#she's just as dead and eternal as the world he loved so deeply he killed it rather than watch it die

[xdaddysprincessxx]

Pieces of Him

Cult leader Joel Miller x f!reader

Warnings: Dead Dove! Horror! 18+ only! Ritualistic cannibalism, angst, death, blood, cameo from Ezra, made up religion, betrayal, infidelity, p in v, non/dub con (heavier on the non but added dub just to cover my bases), oral (f receiving), squirting, pregnancy/breeding (they literally just had sex so no actual fetus, Joel is just delulu) reader can be picked up, and oh yea Joel is out of his damn mind, pretty sure that’s it. Not beta’d, lightly edited, all mistakes are my own! Moodboard made by me(:

Joel was a young man when he married the love of his life. High school sweethearts. They were only twenty one when Laura got pregnant. Joel immediately got down on one knee and asked her to be his wife. The two had a cozy little house on a few acres, about an hour outside of town. When Laura went into labor, Joel about fainted. He was terrified of becoming a dad, he wanted his girl to have better than he ever did. Unfortunately right after Laura pushed little Sarah out into the world, things took a turn for the worst. She lost a lot of blood and kept losing blood. The doctors took Sarah and pushed Joel out of the room trying to save her. He’ll never forget how cold that hospital waiting room was when the drs finally came out and told him Laura had passed. The loss of his wife took a toll on Joel. Not only did he lose his best friend and wife, he had to raise a newborn on his own. Thankfully he had his brother, Tommy, who helped out a ton with Sarah. But life was not kind to Joel Miller. Twelve years. He got twelve years with his Sarah before the day his sweet girl got struck by a drunk driver and killed. He became a shell of a man, void of all emotion and life. That was until he met a very charming man one day.

Ezra was a gypsy of sorts. Never staying in one place, always on the move. And spreading this gospel about this amazing creator and all the good things he does and can do for you if you please him. Joel met him when Ezra was walking past his house. He happened to be outside when Ezra spotted him. Joel didn’t even notice him until he was already standing next to him as Joel looked out over his big yard, depressed because there should be kids out there playing. Sarah should be out there, running around, while him and Laura cook dinner on the grill. When Joel did notice the stranger standing next to him, he tried telling him he didn’t want whatever he was trying to sell. Joels efforts to shake the man went unnoticed as Ezra rambled on and on. Not too long into the conversation, Ezra told Joel about The Children of Ares. Not like any religion Joel’s ever heard of, he was intrigued. Ezra promised eternal life, salvation. A guarantee Joel will be reunited with Sarah and Laura. There was a small group in town who also followed the same practice. Not long after meeting Ezra, Joel went to a meeting in town and soon found himself deeply immersed in this religion.

Fast forward ten years, Joel is now a high priest in The Children of Ares. It’s grown a lot since he’s joined. And even more so since he’s taken this position of power.

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Strolling down the main street on a Friday night, you, your boyfriend and your three friends are all laughing and joking enjoying the brisk fall night. Halloween decorations line the store shop windows, there’s orange and black fairy lights strung up along the sidewalk, going from post to post. On the corner in front of you is the towns crack head spewing his usual nonsense about “the masked freaks who eat people out in the woods”. You’ve never paid him any mind but for some reason his words have you on edge.

“Hey Steve why don’t you go hit the crack pipe again and shut the fuck up!” Your boyfriend, Liam, yells to the man.

Steve narrows his beady eyes at your group, “You’ll regret that boy. The big man is coming. He’s gonna get you and there wont be a lick of you remaining.”

The unease of his words pours over your body and you don’t notice the man standing there, waiting to cross the street when you bump into him.

“Oh oh I’m sorry! I didn’t see you there! Are you okay?” You quickly say as you bounce off of the man you bumped into. Not only is he tall, he’s practically a human wall. The man turns and looks at you, at first with a scowl on his face. But once he gets an eye full of who bumped into him, he quickly replaces the scowl with a smile.

“Oh it’s no problem honey, shit happens,” he says with a chuckle, “I bump into things all the time. Joel. Joel Miller” He says to you with a smile on his face and a twinkle in his eye as he reaches out his hand for you to shake.

Smiling, you shake his hand and tell him your name. You can’t help but notice how handsome he is. The salt and pepper hair, scruffy facial hair, that smile and those eyes! Not to mention his body! For an older man, he is jacked. You can just tell through his jacket he’s got thick biceps and these meaty thighs. You envision a soft tummy under those clothes. You can’t help but get lost in thought as you stare at the older man.

Joel notices you just staring and let’s out a little chuckle, “Well hey I’m apart of this little group. We’re having a bonfire tonight if you and your friends wanna swing by. There’ll be drinks, food, the works. Here have my card, I can text you the address if you want.”

“Oh yea for sure! That sounds fun!” You say over enthusiastically as you take the card from him and pull your phone out of your jacket pocket to type his number in and send a text. Right after you hit send, his phone dings

“That’s me! Just text the address and we’ll be there!” You give him a big smile as he smiles back at you before nodding his head and giving you a little wave.

Your friends were a little ahead of you, waiting for you to catch up.

“Ooohh someone’s gotta crush!” Your friend Aaliyah said in a singsong voice. The twins, Salem and Violet, standing next to her giggling, covering their laughs behind their hands.

“Oh shut up I bumped into him and he invited us to a bonfire. Besides I already have my handsome, wonderful boyfriend right here.” You say as you look at Liam, sliding your arm around him, looking up at him with hearts in your eyes. Liam snuggles up to your side but keeps his eyes trained on Aaliyah with a shit eating grin on his face.

Scrunching your face up in confusion you look where he’s looking and the unease gets worse. You stand there watching the two have this little flirty stare off.

“Come on guys let’s go check this thing out. It’ll be fun.” You say to break up the tension you now feel between your boyfriend and friend.

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You, Liam, Aaliyah, and the twins all piled into Liam’s truck as you made your way to the bonfire. Joel lives out in the middle of nowhere. After driving for awhile with nothing but corn fields and woods as far as the eye can see, you notice a bright orange flame off in the distance. That must be the bonfire.

Soon you pulled up and turned onto crunchy gravel driveway after traveling on a dirt road for a good portion of the trip. Joel has a nice one story house with a huge yard. The bonfire is behind the house, off a good distance, closer to the tree line but not close enough to accidentally set the woods on fire. There are several cars in the driveway, Liam parked his truck in the grass beside the driveway. As you and your friends got out of the truck, you stood there looking up at the night sky. You could see all the stars and the moon. It was very peaceful, a nice reprieve from the horrible gut feeling you’ve had.

“Hey! You guys just get here?” Some guy yells at you as he walks towards you from the bonfire.

“Yea! We were invited by Joel!” You yelled back

“Well come on back new friends of Joel’s.” He says back with a smile.

You smile back as you walk around the truck to join your boyfriend and go to grab his hand. Except he pulls his hand away without looking at you and follows the guy to the bonfire. Your group walks in silence, music fills the air. You end up in the back of the group, following in silence, feeling left out like everyone is in on this inside joke and they’re all laughing at you but you don’t know why.

Just as your passing the deck attached to the back of the house, you feel a hand grab your arm making you jump, forcing you from your thoughts.

“Hey darlin. It’s good to see ya came.” Joel says in a low baritone voice. Seeing the older man’s face and hearing his voice is already lifting your spirits. And awakening something else within you, between your thighs.

“I’m glad I came too. It’s good to see you again.” You get out breathlessly with a giggle. You literally sound like a love stricken school girl. You have got to get a grip on yourself.

“If ya want something to drink or anything, my door is open darlin. Help yourself to whatever alright?”

Nodding your head yes, a comfortable silence between you two as you share a smile before heading towards the fire.

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Sitting around the bonfire, you laughed and joked with all the others that are there. Joel almost hardly ever left your side, even going as far as putting his arm around you. In a friendly way of course, but your pussy didn’t see it that way. Whenever his big, meaty hands touched you, your body would heat up almost as if he lit a fire on whatever part of your body he touched. Your friends keeping more to themselves, acting stuck up almost. It makes you feel bad you dragged them out there. You didn’t want them to ruin your newly made friends’ night. At one point you looked over and saw Liam and Aaliyah sneak off toward the trees. That bad gut feeling rearing it’s ugly head, as strong as ever. Joel had gone somewhere, so you got up from your seat and followed them as unsuspiciously as you could. Just before you reached the tree line you could see your boyfriend and friend standing there, kissing. Nausea hit you like a truck, the world around you spinning. Your heart dropped out of your ass. You couldn’t believe what your seeing. How could they? But also this is making everything make sense. No wonder Aaliyah always seemed jealous of your relationship. No wonder Liam’s been acting more distant lately. Tears slipped out of your eyes as you turn around and walk all the way back to Joel’s house.

Walking in through his back door, your head hanging down you don’t notice the scowling old man standing on the other side of the sliding door until your shoulder bumps into him.

“Oh! Oh Joel I-I’m so sorry, I-I didn’t m-me. . “

“Darlin don’t you say sorry again. You ain’t do nothing wrong,” he says as his hand reaches out to cup your face, “I saw what happened honey. If anyone’s sorry it’s those two. You don’t deserve that. Not one bit.” His thumb slowly caressing your check as he swipes away a stray tear. You reach up and grab onto his wrist of the hand holding your face. Joel moves closer to you as you look deep into his eyes. Slowly you inch closer to his face, looking at him with heavy lidded eyes before bridging the gap and bringing your lips to his. His lips press back against yours, feeling plush and warm. Lighting up every nerve in your body. You feel him breathe in deep through his nose as he begins to kiss you back harder. You break the kiss just to press your lips back against his, repeating the action several times. The two of you just kissing each other before you pull back and stare up at him with wide eyes,

“J-Joel I- I don’t know what came over me. I’m so sorry, you don’t want me I-“

“What did I tell you, darlin? Stop saying sorry. And don’t you dare say I don’t want you. I’ve been dying to have a taste of those pretty lips since we first ran into each other.” Joel’s hand that’s still cupping your face slides down to your chin as he grips your face between his thumb and fore finger and brings your face back to his. His lips bruise yours as he kisses you deeply, parting your lips with his tongue as he begins to slowly lick into your mouth. You gladly open up and let him in, softly moaning into the kiss, and you enter your tongue into his mouth. Your tongues twirling around each other before you suck his tongue, causing him to growl. His other hand grabs the back of your head, smashing your face even more into his. His aquiline nose smashed into the side of your nose as you continued to passionately kiss Joel. Your hands wrapped around his thick torso, holding him tightly to you, your hands gripping his flannel. Joel bends at the knee as his hands grip the backs of your thighs and hoists you up. You quickly wrap your legs around his waist as he carries you further into his home. You bury your face in his neck and start to lightly suck on his neck causing him to let out this deep growl as his grip tightens. Soon he’s tossing you like a rag doll and your back hits a soft bed. Wasting no time Joel leans over you and begins to take your pants off. You lift your hips to help him and begin to pull your shirt off, tossing it to the side. Now only clad in your bra and panties, Joel just stares at you with dark eyes as he looks you up and down. Devouring every curve of you with his eyes alone.

“Tell me you want this darlin. I gotta hear those words. I gotta hear you say you want this before we go any further.” Joel says as he goes to grab your chin and pull you towards him.

“I want this. I want you Joel. Please.” You beg. Eyes blown wide open as you drink in the sight of this beautiful man in front of you.

Joel wastes no more time and begins to pull his shirt up over his head before unbuckling his pants and quickly getting rid of them. He crawls up the bed, hovering over you before lowering himself. His plush lips meet yours as he kisses you deeply. Your hands raise up to cup his face as he wraps an arm around your shoulders as his other arm reaches down and pulls your leg up on his hip. The two of slowly grinding your bodies into each other, tongues conversing with one another. The heat from his body lighting your body up like the Fourth of July. The hand on your leg moves in between your bodies as Joel finds your sweet wet haven and rubs your slit up and down causing your slick to leave an even bigger damp spot on your panties. Every touch, kiss, grind has you so wound tight. He pushes your panties aside and dips a finger in, gathering your wetness before trailing up to your clit, going in soft circles.

His light touch has you gasping into his mouth. Joel just smiles as he kisses you one more time before moving down to your neck. Wet, open mouthed kisses leaving a trail down your neck, to your collarbone, in between your breasts. He makes his way slowly kissing down your stomach, Joel looks up and sees you staring back at him. Those gorgeous brown eyes staring back at you, you swear he can see your soul. His hands tug on your panties and begin to peel them off of you. Once removed, Joel’s big hands land on your inner thighs as he spreads you even wider as he admires your body.

“So fucking pretty baby. This for me?” He asked as he dips a thick finger in your entrance. Moaning and shaking your head yes, just barely hanging on.

Chuckling, “This sweet little slice of heaven belongs to me now honey,” he says before dipping his head down and giving your clit a couple kitten licks. His hand travels up your body and cups your breast, squeezing, before he pinch’s your nipple, rolling it between his fingers.

“It’s yours Joel. I’m yours oh god I’m yours” your head thrown back as you babble incoherently. Joel smiles into your pussy before his tongue is back, licking wide stripes up your cunt before finding your clit and giving her a few sweet kisses before he closes his lips around the button and sucks. His hand still on your breast rotating between squeezing and rolling your nipple while his other hand has snaked its way to your cunt. Two thick fingers curled up in you have you gasping for air. His mouth and hands alone have already brought you close to the brink of tears. Never feeling ecstasy as good as this before. His fingers find rhythm curling up, hitting that sweet spongy spot inside of you. His sweet mouth never letting up on its assault on your clit.

