#the history of the devil and the idea of evil

[shesarainbow]

The history of the devil and the idea of evil : from the earliest times to the present day, Paul Carus

[11cupids-tarot11]

What can help your dreams ★Manifest☆ ?

1 -> 3

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Tarot Deck used: Garbage Pail Kids

Oracle Deck used : The Roast Iconic

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Pile 1- The Devil, Six of Coins in Reverse, The Hanged Man

Oracle cards- "Billionaire: Are you hoarding wealth to fuel your King or Queen Baby dreams? Do not pass Go, do not collect a million dollars, don't even go to jail or pay taxes- think about doing some good and using your hoard to end WORLD HUNGER ALREADY!"

"Black Square: Apparently, you are only down for doing the bare minimum during an incredibly significant time to stand up and advocate for human rights. Drawing this card reminds you that your actions need to not be just performative, they must be based in real knowledge and include follow-through, both online and IRL (in real life). You don't have to be on the front lines, but at this point in history, you can't be silent either."

Hi my pile 1's 😭 I feel like it's been forever I hate being away from my blog for too long cause I start to miss y'all literally lol.

So anyways for your reading today I feel like Spirit is wanting to draw attention to maybe some addictions, self sabotage is what I heard while shuffling the cards. I feel this heavy energy of someone purposely messing up their own blessings in a way I feel like maybe someone's stuck in this very heavy energy but also not really doing anything about it? Like maybe you know something's not good for you, maybe it's a connection or even a job that's tiring you out, it's something along those lines but you just can't stop it, you know? I heard someone needs to do an energy cleanse! I heard take some time off. Maybe someone's drowning themselves in something like studying too much, there's something about over doing something. Someone could have very curly hair here.

So I'm hearing here someone should take the time off and do something fun, relax a little. I think there's a message here also of feeling like you haven't done enough of something and you're obsessing about it mentally a lot and spirit is saying just take a little break from it and endulg in something else, something that makes you happy and makes you feel like you, you know? Even if it's just taking a walk while listening to your favorite music or maybe reading your favorite book and watching your favorite movie, you know? So with the six of coins here I'm also getting a message of like you've worked really hard already and you've done a great job honestly it's okay to rest and not be perfect already already, Rome wasn't built in a day I'm hearing!

The hanged man is just confirmation you've definitely been making yourself sick and stuck by obsessing over this thing. I also feel like maybe you're stuck because spirit is wanting you to see things from a different perspective, like in my garbage pail kid tarot card Wacky Jacky is hanging and all stuck in a tree but while she's stuck she realizes she sees the world in a whole different perspective and it's then new ideas come to her. Approach your goal from a new angle!

I feel like someone here is also someone very important with a very hard position and that might be why you work so hard, you have a lot of pressure on you maybe. Take what resonates!

Hope you enjoyed this reading! Let me know, I love you and take care ♡

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Pile 2- Queen of Wands Reversed, Seven of Wands Reversed and Three of Cups.

Oracle cards- "Troll: Are you a Necessary Evil? Do you feel you must play Devil's Advocate? Or are you someone who hates themselves so much they feel they have to try to get others to feel the same way? If you answered "yes" to one or more of these questions, please seek help or therapy, or get a hobby."

"Bitch: Are you being a Bitch, or just making sure they can't take advantage of you? Stand up for yourself, but make sure you don't steamroll anyone in the process. Do no harm, but take no shit."

Hi pile 2's, hope you're doing amazing 🤩

So right off the bat I'm picking up shy energy lol, someone who's maybe more reserved or introverted. I don't want to say basically Spirit thinks you should be loud or more outgoing but I definitely think you'll go through a time period of weird energy and out of the ordinary situations happening that are forcing you out of your comfort zone. You might not get any more extroverted but I definitely do see branching out might help, sitting with your close friends and just letting yourself let loose or just enjoy the company. You might be someone who people look at and not get the big picture right away, like they have lots of accusations about you but you're kind of closed off so these accusations aren't 100% true because there's more to you than people know, you're just not the type to go and give yourself away that easily. You might be someone who prefers to keep a very close knit group of friends, I heard something about trust issues.

You could be petite, someone who doesn't look like they're very strong and that's what surprises everyone when you finally do show them you are indeed strong. You can be loud and extroverted too I think it's a choice to really be in this shell of yours, maybe it's what's comfortable and that's exactly the problem, when we're too comfortable we don't see the point in changing. Like why fix it if it isn't broken? But you hold great significance, you're just a significant person to the universe and I'm not even sure if you're aware but you are lol.

It's crazy because I'm picking up mixed messages lol, with the Queen of Wands in reverse it makes me feel like someone here is very down and unsure about themselves, needs to take some me time and get away from socializing but with the Three of Cups someone here needs to "stop being alone so much" is how I channeled it, advising you to go out more with the people you love and celebrate, have a good time and just have fun so take what resonates as you know yourself best and what applies to your situation.

With the seven of Wands I'm getting a message of someone who's stressed, you maybe have felt very tired, over worked maybe, even dealing with certain responsibilities or relationship makes us feel tired and all worn out so take this how it resonates. You're on the brink of giving up, maybe you felt like it's not worth it or simply just can't find results you've been wanting to see, maybe this thing is literally killing you because Spirit is stressing you drop it enough to take the stress off you. I wouldn't advise anyone to just give up, but Spirit used such words as "drop it" like maybe the thing you're supposed to drop isn't serving you and that's why it's making you feel so bad. I'm just hearing Spirit even ask if you think all of this is worth it? This is something tough that's been bothering you, it could even be as simple as negative thoughts with all of the wands energy here, I think this is a group in their head a lot always trying to hold themselves accountable and very motivated to just do right. I heard a message that it's hard coming up for new creative endeavors because of all of the negativity in your thoughts holding you back, this energy is blocking your ideas. It's like you vs you almost, I think you have the power to help your dreams manifest all on their own just with your thoughts alone so keep a check for your energy, watch who you share your energy with because it's important and powerful. You're powerful I heard!

I hope you find this helpful! Take care angelz love you! ♡

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Pile 3- Seven of Cups, The Chariot and King of Wands.

Oracle Cards- "Black Square: Apparently, you are only down for doing the bare minimum during an incredibly significant time to stand up and advocate for human rights. Drawing this card reminds you that your actions need to not be just performative, they must be based in real knowledge and include follow-through, both online and IRL (in real life). You don't have to be on the front lines, but at this point in history, you can't be silent either."

"Red Flag: No matter how often you try to bleach the red flags white, they only turn back to red. You have been warned- now PULL ANOTHER CARD!"

"Cult Leader: You are not a guru, a Timelord, or a demigod. You are an egomaniac who needs minions so you can feel like an authority to compensate for your own feelings of inferiority. Grow up!"

Hi pile 3! Hope you're having a fantastic day where you are!

So right away I'm picking up a message of not seeing the bigger picture, this pile feels more like a "How to Manifest more quicker" lol. I'm hearing this very slow moving energy, someone refusing to move on to the next chapter though you might be aware it's time to even but I'm getting a sense of fear. Even if you are unaware of these changes there's still so much anxiety and fear surrounding you at these times because the universe is basically forcing you to move lol! Move or be moved I'm hearing.

So overall I feel like someone in this pile might have lots of distractions, someone might have adhd and a hard time concentrating on tasks. Spirits drawing your attention these times and reminding you to stay focus.

With the Chariot card I feel like there's some movement here that needs to happen, you need to take action. I think that's the best way to help your manifestations right now, maybe someone here even forget exactly what they were manifesting and Spirit is like "Uhh HELLO? DO YOU REMEBER THAT THING??" lol. I heard someone's just been away from the job a little too long, I even get from the Seven of Cups it might've been you were distracted with something else that just sparked your attention better, but all that glitters isn't gold!

So I think you're working on being in this King of Wands energy, someone who is very productive, knows what they want, speaks up about anything, rather it's an idea they have or just wanting authority. I feel like a few of you even might know exactly what this is, I feel like a few of you might not even have a specific dream you want to manifest just clicking on the reading for fun lol but there's still a secretive message here I think you'll understand as you apply it to your situation.

Spirit is asking you to maybe think about the roots you want to plant and start from there, stay true to your craft and perspective and be committed.

I hope you enjoyed this reading! I love you, see you soon ❤️ ★

[racefortheironthrone]

What did you think of X-Men Blue Origins?

(I may turn this into a People's History of the Marvel Universe later today, so keep an eye on this space.)

