#like he truly must have had divine influence/intervention with that one

[ruleofvee]

Title: Dei Gratia

Part: 2/6

Fandom: Minecraft/SBI

Rating: T

Overall Fic Warnings: character death (it is not any of the sbi), canon-typical violence

Summary:

(noun) Bestowal /bɪˈstəʊəl/ The culmination of a series of magic rituals that served to induce a god to bestow their divine favor upon a mortal. In ancient times, this magic was reserved for kings and members of the ruling class. Over the centuries, this practice has died out, and the art has since been lost. ~=~ (Or: Phil is Bestowed with Death's favor. This makes him a target. When the Royal Family of the Kingdom of Craft is kidnapped, leaving only Technoblade behind, he must decide between his freedom and their lives if he wants to bring them back home. If only the Blood God could be somewhat less annoying, that would be appreciated)

[Also on AO3]

~=~

Techno raises hell. 

More precisely, he raises an army. Within the hour, he has sent out summons to the entire armed forces, a few simple words: do your duty and come with me. Short, to the point. Is it not the duty of the army to protect and serve king and country?

He doesn’t expect to meet brazen resistance. He is but a prince, they say, not even the Crown Prince, and the king is the true commander of the armed forces. They have no reason to listen to him. Besides, is he truly qualified for such a role? How do they know he won’t lead them all to their deaths? Foolish, foolish. He is only eighteen, he is not a general.

His response is short. I am the king’s son. Obey, or stay behind as traitors.

Treason is a heavy word. A dangerous word, one that can carry death with it if it falls from the right lips. The look in his eyes makes it all too clear that this is no bluff. And, even if he is not the Crown Prince, he is still a prince. His words still have weight, still have influence.

It’s a gamble, and none of them are gambling men. 

Begrudgingly, hesitantly, a response comes back. It is three words: We follow you. And for Techno, who does not particularly care about enthusiasm or sincerity, that is enough. The army is on his side. His plan is not yet dead in the water.

He can focus on his own preparations.

His preparations are simple. First, food and water. Second, call for his horse, Carl, and for his armor to be readied.

Third, retrieve the Divine Sword from the castle vault.

~=~

(The Divine Sword is a fascinating piece of Craftian weaponry. Many generations ago, it is said that the royal blacksmith fell into a trance, the smell of incense filling the air, and prayed continuously from dawn to dusk, as her hammer struck diamonds and turned them into the sharpest blade the kingdom had ever seen. They melted and oozed and reforged just like any iron would, a magic unexplainable by science in that era. It could only be attributed to divine intervention.

The king of the time claimed the sword as his own. His first act was to use it to slice off the blacksmith’s head, for fear she would create another like it. It is said the slice was so clean that not a drop of blood fell to the ground. And so the Divine Sword tasted mortal blood for the first time.

His second act was to pray to the gods for forgiveness, as blood still dripped from the blade. The sword glowed with divine power, and burned the king’s hand to ash, so he may never again kill an innocent. And so the Divine Sword tasted godhood for the first time.

Many a monarch has led armies into war with this blade. It is a powerful weapon, a sign of hope for the soldiers, a symbol of intimidation for the enemy. But it’s more than that. It is the closest conduit that Craftian kings have to the gods.

It is used for war, and for Bestowals. To call upon the gods for death and for blessings both.

Now, it glitters in the sun with the radiance of a thousand stars, as it dangles from Techno’s hand. As he leads it, once more, into war)

~=~

Dream was right.

As much as Techno loathes to admit it, as much as his stubbornness wishes otherwise…Dream was right. The Craft soldiers are skilled, beyond skilled, and Techno knows enough military strategy to be a beyond capable leader. Yet skill is nothing in the face of divine luck.

Tyche starts off small. In the first hour, as they travel, before they’ve even set foot on Essemp land, a soldier falls off his horse and is trampled underfoot. They stop and try to help him, but in seconds it’s shown to be so clearly hopeless. His head lolls to one side, his neck snapped clean through.

It doesn’t improve from there. Far from it, even. The rations spoil. Tack breaks. Weapons snap in half. Misfortune upon misfortune, piling onto Techno’s army, wearing them down. The soldiers mutter, murmur, rumors and hearsay. Techno grits his teeth and endures. 

The sun burns down on them, down, down. Mud sloshes under their feet from the recent spring rains. A horse slips and stumbles and breaks its leg and must be killed. A soldier collapses from heat stroke and must be carried the remainder of the way to camp. Ceaseless punishment from a fickle god.

(Even Techno cannot escape - from choking on the water he tries to drink to nearly slipping in the mud to nearly losing the Divine Sword - well. Tyche has her fair share for him)

It’s relentless. Some can’t take it. Some leave, deserting, unwilling to face a god under the mantle of a fledgling prince yet to be Bestowed. Most go quietly, slinking away like cowards in the night, so that Techno goes to sleep and wakes up with two thirds of the men he had last night. A few brave (or foolhardy) souls tell him to his face that he’s a fool, that he’s mad, that he’ll get everyone killed, including himself. Fearful, irrational whinings. 

|He feels bitter, betrayed, but Techno simply continues, onwards, always onwards. Let them leave. Let them desert.  He has no words to persuade them with, and his calling is stronger than theirs. Of course they would never understand.

They are losing a king. He is losing his family. 

~=~

It’s worse, somehow, once they make it past the border, once they meet Dream’s men. So, so much worse. 

It’s one thing to fall to an embarrassing accident. It’s another to fall to soldiers with half your skill and thrice your luck, and know there is nothing you can do.

Dream’s soldiers are unstoppable, indomitable. They grin, gleeful, with the knowledge that luck smiles upon them, and they take that as leave to kill and torment and brutalize without a second thought. Countless times by some miracle Dream’s soldiers will evade their swords, or escape their arrows unscathed, or dodge their polearms.  

Some of them fall, of course. Luck by its very nature is unreliable. But not enough, nowhere near enough. Three of Techno’s men fall for every one of Dream’s, their blood soaking the mud.

Their progress is infinitesimally slow. It’s a miracle they make progress at all. But Techno is smart, and determined, and has an eye for strategy, and the remaining soldiers see this in him, and are emboldened. They fight tooth and nail for every inch of ground, and claw their way up to Dream’s castle.

The day ends with a sun setting over a distant castle, and Techno with a handful of men remaining in his so-called army. They retire to their tents, exulting with the progress they’ve made, heavy with the knowledge that tomorrow will likely be their last day.

Techno retires too, but not to sleep. There is a book he’s brought with himself, as a last resort.

It has no title, and it is the oldest book that the Craftian Royal Family has in their possession. 

~=~

The ritual is best performed at dawn. The Divine Sword should be held in His Majesty’s dominant hand, and raised towards the sky…

Techno’s vision is blurring. Yet he refuses to stop, rereading the words over and over until they scorch themselves into his mind. He will not mess this up. There will be no mistakes for what he has planned. 

He has one chance. If he misses this, he will be killed, and it will all be over.

The following monologue must be repeated verbatim…

Over and over, forcing the words into his mind. His fingers tap erratically on the edge of the table. The pages swirl. He breathes in, out, forces them to stabilize. He had three days, and that means he must perform this to perfection tomorrow and alone. There will be no one to guide him.

He breathes, again, trying to absorb that. No one. No Wilbur. No Phil.

Promise me you’ll never try to bring about a Bestowal on your own. 

He breathes an apology to his father, and continues.

His Majesty must feel with all his heart that he wants this, that this is what is best for himself and for the kingdom, else the gods will sense his fickle nature and find him undeserving of their blessing.

Somehow, he has no doubt that the gods will find him at the very least entirely resolute.

The Divine Sword will glow with a heavenly light, and a god will descend from the sky…

He glances to the right, to the Divine Sword that lays by his cot. It still seems to shimmer like water in the light.

Tomorrow, it will shine with blood.

~=~

Phil is…worried.

The dawn of the second day has broken, the sun’s blood red rays casting across the bedroom they’re locked inside. It’s an opulent guest bedroom, as if Dream couldn’t resist from showing off even to prisoners. Phil still remembers the way the man smiled before shutting the door in his face.

He’s tried to call on Lady Death, on Kristin. Each time, his Bestowal Bond only jingled apologetically and sent numb, shooting pains up his wrist. He’s surprised there’s still no mark, considering the number of times he’s tried. As it is, his wrist is only slightly red.

Capable of blocking a Bond. Phil wonders how Dream found that knowledge. Through luck, most likely. 

Wilbur and Tommy are still asleep. The bed is large enough for all three of them, and for the past two nights they’ve been sleeping in a heap. Tommy called it a sleepover. Wilbur didn’t say anything at all. Phil only held them both close, and watched the door.

Now, after giving them both a kiss on the forehead, he’s limping his way to the window, to check on the situation outside. 

An army encampment meets his eyes. Techno’s army. He always did have an interest in military strategy, always found entirely too much satisfaction in his fencing lessons. Phil is both so proud of him and so terribly afraid, because for all that Techno has accomplished, here is where he will die. It’s a miracle he’s made it thus far, without even a Bestowal to his name.

Phil has coddled his children for too long. Now, one of them will pay the price, and it makes his heart bleed. 

He blinks away the tears in his vision, tries to breathe through the choking chill in his chest - 

There’s a figure on the battlefield.

The pink hair, even from this distance, is unmistakable. Techno is standing there, before Dream’s army, with no one but his horse to defend him. What is he…what is he doing? Isn’t he afraid an archer will strike him down?

Phil cranes his neck, unable to look away. His breath catches in his throat. There’s something in Techno’s hand, something glittering - 

The Divine Sword. He brought it. Of course he did. 

But it’s not enough - 

Techno raises the sword, the blade, up, up in the bloodlight of the sun. It glitters with red like a dagger plunged into someone’s back. It shimmers and shines and burns. 

The ritual is best performed at dawn…

No. No, no, no.

[cariserillium]

The Prince of Egypt Things That Are Currently Keeping Me

Sane

Val Kilmer as Moses AND God

The buttery smooth softness of the animation

The fact they really built the story around God and His power and influence and didn’t try to make it more secular (ahem* ALW)

Aaron

The absolutely stunning landscapes and backdrops they have in Every. Single. Scene.

The entirety of “Deliver Us”

Miriam’s character, and how she is a direct parallel to Jocheved, Moses’, Aaron’s, and her mother

THE FREAKIN CHARACTER/DYNAMIC BUILDING BETWEEN MOSES AND RAMESES FROM THE VERY START OF THE MOVIE

Tzipora’s character design

Jethro and how he welcomes Moses into his family despite who he is and where he comes from

Queen Tuya singing the “All I Ever Wanted reprise” to Moses and all of the emotional and spiritual nuances it has

The freakin’ lighting in this movie?!

The hyroglyph dream chase scene

“I will not be given to ANYONE! Especially not an arrogant, pampered palace BRAT!”

The absolutely amazing spiritual truth there is in the lyrics of “Through Heaven’s Eyes”

The design differences in the Egyptians and the Hebrews so you can absolutely tell who is who

The fact that Dreamworks didn’t shy away from presenting the heavy themes like slavery, black magic, and death just because it was a children’s movie

The parting of the Red Sea and the absolutely incredible imagery of the Israelites walking through it

Rameses’ character arc

The absolutely evil insidious power the line “Oh my son, they were only slaves.” has

The choir during “The Plagues”

That heart breaking scene between Rameses and Moses when Rameses finally releases the Hebrews after the plague of the firstborn takes Rameses’ son from him, and seeing Moses breakdown and cry over the loss of his brother as he walks back to tell his people they are free

“ I KNOW to whom I SPEAK, Airin.”

The unadulterated expressions of joy on the Israelites’ faces as they walk away from the land of their captivity

Watching Tzipora and Moses as husband and wife and how truly amazingly strong their relationship is

The children singing in Hebrew in “When You Believe”

The bittersweet moment I have when I watch Moses bring the Ten Commandments down from Mount Sinai because yes it’s happy, but I also know how much he ends up having to put up with from the very people he helped save

Moses being good with children

Steve Martin and Martin Short as Hotep and Hoy, Pharoah’s magicians

That scene where Moses and Tzipora are traveling to Egypt and you see the images of the Hebrew people’s suffering overlaying Moses’ expression of pure determination

The scene where God speaks to Moses in the burning bush, specifically after God chastises him for doubting His choice of messenger and He reaches out and draws Moses closer to Him so that He can get a glimpse of His own glory and be comforted, and the music soars and you see the childlike wonder and fear and bewilderment in Moses’ eyes as He looks at God Himself

That Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Athiests alike can all appreciate the greatness of this movie and the story it tells

[cupidcreates]

Hi, I hope the last day of 2020 will be a success for you. I have a request for yandere Dabi and / or Chisaki when they hear that their dear, affectionate s/o call them "love" or "happiness of my life"

Affectionate Names

With Yanderes Dabi and Overhaul

(Oh my fucking GOD beech I’m SO SORRY this took LITERAL MONTHS to post. I promise I’m never gonna let an ask sit for that long again holy crap. I really hope this was worth the wait bestie, I tried really hard to make it cute for you nonny. Hope you like it!)

Touya Todoroki - Dabi

Disgust, Anger, Hatred, Fear, Dabi’s used to these emotions playing across the faces of the people he interacts with. He knows how he appears to others, how his very visage causes visceral reactions of discomfort in others. He’s fine with that, in fact he revels in it.

If it’s not the abject loathing of a stranger than it’s the cool detachment of his allies. Dabi finds a sort of warmth, even an odd sense of comfort in their gazes. It’s distant, reserved, and to the point; Dabi never has to question what his allies want from him or what their intentions are.

The indifference many find cold is rather temperate to Dabi. 

The fair weather is what he likes. Nothing too cold, nothing too hot, nothing can be resurrected from mild memories.

Dabi was content with this treatment.

Until he met you.

It had been a long time since anything stoked the kind of fire in his chest like you did. Heat typically coincided with anger, but you didn’t make him angry.

That’s not to say he didn’t mistake it for anger at first. He definitely wanted you dead, seemingly at random, for a few days after seeing you pass by him on the street.

But after a while of reflection he realized you didn’t ignite his hate the way thoughts of his family, his father, or society did.

No, this was a completely different feeling, something brand new.

Something to be explored, immediately.

There was something about you he needed, something you had that he had to get for himself.

And Dabi’s not one to not get his way.

He set out to have you, and have you he did. It took longer than he might have liked (though, anything but immediate compliance is too long for Dabi) and you put up a better fight than he would have expected but he did eventually get you swept away from your previous life.

In his mind he won you over.

In your mind, and in reality, he stole you away from your home in the dead of night and trapped you in an undisclosed location until you eventually broke and developed Stockholm syndrome.

After all, he wasn’t mean to you. He kept you fed and watered, the basement stayed a nice mild temperature, and the rats that scuttled about were actually kind of cute when you looked at them the right way.

You were eventually happy, which is what Dabi wanted as it finally allowed him to get close to you.

He wasn’t sure what he wanted from you. He’d started by simply sitting by your side (once you had calmed down enough to let him do so without screaming) then he progressed to holding you (awkward as it was at first) and once he could trust that you wouldn’t run off he allowed you free roam of the hideout.

Free roam as in you were attached to his hip.

He brought you nearly everywhere, as if he was a child and you were his favorite stuffed bear. He wasn’t sure why he felt he needed you around, but he figured he’d find out if he gave it enough time.

And it’s not like you were trouble, you were actually very helpful, getting him out of more than a few scrapes and sticky situations.

He eventually surmised that this, whatever you two had going on, was something like the affection he missed out on in his youth. It was nice to hold your hand, nice to sit you in his lap as he listened to Shigaraki drone on about his next plan, nice to spend a night with you on the rooftops. 

The time he spent with you didn’t strike a chord in him like his first encounter with you did, but he was content.

He could only ever be content.

He didn’t need anything stronger than baseline serenity.

Or so he thought.

He thought right up until the night he was sitting alone in his room (room being a generous term for the hovel hole in the wall he kept his nearly flattened mattress in) dissociating after a very long day.

Dabi tried not to dissociate frequently, it was best to stay aware of your surroundings when you’re a wanted criminal, but when he did allow himself to fall into this state he was typically here for hours. Nearly comatose as he fled back into his mind.

You knocking softly at the door went completely unnoticed, in fact he didn’t even realize you were there until you had entered the room and sat next to him on the mattress.

Your presence took him completely by surprise and shocked him out of his stupor. It took him a moment to recover his composure and re-mask, and in those several seconds with his guard down you saw Dabi’s face more youthful and innocent than you ever had.

You’d asked him a question, he was aware of that much, but the only thing he caught, the only thing he registered was the word at the very end of your sentence.

“Are you okay, love?”

Love

Rather forcefully Dabi was taken back to his childhood; before his quirk manifested, before his siblings were born to replace him, before his own family turned on him in favor of his youngest brother. It had been so long since someone had called him love; so long since his mother would come into his room early in the morning and brush his bangs out of his face, softly calling to him to wake him up and ready him for the day.

Having already been in a vulnerable state, the name cut through him like a knife. Shaken to his core by the memories ripped fresh in his mind he was, for the first time in his life, grateful that his tear ducts had been burned away so long ago.

He gave nothing away, his face already masked up again and his demeanor its typical cool indifference. He spoke to you as he always had, the tremble in his voice only perceptible to him.

He pushed his head into your shoulder and was silent for a while, just taking in you presence, before offhandedly telling you that he didn’t mind if you called him that again. In private of course.

Love

He thought he could get used to that.

Kai Chisaki - Overhaul

Open affection was not only not necessary in Chisaki’s life but also abjectly disgusting.

Perhaps he never really had good examples of tender kindness and open endearment as a child. Maybe he simply couldn’t comprehend affection in the way others could.

In any case, physical fondness and other such displays of the sentiment were completely foreign to Chisaki.

He didn’t mind this, he had much more pressing matters to attend to. Having a partner of any sort other than business would only slow him down.

Oh but you just had to come along, didn’t you? Had to go nosing around where you didn’t belong, a foolish venture already, and then you had to be incompetent's enough to get yourself caught waist deep in his business.

