#meaning they were born human and died a tragic death at sea

[plutoandpolaris]

Me, in my infinite hubris:

“I’m gonna set my Underwater AU in the 1700’s so I can have it take place during the golden age of piracy!”

Good going, genius! Now you’ve gotta somehow sift through maps like THIS

Just to figure out a birthplace for your characters.

Christ.

[astrognossienne]

tragic star: keith moon

“If you don't like it, you can fuck off!” - last words of Keith Moon

This one was a long time coming, but frankly, it took me a while to get interested enough in the subject to actually do this analysis, let alone finish it. At any rate, Keith Moon, like most of the drummers from the rock ‘n’ roll period that we still read about today, led a self-destructive lifestyle. A close friend of his once said the drummer was “like a train ride you couldn’t stop.” Not only was his drumming chaotic – so was his life. According to some, he was at his core a kind and generous soul, but to others, he was lost, lonely soul, and terribly immature throughout his adult life. Perhaps it was the sudden success, upon joining the rock band The Who, when he was only 18 (although plenty of others of the same era were as young, or younger, and survived just fine), but Keith was so eager to please and make everyone laugh that he eventually became the “Moon the Loon” character that he was portrayed as in the media. It got to the point where he wasn't sure who he really was. A true Leo, he made a circus out of everything and he wouldn't walk into any room and just listen. He was an attention seeker and he had to have it. He used amphetamines, tranquilizers, drank way too much alcohol, destroyed hotel rooms and friends’ homes, threw TVs into swimming pools, set fires, and the list goes on. He was ultimately unable to outrun or outlast his demons; whether it was the wife and child he drove away, the friend and chauffeur he accidentally killed in early 1970...whatever else haunted him, it ultimately caught up with him just as he was finally trying to improve his life. Friends were well-acquainted with the many sides to Moon’s strange personality; one minute he was insulting, exaggerating, joking – the next minute he’s a wide-eyed, innocent-looking drummer boy. The public Keith Moon was The Who’s manic drummer and hellraising, daredevil comedian; a man who only ever lived in the moment. However, the real Keith Moon was a son, a brother, a father and a deeply insecure man. A man of extremes, his was a complete shitshow of a life.

Keith Moon, according to astrotheme, was a Leo sun and Cancer moon (the moon is speculative). Moon was born to working class parents in Wembley, London, England. He was a hyperactive child by nature and a mediocre student at school. His art teacher said in a report: "Retarded artistically. Idiotic in other respects". His music teacher wrote that Moon "has great ability, but must guard against a tendency to show off." At the age of 12, he had joined the Sea Cadet Corp and was given his first musical instrument, the bugle. He left school by 15 and was in his first band, The Beachcombers. While performing with the Beachcombers, he used to attend concerts of a band called The Detours. At that time The Detours were planning to sign a deal with Fontana Records and for this deal, this band required a new drummer. The Detours changed their name to The Who in 1964. When Moon learned about the band’s need for a new drummer, he approached them for an audition. After the audition, he became their new drummer, and performed with The Who for the first time in 1962.

From the moment he joined, musically the band was complete, although adding his already volatile personality to those of the other three equally headstrong members meant that the early years of the Who's career were fraught with drama and violence, despite their almost immediate success.  Much of the tension came from the fact that Keith readily joined in on popping pills with guitarist Pete Townshend and bassist John Entwistle, while lead singer Roger Daltrey (with whom Keith was never particularly close) didn't. After sacking Roger for two weeks in mid-1965, he was reinstated, band relations improved, and the Who continued to release a string of successful singles and albums before a downturn in their fortunes in 1968. However, the release of the album Tommy in 1969 turned them into international megastars overnight and from that moment until the day Keith died, they would remain one of the top rock bands in the world. Running concurrently with the Who's rise to stardom in the 1960s was Keith's relationship with his wife Kim. She first met Keith in 1965 when he was 19 and she 15, and while they fell in love rather quickly, he exhibited twin streaks of jealousy and insecurity and Moon was occasionally violent towards Kim. While his mental issues, which would now be readily (and correctly) diagnosed as a combination of ADHD and BPD, reared their ugly heads on innumerable occasions, Keith's true personality shone through enough that Kim stayed with him; she decided to marry him when she became pregnant within a year of dating, and they got married in 1966. Their daughter Amanda was born on 12 July. In those days, there was a belief that married rockstars with kids weren’t as appealing to their mostly female fans, and the marriage (and child) were kept secret from the press until May 1968. He loved his daughter, but his absences due to touring and fondness for practical jokes made their relationship uneasy when she was very young. "He had no idea how to be a father", Kim said. "He was too much of a child himself."

The chaotic sixties would not hold a candle to what the new decade had in store for him, however. Shortly after New Year’s in 1970, Moon accidentally killed his friend, driver and bodyguard, Neil Boland, outside the Red Lion pub in Hatfield, Hertfordshire. Pub patrons had begun to attack his Bentley; Moon, drunk, began driving to escape them. During the fracas, he hit Boland. After an investigation, the coroner ruled Boland's death an accident; Moon, having been charged with a number of offences, received an absolute discharge. Those close to Moon said that he was haunted by Boland's death for the rest of his life. Moon had nightmares about the incident and said he had no right to be alive. Also, compounding this tragedy, was the fragile state of Moon’s marriage. Even after marriage and his daughter being born, he was still jealous, self-centered, and abusive to his wife Kim, both verbally and physically. His mental state also deteriorated as his appetite for all manner of pills escalated and he exploded into a full-blown alcoholic. Even after separating for a year, Kim returned to him, hoping that he had finally changed, but the insane lifestyle Keith kept up at their house became too much. Kim and Amanda (nicknamed “Mandy”) finally left for good in 1973. Since his marriage was a central part of Keith's life, their divorce would come to affect him perhaps more than any other event in his adult life and it was a devastation Keith would never recover from. While most people would use an event like this as the impetus to clean up their act, Keith used it instead as an excuse to drive himself further into oblivion.

Moon's lifestyle began to undermine not only his health but his career. During the 1973 Quadrophenia tour, at the Who's debut US date, Moon ingested a mixture of tranquilizers and brandy. During the concert, Moon passed out on his drum kit during the song "Won't Get Fooled Again." The band stopped playing, and a group of roadies carried Moon offstage. After he was given a shower and an injection of cortisone, he was sent back onstage. Moon passed out again during "Magic Bus," and was again removed from the stage. The band continued without him for several songs before Pete Townshend asked, "Can anyone play the drums? – I mean somebody good?" A fan in the audience, who happened to be a drummer, came up and played the rest of the show. During the opening date of the band's March 1976 US tour at the Boston Garden, Moon passed out again over his drum kit after two numbers and the show was rescheduled. By the mid-1970s Keith was living in Los Angeles and getting up to even more insanity with John Lennon, Ringo Starr, Harry Nilsson, and other stars. Even a new love in his life, Swedish model Annette Walter-Lax, couldn't get him to slow down and take control. There were even stints in psychiatric wards after some mental breakdowns brought on by his despair at losing Kim and his daughter and his drinking. His alcohol and drug abuse was now not only affecting his health (he put on a significant amount of weight at this time due to infrequent gigging) but sadly, his drumming. In 1978 soon after he recorded Who Are You, his final album with The Who, depressed by the deterioration of his drumming and threats from the rest of the Who to clean up his act or else, that he finally decided to get some help.  By the summer of 1978, he seemed to be trying to get his life in order, staying sober and solidifying his relationship with Annette. He was terrified to go into rehab or under psychiatric evaluation, however, and instead self-medicated with Heminevrin, a drug used for treating acute withdrawal from alcohol. However, he took too many on his final night and sadly died on September 7, 1978 at the age of 32.

Over forty years after his death, it's still difficult to think of Keith Moon as anything more than just a hard-drinking insane rock star who would smash his drum set on stage or destroy a hotel room. But regardless of the human being behind the drumkit, the legendary drummer should be remembered as the man who forever changed the sound of rock 'n' roll.

Next, I’ll go back to my beloved star analyses by covering a personal favourite of mine; a force of nature and an unsung pioneer of cinema whose death was ridiculously sensationalized and whose colourful life was almost as wild as Moon’s: Cancer Lupe Vélez

Stats

birthdate: August 23, 1946*

*note*: due to the absence of a birth time, this analysis will be even more speculative.

major planets:

Sun: Leo

Moon: Cancer

Rising: unknown

Mercury: Leo

Venus: Libra

Mars: Libra

Midheaven: unknown

Jupiter: Libra

Saturn: Leo

Uranus: Gemini

Neptune: Libra

Pluto: Leo

Overall personality snapshot: He may sometimes have wanted a safe, simple life where he felt emotionally contained and able to pursue his own creative interests. Then, however, the compulsion to strive for a more central, leading role reared its challenging head, and he knew he had it in him – so out into the spotlight he went. So immense was his creative energy as well as his warm feeling for others that he could become both the artistic home-maker and the home-loving artist/writer/entrepreneur. His personality was large and welcoming, colourful and theatrical because he had such an uncanny knack of dramatizing his vivid impressions and selling himself in the most genuine, heartfelt way. Both the paternal and the maternal urge was strong in him. He needed to use his will to project and establish your identity in the world, and to use his instincts to nurture and protect his emotional and material security. The Sun and the Moon are in their ‘home’ signs here, so that potentially he had the creative vision of Apollo and the lunar wisdom of Diana all rolled into one. This could make him pretty overpowering at times, and indeed he needed a partner and a family on whom he could lavish his emotions. His bearing was often aristocratic, sometimes haughty, oversensitive and self-absorbed, but he always seemed to have enough affection to go around so that no one felt left out. He also managed to remain approachable and compassionate because he was so aware of his own vulnerability and need to be loved. Thus he made a warm and understanding friend, and he enjoyed expressing his feelings with original flair and thoughtfulness.

He was protective, possessive and clannish, a stalwart member of his family, group and nation, and utterly devoted to his ideals. Deeply honourable and dependable, he brought an attitude of devotion and romantic style to all he did. He may have actually had a good head for business because he possessed an instinctive knowledge of security needs as well as a shrewd understanding of people, their desires, fears and foibles. His refined taste for comfort and beauty was part of the impetus for success – he knew his own mind and did not easily budge from his preferences and high standards. Aesthetic sensitivity was strong, and combined with his innate tenacity and quiet ambition means that he was quite successful in the arts. Even though he readily turned a bright face to the world, he did not always feel confident and strong. He had a lively sense of individuality, but his potency was sometimes too dependent on emotional familiarity, and the range of his self-expression too circumscribed within repetitive emotional patterns. Inwardly he shied away from encounters with the big, bad world, and early in life he may have needed to find ways of handling challenges that normally push the panic button. This wouldn’t have been hard for him because his creative drive was tremendous and his individuality needed recognition.

He was ambitious, sound at giving orders, carried responsibility well and was a good teacher, especially able to bring out the best in children. He believed in herself and generally knew the right thing to say at the right time, although he could show a stubborn and dogmatic side. He had a high opinion of his mental powers, and it was certainly true to say that he had plenty of mental energy. He was quite sociable and expected other people to behave well at all times. He was eager for close personal relationships, so he tended to have a wide circle of friends. Self-indulgence was a problem for him, as was laziness and conceit in relationships. He tended to be impatient with superficial details, preferring large-scale situations, and he disliked being tied down by obligations over which he had little control. Conservatism may have affected his creativity, artistic values and love affairs. This expressed itself as self-imposed restrictions or as selfishness. He often felt inadequate, which created an insidious form of oppression over all his forms of expression. He could also take herself so seriously, that people think that he was older than his years.

He was part of a generation that was strongly interested in humanitarian ideals, new avenues of communication and progress in mechanical skills. As a member of this generation, he was able to bring original ideas to both his career and spare-time interests. Crises in thought and ideology arose because he looked beyond tradition and old attitudes towards new original and inventive ways of looking at things. His active mind tended to need constant stimulation and his tastes could be quite fickle and difficult to satisfy. He belonged to a time of peace-loving idealism when the family unit and the way relationships were managed underwent great changes. He could be too idealistic and a little unrealistic when it came to matters of love, sex and romance. As a member of this generation, he tended to need to be motivated to make the most of his potential, because the line of least resistance appeared very attractive, especially when it involved pleasure-seeking. He embodied the Libra Neptune generation in the sense that he was a huge part of a time when beauty reappeared in fashion. He was part of a generation which was highlighted by the clash between authoritarianism and individualism. As a member of the Leo Plutonian generation, he wanted freedom in his relationships and demanded the loyalty of his friends as a right. As a member of this generation, he wanted power over his own life and was prepared to challenge established structures. He didn’t feel comfortable being dictated to, unless he in some way agreed to it beforehand. He was a part of excesses of the sixties. He was part of a generation that brought about a revolution in forms of entertainment, recreational activities and leisure time, as well as attitudes towards children.

Love/sex life: He was a lover so in love with the idea of love that nothing else matters. At times his whole-hearted idealism made him too optimistic and too easily deceived by people who promised to fulfill his ideals and then renege but, as delicate and unworldly as his romantic fantasy may seem, it was remarkably durable. Though he may have been misused and hurt, he never lost his faith in the power of true love. Issues of the flesh were always secondary to him and he was apt not to give them much thought. If such urges must be satisfied, then so be it. If sex proved useful in reaching other goals, that was fine too. As long as sex did not intrude on his ideal of perfect love such physical inconveniences hardly mattered. Unfortunately, most of the rest of the world did not agree with him on this point and, measured by their standards, his sexual behaviour may have seemed immoral or at least strangely naïve. He needed to learn to allow for such harsh realities even as he strove to create that grand idyll of perfect love.

minor asteroids and points:

North Node: Gemini

Lilith: Capricorn

Juno: Libra

Chiron: Libra

Vesta: Aries

Ceres: Aquarius

Pallas: Sagittarius

His North Node in Gemini dictated that he needed to prevent his idealism from influencing his thoughts to such a high degree. He needed to consciously develop a more clear-minded and analytical approach involving his thought processes. His Lilith in Capricorn dictated that he was dangerously attracted to women who had a scrappy plucky attitude hot-wired into their psyche. Against his better judgment, he liked to be around a woman who needed to be in control and to be mistress of her own destiny, because her life was in the control of not-so-well-meaning others as a child. Juno in Libra, he sought a mate who was harmonious, artistic, musical and intelligent. He liked beauty and balance at home. He believed in equal partnerships where all lived up to the letter of the law. Chiron in Libra, he often felt wounded in relationships and could wound others in retaliation. He may have felt he was constantly hurt or rejected in relationships. Through learning that he was whole on his own, he could have freed himself from this destructive pattern. He would have benefited from a partner that could have helped him heal in some way. Vesta in Aries, he was incline to initiate work for religious and humanitarian projects. Action came from a desire to improve every situation. There was a great deal of insecurity in self-evaluation. Ceres in Aquarius, at his best, he had tact and the ability to compromise, making him well liked by all. Pallas in Sagittarius, he had the ability to evaluate true personal worth enabling him to use his resources in the most advantageous ways. Other people may think he was lucky. Ideally speaking, he could have been generally positive instead of being wasteful, and he could have been confident and reliable. Nonetheless, he still used his ideas in a practical way, especially in his career.

elemental dominance:

air

fire

He was communicative, quick and mentally agile, and he liked to stir things up. He was likely a havoc-seeker on some level. He was oriented more toward thinking than feeling. He carried information and the seeds of ideas. Out of balance, he lived in his head and could be insensitive to the feelings of others. But at his best, he helped others form connections in all spheres of their daily lives. He was dynamic and passionate, with strong leadership ability. He generated enormous warmth and vibrancy. He was exciting to be around, because he was genuinely enthusiastic and usually friendly. However, he could either be harnessed into helpful energy or flame up and cause destruction. Confident and opinionated, he was fond of declarative statements such as “I will do this” or “It’s this way.” When out of control—usually because he was bored, or hadn’t been acknowledged—he was bossy, demanding, and even tyrannical. But at his best, his confidence and vision inspired others to conquer new territory in the world, in society, and in themselves.

modality dominance:

cardinal

He was happiest when he was doing anything new, and he loved to begin new ventures. He enjoyed the challenge of claiming territory. He tended to be an initiator—and a bit territorial as well. Also, he had a tendency to start more things than she could possibly finish.

planet dominants:

Moon

Sun

Venus

He was defined by his inner world; by his emotional reactions to situations, how emotions flowed through him, motivating and compelling him—or limiting him and holding him back. He held great capacity to become a part of the whole rather than attempting to master the parts. He wanted to become whatever it was that he sought. He had vitality and creativity, as well as a strong ego and was authoritarian and powerful. He likely had strong leadership qualities, he definitely knew who he was, and he had tremendous will. He met challenges and believed in expanding his life. He was romantic, attractive and valued beauty, had an artistic instinct, and was sociable. He had an easy ability to create close personal relationships, for better or worse, and to form business partnerships.

sign dominants:

Leo

Libra

Cancer

He loved being the center of attention and often surrounded himself with admirers. He had an innate dramatic sense, and life was definitely his stage. His flamboyance and personal magnetism extended to every facet of his life. He wanted to succeed and make an impact in every situation. At his best, he was optimistic, honorable, loyal, and ambitious. He loved beauty in all its guises—art, literature, classical music, opera, mathematics, and the human body. He usually was a team player who enjoyed debate but not argument. He was, at his best, an excellent strategist and a master at the power of suggestion. Even though he was likely a courteous, amiable person, he was definitely not a pushover. He tried to use diplomacy and intelligence to get what he wanted. At first meeting, he seemed enigmatic, elusive. He needed roots, a place or even a state of mind that he could call his own. He needed a safe harbor, a refuge in which to retreat for solitude. He was generally gentle and kind, unless he was hurt. Then he could become vindictive and sharp-spoken. He was affectionate, passionate, and even possessive at times. He was intuitive and was perhaps even psychic. Experience flowed through him emotionally. He was often moody and always changeable; his interests and social circles shifted constantly. He was emotion distilled into its purest form.

Read more about him under the cut.

Keith John Moon was an English drummer who played with the English rock band the Who. He was noted for his unique style and his eccentric, often self-destructive behaviour. His drumming continues to be praised by critics and musicians. He was posthumously inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1982, becoming only the second rock drummer to be chosen, and in 2011, Moon was voted the second-greatest drummer in history by a Rolling Stone readers' poll. Moon grew up in Alperton, a suburb of Wembley, in Middlesex, and took up the drums during the early 1960s. After playing with a local band, the Beachcombers, he joined the Who in 1964 before they recorded their first single. Moon remained with the band during their rise to fame, and was quickly recognised for his drumming style, which emphasised tom-toms, cymbal crashes, and drum fills.  He occasionally collaborated with other musicians and later appeared in films, but considered playing in the Who his primary occupation and remained a member of the band until his death. In addition to his talent as a drummer, however, Moon developed a reputation for smashing his kit on stage and destroying hotel rooms on tour. He was fascinated by blowing up toilets with cherry bombs or dynamite, and by destroying television sets. Moon enjoyed touring and socialising, and was bored and restless when the Who were inactive. His 21st birthday party in Flint, Michigan, has been cited as a notorious example of decadent behaviour by rock groups. Moon suffered a number of setbacks during the 1970s, most notably the accidental death of chauffeur Neil Boland and the breakdown of his marriage. He became addicted to alcohol, particularly brandy and champagne, and acquired a reputation for decadence and dark humour; his nickname was "Moon the Loon."  After moving to Los Angeles with personal assistant Peter "Dougal" Butler during the mid-1970s, Moon recorded his only solo album, the poorly received Two Sides of the Moon. While touring with the Who, on several occasions he passed out on stage and was hospitalised. By their final tour with him in 1976, and particularly during production of The Kids Are Alright and Who Are You, the drummer's deterioration was evident. Moon moved back to London in 1978, dying in September of that year from an overdose of Heminevrin, a drug intended to treat or prevent symptoms of alcohol withdrawal. (x)

[kxhlzn]

[ 🌱 ] a masterlist for all my works to make things easier to find. it will be broken up by media. enjoy!!

♡ note: all works are female reader! i will write for gender-neutral should i receive a request as such, but i won't write for male reader. my apologies! also! please please PLEASE follow my we heart it— it has collections for all my fics, but with original characters because i base my reader inserts off of oc stories i'm writing.

☁︎ we heart it: kxssiewrites ☁︎

➣ fandoms i write for :

harry potter

star wars

detroit: become human

vampire diaries

outer banks

stephen king's it

anne with an 'e'

reign

thirteen reasons why

merlin

the 100

criminal minds

marvel

shameless

the witcher

✧ 𝘓𝘌𝘎𝘌𝘕𝘋 ✧

[ 🍄 fluff | 🌿angst | 🌷drabble | 🦋 series ]

❁ note: actively, i do not write smut— but i may do so in the future.

✘𝘋𝘌𝘛𝘙𝘖𝘐𝘛: 𝘉𝘌𝘊𝘖𝘔𝘌 𝘏𝘜𝘔𝘈𝘕 ✘

♡ connor x reader.

— I Walk The Line [🌿🦋🍄]

An Android called Connor approaches you and Hank Anderson about a murder, and you find yourself fascinated by his nature; You vow to prove that Androids are just as human as you are, even if it means breaking your own heart in the process.

☁︎ chapter - one.

✘𝘚𝘛𝘌𝘗𝘏𝘌𝘕 𝘒𝘐𝘕𝘎: 𝘐𝘛✘

♡ stanley uris/beverly marsh x reader.

— The Birdwatcher & His Lover [🦋🌿🍄]

It's the year 1989 that you realize you're in love with your childhood friend, Beverly Marsh— And it's that same year you realize she doesn't feel the same way. It takes a highschool reunion in your twenties to discover you were someone else's Beverly.

☁︎ chapter one (rewritten vers).

☁︎ chapter one (original vers).

☁︎ chapter two (original vers).

☁︎ chapter three (original vers).

✘𝘚𝘛𝘈𝘙 𝘞𝘈𝘙𝘚✘

♡ poe dameron/armitage hux x reader.

— In A Crown [🦋🌿🍄]

A child heir to the throne of Hosnian, you are tucked away on Tatooine following an attempt on your life; Eight years later, a snarky pilot aids you in an escape from former slavers, and enlists you in the Resistance— Unaware that your presence endangers the entire rebellion.

☁︎ story teaser.

♡ kylo ren x reader.

— Black [🌿🌷]

Kylo Ren fights the attraction between the two of you because he recognizes a rebellion in your heart; One he can't control, nor admit.

☁︎ link.

✘𝘏𝘈𝘙𝘙𝘠 𝘗𝘖𝘛𝘛𝘌𝘙✘

♡ remus lupin x (hufflepuff)reader.

— Butterfingers [🍄🦋🌿]

All the Marauders would say that you are a truly honest person; However, they don't expect you to announce you're in love with one of them as if you're discussing the weather.

☁︎ in writing stage.

♡ fred weasley x (hufflepuff)reader.

— Trouble, Probably [🍄🦋]

Being partners in crime with the Weasley twins has been nothing short of ideal — Until a prank goes awry and you discover your menacing heritage as a Lestrange. Despite the news, it also unravels the history of your adoptive parents, and how their adolescent romance mirrors your friendship with Fred Weasley.

note: In relation to "Butterfingers", so I reccomend reading through that before this so you have the whole experience.

☁︎ in writing stage.

♡ sirius black x (ravenclaw)reader.

— Birdbrain [🍄🦋🌿]

As eccentric as Xenophilius Lovegood, you find sanctum in a tight-knit group of troublemakers after your owl, Frog, dies during a thunderstorm. The next day, a toad is found at your bedside with a note declaring your giftgiver was no other than Sirius Black; And your toad's name is Peabody.

☁︎ in writing stage.

✘𝘛𝘏𝘐𝘙𝘛𝘌𝘌𝘕 𝘙𝘌𝘈𝘚𝘖𝘕𝘚 𝘞𝘏𝘠✘

♡ zach dempsey/jeff atkins x reader.

— The Art Of Forgiveness [🌿🍄]

A year after the tragic death of your boyfriend, Jeff Atkins, your school counselor assigns each person who was close with him a "grieving partner"; In your case, you get Zach Dempsey, who is determined to show you all the ways life is worth living.

☁︎ in writing stage.

✘𝘊𝘙𝘐𝘔𝘐𝘕𝘈𝘓 𝘔𝘐𝘕𝘋𝘚✘

♡ spencer reid x reader.

— Retrouvailles [🍄🦋]

You're the BAU's favorite snowflake, as says Derek Morgan— Your caring, sensitive nature being the inspiration for such a role. Even with his teasing, you're more than happy to be a mediator for everyone as well as the optimist; Especially when Reid is involved.

☁︎ in writing stage.

✘𝘖𝘛𝘏𝘌𝘙✘

❝ [ OUTER BANKS ] ❞

♡ jj maybanks x reader.

— Too Young To Burn [🍄🌿]

After your (final) breakup with JJ, the two of you argue like cats and dogs, with tensions rising; The rest of the Pogues are caught in the middle more often than not, and matters worsen when you all discover a boat after a storm.

☁︎ in writing stage.

❝ [ REIGN ] ❞

♡ sebastian de poitiers x reader.

— Paralian [🍄]

Having been declared "Queen of the Caribbean" upon your sixth birthday, you were born into a pirate's life of high seas and deception. Your crew, the Night Monkeys, were infamous for their influence and power among fellow buccaneers, and they had much control over the waters across the world. However, when there is news of disruption for the crew, they send you to France to make nice with the French Court in order to win their favor, and in addition, back their territories.