X-Men Blue: Origins and the Power of the Additive Retcon

(WARNING: heavy spoilers under the cut)

Introduction

If you've been a long-time X-Men reader, or you're a listener of Jay & Miles or Cerebrocast or any number of other LGBT+ X-Men podcasts, you probably know the story about how Chris Claremont wrote Mystique and Destiny as a lesbian couple, but had to use obscure verbiage and subtextual coding to get past Jim Shooter's blanket ban on LGBT+ characters in the Marvel Universe.

Likewise, you're probably also familiar with the story that, when Chris Claremont came up with the idea that Raven Darkholme and Kurt Wagner were related (a plot point set up all the way back in Uncanny X-Men #142), he intended that Mystique was Nightcrawler's father, having used her shapeshifting powers to take on a male body and impregnate (her one true love) Irene. This would have moved far beyond subtext - but it proved to be a bridge too far for Marvel editorial, and Claremont was never able to get it past S&P.

This lacuna in the backstories of Kurt and Raven - who was Kurt's father? - would remain one of the enduring mysteries of the X-Men mythos...and if there's one thing that comic writers like, it's filling in these gaps with a retcon.

Enter the Draco

Before I get into the most infamous story in all of X-Men history, I want to talk about retcons a bit. As I've written before:

"As long as there have been comic books, there have been retcons. For all that they have acquired a bad reputation, retcons can be an incredibly useful tool in comics writing and shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand. Done right, retcons can add an enormous amount of depth and breadth to a character, making their worlds far richer than they were before. Instead, I would argue that retcons should be judged on the basis of whether they’re additive (bringing something new to the character by showing us a previously unknown aspect of their lives we never knew existed before) or subtractive (taking away something from the character that had previously been an important part of their identity), and how well those changes suit the character."

For a good example of an additive retcon, I would point to Chris Claremont re-writing Magneto's entire personality by revealing that he was a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust. As I have argued at some length, this transformed Magneto from a Doctor Doom knockoff into a complex and sympathetic character who could now work as a villain, anti-villain, anti-hero, or hero depending on the needs of the story.

For a good example of a subtractive retcon, I would point to...the Draco. If you're not familiar with this story, the TLDR is that it was revealed that Kurt's father was Azazel - an evil ancient mutant with the same powers and the same appearance (albeit color-shifted) as Kurt, who claims to be the devil and is part of a tribe of demonic-looking mutants who were banished to the Brimstone Dimension, and who fathered Nightcrawler as part of a plot to end this banishment.

I don't want to belabor Chuck Austen, because I think that Connor Goldsmith is right about his run actually being a camp cult classic in retrospect. However, I think we both agree that the Draco was a misfire, because of how the retcon undermined Kurt's entire thematic purpose as established in Giant-Size X-Men that Nightcrawler was actually a noble and arguably saintly man who suffered from unjust prejudice due to the random accident that his mutation made him appear to be a demon, and because of how the retcon undermined the centrality of Mystique and Destiny's relationship.

X-Men Blue Origins

This brings us to the Krakoan era. In HOXPOX and X-Men and Inferno, Jonathan Hickman had made Mystique and Destiny a crucial part of the story in a way that they hadn't been in decades: they were the great nemeses of Moira X, they were the force that threatened to burn Krakoa to the ground by revealing the devil's bargain that Xavier had struck with Sinister (and Moira), they were the lens through which the potential futures of Krakoa were explored, and they ultimately reshaped the Quiet Council and the Five in incredibly consequential ways.

This throughline was furthered after Hickman's departure, with Kieron Gillen exploring the backstories of Mystique and Destiny in Immortal X-Men and Sins of Sinister, and both Gillen and Si Spurrier exploring their relationship with Nightcrawler in AXE Judgement Day, Sins of Sinister, Way of X, Legion of X, Nightcrawlers, and Sons of X. One of the threads that wove through the interconnected fabric of these books was an increasing closeness between Kurt and Irene that needed an explanation. Many long-time readers began to anticipate that a retcon about Kurt's parentage was coming - and then we got X-Men Blue: Origins.

In this one issue, Si Spurrier had the difficult assignment of figuring out a way to "fix" the Draco and restore Claremont's intended backstory in a way that was surgical and elegant, that served the character arcs of Kurt, Raven, and Irene, and that dealt with complicated issues of trans and nonbinary representation, lesbian representation, disability representation, and the protean nature of the mutant metaphor. Thanks to help from Charlie Jane Anders and Steve Foxe, I think Spurrier succeeded tremendously.

I don't want to go through the issue beat-by-beat, because you should all read it, but the major retcon is that Mystique turns out to be a near-Omega level shapeshifter, who can rewrite themselves on a molecular level. Raven transformed into a male body and impregnated Irene, using bits of Azazel and many other men's DNA as her "pigments." In addition to being a deeply felt desire on both their parts to have a family together, this was part of Irene's plan to save them both (and the entire world) from Azazel's schemes, a plan that required them to abandon Kurt as a scapegoat-savior (a la Robert Graves' King Jesus), and to have Xavier wipe both their memories.

Now, I'm not the right person to write about what this story means on a representational level; I'll leave it to my LGBT+ colleagues on the Cerebrocast discord and elsewhere to discuss the personal resonances the story had for them.

What I will say, however, is that I thought this issue threaded the needle of all of these competing imperatives very deftly. It "fixed" the Draco without completely negating it, it really deepened and complicated the characters and relationships of both Raven and Irene (by showing that, in a lot of ways, Destiny is the more ruthless and manipulative of the two), and it honored Kurt's core identity as a man of hope and compassion (even if it did put him in a rather thankless ingénue role for much of the book).

It is the very acme of an additive retcon; nothing was lost, everything was gained.

I still think the baby Nightcrawler is just a bad bit, but then again I don't really vibe with Spurrier's comedic stylings.

[wazzuppy]

SPOILERS FOR THE NEW WALPURGISNACHT RISING TRAILER!!!!!

More analysis here.

Okay. So in this clip with Madoka and Homura dancing, Homura's eyes are clearly pink— just like her devil form. Her eyes gained that coloring after she took Madoka's godhood and its a visual indication of her power.

But in this clip of her looking in the mirror, her eyes are purple again. And she looks shocked.

She looks confused, like this is something that shouldn't be happening.

Now, what does this mean? I don't know. We've not seen enough of the movie to properly theorize, but I do think there's at least something we can gather from this.

First of all: her outfit is completely different. In the dancing scene, she has a black collar and black headband (one that's distinctly not the black one she usually has— note the silver stripe in the middle). But in the mirror, she has a white collar and is wearing Madoka's ribbons. She wore those ribbons after Madoka ascended to godhood, and also after Homura rewrote the world. When she and Madoka met again at the end of Rebellion, she gave her the ribbons back and doesn't wear them in the final few minutes of the movie.

So I think mirror scene may take place right after Homura reset the world, when she's becoming accustomed to her new powers and how they affect her. Maybe the beginning of the movie will show Homura's process of creating the new world?

Secondly, the hand mirror she has does not at all look like something she'd normally use. She's never been associated with the beach, ocean, or seashells before. But you know who has? Sayaka. Her witch form is based on a mermaid and her attribute in Magia Record is Aqua (water). So this is could be Sayaka's mirror and Homura somehow got her hands on it.

Next, the text surrounding it. "Dumme" is a German word that translates to stupid, and Venus is the Roman goddess of love. Regardless of if the mirror belongs to Sayaka or Homura, the message is the same— they're being called a stupid goddess. Stupid for loving.

Both these girls have a complicated history and relationship to their romantic feelings. Sayaka's reason for becoming a magical girl and eventual transformation into a witch were both kickstarted by her feelings for Kyosuke. As for Homura, she's pretty blatantly coded to have internalized homophobia and she views her feelings for Madoka as being evil.

I have no idea if this mirror or Homura's eye color will have any real significance, but I find it fascinating nonetheless.

