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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 3 months ago

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A Curse [Chapter 9: Hollywood]

A/N: We're in the home stretch now, besties! Only 3 chapters left until the curse is lifted 🪄

Series summary: You are an aspiring actress. Aegon is a washed-up and disenchanted agent…at least until he sees something special in you. But within paradisical seaside Los Angeles you find terrible dangers and temptations, secrets and lies. Maybe Aegon’s right; maybe the City of Angels really is a curse.

Chapter warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), age-gap situationship, Maroon 5, illness/death, angst, ice cream, Sunshine makes her red carpet debut! 😍

Word count: 6.5k

💜 All my writing can be found HERE! 💜

Tagging: @lauraneedstochill @mrs-starkgaryen @chattylurker @neithriddle @ecstaticactus, more in comments! 🥰

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Time machine, walls like glass, the dial turned back to 2009. It’s Viserys’ funeral, and no one can even pretend they’re sad. They stopped being sad years ago, and only relief is left. No more long nocturnal hours of the deathwatch, no more hushed sympathetic updates from the hospice nurses, no more unrecognizable white-haired organic matter contorted in his hospital bed. The chains are broken and they are free, all except one of them, the nineteen-year-old son who believes—without proof, without logic—that the curse is not lifted but only transferred, living on in him like an echo down a long hall.

It’s 2005, and Viserys has turned mean: paranoid, volatile, lashing out with fury at his increasing limitations as his brain is hollowed out like a Halloween pumpkin, like a cored apple. He roars and he throws things. He forgets his family are not torturers. Alicent could shut him away somewhere, but she doesn’t, the guilt would eat her alive; and so while nurses are present at the Malibu mansion around the clock, the Targaryens are not spared his wrath. One night Viserys breaks a window and wields a shard of glass like a dagger, and when the nurses flee screaming, Aemond stops Alicent from entering the room and goes in himself to clean up the mess. Someone has to.

It’s 1999, and after years of anomalies that nobody knew were symptoms—mood swings, muscle weakness, difficulty making decisions, balance problems, memory lapses—Viserys has been diagnosed with a disease that must have been lurking in his forebearers for generations, unbeknownst to them without the longevity or genetic tests of modern medicine. And like so many absent husbands and fathers who experience a revelation of their impending doom, he is determined to make up for lost time. He bakes with Alicent in the kitchen. He walks with Helaena in the garden. He stops condemning nine-year-old Aegon for long hours spent with his favorite toy, a charcoal gray Nintendo 64, first edition; the Fire Orange console won’t be released until the following year, part of the Funtastic Colors series. And now that it’s too late, Viserys’ children learn to love him.

Viserys takes Aegon’s hand and asks the boy to show him how to play Nintendo 64, here at the very start like a mirage, already beginning to disintegrate around the edges.

~~~~~~~~~~

It’s Thursday, August 7th. You don’t have an appointment to see Aegon, but you’re here in Elysian Park anyway. You park on the curb and sweep out into the gilded morning glow, already mid-80s and rising, wrinkled goldenrod-yellow sundress that you left in the drier too long, flip-flops, bare-faced. You barely slept and ran out the door as soon as you clawed your way out of brief, fitful dreams, autumn leaves and endless corridors through apple orchards, distant stars and deep water.

At his desk, Brandon is on the phone and making notes with his flower pen. He gives you a smile; you can only manage a quick wave. You continue into Aegon’s office, where he is engrossed in Mario’s expedition into an ice world where snow falls in unhurried, harmless white spheres. The music is pleasant, but the pools of frozen water are so cold they burn. Mario is making his way towards a block of ice in which a star has been hidden, accessible by navigation through narrow tunnels. Aegon, his green Nike Killshots propped up on his cluttered desk as usual, is surprised but not disappointed to see you.

“Hey, sunshine!” he says, still clicking the buttons on his transluscent orange controller, still swiveling the joystick. “What are you doing here so—?”

“Your dad died of Huntington’s disease.”

He freezes, and on the television screen, so does Mario; a malevolent snowman entity appears and hurls snowballs at the abandoned avatar until he is dead. You wait for Aegon to say something—no, that’s not true, no, you’re wrong, no, that would be a death sentence—but he only sits there, jaw fallen open, eyes filling up his face…and then he jolts to his feet and goes for the door.

You whirl around to watch him leave. “Aegon…?”

He stops in the doorway to the lobby and calls out: “Brando, you’re done for the day. Bye.”

“Oh for cute!” Brandon replies. “Let me just send an email to that moving company and then—”

“No, now. You’re done right now.”

Brandon sounds perplexed. “Okay, literally right now, you got it.” You can hear him gathering up his things, the jangling of car keys, the snapping shut of a laptop, and you remember all the hours you’ve spent gazing into a small rectangular blue-light screen as you combed through Aegon’s filmography, inspired potential that came to a collision of a stop in his mid-twenties. From the threshold, as he waits for Brandon to leave, Aegon watches you with his arms crossed over his chest and his eyes thrashing with dark choppy waves like the riptides of the Pacific. You stare back thunderstruck, and only now do you realize how desperately you were hoping you were mistaken.

Out in the lobby, the front door of the half-duplex opens and closes, and now you and Aegon are alone. He walks back to his desk—loose papers, manila folders, framed photographs, that ever-present bowl of Honeycrisp apples—and drops into his chair, drags his fingers through his slicked-back hair, gazes vacantly at the mint green wall and sighs deeply.

“Who told you?” he asks, like hardly anyone knows, like the few who do wouldn’t have said anything.

“Nobody,” you say, startled. “I just kept guessing different diseases, and I didn’t think it was cancer, and…and…Aegon, Huntington’s is genetic.”

He looks up at you. “Yeah. Yeah it is.”

“Have you been tested? Because if one of your parents had it then you have a fifty percent chance of inheriting the gene.”

“No, I haven’t been tested.”

“Why not?!”

“Because I just haven’t, okay?”

“Have your siblings?”

“Yeah, and they’re all negative. But I didn’t take the test.”

“I think you should take the test, Aegon.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“Because you should know!” you burst out, and your hands are trembling like his do sometimes, dire adrenaline in your bloodstream and your voice frayed like someone has taken a razor blade to it. “Because if you’re negative then you’ll be relieved, and if you’re positive then you can…you can plan for it, you know? And there are treatments that can help manage the symptoms! I looked it up, I spent like four hours last night on Wikipedia—”

“But no one can stop it,” Aegon says. “They can’t even slow it down.”

“You think you have the gene,” you realize, horrified. “You forget things. Your hands shake. And that’s why you’re leaving Los Angeles and avoiding your family, and that’s why you’re marrying Becca—”

“Stay the fuck out of my head,” Aegon says, the first time he’s ever spat his venom at you, and his knuckles are unbruised and yet it feels like he’s hit you, a crack in a wall, bones that split and arteries that hemorrhage.

“Aegon, you can’t run away like that when you don’t even know for sure if you’re sick!”

“It’s actually really common for people in my situation to not want to take a test.”

You speak without any awareness of what you’re going to say. “I would take care of you.”

“You think I want to hear that?!” Aegon shouts. “You think I want to imagine you being there when I lose the ability to walk, and speak, and feed myself, and remember who the fuck I am?”

“I would do it,” you insist. “You believed in me. You helped me. I would help you.”

He shakes his head and glares at you, his eyes going slick and glassy. “You have no idea what you’re offering.”

“Your family has money, they can afford the best doctors and nurses. You wouldn’t be a burden on any of us, but we’d still get to be with you—”

“I saw what my dad dying did to my mom,” Aegon says bitterly, hatefully. “First he was himself, mostly. And then he was depressed, and then he was angry, and then he became a monster. He’s the reason my mother still has nightmares. He’s the reason Aemond lost his eye. You don’t do that to people you care about. You don’t inflict that on someone you love.”

“But what if you move to Texas and you’re fine, and you don’t have Huntington’s, and you don’t die and nothing terrible happens to you?!”

“Then it will be a relief,” Aegon says softly. “And I can always come back.”

“What about me?” you ask, your voice splintering. “If you’re sick, you’re just never going to see me again?”

Aegon smiles faintly, sad, resigned. “I would rather you remember me the way I am now.”

“Afraid? Avoidant? In denial?”

“Just get out,” he snaps, rubbing his face with his palms, wincing like he’s in pain.

“Aegon—”

“No, you don’t know what it’s like to watch someone die of this!” he roars, slamming his fist on the desk. Documents rustle; photographs fall over. “And if I don’t want a diagnosis, if I don’t want to live staring down the barrel of a gun, then that’s my fucking right and you don’t get to say I’m a coward for it!”

“You’re already living like you know you’re dying,” you moan, you plead. There are tears flowing down your cheeks and turning to salt on your lips; your face is hot with blood. “You don’t have anything to lose.”

“I don’t want to know.”

“But you’re making all these choices for the wrong reasons, and you deserve to know the truth, and if you take a test then you can make an informed decision about what you want your life to look like—”

“I would never pick you,” Aegon says, flat, direct, gutting. “So get that out of your head, because it’s not happening.”

You gaze at him helplessly. “Then what are we doing?”

He shrugs, like this is an idiotic question. “I’m your agent. I’m helping you get jobs.”

“That’s not what this is!” you sob. “It’s always been more than that, it’s been more than that from the very first day! Why did you sign me when no one else would? Why were you feeding me boneless spare ribs off your fork? Why did you throw me that apple?!”

Aegon is incredulous. “Why did I fuck you in this office, why did I fly to Minnesota to have dinner with your awful parents? Because I wanted to. Because I really like you, and I think I’ve been honest about that. But that doesn’t mean it’s serious.”

Never serious, you remember miserably. That’s how Aegon had described his affairs. “Does Becca know you could have Huntington’s?”

“No,” Aegon says. “But if she did, it wouldn’t change anything. She would still want to get married.”

“She would want to take care of you.”

“Yes, exactly. She would be upset for a while, yeah, but she…she needs someone to need her. Her parents were doctors, and they weren’t abusive or anything but they were gone all the time, and the house was like a museum, and now she’s…I don’t know, I guess she’s obsessed with creating warmth, and for Becca warmth means homemade bread and bento boxes and dogs and getting my suits tailored for me, and me being her full-time project…I think a part of her would enjoy that. Having me to herself, finally being the center of my universe. And when I get really bad, when I’m…” Aegon swallows noisily. “When I’m dead, she can move on. She can find someone else to marry and she can have kids, and she’ll always have that trophy on her shelf: I was a Targaryen, I was the perfect long-suffering wife. And Aegon loved me more than any of the others.”

More than me, you think. And then a ricochet of Aegon’s words: I would never pick you. “She’s not mad at you? Because of what we’ve done?”

Aegon chuckles uneasily. “I mean, I’m sure she’s not thrilled about you still being around. She’s been a little temperamental, she’s been suspicious. Right before we left for Minnesota, I woke up from a nap and she was swabbing my cheek for an STD test, can you believe that? But she knows this is temporary.”

What had Becca said the day she pushed you just outside this office? And if he was going to leave me, he has better options than you. You nod like any of this makes sense.

“Can we just be us again?” Aegon asks, and now he’s calm, gentle, exhausted. “We have a month left together. I don’t want to waste it.”

“Okay,” you say numbly.

“Don’t forget about the music video premiere tomorrow night. And I haven’t heard anything from the vampire movie people yet.” Then he adds: “That doesn’t mean you didn’t get it.”

“But it’s not a good sign.”

Aegon tries to soften the blow. “They might just be thinking it over. They might still be scheduling the callback for the other actress.”

You—unsteady, dazed, despondent—stare down at the scuffed wood floor and try in vain to smooth the wrinkles out of your sundress. “Sounds like we’ll both be leaving Los Angeles soon,” you tell Aegon; and then you walk until the walls disappear and only the city is left, sun glare, humming air conditioners, dogs barking, children laughing, engines revving, the immense metallic shadow of Downtown on the horizon.

At home in your apartment building, just as you are about to scan your keycard to unlock the front door, you hear Baela and Jace talking inside. The television is on and the microwave is purring—maybe Jace is making one of his favorite snacks, corn dogs or pizza rolls—and their voices are just barely distinguishable.

“What am I supposed to say to her?” Baela asks, sounding distressed. “That I’m officially too rich and famous to need a roommate? I can’t just kick her out. It would break her heart. She’s so sweet, and I know she’s trying really hard but it’s just…well…”

“No, I get it,” Jace replies. “She’s chill.”

“It sounds like her parents are going to make her move home soon anyway, unless she lands a big part, and…you know…I don’t really see that happening.”

“Yeah.” The microwave beeps and someone pops open the door to retrieve the contents.

“So just please don’t say anything, okay? And when she’s gone in a few months we’ll start looking at apartments in Venice or Santa Monica…”

You put your back to the hallway wall and wait long enough that they won’t think you’ve overheard anything, listening to the sounds of cars whooshing by outside, people coming and going from the places where they belong in the world, and you wonder what that feels like.

