#ive been trying to draw them for so long but to no avail

[tiny-vermin]

IM playing with them like DOLLS

heres the lines cus i liked them. and look at me go!!! i used a reference for both their feet and all of esseks clothes!!!!

if u see this u should tell me whether u picture modern aus to include fantasy races or r they all just humans. because i'd like to know. personally i just stick to their canon look + modern era clothes

[todayisafridaynight]

pocket-square sized

[coffinup]

Hi! Ive been trying to learn about mortuary science in my free time, but im unable to take any classes. Do you have any recommended websites, books, or any sources for getting started?

Yes there are tons of ways you can learn about mortuary science without taking classes! Here are some of my favorite recs, I consumed a lot of these before i started mortuary school but some of them I’m using as supplementary study!

Books:

-Stiff by Mary Roach. This book is a TAD dated, but it is an interesting deep-dive into the way that human bodies have contributed to science, how body disposition practices have changed, and how our understanding of death has changed over time. It's beautifully written and really good for getting your feet wet in this topic.

-The Anatomist by Bill Hayes. This is a sort of biography of Henry Gray and Henry Carter (the author and illustrator of Gray’s Anatomy, respectively) combined with a crash course in anatomy. It’s a very fun read!

-Gray’s Anatomy. I still find the illustrations and descriptions in this book really helpful!

-Embalming: History, Theory and Practice by Robert G Mayer. This is technically a textbook, but it's probably the most in-depth book on embalming if that's something you're interested in! It runs kindof expensive, but you can get an account on internet archive and borrow it. I also know there are epubs available of it if you care to seek them out ;)

-All that Remains by Sue Black. Dame Black was a forensic scientist. Her writing is very brutally honest! Forensic pathology is a field I'm personally interested in and very relevant to mortuary science!

Websites:

TalkDeath.com

Whenyoudie.org

These are both great resources for learning about grief, alternate death practices, thanatology, etc.

Videos:

The Mutter museum’s youtube channel. For lots of cool videos on medical history!

Undertaker 365's video on embalming. This is a smaller channel, and this video is long but easy to listen to in the background to learn about embalming.

Kari the Mortician. She has easy-to-follow short-form videos as well as a podcast! I like her because she is a practicing funeral director and embalmer with a long history in the industry. She talks about everything involving funeral services, from directing, to embalming, to historical knowledge, to industry terms, etc.

I'll give a brief caveat to that if you watch any videos by mortician influencers take their knowledge with a grain of salt. Mortuary science, embalming, and funeral directing varies depending on where you are and what path you decide to take, and sometimes social media influencers have a biased perspective. Caitlyn Doughty's historical videos are interesting, but i'd steer clear of any of her opinion pieces. Always keep in mind that social media is designed to highlight posts and videos that stimulate negative emotions; fear-mongering, contrarian attitudes, etc. Negativity draws views. If someone has an overtly negative opinion about embalming, burial, cremation, etc, remember that is just their opinion and never take any one person's opinion as gospel!

Hope this helps as a start! I have a lot of books on my to-read list, so I'll post my opinions of them when I finish them!

[ronanxing]

hi!! I love your art and have been wondering what brushes you use since they always look very smooth

omg thank you so much!!! 😭 that means a lot to me cuz im actually a rly messy artist so ive been trying hard to make my art neater and the lineart cleaner,, i actually use random brushes interchangeably so since theres quite a bit ill just expound below the read more cut :>

so for the entire year or so the main brushes ive used are wendy xu's esterbrook double elastic #135 vintage dip pen mimic and fine point sharpie mimic ! its pay what you like (min $1) and theyre only available on procreate. i highly recc them, they feel SO nice to use! ive been using them a lot esp in the recent (ivantill) comics ive been drawing but also for rendered pieces to clean them up a bit

also rly fun to use for sketching / crosshatching! personally i love to use the mimic gel pen for sketching while the elastic is for clean ups

sometimes i also just use the default ink procreate brushes like "syrup" or "gesinski ink"

for more rendered pieces like the ones above ive been using rinreeper's procreate brush pack (pay what you like, min $0) and marmastry's brush pack (pay what you like, min $0). both of these packs have really lovely brushes that make blending a lot easier, and coloring becomes a lot more fun :> they've been a huge help for me for a long time now (i also used the aforementioned wendy xu brushes for inking and lineart)

these brush packs also come with their own lineart brushes and i sometimes use them too

for pieces that are blockier / not quite as blended i love to use twulf's procreate brush packs, specifically the draw and paint packs. its free and only on procreate! for the draw pack i use "filly 1", while for paint i use "002" and "basic rounded cube". this is perfect if youre not rly looking to blend your colors and rather lay it out as is

OK thats pretty much it, sorry if its incoherent in any way i wasnt sure how to like. format this;; but these are the brushes ive been using d entire year 🫡

[wusnus]

Guide for Doing Commissions

I've been seeing posts from artist who got scammed doing commissions so i thought I'd share my process from when I did them to avoid scams! Payment - Agree on pricing and payment process and confirm they understand before you draw anything. take a screenshot of this as well. Make sure there are no surprises for anyone with the payment process. - always always ALWAYS take at least 50% up front. This is to make sure they cant run off with any of the process without paying. I allowed for a refund if they did not like the sketch but once the sketch has been approved no refund is available. - never send the final before getting paid in full. I would send a lower quality watermarked version to show how it looks then would send the high quality un watermarked file after I'd received payment.

Customers - Friends! My first few were my friends and then when people saw what i did for them they would know to find me for similar stuff! People who love what you made for them will recommend you to others! - People who find your work on their own. Usually im inherently more suspicious of people who dont follow me or anyone who ive worked with. I will still treat them fairly but this can be a red flag so i put up my guard

Advertising - Have your prices and info easy to find! I kept mine in a pinned post and had a link to my website in my bio. If someone came to me and asked about stuff that I had listed in my website or post that's a huge red flag. Most serious commissioners will try to figure out if they can afford your prices before they express interest in commissioning you. - LIST THAT YOU MAY REFUSE ANY COMMISSION FOR ANY REASON this is to avoid conflict when refusing suspicious customers - You don't need a big "my commissions are open!" post. You can have one but unless you are already a big account this is unlikely to reach beyond people who are already interested in your work. something small like "_ commission slots open" is enough to inform your followers

Pricing this is less about avoiding scams and more about pricing your work properly - give yourself wiggle room for difficulty. In all my prices I would add something like "10-20$ more for very complicated designs - price for time and effort. I would set a base price anywhere from 5-50$ depending on the difficulty (ie. 5$ for icons and 50$ for animations) then add to it payment for my time. To get time i would time myself making that sort of work to get my usual work time in hours (excluding breaks and such) then i would multiply that by 6-10$ and add it to my base price to get my final price. So price is determined by b+ht=p where b is base price, h is hourly addition, and t is time in hours to finish the work. this also has the added benefit of forcing you to work within your usual time and not go overboard beyond what you are getting paid for! Red Flags heres some red flags ive seen for difficult customers and scams. - complains about other artists. if they seem to not be treating other artists well they wont treat you good either - hasn't checked your prices before contacting you. how can they plan to pay in full if they havent even looked at what they are getting into? - very newly created account. typically commissioners will have been following you or at least seeing your work before they reach out. a new account is a red flag - wants you to finish something another artist started. I will never touch another artists work unless they have spoken to me directly about it. I dont trust "please render this sketch i commissioned from someone else!". Final Tips - tell your customer how long it will take you to finish their commission (give yourself a week at minimum because sometimes life happens and you need wiggle room). - keep your customer up to date and ask questions! dont send high quality process picture but make sure they like how its going! -Small streamers and creators are some of the best customers I've had because they often will come for more later if they like what you made! super fun to work with especially because you get to see them show your work to their audience

[ididnotknow]

hey im researching drawing tablets that you can like... take out and about with you and i remembered that one comic you drew of your experience of being misidentified as an architect (via spirk) on a train ride and was wondering: What drawing tablet you use/ do you have any recommendations for portable ones?

thankyou!!

(i think about that comic all the freakin time and i love it so much. the spirk. the other persons eyes falling out of their head to stare DIRECTLY at them making out. its perfect.)

(comic for ref> https://www.tumblr.com/ididnotknow/692672943716810752/long-train-journey-shenanigans?source=share )

I use a wacom companion 2 that I bought back in 2016. It used to be extremely good and could even run unity without issue, but honestly it is dying now and can barely run photoshop anymore. I've been looking into switching to an ipad because it's more nomad. Even though the cintiq is as well, you have to carry around the big charger and it is quite heavy.

They don't sell it anymore but I see it has been replaced by the wacom mobile studio pro.

I'd say the pros of wacom is that you get an actual computer. It's running windows 10, you can crack your softwares and it is very versatile, though the price is steep and it's less comfortable to carry around (around 1.5kg+power adapter, so closer to a laptop).

Apple has the advantage of being lightweight, it's easy to use but you are stuck with whatever app is available on it (like procreate that you have to pay for), it's super easy to carry around. Ive tried a couple of different ipads and i found it comfortable to use, though the pen is a bit too thin for me. you have to be ok with giving money to apple, too.

There are obviously alternatives, that often come with a lighter price tag. huion for example also sell pen computers. I have never touched one though, so I cannot give an opinion. I think windows also sells tablets that can be used efficiently to draw, but as for huion, I haven't had the opportunity to try them.

I hope you find something that works for you!

[mercykatze]

I will walk into your house and (politely) demand you to explain all of your lore, hello???????? I'm listening!!!! I will read! I will gobble!!!! I will consume!!!! I'm so interested..... plsplspls don't feel like no one's interested because I am now???? What is the story omg?????

sorry i took so long to reply work is killing me 😭

ive posted a few comics of the story here under the hiddenclan tag but i dont think ill have the time/emotional availability to draw out the rest so ill do a little lore dump under the cut

so what i had envisioned for the story was like. Shineclan (Warmflick and Bluffpaws original clan was Very unpopular in their area, mostly for their disbelief in Starclan. The clan culture acknowledge Starclans existence but saw them as just dead cats with no real power over the clan. The highest power to Shineclan was the current clan leader and that's who theyd refer to for any ceremonies or giving of thanks (hinted at when Warmflick calls upon Thymestar to approve the name she was giving Bluffpaw).

the current leader, Thymestar (Warmflicks father) was a similar sort of leader to Oakstar. very popular within the clan as a strong and fearless leader but was very aggressive to any outside cats, including other clans, loners, ect. eventually it got to the point where the other clans joined up and decided to drive Shineclan from the forest, one way or another. Warmflick, as the only pregnant queen and Bluffpaw as the youngest cat in the clan were both sent away as soon as the fighting started to protect them.

I wanted the story to show in particular, Warmflicks son Jumblekit slowly picking up on signs from Starclan and trying to tell his mother abt them and culminating with her receiving nine lives and the name Warmstar.

