#you didn’t hear this from me I may have a ‘sympathizing with the demon’ post in drafts

[rubysparx]

So can I woobify the winged lion now

[ridiculous-disaster]

Anyone wants to hear a rant about why Zoe should be a twist villain?, no. I don’t care I’m going to rant about it anyway.

I don’t care how nice she is, Zoe should be a twist villain.

Now I know what I’m saying might sound ludicrous, but hear me out.

So in order to explain why I think this I have to bring up a few points. Some will be familiar as I have said them before and some will be new. Let’s tackle the minors first. Most of these have already been mentioned in earlier posts.

1. She is literally vesperia, if translated from French it means wasp. What was Chloe when she was aqumatized? A wasp, if the wielder’s outfit reflects who they are then it would make sense that she is a villain, a wasp is an angry sun condensed into a insect mold. They sometimes sting for no reason, they are a pain in the skin. They will sting because the stinger doesn’t detach and they don’t die. And they don’t even have the positive of their puke being delicious. They are at most pest control. If this truly is a reflection of Zoe then she should be evil. (The pest thing kinda makes sense from a certain angle, Tomas considers Chloe as pest).

2.she is an actress who has previously been lying about who she is, she claims they she pretended to be someone else at her old school but then got bullied when she revealed herself (also can’t really blame her classmates for bullying her, imagine if one of your closest friends suddenly revealed they she was faking everything including her personality, I’d be pissed if that happened). If my theory is true then she could have just made it up to sound sympathetic, which would explain why she drops her backstory within five minutes of us meeting her. She wants the others in class to sympathize with her and having a sad backstory is a great way to get sympathy. Zoe probably knows that she is an actress after all, so she should know what a theater audience finds sympathetic. She is also that sickly sweet that only a made up character can be. Now you may be thinking what about the writing on her shoe, well she could have just written that herself, we only get to see her write numbers in the show so it could be her handwriting Also She outright lies in the show itself she also shows no remorse for Chloe, the person she lied to. Through the entire season she shows no remorse for making her sister believe that her mother cared for her when it was a lie. Taken from a script.

3. Her entrance (I know that the actual reason is that she was pulled out of the eather, but stick with me) it was sudden. She might have seen an opportunity. Her half sister just revealed every temp hero’s identity and has probably fallen so far out of ladybugs grace that she won’t ever have the bee again. So she decides to swoop in immediately afterwards in hopes of getting a miraculous. If Chloe and most of her classmates got one then it’s reasonable too assume that the person giving miraculouses out is also in that class. So she infiltrates the class and makes friends with everyone in hopes of getting a miraculous. And it works she has the bee. If the show did what I wanted it to do now then it would reveal her to be a villain somewhere in season 6. Preferably a little before the middle of the season so the ramifications of her twistiness can be felt. But season finale works too. As long as it’s continuing for the next season.

Now we get to who I think this is a good idea. Simple, the show has shown to have no kwams destroying characters to make a message (cough cough, Chloe). But unlike Chloe this actually has hints to why it would happen. Have the message be that you can’t be too trusting of people. Zoe’s marysue-ness gave her an miraculous in the second episode she was in. Marinette trusted her so quickly without even spending any time with her to get a feel who who she is. For all we know she could have been a demon waiting to take over the world we didn’t know anything about her.

This would also add drama not connected to the love square. The show has consistently shown that Mari can do no wrong, that’s just plain stupid. But if Zoe turned out to be a villain then Mari would have to face that she misjudged someone and continuously gave a miraculous to some one who outright faked who she was. Mari would have unmistakably made an error, that could have been catastrophic.

If I got more to chose then Chloe would have a redemption ark here but they’ve already ruined two (Chloe because of writer bias and Gabriel, because again writing bias, it wasn’t organic and shouldn’t have happened in the first place, because he abuses his son and never changes).

Also while we’re at it can someone can someone call whatever the French and English version of CPS is, I can assure you that it would be better for Chloe, also is it to late to request someone beat up Andre with a metal baseball bat?

[mammons-tax-returns]

HDJXKDKFF I KNOW I HAVE REQUESTS BUT I NEEDED THIS PLEASE FORGIVE ME THIS WAS SO TIME CONSUMING AND FOR WHAT>> TO SATISFY MY DYSPHORIA/fA<>>A???

synapsis ; Satan and MC often discuss the plot lines of their favorite books, but this time, it’s a little bittersweet

✖️MALE MC✖️ comfort, kinda sad, fluff?

MC could practically feel the past few sleepless nights tugging at his limbs. He yawned into his hand. “I probably shouldn’t have pulled an all nighter last night, huh?” He chuckled a little to make light of the situation.

Satan sighed helplessly, brushing some of his hair out of his eyes. “I told you this would happen. You’d better watch yourself before I force you to get proper hours of sleep.” His emerald eyes never left the pages of his most recent favorite novel series.  “Lucifer isn’t as worried for your grades considering you won’t be here for as long as us.”

“That’s true...  But even still, I wouldn’t want to disappoint Luci.” MC rubbed his eyes a bit before responding.

There was only a scoff in response from the blonde, along with mutters definitely slandering his older brother.

“But never mind that.  Wanna update me on your book?” MC grabbed his own book from the table to his side and took a seat on Satan’s bed.  He has learned from experience that Satan read books far beyond his comprehension level-- far beyond the comprehension level of some of the smartest demons as well.  But the plots are interesting enough that listening to Satan relay the insights to him has become a hobby. 

“Well....  Amanthy ends up saving the prince from the monster right in the nick of time, but get this;  the two of them don’t get married.”  MC finally gets to see Satan’s eyes when he looks up in mild excitement.  They’re blazing so brightly that it nearly burns him as he watches them.  This normally happened when Satan was allowed to rant about a book.

“Amanthy calls off the marriage because he didn’t think that the prince was strong enough to be with him on his journey.  I really recommend you reading this part at the very least.  Now that you know what’s actually happening in it, you can focus on how incredibly this author deepens the understanding of Amanthy and his intents.”

Amanthy...  Would you really end it all just like that?  MC found himself wondering.  It must have been the fact that MC projected him and Satan onto the two ex-love birds in the novel.  Amanthy was clearly a sophisticated book-loving mage similarly to Satan, and the prince was a simple man in a foreign world trying to figure everything out.  Just like MC being thrown into the Devildom.  Together, the two fought and travelled together.

As childish as it is, MC was hopeful that they would end up together in the end, just because of his crush on Satan.  And hearing the news about their wedding almost felt like a personal attack.

He can’t respond immediately.  “Oh.” He breathes, “That’s surprising...  I, uh.  Did not expect that.”  A small laugh.  How was he supposed to answer?

“I feel the same.  It was not hinted at in the slightest...”  Satan held his chin between his thumb and index finger.  “But I understand Amanthy.  I mean, looking at it realistically...  The prince had his sword, and even with the little magic he had, surely he could have fought the beast instead of waiting for it to kill him...  Amanthy is a strong man, and I’m not sure how well he’d hold up being with someone like that.”

“Hmm.  Interesting...  This whole plot was just one turn after another.  You really have an eye for good books...  The beginning of that story was a bit slow.” MC tried to seem as invested as possible.  But it was proving to be much more difficult than it seemed.  Although he knew Satan can’t be held accountable for something like this...  Does he really think that Amanthy was in the right?

There was a knot forming in the very bottom of his stomach.  So then, would he do the same thing in that situation?  Would he really drop me if he had to save me like that?

“The story certainly did pick up speed...  Even I was impressed.  But it truly added to the character development!  Amanthy is a smart man for what he did, and he’s really selling it to me.  I wonder if that shopkeeper from the last chapter will reappear...”  He flipped several pages back as if to see if it was hinted at anywhere.  “She looked like a better fit for our bookworm protagonist...  Or maybe he’s better off on his own?”

MC’s mood just seemed to be going down a never ending decline.  The shopkeeper?  Who was literally everything that he wasn’t?

Satan continued before MC could comment, “The prince was always a bit of a dead weight, I can admit.  There were times that I found myself criticizing him for little things, but never fully disliked him...  Although there was much more to him than his exterior, I suppose.”

Okay, now this was a full blown call out post for MC.  The prince getting called a dead weight for the protagonist?  Suddenly, MC constantly having to be reminded by Satan to sleep seemed a little more daunting.

“So that’s how you look at it...” MC hummed and buried his face in his book, careful with his phrasing and hoping that the intuitive male in front of him couldn’t pick up on his hurt.

“Of course...  How would you see it?” Satan leaned a little closer.

This man will be the end of me, and he won’t even know it.

MC cleared his throat and shifted a little out of discomfort. “I mean...  I guess I sympathize with the prince a little.  He hasn’t really gotten the chance to protect himself...  A-And that’s the first time he’s been left with such a powerful beast, right?  Just a few weeks ago, he was in his castle watching the knights spar, and now he’s here defending himself alone.” Don’t seem suspicious, MC.  You got this.  You can do this at the very least, can’t you?  “Amanthy had a good connection with him.  I can’t believe he’d just overlook that because the prince needs help understandably.  I mean, isn’t that what a lover is for?  To love and support?”

Satan’s lips tugged into a simple smile.  “Ahh, so that’s how it is.  I’m surprised you can pay so much attention right now when you’ve barely slept.  You could barely keep your eyes open earlier.” He playfully ruffled MC’s hair.

His affectionate touch stung, and his words stabbed deep into MC’s core.  He knew no harm was meant, and yet he couldn’t help but feel horrible.  Why couldn’t he just listen to Satan’s nagging?

“But your opinion is just as strong as mine!” MC added quickly, hoping that Satan didn’t think he was disregarding him.  “Maybe calling off the wedding was the right choice in the end...  After all, the prince was kinda shady in the first few chapters right?  Maybe he’ll prove to be the bad guy.”

Satan seemed to think it over for a moment.  “ I suppose...  But the prince is a bit more respectful than that, don’t you think?”

And now he’s defending the prince?  Make up your mind already, MC silently thought.

“Y-Yeah, I guess so...” Am I as respectful as him, someone of literal royalty? MC breathed out slowly.  Even if I am, what difference does that make, Satan?

Some time passed after that, and MC couldn’t get passed a single page in his book.  His mind was a confusing jumble of thoughts.  Some of them hoped that Satan would react differently if proposed the same situation.  And some justified Amanthy’s decision in a sickening submission to his situation.  His ‘situation’ is an inevitable unrequited love for Satan.  And now he’s aware that Satan probably wouldn’t consider someone like him as a spouse even if given the chance.  Great.

“MC?  If you’re tired you should sleep.”

The (H/C) haired male jumped.  He looked up to see Satan way too close for comfort at the moment.  He felt himself flush.  “I’m not!  This story is too interesting for that.”

“You haven’t turned a single page.  And you looked a little scary.” Satan chuckled.  “Is it Lucifer?  Is that rat stressing you for your grades?”

“Well, no...  It’s just,” Phrase this properly, please. “I’m all hung up on that whole marriage situation.  If...  If you had to make that decision, would you call off the marriage too?”

Satan had a look of shock.  “Hmm...  I guess I hadn’t considered that.”  He thought for a second. “I don’t think I would.  I may have chosen Amanthy’s side, but I’m not him.”

Geez, that’s a big relief.

“But what about you?  Would you do the same?”

Okay, now that was unexpected.  MC blinked.  “I definitely wouldn’t have.  You heard my piece earlier.  I wouldn’t leave someone just because they were incapable of things like that.”

...  Was that too much information?

“Really...  Interesting.” Satan leaned back into the cushions on the seat.  “It’s almost spellbinding how similar you are to him, and yet you two have such different ideals.”

“Yeah...” MC answered subconsciously.  “And it really--...  Wait.  Come again?”

How similar I am to Amanthy?  No.  I must have heard wrong.  It just doesn’t make sense.  There’s no way that he would compare me to someone as great as-

“I must have never mentioned it, but I tend to project the people I know onto storybook characters.”  He seemed a little bashful, as he couldn’t quite make eye contact with MC.  “Amanthy is a very selfless mage that happens to have a habit of staying up for days on end to finish his studies.  He...  He reminds me of you.”  A small tinge of pink crawled onto his cheeks. “Sometimes, it also feels like you’re the protagonist of a great story, too.”

MC was flabbergasted.  This conversation is hitting him harder than the actual plot of the book being discussed.  “Th-Then, who do you see as the prince?”  This wasn’t adding up.  He couldn’t imagine who it could be if it wasn’t him.

“Me, of course.”  Satan responded without missing a single beat.  “I hate to admit it, but as the youngest brother, I tend to...  Blow things out of proportion.  And the others say it’s because I haven’t experienced the same things as them.  I don’t quite understand it...  But I guess I really don’t need to.”  He looked lost in his own mind as he explained.

He continued as MC struggled to put everything together. “The prince was told many of the same things I have heard.  But I think the reason I relate to him so largely is because I also feel little out of place, as many of his monologues describe my exact feelings so often.”

“Out of place..?  Why is that?” MC’s words left his mouth before he could consider them.  “Err, if you don’t want to talk about it, it’s fine.”

“No, It’s nice to get things like this off of my chest occasionally.”  He paused briefly. “I guess I’m just not used to someone understanding me quite like you do.  Don’t get me wrong, It’s not bad at all.  It’s just a bit...  Odd to me.  Sometimes I wonder if I deserve it.”

“Satan...  Of course you do.  Otherwise I wouldn’t have taken the time and indulged in the same things as you.” MC felt his heart throb.  Of course Satan would look into the story from a metaphorical stance rather than literal, like he did.  He was the one actually reading the pages, after all.  That’s just the type of person he is.  There’s no real beast in this story in his eyes.  The prince was just Satan stuck in his own thoughts.

“But...  Surely, this doesn’t mean that you thought I would have made the same choice as Amanthy, right?”

Satan hummed.  “You’ve got me unraveled under your fingertips, MC.  But you’d be mistaken...  I did.  But even if something like that ever happened, I don’t think I’d let you go quite as easily as the prince did.”  His smile had hints of mischief in it.  “You’re stuck with me.”

MC’s eyes widened a little.  There was so much information to take in at once.  “Well...  Rest assured, then?”

“Agreed.”  Satan nodded. “I’m just hoping you won’t get fed up with having to constantly calm me down before a wreck a building.”  He laughed, but it seemed sad, in a way.

Ahh...  So that’s just it.  Satan was insecure about something that I don’t mind helping him with a thousand times over.  MC found himself smiling.  Demons were much more similar to humans than he thought.

“That’s a bit cute, Satan.”

“What’re you on about?”

MC reached over and pat the top of his head in the way he knows he enjoys it.  “I wouldn’t let you go so easily, either.  I’m not Amanthy, and you’re not the prince.  You’re gonna have to try a little harder to get rid of me.”

Satan was frozen in the spot.  He suddenly understood what Levi’s shows would describe when they said, “time seemed to slow, and nothing else mattered other than him.”

“I don’t think I’d ever dream of it...”

For the first time ever, he felt as if he was receiving his very own happy ending in his own novel. 

[saltandburnsis]

dead in the water, pt. 2

Characters: Reader, Dean, Sam

Age: 20

Warnings: Drowning mention

Word Count: 2,993

Summary: The investigation brings on new connections, revelations and deaths around every corner as you and your brothers get closer to finding the real monster of Lake Manitoc.

A/N: Thank you to everyone who sent messages while I was away. I appreciate every one of you so, so much. Thankfully (and miraculously) both of my grandparents have made full recoveries. (Still positive for COVID but symptom-free.) As usual, all dialogue taken directly from the episode will be in italics.

~ ~ ~ ~

“So, there’s the three drowning victims from this year,” Sam said, his eyes never leaving the computer screen in front of him. You were going through the clothes with Dean, silently planning a trip to the local laundromat as the “too used to wear again” pile grew larger and larger by the second.

“And before that?” Dean asked, lifting a shirt to his nose before setting it down on the bed beside him—the first of few wearable clothes.

“Uh, yeah. Six more, spread out over the past 35 years. Those bodies were never recovered, either. If there is something out there, it’s picking up its pace,” Sam replied.

“So, what? We got a lake monster on a binge?” Dean threw a pair of jeans to the large pile behind you.

“This whole lake monster theory—it just bugs me,” you cut in, mimicking your eldest brother’s actions. At this rate, you’d spend more time at the laundromat than working on the case.

“Why?” Dean asked. Sam continued to click through the articles on his screen.

“Loch Ness, Lake Champlain—there are literally hundreds of eyewitness accounts, but here, there’s almost nothing. Whatever is out there, no one’s living to talk about it,” you explained. Dean walked over to Sam, standing behind him and reading over his shoulder. He pointed at one of the articles.

