#i did not take in a lot of the catholic guilt? not Too much anyway. but that's because i was blocking it out with a stream of martyrs dkjfg

[vulpinesaint]

First of all, thanks for the saint uquiz. It was fun :) and I like reading your poem snippets. Compelling. Do you know Saint Anthony, he’s good at finding lost things. I always thought that was kinda poetic if not just practical. Also I went to catholic elementary school and they taught us about saint philomena, patron saint of lost causes. She was a little girl who went through terrible things bc she refused marriage from an old emperor. Like why did they tell us, a bunch of little girls about that?

you are so welcome!! it was fun to write :) (i was in a religious fugue state for several nights sobbing in miffy's inbox over the hail mary)

i am not fully acquainted with saint anthony actually! i had my very specific set of saints as a kid and then i Stopped Believing In God so i know other saints only through brief mentions (though i do remember hearing that he was good for praying to when you'd lost something! maybe when i was going through our book of saints looking for a confirmation name). you're so right though there's something so poetic about reaching out to a figure held up in divinity above all else and only below god and asking them to help you find your keys. to point you toward where you left that letter you needed. for the divine to be domestic. smth about the safety of saints... god is not to be invoked except in dire need and even then all defaults to his plan for you. saints come down from the heavens for a moment to take your hand and lead you back to the necklace that you thought you lost all those years ago. lives in my head forever and ever. (can't remember if i put this line in the quiz??? but i wrote smth in the poem i chose lines from about how a saint comes down through the rays of light from the stained glass windows to hold your hand... same feeling.) and god. yeah. the way they handed us those stories of extreme suffering as if it would do nothing to us... for a second, i thought philomena was in my childhood book of saints, since her story sounded familiar, but i went to look on internet archive and she wasn't there; p sure who i was thinking about was saint agnes, whose story is very similar.

(her page was also right across from saint sebastian, so i'm sure i read her story more often than the others, when i went back for my constant visits with him.)

really though, saint philomena and saint agnes and saint maria goretti... how many catholic kids were just presented with stories of awful suffering, often of people not much older than them? st. tarcisius is another saint that i was a teensy bit fixated on as a kid (not as much as sebastian and cecilia) but the entirety of his story is that he was a boy carrying the host in the streets of rome and when he refused to give it up to a gang of men, he was beaten to death. i would go back and read his little passage over and over again. there's a miracle within that story, but really... the stories of martyrs are So Much of what makes me the way i am now. guarantee.

[cosinelanguage]

Some extended author's notes on heavy boots, since it took me so long to complete haha. Consider this an appendix of notes I used as background info in my fic (kind of. I have more unfortunately)

Fic Premise:

The entire premise was kind of like a big play on role swaps as a concept. I really, really adore role swaps, but it's kind of difficult to actually write a role swap for one piece given how inherently tied to character's motivations, backstories, and designs their roles are.

I basically couldn't imagine Robin without having some in-depth curiosity and desire to understand the world, and I'm incapable of taking Zeff out of Sanji's backstory (since that ends up changing a lot of what I like about Sanji). But I still wanted Blackleg Robin!!

so, I had my cake and ate it too: Sanji was still raised by Zeff, and so was Robin. The entire thing became a role-swap-but-not-actually. I'm an indulgent person.

Sanji Timeline:

I had to think through a huge amount of details on what Sanji's entire deal was, most of which did NOT make it into the fic, since his backstory changed the most and it's. sanji. he wouldn't offer this information willingly.

Roughly how this works: Germa is working on a delicate balance of World Domination plans that involves being closely aligned with both the World Government AND Big Mom (secretly). They're using Sanji as stepping stone for Big Mom initially, and when the marriage alliance falls through, they use him as the fall guy as necessary to their plans-- i.e. if they get called out for working with pirates, they say it’s Sanji acting alone. 

So by consequence, even after his marriage falls through, he gets sent to Alabasta to work with Crocodile, and all that comes with it

17: despite aligning with WG, Germa takes Sanji back in order to form an alliance with Big Mom

17-20: Extended courtship with Pudding extended courtship-- she goes to North Blue instead of Sanji going to Whole Cake. Pudding after Germa/gov secrets the whole time.

20: Marriage at 20 (Sanji does find out marriage is a scam. Sorry Sanji.)

20: Ohara, Reiju in moment of guilt saves Robin

22: WG is Not pleased with germa’s secret alliance w Big Mom

22: Pudding unlocks the ability to read Poneglyphs

22: Sanji Gets Divorced, and Pudding steals his happier memories a bit selfishly. (convenient for me, the author, who has not thought the details through

22-24: I Don't Know

24-28: Sanji's used as a scapegoat/spy on Crocodile, since any further connection to pirates would be scrutinized

anyway. the reason sanji still gets married is I think him being divorced adds to his terrible vibe of this 28-year-old line cook kidnapped by teenagers. so I constructed an entire timeline for that.

Random Details:

A couple of random details I couldn't really fit into the fic itself:

Long-term I imagine Robin actually taking up more of the wings of the pirate king role. She fights now! It’s great! Let me have this. Sanji takes a much more clearly support role, emphasizing more his spy/sidequest stuff and adopting Robin’s protectiveness of her crew.

Mr. Ash Wednesday was definitely a stretch as a codename– one, with Crocodile’s ‘women are days and men are numbers’ naming scheme, and two with Vivi already being Wednesday. But Ash Wednesday fits as a direct motif (smoking) AND it fits because Ash Wednesday is a miserable little holiday about fasting and welcoming in the peak Catholic Guilt season of Lent. so! perfect for Sanji here, who is wallowing in a pool of his own misery.

A lot of Sanji's relationships with the rest of the crew change fairly dramatically, and it's the main reason I'd consider revisiting the role swap. Usopp in particular is kind of fascinating-- Sanji is pretty dead set on the fact that he's convinced he's going to die sooner rather than later, so he wants to teach this idiot crew as much as he can. But Usopp probably just looks and sees Sanji as a better sniper and a better fit for the crew. Brutal.

Marionette:

Marionette is the cornerstone to a lot of the relationships and character beats in the fic overall-- to the extend that multiple exact beats of dialog are repeated throughout (Robin's intro with Zeff has he repeating Sanji's last words, Sanji tells Robin some word for word advice on just surviving under Germa, etc). I have a lot of notes on just how much this like, 4k prequel is repeated and paralleled in the actual fic, but the sum of it is basically that everyone (Sanji, Zeff, Reiju) are held down by this one moment for their primary motivation, and Robin both accidentally and on purpose leverages that specific pain.

ORIGINAL premise:

this all started as a thought exercise on how a reverse-order Straw Hats recruitment order would work, and ended with one of the most confusing premises to write a fic summary for.

I have some notes on how the other swaps would go, and only one of them I think I'd consider writing:

Robin & Sanji roleswap: look this is an entire fic!! kind of. The initial premise was a reverse order recruitment, and NOT an entire role swap. But, really, Robin and Sanji are pretty easy to swap, outside of them not having a cook until the Grand Line.

Zoro & Jinbe: this premise IMMEDIATELY fell apart on how difficult this would be to write. Jinbe requires a lot of re-world building to introduce early, and his dynamic on the crew is very much reliant on his experience. (which is fun! just... requires a lot of extrapolation). An age-swapped Zoro also complicates the premise, since there's something antithetical to One Piece about not handing off a dream like Zoro's to the next generation to complete. thanks, zoro.

Nami & Franky: I abandoned order immediately, ok. I just think Franky works well in an early role like Nami's, specifically because it can be much easier to write Franky's shipbuilding as something another pirate would try to blackmail him into their crew for (over Brook's singing, sorry Brook). He seems extremely fun and energetic to write as a younger version of himself, especially with any added sibling angst. Nami on the other hand as a more jaded older version of herself, running a Thief's Guild on Water 7 that ransacks the place every time there's a storm?????? really really good

Usopp & Brook: Early recruit musician is EXTREMELY cute to me, so Brook being in Usopp's role made a lot of sense. Like Jinbe, it requires a lot of extrapolation, more than I'm capable of, to imagine exactly how a younger Brook un-devil-fruited would behave. Usopp, on the other hand, is devastating to me: Usopp joins a pirate crew at the same age as canon, and sticks around a bit longer than he thinks he’s worth. In the end, he’s not part of the crew for long until all still die, listening and riffing off Usopp’s final story as they all go one by one, until he’s left with an empty boat and fake tall tales of a pirate crew he’d never really been a part of.

:) anyway the usopp one is great. sorry usopp.

Writing Thoughts:

haha, this whole thing has kind of been an exercise in figuring out 'hey maybe it's good to finish the full thing before posting.' Overall, I think this fic struggles a lot with pacing-- the earlier chapters are paced like how I'd do a 5+1 (scene-based sketches with only details necessary to paint the picture), but the later ones are paced like how I'd do a case fic (fight scenes, me paying attention to the plot rather than just the character thread of the scene)

imo it turns out a bit disjointed from that, and if I were a more patient person I could solve this in the edit

but I am not :) instead this will just be a nice lesson for future me whenever I decide to write a long fic again (Unlikely)

[malhare-archive]

So lemme get this straight, BASICALLY: God created a dude who was the Best TM / his favorite / etc & but HE KNEW (☆) he was gonna "cause problems" eventually then complained & didn't do shit & asked the Now Better Brother to kick them? Now all the problems are blamed to Him & the Girl & dude who just wanted an apple from the Snake that "Knew better than to Not Complain Ever & My dad is the causer of problems"?

I wonder if predestination is involved coz if it was then.. I dunno [stares blanky into space] a lot to unpack lol

Also why did He "create" Jesus... and why did he indirectly killed him eventually- why does he create kids to just have as tools to use on us on his puppet game of life? Is it really worth it? Conditional fake love for another one? What's his deal?

Apologies if I said sth offensive I'm sayin' this to you cause [vaguely gestures]. So you are allowed to call me out 👍🏼This is just One of the "versions" I understand (?). I Could have explained it better as well- But the yuri post got me thinkin xD

You don't need to apologize at all! You honestly treat Christianity with more respect than it even deserves (/lh) and you definitely won't offend my ex-Catholic ass. Speaking of, I'm going to preface this by saying that I was raised Catholic so that's the pov through which I view the Bible, but not all sects of Christianity teach and view things the same way.

ANYWAY, right from the top - The Christian God is not a benevolent God. To Catholics, God is more of a force to be feared and obeyed than anything else. Many would disagree if you said this to their face, but the roots of institutional Catholicism are shame, guilt, and control. Sin is something that we innately desire to commit, but must have the fortitude to resist. Humans' lives on Earth are a trial, a test, a period to devote yourself to God and gain your entry into Heaven through resisting the temptation to sin.

That being said, Lucifer is the embodiment of what happens when you choose to sin and when you choose to defy God. There is no actual, textual reason for Lucifer's rebellion given in the Bible however I was taught that his greatest sins were jealousy (he is jealous of how God favors humans) and pride (he was arrogant and wanted to be on the same level as God/wanted to be independent of God). Lucifer and a host of angels loyal to him waged war on the other angels who were led by Archangel Michael, who cast them all down after defeating them.

Adam and Eve were ejected from the garden for the very same thing; They chose to directly disobey God by partaking of the forbidden fruit (fun fact, the Bible never says what fruit it is! No idea why everyone thinks it's an apple). Lucifer tempted them with the same thing that captivated him so much:

"And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as Gods, knowing good and evil." (Genesis 3:4)

Both these stories mirror the eternal struggle Catholics face: The desire to sin vs the self control to obey God.

God sending Jesus to Earth is essentially seen as his greatest gift and mercy to humanity. After Adam and Eve partook of the forbidden fruit humans became independent, self-centered, and greedy. Humanity as a whole was too thoroughly corrupted by sin to return to God and in Old Testament times sacrifices had to be given to atone for sins. So, Jesus was sent to teach the word of God and to bring people closer to God. He was sacrificed to take all of humanity's sins unto himself, absolving the human race of that darkness - "Jesus died for your sins" and all that. This is why he's called the "lamb of God", lambs being a very common sacrificial animal.

Tl;dr: Lucifer wanted to be independent so God permabanned him. God killed an aspect of himself to absolve humanity of the sin he programmed us to have in the first place 👍 if you don't do everything the clergy God tells you to, you go to Hell forever 👍👍

[lordwisteria]

Going off that “Jason Todd should be Catholic” post I reblogged....this is so ridiculously niche lol but I need to get it off my chest....Jason Todd is so Ronan Lynch coded

Traumatic reaction to violence that unexpectedly changed them forever, into darker and harder versions of themselves

Molten eyes and a smile made for war!!!

How do you live if you think you were maybe supposed to be dead?

How do you kill yourself again and again, even if it keeps you alive?

Just to get it out of the way yes Gansey died and came back but Jason and Gansey are like the least alike of anyone

Complicated relationship with a parent they once adored

Inexplicable magic that is difficult to explain and makes their lives harder (Like everything about Ronan/Jason coming back to life and the Pit)

General asshole who actually does care a lot

Cared the MOST about one person (Gansey) and slowly came to care about everyone else; fighting and clawing their way back into their own families

It is about RAGE and REGRET. FEAR and FORGIVENESS. It is BEING THE MONSTER AND ASKING FOR LOVE ANYWAY

Ok but. But but. Are there any other parallels? You could go the Lynch brothers route (Dick as Declan, Tim or Damian as Matthew, Bruce as a complicated and dead Niall whose obsessions killed him without considering what it would leave behind for his sons). But I think this really only considers the characters relationships with Jason, not who they are as a person. IF we are looking at who they are instead of their relationships (so yes this does not consider romantic/platonic/blahblah):

It would be easy to say Dick is Gansey. They have the same name, are ~leaders~, and are canonically the prettiest princess in any room. I get it and maybe in the Titans you'd be right, but here, Bruce is Gansey. He is the one with the quest! He is the one driving things forwards and bringing the others along. He's the one with the family name and the family wealth and the family home. He went through something traumatic as a child that irrevocably changed him, fueled his intense guilt and obsession. He brought the group together, and yet feels left behind by them. Someone who cares deeply about the people immediately around him, and yet will not stop pursuing his other goals even if it's hurting them or himself. Obsessed, I think, with proving that he deserves to be here.

Which means that Dick...is Adam Parrish. Like. The constant search for independence. The perfectionism. The bad relationship with his father that forced him to need to be his own man. (Sorry real Bruce but you sucked in batman #416) Loving someone so much and yet always thinking the worst of them. Refusing to be a burden and yet accepting any yoke that comes his way. The intensity of the performance, of pretending to be who you wish you were for the people you care about. Taking on responsibilities because there is literally no other choice, nothing else you could do. Picking the best of your options and knowing that none for them are to rest easy. Valuing freedom so much and giving up your literal body for the quest.

PLUS (less perfect but): Cass as Henry Cheng (and not just bc they are both asian do not look at me like that) Narrative outsider who was watching from afar and put themselves in the narrative. Was molded by shady parent's shady business practices. Was put in a situation as a child they should not have had to endure, which challenged their beliefs and shaped them anew. And maybe like, later Tim as Noah, a bright, fun, young kid on a skateboard who gets himself involved in something too big for him and is undeniably damaged by it. Tim isn't betrayed by someone the way Noah is, but he's kind of...betrayed by the narrative, in a way? Betrayed by the adventure that he thought he was getting. Too clever for his own good, but sometimes naive about people. Lowkey a mirror that lets people see whatever they want to see lol

(I don't see super clear parallels for anyone else lol but I did have a fun time with the thought of Damian as Blue (short/down to fight/has another family/environmentalist/kind of feels fundamentally alienated as someone who is not like everyone else/wears green))

[my-castles-crumbling]

Hi!! I heard you let people tell you abt things they can’t tell anyone else so I thought I might give it a go? I hope it doesn’t annoy you(!!).

However uhhh how do I start we’ll I’m a lesbian and pretty proud in my identity. I know it’s normal by now (after a long time of denial) and now I’m a queer activist, go to demonstrations etc.

However I have been raised with Christianity, not the awful kind but rather the „god loves everyone no matter who you are and what you believe“ kind. Basically my family is very open abt anything queer and support my identity wholeheartedly. Nowadays I don’t think I believe in God anymore, at least not the one from the Bible. The beliefs are very deep in my core though and recently I’ve been helping my mom a bit at church ( she didn’t ask me I offered, because I didn’t have school that day ).

Anyways I was sorting food from donations that go to homeless people and I was doing that quietly while listening to music. Suddenly a guy came up to me and looked at me like I was sick or something. I take out my headphones to see what he wants and he puts his hand on my shoulder and says: „May the horrible and disgusting demon leave your body in the name of Jesus Christ“

Which - weird but maybe he meant well. Still I asked him why he did it and he pointed to my pride bracelet and said that he pushed away the demon of homosexuality and that god doesn’t have to give me to Satan anymore. I told him that being queer is completely normal and he looked at me with pity and said: „The demon takes time to disappear, but do not worry god will take it away“ and it’s just really hurtful because the God I was raised with (if he is real) wouldn’t ever do that and I feel like his words just hurt something at my core? So much that I cried. My mother found me and comforted me but I haven’t told her what happened.

Just is that Catholic Guilt? Because I have never experienced anything negative with the religion (just personal experiences not what the Catholic Church is up to in general cause many many things it does are just fucking awful).

Dunno just needed to tell someone otherwise it might have eaten me up from the inside. Sorry for the dump you probably have your own issues and don’t need to hear my whining haha.

Okay bye!!

Hi!! <3

Don't feel bad about messaging at all!

Unfortunately, there are a lot of religious people who feel the way that man does. I would guess that maybe you were upset BECAUSE this is the first time you've experienced such negativity. And ESPECIALLY because you are religious, yourself. It's saddening and scary to see someone who claims to believe the same things as you do to act so full of hatred.

However, I would encourage you to not allow one man's opinions to affect your experience with religion. (I say this as someone who isn't religious at ALL). It's YOUR job to decide how you feel about religion. Unfortunately, there are horrible, hurtful, cruel people everywhere. If you have found safety and comfort with your religion, don't let him make you feel differently.

I will, though, warn you that this man's opinion is relatively common, especially amongst different subsets of Christianity. Trust me, I've seen it myself, way too many times. It's jarring and upsetting, and sometimes downright scary to come across, especially when you aren't ready for it, so be aware. Stay safe. There are people who feel like this. But not everyone does. And you have safety and comfort with people who don't.

Hope this helps!

<3 <3

[misqnon]

nhello monti! it is March Again :v i feel like it's super obvious who i am so thank u for humoring me and using the name i gave u LOL.

my bad, ive never really celebrated april fools so i forgot it.. was... that day. im also glad u checked ur inbox. also theres no pressure to reply in a certain time frame!! i see ur posts that u have seen my asks and thats enough to put me at ease. so . take ur time!

fellow zoro fan!!!! i have a hard time choosing a favorite straw hat tbh.. they r all so special to me. i do probably like brook and franky just slightly more though. old men my beloved (tbh franky isnt that old but hes old compared to the younger members so). wano is the arc of buff men!! as a man liker... it pleases me.

the edit u sent Is So Good. thank u for sharing. i keep seeing sanji tiktoks and wanting to send them to u but i dont wanna spam ur inbox </3 my messages r already So Long..

ive listened to a bit of the dub (through clips) and tbh i do like it!! i like brook's voice acting a lot (hes who ive heard the most of. also he nails the laugh, which is very important to me) but luffys voice is so jarring to me i just cannot.. get past it. i think im just too used to the sub luffy after . a decade . of hearing him sound like that. plus i usually have to use subtitles anyways cuz i have an audio processing disorder so. sub is just what i default to. but yeah definitely valid to watch dub instead!! they do a great job from what ive seen :)

i have seen a bit of extra content involving the live action cast and tbh usopps actor.. is my favorite. he nails usopp. hes real life usopp. and i love usopp a lot so,,. tbh i might just pirate it (ahaha.... pirate.... pirate.... pirate the pirate show .......) because i really want to watch it!!

