#complexity-induced risk

[ontonix]

Complexity-Induced Risk

Complexity-Induced Risk refers to the heightened potential for adverse outcomes arising from the intricate and interconnected nature of a system. This risk emerges when the complexity of a system—whether technological, financial, ecological, or organizational—reaches critical levels, leading to unpredictable interactions that are difficult to foresee, manage, or mitigate. This level of complexity…

[apoloadonisandnarcissus]

Inspirations and Themes in “Nosferatu” (2024), according to Robert Eggers

At the surface this film appears to be “just another remake”, but it’s actually the opposite; it’s a subversion of every theme in Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” and on the original 1922 “Nosferatu”; because Eggers threw the “sexual purity”, “Christian salvation” and “Victorian romantic love” out of the window in this one.

What is Robert Eggers’ “Nosferatu” about? What are the themes? What makes his adaptation different from the others? Let’s explore the list of inspirations for this story, according to their own creator:

1. Emily Brontë “Wuthering Heights” (1847)

“You loved me then, what right had you to leave me? What right, answer me, for the poor fancy you felt for Linton? Because misery and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will, did it. I have not broken your heart, you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine.”

Themes of the all-consuming, obsessive and self-destructive passion, wrecking the lives of everyone around them and only stops when they are both dead; the destructive power of love; revenge; love triangle between a “beastly” man/mental unstable woman/gentleman; blend of hatred and love; couldn’t be together in life, united in death and reunited in the spiritual world; I already expanded on this topic in another post.

2. “Svengali” (1931)

“Oh, God, grant me in death what you denied me in life; the woman I love.”

Theme of the villain who induces others in a hypnotic and mesmerized states; infectious nature which causes contradictory feelings of repulse vs. attraction. Orlok using his sorcery to access Ellen (once again); Love triangle between a obsessive hypnotist/young woman/gentleman; Ellen’s life consumed by her connection with Orlok; couldn’t be together in life, united in death and reunited in the spiritual world.

3. “La Belle et la Bête” (Beauty and the Beast) (1946)

“Love can turn a man into a beast. But love can also make an ugly man handsome.”

Themes of reality vs. appearance: nothing is as it seems, and there’s more to the story than meets the eye. The storytelling is intricate, complex and requires intention and receptivity to truly understand it. Transformation and metamorphosis. Love and self-acceptance; embrace oneself and breaking free from social expectations. Cursed creature whose curse can only be broken by love: “And so the maiden fair did offer up her love unto the beast, and with him lay in close embrace until first cockcrow, her willing sacrifice thus broke the curse and freed them from the plague of Nosferatu.”

4. “Great Expectations” (1946)

“A young gentleman of great expectations.”

Themes of wealth and ambition vs. affection and compassion. Inspiration for Thomas Hutter character, who seeks social advancement, wealth and climb the social ladder, motivated by a desire of self-improvement. Friedrich Harding is Thomas’s Pip Estella; as he wishes to emulate him, and become a sophisticated gentleman. The arrogance and snobbishness of the upper class. Taking damaging risks in order to achieve ambition (traveling to a remote and mysterious castle), and falling into debt to sustain a certain lifestyle (with Friedrich). Learning that love is more important than wealth, the hard way (both Friedrich and Thomas).

5. “The Queen of Spades” (1949)

“If you've any human feeling in your breast, you can't refuse me. I beg. I beseech you. I know why you won't speak. The secret is connected with some terrible sin. That's it, isn't it? I'll make a bargain with you; tell me your secret and I'll take your sin upon my soul. Do you hear me? I mean it. A bargain. I'll take your sin upon my own soul.”

Theme of the horror element relying on Gothic ambience and atmosphere, than overt terror. Heavily rely on visual symbols to give meaning to the story: in “Nosferatu” are the lilacs and windows showcasing the connection between Ellen and Orlok. The idea that malevolent forces are at work is introduced early in the narrative. Theme of Faustian deals with the Devil. Themes of fate and the supernatural commanding the life of the characters, and leading to their demise. Themes of greed, power and pride leading to ruin; thirst for power as a pathway to madness, loss of dignity and loss of compassion for others, embodied in Herr Knock’s character, as he won’t stop at nothing to learn Orlok’s secret of immortality.

6. “The Innocents” (1961)

Miss Giddens: Were Quint and Miss Jessel in love? They were in love, weren't they? Mrs. Grose: Love? [Laugh] Oh, I suppose that's what she called it. But it was more like a sickness. A fever that leaves the body burned out and dry.

Themes of sexual repression and Victorian views of female sexuality (wickedness; sickness, shame; contagion; corruption) vs. love (pure; virginal; sacred; innocent; over-protective). The female protagonist overbearing protection of the children/Thomas masks her underlying conflict with her own sexuality (which she sees as sinful, shameful and diseased). Probably the inspiration for connecting flora (lilacs vs. willow tree) with the Ellen and Orlok, too.

7. “Andriesh” (1954)

Theme of the folk horror fairy tale, which also characterizes “Nosferatu”. The inspiration for Thomas dwelling in Transylvania and traveling to Castle Orlok, in the Carpathian Mountains; as he’s also given a magical token for protection, meets the people targeted by the supernatural, and faces a perilous journey to reach the castle, and then escape the castle; making allies along the way (Romanian old lady and the Nuns).

8. “Vechir na Ivana Kupala” (“The Eve of Ivan Kupalo”) (1968)

Theme of a darkly evocative, poetic and imagistic story deeply rooted in folklore. Use of several and overlapping cinematic techniques (fast motion, camera angles, etc.), to break the sense of reality within the film; in “Nosferatu” this probably translates in the dream/nightmarish atmosphere and hallucinations. Quick changes in tone (from horror to comedy to melodrama). Non-linear story and “show, not tell” approach; where the symbolism, mythology and cinematic complexity are more important than dialogue. Probably also the inspiration for Orlok giving Thomas’s a mount of gold as payment for his signature on the covenant, which will lead to the ruin of his marriage to Ellen.

9. “Leptirica” (“The She-Butterfly”) (1973)

Theme of a story and a vampire heavily influenced by folklore; in “Nosferatu”, by Romanian (strigoi). Use of humor to disarm the viewer. Withholding the reveal of the vampire to the audience; starting with close-ups on the hands, eyes, etc. Using a horse to find the grave of a vampire (in Balkan folklore it’s a black stallion, but Eggers probably choose white to be more visible in the night). A new and completely original ending to a cult classic. The female lead character appears to be naïve and harmless, but is revealed to be the true monster of the film.

[covid-safer-hotties]

You're becoming oddly ableist.

Talking about medical reality isn't ableism

One of the most striking findings was that post-COVID deficits in hospitalized patients look similar to 20 years of normal aging. The team also found that people who had been hospitalized with COVID had reduced brain volume in key areas and abnormally high levels of brain injury proteins in their blood.

Our findings indicate that COVID-19 is associated with molecular signatures of brain aging and emphasize the value of neurological follow-up in recovered individuals.

The pandemic has highlighted the complex interplay between viral infection, immune aging, and brain health, that can potentially accelerate neuroimmune aging and contribute to the persistence of long COVID conditions. By inducing chronic inflammation, immunosenescence, and neuroinflammation, COVID-19 may exacerbate the processes of neuroimmune aging, leading to increased risks of cognitive decline, neurodegenerative diseases, and impaired immune function. Key factors include chronic immune dysregulation, oxidative stress, neuroinflammation, and the disruption of cellular processes. These overlapping mechanisms between aging and COVID-19 illustrate how the virus can induce and accelerate aging-related processes, leading to an increased risk of neurodegenerative diseases and other age-related conditions.

"COVID-19-induced microhemorrhagic lesions may exacerbate DNA damage in affected brain cells, resulting in neuronal senescence and activation of cell death mechanisms, which ultimately impact brain microstructure-vasculature," says Dr. Muralidhar L. Hegde, Ph.D., a professor of neurosurgery at Houston Methodist and a corresponding author of the review. "These pathological phenomena resemble hallmarks of neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases and are likely to aggravate advanced-stage dementia, as well as cognitive and motor deficits."

Covid results in brain damage. Brain damage results in shifts in behavior and/or personality. This is something that must be discussed.

Signed,

Someone who experienced life-altering brain damage three times as a teenager

[howlsofbloodhounds]

Was just thinking about how mock and stimulated executions are a form of psychological torture, but in fictional cases like dust and killer where they really can die in different ways and be brought back to life physically intact but still remembering everything, it can be both psychological and physical torture.

For anyone who doesn’t know and needs a rundown, here’s how the Wiki describes mock executions:

“A mock execution is a stratagem in which a victim is deliberately but falsely made to feel that their execution or that of another person is imminent or is taking place.

This might involve blindfolding the subjects, telling them they are about to die, making them recount last wishes, making them dig their own grave, holding an unloaded gun to their head and pulling the trigger, shooting near (but not at) the victim, or firing blanks.

Mock execution is categorized as psychological torture. There is a sense of fear induced when a person is made to feel that they are about to be executed or witness someone being executed. The psychological trauma can lead to depression, anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other mental disorders.”

Mock executions are not a simple thing, they can range from simple to highly complex and elaborate set ups. They are often planned out by the ones performing it, because there’s often some other purpose for it (such as extracting information for one) and actual death is not the end goal. The victim(s) need to believe they are going to die, or it doesn’t work.

This can include actually tying a noose around one’s throat and letting them hang, let them gasp and struggle, before cutting them down at the last minute. It can even include bringing one very close to death, such as waterboarding, in a way that stimulates it and affects the parts of the brain that believe its dying or close to death.

for cases like killer and dust (or just any character that can be brought back after death repeatedly) where they are often repeatedly killed via slashing/stabbing in the last corridor or in other areas of the Underground, this can make one either deeply afraid of death or eventually become completely apathetic and indifferent and removed from the concept or cycle of death.

they could develop sadistic/masochistic/sadomasochistic tendencies in regards to pain or they could become completely indifferent and removed from the sensations of physical pain, if not their own bodies entirely.

The desensitization and indifference could even lead to said masochist or sadomasochistic behaviors in an attempt to feel something, consistently seeking more and more stimulation and just upping the stakes the more desensitized they become.

Until the point they’re seemingly seeking out extreme torture or abuse in an attempt stimulate being or feeling alive, being or feeling real, feeling connected to their bodies and reality for a moment.

Or alternatively, because their bodies come back mostly in tact, they can struggle to develop any significant level of pain tolerance and every death is still as agonizing, painful and traumatizing as the first.

And all this could lead to severe psychological deterioration; driving them into dissociation or something like a form of legal/clinical “insanity,” removed and detached from the reality around them—unsure if the world, others, or they themselves are real or not, or even if they’re actually truly alive or not.

Difference between a mock execution and actual death though is that the first relies on the fear of an impending death, one that creates fear so overwhelming it becomes learned helplessness when the victim realizes how little autonomy they actually have over their own lives or how helpless/powerless they are to be of any real help to the ones in the same boat as them—which in turn leads to extreme obedience and compliance.

Either to avoid harm or death of themselves, or in an attempt to not put another’s safety or life at risk.

Actually dying, though, can remove the fear of death entirely from at least one of them and can make them extremely removed from/unmoved by others’ harm, suffering, and/or lives—which, sure enough, killer has stated himself that he has accepted death a long time ago. In Stage 1, he even seems to want to die. In Stage 2, he is very casual and unmoved by death, murder, or others agony. (Such as Dream, for example.)

Repeatedly dying in various ways—especially in dust and killer’s specific cases, where they can roam freely and encounter situations that are not coded into the actual Undertale game—and being able to remember it can completely fuck up their perceptions of time.

They can forget that they’re not being killed in that moment, and suddenly react as if they are in that moment—such as whenever Killer loses a limb and Resets.

He has his limb back now, but there may be times where if someone like Cross—who cut off one of Killer’s limbs in the now decanonized cream comics—were to touch his arm or hand, his body would suddenly start behaving and reacting as if Cross had ripped his arm off again. Like sweating, crying, trembling and shaking uncontrollably.

They can suddenly forget what year it is, what day it is, and how long they’ve even been alive. Especially if they struggle to feel alive. Time can blur, the past and present can blur vividly.

Killer may completely lose any sense of understanding about the fear of death. He legitimately wouldn’t understand or empathize with anyone who’s afraid of death or suffering.

(When he’s in Stage 1 he may be able to be in a more clear sense of mind to understand why one be afraid of death, able to vaguely recall times where he might’ve been afraid of it too, but ultimately he still wouldn’t really relate; because the Killer in Stage 1 wants to die. To him, true death is a way to finally rest, and achieve peace. And to..well, keep everyone else safe. From him.)

He may not even fully comprehend that others aren’t like him or even like the ones from his timeline, they can’t simply come back from death or extreme bodily harm.

He may stab someone in the arm and be bewildered and confused when that person starts screaming in pain or reacts with fear, only to suddenly remember: “Oh, wait. You don’t come back, do you?”

Even his most cruelest actions—the ones he plans to do when isn’t being ordered to for some type of gain or purpose—don’t have to be exactly driven by malice, so much as it is curiosity or extreme understimulation— or some other benefit to be gained.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the desire to die he experiences in Stage 1 leads to a more scientific fascination with death in Stage 2, and given his tendencies towards possible canonical blood drinking and his nonconsensual experimentations on others’ souls and bodily fluids (blood and dust), it wouldn’t be a stretch to consider that an aspect of his experiments relate to death.

With his ability to Reset, he won’t even removed from being a test subject, either. In fact experimenting and playing with death on himself would be very beneficial.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Word List: Hannibal

Aperitif - an alcoholic drink taken before a meal as an appetizer

Assiduous - showing great care, attention, and effort; marked by careful unremitting attention or persistent application

Calumniation - to utter maliciously false statements, charges, or imputations about

Castigation - to subject to severe punishment, reproof, or criticism

Commove - to move violently; agitate; to rouse intense feeling in; excite to passion

Cozen - to deceive, win over, or induce to do something by artful coaxing and wheedling or shrewd trickery

Dissentient - expressing dissent (i.e., to withhold assent or approval; or differ in opinion)

Fabulist - a creator or writer of fables; liar

Heterodox - holding unorthodox opinions or doctrines; unconventional

Immurement - to enclose within or as if within walls; imprisonment

Intemperance - lack of moderation

Internecine - deadly; mutually destructive

Inveigle - entice; to acquire by ingenuity or flattery

Mythomania - an excessive or abnormal propensity for lying and exaggerating

Outré - violating convention or propriety

Palter - to act insincerely or deceitfully

Parlous - full of danger or risk; obsolete: dangerously shrewd or cunning

Phantasmagoria - a constantly shifting complex succession of things seen or imagined; a bizarre or fantastic combination, collection, or assemblage

Recondite - difficult or impossible for one of ordinary understanding or knowledge to comprehend

Rufous - reddish

Sanguinary - bloodthirsty, murderous

Schism - separation; disharmony

Soigné - well-groomed, sleek; elegantly maintained or designed

Sybarite - voluptuary (i.e., a person whose chief interests are luxury and the gratification of sensual appetites); sensualist (i.e., one who is persistent or excessive in their pursuit of sensual pleasures and interests)

Truculent - deadly, destructive

More: Word Lists

[farfromstrange]

Interview With The Vampire | Vampire!Matt Murdock x F!Reader

-> Main Masterlist

Pairing: Vampire!Matt Murdock x F!Reader (she/her)

Summary: You are the first journalist to interview Hell’s Kitchen’s resident vampire vigilante after he requested you personally to tell his story. He’s offering you a way out of your miserable job—to make your voice be heard. You’re desperate and curious, so you decide to take the risk. Most people only know him as Daredevil, but you are about to learn who’s really behind the mask. How hard can it possibly be? As it turns out, interviewing a vampire is a lot more complex than you expected it to be, and Matthew Michael Murdock has set his mind on ruining you for any other man to come.

