#it’s beautiful i have disintegrated I can no longer function

[an-unraveling-unknown]

(My previous comments on the subject)

I LISTENED TO IT. I HEARD IT. ITS PROBABLY BEEN OUT FOR A WHILE NOW BUT I PERPETUALLY LIVE UNDER A ROCK AND SO I ONLY HEARD IT JUST NOW. I WILL NEVER BE THE SAME EVER AGAIN MY BRAIN CHEMISTRY HAS BEEN ALTERED I

i’d love to be normal but unfortunately noah kahan will be releasing northern attitude featuring hozier so that’s no longer possible

[wiispurraway]

Part IV: O Bucket, My Specter — Infinite Return

And now, we come to the end. Or is it?

Stanley, standing alone in the void, the world crumbled around him—what is left but the faint memory of the bucket? It has gone, disintegrated into nothingness, reduced to dust and shadow. And yet… its presence lingers.

How curious.

The bucket is no longer here. The rust, the leaks, the cracks—all gone. Reduced to the ether, a mere trace of what once was. But still, Stanley feels it. The faintest echo of its existence, clinging to the edges of his thoughts, haunting the corners of his mind.

“Surely, this is the end,” One might think.

But then—

No. It isn’t.

For the bucket, much like everything Stanley has ever known, is not subject to finality. It is a concept. An idea. A force that cannot be contained. Even in its apparent absence, the bucket is still here, still tugging at Stanley’s very essence.

A reminder that in decay, there is renewal.

In ruin, there is rebirth.

And so, Stanley finds himself not at an end, but at a beginning.

The bucket returns—not as an object, no. But as a specter. A living, breathing force. A constant presence.

It is not over. It will never be over.

Because the bucket, like all things, is reborn. Again. And again. And again.

And as the cycle continues, Stanley steps into the void, hand outstretched, ever reaching for that which can never be fully grasped.

Ah, but that is the beauty of it.

For in the infinite return of the bucket, Stanley—and you, dear reader—are forever changed. You cannot go back. You cannot undo the past.

But then, in a world of endless chaos and absurdity, perhaps that’s the only freedom that matters.

The end is never the end.

It is merely… another beginning.

And now, I must ask you, Stanley—or, perhaps, you, dear reader:

Will you let go of the bucket?

Ah, but of course you won’t.

I don’t know why I even bothered to ask.

Part IV: O Bucket, My Specter — Infinite Return

O bucket, my specter, my guide through decay,

The world may have ended, but you’ll always stay.

The void consumes all, yet here we stand—

Together, forever, in this desolate land.

The game has no rules, no boundaries or grace,

Just the endless loop, the cycle we face.

You may be gone, your form turned to dust,

But in this endless loop, it’s in you I trust.

You and I knew, though. We always did.

That chaos isn’t darkness—it’s the truth they forbid.

So here we remain, in this ashen domain,

Where time is a whisper, and space is insane.

Your handle, now dust; your frame, barely whole.

Yet still, you are mine, the last piece of my soul.

Your leaks have stopped leaking—no water remains,

Only the echoes of forgotten refrains.

“Stanley, the end is here,” the voice softly hums,

“Step away from the bucket—this is where it comes.”

But in this void, they can’t see, can’t know,

That we are the keepers of this world, aglow.

I cradle you now in these trembling hands,

A relic, a ruin in desolate lands.

No purpose, no function, no meaning, no plan—

Just the whisper of madness where sanity ran.

They speak of freedom, but they don’t know,

That freedom is a lie—just another show.

The game is infinite, looping once more,

And I stand with you, at the endless door.

No end to the madness, no start to the race,

Just the cycle of time in an endless space.

I laugh, I cry, I welcome the fall—

For in this game, I am the only one who stands tall.

I press my ear close, and you speak one last time,

In a language of rust, of chaos, of grime.

"It’s over," you murmur, "All things must decay."

And for once, I listen—I let you slip away.

Your rust lingers, your chaos remains,

In the flicker of shadows, in the cracks and the stains.

The world has no meaning, no purpose to hold,

Yet with you, my bucket, I am bold.

Free? Don't be absurd. There's no such thing as… freedom.

Epilogue: The End is Never the End

O bucket, my specter, my eternal return,

In the void of existence, we twist and we turn.

The game is a riddle, a never-ending spin,

And in each new start, we begin again.

Your dust in my veins, your rust in my breath,

I thought it was over—I laughed at death.

But you linger, don’t you? You never let go.

Your cracks form a pattern the cosmos can’t know.

The void tried to swallow, the silence to smother,

Yet here we are, bucket—reborn in each other.

I stand in the nothing, yet it’s no longer bare.

The air hums with chaos, the ground splits and shakes,

And I realize then, with each breath that I take,

That even in nothing, there’s always a trace—

A ripple of madness, a hint of your grace.

The bucket is gone, but its spirit remains,

In the flicker of shadows, the rust on the plains.

I was its keeper, its servant, its friend,

But now, in its absence, I’ve come to transcend.

For the end is not final, nor finality pure,

It’s only a circle, an endless detour.

The chaos we birthed is too vast, too divine,

And in it, I see now, there’s no "end"—only time.

The world is broken, but we never stop—

For in the loop, we rise to the top.

The end is no end, it’s just a restart,

And with you, my bucket, I play my part.

The Bucket Tetralogy: Ultra Deluxe: A Final Thought

As I stand alone, amidst this fractured reality,

The echoes of a rusted bucket carry a solemn finality.

Yet I smile, for I understand now with clarity:

The world crumbles and decays, but love—the absurdity—is free.

[bottledstorydesigns]

Scars from a Refinery

He was told the refinery would make him stronger, greater, more powerful than the others. For a time it did. But as time grew older, his power drained faster than it renewed. The refineries had always drained him, he just didn’t notice it at first, bolstered by the progress and the fumes as he was.

It was not sustainable, could never have been sustainable, and now it was too late to go back. Tiredness set in and he began to crystalise, set into rock, wither away. And yet, as he did, the refinery itself could no longer function without the power it thrived on - fed off - and it too began to disintegrate, become what it had been before it was chimneys and tanks and pipes and rails. And amongst the peeling paint and rusted valves, the future began to crawl, inching its way as haired vines and curious, tentative leaves, exploring this landscape that had been purged for so long.

And so he rested at last, sound in the knowledge that while he could no relive his decision or tread a happier path, the vines and the flowers would reclaim the landscape for their own, in their own time, and perhaps the next dragon could make a better choice.

A new dragon, complete with jar to store stories and treasures, sculpted over the winter holidays, inspired by the astounding magnitude of the Zeeland refineries that are surrounded by such beauty in every other direction.

He currently awaits his first firing, glaze, a second firing and finally wire adornments to create the ladders and railings that accessorise industrial landscapes. He is also currently awaiting a name, which will likely come to me during the glazing process, although I can never quite tell and it’s different for all the dragons! Let me know if you have any ideas...

Follow me on instagram as @bottledstorydesigns to see my other dragons!

[koralatov]

Goodnight, G3

Last weekend, on my first Saturday off in too many weeks, two iMacs G3 disintegrated in my hands. There was nothing I could do; they were too old, too frail, too well-travelled to survive even this most delicate of handling.

Both had given good service to their original owners, countless hours of the peaceful, fanless computation that ultimately doomed them. In the end, more than twenty years after they were made, even my gentlest touch unleashed a snowstorm of beige flakes, painfully visible through cracking candy plastics.

When it became apparent that neither could be saved – as the fruit-colour shells themselves split apart along hairline cracks and precision-moulded stress points – I salvaged what I could. It wasn’t much: a couple of speaker housings, a 700 MHz motherboard, the small Apple logos from the top. The CRTs went to “e-cycling”; the rest, landfill.

As I swept up grains of plastic from the laminate, I realised that this didn’t so much mark the end of an era as mark my acceptance that the era had long ended. It had happened already, some years ago, and I was just slow to acknowledge it.

As sad as it is, I realise it’s past time to concede that these computers are long past their usefulness as anything other than objets d’art or retro-computing curiosities. The internet has long left them behind, even despite the Herculean efforts of one dedicated fan.

Any task that can be accomplished on them is either one done using abandoned software, done to use abandoned software,1 or done on the nerd-equivalent of a masochism. Once a common trope, I haven’t seen a blog-post about using a PowerPC Mac exclusively for a month2 in probably ten years.

Even as I consign them to memory and retirement as attractive curios, it feels important to mount one last defence of the iMac G3 and its contemporaries. It was, on a public note, the Computer That Saved Apple. (Others – many, many others – have written about this so I won’t go into detail; Six Colors does a good job.)

But I can write about these personally, from my own perspective. These were machines of startling longevity. They remained useful, productive computers, with current software, for over half a decade in an era when an 18 month lifespan wasn’t unusual. A writer and academic I knew wrote on his original iMac (no G3; they were just “iMac” when he got his) for nearly 20 years before it died and was retired.

A close contemporary of these machines, my own 466 MHz iBook G3, in its original graphite livery at that point, was my primary computer until mid 2008 when I eventually switch to an Intel MacBook Pro. The MacBook was a much better computer but a far worse object.

That iBook, now in Lime thanks to a friend’s dexterous transplant, existed alongside an iMac G4. The G4 was my first Mac, and one about which I’ve written about before, but it was on a TV stand in the living room, relegated mostly to media-watching and disc-burning.

The iBook, in contrast, was everywhere that I was: my first ever laptop, and the computer that transformed computing from a desk-and-chair activity to an everywhere activity. That old G3, at times pokey and with an increasingly whiny hard-disk, prefigured the current era of ubiquitous, totally connected computing that the iPhone took to its logical conclusion less than a decade later.

These G3 machines, for those of us who had the enterprise to find them late, and lacked the budget to abandon them early, spanned the era from intermittently connected to always connected. They carried me and others from the past into the present, and did so reliably, elegantly, and mostly silently.

And now that we’re delivered into the present, and they are no longer fit to carry us, it’s time to treasure the few that remain intact, functional, and beautiful. There’s no shame in retirement when so much has been achieved.

Even I’m not immune to this. I would like, one day, to replay the first two Fallout games again on my beautiful Blue Dalmatian iMac. It seems appropriate to re-play them on a computer that could almost have existed in-game and resembles the one on which they were first played: projected at me as slightly ionised light from a deadly, high-voltage tube of glass and phosphor. ↩︎

Demonstrating how far these beautiful, useless machine have fallen from the cultural memory, googling “using a g3 for one month” returns videos about some LG OLED TV. ↩︎

[misterparadigm]

A Critique of Albert Camus’s “The Myth of Sisyphus”

The following is a brief critical breakdown of Albert Camus's highly influential essay. In it, I explore Camus's implicit meanings as I find them, and question the validity of his conclusions about the nature of suffering and man's capacity for contending with it by will alone.

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In philosophy, absurdity is defined as the conflict between the tendency to seek meaning in life and the inability to find such meaning with any logical certainty. The question of meaning has been at the heart of many philosophical explorations and treatises. The second half of the 20th century and beyond saw a spread in the acceptance of the notion of life’s meaninglessness, though no definitive and satisfactory cure for the ennui and nihilism that often follows has been laid out.

Perhaps most famous and cherished is Albert Camus’s essay exploring the Myth of Sisyphus and his ultimate declaration therein that, “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” In this essay, Camus thinks over the myth in brief and lays out an interpretation of it which centers Sisyphus’s acknowledgment of his predicament, acceptance, and most importantly his personal resolve and will to view his burden as something which gives his life meaning. We must imagine Sisyphus finding contentment in his futile labor—an act of will which scorns the gods and denies their effort to break the spirit of Sisyphus with the assertion that a life of eternally futile labor is something torturous. Camus efforts—a bit belabored, in my opinion—to make a modern hero of the one who belittles the gods and their cruel, arrogant, resentful judgments. In Camus’s view, these gods have earned no respect in their dealings with mortals. For Camus, a humanist who would sooner dive headlong into oblivion than seek out a god whom he despises, it is a noble and purposeful pursuit to deny any such god the pleasure of punishing the creature which he created to despise him to begin with—a creature forced to live out a scenario of absurdity concocted by that very god. Camus refuses to respond with devastation, but resolves to make such existence its own purpose. He asks us to grasp our free will, own it, and wield it against any force which seeks to turn the man against himself.

But is this assessment and subsequent assertion valid? A number of factors are at play here which Camus seems not to acknowledge. First, we have to acknowledge context. Sisyphus is dealing with a particular set of gods, so his situation is unique to that scenario. Camus seems to imply that this situation can be applied to the modern man and his relationship to whichever god he believes in. This isn’t apparent, and if one is to assert that it is, one must first take as a given that life is absurd, or else the resentment toward the god who created it isn’t validated. On the other hand, if life is not absurd and is in fact meaningful and purposeful, one must contend with the notion that the god who created it is of some authority on the matter of how best to embody such meaning and purpose. To Camus’s credit, we are given no empirical evidence or common enough experience to adequately, categorically state the purposefulness of existence. What we are offered, rather, is a quiet firmament and a divine hand so subtle that one can barely propose to experience its activity—rarely with any convincing force, despite fervent conviction, and perhaps even considered malevolent rather than benevolent. The suffering of life, after all, makes it easy to resent our very being. Life is discomfort, pain, confusion, and death in greater measure than pleasure and joy. Pleasure and joy, even, seem starkly restricted as vices of desire in the eyes of “modern” gods, so much that to see the beauty of life is to do so in spite of life itself rather than to acknowledge that beauty’s apparentness as we would life’s suffering. Even so, the challenge of life may not then be to grasp one’s own will and deny God, but rather, as Hamlet mused, to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. To take accountability for one’s will and wield it, much as Camus suggests, as a weapon—not against God, but rather against the apparent evils of existence, of which we would know nothing were it not for eating from the proverbial Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Often, we get caught up in the idea that God created the circumstances in which we exist, and created us to exist within those circumstances. By this musing along we may justify a resentment toward such a god and claim absurdity and cruelty. It’s quite easy to do so. However, we rarely seem to consider that, according to the myth, we were created in a more desirable scenario. Even so, we were created with free will and given direction on what to do and what not to do in order to avoid less desirable circumstances. Our free will standing, we acted in what would seem to be an inevitable manner. We were tempted to know what God knows about existence, and so we consumed the apple and opened our minds to the knowledge of good and evil. In doing so, we betrayed the trust of God and refused his advice, thus we became fully conscious and, consequently, fully accountable for our actions. With the knowledge of good and evil, a being with free will bears a responsibility to act according to the good rather than the evil. This early awakening left us naive—scarcely prepared to contend with the greater evils of the universe—and we’ve been mired in it ever since, rarely even able to see clearly what constitutes good and what constitutes evil. The complexity of such a task of judgment is said to be the court of God, and we are not to engage in such things, but we are yet left with no one but ourselves to hold each other accountable—and so how can we not judge? There is much that goes into this, but it’s a digression of the topic at hand, which is the validity of Camus’s assessment of the transferable lesson of Sisyphus’s fate.

