A mermaid.”

After pressing a rough kiss to her cheek and taking a swig of peach soda, Mazikeen asked, “You okay? He did his job?”

Eve patted the angel’s shoulder – the one that wouldn’t hurt. “He was terrific! Awesome addition to the team.”

���I didn’t do anything,” Michael mumbled.

Ignoring him, Mazikeen snatched up a towel to dry her hair. “Glad to hear it. Alright! Let’s get Bismarck back to shore, get paid, and find a place to have dinner so we can toast Team Hellrazor’s first successful mission.”

“R-A-Z-O-R,” Eve informed Michael. “To make it cooler.”

[liliesoftherain]

Ground Zero reads Thirst Tweets

A/N: Hey guys, this is a collab with @pinky-the-elephant-room​ !! This is the first part, and the second part can be found here! Her part is NSFW so since i’m a SFW blog we thought it would be best to split the parts! So here’s my contribution! 

Pairing: Bakugou Katsuki x Reader

You walked inside the studio, thanking the heavens that it was cooler than it was outside. Greeting the producers of the setup, you gladly made your way by the set to see two stools placed side-by-side in front of a blue backdrop. 

“Hello, Seize-san! Thank you so much for coming in today, I am Hana and I’m here to help you through this!” You grinned at the young woman who walked up to you. She was short stature and plump figure and gave off the impression of a warm and welcoming personality. Instantly putting you at ease.

“Thank you so much for having me! It’s an honor to be showcased here, along with another hero! You guys are truly kind to grant the opportunity to work alongside you, and please, call me (l/n).”

She nodded enthusiastically, grinning at the praise from such a top hero as yourself. 

“Thank you again, (l/n)-san, come let’s get you ready for the camera! Are you in need of anything to drink, anything to snack on?”

“No ma’am, I am fine! I’m just ready for the shoot!”

“As is your partner!”

You both shared a laugh, both knowing the person you were recording with today was the opposite of ready for this.

“Oh, I’m sure that is the case, ma’am, where is he by the way?”

“He’s right behind you, stupid.”

You turned to see the annoyed blonde behind you, being escorted to the seating area close to where you were being led.

“Ah Ground Zero, good to see you haven’t blown anything up yet.”

“Shove off, hurry up so we can get this over with.”

You laughed, waving him off as the members looked on with concern.

“Don’t be rude, Bakugou! I’ll be there with you soon enough; all you have to do is be good and wait for me.” You winked, eyeing him up and down before turning back around, allowing Hana to guide you off towards your station to get ready. 

The makeup artists just refreshed your makeup and made you ready for the video. You came out of the dressing room, dressed in your usual hero costume but looking less like you’ve been running through the streets of Tokyo. Bakugou was in usual costume but without his hand gauntlet. 

 “Okay you two, we’d like to thank you for taking the time to come on set and do this showing. These tweets are real, and we just want your genuine reaction from them! We’ll try to limit the cuts to be able to ensure that real response, and don’t be afraid to let loose! These are Thirst Tweets for a reason!”

You laughed along with everyone else, except Bakugou who looked a little annoyed by the entire thing. You gave him a slight shove with your shoulders, biting your lip subtly as his gaze locked onto yours. 

“Cheer up already, this is supposed to be fun. What, do you not want to be here with me?” 

“That’s not--Shut up, shitty woman. Just get ready.” he huffed, glancing away from your stare as he mumbled back.

“Okay, starting in 3, 2…,” The cameraman pointed instead of saying one, signaling the tape was now rolling. You beamed at the camera, working your charm as you gave a little wave.

“Hi, guys! I’m, (l/n) (y/n), or better yet, Seize!”

“And I’m Bakugou Katsuki, Ground Zero.”

“And today we’re reading…,” you trailed off, looking expectantly at your partner.

“Thirst Tweets.”

“You could be a little more enthusiastic you know.”

“Oi, shut it!”

You giggle, looking deviously at the camera before swiping his mug-shaped container.

“Oi, what are you-”

“Let’s see what people are saying about our dear Ground Zero, hm? That’s alright with everyone else, right?”

The crew joyfully agreed at the twist, and with their approval, you shoved your container in Katsuki’s chest.

“All right, let’s see,” You snorted, slapping Bakugou’s shoulder as you read the first tweet, “‘I would love to be able to rip that Hero suit right off of Ground Zero and rub my face along those God-like abs. Can a man be any hotter!? Have you seen his moobs!? *dROOLING*”

“Ha!?” Bakugou looked at the tweet with narrowed eyes before looking back at the camera, “Do you know how expensive this hero suit is!? You ain't ripping shit! Plus, what the hell are moobs?”

