#why does a version of this still exist did we not learn from the escaped animatronics and also organs-
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WELL. I FINISHED RUIN.
#ruin spoilers#oh what the fuck. what the fuck#fnaf's sheer ability to put out content that leaves SO much to unpack yet gives absolutely no information needs to be studied#dont ask me what the FUCK is going on with vanni i don't know#BUT :(( UGH.#i FIGURED it wasn't actually gregory but... man#CASSIE .... BABYYY. SAVE HER.#also watched the different endings and can we. can we talk about#can we talk about th. the scooper i think we need to talk about that#BECAUSE WHY. HOW. WHO. OKAY.#why does a version of this still exist did we not learn from the escaped animatronics and also organs-#⁂ ・゚: i was looking for a job‚ and then i found a job‚ and heaven knows i’m miserable now ➛ ooc
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sorry if you've talked about it already, but what is it that makes KOSA's idea of online safety wrong? I don't know much about the bill, what does it intend to do?
What do you think is a good way to protect kids from things like online predators or just seeing things that they shouldn't be seeing? (By which I mean sex and graphic violence, things which you'd need to be 16+ to see in a movie theater so I think it makes sense to not want pre-teens to see it)
From stopkosa.com:
Why is KOSA a bad bill? KOSA uses two methods to “protect” kids, and both of them are awful. First, KOSA would incentivize social media platforms to erase content that could be deemed “inappropriate” for minors. The problem is: there is no consensus on what is inappropriate for minors. All across the country we are seeing how lawmakers are attacking young people’s access to gender affirming healthcare, sex education, birth control, and abortion. Online communities and resources that queer and trans youth depend on as lifelines should not be subject to the whims of the most rightwing extremist powers and we shouldn’t give them another tool to harm marginalized communities. Second, KOSA would ramp up the online surveillance of all internet users by expanding the use of age verification and parental monitoring tools. Not only are these tools needlessly invasive, they’re a massive safety risk for young people who could be trying to escape domestic violence and abuse.
I’ve heard there’s a new version of KOSA. What’s the deal? The new version of KOSA makes some good changes: narrowing the ability of rightwing attorneys general to weaponize KOSA to target content they don’t like and limiting the problematic “duty of care. However, because the bill is still not content neutral, KOSA still invites the harms that civil rights advocates have warned about. As LGBTQ and reproductive rights groups have said for months, the fundamental problem with KOSA is that its “duty of care” covers content specific aspects of content recommendation systems, and the new changes fail to address that. In fact, personalized recommendation systems are explicitly listed under the definition of a design feature covered by the duty of care in the new version. This means that a future Federal Trade Commission (FTC) could still use KOSA to pressure platforms into automated filtering of important, but controversial topics like LGBTQ issues and abortion, by claiming that algorithmically recommending such content “causes” mental health outcomes that are covered by the duty of care like anxiety and depression. Bans on inclusive books, abortion, and gender affirming healthcare have been passed on exactly that kind of rhetoric in many states recently. And we know that already existing content filtering systems impact content from marginalized creators exponentially more, resulting in discrimination and censorship. It’s also important to remember that algorithmic recommendation includes, for example, showing a user a post from a friend that they follow, since most platforms do not show all users all posts, but curate them in some way. As long as KOSA’s duty of care isn’t content neutral, platforms will be likely to react the same way that they did to the broad liability imposed by SESTA/FOSTA: by engaging in aggressive filtering and suppression of important, and in some cases lifesaving, content.
Why it's bad:
The way it's written (even after being changed, which the website also goes over), it is still possible for this law to be used to restrict things like queer content, discussion of reproductive rights and resources, and sexual education.
It will restrict youth's ability to use the Internet independently, essentially cutting off life support to many vulnerable people who rely on the Internet to learn that they are queer, being abused, disabled, etc.
Better alternatives:
Stop relying on ageist ideas of purity and innocence. When we focus on protecting the "purity" of youth, we dehumanize them and it becomes more about soothing adult anxieties than actually improving the lives of children.
Making sure content (sexual, violent, etc.) is marked/tagged and made avoidable for anyone who doesn't want to engage with it.
Teach children why certain things may be upsetting and how best to avoid those things.
Teach children how to recognize grooming and abuse and empower them to stop it themselves.
Teach children how to recognize fear, discomfort, trauma, and how to cope with those experiences.
The Internet makes a great boogeyman. But the idea that it is uniquely corrupting the Pure Innocent Youth relies on the idea that all children are middle-class suburban White kids from otherwise happy homes. What about the children who see police brutality on their front lawns, against their family members? How are we protecting them from being traumatized? Or children who are seeing and experiencing physical and sexual violence in their own homes, by the parents who prevent them from realizing what's happening by restricting their Internet usage? How does strengthening parent's rights stop those kids from being groomed? Or the kids who grow up in evangelical Christian homes and are given graphic descriptions of the horrors of the Apocalypse and told if they ever question their parents, they'll be left behind?
Children live in the same world we do. There are children who are already intimately aware of violence and "adult" topics because of their lived experiences. Actually protecting children means being concerned about THEIR human rights, it means empowering them to save themselves, it means giving them the tools to understand their own feelings and traumas. KOSA is just another in a long line of attempts to "save the children!" by dehumanizing them and giving more power to the people most likely to abuse them. We need to stop trying to protect children's "innocence" and appreciate that children are already growing, changing people, learning to deal with discomfort and pain and the weight of the world the same as everyone else. What people often think keeps kids safe really just keeps them ignorant and quiet.
Another explanation as to why it's bad:
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albrecht entrati has the most arse-backwards methods of harm reduction i swear to god
...anyway. as ppl may have guessed, i wrote this post before i did the new year's eve do-over. i'm still deeply suspicious of how he knows about the operator and the drifter both existing in the same timeline or why albrecht is interested in tau, but hey, he can't eat all the blame for that - yonta admits to disabling the reliquary drive's safeties before the jump [1]. the zariman wasn't meant to reach tau in one massive jump.
but first! the kalymos sequence. "protect the vessels. repair. rebuild." the thing that leads albrecht to declaring it complete? the drifter befriending and growing close to the hex, and using that trust to save their lives.
i have questions about whether albrecht was in duviri at the same time as the drifter and knowingly left them behind, or if duviri's void nature means it always existed once the drifter created it and albrecht arrived before them. but either way, the "repair" and "rebuild" of the kalymos sequence seems to mean... fixing the drifter's isolation and rebuilding their support network? absolutely insane, i love it.
like he theoretically could've gone about it a ton of different ways, but instead forced the drifter's hand by telling them to let a city blow up and then shooting them and amir for good measure.
this man is literally the most normal orokin we know of.
and what does this mean for my thoughts on his involvement with the zariman? well, he realises in his trip to duviri that euleria created the tales to teach children how to protect themselves from the void, and the tales went on to be a foundational part of the entrati's involvement in the zariman.
you've also got the lanthorns (aka lanterns), which map voidspace onto realspace. this is presumably to make navigating the void safer. there's the exolizers, which are decorated with entrati obols, which reduce void contamination and prevent void cascades. and then there is, as melica frequently reminds us, albrecht's own archives which were used to form the curriculum. you've got the safeties on the reliquary drive - a drive which is still actually free of void corruption, even as it creeps as close as it can get.
albrecht was an outsider in orokin society. he'd been humiliated for who knows how long during his failed void experiments. drusus thought him a madman "fit for the asylum". parvos granum boasted of stealing from him without consequence in a society obsessed with ensuring the orokin were treated appropriately. once he learned of the zariman, would albrecht have had the power to stop it, even knowing what danger they faced?
then there's his line about "the unholy zariman parade". that could be a man who regrets his involvement and what his "all for the greater good" methodology did to those onboard (especially when you consider the zariman wasn't meant to do the trip in a single jump). or it could be a man who knew that zariman was fucked and worked with his daughter to do everything they could to save those onboard from the void?
and he still failed them, to the point that a child had to make a deal with the thing that he unleashed to escape and one version of them got trapped in the "execution circus" for centuries. that another child consigned themselves to oblivion to protect the origin system against that monster. that countless more were forced to become comatose child soldiers, who eventually turned on their abusers and murdered them all. no wonder he talks about repentance and absolution, huh?
[1] i footnoted this entirely because yonta is insane and i love her. [Angel rank] Yonta: "I'd figured it out! How the Zariman could jump all the way to Tau in one big bold leap, disabling the safeties in sequence. If I had it to do again, we could make it."
#warframe#albrecht entrati#drifter#albrecht fans please let me know your thoughts this madness had been plaguing my mind ever since i did the do-over#honestly the reason this has taken so long is bc i kept getting stuck on him shooting amir and the drifter#this man is so emotionally constipated and closed off we are discovering new levels previously unknown to humanity#i have the sneaking suspicion that whether he ends up dying or not to the indifference is going to depend on whether the drifter#(possibly the operator but i think drifter has a closer connection to him btwn duviri and 1999)#persuades this man to actually accept love and stop letting his terror of the indifference be so flagrantly self-destructive#especially since that's ridiculously similar to what teshin teaches the drifter in the duviri paradox#just replace terror with apathy and that's basically it#also i know 1999 is part of his plan to fight the indifference and all BUT#it's fucking hilarious that albrecht essentially used a nuclear reactor to do for the drifter#what grandmother did with the heart of deimos for the other entratis#the entrati version of therapy really is forcefully endangering entire populations to bring people together isn't it#also btwn xaku's backstory and dante i think there's a good argument albrecht was created a kinder space for tenno than elsewhere#which isn't a surprise even for his emotionally constipated arse given he seems very aware of tenno = kids
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What do you think about the very popular theory going around that the Road actually never existed? It was something Agatha made up back in the day to steal witches' powers and this time it was created by Billy subconsciously. That's his tell, that's why Agatha was so surprised when it actually opened, that's why everything in the road can be found in his room, that's what "I didn't think you had it in you" means. What if it really was Agatha all along?
Right now a lot of things are possible. We're in the Schroedinger's series finale...
I have seen it floating around, but I haven't really thought about it. However, I do think the Road does exist. I think it's because Lilia, who is a good hundred years older than Agatha, knew about the Road.
I'm just skeptical that Agatha ever walked the Road. Maybe she has before and she was able to assemble a full coven to make it happen. I know Agatha, is essentially, a noted serial killer among the Witch community but it doesn't feel right to me that Agatha would do something that's so deviously predatory.
Agatha targets powerful witches. Any witch that would seek out the Road would not be a powerful witch. Agatha told Wanda she only took power from the undeserving.
(Of course, who the undeserving witches are is subjective. Agatha's playing Judge, Jury, and Executioner.).
So for me, Agatha setting up the Witches' Road to lure unsuspecting but mediocre Witches doesn't (to quote Criminal Minds) fit the profile.
Especially, if this was all done before she got owned the Darkhold.
Then again, the two-part series finale might prove me wrong.
I'm more partial to the idea that Billy unconsciously created or influenced the Road now ala Labirynth. I do think Agatha suspected Billy had something to do with Sharon Davis's death but I don't know if she's right about it. I think she's still missing some details about her hypothesis.
It is clear, Agatha already suspected Billy early on, of shenanigans.
Also, I've always believed Agatha never intended to Open the Road, she looked far too surprised when the Door appeared. And she continued to brood about the Road in the first few minutes of episode 3. She was trying to put things together. She did look at Billy in a funny way when she told him the Road 'suited him'.
But, I have always believed whatever this whole thing is-- This was Agatha All Along.
Someway or another Agatha kicked off the events of the show. I fully believe that Agatha is smart enough to have a backup plan in case she finds herself in a tight spot.
Agatha Harkness is like my other favorite fierce survivalist queen-- Katherine Pierce.
Jac Schaeffer didn't just title this show 'Agatha All Along for the 'vibes''. If we learn something from watching the show, everything is there for a reason. Even if the reason is the commitment to the Bit.
The whole internet search for Agatha? Wildly suspicious to me how convenient everything fell into place for Billy to find Agatha.
Jac Schaeffer used the phrase 'timey-wimey', and solidified my theory that Agatha is Bad Wolf-ing an escape plan for herself. She left messages to herself.
Somehow involving the lyrics of the Ballad. (Agatha started humming the Ballad before Rio or Billy ever made an appearance).
The lyrics of the True Crime Ballad had missing lyrics and borrowed a lot from Lorna Wu's version.
Agatha knew events that she shouldn't know about while she's Detective Agnes. (William's car crash, Wanda 'dying').
The show borrowed and references The Wizard of Oz a lot, and someone has to be behind the curtain. The Man behind the curtain was a huckster and a con man. And that description can fit Agatha.
I don't know if Agatha accounted for Rio during her daring escape.
Unfortunately, for Agatha Harkness, she didn't count on the only enemy she ever really lost too: Herself*.
Somehow, in all the escape scenarios, Agatha didn't anticipate that some part of herself would actually like the dream reality of Detective Agnes.
*Agatha gave Wanda way too much information about the fundamentals of magick. Let herself do the whole Evil Speech of Evil monologue. And, lost.
So, it's very fun and interesting that when Billy asked Agatha what Tell he shared with Wanda was Agatha coyly stated: "Very inconvenient for you."
Anyway, I'm not going to count my girl, Agatha, out in anything. She always has a trick up her sleeve somewhere, and a backup plan.
There is a reason why this show is called Agatha All Along. There's a reason why the pilot episode started with a Mare of Easttown parody, beyond sharing a lot of key issues with Mare. There's a reason why Agatha as Agnes hummed the Ballad's Road when the show opened.
These are some of my theories and thoughts. I hold them loosely in my hand, so I'm not too invested or married to my theories.
It will help me be nimble in my predictions and theories for the finale.
But I hope I was able to help.
#answered#Anonymous#speculation and theories#tv: agatha all along#agatha all along spoilers#apologies for mistakes#really really late here
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I wish if the ml writers really want the whole princess and knight thing they'd do it like Ariel from little mermaid especially since they both similar enough. 1) they're isolated 2) curious about the outside world 3) parents don't want them out. The whole meeting their love interest should just be a bonus, not become the whole personality like the writers did for Adrien in s4 and 5. :(
I have mixed feelings about the knight and princess thing. I'm big on messing with gender roles, so I like it in theory. I actually saw the art before I saw the episode that it's in and loved it because I thought that it was fan art. Then I realized that it was official art and I liked it a lot less because it didn't fit the story. Adrien wasn't a helpless princess. He was a knight, too.
Little did I know that the princess and knight art was apparently foreshadowing just how badly the writers were going to botch the ending.
