#this was a product of divine influence

[stardoopy]

get real

[estrellogy]

Astro Notes Pt. 3

I have a lot of thoughts and observations that I want to share 😭 If you have any recommendations, please let me know as well 🤍

- People often see 7th house as their ideal partner, but YOU are meant to embrace traits of that sign for growth.

For example, a Libra rising will begin to see more personal growth after learning positive traits from Aries e.g. Being more assertive, believing in themselves instead of looking for others’ approval, putting themselves first, etc.

- This might be a controversial opinion, but I don’t think minor asteroids influence your chart. Asteroids like Bride, Groom, and other very specific ones. The interpretations for them can usually be found somewhere in your main placements already. It can make you over complicate your chart and feel even more disconnected with yourself because you don’t focus on your core energy.

Not every small detail about you has to be explained by astrology. At the end of the day, you’re a person with free will and complex experiences that shape you beyond astrology. This is just a tool, not a determiner of your life.

- Pluto in 5th house 🤝 destroying/deleting your creative works when they’re not up to your standards

- The difference between Venus/Pluto hard versus soft aspects is in their expression. They all are intense, magnetic, and obsessive to some degree. However, hard aspects have a harder time owning these traits so they tend to swing between extremes (e.g. total obsession and then indifference). The soft aspects are just as intense and can have the same toxic tendencies as the hard aspects, BUT they have an easier time accepting it as a part of them and seem more ‘stable’.

- 6th house placements are so overlooked! That’s literally the house of your health and daily life. I notice that when you work with your 6th house energy effectively, other areas of your life also improve.

It’s interesting that 6th house comes right before 7th house of relationships. In order to be in a relationship with someone else, you have to take good care of yourself first!

- Aries and Mars aspects (especially hard ones) can overpower other aspects in your chart until you learn how to master that energy and channel them into something productive

- Jupiter in 12th house used to be seen as negative. But I think Jupiter here is one of the luckiest placements to have. This is the placements of coincidences happening in their favors, things lining up in crazy ways, book falling off the shelf right at the page they need to read. Their experiences feel divine.

They are very connected to the Universe, Source, Spirit Guides, or whatever you believe in! Anyone can with practice, but these things come more naturally for them.

- Shoutout to my Virgo Venus and Capricorn Mars for being the only things that stop me from going off the rails 😍

- Saturn in 11th house often feel unloved by the people around them due to earlier experiences with rejection. Saturn is trying to teach them to unconditionally accept themselves. Also, those bad experiences teach them how to read people a lot better and spot the ones with bad intentions. The reward from Saturn will be genuine, solid, and loyal friendships/connections.

I’m so glad you guys enjoy these silly notes! I have a ton of fun making them 😭

[astrocafecoffee]

Astro observation ( part 1)

🔹For entertainment purposes only, enjoy🔹

♦️♦️♦️♦️♦️♦️♦️♦️♦️♦️♦️♦️

✨ Uranus in the first house individuals may reject authority or traditions that feels restrictive to them.others may seem them as trendsetters or avant -garde in their approach to life.

✨ Venus in the 10th house of natal chart peoples are so workaholic that they prioritise their career, success over personal relationships or self care.

✨ your spouse's name asteroid could fall in your natal 7th house. ( Not necessarily, but it can be).

✨ mercury in the 5th house can indicate a communicative and involved parenting style. This individuals may encourage their children's intellectual development, creativity, and curiosity, fostering a supportive environment that values self expression and learning.

✨ Scorpio mars individuals have a strong sense of loyalty and protectiveness towards their loved ones. They can be fiercely protective of those they care about and may go to great lengths to defend and support them.

✨ regulus in 7th house of Composite chart - your relationship with your person may bring some fame/ recognition.

✨ Astrocartography mc lines - indicates which place may have a significant impact on your career or public life.

✨ Astrocartography Dc lines - you may meet your spouse/ long term partner there.

✨ Saturn in the 4th house individuals are very traditional 🙂

✨ solar return Jupiter/ mercury in 3rd house/ 10th house may indicate favorable year for cracking competitive exams.

✨ Earth dominate individuals may admire partners who take their commitments seriously whether it's in personal relationships ,career or other areas of life.

✨ juno in 1st house of groom persona chart means your spouse may influence how you present yourself to others or how you are perceived in social settings. they could bring out certain qualities in you or play a significant role in shaping your public image.

✨ South node lines in your Astrocartography chart indicates where you lived in your past lives.

✨ Briede conjunct Devine asteroid in synastry - divine/ fated relationship.

✨ Union asteroid in your groom / briede pc can indicate where you will meet your potential life partner/ spouse :

♾️ Union in Aries - dynamic / stimulating environments suggest adventurous activities, sports events, or places that involved risk taking and exploration. Gyms, fitness classes, martial art studios, organizing events , can meet through social gatherings / casual meet ups where people gather for fun or socializing. , Business conferences/ academic competitions.

♾️ Union in Taurus -

Fine dining restaurants , art galleries/ elegant social events. Settings related to finance, banking, investments , or business networking events., Exhibitions , concerts, musical performance, through mutual friends, wellness workshops.

♾️ Union in gemini -

Intellectual or educational events, workshops, seminars, book clubs , social gatherings , parties , online platforms, social media, dating apps, local festivals , neighborhood gatherings , during travel, airport, train station, writing workshop, media production, related to communication and journalism.

♾️ Union in cancer -

Family gatherings , reunions, hospitals , caregiving facilities, charity events , volunteering activities, through mutual friends, at historical sites, museums, art galleries, cultural events, small town festivals, near Lake, river, beaches, cafe , restaurant.

♾️ Union in leo -

Theatres , music venues, art galleries, or during performances and artistic events, parties , weddings, festivals , or grand gathering, acting class, outdoor festival, sports event , amusement park, related to child's education, youth organization, casinos, comedy clubs , gaming centre etc.

♾️ Union in Virgo -

Office , workplaces, professional conferences, networking events, volunteer activities, community service projects, charitable organisations, gyms, fitness classes health food store, wellness center, university, school , educational seminars, pet adoption events, parks , botanical garden.

♾️ Union in Libra -

Social getherings, parties, networking events, through mutual friends, concerts, cultural events, museums, theatre performance, settings related to law, mediation or during discussions that involve finding mutual agreements or resolutions., Teamwork, collaboration, relationship focused workshop,fashion shows, design exhibition, cocktail party, formal gatherings, courtroom, law office.

♾️ Union in scorpio -

Psychotherapy session, support groups, detective work, reasearch fields or in setting that require deep analysis and understanding., Spiritual retreats, metaphysical shops, astrology or tarot classes, tantra workshop, relationship councilling, setting related to investment, joint ventures, estate planning, holistic health centres , transformational workshop, place focused on healing practices.

♾️ Union in Sagittarius -

Travel, airport, train station, in foreign countries, or while participating in adventures such as hiking, backpacking, or exploring new cultures, University, libraries, seminars, religious gatherings, philosophy group, outdoor activities, sports events, camping trips, cultural festival, international events, language exchange program, law, publishing house, that promotes justice.

♾️ Union in Capricorn -

Office, corporate events, buisness conference, while pursuing ambitious projects, leadership roles, ceremony, cultural events, context related to banking, investments, Financial setting, teaching activities , prestigious club , organization, or during events where recognition and achievements are celebrated., Formal dinner etc.

♾️ Union in Aquarius -

Activism, volunteer work, community organization, seminars, conferences, discussion groups, online platforms, social media, tech startups, through mutual friends, social circles, online communities, music festival, Charity work.

♾️ Union in Pisces -

May meet in spiritual retreats, meditation centre, yoga studio, art galleries, theatre, music concert, poetry reading,film screening , volunteer work, charitable organisations, near Lake , beaches , hospital, clinic, wellness center, music festival, dance class, spiritual chants or ceremonies, book clubs focused on fiction on fantasy genres.

✨ Saturn in 1st house people often have RBF / Serious demeanor 👺

✨ Moon opposite/ square Saturn in solar return chart indicates emotional heaviness, feeling of loneliness or responsibilities weighing heavily on the emotions 😭.

✨ Jupiter/ Venus in 2nd house of Groom/ Briede pc indicates rich spouse.

✨ South node conjunct karma in synastry might suggest past life conflicts, power struggles or intense experiences that need healing or resolution in the current lifetime.

My other posts :

🔮 your future spouse's career.

🔮 your past life.

🔮 marriage placement in synastry and composite.

And many more on my page-

See you soon ~

- Piko ✨

[ohisms]

↪ ✧ 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐂𝐈𝐓𝐀𝐃𝐄𝐋 ( based on the oracle deck created by fez inkwright. each card represents an archetypal 'character' who resides in the citadel. send these as prompts for inspiring starters , or use them for drabbles ! feel free to combine prompts where desired . SEND A " ✧ " FOR RECIEVER TO RANDOMIZE A CARD ! )

𝐈. 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐂𝐎𝐔𝐑𝐓 , - the aspirant : ambition, diligence, setbacks. - the assassin : ruthlessness, conviction. - the catalyst : radical changes, taking control. - the diviner : divine timing, evaluation. - the fate : accepting help, guidance. - the founder : foundations, community. - the heir : unseen potential, hesitation. - the hound : loyalty, chains, promises. - the king : control, reversal of fortune. - the poet : relationships, vulnerability. - the queen : determination, sacrifice. - the sleeper : cause and effect, clarity. - the spymaster : knowledge, distrust. - the waker : awareness, reflection. - the wise one : tradition, order.

𝐈𝐈. 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐀𝐂𝐀𝐃𝐄𝐌𝐘 , - the acolyte : new projects, learning. - the alchemist : balance, invention, destruction. - the archer : biding your time, planning ahead. - the astronomer : discovery, augury. - the captain : taking command, teamwork. - the cartographer : a crossroads, exploration. - the champion : achievement, downfall. - the enchanter : deception, trickery. - the guide : inheritance, correction. - the orator : communication, confidence. - the patron : mentorship, finances. - the priest : perseverance, faith. - the scholar : investigation, research. - the sentinel : determination, certainty. - the warrior : perfectionism, burnout.

𝐈𝐈𝐈. 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐂𝐑𝐎𝐖𝐃 , - the botanist : parenthood, legacy. - the forgotten : missed opportunities, fear of failure. - the gambler : loss, risks. - the hunter : surefootedness , predestination. - the merchant : self-worth, trade. - the miser : stubbornness, inflexibility. - the muse : generosity, naivety. - the pathless : difficult decisions, lack of direction. - the pilgrim : opportunities, growth. - the sailor : new influences, wanderlust. - the shepherd : celebration, family. - the smith : overthinking, taking action. - the thief : seizing the moment, selfishness. - the vengeance : overcoming sleights, a choice. - the walker : the unknown, the journey.

𝐈𝐕. 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐓𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐏𝐄 , - the adventurer : responsibility, expectations. - the brawler : lack of empathy, confrontation. - the chiromancer : delivering news, collaboration. - the dancer : self-expression, strength. - the herald : small regrets, longing. - the mascareri : hiding your true self, projection. - the musician : inspiration, gratitude. - the painter : productivity, creation. - the puppeteer : explanations, apologies. - the runaway : secrets, running away from problems. - the storyteller : viewpoints, control. - the tailor : attention to detail, pride. - the twins : self-protection, dual natures. - the weaver : rediscovery, transition. - the witch : experimentation, rebellion.

[amerricanartwork]

"Even with my divine influence, there is nothing that can be done... I'm sorry, little ruffian."

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

It's done! I spent like three to four hours working on this last week, but I'm so happy with how this turned out! It was a little hard figuring out the colors, especially for the chamber walls, but it worked out in the end!

I'm trying to not just practice more with these colored pencils, but branch out into making more finished pieces that feature actual scenes and even a bit of story in addition to my sketches. Granted, iterators are good practice for that because their backgrounds are rather simple compared to a natural or even urban landscape conceptually speaking, but still fun to draw, especially with the full arm and umbilical. Seriously, as much as I love drawing just the puppets in an off-the-string manner, it's honestly really fun to draw the arms, the cords, all the wires in the backs of their heads, and the thinking circles, maybe even with a few pearls sprinkled around sometimes.

But anyway, enough rambling. Hope you like the finished product as much as I do!

Oh, and just for a little comparison, I'll leave the sketch below!

And a quick side-by-side with the preview:

[theeternalwombtarot]

Phases of the menstrual cycle broken down for divine feminine & divine masculine who are invested in a romantic connection:

Message: hello!, I'm very excited about this post, I've been working on it all day and felt called to talk about this because in a lot of divine feminines lives right now we're focusing on learning to alchemize and transmute energy and how to best prepare for our manifestations and make the proper decisions to keep ourselves in alignment BUT a good amount of divine feminines are also in the energy of seeking out an awakened masculine or cultivating good energies in their connections. This is a magnificent way to create further spiritually inclined connections in your relationships but also to move into the energy of enlightenment as individuals. I also will say that if you're mensurating be wary of physical sex on your cycle while actively bleeding as it can form soul ties, it's meant to solidify attachments and strengthen the ability to share energy in romantic connections. if you're a woman in general be wary of opening up and allowing anyone in your womb, please be discerning and choose wisely.