I really wanted to show how tragic i found Warmstar as a character. she is painfully optimistic and self sacrificing, even after slowly losing everyone she cares about. where i played the save to, she only had one kit remaining, had lost both Bluffnudge and Jumblekit(now Jumblebear) to the same tragic fire and had lost the mate she found. all of the lives shes lost so far as a leader have been while protecting clanmates. the one kit she has left, Gullgrove, she is incredibly close to. but he has a mate outside of the clans (has brought back 3 litters and is constantly spotted in the twoleg place) and i imagine she is terrified that shes going to lose him through this too.

i just have a lot of feelings about warmflick and shes really special to me so im sad like. with myself for losing motivation in telling this after getting no engagement </3

[lowlaif]

Konpeito

never seen a star up close.

kinda wanna eat one.

and no, not one of those starlets hanging out in ridiculously overpriced LA villas - now finally available in "sustainable" minus an ecological footprint rivaling the size of their range rovers. the owner will fly in from two towns over so they get there early for their yearly yacht trip and ill activate adblock so palantir cant pester me with 50-euro airline ads to the maldives because shit, money is going to be a bit tight this month

i want to eat a star. actual heaps of gas and space dust and heat and whatdoiknow, im not a scientist, id rather not belie my words by googling the exact chemical configuration of something thats just bright and pacifying to me, something thatll melt on my tongue. 'm not even gonna chew. just gonna swallow it. the way i ate chocolate as a kid because relishing in something meant enough time for it to be taken away. the way i drink medicine because - if you gulp it down really quickly, it doesnt have time to taste bitter: anything can be honeyed milk if you clench your teeth hard enough

did you know thats what galaxy means anyway? milk? i wonder what galactical honey would be, then. whether id think its sweet or spicy, whether id like the taste or want to spit it out. if itd go down with well-rounded corners or lodge itself into my throat and stay there. fishbones. i also wonder whether astronauts ever feel scammed when they set foot on the ISS and realize theyre not going to bear witness to a sky made out of sparkling lights and silver threads and golden spots and rainbow clouds but rather just a sea so inky black it's going to make breathing difficult not just by lack of oxygen alone. earths much too reflective for any other luminescent object to be visible to the naked eye, ive been told, hence why youd just be looking at a planet so bright it surely hurts to stare at it, and i wonder what it feels like, being up there and gazing down only to be blinded when youre so used to looking up and squinting?

im homesick thinking of kids drawing earth into the upper right corner of their drawings. i dont actually know if theres stars up there though everybody tells me those pinprick lights are, and i cant breathe when im busy trying to figure out what exact level of depression the stale air around me tastes like. but something in my brain clicks when i think of shiny things and theres no empirical evidence that grabbing the sparkly stuff up above my head wont cure me so i want to, i want to, i want to. wanting always boils down to sinking your teeth into it and ive filed my canines far too often to fear the force of my bite now

people dance on the moon and i mimic their steps in my bedroom and though these are just small steps i dont know the names of the poor sods stuck on the ISS either, even though there's only been like 500 of them and they're all way better at living life than i am. my hands ghost over where i instinctively know the light switches of my flat are and wonder if up there somebody's got a nightlight, cheap plastic stars attached to their ceilings, one of those little projectors that put constellations on your walls. whether they ever have trouble sleeping and if yes, what the hell do they look up at then? who do they cast their wishes to?

never seen a star up close. never held one. but the concept is so familiar, so ingrained into whatever our shared consciousness is made out of, that i want with my molars. i itch to keep it in my tummy so it keeps me warm on the cold days and i only trust what i see so i want to look at it until my retinas burn, until the sound of the big bang echos in the confines of my brain. itll drown out all other unwanted thoughts and itll sing in the genetic make-up of my descendants long after my neighbours cant hear me sing in the shower anymore. ill cup my palms and pray into them. begging is easier when youre in position and im on my knees and i swear ill never run out of things to whisper to the radiant little ember in my hands because it is beautiful and because i like shiny things and because stars have always made us look up at them and

When I finally get my teeth on it and swallow it whole I'm sure a piece of the star will get lodged in my throat like. fishbones. in a last-ditch effort at vengeance. I'll spend the rest of my life attempting to choke it back up.

"I made it with love," I'll say after I finally managed to do so.

"Careful, it's hot."

[fluffyllamas-23]

💝 - What gestures do they really appreciate? How do you get on their good side?

☕ - Coffee or tea?

💀 - How do they feel about horror movies?

💖 - How and how often do they try to impress their partner(s)? How and how often do their partner(s) impress them?

for your girls!!

omg thank you for these!!! My apologies they took so long, I've been having such a rough time with focusing on much of anything and I've been so tired for no reason other than existing is hard lmao but thank you for loving my girls! I did them for Arwen and Marcia, and Jasmine and Saoirse!!

💝 - What gestures do they really appreciate? How do you get on their good side?

Arwen: Arwen really hates cooking and figuring out food. She will if she has to but will hate every minute of her, so the best way to get to her heart is to organize that for her. If someone organizes it for her, whether it be cooking for her or getting her favorite takeout, she just melts. Marcia thankfully loves to cook, so they work well together lmao. Marcia: Marcia loves to be spoiled and told how wonderful and appreciated she is. She really loves experiences - fancy date nights, couples dates at the spa, impromptu weekend getaways….stuff like that. Saoirse: Saoirse really loves when people very obviously listen to her and remember things she’s said and act on those things. She teaches high school, and while she loves her students and what she does, it does get really frustrating sometimes because it can feel like she’s speaking to a wall and has to spend the majority of her day repeating herself. Someone hanging on her every word, and remembering something she’d said weeks ago and bringing it up later is something that just makes her feel SO special and loved. Jasmine: Little acts of service make Jasmine feel really loved. She’s so used to having to be hyper-competent at work and it makes her melt a bit when someone does something for her, even if she’s perfectly capable of and planning on doing something herself. Sometimes she’ll come home after a long, hard day of work, and the house is clean, and Saoirse’s just gotten dinner in the oven, and she kisses her cheek and tells her she’ll draw her a bath and pour her a glass of wine, and she’s all 🥺🥺🥺. It works platonically, too. If one of her coworkers takes the time to grab her a coffee from the cart without her asking, she just dies lmao

☕ - Coffee or tea?

Arwen: Arwen loves iced coffee no matter the weather. Even when it’s freezing, she prefers iced coffee over hot. She usually takes it with oat milk and whatever syrup she’s feeling that day, usually hazelnut vanilla. Marcia: Marcia is a tea kind of person. She loves all kinds of tea, but she tends to prefer earl gray or herbal teas. With earl gray, she takes it with a little bit of cream and sugar, and with herbal teas she’ll add a bit of honey. Not too much, just enough to give it a little bit of sweetness. Saoirse: Saoirse is a coffee person, preferably as black as her soul. Even better would be an IV of coffee directly into her veins, but that’s not possible yet lol. She really likes nitro cold brews, or just plain black coffee. Jasmine: Jasmine is neither a coffee or tea person. She doesn’t really like the taste of either, but will consent to drinking tea when she’s sick (only because her throat always hurts SO bad when she’s sick. That and cough drops are the only things that help). To get her caffeine fix, she usually opts for the largest size available of either Diet Coke or Coke Zero. 

💀 - How do they feel about horror movies?

Arwen: Arwen doesn’t really like horror movies. She thinks they’re dumb, and has no interest in watching them. Marcia: Marcia doesn’t like horror movies. She was raised really religious, and although she’s deconstructed years ago, she still doesn’t really fuck with spooky stuff. She doesn’t really believe in it anymore, but It’s just kind of a holdover from it being drilled into her head that horror and paranormal stuff is satanic lmao. Saoirse and Jasmine: They do enjoy horror movies, but really only during spooky season when they can really get in the mood for it. They won’t really watch any of them outside of October.

💖 - How and how often do they try to impress their partner(s)? How and how often do their partner(s) impress them?

This might be kind of a boring answer, but I don’t really feel like any of these four ever try to impress their partner! They’re all pretty secure and established in their relationship, and any impressing they do is completely unintentional. Marcia may occasionally try and impress Arwen, if only to be given praise lmao.

[carmenpeach]

ive said it lots before but i feel its good to talk about on my little blog but its just so weird to me how badly antipsychotics affected me and how long it lasted even after i quit them. on one hand i thought "well i can try it and if i dont like it i can quit and go back to how i was" but i didnt know it would take almost a year to be myself again, and not just in the terms of being insane. i felt like i lost my passion, drawing had little interest in me and it was so hard to draw, i struggled to get out doodles, so much of my sketchbook is half of a simplified face or just odd proportions or weird lines. like back until november 2022 and prior i felt top of my game, i was filling sketchbooks and happy with almost all my drawings and i feel i was as skilled as i needed/ wanted to be, but it was a hard downhill and im still working on getting to that level again. but moreso i lost my passion for everything else too, like i felt detached from my special interests, i hardly played any video games too.

like sure i wasnt paranoid or filled with dread every time it was silent or i was alone for more than 30 seconds and i wasnt hallucinating and my nightmares and insomnia calmed down and i wasnt having panic attacks every day and wasnt constantly angry, but what did it matter if i felt detached from it all. i always thought i didnt want to live like that but i didnt know what it was like to live without it and its weird and i hated it. i remember the exact moment too when it hit too. i think i was just changing my clothes and suddenly this clarity washed over me, and it was so weird and confusing. one way ive always somewhat described my schizophrenia was this feeling, like another me inside of me, right in my spine and the base of my head, right behind me and always there, and i could never figure out the emotion that came from her (not sure why but i/ we used she/ it for her) but it felt something akin to malicious, like in a way it hated me in a way and wanted to be the front center one, like sometimes i could feel it dragging at me like it would win. and so recently a lot of my symptoms have returned but that one still isnt back yet but since ive been slowly regaining my other symptoms im sure itll follow suit. and so this last year ive been in this panic over this, since that was always a part of me as long as i can remember, this other me. and to have that ripped away i feel like an empty person. she was literally half of me and its lonely now. like i know this is a silly way to say it and i sound like a cartoon character, but its kinda quiet up there. but i hate it. so ive spent this last year feeling like my identitiy as a person was just washed away and suddenly i was a new person in a way, and just being so scared ill never be who i was again. i even spent a good chunk of time trying to trigger psychotic episodes but to no avail. all that to say is, im almost myself again and i dont feel so miserible being different now that im getting back to how i was, and im not worried this other half wont return since now i know it will

[clowningismyboyfriend]

Is Taylor Swift announcing something MAJOR (again) at this years MTV VMAS?! 9/12…. 12/9 🤡🌌

Hi!

Welcome to the second post on my blog!

I figured the first had to be some kind of intro, I couldn’t just come waltzing in all clowned up, spitting my theories and rationalising whilst being irrational. That would be rude of me 😂

But I promised the juice so here is what’s been squeezin’.

In my last video on Tik Tok, I was happily headed off towards the direction of the ultimate clown missions of them all: The Karma “missing” album/era theory.

Thoughtfully shared below for your convenience!

In the relatively short time it’s been since I went from “Standard Swiftie” to full blown “Tay-Spiracy Theorist”, this missing album theory has been both the wildest AND most persistent Ive stumbled across.

The majority of the supporting clues do seem difficult to completely disprove or deny..

Deep in my clowning process of compiling all the piles, I think it was the 112 days theory that I’d JUUUSST started to unpack- I still haven’t wrapped my head around this 112 day theory but it certainly sounds juicy off the top of my head and I’m keen to go take a look later on-

BUT I GOT SIDETRACKED.

When reminded about the calculation of days between and months between, I cross checked my SwiftMath number crunching notes section if you will, where I had carefully and lovingly been documenting what was not immediately apparent to me.

(Sidenote: Although it’s mostly irrelevant now, there’s definitely some interesting SwiftMath on my first video where I somewhat incorrectly predict the release date for 1989- TV.)

So- I noticed that with all of the the Taylor’s Version albums, the re-release dates vs original release dates have been consecutively following a 12 year/9 year pattern- Check it out:

OR= Originally Released

ANN= Announcement date for Taylor’s Version

TV RD= Taylor’s Version release date

1.Fearless- OR- 11/11/2008- ANN- 11/02/21- TV RD- 9/04/21

Release Days apart- 4,532- 12 years, 4 months, 29 days

2.Red- OR- 22/10/2012- ANN- 18/06/21- TV RD- 19/11/21

Release Days apart- 3,315 - 9 years, 0 months and 28 days

3.Speak Now- OR- 25/10/2010- ANN- 5/5/23- TV RD- 7/7/23

Release Days apart- 4,638 - 12 years, 8 months and 12 days

4.1989-OR- 27/10/14- ANN- 9/8/23- TV RD- 27/10/23

Release Days apart- 3,287- 9 years, 0 months and 0 days

I figured ok surely I’m onto a clue here.. although my number crunching in my first video was somewhat skewed to an extent when it came to the upcoming release date of 1989 itself, ever since the announcement of 1989 TV, that repetition of 12 years and 9 years just seemed more than coincidental, although I’ve been proven wrong before with stuff like this.

