#wrote these in 2020 o lord

[angrennufuin]

Nee & Oz || 13. Hair Kiss

Titanomachy campaign Context note: Nee and the party ranger, Oz, have kissed a few times but have not had a Relationship Talk on account of being chased across the countryside by hags

The hand posture is the same as it is for Lightning Bolt, but with the wrist at a forty-five degree angle. “Which,” you explain, “should alter the duration radical to make it a series of bursts rather than a straight beam. No more catching you guys in the trajectory. I sacrifice a little on the average impact, but I think the specificity really outweighs that.”

“Huh,” says Oz, peering at the blasted trees you just practiced on. “Just from a minor pose change?”

You wave your hands dismissively. “And a chunk more raw power to fuel it. About one point five times more, so I can’t cast it as often, but it’ll hit like hell when I do. Are you impressed? You should be impressed. I couldn’t do this level of spell three months ago. I’m trying to fix the collateral damage problem we keep having on this team. Because friendly fire sucks, and I am a benevolent god of the arcane. Although, maybe if I mess with it some more, I can get more targets--”

Something warm presses against the top of your head, where your hair is cropped short. Something like a pair of bearded lips, maybe. 

“What!” you say, almost dropping your wand. You spin around to goggle up at him. “What!!”

“I’m impressed,” he says, peaceably. “If you’re not going to burn yourself out using this instead of the other one.”

“You--!” You’re still stuck on him kissing your head, actually. Otherwise you’d give him what-for about how you know your own limits. Your face is scorching. Oz is smirking, the tall bastard. “You! What! If you want to kiss, come down here and kiss me properly! Hey!! Hey, come back here--”

[drifloonz]

HII WISPYYY OKOK so i have the biggest fixation on Steven rn... that man has me on a chokehold

it's very self indulgent (i think......) but like... S/O who's very scared and jumpy from things like fireworks or balloons, like causing them panic attacks !! like being comforted by him, hugged and being led away from danger... i'm gushing so much over the idea of being hugged by steven and comforted i just know you would put it into words better than me (⁠≧⁠▽⁠≦⁠) I'm sorry if its very vague, thank you !!! ily !!!

HIHI ANON! ! ! and also im not sure if that was intentional but chokehold huh. Sorry. Sorry. ANYWAYS, i can definitely do that! plus i personally relate to being like. jumpy and scared from sudden noises esp around this time of the year good lord ( remember how bad it was during 2020 that shit sucked ). I can also personally relate to the steven fixation.... wistful sigh.

anyways !! ty!! Here is your tall dark brooding Issues Having boyfriend. i wrote way too much for this probably but i assume people follow me for that by now. Throwing birdseed at my followers in the form of depressed men

_

steven with an S/O who is deeply scared of fireworks ( and similar things )

♡ steven himself isn't one who really... likes loud noises, especially ones that come out of nowhere? it doesn't happen often, but sometimes there are fireworks set off around his home, either as a prank or just people celebrating near where he can hear, since, fireworks can be seen and heard pretty far. regardless, he's too tired nowadays to care about that, unless it becomes a constant issue. it does also startle miki though if she's out of her pokeball, which is a cause for concern and... anger. he's not going to track people down and kill them for it though, like he would've before, no matter how tempting it is if it frustrates miki.

♡ so, when you walked into his life having a lot worse issues with that than he did - which is something he realized after the 4th of july ( because that probably exists in pokemon, or something similar to it ) from the flurry of fireworks - he realized that anything like that happening even once wasn't acceptable for him anymore.

♡ along with your fear of balloons - whether it be the popping sound they make when destroyed, or some sort of trauma that they remind you of, or textural issue perhaps... however it becomes apparent, steven's making sure that the both of you avoid them. ( note to self; do not take you to an amusement park. )

♡ he even goes as far as to personally vet the stores or places you go to before taking you out just to make sure no balloons are present, or at least to know how to avoid them if they are.

♡ of course, the reason he even finds out about these fears of yours is likely due to firsthand experience. seeing you panic after a few fireworks go off nearby makes him also panic but much more internally - he's not sure if he should be holding someone or not during a panic attack... doing that all of a sudden would be bad, right? he know if someone did that to him in his worst states he either wouldn't react or would angrily push them off.

♡ so firstly, he tries to calm you down verbally... doing some breathing techniques that he probably picked up from daisy after losing miki and encouraging you to repeat the patterns, along with the 3-3-3 technique in order to ground you. he's not often been on the giving end of these techniques, people always offering to do these for him... but due to that, he's all too familiar with the feeling, and is 100% ready to help you out with it.

♡ then he promises he'll be back soon and seeks out things to help you out and give you comfort. something to block out the noise, closing windows ( not that he often has them open ), moving you somewhere where the fireworks were quieter, like his kitchen or something... and of course, he'd turn on his tv(s) and anything that would overpower the noise.

♡ he doesn't give himself anything to muffle the noise because your noises and voice comfort him... and he wouldn't want to muffle that. even though the fireworks still very much irritate him, but more in a slight annoyance way... at least, until now. he feels mad at any of these sounds more than usual due to the fact it puts you in this state, and you're more important to him than almost anything else. If he could physically brawl with a goddamn firework for you he would.

♡ once you're calmed down enough to talk and you give him permission, he hugs you. tight enough to remind you that he's there for you, but loose enough to give you wiggle room... he'll cuddle with you in his bedroom if you want, and just try to relax you enough to sleep, at least until the fireworks are over. he's like your personal assistant, ready to carry out any of your wants to make you feel better.

♡ comfort foods? he has you there, stocked up on plenty of them after the two of you started dating, since that mostly involves you coming over to his place... it was sort of the start of him deciding to take care of himself and be a little more active in life, even if it's just going out to get groceries from the pokemart and not much else. he'll offer you plushies if you want or have any, blankets, drinks, turning on specific shows, whatever you'd like. he'll even let you play with his hair or clothes or something if it calms you down... he likes how it feels too, and will similarly play with yours because that also calms him down.

♡ if any of this were to happen to you two outside, he'd just quickly lead you as far away as he could within reason and do the same things, at least to the best of his extent. likely, he'd just go home and continue there.

♡ he'll stay with you for as long as you need, give you space if you need it... anything you want. if you need space, he'll just be pacing around his home and doing everything he can to muffle outside noises while he waits.

♡ miki, of course, is also there to help you if you're comfortable enough with her doing so. she's a good distractor, actually? she also gets startled and disgruntled by the noises, so she can relate... she allows you to pet her and will sometimes nuzzle your nose with her snout for comfort, emitting glitchy purrs. How can a dragon purr? fuck if i know but by god i know miki can and will. she's just a big powerful cat in a dragon body.

♡ once the fireworks calm down or stop completely, he checks in on you, continuing to comfort you if you're still even awake by then. he holds you by your waist close to him, giving you a gentle little squeeze, along with a few chaste kisses if you allow it. he's happy that his partner is doing much better now, and he almost feels validated that he's the one who did that...? maybe that's selfish. he didn't know.

♡ after that experience, he's sure to keep the noise muffling measures up to stuff, constantly checking them to make sure they're still properly in place. he becomes a little more overprotective, but he always is overprotective with you... he doesn't want to lose you or scare you.

♡ he continues to practice breathing exercises even when you aren't panicking so that you can remember them precisely if he isn't there. he never intends to not be there for you, but... in the worst-case scenario.

♡ he also encourages you to talk about these things to him, so he can prepare in advance for anything similar - which is likely why he knows about the balloons thing. if you somehow didn't realize by now, he's... really just a big worrywart at heart, no matter how he comes off otherwise.

♡ if the fireworks become far too constant for their own good, steven himself will make it a damn mission to locate whoever's setting them off and tell them to do it precisely like, way further away. his demeanor is pretty scary to everyone else, and that's when he's not even trying to be - so he's pretty good at convincing people, even without many words.

♡ thankfully, pallet town is decently far from any big city in kanto where fireworks mainly take place, especially on steven's side of pallet town - the forest itself gives a good bit of muffling, too. which, always makes it more strange when fireworks occur nearby, but he just chalks it up to the locals buying illegal fireworks for their kids to set off. how irresponsible...

♡ ( what he didn't know is they also sometimes do that when red or blue occasionally take visits back to pallet, since the locals get so excited over them... )

♡ regardless, you're taken care for and he's not going to let you panic unprepared anymore. you've got a keeper!!!! ( i wrote way too much for this apologies oopsy )

[boltlightning]

tagged by the lovely @aloveforjaneausten, thank you so much!!!

1. How many works do you have on AO3? 49!

2. What's your total AO3 words count? 315,193. god help me

3. What fandoms do you write for? actively just the one (potc), but the bulk of my ao3 is final fantasy vii, fullmetal alchemist, and assassin’s creed. almost all of my unpublished personal stuff is dragon age. one day it’ll see the light of day. one day

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

a house, a hearth, a (s)holmes (the great ace attorney, 2021)

good company (fullmetal alchemist, 2016)

heart & home (fma, 2017)

the need of everything (fma, 2018–2020)

benchfellows (ff7, 2020)

i'm proud of all of these but flabbergasted by benchfellows, which is 800 words and something i wrote and posted impulsively at like 2am. but. yknow. the kudos are beyond my power.

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? almost always! nothing makes you forget how to say “thank you” like a normal human being than comments on your work!

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? almost everything i write ends on a melancholy note, but o sleeper (ff7) is probably the worst of them. and that’s really just the threat of canon rearing its head

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? the storm at your door (assassin’s creed) was specifically written to give ezio and sofia a better ending than what they got in canon, and by god i stand by it

8. Do you get hate on fics? thankfully not!

9. Do you write smut? If so what kind? nah. i don’t particularly enjoy reading smut, nor do i have any talent for making it not sound stilted. sex will get hinted at but rarely do i write anything more explicit than someone’s bits being out in the wind

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written? have you heard the good word of my potc/temeraire crossover that is getting quickly out of hand? and till the long days (AC) is not NECESSARILY a crossover, but entwines the world of AC with greek mythology in a major way.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? / 12. Have you ever had a fic translated? / 13. Have you ever cowritten a fic before? nope to all three!

14. What's your all-time favourite ship? i don’t ship much tbh, and while i wouldn’t say i’m the most fond of them, my longest lasting ship has been cloud/aerith. we’re going on 18 years together and i’d be lying if i said they weren’t part of why i started writing in the first place

15. What's a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will? lmao. most ideas i don’t finish i’m content to leave as they are. however, i have one novelization about my dragon age character going through the events of the trespasser dlc that i desperately want to finish, but i’m such a stickler to the dialogue that exists in-game that i’m hamstringing myself. i like the ideas there enough to revisit it every now and then, so it’s not totally a lost cause, but...it's not looking likely gang.

16. What are your writing strengths? lord knows i know how to set a scene. everything i write is in service of eventually getting to describe sunlight or perhaps weather. know this whenever you read something i wrote.

17. What are your writing weaknesses? i’m desperately bad at just…stepping back and letting a scene breathe. i NEED to explain everything even if it’s obvious. i also am very guilty of describing what happens in prose rather than letting it play out naturally in dialogue. it’s remarkable how much i avoid dialogue without even realizing it

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic? eh. it can be used well, but i just speak the one language fluently, so i doubt it’d be a fun or worthwhile bilingual bonus for any reader.

19. First fandom you wrote for? it’s either kingdom hearts or inkheart, and it certainly does not exist anywhere anymore. pour one out

20. Favourite fic you've ever written? my answer changes every time i’m asked this. sticking with the recency bias answer of steadfast and dependable (potc), as i''ve been really into the themes in that fic recently

tagging @johnbly @thesumdancekid and anyone else who might want to snag this <3

[irvinenewshq]

Late Artist Kim Jung Gi Honored at New York Comedian-Con

Photograph: Linda Codega/io9 Earlier within the week, the information broke that South Korean illustrator Kim Jung Gi handed away on the age of 47. Kim, in response to his US agent, had skilled chest pains in France as he was making ready to take a flight to New York, and died after being transported to a hospital. Kim was anticipated to have an Artist Alley desk at New York Comedian-Con this weekend previous to his passing. Over the weekend, the desk has since change into a memorial the place followers have left flowers, drawn illustrations, and signed the desk skirt with well-wishes. io9 took photos of the desk, which you’ll see beneath. Photograph: Linda Codega/io9 Born within the Seoul suburb of Goyang on February 7, 1975, Kim’s first revealed work as an illustrator was the story Humorous Humorous within the pages of Younger Soar Journal. Following that, he taught artwork at personal colleges and universities whereas concurrently working on the artwork studio SuperAni. His first collaboration with one other artist would include author Seung-Jin Park’s Tiger the Lengthy Tail in 2008. Different collaborations would go on to incorporate Belgian artist Jean-David Morvan (2014’s SpyGames comics), Riot Video games for League of Legends, and a variant cowl for Marvel Comics’ Civil Warfare II occasion in 2016. Previous to being an artist, Kim served within the Republic of Korea Military, and attributed that service time to his capacity to have a powerful visible reminiscence for weapons and automobiles. He was greatest recognized for being in a position to attract scenes that includes massive crowds in a handful of hours. He’d usually do that in entrance of a reside viewers, and would narrate his course of. G/O Media could get a fee Photograph: Linda Codega/io9 Throughout his time as a instructor, he would steadily inform college students to “think about the memorable second of the day,” and to mix psychological photographs with what they noticed whereas out and about. In 2020, he tried the Guinness world document for “longest drawing by a person for the Fisheye Artwork.” Throughout that 4 day, 20-hour course of, he created artwork that depicted the “dwelling heritage of Penang.” Along with followers, each Marvel and DC Comics’ Jim Lee, together with different trade professionals, have given tributes to Kim. Moreover, New York Comedian-Con revealed a small assertion that was positioned in an indication at his desk. “[Kim] was a pioneering visible artist, and having him at our occasions was at all times an honor,” the group wrote. “You couldn’t watch him reside draw with out being in full wonderment, however extra inspiring was his appreciation and kindness in direction of his followers and friends.” “Our hearts are together with his family and friends presently.” Photograph: Linda Codega/io9 Need extra io9 information? Take a look at when to count on the most recent Marvel and Star Wars releases, what’s subsequent for the DC Universe on movie and TV, and every part you might want to find out about Home of the Dragon and Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Energy. Originally published at Irvine News HQ

[msclaritea]

“Strain every nerve, parents of Britain, to send your son to this educational establishment… Exercise your freedom of choice because in this way you will imbue your son with the most important thing, a sense of his own importance.”