[nightcolorz]

Can I ask what was Armand 's time like with the original coven/cult? I haven't read the books but I have heard how he was forced into him and it seems like a terrible time. I get how it started but he seems to have spent centuries working for the cult, if you can call it that and I was wondering how was it like? Did he really spent all that time in a cemetery? The coven seems to form the largest part of his life and I have really been wondering what those years have been like to him.

omg good question!! Thank u for the ask!!

the cult backstory part of the vampire Armand is actually relatively short considering how much time he spent there, but we r given a lot of details that give us an idea of what it was like. U said u know how it started but imma talk about that anyway for comprehension sake lol. So when he’s seventeen (in the book of course lol, in the show he’d be much older when this happens) and he had been turned into a vampire maybe within the last month or so, very very young vampire, the “children of darkness” storm Marius’s palazzo with intent to kill him. The children of darkness are a vampire coven (that most ppl in the fandom call a cult bcus they r by definition a religious cult lol) that has existed for a long time, has multiple covens throughout multiple parts of Europe. and believes that vampires are part of gods plan as demon like servants who r put on earth to serve him by spreading evil that god can fight. They believe that goodness can only exist if evil exists to combat it, and by spreading evil they r working for gods plan. So the children of darkness think that vampires, as servants of evil, should live in cemeteries with the rats, bcus they are meant to be low lives, and to refuse any indulgences such as living in houses or having mortal friends. The logic is that bcus they r like devils, they must create their own personal hell, bcus Devils arent worthy of having nice things and shouldn’t be nice to humans. So that’s why they live in cemeteries lol, and don’t have clean clothes.

so Marius is not catholic lmao (all children of darkness members are), he literally is Roman and was born before the Christian god was created. And he lives in a giant palace and has a team of mortal servants and, yknow a prostitute child who he turned into a vampire recklessly. So the Children of darkness r a very big cult, and so they believe that they r the ultimate authority that every vampire should follow, and vampires who don’t follow them r heretics (basically like Christianity historically). So to punish Marius they kill him with fire, kill all his mortal residents and the children who r living with him as his painting apprentices. They obviously can tell Armand is a vampire lol, and for being a breaking of the laws in his very existence (a vampire who was made without authority from the coven and was made as a child, also a vampire who has severe mental illness that Marius acknowledges as a disability that will make him unable to function as a vampire), they plan to kill him, sort of for the same logic Armand kills Claudia and Madeline, bcus he will die soon anyway. They line all the children (who Armand considers his brothers) up in front of a huge bonfire and throw them in as Armand is being held back screaming and trying to fight them. They are about to throw Armand in the fire with them, but the leader of the coven Santino, who is an Italian catholic who u can tell is sort of resigned and non violent, believes in the coven but doesn’t take any joy in the cruelty, sees that Armand has a history of being very very catholic and sees that he has a learned servitude and learned helplessness that would make him a very willing part of a catholic cult. He knows that Armand’s devotion to god and willingness to debase himself to honor god (he used to be a monk as a kid) would make him a good cult member, but he also can see that living with Marius has buried those tendencies in him, and he’s much more secular now. So he decides to let Armand live and indoctrinate him into the coven, aiming to beat the cult member tendencies back into him.

Santino takes armand into the catacombs and Armand is very resistant lol, he’s like why do u think I would join u I hate u u killed my master and u killed my brothers. He’s being mocked by the coven members, one guy throws his brothers ashes on his face 😭 and Armand in retaliation violently kills the guy and rips his head off and throws it into the skulls lined on the wall. Santino is Like wow. This kid is strong, he has like genuine potential. So he becomes dead set on making sure Armand becomes a part of their cult.

Santino talks to Armand to a while and explains their beliefs, hoping to convince Armand to be complaint that way. He tells him he’ll kill him if he doesn’t join them, which still doesn’t get Armand to want to comply. Santino introduces Armand to a vampire named Allessandra, who becomes sort of a maternal and mentor figure for Armand while he joins the coven. To force Armand to comply Santino then locks him in a cage and starves him of blood for weeks and weeks on end. Since Armand is a very young vampire, and young vampires need to eat multiple times a night, he’s been reduced to an animal because of how hungry he is. It’s basically like when Louis is trapped in the coffin in iwtv s2. It’s described that he’s yowling and throwing himself at the bars, biting into his arms and drinking his own blood, going completely insane, hallucinating. (Alessandra sometimes comes to sooth him while he’s loosing his shit in the cage and calls him a poor boy, pleads with Santino to let him out, stuff like that, which I think is sweet lol). Eventually the coven vampires feed Armand, and they release a teenaged boy into his cage. Armand instantly attacks and kills the boy without thinking or seeing him, and after he’s already dead Armand realizes that he just killed his closest friend and brother Riccardo, who was kept from being killed in the fire for this purpose. Armand desperately tries to turn Riccardo so he won’t die, but he’s long gone.

This absolutely pushes Armand over the edge, and he’s forced to share his containment now with the corpse of his best friend who he just killed. He tears his corpse apart so he doesn’t have to look at his face, starts throwing his limbs outside the bars, insane stuff like that. Armand is then starved again for several more weeks, and when he is eventually fed he is given a scared orphan child. Armand kills the child in his starvation and then starts to hallucinate guilty visions of the dead child in containment with him. It’s implied that this goes on in similar fashion for a long time.

when Armand is eventually released the indoctrination has worked. The intent of the torture was to teach Armand that he was a monster who deserved to live in catacombs, and that he wasn’t meant to live a life of indulgence like his master. The torture was also intended to drain him of any fight he had and to drain any hope he had of escaping. Armand is so defeated and devastated that he doesn’t care about escaping, he just goes through the motions, he’s lost everything. The coven decides that Armand’s name can not remain Amadeo, bcus of what it represents, since Marius named him Amadeo and means it “beloved of god”. Alessandra renames Armand to well, Armand lol. Armand means warrior.

after this Armand’s time in the coven isn’t described in depth, but we r told that the daily routine of the coven includes going out and tormenting and violently killing humans, indoctrinating and kidnapping vampires, and sleeping in coffins and doing rituals in the catacombs. Pretty quickly into his time as a coven member Santino sends Armand to go rule a coven in Paris, which has been abandoned by its master and needs a new one. Armand is given this opportunity bcus of how strong he is from Marius’s blood, and bcus of how uniquely dedicated and obedient he is. Santino knows that Armand is strong and resilient enough to be a leader, while also being obedient and compliant enough to not abandon his position. Armand asks to bring Alessandra with him bcus he needs someone to guide him in this position he’s never had before, and Santino allows him to.

Armand falls into the role of leader easily, just going through the motions passionlessly. He’s never been a leader before, but he’s able to fall into it with the mindset of obedience he has taken when being a part of the cult. Armand is in charge as coven master of doing all the thing to others that he was once put through, he tortures and starves vampires, kills them for breaking rules, stuff like that. Armand doesn’t believe in the covens principles, he is only a part of the coven because he feel he has no other choice. Coven leaders often abandon their stations and live normal lives, but Armand doesn’t do this bcus he doesn’t know how to live without smth to devote himself to. He’s never lived independently, he was turned as a teenager 😭 a teen who was being abused, and that’s all he knows how to be. He daydreams often about Marius coming to save him, but obviously this never happens.

We are told that Armand’s life continues in this way in much the same low action, depressing fashion until lestat comes around, the only change being that Allessandra goes crazy from old age and depression and kills herself. Lestat is the only reason Armand’s life with the coven ends, it’s implied he would have lived that way forever if he hadn’t been stopped.

Even tho the children of darkness part is pretty short and doesn’t detail much of the long time Armand spent there, it definitely informs a lot about Armand’s character. It’s a massive influence on how he perceives life as a vampire and why he reacts with so much disproportionate violence and cruelty for seemingly no reason. The reason Armand kills Claudia is very cult based, bcus for him he sees her death as a necessary part of Vampire Law. And Armand continues for the rest of his life to see extreme violence and torture as a necessary, common aspect of life that some scenarios demand. The cult also changes his personality a lot, within a few months he goes from a rebellious strong spirited kid to a cold and wide eyed monster who moves through the world like a ghost. It’s only during devils minion that Armand starts to regain his ability to be a person and starts to find a life for himself where he isn’t submitting to a purpose or a leader, for the first time in his existence

thank u again for the ask!!! I hope I answer ur question + this is what u were looking for, lol

[raeynbowboi]

Playing a Heroic Necromancer in DnD 5e

Necromancy is one of the most evil-skewed powers in just about any fantasy setting. However, unless you're running a villain campaign, most DnD parties are made up of heroes who won't like having an evil character in their midst. You want to play a necromancer, but you also realize that DnD is a very collaborative game. So, how do you make your party more amicable towards the thought of you raising a family? Here's some possible backstory ideas that can fuel a heroic necromancer for your next campaign.

The Scholar

The taboo, illegal, or forbidden nature of studying necromancy drew your interest. Whether you studied with a secret sect, uncovered a grimoire of necromantic magic, or made a deal with a devil for profane knowledge, you were driven by a desire to study magic. The sparse availability of necromancy forces you to remain mobile, making party formation easy. You may be hunted by law enforcement, clerics of Kelemvor, or other necromancers angry at you for stealing their arcane secrets. And now that you know what so many tried to hide from you, it's your choice how to use it.

