#legality and morality. they really never know what to do with the serpents and it shows

[archietransdrews]

jughead in his cop era for no reason

[theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin]

Hi! I’m a big fan of your work!! I am looking for more but unfortunately I feel like I have read all yhe good Harry Potter docs on Ao3. Do you have any recs?

Sorry for the delay, I just know that whenever I make rec list it usually ends up taking a while.

With that, Harry Potter fics are a big genre. Just saying Harry Potter in general really isn’t that specific to me so this is across genres/character focuses/you name it.

Also, as usual, I’ve been on fanfiction longer and have amassed more favorites there. Some of these are cross posted to Ao3. Similarly, a lot are unfinished, this personally doesn’t bother me but if it bothers you take heed.

Also, you’ll see my embarrassing obsession with Tom Riddle. So, heads up for that.

Stepbrother (Tom Riddle/Hermione Granger, period piece, in which the two remind me a lot of Nabokov)

Cat Among the Pigeons (Tom Riddle/Lily Evans, Psycho-Pass Detective AU, in which I am a beta actually so my promoting this goes without saying)

Til Death Do Us Part (Tom Riddle/Harry Potter, Voldemort wins AU, which for me does very well with the concept of immortality and what exactly Tom is supposed to do after he wins)

This Tangle of Thorns (Tom Riddle/Hermione Granger, modern AH AU, a full on Nabokov inspired fic which I enjoy because Lolita)

Delusional (Tom Riddle/Harry Potter, sort of. Harry wins the war, goes crazy, checks into a mental hospital. Or he’s not crazy and Voldemort is as unkillable as Palpatine.)

Harry Potter and the Natural 20 (OC insert, D&D inspired, shameless crack. I mostly enjoy the beginning of this but it makes me laugh enough to recommend.)

A Hairy Business (AU, Harry is a deer, he is literally a deer, that’s it. It’s funny.)

Animus, Anima (Tom Riddle/Harry Potter, Harry travels back in time, gets stuck in Tom Riddle’s brain, and it turns out Harry’s responsible for every terrible thing that ever happened. This one was squicky even for me, very well done, but strap in.)

Addendum, He is Also a Liar (Tom Riddle/Hermione Granger, Tom has an inexplicable ability to travel to the future, but only to this random little girl Hermione Granger)

Framed & Fractured (Tom Riddle/Harry Potter, Harry gets stuck in an evil painting back in time. Tom is creepy as usual.)

Trying for Eden (Tom Riddle/Harry Potter, Harry travels back in time to lecture Tom into morality. It doesn’t work.)

Magical Mirrors (Luna Lovegood and Severus Snape, Luna and Snape stumble on the Mirror of Erised at the same time and strike up a conversation)

Aphelion (Hermione Granger/Loki, MCU crossover, Hermione and Loki strike up the world’s weirdest toxic friendship when Hermione’s young and attending Hogwarts, this leads terrible places as Loki slides into madness and despair)

Wandering Souls (Luna Lovegood and The Undertaker, Black Butler crossover, Luna meets and strikes up a conversation with the Undertaker)

Of Lies Most Beautiful (Tom Riddle, Hunger Games crossover, Tom wins the Hunger Games becaues that’s what he does bitch)

In Wonderland (Tom Riddle/Harry Potter, Harry ends up back in the past and decides to raise Tom Riddle. This goes so poorly that the pair almost get eaten by eldritch gods multiple times.)

Rumpelstiltskin, Guess My Name (Tom Riddle/Harry Potter, Female Harry travels back in time and offers to save Merope’s life/get her Tom Riddle Sr. the non rapey way in return for her firstborn son. Merope thought Harry was joking. She wasn’t joking. In the sequel, also linked, Harry kills Morfin.)

The Eyes (Harry Potter, AU, turns out “the power he knows not” is the power humanity knows not, Harry’s ability to see eldritch abominations and cosmic gods and thus bring them far enough into our reality that they eat everything. And I mean everything.)

Mirror Mirror (Harry Potter, MCU crossover, Harry makes a huge mistake and stops Hulk in the middle of a rampage. This gets him abducted by octopus nazis.)

I See the Moon (Harry Potter and Bruce Banner, MCU crossover, Harry got brain damage from the war and wanders around the middle of nowhere. He runs into Bruce. He’s now Bruce’s only friend.)

You Will Be the Death of Me (Harry Potter and Tom Riddle, Despicable Me inspired, through a series of convoluted events Tom as the world’s worst father figure ends up raising Harry the sad adorable orphan.)

In Death, Standby (Tom Riddle/Harry Potter (sort of, the authro claims), Tom raises Harry, the only Tom raises Harry that I’ve seen done well because Tom is the world’s worst father. Harry thinks he’s a deformed snake until the age of three.)

Little Harry’s Mirkwood Adventure (Harry Potter and Dudley Dursley, Hobbit Crossover, one of the most Tolkien style crossovers I’ve actually seen and is very good)

A (Self-Imposed) Trap for a Fool (Ginny Weasley, turns out Harry Potter never existed, as in he’s a collective hallucination made up by the entire wizarding world)

McLaggen and From McLaggen with Love (McLaggen, a detective AU then a James Bond style adventure starring McLaggen, the greatest wizard who ever wizarded)

Tom Riddle’s Diary: on keeping devils in the summer (Tom Riddle, Tom Riddle’s antichrist orphan adventures involving exorcism and burning people alive)

and the fates sing (hold on, son) (Harry Potter, MCU crossover, Harry is the son of Loki and like all children of Loki he is a wretched and cursed thing)

A Faulty Master (Harry Potter and Itachi Uchiha, Naruto crossover, Itachi after the massacre of his family has a run in with a master of death Harry, who is a creepy creepy man)

Eye of Reason (Harry Potter/Jack Frost, Rise of the Guardians crossover, due to the mythos surrounding his life Harry ceases to be a man and becomes akin to a god)

Flowers for a Ghost (Luna Lovegood and Itachi Uchiha, Naruto Crossover, Luna befriends a blind ghost)

Third Time’s the Charm (Harry Potter, MCU crossover, Bruce Banner keeps trying to kill himself and MoD Harry is there to have himself a real good day)

Blind Faith (Bellatrix LeStrange/Tom Riddle, canon compliant, an in depth look at Bellatrix from the escape of Azkaban onward)

Cocktail Time (Rita Skeeter and Gilderoy Lockhart, Rita does an expose and autobiography detailing the descent of Gilderoy Lockhart and how he became what he became)

Fantastic Elves and Where to Find Them (Harry Potter, canon divergent AU, Harry thinks he’s an elf. That’s it.)

The Twine Bracelet (Colin Creevy, a look at Colin’s death) 

Legal Alien (Harry Potter, MCU crossover, Harry visits New York and an alien invasion breaks out. Culminates with the best, dumb, joke.)

The Root of Desire (Tom Riddle/Hermione Granger, Hermione travels back in time and tries to influence Tom. All this does is inspire his sexual awakening.)

Deadheads (Harry Potter/Godric Gryffindor, a romantic comedy of a kind, culminating in the best dumbest joke)

Give and Take (Tom Riddle/Hermione Granger, Hermione tries to outwit Tom, it ends in despair)

The Road to Somewhere (Harry Potter, Spirited Away crossover, Harry as MoD is in the realm of the spirits)

Absolute (Harry Potter, Harry picks up a death note, he kills everyone)

Fortunate Son (Dudley Dursleys, years afterwards Dudley looks back and writes a memoir and expose about the abuse inflicted on his cousin)

Elective Affinities (Severus Snape/Harry Potter, Harry travels back in time to discover his parents are assholes and things are more complicated than he imagined)

Juxtaposed (Bod, Graveyard Book crossover, Bod attends Hogwarts)

The Fire Omens (Tom Riddle and a look at WWII)

Broken Toys (Tom Riddle and his useless broken toys)

The Fine Art of Poisoning (Madame Zabini)

A Marriage of Convenience (Pansy and Theo get married)

Reparabilis (Tom Riddle/Harry Potter, Tom becomes a professor, he still destroys Harry Potter)

The Unforgivable Curses (Draco Malfoy, a look at the 4th year unforgivable lecture with Moody and the Slytherins)

Ugly (Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy one sided Dudley/Harry Potter, Dudley’s fat, ugly, and creeps on his cousin)

Three Can Keep a Secret (Harry Potter, on secrets and secret keeping)

Caveat Incimici (Hermione Granger, on Hermione and her terrifying wrath)

Babylon (Harry Potter and Tom Riddle, Harry never gets rid of Tom)

Wonderful Tragic Mysterious (Luna Lovegood and Albus Dumbledore, Luna Lovegood time travels and becomes a young Albus’ neighbor)

In the Clockface, Weighted and Weary (Harry Potter/Ariana Dumbledore, Harry after DH ends up back in time in Dumbledore’s childhood and witnesses the beautiful Dumbledore family dysfunction)

Eternal Return (Harry Potter and Tom Riddle, Harry is reincarnated as Tom Riddle and as a result becomes Voldemort so that a Voldemort exists)

Like Pale Fire (Harry Potter/Godric Gryffindor, the Founders are resurrected and it turns out Harry had travelled to the past and become Salazar Slytherin, turns out the Founders were more complicated than people expected.)

12 Moves Sideways (Harry Potter and Light Yagami, Death Note crossover, Light becomes the Defense Professor, for once Harry does not figure out the mystery.)

A Very Young Girl’s Record of Her Own Impressions (Ariana Dumbledore’s diary)

Night Comes Early (Moody on war)

Little Witches (The Black family women and how it all falls apart)

Paved with Good Intentions (Petunia on finding a baby on her doorstep)

Emerald Serpent for Vanity (Draco and Nagini introspective)

Blue (Tom Riddle/Bellatrix LeStrange, Voldemort wins dystopia, Tom visits Bellatrix’s grave and is very crazy)

Eighteen (Hermione Granger, on Hermione’s betrayal of her parents)

Ouroboros (Tom Riddle/Harry Potter, on what they’ve made of each other)

Not so Different (Scout, To Kill a Mockingbird Crossover, Scout reflects on the wizarding world’s raicsm)

Traitor (Hermione Granger, Hermione is captured by the Death Eaters and commits unspeakable acts to free herself)

Smashing Mirrors (Tom Riddle, introspective)

Twelve Dark Moons (Luna Lovegood/Tom Riddle, Luna becomes a captive of the dark lord)

Full Circle (Harry Potter, Harry wins and is miserable)

The Web of a Thousand Spiders (Luna Lovegood on the diary)

The Metronome (The fall of Lucius’ entire generation)

Understand (Hermione Granger and her betrayal of her parents)

Tea with the Headmaster (Severus Snape and Albus Dumbledore, the pair have tea)

This Grief Feeling (Hermione Granger and Severus Snape after the end)

After Innocence (The trio after the end)

Of Great Turmoil and Excess Stupidity (Sesshomaru and Hagrid, Inuyasha crossover, Hagrid decides to capture a demon for class)

What’s Left of Hope (Severus Snape and Albus Dumbledore, on preserving hope)

In His Keep (Severus Snape and Luna Lovegood, Snape informs Luna her father has died)

Wednesday (Petunia Evans, introspective)

In the Presence of Angels (Moody in WWII)

What He Grows to Be (Tom Riddle/Harry Potter, Harry Potter raises Tom Riddle in the past and it goes horribly wrong)

Being Cassandra (Tom Riddle/Harry Potter, Harry Potter, Tom, and their strange AU friendship)

The Girl (Tom Riddle/Harry Potter, a fem Harry Potter keeps accidentally appearing in Tom’s childhood)

Corruption (Tom Riddle/Harry Potter, Tom wins AU and female Harry slowly becomes corrupted)

One Night Stand (Tom Riddle/Lily Evans, a wonderful look on the first war, Tom Riddle, Lily Evans, the Order of the Phoenix, and terrorism)

The Voldemort Principle (Severus Snape, turns out Snape was Voldemort the whole time and Harry is a lying liar who lies)

Harry Potter and the mountain of pure diamond (Tom Riddle/Harry Potter, Harry has become an ageless god who travels worlds and decides to raise Tom Riddle. He’s disturbed when he realizes Tom is more of a person than he is)

A Road Less Travelled By (Harry Potter/Lucius Malfoy, Harry’s a veela, just read it, it’s amazing, I know I sound crazy but it is)

Transformation (Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy, Draco gets eaten by the Forbidden Forest and then Harry gets eaten too)

Rock Bottom (Tom Riddle/Harry Potter, Tom gets trapped being defense professor and has a miserable time)

[chromalogue]

Alive.  Healthy.  Chugging along.  Still rubbish at communicating.  

*

I spent the holiday season making approximately 20 different kinds of cookies.  It was supposed to be more but I ran out of time and spoons.  Some of them, like salted double chocolate cookies and plum slice (which turned out to be a. crabapple slice and b. wildly popular to the point where I didn’t get any) were very successful, and some, like rye flour wreaths and poppyseed sablés, were a bewildering waste of time.  But I do have nice pictures of everything.  And way too late for me to make anything to order, a couple of people got in touch asking for baking and goodies, and it was nice to have something to give them.

*

Highlights from last year’s books include Jordan Ifueko’s Raybearer, Aminatta Forna’s Happiness, and Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent.  

Right now, among other things, I am reading and very much enjoying Paul Féval’s 1867 novel La Ville-Vampire.  It is Ann Radcliffe RPF with all sorts of wry observations about the exotic and ever-so-slightly-wrongheaded character of the English people (you know, the way English gothic novels wrote about the rest of Europe), and it is a delight.

*

A few months into the pandemic, I got in touch with one of my best friends from Toronto, because she really needed to watch The Witcher.  Since then, we get together on a phone call every Thursday or Friday and watch stuff.  I turn off sound and put on subtitles, and hear her audio through the phone, so if it’s not perfectly synced it’s okay.  We’ve also been through She-Ra, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, The Dragon Prince, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, Adventure Zone: Hootenanny, a surprisingly good high school production of Phantom of the Opera, and we’re just starting Raising Dion.  

Will and I loved the heck out of Lupin.  

And the Roku Channel has Hunter, which I loved as a tween.  I’ve been watching it for the nostalgia and because it’s a kind of show I don’t even think they make anymore, i.e. a show I can have on while doing something else and not worry about what I’m missing.  But JEEZ.  Every terrible (both narratively and morally) cop show trope you see being mocked, picked apart, critiqued, or lampooned?  It’s here, and it’s so darned earnest, and it explains so darned much.  Poke it a little and Reaganomics dribbles out (trickles down?).

Some enterprising soul also put the whole of Jul i Blodfjell (Christmas on Blood Mountain) on YouTube, and my soul sang.  I��d heard bits and seen the odd clip, so I was keen to watch.  Fellow North Americans, this is a genre I never even knew existed, even though I’d seen a previous example from Ylvis: the Julekalender.  There’s an episode every day of December, until the 24th.  And this is a slasher murder mystery comedy Julekalender.  The episodes were about twelve minutes long, and when I was trying to decompress after a whole gruelling night of Christmas cookies, and just needed to sit down long enough to shove some bread and cheese in my mouth and chug a smoothie before going to bed, these were just the thing.

*

We’ve heard, not necessarily that vitamin D makes COVID better but that vitamin D deficiency makes it worse, so I asked Will if he wanted me to get him some, and he said sure.

“Do you want the grownup kind or the fun kind?” I asked, because I had been sharing my vitamin D gummies with him and he seemed to like them.

“The grownup kind,” he said, in a tone that suggested it was a silly question.

So I got him some of the flavourless kind you’re supposed to swallow.  And when I brought it to him he was like, “Oh...  I thought they’d be gummy.”

*

The community group is not feeling super great.  The new chair has been micromanaging.  After the second e-mail that left me so furious I couldn’t sleep, I replied to the effect of, “When you coach me on how to do work I did professionally for years, I feel like you’re sending the message that I’m not a good fit for this organization.  I don’t disagree, but we can’t afford to lose members, so let me serve my term to the best of my abilities and I’ll be out of your hair.”  

He apologized, said he definitely valued my skills, and told me that he was changing our procedures so that those skills would no longer be needed.  When I said I’d like to see how the committee felt about changing those procedures, he brought it to a meeting, let two people speak in favour, and then was like, “Welp, everyone agrees with me, it’s a done deal!”  No vote or anything.  Just a decree.

THEN he got in touch to ask me if I would do THE SAME THING I’VE BEEN DOING ALL ALONG, THAT HE JUST HUMILIATED AND BULLIED ME OUT OF, but ONLY FOR HIM.  

Virtually everyone who knows what happened thinks I should resign, and maybe I should.  But we had been working for three years when this dude came on, and he does not get to own this project, and his bad behaviour does not get to take it down.  And I mean, he’s been pretty consistent in underestimating me and minimizing my work, so he probably forgets that some of my previous experience comes from workplaces a lot more toxic than this one.  I’m equipped to deal, and now that he’s flipped the bully switch, there are a bunch of friendly small-town softening behaviours that I’d adopted for meetings here, that I feel empowered to discontinue.

*

When I mentioned offhand to my dad that last Valentine’s Day Will and I had gone out for dinner, and this year it seemed unlikely, so I was gonna have to think of something, my dad said, “You two like mussels, right?  Why don’t you invite him over here and we’ll have mussels?  Your mom will eat some.”

So yeah.  This Valentine’s Day we’re planning a super romantic dinner with my parents.  

*

At 159 800 words on the new thing.  Now all I need to do is research Viking legal codes.  Good times!

[broadwaytheanimatedseries]

Okay But What If I Just

Miraculous Omens AU:

So this is a really wild idea I had, basically a modern human AU where the angels and demons are just people

And I'm not sure if they're highschool age, I think college age fits better for Zira and Crow

Anthony J Crowley and A.Z Fell go by Az and Crowley/Crow most of the time, they are the only ones who call each other by their first names, Crowley more so than Angel.

Because that really is his name, Angel Zion Fell, and Crowley figures it makes sense that the sweetest soul on earth is named after a being of pure goodness, a force of light.

Of course this isn't entirely the reason for his name, the main reason being his legal guardian's obsession with religion, purity, and order most of all.

Gabriel Archer was a strict man with only a love for rules in his heart, and Az has known this since he was old enough to think for himself, which is something Gabriel did not like him doing at all.

Az spent his life being told what to do by all the relatives that came by to talk with Gabriel about the future and where the world seems to be headed these days.

Gabriel always looked like there was an enormous weight on his shoulders whenever the topic came up, as he would fix his tie as if nervous, but not hesitant. Never hesitant.

Gabriel has been waiting his whole life for the right moment to Strike, so when the opportunity finally presents itself, he uses the butterfly miraculous he's been wearing for years now and creates an Akuma to lure out the new Ladybug and black cat miraculous holders.

So now She must choose two. Two souls, meant to work in perfect harmony together, who can stop the efforts of a man who has the wrong idea for what the world should be.

Meanwhile, as all that happens, Az has no idea what the person who raised him is up to, and is enjoying his life of luxury as someone who inherited his parents' riches, and on the other side of town, Crowley lives in an apartment building with the worst neighbors and a shitty landlord.

People tell him he's exaggerating when he calls it hell but it truly is a mess. The only thing that gives him comfort and manages to survive, thanks to his skill and intimidation, are his lovely, wonderful plants.

And though people would describe Az's life as heaven, to him it's beginning to feel more like a fancy, cushy prison. Gabriel tries to make it as comfortable as possible so he never wants to go out and see the world, but it won't work.

Az is desperate for friendship and hungry for knowledge, while Crowley is tired of his crummy life and mundane everyday routine, so much that even causing mischief has become part of the norm and is no longer exciting.

So when they are both tested by Her and She sees them fit for the miraculouses, their lives change forever.

Anthony J. Crowley becomes Ladybug, and very much enjoys being able to change his gender presentation so easily.

He insists on using female pronouns while on duty and as an added bonus it seriously helps with keeping his identity a secret.

The various, increasingly weird lucky charms always make perfect sense to her, they're just like all the pranks she plays as Crowley, one tiny change can set a whole chain of events into motion.

And A.Z Fell becomes Chat Noir, and he loves being able to ditch the goody two shoes persona everyone has decided to see him as and just go apeshit.