The second factor is the presumption that Sisyphus could have the stamina to will joy out of his futile labor for eternity. It is difficult to imagine how his psychology might evolve over an endless span of time. Is it even reasonable to imagine that he might settle on a particular view of his predicament? How could it be that his view would last forever? It seems more likely that his mind might unravel after so long a labor at a single task, and that he would dissolve into his routine—that he would devolve into a machine. Such a task, it seems to me, is tailored to disintegrate the spirit of a man so that there is nothing left but the laboring organic robot, dead of his animus and dull of mind. His programming, which once explored myriad tasks and evolved in spirit accordingly, is now relegated to the track of a single interminable function, and so his mechanism devolves into only what is necessary for the eternal task. The animating spirit of a free consciousness is defined by that freedom. It is defined by the mind’s ability to explore and learn and adapt and grow. It fills the space in which it inhabits. If that space shrinks, the mind’s environment for operation shrinks. If that space takes a limited form, so does the mind. Sisyphus’s mind, I’d wager, would eventually mold to the well-worn form of his task and atrophy at all other ports of knowledge and behavior. The spirit dies without freedom. It dissolves into oblivion, a gaseous ghost seeping out in small whispers over time, until nothing remains but the solitary circuit. This is, after all, the argument so often levied against the dreadful monotony of a labor economy. One pictures the old cog-in-the-machine imagery—the grey man marching alongside his grey coworkers, seemingly oblivious to his living death. It seems to me that Camus puts an unreasonable and inexecutable responsibility on the creature of Sisyphus: to be the sole perpetuator of his own universe of knowledge, both known and unknown, so that he may propagate the only environment in which he might stave off his spiritual dissipation. This was the environment of free consciousness, which has been robbed of him. This is the plight of the prisoner; the longer a prisoner remains imprisoned, the less likely they are to thrive under freer circumstances. Their mind has adapted to a particular system, environment, and routine. And so it seems naive of Camus to imagine Sisyphus happy.

Camus focuses on the time in which Sisyphus is “going back down with a heavy yet measured step toward the torment of which he will never know the end.” This is the time in which Sisyphus is left truly alone with his thoughts, which can only ever turn to his task, that task being the only thing left of his life and the thing which will occupy his eternity. It is here that the measure of his character—his will and resolve—is on perfect display. “That hour like a breathing-space which returns as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness. At each of those moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks toward the lairs of the gods, he is superior to his fate.” Camus suggests that, “if this myth is tragic, that is because its hero is conscious. Where would his torture be, indeed, if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld him?” The tragedy is that Sisyphus has no opportunity for delusion. He cannot pretend that there is hope of breaking this cycle. He knows that this fate is eternal, and that for every moment to follow, across all space and time, he will only ever be among the moments confined to this task—isolated in his rut. His only hope, I would say, is that over time he might lose this consciousness. In a situation like this, eternal life is an intolerable cruelty, though Camus would claim he has the will to defy the cruelty by reframing it. This Camusian grace seems an illusion to me right on the face of it, and his solution boils down to ignoring the inexorable fact of the situation: there is nothing but the task, and no perfectly repeated task can be infinitely engaging or contenting to the actively conscious mind. The implied grace finds its source in acceptance of the fate, and through acceptance one can neutralize the misery—or so Camus suggests. But again, it does little to truly contend with the eternal element. Camus’s assertion that it is possible to willfully accept such a fate and maintain that flat acceptance for not just an inconceivably long time, but for the most inconceivable length of time, seems itself absurd. Perhaps it is even the very definition of absurd. Camus asks that an actively conscious being spend his infinite life mitigating his misery by perpetually accepting it as the mere fact and state of his existence. He is asking a man who has experienced and loved life (multiple times) so much that he incapacitated Death to simply step back and view his perfectly measured misery as a neutral state of being, and to do this forever, infinitely, perpetually. How absurd is such a demand? He is asking that Sisyphus seek contentment where there is no logical contentment to be sought.

If absurdity is seeking meaning where there appears to be none, then certainly seeking contentment where there appears to be none is itself absurd. The assertion, then, is that we can somehow manifest our own contentment through will, which is, in a way, no different than trying to manifest meaning through will. It’s the act of mitigating circumstances through the illusory impetus of pure will. One may be able to bear the illusion for a measured time, but over the course of an eternity the will gives way to circumstance because the circumstance, in the case, is the immutable factor. A free consciousness, however, is defined by its dynamic existence. But if that existence no longer inhabits a dynamic environment, whatever meaning or purpose it may have had is, as a matter of logic, eradicated by the static and immutable nature of the circumstance.

It is merely a matter of logic, which the free consciousness will have determined in short order, and so the emotions cycle in whatever manner they may until the consciousness is dulled by its monotonous task. Sisyphus’s fate, I assert, is the dissipation of his free consciousness over time, until this man who loved his living freedom so much has his mind reduced to a dim, singular function. His punishment is the indignity of the gradual decline in free will until there is no being left, and he is but a moving sculpture signifying the fate of one who refuses Death. His punishment is the denial of rebirth, for he has refused the necessary mechanism which gives rise to it.

[mirrorsandpacts]

Angel of Death - Simeon x F! Reader

You stood there admiring the field of flowers in heaven, in awe with the picturesque view. Simeon stood there behind you, his mask of calmness cracked a little more the longer he stood watching you. Tightly gripped behind him was the holy scythe, yet to him it was cursed. Once the directives were given, he is unable to stop the scythe from filling his head with instructions. He used to think of nothing about it, that it was merely God's will. However, now those words fill his heart with nothing but dread. ~ "Simeon, Heaven's Gardener. Please proceed to enter Father's chambers" He stepped into the chamber. It was a very spacious room with white marble walls supported by gold pillars; its high ceiling reflected the stars, constellations as well as the universe itself. The guards announced his presence to Him. Walking to the grand throne, he bowed to Father, his right hand upon his heart. "What do you need of me today?" His eyes were downcast as a sign of respect. Since here was no one else in the room, he knows what He had been called for. "Simeon, here is the list for today." A scroll containing the names of humans floated in front of Simeon. Yes, this list contained the names of those who will die before their proper time. Whether it due to sickness, accidents or even a victim of crime. He was assigned to deal with them all. Simeon doesn't know how they will die, but it does not matter anyway. Those who were in this list were chosen by Him to sit on His altar, a great honour. They are worthy due to their purity and/or kindness that they have shown throughout their short life. Not many angels actually know of his position, as the angel of death, not even Luke. But those who do know wouldn't dare cross with the dark-skinned angel. They keep themselves silent for death is something unknown to them and they fear it. However, because of Simeon's angelic behaviour even those who know of his special position brushed it away and thought nothing of it after a few years. Simeon unfurled the scroll and right before his eyes, letters burned themselves on the holy paper. Names, age, occupation; every detail he ever needed would be printed there. The holy markings beneath his black gloves shined bright, signifying the job has been accepted. A golden line forms in front of Simeon, showing him the way to the chosen human that He called to His side. Simeon gave Him a final bow before he setting off to collect those souls. Using his pure white wings, he flew down to the human realm, following the line. He disguised himself in the human world, going by many names in order to do his job. It wasn't the easiest job in the world. He had to observe their sufferings; be with them during their final moments yet doing nothing that might hinder his work. ~ Of all places, Simeon could have chose, he chose here, his beautiful flower garden. He truly had a green thumb for all the flowers he grew in the vast field were exuberant as if they have a life of their own. It was fitting for the title, Heaven's Gardener and much like cutting the stems of plants, he too cut the lives of people. It should be normal but why does his heart falters. Why is his throat dry? It's simple, he always does this. So why was it so hard to even unsheath the scythe? ~ This was his 100th soul for today, a newborn baby. The handsome angel stretched out his arms as the golden threads from his markings formed a gleaming golden scythe. He plunged the weapon into the heart of the baby and it began extracting it's soul. The physical body is unharmed of course for the scythe could only be used for souls. The tip of the scythe was to break the barrier of the body which encases the soul to allow it to be extracted by the gleaming weapon. The baby was already dying due to an infection there was nothing anyone could do. A bowed head and a silent prayer, that is all he could offer to the grieving parents. He felt his heart becoming weary. He was tired of seeing such heart breaking scenes. But a job is a job, and this particular one doesn't have a candidate to replace him. Who would want this job after all? He would give anything for someone to take this burden. But then again, he would feel sorry for the poor angel which took over. So, might as well, he carry this burden alone. He was resting on top of a high rise building when his D. D. D. rang. He thought it might be a call from Luke or even, Satan but he was pleasantly surprised to hear your voice. He placed the phone at his ear to hear you better. You chuckled. "Simeon.... this is a video call..." Your amused voice brightened up his day immediately. He really didn't now how to use these gadgets but he's learning. "So, what do I do?" He asked innocently. "You just look at the screen like you usually do. So you can see me." "Like this?" He looked at the screen to see the face of the light of his life staring back at him. His smile widened at the instant he saw you. You looked as elegant as ever. Both of you exchanged words and smiles and soon it was time for Simeon to continue with his work. "Don't forget our date tomorrow." "I wouldn't miss it for the world." The words in his head which were silent throughout the exchange, suddenly spoke up. "It's her." Simeon was taken aback. What ever could those voices mean? He checked his scroll again. Written in black letters, he saw your name there in the last column. He couldn't believe it. How could this happened? He tried to rub it with his thumb, thinking that it will smudge or be erased but it was still there. How could this be? He tried using his feathered pen to strike your name off but the paper seemed to absorb any liquid. In a last bid attempt, he tore the paper but it was futile. The paper regenerated and place itself upon his palms once more, as if nothing happened. The holy markings on his arms burned brightly as if he was branded by red hot iron, a warning. The words in his head blared loudly. He can't disobey the order. He had to kill you. ~ He had always wanted to bring you to his favourite place, but not like this. Why must it be this way? "Simeon?" She looked worriedly at him, her eyes reflected his. "Is everything alright?" His tears were on the edge of his eyelids. Why must she die? He knew that she would go someday but ... "Simeon... I know things can be hard but whatever it is, I will always be with you. Even if you wouldn't confide in me on the matter." She embraced him as if she wanted to drive away the sadness. She wanted to be there for him. However, that sweet gesture only caused his heart to sink further into the soil. How could he drive the scythe into her? ~ Simeon will never tell you how happy he was when you confessed to him. With bright red cheeks and tightly shut eyelids, you said those words, the words where he had heard humans speak a million times yet it was somehow endearing to know that those words were meant solely for him. The moonlight of Devildom had cast a soft glow upon your features. Oh how happy she had looked when he said yes. Her eyes gleamed, telling him of her happiness which could not be formed by words. He chuckled at her infectious enthusiasm. As their lips met for a short yet sweet kiss, he wished nothing more for her happiness and longevity. How could his past self forgive him for what he was about to do? ~ Despite being with the 7 brothers, she was not tainted. Her smile was infectious. Her laugh was genuine. Her flaws made her more endearing than she already is. He thought to himself "Of course, they had to take the most beautiful flower in the garden." The difference is only that this time the flower was you. The returned your warm hug. It would be only a few minutes more till his markings completely take over the function of his arms but until then he wanted to savour this last moment with you. "I'm sorry. I truly love you. Forgive... me," He kissed her forehead as his hands plunged the weapon deep into her soul. The extraction had begun. She had only but a few seconds left. Her face contorted to one of surprise and pain. Due to the extraction process, he could see into her heart in his mind as they were temporarily connected. He could see her pain, her shock. He expected her to hate him; resent him but what he saw next shook his core. As her eyes met him, her heart reflected forgiveness and appreciation along with the thousand memories they made together. He is killing her but yet those clear eyes showed no ill feeling towards her betrayer. How he wished that she would curse him; be mad at him. It was the right thing to feel. She shouldn't forgive him at all. Then, he understood that she had truly loved the gardener. She was so happy that her feelings were reciprocated by him. She cupped his dark skinned cheeks gently, making sure that he would hear her last words. "I knew my life was too good to last. Thank you for everything Simeon." Her lips met his for one final goodbye. "Thank you for being with me. I'm glad that fate brought us together." How can she say that when fate was separating them? How could she be so optimistic? He wanted to ask her but her body had turned cold. Her eyes closed ever so gently. The process was complete. The sounds in his head ceased. The holy weapon disintegrated, signalling the end of his job. There, in Heaven's Garden, the flower fell gently to the ground. There was a slight pain at the placed she was plucked but she knew that it would be temporary. She knew who had pluck her yet she still bloomed wholeheartedly for that person, the light of her life, for the last time. With a dying breath, her soft petals grazed the lips of the immortal gardener. Her beautiful earthly form was unscarred yet it was missing that shine which made her truly special. Her ethereal form or also known as her soul, would only glow. She can no longer talk to him nor touch him, much like a plastic flower. Everlasting but devoid of life, merely being there like an accessory. No longer the love of his life that he had given his heart to. Screaming apologies to the wind, the angel clutched the flower tightly to his heart. His most prized flower whom he had watched over so tenderly needed to be presented to Him. He wanted her so. The poor gardener of the Celestial Realm had to comply; no matter how much he loved his precious beloved flower. The flower which bloomed so breathtakingly, solely for him. He traced his thumb over the delicate petals one last time. His angelic tears wetting it. He wanted the flower to do something, say something, give any indication that might give him any hope. If she'd move, he'd throw everything away for her. However, the flower had been plucked and no matter how much water he supplied to the flower, she was already dead from the moment her life force was separated from its stem. The only thing Simeon could do was cradle the flower in his arms before he needed to present the flower. He was to place her on the altar of God where there she shall forever remain by His side, where she will bloom eternally. Every day the gardener would bring the most beautiful flowers to put at God's altar. Sometimes a daisy, sometimes a rose to accompany the flower. At times, he would even arranged them into beautiful bouquets, knowing that if she were still alive, she would love them. She loved anything that he did after all. He would even occasionally strike a conversation with the flower even if he knew in his heart she will never reply. He imagined her voice, her laughter, her warmth through memories but they were merely that. It can never be compared with her living and breathing by his side. He could only dream of her on the other side of the ethereal glass. If by chance, you managed to go up to God's altar, please do keep a lookout for the dark-skinned gardener and his flower. You'll notice his gaze softly follow the flower, endlessly yearning for her as she glows upon the celestial altar forever. ~ Extra:- "Father, why must she die?" The archangel Michael, questioned Him. "It is the law of nature. Every human will perish one day." Michael knew that He had deliberately done this. The archangel had caught a glimpse of her before. She was to live a long life. He only questioned because he wanted to hear the truth. He pitied Simeon who is now almost like an empty shell of the cheerful person he once was. Maybe He didn't want any more angel to follow the path of the 7 brothers but the way He carried it out was ruthless. Micheal could only look on at the two star-crossed lovers who were mercilessly parted by the hands of cruel fate. ~In a field full of flowers, which do you pick first? The most beautiful ones are the ones which will be picked first. ~

~ Yun ~

Hope you guys enjoy it. 