It didn’t matter, you didn’t matter, whatever you knew about what he was doing didn’t mean a damn thing. All he had to do now was keep you quiet.

For good.

He had to kill you, this much he knew. He’d have no issue doing it, after all who were you anyway? A nosy little cashier at a run-down shop on the brink of bankruptcy. You had no family, if you did they certainly didn’t care about you if the state of and neighborhood your apartment was located in was anything to go by.

You were a threat to the sanctity of his mission, a potential interference to his operation. Simply put you had to go. This was fine, nothing personal. Just business.

But oh you just had to didn’t you? Had to look at him with the most pathetically pleading eyes he’s ever seen as you begged him to let you live. You already knew what he was up to, undoubtedly you understood the torture and death he willingly inflicted upon others. You knew the pleading would do you no good, surely you knew your death was inevitable.

Except that it wasn’t, was it.

Because you had to, you had to come along with a face too sweet to be atomized. Had to, somehow, worm your way into his brain and stop him from dismantling your upper body.

Was this your quirk? Were you somehow influencing him? It had to be something of your doing, the tightness in his chest and warmth in his stomach was something of your doing.

He couldn’t do it. Couldn’t bring himself to destroy something so precious, so pure even. He just couldn’t do it.

But no obstacle comes without workarounds, and he didn’t have an underground labyrinth of empty rooms to not be used.

So if killing you was out of the picture, his only recourse was to keep you hidden away. At least long enough for him to figure out a permanent solution for you.

Living toys are so much more fun to play with anyway.

He kept you holed up in a secret room, watched your every move as months passed. You were very interesting to him, in fact he found almost all of his (precious little) spare time consumed by you. He made sure to visit you daily, though your fear kept you mostly mute at the beginning.

Once you were sure he wasn’t going to obliterate you, he noticed you relaxed and even opened up a little bit. You even allowed him to touch you gently a few times and, to his surprise, he never broke out after his skin made contact with yours.

He figured you must have been sent to him, by some divine or cosmic intervention. You grew on him quickly and he made sure to pamper you in any way he could, moving you to a larger, more luxurious wing of the lair and making sure you had three meals a day of only the best quality food.

One morning he’d decided to visit you earlier than usual, walking down the long hallway towards your room and considering the topic of conversation today.

As he neared your room he overheard you speaking with the associate assigned to your meal delivery today. Pausing just outside the door he caught the tail end of your conversation.

“...so lonely until Chisaki visits. The room is lovely but he’s truly the only happiness of my rather dull life.”

Chisaki considered this for a moment. Perhaps it was a clever deception? Something for him to intentionally overhear and cause him to lower his guard?

Couldn’t be though, he’d never visited you this early, if you wanted to deceive him you’d have waited until your evening meal to speak these words.

A sudden, rather disconcerting warmth overtook Chisaki; Like a flower of light suddenly blooming in his chest he was overtaken by the urge to abandon everything and stay by your side until he withered away and his bones turned to dust.

Regaining his sanity he shook the thought from his head. He’d worked too hard for too long to let go of this now. No, he’d have to continue with his operation, the consequences of letting go now would be too great.

He was, however, sorry to hear that your life thus far had been dull. Had you said this months ago he would have scoffed, because of course the life of a cashier was dull; but now, after months of you having been here, it should have improved.

The only assumption left for him to make was that this must have been his doing. Fair enough on his part, as he couldn’t be sure trusting you was a wise idea.

But if this was how you truly felt about him, maybe he could consider letting you have greater roam of the property. He might even allow you time outside.

Only if you brought your happiness along, of course.

[richmond-rex]

What do you think Henry VII remembers, if anything, of his other uncle Henry VI?

This is such an interesting question and something that I myself have been wondering, so thank you for providing me with the opportunity to expand my thoughts on here 🌹

We know that Henry VII only ever saw his uncle King Henry VI once during his life, when he was 13 years old. However, I’d argue King Henry must have caused quite a great impression on him, and considering Henry Tudor was old enough at that time, also a profoundly lasting one. So far young Henry Earl of Richmond had been living as a ward of his uncle Jasper’s enemies, the Herberts. By 1470 his old guardian, William Herbert, had been executed, and then, as the Earl of Warwick changed sides and brought about Henry VI’s readeption, Henry Tudor was returned to his uncle Jasper who took him to London to meet King Henry VI. That Jasper felt like acquainting his nephew with his brother denotes a special degree of closeness and advocates for his idea of family, in my opinion.

According to André, Henry VII’s court poet and self-styled regius historiographus, on 27 October 1470 Henry VI held ‘a splendid feast with the nobles and best men of the kingdom’ to commemorate his return to the throne. As the king was washing his hands, young Richmond was brought to his presence, and according to André, ‘the king prophesied that someday the boy would undertake the governance of the kingdom and would have all things under his own power.’ Polydore Vergil, a historian that began his service under Henry VII in 1506, wrote in his Three Books that in that 1470 meeting ‘the king... is reported to have said:’

“This truly, this is he unto whom both we and our adversaries must yield and give over the dominion.”

It seems not even Vergil lends much credence to this tale as expressed by his choice of words: reported to have said. As expected, this myth has largely been viewed as Tudor propaganda and indeed the episode has been immortalised in Shakespeare’s Henry VI part III. In the play, King Henry VI meets a toddler Henry Richmond (then escorted by Somerset), calls him ‘England’s hope’, and says Richmond was ‘Likely in time to bless a regal throne’. Given that King Henry VI had his own son Prince Edward as his heir at the time, it seems unlikely he would ever have said such a thing. However, if anything remotely close to that happened, then I agree with Leanda de Lisle in saying that it must have been King Henry VI taking Henry Tudor to be his own son Edward, who thanks to his imprisonment in the Tower he had not seen for five years (and would not ever see again). It’s absurdly sad to think King Henry VI would confound his nephew with his son but arguably also not out of the realm of possibility. We don’t know if Henry Tudor saw his uncle King Henry again, but it’s also not unlikely that he, his mother and uncle Jasper stayed at court for the feast of All Hallows’ (1 November) and All Souls’ Day (2 November).

If King Henry VI ever made such prophecy, wittingly or not, then it must have greatly impacted on Henry Tudor. Henry VII believed to have been chosen by God to, against all odds, become king of England. He once wrote about ‘the crown which it has pleased God to give us with the victory over our enemy at our first field’. Henry Tudor was reported to be very pious—he made pilgrimages to the shrine of St Thomas Becket at Canterbury every Easter, as well as frequent pilgrimages to the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham and donations to the shrine of St Vincent Ferrer in Brittany. He also founded the cult of the Breton saint St Armel in England and boosted the teachings of St Francis by his patronage of the Franciscan order. He especially favoured the Observants (the Franciscans, also known as the Greyfriars), granting them annuities for the establishment of monasteries in England and abroad. It seems he also favoured staying at religious houses when travelling or going on progress around the kingdom.

Most importantly, Henry VII held a singular devotion to the Virgin Mary and his adoption of the red rose as his personal symbol—aside from dynastic reasons—had everything to do with the religious connotations of that flower. Henry VII could have associated himself with his uncle Henry VI by adopting his antelope badge, for example, but instead, he chose the five-petal flower associated with the Virgin Mary and the Passion of Christ. The Franciscans were noted for their devotion to the Passion, and Henry VII had come in contact with the Observants during his exile in Brittany. The rose had five petals like the five wounds of Christ—St Bernard of Clairvaux once stated: “As many wounds as there are on the Saviour’s body, so many roses are there! Look at His feet and His hands; do you not see roses?” 

Forgive me for still going on a tangent about it, but Henry VII’s personal devotion to the Virgin Mary and the doctrine of her Immaculate Conception is exemplified in his Book of Hours, where a miniature shows a figure representing the king kneeling at a prayer desk before a vision of the Virgin as a baby held by her mother, St Anne (or, alternatively, The Virgin and the Child Jesus). His devotion to the Virgin was also highlighted in his rebuilding of the Lady Chapel (now Henry VII’s Chapel) at Westminster Abbey which I will return to in a moment.

I’m not sure but I think it was Vergil who reported Henry VII as having said that religion was his ‘continual refuge’ during exile. His piety has been largely attributed to the influence of his mother Margaret Beaufort, herself also a very pious woman. But given how many years—and formative years those were—they spent apart, I imagine that Henry must have looked up to someone closer to him at the time, namely his uncle Jasper Tudor. We know that after the death of Catherine of Valois Jasper and his brother Edmund were raised by nuns at Barking Abbey, and that then at some point they joined King Henry VI’s court. According to John Blacman, Henry VI’s biographer and chaplain writing in 1485:

[…] and like pains did [Henry VI] apply in the case of his half-brothers, the Lords Jasper and Edmund, in their boyhood and youth; providing for them most strict and safe guardianship, putting them under the care of virtuous and worthy priests, both for teaching and for right living and conversation, lest the untamed practices of youth should grow rank if they lacked any to prune them.

Blacman also claimed that the king personally protected his half-brothers from sexual temptation by keeping ‘careful watch through hidden windows of his chamber’ (yes, I know). Like his uncle King Henry VI, Henry VII would also set a court that ‘maintained the highest standards of sexual behaviour’. Indeed, Retha Warnicke made an extensive compilation of scandals during the first two Tudor reigns and not a single case of sexual misconduct was found to have taken place during Henry VII’s time, marking his court as a decidedly different one than Edward IV’s had been.

Going back to Henry VI’s supposed prophecy, his words surely must have acquired a great weight in Henry Tudor’s mind by 1483 when he made his bid to the English throne. By that time King Henry VI had become a popular saint in England and even though Edward IV had tried to have him modestly—and somewhat obscurely—buried in Chertsey Abbey, Surrey, people had started to flock to his grave. A peasant claimed that Henry VI helped him when he had a bean trapped in his ear, which only popped out after he prayed to the king. Painted images of King Henry VI began showing up in churches around the country, like this one at Barton in Norfolk:

One of King Henry VI’s most ardent devotees was Henry Tudor’s mother Margaret Beaufort (Jasper’s feelings towards the cult are unknown) who had met her kinsman when she was about nine years old. When King Henry VI allegedly offered her the option of remaining married to Suffolk’s son or be remarried to his brother Edmund, Margaret says St Nicholas came to her in a dream dressed as a bishop, telling her to choose Edmund. Again, if this story is true or not, we may never know, but Margaret told that to her confessor John (bishop, then saint) Fisher—why would a famously pious woman such as Margaret Beaufort lie to her own confessor, thus committing a sin? It might be that the events took a mystical turn in Margaret’s imagination as a young girl, but that she associated divine intervention to hers and her son’s fate, and likewise to King Henry VI’s proposal, is clear.

It seems Richard III tried to control King Henry VI’s ever-growing cult by moving Henry VI’s body from Chertsey Abbey to St George’s Chapel at Windsor, a place where visitors wouldn’t have easy access to the king. Nevertheless, when Henry VII came to the throne he wholeheartedly encouraged pilgrimages to the place. Henry VII launched an official campaign to have his uncle canonised, with several petitions to popes Innocent VIII, Alexander VI and Julius II. Henry also ordered the compilation of a book of miracles worked by his uncle, and a biography of Henry VI was published in 1500 claiming that Henry VI had been ever pious and chaste during his life, towards his queen never behaving ‘unseemly ... but with all conjugal honesty and gravity’. Henry VII planned to have the body of King Henry VI re-interred at the heart of the new Lady Chapel he was planning at Westminster Abbey. 

However much Henry VII enjoyed good relations with the papacy, especially Pope Innocent VIII, his campaign to have his uncle King Henry VI canonised never came into fruition. Henry VII decided for him and his wife to be buried at his new Lady Chapel instead, next to the tomb of his grandmother Queen Catherine of Valois. In his will, he stated his wish for his body to be buried:

“in the Chapell where our said graunt Dame laye buried, the which Chapell we have begoune to buylde of newe, in the honour of our blessed Lady.”

That doesn’t mean Henry VII set aside the memory of his uncle King Henry VI. He employed the same man that was overseeing the construction of the Lady Chapel at Westminster, Reginald Bray, to continue the rebuilding of St George’s Chapel at Windsor set in motion by his predecessor Edward IV (it came to be informally known as the Bray Chapel). The modest thirteenth-century chapel of Edward the Confessor was expanded into a vast cathedral-like chapel where, importantly, Henry VI’s body was placed alongside a famous relic, the fragment of the True Cross (a reliquary known as the Cross of Gneth) and the bones of John Schorne (revered for curing gout and toothache).

We may argue that Henry VII’s campaign to have King Henry VI’s canonised was fundamentally political (much like Richard II’s campaign for Edward II) as many historians have done. King Henry VI as a saint, combined with his supposed prophecy, would successfully contribute to the image of Henry VII’s reign as one chosen by God. When we put Henry VII’s religious devotion into perspective, though, his efforts to have ‘the glorious King Henry’ canonised take another dimension—in fact, there’s no doubt that in Henry VII’s eyes God had intervened in his favour. Henry VII’s will also stated his wish for an image of himself to be placed in St Edward’s chapel at Westminster, depicting him returning to God and the Virgin Mary the circlet with which he had been crowned at the Battle of Bosworth.

This is me purely speculating, but I think that even though Henry VII only came in contact with King Henry VI once in his life, his half-uncle might have exercised a great influence on him through his uncle Jasper. Jasper seemed to have been genuinely attached to his brother Henry on a personal level as well as devoted to his political cause. If Henry VI’s saintly qualities had been enough to impress Margaret Beaufort, it is very likely that they might have impressed young Henry of Richmond as well.

[starlling-writes]

Bewitching Monsters - Deity (O’dos) Part 3

Series Rating: 18+ Chapter Contains: brief manhandling, drinking, minor swearing, drug use (psychedelic mushrooms) Pairing: f/fluid BeMo Masterlist   ☆  Writing Masterlist

I ended up at the Laughing Grove—the brasserie Valzok took me to. Caera and Aleril had likely followed me but they were giving me room. My distant headspace must be that obvious.

Citra was working tonight. He brought me my first drink and asked what was wrong. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him. He didn’t pry, but said if it was something Valzok did, he’d be happy to kick his ass for me. That actually made me smile.

The live music tonight was a lovely guitar and piano duet. Both of the girls sang too. Their music was soft and warm. Combined with the alcohol, most of my anxieties were lulled away. My gaze wandered around the room. A few couples were slow dancing on the dance floor. Many people were here on dates too. Seeing so much love muddled my heart. I finished off my drink and left.

“So melancholic.” I jumped and looked at O’dos. They were making a habit of just popping in today. This time, they wore the guise of an androgynous drow in simple clothing. “Are you truly that adverse to our agreement?”

“I don’t want to be a shitty mother,” I confessed. “I don’t wanna ruin someone else’s life because family is a foreign concept to me.”

“You have no need to worry, dear witchling. I know you. You will do fine.”

The sentiment was appreciated, but the words wouldn’t sink in. How could a deity understand when I couldn’t even articulate all my troubles? O’dos’s dark laugh echoed in my head. I flinched, noticing now I was no longer walking through town. We were in the void I often communicated with them in.

“For someone of your level, you hold much doubt over yourself.”

“Is this an intervention now?”

“No,” they answered a little too quickly and flippantly. “Your troubles are your own to handle. I am only concerned with those inhibiting our deal.”

I began wondering if there was a bit of fea in them—or maybe fae got it from the gods. “I wouldn’t say anything is inhibiting it; I’m just…hesitant, to meet this future. There are just so many unknowns.”

“Is that not life?”

I probably shouldn’t tell my patron deity to fuck off. Their smartassery was irksome, yet refreshing, helping to pull my mind from my worries. I met their gaze. There was more wisdom and knowledge swirling around in their eyes than I could ever wish to obtain. If they weren’t worried, then perhaps everything would be fine. Surely they knew better than I.

O’dos cupped my cheek and smiled softly. “One week, witchling.”

“And here I thought you were all out of kindness,” I joked.

Before I knew it, their hand was fisted in my hair, jerking my head back. They stepped closer, leaving half a breath between us. “Do not test me.”

I should have felt threatened. Not horny. Although… given the circumstances, being turned on right now was appropriate. It was ill timed, and influenced by alcohol, but fuck—it sent a delicious shock through me to be manhandled by them.

“One week,” O’dos repeated before vanishing and sending me home.

 The next few days I kept my work door closed and isolated myself from most everyone. I needed deep introspection. The first couple days I tried the simpler approaches: meditation, journaling, divination. Those efforts didn’t get me far. I was getting no sense of hardships in this endeavor, yet something was keeping my heart from being at ease.

I prepared some mushrooms for myself the following day. I was surprised to find I still had any lying around. Many disagree with such methods, but using mushrooms was the best way I found to connect deeply with myself.

“Don’t let me be outside for more than an hour,” I told Caera.

“I still can’t believe you’re going out in this cold, Mistress.”

There was a small flurry going on, but I needed to be out in nature. “That’s why I said an hour at most. Just… have some cocoa ready for me when I come back in, please.”

“Of course."

I took the shrooms and turned on some music. Might as well dance a bit and get myself loose while I wait for the come up. And now that Caera had a body, she could dance with me. We swayed and twirled. I couldn’t remember the last time I danced with someone. Was it with Aero during Brumalis? Maybe. Though I would’ve been drunk then; and I’m almost high now… I needed to dance with others again when I’m sober. I needed to dance more.

My thoughts drifted and soon geometric runes started to dance in my vision. The drugs were kicking in. Time to brave the cold. But the music was so nice. And dancing with Caera was—

No! I had work to do. This wasn’t the occasion for fun.

It was a challenge to pull away from her. Especially knowing I was about to venture out into the dark winter night. I made two small balls of light to float around me and stepped outside.

The snow was barely falling now; the light caught the puffy flakes in a magical way. I could still hear the music playing inside. So I danced. The snow floated around me like flecks in water. I started to feel like I was floating too. Closing my eyes, I saw rainbow light filtering down through ocean waves, breaking into beautiful patterns. The designs gradually turned into an array of strobing, bioluminescent sea life. Fish, whales, turtles, jellyfish—so many creatures danced with me now.