“Bar. Christopher Bar. Where have I heard that name before?” he asked.

“Christopher Bar, the victim in May,” Sam mused, clicking around a bit to find the article he was looking for.

“Isn’t that Andrea’s last name?” you asked as he searched, making your way over to the table and leaning over Sam’s right shoulder. He pulled up the article he was looking for, and the three of you were met with a picture of Lucas. He was wrapped in a towel, and you could only assume it was his grandfather standing beside him.

“Huh. Christopher Bar was Andrea’s husband. Lucas’s father. Apparently, he took Lucas out swimming. Lucas was on a floating wooden platform when Chris drowned. Two hours before the kid got rescued,” Sam summarized. He clicked on the picture so it filled the screen, Lucas’s terrified face staring back at you.

“Maybe we have an eyewitness after all,” you said, moving away from the table and looking anywhere but the picture. Dean did the same, though his eyes were locked on the computer screen.

“No wonder that kid was so freaked out. Watching one of your parents die isn’t something you just get over.”

~ ~ ~ ~

Dean pulled up to the playground, and parked. He didn’t shut the car off, however, until he’d surveyed the area and spotted Andrea.

“Let’s go” was all he said before getting out of the car. He waited for you and Sam to get out before starting the walk over to where Andrea sat.

“Can we join you?” Sam asked once the three of you were in close proximity to her. Andrea looked up at the three of you and smiled.

“I’m here with my son,” she replied, glancing over at Lucas before turning back to you.

“Oh. Mind if I say ‘hi’?” Dean asked. Without waiting for a response, he turned away and walked towards Lucas. Andrea scoffed, smiling, and looked back at you and Sam.

“Tell your friend this whole “Jerry McGuire” thing’s not going to work on me,” she said.

“I don’t think that’s what this is about,” you answered, giving her a small, reassuring smile before looking back at Dean. Andrea mimicked your smile before turning her attention to Dean and her son. She rose from her seat and stood beside you on your left, Sam to your right. The three of you watched in an awkward silence for a moment, like parents only congregated to ensure their children’s safety. You decided to break the tense stillness.

“So, has Lucas always been so…reserved?” You asked, watching as Lucas almost refused to acknowledge Dean’s presence. A humorless laugh escaped Andrea’s lips, and she turned to face you.

“No, no. He used to be so talkative when he was younger. He shut down when his dad passed.”

“We’re sorry to hear that,” Sam interjected when Andrea paused. She sighed, crossing her arms. “I’ve taken him to therapists…done everything under the sun that I could, but still, Lucas hasn’t said a word. Not even to me. Not since his dad’s accident.”

“Yeah, we heard. Sorry,” said Dean as he went to stand beside her.

“What are the doctors saying?” Sam asked. Andrea sighed again, a sort of exasperated sigh that usually accompanied information relayed countless times.

“Oh, that it’s a kind of post-traumatic stress,” she replied. Something about her tone led you to believe she didn’t believe that herself.

“That can’t be easy for either of you,” you sympathized.

“We moved in with my dad. That helps a lot. It’s just…when I think about what Lucas went through—what he saw…” Andrea trailed off, focusing her gaze back on her son.

“Kids are strong. You’d be surprised what they can deal with,” Dean assured her.

“You know, he used to have such life. He was so hard to keep up with, to tell you the truth.” Her nostalgic smile was short-lived as her thoughts settled back in the present. “Now, he just sits there. Drawing those pictures, playing with those army men. I just wish—” She cut herself off when Lucas approached, bending slightly to greet the boy. “Hey, sweetie.” Lucas kept his eyes on the ground in front of him, but went to Dean’s side and held out a picture.

“Thanks.” Dean took the picture and looked down at it. “Thanks, Lucas.” He turned his head to look back at the younger boy, but he’d already set back toward the bench. Andrea watched him for a moment then looked back at Dean, mouth slightly agape.

~ ~ ~ ~

The door of your motel room swung open and Sam walked in, letting it shut itself.

“So, I think it’s safe to say we can rule out Nessie,” he announced. He looked to Dean, who sat at the end of the bed currently covered in clothes—clean clothes you’d just brought back from the laundromat.

“What do you mean?” Dean asked as Sam sat at the edge of the second bed.

“I just drove by the Carlton’s house,” he explained. “There was an ambulance there. Will Carlton is dead.”

“He drowned?” Dean asked in disbelief.

“Yep, in the sink.”

“What the hell? So, Y/N is right; this isn’t a creature. We’re dealing with something else,” said Dean.

“Yeah, but what?” you asked, dropping the shirt in your hands. Sam shook his head.

“I don’t know. A water wraith maybe? Some kind of demon? I mean, something that controls water…” Dean trailed off, and the three of you looked at each other, eyes widening with the revelation you seemed to come to simultaneously. “Water that comes from the same source.”

“The lake,” you continued your brother’s thoughts. “Which would explain why it’s upping the body count. The lake is draining. It’ll be dry in a few months. Whatever this thing is, whatever it wants, it’s running out of time.”

“And if it can get through the pipes, it can get to anyone almost anywhere,” Sam added.

“This is going to happen again soon.” Dean moved to sit at the table and began putting his shoes back on, ready to go after this thing. You grabbed your boots from their spot beside the bed.

“And we do know one other thing for sure,” Sam continued. “We know that this has got something to do with Bill Carlton.”

“Yeah. It took both his kids,” you said, pointing out the obvious in Sam’s statement as you tied your laces.

“And I’ve been asking around. Lucas’s dad, Chris—Bill Carlton’s godson,” Sam revealed.

“Let’s go pay Mr. Carlton a visit,” Dean decided, rising from his seat.

~ ~ ~ ~

As if he’d never moved from the last time the three of you visited his home, Bill Carlton sat on his dock, looking out at the water. His back was to the house, and he made no move to acknowledge your arrival at any point as the three of you walked over. His grief was obvious in his movements—or lack of, that is—but it was a whole other thing to see the despair on his face, the sorrow in his eyes when you approached the man.

“Mr. Carlton?” Sam asked. “We’d like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.”

“We’re from the Department of-”

“I don’t care who you’re with,” Bill cut Dean off. “I’ve answered enough questions today.” His voice quivered as he spoke, always on the verge of tears. You stepped forward to speak with him.

“Your son said he saw something in that lake. What about you? You ever see anything out there?” Your voice was empathetic, but professional—you’d found it was enough to give you an air of authority, but comforting enough to allow you to gain the trust of your witness. Bill, however, remained silent, refusing to meet your gaze. “Mr. Carlton, Sophie’s drowning and Will’s death—we think there might be a connection. To you or your family.”

“My children are gone. It’s…it’s worse than dying.” Bill blinked away tears and finally turned to look up at you. The air fell still for a moment, punctuating his words. He turned away before he spoke again. “Go away…please.” Dean nudged you before nodding his head in the direction of the car. You wouldn’t get anywhere badgering him any further. Sam and Dean left the dock, but you stayed planted in your spot, pursing your lips.

“I’m sorry,” you said softly. Bill only looked down at the ground and shut his eyes. With that, you finally turned and followed your brothers back to the car.

“What do you think?” Sam asked once you were back at the car and out of Bill’s earshot.

“I think the poor guy’s been through hell. I also think he’s not telling us something.” Dean answered.

“So now what?” Sam asked, resting his arms on the hood of the car. You went to stand beside him, ready to get in, but Dean had stopped and was now looking up at the house.

“What is it?” you asked.

“Huh. Maybe Bill’s not the only one who knows something.” He pulled Lucas’s picture out of his jacket pocket and held it out in front of him. The drawing was identical to the house standing before you.

~ ~ ~ ~

“I’m sorry, but I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Andrea said, putting her hands on her hips.

“I just need to talk to him, just for a few minutes,” Dean pleaded.

“He won’t say anything. What good’s it gonna do?” Andrea asked him. Sam was the one to answer her.

“Andrea, we think more people might get hurt. We think something’s happening out there.”

“My husband, the others—they just drowned. That’s all.” Andrea shook her head, adamant in her beliefs. You sighed.

“If that’s what you really believe, then we’ll go,” you said. “But if you think there’s even a possibility that something else could be going on here, please let Dean talk to your son.” Andrea didn’t reply, and she cast her gaze downward. You could practically see the gears turning as she weighed the pros and cons of letting the three of you upstairs. Moments later, she looked back at the three of you and nodded.

“Alright.” She moved past you and walked up the stairs, motioning for the three of you to follow.  You stood against the wall once you’d all reached Lucas’s room, standing close enough to see what was going on, but far enough back to give Dean space to do his thing without an audience. He stepped into the room and knelt down on the floor beside Lucas.

“Hey, Lucas. Remember me?” It was silent for a moment as he looked down at two of Lucas’s pictures. “You know, I, uh…I wanted to thank you for that last drawing. But the thing is, I need your help again.” Dean pulled the picture of the Carlton house out of his pocket and set it down in front of Lucas. “How did you know to draw this? Did you know something bad was gonna happen? Maybe you could nod yes or no for me. You’re scared.” Dean nodded. “It’s okay. I understand. See, when I was your age, I saw something real bad happen to my mom, and I was scared, too. I didn’t feel like talking, just like you. But, see, my mom, I know she wanted me to be brave. I think about that everyday. And I do my best to be brave. And maybe your dad wants you to be brave, too.” You quickly wiped a tear from your eye. The three of you had always had a bond, having lost your mothers to demons at such young ages, but Dean was the only one with real, concrete memories of Mary. Having been two when your own mother passed, you had a vague recollection of her, but nothing as real as what Dean had.

Suddenly, Angela’s eyes widened and her mouth fell open again. You looked back into the room to see what you had missed. Lucas was looking up at Dean, meeting his eyes. He grabbed another picture and held it out to your brother. Dean looked down at it then smiled at the boy. “Thanks, Lucas.”

~ ~ ~ ~

You sat in the back of the car, leaning forward and looking over Sam’s shoulder at the picture he held in his hands. Dean sped down the street, headed back towards the motel.

“Andrea said the kid never drew like that ’til his dad died,” Dean said.

“There are cases. Going through a traumatic experience could make certain people more sensitive to premonitions, psychic tendencies—” Sam relayed some Supernatural Psychology 101, but was cut off by Dean.

“Whatever’s out there, what if Lucas is tapping into it somehow?” He asked. Sam started to respond, but Dean continued his thought. “I mean, it’s only a matter of time before somebody else drowns. So if you got a better lead, please.”

“Alright,” Sam relented. “We got another house to find.”

“The only problem is, there’s about a thousand yellow two-stories in this county alone,” Dean complained. You reached forward and took the picture from Sam, moving it so Dean could better see it.

“See this church?” You asked, pointing to the building in the foreground. “Bet there’s less than a thousand of those around here.”

“Oh, kid thinks she’s so smart,” Dean mocked. You smirked.

“Only ‘cause I am,” you responded triumphantly, sitting back in your seat and setting the picture down next to you. Sam chuckled at the two of you before looking at Dean, shifting the mood of the car when he began to speak.

“You know, uh, what you said about mom—you never told me that before.” Dean kept his eyes on the road ahead.

“It’s no big deal,” he replied, voice monotone. He looked over at Sam when the younger brother refused to look away and grimaced. “Oh, god, we’re not gonna have to hug or anything, are we?” Sam smiled but shook his head, finally turning away from Dean. The two of them remained silent, though, and you decided to break the tension.

“Aw, look at college boy, all in touch with his feelings,” you teased, reaching forward to push on Sam’s shoulder. “You’re turning it into a real chick-flick in here.” You sat back and smiled when your brothers started laughing; your job was done.

~ ~ ~ ~

It had taken a little over half an hour to find the location from Lucas’s drawing, but your assertion had been correct and the three of you had found the white church and, subsequently, the yellow house with relative ease. You had opted to stay in the car this time, letting Sam and Dean go investigate this part of the puzzle. You didn’t have a good feeling about what they were going to find, and after your encounter with Bill, you thought it best to stay back, lest you start getting emotional. Sam and Dean were back in the car within twenty minutes and as always, were quick to fill you in on their discoveries.

“Okay, this little boy, Peter Sweeney, vanishes, and this is all connected to Bill Carlton somehow,” you summarized, looking between the two of them.

“Yeah, Bill sure as hell seems to be hiding something, huh?” Dean nodded, eyes on the road in front of him as he drove down the street, on his way back to the Carlton house.

“And Bill—the people he loves—they’re all getting punished,” Sam continued.

“So what if Bill did something to Peter?” Dean asked, connecting the dots in front of you.

“What if Bill killed him?” Sam specified.

“Peter’s spirit would be furious,” you said. “It’d want revenge. I mean, it’s possible.”

You were back at Bill’s house minutes later. The three of you got out and looked to the dock, only to find it empty.

“Mr. Carlton!” Sam called, looking around. Dean looked back to the water and spotted Bill in the boat, going out into the water.

“Hey, check it out,” he said, getting you and Sam to follow his gaze. The three of you ran down the beach and onto the dock, calling after Bill.

“Turn the boat around! Come back here!” you yelled, your brothers calling out similarly. Bill only looked back at you before turning his head and speeding up. Seconds later the boat shot out of the water, flying back towards the dock. You jumped back at the sudden explosion of water. The boat landed upside down on top of Bill and, almost instantly, both disappeared under the water.

~ ~ ~ ~

SPN rewrite taglist: @mrsfortune1306 @marvelous-glims @headsup-i-am-very-bad-at-writing

forever taglist: @griff1ndor @gothsatanicrapunzel @choosemyname @mersuperwholocked-lowlife @not-astounding @vicmc624 @idksupernatural

[scientistowengottlieb-newtkelly]

Thoughts and feelings about Pacific Rim 2?

you sure you wanna open up that particular can of worms?

movie review time! be warned i'm not in a good mood as i am shaking in pain, however this review would have been scathing regardless. and none of this is to say pacific rim is perfect, it's not, but... aye, i have no words for the world of difference there. oh wait! i do:

so. first and foremost, i hate it. as both a movie and a sequel. did i find it entertaining? yes, mildly, so i suppose it did its job, however the only thing that keeps me watching it is because, simply, it's part of the pacific rim franchise whether we like it or not. therefore, i squeeze as much salvageable content from it as i can, such as how one might analyze the precursors, how we are to view hermann and newt as characters pre-, during, and post-uprising, what we are to expect from drifting (though this one i take with a grain of salt, there is a whole other rant preserved for the joke of an attempt to develop that shit within the movie)

one of my biggest issues with pacific rim is really simple: it plays out like DeKnight did not watch the first fucking movie or was scrolling through twitter while doing it and decided he'd make a cash grab since the first one was relatively popular. "haha the kaiju were going for mount fuji the whole time!!" bitch no they weren't!!! why the fuck did they end up anywhere near sydney, australia, then!!! why did they turn tail on places like manila and san fran instead of heading straight for japan!!! WHY DID THE ONE THAT WAS IN JAPAN NOT SUCCEED, THERE'S NO WAY WITH THOSE MARK 1 JAEGERS THEY'D HAVE BEEN ABLE TO REASONABLY FIGURE OUT THEIR PLAN AND WHERE THEY WERE GOING IN TIME TO STOP THEM!!! newt literally lays out what they are doing in the first movie and they completely ignored that!!! not to mention, if the destruction from elements found in mount fuji would have been enough to terraform the earth, WHY DIDN'T THEY JUST FUCKING DO THAT WHEN THEY WERE SUPPOSEDLY ON EARTH AGES AGO??? THERE WERE VOLCANOES WITH THOSE SAME ELEMENTS BEFORE RIGHT NOW, VOLCANOES ARE NOT A RELATIVELY NEW THING EARTH CREATED SUDDENLY AND I WOULD IMAGINE NEITHER ARE THOSE ELEMENTS!!! IT MAKES NO SENSE!!! and.... okay the fucking drones. how did those bitches make breaches??? we know the breach is some result of precursor/kaiju technology, apparently they know the breach's atomic structure as hermann said in the first movie, but how tf some kaiju organs and tech from earth only is ALL it takes to open a breach... illudes and confuses me... why were no more breaches made by the precursors once they realized how long and how many resources it was taking to kill the humans off??? if it's??? shit they could do with simple earth materials + their own biology??? they could have ended things much faster??? shit just doesn't add up, idk, that was Vague and Annoyed Me

and the jaegers.... were....... strange? the fight scenes were so underwhelming, i could count on one hand the number of maneuvers—NOT SCENES, MANEUVERS—i thought were badass and moved well. their fighting was confusing and paced really weird and some of the moves they pulled... don't... work like that... like some of those scenes were just hand-to-hand combat but in big robot form and they didn't sit right with me at all.