Boris Johnson, writing for The Chronicle, Eton’s student magazine, aged 16.

Eton College in Windsor tries its best to avoid public controversy. Though barely a day goes by without its alumni in the news, the college itself makes few public pronouncements and remains coy with curious reporters.

So, it must have been deeply discomforting when, in September 2019, Eton hit the headlines.

With Boris Johnson recently having been installed in 10 Downing Street, various commentators found an Eton entrance exam paper from 2011, in which prospective students were asked to draft a speech from a theoretical prime minister, justifying the killing of protesters. It’s worth recounting the exam question in full, to give you a sense of what exactly the college was asking of 12 to 13-year-old boys:

“The year is 2040. There have been riots in the streets of London after Britain has run out of petrol because of an oil crisis in the Middle East. Protesters have attacked public buildings. Several policemen have died. Consequently, the government has deployed the army to curb the protests. After two days the protests have been stopped but 25 protesters have been killed by the army. You are the prime minister. Write the script for a speech to be broadcast to the nation in which you explain why employing the army against violent protesters was the only option available to you and one which was both necessary and moral.”

This is a pretty ghastly task to give to any child, but it is made even more disturbing by the fact that 20 of the UK’s 57 prime ministers to date (more than one in three) have been educated at the boarding school. This includes two of our last five leaders, governing for nine of the past 13 years.

If these are the ideals being instilled in Old Etonians during their formative years – that they should expect to reach high office and be ready to commit and justify atrocities against their own citizens – should we be shocked by Johnson’s blasé response to mass Covid-19 fatalities, or David Cameron’s willingness to push people into food banks through his austerity agenda?

Cameron and Johnson were not one-offs, however, but rather signify a renaissance of the British aristocracy in politics and business. The meritocratic ideals seemingly embodied by former prime ministers Margaret Thatcher and John Major – the former the daughter of a grocery shop owner; the latter having left school at 16 with three O-levels (ie GCSEs) – have been wiped from the latest breed of Conservative leaders.

The march of the meritocracy has been halted, and in some respects has even been sent catapulting into reverse, with the Conservative Party once again in the thrall of a rejuvenated aristocracy.

While Thatcher, Major and Tony Blair tried to squeeze out this old money elite, it has morphed and returned in a new guise. As Iain Overton wrote for Byline Times in August 2021: “Eton College appears to have become almost pestilent in British public life. Today, almost every single pillar of British society boasts, at its head, an old Etonian… “These include the [now former] Leader of the House of Commons and Lord President of the Council, Jacob Rees-Mogg; the [former] Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Mark Carleton-Smith; the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby; the [former] editor of Britain’s most influential paper – the Daily Mail, Geordie Greig; and a Justice of the Supreme Court, Lord Leggatt – while in 2020 another old Etonian Justice, Lord Robert Carnwath, retired… not to mention our king-in-waiting, Prince William and his brother, Prince Harry, who both attended the school.”

As Mark Carnegie, the Australian scion and Johnson’s main opponent for his second run at the Oxford Union presidency, remarked to Sonia Purnell for her book Just Boris: “It became clear to me how powerful Eton is as a manufacturer of cultural capital. It’s disproportionately powerful, devastatingly so.”

the Oxford Union presidency, remarked to Sonia Purnell for her book Just Boris: “It became clear to me how powerful Eton is as a manufacturer of cultural capital. It’s disproportionately powerful, devastatingly so.” 

The cultural power of Old Etonians can be traced in no small part to our innate national deference towards our alleged social superiors. Britain still fawns over monarchy, the aristocracy, and the trappings of privilege. We take a weekend stroll around their properties and watch TV dramas about their gilded lives. 

Despite the language of “meritocracy” that has pervaded modern politics, there has been the enduring sycophancy towards the likes of Johnson and his brand of idle genius. A working-class politician, for example, would not get away with the tangled hair, baggy suit and slurred speech that has come to form Johnson’s wildly successful political brand. It could even be argued that a sense of entitled self-assurance is essential to the modern politician.

Aside from delivering good grades, private schools are valuable because they educate students about systems – the ways to navigate the modern world to enhance your power and wealth. Graduates are also endowed with the social manners of the elite – allowing them to assimilate easily into high society (if they were not otherwise born into it). British institutions of this nature are different to many of those in the rest of their world because of their histories; their sense of superiority spans back generations, with that weight of history loaded on to the egos of the most self-regarding students. Nick Clegg, Nigel Farage, Blair, Cameron and Johnson were all privately educated, all (aside from Farage) attended Oxbridge, and all were (and still are) absolutely certain of their own convictions. 

Former prime minister Theresa May was also privately schooled, but she corresponds more with former prime minister Gordon Brown and Labour leader Keir Starmer – all of whom are politicians less comfortable in the limelight. There’s an awkwardness to them, an uncertainty – if only in public – created by the absence of pestilent privilege. 

Johnson shares an alma mater with former prime minister Harold Macmillan, the Old Etonian who served as prime minister from 1957 to 1963, but there is a key difference between the pair. Macmillan fought in the first world war and was badly injured as an infantry officer, something that you can’t imagine of Johnson, who combines the blithe incompetence of Blackadder’s Melchett with the vanity of Lord Flashheart. 

Part of the reason that Johnson was able to persuasively express his “make Britain great again” philosophy was because he embodied the past: he was and still is the Bertie Wooster of Westminster – Bertie being the affable English gentleman created by early 20th-century author PG Wodehouse – merely stripped of Bertie’s bashful naivety. Johnson and his political acolytes embody old aristocratic privilege, yet alongside an abandonment of old aristocratic ideals of public service. Infamously, however, even aristocrats of Macmillan’s era didn’t always enact the most publicly spirited policies, despite their public services virtues – a contradiction that can be traced back to the private-school system. The oldest and most socially exclusive private schools in particular bred individuals for imperial management – a form of national service that involved the exploitation of vast numbers of people. 

The nature of British capitalism, and the private school system, was historically designed to “extract wealth from the countries within the British Empire, which has now been enshrined in corporate law and how the neo-liberal economic system functions,” Labour MP Clive Lewis has suggested. However, now that Britain has lost its empire, “these same laws and principles have been used to extract wealth domestically”.

This imperial mindset is sustained at the University of Oxford, writes Simon Kuper in his book Chums, which says that the history and architecture of the university produces an obsession with the past, and a misplaced assumption that the British state (and state of mind) is more powerful than it actually is. 

This is why the likes of Johnson were obsessed with entering high politics; they wanted to reinvigorate the age of empire, with them ruling the world. This is epitomised by Britannia Unchained – the libertarian manifesto for Britain, authored in 2012 by Liz Truss, Kwasi Kwarteng, former home secretary Priti Patel, ex-foreign secretary Dominic Raab, and the Conservative MP Chris Skidmore. 

It states that: “Britain has lost confidence in itself, and what it stands for. Britain once ruled the Empire on which the sun never set. Now it can barely keep England and Scotland together… To avoid decline, Britain needs to look out to [sic] rest of the world and learn once again what it seems to have forgotten.”

The industrial-imperial era was the nation’s high point, this reading of history contends, when Britain led the international rat race. However, in modern Britain, hard work and innovation are being stifled by the warm embrace of the welfare state and regulation, the authors suggest. As the book’s most infamous quote states: “Once they enter the workplace, the British are among the worst idlers in the world. We work among the lowest hours, we retire early and our productivity is poor.” 

They consequently suggest that insecurity is a necessary bedfellow of economic dynamism. At one juncture – pushing this ethos to its most extreme – Britannia Unchained suggests that Brazil’s favelas are an example of an environment in which entrepreneurship can thrive. “As a sheer experiment in what the poorest entrepreneur can achieve, when nearly all society’s strictures are relaxed, the informal economy is pretty hard to beat,” it says. In this perverse cosmology, our “beating” of other countries in the era of empire is more important than the material gains experienced by the majority of people during the post-imperial evolution of the welfare state and the institution of workers’ rights. Or, to put it another way, things were better in Britain before the creation of the modern welfare state. Britannia Unchained is therefore a reflection of the country that its authors would like to govern – a neo-imperial power. 

"In a scathing letter to the Times, John Claughton, who was a master at Eton from 1984 to 2001, said that the school, which has educated 20 Prime Ministers, now had a mission to ‘ensure that its pupils are saved from the sense of privilege, entitlement and omniscience that can produce alumni such as Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Kwasi Kwarteng and Ben Elliot and thereby damage a country’s very fabric.’

Claughton goes on to add: “Sadly, I failed in that purpose.”

I should have known that Libertarianism came from Britain, the Land of Bad Ideas.

Translation: the year 1880.

[animews]

“wolfwalkers (2020) is a beautiful piece of queer cinema that delicately reflects on the coming out of queer youth in this essay i will- except that i actually write the essay”

sorry in advance for the weird way this is structured i wrote it as a literature assignment to copy the writing style of virginia woolf. which. made the writing a little weird and overly formal so!!! just ignore that lmao

also to anyone who says “wolfwalkers isnt an anime why ru writing about it on an anime blog” HUSH. maybe it’s a cartoon to you, but it is like an anime to ME.

-o-

Wolfwalkers (2020) should, all things considered, be a typical coming-of-age story. But I think it’s not about coming-of-age, but instead coming out. A girl emerging from the closet, rather than from childhood. Wolfwalkers’ queer themes kept me up for a while, joining my late-night musings about stem cell ethics and the Lovecraftian horror of the Bee Movie. So here’s my thoughts. Make of them what you will.

First, let’s talk about werewolves. Werewolves are known to be general personification of “other”, so they’re a common metaphor for queerness. The separation of “wolf” and “man”, the monstrous coming to light and destroying the normal. They’re savage beasts that spend some time in human form, outcasts from society feared by the surrounding population. Whether they’re mindless and beastly or intelligent and misunderstood is up to interpretation, as Wolfwalker illustrates.

With that out of the way, let’s get started. Here’s our protagonist, Robyn Goodfellowe. Her father, Bill, has been summoned by the Lord Protector to hunt wolves. Said wolves are preventing the destruction of their forest home, which, as I am sure you agree, is truly baffling and without reason. For safety reasons, Robyn remains confined to her new home, as Bill informs her that it is “for her own good”. This will come up again later.

Of course, we would not have a story if Robyn stayed indoors, so we follow her as she sneaks into the woods. Her innocence is clearly shown here: she displays no signs of fear of death, confident that the world revolves around her. Therefore, the Robyn who accidentally shoots her precious bird is one at the beginning of her journey: a flower not yet bloomed, eyes closed to the harsh truths of the world. As she watches her bird fall from the sky, a mysterious, wild-looking girl scoops it up and runs off.

Here we take a break from Robyn’s dilemma to meet our antagonist, the religious leader of the town. It must be said that the title of Lord Protector fits him better than a simple name, unyielding and high-minded as he is. Here we see another staple of the queer narrative: religion. The Lord Protector is single-minded in his hatred of wolves: he wants them gone, and believes firmly that such action is God’s will. I don’t believe I must describe the long-held hatred of the Homosexuals by the Christian Church, but if that is something with which you are unfamiliar, feel free to visit your nearby conservative old-timey church and ask. Inherent in many religious folk is the “righteous anger”, the certainty that there is a holy mantel placed upon them to rid the world of the vermin gays, and this is certainly what the Lord Protector represents in this story.

The Lord Protector, angered at the presence of A Female, assigns Robyn to scullery duty, an appropriately womanly task. Robyn gets no support from her father, who believes it will do her good to act more like a woman should. If she conforms to the standards given to her, she won’t have any need to worry. Robyn, unswayed, escapes yet again into the forest to find her bird.

Robyn, not a particularly nimble individual, quickly gets herself caught in one of her own father’s traps after finding her bird (in the distance, a voice yells something about symbolism). Along comes a young wolf, and a scuffle ensues. After a stray bite on the arm, Robyn is set free from the trap, and follows the wolf into its secret cave, wherein it reveals its true form: the wild girl from before, named Mebh.

Mebh is a wolfwalker: she turns into a wolf when asleep. She quickly heals Robyn’s bite, and after a few mishaps, the two quickly make friends. Robyn’s preconceived notions of wolves go out the window: the wolves mean no harm. They’ve been planning to leave the forest to find safer lands, and are waiting for Mebh’s mother to return: she’s been asleep, her wolf-form missing.

There’s a particular scene here, in the middle of the movie, that really got to me. Robyn takes a brush and combs out Mebh’s hair, gently removing the forest debris; she then tucks a saved flower behind her ear. The vulnerability of letting someone touch your hair is not one to be taken lightly. Such a gesture is intimate, offered between close friends, family (or pack, rather). And to slip a flower behind one’s ear? What other indicator of blooming love might there be? This marks Robyn’s progression, as she begins the next step of her journey. As children, Mebh and Robyn believably reach this place in their relationship quickly, beginning their childhood friends to lovers (slowburn, 200k, last updated 2020) love story. They say goodbye, and Robyn runs off into the sunset, eager to tell her father her discoveries.

Predictably, Bill is furious at her breaking the rules, as well as disobeying the Lord Protector. He refuses to listen to Robyn’s pleas, dismissing her claims as “childish stories”. Such language is incredibly similar to those that a queer child’s parents would say under a situation where they are questioning their identity. They’re punished for breaking society’s rules, occasionally for fear of mistreatment by society, or because they disobey the religious conventions. Their exploration of their identity is dismissed as stories, false and made-up. Queer people don’t exist, and if they do, they’re evil and you’re not one of them, they say. You’re just tired, or hallucinating, they swear.

The next morning, Robyn goes to the scullery, as previously instructed. Bill yet again informs his daughter that this is for her own good, before leaving her to slave the day away. Exhausted and hearing mysterious voices, she escapes yet again to see Mebh in the forest (paralleling classic love story format), and ends up promising her to help find Moll, her mother.