☁︎ in writing stage.

❝ [ ANNE WITH AN 'E' ] ❞

♡ gilbert blythe x reader.

— March Comes In Like A Lion [🍄🌿🦋]

It's easy being the messenger between the boys and girls of the Avonlea school and Gilbert Blythe's naive best friend until Anne Shirley arrives; She marches in clad with a fiery red mane and a toothy grin. You've always felt you had a place among your classmates as the dreamer and storyteller, but suddenly you're not sure where you belongs anymore.

☁︎ in writing stage.

Please do not plagiarize any of my work or repost it, and I don't allow translations of any kind. Enjoy! Requests are always open.

Thank you! 💓

[150289city]

ILLUSION - SURREALISM

Analyse creative manipulation images.

1. Zdzislaw Beksinski

The canvas, known as "Creeping Death", evokes a lot of emotions and remains relevant all the time. The leitmotif is death, which creeps silently like a spider. This is how he appeared in the eyes of the painter - death comes unexpectedly and destroys everything on its way.

Beksiński's paintings were about loneliness and the inevitability of death. The painter also often presented a vision of Armageddon. This is also the case of "Creeping Death". The end of the world appears in dark, brown and bloody colors. And death takes its toll and disappears unnoticed from the battlefield. The city burning in the background means that death has won again. Nobody survived. Death can take many shapes, it can resemble a human, an animal or a spider. In the painting by Zdzisław Beksiński, he is a terrifying creature that leaves the ruined area on its cramped limbs. Instead of the face, you can see a bandage through which a blood stain pierces. Instead of a torso, there is a hairy abdomen, similar to that of deadly spiders, and they will always flee from impending danger. Just like death, which also has time to hide from fire.

Beksiński's painting is one of the most terrifying contemporary works of Polish painting. Suffering, anger and resignation permeate them. The artist knows that he is unable to change his fate. He only has pain and the awareness that death will come for him. "Creeping Death" can be a universal picture, presenting the world after war, apocalypse or catastrophe. They can also be the darkest thoughts of every human being that circulate through the mind looking for an outlet. Because everyone is struggling with their own demons, which may appear completely different. It is certain that they cause fear, but they are essential in the fight against the suffering that is part of human life.

2. SALVADOR DALI

There are four clocks in the picture. One hangs from a dry tree, the other, with a blue shield and golden edging, flows down from a brown plinth. There is a fly on it, which can symbolize the "flying" and passing time. The orange watch lying next to it seems to be less soft and melting than the others. Ants crawled over him. The orange clock looks like it's about to be eaten by insects. Ants are here a symbol of rotting, decay. The fourth clock is in the center of the painting. It flows down from a deformed, beige-colored form. Only after looking closely you can see something like a nose, eyelid, long eyelashes. The distorted form resembles skin pulled from the face. According to some, it is a self-portrait of Salvador himself.

"Soft clocks" is nothing but a delicate, extravagant and lonely, paranoid-critical camembert of time and space.’’ Salvador Dali

Persistence of memory is perhaps one of the artist's most recognizable works. It was established in 1931. The idea was born when Dali, eating a melting French Camembert cheese, saw clock faces in it.

Dali created works that were supposed to amaze or shock. He did not represent anything directly, but through a vision. Therefore, he is included in the group of surrealists. Obraz Persistence of memory is a dream about time deformed by memories and dreams. Gala - Dali's muse and wife - said about this painting that the viewer's memory would only be the "softness" of the watches, because anyone who saw this work at least once would never forget it. The rocks of Cape Creus are an element of the landscape that appears in many of Dali's works. They have become an example of "hard" forms. The artist, who has a well-prepared drawing and knows the perspective, creates in a surprising way. An example is theoretically correctly painted clocks, but why is one of them hung over a branch, and the other running off the counter? It was this astonishment that the artist wanted to combine various objects in any way. The elements of the painting are arranged on the canvas in such a way that we have the impression of a large space and emptiness. Thanks to vivid imagination, all details have been divided into soft and hard. Clocks are among the soft ones.

3.  RENÉ MAGRITTE

With my popular sympathy for the Belgian painter René Magritte, I have allowed myself to be introduced to you by opening the whole series "Art for Tuesday" with his "Lovers". Together with the blog returning to the expanses of the Internet, let Magritte be the patron of the reactivation of this cycle, this time with her "Son of Man".

The very title "Son of Man" (French: "Le fils de l'homme") is a bit puzzling when confronted with this picture presents itself.

After all, we see an elegant man in a suit and a bowler hat against the background of the wall separating him from the sea, above him there are clouds that announce a storm or storm. And what is very important - it is a self-portrait.

Oh yes, I would ... Before the face of forgotten people (levitating?) A green apple that makes his face invisible, revealing part of the eye and eyebrow in fact. We have to remind ourselves that the Belgian was definitely a surrealist who grew out of the impressionist school. However, he used his symbolic linguistic voice, which was shaped by such tragic experiences as the mother's suicide - hence the motive of the shroud. The motif of a veiled face, or the lack of it, is constantly present in Magritte's painting. Maybe it allows you to stay safe? For both the "covered" and those looking at him? Or maybe these masks and covers allow for proper perception of things (I refer to the author's painting "Rape")?

As for the "Son of Man", a stretched (as always), original interpretation appeared in my head.

The apple ripens with its apple tree represented by the man. He is well dressed, which can mean high social status. Or maybe an apple covering a man's face makes him anonymous? is it just a tree from which society grows? And when he dies, will someone eat the forbidden fruit that he has grown, and will continue this process? Another "Son of Man" ..?

4. Max Ernst

"Day and Night" is a work that Max Ernst painted in the years 1941-1942. It presents a gloomy rocky landscape in dark colors. The image of the night is dominant here - the dark blue sky and the outlines of boulders. On the dark background, however, there are traces of the day, resembling daytime photographs of the same space. In these pictures these places appear completely different - they are sunny and full of bright colors. They do not resemble a barren night landscape.

Ernst's work follows surrealist poetics. Its meaning becomes understandable above all in the historical context in which it was created. It is about the tragedy of World War II, which left its mark on the artist's own biography. He miraculously managed to escape from the hands of the Gestapo and emigrate from France to the United States.

The night landscape is a barren land devoid of color and optimism. One gets the impression that we are dealing with a world completely destroyed by some cataclysm. His memories are only optimistic photographs from the past, which show the old face of the landscape. These optimistic incrustations in combination with the dominant gray and sterility not only do not cheer up the whole, but make it even more repulsive. We are dealing here with a world that will never return to its former glory.

The colorful pictures bring to mind illustrations from children's books. Thus, the artist refers to the myth of childhood as a lost paradise. Children's dreams are triggered here, in which reality seems to be a magical and wonderful being. At the same time, the juxtaposition of colored fragments with a gloomy background is also associated with the biblical Eden, where innocence and beauty are destroyed by sin and evil.

You can also understand "Night and Day" as a kind of puzzle. The picture resembles a puzzle that needs to be matched in an appropriate way so that they form a whole together. In this sense, one should see in Ernst's work traces of hope for rebuilding what was destroyed during the war. It is, in a way, a proposal to organize the world once again so that it becomes a place where a person feels safe again.

5. Pablo Picasso

"Guernica" is a famous painting by Pablo Picasso, painted in 1937 in reaction to the Spanish Civil War. The work is an act of protest against violence and at the same time a great manifestation of pacifism.

The title of the painting comes from the name of a Spanish city bombed by the German Luftwaffe air force in response to resistance to General Franco's group.

"Guernica" shows deformed human and animal figures, forming a chaotic swirl. You can see the bodies in pieces, especially the heads and limbs. The severed hands tighten tightly on the objects they hold: a candle or a sword. The mouths of the characters are usually open in a silent scream, and terror is visible in their eyes. People seem to squirm in deathly groans. Human figures blend with animals.

The whole thing looks like a huge, dynamic swirl. The depressing impression is deepened by the colors of the painting, in shades of black and gray. The central part of the painting is lit by a light bulb in the upper edge of the work. It seems that the situation depicted in the picture takes place in a narrow room, intensifying the impression of being surrounded and threatened.

The painting was painted in cubist aesthetics, which in the case of such a dramatic topic emphasizes the cruelty and tragedy of war. The fragmentation of the solid is here not only an act of artistic deformation, but also emphasizes the essence of any armed conflict, which is the total destruction of the world.

The war appears on Picasso's canvas as unbridled chaos and suffering. People dehumanize, they are reduced to the level of terrified animals, driven by the survival instinct. Human remains are clearly deformed, they resemble meat. Human and animal bodies are fragmented as if after a bomb had exploded.

The symbol of destruction is the Spanish bull emerging from the gloom, which covers the unfolding events with an unshakable gaze. Broken hands clutch at useless objects, among which stand out a candle and a broken sword. The former may symbolize the desire to illuminate the escape route, but it is also a sign of mourning for those who died. A broken sword and a torn horse indicate the uselessness of conventional weapons in a modern war that brings mass death and destruction.

Picasso's painting exudes an atmosphere of fear and terror, the image of a mother lamenting over a child's corpse is particularly poignant. The claustrophobic narrowness of the room in which the characters find themselves emphasizes the non-exit character of their situation.

[corinthbayrpg]

NAME. Demet Yilmaz AGE & BIRTH DATE. 112 & February 22nd, 1908 GENDER & PRONOUNS. Female & She/Her SPECIES. Werewolf OCCUPATION. Shop assistant at Pandora’s Lore FACE CLAIM. Ayça Ayşin Turan

BIOGRAPHY

( tw: death, violence, stabbing ) Although born in a small town bordering the Black Sea in Turkey, Demet has barely any memories of her homeland from her childhood years. The youngest child of four to a werewolf and a human, the Yilmazs had no pack other than their family, their father’s former one massacred by hunters long before her birth, an event that made him paranoid almost beyond the point of reason. He kept them moving constantly, never setting down roots for too long, and never forming more than minor attachments to people or places. It was not an easy life for children, and coupled with the knowledge of a curse that she had no choice in the matter of taking, Demet often found it difficult to cope in the realities of her situation. The young girl would lean heavily on her family for support. Perhaps a bit needy as a child, but with four older siblings to contend with, she made sure to make herself stand out by whatever means necessary to get the attention she required. The most obliging had always been her father, with whom she had a particularly close relationship, something that only made things all the worse when he died. It was in the beginning years of World War I, and the Yilmaz leader could not avoid the call to battle. Demet was only seven years old at the time, but she’s never forgotten the day they got the news that he had been killed in action.

Their patriarch’s death affected them all differently, but it the family hard. Demet found herself having to grow up fast, still only a child but doing her best to help her mother and siblings around the house that they suddenly had to find a way to manage all on their own, near penniless. Her need for constant affirmation and attention were no longer treated so indulgently, as everyone dealt with their own grief and hardships. The years that followed were tough, as everyone struggled to find their footing in this new reality, especially their mother. Even as her older brothers found their independence, Demet stayed with her mother and sister. It was during such time that she learned to set her own desires aside to help take care of her family, and yet it could never truly be called selflessness, for inside she longed for the chance to live for herself, find something she could call her own and not have to share. She wanted it so intensely it burned, but buried it deep inside for her mother’s sake, and chose to remain by her side.

The decision was, ultimately, not much of a decision at all once the second World War began. Her older brothers took up arms fighting for Britain, while Demet wrote them letters every chance she got. Though she was just as capable of a fighter as her brothers, she would not be allowed on the frontlines as a woman, and so she stayed home in acquiescence to her mother’s pleas. Perhaps it was for the better too, when they received a letter a few months later that informed of the demise of her oldest brother. A tragic tone again overtook the Yilmaz family, but Demet had little time to work through her own emotions. She was more concerned with her poor mother’s well-being, who had already lost the love of her life only to now outlive her first child. Mourning the one lost, and still fearful for the one at war, their home never did quite recover it’s same warm feeling. But even when the war was over, there was little peace to be found. They waited for weeks for her other brother to return, to bring what remained of their family back together, only to discover he had no such intentions. In the end, Demet felt as if she lost both of them; one dead, one still alive, but neither coming home.

Unable to stay in that house, or Britain in general, the Yilmaz women picked up what little they called their own and set off again, this time landing in Greece. Corinth Bay was a welcome fresh start, though making it such was much harder said than done. Still, brick by brick, they made a new life, and slowly their wounds began to heal over the years. Her mother met a nice man who owned a gyro restaurant, and married for the second time in her life. It was after the wedding that her sister became the next one to leave, deciding that it was her turn to step out and explore the world. Though Demet longed to join her, she felt her duty always laid with their mother. With all her other children gone, someone had to stay close to be her comfort. And though they never much spoke about it, she always knew how grateful her mother was to always have her close by for the rest of her lifetime. She lived to a ripe old age, even longer than her husband, and when she passed away, Demet was the one there holding her hand. Although many in town assumed the gyro restaurant would pass on to Demet, she surprised the city residents by handing off the keys to her older sister, who had returned to Greece with a husband of her own. At long last, she had the chance to set off on her own adventure. It was what she had longed for her entire life, a tantalizing freedom that always seemed destined to pass her by, finally within her grasp.

Unfortunately, reality did not live up to the fantasy she had built up in her head. Instead of striking out and finding her place, the longer Demet searched for that experience, the more lost she felt. It seemed as if nowhere in the world had a place for her, where she felt in her bones that she was meant to be.. There was Corinth Bay, sure, and she returned often to visit her sister, but even there never seemed like a place where she fit. She spent a lot of years constantly on the move, searching for something to make her feel whole, and finding only disappointment. It wasn’t until she found herself back in Britain, working in a bookshop in the hub of London, when what she had been looking for came strolling in through the door. He’d been charming and attentive from the first day, winning Demet over with sweet gifts and even sweeter words, and she fell hard and fast. She even took him home to meet her sister, and shared stories of her world-traveling brother. Those years had been the happiest she’d ever felt in her life, and when he proposed, it felt as if all the stars were finally aligned. Except for one small detail. She still hadn’t told him about her nature as a werewolf, had successfully hidden it from him over the course of their relationship. But if their relationship was meant to survive, if they were going to get married, then she would have to tell him the truth.

His reaction wasn’t what she had hoped for. What ensued was a long argument, followed by him storming out of the home they bought together while Demet laid in bed and cried. He was gone for the rest of the day and halfway into the night before finally returning home. He apologized for how he reacted, said that she’d taken him by surprise and that he was just scared, but that he loved her and still wanted to be together. Demet forgave him without hesitation, happy that the matter was resolved and that he still chose her regardless. Or so she thought. It was only three days later, but she could feel the shift in the air around their house. Her fiancé hadn’t been the same since the revelation, something she had attributed to him still adjusting to their new reality, but that day he was particularly fidgety and restless. It wasn’t until the evening when she was settling into bed that the truth came out.

Maybe it was because she was only half asleep, or maybe he hesitated which gave her more time to realize he loomed overhead, but when she opened her eyes, she saw her fiancé standing above her with a silver dagger in hand. She only managed to twist just in time to avoid being stabbed in the heart. Survival instinct took over and she kicked him hard, sending him sprawling across the room while Demet made a run for it, in what became a deadly game of cat and mouse around their home. He caught up to her again in the kitchen, one hand around her throat and the other holding the silver that would be her end, even as she begged him to stop. She tried to plead, telling him that she loved him, but he only called her a monster and claimed to be doing it for the good of humanity. His words cut into her flesh as harshly as his dagger, but it gave her the opportunity to reach out behind her while he was distracted, and get her hands on a kitchen knife. While his first strike had missed the mark, hers did not, and she buried the blade into his stomach. What followed happened in only seconds, but felt like eternity, as she watched his knees hit the ground and blood bubble out through his lips. She wept as she held his corpse, for the man she loved and the future that would’ve been.

When the police came she claimed it was an intruder that attacked them, the house had been smashed up in the ensuing struggle, before he fled out the back. Demet still doesn’t know why she lied, but at the time his memory seemed worth protecting, and once the first one came out it couldn’t be stopped. It was only as she sat there in the police station, covered in blood both her own and his, that she thought about her sister, and a new fear struck her heart. If her fiancé was a hunter, then he knew about her family too. As soon as she was free from the detective’s questions, and the blood had been scrubbed from her skin, she was on the first flight to Greece. When she arrived, it had already been too late, finding crime scene tape across the front of her sister’s house much to her horror. The police were reluctant to give Demet any information, but eventually she got an officer to admit it looked like a home invasion. Her sister and brother-in-law had been killed, but their two children were unharmed. A terrible grief and self-loathing set over Demet, as she blamed herself for their deaths, and if it had not been for her brother’s arrival, she might have never crawled out of it. He’d been named in their sister’s will as the legal guardian for her children, and Demet clung to him like a lifeline. With nothing waiting for her back in London but ghosts and haunted memories, Demet moved back to Corinth Bay too, out of a desire to remain close with the little family she had left, and to help her brother in his new role as a parental figure. But she also harbors a secret reason that is all her own.

Demet has always hated the curse that runs in their family’s blood, ever since her childhood. But recent events only cemented it further. If she had not been a werewolf, then she would’ve never needed to tell her fiancé, and the hunters would’ve never found her sister. Though it was an idea she had entertained over the years, she’d never really had the courage to follow through on it; but now she no longer has such hesitations. Demet wants this curse gone, and is willing to lose her soul in order to achieve it. And no place seems to be crawling with supernaturals quite like Corinth Bay.

PERSONALITY

+ nurturing, compassionate, inquisitive - insecure, pessimistic, gullible 

PLAYED BY ABBY. CDT. She/Her.

[dakarimainink]

Chapter 2

WARNING: None

I walk down the long hallway of the rebuilt estate of the Hellsing organisation. What was once a top-secret property, has now opened their doors to the public for people to get trained in combat, weapon handling and knowledge about dark creatures.

Sir Integra Hellsing know that when she passes away, there will be no one to truly lead the Hellsing organisation, except the government. This was her way of making sure the Hellsing legacy would continue – by opening a sort of school for people to become hunters. I had taken some time to learn how to become a hunter, and apparently, only a few were selected. The criteria – have a specific set of skills one could only be born with.

A set of double doors are open, and inside are people fencing. I note one of the people watching, dressed in a burgundy red uniform with a red writhing mass as her left arm – Seras Victoria. I have read about her, the second human to have been turned by Alucard. She was only 19 years old when she was turned. She had a tragic past and a hard upbringing. Now she was head vampire and the one to train the new hunters.

I watch as two people fence with grace. It’s almost a dance, but one of them is clumsier than the other. The footwork is almost to perfection and the movement like calm waves on the ocean. The fencing ends and they pull off their masks and one of them is revealed to be Integra herself. I look in awe as her long white hair flow down her slim body and her right eye shimmer in the bright ceiling light.

“Well done, Oliver, but you need to work more on your defence.” She points out as she shifts her weight to one side. “I believe you have quite the potential.” She adds before her eyes meet mine. I keep her gaze locked with mine, letting her know I am here for her. She gives me a slight nod. She turns to Seras. “Keep them training. I will be right back.” Integra makes her way over to me, assess my presence before gesturing me to follow her.

We walk in silence down the hallway until we finally enter a room to the left.

The room is open and high ceiling. The back wall has huge fixed windows, letting in the grey light from outside. In the left corner is dark red chesterfield couches, with a dark oak coffee table placed in front decorated with a bouquet of flowers. In the right corner is a small bar filled with all kinds of liquor and crystal glasses. The walls are decorated with huge framed paintings of different historical figures. In the middle of the room is a long dark wood executive desk with a lamp, a landline phone, papers neatly stacked, pens placed in order and a silver box with cigars. Behind the desk is a dark green executive chair.

Integra makes her way to the desk, places her mask on top and sit down in the chair. I walk over to the desk and wait patiently while she reaches for her cigar box. She pulls out a thin and brown cigar, places it between her thin lips, light it up with a golden lighter and inhales deeply. She breathes out the light grey smoke while taking in my form.

I feel her eyes etch into my skin, making me want to spit out words at her, but I know she is a respectable woman with high standards. It took me three years to get this interview and I am not planning on screwing this up.

The silence linger between us uncomfortably as she takes another drag from the cigar. The smoke makes me want to cough, but I supress it. She turns the chair a little, leans back and crosses her legs as she lets the cigar rest between her lips. Her eyelids are heavy, not from lack of sleep, but from the fact that she knows she can somewhat relax in this room.

“You’re from the London History Chronicle.” She says as she finally drags her eyes away from me. She looks absentmindedly at one of the paintings hanging on the wall. “You’ve been nagging me for the past three years for this interview. Why?” She adds and continues to look at the painting.

Nagging her? I mean, yes I have tried desperately to get this interview, but nagging you is a bit too far. And I have never been in direct contact with you, but rather your new housekeeper; Stella Cherrier.

I scan the side of her face. A brown patch covering her left eye from a gunshot wound that made her go blind on that eye. I can see a thin line of a scar peeking from below her patch. It must have been one hell of a shot, yet I have a feeling she didn’t even flinch. That’s the kind of woman Integra is, hard, unfaced, strong, relentless, cold and deadly. I know she could stare death in the eye and still not bat an eye.

“I have been studying and reading about what happened in London 31 years ago.” I begin to explain. “I even wrote I master thesis on the events. I want to ask y…”

“It was nothing more than just an exchange of bullets.” She cuts in, still not looking at me.

I bite my tongue. So she is one of them. “Just an exchange of bullets? I am sure the bill for rebuilding the whole of London would disagree with you, Sir Hellsing.” I lean my weight on one leg as I cross my arms. It makes her turn her head towards me. She looks at my posturing, she seems to dislike it. “I am also sure the three million people who died that night would also disagree with you.”

She narrows her eyes at me, before a smirk grows on her lips. She shifts in her seat, leans forward on her desk with her fingers intertwined. “I like you, what is your name?”

My eyes widen at her remark. She likes me? I felt rather cocky spitting those facts out, showing off my knowledge. I just spat at her and she likes me? I let my arms hang down to my sides and I straighten up. “I am Alessa.” I introduce myself.

She leans bank in her chair and take another deep drag from her cigar. “How much do you know of what happened 31 years ago?”

I scan her face. Is this a test or an actual question? Besides, I thought it was I who were going to ask the questions. “I know everything that is available in writing plus the rumours and fairy tales.” I begin to explain.

“And how do you know the distinction between what is true and not?”

“I go with my gut, my knowledge and what seems reasonable. I hardly believe there were actual angels during the battle, but rather the image of angels because of Iscariot the papal knights joined the battle on their helicopters. I also heard dragons interfered in all of this too, but I mean…” I glance at her grin as I speak. “Vampires and werewolves, that’s okay, but dragons? That’s a bit too far.”

“You would be surprised.”

I let out a gasp at her remark. My eyebrows shoot up as I stare at her questioning.

“But you are correct, no dragons exists. At least to our knowledge. Now you seem like a person who has a great deal of knowledge about what happened and more than enough information to write an article, so why are you here?” She places her cigar in the ashtray and leans forward on her elbows.

“I am here because I want to hear from someone who saw it all. Who was in the middle of it. Yes, there are some corrupted videos available, but you are the only human, as far as I am aware of, who saw and experienced everything.” I explain. She raises an eyebrow at me and I once again cross my arms in front of me. “And who is still alive.” I add.

She smirks at me. “Well then, Alessa. Please go ahead with your interview.”

I pull my backpack off, pull out my notes and my phone to record the interview. “I hope you don’t mind.” I show her my phone and she shakes her head. I start the recorder on my phone, places it on the desk and look at my notes.

I clear my throat. “When the vampire attacks leading up to the reveal of the Millennium, did you ever think it would be linked to something greater than just some random vampire attacks?”

“I had my suspicions, but vampire attacks are not that uncommon, we are just good at hiding it and cleaning up before anyone else sticks their noses in it. We know that humans are not strong enough or equipped with knowledge about vampires that they can fend for themselves, which is why we stepped up from the start. Wasting human lives and sacrificing them as ghouls is a fait I wouldn’t send upon anyone.” Her eyes fall to my phone and there is a twitch at the corner of her right eye. “The police has no knowledge or equipment to fight off vampires or ghouls for that matter. Which is why it is crucial Hellsing is the first to know about these kinds of attacks.”

“It this why you have opened up to the public to train new people?”

She looks up at me. “Yes. I have realised that family run businesses is a thing of the past. When I pass away, the government will take over. I know Seras will do a fine job leading everyone, but I don’t know what will happen to Alucard, as there are no heir to the Hellsing family.”

“What do you think will happen to him?” I am intrigued to know what she thinks. Her head must be filled with the most wonderful things imaginable, both dark and light.

“Who knows. Alucard is the most powerful being to ever exist and without a master, he might go rogue, find a new purpose, find a master within the government or clench his thirst for whatever is going on inside his mind.” She sighs out. “All I know is that the government will take over the Hellsing organisation and it is my duty to make sure the standard of our hunters are the best.”

I nod in agreement. I wonder how England would be without the Hellsing to protect us. Who knows how many creatures they’ve kept at bay by just existing.

“I read that you gave the command to Alucard to release all his powers, did you know what it entailed? From what I read about it; every soul he has ever consumed was released from his coffin and fought alongside him. It was described as a sea of dead souls.”