That being said, he's still Aziraphale and obviously still cares about people, but he doesn't feel the need to be so nice and polite all the time, and the ever so important rules he grew up believing are the only thing that matters, don't seem so relevant anymore.

He's hesitant to use his cataclysm at first, but when Ladybug tells him "whatever you break, Chaton, I can fix." he doesn't hold back, and true to her word, the lucky charm never fails to explode into a million glittery ladybugs that put everything back in its place.

Chat Noir and Ladybug see each other as partners, but Crowley can't communicate his emotions to his Angel to save his own skin, and Az is similarly as nervous around the wily ol' serpent.

So instead of a love square it's two pining hopeless idiots that are already fucking married except they don't know it's the person they're absolutely hopeless for.

Az and Plagg get along swimmingly, their love of food and general sass making them almost instant friends, and Az is greatful to have someone like Plagg who's always there for him.

Crowley and Tikki get along as well as a cunning, angry trickster and an ancient deity of creation can, it's hard but they manage. Tikki is often his moral compass and voice of reason whenever he's about to do something mean and/or stupid, so she's saved his ass a lot since he started being Ladybug. He also tries not to yell at the plants too loud when she's close by, he doesn't wanna scare her.

Gabriel and Nooroo... Do I even have to say it? The names don't even change, why would the dynamic be any different. Both Gabriels are assholes, no one is surprised.

So... Yeah.

[theaurorfileshq]

C A S S A N D R A   A S T O R - R E Y E S  /  A U R O R   S E R G E A N T

AGE: Thirty

BADGE NUMBER: S01B24

BLOODSTATUS: Pureblood

GENDER/PRONOUNS: Cis Woman, She/Her

IDENTIFYING FEATURES: Eyebrow scar, walks with a slight limp and aided by a cane.

STRENGTHS/WEAKNESSES:

(+): Excels in Defence Against The Dark Arts/Uncomfortable knowledge of the Dark Arts in general, can resist the imperious curse, strong moral compass and a heart of gold.

(-): A tendency to hold back from using destructive spells even if doing so puts her at risk, legitimately desperate for approval from authority figures, inability to produce a patronus.

BACKGROUND:

–– In her younger years she feels like a shadow incarnate. A ghostly slip of a thing in a family of ghoulish, graceful monsters. Cassandra is the youngest of four, and the only girl in the family. There is not a day that goes by where she doesn’t know her place. The Astor-Reyes family are traditionalists to the core. Her mother teaches her the rules with a deceitful gentleness. Little girls should be seen and not heard. Little girls should stay out of the way. Little girls need to do whatever their father and brothers tell them. Even when she was small, she knew the foolishness of it. Cassandra was far too hungry a thing to sit still and pretty while her brothers worked. Like all shadows, she longed to come into the light and swallow it whole.

–– She proves herself a prodigy from a young age. Her magic comes out early, unbound and unrestrained. It’s clear to all that little Cassandra is a power-house. A forest fire in a pretty dress, a scorching blaze with very polite table manners. In the early days, before she learns how to focus herself, her magic almost sparks and crackles with its fury. She still remembers the day her father leans down to kiss her forehead and whispers “you’re going to burn the world down, aren’t you, Cass?”

–– Despite it all, she still feels like a shadow. Her power, her raw talent, only get her so far in her father’s eyes. She is allowed to study from his books, secret and forbidden to so many others. He practices spells on her so that she will build a natural defence, so that she will know how to protect herself with magic and muscle memory. When she takes any real interest in his work, she is shut down. Business isn’t for little girls. When she tries to engage with her brothers on an equal playing field, she is pushed away. Experimental magic isn’t for little girls. They look at her with sharp eyes, predators in the making. They’re how Cassandra knows what monsters look like, she’ll reflect, a decade later.

–– Her grandfather never leaves the house. He is a reclusive soul, she thinks, with an edge of longing. Oh, how she would love to stay at home forever with books for company. He has an edge in his eyes, and he stares out the window for long hours at a time. Cassandra is his favourite, she knows, in the way children often do. He is more gentle with her than the others, he humours her more than anyone else, and drives her brothers away when they bother her or tease her. She asks him why he never ventures outside the gates of their garden, and he tells her that he is a trapped soul. He says it like a story, fairy tale slow and full of wonder. He has an enemy, you see. An enemy who outwitted him and bested him in battle. An enemy who feared his power. So her grandfather had to barter away magic and some small level of freedom in exchange for the chance to stay with his family. It seems awfully noble and romantic to Cassandra, but she won’t know for many years the extent of his thwarted dark deeds.

–– She didn’t realise that her family was strange until a couple of years into her schooling. She joins the Horned Serpent house without a second thought, and struggles to make friends even among her like-minded compatriots. People seemed to shy away from her at every turn, so she closed herself off in return. She focused on her books, and her grades, and the polite small talk she could make with those who knew her from before school began. Other noble, honoured pureblood families. She hears it whispered one day, after a talented display of hexes in her Defence class, far more advanced than anything the others could produce. ‘I bet she’s evil, like the rest of them.’

–– The Astor-Reyes family has a bad reputation, and she was foolish not to see it sooner. She didn’t realise she was wrong, to know the things she did. She didn’t realise she shouldn’t have studied the darkest of arts from an early age. She didn’t realise it was wrong to gaze into the abyss, and wish it would touch you in return. They all saw it as a thing that hurt. They didn’t know that the knowledge could be a powerful and rewarding thing. They didn’t know that it could be as gentle as a father’s kiss. It had never hurt her, she’d never seen it damage anything, not really.

–– At seventeen, she has the aura of a wispy, flighty thing. Delicate, darkly beautiful. Her family had a bad reputation, but all she’d been able to do was go with it. After school, she begs her father to let her help him in the family business. She understands now what he does, and that it isn’t strictly speaking legal. Yet she wants to help, regardless. He’s just a businessman. He gets things that people wants. He sells them. Trinkets and artefacts and treasures. It’s just stuff, she thinks, in her still teenaged brain. What are people going to do? Hurt themselves with it? Though she’s older, and undeniably the brightest of his children, he tells her no. She should be focusing on marriage, like a good little girl. She should find a husband and carry on the family line, in one way or another. For the next three years she entertains the ideas, entertains suitors and boyfriends and girlfriends. She has not great longing to be a wife to any of them, and shakes them off as best she can.

–– It’s a strange thing, to be willingly blind. To believe that you have honour when you know, deep in your heart, that something is very wrong. She gets the impression that her family is spiralling around a drain, that something too dark and too dangerous is creeping in. Her eldest brother is a dark shade of the man she used to know, frantic and cloying and obsessive to an extreme extent. He inherits control of everything, in the end, when her father is arrested for his crimes and locked away. She watches the auror squad come and take both Andre and him. Brother and father gone, a dwindling family left behind. She answers questions and feels the heavy judgement of their gazes. Micheal Astor-Reyes becomes the head of their family in a deft blow, and though he only lasts a matter of weeks in the role, she wishes it had been over quicker. Her brother is a cruel man, a foul beast. Experimental and half-crazed like a character in a no-maj novel, Frankenstein the doctor, or Frankenstein the monster –– one and the same, wrapped up in the visage of a man she tries very hard to love. She watches him, far too often, his words and his deeds. She watches and wonders: is this wrong? She wonders it often enough that the litany shifts without her notice, a resigned and shaky: this is wrong.

–– Micheal almost blows her up, in the end. Him and his experimental magic. She should have been wary when he let her into the room, when he asked her to act as witness to his greatest deeds. She knows that he could have easily killed her, down there in his lab. His necromantic obsessions, his fascination with death and how to best it. That kind of spell can do far more damage than it did to her, when it backfires. She knows it could have killed her –– it killed him, after all. She’d seen his burned out husk, seen what was left of him, twitching until he faded away. A great deed. She’d known she was hurt, but it didn’t occur to her that she ought to cry or to scream or to call out for help. All she’d wanted in the moment was to lay down and fall asleep.

–– They bury her brother in the family crypt, and it’s a mark of her own strength that she attends the ceremony. Fresh from her sick bed after two weeks of healing. Intensive as the attentions of her healers had been, Cassandra still feels weary. Bone tired. Achey inside and out. ‘Dark magic often leaves a profound mark on the psyche.’ She needs help to stand, her leg still healing far too slowly for anybody’s liking. The help takes the shape of her Grandfather for the extent of the day. He keeps her steady, somehow steadfast and strong even in his old age. Her mother sobs and weeps, wrapped up in her seemingly endless sorrow. It still doesn’t occur to Cassandra that she ought to cry. She plays picture perfect hostess next to her mother after the ceremony, shakes hand after hand, and accepts condolences she doesn’t want. She plasters on a grim smile, as sad as she can manage.

–– It’s only the three of them in the house, quite suddenly. Cassandra, her mother, and her grandfather. Andre and father will be locked up for a very long time. Micheal is dead. Alexander departed in the weeks after the funeral, galavanting around Europe in a desperate effort to make a name for himself divorced from the rest of his despicable family. Cassandra feels more like a ghost than ever. A broken thing, gripping the cane her mother gifted her as she strives towards independence. She lost her wand, during the accident. It snapped beneath her when she fell. She ought to get a new one, she knows –– but she isn’t ready to face the world, she isn’t ready for them to look at her, yet. She sits in the dusty, unused Drawing Room instead, and makes fitful attempts to master simple spells wandlessly. The ancestral portraits watch her in wry amusement, until one speaks up –– ‘You’re not going to get anywhere like that.’ It’s Cassandra, the elder Cassandra. A great aunt she’s never given much thought to. Grandfather had always described her in unflattering tones, far too priggish for his taste, a stoic and upstanding citizen. His distaste for her is why she was condemned to the old drawing room, rarely used even by her mother. ‘I do believe my old wand is somewhere in the attic, gathering dust. Go and fetch it so we may all cease watching you struggle like a foolish child.’

–– She thinks a lot about the elder Cassandra in the weeks that follow. Using her wand. Gazing at her portrait. Reading about her, however much there is, in the family records. She seemed more noble than anything else, to Cass’s young eyes. Never married. A patron of various charities. Master duelist and stalwart believer in duty and honour. She had been the one who turned her Grandfather in to the Auror’s, who condemned him to a life of imprisonment in his own home for his unholy deeds, condemned him to a life without a wand. Then, the elder Cassandra had died young. She has no proof to back the chilling hunch, but there is something in Cass certain that her death was far from natural.

–– She thinks a lot about honour. Right and wrong. What kind of person she wants to be. She thinks, and then she stops thinking at all and begins to act. She moves their hoard of dark artefacts and distasteful books up to the attic, out of sight and out of mind. She opens all the windows and lets the light in. Then, with steely determination, she applies to auror training. Her career begins in fits and starts, wary eyes following her everywhere she goes. Her name carries weight, her family’s bad reputation still at the forefront of everybody’s mind. She doesn’t cower from it, this time around. She holds her head high and promises herself she’ll never quit, that she’ll never stop trying.

–– Cassandra is a good Auror. It turns out that she has a talent for it, more than she’s ever had with anything else. She graduates from the Academy in New Orleans at the top of her class, after having worked herself to the bone. She felt the rush of the accomplishment, felt ready to dedicate herself mind body and soul to the job, with a newly crafted sturdy moral compass in her heart. A lot of people still don’t trust her, even after years on the job – they think the darkness will win out, that she’ll default back to it if the going gets tough. All she wants is to prove them wrong, once and for all. All Cassandra wants is to be good, to help people, to make a difference in this world. She knows she’s going to succeed.

[ladyshilya]

Riverdale: Chapter Sixty - Eight: Quiz Show

Let’s see how things go with the Quiz Show. First lets check in on some of the other characters.

Archie is dealing with things not going well at this father business. He has to deal with the fact he demoted Mr. Keller for his uncle. Archie did not handle that well at all. You don’t do shit like that to someone who has basically been helping you out when you needed it. Eventually there is a big fight between Mr. Keller and Frank over some money and Mr. Keller leaves. Apparently Frank borrowed the money to because he was giving a sure thing tip at the track. This was how Frank was going to get the money to give the men their bonuses. Lucky for Frank it worked but I have a feeling we are going to see more of him taking money without asking. I get it Archie doesn't’ want to do work that has any connection to Hiram. At the same time you have people to worry about and their families. It’s one of the hardest parts of running a small business keeping your morals and doing what is right to keep it going and your employees feed.

While all of that is going on Cheryl and Veronica have created their rum recipe with is different enough from the original that they can sell legally. Now the speakeasy is a night club giving away free samples. Hiram comes in the with a warrant claiming alcohol is being sold. Hiram takes sledgehammer and destroys all the rum bottles - Why is the rum gone. WTF Hiram, seriously are you really that worried about your child doing better then you. Cheryl has a great idea of using her mother’s old brothel as a place to sell their new rum. It comes with a bar/liquor license, the right clientele and Hiram is not looking there for the rum. Because it has finally been brought up that these girls are taking on way too much. Seriously who has time to do all the shit they do? I know I didn’t in high school. The girls being in Cheryl’s mom to run the place while they are not there. I am not sure how well that is going to go in the long term. Some how Penelope is going to well be her. Also where did Toni get an ankle monitor? I am guessing the Serpents have come connections.

Kevin goes right to his Grindem dates hotel room. Never a good idea to go to a hotel room of someone you just met and know very little about. Things get weird when Kevin date convinces him to do a tickling video right there and he has guy already waiting downstairs. Basically this guy is using the dating app to get guys to make tickling videos. For Kevin to keep doing them to make more money it looks like he is planning on enlisting Fangs to do them with him. Somehow this is going to go really bad.

Jughead is dealing with the fact that the Baxter Brotherhood is looking for something different for the books. They are thinking of a serial killers. It only idea that sounds great to them is The Black Hood. Which of course Bret lets slip to Betty causing her and Jughead to get into a fight. He has this tendency lately to delay or not tell her things. It doesn’t help that Betty found out afterwards the reason she was not accepted into Yale was because of who her father was. Which might be a legit reason, I do question anything coming from Charles. Betty then heads to her fathers grave where she destroys her fathers headstone.

The Riverdale team is working really hard on winning the Quiz Show. While they are doing great and Betty pretty much answers most of the questions. Betty is not sure its going to be enough so she enlists Charles to find some dirt on Bret. While she is able to get some dirt on him its Bret and he redirects everything away from him.  The day of the competition Jughead gets a recruiter to see Betty in another chance to get her into Yale. Now Jughead has the ability to get recruiters to give people a second chance?  Alice trying to be helpful gets Betty the answers to the question, yea that is not going to blow up later. During the contest Betty is nailing every answer, it kinda looks like she read the answers.  Betty is able to beat Bret in a final head to head battle Did anyone else notice the Mean Girls winning question put in there?

Betty didn’t use the answers and won on her own. The ripped up answers were found in the green room trash. Betty, you know better you should have them taken them with you and disposed of them somewhere else.  Well now Riverdale lost the trophy, Betty is expelled and her mom is on an unpaid leave.  Yea, that did not go well at all.  

Jughead being pissed off about this challenges Bret to a duel. Do all secret societies everything can be fixed with a duel? It looks like this is how Jughead is going to die. I still don’t think he is dead because he did say to Betty focus on our bigger goal. Which is either something to do with exposing Stonewall or the Quill and Skull.  It could have something to do with the book series.  I am sure Jughead is not dead.  

We get to see what is going to happen with this duel next episode. Although that looked like punching and not shooting anyone.

[thecorteztwins]

[Just a small ficlet featuring little-known Marvel “villains” Black Mamba/Tanya Sealy, Haven/Radha Dastoor, Skein/Sybil Dvorak, and a surprise guest at the end in a comedy of errors!] Tanya Sealy was also known as Black Mamba, the mercenary who served in the Serpent Society and the aptly-named B.A.D Girls, not mention a super-villain with the Masters of Evil and a super-heroine with the Women Warriors. But she had another identity besides all that---Tanya Sweet, professional escort. As with her mercenary work, it wasn’t something she did simply for the money alone, or because she had no choice. No, far from it---Tanya did it because she liked it. Of course, the money was a factor, she wouldn’t have done it for free, just like she wouldn’t do a merc job for free, but she still liked a damn well lot more than she would have enjoyed some boring office job or dirty menial work. Why people thought it was degrading was beyond her; she got treated like a queen while the poor saps in retail, fast food, and any other service industry were the ones really getting reamed! One of the best parts was picking her customers. You couldn’t say “no” to them in most jobs, but Tanya could any damn time she pleased. Not that she often did, since most of the people who called her were those to whom she’d personally handed her card. She kept different business cards for her different careers/identities, and different phone lines as well. And right now, her line for escort work was ringing, with an unfamiliar number. So, a new customer! Time to find out who it was---someone she’d personally selected, or someone who had been referred to her by another satisfied client? “Hello there stranger,” she said professionally, though with of course the expected hint of sensuality, “You’ve reached Tanya Sweet. To what do I owe the pleasure?” “Hello, Ms. Sweet,” said a woman’s voice. Holy shit, that was unexpected. It wasn’t that she’d never gotten female clients, but they were very rare. “I’m calling about scheduling your services. We’ve met before, if you remember---my name is Radha Dastoor, I went by Haven?” Holy. Shit. No way. She had NOT seen that coming. Yeah, she remembered Haven from the slammer, but she had NOT read her as interested in women at all, let alone the type who would get an escort. It wasn’t that there was just one “type“ of person who purchased her time and attentions, there were a lot of different people who did...but there were a lot of different kinds of people who never would, and she could have sworn that this lady was one of them.

“Oh yes, yes I do,” Tanya swallowed her surprise and continued with her congenial customer-service-with-a-sexy-smile voice, “When were you hoping to schedule?” “There’s a gala in a week,” said Haven, then gave the specific time and date, and explained, “I apologize so much for the short notice, Ms. Sweet. My brother was to be my original plus-one, but something has come up for him, and he’s simply not comfortable attending to his own business unless he knows there is someone to go with me in his stead. He showed me the card you gave to him, and suggested you, since you’re...well, you’re a woman, but you’re also very capable. So he thought you would be the safest option for me.” It was extremely difficult for Tanya not laugh. Oh her god. Oh her GOD. This was HILARIOUS. She’d slid that big stud her calling card when he’d come to pick Haven up from prison, and apparently he had THOUGHT that escorting meant...just accompanying someone. And clearly Haven thought the same thing! Oh man. It was too funny. Though it also made a lot more sense! It also meant she could make some really easy money. “I’m absolutely free that night,” she purred, before realizing she should not be purring anymore, and amended to a more prim tone as she continued, “What will the dress code be?” “It’s black tie, but please don’t worry if you don’t something you feel is suitable,” Haven assured, “I’d be happy to buy you a dress and shoes sometime this week before we go.” Oh SWEET! For sure, Tanya was doing this gig. She’d have to remember to thank Haven’s big dumb lug of a brother next time she saw him! “Yes, that would be excellent,” Tanya continued to successfully contain her excitement at the easy work and free stuff, “After all, you’ll know best what’s appropriate for the occasion. Now, you mentioned your brother would be concerned about me being ‘capable’---are you expecting threats?” “Not expecting per se,” said Haven in a resigned tone, “But, well, a gathering of wealthy people in New York City...” Yeah, that was sitting ducks. Sitting ducks broadcasting their diamonds and Dom Perignon to every dumbass super-criminal in the city. Would the rich never learn? Black Mamba---er, Tanya---hoped not. “I absolutely understand. I assure you, my powers are suitable to combat both baseline and superhuman threats, and I have experience handling both. I believe I told you about my time in the Women Warriors?” She felt that emphasizing her background as a superhero would be better than bringing up her more regular, less legal doings. “Yes, yes I do,” said Haven warmly, “If I recall correctly, you protected the entire state of Delaware. So I have no doubt you can do so for me for the night--though of course I hope you won’t have to.” “And in the event I do, you understand I will be expecting compensation for any medical care needed for injuries I might incur?” “Oh, of course. Do you have a form I should sign?” She was starting to love this woman. Perfect customer. “Yeah, no worries,” she said, her professional veneer finally slipping into a more casual, natural mode for her, “I’ll just bring it with me when we meet up to buy the dress. Hey, is your brother gonna be there for that?” Alas, he was not. But once they had discussed rates, Tanya felt anything but disappointed. *** Things were going great. She looked fantastic in this dress, Ms. Dastoor wasn’t upstaging her---okay, her...Indian outfit thing...was super beautiful...but Tanya had LEGS and CLEAVAGE---, and she’d slipped her card to a whole lot of fine gentlemen who, if they were here, could probably afford her. And best of all, no one had--- “Well hello Tanya. I didn’t expect to see you here.” Oh great. It was Skein. Skein, aka Sybil Dvorak, was actually a friend to Tanya Sealy. They got along great, in fact. But the problem was, she was also a fellow, well, supervillain. One who had gotten her start crashing the parties of the social elite like this, not even for personal gain but for...kicks, Tanya supposed. Something to do with an ex boyfriend. “Hey, Sybil,” said Tanya casually, “Hey, not that it’s not great to see you, but you’re not planning anything, are you? Because I’m here on a date. You know, for work?”