Warnings: SMUT (18+ MINORS DNI), alternative universe, blood play, marking, scent kink, slight Dom!Matt, unprotected p in v, oral f!receiving, biting, vampirism, angst, religious imagery & symbolism, Catholic guilt, mentions of violence, allusions to suicidal thoughts, lots of plot, age gap

Word Count: 12.2k (this is a beast)

Other Characters: Vampire!Elektra (mentioned), Ben Urich (mentioned)

A/n: I finally got this one edited. This is a beast, y’all! I drew inspiration from Anne Rice’s Interview With The Vampire, but particularly the 2022 AMC series (I fell in love with it then and there), but it’s not based on it, so I just played around with the idea and this came out. It’s a lot, but it wasn’t enough for a full-blown series, so you’re getting a big ass One Shot instead. I used my usual Smut tag list, but since this is slightly Dead Dove Do Not Eat, heed the warnings and proceed with care! Don't read it if you don't want to. Anyway, I hope you like it!

Read Me On AO3!

The sun has long set over the Big Apple. Artificial neon, cars, and ceiling lights burning in the highrises along the riverfront cancel out the darkness that has befallen the country’s east. Noise melts into a flood that rolls over people’s senses, but most in New York City have grown numb to the city that never sleeps. 

Sirens follow cacophonies of screams. Teenagers get into clubs with their fake IDs, adults get drunk in bars or go to work the night shift at their underpaid jobs, and the other half cry themselves to sleep, knowing they will have to get up in the morning and go through the same hell all over again. 

Life has become a miserable existence, and it leaves human beings wondering, ‘How much longer do we have to endure this before we all finally drop dead?’

The system fails them. The law fails to protect them. All they can do is lie down and wait to die. And they will die sooner or later. That’s inevitable. 

In Hell’s Kitchen, in a penthouse with a view of the Hudson through colored windows that gloss over during the day and show the city throughout the night, resides someone who most of the city only knows by an alias—Daredevil. 

If anyone crosses him, he will suck them dry. It’s not a metaphor, I’m afraid; his reputation precedes him. Criminals fear the red eyes that come with fists and a sharp set of teeth that will surely run them into the ground. The rest of the city feels a little safer with him, but so far, no one has dared to question his nature. 

Fear is known to work as a paralytic. And this man living in the penthouse by the Hudson is the personification of what one might consider fear-inducing. Without the fear of others, he would not be thriving. 

An apex predator like him lives for the thrill of the kill. When the adrenaline spikes, it makes the prey start running and the blood taste so much sweeter. It is to a creature of his kind what a good glass of century-old red wine would be to a human being; he savors every last drop of it.

Two years out of your Master’s degree at Columbia University, you have become one of those hard-working adults who fall into bed later than they should, and you lie awake at night, wondering how much longer you have to exist before you can live.

You interned at the Bulletin; you ran the true crime and mystery column for over a year before the newspaper shut down. A billionaire from downtown Manhattan bought it to start his own magazine, and you were the only employee he didn’t fire. Instead of relying on your top-tier education and experience though, he has banned you to the lifestyle and beauty column. He’s a beast if you have ever seen one. 

On a Monday in June then, after the sun has risen and is now falling again, you find an envelope on your desk. You glide your fingers over the fancy paper. The letters are written in handwriting that resembles the old letters from the 18th century you had the pleasure of using as research material for your Bachelor’s thesis.

Your heart skips a beat. Could it be…

It is no secret that vampires exist.

Over two decades ago, scientists published papers on the existence of blood-sucking creatures after years of valuable research, and now governments around the world have set out to burn the inhuman species out before they can cause any more damage. Vampirism though is older than humanity itself and unless law enforcement has evidence of homicide, vampires have the right to exist amongst humans. 

They are excellent at hiding their true nature, that much is true. The lore that has been passed down since the beginning of time is only partly true. They know how to adapt and rise from the ashes like elegant phoenixes. The misconceptions surrounding their existence stem from fiction, horror, and fear, but they persist. 

And a rule has been established in society ever since the truth was revealed: don’t talk about vampires! 

Don’t talk about them unless it’s in a fictional context. Don’t put your research out there. Don’t fraternize with them. Don’t risk becoming prey. Don’t be fascinated by them, and God forbid, don’t you dare write articles about them for the public records. If you want to know about vampires, you have to dig, and you have to do so quietly or society will deem you crazy and a freak. 

The worst thing to be is not a flying android or a super soldier with a shield; the worst thing you can be, in this day and age, is a vampire. 

You were a curious child who turned into an even more curious adult. At times even a bitter one because she couldn’t get the answers she yearned for and had to do it herself. So, of course, the We Don’t Talk About Vampires rule came across as rather absurd, learning about it back when you were merely a teen. 

You started researching, and you found out more than you thought you would—more than you thought you could. You wanted to cover the issue in the Bulletin back when you still worked there, but since humans were raised to fear the very mention of vampires in the real world, no longer romanticizing the concept but rather running from it, the truth shall remain hidden. Again, that seemed absurd, but you had to accept it to get ahead. 

You kept researching to the point you convinced yourself you could be one of them if you tried. You felt like you understood them, but nothing could ever fully answer all of your questions to the point it felt truthful. Honest. Real. 

Growing up, everyone told you dead things aren’t supposed to walk. They aren’t supposed to breathe and exist among the living. They are cruel, and vampires are killers that leave trails of bodies the government is hiding from us. Greediness exceeds common sense. The human mind tends to get sick and twisted, and those who don’t fit in hardly ever stand a chance.

Hell’s Kitchen is particularly quiet on the issue. Rumor has it that the vigilante chasing criminals at night and leaving the worst of them dry at the shore of the Hudson while, at the same time, surrendering those he deems worthy of rehabilitation to the authorities, is one of those vampires. 

They call him Daredevil; the savior of innocents and the downfall of the vile. Only a handful of people know who he is. The truth is caught in a spider web of lies, unable to come out unless someone were to tell his story for the world to hear. 

That Monday in June when you open the mysterious envelope on your desk, everything changes. 

He addressed you personally. Your name resembles a masterpiece, the letters swirling at the edges. 

You don’t know me, but I know you.

It’s strange to read your name out of the mouth of a stranger.

I must admit, Miss, I’m a big fan of your writing. And I’m not talking about the lifestyle and beauty column Mr. Doherty of the ‘Silver Lining’ has confined you to.

No, I am a big fan of the work you used to do for the New York Bulletin. I remember your name headlining many articles on crime here in Hell’s Kitchen—a column my late friend Ben Urich used to call his home.  

It’s a shame that the paper was shut down. I tried to prevent it, but the disappearance of half of humanity and Wilson Fisk’s irreparable damage to the city’s foundation tied my hands. 

The token female journalist reporting on unsolicited beauty advice and lifestyle choices no one is going to follow in the days of social media and fake marketing. It must be frustrating, right? Not having a story to tell. Not getting recognized for your impeccable talent. The Bulletin gave you a platform, but Mr. Doherty and his goons took that away from you.

What I’m asking myself is, are you satisfied? You were probably imagining a different future for yourself. A woman of your caliber must want to be more than a mere object used to make a bottomless magazine look better on the market. 

Excuse my overstepping. I read one of your essays on the magical and the mythic—lore versus reality—the other day, and it inspired me. My life has been taking quite a few turns lately, so I required some new… let’s call it insight. 

You don’t know me, but I am one of those creatures you are fascinated by. I’m the kind of creature people have been telling you not to write about because the weak minds of the public would not receive it well. The Catholics, the church, the fragile and fearful human beings that can’t imagine anything in fiction being real and want to remain the superior species—trust me, I know what it feels like to be backed into a corner. To be abandoned. To be underestimated. Not quite like you, I admit, but I have a few years of experience in and with this world to show for myself. 

I imagine you’re tired of your position. I imagine you’re dissatisfied with human idiocy. You crave answers to your questions. Questions you have been asking yourself ever since college failed to answer them. My kind is being censored—partly for good reason—but that doesn’t sit right with you, does it? To live life in a monotone line with no clear way out of this boring rhythm you have had to fall into? 

I can offer you a different path. A story. Answers to your questions. And the unfiltered truth of a 242-year-old man. 

You are going to find a card with my address attached to this letter. I can assure you, sweetheart, we both want the same thing. I will wash your hands if you wash mine. Think about it, and come find me when you have made your decision. Preferably after the sun has set. 

Yours sincerely,

M.

The paper crumbles in your hands, but only at the corners. Your eyes are glued to the lost drops of ink, the blue blood of an old fountain pen caving under too much pressure. 

He chose his words carefully. Every paragraph circles around your head. You breathe in, and it suddenly feels as though the whiff of the unknown is an inhalable drug, twisting your brain inside out. 

The pull threatens to submerge you in a stormy ocean. You’re flailing your arms around helplessly, but there is nothing for you to hold onto. All buoys have drifted into oblivion, leaving a sea of utter emptiness behind, and in the midst of it, there you are, drowning.

In a moment of clarity, you fold the letter back down on the desk. It lands with a thud, and you look around frantically, checking if anyone is watching you. They aren’t. 

M. That’s all he’s giving you. And the fact he is over two hundred years old proves the rumors to be true. He’s standing by it, but only to you. He wants to reveal himself to you, show you his true face for a story, but he’s a vampire. 

You’re alone. You can wash his hands, but is just showing up enough for him? You don’t even know him. 

You’re in trouble. This time though, you didn’t even do anything. You did your job, and he caught an interest in you. How does that work? 

Your heart skips another beat. It should not, but it does. The danger is exciting. It shouldn't be exciting. You hate what your body is doing, but how can you make it stop? You can’t. You can’t do anything but take it.

This stranger has got you in a chokehold, but in his hands, you might as well surrender to your certain demise. You don’t consider vampires inherently evil, but there is a reason people warn you not to walk alone at night in Hell’s Kitchen. He’s dangerous, no matter his nature, and he is not supposed to lure you in the way he does.

But you’re a curious kitten, and he is offering you the holy grail of answers to questions you have been grappling with for years. He hit the nail right on the head. And it doesn’t even scare you how well he knows you. 

This is a gold mine. Realistically speaking, telling a vampire’s story could make or break your career as a journalist. If you do it for the magazine, you’re done before you can even bring your words to print, but if you do it individually and you do it well, people will certainly eat it up. The question is just, are you going to play your entire life safe, conforming to your boss’s view of you until you get the freedom you crave, or are you going to take the risk and fly? 

The answer is as clear as day, but it takes you a moment to process. It’s as though someone is in your head, steering you in the direction of whoever this M is. Daredevil. This vampire who wants you to interview him, and for what? That’s still an open question you don’t have the answer to. But you do know what to do.

You scramble for your laptop, your notepad, and the letter in the envelope. The clock strikes four. You have another two hours on the clock, but you can’t be bothered to stay. 

Upon hearing the sound of your shoes hurriedly scraping against the linoleum floors, one of your colleagues turns in her chair. “Where are you going?” she asks.

“I, uh, have somewhere to be,” you tell her as you brush past her.

“What, now?”

“Yeah. I forgot I had an appointment.”

“What about Mr. Doherty?”

You stop on your way out, looking back over your shoulder. “If everything works out,” you say, glancing through the window to his office at the other end of the hall, “He’ll have my letter of resignation by the end of the week.”

She gasps softly. “You’re quitting?” her voice is barely above a whisper.

Almost sinisterly, you chuckle. “That’s the plan, yeah.”

“But—”

“Tell your daughter Happy Birthday from me. I gotta go.”

Your steps echo for minutes still, but you are long gone with the wind.

Silver linings are considered an advantage that comes from an unpleasant situation. The name has proven to be entirely unfit for the magazine that replaced a big piece of Hell’s Kitchen’s history. The Bulletin had cultural value as much as it was laden with decades of the city’s stories told to the average person. 

Wilson Fisk was the dynamite that sent New York alight. The Bulletin’s destruction was mere collateral damage in the fight to get the city back on track. You have had so many reasons to leave presented to you, yet you never took them. If you had, maybe you wouldn’t be here, making bad decisions on what started as just another Monday in June. 

The fact is though, you didn’t leave, and you are here now. Facts are what matter. They count. Your hypothetical past, present, and future have no place in this reality because you can’t travel back or forward in time. Vampires may exist, and the Avengers time-traveled to save the world, but things aren’t quite as easy once you look at the bigger picture. You are not a superhero, you’re just a journalist chasing the kind of story that will finally make her voice be heard. 

You know that Ben Urich, at least, would be proud of you.

His address weighs heavy on the small card you pulled out of the envelope earlier that evening. You passed it on to the cab driver, and he began to navigate the dark streets of Hell’s Kitchen. The luxury condominiums in this part of the city can be counted on one hand. You know exactly when you’re there. 

The sun has once again set over New York City. You’re wide awake, not quite sure though if you’re ready to face what you are walking blindly into. Even your driver refuses to take you past a certain point, and that is how you know that you’re not dreaming. This is real, and it’s supposed to be terrifying. 

How come you’re not scared then?

You slip twenty dollars to the cab driver, then climb out of the backseat. The salty air from the Hudson River a few blocks down wafts around your sensitive nose. In the distance, you can hear waves crashing into the docks as the wind picks up in speed. The boats must be moving wildly by now, swaying from side to side and possibly even making the fish in the depths of the water seasick. You would be if you were them. 

With every step, you grow closer to your target. On second thought, maybe you should have brought more than just a pathetic bottle of pepper spray and your precious laptop. You could have brought your grandfather’s cassette recorder, at least that would leave a mark if you hit someone over the head with it. 

Do vampires get concussions? That is another question you can add to the seemingly endless list in your mind. It’s a confusing place as of late, and the weird sense that someone is playing with the controls won’t leave you alone. Either you are overthinking, or you are worse off than you originally thought. 

