#instead of with reverence

[kyriathanatos]

Been watching this show I loved back when it first aired called “Evil”, somehow when I wasn’t looking it got 4 seasons and made it to a series finale.

Premise is basically “The X-Files, but Christian, and the main character is Scully” and then it gets so so so much weirder from that.

[memento-morri-writes]

Carrion Backstory Chapter 2 - A Crisis of Faith

Chapter 1 [+ author commentary] / Chapter 2 [+ author commentary] / Chapter 3 / Chapter 4 [+ author commentary]

pov: Carrion wordcount: 1.8k character(s): Carrion Vice (D&D) canon status: canon backstory vignette trigger warnings: hallucinations, injury, violence, mentions of death summary: after being left for dead by his paladin order, Reverence undergoes a crisis of faith.

Reverence lay on his back, staring up at the moon. In the hours since he had been left here, it had sunk lower in the sky, and now it hung just above the rim of the ravine. The tiny waning crescent reminded him of the edge of a knife. 

A knife like how the rocks cut into his skin if he even tried to move. A knife like the wounds all over his body. A knife like the one that had cut him out of the tapestry of the Silver Order. A knife like the one that had stabbed his heart when Orion fell. 

He shook his head. He was thinking in metaphors. That wasn’t good. Maybe he had lost too much blood. Maybe he would die soon. 

He wondered what death felt like. It had to feel better than this.

Reverence closed his eyes and waited to die. 

Unfortunately, it seemed the Flame had other plans for him. 

He woke to the sun beating down on him, its bright light prying at the edges of his sleep. Slowly, his eyes cracked open. It was daylight now, and the sun was visible over the ravine. That meant that half a day had passed since he’d been left here.

Carefully, he tried to move, get a sense of his body. Immediately, pain shot through him, causing him to cry out. So he was still injured. And badly, it seemed. The paladins – his friends – had nearly killed him. 

If only they had finished the job. 

He closed his eyes and hoped to die.

Time slipped away from him after that. Hours passed without him registering them. He slept fitfully, waking every time he so much as twitched a muscle. His mouth grew dry, and he wished desperately for rain. 

Rain would also help with the heat. It was fall now, and yet he was sweltering. The rocks beneath him absorbed the heat. He was roasting here, like a rabbit over a fire. 

A fire. The Sacred Flame. 

An image danced on the back of his eyelids: His own body, speared on a ceremonial spear, and suspended over the temple’s Flame as though on a spit. The air was thick with smoke, obscuring the temple beyond the first two rows of the pews. 

Seated on those pews were the paladins. His paladins. The people he had traveled with and fought with and laughed with. They were laughing now, but this time it was not with him. They jeered, banging their metal travel bowls together in anticipation of a meal. 

He understood, then: This was what the Flame wanted. It wanted him to burn. He had taken in its light, and carried it, like a lamp lighting the way. But his wick had expired, his use had run out. And now there was nothing left to do but burn. Burn until there was nothing left. 

If it wanted him to burn, then he would burn.

He closed his eyes and reached for the flames.

Hours slipped by as he waded through the fire. In its dancing flames, he saw memories. He saw himself training alongside the other paladins. He saw Theodore instructing him, correcting his stance. He saw Beren laughing, a mug of ale in his hand. 

And in every memory, he saw it. Saw the fire that burned behind their eyes. The fire of devotion. Of loyalty. 

He walked onwards, through the fire. 

Ahead of him, he saw Theodore, arguing with Beren. Arguing about him. About whether or not to kill him. A fire burned at their feet, much larger than the distant campfire that had been there the first time he had seen these events. 

Theodore’s voice boomed, unnaturally loud, coming from all sides. “I will not kill one of my men!”

Beren opened his mouth to reply. But what emerged was not Beren’s voice. It was the roar of flames, almost deafening in volume, somehow shaped into words. “THEN LET HIM BURN.”

The flames flickered and the pair vanished. 

When the flames settled, they were there again, this time leaning out over the ravine, just like in his memory. But this time, Theodore carried a burning torch in one hand. Beren spoke again, but instead of protest, it was the Flame-voice again. “LET HIM BURN.” 

Theodore reached out his hand, and dropped the torch. It fell, tumbling down towards where Reverence lay on the ledge. Despite it being a barren shelf of rock, the flames caught. He could feel their heat. Feel the way his chains warmed until they were burning his skin. He opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came. 

Above him, Theodore turned away. “Put him out of your mind. Soon he will be nothing but Carrion.”

The flames engulfed him, obscuring Theodore from view.