I tried at first to apply it to the remaining two albums (Reputation and Self Titled) to absolutely no avail.. surely she wouldn’t be waiting that long to re-release Reputation (either 12 years or 9 years would mean 2029 or 2026) and the 12 year period meant that Debut would have had to be re-released before she even officially announced she would be re-recording.

So it was back to the drawing board but this time I was properly stuck and couldn’t move past it. It felt like I was taking a math test unprepared, but knowing I had learnt the formulas so why couldn’t I just figure it out?! Or better yet, your know those dreams when you try and punch something or someone and just can’t quite connect, like your hand is made of lead??

I was a Swiftie on a clue hunting mission with what felt like writers/hunters block. Easter Egg Block, if you will.

Until..

When doing my bit in casting my daily votes for this years MTV VMAS for Taylors 8 nominations (at the time she had 8.. it’s now up to 11 nominations and don’t think I am ignoring the significance of this number, I just delve deeper into it down further)

I was speculating on this Insta post by @taylornation .. I become sort of fixated on how it referenced her announcement of Midnights at last years VMAS.

… Then I realised the date of the upcoming VMA’s.

September 12th. 12/9. 12…9 🤡🤡🤡

….. WHAT?

So. Announcing a new album would be cliched for her at this point, I mean that’s what she did last year, but what if she’s announcing Reputation or Self-Titled?

Given all the Reputation TV eggs and theories based on so much solid evidence that is already out there, it makes sense.

Although becoming familiar with how Taylor operates (figuratively speaking) I wouldn’t put it past her if she comes out of left field and announces something like Self Titled TV to throw us all off our tracks..

Then again, thinking about the controversial VMAS back in 2009:

When Kanye West pulled this stunt, it was essentially the catalyst for the Reputation album as a whole, because without this first shot being fired by Kanye, there would not have been the ensuing on-again off-again beef between them.

So, I guess it would make sense that if there is any sort of announcement at the 2023 MTV VMAS, it fits that it would be the release date for Reputation- Taylor’s Version, or the release date for Self Titled.. or both?

Or what if it’s something completely different? Let’s take a look at some #SwiftMath!

🫶🏽 2009 was 14 years ago. 1 + 4 = 5.. 5th Taylor’s Version announcement?

🫶🏽 Taylor also currently holds an impressive record of 14 VMAS won overall…

🫶🏽 Taylor is currently the most nominated of the show, with an impressive 11 nominations.. 11 as in TS11?! Nah surely not, that would be too much of a coincidence.

.. But switching things up last minute isn’t a new concept for Taylor…

I mean, look at the VMA’s is when she announced the impending relapse date of Midnights like I mentioned earlier. Firstly, the scheduled date for release was on Kim Kardashians birthday, so you just know that it was bound to generate conversation. But curiously enough, she stated during the announcement that telling everyone that night depended on whether or not she won, so you know she had a back up plan in place.

Circling back to my original quest for Karma as a missing album and/or the next album.. here’s some of what I discovered amongst many more theories that are out there.

All signs and clues definitely keep pointing to Karma..

Whether it be the concept of Karma overall and how it has aptly applied to her major success of Re-recording her masters, or if it is being celebrated in the wake of some of her other big enemies suffering in many ways in their personal lives- including with their reputation! Think Scooter Braun and his divorce and FBI dramas.. Kanye and, well.. Basically take your pick with that hot mess and all his situations.

Although it certainly wasn’t the first, an intriguing clue is when Taylor starts laughing hysterically when announcing “Karma” for the Midnights Mayhem track listing announcement. The caption for this post on her Tik Tok also reads “been excited to announce this one”. It’s like she’s teasing something to do with Karma, outside of the fact that it’s a track title.. She notably also uses a galaxy (🌌) emoji.. We now know that the the emoji could have been a clue for the cosmic, celestial and mythological themes that featured throughout the video. These themes and associated imagery, clueing constellations, stars and planets have become more prominently featured over the last 2-3 eras. Definitely something to consider as a new topic of investigation.. from a brief scan online, there’s definitely theories brewing amongst the Swifties!

I do feel the need to point out the astronaut/moon man reference and connection with MTV here though, but again. This could be coincidental!

Another big clue that lies in the Karma music video is the reference to a Gold Taylor seemingly portraying the Greek Goddess of divine retribution and revenge, Nemisis. Gold Taylor is on a pedestal, which contains the Roman numerals that make up the year of her birth:

If the year of her birth in Roman numerals was an easter egg, as it’s officially since been confirmed that 1989 is out next, it definitely seems like there was duality with the reference; a multi-faceted hint.

1989 was and is her album of rebirth as it was symbolistic of her complete transition from country to pop. Karma is a central concept to the religious belief of rebirth…

So what can we possibly make of all these Karma hints and clues that have been popping up since at least 2016? For example, Taylor’s Vogue interview in which she states “Karma is real” with a capitalised K.

In my last video, at the time of uploading, when you entered in the URL for karmaonthewall.com, this website was redirecting to Taylor’s webpage with the first/previous pathway being “it happens after midnights”. The current redirect pathway now states “TS11”.. Taylor Swift 11, her potentially upcoming eleventh studio album?

For reference: “Karma on the wall” Stems from the theory in general that Karma was/is a missing album/era that was supposed to be released instead of Reputation based on a scene showing all her “lost” albums graffitied on the wall, with Karma on there (twice) next to a “missing” sign from “The Man” music video- Lover era

On one of the pillars in this scene, with visibility beginning at exactly 13 seconds into the video, you can see the graffitied word “Karma” in the same style as the “Karma” on the wall.

All the titles of her albums that were caught up in the masters controversy are graffitied on a wall, with a “missing” sign.. Karma is graffitied twice, Karma is in orange (rumoured to be or to have been the era colour) but also in black, which is the actual era colour for Reputation.

Sidenote: Interestingly, you can also see that 1989 is up there twice- When I first recognised this and thought about some other key clues, particularly in The Man video, it had me backflipping and cartwheeling into a spiral over this whole other theory my overthinking brain came up with.. Taylor, at the age of 22, started to receive all kinds of negative press about her dating life; the Karma album might have been something she wanted to release as a concept instead of Red, having had enough of dealing with the but was perhaps thwarted by Big Machine as a precaution given her bad press, the ongoing Kanye incident and so on. There’s so many little clues that seem to allude to this in “The Man” but I’ve had to put a pin in all that for now because that would be too wild to contemplate.. Wouldn’t it??…

..Back to Karma. As a concept, Karma is based on cause and effect. Good intentions/deeds means good karma and therefore happier rebirths. If the cycle of rebirth in these theories are what we are being directed to, did the orange colour graffiti signify fire and burning and the black colour graffiti represent ashes? I mean- this is hitting me right now as I type this, was it actually a possibility that Karma was supposed to come BEFORE Reputation, not in place of? Was it supposed to go 1989- Karma- Reputation?

What if she was on an entirely different trajectory with her albums and planned concepts, we all know she loves to plan sometimes years in advance.. but what if the entire Kanye/Kim controversy surrounding dishonest and partially leaked audio/video footage and the subsequent #TaylorSwiftIsCancelledParty caused her to change up everything?

The biggest hint at this definitely comes through in her lyrics from the Midnights Til Dawn vault track “You’re Losing Me”:

“Do I throw out everything we built or keep it? / I’m getting tired even for a phoenix / Always rising from the ashes”

A Phoenix is Gold. Taylor on the pedastal- Gold. A Phoenix is representative of rebirth, never ending life.

IS SHE SINGING ABOUT KARMA THE ALBUM?

There was speculation that this song was in reference to her and Joe Alwyns alleged breakup. But I mean, everyone will always try and tie a Taylor song to a boy or a breakup. I genuinely think Taylor is smarter than that, I mean she’s actually spoken on the record about this subject before and she certainly has a duality to the meaning of her songs.. I don’t always hear the boy and girl aspect of a song, and when I read the lyrics/listen to “You’re losing me” I’m even more certain it could be alluding to Karma.

“You’re losing me” was part of the ‘Til Dawn remixes, and Taylor announced that the album would only be available for purchase in person at the East Rutherford, New Jersey portion the US leg of the tour but this song wouldn’t be released for streaming.. It was also at these same shows that Taylor and Ice Spice performed their remixed version of “Karma”.. and debuted their music video! It was actually after these shows that Karma was added as the 44th and final track of the tour.

Okkk so before I continue any further, I need to bring up the other URL- In my last video, the url notalotgoingonatthemoment.com redirected to Taylor Swifts webpage with the added pathway of “theywouldntmedoitkarma”. Seemingly missing a word, maybe as obvious as “let” but maybe not…

For reference: “Not a lot going on at the moment” is a well known, now multi-faceted Taylor expression that appears to have originated from a slogan on a shirt she wore for the “22” music video during the Red era…

The most obvious fitting word be “let”. What if LET stands for Lost Eras Title.. Which the theories all refer to as Karma? Another fit would be Last Eras Track. This has the extra layer of being both the last track played on the Eras Tour set list, plus it fits with the speculation that Karma the song signifies the end of the Midnights era overall.

It could even stand for Last Eras Tour- Will she announce something major on the very last tour date? Could it be that her Karmic rebirth overall will be complete as she coincides the tour with the final re-releases of her albums?

If so, I hope she will be taking us down a completely different way of doing things as we know it, because evidently she is the epitome of genius levels of cleverness, with the perfect amount of class and sass.

I worry that based on Surely she would not be settling into reTAYermen anytime soon, I mean at the bare minimum I couldn’t imagine her never completing a 13th album for example. (Oh my gosh that ALBUM and the delivery going to be one for the books)

She’s made lots of comments and dropped lots of hints in interviews about how she feels like she’s considered too old for the industry in terms of being a pop star.. it does seem so ridiculous though considering she’s certainly at her peak in her career right now!

Although it’s somewhat going off tangent ever so slightly.. Let’s talk about the burning Lover house.

The Lover house that is portrayed as burning down during the Eras Tour- being symbolic of rising from the ashes and rebirth, this ties in with the karma theme Hindi Moksa and burning bad karma to purify..

But does this mean a new house? What will emerge from the ashes of the Lover house, to be rebirthed?

I have a theory on all of that.. I reckon She’s going back to an ex. But we shall see. I’ll not be saying another word…

Theories aren’t for me to speculate on when it comes to relationships.

That remains her privacy and I will always respect whatever she chooses to share with us or not!

❤️

So.. Taking into consideration all of this, plus the bonus below little quick and curious Google..

.. It’s safe to say no matter what happens at the VMAS, we are definitely headed in a fresh and brand new direction! Because no matter what @taylorswift does-She is absolutely golden.

I do have to say though that it can be a constant battle reminding myself that with Taylor… Anything can and will literally go. It’s been speculated that she reads all our theories and has literally implemented some before so that’s pretty cool! Generating and regenerating conversations by furthering the idealisms that we, as fans, have put out there ourselves.. Well, that’s just straight up Karmic and the best representation of the cycle of rebirth indeed.

If she is, it’s honestly the most genius marketing strategy I’ve ever seen. It’s not an approach that’s ever been adopted by a singer/song writer and I think it’s a major key contributing to her ongoing success and so think she does too- Hence why she is always so genuinely, down to earth humbled and grateful for us fans.

#Swifties of #Swiftnation and #Taylornation…

I hope you all voted for our girl!! 11 nominees… I could cry for her!