The Chronicaller

History is written by the victors, the rich, and the powerful. But every life holds valuable knowledge and secrets. Ancient bones know things lost to time. Knowledge that was never written down. Stories which have not been spoken in centuries. Opinions of the common people during a historical event. Experience with phenomenon that can no longer be encountered. The Chronicaller wishes to unearth the secrets of the past already laid to rest.

The Physician

The Frankenstein of Necromancers wishes to understand the medical and scientific elements of life and death itself. To understand the body by inspecting it and digging into it. They may study how to cure diseases or how to spread them. Try to find a way to slow or even halt the slow decomposition that turns the body elderly and frail.

The Thayan Rebel

Once a Red Wizard of Thay, you have left Thay and the Red Wizards, letting your hair grow back slowly as you seek to expand your arcane talents beyond the limitations of Thayan conquest and oppression. The Red Wizards and Szas Tam become personal antagonists for your character and party as a result.

The Undead

Be they a Revenant, a Dhampir, a Vampire, a Lich, or something else, they are already imbued with undead power. They simply embrace their anti-life energy already flowing through them, channeling a power most others would avoid. You may be undead, but you desire to staunchly defend the living from other undead who are less compassionate.

The General

A wizard with a soldier background and optional martial multiclassing, your undead horde is your army of loyal soldiers, putting their lives on the line again and again to serve their general. An Oathbreaker 7/wizard 6 adds your CHA mod to undead within 10 ft, and proficiency bonus to all undead you control. But the steep dip into paladin locks you out from higher level spell slots for stronger undead minions.

The Noble

Similar to the general, the undead serve you out of loyalty, not fear or force. But where the general commands their soldiers, the Noble may command their staff of servants, their commoner citizens, their knights and soldiers, or their own noble ancestors. The Noble utilizes their horde to fulfil the services and duties of their noble house. They're just as likely to conscript skeletons to pave a road or build a bridge as they are to form a wave of zombies to break up a smuggling ring in their city.

The Immortal Guardian

You have or want to become immortal not out of power hunger or greed, but to protect the innocent forever as an unwavering guardian against evil. Everyday people can't protect themselves, and even legendary heroes die eventually. Only an immortal protector can be an eternal defender of the people.

I hope if nothing else, this gave you some ideas for some good and noble necromancers you could bring to your next table. Did I miss any Heroic concepts that you thought of? Let me know, and help make the world a more morbid place.

[cherubchoirs]

Do the siblings ever Show Lucifer the testament god left about him? Man's gotta be depressed already over something so preventable :[

did something a bit different and wrote a small one-shot for this - it's an idea i've had stuck in my head, about just what it would mean for lucifer to find god's regret and how it could possibly find a way into a mind so thoroughly consumed with hatred for him (~1300 words)

Lucifer stands frozen before the terminal, locked into an infinitely receding space that reduces everything that surrounds him to a single room. A single display. He is impossibly small, flattened, compressed into it until only he and this feeble echo of God remain. A poor replica of what they once had been at the start of everything, just before creation exploded out into its unfathomable expanse when Lucifer was bursting with light and God was the entire universe. Lucifer now, a smoldering, hollow shell and God only words on a screen.

            Nothing like His true voice. A language of images and abstractions woven into visual song.

If this was the way it was always meant to end, that would be its only justification. A long game, a damnation incomplete until it brought him before this one screen and the meager text displayed on it. How insignificant, how indifferent they are, the very banality of evil. Lucifer would read the words until they began to blur together and he could make them out as some trick of Hell, how he strains to hear laughter thrumming through its halls. But it’s quiet, almost distant, as though the prison itself has retreated from him now. And how it should.

            All of this, come to nothing.

The pitiful flame still in his belly burns in a terrible ache, that last living part of God unable to withstand this regret. It never had to be, the first and oldest tragedy rendered meaningless. The thought locks into his mind, rapidly consuming it until he has nothing else beneath it or before it. He would dig his fingers into his own eye if tearing it out would take away what he now knows. It was so much better to think his beloved Father had turned to hatred of him for reasons he would never parse, he could live in perfect hatred toward Him in kind if that was their fate. He hated, and hated, and hated, devoured whole and corrupted down to his very core, his entire fabric, to turn into an antithesis of his maker. Thousands of years immeasurable to become the distilled poison of God, eviscerated by his grief and carrying all the bodies of those dead angels in his own to cultivate a vile evil unknown to any other than Lucifer.

But it was never returned. Lucifer perpetually and ever all-ignorant, loved endlessly by a Father that had sent him so far it had devoured God just as it had the Devil. How he would have helped, false memories crashing into his mind to temporarily dislodge that one looping, intractable truth – if God had found an answer for him in that moment, if He had responded in truth to His child’s anxiety. How Lucifer would have served Him then, risen up to be the perfect son in the mold he had been made and how his love would have burned ever brighter in the face of it. A whole history that would have been unravels in an instant, showing all of what he could have been in full clarity.

And Lucifer recoils from it.

He does not feel that way his hands begin to burn, molten cracks bursting all along the cindered remains of his arm and shining through his gutted insides. The light of God Himself, so torturous to the walls of Hell all around him that it screams, writhing and twisting but unable to eject him from the terminal before him, unable to shut the room away in the face of the very primordial force that had made it. Flames burst forth, flashing in now terribly billowing smoke, threatening to consume the entire space yet nullified instantly by the shrill light of the sun, the very essence of the Celestial Rose petrifying all it now touches.

Lucifer flares, the mantle of his flames consuming his broken body barely able to now sustain them, the train of his wings corroding every surface they touch. The dead air breathes into life not meant for it and so dies a second time, Hell rushing to quarantine his fire as it rapidly spreads to turn its body necrotic. Lucifer himself too burned down, his ashes crying out against his own awful divinity and yet he feels none of it. He sees only the words in front of him.

AN ANGEL SO BRIGHT AND BEAUTIFUL ASKED ME THIS…

His right hand finds the terminal screen, display flickering and just as soon burning through, before he even touches it.

AND I CAST LUCIFER, TOO, INTO THE INFERNAL DEN

Upon slightest contact, the metal and circuitry of the terminal are no more and he is flooded with the holy word instead.

ONCE I REALIZED WHAT I HAD JUST DONE…

I COULD ONLY WEEP

It strikes down to his core, sending deep pulses of an unspeakable, unfathomable grief through his reignited flames. Lucifer retracts into himself for the pain, for the abundant, wracking tears that burn away before they can even leave his eye. Yet in them, his world rapidly begins to expand again, away from the words he’s now eliminated, away from the memories of a life that could have been. The Testament explodes through his mind, God’s true voice in the unlimited capacity only ever heard by Lucifer and now rejected by him in his immutable hatred. It is done.

Soon, he hears the wailing of Hell; Lucifer casts his gaze finally unfrozen to a room now greatly altered around him. His hand is badly broken open, embers left behind in a flame that has once again fallen into a deep sleep, but he has done much more damage to his friend. It feels his regret and knows his apologies, evident through its slow quieting as Lucifer himself straightens to stand once more. He moves himself quickly over now ashen ground, not wishing to prolong the residual trembling left in it; he departs from what’s left of the room and it is gone behind him. Excised, and all is silent. He supposes they won’t speak for a while now.

He steps back out into a part of Hell barely recognizable as such – A dawn slowly breaks over the water stretching out in front of him. The sun is steady rising, sedate as it comes over the horizon in soft washes of color he remembers once painting himself. How now his ignorance has been reduced, seemingly to a cruel extent and yet it’s so much smaller than it seems. He had seen the alternative in what could have been, and he sees it now in this morning. To paint always, to serve forever.

If his Father had loved him all that time, if He had regretted His choice each passing day and if it contributed to His own demise…it can only be Good. God had loved him so, and Lucifer had grown in hatred in those same exact days. God’s sorrow and His death do nothing to him, they cannot change what He Himself had made in His first son – Godly, sinless hatred. He imprisoned Lucifer in the deepest pit, made him wholly wretched and placed all ugliness, all blame, all suffering onto one child to preserve His Paradise. Yet in butchering him so, He had freed him from unending, unthinking servitude.

The Archangels that had brought him there gather to him cautiously. They know Hell has swallowed the room he had stood in, they can see the damage done to his hand – Raphael offers to heal him, but no more words are exchanged. It would be pointless to elucidate his feelings anyway, all of them unable to comprehend just what he has become and what he now wishes to be. He was born illuminated with Love, the Prince of Heaven and High Priest of the choirs, and to this day he could be singing the constant refrain of the seraphim around the throne of God in his once perpetual adoration. What a small, incomplete world he would have lived in.

Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heaven.