“Ohhhh,” Sybil winked at her, “Well...since we’re old friends and all, I could be persuaded not to make a scene if you cut me in on what you’re getting for this “date”. Since we’re friends.” Tanya glared at her. “Come on, Black Mamba,” said Skein, undaunted, “You’re a mercenary. You can hardly judge me for being the same.” “I’ll still get paid no matter what you do here tonight,” said Tanya, “So it doesn’t really matter. In fact, she might tip me more if I save her from some disaster. So go ahead.” “Oooh, she?” said Skein, intrigued. Oh, double great. Tanya had forgotten---Skein had a crush on Haven. She’d been one of the other lady villains in their cellblock, and for some reason she was just crazy about her. Tanya didn’t really get it. Sure, Haven was beautiful, she supposed---Tanya wasn’t into women herself---but she was kind of old, and really boring. She just couldn’t fathom her being Sybil’s type at all. But then, Tanya, who considered herself an expert in matters of sex and romance, was of course aware of the old adage that opposites attract. Maybe Haven represented to Skein the sense of stability and restraint that Skein herself lacked. Maybe she felt she needed someone calm and responsible and conventionally moral in her life. Maybe she admired it. Or maybe she wanted to corrupt it. Whatever the case, Tanya was letting her find out that the object of her amorous affections was her meal ticket tonight. Skein might take it the wrong way.

So naturally, no sooner did Tanya decide this, than Haven glided up and greeted their mutual friend, “Sybil? Oh Sybil, that is you!” “Hi, Haven!” Skein trilled in a girlish sing-song voice, twirling a strand of her long black hair around one finger and assuming a flirtacious pose. Tanya had to try hard not to role her eyes at this, especially considering how obviously unaffected that Haven was by it. As crazy as Skein was about Haven, Haven was equally oblivious. Which was kind of odd, given how perceptive Tanya had noticed Haven was in her short time knowing her, but maybe she just didn’t know how to handle being hit on by another woman so blatantly. “Wow, I can’t believe you and Tanya are BOTH here!” “We’re actually here together,” said Haven, clearly having no idea the implications she had just dropped. And that was when Tanya knew...it was over. Sybil blinked. And then... “Are you kidding me?!” she shouted at Tanya, her dress unraveling around her in a whirlwind of thread. . “Sybil, chill out, it’s not what you think--” Tanya tried to calm her down but it was too late, the attention of the security guards had been attracted. A threeway battle ensued, with Sybil/Skein trying to attack Black Mamba while both attempted to evade the super-powered guards. As the completely baffled Haven watched in hypnotized horror, another party guest stepped beside her. “Ah, I’m sorry you had to see this,” lamented the tuxedo-clad Fabian Cortez, “They’re fighting over me, you see.” Haven believed him.

[sxrpxntjones]

The Whyte Wyrm was always crowded, but it was particularly stifling tonight. There were so many people in the bar that it was hard to breathe air that wasn’t tainted with cigarette smoke, body odor, or spilled beer. Still, Jughead was happy. He was seated at the bar with a high vantage point of all that was happening in what the Southside Serpents deemed their headquarters. The occasion for this raucous party? F.P. turning a year older. Jughead knew that his dad cared about as much for birthdays as his son did, but he also never turned down a reason to drink. F.P. Jones was the center of attention in a crowd around him as he held his beer bottle high in the air and fed off their energy, a slightly manic look in his eyes to toasting to another year his liver survived him. Jughead sometimes wondered what his dad had been like in high school - he had found a Bulldogs letterman jacket shoved underneath some boxes in a closet one day and trying to picture F.P. as some jock who ran up and down a field after a tiny ball was usually hard but..tonight, watching him participate in an actual kegger chugging contest, Jughead could see he was watching the path F.P. shouldn’t have taken.

Normally, this sight would’ve been hard for Jughead to swallow. Normally, he wouldn’t have even come. There was no want to subject himself to the visual of why Jughead’s childhood had been so fucked up as he had seen it many times through the years of his life. This year was different, though. This year..she was in his life. Betty had heard of F.P.’s party and had been excited, and then disappointed when Jughead claimed he wasn’t going. Betty had this ability to see the best in everybody and she was wholly convinced that Jughead just had to stick it out through F.P.’s struggle, so certain he would find his way again all because he had a son who loved him and wanted him to get better. With the stars in her eyes and the pureness of heart she gave him as she told this to him, Jughead didn’t want to tell her that F.P. had been promising Jughead he’d get better for him all his life and that he had only a smidge of faith left in him. A smidge that Betty reawakened with her sweet voice and warm squeeze to his hand. He’d do this for her, for him, for them, and maybe he’d actually enjoy himself. It was also another way for Betty to get to know his friends, she reminded him. Jughead tried to keep his girlfriend as far away from his less than legal part of his life as much as possible but it was still a part of him and she wanted to know all of him. So there she was, in the middle of a conversation with Veronica and Fangs and Archie, all four of them laughing at something he didn’t know about but the sight of it made Jughead smile regardless.

“Jughead.” A voice broke the observant teen out of his thoughts and he turned around to face Toni. There was a surly look on her face and all warning bells went off in his mind that he was face to face with a moody woman and he needed to get the hell out of dodge. Especially when it was a moody Serpent woman. He liked Toni, he cared about Toni, he respected Toni but..he wasn’t sure if he could handle her tough as nails attitude tonight and her need to bring everybody down around her when she wasn’t feeling well. She liked to spread her mood as if it made her feel better to infect others and Jughead wanted to stay in his happy bubble tonight. Despite all this, his moral side won out and he knew he’d feel bad if he had ignored a friend in pain. He cleared his throat and pushed away his glass of soda. “Yeah, T. What’s up?”

Toni pushed back some of her pink hair and glanced around the room, sliding closer to him. “Can we..talk? I really need to talk to you about something.” His curiosity piqued, Jughead nodded and he stood up to follow her to wherever she led him. He assumed she wanted a quiet place and connecting eyes with Betty, Jughead smiled and held up a hand to signal that he’d be back in a little bit. All he got was his girlfriend was a wave and a nod. Turning his attention away from her, Jughead realized Toni was leading them into F.P.’s office and his brows rose as she shut the door behind him. He had hooked up with Toni in this very office a year ago and he really hoped she wasn’t looking for a repeat. She was with Cheryl, but Jughead knew Toni was more of a person to follow her impulses rather than logic. He leaned against the desk and folded his arms across his chest, hoping to create the look that he was closed off both physically and emotionally when it came to her. “What do you need to tell me?”

“Cheryl and I broke up.” Well. Whatever Jughead was expecting, it certainly hadn’t been that. His arms fell from his chest and he straightened up, a sympathetic look crossing his features. He hadn’t paid much attention to the couple as Cheryl wasn’t the sort of person he enjoyed spending time with but he had thought the two girls were a really good fit together. They both matched each other in defiance and Jughead couldn’t count the amount of times he had walked in on them in the process of getting it on. He had threatened to ban them from several rooms if they kept it up. To hear that they weren’t together was a shock and from the expression on Toni’s face, Jughead didn’t think it had been mutual or her idea. 

“I’m..really sorry, T. What happened?” Jughead asked softly, his hand reaching up to squeeze Toni’s shoulder. She stiffened for a second but then relaxed, and he could see her defenses weakening. Toni wasn’t one to share her emotions easily but Jughead could tell this was really upsetting her. He didn’t want to scare her away by getting physical but he also wanted her to know he was there. She had listened to a lot of his rants about his dad and even when he wasn’t in the mood to talk, she had been there to sit by him so he wasn’t lonely. This was what he could do to pay her back for that solidarity and friendship. Toni sighed and reached a hand up to brush away a tear that had started trailing down her cheek. “Cheryl told me we just didn’t belong,” she began in a flat voice but Jughead could hear the emotion quivering underneath the monotone she was trying so hard to maintain. “She said she loved me, and that I’d always be special to her, but she had an image to uphold and come graduation, she’d have to get serious about marrying somebody who fit in with her family. Some white boy with a name like Daniel or Phillip who could match her income.” Toni’s hands were shaking and she had clenched her fists to the point where her knuckles were white. Jughead recognized this as a coping method that Betty sometimes did but his urge to smooth out those fingers didn’t come with Toni like it did with Betty. Jughead just kept quiet and let Toni talk it out.

“I’m sorry. That had to be hard to hear. But maybe Cheryl did a good thing for you. It doesn’t sound like she wants to fight too hard to keep you,” Jughead tried to say as gently as he could. He didn’t want to hurt Toni any further but this only further cemented his belief that Cheryl was cold, cruel, and had no heart. Who said that to somebody they claimed to love? Who treated a relationship like it had a value in dollars? Jughead couldn’t even try to begin to imagine how he would feel if Betty told him she was too above him and had to seek higher. It was an insecurity he still tussled with but the more time they spent together, the more it faded away and stayed only in the deepest, darkest corners of his mind. Betty loved him. Betty chose him. Jughead was so, so lucky that Betty was not Cheryl.

“Don’t you get it, Jughead?” Toni asked, her eyes narrowing. She sounded disgusted with him and Jughead cocked his brows, immediately defensive at the tone in her voice. She may be heartbroken but Jughead wasn’t going to let her stand there and spout verbal abuse at him. He was only trying to help and be a good friend, and she didn’t get to make him her punching bag. Nobody did anymore. “What do you think it’s going to be like when Betty graduates? Her and Cheryl are from the same family..God, they’re cousins. You think Mrs. and Mr. Cooper won’t be whispering in her ear like Cheryl’s mom does? You think Betty’s going to choose trailer life and gang life over a good college and a chance to get out of this hell town? You’re stuck here, Jughead. You’re a legacy. Betty has nothing tying her to Riverdale and you have an entire gang. You’re the leader and you don’t get to leave.”

Toni must have seen something on Jughead’s face because her own softened and she stepped forward, putting a hand on his arm in a move meant to comfort him. All Jughead could feel was numb. There had been so much venom in her voice, so much disbelief that he hadn’t realized all these things, and it was as if the demons in his head finally had a face and a voice to speak all the dark thoughts to him. “Jughead..” Toni said softly. “I just don’t want you to get hurt. You’re in so much deeper with Betty than I was with Cheryl. You don’t want to get attached to these people. Your Northside friends..your Northside princess..they’ll all leave and you’ll be here, just a memory. They’re not going to stick around for you. They’ll leave. It’s time you face that instead of acting like both of your worlds can merge. It’s time to grow up.” Toni shook her head, like she couldn’t believe she had had to be the one to deliver the bad news. In her mind, this was her giving Jughead some tough love. Somebody had to shake him out of his delusion.

Jughead remained stock still, not moving. He heard a loud buzzing in his ears and he couldn’t even slap off Toni’s hand. His insides curled in anger at her voice, her face, her whole being but he couldn’t make a sound or a move. All Jughead could do was stand there and watch a montage inside of his head what his future would look like. He’d be wearing his Serpents jacket and watching Betty pack up her life as she hopped into a convertible with Archie and Veronica, not looking back and excited for the bright future she deserved and earned. Archie would not make the burger dates he promised when he was on break from school. Veronica would ignore his texts about movie recommendations and predictions for Oscar night. Lines would be drawn and Jughead would always be Southside.

Toni took his silence for acceptance and she sighed, a pitying noise that made Jughead’s skin crawl. “I’m sorry, Jug,” she whispered and she genuinely did sound sorry. This was what Toni believed the world to be like. “I’ll go let Betty know you’re not in the mood to party. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.” Jughead watched her go, every instinct in his body screaming at him to run after her and refuse to let her dictate his thoughts or feelings but all he could do was stand, frozen. His demons had been released and they were purring and snapping in delight, wrapping him up and torturing him with images and thoughts until Jughead was brought down to his knees and struggled to breathe.

[under-snow-vixen]

Yuletide Letter

hi author! i’m vixen - UnderSnowVixen on Ao3. this’ll be my first yuletide :0

i like worldbuilding, especially around religion, government, and language; religion in general; change in government over time; character studies; explorations of close relationships; post-canon settings; canon divergence; crossovers, especially characters from one canon visiting or joining another canon; gender weirdness and exploration; POV outsider, especially with OC POV; Epistolary fics, especially through paperwork or (transcripts of) broadcast media; unusual formats in general; paperwork in general; political or legal comedy; fluff and comfort; temporary death/revival; travel, especially vagrancy or space travel; finding home in another; hope in the face of doom, be it futile or successful; complicated politesse; memory and its fallibility; storytelling; immortality and all that come with it, especially the gender of immortals; ensemble pieces; growing apart and fighting or accepting that; place-as-character; haunted, wrong, or angry places; liminal spaces; play and joy in terrible times; exploration of inhumanity, real or perceived; what it means to be a “good person” and worries over that; morality; conversations about music and art; prairies, forests, and lakes; things that live in those places, be it human, animal, or other; explorations of advancements in technology and how that affects personal lives; color and light; fables and fairytales, especially those that aren’t as well known; being trapped by snow or other weather; beauty in imperfection; existentialism; and what death means in different cultures

you can write your fic in french if you’d prefer!

DNW for all canons: works that would be tagged Explicit for any reason (mature is fine); references to COVID (other illnesses or even pandemics, even real, are fine); human, no power, highschool, or modern AUs; gender bending without trans readings; crossovers with RPF fandoms; bad endings; or podfic

Kino no Tabi | Kino's Journey - Keiichi Sigsawa (Kino & Hermes) : i love this canon for two big reasons: one is the exploration of cultures or individuals from an outsider’s point of view, and the other is the exploration of gender and identity through various cultures or personal lives. this is also a very existentialist canon, which i adore.

Kino no Tabi lends itself well to two of my favorite things: crossover - i’d pretty much read any crossover with it, even if i’d never even heard of the other fandom! - and outsider POV. Kino is a perfect outsider POV character, but often an outsider’s perspective on Kino can be more interesting. what does your favorite world think of vagrancy? what would Kino think of that world in turn? alternatively, make up an entirely new country for them to visit. a lot of canon countries are based on fables or psychology or philosophy problems, but they can be based on pretty much anything! as long as it’s something different for Kino to see i’ll be happy with it!

Kino is often read as nonbinary and i personally headcanon Hermes to be nonbinary too, but Kino and Hermes have never come across another nonbinary person in their travels. What would their time in a country that explicitly recognizes nonbinary people be like?

any pronouns are fine for Kino, play up the confusion! please do not use it/its pronouns for Hermes though, even from characters who wouldn’t know better. anything else is fine. no ships with Kino, please, Kino is transient. ships without Kino are fine, but of course shouldn’t be the focus.

Dr Cataclysm (Webcomic) (Agrippa & Melon) : if youre here for a different canon and haven’t read this... do so. its pretty short and its free. it’s also by the guy who made Off if that’s a drawing point. find it here.

give me some wholesome found family slice of life and i’ll love you forever. agrippa and melon need a break!! give them a nice dinner or something!! i don’t super ship but tossing in some agrippa/crocodile could be fun. or everyone!! just have agrippa and melon host everyone for a nice dinner. janos can be there as long as he’s chill.

alternatively... that last issue sure is somethin huh. what do you think happened? a where-are-they-now would be fun. i have my ideas, but what are yours?

if the crocodile girl shows up, don’t hurt her!!! she’s just a sick little girl she doesn’t need more stress :(

Moon Knight (Comics) (Marc Spector) : marc :( i love him but hes had such a hard time! (especially lately!!!) you could give him a nice day :) he’s honestly pretty chill despite all the uh... divine annoyances and mercenary tendencies, i’m sure there’s a few people he could just hang out and enjoy company with.

orrrr you could... make his day worse? :))) so many people hate this man, half the time he’s on a team he’s belittled constantly. what’s that like? i love ensemble pieces, if you stick him on a team or with a couple loners and explore their relationship that would be fun. what do people marc works with think of Khonshu? i’m a big fan of suprise revivals, and marc dies... so often.

marc is also really fun to shove into crossovers, and has a built-in excuse for it with Khonshu! part of his whole deal is he 1. is adaptable and 2. just Does Not Give Up. this means he will survive in any world you stick him in or die trying. and then get up and keep trying.

my favorite runs are v2 (1985) and v5 (2015-16) (the first half of v5 is really good), as well as his time with the WCA and the Secret Avengers. i also really liked contagion and conan serpent war despite their... debatable canon. i don’t really know what’s going on with the most recent avengers run.

don’t be weird about his mental illnesses. if you write Khonshu, i like Khonshu-as-God 10000% more than Khonshu-as-delusion and he should be an asshole, but in a lot of the more recent comics he’s just cruel which is :(. please keep to the asshole god side of things as opposed to a cruel god. the 2019 annual and conan serpent war have my favorite Khonshu characterizations. My Explicit-rating ban is lifted for this canon, but only for extreme violence and death.

Nuclear Throne (Video Game) (Yung Venus) : what’s his deal?? he’s a really comical character and probably has the least Bad Stuff going on with him in canon, but he’s still a god of money of all things. what does that mean in a world where currency is extinct? what does being a gun god mean when everyone has guns? is he revered or ignored? i’d love a more serious exploration of YV-as-god, or of his relationships with the rest of those around the campfire.

pretty much anything goes for this canon. mind the general DNWs. My Explicit-rating ban is lifted for this canon, but only for extreme violence and death.

Pyre (Video Game) (any) : while i love the characters of Pyre, what i love more is the world. what were the Scribes like, and what do people think of them now? we know that the Triumvirates were only a tiny portion of the Downside population, what are the rest of them like?

If you’re more partial to the characters, great! i love them all! (or at least all of those who were nominated this year!!) slice of life or post-canon political comedy is the way to go. give me a missing scene from the time spent on Mount Alodiel, or show me how the new government is handling things. depending on who made it up, they either have a lot of experience or none at all!

please feel free to play around with end conditions, but one i’m fond of (and the one i got my first time through) is to liberate Hedwyn, Jodariel, Rukey, Fae, Ti'zo, Pametha, and Oralech, while sir Gilman, Volfred, Bertrude, all non-Nightwings, and the Reader(+Sandra) remain. i tend to use Fae, Mae, or Gae for the moontouched girl but any name is good! i also tend to not give my Readers names, but if you’d like to go right ahead :)

please nothing with Manley, Lendel, or Brighton unless it’s an ensemble piece. no jodariel/ignarius.

thank you !!!!

[azkaabanter]

We are Animals

5k of SMUT AND ACTUAL PLOT… but mostly smut. I upload from my phone so I can’t italicize anything. If you want to see the version with italics, I’ll send you a link to where I posted the story. ANYWAAAAAYYYYY … I also apologize, but I don't know how to enable the 'read more' feature on my phone. I know it's annoying but unfortunately I can't do anything about it.

AU STORY!!

-

This is a Drarry fic based on a video on YouTube of the same title. Kind of post apocolyose/ homophobe universe. Hardcore smut so… yeah

-

“Men. The only animals in the world to fear” - D.H. Lawrence

-

“Findings from the National Center of Disease control released the results of a study which shows that the lifestyle of some homosexuals has triggered an epidemic…” The garbled voice of a newscaster comes out of the radio, along with small blasts of static. I walk down a dirt road in the middle of nowhere, my shoes covered in red dust and the sun beating down on my shoulders, heating my brown leather jacket. I keep my hands in the pockets to keep them from shaking as the small radio I keep in the lining spits out more information.