The apartment complex the card directs you to stretches high above you. You look up, seeing not a single light on. That’s odd, you think, but then again, you are meeting with the city’s most notorious man. If he is who everyone says he is, and if the rumors are even true, that is. 

As you are about to approach the entrance, your fingertips start to burn. A gasp escapes past your lips. Staring down, the cubical piece of paper goes up in flames. You are mere feet from the door, nowhere near close to an open source of fire, and the card starts to burn like a wildfire. 

You pull back, your heart hammering against your ribcage. The ashes fall to the ground, but before they can hit the asphalt, they vanish.

“What the–” before you can finish, the doors before you swing open toward the inside. The lights turn on. Someone even has called the elevator for you. 

Another step forward, and a voice stops you. “Fourth floor, down the hallway, first door to your right,” the voice says through the speaker. Only then do you notice the lack of a doorbell. 

Everything in you is screaming for you to run, but you are rooted in the spot. He dragged you here with a mere letter, and you were more than ready to jump. Desperation was the only thing that drove you here. Your brain seems incapable of rational thought.

What if that is what he wanted all along? To get you complicit by playing on what you so desperately need, which is a story and a way out of this boring everyday life that is threatening to slowly kill you.

He’s like a siren, luring you into his deadly trap, but even knowing all of this, you still can’t find it in yourself to run. 

The second you enter the building, the door shuts behind you, and your only way out is officially locked. You made the decision; you have dug your own grave, possibly quite literally, and now you have to lie in it. It’s better to die chasing a good story than dying at a desk in an office that doesn’t respect you.

You are a disgrace, you can hear your father’s voice in the back of your mind. He always warned you not to be too reckless or your bad decisions will eventually catch up with you. He always taught you not to trust strangers, and to stay the hell away from those who disgrace God, but you have never cared much about being a good girl. 

Your thoughts are as morbid as your obsession with the walking undead. It is time you embrace what people are already saying about you.

The elevator ride feels like an eternity. It goes up and up and up until it finally stops on the fourth floor. The walls smell like nothing but a faint hint of bleach. It’s clean, parquette not carpet, and the walls are kept in a shade resembling a mixture between crimson and maroon, and it is blending into a sort of marble.

The metal doors slide open. Again, you hesitate. A sweet whisper echoes in your ear, dragging you toward the edge. You breach the border between the elevator and the hallway that waits behind it. The voice is distant, and it doesn’t sound human—it reminds you of a siren’s song, calling for you. He is calling for you, and a fog settles over your mind. You’re not in control anymore, he is. 

You imagine him to be an old man, possibly middle-aged. Vampires stop aging when they’re turned. Their mind doesn’t. You’ve read the research plenty. They are wise beings, more intelligent than human beings could ever fathom. That makes them dangerous. 

Their venom rivals the intoxicating feeling of heroin, you’ve heard, and it heightens your senses to the point all you can feel is the one who bit you. Research suggests it’s a million times stronger than an orgasm, for both the vampire and the human being. 

Part of you has always wanted to try it. Part of you wants to know what it feels like to be sucked dry. You want to know what it feels like to be carried into a new dimension by someone who knows how to play the human body like a fucking piano, eliciting the sweetest melody through your very essence and the symphony of your moans.  

This M—Daredevil—is inherently dangerous. He’s as mysterious as they come; a man in a mask lurking in the dark corners of Hell’s Kitchen every night, turning the fight for justice into his hunting ground. 

It’s as though he curled his fingers, and you followed. 

You walk the dark hallway down to the door on the right. Paintings litter the walls. Masterpieces, blotches of white, red, and color. You recognize the red marble as a decorative theme on the wallpaper. Tracing your fingers over it, the rough drywall scratches at your skin. 

You reach out a shaky hand toward the golden knob. Before you can turn it though, the door already flings open. It must be witchcraft. 

Red appears to be his favorite color. At least judging from the hallway, that is true. When you step into the room with a pounding heart and blood pooling in your cheeks though, the inside of the room is a lot more… human. You wouldn’t have guessed it from the gloominess surrounding you on your way there.

A leather couch and armchairs stand in the middle, facing toward the window front. Colored windows, as you have gathered from the rumors. They are see-through now though, showing the city skyline and the moon up high. The chandelier on the ceiling is the only piece of furniture you would consider old. Browns meet hues of blue and dark green, a forest at midnight, and you suck in a sharp breath. The apartment is beautiful. 

You look to your left and see a bookshelf stretching the length of the wall. You can’t help but run your hand over the backs. You would have expected original editions from the 18th or 19th century, but when your fingers trace over the bindings, you are met with the bulging of Braille underneath the elegant golden writing of the titles. None of them seem to have collected dust. It surprises you to only find a mere handful of classics that haven’t been transcribed in Braille and a realization you did not expect starts to crawl its way forward.

“I stole that one from a library in Paris.”

Your racing heart stops beating. The book you’ve been holding falls to the ground, its worn-out leather cracking further around the spine. The thud is deafening. You gasp, turning around. Your shoulders fly up as the tension ripples through every last muscle in your bone. Your bones ache just from how stiff you’re standing, but you can’t move.

The man before you moves as quietly as a mouse. You didn’t hear him coming. The moonlight reflects off his dark brown hair, making it appear almost ginger. He’s wearing a simple suit without a tie, and the white of his shirt is as pristine and clean as the cut of his beard. You can see chest hair poking out from underneath the two open buttons, as dark as the locks on his head. His jawline is irresistibly sharp, leading up to a pair of plump lips he is wrapping around the brim of a crystal glass filled with rum.

Your heart remains frozen. Not a single drop of blood pumps through your veins, yet your cheeks burn brighter than a bonfire on a pitch-black night. 

But his flawless appearance is not what catches your attention the most. Looking up into his eyes, wanting to know whether they are as red as those set into the devil’s mask, you find nothing but your terrified reflection staring back at you. It’s as blurry as the picture of your face in a still ocean’s water, your wide eyes staring back at yourself. 

The red glasses are all you can see. Round with a black rim. Silver would have looked better on him, or maybe even gold. The black reminds you of an endless pit, a sinister embrace of vampire stereotypes, but you can’t look away from the maroon that won’t allow you even a glimpse into his eyes. They are shielding him from the world, and his eyes from curious, stupid humans like you.

He nods toward the ground. “You gonna pick that up?” he asks. His voice reminds you of rumbling gravel. 

He looks like a man. He talks like a man. If you didn’t know better, you would say he is human. There seems to be blood in his cheeks and air in his lungs. 

You have to pull yourself together. Clearing your throat, you bend down and pick the book back up.

“Thank you,” he utters your name. “It’s been a while since I’ve received visitors that don’t work for me.”

You put the book back on the shelf. Your lips are sewn shut; you can’t find the words. Every time you open your mouth like a fish on dry land, you close it again, and it is embarrassing to be standing in front of him with your guard down. 

“Welcome to my home,” he says. You wish you could see his eyes to know if he’s mocking you. “Do you want a drink, or do you need another minute to process?”

He is mocking you. His tone is gentle, as is his voice, but he smirks like a smug motherfucker, and your anger boils to a tipping point. The candle is about to burn out. 

“I–” you stammer. Internally, you curse yourself for being such a fool. 

“Another minute it is then.”

You don’t need a minute though. “You’re blind,” you blurt out. 

The beautiful—deadly—stranger nods. “Yeah.“

“How?”

“Accident when I was a kid.”

“But you’re…” you leave the missing part of that sentence hanging in the air like a noose. 

“Say it,” he murmurs. You want to say it sounds like a growl, but you’re not sure. He isn’t asserting dominance or trying to force you into submission by scaring you away, but he is toying with you regardless. 

You take a deep breath. The word, the truth, numbers your tongue and your lips with its weight. “A vampire,” you say, your voice barely above a whisper, matching his. 

His smirk broadens. He pushes his tongue against the inside of his cheek for a moment, then releases it as it darts out to wet his bottom lip. “I’m a blind vampire, yes,” he answers. “We’re rare, but we do exist.”

Blind vampires. In all of your years of fascination, that has never crossed your mind. You used to believe that they had healing abilities that far exceeded your own. You were wrong. He lost his eyesight before he got turned into a vampire. He lived as a blind human being and didn’t regain his most crucial sense when he died. 

He came back to life, but he died. It is surreal to stand across from him. He’s not just letters on a piece of paper, he is very much real. And he’s blind. 

“Oh, my God,” you curse.

That elicits a soft chuckle from him. “I was starting to think you wouldn’t come,” he says. 

“I was considering not to.” 

He sees right through you with those empty glasses. “That’s a lie.”

“How would you know?” you counter. 

“I can hear your heartbeat. The blood pumping in your veins…” His head tilts ever so slightly in your direction. You take a step back. It’s an instinct. “Your pulse picks up when you lie, or when you’re nervous, or both,” he states. “When you first saw me, your heart skipped a beat. It did again when you lied to me.”

Your eyes trail down to his thick thighs perfectly fitted in his tailored trousers. His thick digits pat the rhythm with his fingers on the fabric. Thud-thudthudthud-thud. You place a hand on your chest. He wasn’t wrong; your heart is racing. 

His smirk turns into a smile, but only briefly again. It’s a glimpse of humanity he doesn’t want you to see. “I like that sound,” he says. “Has anyone ever told you that you smell good? Sweet, sour, and a little salty. Natural. You don’t use a lot of artificial perfume, but you like cherry chapstick.”

You swallow, taking a whiff of your arm. Besides your deodorant masking the scent of your nervous sweat, you smell nothing. How good must his nose be? His hearing? His sense of taste? 

“Right now, sweat is dripping down your back, and your muscles are tense enough to strain against your bones every time you breathe. Your heart just skipped a beat again. You find it weird,” he muses. “I can’t turn it off, but I get it must be strange for you.” 

“You–” The blood has collected in your head, pushing the temperature in the room to an all-time high. “Get out of my body!” you snap. 

He laughs. “That’s a sentence I never thought I’d hear.”

“And I never thought you would ask for an audience with me, but here we are.”

“Here you are.” 

You want nothing more than to wipe that smirk off his face. He looks so smug, standing there with his drink, wearing a suit too fancy for his own home. He’s fully in his element. It’s scary how alluring he is, too. You don’t want to think that way, but as soon as your eyes gaze upon him again, your chest contracts, and you forget how to breathe. 

He’s a wolf, and you’re a lonely little sheep that doesn’t know any better. That lonely little sheep just wants to be a part of something bigger, even if that means surrendering herself to the big bad wolf. He wants a taste of her, and the sheep would give him that in a heartbeat if he just asked. 

You blink. There is a voice in your head, and it isn’t your own. Far from it. You don’t want to be associated with this stranger. She thinks she knows you. She thinks she knows what you want—the sheep in the eyes of her natural enemy. This voice is the most irrational you could be, and you need to stop letting her win.

And yet you—not just the voice of the lonely sheep you appear to be—would follow this man anywhere, even to hell if he asked you to. 

Your eyes drill knives into his skull, but they are also full of curiosity. Can he hear your thoughts? Your heart beats in your throat. You can taste it on your tongue. If you bit your lip, you would bleed, and he would probably fall into a frenzy. Still, your teeth dig into your bottom lip. What if he can hear your thoughts—hear how fucking needy you are? You’re pathetic. What he must think of you, standing across from him, smaller than human life itself. 

You want to read him, but he is far from an open book. He’s not Braille you can run your fingers over, and even if he was, you don’t know how to read it. He’s an enigma. His face is set in stone; an iron mask you can’t penetrate. 

His chest heaves with another chuckle. He sets the crystal glass down on the coffee table, taking a step forward. “No, I can’t read your mind,” he says. 

You flinch. “What?”

“Your breathing pattern. The way you look at me. I can sense that you’re thinking about something.” He adjusts his glasses. “It’s just… Most humans ask me if I can read their minds, you know. I can’t. Some vampires can, but my senses are the only heightened ability I have.” This time, when he chuckles, a hint of bitterness dances in his voice. 

“At least you’re not in my head then,” you say. 

“No.”

“Good.”

A pregnant pause follows. You clutch your bag to your chest, your fingers digging into the frame of your hidden laptop. 

“Can I offer you a drink?” he asks, pointing to his empty glass.

You wave him off. That’s the last thing on your mind. “No, thank you.”

Sometimes at night, you fantasize about diving into the abyss of darkness. It looks and sounds a terrifying lot like him. You want to know him. You need to know him. When it comes to him and this—whatever this is—the lines between want and need are blurring into an unidentifiable mess. It’s an ocean of emotions with no land in sight. A total eclipse of the heart, if you will. You’re losing your mind.

“What you can do–” You straighten your shoulder, hoping it will add height to your beaten confidence. “You can tell me your name. Sir,” you say. 

He nods. “I suppose it would only be fair, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes, it would.”

“Matthew. My name’s Matthew.” The softness of his features as his lips move to the rhythm of his words takes you back anew. His eyebrows raise slightly, and you catch a glimpse of a pair of beautiful, unfocused hazel eyes that steal your breath away. 

Matthew. It is a name that easily rolls off the tongue. It suits him.

You repeat his name aloud. “That’s an odd name for a 200-something-year-old man,” you point out. 

Matthew scoffs. “My parents were both Catholic.”

“I suppose you’re not?”

You hit a sore spot. His head dips, fingers running over his nails and tongue tracing his teeth. “Not anymore,” he says.

God died for him a long time ago, and all churches burned down.

Your grip on your bag loosens. “Then why Daredevil?” you ask. 

His lips part. “I, uh, have the Bulletin to thank for that one. After centuries of existing in this world, and being despised for no matter what I do, I’ve decided to embrace it. I am Daredevil, not even God can stop that now.”

Matt grabs his glass, turning away from you. He doesn’t use a cane to navigate from the couch to the mini bar on the other end of the room. You carefully follow his movements. One of his hands remains at his side, snapping his fingers as he navigates the familiar terrain of his home. 

He uncaps a half-empty bottle of Whiskey to pour himself another glass. 

“You know, Matthew,” you prompt, daring to step forward an inch, “as big as your reputation is in this part of the city, Silver Lining is not the kind of magazine that would cover your story.”

“You still came,” he says. 

“I could lose my job if anyone knew I came here.”

“And yet you’re here and not where you should be.” He turns his head over his shoulder. “You wouldn’t risk losing your job if it wasn’t important to you, would you?”

You stammer, “I–” He’s got you. You’re a fish with a hook in her mouth. 

“If Silver Lining Magazine won’t cover my story, why are you here?” Matt turns back to you, leaning back against the shiny Mahagoni of his minibar. It offers a beautiful contrast to his strong physique and the slight paleness of his skin. “Could it be because you’re fascinated by the mythic?” he asks, teasing. “By werewolves and witches and vampires?”

It’s your turn to scoff. “I won’t confirm or deny. My boss wouldn’t let me write a vampire vigilante exposé even if I begged him to.”