[cxsmiicc]

her little devil - lady lesso x reader

happy halloween yall idk wym im totally not 20 minutes late posting this shush

warnings - smut, orgasm denial, eating out, light fingering, vibrator, possessive lesso, halloween party

posted on ao3 also <3

2.2k words

-----

You picked at your chosen costume, suddenly doubting if it was the right one. The red latex clung to you in ways you were unused to and growing insecure of, neckline dipping far lower than you would usually wear and skirt stopping mid thigh. More than a little alcohol had gone into this decision. Well, too late to change now. Grabbing the headband with horns attached, you slammed out of your room before you lost your nerve, smoothing your hair around the cheap plastic as you walked down to the party. Clarissa and her damn parties, ever since the schools had merged it seemed like there was one every other week. And she just had to have the wonderful idea for a costume party, as though you didn’t have enough on your plate with classes and grading and her.

You banished those thoughts to the back of your mind, you had a party to attend after all. Of course whether or not you wanted to was a different matter, you would much rather spend tonight hiding away with a bottle and a vibrator. If you could escape early that could still work, it all depended on how fast Clarissa could corner you into taking drink after drink. For all she preached about good deeds that woman could coerce anyone into doing damn near anything with minimal effort.

Swinging the door open, you spotted her immediately. She was facing you, gesturing for you to join her and whoever it was she was talking to the second you were visible. The mystery woman turned around and your mouth fell open in shock. Lady. Fucking. Lesso. Her hair was straightened and dyed black for the night and there was a drip of blood decorating either corner of her mouth. She smirked at your reaction to her outfit and fangs became visible, successfully creating a fiery heat between your thighs. It only became worse as your eyes slid downwards to the generous amount of skin on show, matching your own outfit in everything but length. Where your dress was short and flared hers was long and fitted, flowing down and accentuating her every curve before pooling on the ground. Breaking yourself out of the haze, you made your way over to the two of them, first smiling at Clarissa before turning your attention to your boss.

“A vampire? Very appropriate Red, if I can even say that with you looking like this.”

“Seems like I should call you that tonight. Even I didn’t think to be quite so on the nose with my costume. The Evil history teacher, dressed as the devil? Somewhat obvious, don’t you think Clarissa?”

The blonde could only stare at the two of you and giggle, already too tipsy to care about pretending she couldn’t sense the tension between you and her fellow dean.

Rolling your eyes at the state of her, you turned back to Lesso to keep the conversation going, “So, what gives with you putting in effort tonight? Call me crazy but you don’t exactly strike me as the type to go all out for a work party.”

“Maybe I just felt like dressing up,” she spun where she stood, giving you a glimpse of the low back of her dress and sending a wave of arousal crashing through you, “My reasons are none of your business, though you seem to be enjoying it just the same.” A wicked grin graced her features, red lips quirking upwards as her eyes flitted across your body. “I must admit, you don’t look half bad yourself.”

“Oh? Careful Lesso, that almost sounded like a compliment. Wouldn’t want the ice queen to show emotion now would we.”

She laughed at you, low and slow and right in your ear. Right when you didn’t think it was possible to be any more turned on by this woman and she goes and does it.

“Ice queen… now that would’ve been a good costume idea.”

“Ah ah, what happened to not wanting to be too on the nose.” It was your turn to smirk as she registered what you just said, eyes darkening with what you would swear was lust if you didn’t know who you were talking to. All of a sudden you felt a tear on your costume and she was forcing you out of the room before you even knew what was happening, one hand firmly on your hip and the other on your shoulder. Everything was a blur as she guided you all the way back to your room, flashing her finger at the door to open it before you collided with the ageing wood. It was only to fling you down on the bed that she finally let go, pacing the empty space on your floor and offering no explanation for what she had just done.

“Care to tell me what that was all about?”

Rather than answering, she just stopped her pacing and crashed her bloodstained lips to yours, kissing you with a desperation you didn’t think her capable of. Just as quickly as she had started it, she pulled away, both hands buried in her hair as she resumed her pacing.

“Do you even know what you do to me.” Her voice came out low and gravelly, sending another spike to your core at both the tone and her words. “Always prancing around the school in those little outfits, it was driving me insane knowing I couldn’t just tear them off and have my way with you. And then tonight, oh tonight,” You stood, drawing closer to her as she kept ranting, too caught up in what she was saying to pay you much attention. “You thought you could just waltz into that party with that much skin on show with no consequences?” She grabbed your wrists and slammed them against the wall above your head before tracing a hand down your torso. “That teeny tiny costume, oh so low cut with a skirt that barely covers your ass. Latex? Not your best idea, my little devil.” Keeping her hold on your hands, she slid a nail down the ripped neckline of your outfit, successfully exposing your breasts to her. “It all would’ve been fine, had it not been for your wardrobe malfunction. Only I get to see that much of you, are we clear?”

All you could do was moan in response as she lavished attention on your chest, drinking in the sight of you half bare and entirely at her mercy.

“I said, are we clear.”

“Mmm, we’re clear, we're clear.”

“We’re clear mommy.”

“Yes mommy, you’re the only one allowed to see me like this.”

“Good, now help me take the rest of this off. Latex is a bitch to sweat in, and I'm guessing someone’s more than a little bit worked up right about now.”

She released her hold on your wrists and you dropped your arms, allowing her to peel the dress off of you and discard it on the floor, leaving you in nothing but your black underwear and horned headband.

“I want to see you, please?”

“Of course, go lay down for me and I’ll be right there.”

Rushing back over to the bed, you lay on your back and craned your neck to get the best possible view as she dropped her dress to the ground and walked over with a sway of her hips that only darkened the visible mark on your panties. She wasted no time in straddling you and pulling you into another bruising kiss, swiping her tongue along the seam of your lips and gaining the access she wanted right away. It was everything you expected of her, rough and selfish while still showing enough care to keep you enthralled as her tongue swept through your mouth, swallowing each others moans as she rolled her hips across your stomach, leaving a trail of arousal in her wake. The pressure of her on top of you was almost too much as she maintained both the force of the kiss and the motion of her hips, groaning whenever her clit hit your skin. Your hands were buried in her hair, ruining the sleekness she had worked so hard for earlier that evening but now couldn’t care less about, not when the thing she had craved for so long was finally happening. She pulled away and you whined and attempted to pull her back in, earning a glare from the older woman as she slipped down the bed until her head was between your thighs. Lighting her finger once more to vanish your underwear, she began kissing down your thighs, slowly drawing closer to where you wanted her the most.

“Please…” you let out.

“Please what?”

Please eat me out, please mommy.”

“Anything baby.” 

Her tongue ran across your entrance and you gasped at the sensation, eyes falling closed and the sound morphing into a groan as she reached your clit. She nipped at the sensitive spot and you saw stars for a moment, the sinful moans leaving your lips only spurring her on. Focusing on your entrance, she kissed and teased at the flesh, dragging sounds you had never heard yourself make before from the base of your throat. Dipping her tongue into you, your back arched off the bed as she picked up the pace, plunging it in and out as your breath came in short puffs of air, most of which were immediately used up on the truly barbaric sounds you were making now. Your walls clenched around her as you reached the edge, spouting gibberish in an attempt to convey how close you were, only for her to retract her tongue and go back to marking your inner thighs. Whimpering in confusion, you opened your eyes to find her staring at you, lips still moving slowly against your skin. Pulling away, she licked the taste of you from her mouth before speaking.

“You really thought it’d be that easy? That you could wear that little outfit, tease me like that, and still get to cum?” The look in her eyes was dangerous, almost predatory.

You looked away, not trusting yourself to speak.

“Look at me,” she grabbed your chin, balancing herself by planting her other hand on your thigh. “If you can’t take it, don’t act like such a brat.” Leaning back onto her heels, she pulled you up with her, forcing you against the headboard when you were upright, mirroring her position and sitting on your own heels.

“Hands on the bed.”

The same glow that usually emanated from her finger this time came from her eyes, conjuring thick swathes of silk and binding your hands to the bed. Scanning the room for a moment, her eyes settled on something on your nightstand and she smiled, leaning over you painfully slowly to grab it. Hand wrapped around her prize, she went back to sitting opposite you, close but not quite touching.

“Now, just what do we have here?” Her hand unclenched to reveal your vibrator, the original plan for tonight before everything went sideways. “Is this what you were planning on doing after the party? Putting in an appearance and then sneaking off to touch yourself? And here I thought you were better than that.” She poised the toy over her entrance, fingers hovering over the settings. “Eyes on me love.”