and the characters......... oh my word, the characters. look: i love jake pentecost with all of my heart and soul and john boyega's beautiful acting just barely saves the movie from its poor writing. i do love him as a character. but can someone explain to me why in the world they thought it was a good idea to make the only black guy a black market thief/runner, deep-record criminal with daddy and authority issues, and who they dare try to play off as some kind of lazy??? they made him every stereotype they could and said "yeah let's go with that". i'm- aaaaaaaaaaaaaa and what was with the child soldiers??? ROBOCOPS?????? mako....... character assassination at its worst........ my baby......... but the movie was paced so GOD DAMN POORLY I GOT BORED AND LITERALLY MISSED HER DYING THE FIRST TIME I WATCHED IT. and i couldn't tell you the names of half of those poor damn kids, i really couldn't. and can i also say they killed off one of the only two darker skinned kids?? like y'all???? the other darker skinned kids (one of the children i can't remember the names of because it was uttered ONCE in the entire movie or some shit) didn't even GET characterization. my whole heart goes out to her and those other underdeveloped fucks. speaking of...... i am ashamed about jules. from the movie that brought us the mako mori test, they threw in a girl simply for the sake of some shitty, awkward, and unexplained love triangle between jake and White Angst without much else to put to her name. she deserved better. amara was... a decent shot, but very hit or miss because of the writing. i, personally, am very neutral about her leaning towards liking her, but i know people who swing love and who swing hate. liwen was like,,,, they tried really hard to make her unlikable at the beginning because "oh no, she must be the villain! GOTTEM plot twist!!!" and then suddenly she's no longer. threatening everyone except newt. idk i feel like they leaned to heavily one way and i got whiplash when she's actually another but there was nothing to... portray that. at all. i do like her character, and that says a lot because they got me to sympathize with a capitalist without actually regretting it later, but there could/should have been More there. she was powerful, though, in multiple different aspects, and we saw that from her CONSISTENTLY and i 😳🥵👀💕 mako mori test pass for her

now, let's talk about hermann (and by extention, newton, however he'll be getting a section all his own the rat bastard). that man is one of the single instances of decent cross-movie characterization i saw in the whole god damn film. the idea that he takes on newton's roles, that he is more outspoken for himself, that he is just slightly more unhinged after his drift with newton: THAT is on point. he's himself, you can see it, you still know that he's hermann with ever step, but there's something that has shifted in him in those 10 years and it's good without being too much. the "i still get nightmares" scene, the way he presents himself, that scene gives me chills because god bless burn gorman and his acting ability. every face and intonation of his voice is just wonderful and i think his performance was great for what he was given. king shit.

the biggest disappointment of my life came in the form of a kaiju vest wearing bitch at work. at his corporate job. as a boss. for a tech company that undermines all of his and, frankly, hermann's work over their lifetimes. 10 years older and exaggerated to the teeth. newton "move you fascist" geiszler. let me preface this by stating for all to see that i do not hate the idea of newton being the villain. story wise it was a bold move and there was something possible there. BUT THE IMPLICATION THAT ONE OF THE MOST OBVIOUSLY NEURODIVERGENT CHARACTERS IN THE WHOLE FUCKING FRANCHISE, ESPECIALLY GIVEN THAT HE HAS BEEN CHARACTERIZED AS HAVING A "BORDERLINE MANIC PERSONALITY" AKA HAVING ONE OF THE MOST DEMONIZED MENTAL ILLNESSES OUT THERE, ENDS UP ACTING AS THE GOD DAMN VILLAIN OF THE STORY IS A HOT GARBAGE TAKE WHEN YOU FACTOR IN THINGS LIKE POOR WRITING NOT MAKING IT CLEAR WHETHER OR NOT NEWTON IS EVEN IN CONTROL OF HIS OWN FACULTIES AND THE VAGUENESS OF "WILL HE BE 'REDEEMED' OR NOT" BEING UP IN THE AIR LIKELY NEVER TO BE CANONICALLY FUCKING ANSWERED BECAUSE BECKHAM AND DEKNIGHT SHAT OUT A MOVIE THAT BOMBED IN THE BOX OFFICE. we aren't even gonna TALK about the fact that this bitch got AWAY with it despite not even acting in a remotely stable way comparable to himself in the first movie in the 10 years he supposedly dropped off the map from all of his friends because, clearly, hermann hadn't seen him or he wouldn't be so excited with a picture of the two of them on his desk, nor would he have to tell newton about his idea for rocket thrusters with kaiju blood fuel because he would have simply written to him about it. for some strange reason people see his ass show up decked out in a suit he wouldn't even wear for Stacker Fucking Pentecost and a behavior of "Haha Gotta Listen To The Boss" and think "ah, yes, well, time changes a person. THIS BITCH HAS APPARENTLY BEEN LIKE THIS THE WHOLE TIME, YOU THINK HE GOT A JOB WITH LIWEN LOOKING AND ACTING LIKE HE DID BEFORE AND THERE WAS A SHIFT OVER TIME? NO, HE HAD TO HAVE CHANGED IN A SPLIT DECISION AND LIED ABOUT HIMSELF THROUGH HIS TEETH AND NO ONE CONTACTED HIM, OR WAS WORRIED ABOUT HIM, OR DECIDEDLY THOUGHT "YOU KNOW, HE MAY BE EMBOLDENED THAT HE SAVED THE WORLD, BUT I THINK SOMETHING LIKE THAT WOULD HAVE THE EXACT OPPOSITE EFFECT ON HIM AND HE WOULD DO HIS BEST TO AMPLIFY HIS CURRENT STANDING TRAITS. LISTENING TO AND KISSING THE BOOT OF AUTHORITY FIGURES? DIVORCING HIMSELF FROM HIS WORK WITH KAIJU XENOBIOLOGY THAT EVEN HERMANN PICKED UP? TO BECOME THE THING HE HATES? AND FOR WHAT? MONEY? FAME? BITCH WHO ARE YOU?" unreasonable. ridiculous attempt to do this just for a plot twist that was underwhelming at best. i've decided to stick to the fan theory that he was not in control 99% of the time but literally that movie causes such a hellfire path to appear in my wake as i think about it because i know people who don't take it like that and think newt wants what's happening because "haha horny kaiju man" and i wish to scream at the top of my lungs because this is exactly WHY you CANNOT spare ANY EXPENSE to the GOOD, PROPER, INTRICATE directing and writing of a character who is neurodivergent and also ONE OF THE CENTERS OF NOT JUST THE MOVIE YOU'RE WRITING, BUT THE FUCKING MOVIE AFTER THAT. i could go on but i sincerely don't fucking want to, despite how long i've been waiting for someone to willingly hear me out on all of this. all i'll say is if by some miracle they are greenlit for a third film and deknight's working on it and i see ANY sign of a bury your gays end for newt, i'm going to commit the first hate crime against a cishet white male.

to end, the only valid kaiju in that movie was the mega-kaiju, i don't remember the appearance or the names of the three that got through the breaches but the mega-kaiju could kill me and i'd die happy 🥰 beautiful design, that scale comparison when it came face to face with newt? amazing, chills, *chef's kiss* there are exactly two things i liked about uprising and that bitch is one of them.

sorry if this isn't what you wanted, but as i said i am in a bit of a bad mood and have been curled up in bed trying not to think that i'm dying and i've repressed all of this for a couple months now and very few people have actually heard PORTIONS of my frustration so. here it is.

[slo-liveblog]

Witch’s Heart: Bonus Stage Final Thoughts

Hello hello! Honestly I can’t believe I finished Bonus Stage after all this time... took me quite a few months, oof. Many thanks to the handful of you that stuck around during all that, and to the few new people who popped in too! Hope you’ve all been taking care of yourselves, and don’t mind the long post.

CHARACTERS

Claire: After finishing the first game, I didn’t know it was possible to love Claire even more. I was absolutely wrong. The way she took charge at the end was incredibly powerful and I’m so fucking proud of her, even if it’s sad as hell. I really really like how the game both criticizes and respects her unconditional empathy, I think there’s definitely room for both conversations and they’re both incredibly fascinating. I do think she suffers from some of the most writing pitfalls out of everyone, though. Like I said while playing, there’s really no reason given why she wouldn’t confide in Leon, or at least acknowledge that he’s likely the person there she can trust most. In addition, I found it really bizarre that Claire just... never tried to talk to Reynaldo or Sirius after learning about their pasts. Like, at all. I understand why the emphasis on Ashe was important, but it was jarring and kind of unsatisfying to see Claire act so uncharacteristically by not even really acknowledging them after their stories were over. It’s more of a story problem than a character problem though, I think, and I understand why it had to be that way especially considering the conclusions will touch on a lot of the missing pieces- I just wish there could’ve been more of a justification for it. The way her personality was explored through her interactions with everyone, and how other characters were depicted based on their reactions to her ideals, was incredible and I would die for her.

Ashe: Oh Ashe. Fuck Ashe. I do appreciate the depth given to his character, he’s definitely far more complex than I expected and kudos on that. I don’t really empathize with him as much as I do the other four mains, but I do think his writing is incredible and his relationships with Leon and Claire continue to be some of the most interesting to see play out, if not THE most interesting. Star shaped carrots man. Fucked up. Super excited to see how his dynamics with everyone continue, and he’s probably the character I’m the most interested to see make decisions going into these conclusions. His arc feels the most... unfinished, he’s never really reached any sort of closure at any point of the story so far and especially not bonus stage so it’ll be cool to see where he ends up.

Reynaldo: MY BOY. I’M SO FUCKING PROUD OF HIM... going into bonus stage my expectations for him were pretty much rock bottom from the moment I realized he didn’t have a single line in the opening scene outside of saying his name. Like, I kinda made my peace with the possibility that the writer just wasn’t that interested in developing him, and would rather spend time on the rest of the mains. But holy SHIT did he pull through in the second half of the game. The subtle but noticeable build to him deciding to side with Claire was so, so well done. I still wish there was a little more solidity to his characterization- I do have to reach way further to understand him than I do any of the other mains- but I think what we DID get for him was wonderful and god, I appreciate him so much. Definitely the character that improved the most for me from the first game to bonus stage. I can’t wait for his conclusion, here’s to hoping we do in fact get it this year. The way his similarities with Claire were set up makes me SO excited to see how their relationship develops when it’s actually the focus, and how he’ll be fleshed out more in general so we can finally have a clearer picture. Because to be honest, as much as I like the development he was given in bonus stage... there’s still a LOT of gaps to fill in with him.

Sirius: continues to be the perfect human being 1000000/10

Leon: Sweet baby boy whose expressions always make me cry. Leon is still a character I’m sort of on the fence on. Like, he’s very well written and easy to sympathize with. But I realized I’m always far more interested in how OTHER characters react to HIM than the other way around, though. He’s not really a character I personally would find interesting in general, he’s a little simple for my tastes, but that doesn’t mean I’m not 100% invested in seeing him end up happy... eventually. Something tells me it might be a while.

Charlotte: I feel like Charlotte definitely got the short end of the stick in bonus stage, moreso than any other character. Her only memorable scenes that I can think of off the top of my head were when she told Leon he could kill everyone but Claire, when she thought about how Ashe probably can’t be saved, and when she reacted to Claire after the completion of Ashe’s backstory. None of those scenes even come close to hitting the same level of intrigue or emotion as the sparse Charlotte scenes had in the first game, even if that last one does have some interesting bits in it. I said at the end of the first game that we’d only really scratched the surface and I was interested to see more from her and, well, my opinion hasn’t changed. I don’t think there was much I would’ve wanted out of her here anyway unlike the boys, so I’m not especially disappointed. Just hoping we get more excellent Charlotte moments somewhere down the line.

Zizel: I would’ve liked Zizel’s deal to be... a bit more built upon, to be honest? I could just have missed things along the way, but her triumphant moment is a little harder to get in to when we know almost nothing about her or the way she thinks beyond stuff reveled about her in the same scene. I could definitely see that her siding with Claire was being foreshadowed, but I think there needed to be juuust a bit more characterization given to her for that particular development to have the impact it seemed to be going for. Still, it was a good moment, and I think it definitely made up for a lot of the sore lack of Zizel in both games. Can’t wait to see what she does from here.

Lime: Goddddd. Okay look, I still love Lime probably more than I reasonably should. She’s wonderful and I love her design and her personality and her backstory and her motivations but... yea she’s a very very bad person. Bonus stage did really make it clear that she’s not just lashing out occasionally, and this isn’t anywhere near harmless teasing. She’s full on the primary villain of the game, in some ways, and has been doing pretty horrific stuff knowing (and intending for) exactly what she’s causing. Which we sort of knew in the first game anyway, but now it’s very explicit. And like, damn dude... I do wanna see what’s gonna happen with her. It’s tough, wanting to see a character get their comeuppance and stop hurting others while simultaneously just wanting good things for them. this really is how y’all ashe stans feel huh

Side Characters: I gotta say, I really loved a lot of the smaller characters introduced in bonus stage and the way their presence added to the development of the mains. Dorothy and Nicholas, the old dude and the thief woman (I didn’t actually realize until just now but nobody in Wilbert’s backstory had a name, huh. It may not have been intentional but considering that he might literally just not remember that far back I actually really like that decision.), and Ashe’s family and friends were really smartly integrated into the story’s themes and I appreciated that a lot. also lucy and coco rights

Overall This one gets a fucking 10/10 from me chief, some small issues certainly but as close to perfect as they get, in terms of the kinds of stories I like.

STORY

I debated breaking this up into chunks, like I did in the first game with the scenarios, but I feel like the writing quality is more or less consistent throughout the game so it would be a little redundant. I definitely need more time to think on bonus stage before I have a really solid opinion, but at the moment I kind of think the story was even better than the first game? My only major issue was the aforementioned use of Claire’s character, where she’d only really react to the boy’s backstories as she finished hearing them, with the exception of Ashe’s. And her not confiding in Leon. But other than that, it was a constant rollercoaster, with pretty much every scene being jam packed with 3000 layers of character development and relationship building with lore sprinkled in. The elements that were amazing in the first game, like the fun dynamics between the characters and the subtle and unobtrusive exposition, are nothing but improved upon. I do wish we got to play more with the idea of the demon girls living alongside the mains, I think that aspect was severely downplayed almost immediately after it was introduced, but I’m crossing my fingers those potential dynamics get some time in the conclusions. Once again, my biggest gripes with the story are just that I feel like there’s so much more to explore and I can’t wait to see how the rest plays out. still giving this bitch a 10/10 on this one it was everything I wanted and more

GAMEPLAY

Combat: This was kind of... not even really utilized in bonus stage, which I didn’t actually realize until just now. There weren’t any real “boss battles” in the way there were in the first game, the closest thing to it would I guess be Dorothy’s showdown. Considering I didn’t even notice, I think that was a perfectly fine decision. The climax worked well without any actual fights. The battle mechanics continued to be functional and everything, just... not much of a thing.

Demon Requests: It could just be because I played a lot of bonus stage at a very different pace than I did the first game but the demon requests didn’t feel as frequent or intrusive this time around. I was always really excited to get to the request portion anyway cause of the photo booth and all the cool new areas, I had a super fun time using the deep sea bubble and I think overall the stuff that was added to the fantasy spaces was really neat. also lucy and coco rights

Minigames: Very hit or miss. It felt like the minigames were either so quick and easy they were hardly memorable or so tedious they made me wanna die. Take that with a grain of salt, though, I’m really bad at video games. There were very few of them anyway so it doesn’t matter much, but I guess it would’ve been nice if the minigames were less... Like that. To be fair, they were all still pretty charming or cool conceptually. Can’t really complain about getting to fucking shoot people as Dorothy even if it was hell to play.

Overall The demon requests were actually really enjoyable this time around, but the minigames and combat were kind of downplayed. Not to big of a deal, though, it’s not as if they were a focal point of the game to begin with. 7/10

ART & SOUND

Character Design: Not much to say that I didn’t already say after the first game, but the special bonus stage outfits are absolute bangers and I wish they got shown more often. And maybe I would’ve liked the guys to have a little more variety to their suits. But that’s nitpicking, Claire and the demon girl’s dresses are absolutely gorgeous.

Sprites and BGs: The overall art quality definitely got shaky in places but I gotta say, they pulled out ALL the stops for the sprites in this one. Ashe just fully has an entirely new set of them, and everybody else gets tons of new expressions too, all of which are super super good at conveying incredibly specific emotions. All I’m saying is, this would be a totally different game for me without the sprites, and I was always ecstatic to see new ones and figure out what was going on in the character’s head based on them.