(There will also be a shortly summarized version on my Instagram and Tiktok for reposting and sharing purposes if you want to share this type of information with friends and loved ones who may not be on this platform! My Instagram & Tiktok: @theeternalwombtarot)

****

phase one: The Menstrual cycle (days: 1-5) / "Winter" / The New Moon

physical symptoms: fatigue, cramps, bloating, headaches, lower back pain, and breast tenderness

emotional symptoms: low mood, irritability, fatigue, and emotional sensitivity

hormonal changes: low estrogen and progesterone, drop in hormones triggers menstruation

spiritual meaning: rest, release, and renewal. letting go, shedding what no longer serves you physically (biologically) and energetically, and preparing for new beginnings.

themes: reflection, introspection, purification & renewal.

spiritual practice & priority for divine feminine: meditation and grounding techniques, journaling, and rituals of release and healing. embrace and lean into intuition and release emotional baggage and limiting beliefs. embrace themes that come up to the surface to come out by acknowledging, surrendering control and worry, and seeking out new perspective and spiritual guidance. You're going to want to hone in and pay close attention to the body and emotional strain at this time to help you best navigate what needs to be put down or released. use the body at its most heightened to guide you in the direction of alignment and enlightenment. prioritize your happiness and peace.

divine masculines role at this time: further aid in themes of the menstrual cycle by creating an environment of rest, relaxation, and harmony. Study the woman and her needs and desires (both on an emotional and physical-biological human scale). Pour back into her through creating solace in her time of rest and relaxation. Attempt to control disturbing influences as much as possible to conserve divine feminines remaining energy left over and reserved for her rebirth and renewal. Move forward in the energy of compassion and service. Take on her needs and emotional state as if it were your own in order to be productive and fulfilling at this time. Move into the energy of compassion (to feel as she feels and to also feel sorrow for her and thus have desire to alleviate suffering and then do so.) Divine masculine should also consider penetrative sex at this phase to alleviate pain and discomfort like uterine cramps.

phase two: The Follicular Phase (days: 6-14) / "Spring" / Waxing Crescent

physical symptoms: increased mood, higher motivation, skin may begin to clear, light discharge

emotional symptoms: increased mood, higher motivation, increased creativity, mental clarity

hormonal changes: rising estrogen, FSH stimulate follicle growth in ovaries, and the uterine lining will begin to thicken to support a fertilized egg.

spiritual meaning: growth, new beginnings, and rising energy. Time for planting new seeds (like ideas, intentions, and projects) and feeling excited for and embracing growth.

themes: creativity, rebirth, expansion, and manifestation

spiritual practice & priority for divine feminine: this is a good time for divine feminine to set intentions, start new projects, and embrace creativity. visualization during meditation, affirmations, and rituals focused on manifestation is best for this phase. divine feminine should shift focus into project planning and pull from naturally flowing creative energies at this time and capitalize on both tapped and untapped talents to accelerate growth and expansion in her life. she should use her creativity, charm, and imagination to her advantage to bring forth abundance in the world around her and profit off of romanticism. Both in romanticizing her life and in her relationships and appealing to others.

divine masculines role at this time: increase romantic energy in the connection and work towards heightening close interpersonal intimacy through action and positive affirmation. The tongue, the mouth, and the throat chakra are powerful at this time. Plan dates, appeal heavily to the love language, and create unfaltering closeness with the woman. create heaven in her reality to better house her angelic and transformative energy at this time. Lean further into your spirituality as you become one with her during this phase through manifestation, prayer, and further acknowledgment of her divinity and connection to the divine. through your harmony with her from a genuine and aligned place, you too will prosper. You can tap into her natural flow of creativity and expansive energy and leverage your own intentions through required openness and respect for the feminine and the feminine cycle, mutual support, shared focus, mutual intentions, and rituals that honor both energies. (tantric sex or alike included.)

phase three: The Ovulation Phase (days: 14-16) / "Summer" / Full Moon

physical symptoms: increased libido, cervical mucus changes (clear & stretchy), mild to intense cramping to help the release of egg.

emotional symptoms: increased confidence, more sociable, higher libido

hormonal changes: luteinizing hormone (produced by the pituitary gland) surge triggers ovulation, high estrogen, brief rise in testosterone.

spiritual meaning: often linked to the peak of summer and the full moon. This period in the menstrual cycle represents abundance, fertility (both literally & metaphorically), and connection. Seen often as a time of heightened energy, power and creativity.

themes: fertility, creation, peak power, connection to others, and potential.

spiritual practice & priority for divine feminine: an ideal time for socializing, connecting with others, or performing rituals focused on abundance, fertility (i.e. sacred baths and cleansing rituals, sex and physical intimacy or tantric practices, spiritual and ancestral rituals, etc.) and gratitude. Many also use this time for creative expression and celebrating their accomplishments as manifestations can be both conceived and reaped and harvested at this time. Divine feminine should be focused on obtaining personal success and self-fulfillment and pleasure at this time. This is a good time for her to capitalize on personal power and energy and transmute passion into energy to move forward and obtain desires. The ovulation phase is a good time for networking and collaborating on projects and progress forward. She will work well in groups with partners or a partner and will excel in learning and implementing lessons and information.

divine masculines role at this time: The divine masculine's duty at this time is to pour into divine feminine through presence and attentiveness, affirmation and acknowledgment, emotional and physical connection creative collaboration and support, physical support and care, respect, and space for self-expression and celebration of her divine feminine energy. divine masculine can offer his full, undivided attention and listen closely to divine feminines needs, desires, and dreams. being present in a time of high intuition and peak power allows him to further honor her wisdom and creativity but also move in the energy of co-creation and further manifestation for his life. spend quality time with divine feminine at this time and prioritize her and her energy. This is also a good time for divine masculine to encourage and provide access to self-care rituals whether they be a paid service or things he does himself. this is a good time for divine masculine to move forward in the emotional and physical realms through his connection to divine feminine much like his ability to co-create or bring prosperity to his life during the follicular phase. He should move forward in the energy of leadership, confidence, and assertiveness in both physical and emotional realms. passion and intimacy with the woman is heavy and significant at this time, pour into her and strengthen thyself. strengthen your outside support by moving in a similar energy by balancing strength and empathy while being open and flexible to others needs and addressing those needs and providing necessary output. Take divine feminine to events and environments where her sociable demeanor can bring you more money, partnerships, and support. Let her be the face of your power and influence. Flaunt, flaunt, flaunt. Show off and prioritize the feminine. Your prize is in your possession. Your sigil is within her. Let her double the success you share, multiply it, and bring it back home with the both of you. Your good luck charm and prosperity token is within the divine feminine. Carry her around in your pocket or leave her at home on the altar you built for her to relax and flourish.

phase four: The luteal phase (days: 16-28) / "Autumn" / Waning Moon

physical symptoms: bloating, mood swings, breast tenderness, fatigue, increased appetite, acne, irritability (PMS and PMDD symptoms)

emotional symptoms: irritability, mood swings, anxiety, sensitivity, depression, craving comfort

hormonal changes: high progesterone, estrogen decreases, hormone levels drop if pregnancy occurs.

spiritual meaning: it's a time of slowing down, turning inwards, and preparing for rest. It's a phase of reflection, harvesting lessons, and preparing for the upcoming menstrual cycle.

themes: harvest, reflection, inner work, slowing down, and transformation

spiritual practice & priority for divine feminine: this phase is ideal for introspection and releasing what no longer serves you much like the entirety of the menstrual cycle itself. grounding practices like yoga, journaling, shadow work and meditation are common spiritual practices at this time. Bask in all three elements in your top three or allow for those elements to be prominent in spaces of relaxation. This is a good time to assess accomplishments and plan for the future. Your job at this time and area of priority divine feminine should be focused on clear boundaries and clear communication and working through mental and emotional blockages that create disruption in your life and emotional body through inner work. We want to try our best to see through the lens of heightened emotion clearly as often times fear and anxiety based distortion is present within us during the luteal phase. Ask yourself what your frustration, fear, sadness, or other complex emotions right now mean to you, what is your body or intuition trying to tell you, and what do you need to communicate to others effectively to further yourself or obtain peace? Get clear and work through illusions and deception. A time like this beckons emotional warfare out of you, your perseverance is needed. prepare yourself and move in the energy of transformation and transition. Baggage will be shed and released throughout the menstrual cycle.

divine masculines role at this time: At this time divine masculine must ready himself to opposite the divine feminines energy to be proactive and create the ideal environment for rest and rebirth. Do your due diligence to create the safest, most abundant environment in all ways necessary. similar to how the male in nature may help build a nest and sing to create a soothing environment or may take over and build the nest entirely on his own to prepare for incoming change and laboring. invest both financially, spiritually, and energetically into creating the optimal environment. your job during the luteal phase is to curate a safe space, your job as divine feminines hard work begins and the menstrual cycle starts is to keep her warm and tend to her in the safe space you built and brought the resources to.

****

notes:

divine feminine if you are single take into consideration beginning to period track whether it be with a calendar or with an app while you're looking for a divine masculine or are in a position where you're looking for love. this way you already know and have known for quite a while when phases of your cycle begin and what takes place during these times.

another thing I really think is interesting is research on what foods are best eaten through different phases of the menstrual cycle, this can also help divine masculine better prepare for your cycle during the luteal phase while he gets things in order for you to enter a period of rest, there are various charts on these things on Pinterest, I could make another post about that specifically another time.

tantric sex practices or rituals or similar intentional intimacy practices could be really good to implement during high energetic phases of the menstrual cycle to help divine masculine tap into your energy that you're radiating and give him the privilege of co-creating a reality with you or aid in him further manifesting abundance in his life. (do be mindful of period sex and soul ties, if you do not intend for him to stay divine feminine keep this in mind.)

also do your job as a divine feminine to choose your partners wisely as his ability to do these things for you and move with you through these phases of your life are incredibly important especially in states of high power or even energetic vulnerability, I touched briefly on how important it is that divine feminine invest her time in relationships that are emotionally and spiritually safe as you are wide open if you make the wrong choice or give your power away.

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

The Radio Times magazine from the 29 July-04 August 2023 :)

THE SECOND COMING

How did Terry Pratchett and Neil gaiman overcome the small matter of Pratchett's death to make another series of their acclaimed divine comedy?

For all the dead authors in the world,” legendary comedy producer John Lloyd once said, “Terry Pratchett is the most alive.” And he’s right. Sir Terry is having an extremely busy 2023… for someone who died in 2015.

This week sees the release of Good Omens 2, the second series of Amazon’s fantasy comedy drama based on the cult novel Pratchett co-wrote with Neil Gaiman in the late 1980s. This will be followed in the autumn by a new spin-off book from Pratchett’s Discworld series, Tiffany Aching’s Guide to Being a Witch, co-written by Pratchett’s daughter Rhianna and children’s author Gabrielle Kent. The same month, we’ll also get A Stroke of the Pen, a collection of “lost” short stories written by Sir Terry for local newspapers in the 70s and 80s and recently rediscovered. Clearly, while there are no more books coming from Pratchett – a hard drive containing all drafts and unpublished work was crushed by a vintage steamroller shortly after the author’s death, as per his specific wishes – people still want to visit his vivid and addictive worlds in new ways.

Good Omens 2 will be the first test of how this can work. The original book started life as a 5,000-word short story by Gaiman, titled William the Antichrist and envisioned as a bit of a mashup of Richmal Crompton’s Just William books and the 70s horror classic The Omen. What would happen, Gaiman had mused, if the spawn of Satan had been raised, not by a powerful American diplomat, but by an extremely normal couple in an idyllic English village, far from the influence of hellish forces? He’d sent the first draft to bestselling fantasy author Pratchett, a friend of many years, and then forgotten about it as he busied himself with continuing to write his massively popular comic books, including Violent Cases, Black Orchid and The Sandman, which became a Netflix series last year.

Pratchett loved the idea, offering to either buy the concept from Gaiman or co-write it. It was, as Gaiman later said, “like Michelangelo phoning and asking if you want to paint a ceiling” The pair worked on the book together from that point on, rewriting each other as they went and communicating via long phone calls and mailed floppy discs. “The actual mechanics worked like this: I would do a bit, then Neil would take it away and do a bit more and give it back to me,” Pratchett told Locus magazine in 1991. “We’d mess about with each other’s bits and pieces.”

Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch – to give it its full title –was published in 1990 to huge acclaim. It was one of, astonishingly, five Terry Pratchett novels to be published that year (he averaged two a year, including 41 Discworld novels and many other standalone works and collaborations).

It was also, clearly, extremely filmable, and studios came knocking — though getting it made took a while. rnvo decades on from its writing, four years after Pratchett's death from Alzheimer's disease aged 66, and after several doomed attempts to get a movie version off the ground, Good Omens finally made it to TV screens in 2019, scripted and show-run by Gaiman himself. "Terry was egging me on to make it into television. He knew he was dying, and he knew that I wouldn't start it without him," Gaiman revealed in a 2019 Radio Times interview. Amazon and the BBC co-produced with Pratchett's company Narrativia and Gaiman's Blank Corporation production studios, with Michael Sheen and David Tennant cast in the central roles of Aziraphale the angel and Crowley the demon. The show was a hit, not just with fans of its two creators, but with a whole new young audience, many of whom had no interest in Discworld or Sandman. Social media networks like Tumblr and TikTok were soon awash with cosplay, artwork and fan fiction. The original novel became, for the first time, a New York Times bestseller.

A follow up was, on one level, a no-brainer. The world Pratchett and Gaiman had created was vivid, funny and accessible, and Tennant and Sheen had found an intriguing romantic spark in their chemistry not present in the novel.