Integra lets out a chuckle and it somewhat takes me by surprise. “I knew what it entailed, but I had never seen it before. It was quite the sight. To see his raw power unleashed upon this world was almost frightening.”

I raise my eyebrows. Integra, scared? Sounds impossible based on everything I had read about her. She was calculated, strong and fearless. If she was somewhat frightened, who knows what everyone else felt.

“I remember as soon as my command slipped my lips, everyone, from all sides, attacked him. The Nazis and the Iscariot. They could feel the annihilation was about to wash over all of them. Their lives snuffed in a flash.”

“What did it make you feel to know you commanded such powers?”

She leans back in her chair and locks gaze with me. I notice she is chewing her inner cheek. “Responsible.” Is the only word slipping out of her.

My jaw lowers slightly as I am stunned not to hear the word powerful come out of her.

“I feel responsible for every innocent life lost during that night. This war begun because Alucard exists. I believe that if it happens once, it can happen again.” Her eye lower and I sense a hint of sadness. “And I don’t know which state Alucard is in now, considering what happened 31 years ago.”

“What?” I gasp and take a step closer to the desk. I can see she realise the last sentence was not meant for my ears. “What do you mean by state? What happened?” I ask desperately.

The stands up. “This interview is over.” She declares and press a button on her landline phone.

Within a second, a woman dressed in a black dress with a white apron – the housekeeper – enters the room. “Stella, please escort Miss Alessa out of the estate.” Integra commands with a calm voice.

I sigh, letting her know I dislike her decision to just throw me out. I reach for my phone, end the recording and put everything back in my bag. “Safe travels home, Alessa.” I reluctantly follow Stella out of the massive building.

[gcwcns]

ROLEPLAY TAGS: HOZIER EDITION

below the cut you will find 100+ (i lost count) lyrics from hozier’s entire discography that could be used as rp (charrie, otp, etc.) tags. they are arranged by song. if you’re looking for a specific song press ctrl (command if on mac) and f to search it! 

take me to church 

if the heavens ever did speak she's the last true mouthpiece

i'll tell you my sins and you can sharpen your knife

i’m a pagan of the good times my lover’s the sunlight

drain the whole sea get something shiny

there is no sweeter innocence than our gentle sin

angel of small death & the codeine scene

shaking the wings of their terrible youths

with her sweetened breath and her tongue so mean

she's the angel of small death and the codeine scene 

it's bloody and raw, but i swear it is sweet

the sweet heat of her breath in my mouth I'm alive

jackie and wilson

so tired trying to see from behind the red in my eyes

no better version of me i could pretend to be tonight

she blows outta nowhere roman candle of the wild

every version of me dead and buried in the yard outside

cut clean from the dream at night let my mind reset

someone new 

electing strange perfections in any stranger i choose.

there's an art to life's distractions,

the dark caress of someone else i guess any thrill will do

my heart's already sinned.

i fall in love just a little bit every day with someone new

to be alone 

never feel too good in crowds

all i’ve ever done is hide 

i feel like a person for a moment of my life

to have someone kiss the skin that crawls from you

it's the god that heroin prays to

from eden 

something tragic about you something so magic about you

honey you're familiar like my mirror years ago

idealism sits in prison chivalry fell on its sword

innocence died screaming honey ask me i should know

i slithered here from eden just to sit outside your door

in a week 

i have never known peace like the damp grass that yields to me

our hunger's appeased our heart beats becoming slow

so long, we'd become the flowers

after the foxes have known our taste

they'd find us in a week when the buzzards get loud

sedated

just a little rush to feel dizzy to derail the mind of me

our veins are busy but my heart's in atrophy

you and I nursing on a poison that never stung

free and young and we can feel none of it

i'm somewhere outside my life babe

work song

there's nothing sweeter than my baby

she'd give me toothaches just from kissing me 

no grave can hold my body down i’ll crawl home to her 

in the low lamp light i was free 

heaven and hell were words to me 

like real people do 

why were you digging what did you bury 

i will not ask and neither should you

honey just put your sweet lips on my lips

we should just kiss like real people do 

i knew that look dear eyes always seeking

it will come back 

i know who i am when I'm alone

you should never know how easy you are to need 

don't let me in with with no intention to keep me

give me mercy no more

don't you hear me howling babe

foreigner’s god 

she moved with shameless wonder perfect creature rarely seen 

her eyes look sharp and steady into the empty parts of me 

always a well dressed fraud

screaming the name of a foreigner's god the purest expression of grief

i've no language left to say it every word i've got is foreign to me 

cherry wine

her eyes and words are so icy 

she burns like rum on a fire

the blood is rare and sweet as cherry wine

her fight and fury is fiery 

and it's worth it all it's divine

in the woods somewhere

i called your name til the fever broke

night so black that the darkness hums

i prayed my mind be good to me  

i spoke no word no sound he made

to save a life i didn't have

run

tare is this love keep it covered

her hungry eyes her ancient soul

a shame without a sin

with as many souls claimed as she

run til you feel your lungs bleeding

arsonist’s lullaby

i learned the voices died with me

all you have is your fire

don't you ever tame your demons but always keep em on a leash

i knew that something would always rule m

but my peace has always depended on all the ashes in my wake

my love will never die 

honey please try to love me

my love will never die

flowers grow where I'm laid to rest

pick a blossom and hold it hold it to your breast

my love bursting loud from inside

nina cried power 

it's not the waking, it's the rising

it's the heaven of a human spirit ringing

i could cry power

power has been cried by those stronger than me

rattle your chains if you love being free

nfwmb 

give your heart and soul to charity

the rest of you the best of you belongs to me

If I was born as a black thorn tree I'd wanna be felled by you 

fuel the pyre of your enemies

ain't it warming you the world goin up in flames

moment’s silence (common tongue) 

relax and catch the manic rhapsody

all of me is a prayer in perfect piety

when the meaning is gone there is clarity

since it all begun to it's reckoning

so summon on the pearl rosary

shrike

the words hung above but never would form

remember me love when i'm reborn 

as the shrike to your sharp and glorious thorn 

all of my goodness is going with you now

grounded and giving and darkening scorn

almost (sweet music)

sweet music playin in the dark

be still my foolish heart don't ruin this on me

let's get lost and let the good times roll

a love supreme seems far removed

reporting russian lullabies

movement

i could never define all that you are to me

shake like the bough of a willow tree

honey you're atlas in his sleeping

in awe of something so flawed and free

when you move i move

no plan

the screaming heaving fuckery of the world

there's no kingdom to come

there will be darkness again

keep my body from the fire hire a gardener for my grave

when I'm lying under marble marvel at flowers you'll have made 

nobody 

i've been fed gold by sweet fools in abu dhabi

i'd be appalled if I saw you ever try to be a saint

if i had the choice between hearing either noise

i once warmed my hands over a burning Maserati

i’ve had no love like your love

to noise making (sing)

your head tilt back your funny mouth to the clouds

was it just the act of making noise that brought you joy

you don't have to sing it right but who could call you wrong

put your emptiness to melody your awful heart to song

who could ask you be unbroken or be brave again

as it was

i'd had life enough my heart is screaming of

whatever here that's left of me is yours

but your love was unmoved

just as it was before the otherness came

nights were as dark as my baby half as beautiful too

talk

i’d be the voice that urged orpheus when her body was found 

i'd be the choiceless hope in grief that drove him underground

imagine being loved by me

i'd be the last shred of truth in the lost myth of true love

that's found in the last witness before the wave hits

be

once atrocity is hoarse from voicing shame

with the same sweet shock of when Adam first came

be the hopeful feeling when eden was lost

when i have no kind words left love for you now

that will grow bold in a barren and desolate land

dinner & diatribes

hell is the talking type

i'd suffer hell if you'd tell me what you'd do to me tonight 

a pillar i am of pride

let there be hotel complaints and grievances raised

that's the kinda love i’ve been dreaming of

would that i 

love in withdrawal was the weeping of me

with the roar of the fire my heart rose to its feet

i fell in love with the fire long ago 

i was fixed on your hand of gold

and it’s not tonight where i’m set alight

sunlight 

betray the moon as acolyte on first and fierce affirming sight

a soul that's born in cold and rain

i would gladly be the Icarus to your certainty

strap the wing to me death trap clad happily

your love is sunlight

wasteland, baby!

all the fear and fire of the end of the world

like the bonfire that burns that all words in the fight fell to

be still my indelible friend you are unbreaking

and that day that we'll watch the death of the sun

the death of all things that are seen and unseen

better love

blind to the purpose of the brute divine

Staring in the blackness at some distant star

you whose heart would sing of anarchy

when our truth is burned from history

like fire weeping from a cedar tree know that my love would burn with me

[theashofwkm]

A Siren’s Call (Part One)

Summary: In which the surface is off limits, but her voice is so addicting he just can’t help himself. little mermaid!au, sorta

Prompt: Goretober, Underwater

Warnings: blood mention, death mention, reliving tragic memory, law breaking, sneaking out. Despite warnings, all of these are vague and I don’t think this qualifies as actual angst.

Note: day six! sorry again for the lack of read more! tumblr sucks. also why are titles so hard?

———

Bubbles drift upwards lazily, floating to the surface. Skimming around smooth-scaled, smooth-skinned creatures that swim through the currents. Gurgling from the deepest depths up to crashing waves and free air.

The city of the mer is stunning. Gleaming and glittering from reflections of far-off sunlight. Abuzz with life and teeming with happiness, with joy and peace, except for one.

There’s a prince, handsome and beloved by all creatures of the sea. Set to inherit the throne, to inherit his father’s trident and the swell of power that comes with it, to become king. He is the most beloved creature, most beloved mer in all of the sea.

He does not wish to be king. Having little interest for the throne, for the trident, for the power the title holds and the rules he’ll be bound to. Being king is an honor, but it also a duty and a burden and all he’s ever craved is freedom. The binds of prince are loose, but they’re still far too tight. The ones of king are even tighter. He has no interest to be bound to the ocean, or anything else.

The prince is a creature of the ocean, born and bound to its waters, from the sea foam on the surface, to the deepest chasms unexplored.

It’s improper that he holds love for the land.

It’s a secret, of course. Something he keeps even from those he trusts. Secrets have a way of coming to light and while an ally could help, they could also hinder.

Land is forbidden, the surface ordered off limits years ago, for good reason. Humans had learned about them, had slaughtered who they could, the numbers staggering.

The Queen had died in the chaos, protecting her only son. It’s wrong for him to hold such fascination with what killed her. He knows humans are cruel, remembers the wash of his mother’s blood clogging the water around him, remembers the warmth of it. He remembers her death, knows that humans have no mercy, but his fascination holds.

Guilt is what’s really keeping his secret.

Rumors would spread through the castle if they knew the truth. He’d be a king without care for his people. An untruth, but that is what they would see him as. For a ruler, royalty, the people’s perception is everything.

He cannot go to the surface often. Princely duties keep him chained to the sea’s floor, eyes watching him in fascination and reverence, a barrier to the world above. Oftentimes, he lays on the floor, looks up and pretends that he’s looking at the sun, feeling the wind and the air.

There’s fond memories of the surface, behind the guilt. It used to be a place they visited, where they laughed and sang and played music.

Music that was illegal now.

The Queen, his mother, had been so gifted in that department. Her voice had soothed even the grumpiest of listeners. It never failed to send him to sleep as a merling. It was a blessing, until they lost it. Then all music was banned, for the reminders it brought of the kind Queen they had, the Queen they lost.

William hardly remembers her voice. The memory of her scream and her blood is far more vivid. In banning music, the king had taken away any good William had in his childhood, leaving him desperate for something he should hate.

They’d left his mother at the surface. His memory of her is clearer there and maybe that’s why he’s so fascinated with it. Her ghost lives where sky meets ocean, leaving her dead to the place she’d called home. Nothing but a ghost the people were forbidden to acknowledge.

He thinks his father is going about mourning her wrong. He can hardly remember music, what it sounded like, how it made him happy. The only place he can really remember her is the surface, where he simultaneously feels free and like he’s drowning.

There’s a human castle, not far from the home of the merpeople. It’s far less impressive, of course, made of tall, weathered stone and not glimmering gold. There’s a certain charm to it nonetheless. He watches it on his short stints to the surface.

One day, a beautiful melody is heard as he breaks the surface gasping. He can feel the cold spear that drove through his mother, the warmth of her blood as it spilled out into the water. Every time he breaks the surface of the waves, he feels her die all over again.

This time, though, there’s a lovely sound greeting him. Shamefully, it takes him a few moments to realize that it’s singing. It’s been so long since he’s heard it, and his memory of it is weak, quiet.

Turning his gaze to the castle, he sees a girl, standing on a balcony and quietly singing to the amphitheater of the ocean, where nothing visible listens. Waves crash and slosh against the shores, the only music accompanying her voice, the crow of seagulls her background vocals. It all echoes over the gentle rolls of the water.

She’s pretty, the girl. Her hair reminds him of the deep chasms that stretch down into the earth, the ones with no bottoms, so deep that no one dares to explore it. Her dress is also dark, a contrast to her pale skin. He’s bewitched, flicking his tail to drift closer to the girl and the castle full of humans.

Humans he should detest but doesn’t. Oh, he’s tried, but he’s never succeeded. Now, listening to the calm voice of this one, he doesn’t think he ever will.

Nostalgia cinches around his chest, a faded memory of his mother coming to mind, her fingers dragging though his hair as she sings him to sleep. A feeling —safety, comfort — settles over his heart. He can’t remember the last time he felt sated, at peace.

It’s the orange tint of the sun that brings him back to himself, sun lurking low over the horizon, William has to his eyes off her form. Her melancholic song comes to an end with one last drifting hum.

His gaze lingers for a moment, etching her sad beauty into his mind before he turns and disappears under the waves. In a current, heading home, his mind whispers her song to him, hoping to keep the peace it had made him feel while he dives into the chilly waters of home.

Half a moon phase passes before he has to come up for air again. For a glimpse of the girl he shouldn’t be thinking about. She’s there, thankfully, on the same balcony, with a man. The moon leers over them, the vice around his heart loosening a little as he recognizes her, the panic of his mother’s memory duller then it usually is.

Black sky stretched above them, speckled in white, her laughter sounds, light and pleasant, barely audible over rough waves. A storm is coming, clouds inching their way closer from the far off horizon, invisible under the dark sky.

The man is dark haired, like her. He laughs too, in a deeper tone, exchanging unintelligible words with her. They seem comfortable together, the girl happy, and the sight brings a smile to William’s face.

He shouldn’t be smiling because of a human. Yet, with her laugh turning her face to the sky, showcasing her joy, he smiles anyway. They leave after only a few short moments, but William remains, turning his eyes to the night sky.

It’s amazing that it can look so different without the sun. He arches his tail up, ogling the way the soft light bounces off the scales. Water drips from his fin, and he reluctantly lowers it back to the water, casting one last look at the castle as he dives under and returns to his home.

Sneaking into his bedroom, he wonders who the man was, who the girl is. He’s infatuated with her, her voice an addiction he can’t escape.

He’s in trouble.

Only a couple days pass before he has to see her again, far too soon after his last visit, but her memory begs for his return. Breaking the surface is relieving, the memory of his mother distant as he spots the girl again.

The girl is there, on the beach, so close that he has to shirk behind a rock to avoid catching her attention.

Sand sinks beneath her slow, loping strides. Waves roll out to kiss the soles of her feet before receding just to do it again. He notes that her eyes are as dark as her hair, her dress still dark, but scattered with white stars, more casual then last dress she’d been in. She drifts aimlessly, sand squishing beneath her toes and the hem dragging beneath her heels.

She begins to sing. It’s enchanting, to hear it when she’s so close. She’s doing so absentmindedly, a sound between humming and singing, but it’s still beautiful, to the boy who hasn’t heard it in over a decade before he heard her. He peers around the rock to get a better look.

Towards the end of the small stretch of beach, there’s a log. Driftwood that had come ashore during a storm, most likely. She takes a seat, leaning her elbows onto her knees as she stares at the horizon.

William inches around the rock a little more. His tail makes a splash behind him as he does so, excitement making holding it still difficult.

She stops singing, gaze swinging over to William, who’s wide-eyed but otherwise hidden. She stands, eyes pinned to him as she says a soft “hello?”

William ducks behind the rock, but stays above water.

“Who are you?” Her voice is placating, soothing. He doesn’t want to leave, wants to hear it some more, but she’s not supposed to see him. Humans aren’t allowed to see them.

Swallowing deeply, he peers his head around the rock, hyper aware of his tail and that it stays hidden. He looks human, for the most part, above the waist. As long as that’s all she sees, she shouldn’t learn what he is.

“Hi,” he whispers, flopping a hand in a sad attempt for a wave. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude.”

“It’s alright. Were you listening to me sing?”

Red-cheeked, he nods. “Your voice is pretty.” His fingers dig into the rough stone shielding him. He’s not supposed to be here, talking with a human. He was breaking all kinds of laws, coming up here.

“Thank you.” She laughs a little. “I don’t think I’ve seen you before, though. My name is Celine.”

Blinking, William replies, against his better judgement. “I’m William.”

“Hi William.”

“Hi.”

They idle in silence for some time, simply staring at one another, awkwardness thick in the air. She clears her throat. “So,” she says, “what are you doing here?”

“Uhh. I just came to see the castle.” A half-truth. He’d came to see one who lived in it as well.

Something about his words twist her smile in an unhappy way. “Ah, you came to see the Queen-to-be in person, huh?”

“Queen to be?” He tilts his head.

She nods, her posture stiffer and her back now straight. “Yes. I’m the princess. My coronation is upcoming.”

Something in his heart aches, empathetic. He examines her posture, her bitter tone. “You don’t want to be Queen?”

“Not really.” She shakes her head, sighing as she sits again. “It just seems like a lot of unnecessary circumstance and grandeur. A lot of rules to follow.”

He hoists himself up, half dangling off the rock, half leaning against it so he can be better seen. “And it just seems like a waste of resources, doesn’t it?” They’re busy planning a big, proper celebration? Won’t let you have two seconds to yourself without a guard at your side?”

“Yes!” She nods enthusiastically, groaning. “You have no idea how exhausting it is.”

Laughing a little, he shakes his head. “I have some idea, trust me.” He remembers the wall of guards he had to sneak by, the bribe he paid to the gatesman, his father’s voice echoing through the halls. Water laps against the shore, against his back. “It’s nice to just get away for a bit, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it is. Not that I don’t love it, it’s just— it just gets a little stifling at times.”

“Yeah.” He smiles ruefully, sadly. He knows all too well.

Smoothing her skirts, she looks up at him. “Why don’t you come out of the water? I’m sure it’s cold.”

His fin twitches, fingers clenching. “I’m fine here.”

“Alright,” she shrugs, eyes sliding away from him. “Tell me something,” she says suddenly, head rocked back and facing the sky.

“Like what?”

She smiles. “Anything.”

Hours pass, sun dragging across the sky. Pinkened sky, blazing sun, they become something very close to friends. Forging a bond with a stranger, someone that both know they shouldn’t, but that they do anyways.

She doesn’t want to be Queen. She’s being pushed to take her throne and a husband, except there’s no man she’s held any interest in.

“This is probably the best time I’ve had in a while,” she says, mulling over her thoughts audibly and breaking the comfortable bubble of silence. “It’s too bad you’re not one of my suitors, you’re easily the best of them.”

William’s breath catches. He flounders for a response, his mind blank.

“Princess!” A far off cry sounds, her name in a deep tone. She slumps, putting her face in her hands.

William glances down the beach, lowering himself into the water nervously. Instinct screams at him to dive, to swim out of sight.

“Duty calls,” she says, standing to brush sand off her dress. She turns to the voice, but stops herself from taking a step. She looks at William, the strange boy in the water. “Will I see you again?”

He hesitates. He should say no, leave now that he’s seen her up close, held a conversation with her. This is too close, too far past the line, law shattered behind him. “Same time tomorrow?”

Celine nods. “If I can get away.”

Sand flies under the heels of the guard, who sighs once he spots Celine. “Princess,” he says, “you’re needed back at the castle.”

Her gaze turns to sea, barren and empty. She follows the guard back to the castle, to civilization hungry for a glimpse of their future ruler at an overly fancy dinner.

William’s head peeps up over the water as he watches her walk away, guard at her side. His mind turns, heart reaching out to her, her struggles that he understands. He wants to come back, to get closer to her. Her last words play in his mind.

It’s too bad you’re not one of my suitors.

An idea flashes across his mind. He bites his lip, draws blood. Eyes darting between the castle he’s been admiring for months and the water beneath him. He makes his decision.

Diving under the water, he swishes his tail powerfully, rocketing himself downwards, into cool depths and past his own castle. The light shimmer of his home fades as he enters the one place more forbidden then the sea’s cover.

He enters the kraken’s lair.

———

Masterlist

Ooh, a cliffhanger. What will happen next, I wonder? Y’all will just have to wait. Let me know if you liked this, though!!

TAGGING: @pleaseletthisjimbetaken @electricprincess888 @berrie-b @mackenziplier @gerardwayslips @risiskifi @cawestad @theinvisiblespoon @californiakxng @just-another-starfish @superawesomeamazingname @moonstonefox12 @bones-and-tomes @am-i-heaven-or-am-i-hell @itsbumblebunnybee @noisyfreakpersonlover @nightmarejim @schuyleryette @withjust-a-bite @statictay @muraae (tags are open and I think I’m right in not tagging the WKM list because this isn’t explicitly WKM?? Idk.)

[tumblunni]

hey uhhh YKNO WHATS GOOD brainstorming potential headcanons for a character you know NOTHING ABOUT

i guess its less headcanons and more like.. wishes? hopes? what i think would be cool to do with this dude and like ALL I KNOW is that he is a cool dude and apparantly he doesnt have a backstory or sympatheticness SO consider what if he did and maybe thatd be cooler. like dude he owns THE SINGLE BEST BOSS BATTLE THEME IN ALL VIDEOGAMES EVER and that is ALL I KNOW ABOUT HIM and i just want him to deserve it, yo. also if he turned good i could be his friend and some of the badassness would rub off on me

ANYWAY

COOL SQUID PRESIDENT

i would vote for this man as squesident

seriously the design is SO GOOD!!! how did they manage to get such a cool colourscheme out of his entire Thing being that he has no colours?? like damn i like white being used as an evil colour for once, thanks. it symbolizing emptyness and emotionlessness is like BIG YES and i really hope thats what they were going for cos apparantly the wiki says that all the yokai who join his “we should never be friends with humans” gang turn colourless to match? but like the dude himself is less plain white and more very light shades of blue, grey and gold. MAYBE REFLECTS THAT HE IS A MANIPULATIVE DOUCHE WHO MAYBE DOESNT REALLY CARE ABOUT YOKAI AND JUST WANTS TO RULE THE WORLD PERHAPS dammit why does everything about him scream “great 100% evil guy who is very scary” when man I WANT TO LIKE HIM, DAMMIT!!

ALSO SERIOUSLY the visual effect of the wild spirally red yellow eyes against an otherwise “peaceful” colour whose entire point as an evil is “peaceful” taken to a bad extreme. it REALLY immediately sells that “tries to pretend to be calm, collected and fancy but is actually an angry mofo at heart” vibe i got from his theme song??? I REALLY HOPE THATS ACTUALLY HOW THIS COOL BOSS BATTLE GOES DOWN cos man the best villains are smug asshles who Always Win and then when you FINALLY win you get that much of a better ending!!! but AGH another part of me is like “i hope im wrong because he looks like a Cool Dad and i want him to be good”. Maybe his true design concept was to betray me personality with using all his cool dad power for evil...?

ALSO im not gonna spoil you guys on it cos it is JUST AS AMAZING AS HIS SONG but i was toooootally right that he has some sort of super intimidating second form and its got THE COOLEST DESIGN EVER HOLY SHIT! and also apprantly there’s a recoloured bonus boss called Minister Squisker who’s like a colour swap in a really creative way?? it swaps him being all “blank” themed with scary bright eyes and instead his entire body is a wild ye olde mythological illustration style paint job in every colour ever. okay COOL HEADCANON NUMBER ONE thats actually the regular colour of the species and mckraken is the white sheep of the family lol

also UHHH i dunno it seems kinda weird to me that theyd have this dude running a goddamn political party about humans being bad yet he doesnt seem to have any motivation whatsoever for it? unless it really is just supposed to be ‘he only pretends he wants to protect yokai from humans so he can manipulate and rule the yokai’. but like HYPOTHETICALLY in some universe where he actually lives up to his Grumpy Dad Who Has A Hidden Soft Spot potential, maybe he has an understandable backstory that raises legitimate concerns about how humans are destroying the natural and mythological and forgetting their roots, or other reasonable reasons why yokai could think humans are dangerous and all. i mean we ARE dangerous, we’re just a wide group of people that contain evil bastards and also good people, yknow. And thatd resonate well as a plot probably, cos well the whole point of the series is “in real life ur scared of yokai but theyre actually all goofy pranksters who will be your best friend forever”. Both sides being afraid of each other could lead to some good plotness! and it could be really effective and sad if after hours of joyous childhood wonder the protagonist bumps into the first yokai they couldnt befriend. the first one thats scared of them. the first member of this weird colourless political party who accuses them of committing crimes against yokaikind, of obviously only enslaving these yokai friends cos you have an ulterior motive, just like all humans! it could be effective if its something that shakes up the whole way you saw the world and establishes that hey its not all fun and happiness, and there’s some people you are powerless to convince. maybe even some people you are powerless to save...?