OST and Sound Effects: Again, pretty much the same deal as the first game. I think there was a bit of a higher frequency for songs that made me immediately want to search for them so I could listen to them later though, thank god for that. So many good tracks.

Overall Continued to impress me, and then some. Only a slight improvement from the first game, in my opinion, but even that is pretty impressive since I didn’t have many issues with the first game to begin with. 8/10

So uh, in other words, I really really loved this game. Cannot WAIT to start best boy’s conclusion!!!

[prolestariwrites]

Time To Go [2]: Dante Makes Hot Dogs And Doesn’t Get Laid

Fandom: Devil May Cry Rating: M Characters: Nero, Dante, Vergil, Kyrie, Nico, Trish, Morrison Tags: Mystery, Humor, Missing Person, First Time, Family Drama, Family Bonding, Post-Canon Chapter: 2/9 Chapter [1]

Summary: When Kyrie goes missing, Nero goes on a desperate search to find her. Unfortunately, Dante and Vergil go too. Sparda boys shenanigans, fighting demons, a smattering of family drama, and male bonding (otherwise known as Nero’s worst nightmare). Please check it out below, or you can read on FFNet or AO3. Beta read by @copper-wasp.

Now posted! Chapter 2: Dante Makes Hot Dogs And Doesn't Get Laid, in which Dante and Nero get a clue to what happened to Kyrie.

━━━━━━━✧━━━━━━━

Dante can feel the tension radiating from Nero as he drives the van back towards Fortuna. The kid hadn’t said anything since Dante insisted on the keys, slouched instead in the passenger seat as he stared out the window. It had taken every last ounce of his wits to navigate the city streets—driving the van after being used to his bike felt like he might as well be driving a whale—but now that they are on the highway, he relaxes a bit and glances over.

“Still nothing?” he asks.

“The phone hasn’t rung, has it?” Nero bites back sarcastically.

Dante’s lips press together; the kid is just as sarcastic as Vergil, one of the hundred ways they are similar without meaning to be. Genes are a hell of a thing, he has come to realize, so he tries another approach. “Tell me what you did today—maybe I can help figure out what’s missing.”

Nero looks at him skeptically, but sits up a bit. “I woke up and Kyrie was gone. She uh… she slept in my room last night.” Dante glances over with his brows raised and spots the blush on Nero’s face before he turns back to the window. What was that about? “I figured she had a meeting or something, something to do. It was late enough that the kids had already left for school.

“I went downstairs and got breakfast, checked for messages, checked the mail. By lunchtime I hadn’t heard from her, so I called her cell, but she didn’t answer.”

“Was her phone in the house?”

“Huh?”

“What I said,” Dante replies. He switches lanes abruptly, sending the van rocking for a moment. “Did you check the house for her phone?”

Nero frowns. “No. But I didn’t hear it ring.”

“Could be dead. Or she doesn’t have it on her. But go on.”

Nero hesitates for a second, as if considering, and then continues, “Nico was in the garage. She said she hadn’t seen her either. I walked around a bit, went to the store, checked at the cafe she likes. Nobody saw her.”

“Nico didn’t hear her leave?”

Nero snorts. “Nico wouldn’t hear a dinosaur when she’s working in the garage.”

“Then what?”

“I don’t know. Would you keep your hands on the wheel?” Dante stops fixing the mirrors at Nero’s exasperated tone. “I called more people. No one had talked to her today. Then I got a phone call about somebody who needed help. It wasn’t the cops though, it was an anonymous tip. But when I got there, nobody was there.”

“That’s weird.”

Nero sighs and puts his foot up on the dashboard. “Happens sometimes. Somebody wants me to fight a demon but it clears off before I get there. When I got back home, the kids were there, but still no Kyrie. That’s when I got really worried.”

His phone rings, startling them both, and Nero nearly drops it out the window as he fumbles for it. “Yeah?” he says quickly, his shoulders tense. “No,” he growls, “we’re at least ten minutes away… No, he can’t have ice cream… For fuck’s sake, Nico, can you just handle it? Tell them to get their homework done and go to bed… I don’t know, make them sandwiches or something.”

He jabs at the screen angrily before rubbing his forehead. “God help us all if she ever becomes a mother.”

Dante snorts at that. “Yeah, she don’t seem the type.”

Nero goes back to staring out the window. He is quiet for a few minutes before he says, “If something’s happened to her—”

“She’s fine ,” Dante insists.

There is another brief silence, and Dante mulls over what to do. Nero is usually a fairly level-headed kid… at least as level-headed as a twenty-four-year-old half-devil can be. But he has a stubborn streak a mile wide and a blind spot the size of the Grand Canyon when it comes to Kyrie, so his main worry now is keeping him from doing something rash and getting his ass handed to him. He swerves a bit while deep in thought to avoid a pothole, but almost sideswipes a car in the next lane. The car blares its horn and Dante blows his own back, flipping them off as the car speeds by. “Watch where you’re going!” Nero yells.

“He almost ran into me!” he protests.

“Christ, just get us home in one piece,” mumbles Nero.

Dante huffs, putting the turn signal on to switch lanes. Soon their exit appears, and they arrive in Fortuna without further incident. When he parks in front of the house Nero leans over to yank the keys out of the ignition. “You are never driving my van again,” he announces as he jumps out of the passenger side.

“Whatever.” Dante walks around the vehicle and follows Nero into the garage. It is empty, and he glances curiously at the array of gadgets in various stages of building that lay scattered on the work table. Nero leads him through the door to the kitchen, where they find Nico. “Finally,” she sighs, hands on her hips.

“Where’s the note?” Nero asks.

“I’ll get it. Here.” She yanks a plate of steaming hot dogs out of the microwave and shoves it at Dante. “Go feed them.”

Dante frowns as she hurries out of the kitchen. “Come on,” Nero grumbles, leading him into the dining room.

Their place is almost as big as Dante’s building, but with nine people in the house it is cluttered with stuff. Bins of toys, shelves filled with books, shoes stacked by the front door, and the cartoons blaring on the television make the house feel much cozier. However, as he navigates the toy-strewn floor Dante decides he prefers his own place. This is especially true when they get through the family room to the dining room, where six faces turn when they enter, all talking excitedly.

Nero actually smiles a bit when they are so happy to see him, and Dante decides to get in on things. “Hey, kids!” he says with fake enthusiasm, lifting up the plate dramatically. “Uncle Dante made you some dogs!”

The entrance goes flat, the room silent as they gape at him. Nero sighs as Dante lays the plate on the table, moving to stand behind the head chair. “Listen, guys, you’re gonna be on your own tonight.” He nods to the oldest boy who looks about twelve or so. “Samuel, you’re in charge. I want you all to eat and get to bed.”

“Where’s Kyrie?” Samuel asks.

“She’s working tonight,” Nero says. “I’m gonna go pick her up, but it will be a while. Nico will be here if there’s an emergency.” He narrows his eyes and drops his voice a bit. “Everyone got it? We need everyone’s help for this team to work.”

The kids agree and Nero starts handing out the hot dogs, stopping when he is done to give Samuel a few quiet instructions. Dante waits with his arms folded until a hand tugs on his jacket.

“Are those real guns?” one of them asks, pointing to Dante’s hips.

“Uh…” He looks over at Nero, who isn’t paying attention. “Yeah, they are.”

“Can I have one?”

“No.”

“Can I touch it?”

He frowns down at the little boy, who is staring at him with an eager curiosity. “No!”

“Do you kill people with it?”

“Nero?” he shouts. “You ready?”

Nero glances over and nods, and after giving Samuel a firm pat on the shoulder, he leads him back out to the garage. Dante glances behind and frowns at the one who was questioning him, the kid nearly falling out of his chair leaning back to watch him leave, and shakes his head as they step through the doorway. “Kids are the worst,” he mutters.

That earns him a sideways glance as they walk over to Nico, who is standing in front of her work table. “Where’s the note?” Nero demands.

“Here.” She hands over an envelope and a folded piece of paper. “It was sealed when it arrived.”

Nero opens the note, reading it for a second before handing it to Dante. In a script that is too perfect to be handwritten, it reads: Don’t look. I’ll be in touch.

He frowns, trying to figure out what it means. “See?” Nero hisses. “Someone’s taken her.”

Dante doesn’t answer, handing the paper back to him. “Where do we start looking? Who would want to hurt you guys?”

He and Nico exchange a glance. “Plenty of people, actually,” Nico replies, and his brows raise. “Everybody knows Nero is the city’s demon hunter, so not only can the demons find him if they know what to look for, any sympathizers can figure it out too.”

“It has to be someone connected to the demon world,” he growls.

“I don’t know, Kyrie has her own set of people who would want her gone, too,” Nico says.

The two men look at her strangely and she shrugs. “I mean, she’s important, right? She’s one of the last survivors of the Order. Lots of people died, so if someone wanted revenge, Kyrie is an obvious choice. Plus now she’s a public figure. People hated the Order, and don’t want Fortuna to have anything to do with it. Other people hate the new charity, wanting the Order back in charge.” She gestures to the letter. “I’d say half of Fortuna could be a suspect. And that’s not even counting anyone who hates the Spardas.”

“I get it,” Dante groans, rubbing his face. “All right. What we need is a clue. We gotta narrow this down somehow.”

“How do we do that?” Nero asks.

He looks at his wrist before realizing he doesn’t wear a watch. “It’s not that late. I know an empath in a town not far from here. Let’s roll.”

“Fine. I’ll drive.” Nero stuffs the letter in his jacket pocket and heads for the door.

“Want me to come?” Nico offers.

“No. Stay here and answer the phone. And don’t let the kids burn the house down.”

Nico makes a face, and Dante salutes her with a laugh before he follows him back out to the van. Both climb inside and shut the doors, and Nero pulls out into the street, heading for the freeway that will take them west.

Dante gives directions and then starts to fiddle with the radio. “This empath any good?” Nero asks.

“Yeah. She’s good.” He settles on a station and drums his fingers on the armrest.

“Has this ever happened to you?” Nero asks.

Dante looks over, his brows drawn in question. “Has what ever happened to me?”

“Demons coming after you like this?”

He thinks about all the times a demon came crashing into his shop or showing up where he was, the times a hoard had overrun a town he was staying in, all the way back to the day an army descended on his childhood home. “Yeah. It’s happened.”

“Fuck this,” Nero hisses. “Why’s it gotta be us? I didn’t ask for this life. I didn’t ask to be a demon hunter.”

“Yeah,” Dante agrees, sighing as he looks out the window. “None of us did.”

━━━━━━━✧━━━━━━━

Nero takes a moment to look at the little house before following Dante towards the front door. It looks completely normal, faded yellow paint on the shutters, a little picket fence, the front path neatly swept. It is nearly eight o’clock by the time they are on the porch, ringing the bell, but the lamps inside still give a glow through the windows and Nero can hear the television on the inside. It’s not until they are waiting that he notices a sign hanging over the front step that says: Psychic Readings, Walk-Ins Welcome.

A moment later the door opens. A young woman with long white hair wearing an oversized sweater and glasses looks up at them. “Can I help you?”

Nero clears his throat but Dante holds out his hands. “Lir! Long time no see!”

“You have got to be kidding me.” She scowls up at him, and it would be almost comical with her height that only goes to about Dante’s shoulder. But her look is fierce and her voice bitter as she snaps, “I can’t believe you have the nerve to show up here.”

“Don’t be like that, hon. Besides, I need your help.”

“Help?” she scoffs.

“Yeah. I’ll even pay you.”

She looks at him suspiciously before giving Nero a once-over. Then she steps back and waves them inside. “You have ten minutes.”

“Thanks, babe.” Nero follows him as they step into the foyer. The house is decorated simply, the walls and floors wood, and she leads them into a small parlor but does not offer them seats.

“Well?” Lir asks, folding her arms.

Dante clears his throat. “Kid’s got a note and don’t know who it’s from. Think you could tell us?”

Lir snorts. “You know my empathy doesn’t work that way.”

Nero’s heart sinks, but Dante moans, “Oh come on, can’t you try? Just see if you pick up something.”

She heaves a huge sigh and walks behind a desk in the corner. As she takes a seat in the desk chair, Nero and Dante move to take the two opposite. Nero leans forward eagerly, his elbows perched on his knees, as Dante sits back and crosses one leg over the other.

“So what is this note?” she asks.

Dante nudges him so Nero says, “My girlfriend has been kidnapped. This was delivered earlier.” He pulls it from his pocket and holds it out with the envelope, but Lir simply looks at it. “Some demon wrote this, but we don’t know who.”

Lir gives a huff of air. “It’s not from a demon, I can tell you that much by looking at it.”

“What do you mean?” Nero frowns. “You can’t just know that!”

“Sure I can.” She looks at Dante blankly. “Twenty dollars.”

“Please! Just—” Nero growls and shakes the note at her. “Just take it! Try something.”

The woman’s shoulders flex a bit as she leans forward, her hands planted on the desk and her voice no-nonsense. She looks intimidating despite her small frame and pretty face, and Nero feels his ears go pink. “You listen here,” she says in a low tone. “I’ve been reading people my whole life, so when I tell you that there’s no demon on that paper, then there’s no goddamn demon on that goddamn paper, you understand me?”

Fury bubbles over as Nero curses and jumps to his feet. “This is bullshit. You’re a hack.” He points an angry finger at Lir who shoots him a scowl. He tries to think of something else to say, but when nothing comes to mind he shouts, “Come on, Dante, let’s go.”

“Babe.” Dante sighs and leans forward, and Nero gapes at him as he props his elbow on the desk and his chin in his hand. “Don’t be too hard on the kid. He just lost the woman he loves. I mean, look at him.” They both glance at Nero, who frowns. “If I had someone to love like that, I’d be losing my shit too. Only…” He gives her a slow smile. “I don’t have somebody to love. I always wished I had a sweet, pretty thing, long white hair and dark lashes, lips full and pink and ready for me to—”

“Okay! Okay. Just… stop.” But she is laughing, and she shoots him a look as she holds her hand out to Nero. “Let me see it.”

He hesitates just a second before giving over the letter. Lir’s brows go up in surprise as soon as her hand closes around the paper. “Well. What do you know? There is a demon on this note.”

She frowns but Nero says, “I knew it! A demon sent this, didn’t they?”

“No,” she answers. “It’s just a trace. Probably from you handling it so much.”

Nero feels the blood drain from his face. “What do you mean? I’m not a—”

“I’m not stupid,” she huffs, looking at him sharply. “I know a half-breed when I see one.” She looks at Dante and rolls her eyes. “Where did you find this kid?”

“He’s my nephew,” Dante explains.

Lir lets out a huge laugh. “Should have known! Just like the rest of you Spardas. Stubborn and stupid.”

Nero slumps a bit in his chair as she goes back to concentrating. “There’s definitely a mix, but again, it’s hard to tell. Should have worn gloves or something at least,” she scolds him. Then her brow tenses. “It’s someone connected to you. Someone close.”

“What?” Nero leans forward, looking at the letter. “Who could it be?”

“Did Kyrie write this?” Dante asks.

He looks sharply at him, ready to argue, but Lir shakes her head. “No, I’m pretty sure it’s not connected like that. It’s a relative of yours.”

Nero feels his ears burn as something churns in his stomach. “I knew it. I fucking knew it.” He stands and looks at Dante, who is frowning up at him. “That bastard.”

“Wait a second,” Dante snaps.

“Fucking Vergil. I’m gonna kill him.” Nero grabs the note and heads for the door, but Dante is quicker. “Move,” he growls.

“You don’t know it’s him. Don’t be stupid.” Dante jerks his head up. “And you owe her twenty dollars.”

Furious now, Nero pulls out a wad of cash and tosses it at Dante, hitting him in the chest. Then he steps around him and storms out of the house, yanking open the door of the van.

Dante climbs in the passenger side as Nero starts the ignition. “You can come, but don’t try to stop me,” Nero warns.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Dante replies, reaching down to lean the seat all the way back.

Nero glances over, not entirely sure if he’s telling the truth. Dante props his feet up on the dash and promptly begins to snore as Nero drives the van back towards the city. Up ahead the lights flicker on the horizon, and he narrows his eyes, knowing that Kyrie is there somewhere, waiting for him.