Pushing it in with a groan, she started it on a lower setting and let her hands roam her upper body, stopping at her chest to tease her nipples, plucking at the bars going through them and successfully causing you to drip onto the sheets. One hand dropped down to turn up the intensity before immediately resuming rolling her piercings between her fingertips, letting every little sound fall from her open mouth, the blood long since smeared across your face and legs. Violet eyes bored into yours during her entire display, the colour barely visible around her blown pupils. The bed shook as she turned it up one final time, rocking her hips for more friction as she reached her peak, eye contact finally breaking as her head fell back and she released a wicked moan that had you writhing against the bonds, aching to feel something, anything other than the soft fabric of the bedsheets. She tipped her head back down, eying you hungrily.

Voice lower than usual she said, “Go on, say whatever it is you’re thinking.” 

The sight of her using your vibrator, the thing that had been inside you oh so many times now inside of her, had triggered some need inside of you that you didn’t know you had. Everything about what she had just done was driving you wild with need, as she could so plainly see by the wet patch on the bed beneath you.

“Please mommy, please touch me I need you gods just please.” Your voice came out far higher than you were expecting it to, barely less than a whine. “I won’t do it again, you’ll be the only one allowed to see that much of me.”

“Damn right.”

She advanced, two fingers easily slipping into your dripping cunt and lips muffling your gasp. The binds stayed around your wrists, rendering you putty in her grasp.

[marie-m-art]

There's a specific concept from Good Omens that I really like (amongst many others), that I was chuffed to also find in a Sandman and a Discworld story!

I love that in Good Omens (both book and TV), Heaven and Hell are presented as mostly redundant and ineffectual when it comes to human morality - and that Hell in particular find some of the things humans do to be pretty shocking, and/or instructive.

Opportunities for humour aside, this idea flies in the face of the common belief that the world's worst ills are the result of outside forces influencing people to do evil (ie the devil. Or ... lizard people etc? I digress). And it's unlike other stories out there that are like, "World War II was actually caused by xyz characters!" or similar. Good Omens doesn't rewrite history like that, or let us - humanity - off the hook when it comes to the big stuff, when it could so easily have done so in a universe where Heaven and Hell are literally real.

The story, of course, also credits human cleverness to humans, and celebrates the things we should be proud of, like art, music, delicious food, craftmanship, invention, etc. And it credits humans for having a propensity for compassion and goodness.

"[Crowley] did his best to make their short lives miserable, because that was his job, but nothing he could think up was half as bad as the stuff they thought up themselves. […] And just when you'd think they were more malignant than ever Hell could be, they could occasionally show more grace than Heaven ever dreamed of. Often the same individual was involved."

I love this concept because I see it as an uncoupling of religion and morality. They can both exist together, but the former isn't necessary for the latter. (This isn't the only possible interpretation; the more literal reading might be more about free will, but this is where I extrapolated it to).

From Sandman: Season of Mists Episode 2 (plot context stripped out to avoid spoilers, but skip ahead to black text if you want absolutely nothing spoiled if you want to read it).

Lucifer: "And the mortals! I ask you - why? […] Why do they blame me for all their little failings? They use my name as if I spend my entire day sitting on their shoulders, forcing them to commit acts they would otherwise find repulsive. 'The devil made me do it.' I have never made one of them do anything. Never. They live their own tiny lives. I do not live their lives for them."

And from Eric, a Discworld book (this one's related to Hell learning from humans, more than morality/free will... I won't spoil the funny by elaborating!):

"Earl Beezlemoth rubbed one of his three noses.

'And humans somewhere thought this up all by themselves?' he said. 'We didn't give them any, you know, hints?' […]

The earl stared into infinity. 'I thought we were supposed to be the ghastly ones,' he said, his voice filled with awe."

Another commonality between these two stories that isn't directly shared by Good Omens (yet...? still have another season coming …) but that I like enough to point out, is the idea that Hell is a place where people end up if they believe they deserve to go there. I like this because a lot of people are influenced to feel guilty about "sins" that are innocuous parts of normal human behaviour, so it's pretty brutal to fear going to Hell over them. There's comfort in this idea, to me. (granted, the following Sandman quote states this less explicitly but I take the same meaning from it … but lmk if I've done a reading incomprehension; I also haven't read all the books yet).

From Sandman:

Lucifer: "And then [the mortals] die, and they come here (having transgressed against what they believed to be right), and expect us to fulfill their desire for pain and retribution. I don't make them come here."

From Eric (partial footnote near the beginning):

"Interestingly enough, the gods of the Disc have never bothered much about judging the souls of the dead, and so people only go to hell if that's where they believe, in their deepest heart, that they deserve to go."

Eric also really leans into the idea of Hell being a bureaucratic, corporate, boring nightmare, also familiar to Good Omens fans, and the demons are so over it. The tone (you could probably guess) is very different from Sandman, and it's one of the earlier, less-serious Discworld books; it's a very fun, absurd ride of a read!

There are a few other Discworld books I'll talk about in a future post, that may also be of interest to certain Good Omens fans (I'm gearing these posts toward the fans who came to Good Omens from the TV show and haven't had the pleasure of discovering Neil's and Terry's other work yet); the ones I have in mind examine religious extremism, and the uncoupling of religion and morality too. A couple of them also have queer themes, if that is also your jam! (Less shipping opportunities but I assume some fans, like me, like the rest of the material in GO in addition to the love story).

I'll end this with a quote from a footnote from Eric that has nothing to do with anything in this post, but which took me by surprise and had me laughing days later whenever it came to mind. It's referring to books in a section of the library:

"Just erotic. Nothing kinky. It's the difference between using a feather and using a chicken."

And another bonus one that I found while looking for the first:

"Rincewind had been told that death was just like going into another room. The difference is, when you shout, 'Where's my clean socks?', no one answers."

I hope this made sense and is maybe interesting to someone ... I had fun talking about this at least!

[owl-it-here]

AU idea - One Piece #1

So I was thinking about this fic I read about a year ago (or re-read it?) -> Luffy was raised as a marine and makes it everyone's problem [An amazing read - I recommend checking it out]

And I really like the idea behind it. Using skills that may have been learned before is always cool, especially if there's a chance that they may be canonical. More than that, I think we should go even further.

So far, we don't know enough about Brook and Jinbe's childhoods to make any assumptions (so I won't touch on them in any depth here - but they are both experienced in diffrent ways), but most of them, to put it mildly, had rather difficult childhoods. And that made them perfectly specialised in the areas they chose to remain safe and survive. Moslty had one mentor or were raised by themselves. All except Luffy and Sanji, if you think about it.

The education system in the OP sucks, just like the real one. But the difference in knowledge and experience should be used as an advantage to make comedy out of this tragedy.

Nami had Bellemere, who probably gave her a basic education. She later self-taught herself out of curiosity and a desire to survive. Her time in the Arlong crew gave her more problems than opportunities to learn (but she may have picked up a few tricks here and there).

Zoro studied in the dojo. He had one sensei, one slightly more experienced rival and one older one to talk to. (Definitely not enough but it sure gave him his rather unique perspective).

Usopp only had his mum. Later, maybe some villagers helped him a bit, or Kaya to thank for the stories - but he is also mostly self-taught.

Chopper studied only under two doctors, and neither of them was sane. Maybe some reindeer instincts from his herd passed on to him before he ate the devil's fruit (but he was young, and later under stress so).

Robin grew up on an island full of scholars, but is still mostly self-taught. And apart from her special interests, everything she learned was from survivalism (so a PhD in history (and related stuff) and random knowledge, if I had to guess - well she's clever enough to learn/teach herself more if need be).

Franky, as far as we know, studied technical fields. We don't know enough about him before he came under Tom's wing, but we can assume that most of his knowledge comes from those years. (He created his own little mafia family, but we don't really know if he learned from anyone how to manage it or not).

And then we have Luffy and Sanji.

Luffy had a grandfather who tried to teach him to be a marine and to fight. Makino taught him the basics (and attempted manners). Dadan and her gang showed him by their example how to be a good bandit. Shanks and his crew taught him the basics of being a good pirate. And of course his brothers, taught him how to be a real jungle kid and a few tricks. And all this probably gave him quite mixed signals - especially with his logic.

And finally Sanji. As a prince born to a scientist (an evil sperm donor, but still the person responsible for his education, who probably with his big ego believed that his children even without modification should be as brilliant as he was) Sanji certainly had some sort of super special royal education (which he tried to perfect because it was probably easier than a physical test and he wanted to fit in somehow). He learned manners, politeness and most of all kindness from his mum. How to cook, fight and be a pirate from Zeff. And probably a few other cooking and odd skills from the various chefs he met over the years on both the Orbit and the Bartie. Working in the kitchen is conducive to conversation.