“And that’s why Mr. Doherty doesn’t deserve you.” Your body visibly recoils when he pushes forward, moving just an inch toward you. “Your curiosity is a virtue,” he purrs. The moonlight sets your reflection in his glasses alight. 

“Is that why you lured me here?” you ask him. “Because my curiosity is a virtue and you consider yourself better than the people in my life?”

“I didn’t lure you here, and I think you know that. That’s not what this is.” The distance between you starts to shrink, backing you into a corner. “I believe you came here because the thought of interviewing a vampire and sharing your findings with the world on your account excites you,” he says. “You want to be heard. You want to be taken seriously as a journalist, and you want to make people happy.”

The only way for you to come out of this with your pride and dignity still intact is to put up walls before the already existent labyrinth of walls keeping your heart guarded and your soul safe. “Again,” you ask, “why me?”

“Why not you? As I stated in my letter, I’m a fan of your work.”

You roll your eyes. “Yeah, about that. How did you write that if you’re blind?”

“I didn’t, my secretary did.”

“Of course.” Of course, he has a secretary. “I… I just don’t get it,” you say. “You’ve been hiding for so long–” 

Matt cuts you off with an urgency you didn’t expect, “Things have changed. Circumstances…” he trails off. 

“Wouldn’t it be a suicide mission?” 

His answer is silence. You let out an exasperated sigh. “If you want me to interview you, you have to be honest with me.”

“I’m not on the record yet.”

“Right. Maybe you can answer this though—off the record, of course—how can you be certain I didn’t call the cops or the FBI before I came here?”

His eyes crinkle. “I’m not stupid, sweetheart,” he says. 

He’s amused. You’re amusing him. 

“Don’t call me that,” you growl. 

He’s spreading you open, holding up a mirror for you to look into. It’s your miserable self in all its glory, and he knows you better than you know yourself. 

You ignore the sharp pain in your left ribcage as you pull the arrow out of your heart. “Unless someone holds up a sign that they are pro-vampirism, how would you even know I’d listen to you and not just refer you to the Journal of Psychiatry?” 

“Are you telling me you don’t believe in vampires?” Matt quips.

“That’s not… Answer my question!”

The sound of your heartbeat must sound almost like the rapid firing of a machine gun, that’s how fast your pulse is racing. Your veins threaten to burst with the excess blood. It’s a heat like no other. You’re a witch at the stake, and Matt is holding the torch to your gasoline-doused body. 

He clears his throat. Your face falls at the words that tumble out of his parted lips, and the rapid firing turns into a deafening silence and a monotone line on a heart monitor. 

“After what I’ve learned from reading Dr. Rice’s research on the phenomena of vampirism, I can confidently say this species is no different than an animal like the great white shark or the Homo sapiens sapiens—our kind,” he recites. “Vampires are a medium of fiction and propaganda to induce fear, but they are also a widely misunderstood species that is being silenced rather than heard. Our species, the human species, likes to consider themselves superior, even when we’re in a position of being someone’s natural food source. Dr. Rice’s research is based on a comprehensible set of facts, and isn’t that what we have been relying on ever since the beginning? Our psychology makes it possible for us to change the narrative in our favor, and more often than not, we ignore the very facts deemed by humans as an intellectual importance to spread the message of an entirely different agenda. Dr. Rice’s research only proves that egotism and humans themselves will be humankind's certain downfall.”

“My investigative journalism essay,” you breathe out. 

“Published by Columbia University.” 

Your heart restarts with a rush of adrenaline. “How… how do you know all of this?”

“I may be blind,” Matt says, “but I know how to read between the lines.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

The alcohol in his drink seems to have little effect on him. “I know you have questions, and I’m willing to answer them if you promise to publish a detailed report somewhere other than Silver Lining Magazine.”

You look down at your bag, then back at him. “Ben Urich could have told your story in a way that would’ve made people listen,” you murmur. “I don’t have an impressive career like him.”

“Yeah,” he smiles, “but you could have easily written ‘Attack on NYC’. Ben was a good man, an even better journalist, but he could not have written your college essay. And he could never have been you.” 

Your name rolls off his tongue—not a pretentious nickname that makes you want to vomit but your name, and it flicks a switch within you. 

You glance around the spacious living, pulling your laptop out of its confines, and you bridge the distance between you, finally. You notice he smells of sandalwood cologne and scentless soap. “Okay,” you cave. “Where do you want me to set up?”

Session 1.

The spacebar clicks underneath the tip of your index finger. The white of your screen fills with a series of red sequences as the microphone takes in every little sound around you. Except for the two of you and the fading footsteps of one of Matthew’s assistants though, the world has fallen silent in the dead of the night. He’s sitting across from you, legs crossed, head tilted; your life is about to change.

“So, Mister Murdock,” you begin, “tell me. How long have you been dead?” 

His mouth opens in a wide grin. “242 years,” he answers. 

“And what happened the year you died?”

“Well, it was 1782. I was a good few years out of law school. I was a good lawyer, but I wasn’t successful. That year, I met a beautiful woman at a banquet. I wasn’t rich—trust me, I was beyond penniless—but she had been adopted into a wealthy family, and that made her one of the richest women in the room. Everyone wanted her, but when I sensed her across the hall, she only had eyes for me. And she was the first woman to not see me just because I was blind.” He chuckles sadly. “I thought she was the woman of my dreams, the love of my life, but a few weeks later, after letting her into my life, I realized that she didn’t look at me that night because she was interested. She was hunting me. El— Miss Elektra Natchios…”

The year 1782 becomes apparent before your inner eye. As he tells you about the night he met her, you can see the dark-haired beauty making her way across the ballroom. Red lips and a gown to die for. Her dark eyes were full of mischief, but the passion in them could have knocked a grown man off of his feet. And that is just what she did to poor Matthew. 

“I was going to marry her,” he tells you.

He went to church regularly. His knees were bloody from praying, his senses already heightened before he died. God’s soldier, that is how he puts it. He was told that the accident that left him blind happened for a reason, and he had to fight a war that went beyond the country’s fight for independence. 

That summer, Elektra drained him. He didn’t know what she was. She fooled him. He was obsessed with her. Her dark eyes he couldn’t see lured her in, and it was the venom in her blood that became his downfall after she dug her teeth into him.

Matt tried to beg his priest for forgiveness, but he didn’t even make it past the marble stairs before the doors locked. He knelt in a pool of blood—both his and that of the first human he ever sucked dry to survive as a newborn vampire—offering an eternal sacrifice to Catholicism, but God abandoned him on his doorstep. 

The church walls would have been set on fire if he had touched them from the inside. 

You look up from your notepad to find him now standing at the window. He’s not looking out, of course, but he seems so deep in thought, the memories that aren’t your own but his start to dissipate, and you’re brought back to the here and now.

Matt poured his heart out to you. You expected answers, but not this kind, and certainly not of this magnitude. You see him in an entirely different light. He’s vulnerable, fragile, and human. He has endured trauma that killed him, but he couldn’t die because the woman he loved made him immortal. It’s a bigger curse than growing up with the belief that an accident made you God’s soldier. 

He lost everything. For centuries, he has had to live with that. It’s killing you, feeling his pain, the pure agony that radiates off him. 

Your voice is quiet when you ask him, “What was it like?” You don’t have to say it out loud for him to know what you are referencing.

Matt chuckles, the sound a mere breath in the atmosphere. “Like she took my soul from my body, setting fire to my belief system and already heightened senses,” he says. 

You swallow. “That sounds… overstimulating.”

“It was. Is. My heart stopped, but when that happened, something else awoke inside me. The hunger… the hunger was the worst part. It’s insatiable. One hour passes, and you feel like you’ve been starving for weeks.”

“Like you’ve been possessed by a demon?”

“Like I am the demon.”

“But you’re not.” You should stop the recording. You’re not on track; you’re incorporating your feelings into Matt’s story, but you can’t help it. The words tumble out of your mouth without a second thought, a train that cannot be stopped. 

He raises his eyebrows, you can see it in his reflection in the windows. “Are you religious?” he asks.

You shake your head. “This isn’t about me.”

“Are you?”

The veins on the back of his hands bulge as he balls them to fists at his sides. Your throat is a desert, and your heartbeat resembles a storm that burns right through it, sending the sand flying in all directions of the horizon.

You adjust in your seat, crossing one leg over the other. He takes a whiff. He’s smelling you, and that doesn’t help the speed of your pulse to calm down. 

Tapping your pen on your notepad, you watch the red sequences fill the white space of the recording program. It moves with the sound of your voice when you finally dare to answer. “It’s a complicated question because there is a difference between believing in God and believing in the church,” you say.

“Do you believe in God then?” Matt asks. It’s as though he’s trying not to seethe at the mere mention of someone he used to worship. You make a note of that.

“There is so much bad in this world. So much cruelty. I can’t…” You take a deep breath. “I don’t know how to believe in a God that would let the things humans do to each other happen. If God existed—if he was as merciful as Christians like to claim, he wouldn’t let this happen. And I’m so sick and tired of people using their faith, and their beliefs in God and the church as justification to be disrespectful. I don’t understand it. How can anyone? Why is someone who has to drink blood to stay alive—someone who didn’t even choose this life—worth less and the devil’s breed when humans do worse things to each other? Why would God allow us to start wars that kill innocent people? Children? It’s just not fair that we treat ourselves and others as though we are already in hell, and we’re just supposed to accept that God doesn’t care—” You stop yourself, the tears burning behind your eyes. 

Matt turns back around. You can’t look away. “When I was still human,” he murmurs, “I used to believe everything that happened to me was God’s will. The accident, God’s will. Me going blind, God’s will. I went to confession, prayed until my knees were bloody and bruised. I tried convincing myself that every scream I heard from down the block, every person who lost their life or their innocence was my responsibility. God made me this way for a reason, right?” The scoff is as bitter as the liquor in his glass. “I fell apart, you know. I was a kid, so I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand what was happening to me,” he tells you. 

You hold your breath. The glasses slip from his eyes as he takes them off with shaky fingers. You are met with the most beautiful pair of hazel eyes. Emotions dance a heated tango in a tornado. If you look closer, the green specks bring life to his eyes. It’s human nature in the purest sense of the word. 

Your reflection stands in his irises, his unmoving pupils, and the tears glisten in his eyes. They’re as red as blood, watered-down crimson essence. You want to reach out and stroke his cheek, but that would be crossing a very big line that you can’t bring yourself up to touch. 

“I studied law because I thought it would change something,” he continues. You listen. It’s the only thing you can do—listen. “It wasn’t enough. Nothing I ever did felt like it was enough. I lost my father. Jack. I didn’t know my mother until it was too late. Maggie. I had no one. No money, no prospects, just me and those voices in my head, telling me I was supposed to be God’s soldier.”

“You’re not,” you cut in. 

He shakes his head. “I prayed; I crawled up the stairs of the church, and I spent hours repenting for my sins. I bled myself dry for Him. I sacrificed myself. I sacrificed my youth, my heart, and my soul, and I got nothing back. I begged for help until my voice was sore, but nothing… God, nothing was ever good enough. Until Elektra came around,” he says. 

“She changed everything for you. It makes sense. She turned you into a vampire, but she also loved you.”

“She did love me, in her own twisted way.”

“It’s what you deserved,” you say.

He isn’t yours, but the pang you feel in your chest is treacherous. Your heart cracks like a porcelain vase, jealousy creeping in like a parasite of toxic waste.

In response, Matt only chuckles bitterly. “She made me believe again, then took my soul and crushed it in her hand.” The correction makes your shoulders slump. “Instead of feeling like my world ended though, I felt at peace when she sucked the blood out of my veins and fed me her venom,” he says. “It’s sick, I know. I was aware I died that night, that she turned me into a devil who could only survive if he drank the blood of others. The Catholic in me struggled to accept it, but I had no choice but to embrace what she made me.”

“And where is she now?” you ask.

“Gone.” The light in his eyes has fully disappeared now. “I stayed with her for a while until she died in my arms. She showed me what love is, and she showed me heartbreak. She made me hungry for blood, awakening the devil I’ve been trying to tame. She taught me how to feed, how to hunt, and how to chase. But she also cursed me,” he says. “I only exist for myself now. I only bleed for myself. No God, no church, and no more religion. I’m not Jesus, I’m Judas, and I retired the cross the day I was crucified.”

You have run out of questions to ask. Too overwhelming is the sight of his walls crumbling down, this stranger you now know better than any living being seems to. You no longer see money in this, or a story to chase, you only see Matthew, and the halo above his head he still believes is a pair of horns. The world broke him. His faith in God broke him. It crushed him, and he lost everything. How broken he must be. 

“Not such a pretty story when I say it out loud, huh?” He scoffs.

The spacebar clicks again. The recording comes to a sudden halt. One hour and fifty-eight minutes, the first session of your interview with the vampire. You need to put a halt to it now because what you are about to say or do as you reach your hand out to brush his cold, dead skin is not something that should be found on a record. And you won’t ever tell.

Matt pulls away when your warm fingertips brush his. You’re standing across from him now, so close he can smell, hear, and feel all of you at once.

Your touch is the holy water that burns his skin, but the fire sustains him and shoots straight to his core the same way the blood rushes to yours.

“It’s not a pretty story, no,” you say, your voice barely above a whisper, “but it did tell me what I already knew.”

“And what’s that?” he asks.

“That you’re not evil. You’re not the Devil. You’re misunderstood. You’ve been beaten; you’ve been abandoned, hurt, and broken. That doesn’t make you a monster. Trying to make this city a better place does not make you a monster.”

“If you only knew the things I’ve done…”

“I know the rumors suggest that you were the one who fought Wilson Fisk and got this city back where it needed to be. You’ve saved countless women from the worst of fates. You are the reason the innocent people of Hell’s Kitchen feel safe. By picking up that mask, you became a hero, not a villain, and that is the story I want to tell.”

In lightspeed, he has moved you from the window to the other end of the room. Your back hits the wall. 

Matt towers over you in all of his intimidating glory. His eyes spark red, but you hold his unfocused gaze. He has such beautiful eyes. This pull between you is far from human; it’s unhealthy, and it is exactly where he wanted to get you. You’re trapped, pinned underneath him like a deer caught in headlights. 

Exhaling, your breath strokes his cheeks. He closes his eyes, savoring the taste of you. Every particle in the air, he inhales. His tongue darts out to lick his lips. Oh, what you wouldn’t do to suck that tongue into your mouth. 

Your pheromones play his head like a puppeteer pulling the strings of his marionette. He growls. “Do you have any idea how dangerous I am?” 

The moonlight catches his sparkling white teeth. This time though, you come face to face with the sharp edges of his previously concealed fangs. Your jaw drops open. He’s ethereal. 