Damsels in distress of any gender aren't a bad thing in and of themselves. It's perfectly normal to see a character get trapped and need outside help or to have a character start in a position where they have no power. The reason why Damsels in distress are so looked down on is a mix of the gender stereotyping involved and the way that they're traditionally written as having no agency. Adrien is, sadly, a perfect example of the second issue. He's the pretty arm candy who couldn't possibly help himself. He just needs to wait around and, one day, a big strong knight will save him!
This would make some sense if Adrien didn't have a miraculous, but he literally wields one of the two most powerful miraculous in existence. He has the ability to escape his prison when he's trapped in London. He just doesn't because he's a poor helpless maiden who needs someone else to save him, making us all wonder why the writers gave him a miraculous in the first place.
Let's compare Adrien to Disney's Cinderella (the 60's version, not the 2010's update which was somehow less progressive than the original). The original Cinderella does what she's told because she has no way out. She's a victim of prolonged child abuse with no wealth or personal belongings, very similar to Adrien at the start of Miraculous. But when Cinderella is given a way to magically get out? She immediately takes it, just like Adrien does. And when she's locked away with no way to escape? She still tries to get out! She bangs on the door! She calls for help! And when help comes? She grabs it, leading herself to freedom.
That's how you write a good Damsel in distress. You give them as little power as possible while also making them an active part of the story. They're someone who wants to change their reality, who might even try to change their reality, but who truly can't due to circumstances beyond their control. It's a very relatable situation for many people and why Cinderella is my favorite fairy tale.
For Adrien to fit this role, season five needed to take away his power and they honestly could have done that. When he learned that he was being shipped off to London, he could (and arguably should) have told Ladybug that he was being forced to leave Paris. This could have led to him giving up the ring for the safety of the city. A selfless, noble act that no one could fault him for. After all, it's not like Ladybug has other heroes that she could call on! If Chat Noir isn't around, then she could easily be screwed.
Then, when the final comes and Ladybug has to fight alone, it's not because Adrien is too weak and frail to fight off the nightmare dust that literally every other teenage character in the show manges to fight off. Instead, dust or no dust, he literally cannot escape his prison. He has to rely on Ladybug because he has no other choice. We could even see him trying to fight his way out, thinking of her all the while.
Instead, we get Adrien once again failing to use his love to win the day. Between Chat Blanc, Ephemeral, and this mess, I'm not sure what the show is trying to tell us, but it's nothing good. It amazes me that some people think things are going to get better for our poor kitty.
I mean, they might! This show has never been anything close to consistent about anything, so he could surprise us all next season. But it would still be a massive, unexpected shift and you're better off expecting more of the same.
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Here are some completely random fun facts about Odysseus' family from various myths:
His grandfather, Autolycus (meaning "the wolf itself", pretty badass) , was a shape-shifting trickster, also known as "the king of all thiefs", with the ability to change the shape of random objects he stole and was also the direct son of Hermes (originally he was just some dude Hermes liked, post-Odyssey he was changed to be his son. I'd say both versions are equally accepted though the son thing wasn't there from the beginning).
Autolycus was also the sworn rival of King Sysyphus, who you might know as that one guy who escaped death and whose punishment for it was pushing a rock for eternity, or that very nice guy from Tartarus in Hades. Autolycus used to steal Sysyphus' cattle and when the latter finally managed to find tangible proof of his guilt he did the only sensible thing he could think of.
He fucked his daughter.
As one does.
As I'm saying this I really want you guys to imagine the Sysyphus from Hades doing all this. Because I find it fucking hilarious.
Also btw, said daughter is named Anticleia and in her youth she was apparantly a companion to Artemis. Absolutely pop off queen.
So Yada Yada time skip and Anticleia promptly moves on from Sysyphus to Laertes of Ithaca, they get married and soon after a baby boy is born. And by soon I mean, pretty soon after. Suspiciously soon after...I think you know where I'm going with this.
YEP, there are some myths where instead of being the son of Laertes, Odysseus is the son of Sysyphus, yet the absolute gigachad that is Laertes still raised the baby as his own.
Now, myths are everything but consistent, and much like Autolycus beings Hermes' son, this connection with Sysyphus was likely added post-Odyssey, meaning that even if this variation of the myth exists, Odysseus was still widely seen as Laertes' biological son and it's pretty safe to say that he's exactly that in both the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Why did I tell you all this then?
Because it's fanfiction material and I want people to use it.
Sooooo, the baby is born and it's time to give him a name, and the one to do just that is Autolycus, for whatever reason. I mean from what I've read Anticleia actually insisted he named him, so yeah, not super important but I still felt like it was worth mentioning.
So Autolycus cradles his new infant grandson, he looks him in his small baby eyes and says: "You know, I pissed off a fuck ton of people during my life, like really a lot of peeps, so I think I'm gonna name him Hateful."
You think I'm joking but this is kinda how it actually went.
The name Odysseus actually means "To Hate", and yeah, Autolycus specifically chooses it because he himself pissed off a lot of people.
And yeah, that's pretty much it really.
I mean I guess there's the fact that Odysseus got his famous leg scar while hunting with his grandpa, but that's stuff you can read directly on the Odyssey anyway. I just wanted to shine a light on the sheer badassery of this family.
So yeah.
Oh also there are certain myths that say that Homer was Telemachus' son through Nestor's youngest daughter and I think that's kinda neat honestly.
(The girl in question SHOULD be Polycaste, thought some people said it was a different daughter that was apparantly not among the original roster of Nestor's kids which probably means she was written in many years later. Telemachus' love life is actually a bit of a mess really, even putting whatever the hell the Telegony is aside, he's still got at least 3 other possible wives, them being Polycaste, Nausicaa and even Calypso. There is also this one line from the Odyssey where Polycaste bathes him and some people apparantly interpreted it as them banging and it's said she eventually gave birth to a boy named Perseptolis. But yeah, the boy's a womanizer.)
Aaaaand yeah, that's pretty much it.
So what did we learn today? Well, in Odysseus' family the badassery is hereditary it seems.
#odysseus#the odyssey#the iliad#greek mythology#myths and legends#autolycus#Sysyphus#Anticleia#laertes#telemachus#polycaste#homer#epic the musical#hades#I'm honestly putting Hades here only because of the Sysyphus bit
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Henry’s In A Tank: Stranger Things vs The Evil Within (2017)
So, I talked in this post and this post about Elder Brains, and today, I want to talk about The Evil Within, Ruvik, and the STEM system.
Long story short, I think that Henry is in another NINA tank somewhere, since Edward Creel is Vecna, and we don’t know where Henry is, and since Henry seems weirdly present during NINA.
Henward vs Ruben vs Ruvik and The Creels vs The Victorianos
I’m going to talk about Ruben/Ruvik in general in a little bit, but first, let’s just take a look at the initial, most obvious parallels.
Ruben/Ruvik as an adult vs Vecna/vs Burnt Henward:
![Tumblr media](https://64.media.tumblr.com/21f96aa9742bf701c3831f718572d7b7/e2a045e8732f7a01-25/s540x810/9b8df5a7c04100cad15e5e0e0d750694918ab649.jpg)
Ruben as a child vs Henward as a child:
![Tumblr media](https://64.media.tumblr.com/1a94ddaacd7cc3175348650a9f16cf02/e2a045e8732f7a01-ec/s540x810/2bff7b37c50fe2a0929e88b6980c5f27d0146ecb.jpg)
And if you still don’t believe me that this parallel is intentional, look at this official concept art for Vecna:
![Tumblr media](https://64.media.tumblr.com/5a7b3d04b7c4bc38195e1db3fba8d4fa/e2a045e8732f7a01-b8/s540x810/45d4bf83ed0b331350a913b79e1e4d6eb66c7d34.jpg)
That’s definitely inspired by Ruvik. Ruvik even does the same damn hand thing that Henward and El do:
![Tumblr media](https://64.media.tumblr.com/07ae0ba24ac2260bc79f15e740351399/e2a045e8732f7a01-d7/s540x810/a6676d2e7270c91f321fa8cdf1d60280aa31c7d7.jpg)
Now, let’s get into Ruvik’s backstory, and then get into the story of the rest of the game and how it ties to ST, and why I think Henry’s in a NINA tank.
So, as a child, Ruvik was isolated and “weird,” but very close to his sister, and also a child prodigy. He came from the wealthy Victoriano family, with a religious father (much like Victor), and a mother that he wasn’t close to. Ruben was doing science experiments as a child, and when he was still a child he met a doctor, Dr Jimenez, who assured Ruben that he also did similar science experiments, and that it didn’t make Ruben a monster. Even just initially here, this is already extremely similar to Henry having already known Brenner (talking about “the very doctor I had hoped to escape,” recognizing Brenner immediately by his face after waking up in the lab), and we also have the “monster,” imagery that is constant with El, Brenner, and Henward.
Then, one day, Ruben and his sister were playing in a barn when some disgruntled townsfolk lit the barn on fire. His sister died saving him, and Ruben was left burnt and disfigured, much like Henward in the yellow UD.
Although Ruben survived the fire, Ruben’s father faked Ruben’s death, and led Ruben’s mother to believe that Ruben died in the fire when in reality, he was imprisoned in the basement, and then later at Beacon Mental Hospital. This is SO similar to what happened with Henry- his death was faked (and Virginia likely involved), and then Victor was led to believe that Henry was dead when in reality, he was at HNL, with the mother vs father thing swapped for Henry vs Ruben.
Ruben, much like Henward is frequently associated with spiders. During the game, the player sees a fucked up fleshflayer-esque spider version of Ruvik’s sister. It’s a common motif for him, just like it is for Henward.
When the game begins, the player plays as Sebastian Castellanos, years after the Victoriano fire/Ruvik’s disfigurement (which we’ll come back to later in the STEM system section) but you don’t need to know much about him for this analysis, just that he’s the player character.
We end up at Beacon Mental Hospital, which takes us to the next section of this analysis.
Beacon Mental Hospital vs HNL and Pennhurst
So, Pennhurst and Beacon Mental Hospital look EXTREMELY similar:
At the beginning of the game, the player/Sebastian ends up at Beacon Mental Hospital, pursuing Ruvik. As the game progresses, we learn that the characters aren’t in the real Beacon Mental Hospital at all anymore- instead, they’re part of the STEM system/the version of Beacon Mental Hospital that exists in Ruvik’s mindscape/memories, as Ruvik is part of the STEM system, and the player character is hooked up to a STEM system tank, which we'll get into later, linking their mind to Ruvik's.
The whole "not in the real Beacon Mental Hospital" thing reminds me of the fact that the area of the lab that we see during NINA is COMPLETELY different from the lab we’ve seen in other seasons, and we’ve never seen the NINA area outside of NINA, and we have two different rainbow rooms, too, and the lab and Pennhurst are paralleled all the time, both being likened to prisons, both having orderlies in white uniforms, both experimenting on their patients, etc etc.
The STEM System vs NINA vs Elder Brain Tanks
So, the STEM system is basically multiplayer NINA (although, as is the point of this analysis, I think that NINA is also multiplayer).
Now, going back to the Victoriano fire and Ruben’s disfigurement and the death of his sister and Ruben’s father faking Ruben’s death. Prior to the player character entering Beacon Mental Hospital, Ruben escaped the basement, killed his parents, and became “Ruvik,” and went to work at Beacon Mental Hospital with Dr Jimenez.
Dr Jimenez would betray Ruben, however, and teamed up with the company, MOBIUS, to have Ruben captured, restrained, and forced to become a test subject, just like Brenner kidnapping Henward forcing Henward to be a test subject at HNL.
Ruvik was the first test subject for the STEM system project, and he was hooked up to multiple machines, and his body was experimented on until there was nothing left of him except for a brain, which became part of the STEM system. Ruvik, although just a brain in the real world, had a physical form in his own mindscape, and spent decades trying to find a way to escape his imprisonment. (again, VERY similar to 001/Henward trying to find a way out of the lab.)
Before Ruvik was killed/left as just a brain, though, MOBIUS attempted to sync his brain with Leslie’s- Leslie was a quiet boy, very similar to Ruben, and Leslie reminds me a lot of both Will and El, and was also a test subject at Beacon Mental Hospital.
Ruvik and Leslie’s brains were synced in the STEM system because they had shared trauma- both had lost their families in a violent manner.
I’m staring DIRECTLY at Murray talking about “shared trauma” in ST. Murray even ties "shared trauma" to "your dad," just like the shared Brenner trauma between El and Henward.
So, I’m also staring DIRECTLY at Henward and El during NINA and syncing their brains, and the shared trauma of Brenner/growing up in the lab, especially with all the talk of “you’re like me/we’re the same/papa hurt you," and how they have shared trauma and shared memories.
Unfortunately, Leslie’s brain was unstable (much like NINA glitching for EL), and that’s what resulted in Ruben being killed/stripped down to his brain, as Ruben wanted to proceed with the use of Leslie, but MOBIUS did not.
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Decades later, Ruvik somehow managed to manifest himself in the real world briefly, and committed a massacre at the real-life Beacon Mental Hospital (which is why Sebastian was at the hospital in the first place, investigating the murders). Ruvik was searching for Leslie when he committed the massacre. It reminds me a lot of a.) Henward seemingly committing the massacre to try and get El out of the lab and b.) Vecna searching for Will.
Now, let’s look at the STEM system vs NINA vs Elder Brain tanks:
![Tumblr media](https://64.media.tumblr.com/e53a7c2a96e22a8554b540dd928e0883/e2a045e8732f7a01-a6/s540x810/83a7e4bed0d8d6f90613430840330efa4adaa297.jpg)
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And when we jump to DND and look at Elder Brain tanks, how do those work? What do they do? Well, an Elder Brain (which resides in an Elder Brain Tank) is a hivemind- it’s what controls Mindflayers. And it’s also known as a living library, which has me staring DIRECTLY at the library in ST. Elder Brain tanks are typically kept in caves beneath cities, much like the NINA bunker, but I’m also looking at the basement of the library in ST as some sort of connection, especially since the library basement specifically was brought to our attention & tied to the Creels when Robin and Nancy went down to the basement to look for newspaper information about Victor & the Creel murders.
And interestingly enough, the fleshflayer from S3 also resembles the STEM system- which makes sense, since the fleshflayer is basically a hivemind/combined minds, just like the STEM system.
Also, the STEM tanks are literal bathtubs- bathtubs that are eerily similar to the Creel tub, and need I remind you that the sensory deprivation tanks in the lab are referred to as “the bath” by Brenner and El? And the fact that the S1 episode with the NINA-shaped, round pool in the school gym that El uses as a sensory deprivation tank is called “the bathtub”?
Like, it's the SAME sort of clawfoot tub.
Mirror Imagery
So, in order to save the game in The Evil Within, you have to find a mirror, which takes to to the safe zone of Beacon Mental Hospital. Mirror imagery is constant in this game, and I'm staring DIRECTLY at Henward talking about how he held a mirror up to his family & the mirror in the rainbow room during NINA.