~~~~~~~~~~

You stay up too late watching YouTube videos of people with Huntington’s disease, and so the next morning at Cold Stone Creamery you are in a haze, dull throbbing headache, eyes bloodshot from crying, and the frat bro you’re making a Gotta Have It-sized Cookie Mintster for probably thinks you’re high but it’s the opposite: you’ve never felt lower, you’ve never been adrift like this, and you don’t know what to do next. You can’t unknot the threads fate has tied to Aegon. You can’t imagine a life for yourself back home. You can’t remember why you ever thought you’d be able to build something here in the City of Angels, glittering and golden and ever-rushing towards perfection, those who fall behind drug under the wheels.

“Can I get some gummy bears on that?” the frat boy is saying, but your gaze catches on someone behind him. The little metal bells on the glass door jingle and Aegon scrolls inside, khaki cargo shorts and a wrinkled short-sleeve white Oxford thrown over a pink tank top, and he’s traded in his Nikes for flip-flops, and his hair is gelled back from his face so you can see him clearly, vividly, and he leans against the window with daylight flooding in all around him and grins at you.

Why…?

“Can I please get some gummy bears?” the frat boy asks again.

Your manager Josh is blending up a strawberry banana smoothie and glowering at you. “Yo, what is wrong with you today?!”

But you don’t care what he’s saying, because Aegon pulls his black aviator sunglasses out of the pocket of his cargo shorts and slides them on and beams at you, and you hear the words as if he’s spoken them aloud: You are so bright, sunshine.

“I got the part?” you say from behind the counter.

Aegon nods. “You got the part.”

You scream and sprint to him, and when you throw your arms around Aegon he catches you, laughing and warm, and right now his hands are perfectly fine, steady and strong as they cradle the small of your back, the arc of your neck.

“Where the hell are you going?” Josh snaps from the blender. The frat boy, still waiting for his Cookie Mintster, is glaring at you impatiently. “I didn’t say you could take your break yet!”

“Hey,” Aegon says, taking a hundred-dollar bill out of his wallet and waving it around so Josh can see before dunking it in the tip jar. “She’s quitting. Call someone else.” And then he pulls you, grinning and exhilarated, out of the Cold Stone Creamery and into the August air, moving swiftly beneath a cerulean sky full of cumulus clouds, 90-degrees and diesel fumes.

“Aegon, I can’t quit yet, I still have to pay my rent—”

“I’ll pay your rent,” Aegon says. He stops when you are under the shade of a palm tree and stands there with you in the oasis. His Sebring is parked illegally in a fire lane; it is adorned with a new malady, a massive dent in the bumper. “You’re going to have costume fittings and table-reads, and you have to learn the script, and you’ll have appointments with hair and makeup, and you’ll have a personal trainer, and promo obligations…you won’t have time to work.”

“You didn’t force them to hire me, did you?” you ask, the effervescent high dissolving away. “You didn’t threaten to blacklist them with your whole family or anything, right? Because I don’t want this if it’s not real.”

“What?” Aegon says, mystified. “No. No, I swear, I wouldn’t do that. And I don’t think it would have worked even if I’d tried. First billing is a huge deal. Not even Taylor Swift has managed to buy herself a starring role in a movie yet. They liked you. They wanted you.”

The hope quivers in your voice. “I’m going to be an actress?”

Aegon smiles. “You already are one.” He takes off your red apron and your grey hat and stuffs both in a nearby trashcan. “Are you parked around here?”

You point to your Honda Accord, 2003, Desert Mist Metallic paint that gleams under the sun. “I’m just across the street.”

“You aren’t bringing Jace to the Maroon 5 thing tonight, right? Because it’s in your best interests to appear unattached.”

You raise an eyebrow, teasing. “Unattached?”

“Yeah. Being ostensibly single makes you confident and alluring and mysterious. Dragging along your mop-haired boyfriend makes you look like a high school kid at prom.”

“And how does dragging along my sulky, disillusioned Targaryen agent make me look?”

“Like a star,” Aegon replies simply.

“I’m not bringing Jace. Or anyone else besides you.”

“Great.”

“Can we drive to the premiere together?” You don’t want to be away from Aegon; you are a little petrified of the fanfare that awaits you in Downtown tonight. You have no idea what to expect.

“Yeah,” Aegon says, outwardly casual, unmistakably pleased. “I have a driver booked. We’ll swing by your apartment in the limousine around 7 p.m.”

“Why aren’t we taking the Sebring?”

“Because people don’t drive themselves to premieres, sunshine,” he says, like he’s explaining to a child an obvious and fundamental truth: the sky is blue, the Earth is round. Then he gestures to his white convertible and its sizeable new dent. “And also I keep running into things and I don’t want you in the car when I’m driving.”

Because his hands shake? Because his reflexes are slowing until they inevitably stop? “Maybe you’re just stressed because of the wedding,” you say softly.

“Yeah. Maybe.”

“Or it’s psychosomatic. You expect to see symptoms, so you do. But really you’re fine.”

Aegon sighs as wind blows eastward from the Pacific Ocean. He wants to change the subject. You can’t stop yourself from talking. “It’s possible.”

“Maybe whatever’s wrong with you isn’t Huntington’s. Maybe it’s something else, like a vitamin deficiency or a thyroid disorder or lupus or fibromyalgia, or diabetes from all the super unhealthy food you eat. Maybe it’s something a doctor can fix.”