YEAH u have plenty of time!! plus i imagine there will be a part of the story where they go back and visit places they said they would return to (like u mentioned laboon). so 2 more islands plus however long it takes to revisit everything! no need to stress

stay strong 🫡 egghead will be so much better going in blind!

catholic guilt about liking sanji is ... i get it. thats funny /lh. i also feel intense guilt for the weirdest and simplest of things LMAO. im glad i didnt make u feel bad about it!!

YEAHH FELLOW DOFFY LOVER!! ive seen a few videos by melonteee and theyre super good. i would watch more but.. ironically (considering i got 800 episodes through one piece..) i cant watch a lot of longform content because i space out so bad. it takes a lot of effort for me to give my full attention and it gets pretty exhausting so i dont do it often. ur art of him is lovely!!! tongue piercings..... 😳.

i got to like .. stardust crusaders. in jjba. and i imagine i just havent seen enough of dio to feel attached to him like i do doffy, but i have seen a few people say they feel the same!!! ive kinda been wanting to go back to it but i just hate old man joseph joestar with such a passion.... i get too angry when hes on screen LOL. its way worse than how i feel abt sanji bc i dont simmer with intense RAGE every time sanji's on screen and i have a lot more positive feelings towards him. that was a bit of a tangent, whoops.

thabk u for validating my sanji hatred. actually i have come to enjoy a lot of sanji content recently though, and i dont think i hate him as much?? as i did?? i will credit this to u. idk if me just talking about it with another human being helped or if its because i see how much u love him but. i think this is good for me!! less rage .. is always good for me. watch me go back to hating him with a passion again now that ive said im fond of him. because im That Inconsistent 😭😭 (i hope this doesnt happen)

it was only super recently where i realized its not inherently a bad thing to like problematic media. to be fair tho there are definitely a lot more problematic fans when u enjoy problematic media, and i see it with one piece a lot. there is a WEIRD amount of transphobes in this community and i cant help but feel like part of that is because of oda's writing spreading some common transphobic ideas. i think hes redeemed himself a lot with the most recent trans characters, and i adore them, but the damage.. is done. but yeah im sure another big part of why theres so much negativity is just because one piece is insanely popular. the bigger the fandom, the bigger the shitty part of it is.

THEY *HAVE* EARNED THE RIGHT TO BE REAL PEOPLE.. UR SO RIGHT. i love that u can see their morals so clearly in like. every action . or inaction. they take. ughh. people talk about luffy falling asleep during people's backstory and say hes rude for it. and its like!! thats a core part of his character!!! he doesn't care about what happened in the past!! he just cares about how you are NOW. tbh though i WOULD be offended if he fell asleep while i was traumadumping LOL. like as a character decision its genius, but as a person .. i am too sensitive for that. BUT IT SHOWS HIS CHARACTER SO WELL!!

IM SO GLAD U NOTICED AUJFH. that moment is so special. u ARE my favorite sanji lover!! my favorite character?? honestly its law... hes so stupid (/pos)... but like.. its hidden behind a very serious mask. i just love people who are extremely silly. and someone who hides their silliness with all their might (and fails) makes them more silly. some of my favorite law moments are in wano and i Really .. ugh. i wish i could tell u but i refuse to spoil even the most minor of things!! so i will wait till u get there. also his backstory just Kills me. it . it hurts. i love tragic characters. looks at choso from jjk. i have a type .

law may be my ultra favorite but i have .. at least 30 different Favorites. including the straw hats. and tbh everyones at about the same level.. in terms of how much i love them. i think its safe to say i adore one piece characters. its because everyone is silly!!! i can list all the ones im aware of (since there r so many op characters.. i have. a list . but i keep adding to it.) if ur curious LOL. if not, no worries :)

YEAHHH ZOROOO MY LOVE!! thank u for The Food. yum. his one eye is very pretty in ur style 🥺. i havent tried to draw him yet tbh but i understand the struggle!! i tried drawing choso a while ago and his hair is so insanely painful.. art is hard.

hello march!!

is. is it super obvious

i have a guess but i wasn’t feeling super confident about it or anything JSAHBZJVHFD

More below ↓

i actually had like no idea until i received a reply earlier and now im wondering if ur possibly a recent mutual of mine 🔍🧐 maybe starting…with @ a….but i will not make u answer if u dont wanna HAHAHA

i will humor u as long as u want 👍

good to know there’s no pressure!! as soon as i get a message i like to reply as soon as i can but thats bc i get excited lmao. however this does make me feel more at peace

YEAA FELLOW ZORO FAN!! originally my favs were just the top 3 of 1. sanji 2. robin and 3. franky but as we got past water 7 and franky didnt get much more development spotlight he fell a bit just bc i dont get to see him doing much :( still love him though. bc of Shipping Reasons (embarrassing) Zoro got on my radar more and i started to appreciate him as a character more and more. plus he’s just. really badass im ngl. and in addition to that he is. so fucking stupid and uncool and goofy at the same time and that just makes him more likable. so now i just have a quartet of favs cause zoro wormed his way in there somewhere and i hold him dear to my heart. (plus im so bad with directions it is QUITE LITERALLY almost as bad as zoro and so i. genuinely relate to him on that LMAO) but i agree !! i LOVE ALL THE STRAWHATS VERY MUCH. I CANT EVEN CHOOSE A LEAST FAVORITE BC I LOVE ALL OF THEM A LOT. also god yes we fucking love an old guy in this household. and i LOOOVE FUURANKIIIII my silly king!! franky is fairly young but early on in the story when its just a bunch of teenagers and 20 somethings and then 34 year old franky is there its. kinda funny and i love that for him. also speaking of old men i called dofuwani old man yaoi once and someone called me out saying 41 and 46 was not old enough 😔 /ashamed. sorry yall lemme pull out some slash of rayleigh and crocus real quick-

aside from the strawhats my other favs are doffy, crocodile, corazon…god there’s so many characters now that i think about it lmao. secondarily i also like bartolomeo, kizaru, kid, bon clay…i have huge crush on katakuri even tho i havent met him yet…im sure there will be more as i continue and meet more

omg im so flattered u consider sending me sanji tiktoks sjnkjcnd!??! someday. someday u have to do this for me. i will send u more funny edits and op posts

BROOK’S DUB VOICE IS GOD TEIR. ARE U TALKING ABOUT/ HAVE YOU SEEN THIS VIDEO. IAN SINCLAIR IS AMAZING LAMNDKJFN

i got used to luffys dub voice bc i watched it first but ive always been meh/neutral dislike towards it and once i heard mayumi tanaka in sub i was like damn. its the only voice i dont like but hes the Main Character. his sub voice also makes me like luffy more as a character mvkjdnvf dub just makes him sound more like a selfish weird boy instead of a silly selfish little guy. you feel me (and no i feel u even with dub i have captions on bc. yeah </3)

taz inaki and jacob are a trio of mischievousness and silliness that i adore. emily is also fun and goofy but on a more ~ refined ~ scale. and mackenyu is so professional to them all in comparison but it makes it hilarious tbh. i follow all of the main 5 on instagram and love seeing them post about it. the recent april fools video starring jacob (usopp) was. hilarious. like what is

(and yes…pirate it….do it….yohohoho or whatever nami would be proud)

i am so ready for wano and egghead i will stay strong for u march 🫡 must avoid spoilers…and still take my time to enjoy the story..

i understand not being able to do longform content lmao. i did watch their 3 hr stream comp of one piece odyssey but like…i had it on in the bg while doing other things. im glad uve seen their stuff tho!! its one of my fav one piece content channels. im glad u liked my doffy 🥹i embellished a Little bit but his piercings are actually from this colorspread !!

i was insane and in highschool when i was into jjba. a lot of it was also during the summers and i had a lot of free time so i. read all the way up through part 7 after watching parts 1-3 (or 4? cant remember). im not as into it anymore but jojos (and araki) still hold a place in my heart <3 HATING OLD MAN JOSEPH IS SO FUNNY KDSNFVK NO OFFENSE JUST LIKE. YEAH. U SHOULD HATE HIM. THATS A VALID RESPONSE AND HE DESERVES IT. KICK HIS CHEATING OLD ASS. i loved younger joseph and like a lot of ppl him cheating on suzie q pissed me da fuck off. but in pt 4 he’s frail and old and they make u feel bad but still. i KNow What You Did. appreciative u hate someone more than sanji tho like hell yea my boy aint at the bottom LMAO. its cool others have noticed the similarities between dio and doffy too! i always wonder if long running mangaka take insp from each other sometimes

omg…im converting u…my influence as the fav sanji lover /j. but that makes me happy!! hell yea we’re changing outlooks over here. i validate ur sanji hatred but i also wont be mad if u like him a little teehee. his fanon is. a lot better than his canon tho so. that helps. we are fixing him. taking him away from oda and dressing him up like a doll . and if u go back to hating him thats ok too at least he isnt old man joseph 

i only interact w one piece here on tumblr or in the 2 op discord servers i happen to be in. with it being so mainstream (and i have. never been in a mainstream popular fandom like this before) i know theres a ton of gross dudebros who like it so i try to avoid that. sucks to hear there’s a bunch of transphobia but im not surprised :/ i still do see yamato discourse and its like got damn how much convincing do u need yall. but no i agree it probably is the audience oda cultivated + his earlier portrayals…though i do really like that he. tried again and did better. though even with yamato i sometimes feel like he puts him in situations that go against canon (like why did he draw yamato as a geisha and include him in the womens day colorspread…oda why) but alas. give and take

YES THERE;S SO MANY CHARACTERS WHO HAVE INSTANCES LIKIE THAT!! SO MANY MORALS AND CONVICTIONS THEY STICK TO AND SO MANY STRONG CHARACTER TRAITS. thats why i find so many op characters easy to write, bc they’re outlined so heavily in the show in what their archetypes and ideals and behaviors are…it kinda bothers me that luffy falls asleep during moments like that too bc it would make ME upset but like. YEA THATS IN CHARACTER FOR HIM DFKNFV

AH A LAW LOVER!! he’s very popular !?!? i know he comes in again in wano but during punk hazard and dressrosa i was like is this enough screentime for how popular he is omg. i guess he’s just pathetic and sad and grungy punk emo boy . tbh if i didnt already have so many favs who fill that spot i would probably have him as a fav as well. but i do REALLY LIKE law. his backstory with cora….fucks me UP!! and he’s been through a lot and come out stronger. plus his juxtaposition and interactions with luffy and the strawhats is so fucking funny kcncd. the op server im in has PLENTY of law lovers so i see him often. i think i stole this from a tumblr post recently but i saw this and saved it to my phone bc i loved it so much

i relate to him here. he is so me. this was me dyking it up at university fr

ik this is from one piece party but i think it shows his secret silly here. he got it from cora i think how could he not. but he hides it under that I Am A Serious And Scary Doctor . like sure trafalgar 

YES send me the full list!! in return i will list more favs as well. mayhaps a tierlist of some kind. we will see

glad u liked the zoros :^) idk anything about jjk but i will look up this choso man one moment. [...] okay i actually really like his design (and hair) but that looks like hell to draw i wish u the best </3 i have a degree in art and ummm its still really hard sorry to tell u it does not get better </3 [JOKING THATS A JOKE A JOKE CJNCD]

here’s a question to leave u off with: what do you think each of the strawhats eye colors is? since most of them are just drawn with black dots. and IF DIFFERENT what are your headcanons/what do you Wish they were 👁️ eagerly awaiting ur response bc i have Opinions on this

talk to u next time!

[casliveblog]

Custom Toonami Block Week 170 Rundown

Inuyasha The Final Act: We get another one of those episodes where several plots that clearly happened in different orders are kinda happening all at once, so I’ll tackle them in the order they’re resolved rather than the order they show up in. Sesshomaru is still dicking around in the background trying to master the Meido Zangetsuha because it can already kill everything in one hit but really mastering it means a slightly bigger AOE of killing everything in one hit. Meanwhile Inuyasha’s actually kind of proactive in searching out his next upgrade like ‘you know I’m just gonna steal the arc villain’s powers anyway so might as well just hunt him down’ and luckily they find Dakki just as it’s being perfected, like minutes after, it’s crazy. Inuyasha kills the dragon demon that gave the scales for it with a classic game of demonic energy tennis and then the human that forged it pulls a Kaijinbo and decides to start wielding Dakki anyway despite the corrupting influence it has on his body. Another game of demonic energy tennis ensues and Tessaiga loses all its power but manages to crack Dakki and get it scared enough that it just starts pumping energy into its human wielder who just fucking explodes from it, so yeah Tessaiga has its second most useless upgrade now. Like I feel like since it gets Meidou Zangetsuha right after this and it’s very situational and hurts the user at first, Dragon Scale Tessaiga never really gets the chance to shine. Like it ‘absorbs demonic energy’ but that doesn’t really amount to much given Inuyasha doesn’t do anything with that energy, it’s basically a switch that turns off Naraku’s auto-healing. Energy absorption is really weird for a heroic power and Yashahime did a lot of weird shit with Towa using it too but at least with her it made her attacks stronger. Meanwhile Koga gets set up to be attacked by a baby wolf demon kid whose brother is being held ransom by Naraku’s newest incarnation once he realized ‘oh shit Kagura did all my grunt work what do I do now’, Byakuya. I don’t really get what the plan was, like this kid was never going to kill Koga and leading him back to them was kind of a whim that basically amounted to Byakuya getting to see the Goraishi in action. But Moryomaru does come around and Inuyasha gets to save Koga from having his shards taken for like the tenth time (though this time it’s because of bs conveinient Midoriko shenanigans so I guess the good luck cancels out the bad) and they do get to do a cool team attack now that Koga has an energy blast like the rest of the big boys. Also like, they gave the wolf demon kid a jewel shard? Naraku has almost the whole jewel completed at this point, we’ve seen it, so is he like… breaking off new shards? That seems like a bad idea given the only shards besides Koga’s and Moryomaru’s is the one you gave to a random kid to fuck with Sango and it’s currently Naraku’s biggest obstacle, like you’d think he’d stop giving out jewel shards and risking losing them. But yeah, turns out Dragon Scale Tessaiga is too much for Inuyasha to handle rn so he has an upgrade but he really doesn’t so now it’s time for second upgrade.  

Castlevania: So yeah we get the fabulous scene of the demons murdering Frollo which I think is the most popular scene in the series with good reason. Meanwhile Trevo gets help from Sypha doing crowd control and it’s really funny how he’s like ‘damn priest you almost made murderers out of these people’ only for the people to fucking murder the priest, like they switched fucking fast, guess a little ‘ ‘ey isn’t this guy an asshole?’ is all it takes to overcome years of Catholic guilt because all Trevor really does is say ‘they’re lying’, offer no evidence and everyone’s willing to just jump the priest over it, like he’s telling the truth but I feel like the villagers are just a bit too ready to believe him right away. The two of them manage to Seven Samurai their way into teaching the people how to fight demons just in time to have a really long scene of falling into Alucard’s daddy booboo room. Alucard and Trevor have a really cool fight because it’s like Sonic Adventure 2 you’re more likely to believe there’s one supernatural vampire/hedgehog that looks slightly different than you expected than the more unbelievable option that there’s actually two supernatural vampires/hedgehogs. But yeah they get all their flamboyant male showboating out of the way and agree to go kill Dracula because they’re all getting kinda sick of this whole demon horde genocide thing.

Jujutsu Kaisen: I don’t know who’s in charge of directing Meimei’s scenes but they always do it like it’s some kind of survival horror and it’s a special treat. Meimei defeats smallbox with the powers of birds and death which is definitely a sentence I never thought I’d say. Meanwhile Maki, Nanami, and Papa Zenin encounter that lil baby Cthulu thing who’s just digivolved into Perfect Cell Cthulu thing and he and Papa Zenin have a weird meta discussion about animation and HD while Cthulu’s just like ‘my friends are dead and I’m mad’ like I legit thought with how hyped up this tentacle guy was in the first OP and just kinda hanging around in the background of Kujaku’s hiding place he’d be some key figure but apparently he’s just some guy they pal around with, it’s like that bit in the Simpsons where the small yakuza guy does nothing and you’re waiting for him to do something cool and this is cool but it’s not exactly what I was expecting. Papa Zenin’s technique is pretty cool too like a weaponized form of windows movie maker and if you don’t make a full AMV in half a second you get stunlocked but of course since he uses his fists and not like a sword or something he doesn’t have a really good finishing blow so it takes a while to beat the shit out of someone, like that that point learn how to use a sword so you can cut someone’s head off while they’re stunlocked instead of beating them around for ten minutes. Anyway Cthulu Expansions his Domain which is just Super Mario Sunshine with angry murder fish and Papa Zenin does the move which is different from the other move that cancels domain shit and it’s really poorly explained it’s basically just ‘nuh-uh’ to the Domain shit by doing a frame perfect input cancel. And like they always seem to get the guys that don’t have Domains to fight the villains that do because I’m guessing if Papa Zenin could do Doamin stuff he’d have done it by now. Still, the guys hold up as long as they can against fish that can literally just teleport into already biting a chunk out of them and Megumi comes out of nowhere to give Maki her nunchaku back and use his Domain he learned like a couple weeks ago to at least de-power Cthulu’s domain from an insta-kill to like an 80% kill which is enough to actually fight at least but Megumi’s not doing so hot trying to drag Super Mario Sunshine into his Shikamaru Shadow World so he just plans to rip a hole in the edge of the domain for everyone to get out of because it’s one of those once a day things so if you just like move out of the way they can’t spam it. Papa Zenin’s missing an arm and Nanami’s missing an eye so yeah they’re ready to get the fuck out of dodge but Dadgumi pops out of the hole of all people, like father like son I guess just popping in to Super Mario Sunshine to fuck shit up.

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End: I really like how despite the episodes being two separate vignettes likely derived from manga chapters being shorter than anime episodes, the two halves usually lead into each other in some way and carry a certain theme, it’s a good touch I didn’t see in something like Spy X Family that tends to go for mostly unconnected stories or full story arcs. Frieren and Fern are cleaning up a beach in exchange for a counterfeit book supposedly written by Flamme, who we find out in the second half is Frieren’s Master from a thousand years ago and famously didn’t write shit down so a bunch of people wrote shit down to say it was her. The running gag for this half is Frieren sleeps like a college student, up all night reading and then sleeping till noon, which means she won’t be able to see the sun rise on the festival when the beach is finally clean, but Fern Mama Bear’s up and knows it’s important to Frieren to see it and gets them out the door to watch it. Frieren contemplates why Himmel was so insistent on her seeing it back when they were in town and sees it as nothing special until she sees Fern smiling at it and realizes the real sunset was the friends she made along the way. The second half is the group visiting Eisen as the last other surviving member of the Himmel Troupe and Frieren’s like ‘bro I don’t wanna feel bad when you die too so lemme know any unfinished business shit you gotta deal with’ and sweetly enough, Eisen’s unfinished business is having Frieren deal with her unfinished business and getting her to voice her regrets to Himmel’s spirit in the afterlife. This is really kind of a setup for another ‘the way to solve your own problems is to help someone else’ kind of deal but I feel like this series has earned that kind of trite thing at this point and I’d honestly kinda prefer that to a magical ‘oh, heaven’s real and death has fewer consequences because of it’ twist. But yeah, they do find Flamme claims to have talked to the dead in the spot where the Demon King’s Castle was but she also was a notorious troll and may just be fucking with Frieren to get her to work her own shit out but either way Frieren was looking for a sidequest anyway so they might as well go on a NG+ adventure to the Demon King’s Castle to go talk to ghosts or whatever.