“Oh Bakugou, half of the world's population would love to rip that suit off, myself included. Plus, those are your man boobs, and they are absolutely correct, you have the best titties I have ever seen!” You winked at the camera while throwing the paper over your shoulder, “NEXT!”

You gave your bucket a good shake, making eye contact with the confused blonde who was still stuck on your last comment.

“‘Y’all don’t understand what I would do just to have @GroundZero to choke me with a gloved hand. Or do anything to me really. He could hit me with his car, repeated use his quirk on me, give me paper cuts all over my body and throw me into a pool of lemon juice, and I’d beg for some more like yes zaddy **** my ***** up!,’ OH MY GOD.” You used one hand to hold your mouth in amusement, putting the bucket between your thighs so you could show the tweet with your now free hand. 

“You have some pretty kinky fans, Bakugou,” you teased, waving the paper in his face as he grabbed your wrist to hold it steady, staring in disbelief.

“You all are disgusting, why in the fuck would anyone do that to you? Let alone me, who the hell do you think I am!?”

“I mean, you can’t judge, can you?” 

He snaps his head to look at you, a heated glare on his face.

“The hell, of course, I can judge! These people want me to torture them, sick bastards.”

You laughed as Bakugou sucked in a sharp breath between clenched cheeks, you were thoroughly enjoying his discomfort. 

“NEXT!” You shouted, crumbling the paper and tossing it at Bakugou.

“How many of these are there?” He sighed, looking in your bucket in his hands and shaking it around.

“With the way you look there are bound to be a ton.”

“What-”

“‘If I were only able to take just Ground Zero’s jaw out on a date, I’d never be happier’ Oh that one isn’t so bad-”

“My jaw? What the hell-” He looked over your shoulder, reading the tweet.

You looked up and stared at the blessed jawline.

“That’s what it says, but I gotta disagree,” You grabbed his arm and squeezed it while smirking deviously into the camera, “These arms are better, I’d take these bad boys out for coffee over his jaw any day.”

Instead of shaking you off, you swore you felt Bakugou flex slightly under your hold and couldn’t help the shit-eating grin that overtook your face as you stared up at him through your eyelashes.

“Are you flexing, Ground Zero?”

“HAH!? NO WAY, READ THE NEXT DAMN TWEET AND GET OFF OF ME ALREADY.” He snatched his arm from your hold as you waved him off, grabbing the last tweet from the container.

“Aw guess there weren’t as many as I thought, we’re already reaching the end-”

“Good because I’m tired of these wackjobs.”

You scanned over the paper, unable to contain yourself as you busted out laughing. You knew Bakugou was glaring at you, but you couldn’t help it, you almost fell off your chair, having to once again grab his arm for support.

“This, I just- Oh my God, Bakugou you’re-HA!”

“Can you knock it off and read it before I blow your ass up!” He hissed at you, and you knew you shouldn’t have made the situation any worse than it was- but sometimes you can’t help yourself.

“Damn, I mean if you really wanna tap this ass Bakugou, how can I say no~?”

He growled lowly, glaring harshly at your face as you only winked in response. 

“Watch it, (l/n)-”

“‘Ive always been straight BUT i wish ground zero would rip me apart like he did to tht one moth villain, n after tht I have literally never questioned my sexuality so hard, I would let tht man bury his **** so far inside my *** tht i become the Queen of the f**king gays, all hail to me, GZ’s b**tch.Thts it. Thts the tweet.’ HAA.”

You felt Bakugou tense beside you, and when you looked over you saw him shaking in anger.

“Oh what, it’s charming!” You slowed your laughter down to measly chuckles, catching your breath as you were wiping tears from your eyes.

“How is that god damn charming!?” He seethed.

“You know, I can see it.”

“See what?”

“You being gay-”

“HA!? WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU THINKING.”

You look back to the camera and give an innocent shrug.

“He could've fooled me, I swear I saw him checking out Deku a few missions back-” A small explosion cut you off, and you rolled your eyes.

“So dramatic, it’s no big deal. I check out Deku all the time too.”

“You fucking what?”

“Oh yea, I mean I check out Shoto too but Deku’s got a cute ass. What can I say-”

“You’re fucking pathetic.” He huffed, snapping his gaze away from where you sat.

“Sorry, was I overstepping? I’ll leave your man alone!” You teased, poking his thigh as you did.

“Goddammit (l/n), I’m not fucking gay for Deku!” He swatted your hand away, scooting as far away as he could from you.

Which wasn’t very far, seeing as he made no effort to move the stools away from each other.