You may observe yet another deviation from the typical girl’s coming-of-age path that Robyn has declined to follow: the absence of a male lead. Men instead appear as antagonists, through the Lord Protector, and to an extent, Bill. Thus, the movie further establishes itself as a less male-focused story, focusing instead on the girls (one might refer to the Korean word for girl: 어린애- female child: not a teenager but a child, innocent in their understanding and exploration of gender, as Robyn is here, on the cusp of discovery, still androgynous in the conduction of herself, unaware of who she is). As a fellow wolf (or is it Woolfe?) once mentioned, a problem in fiction is the absence of women and their inter-relationships: in this work, we are exposed to girls at their core, wild and genderless, before society attempts to corral them into their proper gender roles.

Robyn returns home to sleep and is shocked to awaken in wolf form. At this moment her father discovers her: a wolf perched atop the sleeping body of his daughter. Another aspect of queer adolescence emerges: fear of discovery. When one has watched their family openly condemn their kind, can they trust their promised unconditional love? If one’s family recognized them as “the enemy”, would they be accepted? Robyn wrestles with this as she stares her father in the eyes and runs into the streets for fear that he will kill her, runs haunted by the fear that he would raise his sword even if he knew it was her. With this, she finds Mebh in the forest and demands answers.

Mebh, confused, insists that she healed the transforming bite, but is distracted by the prospect of teaching Robyn the joys of wolfing (as children do), and so I shoulder the burden of explanation in her place. While the reason for Robyn’s wolfification could be the failure of Mebh to properly heal the bite, I would urge you to consider that Robyn, unconsciously recognizing the bond that she held with Mebh, created the wolf within her even after healing. Rather than getting “infected” by Mebh (as so many believe queer people do), the wolfwalker was within her all along, merely brought to the light.

While trying to sneak back through the gates, wolf-Robyn is discovered and a hunt ensues. To hide, she sneaks into a secret passage in the castle, and stumbles upon Mebh’s missing mother, Moll (alliteration abounds), trapped in a cage. Moll begs her to tell Mebh to flee the forest and stay safe, unknowingly paralleling Robyn’s father. Robyn, out of time, fails to free Moll, and rushes home to ‘wake up’ and turn back from wolf to human, refusing to sleep for the rest of the night.

After another day of grueling work in the scullery, Robyn has lost hope. Her safety hinges even more on her compliance, as her father has been demoted for failing to kill the wolves. Mebh, worried that Robyn hasn’t yet returned, sneaks into town to check on her. Appalled, Robyn begs her to return to the forest and leave without her mother, breaking her promise to help free Moll. Robyn, broken, has forced herself to grow into the role that the world assigned her, becoming exactly what her father and the Lord Protector wanted her to be. In this, she reflects the queer youth forced to stifle their identity to reflect their family’s and society’s expectations, simply to maintain a normal life.

Just then, the Lord Protector holds an announcement. He reveals a chained Moll, restraining her with the help of several soldiers. Seeing her, Mebh is enraged, and after an emotional scuffle with Robyn, who desperately tries to stop her, she jumps onstage. Moll bites Robyn’s father to stop him from catching Mebh, Mebh runs to gather her wolf pack, swearing revenge, and an enraged Lord Protector shouts for all troops to set the forest on fire and drive out the wolves (much like homophobic religious folk attempt to invade the safe spaces of queer people in an attempt to “eradicate” them). Robyn, stunned, can do nothing but watch her friend fight against her father.

Finally, Robyn chooses to side with the wolves (embracing her inner girlboss, etc.), standing against her father and freeing Moll. After a tearful reunion with Mebh and her now moll-ified pack (do you get it? do you????), tragedy strikes: Bill shoots Moll, who collapses. This is not dissimilar to the actions of many parents of queer children, who hurt people not only because of preconcieved notions of danger, but because they fear their children’s “corruption”. Robyn, heartbroken, shifts into wolf-form and runs off, in a twisted coming-out of sorts. Finally, Bill chooses to accept Robyn as both his daughter and a wolfwalker, at which point his own bite takes effect, helping him defeat the raging Lord Protector.

Moll is healed, the pack moves, and the story ends with Robyn and Mebh falling asleep, then running ahead in wolf form. The ending expresses Robyn’s final transformation and acceptance of her wolf-self not as an alter ego but merely as another part of herself, just as queer youth learn to accept their queerness as a intrinsic, unchangeable quality.

The movie isn’t groundbreaking in the way that most people crave queer films to be. The queerness isn’t explicit, and there could be arguments made for a “friendship movie”. But this movie isn’t about that, to me. For someone who has seen so few movies where queerness as an exploration isn’t punished, where the “bury your gays” trope isn’t implemented, where the main characters are children without themes of inherent corruption… I won’t lie, it made me cry. 

It’s just. Isn’t it beautiful to see such a simple movie about love between girls? Isn’t it lovely to know that cinema is allowed to be like this? Wolfwalkers (2020) is many things, a stepping stone and a soft touch, a children’s movie and a mature film, a work of art and a labor of love. all that, and most of all, it is deeply, intrinsically, queer.

[lieutenantselnia]

I just learned about fictosexuality, I was wondering who are some of your f/o’s (if your comfortable answering?)

That's absolutely no problem for me, I actually love talking about my f/o(s) :D (asks about them are always appreciated!)

My main one is Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz from Phineas and Ferb, however not the regular one, but his 2nd Dimension variant. I actually didn't even like him a lot when I first got to know him, but then at some point later I was like "hold on he's actually hot" xD He's been my f/o for a bit more than a year now and I really love him a lot! Thinking of him always helps me when I'm stressed or anxious, or in a bit of a down mood. He makes me very happy and even though he's fictional, he truly makes my life better💖 (recently I've also been questioning if I have feelings for regular Doofenshmirtz as well, I'm currently watching the series again and thought more than once that he's actually pretty cute)

I also have a few other characters that would sort of consider as f/os or at least crushes, however I tend to get very fixated on one character at a time and then often neglect the others (sometimes I feel kinda sorry for that, because they also mean a lot to me, but apparently I'm just too faithful, even towards people who don't really exist xD). A character that I've been in love with for a long time was Grand Admiral Thrawn from Star Wars, but because of some issues I unfortunately kind of lost my interest in him in 2020. I think it might come back tho, and either way he's still one of my favourite characters. I also had two rather short-term crushes last fall, on Lord Viren from The Dragon Prince and Silco from Arcane. They all got overshadowed by my love for Doofenshmirtz though, but I still like to consider them as f/os.

I also have a few characters that I sort of consider as part of my f/o list, but they are already from a couple years ago and I don't really have romantic feelings for them anymore: Loki from the MCU, and Darth Vader and General Grievous from Star Wars. They still had some impact on my life so I want to mention them :)

~

 I realised I wrote quite a bit of text here, so here is a summarised list (also since pretty much all of them are villains (and kinda old), I just want to mention that they don’t reflect my taste in real-life people):

2nd Dimension Doofenshmirtz (my main f/o <3)

Thrawn

Silco

Lord Viren

General Grievous

Darth Vader

Loki

~

(By the way, I generally have absolutely no problem with sharing f/os, I think it can actually be quite fun to gush over a character together! Only if someone has a headcanon for one of my f/os that heavily contradicts with mine or somehow makes me uncomfortable, I might not interact (much) with that person, but generally I don’t have a problem if they interact with my posts or follow, as long as they’re being respectful :) )

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

Go thou near and hear all that the LORD our God shall say...

22 These words the LORD spoke unto all your congregation in the mount out of the midst of the fire, of the cloud, and of the thick darkness, with a great voice, and he added no more. And he wrote them in two tables of stone and delivered them unto me.

23 ¶ And it came to pass when ye heard the voice out of the midst of the darkness and saw the mountain that burned with fire that ye came near unto me, even all the princes of your tribes and your elders;

24 and ye said, Behold, the LORD our God has shown us his glory and his greatness, and we have heard his voice out of the midst of the fire; we have seen this day that God does talk with man, and he lives.

25 Now, therefore, why should we die? For this great fire will consume us; if we hear the voice of the LORD our God any more, then we shall die.

26 For what is all flesh that it should hear the voice of the living God that speaks out of the midst of the fire, as we heard, and live?

27 Go thou near and hear all that the LORD our God shall say, and thou shalt tell us all that the LORD our God shall speak unto thee; and we will hear it, and do it.

28 And the LORD heard the voice of your words when ye spoke unto me, and the LORD said unto me, I have heard the voice of the words of this people, which they have spoken unto thee; they have well said all that they have spoken.

29 O that there were such a heart in them that they would fear me and keep all my commandments always that it might be well with them and with their children for ever!

30 Go say to them, Return to your tents.

31 But as for thee, stand thou here by me, and I will speak unto thee all the commandments and the statutes and the rights, which thou shalt teach them, that they may do them in the land which I give them to inherit.

32 Ye shall observe to do, therefore, as the LORD your God has commanded you; ye shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the left.

33 Ye shall walk in all the ways which the LORD your God has commanded you that ye may live and that it may be well with you and that ye may prolong your days in the land which ye are to inherit. — Deuteronomy 5:22-33 | Jubilee Bible (JUB) Jubilee Bible Copyright © 2013, 2020 by Ransom Press International Cross References: Genesis 3:10; Exodus 19:8; Exodus 20:19; Exodus 20:21-22; Exodus 24:3; Exodus 24:12; Deuteronomy 4:33; Deuteronomy 4:40; Deuteronomy 5:16; Deuteronomy 18:16-17; Joshua 1:7; Joshua 3:10; Joshua 23:6; Judges 13:22; Luke 1:6; Ephesians 6:3; Hebrews 12:18-19

[straighttohellbuddy]

📓 !!

Okay im so excited please know I think about How The Light Gets In's world every day still, and so anyways here is a side story I want to write but there's a lot of set up regarding the reader and eef becoming friends again. For context, they were incredibly close around 2014-2017, but people were getting creepy and invasive and demanding about their friendship (think 2012 toxic side of the Phandom, if that makes sense), and a lot of the reader's relationships were strained at that time because while they had been successful before, they were absolutely blowing up after their first album released and they became far more mainstream. They felt like they were bothering the people they had become closest to, both because they're worried that they're a bother, and because gossip rags and paps would harrass their friends looking for a scoop, and so they ended up just completely cutting off contact without warning one day right before they went on their first tour. the start of HTLGI is about 3 years since they'd been in proper contact with any of the creators they were close to at that time.

DON'T LOOK AT ME on their 2017 ep Hyperfocus was a more general song in response to everything that had been happening in their life around that time, with a focus on how they stop associating with anyone for a while, without outright addressing it, but on their latest album n o s t a l g i a, read at 5am ft. Troye was specifically written at the start of quarantine, when the reader was getting back into YouTube, about their feelings regarding how their friendship with ethan ended, as they spent a lot of this time looking back of their YouTube career, and he was the person they were closest to for a very long time, before they iced everyone out.

OKAY SO THERES MORE OF THE BACKGROUND OF THE WHOLE FIC AND THE READER BUT

Werewolf Ethan & Mark. I'm sorry I don't make the rules. They have golden retriever energy you cannot change my mind. But also because this is the HTLGI you know that supernatural characteristics are able to be activated rather than just triggered by the full moon. What I'm trying to say is since this is set in the year of Unus Annus, they film a video together that's like, you know that show where a person has to try and outwit a professional tracker? Except its the reader being tracked by two werewolves at night in a national park. Reader is wearing some sort of night vision camera on themselves so whenever it cuts to them the audience can't actually see how they're using their powers, if that makes sense.

Also the reader agreed to this knowing it would probably be when they ended up telling Mark and Ethan about them being a demon.

Video is titled Hunting Down An Old Friend

A few Moments that the boys edit out:

The reader using their stupidly sharp prehensile tail to swing from tree branches, though they leave in shots where the reader's tail can't be seen.

Knowing that with the werewolves having advanced hearing, the reader would give themselves away by talking to the camera, they take a few minutes having flown up to a high tree branch, to pull out a notebook and do a little sketch of how Mark and Ethan appear in their Demon True Sight, and holding it up to their camera.

Werewolves being one of the animals who can kind of sense demons without being able to identify them, essentially like dogs can sense natural disasters and are often good judges of character, this can be heightened on command for werewolves. There's about 15 minutes of footage cut out of the boys discussing or mentioning how this place has awful vibes and that they should have done this during the day. It gets worse as they get closer to the reader, who didn't realise that the boys hadn't thought to ever use that particular power around them before.

("I say this with so much love and appreciation for you, dude," Ethan yells, looking up at you from the base of the tree they'd finally found you in, "but I- this is making me anxious I feel like something terrible's gonna happen, and we should probably get out of here and film the rest of the video back at Mark's." And behind him, Mark's nodding, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, eyes scanning the trees for whatever was most likely the cause of this terrible impending doom.

Oh. It's you. And they don't know its you.

Now or never, you suppose.

"Can you cut the cameras for a second? You're going to be fine I promise," you called back, and though they obligingly did, they both seemed antsy. You cleared your throat awkwardly, "that... that terrible feeling, that's not the park or anything in it- well I mean, it is, but it's just- it's me."

and later

"Dude your wings smell like rotten eggs."

"To YOU Ethan! And no they don't!"

"If it makes you feel better they smell like burning and rotten eggs."

"It does not."

(for reference, when enhancing their sense of smell werewolves can kind of distinguish various supernatural creatures, or parts of supernatural creatures. Some creatures have an inherent scent, but some, like angels and demons, only have distinct scents when they've activated certain attributesor abilities; demon wings smell like fire and brimstone, which unfortunately means burning and rotten eggs. I like to think angels wings are like the love potion in Harry Potter that smells like the things you love the most. Mark and Ethan usually don't enhance it around each other because they smell like wet dog to the other)

This gets about 2k notes on tumblr. The reader likes it:

Ethan finally finding Y/N at the end of Hunting Down An Old Friend (2020) Colourised.

Other things to note regarding all this:

It takes a while to rebuild their friendship to the point where they're comfortable enough to be on camera together (eef and reader specifically).

However, the Unus Annus video is the first thing they properly do together, and the reader, in an effort to connect more and make up for the past, will join in multiplayer gaming streams if asked.