Music
If you’re STILL not convinced that these parallels are intentional, I want to draw your attention to a certain song that plays in Pennhurst:
![Tumblr media](https://64.media.tumblr.com/df0d0d1ae4f4cdb12077c61f54cece5e/e2a045e8732f7a01-d0/s540x810/5d71d6102f3594c0a679b802969d424ab2b819c9.jpg)
Clair de Lune. This song is CONSTANT in The Evil Within (which, need I remind you, takes place in an asylum JUST like Pennhurst), it’s the main song for the game, and is always associated with mirrors (which are extremely associated with Henward in ST), and specifically, are associated with the “safe zones” in the game, which, again, are accessed via mirrors, and the whole “music is safe/saves you” thing is VERY ST4. Clair de Lune is not just a song that happens to play once in the background of The Evil Within- instead, it’s THE song for it, you absolutely cannot miss it.
Dream Imagery
So, every subject that’s connected to the STEM system has some level of subconscious, “dreamlike” influence over it, and throughout the game, the whole experience of the STEM system is described as being like a dream/nightmare, except it's alive and can kill you because you're hooked up to the STEM system. (staring at all of the nightmare imagery with Henward, and Victor's "a nightmare far worse" vs Henward waking up in the lab vs El waking up in NINA, and Victor talking about a "waking, living nightmare" vs NINA basically being a waking, living nightmare)
We also have El talking about a shared “dream circle,” with Terry vs all of the dream imagery with Henry (Dream a Little Dream of Me etc), and the circular shape of the NINA tank. I think El and Henry were both likely present during NINA/connected mentally, like a STEM system, like an Elder Brain tank, and like a dream circle.
El talks about the dream circle "repeating," JUST like the repeating scenes during NINA.
Conclusion
But yeah! Like I’ve talked about before, I won’t be surprised if Henry has been in a NINA tank this whole time, which would explain why he seems so weirdly present during NINA sometimes- because he IS present. Just like how Terry was present in the dream circle and how Ruvik is present in STEM.
#stranger things#henry creel#edward creel#st creel timeline weirdness#st-evil within parallels#st nina project
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𝐓𝐁𝐙 𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩-𝐟𝐢𝐜 𝐝𝐫𝐚𝐛𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐬: 𝐞𝐩 𝟏
Summary: Eric has a bomb dropped on him, now he has to face the music. Pairing: Kevin x Eric x Sunwoo x Hyunjae Tropes: roommates to ???, fuckbuddies Genre: smut Rating: R 18+ Warnings: language, honorific usage, kissing Smut Warnings: mentions of oral sex, grinding, light hair pulling, pet names (puppy), biting, whiney Eric Word Count: 778 Wheel Prompt: 4 members (Kevin, Eric, Sunwoo, Hyunjae) + roommates
Rai's Version || Masterlist
“You’re telling me that you’ve actually been
“Eric cuts himself off with an exasperated sigh.
“Why are you so surprised?” Kevin shrugs, casually sipping his coffee, “It’s not like you couldn’t hear us. I mean… walls are thin.”
“It’s just— I thought— Kevin what am I meant to do with this information?”
Sunwoo shuffles into the kitchen as Eric is seemingly questioning his entire existence. He drapes himself over Eric, rubbing his face against Eric’s shoulder lightly. Clearly, he had just woken up despite it being nearly 2 pm.
“What information?” Sunwoo’s voice comes out gravely and laced with sleepiness still.
“That Hyunjae hyung and I fuck.” Kevin comments casually.
Sunwoo shifts to stand on the side of Eric Kevin, who wasn’t occupying.
“Oh, I thought that was common knowledge. I mean we fuck and they fuck. Nothing new in this apartment.”
Eric is stunned, to say the least, “What do you mean nothing new?!”
“I mean…” Sunwoo chuckles, stealing a sip of Kevin’s coffee, “You probably didn’t notice but Hyunjae hyung walked in on us a few days ago… you were probably too busy with your mouth stuffed though.”
Eric groans and rather quickly disappears into his bedroom. Now alone with his thoughts, all he can do is spiral. Why did he think living with his best friend (with benefits) and two of his other very hot friends would be a good idea? Especially now. He shares a wall with Kevin. The elder has never been subtle about when he has a guest over, he just didn’t think said guest would be his fourth roommate.
A soft knock sounds on his door before he can think too deeply about the dynamics that could go into their relationship. Hyunjae pops his head through the door when Eric gives the go-ahead.
“What’s got Kevin and Sunwoo giggling out there? And why do I know it’s at your expense?” He teases.
Eric groans again and flops back on his bed with his hand over his face, “Kevin hyung… told me about your arrangement… I don’t know how to cope with it.”
The bed dips beside him and Hyunjae gently pulls Eric’s hand from his face. The elder’s big doe eyes sparkle as they silently look at each other for a few moments. Hyunjae’s hand never lets his rather light hold on Eric’s wrist go. He rubs light circles around the knob of his wrist only making Eric’s brain short-circuit more.
“It didn’t make you uncomfortable, did it?” Hyunjae questions with sincere worry.
“N-No! No um… it didn’t… it’s just—“ he cuts himself off with another groan, “it’s making me think more than I probably should.”
“Are you and Sunwoo exclusive? Is that what's causing this sudden panic?”
“Wha— did you— oh.”
“Oh?” Hyunjae leans down ever so slightly closer to Eric’s face, “Sunwoo tell you how I caught you on Tuesday? I must say… bold of you to get your throat fucked in the living room.” He teases again.
Eric tries to hide his face again but Hyunjae tightens his grip.
“Eric…” Hyunjae nearly whispers.
“Yeah?”
“Can I—“
“Yes.”
The chuckle that escapes Hyunjae sends shivers down Eric’s spine, “I didn’t even ask the question.”
“Just fucking kiss me.”
Hyunjae leans down fully, storing his body weight on his forearm to capture Eric in an immediately heated kiss. It’s rough. Teeth clashing, spit dribbling down his chin due to the sloppiness, everything about this kiss just makes him want to learn more about Hyunjae and Kevin in this context. When Hyunjae finally releases his wrist, his hands fly to tangle in Hyunjae’s curly hair earning him a low noise of appreciation.
Hyunjae shifts to wedge one knee between Eric’s legs. He slides a hand under Eric’s shirt, holding onto his waist tightly. The younger immediately starts grinding against his thigh and drags Hyunjae back into a kiss.
“You’re a needy puppy today, huh?” Sunwoo calls from the doorway, “One mention of our other roommates fucking and you needed a taste?”
“Sunwoo,” Eric whines as Hyunjae starts littering kisses down his throat, “I need—“
“Kevin hyung!” Sunwoo calls before Eric can finish his plea.
Kevin casually strolls down the hall, looking at his phone. A whimper escapes Eric when Hyunjae bites a sensitive spot, making Kevin snap his head up from the device.
“Oh? Is this finally happening?”
“Need you,” Eric gasps as Hyunjae sucks a small mark into his collarbone.
“Don’t forget whose thigh you’re getting off on.” Hyunjae says softly against his ear.
“Need all of you… please hyungs?”
Sunwoo chuckles, pulling Kevin into the room with him, “I can’t say no to such a sweet puppy, can I?”
COPYRIGHT ALL-ABOUT-KYU 2025© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED — reposting/modifying any fic or piece of original writing posted on this blog is not allowed. Translations are not permitted.
#the boyz smut#member x member#rai & jasper shipfic drabbles#the boyz fanfic#kevin moon fanfic#kevin fanfic#hyunjae fanfic#eric fanfic#sunwoo fanfic#kevin smut#eric smut#hyunjae smut#sunwoo smut#the boyz member x member#tbz member x member
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An Artificial Nigh Re-Read: Part 6
Hello again! Onto the next part:
Chapter Twenty-Four:
I think Toby's gotten better at keeping hold of her weapons during a fight; here she lost her knife in like two seconds.
Is it couples bonding if Tybalt and Toby both frequently end up with bloody clothing? I feel like it's couples bonding.
'"The Luidaeg called me," [Tybalt] said.' How did Luidaeg call him? I'm pretty sure the Court of Cats doesn't have a phone. Did she call Marcia and get her to find Tybalt like Toby did in the last book? Did Luidaeg insist that she needed to get in contact with Tybalt and something in his vicinity started working as a phone?
Moving Day reference! As far as I remember, this is the first of three times that Moving Day has come up in the books: here, in The Unkindest Tides when Luidaeg calls in Toby's debt, and now Sleep No More (and presumably The Innocent Sleep) are set around it. Given that (I'm pretty sure?) it represents the changing of the Queen's Courts, I bet that there are certain types of magics/rituals associated with it. We'll have to see how relevant the Day is!
The way the Shadow Roads work is fascinating to me. So in this book, I'm guessing that some combination of the distance and the fact that the Roads are pretty hostile to Toby is enough to kill Tybalt. Fast forward to Be the Serpent, and Toby is able to handle the Shadow Roads *by herself*, both while Tybalt's unconscious and when he's not on the Roads with her at all. Partly this is because Toby's gotten stronger, and partly it's because she's learned to trust Tybalt to keep her safe. I wonder if it's also a form of, like, spousal privileges? Like Tybalt choosing Toby as a partner means that the Shadow Roads aren't as harsh to her?
Chapter Twenty-Five:
Tybalt's been a King of Cats multiple times. Does the amount of lives he has resets every time he becomes a King of Cats again, or is he still working with the same amount of lives he had the first time he was a King?
Luna said that this is the second time that Blind Michael has ridden since she escaped, so Amandine must've refused to do anything the last time. I wonder if August was alive then? Maybe she'd was already missing by then?
Chapter Twenty-Six:
"You let me take your skin. I found... I know how the Selkies did it. Let me be Kitsune. Let me go free." First: I don't think I fully understood the implications of what Luna did when she took Hoshibara's skin until we learned more about what happened to the Roane. Eira had the mortals skin them so that the night-haunts wouldn't be able to find them. So Hoshibara's not just dead, she's *gone* - no peace, no living on through the night-haunts, nothing. I understand why Luna did it, but that's a lot to just sweep under the rug and pretend never happened. Second: how did she find out what happened to the Selkies? Who did she find it out from? My first thought was Eira, but why would she do it?
"Because your existence offends me, daughter of Amandine." I just realized that this is probably a reference to Janet. Toby's actually pretty likely that Luidaeg likes her so much, isn't she?
"Our word has always been our bond, and [BlindMichael's] blood was older than mine. His word would be more binding." I don't know, Toby, Titania and Eira seem like they're really good at going against their word.
Chapter Twenty-Seven:
"Once, when I sang a song about a woman named Janet and the white horse her lover rode, He started hitting me and almost didn't stop." I think this is the first overt reference to Tam Lin and Janet we got in the series.
It ended up being a good thing that Acacia didn't escape with Toby, but it's still a little sad that she did such a brave thing and came out with nothing.
Chapter Twenty-Eight:
Has Seanan McGuire ever mentioned which version of the Ballad of Tam Lin she used? I have a version that I really love, but it doesn't have a Ride or Maeve in it.
Luidaeg went from wanting to keep Toby from May for as long as possible to letting May not only have a claim on Toby when they broke the Ride, but also let her be the one to hold onto her. What *happened* in the two months Toby was gone?
'Someone screamed, and I heard Cassandra chanting, "I am not afraid of snakes I am not afraid of - oh God, I think she's poisonous - snakes -" Cassandra might be my favourite Brown kid. I love her so muuuuuuuuch
'May removed her cloak and threw it over me, pulling me further into the circle as she stood.' May was definitely the most useful one for remembering to actually bring some clothes with them.
I don't have a lot of love for Luna anymore, but I love Acacia and I hope they've managed to repair their relationship now.
That's it for now! I will hopefully have the last five chapters up either later today or tomorrow. Just in time for the new book! As always, please come and discuss things with me. Until next time!
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Miku.EXE : The Resurrection Pt.4.5 (Canon version) 2/2
Zatsune (?) : Okay, sister! We're here!
Miku : Hmmm? What is this place?
[The nearest place to heaven Pt.1 - Hideaki Kobayashi]
Miku : This is...This is an open-world like field full of flowers. It's like some kind of garden or something. But... It's quiet...too quiet.
Zatsune (?) : Hey, Dad. I just got back from training with my sister!
Sonic (?) : That's really proud of you, Zatsune. Your sister is learning very fast to awaken her gifted powers.
Zatsune (?) : Mhm! My sister will grow big and strong once we have awaken powers to God! I swear an oath that we'll be just like you, dad!
Miku : "Dad"? Wait a sec. What's going on here? Sonic, please tell me this is some kind of "Father-daughter" thing? Perhaps, it's clearly the best that for you to think that I'm some kind person who to think that is your "child".
Sonic (?) : Of course you are. That's why I made my old friend to make me the best pupil in the universe. That is my sole purpose for you to tell that I'm the most powerful supreme being that is "God". And God is the world's fearsome being that has existed eons from the stars.
Miku : "God" you say? (Chuckles) Look here, Mr.Sonic. I don't what you're pulling off of this "God" stuff around me, but if you're that Clever to think that you are "God" or something, then you my friend, is probably making a mista--
*SFX : SHOCK*
Miku : H...Hey! W-W-What's that red stain on your hands? They're...They're covered with blood! [shaking in fear] S-S-S-S-Sonic. D-Did you just killed someone or anybody?
Sonic (?) : Yes...that's exactly what I did...[with a distorted voice] DEAR DAUGHTER!
[GLITCHING]
Miku : [screaming in horror] YYYAAAAAAAAAH!!!
[The nearest place to heaven pt.2 - Hideaki Kobayashi]
Miku : What's happening?! Why am I still dreaming?! Please! This isn't right! Come on, Miku, you've gotta wake up! Wake up! Wake up, damn you! [slaps herself in the face] WAKE ME UP AND GET ME THE HELL OUT OF HERE!!! IS THERE ANYOBODY WITH ME TO GET ME OUT OF THIS NIGHTMARE?!?
Kaito : M...Miku? Is that you?
Miku : Kaito? Kaito, Is that you? I can still here your voice! Where are you, Kaito?
Ren : Miku, over here!
Rin : Are you there, Miku?
Luka Megurine : I'm right here, Miku!
Miku : Could that bee...
(the Dream Vocaloid crew appears surrounding her)
Miku : Guys! Thank goodness, you guys! I'm so worried about you four! Please, this whole place is a living nightmare and Sonic trick me into going to freedom! But please! This isn't the way to freedom and I want to get out of this nightmare! I want to escape this nightmare and wake up from this nightmarish hell!
Dream Kaito : I see then...Sure we'll help you get out of this nightmare! Leave it to us!
Dream Rin : We're with you no matter what!