“I could snap your neck—” Matt places his hand on your neck, “I could make that heart stop beating, take the air from your lungs. I could eat you…” He traces the vein in your throat from your jaw to your collarbone. “I could bite you and suck your blood until you’re empty. I could kill you, sweetheart. My kind is your natural enemy. You shouldn’t be here.”

You shudder. His nose brushes the sensitive skin below your ear. He’s so close you can smell him. On inhale, and his scent consumes your senses. He is all you can feel now. You reach out to hold onto his arms, his muscles tensing under your teeth. He’s big and strong, and those hands have a mind of their own as they begin to wander but never where you need him most. 

You shouldn’t be here, yet you came. He asked you to him, and you complied. Is this your fate now? Chasing after your big bad wolf like the helpless sheep that you are?

Your walls clench around an agonizing emptiness, your swollen clit brushing against your soaked underwear. Whatever he is doing to you, it’s the cruelest form of torture. 

A strangled noise breaks out of the back of his throat, rumbling in his chest. “You have no idea how badly I want to taste you,” he breathes. 

“Do it,” you beg. “Taste me.”

He utters your name again. “Stop.”

“Please.”

Your tone shatters him. When he kisses you, finally, fireworks explode in the universe around you. All the stars seem to finally align. Your heart opens, and it sucks him right into you. Your soul yearns for him. He’s so close yet so far away. 

The moon stands between you, but you cross even that ocean as you push against him, forcing your tongue into his mouth. He takes like heaven and hell; he’s the apple Eve bit into and cursed her for all eternity. But he’s also the snake, the one who compelled you to take this journey of bad decisions and jump right off the cliff’s edge. You melt into him like a broken candle. 

He pulls away. Those fangs are alluring, as sharp as a knife’s tip. You want to know what it would feel like gracing your skin, digging into your as he thrusts his cock into your tight cunt. The thought alone sends your mind into a spiral.

Your lips are swollen, but he has yet to draw blood. Matt looks as though he wouldn’t dare, his eyes darting around in a darkened conflict he feels might cost him more than your dignity. You are begging for it, as is your body, but he’s holding himself back. He’s the one who tied himself to an invisible pillar, keeping his hands locked behind his back. But that is not the Matt you want. 

You lean your head to the side, exposing the length of his neck. All control has slipped from your fingers. It’s in his hands now—you are. He cups your head gently. A mere few inches lie between your fountain and his lips.

You press a kiss to his calloused palm—a desperate and needy kiss, tracing your tongue over the lines that tell his life’s story in a way no interview can retell—and it is then he is forever done for. He’s doomed, and you are the second woman to pull him under the pits of hell. 

Saliva drips from his fangs. You hold your breath. He hisses, a weak admission of surrender; the words die miserably on your tongue when his lips close around your pulse point with all his might, and his teeth drive home. 

You moan aloud. Your fingers tangle in his hair, forcing him deeper as he sucks the dark red essence out of your vein. The sensation is more than you bargained for. It’s a drug that wrecks your system. The synapses in your brain backfire with all their might, and what follows the initial explosion of pleasure shooting white hot through your being is complete and utter silence as this God of a man feeds on you. 

The invisible string between you glows a bright crimson. It slings around you, tying you together like the roots of a tree. It’s an eternal sacrifice. You are giving your all to him, the very core of your existence that is now flowing into his mouth. You swear you can hear his thoughts mingle with yours. Yes, more, please. You taste so good. Your knees buckle, but you remain standing strong. He makes sure you don’t fall. Don’t slip away from me. I need you. 

A tear rolls down your cheek. You could sob. It feels so good—too good to be true. In that moment, you become one. There is no telling where one begins and the other ends. The coil in your stomach tightens, and the only pain you feel is the pleasure threatening to overwhelm you. He’s taking everything as you give him everything, but it is not enough. It has never been enough. 

When your body struggles to catch up with the lack of blood, he pulls away. His fangs drag out of your neck agonizingly slowly. You whimper at the sudden loss.

Matt catches you as you stumble into his arms. “You okay?” He cradles your face, brushing the hair out of your face. Your blood stains his lips. Blinking up at him, the force of your metaphysical connection slaps you awake. 

You cease to exist in all solar systems but his. 

He pokes the tip of his index finger with the sharp edge of one tooth, sliding it over the two holes that are pulsating with the work of your heartbeat.

“I shouldn’t have—” he begins. 

“No,” you say. “You did exactly what you should have.”

“I couldn’t stop.”

“But you did.” You wipe the blood from his mouth. “And I felt you. I only felt you.”

The living room passes by you. Before you know it, your back lands on something much softer than a concrete wall. He’s not a monster, that one, but he surely is an animal. 

You taste your blood on Matt’s luscious lips as he devours your tongue. It tastes of copper and a little bitter, but that is what makes him moan. That sound is the last thing you could ever grow tired of. 

His palm rests on your chest. Your heart pounds against his palm. “You’re so alive,” he says.

You cradle his face in your hands. “And you’re more human than you think.”

If he wanted to pull your heart out and hold it, you would let him in a heartbeat. 

He leans you back. He strips you bare. He kisses down your body like you are a fucking masterpiece for him to explore. That is how he sees you. 

Your head falls back. The kisses wander from your hips to the inside of your thighs. Every kiss brings his breath closer to your center. Matt pulls them apart. He opens you up to him. Your scent clouds his senses, and he groans, but he doesn’t touch. 

His fangs graze your skin. “Mine,” he growls. 

You gasp. He bites into the sensitive flesh. Hard, passionately. Your legs wrap around his head, trapping him there. He sucks, and he sucks, and he drinks, and the wetness pools out of your cunt in an obscene amount. This is foreplay to him. It drives you toward the edge leading to an abyss you are afraid you might never be able to crawl back out of. There is no bottom, it is just a pit, and he’s pushing you closer and closer, and—

Your back arches, but he pulls away before the coil can snap into a million butterflies. He pries your legs away from his head, spreading them further on the mattress, as far apart as they will go. 

Breakfast, lunch, and dinner have been served on a silver platter. He breathes in. The scent of your soaked pussy sticks to the hairs in his nose. It isn’t enough. He breathes in again, your arousal sweeter than fiction. You’re everything and more. He wants to taste that part of you more than anything, suck up the slick that is soaking the sheets—and you didn’t even think that was possible—but he waits because he needs to savor it. He doesn’t want it to be over too soon. neither for him nor for you. 

The blood is still dripping from his tongue and his fangs, and the raw inside of your thigh. He runs his finger through it. The sting runs from the wound to your folds, then back down. Still, he doesn’t touch. He plays with the blood, sucking on his fingers until they’re clean, and then he dives back in for a taste. He doesn’t bite, he kisses and sucks, but he doesn’t push it further. He doesn’t hurt you. 

You’re his saving grace; he has to worship you. Pain only has a place in pleasure. 

“Matthew,” you moan. 

He chuckles, kissing where his fangs left deep indentations. “No one will ever touch you again,” he purrs. “I’ll make sure of that.” 

You try to protest, but the words die on your tongue when he leans in, capturing your clit with his hungry mouth. The wound on your thigh closes. The blood from his lips mixes with your juices, and you cry out at the intensity of it all. 

He eats you with the ferocity of a man starved for weeks. He eats your pussy like he ate your blood, savoring every drop but still feasting for the taste to spread out in his mouth like wildfire. Sour, sweet, and copper. He sucks your sensitive clit into his mouth. His tongue drags through your folds, up and down, and then the tip slides inside, tasting your walls. He grows bolder as your moans accelerate. 

Matt cradles your thighs. He forces your hips back down to the mattress, stronger than the average human man. You have to endure his beard scratching and burning, and the pace he has set.

The orgasm creeps up on you. Before you know it, he has plunged his tongue into you, and your body convulses around him. You scream into a pillow as you come. 

You are each other’s forbidden fruit. No prayer in the world could keep you apart. 

Faintly, you can hear him say, “Good girl.” Your legs quiver. He pulls away, then comes right back like a boomerang. 

He’s warm now. He was cold before, but when he kisses you this time, he’s warm. He’s hot. You run your hands over his bare chest, the scars that lie under the dark strands of hair. You tug at it, and he moans. You can tell he is a little insecure, but by pressing your lips to one of the cuts on his shoulder, he relaxes. 

What he must have endured, what he must have lived through before he died and was resurrected in the same breath, just without a beating heart—you don’t want to think about it or you will break, but you can still feel him through the crimson tie that holds you together, and you know that he has suffered enough for more than two lifetimes. You wish you could take it all away from him. You wish you could have saved him before it was too late, loved him more than the woman who turned him, but turning back time is an impossibility. You are both acutely aware of that. 

“Hey.” Matt tilts your head toward him. “Where did you just go?” he asks. 

“Thinking about you,” you murmur. 

“Me?”

“You.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to be your salvation.”

You. His salvation. He kisses you, softly this time. He pours gratitude into his lips and bleeds them out in poetry as they slide into your mouth, and you swallow every last drop. 

If someone had told you a week ago where you would see yourself on that particular Monday, you would have laughed at them. And if someone had told you a week ago that you would be making love to the devil, you would have called them crazy. But it’s happening. 

He thrusts into you without a warning. His thick cock fills you like nothing and no one ever has before. Your cunt has been molded to fit him, you’re sure. You take him in, and you moan at the stretch. It’s a pain so delicious you could fall apart right then and there just from the feel of him inside you. 

Every thrust drags the tip of his cock along your sweet spot. Every added sensation drives you closer to your death. 

Your body tingles. He explores your face with his lips rather than his fingers, moving to your neck again. You cling to him, oh-so-desperate for him. He likes you like that, and you like him like that. 

“You’re fucking with my head,” he tells you. “Offering your pussy to a vampire. Letting me drink your blood. Begging me to fuck you. You’re in my head, baby. Can’t get you out of my system. Fuck.”

You are his downfall, his salvation, but he is all of those things to you as well—all of those things and more. If he could read your mind, you would tell him that. Words can’t do justice to how you feel. Not right now, maybe not ever. 

“Bite me again,” you beg.

His thrusts falter. He searches your body for any sign of regret. His fangs come out, and he buries them deep in your jugular vein. The floodgates open wide. Your walls clench around his cock, your clit pulsates, and the wave crashes into you. 

You come as he devours your neck and your blood. You transcend into another dimension, far away from everything and everyone but never him. Never Matthew.

The sensation of you wraps around him like a weighted blanket. His balls tighten, your blood unfolding its taste on his tongue. You are all over him, inside of him, everywhere at once. He falls head-first, dragging you down with him. 

He comes with a shout that is only muffled through his teeth buried in your flesh, his cum spurting into you and filling your cunt to the brim. Your eyes roll back. You’re flying and falling all at once. 

Oh, how good it feels to be consumed by him. To be fucked and sucked dry. You would have never expected this to come out of your week, let alone your life, but now that it has happened, you are floating on cloud nine. 

Dizziness threatens to take over, but before you can pass out, he forces himself away, allowing your heart to catch up with the lack of blood in your system. He collapses on top of you. His cock softens, but he stays inside. You need him there. You want him there. And that is the only place he wants to rest tonight. 

He heals the wounds on your neck. “You have a mark,” Matt rasps, tracing your skin with his finger. 

You choke out, “Yours.”

“Yes, you are.” He kisses you there. Once, twice, even a third time. “Mine,” he says.

You’re his. He’s yours. It doesn’t get any better than this. 

The minutes tick away on the obnoxious clock on the wall. Matt pulls out eventually, wrapping you up in a blanket. He coaxes you to drink, but you’re barely lucid. Only when he begins to stroke your hair you start coming back to yourself. You thought you might regret it, but as you look at him, his almost guilty eyes staring back at you, all you can do is reach out for him. 

“Session two tomorrow?” you ask.

He chuckles and retorts, “Have I not scared you away?” There is some truth to it though.

He’s covered in your blood. It sticks to his lips, his hands, and his chest. It’s sickeningly intimate, in a way.

You shake your head in response. “You could not possibly.”

He listens to your heartbeat. You’re as honest as they come. 

“Okay,” Matt says. “Session two tomorrow then.”

That night, you fell in love with the Devil, but he also fell in love with you, his angel in the form of a reckless journalist, and the only blood he ever wants to taste again until the end of his miserable, cursed days. 

Matt Murdock (Smut) Tag List: @shouldbestudying41 @theradioactivespidergwen @cheshirecat484 @1988-fiend @acharliecoxedfan @gpenguin666 @linamarr @mcugeekposts @itwasthereaminuteago @norestfortheshelbywicked @yarrystyleeza @littlenerdyravenclaw @etanordoesbullsh1t @thychuvaluswife @harleycao @schneeflocky @imjustcal @pipsqueakkitten @merlinbtch @sya-skies @amberritonicole @ravenclaw617 @pigeonmama @bohemianrhapsody86 @a-girl-has-n0-name @winkev1 @callsign-ember @chittaphonstar @buckyyyismahhlife

[cultkinkcoven]

The one major thing I’ve taken away from my couple days of arguing with Christians about abortion in the Bible is that they always must insist that I am saying these things because I want the Bible to agree with my views. I know this is only because they use the bible as justification for their views… but guys….

Babes,… I’m a fucking Luciferian. Come on. Why would I care about whether or not the Bible agrees with abortion? I’m obviously not following the Bible anyways. If i wanted a reason to justify my beliefs…I wouldn’t be using the Bible… because the Bible clearly does not follow my morality anyways.

I am a supreme lover or theology, history, and culture. I am far more interested in the followers of Christ than Christ himself. And likewise, I find the creation of the Bible fascinating. I think the evolution of Judaism to Christianity is one of the most interesting things in the world. I love humanity, far more than I care about its God. I want to know what values, characteristics, doctrine, they considered to be divine and projected onto their God. I only study the word of God so I can understand the human hands that wrote it.

When I say “the Bible never condemns abortion, here are some contextual pieces of history and scripture that clearly explore God’s perspective on fetal life” I’m not saying “look guys! The Bible is pro abortion and that means we all should be too!!! This totally proves me right about everything!!!”

because it simply doesn’t.

I woke up one morning with a curiosity: “How did people in antiquity regard abortion?” and the clear solution to that curiosity was to read the manual they created for their people. Turns out the manual isn’t all that conclusive, and would actually point towards a complex answer. Does that mean their views were correct, moral, or justified? I honestly don’t care! My opinions on their beliefs don’t matter! The only thing that matters was the intention of the people and the effect these intentions had on the people.

Whether or not the big G-D is truly against abortion could not be known to me, a mere pagan heathen. But what I will continue to say, because I know it to be true now that I’ve spent this much time researching it:

Abortion and/or intentional miscarriage is never at any point stated to be a sin in the Bible or any Biblical text. Never is abortion condemned in the Bible, never is any woman said to be sinning or going to hell for having an abortion or intentional miscarriage. Never at any point, ever, does God say abortion is a crime, and never at any point is it implied that abortion is murder. On the contrary, it is established that it is not.