Reverence burned away.

He woke, thrashing against the chains. It hurt, the pain almost blinding, but that didn’t matter. If he did not break free, he was going to die. And, he realized for the first time, he did not want to die. He wanted to escape, and to get out of this ravine. To hunt down Theodore and destroy his life as Theodore had done to him. He wanted revenge. He wanted to live.

The world took on a purple tint, growing hazy and distant. His muscles screamed in agony. The chains were too tight, cutting into his flesh. He bellowed in pain. They were choke him. Squeeze the life from his body. He was going to burst, or implode.

And then he was free.

The pressure on his body vanished as the chains broke and  fell away, clattering into the depths of the ravine. Euphoric, forgetting about his wounds, he leapt, scrabbling for a handhold on the rocky cliff. His long, knife-like claws dug into cracks in the rock. Slowly, every muscle burning, he ascended. 

Reaching the top of the cliff he staggered forwards, away from the edge. As he stumbled, the world grew in size around him as his body shrank. The pain that he had been trying his best to ignore slammed into him with its full force. 

His legs buckled under its weight and he fell to his knees.

He was dying, he was sure of it. He couldn’t die, not now. Not now that he was free, now that he understood! Desperately he reached out, searching for the golden-orange light of his magic. There was nothing but the cold and the dark. 

Of course. The flames had burned him. They would never heal him now.

BItter laughter bubbled to his lips, harsh and dry. He fell sideways, ignoring the distant pain from the impact. With great effort, he rolled onto his back. Above him, the sky was dark. The moon had vanished. He found himself falling again, but this time falling up, into the welcoming dark. 

He closed his eyes and waited for impact.

Time became a river again, with him borne along by the current, blissfully unaware. Every so often the world became real again, awareness surfacing like an island. 

“Hello? Can you hear me?”

A burst of pain in his shoulder. 

“Oh, fuck.”

A gentle touch.

Stinging pain.

A groan, from somewhere inside himself, more animal than human.

“I know, I know. It hurts. Just try to relax.”

The crackling of a fire. 

Cool water on his lips.

“Drink.”

Before he saw anything, he could hear. He took in the sounds of the world. The crackle of a fire. A rhythmic zing sound, over and over again. Zing, zing, zing. And underneath it, someone humming. He was not alone.

Extending his awareness to the rest of his body, he checked what he could feel. He lay on his back on something soft. A bedroll, maybe? No, too hairy. A pelt of some kind, then. He didn’t hurt, at least not much. There was a soreness that permeated every inch of his body, but it was nothing compared to the agony from before. Wiggling his fingers and toes, flexing the muscles in his arms and legs, he checked his range of motion. He could move. That was good. Maybe even fight if he needed to, though he didn’t want to test that theory.

He cracked open his eyes. Above him, he saw the branches of pine trees. Beyond that, the night sky, and the thin line of a waxing crescent moon. Slowly lifting his head, he looked around. A fire lit a small campsite, tucked amongst the trees. No tents, only his pelt and an empty bedroll. A rabbit roasted on a spit over the fire.

Beyond the fire hunched a figure, bent over some task. They appeared to be the source of the humming as well as the other noise. They didn’t seem to have noticed that he was awake yet. 

Carefully, as quietly as possible, he sat up. Glancing down, he saw he was shirtless and barefoot, though he still wore his pants from the Order, ripped in several places and stained with blood and dirt. He looked around for a weapon. 

There, by the other bedroll. A sheathed sword. 

He inched towards it, stepping as lightly as he could manage. But he was still sore, and clumsy. 

The humming stopped.

“Oh, good, you’re awake.”

He looked up and saw that the hunched figure on the other side belonged to a rugged-looking human man with weathered skin and a tangled mop of black hair. There was a wide grin on his face. In his hand gleamed a knife, which he was sharpening with a whetstone held in his other hand. Zing, zing, zing.

He must have seen the fear on his guest’s face, because he laughed and raised his hands. “I don’t mean you any harm. It would be a waste of all the time I spent dragging you back from the brink of death.”

He gestured to the rabbit on the spit. “I imagine you must be hungry. Come, sit.” Taking the knife, he sliced off a perfectly roasted slice of meat, letting it fall onto the plate. He held it out in the direction of his guest who still crouched near the bedroll. 

The sword was so close. But if this man had saved him… The smell of the roasted meat hit his nose and his stomach growled. He didn’t know how long it had been since he’d eaten but he knew it was days. 