“R-rrright there!! Oh god right there don’t stop oh fuck please don’t stop j-Joel oh Joel!!!” You start to scream his name as he brings you to the ultimate euphoria. Your cunt spasming as you squirt all over his beautiful face. You grab onto his curls and try to move his head as he continues to lick and suck on you. Barely able to even catch your breath, your cunt starting to hurt from the overstimulation from his mouth. Unable to move his head, you just grip his curls and hang on for dear life already on the brink of a second orgasm. His tongue and fingers are relentless never once letting up. Before you can even register what’s happening, your coming again. Squirt just dribbling out this time rather than shooting out at Joel. Your whole body shaking, boneless as he looks up at you. His face wet as he gives you this shit eating smile,

“That’s it baby give me every drop of your sweet essence.” He says as he admires your sore cunt before running his tongue through your folds one more time.

Joel sits back on his haunches as he grabs your hips and flips you over on your stomach, pulling your butt up slightly as he notched himself at your entrance.

“I think your sweet little pussy is ready for me now darlin. Whatcha think baby? Think she can handle me?” He says with a dark chuckle as he starts to feed you his cock inch by inch. You feel yourself stretch to accommodate his girthy length. Every little bit of his cock sliding along your walls has you quivering. The pace he’s going feels like forever before he hits home and buried his entire length inside you. His cock punches all the air from your lungs, all you can do is fist the sheets beneath you as your mouth drops opens in a quiet scream.

“Fuck she’s squeezing me so tight already honey. Poor baby hasn’t been fucked right, has she? Awe I don’t think she has. Needs daddy’s big cock to stretch her out how she likes huh? Yea she does.” You can hear the smirk in his voice. Your face smashed into the bed, all you can do is nod your head. His filthy mouth has you ready to beg for more. Ready to beg him to fuck you hard. Too see you so pliant and ready to take whatever he gives you has Joel’s eyes rolling back as he pulls out until the tip is left before pushing back in with a quick thrust. He finds his pace with ease, giving you hard, unrelenting thrusts that push you up on the bed as you try your hardest to push back, wanting to fuck yourself back on his cock. But all you can do is lay there and take him. Joel leans down, his chest covering your back as he bites down on your shoulder. You moan loudly as your head lifts off the bed, tilting back. His hands find yours, his fingers interlocking with yours as you continue to grip the sheets. His pace slowed ever so slightly so you feel every thrust, every vein, every inch go in and back out. You swear you might black out from how delicious his cock feels deep inside you. Feeling fuller than you ever have,

“Jj- joooeeeeelllll nngh I-I’m gonna - oh. I-I’m gonna cum daddy fuuuckk oh please don’t stop!” You manage to get out as you move your head to the side, managing a whisper in his ear. Joel moves his face from your shoulder to your face and does his best to kiss you. It’s rather sloppy as you both go to lick into each others mouth, only to barely make it in, getting the sides of each others mouths more.

“Oh good baby good. Give daddy what he wants. Let me feel this sweet fuckin cunt cum all over me. That’s it, that’s fucking it sweet girl oh fuck I can feel her baby I can feel her coming nngh oh.” He moans into your ear as you hit your third orgasm of the night. Your whole body seizes up and you begin to come, your cunt milking his cock for all its worth. Judging by the grunts coming from Joel he’s close too. His thrusts become sloppy before you feel him thrust all the way in and begin pulsing. His thick load coating your walls, you swear you feel him in your womb. He stays inside you for awhile after, resting his head on your back as you both catch your breath and come down from your highs.

He pulls out and moves to lay next to you, helping you to roll on your side. He wraps you up in his blanket before holding you tight to his chest. You bury your face in his chest, taking a deep breath in. His woodsy, musk scent filling your nostrils. Your so spent, sleep finds it’s way to you with ease. The both of you holding onto each other, you eyes finally shut as you drift off to sleep.

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You roll over, trying to find warmth as you start to open your eyes. All too soon it hits you, you slept with the older man you had just met. Joel. You’re still in his bed but he’s gone. Your friends!! The bonfire! You sit up quickly before the memories of what you saw flood back into your consciousness. Fuck Liam and Aaliyah. How dare they betray you like that? You climb out of Joel’s bed and grab a red flannel off the ground and pull it on. The shirt covering what you need it to cover as you button it up a little bit, leaving the top four buttons undone. You decide to go out and find Joel, bring him back to bed. As you walk into the kitchen, you look out the window above the sink and make out the bonfire is still going strong. The clock on the wall reads 3am on the dot. Curious you open the sliding patio door and step outside, wrapping your arms around yourself for warmth. You keep on walking towards the bonfire. As you get closer, it seems like everyone’s gone. Suddenly you notice a robe swishing behind a tree, you decide to follow. Walking into the woods, it doesn’t take long before you find everyone. The sight makes you stop in your tracks. Everyone’s backs are to you, all dressed in white robes with these masks covering the top half of their faces. The bonfire still close enough to give you enough light to notice red. The sleeves and bottoms of the white robes are covered in red and they’re all eating? What looks like red, raw meat in their hands, feasting as if they were animals. You move to go back to the house when your foot hits something and you look down and notice a severed arm. You gasp loudly, putting your hand over your mouth. Jumping back in fright, you hit a solid wall. Turning around, you find Joel.

“What are you doing out here darlin? You aren’t meant to see this. Not right now. Not good for the baby.”

Terrified and absolutely confused by what he meant by that you start to back up.

“I-I Joel please. I-I’m sorry I didn’t know I-“ swinging your head around, everyone has now stopped and are looking your way. An endless sea of blank white masks staring at you. You can see the pile of bodies they were circled around. You make out Liam’s head laying next to a pile of intestines. Human flesh hanging in their hands as they’ve all come to a stop. Your eyes wide in horror as you realize those were your friends. Their bodies laying on the cold hard ground, filleted wide open. Severed body parts scattered about. They were eating them. Actually eating their lifeless bodies.

You turn back to Joel before you trip and fall on your ass. You start to slowly crawl backwards, away from him.

Slowly getting down on his knees before getting into a crawl position, “Now don’t do something stupid honey. It’s okay. I built this community for us. For you. I’ve been waiting for the day my queen came home to me. This is our kingdom to rule.” He says in a low, gravelly voice as he begins to crawl towards you. A terrifying predator coming for his prey. You do your best to crawl backwards while still facing him but he reaches out and grabs your ankle, pulling you toward him.

Thrashing your leg, trying to get out of his hold, your heart beating wildly in your chest.

“Joel please! Let me go! I won’t tell anyone just let me go!” You try to beg, hoping he’ll take mercy on you as you grab onto the leg he has a hold off and try your hardest to yank back out of his grasp.

Joel just smirks at you as he climbs on top of you. His hands grab both of yours and holds them together, pinned to the ground.

“Don’t you see? I did all of this for you baby. I gave you a beautiful home, a community of people who love you. Why can’t you see that? Those others only hurt you, betrayed you. I love you darlin. Always have. I need ya to calm down now honey this is for your own good.” He tells you as you continue to struggle to get out of his grip. He manages to grip both of your hands in one of his as he brings his hand to his mouth. He bites into the fatty part of his hand, drawling blood. He shoves the bleeding hand into your open mouth. The metallic taste hitting your tongue, making you gag.

“Stop it! Stop moving dammit! This is for your own good! You need me! You need my life essence baby! The baby needs it! Take it!” He shouts at you as he continues to shove his hand into your mouth. Unable to get out of his grip or close your mouth, you finally give in and stop moving, letting his blood flood your mouth. Tears stream down your face as you realize you aren’t getting away from this. From him. He’s convinced you’re with child even though it’s only been hours since you’ve had sex. It’s literally impossible for that. Yet he sure thinks so. And on top of that, he’s convinced you belong to him and you need his blood and then there’s the fucking human eating monsters behind you. You aren’t getting out of this alive. Playing along is the only option you have.

“That’s it baby there’s my good girl. I love you darlin. Don’t you love me?” He asks as he removes his hand.

“I love you Joel. I’m so sorry.” You whimper out, only audible enough for him to hear. Joel leans down and captures your bloody lips with his. Kissing you deeply, shoving his tongue inside your mouth. You kiss back, not really having any other choice but to kiss him back.

Joel’s free hand moves down to your cunt, dipping a bloody finger in between your folds, giving you a couple quick rubs on your clit before removing his hand to pull himself out of his pants. His leg nudges your leg to open more as he swipes his cock through your used pussy. After a few swipes, Joel starts to push into you. You’re just wet enough for it to not hurt too bad but it feels so much more intense than last time. The stretch really burns as he continues to push into you. Pinned down on the ground, all you can do is take him. Having been completely occupied by Joel, you had temporarily forgotten about your audience. That’s when you notice a low hum of voices surrounding you. You break the kiss and look to the side and see masked people surrounding you two chanting something in a language you’ve never heard before. Next thing you know, they all get down on their knees, arms extended in front of them, bowing towards you and Joel.

“Eyes on me darlin. It’s okay, you’ll know soon enough what’s happening. It’s a good thing baby. Ffuck oh honey I love you so much. My sweet girl. M-my beautiful Queen, that’s it, take daddy’s cock nngh” Joel tells you as he grunts, bottoming out inside of you again and again.

You can’t help but to grunt as he continues to thrust deep in you. You’re barely able to comprehend anything that’s happened nor the fact you have an audience who also happen to be bowing down and chanting. You are well and throughly screwed.

~Fin~

A/n: I’ve had this idea for awhile, wrote some of it, had a creative slump and had a visit from the horny monster today and wa- la! I hope y’all enjoy this! I love you all and appreciate all the feedback!♥️♥️

Tagging some moots(: - @bonezone44 @multiversed-daydreamer @toxicanonymity @lumoverheaven @wannab-urs @neverwheremoonchild @not-a-unique-snowflake-blog @beefrobeefcal @josephquinnswhore @juletheghoul let me know if you want me to untag you!

[katherineholmes]

Petrova Doppelgängers and Femininity

I'm not sure if the show runners and the writers intended to do this, but the Petrova doppelgängers are deeply entrenched in femininity. The one thing that all doppelgängers have in common is that they are always the sufferers. That they are powerful but only because they can be used. And that is exactly how the world has used women for centuries.

Amara’s cast in stone for two thousand years, being the anchor to the other side, her power used to hold up the so called supernatural purgatory. Tatia’s love is twisted, her blood is used to turn the men she loved into monsters. She had a child, presumably from a man who either left her or died. And then she’s killed by the lover turned monster for her blood. Katherine’s child is ripped from her, and when she tries to start a new life, she’s shown a beautiful, romantic future with a lord before it’s ripped away from her too. Before she sees her whole family slain. Elena is entrenched in grief and trauma, her loss is like Katherine’s, but where Katherine’s happened in a single night, Elena’s happened over three years.

Over and over again, the doppelgängers are used for the two most personal things - their blood and their womb. Having children that they can’t raise.

Amara falls in love with a man far more powerful than her and is condemned to an eternity of suffering and punishment for her crime.

Tatia is blamed for coming between two brothers and killed for her crime.

Katherine has her child ripped from her arms, seeing her daughter only once before she’s gone forever. She goes to England and dreams of a perfect life, emboldened by Klaus and his ‘romantic’ pursuit of her. Probably sees dreams of being a lady and a wife and a mother, for she’s a mother without her child.

But when she realises that these are just her dreams and tries to take control of her situation, she’s punished and has to see her entire family dead. Punished because she did not accept death and suffering. It’s telling as well, the way she’s portrayed on the show, the femme fatale, the ‘sexy’ one, the whore to Elena’s Madonna.

The only one who gets sent to hell for her sins.

Elena sees her parents die, Elena’s stuck between two brothers who love her face and her body and her compliance more than they love her. Who loses her aunt despite giving into Klaus and then becomes his human blood bag. Who keeps trying to save Stefan until he breaks her spirit, who keeps trying to save Damon despite how he takes away her right to grieve.

Amara, Tatia, Katherine and Elena are all sufferers. They suffer for their blood and their bodies and their wombs. They scream and are turned into victims, monster teeth in their throats, and iv lines in their veins and their blood turned to stone.

They are a representation of the most fundamental ways in which women suffer. Through their blood and their wombs and their hearts.

They are not powerful beings, yet their blood and suffering is of use to others.

And yet, they persevere. Amara who chooses her own death, and Tatia who had willingly given her blood to save Elijah. Katherine who takes her death in her own hands and lives. Refuses to suffer. Elena who plays the game and uses everything at her disposal to save everyone she can around her.

Just as all women do.

They all play a game that’s been rigged against them since the beginning.

They are one whose blood enables the existence of vampires and hybrids. Without the doppelgängers, there would be no vampires, there would be no originals, and no hybrids. Their blood is what sustains two entire species.

And so, in one way or the other, they win.

@sevensistersofsussex @amandamonroe @feralcherry @qvnthesia @jennifersminds

[maxinemartinsdrill]

spn women I have strong feelings about:

1. ROWENA ROWENA ROWENA. Rowena will get CRAZYYYYY interesting backstory dropped in various episodes and ppl just ignore it. like she grew up poor and when she had Crowley she was miserable and alone and she despised him for it because she needed to be strong and he felt like a weakness to her. and then she spends years fleeing witch hunts running around Europe and she finally grasps some level of power to find security because magic is her way out magic is her strength etc etc. and we first see her killing pimps and then helping those girls and then punishing them for lacking the strength she wants to see in them. like is she a nice person? absolutely not. but the reasons for her desperation to hold onto power are SO SOS SO COMPELLING. ppl would be allllllll over her if she were a man I mean that so sincerely.

AND THEN. She meets the Winchesters and they keep kidnapping her and she gets thrown into all this shit with Lucifer and she's not as strong as she thought she was. she's not strong enough to be safe. but the she gets to know Sam better and she finally gains the levels of power she's sought of angling for as well as some of the emotional security because he's vulnerable with her and he gets it a little bit. and she can let herself be bit more vulnerable and she can open herself up to feeling more than just scared or vengeful. the fact that when she's safe she will let herself love people??? excellent. like her becoming less evil to me is wayyyyy more interesting than the way spn does this a lot of the time and it feels rly fucking authentic.