A deep rumble brought me out of my trance. Vérus stood before me. “What are you doing?” he asked while I was distracted by the fading light trails of a school of fish.

“Dancing.”

“I meant, why are you outside?”

“Cuz I’m tripping on mushrooms and being outside helps me connect to nature better which will help me connect with my inner-self better and I need to do that cuz I have a lot of thinking and introspection I need to work on within the next four days,” I rambled.

He slowly blinked. “Did you take my ichor?”

“No, why?—Wait!” I gasped. “Would that help? By the moon, your ichor is gonna be a lot more useful than I thought. How do I take it though? Do I make a tea, or a tincture, or bake it in bread or something, or burn it like incense—”

“Stop,” he cut me off. “That is the opposite of what I meant. You need to go back inside.” He walked to my house and was about to let himself in when he looked back and noticed I had gone back to dancing in the snow. With a heavy sigh, he came and grabbed my arm to drag me along.

“Oh good, I was just about to go get you,” Caera said.

“It’s been an hour already?”

“Yes, Mistress.”

Huh, normally time felt slower when I tripped. I took the mug of cocoa from her and settled into the chair closest to the fire. My toes were freezing.

“And why are you doing all this?” Vérus asked dully.

That put a sharp damper on my trip. Why was he still here? I took a moment to stare at the fire before answering. “I’m going to be a mother soon.”

I knew what he had to be thinking. His unspoken questions made my skin crawl—it was like thousands of tiny spiders crawling over and nibbling at me. I immediately forced that imagery from my mind before the drugs made it worse. It threw me off a bit when he coolly asked, “And this required such… introspection, why?”

“I don’t know how to parent!” I slammed my mug down on the table, some cocoa sloshing out. “I don’t wanna fuck up. I don’t know if I’m ready for this.”

Vérus knelt on one knee before me and turned my face to look at him when I tried to look away. He was so close now. Runes ran down in face in the most intriguing patterns. “Witch. I’m not in the habit of giving compliments. That said—your skills are greater than any witch I’ve seen before. Your consideration draws others to you. I do not foresee you failing such a thing.”

He left me truly speechless for a moment. I still wasn’t used to him being this friendly. “This… is the weirdest trip I have ever had.”

— — —

BeMo Masterlist   ☆  Writing Masterlist Story:  Previous   —   Next Character Arc:  Part 1   Part 2   [Here]  Part 4

[anotherhawk]

5 Times Crowley Died Carelessly (And 1 Time Aziraphale Insisted on Caring) Ch1 - Good Omens Fanfiction

Summary: The fire in the bookshop was the first time Crowley had ever experienced the horror and loss of suddenly and violently being the only occult/celestial being on Earth. Aziraphale, on the other hand, has had plenty of chances to get used to that feeling over the previous 6000 years. Spoiler alert: he hasn't got used to it. Not even a little bit.

Warning for repeated temporary character death and an exceptionally loose and inaccurate account of the Book of Genesis

This should be 6 chapters. You can read it on AO3 here or click the read more below.

He wasn't sure just why he had followed Cain out into the east. If anyone asked he'd probably say that the first murderer seemed an ideal figure to hang around, what with his general remit being to cause trouble and everything. Truthfully he just hadn't really known what else to do. He couldn't have stayed - there. The grief of Eve and Adam had been too much for him to bear.

Most of the time he stayed in his snake form, slithering along in Cain's shadow, unseen or at least unacknowledged, keeping the worst of the weather and the wild animals away from the human and, discreetly bringing him food and water on those occasions when Cain spent more than a day or so lying under a tree, staring dry-eyed at his hands.

Every time he thought about showing himself – saying something. But he couldn’t imagine what he could say that could possibly make any of this better, and he could easily imagine plenty of things he could say which would make it worse. No, the thing of it was, he didn’t understand what had happened. Not really. He didn’t understand and he was pretty sure he was the one responsible.

Eventually Cain cried less and walked more, finally coming to a beach where he built himself a little hut out of assorted tree bits woven together and took up fishing. It wasn’t much of a life, all told, but then no one had much of a life really. There should be more than this, shouldn’t there? What was any of this supposed to accomplish?

As always his questions went unanswered.

With an uncomfortable pang he left Cain behind and spread his wings to fly across the ocean. From there he sort of just kept going – flying, walking, slithering , whatever it took to keep moving and not have to stop and think. Days, turned to nights, turned to days again, and the weather got colder until eventually the rains fell frozen from the sky and gathered in heaps so white they reminded him of Heaven and he hated it. They burned too, in a way that fire didn’t, and at the foot of a mountain range he stuck his hand deep into a drift, wondering if this was holy. It wasn't, he eventually decided. It was just cold.

He gazed up at the clouds obscuring the mountain top. Maybe the view would be clearer from the top. Maybe he'd be able to look across the world and understand what it was all for. Maybe, if he was that high up, She wouldn’t be able to ignore him anymore.1

He decided to climb the mountain on his own two feet, or at least the feet he was currently manifesting. Felt like it was the sort of experience you should work for, and the burn of the ice on his feet distracted him from everything inside his head.

It quickly became apparent that this was more of a struggle than he’d been expecting. In spite of his stern words to the contrary his corporation keep insisting that it needed more and better air to breathe than was available. As a sort of revenge he stopped breathing at all, but developed a splitting headache after an hour or two. And the cold just got worse, the wind biting right through his robes until he couldn’t feel his fingers or toes at all, and his body just wouldn’t stop shaking.

Staring vaguely at the white blotches covering his fingers, he sat down heavily on a miraculously handy rock outcrop, sticking out of the snow field. Just a few moments rest and then he'd either carry on or head back down.

The snow was falling thicker again. He tilted his head back and looked up. “What iss thiss all about?” he asked, scowling as his tongue felt more clumsy in his mouth than usual. Really this body was more trouble than it was worth. “Was it my fault?” he wondered forlornly, and he could pretend he was talking to the uncaring sky, rather than an uncaring anyone else.

He'd spent time with both Cain and Abel as they'd been growing up. Keeping an eye on them, enjoying the day to day family drama. He'd been fascinated when instead of joining his parents in foraging in the forest Cain had started collecting seeds and planting them, letting food grow on the first family's doorstep instead of having to go off and find it. He'd taken to following Cain around his fields and orchards, asking what he was doing and offering suggestions until finally Cain had shoved a couple of stick tools at him and told him to help.

Well, helping wasn't the sort of thing he was supposed to do, but he figured that any way of getting close to the humans was probably alright. 2 So sometimes he and Cain would sit and talk in the fields at the end of the day, watching the sunset. And sometimes Cain would complain about his brother, about being overlooked, and about favouritism and, well, he had never been anyone's favourite anything, and so he sympathised, he really did.

 He sympathised. And he was supposed to stir up trouble. And he'd been bored. So yes, he'd egged Cain on a bit. He'd wanted some fireworks, metaphorically speaking. A bit of a barney, a good old-fashioned family argument with everyone drawn in and taking sides.

 He'd never imagined what could happen. He'd never seen it coming.

 Of course he knew about mortality, there had been plenty of animal deaths by this point. If it came to that he'd seen angels die in the War, and even more die in the Fall. But this had been different. He'd watched Cain and Abel grow up. He'd seen them running and playing together, seen Abel cry in sympathy when Cain fell and bloodied his knee, and he'd seen Cain give up his last few figs to share with his brother. He'd thought they loved each other. He'd thought he understood that at least. But he'd seen Abel lying there on the ground, his face frozen in eternal surprise, and he'd seen Cain standing over him, the rock in his hand, and he'd realised he didn't understand  anything.

 It was only a few words. Only a little temptation. “They are made in your image though, aren't they?” he shouted into the storm. “I suppose overreacting is part of the design!” He stood up dramatically, arms thrown wide and immediately got buffeted off his perch by the wind and swept a little way down the mountain.4 He picked himself up and trudged doggedly back up the mountain. “Where was I?” he asked blearily, trying and failing to find his rock. At least he wasn't shivering now. Small mercies and all that. Actually he didn't even feel that cold anymore. Clearly he was getting the hang of this corporation lark. He looked up towards the top of the mountain. Might as well press on then, really.

 He wished he'd said something else to Cain. Wished he'd said something afterwards. Eve's scream echoed through his mind.

 Cain had been cast out. Cursed. So this couldn't have been part of the divine plan, could it? All of this, all of the little family's suffering, this wasn't by Heaven's design. He had seen the shock and horror on Aziraphale's face, had been certain it was mirrored on his own. Not Heaven's design, and it couldn't be Hell's because  he  was Hell's agent and he hadn't  meant  to. It had just been a few words... But that left it being something Cain had chosen to do himself, and that couldn't be right, could it? He'd loved his brother, hadn't he? If it was a choice, why make  that  one?

 Snow was falling on his face. The ice was hot against his back. He'd just lie here for a minutes more then he'd get up and be on his way. He'd just -

  1Actually if we accept that She is omnipotent we must accept that She is capable of ignoring anything She chooses to. However if we accept that She is omniscient then we must accept that She is also constantly aware of everything that She is actively ignoring. In this way, as in many others, we should probably accept that the demon-who-will-be-known-as-Crowley is something of a headache for all concerned.

2This was the same logic that he had earlier used to justify being Eve's first choice of babysitter on date nights. His angelic counterpart3 kept a dignified distance. Crowley invented peek-a-boo, claiming he was taunting the babies for not understanding object permanence.

3Aziraphale.

4It's possible this could be considered a minor form of divine smiting as a punishment for insolence. It's more probable that it was simply weather. It may even be possible that were we to suppose divine influence in this moment that it was intended as a message along the lines of 'Get off the blessed mountain you bloody idiot, you're literally a snake, you're sitting in a blizzard, and you're not even wearing shoes.'

 It had been the first truly harsh winter and Aziraphale had been kept busy. Eve was expecting again and now.... now the boys were gone the little family had struggled to survive. He'd started off trying to be circumspect about his miracles but in the end he'd just made sure that the fields yielded a full harvest whether anyone was tending them or not, and even then as winter wore on far too long he'd resorted to miracling the food stores full again.

 It was perfectly legitimate, he told himself. The humans were struggling because of demonic action. Angelic intervention was necessary to keep them going.

 It had been demonic action, hadn't it? He'd seen the demon, Crawly, talking to Cain not long before the murder, and Gabriel had certainly been satisfied with that as an explanation. Only Aziraphale had also seen the look on the demon's face afterwards, and that hadn't been satisfaction at a job well done or even enjoyment. That had been bewilderment and grief.

 He would have liked to have had a chance to maybe talk to the demon about if after – get the other side's perspective, so to speak. But he'd been far too busy trying to help the poor parents, and by the time he'd thought about it again Crawly had gone and he hadn't come back.

 Which was fine by him, really. It stood to reason that his job would be much easier if his demonic counterpart decided not to bother doing his.

 Still, it had been a long hard winter and it wasn't surprising that he felt a little odd, he considered, as he watched the sun rising over the hillside. It was only the nature of the oddity that struck him as peculiar. 5 He felt alone, which was strange, since he'd been the only angel permanently stationed on Earth since the Garden. So that shouldn't be a new feeling at all. He'd noticed when the others left, or at the very least he'd felt their absence which was sort of the same thing. So why was it hitting him harder today? Perhaps he should check in with Heaven? He didn't have anything in particular to report, there had been nothing significant since Abel's death, and after the way Gabriel had spoken to him then, he wasn't exactly in a hurry to repeat the experience...but perhaps he should? Perhaps he was lonely. Angels  were  supposed to be social creatures after all.

 But that wasn't exactly what this felt like. It wasn't coming from him, it was coming from the world. As though some vital piece had been ripped out, leaving nothing but a jagged hole. Something was missing. Let's see, he was here, and the humans, and...oh. Oh, dear. That was about it, apart from the expected assortment of God's creatures. Just him and the humans and a jagged hole where his demonic counterpart should be.

 This was the sort of thing he should investigate, wasn't it? Heaven would surely expect a report on demonic activity. And if he focused he thought he could sense where Crawly had last been – where he'd died presumably. Or discorporated, rather? This was all so new.

 He made absolutely sure that the humans would be fine on their own for a while and set out, flying across the world in a matter of days. He could have done it faster, of course, but then someone might have noticed and he'd really rather not have to explain what he was doing every time he turned around.

 Eventually he found himself flying up the side of the tallest mountain in the world. He was well above the snow line and good gracious it was cold. He shivered and automatically performed a minor miracle to keep the air immediately surrounding him at a comfortable temperature.

 He found the remains of the demon fairly easily, thawing the ice around the sad little lump so he could dig it out of the snow. There was no sign of violence or injury. It looked as though Crawly had just laid down and died.

“What in the world were you doing up here?” he asked, knowing that he was talking to nothing but a husk of flesh, the demon himself long since departed. “And why didn't you just miracle yourself warm for heaven's sake?”

 In death the demon didn't look especially intimidating.6 In fact, if it wasn't for the pale skin and those snake eyes, Aziraphale could easily have mistaken the body for human. Remembering how Adam and Eve had acted he reached out to close the eyes over only to find that in his transition between snake and human Crawly apparently hadn't bothered to install eyelids. He clicked his tongue and smoothed out the frown lines from the brow instead. Evil was apparently troubling even to its instigators. He didn't know how to feel about that.

 There didn't seem to be anything for him to do here. This wasn't any hellish scheme, Crawly had simply got too cold and discorporated. Probably he was down in hell right now, doing whatever it was demons did on their own time. No doubt either he or another demon would be back sometime soon and the status quo would resume. In the meantime he should get back to the humans, no point in lingering here.

 He lingered there, staring down at the red curls strewn across Crawly's face. Enemy or not, empty husk or not, just leaving him here didn't feel quite proper. The remains of a demon shouldn't just be left lying around, should they? That had to be some kind of hazard. The humans might come here at some point and it might be dangerous.

 Justifications firmly in place, Aziraphale carried Crawly down the mountain and buried him beneath an apple tree.

5Not that he had much to compare it to.

6Aziraphale had never been especially intimidated by him in life either.

[ofgoldenangel]

Discord Chat: Angel’s in Love

SUMMARY: Gabriel askes to chat with Michael after their Angel’s meeting to discuss his growing attachment to Zatanna.

TRIGGERS: mentions of death

WRITTEN WITH: @ofwarriors

Gabriel: Waited until Zatanna had exited the shop to ask Jesse for some help, he'd noticed her look before nodding his head towards her offering a small smile. He needed to talk to Michael even he could take notice of their weird tension between each other and he needed to talk about it. "Michael, I may be weaker but I see the way you look at her" he replied looking up from his book. "Talk to me brother...what happened?"

Michael: He wondered if he'd actually been that transparent. Apart of him wanted to deny it, but he knew that Gabriel would see right through it. "It's a long story, Gabriel. One that's not going anywhere further so you don't have to worry," he deflected instead turning to focus on narrowing down spell books and grimoires that could be used to aid Zatanna's research.

Gabriel: Could easily see something had happened between his brother and the mage, the angel was never one to show emotions yet now? he could read everything on his face. He snapped his fingers shutting the book Michael was looking at "She is taken Brother, the first time you show any emotion and it's towards a woman who is in a very happy relationship" he replied turning to look at him sighing "What happened Michael, Don't lie to me"

Michael: "Is she happy? Truly?" he asked. The words came out before he'd even had a chance to think. He hadn't meant it. Or maybe he had. He wasn't sure of anything anymore. Michael rubbed his temples and leaned against the countertop. "I kissed her," he admitted. "It was a lapse in judgment and it won't happen again." He couldn't believe they were actually talking about this. The city was falling apart and this is what they were talking about. "She's valuable to this team and I don't plan to screw that up."

Gabriel: was quite taken back by his brother's outburst Michael was never one to lose control like this. Did he care more for the Mage than he let on, this was a spell for disaster, it was quite obvious the mage wanted her boyfriend to him unless something changed? "Why would you say that? Dimitri has never given us reason to think he doesn't care great for Zatanna" He replied before looking at his brother for a moment. "Was it a lapse in judgment or are you falling for her? Michael, you know out of anyone I'd understand but this is quite messy.."

Michael: He was embarrassed by it all, truly. He knew that Gabriel was right. He'd felt it in Zee's kiss too. Her heart was with Dimitri and all Michael had done was confuse her more. "They'd had a fight," he explained. "Dimitri charged at John with the intent to kill. In hindsight, that was probably the doing of this whole imbalance business. It frightened her. She'd come to the shop to get space from it." he went on. It felt good getting it out into the open. Confessing what he'd done. "I was there. My wing was injured," he replied as he looked over his shoulder. "I'd gotten jumped and I wasn't healing properly. She's stronger than I am right now," the archangel admitted and for some reason that didn't really bother him. "She healed the wound and..." he let the rest hang in the air. "It was a lapse in judgment, Gabriel. Neither one of us was exactly ourselves at the time."

Gabriel: could read the confusion on his brother's face but when it came to the image. He'd done something stupid that made things rather awkward between them but Zatanna was anything but hateful towards him. "Well, we both know what his dark side holds, if she came back unharmed that should show you how much he cares for her, as for john I'm pretty sure he started said fight." He replied looking at the other "I hope so brother, love at the best of times is painful, it's almost unbearable when it's not returned, I care for you deeply Michael and I don't want you hurt, emotionally or physically, though I have to admit didn't really think shed be your first kiss" he teased his elder brother

Michael: "This time he took care not to harm her but what about the next?" he asked. Again the question had come out before he'd even had time to process it. The archangel had been more than a little confused by the woman tonight. Despite everything, she'd been her usual self. Going so far as to offer help to all the angels in the city. A part of him couldn't help but wonder if this had all been his father's doing. After all, Zatanna hadn't meant to summon Michael. She was aiming for a guardian angel but instead, she got him. Why? At first, he'd thought she underestimated the strength of her magic but now he wasn't sure. Had it been his father's doing all along? He pushed those thoughts away. This wasn't divine intervention. He wasn't ordained for her. She had someone in her life already. "There's nothing she could do to hurt me, brother," he smiled softly. It was a lie but one that he'd happily live with. "If anything I'm the one who's caused the most harm tonight." He rolled his eyes as his brother teased him. "First, last, and never again. Are we done now? Or will I have to live with your teasing for the next century?" he chuckled, trying to push it all aside.