“The ‘Gay Plague’ is the center of a political storm- the Moral Majority claiming that AIDS is God’s punishment for the gay lifestyle.” I close my eyes hard and use my shoulder to wipe the sweat out of them, and my messy black hair sticks to my forehead. In a hidden part of the thick jacket I can just hear the minute clinking of small pink pills that I live on in a small prescription jar. The pills in that jar, though, are anything but legal. The announcer continues.

“This isn’t just a disease we’re talking about here! These people are capable of murdering other humans when they-” The voice becomes inaudible from all of the static emitting from the cheap radio, so I take it out and hit it against my jean-clad leg until the voice is understandable again.

“C'mon…” I huff to myself, hitting the small box once again when it continues to cut out, until it finally continues.

“-and 50% of U.K citizens are favoring quarantine. We’re putting them in a nice, comfortable place-” The voice of the announcer is cut off suddenly by another person shouting into the microphone.

“Just isolate them!” The newcomer says, and I continue to listen, though it hurts. Looking up, I see the outline of a tall brick enclosure in the distance as my radio spouts more slurs. I would switch to another station, but these news reports are all that are broadcasted anymore. The second voice continues, though in a calmer tone than the one previously used. “We have received proof that the free world is, once again, in danger.

The radical group of homosexuals, known otherwise as the Death Eaters, have rallied together, more determined than ever to destroy the means put in place by our scientific and medical communities that keep us all safe, and healthy. Although we have created a protective quarantine, no one is truly safe.” I turn off the radio, no longer able to listen.

I can hear my mother’s voice in my head, pressing the bottle of pink pills into my hand. ‘Hide, Harry. Hide in plain sight, be a nurse, do whatever you can. Just don’t let anyone know who you really are.’ So here I am, in the middle of a field on a dirt road in August.

Eventually reaching the gate of an eight foot tall barbed wire fence, I look up and sigh, pushing it open and walking inside the quarantine zone.

The road is deserted, with various posters blowing about in the street, and the rusted shells of forgotten cars lining the outsides of empty buildings. My green eyes scan the chain link, looking at the various posters tacked up.

Seeing some of them closer, they look to all have some extent of coverage from green or black paint. I can even see a poster of the Queen with a large green skull with a serpent tongue covering her face. I reach out to touch the poster, but in pulling my hand back, the tips of my fingers come away glistening with green liquid. I then take a step back, look around, and continue on my way, eyes trained on the ground in front of me, and hands stuffed in my pockets, with the muffled sound of men’s screams permeating my ears.

I continue walking through the desolate streets until I reach a heavy metal door with the words “Caution: Quarantine inside. Enter at your own risk.” I don’t think twice before pressing my shoulder against the door to open it.

Inside, the sounds of suffering are clearer, but I continue on my way. Close by, I can hear someone with a hacking cough, a side effect of the numbing agent.

“Hey-” A hoarse voice calls out, and I look up in surprise. “you’ll help me…” An unkempt man sitting in a pile of trash lunges at me, trying to grab my ankle, though I manage to jump out of the way. “Help me!” He screams at my back as I walk away. “You selfish pig! You’re just like the rest of us!”

“L-leave me alone.” I say quietly, continuing, albeit at a quicker pace, towards my destination while the man screams behind me.

“You’ll get yours one day kid! You just… you fucking wait…” Is what I hear before he breaks down crying, and I keep going out of fear.

I turn a corner a small ways from the man to the front of an unassuming building, manned by two armed guards wearing respirators over their mouths and noses. The man on the left looks me up and down, before stiffly asking- “Identification?” I take out my security pass and he runs it under a machine, which beeps to signal my clearance. “Put out your arms.” He says, taking out a metal detector and waving it over my whole body.

As it runs over my side, I pray with every ounce of my sinning soul that the pills won’t be detected, even though they never have been before.

“He’s clean.” The guard says once the detector has run over me multiple times. He gives me a look of sadness, and motions to his partner to open the door. “Good luck in there, Potter.” I nod in response and walk through the door into the cool, dark building.

My whole body shakes as I walk to the bathroom, the intercom of the building playing more messages like the one I heard on my way to work. “Several members of the Death Eaters have been arrested for vandalizing property, writing messages that spread their hate and lies…” I listen intently at the door to the restroom to make sure that it’s deserted, before entering and locking the door behind me. “The authorities have transferred the detainees to a nearby clinic for immediate neutralization.”

I walk to the sink, not bothering to look in the mirror because I know what I would see; the tired eyes of a liar, and the messy hair and smile-less lips of a sinner. I take the plastic container out of my pocket and crack it open, depositing the pills into my hands, looking at them with distain and distaste, before I hear a creak behind me. I look up and turn to the side, the sudden appearance of a heavily freckled red-haired man taking me by surprise, causing me to drop the container of pills and drop to my knees, scrambling to pick them all up.

“I-it’s not what it looks like-” I stutter, fear taking over my whole being, because if he knows what these pills do-

I look back at him after all the pills are put away, and I see a sad smile on his face.

“I should have known you were on Celibron-” he says, his accent thick. I narrow my eyes at him before looking away, my heart beating a million miles and hour. “I know exactly what you’re going through. You’re doing a really good thing-” I look back up at the man, who looks hardly older than I. How could he possibly know what I'n going through?

I narrow my eyes again, and stand up straight, slipping the bottle into my pocket. “I can’t eat… I can’t sleep… these- these things are fucking poisoning me-”

“These things saved my life.” The other man says calmly, resting his hand on my arm, which I immediately pull away. I turn my back, and put my hand on the doorknob, figuring I can just take the pills somewhere else. “Do you want to get better?” He asks, and my grip falters, before steadying again.

“There’s nothing wrong with me.” I say. “It’s just a precaution.” And I walk out of the room, leaving the red haired man alone, once again.

About an hour later, I’ve nearly forgotten the experience. My mind is numbed by the Celibron coursing through my system, and my shoes loudly hit the ground in the quiet hallway leading up to my patient’s room.

I’ve traded my leather jacket and jeans for dark red scrubs, and my hands are unable to stop fidgeting as I walk up to the one-way glass that shows me my patient.

I look in and see him sitting on a table, wearing nothing but white shorts, and I swallow thickly, before mentally berating myself for it. He has neat bleach blonde hair and wears a look that would seem horrible on anyone except for him. His lean arms are pale and his stomach is toned and blemishless. When he looks up I can see stormy grey eyes and a strong chin. I open the door and walk into the room, trying to avoid eye contact with the beautiful man.

I go to the cart positioned directly next to the man, whose feet are bound to his padded medical chair. I pick up his file and graze my eyes over it, before having them rest on his name. 'Draco Malfoy’ I glance at him and look back at the chart blankly when I find that he’s looking back at me.

I walk around the back of him, glancing at his forearm and seeing a tattoo of a green skull and serpent right beneath the hinge of his elbow. His voice takes me out of my stupor.

“So… what’s it like?” I return to his side and look him in the eyes, before glancing away again. “When they cut it off?” Draco asks me morbidly.

“You’ll be anesthetized-” I reply quickly.

“Mm-mm. No, I want to feel everything-” my neck heats as I feel him look me up and down. “even pain.” He says everything with a confidence that I don’t understand. I don’t understand how he could be confident and level headed in the situation that he is in.

“We can’t do that. That’s… inhumane.” I tell him, still keeping my eyes on the tools that I’m fiddling with for no reason other than to distract myself from the strength of his gaze. He thinks for a moment before replying.

“Since when did that stop anyone?” I pause for a moment before continuing my distraction.

“I-I’m sorry. The government requires that every patient be numb from the waist down for this procedure…” His eyes burn into the back of my neck and I can feel the pills working against the feelings rising up inside of me. He smirks.

“What do you feel down there, nurse boy? I could smell you a mile away. Your body’s strong… it’s resisting those pills-” I turn to face him, an easygoing smile decorating his features, and anger boils up inside of me.

“How did you know that?” I ask with a mixture of anger, fear, and curiosity. His blonde hair flops into his eyes and he brushes the strands away with gentle fingers.

“Did you ever break sodomy law?” I stop again, the heat from my neck spreading to my cheeks.

“T-the what?” I stutter, trying to play innocent as I lean back against the wall. He just smiles and shakes his head, as if he can’t believe my ineducation on the subject.

“Sodomy, sweetie. Mmm, sodomy.” The blonde nearly hums the words, before turning back to me with an amused expression. “C'mon, everyone knows that the clinic staff are all a bunch of gays…” He looks me up and down hungrily, and says more quietly, “my nose never fails.” And my anger boils over. I slam the supplies on the cart, push off the wall, and walk right up to Malfoy. “Look, I don’t know what shit you heard, but it’s wrong. I’m straight.” I tell him matter-of-factly, walking to the other side of the room to pick up the sphygmomanometer. He clicks his tongue.

“Yeah, so is spaghetti 'till you get it wet…” He pauses before continuing at a whisper. “and hot…” His eyes are filled with lust, and it’s getting harder and harder to keep my composure under his grey gaze.

“I-I need to t-take your blood pressure-” I keep my eyes trained on the ground as I walk the few steps over to him, my fingers brushing his warm skin while I strap the contraption to his right bicep. He breathes in deeply,the muscles in his chest rising and falling as he chuckles and softly says

“You’re strapping it to the wrong limb-” I cut him off.

“You’re about to be castrated. Doesn’t that bother you?” I ask him irritably, giving in to my want for just a moment to rake my eyes up his body. He still acts indifferent, and I can’t tell if he’s really courageous or really stupid.

“Hell no.” He says, and I begin pumping up the pressure in the arm band of the sphygmomanometer. He throws his head back and then looks at me with a grin. “Turns me on, what can I say?” I rip the Velcro and take the band off of him, throwing it to the side in anger.

“This isn’t a game! People are dying because of this!” I exclaim, running my hand through my already disastrous black locks, and he suddenly turns serious.

“I live out there…” He looks down at his bound feet for a moment, before bringing his eyes up to mine once again. “I know what it’s like.”

“You’re a freak.” I say, going around to the other side of the chair back to the cart, my anger boiling over. I look at him again and his sarcastic smile is back.

“Might be hard- er, difficult- to do the procedure, if I’m… y'know.” He says, and I look up. He flicks his eyes downward, and I notice the bulge in the thin cotton pants.

“Oh… yeah…” I say.

Suddenly, Draco’s lunged out and grabbed my hand, pulling me to the side of his chair on my knees, putting my hand over his growing hard on, pressing it down, and moving it so that I’m cupping him. He’s strong; even as I’m struggling against him, I can’t get my hand away from it’s place against his cock.

“How does that feel?” I can hear the smirk in his voice. “Yeah, just squeeze right there-” he exclaims to me when I inadvertently clench my fist around him. I can’t say that I’m not enjoying feeling what must be a rather large cock through those thin pants, though I know it’s so fucking wrong.

I stop struggling, and look away guiltily as I squeeze down his cock, though not bare I can feel its’ heat, and I have Draco writhing in his chair. I can tell that his moans are hardly contained and I have to thank god for these scrubs hiding the bit of hardness that I’ve acquired despite the pills.

“Fuck-” he moans quietly, more like a gasp when I flick my wrist hard. His hand is gripping my wrist as I go faster and faster; my panting becoming audible. It’s so…

wrong.

But…

It’s also… so

right.

“Fuckfuckfuck…” Curses spill from his lips as I take my hand off of him just to put it down the waistband of his pants and actually touch him. He’s heavy and throbbing and I have the sudden urge to put my mouth on him, but banish it from my head immediately.

'This is plenty wrong enough…’ The thought crosses my brain when I swipe my thumb over the head of his dripping cock, lubricating my hand in his precum as I continue to jack him off.

His other hand is pulling on my hair as moans continue to fall from his mouth.

“Tell me your name. Tell me your name so I can shout it when I come.” He gasps to words, and his cock twitches in my hand.

“Potter.” I say, and he’s already started his orgasm.

His hand grips my hair roughly and he arches his back. I bring my eyes to his face; grey eyes closed, and biting his lip in ecstasy.

“Fuck Potter!” He gasps and I can feel his come on my hand as he pants and moans and curses, finally collapsing in the chair, his chest rising and falling quickly. “You… you’re good at that-” he says as I stand up not a moment before the door opens behind me, causing me to run into the cart in surprise.

The surgeon walks in, completely indifferent to my reaction, and walks over to the cart, turning to me. My white covered hand is hidden behind my back.

“Where’s the scalpel?” He asks me, and I look over at Draco with wide eyes, who smirks, winks, and lunges at the surgeon, putting the blade in his neck and pulling it back out when the man has fallen to the floor.

He then takes my wrist in an iron grip and pulls me out the door and through several hallways.

“C'mon c'mon!” He says back at me, before throwing me against the wall near a guarded door. He attacks the guard, taking him down by brute force, punching him several times, then coming over to me, hauling me up, and dragging me over to the door.

“Open the door.” He says into my ear, raising hairs over my entire body, but I still struggle against him, until I feel cool metal against my throat. “Open. the door.” He repeats, pressing the scalpel in more, until I relent and put the code into the door.

Once unlocked, people come rushing out of the armored room in hysterics. All homosexuals. All people like Harry. I turn to run, but he’s come up behind me.

“Where do you think you’re going?” He asks me, picking me up.

A sudden hit on the the back of the head has me out cold, and I can vaguely feel myself being thrown over a shoulder and carried…

-t.s-

“Ow…” I say when I awaken with a pounding headache, rubbing my forehead. I look around, and my heart rate rises when I see that I am no longer in the clinic.

I’m in a cloth tent, alone.

I scramble to the door, ignoring my headache and climb out into the light of a setting sun. Music, laughter and yelling reach my ears from somewhere nearby, and I decide to investigate. I know that I’m getting close, as I can hear Draco’s voice:

“Yes! My fellow Death Eaters! I promise you that we will stab at the opposition! We will be treated as people in this cruel world! We. Will. Be. Victorious!” He screams, the voice of the man permeating my ears. An excited scream rises from the other people in the group. “Stripped of our dignity, under the guise of a disease, an epidemic, that has nearly wiped us out. And now we appear! Without out meds! Because we won’t hide anymore. This is OUR freedom!” His speech hits a crescendo when I round the corner of the rocky path, and crouch behind some bushes.

In the clearing I can see Draco, standing on a rock next to a blazing fire, and a rather large group of cheering followers who are dancing and talking. Among them I swear I can see the red haired man from the bathroom.

I crouch lower behind the bush when I see Draco looking around the edges of the clearing, praying that he won’t see me. But he does. His eyes lock onto mine and I swear I see him lick his lips, before I back up, trip a bit, and then run as fast as I can in the other direction, thoughts racing through my mind.

'I’m not one of them. I’m straight, I’m normal. I won’t be killed and there’s nothing wrong with me.’ Desperate thoughts fill my head as I run, and I can hear him perusing me.

“You can’t go back! You have nowhere to go-” he yells after me, but I just keep going, my chest heaving and my legs burning, yet I still run with tears in my eyes.

I run until I trip, falling to the ground on my back, and within thirty seconds Draco’s reached me.

He kneels behind me and pulls me up onto my knees, one hand on my throat and holding my ear to his mouth, and his other arm around my stomach holding me in place as I struggle against him.

“You can’t go back. The government’s declared you a renegade-” He says into my ear, his fingers and thumb digging into my cheeks and squishing my mouth.

“I-I can’t be a part of this-” I say, and he stretches my head back so that my neck is completely exposed, and puts his lips next to my ear.

“You’re here, just do it.” He says, and pushes me down so that I’m flat on my back, his knees on either side of my hips and his hands on either side of my head. I stare into his eyes, which have a softness that I didn’t see in the clinic.

“You felt something didn’t you?” He asks with a smile, stony eyes gleaming. I swallow thickly and try to ignore the pangs of want throbbing in my chest. “That’s the pills wearing off.”

Our breathing heavy and deep, it’s my turn to talk. “Was that your plan? To hold me hostage until the pills wore off?” I challenge him, and he smirks at me, his lips now mere inches above mine.

“A man’s not a man until his pills wear off…” He looks at me thoughtfully. “I’m doing you a favor.” He licks his lips, and takes the hem of my shirt in his fist, ripping it over my head, leaving my tanned chest gleaming in the darkening sky. His eyes look at me hungrily.

“What are you doing?” I ask, though all logical thought is being clouded with lust.

“Freeing the dragon.” He smirks, and all thought goes out the window. With a surge of strength, I push Draco off of me onto his back, and reassume his old position on top. The man beneath me looks vaguely surprised, but he doesn’t have long to retain the face because I’ve started attacking his lips.

I kiss him with a passion I’ve never felt before. His lips are soft and supple, and when his tongue snakes into my mouth it feels like it was made to be there. I bite his bottom lip hard in ecstasy, and when I grind my hips down into his for a split second, he groans into my mouth.

I rip his shirt off of him, running my hands over ever inch of uncovered pale skin all the way up his arms to his wrists, which I pin over his head while I start attacking his neck with hard bites and kisses, all the way to his collar bone. We’re both panting like animals at this point, but I couldn’t possibly care less.

“Shit-” he gasps, pressing his hips into mine, presenting me his already throbbing cock through yet another pair of thin pants. I take my hands off his wrists and he immediately puts one in my hair, and the other is running down my back, pushing me onto him.

He grabs me by the sides, hauling me into a sitting position without ever taking his lips off of mine.

Draco licks all the way down my neck and onto my collar bone, his cock pressing into me and mine prodding him in the stomach. I grind into him and he throws his head back in a loud moan, thrusting his hips up against me.

“Fuck…” I sigh, because it seems to be the only word in my vocabulary right now.

Within seconds of my moan he has his fingers in the waistband of my pants and is almost ripping them off, leaving me bare in his lap. I immediately climb off of him and pull his pants off of him, but the second they’re off he’s got me back on top of him, assaulting my lips and squeezing my ass.

My thighs are wrapped around his waist and every time I move my cock rubs against his stomach until I can’t take it anymore.

“I-I need you-” I gasp in his ear, and his mouth is immediately off of mine.

“If you want me, you’re going to need some preparation.” He whispers in my ear, not taking any more time and putting me down on my stomach, spreading me, and putting his tongue in my hole.

“Goddamn, Draco!” I gasp as he puts it as deep as it can go, working me loose. My hands pull at his once neat blonde hair, and he works his tongue in me until he has me writhing. But he doesn’t stop there. He puts two fingers in his mouth, covering them with saliva, and puts them in in place of his tongue. I moan, and he starts to talk.

“You’re going to look so fucking gorgeous with my cock inside you.” He pumps his fingers faster, earning himself a strangled gasp. He takes my head and turns it so that my eyes are on him while he finger fucks me. “You’ll be taking all eight inches whether you like it or not, baby.” I throw my head back in reply because he’s started curling his fingers and I can’t comprehend anything but the feeling. He smirks, grey eyes crinkling. “Good.” He says, taking his fingers out and leaving me with an empty feeling. “I need you to lube me.” I quirk an eyebrow, and he chuckles. “Suck me a bit. Just a little. I don’t know how long I would last in that mouth.” I blush but bring my mouth down to meet his glistening head all the same.

His cock is warm and full in my mouth and I try to take it as deep as it can go, getting it as wet as possible. All too soon he’s pulling it out.

“I-I can’t…” He pulls me on top of him again, but doesn’t have me sit. He looks me dead in the eye. “After I’m done with you, you’re not going to be able to sit comfortably for a week.” He growls the words into my ear and I moan. He takes that as the signal to start lowering me onto him.

Inch by inch he fills me, and it burns and hurts but it hurts so good that I don’t know whether to scream or moan. His girth is stretching me and I wrap my legs around his waist. After a bit of adjusting, Draco is in me all the way to the hilt, his tip brushing lightly against my prostate every time he moves. He puts his forehead against mine and kisses me when he starts thrusting; slowly at first. In the beginning it hurts, and he swallows my cries. But then it starts feeling good… suddenly, he isn’t going fast enough.

“Faster.” I gasp into his ear, and he has no problem fulfilling my request. My cock rubs against Draco’s stomach with every thrust, giving me more pleasure than I know what to do with. My nails scratch at his back roughy, surely leaving dozens of marks.