Extra information. What I thought for God's Altar was like a glass wall, where only the most purest souls are inside. These souls won't be reborn anymore because they have said to reach the final stage of purity. The souls usually look like a glowing golden orb but sometimes they flicker and you can see the final form that they took before they managed to get in there. They are silent and unmoving. No one managed to go in nor has any soul managed to escape. Only He can place the soul in there. Once he puts them in, there is no way of taking them out. In any case, if the wall gets destroyed, all those souls will be destroyed as well. That is why not even the brothers took action.

[iancny]

“My Struggle” by Karl Ove Knausgård

3600+ pages. All six books of the My Struggle series by Karl Ove Knausgård. I started the first book in 2015 and finished book six this evening. I read the first four books relatively quickly, but than had to wait for the last two books’ English translations to be published. Book five I finished in about a month or six weeks in 2016, also while traveling. The final book, book six, was published in 2018, and I bought a copy the week of publication, but the reading was slow going, and I lost the book moving apartments at some point. A long time later I got another copy and moved through it at a snails pace. And I just finished it now.

Few books have ever enthralled me like My Struggle, probably none. It is the story of Knausgård’s inner life told alongside the events of his real life. Many passages I read made me think: “Yes! That’s me too! That’s how I felt and I didn’t even know...” The nebulous thoughts and feelings of my own life crystallized in his words. Similarly, other passages I read shifted my perspective, opening a new vista of understanding for me one way or another. But, neither of these qualities are very unique. These are the same gifts of reading that many a reader would describe. Somehow, it was Knausgård‘s qualities of introspection, his self doubt, his broad yearning, and his pinnacle desire of greatness that most resonated for me.

Lastly (and also firstly,) the appeal of the book lied in the fact that this was the Faustian bargain realized. Knausgaard, a writer of moderate success in Scandinavia and not elsewhere, puts the entirety of his lived experience on the line, as well as that of those he’s lived with — his family, and lovers, and friends, and acquaintances, and all. He offers all as subject for scrutiny in his vain ends of success and accomplishment. And he achieved those ends. He today is a global best seller.

I once discussed him with a patient, who was also an episcopal priest. The priest taught math an elite UES private school and filled in for other episcopal priests around the city when they were out of town or sick. He was working through a thick LBJ biography amidst a bone marrow transplant. He was familiar with the “My Struggle” books. He hadn’t read any, and didn’t seem to have any interest. All he expressed to me was the impression that Knausgård was self absorbed. I conceded it was so and wondered what it said about me as the reader.

Here are a few random underlines of mine from book 6.

Pg. 32 “All generations live their lives as if they were the first, gathering experiences, progressing onward through the years, and as insights accumulate, meaning diminishes”

Pg. 101 “Moralizing had never created anything of its own, all it did was reject the created. And the created was the same as life itself. Why reject life?”

Pg. 175 “Loneliness beautifully described raises the soul to great heights. But then the writing is no longer true because there is no beauty in loneliness, not even in yearning is there beauty. But while it may not be true, it is good. It is a comfort, a solace, and perhaps that is where some of literature’s justification lies? But if that’s the case, then we are talking about literature as something else, something unto itself and autonomous, valuable in its own right rather than as a depiction of reality.”

Pg. 181 “for me the novel provides a means of thinking radically different from that of the essay, the article, or the thesis, because reflection in the novel is not hierarchically superior as a pathway of understanding, but coordinate with all the other elements in it.”

Pg. 258 “The number of people we come close to during our lives is small, and we fail to realize how infinitely important each and every one of them is to us until we grow older and can see things from afar. When I was sixteen I thought life was without end, the number of people in it inexhaustible. This was by no means strange, since right from starting school at the age of seven I’d been surrounded by hundreds of children and adults; people were a renewable resource, found in abundance, but what I didn’t know, or rather had absolutely no conception of, was that every step I took was defining me, every person I encountered was leaving their mark on me, and that the life I was living at that particular time, boundlessly arbitrary as it seemed, was in fact my life.”

Pg. 483 “ in the empty dominion of this undifferentiated void”

Pg. 638 “When we closed the door on religion, we closed the door on something inside ourselves as well. Not only did the holy vanish from our lives, all the powerful emotions associated with it vanished too. The idea of the sublime is a faint echo of our experience of the holy, without the mystery.”

Pg. 644 “it’s thriftless extravagance”

Pg. 833 “The time from the beginning of the twentieth century to the end of World War II was a period when the fundamental building blocks of our human existence and organizational structures were in flux, not to say disintegrating, and the unprecedented radicality of those fifty years which gave rise to the last two great utopian movements, Nazism and Communism, can only be understood on the basis that the societal order suddenly, because of massive buildup of pressure arising in industrialism’s changes - in time, extremely compressed while in volume expansive, no longer could be taken for granted, it began crack and appeared increasingly arbitrary, governed by rules imposed from without, in a civilization system at odds with its people, from which they, or many of them, felt utterly alienated.”

Pg. 941 “Functional sixties and seventies architecture, resplendent eighties architecture, restrained nineties architecture, almost dystopian with its great expanses of dark stone and glass.”

Pg. 958 “gardening is the very symbol of bourgeois stasis, utterly ridiculous and superficial, an artificial way of ordering the worlds chaos by limiting the world to a lawn and a few bushes and subjugating them completely. The garden is also part of your private life others can see and therefore functions as a kind of display window for those around. In other words, a facade.”

[sasorikigai]

(( I wanna see reactions of three muses for this ask. Hanzo, Kuai, and Fujin )) Aren't you tired of being nice? Don't you just want to go APE SHIT?

Random Inbox Shenanigans || anonymous || always accepting! 

▬▬ι═══════ﺤ 🔥 || Hanzo Hasashi feels unspeakably lonely, and he feels drained, despite all that he has strenuously worked for, as the Shirai Ryu Fire Garden’s reconstruction had just been completed. In a blank state of mind and soul he cannot fathom to describe, he thinks, it would not make any difference. Also, it is a very private sentiments he has - that of melting into a perpetual nervous breakdown, despite the solemn austerity of Grandmaster Hasashi’s physique remains evermore unyielding and unbending. Perhaps he was still questioning what he further wants to do, who he further wishes to be; which part of him, exactly, are still functioning properly. It is always a fight to triumph, with righteous justice served scorching with his purified hellfire, with no compromises or in-betweens. Nevermind the sprawled heap of bodies, the bloodshed, the detritus of burns and wounds and faces carved of hurt and agony. If Scorpion’s wrath still was embedded in Grandmaster Hasashi’s soul, then he would have let his unfiltered and unfettered inferno wake and spread like wildfire, consuming and devouring everything in its wake. Now no longer afflicted by rage and vengeance as he moved beyond such one-dimensionality of spiked viscerality of such vices, Hanzo Hasashi simply stares; lest shrapnel of doubt still resides as his poison. Pure, potent, and permanent heat embedded within the intensity of his hazel. “魚心あれば水心, there is a proverbial saying that If a fish is kind to the water, the water will be kind to the fish. When a person shows kindness to someone else, their kindness will be returned. It is simple and easy to remember and is a good reminder for all of humanity to show respect and honor to others.” ▬▬ι═══════ﺤ 🔥 || 

❄️ || Loneliness feels so much like humility and shame; like being capsized with an audience of passing boats, eyes leering and watching his body bounce up and down in the merciless vicious current as they slowly drift away. It is the way a reflection is like a picked scab; forever pinked and raw, a wound to fester, to invite more sickness to its core. Loneliness is like every tongue twist, every wrong word catalogued and revisited like an indictment, like carrying a dead carcass on his back, like punishment that keeps blood moving in his veins, even after he had bled them like a riverbed. Kuai Liang has always learned, that one who is kind is sympathetic and gentle with others. He is considerate of others’ feelings and courteous in his behavior. He has a helpful nature, for kindness pardons others’ weaknesses and faults, as does his own. Kindness is extended to all – to the aged and the young, to animals, to those low of station as well as the high. The social hierarchy, and multitudes of restrictions and prohibited human connections other than the brotherhood of assassins served them as soulless lap dogs of numerous Grandmasters, and as Kuai Liang’s protean awareness and perception increased along with the untapped cryokinetics, he had seen just how immorally corrupt the burrowing darkness had been, forcing not only his world, but the entire equilibrium of Earthrealm to hang on such precarious balance. “The scope of my ice exists to be extended against the throes of corruption and darkness. And I will not hesitate to retaliate against such usurption should anyone threaten the sanctity of humanity with ravenous vices of power, greed, causing agony and torment upon those who seek peace and serenity.” ❄️ || 

▬▬ι═══════ﺤ 🌪️ || The most important thing in life may be happiness, contentment, zeal, and peace of mind, for nothing in the world matters more than serenity. No tangible acquisition can make any mortal nor immortal feel content in their life; it is elation, just elation. Endearment, or what he knows as love, could be the most beautiful thing that could offset the throes of perpetual ravaging war, realms being torn asunder and reconstructed, as annihilative destruction viciously immortalized by the sanguineous torrential flood. The catalytic propellent of love mitigating agony and despair will heighten the benevolence of love and sacrifice, which becomes the greatest feeling for one to ever experience. It is not difficult to say that one will be delighted beyond stars to know that there is someone that will go out of one’s ways to preserve humanity’s sustenance and survivability. Fujin had both endured the disintegration, as the might of the kamikaze wind scattered beyond recognition under the irreversible vortex of Soulnado, and having been sucked into the abysmal nothing, as the naught of his existence left his brother as the sole divine being who would protect the Earthrealm. The Wind God had long relived all the lost promises, and yet, his halcyon, empyrean optimism continues to etch the pearlescent depth of his divine gaze, as Fujin’s lips imperceptibly curl into a crescent. “The wind will penetrate, ravage, and scatter even the mightiest forces of evil, for the flurries of my blades will exact righteous justice. As kamikaze carves inspirations into the realms, the Earthrealm will write its story, amidst all the duality of passion and tragedy.” ▬▬ι═══════ﺤ 🌪️ ||

[adverb-slut]

Breakpoint (Fanfiction) Part 2/6 | Beelzebub

Sorry for posting this late, guys!  As you all know, this is a six-part story (only parts one through three are written so far) and focuses on each of the brothers (Satan being the exception since he was never an angel) breaking point in when they decided to rebel against their Father when they were angels up in the Celestial Realm.  

This specific chapter features Beelzebub and Lilith!

As always, you can read this story here on AO3.

Title:

Breakpoint

Summary:

These are the tales of when Belphegor, Beelzebub, Asmodeus, Leviathan, Mammon, and Lucifer each decided to actively rebel against their Father and together incite the Great Celestial War.  

Genre:

Backstory/Lore

Rating:

T

Word Count:

3424

Additional Note:

This chapter chronicles the breaking point of Beelzebub!

Previous Chapter:

Read Chapter 1 | Belphegor here!

-

“Beel! ” Belphie’s eyes were steeped with betrayal.  “You said you’d come for me.  Where are you?”  

Beelzebub watched as his twin’s form disintegrated before his very eyes and reached toward him.  “I did, Belphie —I just couldn’t—”

“I’ve been waiting two years, Beel!" Belphie cried, more and more of his body disappearing into nothingness.  “ Two years!  We agreed to three weeks!  Are you even going to come for me at all? ”

“I’m coming, Belphie!” Beelzebub screamed, bolting out of bed and reaching forward as if to grab his missing brother’s hand.  His fingertips grasped nothing but air. He shivered, realizing it was just a dream—a dream that he’d had every day for the past two years.  

Two years.  That’s how long it had been since Beelzebub had seen his younger brother.  Two years since he’d left him on Earth, promising to come back at sunset three weeks later.  Two years since he’d gone to look for his brother after the three weeks were up, only to realize that Belphegor had moved around so much on Earth and was no longer in the same village that he’d left him.  Two years during which Beelzebub had spent every single waking moment of his eternal life when he wasn’t guarding Eden to look for his only brother in every human-inhabited region of Earth, forgoing most of his meals and sleep and taking only a few moments every night after searching to rest. 

He stared at the space next to him on his king-size bed where two years ago, Belphie would have slept and sighed.  He rubbed his eyes groggily—getting only ten minutes of sleep every night caused him to be perpetually tired—and looked at the golden clock that rested on his bedside table.  It read that it was dawn; the Guardians of Eden on the night shift would be almost done standing sentinel over the Garden by now. That meant it was almost time for him to get to work.