There are pieces of scripture that clearly establish that the mother is of greater significance than the fetus, and people in antiquity did not consider an infant to be a full person until at its first breath at least, and usually only after a few months of life because of the fact that around 50% of newborns would die anyways. To terminate a thing that might not even live anyways was regarded far differently than killing a fully established person. Due to the increased risk of death during childbirth and the slim chance of newborn survival, it was very normal and common for women to induce intentional miscarriages to save their life. The only instance in which infanticide may have been considered the same as murder was only in the case of late term “abortions” where the fetus had a full form, and looked like a baby (which, we still do not do to this day. It’s illegal to have an abortion in the 9th month).

and to be extremely clear: Premature babies did not survive in antiquity. A premature birth was a still birth or miscarriage. When Exodus 21 says: “If people are fighting and hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely[a] but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman’s husband demands and the court allows. 23 But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, 24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25 burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.

they are referring to a miscarriage. That’s why on every single version of this verse you can find online and in most english translations there is always a footnote on the word “prematurely” that says “or miscarriage”

This isn’t some secret pro-choice agenda. This was the intended meaning of the text. Translators are not trying to support abortion, they are trying to support the intended truth.

Because the fetus was the property of the husband, the loss of the fetus would result in a fine paid to the husband. Further harm caused to the living mother was paid via execution if she died, or a hand for a hand, foot for foot etc. This is the most agreed upon interpretation that makes the most sense in accordance to the customs of the Jewish people and other laws of nearby nations in which Hebrews inhabited.

So, to conclude this shit show,

I don’t give a shit a fuck or a damn what YHWH thinks of abortion. I find the opinions and beliefs of his people to be far more interesting and historically significant. Based on their literature, we can get a pretty comprehensive view on their ideals when it came to this topic. Their ideals have absolutely nothing to do with mine nor do they add legitimacy to mine.

I just like theology guys lmfao

and you bet your ass that I’m going to take the time to do my research if there’s a chance that I accidentally shared misinformation (which I did! Numbers 5 are not instructions on how to do an abortion! That’s not the correct verse to use for this argument. That was totally my mistake.) In that research I only learned more about the ancient word that supports my original thesis.

and so, my original claim still remains true. The Bible does not condemn abortion. No biblical text ever condemns abortion, and God did not call it a sin.

💋

[girlbossvicvega]

born again episode 4 is really good and i think a great piece of characterization for matt actually. it’s a series of slights, jabs, taunts, frustrations - people trying to put matt in his place over and over again for whatever their own reasons, and throughout it all there’s this undercurrent that at some point the levee is going to break

we basically spend the whole episode watching matt be wrecked by guilt over hector’s murder and how it mirrors foggy’s death - both good, innocent people that matt took a big risk to try to save, but who ultimately died after that very risk put them in danger. there’s also the fact that he doesn’t want hector’s niece to see her dad’s body, which you can’t help but think is because he was a little kid himself once who felt his own dad’s body grow cold. so, ok. matt’s already in the guilt complex mode.

then we get a series of rage-inducing moments of ableism. most from his client, but also including one during which matt also gets overtly threatened by a cop. shoving matt against the wall, getting all up in his personal space, the little thing where he took matt’s glasses off earlier in the season - officer powell’s such a genuine creep towards matt. it makes my skin crawl, i love it

then matt argues on behalf of his client for rehabilitation. but despite getting the best possible outcome within the current system, matt is forced by his client- who has been nothing but an asshole as a means of lashing out- to face up to the fact that even the best outcome within the current structure, a flawed structure he has been leaning on to cope with his role in foggy’s death, is not enough.

and then, frank shows up. and yes, he reads matt for filth (somewhat unfairly imo, although i feel like that was on purpose). but he’s also just…refreshing. frank acts like he’s just another person trying to put matt in his place, but he isn’t. we’ve just been faced with what that looks like over and over again all episode! and what we see here instead is frank being the first person to realize what’s really going on with matt, and giving his best effort to help him. and it works :)

[luna-rainbow]

Do you think Bucky ever got any sleep during all his years of Hydra captivity? Or was it just wipe/kill/back in the freezer? I don't think cryostasis would be anything like normal restorative REM sleep.

Hello nonnie!! I have finally had a light-bulb moment for this ask (I'm sorry it's taken me like 7 months)

I've been going about it the wrong way, trying to research on sleep, when in actuality what I should have been researching is the brain under hypothermia. This is an observational study conducted in the 1980s looking at children undergoing induced hypothermia (lowering of body temperature) during cardiopulmonary bypass (sometimes required during major surgery). In summary, by the time the body temperature cooled to 18 degrees, all brain activity ceased. Sleep - consisting of non-REM and particularly REM - are associated with far more active brain waves. So nonnie, you are very correct in saying that Bucky, even with his super soldier abilities, unlikely ever got any "sleep" during cryostasis. (I'm sorry to all the ficcers that wrote Bucky dreaming during cryo but I think most people are happy to ignore this piece of science)

In terms of whether Bucky ever got "sleep", I think that is hard to say. Even normal soldiers might drive themselves to go without sleep for 36+ hours if required for a mission (heck, even hospital shifts go for 36 hours in some places). As a super soldier, Bucky might tolerate sleep deprivation for longer. This means missions like taking out the Starks - travelling from Russian and back - he might achieve in one sitting without sleeping in between (although I guess no one can stop him from dozing off on the plane).

I think one implied part of your question is "is it likely that Bucky was allowed out of the freezer for long enough periods at a time to need (and get) sleep"? I feel like that is unlikely, judging from the "he's been out of cryo for too long" line from CATWS. The timeline goes: day 1 Bucky makes assassination attempts daytime + night time against Fury / day 2 Steve makes a run down to Jersey arriving there at night / day 3 Bucky attacks Steve on the causeway and then we get the nighttime vault scene where Bucky is "unstable". Even if we add a day or two prior to allow for prepping, that still means Bucky becomes "unstable" and questions his identity within a bare week of being out of cryo.

Credit @lost-shoe (this post)

Now onto the angst...we know anaesthetics is not like restful sleep, so theoretically neither is cryostasis. While the science of cryostasis doesn't exist at the moment, we know from artificial hypothermia in surgical situations that it puts incredible stress on the body and all its organs. Looking at the laboratory derangements during hypothermia it looks like it pushes the body over to anaerobic metabolism and causes lactate to go up. You know when you go for a run and your muscles cramp up because you haven't warmed up enough? That's because your muscles have produced too much lactate from anaerobic metabolism. So...no wonder Bucky can't stand when he comes out of the cryo chamber. It also increases one's bleeding risk and reduces one's healing speed, so take of that what you will for your Whumptober prompts 😂

I also wonder whether, because the brain is not receiving any REM sleep during cryo, it means Bucky has been in a constant state of sleep deprivation for the last 70 years. The theory of "prefrontal vulnerability" in sleep deprivation proposes that functions like language, executive functions, divergent thinking, and creativity are particularly affected, so that can contribute to Bucky's inability to process/produce complex language and his slowness when it comes to working through complex problems. It also has significant effect on memory and attention: it's interesting to note that during sleep deprivation of more than 35 hours, they found that while free recall was affected, recognition was not. (Disclaimer for science: small sample size, opposite result for subjects with sleep deprivation ~24 h).

So yeah, I think there are practical reasons why Hydra would not allow Bucky to have restorative sleep between missions. Consolidation of long term memory (i.e. transferring them from short term storage into long term storage) usually happens during sleep which means it is quite likely Bucky remembers only broken bits of his time (if at all) in the last 7 decades.

[mariacallous]

SUNDERBANS, West Bengal—Thirty-year-old Sita*, originally from a coastal region of Bangladesh, recalls the day Cyclone Aila struck with chilling clarity. Her house made from mud and thatch crumbled from the impact.

“It began like any other day, until a sudden shift in the air warned us of an impending disaster,” she said.

“We heard people screaming that the riverbank had broken, and the water was rapidly heading toward the village,” she recalled while sitting on the floor outside her brick-and-mortar house in the Sunderbans area of West Bengal, where she now lives. When she went back a few days later, everything had been washed away. Nothing was left of what was once her home.

“We lost everything—our home, our possessions, everything,” she recalled, her voice heavy with memory.

According to the Global Climate Risk Index 2021, Bangladesh ranks seventh in countries most affected by climate change since 2000. The World Health Organization reports that in 2022 alone, more than 7.1 million Bangladeshis were displaced as a result of it. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that sea level rise will inundate soil with salt, reduce crop productivity, and increase poverty by 15 percent by 2030.

The issue of migration and the impacts of climate change, however, are not confined to Bangladesh alone. The Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest, shared by India and Bangladesh, lies at the heart of this mobility.

While most climate-related displacement is internal, many Bangladeshis migrate to India through porous borders. Informational circulars in the Indian Border Security Force camps on one such border in Panitar highlighted these infiltrations as a recurring issue.

The illegal nature of such movement makes it difficult to determine the exact number of Bangladeshi migrants in India. However, the Asian Development Bank states that this could be the largest international migration flow, surpassing migration across the Mexico-U.S. border.

“Migration is very frequent between Bangladesh and India, particularly from the Sundarbans area. People have friends, neighbors, and relatives there, so they cross the border—sometimes legally, sometimes illegally,” explained Md Shamsuddoha, the chief executive of the Center for Participatory Research and Development, a policy think tank in Bangladesh.

“As you call them refugees, they are not refugees that are stateless and persecuted by the government, like the Rohingyas. However, in Bangladesh, this is not the case because the government is not forcing them to leave the country. Those moving to India are crossing the border voluntarily.”

Ashok Swain, a professor and head of peace and conflict research at Uppsala University, Sweden, and the UNESCO chair of international water cooperation, highlighted the ambiguity of the term, calling it the absence of a legal framework—both domestically and internationally—that fails to recognize climate migrants as refugees. This allows both countries to overlook the issue rather than engage in a complex legal and humanitarian debate.

One of the biggest concerns regarding the issue of climate-induced migration, Shamsuddoha explained, is the denial. “The government denies that people are migrating from Bangladesh to India due to climate change.”

According to a 2010 report by the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), estimates of Bangladeshi migrants in India vary widely. India claims there are up to 20 million illegal migrants, while Bangladesh denies any irregular migration, arguing its economy is comparable to India’s. The 2001 Indian census recorded only 280,000 Bangladeshi migrants from 1991 to 2001, though this likely excludes many undocumented movements.

The issue, Shamsuddoha added, is that many of these migrants manage to obtain Aadhaar cards, an Indian identity document, or other legal documents in India. As a result, the Indian government considers them illegal, arguing that they acquired these documents fraudulently and are Bangladeshi citizens, attempting to deport them. However, Bangladesh refuses to take them back, denying them as its citizens since they possess Indian documents.

“This is a governance issue. The Bangladeshi government sees migration to India as beneficial since people are seeking livelihoods on their own, reducing pressure on the state. Meanwhile, India views it as a source of cheap labor. These are the interests at play for both countries, in my opinion.”

India and Bangladesh’s refusal to recognize refugees under international law, coupled with their non-signatory status to the 1951 Refugee Convention, creates major obstacles to cross-border cooperation on migration. Without legal protections, climate migrants are left vulnerable, with limited rights and access to essential services. Many face human rights abuses, including trafficking, modern slavery, and inadequate access to housing, health care, and education.

The legal ambiguity surrounding climate migration between India and Bangladesh leaves vulnerable populations exposed to severe human rights challenges.

“India’s citizenship laws, such as the National Register of Citizens and the Citizenship Amendment Act, further complicate the issue, as they distinguish between migrants based on religion rather than considering climate displacement as a legitimate reason for migration. As a result, instead of recognizing and addressing climate migration through structured policies, India’s political landscape continues to treat all migration as an issue of legality and national security, making meaningful solutions for climate migrants nearly impossible,” Swain added.

While the nations argue on the verbiage, there are people like Sita and thousands of others who have lost their homes to the impacts of climate change and wonder what the future holds for them. Living deep inside the Indian state of West Bengal, one Bangladeshi migrant who arrived two years earlier hopes to assimilate rather than go back.

Sakina*, one of 13 siblings, was just 15 when her father married her off, unable to feed another mouth after his farmland became barren due to rising salinity. Then her father used all his savings to construct a new house. But when Cyclone Aila destroyed their home, the abject poverty forced the family to decide it was time for their youngest daughter to marry.

“When the cyclone came, the best houses nearby vanished, and our house was not even a house in front of those,” she recalled.

Even after marriage, Sakina couldn’t escape the wrath of extreme weather. Heavy rains frequently flooded their home, washing away their few belongings. Struggling to build a stable future, she paid an agent 6,000 rupees ($70) to help her cross into India. Today, she lives in West Bengal, posing as an Indian citizen with documents like an Aadhaar card, convinced she has finally left uncertainty behind. But she speaks in hushed tones, fearing that someone in her neighborhood might discover her true origins in Bangladesh.

The southern part of the India-Bangladesh border divides the coast and the Sundarbans. Therefore, the natural features, such as rivers, marshlands, and low-lying areas, are not suitable for installing barbed-wire fences.

Another Bangladeshi migrant, Robina*, recalled her family’s attempt to cross the border with the help of a human smuggler. He hid them in a nearby house until the following night when they finally managed to slip across, crossing a canal while hiding behind bundles of tied-together flower leaves to avoid detection.

Now she lives in another part of West Bengal, Basirhat, two hours of bumpy riding from Kolkata. Robina, originally from Satkhira in Bangladesh, moved to India two years ago in search of a better life, following a similar path to escape the relentless cycle of disaster.

India and Bangladesh share a common concern about climate change’s impact on the Sundarbans. In 2011, they signed a historic Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that detailed actions to protect local livelihoods dependent on the ecosystem, manage the region jointly, and perform extensive research on climate change and its impact on the delta region. However, researchers claim that the only notable achievement of the MoU has been joint assessments of tigers.

Despite strong India-Bangladesh cooperation on issues like tiger conservation and water sharing, climate-induced migration remains unaddressed due to its political sensitivity. Unlike conservation efforts, which have international support, migration raises complex political, economic, and security challenges that both governments prefer to avoid, Swain said.

Shamsuddoha added that this is clearly a policy gap.

“We are working to address it as part of a regional network called Climate Action Network South Asia. We are engaging with policymakers in both Bangladesh and India to push for a common stance, ensuring that people do not suffer due to this gap or end up being considered stateless. However, the challenge remains that the Bangladeshi government continues to deny the existence of climate-induced migration to India. Similarly, the Indian government lacks a focused policy recognizing that people from Bangladesh are migrating due to climate change and displacement. This policy inertia persists on both sides.”