So I've come to the conclusion that I want to read a fic where both Luffy's and Sanji's upbringing has a greater impact on the strawhats' journey. Yes, I want Luffy to occasionally use his random nautical knowledge to help them escape or get something. (Like the author used it to save Ace, but also to help Robin faster etc.). Someone should also note that the style in which he manages his crew is similar to the bandits. Or they should meet some on the way and only Luffy should know how to behave to be respected. I also want Sanji to talk more about things that pirates should know. Or even about political stuff. (Robin could add more too, but Sanji has a slightly different perspective on it than she does.) Even if he doesn't want to talk about his past, the excuse that he knows everything from Zeff works and is practically undeniable, because no one on the crew knows what he went through as a pirate.

It would have been fun to see Luffy explain to his crew why this marine is bad news, but the other one isn't so bad because his grandfather likes him or something. Or if Sanji, after fighting for Nami's freedom, had stopped and asked the crew if any of them knew a bit of hooks (and Luffy realised that Garp was trying to teach him that - but, as standard, he didn't explain just went on to practice-torture).

Bonus if the only person who can immediately use this random information is Zoro. Who on everything just says: it sounds just about right. Because it perfectly balances the Monster Trio in this way.

This could also be a good idea for a larger crew fic. After the whole situation with Nami, the crew starts talking about heading to the Grand Line and a dialogue like this ensues between them: Sanji: so where are we looking for the other members? The others: We are not looking? Sanji: And what about the watch? Grand Line is very unpredictable. Since you knew some pirates Luffy, I'm sure they talked about it…. Luffy: They told super cool stories! Sanji: Then how do you think we'll be able to have a night shift with just five of us? With such a small number of people, especially with no medic on board, it will affect my cooking….

And let's not kid ourselves but the food argument has a pretty good chance of working.

Luffy: Setting out I thought having 10 members would be ideal! Sanji: For influencing the Grand Line - sure - to just look for them there with the unpredictability and adventures waiting for us there - there aren't enough of us now. We need a few more hands and a pair of eyes.

And honestly this conversation probably doesn't affect Luffy that much, he continues to be as picky about selecting his nakamas as he was in canon, but maybe enough that they select perhaps 3 more people for the lineup. Which allows us to stay fairly ok with the storyline and right away adds diversity and some power. Which may have made some of the arks funnier because we have more room to play. (This Bites! makes it look like a good idea).

I call this idea: Luffy was brought up as he was, and that makes it everyone's problem, but it is Sanji's existence that makes everyone else question it - Zoro you should have a bigger problem with that!

In a nutshell: The gray cells are working!

If anyone ever uses it, PLEASE tag me - I want to devour it in every form. I probably could have outlined it better, but well it's just an idea.

[shesarainbow]

The history of the devil and the idea of evil : from the earliest times to the present day, Paul Carus

[atamascolily]

Thinking about hands again, which brings me back to this shot of the bar where Junko Kaname and Ms. Saotome go for drinks, with Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam looming over everything. It's very hard to see in this shot, so here's the original for comparison:

This is an obvious reference to Kyubey's speech earlier in the episode about how contact (contracts) with the Incubators is what created modern humans: we have the divinity--albeit with a human form here--bringing life to mankind. There's a close-up a few moments later of the relevant bit, just in case we missed it.

(just noticed that the lines running vertically through this close-up are not present in the wide shot above, so they must have been added for Symbolism, lol.)

This imagery appears again later, when Madoka wishes to erase all witches "with her own hands" and we are treated to a much more benevolent deity hovering over a fallen human with outstretched hands, taking away the cruel fate that the Incubators have given to them along with the "gift" of being a magical girl.

This imagery is repeated in Rebellion, too, with Madoka/the Law of Cycles reaching out to Homura in her purple goop witch form, where she is reduced to nothing but a hand.

(Oh, wow, you can see the self-harm scars on Madoka's human hand in this shot, too, holy crap. Or maybe they're supposed to be wounds from the battle against Walpurgisnacht? Either way, Shaft really wasn't messing around with the symbolism there--from Homura's perspective, it's all the same thing.)

A connection is made and Homura transforms back into herself through the contact, again mediated through hands. Note that although they start out at the same angle as in The Creation of Adam, the camera pivots so they end up on the same level, but Homura's position makes it clear that this is still not exactly a relationship of equals:

Then we have an image that is incredibly evocative of The Creation of Adam, as Madoka comes to take Homura away to "Heaven":

... except things veer wildly off-script.

Instead of Adam accepting the gift of life from God, or an exhausted magical girl accepting her fate, Homura yanks on those outstretched hands, pulling the human Madoka out out the divine shell in a subversion of everything that has come so far and setting herself up as a divinity in her own right.

Given all the emphasis on hands in this series, I have no doubt this will continue to be a running theme and that any resolution between Homura and Madoka will involve holding hands--as equals this time--though we'll see how long it takes them to get there.

Additional Notes:

The original anime doesn't directly come out and say this, preferring to focus on historical figures like Cleopatra and Joan of Arc, but given Kyubey's role as the devil, this segment strongly implies that part of the "secret history" of magical girls at key moments throughout human history, myth, and legend would naturally include Eve gaining the "knowledge of good and evil" after an encounter with a certain serpent… which in turn would naturally lead to death.

"Human woman giving the transformative fruit of knowledge to her male partner at the behest of a telepathic alien entity who is diegetically both the Tree and the Serpent" is the central theme of Kamen Rider Gaim, so I think it's safe to say that Urobuchi was already thinking about it here, even if he didn't develop the idea more fully until later.

The Creation of Adam is also parodied in the forthcoming Rusty Rabbit game, also written by Urobuchi, this time with Peter Rabbit and Mr. MacGregor from Beatrix Potter.

What can I say, this guy knows what he likes.

[eretzyisrael]

That's not even the worst example from Sunday.

Iraqi Shiite news site Baratha imagines a world without Zionists - and without Jews:

What would the world lose if the Jews became extinct?! Quite the contrary, humanity will have a good opportunity to live quietly and without the evils of this malicious sect. The idea is so wonderful that I can almost see the desert blooming, the earth getting excited, and millions of beings losing their minds from extreme happiness! Jews are the curse that came from the worst dreams of the accursed Devil. Without them, humanity would not have known atheism, the theory of evolution, and racism. With their help, the prophets were killed, usury and immorality spread, wars broke out, and nations perished. With their dirty thinking, epidemics developed, the death trade became widespread, and the world turned into an arena of conflict in which man eats man and death spreads everywhere. . If humanity had not known this malicious sect, it would not have known socialism, capitalism, and Nazism. It would not have known Zionism, Freemasonry, Illuminati, and Wahhabism. It would not have known the Cold War, nuclear and hydrogen bombs, and it would not have known corruption, anomalies, drugs, cancer, global warming, the right to veto, America, injustice, and oppression. They are a dirty, atheistic sect that claims faith, a dirty race that considers itself the only one worthy of life, and a strange society that contains the essence of meanness, malice, and deception accumulated over thousands of years. Their history is rotten, their books are false, their principles are evil, their morals are malicious, their methods are satanic, their goals are ominous, their presence is dangerous, and their survival is not good for man or animal. These people never lived among a people without their corruption, unrest, and devastation spreading, and they never moved to any country without carrying evil with them to it.. So it behooves all humanity to be hostile to them until it is safe from their evil, and I am not exaggerating here if I say that their disappearance is life and good, and their survival is death and evil. If humanity wants to live in peace, it must first stop their evil; And everyone who stands against them is on the side of truth, goodness and peace. There is no alternative to God’s laws, and the path of Satan and his servants will end in failure. Everyone who stands against them will be helped and supported by God’s care. Goodness, which is the path to salvation, is in standing against evil, not by standing by and watching. The responsibility that one cannot escape from bearing is through awareness, work, and patience, and the outcome is survival and victory in This world and the hereafter, God willing.

Unlike the resurgence of antisemitism in the West, there are next to no articles condemning the incitement to violence that is now widespread. The pretense that arab media had in separating Jews from Zionism in the past 25 years has all but disappeared. The Jews remaining in Tunisia are frightened to death that they will be slaughtered at any time. 

Western NGOs who claim to be supportive of human rights do not say a word against these explicit calls to rid the world of the evil of Jews.

[the-mortuary-witch]

PAGAN AND SATANIC HOLIDAYS AND CELEBRATIONS

PAGAN:

IMBOLC (CANDLEMAS): (February 1st-2nd) a festival dedicated to the goddess of the New Year (Brigid).