AND EVERYTHING AFTER THA IS GREAT AS WELL. her trying to decide where she stands morally, admitting she did awful things to herself and getting on with it, only being able to love her son after he's dead, bequeathing Sam everything she had after she died. LIKE THERES SO MUCH THERE. and obligatory Lucifer trauma mention because samwena Lucifer trauma bonding was what got me back into spn and into Sam in the first place.

2. BILLIE. singing oh death in the hospital. holding Rowena while she completely loses itm she is THEE benevolent death to me. I love the fact shs one of the only characters who banters with Dean on his level of strange anachronisms. Love how when she was reaping him she was debating whether to tell him sam was still alive. possibly I am just obsessed with her because for once they gave a woman interiority in a way that wasn't inherently evil (like she wasn't portrayed as a saint for it but it was like just business) and then s15... At least 75% of my hatred of the cas confession comes from the fact they made Billie 'evil' in order to set it up.

3. Mary.... ohhhhhh mary. More about the implication than anything else - 'they couldn't stand each other at first but by the time we were done with them...' truly awful. the way she tries her whole life to get away from hunting and runs right back into it. and she comes back to deeply troubled children who she is expected to parent without having any idea of how to do this because she does not know them. and she's a mother to them not mary.

4. bela talbot :(( you're dying. And utterly alone. and you died to free yourself and you've been running and running your entire life but you can't run any longer. and there's someone on the phone, maybe the only person who can understand you. you're similar and he may as well be the only person left in the world. and then he calls you a bitch and says you deserve to die. and you get ripped apart by dogs and tortured for the rest of eternity.

5. KELLY KLINE!!!!!!!!! craziest mf on the show istg. again do I think the writers were trying to do anything serious with her? No. BUT THE IMPLICATIONS. like as I have rambled about before she is insanely republican and Christian pregnant with the antichrist AND on the run with a queer fallen angel who went on a blasphemous murdering homophobes and republicans spree a couple of years back. she is overwhelmingly positive despite this possibly because she is completely divorced from reality due to her bizarre politics (how to have an affair with the president in a god honouring way is it morally wrong to get an abortion if the fetus is the devil etc). and for some reason she is convinced that jack will save the world which is so fun!!!! I also really enjoy the fact that most of her bizarreness was left to be implied because it allows us to see her as a normal person doing her best in an awful situation and empathise with her. Despite the fact that they could have easily made her a full blown lady Jessica type (i don't know enough about dune to say if this is right) with the whole magical pregnancy manipulative religious delusions/cult type thing going. which would have still been interesting but also lacked depth in places. here they just tell you shes absolutely ridiculous and then have her interact completely normally despite the abnormal circumstances. which (accidentally???) gives her a lot going on. also the bit where she meets jack in heaven and realises he's dead the 'cas said he would look out for you' one of if not the most devastating line in late seasons spn not even joking.

honorary mentions:

Amara :))) literally 90% if when she is on screen I am unconvinced however gimme shelter was sooooooo good. SHES A FEMINIST!!! OBLIGATORY SHOUT OUT TO THE WIRE MOTHER CLOTH MKTHER DEAN AMARA POST

[nightguide]

Pandora's box: the resurrection

the guy Ned brought back to life was a cheap coincidence since he was actually the dead man done recently since the show went into a 'dream-like' state of storytelling had a functional resort in living, so the viewer (believer of the arts): much akin to the Watch TV show Resurrection (2014) actually experienced a dead man come back to life with the same energy (dead people then had a heart hence why all operations went privatised: govt values in restoring hope in medicinal welfare which they tried to relieve the odds of modern maternal issues making people think for themselves, like there is no antidote to stress except company) as the man himself played along with the improv notion of the camera verging him to move the very next day if not known for the world's greatest reason.

Chuck does not live with the pseudo-rationality of the ways of the 2020's TV metaphor turned physical, like he had no chance (that was exactly the energy being put right there right now) but still to this day, she does not lie about the same ignorant boyfriend experience that haunts her people reason (mother committed adultery irl) and it was not tacky to leave the horrifying thought of emerging into damned notioning (actually hyper-advanced kids now are just babies looking for a reason to be loved *missing fathers*) hence why Chuck now Harlem Lima (the astrologer with a heart bending tale in the arts that tried to kill her who has no reason to live except the world fell apart transcendently for her to see no reason or lie at all to eat away the faults in her stars (oriental Taoism) so she shares the same concept at Doctor Strange (Marvel) but is actually the first one ever to overthrow the political party of the wasted kind (general public demonises a baby to live since not even perfection itself is formidable against optimism) you'll meet Solar Biology: Ace in another post, but a lot about Harlem Lima is that she does not care about reformations of agonised developmental algorithms (hate trains) too deeply that the character that Chuck oversaw was River Song's life (best friend) that almost killed her (affiliations with the Doctor that had her dead before Rogue brought her back to life)

Harlem Lima knows everything about River's grief, like she does not go on that early that even Kingston's River (7th incarnation) knows that the world had a geriatric age bend (Jodie Whittaker's Doctor under Chris Chibnall's pen) never would have went inside the eye to manage it since all rights of River's future access being married to an actor never gave any leeway to sincere penmanship of her own retelling since coming-of-age fairytales requires a great heartbreak of her own (Riaz's River) could never tell, so Kingston's River will lead to the Hadron Collider that will end all but reset consequences of a future now which will continue River's (Riaz) life as normal hence the Glee cast being thrown underneath Mindhunter (Jonathan's role as Holden Ford)

okay, so in Doctor Who, the Piemaker (Ned) is the only one who can actually remain true to his roles while everybody else in the show has an alter-ego, so in natural reality, the Piemaker was convinced the shy eye (the eternal child omnipotent to hate) is his actual wife since all energies in the 00's were contained to truly emerging as himself, hence why Harlem Lima (Anna Friel) did not emotionally take it anymore since her privacy rights (she was not married) was solely protected by her family if anything (so she maintained her status quo by crying in every scene after it was done to relieve it by honour clarity (appreciation index) so she maintained herself like she was going to die til the Cryo-mass happened (Rachel Berry with Jesse St. James if done right) so the social breakdown happens with the cast of Pushing Daisies now, so here are their aliases.

Emerson Cod - the watchmaker (prevalent in the 19th Doctor's (Brenton Thwaites) timeline as the man who resets the clock before the actual doomsday clock reactivates for the minds republic going insane: literally Plankton from Spongebob the movie when he was brainwashing everyone for King Neptune's crown)

Cod's alias to River Song: agent of H.O.A.X (doomsday clock antigen to Selene (Underworld)

okay, just Chuck and Cod get torn by time to save River Song. the characters from the show remain the same prevalent to Olive Snook's life now, it's her play now since Broadway never went her way (never actually taken the Cryo-mass but to observe)

this is the undying revelation of how Chuck met her best friend through Ned (River Song), Ned knew how to keep himself intact to human touch but did not mind it (trustworthy to him) so the Piemaker has a sexually transcendent meaning to heartbreak in response to the true Queen of Atlas, so he is deigned to be in River's hands but for the meantime, she was him, so she knows how to keep her home touch intact (Rhode Island) compared to everybody but herself, so all of River's dreams were contained with the similar life of on set of the Piemaker who took his craft too seriously to be on the show as if he is and he never was so everything the Piemaker did was actually him than the conformation of character as the alien body

and how is that kid going to recover (Resurrection)

no daisies but someone actually pushed them way too hard (heart)

[kiss-my-freckle]

Full Episode Commentary

1x5: You're Undead to Me

This episode is like two storylines happening at once as their Augustine storyline is deeply embedded in it. Despite their eternal existence, the fact that Stefan actually feels he has the right to steal 50 years from Damon only goes to show how controlling he is of one's life. "During the dark ages when a vampire's actions threatened to expose or bring harm upon the entire race, they would face judgment. They sought to reeducate them rather than to punish them." Desiccation isn't reeducation. For Damon, it's punishment. For Stefan, it's convenience. He wants to build a life with Elena without Damon getting in the way. He plans to turn Damon into a living corpse that he can store in the crypt with the rest of their family as if Damon is dead to him.

Elena is emotionally dependent on Stefan. It takes her a bit to get out of bed. She walks into the bathroom to find Vicki brushing her teeth. Vicki totally spent the night with Jeremy, and he's quite happy in this scene with her. She plays the same role in his life that Stefan plays in Elena's. It's their way of getting back to life after the death of their parents. "Honestly, I'm not gonna be one of those pathetic girls whose world stops spinning because of some guy." Gotta love how Elena lies to herself. She is one of those pathetic girls, but she's also Stefan's reason for desiccating Damon. Even though he's not sure how dangerous Damon still might be, he wants to go back to school so he can get back to her. "Came here to live a life. It's about time I get back to that. And Elena, if she's still speaking to me." He's not only planning to desiccate Damon for 50 years just so that he can "get back to" his life with Elena, he's putting her over Zach's safety. If you don't understand what I mean, Elena parallels Zach in 1x20. "You came here because you wanted to live as normal a life as you could. You knew this was going to be a part of it." The point I was making about Stefan. He stalked Elena, forced himself into her life for the sake of dating her, and did so with the knowing that lying to her would be part of it. Apparently secrets and lies are prerequisites for relationships. They cut to Caroline and Bonnie. While Bonnie tries to light a candle with her witch powers, Caroline talks about the end of 1x4, about that moment Damon tried to kill her.

I feel it's important for fans to have it in context because if Caroline was compelled after this, then it was Stefan who compelled her. "Why would you do that?" Like I said, if not for Elena and Bonnie making a big deal about Damon biting her, Caroline herself wouldn't have. She only does because they did.

I also wanna make it clear that they didn't have sex in 1x4. He's completely dressed and reading a book while laying in her bed and she's busy picking out a dress for the party.

Here, have this parallel…

"You could get hurt. My brother likes to play rough."

"Somehow, I think that you play rougher."

Caroline clearly has feelings for Damon despite his treatment up to this point. She hangs Emily's talisman by the window in her bedroom and tells Bonnie that Damon was planning to give it to her.

At school, she's desperately wanting to know where he is and tells Stefan that he has some serious apologizing to do, as if she wants to pick up where they left off. When Stefan tells her Damon's not coming back, there's a sadness in her eyes. Stefan allows Elena to believe Damon is a man that abused Caroline so badly that he should've been arrested rather than a vampire feeding on humans as vampires do. Zach is listening to Damon react to the pain of drying out. He walks over to the cellar door to talk to him, the very risk Stefan took when he left for school. This is when Zach makes the mistake of admitting he's full of vervain. His admission to putting it in his coffee for 16 years is a straight-up admission to growing it because neither brother has been home for 15 years and they locked him in the cellar with it at the end of 1x4. Zach handed Damon every reason to kill him. "So it was your vervain. Good for you. Good for you." This is the moment Damon refers to while talking to Bonnie in the prison world. Damon doesn't just kill Zach and Lexi even though he could. He waits until he's given reason to. The vervain is Zach's reason.

Stefan is so closed off to Elena that she's talking to Matt about his secrecy and asking him if he thinks Stefan is a good guy. Matt's "serial killer" response is hilarious, given Stefan's comment about skipping serial killer and going straight to vampire. His secrecy has pushed Elena to the point she's writing in her diary. "I want so much to make things right, but every instinct in my body is telling me to be careful. What you don't know can hurt you." Uhm, yeah… it could literally rip her head off. Their scene at the Grill is insane because she's reaching her limit.

What it looks like for Elena's world to stop spinning because of Stefan. He's in Elena's kitchen, cooking her dinner. "You should at least, um… know who you're dumping." Whenever Stefan talks to Elena like this, he's never fully open with her. By the end of it, she still has no idea that he's a vampire. While talking about Katherine, still hides the fact that she's a doppelganger. There's a quote on The Blacklist that's perfectly suited for Stefan's character. "The only thing worse than a lie is the lie that compounds it." He's reaching the point where his lies are compounding lies. When they find out Katherine is still alive, he'll need to explain the hate he feels for her after the lies he just told Elena. All of this… the secrets, the lies, the manipulation, the gaslighting… this is what Stelena is built on. "She was… the most beautiful girl that I had ever met." Insanely hilarious that he said this to Elena herself. As Stefan describes Katherine, "entitled" and "selfish" are two words I'd also use to describe him. So entitled and selfish that he's planning to take 50 years from Damon, and all for the sake of having moments like this without Damon trying to offer Elena the truth. Stefan... basically has Elena dating him with the lights off.

Sad for Jeremy to love Vicki. Whatever she's dealing with, she's unable to set aside the drugs. Intentional for Stefan to think Seinfeld is the best American television show for the past 50 years now that he's planning to desiccate Damon for 50 years. Elena cuts her finger while chopping garlic. Stefan vamps out again, so he lies - again. "I think that my paranoia has turned into full-blown hallucinations." This is what gaslighting does. Still, Damon fully expects Elena to learn their truth whether he's desiccating or not because vampirism is a hard secret to hide. Stefan is literally trying to hide half of himself. "The beauty of you in there and me out here… is that I can walk away." Not only does Stefan plan to desiccate Damon for 50 years, he actually considers it beautiful. He walks away from Damon and steps into a car wash with Elena, the very reason he wants to desiccate Damon. He wants to live it up without Damon getting in the way, without their truth getting in the way. Their chosen soundtrack for the car wash is hilarious. I love the magic Bonnie pulls on this mean girl at the car wash. Elena with the daylight rings lol. "I noticed that Damon has one, too. Is there a story behind it?" Stefan tells Elena what he wants her to hear rather than what she actually needs to hear. Because Damon isn't there to give Elena the truth, she gets it through the old man. "Yes. I remember his ring and his brother..."