“I’ll see you tonight, okay?” Aegon says; and he kisses your cheek and climbs into his Sebring and speeds off towards the interchange of the 110.

~~~~~~~~~~

You told your parents you needed a dress for Clara’s bachelorette party so they wouldn’t yell at you when they saw the charge on the credit card. You will have to devise a new strategy for future purchases; you are running out of wedding-related excuses. The gown is electric yellow and less formal than the one you wore to the charity gala, sufficiently frivolous for a music video premiere, a V-neck and a high-low hemline. Your hair is down and your eyeshadow warm and smokey: Gilded Ganache and Semi-Sweet by Too Faced, Night Star by NARS. You drench yourself with sugary Shimmer Mist from Bath and Body Works, then realize that was probably a stupid idea. But there’s no time to try to scrub it off; Aegon has texted you that he’s five minutes away.

You click out into the kitchen in the yellow heels you found at T.J. Maxx. Jace is sprawled on the couch and bobbing his head as he sings along to a Charli XCX song pulsing out of his iPhone:

“You wanna guess the color of my underwear,

You wanna know what I got goin’ on down there…”

Baela, who had been getting a can of La Croix from the refrigerator, turns and is startled when she sees you. “You’re glittering. And that looks like a prom dress.”

You scrutinize yourself, suddenly self-conscious. “Is it bad?”

“No!” Baela cries, overcorrecting, not wanting to hurt your feelings. “No, it’s so cute. Jace, isn’t it so cute?”

“Totally,” he says from the couch, not looking at you.

“No contrast, huh?” Baela muses, glancing at your shoes and clutch purse.

“Doesn’t yellow go with yellow…?”

“Of course it does.” She beams, too broadly. “Have fun tonight! Walk really slowly on the red carpet. It will feel ridiculous, but that’s how they get good photos. And cycle through four or five different poses. Count to ten in your head and then switch to the next one. And don’t smile too much! You’ll look creepy and your cheeks will get tired and go numb and you’ll start twitching. Do a small smile and then laugh a lot when the interviewers make their dumbass jokes. It’s good television and they’ll like you and give you more airtime.”

You try to commit this to memory. “Okay.”

“Here.” She gifts you an ice-cold can of La Croix, coconut flavored. “Drink this on the ride over, then make sure you have a lot of water at the premiere. Stay hydrated. Keeps you peppy and glowing.”

“Okay,” you say again, a good little foot soldier.

Baela gives you a quick hug goodbye; but you catch the way she frowns at your carefree hair, the deep but not-so-revealing V of your neckline. Maybe she’ll reconsider the implants thing, Baela’s face reads. You can feel cold beads of sweat bleeding from your ribs, your spine. Then you are out the door, descending in the elevator, trotting onto the sidewalk to find the limo already waiting there, black and sleek under a sky that is slowly sickening from midday blue to dusk embers. The windows are tinted so dark you can’t see anything from outside.

“Hey, sunshine,” Aegon says as you slide into the back where he is waiting in the suit he wears to auditions and film shoots and, apparently, premieres: skinny black tie, slightly rumpled and untucked white shirt. He sees the La Croix. “Don’t you not like that?”

“My roommate gave it to me.” You set the can, wet with condensation, in a cupholder. Aegon hands you an iced vanilla latte to replace it. And as you buckle your seatbelt and the limo driver coasts east to hook into the 110 and then heads dead north towards Downtown, Aegon pulls a tiny spiral notebook out of the inside pocket of his suit jacket and reads off names to you: people who were involved in the production of the music video you filmed over a month ago, people to praise, people to thank. You’re trying to listen to him, but your thoughts are fuzzy and your heart is racing.

“What’s wrong?” Aegon asks, and you return to him and smirk guiltily.

“I’m sorry. I’m just nervous.”

“Why? You’re not nervous when you’re acting.”

“Because I’ve acted a million times, but I’ve never done a red carpet before. Not even a mini one like this. What if they ask me something I’m not expecting and I freeze up? What if I accidentally offend someone? I’m always saying things that make people think I’m stupid.”

Aegon laughs lazily, peering through the window as the freeway takes you through Vermont Vista, Broadway-Manchester, Florence, blurs of houses and palm trees and graffitied concrete barriers. “Yeah, you are always saying ridiculous things. But that’s who you are, and it’s charming.”

“You think it’s charming.”

Aegon smiles at you. “I do.”

You stir your latte so the ice cubes clink together and you make a jittery little sound, half-sigh, half-whimper. Aegon puts a palm on your bare thigh, pushing the hem of your dress just above your knee; his hand is warm, and gentle, and heavy enough to ground you.

“You’re shaking,” he says, alarmed.

“Yeah,” you admit. “I’m fine. I think it’ll stop once we get there.”

Aegon lifts his hand away—no! you think, pathetically—and then unbuckles his seatbelt and crawls over to the window just behind the driver’s seat, which is all the way down. The limo driver is in his fifties, salt-and-pepper hair and a full beard, classic rock radio station. The opening notes of Dani California pump out of the speakers, the bass reverberating through the leather seats. “Hey,” Aegon says to the driver, thumping his fist on the window slot. “Roll that up.”

“Yes sir,” the driver assents immediately.

“Don’t park or unlock the doors until I tell you to.”

“Yes sir.”

The dark opaque window closes, the driver disappears, and Aegon comes back to you. He takes your half-finished latte out of your hand and places it safely in a cupholder.

You’re smiling as you ask: “What are you going to—?”

He reaches beneath your dress—tulle ruffles the color of unclouded daylight, or lemons, or butter, or sunflowers—and his fingertips know where to go, their corporeal memory is perfect, and they apply divine spiraling pressure over your panties, silk to leave no lines beneath your dress; that’s a trick Baela taught you. You gasp and clutch for the back of the seat, sweated skin on black leather, your spine arching, your blood cascading south as the freeway runs northbound.

“Are you nervous now?” Aegon whispers; and his words are taunting but his voice is hushed, and he’s in front of you, leaning in so close your lungs are filled with him, Juicy Fruit and sunlight and the heat and the city, and his other hand turns your face away from him so he won’t ruin your makeup. Instead of your lips, his mouth finds your throat and collarbones, and he kisses you there as his fingertips press down more forcefully beneath your dress, so insistent, so hungry, and you are blinded by the realization of how much you have craved him, how desperately you miss him each time you’re apart, and only being with him feels like this, you don’t belong anywhere else, and your chances to touch him are vanishing like sandcastles turned to ruins by the surf.

He’s getting married in a month.

But he’s here now, and you want him.

He’s choosing Becca.

But his hands are choosing you, and his lips, and the outline of his hardness that you can feel when he leans against your thigh, nudging your legs further apart, and surely even through the silk he can feel how wet you are.

“You shouldn’t have taken your seatbelt off,” you say breathlessly. “That’s not safe.”

Aegon laughs as if this is a ludicrous concern, and maybe he doesn’t think that dying in a car accident of a fractured skull or an aortic dissection would be the worst thing in the world. “Don’t worry about me.” He breezes the fingers of his left hand through your hair, nuzzling you, inhaling you, saccharine sweetness and young frenetic nerves, endorphins pouring from your bloodstream.

He’s good, he’s very good; but for you it can take a while, and how far is the limo from the premiere venue? “I’m not going to be able to finish—”

“Yeah you are,” Aegon says, drawing back to look at you, his eyes locked with yours; and you moan as his fingers move the strip of silk aside and sink into you, and you are filled with him as his palm keeps up the euphoric friction, and then it collides with you—knuckles, gravity, riptides, fate—and it takes everything left in you, worn wrung-out scraps, not to cry out, because you’re not alone now, and you’ve never truly been alone with him when this happens, and you know you never will be. The sweetness and the bitterness are coiled up together like threads of fabric, like the lines of a family tree.

You are still panting as Aegon sweeps his left thumbprint just beneath your eyes, clearing away the eyeliner and mascara that has begun to run as your eyes water.

“Don’t cry, sunshine,” he murmurs, concerned.

You chuckle shakily. “I’m sorry. You know I get like this.” When it’s good. When it’s with you.

“Are you still nervous?”

“No,” you answer truthfully.

“You’re going to do great.”

“What should I say?”

“Whatever you want,” Aegon tells you. “Be yourself. Be real.” Then he kisses you on your lips only once: feather-light, immaterial enough to not mar you. “Oh, we have to clean up,” he realizes, panicked, and he hasn’t thought this through.

“It’s okay. We’ll figure it out.”

You open the can of coconut La Croix that Baela gifted you and soak a handful of napkins that Aegon gets from the driver. You erase the evidence between your legs as best you can; Aegon cleans his hands and gives himself a generous squeeze of hand sanitizer from a tiny travel bottle in your clutch. Then he uses the corner of a napkin to dab away stray flecks of mascara on your cheeks. You check your face in the mirror of your makeup compact: dewy, but acceptable. Natural. Lived-in. Aegon rearranges a few wayward strands of your hair. You slurp down the rest of your vanilla latte. The limo is rolling to halt. You reach for the door handle.

“No,” Aegon says, stopping you. And he gets out first and then waits for you, hand open, until you emerge from the limousine and into a new world: flashbulbs, video cameras, microphones, assistants dressed in black, screaming Maroon 5 fans. Aegon fluffs the train of your electric yellow gown and then leads you into the chaos.

The music video premiere is being held at the historic Broadway Theater. The red carpet rolled out for the occasion, in a nod to the name of the band, is not a bright bloody red but a deep maroon. People are shouting and waving at you, and you have no idea what’s going on; and yet in your ribcage your heartbeat is slow and measured and strong. Aegon has a hand on the small of your back, and you think: I want it to be like this all the time. I want it to be like this forever.

Now a young man in a teal suit is rushing up to you and Aegon has disappeared to the sidelines, and the man is telling you that he is from E! News, and although he says his name you immediately forget it. You don’t panic; you smile softly and try to listen through the noise of the crowd. Now Maroon 5 has arrived and is posing for photographs as the fans screech and beg for autographs.

“So how’s your day going?” the man from E! News asks, a microphone held to your lips.

“It’s been so exciting, this morning I got to quit my job!”

The man laughs hysterically. “What? Are you serious?”

“Yeah, I’ve been working at an ice cream place for months, but not anymore!”

“And do you have a passion for ice cream?”

“Not really, I just had to pay rent, you know?”

“Girl, do I ever!” the man says, still laughing. “What’s your favorite kind of ice cream?”

You smile sheepishly. “Vanilla.”

“Oh, so you’re a vanilla girl, huh?”

“I am, I really am, and I know the joke. But vanilla can be great! It’s a classic, and it’s sweet and uncomplicated, and it’s not trying to be anything it’s not. It’s pure. It’s innocent.”

“Oh my God, that was poetry! I might have to give vanilla another shot. You’ve convinced me.”

“Cool,” you say. Aegon is watching you from behind the video camera that you’ve just noticed; he is nodding, he gives you a little thumbs-up.

The man from E! News asks next: “So, ice cream expert, if I was an ice cream flavor, which one would I be?”

You ponder this. “Well someone once told me that interesting adults like strawberry, and you seem really interesting, so I’d say you’re strawberry ice cream.”

“Adorable,” the man sighs, marveling at you. “What are you going to be up to now that you aren’t working at the ice cream shop anymore?”

“Well according to my agent—and I have the best agent in the world, he’s absolute magic—I just got my first starring role in a movie.” The E! News man shrieks in excitement. “And I can’t really tell you anything more about it just yet, because I don’t know what I’m allowed to say publicly, but I’m so so so excited and so grateful, and Los Angeles is an incredible place. I’m in heaven and I’m thrilled to be here with you tonight.”

Another E! News correspondent, a woman in a salmon-colored dress, dashes in to join the conversation. She has blindingly white veneers and so much Botox she can’t move her forehead. “Could you tell us what it was like working on this music video?”

“It was an amazing experience,” you say; and in this moment you believe that, and Dan doesn’t exist, and neither does the bathtub scene that almost happened, and neither does the terror that threatened to consume you before Aegon smothered the flames. Now, Aegon is watching closely as Dan navigates the red carpet. They make split-second eye contact, Aegon glares fiercely, Dan keeps a wide swath of space between you and him as if you are radioactive, a silent poison that cooks malignancies into blood and bones. “We filmed in this gorgeous mansion in Beverly Hills, and everyone involved in the production was so imaginative and professional. I got to wear outfits designed by Schiaparelli and Rodarte, oh, and Phoebe Philo, and the actor playing my awful ex-boyfriend was fantastic, and there were these weird exotic cats that kept trying to bite me…”

You keep talking and interviewers keep descending, appearing out of nowhere, and then you are posing on the red carpet—you even take a few awkward photos with Maroon 5, none of whom remember who you are—and to your surprise, several fans even ask you for an autograph. Without thinking, you add a tiny sun after you sign your name each time.

“There, a little bit of sunshine,” you say to a preteen girl who beams up at you. “Not that you need it, look how brightly you’re shining!”