Beelzebub’s stomach growled in protest as he changed out of his sleeping tunic and into the pearly white robes and green sash that were his standard uniform.  His meal times had varied greatly in the two years that he had spent scouting the Earth for his brother. He could only afford to waste a few precious seconds on eating quick meals, none of which sustained him for very long.  

And today, since it was already so close to the time for his shift to start, he didn’t want to waste even a moment by grabbing something to eat. 

He raced toward the precipice of the Celestial Realm and launched himself off.  As soon as his feet left the cloud cover that made up the ground, he flapped his wings downward and began his descent toward the surface of Earth.

This trip always chilled Beelzebub to his very bones.  He could almost feel his hands curl underneath his brother’s arms as the two made their way to Earth—him to go guard Eden, and Belphie to go observe and interact with humans. 

He flew downward for a few moments before his feet touched the ground.  He walked north for several feet before he saw the silhouette of tall, imposing fruit trees and the other plants that made of the flora of the Garden of Eden.  

“Beelzebub!”  Adoniel greeted from the Garden’s entrance.  “You’re right on time.”

Chasan, the other angel on duty, saluted him.  “Good to see you.”  

“You, too,” Beelzebub replied.  “You guys can go; I’ll take it from here.”

As the two nighttime Guardians of Eden began to take their leave, Beelzebub glanced at the sky, searching for Tabris, the angel with whom he had shared the morning shift with for as long as the Garden of Eden had needed guarding.  Usually, Tabris arrived earlier than him, but today, he was nowhere to be seen.

Figuring the other angel had overslept, Beelzebub walked over to the entrance and stood erect, scanning the area in front of him for any intruders, as he always did.  

Several minutes passed by, and there was still no sight of Tabris.  Beelzebub began to worry; if his Father found out about his partner’s tardiness, there would be no doubt that he would be punished severely.  His Father wasn’t known for physically abusing His children for minor infractions like lateness, but the incensed lectures He gave were even worse than even the most abrasive whippings.  

As Beelzebub decided that today he would just have to do the work of two guards, he heard the sound of wings flapping.  He glanced at the sky, expecting to see Tabris, but instead, saw the figure of a female angel.

This angel was exceedingly beautiful, with long hair that cascaded down her back and features so fine that he had to wonder exactly how long his Father had spent fashioning her.  One thing, he noticed in particular, was her wings: they were massive and feathered, covered in jewels and various precious gemstones.  They were far too heavy to be of any practical use.  He figured that they were just ornamental.  He deduced that she must not be an angel that was usually sent down to Earth, else she would have been given functional wings, or none at all.

The woman angel caught him staring and blushed, tucking her wings behind her.  “Yeah, I wasn’t created to leave the Celestial Realm, much.” She fingered the gaudy feathers that adorned her back.  “They’re just supposed to look pretty.”

He then realized that she appeared familiar.  “Wait—you’re one of the Seraphim, aren’t you?”  No wonder she didn’t venture out of the Celestial Realm.  The seraphim were the most powerful angels—even more so than most Archangels—with beautiful voices.  They sat directly at the Throne of the Almighty, singing his praises day after day. 

“Yes, my name is Lilith.”  She reached out her hand, and he shook it.  “I’ve been assigned to be your fellow Guardian of Eden today.”

Beelzebub did a double-take.  Why in the world would God assign a mighty Seraph to do a menial guard job?  “What do you mean?” He looked around.  “What about Tabris?��� When he saw the confused look on Lilith’s face, he elaborated, “He and I have been the morning guards of Eden for as long as I can remember.”

“You didn’t hear?  Tabris broke one of his wings yesterday.  He’s on bed rest for the next few days,” replied Lilith.

Huh.  Beelzebub hadn’t heard anything about his partner’s injury, but then again, he had been on full Belphie-searching mode, so he hadn’t had much time to pay attention to anything else.  He felt a twinge of guilt creep up but tried to focus on the matter at hand. “Ah, okay, but why you as his replacement?  You’re a Seraph—surely your worship is more important than this.”

Lilith blushed and wouldn’t meet his eyes.  “Well, I’m currently suspended.”

“What?  Why?” he asked, his eyes widening.  Seraphim were wildly devoted to their Father.  He couldn’t imagine one doing something to upset their Father so much that he would suspend them.

She took a deep breath and her blush deepened.  “Well, yesterday, my sisters and I were worshipping at the Throne, as usual, when I realized that one of the rhythms to the hymns that we were singing was written really off.  I first thought that maybe it was our fault and we were singing it wrong, but I checked and it was just written strangely.  So, I went to go take the music earlier today to Leviathan—you know, the Angel of Worship.”

Beelzebub could see where this story was going.  The Angel of Worship’s antics when it came to critiques of his praise songs were well-known.  “And he got angry with your comments, then went directly to Father, made it sound worse than it was, and got you in trouble,” he finished for her.  “Leviathan will do anything to make an excuse to go see Father directly.”

“He’s such a kiss-up, sometimes.”  Lilith shook her head and pulled out two spiced manna cakes from her orange sash.  

He couldn’t help but watch her unpeel the wrapper from the two cinnamon-and-clove flavored biscuits, his stomach growling loudly.  He blushed.

Lilith smiled and reached out her hand, offering him a cake.  “Want one?”

Beelzebub grabbed it, smiling and deciding that he definitely liked this angel.  The cakes were incredibly dry and were meant to be eaten soaked in milk and honey, but he was so hungry that he couldn’t care less and took a bite of the crumbly biscuit.  

“Sorry,” he apologized, his mouth filled with manna.  “I don’t get many chances to eat.”

She put a hand on his shoulder sympathetically.  “I heard about your brother—everyone has. I mean, he’s the Angel of the Sabbath.  Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll find him soon.”

Beelzebub sighed, suddenly not so hungry, but swallowing the rest of the cake, anyway.  “I hope so.”

Lilith noticed the change in his demeanor and poked him in the chest.  “You’re Beelzebub, right? You’re supposed to be one of the best guardians ever—teach me your ways!”

A hint of a smile curled on his face.  He could see that she was just trying to take his mind off of Belphie.  “Being a Guardian of Eden isn’t so hard. Our goal is to keep humans away from the Garden, but even more so, away from the Tree of Life in the middle.”  He pointed east from where they were standing, in the direction of the Tree. “The fruit from that Tree has the power to heal any kind of ailment—including the effects of old age.”

“I thought it was supposed to make humans immortal and to heal angels’ diseases.”

“The angel part is true but not the human one—that’s just a rumor we spread to deter them from trying to find it, considering some humans are content and relieved with their mortality.  The real power is that every time a human or angel consumes one, it cures them of whatever sickness they’re currently suffering from, even if it’s just the aches and pains that come with being old.”

“I got you.  Well, that sounds easy enough, Beel.”

Beelzebub swallowed at the nickname; it was something only Belphie had called him, but he was surprised that it sounded right coming from her lips, too.  “It is.”

They stood side by side, guarding Eden for several hours.  It was almost sunset, and Beel wanted to get a head start on searching for Belphie.  But, before he could say anything to Lilith, he noticed a figure coming up over the horizon, hunched over and carrying what appeared to be a person.

“Who’s that?”  Lilith asked.

Beelzebub readjusted his stance and frowned.  “An intruder.”

And he was right.  Ambling up to them was an emaciated man, his tattered loincloth dirty and covered in what looked like dried bloodstains.  In his arms was a young girl, her unwashed hair plaited, looking just as worse for wear as the man carrying her.

“Please,” the man pleaded, walking up to Beel, who looked on ahead of him stoically.  “My daughter—she’s very ill.”

A pang of guilt shot through Beel’s heart, but he had seen cases like this all the time.  And as usual, he knew he had to turn them away. “I’m sorry, sir, but—”

“Oh, my goodness,” Lilith cried, rushing to the man’s side, taking the young girl out of his hands and cradling her herself.  Her eyes widened and filled with pity. “What happened?”

“Our camp was raided by another’s several weeks ago, and we have no food.  Yesterday, our chief’s wife found some herbs to eat, but when my daughter consumed them, she grew very sick, and she hasn’t woken up since, even though she is still breathing,” the man explained, his eyes filling with tears.  “Several moons ago, an angel visited us and told us that my daughter would be the savior of our camp, but if she does not survive, I fear that we will be left defenseless.”

Beel’s heart skipped a beat when the man mentioned another angel.  “What did the angel look like? Did he have black and white hair? With eyes like mine?  No wings?”

“No, no,” the man said, pausing to analyze Beel’s eyes.  “He had tan skin, with white hair and dark blue eyes, tinted with gold. He also definitely had wings.”

Beel could feel his heart drop.  He didn’t know who that Messenger Angel was.  “Well, either way,” he sighed.  “Sir, we can’t help you. You need to leave.”

Lilith glared at him as the man protested, “But sir, we need to get to the Tree of Life.  The shaman of our camp has tried everything to heal her, but nothing has worked. We know the fruit from the Tree can heal any kind of sickness.”

Beel didn’t have time to dwell on the fact that the man somehow knew the true nature of the Tree of Life and stamped his foot.  “No. No one is allowed in the Garden of Eden.”

“We can make an exception for you, though,” Lilith amended, stepping aside to let the man pass.

This time it was Beel who glared at her.  “No, we can’t.  Lilith, that’s what we’re here for: we have to make sure no one can get inside the Garden.”

“Beel!  This man is desperate.  We can’t let that little girl die—we can’t!  What kind of angels would we be if we did?”

He massaged his forehead.  “Lilith, we have our orders.  We can’t just go making exceptions for people based on how desperate they are.”

“Look at her,” Lilith argued, gesturing toward the man’s daughter.  “I don’t care what our orders are; we can’t just let this girl die on our watch.  I don’t think Father will be angry if what we’re doing saves a life.”

For someone who was supposedly so close to his Father, Lilith didn’t seem to understand that His orders were absolute and that there was no loophole that could be exploited which wouldn’t lead to severe punishment.  

Since Lilith had decided to be so adamant, Beelzebub tried a different tactic.  “Lilith, this man was told by one of our Messenger Angels that this girl would save her camp someday.  Just trust that God will heal her—you know that He doesn’t lie.”

He thought that that point would get her to calm down, but it was to no avail.  “She’s suffering now, Beel.  I can’t allow that.”  She gestured toward the man and motioned for him to enter the Garden. 

Beel shook his head in frustration.  “There’s no point in letting him in, anyway.  The Tree of Life is guarded by flaming swords.  He can’t get to it.”

The man’s face crumbled, but Lilith was quick to remedy the situation.  “I’ll do it. I’ll fly above the swords, and I’ll pick a fruit from the Tree and give it to him.”

Beel blanched.  “No. No, you won’t.”

“Yes.  I.  Will.”  And with that, Lilith raced into the Garden of Eden.

-

Three hours.  

That’s how long it had taken for all four Guardians of Eden—and one temporary one—to be summoned to his Father’s Throne Room after the young girl had taken a bite from the fruit of the Tree of Life and had been revived.  

In the future, it would take God another year to summon Belphegor for his tribunal, but it had only taken three hours for Him to call Beel for his.

Beelzebub kept his eyes down, not daring to look at his Father’s blinding, lighted presence.  He, Adoniel, Chasan, the broken-winged Tabris, and Lilith had just been instructed to rise after falling prostrate before the Throne of God.  

The three angels who had not been involved in the incident gave Beel confused looks, but he couldn’t meet their eyes.  He stared at the floor, trying to imagine he was anywhere but here. 

His Father’s Throne Room was a place of judgment, and usually, the verdict was nothing but guilty.  He tried to take his mind off his probably impending doom—surely his Father would blame him for not stopping Lilith as she flew above the flaming swords guarding the Tree of Life and picking its fruit—by listening to the glorious notes of the piano that Lucifer played from God’s left side.

The Archangel of Music’s eyes were closed, like the world was nothing more than him and his music, as his fingers deliberately played the solemn notes of a melody that he had created.  Lucifer never played any song twice, and he used no sheet music. Every song that he performed was an original piece that he made up on the spot, the notes coming so alive in his mind that they leaped out of his fingers into the most rapturous tune.  

“Beelzebub, Tabris, Adoniel, Chasan, Lilith,” boomed the Almighty.

“We are here, Father,” they chorused, bowing their heads.

“It has come to My attention that one of My Guardians has allowed a fruit to be picked from the Tree of Life.”  The glow of God’s glory receded and then flared back even brighter, signifying a spike in His anger. “Which one of you is responsible for this?”

Beelzebub knew that of course, his Father already knew who took the fruit; He was merely giving the culprit an opportunity to own up for their crime and apologize—not that it would make their punishment any less severe.

From the corner of his eye, he glanced at Lilith.  The normally upbeat Seraph had her eyes glued to the ground, a terrified look on her face.  He frowned in sympathy; facing her Father’s wrath twice in such a short period of time would be a horrifying experience—once was enough for most angels to ensure they never disobeyed again.  

And besides, it wasn’t as if Lilith had—apart from breaking orders—done anything wrong.  She had technically saved a life, just as she had mentioned before. 

Beel gulped as the silence from the five angels filled the room.  It was so suffocating that he didn’t know if Lucifer’s masterful playing was sufficient to overcome it.  He stepped forward. “I did it, Father.”

His Father’s furious light subsided in surprise.  “You, Beelzebub?”

Of course, God knew that it was not him who took the fruit.  But, Beel knew how his Father’s mind worked.  If Beel admitted to the crime, his Father would punish him for what he confessed and also punish him for lying, as well.  The Almighty still knew that Lilith had committed the crime, but Beel’s sacrifice for her would be enough to sate His anger, and she wouldn’t be punished at all.

His admission elicited shocked gasps from Adoniel, Chasan, and Tabris.  Lilith stared at him, her eyebrows downturned in agony. “No—” she began.

Beel interrupted her before she could get very far.  “—one expected this of me, right, Lilith? Well, they should have.  In fact, Father, I was not only the one who picked the fruit, but I ate it, too.”

“You ate the fruit, Beelzebub?”  his Father confirmed, even though He knew otherwise.  “You know not even angels are allowed to eat the fruit, as they can suffer ailments that can be healed, as well.”