Gabriel: eyed his brother for a moment letting his question hang in the air " you've met his brother, you know what is happening out there. In his right mind, I've never heard of him laying a finger on the mage or anyone without just cause. Do you truly believe he is a bad character? Enough to hurt the women he cares for?" His asked in earnest, Michael knew Dimitri not him, all he had were stories told to him by the mage and his brother get him caught up on the people his brother been spending time with. " I swear we need to work on your poker face, just because dad created Chloe for Lucifer doesn't mean he made us all mates for life, Luci was always the favorite so of course father thought of him more." He sighed moving closer to Michael placing his hand over the others. "There is plenty she could do, but Zatanna isn't the type to do it willingly. You will have to talk to her brother, It can wait till we've restored things and you are feeling more like yourself but that talk will need to happen" he replied before smirking slightly "I finally have dirt on you and you won't let me use it? I think not brother, and don't close your heart off to this feeling who knows there may be some other leggy mage out there dying to wow you, after all, you still have plenty of firsts to take" he chuckled.

Michael: "Truthfully I don't know. He is bound for hell. His rage and killings have done wonders to feed Aamon, but no, I do not think he'd ever turn his hand on her. Heaven and Hell both help him if he did. She's got enough fire in her to put even the strongest of men into the ground," he murmured, finding himself once again fighting with temptation. Gabriel was right. Believing this was father's doing was simply wishful thinking. His less than pious feelings for the magician had less to do with father and more to do with this growing mortality he was experiencing. "I will talk to her and to Dimitri," he promised. "I owe him that much." He rolled his eyes as his brother continued to tease him. "There is no room for this feeling in my life Gabriel. It clouds judgment too much.  You saw it tonight. I can't make the calls I need to make when I'm like that," he explained. "As for having dirt on me," he side-eyed his brother. "Try to keep it between us, yeah? If Lucifer finds out he was right to some capacity I will never live it down."

Gabriel: "being bound for hell doesn't necessarily preach about character, and Aamon has plenty of humans in this day in age to keep him feed for centuries. If even under Aamon's influence he didn't lay a hand on the mage that shows not only great resilience but love for her, notice how even with the stressor of John gone her phone hasn't rung once since being here? He is giving her the space he knows she needs. But that again I've always seen the good in humankind" he chuckled softly shaking his head, his brother was truly lost to his emotions something the younger had never seen except maybe during the war, they'd lost so many brothers and he knew Michael took each lost personally. " you do, though I'm sure they'll forgive you, if not at least you did the right thing" he replied because chuckling "you were fine brother, we took a problem and handled it together as we always do, love does make people rather crazy and if this is you crazy I must say you still function like my uptight brother" he replied before rolling his eyes " I won't tell anyone, besides the next time I see lucifer I'm sure he'll have my wings so I'm going to do what the mage suggested and steer clear of our brother."

Michael: He smiled gently at his brother. Gabriel was always the one to see good in humanity, even in the most muddled souls like Dimitri. Michael had broken bread with the man. He knew despite what he'd done in his past, he'd retired from that life and was trying to do better for himself, for Zatanna. And, if he were honest, looking at the mage's history, Michael simply wasn't her type. "You're right. I do hope they work it out," he nodded, not taking his eyes off the floor. He hoped if he said it enough to himself he'd mean it. He didn't like feeling this way. He wondered if this is what his brothers had felt upon falling. Why anyone would wish to be overcome with dark emotions like this was beyond him. "What I have for her isn't love," he remarked, being the uptight brother Gabriel knew him to be. "It's...infatuation, maybe. Admiration. You like her yourself. I've seen you take to her," he smiled gently. He knew Zatanna had been counseling the young angel after his fight with Lucifer. "She shows us kindness when no one else in this city does. It's easy to see why I made the mistake I made, but I assure you it won't happen again with this mage or any other mage for that matter. As for Lucifer, even in my weakest state, I'd like to see him try. He knows that's an act of war as much as any," he reassured his brother. "But I do agree with Zatanna on this. It's best to steer clear of him for now."

Gadreel: He looked at the other, even he could see his brother held feelings for the mage no matter how much he tried to push it down or deny it they would be there. The problem with humanity is its life was fleeting compared to theirs and if Mike did end up loving Zatanna it would be nothing but pain. "You may not believe that right now, but you know no matter what they'll always be your friend, funny thing about humans they get pretty protective over their friendships brother"  He replied hopefully before smiling at the other. "Infatuation or not, I didn't want to kiss her, if anything my attachment to the mage is in Motherly of nature" he replied truthfully before smiling softly "She is one of a kind, and it's easy to see how you could've developed these feelings and I don't think you should run for them.  I guess I didn't count on such hatred...you didn't hate me in the end. " he sighed nodding his head "I will brother you have nothing to worry about, I shall stick to the shop to ensure you won't worry endlessly about me getting hurt again"

Michael: It wasn't fair, truthfully. If she didn't return his feelings in kind, he could live with that. What he found more painful was the fact that he'd have to watch nature take its course on her and the mortals around her. Whether she remained a friend, a lover, or home, it didn't matter. Death would take her one day and there was nothing that he could do to stop that. "They are fiercely loyal," he smiled softly, nodding his head in agreement. "I'd say that's the one refreshing thing about being here." His brothers had been as well up until Lucifer broke with tradition and started a war. He chuckled when the angel mentioned that he'd found a mother in Zatanna. None of them had ever had a mother. They had all been built for war and shaped by fire. "She'd lay her life on the line for you just as sure as I would. I could never hate you, Gabriel," he reassured the angel. Truth be told, he'd do anything to avoid another war. He'd been much younger by angel standards during the first war. Much more brash and heavy-handed. He'd lost so much in those days. He wasn't sure he had it in him to do what needed to be done again. "Well, in that case," he tossed the angel a spellbook. "I might as well put you to work," he grinned. "Zatanna's picked up a lot just on our behalf. There's a lot riding on her shoulders." He'd be lying if he said he wasn't worried she'd taken too much on her plate. A part of him knew this had been her way of avoiding dealing with everything else. "We need to narrow down what can and cannot be used to help her. We owe her that much." They owed her more than that, but this was a good place to start.

Gabriel: Could see the struggle in his brother, it was a slippery slope, if he did fall for her and Zatanna returned his feelings her life would pass before his eyes. Or he could just bury his feelings hoping to enjoy what little time they had together it was quite the lose lose situation and Gabe didn't envy his brother one bit. "That they are, we are quite lucky to have found such a good group of them" He replied softly before looking at the other, he found that he liked the feelings of family he received from them, back in Heaven when Lucifer left all he had was Michael, it was strange to think how broken his family had truly become until he was faced with something that worked. "I thought you would...Lucifer and I were inseparable growing up...I shared a lot of his thoughts except the ones about humanity being useless...after the war, even though I fought with you, I'm sure even you could sense my hesitation to attack our brothers..." He replied in a soft voice before chuckling softly at the book Mike tossed him nodding his head head "I know brother, we'll find the fix I just know it, I wonder what we'll find out" He replied opening the book before moving to read over the spells "Make sure you work to Mikey no pushing all the work on us youngsters"

Michael: He saw no sense in wallowing in self-pity. He knew what he had to do even if he didn't necessarily want to do it. He wasn't going to destroy her life over his selfish desire for something comfortable. He hoped that his brother would never be faced with a decision such as this. "One can only hope we can help them as much as they've helped us," he nodded. "We were like them once too," he smiled softly, remembering his family when they had been whole. "Even the strongest of bonds can break. Lucifer's ideology was rigid but so was mine. I know to have to choose sides was hard, but I'm glad you're here brother." There was a reason Michael had summoned him before the others. Gabriel was the kindest of the four of them and earth needed that kindness now more than ever. "Oh, I'm no slacker, brother. I intend to do my part," he teased as he grabbed a book off the shelf. It was going to be a long night.

[bellatrix-la-strange]

God’s not home right now. Please leave a message after the beep. Beep.

So this was inspired by a prompt I saw somewhere and now cannot find no matter how hard I try, but this is basically it:��

‘Humans have just found out God is real and he’s abandoned them all these years. Their plans get increasingly elaborate as they think of new and different ways to get his attention’.

They didn't know he was gone gone (like really gone) until they were invaded by the Golasteens species in the year 2666 BC. Of course, by then many philosophers, preachers and even scientists had long since convinced themselves he’d never existed in the first place, so one would think that this small adjustment wouldn’t have been much to get used to.

Problem was that in their heads, it had been they who had abandoned any belief in him, not the other way around.

In any case, the alien species had been kind enough to regale their new slaves with stories of their greatness and success, all derived from decades and centuries worth of tutelage under God’s careful guidance. Naturally, after being confronted with the existence of aliens--and highly sophisticated ones at that--in such a sudden manner and then becoming enslaved at this same species’ whim, humans were reluctant to give their words more power than they already held.

However, once the foreign representative envoys from different planets began arriving to either congratulate or berate the Golasteens for their new colony and they, too, carried similar tales of their own origins, humans were left to face a horrifying reality: God was real.

And he had left them.

Though they’d yet to realize it, the Golasteens had just made their biggest mistake. They believed that they had curbed, if not completely and utterly decimated, any last hope the humans had held of a future existence as a free species and while those certainly were some dark times which followed, the harrowing news ended up being the spark to light the world on fire. The rebellion was swift, brutal and successful--humans were in control of Earth again.

In the times that followed, the human species truly began to shoot for the stars. They built ships which could take them to planets closer than one thousandth of a light-year away and as they explored new cultures, met alien beings, and drifted further and further away from home. In no short amount of time, humans could be found in the very furthest reaches of the known universe.

They hopped from world to world, leapfrogged across galaxies and dropped women and men into the darkest of black holes in their search for God. Sometimes they came so very close behind him--less than a decade since his departure--and the small, but remarkable milestone would be enough to fuel the next five generations of searchers.

But even the most obstinate race in the universe must admit defeat at one point and so the Search for God was eventually put on hold in favour of a more localized approach. As was to be expected from such a people, the years that followed were not altogether pleasant, nor well thought out.

Believing God’s absence to be related to man’s obsession with the materialistic and technological, a good portion of Earth’s population (now extending across seventeen planets and fifty-four satellites) reverted back to the old ways. They re-adopted traditional ways of life, cleansing themselves of the polluting influence of modern technology and bathing in the healing nectars of old world living.

Humanity took a huge leap backwards and landed in 2004.

When enough time had passed and God still hadn’t shown his face, the greatest human thinkers and strategists turned back to the drawing board and hatched up a new plan.

They were being deliberately ignored, they said. Punished, publicly shamed in front of the rest of the universe as each and every single new creation had their existences mapped out and guided along by God himself. Everyone except the humans. Their creator’s cold shoulder when it came to Earth’s originaries certainly hadn’t gone unnoticed by the rest of the universe’s inhabitants and as centuries passed and the situation still hadn’t changed, the tales turned to rumours, and the rumours turned to facts, which then morphed to pity and mockery.

Earth, and by extension humans, were social pariahs. That was the century in which mankind went underwater. Like the myth of Atlantis, they rebranded themselves the World of the Lost and vowed to hide beneath the deepest and murkiest of shadows until the end of time--just as God wanted.

But humans grew tired of living in the dark. They trudged back to the surface eventually and shook the cobwebs from their trusty old drawing board.

By now, it had been more than three thousand years since their ancestors had last created films and texts which warned against following this new pursuit, so humans couldn’t truly be faulted for not knowing any better when they brought back dinosaurs.

After all, what better way to get God’s attention than by proving you could do his work just as well as he could?

Unfortunately for the goal of the plan (though fortunately due to its disastrous results) God didn’t show up and witness the Earth explode into chaos as the highly sophisticated technology of the time endowed these ancient animals with powers beyond anyone’s imagination. It took over eight decades to mop up that colossal spill-up and after that, the suggestions scribbled on the drawing board lost some of their apocalyptic aftertaste.

That’s when they decided to focus their efforts on their future, to becoming the best of the best in anything and everything they could think of. That was the true Golden Age of humanity and yet, even as they crawled out from the hole God had outlined and which the humans had really dug into, they were still frustratingly bereft of any divine intervention.

One year, humans even managed to coordinate the change of the entire world's wardrobe to micro-glass textiles which would reflect the rays of the sun and create prisms of arching rainbows. It had been some scientific breakthrough or another in their efforts to travel faster and further across the galaxy and had spiralled into a desperate fashion choice. Foe 365 days the earth sparkled like a freshly shined disco ball unashamedly begging for praise and attention.

But nothing worked.

Humans were reaching new and unexplored levels of desperation. In a last ditch attempt to catch God’s eye, they turned back to the very basics and constructed a machine capable of doing the one thing they’d been trying to do for the past 60 millennia.

Checked, tested, re-checked, re-tested and re-re-checked (just to be sure), the machine was fired up with a flick of a switch.

A bolt of sound shot out across all levels of the galaxy until even the emptiest and most forgotten of corners were echoing with the cries of the human race. Translated into thousands of different languages and carried dozens of light-years away, their shout of anger, their howl of betrayal, their sob of agony, their whimper of loneliness, their howl of mourning… It was all swept away in a current of light, sound and stars.

When the universe was silent once more, they waited. They held their breath and gazed up at the stars. They had long since resolved archaic issues like global warming and on a night as clear as this one, with the clouds keeping their distance and the moon stuck halfway between winking at them from her perch in the sky, they could see deep into space, far enough to distinguish the light of neighbouring planets and the winding belts of alien colonies.

Humans were surrounded by life. They were capable of snuffing it and nurturing it within a blink of an eye and yet, as they stood on the precipice between their salvation and their downfall, they were powerless.

So they waited.

Further than the mind can imagine, tucked away in a hidden alcove verging on the line between present, future and past, God slept.

Somewhere in his being, tangled in the same strands he'd used to fashion the world into existence, buried down so deep it was only too easy to forget it was even there, a piece of consciousness stirred, roused by a distant, powerful cry.

With a world altering jolt, God woke up.

[maidenofsophia]

A New Day

After much meditation and contemplation (and days spent on the Janite website) I have decided to convert to the Deanic faith. 

I consider myself a Sophian Deanist. This could be considered an independent/’blended path’, though I am mostly inspired by the Janite tradition, but I am discarding all of the patriarchal and heteronormative language and ideas that I held as a Christian and a Gnostic. What remains I have found closely parallels the beliefs that are compatible with Deanism and the lessons of the Daughter found in the Filianic Scriptures. 

The Gospel of Our Mother is one of the only religious texts, with the possible exception of the Dhammapada (which can be used in secular context), that I feel I can read with utter comfort and agreement. I do not have to dig deep in something that might sound offensive or aggressive to find a spiritual meaning; I know this is fulfilling religious practice for some, but in my current mental state I am tired of feeling the need to cherry pick or ‘read between the lines’. That is not to say the Filianic Scriptures are too simple or lack esoteric depth - I think there is a treasure trove of spiritual insight to be found in these pages - but there is no passage I’ve found so far that could inspire someone to discriminate or harm someone else. The message is clear on every page; we are all children of Our Mother, loved by Her, and called to love each other.

In a recent post I mentioned discarding my Gnostic belief about Sophia accidentally creating the seven archons; the malevolent rulers of the Universe. In an attempt to discover their holy equivalent, I came across the Seven Lower Sefirot of Kabbalah, the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit, the Seven Pillars of Wisdom, the Seven Titans of Eurynome - but I was always lead back to the Seven Janati. It was if they were calling me to know them, all of them offering out a hand of support, each one a different face of Dea Sophia. With them I feel aided to wrestle against the Archons in every day life, though now I see said Archons as parallel to the seven daughters of the Dark One. There is a balance now that I could not find in Gnosticism. I feel excited by the prospect of coming to know each Jana on a personal level, as I have with Sophia for so man years.

What held me back from properly converting before was the prospect of bringing my belief of the Father and Son into a religion centred on the Mother as the Supreme Creatrix. Even though the Janite tradition accepts those who still believe in the Father God, I felt that personally Deanism should remain a safe space for those wanting to focus only on the Divine Feminine and didn’t wish to spoil that. But that is all rather moot now as I don’t feel the same connection to the Divine Masculine as I once did. I believe that Male/Masculine interpretations of the Divine are valid and exist as much as the Feminine, which is where I may disagree with Orthodox Deanists, but I no longer feel he is a part of my personal faith. I do not see the Father as a consort or counterpart to the Mother, rather he is another way of looking at Her, and the same goes for the Son in regards to the Daughter. I cannot say that I am finally seeing the “true faces” of God for everyone, and never would, but I these are the faces and interpretations that feel right for me.

I am still a Perennialist. I don’t believe in or claim to know the One True Religion. I don’t think I am any closer to that truth before with Deanism than I was Christianity; only more comfortable. To quote Reza Aslan, I see all religion as a language used by humans to connect with God. And that God, being Divine, is incomprehensible by human understanding, but we all connect with God differently as She calls us to Her. I believe I am being called to recognise God as the Divine Feminine alone; as Great Mother, Daughter and Mother Spirit. But this does not mean I believe the Father or Son or Divine Masculine does not exist on another spiritual level - but they are no longer a part of my religious practice or Godhead. 

As noted, my names for the Sophian Trinity remain as opposed to the traditional Deanic Trinity - but the meaning is still the same. The Great Mother / Barbelo, remains as the first mystery and source of all things. Unlike the other two, She cannot be anthropomorphised or have Her true name revealed (Barbelo itself is a mystery, an adverb, rather than just a name), but all can know Her as the Mother of all things, the Creatrix. After Her comes Sophia, the Genetrix, the Celestial Mother who can be known to Her children. From a Sophian perspective, She may also be called the Mother Spirit or Holy Bride - as She is the link between the Great Mother and all living beings, She is the assumption of our souls. I know the idea of being ‘wedded to God’ is not found in Deanism, as far as I’m aware, but it is a ritual I have already performed and do not wish to break. The Holy Daughter I will also continue to know as Zoe. My belief in Her sacrifice, coming from a Gnostic background, is more in line with the Janite perspective - that Her sacrifice meant the shattering of Her soul into creation, ensuring a part of Her resides in every living thing. I no longer believe in the necessary intervention of a masculine saviour - but rather that the Logos is a gift of Sophia aided to empower the sparks of the Daughter that are inside every one of us. 