As you are about to enter the theater, you glance back to see where Aegon has gone. An interviewer has entrapped him, although Aegon clearly resents being caught on camera. He’s a good sport though; he forces a smile and answers the questions. He’s being asked about you.

Aegon says: “She has a great attitude about work, and about life in general. She’s very talented. And obviously she’s beautiful, so…yeah. I feel really lucky to have found her. She’s usually the best part of my day.”

“And are we going to see you in any upcoming films?” the woman from Entertainment Tonight asks flirtatiously. “We all know you have the chops!”

Aegon throws his head back and cackles. “No. You wish. Okay, thank you very much for your time, I’ll talk to you afterwards.”

“Thank you, Aegon!” the interviewer calls out, waving, and you think: He really could have been a star if he never left acting.

You and Aegon sit together at the screening, and he keeps feeding you pieces of popcorn—your lips brushing his fingertips, salt stinging on your tongue—and you have to resist the urge, no, the gravity, the effortless instinct to rest your head on his shoulder. Maroon 5 do a panel after the music video and take questions from the audience. They manage a few comprehensible responses.

Afterwards, Aegon doesn’t take you straight home to Harbor Gateway. He doesn’t take you to his office in Elysian Park either. Instead, he tells the limo driver to follow the 101 northwest to Hollywood, and he drags you out into the cool indigo night—veined with florescence and neon—and onto the intersection of Vine Street and Sunset Boulevard at the genesis of the Walk of Fame, a trail of 2,800 stars carved into the sidewalk, into eternity.

Aegon stands on a star of this earthbound constellation and says: “You’re going to have one of these someday.”

And here under the aisle of a streetlight with Aegon smiling like that, kind and radiant, you could almost believe him.

#aegon ii targaryen #aegon targaryen #aegon ii #aegon targaryen x reader #aegon targaryen ii #aegon x reader #aegon ii targaryen x female reader #aegon ii targaryen x reader #aegon ii x you #aegon x y/n #aegon x you #aegon ii x reader #aegon targaryen x you

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thespiritualencourager · 29 days ago

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🔴 NO PLACE TO HIDE

“Evil shall slay the wicked, and those who hate the righteous will be condemned. The LORD redeems the soul of His servants, and none of those who take refuge in Him will be condemned.”

‭‭—Psalm ‭34:21-22‬ ‭(NASB‬‬)

[Dig Deeper] : Job 34: 21-22

Have you noticed that when people try to hide from trouble they rarely succeed? A true story relates that a retired couple was alarmed by the threat of nuclear war, so they undertook a serious study of all the inhabited places on the globe. Their goal was to determine what geographical location would be least likely affected by a nuclear war.

They studied books and traveled the world and finally found the place. That Christmas they sent their pastor a card from their new home on the Falkland Islands. Shortly afterwards, however, their “paradise” was turned into a war zone by Great Britain and Argentina. Even though they had tried to hide from trouble, trouble had found them.

Elihu, Job’s youngest friend, made this same observation about God. No one can hide from Him. His all-seeing eyes observe man’s every step. Although Elihu was wrong in his assumption that Job had some hidden sin in his life, he was right to claim that nothing could be concealed from God’s sight. Had Job truly been a worker of iniquity, God would have known it.

Sometimes we feel frustrated because many evildoers are able to cover their wickedness so cleverly that they never can be brought to trial. Other times they simply disappear with their ill-gotten gains and no one can find them. But no one escapes the watchful eye of God. He knows what they’ve done and where they can be found. When the time is right, God will make sure justice is done.

If you are the victim of a miscarriage of justice or know some guilty person who has disguised his wrongdoing, be encouraged. No one can hide from the LORD. The most clever criminal can never conceal his deeds or himself from the watchful eyes of God. God observes all that we do, and He is a just Judge.

Justice is blind, but God isn’t.

— Woodrow Kroll

#inspiration #christian living #bible #bible verse #christian faith #scripture #trust god #god #jesus christ #holy spirit #devotional #christian quotes

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glitch-but-ya · 6 months ago

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The other side of paradise.

Pairing: Sylus x Pacifist!Reader

TW: Angst(?) + fluff(?), mentions of death and afterlife, mentions of blood and violence.

Summary: A pacifist yearning for tranquility and a relentless conqueror, hardened by the cruelty he has endured, find themselves bound by an unlikely connection. People say love changes the heart, untangles its strings, and tends to its wounds. While the two of you may never fully see eye to eye, you will discover the paradise you seek within each other, mending each other's hearts along the way. W.C: 1,507 words

“The cruelty in our hearts cannot be quelled. But as you grow, you will find man to be kinder.”

He could never understand you. That was the bitter truth the both of you were forced to swallow. The hands that cradled your face stank of the blood of thousands. It was a truth that applied to you both with haunting accuracy. Sylus did not know kindness—an element you possessed in abundance. And yet, despite your circumstances, you two had fallen for each other helplessly. When worlds collide, it is only natural for us to explore the lands that are unknown.

Emotions are impulsive creatures. When you met the relentless conqueror, you felt nothing but sympathy for him. You prayed that his heart could rid itself of the malice it bore, that he could turn over a new leaf and embrace a life of peace one day. You did not hate him. But you did not feel for him either. So why did your heart thump against your chest every time you looked at him?

Emotions are impulsive, and morals are fluid. You could never have expected to learn something from a heartless man. Sylus taught you that immense cruelty and a tender soul could coexist. He taught you that equilibrium exists, even in humans.

The first time you truly looked at him, you saw vulnerability, an odd sense of tenderness, and affection. And it stirred something in you. You felt warmth spreading across your body, to your cheeks, and eventually reaching the chambers of your heart. Your body stilled, blood coursing through your veins at an increased speed, and his eyes softened momentarily around you. But you couldn’t. You couldn’t feel this. You couldn’t be in love. This man single-handedly went against everything you believed in. He preached what you condemned and lived the way you feared. He was what you were afraid of becoming—the type of man you deemed pathetic and vindictive.

Then why? Why did you go quiet under his loving gaze? Why did you begin to see a side of him you wholeheartedly believed did not exist? Why did he start to feel... human?

You decided that the answer was love. Infatuation. But you knew that the two of you were doomed. How could people from two different worlds, both literally and metaphorically, ever touch? Well, one has to learn to compromise.

Sylus was aware of your pacifistic nature. The way you hesitated to raise the gun, the way you faltered to slay the wanderers, or the way you looked at him when he made decisions he believed were necessary for survival. He couldn't bear to see that look on your face, he had to admit. He couldn't handle how you silently pleaded with him to take another route, to make another choice. How you looked at him as if he was about to commit a monstrous act, though to him, he was merely keeping you both safe.

No matter how much he tried to convince himself it was the best choice, the guilt continued to gnaw at him. And the subtle hints you dropped about your discontent afterward did not help. "There's always another way, Sylus," you'd say, your eyes empty and unreadable. If it were anyone else, he would have moved on. But it was you.

“Did you ever consider living a different life? Just... running away from all this and starting over?” you asked, twirling a tiny flower between your fingers. "I mean... don't you get tired?"

It didn’t take long before Sylus began to see the world through your lens. The small snippets of your true thoughts that you'd drop subtly into every conversation changed something in him. And now, the more he thought about it, the clearer it became to him—he didn’t mind any life, as long as you were in it.

Whether it be a simple, domestic lifestyle or a life led by danger and thrill, his only wish was to walk by your side every step of the way. The things he had to leave behind didn’t matter. Not more than a future with you. For a chance to be by your side eternally, he’d sacrifice anything. Whether it be himself or the world, he’d burn both to ashes, rip them to shreds over and over, even if the chance was slim. He would—for you.

But he knew.

Sylus knew it didn’t erase his past. No amount of redemption could rewrite his fate.

“I want to create a haven. With you. A paradise where everyone is equal. Where war and violence don’t exist, where people can live without the fear of coming home to a massacre. I know it's naive. No need to tell me. But, still... if I could save even one soul, I'd be content."

Sylus had said before that he could make every wish come true. And yet, when you'd said this with your head cocked towards the sky, he could not help but feel powerless to fulfill your desire. His calloused hands had worn out from the tartness of blood. Seeds of destruction had been sown in his eyes, and an unfamiliar power that kills coursed through his veins.

How could he aid you in crafting a paradise with such a past?

"A haven..." he said softly. "That is a beautiful thought. But, sweetie, do you really think someone like me can stand by your side and help you create that place?" Sylus slipped his fingers into the valley between yours, gently gripping your hand and bringing it to his chest. "These hands break whatever they hold." "Then how am I still here?" A thoughtful hum escaped his lips. The truth was, it was love. An admiration he held only for an insignificant amount of things in his life. "Then..." you mused, "You can find it in your heart to love more. Just like me, you can slowly learn to make your heart beat." He chuckled. "I’m a dead man." "And I’m a deranged scientist. I’ll bring you back to life."

Oh, what would he do without you?

"When you say it like that, I feel as if it is actually... possible. But, even if we did create such a paradise," he looked at you tenderly, his gaze almost apologetic, "Would I be deserving of a seat in your world? Well, either way, if you ever establish this world you dream of, I would fight to protect it. I swear."

Sylus was not a religious man. He firmly believed there was no such higher being. Despite that, he couldn’t help but think of how, if a paradise were to exist, it would not be a place for people like him. If a supreme power existed, he would be thrown into the loneliest pits of hell, forever separated from what he yearned to hold eternally. He would never see you again. He would be damned. Completely and utterly.

If a paradise existed, it would be a place for ones like you. You would walk through the gates, your head held high, and you would not turn to look at him. He was a bad man, after all. He was not worthy of your kind gaze. He was merely a sinner, and he could but watch as you moved on with your joyous life. He would be happy for you, of course. But the agony of being separated from a lover is too much for one to bear. He couldn’t deny that his heart would quench at the sight of you, and how you’d feign ignorance of his existence and embrace your new life happily.

"One day, when the gates of judgment open, you will walk forward, and I will be left behind. And you will not wait for me. You will not look back. But I will admire you as you walk in. I will adore you until the consequences of my punishment rip me to shreds. And even in the flames, my eyes will never leave yours. Until that day, though, I will cherish you."

"Don't say that!" you frowned, furrowing your brows at him. "Do you truly think you’re irredeemable? You have potential! So much of it. If we wish to, we can simply rewrite your fate." You placed a hand on top of his and squeezed. "I'll be with you if you ever make that choice. We will nip you off the stem, and this time, you’ll grow back as a far more luscious plant than you ever were." "And if I don’t change?" "Well, we’ll make use of it. I won’t give up on you because of some imaginary restriction of morals."

So, if judgment day were to come, he could but watch, standing at the border between paradise and hell, his gaze locked on you incessantly as he loved you from the other side of paradise.

Until that day comes, though, he’ll love you. Until death does you apart.

#lnds #love and deepspace #l&ds #lnds sylus #love and deepspace sylus #sylus #l&ds sylus #lads #lads sylus #sylus qin #Qin Che #sylus x reader #sylus fluff #sylus fic #sylus drabble #xreader #sylusxreader #drabble #fanfiction

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jessaerys · 1 month ago

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the first comedian i ever saw was john mulaney, whom i discovered via gifsets on tumblr, and i do not mean like, the first comedian that made comedy interesting for me or the first time i realized comedians could be funny and relatable to the #youth. i mean john mulaney's 2012 comedy special, New in Town tumblr gifsets of his noodle-y coked up stand-up alerted me to the concept of stand-up comedy as in, like, the concept of stand-up being a thing that exists, because i grew up so sheltered that i shit you not i was not allowed to watch comedians. the whole genre was banned, like movies that deal with witches, or the theory of evolution.

those i was aware existed. movies with magic in them, theater, seeing classmates outside of school hours, holidays, life saving medicine, premarital sex, being a LESBIAN, among other things, all of which i, at some point, was able to intuit were things that existed in the Them part of Us vs Them.