There was, however, a huge problem. There wasn't a second Good Omens book to base it on. But there was the ghost of an idea.

In 1989, after the book had been sold but before it had come out, the two authors had laid on fivin beds in a hotel room at a convention in Seattle and, jet-lagged and unable to sleep, plotted out, in some detail, what would happen in a sequel, provisionally titled 668, The II Neighbour of the Beast.

"It was a good one, too" Gaiman wrote in a 2021 blog. "We fully intended to write it, whenever we next had three or four months free. Only I went to live in America and Terry stayed in the UK, and after Good Omens was published, Sandman became SANDMAN and Discworld became DISCWORLD(TM) and there wasn't a good time."

Back in 1991, Pratchett elaborated, "We even know some of the main characters in it. But there's a huge difference between sitting there chatting away, saying, 'Hey, we could do this, we could do that,' and actually physically getting down and doing it all again." In 2019, Gaiman pillaged some of those ideas for Good Omens series one (for example, its final episode wasn't in the book at all), and had left enough threads dangling to give him an opening for a sequel. This is the well he's returned to for Good Omens 2, co-writing with comic John Finnemore - drafted in, presumably, to plug the gap left Pratchett's unparalleled comedic mind. No small task.

Projects like Good Omens 2 are an important proving ground for Pratchett's legacy: can the universes he conjured endure without their creator? And can they stay true to his spirit? Sir Terry was famously protective of his creations, and there have been remarkably few adaptations of his work considering how prolific he was. "What would be in it for me?" he asked in 2003. "Money? I've got money."

He wanted his work treated reverently and not butchered for the screen. It's why Good Omens and projects like Tiffany Aching's Guide to Being a Witch are made with trusted members of the inner circle like Neil Gaiman and Rhianna Pratchett at the helm. It's also why the author's estate, run by Pratchett's former assistant and business manager Rob Wilkins, keeps a tight rein on any licensed Pratchett material — it's a multi-million dollar media empire still run like a cottage industry.

And that's heartening. Anyone who saw BBC America's panned 2021 Pratchett adaptation The Watch will know how badly these things can go when a studio is allowed to run amok with the material without oversight. These stories deserve to be told, and these worlds deserve to be explored — properly. And there are, apparently, many plans afoot for more Pratchett on the screen. You can only hope that, somewhere, he'll be proud of the results.

After all, as he wrote himself, "No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away, until the clock wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone's life is only the core of their actual existence."

While those ripples continue to spread, Sir Terry Pratchett remains very much alive. MARC BURROWS

DIVINE DUO

An angel and a demon walk into a pub... Michael Sheen and David Tennant on family, friendship and Morecambe & Wise

Outside it's cold winter's day and we're in a Scottish studio, somewhere between Edinburgh and Glasgow. But inside it's lunchtime in The Dirty Donkey pub in the heart of London, with both Michael Sheen and David Tennant surveying the scene appreciatively. "This is a great pub," says Sheen eagerly, while Tennant calls it "the best Soho there can be. A slightly heightened, immaculate, perfect, dreamy Soho."

Here, a painting of the absent landlord — the late Terry Pratchett, co-creator, with Neil Gaiman, of the series' source novel — looms over punters. Around the corner is AZ Fell and Co Antiquarian and Unusual Books. It's the bookshop owned by Sheen's character, the angel Aziraphale, and the place to where Tennant's demon Crowley is inevitably drawn.

It's day 74 of an 80-day shoot for a series that no one, least of all the leading actors, ever thought would happen, due to the fact that Pratchett and Gaiman hadn't ever published any sequel to their 1990 fantasy satire. Tennant explains, "What we didn't know was that Neil and Terry had had plots and plans..."

Still, lots of good things are in Good Omens 2, which expands on the millennia-spanning multiverse of the first series. These include a surprisingly naked side of John Hamm, and roles for both Tennant's father-in-law (Peter Davison) and 21-year-old son Ty. At its heart, though, remains the brilliant banter between the two leading men — as Sheen puts it, "very Eric and Ernie !" — whose chemistry on the first series led to one of the more surprising saviours of lockdown telly.

Good Omens is back — but you've worked together a lot in the meantime. Was there a connective tissue between series one of Good Omens and Staged, your lockdown sitcom?

David: Only in as much as the first series went out, then a few months later, we were all locked in our houses. And because of the work we'd done on Good Omens, it occurred that we might do something else. I mean, Neil Gaiman takes full responsibility for Staged. Which, to some extent, he's probably right to do!

Michael: We've got to know each other through doing this. Our lives have gotten more entwined in all kinds of ways — we have children who've now become friends, and our families know each other.

There have been hints of a romantic storyline between the two characters. How much of an undercurrent is that in this series.

David: Nothing's explicit.

Michael: I felt from the very beginning that part of what would be interesting to explore is that Aziraphale is a character, a being, who just loves. How does that manifest itself in a very specific relationship with another being? Inevitably, as there is with everything in this story, there's a grey area. The fact that people see potentially a "romantic relationship", I thought that was interesting and something to explore.

There was a petition to have the first series banned because of its irreverent take on Christian tropes. Series two digs even more deeply into the Bible with the story of Job. How much of a badge of honour is it that the show riles the people who like to ban things?

David: It's not an irreligious show at all. It's actually very respectful of the structure of that sort of religious belief. The idea that it promotes Satanism [is nonsense]. None of the characters from hell are to be aspired to at all! They're a dreadful bunch of non-entities. People are very keen to be offended, aren't they? They're often looking for something to glom on to without possibly really examining what they think they're complaining about.

Michael, you're known as an activist, and you're in the middle of Making BBC drama The Way, which "taps into the social and political chaos of today's world". Is it important for you to use your plaform to discuss causes you believe in?

Michael: The Way is not a political tract, it's just set in the area that I come from. But it has to matter to you, doesn't it? More and more as I get older, [I find] it can be a real slog doing this stuff. You've got to enjoy it. And if it doesn't matter to you, then it's just going to be depressing.

David, Michael has declared himself a "not-for-profit" actor. Has he tried to persuade you to give up all your money too?

David: What an extraordinary question! One is always aware that one has a certain responsibility if one is fortunate and gets to do a job that often doesn't feel like a job. You want to do your bit whenever you can. But at the same time, I'm an actor. I'm not about to give that up to go into politics or anything. But I'll do what I can from where I live.

Well, your son and your father-in-law are also starring in this series. How about that, jobs for the boys!

David: I know! It was a delight to get to be on set with them. And certainly an unexpected one for me. Neil, on two occasions, got to bowl up to me and say, "Guess who we've cast?!"

How do you feel about your US peers going on strike?

David: It's happening because there are issues that need to be addressed. Nobody's doing this lightly. These are important issues, and they've got to be sorted out for the future of our industry. There's this idea that writers and actors are all living high on the hog. For huge swathes of our industry, that's just not the case. These people have got to be protected.

Michael: We have to be really careful that things don't slide back to the way they were pre the 1950s, when the stories that we told were all coming from one point of view and the stories of certain people, or communities within our society, weren't represented. There's a sense that now that's changed for ever and it'll never go back. But you worry when people can't afford to have the opportunities that other people have. We don't want the story that we tell about ourselves to be myopic. You want it to be as inclusive as possible

Staged series 3 recently broadcast. It felt like the show's last hurrah — or is there more mileage? Sheen and Tennant go on holiday?

David: That's the Christmas special! One Foot in the Algarve! On the Buses Go to Spain!

Michael: I don't think we were thinking beyond three, were we?

So is it time for a conscious uncoupling for you two — Eric and Ernie say goodbye?

David: Oh, never say never, will we?

Michael: And it's more Hinge and Bracket.

David: Maybe that's what we do next — The Hinge and Bracket Story. CRAIG McLEAN

[universalitgirlsblog2]

🩷🌸PROTECT YOUR ENERGY🌸🩷

🩷🌸Your energy is sacred and precious. It is so important to protect, cherish and nourish your energy in this chaotic world. Stop giving away your energy as if it is not valuable and precious currency. Do not give away your energy to mindlessly consuming things on the internet or to other people. Stop being always available. Not everything or everyone needs our response🩷🌸

🩷DO NOT DWELL ON THE NEGATIVE

Stop giving your energy and attention to things you do not want to see. Focus on the positive things , shift from complaining to gratitude. You can also repeat the mantra -

" I am now through my sovereign divine right calling back my power and my energy from all the people , places and past events where I have given my energy away consciously or unconsciously where my energy has been taken without my consent or with my consent. I call back my energy now . "

🌸SET BOUNDARIES

Boundaries are more about you than other people. If you have a diamond at home , you will protect it , right ? Similarly, your energy is ad precious and valuable as a diamond. Protect it. I made a post on summary of Tam Kaur video on boundaries. I would suggest you to read it. Click me !!!

🩷SELF-CARE

Make self-care your daily ritual. Workout , Meditate , Do Yoga , Mirrorwork , listen to Guided meditation and do breath-work. These things work miraculously. It is the little things that matter.

🌸BE MINDFUL

Be mindful of what you consume. On social media , there are people who feed on negativity . On youtube , you may find some youtubers who love to feed on negativity and offend people to get views and engagement. Please do not waste your time watching those youtubers , watch youtubers who inspire you , it can be the wizard liz , if you want to take inspiration for mindset or it can be a productive vlog . Anything which will inspire you and help you to level up in your life. I would recommend you to check out these two posts where I mentioned youtubers who can help you to be motivated and productive - click me and click me !! Unfollow influencer or celebrities you do not like , give you bad vibes or make you feel insecure. Follow content which will motivate and educate you. Do not engage in a conversation with toxic people. Let them be. Limit your exposure to negative influences. Do not be friends with anyone , not everyone deserves your attention and energy.

🩷DO NOT TAKE ANYTHING PERSONALLY

It is never personal. Whatever people say about you , it is not about you. It is a reflection about them .

🌸CLEAN YOUR SELF-TALK

You do not have to believe everything you think. You have the right to choose what you believe. Write down your negative thoughts and switch them with positive ones.

I cannot do this -- I can do anything I put my mind into .

No one believes in me --- I believe in myself and that is enough.

🩷TAKE A BREAK

Stop mindlessly scrolling . Take a break from social media. Social media can be extremely draining. Put a time limit on social media. Be as intentional you can be about the media you consume. Follow positive influencers which will motivate and educate you.

🌸GRATITUDE

" A grateful heart is a magnet for miracles ".

When was the last time you were truly grateful for what you have ? Here is a small thing you need to do - before going to bed , think about the five things you are grateful for.Thank God or Universe for the blessings. Shift your focus from complaining to gratitude.

🩷FIND HEALTHY COPING MECHANISMS

Over-eating , smoking or drowning yourself in alcohol to numb your emotions will not heal you. Be courageous enough to deal with your emotions. Journal your emotions , do shadow work , meditate , cry or exercise. Adopt healthy coping mechanisms , they will help you in future too.

🌸CHOOSE YOURSELF

Choose yourself. Put yourself first.Be your own best friend. Be your biggest fan. Put your needs and wants first. You can never leave you , you will always be there for yourself.

🩷UNDERSTAND WHEN YOUR THOUGHTS ARE NOT YOURS.

Sometimes our thoughts do not belong to us , they belong to some comment we read on internet . Ask yourself- " Are these really my thoughts ? " . If the answer is no , do not entertain those thoughts and let them go.

🌸🩷That is all for today. I hope this post helped you. Do not just read and like this post , apply the tips too ! Please protect your energy , it is precious , so are you !!!!🩷🌸

[hoseoksluna]

SMOKE, v. | myg

pairing: idol!yoongi x smoke!oc (ft. jungkook & taehyung)

genre: smut, fluff

word count: 8.2k

summary: everything that hurt has stopped.  

pinterest board: smoke / playlist: moon kitty's playlist / taglist: join / discord: join

warnings: yoongi is perfect, mutual masturbation, lots of lustful thoughts of sex and oral, yoongi's pov—literally the biggest warning, sex toys, desperation, praise kink, neediness, mentions of punishment & an actual punishment, too.

note: this might be the best chapter in the series and unfortunately, it's the last chapter i post before my hiatus. thanks to my bestest friend in the world, @tkslovechild, this series is finally moving forward somewhere and it's not a source of my depression anymore. i hope you all enjoy this chapter, my babies. see you after my hiatus. i will miss you all, terribly. luna loves you forever.

side note: make sure to listen to oc's playlist. it's so good.

The lights must be blaring, in the bizarre simplicity of our current happenstance, and the toys for adults must be tinged with a variety of colors, but my eyes are moored on the prismatic delicacy of her utter engrossment. 

Pupils wide and swallowing each detail of the display of the instruments of pleasure, my cock is so tight in my pants that I struggle for air, my fists clenched by my sides, ever so ready to snatch the product she points at just so I could become the means to make that joy explode further in her. She teased me in the car with her naughty songs, with her coy glances at me to suss out whether I caught onto the meaning—when in reality I tried my fucking hardest not to give in to my imagination and crash my car. Her body was curled so divinely, facing me, and my hands gripped the steering wheel until the leather squeaked. We laughed about it, she blamed me for farting, and I longed to kiss her until she would shut up. 

And I should have—because now she’s teasing me with her utmost fascination with a certain clit sucker. 

Whatever color it is. 