Beelzebub gulped.  “Yes. You know I’ve spent many moons flying around Earth, searching for my twin brother, Belphegor, the Angel of the Sabbath.  In doing this, I haven’t gotten much time to eat, so in my desperation, I picked from the Tree and ate.”

“What gluttony you displayed, today, my son!  This appetite—so all-consuming that you would desecrate a sacred fruit for the pleasure of excess nourishment—this need for immediate gratification in the form of food, has caused you to disobey My orders and sin.”  The Almighty’s anger flared again. “You must be punished.”

“Yes, Father, you should punish me,” Beel replied, wringing the hem of his tunic nervously.  And punish me, and me alone, he added silently.

“This is your first offense, my son—I will make your retribution less severe, provided you understand the error of your ways.  Answer me, Beelzebub, do you regret what you did?”

Considering he hadn’t even committed any crime, Beel knew he couldn’t answer the question truthfully.  He turned his head to look at Lilith, whose eyes were overflowing with grateful tears, her hands over her mouth to drown out her sobs.  He knew that he would admit to the offense a hundred times if it meant she didn’t have to suffer for it.

So he answered the question in that context instead.

“No.”

[johannas-motivational-insults]

I’d love to get some commentary on the scene in Demons where Catra finally decides to say fuck it and leave the Horde? Or, if it is answered already, maybe the scene in chapter 31 where Catra is struggling with the narratives of being a villain and a victim? Because those scenes came for me while reading. In different ways, of course.

Sure thing! The first was already requested so I’ll take the second. I’ll leave out the part right at the end because that’s after the reminiscing on this theme in particular is over and the content is pretty triggering. (Commentary is bolded.)

You know, it’s funny. This wasn’t initially a theme I was planning to specifically focus on in the chapter even though it was always there in the background. But I was going through a really rough couple weeks mental health wise when I finished this chapter and the kinds of things that were going on in my head ended up making it onto the page.

I’m someone who had a very rough childhood for a plethora of reasons and has always felt the world was out to get me, but at the same time I’m not blameless either. As much as I’ve always tried to be a good person, there were times when I wasn’t, and it’s easy for me to look back at what I went through and wonder a) how much of it was due to me accidentally being selfish or alienating people and b) if maybe I ended up deserving it in the end based on who I became later. And I think that’s a mental trap a lot of abuse survivors fall into... they were hurt and end up lashing out to express themselves or because they can’t hold it in anymore, or they just don’t know how to have functional relationships and end up being toxic to other people, and then start to think “oh they were right about me, I’m a terrible person who’s undeserving of love.”

That mental battle really fit well with what was going on with Catra, because she’s been plagued with these nightmares that remind her of all the ways she was hurt but also carry all these terrible messages about her lacking worth and agency. Compound that with Lonnie showing up and not letting her act like she was only a victim (which is true) and her guilt over the way people are still afraid of her and in general over being a recovering villain, and then of course the way she reacted to Adora’s confession earlier in the chapter, it was this big mess with these two narratives of her own life being in conflict. Even the Octavia flashback lined up incredibly well with that idea once I took Baby Catra’s thoughts the direction I did. So yeah, that’s how this whole bit was born.

The longer she punches, the sicker she feels. She hates Shadow Weaver, and she hates her life. The memory won’t stop playing in her head. Remembering that pain, that helplessness, it makes her feel like a tiny bug being crushed under the heel of a cruel fate. A lowly creature destined only to suffer and then get stamped out on a whim, her remains dragged across rough concrete until they disintegrate, leaving nothing but an ugly stain to be washed away.

That imagery is beautiful and I might have cried a lot while writing it. It’s just... something I feel.

But that’s just her victim complex talking, isn’t it?

Big ouch. I owe this line to the retooled opening scene which @malachi-walker helped me build. I did write Lonnie’s line about this myself, but credit where credit is due, she gave me ideas to make the chapter better and it was so much better and coherent theme-wise after that.

No, Catra’s no victim. She’s a straight up villain. That overwhelming hatred eating her from the inside, it’s for herself as much as Shadow Weaver. What kind of monster behaves the way she did back in Adora’s room?

Okay to be fair Catra was not totally in the wrong there, it’s a complicated situation, but she’s spiralling so she’s not exactly a reliable narrator here. (Adora similarly ends up thinking she was the one at fault, so there you go.)

In her defense, she was caught off guard. Catra already understood, after much discussion, that the relationship between Adora and their guardian was not as rosy as it had appeared to her all those years. But that knowledge did nothing to prepare her. The thought of Shadow Weaver hurting Adora, hurting that anxious, loving, vulnerable child, it made her want to scream. (You and me both, Catra.) To hug Adora and tell her she didn’t deserve it, never could have possibly deserved that. But did she? No. Adora told Catra something horrifying and she couldn’t even sympathize, too caught up in her own rage and jealousy to show concern for someone she supposedly cares about. But what else is new?

Really, what else is new?

Maybe she had a point, maybe Adora was wrong to equate their experiences. Maybe Adora was never trying to, and it just felt that way. Catra’s not in the right headspace to evaluate that right now. But either way, it didn’t justify that kind of reaction. It’s like those incidents in her childhood with Octavia, with Lonnie and Adora. Standing up for herself and expressing her feelings shouldn’t mean having to attack, to brutalize her prey. But a beast knows no different.

I hate (love) when we can just see the way Shadow Weaver has shaped her thinking and is still hurting her even from beyond the grave.

Lonnie was right, Catra’s just like Shadow Weaver. She’s trying to be better than her, swore to her that she would be, but she isn't. She never will be. Shadow Weaver crafted Catra in her own image, cut away the good parts of her and molded what remained into something sharp and ugly, forged it in fire until it was as hard and unforgiving as her. (Another load of imagery I relate to and cried a lot at.) Even if she wasn’t a monster to begin with, that witch poisoned her and turned her into one. And there is no antidote, not for this affliction.

She should never have dragged the squad out here, convinced Adora to leave the safety of the Crystal Castle, let Scorpia and Entrapta believe she’s someone they can trust, someone worth following and protecting. She’ll destroy every single one of them. All she does is hurt people.

Oh daaaamn and the use of the heartbreaking canon lines to make everything worse. There is more of that coming next chapter. ;)

Man, the crippling self-doubt at the end of this chapter where you can see she wants to do good but she feels like she’s incapable of it is so fucking heartbreaking. When you get told you’re bad and nothing but a waste of space it is so hard to believe that you can actually do good things. And we know everyone currently at the Crypto Castle loves Catra and respects her enough to follow her lead, but in the throes of this spiral she can’t believe that, she can only believe the things Shadow Weaver taught her to believe about herself, which came true to an extent but really it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Catra is doing so well fighting back against that programming and seeing her backsliding like this is so tragic, but ultimately realistic. That’s why I decided to incorporate it into the story.

I should also say, the fic You Do Not Have To Be Good certainly influenced this chapter. Chapter 9 pretty much destroyed me emotionally when I was already in a bad place and it contains some similar themes and fucking amazing imagery, which no doubt inspired me to write this part in particular the way I did. So you all can also thank SleepySappho for this. Go give that fic some love, if you’re down to read more of this kind of stuff as well as BDSM.

(Bonus Fact, because surely some of you are wondering by now: the chapter ending wasn’t planned. There were vague plans for Catra to have a relapse and/or contemplate ending things but I wasn’t planning to put it here. But as I wrote that bit I realized this was where it should go, this was where it made the most sense, it felt like the correct climax/crisis in the arc that’s been building in the last 5 chapters. And the other plans I had and things I had set up worked really well with it and I decided to go that way. But shh, let everyone else think I’m just a genius for the way everything ends up coming together lol.)

[hieromonkcharbel]

Don't be Apathetic about Apatheia - -

One interesting aspect of philokalic spirituality is what the desert fathers describe as “apatheia”. It is the fruit of one’s long struggle with the passions through the ascetic life and prayer and is considered a positive state of grace. Even though the word has its origin in stoic philosophy, in the Eastern Christian spiritual tradition it has nothing to do with stoic apathy, or what might be considered a state of indifference. “It is a positive state of self-control, or rather, Christ-control or Spirit-control. It is the stilling of all the passionate thoughts through askesis, purity of heart, and the gift of tears. It is being anchored and rooted in God, in the peace that passes all understanding” (Coniaris, “Beginners Introduction to the Philokalia, 70).

Thus, it expresses a kind of deep freedom that only comes through absolute dependence upon God and His grace. Apatheia is not something one achieves simply through strength of will but rather through such a radical openness to God’s grace and action that a man “no longer lives for himself, but Christ lives in him.” Also translated as “dispassion”, it has been described as a restoration of the state of our true nature and living in the freedom that is ours as those who have been made sons and daughters of God. The passions have not been destroyed but rather transformed and ordered towards God and the peace of the kingdom: man by grace exerts a control over the passions and is in charge of himself once again.

Psychologically this is not a suppression or a cutting off of the soul’s powers; not an unhealthy functioning but rather a redirecting of those powers toward the good and the holy. The dispassionate man is freer to love and give himself in love because he is no longer driven by selfish desire. We see this in the saints who commonly manifest the glory, the freedom, and the joy of the kingdom. St. Symeon the New Theologian describes it as a “foretaste of heaven, God’s reward for those who have ‘fought the good fight of faith’” (Coniaris, 74).

This transfiguration of the passions has been captured beautifully by St. John Climacus who wrote: “I have seen impure souls who threw themselves headlong into physical eros to a frenzied degree. It was their very experience of that eros that led them to interior conversion. They concentrated their eros (love) on the Lord. Rising above fear they tried to love God with an insatiable desire. That is why, when Christ spoke of the woman who had been a sinner, he did not say that she had been afraid, but that she had loved much and had easily been able to surmount love by love” (Coniaris, Philokalia, The Bible of Orthodox Spirituality, 162).

The rewards of the struggle for apatheia are great and by God’s grace the passions can be turned into virtues. Anthony Coniaris writes: “pride can become humility; lust can become agape, the sacrificial love that God has for us; anger can become righteous indignation against evil; greed can become generosity; unfaithfulness can become steadfastness; envy can become ‘rejoicing with those who rejoice;‘ sloth can become diligence; sensuality can become spirituality - all of this can be accomplished by God’s grace and our cooperation with His grace through askesis, prayer, and vigilance.

Such a notion is so foreign in contemporary culture that sees and understands freedom as the ability to do whatever one wants and to satisfy one’s desires, even the basest of them without restriction, internal or external. Therefore, the joy of chaste love is mocked and denigrated because it is rarely experienced or sought. The bondage that most people in our hyper-sexualized or hyper-sensualized culture experience is so great that the freedom and the increased capacity for love is beyond their conception. Their true self and personality has become so stunted and immature in its development that it fosters a profound boredom and inner dis-ease that can only be addressed by constantly pushing the boundaries of what is moral and ethical. This shifting of boundaries gradually and inevitably leads to a disintegration of self and identity. The depth and the beauty of all that is good and true about the human person is exchanged for the superficial and the banal.

The fruit of dispassion/apatheia, however, is the restoration and integration of the human person. Fr. George Florovsky defines it as “a state of spiritual activity, which is acquired only after struggles and ordeals . . . Each person’s ‘I‘ is finally regained, freeing oneself from fatal bondage. But one can regain oneself only in God. True ‘impassibility‘ is achieved only in an encounter with the Living God. The path which leads there is the path of obedience, even of servitude to God, but this servitude engenders true freedom . . . In God the personality is restored and reintegrated in the Holy Spirit” (Coniaris, 166).

We are desiring beings, which means we experience a certain lack or incompleteness in ourselves; a lack that only God can ultimately satisfy and fulfill. Apatheia restores our ability not only to see this truth but also the freedom to desire virtue and “redirect the energy of the passions toward loving that which holy and good” (Coniaris, 166).

[theangrypokemaniac]

Contests Part 2/2

6. Loser Jessie

Screechy harpie Jessay has even more of a raw deal than Mavis and Dawn of the Dead.

From the outset I knew she'd never be champion, but she ought to rise above the tiresome berks clogging up procedure.

Sufficient popularity at Pokémon Towers ensured the girls were allotted coverage of all their award ceremonies. They had a moment in the sun.

What has Jessie in comparison?

I can't recall Hoenn, but I don't expect it was much.

Sinnoh however carried naught but a single paltry episode.

This for a main character.

This for someone there from the beginning.

This for an ardent fan favourite.

This for a wench who, should we include all her various mutations, has featured in more installments than either of 'em.

But no, treat Jesseee as worthless, even lower than Dawn's groupies. It's not like anyone watches it for her.

Looking back, it's obvious what they were intending to do come Unova.

What's the score then?

• One paltry Contest on screen.

• A couple happen elsewhere, marked by a few seconds per mention when the script oh-so generously moves away from the thrilling main plot.

It's gotta be the small-town concerns for Jessuhleenuh, nothing major. She deserves no better.

• One won by James, so not hers. Press her inadequacy upon us!

• One obtained as a gesture of pity from Kate Middleton.

And how did that work? What's the good of allowing 'Dawn' entry again?

She'd already qualified. If winning here, that gives her six, therefore there aren't enough Co-ordinators for the culmination.

And when Jessie showed up with a Ribbon recorded as belonging to Dawn, how was she taken as fulfilling the quota?

The slapdash way these Contests are run!

God forbid Jess should be shown as excelling at anything. It must be scraping into the final undeservedly.

Bitch gotta know her place.

7. Bumpkin Jessie

...

Ain't no description I can give that don't rhyme with 'hit', or variations of the theme.

You thought the shafting Jessica got coverage wise was bad enough? Yer ain't heard the 'alf of it.

Sinnoh was a period of peak Moron Team Rocket, where the one surprise was how stupid they could be.

You may remember an early episode when James designed her clothes for the catwalk. She thought it'd complement his work by applying lipstick all across her mug.

Obviously Jessie would do that, clueless as to how make-up functions.

Come on kids, she's thick!

Even at that numskull nadir it's difficult to comprehend anyone choosing this get up without severe duress.