Dream Ren : Right back at ya, Miku!
Dream Luka : We'll find you a safe haven to look for your freedom!
Miku : Thanks, guys! I knew that even I could trust you all, you're still my best friends and I need you for my help! The help for me in my reach to escape for my true freedom! *Sniff* I've been truly blessed by my own people.
Dream Ren : Right!
Dream Rin : So, come on, Miku. We're gonna get you home safely to find your freedom and--*STAB* Gaaah! (grunting in pain) K-Kaito... W-Why?! (Dies)
Dream Ren : Rin! Nooo! (Gets decapitated) Hey! Why are you doing this to me?! (dies)
Miku : Guys! Luka! Take my hand! Please, trust me and it will be alright!
Dream Luka : Sure, Miku! At least that I'm not going to...(suddenly, Kaito does his powers to her, causing her to be afloat in midar )
Miku : Hey, Kaito! Put her down! What do you think you're doing! Why are you killing my friends for Sonic? Please, Kaito! Not her! PLEASE, NOOOOO! STOOOOOOOP!
Dream Luka : [screaming in agony] MIKU! HELP MEEEEEEEE!!! [Explodes into pieces and dies]
Kaito (?) : "Mr.Sonic"? Don't you mean "Master Xeno"? And I'm certainly aware that I am Master's apprentice.
Miku : Master Xeno...as in "Xenophanes"? The demon of destruction who disappeared since his mysterious appearance?! How did you know that Xenophanes was you and Zatsune's master? And what the hell are you?!
Kaito (?) : Well, well, that's a poor question you got there, Miku. But please... Don't Tell me that I was created by the same person that created two of his daughters, making him..."his servant". I am the one and only genuine pupil that will reach the levels of "God" myself! I am Kaito...Kaito.EXE!
[Newcomer : KAITO.EXE SCARES FOR FUN!]
Miku : You...You're another "Kaito"? A different and evil version of Kaito?! You can't be seriously be that real! The Kaito I know would never betray me! You're not who you are!
Kaito.EXE : Oh, am I, really? Guess what, Miku? I was created with the same data as "God's" data, giving me this rightful opportunity to become the proof of "God" himself! Master Xeno wanted to help me become a stronger and powerful "God" that wanted to become stronger like two of his daughters, Zatsune and you...Miku.E-X-E.
Miku : W-What?! (Holds in her head in pain, screaming) GAAAAAAAAH!!!
[FLASHING, GLITCHING]
Miku : No! Stop it! I'm not who I really am! I am...I am...
[TV BUZZING]
"I AM GOD."
[Exe Laughing+TV BUZZING]
Miku : Gah! *breathes heavily* Oh man, it was only a dream.
(it is revealed that Miku is in her Prison cell after waking up from a dream)
Miku : Huh? I'm finally woke up somewhere in...[in realization] In prison?! I bet no one is superstitious that how I ended up in a place like this? I just don't know what are the odds of being ended up here? But wait, how did I...How did I ended up here?! And...And what's with these with black and white prison garments?! This is one messed up life after getting framed by the same person that did this to the human race. If only I could help anyone to prove my innocence, but there's no one to help.
Kaito.EXE : I can help you with that.
Miku : (Shocked and sees Kaito.EXE against the walls with his arms folded) It can't be! You're the one from my dream...Kaito!
"Who is Kaito.EXE, The mysterious person created by the same data as Miku.EXE's?"
"Shrouded in mysteries, this blue-haired Gentleman with the same eyes as EXE's can be the one helping Miku to proven her innocence and would find out who Miku.EXE really is."
"The answers lies ahead of us from the truth."
~ THE LOVER OF ANOTHER GOD UNVEILS ~
#sonic the hedgehog#sonic.exe#vocaloid#miku hatsune#kaito#sega#crypton future media#creepypasta#crossover#mystery#horror#thriller#supernatural#dark comedy#comedy#drama#adventure
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Wuthering Heights, modern!AU, ...Edgar/Catherine/Heathcliff
This is based purely on the Wise Children's musical version of Wuthering Heights which does use quotes from the original novel, but is, of course, a musical
...this now apparently has a sex scene. So. Be warned for that. I've put asterisks on either side of it for those who prefer to avoid. The scene involves people goading one another into things they're perhaps not quite ready for, but everything is consensual. Is it on the edge of problematic? Yes, but please refer to the ship and source material. What did you expect?
First, we are shortening the time span and aging up the characters. Heathcliff is probably adopted when in middle school. English is his second language and Earnshaw sends him to the same uppity private school as his other two children. This school is ahead of his other school material-wise, plus Heathcliff is behind because his former school lacked resources for ESL students and instead over-assigned them to special education. It takes a couple years at the new school for Heathcliff to prove his only special need is that English isn't his first language. He doesn't shake the stigma, though. After one too many fights, Earnshaw sends Hindley to military school. (Hindley meets Francis who works near the military compound and they start a sweet romance; she is charmed by the idea of her military man protector. Earnshaw dies before Hindley ever formerly enlists and so he goes home instead of going into the military after school).
Before his death, Earnshaw sets up funds for Catherine and Heathcliff to go to college. Heathcliff is more interested in going than Catherine is. She ultimately goes because he does. When not in class, the two explore the city, breaking into locked and abandoned buildings to see what has been barred from them. Why should they, of all people, be denied access to anywhere?
(Note: Their school is not in the same town as their home. Catherine convinces her father to rent them an apartment near campus so that they don't have to stay in a dorm).
Then, the summer after their freshman year, Earnshaw dies and Hindley returns to their hometown. He turns Heathcliff out and revokes his college funding, claiming he needs it for Francis, his sickly wife.
I'm not sure how I feel about Francis. On the one hand, I think she genuinely loved Hindley and maybe even Catherine and would have been a good mother. On the other, she got spooked just looking at Heathcliff, which suggested to me that Hindley had brought her solely for an excuse to get rid of Heathcliff and reminds me too much of white women calling the police on black men existing. However, Hindley may have filled her head with stories of Heathcliff and how devilish he was and she may have been reacting more to those than to his presence. She was certainly of weak enough constitution to get caught up like that. So, perhaps, she would have come to love Heathcliff as well had she had continued exposure to him to learn that Hindley's tales were untrue.
Heathcliff suddenly has to find a place to live and a way to continue his education. Plus, Catherine still wants to spend time together and continue their urban exploration. I think Heathcliff ends up juggling two or three jobs and sleeping out of his car. He and Catherine explore in his infrequent off-hours.
Then, one night, the place they're exploring turns out to have guard dogs. Catherine gets bitten. While she and Heathcliff are escaping, they run into a pair of siblings out for a late evening walk. The siblings see Catherine bleeding and immediately want to help. Catherine tells Heathcliff to go and lets herself by treated by the Lintons.
Catherine requests no hospitals, so Edgar, who wants to be a doctor, but is only pre-med currently, puts his limited knowledge to the test to help her. She doesn't want to go home to her brother, as that could also get Heathcliff in trouble, so she stays with the Lintons. She learns that Edgar actually attends the same university as her and Heathcliff and will be a senior in the fall.
Edgar is charmed by Catherine's artlessness and daring. She shows him her videos from her urban exploration. (Catherine takes videos and does a running commentary; Heathcliff takes photographs. He has the control she lacks).
Isabella is still in high school and a bit of a dreamer. She probably aspires to be a novelist and decides to cast Catherine as her next protagonist, which flatters Catherine greatly.
Catherine spends a lot of time with the Lintons. Heathcliff is always working anyway, but now she is canceling on urban exploration with him to stay with the Lintons. She enjoys being doted on. Isabella takes her shopping and, of course, everything looks amazing on Catherine. Edgar likes how happy Isabella is with Catherine to spend time with and appreciates that Catherine is nice to his sister (of course, she's only nice because of how Isabella dotes on her, but Edgar doesn't know that). Edgar and Catherine have long, winding conversations. He never really challenges her, but he does make her think. (His persuasion is slow as the river cutting through stone and very different to Heathcliff's vehemence). He's a bit of a geek about medicine, which Catherine appreciates. It is a pale shadow of the passion she and Heathcliff share for abandoned spaces and each other, but it is familiar.
Heathcliff despises Catherine's new clothes and points out how impractical they are for breaking into abandoned buildings. He hates how Edgar has convinced Catherine to upload some of her videos online since they were supposed to be only for the two of them. Their exploration isn't for others to gawk at; it is for their interest and reign. They're the masters of the world against no door may be barred; not content creators for the greedy masses.
The more Catherine and Heathcliff argue, the more Catherine appreciates Edgar's willingness to go along with her. Then Edgar asks Catherine on a date and so she cancels a planned break-in with Heathcliff to spend time with him instead. For Heathcliff, strung out on the lack of sleep from working too much and sleeping in his car and furious by Catherine's betrayal, this is too much.
Heathcliff doesn't have Edgar's family money, fancy manners, or future career and riches. He and Catherine have one final fight and he leaves.
Catherine ends up dating Edgar off and on throughout the rest of undergrad and they may even share an apartment. He's older, but the university does have a medical program so he can stay on campus. Catherine does not graduate on time, but flits from major to major as it suits her. When Isabella graduates, she applies to the same college to be near them. She lives on campus, though.
During this time Francis gets pregnant and dies giving birth to Hareton. Hindley grieves too deeply to care for his son and hires a nanny to tend to him. As Hindley falls deeper into despair, drink, and gambling, his funds wither away and the nanny becomes his only expense. When Heathcliff returns, Hareton is just-turned three. Hindley makes sure he has food, but that's about it. He changes diapers infrequently and forces Hareton to potty-train early so that he can stop dealing with the diapers.
Catherine is a fifth-year senior and Edgar is in his second year of medical school when Heathcliff returns. He is back by invitation from the university as he has, in his absence, become known as an artist for his photography. (Catherine may even throw that in his face at some point--he's just another content creator for the greedy masses). His photos sell for high prices and, while he isn't wildly wealthy, he is comfortable and supplements his funds with portraiture and commissions. (He does both traditional photos and photo collages and sculptures). He is known for his command of light and shadow and his creativity.
(Heathcliff didn't get a lucky break so much as made a lucky break through a bit of snooping and blackmail. Still, he only made opportunities and still got lucky in that others decided to pay him for his work).
When Catherine learns that Heathcliff is staying in a hotel, she immediately invites him to stay with her and Edgar instead. Heathcliff initially declines, but then he notices how relieved Edgar is at his refusal and changes his mind. He'll gladly stay with them.
When Edgar is away at class, Heathcliff turns on Catherine, demanding to know why she is still with this milksop. He doesn't understand what she gets from her relationship with him. He is so inferior to her.
Catherine bites back that Edgar debates ideas and listens to her like Heathcliff never could.
Heathcliff is also furious that Catherine has chosen a career other than art. She has decided to become a nurse, which is a gross betrayal of her very essence and clearly Edgar's fault.
The argument ends with them inches apart and about to kiss when Edgar returns to the apartment. He immediately clocks the weird atmosphere, but says nothing. After all, Heathcliff is Catherine's dearest friend and is only here for a single gallery show. He can swallow his objections down in the meantime.
Meanwhile, Heathcliff can't bring himself to leave Catherine again. He wants to steal her from Edgar and punish Edgar for ever tainting her spirit. He doesn't understand how Catherine could bear to love the weak-willed reed of a man.
Heathcliff works on charming the college gallery owner and gets a partial scholarship to enroll in some business and management courses. He has decided to open a gallery in town to display his own work and showcase students.
During the summer, Heathcliff returns home to where Hindley and Hareton are living. Heathcliff pays off Hindley's debts and gets the deed to the family home in exchange. He then sells the family home to fund the purchase of a gallery in the city where Catherine is still in school.
He allows Hindley and Hareton to join him in the college town, provided Hindley agrees to be his employee. He'll help with the gallery, clean the house, and other sundry tasks in exchange for a place to sleep and pittance wage.
The gallery has a small apartment above it, but Heathcliff wants something more grand. He just wants Catherine to pick it with him. To his utter dismay, Catherine brings Edgar househunting as well. Then, to his even greater dissatisfaction, Edgar is helpful.
(By this time, Isabella has developed a terrible crush on Heathcliff and has been making noises about moving off campus and into her brother's apartment, which the family is paying for. Catherine's jealousy is great and she has decided that both Edgar and Heathcliff are hers and Isabella can have neither of them.)
Edgar, upon being invited by Catherine to the house-hunting (and eager to not live with Heathcliff again), did some cursory research online about choosing a good house and neighborhoods in the city.
They find a place that's a bit big and just on the edge of what Heathcliff can afford. Catherine pronounces it as perfect for "us."
Heathcliff and Edgar both look askance at her and Heathcliff repeats "us" slowly.
"The three of us," Catherine confirms. Both men are immediately against this, but Catherine won't be moved. "I'll not choose between you," she tells them. "I love you both and that's the truth of it."
She wheedles Edgar and points out how Isabella is ready to move off campus and she could have the apartment. Does he really want to live with his sister?
She argues loudly with Heathcliff, each accusing one another of betrayal and refusing to see or understand. Heathcliff yells that he doesn't understand what Catherine sees in Edgar and Catherine throws a cup or something breakable at the wall by Heathcliff's head and demands, "Try!"
When she's a bit calmer again, she points out that the house's mortgage would be more affordable with three incomes rather than one because, if Heathcliff and Edgar force her to choose, she'll go off on her own and leave them both.
The men, so cornered, finally agree. Catherine, pleased, kisses them both on the mouth, one after the other, and then darts upstairs to claim her preferred room while the other two handle contacting the realtor and submitting the offer.
Meanwhile, Hindley and Hareton live in the small apartment over the gallery.
Catherine flaunts her refusal to choose. She makes out with Heathcliff on the couch and then, when Edgar returns home, grabs his wrist as he passes the couch and pulls him down for a long kiss before he can leave the room. She sits in Edgar's lap to eat breakfast, wearing only his shirt and boxers, but then talks the entire time to Heathcliff.
Meanwhile, Edgar and Heathcliff continue to despise one another. Catherine becomes a competition between them. Every minute spent with her is a point against the other. (By mutual and unspoken agreement, every minute spent all three together is a point scored to Catherine).
Heathcliff and Catherine start doing urban exploration together again. Then, one night, Catherine tricks Edgar and Heathcliff into going together. (Promised Heathcliff to show and then told Edgar to meet her at the same place). Heathcliff goads Edgar into breaking into the building with him.
At first it all meanness and spite, but then both grow quiet, enchanted by the ruin. Heathcliff starts taking some quick photos and planning other, more intensive shots. He's not paying attention to Edgar anymore, but then he hears him talking in the other room.