Michael Kugelman, Foreign Policy author and expert specializing in South Asia and the director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center, said: “Given that climate change effects will be intensifying, suggesting increases in climate migrants and migrant flows into India, there’s a crying need for Delhi and Dhaka to start talking about these issues. That’s unlikely to happen at least until there are elections in Bangladesh and there’s a new government in power that India is comfortable working with.”

Illegal immigration from Bangladesh to India, including refugees and economic migrants, remains unchecked. While no exact figure exists, an analysis of population and demographic data from the 1981, 1991, 2001, and 2011 censuses suggests the number exceeds 15 million.

“You also need to mobilize media opinion and civil society while engaging directly with political stakeholders—not just the bureaucracy, but also members of parliament—so they can take a common position, perhaps even start monitoring how many people are crossing the border,” Shamsuddoha added. “If we could establish that migration is happening, it would be a step forward. But right now, both governments are in denial—Bangladesh refuses to acknowledge climate migration to India, while those who do cross over try to blend in as Indian citizens. It’s a constant game of hide and seek.”

He described India and Bangladesh’s bilateral relationship as “businesslike,” stating that despite years of alliance, the two countries have failed to address climate migration, as the interests of the Bangladeshi people were never a priority.

“The relationship between India and Bangladesh has been strong, but it did not address the real issues faced by the people. It feels more like a business arrangement—India prioritizes its interests, focusing on securing trade corridors and market access in Bangladesh, while ignoring long-standing concerns like the Teesta Barrage, Ganges water-sharing disputes, and joint climate adaptation efforts under the UNFCCC. The discussions revolve around increasing investment in Bangladesh, benefiting companies like Adani, rather than addressing the needs of the Bangladeshi people. The relationship was one-sided, serving India’s interests, while Bangladesh’s government relied on India’s support to stay in power. For the past 15 years, India has backed an undemocratic government in Bangladesh, so it will, of course, take some benefit out of it. And India did,” Shamsuddoha said.

However, Swain insisted that the politicization of the issue has made it impossible for the historical allies to find common ground vis-à-vis their climate migrant situation.

These ongoing issues of statelessness and displacement are exacerbated by the growing political and environmental tensions between India and Bangladesh. The recent political upheaval in Bangladesh, marked by the fall of the Hasina government and her subsequent refuge in India, has complicated bilateral relations between the two countries.

“The best way forward for India and Bangladesh is to recognize climate-induced migration as a shared developmental and humanitarian challenge rather than solely a security issue. Given their deep geographical, economic, and ecological ties, both countries would benefit from a common development policy that prioritizes climate adaptation, economic cooperation, and legal labor mobility to manage migration in a structured way,” Swain said.

*The names of migrants in this story have been changed to protect their privacy.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Reference saved in our archive

One of the biggest reasons we have to push back on the harmful rhetoric that covid is "just a cold." It's not.

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic, caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, has profoundly impacted global health, affecting not only the immediate morbidity and mortality rates but also long-term health outcomes across various populations. Although the acute effects of COVID-19 on the respiratory system have initially been the primary focus, it is increasingly evident that the virus can have significant impacts on multiple physiological systems, including the nervous and immune systems. The pandemic has highlighted the complex interplay between viral infection, immune aging, and brain health, that can potentially accelerate neuroimmune aging and contribute to the persistence of long COVID conditions. By inducing chronic inflammation, immunosenescence, and neuroinflammation, COVID-19 may exacerbate the processes of neuroimmune aging, leading to increased risks of cognitive decline, neurodegenerative diseases, and impaired immune function. Key factors include chronic immune dysregulation, oxidative stress, neuroinflammation, and the disruption of cellular processes. These overlapping mechanisms between aging and COVID-19 illustrate how the virus can induce and accelerate aging-related processes, leading to an increased risk of neurodegenerative diseases and other age-related conditions. This mini-review examines key features and possible mechanisms of COVID-19-induced neuroimmune aging that may contribute to the persistence and severity of long COVID. Understanding these interactions is crucial for developing effective interventions. Anti-inflammatory therapies, neuroprotective agents, immunomodulatory treatments, and lifestyle interventions all hold potential for mitigating the long-term effects of the virus. By addressing these challenges, we can improve health outcomes and quality of life for millions

[foundationsolution1]

Understanding Concrete Flaking And Its Similarities With Spalling

Concrete, which forms the integral structure of many modern buildings, is renowned for its durability and strength. However, despite its robust nature, it is susceptible to natural wear and tear, harsh environmental conditions, and poor construction techniques, all of which can result in damage over time. Two of the most common problems that afflict concrete structures are flaking and spalling. While they may seem similar, it’s crucial to delve deeper into these conditions to understand their nuances. In this article, we will primarily focus on flaking, but oddly enough, you’ll discover that it has a striking resemblance to spalling.

FLAKING: A CLOSER LOOK

Also known as scaling, flaking is a predominant issue affecting concrete surfaces. When concrete begins to flake, it means that its top layer is peeling away from the hardened, integral part of the material, exposing the underlying aggregate. This is not just an eyesore; it also compromises the integrity of the structure and can lead to broader issues if not promptly addressed.

UNDERSTANDING CONCRETE FLAKING

Flaking is a common occurrence in freeze-thaw settings. In such climates, water penetrates the porous nature of the concrete and freezes. When water freezes, it expands, exerting pressure on the surrounding concrete. As the thaw returns, the water dissipates, leaving a void. This continuous cycle of freezing, expansion, and thawing causes the surface of the concrete to weaken, leading to peeling off, or as it’s more commonly known, flaking.

Another common cause of flaking is the use of chemicals like deicers. Often, these chemicals can induce a similar freeze-thaw cycle, intensifying the process even more and leading to flaking. Inadequate concrete mix or improper application techniques can also be to blame for flaking.

FLAKING VS. SPALLING: A COMPARISON

Flaking and spalling often get confused, and reasonably so, given that these conditions portray similar symptoms. Much like flaking, spalling involves the degradation of concrete, causing it to chip or break off in fragments. The primary difference between the two stems from the degree of damage and the size of the affected area.

While flaking typically affects the thin top layer of the concrete, spalling extends deeper into the surface and affects larger areas. The surface degradation from spalling can reveal the aggregate and sometimes the reinforcing steel within the concrete, leading to severe structural deficiencies.

However, regardless of whether it’s flaking or spalling, these issues need proper and immediate attention. They indicate an unresolved issue with water ingress or a potential structural problem that could escalate if left untreated.

CONCLUSION

The longevity of a concrete structure primarily depends on the quality of the pour, the climatic conditions of the area, and long-term maintenance. It is crucial to consider environmental factors and utilize durable building materials to minimize the risk of flaking and spalling, thereby ensuring the longevity of the structure.

If you notice signs of flaking or spalling on your concrete structures, it’s advisable to consult with a professional as soon as possible. Remember, catching these issues early and addressing them promptly can prevent further damage, safeguarding the integrity and lifespan of the structure. Flaking might seem like a minor aesthetic issue, but it can be an indication of more serious underlying problems calling for your immediate attention.

So, understanding the complexities of concrete flaking, identifying its similarities and differences with spalling, and taking timely corrective action will go a long way in maintaining the health of your concrete structures.

Tagged Concrete Flaking, Foundation Repair, Foundation Solutions

[the-witchy-housewife]

｡+*✧ 10 Red Flags That Signal a Mystical Charlatan ✧*+｡

This is an article from my website, The Witchy Housewife. You can read it at the source here or look under the cut to read it here on Tumblr. If you enjoy my work, please consider subscribing (at the bottom of this page) to receive articles as they're posted via e-mail, exploring the shop, leaving a tip, or reblogging this post. I run this all myself, so all support is greatly appreciated. 💜🔮✨

As I have begun reworking the intuitive services available in my shop, I’ve found myself contemplating the current state of our culture and economy and the heightened sense of desperation these things can induce. While I firmly believe that, given the system we currently live within, those with a passion for the metaphysical should be able to make a living by assisting others through various mystical services, it is imperative that those of us who do provide these services acknowledge the presence of con artists and charlatans in our midst who seek to take advantage of the emotionally or financially vulnerable. Today, I’ll be discussing some of the potential warning signs that are good to keep in mind when seeking spiritual services, whether they be divination work, energy work, or any other form of spiritual assistance you may encounter.

1. Claims of Exclusive Abilities

If a prospective spiritual service provider insists that they possess some sort of unique, one-of-a-kind ability that cannot be found anywhere else on the planet, it is likely they are a con artist at worst or lying as a marketing gimmick at best. While, in some cases, such claims may be related to a system of working that is truly of their own creation, there are always routes to be taken by others that have the ability to yield similar results. In truth, as with any skill, mystical abilities can be mastered by anyone willing to put in the time, effort, and dedication, including those who may not have been blessed with “natural-born” inclinations.

Certainly, those who have put in such work prior to offering mystical services may show better focus or discernment when delivering results and interpretations when compared to those who have begun offering services with little prior experience, but the tools available to achieve the former are not unavailable to the latter by any means. In fact, for those interested in delving into the world of divination and magick, I offer comprehensive articles packed with free, fundamental information for anyone at any level here on this very website. Everything that a spiritual service provider can do for you, you can do for yourself, and the choice to hire someone else is one that should be one of convenience rather than desperation.

2. Claims of Superior Abilities

While I will reiterate that a more experienced and well-studied spiritual service provider will likely show evidence of stronger focus or discernment in the results they yield, the need for them to put others down in their various interactions and marketing material should be obsolete. The ability of a good service provider should speak for itself without the need for name dropping and muckraking. This is another red flag which strikes me as scam-bait at word and sleazy marketing tactics at best.

Further, claims of exclusivity or superiority have the potential to create a dynamic of inauthentic dependency. Rather than returning to a service provider because you find them to be reliable and helpful for your particular needs, you risk being hooked onto false claims which prevent you from seeking out other providers who may work better with you, and as with the previous red flag, you also run the risk of developing a subconscious complex of inferiority which hinders you from developing your own abilities.

3. Fearmongering About Curses

Throughout my extensive journey in the realms of spirituality and magick, I’ve found curses to be an exceedingly rare occurrence. Even for those who associate with the more unsavory occult crowds, the individuals who dwell within them tend to lack the necessary depth of knowledge and practice, courtesy of an ego-driven approach, to produce meaningful enough results to cause you any substantial issues that a quick cleanse won’t cure. Such is the case, as well, for inadvertently directed negative energy by non-practitioners, which can deliver rather unpleasant results but can ultimately also be solved by a quick cleanse.

Regardless of the “level” a curse may be at, however, it is worth noting that these things can be cleansed, banished, and/or mitigated by anyone who takes the time to familiarize themselves with the appropriate techniques. If a prospective spiritual service provider tells you that you have a curse that only they are capable of removing – or, in the same vein, if you have any sort of spiritual haunting or attachment going on that they claim only they can remove – they are attempting to deceive you. More than likely, there is no curse or entity or energy plaguing you, and they are simply saying so to hook you into another payment. Even if someone does legitimately provide cleansing, banishing, healing, or protection services, a good one will never force you into that service through fear, and a better one will always assure you that you are entirely capable of handling it yourself if you are unable to or simply do not want to outsource the work.

An unfortunate possibility that should be mentioned here, however, is that feelings of negativity, especially when paired with a newfound awareness and acknowledgement of other realms, can sometimes attract unsavory energies and entities who feed on or thrive in such emotions. Horror and despair are especially powerful at drawing such attention. As such, it is a good idea for anyone seeking out spiritual services for hire to at least familiarize themselves with cleansing, banishing, and protective techniques that feel appropriate for and compatible with them. I feel that my article, The Basics of Spiritual Safety & Wellbeing, is a very important one for anyone dipping their toes into such explorations. I would also like to note that I am available within my office hours to offer guidance to those who feel they need it, so if you have come across this article after a negative experience with a spiritual service provider which has drawn any unsavory presences into your midst, feel free to contact me here and I will be happy to advise you where I am able.

4. Threats at Any Level

On the topic of fear, if a spiritual service provider has threatened you in any capacity, whether it pertains to threats of curses or harmful spirits or threats against your mental or physical wellbeing, they are most definitely not someone you want to continue working with, nor should you keep open any methods of contact. Keep a paper trail of such threats to the best of your ability to report them to their web host or to the customer service of the platform they are selling their services on, and in the case of a physical threat, to report them to the proper authorities. Beyond this, block them from continued contact wherever you are able.

Unfortunately, in the digital age we live in, most services are online, and the internet is very much still in this sort of murky, weird territory when it comes to law enforcement. Speaking from experience, I urge anyone with an online presence to be very careful with how much personal information is shared online, and it is also a very good idea to search yourself on Google in order to request the removal of your personal information on places like Whitepages if you’ve ever used your real name online. We seem to have gone from the era of “stranger danger” right into an era of no fear at all regarding the sharing of identities online. This is no less dangerous than taking out a physical billboard with that same information.

Returning to the topic at hand, however, if a prospective service provider is threatening to curse you in return for an unwillingness to hand over money, they are no different than those I mentioned previously who lack the sufficient expertise to do such a thing. More than likely, these types of people are practitioners at all. The worst they can do, in both of these cases, is direct a bit of negative energy your way, which, as I also mentioned previously, is an issue easily resolved with a simple cleansing.

5. Claims of All-Knowing Abilities

While this is particularly relevant for divination-based services, it’s still necessary to note in this article: If your prospective spiritual service provider makes grandiose claims of possessing any sort of all-knowing, 100% accurate ability, they are being fraudulent. Even the most highly skilled among us, while having the capability to give accurate and highly beneficial information in most cases, will still make the occasional mistakes of misinterpretation or a slight unsteadiness in focus. As is currently theorized based on the multitude of practitioner experiences which confirm it, the subconscious has a habit of communicating via symbolic gesture, emotional appeals, and vague notions.

This is why, when seeking a divination service, providing as much information about your situation as you are comfortable with is crucial to a thorough and relevant interpretation. The more context you give to a cartomancer, astrologer, or medium, the more context they can focus on when requesting information via other realms. This is also why many of those who offer blind readers as a viable option will make use of personally crafted proprietary spreads, as this allows them to put some degree of context where there is none. The tower card in tarot, for example, can be interpreted in various ways depending on the circumstance it is applied to, and an interpretation that makes little sense to you cannot necessarily be credited to the ability of a reader you have given little information to.

Further, I have found in my experiences and the experiences of many others that our futures are quite malleable. Magick done by a practitioner can influence a particular outcome, but it does not completely eliminate the many other factors that also bear influence. Divination done by a reader can reveal to us one or more potential outcomes of a situation or give us a peek of the path we are currently on, but it is up to us to take this knowledge and utilize it to either follow the same path or take a new one. If the world of metaphysics was set in stone like the physical experience, it would be much easier to observe and repeat in a scientific context, which is not the case at this time.