ANYWAY possible idea for ‘what if the dude originally had a sympathetic motive but it got twisted over time and now he’s just a fuck BUT maybe he could still be redeeminated someday ok thanks” What if he’s the spirit of.. like.. ocean pollution? Like there’s some yokai who are ghosts of a mortal person but theres some that are just nature spirits or personifications of concepts. What if he’s the personification of the dying screams of all the wildlife killed in a particular tragic oil spill? hence squid = thematic, and blank white colourscheme = even more thematic reflecting the stain the oil would leave on a pristine ocean and also the blank emotionlessness he was left as after witnessing that tragedy. Cos like his entire Purpose would have been born out of avenging anger but i mean he was just a kid, the only one left alive on a ruined beach and seeing just how powerful humans were and how pointless it would be to try and fight them with his weak power. like he was born to avenge all these souls and he just keeps failing!! his entire reason to live and he’s just too small!! so he ends up becoming bitter and cynical and learning how to use his silver tongue to manipulate others into becoming his weapons, and he vows that someday he’s gonna come back when he has the power he needs to complete his mission. and he’s just forever had this anger seething inside that he’s been unable to get any catharsis from, so when his cold and collected persona cracks he’s really damn scary with all these years of a man who’s grown old fearing he’ll never be able to avenge his ocean friends and just AAAAAA! itd be really good cos itd be a way he could still be intimidating and high stakes as a boss fight but also sympathetic!! also it could make sense why he’d only be redeemable after defeating him? like this entire time he’s been hidden behind a million layers of politics and minions and stuff and its very easy for him to not see the reality of the fact that he’s terrorizing human children just like how humans scarred him as a child. so like his whole big second form transformation super anger mode time would be sort of a last ditch attempt to deny what he already knows, the doubts that have been eating away at his soul now he’s getting close to the end of his life goal. but also like.. he doesnt even know who he IS, under the lies! its been his entire purpose for existing. like he probably uhh.. didnt have much plans after his victory. he probably wouldnt have much will to live left. so yeah you basically beat up this guy’s emotional walls and make him face the face of the people he’s been hurting, when he’s been trying to avoid it for so long. and he gets to see how much all the other yokai genuinely trust you and how much youre personally sacrificing to protect them so maybe you really arent just lying about being a good person...

oh also i was thinking about the inherant hypocrisy present in the fact that this guy is a big spoopy REALLY WELL DESIGNED squid monster that spends all his time in a depowered humansona instead, despite his whole Thing being hating humans. and, yknow, ‘i’ll solve this using a carbon copy of human politics instead of any more traditionally magical way of fighting the humans’. Yeah. So THEORY of SADNESS maybe he like never actually met any other yokai for a long time? I dont think it really makes sense that he’d be hypocritical because he secretly likes humans or something, that wouldnt jive with this backstory idea. So im thinking another explanation could be that he genunely doesnt know much about yokai culture? Like cos of his backstory he just poofed into existance on this destroyed beach in the human world and spent the first few centuries of his life completely alone except for the terrifying monsters that haunted every second of his life, and the knowledge that it was his purpose to defeat them but he didnt know how. And he was a nature spirit of the sea but his sea was empty of everything except death, so he couldnt even hug a cute fish sidekick or something- OH GOD WHAT IF HE DID HAVE A CUTE FISH SIDEKICK AND IT DIED COS OF HUMANS!!! very tiny sad squid monster child holding a dead pet, oh god why did my heart did this to meeee!! so yeah he didnt even know he was a yokai or wtf yokai are, he didnt know anywhere outside the tiny rock pool he would hide in on this barren beach. And then someday he gets found by an older yokai and adopted and like he feels like he owes them so much cos they gave him a reason to live, and a connection to the nature that he was supposed to protect, and.. well.. any companionship at all ever. So thats how his directionless “humans are bad” turned into “yokai are good and i need to protect them from humans like i failed to protect the beach” which turned into “i need to get more power to do this” which turned into manipulating other yokai and seeing them as nothing more than tools to take down the humans, his revenge consuming him until he barely remembered the reasons he originally wanted to do it...

and blablabla thats where we bring in the recolour bonus boss also, and say thats the nice grandpa figure who adopted him when he was all lost and trapped in the human world. and cos he was sorta adopted into nobility thats why he’s so over the top with his pompousness, its like a hint of IM LOVV MY GRANDEPA shining through his grumpface. ALSO maybe a sad situation where the gramps saw his kid growing up into this scary extremist and he tried to reason with him that humans dont need to be destroyed and that led to them fighting and him getting sealed off in recolour bonus boss land. and mckraken sees it as the biggest betrayal of his life and it totally threw him off the slippery slope to feel like the one man he trusted the most was a traitor to yokai all along. but even at his most evil he couldnt bear to actually kill his beloved gramps so he just imprisoned him and tries to stop thinking about it but like THE CONSTANT SPECTRE OF THE GUILT HANGS OVER YOUR HEAD THAT YOU DID YOU GRAMPS WRONGGGG So yehmaybe protag could find the gramps guy and hear about the sad backstory via him and then defeat mckraken and make him realise he was wrong and he apologises to his gramps and atones and all the humans and yokai are friends again and BUNNI CRIES FOREVER the end

cos seriously man this guy’s design is too good to be wasted on a hateable!! srsly he’s like that archetypical goofy big beard chubby pirate dude BUT INTIMIDATING AND BADASS AND COOL FASHION AND DAVY JONES SQUID BEARD SQUEARD I LOVE HIM he is too round to be 100% evil

*slams fists on the table* IF YOU DONT LIVE UP TO MY EXPECTATIONS I AM GONNA CRY

aaa i need to stop just sitting here theorizing about this game and actually friggin play it lolllll

[graysonfirewolf85-blog]

Queer Positive Deities

Keep in mind that this is NOT a complete list of ALL pantheons and deities that are queer positive. This is a good majority, but by all means it is NOT all of them. Also not all photos would fit.

DISCLAIMER

This wiki will contain sexual terms and other mature items that each deity represented or did in their specific pantheon. If any of it bothers you, please exit the wiki and move on from it. Thank you.

Achilles (Greek)

The Greek hero Achilles was invulnerable excepting his famous weak heel, but a male shieldbearer broke through the warrior’s romantic defenses. While Homer never explicitly states a gay relationship between Achilles and sidekick Patroclus, many scholars read a romantic connection between the two, as only Patroclus ever drew out a compassionate side to the famously arrogant warrior. Patroclus’s death at the hands of Trojan Prince Hector sent Achilles into a rage in which he killed Hector and dragged his body around Troy. Other myths also disclose Achilles was struck by the beauty of Troilus, a Trojan prince.

Adonis/Tammuz (Phoenician/Greco-Roman/Mesopotamian)

The name “Adonis” now refers to a strikingly beautiful male, but the original Adonis is a cross-cultural deity, showing up in Phoenician and Greco-Roman mythology. Adonis is often equated with the Mesopotamian Tammuz, with whom he shares many attributes and stories. Most noted for his relationships with goddesses, including Astarte, Aphrodite, and Persephone, Adonis was also the beloved of the god Dionysus. Adonis and Tammuz are fertility gods, representing the vegetation of the land, in a constant state of life, death, and resurrection. Adonis died from a boar’s attack, which mutilated his genitals. In the much-celebrated descent-of-the-goddess stories known in many cultures, the Goddess travels into the many layers of the underworld to retrieve the spirit of her consort. Adonis is seen not as a king, but as a lover, somewhat effeminate or homoerotic. His priests in Athens were homoerotically inclined, and, along with priestesses, they celebrated his life and death by planting gardens of Adonis, and then uprooted them only a few days after sprouting. In the Greek magical papyri, Adonis is invoked for lesbian love spells.

Antinous (Greco-Roman-Kemetic)

This resurrection figure holds ties to ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Roman cultures. Antinous was a real historical figure and the male companion of the Roman emperor Hadrian. The pair would take journeys around the Mediterranean. And on one trip, Antinous drowned in the Nile on the same day that Egyptians commemorated the watery death of Osiris. Deeply affected by the death of his lover, Hadrian encouraged the deification of Antinous, and cults sprung up around the Mediterranean honoring him. In some tellings, Antinous rose from the Nile after his death and was then revered as a form of Osiris reborn. Indeed, the god and the Roman cult that followed him still have devotees today.

Apollo and Hyacinth (Greek)

Apollo was initially the Greek god of light and later was associated with the Sun. His twin sister is Artemis. As the god of music, dance, divination, healing, and artistic inspiration, he can grant these gifts to others. Apollo is known for taking many male lovers, most notably, Hyacinthus, or Hyacinth, a mortal youth. When he was tossing the discus with Apollo, it struck Hyacinth with a mortal blow. The western wind god Zephyrus, who desired Hyacinth and was angry and jealous of Apollo, caused the accident with his winds. The Sun god could not save his beloved, but from his wound Apollo created the Hyacinth flowers, a symbol of youth cut too short. Hyacinth later became a divine patron to those pursuing same-sex love.

Aphrodite/Venus (Greco-Roman)

Aphrodite embodies the powers of love on every level, especially romantic love. Known as Venus to the Romans, and associated with the morning and evening star, the planet Venus, she was renowned for her gifts of attraction and beauty. She originated—along with the Furies—from Uranus, the sky god, springing forth from the foamy sea where Uranus’s genitalia had fallen after being castrated by his son Chronos. She is usually displayed as a beautiful woman rising out of the sea, as in Botticellis painting, “The Birth of Venus.” As she walks on land, she trails flowers behind her, even in the most barren of deserts. Her aid Eros is the original archetype for the Valentine’s Day cupid, shooting his arrows and making people fall in love. She had many lovers, most notably Ares the war god and her husband, Hephaestus. She bore Hermaphrodite from her union with Hermes.

Artemis/Diana (Greco-Roman)

Artemis is the huntress, the goddess of wild things, the protector of women and children, and the maiden aspect of the Moon. From her bow, she fires silver arrows, the shafts of moonlight to illuminate her path. In many versions of her myths, she is the archetype of the strong, independent woman, goddess of Amazons and unsympathetic to those of traditional masculinity. After her birth, she immediately got up and helped her mother deliver her twin brother, Apollo. Artemis rejects many traditional roles, such as marriage and conventional society, and feels kinship to those beyond traditional roles. Her festivals included same-sex eroticism involving both females and males. As the Romans’ Diana, she took on a more maternal, universal goddess archetype, and became the mother of Aradia, her avatar in 14th-century Italy, who taught the Goddess’s craft.

Astarte (Phoenician/Canaanite)

Astarte is a manifestation of the Great Mother Goddess of the Paleolithic cultures, identified with the earlier goddesses Ishtar and Inanna, and later the Greco-Roman Aphrodite/Venus. Versions of Astarte were worshiped throughout the Middle East, Egypt, and even across Europe, with the spread of the Roman Empire. She is a Queen of Heaven, and patron of love and war. She, too, is involved in the resurrection and fertility myths of Adonis, also known as Adoni, or lord. Though usually remembered in feminine form, like other goddesses, she does have mixed gender incarnations, sometimes depicted as a hermaphrodite, and later the Phoenician records mention King Astarte. Astarte’s temples were served by the kelabim and possibly a gender-variant order of Amazonian women.

Athena/Minerva (Greco-Roman)

Springing fully formed from the head of Zeus, without aid of a goddess, Athena is presented as the wise warrior woman of the Olympians. She has the ability to transform into a young man. Her affairs often end on a tragic note, and most modern myths present her as celibate, though such descriptions were probably added by the patriarchal rise, to demonstrate a strong warrior woman could not have love. In one such myth, her “brother” Hephaestus makes her armor, for “her love.” He means physical love, while she assumes platonic love. I find it hard to believe such a goddess of wisdom and strategy would misunderstand such an offer. Most likely, our modern Athena is a sanitized version of the ancient Minoan snake goddess. Her darker half was shed and cast off as the gorgon Medusa. Modern Athena carries a shield with Medusa’s face on it. Athena is the goddess of strategy, weaving, and invention, who is credited with teaching humans how to graft olive branches onto trees, yielding more harvest. The city of Athens is named after her. She is often called Pallas Athena, in honor of her friend (or possible lover) who died as a youth in a spear throwing accident. Minerva is her Roman name.

Atum (Kemetic)

In the creation story for the Egyptian gods, the first deity, Atum, was both male and female, according to studies by researcher Mark Burstman. The ancestor to all self-produced two offspring, Shu and Tefnut, through either a sneeze or his own semen, and it wasn’t for a few generations that the archetypal male and female gods of Isis and Osiris were born.

Baphomet (Europe)

Baphomet is not a traditional pagan god, but one most noted for its link to the Knights Templar. Pictured as a hermaphrodite, with breasts and a penis, Baphomet was also a mix between human and goat, a perfect mix between male and female, human, and animal, although something akin to the traditional Middle Age view of the devil. Baphomet is a deity of fertility and wealth. To curb their growing power and influence, King Philip IV of France claimed the Knights Templar were worshiping Baphomet and practicing homosexuality, two acts of heresy in the eyes of the Church.

Baron Samedi (Vodoun)

The Voodoo loa (law) named Baron Samedi is a god of the dead and magick, but is also evoked for help in daily life. His place is the cemetery and his symbol, a skull. Samedi is depicted as transgendered, wearing a combination of men’s and women’s clothing of black and purple, possibly representing his walk between two worlds, the living and the dead, in the same way that his sunglasses, with only one lens, do. He sees in both worlds. The Baron is known for his sexually suggestive movements indicating a desire for anal intercourse.

Bona Dea (Roman/Italian)

Bona Dea is the “Good Goddess” about whom little is known. She is a goddess of healing, magick, prosperity, and women. In fact, her cult did not allow the participation of men, and none of her mysteries were to be shared with the outside world. Most of our information on Bona Dea comes to us from the written accounts of male scholars lacking a personal connection to her rites. Her ceremonies possibly included lesbian acts of love as a part of worship.

Bran (Welsh)

Bran the Blessed is a Celtic hero/god of the mystical otherworlds. In many Celtic myths, the line between divine and mortal, spirit and flesh, is less visible than in most other mythologies. The legends were passed on orally, and recorded only much later by Christian writers. To preserve the story, yet not blaspheme, the gods and goddesses were transformed into heroes of folktales as the stories are told and retold. Bran is a patron of magick, battle, and resurrection. His main tale is the rescue of his sister, Branwen, who in many ways seems like his feminine half. She was abused by Matholwch, her husband and king of Ireland. Bran’s army defeated Matholwch’s men and rescued her, but Bran was fatally wounded. His head was eventually severed and continued, after his death, to speak and give magical advice. Eventually it was buried in London. As an interesting note to his history, Robert Craves, the somewhat controversial author of The White Goddess, believed Bran was worshiped by an order of homosexual priests, and Amathon, a version of the Green Man, wrests Bran’s secret magical name by seducing one of Bran’s priests.

Cernunnos/Herne the Hunter (Celtic/Proto-Celtic)

Cernunnos is the fabled Horned God, a central figure in modern witchcraft. He represents the god of the waning year and animal lord, the complement to the Green Man. Usually depicted naked, sitting in a lotus position, with stag antlers and a torc (Celtic neck ring resembling a choker) around his neck and one in his hand, surrounded by the animals of the forest. Some renditions portray the Horned God with an erect penis, surrounded by men with erections as well. Very little of Cernunnos’s original mythos survives, so old are his cults. Worship of him, primarily in Caul and other Celtic territories, is believed to predate the arrival of the Celts. We don’t even know his proper name; Cernunnos is a Roman variation. He has been equated with Herne the Hunter and even the Greek Pan and Dionysus due to their similar associations with nature and shamanic trance work. Herne is a figure of British folklore, the God of the Wild Hunt, appearing at times of crisis. Cernunnos is sometimes associated with the chalk carving of the god figure at Cerne Abbas in Dorset. The figure is not horned, but associated with fertility, due to his depiction with his exaggerated phallus. Cernunnos is an aspect of the Great Father God, a force of nature, like the Goddess—loving, gentle, and receptive, but also fiercely protective and powerful.

Chin (Mayan)

Chin is described as a small child or dwarf, and is a deity of magick, divination, and the destiny of rulers. He introduced homoerotic relationships to the Mayan nobles. The nobles would obtain youths of the lower classes to be the lovers of the nobles’ sons. Such unions were considered legal marriages under Mayan law.

Chrysippus (Greek)

Euripedes wrote that this divine Peloponnesian hero was on the way to compete in the Nemean Games when his Theban tutor Laius ran off with him and raped him. The incident drew a curse upon the city of Thebes.

Damballah (Vodoun)

Damballah is the serpent god of the Voodoo loa and although Damballah is portrayed as a father figure, he has an androgynous nature and can manifest homoerotically or bisexually. Invoked for guidance, peace, and prosperous good fortune, Damballah is the god of rain and rainbows, making a modern connection to the queer rights movement.

Dionysus/Bacchus (Thracian/Greco-Roman)

Dionysus is the son of Zeus and a mortal woman named Semele. Myths paint Zeus’s immortal wife, Hera, as the villain, tricking Semele to her death while she was still pregnant. Zeus could not save her, but saved his child, and implanted the unborn child in his thigh, carrying him to term. Thus, in this myth, Dionysus is “twice born” and associated with immortality and Zeus is transgendered and associated with birth. Older myths cite Dionysus’s early death and rebirth, as well as a serpent, perhaps Persephone in disguise, as his mother. Hera plagued him after his birth, so to disguise himself, he learned the art of shape shifting into various plants and animals and dressed in women’s clothing to avoid detection. He kept company with woodland creatures, depicted as soft and feminine, yet virile and strong, Dionysus is a balance of extremes. His myths, too, contain both ends of the spectrum. As a god of ecstasy, wine, and love, he traveled the world with his teachings, before ascending to Olympus as one of the twelve main deities. Like Jesus, but predating him, Dionysus spread his message and gathered followers to his cult. Some expressions were peaceful and loving, while others were more extreme and violent. His female followers of the more extreme rituals were called the Maenads, or Bacchante. Noted for his associations with Aphrodite and Persephone, taking a sacrificial Adonis-like role in several stories, Dionysus was less well known for his love affairs with men, including Adonis and Hermaphrodite. Dionysus is both an upperworld god of light, as a newborn child of innocence, and one who has braved the underworld, in search of his mother’s spirit, to come back with the power the shamanic realms has to offer. As Bacchus to the Romans, this god was depicted less beautiful, and more masculine, yet he retained his softness and sensitivity. Dionysus is quite the example of balancing gender identities as a path to enlightenment.

Ereshkigal (Sumerian)

Sister to Inanna, and Queen of the Underworld, Ereshkigal is the dark goddess of the dead. She is like the crone, and associated with the power of transformation and destruction, with Greek Kore/Persephone, Hindu Kali, Celtic Morgan, and Norse Hel. In Egypt, Ereshkigal was petitioned for gay male love spells.

Eros (Greek)

Eros is most popularly known as the cupid image of Valentine’s Day cards, and as the aid to Aphrodite, shooting arrows to make mortals and gods alike fall in love. The mythic, truly worshiped god Eros is much different from our conception of him. Like Dionysus, he contained a mixture of feminine and masculine energies, being soft, gentle, loving, effeminate, and childlike on one hand, and ancient, wise, aggressive, and masculine on the other. Eros is the patron and protector of homosexual love. He, along with Hermes and Hercules, could grant blessings upon male couples—the gifts of loyalty, eloquence, and strength, respectively. Eros is a major deity in the Orphic Mystery Schools, associated with the dolphin, flute, lyre, rose, and rooster. As a patron of success in battle, he was called upon by warrior/lovers before a fight, because many in the Greek world believed the love men had for each other would unite and lead them to victory.

Erzulie (Vodoun)

Erzulie is the Voodoo loa of love, seduction, and beauty, who grants the gift of manifesting beauty to those in the creative arts, such as painters, musicians, poets, and designers. Although similar in some ways to the Aphrodite archetypes, Erzulie also contains darker elements akin to the underworld goddesses. Her symbol is the mirror, not only to admire her beauty, but in Voodoo, the mirror is the symbol of the spirit world, the gateway to the realm of the loa. She is sometimes known as a loa of tragic love, for she is Erzulie Ge Rouge, Erzulie of the Red Eyes. She weeps constantly because no man can love her enough. Some practitioners consider her a patron to gay men and lesbians. Men “ridden” by Erzulie often display transgender traits.

Freyja (Norse)

The Norse myths divide the gods into two tribes, the Aseir and Vanir. The Vanir tribe is considered earthier, embodying the natural forces. The Aseir represent the more intellectual aspects demonstrated by sky-god cultures. The two tribes clashed and eventually the Aseir won the conflict. As a sign of peace, the tribes traded members. Freyja and Freyr lived in Asgard with the Aseir as part of the agreement. Freyja is the good goddess of these ancient people who would become the Norse. She is the goddess of the land, fertility, eroticism, and magick. She specialized in a shamanic magick called Seidr, the practice of inducing shamanic states through shivering and shaking, and sex magick acts are also attributed to her. She wears the golden falcon cloak, which carries her into the otherworlds like the bird of prey. Freyja taught her magick to the god Odin, the all-father of the Aseir. This great goddess later became a goddess of battle, and her initiations included the rite of boys becoming men and warriors. Although modern practitioners of the Norse traditions, the Asatru, are often seen as dominantly heterosexual and sometimes even unwelcoming of gays, it appears possible their ancient spiritual ancestors had homoerotic overtones in actuality, or ritually, like most ancient cultures. Becoming a warrior was a form of blood brothering. Ritual anal intercourse may have been a part of that warrior bonding.

Freyr (Norse)

Her brother, the god Freyr, also embodies the earth, like a vegetation king, growing, dying, and then resurrecting. Sharing attributes with the traditional Wiccan horned and green gods, Freyr is sometimes depicted with an erect penis, and fertility icons are present as part of his worship. He is also a patron of magick, shamanism, water, eroticism, love, peace, boars, horses, and stags. Freyr seems to keep his associations with peace, an association many queer men identify with instead of focusing on the more patriarchal and warlike gods, while other gods, including his sister, were directed toward war. His priest may have been homoerotic or transgendered, and well versed in his sister’s form of shamanic magick. In many ways, Freyja and Freyr are like two sides of the same coin, even in name. To modern pagans, they represent the primal Goddess and God of the land, the Lady and Lord seen all over the world

Ganesha (Hindu)

Ganesha, the breaker of obstacles and binder of evil, is usually depicted as a four-armed, plump, elephant-headed man, riding a rat. Ganesha is a benefactor, a wise, gentle, and loving god, acting as an aide and intermediary for other deities of the Hindu faith. He is the son of the goddess Parvati. One myth claims his father is the god Shiva. Another says he was created by Parvati from clay and dust, to be both her son and servant. Lesser-known myths say he sprung from the union of Parvati with the goddess of the Ganges River, Ganga, or another handmaiden goddess. Shiva beheads him in a fit of anger, as Ganesha protects the inner chambers of Parvati. The goddess replaced his fallen human head with an elephant’s head. Shiva later gave control of his armies, his own power, to Ganesha. The inner chambers of the goddess represent the inner, sacred power, and the power of sexuality, as he is said to guard the root chakra, and kundalini. The gates to the kundalini energy are the vagina and anus, and the elephant-headed god has been linked to homoerotic forms of worship involving anal sex. Ganesha is mixed in terms of sexuality, masculine in gender, and as represented with the elephant’s trunk, but also is soft, tender, and portrayed with breasts. He opens the gateways that block our path, removes obstacles, and protects travelers. Speaking from personal experience, Ganesha is a powerful ally to have when overcoming challenges placed before you.

Ganymede (Greek)

The most famous male lover of the Olympian god-king Zeus, Ganymede was a prince whom Zeus coveted. Taking the shape of an eagle, Zeus snatched Ganymede up to Mount Olympus to be his lover and his cupbearer, pourer of the golden ambrosia, the nectar of the gods. Ambrosia, like other sacred liquids, is associated with semen. The sign of Aquarius is associated with Ganymede.

Gwydion (Celtic)

Brother to the Welsh warrior Gilfaethwy, Gwydion is an archetypal magician figure, whose attributes were later absorbed by the Arthurian legends in the figure of Merlin. Gwydion is a trickster, as well as a magician, associated with the Celtic otherworlds and rites similar to shamanism, shape-shifting, and transformation. To woo the lady Goewin from the warrior/magician/king Math, Gilfaethwy asked for Gwydion’s aid. Though greatly skilled, they failed, causing a war with the King Pywll. Math punished them by transforming them into animals of the opposite gender and having them mate, producing a deer, pig, and wolf, who were later transformed by Math into human men, the heroes Hyddwn, Hychtwn, and Bleiden. Gilfaethwy took the female role twice, but Math made them both retain their human consciousness within their animal incarnations, as punishment. The results, however, were quite

wonderful, creating three heroes. Such myths can construe an archetypal reality that preceded events of ritual transgenderism and homoerotic worship among the Celtic people. Only later, as the myth was retold to Christian audiences, does the same-sex union become punishment for misdeeds. Gwydion later guides the development of the warrior Lleu, much like Merlin did with King Arthur.