✨I hope she releases a super exclusive, mega detailed all access passes behind the scenes tour about The Eras Era… Manifesting this as the announcement✨

Please feel free to add and share and comment and discuss with me!

Until then,

.. I’m in exhile seeing you out..

Dani

Xx

[this-was-a-terrible-idea]

Tag game!!

Tagged by @bi-bats thank u for the tag ily 💕💕💕

name: Bean!!

pronouns: she/her (i dont mind they/them though)

where do you call home: Alaska!

favorite animal: frogs n toads 🐸💚

cereal of choice: really depends on my mood and what my available options are, tbh. recently its been cocoa puffs with chocolate milk 😂

visual, auditory, or kinesthetic learner: visual and kinesthetic!! if you try and give me auditory instructions i will bluescreen

first pet: when i was a kid my parents had a german shepherd and two black cats! they all died when i was a kid though, and i havent had a pet since 😔 i want a cat so bad

favorite scent: the woods!! the forest!! trees and dirt and leaves and petrichor and loam and moss and earth. looooove that scent.

do you believe in astrology: not really. growing up i used to read my horoscope with my mom for fun but nowadays i dont put a bunch of stock into it. its fun though, even if i dont know what it all means (my sibling made me calculate my big three and its virgo pisces pisces, in that order. no idea what that means for me tbh but it cracks him up)

how many playlists on spotify/apple music: HEY. listen i already get so much shit from my sibling for this so i dont wanna hear it askjldfhhkasjhdf i dont really use apple music for playlists but spotify... i just clicked create new playlist and it auto-titled it "My Playlist #166" so. 165 of my own playlists. dont ask me how many are basically the same playlist with slight tonal shifts. i dont wanna hear it akfasdlfdfa;dl (and no i WONT go through and delete playlists. spotify is an archive to me lmao)

sharpies or highlighters: sharpies. highlighters have Specific Uses in my brain and sharpies are multi-use and fun

songs that make you cry: im not sure ive cried over a song since i was a teenager that would process my emotions via laying on the floor with my earbuds in, ipod volume set to the max, crying. one of THOSE songs is End of the Line by Henry Jackman. Some songs that make me sad nowadays though are Something in the Orange by Zach Bryan (i KNOW, its country!! how much i like this song surprised me too) and If We Were Vampires by Noah Kahan and Wesley Schultz.

songs that make you happy: not to sound like a snot but i feel sooooo many complex emotions over music and broadening them to reach an overarching 'happy' is askldfjadf im overthinking this one i believe. anyways. Northern Attitude by Noah Kahan, When the Day Met the Night by Panic! at the Disco, Cafe Carnival by Craig Chaquico

do you write/draw/create: sometimes!! id say like 90% of my writing never gets out of the discord rambling stage (sometimes i post that on ao3 if i like it and feel like its long enough) and i wouldnt classify myself as an artist, but for creating i recently got into bookbinding!! ive been typesetting things and when i get to go home this next hitch i want to actually get the woodworking bits i gotta do done so i can move onto the actual binding parts.

no pressure tagging: @skyderman, @cacopheny, @megatraven, and anyone else who might want to do this! again, no pressure :)

[ooglywooglies]

i have to make a separate post because the tags were getting too long

but yes all my vampire characters are thin, i even struggle to justify to myself xanthes huge bazoongas because in the lore nyesaya cant justify having a lot of fat on their body because of how infrequently they eat. i had to do a bunch of lizard and deer blood math to come up with a somewhat reasonable metabolism to keep them from having to kill too often.

there are not many vampires running around in universe because theyre fairly weak and its 100% legal to kill them basically at any time for any reason by exploiting a revenge law that exists in order to justify another law that allows vampires to kill and eat 1 human every month or so (im stuck between 1 and 3 months because 3 is really stretching that metabolism problem thin but 1 still feels way too frequent for what a law would allow) they can only do it past 10 pm and when they kill someone they have to report it so it can go on a publicly available list so their loved ones can know who did it. you dont have to verify a relationship to a person on this list to kill a vampire, you just have to be able to name someone on the list when you do, probably, i havent really thought of a consequence for not doing that, there probably arent even any consequences.

(wow alex do you have much of a bias here - LOOK IM TRYING TO MAKE IT BALANCED, OF COURSE HUMANS WOULD SYSTEMICALLY OPPRESS VAMPIRES - i always get nervous people are gonna be like hey this feels similar to real life oppression are you trying to say vampires in your universe are analogous to human minorities in real life? and i mean, i get why youd say that, real life human minorities are oppressed because the majority thinks of them as a threat, vampires are oppressed because THEY ARE a threat. i dont think that means im SAYING human minorities are a threat. i just kind of wanted to draw the logical conclusion of what would happen if a sentient creature like this lived in a world like ours. human minorities still exist in my universe and are still oppressed, theyre probably even compared to vampires IN UNIVERSE. and its like, yeah i have sympathy for the vampires a few of them are main characters, i talk about their oppression more than the real life human minority group characters because idk, im a real life human minority myself and i sort of find my own oppression tiresome and uninteresting at this point. at least in the context of my fantasy story. maybe its comforting to me to explore this through the lens of a fictional alien species, my point is please dont take this in bad faith please i promise i think about the implications and i promise thats not where im going with this im just autistic about biology and politics and magical realism.)

anyway in order to not HAVE to eat super often ive been working on developing ways to slow down their metabolism. its not completely perfect and ive had to throw in some "fine whatever its magic" to cover the cracks but i initially based their metabolism on komodo dragons since theyre a similar size. thats where the lizard and deer blood math comes in, deer i think have a similar amount of blood to humans it was like 10 pints or something. this was so long ago ive lost all my sources, and so if a komodo dragon is good off of like an entire deer for like a month, thats where i got that estimate from. so they have some reptile-like traits like, they dont regulate their own body heat, for the most part. they sleep a LOT like 20 hours a day most of the time, they get tired really really easily, and they brumate in the winter

im not sure if brumate is the right word, thats the reptile word for hibernate but theyre not reptiles, theyre not mammals either

they were sort of just sprung into existence by a human hating food chain based goddess so you cant really classify them taxonomically. its one of those situations that sort of frustrates me because yeah magic does exist in this universe and you cant explain everything in a grounded way

sidebar the magic is very magic and not logic but one thing i like about it is its basically an invisible gas (its also a form of life but thats not really important) so the way its "wielded" is you can basically just form a connection between yourself and anyone else via the invisible magic gas thats constantly touching everyone. telepathy is something that happens a lot in universe especially with vampires because its how they conduct their religion and its like certain beings can just beam sounds and images directly into your brain, especially while you sleep via the connection of these magic particles

preddy cool

[dalleyan]

Elfwine Chronicles (new LoTR stories, Adventures of Theodred, Son of Eomer, ch 10 posted, 5-27-23)

Theodred's adventures as he travels with Freahelm, trying to find a direction for his life.  (Adventure, Drama, Angst, Romance, Family, Humor) (19 chapter story)

 Chapter 10  -  (begins late Nov, 44 IV)

Because of Theodred’s unique situation, he usually had his pick of relatives to stay with in Minas Tirith. Through his mother’s family, there was the Dol Amroth townhouse to make use of, though he was less inclined to do so now that his grandfather had passed on and his Uncle Elphir was the ruling Prince.  He liked Uncle Elphir, but his stiffer manner was not nearly so inviting and Theodred felt himself more an imposition if he made too frequent visits there, or stayed too long.

However, through his father, and his mother as well, he was connected to the Steward of Gondor, and they were always most accommodating both in Minas Tirith and Emyn Arnen whenever he chose to put in appearance.  That was generally where he took up abode, and did so on this trip. His third option, only used on rare occasions when he was absolutely desperate, was to fall back on his brother’s marital tie to the royal family of Gondor.  King Elessar and Queen Arwen were equally as hospitable and inviting as the Steward, but he did not think it wise to make use of that connection too often. Even so, Elessar would not allow his visits to the city to go unnoticed and made certain he received numerous invitations to stop by for talks, attend gatherings and so forth, generally making certain he felt welcome and very much a part of the extended family.

Even when the Steward and his family were to be found in Emyn Arnen, a half day’s journey from the city, they had made it clear to Theodred that he was to make their Minas Tirith home his own whenever he chose to do so, particularly in light of his recent traveling.  He was both relieved and sorry that they were not in residence when the pair arrived this time.  To some extent, he was hoping to talk to Faramir about all that had happened with Arawine and Kata, hoping to clear his mind and sort his thoughts, but in another sense, he rather suspected he already could guess what conclusions his uncle would reach, and that they would largely mirror those his mother had expressed.

Though the pair knew that no one would object to their having separate rooms and indulging in making full use of the servants and the facilities of the Steward’s residence, neither wished to impose to that great an extent.  Already grateful that they were so readily accommodated, they shared a room and kept their impact on the household to a minimum.  Still, both fully appreciated warm, clean beds, roaring fires, and available hot baths whenever they wished, not to mention excellent food, well prepared, by someone else.  They were used to simple fare for breakfast and dinner, and had finally persuaded the cook to allow them to keep to that regimen for the most part.  Only if they dined in of an evening did they give in to fancier fare, though they sometimes made it a point to eat at an inn or accept invitations to feast with friends.

Within a week of their arrival, November was drawing to a close and Faramir’s family arrived from Emyn Arnen, surprised but pleased to find them there.

Though Faramir was eager to hear of Theodred’s most recent travels, he soon realized something more was at work than before, and that his nephew was not so wild to share his adventures this time around.  Rather than press, Faramir allowed the young man to broach the subject in his own good time, and eventually Theodred did explain the culmination of his trip and the unpleasantness ever since his discovery in Dale.  The Steward did not need to be told that the matter had been left unresolved, both between the two young men and within Theodred’s own heart and mind, yet he did not feel he could give him any easy answers.  There were choices and decisions that only Theodred could make, and then actions only he could take.  While Faramir, and likely the rest of the family, would do all they could to facilitate peace being restored, in the end only Arawine and Theodred could settle this matter.

To some extent, Freahelm was not totally clear what his role was now.  When Theodred had been intent on traveling, he was to go as a companion, if for no other reason than safety, but once they had reached Mundburg, and it was clear they would likely stay there through the winter months, Freahelm had no fixed purpose.  True, King Eomer had never officially released him from service in the army, and unofficially he was specifically attached to Theodred as a bodyguard. Presumably that was yet the case, even if they were not traveling and danger was minimized for the time being. Still, he would need to find something to occupy his time while they were in the city or he would surely become fat and lazy, and go quite mad.  Theodred would attempt to engage him in his new interest of collecting tales and making an historical record, and he would good-naturedly allow it, but he could not see it becoming an all-consuming passion with him as it was rapidly becoming with his friend.  At least Minas Tirith offered year-round pursuits of entertainment, and their several recent visits had acquainted him with the city and many of the soldiers who served here.  He supposed he could keep from being too bored.

Early in December, he and Theodred ventured out into the city.  Theodred was in search of better writing materials for his project, and though Freahelm couldn’t be of much help to him in that respect, he thought to stretch his legs.  When they found a sizable and respectable looking stationers shop on the fourth level, Freahelm left Theodred at the door and wandered off down the street, agreeing to return shortly.

 continue reading on AO3:

              https://archiveofourown.org/works/46771651/chapters/119620465

[7r0773r]

Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry

Telling a story is like reaching into a granary full of wheat and drawing out a handful. There is always more to tell than can be told. As almost any barber can testify, there is also more than needs to be told, and more than anybody wants to hear. (p. 29)

***

And so there would always be more to remember that could no longer be seen. This is one of the things I can tell you that I have learned: our life here is in some way marginal to our own doings, and our doings are marginal to the greater forces that are always at work. Our history is always returning to a little patch of weeds and saplings with an old chimney sticking up by itself. And I can tell you a further thing that I have learned, and here I look ahead to the resting of my case: I love the house that belonged to the chimney, holding it bright in memory, and I love the saplings and the weeds. (pp. 37-38)

***

Buying a tractor at that time was not unusual. A lot of people were doing it. The young men who had been in the war were used to motor-driven machinery. The government was teaching a new way of farming in night courses for the veterans. Tractors and other farm machines were all of a sudden available as never before, and farmhands were scarcer than before. And so we began a process of cause-and-effect that is hard to understand clearly, even looking back. Did the machines displace the people from the farms, or were the machines drawn onto the farms because the people already were leaving to take up wage work in factories and the building trades and such? Both, I think.