I also feel that, running with Sophia’s Grecian theme, I will refer to the Janati by their Greek names in my personal practice. 

Apologies to any of my followers who followed me for being a Gnostic / Esoteric Christian blog. I still plan to reblog and be interested in what happens in the Christian community, as I will always feel a cultural tie to my first religion, as well as one that has such a huge influence on the world. I will always love Yeshua, but as I have done for years - as an enlightened spiritual teacher, rather than a divine figure. I believe he and many others are a good example of what it means to a true Child of Dea (no matter what gender he identified Her with). And yes, I am and will always be a huge Magdalene devotee. She remains my personal human avatar of the Holy Daughter (not to be confused with the idea of her being Sophia incarnate). 

To be honest, for myself, it doesn’t feel like too much is changing. Rather a lot of beliefs I already had feel easier to behold after letting go of a lot of unnecessary religious baggage. I no longer feel like I’m trapped in a world ruled by dark, false gods and hoping to go home - but rather She is with me and Her world is beautiful. I feel like I’ve been lost in a forest of thorns and now they’ve retreated back to show the bright path before me. 

I believe that I am created from before the dawn of time By the Eternal One, Madria Dea. I believe that She is One and there are none beside Her, And I believe that She is also Three.

I believe in the Celestial Mother, She Who is Pure Light; The Creatrix of the Earth and of the Heavens, And of all the infinite cosmos. And I believe in Her Holy Daughter, born of the Celestial Mother; She Who rules all the energies of Creation, Whose Nature is Perfect Love.

And I believe that there is She, Who stands beyond these Two, Whose Name has not been spoken upon this Earth; For She is the Beginning and the End,

The First Principle and the Final Cause, The unoriginated Origin of being; The Great Mother of all that is and all that is not; She, Who Is.

I believe in the Seven Janati, the Seven Great Powers of Dea. I believe that they are the Living Streams of Virtue who flow from the Mother and that together, these Living Streams form the River of Life.

And I believe that I was made a perfect creature, and I believe that at the dawn of time, my soul did turn from the Perfection of existence, that I may know of the other things, for many things I did not know. And thus I gathered infirmity in my sovereign will; I believe that through this choice, I needs must suffer the limitation of imperfect being, to learn and know the other things, for I believe within Her Divine Will, the darkness must be known to truly know the Light, And the Dark beyond the light.

And I believe that all Her Will might Be, that the Daughter of Eternity gave Herself to be cast down into darkness. I know that She rose from that darkness, triumphant, and reigns as Queen of Heaven. I know that through Her Shattering, the fault of my soul shall perish, And I know that through Her triumphant Life, My souls shall rise renewed in Her Perfection; That I may return to Eternal Communion with the Eternal One, Madria Dea, In the Completion of the Wholeness of Her Will.

Blessed be the Lady and all Her children.

[vertigokrp-blog1]

SUBMITTED FOR YOUR APPROVAL:

The case of one Song Hanbin, youth lost in the depths of countryside quaintness and simple delights. A 27-year-old spending days in the small suburbs of Muhan as a spiritual guide to Muhan’s cult leader, an upstanding citizen like many others in town. An unremarkable little story that takes odd turns when you take a second look. Because, in Muhan, nothing as it seems. In Muhan, you must trust no one.

        Song Hanbin is one with the vertigo.

CONTENT WARNING.

Religious themes, mentions of cults.

THE STORY.

he’s an enigma, a shroud of mist in the distance, all the questions and none of the answers. where his life has been prior to muhan is a hot controversy, his answer changing every time someone asks, and few ever know what he’s done the day before, much less what he did years before. some speculate he came from old money, had inherited a business, a name, and sold it all to live very comfortably in the countryside. some whisper that he’s a foreigner who possessed a genie in a bottle - how else did someone so young earn such devoted acolytes, wealth, credibility if not by the influence of a djinn? all of it was ridiculous, all of it it was true by the very nature of rumors, but here was the truest truth: he was born knowing the taste of dirt. how it felt on his hands and between his toes when he dug at the ground for scraps and roots to eat and bones to suck on, what it was like to sleep like a dog. he was a boy forsaken, a boy who learned how to run before he could walk. hanbin’s family was no better, they’d all been born neglected, forced to become scavengers to survive, and they were some of the many invisible undesirables of the forgotten shantytowns in the countryside of korea. while other children spent their days in the sun, hanbin and his siblings traveled from street corner to street corner, pickpocketing slim pickings and selling their meager bounty to buy their meal for the day, teaching themselves to make it last just short of a week. it was a miserable existence, being born to die in the gutter, and so dismal that he could not even imagine a better future to hope for. with hanbin, and all nameless street urchins, there were no false suppositions, no daydreams, no ambition, no sights beyond what was in front of him - only resigned acceptance.

supposedly.

but resilience was an unspoken virtue - no one cared for an urchin with an iron will until he was already rich - then it was a story to be retold over cocktails and hors d'oeuvres; nothing like a tale of poverty to whet one’s appetite. but he’d never give them the satisfaction of knowing how desperately his grubby little heart hoped to possess something all his own, not to sell for food, but a single trinket of sentiment, to reaffirm his humanity, that he wasn’t just born to die. it was this pride that spurred him to abandon the only family he’s ever known, hitchhiking his way to the city - dirty wealth was easier to come by in the thick of neon lights and velveteen pleasure rather than pastoral destitution. the work he did could not be spoken about in polite company, but he built up his own income, had the self restraint not to blow it on something short-term or shallow - he hated the work. made his skin crawl with the acid he imagined pouring on himself, and he was sure to to put it behind him as quickly as he could - he left abruptly, as good as a shapeshifting nomad - his image of himself in the city didn’t suit him, and so he adopted another one. a pious one - a man on a pilgrimage, a saint, a prophet with literal visions of the lord himself. but prophets were ignored in the big city - there were dozens of them on every street corner panhandling for some generosity, and if hanbin wanted to make his mark, it would be in the countryside, the rural towns and sleepy villages that time forgot that he’d have to supplant himself as savior. he went first to his home village and met with his family once more, telling them and his neighbors within the village that he’d left to go on a pilgrimage of sorts to a monastery where he’d experienced a religion conversion and epiphany and touted himself as a holy man.

they were skeptical - but when his prayers starter bringing them answers, curing their ailments, kept storms at bay, they began to believe in miracles - they began to believe in him. perhaps the healing was really the power of prayer - or perhaps leaving their health to another power led them to relax and get the rest they needed. perhaps it was the single unmarked pill he’d offer at the end of the prayer (oftentimes simply over the counter acetaminophen or ibuprofen or diphenhydramine he’d brought from the city). perhaps the storms’ changing paths was merely coincidence. it didn’t matter. their belief in him gave him power, gave him clout, and he traveled the countryside like this, a nomadic prophet, performing prayers and miracles, gathering acolytes and believers - it’s a strange power, that of a holy man, to grab a throng by their hearts and feel them twist between his fingers.  but it’s not enough. the common lore that floats around muhan now is that hanbin had found his way to busan where it was known that a very prominent political figure - some say the mayor, some say a council member - had a child sick from a terrible  illness and had heard of the holy man traipsing across the countryside working miracles and, out of desperation and perhaps thoroughness, invited him to come pray with him, for the child. the story goes that the next day, the child is healed, the politician is grateful, and hanbin is lauded. the politician rewards him with wealth beyond imagine, his modern day genie, and he invests wisely and, perhaps with divine intervention, grows into something great. his path takes him to muhan, drawn to the rumors and sleepy small town intrigue where he would be a giant of a man, and he supplants himself into the prestigious community, nestling himself into a role that was carved for him. this was how the story went and ended, neat and tidy and predictable, and it was the story he told in polite company, to outsiders, to waitresses who asked and to the wandering eyes who found him.

how he came to be father hanbin.

THE TWIST.

but neat stories are better known as fairy tales. there was no magic genie, no politician - he’d come to busan as a man with a wealth of reputation and acolytes, but not much else, certainly not tangible wealth that would open the doors he truly wanted - religious clout, as romantic as it was, would never hold up to money. he’d heard of a rather peculiar cult of tycoons and heirs and ceos who worshipped a golden devil in busan and envied them furiously - for as long as there was a step for him to climb, a door closed to him, he could never be satisfied.

there’s a man who he knows to carry the key he seeks. the spiritual guide to the cult leader, obscenely rich and nefarious, a wicked man but no more wicked than hanbin, and perhaps that was his flaw. finding him on his way home was easy, dispatching was easier - hanbin still remembers the frantic beating of a pulse fighting for air and life beneath his fingers, how very much like ripe fruit the poor man resembled with his face turning blue, then purple, then blue again before he went slack in hanbin’s hands. how hard it’d been storming something awful the night he dumped the body into the nakdong river, how it’d surely dump the corpse into the south sea before the night was over. then luck struck twice - the spiritual guide was old-fashioned enough to keep a cache of solid gold in his home under lock and key - the literal key to wealth was on his person, which hanbin had snatched before dumping it. how fortuitous. it was easy still to stage it as if the man had taken his treasure and ran off into the night - he was no angel, after all, he knew it and the community he served knew it well - his disappearance raised little hubbub and was forgotten within a month.

hanbin, however, was savvy enough to waltz into the cult so soon after their key figure disappeared. he took his time, invested his newfound wealth and built it to be greater than anything he’d ever seen - this much, at least, was true. attracted organic attention with shows of philanthropy across busan until he was impossible to ignore.

“i’ve heard he’s some tech genius who’s sold his company at twenty-four. he’s retired now, isn’t that right? so young, my goodness.”

“i heard he’s a millionaire who’s a born again christian. invests his money real smart and donates the extra to the poor.”

“he’s a prophet alright. at least when it comes to stocks. maybe it’s divine wisdom. maybe god’s a millionaire too.”

it’s a year before he approaches the cult - or rather, they approach him - under guise, of course, and through implicit words and half codes. but their intent - or rather, their invitation is clear.

it’s another two years before he rises through the ranks as spiritual guide and makes the move to muhan - truly his holiness has granted him his prosperity. same practice - different deity.

[glare-gryphon]

Hi! I really like the Obi-Wan raises the twins on Tatooine untill Vader finds him. Would you be willing to tell me what happens next? Maybe with the 501th and the 212th and Vader finding the twins? Love what you write!

I was hoping to update Negotiation today, but it’s being uncooperative so here’s this instead.

A follow-up to THIS PROMPT

Desert - Part 2

Rating: T

~1500 Words

Pairings: Obi-Wan Kenobi/Anakin Skywalker/Padme Amidala (Past), Obi-Wan Kenobi/Anakin Skywalker (Past), Obi-Wan Kenobi & Darth Vader, Darth Vader & Skywalker Twins

Additional Tags: Post-Mustafar AU, Obi-Wan Raises Luke & Leia, Vaderkin

Vader had missed very little about the desert. Not the sand, nor the empty, aching void of sentient life. What he had missed was the warmth, and he finds himself basking in it as Appo drives them through the Jundland Wastes to the small homestead a local directed them to in exchange for a handful of credits. Of all the things Vader adjusted to about life among the stars, the constant chill was never one of them. Even now his robes are always just a bit thicker than those of his peers, the temperature in his private quarters always just a bit warmer. He was a child raised under two suns, and space is so, so cold.

When his Master had sent him to this dustbowl planet, all he’d had to look forward to was the suns. Finding his wayward husband here? Well, that is something he would have never expected. It seems like a gift from the Force itself because honestly, what are the chances that they happened to be on the same planet, let alone passing through the marketplace at the same time? Truly, there must have been divine intervention to bring about this miraculous happening. He’d all but given up on finding his wayward lover, after all these years.

He can still feel Obi-Wan in the Force when he reaches out, the Force bond they’d severed on Mustafar slowly patching itself back together. Frustration simmers beneath the surface of shields cracked from stress; anticipation and fear as well. That’s not the only Light he can feel, however. The homestead ahead all but hums with power, brought to vibrant life by what feels like two miniature suns. Vader can’t say he’s particularly surprised that Obi-Wan has taken some wayward Force-users under his wing—he’d thrown quite a fit when his men were commanded to find the homestead—though envy does curl like a dragon in his gut. These beings, whoever they are, have spent the last six years with Obi-Wan. Six years that should have rightfully belonged to Vader. He reaches out to them, curiosity getting the better him, and almost as soon as he’s brushed against those Lights do shields go up, all but vanishing from the Force with their effectiveness. In the back of his mind, Obi-Wan’s worry spikes into sharp panic.

As far as moisture farms go, Obi-Wan’s is well-tended. High-end vaporators hum as they work, powered by the solar panels laid out across the dunes. A herd of bantha graze on the Waste’s sparse shrubbery nearby, raising their heads curiously as armored clones pass them by. Vader can feel the Obi-Wan’s latent influence keeping them calm; he always did have a way with the local fauna.

The home itself is as nice as the rest, once Vader pries open the door with the Force. He can feel the hum of life within, warm and bright and comforting. The echo of laughter rings in his ears, grates at him. It turns his stomach to think that his husband had been happy here, away from him.

As much as Vader would like to explore the home, to discover just how his wayward husband has spent his days, he leaves that up to the clones. His first priority is to locate the Force-users before they find his clones. He can’t tell much about them with how well they’re shielding, but that is enough to know that they’ve not wasted the last six years. Clearly Obi-Wan has spent some time training them, and even a half-trained Jedi can pose threat to the Force-null clones if caught unawares.

He stalks the house like a predator, reaching out in the Force in attempt to locate the pair. It works, their shields stressed and cracking under the weight of their emotion with the closer he gets. By the time he rounds the corner into one of the rear rooms, they have given up on hiding themselves in favor of focusing entirely on escaping.

Vader is presented with the image of a young girl, holding the legs of another child as they climb through the window, very briefly. As soon as she notices him, she releases her grip, and Vader hears the other child topple to the ground outside with a muffled oof. He is quite lucky they are at ground-level, and that the sand will break the worst of his fall.

“Ouch!” The second child whines, but neither pays him any mind. The girl, as soon as letting go, had spun on her heel and pulled a very familiar lightsaber hilt from her belt. The weapon appears almost comically large in her tiny hands, but that isn’t what Vader is paying attention to. Instead, he finds himself studying her.

There is a fire in her dark eyes that he knows like he knows himself. Brown hair, gently curling, is pulled away from a rounded face. It provides him with an unimpeded view of her features—features that take his breath away. He almost doesn’t believe it possible, but the dragon in his ear whispers fervent agreement: She looks just like Padme.

The boy pops his head back through the window, and there is no denying Vader’s growing suspicion, now. Looking at him is like looking back through time to his own younger self. Shaggy blond hair and blue eyes, a warm glow in the force. He has her features, too, softer than Anakin’s own.

These are their children. His twins, he thinks with awe. They lived, and Obi-Wan has spent the last six years raising them.

Throwing out a hand, Vader calls his old lightsaber hilt to him. The girl squeaks in surprise as it is wrenched from her grip, not strong enough to keep hold of the hilt against the influence of the weapon’s rightful owner. He has no interest in engaging his own daughter in combat, and won’t have her hurting herself in the process of trying to ward him off.

Both children shriek when they’re grabbed—the boy by Appo outside and the girl by Vader himself. It’s no small feat to get them back to the speeders, as they kick and writhe all the way there, yelling for their father. I am your father, Vader wants to snap, but suspects that to be a conversation best had in Obi-Wan’s presence. They don’t trust him yet; they wouldn’t believe him.

By the time they reach port, the boy has mostly settled. He seems to be the calmer of the pair, taking in their surroundings with a keen, analytical eye that he clearly inherited from his mother. It makes Vader want to watch him all the closer, if not for the way his sister is still flailing in his grip, spitting a collection of curses a girl her age could only learn on Tatooine and lashing out at anyone who wanders close enough. He has to trust his clones to handle the boy, or else he’ll drop the girl. As it is, he has to hold her under her arms and keep her as far from him as he can manage, having taken a surprisingly strong kick to the gut on the way to the speeders.

As soon as they’re within sight of Obi-Wan however, he gives up all hope of keeping the children restrained. The girl leans over when he’s momentarily distracted by the boy’s struggling in his commander’s arms, biting down viciously on his organic hand through his glove. Vader yelps, dropping her on reflex, and she takes off running as soon as she hits the sand. Her brother is quick to join her, slipping from Appo’s grip after a well-executed wiggle.

Clearly visible in the cargo hold of their transport, Obi-Wan is bound and seated. His head shoots up at their shouts of, “Daddy!” and Vader watches him struggle against the binders that hold him in desire to reach out to the children. He can’t get loose, but the boy quickly climbs into his lap anyways when they reach him. The girl hovers at his shoulder, scrutinizing his binders and the bruises his struggles have raised. There is visible relief in Obi-Wan’s face as he inspects the twins for damage, but his fear in the Force has yet to fade. Undoubtedly he is still concerned with what Vader is going to do to him—do to them—now that he’s found them.

The only thing he wants to do is hold them. Obi-Wan, the children whose names he has yet to learn, any of them. Just hold them close and soak in the realization that he’s no longer alone—bask in their Light like he had the suns of this planet. The desire is strange, one he hasn’t felt in some time, and he’s sure he’ll be furious with Obi-Wan later once the reality of the situation sinks in. For now, however, he calls the rest of his clones back and instructs the pilot to take off. There will be time for that later. Now that he has them with him, they will have all the time in the galaxy.

[inqorporeal]

ADAM SERWER JUN 4, 2017

The strangest part about the continued personality cult of Robert E. Lee is how few of the qualities his admirers profess to see in him he actually possessed.