[mrfeenysmustache]

A String of Souls

Chapter 6

Pairing: InuKag

Genre: angst, romance, SORT OF soulmate AU

Summary: Kagome Higurashi lives in a world where everyone has a soulmate, and they don't have to wait long to find them. She is more than happy with the person fate has chosen to stay by her side, but as soon as Happily Ever After can begin, it's ripped away. Fate, it seems, can be a cruel mistress. Or maybe not... Time travel/Soulmate AU/No jewel/InuKag

—————

A.N: Couple of things... First: SO SORRY about more than a MONTH in between this chapter and the last! I don't like going that long between updates. I have a reason: Along with this story AND my Pushing Daisies crossover that is also in progress, I'm also currently writing what I expect to be a pretty big project. It's taking up most of my plot bunnies lol I won't be posting on that for a while yet, I think, because I'd like to have a lot of it written and most of it planned and brainstormed. It's an Inuyasha/Thor/Avengers crossover. SO BE READY FOR THAT! Second: THANK YOU to all who have left faves, follows and comments! I love you all.

If Kagome wasn't convinced before that she'd somehow managed to time travel, she was convinced now.

Sitting on the floor of Kaede's little hut, she glanced around and took everything in slowly.

'It's all so ANCIENT. How did I even get here...'

"Well child, ye said ye had explanations."

"Oh, right... well, you see... we aren't really sure what's going on. I guess you could say that I'm not from around here. I fell down a well on my family's shrine property and woke up here. Inuyasha helped me out of the well on on this side. I had no way to climb out."

"I see. And Inuyasha, how did ye manage to break my sister's curse?"

"I don't know. I just woke up and pulled the arrow out. Simple as that."

"Hm."

Kaede stroked her chin and eyed them speculatively. Kagome glanced at Inuyasha, but he was glaring at Kaede with his arms crossed firmly across his chest.

"I'm sure ye know this, Inuyasha, as ye we're there, but Sister Kikyo is dead."

The ears on top of his head snapped back and sadness filled his aura. Kagome felt her own heart shudder in response. It was a fey feeling, and she rubbed her chest to make it go away.

"She died... that day?"

"Aye. From the wound ye inflicted on her."

"I never put a scratch on her, old hag! Not a single scratch! I never would have!"

His aura was writing in pain and anger. It felt harsh and overwhelming and Kagome wondered why she having so much trouble muting her ability to feel it. Usually she could drown this part of her powers out if she needed to. It was as if his soul was demanding to be seen by her.

Kaede stared at him with a hard glint in her eye, weighing his response.

"I know."

"What?! Then why would you say-"

"I was testing ye, Inuyasha. I know not what sort of feelings ye may harbor towards us or my sister. Ye fell into your sealing slumber believing she'd turned on ye. I simply wanted to know if ye held any feelings of animosity or vengeance."

He glared at the old woman and then huffed in agitation, nodding for her to continue.

"We figured out the culprit behind BOTH of your demise several years after. A very injured man my sister had been tending to in secret had fallen in love with her. Before he could pass on, he gave his body to a hoard of demons and was reborn. I'm sure he planned to sow discord between ye both and take her for himself, but the demons had no plans of being tied to a priestess and killed her instead. He came back looking for that jewel that rumor keeps placing here. We have managed to chase him off, but he's still lurking around somewhere."

"So, that wasn't Kikyo who... it was him?"

"Aye Inuyasha. He is a shapeshifter. And a crafty one at that. Tell me, what did ye and my sister plan on doing that day?"

His cheeks burned red and Kagome's brows disappeared into her hairline.

"She said... she said she'd found a spell. One that she could use to make me human. And we could... we could have a normal life."

Kagome couldn't stop her horrified gasp as disgust and disbelief and, oddly enough, guilt pulsed through her.

"She was going to turn you into a human?!"

Inuyasha's brow furrowed as he stared at her, confusion painted all over his face.

"Yeah?"

Kagome's heart squeezed in an unexplainable way. She would have been alarmed by it had she been in more normal circumstances.

"But why?" She whispered almost brokenly, and Inuyasha tilted his head to the side as he considered her.

"So we could be together."

"But that's... that's... that's terrible! If you want to be with someone, you don't try to erase half of them!"

Inuyasha's face grew red with a mixture of embarrassment and anger, his voice rising over the rapid thumping of his heart.

"Hey, it wasn't her fault I was born this way!"

His words seemed to have the opposite effect he'd intended them to have. She didn't immediately understand and sympathize, didn't grasp the fact that a hanyo and a priestess had no business together, and cleansing him of his demonic blood was the only way to be together. Instead, her eyes and her scent grew ever sadder, and it seemed as if she was seeing straight to the bottom of his soul.

"Yeah? Well it's not your fault, either."

He blinked, his ears laying back down on his head as he allowed her words to filter down through the fuzz that now filled his brain.

That was something he'd always believed about himself, but to have someone else just... get it like that? He'd never, ever received that kind of understanding from another person before, and he wasn't sure what to do with it. He looked away, crossing his arms and hunching his shoulders defensively.

"Kaede-Sama, is such a thing... even possible?"

Kaede glanced at Inuyasha, who still looked pointedly away though one of his ears had perked in their direction, still interested in their conversation.

"I believe I know what spell my sister intended to use on Inuyasha, and no. It would not have worked. I'm sorry to say Inuyasha, but ye need to know the truth."

"Keh. Don't matter now, anyway."

"Indeed it does not." Kaede turned back to Kagome. "Now child, how about ye? Where do ye come from where doorways hide in wells?"

Kagome pulled at a loose string on the pants hem around her ankle, nervous that her only reasonable explanation would be rejected and she'd be chased from this village with torches and pitchforks.

"Um... it's not really where I'm from... so much as when."

"Come again child?"

"I think... I think I might be from the future. The future of this village."

"How would such a thing be possible?"

"I don't know." She shrugged helplessly and Kaede stared deep inter her eyes, searching for truth or a lie or something. She felt the old woman's spiritual aura begin delicately prodding at her own and she tried not to cringe away in defense.

"I see. There is a familiar signature in your aura, child. I believe I may be able to give you at least one answer. Whether it will lead only to more questions, only time will tell."

"Familiar... signature?" Kagome felt her heart rate begin to rise and a faint dread set in. For some reason she knew the knowledge about to be imparted to her was going to change everything, and there was no way to stop it.

"I believe, young Kagome, that you may be the reincarnation of my sister."

Her eyes blew wide and her jaw dropped and her heart beat beat so fast and hard she could hear her blood rushing through her ears. She looked over at Inuyasha, who was staring at her with a look of bewildered astonishment before she felt his own demonic aura probing hers. He reared back, apparently finding what he'd been looking for, this 'familiar signature,' and he got up and stalked out of the hut without a word.

Kagome couldn't imagine how he must be feeling, faced with the reincarnation of the woman he'd hoped to build a life with. He probably needed some serious space. She turned back to Kaede, completely unsure where to even go from here.

"Kaede-Sama... are you certain?"

"Oh yes. Most of your aura is your own, Of course. But the core of it, the core of your soul, is much the same. I would recognize it anywhere."

She felt sad and confused, and like she didn't quite fit in her own skin anymore. She wanted a bath and large mug of her mother's tea.

"Well, what now?"

"I know not, child. I know not."

"Ok then," she responded, determination filling her and warming the places in her that had chilled with this recent revelation. "Tell me more about this shapeshifter. Where can we find him?"

She had every intention of trying to get home, but she would glean as much useful information as she could to give to Inuyasha before she departed. She hoped her departure and the death of the man who had tried to ruin his life would give him peace. She hoped he'd find a place to belong and people to accept him as he was.

And she hoped she'd be able to forget him, and this whole strange adventure, and move on with her life.

[incarnateirony]

Chuck came off as bad (& as annoying) as Metatron, to me. Very megalomaniac like & SO OOC. He's worried about Jack sneezing India away. But then he just overreacts (to D&S making the RIGHT CHOICE which he always liked before) & 'ends' the world he was so worried about?

But to be fair, this seems to be going on with a lot of people.

And generally comes from, atop canon confusion, Christian Culture Coding getting in the way of people’s lenses, even if they, themselves, are atheist or whatever, because we live in a society largely formulated by the dogma.

That said,

You’re confusing the God of Control with the God of Good. Point being, there was never a God of Good, just a God of Control. He humors, he lies, he misleads, and when it goes beyond his control, he punishes. He burns. He floods. He starts over. Or at least Gnostic. Hermetic has a different silver lining which I bang on elsewhere. The two overlap. We’ll see.

Christian dogma is understandably unkind to this, or the mainstream forms of it. Other belief systems that tap on judeochristian elements, like Gnosticism and Hermeticism – which were both very present in this season, admit to this from different angles.

Gnosticism is the pessimistic angle, wherein ironically Lucifer was the force of respective good who brought knowledge to man with his division from the divine, and brought free will. Hermeticism acknowledges the Great Good as god, but not as the god we know. Both forms have a god above the terrestrial god, above the fire and brimstone god, above both a masculine and a feminine aspect (Amara) as the one and the all - the shadow of god, as it were, the first thought that floated in the Empty Nothingness, the Ein Soph. As all things are this Shadow, we are all God, and all reflected in it, and it is our own Shadow as well, but no one of us is the one true god unto ourselves. Rather, climbing the tree of life is the ascent towards the divinity, away from the terrestrial and mundane worlds and into a state of cosmic consciousness – first in realms of angels and gods and then past it, to primal thought and to grasp what the Nothing Before Creation even means.

Gnosticism’s pessism gives aspect to this in addressing the concept of Abraxas as the true creator, with demiurges and false creators beneath them as fragments of the self.  A two set: A god of both creation and control, and a god of knowledge and freedom. But there is also the divine masculine and the divine feminine, representing creation and destruction, neither of which are good or evil, just balances of the universe. 

The god that breathed creation is more of the true satan in our understanding of the concept; that the Lucifer that was cast down did so at the cost of breaking past the walls of control to bring a different form of truth to man. Gnosticism frames Lucifer, ironically, as the benevolent force in this structure (which, in theory, in being the first to rebel against villainous Chuck and his control, would have made him the first hero of this story, as much as we are loath to admit it with Mark P – to whence he was caged, strangulated, abused, kicked out of heaven, and himself became a monster – is this sounding familiar with Jack’s path in sync to Team Free Will as his fathers?)

Even still, Chuck’s attempt to control – or, in the old narrative, save his creation – was giving the mark to Lucifer. Lucifer, driven by the destructive balance needed in the universe, then descended. Amara’s destruction and black smoke still entered the world as the demons and hell, and balance resumed, with Lucifer framed into the Ultimate Villain Of This Story, drive and motivation behind we only hear in S11, but didn’t want to sympathize with, especially with Chuck’s supposed parental lessons.

On the other hand, Chuck voluntarily wrote the draft for the ultimate biblical revelation. Everybody tore that up. In theory he kept writing. He kept “creating.” Only his creation was one misery porn after another. Other pseudo-gods tried to fill his place, even write like him, but without the same universal impact because they weren’t really in his seat. He was still writing. He was still writing all of it. 

A thousand prayers he could have answered and he didn’t. He just kept writing. Kept making new dramas. There is the theoretical question of if Amara is a being of his own design to introduce the drama of it, but with the later gnostic and hermetic structure meeting the vein of it, that is unlikely. Rather, it is the divided god, The Archon, the Demiurge, the Unbegotten father theoretically above it, just like in full metal alchemist,

Speculatory? Sure, but not unparallel. It was the end of the road at the far nothing once journies were met, past poles of sacrifice and gain, of destruction and creation, of any concept of evil or good. It is the ultimate good, because its thoughts are what becomes and exists, but it is you, and me, and everyone, and it is our shadow that reflects us, as only its dream is, in a very lovecraftian concept wherein it just wants to sleep.

Anything like… ringin’ a bell here? 

The shorthand explanation is that Chuck is the creator force of the universe(s) related to him, as part of the dream, and Amara is the destroyer force of the universe(s) related to her, but in essence they’re still dancing poles. When Chuck and Amara took their leave, they made a balanced caduceus towards the heavens, a legendary sign of balance that would later become relevant in all of the hermetic STUFF going on, especially in season 14.

God is a writer. The shadow – in theory, unless they swing way far left all of a sudden – is a dreamer past them, the thoughts of the nothing in which we all reside. People may consider this somehow underwhelming, “it was all a dream,” but it’s a great step beyond that and it’s reductio ad absurdum to apply that, unless you only consider your entire life a dream – because this is a philosophy turned over by some of the greatest minds our academia banters back and forth to our day, banters the specifics of, entire elaborate philosophies and theologies are written around. Abraxas (though buckleming wasted that name on the late demonology corruption, and it has many names and forms) is the origin of Abracadabra – I speak therefore I am; it is similar, and yet in opposition to the alternate take, “Only what I dream is real, I know nothing of reality beyond what I know.” – the opposition of the idea of a divine force compelling you, versus being the center of your own active dream you take into your control.

How far TPTB take this line of philosophy is hard to say, but they’re definitely popping some wheelies around with the idea right now.  

God had fun with his control, his story, his entertainment, until the free will inserted into the universe beyond his control reached a pinnacle where they no longer followed his orders, or went without question; wherein they looked him in the face and tried to take him down. The story, then, ceases to be fun. It is no longer of value. Rather, his entertainment comes in the ways of old with each major rebellion: the fire and brimstone of the past, putting a new spin on the universe that is his sandbox, with or without Amara’s aid, who he may very well even be unified with despite not entirely being one with the Shadow of himself (and us.) After all, they caduceus spiraled their way out, who’s to say what became of them on that road trip, and what balance was met. Amara’s, what, playing craps out in Reno? Sure. But writers lie. 

Team Free Will are the ouroboros that has broken its chain, becoming the brazen serpent that climbs the cross/tree it would have been crucified on in a journey towards the peak of existence and enlightenment, standing toe to toe with what seems to be the crown, and the skies grow dark until they can tackle, and own that. Until they take full, true, and total control of their experience to the godhood, and really, truly, and ultimately rip up not just the ending and the rules, but whatever forces are dictating, rewriting, finding new amusement in their sufferages, feeding draft after draft of possible deaths or rewrites even to Death trying to keep the cosmic order, who herself is growing tired of the shenanigans.

“In the end, I’ll reap god too.” - Death, S5.

Welcome to the end.

Enjoy some related posts of adjacent topics and issues including the primordials of SPN, the gnostic and hermetic structure, titles, applications, general theology and pass-around thoughts as they came up:

(x) (x) (x) (x)

Chuck didn’t answer prayers not due to lazy authorship. Chuck didn’t answer prayers even in the darkest days because he didn’t want to. The drama is all he can experience. The games. But now the game itself is fighting back, via one bullet from Sam Winchester willing to sacrifice himself to destroy the creator himself in a moment of that free will rebellion – a strange aptness considering his place in the universe against Lucifer.

[mittensmorgul]

what do you think is the in-universe/fandom/writers perspective of sam, and how do you think they vary? I was thinking about how i usually hear he is the responsible/intelligent one, which i dont think works really well, especially in later seasons and i dont know if that is the way the rest of the characters view him. And I also started thinking about how theres this general believe (1)

that the writers have over time, forgot sam's personality/way of thinking, which explains why we know more about dean, that we do sam. I don't know if this makes sense lol :p I guess I just think that even though there are different interpretations of the characters in the show, since sam is a lot more private than dean, its easier to read dean (2)

Hiya... this is a weird question, but I will do my best to answer. I... don’t think they really vary how they write Sam. I mean, some episodes deal more specifically with him and his point of view and internal drama than others, but I do agree that we are shown less of that side of Sam then we are of Dean. But I also don’t think this is a new thing.

Dean has almost always been our “audience point of view” character. Or at the very least our “audience emotional touchstone” character. With a few exceptions, like a good chunk of the time he was saddled with the Mark of Cain. But aside from that, yeah... he’s the one we most often see the story through.

Going all the way back to s1, things ~happen to Sam~ and Dean reacts. I think they may have originally been shooting for more of a balance, and maybe did even originally intend Sam to be the audience POV character. After all, he was being pulled back into this underworld of sorts of supernatural monsters and demons and stuff. We-the-audience could’ve so easily had our entry into their world through Sam’s eyes, being pulled from normal citizen into the hunter world through Sam’s adjustment to it all. But it never really worked for me. Sam’s pov was Traumatized™ from the end of the pilot episode, while Dean was already grounded in that world, accepting of it and ready to keep living the hunter life. It proved to be a far more stable pov and emotional engagement to the narrative, you know? Sam kept wanting to run away. Kinda hard to feel attached to the narrative through that sort of emotional standpoint, you know? *I* didn’t want to run away...

But then stuff KEPT happening to Sam-- the weird powers that terrified him, the loss of his connection to the normal world that put him off balance just as much, the realization that there might never be an end to the hunting... which put that burden on Dean as a character to keep pushing forward, and that’s the through-line for the audience to cling to emotionally.