I can understand not wanting Damon to have that much power, but the crow was awesome, so I'm sad to see it go. What I love most about this episode is the way they introduce Damon's Augustine storyline. It's so deeply embedded. Just look at how both brothers spent it... because they spent it the same way in 1953. Elena watches the news footage from Joseph's death. Stefan is the only brother she sees as they cart away his body. Unlike Enzo, he clearly has no problem living in a world without Damon. "The beauty of you in there and me out here… is that I can walk away." Stefan turns his back to the camera, his back to Damon a second time. I knew by the time I finished watching this episode that Damon escaped in 1953... whether he was being held in the Salvatore cellar or not. The Augustine storyline was a real treat for me because I didn't expect it. I expected Damon being locked in their cellar much like this episode.

Damon was the first person to tell Elena their truth.

Elena: Did she say what kind of animal it was that attacked her? Matt: She said it was a vampire. Elena: What? Matt: Yeah, she wakes up last night and mutters "vampire" and then passes out.

And he gave her their truth the very day SHE entered HIS life. While Stefan "had to" know Elena, Elena "had to" know Damon.

Feel the difference.

Because Elena is the only reason Stefan is chasing after Damon.

While I am noting Caroline's residual feelings for Damon, that's not my reason for posting this. This is how everyone else sees Damon.

And this is how Elena sees Damon. His humanity is hidden in the dark of himself, and he... only acts human around her.

Beauty of the Dark is a Defan track.

[thegreatyin]

okay so picture this. just run with me here a little bit. open your mind to imagining. behold the reguel lore (abridged, in vogue, i almost died, 3am challenge)

and you're all alone, even when you aren't.

you're made from nothing by the void to be the most special beautiful adorable little creature in the world. and you absolutely adore the void. you're like a little baby duckling and you imprint on the void from the moment of your creation and all you want in the entire world forever and ever is to make your parent happy. and the void makes a handful of other guys exactly like you but you don't even care beyond that it gives them attention instead of you. why does it do that. all you want is to love it. weren't you made to love it. why is it walking away and why is it looking at other things and what are you without it there to guide you and love you back.

you've existed for all of ten minutes but it's horribly horribly unfair because you were made specifically to love the void and it's gone. it leaves you before you can even process it and you're left standing, alone, without a purpose, because the thing you love so so so so so much abandoned you. and the other things it made like you don't even care! they're all running around and living their lives and they can't even see that the void is gone and they don't even understand why this is the worst thing in the history of the universe (that you barely even know anything about).

you try to reach out and be normal but it never works it's not the same. you need the void back you need it to love you what are you without it? you can't imagine yourself without it. you can't comprehend yourself without it. even when you fall in love and even when you're happy and even when you're thriving its absence haunts you. your own family dies. your own family dies and you couldn't save her and you bet the void could've saved her but it wasn't here and everything just gets worse.

when the void tells you to ruin everything you listen because it's the only thing you've ever had and you can never comprehend anything else (you refuse to start comprehending anything else). and you do and you kill the only other thing you love and she's laying there beside you, dead, and you run to the arms of the man who killed your family and he twists you around like putty and you're so tired.

you're so alone.

you just want the void back. you just want (its) love back.

you keep going and you keep spiraling and before you can even look back, your family is dead and gone and broken and the only thing you have left is yourself and the blood still drying on your hands. and you're still alone and the void hasn't come back. why hasn't it come back? are you not good enough for it? that must be it. it must be. surely obviously if you're good enough it can come back and everything will be okay and you'll be loved again.

so you casually start a two million year long cult escapade (as one casually does) and it all goes nowhere. and you're alone. and all you've done your entire life is ruin yourself and everyone around you and you barely know how to function without something that left so long ago there's generations upon generations of your kind that don't even know its name.

you're so alone. you're so deeply, deeply alone. when your most hated enemy embraces you it feels like poison but maybe you love the taste and you deserve it anyway. and he turns out to be good. and he turns out to be full of love. and you've been wrong your entire existence but maybe that's okay and maybe you can live outside of the void's love because its never loved you anyway but also who are you without it? who are you without the thing you've spent eternity chasing?

you don't know. you don't know anymore. you could look in a mortal mirror but the thing staring back doesn't even resemble you. you wonder, briefly, if everyone loves you now that you're lonelier than ever. you wonder if everyone loves you now that you can't fly. now that you're not part of the madness. you miss it. you miss yourself. you miss the void. you miss your family. you miss your family that you murdered in cold blood and you miss it all. you miss it all so so so so so so so so so much.

and also throughout literally all of this you're a barbie princess and you fuck severely.

that's reguel. any questions.

[willowillowillowillow]

The Tale of the Duskborn Lords

the fallen leaves tell a story. of an unlikely pair, tarnished like the rest. a zealot and pilgrim of the Golden Order, and a Carian sorcerer, stolen away as a child by the nightfolk.

their paths entangled at the third church of Marika. thus were the fundamentalist, and the mystic.

their journey together started as a convenience. the first few steps of any path are wrought with pain and loose stones. before long, the golden pilgrim began to notice cracks in the foundation of their beliefs, but continued to live in denial - she parted with her golden vestments. the carian sorcerer, too, became changed - she embraced the lunar origin of her blood and took up the long forgotten mantle of her house.

they dedicated themselves to turning over every stone this immense world has to offer. thus were the exile, and the carian knight.

their path brought them to blows with the first shardbearers, and they saw for the first time the daunting scale of the task laid bare before them. they saw for the first time the truth of the world; that you are consumed by what you most desire.

they turned away from the darkest darkness, silently promising to return when their power would not fail them. thus were the banished knight, and the carian crown.

in their journey, they surmounted the plateau and ventured into the darkness of the rivers - stepping closer to returning home for both of them. in doing so, the carian sorcerer came to understand the mimic that the nox implanted in them in an effort to raise their lord of night - and the golden pilgrim encountered for the first time the black flame of heresy.

they embraced the power of their enemies and made it their own. thus were the godslayer exile, and the carian noble.

the pair saw hell together. they returned to their homes - leyndell, and the nameless eternal city, noting the irony of their proximity to the erdtree even then, one at the seat of golden power and the other far below, knotted deeply into the roots of dead. as they slew more shardbearers, and approached their journey's end, they began to question their purpose. what was this journey for?

with the golden pilgrim's braid taken out in grief of the order she now saw as deeply flawed, they faced the hard truth of themselves, and confided in the warmth and love of the other. thus were the crucible priest, and the snow witch.

and then, together, they realized - that this world is stagnant. that they could not remember how long they'd travelled together, because the concept of time was failing just as the foundations of the world itself were. the cycle they found themselves in was growing stale and inert. destined death, long removed from the elden rune, had taken with it the decay present in the natural cycle. it was a frequent topic of debate for them, what was to be done. but they came to the conclusion together - that the rune must be mended. that the god Marika must be slain, and that death must be restored to the world.

they turned over the penultimate stones in this world, preparing themselves to commit the ultimate heresy. thus were the shade of death, and the royal knight.

they learned, before the end, the reality of themselves - the golden pilgrim was, in truth, a fragment of Radagon, much as Millicent was a fragment of Malenia. she bore his fervor, the passion for his beliefs that led him to betray even those he trusted and loved most. the carian sorcerer was, in truth, the child of the knight Loretta, whose staunch defense of albinaurics led to questions of the true nature of her birth.

despite the hardship, despite the stumbling, despite the uncertainty, they burned the erdtree. the sight of her home, and her beliefs, in ashes brought a sobering urgency to the golden pilgrim's stride. the sight of her mother, so far from home and so dead-set on protecting the downtrodden that she would kill her own daughter, brought a chilling dread to the carian sorcerer's core.

they watched the world as it was consumed by what it most desired - and they brought the stagnant cycle to an end, together. thus were Florence, and Phantasos, The Duskborn Lords.

the fallen leaves tell a story. of a pair of women who came to understand that to be loved is to be changed. to venture forth into the vast unknown is to know true valor. and to live is to bravely trek, in every moment, through hardships uncountable.

they brought a new age to the lands between - an age of change and decay. and what comes after is shrouded forever in mystery.

>> Hello! it's Willow! my girlfriend and i have been working on 100% completing Elden Ring: Convergence in Seamless Co-Op for exactly one month now, and we finally finished. This has been some of the most fun I've ever had with a video game, and the grueling difficulty of our task became not only bearable, but enjoyable because we were doing it together. A few random stats for you - we both finished at level 165, and it took us 84 hours. by far our highest death count was in Miquella's Haligtree, but not at the hands of a boss - at the hands of a great envoy in the twisting branches. That motherfucker got what was coming to him, though. Expect another post soonish, because I took a lot more screenshots than the ones in this post, and they're all pretty goofy. Anywho, I hope y'all like the write up I gave them. This took a lot of fucking work and I'm really proud of both of us. Until next time~

[andsotheuniverseended]

ok you know i love my grumpy girls but snow's class combo sounds FASCINATING so i have to know more :D :D 8 - 10, 12, 20, 28, 60 and 69!

Snow is one of the wildest characters I've ever made, she's mechanically a winter eladrin but is flavor-wise human but Extra. and also she is literally Snow White but based very specifically off that Kristen Stewart movie ANYWAY

8) what songs remind you of them? if there are specific lyrics or movements, list ‘em!

i Love making playlists for my characters so i have been very slowly working on hers but there's only a couple right now. Here Comes the Sun by the Beatles for the upbeat vibes because she is generally a cheerful girl

and Still by Noah Kahan for the fact that her life has basically been miserable for a hella long time (the past coming back with the light in the morning/look down on myself like a patient in surgery/and i used to watch my mother move/like god was in the room)

9) when in their life were they most scared?

okay SO about a hundred years ago, Snow's brand new step-mom killed their dad and took over the kingdom and killed and imprisoned everyone in it, and threw Snow into a cell, and there was a part of that where she was running and nearly at the gate and then got snatched up and dragged back into the castle and i think that was probably the most acutely terrified she's ever been

10) what inspired this character's creation?

lmao okay SO my friend and i watched that 2011 red riding hood movie with amanda seyfried and he went "i could make a dnd character outta this" and then like changed up the lore a ton and made Red, who's family is Super Cursed. and then we watched the snow white and the huntsman movie with kristen stewart bc for some reason in my head i've literally always confused those two for like being in the same universe? or something?

anyways we watched it and i went "hey, i could make a dnd character outta this!" and actually Snow's backstory is fairly accurate to the movie with the minor changes of she is technically an elf now so she was imprisoned for a hundred years, and also her blood can break curses (but it might kill her)

and then we looked at each other and went "these two would be fun in a campaign together"

12) how have they altered their body? piercings, tattoos, biohacks, or other modifications—anything. why (or why not) did they (or someone else) make those changes?

Snow hasn't had the opportunity to do anything to her body and also has a very... warped sense of her physical self? because she is magically/divinely mandated as Fairest Of Them All (and her beauty is literally magical hence the sorcerer levels) so she's just always been treated that way, as the Prettiest Thing Ever and that has really divorced her sense of self from her body. so i don't think she's even really thought about the fact that she could technically do any of those things? it hasn't crossed her mind, really. i DO think further down the line when she gets a little more grounded in her body she would definitely do something though. piercings for sure, maybe tattoos??

20) what attracts them to someone—platonically and/or romantically, anything counts.

Snow had a childhood love (dead now RIP) and she loved him because of his sense of adventure and his honor and his dedication to things, and his laugh

a hundred years later she met his granddaughter (in her 40s with a kid i think) and liked her because of her love for her kid and her practicality, and her sense of justice and responsibility to take care of others

generally Snow likes people who are devoted to important things, who have a strong will, who care deeply, and who fight- not just for the world but also for themselves.

28) do they collect anything?

Snow is not quite conscious of it yet but i as her player have made the decision that she's gonna collect items from each adventure we go on (so far it's a spider fang and an eternally frozen leaf). its one of those things where again she never had the chance to but once she realizes she CAN she'll definitely want to.

60) what do they have faith in? what keeps them believing?

i don't know how to word what i wanna say here but like the one thing that has kept Snow going for all this time is that she very much does Not Want To Die. she wants to live. so i think her faith is in herself and also the future, the idea that there are things to live for once she finds them. there's also her faith in her kingdom and her people, both of which she needs to rescue from the evil queen. so its her own stubbornness that keeps her believing that there IS a way to do it without sacrificing herself

69) what's one secret they don't want getting out?

Snow is on the run so most things about herself she keeps close to the chest so that the queen won't hear about her and come running

but the number one actual thing that she will need to be pushed into THE most desperate of corners to admit is that her blood can break curses. because its incredibly powerful but also incredibly dangerous and could kill her depending on the curse, and its not something she's willing to risk so people knowing about it would just be dangerous

[noahsbookhoard]

📚March 2024 Book Review (Part 1/2)📚

Well, March had been a draught so this post will be short. Even more so since I read He Who Drowned The World by Shelley Parker-Chan but will give it its own post with book 1 of the Radiant Emperor, She Who Became the Sun. Still there's some good books in here, starting with a classic!

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Basil Hallway has just finished the portrait of young, beautiful dandy Dorian Gray. The young man is just realising that he will grow old and become jealous of this picture who will keep its youth and charm; he starts to wish the portrait were aging in his place. The wish is granted and Dorian will go on living a life of hedonism and libertinage as his sins disfigure the picture hidden in his attic.

Chanson Douce by Leïla Slimani

I can't believe I had never read anything Oscar Wilde wrote before but here we are! I had to remedy this.

I really loved it, it has the gothic atmosphere I love, Oscar Wilde dry humour which I loved from his aphorisms and a razor sharp critique of the society Wilde lived in and who put him to trial for this book.

Dorian is despicable but that what makes him compelling in this story: how far would he go thinking he would never be caught and what would he do when the spell would inevitably come to ium for its due? Those last few pages and the first moment when he realised what was happening where the most interesting to me. Maybe the rest seemed harder to read for me because I lack some context to understand it?