“So you’re gay for-”

“NOBODY!”

“Okay okay!! Just read my tweets already, I know they’re getting antsy watching us just talk about your closeted sexuality!”

“...tch.” 

You could practically see a vein popping out of his neck, and even though you were sure he was picturing murdering you in his mind, you couldn’t help but think of how sexy it was.

You watched as he unenthusiastically pulled out a piece of paper, bored eyes scanning till they narrowed.

“You’re fucking fans are worse than mine.”

“What! Read it, I wanna hear!”

“Do I have to-”

You cut him off with a sharp look of your own, wearing him down until he sighed and did as he was supposed to. 

“‘I would pay any amount of money, or literally give up any organ-appendix, spleen, gallbladder, lungs, my damn heart, just so Seize can spit on my face and call me a worthless, good-for-nothing loser, then kick my body and walk away. It would be my honor and my greatest life accomplishment.’” He threw the paper in front of him as if it were burning his skin, once again staring at the camera in disgust.

“Wow,” You giggled, “I don’t even know how to respond. I don’t really think that’s worse than yours Bakugou, but thanks I guess?” 

“Thanks!? That’s all you’re going to say? How about I kick your ass and call you a worthless shithead myself, would that turn on all you perverts watching this, ha!?” 

You smacked his arm playfully as you tried to get him to calm down, but his heavy breathing was an indication he wasn’t having it.

“I’m sure it would-,” His head whipped to face you and you clicked your tongue at his behavior.

“Oh, c’mon don’t be a prude, these are juicy and I for one wanna keep hearing them! So, hurry up and read another one before you blow a gasket.”

“Whatever, this is fucking stupid.”

“Alright stupid, just keep going.”

He side-eyed you, grinding his teeth together in what you assumed was to hold back even more vulgar insults.

“‘Don’t kink shame me..’” Bakugou paused, a long sigh coming from him as he reluctantly continued, “...’Don’t kink shame me but it’s my goal in life to die by @Seizes thighs. Her thighs are so strong but soft looking and I swear they can crush me in an instant-’”

“Ohh that’s true. These can crush anyone.” You slapped your thighs for emphasis, a cheeky grin playing on your lips.

“Are you seriously proud of that?” He deadpanned at your joyful expression.

“Uh, yeah? What, a woman can’t be proud of her thunder thighs of steel! You're just jealous you’re not being crushed by these babies.”

“Why the fuck would I be jealous!?” 

“Cause I have amazing thighs that any man would love to be in between-”

“Next fucking tweet,” Bakugou cut you off, “‘I will eat Seize ass with a spoon, be havin’ that as breakfast, lunch, and dinner n never get tired.’ Okay but seriously what the hell is wrong with you people? With a damn spoon?”

“It’s flattering almost, don’t you think? I would be their favorite meal that they never get tired of,” You look to the camera and wiggle your eyebrows, “I mean I don’t know if I’m down for that, but if you wanna snack sometime, link up with my manager-”

“Absolutely not, don’t give these perverts any more fucking ideas.”

“Okay, dad.”

“Quit being a damn brat and just accept that these are weird and not cute, for fucks sake!”

You look to the crew behind the camera, bowing your head a bit as you spoke.

“Sorry, you’re going to have a lot of bleeps because of this big lug.”

“DON’T IGNORE ME-”

“Read the next tweet,” you extend your words in a whiny voice, “I wanna hear what else people think about me!”

You watched as Bakugou clenched his hand before relaxing, reaching inside to pull out another folded paper.

“‘@Seize is the best ever. Strong and compassionate, honestly my favorite hero by far. She’s giving the other pros a run for their money, good job and keep it up!’. Tch at least we’re done with the weird ass shit. ”

“AWHHH, you guys are so sweet! I don’t know how I match up to other heroes-”

“Tch, she matches up just fine-”

“Well, if we’re talking about boobs, especially if you compare mine to yours, I don’t stand a chance!” You reached a hand over while your body was still facing the front and squeezed one of his pectorals. 

“YOU HAD TO TURN THIS INTO SOMETHING FUCKING STUPID, DIDN’T YOU!?” He jerked away from you; eye twitching as he took ragged breaths.

“What, just stating the truth. Now, c’mon if we had the same number of tweets then this should be my last, why do I have to drag these out of you?”