You couldn't see, back then, that this process would build up and go ever faster, until finally it would ravel out the entire old fabric of family work and exchanges of work among neighbors. The new way of farming was a way of dependence, not on land and creatures and neighbors but on machines and fuel and chemicals of all sorts, bought things, and on the sellers of bought things—which made it finally a dependence on credit. The odd thing was, people just assumed that all the purchasing and borrowing would merely make life easier and better on all the little farms. Most people didn't dream, then, that before long a lot of little farmers would buy and borrow their way out of farming, and bigger and bigger farmers would be competing with their neighbors (or with doctors from the city) for the available land. The time was going to come—it is clear enough now—when there would not be enough farmers left and the farms of Port William would be as dependent as the farms of California on the seasonal labor of migrant workers. (p. 183)

***

My wonderful machine sometimes altered my mind so that I, lately a pedestrian myself, fiercely resented all such impediments on the road. Even at my sedate top speed of forty miles an hour, I hated anything that required me to slow down. My mind raged and fumed and I cursed aloud at farmers driving their stock across the road, at indecisive possums, at children on bicycles. Ease of going was translated without pause into a principled unwillingness to stop. (p. 187)

***

My vision of the gathered church that had come to me after I became the janitor had been replaced by a vision of the gathered community. What I saw now was the community imperfect and irresolute but held together by the frayed and always fraying, incomplete and yet ever-holding bonds of the various sorts of affection. There had maybe never been anybody who had not been loved by somebody, who had been loved by somebody else, and so on and on. If you could go back into the story of Uncle Ive and Verna Shoals, you would find, certainly before and maybe after, somebody who loved them both. It was a community always disappointed in itself, disappointing its members, always trying to contain its divisions and gentle its meanness, always failing and yet always preserving a sort of will toward goodwill. I knew that, in the midst of all the ignorance and error, this was a membership; it was the membership of Port William and of no other place on earth. My vision gathered the community as it never has been and never will be gathered in this world of time, for the community must always be marred by members who are indifferent to it or against it, who are nonetheless its members and maybe nonetheless essential to it. And yet I saw them all as somehow perfected, beyond time, by one another's love, compassion, and forgiveness, as it is said we may be perfected by grace.

And so there we all were on a little wave of time lifting up to eternity, and none of us ever in time would know what to make of it. How could we? It is a mystery, for we are eternal beings living in time. Did I ever think that anybody would understand it? Yes. Once. I thought once that I would finally understand it.

What I had come to know (by feeling only) was that the place's true being, its presence you might say, was a sort of current, like an underground flow of water, except that the flowing was in all directions and yet did not flow away. When it rose into your heart and throat, you felt joy and sorrow at the same time, and the joining of times and lives. To come into the presence of the place was to know life and death, and to be near in all your thoughts to laughter and to tears. This would come over you and then pass away, as fragile as a moment of light. (pp. 205-06)

***

Now that I knew what it was that had led me from the start, I had to reckon with it. I had to look over what I had learned so far of life in this world and see what light my heart's love now shed upon it. What did love have to say to its own repeated failure to transform the world that it might yet redeem? What did it say to our failures to love one another and our enemies? What did it say to hate? What did it say to time? Why doesn't love succeed?

Hate succeeds. This world gives plentiful scope and means to hatred, which always finds its justifications and fulfills itself perfectly in time by destruction of the things of time. That is why war is complete and spares nothing, balks at nothing, justifies itself by all that is sacred, and seeks victory by everything that is profane. Hell itself, the war that is always among us, is the creature of time, unending time, unrelieved by any light or hope.

But love, sooner or later, forces us out of time. It does not accept that limit. Of all that we feel and do, all the virtues and all the sins, love alone crowds us at last over the edge of the world. For love is always more than a little strange here. It is not explainable or even justifiable. It is itself the justifier. We do not make it. If it did not happen to us, we could not imagine it. It includes the world and time as a pregnant woman includes her child whose wrongs she will suffer and forgive. It is in the world but is not altogether of it. It is of eternity. It takes us there when it most holds us here.

Maybe love fails here, I thought, because it cannot be fulfilled here. And then I saw something that a normal life with a normal marriage might never have allowed me to see. I saw that Mattie was not merely desirable, but desirable beyond the power of time to show. Even if she had been my wife, even if I had been in the usual way her husband, she would have remained beyond me. I could not have desired her enough. She was a living soul and could be loved forever. Like every living creature, she carried in her the presence of eternity. That was why, as she grew older, I saw in her always the child she had been, and why, looking at her when she was a child, I felt the influence of the woman she would be. That is why, in marrying one another, we mortals say "till death." We must take love to the limit of time, because time cannot limit it. A life cannot limit it. Maybe to have it in your heart all your life in this world, even while it fails here, is to succeed. Maybe that is enough.

And so there were times when I knew (I knew beyond any proof) that the faith that carried me through the waterless wastes was not wasted.

I began to pray again. I took it up again exactly where I had left off twenty years before, in doubt and hesitation, bewildered and unknowing what to say. "Thy will be done," I said, and seemed to feel my own bones tremble in the grave.

Not a single one of my doubts and troubles about the Scripture had ever left me. They had, in fact, got worse. The more my affections and sympathies had got involved in Port William, the more uneasy I became with certain passages, not just in the letters of St. Paul, that clarifying and exasperating man, but even in the Gospels. When I would read, "Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left. Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left," my heart would be with the ones who were left. And when I read of the division of the sheep from the goats, I couldn't consent to give up on the goats—though, like most people, I had my list of goats, who seemed hopeless enough to me, and I didn't know what to do about them.

What would I do with a son who killed his father merely to inherit his money, and only a little quicker than he would have inherited it anyhow? What would I do with that woman—she lived up in the big bottom at the mouth of Willow Run long ago—who beat a black girl to death for stealing a spoon and then found the spoon? What would I do with somebody who reduced the world in order to live in it, somebody who reduced life by living it? What would I do with a man who wished for the death of his rival? I didn't know. I could see that Hell existed and was daily among us. And yet I didn't want to give up even on the ones in Hell. For the best of reasons, as you might say.

"You don't want to go to Hell, honey," said Miss Gladdie Finn.

"I don't," I said. "But I don't reckon it has enough room for everybody who's eligible."

"Well, I don't know," she said. "A soul is mighty small."

But now I could see something else too—something, I suppose, that old Dr. Ardmire knew I did not see, and knew I would not easily see. My mistake was not in asking the questions that so plagued my mind back there at Pigeonville, for how could I have helped it? I can't help it yet; the questions are with me yet. My mistake was ignoring the verses that say God loves the world.

But now (by a kind of generosity, it seemed) the world had so beaten me about the head, and so favored me with good and beautiful things, that I was able to see. "God loves Port William as it is," I thought. "Why else should He want it to be better than it is?”

All my life I had heard preachers quoting John 3:16: "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." They would preach on the second part of the verse, to show the easiness of being saved (“Only believe"). Where I hung now was the first part. If God loved the world even before the event at Bethlehem, that meant He loved it as it was, with all its faults. That would be Hell itself, in part. He would be like a father with a wayward child, whom He can't help and can't forget. But it would be even worse than that, for He would also know the wayward child and the course of its waywardness and its suffering. That His love contains all the world does not show that the world does not matter, or that He and we do not suffer it unto death; it shows that the world is Hell only in part. But His love can contain it only by compassion and mercy, which, if not Hell entirely, would be at least a crucifixion.

From my college courses and my reading I knew the various names that came at the end of a line of questions or were placed as periods to bafflement: the First Cause, the First Mover, the Life Force, the Universal Mind, the First Principle, the Unmoved Mover, even Providence. I too had used those names in arguing with others, and with myself, trying to explain the world to myself. And now I saw that those names explained nothing. They were of no more use than Evolution or Natural Selection or Nature or The Big Bang of these later days. All such names do is catch us within the length and breadth of our own thoughts and our own bewilderment. Though I knew the temptation of simple reason, to know nothing that can't be proved, still I supposed that those were not the right names.

I imagined that the right name might be Father, and I imagined all that that name would imply: the love, the compassion, the taking offense, the disappointment, the anger, the bearing of wounds, the weeping of tears, the forgiveness, the suffering unto death. If love could force my own thoughts over the edge of the world and out of time, then could I not see how even divine omnipotence might by the force of its own love be swayed down into the world? Could I not see how it might, because it could know its creatures only by compassion, put on mortal flesh, become a man, and walk among us, assume our nature and our fate, suffer our faults and our death?

Yes. And I could imagine a Father who is yet like a mother hen spreading her wings before the storm or in the dusk before the dark night for the little ones of Port William to come in under, some of whom do, and some do not. I could imagine Port William riding its humble wave through time under the sky, its little flames of wakefulness lighting and going out, its lives passing through birth, pleasure, suffering, and death.

I could imagine God looking down upon it, its lives living by His spirit, breathing by His breath, knowing by His light, but each life living also (inescapably) by its own will - His own body given to be broken.

Once I had imagined those things, there was no longer with me any question of what is called "belief." It was not a "conversion" in the usual sense, as though I had been altogether out and now was altogether in. It was more as though I had been in a house and a storm had blown off the roof; I was more in the light than I had thought. And also, at night, of course, more in the dark. I had changed, and the sign of it was only that my own death now seemed to me by far the least important thing in my life.

What answer can human intelligence make to God's love for the world? What answer, for that matter, can it make to our own love for the world? If a person loved the world—really loved it and forgave its wrongs and so might have his own wrongs forgiven—what would be next?

And so how was a human to pray? I didn't know, and yet I prayed. I prayed the terrible prayer: "Thy will be done." Having so prayed, I prayed for strength. That seemed reasonable and right enough. As did praying for forgiveness and the grace to forgive. I prayed unreasonably, foolishly, hopelessly, that everybody in Port William might be blessed and happy—the ones I loved and the ones I did not. I prayed my gratitude.

The results, perhaps, were no more than expectable. I found, as I had always found, that I had strength, but never quite as much as I needed—or, anyhow, wanted. I felt that I might be partly forgiven, as I was partly forgiving; Port William continued to be partly blessed and happy, as before, and partly not; I was as grateful as I said I was. And so perhaps my prayers were partly answered; some perhaps were answered entirely. Perhaps all the good that ever has come here has come because people prayed it into the world. How would a person know? How could divine intervention happen, if it happens, without looking like a coincidence or luck? Does the world continue by chance (since it can hardly do so by justice) or by the forgiveness and mercy that some people have continued to pray for?

But why ask? It was not just a matter of cause and effect. Prayers were not tools or money. Sometimes in my mind I would be sitting again in Dr. Ardmire’s office, as if I had returned to 1935 out of my later life to give him my report. I finally knew, I told him, why Christ's prayer in the garden could not be granted. He had been seeded and birthed into human flesh. He was one of us. Once He had become mortal, He could not become immortal except by dying. That He prayed that prayer at all showed how human He was. That He knew it could not be granted showed His divinity; that He prayed it anyhow showed His mortality, His mortal love of life that His death made immortal. And I could see Dr. Ardmire looking straight at me with that distant, amused light in his eyes, and I could hear him say, "Well. And now what?" I had learned a good deal since 1935, I supposed. But did that mean that I could explain much of anything? It did not. Did it mean that my way in the world was now lighted to the very end? It did not.