so they were categorized within my emerging consciousness as:

"those things i am not allowed to partake in despite really really reaally wanting to, but unfortunately, i can't, shan't, and never will, it's not in the cards for me, because, God doesn't like those cool sexy enigmatic forbidden things. and he will punish you if you do like those cool sexy enigmatic forbidden things, but don't worry, it won't be with eternal torture in hellfire - which all of those other FAKE Christians believe, unlike us, the Real Christians, who know God is loving and merciful and true, and will ONLY torture you and kill you and destroy the world and 99% of all humans present, past, and future in Armageddon with NON-eternal hellfire, and since we don't have souls because everything we are exists only in His perfect infinite memory and therefore only He, YAHWEH, whose Holy name in ancient Hebrew means "to cause to become", or "to come to pass", He is the only one who can bring you back to conscious existence after you die which he will do for all of those cool people from the past you always wanted to talk to like leonardo da vinci, or albert einstein, or jane austen, or Genghis Khan, and they will aaaaaall hang out with each other and trade juicy historical gossip with your friends and family and aall of yours and your family's resurrected dead loved ones who by the way, will all be paused at the IDEAL cusp of youth and virility, and will never grow old and live forever in a second paradise on earth where ambiguously socialist communities will live meaningful, semi-rural lives in idyllic, suspiciously american-looking stasis in a new Reality where you can farm the land and commune with nature and have a Tiger as a pet because all animals will be tame and also herbivorous for some reason�� they will ALLL hang out and NONE OF THEM will ever THINK OF YOU or REMEMBER YOU or BE SAD YOU AREN'T AROUND because not only is God going to drag you to the recycle bin folder and hit DELETE FOREVER, but he is also going to eternal sunshine of the spotless mind YOU from your mom's and dad's and sister's and friend's and resurrected loved one's MEMORIES (it will be kind of like the difference between being vaporized and being beamed up in star trek, you know, like technically the same thing, but one has a way cooler outcome) God in all of his infinite benevolence and neverending mercy will condemn you to this fate only IF ☝🏽 you don't fast-forward the VHS tape during Ursula's cunty song in the little mermaid."

so i knew those things existed from the cultural osmosis they couldn't shield me from because homeschooling is, thank god, illegal in mexico.

as opposed to COMEDY, which was was apparently too abstract an art form for my feeble baby brain to conceptualize as a thing, though -to be fair- comedy consists of an old guy standing in place, talking, which -to be fair- was the one thing that would make children in the 90s not want to be glued to the mischievously electric warm and loving cloth mother box: the CRT TV. (as opposed to what a subsection of those same 90's kids's answer would be now, which is, well, you know.)

all of this is to say, john mulaney, the concept of stand-up comedy: suddenly i am connecting the dots, i am remembering moments of my life and re-contextualizing them like the last 5 minutes of The Ring, i am seeing that All Things Are Delicately Interconnected. i understood then that those references i knew cartoons like hey arnold and the animaniacs were piloting over my head but i didn't care because i was busy being six, that the little gag of a guy who is on stage under a triangle-shaped spotlight going, so what's the deal with airplane food? and getting thrown tomatoes at him (and NOT because they are the indisputable king of fruits that are vegetables, despite what the rigid tyranny of taxonomical science want you to believe -the transgender of foods, if you may),

THOSE little cartoon gags, were comedians. they told jokes for a living, outside the framework of fiction as i knew it.

and,

crucially,

they wore suits.

why? because cultural references in children's media are always a generation or two older than the children watching the cartoons are. that's just kind of how making cartoons has to be like, by virtue of children being ass at drawing. just absolutely atrocious portfolios. idiots can't even innovate on the crayon medium. composition game weak as hell. so, adults making cartoons in the 80s, living through a notorious period in kid's television known as the wild wild west where cartoons could basically show whatever the fuck they wanted short of hardcore sex, the word fuck, or god forbid, homosexuals, and the art of animation hadn't been yet massacred by calart graduates with polycule drama, when animators were REAL MEN who SMOKED like CHIMNEYS and PROVIDED for their CHILDREN by drawing SILLY ANIMALS wearing GLOVES for probably-not-racist REASONS.

so what these real men animating real art for the last generation of real children, were referencing, was the glamorous comedians of ages past, when wearing a suit was the norm.

therefore john mulaney, wearing a suit, totally normal. fork found in kitchen. frog on a lilypad. unrealistically attractive characters in daytime television hospital dramas.

well imagine my surprise when i find out that john fucking mulaney was ALSO fooled by those damn cartoons. that the majority of comedians dress like animators in the 80s.

absolute betrayal! how did we lose the art of dressing sharply for one's job, no matter how despicable! even the nazis could do it!

...and THAT'S how my set would go if i was a comedian, and you bet your ass i would be dressed to the nines. i would go all out. like puttin' on the ritz but much less like a video you and other people in your age bracket remember watching on tv as children late at night, which terrified you despite no adults noticing anything uncanny about it, but none your ragtag team of internet sleuths can't find anything about it online... and isn't that just odd.... surely, following this investigative thread will not unearth any horrors best left forgotten.......

if i was a comedian, by the way, i would definitely be the "but doctor, i am pagliacci!" kind that has a substance abuse problem, but not even one of the sexy glamorous ones like pills or cocaine or even the humble alcoholism, as i am writing all of this in one single sitting while stoned on this fancy californian edible gummy i bought legally at the Weed Store, which is now a thing that exists and is normal, and can you believe?? how wonderful life can be when you've joined the Them team ???

that's how my set would go. but not the opener, more like a second or third act set. for my first act set i would show up, wearing a suit so well-tailored every woman in a ten mile radius would fall wildly in love with me and i would stand very solemnly in silence while everyone settled down their chatter and applause, and with kind of a valley girl accent (it's not a reference or anything, we have established i can barely handle the concept of references, i just think it would be funny) with a kind of valley girl accent i would go, "anyone here like incest?"

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thesadadventurersgame · 1 year ago

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The sad adventurers

Play as sadness incarnated, being revered as a deity and condemned to cry for the rest of eternity. Join an thrilling adventure with mortals you just met and, for the first time in your life, make real friends! (and try not to make them cry while they're around you and your contagious sadness). Will you help you new friends get what they want or will you get in their way?

The story will have two main points of view: Mc's and Antara Al-Amin's, other characters will also have their own POVs, but they will be shorter and won’t allow you to make choices.

(This is a wip that, unfortunately, will take time to be completed. English is not my first language and I do this just for fun, if you see any typo, please tell me!)

“In the beginning, there was only happiness. The first goddess was born from all the laughs in the world. A woman who shines every time someone laughs or smiles, never sad or angry. Love came soon after, from the desire to share this happiness, from the desire to care and be cared for. They loved and love everything they see. But, when mortal men were expelled from paradise, when they first began to feel pain and cried, from their tears emerged sadness. A deity who cried, cries and will cry forever and ever, cradling all the sadness in the world in their arms. They did not come alone though. Anger, their brother, came from the blood that men have shed and will be strengthened by it in the future. He can never be satisfied and will never be satiated, nothing makes him smile more than pure hatred. and, finally, came Fear. Born from the fear of feeling sadness, pain, fear of losing control of your own feelings, your own body, fear from being hurt and hurting. that’s where he came from.

But, before all of them, we, mortals, were born. The many fruits of the immense tree the love between life and death is. Unlike the Gods, we can feel all types of emotions proportionally and unproportionally. Only we can feel everything and feel nothing at the same time, Without us, the Gods would be nothing. But we are never satisfied, are we? we want everything until there is nothing left and will do everything, everything we can to have it. Everything to have at least one wish, any wish, fulfilled.

In ancient books it is said that if you can gather: hapinness tears, sadness laughter, the blood of love boiling with hate, a little ounce of love from hate and a demonstration of courage from fear, life itself will grant you one wish, ANY wish! That's why I brought you all together here. Together we can make history!” the man closes the book in front of him, smiling from ear to ear. “So? What do you guys say?”

𖦹 Customizable MC

ꕀ Name, personality, species, gender, sexuality, pronouns, appearence, level of naivety, hobbies, your control over your own powers and more

𖦹 Romance 1 (or more) of 6 romanceable love interests

𖦹 Choose between helping the adventurers achieve their goals or completely hindering them

𖦹 Define how you fell and interact with the other gods, as well with your own divinity

Ro’s:

Antara Al-Amin (27) | The leader | (he/him)

An adventurous and brave man. He was the one who brought your group together and is also, the leader. He makes you curious, no one has ever tried such a thing before, no one has ever been foolish enough, and yet there he is, sure that everything will work out.

Everything you do seems to mesmerize Antara, and he seems to do everything just to see your smile, failing miserably most of the times, but never giving up.

You do not know what his wish is going to be, but you know he won't give up on it, no matter what.

Species: Human

Apparence and personality: Antara is a slender but strong tall man, measuring approximately 1.80m. His umber skin is covered in scars from past adventures, which he brags about endlessly. His midnight black hair is styled in long dreadlocks and his amber eyes sparkle with a mischief that he doesn't care to hide. According to him, his stubble is his charm. He prefers masculine clothes, but likes to dress feminine in formal occasions. Antara has a flirtatious and outgoing personality, throwing himself into the arms of anyone willing to hold him for the night. it's clear to you that he cares about everyone in the group, including you, which is silly, but you don’t dislike it.

Rajinder Khan (28) | A good friend | (He/Him or She/Her)

Rajinder at first only joined the group because of Antara, their childhood friend, as they thought that Antara was going completly insane, fearing for his friends life. However, the promise that their greatest wish could be granted was also a factor, who would deny such oportunity after all?

Rajinder was the first to protest when Antara allowed you to join the group. They seem to have a great aversion to showing emotions, especially sadness, maybe that’s why they ignores you everytime they can.

Species: Human

Apparence and personality: Rajinder is a tall (2.00,m 1.98,f) heavy built person. Their golden skin is covered in freckles from head to toe. Male Rajinder keeps his hair in a military cut, female Rajinder wears short braids, both have black hair and almond eyes. They prefer more gender neutral clothing. Rajinder has a distant and cold personality, speaking only when needed.

Yueling Bai (25) | The liar | (She/Her, They/Them or He/Him)

The first thing you learned when joining the group was that you cannot trust a single word that comes out of Yueling’s mouth, for every ten words they say, nine are lies. The only thing they don’t seem to lie about is about how they feel about you and the others.

Yueling is a notorious liar and a extremely famous mercenary, that’s why Antara invited them in the first place, They have many skills that can be extremely useful. Every time the groups wishes are mentioned, Yueling is the first to try to change the subject, or they come up with a new wish. You are not going to lie, this worrys you, but there’s nothing you can do, for all you know, they can't even have a wish yet. They're neutral towards you joining in the group, and find the way you affect their emotions annoying, but despite that, they still treat you with polite deference (sometimes)

Bonus: They grew up within one of the kingdoms in your territory, which is embarrassing since you don't remember most of them.

Species: Half-elf

Apparence and personality: Yueling has a lanky body and is avarage in height (1.64), with olive colored skin, covered in tattos. Their straight short hair flows freely below their jaw, a small red clip pinning their bangs to the top of their head. They wear scarlet-red paint around their eyes which perfectly harmonizes with their jet black iris. Female and male Yueling prefer clothes generally assigned to the gender they identify with, however non-binary Yueling will prefer more masculine clothes. Yueling is a born liar, their playful personality, for all you know, could be another one of their various lies, but you like it.

Felix/Felicia Bellerose (22) | The runaway princet | (He/Him or She/Her)