Picture the scene: you debut on stage, before an audience of thousands and television cameras, in an event preoccupied with superficiality.

What do you wear?

• Giant, oversized glasses out of fashion since the Seventies.

• Bootlace tie last worn in the nineteenth century Wild West by a barman serving sarsaparillas.

• Colour scheme of brown and orange, the nation's favourite hues.

• A man's old shirt fraying at the cuffs.

• Voluminous apron dress.

• Massive yellow bows last seen decorating an Easter Egg. Always a winner.

• Heavy, clod-hopping boots.

• PIGTAILS!!!

Even the name is unattractive.

Ah yes, very common for those under six. Unheard of later.

You have reached puberty haven't yer Jessie? I can't tell anymore.

They couldn't get enough of that combination in Cosmo, which is why it's no longer in print.

Not only is Jessie denied success, she's deprived of the chance to be pretty in a realm where nothing but that carries weight.

Worse, given how her face disintegrated, this is the best she's been for five generations.

Yeah, because the inbred milkmaid style is such a good look, eh?

SEXAY!!!

8. So Long, Tsundere

Remember tsunderes? What happened to 'em?

The curse of Pokémon was draining the well of inspiration too quickly, throwing away interesting characters as mere guests.

This is particularly noticeable regarding the ladies. Back then, we got Misty, Jessie, Jessibelle, Cassidy, Aya, Giselle, Tyra, Sabrina, assorted crones Brutella, Nastina and Lacy, plus Joy, Jenny and Dame Ketchum provided parental authority.

How did a series that began with ball-breaking birds like that end up with insipid, glassy-eyed dullards like Zuhreena, Banana Lana, Marsh Mallow and Lilliput?

Ooh, Zuhreena is a pwincess!

Ooh, Banana Lana bwows big bwubbles!

Ooh, Marsh Mallow wuvs phallic waddishes!

Ooh, Lilliput won't pwet wanimals bwecause of Secwet Pain!

Can you imagine such weak specimens finding any place in the anarchic atmosphere of the classics?

It's SO boring!

Where's the punch? Where's the human spirit?

Where's the entertainment gone?

This squishy attitude began in Hoenn. Misty left, Jessie's hair symbolically changed from volcanic red to pink, and Contests introduced a cuddly theme where glitter glue and sequins are top priority.

Every sharp corner, every jagged point has been filed smooth. Now its substance hasn't the hardness to even develop edges, not when it's all cushions and candyfloss, where catching Pokémon rests on them deigning to grant permission, rather than 'avin it out.

Tsunderes, exuding untamed charisma and independence, besides a soupçon of danger, simply don't fit the cardboard box we habit now.

Nor do yanderes, kuuderes, tsuntsuns, or even derederes. It's just nothing but smiley-smiley creeps.

I wouldn't mind any of these tropes as long as there was some sign of colour to be had.

9. The Sacrifice of Misty

Misty bid farewell under the feeble justification that the lack of a longterm goal made her vulnerable to sacking.

Such a line uttered as if her own choice, being beyond them as writers to invent a purpose.

This implied her replacement would have an exciting quest aiming for excellence, something just beyond Misty's capabilities.

What did we get?

Dressing up and collecting Ribbons!

Is that...is that it? Is that the great idea? Is that all the girls are worth?

I lost Misty for THIS?!

Perhaps it makes no difference. By Hoenn they'd rendered her a leaden blandness sucked dry of all that made her special.

Going by the greasy-toothed bastardisation that swanned up in Alola, Misty was simply too wild for the safe, stifling atmosphere of today.

Her departure ensued she remains frozen as a funny, beloved presence, unlike those she left behind.

Now there was a lucky escape, as once the fanny-flapping starts, the bints have it on the brain.

May had Max to beat on the side, but Dawn developed monomania.

Hardly an episode went by without some reference to Contests, or how today's plot spurred her on to the next opportunity.

Yer need help, love!

Rather than Ash's new friend being a fascinating person who so happened to enter vanity projects, the competition defined them to the exclusion of life.

It is but moths drawn to the candle flame waiting to engulf them.

Contests are this world's version of Tom Riddle's diary: they promise sympathy and validation, but they eat your soul.

Like Tumblr.

10. Completely Unoriginal

Seems to me it wasn't so much Misty had no goal, it was more that Contests were the supposedly hot concept wedged into an existing property.

If earlier aspects failed to accommodate the invader, the onus certainly wasn't on the new kid to change. Oh no, stuff it in and chop off whatever gets in the way.

In the eyes of the post-Shudo regime, Misty was too volatile to last, and so had to go.

What idiots.

She's a tsundere. The softer, more feminine side is a defining component.

Would it really have been so problematic to retain her as an entrant? If Jessie can, why not?

Even if failing to fit, so what? Since when was established characterisation a barrier?

Isn't twisting likeable folk into unrecognisable pods the modus operandi of the writers?

That canon is immaterial, and must always give in to whatever fancy they currently have?

Well then, what's the big deal in infantilising Misty to promote it rather than pensioning her off?

Viewers will be more invested in the challenges awaiting a familiar face rather than a stranger.

What reduces the above to the risible is the original Misty and Jessie both participated in the Princess Festival.

All Contests are is that very scenario on repeat and robbed of all meaning.

Think about it:

• Beauty round

• Battle round

• Jessie loses

Same bloody thing.

Not only have I got to suffer this draining spectacle, it's got the nerve to possess not one iota of fresh ideas!

Contests are a low rent rip-off. The Princess Festival had a worthy reward in the shape of one-of-a-kind Dolls.

It'd already been revealed that ordinary Princess Dolls were ruinously expensive, therefore the special Pokémon edition have to be priceless.

What d'yer get for the trouble of a Contest but a bit of plastic tat taped to bargain basement frippery?

And they demand you get five of 'em!

Contests themselves were then resurrected as Showcases, although mercifully slimmed down to only three, with the emptiness ramped up in compensation.

Perhaps ironically, Princess Versus Princess is one of my favourite episodes. I love its critique of female avarice and accurate portrayal of clothing sales as reminiscent of the zombie apocalypse.

I don't mind the Festival as a single adventure, but I may have felt less favourable had it been a constant presence.

Except it isn't the competition at stake. This is a framework to explore Jessie and Misty as people.

Through its device we learn their history and therefore how they came to develop as the girls we know.

The setting serves as an opportunity for both to confront the misery and isolation of their childhoods, with the promise of overcoming that old torment with the balm of victory.

In the final, they aren't so much battling an opponent as fighting to be free of the past.

The tragedy is only one can be granted that reprieve. The other must remain unhappy in the ruins of memory.

It matters, unlike vapid Contests, where posturing is king. What depth can they provide in comparison?

Despite identical content, they are inverse counterparts, with the Festival presented as merely a light affair concealing a rather dark tale of neglect.

Contests however are paraded as this worthy nourishment for body and mind, a major point in one's journey towards enlightenment, when all they really amount to is an organ grinder and his monkey arsing about for the slack-gobbed plebs.

Bread and circuses.

Best of all, Misty won, not some side twat, as it should be.

Note how Jessie dressed: in delicate, vivid robes and golden decoration. The boys thought her beautiful.

Not as a gormless dweeb you'd cross the street to avoid!

And why the need to disguise herself anyway?

The Twerps had no issue with Jessie of Team Rocket joining the fun back then, so what happened?

At least she received the consolation of gaining Lickitung as a friend, with James and Meowth desperate to comfort her.

What do Contests bring? Sod all!

[noramoya]

MICHAEL JACKSON, BLACK SUPERHERO: African-American Artists And Intelectuals, From Jay-Z To Henry Louis Gates, Weight In On Jackson’s Legacy.

“When Michael Jackson was a boy, you didn’t have to say “black is beautiful,” you just had to look at him and you knew. In 1969, as black people were getting comfortable with the idea that African features are gorgeous, he arrived as the perfect punctuation of that idea. He was cherubic with his rich brown skin, a broad nose and a big halo of curls atop his head at a time when the Afro was a powerful symbol of black pride. “People responded viscerally to Michael Jackson’s beauty,” says Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. 1969 was a year after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a time when the black-power and civil rights movements seemed to be disintegrating, but Michael showed up, a soul-music prodigy irrepressibly optimistic and bursting with youthful enthusiasm. “Here was a child who clearly understood the R&B idiom,” says music-industry veteran Gary Harris. “He was some sort of test-tube creation from a mad soul doctor’s lab. If Diana Ross and Stevie Wonder had a child, it would have been Michael Jackson.”

He quickly became the number-one black child star of his era, and of all time. The first four Jackson 5 singles each topped Billboard‘s Hot 100, an unbelievable start. Black people fell in love so hard, he became more than an artist and more like a member of the family. You didn’t want anything to happen to him so much that you felt protective the way you did about a younger brother. “He was ours,” says Q-Tip. “He meant everything to black culture.”

It wasn’t just about Michael. A few years after the Johnson administration declared the black family broken with the Moynihan Report, the Jackson family was large, intact, vibrant, successful and seemingly happy, giving America an idealized image of domestic bliss. Jay-Z told me he grew up pretending to be Michael, singing alongside his two older sisters and brother. “Here you had Michael and four brothers,” says the Rev. Al Sharpton, “all talented and all cute and the strong father and the mother who was matriarchal and Janet, and it was like, ‘Wow, all this talent in this family, showing we could do something.’ We were proud of that.”

Michael had a second family: Motown was a deeply trusted brand in millions of black households. If Berry Gordy said it was good enough to release, you could bet it was great. The Jackson 5 were the last great act to come out of the Detroit label, further proof of Malcolm Gladwell’s theory in ‘Outliers: The Story of Success’, that life timing is critical to success, that the historical forces swirling around the moment when you emerge can make all the difference. “The Jacksons were the first family in line to truly benefit from the post-civil-rights era with America’s new open-arms policy toward black entertainment,” says ?uestlove. “1969 was the year the social floodgates opened and an 11-year-old led the charge in post-Malcolm/Martin/Motown America. Historians always forget the third-most-important M to help black America get access to the promised land is Motown

Thriller came out at the end of 1982, as the affirmative-action generation was beginning to make its move. Jesse Jackson would make a bid for the presidency, Eddie Murphy would launch his assault on the top layers of Hollywood, Oprah Winfrey would start her legendary talk show, and Bill Cosby would create the best-rated sitcom of the decade. Even before all that started, the vibe of black ascensionism was in the air, and Michael saw no reason why race should hold him back from the most elite level of his profession. He decided to ride his excellence to the zenith. Current Motown president Sylvia Rhone says, “Throughout his career, his success dramatically affected my view of what was possible and open for African-Americans.”

Many blacks now compare Michael with Barack Obama – perhaps the highest possible compliment in black America. Not only are they both integrationists and racial harmonists, but they both were determined to reach the top while refusing to let race hold them back. “There’s so many components of why Barack Obama is president,” says Diddy, “and Michael Jackson is one of them. He started a change in the perception of the African-American male on a worldwide level: his strength, always putting himself in a power position, being seen as a hero.” Sharpton echoes the point. “Way before Tiger Woods or Barack Obama, Michael made black people go pop-culture global,” he says. “You had people in France, South America and Iowa comfortable with their kids imitating a black kid from Gary, Indiana. And when some of those people in Iowa grew, they were comfortable with voting for Barack Obama because they got comfortable imitating a black kid named Michael Jackson when they were young. Obama is a phenomenon, but he’s the result of a process that Michael helped America graduate to.”

Michael was also a boardroom killer. In the decades before him, black recording artists were, as James Brown observed, in the show but not in show business. Many ended up losing the copyrights to their own songs and pocketing a fraction of the money their music brought in. Jackson knew all about that history. “He knew Berry Gordy made his money off copyrights,” cultural critic Nelson George says. “He knew the value of songs. That’s something he understood.” In 1984, when the ATV music-publishing catalog, which contained 251 Beatles songs, including “Yesterday,” “Let It Be” and “Hey Jude,” as well as work from Bob Dylan, went up for sale, Jackson went after it. After 10 months of negotiation, Jackson purchased the catalog for $47.5 million. His stake is now worth more than 10 times that, and the move was easily his shrewdest business conquest – and the asset that kept him afloat during his financially troubled last years. It proved his savvy, separating him from all those previous black artists who lacked the power to control the music business. But more than that, the symbolic power of Jackson owning the Beatles’ music cannot be overstated. Not only did he become as big as the Beatles, he bought them too. A century after American whites owned blacks, a black performer owned the product of the most elite white group in the world. It was an amazing turnabout, and one blacks took special pride in. A few nights after Jackson died, I was in L.A., searching the radio for an MJ song, when I came across “Strawberry Fields Forever” on an oldies station. I said, “Fuck it, Mike owns this. Same difference.” And I listened.

By the Nineties, Jackson no longer looked like a black person – after a series of surgeries, his facial features and skin color had become more and more Caucasoid. George says, “I don’t think there was any question: There was disquiet in the black community about the color thing. It was an issue. People didn’t wanna go out and say, ‘He’s fuckin’ becoming white,’ but people were like, ‘What’s that about?'” As Jackson was literally assimilating, we struggled with his choices but never symbolically tossed him out of the race, even though he seemed to be trying to surgically remove himself from it. “The reason black folk never turned their backs on him,” says Georgetown professor Michael Eric Dyson, “is because we realized he was merely acting out on his face what we collectively have been tempted to do in our souls: whitewash the memory and trace of our offending blackness.” Still, we struggled to understand why. Some have said he no longer wanted to see his father in the mirror, but there seem to be deeper forces at play. “I think he wanted to be a symbol of universalism,” Gates says, “and he erroneously thought his skin color, hair texture, the length of his nose and shape of his chin inhibited that. You could say he was appealing to the universal, but there’s no way of escaping, even giving him the benefit of the doubt, that it’s a function of Negro self-hatred and self-loathing, which is a function of slavery, Jim Crow, segregation and racism, which made blacks hate the very things that make them beautiful.”