Vinland Saga: So yeah Gardar’s here to take Arnheid and their definitely alive and with her son but Wolf ain’t having that and Einar’s kinda slowly coming to the realization that just because they’re good to them doesn’t mean the guys that literally enslave people are the good guys. Thorfinn manages to talk him down and Wolf beats the shit out of Gardar so they can drag him off for questioning. The rest of the episode is kind of an awkward ‘what now?’ conversation between a couple of parties. Arnheid tells Einar about how Gardar left for war based of an unnecessary and vague idea of keeping his family safe and protecting them and ironically all the men running off to war for what amounts to the viking equivalent of fighting for oil is what opened up her village to being ransacked and her son dying (they don’t show them murdering a one year old obviously but I checked the wiki and apparently he was killed because you get more for female slaves that don’t have kids) and her getting sold as a slave. And now worst of all she sees the kind of monstrous murderer Gardar has become and is afraid of him so she’s ready to leave him to his fate and protect her own now that, get this, she’s fucking pregnant with Ketil’s kid (I’d fucking laugh if this story were different and she carried to term and the Ketil welcomes the kid and it comes out with Einar’s bright red hair that’d be fucking hilarious). But yeah, except all of that or at least part of it was a fucking lie because after everyone goes to bed Arnheid’s gonna sneak out and see him anyway. Sverkel tells her a contrasting story about how not going to war caused him and Ketil to lose everything they were avoiding fighting for in the first place, so moral of the story is fight or don’t, world’s fucked up and everyone ends up broken in the end so you gotta pick the kind of brokenness you can live with. And that seems to finalize Arnheid’s decision as she walks into the night in a way dramatic enough to ensure me she is definitely not coming back.

[counterpunches]

source

Caption:

[[@else: I suppose it's time to tell my abortion story. Of the abortion that didn't happen, that led to me.

A lot of anti-abortion people put words & thoughts into the mouths of the unborn.

Well, I'm one that was recommended to stay unborn, who got born, and here's what I say.

My mother found our very early in her pregnancy that there was an extremely high risk to her if she continued.

Terminating the pregnancy was floated by one of the doctors. It would have been legal due to the risk to her, but heavily stigmatized.

Her family was deeply Catholic. She was deeply Catholic.

She did not terminate. The risk became a reality.

So I'm here, and she's not.

I'm glad to be here.

It is hard to put into words the gratitude you feel to a mother who sacrificed herself entirely for you, and I'm not going to try here.

Because I'm also very angry.

Without in any way taking away from the courage and selflessness with which she bore her situation and which she showed in all aspects of her life

I don't believe she ever really felt like she had a true choice.

The stigma, the religious dogma, the judgement - everything she'd ever known - told her she could not save her own life.

Her parents would have, however sadly, believed she'd go to hell. Her family and friends and community would have judged her.

Everyone she'd ever loved believed it was wrong. And so she believed it was wrong.

Needlessly.

I don't know what choice she would have made if it had been a true choice.

Maybe she would have chosen me anyway. Maybe she would have chosen to stay for her two already-existing children and for all those who loved her so deeply.

But she should have had a real, true choice.

Would I trade being here for that?

In a heartbeat. Without hesitation.

My siblings could have grown up with their mother.

My grandparents could have seen their beloved daughter live out her beautiful life, instead of mourning her every day until their deaths.

Her brothers and sisters would not still thirty years later feel the pain of losing the sistre they loved so much.

She could have continued to bring the light to the world that she had always brought, that I have heard so much about.

My father perhaps would not have descended into the grief & guilt that destroyed him, our relationship with him, the innocence of our childhoods.

Now, I think about how my young nieces & nephews will grow up without her, without the kind of grandmother I had. That pains me too.

I grew up in the devastation of her death.

I've watched the consequences of it play out for thirty years.

I can see what might have been differently if she'd had a true choice and it snatches my breath away, to see the suffering that didn't have to be for the ones I love most.

I know that it is not my family, but it is also profoundly difficult to know that it is because of me.

Or to be more exact, because the world did not allow my mother her right to a true choice, and my being here is perhaps a result of that.

It's not a burden I'd wish on anyone

I wish that I could have told her. It's okay. Stay. Live. Be happy.

I wish I could know that she knew that that was more than ok.

Don't I want to be here? Don't I want to be alive, aren't I glad to live??

Now that I'm here, sure. But had I never been, what would I have lost? Nothing.

You can't miss what you never had. Can't lose anything when you never existed.

There's no pain or loss in not existing.

I didn't exist then, to want anything. I didn't exist to hope or wish or fear anything.

I didn't exist back then. Not me. There was a possibility. An idea, a hope maybe. Some cells, a process in her body. Not me, any more than a sperm was me or an egg was me.

*I" didn't become until much later. Til I was born.

My mother wouldn't have taken anything from me or cause me any pain by living for herself, because I didn't exist to lose anything.

There was so much pain, so much loss in losing her. Loss that will ripple down generations.

So I will say to my dying breath, as the person who only lives because she didn't abort, that whatever she thought or chose or did not chose, she should have had a real choice to abort.

That she should have felt that aborting me was valid and good a choice as not.

Everyone should feel that, and have real access to enact that choice without obstruction or shame or question.

Whether it is their actual life at risk, or not. A forced pregnancy can be the death of many things, not just the end of ther person's life.

Having me took away from the world everything that my mother could have given it.

Forcing someone to have a child against their will can take away what that person could be and bring if they had their choice, whether they live through the pregnancy or not.

Most of all it takes away their right - their inalienable right - to choose how they live their life in their own body.

A non-person, a hypothetical future event, the birth of someone who doesn't exist yet, doesn't have that right.

Other people, who claim to speak for the unborn do not have that right.

We all lose so much by it. It can cause such pain and suffering, for child-bearers, for children, for everyone.

Do not pretend to speak for the unborn.

Do not pretend to speak for the children born against their mother's will.

Do not pretend that you care for them while you hide misogyny behind dogma.

My mother deserved her right to a real choice.

Everyone does. Unconditionally.

As the child who could have been aborted, I tell you - to oppose that right, let alone work to criminalize it, is unforgivable.

I'd like to emphasize because I didn't say it loud enough in the original thread:

There doesn't need to be a tragic story or a threat to life to make abortion ok.

It can be simply because you don't want to have a child. That's all. You still have the right to a choice.

I told my sad story because:

a) it is important to me to counter the rhetoric of anti-choice folks, that claims that if the unborn could speak they would be anti-choice

b) forced pregnancies can really f*ck up lives in many ways and that needs to be recognized.

But:

There shouldn't have to be a tale of woe to justify bodily autonomy.

It's a right. An absolute right. It should be protected by law.

That's it. That's all.

Last thingL I want this point to be heard, but I don't particularly want to deal with blowing up on twitter.

I will probably lock my account down at some point, but I would like this still to be shared. Maybe use an unroll app and share from there if you would like to.]]

[bangtanloverboys]

something sick & twisted (i) // jjk

summary - all your life you considered yourself to be a good kid. you got good grades, went to church every sunday, didn’t go to any parties. you did anything you could to keep yourself on the path to heaven, even if it meant hiding some of the darkest parts of you to yourself. that was how you lived until one day, your no-good roommates decided to take you up to an abandoned cabin in the woods, where you begin to feel yourself corrupt from the inside out

pairing - demon!jungkook x church boy!reader

genre - suspense, smut

word count - 11.4k

warnings - internalized homophobia, catholic guilt, reader is a bit of a straight edge, kinda incubus!jungkook but also not really?, toxic friendships, drugs use (marijuana), driving while intoxicated/high, head injury, hospitals, kinda unconsensual touching?, clubbing, alcohol consumption, kitty gang!jimin shows up, sex dream, blowjob, paranoia, sleep deprivation, (former) youth group leader!namjoon, homophobic parents, masturbation, shame, lot’s of conflicted feelings, voyeurism, some degradation, slight man handling, name calling, spit as lube/improper prep (please don’t do that), loss of virginity, dom!jungkook, sub!reader, top!jungkook, bottom!reader, gay sex, unprotected sex (also don’t do that), non-explicitng praying during sex (um), crying during sex, kinda dacryphilia, marking, accidental selling of the soul

author’s note - the infamous gay demon jungkook is here. . . and here’s here to fuck shit up. i would like to note that if you are religious, i do not recommend reading this. @tipsydipsydo​ since you asked to be tagged. . . hope you enjoy also big shout out to @crazy4myself​ for being my beta for this ily

part ii

All throughout your life, you knew there was something off about you. You could never figure out what it was exactly, but you knew you weren’t like the other boys at your church. It got even more apparent when you started school. You don’t know what it was as you’d play in the dirt, on the field, on the playground with all the other guys; goofing around and having fun. But there was just a piece of you that knew you couldn’t relate to them, entirely.

One day, you were walking past the swingset where a couple of girls were whispering amongst themselves. Curious, you circled around them to get a bit closer. Being as careful as possible, you were able to get close enough to hear them. 

“I think Lucas is the cutest boy in class!”

“No! He’s not!”

“It’s Lucas! And I’m gonna marry him, he’s gonna be my boyfriend one day.”

You were taken aback by their conversation. Not because they were talking about boys, but because they were wrong. The cutest boy in your class was Eric, the boy who sat next to you during reading time and always read Percy Jackson. You’d peer over the edge of your own book to watch his eyes wildly follow the lines on the paper. Sure you lost points for not reading the required amount of pages you were supposed to, but it was worth it.

It wasn’t until the following Sunday that you learned it was wrong.

You sat in horror as the preacher talked about how boys liking other boys was wrong and that they were going to burn in Hell. Shame burned deep in your soul as he continued to talk about how much God hated queer folk. If God hated homosexuals. . . did He hate you too? Looking at your parents, you saw them nod in agreement. Did they hate you too?

After that mass, you made a point not to sit next to Eric anymore. Not that he noticed anyways, he wasn’t exactly your friend. Every night, you prayed to God begging Him not to hate you. To change you, to understand that you didn’t want to be that way. But every day, you still woke up the same.

It wasn’t until you were in a middle school sex ed class that homosexuality was brought up again. The teacher asked the class what they homosexuality was. Prepared with what you had learned from church, you raised your hand proudly, ready to answer. When she called on you, you answered that it was a sin. Within an instant the class erupted into gasps. The teacher gave you a pitiful smile before telling you that it wasn’t a sin and there was nothing inherently wrong with it.

That Tuesday afternoon, you swore the sun shined a little brighter. If it wasn’t wrong, then maybe God didn’t hate you! He loved everyone, maybe the gay thing was a mistake and He did love you! You weren’t going to burn in Hell! When you got home from school and your parents asked you what you learned, you eagerly responded with what the teacher said that being gay wasn’t a sin and that it was okay. The joy you felt earlier melted away into fear as you watched your parents’ faces harden. Your mom stood up from the dinner table, saying she needed to make a call. Leaving you alone with your father, who talked with you for the next 30 minutes about how that teacher was wrong and that you should never ever be gay. You were transferred out of that school.

Years passed and you buried those thoughts and feelings deep inside. You locked it away in a little box and threw away the key. God loved you and He wouldn’t make you gay. . . But it didn’t make sense as to why you were.

Knowing your mortal sin, you did everything in your power to make up for it. To prove to Him that you were never going to act on your desire and be the child of God you were: you prayed every night before bed, went to church every Sunday with your family, attended every Youth Group field trip; you never swore, drank, smoked, partied. Nothing. You were the picture perfect child to the picture perfect family. 

You even had a girlfriend! Although not for very long. Her name was Aera, one of if not the most beautiful girls in school. You dated her for a few months before it ended abruptly. You took her to Senior Prom and when you were driving home, she got rather. . . handsy. By the time you parked, she all but pounced on you. Straddling you, she kissed you feverishly. You sat there frozen, not knowing what to do as her hand traveled down south, where you were still soft in your pants. After a few minutes of you not responding, she pulled away, eyebrows furrowed.

“Are you gay or something?”

“No!” You blurted out, “I-I’m just not ready!”

“Well when are you gonna be ready? It’s been 3 months and I’ve been hinting at it for weeks! Hell, that was the first time we even kissed!” She exclaimed as she pulled herself off of you.

“I-I want to wait until marriage,” you muttered, the excuse falling flat on your tongue. It was true though, you wanted to wait for marriage and wait for the right person. But if you were honest with yourself, that wasn’t the entire reason. 

Rolling her eyes at you, she told you to call her when you weren’t gonna be such a prude. You didn’t call her back.

The remainder of your time at highschool, you didn’t date. Claiming to be too busy studying and your parents didn’t mind. They liked the idea of a studious son, they were proud of it also. Bragging to the other people at your parish on how you never did anything bad, like most of the other kids at your school. The closer you got to graduation, the more they started suggesting Catholic colleges and Universities nearby that either they went to or thought were good schools; but you didn’t want those. You wanted to go to school in a different place, meet and see new people. It took a bit of cooperation, but you were finally able to convince your parents to let you go to a regular college as long as you held up to three rules: stay on top of your school work, don’t go out partying, and most importantly, go to church. 

All of which you managed pretty fine; you were only at college to get an education, nothing more and nothing less. For the past 3 years, those rules still held up and your past roommates were pretty understanding of them and respected your space. 

That was until you got two new roommates, Taehyung and Soekjin, who made an unending game of trying to get you to abandon those rules. A few weeks into the semester, they seemed to have dropped the issue, or so you had thought. 

One night, you were running late for an evening Saturday mass. You’d accidentally missed church last Sunday and it was nearing the weekend and this was the only time you felt you could make it up. It was by mere coincidence that your roommates were also going out that night and offered to drop you off. Relief flooded through you as you accepted the offer, they finally seemed to have learned to respect you. The three of you climbed into Seokjin’s car and you were off. A few minutes go by and you spotted the church in the windshield, and got ready for them to turn into the parking lot. Only the turn wasn’t never made. 

“Uh, guys? You passed it.” You questioned, gesturing to the building that was slowly shrinking into the distance. Looking up, you saw both of them grinning at each other. 

Seokjin made eye contact with you in his rearview mirror. “We know.”

Turning in his seat to face you, Taehyung began to speak. “We just thought that you should be spending your Saturday night doing something fun! You’re almost 21 and you’re still following your parents' rules. Live a little.”

“Those-those aren’t my parents’ rules, I willingly want to go?!” Your explanation fell on deaf ears as Taehyung shifted back in his seat to face the front. He opened up the center console, digging around until he pulled out a plastic baggie with two neatly rolled joints. “What are you-”

Before the question even fully left your mouth, he took one of them out and to his lips. Pulling a lighter from his pockets, he lit the joint. He took a deep inhale before facing you again. “Wanna hit?” Blowing the a thick cloud of smoke in your face.

“No-!” Your shout was cut off with a cough as you accidentally inhaled the smoke. “Turn around now. I’m not comfortable with this!”

“Relax, dude. We’re almost there.” Seokjin chimed in as Taehyung passed the joint to him, his eyes never leaving the road as he took a hit. “You’ve done nothing but study and church, study and church. The school year is almost over and you haven’t done anything!”

“Because I didn’t want to do anything else, now where are we going?!” You were close to screaming as you looked out the windows, seeing nothing but trees and wilderness surrounding the road. You felt like your heart was about to beat out of your chest. “Turn around please!”

“Okay dude, you seriously need to chill.” Taehyung scoffed, blatantly ignoring your pleas. “Either take a hit, or shut up.”

Tears that welled up in your eyes burned as you blinked them back. There were many things you allowed Taehyung and Seokjin to get away with so far: you never bagered them about the smoking or the drinking, or coming home late and intoxicated. In fact, there was more than enough occasion where you’d walk in on them either giving or receiving sexual acts to both women and men alike! You’d ignore the burn in your cheeks and the dark twist in your gut as you slammed the door shut. You respected them and their choices, you had hoped they would do the same for you. But you had thought wrong. 

Helpless in the situation, you bit your tongue. Your hand immediately went to the cross that hung around your neck, trying to find any comfort for your current situation. Closing your eyes, you began to pray. Praying for God to do anything to help you get out of this car and back home. Yet nothing happened. You knew God worked in mysterious ways, but you really needed a miracle right about now and the lack of one wasn’t making your chances look any brighter. 

Fifteen minutes had passed when the car finally stopped. Opening your eyes, you saw the headlights shine onto the front of an old hunting cabin. You watched as Taehyung stubbed out the joint on the leather of the seat, adding onto the several other burn marks along the edge of the seat. 

“We’re here.” Seokjin announced as he opened his door, stepping out into the cool night air, the smoke curling around him.

You remained seated in the car, refusing to move. 

“Come on, Y/N! We promise it’s nothing too bad.” Taehyung whined. “We just want to show you this, then we’ll take you back to the dorm.”

Taking a deep breath, you met his eyes. “Promise?”

“Scouts honor,” he responded, pressing his hand over his heart. 

“Five minutes,” was all you said as you climbed out of the car. Taehyung let out a little cheer as you took in the sight of the cabin before you. The front windows appeared to be broken and the deck looked half rotted away. Despite all the clear evidence pointing to it being abandoned, you felt like something was staring at you from inside. Whatever it was, it clearly wasn’t friendly.

“Alright, let’s go.” Taehyung giddily rubbed his hands together as Seokjin turned on his phone's flash.

Taking careful steps, you all made your way up to the front door that was creaking as it swang idly in the door frame. The feeling of being watched only grew stronger the longer you stood on the front step. Seokjin pushed the door completely open, shining his phone light inside. From the small light, you caught glimpses of red spray paint and taxidermied deer heads on the walls. He took a couple steps forward, Taehyung following close behind. You were about to take your step in, but Seokjin’s phone flashed over some of the graffiti, revealing several pentagrams and demonic looking symbols sprayed all over the walls. You froze in the doorway, your mind and body refusing to step foot near unholy imagery. 

“Get in here!” Taehyung grabbed your wrist, trying to drag you into the cabin by force.

“No. You showed me the freaky house. Take me home.” You resisted his grip, but unfortunately he was stronger than you and pulled you in. As you stumbled in, you heard a loud crunch underfoot. Flinching, you slowly lifted your foot to see the broken fragments of what looked like an animal skull. Feeling the scream coming, you slapped your hand over your mouth in an attempt to muffle it.

Seokjin scoffed at your reaction. “It’s already dead, not like you can hurt it anymore.”

The tears you’d been holding back for so long began to blur your vision as you glared at him. Fed up with your roommates’ behavior, you turned on your heel, ready to walk back out towards the way you came. You did not want to spend another second in the demonic household, but Taehyung stepped in front of you, preventing you from leaving. 