F comes from the second most powerful empire in the world, Tartarus, a troubled place led by a tyrannical and sadistic Queen, their mother, Hild Bellerose, more know as the “Red Queen”. F's dream has always been to free his empire from Hild’s clutches, but they never had the courage to do so, being raised to be complient and obedient, going against their mother was like a fever dream. Luckily, they know the right people. They joined the group with the help of their royal guard, who helped them escape from the palace during the night. They don't seem prepared to fight, at all, good thing they have their charisma.

They're easily impressed by you and your powerss, treating you with deference.

Species: Vampire

Bonus: Tartarus is one of the kingdoms under Gunnar's territory, you can choose how to feel about it.

Apparence and personality: F is an tall (1.85m 1.82f) skinny person, with pale ivory skin and red eyes. Their curly, sunset-blonde hair is tied in a low ponytail with a crimson red ribbon if male and falls on their shoulders freely if female. They use a big black umbrella during the day and round sunglasses, if female, F will prefer feminine clothes, but doesn’t have a preference if male. F is a shy, air-headed person and a huge people pleaser, but, when needed, they are extremely charismatic and flirtatious. They will do everything to please their companions. They have a really hard time making choices by themselves.

Aza Bonheur (24) | The (un)lucky one | (She/Her)

Aza is F's royal guard and their biggest co-conspirator against Hild, she’s the one who convinced the princet to join the group and is one, if not the only, of their closest friends. She can easily be considered one of the strongest person of the group and strangely, she doesn't seem to have a wish to make.

Aza has an supernatural level of luck (good and bad), which is defined by a magical coin that she carries with her everywhere. She also appears to be able to steal other people's good luck and can transfer good or bad luck to others. She never mentions how she gained these “powers”, avoiding the subject as much as she possible can.

She treats you with deference but has her suspicions about you.

Species: Human

Apparence and personality: Aza is a strong women of avarege height (1,72), with green eyes and rose beige skin, covered from head to toe in scars. Her almond-colored hair is short and gelled back, showing the scar that runs from one side of her face to the other. Aza has a tough but kind personality. She is a serious woman who doesn't fool around but has a passion for drinking games. She doesn't have a preference for clothes, when she is not wearing her armour, she likes to wear anything as long as it is practical.

Douglas, Fear itself | The one who vanished | (He/They)

Douglas is the only God to not have an counterpart. When you were younger, Douglas was a shy and fearful boy, always in the most darkest of the corners, watching everyone cautiously. Neither you nor the other gods remember a thing about Douglas, because, when you separated, all the memories you had of him disappeard...but they seem to be coming back.

You don't know how, but you will find him.

Species: Vampire

Apparence and personality: You remember Douglas as a tall and slim boy, his tanned skin was always sickly pale and he had huge, dark circles under his eyes. Deep crimson red eyes that were always wide open. His hair was dark and oily, going down his back. All you can remember is how he trembled looking at you and the others.

Non ro’s:

Gunnar, Hatred itself | your brother | (he/him)

Gunnar, your dearest brother and the most hot-headed person you've ever met. You are the only person and thing that makes him smile other than hatred and violence. You spent a good part of your life clinging to him. In times of war, where your sadness was so deep that you couldn't stop sobbing and screaming, even if his blood was so hot to the point of melting his skin, he never stopped taking care of you, staying by your side all the time.

You do know where he is.

Species: Demon

Appearance and personality: Gunnar is a very tall man (2.00) with muscular build, and appears to be approximately 30 years old. His white hair falls over his shoulders like waterfalls and his porcelain skin is often red and burnt because of his blood, which boils at the slightest provocation. He has red eyes and a neatly trimmed beard. He does not prefer a specific type of clothing, but generally wears more androgynous clothing. Gunnar hot-headed, mean and sadistic

Bonus: Gunnar is aromantic

Ahladita, Hapinness itself | your counterpart | (She/Her)

You and Ahladita were always fighting in your youth. For being counterparts, the mere presence of each other could ruin the other's work in mere seconds. While she was trying to make something happy, you soon came to make the same thing sad and vice versa. If she tried to make a place sunny, you came to make it rainy, but she always had extra advantage, she was older and trained her powers much more than you did. You can choose whethever this rivalry has passed into adulthood or not

If you are not rivals in adulthood, you will know where she is ;if you are rivals, then you won't.

Species: Fairy

Appearance and personality: Ahladita takes the shape of a woman in her early 20s, who has a curvy body of average height (1.70). Her skin has a golden bronze hue and is soft and shiny. Her curly, black hair is inches from dragging on the floor and contrasts perfectly with her golden eyes. She prefers more feminine clothes. She is extremely extroverted and bubbly.

Itoko, Love itself | Someone interested | (They/Them)

Itoko has always had a peculiar interest in all the other gods except happiness, perhaps due to the fact that you are all mostly negative emotions. Itoko were always very observant and had an unhealthy obsession with your brother, but well, counterparts. You both were relatively close in your youth, and you can choose if this continued in your adulthood. They love you, for they love everything they see and feel, but is not romantic and maybe, it's not even platonic, for all you know, it can be more as if you were a... a story, an subject, an object that they are deeply invested in. After a long time, their curiosity turned to you once again, their attention is completely yours now.

You don't know where they are, but it wouldn't be hard to find out.

Species: merfolk

Appearance and personality: Itoko takes an androgynous appearance in their mid-20s. Their curvy, chubby bodie are a creamy shade and their skin is smooth with a heart-shaped scar in the middle of their chest. They are short in height (1.55) and have midnight black hair, which reaches the middle of their back, styled in a hime cut. They prefer feminine clothing, but are usually naked, with just a cloth to cover their genitals. They are calm and observant and love to flirt.

Bonus: they can shapeshift

Dunia, Life, the beginning of everything. | The creator | (She/Her)

Everything came from Dunia and Orpheus, everything belongs to them. She has looked after you and the other Gods since the moment you were born. You never had the best relationship with her, but she was always there.

You know where she is

Appearance and personality: Dunia takes on the appearance of a woman on her mid 40s with a robust and tall build (1,95), with dull brown skin. Her long, wavy hair is tied into a high ponytail and she wears silver armor, which you've only seen her without once in your life. She is a serious and cold woman.

Orpheus, Death, the end of everything | The beginning and the end | (He/Him)

Everything came from Dunia and Orpheus, everything belongs to them. Mortals fear his judgment. Creator of the 7 layers of hell and a father to you, Orpheus, unlike Dunia, has always been very close to you, taking care of you as if you were his own child.

You know where he is

Appearance and personality: Orpheus takes the form of a man in his early 50s, of average height (1,70), with a slim, frail build and a pale skin full of scars. his wavy blonde hair is cut below his ears and is always messy. He is a calm man and is terrible at giving advice.

Demo tba | Pinterest | Playlists

#if game #if wip #twine game #twine if #interactive fiction #interactive fiction wip #interactive fic characters #introduction post #dating game #dating sim #wip game #interactive fic

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deusvervewrites · 2 months ago

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Paradise of the Strong: Shiozaki in this Japan? As a Christian she should be on the side of the Resistance, but we all know how easily any religion can be turned against its own core tenets or used to justify actions it should condemn...

I think the big sticking point is that the MLA are a cult of personality who worship Re-Destro. Not that this is necessarily an impossible contradiction, as proven by multiple real world events.

Her Quirk is a mutation which is, at first glance, somewhat weak, and that's not exactly the kind of thing the MLA consider their 'in group' which is worth noting

#asks #paradise of the strong au

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jaywantstosleep · 2 months ago

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tgcf, a reflection.

it's about opposite halves; "body in the abyss, heart in paradise" (Xie Lian, vol. I, ch. 1) had to be an oxymoron. i noticed how it manifests itself throughout the novel, both its sintactic structure and its semanthic implications; in my opinion, it's the essence of the story.

so, Xie Lian enshrines the grave of a ghost he himself struck down on a bridge with his reflection: body in the abyss, heart in paradise, or 身在无间，心在桃源. 无间 is the avīci or worst level of Buddhist hell: 无间 translates to no space/rest. hours before his death, the ghost had declared that such an abyss is none other than the human world. paradise or 桃源 literally means "peach blossom spring," which refers to a utopian, hidden land from a poem by Tao Yuanming. in the poem, a man comes to this land of peach blossoms by chance, marvels at the eternal peace that reigns there, and returns to share the location to the world, yet the place is gone.

my interpretation is as follows: while the physical body and everything tangible suffers incessantly, one's heart, 心 which is also the spirit/nature of something, has to reach, also incessantly, for such a paradise which is nowhere since it's not a real place but a state of mind we all develop individually and we call it freedom.

Xie Lian is condemned to live up to his own precept. the worst tragedy at one point is that he cannot die, so he's unable to escape the abyss of perpetual torture, a gradual one that is triggered by his first hubris. Xie Lian oscillates between being the sacrificial lamb of the Heavens (he does, indeed, share several characteristics with the messianic archetype) to the one who carries the axe as a result of the corruption of his body, soul and morals. and it's not only in him that the phrase manifests itself. other characters, such as Shi Qingxuan, Yin Yu, Xuan Ji, Jian Lan, the Four Calamities or Jun Wu become both victims and victimizers of their own 无间, carefully interweaving stories into a single work quite similar to greek tragedies of fatal destiny, such as Oedipus or Prometheus in chains. the author further plays with this dual and contradictory nature of the oxymoron in individual scenes, aided by visceral, folkloric and epic symbolism (i'll reflect on my favorite scenes in a near future). furthermore, a brilliant narrative parallelism is created between Xie Lian and Bai Wuxiang, whose mask is fittingly with one half smiling and the other half crying to project this madly antithesis onto Xie Lian, hiding any human traits he may still have.

to all this, the phrase raises the question of the paradox of Theseus; with so many irremediable changes, what makes you you? in the novel, more than 800 years pass since the death of the ghost on the bridge. Xie Lian and Hua Cheng are in front of a campfire on the seashore. Xie Lian tells him: "to me, the one basking in infinite glory is you; the one fallen from grace is also you" (vol. IV, chap. 63). Xie Lian doesn't mean that such opposites to which the self is deconstructed and subjected conform one whole exclusively, for that's but the result of the tangible 无间, but what we do with it. he, at the climax of his corruption, managed to remain true to himself and stop a catastrophe thanks to a small gesture of kindness that nevertheless describes something much bigger. "i want to understand your everything," Xie Lian continues; though transient, both opposing halves deserve to be loved equally. that man who handed him a bamboo hat loved him, for a few seconds, with wholeness. the 桃源 perchance can be found cathartically; the 桃源 is the eternal faith towards oneself. absolutely no one fought Xie Lian's battles but him, literal and figurative, nor did anyone had to. it was enough to believe in him, and to make him believe that he can believe in his own freedom again. suddenly, what's tragic transforms (again, a contrary) into a miracle: Xie Lian, thank heavens, cannot die. as for him and his shared fortune with Bai Wuxiang, they bifurcate in the end, both "endings" complementing each other, in spite of everything.

#tgcf #heaven official's blessing #tgcf xie lian #xie lian #book review #bai wuxiang #literature

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erysvoleil · 1 year ago

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Also while I'm thinking about paradise killer again (good game glad I played it) [also full spoilers because yeah] I think the thing that sticks out to me the most in the "no matter what you do, you didn't change the system" department is the conversation with henry you get if you actually manage to save him. If you actually jump through all the hoops and dig into all the side tangents to completely absolve him, completely get him off the hook of every single thing he's ever been accused of and he's still there in the "drive off into the sunset and/or do some extrajudicial executions" segment to chat with.

Because like. You've done all that. You've Won, with respect to his story, you've Stood Up for the little guy, saved the day. And he's still in prison. He's still a disposable human sacrifice who's getting left behind while the powers that be condemn this entire reality to oblivion. He's still got a demon screaming bloody murder inside him. All you've won for him is the right to watch the world end, a few more hours of breath before his inevitable execution.