Sam’s fighting against the demon blood powers, Dean keeps him grounded and supports him. John tells Dean that he either has to save Sam or else kill him, and we-the-audience are supposed to suspect there’s something Dark about Sam that we should be at the very least wary of, but Dean sticks by him swearing to save him no matter what. Sam’s kidnapped and killed, and Dean finally does save him, buy trading his own soul for Sam’s. In s4, Sam *is* hiding dark secrets, working behind Dean’s back with Ruby, basically succumbing to drug addiction while Dean tries to protect him from all that.

Sam’s soulless, Dean finds a way to save his soul. Sam’s halluciferating, Dean finds a way to save him again. Dean’s in Purgatory, and Sam hit a dog-- not even trying to do the whole saving thing... again, making it hard to put a pin on how we’re supposed to interact with the guy who keeps wanting to run away from his own story while we’re supposed to be engaging with it.

Sam takes on the trials, Dean supports him through it. Sam’s possessed by an angel, and unaware of the fact, so Dean is our window into that entire mess.

Then the Mark of Cain happens, and Sam goes off the dang rails trying to save Dean from himself... which is the only flip in this script, really, aside from Sam trying to save Dean from Michael now in s14.

The thing with s10 is that I personally had a really hard time trusting Sam’s assessment of Dean’s mental state, simply because he’s never really had a bead on it before. The show attempting to force us to see the emotional beats through Sam’s eyes just... didn’t fly for me. It was a disconnect. I’m much happier with the situation now in s14, because I actually *do* feel like I get Sam’s pov now. At least, more than I ever did back in s10.

I think the notion that Sam is “the responsible/intelligent one” is a fandom oversimplification. Like... I said above, Sam was always the one trying to run away from his own life. I mean, that’s not exactly “responsible” behavior. As for intelligence, there’s lots of different types of intelligence, and Dean is just as “intelligent” as Sam is, but in different ways. They think differently. Heck, I wrote a lot about this back during s11, but the tl;dr of all of it was that they are different people with different emotional coping styles. Sam might be great at research and getting people to open up to him and thinking through problems in a linear, logical fashion, but that doesn’t make him “smarter” than Dean. Dean’s more intuitive, and relies a lot more on his own understanding of the world to make logical leaps to solutions. I also think, for a vast number of reasons not least of which is the fact that Dean had essentially been a “parental” figure to Sam his whole life while Sam had unwittingly fallen into a “child” role because of that, that Dean is the more emotionally intuitive and Sam’s not even been fully aware of just how emotionally demanding he’s been of Dean while not offering Dean the same sort of emotional consideration in return. Because kids just don’t do that for their parents (or they definitely shouldn’t, despite Dean’s heaven memory of doing that for Mary in 5.16, but that’s another post entirely).

Sam understands the world through the lens of his own experience. He assumes that everyone else feels and reacts as he would in those circumstances. Dean, however, understands people. But he’s got a couple of huge blind spots when it comes to Sam, just like we-the-audience do. Not through any fault of his own, but because of how he was parentified and how his entire life to a certain point had been devoted to the cause of protecting Sam.

This is partly why I was THRILLED to hear Sam opening up to Rowena in 13.12. What a fantastic episode. Not only did Sam successfully take on the emotional burden of the narrative with aplomb while Dean was compromised, but he actually had an honest emotional chat with Rowena about trauma he admitted to having kept secret for almost EIGHT YEARS. 

I mean, he did pretty good in 12.11, too, when Dean was losing his memories. He became the “hand-holder” for the audience quite nicely in that episode too, even if some of his shortcomings were put on display. But it took him another YEAR after that to really begin to open up about his actual feelings, you know? Rather than clinging to Dean because he needed him (which is a theme that goes way back, long before his talk with Charlie in 10.18 even about how he’d resigned himself to this life, but only as long as Dean was in it with him), it took him rebelling and “picking a side” in s12 for him to really begin to figure out HIMSELF, instead of just what he is as an adjunct to Dean.

GROWTH!

And now he’s responsibly taking on leadership roles and learning about what Dean went through all those years taking care of him through helping to guide Jack through his own life. So I don’t think it’s so much that the writers have “forgotten” who Sam is, but they’re finally letting him grow up in a lot of ways, like they’ve shown us Dean getting to grow into his own person as well. And I think it’s spectacular.

I’ve written a bunch about the differences in Sam and Dean as characters, and a lot of it is tagged “sam sympathizes and dean empathizes”, and a lot of the parentification of Dean stuff is in the “performing dean” tag-- which also deals with this disconnect of how Sam sees Dean through this hazy lens of performance that was often structured specifically to hide Dean’s personal emotional turmoil beneath a Strong Mask for Sam’s benefit-- but as I’m getting into s11 now on my blog retagging project, there’s probably gonna be more stuff falling into that tag, with the perspective of hindsight. :P

[newstfionline]

When a Stranger Decides to Destroy Your Life

Kashmir Hill, Gizmodo, July 26, 2018

Monika Glennon has lived in Huntsville, Alabama, for the last 12 years. Other than a strong Polish accent, she fits a certain stereotype of the All-American life. She’s blonde. Her husband is a veteran Marine. Her two children, a boy and a girl, joined the military as adults. She sells houses--she’s a real estate agent at Re/Max--helping others realize their own American dream.

But in September 2015, she was suddenly plunged into an American nightmare. She got a call at 6 a.m. one morning from a colleague at Re/Max telling her something terrible had been posted about her on the Re/Max Facebook page. Glennon thought at first she meant that a client had left her a bad review, but it turned out to be much worse than that.

It was a link to a story about Glennon on She’s A Homewrecker, a site that exists for the sole purpose of shaming the alleged “other woman.” The author of the Homewrecker post claimed that she and her husband had used Glennon as their realtor and that everything was going great until one evening when she walked in on Glennon having sex with her husband on the floor of a home the couple had been scheduled to see. The unnamed woman went into graphic detail about the sex act and claimed she’d taken photos that she used to get everything from her husband in a divorce. The only photo she posted though was Glennon’s professional headshot, taken from her bio page on Re/Max’s site.

Glennon was horrified. The story was completely fabricated and she had no idea why someone would have written it. Someone on Facebook named Ryan Baxter had posted it to the Re/Max page; Baxter also went through Glennon’s Facebook friend list and sent it to her husband, family members, and many of her professional contacts.

“Sorry to be the one to let you in on this,” Baxter wrote to Glennon’s husband, Scott, in a Facebook message.

Glennon waded into the comment section on the Homewrecker story and wrote that it was completely fabricated. A woman named Amy responded skeptically, “Hmmm, so why would someone make up such an extravagant story?”

The story was re-posted on other sites, including one called BadBizReport.is where it has been viewed over 95,000 times. It quickly became the top search result for Glennon’s name on Google. Within a year, Glennon was experiencing the repercussions: Her number of listings dropped by half. She estimates that she’s lost $200,000 in business since 2015.

She was mystified as to the post’s author. She thought it could be a rival realtor, or an acquaintance who was angry at her.

“I was looking at every person in my life and every stranger and wondering who did it to me and why,” Glennon told me by phone. “It makes you rethink every relationship in your life.”

Eventually, after $100,000 in attorney’s bills, Glennon was able to unmask the culprit. It turned out to be a complete stranger who had been offended by a comment Glennon had made about a news article on Facebook.

In 2014, a teenager from Alabama visited Auschwitz and tweeted a smiling selfie from the former concentration camp. It went viral, as people across the internet debated the teen’s choice of self-portraiture. WHNT News, a Huntsville, Alabama-based TV station, posted a story about the incident to its Facebook page asking readers to “share your thoughts.”

A heated discussion ensued. Monika Glennon was among those defending the teen, saying that kids make mistakes, that at least she was visiting the site, and that the condemnation by an internet mob “shows the same judgmental and senseless pack mentality that led to this horrific time in history to begin with.”

A woman named Mollie Rosenblum disagreed. She responded to several of the teen selfie supporters, including Glennon, saying that Auschwitz was a somber place for reflection and not an appropriate place to take selfies. She identified herself as being of Jewish descent and suggested that others didn’t have a full grasp of the Holocaust. Glennon responded to Rosenblum, telling her Auschwitz isn’t “her” place, that it “belongs to all and was a former killing zone of all,” including, originally, Polish people.

If you’ve ever argued with someone online, you’re probably not surprised to hear that neither person was convinced by the other person’s arguments. Glennon forgot about the exchange and went about her life. Rosenblum did not.

Rosenblum stewed over the exchange for a week. It was a low point in her life; a single mother with two sons, she was, by her own account as posted on Facebook, then “in the throws of full blown methamphetamine addiction” and making very poor decisions (including, in 2016, kidnapping). She spent a few hours researching Glennon online and soon knew enough to fake having met her in real life. It was the online version of road rage; instead of pulling a gun on another driver, Rosenblum decided to drop a bomb on Glennon’s reputation. Rosenblum submitted her fabricated story to She’s A Homewrecker, and then, according to an account she later gave to a local news outlet, forgot about it.

There is a constellation of sites on the internet that exist solely as places for people to exorcise their demons, and more importantly, their grudges; She’s A Homewrecker is one of them. It offers the opportunity to publicize a person’s misdeeds so that they are available not just to an inner circle with access to relevant gossip but to anyone who Googles that person’s name. The terms of service specify that posts must be factually true, but if they’re not, it’s not a problem for the site. It’s protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects websites from being sued for the things their users say.

Rosenblum wrote and submitted the story in August 2014, but it wasn’t published until September 2015, long after Rosenblum had forgotten about it. It may have languished in obscurity there if not for a person who went by Ryan Baxter on Facebook. Baxter was the one who posted the story to Re/Max’s Facebook page, emailed it to Glennon’s bosses, and sent it to many of her Facebook contacts. Apparently a regular reader of She’s A Homewrecker, Baxter had a habit of compounding the damage to people shamed on the site. Glennon found numerous instances of Baxter posting She’s a Homewrecker posts to the Facebook walls of other people’s employers and friends. Such are the strange hobbies of the modern age.

Glennon wrote repeatedly to all the sites that had posted the story telling them it was false but none of them would take it down. Her only option was to go to court, so she filed a lawsuit in 2016 against John Does, alleging libel and copyright infringement, because the post used her professional headshot, which she had ownership of.

Through the suit, Glennon was able to subpoena She’s A Homewrecker and Facebook for IP addresses, as well as Internet Service Providers to find out the identities of the people behind the IP addresses. A couple of months after she filed the suit, yet another post appeared on yet another site, “Report My Ex,” written by a man claiming to be the husband who had cheated with Glennon, again luridly detailing a sex act that never happened.

“That really scared me because I was afraid men would book me as a realtor expecting me to have sex with them,” Glennon told me by phone. “So I had my husband start coming with me to bookings at vacant homes. We installed a surveillance system in our house because I was so scared.”

Through the subpoenas, Glennon discovered that Ryan Baxter was a stranger in Oxnard, California, named Hannah Lupian. Shortly after Lupian was served with a legal complaint, the Ryan Baxter profile disappeared from Facebook. Glennon has never heard from Lupian, and I was unable to get in touch with her.

Rosenblum was another matter. After becoming aware that her identity would be revealed by her ISP, Mollie Rosenblum doubled down. She emailed Glennon’s attorneys, apologizing but saying that if Glennon continued to pursue her legally, she would “protect [herself] by making their initial contact public.” Six months later, in September 2017, Rosenblum acted on her threat and took to Facebook and the comment section of the BadBizReport, where she apologized for lying about Glennon being an adulterer but said she did it because of Glennon’s “veiled antisemitism.”

Glennon was horrified. She didn’t want more terrible things written about her online.

“I’m not a Nazi sympathizer. I grew up in a poor family in communist Poland,” Glennon said. “I saw the comments and reached out to [Rosenblum] over Facebook Messenger and said, ‘This has reached an awful level of damage that you have done to me. Let’s meet. Please ask me what you want to ask me.’”

They agreed to meet at a restaurant in Athens, Alabama, a town an hour from Glennon’s, where Rosenblum lives. The meeting lasted four hours.

“She had thought I was this mean, rich bitch. That’s the problem with social media. You just make these assumptions about people,” Glennon said. “After meeting me, she did an affidavit admitting everything she did. She understood who I was then.”

Rosenblum did not respond to media inquiries via email or Facebook Messenger. She appears active on Facebook as recently as July 4, but she has been sentenced to four years for kidnapping and the Alabama Department of Corrections website says she started her term in November 2017. Her thinking, however, is well-documented online and in court documents.

Meeting Glennon in person seemed to defuse Rosenblum’s anger. She returned once again to the comment section of the BadBizReport to retract what she had said and apologize.

“Mrs. Glennon is in fact a kind and compassionate person with whom I share many common values,” wrote Rosenblum. “Please accept my deepest regret for the harm I have brought to the lives of her and those whom love her.”

Rosenblum wanted to take the posts down but she couldn’t. On submission sites like She’s A Homewrecker, there is no delete button, not to mention the copies of the post that appeared on other sites.

“These sites should allow original posters to take these posts down,” said Glennon. “I see a lot of people in comments saying they regret it and want to take it down but they can’t.”

Glennon won her lawsuit against Rosenblum and Lupian, with a federal court in northern Alabama finding in her favor on claims of copyright violation, invasion of privacy, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and interference with her business. The judge ordered websites that published Rosenblum’s story to remove it. She’s A Homewrecker has already taken down the post, but it remains up on BadBizReport. BadBizReport’s website states that it doesn’t respond to court orders and that “there’s no way in hell to get off of BadBizReport once you’re listed on it,” adding “American lawyers make us laugh.”

Luckily, the judge also ordered search engines, “such as Google,” to de-index all versions of the post “to ensure that it does not appear as a search result when Ms. Glennon’s name is searched.” In Europe, the right to remove irrelevant or false information from your search results is enshrined in the law as “the right to be forgotten.” In the U.S., you have to pay for it.

“You should be able to remove untrue stories without spending $100,000,” said Glennon. “For a person making minimum wage trying to clear their reputation, it would be impossible.”

There is a question as to whether Google and others will comply with the order.

A Google spokesperson said the company reviews all court orders requesting links be removed from search and prefers when parties resolve among themselves in court whether a page should be removed from search results. Last year, Google removed links from search in the U.S. because of defamation over 30,000 times.

Glennon says the experience has left her more cautious online. She locked down her Facebook account so that strangers have less access to her information and, importantly, can’t see her friends list. Surprisingly, she still comments on news articles.

“But nothing too provocative,” she told me.

[mysticdragon3md3]

12:44 AM 6/15/2021

I found a new comic book YouTuber that I might like. He had a lot of interesting videos comparing the manga industry to the American (superhero) comic book industry. And with him being an anime/manga fan, I didn't have to put up with constant excuses or insults towards manga/anime.

But then, once, then twice or more, he started making little comments against diversity in comics, downplaying the importance of representation, he dismissed comics tackling social issues, and he pretty much called ridiculous, comic book creators talking about problems they face in their industry.

Now, I love escapism, maybe more than most people, being a socially anxious, maladaptive daydreamer, hikikomori who didn't leave the house for 10 years even before the coronavirus quarantines, but even I know it's important for art to tackle those social issues. There are too many academic media studies and lectures, easy to see online, that specifically note how fiction writing is often pivotal to progressing culture. I say that even as someone who spends all my time watching/reading iyashikei, "slice of life", and any other escapism that will give me a reprieve from thinking about the horrible things in the real life world. Just because I can't handle it, doesn't mean that others can't. And if we're just talking about sales, I don't think americomi SHOULD follow manga's example to largely avoid social issues, on the hypothesis that manga's higher sales are caused by avoiding real world issues, in order to cater to escapism audiences, however large they may be. But regardless, who's to say americomi can't be both? Americomi can and should be both socially conscious AND escapism. And frankly, I've read several series of manga that have tried to stretch beyond personal emotional issues and try to touch on broader social issues, and just flaccidly betray the author's inexperience with how those broader emotions work in real life society. It's sad. If it's a perspective representative of a people, of a culture, then it's sad how uninformed they are. But also encouraging that they're willing to try. And yet someone suggests that americomi throw away their unique strength in that area? That can't be a good call.