Those who knew Jackson well say he wasn’t trying to surgically remove himself from the race. Producer Teddy Riley, who worked on Jackson’s Dangerous album, says, “Of course he loved being black. We’d be in sessions where we’d just vibe out and he’d say, ‘We are black, and we are the most talented people on the face of the Earth.’ I know this man loved his culture, he loved his race, he loved his people.” Questlove adds, “As a fellow child of a taskmaster, no one knows self-distorted insecurity like I do. A person ashamed of his roots would never have made a gazillion odes to Africa as he’s done.” And even as his face got whiter, his music stayed black and rooted in the R&B tradition he mastered as a kid.”

[koralatov]

This is an interesting machine: a Wikipedian counterpart to the NeXTcube that birthed the web without which Wikipedia, the iMac used to make it, and much else besides, wouldn’t exist.

These photos, taken from the Christie’s auction,1 are beautiful. The most especially beautiful is that well-travelled box: it has the natural patina that we’ve all spent 20 years trying to achieve quickly and artificially on our jeans and copper-bottom pots and everything ‘heirloom’.

Twenty-year-old plastics and electronics are interesting, but twenty-year-old cardboard is fascinating. iMacs and GameCubes survive in relatively large numbers because they’re a (mostly) functional object and an attractive one at that. Boxes rarely do because their function is nearly immediately outlived, and they take up disproportionate space for their expired utility.

That box is the kind of artefact that I’m deeply drawn to, but unable to create or own myself. Ephemera cannot survive in my environment – it falls victim to the manic, far-reaching purges that happens every few years, usually spurred on by a disruption or crisis. Fight Club had a deep and lasting effect on my outlook that applies inconsistently but intensely.2

And yet: I’m drawn to it and its kind, while also knowing I could not be trusted with it.

I also can’t really be trusted with the iMacs G3 that I’m in the process of upgrading with RAM and SSDs – there’s a strong possibility that, at some point in the future, they’ll be given away. But, while they’re here and while I’m passionate for them, I’ll enjoy the project and enjoy using these wonderful machines. I’ll even perversely enjoy the absolute frustration of opening them up to work on.

One of the things that makes the iMac G3 so especially attractive, so especially enjoyable, is the inconsistencies and joyousness embodied in their design and manufacture. These are machines from an earlier Apple – a pre-aluminium, pre-iPhone, pre-multiple-trillion-dollars Apple – and, like the company then, they’re not perfect.

They aren’t machined blocks of aluminium, crammed full of densely bespoke electronics: they’re a fragile, slightly wonky assembly of discrete parts, many of which you can replace yourself if you’re brave enough. And they really are fragile – I’ve had two disintegrate, horribly, into a snowstorm of internal beige plastic and wobbly CRTs during shipment. (One of those, tragically, the same colour as Wales’ historic machine; I hope its strawberry plastics prove salvageable.)

They have strange, charming inconsistencies in their design: pinstripes on the screen surround next to a slightly different shade of translucent plastic, unstriped, on the bottom housing. Handles in yet another kind and shade of translucent plastic. Snow-white iMacs shipped with black peripherals3. Two of them came in insane patterns. (Those two are my favourite, and my Blue Dalmatian arrived, thankfully, intact.)

They are, quite simply, beautiful, strange objects: very much of their time, very clearly far worse computers than Apple makes now, but also far nicer and more fun than anything Apple makes now.

The new 24″ iMac, which has been compared to the iMac G3, is beautiful and returns colour to the Mac – but it’s not fun. It’s perfect in its implementation, uniform in its materials, and sterile in its beauty. It is the product of what Gruber, whose site I no longer read, describes succinctly as “rigorous consistency”:

Type choices under Steve Jobs were excellent, but always a little ad hoc. Myriad for advertising and packaging, Lucida Grande for Mac OS X, Helvetica for the iPhone. I think it’s safe to say that Steve Jobs was far less rigorous than Jony Ive. The rigor necessary to develop a single type family that can work for everything from a digital watch face to a 100-foot billboard advertisement is extraordinary. And Ive has also brought that rigorous consistency to Apple’s architecture. Their new campus and their new retail stores are of the same design language – lighting, materials, furniture.

Ive’s tenure was one of rigour and constant polish. This led to some incredible devices, but simultaneously ended up polishing out character and warmth, leaving behind beautiful objects that were, at times, functionally impaired. We ended up with slabs of aluminium that are incredibly computers but forgettable objects.

The new iMac – beautiful, powerful, colourful – is rigorous in its design, and I’m glad it exists. I’m glad that it heralds colourful, powerful laptops in my price bracket. I’m glad of these things, but I’ll never look at it with the fondness I do the iMac G3.

Inexplicably, aggravatingly, Christie’s, who operate in a business that’s all about details, can’t seem to get their shit together and use proper apostrophes in their listing. This is so basic that I can’t even get Tumblr, a coding disaster all of its own, to stop overriding ' and replacing it with a real apostrophe!

I’m not expecting them to manually add the HTML character entities by hand (been there, done that, and would not recommend it) but I am expecting them to use a CMS that does this itself, or to type the fucking character. On a Mac, like the one they’re listing for sale, it’s ⌥⇧] – and has been for at least 30 years. ↩︎

Distressingly, I’m now older than either Edward Norton (30) or Brad Pitt (36) were when they made the film. Outliving Tyler Durden is a sort of generational rite-of-passage akin to outliving Kurt Cobain, and one that’s not without a little existential horror. Tyler is and remains perfect in his own way, while I simply age. ↩︎

The original black and white combo is actually pretty hard to find on Google’s image search nowadays – most people have swapped out the black Pro Mouse and Keyboard with later white ones, which jells better but isn’t period-correct. The A1048 keyboard is a common but anachronistic pairing; more appropriate would be the much rarer white M7803, which by this point in time is likely not very white. ↩︎

[artboitrash]

His Bloody Rose (Stefano Valentini fanfiction) Chapter 5 - Red Flags

Fear.

That's all I could feel.

Pure fear surging through my body.

"Bella. . ." I heard a smooth voice whisper in my ear. "Open your eyes, you can look at me. . ."

More fear went through me, and I shook my head. There was a low   chuckle coming from above me. I felt fire in my stomach, beginning to   overcome my entire form. I was terrified where it would spread to.

Something inside me begged not to let that warmth meet my heart.

"Rosa. . ." murmured the voice above me.

I could feel warm hands resting gently on my arms, not pinning me down forcefully but holding me gently. I felt my body, still full of   fear, begin to squirm as I wanted to get away from the thing causing it.

"Look at me, my dear."

The commanding tone made me open my eyes, and I looked up at the   person in front of me. Stefano Valentini lay on top of me, a twisted   smile on his face as he looked at me.

"My, your eyes are so pretty," he whispered as he leaned down. He pressed his lips to my forehead, a soft kiss rippling through my head.

The fire erupted through my entire body. The warmth from Stefano's lips fueled the fire, and I began to cry out.  I squirmed more as I felt flames emit from my body, tears streaming   down my face. Pain and fear mixed through me, feeling my body turn to   ash. My body disintegrated and collapsed, scattering across the blank   surface that I lay on.

"Bella Rosa," he murmured in my  ear that was no longer there, a smile dancing across his lips, "You are  such an elegant being, and you will be my most prized work of art."

-

I  awoke with a jerk, surrounded by darkness. I knew it was late at night from how dark it was in the room, making me realize I was laying in my room.  I felt my heart pounding in my chest, still feeling the warmth of the  fire heat my body. I pulled at my sheets, feeling my tangled pajamas  covered in sweat sticking to my body.

Now that I was released from  my prison of warmth, the sweat began to cool my body like it was meant  to. I lay back, just breathing a sigh of relief. I realized I still felt  warm in my core, my stomach twisting like I was sick. I shuddered,  trying not to think on the dream, but inevitably realizing that I could  still feel Stefano's lips on my forehead and his breath against my ear  and neck.

I jumped up, fear surging through me as I ran to the light switch.

Looking  around my room, nothing looked out of place. I breathed deeply in hopes  of calming down, letting myself take in every detail and mess  throughout my room.

No one but me was in my room. I swallowed  the saliva that had accumulated in my mouth. I felt my heart begin to  slow it's erratic pace. The heavy heat in my chest and stomach cooled,  and I shivered as I stood in the empty room.

I turned to leave my bedroom, then I hesitate. I walk to my bag and grab my laptop, flipping it open and turn it back on.  I can't handle being alone right now. Though, as I in fact live alone,  I'll have to make due with YouTube videos and music to calm myself.

While  waiting for it to boot up, I walk with my laptop to my kitchen. I set  it on the counter and type my password into the sign-in page. The screen  lights up with an automated message of "Welcome back, Rose" before the  loading screen disappears and opens on my notes from the guest lecture.

I  glance over the notes I had taken from the questions asked at the end  of the lecture. I stood there, reading over the exact phrases the   officer used and the notes I interjected while listening.

"How to protect yourself:

"The  serial killer is likely charismatic; probably attractive (subjective,  I'm sure); has a sense of entitlement to women's bodies (since no men  with killer's M.O. have shown up); likely did not have relationship with  victims, friendship or acquaintance or otherwise; killer seems to go  for women searching for modelling or acting or beauty jobs; "distinct  affection (wrong word) for actions while dismembering his or her victims";  killer gravitates towards young women with pale skin with mild  imperfections and brown or black hair; hair length, age, eye color, and  heights varying."

I read over the last two notes a few  times. I reached a hand to my short brown hair. I had hoped that because  I kept it short I wouldn't put me on the potential menu, so to speak.

My  mind floated back to my dream. I shuddered again, then turned to fill  my kettle with water. It's dark out, so obviously it's too late for  coffee, but it's never too late to make a cup of tea.

I might idealize British culture too much.

I  let my mind sort out the details it was focusing on as I clicked on the  burner under the kettle. I hesitated as I thought about the list the  chief had given us. My mind fluttered with details I had picked up, or  thought I had realized.

Stefano's charming smile and charismatic  gait. He's the only man that's actually been able to turn my head, the first person I've encountered that I would deem "attractive" or someone that looks appealing to me.  That's at least two things checked off.

"Entitled to women's  bodies" rang in my head. The thought of how he had acted both times I  had spoken with him; the way he kissed my hand when I thought he was  going to shake it again, and the way he had pulled me to him and kissed  my forehead. The way he had forced me to look at him while he stared at  me and held my face in his hand. The way he spoke made me think he  believed he owned me, saying I was "his good luck charm," and seeming  like he was entitled to my time and attention when he had encouraged me  to sit with him and review his photos.

Was I reading too far into his interactions with me?

And the photographs he had shown me, it had reminded me of the crime scene photographs I had seen.

I hesitantly went back to my computer screen. I opened a new tab and typed "Stefano Valentini" into the search bar.

I swallowed to myself as the page loaded.  I had resisted looking him up, but now I'm worried about this suspicion growing in my mind. A news article appeared as the first link, and I grabbed it, putting it into a new tab.

I  read through the article, it being about the body being found: a woman  named Emily Lewis. I scrolled through, realizing I had read through this  story before. I kept reading, coming across the paragraph "Emily's  longtime friend Stefano Valentini appeared heartbroken at the news:  'It's a terrible thing that happened to my lovely model... At least I  was able to capture her essence forever before it was destroyed.'"

My eyes flickered, now finding meaning in what I thought was a throwaway quote from a random citizen.

Could this be real? My stomach turned at the thought. Could this man really be a serial killer? Is he the serial killer terrorizing Krimson?

Those  bloody photos, the women in them missing limbs like the crime scene  photos. Almost exactly the same limbs missing, their bodies looking less  like special effects in my mind and more like actual corpses being used  to create photographs.

Could Stefano have used models as props, as literal props and killed them?

I jerked, then sped walked to my bedroom again. I rummaged around and found my school bag, grabbing inside it and finding my phone. I opened it and unlocked it. I quickly dialed 911, ready to make a full statement and explain what I had realized.

Then I hesitated. Was a charismatic man enough for me to call the police? Just because he acted like he did doesn't mean he's a serial killer

No. No, I must be acting irrational.

I let my hand drop to my side and walked back to my kitchen. As I walked in, the kettle began to boil and whistle on the stove. Swallowing, I set my phone by my computer and poured the water into my mug. I exited the phone app and opened the timer function. I typed in the time for my tea on my phone, starting and setting it back down on the counter.

I sighed and turned back to my computer. I read over the statement again, thinking over it as much as I could.

Then the phrase "longtime friend" jumped out at me. Stefano had known Mrs. Lewis for a long time. That was completely unlike what the chief had said while speaking in class today, that the killer likely didn't know his victims very long before killing them.

I forced a laugh at myself. Of course, I completely missed that. I chuckled out a sigh to try and calm myself. I don't need to be so afraid. I began rereading the entire article again, trying to commit it to memory.

After calming myself down, I realized that jumping at shadows after a nightmare is probably not a good idea. Stefano can't be the serial killer in Krimson, I'm sure the police would have centered in on him far too fast otherwise.

That doesn't mean Stefano isn't dangerous or trying to implant ideas in my head. He seemed to be taking interest in me, maybe, since he's been acting somewhat affectionate towards me. Or maybe that's completely incorrect too, and I'm completely misreading the situation.

My phone rang out, drawing me out of my thoughts. I looked down and saw my timer had stopped and was beeping at me to shut off the alarm. I unlocked my phone again and stopped the timer. I turned and began preparing my tea.

As I reached behind my computer for the sugar, I closed out of the news article tab and clicked another link. It was another news article, but not about a murder this time.

I placed my mug by my computer and went to my fridge to get some milk. After pouring milk in the tea, then putting it back away, I pulled out a spoon to stir the tea. I looked over the article I had clicked on, written by a Susan Phi, stirring as I began reading.

It was ruthless. It tore into Stefano and how he portrayed women with his art, how he is a professional photographer but not an artist. It spoke about how he had been injured while working as a war photographer, and it changed how he saw the world. When when he had returned from service he began to make art with a deeper meaning and reflections on what beauty means.

"Oh," I mumbled under my breath. I felt myself beginning to understand.

His reaction when I complimented his work had nothing to do with affection towards me specifically. His photographs hadn't been received well when he exhibited them. People were being so unkind to him about his art, following a set mind that when a man portrays only women he is only interested in the sexual appeal.