It was her idea to head inside this store. We drove around through the moonlit streets of Seoul for an hour, listening to her playlist reverberating throughout the vehicle. With the windows pulled down, the miscellaneous paraphernalia of her soul—the erotism of persona, the melancholia of her heart and the despondency caused from her pain—rumbling out of them, letting everyone see and hear the echo of her newly bloomed enthusiasm and the sprightliness of her being. She was alive at night, alive with me, liking the principle of me learning about her through this artful form. And I liked her liking that. 

The songs spoke what our mouths couldn’t, communicating for us, because we acted as though my own pain didn’t break us apart. In the vivacity of the car drive, in the lapis lazuli of our own exclusive, atmospheric globe, I didn’t tell her off for being bare for me the previous morning. No, I took off her night dress and drank from the sweet nectar of her bosom, right there on the ivory of her plush couch until she drenched it so well that she blushed. 

In fact, it’s the only thing I voiced out in terms of the conflict. 

Perhaps it was due to the influence of her songs, laced with the heady aroma of her energy—fuck, if I know, but I didn’t regret my words. 

Not this time. 

And her glimmering cheeks flushed like they did in my imagination, tightening my cock in the easy way that she was only capable of doing. I seized the tension between us—and I might as well clasped my hand over her thighs, which were still turned to me, with how her breath hitched in her throat in reaction to my brazenness. 

It was the reason why she wrapped her fingers around my wrist when we walked by that sex shop en route to the restaurant I chose, stopping me dead in my tracks. She held our sexuality close to her chest, not adding to it in the car, but unraveling it there, in the middle of the street, with strangers passing by. Gave me a look only a moon kitty like her could, mischievous yet innocent, and tilted her head in the direction of the store. And I knew, deep in my heart, that it was the little creature inside her that dragged me in—no longer neglected, but attuned to my attention, to my care and the respect I wafted towards her. 

There were no two sides to her, and on no account did we stand on the opposite sides of the chessboard with our agonies, despite the fact all I could see was the monochrome of its pattern once I regarded her enthrallment. 

Somehow, we are unified at this very moment,  and I crave to buy her that clit sucker. 

“Choose a color,” I rasp, and my cock agrees with me, twitching at the idea of her picking a color of her liking, one that can match her nails or perhaps the dark wine of her hair. One that bewitched me so profusely once I observed it under that soft white light of the interior of my car, its sleekness dipping into my heart that began to thunder for her. One that absolutely pales in comparison as I look at it now, the red dull and bleak, my sight unfolding in colors. My craving expands when her eyes widen at my seemingly brainsick idea, digging into mine while her tightened lips quiver in a smile. I smirk, enjoying her coy reaction, and I take this teasing into another dimension, austerely because I want to—and because I can, because we can. “Maybe the red one to match your hair.” 

Her gasp melts into a delicate laughter that tickles my insides and, mindlessly, she runs her elongated fingers through the ends of her hair at her tummy. Taps her long, cross-embellished nail, on another package beside it. “This one has the thingy that vibrates inside you.” 

It’s the same rose toy, but with a silicone attachment with a bulbous end. I’m not sure how those violent vibrations inside her walls can feel pleasurable for her, but the way she gazes at it—with a smirk akin to mine and lowered long lashes that languidly beat against the tops of her cheeks—propels me to seek my answer. 

I take it in my hands, inspecting it further. And I notice that the petals hide a small tongue in their center, simulating an oral sex for her lonesome times. 

Heat clings to my skin as I grow feverish. I am leaving for a tour in a few weeks. Who will be there to eat her sweet little pussy? 

The apples of her cheeks blaze in pinkness, regarding me as she is, and I lick my lips. “This one licks your clit. Do you think it’ll do a better job than me?” 

The rose tint deepens at my teasing words and all I can think about is how she’s gonna press those petals deeper and deeper into her folds, digging her long nails into the silicon surface just like she dug her nails into my scalp. And suddenly, I can’t take it anymore. 

I fast forward. 

“Do you want this thing or the bullet?” I ask her, impatient, but for what—I don’t know. What I do know is that I can’t stay in this place any longer with my imagination bursting forth and clouding everything negative I ever felt towards this girl. And while the newness crests joy and contentment in me, I need to be distracted from the lust that has become so natural between us. Or else, I bend her over in this aisle, rip the package open and use it on her while I fuck her dumb. 

I might become unhinged. Just for her, just for the flush blanketing her features. Just so I have her positive feelings in my hands. 

She’s too overwhelmed to respond, redder than her hair and it’s endearing. Kitty cups her face and turns around, letting me see her back, and I do the thing I unknowingly wanted to do the moment I inched closer to her. 

I brush my hand down her noble spine, clothed in the sheer fabric of her tight top that exposes her camisole underneath to me. I hook my fingers on the belt loop of her baggy jeans and bring her back to me. Her gasp is so tender and so unlike her when she collides into me, her fists bunched on the top of my chest, her hair a mess—tangled on her forehead and eyelashes and I’m awestruck. 

By her beauty, by the way there’s no end to her. And I want to keep acknowledging myself with the inexhaustible wholeness of her until I’m gray and stooped in the old age of my affection for her. 

No gold, no golden power staining my hands. She’s silver and I am desperate for that moonlit glory to mist my veins. Privately, for me and her. A thing only we know of. 

No Sun-mi, no Jungkook. 

Pinching the strands of hair away from her face, she seems to be swimming in a thought I’m very curious about. Even more so, when she engages her hands and hangs them over my neck. Calmness relaxes the muscles of my stomach and I take a detailed note of that. 

No anxiousness, no winged demons beneath. 

This is right. This is how it should’ve been from the start. Playfulness, a little bit of lust, and a whole lot of exuberance. Nothing else, at least not this early on. 

And even though I asked her a million naughty questions that I’d love for her to sophistically answer for me, something whispers in my gut that I should share my thoughts with her. And without a hint of fear, I do. 

“This is good, isn’t it?” I murmur, tipping my chin, my body leading me to lean my forehead against hers and I do—I do, I do. Kitty sighs, oddly validating me, and I continue. “I mean I wasn’t planning on buying you a fucking clit sucker tonight, but I’m glad we’re here.” 

She laughs and I lift my head, needing to see her expression of delight. And atypically, my mouth rounds in the same grin and the same laughter spills out of me. 

One that breaks into an indecent groan when she finally graces me with her response. 

“You know, they have rose toys for men as well. So if I’m getting one, you’re buying one, too.” 

It’s like she palmed me over my jeans with her words, but I disagree with a fraction of it. 

“Wrong. I’m getting you one.” 

She appears to be stunned by my willfulness to not let her spend a dime when she’s with me, her mouth parted and her head cocking back just once. And when she closes her pretty, half-glossy mouth, curls the pillows under her teeth and drops her eyes, her palms sliding down my chest, she accepts it. 

And I feel like a man, not a skeleton of who I used to be. 

“You’ll be getting two, then.” 

I chuckle. Draw near to her ear, sinking under the waterfall of her hair, and I hear her breathing harden. “I can get three if you can’t decide,” I flirt, pulling back more to edge her than to stuff my hand with the other toy that includes the bullet, holding it up for her. Her pools sparkle as she looks at them before perching up at mine, melting.

I bite my lip, feral; and I don’t wait for her to answer once I stack them up in one hand, pivoting on my feet. 

“Wait.” 

She steals the box with the bullet and puts it back to its original place. Replaces it with a male version of it, her smile cheerful and full of mischief. I take something else that I cover from her sight, which glides upon the display of all kinds of different cock rings and whatnot. 

Little does she know what I intend to surprise her with as soon as she allows me back into her girlish lust. 

My heart hammers in my chest in tandem with my cock as I pay for it. And I hope that she gets the memo. 

That she’s not just a fling—and certainly not just a friend. 

“Do you think your toy will pass through security?” 

Had I not swallowed my noodles, I would’ve spat them out at her black little outfit. Kitty giggles at my reaction—at the frozen tension in my face as I gaze up at her from my bowl, the soup dripping from my chin. Our movements are simultaneous—hands letting go of our chopstick, but while mine reach for a napkin, hers rummage in the white plastic bag I set down on the empty chair beside me. 

The table is too narrow, and it’s a blessing and a curse. 

Her vanilla perfume hits my nostrils and I’m convinced it’s what the moon must smell like. The box of the male toy is overly big for her hands and her hair shields her from me as she discreetly reads the description and the instructions. I widen my legs under the table, my bloodstream focusing on only one body part of mine, and I wonder if that’s what she was truly thinking of while she ate her own bowl of noodles. 

Fucking myself with a rose fleshlight. Away from her; across the sea. 

Jungkook must’ve told her about our tour. I wasn’t going to mention it tonight because I didn’t want to ruin the night with the sombreness of my work. As much as I looked forward to seeing our Army from that side of the globe, I wasn’t happy with the decision installed upon us—wasn’t happy that our management didn’t ask us about our feelings, whether we’re ready for it or not. It was more of a—you have a job now, do it well, cameras will be rolling—and that was the end of it. Namjoon sensed my dissatisfaction, slouching in his chair in front of me, with his jaw propped between his fingers and his eyes piercing through me but he, too, couldn’t say a thing. 

None of us could. 

It cast me to a deeper sea of my anguish that I didn’t want to stream into my ordinary life with Kitty. I was going to tell her as soon as my fresh emotions would’ve settled and we would’ve settled to the same extent, though having the toy be in the center of it changes everything now. 

It’ll be different. 

I won’t be a puppet, channeling my humanness through my love for our beloved Army. On the contrary, I will be a dancing fool, knowing I have someone waiting for me back in Seoul while being the epitome of my deepest longings and sentiments overseas. My heart, the toy and the means of our communication. 

I wasn’t going to bring the toy with me because if the members were ever to find out, I wouldn’t live it down. But if it makes that sparkle in her irises last a little longer, I shall put extra care into hiding it at the bottom of my suitcase. 

“You want me to take it?” I ask, softly, leaning back in my chair, one hand on the table, the other across my thigh. Her smile curves as she glimpses up at me, and I still can’t believe she pulled out an actual sex toy in a restaurant filled with hungry drunken people. If anyone recognizes me, I’m fucked. Majestically, devastatingly fucked if they take a picture, the said picture gets to our management and I have to write an apology letter on Weverse afterward. 

I’m sorry for having a personal life with a beautiful girl who’s unlike any shallow pretty faces I’ve come across. I will be more mindful of my actions in the future.

Fuck that. 

She can take it out of the packaging and see if it needs to be charged before we can use it if she so much as wishes so. 

We.

Yes, that’s right.

I’m not the same person I was yesterday, and something tells me that I have her to thank for that. 

“Well, I’m sure the Christmas spirit will get to you and you’ll be lonely. Also, let’s not forget it’ll be cuffing season most of all.” 

It’s funny she says that, considering what I secretly bought for her. Hysterical, in fact. Hilarious. 

It’s hidden in the pocket of my jacket, so even though she followed her curiosity into the bag, she still doesn’t know about the surprise that awaits her. I took it out when I let her walk in front of me, discreetly. It brought me more joy than I thought I was ever capable of bearing. 

Still, I wonder how much more of it I can be filled with. And I want to tempt it—brim with it. I reckon she’s the safest person to take that risk with, but the quiet, unknown voice in me adds that it’s not a risk at all. 

Quite the opposite. 

And the idea of cuffing her, both literally and figuratively, draws me closer to that cliff of brisk water of that ultimate joy and I want to get soaked. I want to drink. 

I want to be cleansed by it. 

“Would you like to be cuffed by me, little one?” 

It was automatic, the pet name streaming out of my mouth like that mini waterfall I seem to be dazed by. The question, too. And I’m not afraid, not even a hint of dread crawls upon me, and I find myself hoping that it stays. That everything I do and say from now on is of that automatic matter, unabashed, not blocked, not held back. 

I hope to be a real person with her. Without any ghosts, any demons. Any pain to scar her with. 

The little one doesn’t smile this time, shrinks in her flummox, but still I don’t fear, I don’t wish to grasp my words and put them back in my throat. Taking little steps means grazing your knees and I’m here to place band aids on her bleeding spots. 

I’m here for her. 

And my belief is supported by my actions this whole evening. 

The person I was yesterday is almost unrecognizable to me and I pray, I pray and I will pray once this night is over that it shall remain so. 

“I’m not sure what kind of question you’re asking me right now,” she murmurs, leaning her elbows on the table, drawing close to me like I’m drawing close to her, and it’s good enough. I don’t ask for anything else from her. 

“It’s the one you think it is,” I rasp, making her eyes widen slightly, and I have to chuckle. She’s so damn adorable, standing outside of her comfort zone, and my own eye is watchful over her, over her little steps, band aids ready in my hands. 

At the sound of my soft laughter, she drops her gaze, running her tongue over the inside flesh of her cheek—and there it is. That kind heat rushing through her. I want her to be smoldered by it. 

I want a lot of things when it comes to her, a phenomenon that forces me ponder if there ever will be an end to it. It’s better than feeling dissatisfaction regarding someone, digging a hand deep in them, expecting gold, yet plucking out stones that only cut your skin eventually. The more you dig, the bigger the wound. But I don’t have to do that in her. The little one, the moon kitty herself, gives it over, willingly. All of her silver moon dust, glory, and the ashes from her firelight. 

Maybe that’s how it should be. 

Not expecting, not reaching, but being given, being provided. 

Her eyelids lift and descend over the package in her hands before they root upon mine. And her response to my words keeps me company all the way to America. 