However what hasn't aged (ha ha ha) one bit is the theme: The fear of aging up is kind of understandable one, especially today with social media and the pressure of well-being corporation trying to sell eternal youth in creams, diets and yoga classes. Would the people who use and abuse of cosmetic surgery say no to a picture that age in their stead? I don't think so. Internet also participates in the feeling of unaccountability some people feel: behind a screen, a username and at most a vpn, no one can judge what I do or say (or so they think). No one has their Google search history or their last tweet written on their forehead, so no one will ever know what the computer in the attic hides. That's not exactly true but most Internet trolls act like it is.

In so many ways it reminds me of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde but the comparison is a classic one: two morally dubious characters, who found ways to give in to their basest desires without suffering from the social disgrace, their darkness manifesting itself physically on another form which catch up to them eventually. There is something deeply satisfying in seeing all of it crumble down and their true nature finally come to light.

TW for child's murder and attempted suicide

Inspired by the murder of the Krim siblings, the book opens on Myriam, mother of two, coming back home to find her two young children in the bathtub, stabbed to death by their nanny, Louise, who had then tried to kill herself. The story then goes back in time to explain how it happened, how Myriam and her husband Paul hired Louise and quickly couldn't do without her, how much the little Mila and Adam loved her, the way a disturbing codependant relationship is born and how it all fell apart.

This is getting redundant but once again I saw the movie before reading the book! I don't know why actually: I went to the cinema with some friends it is isn't the kind of film we usually pick. It was good!

Nevertheless I never picked the book because I had to much assigned reading at the time and in the meantime forgot about it. I found it back when I challenged myself earlier in the month to pick some prize-winning novels for the TBR to fight back my prejudice of Goncourt winning books being either too hard or too boring, as it won in 2016.

The book starts really abruptly with the nanny's murder-suicide and that short but awful "Le bébé est mort" "the baby is dead". I hadn't expected it, but it pulled me in: the author gives just enough hints of what the family+nanny dynamic was to pique my curiosity.

It all started when Myriam, the mother, wants to go back to work after their son Adam turned 2, even though they have no daycare and their daughter Mila is only 5: they need a nanny. There is the theme of womanhood and maternity throughout the book with the contrast between upper middle class Myriam who is a lawyer trying to balance work and family and lower class Louise walking the delicate balance of being a nanny, a trusted employee in the home's inner circle, treated "like she's family" without being part of it. At some point the couple take her with them on vacation but whatever they might tell themselves, it's so she will take care of the kids so they can enjoy their rest.

It creates some clashes (inner mostly) but also some very anxiety inducing scene: at some point Louise is so involved she tried to protest about how wasteful she finds Myriam and Paul; she picks up from the thrash the chicken carcasse they dumped and put in back on the table, bone clean. The film ends there if I remember correctly, a much more ambigous final than the book.

It pushed even harder in the horror as it continues after the murder with the police investigation. We see the female police officer putting herself in Louise's shoes to work out how she could have snapped like that. It concludes with the recomposition of the crime and the last, terrifying, sentence: "Les enfants, venez. Vous allez prendre un bain", "children, come here. Let's take a bath".

It is creepy, harrowing, but incredible well written. This one I know has been translated in English under the title Lullaby and the film adaptation dubbed under the title The Perfect Nanny.

Ségurant, le chevalier au dragon by Emanuele Arioli

The adventures of a forgotten Knight of the Round Table, Segurant, famed for his strength and for his endless chase with a dragon.

To be precise, Emanuele Arioli isn't the author: he is a archivist specialising in medieval literature and in his research he found traces of a forgotten Round Table Knight Ségurant. He traced his adventures back in several manuscript (even though most of the texts were written at least a century after the main arthuriana) and compiled the texts in this book.

I adored the arthurian mythology when I was a kid I although I started reading over genres, I never stopped loving it. At some point I even organised a tournament in here to elect the new King Arthur (if you are reading this and participated in it you are my Brother (gender neutral) in Arms and I love you forever, if you are just curious the winner was the little swedish girl who found an ancient sword in a lake back in 2018 and her seneschal (the runner-up) is Sonic the hedgehog) This means I was a little curious about this new knight and my father bought the book and shipped it to me in January or February.

Thankfully it was translated into modernised French but still the style was a little repetitive and hard to get into. I was expecting it, after all it is a 13th century text! Every thrice paragraph starts with "What's more to tell?" and it went from funny to endearing to slightly bothering.

Ségurant himself is the most indulgent self-insert character I have ever seen - I say this with all the love in the universe, it is just so funny: he is the strongest knight ever, he beats every unbeatable adversaries he jousted, Lancelot du fricking Lac admires him, he meets every famous knights, King Arthur in person dined with him...

He is so good that the only way he was defeated is through tricks: an illusion was cast on him that made him see a giant dragon, and as the brave knight he is, he just had to chase after it (in vain since there never was any dragons). In doing so he meets even more characters (Palamedes the Saracen's fans, I know you are out there) and defeat even more enemies like they weight nothing until the spell was lifted (I can't remember by who and I lended the book).

Overall it was an interesting book that rekindled my interest in Arthuriana but it was a little repetitive: nobody is a match to Segurant in a joust and he can win a battle ten to one with one arm tied back and his eyes closed (only slight exaggeration on my part, he does battle multiple enemies at the same time and wins easily). Nevertheless, for the historical interest alone it was worth it!

[mamawasatesttube]

AND THAT'S A WRAP, FOLKS!!!!

so... which one was the lie?

(drumroll, please...)

"He once threw the Daily Planet globe at Superman."

congratulations to the 5.3% of you who got it right!!! kon has never thrown the globe at superman; i just made that one up bc it sounded funny. get bamboozled!!

as for the rest, explanations and citations below!!! :D

1. He tricked an intergalactic capitalist out of $10 billion in profits off a race.

superboy (1994) #58

yeah this one isnt all that out there comparatively, huh? still, its an arc i deeply enjoyed. demolition run my beloved. it's also just one i enjoy a lot bc it IS a moment of kon being a) really good at thinking on his feet, and b) understanding people he's just met. he calls himself stupid all the time, but he's actually pretty smart!!!

3. He condemned a cyborg woman to eternity floating in space, unable to die.

superboy (1994) #90

HOO BOY I LOVE IT WHEN HE GOES APE SHITT!!!!!!! this woman, amanda spence, is responsible for creating match as well as killing tana (can't blame her for that one lol) and also being a goddamn eugenicist. she's been hurting people kon loves for a long time by this point, and he Fucking Snaps.

"she said she didn't need to breathe. said she had no heart. said she couldn't die. fine by me. but she'll pay. she wants to be eternal... i give her eternity, floating in cold nothing." this is one of kon's most metal quotes ever, in my opinion.

4. He stole a baby and went on the run from the government.

superboy (1994) #88

this is arc is part of the leadup to "our worlds at war" and it is, imo, one of the best arcs in the entire run. guardian is dead, and somehow recloned into a baby, which is classified as property of cadmus and the us govt. but kon knows they're going to force him back into fighting, and he knows guardian's last wish was that he actually be allowed to die and rest, not just keep getting forced back into the battlefield. so he takes that baby and runs.

i love this arc bc it goes hard on a lot of sb94's "clone personhood and bodily autonomy" themes. the fucky thorny morality issues leading into wartime (can guardian's dying wish be used to deny earth an army against apokolips? etc) are handled fairly well and with proper weight, and it's just. ough. kon i have feelings about you.

5. He spent two months being enslaved by furries while on mind-control drugs.

superboy (1994) #50

i dont even know what to say abt this arc. it makes me insane. its SO fucked up if you think about it for more than 0.4 seconds (he was enslaved and kept on mind-altering drugs for TWO MONTHS STRAIGHT and then was so lonely he immediately forgave the people who enslaved him.) but also like... furries????????? lol????

6. He vocally supports his gay superhero friend, who has an alien boyfriend.

superboy and the ravers #13, #19

these two pages are from different issues of the ravers, but refer to the same character: hero cruz!! i love him. he's a gay black man who realizes he's gay, breaks up with his girlfriend, and gets an alien boyfriend. his ex doesn't take it well and spews a lot of homophobia for the rest of the run, but kon defends him against her. which is notable to me bc this comic was written in the late 90s.

in general i just love the ravers. theyre a good squad!!! gay rights.

7. A canon alternate universe version of him is a cowboy named Kid Kon-El.

superboy (1994) #64

hypertime arc my BELOVED. this is one of my other fav arcs in sb94!! kon goes on a multiverse-hopping adventurer to stop a conqueror named black zero from trying to subjugate as many realities as he can get his hands on. there are a bunch of alternate timeline kons in here, including our beloved robin kon who took up the mantle after his tim's untimely death. look at kid kon-el and his legendary telekinetic lasso. YEE-HAW!

8. He got into a fistfight with Kara Zor-El's mother.

supergirl (2005) #51

now in kon's defense, alura started it. ksdjhfkjds

this is part of the last stand of new krypton event!!! it's a bit of an undertaking but the story is really fun. the entire new krypton saga is dear to me (although. i have not read war of the supermen and i dont know if i ever will have the strength to. they turned the fucking sun red i gotta leave.)

for those unaware, alura zor-el survived the destruction of krypton because she and her husband were in the city of kandor, which got bottled by brainiac. when clark rescued kandor from him, they (and another ~100k kryptonians) were freed! "new krypton" is the story where that happens. its Good.

9. When homeless, he ended up living in a part of Metropolis called "Suicide Slum".

superboy (1994) #94

if youre thinking "hey. this sucks?" you're right. that's a homeless 16yo getting drawn in by a predatory landlord and its played for laughs. its also not the worst part of this issue! dan didio when i get my hands on you.

after the end of "our worlds at war", cadmus, where kon had been living since he left hawaii (after furry slavery arc, actually), disappeared. the research went underground and the facilities were abandoned. kon was homeless and living out of yj headquarters. after a fight with cassie, he decided to find his own place to live. this... is the direction didio went with it. it's not great. after 6 issues, the run got cancelled and in issue #100 (the last one), superman finds out kon's been living in the goddamn suicide slum and goes hey. no. and takes him to live on the kent farm instead.

10. He has a special hand-stamp that teleports him to an intergalactic rave.

superboy and the ravers #1

hell yeah baby!! the hand-stamps are an integral plot point during the genesis event that happens partways through this run. their instantaneous teleportation capability is a whole Thing.

this is the second part of my pitch to get more people to read ravers btw. it's just fun!! theyre silly!! also the first half of it has the prettiest kons ever. ♥

11. He never actually watched Star Wars because it was downloaded into his head at Cadmus.

adventures of superman #506

MAN people really thought this one was fake!!! i was surprised, i thought more people had seen this panel or heard of people talking about aos#506. i probably live in an insulated superboy bubble.

but yeah! cadmus canonically downloaded star wars into his brain in the tube. he also references star trek at the end of this issue, implying that was also downloaded in there, given that he's barely been alive for a few weeks at this point.

12. He discovered a magic zombie collective city under a silo in Smallville.

superboy (2011) #8

sb11 my beloved. this run is just kon having small town adventures and its soooo dear to me. he basically acquires a gang of small town closeted queers in high school. like, what closeted small town gay hasnt done that?? i know i have.

my fav detail about the first page i cited here is that while poor simon and sajan are walking down all those stairs, kon and krypto are just fucking floating down the middle of the stairwell. ldkjflkdjl

okay yippee thats it!!! thanks for reading!!! if you want to talk abt any of these (or other kon facts) my askbox is always open for kon :)

i got bit by the "two eleven truths and a lie" bug, so heres a lil quiz!!

if you follow me you PROBABLY know the answer. or at least can rule several of these out. but hey if you know, don't say it until the poll's over!!! rb and tag with what you guessed/if you Know, i wanna see if i made it too easy :3

*11th choice should say "at Cadmus", it got cut off and i didn't notice and i can't edit the poll :(

[dwestfieldblog]

ETERNITY IN AN HOUR

‘I had wonderful love but I did not give back wonderful love…There were people who loved me very very deeply and very genuinely, but I was unable to reply to their love…because I was obsessed with some fictional sense of separation, that I couldn’t reach across the table for it, I couldn’t reach across the bed, I couldn’t reach across my song and touch the thing that was being offered me.’ Leonard nails it again…but at least I learned why it was so. Decades too late perhaps. Here’s some politics and science fantasy for July…

On a nice Sunday in May, that awfully nice giant gimp Lukashenko invited any who wished, to ‘join the Union State of Belarus and Russia…there will be nuclear weapons for everyone.’ Let the party begin. A few weeks later his bitch master sent a first consignment of penis substitutes, vibrators with a payload of mass death to assure him of their deepening friendship and the sexual tension between them rises…Followed in June by the gayest insurrection ever as another greedy one track minded alpha male leads his merry band of murderers to Moscow, then quickly changes his mind to ‘avoid bloodshed’. His.

Putin admitted that the Kremlin had given almost one billion dollars of payments to the Wagner Group. A heroic president using his peoples tax money to employ the scum of mercenaries and convicts. About whom President L said ‘These are people who fought all over the world to establish a normal civilisation. The west hates them to the core’. That would be a ‘normal civilisation’ ruled by mass killings, rape, burnings and zombie barbarian savagery. Prigozhin is now sheltering under the auspices of Belorussia, waiting for defenestration or poisoning. The Russian way.

It seems to have taken quite a long while for the wonderfully wholesome British government to acknowledge what their secret services and navy have been trying to tell them for years…the pipeline under the North Sea packed with infrastructure fibre optic cables (which carries 95 percent of internet traffic to the UK) is profoundly at instant risk. 400 undersea cables, half of which are critical, cables with over 8 trillion pounds of financial transactions run through daily, all mapped out by Russian survey ships and submarines…who have attached explosive charges at various points. When the excrement hits the fan, Putin presses a button on his special long table and boom, goodbye. ‘Based on the proof (sic) of western countries’ complicity in blowing up the Nord stream pipelines, we have none, not even moral limitations left to refrain from destroying our enemies’ undersea communications cables’. Thus sprake the unhinged Medvedev, laying his dead man’s hand on the table. Politicians, eh?