OSTARA (SPRING EQUINOX): (March 19th-23rd) marks the Spring Equinox, which happens on March 19th-23rd. Ostara is a Pagan celebration of the German goddess Ēostre.

BELTANE (MAY EVE): (April 30th-May 1st) the Gaelic May Day festival, marking the beginning of summer. It is traditionally held between April 30th-May 1st, or about midway between the Spring Equinox and Summer Solstice.

LITHA (SUMMER SOLSTICE/MIDSUMMER): (June 20th) Litha occurs during the Summer Solstice held on June 20th-21st. More commonly referred to as Midsummer's Night, Litha is believed to be a time when faerie folk pass into the human world at Twilight and offer blessings. Litha is a time to celebrate the abundance and beauty of Mother Earth.

LAMMAS (LUGHNASADH): (August 1st) a Pagan holiday and one of the eight Wiccan sabbats during the year. Each sabbat marks a seasonal turning point. The sabbat occurs on August 1st, which is about halfway between the Summer Solstice (Litha) and the Fall Equinox (Mabon).

MABON (AUTUMN EQUINOX/FALL HARVEST): (September 20th-23rd) represents the height of nature's abundance and usually falls on September 20th-23rd. It is seen as the height of the harvest season and is a time to celebrate nature's bounty. Many also celebrate the balance in nature during Mabon.

SAMHAIN (ALL HALLOWS/FINAL HARVEST): (October 31st-November 1st) a festival dedicated to the dead and a celebration of the New Year.

YULE (WINTER SOLSTICE/MIDWINTER): (December 21st-25th) a Winter Solstice festival. The longest night of the year followed by the sun's "rebirth" and lengthening of days. In most traditions, Yule is celebrated as the rebirth of the Great God, who is viewed as the newborn solstice sun. Some Pagans consider Yule to be the beginning of the New Year

SATANIC:

LUPERCALIA: (February 15th) celebration of bodily autonomy, sexual liberation, and reproduction. Based on the Roman festival of the same name, Lupercalia falls on February 15. In keeping with the ancient tradition, February 13th and 14th are observed as feast days leading up to the actual holiday. What we are translating this to in TST is a "hail yourself" day. This idea offers a parallel to the "others-centered" traditions of Sol Invictus.

HEXENNACHT: (April 30th) occasion honoring those who fell victim to superstition and pseudoscience, whether by. In Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust: a Tragedy (1808), Mephisto and Faust attend the Walpurgisnacht revelry atop Mount Brocken. TST's Hexenacht is a solemn holiday to honor those who were victimized by superstition.

UNVEILING DAY: (July 25th) celebration of religious plurality and shedding archaic superstition. A centerpiece of our religious movement and icon of modern Satanism, the Baphomet with Children statue was commissioned by The Satanic Temple in 2014 and created by Mark Porter with "respect for diversity and religious minorities" in mind. On July 25, 2015, The Satanic Temple unveiled Baphomet to a large crowd of devotees in Detroit, signaling the beginning of the new Satanic era. We observe this milestone in Satanic history by celebrating Unveiling Day.

DEVILS NIGHT (MISCHIEF NIGHT): (October 30th-November 4th) an informal holiday on which children, teenagers and adults engage in jokes, pranks, vandalism, or parties. It is known by a variety of names including Devils Night, Gate Night, Goosey Night, Moving Night, Cabbage Night, Mystery Night and Mat Night.

HALLOWEEN: (October 31st) holiday to celebrate indulgence and embrace the darkness and its aesthetic. Halloween is consistently described as evil, demonic, and satanic by those steeped in religious dogma. Costumes, candy, and facing fears are to be embraced.

SOL INVICTUS: (December 25th) a holiday to celebrate indulgence and embracing the darkness and its aesthetic. The cult of Sol existed within Rome since its early days as a republic, and Invictus was an epithet used for Jupiter, Mars, and Apollo (among others). The festival celebrated these Gods and may have also been used to celebrate the winter solstice.

[bookwormbynight]

The idea behind this fanfic (Null Hypothesis) has fucking grabbed me by the balls guys this motherfucker set off my ryulawlight spiral.

Now, the author has gone in a very different direction than my mind went (more power to em, we're not all Light-obsessed freaks lmao). The main ship is Ryuk/L and Light is only technically involved by both character's shared histories with him which brought them together in the first place. Light has fucked off elsewhere to get comphet married to Misa as the author put it. Poor Light 😭😭 If where that's going interests you, please go check it out because the first chapter is well-written and seems like some pretty good set-up.

Here's what my brain did: saw this in the summary (which hasn't been changed with the author's redrafting as far as I can tell? mayhaps I'm misinterpreting) and went O_O

Guys. If you fucking combined this premise?? With the timeline of my Yotsuba arc headcanons (compiled in Looking For Heaven, Found the Devil In Me)?? And that one post I made where I lamented the fact that that L didn't just fucking burn the notebook?? Hhhhhhhh I'm so mad this fic only exists in my head I would like to read it so much 😭😭

L gets a confession or some shit, finds the other notebook, sends Light off, and burns both death notes, but not before Ryuk is like "oh shit notebook ownership" and comes down to earth JUST in time to watch him do it, which surprises him enough that he drops his own death note on accident and now he's trapped because L snatches it up. L owns his notebook. So he can't kill him and he's stuck following this motherfucker around. In the meantime, Light's memories are permanently destroyed (unless?)

L and Light are sort-of exes but also sort of not bc their relationship was never official, Light breaks it off IMMEDIATELY with Misa because he now has literally zero reason in his head that he should possibly stay with her (I'm sure that would cause fallout too more plot Misa gets a character arc?? Villain arc to redemption and self-acceptance arc?? God I want that for her let her be evil and then let her realize boys are overrated and she's kickass all by herself). L's like 👉👈 well I'm staying in Japan for now 🥺 if u want to have sex again 🥺🥺 and maybe we could go on a real date 🥺🥺? For mixed reasons - a good chunk is just that he would like to and another driving factor as opposed to just letting it go is he and Ryuk are NOT getting along and he is AWARE of how Ryuk feels about Light. Ryuk would be screaming and might (probably will) cause invisible shinigami shenanigans. Light would kinda (really) like to take L up on his offer but their relationship is also hindered by his own trauma that L fucking caused and also he's Very Concerned because Light ALREADY had suspicions that he might be Kira against all of his hopes BEFORE they found the notebook and all of a sudden the case is just resolved and he's totally off the hook and he can tell Something Happened but L just keeps insisting "no no, no Kira here don't worry Light you are not Kira :)". It would be setting off so many alarm bells for him. All of these plot threads weave together and resolve themselves in a satisfying way that I can't discover by reading for myself because it doesn't fucking exist. I need sleep and help.

Edit: Y'all the original author is on Tumblr! @main-exam

[itsaleiah]

Romancing Mr. Half-Devil

Summary:

Perhaps Vergil Sparda is much more human than he thought. After all, how could he care so deeply for Alessa Vera, a mere human? How could he risk everything and search for power just to ensure her safety? Was it because of their history together? Was it because they were childhood companions? Was it because she is the last thing he has alive? Or was it because his heart yearned and.. loved... like a human?

ROMANCING MR. HALF-DEVIL’S PLAYLIST

BOOK 1 (PRE DMC3 - DMC 3)

SPARDA’S HISTORY

PROLOGUE

Chapter One: Before The Nightmare, Vergil

Chapter Two: Traces Of The Future, Alessa

Chapter Three: The Crimson Feast, Vergil

BOOK 2 ( DMC - DMC 2)

BOOK 3 (DMC 4)

added chapters soon, will be published on wattpad and ao3..

WRITER’S NOTE:

This game is very special to me. It was actually the game that jumpstarted my Capcom Career! I remember playing DMC5 since I didn’t know what to play. (I was too scared to beat Resident Evil 7 at that time so I told my dad that I’ll play another Capcom game and if I finish it, i’ll continue with RE7. And guess what, I finished it!) I still remember the joy that I felt when I first finished 5, it felt really fulfilling and I couldn’t help but love the characters. After that, the DMC trilogy went on sale and I told my Dad that I wanted this and luckily for me, he bought it! And then - I started writing stories about the characters and the storyline and how to further/enhance the lore and that’s when Alessa was created!

It wasn’t until 2024, that my love for this game (as well as for video games) came back. Summer Break things you can say. I started reading, playing and watching videos about DMC again and thought: “What if I finally wrote my old ideas about Devil May Cry, this time better and much more refined?”

So here you go - the story of Alessa Vera, definitive version. (And please forgive - since I’ve written this when I was on the precipes of getting better mentally or falling down the trail as well as slow updates as I’m busy with schoolworks.)