Hecate (Greco-Roman)

The archetypal goddess of the witches, Hecate is the triple goddess of magick, justice, travel, the night, and the crossroads. She guards the roads of travel, sailors, horses, dogs, and wealth. As Hecate Triformus, she is the one who is three, embodying maiden, mother, and crone, but is most often seen as the crone, the dark goddess of the underworld—the bringer of light or terrible darkness, as a goddess of blessings and curses. Her symbol is the torch, carried into the dark night. As a handmaiden to Aphrodite and Persephone, she is a goddess of love, evoked for gay male love spells going back to the 3rd century C.E. She is also linked with Diana and Proserpina by the Romans, as triple Moon goddesses, and with Artemis, Luna, and Persephone in various triplicies, by the Greeks. Though most typically viewed as a Greek goddess, worshiped by priestesses, her roots trace back to Thrace, and she was honored by gender-variant male priests called semnotatoi. The Romans did not change her name when they assimilated her from the Greek pantheon.

Heracles (Greek)

The famous hero had a number of male companions through his many trials. Among them: Abderos, who kept the mares of Diomedes for Heracles but was eaten by the beasts; Hylas, Heracles’ companion when he sailed on the Argo, who was eventually kidnapped by nymphs in Mysia; and Iolaus, who help cauterize the necks of the hydra when Heracles famously chopped off the beast’s many heads. Indeed, the relationship with Iolaus was enshrined in Thebes, where male couples of the day could be found “exchanging vows and pledges with their beloved at his tomb,” according to historian Louis Crompton.

Hermaphrodite (Greek)

Hermaphrodite is a deity of both genders, having a penis and breasts. One myth states Hermaphrodite is the child of Hermes and Aphrodite, hence the name, and contained the best attributes of them both. Another myth states a nymph named Salmacis pursued a mortal man who spurned her. She asked that she and the mortal be joined forever, and the gods did just that, fulfilling her exact words, and not her intention. The gods melted the two together into one being with both masculine and feminine attributes.

Hermes/Mercury (Greco-Roman)

Although called the messenger god of the Olympians, Hermes has a much greater sphere of influence. True, he is the god of travel, but he is not restricted to any place or role. When speaking to his father, Zeus, he asks to go anywhere he chooses, and takes the role of messenger and psychopomp, traveling between the heavens, Earth, and underworlds. A psychopomp is a guide for souls who takes the dead to the underworld, and new souls to Earth. The psychopomp is the divine archetype of the shaman and magician. As one not bound by traditional roles and obligations, he is free to go and do as he pleases. Hermes took male and female lovers as he desired. With Hercules and Eros, he is part of a homoerotic trinity. His son is the god Pan. Although a male deity, Hermes is androgynous, and carries a lot of boyish charm. Called “Mercury” by the Romans, and associated with Thoth of the Egyptians, Hermes was evoked during the 3rd century in Egypt for gay and lesbian love spells in Hellenistic (Greek) magick. Dill seeds are considered the “semen of Hermes.” Hermes is also credited with giving humans the gifts of writing, mathematics, music, geometry, games, gambling, gymnastics, and wrestling. He is even said to be the inventor of masturbation. Invoked for protection when traveling, Hermes is another Greek patron of the crossroads. He is the god of both intellect and cunning, and as a trickster spirit, he is a patron of thieves. The symbols of Hermes include the winged sandals and cap, the caduceus, and the wand. The caduceus symbolizes the currents of kundalini, rising in a spiral, and later pictured as a double helix, like DNA, or the currents of masculine and feminine energy blending together. Now it is the symbol of modern medicine, as Hermes is a patron of healers. Hermes is a versatile god of many talents, trades, and attributes.

Horus (Egyptian)

Horus is the avenging son and a savior figure, a divine child in the Osirian cults. Horus is the falcon-headed god. One of his eyes is the Sun and the other is the Moon. The son of Osiris and Isis, he revenges himself against his father’s murderer, his uncle Set. Although Horus and Set were in constant conflict until Horus’s eventual victory, one myth relates the story of oral intercourse between Set and Horus, and Set consequently gives birth to Horus’s child. The child is either the Moon god Khonshu or the scribe of the gods, Thoth. Thoth is also associated with the Moon and homosexuality, although in most stories Thoth predates Horus. Homoerotic reproduction is common between divine personages, and their union often signifies birth of a mystical truth rather than a physical child. This particular birth suggests that the child of light and the god of darkness, nephew, and uncle are really two sides of the same deity, much like the cyclical Oak and Holly King of Celtic myth. Unfortunately, many scholars interpret the saga of Horus and Set as the struggle of good versus evil.

Hypnos (Greek)

Popular in mythology is the story of the Moon goddess Selene, who loved the boy Endymion. Most versions tell us she was so distracted by her love that she failed to pull her Moon chariot across the sky, causing darkness and the phases of the Moon. The gods punished her by putting poor Endymion to sleep, yet she still visits, continuing the dark phases of the Moon. The underworld god Hypnos, god of sleep, also loved Endymion, and he put Endymion to sleep, so they may share time together through dreams.

Indra (Hindu)

Indra is the Hindu sky god, with many similarities to Zeus. Both bisexual and transgendered, Indra loves his wife, Indrani. Indrani and Indra are viewed as the feminine and masculine sides to one being. Indra also loves the Moon god Soma, who elicits comparisons to Ganymede. The word soma also refers to the drink of the gods, like the Greek ambrosia, an offering, or potentially a psychotropic substance, real or mythic, which opens the gate to the gods. Soma also forms a union with Agni, the Hindu god of fire.

Isis (Egyptian)

The most beloved of goddesses, Isis is the Great Mother goddess of the Egyptians, the mother of gods and pharaohs. As the goddess of the land, agriculture, Moon, heaven, the underworld, healing, and magick, she is essentially the goddess of life. Her worship started in Stone Age Egypt, but was later incorporated in the more patriarchal myths of Ra, Osiris, and Horus. Even so, she plays a pivotal part in such dramas. Her worship spread into Europe, particularly as a result of Rome’s contact with Egypt, and only diminished with the rise of Christianity and the violent conversions associated with it. Christianized emperor Constantine forbade her worship and rites, desecrated her temples and killed her priests and priestesses. Actually, she was worshiped almost twice as long as Christ has been, and modern pagans are reviving her worship. Her cults and mysteries may have been similar to or even inspired the Eleusian mysteries of Persephone and Demeter. Although associated with homosexuality through her son Horus and brother Set, Isis, like other goddesses of her time and place, is served in ancient times, and today, by gay and transgendered priests and priestesses. Priests of the ancient world grew out their hair and nails, wore skirts, engaged in ritual sex, fertility rites, and possibly ritual castration, all to the dismay of later Christian observers. As the Great Mother, she welcomes all genders, orientations, races, and classes to her worship, and is considered one of the most popular and well-known goddesses in the modern pagan movement.

Kali Ma (Hindu)

Known in Hindu myth as the destroyer, the warrior goddess, and devouring mother is Kali. She is a dark goddess of magick, tantra, thieves, warriors, and death, with many arms carrying weapons, skin like ebony, and wearing a necklace of human heads. She is the destroyer of demons, and the wife/mother of Shiva, the dissolver. In modern practice, Kali is the harsh mother called upon to destroy what does not serve, including our own egos and illusions. She is both beauty and horror personified, forcing us to face our fears. Most people misunderstand the power of Kali. She is not a monster. She is akin to the Celtic war goddesses and crones, like the triple Morgan and the Cailleach. In the Hindu traditions, she is like Mother Nature. Male worshipers sometimes dress as Kali, with fright wigs, masks, and dresses, or ritually cut themselves with swords, as a symbolic castration.

Loki (Norse/Scandinavian/Germanic)

Originally, Loki was a fire god, later absorbed by the Teutonic tribes. In Norse myth, he is adopted as Odin’s blood brother. As his myth changed over time, he was demonized much like the Egyptian Set was. Loki is the trickster, in the positive and negative associations of the word. Although oriented to fire and light, Loki is as much a mercurial figure as Hermes and Thoth, working in words and clever unpredictability, like a combination of The Fool and The Magician of the tarot. Later his words turned to lies and his pranks turned much more malicious, siding with the enemies of the Asgardian gods, causing the death of Balder, the Sun god, son of Odin and brother to Thor. Loki is credited with starting Ragnarok, the Norse Apocalypse the gods desperately tried to prevent. As a shape-shifter, Loki is associated with transgenderism. To help Thor recover his hammer, stolen by the giants, he dresses Thor as Freyja and disguises himself as “her” handmaiden. Later disguised as the giantess Thokk, he prevented Balder’s resurrection by refusing to cry for Balder and defying the goddess Hel’s vow to release Balder from the land of the dead if all would shed a tear for him. Loki also assumed Freyja’s form and cloak, indicating magical and shamanic associations with the goddess, although it appears Loki never had a cult or priesthood exclusively his own. He transforms to a mare, gets pregnant, and gives birth to Odin’s eight-legged magical steed Sleipnir. Because of it, Loki, as a male god, is associated with homosexual union, called “argr” by Odin, an abusive term in old Norse for a sexually receptive male. Related to the word “ergi” that may indicate a sexually receptive male and one versed in Freyja’s magick. Loki also fathered the Midgard Serpent, Fenris Wolf, and Hel, the goddess of death.

Macha (Celtic)

Macha is an aspect of the Celtic triplicity known as the Morgan. Her name means “battle” and she is associated with both the crow and the horse. Three Machas have appeared in Celtic myth. The first is the wife of Nemed. Another is Cimbeath’s wife, who becomes a war chief, herself. The last, and most unusual, is Macha, the wife of Crunnchu. She came to Crunnchu as a fairy lover, making him promise never to reveal her identity. She becomes pregnant with his child. Foolishly, Crunnchu brags to the King in Ulster that his wife can outrun any of the king’s horses. The king accepts his challenge, demanding Crunnchu’s head should the latter lose the bet. Macha, in her mortal guise, is forced to run the race, and she wins, immediately gives birth to twins, and reveals her divine nature, cursing the men of Ulster for their treatment of her. For nine generations, in times of great crisis, all the men of Ulster experience a feminine transformation, living the pains of childbirth. Such androgynous transformation could signify a strong goddess cult influence in Ulster, originally demonstrating not a punishment, but an understanding of the goddess Macha. Although a goddess of war, she is also a goddess of life and sovereignty, giving birth under harsh conditions. Both Emain Macha, Ulster’s capital, and Ard Macha are named after her.

Morrigu/Morrigan/Morgan (Celtic)

The Celtic trinity of war goddesses are known by the name Morrigu. One version contains the goddesses Anu, Babd Catha, and Macha. Another version consists of Babd, Macha, and Nemain. All are associated with battle and death, but also with life. On Samhain, the Morrigan mates with the Dagda, with one foot in the river and one on land, symbolizing the veil between the worlds opening as spirits pass through it. In the revival of modern witchcraft, she is one of the most popular Celtic goddesses, associated with the Great Mother of the Earth, sea, and cosmos. In later myths, she was transformed into Morgan Le Fey of the Arthurian legend, sometimes ally and sometimes villain.

Narcissus (Greek)

A figure mostly known for his obsessive vanity, this son of a nymph and a river god would spend his last days gazing at his own reflection, but the first man he showed affection for was not himself. A myth traced in origin to the Boeotia region mentions a relationship between Narcissus and the smitten Ameinias, whom Narcissus would eventually grow tired of before sending him a sword as a kiss-off. Ameinias, desperately depressed over the rejection, killed himself.

Nephthys (Kemetic)

While there are fewer tales in Egyptian history and mythology about female than male homosexuality, many considered the goddess Nephthys to be a lesbian. The sister and constant companion of Isis, she married brother Seth but bore him no children. Scholars have debated whether the stories of Nephthys, who did bear one son by Osiris, show that the culture held lesbians in greater esteem than gay men, because they could still be fertile despite their sexual orientation. Then again, others express skepticism about her lesbianism altogether.

Odin/Wotan (Norse/German/Scandinavian)

Known as Wotan the Wanderer in Germanic myth, Odin is the all father and king of the Aseir, the warrior gods of the Norse pantheon. Credited with creating, with his brothers, the nine worlds of the Norse cosmology Odin, is a god king and mercurial figure, a traveler, binder, and inspirer. Odin is very shamanic, hanging himself from the world tree to gain knowledge of the runes and giving his eye for knowledge. He is attended by two ravens—Thought and Memory—the head of Mimir who granted him knowledge, and the spirits of the warriors of Valhalla and the Valkyries. (“Valkyrie” means “choosers of the slain,” a group comprising of Amazon-like warrior goddesses acting as psychopomps to the souls of heroes, leading them to Valhalla.) He is the god of nobles, leaders, warriors, poets, magicians, and mad men, evoking a frenzy or fury for battlers. His son Thor is the chief god of the common folk. Odin is known to have assumed feminine dress and identity when it suited his purpose. Freyja initiated him into Seidr shamanic magick, a form traditionally reserved for women and transgendered/homosexual men. He is blood brother to Loki, and their bonding has homoerotic overtones, much like the process of warriors bonding in the rites of Freyja.

Orpheus (Greek)

The legendary poet and musician may be best known for the story of his journey to the underworld to retrieve his wife, Eurydice; he failed to do so when he succumbed to temptation and looked at her before both had returned to the world of the living. According to Ovid, he never took another female lover after that — but did love other young men in Thrace. Spurned, Ciconian women would eventually tear Orpheus apart during a Bacchic orgy.

Osiris (Egyptian)

Osiris is one of the few fertility gods of the ancient pagan world not specifically associated with homosexual relationships, as Adonis and Dionysus are. His only association comes from his brother Set and his son Horus. Originally a god of fertility, he is killed by his brother Set, and resurrected by his wife, Isis. Angered by his resurrection, Set dismembers him. Isis finds all the pieces, except his penis. She resurrects him, placing a symbolic phallus in the correct position. Because of his inability to create new life, Osiris becomes lord of the dead. Either prior to his second death, or through the magical workings of Isis after his second resurrection, he conceives a child with Isis, named Horus, who continues his battle against Set, with the aid of Anubis, Nephthys, and Thoth, and eventually wins, becoming the new pharaoh, ruling in Osiris’s name. The flooding of the Nile River is said to be the semen of Osiris, the life-giving waters resulting from his acts of self-pleasure in the realms below. Pharaohs may have imitated Osiris during their enthronement rituals, masturbating before the image of the gods. These rituals later led to public masturbation as religious worship in Egypt. Such acts of religious sexuality can be found also in ancient Phoenicia, Babylon, and Assyria.

Pan/Faunus (Greco-Roman)

The horned god Pan incarnates the power of the land and animals, the power of wild things, into an archetype of immense power. Often viewed as the primary representation of the Wiccan godforce, Pan is the goat-legged god of music, creativity, poetry, nature, animals, sexuality, and even terror. He is the god of life and death, though not often portrayed as a lord or king, but somewhat as a trickster or nature spirit, cavorting with nymphs and satyrs. Originating the term “pansexual,” Pan loves both men and women. Artwork depicts him playing the panpipes, penis erect and chasing after men and maidens, particularly shepherds and young men to whom he is teaching music. He has been associated with Dionysus and Ganymede. Unfortunately, his visage was partially adopted by Christians to embody the devil, or Satan, though Pan’s pagan historical worship had absolutely nothing to do with Satan.

Poseidon (Greek)

According to Pindar’s First Olympian Ode, Pelops, the king of Pisa, once shared “Aphrodite’s sweet gifts” with the ocean god himself. Pelops for a time was taken to Olympus by Poseidon and trained to drive the divine chariot.

Quan Yin (Asian)

Quan Yin, or Kuan Yin, is the Chinese goddess of compassion. She sits on an island and listens to the prayers of the world, particularly those of women, children, and sailors. In Buddhists terms, she is a bodhisattva, one who forsakes her own union with divinity to remain behind on a spiritual plane, to guide and help the people of the world. She could be thought of as an ascended master or saint. Quite possibly Quan Yin was once depicted as male, from Indian origin, as Avalokiteshvara, and later viewed as a female figure, since union with the divine reconciles the female and male aspects. The Buddha is generally shown as male, so his companion, Quan Yin, was depicted as female in the 8th century. As a bodhisattva, Quan Yin is seen as beyond this world’s concept of gender, and can change gender at will, as needed.

Ra (Kemetic)

While the sun god Ra in most mythological accounts was regarded as the father to the major gods, Sir Ernest Alfred Wallis Budge wrote of clear indications of a double-gender nature to the deity. As early as the fifth dynasty, Budge wrote of Ra’s female counterpart Rat, who was considered the mother of the gods.

Rama (Hindu)

Another origin story for the hijras comes from the Ramayana, which tells the tale of Rama gathering his subjects in the forest before his 14-year adventure. He tells the men and women to return to their appropriate places in Ayodhya, but upon his return from his epic journey, Rama finds some have not left the place of that speech and instead merged together in an intersex fashion. He grants hijras the ability to confer certain blessings, the beginning of the badhai tradition.

Sedna (Native American/Inuit)

Several myths paint Sedna has a gynandromorphous creation deity, served by two-spirit shamans. Others depict her as a young woman who lived with her female partner at the bottom of the ocean. She is a mother goddess of life and death, of animals, particularly sea creatures, hunting, heaven, and destiny.

Set (Egyptian)

Set, or Seth to some, is the brother to Isis and Osiris, the divine mother and father of dominant Egyptian myth. He is also husband to his sister Nephthys, a dark goddess who lacked Set’s association with evil and later defected to her sister Isis’s cause. Set is considered the god of evil by the Osirian cults of Egypt, but more rightly he is the god of the harsh forces, the desert, the tests of the world, and the mysteries of death and sacrifice. He is distinguished by his red hair and fair skin—a far cry from the other Egyptian gods—suggesting a previous incarnation and set of associations from another people that were later absorbed into the Egyptian pantheon. His redness is reminiscent of the red sands and dust storms. He is also considered pansexual. Much later he was connected with Typhon, the serpent chaos god and nemesis of Zeus. Typhon is associated with the watery chaos serpent creation goddess Tiamat of Sumeria. In modern mythology, Set slays his brother Osiris twice out of jealousy and twice Isis returns him to life, though finally as a god of the dead. The two begot Horus, who continues the fight. Though Set himself was Horus’s nemesis, the two have oral sex, Set swallows Horus’s seed, and gives birth to a child.

Teiresias (Greek)

The blind prophet of Apollo was most famous in Greek myth for being transformed from a man into a woman for seven years. During his female years, Teiresias became a priestess of Hera, married, and even had children, according to Hesiod. Call him mythology’s original transgender person. After the gods changed him back, Zeus asked who enjoyed sex more, men or women. Teiresias revealed the ladies had it roughly 10 times better than the lads. Reporting this earned him a blinding by Hera.

Tezcatlipoca (Aztec)

As the Father of Witches, Tezcatlipoca walks the jungles in many forms, including a jaguar, coyote, monkey, or woman. He is the patron of sorcery and divination, often depicted holding his namesake, a black obsidian, or “smoking,” mirror. Seen as a dark solar figure at times, he is the mirror image of Quetzalcoatl, with whom he battled often. As a magician and shaman, Tezcatlipoca grants miraculous healings, although he is associated with death and sacrifice. Tezcatlipoca and his priests are associated with transgenderism, homosexuality, and ritual prostitution similar to the cults of the Middle Eastern goddesses.

Thoth (Egyptian)

The myths surrounding Thoth are numerous and varied, ranging from his role as a primal creation god to that of guide and aide to the ruling god, or son of Set and Horus’s homosexual union. His is pictured variously as a man with an ape or ibis head. Thoth’s title, “shepard of the anus,” comes from his association with the ibis, which fastidiously cleans its anus with its beak. He is primarily a god of writing, communication, magick, invention, justice, and the Moon.

Tlazoteotl (Aztec)

Tlazoteotl is the “Eater of Filth,” “Dirt Goddess,” or the “Shit Goddess” who takes all the darkness of the world, all the horrors, pain, and suffering and transforms it to purest gold. With these attributes in mind, Tlazoteotl can be viewed as an underworld, dark goddess figure, bringing the wisdom of the shadow to her people. She is a powerful goddess of life and death. Viewed as the archetypal witch, even in the Americas, she is seen partially nude, with either horns or a conical hat, holding a snake and riding a broom. The rabbit is her animal. Along with Xochiquetzal, she is mother and protector of the huastecs, transgendered, lesbian priestess. She is also linked with male homosexuality in her form as “Goddess of the Anus.” In most recent times, in a pop-culture, graphic story called The Invisibles by Grant Morrison (Vertigo/DC), she is associated with a shamanic drag queen named Lord Fanny.

Xochilpilli (Aztec)

Known as “the prince of flowers,” Xochilpilli is the Aztec patron god of flowers, physical pleasure, fine food, dancing, singing, games, entertaining, and perfumes. Although he is a giver of curses as well as blessings, his festivals are known for their lack of human sacrifice. Xochilpilli is a corn or grain god, partaking in the fertility mysteries of the spring equinox, much like a New World Adonis, with his mother and lover, Xochiquetzal. He is a patron of gay men, gender variance, and male prostitution. As a form of the god Naxcit-Xuchitl, he is said to have introduced homosexuality to his people. As Naxcit-Xuchitl, he ruled the Age of Flowers, or the Cosmic Cycle of the Four-Petaled Flower. Though most records of this time are derogatory, the general, less hostile position marks it as a time ruled by women warriors, where a form of Xochiquetzal was prevalent, and men focused on the arts and possibly same-sex relationships. Perhaps the Four-Petaled Flower age was a New World matriarchal age.

Xochiquetzal (Aztec)

An Aztec goddess of the underworld and of spring flowers, Xochiquetzal is somewhat akin to the Greek Persephone in that regard, though others relate her to the biblical Eve. The rain god Tlaloc is her husband, though Tezcatlipoca fell in love with her and took her away. Tlaloc then brought the great flood. Xochiquetzal is the mother of Quetzalcoatl and Xochilpilli. Marigolds, the Moon, red serpents, deer, spiders, butterfly wings, and thorns are her symbols, as she is a goddess of weavers, painters, sculptors, craftsmen, smiths, poets, and those engaging in nonreproductive sex. She is a protector of lesbians, along with Tlazolteotl, and is strongly linked to gay and transgendered men.

Vishnu/Mohini (Hindu)

A major deity of the religion regarded as protector of the world, Vishnu is clearly depicted in the faith as gender-fluid. This major Hindu deity frequently took on the female avatar of Mohini. Vishnu even procreated with Shiva in the Mohini form, resulting in the birth of Ayyappa, a major figure still worshipped by millions who make pilgrimages to shrines in India. The avatar Mohini frequently gets describes as an enchantress who maddens lovers.

Yemaya (Santeria)

Yemaya is the orisha of oceans, rivers, and water, a divine mother. The orisha are like the loa of Voodoo, but Santeria practices have a particularly Spanish flair. Yemaya is a great sorceress, a powerful patron of magick, and is known to shapeshift into a man at times. As a warrior woman, Yemaya is linked to transgendered and lesbian women. Water is generally associated with healing, cleansing, and emotion, so Yemaya is appealed to for healing, particularly now, to wash away HIV/AIDS, as she is also seen as a patron to gay, bisexual, and transgendered men.

Zeus/Jupiter (Greco-Roman)

Zeus is a sky and storm god, the carrier of lightning and rain, and the leader of the Olympians. The son of Chronos the Titan and grandson of the sky god Uranus, Zeus led his siblings to victory against the Titans. He divided creation among his brothers. He gained the heavens, Poseidon the seas, and Hades the underworld. Zeus is both a beneficent father figure and a stern patriarch, but always the supreme god. Zeus is associated with the planet Jupiter, which is his Roman name, and the granter of fortune, blessings, and prosperity. His wife is the sky goddess Hera, although he is known for his liaisons with both men and women, siring numerous offspring. Zeus is a shape-shifter and often uses the ability to seduce unsuspecting young men and women. In the Orphic mythology, he is transgendered as Zeus Arrhenothelus, being both mother and father. Later myths completely abandon Zeus’s transgendered aspects, but he retains some motherly attributes. Zeus gave birth to the goddess of wisdom, Athena, directly from his brow, as he did Dionysus from his thigh. This ability to carry a child to term echoes Zeus’s older attributes and we should not forget Them.

https://www.pride.com/entertainment/2017/9/11/52-queer-gods-who-ruled-ancient-history

Christopher Penczak’s Gay Witchcraft: Empowering the Tribe

[am-molloy]

World Building - Spira

Not too long ago I made a blog post about a poem I once wrote. Well, for today’s post, I want to share the world where that poem belongs. Below is a brief history, background into the culture, and brief language introduction to the Hikarans of Spira, a world I created long ago for a roleplay.

Hikarans © to A.M. Molloy.

The people of Spira, a planet located in a distant galaxy, are proud races, yet none are more proud than the Hikarans who inhabit 87.6% of the planet. Most Hikarans reside in the capital city of Bal'Thor, located of the coast of the Hüinzha Sea in the Ezhrainen continent. They are said to have been the first race created when the gods made the planet inhabitable.

        Hikaran's have a humanoid appearance at first glance, however, there are ways to tell them apart from humans. Because Hikarans are a tribal race, their best features are their legs. They are usually longer and more muscular than humans to provide an excellent jumping range. Because of this feature, most Hikarans are hunters, the majority of them being female. All Hikarans are born with pure white hair and the colour of their hair does not change as they  age. On the off occasion, the pigment may be off in their hair, and sometimes eyes, and can vary to a very light blond.