I prayed like a man walking in a forest at night, feeling his way with his hands, at each step fearing to fall into pure bottomlessness forever.

Prayer is like lying awake at night, afraid, with your head under the cover, hearing only the beating of your own heart. It is like a bird that has blundered down the flue and is caught indoors and flutters at the windowpanes. It is like standing a long time on a cold day, knocking at a shut door.

But sometimes a prayer comes that you have not thought to pray, yet suddenly there it is and you pray it. Sometimes you just trustfully and easily pass into the other world of sleep. Sometimes the bird finds that what looks like an opening is an opening, and it flies away. Sometimes the shut door opens and you go through it into the same world you were in before, in which you belong as you did not before.

If God loves the world, might that not be proved in my own love for it? I prayed to know in my heart His love for the world, and this was my most prideful, foolish, and dangerous prayer. It was my step into the abyss. As soon as I prayed it, I knew that I would die. I knew the old wrong and the death that lay in the world. Just as a good man would not coerce the love of his wife, God does not coerce the love of His human creatures, not for Himself or for the world or for one another. To allow that love to exist fully and freely, He must allow it not to exist at all. His love is suffering. It is our freedom and His sorrow. To love the world as much even as I could love it would be suffering also, for I would fail. And yet all the good I know is in this, that a man might so love this world that it would break his heart. (pp. 248-54)

***

It is not a terrible thing to love the world, knowing that the world is always passing and irrecoverable, to be known only in loss. To love anything good, at any cost, is a bargain. It is a terrible thing to love the world, knowing that you are a human and therefore joined by kind to all that hates the world and hurries its passing—the violence and greed and falsehood that overcome the world that is meant to be overcome by love (p. 329)

***

For a long time then I seemed to live by a slender thread of faith, spun out from within me. From this single thread I spun strands that joined me to the good things of the world. And then I spun more threads that joined all the strands together, making a life. When it was complete, or nearly so, it was shapely and beautiful in the light of day. It endured through the nights, but sometimes it only barely did. It would be tattered and set awry by things that fell or blew or fled or flew. Many of the strands would be broken. Those I would have to spin and weave again in the morning. (p. 330)

***

I watch and I wonder and I think. I think of the old slavery, and of the way The Economy has now improved upon it. The new slavery has improved upon the old by giving the new slaves the illusion that they are free. The Economy does not take people's freedom by force, which would be against its principles, for it is very humane. It buys their freedom, pays for it, and then persuades its money back again with shoddy goods and the promise of freedom. "Buy a car," it says, "and be free. Buy a boat and be free. Buy a beer and be free." Is this not the raw material of bad dreams? Or is it maybe the very nightmare itself? (p. 332)

***

This is a book about Heaven. I know it now. It floats among us like a cloud and is the realest thing we know and the least to be captured, the least to be possessed by anybody for himself. It is like a grain of mustard seed, which you cannot see among the crumbs of earth where it lies. It is like the reflection of the trees on the water. (p. 351)

[jackrrabbit]

Adversary /// Overhaul x f!Reader (18+)

Summary: You make a deal with the devil to save your life, but it turns out Overhaul’s not interested in your soul.

A/N: Remember when I said I was going to do a fantasy collab and then dipped for like 9 months? Hahaha…anyway…

@pleasantanathema @ present-mel @shadowworks—if it’s not too late, here’s my part for the Pleasant & Strider Fantasy AU Writing Collab from a million years ago. Go check out the masterlist and gorge yourself on these amazing pieces!!

Tags/Warnings: dubcon, demon fuckery & occult things, big heresy/sacrilege/perversion of religion, sex in a church ft. Catholic sex guilt, other than that it’s not that bad lol, inexperienced reader, mild degradation, shameless camp and demon-fucking clichés, Overhaul calls you “little girl” 👉👈

He doesn’t look like a demon.

Not that you really know what demons are supposed to look like. But…red skin, right? Fangs and claws and swirling masses of bad energy. Maybe cloven hooves for feet. Yes, that’s the Disney version—but even if you didn’t expect a cartoon personification of evil, you didn’t expect this.

He looks like a doctor, you think. Lab coat hanging open, surgery mask pushed down under his jaw, stethoscope draped over his shoulders. No, he’s a little young to really look like a doctor…an intern, you amend, shifting back in your hospital bed. He looks like he fits right in here, not a hair out of place. Except for, you know, the polished black horns curling out of the sides of his skull.

Overhaul. It was written in the book. That’s the only thing you have to call him in your head.

He’s standing in the center of the sigil you drew at the foot of your bed before midnight, surveying the room critically without meeting your gaze. He looks annoyed—that’s not a good sign, is it?—but then again, of course he’s annoyed. You’d be annoyed too if you got summoned out of your cozy hell dimension in the middle of the night. According to the book, you’re lucky he even showed up…although ‘lucky’ isn’t really how you’d describe yourself most days.

“So,” Overhaul says after a long moment of silence in which you question every choice you’ve made in your relatively short life. “You’re dying.”

You nod.

“And you don’t want to be.”

You nod again, wondering if you’re supposed to be contributing more to this conversation. It’s a bit difficult when your mouth is so dry it feels like you’ve been eating dirt, but you suppose being in the presence of an unholy servant of Satan will do that to a person.

“Fine.” He sighs, frowns, and then finally lowers his gaze onto yours—and you shiver.

Those eyes. No human has eyes like that.

“Make me an offer,” Overhaul tells you, and through his open mouth you catch a flash of sharp white teeth.

Okay. Okay. The chirping of the heart monitor speeds up (as if it weren’t obvious enough that you’re terrified) and you fold your knees up to your chest and fidget with your ring and think. He’s giving you a chance to establish parameters. You’re supposed to start with his end of the deal, the thing you want from him. That’s what it said to do in the grimoire, aka the 19th century demonology volume your creepy cousin brought back from her pagan anthropology research trip in rural France. The one you keep hidden under your bed because your mother would burn it if she knew you were reading about summoning demons.

Offer nothing to a hell creature without first telling him your price. You know the words by heart, both the winding calligraphy of the original French from the grimoire and the rushed scrawl of the English translation your cousin left for you in sheets of lined paper layered between the pages of the book for you to read. Really, this is her fault. She was the one who slipped you the book, who told you that it worked, who snuck you the ingredients for the summoning. She was the one who left a bookmark at the chapter on this particular demon, one that specializes in ‘Contrat pour Remédier au Déséquilibre des Quatre Humeurs’, which she said meant a contract to cure any illness. Even his ‘name’ is translated in her hand, practically an afterthought in the margins of the page.

‘Le Malin qui Ravage et Rebâtit’— Overhaul?

You looked up the literal meaning of this phrase on your own. It did not reassure you.

“Girl.” His voice is cold, irate. Your eyes snap back up to his and it feels like that burning gaze is laser-beaming into your skull. “Do not test me. My time is limited…as is yours.”

You swallow. “How long do I have left?”

“Less than a single human year,” he tells you without a trace of sympathy. “Seven months, twelve days, three hours. Or so. You’ll be too exhausted to leave this bed in four months, and the pain will become intolerable in six… By the end, you’ll wish—“

“Stop,” you breathe out. The heart monitor is beeping wildly and you squeeze your knees into your chest, trying to calm down your breathing. “Stop, I—I want to live.”

“Of course you do.” Overhaul’s lip curls. “How very predictable.”

Be specific, you remind yourself, doing your best to ignore the stifling disapproval from the man—the demon—in front of you. Something about him (maybe how clean-cut he looks, maybe the indisputable authority in his demeanor) makes you want to impress him. But you didn’t turn your back on your religion—you didn’t draw pagan symbols on the floor in chalk, fill silver cups with various questionable substances (including your own virgin blood), and turn the crucifix your mother hung over your bed upside-down so you could let a demon make you feel guilty for wanting to survive. “I want to be cured. I’m okay with whatever natural death I have instead when I’m older, I just don’t want to die of this illness. I want you to make me healthy.”

“Simple enough. What else?”

‘Simple’? Your heart surges with something you’ve felt very little of since your initial diagnosis—hope. “T-That’s it. Just the cure.”

Overhaul glares at you. “Humans… Every vice in the world available to you, and you limit yourselves to the basest priority of survival.”

“But you can do it? You can cure me?” you persist.

Overhaul steps forward (quiet, so quiet you wonder if he really moved) and holds a hand out to you past the foot of your bed—you hesitate, and a second later you can see the muscles in his hand flex, stretching the latex of his plastic gloves tight over his knuckles.

Just do it. You give him your hand. Carefully. Like you’re scared the contact will burn you. It doesn’t (although his skin feels warmer than yours), but after a moment his grip tightens, sliding down past your hand to circle the fragile bones of your wrist and squeeze.

“Ow?” You wince.

The demon’s eyes flicker closed for a second, lips moving silently like he’s talking to himself—and then he drops your hand unceremoniously back onto your lap. “You could be cured before the sun rises this morning. I doubt your stay in the hospital will extend past the end of the week.”

He sounds bored, voice as flat and passionless as it was earlier, but your heart is soaring. Cured. You’ve lived with this illness for so many years, you can’t remember the last time someone told you you could be cured. And getting out of the hospital that soon? You can just imagine taking down all the decorations from the walls of your room here and setting them up in your old bedroom at home. You could see friends on the weekend and not take an oxygen bag, you could get a job or—or apply to college, you could have a life—

“That is…assuming you have something to offer me in exchange for the cure.”

Your stomach drops. You’d almost forgotten about the other half of the deal.

“Don’t tell me I came all this way for nothing.” Overhaul steps back, and the orange light of the candles you set sends strange shadows over his arrogant face. The fires look brighter now, and you find yourself tracing the lines of those shining black horns. In an odd way, they look natural—so organically framing his temples that you can’t imagine him without them.

“N-No, of course not. I have some money—I mean, my mom has some, and I can get it for you…” Which is half the truth. If you know anything, it’s that your mother’s spent most of her savings on your treatment and care. You probably have more debt than you have money in the bank right now—you’d try to get rid of that, too, if you hadn’t read in the book how important it is to keep your request as simple and straightforward as possible.

…Although it’s apparently not enough. Overhaul’s eyes narrow, molten gold irises carved into slits. “Even if I had a use for human money, do you really believe your life is worth so little?”

“No—no,” you say quickly. “I just thought—in case you were interested—”

The air crackles with energy, the candle flames spark bright blood-red, and the hair on your arms stands straight up. “I am not.”

“Okay! I get it.” You wave your hands back and forth, pulling your IV line from side to side with the motion. The book was very clear about staying calm and rational while you work out the terms of the deal, but that’s easier said than done when you have a real live (live?) hell creature in front of you. You always knew this was going to be the hard part—all the stories say there’s only one thing that a demon would be interested in, and no matter how inviting the prospect of living past this illness is, you know you’d rather die than sell your immortal soul to the devil. “I’ll give you anything except my soul! And—and don’t hurt anyone I care about, or— just don’t hurt anyone, okay? Other than that, if there’s anything I can give you, I will.”

Overhaul’s lip curls, baring a thin strip of those unnaturally sharp canines. “And is your soul really so valuable?”

This throws you for a loop. Isn’t that the standard deal? A soul for a wish? That’s how it’s supposed to work—at least in this twisted version of reality where you can summon a demon to perform unholy miracles for you. But if you think about it, it doesn’t really make sense, does it? Why would your soul be valuable to him? You can’t form an argument, especially since you’re not willing to barter it away in the first place.

Your mouth is pursed open as you search for a response, but Overhaul doesn’t seem willing to wait. A gloved hand wraps its way around the railing at the side of your bed, and he leans in closer. “Little girl…what makes you think you possess anything I desire?”