Warily, he inched closer. When the other man made no move to attack, he snatched the plate of meat from his hand. Not bothering to wait for utensils, he picked it up and began to eat. It was the most glorious thing he had ever tasted. It was gone in seconds. 

He looked up and saw his rescuer holding another plate. “Do you want more?” 

He nodded vigorously. “Yes,” he rasped. Then, as an afterthought, “Please.”

His rescuer nodded. “Of course. But first, tell me: Who are you?”

He wasn’t sure what was going to come out of his mouth until it did, but once it was out he knew it was the truth. “My name is Carrion.”

[penta-png]

i just lost like 15 minutes of my life that i fear i will never be able to get back. congrats on the birth longlegs

[vaporgrove]

making you look at them

[4lph4kidz]

admittedly this was always a self-indulgent interpretation but for a while i was leaning towards 'page' being a pun, a very passive role where the character is the often-unintentional means of their aspect's narrative conveyance - largely based on jake in the game over timeline being a disempowered conduit for the raw power of hope at wannabe narrator aranea's request. also later narrator dirk being obsessed with him.

i also liked to think about the page of hope as 'a blank page' with some essential tie to like, the spirit of fiction or imagination itself - that was based on the way jake is teased so early on in order to fuel reader speculation. jake's in-character relationship to fiction and narrative-reality is really interesting too, i do like the idea that he can subconsiously alter reality via his beliefs... i think all thats been kind of ruled out by Beyond Canon at this point, though. perils of building an extensive interpretation on a very small set of examples. i can't win at classpects. either i try to keep it neat and systemitized, and am wrong, or i use it as a very loose jumping off point for something else, and i'm still wrong

[justmenoworries]

"Oooo Adam has a right to hate Lucifer, Lucifer took Lilith and Eve away from him"

Adam was an abusive asshat to Lilith. Lilith chose to be with the one who actually respected her and didn't demand she be solely his submissive hanger-on.

"From the dust of Earth, [the angels] created Adam and Lilith. Equals as the first of mankind, but despite this, Adam demanded control, and Lilith refused to submit to his will. She fled the Garden."

"Drawn in by her fierce independence, Lucifer found her and the two rebellious dreamers fell deeply in love."

2. Lucifer didn't "take" Eve. He offered her the forbidden fruit and she accepted.

"Together, [Lilith and Lucifer] wished to share the magic of free will with humanity, offering the Fruit of Knowledge to Adam's new bride, Eve, who gladly accepted."

We don't know what happened after aside from the fact that apparently because Eve took the fruit "evil" was let in to the world the angels created. Since humanity still, y'know, exists, we can gather that Eve stayed with Adam and they had kids like in the original myth.

3. It really says a lot that this wording denies Eve and Lilith any actual agency in what happened in favor of pushing all the blame and responsibility on Lucifer and making Adam out to be a poor uwu misunderstood baby. The misogyny is strong in this one.

[daydreamingtomatos]

quotes from miyazaki that you shouldnt misconstrue:

the "insult to life itself" quote, which was calling out ableism within his industry. it does not apply to wider generative ai critique, its from 2016.

quotes from miyazaki that you should totally misconstrue:

[msnihilist]

Another headcanon for the Monday-verse I have is that, unlike our Doc and Drew, Doc and Drew Monday planned for Zak to be born with his powers.

...If only because I can't think of any other reason why the two of them would have had a child in the first place, especially not continue to keep him around despite the fact that they detest him.

[symbiotic-slime]

writing some catholic trauma into my venom tma au >:3

[tanicus-caesareth]

guarana drama, damage control

[randomnameless]

The more I think about it, the claim Edelgard wants to be a goddess/replace the goddess from Dimitri and Seteth makes more sense. Her believing only she can fix the world's problems, believing the world is too sinful because of "those eeevil lizard people", crushing anyone who dares oppose her and seeing human sacrifices as a means to an end/collateral damage. Heck you can see her war as a rapture and those who don't agree with her burn for a thousand years or in the case get killed/vanquished. And after her war if she wins, then she reforms a church under her name and in Nopes she does the exact the same thing after getting rid of the Slithers with Rhea. And considering how cultish her stans irl behave while trying to claim that they're "good people", yeah it all clicks.

The thing is,

The "Goddess" or at least what we know/heard of her didn't even act like Supreme Leader did.

Sure, sources on Sothis's time in Fodlan are biased, either we're told anything about her by Rhea, or by the Mole People.