And like, damn! That's really potent! It makes you think of the other ways he's unsaveable-you can't give him the like decade of his life he spent in prison on the earlier accusations back, you can't undo the fuckhell of his entire setup as a fall guy for the administration, his very conception being tied up in their bullshit games, you can't undo the way disposable underclass in this society has permanently eviscerated his social existence! And at least assuming my memory of it is intact enough, he's still pretty bitter about all of that! You cannot as the One Person magical Video Game Protagonist really do anything to save him! It's Quite Potent!

#paradise killer

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morsmortish · 10 days ago

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in some ways, barty is adam. his father made him in his image, just as god made humanity in his. i mean, he even has the same name. he was given a life of paradise, not in the Garden of Eden, but as part of a rich, respected, influential family. he’s smart and loved and wealthy. what more could he want?

in some ways, barty is eve. despite having everything he could want, he makes the active choice to disobey and sin, joining the death eaters by his own volition. he takes a bite from that apple and doesn’t look back. in doing so, he dooms himself forever.

in some ways, barty is the snake. he is inherently, inexplicably evil. he symbolises temptation because that is what he does: tempts people, abused their love for him. he lives within a world of wisdom, not far from a tree of wisdom, and when he is condemned, his punishment is to become like everyone else, roam as an unimportant spec for all eternity.

#t #beth and the biblical parallels strikes again #i find the bible such an interesting piece of literature. do i believe in it? depends on the weather #barty crouch jr #old testament #marauders era

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matthew2641 · 4 months ago

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Hannibal's expression during his assault on Miriam Lass bears resemblance to Alexandre Cabanel’s The Fallen Angel. i feel this evocation extends beyond mere aesthetic homage to instead entwine itself with the ontology of Hannibal Lecter's self-conception.

Cabanel's rendition, drawn from Paradise Lost, is a depiction that challenges the crude caricature of maleficence most associated with him. Here, Lucifer emerges as a being suffused with an agonised sublimity, a cast angel wounded yet incandescent with his terrible splendour. Hannibal is a man whose estrangement is elective to the degree that his being becomes predicated upon an elevation beyond, what he feels, are the vulgar strictures of human ethics, morphing ignominy into a sovereign assertion of autonomy. the act of silencing Miriam Lass thus assumes a dual function: a pragmatic excision of a threat, and a ritualistic reaffirmation of a self-stylised divinity. just as Lucifer's descent, which in Milton's rendering is an act of self-authorship. so too does Hannibal enact his violence as both expression and consecration. his choice to remain beyond society's pale is not the mark of a beast but the signature of one who has crowned himself as something greater. tertium quid — neither wholly human nor wholly monstrous, a figure existing in an interstitial abyss between godhood and damnation.

such self-exile also recalls hallmarks found in Gnostic and apocryphal traditions. wherein figures expunged from the material world are not cast as a means of punishment, but initiated into a higher, more painful knowledge. for within Gnostic thought, the ''fall'' is not an inherently negative notion; rather, it is the necessary precondition for transcendence. it is a liberation from the chains of the material world, where the only cost becomes the inescapable truth of one's own condition. Hannibal's, in a manner akin to Lucifer's, descension is inverted to a means of ascension, inhabiting a space utterly apart from human comprehension, a space wherein violence marks both his freedom and the affirmation of his unshackled being.

Cabanel's Lucifer, resplendent in his abasement, embodies a duality mirrored by Hannibal, a creature of unbearable solitude and equally unconscionable self-awareness. the tragedy shared by both figures is not their expulsion from conventional morality but the lucidity with which they embrace it. in The Fallen Angel, Lucifer's furrowed brow and gleaming eye betray a soul that, though condemned, does not grieve its rebellion but savours its ruinous majesty. Hannibal, in his moment of violent orchestration, manifests the same ineffable grandeur and immaculate solitude. in aligning himself with the Luciferian archetype, he enshrines himself in his mythos, shaping exile through the means of ascension rather than loss.

#hannibal #hannibal lecter #mads mikkelsen #hannibal nbc #nbc hannibal #writing

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eye-of-mordor · 5 months ago

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TAROT CARD SERIES 7/21 The Chariot

After being banished from the garden, the Lovers face its east end where cherubim (angels) guard the passage to the garden's center where the tree of life stands. At right is a white sphinx, and at left is a black one, and in some different versions of the tarot they are not sphinxes but rather horses. Now that the man and woman have been given the boot from paradise, they are condemned to wander the world in all their miserable mortality and with it, plagued by mankind's most horrid invention: war. Thousands of years later, their descendants would invent the wheel and then the chariot that was utilized in speedy conquests by nomadic foreigners from the far northern steppes that came to the middle regions of the globe. With this came hierarchies of caste law. Money was invented, societal classes developed to separate the poor from wealthy, the latter of whom professed a divine lineage from the godly father and mother and strove to preserve that diminishing lineage.

#Tarot Series #Tarot #Haladriel #Saurondriel #Galadriel #Morfydd Clark #Halbrand #Sauron #Charlie Vickers #TROP #The Rings of Power #Rings of Power #mine #my edit #LOTR #Lord of the Rings #The Lord of the Rings #occult

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eretzyisrael · 5 months ago

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Over the weekend, we saw more proof that the only time the world cares about Palestinian civilians are killed is when there is a way to blame Israel.

The New Arab reports:

A Palestinian journalist was shot and killed outside her family's home in the northern West Bank town of Jenin late Saturday, where Palestinian Authority (PA) security officers, backed by the Israeli military, continued their crackdown on Palestinian resistance fighters. Shatha al-Sabbagh, 22, was killed by a sniper with the Palestinian security forces while she was with her mother and two small children, her family told The New Arab's Arabic language edition Al-Araby Al-Jadeed.

She added that there were no fighters in the area at the time. Sabbagh's brother-in-law, Suhaib al-Mura'i, said a sniper stationed inside a nearby house - which was seized by the PA forces and turned into a military post - had fired at her as she left his home with her two small children, her mother and sister.

The Palestinian Authority has been attacking terrorists in Jenin over the past several weeks. They vehemently deny that they had anything to do with her death, instead condemning "outlaws" - meaning Jenin's armed groups - for killing her:

The official spokesman for the Palestinian security forces, Brigadier General Anwar Rajab, condemned in the strongest terms the heinous crime committed by outlaws on Saturday evening in Mahyoub Street inside Jenin camp, which resulted in the killing of journalist Shaza Sabbagh after she was shot in the head, and inflicting severe material damage to a house that was burned and randomly shot at . Rajab said in a statement issued tonight that according to initial investigations and eyewitness testimonies, security forces were not present at the scene .

Nearly nobody in the Arabic media is believing the PA's claims. However, al-Sabbagh's family is not exactly impartial.

Her brother, Moatasem al-Sabbagh, was an al Qassam Brigades terrorist who was killed by Israel last year as he was holed up in a house protecting Abdul Fattah Kharousha, the Hamas terrorist who murdered brothers Hallel and Yagel Yaniv in Huwara. The mother of the siblings expressed joy at the death of her son Moatasem, saying how proud she was of him and how he is going to Paradise while the Jews go to hell.

This is a big story in Palestinian media, with each news site following their own politics in how they report it and who they blame for her death.

But the international media has shown little interest in the story of an attractive, young journalist and student being executed with a gunshot to her head.

As always, it isn't that they care about innocent Palestinians being killed. They clearly don't. The world's media are only looking for reasons to condemn Israel.

#palestinian journalist #palestinian journalist killed #satha al-sabbagh

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elysiuminfra · 6 months ago

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good afternoon. some thoughts on southern baptism, a society built on shame, and my upbringing in the bible belt.

i don't have many memories of my childhood, but i am slowly uncovering them, piece by piece. i remember being a child, in church, being taught the concepts of heaven and hell. heaven is where good people go. the purest believers, those closest to the lord christ, would go to heaven, and no one else. the definition of who was worthy enough to go to heaven was well-defined as someone who lived without sin, but what counted as *sin* was not. hell was the place sinners went, and was the ultimate punishment. it was, i would come to learn, shockingly easy to go to hell, and others would try very hard to condemn you to it if you stepped out of line. a funny remark that shocked some friends was the pictures we were shown of heaven. suburban houses in the clouds, roads paved in gold, an american paradise with white picket fences. that itself is already a commentary itself. i don't need to elaborate on why a white-dominated church would teach this. it speaks for itself!

it is a culture built on shame, secrecy, and i will admit, child abuse. sinners went to hell, so no one was a sinner. the nuclear family was the ultimate paradise, no matter what went on behind closed doors. parents would pride themselves on how good their kid behaved. if your child behaved poorly, it was a sign of failed parenting, of sin in the house. so parents tried very, very hard to keep their children from bringing them shame. this is not hyperbole. most christian children i knew were regularly hit by their parents, including myself. some worse than others. it was an open secret with the children, but adults never spoke of it. no one wanted to admit they beat their kid with a belt until they left welts. they called it "discipline" and not "physical torture against a 5 year old," because that wasn't proper. this was also enforced in my not-technically-but-basically-christian elementary school. you were threatened with beatings if you misbehaved. some kids i knew were beaten. it's so normal i knew more children that were abused by their parents in some kind of way than children who had parents that didn't abuse them.

shame played the biggest role. emotionally and mentally it took its toll on everyone. if you sinned, you were punished, cast out, ostracized, no longer included. you had to redeem yourself by repenting and being shameful for what you did. and by the lord was everyone ashamed of something. no one was open about anything, except for how good they tried to look. no one wanted to admit that they drank every night. no one wanted to admit they stole their child's adhd medication. no one wanted to admit that they were cheating on their partners because of how miserable their marriage made them feel. everyone sinned - in sometimes very self-destructive, but fixable through community type ways - but no one admitted it, because to be open about your life meant inviting shame. even benign things, such as liking certain "sinful" shows or books or anything deemed the devils work brought shame. and shame is a very powerful tool. it keeps people isolated, it keeps people scared, and that's what southern baptism operates on. everyone else but the Flock is an enemy. the Flock is safe, but the rules of the Flock were so strict, everyone was too afraid to break them. this trapped people in endless cycles of self-destruction. i saw it happen to many people. shame stops you from getting help, not that the people you were around would help you as judgmental as they are, but your church was your world.

the church was more real than the government. heaven was more real than other countries. christ was more real than capitalism. i once believed this. many, many people truly believe this. it's why a lot of christian southerners are so deranged and miserable. you're indoctrinated into this honor-built society where you must flagellate yourself just to be considered a good person. and if you were gay, or trans, heaven forbid, you were at genuine great physical risk by people who you once sat next to in church. but i will elaborate at a different time.

i have more thoughts but this post is already so long. but do you see what i mean? it's more like a cult than anything else. i was very lucky to stop going to church. some people never escape. they enforce it on their own children. unloved children enter loveless marriages and continue living miserably until they die. and the cycle repeats.

#child abuse tw #this is a personal cultural theory. but a lot of the systemic child abuse and obsession with discipline is a relic from slavery.

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episcopalianorthodox · 7 months ago

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Christ’s Descent into Hades (Hell)

Chapter I (17).

Joseph says: And why do you wonder that Jesus has risen? But it is wonderful that He has not risen alone, but that He has also raised many others of the dead who have appeared in Jerusalem to many. And if you do not know the others, Symeon at least, who received Jesus, and his two sons whom He has raised up — them at least you know. For we buried them not long ago; but now their tombs are seen open and empty, and they are alive, and dwelling in Arimathaea. They therefore sent men, and they found their tombs open and empty. Joseph says: Let us go to Arimathaea and find them.