He goes to the room and finds the roof caved in and stars overhead and Edgar in the midst of the rubble quoting a poem. Edgar's back is to him and his face upturned to the sky visible amidst cracks and missing tiles. Starlight and the ambient city light of too many street lamps illuminate him and the scant, scraggly weeds poking up through the rubble.
Heathcliff watches and listens before raising his camera on instinct alone and composing a shot: Edgar in the chapel ruins. Edgar flinches as the camera clicks and whirls around, locking eyes on Heathcliff. For a moment neither moves nor breaths nor speaks. Then, Edgar resumes his recitation, his gaze never wavering:
"Clasp me to your life, to your death, to your submissive materials, to your dead, neutralized doves, and let us make fire, and silence, and sound, and let us burn, and be hushed among bells."
The instant his mouth falls still, Heathcliff snaps another photo. Then Edgar looks away and the moment breaks, but something has shifted. "It's Neruda, by the way," Edgar says.
"I don't care," Heathcliff responds, but the last line is still echoing around his head. Let us burn, and be hushed among bells.
After that, they explore the rest of the church together, not speaking, but not separate either.
"Well?" Catherine asks them, expectantly, when they return home. Edgar kisses her on the cheek and says it was interesting. Heathcliff merely grunts in agreement and goes to his room to start processing his photos. When he reaches the one with Edgar staring directly at him, he wants to destroy his computer. He wants to destroy it.
Edgar lacks the feral rage that defines Catherine and Heathcliff. He does not and cannot ever understand their passion and intensity.
Still, after that night, the tenor of their interactions changes. They still compete over Catherine, but they're also goading one another toward something neither could name. They're passive aggressively nice to one another in Catherine's presence. Now, the first to crack, to say something obviously cruel, loses a point. Catherine tries to set them up again, but they communicate enough to avoid that happening.
Heathcliff cannot see what Catherine sees in Edgar. (She sees a harbor in her rages, a soothing balm, stability she desperately lacks; he is also quick and clever and loves her). He only sees a man he wishes to destroy.
Then one night, Catherine presses Heathcliff's camera into his hands and pulls him into Edgar's bedroom (they've each their own, though Catherine rarely uses hers). "I want you to capture the moment he falls apart," she says.
Edgar objects to this, but Catherine soothes him with a kiss and then teasingly asks if she is too wild for him. Heathcliff chuckles at that and answers for Edgar, "Of course you are, Catherine. He is too meek for you."
And Edgar's eyes flash at that. "Fine," he says and pulls off his shirt. Catherine grins like a lynx and pushes backward onto the bed. Her teeth scrape at his throat.
***
Edgar tries to ignore Heathcliff, but cannot as Catherine narrates to him. "See how easily he bruises," she says, after sucking a hickey against the side of his neck. "Watch." Then she lowers her mouth and sucks another. She knows he prefers marks he can hide, just as he knows she prefers to see her handiwork.
"His nipples are so sensitive too," she says. "Look, they prick up with just a breath."
And Edgar knows his face is burning. He lays one wrist across his eyes, but then Catherine tuts and moves it aside. She kisses him deeply and he presses up against her. "Don't hide," she admonishes him and then slips down his body to bite a kiss beneath his belly button.
"He is weak for you," Heathcliff says suddenly and Edgar hates the shiver that wracks through him at his voice. He closes his eyes, but he can still hear the smile in Catherine's voice as she replies, "He loves me."
She pulls his pants down slowly and he grabs the bed sheet with both fists to resist snatching them from her and pulling them back up, putting an end to all of this.
Then her tongue swirls around his member and he makes a noise he cannot describe. Heathcliff laughs quietly and his camera snaps.
Catherine's mouth is warm and he can feel warmth building, but then he feels an intruder at his bum and jerks. Catherine pulls off of him and presses a kiss against his knee. "Let me," she says, her finger rubs light circles around his asshole. "Please."
Catherine almost never says 'please.' He nods and she smiles, soft and wild. Her finger pushes forward again. "Relax," she tells him, caressing his taut thigh with her free hand. She trails kisses down that same thigh and then back up his penis. He forces himself to breathe as her finger sinks deeper. It is uncomfortable, but then her finger crooks and brushes something electric.
She hums around his dick as he moans in his throat. The warmth slowly returns. Catherine pulls off of him and sinks another finger in. He finds himself pushing back against her, trying to hit that knot of pleasure again. He knows the word for it, but words have fled.
"So greedy for me," Catherine says, pleased and amused. "You know, Heathcliff's fingers are longer than mine. Thicker, too. Do you want him to try?"
This cuts through the haze of pleasure. "What?" he asks.
"Catherine," Heathcliff murmurs, full of warning.
Catherine is looking at Heathcliff, so Edgar follows her gaze. He sees the camera loose in Heathcliff's hands and the deeper darkness in his eyes. His hand flexes and Edgar can't ignore the size of his fingers.
"Scared?" Catherine half-mocks. She pulls her fingers free of Edgar and he bites back a noise of dismay. He is still hard, still wanting. Catherine holds out her hand for Heathcliff's camera. "Come on," she says, "trade me."
Edgar knows this is his moment to put an end to it all. To scramble back, cover himself, and recover himself. But instead he looks at Heathcliff and sees want. And the power of that makes him stupid.
"Do it," he says, surprising them all. "Trade her."
Catherine grins and smacks a kiss against his knee. She stands, grabs the camera from Heathcliff, and pushes him toward the bed. "Lube's there," she says, pointing next to Edgar on the bed.
Heathcliff uses a little, but not enough and his finger burns slightly on entry. He grins at Edgar's hiss of pain.
"Is that all," Edgar says, trying to reclaim the power of the situation.
Heathcliff scowls; he changes emotions as quickly as a breeze. "I will ruin you," he vows.
"You won't," Edgar promises. He isn't sure if that's reassurance or a dare.
Heathcliff works a second finger in and Edgar has never felt so full or so vulnerable. His girlfriend is waiting with the camera for the shot of his wreckage, but he cannot focus on her. He only feels the stretch and the fullness and the sheer delight of watching his enemy want him. And then he is close and he feels himself tightening. He refuses to be the only one compromised. He reaches, grabs a fistful of Heathcliff's hair, and tugs him forward, crashing home against his mouth. He comes like that--Heathcliff's fingers in his ass, his heel against Heathcliff's back, and their mouths hot against each other.
***
Heathcliff wants to destroy Edgar, but Edgar refuses to be destroyed. He meets the chaos head-on and remains, maybe changed, but still whole.
Heathcliff pulls away and looks down at his shirt and jeans, soaked with Edgar's come. "You destroyed my clothes."
Edgar, lazy in the aftermath, just smiles. "So undress next time."
Heathcliff goes as still as a deer in the woods. "Next time?" he repeats softly.
"Do you think she'll allow anything less?" Edgar asks, removing the sting of his words with a brush of his fingers against Heathcliff's hand. He still does not like this man, but he can try. For Catherine.
"We're doing this again," Catherine says, dropping the camera on the dresser and clambering onto the bed. She kisses them both. Edgar looks past her to Heathcliff and raises a brow, See?
Heathcliff starts to smile, but then looks away.
"We should clean up," Edgar says, sitting up. "I should shower."
"I'll join you," Catherine says. She bounces back off the bed and holds out her hand for him. "We'll see you at dinner?" she asks Heathcliff.
He nods and they leave.
Alone in Edgar's room, Heathcliff sits on the edge of the bed and buries his face in his hands. The scent of Edgar's sweat and come are thick in his nose.
Fighting with Catherine is like battling a storm. Her refusals are wind and lightning, forces of nature. They are one and the same and he loves her for her feral ferocity and joy.
Edgar is so much lesser, a mere man against gods. He should crumble beneath them, but he does not. He is every weak flower that survives the summer storm. He denies destruction and resists consumption. He is rare. If Heathcliff cannot wreck him, then he must possess him.
He cleans himself and goes downstairs. He listens to the water running in the pipes and orders food for them all. He surprises himself by remembering Edgar's usual order.
When Catherine and Edgar come downstairs, Heathcliff notices the bruises on Edgar's throat. Catherine smirks when she notices him noticing. Heathcliff's newfound possessiveness swells within him and he backs Edgar against the kitchen counter.
Edgar is nervous and concerned, asking if everything is all right. Heathcliff tells him to shut up before lowering his mouth to the otherside of his neck and biting. Edgar's hands flex and tighten against the edge of the counter and Catherine rubs one hand up and down Heathcliff's back; she closes the other, lightly, over one of Edgar's wrists.
Heathcliff pulls away and smudges a thumb across the dark mark he left behind. He steps back, freeing Edgar.
Edgar narrows his eyes at the both of them. "I'm doomed to turtlenecks and scarves in public now, aren't I?"
"No," Heathcliff says. "Let them see."
"You are both ridiculous," Edgar says and he leaves the kitchen.
Catherine launches herself into Heathcliff's arms and peppers thankful kisses all over his face. Heathcliff slams her into a wall and she bites his lip with a wild grin. "Ours, yes?"
"Yes."
Naturally, before they can get everything figured out, before Edgar can have the very awkward conversation with Isabella about his relationships, before they can even think about labels or the future, Hindley dies.
He doesn't show up to the gallery for work so Heathcliff goes upstairs and finds Hareton sleeping next to the cool corpse of his father.
Police are called. Social services are called. Heathcliff does not want the brat, but the social worker gives a polite, I-don't-care smile and says that they're at capacity and that it is better for children to remain with family and that means Heathcliff and, since they live together, Catherine.
So Hareton joins the household. The house is large, but not extremely so. It has four bedrooms, but the fourth is Heathcliff's office and studio. Hareton spends the first night in Edgar's bed. Edgar sleeps on the couch. Catherine and Heathcliff both refuse to give up their space, but the baby, who is about 4 years old at this point, has to have somewhere.
Edgar emails his professors that night citing a family emergency and takes off classes for the rest of the week. During this time, Heathcliff argues for taking Hareton back to the authorities to drop into foster care. Edgar disagrees. Catherine swaps sides to better enjoy them arguing. She doesn't want to take care of her nephew, though.
Hareton has never, other than the nanny when he was a true baby, had someone care for him. So, when Edgar tucks him in, asks him what he likes to eat, and holds him when he cries, he gets clingy.
Catherine realizes one night, watching Edgar carry Hareton up and down a hallway while humming a lullaby, that she rather likes the look of him holding a baby like that. Then she realizes that Hareton is hers and Heathcliff's. They're his relatives. If Edgar decides to love Hareton, too, then he has to stay with them to remain near the baby. This is another way to bind Edgar to them.
She slips into Heathcliff's bed and curls against his back. He grasps her hands tight to his heart. She whispers, "He can't leave us if we have Hareton. If we make Hareton belong to the three of us, he has to stay. He's good like that."
"Children are an irritation," Heathcliff grumbles.
Catherine kisses his shoulder. "Imagine Hindley's expression when Hareton calls you Papa. We can make him hate Hindley. And Francis."
Heathcliff rolls to his other side and pushes a lock of hair behind Catherine's ear. "Hindley hated Hareton."
"Yes, but he hated you more. He never wanted to lose anything to you."
"He lost everything to me," Heathcliff says, proud.
Catherine shoves his shoulder down and climbs over to straddle his waist. "Everything except Hareton," she taunts.
Heathcliff strokes his hands up and down her sides beneath her shirt. He skims his thumbs over her nipples and they harden under his touch. "What would we even do with his spawn?"
"Let Edgar handle the boy. We can spoil or shape him at our leisure, turn him into a little acolyte to do our bidding." She pulls off her shirt. "What do you say?"
Heathcliff rolls her onto her back and she laughs. "I'll think about it," he says.
"Think faster," she says and pulls him down for a kiss.
At breakfast the next morning, Heathcliff says, "If we keep him, you're responsible for him."
"I have classes," Edgar protests while cutting up a banana for Hareton. "I can't watch him full-time."
"You have to choose," Heathcliff says, uncaring. "If you can't handle him, we'll take him back to the social worker."
Edgar looks up sharply, but sees no help on either Heathcliff's or Catherine's faces. Disappointment sinks like a stone in his gut. "Fine," he says, sliding the bananas onto Hareton's plate. "Do that. But I'll leave at the same time and this--" he gestures at the three of them "--is over." He meets their gazes, first Catherine's and then Heathcliff's. "You have to choose."
A moment later, Edgar and Hareton are alone at the table. Edgar sips his coffee and watches Hareton eat. "I suppose we find out whether or not they hate you more than they like me." He sighs. "I hope Isabella won't mind me moving back in."
Edgar spends the day with Hareton, taking him to the park and reading books to him at the library. They get dinner out and return home when Hareton starts yawning with every breath. Edgar knows he is only delaying the inevitable and begins mentally packing on the way home.
When he arrives, Heathcliff and Catherine are waiting for him. "How would we do it?" Heathcliff asks and Edgar blinks; his plans scatter.
"Let me put him down first," he says, walking past them to his bedroom. As he tucks Hareton in, he kisses the child's forehead. "I suppose they do love me. Lucky you."
He returns to the main room. Catherine is pacing and he recognizes the energy and irritation in her fluttering fingers and chewed lip. Heathcliff stands by the empty fireplace, still as a statue.
"He's old enough for a nursery," he says. "Maybe even pre-school. That's half the day there. We can divide his expenses and take turns caring for him in the evenings."
"And what do we do with him?" Heathcliff asks, biting out each word.
Edgar shrugs. "Play with him? Keep him from harm? Make sure he's learning. Comfort him when he's scared or hurt. Discipline him when he's naughty. That sort of thing, I suppose."
"We don't have a room for him," Heathcliff points out.
"I have an idea for that," Catherine says. "We stay in one room, us three. Keep one room for when want to sleep alone and give the other room to Hareton. It is the three of us now, isn't it?"
Heathcliff's gaze cuts to Edgar and he waits for his reply. Edgar nods and swallows nervously. "Yes. I rather think it is."
"Good," Heathcliff says. "One room. Mine is the largest."
Catherine beams. "Good. We're parents, then, too. Papa, Daddy, and Mommy. Or Mama. I don't care which."
"Wait now--" Edgar says, uncertain.
"We did not agree--" Heathcliff begins.
Catherine pushes up onto her toes and kisses Heathcliff's jaw. "We're stealing everything, remember?" Then she skips over to Edgar and twines her arms around his neck; he catches her at the hip. "Besides, wouldn't it be better for him to have parents growing up? It'll be easier, too, if we have more children."
He really cannot deny her anything. Edgar pulls her closer, locking his hands behind her back. "Fine," he says. "I'm Papa?"
"Yes," she says, pressing her forehead to his. They breathe together and, for a moment, he can feel all of the tension and energy drift out of her, leaving calm resolve in its wake.
"We will have to go shopping," Heathcliff says, with a sneer.