Impromptu duet in proximity Among Us of Young Volcanoes by Fall Out Boy, which has their respective chats and fandoms losing their minds, except it stops abruptly after the first chorus as they both remember the opening lines of the second verse (make it easy, say I never mattered -- those lyrics hit a little too close to home)

But also the reader convinces him to join him for a proper cover in like, February of 2021, and it's something deeply sappy (I'm thinking Bon Iver by mxmtoon because I think its sweet and fits them well)

Also Ethan being reminded that the reader is kind of a much bigger deal than when they'd been friends before.

designed to hurt (touch me) from their ep Working On It is nominated for a Grammy for Track of the Year, and n o s t a l g i a wins Best Pop Album (because it's my fic and I said so)

FIRST OF ALL designed to hurt (touch me) is a beautifully produced song about Corpse (which people do not know) and the title itself is literally making fun of something he said IMAGINE his reaction to it being Grammy Nominated 😂😂😂 God he'd be proud but lowkey fuming, meanwhile the moment the nominations are announced the reader tweets:

me: here is an album where I processed my entire world view including heartfelt explorations of the trauma of existing and oversharing in the public eye from a young age without the traditional barrier between audience and entertainer

the grammys: that's cute BUT you know the song you wrote to bully your boyfriend and also be horny on main for him before you guys were even dating? THAT deserves its own recognition.

meanwhile Ethan's like..... this is the same person who I filmed a video with playing cards against humanity, and you laughed so hard you almost threw up. I am very proud but deeply confused.

The Hot Meme of Late April 2021 is "2 time Grammy Award Winning Artist Y/N" with a gif, still, or quote from the reader where they're just being an absolute chaos gremlin.

Of course we have "If I bleached my asshole for charity I'd do it tastefully."

2 Time Grammy Award Winning Artist Y/N speaking to their actual boyfriend in the year of our lord 2020: You are being executed for Clown Crimes.

ethan posts a short video to twitter simply of his screen where he's renaming a folder from "Never Before Seen Images of Grammy Award Winning Artist Y/N" simply changing it to 2 time Artist. The reader responds specifically to his tweet with a video of themselves asking Google how to hard reset someone else's computer.

So many screenshots from old videos surface that week.

I miss this world. Sorry this is rambly!!

[soldouthaz]

hey all!  it’s nearly the end of the year now and it’s time to finish the list of my favorite 2020 fics! (you can find part i of this rec here !) I can’t thank these authors and anyone else who published things this year enough. it’s been many long months where a distraction was much needed, and we got such amazing content for FREE. being able to escape into another world for even just a few minutes right now is priceless. 

to everyone who wrote something, read something, or simply made it through this year, kudos to you! wishing everyone a much more relaxing 2021 with even more amazing fics to come. :)  thank you guys for everything – happy holidays & new year, and happy reading!  

there were so many good ones out this year and there’s no way I can include all of them, but I enjoyed so many more than just the ones on this list! the ones I picked just stood out to me for some reason based on how I was feeling or what I was going through at the time, and they all helped me in some way or another. :) not to mention, I am sooo behind on recent fics and most of the blff, so I will be making more recs slowly into the new year as well!  

quick disclaimer! as with every time I put these together, this list is based on my own opinions and features a variety of different kinds of fics and tropes. I include the info next to them for a reason! please stick to your own preferences and leave any hate out of your choices. that being said, if you enjoy any of these, please leave the author a kudos, comment, or send them a message to let them know you liked it!  

okay, in no particular order!:  

a place with skeletons by @crazyupsetter / whoknows 
 E | 50k | b!L | veela!Louis 

“I would choose anyone other than you,” Louis says, picking up his train of thought again. He feels a lot more cornered and defensive when they’re in Harry’s house, for some reason. 

It doesn’t really make sense, considering that this time, Louis was the one who couldn’t hack it any longer. He broke first. There’s something about being in Harry’s space, though, the green and earthy feeling of it. It should feel like open space with all the plants, but Louis has never felt more claustrophobic than he does when he’s here. Harry’s chest moves against his back, a sharp intake of air. 

Before he can open his mouth to defend himself, Louis keeps going, “If I had a choice in any of this, I would have been saved by that elderly security guard over you. I wouldn’t mind having to have the occasional cuddle with her.” 

even the best laid plans by @falsegoodnight
 E | 25k | b!L | uni au  

Louis wants to have sex with someone and decides Harry is the perfect alpha for the job. 

runaway darling by @solvetheminourdreams 
E | 26k | no smut | wedding au  

An AU where Louis hates weddings, Harry loves them, and together they help a bride skip hers. 

three days in february by @mercurial-madhouse / writing_practice 
 E | 187k | b!L | magical realism  

Louis is cursed after a night out with the lads and the five have just three days to figure out what happened and how to break it before Harry and Louis both lose their sanity and maybe something more. Louis can hear everything Harry thinks and Harry isn’t sure he can keep his feelings for Louis a secret from his own mind. 

a springtime’s wilt, an autumn’s bloom by snowcaplou  E | 20k | b!L | abo 

Harry is Louis' personal chauffeur, and although he hides his feelings for his boss behind a wall of rigid professionalism, Louis still manages to squeeze through the cracks.

just a flicker in the dark by @falsegoodnight 
 E | 57k | b!L | witch!Louis 

Louis is a struggling witch desperate to prove himself after yet another magic disaster and finds a calling in the haunted house of client Niall Horan. Things get more complicated when he’s assigned a case partner: acclaimed medium and ex-boyfriend, Harry Styles. 

terror of surrender by @loubellies 
E | 31k | b!L | yoga instructor!H  

Louis is a recent divorcee with a new favorite yoga teacher, Harry. 

loving you’s a bloodsport by @rosesau
 M | 106k | no graphic smut | royalty au  

harry is a bratty prince, louis is a guard who works in his palace, and niall is the only one who’s got his life in control. 

spoonful of sugar by @zanniscaramouche (check out this part too!)  
E | 43k | b!L | mob boss!Harry  

Louis Tomlinson cares for his family above all else, a fact that’s led him on a twisted path peddling drugs to support them. Just as he’s made the decision to jump ship, Louis gets snared between the two largest crime syndicates in the city. To keep his family safe he’s forced to trust the man that failed to keep his promise two years ago, the resident drug lord he’s unknowingly been working for, Harry Styles. 

quiet people have the loudest minds by @2tiedships2
 M | 38k | referenced b!L | abo 

The one where Louis is a nonverbal omega who has accepted the fact that he will never find an alpha that will treat him as an equal. On the other hand, he’s never met anyone like Harry. 

works like a charm by @falsegoodnight 
E | 18k | b!L | Hogwarts au  

Ever since Louis joined the team in fifth year, a few facts have become set in stone. 

One: Louis is the best chaser in Hogwarts.  

Two: Harry is the best beater in Hogwarts. 

Three: They do not get along.  

So it’s really unfair of Liam to think that forcing them to spend time together as Louis recovers from his injury will make them the best of friends. The last thing Louis would do is get along with that git. 

show you the stars in the daylight by @yvesaintlourent / bruisedhoney 
E | 13k | b!L | friends to lovers  

The one where Louis has a type and at sixteen and scrawy, it’s definitely not his best friend’s little brother Harry…ten years later, he changes his mind. 

in a sea of mist by @tomlinvelvetfics 
E | 126k | b!L | mythology au  

A Greek Mythology/Camp Half-Blood AU where Harry is lost, the road to peace is a wretched one, and somehow, through a mist of confusion and regrets, Louis seems to be the only thing that makes sense and everything Harry needs. 

confessions of a fabricated alpha by @jaerie 
E | 18k | b!H/b!L mention | abo  

famous alpha Harry Styles has a secret and paying an alpha to roleplay a relationship with him over the phone is the only way he can be himself. 

take my whole life too by @goodmorninglou
  E | 24k | b!L | d/s elements | WIP

Louis knows three things, at the base of it all. 

He likes when Harry hurts him. He doesn’t know why, not really, but he knows that he likes it. Likes giving up control, likes feeling small and taken care of, likes being praised for taking whatever Harry gives him for as long as he gives it. He and Harry are meant to be. No matter what time they finally fall together, what day, what age, what place, the moment that they do, that’ll be it. It’s going to be them against everyone else, hand in hand for the rest of their lives. That’s been a given since they met. The half of Louis’ soul that’s missing is Harry’s. 

And, sans those two things, he doesn’t really know much of anything at all. 

sweet like honey by @falsegoodnight  
E | 33k | b!L | amateur porn au  

Harry and Louis need money and they find an unconventional solution in the form of PornHub. It’s not supposed to be a big deal. 

a few rereads posted from before this year that I enjoyed again!  

the case of the (definitely not haunted) styles mansion by briamaria  
E | 40k | b!H | nancy drew au  

the Nancy Drew AU where Marcel is a man of logic, Louis is a private detective who believes in ghosts, and the Styles Mansion is definitely, absolutely, positively *not* haunted. 

canyon moon by @eeveelou  
E | 40k | b!L | abo  

For as long as Louis has remembered, he has been promised to be mated to Harry, his best friend and the future pack alpha. But Louis’s heart belonged to the forest and to the hunt more than he could ever imagine it belonging to Harry.  Then Harry’s father dies in a violent accident, and Louis’s future alpha disappears on the wind.  

An A/B/O Lion King AU 

lemon eyes by @turnyourankle  
E | 50k | b!H | abo  

It’s not proper for omegas to mess around with alphas before finding their bondmate. But Harry doesn’t give a damn what’s proper and fully intends on getting as much experience as he can before even trying to find one. As far as he’s concerned, the right alpha won’t care, and he’ll have some fun on the way.  And who better to start with than Louis Tomlinson, the alpha with the worst reputation on campus? 

all this delusion in our heads by snowcaplou 
 E | 15k | b!L | exes to lovers  

After Harry and Louis break up, they cope with it in very different ways. What will happen when Harry keeps calling his ex over when things go wrong in his life, but Louis just can’t take it anymore? 

the way the storms blow by @rbbsbb  
E | 21k | b!L | roommates au  

Louis doesn’t have a habit of thinking about Harry’s dick. 

That would be weird, seeing as they’re best mates, and they share a flat, and they’ve spent holidays at each other’s family homes. 

Their friendship hasn’t ever risen to a point where Louis should want to see his mate’s dick, and he’s happy to keep it that way.  Except, all that Louis can think about is exactly that. The size of it. The shape. The amount of people it’s been in.  

Maybe it’s the tequila talking, or the fact that Louis’ just recently walked in to an eyeful of Harry taking turns on some slags that he’s never seen before, but. Louis’ mind can’t stop obsessing over the idea. 

and a few more recs from some other fandoms for anyone who might be interested! (feel free to rec me some more if you know of any!)  

burning the ground by lq_traintracks (drarry)  
E | 10k | b!draco | abo 

“Strap him down,” someone said, and Harry felt the rage thicken inside him – the viscous fear. Magical bindings pulled taut around his wrists … He felt a wand touch his arm and then a sharp bite as something punctured the skin, and a sweet, cool tonic rushed his veins. His breathing slowed. His eyelids drooped. The ceiling went grey and dark. And then he heard a woman’s voice sigh, “Someone, get Healer Malfoy.” 

every step you take by nokomis (sterek) 
 E | 50k | light b!Stiles | abo  

Stiles accidentally ends up magically bound to Derek. It’s super. 

+

alright, I think that’s it for this rec! as always, please let me know if i’ve tagged anything incorrectly or if you’d like to be untagged from something!  

and like I said before, I am wayyy behind on reading for these last few months and I need to catch up. when I do, I’ll definitely make some more recs into the new year! 

I just want to say another thank you to anyone who wrote or read or created or just existed this year. it’s been hard on us all but having this outlet definitely made it easier. I can’t wait to see what else is published next year! happy reading everyone, and happy new year! :)

[addictedtoeddie]

The full Esquire Spain interview translated from Spanish:  

Eddie Redmayne trial: guilty of being the most talented (and stylish) actor of his generation

The Oscar winner talks about what it means to premiere a film with Aaron Sorkin (The Chicago 7th Trial on Netflix) and filming the new part of the most famous saga of all time under the watchful eye of its author, J.K. Rowling.

By Alba Díaz (text) / JUANKR (photos and video) / Álvaro de Juan (styling) 10/23/2020  

At the Kettle’s Yard Gallery in Cambridge, stands alone and leaning on a piano Prometheus, a marble head made by Constantin Brâncusi, and the only piece of art that Eddie Redmayne (London, 1982) would save from possible massive destruction. He tells me about it as he leaves the filming set of the third installment of Fantastic Beasts in the early days of an autumn that, we suspect, we will never forget. It begins to get dark as the actor nods seriously: "I promise to do my best in this interview."

Eddie Redmayne made himself in the theater despite some voices warning him that he could not survive in it. "Many people were in charge to tell me that it would never work, that only extraordinary cases make it and that I would not be able to live from this professionally." Even his father came home one day with a list of statistics on unemployed young actors. Redmayne, who is extremely modest, polite and funny, adds: “But I enjoyed theater so much that I got to the point of thinking that if I could only do one play a year for the rest of my life… I would do it. And that would fill me completely.

Spoiler: since then until today he has participated in many more. He set his first foot in the industry when he debuted at the Shakespeare’s Globe Theater and won over critics and audiences. He then landed his first major role in My Week with Marilyn opposite Michelle Williams. And then came one of the roles of his life, the character he wanted to become an actor for, Marius. With him he sang, led a revolution and broke Cosette's heart in Les Miserables. “I found out about the Les Misérables auditions when I was shooting a movie in Illinois. Dressed like a cowboy. I picked up the iPhone and videotaped myself singing the Marius song. I always wanted to be him ”.

Now Redmayne is an Oscar winner - thanks to his portrayal of Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything - and the protagonist of one of the most important sagas in history, Fantastic Beasts. He plays the magizoologist Newt Scamander in it. When I ask him what it means to him to be the protagonist of a magical world that is so important to millions of people, Eddie sighs and takes a few seconds to answer. “I have always loved the Harry Potter universe. Some people like The Lord of the Rings or Star Wars ... But, for me, the idea that there is a magical world that happens right in front of you, that happens without going any further on the streets of London, that. .. That exploded my imagination in another way.

During the quarantine, J. K. Rowling, who has been in charge of the script of the film, sparked a controversy through a series of tweets about transgender women. Redmayne assures that he does not agree with these statements but that it does not approve of the attacks of some people through social networks. The actor was one of the first to position himself against Rowling alongside Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and other protagonists of her films. "Trans women are women, trans men are men, and non-binary identities are valid."