“Faster.” I say again, because I want more. So much more. “Harder.” And he goes harder, but still not hard enough. I pull his face down to meet mine, and look into his darkened stormy eyes. “Fuck me ask hard and fast as you can.” I say to him, and he grins.

“As you wish, Mr. Potter.” He says, before pulling out, putting me on my hands and knees, going back in, and fucking me so hard that he hits my prostate with every thrust.

“Draco!” I scream, his hips slapping my ass where they meet, and his hands pulling me by the hips to meet his frantic thrusts. I take myself in hand and jack myself off harder and faster than ever before because I’m so painfully hard that I don’t know what to do with myself. Soon, I can feel the coil tightening inside of me. “I-I’m going to-” is all I get out before I come the hardest I ever have, and he’s still fucking me as hard as ever.

Draco pulls me up so my back is against his chest and he takes my now soft cock in hand, moving his hand in time with his thrusts until I’m amazingly hard again, and he himself is grunting. But his orgasm comes with dirty talk.

“I’m so glad I got to fuck you open. I want to split you down the middle with my cock, and never stop fucking you. I got you hard again so I could suck you, feel all 7 inches of you, Harry. Fuck… Fuck!” He screams, riding out his orgasm inside me. The second he stops coming, he pulls out, moves down and gives me the most aggressive blowjob ever, which ends with my come all over his face.

“Scared, Potter?” He asks me, panting.

I give him a wry grin.

“You wish.”

-

“And so, in response to this new aggression, we are launching a new effort…”

[eksbdan-blog]

New Post has been published on https://passingbynehushtan.com/2019/10/31/man-atonement-sins-of-the-world/

How Can a Man Atone for the Sins of the World Through His Own Sacrifice? Only One Way. Part 4. The Man.

This is an article in a series. Please see:

How Can a Person Atone in a Sacrifice for the Sins of the World? Only One Way. Part 1. How Can a Man Atone for the Sins of the World By His Own Sacrifice? Only one way. Part 2. The Messianic Secret How Can a Man Atone for the Sins of the World Through His Own Sacrifice? Only one way. Part 3. Preparation for Sacrifice.

The Sins of the World, A Man and a Cross. How? Two Things

Now, this Messianic secret starts with the two elements I mentioned, which make up the entire image of the Cross: at its bare minimum, stripped of identity and context, a vertical piece of wood, and a man hanging on it.

As I implied before, we start with this by asking about the function of Jesus’s symbolic method: if this is the core, the central and vital symbol of the Christian message, and if Christianity has become a Holy or an evil organization, would we expect this one to reveal it? Yes, we would. Because it is of such value, this would represent a means of protecting the message from being pointedly attacked and lost to those who are always in the world looking for it represents a specific understanding of how redemption works.

I want to speak first on this nature of biblical symbolism as well its means of protection before this man and Cross represents a fundamental specific understanding of God’s mind. If the formal container of the meaning of the Cross is revelational, and this is invaluable, just as something about it which makes it as powerful revealed as powerful concealed, in the following way.

If a plan is said ordained by God, it not only illogical but blasphemous to assume this depiction of Christ on the Cross is different, or any less revelatory, than its meaning. The attachment of meaning is not gratuitous but as an irresistible consequence of the image.  The image in its primary function is for easy access to a precise meaning, which is God’s plan, but only within some mind with as unhypocritical a motive to see it as God’s motive is in preserving it from others.

This is why the message of the Cross is primarily one about the nature of morality because the whole display of the Cross is a spiritual movement to expose spiritual reality, not a physical movement for physical reality. If moral movement is spiritual, and the only kind that counts, I ask in what way would we best legally deal with it if not by our equitable, rational, and fair interpretation? Interpretation of a symbol depicting, whether we want to believe it or not, the single most pressing and implicating religious event in human history?

Why this must contain this deep meaning with life and death implications is because true revealed faith is no such thing if not disclosing of transcendent secrets. Christian people who insist that it is a revealed faith but not disposed toward treating these issues with the gravity that this category implies is not from the start engaging in morality. And for them to only admit that Christ on the Cross in the act follows the same lower form of morality is to admit it represents nothing more than something like “love” or “obedience” or “death.” To assume its accidental functionality or its intentional one of nothing more than another common symbol is the quintessential moral failure. I do not suggest that those who belong to God are only those who understand perfectly, but means that, through the resistant noise produced by these others, they want to, have an overarching concern for it and have enough despite the world’s downgrading.

The Academy finds it divisive and fundamentalist to bind morality and the handling of religious symbolism in this way. The tendency is to treat such symbols as merely incidental to its age and culture, making their meaning malleable, academic, and disposable. But this is no choice for moral spirituality if the claim is that God designed and delivers a kind of communication as a means of revealing his proprietary knowledge, which would be ageless by definition. No matter who you are, your responsibility is to assume the possibility that spiritual life is infinitely more important than physical life. Your ultimate function in life may be the examination and testing of the world faiths, which claim a special revelation from God. Your spiritual morality may be the only kind upon which qualifies any conception of spiritual existence after death. To proceed in, without bias, hypocrisy, and dissembling, that potential toward a decision.

A true revelatory document is one by definition hidden and revealed, with the former representing the symbol and the latter representing its meaning. If a claimed message from God rests only on your faith in some ancient sage’s confidence, and not on a received truth which he delivers from God and subsequently revealed as true historically, this is not a revelation. This the making of a divine symbol to mean another common symbol, not divine knowledge and meaning. God shows himself in some fashion to the subject, which is scriptural and direct and which manifests itself as a possible product only of the mind of God, not man. In reciprocation, you demonstrate the highest kind of morality by its honest handling, since God’s informational object of handling is the highest transcendent value, and the place of its processing is the most valuable dimension of the individual.

Downgrading Made Simple

I am sure most of you are aware after being exposed to the offered hermeneutical and interpretive choices of the World that there is continuously some attempt to retool biblical types, for example, into non-revelatory things. This retooling s an attempt to circumvent this original, unavoidable definition of morality into a kind of lower value. You lower the symbols means of demonstration in a lower place of expression so that when thinking about goodness, we can think of ourselves there without the threat of very harsh, implacable, interdimensional spiritual laws threatening us.

Moses’ serpent on the pole of Numbers 21, for example. The story is that this is not a display of a more significant and later intention of God, but only perhaps for Moses to give a superstitious people hope that God will protect them from serpent bites. Or, we hear, Christ in John 3 did not refer to this serpent on the pole as a type of him, and has no place in his talk with Nicodemus except Jesus just telling him to believe in God and get baptized truly. Or, Moses’ serpent stops at the meaning of “holiness under the appearance of sin.” Or, the Greeks borrowed the image of the serpent in the Staff of Asclepius, the symbol for medicine and healing, and the image means “true healing by God alone.”  Christ is “lifted up,” the serpent was “lifted up,” therefore “lifted up” means Christ raised as the cure for sin.

Do I have a problem with any of these? No, not superficially, except for the first and second. They are all the same interpretation, led by an insularity trying to take a meaning of the serpent on the pole only from a range of possibilities for the purpose of uncoiling and pacifying that serpent, so to speak. The serpent is, however, undomesticated forever, and not defanged unless it is allowed to speak for itself.

That irresistible reflex, an aversion to the idea of any particular thing hidden that may jump out, scare and threaten them, which leads their actions in first making it less threatening, is the problem of a priority of self in the face of truth. Who knows what, if they thought God were speaking certain instead of general things about us, he would say about what is really in our hearts? It’s a lot easier to handle the suggestion that “all those who have no faith can’t be saved” than it is “only those who have [Certain kind of faith here] will be.” Sin defines as a priority of fear of a relatively worthless loss over something of infinite value, so you change the language to avoid the clear threat of identifying against something Holy in which you have no visceral interest. At least “faith” remains open only to an unthreatening species.

We do this for the same reason that Vladimir Bukovsky, in his book Judgment in Moscow: Soviet Crimes and Western Complicity, said that the West, particularly the liberal West, never really resisted the evil of the Soviet state, they were complicit.

“The movers and shakers of today have little interest in digging for the truth. Who knows what one may come up with? You may start out with the communists and end up with yourself.”1

In the church, the theologians of today have little interest in digging for the truth about real sin. Who knows with what might come up? You may start with Satan and end up with yourself.

The thought is that Jesus of the Cross is axiomatically a particular revelation of God’s plan and strategy of implementing it. It’s not optional for Christianity as a revealed faith but would crumble without it by the hands of those who must somehow place themselves in exclusive control of transcendent meaning so that the idea of God that occupies their thoughts does not haunt it as well.

That brings us to the why and how of the necessity of using something ambiguous for this particular revelation of God’s plan of redemption, but not vague for a certain, targeted few.

If you have something of value, particularly of the highest possible value, you don’t throw it into the street for anyone to pick up and exhaust according to their desires, but by some means, you put it away. If anyone thinks it’s as valuable and wants it, they must show their belief that it carries the approximate value that its provider ascribes. The key to this analogy is “desires,” so keep that in mind.

If you want a loan at the bank for a business project, you convince them that you know what you’re doing, that you see the value of money, that you already have some means in cash reserve for a possible slow start, show you have a familiarity with the work. You present a business plan to show that you know where you’re going. You may complain that the bank does not just empty its coffers and let it rain down over the city like a ticker-tape parade, or give it to you just because you want it, but the fact is that if you place a value on a thing you don’t treat it like trash, and you are not honest in expecting others to.

God’s currency is existential truth. “Truth” is the currency of our theology, but not “God’s truth” as we conceive it. “God” is one thing, and “truth” is another, and God’s truth is God’s revelation in a historical phenomenon of promise and fulfillment that forever establishes his exclusive authorship. In our theology, ‘God’s truth” means any kind of truth, biblical or not. “God” is therefore made a disposable and weak concept because there is a desire to think of it as unsupportable except by insular subjective and idiosyncratic motives.

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The world, including our theology, has access to “truth,” but this only appears to be a value, because it is not a concept formulated with an unavoidable transcendental attachment. The way the world handles the ultimate spiritual bank is they make their own currency, and their own bank, and loan it out to their own people, that don’t place upon it so harsh and strict qualifications.

The currency they exchange and spend is a boon to the world. It finances countless books, lectures, seminaries, emotions, churches, and pious intentions very successfully and lavishly, but only because they can’t get into the other transcendent bank and use its currency of truth, which has a firewall around it which keeps them out.

The only way a real revelation of God is of possible success when given into a world with a majority of people hostile or apathetic to it, but still for a small number who are receptive, is to make sure it gets through to the right people and hide it from the wrong people. The bank hides its money by putting it into safe. With God, he protects it from the wrong people by baiting them with what they really love. Those are the things of the world, mystery, puzzles, work, tantalizing questions, and generally a possible view of transcendence taken for the exclusive service to them and their desires. It superficially looks like the real thing, giving a feeling that they are holding something ultimate, but the comparison stops there. At the same time, this symbol that can signify carnal things to carnal concerns, having the competence to appear holy but is not, is for those looking for God also symbols of things that pertain to eternity, truth, spiritual law, God’s mind and the provably miraculous. The one honestly looking for truth gets it, which is entirely abstract but of life and death importance, and the one looking for other things gets it, which can only fuel carnal ambition and die with them. This accomplishes two things.

One, God’s Word, his message, is preserved untouched for those that will receive it since the carnal majority never know it in order to mount a targeted effort to demagogue it too vigorously and widely. Two, God’s Word remains as a foundation for the growth of a larger religion not divinely motivated, but which reveres the “Bible” idea. In this, its members unconsciously create a much broader, global protective context in which that Word is preserved and distributed. Every biblical symbol reflects this same strategy.

There is a temptation to ask if this truth is of ultimate value to everyone, why is it not given unambiguously? After all, if an entire people are dying of some new virus and you have a sure-fire cure, love means offering it freely. Why does the revelation have to be symbolic at all? This is a persistent and loud complaint of liberal, universalist sects and atheists.

I remind you that the spiritual body is not the physical body, and a physical drug is not a spiritual one. The spiritual body, as the physical body, is a body effected by the accumulated attitudes and actions as a result of free will with respect to that life. But the spiritual body is by definition free will, history, reason, love, attitude, and belief itself, not sloughed off in death but remaining to stand as an indelible witness of that person as the being in himself, not the beings corporeal representation device. The cure for spiritual sickness is spiritual and will metabolize successfully only by working in nuclear agreement with the spiritual body of its introduction. Since the spirit is itself a decision and its effects, not only a possible reflection of it, a cure passed out indiscriminately is one that assumes that the spirit will benefit from it like the physical cure, without the synergistic cooperation of the receiver. In all due respect to Calvinists, this is then a denial that we even have spirits (or souls if you will), defined as the strongest and most identifying part of an individual which has to power and responsibility to accept or deny reality. To such an entity, you compassionately make the drug freely accessible. But since it is a transcendent truth, information, and not a thing, it can’t work in a spiritual body which treats it as a medical talisman, but only by being in the sense of a receptor to what it already is. If not, your just an antibody to the divine antibody.

By this same logic, God coming down and appearing on the White House Lawn before CNN cameras is not compassion, it’s the forcing of truth upon the receiver and the removal of his free will in accepting it. It’s not respect, its infantilizing, or thinking of people as programmable androids. In that case, no one can reject God. It leaves no room for your moral conscience to move in the process of search, discovery, and commitment. As such, it gives the holiest aspect of God, his sovereign non-contingency, and inter-dimensionality, which makes him inaccessible except through a mediator, an inconsequential aspect, and, therefore, just a notion.

We are discussing a moral decision and a moral choice made for your spirit when that is a most important act you can perform, emblematic of the soul, is not your moral decision, nor a moral decision of the one who makes it for you.

But if this depiction of Christ on the Cross represents God’s plan of redemption, and the plan demarcates fundamental evil from good, the depiction’s meaning has to be as earth-shattering by its true reveal as it is protective of it. The two essential elements of the Cross of Christ begin with this: rather than an answer, I ask if the Cross is first showing as a question and a moral choice between two things?

This is where it really gets interesting. But if your fear snakes override your need for the truth, don’t even try to follow me from here.

The Man: Sin and Righteousness

There is a cross. There is a man on the cross.

The man, again, tortured and murdered by hanging on this cross. His life, draining away. Bound, affixed, tied to this wood. Abused, crushed, and dying. Finally, he dies by hanging on this device of murder.

Our time now will center on this man. Who must he be a sacrifice for the sin of the world?

The act is not transcendently redemptive if it is not, first and foremost, a revelation. I think we have sufficiently exhausted this. We must then conclude the consequences of you taking this as something primarily designed to be mysterious with benefits that reach out to the individual only from Heaven is a full-frontal coup to its designed power and the crushing of the message.

As I have just discussed, sin is the forcing of a spiritual cure into the function of a physical, “evil” one, that one receives and holds without the necessity of moral reflection, with it giving healing benefits automatically. This is called talismanism, what the ancients called idolatry. Many of us readily insist that before the act of the Cross and the Man can in any way be redemptive, it must be known and believed. But taking the meaning of the Man and the meaning of the Cross as God/Jesus/Savior/Redeemer on burden/death/sacrifice/love are weasel words. They are designed to accommodate the necessity of divine meaning with the ardent love of a religious device transmitting virtue to a person without necessarily any depth of understanding, love, and meditated engagement. These words are conceptual, not revelatory. What would be revelatory is when the meaning reduces to a symbol concept so powerful that it then forces a signification which then stands for the end of the signification process, not the beginning or middle. It is ending in the thing-in-itself, not its mediator. It is ending in a piece of knowledge that could not have come from the human mind. Those words are infinitely re-assignable to another vulnerable concept, such as “political activist,” “radical rabbi,” “hippy saint,” “persecution,” “lover of people,” “ultimate ritual sacrifice,” etc. None of these stops a possible chain of signification because “truth” has arrived by the symbol’s instrumentality. We want an idea that is revelatory outside of the mind’s resources in an engagement with common words.

For this mediation to succeed in producing a revelation, there are some theological keywords for scoping out that apply to this man: righteousness and morality, lust, and sin.  He has to be righteous and not carnal, but by the meaning of carnality and sin, because righteousness is defined by what it is not. We are not going to offer “righteousness,” for example, and leave its definition open or rendered to “lawful obedience” or some similar. The working definition has to be consistent with the spiritual receiver in the act of free will in wanting and choosing to see some revelation which, like the motive, is alien to carnal thought and expectation.

After this, we consider the display of righteousness and sin in the scene of a man hanging on a Cross, which is the display of sacrifice for world sin.

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Now, according to the Bible, some are spiritual and those carnal. Those righteous and unrighteous. God hearers, and God resisters. The Man is one of these, perhaps the righteous, perhaps a deceiver. For him to deliver a revelation for all, it is in the sense of being offered to all but not accepted by all. But to be unrighteously accepted or denied, it will have to be one that is as accessible as it is obscure to all, depending upon the kind of person who is in view. The Man on the Cross is a carnal resister to some and a canal encourager to others. One revelation is for the righteous, and one hidden for the unrighteous.

If he is a sacrifice for the sin of the world in the sense of its possible cure, it is evident that the agent of this task can’t be unrighteous carnal and sinful. He has to be righteous in a way that is not human but possible for humans, long before you consider whether such a sacrifice is possible. But what do these concepts mean?

Well, there is an ultimate sense of these ideas and a common one, just as there is an open and easily appropriated signification to this sacrifice and a closed but accessible one.

The common-sense version is that righteousness is doing things according to a moral code. Unrighteous is doing otherwise.  Carnality is acting and thinking in accord with the world and its devices and rewards, and spirituality is doing things in agreement with God’s world.

If this is so, the moral code is according to that of this other world. Not in law or obedience touted as given from another world, or a code which itself does not have such a transcendent mark. This Man’s moral code, which should be ours, is one impossible for us to obey because the standard is too high for us, or else we could do it ourselves. But this can’t be primarily physical obedience because that is not an obedience of a certain reflection of the spiritual body in itself, not necessarily carried out by the moral spirit itself, but can just as well thought by anti-spiritual motives. The moral code and its obedience have to be of exclusive alien origin and motivation, or else it can’t stand as a witness to a genuinely spiritual state. This origin is not a matter only of faith and personal will. The origin displays openly or will not be an available universal choice, but only for those that are looking for righteousness as a personal attribute of spiritual superiority and functioning selfishly as Hell insurance. A transcendent “righteousness” for the Man on the Cross is not ultimately obeying then a “moral code,” implying any kind, possibly within our common understanding and ability. It implies a specific spiritual, moral code that speaks to the morally intended spirit God’s nature and existence, so the receiver of this Man’s morality obeys it in its right place and way. Not a literal obedience, as in the Man’s sacrifice, but from the standpoint of a witness to it, and a returned faith in its truth.

Some of these ideas are easy. Righteousness means being spiritual, and that means following the moral code laid down by the God of the Spirit, of that other dimension above the temporal. But it’s only easy if they are referring to a conceptual object of the other world, and we have far from finished defining these keywords up to a particular species of transcendence.

Words Mean Things

Lets just back up and think about the difference between mere ideas and predicates as applied to the sinful way that we use spiritual language in a carnal fashion.

I am saying that any working idea of “righteousness” and “sin,” for example, is not represented by a concept which points to predicating knowledge, which is so open that it allows another symbol for it, which is opaque by definition. Both the concept and the predicate must be transcendent, with the concept having the ability to only refer to the divine knowledge, for which it cannot point higher.

A conceptual object means “idea.” An idea is a symbol for a range and quality of knowledge, data, information which necessitates representation and mediation to and between its giver and its receiver. Since this is about God’s ultimate ideas, then it’s between God’s mind and ours. There is something that these words mean that originates in God’s mind and will. Saying that, for example, “righteousness” will predicate and signify by knowledge, by information, by truth defined as “obedience to God,” can’t be the end of this signification search back to that ultimate, it’s just a nudge in that general direction. This means that that the definition is still carnal, still in the world, still lacking connection to God. If we are talking about discreet categories of knowledge, then the meaning of our words that refer to something other than our natural, carnal sense of “knowledge” has to be discreet, or else you are taking ideas which lead only toward and not into it. If so, it must be an example of a world completely outside of mind, the emotions, and the systems which this world invents and uses.