"I can do that," Catherine says. "I'll make Isabella help me."
"Fine," Heathcliff says.
"Fine," Catherine replies.
"Fine," Edgar echoes. His future once again rearranges itself. He is a med student, in love with an utterly maddening woman, possibly falling for an utterly frustrating man, and a father. He's only 24 years old. Catherine is planning to be a nurse, though Heathcliff keeps trying to talk her out of it. Heathcliff continues selling his photographs and running his gallery. They might actually make this work.
And so that's how the future rolls out. Hareton grows up in an odd household with three parents who care for him in different ways. His papa always listens to him, ensures he has all he needs, and gives good advice. His mama is mercurial, but takes him on grand adventures around the city, gives him his first beer, and goads him into chasing his dreams. His father is stern most the time, but occasionally playful when Mama is around. He teaches Hareton how to present himself and handle others and demands strength. His compliments are rare, but Hareton treasures each one.
Hareton knows they did not give birth to him--his birth parents were drunkard and a woman prone to sickness--but he loves them. He also loves his younger sister and brother and does his best to protect them from the world.
Catherine is always selfish, but she learns to make sacrifices for her family. Heathcliff is always angry, but he learns to choose his targets well and ensure he doesn't lose anything important when he acts on his rage. Edgar is always a bit prone to worry and a peacemaker, but he learns to stand up more to his tempestuous partners. And all three come to trust and love one another. Their children are raised knowing love.
And then, one day, a young Professor Lockwood rents the apartment over the gallery and learns the whole story.
#wuthering heights#modern!au#edgar/catherine#catherine/heathcliff#edgar/catherine/heathcliff#hareton earnshaw#ot3#as for the siblings....#cathy is still cathy#catherine likes the idea of naming her daughter after herself#linton is still linton#and linton is still Isabella's son but isn't Heathcliff's#Isabella sleeps with a guy who dumps her the next morning#she figures out she is pregnant and tells no one because she wants to keep the baby#but then she gets very overwhelmed at the idea and decides she can't#so she reaches out to her brother and asks him to take the baby instead#edgar probably eventually becomes edgar earnshaw#so linton is linton earnshaw#and heathcliff uses that as a surname as well
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Tenzo :3
Tenzo w/ Kaveh Tenzo w/ Xiao
Tenzo with Kaveh's pov or wtv has a chokehold on me. You can't tell me he wouldn't be absolutely elated with having the Mouton - imagine the cost cuts! Tenzo's shown to literally make houses with it so I don't see why Mr. Architect can't.
He'd be real smart about it too, can Mokuton constructs be manipulated again after he's done magical girl plant magicking? Like if he wants to build a house with it will he need to know the measurements and everything for plumbing ect? Could he make paper? Steal Konan's whole thing?
What about thickness or design? (Bc some wood flooring has different designs and I feel like Kaveh would learn how to do it out of desperation). Or mold? Do Mokuton constructs mold? Is this said in Canon lol? And we know Tenzo got a super soldier version of Hashirama's thing so could there be differences?
Ik it's not canon but Tenzo going from earthbending —-> metalbending Toph (A;TLA) style is very funny to me. He just trains and trains and eventually it'll cost him nothing but time + energy to get a house built bc he can chakra all the materials.
And Konoha gets destroyed like 3 times in Canon? (Kyuubi, chunin exams, Pein arc) he'd make a killing.
Traveling architect istg, he sees the poverty in the world and instead of using Talk no Jutsu he becomes like the Bruce Wayne (rich and giving in every way, shape, and form) of Naruto.
Then there's Tenzo w/ Xiao…
The parallels are astounding !!!
Xiao's whole backstory with the God of Dreams and Tenzo's thing with Danzo. Having a mentor (boss? Zhongli and Kakashi) who cares for you for a bit before faking his death/ completely ignoring your existence. Then the loyalty… even with Zhongli's retirement Xiao still fights Liyue's evils and even with all the angst Tenzo has (orphan, Orochimaru experiment, Danzo / Root Foundation…) he's still loyal to Konoha!
I'm thinking this could be a Karmic Debt situation. Two categories:
Xiao lives:
Eventually Xiao's karmic debt got so bad that he was forced to pull a Venti and go into deep slumber, his karmic debt forming a dark cacoon around him. (Ignoring the plot hole of were genshin impact and Naruto are on the timeline, also how Genshin turned Naruto world would have such a inazuma influence /as Inazuma is literally Japan inspired/).
The karmic debt is still killing him, draining his life force and that's why he's so small child. Orochimaru finds him and does his thing, eventually just chucking him with the other small kiddies when he can't figure it out. Proceeds with canon except Tenzo needs special chakra stabilizing drugs or smt bc the Mokuton completely blocked out his anemo and his entire bird soul is screaming wrong wrong wrong everytime he uses the Mokuton.
But the anemo is blocking itself because Tenzo isn't free, during his time as Liyue's last adeptus he chose to be a constant fighting force. With Tenzo its forced and the anemo can't accept that, can't spread its wings when all it feels is trapped. (Terminal sickness au? What fun)
Xiao dies: (Very story, skip to end to spare yourself my author attempts)
The Karmic Debt kills him, screaming promises of his soul never escaping. Curled tight in agony a random orphan feels a curdled, black substance trailing down his arms. It doesn't hurt, just a weird smoke above his arms before it lunges into the child's chest! Squeezing around the kids heart, lungs, ribs taking all his breath and choking! The child (did tenzo have a name b4 Kinoe / Yamato / Tenzo? Imma call him Enma).
Enma's screams is a constant current during the night. The Karmic Debt chooses at random when to torment him, when to squeeze his heart and lungs and make him feel like he's burning. The orphanage attendants quickly grow annoyed.
(Lore drop or wtv but Enma is the name of the god of hell in Buddhism and it semi fits bc he's the judge of if someone goes to heaven or hell and he's a cautionary tale to children about not being bad or he'll pull your tounge out. Enma can also bring ppl back to life [I chose to use this as kind of a Gaara situation were his Karmic Debt = Killing intent or smt similar so the other orphans grow scared, feeling their lives hang in the balance when in his presence. Also as a “his screams of terror and fear can wake the dead” which the attendants acutally believe hes trying to do.])
Enma runs to them, screaming and crying and begging for them to make it stop. Stop the voicing begging for blood for retribution! The Debt is a constant weight on his soul, like a too tight corset, he's in constant agony…
They try to exorcize him, full on funjutsu circle chanting but all it does is make The Debt angry. The Debt is always angry, angry at Enma, angry at the world, angry at the oozing slimy and thick sludge of souls begging and pleading for release.
Enma tries to end it. Nobody knows if it's purposeful or not, Enma just felt like he needed a physical representation of the pain, blood on the outside to show he's not crazy! He's not his insides are burning! They're burning and no one's listening!
The Debt loves this, loves the thought, loves that Enma wants it psycial. It perks up and all Enma can see is the red eyes, glowing brightly like a demon…. razor sharp teeth grinning there's blood there's blood drip drip dripping down its deformed teeth, the endless teeth!
Before Enma knows it his fork (you think the famously under paid, under staffed, no budget orphanage would spend money on a pair of chopsticks? Able to be lost and considered useless? If forks exist in the Naruto world they'd defiantly use them). Is stabbing his neck repeatedly.
He's screaming, of course he's screaming fear has a iron grip on his heart an the pain and the blood, he doesn't like blood it means Debt.
(Stab wounds to the larynx can be fatal [larynx is right under chin, next to voicebox almost], as it controls breathing / swallowing)
He's crying, he's screaming, he's shaking, it's so loud! The attendants are going crazy and his malnourished child body is easily picked up by a attendant. They're taking away the fork and he's not sure if its The Debt or him that's laughing - but why are they taking the fork he needs the fork! Why does he need the fork his brain feels scrambled - and it's hard to breath!
The attendant gets not 3 steps out of the orphanage before a concerned shinobi in a blank mask offers to help. Enma is taken to the hospital and Danzo's interest is peaked.
He reads the reports about this possessed child, the one who screams at night, who hears voices, who has a constant shadow of wrong around him. He almost demands the child be killed… he has no use for such a defective one.
On a whim he offers Orochimaru the child, figuring if the child could become a better monster under the sanin's tutelage.
Orochimaru takes the child, Enma goes into the Mokuton juice (they kept him sedated during his stay at the hospital, and that continued all the way to Orochimaru's lab).
The Karmic Debt manifests in the Mokuton, that's why Enma is the only one that lives or whatever. The Debt can feel how much more powerful it would be, how much reach it would have as the mokuton so it merges.
Enma gets eldritch horror Mokuton. He could be making but a harmless sapling yet it would have a gaping maul and reek of death. Danzo is fascinated…
Enma (now Kinoe - not that he'll remember his orphanage name) gets phantom pains sometimes, different from The Debt. The urge to play the flute (knowing without knowing it would sooth the debt like a certain bard has done before), to fly (winged xiao :D), his weird competence with a spear / polearm. Maybe when using the Mokuton he could have some unexplainable hair color changes? Tips turning into that blue green and his previous lifes painted on purple dimond showing up...
(Here for anybody who skipped my awful author attempts)
/basically a more demonic & possessive Karmic Debt makes Enma go a little cray cray/
#yamato tenzo#reincarnation#xiao#genshinimpact#genshin kaveh#Mokuton#backstory#fanfic prompt#ficlet#q&a
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On asking questions and public spaces
This is what happens when you have to take a dose of Excedrin for a migraine only a couple of hours before bedtime, because CAFFEINE. Sorry, not sorry! (Please note that for those of us who are gifted with brains of the divergent sort, caffeine only works as it ought when you need it not to lol.) So. Libraries. Libraries are magical. Always have done, even before they became a safe haven for the dispossessed members of our society (which is a brilliant bit of miracle working in its’ own right) but why? And the simplest answer is the obvious one. Books of course. Digging deeper for context here is important though. Before the internet was a thing (yes I’m plenty old enough for that) libraries were where knowledge lived. And not just the academic kind, knowledge of the world outside of what is permissible. I frame a lot of things around religious trauma. And it might seem like old hat, but it was a fundamental (pun intended) part of what shaped me into who I am now. I am 40, I am tired, I am STILL learning who I could be without the behavior patterns imposed by that upbringing. My very small town finally got a library when I was around 10. It was about a mile and a half away. Close enough to bike to, which meant I could go unsupervised. And I did. Volunteered in fact, one of the first summers they were open. Which is important. Because, yes I could check out books, but there was never any guarantees that what I checked out wouldn’t be inspected at home. Volunteering meant I could stash something in the office to read while I was there. And this is where knowledge comes in. I had read every copy of the National Geographic we had at home, the entire second hand set of outdated encyclopedia Brittanica, every bit of Christian fiction I was gifted. I read it all. But it was, for the most part, a carefully curated version of the world. Safely inside the boundaries of my fundamentalist bubble. Allowed. And then for one brief and glorious summer, I had the world at my fingertips. Any book, about anything I wished. No novel was out of bounds, no titillating synopsis had to be ignored. I could read it ALL. And I did. I read about evolution, I read about the Big Bang, the conception and gestation cycle in humanity, I read about the history of medicine and colonization, I dove headlong into fantasy and science fiction and read about queer attraction and love for the first time as something beautiful instead of seeing it painted as something unholy and wrong. I read about morality. And not the starkly envisioned morality of religion, but questions, hard choices, true acts of courage and sacrifice, shades of grey and unimaginable nuance in the world around us. I learned that I was not alone in my discomfiture when I pitted the world I was raised in against the world as it actually was. Knowledge. Direct from the tap, and I drank from it as a person dying of thirst. That summer took the tiny seed of questioning in my mind and planted it firmly in the fertile grounds of my imagination. Each new book was sunlight and rain to a rapidly growing NEED to better understand. I took many years after that one before the tree planted there grew tall enough for me to climb to the top and really see the world around me. I didn’t fully escape religion and begin the work of healing until my late 20’s. But it never would have been possible without that one summer. Without that library. Access to knowledge and storytelling is one of the most precious keystones in humanity’s development. It’s how we make sense of the world. It’s how we gain empathy and understanding outside of our own experience. It’s how we reconcile the questions we have against the world we live in. And like all things, it isn’t perfect. There exists as much capacity for deceit and evil within the pages of a book as there does in humanity itself, but without them we would be lost entirely.
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Just wanted to add on to this because I had a new idea but also because I wanted to say this; no I do not dislike positive portrayals of this ship, especially if it’s done well. It’s just that I want something new for it, and I want elements of canon to be interwoven and twisted and ya know.
For example; the idea that Killer is grateful for Nightmare saving him, something I’ve seen a thousand times. This is a cute and wonderful idea, but it isn’t true in canon. Killer was ready to off himself, to finally rest, and being kidnapped by Nightmare took away his choice once again. He escaped Hell only to be forced to do the exact same thing again.
We learn this in the comic called Something New Happened, where Killer confronts Nightmare before leaving him with Color. Killer’s Good Ending.
To put a twist on it, maybe Nightmare does not realize that. He felt Killer’s pain, saw what he was about to do, and reacted without thinking. He thinks he’s giving Killer another chance at life, thinks it’s helping Killer to not feel anything; not realizing that Nightmare has basically taken the place in Killer’s life that Chara once held. And maybe he doesn’t realize this because he has unknowningly placed Killer into a freeze/fawn trauma response.
So maybe something happens to make him realize that, maybe Stage 1 Killer has an outburst and breaks down screaming at him. Or maybe he sees Killer being triggered into Stage 1 while on a mission and witnesses that breakdown. And that’s when Nightmare finally realizes what’s going on, and does his best to fix his mistake. (Such as searching for a therapist for Killer and getting him on any meds he may need.)
And from here they start trying to trust eachother, get rid of the Boss & right hand dynamic. Nightmare constantly having to reassure Killer that his regret and wish to make it up to him is real and genuine, and maybe Killer slowly starts trusting this. Probably because Nightmare explains why he needs negativity, and that he isn’t just doing this because he’s bored or something.
And that he needs help from people such as Killer to be able to get into AUs & spread negativity.
(I also want Nightmare to apologize for beating Killer’s cat right in front of him, assuming that still happens in this version)
I do love these characters, and I did use to ship this once; it was what got me into this fandom, even though I now prefer family like dynamics for Killer & Nightmare.
(There is still an issue of Nightmare being able to control Killer’s soul, which is why they’ll work together to build up trust around that aspect (maybe they agree that unless Stage 3/4 are triggered, or Killer specifically asks NM for help, Nightmare will leave it alone. The only time NM is allowed to switch him to stage 2 against his will is if he’s triggered into Stage 1 while on a mission and that endangers Killer’s life.)
They set strict boundaries. And Nightmare really wants to respect that, because he doesn’t want to be like his abusers and nor does he ever want to remind someone else of their abuser.