Memorial Day has the tendency to conjure up old arguments about the Civil War. That’s understandable; it was created to mourn the dead of a war in which the Union was nearly destroyed, when half the country rose up in rebellion in defense of slavery. This year, the removal of Lee’s statue in New Orleans has inspired a new round of commentary about Lee, not to mention protests on his behalf by white supremacists.

The myth of Lee goes something like this: He was a brilliant strategist and devoted Christian man who abhorred slavery and labored tirelessly after the war to bring the country back together.

There is little truth in this. Lee was a devout Christian, and historians regard him as an accomplished tactician. But despite his ability to win individual battles, his decision to fight a conventional war against the more densely populated and industrialized North is considered by many historians to have been a fatal strategic error.

But even if one conceded Lee’s military prowess, he would still be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans in defense of the South’s authority to own millions of human beings as property because they are black. Lee’s elevation is a key part of a 150-year-old propaganda campaign designed to erase slavery as the cause of the war and whitewash the Confederate cause as a noble one. That ideology is known as the Lost Cause, and as historian David Blight writes, it provided a “foundation on which Southerners built the Jim Crow system.”

There are unwitting victims of this campaign—those who lack the knowledge to separate history from sentiment. Then there are those whose reverence for Lee relies on replacing the actual Lee with a mythical figure who never truly existed.

In the Richmond Times Dispatch, R. David Cox wrote that “For white supremacist protesters to invoke his name violates Lee’s most fundamental convictions.” In the conservative publication Townhall,  Jack Kerwick concluded that Lee was “among the finest human beings that has ever walked the Earth.” John Daniel Davidson, in an essay for The Federalist, opposed the removal of the Lee statute in part on the grounds that Lee “arguably did more than anyone to unite the country after the war and bind up its wounds.” Praise for Lee of this sort has flowed forth from past historians and presidents alike.

This is too divorced from Lee’s actual life to even be classed as fan fiction; it is simply historical illiteracy.

White supremacy does not “violate” Lee’s “most fundamental convictions.” White supremacy was one of Lee’s most fundamental convictions.

Lee was a slaveowner—his own views on slavery were explicated in an 1856 letter that it often misquoted to give the impression that Lee was some kind of an abolitionist. In the letter, he describes slavery as “a moral & political evil,” but goes on to explain that:

I think it however a greater evil to the white man than to the black race, & while my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild & melting influence of Christianity, than the storms & tempests of fiery Controversy.

The argument here is that slavery is bad for white people, good for black people, and most importantly, it is better than abolitionism; emancipation must wait for divine intervention. That black people might not want to be slaves does not enter into the equation; their opinion on the subject of their own bondage is not even an afterthought to Lee.

Lee’s cruelty as a slavemaster was not confined to physical punishment. In Reading the Man, the historian Elizabeth Brown Pryor’s portrait of Lee through his writings, Pryor writes that “Lee ruptured the Washington and Custis tradition of respecting slave families,” by hiring them off to other plantations, and that “by 1860 he had broken up every family but one on the estate, some of whom had been together since Mount Vernon days.” The separation of slave families was one of the most unfathomably devastating aspects of slavery, and Pryor wrote that Lee’s slaves regarded him as “the worst man I ever see.”

The trauma of rupturing families lasted lifetimes for the enslaved—it was, as my colleague Ta-Nehisi Coates described it, “a kind of murder.” After the war, thousands of the emancipated searched desperately for kin lost to the market for human flesh, fruitlessly for most. In Reconstruction, the historian Eric Foner quotes a Freedmen’s Bureau agent who notes of the emancipated, “in their eyes, the work of emancipation was incomplete until the families which had been dispersed by slavery were reunited.”

Lee’s heavy hand on the Arlington plantation, Pryor writes, nearly led to a slave revolt, in part because the enslaved had been expected to be freed upon their previous master’s death, and Lee had engaged in a dubious legal interpretation of his will in order to keep them as his property, one that lasted until a Virginia court forced him to free them.

When two of his slaves escaped and were recaptured, Lee either beat them himself or ordered the overseer to "lay it on well." Wesley Norris, one of the slaves who was whipped, recalled that “not satisfied with simply lacerating our naked flesh, Gen. Lee then ordered the overseer to thoroughly wash our backs with brine, which was done.”

Every state that seceded mentioned slavery as the cause in their declarations of secession. Lee’s beloved Virginia was no different, accusing the federal government of “perverting” its powers “not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern Slaveholding States.” Lee’s decision to fight for the South can only be described as a choice to fight for the continued existence of human bondage in America—even though for the Union, it was not at first a war for emancipation.

During his invasion of Pennsylvania, Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia enslaved free blacks and brought them back to the South as property. Pryor writes that “evidence links virtually every infantry and cavalry unit in Lee’s army” with the abduction of free black Americans, “with the activity under the supervision of senior officers.”

Soldiers under Lee’s command at the Battle of the Crater in 1864 massacred black Union soldiers who tried to surrender. Then, in a spectacle hatched by Lee’s senior corps commander A.P. Hill, the Confederates paraded the Union survivors through the streets of Petersburg to the slurs and jeers of the southern crowd. Lee never discouraged such behavior. As the historian Richard Slotkin wrote in No Quarter: The Battle of the Crater, “his silence was permissive.”

The presence of black soldiers on the field of battle shattered every myth the South’s slave empire was built on: the happy docility of slaves, their intellectual inferiority, their cowardice, their inability to compete with whites. As Pryor writes, “fighting against brave and competent African Americans challenged every underlying tenet of southern society.” The Confederate response to this challenge was to visit every possible atrocity and cruelty upon black soldiers whenever possible, from enslavement to execution.

As the historian James McPherson recounts in Battle Cry of Freedom, in October of that same year, Lee proposed an exchange of prisoners with the Union general Ulysses S. Grant. “Grant agreed, on condition that blacks be exchanged ‘the same as white soldiers.’” Lee’s response was that “negroes belonging to our citizens are not considered subjects of exchange and were not included in my proposition.” Because slavery was the cause for which Lee fought, he could hardly be expected to easily concede, even at the cost of the freedom of his own men, that blacks could be treated as soldiers and not things. Grant refused the offer, telling Lee that “Government is bound to secure to all persons received into her armies the rights due to soldiers.” Despite its desperate need for soldiers, the Confederacy did not relent from this position until a few months before Lee’s surrender.

After the war, Lee did counsel defeated southerners against rising up against the North. Lee might have become a rebel once more, and urged the South to resume fighting—as many of his former comrades wanted him to. But even in this task Grant, in 1866, regarded his former rival as falling short, saying that Lee was “setting an example of forced acquiescence so grudging and pernicious in its effects as to be hardly realized.”

Nor did Lee’s defeat lead to an embrace of racial egalitarianism. The war was not about slavery, Lee insisted later, but if it was about slavery, it was only out of Christian devotion that white southerners fought to keep blacks enslaved. Lee told a New York Herald reporter, in the midst of arguing in favor of somehow removing blacks from the South (“disposed of,” in his words), “that unless some humane course is adopted, based on wisdom and Christian principles you do a gross wrong and injustice to the whole negro race in setting them free. And it is only this consideration that has led the wisdom, intelligence and Christianity of the South to support and defend the institution up to this time.”

Lee had beaten or ordered his own slaves to be beaten for the crime of wanting to be free, he fought for the preservation of slavery, his army kidnapped free blacks at gunpoint and made them unfree—but all of this, he insisted, had occurred only because of the great Christian love the South held for blacks. Here we truly understand Frederick Douglass’s admonition that "between the Christianity of this land and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference."

Privately, according to the correspondence collected by his own family, Lee counseled others to hire white labor instead of the freedmen, observing “that wherever you find the negro, everything is going down around him, and wherever you find a white man, you see everything around him improving.”

In another letter, Lee wrote “You will never prosper with blacks, and it is abhorrent to a reflecting mind to be supporting and cherishing those who are plotting and working for your injury, and all of whose sympathies and associations are antagonistic to yours. I wish them no evil in the world—on the contrary, will do them every good in my power, and know that they are misled by those to whom they have given their confidence; but our material, social, and political interests are naturally with the whites.”

Publicly, Lee argued against the enfranchisement of blacks, and raged against Republican efforts to enforce racial equality on the South. Lee told Congress that blacks lacked the intellectual capacity of whites and “could not vote intelligently,” and that granting them suffrage would “excite unfriendly feelings between the two races.” Lee explained that “the negroes have neither the intelligence nor the other qualifications which are necessary to make them safe depositories of political power.” To the extent that Lee believed in reconciliation, it was between white people, and only on the precondition that black people would be denied political power and therefore the ability to shape their own fate.

Lee is not remembered as an educator, but his life as president of Washington College (later Washington and Lee) is tainted as well. According to Pryor, students at Washington formed their own chapter of the KKK, and were known by the local Freedmen’s Bureau to attempt to abduct and rape black schoolgirls from the nearby black schools.

There were at least two attempted lynchings by Washington students during Lee’s tenure, and Pryor writes that “the number of accusations against Washington College boys indicates that he either punished the racial harassment more laxly than other misdemeanors, or turned a blind eye to it,” adding that he “did not exercise the near imperial control he had at the school, as he did for more trivial matters, such as when the boys threatened to take unofficial Christmas holidays.” In short, Lee was as indifferent to crimes of violence toward blacks carried out by his students as he was when they were carried out by his soldiers.

Lee died in 1870, as Democrats and ex-Confederates were commencing a wave of terrorist violence that would ultimately reimpose their domination over the Southern states. The Ku Klux Klan was founded in 1866; there is no evidence Lee ever spoke up against it. On the contrary, he darkly intimated in his interview with the Herald that the South might be moved to violence again if peace did not proceed on its terms. That was prescient.

Lee is a pivotal figure in American history worthy of study. Neither the man who really existed, nor the fictionalized tragic hero of the Lost Cause, are heroes worthy of a statue in a place of honor. As one Union veteran angrily put it in 1903 when Pennsylvania was considering placing a statute to Lee at Gettysburg, “If you want historical accuracy as your excuse, then place upon this field a statue of Lee holding in his hand the banner under which he fought, bearing the legend: ‘We wage this war against a government conceived in liberty and dedicated to humanity.’” The most fitting monument to Lee is the national military cemetery the federal government placed on the grounds of his former home in Arlington.

To describe this man as an American hero requires ignoring the immense suffering for which he was personally responsible, both on and off the battlefield. It requires ignoring his participation in the industry of human bondage, his betrayal of his country in defense of that institution, the battlefields scattered with the lifeless bodies of men who followed his orders and those they killed, his hostility toward the rights of the freedmen and his indifference to his own students waging a campaign of terror against the newly emancipated. It requires reducing the sum of human virtue to a sense of decorum and the ability to convey gravitas in a gray uniform.

There are former Confederates who sought to redeem themselves—one thinks of James Longstreet, wrongly blamed by Lost Causers for Lee’s disastrous defeat at Gettysburg, who went from fighting the Union army to leading New Orleans’s integrated police force in battle against white supremacist paramilitaries. But there are no statues of Longstreet in New Orleans.* Lee was devoted to defending the principle of white supremacy; Longstreet was not. This, perhaps, is why Lee was placed atop the largest Confederate monument at Gettysburg in 1917,  but the 6-foot-2-inch Longstreet had to wait until 1998 to receive a smaller-scale statue hidden in the woods that makes him look like a hobbit riding a donkey. It’s why Lee is remembered as a hero, and Longstreet is remembered as a disgrace.

The white supremacists who have protested on Lee’s behalf are not betraying his legacy. In fact, they have every reason to admire him. Lee, whose devotion to white supremacy outshone his loyalty to his country, is the embodiment of everything they stand for. Tribe and race over country is the core of white nationalism, and racists can embrace Lee in good conscience.

The question is why anyone else would.

* This article originally stated that there are no statues of Longstreet in the American South; in fact, there is one in his hometown of Gainesville, Georgia. We regret the error.

[florafaunaravenna]

Reflections on Crescent Lake and the Salt Creek Tide Pools

On the morning of April 13th our Natural History class piled into a fleet of university sponsored minivans and headed out for the Olympic Peninsula. I didn’t know what to expect what I would find out there, but I had with me my most weatherproof clothing, my field guides, and a pair of high power binoculars strapped to my chest. I was ready to perceive the natural world and to perhaps find transcendence from my suburban life of “quiet desperation”, as good old Thoreau prescribed. 

After several hours of transit we made it out to the tide pools at Salt Creek. Walking along the beach was a pleasure, to begin with. By my feet in the fluctuous strand floor which seemed to yield to my boot soles as though the sand and sea water had mixed to produce some kind of non-newtonian sludge-y fluid, I could see the tiny pipholes that seemed to be produced by the mollusks that were buried under the sand, and the fluted “leaves” of the kelp and seawrack that laid forlorn all along the shore like the discarded clothing of mermaids. 

This was drawn at Salt Creek at 3:00 PM on April 13th, temperature around 46 degrees Fahrenheit, with a light rain falling and a brisk wind blowing from the West. I feel pacified and yet moved by the movement of all the life and the abiotic things around me. I wonder how much humans must muck around in the environment for them to be a threat to nature, because nature seems so vast and impenetrable. I notice that there’s a lively algae smell on the air, perhaps because there’s a lot of algae and kelp growing in the water, or perhaps because there is algae and kelp fermenting on the beach? It reminds me of third grade field trips. 

[a part of the coastline which rose rockily over the tideline, the first that were in abundance obviously had a much better hold and were more prominent in the places where their footing was more secure, and less likely to be disrupted by the continual shifting of the tidal movements] 

The sky was grey and overcast, and as I walked along I could feel beads of rain drop on me, and the brisk westerly wind (coming all the way from the Alaskan coast, as I understand it) reminded me of the hundreds of inches that fall out here in the peninsula, watering and nurturing the trees, ferns, and mosses that I would later see while walking around the woods nearby Crescent Lake.

I pulled out my binoculars and took a look at the trees of a promontory rising above the waters, and saw a bald eagle perched on a Douglas Fir. They like to be near shorelines so that they can hunt their favorite prey--fish--and they perch on high trees, so if there was a place I was going to see a bald eagle it would be there. 

[A Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) seen from below and partially obscured by a tree. I could only see its upper half and didn’t look at it when it flew away, but even from the distance and with the partially obscured view I could tell it was a powerful bird of prey. Its eyes had a noble cast to them, I thought.]

I looked through my binoculars, adjusting the focus to get a more advantageous and precise view, before I moved on crossed the strand towards a more rocky area of the beach. Here, what immediately struck me was the preponderance of barnacles and mussels latched onto almost every open rock that was hit or submerged in the briny water of the Sound. 

[walking along the rocky tidepools of Salt Creek, there was a ground cover--a carpet, basically--of barnacle encrusted Sea Mussels (Mytilis californianus) (so I would guess because of their size)]

I was told after asking about the mussels that they latched onto a substrate of dirt on the rocks using hairs that somehow grew out of their bodies, through their shells, and latched on with tight bonds to the rocks, where they clung and filter fed on whatever the tide brought in for food. 

Walking, wading, and climbing over the rocks and terrain of the rocks I saw a veritable cornucopia of life springing up unbidden from the water and the grey stones:

[a kelp crab (Pugentia producta] and a young Purple Sea Urchin (Strongylocentrotus purpuratus)]

[a unique Red Spong (Ophilitaspongia pennata)]

[A Black Chiton (Katharina tunicata) hanging out on the inside of a mussel shell]

[This sketch here is a drawing I made of one of two Green Anemones (Anthopleura xanthogrammica) that were swaying and swishing their stingers in shallow pool of water at the center of the rocky outcropping. I tried to get a closer look at the mouth but I was unable to tell how it was or by what mechanism or moving of parts the anemone actually eats. Its color was a vibrant, lively green hue that reminded me a faded neon, or perhaps like electrified grass]

I triapsed back and forth over the beachhead, looking at this or that thing, until I could feel the wind cutting nearly to my bones. It felt a lot like the wind that came down from the cloud and chilled poor Annabel Lee, so I eventually beat a retreat to the minivans parked above the beach after taking a few good looks at the Oystercatcher strutting about on a distant rock. I learned that barnacles latch onto rocks with their heads and that the openings that I had figured to be their mouths were actually their feet, which they used to draw in their food. 

It occurred to me almost strange the reality that many of our natural habitats and environmental treasures are being eradicated or put to unbearable levels of stress by human industrial activity, because the ocean and its consequent liveliness seemed so vast and inexhaustaible out there. I felt insignificant and truly microscopic in my human concerns in comparison to the vast teeming universe of life and interaction that was occurring below those waves. I knew that I was only glimpsing a portion, a sliver of the strange life and kingdom that operated 24/7 below the foaming and cresting sea. So on the way to Crescent Lake I closed my eyes and tried very hard to commit all that I’d seen to memory, and if I couldn’t commit it exactly it as it had been to memory, to at least preserve the essence of the feelings and passions that were stirred in me as I gazed out over the grey windy horizon.

Also, I noted that in terms of abiotic and biotic factors, the abiotic factors were a much stronger influence on these creatures that I could visibly see than a biotic factor like some predator. The placement of the mussels and the more stationary sea creatures, like the anemones, limpets, and barnacles were entirely dependent on where the rocks were to be found to be firmly lodged in place and yet swept over by the tide. The rocks provided a stable base for the mollusks and the bivalves to live while the presence of the tide brought in necessary sustenance. The eagle also, was dependent on having a large tree and a lack of human interference ( I later learned) to make its livelihood of hunting small fish easier along the coastline.

The next day, after our group had slept overnight in the fine lodgings of Camp Rosemary, I went out early with a group (around 6:30 in the AM) to do some bird watching. Tim demonstrated how birds could be attracted through the use of a call that could be replicated on a smart phone, though he advised against the repetitious use of such methods, apparently because the birds catch on to what you’re doing and start ignoring the calls altogether. Still, I got a good chance to use my binoculars and my not-so-great faculties of snap-second perceptiveness to try to catch some birds in their natural habitat. I saw a hairy woodpecker, a red-breasted nut hatch, and saw quite a few pacific wrens, who engaged in a kind of territorial dispute with another group of pacific wrens right before my eyes. 