Let me give you an example. You are an auto-mechanic and trained as such, but you want to become a neural surgeon because you’re good with your hands, and you want more money. You can’t become one just because you want it. Let’s say that Joe wants a Doctorate in neural medicine. Still, he figures that the best way of doing this is to read a medical textbook and memorize all the surgical vocabulary and their definitions. Although he is unaware of how to use any of these words in a general conversation on the chemistry, surgical techniques, and biology of the profession, he goes to the medical college and starts composing random sentences and conversing with the professors using all this terminology anyway, expecting that they will accept him as a surgeon and grant him a degree.

If he thinks this possible, he would be quite disrespectful of both the faculty, the profession, knowledge, and generally of reality itself. His aim is more money. He has in real interest in the business, or else he would commit himself to learn it properly and thoroughly. Does he deserve a doctorate in neural medicine based upon his handling of its sacred ideas?

If the attitude and the actions of the mechanic are an indication of his willful and selfish use of higher things in an attempt only to take them for himself, this is unrighteousness. Righteousness shows by pursuing and having higher things. Any talk or actions you engage in with those higher things, as irrational as it is, is but an attempt to steal them for yourself by your superficial attachments.

You might say that this is an incompetent and absurd analogy. First, the idea that you have to know all the technical jargon of theology to go to heaven? And how can I use such an insane and clueless person like this, whom you would never find in the real world? But that’s why I used it because the insanity in how we use transcendent keywords is even more insane and irrational than this auto-mechanic.

No, of course, you don’t have to know all the jargon. But I’m not talking about “biblical pericope” and “hypostatic union.” I’m talking about “righteousness,” “spirit,” and “sin,” fundamental things even a child could handle. The auto-mechanic is not really using medical terms to use in his fake-out that you would likely only get from a medical textbook. He actually thinks that if `he uses “body” and “blood” and “vein,” this is enough to qualify for a surgeon. If not a surgeon, but a theologian, this level of depth is also enough, with the open and unqualified use of such as “faith,” “sin” and “righteousness. So my example is really, really crazy and unlikely except within the spatio-temporal world that uses transcendent things only to pretend its pursuit, love, and learning. Our world of spiritual hypocrisy.

No, if you’re going to use a word, no matter how basic, that refers to the other world, you have to use still another word, or reformat that idea so that it includes and is qualified by something specific that could have only come from that world and is proof of it. You can’t use ���duodenal mucosal resurfacing” in a sentence, or use “righteousness” in a sentence, and be said to understand this stuff.  You need a medical or theological qualifier, or you need to keep talking.

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For a theologian, the distance between you and any of your transcendent authorities is naturally much greater than you and the medical certification board when not certified by them, no matter how unqualified you are for their degree. If you’re a theologian, the spatial distance between a simple idea representing a proposed transcendent quality or property and a demonstration that shows the validity of that idea is much greater than “Duodenal mucosal resurfacing” and the case studies in France that demonstrate its effectiveness and safety for the procedures release for the general population. In the context of faith, it is way easier to use “God” without “of prophecy” or ”word,” His transcendent demonstrations, than using “DMR” without referral to its proof-of-concept, “Revita DMR trials.” Without referral to its physical demonstration in a certain paper to the FDA for the purpose of instilling confidence in for that procedures certification and implementation. The theological one is easier because transcendence is naturally far from the heart, instantly thought of cursively and with its unreality leading its apprehension. Its unreality or irrelevance is influencing you more than its proof-of-concept if you use a technical term as a general one.

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Since this is the case, you have to be ten times more careful in how you talk about it if you want to be qualified as a theologian and not a scientist at best, and a huckster or worse. Not to mention your qualification as having a real faith issued/caused/made available by a transcendent authority.

Theology is not the study of God’s theology because “theo” means “God,” but because a study of God is only legitimate if God’s revealed qualities and acts from that dimension in that which is not God is the focus of the study. “God” does not stand alone as a concept, but it implies another dimension that pertains to his fact to be an industry above mere fantasy. “God,” the idea, is an unspoken but highly qualified one. Theology is then the use of words that refer to transcendence in a way that demonstrates God to yourself and others that He is known and understood by the greatest examples of his transcendence. You can’t use “righteousness” and say it means something like “obedience to God’s moral law” and call this proper theology,  because “obedience,” “God,” “moral” and “law” can exist either explicitly or implicitly with no connection to a particular and ultimate example of them which is not from here. They are ideas, they are not divine predicates in a real and objective demonstration of God, and if you don’t have that you don’t have any God to faith, except faith in a nice idea.

Am I beating a dead horse now? Ok, let’s take this forward.

“God” and his Reveal

You might not have thought about it, but the Bible follows all this almost exclusively. The Bible is written not like a clueless, emotional, and groundless tout, no matter how much atheists and far-leftists want to think of it as such. The Hebrew Bible and its combined New Testament are entirely alone among this type of literature in its stubborn insistence that it’s a proven revelation, not just the wishful thinking of its subjectively inspired human authors.

Isaiah 48:3. “I have declared the former things from the beginning; and they went forth out of my mouth, and I shewed them; I did them suddenly, and they came to pass. 4 Because I knew that thou art obstinate, and thy neck is an iron sinew, and thy brow brass; 5 I have even from the beginning declared it to thee; before it came to pass I shewed it thee: lest thou shouldest say, Mine idol hath done them, and my graven image, and my molten image, hath commanded them.6 Thou hast heard, see all this; and will not ye declare it? I have shewed thee new things from this time, even hidden things, and thou didst not know them. 7 They are created now, and not from the beginning; even before the day when thou heardest them not; lest thou shouldest say, Behold, I knew them. 8 Yea, thou heardest not; yea, thou knewest not; yea, from that time that thine ear was not opened: for I knew that thou wouldest deal very treacherously, and wast called a transgressor from the womb.”

You can confirm that fact even in its most casual use of its key nouns. Its use of, for example, “God,” is always with an explicit or at least strongly implied qualifier to his informational demonstration in the world, or his specific connection to his domain, which distinguishes him from the unrevealed and pagan gods around.

The reason why we are going down this road when I’m supposed to be talking about the Man on the Cross and that display of sin and righteousness is that I’m going to suggest that the miraculous qualifiers that are associated with “God” are much stronger for the association of both the Man on the Cross and the Cross itself. This will show how the meaning was tossed out after the1st century, and why the church is being destroyed by those who are continually let in that have no interest in this whatsoever.

“God of Heaven” (Ge 24:3,7; 2Ch 36:23; Ezr 1:2; Ezr 5:11-12; Ezr 6:9-10; Ezr 7:12,21,23; Ne 1:4-5; Ne 2:4,20; Ps 136:26; Da 2:18-19,37,44; Jon 1:9; Re 11:13; Re 16:11)

“God of Abraham” (Ge 26:24; Ge 28:13; Ge 31:42,53; Ex 3:6,15-16; Ex 4:5; 1Ki 18:36; 1Ch 29:18; 2Ch 30:6; Ps 47:9; Mt 22:32; Mr 12:26; Lu 20:37; Ac 3:13; Ac 7:32)

“God of the Hebrews” (Ex 3:18; Ex 5:3; Ex 7:16; Ex 9:1,13; Ex 10:3)

“God of Israel” (201 instances)

“God of hosts” (39 instances)

“God of truth” (De 32:4; Ps 31:5; Isa 65:16)

God of knowledge (1Sa 2:3)

God of glory (Ps 29:3; Ac 7:2)

God of the spirits of all flesh (Nu 16:22; Nu 27:16)

This is a very truncated list. It does not even come close to representing the point. Search for “Lord of,” with such as results as “Lord of Hosts” (244 instances).

References to Abraham or Israel are references not just to people or collectives, but more importantly, to precisely what God told them and what God subsequently did with them. They are this equivalent. God revealed himself to them, either by the personal presence or by disclosure of that about him and his mind, which only he could know and which proves it.

I point out that your revelation of yourself to another person must go far beyond your bodily presence and incidental actions as this disclosure of who you are. The body is a superficial thing relative to your spirit, and you can have a limitless number of false readings by it. What really does it is when you speak. You relate your beliefs, feelings, history, intentions. A police report also shows a lot and the testimony of others. Therefore, it’s mostly by information carried on spoken words or in documents, not only by sight.

For Abraham and the rest, when a Jew said “Abraham,” they were not thinking just about a guy that is the physical progenitor of the Jewish race. They thought about his connection to God in a relationship in which the two spoke to each other, with Abraham receiving a revelation about God concerning the future of humankind. Abraham talked to God, who promised him physical and spiritual progeny more numerous than the stars of heaven. To Israel, that God brought them by Moses out of Egypt by signs and wonders, sustaining them by the same agency in the desert. They were not fed by “water” or by “manna” or by “quail,” but by supernaturally produced instances of them. God finally brought them into the “promised land,” the land of prophetic promise, and through the miracle of the parting of the Jordan River.

Remember this, because it is absolutely essential to understand the plan of redemption in which we are now supposed to be partakers.  Don’t forget the image of Christ on the Cross when I start to talk about how these things are written this way for a purpose, having the ability to be turned a carnal way or a particular spiritual way, which is the presentation to you of a test by a kind of question.

When the New Testament as a whole comes into view, this question is what its all about, with an answer mostly to what God is and where God is by a fulfilled demonstration of himself.

God of great price, God of peace, God of all grace, God of the holy prophets, God of our Lord Jesus Christ, God of all comfort, God of patience and consolation, God of the living (not of the dead), God of my salvation, Kingdom of God/Heaven. God (Father) of lights.

The Old Testament references often refer to a prophet, an agent of God to whom he spoke and gave a revelation of the future. This includes Abraham, Issac, and Jacob, Moses, and the rest. Then the most frequent mention of them is to their collective children, Israel, the Hebrews, who are the people of prophetic promise.

When we get to the New Testament where is related to a momentous fulfillment and representation of God’s existence, nature, and plan, you can see that a lot of these informational qualifiers are referring specifically to a past promise and its revelation. A realization of a supernatural oath, which forms a context for such ideas as grace, patience, salvation, peace, sin, and righteousness. These are not defined arbitrarily. Each one refers to a particular line of biblical evidence of God’s work, what he has realized and revealed, not only “God.” With each instance, the expositor can open scripture and show you what God has done to give peace, save, build a kingdom, give patience and consolation, which are supernatural events of history toward the outworking of his plan of redemption.

But the greatest is this:

God’s Son

What must be remembered here is that all of these informational qualifiers of the God concept are the product of the Messiah and for the Messiah. Not one of them is attributed directly to a “God” who is only a concept but only to a God who is revealed in the flesh. Messiah is the revelation of God in the flesh. Literally, God’s promise, his prophetic utterances to the Prophets, come true. This looks a lot like this necessary dichotomy of idea and demonstration of which have spoken. It also looks a lot like a man and a Cross.

“Man” is an idea. Even “Messiah,” “Christ,” and “Jesus” is an idea. What God did is not an idea. It’s not the token or representation of reality; it is reality, what the Bible calls “Truth.” You cant use the concept without the reality, or else you have an uncontrolled idea given to carnal culture to redefine according to its wishes. “God’s Son” is a concept, but the concept is qualified with a demonstrative predicate, and like ‘Abraham,” it is put to faith as the equivalent of God himself and identically for God’s Son himself.

1.Moscow in. Vladimir Bukovsky 1942-2019. Vladimir Bukovsky 1942-2019. https://www.vladimirbukovsky.com/judgment-in-moscow. Published 2019. Accessed November 18, 2019. ↩

[mbtizone]

Hermione Lodge (Riverdale): ESTP

Dominant Extroverted Sensing [Se]: Appearances are very important to Hermione. She wants to have the very best of everything, and provide a luxurious lifestyle for her daughter. She cares about money and status, which results in her dumping Fred, her high school boyfriend, and choosing to marry a wealthy man instead. Despite losing all of her money and her status, Hermione proves herself to be incredibly resourceful and adaptable once it’s all gone. Hermione is extremely opportunistic and her constant awareness of her environment allows her to see possibilities that she can benefit from. Hermione is impulsive and lives in the moment. She starts an affair with Fred Andrews while her husband is incarcerated, but fails to think of what will happen when Hiram gets out. She also forges Veronica’s signature without much concern for the possible consequences of her actions. Hermione tries to defend Hiram’s actions to Veronica. Yes, he hired the South Side Serpents to decrease the value of the land that Lodge Industries was hoping to acquire… but it was happening anyway! “He saw an opportunity and he took it.” Besides, it was going to happen anyway, so what does it matter if he made it happen a bit faster? Out with the old, in with the new!

Auxiliary Introverted Thinking [Ti]: Hermione tends to do whatever makes logical sense to her. She’s good at pointing out flaws in rationalization. When Veronica admonishes her mother for her parents lack of moral decision-making, Hermione points out that those decisions keep Veronica in designer clothing and allow her to live her extravagant lifestyle. Hermione is good at analyzing situations and coming up with the best way to get something done. She’s good at evaluating multiple variables to come up with what she considers to be the best solution, and prioritizes what solves the problem at hand over morality (forging Veronica’s signature on a document she refused to sign). Although she often feels bad for her actions, she doesn’t regret them. After telling Veronica that Hiram is the reason Ethel’s family lost all of their money (causing Manfred Muggs to attempt suicide), Hermione maintains a detached perspective of the situation (“It’s the risk of doing business with your father”). Hermione thinks of things from multiple angles, and usually does this internally, without sharing her plans (unless Veronica forces information out of her).

Tertiary Extroverted Feeling [Fe]: Although she has empathy and genuinely cares for others, Hermione can be emotionally manipulative. She uses her former relationship with Fred, as well as Veronica’s budding friendship with Archie to her advantage. Hermione uses Fred’s affections to get him to take her to the Drive-In, so she can slip off to pay the Serpents what Hiram owes them. She wants Veronica to use her friendship with Archie to try to convince him to talk to his father about selling his company to the Lodges. Hermione is good at diffusing conflict and making compromises to maintain peace. She is a skilled negotiator, and talked Principal Weatherbee into going easy on Betty and Veronica after the incident with Chuck. Hermione is friendly, kind, and allows Polly (a perfect stranger) to stay in her home and even hosts a baby shower for her. Hermione often wants to talk things out with Veronica and wants to know what she can do to fix things when they are at odds with one another. Hermione usually takes the high road when someone verbally attacks her, but she is fiercely protective of the people she cares about.

Inferior Introverted Intuition [Ni]: Hermione has trouble when it comes to thinking about the future. She begins her relationship with Fred not thinking about how it will effect Veronica if she discovers the truth, and doesn’t consider what Hiram would do to Fred if he found out, or what will happen when he’s released from prison. She doesn’t think about the potential legal trouble she could find herself in for forging Veronica’s signature. Hermione seems to generally believe that things will work themselves out one way or another.

Enneagram: 3w2 7w6 9w8 Sp/Sx

Quotes:

Hermione: Veronica. Veronica: What the hell was that? I saw you with that biker guy, that Serpent. And don’t tell me you were just being polite. Hermione: I was handling some unfinished business for your father. Veronica: I’m gonna need more than that, Mom. Details, specifics. Hermione: All right, then. Your father hired the Southside Serpents to help decrease the value of the drive-in’s land so he could purchase it at a cheaper price using an offshore LLC. What you saw was me paying them for a job well done. Veronica: So Daddy’s the anonymous buyer? And he’s doing this from jail? Hermione: He has an extremely long reach, your father. And he’s sunk every last penny that we have into this deal. Veronica: So Dad really is- Hermione: Dad is a businessman. He saw an opportunity, and he took it. And it was happening anyway. Old Riverdale’s dying. He’s just simply helping it along. Veronica: But it’s wrong. Hermione: Wrong? Well, did you like living at the Dakota with a Central Park view? Did you like your personal shopping account at Barneys? How about our family dinners at Jean Georges? Your Hermes? Veronica: Those were just things, Mom- Hermione: That was our life, Ronnie, provided to us by your father.

Veronica: Are you gonna leave Dad when he gets out of jail? Hermione: Honey, why would you ask such a thing? Veronica: I saw you, Mom. With Fred Andrews in the trailer. Hermione: Oh, Veronica. Honey, I am so sorry that you did. But I want you to know that we’ve… We’ve never even kissed before. Until today. Veronica: What about Dad? What happens when he comes home? Hermione: I’m not sure. I’m so sorry, baby. It just happened, Veronica. And I know that this must be confusing. Veronica: Yeah, it is. Hermione: So, what can I do to help? Veronica: You know what, Mom? There’s actually nothing.

Hermione: I know you’re not his biggest fan right now, but I was hoping you would sign it. Veronica: Why would I need to sign it? Hermione: When your father was arrested, we made you a legal officer of Lodge Industries. Surprise! And two out of three signatures are needed to award the contract, which your father wants to give to a less than legit outfit. Veronica: And you want my help giving it to your boyfriend. I was gonna apologize to you. If I sign that, will you stop seeing Fred Andrews? Hermione: Ronnie, I can’t agree to that. Veronica: In that case, Mom, I’m sorry, but no. However you’re rationalizing what you’re doing with Archie’s dad, I don’t want any part of it.

Hermione: What do you want? Veronica: For you to admit what you did. Hermione: Fine. I kissed Fred Andrews. Veronica: No, Mom, the other thing. It involves you forging my signature to get Fred Andrews that stupid contract to build on Dad’s land. Hermione: Veronica, I asked you to sign that- Veronica: You broke the law, Mom, and you used me to do it. When Daddy finds out, he’s gonna think I betrayed him. He won’t, I will tell him. Veronica: Really? When? Right now? Because I’ll cancel my plans for that. Hermione: You know it doesn’t work that way. Veronica: In that case, I’ll talk to you later, my friends are waiting. Hermione: Ronnie, do not go out that door. Veronica!

Hermione: Veronica, there’s something that you need to know – about that Muggs girl. Veronica: What? Hermione: Her father, Manfred Muggs, invested with your dad. And it’s probable that they lost a lot when your father was arrested. Maybe everything. Veronica: Mom, they’re being kicked out of their house, their home. Hermione: Well, from what I’ve been told, the Muggs family is going to testify against your father. Veronica: They should. How many, Mom? How many families like Ethel’s? Hermione: It’s the risk of doing business with your father. Veronica: Could Mr. Andrews lose everything, for doing business with you and Dad? Hermione: I’m not sure.

Hermione: What’s all this? Veronica: Dad’s files from the basement. Mom, Archie overhead Mr. Blossom say that he’s the one responsible for putting Dad in jail. So I did some digging. And found this spreadsheet of monthly payments from Blossom Maple Farms to Lodge Industries until about five months ago, when they stopped. Hermione: When your father was arrested. Veronica: There’s more. The payments, which are significant, by the way, have been happening for 75 years. That’s a ton of money. What if Clifford implicated Daddy to get out of paying the monthly fee? I wouldn’t put it past the wig-wearing monster. We should tell Dad’s lawyers. Hermione: Well, hold on. If Clifford did orchestrate your father’s arrest, people might think that Hiram had something to do with Jason Blossom’s murder. Ronnie? You got to let this go. Veronica: You don’t think Dad could, in any way, be responsible for Jason’s murder, do you? Hermione: No, honey, look, don’t make things worse by asking questions that no one else is asking. And please, God, do not bring the Blossoms into this. And that includes Cheryl.

Hermione: You and Archie… Getting closer? Veronica: Maybe, why do you ask? Hermione: Your father and I made Fred an offer to buy out the SoDale contract, but Fred is still on the fence about it. I was hoping maybe you could talk to Archie. Maybe he could convince Fred to sell? Veronica: Yeah, sure, Mom. No problem. I’ll just sexually manipulate Archie into doing my bidding. Hermione: As long as you’re in control. Veronica: Oh, my God, Mom, I was kidding. Also, why are you trying to push Fred out of this deal? He’s the only person in this town who was loyal. Who was good to you. Hermione: Your father is coming back. He and Fred? They will not get along.