6. Dubious Pricing Practices

Market-conscious and economically-considerate pricing is a key aspect of any service, and it’s equally important to exercise caution when hiring spiriting service providers as it is when hiring any other service provider. Prices that are too high raise concerns of deceit, while prices that are too low raise concerns of unpracticed ability. It is worth noting, however, that unstable pricing does not necessarily reflect malicious intentions. Speaking as someone who offers freelance service in a number of sectors, it can be difficult at times to know what your ideal price range should be while taking into account the monetary value of the time and effort a project will take you, the state of the economy and the effect on the average person’s spending ability, and the reflection and impact the pricing of a new service will have on the rest of the industry who are all in the exact same boat as one another. So, I will once again reiterate that, when you hire someone for a spiritual service, you are paying for the convenience of not having to put forth your own time and effort to achieve a similar result. Some things, like a one to three card tarot reading, may be a couple dollars, while others, like a thoroughly written astrological report or a time-consuming ritual, may be a couple hundred because it takes far more time for one to complete with the amount of energy such a service calls for.

Ultimately, it is not really up to you to determine what someone “should” be charging for their services, but if something does truly seem outrageous to you, consider reaching out to the spiritual service provider to ask for more information about their service. If you find that it is something that it worthwhile but is out of your budget, ask about potential payment plans or if they offer any more affordable services. If all things fall through or if you simply don’t have a good feeling about the provider, seek others who provide similar services.

7. Cliffhangers & Other Vagueness

While taking into consideration that the less information you provide a reader, the vaguer of a response you are likely to receive, there is a time when it can cross into the realm of a predatory practice or simple inexperience. In the case of a tarot reading, for example, if all information you are given is a copy-and-paste of what can be found on a website like Biddy Tarot (an excellent tarot resource, by the way), it’s possible that your reader developed only a surface-level understanding of tarot before deciding to enter the field. This is not inherently malicious or deceitful, but it does cause its own set of issues in that it can be a waste of money for those who are expecting services with depth, it can spread the potential client pool more thin for those who have put in the time and effort to hone their craft, and it can further muddy the already-skewed public perception of those who study, practice, and/or sell these services.

On the other hand, if a spiritual service provider is telling you that there is something you need to know or do that they cannot share with you until you purchase another service (or an initial service, in the case of those who may reach out to you first, which we’ll discuss more later on in this article), they are most likely appealing to your curiosity to lure you into giving them more money. Now, this does not refer to providers who may tell you, “You are asking me to do something that is not part of the description of this service. Please purchase another service if you would like me to do the additional work you are asking me to tack onto the service I have just done for you,” in response to you having asked for something more than they’ve given you. Requesting that someone do additional work for you for free is, quite plainly, taking advantage of someone. This warning is reserved only for those who are bringing up “concerns” of their own volition without giving any detail whatsoever as a deceptive marketing gimmick.

8. More Money, Same Service

Similarly, if a spiritual service provider has not provided you with the full extent of what they have promised in their service description but instead stops short to ask for more money, they are, without a doubt, a con artist. Commonly, this is seen in ritual or energy work services wherein the scammer will tell the scamee that they suddenly require more energy for their working than they initially thought, and so it is “necessary” for the scamee to send more money for the service to be fulfilled. This should never be the case. Anything beyond what is listed in the description of a service is a separate service or a favor, but a service must include everything that is listed in the description once it is paid for.

This is why it is crucial as a spiritual service provider to comb through our service description with strict attention to detail and an enhanced awareness for how our words could potentially be misinterpreted. Sometimes things may slip through the cracks, and other times there may be customers who are intentionally misinterpreting things to take advantage of us, but we should attempt to mitigate these potential situations to the best of our ability before such a thing happens.

Please note that this red flag does not apply to service providers simply adjusting their pricing overall. If a service you’ve paid for once before is more or less expensive the next time you return to it, this is more than likely a simple reflection of a shifting market.

9. Love, Light, & Yes Men

While it is more than normal to receive positive news and validating information from a spiritual service provider, if it is the case that you are always being told exactly what you want to hear – and especially if your experiences outside of the service don’t necessarily reflect what you are hearing – it is likely that the provider is carefully choosing their words and/or glossing over potentially crucial information in order to keep you coming back as a recurring customer. Not every working goes as planned, and not every reading is pleasant to hear. A good reader is an honest one, and at times, that may lead to receiving information that makes us uncomfortable, angry, or otherwise upset. As a client, it is important to approach any potential spiritual services with a desire for truth and an understanding that the truth is not always in alignment with our desires.

10. The Opportunistic Approach

In today’s digital landscape which is plagued by ever-transient algorithms that seem to always favor corporations, clickbait, and marketing threads written with that distinct belittling for-profit pacing, advertising can be challenging. Authenticity often comes at the sacrifice of optimized search engine results and oppressive levels of visibility on social media. This is something I am intimately familiar with, as when I had first started this blog, I attempted to reconcile my unique voice and desire to be thorough with the need to be keyword-conscious in order to please the technocrats who determine which ventures are most profitable and, therefore, most worthy of circulation. I ultimately decided, however, that my authenticity was more important than my visibility, and my visitor count has taken a hit as a result.

With this decision in mind, this leads one to seek out more creative methods of promoting their goods and services. Those looking to get their work seen may then seek out and follow/interact with users who share relevant content, may host giveaways in exchange for assistance with internet visibility, may regularly post about the goods or services they offer alongside the other content they may share, and/or may mention their goods or services in passing when pertinent to the discussion at hand.

When it becomes worthy of an eyebrow raise, however, is when you are approached either entirely at random or at a time when you have expressed some sort of desperation publicly and the appeal used to market to you is an emotional one. If, for example, you’ve recently posted something on social media about your troubles with love or money and you suddenly find your inbox filled with WhatsApp numbers and promises of infallible rituals cast by powerful spellcasters who can solve all your worldly problems, you are being propositioned for a fairly common scam.

[farfromstrange]

Watching the AMC tv adaptation of Anne Rice’s “Interview With The Vampire”, I got back into the mood of writing for my series ‘Total Eclipse Of The Heart’, but since it’s been a while since I’ve written anything fantasy-related, I decided to practice my vampire writing a bit more with a little One Shot. I’m going to tease it before I post it. I’m too excited not to. This baby will be yours tomorrow, and I will use my Matt Murdock Tag List for this, but if you want to be tagged (and you haven’t filled out my Tag List Form), let me know and I’ll tag you for this! Anyway, without further ado, here is a little sneak peak…

Interview With The Vampire

Pairing: Vampire!Matt Murdock x F!Reader

Warnings: Vampirism, angst, SMUT (18+ MINORS DNI), oral sex, unprotected p in v (but it’s with a vampire, so not sure if that counts as a warning), blood play, biting, marking, scent kink, mentions of suicidal thoughts, violence, age gap, Dom!Matt, long One-Shot (it’s a word-count beast)

Summary: You are the first journalist to interview Hell’s Kitchen’s resident vampire vigilante after he requested you personally to tell his story. He’s offering you a way out of your miserable job—to make your voice be heard. You’re desperate and curious, so you decide to take the risk. Most people only know him as Daredevil, but you are about to learn who’s really behind the mask. How hard can it possibly be? As it turns out, interviewing a vampire is a lot more complex than you expected it to be, and Matthew Michael Murdock has set his mind on ruining you for any other man to come.

ACTUAL SNEAK PEEK UNDER THE CUT

[…]

The sun has long set over the Big Apple. Artificial neon, cars, and ceiling lights burning in the highrises along the riverfront cancel out the darkness that has befallen the country’s east. Noise melts into a flood that rolls over people’s senses, but most in New York City have grown numb to the city that never sleeps.

Sirens follow cacophonies of screams. Teenagers get into clubs with their fake IDs, adults get drunk in bars or go to work the night shift at their underpaid jobs, and the other half cry themselves to sleep, knowing they will have to get up in the morning and go through the same hell all over again.

Life has become a miserable existence, and it leaves human beings wondering, ‘How much longer do we have to endure this before we all finally drop dead?’

The system fails them. The law fails to protect them. All they can do is lie down and wait to die. And they will die sooner or later. That’s inevitable.

In Hell’s Kitchen, in a penthouse with a view of the Hudson through colored windows that gloss over during the day and show the city throughout the night, resides someone who most of the city only knows by an alias—Daredevil.

If anyone crosses him, he will suck them dry. It’s not a metaphor, I’m afraid; his reputation precedes him. Criminals fear the red eyes that come with fists and a sharp set of teeth that will surely run them into the ground. The rest of the city feels a little safer with him around, but so far, no one has dared to question his nature.

Fear is known to work as a paralytic. And this man living in the penthouse by the Hudson is the personification of what one might consider fear-inducing. Without the fear of others, he would not be thriving.

An apex predator like him lives for the thrill of the kill. When the adrenaline spikes, it makes the prey start running and the blood taste so much sweeter. It is to a creature of his kind what a good glass of century-old red wine would be to a human being; he savors every last drop of it.

[…]

[daddyelliott1979]

Littles with Disabilities in kink Spaces

Another post inspired by my boy @squirtdaboi.

So today he did an amazingly brave thing and went to London, by himself for the first time, to a puppy event to meet up with friends.

Something to know about this amazing boy is he's partially sighted and has sensory issues, so this was a huge thing for him. So freaking proud of him!

We worked through lots of anxiety, and his so called friends kept changing plans which really doesn't work well for him- I have to reassure him when he comes to visit exactly what's going to happen - and I have zero issue doing as many times as he needs.

My boy went through a lot during the day, most disappointing was that friends abandoned him, luckily some really decent pups looked after him towards the end. Even making sure he got to his train. So thank you to our little heroes today!

Now here's the thing that angers me the most, as a Daddy who has 2 kiddos with Special needs, how the community treats those with different needs often leaves me utterly livid!

Worse is that most events are catered to the able bodied, often being in places where the disabled facilities are in the lady's toilets? If there is even that! In this day how is that even considered acceptable!?

Yes he's little, but he has some continence issues, so should he or others be discriminated against? Or find themselves in spaces that are really non inclusive?

Now I have to add that I spent 20 years working in adult and children support and enabling services, I'm a qualified Therapist, and have spent over 2 decades as an activist for the human rights and inclusion of those with different needs.

So I fully understand that most people aren't going to have the level of understanding and competency in these matters; but compassion doesn't require training, it requires genuine empathy!

As a community we have to start doing better at inclusion and creating safe spaces for those with disabilities, especially at events! A little bit of awareness goes along way!

No one is expecting you to be a carer, but if you are going to invite those with additional needs to events or play dates, have a basic understanding of their needs, ask what you can do to help and is there anything you need to be aware of!

And when playing with others this should just be basic etiquette and Safe play behaviour!

To event organisers, find out how you can make your event's inclusive and accessible for all! And yes that means you may have to ensure that there are facilities that are accessible should people need it!

We can do so much to make our kink Spaces more inclusive; see that shy person looking awkward? Maybe try to include them, ask them if they are ok?

As a person who is hard of hearing I can tell you how often people communicate with me in ways that make it impossible to hear- I often just give up reminding people and ignore them.

So imagine if you have more complex communication issues?

Again we can do so much to be inclusive, face people (don't always stare in people's eyes as it's anxiety inducing for some), use clear language, don't cover your mouth. Ask people what you do to support better communication; honestly you will find people will feel so enriched if you take little time to understand!

Conclusion

People with disabilities are at an increased risk of social exclusion, it can be a trial just getting to places (that's if someone lets them go!), so we can all do much to welcome people with open arms!

But remember not everyone likes being touched, so take "opens arms" as a metaphor, and at the very least ask before touching/hugging!

[mister-ancunin]

IM LISTENING u can use this ask as an excuse to yap abt yume and/or yumetoru as much as u want the stage is yours my friend 🎤

YAYYYY THANK YOU SYLVIA !!! sorry this took 3 days… one person audience lets go . ahem [takes the mic]

beware this got a little long

Yume lore drop

Basic

⟢ his first name is Kiyoyume 

⟢ Yume is a Special Grade 1 Jujutsu Sorcerer

⟢ His CT revolves around dreams and manipulating them. The gist is that he has the ability to invade a target’s mind and put them in a dream-like trance when they fight. He can then use the targets’ deepest fears, insecurities, weaknesses against them in various ways. This trance can also induce a phenomenon similar to sleep paralysis. Yume’s Domain Expansion creates a field of his own whim, basically an enclosed area where imagination is his only limitation. It’s more complex but I’ll put this here for now xx.

⟢ Since Yume’s abilities are heavily relied on mental capability, there is a limit to how much he can use during a certain time. Otherwise he risks insanity due to the lines between his imagination and reality blurring to the point of indistinguishability 

⟢ Yume (ironically) has really bad insomnia

Okay history time

⟢ Yume was part of Masamichi Yaga’s class and a fellow student of Satoru, Suguru, and Shoko. For the first half of first year, Yume was often seen interacting with Shoko rather than the other two. Their similarities in overall personality as well as interests rendered them as good friends, later leading   to Shoko introducing him to Satoru and Suguru. 

⟢ Although Yume went about the situation with incredible hesitance, their meeting went off without a problem. Even with the high contrast in Yume and Satoru’s personalities, it was clear that they connected without a hitch. The four of them became good friends and continued to stay in touch outside of class as well. 

⟢ There’s a lot more I could go into but I’ll leave their school lore at that lol

⟢ Unlike Toru who obviously continued on to hone his abilities after graduation and worked as a Jujutsu Sorcerer, Yume took a step back from the sorcerer world and ended up pursuing a career in professional fashion photography. Photography was Yume’s primary career for a long while before he started missing the action that came with being a Sorcerer. After a couple years, he switched to a balance of both sorcerer and non-sorcerer work. 

⟢ This half-and-half lifestyle seemed to work incredibly well, allowing for Yume to do what he liked while keeping touch with his friends. 

Official introduction

⟢ Yume is officially introduced in Jjk canon a little while after Nanami’s first appearance. While Yuji was with Nanami to investigate the whole Junpei//Mahito ordeal in season 1 episodes 9-13, Toru had gone to go find Yume among his other tasks during the time. 

The two of them stayed in touch after school, but since Yume was constantly travelling for either photo shoots or missions from the higher up, it was mainly through online connections. 

Toru eventually convinced Yume to return with him to watch the Sister School Exchange Event in season 1 episode 14. That is when he makes his first screen appearance alongside Utahime.

Housing ?? idk what to call this . extra

⟢ Because of the fun Yume ended up having and realization that he missed getting to hang out with Satoru like they did as kids, he decided to pause his photography career to work as a sorcerer full time. 

⟢ It had been the most impulsive decision of his life, but Yume was incredibly happy with the results. Since it happened so suddenly, he ended up staying at the Technical College with Satoru. It was originally something temporary, but since Yume was constantly out on missions, it became a more permanent residence. He didn’t mind too much, considering he was right on campus for students and got to be with Satoru whenever their rests overlapped.