[I attempted here to draw from memory and the aid of some judicious googling later a Red-breasted Nut Hatch that I was only able to take a rather blurry photo of by pressing my phone camera up into the eye hold of my binoculars. The bird was small and danced on the branc, up and down before flying off into another part of the forest. It’s call had a distinctive up swing to it that I found pleasant and compelling]

At the end of our walk we saw a couple of lone alders, which I was able to distinguish because of their whitish trunks. Tim said that the alders were pioneering, in that they were better able than other trees to grow after an area had been disturbed, either by a fire, or by human intervention.

A picture of Lake Crescent early in the morning. A Very Pristine and Beautiful Lake. This was taken at 6:30 in the morning, on April 14th, clear skies, temperature of 47 degrees Fahrenheit. The drawing was made in the same conditions.

I feel awe, wonder, a closeness to divinity, and calmness. I wonder whether the lake freezes over in the winter times, and how often it does if it does. I notice that the fog is rolling seemingly very slowly back over the mountains at this hour and I also wonder what causes the fog to be so thick around these parts. It reminds me of some ancient past that I feel all of humanity must feel resonate in their deepest heart of hearts hearkening back to some primeval grandness.

I attempted to make a drawing of the other side that I could see from where I was standing, where the fog was rolling slowly and leisurely off the snowcapped hills, and the fir and pines were standing so proudly and tall with their distinctive bronze and dark green leafy coat. Really a sublime sight to see.

We went walking through the forest and I got a much better look at the strange biotic and abiotic interactions that influenced the growth and ecosystem of the woods. In one case there was a clearing where someone had probably cut down trees to make room for a cabin. The person had packed all that up and moved away, maybe 50 years ago or so, because there were about 4 or 5 slanting alders standing there in the clearing, reaching up towards the forest canopy.

A lot of what affected the tree ecosystem, as I understood it, was competition for light. The trees that could grow the tallest the most quickly--usually the Hemlock--were to dominate the forest, except in those cases when another element of nature, such as a fire, made it so that the cedars, with their natural resistance to fire, could thrive in the absence of other competitors. This interplay between abiotic and biotic factors in deciding the makeup of the forest was very interesting to me. It wasn’t just that the tall trees predominated as one would imagine. Instead, there was a more complex interaction happening betyween various advantages and idiosyncrasies of the trees. Some were more prone to being choked by the growth of moss or other epiphytes on their brances. Some were able to synergize with the epiphytes by taking nutrients that the epiphytes created from the atmosphere using their natural ability to fix nitrogen.

[This was a particularly interesting specimen. The tree had collapsed and became a stump, but had somehow continued to survive because it was now tethered to a nearby fir by something called a mychorrizal mat. If there were more competition for resources this stump would surely die, but because there was an abundance it could live a sort of half life attached to a nearby healthy specimen]

[I couldn’t identify this mushroom very well. It had a glossy brown cap, and a slightly pale stalk. The most distinctive feature of it that caught my eye was the gill-like folds underneath the cap, that, when I rubbed my fingers over them, left behind a kind of velvety residue on the pads]

Overall the trip was remarkable and mind blowing in many ways, and though I am but a novice and neophyte... And truly of weak and small comprehension when it comes to naturalism and the natural world in general, I was more than glad and even grateful that I had had the opportunity to be in the natural world and learn something about it. While I was learning about the alder’s pioneering nature, and the hemlock’s preponderant survivability in difficult and rocky conditions, the eagle’s disdain of humanity and the symbiotic relationship between the trees and the moss, or got to touch the side of a glacial erratic and see the places where the driving action of a giant glacier must of have worn it smooth and then rough again and again over thousands of years, I was in awe, I really was.

[lievbios]

Angel || Cordelia Chase

Name: Cordelia Chase

Age: 18

Relationship: Single [Verse depending]

Sexuality: Bisexual

Job: Student

Faceclaims: Charisma Carpenter

Cordelia Chase was an agent of the Powers That Be. She attended Sunnydale High School as a teenager, where she was a popular cheerleader known for her standoffish “Queen Bee” personality and attitude. Since the school was situated on a Hellmouth, Cordelia also became familiar with demons and mystical occurrences, even helping to fight them as part of the “Scooby Gang.” After graduating high school, Cordelia moved to Los Angeles where she joined supernatural detective agency Angel Investigations and gained the power of the visions. These visions gave Cordelia great insight into the pain of others, stripping her of her selfishness and forging her into a dedicated and powerful warrior in the fight against evil. However, they also allowed her to fall victim to the machinations of the goddess Jasmine. Cordelia died in 2004, using her last moments on Earth to aid her friend and love, Angel, and put the disillusioned hero back on his heroic path. After death, Cordelia legitimately became a higher being in the service of the Powers That Be.

Cordelia was the only daughter of a wealthy family in the small town of Sunnydale, California. She has a cousin named Timmy which she practiced cutting hair on.[6] She was a very beautiful and popular girl, whose fashionable clique was nicknamed the “Cordettes” and included Cordelia’s best friend, Harmony Kendall. She was a spoiled, stuck-up brat who enjoyed ridiculing those she saw as inferior and dismissed her classmates Xander Harris, Willow Rosenberg, and Jesse McNally as “losers.” In ninth grade, she and Harmony took remedial Spanish together, where a boy named Donnie Wray developed a crush on her and wrote an embarrassing song about her.[7] Cordelia was among the many students and teachers at Sunnydale High who ignored unpopular student Marcie Ross so completely that she literally faded out of sight.[8] At one point, Cordelia had a crush on senior student Daryl Epps, an all-star champion football star, until his untimely death in a rock-climbing accident.[9]

In her sophomore year, Cordelia immediately befriended Buffy Summers, a new girl who transferred from Los Angeles. Cordelia, in a nutshell, was the embodiment of who Buffy was before becoming the Slayer, and became the chief foil at school for Buffy. Buffy could not stand Cordelia’s snobby behavior towards her less popular classmates and instead became friends with Willow, Xander, Jesse, and the new librarian, Buffy’s Watcher Rupert Giles. When Buffy mistakenly attacked Cordelia with a stake, Cordelia made it her mission to make Buffy as much of an outcast as possible,[10] despite the fact that Buffy later saved her life on several occasions.[10][11] When Cordeila ran for May Queen, her boyfriend Mitch Fargo was beaten up, Harmony was pushed down a flight of stairs, and Cordelia’s favorite teacher was nearly suffocated. Realizing the attacks must have been about her, Cordelia swallowed her pride and contacted Buffy for help. She discovered that invisible student Marcie Ross was responsible for terrorizing her, and Buffy saved her life when Marcie tried to mutilate her as revenge for ignoring her.[8] Despite her tendency to rationalize strange events, Cordelia was forced to finally accept the existence of dark forces in Sunnydale when she was attacked by vampires on the night of the Spring Fling. Learning that Sunnydale was on a Hellmouth and that Buffy was the Slayer, Cordelia became a reluctant ally to the “Scooby Gang.”[12]

The two dated for the rest of their junior year going into the senior year. When Spike returned to Sunnydale and kidnapped Willow and Xander, Cordelia and Oz searched for the two, both falling witnesses to Xander and Willow’s kiss. Running away, she fell through weak flooring and was impaled by a large piece of rebar. While in the hospital, a heartbroken Cordelia confronted Xander for his cheating and broke up with him. When she returned to school, she attempted to regain her standing with the Cordettes but was rebuffed and insulted by Harmony.

After being shunned by her friends and severing ties with the Scooby Gang, Cordelia befriended a new student, Anya[17] Blaming Buffy for everything that was wrong in her life, Cordelia wished that Buffy had never come to Sunnydale. Anya, who was really Anyanka, a vengeance demon, granted this wish. At first, Cordelia was pleased with her circumstances, but soon came to realize that Sunnydale, was really worse off without Buffy upon discovering that The Master had risen and both Xander and Willow were vampires and her hometown, a wasteland overrun by bloodsuckers. She went to Giles for help but was killed by Willow and Xander, however Giles was able to destroy Anyanka’s power and change things back to normal.[18]

Despite her intelligence and having been accepted to the likes of Columbia University, Cordelia found herself unexpectedly unable to afford college due to her family’s sudden financial reversals, and therefore, she moved to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career. Meeting Angel at a Hollywood party, she pretended to be successful, when she was, in fact, nearly penniless, renting a dilapidated apartment and stealing food from such parties. Her agent was ignoring her calls, and she had no family to turn to, having severed ties. Desperate, Cordelia met with Russell Winters, believing that he would be able to relieve her of her meager financial situation. However, with her experience as a member of the “Scooby Gang”, Cordelia immediately recognized that Winters was actually a vampire.[21]

As Angel’s link to The Powers That Be, Cordelia grew more sensitive to the feelings of others as she experienced the pain of the subjects of each vision. The visions became increasingly more frequent and intense, and began to physically damage her brain. For months, she secretly took powerful painkillers and underwent CAT scans and MRI’S that indicated the slow deterioration of her brain tissue. Yet, when presented with the opportunity to pass her visions to the heroic Groosalugg (through the act of sexual intercourse) during a short trip to the demonic dimension Pylea, Cordelia refused, stating that the visions were a part of her and made her who she was, a Champion.[24]

During this time, Cordelia developed romantic feelings for Angel as did he for her, but when the Groosalugg arrived in Los Angeles after being dethroned, Cordelia decided to put her feelings for Angel on hold and began a passionate relationship with Groo, going so far as to use a spell to allow the two to have sex without Cordelia losing her visions, and even giving him a makeover to resemble Angel right down to the hairstyle and wardrobe. Tormented by this, and gripped by a growing fear and jealousy that Groo would eventually replace him as the team’s primary fighter, Angel gave the two money to take an extended vacation. Upon their return, they discovered that numerous horrific events had occurred, including the kidnapping of Angel’s infant son, Connor, at the hands of vengeful vampire hunter Daniel Holtz. In response to this, Cordelia immediately shifted her attention to Angel, and Groo eventually realized that she truly loved Angel, proceeding to depart Los Angeles after a final farewell.

Unbeknownst to everyone, Cordelia’s transformation also set in motion a major chain of events: her body became suitable for use by powerful forces. Cordelia’s transformation gave her the power, not entirely under her control, to cleanse evil influence with a white glowing light.[26][27]

For three months, Cordelia was stuck on a higher plane and expressed extreme feelings of boredom, unable to talk to her friends or do any good. She was, however, able to watch her friends on Earth as well as all of Angel’s past deeds as an evil vampire. When Angel’s destiny was stolen in Las Vegas, Cordelia used her power of divine intervention to help Angel out by making him win at a rigged slot machine so he could get into the right place at the right time.

Cordelia somehow finally returned to Earth, though with a fallen power piggy backing right along with her. Because of this, the Powers That Be’s safeguard was triggered and Cordelia’s memories were wiped clean and the fallen power made dormant. When the amnesiac Cordelia found herself at Angel Investigations, Angel and the others hid the bizarre reality of their situation from Cordelia, fearing it would be too much for her to handle. Confused and suspicious of Angel Investigations and those who worked there, Cordelia sought the truth and was horrified by what she discovered about her life as a Champion. After being attacked by a violent demon and several Wolfram & Hart operatives, Cordelia was rescued by Connor, Angel’s now teenage son and, feeling safe with him, decided to live in his loft because she appreciated Connor’s honesty about the supernatural.

While pregnant and under Jasmine’s possession, “Cordelia” horribly murdered the last sun totem, Manjet, Lilah Morgan, and the Svear family to serve Jasmine’s plans. Along with these things, she brought forth a nearly invincible demon called The Beast, and convinced Angel and his team to take away Angel’s soul and bring forth Angelus to distract them in order to keep her plans secret as well as attempting to have Angelus be her minion. Cordelia stole Angel’s soul so that he could not return and continually told Connor that they were special, deceiving him into believing that the rest of the group hated them and would kill their baby.

After several months in the hospital, Cordelia seemingly awoke from her coma and was shocked by the events that had transpired in her absence. What apparently woke her was a vision from the Powers That Be. She learned that Angel Investigations no longer worked as a detective agency at the Hyperion Hotel, but had taken over the Los Angeles branch of Wolfram & Hart with Angel as CEO. Angel explained that the team was attempting to use Wolfram & Hart’s near-infinite resources to fight against evil, but Cordelia was unconvinced, describing what he had done as a “deal with the devil.” She learned that the real reason for Angel’s decision was that Wolfram & Hart agreed to erase Connor’s memories so he could live a normal, happy life with another family; the rest of the team’s memories of Connor had been similarly erased. Cordelia apologized to Wesley for killing Lilah, but he assured her he did not hold her responsible for Jasmine’s actions. When Angel learned that their old foe Lindsey McDonald had returned and was planning to activate Wolfram & Hart’s failsafe to eliminate him, Cordelia helped him defeat Lindsey, being enraged to discover that Lindsey had taken Doyle’s identity. Afterwards, she confessed to Angel that her return was only temporary and that it was time for her to leave much to his chagrin. They shared a kiss before Angel received a phone call telling him Cordelia had died in her coma, having never awoken. He turned to look at Cordelia, since he just kissed her, but she was gone.[31] Later that night, Angel received a vision—given to him via Cordelia’s kiss—that granted him the knowledge he needed to bring down the Circle of the Black Thorn and prevent the apocalypse.[32] Upon her death, Cordelia became a legitimate higher power.

Angel succeeded in defeating the Circle, but the Senior Partners banished all of Los Angeles to hell as a result. In the ensuing chaos, Angel was rendered human and Gunn was turned into a vampire. Wesley, who had died in the battle against the Circle and was a ghost, attempted to contact Cordelia in the hopes of getting the assistance of the Powers That Be, but they were unable to help as they had no influence in the Senior Partners’ hell dimension. However, Cordelia managed to muster a slight breeze to let Wesley know she was listening.[33] Later, when Angel was fatally injured by Gunn, Cordelia was able to appear to him to help ease his transition into death. She was heartbroken by what had become of her friends, but was nevertheless amused to learn that Angel had accidentally named his dragon after her. Angel and Cordelia watched helplessly from another plane as Wesley revealed that Angel’s role in the Shanshu Prophecy would be one where he would massacre many people.[34] As Angel chose to succumb to death, not wanting such events to transpire, Connor appeared and inspired his father to keep fighting. Cordelia urged Angel to go back to his son before fading away, assuring him before she left that he could never be what he saw in the vision.[35] After the restoration of Los Angeles, Angel came to recognize Cordelia’s presence in the gentle breeze, often trying to dissuade his pessimism, such as when he was brooding about whether Wesley and Fred would be united in the afterlife.

Cordelia evolved dramatically throughout her years working in the Scooby Gang and Angel Investigations. She changed from an egocentric snob to a person whose life was increasingly dedicated to helping others. When first introduced, Cordelia felt no burning desire to become a better person, but suffered rejection and mockery from her original friends as she outgrew their shallowness. She was vain, often self-absorbed, and appeared to care more about clothes than people. Buffy and her friends often found Cordelia’s shallowness annoying and off-putting, so it took some time for them to warm up to her (however, Buffy and Cordelia still held somewhat of a bickering friendship during her time in the Scooby Gang).

After moving to Los Angeles, Cordelia inherited visions that allowed her to feel the pain of others, which changed her future from being a famous actress to “helping the helpless.” Cordelia was similar to Buffy, in that they both started as shallow and vapid but gradually became more dedicated to others and their own duty. Additionally, like Buffy, Cordelia matured after being put in a position of being a hero. Similarly, while Buffy matured after caring for her sister Dawn, Cordelia became more nurturing while caring for the infant Connor. In actuality, despite never being very close to Buffy, Cordelia was actually a lot like her in personality (which may have been partly the reason Angel loved her as well).

Cordy died with a grounded confidence and compassion for those in need, which replaced the arrogance and vanity of her adolescent self. Since Cordelia’s first appearance, she has had a passionate love of clothes, which remained unchanged up through her final day on earth; in fact,[7] she quickly forgave Angel for his prior actions after discovering that he had bought her an entire set of designer clothes as an apology, similar to how she made peace with Xander when he paid for her prom dress.[19]

Originally a normal human, Cordelia began receiving prophetic visions from The Powers That Be.[41] The visions usually consisted of ambiguous imagery of forthcoming attacks on innocents or various demonic disasters. Cordelia used this imagery to help Angel prevent them from happening.

Cordelia was the mother of a brood of Haxil Beast spawn.[42] When pregnant with them, she gained a telepathic connection with the children and their father, who used it to control her. Cordelia was forced to be the host of an unborn Skilosh Demon, which granted her a working third eye in the back of her skull until it was removed.[43]

Cordelia claimed that as a cheerleader, she need only be shown a move once before being able to mimic it, and demonstrated this by successfully copying a series of combat moves Angel is teaching her, and manages to corner him as a result.[44] She continued to learn how to fight under the instruction of Connor.[45]

After her death, Cordelia was promoted to become a Higher Being by the Powers That Be as a reward for all her sacrifices, and especially for helping Angel one last time in his war against the Senior Partners and Circle of the Black Thorn.

As a higher being, Cordelia was shown to possess the powers of:

Telekinesis: Cordelia used this ability to help Angel win a game to save people’s souls.

Retro-cognition: Cordelia witnessed Angel’s history of misdeeds as Angelus through this ability.

Aerokinesis: To let Angel know that she was hearing him, Cordelia created a cool breeze of air.

Premonition: When Angel was dying, Cordelia sent a vision of herself in his mind to provide him with both encouragement and hope. When she was in doubt of her feelings for Angel, she was also shown what was to come through this ability.

Time-Manipulation: Before she ascended to the higher plane, Cordelia’s powers of light-manipulation advanced to the point where she was able to stop time itself, allowing Skip to explain to her that she had become a higher power.

VERSES

[chaoticblades]

Wing Meta: Kalas

Now that the holidays (and extended family interactions =____=) are over, let’s talk about our favorite fuckup! :D

I think this one has even more spoilers than the Xelha post.

Wing Meta: Xelha

Wing Meta: Savyna and Lyude

So, good ol’ カラス. There’s little point in speculating about the inspiration for his wings (since the game is very, very clear on the raven theme), buuuut I’m gonna do it anyway ‘cause that’s just the kinda guy I am.