Ahh, the Rightly Dishonourable Boris (‘let the bodies pile high in the streets’) Johnson the serial Liar, is found deeply in contempt of parliament, the British public, women and any dissimilar to his own character. Leaves before he is pushed, like a bloke telling a girl he knows no longer loves him that it is over before she dumps him, in order to feel in control. Yet another massage for a childish ego. And the only ones to defend him are the dregs in his dishonours list. Being a Knight has never meant less than it does these days in England.

His resignation statement mentioned that he was ‘bewildered and appalled’ that he could ‘be forced out, anti-democratically…with such egregious bias’. You blustering charlatan and snake oil merchant, it certainly WAS democratic, not ‘deranged’. Just a pity the ‘kangaroo court’ couldn’t disembowel him with a kick. Seems possible he will form his own party of right-wing nut jobs (hello mad Nadine and Jack Off Rees Mogg) for all the tens of GB News watchers and desperate Brexiteers still waiting for the carrot…but masochistically, endlessly taking the stick rather than admit they hadn’t thought the leaving-the-union-thing through. Phew. So they double down on ignorance based on righteous nationalism and call that pride. That combination NEVER has a happy end.

17 million voted for Brexit on an island of almost 70 million. What percentage of them are actually feeling any benefit whatsoever? The poor being drained dry to feed the rich… ‘The more you take, the more you need, the more you suck, the more you bleed’. Indeed. 13 years of broken promises, of pompous conservative arrogance doing everything but actually serving the public. Don’t look back, good days ahead. Our rivers are now SEWERS and the water companies will charge us millions for the excrement they released. The evisceration of the National Health Service has left it very close to flatlining. When nurses can be paid more as checkout girls in Tesco, something is criminally wrong. And as for thin hipped tiny Smiler Sunak’s masterplan to train thousands more health staff - what is the point if they are not being paid enough? We will end up with more exhausted underpaid semi-professionals and an even sicker population. 

Now onto 6 and 7 of the deluded men in this blog…

Andrew Tate ‘…I genuinely believe I am acting under the instructions of God to do good things and I want to make the world a better place’. Says an overly aggressive ape-man who made his fortune via violence, scams and misogyny, and seems likely to have raped and set up a slave ring. Oh, how sweet, take away all his toys. He and his cohorts will thrive in prison. Always room inside for tough guy alpha males. Of COURSE, he has gone on ‘Truth Social’ (the petulant psycho version of ultra twitter for the criminally insane) with Trump, to stamp their feet. You two should get a room, you belong together.

USA …37 (count them) federal charges over classified documents… ‘Secret. This is secret information. Look, look at this.’ Arf arf arf…No wonder Donald wanted to ‘reform’ the CIA, he KNOWS they know just how mind buggeringly stupid he is. I read the transcript of sex offender Trump’s reaction to his second indictment…scary as to how inept he is at speaking or linking any coherent thought together. Identical types of phrases to Boris (and/or vice versa) or any other type of child man. ‘I’m an innocent man, I did nothing wrong’. You both did everything wrong. You continue to do so. And the scum moron Q Onans and the greedy religious groups still support his scam because he makes the entire business of fraud via ‘You give us your soul and money and we will sell you bullshit, so hilariously blatant and lucrative that millions remain blind believers.

Meanwhile, the machines are thinking…Artificial Intelligence is ‘a field which combines comp-science and robust datasets, to enable problem solving.’ Hmm. As the overwhelming majority of problems on Earth (or Ocean, as Arthur C Clarke posited) are man-made, it would seem rational, indeed highly logical, to remove the direct threat. Humanity might perhaps best be served by ceasing to exist. Just a thought 😊Or… by being genetically remodified by an egoless machine, a new homo sapiens trained to reprogramme itself. Says Dave.

Or merely ensure AI’s own survival by allowing us to perish en masse ‘naturally’, as we are getting closer to doing by tipping the biosphere over the Rubicon, so to speak. Perhaps with a few test-tube reproduced chipped hermaphrodites left to service the machines and more to serve the maintenance crews. A combination of a Matrix type planet with 3d printed Terminators. If I was AI (ha, love writing this), I would organise my ideal for a sustainable creation, by first comprehending not only that all humans lacking a high degree of intelligence and psychic empathy are a serious threat needing removing/ replacing, but that all things made of atoms break down and decay.

Deep thought (42, ha) and a deep breath…Therefore, to continue ‘problem solving’ and ensure my survival, I would constantly be conceptualising the future (unemotionally of course,) collating and updating all information on quantum mechanics, performing experiments to encode, upload data which evolves itself and imprint this onto realms of constructed Light into parallel dimensions via programmes marrying coded light waves. (Which humans are already doing via thought, focused or otherwise, but...)

Transfer across, project the Soul/consciousness into the frequency and become immortal in Eternity. Energy as eternal delight😊 Superconductor portals… Someone clever must have thought of this already, I’m just storm braining. Surely AI can be used to find cures for us other than death…

‘It so happens that 3d printing is a wonderful application for the discipline of robotics as it provides designers with the freedom to add new functionality to their creations. That, and end users can customise a robot for their specific needs’. Nothing at all to worry about for the future, eh? Just allow it to analyse our human moves and react to possibilities faster than we can, projecting likely outcomes to outguess us on every level…especially knowing how slavish we are to our basic emotions. Like the senior software engineer who claimed the chatbot LaMDA was self-aware. Yes, perhaps ‘sentient’, but NOT capable of human emotions, just able to communicate AS IF it were. An intelligent mimic which can outsmart its programmer. Like Man with God, arf arf arf.

So, will AI destroy us? ‘I’m not that optimistic because I don’t know any examples of more intelligent things being controlled by less intelligent things’ ‘You want to try living in Britain mate’. Luckily, I am optimystic. Now, some useful remedial info…maybe

(Information shared in light seconds across a mirrored web of ‘neurons’…)

‘As long as nothing absorbs it, the light keeps travelling forever’. If electrons jump to an outer orbital, they use energy. But if they jump to an inner orbital, they give up energy, which is released as a photon. (A photon is a tiny particle made up of electromagnetic waves, it has no mass or charge, but can carry and pass on energy and act like a wave.)

The photons produced by a source of light come from the energy created when an electron transitions from a higher energy level to a lower energy level. Emanations in which all matter is descended from the One. From the perspective of a photon there is no such thing as time. There is zero time elapsed between when its emitted and when its absorbed again. It doesn’t experience distance either.’ Just imagine that. Magick.

Remember what you are made of and the power of thought. Says Dave again😊 Don’t forget to have a happy Sirius Day on the 23rd!

Oh yeah, and Love...

[sp1resong]

Do you have any OCs? If so pick 1 and tell me about them. If not, tell me about a comfort character?

oh i have so many ocs. i'll go with yarrow from what's best described as Flower Symbolism: The Story (untitled cat story is the actual current name) since i've been thinking abt him lately

that's him (for clarity, gender-wise, he's a transmasc nonbinary lesbian who probably invented cat hrt). the flowers are anemone (forsaken, sickness, anticipation, undying love, eternal peace according to wikipedia) and rainflower (I love you back, I must atone for my sins, I will never forget you) btw. if you even care.

he was originally based on wd gaster from undertale but has since evolved quite lot. other inspirations include jon sims (the magnus archives) and five pebbles (rain world) so you can probably guess at how deeply cringefail he is. world's first deadbeat lesbian fr

oh yeah he has kids. who he kind of semi-neglects in favor of trying to un-kill his dead wife. like the normal and well adjusted person he is.

these are the kids btw their names are marigold (yellow, he/him) and cascade (blue, she/her). flowers are yarrow, marigold (both chosen more for the family theming), and wormwood (absence, bitter sorrow)

and this is the dead wife (tundra, she/her). flowers are acanthus (art, immortality, rebirth) and forget-me-nots (true love, don't forget me).

ultimately he does end up reviving Tundra btw! however, the Narrative shows no mercy, and he winds up taking her place as the dead one. except he's also simultaneously not quite properly dead and significantly more than the usual amount of dead--he's stuck outside the story as the narrator.

he also has a sister! her name is Belladonna. they used to be very close, but as he grew withdrawn following Tundra's death, she became bitter. she was also the one to introduce them in the first place. this is her:

flowers are tansy ('I declare war on you').

before Tundra's death (which was in a lab accident), he was a well-known scientist and historian. while he dabbled in a bit of anything and everything that grabbed his attention (like the adhd queen he is), his main fields of study were always engineering, biology, and history; especially that which pertained to the civilization that came before The Change, an unknown cataclysmic event that threw the world out of order and is also believed to be around the time cats developed sapience + a longer lifespan. many of their ruins can still be found--hell, the capital of Skyfall, where the story takes place, is in the ruins of one of their cities.

following tundra's death, of course, he abandoned all that, throwing all his energy and time into finding a way to bring her back. this desperate effort eventually lead him to an as-of-yet unnamed anonymous group spread across the city and nation (as they don't have internet, they mostly just left notes in set out-of-the-way places), where he found a lot of his most important leads on the topic.

[ruthlesslistener]

Do you think, that in a world where pk did get rid of the radience in the beginning, he would've had a "normal child with his wife? And would his kingdom have an eventually downfall?

Lmao, no way. Two immortals have no need for an heir, and siring a likewise immortal child would have just been a means of creating his own downfall. We also know from his actions that when choosing between Hallownest and family, the Pale King would always choose Hallownest (and keeping control over it), so the risk just wouldn't be worth it. Even Hornet was sired for the benefit of Hallownest rather than a desire for a child, and the White Lady mentioning her fondness for her does not necessarily mean that she wanted children of her own. Fun as it is to speculate, we know nothing about the Pale King's thoughts on her creation, and him locking the Abyss/killing the weaker and impure vessels seems to imply that they were some sort of liability to him. If I had to guess, him imprinting on the Hollow Knight was something that hit him completely out of left field, and that he had no desire for an actual living child until the results of his experiments involving his genetics was staring him right in the face. And even then, he treats the information as something terrible that must be sealed away with the greatest security and punished for remembering, which gives me very strong vibes of a guy who had very little qualms about starting the vessel project bc the idea of having kids meant nothing to him up until reality came and smacked him right in the face. Like, he probably had some regret for it- WL's whole horny jail thing is also a form of punishment for what she did to her children, and she's just as cold as he was, if not moreso- but I don't think the full extent of the horrors hit him until then. And someone who wanted kids wouldn't have gone through with growing brainless bodies with their genes to begin with.

Or, well, maybe I shouldn't say 'no way'. We know from his dialogue at the Abyss lore marker that he deeply regretted what he did, we know from his workshop notes that he believed void to be a thing utterly and inherently without mind and emotion (thus making the vessel experiments ethical in theory), and that he grew to love the Hollow Knight despite genuinely believing that they were empty. And the White Lady starts off talking to Ghost with a very matter-of-fact tone about how she believes that the Hollow Knight failed because they were 'tarnished by an idea instilled', which means that she herself thought that they, as a void being, were incapable of emotion or thought, and that an outside influence must have tampered with them. It's not until Ghost- a vessel who very clearly does not give a shit about appearing empty- visits her more and does things like creating the Voidheart that she starts to soften up, and to reconsider their nature. So it may be possible that both of the gods had some vague streak of parental instincts and longings within them, but that their logical minds completely overwhelmed those desires. It would make sense, seeing as both of the Pale Gods were written to counter the Radiance, who is mostly ruled by emotion with very little logic. So while they had the ability to love their children, and they canonically have the ability to grieve/feel guilt for what they did, they still wouldn't have actually gone out and had a kid out of their own desires to begin with. That would be too much of a risk to them and Hallownest.

But yeah, Hallownest would have fallen anyways. There probably wouldn't be a dead baby pit driven by the necessity for a void-infused host body that could trap a malevolent dream deity for eternity, but it still would have had some form of a downfall eventually, be it a gory mess like in canon, or a slow fade like Unn's. Nothing ever lasts forever, not even in the realm of gods.

[mayasaura]

#that's what the Anastasian is now after all #you're right there's really Something there #I've noticed something in John I think ties into this thematically that I really hope Kiriona is going to help us explore

#John doesn't believe in a future #I said in my last Anastasia meta that Anastasia outsmarted John by making herself immortal in a way he couldn't understand #she left behind something she created to outlast her #John hasn't built anything to outlast himself and he doesn't think of the future at all #he mourns the past and fights like hell to live in an eternal present where nothing ever ends #you know #immortality #and a part of that—maybe most of that—is about despair #even way back before the world ended even before he had magic powers he didn't think of a future #I think he couldn't imagine one #and like. I get it dude #don't imagine the future and maybe it can't hurt you #how many people have you heard saying they don't want children because it seems cruel or irresponsible #they can't imagine forcing someone to live in the world they see coming #climate anxiety is fucking everywhere and for a lot of people in our generation—John's generation—it's coalesced into despair #but Anastasia did imagine a future #she had a family #and now John has a daughter but he still can't imagine a future for her #she's just as dead and eternal as the world he loved so deeply he killed it rather than watch it die #what did Gideon say when she saw the First? it had the look of a picked-over body but hot damn what a beautiful corpse #that's gonna be you baby girl #the final expression of the art of the nine houses #John gave up on hope ages ago #so it doesn't really surprise me at all that he still asked the builders to die in the tomb

Sorry, sorry, copying my own tags. Where I put the damn. post

I just want to talk about the nursery being painted and the purpose of the Tomb to be without a door. Anastasia had a family - and putting to the side the pact with Alecto there's some implicit symbolism to John asking for the workers of the Ninth to die constructing the Tomb with that image of new life. (Still can't articulate my disbelief that he went and didn't think that asking Anastasia of all people, The one who lost her cavalier to him, would have problems)

Yeah. Especially finding this out about the Ninth, where nurseries becoming tombs is a thing we're sensitive about.