Fred: Hermione Lodge. Well, my day just got a lot more interesting. Hermione: Hello, Fred. How are you? Fred: Surprised. Can I get you anything? Would you like a water? Hermione: A job. I saw on your website that you are looking for a seasonal hire, someone to help with the books? Fred: Yeah, my guy’s on paternity leave. Hermione: You know, I think my daughter’s going to school with your son, isn’t that funny? We’ll have to tell them that we knew each other, that we even dated, for a little while – Well, at least until I… Fred: Chose the rich kid. Hermione: And now, a reversal of fortune. How’s Mary doing? Fred: She’s in Chicago. We split up. We’re civil. How about you? How are you holding up? Really? Hermione: I have a little money saved. I was praying that someone in Riverdale, maybe an old friend, would be willing to give me the benefit of the doubt. Fred: If it were up to me. Hermione: Isn’t it up to you? It’s your company. Fred: Well, I have clients. I can’t very well have Hermione Lodge, the wife of Hiram Lodge, on trial for fraud and embezzlement, balancing my books, can I? Hermione: No. I suppose you can’t.

Veronica: You’re doing great, Mom. Better than me this week. Hermione: Yeah, we’re surviving, Ronnie, by our wits, because that’s what we Lodge women do. If Dad could see us now. Veronica: He’d say you look stunning in that new uniform. Hermione: I’m going for this Joan Crawford, Mildred Pierce thing. Is it working? Veronica: Definitely.

Hermione: Cheryl, I went to school with your mother. She didn’t know the difference between having money and having class, either.

Fred: How’s the, uh, first day going? Hermione: Um It’s your books, Fred. You only have enough in the bank to cover three more weeks of payroll. Fred: I just don’t want to… I – I can’t let my guys go. Last time I fired someone, it was not good. I trust those guys, you know. They trust me. That’s worth everything. Hermione: Yeah, but I mean… Even putting your business at risk?

Hermione: And Fred Andrews is escorting me to the drive-in, so all the pieces are in place. Smithers: The drive-in with Fred Andrews? Hermione: Yes. An attractive woman going with an old friend is less conspicuous than an old crone going alone. Smithers: You’re not an old crone, Ms. Hermione. Hermione: Of course not. That was a joke.

Hermione Lodge (Riverdale): ESTP was originally published on MBTI Zone

[fxyeahriverdale-blog]

What Happened To Us?

Chapter 9: The trial of Chuck Clayton or Betty Cooper?

A/N: I edited this myself, so please be nice haha. Sorry for any mistakes!

Read the story on AO3

“Do you love Jughead Jones?” Yes. Betty wants to scream it for the world to hear, but she knows she can’t. She panics. Betty can feel herself beginning to sweat. She hates lying. She is the biggest advocate for the truth. This past year has turned her into a liar. She is buried so deep in her lies. She wants to tell the truth, but she knows that there will be no going back. Jughead definitely would never forgive her if she revealed the truth in such a public way.

She makes the mistake of looking down at Jughead whose eyes are locked on hers.

“Yes.” Betty catches her tongue quickly,”he has been one of my best friends since I was five years old. Of course I love him, he is like a brother to me.” Betty cringes at her words. A brother? Who has sex with their brother? Why would she say that? He is her boyfriend or ex boyfriend she's not sure. That is just gross.

“Incest.” Chuck coughs out. Betty cannot believe he is still being an immature douche while standing trial for attempted murder.

“Did you and the victim ever engage in sexual activity?” Alice Cooper leaps onto her feet. Oh no!

“How dare you! She is a fifteen year old girl!” Betty’s face turns bright red in embarrassment. For once she is grateful for her mother's craziness.

“Order! Mrs. Cooper, this is your first and final warning to not interrupt my court room. Only those who are allowed to can speak.” The prosecutor turns around to Mrs. Cooper and gives her an assuring look.

“The witnesses' mother is worried about her daughter and I agree with her objections. I object to that very inappropriate question. These are two minors and their sexual activity has no relevance to this case.”

“Due to the fact they are minors and the witnesses' legal guardian clearly objects to this question, objection sustained.” Betty let’s out a sigh of relief.

“Ms. Cooper what is your relation to my client Chuck Clayton?”

“We are classmates.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes.”

“It seems that you have quite a fascination with my client.” Betty can’t stop herself from rolling her eyes.“Did you on the night of September 15, 2016 walk into Pop Tate’s Chock-lit shoppe and interact with my client?”

“Yes.”

“And you asked him out on a date?”

“I wouldn’t call it a date.” Betty would never ask Chuck on a date genuinely. She hates him, so much. Her blood boils just at the mention of his name.

“Ms. Cooper that is not an answer.”

“Sure.”

“I need a yes or no answer.”

“Yes.” Betty avoids Jughead’s eye contact. She cannot believe that this is being brought up right now. Chuck is going down no matter what. He is pure evil blasting her in front of the entire court room.

“When my client arrived at the pool house at home of your classmate Ethel Muggs did you lure him into getting into the hot tub?”

“I can’t lure him into anything. Your client went into the hot tub on his own free will.” Betty shut her eyes, she knew that she just set herself up. One of her talents is publicly speaking. Today she can’t say the right thing.

“Then why did you put muscle relaxers in his drink?” The crowd in the court room gasps.

“I did it because I wanted to scare him. I wanted to get him to confess about all of the girls at school he had been sexually harassing.”

“Do you know that this is not only illegal, but morally wrong to drug a human being.”

“I don’t think that you can really talk to me about morals.” Betty bites back.

“Ms. Cooper please refrain from the commentary. You are here to answer questions. Is it true that you continued your grudge against Chuck Clayton?”

“If seeking justice is a grudge then I guess yes. Otherwise no, I didn't continue my grudge. I don't live my life thinking about how to ruin Chuck Clayton's life. He does that himself.” She cannot help it. She doesn't have a dumb grudge against Chuck. She is justified in hating him. She sees him every night in her nightmares stabbing Jughead. She disliked him for all of the years that he bullied Jughead. She disliked him when he hurt Veronica and other girls are her school. She disliked him for his stunt at Jughead's birthday. She hates him for taking Jughead away from her.

“Why did you physically assault my client on October 25, 2016 then?”

“That is a reach.” Betty says annoyed. Chuck has set her up for her to slap him and they both knew it. Betty glares at Chuck who sits in his chair smiling at her.

“Your honor this girl keeps avoiding my question.” The defense lawyer whines like a little kid. The Clayton’s are spending all of their money on a lawyer that whines like this?

“Hi excuse me, ya my name is Elizabeth Cooper not this girl. Yes I hit Chuck after he got in my face making vulgar comments to me. I should not have hit him, but honestly I don’t feel bad about it. Your client, Chuck Clayton sexually harasses women, bullies students, and stabbed an unarmed man. A man that would never hurt anyone! You just watched it on the videotape yourself and you are still up here defending him because money can buy anything. I am willing to testify the truth about what happened, but I refuse to be put on trial.” Betty gets up from her seat.

“Ms. Cooper I am not done.”

“I am!” Betty gets up. Chuck Clayton grabs her arm on her way out.

“I am taking you down with me.” He says in a giddy voice.

“Bring it on! I have nothing to lose.” Betty spits back.

“Seeing him forget you is just too sweet.” Betty blinks back tears before running out of the court room.

She doesn’t care about how much trouble she is going to get into. She doesn’t care about her mother yelling at her later for slipping up in the spotlight. She just needed to get away from there.

Betty runs in her heels out of the court room. Her breathing picks up and she knows she cannot deny the panic attack that is about to take over her body. Betty rushes past confused people in the court building. She bursts through the court doors and makes a beeline for the parking lot.

She stops in her tracks at the sight in front of her. Betty cannot hold in the scream that escapes her mouth.

Jughead had just watched Betty race out of the court room. The whole court room looked around stunned at the scene that had just taken place.

He had no doubt in his mind that he should go after her. Alice Cooper rises to her feet. Jughead knows that she will only make Betty feel worse.

“Alice let Jughead go.” Hal Cooper says and Jughead gives him a thankful nod. Jughead quickly walks out of the courtroom. It is not his turn to testify for another hour.

He walks straight for the exit knowing that she all ready left.

He opens the door as he hears a loud scream. Betty!

Jughead runs as fast as he can towards the noise. Two boys lay on the ground, one with a knife in his knee. The other with a bloody face. Both are okay, just beaten up.

Betty in on the ground curled up into a ball. Her entire body is shaking. ”Betts.” He says softly. He crouches down to her hoping that she will look up from her knees.”I’m here. It’s okay Betts.”

“Blood, so much blood.” Jughead puts his arms around Betty. “Stay. Stay with me.”

“I’m not going anywhere Betts.” She looks up at him as if he startled her. He notices that her hands are red from how tightly balled up they are. He takes one of his hands and place it in hers. She releases the other one and Jughead notices the bloody crescent marks in her palms.

“What- What the hell?” Jughead looks behind him to see half of the court room approaching the scene. Betty buries her face into Jughead’s chest.

“Help- We need help.” Betty says quietly and Jughead holds her tighter.

Jughead turns around.”Can somebody get them some help please?”

Kevin runs away from the crowd.

“Don’t shut your eyes.”

“What was that Betts?”

“Stay with me.” He froze as her words sounded all too familiar. He had just heard some of them on the screen in the court room. Betty presses her face into his chest. Her arms wrap tightly around him.

“Betty they are all right.” Jughead looks up at the guys one he recognizes as a serpent that he has seen speaking to his dad before and another one is Chuck Clayton’s friend Robby Matthews.

“We’re fine.” The serpent says wincing from the pain of the knife in his knee.

“Ya Betty we’ll be okay, don’t worry.” Robby tries to reassure her. She looks up from Jughead’s chest at the boys.

“See Betts they are okay. I am okay.” She looks up at him and he nods at her.”I am right here and I am okay. I promise. Let’s get out of here okay?” Betty nods wordlessly.

He picks her up off of the ground. She is still in shock and can barely stand. Jughead can see the huge crowd behind them with their cameras out, he needs to get her out of here.

“Trust me Betts?” She nods. He picks her up bridal style and carries her away from the scene. Betty clutches onto the collar of his jacket.

After a block he feels his shirt become damp. He puts Betty down.

“Please don’t cry.” Jughead is desperate to do anything to make her tears go away.

“Are they really okay?”

“Yes they just got into a stupid brawl. Both of them are going to be okay. Let’s go get a milkshake?” He suggests.

“Don’t you have to testify in an hour?”

“I've got something more important to do.” A smile escapes Betty’s pink lips and Jughead smiles back.

“You are not getting in trouble for me Jug.”

“I have a feeling that the hearing is going to be postponed after the commotion outside of the court house.”

Jughead opens Betty’s palms to reveal the nail marks that he had just discovered in the court house parking lot.

“Are you okay Betty?” Betty gives him a sad smile and he knows her answer. He kisses her palms. He realizes what he has done and pulls away from her.”I am sorry.” She smiles up at him and laughs.”What?” He asks her.

“Did you know that you’ve done that before?” Betty asks. It makes sense why he would get the courage to do something so intimate. He can't believe that he has done that before.

“Let’s go chat over milkshakes.” She grabs his hand as they walk hand in hand to Pop’s.

Jughead feels comfort at the familiar chime of the bells on the diner door.

“Whatever booth you want.” Betty leads them to a booth in the middle of the restaurant. She slips her jacket off not making eye contact. Her eyes are bloodshot red and she looks pale. She looks thinner.

“Betty when was the last time you ate?”

“I brought you guys breakfast this morning.”

“Yes and it was delicious thank you, but Betts are you eating?”

“You don’t have to pity me Jug-”

“Good afternoon you two. What can I get you?” Pop asks.

“Just a strawberry shake for me please.” Betty answers and Jughead is grateful that she is at least ordering a shake.

“The usual for you Jughead?”

“Of course.” Jughead answers. Pop disappears.

“I’ll eat the strawberry on my shake okay.” Betty agrees.

“Promise?”

“Would you believe me if I say yes?” He heard her underlying tone. She wanted to know if he still trusts her.

“Yes.” Some color returns to Betty’s face as her cheeks turn a tint of pink matching her lips.”Betty I’m-”

“Jughead.” He shuts his eyes in frustration at getting interrupted again.

Once he registers the voice his frustration goes away.

“JB?” Jughead turns around to see his little sister running towards him. He gets up from the booth waiting to receive his little sister’s hug, his mom trailing behind her slowly.”What are you doing here?”

He remembers Jelly Bean and his mom walking into the court room with Betty.

Jughead looks down at the booth to see that it is now empty with Betty’s milkshake sitting without the strawberry on top. Jughead looks over his sister’s shoulder to see Betty at the entrance. She smiles at Jughead as she pops the strawberry in her mouth.

Jughead hears the familiar chime at the door as Betty disappears.

“Betty came to Toledo this morning and convinced mom to let us come see your trial.” Jughead smiles. She is the guardian angel that he doesn’t deserve.

“You really like her don’t you Jug?” Jelly Bean asks.

“Do you guys want anything to eat?” Jughead asks avoiding the question.

“We aren’t staying long.” Jughead’s mom

“I’m hungry mom.”

“Okay Jelly Bean we can stay and eat.”

“You’re the best.” Jelly Bean gives their mom a hug.

“I need the restroom just order me a-”

“Turkey burger no tomatoes and a neapolitan shake.” Jughead recites his mother’s usual order.

“I’ll be right back.” As soon as their mom was out of sight Jelly Bean leaned forward.

“Jug you have to take me to dad.”

“That’s not a good idea JB.”

“Please? I haven’t seen him in two years. Please if we go quick we will have enough time before mom catches up.” Jughead sighs. He hasn’t even worked up the courage to visit him yet. His sister has no idea how bad off their dad has been the past few years. Jughead is glad that she hasn't seen him in his constant drunken state. When Jughead sees his sister's sad eyes, he knows that he can't say no to her.

“We have to go quick.”

Jughead pulls out his wallet and throws money down onto the counter.”Hold the burger Pop, I’ll be back later.” Jughead says on his way out.

“Jughead your change!”

“Just put it towards a future meal.”

Jughead and Jelly Bean run to the sheriff’s station hoping to buy some time before their mom storms in and takes Jelly Bean away.

Jughead knows that they won’t have to deal with Sheriff Keller because he is busy dealing with the fight that happened in front of the court house.

Jughead walks in and instantly recognizes one of the men as the officer that sat in his hospital room with him.

“Can we see my dad?”

“Sure. Good to see you're doing well Jughead.” Jughead smiles awkwardly as they follow him back to the cell block.

“You have a visitor FP.” FP sits up and his eyes are stunned.

“Hey dad.” Jughead says. FP’s eyes begin getting misty.

“Jughead? Jelly Bean?”

“Hi daddy.” Jelly Bean says shyly.

“What are you guys doing here? Where is your mother?”

“Probably on our heels, so we don’t have much time. This was Jelly Bean’s idea.”

“Right.”

“I miss you daddy.”

“I miss you too sweetheart. Both of you.” FP looks at Jughead hopefully.

“Betty said that you had stopped drinking and started working with Fred again.”

“Yes that’s right. How’s Betty.”

“She got mom and I to come here.” Jelly Bean says excitedly.

“I wouldn’t expect anything less from that girl.”

“Forsythe, Forsythia.” Mrs. Jones come running into the cell block.

“Hello Gladys.” FP says with a smirk on his face. Gladys scowls at him.

“FP.” Gladys rolls her eyes as she says his name.”Jelly Bean get in the car we are leaving now. This was a mistake!”

“Mom-”

“This town is toxic. This,” Gladys references their current situation,”this is toxic. Say goodbye Jelly Bean we’re leaving.” Tears are streaming down Jelly Bean’s face and Jughead’s heart is breaking. This is de ja vu.

“Mom please don’t leave. Please?” Jughead begs.

“Let them go Jughead.” His father says.

“Like I am going to listen to the convict.” Jughead snaps at his dad.

He runs after his mom and sister. Jughead’s brain is flashing back and forth between the day his mom dragged a crying Jelly Bean away from him and this current moment.

“I love you Jughead.”

“I love you too JB.” Mrs. Jones slammed the car door shut and drove off quickly leaving Jughead in the dust.

“Hey Jughead.” Kevin Keller appears outside of the station.”Have you seen Betty?”

“We were just at Pop’s, but my mom and sister showed up and she slipped out. I don’t know where she went.”

“Nobody does. Alice has a man hunt going on all over town looking for the two of you. That’s why I am here.”

“She is not here. We were at Pop’s about fifteen minutes ago which means she couldn’t have gotten too far.”

Kevin and Jughead searched different spots around town, looking for Betty. They continuously ran into people looking for her. Betty has a lot of people that care about her.

Where would Betty go? When they were kids and Betty would want to escape from her parents, she would come over to Jughead’s and they would hang out, until she had to go home before curfew. They would sit and talk in his treehouse. Lightbulb.

“I think I know where she is Kevin.”

“Let’s go.”

Jughead and Kevin approach his old house located near the river.

“Why would Betty be here?”

“Not here.” They walk down the path getting close to the river. They come upon a hidden tree house. Jughead breathes a sigh of relief as he spots Betty sitting up in the old tree house.

“How did you know she would be here?” Kevin asks amazed.

“Intuition.”

“This is some soul mate shit.” Jughead looks at Kevin confused.

“Oh right, well it’s no secret you are madly in love with the girl.”

“I am not!” Jughead can’t even believe the lie that is coming out of his mouth.”Betty.” Jughead says her name softly.

“Juggie?” Betty peaks her head out of the treehouse. Kevin awkwardly waves.”Kev.”

“Can we come up?” Jughead asks.

“It’s your tree house Jug.”

"Not anymore, but we're coming up anyways." Jughead and Kevin climb up the wooden ladder.

“It’s my two favorite boys. What’s up?” Betty says in a casual tone. Jughead and Kevin look at each other unsure of what to say. Betty has pulled herself together and she looks unusually happy. Jughead cannot understand for the life of him how Betty can put on this act all of the time. He has been around her for long enough to see the cracks.

“There are a lot of people out looking for you right now Betts.” Betty rolls her eyes.

“I can’t go anywhere anymore. My mom is too much.”

“At least she cares.” Jughead jokes and she looks at the two boys sadly.

“Wow I am such a jerk complaining about my mom. Sorry guys,” Betty says referring to the fact that both boys have been abandoned by their mothers.

When Jughead’s mom left, Kevin had sat beside him one day in class. He told him about the day his mom left when he was five years old. Jughead had appreciated his raw honesty. He knew that Kevin was the only person that could ever understand what he was going through. The only times they did talk was because they were mutual friends of Betty. Betty is friends with everyone.

“Betty you have every reason to complain about her, your mom is bat shit crazy.”

“But she loves you.” Jughead adds in.

“Let’s go home before she puts out an amber alert.” Betty says annoyed.”Thanks boys for finding me before she does.”

The three walk back onto the residential road. Kevin and Betty begin talking about some pop culture reference that Jughead hasn’t heard of, but he smiles as he walks with his friends.

Suddenly a station wagon cuts them off in their path almost taking them out.”Get in the car Betty!”

“Oh my god Mom!”

“Get in now.”

“Okay okay.” Betty’s quickly hugs Kevin. She looks over at Jughead and gives him a hug. She lingers for a bit and he lets her. He enjoys it.”Thanks Juggie. I’m sorry.”

“Bet-”

Alice blares the horn and they jump.”Jesus christ mom I’m coming!”

Betty gets in the car and slams the door shut and then Alice Cooper speeds off fast than Mrs. Jones just did. The theme of the day is women speeding away from Jughead.

“Rude she didn’t even offer us a ride home.” Jughead looks over at Kevin wondering how he always thinks of jokes on the spot.

“I don’t remember you being funny.”

“You must have hit your head pretty hard then.” Jughead smiles. Finally somebody with a real sense of humor. He now understands why they are friends.”I miss Betty all ready. She would have totally hit my arm after I said that joke.” Jughead can totally picture the scenario in his head.”I can’t even bring up her name without you turning redder than Cheryl Blossom’s lipstick.”

“Shut up.”

______________________________________________________________________

Alice’s tires screeched as she pulled into the parking lot of the police station at a frightening speed. Alice pulls into a parking spot and slams on the brakes.

“Why are we here?”

“You are here to apologize for the stunt you just pulled in the court room.”