Little girl. You’re not a little girl, you’re a grown woman—and yet there’s no untruth in the statement. In front of him you feel insignificant, immature, weak. You have nothing real to offer, and something tells you that you’re not going to get rid of the demon you summoned without a sacrifice you’re not willing to make.

You twist your ring around your finger—the nervous habit you haven’t bothered to break because you’ve always had more important things to worry about—and the glint of silver in the candlelight must catch Overhaul’s eye because before you even notice him moving, your delicate hand is trapped in his larger one to give him a better view of the tiny piece of jewelry. “What is this?”

“It’s—um, a ring. A purity ring.” Has he never seen one before? Well…actually, that makes sense.

Overhaul turns your hand over in his without touching the band of silver. He’s looking at it closely, inspecting the lovingly engraved cross in the design and the inscription on the other side. “Matthew 5:8,” he reads out.

“…Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” you recite cautiously. It feels wrong to speak the words in front of him, but somehow you can’t help yourself.

Overhaul’s hand doesn’t leave yours. “This ring is important to you.”

“It’s a symbol of a—a promise I made to God. To save myself for my future husband.”

“To ‘save yourself’? To save what?”

You can’t believe you’re explaining this to a literal demon. You close your eyes and inhale slowly and taste smoke. “My…virginity. It’s a promise that I won’t have sex until I enter into a biblical marriage.”

At this, Overhaul is quiet. You give him a moment to answer, half expecting him to question why you think God cares about your sexual status (honestly, you’d be lying if you said you haven’t wondered this yourself), but he stays quiet until you peek up at him to try and gauge the look on his coldly handsome face.

He’s still staring at the ring. He hasn’t touched it—maybe he can’t, because of the cross?—and through the latex, his skin feels hotter than a human’s is supposed to be.

“Is there…” you start, but you trail off when you realize you have nothing to ask. You give a little tug to try and take your hand away and you’re surprised when your wrist actually slides out of his grip to fall back on the nest of sheets in your lap. You didn’t think he’d let you go so easily.

Overhaul turns his head to the side, eyes drilling into you so you feel like you should lower your gaze. The candlelight flickers in strange shadows over his horns. “This will do,” he says quietly.

“What?”

“In exchange for your cure.” The demon taps his own left ring finger, the place where the purity ring sits on your hand, and your heart soars. He actually wants that? It’s just a simple silver band, not worth much, but you’re not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Maybe it has some special significance because of the religious connotation. Your mother will be angry you’ve lost it, but you’re happy to cope with that if it means living to actually get married!

“Yes!” you blurt out before he has a chance to rethink his offer. Sure, you’ll miss the purity ring—you’ve had it since you were a kid, after all—but there’s no question you’re getting the better end of this deal. At least in your opinion.

Something flashes through his yellow eyes, something you don’t even want to try and identify. “The contract, then.”

You barely have time to notice that his voice has gentled, that it’s practically silken in comparison to before, when the candlelight flickers again and suddenly the contract is everywhere. Everywhere. Writing appears on every surface in the room, covering the walls, stretching over the ceiling, coiling around the sides of the hospital equipment and decorating your bedsheets until you and Overhaul are the only untouched surfaces in sight. The characters are inscribed in red, dark red like—don’t think about that, you tell yourself squeamishly. You can make out some of the letters, even a word here or there—French, you recognize, mixed with what looks like Latin and interspersed with what you can only guess are runes.

“I can’t read this,” you tell him, fidgeting with your ring for what you now realize will be the last time.

“I only need your name,” he purrs, and then you feel a fragile weight in your hand: a feather, pearl-black and glossy and too large to belong to any bird you can think of, its angled tip glistening with wet ink. There’s an empty space in the writing before you, and Overhaul’s gloved hand comes to yours again to guide you into place.

This feels wrong…then again, of course it does. Even if you’re getting off relatively easy and just losing your ring rather than your soul, you’re still making a deal with a demon. You sign your name, forcing yourself to think about the future you have ahead of you rather than a disapproving white-bearded caricature of The Man Upstairs wagging his finger at you for haggling with a literal servant of Satan. People have done worse things to survive, haven’t they? It’s just a ring.

You set the feather down and Overhaul sighs, thick black eyelashes obscuring his intense gaze for a moment—and then the contract is gone, leaving your hospital room as blank and sterile as it’s supposed to be (well, aside from the candles and all the other ritual stuff you threw together to summon a demon in the first place).

“Are you going to cure—heal me now?” you ask.

“…Patience, little girl.” He’s pulling his glove off, peeling it down his fingers to bare the pale skin of his hand. You catch your breath and wonder what this is going to feel like, and then the tips of his fingers meet your cheek and—

you stop breathing.

It doesn’t hurt.

Or if it does, you don’t remember the pain a second later when breath floods back into your lungs. What you do feel is energy. Strength in your muscles, blood pumping through your veins, every inhale and exhale as light as a bird and freer. You feel healthy. You’re surprised you even remember what health feels like but you do: it’s like you’ve only been half alive, and now life is surging into you and through you and around you, bubbling up in your core like a spring overflowing. You blink rapidly, thinking you might cry from the sheer pleasure of it, but when you open your mouth it’s laughter that comes out. You’re healthy. You’re alive. You barely notice the IV line literally falling off of your skin because the hole where it entered your vein is sealed shut and healed perfectly.

No more needles. No more hospitals. Even without all the monitors beeping out your heart rate and measuring your vitals, there’s not a shred of doubt in your mind that you’re cured.

“Thank you!” you laugh, looking up at Overhaul and for the first time, not caring that he’s evil incarnate. “I feel—I’m okay! It worked!”

“Of course it did.” His expression is inscrutable, but he lets you have a few moments to enjoy your newfound health.

You roll your shoulders back, flex each muscle you can isolate one by one to test, make fists with your fingers and then run them over your hair, which is already thicker and shinier than it was a moment ago. Your body thrums with energy—you want to run, to feel the ground against your bare feet and the cold night air on your face, and you think you could do it! Your legs are already swinging over the side of your cot, ready to run barefoot out of the hospital if that’s what it takes, but before you can stand up Overhaul’s pushing you back down onto the bed.

“Have you forgotten your end of the bargain already?”

Honestly you did forget, but only for a second, only because you were so excited to just be outside again. “Oh, yeah. Of course.” Your hand goes to your left ring finger, ready to slip the ring off and hand it over, but Overhaul shakes his head.

“Not here.”

“What—?”

You’re falling. Your hospital room is disappearing, the image of your walls and your window and your bed disintegrating into yawning black, and you’re falling through it into nothing, into emptiness, and Overhaul’s still-bare hand in yours is the only anchor you have so you clutch onto it and squeeze your eyes shut. You want to scream—that’s the sane thing to do when you’re falling through miles and miles of empty space, right?—but when you open your throat the sound is swallowed up just like the light was…

Overhaul’s hand burns into yours, an improbable lifeline that you pull closer more out of terror than conscious thought. The slick, empty air rushes around you and you think I am going to die like this and then, incredibly, as soon as you’ve accepted your imminent demise, you feel your back mold onto a chilled, flat surface, vertebra by vertebra up to the back of your head, as if you’ve been lain down onto it.

Your heart thuds in your ears and you brace for an impact because your body hasn’t quite accepted yet that it’s not falling anymore—but at the same time, you know you’re lying down on something. You pry your fingers away from their vice-grip on Overhaul’s arm and feel around blindly for what’s underneath you, and when it seems reasonably tangible you let yourself open your eyes.

Way above, vaulted dozens of feet over your head, is a ceiling studded with gilt-edged frescoes and stained glass. It’s raining (even though it wasn’t in the hospital, you think) but through the massive panes of colored glass there’s enough oily blue light to make out that you’re in a church.

You’re in a church, with a demon. Isn’t that against the rules?

You sit up stiffly and look over at Overhaul, who’s standing at your side and looking down at you…which is how you realize the soft, cold surface you’ve been deposited onto is the blanket on top of the altar in the sanctuary. “Where...did you take me?”

“You should know this place.”

And you do, when you look around. It’s empty now and you’ve never been here at night, but this is a church your mother would bring you to when you were little, back before the disease got so bad you couldn’t risk traveling to it anymore. This is where you took your purity vow…the ring feels heavy on your hand. “Why—why—“

“I can’t stand human hospitals. Filthy places… How that reek of illness and death doesn’t bother your kind, I’ll never understand.” Overhaul pulls his latex glove back on. He’s dressed differently now, no longer impersonating a doctor—black shirt, black pants, and a…bird mask in red leather and gold. So are you, as a matter of fact. Instead of your hospital gown, you’re in a gauzy white dress that’s already been pushed up to pool around the tops of your thighs.

The slip is too thin for the cold, and you can feel your nipples standing up under the cloth so you fold your arms over your chest and hug yourself. “Why did you take me here?” The sound of your voice echoes off the walls eerily and you wish you hadn’t spoken so loudly. The reflection of your words sounds girlish, nervous.

“I told you. Your side of our contract.” Even in this dark, the angular features of his face are clearly concentrating—on you. “Are you already having second thoughts? Such a fickle little thing…”

“You mean the ring?” You reach for it again, ready to tear it off and throw it at him if that’s what it takes to see your deal through, but Overhaul snatches your hand away, pinning it above you.

“Not the ring,” he says. “The promise.”

The…promise?

A chill makes its way down your spine despite the heat radiating off the demon’s body and onto yours. “I don’t understand.”

“The promise,” Overhaul repeats—and you hear a sound almost like wings flapping and then he’s on the altar with you, knees straddling your hips as a single hand holds both your wrists above your head. “To remain a virgin until marriage. Your promise to God.”

A streak of lightning cracks down on the other side of the stained glass window behind the altar, illuminating the room briefly in spectacular pits of red and orange and yellow…and then it’s dark again, and the only color you can make out is the gold in Overhaul’s eyes.

“I’m going to break it,” he murmurs, lowering his head toward your ear right as the answering thunder rolls through the sanctuary, up through the altar, up into you.

///

Méfiez-vous de son piège, the grimoire said. Beware of the catch.

Of course it wasn’t just a ring.

Overhaul’s fingers are in—inside you, his middle and ring finger pumping through the length of your cunt like they belong there, like you were made to be touched this way. A mixture of your juices and your own spit cling to the latex because he made you suck his fingers before he put them in you and he hasn’t bothered to take his gloves off—not that you asked. You’ve been too busy biting your lip to try and muffle the moans that he keeps forcing out of you. He’s bracing himself on top of you with one hand and fingering you with the other, so your own hands are free to push into your eyes and hide your face…until he yanks your arm back and stops.

“Look at me.”

Your eyes are screwed shut and you shake your head back and forth, the movement shuddering your whole body right down to your pussy wrapped around Overhaul’s fingers. He slows the movement and kneels back, pushing one of your thighs up into your chest as he does it.

“Look at me.”

And you’re not sure whether it’s some unearthly power he has over you or the plain old deterioration of your willpower, but you can’t refuse him. You crack your eyes open and he’s glaring down at you, skin pale as ice in the blue light. Once he’s satisfied that you’re watching, the demon leans back in to fuck your cunt with his fingers, slowly at first and then quicker when he hits something inside of you—a spot, a place on the inner wall of your pussy that makes you feel like you’ve been shocked— heat blooms through you like blood in water and you gasp and he curls his fingers up to pet over that spot again.

“Wait—wait, that’s—it feels—weird!” You’ve never felt like this before. You’re not supposed to feel like this, it’s wrong.

“I understand you’ve never touched yourself, but don’t pretend you don’t like it.” Overhaul says, voice as indifferent and calm as ever even though your cunt is dripping clear sticky liquid over the plastic of his glove.