        The key factor in noticing a Hikaran from a human, however, is once glance at their eyes. Hikaran eyes are pure white, with no visual pupil. The healthier one is, the whiter their eyes are. If one is sick, or injured, you can tell by the color of their eyes, which turn blue, also with no visible pupil. The darker the blue their eyes become, the closer they are to death. When their eyes are completely black, it means they have passed on and are sent to Sinaz, the God of Death. When a Hikaran becomes blind, their eyes turn grey, sometimes with a slight shade of green. If blind and not well, their eyes become grey-blue, with the gray being prominent. If they have passed on, their eyes are completely dark grey, with a light blue mix.

        For the Hikarans, another key difference that separates them from humans is their aging process. A Hikaran will stop aging after puberty, usually around the ages of sixteen to eighteen, and remain looking youthful for the rest of their lives. This may cause confusing in other races when meeting a Hikaran family, for those of all ages, grandparent, parent, and child, all appear to be the same age. Hikarans are almost immortal in this sense, for they can live to be thousands of years old. They can die from sickness or be killed in battle, however.

        As a tribal race, Hikarans have painted blue markings on their bodies, while royals can use gold if they chose. Each symbol on their arms mean something different, but only a Royal can wear the markings for Life and Death. As shown below, these are a few examples of said symbols. The first symbol shown represents life while the second represents death. Other symbols include community, peace, family, and so on.

The markings on their bodies are painted using special paint, Ha’kar, that stays on permanently like a tattoo until removed by a special kind of remover paint. Only by using the removal paint, He’kar, can the markings be removed from the body.

        Hikaran culture is rich in history and unique rules. A few cultural notes are worth looking into.    

        There aren’t many thieves in the capital city of Bal’Thor. The people who are thieves are very good at what they do, however, so that they don’t get caught. Thieves keep low on Spira. First offence is branding, second is loss of your writing hand and third is hanging.  Whether it’s the Royal’s crown or a loaf of bread, it makes no difference.

        At sixteen, female Hikarans would build their own doll to remind themselves that they are no longer a child. Also, in marriages it is the oldest sibling who gives the approval of whether or not the female gets to marry the male, or vice versa. If there are no siblings, the task falls unto the mother of the child to be married.

        Hikarans always throw a big town party right before a war, (hosted by the royals), to get the town pumped and ready for war. The Hikaran battle cry is ‘For Life, For Country, For Honour!’

        The current royal, and ruler of the Hikarans, is Svetla Sa’Den. It is also worth noting that royal members must learn and master as many instruments as possible, as it is they who entertain their guest at parties.

        Right before doing what is commonly known as ‘The Tradition’ (or sex in our culture), one usually says “I give myself to you. I surrender”. (Girls say ‘I give myself to you’. Boys will say ‘I surrender’) If these words are not said, it’s usually considered prostitution.

        When near the presence of a graveyard, a Hikaran will always walk with their heads bowed down and breath out slowly. They will never intake air near the dead out of respect for those who cannot breath no more. This is possible due to a Hikaran's lung capacity being larger than a human's.

        The most noticeable cultural aspect is how a Hikaran will greet one another. Hikarans great each other by placing both hands, in a fist, to their chest, and thrusting them forward.  This symbolizes that they as a person and the gods up above recognize them as a whole. This gesture also signifies the standard greeting, "I myself, see you, as the Gods above."

        Hikarans are a very religious race and they worship many gods and goddesses. The goddess Kidaha is the literal heart of the planet Spira and she is one of the few gods who reside on the planet as opposed to the heavens with the other immortals. To many of the planets residents, Kidaha's decision to live amongst the mortals was a foolish one and some even fear for their lives. If Kidaha were to ever be killed, the planet would die alongside her, and with it, the people. Yet the goddesses love for her people and the planet was too strong to live her immortal days among the heavens. She enjoys life as a peaceful woman and is said to live in the capital city of Bal'Thor.

        Other gods tend to visit the mortal realm from time to time, the most common being Shinoda, who enjoys aiding the lost goddess Aowyne in her attempts of a normal everyday life. A tragic event in the heavens left Aowyne wounded on the planet Spira with no memories of her former godlike self. If she were to ever recall, her powers would return tenfold and in turn destroy the planet. Therefore, Shinoda exercises his power so that Aowyne may life out her life in peace as a mortal and keeps her from finding out who she really is.

        Below are the most prayed to gods and goddess of Spira, worshiped not only by the Hikarans, but by the rest of the planet as well.

Kidaha (Goddess of Spira and the heart of the planet)

Shiesta (3rd), Ouganda (2nd), Shinoda (1st) (The 3 top Gods. Rulers of the Hikaran Gods and Goddess’)

Aowyne (Lost goddess of magic)

Sinaz (God of death)

Zamir (God of the Underworld, husband to Mehélia)

Mehélia (Goddess of air, wife of Zemir)

Yava (Sun goddess)

Umon (Scribe and Scholar to the Gods)

Florydia (Goddess of Beauty and very vain)

Uffa (Cat-like god. God of strength and war)

Iyana (Goddess of health)

Keowa (God of fertility)

Rarity (Goddess of harmony. She is the only Goddess to appear completely Hikaran in form and is extremely shy)

        As part of their religious beliefs, a Hikaran promise is more than just a word. To a Hikaran, a promise is what keeps the natural balance of the world in order. They never make a promise they cannot keep. To them, promises are a legal bind between them and whomever they made the promise with. It was once said that an unnamed god came down from the heavens and gave the lesson of the promise. This lesson was about keeping honour between yourself and your comrade and in turn aiding you keep honour with the gods. Therefore, as long as one can remember, no Hikaran would ever make a promise they can't keep.

        As set forth by the royals, if one did happen to break a promise, depending on the severity, they will be banned from, (in order), their house, town, country, and eventually, the planet. Hikarans firmly believe that the reason people die is because somewhere in their life, they forgot about a promise they made and broke it and therefore the gods punish them by death. As a result, being called a ‘promise breaker’ is the worst possible insult you can give to a Hikaran. Therefore, instead of saying 'I promise' they would say 'I swear', which holds just as much value as a promise, without the threat of banishment and death.

        As part of the Hikaran tradition, the Starlight Celebration is the most celebrated holiday in their culture. It is believed that during the 27th moon of Ishtar (November 18th in the human calendar) was the date that the gods created Spira. Many festivities are done and no one is to work on this day. A more modern tradition, however, is the telling of the tale of Isolde and Seryestin. For on that day they stopped a war between their planet and the planet Bashira. Every Hikaran knows the story of the two war heroes and some even worship them just as they would a god.

        The story tells of how the Hikaran born werewolf, Isolde, and his werewolf Deskravesk lover, Sereystin, died heroes of Spira. They saved millions by defeating the corrupt General Mudurk at Prison Guard. Prison Guard is a ruthless place on the planet Bashira where every captured person is tortured beyond recognition. The tale tells the story form beginning to end and is sung every year during the Starlight Celebration festival in honour of these war heroes. Though the two lovers died, it is rumored that Isolde and Sereystin are actually still alive, hiding from the people of Bashira, and along with their twin children, Sorren and Rhyx, live happily somewhere on Spira.

The Tale of Isolde and Sereystin

The moonlight bathes the road to redemption

Sweet howls of the night; the melody sings

Crazed yet sane, blood shall be shed

War rages on in the world

Kill the horror that lies in the soul

Unable to break free from sins committed

Cry out, cry out; silence fills the land

Poisoned veins will stand alone

Behold thy beauty of sweet summers night

Hail to the captive; sweet innocence arises

Wanting without knowing; unable to achieve

Darkness falls over the land once again

Be swift for death shall chase; killer of the night

Arise the sun to darkness still

Wanting without knowing; separated against will

Death to many, death to all, once again

Races of the world reunite; self inflicted damage

Captured once more; break free from hell

Twice dawn comes, blood still floods the land

Clash of blades; six hits, one death

Adorned blackness; victory arises

Fighter of love, fighter of peace

Striking blow through heart and soul

Death has been defeated

Rest well sweet child. Fear no more

Peaceful night now fills thy heart

Young love will last forever; sweet dreams

Eyes of sorrow have lifted

                                                                    *****

The Hikaran Language:

Though Hikarans populate 87.6% of the planet Spira, the Hikaran language is the fifth most common language on the planet, the first being Deskravesk. The written word is considered a gift from the Gods. Therefore, when writing traditionally, it is written from top to bottom, left to right. Signifying the Gods sending their gift from above to be received by mortals below; and from doing wrong, (left), as in doing bad choices, to be righted, (right).

        There are twenty seven letters in the Hikaran alphabet, however, there are a total of thirty-two characters in the written language.The Hikaran alphabet and symbols.

The Hikaran Number system:

0 = nok         6 = ni

1 = sīg           7 = rah

2 = kō           8 = nō

3 = nā           9 = dõs

4 = sar           10 = re

5 = me          100 = sīgnokkō

A simple sentence in Hikaran follows the following sentence structure: subject - object - verb, unlike English where it is subject - verb - object. The verb always goes at the end of the sentence. It is believed that because verbs are actions - and actions done by a person are gifts from the gods - that the verb goes at the end so the gods above know that the people below understand their spoken gift.

        The Hikaran language is also filled with particles that tell the listener what the subject is about. The most common particle is the subject marker he (pronounced heugh with a hard h and emphasis on the ugh). Others include the possessive marker, ko, (similar to the 's in English), the sentence enders ne, kra, and shi. Each of the sentence enders add a different feeling to the sentence and have no real grammatical value.

        An example sentence in Hikaran would be the following common phrase, uttered often due to the inherent evil that resides within the un-pure body.

Ex: Anel he baka ei.  

Translated, this sentence means 'Evil is here', or a literal translation, 'Evil he here is'. The red symbol in the Hikaran text represents the sentence marker, he. The green characters is the highlighted verb, ei (part of the verb to be conjugation). The very last symbol, the small one at the bottom right, represents the Hikaran version of a period.

In Hikaran, the vowels are pronounced as follows:

a as the 'a' in 'father'

e as the 'e' in 'get'

i as the 'i' in 'pin'

o as the 'o' in 'lot'

u as the 'u' in 'put'

The consonants are pronounced the same as in English for the most part. However, a few of them change sound depending on where they are placed in a word. For instance, 'h' has a hard guttural sound when it is placed at the start of a word where 'e' is the next letter. An example is in the subject marker he.

        To understand the other sentence particles, we will continue to use the common phrase, 'Evil is here'.

        When showing possession of something, the marker ko is used. In this example, 'Anel he ko baka ei', translates to 'Evil is mine'. The subject particle he is never left out, and the possessive particle ko follows the subject particle. Because of the use of ko, the verb of ei becomes 'mine' when translated.

        The particle ne, when added to the end of the sentence, gives off a feeling of agreement, most commonly translated as 'right' or 'yeah' in English. 'Anel he baka ei ne' translates in English as 'Evil is here, right?'. It may also give off a feeling of uncertainty.

        The particle kra, when added to the end of the sentence, gives off a feeling of wanting. It's commonly used at the end of a question sentence and implies that you want more information from the listener. 'Anel he baka ei kra?' will translate to 'I want evil to be here?'

        The particle shi, when added to the end of the sentence, is almost as if expressing a verbal exclamation point. It also gives of the air of excitement. 'Anel he baka ei shi' will translate to 'Evil is here!'.

                                                                    *****

As the Hikaran's would say, "Anel he baka ei. Kashaha, mazqa yc yba ocklz hkwer." (Evil is here. So remember to bring peace to the world).

[myth-lord]

Recent Updates

These are all the recent changes I’ve made to my big list, which you can find here: https://myth-lord.tumblr.com/post/170870848094/final-monsterenemies-list

I’ve also removed the Zlatorog and the Tsemaus from the list. Zlatorog will join with the good-natured creatures, Tsemaus is replaced by the Sverdhvalur. 

Akheilos, Utelif (M-European) – Beast / Fish   - While these monstrous sharks have less evolved teeth, the giant saw-like nose of these fish is feared by even the most brave of sailors.

Akkorokamui (Japanese) – Aberration / Cephalopod   - Enormous octopi which use their eight powerful tentacles to hunt for whales and humanoids in the depths of the dark oceans.   Akkorokamui, Migas (African) – Aberration / Cephalopod - This stalking machine often uses one of its fifty tentacles to drag prey into its calm waters turning it into a splash of tentacles, blood and gore. Akkorokamui, Lusca (Caribbean) – Aberration / Cephalopod   - Lusca love to live in and around black holes in the oceans, where the oceans reach the deepest.  

Alraune (German) – Plant - Enormous roses which crave the blood of other creatures and which grow humanoid clones to lure prey into their thorny vines. Alraune, Abere (Melanesian) – Plant - Clever and cunning carnivorous plants which grow beautiful humanoid clones to lure in foolish prey.

Amarok (Inuit) – Beast - Enforcers of Darkness and the night, these giant wolves will hunt and kill anybody foolish enough to travel at night. Amarok, Akhlut (Inuit) – Beast - A magical force of nature, these shapeshifters can shift between the forms of killer whale and giant black & white wolves.

Caspilly, Swamfisk (Swedish) – Beast / Fish / Ooze / Parasite - These deep sea horror fish use their own stinking ooze-like flesh to lure in prey, the oozy flesh will eat the victim from inside. Caspilly, Marool (English) – Demon / Fish - When they come to the surface they attract sailors by giving away a beautiful but haunting light-show underneath the waters of the ocean. 

Cirein Croin (Scottish) – Dragon / Sea Serpent / Shifter   - These beautiful female sea serpents use their beguiling polymorph ability to appear as a beautiful and small silver fish or mermaid.  

Cuero, Vatnsandi (Icelandic) – Aberration / Fish   - Also known as the mothers of rays, these enormous manta-like creatures are as majestic as they are vile.  

Cyclops (Greek) – Humanoid / Giant   - These one-eyed giants keep herds of sheep or humans and are good metalworkers. Cyclops, Bungisngis (Philippine) – Humanoid / Giant - Enormous savage Cyclops species which destroy more than they create, their huge fangs are too big to fit in their abominable mouths.   Cyclops, Papinijuwari (Australian) – Aberration / Giant / Alien - These monstrous blue-skinned Cyclopean giants race through the sky in the forms of meteors, anywhere they crash down, diseases spread. 

Dorotabo (Japanese) – Elemental / Spirit - Created when a human dies within nature and its body doesn’t get a proper burial, the spirit will taint the mud beneath it and create a new elemental. Dorotabo, Ahi At-Trab (Arabian) – Elemental - These living sandstorms are created when an entire caravan perishes together, the spirits of the deceased bound to the hot desert sands. Dorotabo, Land Wight (Norse) – Elemental / Spirit - It is almost impossible to kill a Land Wight as their extreme regeneration will heal any wound that is inflicted to their earth-like bodies. 

Ebajalg (Estonian) – Elemental / Spirit - Capable size-shifters, these dangerous air elementals can appear as a small dust devil or as an enormous hurricane at will. Ebajalg, Hala (Serbian) – Elemental / Spirit - Evil wind and cold elementals, Hala combine the forces of hail, air and snow into a dangerous living whirlwind of frozen death. Ebajalg, Iya (Native American) – Elemental / Spirit - These evil air elementals have a more humanoid shape and greater intelligence, one of these can destroy an entire town. 

Enenra (Japanese) – Elemental / Spirit - To kill a victim, these cruel smoke elementals simple enter the lungs of their victims, slowly choking them to death. 

Erymanthian (Greek) – Beast - Always irritated, always aggressive, always in a bad mood, Erymanthians are probably the most nasty of all boar species. Erymanthian, Bonguru (Solomon Island) – Beast - These boars bodies function as living hives for aggressive hornet-like creatures and for all types of parasitic fungi which grow from their backs.

Fossegrim, Katsura-Otoko (Japanese) – Fae / Nymph - During full moons these charismatic male nymphs with their pink hair come down from their hidden moon castle to hunt for beautiful victims. 

Gegenees, Virabhadra (Hindu) – Humanoid / Giant - These beautiful eight-armed giant women are actually the female variants of the Gegenees species, each of their 8 hands hold different weapons.

Goblin, Amadan (Irish) – Fae - Mostly used as fools and jesters by Unseelie leaders, these nasty goblinoids can make a victim laugh itself to death.  

Gulon (Swedish) – Beast - Also known as Dire Wolverines, these voracious eaters have been known to eat themselves to death.   Gulon, Taotie (Chinese) – Aberration / Alien - There are ancient legends about these gluttons, which tell about entire planets being stripped of all life by these voracious eaters. 

Hrokkall (Icelandic) – Undead / Fish - These undead eels with razor sharp saw-like fins love to cut through living flesh, separating limbs from bodies with ease. 

Hyakume (Japanese) – Aberration - These fat, many-eyed monsters love to collect information and secrets, they can send their eyes on spy missions.

Inulpamahuida (Mapuche) – Beast / Vermin - These large stick-like vermin fake being fallen trees to lure smaller creatures into a deadly trap. 

Itzpapalotl (Aztec) – Fae / Vermin - While these giant black and purple butterflies look beautiful, they gather around in places where death’s energies are strong.

Jba Fofi, Djieien (Native American) – Beast / Vermin - They are born with necrotic blood, which means they automatically rise as undead solifugid when they die. Jba Fofi, Jorogumo (Japanese) – Fae / Vermin / Shifter - All types of arachnids are drawn to their lairs, fighting a Jorogumo always means fighting an eight-legged army. Jba Fofi, Tsuchigumo (Japanese) – Demon / Oni / Vermin - When the spirit of an Oni enters the body of a Jba Fofi, they transform into one of these dangerous trapdoor spiders.

Jubokko (Japanese) – Plant / Vampire - Trees growing near battlefields and which drink a lot of blood instead of water are eventually corrupted into these vampire trees. Jubokko, Umdhlebi (African) – Plant / Vampire - A very nasty and dangerous tree which drinks the blood of its victims and which is extremely poisonous. Jubokko, Waldgeist (German) – Plant / Vampire - Instead of blood these horrifying trees drain the spirits of their victims, these spirits become the trees guardians.  

Karkinos (Greek) – Beast / Vermin - A blue, aggressive crab the size of a big dog, one of their pincers is much larger than the other. Karkinos, Heikegani (Japanese) – Demon / Oni / Vermin - Whenever a creature attacks a Heikegani, the trapped spirit of a samurai will appear with a spiritual sword and attack the soul of the attacker. Karkinos, Traicousse (Belgian) – Fae / Vermin - Bizarre green crab-like monstrosities with countless pincers and legs, these Fae vermin claim entire rivers as their own.   Karkinos, Saratan (Arabian) – Beast / Vermin - These enormous Hermit Crabs place rocks, plants and earth on their backs to merge with their surroundings and hunt for prey.  

Lamia, Ajatar (Finnish) – Demon / Beastman / Reptilian - After biting a victim, the poison of these winged snake-women will transform the victim into a new demon. 

Leshy (Slavic) – Fae / Shifter - These plant-like tricksters love riddles, and may remove their cruel plant-curses from victims that can tell them a good riddle. Leshy, Kayeri (Colombia) – Fae / Shifter - These nature spirits protect the mushrooms, toadstools and other fungi, they harvest their deadly spores to use against their enemies. 

Manticore, Sphinx (Greek) – Beast / Chimerae - These cruel monsters love to toy with intelligent prey before they eat them, answering their difficult riddles will gain their respect. Manticore, Piasa (Native American) – Beast / Chimerae / Shifter - These are the offspring of Sphinxes and Manticores, these creatures can become like a living cave painting on the wall. 

Nguruvilu (Mapuche) – Beast / Chimerae / Reptilian - Extremely evasive creatures, these Fox-Snakes are almost impossible to hit with ranged attacks. 

Peryton (M-European) – Beast / Chimerae   - Their humanoid shadows betray their tragic pasts, Peryton were once cruel humans and were cursed into the forms of these killers.

Rat King (German) – Beast - These giant rat creatures are covered by swarms of smaller rats, these swarms form a living barrier around the Rat King. Rat King, Lavellan (Scottish) – Beast - These deformed giant rats spread a deadly poison through the air with their poisonous aura’s. Rat King, ColoColo (Mapuche) – Beast - These monstrous rats feed on the breath and saliva of sleeping creatures, it becomes harder to breath when these horrors are near.  

Succarath (Patagonian) – Aberration - Their many young are protected by their huge hairy tails, a Succaraths psychic abilities are enhanced by every young that is carries on its back.

Tiyanak, Myling (Finnish) – Undead - Looking like five year old children, these undead horrors jump on the backs of their victims and then increase their weight to crush the life out of them. Tiyanak, Munkur (Turkish) – Undead / Parasite - These horrifying undead children grow from the bellies of huge monstrous ogres, they command their ogre-hosts to choke the life out of victims. 

Unhcegila (Native American) – Dragon / Alien - These vile horned lake dragons love to toy with their humanoid prey, they use their antlers and horns in battle. Unhcegila, Amhuluk (Native American) – Dragon / Alien - Amhuluk corrupt the lakes in which they settle, turning the waters into a mutant goo which mutates any creature that drinks from it. Unhcegila, Gaasyendietha (Native American) – Dragon / Alien - Gaasyendietha travel the cosmos in the form of a burning meteorite, crashing down on random planets and reaping away all life they find. 

Valravn, Nachtkrapp (German) – Undead / Avian   - If a Valravn by accident devours the heart of an evil individual they perish and their corpse grows into a huge crawling monstrous raven.

Ziphius (M-European) – Beast - These small whale creatures use their extremely sharp beaks to break the shells of giant clams and the bones of other creatures. Ziphius, Hrosshvalur (Icelandic) – Beast - Also known as Horse-Whales as they have so much power, Hrosshvalur use their heads as battering-ram against the ships they hate.   Ziphius, Sverdhvalur (Icelandic) – Beast - These bizarre whale monsters have an enormous sharp dorsal fin, which with they can cut boats and other creatures clean in half. . Ziphius, Skeljungur (Icelandic) – Beast - Enormous monstrous whales which are covered in hard shell-like barnacles, they let ships crash against their bulky bodies. 

Zombie, Draugr (Norse) – Undead / Shifter - While most Draugr spawn in the sea as groups, there are also solitary Draugr that haunt lonely swamps and lakes. Zombie, Mummy (Egyptian) – Undead - Ancient, monstrous undead which command the very sands of the desert to do their horrid bidding.

[kyojinofbraveos]

Chapter 91 Thoughts.

aka IS THIS ATTACK ON TITAN?!?!

The moment I clicked the new chapter was the moment I had the very same thoughts. I even double checked the titles. Then the penny dropped to my mind.

So Isayama decided to make another time-skip and also a change of character views as well.

It has been almost 80 years after this:

Almost 40 years after this:

Almost 30 years after this:

Almost 20 years after this:

9 years after this:

4 years after this and other events from the first chapter of manga:

And 3 years after this:

And we are at the year 854 now.

Cool.

Continue under the cut!

Do you guys remember the very beginnings of this manga? I am not talking about anime adaption, I am talking about first volumes. Do you remember how Isayama jumped to the day 104th’s graduation after Fall of Shiganshina? Without even giving us the chance to know our characters properly he jumped 5 years later, do you guys remember? If you don’t, I recommend you guys to go read at least first volume once again. This is not the first time Isayama is making a time-skip and surrounding us with new characters. We get a closer look our main characters’ personalities after Eren sealed the hole at Trost and then we got a whole volume of 104th and their trainings while he was sleeping for those 3 days. I am sure we also are going to see what happened during those 4 years, but I am not sure about when of course. We seem to be going to hang out with our new characters a little more.

Unlike some, no matter how unexpected it is, I am quite cool with both time-skip and new characters, though I personally rather Warrior backstory but hey, we are finally getting a chance to see the story from Warrior point of view which this point of view is tragic and also terrifying, at least from my eyes.

In this chapter we have finally get a little close to the Warrior side and also BRA+Zeke’s state of mind. It was quite fun to see new Warrior cadets and it was funnier to watch Gabi running in the front line like a naughty kid.

It is an interesting coincidence,heh, to see how much our new characters resembles our main cast. Like... A copy-paste level of resemblance.

I really thought why Isayama chose to make our new cast this similar to our old one, it definetely was not because of he can’t create original characters anymore. Hell yeah he can. But it was probably because to make everyone, himself included, feel close to this new cast. And it really worked, I really liked this new cast, especially Falco.

But it was also terrifying to see how brain-washed they are.

Let me remember you guys our old friend, Trost Arc once again. Do you remember how shocked and traumatized each one of our characters were? I am aware this is not the same situation, I really am but just look at our new characters and their behaviors in a front line.

Directly jumping to the face of enemy without even blinking.

Talking with each other like it is another sweet day on MarleyLand.

I mean... Can someone inform me about this? Is this how actual soldiers act in a war? I am aware of course there are times that every soldier talk with each other and make jokes and such, but not when you are at the face of death and about to lose an actual war alongside with yours and your friends’ lives. You are suppose to take human life, and your life can be taken as well. Is this how soldiers react to this?

No, that is how Warriors do.

Let’s say hello to our old friend, Trost arc. 

Chapter 4.

Chapter 5.

Look how panicked everyone is. How traumatized every one of them are. There are many differences between both sides, but what does not change is that this is war. 

And guys, war is not a cool thing, remembering it just in case.

Another thing I want to talk about is Warrior state of mind I am mentioning since the beginning of this post. 