Well, that and the fact that they’re no ordinary corvid wings. They’ve got a distinctive hook off the wrist, which is most likely an unusually pronounced alula (aka bird thumb), meaning that what we’re looking at is exposed bone. Spooky! (Also appropriate, given the whole carrion bird/harbinger of apocalypse thing.)

Fun fact! According to Wikipedia, “alula” translates to “winglet”! And it’s also called a “bastard wing”. And Kalas has no parents, so....

Anyway, his wing is otherwise a fairly standard shape for that family... except for the pronounced secondaries. Alas, I’m not actually a bird person so I won’t speculate further about that (so as to spare myself any more hours of futile corvid research. The winglet diagram comes in real handy here, since it’s basically a mirrored skeleton of his other wing). Finally, he’s got falcon-like stripes on his pinions resulting in a mix of browns and greys.

Even expanding into other corvid species, I could’t find any that truly matched these details.

In any case, onto symbolism!

Ravens are consistently depicted across cultures as tricksters and omens of misfortune and death, though the latter is isn’t nearly as universal. 

Trickster Ravens

Corvids in general are considered highly intelligent birds, an attribute that they mainly use for theft. For example, they’ve been known to yank the tails of other birds/animals in order to distract them from a tasty, tasty meal. Magpies in particular have such a rep for stealing End Magnus shinies that they’ve become synonymous with the act in much the same way as we use “packrat” to describe a hoarder and “chicken” a coward.

Ravens As Omens

In Greek tradition, a white raven was Apollo’s messenger. Ravens are more relevant in terms of the practice of augury, a form of divination in which certain birds are observed for signs of favor/displeasure of the gods. Ravens (and crows) fall under the label of “oscines”, or birds whose omens are determined based upon their calls. They aren’t regarded as being inherently unlucky (that dubious honor goes to the owl).

According to Wikipedia (citation desperately longed for), in Serbian folklore ravens “appear in pairs and play the role of harbingers of tragic news... in combination with female characters as receivers of the news”.

Unlike black cats, there’s an emphasis on ravens as a sign of misfortune to come rather than an embodiment of it. Similarly, they don’t directly symbolize death; instead they’re merely associated with it, much in the way one might associate the fall colors with the coming winter.

Ravens in Japanese Folklore

I went through many layers of questionable research to get this info, so it damn well better be accurate.

Yatagarasu, the 3-legged crow, was a guide sent by Amaterasu to Emperor Jimmu in order to guide his lost ass to his future seat of power.

Seen here: Yatagarasu and Jimmy’s lost ass (left).

After Google Fu’ing for awhile to figure out the meaning behind a sentence found word-for-word and lacking citation in nearly every article on Yatagarasu, I finally managed to track down an additional piece of lore: he is apparently an incarnation of Kamo Taketsunumi no Mikoto, god of good fortune and founder of the Kamo clan (???? Maybe??? All those articles weren’t kidding when they said the legends of Yatagarasu are contradictory).

Color Symbolism

This is, of course, something the varies from culture to culture. The relevant symbols here are black and white.

Black

West

death/void

authority

evil

mystery

Japan

evil

bad luck (take this with a grain of salt--I don’t trust my sources on this)

White

West

purity

peace

holiness

sterility

Japan

death

mourning

simplicity/purity

Interpretation

Kalas and Fate

So how does this shape how we can interpret Kalas?

It’s best to start with how he got the name in the first place.

Hearing you were not the perfect being [Geldoblame] had envisioned, he called you an ill omen, a cursed premonition of things to come. He named you Kalas, which means Raven in a long-lost language.

Larikush, on the origin of Kalas’ name

I guess it was the reason for my existence, and my hatred.... Something I just couldn’t get rid of.

Kalas, on why his name was the only thing he remembered after Alfard

And, of course, straight from Emperor Gelnochill himself:

I found you Kalas, you sickly raven!!!

Geldohead, triple exclamation his

I find Kalas’ comment the most interesting, since it’s an explicit reference to the theme of destiny yes I said it that is woven into the Baten Kaitos as a whole. One of the things I really like about this series is the interplay between fate and choice--many characters have fated roles (Kalas, Xelha, Melodia, Mizuti, Sagi, Guillo, people touched by the Dark Brethren in general) but even as they fulfill them, the narrative never treats it as if free will is antonymous with these events.

Dr. Georg’s experiments were aimed at creating a Magnus of Life. This would be the exact opposite of the End Magnus, which are symbols of death and destruction... Kalas and Malepercio may have been destined to fight one another....Kalas could be said to be a bad omen for Malpercio, a harbinger of the god’s demise

Lyude, on something that’s really sad once you’ve played Origins

Love and hatred... Melodia[sic], and Kalas... She is Malpercio’s curse to the world, Kalas must be his prayer...

Xelha, ditto

“Fate” is largely played as being somewhere between divine intervention and the consequences of choice (e.g. Malpercio seeking power from the Dark Brethren put everything in motion), hence why the Magnus of Life could and did choose not to oppose Malpercio at first. It makes for an interesting hierarchy of power, like an arch.

The Dark Brethren can be considered the keystone and Malpercio the arch itself--it is by their power that Malpercio is what it is, their locking the gods into position that keeps them from acting of their own will. Melodia and Kalas are outside forces, bound to--but unfettered by--the conflict between master and unwilling servant. Despite their role as pawns, they’re the ones with the most power. Influence can be asserted over them, but in the end it’s their hands that decide if the keystone is restored or removed.

Kalas’ identity as the ominous raven is the perfect example of this theme at play. He’s repeatedly acknowledged as an entity of misfortune, but ultimately it’s his will that decides whose. He’s no passive auspice--bad things may happen to those around him, but only by way of his own agency (and the of others. Looking at you, Geldoblameworthy-for-his-own-problems). Even at the very end, when Melodia chooses to surrender to fate, it’s he who rescues her and tells Malpercio to rest.

He and Melodia can be considered the pair of ravens, Xelha the receiver, as per her witnessing them discuss their plans in Moonguile.

Kalas the Trickster

Kalas is possibly the most wily protagonist who isn’t straight up a villain I have ever seen. Street smart, people smart, and a fantastic actor, he’s able to pull the wool over the eyes of basically anyone who isn’t already aware of what he’s trying to do. It can be surmised that he’s also gifted at sleight of hand, given that no one noticed him slip an ever-glowing magnus to the ducal heir of Mira.

The entire first half of the game is an elaborate trick on the Guardian Spirit and Malpercio, fooling them about their memories and using them as a buffer against Malpercio’s power (though one has to wonder if that wasn’t just a trick on Melodia’s part, as Kalas was already exposed to that power. It would absolutely be in character for him to nope out of the picture if he thought that coming in contact would turn him into a boob monster).

As is common in the trickster archetype, he rarely relies on brute force to achieve his goals, to the point that one of the major character shifts in the late game is him swearing to take down Malpercio. Giacomo is his other blind spot, his mere appearance sending Kalas into an otherwise unseen rage. It’s easy to overlook that these are the exceptions, given how prominent they are (and how they launch you into one of the more dreaded fights in the game).

However, when it comes down to it, most of his work is done so quietly, it becomes a major reason to replay, just to see if you can catch him. Right from the get-go, he uses Xelha’s reference to Moonguile as an excuse to head on in. When she gets mad at him for looting, he restructures his argument to appeal to emotionalism and lets her believe what she wants. And while he initially resists joining up with her, he has no problem travelling together for convenience sake (and later, presumably, to stay close to the Earth Pendant and Chaotic Trio). Then there’s his efforts to direct suspicion onto Lyude. Despite coming across as the brashest member of the party, he frequently hides behind the others in this manner.

Yatagarasu

This section won’t be as carefully constructed as the others, but I believe the allusion is intentional. For the purpose of this argument, I’m going to have Kalas’ 3 arms--his arm arms/winglets and his natural wing--stand in place of Yatagarasu’s 3 legs. (Alternatively, one could count his original wing and the white wings, but I’m not going to for reasons to be indicted.)

Xelha takes the part of Jimmu, the royal wanderer. It was, after all, her dream of Kalas that was the inciting incident for her entire part in the story, returning him to the role of omen. It lead her to send out the witches, spy on Geldoblame, and bring Kalas along even knowing his intentions. In times of uncertainty throughout the story, she turns to her desire to save him as a source of strength and guidance.

Kalas: Black and White

Melodia refers to him both as “dark-winged stranger” and “white-winged darkness”. Kalas’ treatment in the narrative is interesting regarding the idea of purity. His lack of a second wing leads to him being ostracized by everyone from Geldoblame to some Miran randos. Larikush links the single wing to Kalas being “excessively human” and Balancoir Asshole #2′s “Malformed wings are the direct result of a malformed heart. His soul must have been tainted at birth”.

Of course, once he’s touched by Malpercio, he gains a (literally) shiny new pair of wings. This is also the point where he goes from morally distraught antihero to unrepentant mwahaha’er, only changing back when he makes the choice to rip out his additional wing.

The color symbolism is a little hard to decipher here, given that it’s an Eastern game but Kalas’ design is more West-inspired than just about any other character. From a Western perspective, it’s a fairly clear-cut juxtaposition of contrary symbols--his dark wings initially foreshadow his betrayal but ultimately are associated with his good side while the white represent the acceptance he seeks but are tainted by evil.

Kalas is the fallen angel, right down to Xelha being drawn to him like a moth to flame. I could probably make a whole section on Kalas being a croc-wearing anime Lucifer but I’m kinda really uncomfy with the Church, so I’d rather save myself that stretch.

In Japan it gets more complicated, assuming that that info regarding black’s symbolism is accurate. Because while the white of death is suitable for the dark harbinger, black isn’t terribly befitting of the Divine Child. It’s possible it’s a reference to the fact that Kalas wasn’t originally the Divine Child but *shrug*

Uh, so yeah. There’s plenty more I could say but this is already too long ^^;

[dndstorystuff]

TIBERIUS INVICTUS MAXIMUS

The God of Revolution and Freedom:

  Tiberius Invictus Maximus; his very name strikes fear into the hearts of tyrants across the world. A mortal who ascended to godhood, Tiberius, while being one of the weaker gods, is one of the most pervasive across society. Revolution is an integral part of society and one could say a vital part of nature itself. At its core, revolution is change, and change is always inevitable in every single field of life, nature, and the universe itself. Nothing stays constant, everything morphs, it is against the rules of life itself for something to remain constant. Such a thing would be a blight upon Tiberian ideals. At the same time, Tiberius also encompasses the nature of freedom. As a mortal, and as a god, Tiberius always held dear the value of the everyman, the people. He scorned those who ruled through might and fear and advocated through rule by the right of the people. Since becoming a God, he has continued to morph his ideology, to the point where he considers the greatest and most ultimate state of freedom to be the liberation of mortal man from the rule of the gods themselves. The end goal of Tiberius is to achieve total freedom through revolution by fighting and destroying the gods themselves. This will only be possible when the mortal world is completely free and united in the ways of Tiberius, for it is only then that he will be strong enough to liberate mortals from the rule of the gods. After that is complete and Tiberius reigns alone and supreme, he intends to kill himself, and leave the mortal world to guide itself, free from the tyranny of immortals.

  The Dual Nature of Tiberius:

  Tiberius represents revolution first and foremost. His nature demands that change must be brought to society, by any means necessary. When one thinks of Tiberius, one probably thinks of armed rebels storming capitols and beheading the heads of tyrants. But that is not always the case. It is certainly a prevalent strategy among Tiberians, but Tiberian cults have often brought about change peacefully. There must be a revolution, but it does not have to be a violent revolution. Tiberian ideals hold that revolution can even be achieved even through voting. The nature of the revolution often does not matter to Tiberius, due to his nature; a man who revolts to establish a tyranny would find the same support from Tiberius as a man who revolts to establish a democracy. However, due to his dual nature, the followers of Tiberius tend to be those who emphasize more free processes, although historical revolutions by authoritarians have been noted. 

  In terms of his personal involvement in revolutions, Tiberius cannot choose himself to avoid helping a revolution, as his nature demands that he do so. In addition, Tiberius is unable to force and ideology such as democracy on an authoritarian revolution, as that would be a breach of the freedom that he also embodies. However, Tiberius can, and has, sown the seeds for revolution, not through his direct support, but through his servants who he commands to do his will. Tiberius will often target authoritarian states, due to his personal disgust with them, and will command his followers to infiltrate the levels of the state in order to create a revolution that will hopefully push forward the freedom that Tiberius values.

  As said before, Tiberius, through his nature, MUST take up the mantle of all revolt, even if it is for an authoritarian purpose. This disgusts him, and often, any such revolt that is successful in establishing an authoritarian state finds itself facing significant pressure from the followers of Tiberius who form counterrevolutionaries at his command. Tiberius, as the embodiment of freedom, is also unable to force anything upon his mortal followers. They follow him through free will, and they are completely free to make their own decision of their own wills, regardless of what Tiberius himself would personally want. Tiberius can send orders to his followers, but they are not bound to them. If a Tiberian cultist truly wished to disobey the commands of Tiberius, he would not face any sort of divine punishment, most likely he would simply be opposed by other loyal followers and lose the favour and aid that Tiberius had given him.

  The Balance of the Dual Nature:

  Tiberius views his dual nature as a balance. Depending on the state of the world, or the particular area, Tiberius can have a heavy emphasis on revolt, and in others, mostly represent freedom, usually gained as a result of past revolutions. For example, Tiberius is seen as a god of revolution first by rebels and revolutionaries but is seen as a god of freedom first by those same rebels who establish a democracy after their revolt succeeds. The power and nature of Tiberius and his followers often radically differ depending on this balance in an area. The end goal of Tiberius is to fully embrace the aspect of freedom through revolution; as stated by the Tiberian prophecy.

  The Followers of Tiberius:

  Tiberius is a unique god, in that he tends to lack a formal system of worship. This is not always true, such as in the case of the Turonoc Republic, which has adopted the worship of Tiberius as the state religion, and the patron god of their civilization. They focus less on the aspect of Tiberius as a revolutionary, and mostly focus their worship and teachings on his aspect as a god of freedom; they teach that he is the patron of their democracy. For the most part, however, due to the revolutionary nature of Tiberius, any sort of worship is mostly underground and heavily monitored, or prohibited by the local elite. Tiberius encourages his followers to embrace his personal idea of freedom through revolution, but he also gains power and MUST give some form of favour to anyone who embraces the idea of either revolution (for any reason) or freedom (for any reason). Tiberius himself can choose to deliver limited aid, but he cannot actively sabotage or deny aid to any. The followers of Tiberius have a select few mottos, but they are not necessarily rules, more along the lines of guidelines or simply the personal ideals of Tiberius put into word. These are the three primary mottos of Tiberius himself:

  The first duty of a mortal is to think for himself

It is better to die than to be a slave

Freedom through Revolution is the great truth of the universe

  Once again, these are not rules, and the followers of Tiberius need not follow them. As said previously, a dictator may seek the help of Tiberius in revolution, just as peasant farmers would. These are simply the core values of Tiberius himself, and his most loyal followers.

  Powers of Tiberius:

  Tiberius is one of the weaker gods, and as such is not all that capable of doing great godly feats such as calling down pillars of fire and turning cities into salt. He also does not believe in massive intervention in mortal affairs, due to his relationship with Ruhan, and his general distaste of tyranny and authority. Rather, Tiberius tends to act through his followers. He grants them increased stamina, unnatural charisma, the strength of will to undergo a revolution. Tiberius provides the tools, but the benefactor must use them effectively themselves. As revolution, freedom, or number of followers grow in an area, The influence of Tiberius increases. Those blessed by him often find they no longer need sleep as they dedicate their full effort to the revolution. The longer and more established the revolt, or worship of Tiberius in an area makes it increasingly more difficult to combat it in any regard. The greatest power of Tiberius is reached when a revolution reaches a critical state, in which case an aspect of Tiberius, an angel that represents his will, arrives in the mortal plane to lead and assist the revolutionaries to glorious victory. This aspect of Tiberius is very strong, intelligent, and charismatic, but is not in anyway invincible. Its true form is a horrifying non-euclidean mess of geometry, as it is always in revolt against itself, but that form tends to drive mortals mad. As such, it hides within another form, that varies depending on who views it and what ideas they have of angels and Tiberius within their heart. The aspect of Tiberius appears unique to every individual and could appear as anything from a mighty demon of war and terror, to a beautiful maiden dressed in glorious armour and wielding a sword of light. Regardless, this aspect, just like it's god, cannot force anything. It too values freedom through revolution but is still beholden to help any revolt. It also cannot force the revolutionaries to adopt any particular government or even it's aid at all. No means no.

  Tiberian Relations:

  Tiberius generally does not enjoy particularly good relations with other gods. This is mostly his fault, as he despises those who wield their power tyrannically over others, and views most of the gods as no better than mortal tyrants. However, there are a few gods that Tiberius is willing to work with, and one who he considers being his true friend. Sate and Tiberius work well together, as Sate, being the god of change, meshes well with Tiberius, who represents revolution. Tiberius himself does not particularly like Sate, as he views change and chaos without the end-goal of freedom to be wasteful, but the two find themselves drawn together through their common bond. Ruhan is another god, who does not particularly share any sort of nature with Tiberius but is one of his greatest friends, which stemmed from their times as mortals. Ruhan and Tiberius work together against the other gods, and where one’s followers are, the others are often nearby providing help and assistance. Mirroring the friendship of the two, their followers also tend to work very well together.

  The Tiberian Prophecy:

  The prophecy of Tiberius is an ancient text that was created by a great woman lost to history. When the Imperium fell, and the Republic rose she foresaw a vision of the future in which Tiberius reigned victorious over the universe itself:

  Verily, I say unto thee, the era of revolution is nigh.

The great force of freedom will lay waste to the oppressor

All will be equal before the gods

For upon the final knell of the old world

Death will come to those who scorned its embrace

And in its sweetness, the world shalt be rent asunder by the might of mortals

Alas, for in the final triumph of the great revolution

He shall find himself wanting

And perish before the most unknowable of powers