“Show me how well you can use this and I just might be.” 

Dead or alive, I blur between the lines. Jet lagged or just sick with love, it is a conjoined affair in me like the two halves of my heart. 

I miss her, even though I haven’t been able to unattach myself from my phone, the only tangible connection between us—the back and forth exchange of words, emojis and stickers that I had never used in my life but began to spam our conversations with once she coyly hid behind them. I miss her, even though I spent nearly every day with her until I boarded my flight. 

In Jungkook’s hotel room, the members share a meal together while I stay back, settled comfortably on the beige couch by the floor-length windows as the morning sun shimmers its rays across the walls. I’m sporting a hard-on, which I camouflage with a rough-textured pillow across my lap, due to the contents of our text messages. Hobi is slurping his ramen next to me, elbows propped on his elbows, posture slouched, oblivious to the fact that the girl of his platonic dreams is horny and challenging me to join her in her evening self-care. 

Yes, Hobi has developed a crush on the moon kitty and I was the first one to know. 

During the last of our leisure time in November before the tour, Hobi called me up and asked me to join him on his last drinking adventure before our work duties swallowed us. He lured me into his apartment with the two bottles of Hennessy that he had bought for the occasion and we talked work, we talked our management and we talked girls. 

He admitted to me how guilty he felt for triggering such unpleasant memories in Kitty’s mind after I shared with him the reason why I picked her up into my arms and walked away from him. I was purposefully vague in my speech, not wanting to disclose such privacy without her present, without her knowing especially, and Hobi respected that. Told me he thought about her since that day, remembering only the negative, tethered wisps that seemed to curl tightly in his gut. And I, drunk out of my mind, doting and devoted, shared with him that I wanted her. 

Made sure to emphasize in my admission that she was mine. 

It was the bravest thing I ever had done. 

Hobi understood, explained to me that how he regarded her was strictly friendly. Thought that she carried a certain elegance of beauty that was unprecedented in today’s culture, however, with which I enthusiastically agreed. Then he clutched my shoulder, the wounded one, with extra tenderness, looked me carefully in the eye, and gave me a groundbreaking word of advice that shook through my world. 

Don’t treat her like you treated Sun-mi. 

I didn’t grasp the meaning until we opened the second bottle and Hobi, seeing my puzzlement, fleshed out his wisdom. 

Don’t cling, don’t make her the air you breathe. Just live your life by her side and breathe your own air. You worked too hard to get here to backtrack. 

And I tried, within the little time we had together. 

We didn’t fuck, we didn’t devour each other’s bodies. We conversed, I learned her favorite color, the name of her favorite band, the dishes she liked—and the common ins and outs of her life. White wasn’t the only color of her soul, she liked red; that deep, dark tint one would only witness alive in the depth of the night. She liked the color of the stop lights, of the tail lights; she liked the way it bathed my face in gentle, undangerous fire whenever we would get stuck in traffic on our car drives—and apparently she liked my patience. 

Chase Atlantic was her favorite band. 

Tteokbokki her favorite dish. 

And I was her favorite person. A fact I already knew by the way she would kiss me at those favorite stop lights of hers. 

That was all we did. Kiss and converse. And I didn’t cling to her, didn’t make her the air I breathed. On the contrary, following Hobi’s wisdom, I fell for her in the purest of ways, which I somehow made possible in this befouled world. 

And, perhaps, she did, too. A deduction of mine because she began to smoke in front of me at some point. 

She was afraid I wouldn’t like it, a sensitive wound that she let me in on—a formless, unclear one that kept me wide awake at night, scrambling my brain to try and figure out what the fucker before me did to her. That was, until she told me, upon our last car drive during that last week we’d have with each other, that the said wound was caused by my own fault. 

I told her off for being bare for me at the beginning of the trajectory of our closeness and I sowed a poisonous plant of a hang-up in her. A block in her brain that pressured her to hide the “questionable” parts of her from me. 

But there weren’t any questionable parts of her—and I told her, after I pulled out my own pack, lit up one, grabbed her by the back of her neck and kissed her until her lungs were depleted of air. 

It was the bloom of our lust, particularly the vocal, intense apology I strung into her lips, kissing them deeper and deeper until they swelled. It was the beginning of our naughty text messages—right on the cusp of my absence, hooking onto my yearning and expanding it to heavenly dimensions. 

Yes, heavenly. Our closeness represented heaven as we had forgotten about our toys and remembered them during our hypersexual conversations. Face to face, we focused on the stimulation of our connected intellect, our intertwined characters; phone to phone, our bodies sought compensation.

And right now, upon the first morning here in the US, the moon kitty is persuading me into unpacking my suitcase and using the rose toy in my room. 

She’s straining, working so hard, sending me her little stickers of adorable, pleading animals, incognizant to the fact that I don’t need to be that much impelled to do it. She’s staying up for me, needy in bed—I made my decision the second she mentioned it. 

I merely delight in her saying please. 

I get off on it; it makes my cock rock hard and the concept of the members being around and unaware of what she’s doing to me—especially Jungkook, who’s stimming and happy to be eating after a restless night—heightens my pleasure, lengthening towards the heavens. 

If only I could take her there. With my tongue. Like I did the first time, holding her body down so she wouldn’t rise higher without me. 

pleaseeeeee, i’m gonna start without you if you dont get up rn 

I smile at the text message and I imagine her writhing in her bed, her bedsheets crumpled and tousled around her, her fingers tracing the curved petals of her rose toy—itching, impatient, needy; waiting for me. 

My cock grows. And I, too, meet my impatience. 

Just a second. Be good, I respond back to her, locking my phone and immersing myself in reality. 

The boys are uncharacteristically quiet, each one indulging in an activity of their own. Jungkook is huffing, his cheeks full and around, staring down his plate of food as if it was about to grow its own legs and walk away from him. Jimin is watching him with an endeared smile that is split by a secrecy all of us are aware of. Lopsided, its glow is shunned out by the tender, doleful layer of wetness in his eyes. And I know that his tummy will get full by watching him eat and that it will be his only source of fulfilling food for today. 

I clench my fists. 

Hobi beside me has finished his own breakfast and has entered his food coma, staring into nothing at the ceiling as he rests his neck against the backrest of the couch. Taehyung is looking at me in a way that brings my eyes back to him for a double take. With a smirk and a glint in the gentleness of his eyes, he flicks his browns at his own phone and nods his head, telling me something in the silent language that I don’t want him to. 

He noticed something he shouldn’t have. 

The words are flung out of me long before I comprehend what I’m saying, up and ready on my feet, covering my erection with the thick hem of my oversized shirt. 

“I’m gonna head to mine for a bit and take a shower,” I announce, making heads lift in my direction, and considering my situation, I cower in shyness, keeping my back to them as I walk towards the front door. 

“The stylist is coming at one pm and we have a soundcheck at three thirty,” Namjoon informs, and I pivot to look at him, at all six of them while my hand remains on the doorknob. 

Jungkook is rubbing his eyes and I take one last look at his faded mint hair, saying goodbye to it in my heart. I know what hair color I’m changing my silver hair to, thought of it on the plane and was immediately convinced it was my greatest idea. I nod, sweeping my eyes over the last five heads as if I was going to come back to them as a different person. 

Perhaps I was. 

I ignore Taehyung and his knowing smile as I leave, racking my brain, trying to come up with the reason why he’s acting like this. Did Hobi say something or was I not careful enough, divulging my secret out in the open with my face or my body language? Was the pillow over my lap and my eyes, all of my attention glued to my phone making it that obvious that I’m seeing someone? 

How would they react if they knew it was the Kitty girl? 

I leave it be for now, my cock asking for attention. I fish out my hotel key card and close everything behind me. Taehyung’s all seeing eye, Jimin’s diet and I stoop in my homesickness. 

It’s been two days and I feel as though Kitty ripped my heart out of my chest and folded it somewhere inside her purse when we hugged for the last time. I reminisce on her innocent touch on my neck, the only place she ever touched me besides my hair, on her lips that pressed against that place her hands warmed as I video call her. 

She picks up, immediately. 

I can only see her round head, the red of her hair sprawled messily on the silky, light beige cover of her pillow while the rest of her body is shrouded by that material. She smiles at me, no hint of embellishment lining her face—and something tells me that she’s all bare underneath her bed sheets, too. 

I palm my cock, desperate. 

“How long were you gonna keep me waiting?” she asks, and proves me right as she raises a hand and props it behind her head, the duvet drifting down a little and exposing the beginning of her fleshy peak and my mouth waters. I licked and kissed that breast of hers once upon a time and I would do anything to have that opportunity right now. I would do a better job; I would drive her insane. Spoil her with kisses so harsh that she would reach a point in heaven that no one ever has. 

I think about her question and deem I could never keep her waiting long if I were all by myself. “You know who I was with. Was I supposed to pull out my dick in front of them?” 

She giggles at my bizarre response, shifting her head to find a more comfortable spot, and the wholeness of her breasts greets me.

Bless all silky beddings. The superior invention of all. 

“Oh, hello there,” I joke, deepening her giggles and she angles her phone so I don’t see anything, breaking me apart. 

I shall punish her for it. 

I set my phone down against the table by the wall and take my shirt off. My angle allows her to see the state of me that she created with her lust—by telling me that she was up and desperate for me, craving the toy that I bought for her and that she wouldn’t use it unless I did with her at the same time. I didn’t need any details, any obscenities that I know full well she’s capable of giving me. Just her admitting to me that she needed me, trusting me enough with that intimate information made me so hard that I couldn’t contain myself. 

I watch her eyes glide down my body that isn’t good enough to be regarded like she does, stopping at the weakness she’s effectuated in my groin. And I let her, the first person who ever looked at me with such raw, undomesticated hunger. 

And I wish she would eat me up. Get on a plane, get to this hotel, to my room and take her time taking out my bones. I am for her taking—and I have been since the first time our eyes linked. 

“You’re not really helping me right now,” she croaks out, her raspy voice enveloping around my aching cock and I can say the same. Especially when she shifts entirely, rolls over to her tummy and I can see her natural face better, the carmine of her hair that veils and tickles her cleavage, enough that she flicks it behind her shoulder, letting me be the witness to her bare skin. 

Now she’s punishing me. 

“Was I supposed to help you? I thought we’re helping ourselves,” I tease, and my words pull her mouth apart, even more so when I begin to take off my belt, making sure I tug it out of my belt loops swiftly. She bites her lip, ruining me, and I want to use that leather on her. I fold it in half and point it at her. “This is what you’re getting once I see you.” 

She licks the skin she bit onto, her eyes widening, and I quiver—I quiver because she likes the idea. 

“What for?” she asks, raising her voice a little bit, and I chuckle. 

“For being so goddamn beautiful.” 

Kitty blushes and curls her lips under her teeth like I’ve noticed she so often does. I like it so much, so fucking much that I yearn for her to do it when she takes my cock into her throat for the first time. 

I know she will do a good job, swallowing every inch. 

“Where’s your toy, huh?” 

My chuckle is savage this time, vibrating in my sternum and I watch her perk up at the sound like the kitten she is. I descend into madness, willingly, hasty to jump head-first into this thing, despite my following words. 

“You just can’t wait, can you?” 

Her ‘no’ is etched all over her flushed cheeks and I crave to kiss it, run my lips all over it so they can remember it beyond this day, this month—all the way into the new year. 

“Did you pass through security with it or does the entire LAX know what a slut you are?” 

Her words spring in me, exciting me further more, and I can’t help but smile and blush, like her. I drop my gaze, fondle the leather of my belt, and I feel little sparks of muted electricity shooting down my arms. My mind outruns me, picturing the way I physically destroy her for her bratty, delicious mouth, and my smile blossoms, denting into my face. 

“Your ass is gonna be red, little one. So fucking red you won’t be able to sit down.” 

She doesn’t back away at the threat and I visibly see my own reaction reflecting in her. And it’s my mouth that parts this time when she props her phone against something, rises her chest in the air and sits down on her folded legs. And I have to hold onto the table, with the belt still caged in my grasp, when she spreads her thighs and gives me the consent to see all of her. 

Her perked, full breasts, asking for me. Her soft tummy, perfect for my hands to hold. And my own personal ruination down low, between those thighs, glistening and sopping wet. 

“Not even like this?” 

My cock aches. I let go of the belt and the clanging sound accompanies me as I unbutton my pants. “Not even like this.” 

My desire lodges at the bottom of me, pent-up and animalistic. And I take my phone, rummage in my opened suitcase for the toy, lube and head for the shower. My manliness doesn’t even move due to how hard I am. 

Hearing the sizzling noise of the blasting stream of the shower, her brows scrunch up in confusion and I enjoy her obliviousness to her punishment. 

“You’re taking a shower?” 

I’m not too sure about how loud the toy is and I’m not risking having my members eavesdropping on our intimate act with their ears pressed against the thin walls. I’m absolutely not risking shit, locking the door behind me after I leave her in the small rectangular hole in the shower and dispose myself of my underwear. 

And when I step inside and the water dribbles down my sensitive skin, ignited from my lust and hers, I discover that my plan is working out perfectly. 

She can’t see anything. 

She can’t see the lower half of my body—and she won’t be able to watch the petal-ornamented mouth of the toy swirling around my cock. 

And that’s what she gets, talking like that. 