“Nothing is going to come grab you, bro. There’s nothing’s gonna happen.” As if on cue, one of the mounted deer heads fell to the ground, startling you. “Okay maybe stuff is gonna fall because shit’s old as hell. But isn’t this place cool? Seokjin and I heard some of our classmates talk about this place and we wanted to check it out.”

“Yeah, some years ago some kids tried summoning a demon and they started doing messed up shit, like they had no conscience whatsoever.” Seokjin explained as he looked closer at the symbols on the wall. “They got locked up before anything could do anything worse, but they all blamed it on the demon they summoned. Telling them to give into their dark desires.” As he talked, you felt Taehyung standing closer behind you. Almost uncomfortably close. “And according to them, the demon is still around, still at this house.”

“If you’re trying to scare me, it’s not funny. Can we leave now?” You could feel Taehyung practically breathing down your neck, causing heat to crawl over your body. Every bone in your body was telling you to run, but with Taehyung right behind you, you know he’d grab you and keep you here even longer. 

Rustling on the other side of the room had your eyes snap over. There stood Taehyung, poking at the fallen deer head with his foot. A strange mix of relief and fear washed over your body. If Taehyung was over then who was standing behind you?

 Your brain tried to rationalize the situation. Perhaps you were on edge and imagining things, the stuff about demons getting to your head. Or maybe you were contact high from being trapped in that car for so long. No matter how many rational solutions you came up with, none of them felt right. You felt the presence get closer to you, hot air brushing against the shell of your ear like someone was breathing right on it; the faintest touch of lips grazing against your skin. 

“Boo.”

You let out a blood curdling scream as you whipped your body around, throwing your arms about in an attempt to shake off the heated presence that remained attached to your body. You heard the concern calls of Seokjin and Taehyung, trying their best to calm you down. Ignoring them, you bolted out the door, ready to make your way back towards the car and away from this place forever. As you bounded across the deck, you hit a weak spot. The rotted wood giving away to your weight, before you knew it, the world went dark. 

The next thing you knew you were lying down on a bed, machines beeping beside you and antiseptics filled your senses. You were in a hospital. In seconds it all started coming back to you: your roommates, the cabin, the paranoia, the presence. All coupled with a painful throbbing in your skull, reminding you of how you got there. 

Peeling your eyes open, it was bright and blurry; you were able to make out two figures on the other side of the room. They must’ve noticed you waking up because you heard hushed comments and a set of footsteps left the room. Before you knew it, Taehyung appeared overhead. “H-hey Y/N, you with us?”

“What happened?” You muttered.

“You hit your head running out- listen, the doctor-”

“He’s finally awake!” A female voice cut him off, directing both of your attention to her. “Hey Y/N, I’m Dr. Lee. How’s your head?”

“Hurts. How long was I out?” You questioned as the world got more into focus. Glancing out the window, you could see the sky was still dark so it couldn’t have been too long. . . unless it’s been longer than that.

“Only a few hours,” the doctor reassured you with a smile. “Your friends here said you took a tumble at a party, right?”

Your eyes darted to Tae and Jin, who were behind the doctor silently pleading for you to go along with it. They knew what they did was wrong, seeing as they technically kidnapped you. They put your life at risk. They deserved to face the consequences of their actions, you technically could sue them. But then the face of your parents came into view. You knew that if you fessed up about them driving high and taking you to some demonic abandoned cabin, you’d never hear the end of it. You couldn’t tell the truth. You’ve never lied before, and the mere thought of it had you feeling worse than your already pounding head. 

“Right.” Your voice was flat. Behind Dr. Lee, you saw Seokjin and Tae quietly sing your praises as you lied to her, feeling sick to your stomach. 

“Gotcha. Good news is your ankle isn’t sprained or broken, but considering your head injury we’d like to keep you overnight for observation.” She explained. “Your friends are more than welcome to stay-”

“No!” You cut her off. Dr. Lee gave you a bewildered look. “Sorry, it’s just. We’re roommates and maybe I can get some sleep.” You chuckled, to which she seemed to understand. After a few more minutes of checking you up, she told you a nurse would be around with some meds for you then bid you goodbye, leaving you alone with Taehyung and Seokjin once again.

“Hey man, you’re a real one-”

“Just go. I’m tired.” You huffed. While you doubted you’d get any sleep, you wanted to be alone. You needed to process what happened in that cabin and you didn’t need the two buffoons who brought you there to freak you out about it more. Plus, Seokjin snored so a quiet night away from the dorm was more than ideal, it doesn't matter that it’s spent in a hospital. 

Nodding, they said goodbye, mentioning that they’ll pick you up in the morning. Door closed, you let out a sigh of relief. Finally alone, you leaned back onto the hospital bed, all the energy draining from your body. You figured that while you were waiting for a nurse to drop off your meds, it wouldn’t hurt resting your eyes a bit. 

However the rest you received wasn’t exactly restful or comfortable; the dry sheets itching at your exposed skin and a sticky heat crawling down your back. Shifting in the bed, you tried to ignore it, thinking it could possibly be the IV going through your body. The heat only grew though, inching all over your body. As the heat moved, it slowly felt more like. . . hands? Was someone touching you? You laid still, trying to gauge if someone else was in the room with you. Yet you heard nothing; no breathing, no rustling of clothing, nothing. Yet you felt someone was in the room with you and was touching you.

The heat made its way along the front of your torso, circling its way over your pelvic bone. The invisible hands dragged their way over until they rested right above your dick. You held your breath, wanting this sick nightmare to be over. The heart monitor you were connected to was beeping speedily as the unseen fingertips started to drop lower and lower. You could feel the large palm of the hand begin to press against you, causing all the blood in your body to rush towards your cock. This had never happened before. You weren’t sure if you hated it or wanted it to continue. You didn’t move though, your body frozen in a silent dilemma of letting it happen or opening your eyes and confronting the person touching you.

Opposite side of the room, you heard the door click and suddenly the heat left you. Your eyes snapped open, finding a nurse with a tray of medication in hand. Your head swung about the room, but you saw no one else. 

“Sorry if I woke you, I have your meds.” The nurse chuckled. You felt your heart was still racing but the monitor's rhythmic beat was unphased as she approached you. She couldn’t have been that much older than you, you noted. She also seemed to be very peppy for the late hour; but you welcomed it, liking her cheerful attitude as a small distraction. She handed you a small cup of colorful capsules, explaining which ones were which and a bottle of water. 

“Thank you,” you responded after you downed the meds, gulping down the water. After that strange dream? Hot flash? your body welcomed the cool liquid. 

“It’s no problem,” the nurse reassured as you handed her back the small plastic cup. “If you need anything else, press this button right here.” She pointed to the remote that was tucked in the side of the bed, the button labeled NURSE, as she made her way towards the door. 

“Got it.” You nodded. Laying back against the pillow, you shut your eyes. But you could still feel someone was in the room. Unsure if the nurse had left yet, you peeked out of one eye to see if you were alone and you were. You chalked it up to residual paranoia from the dream, but you still felt watched. Closing your eyes again, you muttered a prayer under your breath. You prayed for God to give you a speedy recovery, and for Him to give you a sense of peace from the evening's events. After that, you were able to sleep a bit more easily, yet you still felt a presence in the corner of the room watching you.

A few days have passed since the cabin incident as you’ve dubbed it, and you haven’t spoken much to either Taehyung or Seokjin since they picked you up from the hospital after you received a clean bill of health. Which was an awfully hard task, considering you all shared a dorm. But it was needed. Sooner the semester got over the sooner you’d never have to see them again. 

Unfortunately the strange hot presence you felt at the hospital came with you, always crawling around the back of your neck. You swore you could hear it whispering in your ear sometimes, making you think of things you never in a million years would do. You’d find yourself staring at the half empty bottles of alcohol that Seokjin and Taehyung would leave around the room, imagining yourself drinking them and getting drunk. Or late at night right after you said your nightly prayer, your mind would flash back to one of the many times you walked in on Taehyung going down on some guy you remember seeing on campus; you’d imagine yourself in Taehyung’s place. On your knees, your mouth stuffed full of- 

You’d manage to catch yourself before your mind wandered a bit too far. It was like the angel and devil on your shoulder; only your angel was missing, leaving you alone with the devil, telling you to give in to your darkest desires. 

The thoughts not only plagued your mind when you were awake but when you slept as well. You were never even able to fully remember the dream in its entirety but you were always able to remember the heat that engulfed your entire body and a dark pair of eyes, staring deep into you. You could still feel the eyes on you when you’d wake in the middle of the night, your dick hard and begging to cum. One time, you were unconsciously grinding into your mattress, and you knew how close you were. It was so tempting to give in and let yourself go, the eyes still freshly seared into your mind. But you couldn’t. It was dirty and wrong. With tears in your eyes, you silently prayed to be free of the torment. 

The morning of your twenty-first birthday rolled around. It was a Friday, you had nothing to really do that day. Peeling your eyes open, you stared up at Taehyung’s bed above you, not wanting to look down because you already knew what would happen if you looked. Unfortunately, you’re  getting used to waking up with an nearing on painful morning wood, you have begun a routine of cold showers in the morning, not wanting your roommates to see you. Gathering your things, you made your way to the showers. Maybe if the water gets cold enough, it’ll freeze the hot presence that’s attached itself to you. You think that every time you take the shower, and still as soon as you leave the icy shower, the heat creeps right back up your body. 

By the time you return to your dorm, Seokjin and Taehyung are awake; Taehyung still sitting in his bunk, legs dangling over the side. When you pushed open the door, he met your eyes and a boxy smile grew on his face. 

“Ay, there he is! Man of the hour! Happy birthday, dude!” He cheered as you dropped your pajamas into your dirty laundry.

“Thanks,” you sighed as you laid back down on your bed, pulling out your phone. 

“You gonna do anything today?” Seokjin asked.

You shrugged, you didn’t really have any plans. You didn’t have many friends on campus, one of the many sacrifices you made for focusing on your education. Then with your parents living a few hours away, it was unlikely you’d be able to celebrate with them. Your parents didn’t like drinking anything other than a glass of wine at dinner. Having tasted wine already multiple times each time you had communion, you don’t think you’d have a good time.

“You’re not doing anything for your 21st? You’re a full on legal adult, and you’re not gonna do anything?” 

“Yeah, let us treat you to something.” Jin offered. “See it as a way for us to repay you for. . . you know.” He added on, not so subtly referencing the start of your constant mental torture. 

You opened your mouth to decline, but the words that came out were: “Sure, why not.”

The statement had both you and your roommates frozen in shock. You can’t believe you agreed to that, you want to be mad. You want to be angry and take it back, but the words don’t come out, stuck in the back of your throat. Tae and Jin ignore your state of shock and let out a cheer, happy that you finally agreed to do something quote-unquote not lame.

The entire rest of the day you tried to figure out a way to cancel on them; making up a phone appointment with your mother, a test coming up, a book you wanted to read. Ever since the night where you lied to the doctor, you’ve found lying a bit easier and it was something else added onto your growing list of sins. But the voice in the back of your head told you that they were small, innocent lies. They shouldn’t have that big of any consequence, right?

They dismissed each and every excuse you threw at them, adamant that they were going to give you the best birthday ever. When you refused to get ready, Seokjin all but threw some of your nice Sunday clothes at you after pulling them from your dresser. With no other choice, you let it happen. Best case scenario, they take you to some bar and they’ll buy you something strong that’ll make you sick in minutes, forcing the night to end there. Alas, it didn’t appear they were taking you to a bar.

No, they were taking you to a new club that had just opened that weekend downtown. The three of you waited a near hour in line outside the building before getting let in. Once inside, it looked just as one would expect a club to look. Colorful lights danced across the overly crowded room, the bass of the music thumping loud in your ears. You hated yourself for agreeing to going in the first place, yet that twisted part in you was intrigued by it all. Several times you caught yourself staring at the couples as you passed by them. They didn’t seem to care, too wrapped up in their own pleasure to notice you.

Taehyung and Seokjin led you straight to the bar, where they called for the attention of one of the bartenders, who looked like he would rather be anywhere else. 

“What can I get for you?” He asked, shouting a bit over the loud music. 

“It’s his 21st! Got anything you’d recommend?” Taehyung raised his eyebrows, obviously hoping that maybe it would lower the price on the drinks you’ll order. 

Shifting his attention to you, the bartender asked, “What do you like?”

“Uhh, something easy?” You shrugged, having no idea what to do or say. You were way out of your element. 

The bartender blinked at you for a moment. “I’ll make you a Long Island Iced Tea.” 

You leaned over to Seokjin beside you. “Is that a good one?” 

He didn’t really give you a response, as his eyes were locked on the crowd. Following his gaze, you saw he’d made eye contact with a girl on the dance floor, and was slowly inching in that direction. Rolling your eyes, you turned to face Taehyung again, but he wasn’t there anymore. Glancing around, you found him grinding on the ass of a guy. 

You whipped your head back in front of you, just in time for the bartender to give you your drink. Before you could take it, he asked for your card to pay for the drink. With both Seokjin and Taehyung occupied, it gave you no other choice than to pull out your debit card and hand it over to him with a sigh. So much for it being their treat.

You don’t move from your place at the bar, sipping your drink as you observe the people around you indulge themselves. After a while, you slowly got used to your surroundings. The boom of the music didn’t shake you to your core, and the drink you’d ordered wasn’t all that bad. However, you began to feel the familiar sticky heat surround you accompanied by the sensation of someone watching you. 

Turning away from your drink you stared into the sea of people. With the low lighting and the constant movement, it was difficult to make out anything in particular but something compelled you to continue to stare into the crowd. It was hard to see in the dark, but eventually you spotted who was staring at you and it was a pair of eyes you never thought you’d see wide awake. Leaning against the wall, was a young man, not much older than you, dressed head to toe in red. His long dark hair was slicked back, fully exposing his eyes to you. The same dark eyes you see every night when you go to bed. The air was sucked from your lungs as you gawked at him, unsure of what to do. When you had met his gaze, he didn’t turn around or play coy, only continued to watch you with heavy lidded eyes. With a smirk playing on his lips, he winked at you before vanishing behind a group of people. 

You couldn’t believe what you just saw. The eyes from your dream staring right at you, ready to devour you at any given moment. It had to be the alcohol, no. You were drunk and seeing things. Can you see things when you’re drunk? Or was that a drugged thing? Either way, you couldn’t have seen those eyes. They weren’t real, they were some sort of strange figment of your imagination. 

A tap on your shoulder jerked you out of your spiral. Turning, an extremely beautiful man stood before you; his faded pink hair perfectly tousled, and a smirk pulling on his plump lips. 

“Hey cutie,” his voice was low as he placed his hand on your knee. You froze. Never once in your life has a man ever flirted with you. You were unsure how fast your heart was beating or if it was even still beating at all. “How’re you doing tonight?”

“I- uh, good.” You stuttered out. Was the music getting louder? “H-how are you?”

“Oh what a gentleman,” he purred as his hand crawled up your thigh, his touch was burning. Almost like it was searing into your skin.  “I’m doing good. Thank you. . . What are you doing here tonight, hmm?”

“It’s-It’s my birthday.”

“Oooh,” that seemed to intrigue him even more. “Then, why don’t you let me say happy birthday?” His hand was now dangerously close to your dick, already growing harder against your slacks. 

If your face wasn’t already red, it certainly was now, your cheeks burning as the beautiful man’s gaze flickered down. The voice in your head grew louder, telling you to give in. To let it happen, to indulge yourself in a little sin. You opened your mouth, but before the words were able to come out, you slapped your hand over your mouth. 

The action startled the man in front of you, giving you a puzzling look. “Hey if you don’t want to-”

You don’t let him finish. You scrambled off your seat and made your way towards the exit, not caring that your roommates were still in the building. You needed to get as far away from the club as possible. 

It took a couple hours, but you walked all the way back to campus, not even really caring that you should’ve ordered an Uber. You needed penance, that walk was going to serve at it. You couldn’t believe yourself for what had happened. The small sliver of you that wanted it, that wanted to accept the stranger’s offer. You wanted to throw up, you were so disgusted with yourself. You didn’t deserve an Uber home, you deserved to walk home.

It was nearing 3 am by the time you reached your dorm, you weren’t even sure if Tae and Jin were back yet. You didn’t really care, all you could think about was the aching in your feet and how badly you wanted to sleep. Throwing off your shoes, you flopped into your bunk, not bothering to change out of the nice clothes you were in. 

Alas, even in the world of dreams you couldn’t escape. You dreamt of the beautiful pink haired stranger, his plump lips wrapped around your cock. Mind muddled with lust, you bucked into his mouth, you couldn’t take it anymore. You needed release. You were so close to it too, it was only a matter of seconds. The stranger around your dick met your eyes, and you could feel your gut twist in knots. Overwhelmed, you turned to face the wall, not wanting to see what you knew would happen next. Instead of meeting the wall, you’re face to face with the man and his dark eyes that have been haunting you. A choked moan slipped past your lips, unable to divert your eyes away from his.

“Look at him.” A voice rang in your head. While you did not recognize it, you knew it came from the man. “Look at him while you cum.”

Compelled to follow the order, you glanced down to the pink haired stranger just as the knot in your stomach snapped, shooting your cum into his soft warm mouth. Tears pricked at your eyes as waves of pleasure washed over you. Lewds slurps echoed in the room as he gulped down your release. He pulled himself off you with an obscene pop. 

“Naughty boy.”

You awoke with a start, breathing so hard it felt like you had run 10 miles. The sun shining out your window and the snoring of your roommates had you sighing, it was a dream. It wasn’t real. Moving to sit up, you notice the crotch of your pants are wet. Cringing, you pushed your cover away to reveal a dark circle of wetness in your nice pants. Your eyes welled up as you got up, gathering fresh clothes as quickly as you could, rushing towards the bathroom. 

Dressed in clean clothes, you stared yourself down in the mirror, disgusted with what you’ve become. You used to be so. . . good. Yet ever since that night, that stupid night at that cabin, something has changed you. Because ever since, you felt that heat attached itself to you, you’ve felt dirty and gross. No matter how many times you showered, you’ll never be clean of it.

Unsure what else to do or where to go, you found yourself walking the few blocks to your church. Pulling open the heavy doors, you stepped into the chapel. Usually when you go to church, regardless if there is mass or not, you feel all the tension leave your body. Not this time. It felt like it wound up even tighter. 

You walked past all the pews until you were in front of the altar. Quietly as you could, you tugged the pew kneeler down. Kneeling down, you pressed your hands together, you squeezed your eyes shut, and you prayed. You prayed to God that He’ll forgive you for what you’ve become and for Him to free you of this horrible nightmare that you’ve been living in. You begged Him to deliver you from the sin of your own thoughts. As you prayed, the heat that you’ve grown all too familiar with creeped along your neck, like it was mocking you. Telling you that no matter how much you prayed, or how much you wished to be free, you could never escape it. 

The following weeks, you made every point to avoid sleep and those dreams. You’d stay up hours past the usual time you fall asleep, even up longer than Seokjin and Tae who already stayed up pretty late. You’d stay up reading, completing assignments and studying for tests that weren’t going to happen for a while. The only sleep you’d get was maybe a few hours, but that was only when your body couldn’t stay up any more. Most of the time you’d end up falling asleep at your desk, passing out from complete exhaustion. 

You were absolutely miserable, and it showed as your grades started slipping. By the time Spring Break rolled around, you went from straight As to Cs and Ds. You were glad that parents didn’t get emails or updates on your grades in college because they certainly would have a lot to say.