With this chapter, I really have seen how much RBA+ Zeke have been brainwashed. Marley took them all at the ages between 5-7 and told them that they are good Eldians, they are chosen Eldians and all the trouble they have endured is because of those bad Eldians who ran into the Paradis Island. If they act like good Warriors and help Marley to get rid of those bad Eldians hiding behind their Walls, they will show the world that good Eldians still exists.

Sounds like a child story, I know.

But Warriors were also children while they were growing up with this story.

Gabi seems to suppress this from her head to toes, I don’t see anything that proves otherwise on other Warrior kids. 

What about our Warrior kids that we are familiar?

Well, we don’t know that much about our Warchief and we are missing his presence. And his backstory. It is said that Colt is gonna inherit his power as his successor but Mr. Key Zeke Jaeger is way too important to kill. I  think he will keep the power long enough to meet Eren and Survey Corps..

Annie was a super-aware character when it comes to pick things up. I am quite sure she didn’t adopted that much Marley tried to doctrine her yet she did her best and was chosen as one of 7 Warriors of Marley and that was because her father seem to force her to do so. But since we don’t have her full backstory, as usual, what I am writing you guys here are only my head canons, nothing more.

I am the meat in a sandwich about Bertolt. He seem to loyal to Marley, so this makes me think he also have suppressed Marley’s Warrior story but who knows maybe he was forced to it by his family or someone else? Bert had no will of his own so if someone forced him to do his best and be chosen as a Warrior, Bert would try to do so. Guess what am I lacking here once again? Ah yeah, we don’t know any of our Warriors’ backstory so once again I am stuck and the only thing I have is my head canons and previous analysis about Warriors.

And Reiner...

Yeah, Reiner.

Reiner never had a chance to live for only himself.

He always fought in the wars of some other men has started many years and years before he was even born.

Marley told him a story about such a good Eldian he must become and he believed this. He has become a loyal Marley soldier and devoted himself for a cause against his own nation. He never had a world view of himself to all of these. 

Marcel died for him right after Bertolt kicked the Wall down and he came into Paradis like a wrecking ball.

He joined Trainee Corps there and those 3 years of his life, the life he lived among with his suppose to be enemies was probably the best 3 years of it. This torn him between his mission and his humanity, between his Warrior and soldier sides.

He lost his best friend on the way and he did not even have a chance to fight for saving him. God knows what happened to him after the lost of his best friend and also the defeat against Survey Corps.

He kept living, he kept fighting. But never for himself, always for other people’s wars.

And now they are choosing another warrior to inherit his power.

A tragedy. 

This word sums up Reiner’s whole life.

Gabi wants Reiner’s Titan power, but someone as fanatic as she is shouldn’t be close to that kind of power in any way. She or Captain Maggath didn’t care the war laws Colt mentioned, to them if they succeed what they did was going to be justified and this reminded me how Eren killed Mikasa’s kidnappers because to him they were wild animals who are a thread to other people and it was justified for him to kill them. Gabi should learn how wrong she is, just like Eren did, otherwise in SnK world standards she seems to be a goner. 

Whole chapter was unexpected but what was more unexpected to me was to learn that our Cargo Titan is known as Cartman and is an actual Titan shifter. I was never convinced to those who say Cargo Titan is a shifter, but it seems like it so. And with Jaws revealing himself, our Titan-shifter set has been collected.

Ymir has definetely gone to me, I have no hope left. I have seen some posts that points out she might be alive but to me it makes no sense to keep a Titan shifter locked for 4 years when you can give her power to another Warrior and use it during the war. Ymir’s new predecessor may be fighting on other front lines, who knows. We will see that in upcoming chapters!

One last thing before I end this post.

In this chapter we also have learned who Marley is in a war with, as I pointed out here. Their official name has changed to Mid-East Alliance but I am really glad to see a Middle East inspired nation on this manga, no matter how Isayama represents them. I wonder whether or not they are gonna have more screen time.  Personally, I’d love to see more from them but we haven’t even seen Marley enough and East Sea Clan has become a city myth already. 

I wonder how long Isayama is going to keep showing us Marley as bad big enemy. I want to get know them better, not just as the monster they have become but isn’t there anybody human in this nation? They are the actual humans in the story yet we haven’t seen any human acts from them, it is like they are the monsters, not Eldians. Look how much trust Captain Maggath has put to Titan powers while saying it is absolute while our Walled People who are the actual Titans are scared hell out of it. There are many for us to see on Marley side and it is a nice chance for us to get know them and also our new Warriors and hopefully RBA+Zeke better! 

I am really excited for next month because we will not just get our new chapter but also season 2 will be here! I can’t wait! April 1st is close y’all! Stay hyped, next month is gonna be legen-wait for it-dary! LEGENDARY!

Thank you all for reading!

[fairytail-whathesays]

I have seen your post on Zeref. What do you think should have been done with him for his character to be at the least DECENT?

Hooooly shit. Let’s enter that hurricane and try to find the eye.

1. Stop trying to weave together every single plotline into Zeref.

The big, overarching villain does not necessarily need to be connected to every single story in the series. And when they are, it takes an exceptionally skilled writer to pull it off, and Mashima is frankly a good ways under par. Untangling this mess is the first step towards finding a place from which we can launch an actual character. To that end, I suggest cutting out:

Irene Belserion’s backstory, obviously.

Anna Heartfilia and the Eclipse Gate. That one falls apart rather easily. The dragonslayers did not need to come from 400 years in the past.

Zeref’s story with Mavis. There is far too much interweaving between Fairy Tail and Zeref and it’s basically driving this shitty Alvarez arc.

If you absolutely must keep Natsu being Zeref’s brother, then do so, but that plot point is so overused it’s fast approaching cliche levels. There really should be other ways to tie the central characters into Zeref if they have to be.

2. Explain Ankhseram.

Ankhseram is an actual, divine god of life and death that was awake and willing to curse two teenage individuals over messing with life and death in ways that would end up causing more mass death. In present day Fairy Tail, there has not been a single hint of any divine presence at all beyond Chronos, who in himself is just sort of there to give DiMaria an unfair power. In case anyone is confused at why Ankhseram is important:

It literally caused every single important event in the goddamn manga with its actions.

And yet, it has received no fleshing out or explanations beyond those backstory actions. It is literally just a very important chunk of backstory with no substance. We do not know who exactly Ankhseram is, why he felt it important to curse Zeref and later Mavis over his transgression and her own much smaller one, why it has not been seen or heard from since, what its laws and rules surrounding death are, or how it feels about the events that have unfolded as a consequence of its curses. Ankhseram is literally “a mean god came and cursed Zeref one day so that’s why he’s bad” and that’s it.

3. Do better when it comes to “snapping” Zeref.

People have heard me mention that what Mashima wanted when creating Zeref is the story of a good person who just suffers way too much trauma and tragedy before that one last thing happens to completely break them and turn them into a monster that can’t be saved. I have also mentioned that he failed, badly. And that’s because the catalyst for Zeref “snapping” was Grimoire Heart’s war with Fairy Tail on Tenrou Island. I should mention that Zeref gaining control of his death powers goes hand in hand with his loss of care for humanity at large–one can’t happen without the other. I should also remind everyone of the terrible, traumatizing, and tragic displays of human violence and aggression that have happened during Zeref’s 400+ lifetime, including recent ones like: the cultists of the Tower of Heaven running an immense slave labor project using kidnapped and abused children, the many millions of people across the many towns Grimoire Heart slaughtered without mercy looking for ‘keys’, the Edolas Anima project run by a mad king that would’ve ripped away everyone in Earthland and murdered them……and yet, what tips him from  his life of willful seclusion and love for humanity into nihilistic omnicidal insanity, is…..a war with Fairy Tail that Grimoire Heart started and subsequently lost, badly, wherein no one died except people who died at Zeref’s hand. This is not exactly a believable catalyst for me. I have trouble, considering the depth and scale of this manga, believing that this is what turns a good man into a psychopath. Do better.

4. Stop mixing “kind” and “murderous”.

I will state right here and now that we are supposed to perceive pre-Tenrou Zeref as good. Flawed, maybe, but good. After all, he fell in love with Purity Sue Mavis, and taught her and the other Fairy Tail founders their magic. And he participated in a project to dethrone a homicidal dragon king. All of his horrific experiments started with him just trying to revive his slain brother. That meanie Ankhseram is to blame! All those demons that have hurt and threatened countless people are “misunderstandings”–they were for the purpose of suicide, not killing anyone else! And he banded together 730+ guilds both light and dark to overthrow a tyrannical monarch!

Yeah, there’s a bit too many problems with this. For someone who hadn’t seemed to have had his “snap” yet, Zeref pre-Tenrou is surprisingly uncaring about loss of life that comes as a direct result of his actions. That stuff I mentioned in point three about possible catalysts for Zeref to snap over human violence? A lot of that is blood on his hands. The Tower of Heaven was started in his name, to bring him out of his supposed sleep. So were the mass killings committed by Grimoire Heart. In addition, the demons that he created are either vicious killing machines (Lullaby, Deliora) or are incredibly hostile to human life (Tartaros), an idea that was apparently programmed into them. For someone whose decision to slaughter the entirety of humanity down to the last child was born as a result of one final anger with humanity’s senseless violence against itself, Zeref has still done more harm to humanity than it has ever done to itself, by far, and is either too selfish or too hateful of humanity to begin with to acknowledge it.

This really just comes with a problem I’ve pointed out before, which is that Mashima has no sense of delicacy or subtlety when writing antagonists even if they’re supposed to be anti-villains or tragic villains. “The Black Wizard Zeref” being a misunderstanding kind of plays off how many people were torn apart by Zeref as though he didn’t very much earn that name.

5. Cut his love story with Mavis.

This was just so unnecessary, not to mention a monumental dip into the pedophile-pandering jar. Even if you had to maintain Zeref’s connection with Fairy Tail (you really didn’t), a love story was not the way to go. It has now started its entire own arc, and a very poorly done one at that. You know how I would’ve won the war with Alvarez? Walked up to Acnologia with Mavis’ crystal in hand, said “hey, eat this” or otherwise told him to fling it into the sea, or in some other manner had it delivered permanently from Zeref’s grasp. The fact of the matter is that Mavis should have remained dead, because her being alive has been a tool used for Zeref’s character and not to its greatest effect. 

6. Explain what exactly is necessary to kill Zeref.

Another one of those things that was never really explained about Ankhseram (that really should have been) is the immortality he cursed Zeref with. The most we’ve been able to guess is that it’s sufficient power, as E.N.D. is described as being the most powerful of Zeref’s demons and thus able to kill him. So, uhh….? Have Acnologia do the job? It’s canonically greater than Zeref’s equal, easily so. Or, I dunno, wait a few years and Laxus or Gildarts will get to that level, I’m sure [shot]. Oh, but Zeref wants to destroy Acnologia! (Strange thing, as setting Acnologia on a rampage would be the easiest route to wiping out humanity, which is Zeref’s main goal). That’s what he wants Fairy Heart for: to destroy Acnologia. But couldn’t he also use a power source that great for his suicide? 

If all he needs to die is power, than what exactly is stopping him? If it’s not power, than what is it? We’re getting kind of close to the end of the manga here, and why exactly E.N.D. should be the one to kill Zeref instead of anyone else hasn’t exactly been explained. 

[isaacathom]

time to think about various story ideas ive had, yeehaw

ACitDS - Thomas trying to find their parents amidst the angel/demon war. pretty neat. I wanted to make a game out of it so the player could decide which way Thomas swung in terms of angel/demon, giving leeway for players who made mechanical choices against the ‘moral’ choice (cause like, split progression, man. it was gonna be pretty flexible and based mostly on choices within the world, though one route was locked behind a specific skill progression).

ACB - ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. war story about a commander trying to protect their homeland, except they arent even a commander in that homeland, and also its just really complicated. I like the individual characters i guess, even if im pretty sure Black themself was... not... my best character. I’ve made more ableist ones (hhhhhh) but that wasn’t my finest, so acb would need a total rehaul to fix that sorta thing. characters neat though.

SFY/414 - the whole gang of criminals help a guard catch other criminals story. or gay suicide squad, as you wish. i like my characters, and i like a whole lot of it, and i like the world. the core premise is a lil shaky but if you get past it, fun times, i think. i love tamjol especially.

SFY/425 - i dont know shit about the civil war plot except that tamjol is there and gets accused of being a traitor after his group finds out he’s a Shonyul, thats a fun one. thats basically the only thing i know for certain about it, that those scenes happen, and maybe one where he confronts his “father” directly, idk, weird stuff all around.

SFY/BTH/386 - sailing time. theres a storm, a mutiny, a second bloodier mutiny, and then a whole ass dragon eats like 2 whole boats without warning, god damn.

CCC - we have established i think that idea slapped i just never wrote shit. i dont remember any of their names. i just know some fuckers got lazered in the chest. tight.

Codename Seren - oh no

Codename Sworl - uhhh bunch of aliens get sent to earth disguised as teen girls to track down a different group of aliens. i remember nothing except that the sworl Charlotte ended up falling in love with a girl called Aaliyah (??????) who was actually one of the enemy aliens, and also that the sworl overlords were trash. everything else, big ol’ no clue.

EC - former MC fanfic, crystal’s sister and BIL get kidnapped by the goddess of fire in order to get the city (of which the BIL is like, the prince?) to do a bunch of specific things so that the fire goddess can release the imprisoned goddess of darkness. also one of the members of the motley gang crystal acquires is actually the fire goddesses missing daughter, and another is the descendant of some of the dark gods closest attendants who bailed and were hunted down. and the other dude is like. the son of a ghost? like? a ghost? like his human ass father found a portal to an afterlife realm and fucked one of the librarians and now their kid is half fucking ghost, I dont get it, also the man had a wife so uh W. Skye’s dad was messed.

GGS - hell yea. gods forming pacts with a bunch of youngsters who die in tragic circumstances (one was a car accident, another got crushed by a tree, and a pair got caught in a burning house). fun times. the car one had the war goddess as her partner and was able to summon a magic gun, the tree one had the god of time and fought with a magic sword while his COMPLETELY HUMAN sister kept tagging along on his missions and using a dustbin lid as a shield to help him out. nice. i love them all.

KoA - i dont remember whats happening there except that one of the kids was like, iron resistant? so she could use magic even when in iron? and fter they got captured by the govt or whatever they found out about her power and things escalated and im like 90% sure they fucking. hit her on the head with a shovel and killed her? i. i dont know why that was what i decided should happen in my novel but there you go, huh. her sister was very upset and i think ended up finding out she was iron resistant too? i dont remember the plot of this.

Kingdom Keys  - crocodile minigame and a littol skeleton man. basically if you found three keys you could access this area and get a wish granted by the goddess, and the skeleton dude had tried this previously and sort of failed? its kind of unclear but i think it was that he’d adventured with the main girls mother for the keys and i think she died? so then he used his wish to save her life? or the other way around? i think he died trying to get either the 1st or 2nd key and at the end the mother made it to the goddess and used her wish to bring him back, except he was a skeleton for Uh Reasons (how fucking long did it take???) and then i think the mother died after, i DONT know. i just remember littol skeleton boy man dude. he was like, 16 but also like 40, i think, i AM Unclear

Mermaid Cafe - there is no plot to mermaid cafe except that a mermaid like, comes on land and hides her identity, goes to a cafe by the sea one day to be a little closer to home, and then gets trapped along with a bunch of other people when the sea goes Very Bad. it was a very weird dream.

Minds Eye - ? gods claim your kids when theyre born and raise them? there was no further plot. i dont remember shit.

Mistakenbound - the last gasp of my hs phase, may it rest in peace. some heart player got murdered for revolution b4 the game starts but persisted as a ghost and pretended to be a blue blood, which while it was based more off the story of Rhia from COdename Seren, is a fuck of an aradia ripoff, whoopsie fucking Daisies

LOTMV - light demigod gets “kidnapped” by a dark demigod, sparks a war, very complicated, i mostly like it. one draft had the light demigod killing her shitty soldier ex-boyfriend at the end of the story after he almost murders the dark demigod, who has all but become her gf in the time since she left home. fun stuff.

Puppeteers Rebellion - buncha voodoo shit, smth about voodoo being outlawed and a countess using her powers in it to try and overthrow the kingdom, being foiled by the princess who she had (inadvertently?) been training at a sewing circle thing. i think?

Re:Memory - rebirth where your actions in your previous two lives determine your class, protag is class 1 (worst) because her last lives where a fucking infant and a murderer. befriends the princess (class 7) and idk what the hell were they planning to do but it was gonna be smth.

RiH - story about a thief with a metal arm trying to save the metal forest from an unnatural rust, aided by a knight who is one of the few people who actually notices their presence. was actually an MSPFA, ripperino, i still have like, 4 panels total and nothing else.

Royalty Story - uhhh country being run by Queen Adelaide acting as regent for her like, 21 year old son, but then she gets taken captive by this woman named Hazel who starts running the kingdom, forcing Adelaides three kids to flee the castle and try and find a solution. idk what was going on. the kids were Jackson, Morgan, Lillian, in order, iirc? cause the naming scheme was -an (sound). i thought it was neat. Lillian was the only one who shortened her name, to i like just Lilli, but Jackson was never Jack. they were neat.

SoaCS - pirate sets off a curse that means they are followed by a terrible icy storm, ends up being cast overboard by their (new) crew and saved by a woman on an island, who then also helps them escape when the storm ravages her home. then they go on a whole thing try to fix the mistake that HE made, resulting in them going back to where he had abandoned his crew in search of treasure. lotta fun. he even directly saves her life at a point where he had failed/refused to save one of his old partners last time, which was neat, but overall she was saving his ass. fun times. never wrote much for that.

Shadow Huntress- idk theres a girl called Blake and shes aways running because she thinks if she stops people will notice the scars of battle with like, The Darkness. physical battle, but also the emotional toll. ends up mentoring a few of her classmates who became hunters sort of incidentally. idk.

TDoC - so theres a demon king in the center of the lake, and around this lake are a bunch of cities with demon lords. and you have to kill the demon lords in order in order to be able to access the demon king and kill him. and there was a mechanic in place where you could only kill one demon lord/king. so the new party who is trying to free themselves from demon rule is accompanied by a group who tried many years prior, and in the first battle one of them fucking dies while trying to kill the lord because it turns out! that in the last attempt! he had succeeded in laying the final blow, and his soul was forever weakened and could not withstand the demonic energy this time, so from the outside he basically stabbed down at this demon lords week spot and then the second his blade made contact there was a burst of energy and he collapses like a sag of bricks who barely lives to the end of the battle to explain what happened. that was neat. i like the idea of the party by the time they get to the demon king being people who had all killed a demon lord, meaning they shouldnt be able to kill the king, but then they all manage to deal the final blow together, with their combined souls withstanding the initial burst of energy and killing him. whether they all die afterwards or just kinda pass the fuck out to be found by their allies outside who react to the demonic death wail, idk. i think its neat. that end sounds kinda cliche but presumably they had their best soldiers (demon killers) and then a handful of people with them who HADNT killed a demon who should have been able to, except the king could fucking smell em and wiped the floor with them early, knocking them out or killing them to focus on toying with the ones he wanted revenge on. I’m down for that. cause then its slightly less of a like, “twist”, since in the planning to kill the king SOMEONE would have noticed that they had to send some non-heroes :P So make sure you do, I guess.

TFOS - princess vs dragon, she has a gun and she wants revenge for her older sister and aso to save her kingdom. aided by a mage a knight and a rogue, bunch of lesbian mfers fighting dragons, Nice.

TFT - proto GGS, main difference was that becoming a demigod was essentially randomised and that there was like. a god of computers. who i think i reworked as a god of technology? or something? tech generally, not computer tech. idk. cherry was cute.

WTDD - the worlds surface is a series of spinning gears with cities and towns on them, and the gears all powered a music box below the earth which kept this colossal dragon asleep. and then one day the gears stop and the dragon wakes up. something like that. the initial thing was world is gears, but id probably shift it to a city or an area? cause the idea of a city constantly rotating sucks ass. admittedly that was straight up the reason the gears stopped in the initial writing, because the villain (??) was sick of the rotation ad fucking. blew a gear up. nice.

YD3N - uhh bunch of robots? one for eac letter of the alphabet (so there was Aden, Byden, Cyden, Dyden, Eden, etc) and Yd3n was the source of all of them. and then a robot called syd3n manages to escape and finds the aid of a local engineer called Ignis Lex, and they try to free their siblings and especially Yd3n, and find out the purpose for the alphabet crew. fun fact, this entire story came about because on the way home from uni I saw a dude in front of me with a jumper that said ‘Sydney’, except the last y was covered and my brain misread what was left as Syden, which is why theyre the protag. Neat.

thats the only ones listed. its missing a few, but i dont remember them much or have names for them :P

[thejoydaily-blog]

Insanity and Spiritual Songs in the Soul of a Saint

Reflections on the Life of William Cowper

Insanity and Spiritual Songs in the Soul of a Saint

Reflections on the Life of William Cowper

1992 Bethlehem Conference for Pastors

Resource by John Piper

Topics: Depression, Biography

There are at least three reasons why I have chosen to tell the story of the 18th century poet William Cowper at this year’s conference.

One is that ever since I was seventeen — maybe before — I have felt the power of poetry. I went to my file recently and found an old copy of Leaves of Grass, my high school’s literary magazine from 1964 and read the poems that I wrote for it almost thirty years ago. Then I looked at the Kodon from my Wheaton days, and remembered the poem, “One of Many Lands” that I wrote in one of my bleaker moments as a college freshman. Then I dug out The Opinion from Fuller Seminary and the Bethel Coeval from when I taught there. It hit me again what a long-time friend poetry-writing has been to me.

The Breach

I think the reason for this is that I live with an almost constant awareness of the breach between the low intensity of my own passion and the staggering realities of the universe around me, heaven, hell, creation, eternity, life, God. Everybody (whether they know it or not) tries to close this breach — between the weakness of our emotions and the wonder of the World. Some of us do it with poetry.

William Cowper did it with poetry. I think I know what he means, for example, when he writes a poem about his mother’s portrait long after her death and says,

And, while that face renews my filial grief, Fancy shall weave a charm for my relief.

There is a deep release and a relief that comes when we find a way of seeing and saying some precious or stunning reality that comes a little closer to closing the breach between what we’ve glimpsed with our mind and what we’ve grasped with our heart. It shouldn’t be surprising that probably over three hundred pages of the Bible was written as poetry. Because the aim of the Bible is to build a bridge between the deadness of the human heart and the living reality of God. The second reason I am drawn to William Cowper is that I want to know the man behind the hymn, “God Moves In a Mysterious Way.” Over the years it has become very precious to me and to many in our church.

God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform; He plants his footsteps in the sea, And rides upon the storm.

Deep in unfathomable mines Of never failing skill, He treasures up his bright designs And works his sovereign will. Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take, The clouds ye so much dread Are big with mercy, and shall break In blessings on your head. Judge not the lord by feeble sense, But trust him for his grace; behind a frowning providence He hides a smiling face. His purpose will ripen fast, Unfolding every hour; the bud may have a bitter taste, But sweet will be the flower. Blind unbelief is sure to err, And scan his work in vain: God is his own interpreter, And he will make it plain.

This hymn hangs over our mantle at home. It expresses the foundation of my theology and my life so well that I long to know the man who wrote it. Finally, I want to know why this man struggled with depression and despair almost all his life. I want to try to come to terms with insanity and spiritual songs in the same heart of one whom I think was a saint.

The Context of His Life

Let’s begin with a sketch of his life. Who was he and when did he live?

He was born in 1731 and died in 1800. That makes him a contemporary of John Wesley and George Whitefield, the leaders of the Evangelical Revival in England. He embraced Whitefield’s Calvinistic theology rather than Wesley’s Arminianism. It was a warm, evangelical brand of Calvinism, shaped (in Cowper’s case) largely by one of the healthiest men in the 18th century, the “old African blasphemer” John Newton, whom we will see more of in a moment.

Cowper said he could remember how as a child he would see the people at four o’clock in the morning coming to hear Whitefield preach in the open air. “Moorfields (was) as full of the lanterns of the worshippers before daylight as the Haymarket was full of flambeaux on opera nights” (Gilbert Thomas, William Cowper and the Eighteenth Century, Ivor Nocholson and Watson, 1935, 204.).

He was 27 years old when Jonathan Edwards died in America. He lived through the American and French revolutions. His poetry was known by Benjamin Franklin who gave Cowper’s first volume a good review (Ibid., 267). But he was not a man of affairs or travel. He was a recluse who spent virtually all his adult life in the rural English country side near Olney and Weston.

From the standpoint of adventure or politics or public engagement his life was utterly uneventful. The kind of life no child would ever choose to read about. But for those of us who are older we have come to see that the events of the soul are probably the most important events in life. And the battles in this man’s soul were of epic proportions.

So let’s sketch his seemingly uneventful life with a view to seeing the battles of the soul.

Deep Despair

He was born November 15, 1731 at Great Berkhampstead near London, a town of about 1500 people. His father was rector of Great Berkhampstead and one of George II’s chaplains. So the family was well to do, but not evangelical, and William grew up without any saving relation to Christ.

His mother died when he was six and his father sent him to Pitman’s boarding school in Bedfordshire. It was a tragic mistake, as we will see from his own testimony later in life. From the age of ten till he was seventeen he attended Westminster private school and learned his French and Latin and Greek well enough to spend the last years of his life fifty years later translating Homer and Madame Guyon.