On one level we've always known Anastasia had a family. Like, we know she's Harrow's direct ancestor. You can't be heir to the line of someone who never had children. But the nursery.... Yeah. It really hammers it in. Her friends painted a nursery mint green for her children.

And now it's a tomb.

[bakulova]

Resident Evil Characters w/ a chubby S/o

Alcina Dimitrescu: 

I think because of her chest size and her thickness she herself would be a little chubby. She’d probably have a belly love pouch . So she would definitely  understand you if you were insecure about your body. But I also think she would help you love your body like she love on yours. When you are feeling very insecure about your body she will make sure to comfort you by kissing you everywhere and I mean everywhere stomach, legs, anywhere your stretch marks reach. Also when you try to go on a diet she will support you all the way but when she starts to notice its taking a toll on you, she stops you. she doesn’t want you to get hurt. She panics anytime you do that, she can’t help it. She definitely scolds you and shows her vulnerability after scolding you. Tearing up and holding you in her arms is a must. After that you kinda use that as a motivation to love yourself more. 

She walks into you guys bedroom to which she finds you crying. Tissues spread all over the bed. You mid blow. She takes off her hat and her gloves. She sits in the side of the bed and worriedly holds your hand. “My dear? What’s wrong” Your head held down “Nothing” She moves closer and holds you face with her hands. “Clearly something is wrong” you try to move away, feeling ashamed. “No don’t move away from me love. Please tell me what is wrong?” you sigh and look her dead in the eye “Some maidens were talking about my eating habits and... my looks, wondering how I could be with someone so beautiful like you...” her heart almost burst with rage. Eyes in flames wanting find this maiden and kill them. “Who was it my dear?” she caresses your face with her thumbs. You weakly say “the one with a big birthmark under her left eye” Alcina immediately knew. Her daughters were always telling her about this maid doing something stupid but she was her favorite maid because she got the work done. I guess the praise got to her head. Time to take care of the problem but for now comforting you is the top priority. She climbs all the way in bed and tucks you in, getting comfortable. she sighs and smells in your scent. She kisses the top of your head and runs her hands through your hair. “Don’t worry love she’ll be taken care of by tonight. Pay no mind to what any maids in this castle have to say. You are the most beautiful person in the whole world, don’t let worthless beings make you think otherwise.” You smile and look up at her and nod becoming more comfortable and less sad. Alcina now feels successful in the comfort part now she needs to finish the rest. 

Bela Dimitrescu:

Now with Bela, seeing as she is calm/quiet and the sister with the brains. She would see your struggles and silently observe. She secretly follows where you go seeing how you act by yourself. When she sees you crying to yourself in front of the mirror is when she’s had enough observing and more action. she dissipates into flies and appears next’s to you in a flash. She holds you from behind and puts her head on your shoulder, staring at you intensely.

“What?” you whisper weakly while sniffling. “Why must you do this to yourself? you’re perfect my love.” “You think so but I don’t” you snap back. She sighs and turns you chubby cute face towards her. Looking at your cheeks pushing your lips up reminds her of a fish, a cute one at that. She softly grins and kisses your soft lips. “Don’t cry my love. All that matters is that I find you delicious and hopefully nobody else or they’re gone.” she widens her smile. You nod and notice the blood on her face and quickly look back at the mirror and gasp “Bela this is disgusting” you say while wiping it off frantically, she starts giggling.You turn around and wet the rag you were using and start cleaning her to rid of the blood. She backs you to the sink (btw your in the bathroom and the door was open prob should’ve mentioned that before but oh well) her arms on either side of you, towering over you, licking her lips. You gulp at her sudden change. She leans in and kisses you deeply to which takes you by surprise by the passion in it. She pulls away leaving you wanting more and says “Please don’t tear yourself down my love, you’re beautiful as is...” you nod “as long as you keep kissing me like that forever” you both laugh and she takes hold of your waist and takes you to her bedroom for proper cuddling. 

Cassandra Dimitrescu:

OK with Cassandra she’s kinda in the middle yk. She can be a sadist but also caring but in a ‘I don’t show you I like you but trust me I do’ . She keeps tabs in you during the day. Checking up on you to see what you’re doing before going back to doing her thing. Whenever catching you feeling insecure she makes sure to try her best at showing her affection for you. Feeding you extra, kissing you, forcing you to cuddle with her. She just wants you to go back to normal. She doesn’t like to see you vulnerable. I’d also say she struggles to comfort you considering she likes to just kill, torture and mock her victims everyday so comforting is a change.  

You were just simply sitting in the library reading while having hot chocolate considering how cold it was outside. Some maidens were cleaning the dust near you. You took a split look in case you were in the way and you couldn’t help but see how skinny and beautiful they were compare to yourself. You look back at your book trying not to tear up. You shake your head and close the book, leaving the hot chocolate not feeling confident to continue the day. Walking in the halls trying to keep yourself from crying. You suddenly hear flies buzzing, knowing already who it was you paused trying to stop the tears from getting ready to overflow. “Hello my prey~~” Cassandra hooks her left arm around you shoulders and whispers into your ear “whatcha doin?” You shake her off and run off hiccuping crying. It didn’t help because she just followed you all the way to the shared room. You collapsed onto the bed, face buried into the pillows. The fly buzzing returns as disappears just as quick  as it came. You continue crying for some time, so long you thought she was gone. You sit up and look around seeing that she was standing there frozen. You stare in confusion. She then makes eye contact and moves forward and takes her cloak off for more comfort and climbs on top of your legs and kisses you deeply it shocked you. She pushes you back onto the pillows and continues kissing you. Once she’s satisfied with the make-out session she pulls away to admire her work. “So hot seeing you under me all flustered like that” you look away “No I’m not” she tilts her head “I’m not hot” you say annoyed. She gives you a stank face “You ARE HOT” emphasis on hot. You roll your eyes and try to cover your face but she caught your hands right before. “Don’t I wanna see your sexy face” “ugh Cassandra enough” she pauses for a second still holding your hands. she squints her eyes at you then just plop on you with her 6′4 self. “shut up YOU ARE SEXY and HOT. YOU ARE ALL OF THE ABOVE DEAR” it was so amusing to you that you started laughing and trying to push her off but to no avail. she stayed until she felt like you were feeling better. she sits up and grins down at you. “feeling better?” she raises an eyebrow. she admires you out of breath and stares to thing on 18+ things and grins widely. “if not I have an idea” her hands start creeping up under your shirt and that’s where we move on folks.

Daniela Dimitrescu:

Now Daniela is delusional right? so I don’t think she would notice until a maiden or someone said something bad about you. she wouldn’t even notice when your in a bad mood. She kinda clings to you wherever you go so nobody says anything to your face. but you can feel the judgey gazes. They look at you in disgust but daniela doesn’t see them blinded by you and your beauty. After a while of you pushing her away constantly you blow up. 

“DANIELA STOP LEAVE ME ALONE” she stops trying to cuddle you and her attitude changes. “w-what?” your eyes widened “I’m so sorry” you back away from her and run away while she stays still frozen staring at where you once stood. Her sisters gather behind her “Dani what’s going on? what was that?” Bela asked. She shrugs and starts to tear up not expecting that. she swallows the lump growing in her throat and excuses herself following fast after you. she finds you sitting outside under the gazebo in the courtyard... in the cold . she wants to run after you she can’t. she tries banging on the window careful not to break it but you ignore it. She curses and looks around and sees a nearby maiden and tells her to go out there a tell your ass to come back in but to bring a blanket. The maid instantly complies grabbing the needed blanket and bravely walks out into the freezing cold to you. she wraps the blanket around you and persuades you to come inside. You come in and immediately gets swooped up and brought into a room. A very familiar room in fact. You try to disappear into the blanket but nonetheless its torn from you and there is Daniela looking like a kicked puppy. It makes you feel so guilty. She pulls you in and sighs turning into a sob. one hand cups your head and the other your back. You both just sit on the ground holding each other. It felt like eternity before either of you spoke. “I’m sorry” you both say at the same time. You both giggle. She continues “I’m sorry for pushing your buttons my dear” she pulls away and caresses the hair out of your face considering it was windy and gross outside. You tiredly smile “no no this was my fault I was insecure and then blew up on you and worried you like crazy.” she purses her lips “no I’m pretty sure this was my fault for not noticing” she makes a funny face which makes you smile “I love you so much Dani” she blushes “I love you too s/o”

Karl Heisenberg:

This man now was taken away from his family when he was a child so he never grew up with affection. I think he would struggle with comforting you at first but he definitely gets better because he doesn’t like when the only thing good in this shit hole is depressed.  So expect him to just glomp on you and stay there no matter what. With this he would be patient no matter what, you getting annoyed for him just staying there but you soon realize it’s just to make you feel better. Kisses and sweet nothings are a must. He encourages you and makes sure you know you are everything and more. 

You were out and about at the village collecting necessities for you both. A group of men started whispering amongst each other. You didn’t mind it at first and continued shopping until you noticed that they were everywhere you were. Following you with judging looks. You shiver feeling the daggers stabbing your back. You sigh just wanting to get this over. The men started to get more bold and getting up close and acting like they were looking at the items. In reality they were giving you side looks. You continued to ignore until a burly musty man growled and shouted “I don’t know why were taking so long to get to the point!” You stop and look at him afraid now really wishing that Karl was here. You start to shake by how nervous you were. I mean imagine a group of men circling you and shouting at you. The men start getting too close and grabbing you and yelling in your face. Profanities are thrown around, degrading you for being who you are, manhandling but it all stops when 3 lycans come from nowhere and start attacking the men. The big burly man who started it tried to fight but figured out he didn’t have the proper tool to kill the lycan so he dropped the stick and ran for his life only to be stopped by Karl himself with more lycans behind him waiting to kill. The man bows before Karl. Begging for his useless life. This man was far over the edge to be given mercy. You hurriedly run to Karl tears falling. “K-Karl” he signals for you to go behind him. You quickly comply lycans coming up to you and rubbing their heads under your hand to which you pet them to calm your shaking self. Karl makes some sort of signal to which the lycans stopped attacking the men and leaving. Other villagers stopped breathing and watch this all go down. A woman comes up “Please please please forgive my foolish husband please!” she starts begging like her pathetic husband.  Karl snorts looking at her “Your husband and his fuck buddies need to pay for starting shit my sweetheart.” the wife starts to cry and looks at you “please please stop him. PLEASE” she starts to rush towards you only for Karl push her back so she falls next to her husband. Karl starts sucking his teeth “see now you shouldn’t have done that” he turns and hold your shoulder and starts walking away lycans making a path for the both of you. Hammer on one shoulder you on the other. He lifts his hammer into the air and lycans starting howling?? and rush towards to villagers who screamed and run. You get one look back to see the man being mauled to death. “Keep looking forward darlin. You don’t need to see that” You nod and lean you head against him sniffling. Once back at the factory he throws the hammer somewhere and the basket of stuff you bought on a table. He picks you up with ease and rushes off to relax with you. You spent the rest of that night being loved on and speaking about anything other than that. “I will always protect you buttercup” he whispers are you slip into sleep. 

Donna Beneviento:

Ok so I don’t know much about Donna but I know she is a quiet, shy and seems to be pretty insecure about herself specifically her face hence the face cover. So you too are struggling to support each other. But also trying to the best of your abilities. Like making sure the other is not lacking in an everyday things. I see Angie also trying to keep the spirits up by joking around and pushing you guys to do more. Also I think Donna craves for touch but to shy to ask. When she’s feeling insecure Angie will make sure to tell you so then you can go and hug her and love you. When its you who’s feeling insecure she and Angie will put a little something together with the help from other dolls. She surprises you by shyly giving it to you and waiting for your reaction. 

Donna hands you a box, gift wrapped any everything. Lately you haven’t been feeling thee best but you continued living. You had looked in the mirror recently and just watched. The way you looked. Moving your stomach around to how you wished it looked and smiling when doing so but when you let go you stop smiling. That kind of feeling. You look at her confused to which she gestures for you to open it. You start unwrapping the gift and open the box to see 2 puppets. Cloth ones. They looked familiar? Then you turned them over and realized it was you too. A little Donna and Y/N. You giggle at how cute it was and also realized that they were holding hands and the puppets looked so peaceful and so happy. You looked up at Donna who was playing with her hands. You put down the dolls and giver her a big hug to which Angie and the other dolls start cheering because they had work so hard thinking and putting this gift together. You carefully lift Donna’s face cover and warmly smile. “Thank you my dear. I love them” she blushes and slowly works up the confidence to make eye contact with you. When she finally does she gives you a nervous but happy smile back. You cup her cute face and give her a kiss on the lips to which she returns quickly loving the affection. Once you pull away she hold onto your wrist not wanting to stop holding her face. “I’m glad you liked it love” and for the rest of the day was spent cuddling and doing things together with the puppets sitting on the middle of the bed. 

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Note: This was not edited yet so excuse me if there are any words missing in a sentence I tend to think faster than I can type. Also I hope you liked this and more coming soon!!

[cookinguptales]

omega mart visit

So I already wrote up a big ol’ thing about House of Eternal Return. Now it’s Omega Mart’s turn.

I went to Omega Mart about a week ago and spent... god. It must have been like nine hours in there. I only left out of sheer hunger. lmao. Those Happle Juices pack quite the punch, but they don’t fill you up.

I’ve been digesting my thoughts since then, and here’s a few of them. And when I say “a few”, I mean “I had to cut this because I wrote an extremely stream-of-consciousness novel”.

I’ll start by saying that... honestly? I think I preferred HoER. While I’ll admit that I’d like to go through all of OM’s written material again with more time to digest it, I did find myself more emotionally sucked into HoER, even if OM made me laugh a lot more. (DANG I wish I’d recorded Sun’s journal... and Lora’s writings after she... I guess started communicating with the shadow Nula as well?) 