Getting out of the car, you stared up at your childhood home. You came home for break every semester, but this time around, you truly didn’t want to be here. After the last few weeks, you wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed and pretend the rest of the world didn’t exist. But you had no other choice, wanting to appear as if nothing was wrong, you had to see your family.

Shouldering your backpack, you walked up the gravel walkway to the front door. You knocked three times before your mother swung the door open, a bright smile on her face.

“Oh my baby boy is home!” She cooed as she moved to hug you.

“Hi mom.” You sighed as you hugged her back. For a moment, you forgot about everything that happened the past few weeks. You forgot all about the cabin, the dreams, the eyes, the club. Everything. At that moment, you were just a boy hugging his mom. Eventually the moment had to end and she pulled away.

You watched as her face morphed from happy to concerned. “Honey, have you been doing alright? You look tired.”

“Just. . . been having trouble sleeping.” You shrugged.

“Oh, well, go to bed early tonight and sleep in as late as you want. You’re on break now!” She cheered as she fully stepped away from you and into the house. “Come on, we actually have a bit of a surprise for you too.”

Lacing her arm with yours, she all but dragged you into the kitchen where there stood your father and-

“Namjoon?!” 

With the call of his name, he turned to face you, his dimpled grin fully on display. Instantly, you felt warmth spread across your cheeks. Having gone to the same parish as you, Namjoon had been your Youth Group leader when you were in middle school and you thought he was absolutely wonderful; he was always so kind and thoughtful and caring. He was everything you wanted to be in a person. You’d heard plenty of the girls in your group gossip amongst themselves about how hot they thought he was and while you hated it, you agreed. At first you thought you could ignore it; you’d sit next to him and talk to him as often as you could during and after the group meeting. But the closer you felt you got with him, the more you realized the feelings weren’t platonic anymore. Almost overnight, your behavior towards him changed. You’d sit further away from him or in the back, you would only talk to him when absolutely necessary. You thought you were subtle about it, but he had noticed the drastic change; constantly checking up on you and asking if you were doing alright, none of which helped you in your endeavor to stop liking him. Eventually when you aged out of his group, you made a point to not contact him at all. In fact, the last time you think you have even heard of Namjoon was when he got married back in the fall. Your parents had received the invitation, but due to you being away for college, you missed the ceremony. 

“Hey, Y/N! How’ve you been?” He held out his hand for you to shake. As you did so, you felt the familiar heat dragging down your spine. You immediately dropped his hand, as if he was on fire. 

Before he could ask what that was, you answered his question. “Good, good. Just been dealing with school. Nothing much has been happening.”

“Ah, come on, don’t be so modest.” Your father boomed as he put an arm over your shoulders. “He’s the best in his class, aren’t you, son?”

“Y-yeah, definitely.” You squeaked as the lie stumbled over your lips, not even thinking twice about it. The heat continued to steadily inch down your back, creeping along until it reached the waist of your jeans. You squirmed against your father’s hold, you weren’t sure how long you were going to last until it reached. . . other places. 

“It was also his birthday not too long ago, Mr. Twenty-One.” Your dad boasted.

“Oh really well, happy belated birthday.” Namjoon smiled at you, bowing his head a bit. The heat made its way over to your ass and you felt it squeeze you. It took every fiber of you to not make any drastic movement, not wanting to make any more of a scene. 

“Thank you.” You said, giving him a tight smile in return. 

“We were about to sit down for lunch, would you like to join us or would you like to settle in?” Your mom interjected.

Meaning your options were to either suffer through a lunch with the presence touching you and potentially making a fool of yourself, or to hide in your room, leaving you alone with it. That thought alone was enough reason for you to agree to lunch.

Beaming, your mom took your backpack from you saying she’ll put it in your room while you, Namjoon, and your dad went to the backyard where the patio table was all set up. When you sat down, the heat left your body. Which you were thankful for, maybe you could get through the rest of the afternoon without any trouble from it. As you sat quietly, Namjoon and your dad continued their conversation before you came in. It was a few minutes until your mother returned, food in hand. You thanked her as she prepared your plate and handed it to you. You ate in silence, listening to what your parents and Namjoon talked about things that had been happening recently, both in the church and in your family. 

“So Y/N, you have a girlfriend yet?” Your former Youth Group leader asked, taking a sip of his lemonade.

“Oh- No, not yet. Haven’t found anyone.” You answered, giving a tight smile. “I like to focus more on school anyways.”

“Well that’s understandable,” he nodded. “But I do hope you find someone that you like soon.” He smiled.

“Thank you-”

“Oh, did you hear about Yoongi?” Your mother interjected.

“No? What happened, is he okay?” You asked. Min Yoongi was your next door neighbor and childhood best friend, but the two of you grew apart just before highschool started. So to hear his name brought up randomly was cause for a little concern.

“He says he’s bisexual and has a boyfriend!” 

Soon as the words left her mouth, you froze in your seat. You were relieved that nothing bad happened to him, but jealousy and fear washed over your body. After all those years of friendship you had with him, you were suddenly disgusted with him, hating the fact you were such a close friend to someone disrespecting God like that. Yet at the same time, a small part deep inside you felt envious of him. Despite your internal conflict, the news had you looking tentatively to your father who was clenching his jaw. 

“Oh really?” Namjoon spoke first, his tone sounding genuinely curious.

“Mmhmm, his parents were furious and kicked him out. Don’t think we’ll be seeing him again any time soon.” Your mother continued on as she ate her salad.

“Oh, is he going to be alright? Does he need help?” Namjoon furrowed his brows as he set his fork down.

“Don’t think he needs any help considering he chose his path.” Your father said as he whipped his face with a napkin. “Boys shouldn’t mess around with other boys, it’s just not natural. Right, Y/N?”

“Right, dad.” You murmured quietly, the words putting a sour taste in your mouth. You looked down at your plate, picking at it a bit. You wanted the floor to swallow you up. You wanted to scream and cry because you know that if they knew you were like Yoongi, they’d say the same things about you. 

“I wouldn’t exactly say that, Mr. L/N.” Namjoon countered. “Being gay or bisexual isn’t unnatural, as we do see homosexuality among wild animals such as penguins, lions, and primates. These people aren’t choosing to be gay, they just are.”

“God made us the way we are, and He doesn’t make mistakes. Yoongi and all those other homos made their choice.” Your father argued, raising his voice ever so slightly. “What are you gay, Namjoon? You’re defending them so passionately.”

“No I’m not, but my wife is bisexual. Seeing as I’m an ally to her community, it’s only right I speak up on their behalf.” You swore for a moment he glanced in your direction. “But now I feel that I’m not exactly welcome here, so I think it’s time for me to go.”

“You don’t have to do that, Namjoon-” Your mother pleaded as he sat up.

“No, Mrs. L/N, I think I do.”

“I’ll walk you to the door.” You blurted out, catching everyone at the table off guard. Before your father could say a word, you were already out of your seat and walking back inside the house, Namjoon not too far behind you. You don’t turn to face him until you’re both at the front door. “I’m-I’m sorry about that. . .”

“It’s not your fault,” he reassured you, putting a hand on your shoulder. “People fear what they don’t understand.” He gave you a squeeze before dropping his hand. “And uh, if you ever need someone to talk to that’s not your parents or anything, here’s my card.” He pulled a small business card from his pocket, handing it to you. 

“I’m not-” You began to defend yourself but he stopped you. 

“I’m not saying you are, but I’m here for you. As a friend.”

The tips of your ears grew hot as you accepted his card. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” he smiled as he stepped out the front door. “Take care, Y/N.”

“You too.” 

You watched as he walked down the pathway towards the sidewalk. You didn’t shut the door until he was out of sight. Once you couldn’t see him anymore, you shut the door. Feeling tears well up in your eyes, you made your way up to your room, not wanting to speak to your parents for the rest of the day.  

You don’t speak much to your family the rest of your time there, both of them being too busy to entertain you anyways. You spend your time watching Netflix, consuming as many nature documentaries as you possibly could. When you do talk with your parents, it’s very superficial things over the dinner table. 

The strange hot presence still lingers around you, although not as badly as it was when you were at the dorms. It felt weaker almost, like there wasn’t enough fuel around for it to continue. Despite its hindrance, the dreams were still prevalent, but not as bad as they were. The only thing in the dreams were dark eyes and the handsome stranger that they belonged to staring at you. You’d wake up in a cold sweat, those eyes never leaving your mind. You should’ve been relieved that the torment you had been experiencing was finally ceasing, it was the moment you had been praying for. But you almost missed it? You didn't understand why, seeing how the heat always made you feel dirty and shameful. Yet the moment you realized it was gone, you wanted it back. 

The presence must’ve somehow read your mind because the last day of Spring Break, it had returned in full force. As you slept, you dreamt of the same man, loitering in the corner of the room observing you. Heat surrounded your body as he stared, taking the form of hands as it spread across your skin. As it groped you, you felt your cock harden in your boxers. A moan slipped out involuntarily. You didn’t know what part of you missed this, writhing in warped pleasure; but you weren’t sure how much longer you could stand it. The invisible hands made their way over to your neglected member, slipping beneath the fabric of your underwear. A firm grip wrapped around your cock, squeezing it. You bit your lip, trying your best to prevent any noises from falling from you. The invisible hand began to pump you at an agonizingly slow pace, driving you mad. But just before you reached that sweet release. Your eyes snapped open, your body still covered in the blazing heat. 

A low whine escaped you as you slowly came to your senses. Unable to bear the sweltering heat, you pulled off your covers, exposing your sweat-soaked skin to the cool air of your bedroom. You could still feel the aching hard on in your boxers. You were so close to coming in your dream, and you probably still were even now. It probably wouldn’t even take much if you were to-

No. You couldn’t do that. You couldn’t touch yourself. It was wrong, but you could feel your cock practically begging for it to be touched. Your eyes began to burn with tears as you came to your decision. You squeezed your eyes shut as your trembling hand traveled over your boxers. You give yourself an experimental squeeze, eliciting a gasp from you. You then slid your hand underneath.

Your tip was already leaking pre-cum and you hissed as you smeared it with your thumb. You pumped your cock at a cautious pace. Letting out a cry as you struggled to make yourself feel as good as you did in the dream.

“What did I do to deserve this?” You whined out.

“You did nothing.” A deep voice has you sitting up in bed, your hand still loosely wrapped around your cock. The voice is familiar, you’ve heard it before. You know you have. The voice came from the corner of your room, it’s dark for a moment before a figure stepped out from it.  Your breath caught as The man with the dark eyes that’s been haunting you for so long revealed himself. He was dressed in the same outfit from the club all those weeks ago; his animal print shirt more apparent in the low lighting of your bedroom.  You opened your mouth to ask who he was, but words failed to come out. You had to still be dreaming. You had to be stuck in some sort of dream hellscape now as your punishment for missing the torture. “I promise you, you’ve done absolutely nothing.” You watched as his lustful dark eyes drank in your desperate form, a proud smirk on his face.

“Then why is this happening to me?” Your voice returned to you as you pulled your hand from your boxers. “I can’t do this anymore, I want it to stop. Please make it stop.” You pleaded with the stranger as he walked over to your bed. If this was a dream, you might as well let it happen. 

“You want me to make it stop?” He asked, his hand finding your ankle, tracing up your leg. “How badly?”

“So bad. Please please please, I’ll do anything- give anything for it to stop, please!” You begged him. 

“Anything?” His hand traveled further up your leg, reaching your thigh.

“Yes, anything!” You cried.

“Give yourself to me and I’ll make it stop. Once I’m done with you, you won’t feel bad anymore. I promise.” He was dangerously close to your dick, his hand barely grazing over the soiled fabric. Tentatively, you nodded. The stranger’s face grew into a wicked grin as he leaned in close. “That’s all I need.”

Surging forward, his lips met yours, kissing you at a brutal, almost bruising pace. Distracting you with his mouth; his hand pressed against your cock, eliciting a whine from you that he swallowed as he kissed you. He pulled away from your lips, leaving you to chase after them. He cooed at your attempt, but shushed you. 

“I’m in charge here,” he whispered, nibbling a bit at your ear. He kissed down the column of your neck and chest, leaving behind a trail of red and purple marks. Marks that would be gone by the time you awoke from the dream. As he sucked on your neck, his hand slipped past the band of your boxers. “You’re so hard, aren’t you little boy?”

You nodded fervently. “Please.”

“Please what? Are you gonna use your words like a big boy?” He teased as his hand began pumping your cock at a much faster rate than you were, driving you to the edge almost instantly. 

“Fuck me! Please fuck me! I need it, make it stop, please!” You babbled, desperate for him to fulfill his promise and take it away; take away the heat, the pain, the want. Just take it all. You couldn’t stand it anymore. 

With his free hand, the stranger pushed you to lay back down on the bed. Now hovering over you, he kissed you again, licking at the seam of your lips for you to open up. To which you did, and you welcome the intrusion. His tongue tangled with yours as he played with you, drinking in your weak mewls.

You felt like the world was spinning all around you, unable to tell what was up from down or left from right. Your body heat rose little by little as the stranger pleasured you. You could feel your gut tighten, getting closer to orgasm. 

“I’m-I’m gonna-” You sputtered.

Just as you were about to reach your climax, he ripped his hand away, denying you your orgasm.

“No, no! You said you were gonna make it stop!”

“Not like that.” He leered as he pulled away from you. You weren’t given full time to mourn his presence or your orgasm, because he tugged down your boxers, your erection slapping against your stomach. Immediately you felt your face heat up as his eyes darkened. Your hands went to cover yourself, but his hands grabbed your wrists. “No.” He ordered. Meekly, you nodded as you dropped to your sides. 

He stepped away from your bed, you’re about to protest but the words died in your throat as he began to pull off his clothing. You watched in awe as he plucked the buttons of his shirt, revealing golden tan skin. With the shirt on, you didn’t quite gage how muscular he was, but it was evident by now that the man your mind had dreamt up was very well built. When he reached his belt buckle, your averted your eyes, evoking a laugh from him.

“You were fine watching me two seconds ago, don’t you wanna see the full thing, little boy?” He taunted you, the rustling of clothing evident in the background as he shucked off his remaining layers. “Take a look. No shame in that.”

Hesitantly, you turned your head, just in time to see him in his full glory. His cock stood hard and tall. You could feel your face growing hotter as you covered your eyes. He had the most delicious dick you’ve ever seen, granted it was the only one you’ve seen besides your own, but it was beautiful nonetheless. A string of perverted thoughts ran through your mind as you felt him rejoin you on the bed, but he didn't remove your hands. No, instead his hands rested at the back of your knees, pushing them up, showing off your tight little hole for him. 

The stranger held two fingers in front of your face. “Open.” You opened your mouth, and you’re barely given a second to process what he wanted before he pushed his fingers past your lips. “Get my fingers nice and wet. Need to prep you to make sure you can take me.” You were taken back at the order, but you complied, closing your lips around them. You dragged your tongue all over the digits in your mouth before they’re removed. 

You watched as his hand disappeared from your vision. “Eyes on me.” His other hand on your jaw, forcing you to lock eyes with him. You feel the cool, wet appendage against the ring of muscles. Flinching, you tried to wiggle away from him, but his grip on you tightened. You mewled at the feeling, a mix of discomfort and pleasure. “Stay still and look at me!” You stilled as he pushed his finger into you up to  his knuckle. “Shit, you’re so tight. How are you gonna take my cock? Hmm?” He mused to himself as his fingers started to slide in and out of you. You fisted at your sheets, needing something to ground you from the pleasure that was building in you. He was able to stretch you open enough to take two, then three fingers before he declared you ready. 

Once his fingers are out of you, you feel a moment of emptiness before you feel his tip against your hole, already pushing in. Glancing up at him, you watched as a glob of spit fell from his lips, directly onto the head of his dick as he sank into you. A shiver ran down your spine as the spit came in contact with your sensitive hole. He was a good inch or two in before he slammed his hips down into you. 

A strangled moan at the sudden fullness. The dreams you had have never felt this good, this real. You were going to hate yourself in the morning, but you didn't care. You couldn’t care anymore. The stranger promised to make it stop, you weren’t sure how he was going to as a figment of your imagination, but maybe it was a way of convincing yourself to get it over with.

At the sound of your moan, he slapped a hand over your mouth. “As much as I’d love to hear those sweet noises of yours. . . I don’t think we want your parents to wake up and see their good little boy taking cock, now do we?”

His words don’t quite register as he started thrusting into you at a harsh pace. Any other sounds you make are muffled by his hand, making the only sounds in the room the lewd slap of skin against skin. You could feel every ridge of his cock as he pushed in and out of you, driving you delirious. You squeezed your eyes shut, but a harsh slap against your thigh forces you to open them. 

“Hey, I didn’t say you could close your eyes.” He growled. “I want you to look at me while I fuck you open, like the dirty whore you are. Keep them open, or I’ll make sure your parents hear.” His eyes flashed red as he spoke, his threat sounding very real. Your breath hitched as with another pound of his hips, reality came crashing down. 

You weren’t dreaming. The man on top of you- the man inside you was real. The stranger was very real and you were actually having sex with him! Your eyes widened, unable to look away from the filthy sin you were committing, and with a stranger no doubt! Tears burned in your eyes, threatening to spill at any moment. Before you knew it, your lips were moving against his hand  in silent prayers for forgiveness. 

 When the stranger felt your lips moving against his palm, he removed his hand. His face curving into a wicked smile. He must’ve gotten some sick kick out of it as he picked up his pace, thrusting into you faster. The tears that welled up in your eyes started to spill, rolling down your cheeks as you sputtered uncontrollably. Your grip on your sheets tightened as you felt the familiar build up of your orgasm coming up. 

Leaning down to whisper in your ear, he asked. “Do you want me to stop?” 

More tears falling down, you responded. “No.” You wanted this. You wanted this so bad, you didn’t want it to stop. At the moment, you didn’t care if God would send you to Hell because you had gay sex. All you felt-all you wanted was to cum. “No, fuck me. Please, I wanna cum.”

The wicked grin spread across his face once again as he pistoned his hips faster and faster into you. His hand goes to your neglected cock that you’d just realized had been leaking more all over your stomach. Your dick in hand, he began pumping it as best he could while keeping pace with his thrusts. Releasing your grip on your sheets, your hands wrapped around his shoulders pulling him close as you feel yourself inching towards the edge. 

“I-I’m- I’m gonna-” You hiccupped as your gut got tighter and tighter. 

“You’re gonna cum? Huh, all over my cock like a filthy slut?” He jeered as he bucked into you. 

“Yes-! Fuck-! I’m-” You sobbed as he pounded into you, his grip on your cock driving you further into delirium. With another slam of his hip, you cum; spurting out over his hand and your stomach. He rode you through your orgasm, mumbling nonsense to himself. You didn’t quite understand what he was saying, only catching a few phrases about how tight you were and something about his home. With each thrust from him, it sent you further into overstimulation.  

“Gonna fill you with my cum- fuck. Such a good whore.” He groaned. With one last snap of his hips, he joined you in ecstasy; painting your insides white with his essence. He managed a few more sloppy thrusts, before collapsing on top of you.

You both laid there for a few moments, your breaths mixing as you panted. You laid there, bodies hot and sticky before the stranger looked at you. His lips met yours for one more lazy kiss, all tongue and teeth before pulling away and out of you. Your body whined at the loss of his touch. 