Then rose up the chief priests Annas and Caiaphas, and Joseph, and Nicodemus, and Gamaliel, and others with them, and went away to Arimathaea, and found those whom Joseph spoke of. They made prayer, therefore, and saluted each other. Then they came with them to Jerusalem, and brought them into the synagogue, and secured the doors, and placed in the midst the old covenant of the Jews; and the chief priests said to them: We wish you to swear by the God of Israel and Adonai, and so that you tell the truth, how you have risen, and who has raised you from the dead.

The men who had risen having heard this, made upon their faces the sign of the cross, and said to the chief priests: Give us paper and ink and pen. These therefore they brought. And sitting down, they wrote thus:-

Chapter 2 (18).

O Lord Jesus Christ, the resurrection and the life of the world, grant us grace that we may give an account of Your resurrection, and Your miracles which You did in Hades. We then were in Hades, with all who had fallen asleep since the beginning of the world. And at the hour of midnight there rose a light as if of the sun, and shone into these dark regions; and we were all lighted up, and saw each other. And straightway our father Abraham was united with the patriarchs and the prophets, and at the same time they were filled with joy, and said to each other: This light is from a great source of light.

The prophet Isaiah, who was there present, said: This light is from the Father, and from the Son, and from the Holy Spirit; about whom I prophesied when yet alive, saying, The land of Zabulon, and the land of Nephthalim, the people that sat in darkness, have seen a great light.

Then there came into the midst another, an ascetic from the desert; and the patriarchs said to him: Who are you? And he said: I am John, the last of the prophets, who made the paths of the Son of God straight, and proclaimed to the people repentance for the remission of sins. And the Son of God came to me; and I, seeing Him a long way off, said to the people: Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world. And with my hand I baptized Him in the river Jordan, and I saw like a dove also the Holy Spirit coming upon Him; and I heard also the voice of God, even the Father, thus saying: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And on this account He sent me also to you, to proclaim how the only begotten Son of God is coming here, that whosoever shall believe in Him shall be saved, and whosoever shall not believe in Him shall be condemned. On this account I say to you all, in order that when you see Him you all may adore Him, that now only is for you the time of repentance for having adored idols in the vain upper world, and for the sins you have committed, and that this is impossible at any other time.

Chapter 3 (19).

While John, therefore, was thus teaching those in Hades, the first created and forefather Adam heard, and said to his son Seth: My son, I wish you to tell the forefathers of the race of men and the prophets where I sent you, when it fell to my lot to die. And Seth said: Prophets and patriarchs, hear. When my father Adam, the first created, was about to fall once upon a time into death, he sent me to make entreaty to God very close by the gate of paradise, that He would guide me by an angel to the tree of compassion and that I might take oil and anoint my father, and that he might rise up from his sickness: which thing, therefore, I also did.

And after the prayer an angel of the Lord came, and said to me: What, Seth, do you ask? Do you ask for oil which raises up the sick, or the tree from which this oil flows, on account of the sickness of your father? This is not to be found now. Go, therefore, and tell your father, that after the accomplishing of five thousand five hundred years from the creation of the world, you shall come into the earth the only begotten Son of God, being made man; and He shall anoint him with this oil, and shall raise him up; and shall wash clean, with water and with the Holy Spirit, both him and those out of him, and then shall he be healed of every disease; but now this is impossible.

When the patriarchs and the prophets heard these words, they rejoiced greatly.

Chapter 4 (20).

And when all were in such joy, Satan the heir of darkness entered and said to Hades: O all-devouring and insatiable, hear my words. There is of the race of the Jews one named Jesus, calling himself the Son of God; and being a man, by our working with them the Jews have crucified him: and now when he is dead, be ready that we may secure him here. For I know that he is a man, and I heard him also saying, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death. He has also done me many evils when living with mortals in the upper world. For wherever he found my servants, he persecuted them; and whatever men I made crooked, blind, lame, lepers, or any such thing, by a single word he healed them; and many whom I had got ready to be buried, even these through a single word he brought to life again.

Hades says: And is this man so powerful as to do such things by a single word? and if he be so, can you withstand him? It seems to me that, if he be so, no one will be able to withstand him. And if you say that you heard him dreading death, he said this mocking you, and laughing, wishing to seize you with the strong hand; and woe, woe to you, to all eternity!

Satan says: O all-devouring and insatiable Hades, are you so afraid at hearing of our common enemy? I was not afraid of him, but worked in the Jews, and they crucified him, and gave him also to drink gall with vinegar. Make ready, then, in order that you may lay fast hold of him when he comes.

Hades answered: Heir of darkness, son of destruction, devil, you have just now told me that many whom you had made ready to be buried, be brought to life again by a single word. And if he has delivered others from the tomb, how and with what power shall he be laid hold of by us?

For I not long ago swallowed down one dead, Lazarus by name; and not long after, one of the living by a single word dragged him up by force out of my bowels: and I think that it was he of whom you speak. If, therefore, we receive him here, I am afraid lest perchance we be in danger even about the rest.

For, lo, all those that I have swallowed from eternity I perceive to be in commotion, and I am pained in my belly. And the snatching away of Lazarus beforehand seems to me to be no good sign: for not like a dead body, but like an eagle, he flew out of me; for so suddenly did the earth throw him out. Wherefore also I adjure even you, for your benefit and for mine, not to bring him here; for I think that he is coming here to raise all the dead. And this I tell you: by the darkness in which we live, if you bring him here, not one of the dead will be left behind in it to me.

Chapter 5 (21).

While Satan and Hades were thus speaking to each other, there was a great voice like thunder, saying: Lift up your gates, O ye rulers; and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting gates; and the King of glory shall come in!

When Hades heard, he said to Satan: Go forth, if you are able, and withstand him. Satan therefore went forth to the outside. Then Hades says to his demons: Secure well and strongly the gates of brass and the bars of iron, and attend to my bolts, and stand in order, and see to everything; for if he come in here, woe will seize us.

The forefathers having heard this, began all to revile him, saying: O all-devouring and insatiable! open, that the King of glory may come in. David the prophet says: Do you not know, O blind, that I when living in the world prophesied this saying: Lift up your gates, O ye rulers?

Isaiah said: I, foreseeing this by the Holy Spirit, wrote: The dead shall rise up, and those in their tombs shall be raised, and those in the earth shall rejoice. And where, O death, is your sting? where, O Hades, is your victory?

There came, then, again a voice saying: Lift up the gates!

Hades, hearing the voice the second time, answered as if forsooth he did not know, and says: Who is this King of glory?

The angels of the Lord say: The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle. And immediately with these words the brazen gates were shattered, and the iron bars broken, and all the dead who had been bound came out of the prisons, and we with them. And the King of glory came in in the form of a man, and all the dark places of Hades were lighted up.

Chapter 6 (22).

Immediately Hades cried out: We have been conquered: woe to us! But who are you, who has such power and might? and what are you, who comes here without sin who are seen to be small and yet of great power, lowly and exalted, the slave and the master, the soldier and the king, who has power over the dead and the living? You were nailed on the cross, and placed in the tomb; and now you are free, and have destroyed all our power. Are you then the Jesus about whom the chief satrap Satan told us, that through cross and death you are to inherit the whole world?

Then the King of glory seized the chief satrap Satan by the head, and delivered him to His angels, and said: With iron chains bind his hands and his feet, and his neck, and his mouth. Then He delivered him to Hades, and said: Take him, and keep him secure till my second appearing.

Chapter 7 (23).

And Hades receiving Satan, said to him: Beelzebul, heir of fire and punishment, enemy of the saints, through what necessity did you bring about that the King of glory should be crucified, so that he should come here and deprive us of our power? Turn and see that not one of the dead has been left in me, but all that you have gained through the tree of knowledge, you have lost through the tree of the cross: and all your joy has been turned into grief; and wishing to put to death the King of glory, you have put yourself to death.

For, since I have received you to keep you safe, by experience shall you learn how many evils I shall do unto you. O arch-devil, the beginning of death, root of sin, end of all evil, what evil did you find in Jesus, that you should compass his destruction? how have you dared to do such evil? how have you busied yourself to bring down such a man into this darkness, through whom you have been deprived of all who have died from eternity?

Chapter 8 (24).

While Hades was thus discoursing to Satan, the King of glory stretched out His right hand, and took hold of our forefather Adam, and raised him. Then turning also to the rest, He said: Come all with me, as many as have died through the tree which he touched: for, behold, I again raise you all up through the tree of the cross. Thereupon He brought them all out, and our forefather Adam seemed to be filled with joy, and said: I thank Your majesty, O Lord, that You have brought me up out of the lowest Hades. Likewise also all the prophets and the saints said: We thank You, O Christ, Saviour of the world, that You have brought our life up out of destruction.

And after they had thus spoken, the Saviour blessed Adam with the sign of the cross on his forehead, and did this also to the patriarchs, and prophets, and martyrs, and forefathers; and He took them, and sprang up out of Hades. And while He was going, the holy fathers accompanying Him sang praises, saying: Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! Alleluia! to Him be the glory of all the saints!

Chapter 9 (25).

And setting out to paradise, He took hold of our forefather Adam by the hand, and delivered him, and all the just, to the archangel Michael. And as they were going into the door of paradise, there met them two old men, to whom the holy fathers said: Who are you, who have not seen death, and have not come down into Hades, but who dwell in paradise in your bodies and your souls?

One of them answered, and said: I am Enoch, who was well-pleasing to God, and who was translated hither by Him; and this is Elijah the Thesbite; and we are also to live until the end of the world; and then we are to be sent by God to withstand Antichrist, and to be slain by him, and after three days to rise again, and to be snatched up in clouds to meet the Lord.

Chapter 10 (26)

While they were thus speaking, there came another lowly man, carrying also upon his shoulders a cross, to whom the holy fathers said: Who are you, who have the look of a robber; and what is the cross which you bear upon your shoulders?

He answered: I, as you say, was a robber and a thief in the world, and for these things the Jews laid hold of me, and delivered me to the death of the cross, along with our Lord Jesus Christ. While, then, He was hanging upon the cross, I, seeing the miracles that were done, believed in Him, and entreated Him, and said, Lord, when You shall be King, do not forget me. And immediately He said to me, Amen, amen: today, I say unto you, shall you be with me in paradise. Therefore I came to paradise carrying my cross; and finding the archangel Michael, I said to him, Our Lord Jesus, who has been crucified, has sent me here; bring me, therefore, to the gate of Eden. And the flaming sword, seeing the sign of the cross, opened to me, and I went in. Then the archangel says to me, Wait a little, for here comes also the forefather of the race of men, Adam, with the just, that they too may come in. And now, seeing you, I came to meet you.

The saints hearing these things, all cried out with a loud voice: Great is our Lord, and great is His strength.

Chapter 11 (27).

All these things we saw and heard; we, the two brothers, who also have been sent by Michael the archangel, and have been ordered to proclaim the resurrection of the Lord, but first to go away to the Jordan and to be baptized. Thither also we have gone, and have been baptized with the rest of the dead who have risen. Thereafter also we came to Jerusalem, and celebrated the passover of the resurrection. But now we are going away, being unable to stay here. And the love of God, even the Father, and the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.

Having written these things, and secured the rolls, they gave the half to the chief priests, and the half to Joseph and Nicodemus. And they immediately disappeared: to the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen

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