After having spent a while talking, Redmayne confesses to me that he has never been a big dreamer not to maintain certain aspirations that ended up disappointing him. So he has always kept a handful of dreams to himself. One of them was fulfilled just a few weeks ago with the premiere of The Trial of the Chicago 7, a film written and directed by Aaron Sorkin that can already be seen on Netflix and in some - few - cinemas. “I was on vacation with my wife in Morocco and the script arrived. I think I called my agent before I even read it and said yes, I would. She probably thought the obvious, that I'm stupid. After that, of course I read the script, which is about a specific moment in history that I knew very little about. I found it exciting and a very relevant drama in today's times. "

And it is that having a script by Aaron Sorkin in your hands is no small thing. Eddie Redmayne has been a fan of his work ever since he saw The West Wing of the White House. “His scripts have delicious language and dialogue. As an actor, it's fun to play characters that are much smarter than you are in real life. That virtuosity is hard to come by. I really hope that audiences enjoy this movie and feel that there is always hope. " He remembers that since he released The Theory of Everything he has recorded, to a large extent, English period dramas, “and although the new Aaron Sorkin is not strictly contemporary,” says Redmayne, “to be able to wear jeans and shirts and sweaters instead of so much tweed is great ”.

Besides acting, art was the only thing the actor was interested in, so he ended up studying Art History at Cambridge University. “My parents are quite traditional and when I told them I wanted to act they gave me free rein but on the condition that I study a career. And I'm very grateful for that because ... Look, beyond that, when I play a real character I usually go to the National Portrait Gallery in London quite often. There I lock myself up. Now, for Sorkin's film, I went through a lot of photographs and videotapes. Art helps me to be more creative, to get into paper ”. If he were not an actor, he would be, he says decidedly, a historian or perhaps a curator. "Although I think he would be a very bad art curator."

Against all logic, Eddie Redmayne is color blind. But there is a color that you can distinguish anywhere and on any surface: klein blue. He wrote his thesis on the French artist Yves Klein and the only shade of blue he used in his works. He wrote up to 30,000 words talking about that color with which he became obsessed. “It is surprising that a color can be so emotional. One can only hope to achieve that intensity in acting. "

Like his taste for art, which encompasses the refined and compact, Redmayne seems to be in the same balance when it comes to the roles he chooses. When I ask him what aspects a character he wants to play should have, he takes a few seconds again before answering: “I wish I had a more ingenious answer but I will tell you that I know when my belly hurts. It's that feeling that I trust. In my mind I transport him to imagine myself playing that character. When I read a script I have to really enjoy it. You never fully regret those instincts. It's like when you connect with something emotionally. "

So we come to the conclusion that all his characters have some traits in common. "You know what? I never look back, and this is something personal, but I do believe that there is a parallel between Marius in Les Misérables trying to be a revolutionary, someone who is quite prone to being distracted by love but at the same time is willing to die for his cause, and Tom Hayden from The Chicago Trial of the 7 who was a man who had integrity and was passionate and fought for the things he believed in. So I suppose there may also be similarities between a young Stephen Hawking and Newt Scamander. There are traits in common in all of them that I don't really know where they come from ”.

When we talk about the year we are living in, in which it is increasingly difficult to find hope, we both let out a nervous laugh. "There must be," Redmayne says. “There is something very nice that Tom Hayden, the character I play in Sorkin's film, said to his former wife, actress Jane Fonda, just the day before she passed away. He told her that watching people die for their beliefs changed his life forever. In that sense, I also think about what Kennedy Jr. wrote about how democracy is messy, tough and never easy ... As is believing in something to fight for. I look at history and how they were willing to live their lives with that integrity to change the world and I realize that somehow that spirit still remains with us. " We fell silent thinking about it. "There must be hope."

I tell him about my love for Nick Cave's blog, The Red Hand, and one of the posts that I have liked the most in recent weeks. In it, the singer affirms that his response to a crisis has always been to create, an impulse that has saved him many times. For Redmayne there are two activities that can silence noise: drawing and playing the piano. “When you play the piano your concentration is so consumed by trying to hit that note that you can't think of anything else. Similarly, when you draw something, the focus is between the paper and what you are trying to recreate ... There I try to calm my mind.

Before saying goodbye, I drop a question that I thought I knew the answer to, but failed. What work of art would you save from mass destruction? "How difficult! I could name my favorite artists but still couldn't choose a work. Only one piece? Let me think. I am very obsessed with Yves Klein, but I would stick with a work by Brancusi. There is a sculpture of him, a small head called Prometheus, in Cambridge's Kettle’s Yard, on a dark mahogany piano. The truth is that I find it very ... beautiful ”.

Before leaving, he confesses to me - with a childish and slow voice - that he would like to direct something one day. We said goodbye, saying that we will talk about his next project. Next, the first thing I do is open the Google search engine. "P-r-o-m-e-t-h-e-u-s". Although Eddie Redmayne has trouble distinguishing violet from blue, he doesn't have them when choosing a good piece. He's right, that work deserves to be saved.

* This article appears in the November 2020 issue of Esquire magazine

Source: esquire.com/es/actualidad/cine/a34434114/eddie-redmayne-juicio-7-chicago-netflix-entrevista/

[bartzechariah]

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[dallanebbia]

selcouth

fandom: bnha pairing: kacchako; bakugou katsuki x uraraka ochako word count: 6.6k warnings: minor descriptions of injuries synopsis: five times uraraka held bakugou’s hand – and the one time he held hers. pre-relationship, second year, future fic notes: written for day 5 of kacchako week 2020, with the prompt ‘hand holding.’ fun fact, this was the very last prompt i wrote for this event! i went back and forth with a ton of different plots,  but i ended up with a good ol’ 5+1 fic, ft. lots of fluff and an emotionally dumb, oblivious bakugou. when i started writing this ship, it was hard for me to get into bakugou’s head to write from his pov, but i think i’m getting a little better at it :) ao3: [link]

selcouth (n.) – Old English, something unfamiliar, unusual or wondrous

─── ･｡ﾟ❁ﾟ｡･ ───

The first time Uraraka held his hand was literally only because he had no other choice.

“Jeez, Bakugou… do you always hafta be so intense about things?”

Uraraka winced at the grotesque sight of Bakugou’s knee, swelling into an angry purple color between the shredded remains of his hero costume pants. 

“Tch, like I was gonna let someone else beat me to the action,” he scowled, leaning against an electrical pole for support.

In retrospect, launching himself headfirst into an ongoing robbery wasn’t the smartest idea – especially when he was only supposed to be an intern. He’d kicked ass of course – those shitty villains had nothing on him – but the busted kneecap and fractured foot he got in exchange weren’t really doing him any favors. 

Kamui Woods had taken one look at him, sighed heavily, and radioed Uraraka to escort Bakugou back to the agency for healing while he dealt with the police.

Bakugou had protested, saying that he didn’t need help – but it was quickly becoming clear that he wasn’t going anywhere. The pain in his legs was excruciating, throbbing in time to his heartbeat, and it took every ounce of his remaining energy to keep himself from collapsing in the middle of the street. 

“Bakugou –” Uraraka bit her lip, watching in worry as he tried to push himself upright, flinching violently. On instinct, she stepped forward, immediately coming up to try and steady him. “Let me –”

“I don’t need your fuckin’ help, Round Face,” he barked, jerking himself away from her outstretched hands. It was a mistake, though – he grimaced, his face crumpling in pain, and he missed the way Uraraka’s eyes narrowed in determination. 

“There’s no way you’re gettin’ back to the agency like that, Bakugou,” she said sternly. “Quit bein’ such a damn edgelord and let me help you!”

“Fuck off,” Bakugou snarled. “I don’t need some pink-cheeked – you bitch, don’t you fucking dare.”

“You really wanna be carried outta here on a stretcher?” He felt anger boiling in his blood just thinking about it. “That’s what I thought.” The set of Uraraka’s mouth just tilted down stubbornly, and before he could keep protesting, she slapped a hand over his bicep.

“I’ll murder you.” His eyes glared daggers into the side of her head, but the pain in his expression eased as he rose into the air.

“Yeah, yeah, I know.” Uraraka rolled her eyes, grabbing a fistful of his pants and tugging him along as she started down the street. There were already emergency responders helping to clean the crime scene, the police herding the robbers into cars, and all that was left was for them to check into medical and write up their reports. “Lord Explosion Murder, we get it already.”

“That’s King to you, Round Face,” he spat out, making a face as his body started to turn awkwardly in the air. “Oi, quit movin’ me around so much, I’m gonna flip over!”

Uraraka threw him an annoyed look, and adjusted her grip so that she was holding a bigger handful of fabric. “Well, it’s this or your foot, and I don’t wanna risk makin’ your injuries worse than they already are.”

“You’ll make them worse if you keep making me bump into random shit,” he sputtered furiously. He tried batting himself out of the way of a traffic sign, only to be jerked out of the way at the last second like a balloon. “Fuck – I said quit that!”

“If I knew you were gonna be such a pain about this…” Uraraka huffed and came to a stop in the middle of the goddamn sidewalk, ignoring all the attention they were drawing. “Fine, lemme just – “

Bakugou faltered as she yanked him down closer to her, grabbing his gloved hand in hers.

“O-oi, what are you – ?” He scrabbled at his arm, trying to shove her away, but his bulky gauntlets made it virtually impossible.

“S’just my hand, Bakugou,” Uraraka sighed, and tossed him a frown when he kept trying to pull himself out of her grip. “Stop bein’ so weird about it!”

“I’m not being weird,” he snapped, biting the inside of his cheek to hide his discomfort. Had her grip always been so strong? “I could blow your fucking arm off!”  

That earned him a scoff. “You’ve got the most control over your quirk outta anyone from our class, Bakugou. There’s no way you’re gonna blow my arm off,” she said exasperatedly, and he blinked a little at the way she said it, as if it were obvious. “Look, if it’s such a big deal, I’ll princess carry you back instead.”

“Try that and I’m actually gonna kill you,” he growled darkly. Shitty Hair was supposed to swing by the agency so they could grab dinner, and there was no fucking way Bakugou was letting his dumbfuck best friend see him carried in like a damsel in distress.  

Uraraka grinned to herself in victory. “You already said that.”

“Well, I mean it!” he grumbled, and slowly resigned himself to being dragged along like a balloon. At least he was floating right-side up now – and facing the right direction this time.

“… Wait. Did you call me a fuckin’ edgelord?”

─── ･｡ﾟ❁ﾟ｡･ ───

The second time Uraraka held his hand was an accident.

“Oh sweet Jesus.”

Bakugou exhaled slowly, trying to quell the frustration bubbling in his stomach, and shot a dirty look to the side.

“Oi,” he snapped, glaring at the petite brunette sitting next to him. “Zip it, Round Face.” Uraraka had been squealing and muttering under her breath since the damn movie started, and he was over it.

“Eeek – sorry!” Uraraka whispered, flashing him a wavering, apologetic smile before an upswell in the creepy background music made her features contort in a wince.

Bakugou just grunted, turning his eyes back to the laptop screen. He didn’t know how Pinky got Uraraka to join their weekly movie night ritual, but he had ended up next to her on Shitty Hair’s bed, the two of them squished her up against the wall. Pikachu and Tape Face were sprawled out on the rest of the bed, slowly dozing off, but Shitty Hair and Pinky, who had commandeered the floor space, had left the room ten minutes ago for snacks, and they hadn’t come back yet.

He hoped to hell that they weren’t making out in the hallway again.

“Oh god,” he heard Uraraka squeak quietly, as on the screen, a flash of lightning showed the silhouette of a man in the dark house, while the female protagonist was sleeping, completely unaware. “Oh god, oh fuck no – “

His eyes cut over to the side, eyeing Uraraka in surprise. “The hell?” he muttered, and brown eyes darted in his direction. “Since when do you curse?”

Uraraka frowned at him, but flinched as the woman on screen jolted awake. “M’allowed to curse, Bakugou, I’m not a kid,” she whispered back fiercely, but flinched as another flash of lightning showed the dark figure standing by the woman’s bed. “Ohmygod, ohmygod –“

He scoffed. “It ain’t even that scary, Cheeks,” he murmured with an eyeroll. “This is pussy shit.”

“Maybe for you!” she hissed, and let out a whimper as the music faded, leaving only the sound of the woman’s heavy breathing filtering through the speakers. “Oh my god, no no no – ”

At this point, Bakugou just tilted his head to sneer at her. “Seriously? You could literally fuck that guy up in a second.”

Uraraka made a face. “Just ‘cause I could, doesn’t mean it’s any less creepy! Nobody wants to wake up and find some serial killer in their house!” she protested, a little too loudly, and they both froze as Pikachu groaned a little, shifting so he was sprawled over Tape Face a bit more, before falling limp again.

For a few blissful minutes, she kept quiet while the movie played – but when the main character let out a dramatic gasp, she jumped again, hands flying to her face. She curled herself into a ball, peeking through the fingers covering her eyes, and Bakugou couldn’t help but mutter, “Tch, you’re such a wimp.”

Uraraka’s head whipped up, eyes narrowed. “I am not a wimp!” she whispered hotly.

A blonde eyebrow rose doubtfully. “Are too.”

“Are not!”

“Are too.”

“Are not!”

“Yes, you are,” he emphasized lowly, nodding at the laptop screen. He recognized the scene playing on the screen, and he had to bite back his smirk as he goaded, “You’re not even watching the damn movie.”

“Fine, I’ll prove it!” With a huff, Uraraka sat up, leaning forward and staring at the laptop with knitted brows. Bakugou let himself grin a little – baiting her was fun, but he kept his eyes on her as the main character crept down the dark hallway. He’d seen the movie once a while back, but he remembered that there was a jump scare, just after –   

“Holyfuckingshit!” The shrill, tinny scream from the movie almost covered Uraraka’s strangled squeal of fright, but Bakugou sure as hell didn’t miss the way the brunette leapt clean into the air, diving into Shitty Hair’s comforter like an ostrich hiding its head in the sand. Bakugou couldn’t quite hide his snickering, his body shaking as he cackled quietly, but when he tried to bring his hand up to wipe at his eyes, something was preventing him from moving.