But I agree, the game gives us some clues about what Supreme Leader wants to be, at least in Tru Piss. With her Manu support, she becomes the figure people look up to and aspire to be, the source of strength the Goddess and the CoS previously were. You also have the explore sections in the monastery, and how she's found where Rhea used to be when she was doing her archbishop things (the audience chambers iirc?), the CoS being "reformed under her supervision" and the final straw on the camel's back is her ending mural.

The rest is her messiah complex - partly fueled by Adrestian nationalism - and her stubborness, Supreme Leader will walk on her path and refuse to look back or even reconsider, no matter the obstacles standing before her, you are either on her side, or an obstacle needing to be removed.

As for the irl devoted fans, lol, I won't consider their behaviour in an analysis of the character, but if we are to talk about the BESF in Nopes, they are also sure they're doing a favor to the world/Fodlan while ignoring a good part of said Fodlan. Nopes!Ferdie comes to mind, with his nonsense about the Kingdom having more crusted generals, or the general fuckery that is the alliance with the Federation, or people being gung ho and looking forward to sack the monastery/cities/Faerghus to earn some fame.

[deiscension]

﹄ ◇ ; @melodicbreeze / WHAT'S SHI QINGXUAN THINKING?

💭 I know it's been few interactions but---

      ⌜◈⌟    ▌ ──  '𝙄𝙩'𝙨 𝙨𝙤 𝙣𝙞𝙘𝙚 𝙩𝙤 𝙛𝙞𝙣𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙮 𝙝𝙖𝙫𝙚 𝙖 𝙙𝙧𝙞𝙣𝙠𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙗𝙪𝙙𝙙𝙮 𝙬𝙝𝙤 𝙘𝙖𝙣 𝙠𝙚𝙚𝙥 𝙪𝙥 𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙝 𝙢𝙚 𝙖𝙜𝙖𝙞𝙣. Most people are knocked flat on their backs by the third or fourth round, but not my favorite bard in all of Teyvat!'

     𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞'𝐬 𝐧𝐨 𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐩𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐧 𝐫𝐞𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐟 𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐝𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐚𝐬 𝐋𝐚𝐝𝐲 𝐖𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐌𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫, even if The Angel's Share is a far cry from the splendor of Chenyu Vale's mountaintops. A blessing in many ways. The lingering sting of shame isn't quite as quick to reawaken when both scenery and company are so different from that bygone era. In its place appreciation blooms: for the boisterous tavern patrons, the endless flow of dandelion wine, and a companion at her side who laughs alongside her 'til both their sides hurt and the bartender has to tell them to quiet down. She's been accepted by him without question. That's enough for her.

     𝐎𝐫 𝐢𝐭 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐛𝐞 𝐞𝐧𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡. But without the shame to aid in smothering it, the ache for those long-gone days swells until her chest could burst from it. She's no longer Lady Wind Master. She never should have been. She knows this as well as she knows the back of her own hands. Is it so wrong for her to miss racing through the clouds? Is it so wrong for her to pine for the taste of sweet sake mingling with the scent of incense rising from the offerings of her beloved devotees? At times, being at Venti's side seems to exacerbate these pangs of nostalgia. Surely one of her favorite pagodas still stands atop the mountains, even if as overgrown remains. If she could somehow take him to one and manage to unearth a bottle of Thousand-Year Mulberry Mead along the way, then maybe...

   ...𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐬𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠? She's moved on. Besides, that mead had been brewed specifically as offerings to Adepti. More than a sip or two could easily kill a mortal. And speaking of--

     '--𝙎𝙝𝙤𝙪𝙡𝙙 𝙄 𝙗𝙚 𝙬𝙤𝙧𝙧𝙞𝙚𝙙 𝙖𝙗𝙤𝙪𝙩 𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙡𝙞𝙫𝙚𝙧!? I know humans are sturdier than they look, but surely there's a limit to what their organs can handle. Aiyah, how many bottles did we go through last night? Wait... can he drink as much as me in a single sitting? Hmm...'

[widowshill]

"for most of my life, i've wanted a place where i've belonged. a place where I could feel at home again. feel loved again. and i've found that place, here at collinwood." this is actually what it's all about babey

[wheatstar]

the thing about warrior cats that bothers me the most is that there are so many writing decisions that COULD be really interesting but i know the authors probably didnt mean it in that interesting way so instead i just get disappointed over and over again

[pocketramblr]

Girl now is NOT the time to be thinking about Yumi and Nikaro role swap potential

[insignificantstrawberry]

Honestly, it’s comforting to know that no matter how crazy and obsessive I may appear to others on the subject of the titanic, I know in my heart that I am not even close to the level of insane some people can become and in fact I might as well be perfectly healthy and mentally stable.