With him gone though, the fog in your mind began to clear and you realized what you had done. You felt sick and gross and dirty. But it felt so good. It felt good to give in, to not care about what anyone else thought. The conflicted feelings swirled around you, trying to fully understand what or or why, but all you could do was stare blankly at the ceiling. 

Turning your head to voice your spiral, the stranger shushed you. 

“Shhh, rest, Y/N. Shh.” Saying your name for the first time that night. 

Your body heeded his words, growing tired with each passing moment. But your mind started racing with questions rose up as your eyelids felt heavier and heavier. What had happened? How did he know your name? What was his name? How even did he get in here? You wanted to ask them, but your body was slowly starting to fail, not allowing you to stay lucid enough to question him. The last thing you saw was his smirking face above you.

Your eyelids were heavy the following morning, not wanting to wake up and face the day. You expected any moment for your mother to burst into the room, saying she’s making you goodbye pancakes. But she doesn’t. The longer you wait, the more you realize, you don’t even smell pancakes. You don’t even smell the familiar scent of your parent’s laundry detergent. It was darker and musky.

Your eyes snapped open and you didn't recognize the ceiling. You didn’t know where you were. You attempted to sit up but every muscle in your body screamed in pain. You wondered what you could’ve done to have your body hurt so much, but then the last night’s activities flashed through your mind: the stranger, sex, giving into him. A deep pit of guilt began to build as it all hit you like a truck. 

Ignoring the burning pain in your body as you sat up in bed. Red sheets pooled at your waist as you looked around. You were in a room no bigger than your own with not much furniture besides the large bed you were currently in. Feeling someone shift beside you, you glanced down, meeting the eyes of the stranger lying down next to you.

“What? Did you think I’d let you go after just one round?”

[jaeheewillalwaysbemyfav]

so since you're gonna do the avatar!mc au with the entities you think each brother would fear the most (SO excited for that btw, my friend can attest to the fact that i've basically been rambling about tma x om nonstop since the first post you made that put the two together), i'd love to hear your thoughts on which entity each brother would *be* an avatar of, if you're cool with sharing! personally i love the ideas of specifically vast!levi and dark!belphie but i'd love to hear your takes on the concept! <3

So because of how time works, despite receiving this ask on July 12, by the time you see this it’ll be August! So the entire Avatar!MC series should be out by now, which I hope you will/have enjoy/ed. I wholeheartedly agree with the concept of Vast! Levi, which I’ve talked about before (as you know ;) ), but I will happily ramble about it again!

These aren’t gonna be short fics though bc I do Yearn to save that energy for The Longfic, which is still in the planning stages because a) I can’t pick a timeline, and b) trying to match up the timelines of Obey Me and TMA is hard, especially when I tend to have a violent disrespect for actually paying attention to the timing of plot events in both. I already fucked up a part of the plotting because I forgot the order we get pacts with the brothers lmao

Content warnings: Mentions/allusions to tma-typical Spookies, yet another installation of my Cursed Crossover idea, lengthy debates about what makes someone choose to become an avatar of fear, spoilers for Lesson 16+ of Obey Me and S5 of TMA

What Entity Do I Think The Brothers Would Serve? (Cursed TMA x Obey Me Crossover)

Lucifer

So I put him as falling victim to the Eye/Beholding bc of his whole thing about Secrets and Pride being about wanting control over your own image

And he does have a creepy tendency in canon to always know when his brothers are up to some Dumb Shit

BUT! You know what we see in Lucifer’s character that we see in a certain Entity?

A simultaneous manipulation of others and submission to being manipulated by a higher power

That’s right, I think Luci would be a Web avatar

But Winter, Lucifer wouldn’t wanna take marching orders from someone/thing else! He’s too proud for that— You’re right! He doesn’t want to. But he will.

He willingly submitted himself and his family to Diavolo for eternity to get what he wanted (saving Lilith)

And from how much we see him work, it’s safe to say that he’s a pretty damn essential part of running the Devildom

If he really wanted to, he could probably successfully pull a coup on Diavolo

But he doesn’t, because he’s trapped himself by his own honour code

Thus, the sexual tension bromance we all know and love/insist is Deeply Problematic and blacklist (depending on how much you like/hate dialuci lol)

10/10, would fill with spiders again

Mammon

I put Mammon as falling victim to the Buried for pretty obvious reasons

But admittedly picking a fear he’d serve is trickier

I had to get a bit abstract with it, but I think the Hunt might suit him

Not necessarily the primal *cough* and police brutality *cough* parts of the Hunt tho

More like how Basira was considered an avatar of the Hunt in the fearpocalypse because of her mission/promise to Daisy

See, Greed can stem from fear

Fear of losing what you have, of no longer being able to support yourself, of being preyed upon by others

So people become greedy as a defense mechanism, to protect what they have

If they’re on the offensive, they won’t be targeted

Also, if you’re constantly pursuing more more more, there’s no time to think about anything else

Like consequences, or guilt, or Feelings

If Mammon let his little tough guy act go too far for too long, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say he could start heading down the path to avatarhood

After all, people pay big money for hitmen and bounty hunters…

Leviathan

As I said last time, I can see why people would associate Levi with the Lonely first: he’s a shut in, he acts like he wants nothing to do with people/would rather be alone, and I get it

BUT! All of that actually stems from the fact that Levi has terrible self-esteem and thinks he deserves to be this gross shut in loser

While envy can make you want to bring others down to your level, so to speak, Levi tends to just shun “normies”, not actively conspire to sabotage them

He actually does crave understanding and to have people in his life, he just doesn’t know how to go about it

Boy’s got Mega Social Anxiety is what I’m saying (funny how both the Lonely and the Eye can be real bad for that, huh)

But the Vast? Nihilism? Takes all the pressure off

If everyone is a small, insignificant speck in the face of an uncaring, unfathomably large cosmos, who cares what you do? Who cares what people think of you?

Yeah, you’d be kinda weird too if you stared into the infinite abyss of the ocean and realized it was just the maw of a gargantuan sea monster too, Karen, lay off

Plus aesthetically, the great Awful Deep most people fear in the ocean is a comfort to Levi

And again, THE VAST IS MORE THAN JUST THE SKY

I WENT ON A BOAT ONCE

LIKE REAL FAR OUT, SO I COULDN’T SEE LAND FOR DAYS

IT WAS JUST ENDLESS B L U E

AND I WAS ON A CRUISE IN THE CARIBBEAN

I SAW A FRACTION OF THE OCEAN’S S U R F A C E AND IT WAS I M M E N S E

Did you know we’ve only explored like 5% or whatever of our oceans? Think about that! Every Single Thing we know about what’s in there is just the tip of the iceberg!!! GOD KNOWS WHAT’S DOWN THERE!!! PROBABLY FUCKED UP FISH IS WHAT

*ahem* anyway, fishee

Satan

Another tricky boi

I marked him down as fearing the Desolation, as a reflection of what he fears most in himself

I probably could have also gone with Slaughter, but I’d say that’s more baby/early-Satan

Desolation is also about destruction of potential, and Satan has very carefully built himself into a non-rage-monster person

So tearing that all away from him is :)))

But what would Satan give himself over to?

Ceaseless Watcher, I want that twink OBLITERATED—

Satan clings to knowledge and erudition to distance himself from the rage he was born as

“Watch and learn” is literally how he became a person

I find it deeply funny that it could also easily be how he becomes a monster once again

Also if you think the avatar of Wrath wouldn’t have a use for supernatural blackmail you’re just straight up incorrect

Couple that with Satan’s various connections and he’d be a Force to Reckon With

Asmodeus

I put him as a victim of the Corruption bc I found it extremely fitting considering the duality of his romanticized image vs the “dirty” fluid-filled nature of Lust.

Lust can be really nasty, but as licentious as Asmo’s supposed to be, he’s surprisingly coy

(now part of that comes from the fact that Obey Me isn’t strictly 18+/full-on porn, but still)

There’s a lot of Interesting Ideas to unpack there with attitudes towards sex vs sensuality and idealisation vs reality

Now as for an avatar… I debated this for a very long time, tossing around Eye, Stranger, Spiral, even Web for like one second

But I think I’ve got it

Slaughter!

Specifically the musical/random outbursts of violence side (not so much the war side)

Why? Well for one, Biblical Asmodeus is said to “"transport men into fits of madness and desire [...] with the result that they commit sin, and fall into murderous deeds (Testament of Solomon, verse 23).”

But also, Obey Me Asmo’s affair with that portrait chick from the earlier lessons started a whole ass war

Like it or not, the boy is very good at instilling manic violence in people

They don’t call it bloodlust for nothing

Beelzebub

I paired Beel with an End avatar MC bc the boy fears losing his loved ones like he lost Lilith

You could argue that Desolation would fit there too but I liked how it fit Satan better

Now as for a Vibe…

I’m tied between Flesh and Corruption tbh

Though corruption is mostly bc buge :)

So I’ll talk about the Flesh

So uh, mass consumerism, meat is meat, cannibalism… see where I’m going?

Ignoring the Hans because that was super racist, the two Flesh avatars I remember best are Jared Hopworth and The Guy Who Stuck His Arm in a Spooky Meat Grinder To Feed His Buds

I think of Jared in relation to Beel not because of the gym thing, but because his very chill/apathetic attitude towards his patron is similar to how I’d picture Beel’s approach to all this

Like “well, guess I’m here now”

I love Beel as much as everyone else, but he’s not exactly apologetic about his… habits

Not to the degree that he’d actually try and change them anyway

So if he got started on the path to Flesh avatarhood, he’d be pretty fucked

Belphegor

I put Web for him as a fear almost entirely because of the concept of Uno Reverse Card, ngl

It does technically tie into his whole thing about being trapped in the attic, since he’d denied all agency and freedom in there, but… Uno Reverse

Dark!Belphie is an interesting concept, and MAG86 “Tucked In” is iconic, but tbh I don’t really… Get the Dark

Don’t get me wrong, put me in a dark place and I will be scared, I don’t like not seeing things, but I have a hard time wrapping my head around why one would become an avatar of the Dark

It’s not a very “primary” fear imo? Like, I’m scared of the dark bc I can’t see what’s there, ie. a threat could be there and I wouldn’t know, but intellectually I know it’s just the absence of light. That’s not really spooky on its own.

I guess what I’m saying is I can attribute spookier things related to the Dark better to other Entities, so I’m not sure what its draw is specifically

According to the Entity Sexiness Survey I did a while back, there’s apparently some Catholic stuff going on with the Dark so maybe that’s why i don’t get it lmao

Anyway I’d put Belphie down for Spiral

“What lies behind a smile” indeed cowboy

Apparently it’s getting choked

Is it because MC’s entire relationship with him is originally founded on a lie?

Is it because the Spiral deals with distortions in your perception, gaslighting gatekeeping girlbossing, as well as foggy liminal mental spaces like between sleep and consciousness, death and life?

Is it because I think Belphie would absolutely delight in driving someone bananas by fucking with their dreams until it bleeds into their waking life?

Is it because being a person or consistent being at all is too much effort, consistent internal geography is hard, fuck it, just be an endless twisting series of hallways?

Yes :)

[magireco]

Would love to hear more thoughts on how these girls have understandable teenage motivations (A+ tag analysis by the way)

1. Thank you!!!!!!

2. ALRIGHT IVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS (shuffles my papers). i’ve gone off about homura’s motivations in depth before but i think it was only in dms/groupchats? anyways i’ll go in order with All the girls bc i think about this all the time as a teenager who grew up mentally ill and had their perceptions skewed because of it, and also i don’t think it’s talked about nearly enough for the others, at least on my blog... so, buckle up!!! this is REALLY LONG!!!! 

3. i tried writing like, an individual thing for every member of the quintet all together in this one ask, but i ended up talking a little too much about homura and now i’m going to split up all the different analysis stuff for each character into the reblogs and work on it every so often! you’re free to kinda skim of course because i really did write a whole novel but here we go!! read under the cut. :3 this is literally essay length btw. i did NOT expect it to get this long but if you want to read it all i’d recommend it but i don’t expect most people to

First: Homura Akemi

okay so i’m going to kind of summarize everything but from the perspective of empathizing with her so if you don’t want to reread a whole recap you can skip to the ending few paragraphs

Summary

first of all, in episode 10, homura’s past is explained for the viewer. she was a shy, unsure girl who had been bedridden for a long time. she was clearly unsocialized, not to mention she went to a catholic school and those can be brutal, esp in japan... that’s all we know about her in that episode, but it’s revealed in one of the drama cds that she was bullied as a child(& further at mitakihara middle), her parents never were mentioned ever (i assume them to either be dead or neglectful, considering she lives alone and unchecked), and in magia record, homura says to natsuki that she’s never had friends before, she hasn’t been on vacation before until the beachside bonds event, hasn’t ever celebrated valentine’s day, has never celebrated new years, etc... 

clearly, she’s missed out on a lot not only because of her sickness and hospitalization, but because of her isolation as a child at school. judging by her demeanor and the way she reacts when madoka comes up to her without being asked to, something like that had never happened to her before. it’s clear to me that madoka was many of homura’s “first’s”, her first friend, the first person who reached out to her, the first person to compliment her name honestly(validating her, disproving her dislike of her name), the first person to regard her so kindly rather than judging her based off of her appearance and demeanor (like other students had apparently done, this is also shown when the other students at mitakihara middle make fun of her for being tired after only being able to run one lap). AND, madoka (and mami, but homura knew madoka better at that time) saved her life, even though homura was so willing to die, just in that moment... i’d assume it made homura feel like someone believed in her even when she was at her worst. it’s really clear by the glimmer in her eyes that these are nice people that made her feel happy and welcome... and then walpurgisnacht came. she didn’t know much about magical girls and just believed in madoka and mami to be able to defeat the witch because she saw them as strong and saw the witch as defeatable, despite its size. and then mami died, right in front of her and madoka... 

this kinda seems headcanon-y when i phrase it this way but it’s practically proven in her actions but i really think homura is scared to be abandoned, especially by someone who was as overtly kind and nonjudgemental to her as madoka... it’s in the way she cries her name and says “don’t go” before madoka runs away to fight walpurgisnacht. OH ALSO, i need to address this one thing really quick because people like to assume that homura didn’t care about mami from the beginning and only liked madoka. it’s not that she wasn’t sad when mami died, she was clearly terrified and didn’t want the same to happen to madoka, also mami LITERALLY WASN’T IN HER CLASS OR HER GRADE so i assume she spent most of her time with madoka considering they were in the same grade and class and probably shared most of their periods with each other... but also, once again, mami is older than both of them and homura probably saw her as more of a mentor/teacher that she needed to impress rather than madoka who was more on her level, i guess?

anyways, moving on... homura had to see madoka die (& experience the crushing guilt she felt for “letting madoka go” even though there was nothing she could’ve done) and literally says “i’d rather you had lived than saved someone like me” ... her self worth is below zero. she makes her wish to be strong enough to protect madoka(because she sees madoka, her first friend, who saved her life which she felt had no worth, as so strong and noble) which causes her to go back in time, etc. etc., you know the deal. okay before i move on to talk a little more abt the timelines and the personality change i’m going to address why it’s reasonable that she’d be attached to madoka.

i mentioned before that homura said herself that she had never had a friend before. just like, put yourself into her shoes for a second. this girl has no idea how to make friends; it was never taught to her. it’s literally rational that she’d get attached to her first ever friendship. it’s not “normal” the way she views madoka, but how could it be? this is her first time having a friend, she’s afraid of being abandoned by her, but she’s had to see her die over and over again anyway. she doesn’t want to lose madoka. even if she doesn’t go about it in the right way, there’s no way she would’ve actually known how to Do relationships. no one taught her. i think that needs to be empathized with more...

i kinda feel like i need to summarize all this just bc if i word it right it kinda reminds you & puts into perspective just how terrible and scary all of this was.

anyway Again, i would skip straight to the end of timeline 3 (where a New Flavor of trauma is given to homura) but i need to first address timeline 2 for a second. it was homura’s first time repeating the timeline, she trained with madoka and mami again, she was still hopeful despite what happened, etc. kinda just bonding further with madoka Again... and then it’s at the end of this timeline that she watches madoka turn into a witch, just in front of her very eyes... and realizes the true fate of magical girls. when she resets the timeline again, it’s up to her to start anew and break the truth to the group when she sees them again. when she tries telling the truth, sayaka immediately shoves this aside, claiming homura was just trying to split everyone up. it’s clear that that hurts homura. (also the little shinies in her eyes were wavering which is anime-code for sad) her feelings were immediately disregarded by sayaka and she couldn’t defend herself, but madoka did for her, and mami tried to diffuse the situation. 

after they all find out homura was right when sayaka turns into a witch, mami kills kyoko and ties up homura in her ribbons and aims a gun at her, and this, rightfully, ignited a fear within homura... madoka is forced to kill mami in order to save homura, leaving only the two of them to fight together. then, when walpurgisnacht comes that time, The Promise is made... madoka tells homura to go back in time and save her from becoming a witch (because she doesn’t want to curse the world that way, she still sees beauty in it) and homura agrees, saying she’ll never stop until she saves madoka, and then... homura has to mercy kill madoka before she becomes a witch. she cries loudly and shoots madoka’s soul gem... it’s literally so heartwrenching and (usually) brings the viewer to tears, or puts something into perspective for them...

then we assume the personality change happens in the timeline right after. this personality change causes a lot of discourse because sometimes it’s seen as kind of irrational, but personally, i think even moemura had at least SOME resent for the world around her considering what she’d been through. it’s madoka’s repeated deaths that finally push her over that edge. i could get further into the coolmura arc but that’d take a WHILE, so i’ll just kind of explain something briefly though -- why homura ended up becoming even MORE focused on madoka. and i’m also going to debunk the claim that homura doesn’t care about her other friends as fast as i can before moving on.

also, ONE LAST side tangent, for those that think homura really did do a 360 degree personality turn are wrong. it’s shown explicitly in homulilly’s labyrinth that there’s this... “core” homura, a shadowy purple silhouette with braids. every time the series depicts homura’s internal self, it’s always glasses+braids, symbolizing her “child” self, who she truly is. she never stopped being that person. she doesn’t want to kill. ...but i can get into that in a rebellion analysis later! this is also shown in wraith arc bc the person inside her soul gem has glasses+braids. anyway let’s get to the next part i’m going to rant about

Homura’s Love for Madoka, but Otherwise Apathy

homura has seen many different, yet all similar, versions of her friends. the first claim i’m going to talk about which i saw brought up quite a few times before is in regards to homura and mami. first of all, homura absolutely still cares for mami, and not just in the “i only care about your life if it affects madoka’s” way. one part that always gets me is when mami ties her up in the series timeline after homura frantically warns her that this witch isn’t normal, to which mami IMMEDIATELY brushes this off, without even giving homura a chance. then, when mami’s ribbons fade away, homura looks horrified and just goes “oh no...” and it’s kind of obvious to me that it was in response to mami’s death rather than madoka’s reaction. this is arguably up for debate i guess because i’ve seen different takes on that reaction and it’s ambiguous, i guess? but i’m about to get into something extremely similar and that’s the sayaka situation, where madoka throws sayaka’s soul gem onto a moving car. homura gasps and immediately pauses time and disappears, running in literal open traffic and climbing on top of a moving car to retrieve sayaka’s soul gem. one could argue that this is ALSO only just because homura wants to save madoka (and kyoko) the fear, but don’t you think her expression would be different? if homura truly didn’t care for sayaka’s wellbeing, wouldn’t she be making an expression more similar to like, “oh, this shit again...” instead of the frantic one she was making in the scene? this kind of thing Also happens when kyoko asks homura to leave while kyoko’s about to sacrifice herself in oktavia’s labyrinth, and homura looks up sadly at kyoko and then back down at madoka, and once she knew kyoko was dead, she just quietly said “kyoko...” to herself. she usually refers to them as [last name, first name], but she dropped that during that moment... it otherwise sounds like a bare minimum thing to do, but keep in mind the timeline we’re shown in the series is implied to be like, the 110th timeline, i think? like, this is the last timeline, she’s worn down, but she still does have empathy -- or at least sympathy -- for the others. she still loves them. 

homura promised to be madoka’s protector, she dedicated her life to her, and also she doesn’t have a choice not to dedicate her life to her anymore, even though that’s not fair to her... homura is in a really hopeless situation and madoka is her hope, and madoka is the one that judges her the least out of the quintet (like saying “i’m sure homura is good” to herself) upon first impression. also okay i mentioned this already in my last post (which you saw) but i’m going to bring it up one more time, homura is not mentally 26!!!!!! she is still 14 mentally!! in order to be 26, you have to have experienced 26 years of new life experience. maybe you acquire that through school, maybe you aquire that through friends, whatever it takes. but homura just repeated the same month over and over, and it’s not like her body (canonically) ages ever. she just kind of gets transported back into her body in the hospital again considering she’s back wearing her braids and pajamas... so, yeah. no mental development there. i also mentioned this here but i’m gonna say it again, that just makes it even harder for her to actually age correctly... it stunts her to 14. imagine being 14 for 10-11 years...