“Get your toy ready, kitty,” I say, letting the water drench me before I get the job done. I push my hair back and I hear her gasp, the sound making me stop my movements. I look over to her, swiping the drops from my eyes, and I find her humping her hand ever so slowly. I rage, beautifully, wishing that was my hand she was gliding her pussy on until I realize that I’m the reason she slid her hand down there. But that still doesn’t mean she’s allowed to do so. “No touching or we stop.”

My heart hammers in my chest when she complies and my weakness for her increases, filling up every part of me until she’s the very owner of me. 

I swell up with pride. 

“Good girl.” 

At my praise she plunges her wet fingers into her mouth and I lose my sanity. I lose my name, my identity, and the knowledge of my whereabouts. I’m not in LA, where I don’t want to be, carrying my responsibilities and the pressure of unfairness on my back, but I’m somewhere else entirely. All by myself in a place, where she’ll soon join me. A wintry island, just for us, where I’m not an idol, where I don’t have a job that forces me away from her, but where I’m free. Free to do whatever I please. 

“Good fucking girl. Let me have a taste.” I lean my palms against the edge of the hole and I die when she reaches her shiny fingers towards me, towards the camera. I hum, the sound interwoven with my gentle laughter, and I stop myself before I lick the screen. “Thank you. So good, Kitty. Now, can you be the best girl ever and lick your toy? Make it nice and wet for your pussy?” 

Her breath trembles as she exhales, reaching over for the red rose beyond the set-up of her phone. And she rests her chest against the mattress, upthrusts her bum in the air and while she’s this close to the camera, she darts out her tongue and drags it over the silicone hole in the center, her alluring eyes fixed on me. 

My arousal oozes out of my tip, scalding hot, and I suck in a breath, fucked out. 

“Fuck, baby,” I husk, my eyelids lowering as my whole body catches on fire, and I can’t respire. I grip the edge until my fingers are bathed in white. My desire asks for more. “Spit on it for Oppa.” 

She moans and I nearly explode, my memories of her noises when I was tongue-deep in her flooding through my mind, and I can’t take any more of it. Especially not the discovery that she’s keen on titles, keen on me being the dominant one. 

My palm itches for my cock, but I won’t give in. Not yet. 

Kitty gathers her saliva and she seizes all of me when she spits on it, circling her tongue around the rim, spreading it there. And then she whines and my manliness twitches, painfully, ridding me of any sense I had left. 

“Can we start now, please?” she begs, and I’m ready to give her everything. 

I moisten my lips. “Wait for just a little while, baby. Let Oppa get his toy ready.” 

And under her gaze, I squirt the lube inside the hollowness and all over myself, sighing and tilting my head back when I scatter the liquid along my shaft. The pressure of my fist is delicate, yet it feels as though I’m levitating. I’m confident it’s owing to the fact I’m being watched by those rounded eyes of hers and that she’s observing what her psyche has done to me. 

“I want to see you,” she whimpers, and I don’t feel like punishing her any longer. 

I unclench my fist. “What pretty word do you use when you ask for something?” 

She doesn’t even think about it and my pride enlarges. “Please.”

“That’s a good fucking kitty.” 

She sits up and nearly fucks her mattress, moaning into her hand—and I know, I already know that I won’t last long under these circumstances. 

I’m so eager to give her what she wants that I don’t perceive that she's never seen this private part of me before until she gasps so fucking loudly that I startle. I’ve set her on the lower shower shelf and her mouth is wide open, the toy prepared in her hand. 

“You’re so…” she trails off, shy all of a sudden, and I might pay for her plane tickets after my shower. I’m fucking her so hard that I’ll mark every single inch of mine inside her pretty pussy. 

“Tiny,” I finish for her, and she laughs in that dopey way, even though we haven’t even started yet. 

“Will that toy even… fit you?” she asks, her pools entwined to my cock, transfixed, and I long to kiss her. Despairingly. 

I look down to my little man, to the toy and eventually to her. “I’ll make it fit.” 

Her breath hitches in her throat, pleasuring me. “If you talk like that while we do our thing, I won’t be able to hold out.” 

I hum, deeply, my endearment. “Why is that a problem?” She’s taken aback, like she always is whenever we talk, and I tilt my head towards the toy in her hand. “I want you to ride it for me.” 

She sinks her teeth into her bottom lip and places the rose between her legs without taking her eyes off of mine. Ever so dangerous, ever so aphrodisiacal. “I want you to fuck it for me.” 

I groan, wrapping my fist around my shaft. “Turn it on, Kitty. Make yourself feel good.” 

She mewls long before she turns it on—and once she does, her chest arches towards me and her eyes flutter back. Her hips slowly find their rhythm as she begins to hump it, unsure at first before falling into its temptation. And then she’s loud, louder than the raging waterfall behind me, sprinkling me, and louder than me when I get to work and tug on my length. 

My noises bring her to me, but she doesn’t fix her gaze on mine—they pass down to my cock, her moans becoming needier, and she encourages me to join her. 

“Come on, Oppa, it feels so good.” 

I wade in a haze, spurred from her pleasure and now the title, unable to move my limbs. “Is it sucking on your clit?” 

She nods her head, stopping, but it brings forth more delight for her. She crumbles, her chest curving, and she saves herself from tumbling by propping her palm flat on the mattress, struggling—struggling to breathe, struggling to talk. 

“I—I’m not doing it if—if you’re not,” she stutters, her words melting into a whimper and I’m gone. 

It’s her energy, her desperation-fueled energy that pushes me to move my other limb and glide the mouth of the toy down my tip. She orders me to turn it on and I do, bending forward in the paralyzing pleasure it begins to give me. 

And it’s me who’s loud as it sucks on my head so vehemently that I, too, struggle. 

“Fuck, fuck—” I groan, lowering the toy down my length just in time for it to take the other direction, and I don’t moan any of her pet names. No, I moan out her name—and I make her come. 

My name breaks on her tongue and it is as my undoing as it is hers. I have to pull it out of me in order not to stop our playtime there, recuperating by watching her convulse while sitting on the toy as it completely traps her in the celestial realm of her orgasm. My cock twitches in the air, yearning to be inside her, and feel her walls spasm around it. I accept my death for the longevity of the bursting of her pleasure and I fall, I face-plant, drastically, for her. Deeper and deeper. 

No way back. 

“Good girl. So good. Oppa is proud of you.” 

She yelps, overstimulation grappling her, and I bite my lip so hard I break skin. She lifts her bum, quivering, and only when she catches her breath and begs me to come for her do I fuck the toy and chase down my own orgasm. 

And it doesn’t take long. Not when she topples onto the mattress and her face is what I come on while she, again, joins me, working her fingers on her clit out of my view. 

“You know I’m fucking you and not this toy,” I mutter, focusing the suction on my tip as I pound it. And when she moans my name and I hear the squelching of her hole, I throw the toy on the shelf beside my phone and use my hand to stain her face as if she were here with me, on her knees. 

My orgasm erupts and erupts, triggering hers, and we come together like this. Close, yet far away. Looking into each other’s eyes—never failing, never deteriorating, never diving into our past pains. 

Lightness blankets me and I feel as though I could fly and drift through this world without any burdens to bear on my back. Kitty looks well-spent and I suppose I reflect her all over again—and shall reflect her until my last dying day. 

I wipe my screen, my innermost craving still yet not satisfied, and I identify what it truly is. As she raises onto her knees, I lean against the shelf with my elbows and reveal it to her. 

“Let me see your pussy. Show me how wet you were for me.” 

She saw me up close, I didn’t.

It is only fair. 

She swears, enveloping her vulgarities around my name, and she obeys. Lies back down against her silky pillows and takes her phone between her legs, spreading them. She parts her wet folds with the two of her fingers and I salivate. Her clit is swollen and carmine from the intense sucking of the toy, glimmering in the faint light, her lips dripping and her hole squeezing around nothing. I wither in need, tasting blood on my lip, and when she runs all four of her fingers up her clit, I begin to heave. 

Hard, all over again. 

“Such a pretty pussy. Oppa misses it.” 

She purrs nonsense, as sleepy as she is, and the transfer back to reality is brutal. I check the time and it must be almost four AM in Seoul. I grieve the time zone between us, hoping the endeavor we shared was worth her staying up for me. 

“Good night, moon kitty. Sleep well.” 

She mumbles the same without omitting my newly deep-seated title. The three beautiful words for her form on my tongue, but I don’t say them. I save them for a better time, for the end of this tour, once I fly her to me. 

I watch her sleep for a little bit, my cock softening. Her hand is furled under her chin and I think about how she’s protecting my heart right in there. It doesn’t allow me to end the call, so I take a shower, place her on the sink when I dry myself off, on the table when I dress myself and turn my microphone off when I blow dry my hair. 

It is only when Jungkook knocks on my door and sloshes his sudden plan over me that I am forced to let her flow in her dreams without me and keep them undisturbed. 

What he tells me is my duty and I don’t hesitate to pocket my inconspicuous knife that carries too many bad memories. 

I thank him in my head that I get to wash those memories away with a different blood. 

What he tells me is this: “Come with me, hyung, we have a son of a bitch to mutilate.” 

𓂃 ౨ৎ LOVE-KISSED BABIES: @tkslovechild, @jjk7k, @parkinglot-nights, @bethvar, @Sexytholland, @yoongibaybee, @crystaleah,@fennecnco, @lil-kpopstan, @euphoricmyth, @jungkoock, @cinmmongirl, @hoseokkie-caeks, @kam9404, @fr0ggieth1nk.

© 2024 hoseoksluna, all rights reserved.

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[ohnoitstbskyen]

Oh no. Sir I believe I'm going to need you to explain that Dragon Age 2 opinion, that is a BLAZING hot take

I really don't think it is. Although of course all of this is personal opinion, not some sort of divine proclamation on high about which video games people are allowed to prefer, so take please it in the spirit it is offered.

Origins is a worldbuilding walking tour as much about explaining its own in-universe lore and fantasy history as it is about either its characters or the actual story that is happening in the game. It's a cool world! With some great lore! But also it is built entirely around Generic Fantasy Plot Structure #1 and never particularly seems interested in innovating, or surprising the player. On top of which, a lot of its setting and lore is pretty weakly sketched and doesn't really get developed into something either visually or narratively compelling until it gets built out in later games.

And while Inquisition has some genuinely fantastic characters, everything else about the game suffers very badly from the plague of BioWare Magic™, i.e. the production was an absolute mess up until the last minute when five hundred extremely overworked and underpaid creative geniuses somehow managed to wring a functional experience out of the trainwreck. It was made with fucking Frostbite of all things, jesus christ, it's holding together with spit and duct tape.

Now, Dragon Age 2 shares a bunch of the problems of Origins and Inquisition. It too bears the hallmarks of "our executives couldn't plan a healthy game production cycle if their lives depended on it" with a lot of unfinished content, half-assed sidequests and a truly frustrating over-reliance on a combat system that isn't half as engaging to use as it needed to be.

But Dragon Age 2 also has something neither of its siblings could ever even hope to match: an actual compelling protagonist.

Like, listen, I know people adore their headcanons about their Wardens and Inquisitors, and it has made for some truly amazing fanworks, but Hawke is literally the only actual character out of all of them. Hawke has conflicts, problems, needs and drives that actually inform and push the story forward, they have a family and a history and a reason to give a sh** about the central conflict of the narrative.

In Origins and Inquisition both, your character becomes the main character of the story entirely because of fate and random chance. You are the Chosen One and you are the only one who can Save The World because you're the last of the super special elite fantasy Hero Squad, or because you got some green magic stuck in your hand by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Because the character is a complete blank slate onto which the player is expected to project themselves, random chance and circumstance are the only tools the plot can use to position them as main characters. There is no character to drive them to it.

In Dragon Age 2, Hawke becomes the champion because they're trying to build a new life for their family in Kirkwall, and end up embroiled in the chaos and politics that befall the city as a natural consequence of living in it and dealing with the conditions of it. Hawke and their family's needs and wants drive their actions, and push them to engage in endeavors that influence the course of history. They have agency (in the conceit of the narrative, at least) over how their life turns out, they make choices that have consequences, rather than being dictated into the position of Main Character by a literal looming apocalypse that permits no other course of action.

And I'm not about to sit here and claim that Dragon Age 2's story is perfect or that every character is a masterpiece or that every plotline is amazing. No, there's plenty of scuff and jank and things that have aged poorly and unresolved plot threads and all the rest of it.

And I am definitely not forgetting the godsdamned DLC where BioWare threw it all overboard by inventing a Special Bloodline Plot where oops it turns out Hawke actually IS a special chosen one specially chosen by a special fate to have a special role in Saving The World because they're special because of fate and destiny and blah blah, I still think that was phenomenally stupid (especially when Corypheus wasn't even Hawke's goddamn main villain to deal with what was any of this supposed to add to their character ffs BioWare)

But even with all its problems, the simple fact that Hawke is a character you can give a shit about independent of your own projection as a player - the fact that Hawke isn't just an empty bland blank slate with no personality, no traits, no wants or needs or drives - that has made Dragon Age 2 infinitely more memorable to me than either Origins and Inquisition. I think about it to this day. I think about Hawke to this day. I care about what happens to the character in a way that I just simply could never bring myself to do with either my Wardens or my Inquisitors.

[astrolovecosmos]

Aries - Libra Axis: Tells a story about taking action vs. indecision, inaction, and procrastination. Tells a story about selfishness but also giving to the detriment of self, lack of boundaries, assertion, charm, persuasion, force, peace and war, leadership and cooperation, independence vs. partnerships, passion, romance, self-awareness vs. shallowness and detachment, insensitivity vs. tact, cheating and deception, winning and losing, honesty and bravery. Tells a story about lovers and fighters.