He pushes back in and grinds his palm over the little button on the top of your pussy—your clit?—and you want to scream. “No, I—I don’t—nnhh...”

Do you like it? The demon’s body is so hot next to yours, like he’s running a fever except you’re the one going out of your mind… You’ve heard metaphors for sexual pleasure before (that it’s like having something to drink when you’re dying of thirst; or that it’s the ultimate act of intimacy, love in physical form) but all of that’s a fucking lie. There’s nothing to compare it to, no reference that makes sense, because it doesn’t make sense—you don’t even want him to keep going, do you? You’re only doing this because you signed your name on a devil’s contract, because you don’t want to die and there’s no alternative…but that doesn’t explain why you feel so warm from the inside out, why you’re squirming and your hips are rocking involuntarily no matter how much you try to keep still. This isn’t right. You feel like you’ve been lied to.

A good girl wouldn’t like this.

Overhaul isn’t going to let you close your eyes, so you don’t—but the sounds coming out of your mouth are so…indecent (and how can you think these things about yourself? the word feels like someone else is saying it when you hear it in your head) that your hand is drifting up to your mouth before you can stop yourself, trying to stifle all of it…

“Let your voice out. I want you to hear yourself moan.”

Long fingers slide their way out of your pussy and then move up to rub quick little circles around your clit and you moan, like a whore, like a girl getting her cunt rubbed by a demon— “Oh, uhhhn—something, it’s—coming—“ There’s something building up in your core—a peak, a climax, something that makes you fist your hands in the nightgown he put you in (so tight you’re surprised the thin fabric hasn’t torn) and tilt your hips up into him, begging without words because you don’t have any to express what your body is asking for…

But he doesn’t give it to you. Overhaul takes his hand away from your pussy and the shock of the cool air after his too-hot touch is almost enough to send you over that edge—almost. Not quite. And without it, you’re left shivering and quaking, thighs twitching as your baser instincts beg you to just put your hand between your legs for once and hump your fingers to completion if the demon won’t do it.

You’re not going to risk that, though. Not when Overhaul’s dragging your body closer, bunching up the blanket on the altar under your spine, so your pelvis is angled to his… He’s already shirtless and you hear him unzipping his pants but you can’t bring yourself to actually look at him, even when you feel something hard and hot nudging up against your inner thigh and then aligning to your sticky wet slit.

“This will hurt a bit, but I want you to look,” he says, and you don’t even understand at first until you make yourself feel it—his cock, pushing up against your tight cunt to finish this, this perversion of what your first time was supposed to be…

And what was it supposed to be? Roses and candles and soft kisses? A nameless, faceless husband unzipping your wedding dress and making love to you with the lights off? The way the demon touches you should be cruel in comparison but it isn’t, it’s lighting fires under your skin and turning your brains to mush, so how is your body supposed to tell the difference?

It’ll hurt, you know that, you’ve heard enough about sex to know that it always hurts the first time for girls…women. It was already a stretch to fit his fingers in your virgin pussy, so of course his cock is going to hurt. You turn your head toward the window at your side and try on look out at the rain drawing rivulets like veins over the glass, something to focus on instead of him.

“I said look,” the demon hisses, and his hips push forward a bit and you bite off a whimper of pain. “Watch me take your virginity…look at your tight little cunt swallowing me up just like it was made to.”

“N-No—“ you whine, even though it’s not like you can ignore it. “Don’t make me, don’t make me look, I can’t—“

“Then look at me.”

It’s what he wants, some kind of wicked satisfaction he gets off on, but you’re lucky enough to even get an option so you choose that one, shifting your gaze up into his face instead of the place where his cock is pressing deeper and deeper inside you. Overhaul’s eyes are half-lidded and it’s hard to tell from behind the mask but the look on his face is…pleasure? No, that would be too human. Restraint, at least. He could just thrust up into your body in one stroke, but he wants you to feel it for some reason.

Maybe because it’s a worse betrayal of your chastity if you want to get fucked.

Lucky for you, though, you can barely feel anything aside from the pain. The heat you felt building earlier is draining out of you even as Overhaul tilts deeper, layering his chest over yours. You’re almost grateful for the modest barrier the dress provides between your torso and the solid muscle of his abdomen. His cock in your pussy feels like it’s too big too deep too much and it’s the first time you’ve felt like your body wasn’t created specifically for this purpose so you hold it tight.

“Does it hurt?”

A second of clarity makes you want to snarl (of course it fucking hurts, I’m losing my virginity to a demon I summoned from hell) and you dig your fingernails into your palms to stop yourself from saying it out loud. Overhaul pulls out a fraction of an inch and then pushes back in and you feel like the breath’s being pushed out of your lungs. “Yes! Yes, it—it hurts—“

“I can make you enjoy it…for a price,” he sighs, settling into a slow rocking motion of his hips pushing into yours.

And you want to, every sore muscle in your cunt is telling you to give in and give up, give him what he wants so you can enjoy it like he says—but you’d rather hate every second of this than make another deal. You shake your head quickly and because you’re still too afraid to look away from him, you don’t miss the look of surprise that flits across his face before he tamps it down. “I don’t—I don’t want to—like it,” you gasp out between thrusts. “It’s better if—if it h-hurts…”

This time it’s obvious—his eyes really do widen, and you feel some petty triumph at having caught him off guard like this. Who’s predictable now? you think—and then he’s lifting one hand off the altar at the side of your head and tugging his glove off with his teeth, and you don’t even have time to be afraid of what he’s going to do to you because it’s too late, his bare fingers are already stroking over your mound and onto your core, massaging into the flesh of your stomach so he can feel his own cock sliding in and out of you—

and it doesn’t hurt anymore?

You only have a second to try and understand—he cured you, he healed the pain from your first time just like he healed your illness?—before he hooks his grip under your thigh and folds your legs into your chest so he can fuck into you harder than before. His cock slaps into your pussy and you can hear it, hear how wet your filthy little cunt is, smeared through with your juices. It’s sick—the sound of skin against skin, and the moaning you can’t hold back, you sound like a woman in a porno and you wish the pain would come back just so you could keep hating what he’s doing to you. “What—what did you do—“

The demon ignores you. “It feels good, doesn’t it.”

“Nn—“ It’s deeper like this…deeper and rougher and you can feel it. Now that the pain’s been reduced to the dull ache of a stretched muscle, you can feel everything—his cock sliding against that same spot in your cunt that makes you want to squeal, the friction of his body moving against your clit, all of it, everything you wanted to block out— he pumps into you and you hear your breath sobbing out a moan a second out of rhythm, the sounds of you bouncing on demon cock echoing over the walls. “Please—ah, ahhh…”

“‘Please?’ Are you begging—me, little girl?” Overhaul pushes your thigh up and drags his cock through you, excruciatingly slow, forcing you to feel the thick head slide over every gummy wall in your slick pussy.

You shake your head, mewl, try to force your hips to stop rocking back into his and grinding your clit against him. But you can’t. You’re a—you were a virgin, for fuck’s sake! Overhaul’s immortal. Probably thousands of years of experience on how to make you feel like you want this, like you’re only alive in the places he touches you… You’re at his mercy, if he has any. You never stood a chance.

“Then are you begging your god?” His body lowers directly onto yours and like you’re being controlled by puppet strings your arms fold around him and rake your fingernails uselessly into the smooth skin of his back. You can feel the vibration of his mirthless laughter through his chest. “It must hurt terribly…to know he isn’t listening.”

“Don’t—stop, please,” you sob. “Don’t say—don’t stop—please!”

“Listen to yourself, girl—“ Overhaul’s breath is faster now, but you don’t have time to question it because you feel your peak coming again, the tension rising up through your cunt and your abdomen, harsher and crueler than when his fingers were in you but you want it just as much. More. “Has he ever answered your prayers? Has he...ahh, fuck—who’s the one giving you what you need?”

“No— please, please just let me let me, please—“ You’re talking nonsense now, begging for the release—at least then it’ll be over, and you need it, you need it so badly you feel your muscles locking up, cramping, your ankles crossing each other behind Overhaul’s back.

“Good girl,” the demon breathes, and then he lifts off you so he’s kneeling upright with the two of you still connected, his thick, heavy cock still speared in your pussy, and his fingers come down again to rub at your clit. Everything’s so wet you can hear the motion of his fingers slicking themselves through your juices, sliding up and down the little button over and over and it feels so good that a tiny part of you almost wants to drag it out, to savor it, but the rest of your body is going to die, is going to go crazy if the demon doesn’t let you cum right now, right now, right now!

And he does. Praise the Lord. The pads of Overhaul’s fingers pass over your clit one last time and your head rolls back, your throat moves but you can’t even make a sound, your legs shake and you cum.

You didn’t know it was like this.

Your cunt squeezes down on his cock, throbbing and pulsing and your toes literally curl (you didn’t think that was a real thing!) and your vision goes black for a moment and—oh fuck oh fuck i want this i want more how is it possible that i’ve never felt like this—you understand, more intimately than ever, why sex is wrong:

because nothing that makes you feel this good could possibly come without a cost, could it?

///

It must take longer than you thought for you to come back to your senses, because when you regain awareness of your body you’re in your hospital bed. You’re clean, too, and you wonder for a second if Overhaul bothered to clean you up? Or no…he probably just snapped his fingers and transported you back to your room. You’re not really sure how it works.

What you are sure of, however, is that you just got fucked by a demon. You’re sore in places that you didn’t know it was possible to be sore, and there are already bruises forming on the flesh of your thighs from how tight he was holding you. You don’t really have time to inspect these, though, because apparently your…ordeal (if you can call it that) isn’t over.

Overhaul’s still here.

He’s facing the hints of sunrise through the east window, dressed again in the immaculate lab coat and surgeon’s mask. “You’re awake,” he says without looking at you.

You nod hesitantly. You’re not really sure what the protocol is in this situation, but at least you’ve finally held up your side of the contract, right? And so has he. Despite having been up all night doing sinful things, you’re still itching to get out of this bed and test the limits of your healthy body. “You’re…going to leave, right?”

“Yes—”

At that, you sigh in relief and settle back into your starched bedsheets.

“But there’s one more thing you owe me.”

“Goddamnit,” you swear for the very first time in your life. After what you just did, taking the Lord’s name in vain seems like a relatively minor sin.

Overhaul’s mildly irritated expression doesn’t change, but he holds his hand out to you, palm up, the way you imagine someone would if they were helping you out of a car or requesting a dance at an old-fashioned ball. And really, you want all of this to be over—you want to get out of this hospital, you want to taste what the air outside is like, you want to distract yourself from what you just gave up in exchange for a future. At this point you’re just going to have to hope God isn’t as picky about the whole premarital sex thing as you grew up believing.

So you put your hand in Overhaul’s.

Slowly, carefully, like he’s afraid it’ll burn him, he slides your purity ring down your finger and balances it in the palm of his bare hand. It sizzles when he touches it, glowing orange until it eventually burns down into a ash-black circle in the center of his palm. Once he’s satisfied that your pretty little ring has been reduced to nothing more than a scorch mark, he closes his hand around yours and you feel something sharp, painfully hot, etching onto your finger.

It’s over in a second, but you still yelp and yank your hand away from him as soon as he lets you. “Ah—ow, what was that?”

He burned you, he literally burned you! He’s already healed it, but there’s still a thin, pale scar, an intentional one left wrapping around the skin at the base of your left ring finger. Like a wedding ring.

When you look close, you can make out a symbol on the back of your finger where the cross used to sit—and even though your conscious mind doesn’t recognize it, the sight of it rings out something inside your ribcage, deeper and truer than flesh and blood. It’s the devil’s mark, you think. It’s his.

“…A promise,” Overhaul says softly, and even though it’s a chilly morning, you can feel the heat of his hands on yours a long time after he vanishes back into the dark.