In Defense Of My Own Claims

btw before you think i’m just going full-on radical homura apologist, i’m not explaining all of this to be like “homura made ALL THE RIGHT DECISIONS because her trauma gave her an excuse!!” because like, Obviously, she did a lot of bad things, she killed people, did a lot of callous things, a lot of thoughtless things, a lot of things that make her seem emotionless, etc. but i just have trouble blaming her considering how things ended up, and it’s not like she enjoys killing people. she’s not sadistic... she ends up becoming short with all the others not only because of her (extremely) weakened trust in them, but also because the amount of times she repeated the timeline. i’d imagine it makes her feel like the others can’t truly die because she can just go back and see them again. (this is also why wraith arc/post-tv series must’ve been hard for her because she can no longer turn back time, things are permanent now, deaths are forever) she’s become so worn down that she’ll do anything to escape the loops... also considering she has no choice but to continue? although it shouldn’t be, it’s technically her job as a magical girl to defeat all witches and walpurgisnacht counts. it kills magical girls and tears up the whole city and she’s usually the only magical girl left... her choices, when defeated, are either to give up and die or to go back and try again, and she made a promise to her first ever friend to do just the latter... i just don’t understand how this isn’t easier for people to comprehend, that all of this trauma and stress and responsibility on top of an already traumatized 14 year old does not mix well. ever. she had to figure out all of this by herself.

TL;DR:

homura was a previously traumatized, unsocialized 14 year old with (very)low self esteem & self worth whose first friend (and first love, really, let’s be honest) died in front of her in horrific ways and she watched as she (and the other friends she came to make) drifted slowly apart from her in her endless and futile attempt in saving her from what proved to be an inescapable fate. also she’s 14 and also she’s (canonically) mentally ill and a lesbian. not a monster, not evil, not “psycho”. and that’s that!

[gerrydelano]

HI! new installment!!! the title of this one….. love this shit sm. anyways figured i’d livereact because it’s been a while since i’ve done one and im just hanging out by the pool rn so i have nothing to do! ok it commences 😵‍💫 jon making tea my beloved……. i love him i love him!!! hiiiii adelard i feel like basira has so much going on and while i don’t love her i do feel bad for her.. jon uses almond blossom conditioner? nice. basira girl don’t go back to the force girl don’t even think about it especially since you’re Dark-ed now. i don’t know why but that feels like a very bad idea lol <3 “sword and shield” i do love the analogy tbh. immaculate. jon getting compared to internet vegans….. ough. that’s rough buddy 👍 ex (ish) catholic martin we (ex catholics) love to see it.. i did go to ash wednesday this year though i think??? made me late to choir rehearsal lol ugh. that shit makes you break out so bad. ohhh martin is jealous…. man. tattoo!!! yesss. ohhhh melanie…. she’s being very sweet w basira which is nice! are they hitting the bong?????? ok go off i guess JON???????????? JON WHY DID YOU STEAL FROM MIKE CREW??? that’s such a bad decision .. who’s this guy? oh it’s salaesa…. hmmmm…. anyways i loved this so much your tma writing is like everything for me !!!

damn, that was fast! hey! i hope you're having fun at the pool nice

jon making HUGE tubs of masala chai my BELOVED!

basira has So much going on, like. a big point i want to make here in terms of Everyone is "a person can be right About something and Have a right to their feelings, without being IN the right and always justified." that goes for daisy here, too, but like... very much basira on a whole. nobody deserves what she's going through rn.

jon takes personal grooming VERY seriously. he smells Lovely

she doesn't want to go back to the force!

hang on Spoiler Time

you know the whole "your first thought doesn't define you, your Second one does" thing? they're pressuring her to say her First Thoughts, her gut feelings, the things she doesn't even agree with and wouldn't act on but has to Process Aloud if she wants to suppress the dark. it sucks a lot! but she's only saying all of That out of a sense of ingrained guilt and responsibility, dw.

daisy and basira as sword and shield (derogatory) vs danny and martin as sword and shield (benevolent)

JUDITH TORE HIM A NEW ONE WITH THAT YEP. queen

oh yeah he's very heavy on the EX there but the slaughter bullet is Doing Things to him about it and WUH OH!

VERY JEALOUS HGBJKN LIKE! divshah triggers the shit out of danny because she reminds him of the contortionist but it only hits danny after that Martin Didn't Even Know That, He Just DID This. JHBKJN. "Oh,"

melanie is the kindest person in tma i stand by that. she has no reason to PUNISH basira right now, like. she's being punished enough! she needs a friend rn! and melanie is the best suited for that atm.

they sure ARE hitting the bong! dream blunt rotation

SURPRISE! JON IS A FUCKING WILDMAN AND NEVER LEARNS! EVER! he's about to regret this so fucking hard lol

hiiii salesa mikaele salesa who everyone thought died in an explosion in 2014 what uhhhh what brings you here aha screams

thank you so much as always! i'm thrilled that you enjoyed the chapter 😭

[ofhouseadama]

could I dm you this? yes. but also asks are fun even though this question is mean so. how do Ed and Lorraine react to the Vietnam war?

Okay so my Ed and Lorraine are absolutely Kennedy Democrats, are both very excited and enthusiastic about the first Catholic president, but both are against the Vietnam War and US military intervention from the start. Ed's already fought in one imperialist proxy war, he's got the PTSD to prove it, and Lorraine just is truly repulsed by violence of any kind.

And also like, to go completely left field for a minute -- I've been thinking a lot about how teenage Lored were effectively trapped at 17-19 years old. Mostly financially, and in different ways. in 1951, Lorraine wouldn't have been able to have her own bank account. Women wouldn't have the right to open their own bank account until the 60s or have a credit card until the 70s -- her money would have been her father's, effectively. and while probably not maliciously, since she was a young woman she likely wouldn't have had much access to her pay checks unless she was cashing them directly. Ed, meanwhile, while trying to survive a negligent/abusive household, absolutely would have been spending money on things most teens wouldn't have to in order to survive... and that's before getting the draft notice from the Selective Service, which took away even more control of his own life.

So I see Ed and Lorraine getting married young (even for the 50s, they're a few years younger than the median, though the war was actively driving that age down) mostly out of making the most out of what they could together. Ed putting Lorraine on his bank accounts and asking her actively to manage them while he's away, and her depositing her paychecks into his account would give her more financial control in her life than most women of the era. Lorraine's engagement ring (the size of that goddamn rock) is even an insurance policy most women her age and demographic didn't have -- often when women fled marriages, it was only with their jewelry to sell. It's half about Ed's possessive streak, half him showing he's not afraid to give her the money to run, if she needed to.

Anyway -- the trauma of their late teens and early twenties is entirely rooted in the rising Cold War anxieties and the locus of harm done to women in the 50s and I fully see their pursuit of demonology and the supernatural as something Lorraine initially started while working as a secretary for the Diocese, something she did to stay late at work and help people she could physically reach while Ed was away at war. She initially started staying late on the days she knew Father Gordon would be bringing in a scared family or terrified couple or frightened soul in through the back door hours after everyone had left, staying to pray and keep herself nearby, to be an observer to a fight she could be party to. Father Gordon figures her out quickly, of course, asking what interest she has in demons and exorcisms, and figures out she's clever with records and archives, almost to an uncanny degree.

And then figures out to exactly what uncanny degree.

After Ed came home and became the husband instead of the boyfriend, it turned into something Ed could throw all his metaphorical demons onto and a healthy way to exercise his control issues and fear and anxiety that doesn't (generally) affect Lorraine because she's fighting with him side by side in this, when before they were separated by thousands of miles -- the beginning everyone's favorite Catholic battle couple very much rooted in Ed and Lorraine parsing out who brought home metaphorical demons from the war, and who brought home literal ones, and bringing them to Father Gordon when necessary. Rooted in Ed needing to be useful, to dusting off his Catholic school Latin and reading everything he could get his hands on so that he could continue to help, continue to fight.

Lorraine would have been pregnant with Judy during the heightening tensions with Cuba and as Kennedy is sending more and more military "advisors" to Vietnam and Cold War tensions flared the hottest they'd get in the 1960s and I can just see both of their control issues revving up, especially with a few-months-old baby in the mix. Just the two of them laying bed, looking down at their three month old baby girl, wondering if they'd all get nuked tomorrow. If war would be declared tomorrow. If they'd all be dead, if they brought her into the world just to die violently. It's like taking guns off the street. They can't control the White House, or the Soviets, or Cuba or China or or or -- but they know about demons, they know about spirits, they know about taking these bombs off the battlefield, in the war of good against evil, and this is a war they can be foot soldiers in together.

Lorraine would get a bit of relief in the March of '63 when Kennedy dropped married men with children to the bottom of the draft pool, and then dropped the age of the draft pool to 26, aging Ed out of the Selective Service entirely. And then in November, JFK would be assassinated, and the photo of Jackie Kennedy covered in blood, leaving the hospital hand-in-hand with RFK, would be on the front page of every newspaper in the country. It would be a jolt for both of them -- but it wouldn't fully hit Lorraine until seven years later, when she'd have her first vision of Ed's death and fully understand Jackie Kennedy's weary, "I want them to see what they have done to Jack."

After the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in August of 1964, they fully throw themselves into taking cases almost full time. As the war heats up, Ed pulls back from teaching art classes at the VA. If he spends too much time there, he has to face how pointless the violence has been. If he spends too much time there, now, he has to face that he still doesn't know why he survived. Why he lived, and everyone else on board the ship with him died. Because he still doesn't know, he still is fighting to make his life matter in a way that makes sense to him. All he has is his sense of duty, a couple of college credits, and his hands. On good days, he knows that he's loved -- that Lorraine loves him so much it makes it hurt to breathe, that he's a good father to his daughter, who will never be afraid of him.

Ed has a complete PTSD relapse in 1966, with the beginning of the ground war and the full-throated resurgence of the American propaganda machine and military recruitment. He's back in the guilt spiral, the "I never had it that bad, I was only in the Navy for two years, I never had it that bad," just feeding into "why did I live when everyone else I fought with died," back and forth until he can't sleep, can only sleep when Judy sleeps, accidentally ends up adapting himself to her nap schedule and has to sleep with his hand on her chest, feeling her breathe.

Lorraine calls in Chief, after Ed can't get out of bed for 72 hours and misses mass for the first time in his life. Chief, who comes up from Brooklyn to remind Ed of the time their entire ship exploded and Ed treaded water for eight hours and everyone else died. How they spent the next six months getting drunk whenever they weren't on duty and picking fights they couldn't get out of, and that one time they got thrown in the brig because Chief struck a superior asshole and Ed just followed him into the fight. (No, Lorraine does not know about that time Ed and Chief ended up in the brig. She will never know about that time. Judy will at some point in her early 20s learn about that time, when she needs to learn about how her parents are people, who have absolutely made mistakes in their lives.) "You and I spent six months drunk," Chief says, bouncing Judy on his knee in the kitchen over a cup of coffee, Ed refusing to look at him as he deep cleans the stove. "And then your dad died, and your sainted wife handled everything for you, and we realized we couldn't send you home to her like that."

"I still don't know why I lived."

Chief shrugs. "It doesn't matter why, son. The same reason any of us live, and any of us die. It doesn't matter. You have a little girl now who depends on you. She matters more than any goddamn reason -- you live for her, and your saint of a wife, and for all the people that you help. So that you can look them in the face, say you've been down in the hole that they're in now, and you know the way out."

Lorraine calls in Chief, because she absolutely picked a fight after mass that day without Ed, with Judy on her hip. Overheard Dorothy O'Malley running her mouth in the pew in front of her sounding like a national security ghoul and didn't even think before she opened her mouth and unloading the full force of her anxiety and anger on her. Only stops because she feels a gentle hand on her shoulder and Father Gordon murmuring in her ear, "Okay Mrs. Warren, you've made your point," while leading her away. It's the "Mrs. Warren" instead of the familiar "Lorraine" that jolts her back to herself, kissing Judy's head as she tries to shake herself out of it.

"Thank you," she tells Father Gordon, defeated.

He shrugs. "You don't come to confession until before Friday night prayer service. I didn't want you stewing on this all week." Pausing, he takes a moment to fondly tug on one of Judy's pig tails, making her laugh. "If Ed's not... feeling well, I know about that."

Lorraine bites her lip, knowing full and well that Father Gordon served as a chaplain in World War II. That seeing the violence of the Nazis firsthand is what convinced him that the Devil was more than a metaphor, that evil truly walked the Earth. Sent him on his own path, chasing darkness.

Lorraine nods.

"I could talk to him," Father Gordon says. "But it would likely come better from someone he served with."

When she gets home, she finds Chief's number in their phone book, and calls Brooklyn for the first and last time. He comes up the next day, and shoos her out of the house to do something for herself for the first time in months, telling her that he's more than equipped to look after a single three year old.

Ed goes back to teaching at the VA a few months after that, teaching art to the new round of mentally scarred children returning from war. He concedes to group therapy, and a few sessions with the VA psychiatrist to get something to take the edge off. He teaches at the VA until the troop withdrawals in 1970, reducing his class load as he and Lorraine take on more and more cases -- verging towards a hundred a year -- for the Catholic Church, and the media attention that comes along with that, the publicity engagements that help keep their bills paid, the articles and academic talks.

Even still, Ed occasionally brings home someone for dinner, just to make sure that they've only brought metaphorical demons home from war with them, not literal ones.

Sometimes it's literal ones.

[creepyleech]

You know what I want?

For Crusade!Era Joe x Nicky to just magically show up in 2020. But this is, like, the Yusuf and Nicolo who had just started travelling together a couple of years ago, because they had nowhere to go.

Anyway so cue them watching with all levels of shock as their modern counterparts turn out to be a fucking couple?? Like??

And THEN we get scenes like the following:

-Yusuf calling Nicky all names under the sun, and saying Joe is disgusting for laying with that filthy invader. Sprinkle that with insults towards Nicolo, with little details of things Joe remember Nicky used to do. Cue Joe shoving Yusuf against a wall at some point, “You are a child. Nicky is a better man that you could ever dream to be. And if you insult him in my presence again, I’ll dump your body in bottom of the Thames.”

-Yusuf realizing that Nicky can understand him and speaks Arabic fluently, when he’s in the middle of muttering curses under his breath and Nicky casually replies to him.

-Nicolo, who had spent the past year filled with guilt re: the crusades, goes to Joe and they have a heart to heart and Nicolo cries and begs for forgiveness. Joe just holds him and says he understands. That he forgave him a long time ago. Nicky, who had come to fetch Joe for dinner, looks at them with a mixture of sadness and relief; he remembers going through that.

-Nicolo going to Nicky and talking about all his catholic guilt. Nicky telling him “I can’t tell you what to believe. But I believe in nothing but the love I feel for my family, and the love I have for Joe.”

-Yusuf telling Joe he has a weird accent. Joe saying “I’m speaking your language to you out of courtesy.” And then he just immediately switches to the Arabic/Ligurian dialect that he and Nicky use for each other, and refuses to switch back for the rest of the night. This leaves Nicolo and Yusuf to talk to each other, instead.

-Nicky cooks one of Joe’s favourite foods, which is Yusuf’s favourite. Yusuf admits, only to himself and in his head, that that is the best he’s ever had. He eats seconds and thirds. Joe eyes him with a smug smile and he just walks away in a huff.

-Joe and Nicky are in bed, talking. Joe tells him that he can’t stand Yusuf. “He’s so righteous. He thinks he knows everything. I remember that rage, I remember how cruel I was to you for so many years. Long after you stopped being cruel to me. Long after you tried your best to offer olive branch after olive branch. I just- I hate him. I hate that I hurt you so much, for so long.” And they cry and hold each other and thank the universe for who they are now. Nicky asks him to have some empathy for the man he used to be. Yusuf had lost his brothers, his family, everything he’d ever known, because of men like Nicolo. Nicolo had chosen to take up the cross and go and invade a foreign land. Yusuf’s hate was justified, and it would eventually come to an end. They cannot undo the past.

-Yusuf feels- resentment? Anger? Jealousy? Because he seems to be the odd man out. Because Joe is so kind to Nicolo, and Nicolo acts like he’s trying so hard to please Joe in return. Nicolo did that sometimes, with him. Tried to offer a truce. But Yusuf had no interest in taking Frank scum as a friend. He doesn’t know why it bothers him to see them like that. He doesn’t know why it bothers him that Nicky doesn’t try to engage him. He wishes he would, so he could yell back. Nicolo’s Arabic rivals that of a child. It’s hard to argue and yell at someone who can’t understand you. Nicky would understand him, though. He could tell Nicky in fine detail, exactly why he hates him so much.

-Nicky is cooking again, and Yusuf quietly sits and watches. Nicky doesn’t comment on it, but asks him to pass the salt, if you could.

-They read in the same room, all four of them. Joe and Nicky have no shame in lying piled on top of each other. Yusuf engages in some nice hate watching, and Nicolo is just overall uncomfortable. They leave the couple alone and share a few words in the kitchen, bonding over the strangeness of it all.

-Sparring turns into a blood bath. It’s just a lesson in sword fighting at first. With Yusuf and Nicolo genuinely interested in learning from men of such skill. And then it turns into Joe going way too hard on Yusuf after he (maybe) accidentally hurts Nicolo. After a snide comment or two (bc Yusuf has a death wish aparently) Joe loses his patience and attacks him. Nicky is the one that gets in between the two and gets hurt defending Yusuf, which Joe feels terrible about. But afterwards, it’s Yusuf who comes to Nicky and offers a begrudging apology.

-Don’t ask me how, but Yusuf or Nicolo or both get a glimpse of Joe and Nicky either having sex or starting to. If it’s on purpose or not, only I and god will ever know.