As for his comments and implications about diversity and representation in americomi? *sigh* This is why I always end up sticking to very few geeky YouTube channels. You never know when someone who sounds perfectly enthusiastic, informed about the medium, insightful in their analysis, is going to start dropping hints and implications about some uncomfortable things. Maybe it's misogyny, maybe it's casual homophobic "humor", maybe it's some other kind of bigotry trying so hard to fly under the radar, but still carries that stink through the air. First it happens once, and you think you were just reading into things too much. So you watch another one of their videos or 2. But then they say more things implying the same line of uncomfortable thought. And sooner or later, it's snowballed into, "I think I better go back to ProfessorThorgi and NerdSync; at least they will outright not apologize for social justice".

And to prove the effectiveness of representation to sell a series: This very week, I abandoned all my other obsessive fandoms, and shifted my focus to this new Trese series, which I hadn't heard of before, because it featured a protagonist with the same gender and ethnicity as me. I didn't even think my ethnicity was important to me! For my entire escapism-fiction-addicted life, I didn't think I needed a protagonist or setting that matched my ethnicity! And I had for years, already been accustomed to sympathizing with protagonists of the opposite gender than me. This was also AFTER I had begun to think maybe I had grown out of loving the "demon hunting" subgenre, that Trese was in. "Maybe I was too anxious now, to enjoy anything but iyashikei and 'slice of life' genres," I thought. Well, Trese proved that none of that mattered, because nothing will get you more excited than a protagonist like you, even if it's just on a subconscious level. Representation hooked me. It sells.

And as for comic book creators talking about their industry? Let them! Life is hard for manga creators! Eichiro Oda is going blind with all the work he has to keep up with! So many assistants go uncredited, because they just need to get the work out there! Rumiko Takahashi recently posted her usual work schedule to Twitter and we all had a good laugh about how insane that is, but we can't keep hearing about manga-ka having to take hiatus for health reasons, because we just *accept* these insane conditions and expectations, working each one of them into the ground, every single week! I'm fairly convinced that because the manga industry is so overflowing with contenders and manga-ka can be treated as disposable, that individual manga-ka have no choice but to just bear their abusive work schedules and not complain! Comic book creators not talking about their industry is not a good sign! It's a sign that anything they say could get them fired and they're desperate to hang onto their jobs, so they have to put up with health-destroying work conditions! I believe the reason why such abuse isn't rampant with americomi, is because americomi creators aren't afraid to speak out against the problems in their industry! The founders of Image Comics pretty much said to Marvel, "you can't treat us this way, we're not disposable, the fans know our names and not just the characters" and they proved themselves true. They made the American comic book industry much healthier for the people who work in it, compared to the manga industry. Maybe in Japan, everything a manga creator says serves the purpose of marketing and has to stay squeaky clean as to not scare off new readers or tarnish the publisher's brand. But American comic book creators speaking up is making the real world more tolerable for real people and the industry less guilty for us to consume. You ask what "marketing" purpose or value comes from comic book creators speaking out to fix problems in their industry? Well, there it is. Some of us, want less of the things we enjoy to be the products of other people's suffering. Even if it's just a small corner of the world like comic books, at least we can feel good about buying that. At least let me have *this*! ;o;

Personally, I think that if American comic books want to match the sales of manga, even with manga doing very little to advertise themselves... Audiences just want characters to latch onto. I don't spend all my time on social media or making fan-art to support a title, but because I love characters. And maybe it's a little more difficult to even know who a character is, let alone, love them, when writers keep changing, and even one-shots with crazy OOC AUs get folded into the mainline canon. I dunno. That's just a guess.

But laying the blame on social justice and ignoring good for real life people, that'll always make me suspicious.

[dfroza]

stealing, killing, and destroying.

this is what the lying dragon of this world does.

“A thief is only there to steal and kill and destroy. I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of.”

(the 10th verse of the 10th chapter of the book of John in The Message)

Today’s reading of the Scriptures from the New Testament is the 10th chapter of the book of John, read here in The Passion Translation:

[The Parable of the Kind Shepherd]

Jesus said to the Pharisees, “Listen to this eternal truth: The person who sneaks over the wall to enter into the sheep pen, rather than coming through the gate, reveals himself as a thief coming to steal. But the true Shepherd walks right up to the gate, and because the gatekeeper knows who he is, he opens the gate to let him in. And the sheep recognize the voice of the true Shepherd, for he calls his own by name and leads them out, for they belong to him. And when he has brought out all his sheep, he walks ahead of them and they will follow him, for they are familiar with his voice. But they will run away from strangers and never follow them because they know it’s the voice of a stranger.” Jesus told the Pharisees this parable even though they didn’t understand a word of what he meant.

So Jesus went over it again, “I speak to you eternal truth: I am the Gate for the flock. All those who broke in before me are thieves who came to steal, but the sheep never listened to them. I am the Gateway. To enter through me is to experience life, freedom, and satisfaction. A thief has only one thing in mind—he wants to steal, slaughter, and destroy. But I have come to give you everything in abundance, more than you expect—life in its fullness until you overflow! I am the Good Shepherd who lays down my life as a sacrifice for the sheep. But the worker who serves only for wages is not a real shepherd. Because he has no heart for the sheep he will run away and abandon them when he sees the wolf coming. And then the wolf mauls the sheep, drags them off, and scatters them.

“I alone am the Good Shepherd, and I know those whose hearts are mine, for they recognize me and know me, just as my Father knows my heart and I know my Father’s heart. I am ready to give my life for the sheep.

“And I have other sheep that I will gather which are not of this Jewish flock. And I, their shepherd, must lead them too, and they will follow me and listen to my voice. And I will join them all into one flock with one shepherd.

“The Father has an intense love for me because I freely give my own life—to raise it up again. I surrender my own life, and no one has the power to take my life from me. I have the authority to lay it down and the power to take it back again. This is the destiny my Father has set before me.”

This teaching set off another heated controversy among the Jewish leaders. Many of them said, “This man is a demon-possessed lunatic! Why would anyone listen to a word he says?” But then there were others who weren’t so sure: “His teaching is full of insight. These are not the ravings of a madman! How could a demonized man give sight to one born blind?”

The time came to observe the winter Feast of Renewal in Jerusalem. Jesus walked into the temple area under Solomon’s covered walkway when the Jewish leaders encircled him and said, “How much longer will you keep us in suspense? Tell us the truth and clarify this for us once and for all. Are you really the Messiah, the Anointed One?”

Jesus answered them, “I have told you the truth already and you did not believe me. The proof of who I am is revealed by all the miracles that I do in the name of my Father. Yet, you stubbornly refuse to follow me, because you are not my sheep. As I’ve told you before: My own sheep will hear my voice and I know each one, and they will follow me. I give to them the gift of eternal life and they will never be lost and no one has the power to snatch them out of my hands. My Father, who has given them to me as his gift, is the mightiest of all, and no one has the power to snatch them from my Father’s care. The Father and I are one.”

When they heard this, the Jewish leaders were so enraged that they picked up rocks to stone him to death. But Jesus said, “My Father has empowered me to work many miracles and acts of mercy among you. So which one of them do you want to stone me for?”

The Jewish leaders responded, “We’re not stoning you for anything good you did—it’s because of your blasphemy! You’re just a son of Adam, but you’ve claimed to be God!”

Jesus answered, “Isn’t it written in your Scriptures that God said, ‘You are gods?’ The Scriptures cannot be denied or found to be in error. So if those who have the message of the Scriptures are said to be ‘gods,’ then why would you accuse me of blasphemy? For I have been uniquely chosen by God and he is the one who sent me to you. How then could it be blasphemy for me to say, ‘I am the Son of God!’ If I’m not doing the beautiful works that my Father sent me to do, then don’t believe me. But if you see me doing the beautiful works of God upon the earth, then you should at least believe the evidence of the miracles, even if you don’t believe my words! Then you would come to experience me and be convinced that I am in the Father and the Father is in me.”

Once again they attempted to seize him, but he escaped miraculously from their clutches. Then Jesus went back to the place where John had baptized him at the crossing of the Jordan. Many came out to where he was and said about him, “Even though John didn’t perform any miracles, everything he predicted about this man is true!” And many people became followers of Jesus at the Jordan and believed in him.

The Book of John, Chapter 10 (The Passion Translation)

Today’s paired chapter of the Testaments is the 42nd and closing chapter of the book of Job where God restores Job’s life:

Job answered the Eternal One.

Job: I know You can do everything;

nothing You do can be foiled or frustrated.

You asked,

“Who is this that conceals counsel with empty words void of knowledge?”

And now I see that I spoke of—but did not comprehend—

great wonders that are beyond me. I didn’t know.

You said, “Hear Me now, and I will speak.

I’ll be asking the questions, and you will supply the answers.”

Before I knew only what I had heard of You,

but now I have seen You.

Therefore I realize the truth:

I disavow and mourn all I have said

and repent in dust and ash.

After the Eternal had spoken these words to Job, He turned and spoke to Eliphaz from Teman.

Eternal One: My anger is burning against you and your two friends because you have not spoken rightly of Me, as My servant Job has. So now, gather your friends and bring seven bulls and seven rams. Then go to My servant Job, make a burnt offering for yourselves, and he will pray for you. I will accept his prayer. Despite the fact that you have not spoken rightly of Me, as My servant Job did, I will not deal with you according to your foolish ways.

So Eliphaz from Teman, Bildad from Shuhah, and Zophar from Naamath went and did as the Eternal commanded, and He accepted Job’s prayer for them.

The Eternal restored the fortunes of Job after he prayed for his friends; He even doubled the wealth he had before. All of his brothers and sisters, along with those he had known earlier, came and shared meals with him at his house. They sympathized with him and consoled him regarding the great distress the Eternal had brought on him. Each guest gave him a sum of money and each, a golden ring. The Eternal One blessed the last part of Job’s life even more than the first part. He went on to possess 14,000 sheep, 6,000 camels, 1,000 teams of oxen, and 1,000 female donkeys. He also fathered 7 more sons and 3 more daughters. He named his first daughter Jemimah, his second Keziah, and his third Keren-happuch. Nowhere in all the land could one find women as captivatingly beautiful as Job’s daughters, or as independently wealthy: their father gave them each a share of the family inheritance along with their brothers. After all this, Job lived 140 years. He lived to see his children and their children and so on, to the fourth generation. Then Job died, old, and satisfied with his days.

The Book of Job, Chapter 42 (The Voice)

my personal reading of the Scriptures for Wednesday, may 19 of 2021 with a paired chapter from each Testament of the Bible along with Today’s Proverbs and Psalms

A set of posts by John Parsons that reflects upon anxiety and separation from inner peace:

It is written in our Scriptures: "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God" (Phil. 4:6). Note that the verb translated "be anxious" here (i.e.,μεριμνάω) comes from a root word (μερίζω) that means to be fragmented or divided into parts and pieces. Being anxious is therefore the uneasy state of being distracted, unfocused and divided within yourself. When we worry we heed voices of fear and begin to feel 'double-minded,' (i.e., δίψυχος), unstable, and unable to think clearly; we get restless and find it difficult to deeply breathe. We start to feel out of control, fearful that something bad will happen despite all our efforts or wishes to the contrary; we sense doom; we lose heart; we go dark... The Scripture here admonishes us to pray when we are tempted us to be anxious by focusing on something for which we are grateful. Doing so will instill the "peace of God" (שלום יהוה) that rises above all worldly thinking to keep watch over your heart and your thoughts through Yeshua the Messiah (Phil. 4:7). We gain the "light of life," that is, inner illumination from God, so that we can remain steadfast and unmovable in our faith, despite the temptation to look for relief from our struggles apart from God. [Hebrew for Christians]

5.19.21 • Facebook

From our Torah reading this week (i.e., parashat Naso) we read, "If any... goes astray and breaks faith..." (Num. 5:12). The sages comment that the Hebrew for "goes astray" (i.e., tisteh: תִשְׂטֶה) is written so it may also be read as "goes insane" (i.e., tishteh: תִשְׁטֶה), and concludes that sin is a form of insanity, that is, a denial of what is real, and therefore a state of delusion. We are required, of course, to believe that God is knowable (Rom. 1:19-20), that we are always in His presence (Prov. 15:3; Psalm 94:9; 139), that He knows all things (Psalm 147:5), and nothing can be hidden from Him (Isa. 40:28; Jer. 23:24; Heb. 4:13), but when we sin, we "break from" this reality and deny the divine Presence by a perverse act of self-exaltation. Whenever we imagine that we are unseen by God or whenever we "forget" that we live, move, and have our being in His presence, we are denying reality. Our sin causes us lose sight of what’s real: we forget who God is; we forget who we are; and we exile ourselves from the Source of life... Surely sin is a form of insanity, and therefore we have a moral and spiritual obligation to think clearly and to value truth.

As Rabbi Judah would say, "Contemplate three things, and you will not come to the hands of transgression: Know what is above from you: a seeing eye, a listening ear, and all your deeds being inscribed in a book" (Pirke Avot 2:1). Therefore "fear God and keep his commandments, because this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil" (Eccl. 12:13-14). [Hebrew for Christians]

5.19.21 • Facebook

Today’s message from the Institute for Creation Research

May 19, 2021

Sowing and Sleeping

“So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption.” (1 Corinthians 15:42)

When a believer’s soul and spirit leave the body and return to the Lord, it is significant that the New Testament Scriptures speak of the body not as dead but as sleeping. For example, Jesus said, “Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep” (John 11:11). This state is not “soul sleep” as some teach, for “to be absent from the body, [is] to be present with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8). The body is sleeping—not the soul.

Similarly, when the believer’s body is laid in a grave, Paul speaks of this act not as a burial but as sowing! “But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come? Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die: And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain: But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body” (1 Corinthians 15:35-38).

Just as a buried grain of wheat brings forth a fruitful plant, so the old, sin-corrupted, aching body of human flesh, sown in the ground, will some day come forth “fashioned like unto his glorious body” (Philippians 3:21), in which “there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain” (Revelation 21:4).

“So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption: It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power: It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body” (1 Corinthians 15:42-44). When a believer’s body is sown in the ground, God will soon reap from it a body of glory that will last for eternity. HMM

[cyberpoetryballoon]

Everyone Wants to Return to 'Normal.' That Doesn't Mean You Should

A strange phenomenon has begun to occur in big cities, particularly Los Angeles and New York. Inklings of the behavior started to appear on my Instagram Stories weeks ago—people, three to 10 deep, hanging out in public, drinking in groups, eating in restaurants. I have to assume the individuals at these gatherings were aware there's a deadly pandemic still ravaging the country, as some were wearing masks, yet many are choosing to forget the other measures being asked of us to prevent the spread of coronavirus. And it really is a choice.

New York City entered phase 1 of the reopening process on June 8, allowing construction work and curbside or in-store pick-up at retailers. While Phase 2 is slated for June 22—opening up outdoor dining, barbershops, and salons, as well as additional retail and other services—and Los Angeles is in Phase 3—allowing zoos, aquariums, and music, film, and TV production to resume business—it hasn't stopped experts from questioning the speed of reopening as a public health concern. Simultaneously, many denizens of these cities are fully abandoning social distancing and self-isolation guidelines, seemingly believing that these reopenings signal the end of the virus itself. In LA, an underground dance party drew about 100 people last week. That same day, St. Mark's Place in New York City was crowded with mostly unmasked people raging as a New Orleans-style jazz band played live outside a local bar. It looked like a block party, not a city heeding and grieving the hundreds of thousands of residents sickened (and nearly 20,000 killed) by a deadly pandemic.

I'm not exactly sure when it started, but this disparity between awareness and personal behavior has progressively become common on my timeline. Weeks ago, I sent friends screenshots of an ex-boyfriend's Instagram Stories in which he goes from decrying the government's handling of the COVID-19 crisis to a video of him partying with friends on a boat, no masks in sight. I've seen acquaintances post about relatives struggling with coronavirus, admitting that at first they didn't take the virus seriously, only to see them follow up with social media posts at the beach, drinking and laughing with a PPE-free group of friends. I've heard of containing multitudes, but, uh, that ain't it.

It all came to a head on Saturday afternoon, when a friend and I met up for a social-distanced hang. Masks on, we walked to a nearby bar that was empty, got frozen watermelon margarita road sodas, and headed to a park, where we sat for a few hours soaking up the sun while keeping to opposite ends of my large picnic blanket. We used hand sanitizer liberally and frequently, and avoided all touch. It felt comforting to feel a sense of normalcy again, even if it had to be adjusted for the current conditions. Those are easy sacrifices, though, when you consider the consequences (i.e. dying, or someone else dying because you're an asshole). About a hundred feet away, we saw a picnic table full of people celebrating a birthday. For a moment I thought nothing of it, until it came back to me, like a memory triggered from hearing a song or seeing a Hyundai Sonata or whatever else gets the brain remembering things: This isn't normal anymore.