“Shut the hell up,” He picked out the last piece of paper as he tossed the bucket on the ground, ignoring the way you complained about it. “‘Got damn,’ Holy hell I’m going to lose brain cells, ‘Got damn, Id suck a fart’...’suck a fart out of Seize’s ass and woul beg for more as she suffocates me, no cap. Lick her from those ankles to those thighs n back, I bet she tastes like one of those sour n sweet skittles wid the way she sweaty from beating others asses but good from the way she hot, and dat shit be the best shit u can taste. wont even say sorry, jus flip her over and eat that ass’...’#NomNomNom’”

“Wow, some of you guys are pretty creative. I mean, I can’t tell you what I taste like but if you wanna try it out, lemme know.” You giggled, winking at the camera as you made the ‘call me’ sign with your hands. 

You were waiting for another blow up from the angry blonde beside you but were surprised to see him silent. He was clenching his jaw harder this time around, eyes narrowed in fuming slits and he shook slightly by how hard his body tensed. You were about to ask if he was okay when you got the signal to end it, so you ignored it for the moment as you gave a bright smile to the camera.

“Well, that seems to be the end of this little segment, boo!,” You gave a pout, before smiling again, jumping back up and tossing an arm around your cast-mate, “Thanks for having us on today, and to end on a serious note make sure you’re staying safe out there. We all care about every single one of you, that’s why we do stuff like this, to stay connected! Have fun, be safe, and remember, be heroes! This has been Seize, along with,”

“Ground Zero.”

“Bye!”

“Cut!”

As soon as it was over, you were thrown off Bakugo’s shoulders as he stood up abruptly. You looked over in worry as he rigidly walked off and you wondered what had went wrong.

During most heavy-duty operations, which are the only type of operations you both worked together, Bakugou was always silent and calculating. He angered easily, and the time to fear him most is becomes quiet. Making a villain piss his pants with his yelling was a skill indeed, but when a villain saw that angered and dark gaze, that’s when they should be terrified. 

You tried to follow him, but you were immediately swarmed by your manager who had apologized for arriving late.

“Yes, it is alright! I understand I was able to start perfectly fine, it’s no trouble at all.”

You didn’t listen to his answer, scanning the crowd to realize you had lost the pro.

“Dammit.”

“Ne, (l/n)-sama is there something wrong?” 

“No,” You shook your head with a sigh, “Nothing at all.”

-----------------------------

[spiders-hth-is-an-outlier]

Possibly a big ask to get just out of the blue but: what are your Supernatural season opinions? Which one is your favorite? Least favorite? Did you watch long enough to have showrunner opinions? If yes, which showrunner is your favorite and which is your least favorite? If no, which season that you haven't seen most tempts you to get back in the Supernatural trenches? Answer exactly as many of these questions as you want to. Carry on.

You know, I am not sure how long this Ask has been sitting here, because my Tumblr notifications are borked -- I hope not long? If long, I apologize, I wasn't ignoring it on purpose!

Okay, so I have more than the average number of Supernatural opinions, probably, but I'll try to keep this to a dull roar! Inside Me There Are Two Wolves: one of them believes that only the original five seasons of Supernatural are worth defending in any way, the other really, really loves seasons 11 and 12. The Kripke Era had a lot of problems, particularly in its treatment of women as bodies without agency and its treatment of Black men as literal predators, but also for all its flaws, it had a kind of coherence and narrative drive that comes from being the product of a dude who obviously cared about it and had something to say. Taken on its own, seasons 1-5 are a brutal and compelling story about the traumas of being men in a universe that's been absolutely destroyed by its Fathers: on almost every level, it's about these abandoned and brutalized boys discovering that their entire reality is the product of an abandoning and brutalizing God, populated by authority figures who are universally demanding and arrogant, but also completely fucking useless. It's quite literally about Sam and Dean trying to hang onto their souls and their own agency when everyone around them wants them forced into shapes formed by conflicts that fell into place at the beginning of time. It's hard to remember, but back then even the Lucifer plotline was about that! It was about the damage fathers inflict on sons! Things were about things, in the Kripke era!

Then we get to the Gamble era, and. Woof. I actually -- don't hate 6 and 7? Like everything Sera Gamble touches, those two seasons are kinetic and memorable and funny and weird and hit some really, really great emotional beats. There are Some Problems, but Gamble was saddled with a pretty dire job, trying to find a way forward after everything about the series really had effectively wrapped up in Swan Song, and I think she did an okay job. People got mad at her for killing Castiel, but you know, damn, I give her this: that was a storyline. Like, this character who was fresh out of the cult he was raised in becoming disillusioned by how messy normal life is and deciding that maybe people need better authoritarianism instead -- the way he's driven to take too many risks by the fact that he's abandoned and desperate -- Crowley as a legitimately scary villain while still being charming af -- and the tragic resolution of Castiel being torn apart by both his hubris and his heroism. It's actually really good. I understand why people didn't want what Gamble was serving up -- and I'm able to like it because it was undone later, you know? -- but she really did commit to a full season of character arc and saw it all the way through to an earned ending, and I gotta respect that.