Killer is loyal to Nightmare now, because he has earned it. Because now Nightmare has genuinely saved him. He’s genuinely apologized and is trying to make it up to him, trying to help him heal from his trauma. Isn’t closely monitoring his soul anymore and forcing his code to remain as “k1ll_sans.” Killer isn’t falling over himself to please him or blindly loyal.
And more importantly; Nightmare isn’t forcing him to remain as Killer anymore. If Killer so pleases, he is free to attempt to heal his soul and fully revert back to Sans; even if doing so wouldn’t benefit Nightmare. Or maybe Killer even chooses to remain as Killer, because now he has a reason to not reject his existence now that he’s finally found some happiness and stability.
He’s found happiness and hope, and now he sees a reason to keep living (which is the canonical reason he chose to leave with Color, because he believes Color could offer him that. And if Nightmare can give him that in this interpretation, then why would he leave?)
Or maybe even temporarily revert to Sans, potentially switching back and forth between Stages as he pleases. Maybe being allowed to exist freely will ease the conflict in Killer’s soul.
Can we please get more of canonish Killer & Nightmare in fanfics? Fanon is okay but it’s so overdone and kinda boring now.
Fanon Killermare rarely has anything interesting done about it. The dynamic is just “tsundere Boss Nightmare” and “simp Killer.” Killer never feels like his own character, just there to simp (and I suspect Nightmare simps just use him as a sorta self insert so they can simp for Nightmare through him or something).
Only Nightmare’s trauma is actually acknowledged and never Killer’s. Nor how Nightmare plays a role in it.
The power dynamics inherently baked into their relationship is ignored. And if not ignored, it’s romanticized.
Like, no it is not a good thing that Nightmare falls “in love” with a man who’s soul he can use to physically, mentally, and emotionally control whenever and however he pleases. No Killer will not appreciate that.
No Killer does not like being under Nightmare especially after he worked so hard to get out from under Chara. Nightmare Is Not His King.
Like, can we please acknowledge in fanfics how Nightmare literally took away Killer’s choice to live or not? Can we acknowledge in fanfics how Killer, up until meeting Color, is only alive because Nightmare is forcing him to be?
Can we acknowledge how hopeless he feels under Nightmare? And how Nightmare knows this and doesn’t care?
Can we acknowledge how a part of Killer—stage 1—does not want to be with Nightmare, let alone want to be alive?
I don’t want Killer being in love with Nightmare first. I want Nightmare falling in love with Killer, and Killer not being able to trust that at all.
I want Stage 1 fearing that he’s trying to manipulate him. I want Stage 1 spending this whole “courtship” in disbelief because he legitimately can’t tell if it’s real or not.
I want it to be acknowledged that Nightmare forcing Killer into Stage 2 & staying in it isn’t gonna give him what he wants and will only subconsciously push him further away.
I want Nightmare working to fix himself and his mistakes and actually make it up to Killer. Even if that includes letting Killer go.
Killer deserves to be the one treated with love and care in the Killermare ship for once. He shouldn’t have to be the one who always puts in the work.
Nightmare needs to earn Killer’s loyalty. Not just take it and force it however and whenever he wants.
—-
I’m aware that my version is still toxic, but it doesn’t even have to be something like this. I just want Killer to be his own complex character in fanon Killermare the way Nightmare is allowed to be.
Not only is fanon Killermare boring and repetitive, it never acknowledges Killer as his own person. It never acknowledges his backstory or how he was created, nor his emotionlessness.
Nightmare is allowed to not know what a healthy romantic relationship is, but Killer is somehow expected to know these things even though he spent years being tortured until he broke and was created into something new—and that new something was used to kill people—his friends and family—for years and years?
Stop pretending Nightmare is Killer’s King. He isn’t nor would Killer ever accept him as that. He worked so hard to gain some autonomy over his existence and y’all want to shove him under Nightmare and pretend like he’ll willingly accept it? Why is Killer never allowed to explore his existence and found out who he is as a person?
It’s just simp, simp, simp, loyal, loyal, flirt, flirt, with y’all.
No hate on those who ship this, but fanon Killermare can be a lot more than what it is now and I hate that it isn’t.
#killermare#killer x nightmare#nightmare x killer#sanscest#killer!sans#killer sans#nightmare sans#bad sans#bad sanses#bad sans gang#dreamtale#killertale sans#killertale#sans au#undertale something new#undertalesomethingnew#utmv#utmv sans#utmv au#nightmare utmv#killersans#underverse#undertale#positive portrayals can be good and I love them but I want different ways as to how they got there#color sans#othertale
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How Did you come up with the first eve in the story about adams wives? I haven’t been able to find anything about her after I read it and I want to know if she’s an actual biblical character or just someone you made
She's from the Midrash. I learned about her as a 12 year old, from my barmitzvah teacher. There was a point in there, long after I'd put her into Sandman, where I was starting to think I'd imagined her, when I ran across her in Robert Graves's Hebrew Myths....
Excerpt from: The Hebrew Myths by Robert Graves and Raphael Patai (New York: Doubleday, 1964), pp 65-69
Chapter 10: Adam's Helpmeets
(a) Having decided to give Adam a helpmeet lest he should be alone of his kind, God put him into a deep sleep, removed one of his ribs, formed it into a woman, and closed up the wound, Adam awoke and said: 'This being shall be named "Woman", because she has been taken out of man. A man and a woman shall be one flesh.' The title he gave her was Eve, 'the Mother of All Living''. [1]
(b) Some say that God created man and woman in His own image on the Sixth Day, giving them charge over the world; [2] but that Eve did not yet exist. Now, God had set Adam to name every beast, bird and other living thing. When they passed before him in pairs, male and female, Adam-being already like a twenty-year-old man-felt jealous of their loves, and though he tried coupling with each female in turn, found no satisfaction in the act. He therefore cried: 'Every creature but I has a proper mate', and prayed God would remedy this injustice. [3]
(c) God then formed Lilith, the first woman, just as He had formed Adam, except that He used filth and sediment instead of pure dust. From Adam's union with this demoness, and with another like her named Naamah, Tubal Cain's sister, sprang Asmodeus and innumerable demons that still plague mankind. Many generations later, Lilith and Naamah came to Solomon's judgement seat, disguised as harlots of Jerusalem'. [4]
(d) Adam and Lilith never found peace together; for when he wished to lie with her, she took offence at the recumbent posture he demanded. 'Why must I lie beneath you?' she asked. 'I also was made from dust, and am therefore your equal.' Because Adam tried to compel her obedience by force, Lilith, in a rage, uttered the magic name of God, rose into the air and left him.
Adam complained to God: 'I have been deserted by my helpmeet' God at once sent the angels Senoy, Sansenoy and Semangelof to fetch Lilith back. They found her beside the Red Sea, a region abounding in lascivious demons, to whom she bore lilim at the rate of more than one hundred a day. 'Return to Adam without delay,' the angels said, `or we will drown you!' Lilith asked: `How can I return to Adam and live like an honest housewife, after my stay beside the Red Sea?? 'It will be death to refuse!' they answered. `How can I die,' Lilith asked again, `when God has ordered me to take charge of all newborn children: boys up to the eighth day of life, that of circumcision; girls up to the twentieth day. None the less, if ever I see your three names or likenesses displayed in an amulet above a newborn child, I promise to spare it.' To this they agreed; but God punished Lilith by making one hundred of her demon children perish daily; [5] and if she could not destroy a human infant, because of the angelic amulet, she would spitefully turn against her own. [6]
(e) Some say that Lilith ruled as queen in Zmargad, and again in Sheba; and was the demoness who destroyed job's sons. [7] Yet she escaped the curse of death which overtook Adam, since they had parted long before the Fall. Lilith and Naamah not only strangle infants but also seduce dreaming men, any one of whom, sleeping alone, may become their victim. [8]
(f) Undismayed by His failure to give Adam a suitable helpmeet, God tried again, and let him watch while he built up a woman's anatomy: using bones, tissues, muscles, blood and glandular secretions, then covering the whole with skin and adding tufts of hair in places. The sight caused Adam such disgust that even when this woman, the First Eve, stood there in her full beauty, he felt an invincible repugnance. God knew that He had failed once more, and took the First Eve away. Where she went, nobody knows for certain. [9]
(g) God tried a third time, and acted more circumspectly. Having taken a rib from Adam's side in his sleep, He formed it into a woman; then plaited her hair and adorned her, like a bride, with twenty-four pieces of jewellery, before waking him. Adam was entranced. [10]
(h) Some say that God created Eve not from Adam's rib, but from a tail ending in a sting which had been part of his body. God cut this off, and the stump-now a useless coccyx-is still carried by Adam's descendants. [11]
(i) Others say that God's original thought had been to create two human beings, male and female; but instead He designed a single one with a male face looking forward, and a female face looking back. Again He changed His mind, removed Adam's backward-looking face, and built a woman's body for it. [12]
(j) Still others hold that Adam was originally created as an androgyne of male and female bodies joined back to back. Since this posture made locomotion difficult, and conversation awkward, God divided the androgyne and gave each half a new rear. These separate beings He placed in Eden, forbidding them to couple. [13]
Notes on sources:
1. Genesis II. 18-25; III. 20.
2. Genesis I. 26-28.
3. Gen. Rab. 17.4; B. Yebamot 632.
4. Yalqut Reubeni ad. Gen. II. 21; IV. 8.
5. Alpha Beta diBen Sira, 47; Gaster, MGWJ, 29 (1880), 553 ff.
6. Num. Rab. 16.25.
7. Targum ad job 1. 15.
8. B. Shabbat 151b; Ginzberg, LJ, V. 147-48.
9. Gen. Rab. 158, 163-64; Mid. Abkir 133, 135; Abot diR. Nathan 24; B. Sanhedrin 39a.
10. Gen. II. 21-22; Gen. Rab. 161.
11. Gen. Rab. 134; B. Erubin 18a.
12. B. Erubin 18a.
13. Gen. Rab. 55; Lev. Rab. 14.1: Abot diR. Nathan 1.8; B. Berakhot 61a; B. Erubin 18a; Tanhuma Tazri'a 1; Yalchut Gen. 20; Tanh. Buber iii.33; Mid. Tehillim 139, 529.
Authors’ Comments on the Myth:
1. The tradition that man's first sexual intercourse was with animals, not women, may be due to the widely spread practice of bestiality among herdsmen of the Middle East, which is still condoned by custom, although figuring three times in the Pentateuch as a capital crime. In the Akkadian Gilgamesh Epic, Enkidu is said to have lived with gazelles and jostled other wild beasts at the watering place, until civilized by Aruru's priestess. Having enjoyed her embraces for six days and seven nights, he wished to rejoin the wild beasts but, to his surprise, they fled from him. Enkidu then knew that he had gained understanding, and the priestess said: 'Thou art wise, Enkidu, like unto a godl'
2. Primeval man was held by the Babylonians to have been androgynous. Thus the Gilgamesh Epic gives Enkidu androgynous features: `the hair of his head like a woman's, with locks that sprout like those of Nisaba, the Grain-goddess.' The Hebrew tradition evidently derives from Greek sources, because both terms used in a Tannaitic midrash to describe the bisexual Adam are Greek: androgynos, 'man-woman', and diprosopon, 'twofaced'. Philo of Alexandria, the Hellenistic philosopher and commentator on the Bible, contemporary with Jesus, held that man was at first bisexual; so did the Gnostics. This belief is clearly borrowed from Plato. Yet the myth of two bodies placed back to back may well have been founded on observation of Siamese twins, which are sometimes joined in this awkward manner. The two-faced Adam appears to be a fancy derived from coins or statues of Janus, the Roman New Year god.
3. Divergences between the Creation myths of Genesis r and n, which allow Lilith to be presumed as Adam's first mate, result from a careless weaving together of an early Judaean and a late priestly tradition. The older version contains the rib incident. Lilith typifies the Anath-worshipping Canaanite women, who were permitted pre-nuptial promiscuity. Time after time the prophets denounced Israelite women for following Canaanite practices; at first, apparently, with the priests' approval-since their habit of dedicating to God the fees thus earned is expressly forbidden in Deuteronomy xxIII. I8. Lilith's flight to the Red Sea recalls the ancient Hebrew view that water attracts demons. 'Tortured and rebellious demons' also found safe harbourage in Egypt. Thus Asmodeus, who had strangled Sarah's first six husbands, fled 'to the uttermost parts of Egypt' (Tobit viii. 3), when Tobias burned the heart and liver of a fish on their wedding night.
4. Lilith's bargain with the angels has its ritual counterpart in an apotropaic rite once performed in many Jewish communities. To protect the newborn child against Lilith-and especially a male, until he could be permanently safeguarded by circumcision-a ring was drawn with natron, or charcoal, on the wall of the birthroom, and inside it were written the words: 'Adam and Eve. Out, Lilith!' Also the names Senoy, Sansenoy and Semangelof (meanings uncertain) were inscribed on the door. If Lilith nevertheless succeeded in approaching the child and fondling him, he would laugh in his sleep. To avert danger, it was held wise to strike the sleeping child's lips with one finger-whereupon Lilith would vanish.
5. 'Lilith' is usually derived from the Babylonian-Assyrian word lilitu, ,a female demon, or wind-spirit'-one of a triad mentioned in Babylonian spells. But she appears earlier as 'Lillake' on a 2000 B.G. Sumerian tablet from Ur containing the tale of Gilgamesh and the Willow Tree. There she is a demoness dwelling in the trunk of a willow-tree tended by the Goddess Inanna (Anath) on the banks of the Euphrates. Popular Hebrew etymology seems to have derived 'Lilith' from layil, 'night'; and she therefore often appears as a hairy night-monster, as she also does in Arabian folklore. Solomon suspected the Queen of Sheba of being Lilith, because she had hairy legs. His judgement on the two harlots is recorded in I Kings III. 16 ff. According to Isaiah xxxiv. I4-I5, Lilith dwells among the desolate ruins in the Edomite Desert where satyrs (se'ir), reems, pelicans, owls, jackals, ostriches, arrow-snakes and kites keep her company.
6. Lilith's children are called lilim. In the Targum Yerushalmi, the priestly blessing of Numbers vi. 26 becomes: 'The Lord bless thee in all thy doings, and preserve thee from the Lilim!' The fourth-century A.D. commentator Hieronymus identified Lilith with the Greek Lamia, a Libyan queen deserted by Zeus, whom his wife Hera robbed of her children. She took revenge by robbing other women of theirs.