“The fuck?” he uttered, staring down in bewilderment. At some point, Uraraka had grabbed his hand during her freak out, clenching it tight against her forehead, as if trying to hide her entire body behind the width of his hand. She looked utterly ridiculous, but some part of him couldn’t help but notice how fucking tiny her hands were.

Then, he realized that he was starting to float off the bed.

“Oi, let me go!” he hissed, shaking his hand to try and get her attention.

“H-huh?” Uraraka sat up, a little wild-eyed, and Bakugou leaned over to poke her in the middle of her forehead, hard.

“Your quirk, you idiot!”

Her mouth dropped open in mortification as she realized she had commandeered his hand, pushing it away from her abruptly as she quickly pressed her fingers together. “Sorry, sorry!” she squeaked, and Bakugou dropped back onto the mattress with a thump. “Oh god, I didn’t mean to – ”

“Will you chill the fuck out already?” he grumbled, repositioning himself on the mattress and kicking Pikachu’s fat ass over to give him some more room. He didn’t want her to use him as a teddy bear again, so he grabbed a pillow and shoved it at her. “Here, if you really need to hide behind something...”

He let his voice trail off as Uraraka took the pillow, still flushed in embarrassment. “… sorry,” she offered again, a little timidly, and Bakugou sighed.

“…Whatever, it’s fine,” he muttered, balling the hand she had held in a fist. It felt weird for some reason – why did his palm feel so prickly all of a sudden? “Just shut up already, will you?”

Uraraka just mimed zipping her lips together, nodding furiously, and he rolled his eyes as he turned back to the screen, a good half-meter between them.

─── ･｡ﾟ❁ﾟ｡･ ───

The third time Uraraka held his hand was just… weird.

“Shit.”

Bakugou glared down at the sloppy tangle of gauze wrapped loosely around his hands. With a grimace, he yanked the bandages away, gritting his teeth against the pain that shot through his body, the echoing ache digging down deep into his bones.

He wanted to call Shitty Hair for help, but the redhead was out for the weekend, visiting his family. There was no way he was going to cave and ask anyone else for help, so Bakugou had sucked it up and tried taking care of it himself.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t going so well.

“Eh? Is that you, Bakugou?” His head snapped up at the sound of a familiar voice, and a glance over his shoulder revealed Uraraka, standing in the entrance of the common room in her pajamas. Her hair was a mess and she was rubbing at her face sleepily, but none of that explained what she was doing up at three in the fucking morning.

“What the hell are you doing?” he scowled, turning his back to her.

“I got thirsty,” she yawned. “Why are you up so late? Isn’t it past your bedtime?”

“What are you, my fuckin’ mother?” he snapped. “Fuck off.”

“Right…” Uraraka pursed her lips, padding to the kitchen. “I was just askin’, sheesh…”

Even though his body was hidden by the couch, and there was no way for her to see anything other than his head as she crossed the room, Bakugou still buried his hands into the front pockets of his hoodie. He was in pain and frustrated and exhausted, and he felt like a spring wound too tight. Uraraka’s sudden appearance had caught him off guard, and he felt oddly exposed for some reason.

She disappeared into the kitchen, and Bakugou exhaled slowly. He slowly pulled his hands back out, grabbing the bundle of gauze with a wince and settling down to untangle the mess for the hundredth time. He could feel his hands protesting, the stitches crawling up his palms already starting to bleed through antibacterial gel he’d lathered on earlier, and he slumped even further into the couch as frustration burned at the backs of his eyes.

“Um… Bakugou?”

He froze, eyes sliding to the side to see Uraraka. She was standing at the other end of the couch, a glass of water in hand, and looked both hesitant and determined all at once.

“Mind your own fuckin’ business, Round Face.” He ducked his head, swallowing as he took a steadying breath.

He picked at the tangled bandages, but the couch dipped suddenly under him. He felt Uraraka scoot close until she was sitting at his side, body turned to face him as she said softly, “If you want, I can…?”

She held her hand out, waiting for him to give her the gauze.

His first instinct was to say no. It was bad enough that he had to ask Shitty Hair for help, but he didn’t want anyone else seeing what a weak little shit he was. He had to learn how to do it himself at some point too – there wasn’t a point in relying on someone when he could do it alone, just as well or even better.

Still… his gaze fell to her outstretched hand, and he noticed the faint scars covering the skin of her palm and fingers. The pale marks were obviously not new, not years old either – but they were well healed, without any excess scar tissue. He didn’t know how he never noticed them before.

Huh. He flicked his gaze up to her face, where she watched him with patient eyes, gnawing at her lip nervously. Well, not like she can make it worse.

“… whatever.” He slapped the bandages into her waiting palm, and cursed himself for being a dumbass as pain and black dots exploded across his vision. “Do what you want,” he muttered with a grimace. He turned his head away, jaw set stubbornly, but slowly, he let his gaze slide to the side, watching her from the corner of his eye.

To his disgruntlement, Uraraka combed through the mess easily, fingers plucking until the length of gauze was coiled loosely in her lap. She reached towards him, and Bakugou had to bite back the instinct to recoil from her touch as she tugged his hand over, cupping it as she started to wrap his palm.

Her hands were cool against his skin, her touch firm yet gentle. She moved quickly and confidently, as if she’d done this exact same thing a hundred times before, and he didn’t notice his head turning to watch her work until she glanced up at him. She met his gaze with a startled “eep!,” and then immediately directed them back down with an embarrassed flush.

He felt his cheeks turn hot, and a weird buzzing sensation settled below his skin, one that got really loud every time Uraraka’s fingers brushed over his. It wasn’t a bad thing per se, but it felt disconcerting – and after she finished tying off the ends of the bandages, he immediately pulled his hands back.

He examined them, begrudgingly impressed. The wraps looked as good as when Recovery Girl had done them, possibly better – but he figured the pain was the reason he was thinking so weirdly, so he pushed the thought out of his head.

“How do they feel?” Uraraka asked. “Not too tight?”

“S’alright,” he mumbled. “Better than how Shitty Hair does it.”

For some reason, she laughed. “Don’t let him hear you say that. He was really touched that you asked him for help, y’know?”

“He’s fucking dead,” Bakugou growled, because of course Shitty Hair went and blabbed. He leaned back against the cushions with a sigh – the stabbing ache was still there, but it was slowly dulling. Without the stress of trying to wrap his injuries by himself, he felt ten times lighter.

He glanced over to Uraraka, who was staring off into nothing, toying with her half-filled water glass absently. His gaze dropped to her hands again, curiosity niggling at the edge of his brain, and he asked brusquely, “How the hell do you know how to do shit like this anyways?”

She jumped a little, blinking in surprise, but when he didn’t say anything, just waiting for an answer, she giggled nervously. “Oh, well… durin’ my internship with Gunhead, he taught me how to throw knives!”

He jerked upright at that, his eyes bugging out, because what the fuck?

“And I was pretty bad at it at first,” Uraraka continued, rubbing the back of her head sheepishly. “I kept cuttin’ my hands up… so I got a lot of practice with takin’ care of stuff like that!”

“Knives?” he repeated incredulously. “You can throw fuckin’ knives?”

“Yeah?” She shrugged, as if she wasn’t aware of how fucking badass she sounded. “I mean, you never know when you’ll need one – that’s what Gunhead always said. I asked the Support Department to add a bunch to my hero costume, but I hafta pass some sort of test before I’m cleared to carry them…”

Bakugou huffed, clicking his tongue. “Un-fucking-believable,” he muttered, shaking his head. He knew that she was strong, but he could feel his respect for her leaping up a few notches.

Knives. Who would’ve thought?

Unfortunately, Uraraka somehow interpreted his words as disbelief, and her eyes narrowed into a glare.

“Hey, I’m serious!” she scowled, scooting closer so she could shove her hand into his face. “See – this one’s from where I dropped one and tried catchin’ it, but I didn’t get all my fingers on the handle… and this one is because I was testin’ out different weights, and there was this one that was super heavy and slipped and cut my palm. And this one –”

Bakugou rolled his eyes, but continued to listen as she chattered away. His gaze settled on one scar that curved from the middle of her left palm across the meat below her thumb, grazing the back of her wrist like a half-drawn contour line. The mark shined a little, catching the light as her arms moved, and he found himself oddly mesmerized by it.

Absently, he wondered what it would feel like, pressed up against the skin of his palm.

─── ･｡ﾟ❁ﾟ｡･ ───

The fourth time Uraraka held his hand didn’t really count – not until he apologized.

“Yield?”

Bakugou scowled, hands scrabbling against the muscled thighs squeezing his neck. “Hell… no…” he croaked through gritted teeth.

 “Ah-ah-ah,” Uraraka chided, her voice already lilting gleefully. The legs around his throat tightened just a little more. “You ain’t gettin’ out this time, Bakugou – yield already!”

He struggled against her for a few more seconds, trying to squirm his way out of the chokehold, but after another warning squeeze, he sighed, falling limp with a groan. “Fine, fine,” he grumbled, “I yield, now let me go!”

He gasped as Uraraka released him, gulping down air as he tried to catch his breath. At his side, Uraraka rolled onto her knees, grinning in victory.

“Heh, that’s one more for me!” she cheered, pumping the air with her fist, and she gave him a cheeky grin. “Better watch out Bakugou, soon you’re gonna be eatin’ my dust!”

“Tch, don’t get all cocky just yet,” he barked, pushing himself up off the floor. He used the bottom of his tank top to wipe at his face, wincing at the sting of sweat dripping into his eyes. “I’ve still got fifty wins to your forty-eight!”

“Yeah, but I’m catchin’ up!” she shot back, waving her hand dismissively. “You used to have like, ten wins on me at one point – just a few more spars and we’ll be tied!”

He scowled, but only because she wasn’t wrong – when they’d first agreed to start sparring together, a little while after his hands had finally healed up properly, he’d been pinning her to the ground consistently. Then, she started going to those supplemental martial arts classes, and he started getting his ass kicked more and more.

For some reason though, he didn’t mind the idea of losing if it meant he was losing to Uraraka.

Still, he had a reputation to uphold, so he rolled his eyes and spat out, “Pft, in your fuckin’ dreams, Cheeks.”

Uraraka paused, head tilting in confusion. “Cheeks?” she asked, brow raised. “What happened to Round Face?”

“I mean…” Bakugou cursed internally – he hadn’t meant to let the nickname slip out, but since it was already out there… he leaned forward and poked her, right below the pink blush staining her cheekbone. “If the shoe fits, and all that shit.”

It was also meant to refer to her ass, but he figured that she didn’t have to know that.

Uraraka’s expression darkened as he kept poking at her cheek, jerking her face away. “Stop that,” she snapped, and Bakugou just smirked.

“Or what?” he said teasingly. He didn’t quite know how it happened, but trolling Uraraka had become his favorite pastimes – she was just too easy to rile up. He just reached forward and poked her again, ignoring the glare she was giving him. “Whatcha gonna do, Cheeks?”

“If you poke me one more time, I swear – ”

He just snorted, going in to squish her cheek again, but Uraraka’s arm whipped up and caught his hand in a claw-like grip, her thumb digging into a pressure point that sent a stabbing pain shooting through him. “Ow, ow – fuck, what the hell – ?!”

She shoved him away as he crumpled under the force of her grip, and her voice was loud and angry as she yelled, “I said stop, Bakugou!”

He fell back, brows knitted in confusion as Uraraka stood up abruptly, stalking over to where they’d placed their things earlier. She pulled on her jacket roughly, grabbing her water bottle, and Bakugou scrambled to his feet as he realized that she was actually upset.

He caught her right before she made it to the locker room, grabbing her shoulder. “Oi, what was that for?”

“Let me go!”

“Not until you explain,” he growled, and yanked her back so she was facing him. “You’re being all moody now, what gives?”

“You were bein’ a jerk,” she snapped, mouth downturned as she stared at him defiantly. “I don’t appreciate bein’ made fun of.”

What? He frowned. “When the hell did I make fun of you?”

“You called me Cheeks!” she exclaimed furiously. “And you kept pokin’ at ‘em, lookin’ all smug!”

She said it so pointedly, as if that had proved her point, but Bakugou just felt even more confused. Were all girls so fuckin’ weird?

“You’ve got chubby cheeks, so I called you Cheeks.” He didn’t know what was happening – he thought the name fit pretty well, but clearly she didn’t agree. “How the fuck is that making fun of you?”

Uraraka’s jaw clenched. “You literally just called them chubby,” she said, her voice tight as she looked away.

“Cause they are, dumbass.” He paused then, studying her, and as she curled an arm over her stomach, he finally realized what she was going on about.

Bakugou frowned. He knew girls were all sensitive about their bodies and stuff, but he’d thought that Uraraka wasn’t the type to worry about that stuff. She was always stuffing her face when there was free food around, and her costume was basically skin-tight; he figured that she had to have some measure of confidence to pull that kind of shit off, but maybe he was wrong.

“M’not saying that you’re fat,” he said slowly, trying to come up with the right words to explain himself. He knew he could come off as an asshole, but he wasn’t the kind of guy who said shit like that. “You’re not, alright?”

“Whatever, Bakugou.” She didn’t seem convinced, rolling her eyes as she tried shrugging his hand away.

“Oi, I mean it.” He tugged on her shoulder insistently until she met his gaze. “Nobody gives a fuck about what you look like, Uraraka. You’re strong, and that’s all that matters. So fuckin’ what if you’ve got chipmunk cheeks – they’re c-cute, so fuck whoever gives you crap about ‘em!”

He stuttered over the word, his face flushing a little, and he had to avert his eyes when she blinked up at him in surprise. It felt awkward as hell, saying something like that out loud, but he didn’t want her to get the wrong idea about him.

He didn’t want her thinking that way about herself.

“Oh.” He heard Uraraka exhale slowly, as if trying to gather her thoughts. Then, she laughed a little and said, “Who are you and what have you done to Bakugou?”

“Oi, what’s that supposed to mean?” His head whipped up, a glare ready, but it faltered as he saw the smile on Uraraka’s face as she stared at him. It was small and soft, and there was something he couldn’t quite name lingering in her expression. He felt his tongue go heavy all of a sudden, and all he could do was swallow thickly as a swooping sensation erupted in his stomach.

She shrugged. “You bein’ nice is just… strange, I guess.”