-After the sparring chaos, Yusuf and Nicky have a quiet truce where they cook together. One day, Yusuf speaks up. “I hate you,” he says and then he doesn’t stop. He gets it all out. All his feelings and his anger and how dare you come to my people and slaughter them like animals and then ask me to sit by your side, eating dinner as if we’re brothers. And once he’s done, Nicky says “You’re right.” And Yusuf deflates. Nicky tells him that the crusades were wrong, and that Yusuf is allowed his anger, and that Nicolo already knows he was wrong. It changes nothing, and yet it changes everything.

-Yusuf starts seeing Nicolo through the colours of Nicky’s words. He sees the guilt and the pain and the reluctance. He also sees the resignation. Nicolo expects nothing from Yusuf but harsh words; not only that but deep inside he feels they are deserved. And they are! But Yusuf didn’t think he knew that. But he does. He does. And maybe-

-It’s easier, somehow, to not be so cruel all the time. But it feels like betrayal in way. A betrayal to his people and his brothers. That he’d forget what the enemy’s done. That he’d see the enemy as anything other than the monsters who took what was not theirs. But it’s easier. It’s easier to ask Nicky what that spice is called. And to correct Nicolo when he pronounces a word wrong. And to get him a glass of water when he’s gotten one for himself.

-Joe doesn’t forgive him. Forgive him-? Joe doesn’t like him, is the thing. But one day, Yusuf goes to him and they sit outside, and they drink wine, and Yusuf asks him how he could look his mother in her eyes, knowing that he was walking the earth arm in arm with one of the men who killed her sons. And Joe remembers thinking that. Joe thinks of Booker and betrayal and lying in bed with one’s enemies. What Joe says is, “You cannot change what’s happened. You cannot die. Nicolo cannot die. You are bound to him, and he to you.” He pauses and looks directly at Yusuf. “Are you the same man you were yesterday? Have you never made mistakes? No one feels the guilt of the crusades as deeply as Nicolo does. You do not have to forgive him. But you need to let him show you that he can change. That he already has.”

-That night, Joe calls Booker. It’s the first time they’ve spoken in a decade.

-Months go by, and Yusuf asks Nicky to teach him some Ligurian words. Nicky doesn’t comment on the significance of it. He sits down, grabs a book, and reads to him.

-It’s about s year since they had landed in the 21st century, and Yusuf comes to Joe with a request. And that’s how Joe sits between the two of them, playing interpreter. It’s the first real conversation that Nicolo and Yusuf have ever had. Their voices raise and at one point Yusuf gets up in anger, but he comes back and sits down and tries again.

-Nicolo’s Arabic becomes passable. He speaks to Joe extensively every day. Yusuf has to admit, it’s impressive. Yusuf knows all but a couple dozen phrases in Ligurian, but every time he speaks them, Nicolo stares at him with something quiet, intense.

-They don’t mind the affections between Joe and Nicky anymore. It’s become common place. If tension grows between Nicolo and Yusuf, neither speak of it. When Yusuf and Joe are alone, Joe is unbearably smug about it. He never says it, but Yusuf can read the expression on his own face.

-Joe and Nicky leave for a mission. They’ll be gone a week. Nicolo and Yusuf now have the words to speak to each other and, without an audience, they do so freely. They argue a lot. Nicolo cries and Yusuf cries and they drink themselves into peace again. But like magnets, they find each other much as their counterparts have. It’s messy and confusing, but it just- fits.

-It’s almost as if Joe and Nicky had to be there to say goodbye. Because they come back, and they notice the shorter space between Yusuf and Nicolo. Nicky’s mouth twitches in one of his small smiles, but Joe just huffs a laugh and says something in his dialect that Yusuf cannot understand. And if they wait for Joe and Nicky to retire before they allow themselves to sit close to one another again, no one needs to know. And if they bring their cots together in the night, no one needs to know. But that’s how they rise again, back to their home. And it’s bright out and it’s quiet, and there’s no tv and no electric lights and no radio. And Yusuf and Nicolo know that the hard work starts now, but they’re gonna be ok.

Ok fuck I accidental turned this into a compete fic outline and now IM ACTUALLY CONSIDERING WRITING IT fuck it was just suppose to be a head canon. Fuuuuuck.

[gebtoons]

my contribution to the bapo timeline discourse bc i’m just gonna propose a timeline and will not be taking criticism <3 (under the cut bc this is gonna be a long post probably) 

ok disclaimer I am quite stupid, however I’m gonna use my knowledge from my own 12 years in american public high school and what little info I have about american boarding schools/catholic schools that I have from my friends lol. so. idk. 

i’m also gonna date songs/major events and i’m gonna be taking some “just trust me bro” liberties bc y’all are right it does NOT make that much sense. 

January 6: Epiphany; this is like an actual holiday lol. like its always on the sixth. idk its good that this is the starting point bc its an actual date yknow? For the purposes of this timeline were going with that its early in the week, so lets go with Monday idk

January 6-13: You and I, Role of a Lifetime; so we’re all kinda in agreement that this timeline (at least the beginning) only really makes sense if you and i/role of a lifetime aren’t like. a singular moment and are instead multiple days. so yeah, of this first week, this is like. monday-next sunday ish yknow. 

January 14: Auditions, Plain Jane Fatass; ok so having auditions for a spring musical right after kids get back from break actually makes perfect sense to me, like i can see it being like “ok take break to prepare so as soon as you come back we can have auditions so we can jump right into rehersals” yknow? and since the rave is clearly on a friday (”we’ll meet in tanya’s room on friday night”) so i’m going with the monday before.  

as for pjf, i know it doesn’t make a ton of sense for them to get a two week late birthday package their first few weeks back from school, but hear me out it makes sense. the implication throughout this entire show is that the twins have decently shitty parents. from bits of dialogue (in this song in particular lol) i’m kinda inferring their the “only concerned with how their kids make them look to others” kind of neglectful. so I don’t think it’s too outside the realm of possibility that they went away for the holidays, didn’t bring the twins, and instead mailed them a birthday package and having it show up two weeks late. realistically the timing of this isnt that important and the explicit “two week” time frame could’ve been an exaggeration on nadia’s part to mock her shit parents (idk its in her character) basically ppl are a little two fixated on this imo but anyway. moving on. 

January 18: Wonderland, A Quiet Night At Home, Rolling, Best Kept Secret; a very agreed upon point in the timeline. its the friday following the auditions. moving on. 

January 21: Confession; also very agreed upon. the monday following the rave. moving on again 

January 23: Portrait of a Girl; the date here is kinda arbitrary, but bc sister chantelle says “ok lets try to put yesterday’s rehearsal behind us” and i for the life of me cannot think of a scene she could be referring to (there’s none in the script either) that implies it wasn’t the same monday as confession (bc even in a boarding school i think holding extracurriculars that aren’t sports over the weekend (especially when they are no where near crunch time lol) is weird and not common) so i just picked a random day during the week

January 25: Birthday Bitch!, One Kiss, Are You There?; from matt’s line in wonderland, ivy’s birthday is a week after the rave. in my timeline that’s january 25th (an aquarius queen). 

btw given all grown up’s “17, how will i manage?” ivy is 16 during 17 at her party, which is strange given shes a high school senior and seniors are typically 17 during 18. so either a) she skipped a grade, not an unheard of thing. or b) shes not a senior, shes just a junior who hangs out with a bunch of seniors, which is also pretty common. and looking through the script i can’t find any mention that she is also a senior, other than yknow she graduates with them, but she isn’t mentioned during the class ranking scene? so idk not that it really matters just a fun detail 

February 3 (at night): 911 Emergency!; ok controversial. i know i like the joke about how its funny that peter having a weird dream when he was high prompted him to want to come out and really ruined his relationship with jason. BUT. i think the dream (despite it’s weirdness) would have a lot more meaning if it wasn’t the result of being really high, but if it was a dream he had like a week later as a result of a building sense of guilt/anxiety bc he told matt. also it fits better given later timeline things. (this timeline literally only exists if there are weird jumps in time that don’t make a ton of sense) (EDIT: I forgot one line about Jason crashing at ivys but fuck it forget that bitchass line this makes for more drama its staying this way)

February 4: Reputation Stain’d, Ever After; the next day following peter’s dream, idk what else to say, moving on. 

February 25-28: Spring; another jump! i’m sorry but the only way for this to make sense logistically is for there to be quite a few time jumps! however, i also think this one works bc i think it gives time for everything from around ivy’s party and peter and jason’s break up to stew emotionally. like obviously a musical only has so much time to tell a story so the audience cannot see every realistic beat, but honestly i think it makes the whole thing a little more dramatic™ if there’s space for everything to settle, and for ivy to come and apologize and such. also, the reason it’s multiple days is bc in the script, ivy is trying to study (presumably for some sort of midterm) while nadia is playing, so that probably takes place a few days before they move out, so before finals. but in the script, jason and peter are packing and peter is leaving, so that part of the song/staging takes place on the 28th. yes, that’s weird, but we are clearly thinking more about the logistics of this school than the writers were so. 

March 1: One; assuming st. cecilia’s works kinda like boarding schools here, they probably do staggered move out/move in, just bc that would be a lot to have people coming and going at once so it makes sense that peter left the day before, while jason and ivy are leaving the next day. also, given that peter is trying to call jason while he and ivy are banging, it’s probably been a hot minute since the actual break up, since peter was clearly very hurt by the whole thing, it would make sense (at least to me) that peter would reach out a month ish later, rather than like a few days later (you have to make so many assumptions to make this timeline work granted they aren’t super out there assumptions but still this is annoying) 

March 1-25: Spring Break. the coworkers I have who are in boarding school work over their school breaks, which are longer than the public school breaks (which are only a week) so i put their spring break at 3 weeks. it makes sense, and it makes the later part of the timeline make sense. 

I know i’m already halfway through this, but to me it makes sense for their to be quite a few time jumps in the story bc its a musical. they cannot show every day. there are a lot of other shows (particularly shows set in high schools) that are set over a whole school year, but if you just look at the events of the story that doesn’t make sense, so you have to imply that obviously they are not showing every little detail. moving on. 

March 25: Wedding Bells, In The Hallway, Touch My Soul; peter wakes up from his nightmare in the church, so im assuming he fell asleep in church (like he almost did during epiphany). also it makes sense that class ranks are announced in late march-early april, I know my school announced ours in like, the first week or so of april? so yeah. moving on.

(from this point on i was giving myself a headache trying to make it make sense so its all weird from here!!)

April 4: See Me, Warning; the date doesn’t really matter here, I picked a random day in early april. the script said peter is calling from him and jason’s old dorm room, as he was picking up the last of his things, so he clearly made the roommate switch after school started (makes sense to me). 

April 15-20 (approximately): Ivy finds out she’s pregnant. look google tells me on average people find out they are pregnant around 5-7 weeks after conception. i went with around 7 just so this timeline makes a tiny bit more sense given the later stuff, so yeah here we go. 

May 4: Pilgrim’s Hands, God Don’t Make No Trash, All Grown Up, Promise, Once Upon A Time, Cross; a rough night for our heroes. so given sister chantelle saying “again? wonderful.” and nadia saying “i can’t believe you missed rehearsal again”, clearly ivy has been missing quite a few rehearsals, so for dramas sake maybe from when she found out she was pregnant? also i know i’ve been saying they wouldn’t have rehearsals on weekends, and given my weird timeline this would be a saturday, but its tech week so i’ll allow it. 

May 5: Two Households, Bare, Queen Mab, A Glooming Peace; pretty self explanatory, and it makes sense to have the spring play in early may. rip jason. 

May 11: Absolution; the day before graduation peter goes to confront the priest. gives him a small amount of time to start processing, and it makes sense it would be the night before, at least to me. 

May 12: No Voice; i fucking hate this. “peter, we graduate next sunday” i hate that stupid fucking line. do you know that this timeline literally would be fine if it weren’t for that stupid fucking line? bc then, the school play would be in early may and graduation could be in late may-early june (when most high schools hold graduation) but no. keeping with continuity, they have to graduate the sunday following the school play. “peter we graduate in a month, are you really never gonna talk to me again?” would have been fine. but no, now we have beef. literally everything else about the end of this timeline being kinda weird would work itself out, except for the fucking graduation. god damn. anyway, may 12th, the graduate on may 12th which is really fucking weird bc of that one fucking line. whatever. i didn’t write the damn thing bc if i did i wouldn’t have written that fucking line. (i’ve been at this for over an hour and a half, so i’m a tad annoyed, can you tell?) 

anyway, that’s it. that’s my long as hell proposed bare timeline. if there’s anything glaringly wrong with it i don’t care bc this timeline literally cannot make sense. but honestly, now that i think about the Popular Tween High Schooler Musicals (heathers, bmc, deh) the timelines of those (especially heathers and bmc) don’t make tons of sense either. that’s just the way it is, that’s the way its gonna be. and we have to live with it. 

this post is so long it is actually slowing down my laptop as i type it

[ifyouseekay468]

what do YOU personally think the teenagers (mcr) lyrics are about my friend ? like i keep thinking about them but im not sure im going somewhere

okay, ive answered this ask twice on mobile and each time my phone deleted it, so here I go, the FINAL version of this post

It's been a hot minute since I listened to teenagers so I decided to do a quick run-through of the lyrics, and while Gerard&Co were raised catholic the lyrics seem to REEK of protestant trauma, so that's what I'll be going off of, but I'm pretty sure the two denominations overlap here. The first verse is about kids in youth group, Christian GirlsTM especially, who are put there to pressure you into being "normal" into "cleaning you up with the lies in the book" (bible), although the pastor is the one giving the teaching THESE are the people who will get you to BELIEVE, who will get you to lie to yourself, who will get you to church camps that on some level utilize brainwashing techniques, and will DESTROY you with the idea that you're "Just one of them, and just need to change everything about yourself and fake your way through every last sermon to be just a part of the gang",

The part about sleeping with a gun and keeping an eye on you is about two things: one, about the idea that God can see all your thoughts, that THINKING about "sin" (ie; fantasizing about sex) is as bad as COMMITTING sin (which is fucked up entirely on its own because fantasy is SO FUCKING DIFFERENT FROM REALITY and that is a CRUCIAL aspect of sexual expression in order to safely engage in sex), AND the fact that these kids will pretend to be your friend, will prod you into doing things with them, into telling them things about yourself all the while making you feel like "part of the group" when really they're just blabbing either to religious leaders, or are ostracizing you and bullying you behind your back.

"The drugs never work"

This in my opinion points to the fact that this song is specifically about being QUEER in a christian culture. It is common for trans people to turn to drugs or psychedelics in an area that has little to no access to gender affirming care, or acceptance because they both change reality and disconnect one from the body that is causing their dysphoria. It can also help burn away the guilt, so to speak.

The methods of keeping you clean is about two things: one, about purity culture, no smoking, no drinking, no friends who drink, no sex, no porn, no masturbation, no impure thoughts. The second, is the way they're able to subtly manipulate you into hiding yourself, into lying to yourself, into forcing yourself to the point of death into being cishet. They're keeping you clean not just from the vices of addiction, but the vices of the flesh, the vice you can't escape because it's a part of you from the day youre born. On a darker note, this could also be referring to c*nversion th*rapy, given this second interpretation of the lyrics

"Ripping your head and aspirations to shreds," Is again about two things in my opinion: both the idea of "losing yourself to God's will" that usually leads one to losing their identity and getting depression and fucked up mental health, and the "shift" that happens at church when you reach a certain age. You know the kind, right? You're four years old, and church is FUN! You get to go to this big room and sing and dance on stage with all your friends! You get to play GAMES! You get to talk to the ~cool teenagers~ who are ~Just like you~ and ~think youre a "cool kid"~, you have ~best friends~ who will be with you like Jesus and the 12! but then, one day, something happens, something SHIFTS. maybe the Sunday school teacher leaves, maybe there's a new family at church, maybe the church changes buildings. Maybe none of that has to do with any of it, all you know is that now things are forever different. Church isn't fun anymore. The kids classes are repetitive, they're bribing you into memorizing bible verses with money, they DONT reward critical thinking or analysis, but they do call you smart, that's because they dont want SMART kids they want OBEDIANT ones. You have no choice but to stat going to REAL church. Suddenly, your best friends are not your best friends. Suddenly they're avoiding you. Suddenly they're lying to you. Suddenly you're too... well they don't know the word yet but "gay" for them...

"Teenagers scare the living shit out of me"

This is what youth group does to you, it isolates you from your entire generation because there are few people your age and a whole lot older than you, and everyone is so much DIFFERENT from you for some reason, but neither of you know why, not yet anyways. This makes you distance yourself from teenagers, because you can't SEE yourself as a teenager, because youre nothing like other teenagers.

"They could care less as long as someone will bleed,"

This is the martyr complex that permeates youth culture like the smell of wine, the problem? these kids love to make a show of themselves and their martyrdom, but they're unwilling to martyr themselves, so what do they do? They throw someone else to the wolves and take the glory. They ostracize and eliminate the unique in the name of preserving their faith. They convert and convert and god help anyone who doesn't want to convert.

"So darken your clothes and strike a violent pose"

This is about deconversion, how the moment you leave the church you never want to see another cross till the day you die, that you want to avoid christians of all costs because you don't want them To drag you back into the pit that devoured you. So you do anything and everything you can to make yourself repulsive to Christians, which actually coincides with your indulgence of mundane activities previously considered as "sin"

"Maybe they'll leave you alone but not me,"

There's a different between a cishet ex Christian and a queer ex christian, and that difference is that a cishet atheist is more likely to be left alone than a queer one, especially a queer one whose whole demeanor screams "Christians be gone," that shit is like... it summons christians faster than free winter jam tickets! They swarm to you frothing at the mouth with holy water waiting to either convert you or exorcise you into purity, depends on if you want them or not. Again, you don't even have to be OPENLY gay, they can TRACK this shit. it's like fucking... INSTINCT or something.

"The boys and girls in the clique, the awful names that they stick, you're never gonna fit in much kid,"

as alluded to above, this lyric is about how, even from a young age, BEFORE youth group, this toxic culture kind of develops. ESPECIALLY around christian girls. They don't have the vulgarity of slurs, but they can make up for it with slang like "tomboy" "nancyboy" "too boyish" "a sissy" "Weird" etc, youre NEVER going to fit in, because the moment that "shift", from fun games and songs to Real Church, occurs, you have a target on your back.

"But if youre troubled and hurt what you got under your shirt will make them pay for the things that they did,"

This is probably a gun. But that's a tad too boring for my taste. If you were raised protestant you KNOW that being an ex protestant, after the craziness of evangelicalism, you would not hesitate to burn down your old church. It could be a secret tattoo, top surgery scars, hell maybe even nipple clamps. Whatever it is, it's symbolic of revenge. I know that anytime I wore my labrys necklace to church I would always hide it under my shirt. I hid books and CDs under there too. Again, it's about revenge, it's about breaking free, gun or no gun, the point is getting out and getting back at them.

and thats pretty much my take on the song. Again, this is not about artist intent this is just what the lyrics reminded ME of personally (as you can see from the over biographical bullshit I wrote), I'm always open to contradicting interpretations though as I always have like 2+ interpretations of a song or book! I never really saw the song through the lens of youth group specifically but when I went over the lyrics again in retrospect it all seemed to really click (pun not intended) well! Thanks for the ask!