“You have always told me to stick up for myself. You wanted me to stand up to and never talk to Archie and Veronica again, so why is this any different?”

“You embarrassed yourself up there and your family.” The words stung. The last thing she wanted to do was embarrass her family. She is sick of her mother’s bullying.

“You do a good job of that yourself mom. I am not perfect! Our family is not perfect! You and dad had a baby at sixteen that you gave away. Then Polly got pregnant at sixteen. Forgive me for wanting to create my own path.”

“You are on the path of self destruction Elizabeth.”

“Why is nothing I ever do good enough for you mom?” Betty asks with a mixture of sadness and anger.

“We will discuss this at home.” Betty’s mom says as she looks around at their public surrounding.

“I am not going in there.” Betty stands her ground.

“Oh yes you are, I am your mother and you are a minor.”

“Well it’s a good thing I turn sixteen next week. Ya that’s right it’s my birthday, which I know you forgot about. Sixteen also happens to be the age that you can be legally emancipated at.” Alice laughs.

“Oh the teenage dramatics and threats. Good luck getting the state to clear that.”

“A mother puts her daughter who doesn’t suffer from ADD on Adderall and countless other prescriptions. A sister who just had babies with her third cousin. A father stole files from a murder case. My mentally unstable mother who threw a brick through the window of her own business at her husband.” Betty feels bad at how brutal she is being.”Oh I have a case mother and I am not messing around. I love you mom, but I am not your robot. You cannot control me!”

Betty turns on her heels.”Get back here young lady or I will send the cops after you this time.” Betty turns back around and crosses her arms.

“I will turn around if you take me straight home?”

“You are going straight to your room.”

“Yes, let the grounding commence.” Betty says annoyed. Actually being grounded doesn’t sound all that bad right now.

When Betty gets home she slams the passenger side door.

“Your room now Elizabeth!”

Betty obeys her mother as she runs up to her room.

She slams her door. Betty feels her entire body fill up with rage.

She examines her clean and perfectly girly room. Her mind is filling up with all of the ugliness of the past year. Finding out Polly had been put away in an insane asylum, Jason’s murder, Archie rejecting her, Her parents almost divorce, her habit of digging her nails into her palm, the hot tub incident with Chuck, finding Polly at the asylum, Jughead getting stabbed, and him forgetting her.

Chuck’s words played on repeat in her mind.”Seeing him forget you is just too sweet.” Her head is now being fogged by darkness.

She starts with throwing her mirror to the ground. She rips to L off of her wall followed by the o, v, and e. She rips all of her pictures off of her vanity.

She picks up anything she can find and throws it. She tears apart everything in her room from her dresser to her wallpaper.

Betty has no idea how long she has been throwing everything around for, but she continues as she keeps finding things to break.

She feels strong arms wrap around her waist that lift her off of the ground. She tries her best to fight off the arms.

“Get off of me!”

“No.” The voice responds. Betty’s brain is still fogged up. She is angry. She can never have him and she doesn’t want him around her like this.

“Go away! Go away now!” She warns.

“No Betty.” The voice is stern. Betty elbows him in the stomach.

“Ow fuck.” All of the darkness escapes from Betty’s brain as she realizes what she’s done. His grip loosens and Betty begins crying.

“I am so sorry Jug. I didn’t mean to.” He lets her down. She turns around to see him clutching his abdomen where his stab wound is.

“It’s okay Betty.”

“It’s not okay!” Betty notices Archie, Polly, Cheryl, and Veronica standing in her doorway terrified. Betty looks around at her trashed room.”Get out!” Betty yells in embarrassment.

“Betty we’re not going any-”

“Get the hell out!” Betty slams the door on them. She turns around rememrbing that Jughead is there.”You too!” He reaches for her hand and she rejects him.”I said get out!”

“Betty please?” He looks at her with pleading eyes. She is so broken.

“I don’t want you here. Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

“Okay.” Jughead says defeated.

He heads for her door sadly. Normally Betty would never be this awful to him, but she is not in the right state of mind.

Jughead’s hand touches the door handle when he hesitates. Betty wishes he would just leave all ready.

He betrays her verbal wishes and turns back around.

“Jughead-”

Jughead wraps his toned arms around her.”I am leaving Betts I promise. You’re my best friend.” Friend, the word stung worse than when she got attacked by a bee hive that Archie had accidentally stepped on in the fourth grade.”Come get me when you’re ready.” He sweetly places a kiss on her forehead, something Jughead had only done when they were really little.

Betty puts her hand to her forehead to feel where Jughead had kissed her as he leaves her room.

He opens the door revealing Archie, Polly, Cheryl, and Veronica all staring at them in amusement.

“Betty asked for privacy, let’s respect it.” Jughead shuts the door behind him.

She examines the mess around and Betty collapses onto her bed exhausted. She is too tired to care about the consequences of her outburst.

Betty Cooper has finally lost it.

A/N: So she said she loved him, but then she had to add onto it!

Betty has finally lost it :(. Considering what these kids have been through by age 16 I am surprised they all don't snap. 

Next up: Betty's condition puts Jughead's quest to regain his memories on hold and the beginning of Betty's sixteenth birthday.

Also thanks everyone for voting for my next story, looks like Spring Break is the winner!

[briannaslist]

Chapter 12: Anatomy of A Murderer

A Riverdale Recap

The penultimate episode. We get answers, and even more questions. But the biggest mystery is solved – Who killed Jason Blossom? Skip to the end if you’re just curious to know. Stick around for the fun leading up to the trigger being pulled.

The biggest downside to knowing when it’s the episode where you get the answers is that it can feel like it can drag along. It was actually a very good episode.

The episode picks up where the last one left off: Archie and Veronica are at Pop’s, telling Betty that the gun was a plant. Archie has had enough of being treated like the season’s selfish idiot and decides he’s going to take charge and not be an asshole anymore. First he says they need to tell their parents. Because this isn’t Pretty Little Liars and the parents, while at times questionable, are not stupid and oblivious.

They go to the Andrews’ house and tell Mary, Fred, Alice, and Hermione everything they know so far. But the parents are in denial because their perspective says that F.P. has often been in trouble with the law and any statement Archie and Veronica would make would be inadmissible anyway since they trespassed. Archie is like, “Well, we tried to include you, and I can’t speak for anyone else here, but I’m telling the police.” The one downside is that he didn’t go right away.

Let’s check in on Jughead – he’s having a rough night. He’s outside of a bus station, in a phone booth, telling his mom he bought a ticket to Toledo. However, you can tell the conversation isn’t going well because Jughead’s fragile smile falls as his mom keeps talking. Essentially she told him not to come. He hangs up and cries in the phone booth before going back into the station to change his ticket. But the bus doesn’t leave until the next morning and the lobby of the bus station is about to close. More importantly, why wouldn’t his mom want him to come. Maybe things aren’t what they seem in Toledo either; but I suppose that’s a storyline for season 2.

Veronica finds her mom searching for passports and she tells Veronica that there’s no telling what F.P. will say. The association with him is worrying for Hermione and she says that Veronica needs to pack a bag, just in case. Veronica says that they’ll look guilty if they run and Hermione says that she is guilty, using bribing the mayor for the land and paying the Serpents off as examples.

Archie and Betty are searching for Jughead and Archie figured Jughead would be at the bus station. They arrive too late and the station is closed; Archie keeps coming up with the right answer or move, but he’s just always a few moments off. Archie gets a phone call from Veronica, who needs someone to talk to.. Archie tells her that he and Betty are searching for Jughead and Veronica says she’ll meet them. Veronica thinks Jughead would be at Pop’s since it’s the only place in town open 24/7.

Sure enough, when Betty, Veronica, and Archie go to Pop’s, they find Jughead. Veronica tells Jughead that the gun that was found was a plant and that they know his dad is innocent. Kind of makes this next part awkward: F.P. confesses to everything. I mean everything. Kidnapping Jason; attempting to hold him for ransom; killing him; putting him in the cooler; dumping the body; even stealing the investigation photos from Sheriff Keller’s house and setting Jason’s getaway car on fire. So, when the core group shows up to the station and tells the sheriff that F.P. is being framed, it’s really awkward when he responds that F.P. just confessed.

The following morning, Polly joins the Blossoms for breakfast. Penelope shows her the newspaper cover with the headline story of F.P. being arrested for Jason’s murder. Polly is surprised to see that it was him and not one of the Blossoms.

In the school cafeteria, Archie, Betty, and Veronica are talking about their disbelief of the entire situation. Veronica wonders if her father paid someone to plant the gun and Archie holds her hand under the table to comfort her. Kevin comes in and asks how Jughead is doing. It’s a bit uncomfortable because Jughead is obviously not doing well and is being questioned by Kevin’s dad. Kevin tries to defend his dad and says that he’s just doing his job. And that is true; everything they found pointed to F.P. and then he confessed. The Sheriff is in the right, logistically. But Betty says that Sheriff Keller is wasting his time because F.P. didn’t do it. Their awkward conversation is broken by the huge hush that falls over the cafeteria because Jughead just walked in.

Jughead walks right up to Cheryl and tells her that he’s sorry. Cheryl slaps him in the face and starts hitting him and Archie jumps up and pulls her off him. Principal Weatherbee comes in and tells Jughead to come with him. One has to wonder why Jughead even did that; was it some misplaced guilt and he maybe wanted to be punished? Jughead is edgy, that was probably it.

Betty talks to Cheryl and says regardless of what F.P. did, that doesn’t have anything to do with Jughead. Cheryl says things are strange because everyone is coming up to her and saying that she must be relieved that it’s finally all over; she doesn’t feel like it is over. These characters are genre-savvy!

Betty then goes to wait for Jughead outside of the principal’s office. He says Weatherbee questioned him too and he’s not sure if Weatherbee or Sheriff Keller is the bigger jerk. Betty says not to listen to them and starts in again at F.P. being innocent. But Jughead is disillusioned at this point and has given up on F.P. doing right.

Fred hangs up from a phone call with Weatherbee. He tells Archie that Weatherbee is concerned for Jughead’s personal safety and thinks that he should finish out the school year at home. Archie says it’s completely unfair that Jughead is the one who got attacked at school and he’s the one being punished. But I think Weatherbee is right on this; imagine what some of the other kids would say and do to him. He already feels out of place at school and this situation certainly doesn’t help. Fred says that they need to figure out a long term solution for Jughead and Archie says that they are the long term solution. But Fred isn’t Jughead’s legal guardian and doesn’t want to be responsible for Jughead and the trouble that seems to follow his family. Unfortunately, Jughead is hearing all this and he starts to walk out of the house. Archie sees him and stops him, but Jughead tells him that he’ll sleep on the couch in the garage. Archie is pretty pissed at how Jughead is being treated. Finally solidifying that he actually is a good friend who cares.

Hal comes home and shows Betty and Alice the evidence that he stole from Sheriff Keller’s house. Betty points out that it’s strange that F.P. confessed to taking the evidence when he obviously didn’t. Hal says he has no idea why F.P. did that, but when he found out about the confession, he decided to come home to destroy the evidence. He stole it because he was afraid that it would lead back to Polly. Now for an unexpected reveal:

               Turns out that Hal’s grandfather that was murdered by a Blossom…was also a Blossom. Clifford’s grandfather and Hal’s grandfather were brothers. When the murder happened, their side of the family split from the Blossoms and took the name Cooper. So…technically Polly and Jason are relatives; this is also the reason why Hal wanted Polly to have an abortion. But you know, had Hal actually said all of this in the very beginning when Polly and Jason started dating, no one would be in this mess. “You two are related,” carries much more weight than, “I don’t like that boy so stop dating him.”

The Coopers rush off to get Polly out of Thornhill. Their arrival wakes up everyone and they have a confrontation in the foyer. Alice says they know all about the incest and the business with the grandfathers being related. They think that’s why the Blossoms had a problem with Polly, much like why Hal didn’t like Jason. But Cliff and Penelope both knew. Penelope says nothing could be more purely Blossom than Polly’s babies and Cliff says to “spare the middle-class morality” and says Jason and Polly were like “third cousins”. All the Coopers are weirded out by the conversation and Hal and Alice take Polly out of the house.

The next morning, Archie and Jughead eat breakfast with Mary at Pop’s. Mary went to see F.P. last night, passing herself off as his lawyer. She says that F.P. never budged from his story. She doesn’t think things will be going well for F.P and suggests that Jughead goes to see him before the arraignment. She does have an interesting question though – she wants to know who Joaquin is. He was F.P.’s only phone call.

Jughead takes Mary’s advice and goes to see F.P. It…does not go well. Or does it? Jughead and F.P. are very emotional and when Jughead is leaving, F.P. tells him not to come back. But there’s something about his expression that tips Jughead off to something being amiss. When Jughead leaves, he calls Betty and tells her that she was right about his dad hiding something.

Archie tells Veronica about F.P.’s phone call to Joaquin. She says Joaquin would know if F.P. was hired by her father. I am so tired of Veronica’s motivation. I can’t even be sympathetic to her issues anymore. It just seems so inconsequential to everything else that’s happening. Who cares about your dad, Veronica?

Veronica, Archie, and Kevin talk to Joaquin about F.P. Kevin says they want the truth and that he’s asking as the sheriff’s son. Which isn’t a powerful title. Literally meaningless in this context. Joaquin tells them that F.P. called him for a late night cleanup job of the body and he just assumed that F.P. is the one that pulled the trigger. Kevin angrily says, “You’re a criminal!” I mean, obviously. He’s in a biker gang. He told you that the same night you met him Kevin, you always knew. Veronica asks if it was Hiram who did it and Joaquin mentions this guy named Mustang who was talking about a rich guy and being the only other person who knew about the murder.

Veronica is insistent on talking to Mustang, so Joaquin takes them to Mustang’s residence. However, they find Mustang dead in the bathtub from what appears to be a drug overdose. Joaquin says he can’t be there and starts leaving with Kevin; Kevin tells Archie and Veronica to call his dad.

The police come to investigate what happened with Mustang; it looks like they also called Hermione and Fred because they’re there too. Under Mustang’s bed, they found a bag full of money with the initials “H.L.”. Sheriff Keller immediately accuses Hermione of being the owner of the bag and Veronica corrects him and says it must be her father’s because he was working with the Serpents. Hermione gets Veronica to shut up after that because it’s not like they actually have to answer the questions right away like that. Couple things though: 1) If you’re conducting illegal activity, why would you ever be stupid enough to give something with your initials; 2) Hermione Lodge is a very feminine woman and that was not a woman’s overnight bag; 3) Those initials could point to anyone; 4) Sheriff Keller seems like a good dad but wow is he shit at being a police officer.

Later, Kevin and Joaquin are at the bus station. Joaquin has a bag and before he leaves he tells Kevin that he should tell his friends to stop what they’re doing before they get hurt. Kevin says, “You don’t know them; just like I don’t know you.” But when Joaquin starts leaving, Kevin calls him back and kisses him. Joaquin says he’s going to miss him and then tells him there’s something else hidden that he didn’t want to mention in front of the others.

Cheryl is still feeling uneasy, so she asks her mom what Jason and Clifford were arguing about the morning that Jason got murdered. Penelope says they’ve been over this and that it was about Jason not being able to stomach the business. Which doesn’t make sense because they sell maple syrup. Cheryl knows there’s more to that and asks what it was that Jason couldn’t handle; then she takes it further and asks if he was afraid of Penelope and Clifford. Penelope is pissed at the allegation of them killing Jason and drags Cheryl out to the barn with maple syrup and says, “There’s the big secret Cheryl! Maple syrup! Drown in it.” Which doesn’t really help her, “I’m not a murderer” case, but what do I know.

Kevin tells Betty about what Joaquin said to him. Those two, along with Jughead, go looking for what Joaquin stashed. Kevin says that the phone call from F.P. was him telling Joaquin not to go with the contingency plan because it was too dangerous. Joaquin heeded the warning, which is why he didn’t mention it at first. The group finds the bag with Jason’s jacket.

Then the group gets together with Archie and Veronica in Archie’s garage. Betty discovers that there’s a hole in the pocket of Jason’s jacket. In the lining of the jacket is a flash drive. And on the flash drive is a video of the murder. After the video concludes, Betty calls Cheryl and tells her that she needs to get out of her house.

Cheryl thanks Betty and goes into the dining room where her parents are having dinner. Cheryl stands by Penelope and says, “You did a bad thing daddy. And now everyone knows.”

Alice brings the flash drive to Sheriff Keller and the mayor. The content of the video consisted of Jason tied up in the basement under the Serpent’s bar, being taunted by Mustang. Mustang leaves when Clifford Blossom comes in. Cliff takes the engagement ring from Jason and then shoots him in the head without even a second thought. Like grandfather, like grandson.

F.P. confessed to the murder because Clifford threatened Jughead’s life if F.P. didn’t confess. However, F.P. is still getting charged with a lot of other things, such as obstruction of justice, mishandling of evidence, and perjury. Though I don’t think that last one should stick because F.P. was under duress when he did that.

Veronica comes home and apologizes to Hermione for ever thinking that Hiram could have been part of a murder. Her mom says it’s okay and tells her that Hiram is coming home. I sincerely hope that that is the last we hear of Veronica’s constant, “My father, my dad,” business. She was starting to sound like Prince Zuko and wasn’t nearly as endearing or sympathetic about it.

The police go to Thornhill to get Clifford. Cheryl and Penelope are outside and they point the police in the direction of the barn. When Sheriff Keller opens the door, we see Cliff, who appeared to have hanged himself and a spilled barrel that reveals drugs. No wonder Jason couldn’t stomach the family business.

Biggest questions now: Why did Cliff kill Jason instead of just letting him leave? Did F.P. set Jason’s getaway car on fire and help with clean up? Is Cliff the person who framed F.P. and tipped the police off? Will Joaquin ever return? Can the friend group actually remain a group of five after all the unpleasantness with Sheriff Keller and F.P. Jones? And what happened in between Cheryl telling her father she knew and him hanging himself?

The season finale will be stacked.

[peopleundcrneath]

( this is a permanent plot and starter call! you can like this any time, regardless of how old it is and i’ll get back to you with a plot and maybe a starter with this muse! )

BASIC INFORMATION.

Full Name: katerina bianca rinaldi.

Nickname(s): bi.

Age: twenty one. 

Date of Birth: september 16.

Hometown: london, england. 

Current City: boston, ma.

Gender: cisfem.

Pronouns: she/her.

Orientation: bisexual / demiromantic. 

Religion: atheist. 

Political Affiliation: democrat.

Occupation: university student.

Living Arrangements: alone, serviced apartment. 

Language(s) Spoken: english, italian, spanish, french, german.

Accent: english.

PERSONALITY.

Zodiac Sign: virgo sun, scorpio moon.

MBTI: entj, the commander.

Enneagram: type 8, the challenger.

Temperament: melancholic.

Hogwarts House: slytherin, horned serpent.

Moral Alignment: lawful evil.

Primary Vice: pride.

Primary Virtue: charity.

Element: fire.

BIOGRAPHY.

bianca is the fifth of seven. daughter to a pair of diplomats, born in london, raised all over the world. she spent the first fifteen years of her life being the new kid at school, and as a result, is only too adept at finding common ground with people within the first five minutes of a conversation. despite knowing that her travels and her unique experiences were what drew people to her, she often found herself longing for a place to really call home, even if it meant giving up the more exciting life on the road - or in her family’s case, on the jet. so when her older siblings started leaving and planting roots in the cities that they loved, she wanted to do the same. at sixteen, she struck a deal with her parents to allow her to experience the remainder of high school in new york, staying with a nanny who served as her legal guardian and would spend summers with the rest of her family wherever they were at the time - a decision that left her parents baffled at first, but ultimately didn’t resent her for making.

bianca is smart and she knows it. she plays hard, but always plays to her strengths so she doesn’t have to work too hard - her life is a series of calculated decisions after the other, each testing just how much of her own hubris she could get away with. it isn’t that she’s never seen a situation go south and blow up in her face, but it was more that she’s never actually been in a mess that she couldn’t either talk or buy her way out of. 

tl;dr: highly independent, super resourceful, rather crafty piece of work that really just needs to sit down and chill for a second. 

love her.

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