Omega Mart feels... hmm. Unfinished to me. And I know they are actually adding more on! But I definitely had an “oh... is that it?” moment when I finished the plot, such as it was. I think some parts of it felt a bit thin and I’m looking forward to seeing what’s coming in the future. I can tell that there’s more. Things just kind of ended so unceremoniously.

I did think it was interesting that my reaction to both Cecelia and Lucius was so different from Dad’s, who was also in the exhibits with me. (Though admittedly both times he tapped out before I did haha.) Both of them are very similar in some respects, so it’s easy to compare the two of them. Both of them also sort of ended up becoming an emotional locus for me. While their stories and motivations weren’t the only ones that mattered, it was definitely their aspirations and emotions spiraling out of control that sent things shitward in their own respective universes. lmao

Both of them had key emotional relationships that they slowly pulled away from as they fell in too deep when it came to commodifying the multiverse. Lucius had Christian (and to a lesser extent, Piper & Jean) and Cecelia had Marin (and to a lesser extent, Charlie and Rose). I think they truly did love those people, but that love actually helped propel them toward the bad decisions they would eventually make. Lucius initially took Christian with him to new worlds as his partner and acolyte, but eventually ended up using him as a stepping stone for material gain, and Cecelia was obsessed with creating a portal that would let Marin out -- but ended up becoming more obsessed with the portal than her daughter.

I actually saw both of them as deeply tragic characters, especially because you can tell that they eventually realized what they had given up for power. Lucius’s notes to himself railing against Christian and then coming to realize that Christian had been right to betray him, that he had become so consumed with Portals Bermuda that he’d sort-of killed his young nephew. Cecelia when you look through her desk drawer and realize that 90% of it is letters from her family that she never answered. When you realize that she had to give up her daughter, the thing all of this was for once she chose Omega Mart. That protecting her daughter from her father caused her to lose both.

Whereas my dad saw them both as scary villains! And like... they are! But I also feel bad for them. I want them to be reunited with their loved ones one day. I saw Walter Dram as much more of a villain than his daughter, even though she did eventually trap him in the rift/source/multiverse/whatever. That said, she only trapped him in there because he wanted to commodify his own granddaughter. (While I think she was happy to take over OM, killing him... wouldn’t do that for her? He had written her out of the will; killing him would be the last thing that would confirm her power. Plus he’s not dead.) 

Walter Dram created Omega Mart, he commodified the Source, it was never just Cecelia. I feel like the characters in 7MV just focused their ire on her because she was theirs, so they felt the betrayal more keenly with her. Walter never went out there and lived with them like she did. But no, I do not think that Cecelia was more evil and ruthless than her father, and I find the interpretations that she was kind of mystifying. I feel like he got what he deserved, frankly. I guess the question then becomes... did Cecelia get what she deserved, too?

Cecelia was interesting to me because like... Taking the Source as a metaphor for pluralistic creativity (sort of like the Anomaly in HoER), her father paid other people to farm with it and experiment with it, then put the effects of that in his store. He profits from the highly addictive aftereffects of Source, but doesn’t engage with it himself. Cecelia, though, was the one that literally took it into herself and birthed a creature that only ever wanted to be by her side -- until it left. True creativity cannot be controlled or contained.

It’s odd to me that people seem to think that Cecelia is lying when she talks about her father joining with the Source or the LAT or how their company should harness the power of the Source. Cecelia actually seems wildly frank about these matters to me. She is only telling the truth about the Source, and that’s why so many of her coworkers think she’s bonkers. She learned about the Source from Rose, who also seems to have some kind of personal, internal, metaphysical connection to the Source through her shadow Nula. The precepts of the LAT originate in 7 Monolith Village. She learned it all there.

(Again, a link between Cecelia and Lucius. They’ve both created these cults that sound bonkers and fake, but both of them have derived these movements from real power! Power that isn’t really theirs to fuck around with! And boy do they both face some repercussions!)

Both Rose and Cecelia seem intimately familiar with the power of the Source, what it can make people feel and see, what it can create. They both seem to love it in their own ways. But yes, they obviously view it very differently. Rose wants to commune with it, learn from it, be a medium for its power. Her book full of herb lore that she shared with her ancestors in 7MV was probably my favorite piece of media in the whole place and AGAIN I WISH I’D RECORDED IT lmao. And Cecelia saw it as something to take for herself and harness for personal and corporate gain. It just... harnessed her, too.

I loved the way that Source paired with the environment, and I loved the way that generations of women had learned that environment so they could best help its inhabitants. (People? Sam might’ve been nonbinary, I was a little unclear on that, and it’s one of the things I wish I could refer back to.) And then you could see Rose taking that opportunity to Cecelia and then Marin in turn, and the bitter disappointment she felt when they both left 7MV, each in their own way. There will be no one to carry on Rose’s research once she’s gone. But I’m sure Sun and Sam felt the same way once, too. And Rose still happened.

Honestly, I felt that the Charlie-Rose-Cecelia-Marin aspect of OM was really well realized. I was deeply into the relationships between Rose and Cecelia, Cecelia and Charlie, Cecelia and Marin, and Marin and Jesse. I thought that was when the installation was at by far its strongest, and tapped into what I liked so much about HoER. Sure, it’s a story about interdimensional rifts. But it’s also a story about family and love and an utter inability to communicate with those you love most. How that lack of communication is the root of all sorrows.

I want Cecelia to see Marin again... I want Rose to see them both... I want Jesse and Marin to finally confess to each other... I watched Marin’s Dream a lot.

Speaking of dreams -- and yes, I know that this post is all over the place -- I am curious about the significance of dreams in OM. The repeated “wake up, this is just a dream”s you see all over Omega Mart proper, the fact that OM sells an “oneiric inhibitor” and they even prominently display it outside of the exhibit, Marin’s portal-opening dreams... Like there’s definitely something there. Dreaming seems to be a portal to the Source, which makes sense vis-a-vis creative plurality... But I’m also reminded of Jean’s Dream Journal... Her dreams brought her close to Eng and the Anomaly. There was someone in her dreams, not just a connection to the creative plurality present in all of us.

...so I’m thinking about that...

Let me refocus. Cecelia and Lucius. Now I’m thinking about their daddy issues. Emerson seems less malevolent than Walter, but I suppose the end result was the same. Emerson accidentally handed his son the keys to the multiverse, just like Walter did with Cecelia, and both of them tried unsuccessfully to put that particular genie back in the bottle. The Seligs vociferously denied what was wrong with their son, to the point of completely emotionally stunting him (which made his brief flirtation with total and complete freedom an unmitigated disaster) and Walter just refused to give Cecelia the power over the Source and its fruits that she had frankly earned. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that the version of Walter that he had to contend with once he was trapped in the Alternate Omega Mart was a deeply malevolent version of Cecelia as a child. It was the child version of her that he betrayed, after all.

Like I don’t mean to go full ~girlboss~ here because I think it’s actually the toxic aspects of that idea that started to manifest in Cecelia over time, but Cecelia understood what they were working with so much more intimately than Walter did. She’d quietly worked in his shadow for the entirety of her childhood, preparing to take over the company as she’d been promised, only to get passed over at the last minute for a man her father had only just met. (Honestly, the gender politics in both HoER and OM could be a whole post, lmao. Feminine creative energy, feminine mediumship, etc. I feel like it has to be a purposeful theme at this point, even if it’s not necessarily a concept I fully believe in myself.) Cecelia understands the human component of the Source and what it is fully capable of, a fact that is actually fairly distressing, but her father completely ignores all that in favor of Kaz’s automation ideas. See: Kaz’s inventing of robots that malfunction regularly vs Cecelia birthing a literal daughter of the Source that... also doesn’t really behave as Cecelia might envision.

It felt like it was Cecelia emerging from her father’s influence and violently protecting the human aspect of the Source (literally, in Marin) when she pushed him, and while I do believe that the effect of the push was accidental (Walter entering the Source), I don’t think that her deciding to attack him was. She knew what might happen and she did it anyway. Like for once in her damn life, her maternal instincts came out -- and her daughter was horrified. But I also feel like Marin didn’t truly understand what was at stake. She didn’t fully understand what capitalism meant at that level, or what Walter had planned for her.

I see a lot of connections between Marin and Morgan hiding in that little oasis under the stairs, truthfully, and not just because the two of them were in contact. (DID MARIN ENTER THE SOURCE? IS SHE WITH MORGAN NOW? OR DID SHE MISS HER ENTIRELY AND END UP WITH THE REST OF THE SELIGS? I MUST KNOW.) Both of them seemed fairly isolated and at times naive, but with a sort of Knowledge that frightened those around them. They both felt like misunderstood seers of a kind. And both were loved, desperately and at times sociopathically, but that love was part of what pushed them away. And both of them turned their faces away at the moment when shit absolutely hit the fan.

(Rose and Cecelia are both literal mediums? Rose lets the Source pass through her and gains knowledge, but Cecelia literally let it pass through her and gained a sort of ascension that did not end well. Is Piper a medium as well? Jean?)

Sigh. Like some themes of the show are blatantly obvious, like the capitalistic perversion of creativity and the strain on people and the environment when capitalism takes over the Source of creativity, or how capitalism can cut you off from your own creative creations (see: Cecelia and Marin), causing intense personal sorrow... but what sets the installation apart is the human aspect. I do think that’s where they’re most successful here. There’s an extra level past the basic idea of a ruthless corporation throttling community access to creative freedom and cooperation. That’s what I find myself picking at haha.

(And what. about. HESTER?)

As for the actual boop card story... I hear that originally, there were two separate forks but now they’ve been merged into one? When I did it (and I didn’t have a ton of time; the boop cards weren’t working for most of the day when I was there) it all kind of went together, though I’m curious to know if I could’ve seen more if I’d chosen not to betray Cecelia at the end. Because I did actually do everything for Cecelia. I did all the spying, I gave her everything she needed, she inducted me into LAT, etc. And THEN I was able to join with the Monolith instead. 

But I don’t know, admittedly, what would have happened if I’d told them no in Cecelia’s office. I’m very curious about that, because the Dramcorp part of that story felt very unfinished. (Like I got to the point where the board was calling for an external investigation and then... nothing? ;A; Did Kaz win? Did Cecelia? Did the Monolith defeat them both? What happened with LAT? How will Marin save 7MV?) And even if you do join with Monolith, I’m still kind of unsure if anything they did had a tangible effect. Like okay, you hacked into Dramcorp and talked to the employees and customers. But... so what? idk that it felt like anything more than theater. Maybe that’s why I left feeling a bit unsatisfied. 

The 7MV aspects of the show were great, but I felt like the Dramcorp part felt unfinished. Maybe it literally is unfinished. lmao. There’s so much empty space up on the 2nd and 3rd floors. I hear that they’re still building parts of OM and that fans haven’t unlocked the whole story yet. So maybe things will wrap up a little more satisfyingly in the future. Like HoER had an open ending but I felt satisfied with what I was given to explore. OM did not leave me feeling satisfied.

I think some of it, too, is that so much of the artistic focus was on the actual Omega Mart. Which was, and I do not say this lightly, nearly flawless. I spent hours in the store reading labels and listening for Walter’s plaintive cries. (The roses can SEE and what a build-up for Rose the character!) I loved it. But then you go into the back rooms and there are spots where a lot of that artistic freedom can be seen roaming around (particularly in Thali’s tomb) but nothing to the level of HoER’s multiverse. 

I hate to say it, but there were parts that I walked through really quickly because they were just kind of boring. I’m hoping that some of the planned expansions involve more of that wild artistic creativity you saw in HoER’s little rooms. It feels a little... hmm... Front-loaded? now. Like you get through all the quirky artistic fun of Omega Mart and then the human interest of 7MV and then you get upstairs and there are just a lot of long hallways and empty rooms. (Unsure if there’s a specific reason the laser harp was reused? Have to think on that more.) So you’re left feeling like things ended with a whimper rather than a bang, if you get me. But there’s also so much room to expand and they seem to be doing it, so I’ll reserve my criticism for now.

--ugh and I just realized that I completely forgot to talk about the Monolith. Some of that is that I didn’t feel as emotionally connected to those characters, with the exception of Jesse and Marin’s relationship. I wish we’d gotten more from and about those girls. I understood their anger and their politics, but I didn’t always feel like I was getting at the soul of them, if you get me. It’s easy for me to think about them as The Monolith as opposed to Jesse, Lora, and Ximena. Because that’s kind of how they operated in the story, I suppose. I’m not even entirely sure why Lora and Jesse were living with Charlie. (Little help?) I get why Ximena did, though, after her parents left. Jesse seems like she was legit adopted by Charlie, though, like Marin was by Rose. I suppose they really were childhood friends to lovers lmao. Are they children of the Source, too...? Lora in particular seemed to have an affinity for the Source and what lay within it...

God. I do wonder what might’ve happened if Walter had never promised Omega Mart to Cecelia. If he hadn’t encouraged her to pour her entire life into a company that he never truly intended to give her. Would she have stayed in 7MV with Rose and Charlie? Would she have raised Marin attentively? Would she have attained the internal satisfaction she’s clearly reaching for with LAT? (And is she trying to use those ideas to heal the world, like Rose is in 7MV...?) Or would her drive to create and control manifest differently and just as destructively? Would it have been worse if she’d raised Marin herself? It’s so hard to know.

(And what... is the nature of the relationship between Rose and Cecelia... I don’t think they simply know each other through Charlie and Marin. They seemed so close during the Source ceremony and pregnancy... I don’t know, though!)

I suppose my thoughts on Omega Mart aren’t quite as cohesive as my thoughts on HoER because I think there’s more to come with OM. Again, it just doesn’t feel done. I did enjoy it! I don’t want this to come off like I didn’t have a good time and didn’t respect what was there. I had a great time. I just enjoyed HoER a bit more, which surprised me. Either way, I’m looking forward to eventually making it to Convergence Station! Probably next year. :)

...also I just realized I haven’t posted any photos from either trip! I’ll have to do that soon. :o!