Then, I suddenly heard chants of "no justice, no peace." Hundreds of protestors marched through the park, following the paved pathway to meet at the monument in the center of the park. It was a strange collision of the world we're now living in, and the layers of cognitive dissonance that are spreading throughout our collective consciousness in various degrees. To see these gatherings—myself and my friend cautiously catching a fade at the park, a large cluster of people abandoning concern for an afternoon of celebration, and protestors fighting for a greater good despite fears of illness and brutalization from police—made me realize the mental gymnastics we're all performing out of fear or necessity.

Simply Psychology explains that cognitive dissonance "refers to a situation involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs or behaviors. This produces a feeling of mental discomfort leading to an alteration in one of the attitudes, beliefs or behaviors to reduce the discomfort and restore balance." Meaning, we do not-great shit, convince ourselves why we have to do the not-great shit, and then, when we can feel your own brain dragging us to filth, we quiet the demons by reminding ourselves that surely, we're actually a Good Person who just had to do some not-great shit. It's how society got both reality TV stars and certain breeds of Nazi sympathizers.

For protestors, there are dueling conflicting attitudes and behaviors: protecting oneself and others during a pandemic, and protecting and fighting for Black people in the face of racial injustice. To do one, the other has to be sacrificed, even if participants are taking precautions like wearing face masks, using hand sanitizer, and staying home if they have any symptoms. When I chose to protest these past weeks, it all came down to a simple fact: I have health insurance. I can afford to put my body on the line in the service of an important fight, because I have the privilege of a medical safety net. But for others, and for the drunken partiers convening and raging like it's pandemic Spring Break even when they know they shouldn't according to the pleas of health experts, it's bafflingly irresponsible. So many people are inexplicably getting comfortable, and dropping their guard too damn low.

The reminders of the time we're living in are everywhere—on signs in storefronts, in the masked faces on the street, in the daily push notifications—so seeing such a large number of people, both in real life and online, blatantly contradict themselves is surreal and upsetting. It boggles the mind, especially when coming from people who ostensibly know better. Do they believe they're immune in some way? How many of these people are getting regularly tested for COVID-19? Perhaps a positive antibody result has led some to believe that they're impervious to coronavirus, despite the fact that experts say that may not be the case. Are the people crowding restaurants and throwing backyard parties with dozens of friends and family considering their forays outside of the stifling bounds of quarantine a little treat? Something so small that it's probably harmless?

It's understanding to deeply grieve for normalcy—to yearn for the joy that comes with being drunk with your friends, laughing at a bar, gossiping at a restaurant. The act of communing over food and drink is ancient, and beautiful, and above all, really fun. But if it means you and all your friends end up with COVID after one night of getting shithoused at a Florida Irish Pub, would it be worth it? Imagine being willing to risk it all for a pint of semi-cold Guinness. Wild!

The anti-mask, pro-reopening brigade is loud and misled, but so are those who are crying online and in person about the horrible impacts of COVID only to turn around and put others at risk out of a sense of personal entitlement or willingness to allow themselves a pass. Offering our patronage to small businesses like bars and restaurants is absolutely important, especially when so many across the country are faced with the difficult choice of having to open prematurely and putting their staff at risk of contracting COVID or lose their livelihood and their ability to pay their staff. The government has done far too little to help these workers, but there are ways we can help support them besides by crowding their tables and pretending that Everything Is Fine, when the numbers show that we're still in a very bad place. So instead of choosing to forget, instead of choosing to pretend that we're safe just because their doors are reopening, consider getting takeout, or buying merch. Bars and restaurants can still be supported in full, in a safe way.

The normal we knew is gone. Humans have had to evolve for their survival since literally forever. Refusing to do so is a danger to all. It's time to adapt to a new reality.

via VICE US - undefined US VICE US - undefined US via Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network

[carolrhackett85282]

Everyone Wants to Return to 'Normal.' That Doesn't Mean You Should

A strange phenomenon has begun to occur in big cities, particularly Los Angeles and New York. Inklings of the behavior started to appear on my Instagram Stories weeks ago—people, three to 10 deep, hanging out in public, drinking in groups, eating in restaurants. I have to assume the individuals at these gatherings were aware there's a deadly pandemic still ravaging the country, as some were wearing masks, yet many are choosing to forget the other measures being asked of us to prevent the spread of coronavirus. And it really is a choice.

New York City entered phase 1 of the reopening process on June 8, allowing construction work and curbside or in-store pick-up at retailers. While Phase 2 is slated for June 22—opening up outdoor dining, barbershops, and salons, as well as additional retail and other services—and Los Angeles is in Phase 3—allowing zoos, aquariums, and music, film, and TV production to resume business—it hasn't stopped experts from questioning the speed of reopening as a public health concern. Simultaneously, many denizens of these cities are fully abandoning social distancing and self-isolation guidelines, seemingly believing that these reopenings signal the end of the virus itself. In LA, an underground dance party drew about 100 people last week. That same day, St. Mark's Place in New York City was crowded with mostly unmasked people raging as a New Orleans-style jazz band played live outside a local bar. It looked like a block party, not a city heeding and grieving the hundreds of thousands of residents sickened (and nearly 20,000 killed) by a deadly pandemic.

I'm not exactly sure when it started, but this disparity between awareness and personal behavior has progressively become common on my timeline. Weeks ago, I sent friends screenshots of an ex-boyfriend's Instagram Stories in which he goes from decrying the government's handling of the COVID-19 crisis to a video of him partying with friends on a boat, no masks in sight. I've seen acquaintances post about relatives struggling with coronavirus, admitting that at first they didn't take the virus seriously, only to see them follow up with social media posts at the beach, drinking and laughing with a PPE-free group of friends. I've heard of containing multitudes, but, uh, that ain't it.

It all came to a head on Saturday afternoon, when a friend and I met up for a social-distanced hang. Masks on, we walked to a nearby bar that was empty, got frozen watermelon margarita road sodas, and headed to a park, where we sat for a few hours soaking up the sun while keeping to opposite ends of my large picnic blanket. We used hand sanitizer liberally and frequently, and avoided all touch. It felt comforting to feel a sense of normalcy again, even if it had to be adjusted for the current conditions. Those are easy sacrifices, though, when you consider the consequences (i.e. dying, or someone else dying because you're an asshole). About a hundred feet away, we saw a picnic table full of people celebrating a birthday. For a moment I thought nothing of it, until it came back to me, like a memory triggered from hearing a song or seeing a Hyundai Sonata or whatever else gets the brain remembering things: This isn't normal anymore.

Then, I suddenly heard chants of "no justice, no peace." Hundreds of protestors marched through the park, following the paved pathway to meet at the monument in the center of the park. It was a strange collision of the world we're now living in, and the layers of cognitive dissonance that are spreading throughout our collective consciousness in various degrees. To see these gatherings—myself and my friend cautiously catching a fade at the park, a large cluster of people abandoning concern for an afternoon of celebration, and protestors fighting for a greater good despite fears of illness and brutalization from police—made me realize the mental gymnastics we're all performing out of fear or necessity.

Simply Psychology explains that cognitive dissonance "refers to a situation involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs or behaviors. This produces a feeling of mental discomfort leading to an alteration in one of the attitudes, beliefs or behaviors to reduce the discomfort and restore balance." Meaning, we do not-great shit, convince ourselves why we have to do the not-great shit, and then, when we can feel your own brain dragging us to filth, we quiet the demons by reminding ourselves that surely, we're actually a Good Person who just had to do some not-great shit. It's how society got both reality TV stars and certain breeds of Nazi sympathizers.

For protestors, there are dueling conflicting attitudes and behaviors: protecting oneself and others during a pandemic, and protecting and fighting for Black people in the face of racial injustice. To do one, the other has to be sacrificed, even if participants are taking precautions like wearing face masks, using hand sanitizer, and staying home if they have any symptoms. When I chose to protest these past weeks, it all came down to a simple fact: I have health insurance. I can afford to put my body on the line in the service of an important fight, because I have the privilege of a medical safety net. But for others, and for the drunken partiers convening and raging like it's pandemic Spring Break even when they know they shouldn't according to the pleas of health experts, it's bafflingly irresponsible. So many people are inexplicably getting comfortable, and dropping their guard too damn low.

The reminders of the time we're living in are everywhere—on signs in storefronts, in the masked faces on the street, in the daily push notifications—so seeing such a large number of people, both in real life and online, blatantly contradict themselves is surreal and upsetting. It boggles the mind, especially when coming from people who ostensibly know better. Do they believe they're immune in some way? How many of these people are getting regularly tested for COVID-19? Perhaps a positive antibody result has led some to believe that they're impervious to coronavirus, despite the fact that experts say that may not be the case. Are the people crowding restaurants and throwing backyard parties with dozens of friends and family considering their forays outside of the stifling bounds of quarantine a little treat? Something so small that it's probably harmless?

It's understanding to deeply grieve for normalcy—to yearn for the joy that comes with being drunk with your friends, laughing at a bar, gossiping at a restaurant. The act of communing over food and drink is ancient, and beautiful, and above all, really fun. But if it means you and all your friends end up with COVID after one night of getting shithoused at a Florida Irish Pub, would it be worth it? Imagine being willing to risk it all for a pint of semi-cold Guinness. Wild!

The anti-mask, pro-reopening brigade is loud and misled, but so are those who are crying online and in person about the horrible impacts of COVID only to turn around and put others at risk out of a sense of personal entitlement or willingness to allow themselves a pass. Offering our patronage to small businesses like bars and restaurants is absolutely important, especially when so many across the country are faced with the difficult choice of having to open prematurely and putting their staff at risk of contracting COVID or lose their livelihood and their ability to pay their staff. The government has done far too little to help these workers, but there are ways we can help support them besides by crowding their tables and pretending that Everything Is Fine, when the numbers show that we're still in a very bad place. So instead of choosing to forget, instead of choosing to pretend that we're safe just because their doors are reopening, consider getting takeout, or buying merch. Bars and restaurants can still be supported in full, in a safe way.

The normal we knew is gone. Humans have had to evolve for their survival since literally forever. Refusing to do so is a danger to all. It's time to adapt to a new reality.

via VICE US - undefined US VICE US - undefined US via Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network

[melodymgill49801]

Everyone Wants to Return to 'Normal.' That Doesn't Mean You Should

A strange phenomenon has begun to occur in big cities, particularly Los Angeles and New York. Inklings of the behavior started to appear on my Instagram Stories weeks ago—people, three to 10 deep, hanging out in public, drinking in groups, eating in restaurants. I have to assume the individuals at these gatherings were aware there's a deadly pandemic still ravaging the country, as some were wearing masks, yet many are choosing to forget the other measures being asked of us to prevent the spread of coronavirus. And it really is a choice.

New York City entered phase 1 of the reopening process on June 8, allowing construction work and curbside or in-store pick-up at retailers. While Phase 2 is slated for June 22—opening up outdoor dining, barbershops, and salons, as well as additional retail and other services—and Los Angeles is in Phase 3—allowing zoos, aquariums, and music, film, and TV production to resume business—it hasn't stopped experts from questioning the speed of reopening as a public health concern. Simultaneously, many denizens of these cities are fully abandoning social distancing and self-isolation guidelines, seemingly believing that these reopenings signal the end of the virus itself. In LA, an underground dance party drew about 100 people last week. That same day, St. Mark's Place in New York City was crowded with mostly unmasked people raging as a New Orleans-style jazz band played live outside a local bar. It looked like a block party, not a city heeding and grieving the hundreds of thousands of residents sickened (and nearly 20,000 killed) by a deadly pandemic.

I'm not exactly sure when it started, but this disparity between awareness and personal behavior has progressively become common on my timeline. Weeks ago, I sent friends screenshots of an ex-boyfriend's Instagram Stories in which he goes from decrying the government's handling of the COVID-19 crisis to a video of him partying with friends on a boat, no masks in sight. I've seen acquaintances post about relatives struggling with coronavirus, admitting that at first they didn't take the virus seriously, only to see them follow up with social media posts at the beach, drinking and laughing with a PPE-free group of friends. I've heard of containing multitudes, but, uh, that ain't it.

It all came to a head on Saturday afternoon, when a friend and I met up for a social-distanced hang. Masks on, we walked to a nearby bar that was empty, got frozen watermelon margarita road sodas, and headed to a park, where we sat for a few hours soaking up the sun while keeping to opposite ends of my large picnic blanket. We used hand sanitizer liberally and frequently, and avoided all touch. It felt comforting to feel a sense of normalcy again, even if it had to be adjusted for the current conditions. Those are easy sacrifices, though, when you consider the consequences (i.e. dying, or someone else dying because you're an asshole). About a hundred feet away, we saw a picnic table full of people celebrating a birthday. For a moment I thought nothing of it, until it came back to me, like a memory triggered from hearing a song or seeing a Hyundai Sonata or whatever else gets the brain remembering things: This isn't normal anymore.

Then, I suddenly heard chants of "no justice, no peace." Hundreds of protestors marched through the park, following the paved pathway to meet at the monument in the center of the park. It was a strange collision of the world we're now living in, and the layers of cognitive dissonance that are spreading throughout our collective consciousness in various degrees. To see these gatherings—myself and my friend cautiously catching a fade at the park, a large cluster of people abandoning concern for an afternoon of celebration, and protestors fighting for a greater good despite fears of illness and brutalization from police—made me realize the mental gymnastics we're all performing out of fear or necessity.

Simply Psychology explains that cognitive dissonance "refers to a situation involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs or behaviors. This produces a feeling of mental discomfort leading to an alteration in one of the attitudes, beliefs or behaviors to reduce the discomfort and restore balance." Meaning, we do not-great shit, convince ourselves why we have to do the not-great shit, and then, when we can feel your own brain dragging us to filth, we quiet the demons by reminding ourselves that surely, we're actually a Good Person who just had to do some not-great shit. It's how society got both reality TV stars and certain breeds of Nazi sympathizers.

For protestors, there are dueling conflicting attitudes and behaviors: protecting oneself and others during a pandemic, and protecting and fighting for Black people in the face of racial injustice. To do one, the other has to be sacrificed, even if participants are taking precautions like wearing face masks, using hand sanitizer, and staying home if they have any symptoms. When I chose to protest these past weeks, it all came down to a simple fact: I have health insurance. I can afford to put my body on the line in the service of an important fight, because I have the privilege of a medical safety net. But for others, and for the drunken partiers convening and raging like it's pandemic Spring Break even when they know they shouldn't according to the pleas of health experts, it's bafflingly irresponsible. So many people are inexplicably getting comfortable, and dropping their guard too damn low.

The reminders of the time we're living in are everywhere—on signs in storefronts, in the masked faces on the street, in the daily push notifications—so seeing such a large number of people, both in real life and online, blatantly contradict themselves is surreal and upsetting. It boggles the mind, especially when coming from people who ostensibly know better. Do they believe they're immune in some way? How many of these people are getting regularly tested for COVID-19? Perhaps a positive antibody result has led some to believe that they're impervious to coronavirus, despite the fact that experts say that may not be the case. Are the people crowding restaurants and throwing backyard parties with dozens of friends and family considering their forays outside of the stifling bounds of quarantine a little treat? Something so small that it's probably harmless?

It's understanding to deeply grieve for normalcy—to yearn for the joy that comes with being drunk with your friends, laughing at a bar, gossiping at a restaurant. The act of communing over food and drink is ancient, and beautiful, and above all, really fun. But if it means you and all your friends end up with COVID after one night of getting shithoused at a Florida Irish Pub, would it be worth it? Imagine being willing to risk it all for a pint of semi-cold Guinness. Wild!

The anti-mask, pro-reopening brigade is loud and misled, but so are those who are crying online and in person about the horrible impacts of COVID only to turn around and put others at risk out of a sense of personal entitlement or willingness to allow themselves a pass. Offering our patronage to small businesses like bars and restaurants is absolutely important, especially when so many across the country are faced with the difficult choice of having to open prematurely and putting their staff at risk of contracting COVID or lose their livelihood and their ability to pay their staff. The government has done far too little to help these workers, but there are ways we can help support them besides by crowding their tables and pretending that Everything Is Fine, when the numbers show that we're still in a very bad place. So instead of choosing to forget, instead of choosing to pretend that we're safe just because their doors are reopening, consider getting takeout, or buying merch. Bars and restaurants can still be supported in full, in a safe way.

The normal we knew is gone. Humans have had to evolve for their survival since literally forever. Refusing to do so is a danger to all. It's time to adapt to a new reality.

via VICE US - undefined US VICE US - undefined US via Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network