From 1749 he was apprenticed to a solicitor with a view to practicing law — at least this was his father’s view. He never really applied himself, and had no heart for the public life of a lawyer or a politician. For ten years he did not take his legal career seriously, but lived a life of leisure with token involvement in his supposed career.

In 1752 he sank into his first paralyzing depression — the first of four major battles with mental breakdown so severe as to set him to string out of windows for weeks at a time. Struggle with despair came to be the theme of his life. He was 21 years old and not yet a believer. He wrote about the attack of 1752 like this:

(I was struck) with such a dejection of spirits, as none but they who have felt the same, can have the least conception of. Day and night I was upon the rack, lying down in horror, and rising up in despair. I presently lost all relish for those studies, to which before I had been closely attached; the classics had no longer any charms for me; I had need of something more salutary than amusement, but I had not one to direct me where to find it.

He came through this depression with the help of the poems of George Herbert (who lived 150 years earlier). These contained enough beauty and enough hope that Cowper found strength to take several months away from London by the sea in Southampton. What happened there was both merciful and sad. He wrote in his Memoir:

The morning was calm and clear; the sun shone bright upon the sea; and the country on the borders of it was the most beautiful I had ever seen...Here it was, that on a sudden, as if another sun had been kindled that instant in the heavens, on purpose to dispel sorrow and vexation of spirit, I felt the weight of all my weariness taken off; my heart became light and joyful in a moment; I could have wept with transport had I been alone.

That was the mercy. The sadness of it was that he confessed later that instead of giving God the credit for this mercy he formed the habit merely of battling his depression, if at all, by seeking changes of scenery. It was the merciful hand of God in nature. But he did not see him, or give him glory. Not yet.

Shattered on a Brick Wall

Between 1749 and 1756 Cowper was falling in love with his cousin Theodora whose home he would regularly visit on the weekends. She became the Delia of his love poems. They were engaged, but for some mysterious reason her father, Ashley Cowper, forbade the marriage. His apparent reason was the inappropriateness of consanguinity. She was William’s cousin. But it seems strange that the relation was allowed to develop for seven years as well as the engagement only to shatter on a brick wall at the last minute. Probably her father knew things about William that convinced him he would not have been a good husband for his daughter. This is probably true.

But it didn’t turn out the way he hoped. Though they never saw each other again after 1756, Theodora outlived him but never married. She followed the poetic career of William from a distance and sent him money anonymously when he was in need, even a regular stipend at one point.

We know of nineteen poems that he wrote to her under the name Delia. One of them, written some years after their parting, shows the abiding pain:

But now, sole partner in my Delia’s heart, Yet doomed far off in exile to complain, Eternal absence cannot ease my smart, And hope subsists but to prolong my pain.

Accumulated Pain

What we find is that William Cowper’s life seems to be one long accumulation of pain.

In 1759 when he was 28 years old he was appointed, through the influence of his father, Commissioner of Bankrupts in London. Four years later he was about to be made Clerk of Journals in Parliament. What would have been a great career advancement to most men struck fear in William Cowper — so much so that he had a total mental breakdown, tried three different ways to commit suicide, and was put into an asylum.

His father had arranged for the position. But his enemies in parliament decided to require a public interrogation for his son as a prerequisite. Cowper wrote about the dreadful attack of 1763:

All the horrors of my fears and perplexities now returned. A thunderbolt would have been as welcome to me as this intelligence (=interrogation) ... Those whose spirits are formed like mine, to whom a public exhibition of themselves, on any occasion, is mortal poison, may have some idea of the horror of my situation; others can have none (Ibid., 114).

For more than half a year his feelings were those “of a man when he arrives at the place of execution.” At that point something dreadful returned to his memory that causes us to wonder about what kind of father William Cowper had. The 32-year-old Clerk suddenly recalled a “treatise on self-murder” that he read when he was eleven years old.

I well recollect when I was about eleven years of age, my father desired me to read a vindication of self-murder, and give him my sentiments upon the question: I did so, and argued against it. My father heard my reasons, and was silent, neither approving nor disapproving; from whence I inferred that he sided with the author against me (Ibid., 118).

Suicidal Tendencies

In the week before his examination (October 1763) he bought laudanum to use as a poison. He pondered escaping to France to enter a monastery. He had illusions of seeing himself slandered in the newspaper anonymously. He was losing his hold on reality almost entirely.

The day before the Parliamentary examination he set out to drown himself and took a cab to Tower Wharf. But at Custom House Quay he found the water too low and “a porter seated upon some goods” as if “a message to prevent” him (Ibid.).

When he got home that evening he tried to take the laudanum but found his fingers “closely contracted” and “entirely useless.” The next morning he tried three times to hang himself with a garter. The third time he became unconscious, but the garter broke. The laundress found him in bed and called his uncle who canceled the examination immediately. And that was the end of Cowper’s brush with public life — but not the end of his brush with death.

Conviction of sin took place, especially of that just committed; the meanness of it, as well as its atrocity, were exhibited to me in colours so inconceivably strong that I despised myself, with a contempt not to be imagined or expressed ... This sense of it secured me from the repetition of a crime which I could not now reflect on without abhorrence ... A sense of God’s wrath, and a deep despair of escaping it, instantly succeeded (Ibid., 119).

Now everything he read condemned him. Sleep would not come, and, when it did, it brought him terrifying dreams. When he awoke he “reeled and staggered like a drunken man.”

The Sun of Righteousness at the Asylum

So in December 1763, he was committed to St. Albans Insane Asylum where the 58-year-old Dr. Nathaniel Cotton tended the patients. He was somewhat of a poet, but most of all, by God’s wonderful design, an evangelical believer and lover of God and the gospel.

He loved Cowper and held out hope to him repeatedly in spite of his insistence that he was damned and beyond hope. Six months into his stay Cowper found a Bible lying (not by accident) on a bench in the garden.

Having found a Bible on the bench in the garden, I opened upon the 11th of St. John, where Lazarus is raised from the dead; and saw so much benevolence, mercy, goodness, and sympathy with miserable men, in our Saviour’s conduct, that I almost shed tears upon the relation; little thinking that it was an exact type of the mercy which Jesus was on the point of extending towards myself. I sighed, and said, “Oh, that I had not rejected so good a Redeemer, that I had not forfeited all his favours.” Thus was my heart softened, though not yet enlightened (Ibid., 131–132).

Increasingly he felt he was not utterly doomed. There came another revelation and he turned again to the Bible and the first verse he saw was Romans 3:25: “Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God.”

Immediately I received the strength to believe it, and the full beams of the Sun of Righteousness shone upon me. I saw the sufficiency of the atonement He had made, my pardon sealed in His blood, and all the fullness and completeness of His justification. In a moment I believed, and received the gospel ... Whatever my friend Madan had said to me, long before, revived in all its clearness, with demonstration of the spirit and power. Unless the Almighty arm had been under me, I think I should have died with gratitude and joy. My eyes filled with tears, and my voice choked with transport; I could only look up to heaven in silent fear, overwhelmed with love and wonder (Ibid. 132).

He had come to love the place of Dr. Cotton so much that he stayed on another 12 months after his conversion. One might wish the story were one of emotional triumph after his conversion. But it will not turn out that way. Far from it.

Newton’s Influence

In June 1765, Cowper left St. Albans and moved in with the Unwin family in Huntington. Mary Unwin was only eight years older than Cowper, but she was to become to him like a mother for almost thirty years. In 1767 Mr. Morley Unwin, Mary’s husband, died in a tragic fall from his horse. This set the stage for the most important relationships in Cowper’s life. Not only did he and Mary Unwin live together for the rest of her life, but at the death of her husband, John Newton entered the picture and became the most important influence in Cowper’s life.

John Newton was the curate at the church in Olney not far from the Unwin’s home. He had lost his mother when he was six just like Cowper. But after being sent to school for a few years, he traveled with his father on the high seas, eventually becoming a slave trading seaman himself. He was powerfully converted and God called him to the ministry. He had been at Olney since 1764 and would be there till 1780.

We know him mainly as the author of “Amazing Grace.” But we should also know him as one of the healthiest, happiest pastors in the 18th century. People said that other pastors were respected by their people, but Newton was loved.

To show you the kind of spirit he had, here is a quote that gets at the heart of how he approached the ministry:

Two heaps of human happiness and misery; now if I can take but the smallest bit from one heap and add to the other, I carry a point. If, as I go home, a child has dropped a halfpenny, and if, by giving it another, I can wipe away its tears, I feel I have done something. I should be glad to do greater things, but I will not neglect this. When I hear a knock on my study door, I hear a message from God; it may be a lesson of instruction, perhaps a lesson of penitence; but, since it is his message, it must be interesting (Ibid., 202).

John Newton was told that a family near his parish had lost their father and husband, the Unwins. He made the trip to the Unwins and was such a help to them that they decided to move to Olney and sit under his ministry. So in September 1767 they moved from Huntington to Olney and lived in a place called Orchard Side for almost 20 years. For 13 of those years Newton was Cowper’s pastor and counselor and friend. Cowper said, “A sincerer or more affectionate friend no man ever had” (Ibid., 192).

The Dream

Newton saw Cowper’s bent to melancholy and reclusiveness and drew him into the ministry of visitation as much as he could. They would take long walks together between homes and talk of God and his purposes for the church. Then in 1769 Newton got the idea of collaborating with Cowper on a book of hymns to be sung by their church. He thought it would be good for Cowper’s poetic bent to be engaged.

In the end Newton wrote about 208 hymns and Cowper wrote 68. The hymnal was published in 1779. Besides “Amazing Grace,” Newton wrote “How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds” and “Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken” and “Come, My Soul Thy Suit Prepare.” Cowper wrote “God Moves in a Mysterious Way” and “There is a Fountain Filled with Blood” and “O for a Closer Walk with God.”

But before Cowper could complete his share he had what he called “the fatal dream.” January had come again. His breakdowns had always been their worse in January. And it was now ten years since “the dreadful ‘63.” They came virtually every ten years in their worst form. He does not say precisely what the dream was but only that a “word” was spoken that reduced him to spiritual despair, something to the effect of “It is all over with you, you are lost” (Ibid., 225).

Twelve years later he still shuddered at the dream. He wrote to Newton in 1785, “I had a dream twelve years ago before the recollection of which all consolation vanishes, and, it seems to me, must always vanish.” Not long before his death he told Lady Hesketh, “In one day, in one minute I should rather have said, she (Nature) became a universal blank to me; and though from a different cause, yet with an effect as difficult to remove, as blindness itself” (Ibid., 226).

Providentially Protected

Again there were repeated attempts at suicide, and each time God providentially prevented him. Newton stood by him all the way through this, even sacrificing at least one vacation so as not to leave Cowper alone.

In 1780 Newton leaves Olney for a new pastorate in Lombard Street, London where he served for the next 27 years. It is a great tribute to him that he did not abandon his friendship with Cowper, though this would have been emotionally easy to do no doubt. Instead there is an earnest exchange of letters for twenty years. Cowper poured out his soul to Newton as to no one else.

Perhaps it was good for Newton to go away, because when he left, Cowper poured himself into his major poetic projects between 1780 and 1786. You have probably never heard of any of these. His most famous and lengthy was called The Task, a one-hundred-page poem in blank verse. Even though he saw himself in his blackest moods as reprobate and hopeless, he never stopped believing in the truth of the Evangelical Revival. All his poems are meant to teach as well as to entertain. He wrote about himself:

... I, who scribble rhyme To catch the triflers of the time, And tell them truths divine and clear Which, couched in prose, they would not hear. (Ibid., 265)

His first volume of poems was published in 1782 when he was 51. Three years later came The Task which established his fame. The great usefulness of these poems is that they “helped to spread (the Revival’s) ideas among the educated of all classes ... because of his formal alliance with the (Evangelical) movement and the practical effects of his work, (Cowper) remains its (poet) laureate” (Ibid., 183).

Perhaps his productivity staved off the threatened breakdown of 1783, the next ten-year interval. But the reprieve did not last. In 1786 Cowper entered his fourth deep depression and again tried unsuccessfully to commit suicide. He and Mary move from Olney to Weston that year and the long decline of both of them begins. He cares for her as for a dying Mother from 1790 to 1796, filling what moments he can with work on his translations of Homer and other Greek and French works. He writes his last original poem in 1799, called The Castaway, and then dies apparently in utter despair in 1800.

Reflections on his Depression

William Cowper’s melancholy is disturbing. We need to come to terms with it in the framework of God’s sovereign power and grace to save and sanctify his people. What are we to make of this man’s life long battle with depression, and indeed his apparent surrender to despair and hopelessness in his own life?

The Lone Exception

One thing to notice is that there is some inconsistency in the way he reports his misery and hopelessness. For example, in a letter to John Newton on January (!) 13, 1784 he wrote,

Loaded as my life is with despair, I have no such comfort as would result from a supposed probability of better things to come, were it once ended ... You will tell me that this cold gloom will be succeeded by a cheerful spring, and endeavour to encourage me to hope for a spiritual change resembling it — but it will be lost labour. Nature revives again; but a soul once slain lives no more ... My friends, I now expect that I shall see yet again. They think it necessary to the existence of divine truth, that he who once had possession of it should never finally lose it. I admit the solidity of this reasoning in every case but my own. And why not in my own? ... I forestall the answer: — God’s ways are mysterious, and He giveth no account of His matters: — an answer that would serve my purpose as well as theirs that use it. There is a mystery in my destruction, and in time it shall be explained. (Ibid., 281–282)

Notice that he affirms the truth of the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints and does not even quarrel with the reality of his own conversion at St. Albans. What he disputes is that the general truth applies to him. He is the lone exception in the universe. He is reprobate though once he was elect. Ask not why. God gives no account. This is his bleakest way of talking.

Healed and Bade Live

But notice something else. In that same year he was writing The Task. In it he recounts what Christ meant to him in a way that makes it very hard to believe there are not times now when this is still real for him:

I was stricken deer, that left the herd Long since; with many an arrow deep infixt My panting side was charg’d, when I withdrew To seek a tranquil death in distant shades. There was I found by one who had himself Been hurt by th’ archers. In his side he bore, And in his hands and feet, the cruel scars. With gentle force soliciting the darts, He drew them forth, and heal’d, and bade me live. Since then, with few associates, in remote And silent woods I wonder, far from those My former partners of the peopled scene; With few associates, and not wishing more.

What would he mean in 1784, twelve years after the “fatal dream” that Jesus had drawn the arrows out and healed him and bade him live? Were there not moments when he truly felt this and affirmed it against the constitutional gloom of his own mind?

Even in the 1790’s there were expressions of hope. From time to time he gave evidence, for example, that he was permitted by God “once more to approach Him in prayer.” His earliest biographer and friend said that in the days of the last decade God had once more opened a passage for him but that “spiritual hounds” haunted him at night (Ibid., 368, 374).

Scrambling in the Dark

But there was horrible blackness for him much of the time. He wrote to John Newton (friend to the end!) in 1792 that he always seemed to be “scrambling in the dark, among rocks and precipices, without a guide. Thus I have spent 20 years, but thus I shall not spend twenty years more. Long ere that period arrives, the grand question concerning my everlasting weal or woe will be decided” (Ibid., 376). This is bleak but it is not the settled reprobation we read in 1786.

The last days of his life brought no relief. No happy ending. In March of 1800 he said to visiting Dr. Lubbock, “I feel unutterable despair.” On April 24 Miss Perowne offered some refreshment to him, to which he replied, “What can it signify?” He never spoke again and died the next afternoon (Ibid., 384).

What were the roots of such overwhelming and intractable gloom? No doubt there are secrets that God only knows. But we can see some reasons why he may have struggled the way he did. Consider the home into which he was born. His father John married his mother Ann in 1728. Between the wedding in 1728 and his birth in 1731 three children had already been born and lost! He lives. But between 1731 and 1736 when his brother John was born, two more children enter the family then die. Then the mother dies a few days after John’s birth. William is six years old. The marriage is one sustained heartache.

The pain and emotional trauma of the death of his mother can probably not be calculated. It’s true that John Newton lost his mother at the age of six, the very year Cowper was born. But there is a difference, as we will see in a moment.

The Portrait

In 1790 at the age of 59 Cowper received a portrait of his mother in the post that swept him away with the emotion of years. He had not laid eyes on her face for 53 years. He wrote a poem to capture and release the pain and the pleasure of that “meeting.” We catch a glimpse of what it was for him at age 6 to lose his mother. And perhaps why he took so to Mrs. Mary Unwin.

Oh that those lips had language! Life has passed With me but roughly since I heard thee last. ... My mother! when I learned that thou wast dead, Say, wast thou conscious of the tears I shed? Hovered thy spirit o’er thy sorrowing son, Wretch even then, life’s journey just begun? ... I heard the bell tolled on thy burial day, I saw the hearses that bore thee slow away, And turning from my nursery window, drew A long, long sigh, and wept a last adieu! ... Thy maidens, grieved themselves at my concern, Oft gave me promise of thy quick return. What ardently I wished, I long believed, And disappointed still, was still deceived; By expectation every day beguiled, Dupe of to-morrow even from a child. ... But the record fair, That memory keeps of all thy kindness there, Still outlives many a storm, that has effaced A thousand other themes less deeply traced. Thy nightly visits to my chamber made That thou mightst know me safe and warmly laid; Thy morning bounties ere I left my home, Thy biscuit, or confectionery plum; The fragrant waters on my cheeks bestowed By thy own hand, till fresh they shone and glowed: All this, and more endearing still than all, Thy constant flow of love, that knew no fall, Ne’er roughened by those cataracts and breaks, That humour interposed too often makes: All this still legible in memory’s page And still to be so to my latest age.

One begins to ponder the strange relations Cowper had all his life with older women, wanting them in his life, and yet confusing them with the love poems he would write when he had no romantic intentions. Lady Austen in particular was bewildered by the way Cowper wrote to her. This kind of behavior may have its roots not only in the loss of his mother but in the virtual loss of his father and his horrible experience in boarding school between the ages of six and eight. He hated boarding school and longed for his father:

But my chief affliction consisted in my being singled out from all the other boys, by a lad about fifteen years of age as a proper object upon which he might let loose the cruelty of his temper. I choose to forbear a particular recital of the many acts of barbarity, with which he made it his business continually to persecute me: it will be sufficient to say, that he had, by his savage treatment of me, impressed such a dread of his figure upon my mind, that I well remember being afraid to lift up my eyes upon him, higher than his knees; and that I knew him by his shoe-buckles, better than any other part of his dress. May the Lord pardon him, and may we meet in glory! (Ibid., 69–70)

One would never say it in the eighteenth century. But knowing what we know today about its effects and what we know about boys at that age, it is hard not to raise the specter of sexual abuse. What horrors a little six-year-old boy may have experienced combined with the loss of his mother and the virtual loss of his father!

Be There

Perhaps the most poignant lines Cowper ever wrote are hidden away in a poem called Tirocinium (Latin for the state of a new recruit, inexperience, rawness) in which he pleads for a private education rather than one at boarding school. What comes through here is a loud cry for his father to have been there for him, and a powerful plea to fathers even in the 20th century to be there for our children. Listen to these lines:

Would you your son should be a sot or dunce, Lascivious, headstrong, or all these at once, That in good time, the stripling’s finished taste For loose expense and fashionable waste Should prove your ruin, and his own at last, Train him in public with a mob of boys, Childish in mischief only and in noise, Else of a mannish growth, and five in ten In infidelity and lewdness, men. There shall he learn, ere sixteen winters old, That authors are most useful, pawned or sold, That pedantry is all that schools impart, But taverns teach the knowledge of the heart. ... And seems it nothing in a father’s eye that unimproved those many moments fly? And is he well content, his son should find No nourishment to feed his growing mind But conjugated verbs, and nouns declined? For such is all the mental food purveyed by public hackneys in the schooling trade. Who feed a pupil’s intellect with store Of syntax truly, but with little more, Dismiss their cares when they dismiss their flock, Machines themselves, and governed by a clock. Perhaps a father blest with any brains Would deem it no abuse or waste of pains, To improve this diet at no great expense, With savoury truth and wholesome common sense, To lead his son for prospects of delight To some not steep though philosophic height, Thence to exhibit to his wondering eyes Yon circling worlds, their distance, and their size ... To show him in an insect of a flower Such microscopic proofs of skill and power, As hid from ages past, God now displays To combat atheists with in modern days. ... Canst thou, the tear just trembling on thy lids, And while the dreadful risk foreseen, forbids, Free too, and under no constraining force, Unless the sway of custom warp thy course, Lay such a stake upon the losing side, Merely to gratify so blind a guide? Thou canst not: Nature pulling at thine heart, Condemns the unfatherly, the imprudent part. Thou wouldst not, deaf to nature’s tenderest plea, Turn him adrift upon a rolling sea, Nor say, go thither, conscious that there lay A brood of asps, or quicksands in his way; Then only governed by the self-same rule Of natural pity, send him not to school No! — guard him better: Is he not thine own, Thyself in miniature, thy flesh, thy bone? And hopest thou not (‘tis every father’s hope) That since thy strength must with thy years elope, And thou wilt need some comfort to assuage Health’s last farewell, as staff of thine old age, That then, in recompense of all thy cares Thy child shall show respect to thy gray hairs.

He never wrote a tribute to his father that we know of. He says almost nothing about him. But this is a powerful plea for fathers to love their sons and give them special attention in their education. This is what he missed from the age of six onward.

Lessons from the Depressed Life

1. We should all fortify ourselves against the dark hours of depression by cultivating a deep distrust of the certainties of despair.

Despair is relentless in the certainties of his pessimism. But we have seen that Cowper is not consistent. Some years after his absolute statements of being cut off from God, he is again expressing some hope in being heard. His certainties were not sureties. So it will always be with the deceptions of darkness. Let us now, while we have the light, cultivate distrust of the certainties of despair.

2. We must love our children and keep them close to us and secure with us.

John Newton lost his mother just like Cowper. But he did not lose his father in the same way. In spite of all the sin and misery of those early years of Newton’s life, there was a father, and who can say what deep roots of later health were preserved because of that. Let us be there for our sons and daughters. We are the crucial link in their normal sexual development and that is so crucial in their emotional wholeness.

3. May the Lord raise up many John Newtons for us, for the joy of our churches and for the survival of the William Cowpers among us and in our churches.

Newton remained Cowper’s pastor and friend the rest of his life, writing and visiting again and again. He did not despair of the despairing. After one of these visits in 1788 Cowper wrote:

I found those comforts in your visit, which have formerly sweetened all our interviews, in part restored. I knew you; knew you for the same shepherd who was sent to lead me out of the wilderness into the pasture where the Chief Shepherd feeds His flock, and felt my sentiments of affectionate friendship for you the same as ever. But one thing was still wanting, and that the crown of all. I shall find it in God’s time, if it be not lost for ever. (Ibid., 356)

That is not utter hopelessness. And the reason it is not is because the shepherd had drawn near again. Those were the times when Cowper held out hope.

4. Let’s use our mind to focus on greater realities outside of ourselves.

In the very research and writing of this lecture I experienced something that may be a crucial lesson for those of us given to too much self-absorption and analysis. I devoted about three days from waking till sleeping to William Cowper, besides leisurely reading of his poetry up till that time. Those three days I was almost entirely outside myself as it were. Now and then I “came to” and became aware that I had been absorbed wholly in the life of another. But most of the time I was not self-conscious. I was not thinking about me at all. I was the one thinking, not the one thought about. This experience, when I “came to” and thought about it, seemed to me extremely healthy. That is the way I experienced it. In other words, I felt best when I was not aware of being a feeling one at all. I was feeling and thinking the life of William Cowper.

I think this is the way most of our life should be. Periodic self-examination is needed and wise and biblical. But for the most part mental health is the use of the mind to focus on worthy reality outside ourselves.

5. Let’s encourage our people to continue on in hope and faith.

The first version of this lecture was given in an evening service at Bethlehem Baptist Church. It proved to be one of the most encouraging things I have done in a long time. This bleak life was felt by many as hope-giving. There are no doubt different reasons for this in the cases of different people. But the lesson is surely that those of us who teach and preach and want to encourage our people to press on in hope and faith must not limit ourselves to success stories. The life of William Cowper had a hope-giving effect on my people. That is a very important lesson.

6. Let us rehearse the mercies of Jesus often for our people, and point them again and again to the blood of Jesus.

These were the two things that brought Cowper to faith in 1764. Remember how in John 11 he “saw so much benevolence, mercy, goodness, and sympathy with miserable men, in our Saviour’s conduct, that I almost shed tears.” And remember how on the decisive day he said, “I saw the sufficiency of the atonement He had made, my pardon sealed in His blood, and all the fullness and completeness of His justification.”

You cannot persuade a person that he is not reprobate if he is utterly persuaded that he is. All you can do is keep soaking him in the “benevolence, mercy, goodness, and sympathy” of Jesus and “the sufficiency of the atonement” and “the fullness and completeness of Christ’s justification.” He will say that they are wonderful in themselves but that they do not belong to him. But in God’s time these truths may yet be given the power to awaken hope and beget a spirit of adoption.

We have good reason to hope that if we nourish the love and patience of John Newton in our church and the sufficiency of Jesus’ atonement, the William Cowpers among us will not be given over to the enemy in the end.