I genuinely hate seasons 8 and 9. I think everyone is a dick, particularly but not exclusively Dean, to the point where I just find it a bummer to watch. I mean, you get Benny, and I love Benny. You get, I dunno, bits and bobs of decent episodes, but overall they are very fucked up seasons in my opinion. So Carver era is on thin fucking ice with me, but I do think you start to get a rebound in season 10 with the Mark of Cain stuff, although I wish they'd managed to keep Cain around longer. All the really good Claire stuff starts happening, which is nice because Claire, but also because for once the show is really letting itself go back and deal with the mess these protagonists leave behind them constantly. Castiel and Claire have maybe the most interesting non-Winchester relationship on the show. Oh, and Rowena shows up around here too, right? Love her. So the back half of Carver, 10 and 11, are starting to really gain traction for me. The world is building outward, secondary characters are starting to be genuine characters in their own right, the politics of Heaven and Hell get a little richer and more interesting. The show is really starting to feel like it takes place in a universe, which is great because we love the Frigging Winchesters, but they shouldn't be the only thing going, right? We have 15 seasons to get through! Season 11 is basically bracketed by what are probably my two favorite Supernatural episodes: Baby and Don't Call Me Shurley. (I think I'm the world's only living Metatron fan; I fucking love that little dude.)

Dabb takes over in 12, and I really, really, genuinely love season 12. I fucking love Mary. There are so many episodes I adore -- Celebrating the Life of Asa Fox is a special favorite of mine, and I remain pissed off that the Banes twins never made it to recurring status, bluntly that feels wildly racist to me -- probably the best three-episode streak in the show is Lily Sunder Has Some Regrets to Regarding Dean to Stuck In the Middle (With You), three just almost perfect episodes. So I was poised to really love the Dabb era. I wanted to! My body was ready!

And I do really love the first chunk of season 13, the Widow Winchester arc. Obviously I'm a romantic, love that for me, but it's just also really good? The acting, the writing, the psychological complexity of Dean wanting Jack to be Bad so he has an outlet for his anger and Sam wanting Jack to be Good so he can retroactively parent himself and raise a Lucifer-tainted child who isn't crippled by self-loathing. Billie's great, and it looks like she's going to start being one of the major powers of the universe. Unfortunately -- with the occasional exception of this or that solid episode -- that's kind of the end of Pretty Good Supernatural. Season 13 kind of unravels; season 14 always feels like it's looking for itself (which is a bummer, because I wanted very much to care about Michael); season 15 is, idk. Idk about any of it, it's all pretty pointless. I feel bad complaining on some level, because the show's been on for like fourteen years at this point! It's kinda justified in feeling a little worn out. But the reality is that the later seasons systematically undo all the expansion that had excited me earlier -- the Wayward Sisters crew pretty much vanishes when the spinoff isn't picked up, Naomi and the angels stop doing anything, Crowley's gone, Mary's gone for much of it. We're just kind of futzing around with monsters who don't seem to matter (very much including Lucifer, who hasn't mattered in ages) and a lot of Jack, who. I try not to shit all over, because I know he's a popular character, but I find him just ungodly boring. Everything in the last two and a half season just feels like it's headed nowhere in particular, and also it bored me. The Empty deal is just sadness porn; it doesn't have any resonance or meaning in terms of Castiel's character, it's just him agreeing to die for his kid, which is okay, it means he's a loving dad, which he is, but there's no conflict there, ergo no real drama. It's just mean; it happens because it'll make us sad, and no other reason. Rowena is the only strong secondary character left, and her ending also doesn't feel particularly relevant to her, it's just a generic Sacrifice to Save the World. Everything just feels like they're autogenerating plotlines, rather than letting the actual needs and drives of the characters shape the narrative. So while I have this weird split personality with Carver where I either hate what he's doing or I love it, most of the Dabb era is just. There. It doesn't make me feel anything except kind of tired and embarrassed. Which is a bummer, because I have an inexplicable fondness for Dabb, probably just because of how much I love s12. I wanted to love his seasons! I did love his first season! I feel like maybe something happened when the CW rejected Wayward Sisters? I know that was kind of his darling, and it feels like maybe losing that kind of sucked the joy out of him, and he's kind of checked-out by the end. That's genuinely just my guess, however.

That's Professor Milo's Intro to Supernatural Studies, don't forget to fill out your course survey on the way out!