Taurus - Scorpio Axis: Tells a story about control, power, jealousy, resentment, stubbornness, indulgence and sensuality, comfort and thrill, safety and danger, possessive behavior, materialism, emotional strength and influence, inner security or contentment and inner empowerment and passion, willpower, revenge, grudges, manipulation, obsession, seduction, self-destruction, transformation and rebuilding. Tells a story about self-mastery and self-esteem.

Gemini - Sagittarius Axis: Tells a story about communication, learning, knowledge, teaching, exploration of mind, body, and the world, trickery, con artists, betrayal, support, lies and truth, versatility, duality, variety, curiosity, superficiality vs. depth, philosophy, morals, logic, spontaneity and fickleness, symmetry vs. asymmetry, restlessness, carelessness, freedom, exaggeration vs. factual, movement, cunning wit and intellect as well as wisdom, optimism vs. skepticism, dissembling, analyzing, deception, schemes, gossip, boasting, charm vs. tactlessness, and promises. Tells a story about storytelling - lessons and adaptation.

Cancer - Capricorn Axis: Tells a story about protection, self-preservation, endurance, practicality, emotions and rationality, defense vs. offense, vulnerability, attachment, clinging vs. self-reliance, sentiment, nostalgia, home and family, ambition, purpose, clans, tribes, societies, private world vs. external/outer world, moods, cycles, authority, parents/mothers and fathers, caution, responsibility, duty, patience, compassion vs. cruelty, intuition, shrewdness, strategy, contentment vs. dissatisfaction, security vs. insecurity. Tells a story about needs and being uninhibited, as well as control and discipline.

Leo - Aquarius Axis: Tells a story about leadership, charisma, confidence, individuality, self-expression, creativity, innovation, the power of one vs. the power of the many, attention, compulsion, pride, ego, play and discovery, experimentation and rebellion, drama, curiosity, socialization, influence, dignity, generosity, benevolence and/or common good, chaos, destruction, passion vs. dispassion, humanity, divinity, fellowship, organized groups, separation or standing apart, control or tyranny, strangeness and what's rejected vs. what's accepted or even celebrated. Tells a story about the king/queen/politician and anarchist/rebellion/revolutionist.

Virgo - Pisces Axis: Tells a story about the spirit and body, healing, helping others, service, caring for others, listening to your body or your intuition, purity vs. corruption, compassion, sensitivity, impressions, flexibility, logic, imagination, being receptive, mysticism, confusion, illusions, clarity, distillation, categorizing, researching, analyzing - a thorough search for facts/truth. Tells a story about sacrifice, empathy, saving others, discernment, efficiency and productivity vs. procrastination and rest, modesty, free and flowing energy vs. precise and predictable energy, perfectionism vs. admiring flaws, realism or skepticism vs. idealism, details vs. big picture. Tells a story about the dreamer and the worker, the ability to make our dreams come true.

[monstersdownthepath]

Homebrew Horror: Galroscul, Nascent Lord of Gluttony and Cannibalism

(Art done by the incredible @crankyteapot!)

First mentioned here, Galroscul is a fierce and powerful fiend who once coveted the throne of King of Demons, wishing to feed from Lamashtu's flesh to achieve his apotheosis... but before Lamashtu even registered his existence as a threat, he was beset by the combined forces of both Zura and Xoveron, who saw him as a challenger to their dominions over consumptive destruction and rampant gluttony. He was powerful, but not so much so that he could overcome such a fierce and coordinated assault from two Demon Lords and their armies, and yet his opponents could not simply kill him or he would rejuvenate and attack them while they were weakened, leaving them all back at square one... so they imprisoned him instead.

On a far-off world under the lock and key of a cadre of hedonistic Zurans and Urgathoans, Galroscul is imprisoned in a great and terrible machine that draws from his demonic power, infusing cuts of meat with fiendishly addictive energy that assures a steady trickle of profits for the meatmongers as customers become unable to stop themselves from buying more. This also serves the purpose of providing tantalizing food for the man-eating demons and undead among their ranks, and all the while the would-be Demon King is slowly being driven insane by the pain of the machine sapping his power and the pain of his empty stomach seeing countless tons of meat pass him by while he has no mouth to eat them.

And yet, wracked with pain and hunger, Galroscul is far more clever than he appears to be, and his fierce desperation will drive him to enact a plan no sane being would ever consider. Able to still wield sparks of his demonic magic even while imprisoned, Galroscul will slowly but surely do the unthinkable, cutting pieces away from his body and shearing his own divine power out of himself bit by bit. Every piece of meat and drop of blood that he cuts away falls onto the procession of meat below, contaminating them with a far more potent form of demonic corruption that his captors intended. Soon after he begins this process, demonic tieflings bearing the features of fiendish boars will start popping up all over the planet as new, bizarre religious groups begin to form around demagogues bearing traces of the Demon Lord's might, contacted in their dreams by the Hunger Sealed in Steel and guided towards the effort to free him.

The statblock below does not represent Galroscul as he was or as he is; in the current time, he is still imprisoned on a far-off world in the torturous meat machine. Despite his imprisonment, his influence still grows in strange parts of the cosmos from both the lingering cultists he possessed when he was vying for the throne of Demon King, and where covert deliveries of demon-tainted meat are served, whether it be the prison world he is held on or another world that his cultists have managed to smuggle products to. As the years tick excruciatingly by, he will cut enough away from himself to slip the machine's shackles and put out a rallying call to all his corrupted sycophants and wicked "children" at once. The factory in which he is held will be destroyed in a single night, after which Galroscul will rampage across this distant world's surface for a hundred days, devouring everything he comes across in both gluttonous fury and rapturous joy at his freedom. For now, though, he simply dreams of the times to come.

Thus, these stats represents Galroscul shortly after his freedom. He is greatly withered both physically and mentally, but this is merely in comparison to his previous power at CR 29, and he still maintains a grip on vast portions of of his old might. As the picture above alludes to, he still has pieces of the imprisoning machine fused to his body. These are now welded to his very essence, and regenerate from damage just as his flesh and bone, serving as eternal reminders of his failure... and reminders to never let it happen again.

Galroscul, the Hunger Sealed in Steel CR 24 Chaotic Evil Huge Outsider (stuff) Init: +8; Senses: Darkvision 120ft, Detect Good, Detect Law, True Seeing, scent (60ft); Perception +35 Aura: Frightful Presence (120ft, DC 29), Unholy Aura (DC 24)

------ Defense ------

AC 40, touch 20, flat-footed 32 (+4 deflection, +8 Dex, +20 natural armor, -2 size) HP 515 (27d10+351); Regeneration 15 (Good) Fort +32 Ref +20 Will +24 Defensive abilities Ferocity, Hog Wild; DR 15/Cold iron and Good; Immune Charm and compulsion effects, death effects, disease, Electricity, poison; Resist Acid 30, Cold 30, Fire 30; SR 34

------ Offense ------

Speed 80ft, burrow 30ft, climb 80ft Melee Bite +45 (2d6+19/19-20 plus grab), 2 claws +37 (1d8+7 plus grab), gore +44 (2d6+19/19-20 plus Dispelling Gore), sting +37 (1d8+7) Space 15ft; Reach 15ft Special Attacks Dispelling Gore, Down in One, Fast Swallow, Gruesome Gullet, Merciless Assault, Overhead Flip (DC 37), Swallow Whole (6d8+22 bludgeoning and piercing plus 5d6 energy plus Consume Essence (DC 29), 30 AC, 51 HP), Spell-like Abilities (CL 20th; Concentration +26)

Constant--Air Walk, Detect Good, Detect Law, Greater Magic Fang (bite, gore), Unholy Aura (DC 24) At-Will-- Dragon's Breath (any option) (DC 20), Greater Dispel Magic, Greater Teleport (self plus 50lbs only), Hunger for Flesh (DC 20), Slow (DC 19) Telekinesis (DC 21) 3/day--Bountiful Banquet, Dimensional Anchor, Hungry Pit (DC 21), Mass Reduce Person (DC 20) 1/day--Delectable Flesh (DC 22), Dimensional Lock, Freedom of Movement, Time Stop

------ Statistics ------

Str 39 Dex 26 Con 37 Int 22 Wis 20 Cha 23 Base Atk: +27; CMB +43 (+4 grapple); CMD 61 (+4 vs grapple)

Feats Cleave, Cleaving Finish, Combat Reflexes (B), Consume Essence, Dazzling Display, Dramatic Slam, Great Cleave, Greater Grapple, Improved Grapple (B), Improved Unarmed Strike (B), Intimidating Prowess, Multiattack, Overhead Flip, Power Attack, Savage Leap, Savage Slam, Weapon Focus (Bite)

Skills Bluff +29, Climb +42, Diplomacy +26, Disable Device +28, Escape Artist +38, Intimidate +50, Knowledge (Arcana) +16, Knowledge (Dungeoneering) +16, Knowledge (Engineering) +20, Knowledge (Nature) +16, Knowledge (Planes) +19, Knowledge (Religion) +16, Linguistics +12, Perception +35, Profession (Chef) +23, Sense Motive +28, Spellcraft +16, Survival +25, Swim +23, Use Magic Device +29

Languages Abyssal, Aklo, Celestial, Common, Draconic, Giant, Goblin, Gnoll, Necril, Orcish, Polyglot, Terran, Undercommon; Telepathy 300ft

SQ Nascent Demon Lord traits

------ Ecology ------ Environment Any Organization Unique Treasure Triple ------

Combat: From afar, Galroscul will buffet his foes with Slow and Dragon's Breath to soften them up, Hunger for Flesh and Delectable Flesh, to disrupt their ability to cooperate, and will set up Hungry Pits for future maneuvers. Against Outsiders or creatures whom he has seen use teleportation magic, he focuses his Dimensional Anchor and Lock to prevent them from fleeing. Against humanoids, he will prioritize Mass Reduce Person to shrink them down, allowing him to swiftly devour them with Down in One. After a very short setup, he rushes into combat and focuses his gore attacks on enemies with numerous magic effects on them to rip them asunder. Once in melee, he is not an especially complex creature: He seeks to devour as many enemies as he can at once, utilizing Great Cleave, Cleaving Finish, and Down in One to do so. Against meals that refuse to go down easily, he will utilize his Savage Slam feat line to pulverize his target (or hurl them into Hungry Pits) while Dramatic Slam allows him to continue terrorizing the rest of their allies.

Morale: Galroscul's morale is a fickle thing. His loss of power leaves him vulnerable to death, something he fears immensely while his cult is fractured and weak, but he gets lost in the thrill of combat and the taste of blood to the point he often does not realize how hurt he has become until he reaches a specific hitpoint threshold which forces him to go Hog Wild. Once Hog Wild, his frenzied state sees him acting like a desperate predator alternating wildly between fight and flight depending on how often his attacks connect with their intended targets and how many of his enemies are still standing. Because Hog Wild prevents him from teleporting away, he will fight to the death if he cannot instantly spot an escape route.

------ Special Abilities ------

Dispelling Gore (Su/Sp): The runes carved across Galroscul's tusks grants his bite and gore incredible power while having a ruinous effect on all other magic. Each time he strikes a creature with his gore attack, that creature is affected by a targeted Dispel Magic. If he confirms a critical hit with his gore, the creature is affected by a targeted Greater Dispel Magic instead.

Down In One (Ex): Galroscul's jaws can briefly unhinge to quickly snap down morsels before they can even react. Once per round when reducing a creature of any size to 0 HP with his bite attack OR when confirming a critical hit against a Small or smaller creature or object with his bite attack, he may immediately swallow that creature whole without needing to make any grapple checks.

Gruesome Gullet (Ex): While his crushing and gnawing innards are usually enough to kill most foes, Galroscul has numerous stomachs he can move meals into, each capable of digesting a wide variety of material. Creatures swallowed by Galroscul take an additional 5d8 points of Acid, Cold, Fire, or Electricity each round, chosen by him; he can divide the damage types as he desires between each swallowed creature by shunting each of them into different stomachs as a free action once per round. His multitude of stomachs allow him to continue swallowing victims even after some have previously cut their way out, and their reinforced tissues benefit from his full natural AC bonus, rather than half.

Hog Wild (Ex): Galroscul has been defeated once before, and refuses to ever lose again for fear of going through the same tortures. If he begins his turn below 150 HP, as a free action he enters a frenzied state in which he cannot use any of his spell-like abilities, but he gains the Dual Initiative extraordinary ability, with his second turn immediately added to the current initiative order. When he goes Hog Wild, all creatures within 300ft must immediately save against his Frightful Presence with a -4 penalty to the saving throw, even if they had succeeded the save previously that day. While going Hog Wild, Galroscul is immune to the staggered, fatigued, and exhausted conditions, and cannot be put to sleep through any means. He remains Hog Wild for 1 minute or until the current combat ends, whichever comes first, and cannot go Hog Wild again until 24 hours pass.

Merciless Assault (Ex): Once per round, if a creature within Galroscul's reach is knocked prone or becomes shaken, frightened, or panicked, he may make an attack of opportunity against that creature. In addition, when damaging a creature with his Savage Slam feat, the damage dealt is instead equal to the natural attack he established the initial grapple with.