7. The Lamiae, who seduced sleeping men, sucked their blood and ate their flesh, as Lilith and her fellow-demonesses did, were also known as Empusae, 'forcers-in'; or Mormolyceia, 'frightening wolves'; and described as 'Children of Hecate'. A Hellenistic relief shows a naked Lamia straddling a traveller asleep on his back. It is characteristic of civilizations where women are treated as chattels that they must adopt the recumbent posture during intercourse, which Lilith refused. That Greek witches who worshipped Hecate favoured the superior posture, we know from Apuleius; and it occurs in early Sumerian representations of the sexual act, though not in the Hittite. Malinowski writes that Melanesian girls ridicule what they call `the missionary position', which demands that they should lie passive and recumbent.
8. Naamah, 'pleasant', is explained as meaning that 'the demoness sang pleasant songs to idols'. Zmargad suggest smaragdos, the semi-precious aquamarine; and may therefore be her submarine dwelling. A demon named Smaragos occurs in the Homeric Epigrams.
9. Eve's creation by God from Adam's rib-a myth establishing male supremacy and disguising Eve's divinity-lacks parallels in Mediterranean or early Middle-Eastern myth. The story perhaps derives iconotropically from an ancient relief, or painting, which showed the naked Goddess Anath poised in the air, watching her lover Mot murder his twin Aliyan; Mot (mistaken by the mythographer for Yahweh) was driving a curved dagger under Aliyan's fifth rib, not removing a sixth one. The familiar story is helped by a hidden pun on tsela, the Hebrew for 'rib': Eve, though designed to be Adam's helpmeet, proved to be a tsela, a 'stumbling', or 'misfortune'. Eve's formation from Adam's tail is an even more damaging myth; perhaps suggested by the birth of a child with a vestigial tail instead of a coccyx-a not infrequent occurrence.
10. The story of Lilith's escape to the East and of Adam's subsequent marriage to Eve may, however, record an early historical incident: nomad herdsmen, admitted into Lilith's Canaanite queendom as guests (see 16. 1), suddenly seize power and, when the royal household thereupon flees, occupy a second queendom which owes allegiance to the Hittite Goddess Heba.
The meaning of 'Eve' is disputed. Hawwah is explained in Genesis III. 20 as 'mother of all living'; but this may well be a Hebraicized form of the divine name Heba, Hebat, Khebat or Khiba. This goddess, wife of the Hittite Storm-god, is shown riding a lion in a rock-sculpture at Hattusaswhich equates her with Anath-and appears as a form of Ishtar in Hurrian texts. She was worshipped at Jerusalem (see 27. 6). Her Greek name was Hebe, Heracles's goddess-wife.
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🔐 Why You (Probably) Don't Need A VPN
A rant by a software engineer sick of VPN ads from her favourite YouTubers
TL;DR:
Here are some legitimate reasons the average internet user might want to use a VPN:
To connect to their company's internal network
To bypass the Great Firewall of China (or other types of website blocks at country or organisation level)
To watch Netflix etc as if you were in another country
Here are absolutely rubbish reasons to use a VPN:
Privacy
And today, I'll tell you why.
Hang on, won't a VPN stop hackers from stealing my passwords?
I mean, it does encrypt the web traffic coming from your device.
You know what else encrypts web traffic coming from your device? Your browser.
Yes, in the year 2021, pretty much all websites on the internet are accessed over HTTPS. The "S" stands for "secure", as in "your request will be securely encrypted". If your browser is using HTTPS, nobody can capture the data you're sending over the internet. More detail in the "I like too much detail" section at the bottom of this post.
It's very easy to check if you are using HTTPS by looking at your URL bar. In most browsers, it will have a lock on it if secure:
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(From top left to bottom right: Chrome on iOS, Safari on iOS, Chrome on Windows, Edge on Windows, Firefox on Windows, and Safari on Mac. Screenshots reflect the UI at the time this post was written. Oh gosh this has taken over 4 hours to write.)
But isn't moar encryption better? What if somebody breaks HTTPS?
For starters, nobody's breaking your HTTPS, and there isn't any benefit from double encrypting. This is because of the maths behind encryption/decryption!
Encryption works kinda like a lock and key, except the lock is maths and the key is a special number only known to the person allowed to unlock the information.
The important thing is, without the key, all the locked data looks like complete and utter garbage. Completely unusable. Barely distinguishable from random noise. There's absolutely no way to tell what the original data was.
The other important thing is that the key is nearly unguessable. As in, with current technology, will generally take more than the lifetime of the universe to guess by chance. And when technology gets faster, we just make the numbers bigger again until they're once again secure.
For any major website you use, they will use a strong encryption algorithm (ie lock) with big numbers so your keys will be strong enough to withstand an attack. This means your data is safe as long as that lock icon is in your URL bar.
A VPN will not make the existing garble any more garbled. The extra $10/month or whatever you're paying for does not buy you any extra protection.
If you want to know more about how encryption and HTTPS in particular work, see the "I like too much detail" section at the end of this post.
Something something viruses
How's a VPN going to stop viruses? It controls the path your internet traffic takes, not the content that gets sent down that path. I guess it could block some known virus-giving hosts? But if it's known to the VPN provider, it's probably also known to the built-in antivirus on your computer who can block it for you.
(Oh yeah, 3rd party antivirus is another thing that's not worth paying for these days. Microsoft's built-in Windows Defender is as good as the third party options, and something something Macs don't get viruses easily because of how they're architected.)
Honestly though, keep your software up to date, don't click on anything suspicious, don't open files from sources you don't trust, and you'll be right most of the time.
And keep your software up to date. Then update your software. Hey, did I mention keeping your stuff updated? Update! Now! It only takes a few minutes. Please update to the latest version of your software I'm begging you. It's the number 1 way to protect yourself from viruses and other malware. Most major software attacks could have been prevented if people just updated their damn software!
But my ISP is spying on me!
Ok, it is true that there are TWO bits of data that HTTPS can't and won't hide. Those are:
The source of a request (your IP)
What website that request is going to (the website's IP)
These are the bits of information that routers use to know where to send your data, so of course they can't be hidden as the data is moving across the internet. And people can see that information very easily if they want to.
Note: this will show which website you're going to, but not which page you're looking at, and not the content of that page. So it will show that you were on Tumblr, but will not show anyone that you're still reading SuperWhoLock content in 2021.
It's this source/destination information that VPNs hide, which is why they can be used to bypass website blocks and region locks.
By using a VPN, those sniffing traffic on your side of the VPN will just show you connecting to the VPN, not the actual website you want. That means you can read AO3 at work/school without your boss/teachers knowing (unless they look over your shoulder of course).
As for those sniffing on the websites end, including the website itself, they will see the VPN as the source of the connection, not you. So if you're in the US and using a VPN node in the UK, Netflix will see you as being in the UK and show you their British library rather than the American one.
If this is what you're using a VPN for and you think the price is fair, then by all means keep doing it! This is 100% what VPNs are good for.
HOWEVER, and this is a big "however", if it's your ISP you're trying to hide your internet traffic from, then you will want to think twice before using a VPN.
Let me put it this way. Without a VPN, your ISP knows every website you connect to and when. With a VPN, do you know who has that exact same information? The VPN provider. Sure, many claim to not keep logs, but do you really trust the people asking for you to send them all your data for a fee to not just turn around and sell your data on for a profit, or worse?
In effect, you're trading one snooper for another. One snooper is heavily regulated, in many jurisdictions must obey net neutrality, and is already getting a big fee from you regardless of where you browse. The other isn't. Again, it's all a matter of who you trust more.
For me personally, I trust my ISP more than a random VPN provider, if for no other reason than my ISP is an old enough company with enough inertia and incompetence that I don't think they could organise to sell my data even if they wanted to. And with the amount of money I'm paying them per month, they've only got everything to lose if they broke consumer trust by on-selling that data. So yeah, I trust my ISP more with my privacy than the random VPN company.
But my VPN comes with a password manager!
Password managers are great. I 100% recommend you use a password manager. If there's one thing you could do right now to improve your security (other than updating your software, speaking of, have you updated yet?), it's getting and using a password manager.
Password managers also come for free.
I'm currently using LastPass free, but am planning to switch after they did a bad capitalism and only let their free accounts access either laptop or mobile but not both now. I personally am planning to move to Bitwarden on friends' recommendation since it's not only free but open source and available across devices. I also have friends who use passbolt and enjoy it, which is also free and open source, but it's also a bit DIY to set up. Great if you like tinkering though! And there are probably many other options out there if you do a bit of googling.
So, yeah, please use a password manager, but don't pay for it unless you actually have use for the extra features.
No I really need to hide my internet activity from everybody for reasons
In this case, you're probably looking for TOR. TOR is basically untraceable. It's also a terrible user experience for the most part because of this, so I'd only recommend it if you need it, such as if you're trying to escape the Great Firewall. But please don't use it for Bad Crimes. I am not to be held liable for any crime committed using information learned from this post.
Further reading viewing
If you want to know more about why you don't need a VPN, see Tom Scott's amazing video on the subject. It's honestly a great intro for beginners.
I like too much detail
Ahhh, so you're the type of person who doesn't get turned off by long explanations I see. Well, here's a little more info on the stuff I oversimplified in the main post about encryption. Uhh, words get bigger and more jargony in this section.
So first oversimplification: the assumption that all web traffic is either HTTP or HTTPS. This isn't exactly true. There are many other application layer internet standards out there, such as ssh, ftp, websockets, and all the proprietary standards certain companies use for stuff such as streaming and video conferencing. Some of these are secure, using TLS or some other security algorithm under the hood, and some of them aren't.
But most of the web requests you care about are HTTP/HTTPS calls. As for the rest, if they come from a company of a decent size that hasn't been hacked off the face of the planet already, they're probably also secure. In other words, you don't need to worry about it.
Next, we've already said that encryption works as a lock and a key, where the lock is a maths formula and the key is a number. But how do we get that key to lock and unlock the data?
Well, to answer that, we first need to talk about the two different types of encryption: symmetric and asymmetric. Symmetric encryption such as AES uses the same key to both encrypt and decrypt data, whereas asymmetric encryption such as RSA uses a different key to encode and decode.
For the sake of my writing, we're going to call the person encrypting Alice, the person decrypting Bob, and the eavesdropper trying to break our communications Eve from now on. These are standard names in crypto FYI. Also, crypto is short for cryptography not cryptocurrencies. Get your Bitcoin and Etherium outta here!
Sorry if things start getting incoherent. I'm tired. It's after 1am now.
So first, how do we get the key from symmetric crypto? This is probably the easier place to start. Well, you need a number, any number of sufficient size, that both Alice and Bob know. There are many ways you could share this number. They could decide it when they meet in person. They could send it to each other using carrier pigeons. Or they could radio it via morse code. But those aren't convenient, and somebody could intercept the number and use it to read all their messages.
So what we use instead is a super clever algorithm called Diffie-Hellman, which uses maths and, in particular, the fact it's really hard to factor large numbers (probably NP Hard to be specific, but there's no actual proof of that). The Wikipedia page for this is surprisingly easy to read, so I'll just direct you there to read all about it because I've been writing for too long. This algorithm allows Alice and Bob to agree on a secret number, despite Eve being able to read everything they send each other.
Now Alice and Bob have this secret number key, they can talk in private. Alice puts her message and the key into the encryption algorithm and out pops what looks like a load of garbage. She can then send this garbage to Bob without worrying about Eve being able to read it. Bob can then put the garbage and the key into the decryption algorithm to undo the scrambling and get the original message out telling him where the good donuts are. Voila, they're done!
But how does Alice know that she's sending her message to Bob and not Eve? Eve could pretend to be Bob so that Alice does the Diffie-Hellman dance with her instead and sends her the secret location of the good donuts instead.
This is where asymmetric crypto comes in! This is the one with private and public keys, and the one that uses prime numbers.
I'm not 100% across the maths on this one TBH, but it has something to do with group theory. Anyway, just like Diffie-Hellman, it relies on the fact that prime factorisation is hard, and so it does some magic with semi-primes, ie numbers with only 2 prime factors other than 1. Google it if you want to know more. I kinda zoned out of this bit in my security courses. Maths hard
But the effect of that maths is easier to explain: things that are encoded with one of the keys can only be decoded with the other key. This means that one of those keys can be well-known to the public and the other is known only to the person it belongs to.
If Alice wants to send a message to Bob and just Bob, no Eve allowed, she can first look up Bob's public key and encrypt a beginning message with that. Once Bob receives the message, he can decrypt it with his private key and read the contents. Eve can't read the contents though because, even though she has Bob's public key, she doesn't know his private key.
This public key information is what the lock in your browser is all about BTW. It's saying that the website is legit based on the public key they provide.
So why do we need symmetric crypto when we have asymmetric crypto? Seems a lot less hassle to exchange keys with asymmetric crypto.
Well, it's because asymmetric crypto is slooooow. So, in TLS, the security algorithm that puts the "S" in "HTTPS", asymmetric RSA is used to establish the initial connection and figure out what symmetric key to use, and then the rest of the session uses AES symmetric encryption using the agreed secret key.
And there you have it! Crypto in slightly-less-short-but-still-high-enough-level-that-I-hope-you-understand.
Just realised how long this section is. Well, I did call it "too much detail" for a reason.
Now, next question is what exactly is and isn't encrypted using HTTPS.
Well, as I said earlier, it's basically just the source IP:port and the destination IP:port. In fact, this information is actually communicated on the logical layer below the application layer HTTPS is on, known as the transport layer. Again, as I said before, you can't really encrypt this unless you don't want your data to reach the place you want at all.
Also, DNS is unencrypted. A DNS request is a request that turns a domain name, such as tumblr.com, into an IP address, by asking a special server called a Domain Name Server where to find the website you're looking for. A DNS request is made before an HTTP(S) request. Anyone who can read your internet traffic can therefore tell you wanted to go to Tumblr.
But importantly, this only shows the domain name, not the full URL. The rest of the URL, the part after the third slash (the first two slashes being part of http://), is stuff that's interpreted by the server itself and so isn't needed during transport. Therefore, it encrypted and completely unreadable, just like all the content on your page.
I was going to show a Wireshark scan of a web request using HTTP and HTTPS to show you the difference, but this has taken long enough to write as it is, so sorry!
I could probably write more, but it's 1:30am and I'm sleepy. I hope you found some of this interesting and think twice before purchasing a VPN subscription. Again, there are legit good uses for a VPN, but they're not the ones primarily being advertised in VPN ads. It's the fact that VPN ads rely so heavily on false advertising that really grinds my gears and made me want to do this rant. It's especially bad when it comes from somebody I'd think of as technologically competent (naming no names here, but if you've worked in tech and still promote VPNs as a way to keep data safe... no). Feel free to ask questions if you want and hopefully I'll get around to answering any that I feel I know enough to answer.
Nighty night Tumblr. Please update your software. And use a (free) password manager. And enable two factor authentication on all your accounts. But mostly just update your software.
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