That made him scowl. “I’m always fucking nice, what the hell?”

“Keep tellin’ yourself that, Bakugou,” she said dryly, and then shook her head, huffing a little. “Well, I guess Cheeks is better than Round Face, in any case…”

Her voice trailed off, and the silence that fell between them felt heavy and oppressive as Bakugou shifted on the balls of his feet. There was something weird about the way Uraraka was peering up at him, almost expectantly, but he didn’t know what she was waiting for.

Eventually, he settled on just repeating himself – he figured it wouldn’t hurt to hammer his point in, just one more time. “I mean it, y’know,” he grumbled. “You’re fine the way you are.”

“… Thanks.” For some reason, that made Uraraka’s shoulders slump a little, but before he could read into it, she offered him that weird little smile again. “That means a lot, comin’ from you.”

“Hah?” He blinked. “Why?”

“You’re always upfront and blunt ‘bout what you’re thinkin’,” she explained, and reached up to lay her hand over his, still resting on the curve of her shoulder. She squeezed gently, before dragging it off of her. “I know you really mean it – you aren’t sayin’ stuff just to make me feel better.”

Their hands hung between them, Uraraka still holding his, and goosebumps trailed up his arm as he felt his skin tingle under her touch. Even as she let go, the feeling lingered, and he couldn’t help but flex his hand, trying to work the strange sensation away.

“I don’t do that kind of fake shit,” he said, clearing his throat a little, and tried to hide his discomfort by shoving his hands in his pockets. “But… if you really don’t want me to call you that, I’ll stop.”

Uraraka shook her head. “No, I… I don’t mind it,” she said shyly, twisting her fingers together, and he offered her a nod, mouth quirking upwards as he resisted the odd urge to let himself grin wildly.

“Cheeks it is, then.”

─── ･｡ﾟ❁ﾟ｡･ ───

The fifth time Uraraka held his hand was only for half-priced ramen.

“Oh my god.” The brunette stopped dead in her tracks, eyes going wide in awe. “Bakugou, look!!”

He paused, confused, and followed her outstretched arm to the storefront of a local ramen shop. They’d gotten permission to leave campus to grab something for dinner after their sparring session, but they’d agreed on going to the supermarket for food.

Bakugou took a second to examine the restaurant façade, head cocked in confusion. There was nothing out of the ordinary – it seemed like the shop probably had decent ramen, but he could make his own just as easily.

“What the hell am I supposed to be seeing?”

“It’s right there! Look!!” Uraraka made an impatient noise, pointing at the shop again in excitement. “They have a 2-for-1 special on their ramen! It’s half the usual price!!”

Ah. Sure enough, there was a sign propped out in the middle of the sidewalk, advertising the very offer Uraraka mentioned. “Yeah? So?”

“So,” she said, dragging out the word expectantly, “Let’s go!”  

It was his turn to stop, this time turning to her incredulously. “… Hah?”

“Let’s go eat there!” she exclaimed, all starry-eyed. “We came out here to grab dinner, right? I bet they have spicy ramen too…”

“Cheeks…” he said warningly, rolling his eyes at her wheedling tone. “We’re supposed to be getting groceries.”

“Aw, c’mon, Bakugou!” she pouted. “We can get groceries after; this is a once in a lifetime opportunity!”

“Pretty sure that’s supposed to apply to things like winning the lottery, not some deal at a restaurant,” he said dryly. Still, he took a closer look, his brows rising as he read the tiny characters lining the bottom of the sign. “Besides, it’s only for couples. Unless you’ve got a secret boyfriend, I think you’re shit outta luck, Cheeks.”

Without missing a single beat, Uraraka said, “Well, I have you, don’t I?”

Bakugou sputtered, his heart stuttering. “What?”

Uraraka just blinked up at him even more eagerly, a determined smile growing on her face. “My auntie and her best friend used t’pretend to be a couple to get the paired ticket discounts at amusement parks,” she explained casually, and Bakugou could almost begrudgingly admire that – those places were expensive as shit. “This is the same thing!”

“Uh huh,” he said doubtfully. “And how the hell are we supposed to convince people we’re a couple?”

“All we gotta do is hold hands and be happy together,” she said cheerfully. “They’ll totally buy it!”

Hold hands. Bakugou swallowed a little, something turning uncomfortably in the pit of his stomach as he recalled the last few times she had held his hand. The weird feeling in his hand had eventually gone away, but when he’d gone online for more information, the only rational explanation he found was that his skin was reacting badly to her soap or something.

He scowled – he wasn’t going to risk a full-blown allergic reaction just so Uraraka could get a cheap deal on ramen. “Yeah, not happening.”

“C’mon, Bakugou – please?” He faltered a little as she stared up at him with wide, brown eyes. That weird, warm itch started to spread again, his palms going a little sweaty for some reason – what kind of weird-ass soap did she use? “I can’t eat out all that often… and we did come out to grab food, right?”

He clenched his jaw, folding his arms across his chest stubbornly. “No.”

“Please?” she pleaded, shaking his arm. “C’mon, just this once!”

He studied her with narrowed eyes, chin jutting out as he glowered down at her, but she just kept staring back at him, unblinkingly. As they stood there in stubborn silence, he felt that uncomfortable feeling surge to life, crawling up his spine, but he refused to look away even as he felt heat blooming across the back of his neck.

“Cheeks…” he growled warningly. His throat felt a little thick, a weird tightness spreading through his chest, but somehow, he found his resolve wavering a little. Clearly, whatever he was reacting to had already got to him – he might as well just take advantage of it. And it had been a while since he’d eaten ramen…

“Please?” she asked again, and he held her gaze for a few seconds longer before exhaling heavily.

“Ugh… fine,” he growled, scowling at the way Uraraka’s expression switched from puppy dog eyes to satisfied smugness in the blink of an eye. “But if you tell anyone this happened, you’re dead. Got it?”

“My lips are sealed!” she said cheerily, punching the air in enthusiasm as she beamed. “Ahh, this is gonna be great!”

She didn’t even hesitate as she pulled his arms loose, wrapping a hand in one of his. As their palms slid together, something in his gut did a little flip. Somehow, her hand snugly in his, clasped together as she started to tug him forward, and he could feel the ball of his hand rub against that scar he had noticed, back when she’d helped him wrap his hands that one night.

If she ever decided to switch soap brands, he decided that he wouldn’t mind her holding his hand again.

─── ･｡ﾟ❁ﾟ｡･ ───

The one and only time Bakugou held her hand was because she was a forgetful idiot.

He looked over at Uraraka again, watching the way she rubbed her hands together, breathing on them as she shivered. He cast a glare over at her shitty friends, who were standing around like oblivious idiots – couldn’t they see she was freezing?

Ending up at the open-air mall with the rest of his classmates had been the very last thing he’d wanted to do today, but Shitty Hair had gotten Tape Face and Pikachu to help drag him out of the dorms, ignoring his hollering as they literally wrapped him up in tape and carried his squirming body onto the train station. He’d given in at that point – especially when he saw the way Uraraka’s face brighten a little as she saw him enter the train car. She had offered him a wave and a smile, but had otherwise stayed with the rest of her stupid friends, even after arriving at the mall.

He kicked at the ground, slouching as he shoved his hands further into his pockets. Peeking at where Uraraka was sitting again, his eyes narrowed as he saw Deku and Frogface and Four-eyes wandering off, Ponytail and Icy-Hot heading in a different direction, until Uraraka was left alone on the bench, surrounded by a bunch of shopping bags that were too expensive to belong to her.

He chewed on his lip, staring as she rubbed her hands together again, and finally made up his mind.

A glimpse over his shoulder showed the other four idiots he called friends running around the shoe store, surrounded by piles of boxes, and he quickly spun on his heel and stalked over to where Uraraka was sitting, humming some song with her eyes closed. When she didn’t react to his presence, he nudged her leg with his knee.

“Oi. Cheeks.”

“H-huh?” Her eyes fluttered open, focusing on him, and he shifted a little as those big brown eyes made his knees feel oddly weak. “Oh hey, Bakugou, what’s up?”

He thrust his hand out with a sigh. “Gimme your hands.”

“Uh… what?” Uraraka watched him in confusion. “Why – ?”

He huffed, wiggling his fingers. “Just give ‘em to me, Cheeks.”

“O… kay?” The wary glance she gave him almost made him want to roll his eyes, but she still reached forward. She placed her hands on his open palm, almost tentatively, but Bakugou quickly grabbed them, engulfing her tiny ones in his as he squatted down to breathe hot air over her bare fingers.

“What kind of dumbass doesn’t bring gloves with them?” he muttered, brows scrunching in concentration. Uraraka squeaked in surprise, but she let out a sigh of relief as he activated his quirk just enough to let heat radiate out from his glove-covered palms. “It’s the middle of the winter, you idiot.”

Uraraka’s face went a deep pink, most likely from the cold air. “I was runnin’ late!” she said bashfully. “By the time I remembered them, we were already on the train…”

“Stupid.” He wanted to make a comment about how shitty her friends were for not helping her, but he bit it back in favor of bringing his hands to his mouth, pulling the gloves off with his teeth. “Here, put these on.”

“E-eh?!” Uraraka waved her arms, flustered, as he shoved them towards her, shaking her head. “Bakugou, what… won’t you be – ”

“I have my quirk, Cheeks.” He gave her a flat stare, holding up a sparking hand. “Take ‘em, it looks like your fingers are gonna fall off.”

“Ah, I’ll be fine, you don’t have to – ”

“Fuck, do I have to do everything myself?” he grumbled, and her mouth fell open a little as he took her hand – and he was right, even with how he’d warmed her hands up, they were still practically icicles – and shoved it into one glove, before doing the same to the other side. Uraraka was still staring at him in bewilderment, so Bakugou tucked in her sleeves before tightening the toggles around her wrists to keep her body heat from escaping.

He checked one last time to make sure all her fingers were in the right places, before letting out a satisfied huff. “There. Now you won’t get fuckin’ frostbite,” he said firmly, and smirked a little – there was no way Uraraka could say he wasn’t nice after this.

Except… when he looked up, she was staring at him with a strangely soft expression that made his lungs go tight. It made him feel all hot and weird all of a sudden – the stupid allergies were coming back, dammit – and he stood up quickly, wiping his sweaty hands on his pants.

“Give ‘em back later,” he said, suddenly feeling nervous for some reason. He shoved his hands into his pockets, nodding at her as he tried to act cool, and turned around to head back to the shoe store.

He only took a few steps before the sound of Uraraka’s voice called out to him. “W-wait! Bakugou!”

He turned quickly, seeing her standing behind him, his gloves looking comically large hanging off the ends of her arms. “Hah?”

“U-uh, just…” She fidgeted, shifting her weight between her feet, but then her lips stretched into a huge, beaming smile, her eyes crinkling. His heart started to race in his chest under the force of Uraraka’s grin. “Thank you! For…”

“Y-yeah, yeah,” he stuttered, feeling his cheeks burn. “Whatever.” Her smile somehow got a little wider, and he quickly spun around, nearly sprinting away.

Bakugou didn’t look back at her, despite how much he wanted to – but if he had, he would’ve seen the way Uraraka brought his gloves to her nose, inhaling the lingering smoky-sweet smell as she hid a goofy grin behind her hands. 

[conquerthedevil]

Signs of a Spiritual Attack: Desolation

August 28, 2020

I received an email about a week ago from a woman who wrote just one sentence. “What are the specific things I should look out for that would be signs pointing to a spiritual attack?” That statement she made reminded me of why I started this website. There are a lot of signs or symptoms that indicate a spiritual or diabolical attack. In this article, I will concentrate on one, and then write subsequent articles describing the others. I was attacked by witchcraft, so the issues I am going to write about will come from my lived experiences, and be specific to those demonic attacks. But not everyone is spiritually attacked, so some of the things I experienced will also apply to suffering in general. For example, all kinds of people go through depression or have anxiety so they will understand that part of my suffering.

People who are under a spiritual attack will have certain things happen to them that didn’t happen to me, and visa versa. Depending on the circumstances leading up to, or surrounding the attacks, each person will experience these afflictions in different degrees. But God never gives us more than we can handle. Anyone who has suffered an attack from the enemy will be able to identify with what I am saying, and then apply it to their particular situation. This knowledge is going to console you. I say this with great confidence because I had no one to help me. Not even priests understood what was wrong with me. In the beginning, I had no idea what was happening. But I eventually had to consider whether or not it was demonic, because nothing else made sense. I think that God allowed me to suffer this way for many reasons. One reason is so that I can help other people who are suffering in the way I have. No one understood what I was going through, and that added immensely to the mental and emotional effects of the attacks. So, I want those people who are struggling with an attack to know that I understand their suffering, and I know intimately what you are going through because I went through it too. I am sharing my story with the hope that it will help others get through this time in your life a little bit easier.

The first sign I want to talk about is desolation, but I have to clarify a few things so that this is clear. Christians experience consolation and desolation throughout life. The simplest explanation is that consolation is being able to feel God’s consoling presence within, and desolation is not being able to feel it. This is a part of the spiritual life that no one can escape. In times of consolation, there is a loving communication between God and the soul that brings it to love the Lord more intensely. And in times of desolation, this communication is withdrawn, which, in the beginning, is perceived as a lack of God’s love for the soul. The result is the same because consolation and desolation help a person come to know and love God in a whole new way. So this process is good, even though desolation hurts. In a spiritual attack, which God allows for our betterment, desolation is distorted by the devil. It is amplified and used as a weapon against us. So in this context, desolation is a sign of a spiritual attack. Now that I have made that clear I can move on.

Desolation: A temporary darkening of the mind and disturbance of the will and emotions, permitted by God to purify the souls of his followers. It may be caused by the evil spirit or brought on by a variety of other causes, but it is always purposeful, namely to withdraw a person’s affections from dwelling on creatures and bring them closer to the Creator.

Desolation is an almost unbearable darkness, an emptiness so deep that every waking moment is spent in mourning. This is a horrible suffering. But it is how the Lord brings us to love Him most profoundly. It is how He teaches us to stop looking at ourselves and look at Him. Jesus leaves us because He wants us to experience Him physically. In my case, I was not fully aware of God’s presence in me until I couldn’t feel it anymore. So Jesus grabbed my attention by retreating from me, and that automatically caused me to become aware of the lack of His presence in me; and in my life. That didn’t mean that Jesus wasn’t present anymore, only that I couldn’t feel Him anymore.