Nascent Demon Lord Traits: Galroscul has lost enough of his power to have been reduced to a Nascent Lord instead of a full one, and as such he has the following traits:

Immunity to charm and compulsion effects, death effects, Electricity, and poison.

Resistance to Acid 30, Cold 30, and Fire 30.

Summon (Sp): Once per day, Galroscul can summon any demon or combination of demons whose total combined CR is 20 or lower. This ability always works, and is equivalent to a 9th-level spell.

Telepathy 300 feet.

Galroscul's natural weapons, as well as any weapon he wields, are treated as Chaotic, Epic, and Evil for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction.

Galroscul can grant spells to his worshipers, which requires no actions on his part. He grants access to the domains of Animal, Chaos, Destruction, and Evil, with the subdomains Fur, Demon, Rage, and Cannibalism. His favored 'weapon' is bite attacks.

[creature-wizard]

Important things to know about Wicca

Wicca is a 20th century religion influenced by the witch cult hypothesis, which is now discredited.

Not all witches are Wiccan, much less subscribe to models of divinity and magic popular within the Wiccan movement.

Even among witches who are Wiccans, beliefs are highly diverse.

Historical paganism and folk magic practices were very different from Wicca, which is very much a product of the 20th century culture it developed in.

Dr. Angela Puca has a short video explaining Wicca's origins here:

[sadclowncentral]

my best friend and i have this theory that many of our interactions with the world around us can be approached from two broad perspectives: life as a narrative (i interact with the world and the world interacts with me) or life as an environment (the world interacts with the world and i happen to be in it).

in almost all cases, both things are true simultaneously, and i believe most people are inclined one way or the other, but depending on the situation, reflecting on which side you view it from might help with acceptance or change.

a narrative perspective can help you see yourself as a actor able to change their fate, but also lead to unfair self-blame or frustration with the rest of the world when you are not able to change said external factors. being stuck in traffic and hating everyone in a car and yourself when you are late at work because this always happens on important days when this is just what being alive in our world means is a benign example, but narrative fallacy can easily make you view a series of unrelated events in your life as divine punishment or personal failure instead.

at the same time, while an environmental perspective can make it easier to accept things you can and could not influence, it can also leave you stuck in unfavorable situations because you don't consider action a viable or productive option. an environmental fallacy would be hating everything about your job and your relationships with your coworkers but accepting this as a natural part of being an adult when actionable steps, be it self assertion or a job change, could improve the situation in your favour.

of course, not every interaction with the world fits into two neat categories, but often when i am frustrated or angry with the world or myself, it helps to take a moment and ask myself. is this my narrative or my environment? and if it's both, am i looking at it from the wrong direction? am i stuck in the environmental perspective, standing in front of an open door and lamenting being locked inside? or am i stuck in the narrative, rattling at the closed window instead of giving up of enjoying the view?

[shadowkoo]

disgraceful dreams - teaser

→ Summary: After two years of lustful pining and disgraceful dreams about someone far out of your reach, you decide the only way to move past your hopeless crush on Onyx Academy's star student is by taking part in the Lupercalia festival for the very first time.

↠ wooyoung x f.reader (feat. yeosang) | teaser wc: 491 (16.4k~ total) | 18+ ↠ genre: witch/warlock au, smut, virgin!reader, inspired by s2e3 of caos, slowburn

→ Full Fic Warnings: little bit of social class discrimination, cult-ish behavior (mentions of blood, Y/N uses a knife to cut her hand for binding/ritual purposes), being ‘hunted’ like prey, explicit sex, unprotected sex, rough sex, pet names, praise kink, biting, nipple play, breast play, begging, fingering, mutual masturbation, oral (female and male receiving), exhibitionism, voyeurism, partial agoraphilia & semi-public sex, dirty talk, heavy teasing, spanking, multiple orgasms, grinding, deep dicking, size kink (wooyoung is HUNGGG), magical sex, fucking up against a tree, slight age gap (y/n is 20 and wooyoung is 25), slight corruption, choking, possessive!wooyoung, woo is ravenous for you (you’re welcome)

→ Networks: tagged below

@ksmutsociety @k-vanity @pirateeznet @cromernet

@illusionnet @othersideoutlawsnetwork @cultofdionysusnet

→ Release Date: 10/31/24

↠ want to be notified when this is posted? join my taglist here!

Under the safety of your blankets, you move quietly, as if any sudden movement could betray your secret. One hand begins to massage your breasts through your thin tank top, the other sliding down toward your pink panties.

Taking a deep breath, you open your legs, allowing your fingers to slip beneath the dampening fabric. After spreading your juices around, you rub your clit before slowly dipping your first finger into your slick entrance. The sensation is unfamiliar—neither bad nor uncomfortable, just something you're not used to. The pain of the stretch lingers, leaving a strange warmth that you can't quite place.

You close your eyes and pretend that Wooyoung is there with you. Swiftly, you begin to curl your fingers, simultaneously bucking into your hand. You picture him hovering over you, but the image clouds over, shifting into a different scene that becomes sharper.

Wooyoung is also in bed, with his hand wrapped around his exposed, thick cock, lazily pumping it. There’s something unsettlingly vivid about this image, as if it’s not just a product of your imagination. It feels real—too real. Gasping, you realize that he’s in your head, projecting himself, revealing his presence in a way that makes your heart race.

Then, as if he can sense that you've finally caught on to his wicked scheme, a dark smile tugs at the corner of his lips, the kind that makes your body’s temperature spike. “Are you touching yourself, like I asked you to?”

You suck in a sharp breath and nod instinctively, even though you know he can’t physically see you. But somehow, you sense that he knows.

“I bet you are,” he hums, closing his eyes while running his thumb over his pink head. He tosses his head back as he strokes himself, “I bet that tight little virgin cunt of yours needs some good stretching before she’s ready for me.”

Feeling the heat rising to the tips of your ears, they’re red from the weight of his words, like they’re wrapping themselves around you, pulling you deeper into his influence. The knot in your lower belly grows as you match your little finger thrusts to the speed of his hand pumps.

“Add another finger, honey, I know you can,” Wooyoung groans, his hand moving a little faster. “Look at how my cock aches to be sunk inside your sweet folds.”

You do as he commands. You’re panting at this point; completely zeroed in on his throbbing length while you climb towards bliss. The silent room fills with a sinful pattern of squelches from each thrust into your lush heat, and a divine sensation washes over you.

“Goddess, I’m about to make a mess,” he whines, a sound that you’ll never be able to forget. He stills, letting out another beautiful noise while his seed shoots out across his abs, some even on his dark silk sheets.

“That’s just a preview,” he grins devilishly, “Sleep well, Y/N.”

→ Taglist: @gyupremacy @yoonguurt @starsrens (join my taglist here!)

©shadowkoo 2024. All rights reserved.

[skyscrapergods]

i'm working on my own concept for my own mlp fanlore/au and i've been inspired by your take on alicorns to make my own more unique as well. my idea is centric around the concept that alicorns are ponies who acended into what's basically pony elves that get worshiped because of the mysterious way they ascended, but idk how to really make a religion set up that works cohesively with it. i am wondering if you possibly might have some tips and tricks for how to go about my alicorn religions.

The most important thing about religion is that it's made up. If it is based in observable fact, then it's not religion; it's just culture.

Paying taxes and bowing to the king is based on observable orders. Believing that the king has a divine right to be king, or that he has powers/blessings granted to him by birth/status is religion.

In skyscraper gods, things are different because believing something about a god actually has the power to make it true, or at least influence the god's form/powers in an abstract way. My gods are influenced/given power by belief and worship.

In the human world, you can believe whatever you want about any person or god, and that doesn't make it real. If there are gods about, they are unlikely to be controlled by human religion, and definitely aren't spawned by such (or we would have a lot more gods than we do)

In a normal world, religion is not based on observable fact, and it is designed and maintained by the people themselves.

So from my limited understanding of world religions, there are four "needs" that religion is designed to fill: Community, Ritual, Meaning, and Ethics.

I went off the deep end and wrote an essay about my philosophy. Whoops, hope you enjoy:

Community

Humans need community, and many religions involve gathering and doing activities together. This makes religion incredibly important to human social health, as we often fail to fill our need for community because we don't immediately die without it. Under capitalism especially, we are incentivized to ignore as many human needs as possible in order to be productive/survive. Religion makes itself more important than simple survival, and ensures we fill certain needs by promising metaphysical rewards.

Ritual

Ritual is also incredibly important to human health. We thrive when we have a consistent schedule to the day, month, season, and year. It helps us save our brain bandwidth if we already know what basic tasks will happen today. Instead of doing math to figure out optimum times to do so, we socialize, come of age, physically touch, meditate, sing, mourn, plant crops, travel, cook, keep records, hunt, celebrate, and more according to a calendar maintained by religion. These are all important aspects of life that we need to remember to fill, either by logic, community, or religion. Science even backs up the need for ritual, with brain pathways growing best in response to consistent habit-keeping. But brains aren't observable for most people, so we have culture and religion to keep time instead.

Meaning

Meaning is a tricky one. We ended up with brains big enough to wonder why we exist; a burden few animals share. Scientifically, we thrive in environments/jobs/roles where we feel that what we are doing has value. I look at every part of my life and see the value of being a person, observing and changing my environment. Many people on earth aren't sure that's enough, so they invent an unobservable force that assigns value to their lives and actions. Meaning is easiest to keep track of and believe if others share your definition. Culturally, you have a lot in common with your neighbors, you both probably work toward similar goals (housing, stability, connection with others, secular holidays) and are satisfied when those goals are met. Religiously, you have a lot in common with others in your religion (charity, proselytizing, meditation, celebration) and are satisfied when those goals are met. Religion also provides goals for your entire life and community which are helpfully defined for you, whereas you have to come up with that on your own outside of religion. Doing so can be frightening, frustrating, and difficult, so religion is very rewarding and calming.

Ethics

Lastly, there's Ethics. Not all religion deals with ethics, but many major earth faiths do. Humans desperately need to have a code of ethics to be healthy, and society works best when we all agree on some basics. That way when someone violates a law, you don't have to convince everyone around you that what they did was wrong; there's already a standing defined agreement. Ethics is about rewards as well as punishment. For example if you're the first one to read this whole thing I'll draw a pony for you just dm me. Community ethics are decided by those in power, and "those in power" can be: the people themselves via majority rule, chosen representatives, rich aristocracy, respected philosophers, religious appointees, kings and conquerors, holy mystics, sacred texts, etc etc.

Religion comes in with a code of ethics (written by the religiously powerful) and imposes it on its followers. This is useful and generally brings community harmony when they all agree on something. Religions based on ancient texts are tricky, because old, outdated ethics have to be reinterpreted to fit modern landscape. These interpretations split churches and create sub-religions, which mutate into cults, peter off into nothing, or go to war with each other. It's great fun. At the end of the day, having a group of people who agree on right and wrong within their community is the goal. We just got lost on the part that said everyone else in the world has to obey our ethics or else we're blowing up the planet.

...

Aaaanyway, this was about.... my little pony?

Does Religion Affect Gods?

The first thing you must choose is how much the religion is based on fact, and how much is made up. In my world, there's a lot of things that are made up by ponies, that either become true or influence the god's form/powers in some way. Luna used to be silver, but now she is dark blue.

You can do that, or you can be normal about things. Typically, religion does not actually do anything. Gods are gods whether or not they have worshipers. People believe things that gods tell them, and they make up their own lore as well.

What about People? What about this and that and everything?

You need to decide if your alicorns are participants in the religion about them, or just subjects. Do all/some/any of them take their place as religious figures and command the masses? Do they speak ethics? Do they inform ponies of the powers they have? Do ponies make up abilities they think alicorns have? Do they like being worshiped, or is it more like stalking?

Some alicorns may embrace godhood, while others flee from it. The ones that get the most involved will have influence over how the other alicorns are treated.

Is there a standard to which alicorns must live, failing which they can't be "real" alicorns in society's eyes and are thus shunned/killed? Do the alicorns ever give an opinion that is taken way out of proportion and suddenly became a major religious movement? Are marshmallows illegal because one alicorn doesn't like them? Do ponies get prosecuted for stepping on "sacred" flowers which are just regular lilies? Is there taxes/tithing to alicorns? Are alicorns promoted to political office for nothing except their nature?

How do ponies construct their sermons/temples/practices to fulfill the four tenants of religion? Does alicorn worship provide them with Community, Meaning, Ritual, and Ethics?

Do alicorns actually earn any of this? Are they regular guys that just look special? Can they abuse their powers? Can ponies abuse others in their name? Do the alicorns speak to the masses or to religious leaders? Do they have any control over their legacy or is it out of their hooves? Are they in danger of their worshipers deciding they need to be freed from their mortal bodies? Do religious leaders go power crazy and use alicorns to further their agenda? Are their schisms and wars over beliefs? do the alicorns command their followers to fight each other? Do they fight with each other? Does each alicorn have a different following or are they all part of a shared pantheon? Do they respect each others' role within that or struggle for change?

And remember, what is true for one alicorn/church/sect/country may not be true for another. Variety is the key.

It's all About the Questions

The trick to worldbuilding is to ask a lot of questions. You can answer them as you go, having the answers lead to more questions, or you can ask a bunch at once and answer them all later.

Every decision you make has consequences. Big social movements affect the environment, the environment affects food supply, food supply affects social movements. Everything is connected, and religion makes those connections more magical, for better or for worse.