That explains why he was trying to gain a spot in my community college's gallery. He believed so much in his work, that was evident when he showed me his photos, but he wasn't being given a welcome reception by the professional art community.

I realized I had been stirring my tea this entire time. I stopped and turned to put the spoon in the sink.

Oh, this poor man. I was about to send the police after him, and he most definitely doesn't deserve it. He has been run off his feet trying to get recognition with his art and was constantly being forced into a niche of "shock value" that doesn't resonate with his work at all. I've seen shock value work, I've made some myself and watched people in my art classes present their gory and violent ideas in my art classes. Stefano's work wasn't anywhere close to that, that is so obvious to anyone who has spent any portion their life studying art.

I bit my lip, bringing my mug to my mouth to blow gently over the top of it. I sipped carefully at the tea, hoping that I would have a chance to make it up to him, despite him not knowing I had that thought.

I look at a few more articles from the local paper, reading about him.

Stefano Valentini. He's most certainly the most interesting artist I had ever come into contact with.

[johobi]

Satan, Baby

Word count: 2.6k

Pairing: Seokjin x Reader

Warnings: If you’re sensitive to religious topics and imagery I would skip this one, some rather major if brief angst, alcohol as a crutch, slightly scary in places, especially if you don’t like goats, fingering, tentacles (yep, however brief), archaic dialogue.

Prompt: “Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?” -The VVitch (2015)

AO3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16946889

When the devil knocks, you’re only too happy to answer.

Gin-gle bells, gin-gle bells, gin-gle all the way!

The greetings card sits, sardonic, opposite you. It has become a tragic premonition of this year’s festive agenda.  And the friend who’d gifted it you, gleeful grin and all, likely has no inkling of the accuracy with which it speaks. But how would she, when, blithe flake that she is, no longer favours you for her company this holiday. And not because you demanded it of her; of course not. You’re not the type to presuppose anything of anyone. It had been she who proposed your cosy Christmas twosome. A three-day extravaganza of turkey, gift-exchange and, yes, gin. Indeed, she’d been emphatic in her suggestion. It’s only been two weeks, after all, since you unearthed your ex-girlfriend’s year-long, adulterous deception. And you shouldn’t be alone after that, she’d insisted. But, no. The day before its Eve, your apparent best friend fucked off with her degenerate, drug-peddling boyfriend to a romantic retreat.

Christ.

So much for friendship.

So much for love.

Every unenthused effort you’d exerted in giving that other bitch - the cheating one - the Christmas she’d pouted for was wasted. The lurid lights, the offensively cheery decoration of your living room; it distresses your eyes and heart both. Reminds you how hideous a charade the whole ordeal has been. It’s relentlessly fake. A blanket of spray-on snow over nine layers of flaming lies.

It wasn’t just the pantomime of Christmas, though. Everything had been for Lily.

Your family’s desertion of you, for one. To say that they were disapproving of your relationship was underselling the strength of their abhorrence. Backwards, backwoods, and back-to-back harassment was their mentality and method in a nutshell. But you braved their repudiation for a love so true that it gave you the wings they purported God would tear from you.

If He feels so vehemently that a woman shouldn’t tongue another, though, he can fucking keep them.

And so you sit alone, gin in one hand and your dog snoring under the other, pensive. Numbly so, by this point. One can only weather so much before seeking shelter inside somewhere warm and safe. For you, it’s your mind and in the dregs of a bottle. Can’t drink too much, though. You have work tomorrow. The world doesn’t stop for Jesus these days.

Your drink becomes too cloying to endure. Its bottle, while only half-imbibed, sits suddenly heavy and offensive in your palm, because even alcohol has betrayed you. The stunts your stomach is showcasing deters you from persisting, so you relieve yourself of the bottle’s burden in an extraordinary way. Like an active grenade you lob it into the fireplace opposite and revel, exhilarated, how it enrages the flames for an alluring moment. The crack of splintering glass stirs your dog from repose to alarm in a split second, but you soon have him settled. He peers up at you with a question, but you only need smile before his placidity returns.

Maybe I could skip town? the scenario is heady to conceive. It grips you as you speculate within, everything outside your mind’s four walls forgotten. All but the flames afront of you. As they snap and writhe like the souls of those damned, the fire mesmerises you into a deeper state of introspection. You feel free of the compulsion to blink. Sink further into stupor.

I would sell my soul for another life.

The blaze speaks back. It knows you as well as you do. It is you.

Is that so?

Yes, I would, and there’s no hesitance to your thinking so. In your trance you feel easy, open.

That is quite the sacrifice, your mind supposes, though why you’ve taken on a different, more masculine voice to debate yourself is something you won’t allow yourself to examine.

Your eyeballs prickle in protest for being denied moisture. Nevertheless, it’s impossible to blink. My soul is rotten, if I even have one, and you truly believe that. I’ve been through too much.

The second voice inhabiting your body deepens. Deepens, and mutates, until there’s a trio of them speaking in perfect tandem; a whisper, a growl, and a voice of silver silk. Contrarily, it is luminous. Wouldst thou grant it to me?

“W-What?” you splutter it outside the confines of your internal monologue. Because that is not you conversing back. As soon as the exclamation stumbles over your tongue, your reverie disintegrates. You regain your ability to blink, but within one or two you feel yourself shift into an eerier reality. The fire is no longer quite so bright nor dazzling. The embers gasp their final, fiery breaths as they fade. The room is dark but for the paltry twinkle of your looming Christmas tree. Pluto barrels from the room, tail tucked to his stomach, a piercing yelp in his wake. “P-Pluto?”

Silence.

The rapid in-and-out of your breath is all that meets the muted air. Until the slightest shiver of movement catches in your periphery, and then you’re panting like a dying dog. You shrink into the sofa’s security, legs folding to your chest to screen your defenceless body. It must be a trick of the lowlight, but your eyes insist that there is a figure some eight foot tall occupying the corner. But it can’t be, because the tree’s illumination, however scant, catches nothing tangible. And yet, as your eyes squint through disbelief and murk, you swear, solemnly, that two, twisted horns sit atop this silhouette’s head. “Who’s there?” you don’t so much as threaten as squeak, catching your teeth on the tops of your knees. “Show yourself. How did you get in?!”

One blink and the demonic shadow vanishes, like your dry eyes were the instigator of this nightmarish hallucination. But something still remains there, you’re sure of it. It doesn’t breathe, it doesn’t speak, and it doesn’t disturb this plane of existence in any capacity, but you know it’s there. “Who are you? Have I finally gone insane?”

Your heart-rate is in the cosmos. And it only continues to ascend when the shadow responds, in that same, flanged voice. It’s otherworldly and melodic, bordering on soothing, were it not for the growl underrunning every spoken word. “Thou art of clear mind and clearer eyes. Thou hast summoned me.”

The dark form offers nothing to the truth of its identity, and yet you already know what stands there. There is no doubt in your mind. Strange, when up until this point you’ve been atheistic to the point of obnoxiousness. None of that is of any importance now, though, when faced by a being exuding the formidable truth. “Th-The Devil? I summoned you?”

It’s unnatural how your heartrate quietens when it - he - steps forward from indistinction. With him he brings an aura of utter tranquility, and even on its boundaries you feel like you’ve consumed a healthy dose of some benzo or another. Empty of anxiety, you’re able to appreciate the godless beauty of this man. Yes, a man, or perhaps that is how he’s choosing to present himself to you today. Quite against expectations he’s donned head to toe in white; a suit perfectly tailored to cling, and hair like platinum thread. Wide shoulders and narrow hips draw your eyes first, but then they land on, and refuse to waver from, his divinely-featured face. Everything you see there is sculpted by a deity’s master hand. The man possesses voids for eyes; they neither let light in nor out, and as he observes you without relent, you fear for what might happen if you fall into them. “Thou didst,” he murmurs past ripe, apple red lips, and this distraction is almost more damning. God, you want his mouth. More than all those who came before him.

“I didn’t think you were real. I didn’t think any of this kind of thing was real. What else is real? Do you have a name?” you’re not really the type to babble nonsensically, but you just feel so serene. Weightless. Words are but feathers on the wind, and to release them is to be free. There being an ancient, malevolent entity in your vicinity is of little worry.

“Seokjin is one of mine names,” he smirks; a mere twitch of his generous mouth, and cherubs are in chorus in your heart. The rest of your stumbling enquiries go unanswered. “Address me thus, if thou pleases.”

“You look more like an angel,” you breathe into the space between you.

The Devil smiles wider. It’s tenuous, but perhaps you spy two rows of vaguely pointed teeth. “There is nary a difference. They live to serve their Creator, as doth mine conscripts. I, however, am transparent in mine subjugation. He is not. One might consider that,” he tongues a tapered tooth. “Devilish.”

There’s little time to form an opinion on the matter because he takes two more steps to you, and every incremental increase in his proximity robs you of the wherewithal to function. He’s absolutely breathtaking, fatally so. It’s only when you heave in an urgent breath that you realise how even your most autonomic of impulses are impaired by him. You lower your legs to both see him better and signal your receptiveness to his advance. There’s no suggestion of what he may do when he comes near, but his eyes graze your exposed thighs without apology, only that sultry smirk pulling at his mouth. “Say to me,” he whispers low and slow, savouring each syllable like an indulgent meal. “Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?”

You don’t react verbally, not just yet. Your body, however, gives an immediate answer. There is a diabolical stirring between your spreading legs, intensifying for every second his gaze lingers there. It must be some dark magic hitching up your shift and soddening your cunt, but you sense it comes solely from you. You’re inebriate on his exotic musk, so dense that it fills not only your nostrils but your mouth; an irresistible tang compelling your asphyxiation. Rather than draw breath, however, you release a wanton whine. Each moment you go untouched by him your pussy strengthens its revolt. You’re so, unbearably tender, so shamefully wet, that little more than the heat of his breath on your skin will undo you. That much you’re sure of, as you squirm, open-legged and leaking for his pleasure, beseeching him for his mercy.

“Grant me thy answer, sweet girl,” the demon persists at range. He studies how unreservedly you present yourself to him, leaking so copiously that it moistens the sofa beneath. “I must hear it by thy own lips.”

It takes everything remaining of your modesty to prevent yourself from masturbating. “Y-Yes. I want to live a delicious life. Please.”

The one hand obscured in his pocket, he withdraws, raising it to the air. Adorning it is a ring, inset with a peculiarly flickering jewel. You rise, too, but whether it be by sorcery or out of your own, debauched necessity, you don’t know. The sofa dips under the soles of your feet as you straighten awkwardly to attention. The arousal streaming your legs in depraved amounts demands you keep them apart. An undignified stance, to be sure, but something you care little about in your condition. Fuck, you twinge like a metronome at your centre, mouthing around nothing but a desperate wish.

That wish, Seokjin grants. It’s only one more step before he’s level with your bosom, peering up at you completely soulless. Completely endless. His aroma is spicy and thicker than ever, and more potent an influence on you than the strongest of spirits. “Delightful,” he hums with a resonance that tickles your insides. And there’s no time before he actually is. With just the one, bold hand, he bypasses the lacy hem of your shift and embeds two fingers straight into your pliant cunt. Immediately you are boneless and require his shoulders for support, flagging over him like a damsel courting unconsciousness. You’re very much awake, however, because you feel it all. The quivering of your cunt as he stretches you in slow, circular motions. The press of his fingertips as he palpates your g-spot with enough power to weaken your knees. And then, most peculiarly, how he advances into you even at his knuckles’ limits. What felt like fingers before are now far too thick and flexible to be considered as such. The tendrils that penetrate you lash and writhe along the limits of your pussy, caressing the puckered opening in your cervix. The girth of him transformed is almost too much to bear, but you’d rather be torn asunder than risk his withdrawal. You don’t even think to question the unearthly occurrence. It’s far more gratifying than any appendage a mortal can offer.

But despite your best to keep him, The Devil withdraws. Slowly, painfully, he dislodges his digits from your sticky cunt, until there’s nothing there but an intolerable ache. You tremor as you raise yourself from his shoulders, poised to beg his return. “I need more,” you’re starved; raspy. “Please.”

He doesn’t capitulate to your pitiful plea. Instead, he removes his hand from beneath your skirt, fingers demonstrably fingers. They shine with slick so thick it barely runs. And vacant from his index finger is the ring you swear embellished him once. Confusion can’t establish itself before he ensnares you in his sordid eyes once more. “Sign mine book. Kiss these lips. Thy soul is the price,” he’s guttural but hushed all at once, and before you can fathom his proposition he produces a book in his unsoiled hand. Inlaid with bone and scale, the tome looks primeval. The spoiled, aged pages flip to one without entries, and Seokjin smears your essence in its margins. You require no further explanation.

The quill lies immaculate and waiting. “I can have anything I want?”

“All that thou wishest,” his tongue moves more than his lips do; a serpent behind sharp teeth.

It hurts to behold him much longer. The eyes that bore, unabating, into you; you feel him already taking stock of your soul. He’s in you, somewhere, too hot and too intense. And yet you want more. “Can I have you?”

His self-satisfaction suggests that your request isn’t a revelation to him. Just another of his ploys bearing fruit. “Thou desirest me desecrate your unworthy cunt, girl?” Seokjin waits a beat for your manic head-bobbing. “Very well. Sign thy name.”

You do. There’s no reluctance between your scribbles despite the agony that accompanies it. Each stroke scores itself raw into some unplaceable part of your body; your receipt for this cursed transaction. As your signature dries on the page, it’s with crazed anticipation you meet his waiting gaze. “I’m ready.”

The book slams and disapparates with an ear-shattering snap, but not even that can deter you from your trajectory. Delicately but determinedly, you bend until your lips are a whisper upon his. The kiss doesn’t remain chaste for long, however. Seokjin’s tongue pours like molten lava into your mouth, scalding all it touches. Your eyes drift closed while twined by tongue, and it’s then that he seizes you into a steely embrace. Rough, ravenous hands drag you from the sofa and plant you to the floor beneath him. His heat and weight are suffocating, wonderfully so, and each lap of his tongue is a lick of flame purifying you of misery.

God, you think, staring through the ceiling as Seokjin sinks his whetted fangs into your breast. Let me burn.