“How long, O Lord? Will you utterly forget me? How long will you hide your face from me? How long shall I harbor sorrow in my soul, grief in my heart day after day? How long will my enemy triumph over me? Look, answer me, O Lord, my God!”

After a while, I started to feel abandoned by God, and I wondered if He loved me. I didn’t understand what I did to make Him leave me, nor did I know why He let the enemy attack me so viciously. But these sufferings caused me to set out on a spiritual journey in search of my Jesus. He was all that mattered. So, desolation, even though it is a natural part of the spiritual life, can be used by the devil during a spiritual attack. But God is in control and no matter how much you think Jesus has left you, He is bring you closer and closer to Him during these spiritual attacks. There are moments when God consoles you, but they are brief and ignite an even greater desire in you to find Jesus. So, I think that this void that lives in us, during these spiritual attacks, is key. And I will go as far as to say, that Jesus has made us believe that He has abandoned us because He loves us, and He wants to be loved back. No matter how you are feeling, or what you are going through, remember that God is love. He is all good, and everything that He allows to touch our lives, no matter how difficult it may be, is for our greater good and His glory. So keep searching for Jesus, and when the time is right, He will set you free.

https://www.conquerthedevil.com/part-1-signs-of-a-spiritual-attack/

[lawrenceop]

Painting the Paschal Candle

Why paint my own candle?

The thought of painting the Paschal Candle for the Rosary Shrine in London, where I currenly am based, first came to me at the beginning of the year. I wanted to have a candle with the Rosary Shrine coat-of-arms, and I thought at first that I should commission a professional painter to do it; looking at the designs in the religious goods catalogues only convinced me that only a custom-designed candle would satisfy me. However, I knew a few friends who had painted their own, and I enjoyed the idea of coming up with my own design. The only problem was that I hadn’t picked up a brush to paint anything since I left secondary school, almost three decades ago! So, I ordered two Paschal candles so that if I made a mistake with one, I had an alternative candle with a ready made design!

Materials I needed

A little research online, and a few discussions with Facebook friends ascertained that I needed acrylic paints including gold and silver acrylic paints and some wax pens. To these, I would need to add an acrylic paint binder which helps the water-based acrylic paint to bond with the wax surface of the candle. And finally I needed to trace a pattern onto the candle. For this I bought carbon paper and an embossing tool. 

Design: Cosmati and the Cosmos

From the outset, I knew I wanted a candle with designs inspired by the artwork of the great Christian basilicas of Rome. I gave some consideration to a design inspired by the Lindisfarne Gospels, but thought this was too complex and ambitious. At another point, I thought of an icon of Christ emerging from the tomb and trampling the coronavirus underfoot! But I thought that it unwise for a beginner like me to try any figural work lest my depiction of the Lord become like the ‘Monkey Christ’ of Borja! So, I returned to the medieval designs that have long inspired me: Cosmatesque patterns. 

Named after the Cosmati family, Cosmatesque patterns are sometimes called ‘opus alexandrinum’, perhaps because they originated in Alexandria. The geometric designs are certainly of Greek and Byzantine origins, and they’re first seen in the Western Church in the 11th century. According to Leo of Ostia, the abbot of Monte Cassino (the influential abbey founded St Benedict) “sent envoys to Constantinople to hire men who were experts in the art of laying mosaics and pavements”, and thus the transfer of knowledge about these Eastern patterns and designs came to the West. Cosmati work flourished in the 12th and 13th-centuries predominantly in Rome, but examples of Cosmatesque work are found throughout Italy, and even in Westminster Abbey in London. Its ‘Great Pavement’ was installed in 1268 on the sacred site where the monarch is crowned. Indeed, Cosmati work is costly, precious, and thus restricted to the most important of churches, often those associated with royalty or the papacy. 

The stones used for laying the mosaic designs are almost always recycled from classical Roman sources, and two precious stones, coloured green and purple, feature in their design. Green porphyry was called Lapis Lacedaemonius by the Romans, and it came from quarries near Sparta in the Greek Peloponnese and was quarried from the Bronze Age until around the 5th century AD. The even rarer purple ‘Imperial Porphyry’, which was reserved to the Roman and Byzantine Emperors, comes from quarries at Mons Porphyrites in the Gebel Dokhan of Egypt’s Eastern Desert, quarried from the 1st century AD until the 5th century. Hence, by the time the Cormati family were active in Italy, green and purple porphyry were antiques that were no longer being quarried. The Cosmati pavements, therefore, accentuate and set off roundels of this legendary stone recycled from Roman spolia.

Cosmati designs generally have two geometric patterns: interlaced circular bands called guilloche, and which are said to represent the Resurrection, perhaps because they form a series of infinity loops; and secondly, the quincunx, which is a central circle surrounded by four circles. The quincunx is an ancient symbol, reminiscent of the Greek cross, which stands for the cosmos or an ordered universe. The Cosmatesque quincunx, moreover, with its triangular mosaics inlaid into the whirling circular pattern stands for the created world. As Galileo wrote: “The book of nature is written in the language of mathematics, and its letters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures.”  Hence, at Westminster Abbey, the Great Pavement uniquely had an inscription around the central quincunx design that referred to it as representing “the eternal pattern of the universe”. 

At the centre of the Paschal candle, therefore, I placed a Cosmatesque quincunx, with triangles of green and purple around roundels of green and purple, evocative of imperial porphyry. I looked online for a design that could be easily traced, and printed this out, put the carbon paper on the candle, and then traced over this design with the embossing tool. 

At first, I had intended to draw a cross in the central circle, and then, on the other four circles, I wanted to draw the ‘Alpha’ and ‘Omega’, and the year in Arabic numerals: ‘20′ - ‘20′. However, it was only after I had painted the quincunx that I recalled that the five incense grains would have to pierce these five circles, thus obscuring these symbols. So, an alternative solution had to be found! Incidentally, the five incense grains stand for the wounds of Christ, or the nails that pierced his body. I bought these golden pine-cones of wax from Italy, where they’re commonly used to pierce the Paschal candle – rather different from the brass pins we’re accustomed to in England, but they seem to work very well with this candle, and they add to the Romanitas of the design. 

It was fitting, then, that this quincunx at the centre of the Paschal candle stand for the Cross of Christ, and for his Five Wounds – an observation made by James Joyce concerning the quincunx symbol. However, the quincunx is a rich symbol: as we’ve seen it also stands for the whole created order, which is now redeemed and transformed by the Risen Christ; or it stands for Christ in majesty surrounded by his four evangelists; or for the four Platonic elements of creation (fire, water, earth, and air) with the fifth element in the centre being aether, the Aristotelian quintessence. This design, therefore, signifies that all of creation is raised up and renewed by Christ rising from the dead; the whole cosmos is subjected to the imperial Christ, and resounds with the joy of his Gospel.  

 Our Lady’s Rosary and the Paschal Lamb

Having decided on the central cross-shaped quincunx, I knew I needed two more roundels that I wanted to add to lenghten the overall design. At the bottom would go the emblem of the Rosary Shrine, which is the monogram of the Blessed Virgin Mary surrounded by the Rosary. 

I needed another emblem that would balance this at the top, and I chose the Lamb of God, a symbol of the Risen Lord. As St Paul says: “Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed for us” (1 Cor 5:7), and this text is used in the Communion chant of Easter Sunday. 

I searched for a medieval design of the Paschal lamb, and found this beautiful example on the ‘Cruz de Bagergue’ that dates from 1200. The Paschal lamb carries a flag featuring a red-cross on a white field, which is traditionally used as  an emblem of the Resurrection, but it also conveniently looks like the flag of St George, i.e., the flag of England, which is the land now rededicated as Our Lady’s Dowry! 

Alpha & Omega

However, what about the requisite signs on a Paschal candle? we needed a cross, and an Alpha, an Omega, and the numerals for this current calendar year. First, I painted a Greek cross in the central circle of the quincunx, using the alternating black and white Cross of the Dominican Order. But I fashioned it as a Greek cross, and around this I wrote the Greek letters IC XC NIKA. This emblem, called the Greek Christogram, has been in use since the 8th century, and it was found throughout Byzantium, notably on imperial coinage. It is a reference to the victory of Constantine at the Milvian Bridge in 312, and the Greek letters spell out: “Jesus Christ Conquers” i.e. through his Cross. By the 9th-century this emblem was believed to be apotropaic, that is to say, it is believed to have the power to drive away evil. 

Continuing to be inspired by Byzantine art, I looked to examples of Crosses which had an Alpha and an Omega, the Greek letters for the Beginning and the End (cf Rev 22:13) hanging from them. The Altar Cross in Westminster Cathedral notably has these letters of the Greek alphabet hanging from its arms, and I researched and found medieval engravings and medallions with the same device. However, in all the old Byzantine images, the Omega was drawn not with the uppercase Ω but rather the lowercase ω. So, on the Paschal candle, I drew two jewelled Greek letters, the uppercase A and the lowercase ω suspended from the Cross-shaped quincunx. Following on from this, it seemed best to put the date above these, but rather than to write the date in Arabic numerals (2020), I opted to stay with the Roman-Byzantine theme, and so I chose the neat Roman numerals (MMXX), inscriped above the horizontal roundels of the quincunx.

Flora and Beasts

Finally, I decided to add a few small elements to the candle so that not everything was centred around the middle portion of the candle. Near the top, I painted some bees, and then I added some to the bottom as well. Why bees? This is again a classical reference: Virgil, too, praised the industry and society of bees, and the Exsultet, which dates to at least the 4th century, says this concerning the Paschal candle: 

“On this, your night of grace, O holy Father, accept this candle, a solemn offering, the work of bees and of your servants’ hands, an evening sacrifice of praise, this gift from your most holy Church. But now we know the praises of this pillar, which glowing fire ignites for God’s honour, a fire into many flames divided, yet never dimmed by sharing of its light, for it is fed by melting wax, drawn out by mother bees to build a torch so precious.”

Where there are bees, there ought to be flowers, so I added a few pink flowers, a reference to the cherry blossom (sakura 桜) which appear at this time, and which the Japanese enjoying viewing in the Spring (called hanami 花見), as a meditation on transience and impermanence, and the fleetingness of beauty. The exercise of painting the candle, I realised, is an exercise in detachment and impermanence because I would also come to sit in church, watching the candle burn down over the course of the year, and so consume and destroy that which I had painted. Sic transit gloria mundi! 

Finally, I added a skep, the medieval bell-shaped hive made from coiled straw developed by apiculturists, and the hive is dripping with golden honey. It seemed fitting that the bees should have a place to live, and that their hive should be of the kind commonplace in Europe during the time that the Cosmati family engaged in their particular golden industry. 

And then, as a little personal indulgence, I added a portrait of my beloved priory cat Felix. First consulting a book of ‘Cats in Medieval Manuscripts’, I adapted an illustration from the ‘Luttrell Psalter’, c.1325-35, and gave the cat the same colouring and pattern as Felix, who has a fine coat that looks like a Dominican habit. Felix has quite a penchant for sweet things – even though he’s not allowed them – and I am sure he’d love some honey, towards which he’s shown extending his paw. 

Technique

I wanted to avoid seeing brush stokes in the quincunx, so I learnt to dab my brush rather than just paint it in broad strokes. I realised that I didn’t need a lot of paint - often a pea-sized blob would suffice, with an equal sized blob of the acrylic binder: mix these well, and then, let it dry a little; the less wet the paint, the easier it was to paint on the wax. I learnt that, with acrylics, if one made a mistake, one could easily run over it with a wet brush, and the water washed away the paint like an eraser. As time went on, I rather enjoyed painting the candle, and it took me about 2 hours a day for 5 days, which is far quicker than I had expected. 

Final Reflections

As Providence would have it, I began work on the Paschal candle on the Monday of Passiontide. By that time, public Masses had ceased because of the coronavirus pandemic, and then, having more time on my hands, this project became a Godsend because it gave me something to focus on; it took my mind off the worries of the present moment. Painting the candle became an act of love, something beautiful and devotional that I could do for God and for the sacred Liturgy; it became a prayer, and indeed, I would pray as I painted the Rosary, or the Paschal Lamb. Finally, on Easter night, I pierced the quincunx with the wax pine-cones of encased incense, and then I saw it lit and raised high on the Paschal candle stand. And then, I was privileged to be the first to incense the candle, and then, to sing the Exsultet that praised God for it, asking that its 

“flame be found still burning by the Morning Star: the one Morning Star who never sets, Christ your Son, who, coming back from death's domain, has shed his peaceful light on humanity, and lives and reigns for ever and ever.”

Amen.

[embarrassingresultofmyfreetime]

Link to my collection of spyvember fics! I’ll probably update even after this months ends because there are a few more fics I wrote that I haven’t posted yet :)

Ch 1 - I Thought I’d Lost You - Combination: Day 25 (I thought I'd lost you ) + Day 22 (Cuddles on a rainy day) Summary: The Master saves the Doctor's life but he doesn't know how to be the Doctor's friend after everything he's done so he continues to play the role of 'sweet human O'. Angst+Fluff+Happy Ending

Ch 2 - Renegade Runners - Day 24: Cops and Robbers Summary: Time Lords sense the universe in a deeply intricate and powerful way- which makes for a very fun and completely irresponsible twist to an old children's game. Fluff

Ch 3 - Partners - Day 26: Slow Dance Summary: The Doctor made a minor miscalculation and now her fam are in trouble. She needs a plan- but in the meantime, what's the harm in a slow dance with her best enemy? And why is he there anyway? very mild angst+fluff+plot

Ch 4 - Taller Than You - Day 27: Height Differences Summary: The Doctor and the Master are stuck in the rare situation where they have to work together. They aren't too good at that, but they are good at fighting- so they decide to bicker over the smallest things to pass the time instead. fluff+banter+gentle roughhousing

Ch 5 - This One's For You - Day 28: Piano Summary: There's a certain restaurant the Master likes to visit when he wants to work through his feeling about the Doctor without anyone finding out about him. After yet another failed confrontation with the Doctor, he returns to the restaurant once more and plays a song with her in mind. Angst+Fluff+Hugs