#gifs by soliloquent

[soliloquent-stark]

anyone order one handsome mentally ill grandpa? if i was to gif all the moments he looks sad/angry/anxious it would be like 90% of his scenes 🤡

sebastian stan in the falcon and the winter soldier (2021)

[mischief-and-tea-by-the-sea]

happy birthday! 🖤❤️💚

Thank you so, so much!!!!! 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

[writeyourdarlings]

you draw the most beautiful, softest steve ever, and i am in awe every time. i can't stop staring at your stuff 🥹💗✨ thank you for blessing us <3

liv omg i'm speechless🥹 thank you so much, i'm really glad you like them. steve is such a big darling boy, and that's how i always want to capture him. just softness whenever u look at him!😊 💖

[lullabyes22-blog]

Snippet - Fairytales - Forward but Never Forget/XOXO

Jinx soliloquizes.

Or philosophizes.

Or something.

Forward, but Never Forget/XOXO

Snippet:

"Perfect," she mutters. "That's what he says."

Except it's not about her. Well, yeah. It is about her. But it's really about Silco. His hopeless, relentless, bottomless thirst to win. To prove the world wrong. To show them all. He's always been the man with the big plan, and the empty pockets. He's come up the hard way, only to have Topside's snobs laugh him off the block. He's never been enough, never had enough, and the fierceness of it, that low-down burning grudge in the pit of his gut, has fed him like nothing else.

It's become his sustenance. His lifeblood. The heart of Zaun's revolution.

Jinx knows Silco's story. She was there for every page.

Same way she knows Vi's story. The girl with too much on her shoulders, who carried her burdens till they broke her, and left her better self to rot in a cell. Same way she knows Vander's story, the man who gave too much, and lost too many. Same way she knows Claggor's story, and Mylo's, and all the rest whose deaths were as quick as their lives were short.

And Ekko, who's still alive. Alive and kicking.

And that, Jinx thinks, is the kicker.

The Boy Savior's lost his way. And—boo hoo—it's all because of her. She's the one who let the Big Bad Wolf inside their home. And with a huff and a puff, he blew their world down. Never mind that it was made of sticks, and sticks are for burning. Never mind that Little Blue Riding Hood was only playing with matches, and the world had been waiting, hungry, to go up in smoke. Never mind that, if she hadn't gone a-knocking, the Big Bad Wolf would have, and the whole place would have burned anyway.

Silco was always gonna get what he wanted, come hell or high water. And in the end, hell won, and the high waters rose, and they all drowned. Burned.

Boom.

Jinx nearly laughs, but stops. It tastes too stoppered-up with salt, and she's not here to cry. Since the Deadlands, she doesn't have a single tear left for them.

Not a single drop.

"In fairytales," she tells Billy, "tears are magic."

Billy's head tilts, listening. He understands nothing. But he's a good listener.

"But fairytales—they're all warnings, see? Tales of what happens when girls do bad things. Like not listening when your big sister says 'Stay at home.' Like not running when the brave boy says 'Come with me.' Like not screaming when the wolf opens his big, bloody maw, and says, 'Dinnertime.'" A clammy shiver flutters over her skin. "You're not supposed to get happy endings when you break the rules. You're supposed to die. Just like the monsters."

Because that's what bad girls are. Monsters in marzipan shells. Hungry to break out; born to be slain. That's the way fairytales work, too. If you're a good girl, you get a happy ending. If you're a bad girl, you get a dead end. 

There's no other way, and if there was, someone would've written it by now.

But this is Zaun. And no one writes fairytales here. The story's lived, not written. It's passed down from generation to generation. Mother to son. Father to daughter. Sister to sister. That's why Jinx knows Silco's story. Why she knows Vi's, and Vander's. And every story she's ever heard, true or not.

That's how the city lives. How it survives. Through living and suffering and dying, and having others remember, so there's always someone to tell the tale.

To never forget.

Jinx, though? Jinx has already died. Died, and come back. Destroyed, beheaded, cried; destroyed, deadheaded, survived. A phoenix, Silco calls her. Born the bones of her enemies, and destined to rule over a city reborn. 

That's pure Silly talk, though. Him and his Silcoisms. He could fill a whole book. A heavy tome, penned by the man himself. She'd read it, cover to cover. Hell, maybe she'd have a starring role!

The Blue Herring. The Chekhov's Loaded Gun. The Unjinxed Jinx.

She nods. "Yeah. I'd be in Silly's book."

Billy chirps. He's a curious little thing. He'd make a great detective, if he was less bird-brained.

"I'd be the heroine. Well—the anti-heroine. One of those film noir dames. The—the—" She snaps her fingers. "—the femme fatale. Yeah. Silco loooooves a good femme fatale. Says they're the ones who write history. With their wiles and wits and weapons hidden in naughty places. And they've got a whole lotta naughty places." She tips Billy a wink. "Get it?"

Billy's beady eye slits. The little prude.

"I'd be his muse," she goes on, "and he'd name a cocktail after me. A strong drink, with a bite. And he'd call it: Blue Lightning. Or maybe Pink Suckerpunch. Or, no, no! Jinx. Just Jinx." She giggles, and Billy squawks in scandal. "And he'd tell the bartender: A tall cool Jinx, Chuck, with a cherry on top. And he'd sip, and make a solo toast, and say: Here's to lookin' at you, kid. And I'd be a portrait on his wall. A big one. I'd be in a slinky gown. Something glammed-up and glittery. And my hair, all curled. And my face, all made up." She sweeps her short hair up over her head in mimicry of a lush chignon, sucking in her cheeks and pouting her lips. "And then there'd be a flashback. And the room would go smoky, and full of music, and there'd be a spotlight shining down on me. And I'd have a cigarette in one hand, and a gun in the other. And then I'd turn around, and shoot the cameraman."

She doubles over with laughter. Billy is less impressed.

Crows are many things. Comedians, they ain't.

"That'd be the last shot. Of the film. Get it? Because I'd shoot him!" Wiping her eyes, she grins. "The femme fatale with firepower. That's me. Waaaay better than a fairytale. Silco says so, too. He says the femmes Haunt the narrative. That's one of his words, too. Narrative. It's all about how you tell the story. Who gets to tell it, and what they've got to say." She juts her chin at Piltover's skyline, all glitz and glory. "Topside's stories? They're all the same." Her tone deepens: the bombast of a newsreel narrator. "'Piltover! Home to the Hexgates, the marvel of the century. An endless horizon of progress.'" She blows a raspberry. "Blah, blah, blah. Their story's just: Look how shiny we are. And how rich. And how pretty. What? That dark sooty hole down there? It's just the dirt. Ignore it. It's not real."

And just like that, the anger comes, bubbling up like lava. Her jaw grits.

"Their stories aren't real. They're lies. As hollow as their hearts. Hollow as fairytales. And fairytales, they're only stories for kids. Keep 'em soft, and sweet, and dumb. The real stories—the hard truth—they're down here. In Zaun. We're the city of dreams. Not Piltover. Because we know what it takes to make our dreams come true."

Not a wish upon a star. A fist to the jaw, and a knife in the back, and a graveyard's worth of corpses.

Vi couldn't see that. She took one look at Zaun's acid-green skies and thought, Who would want to live here? And that's all it took for her to turn her back. She chose Piltover, where her fists have no place, and her spine is a straight arrow, and her voice is a muted murmur. Where her story is:  Yes ma'am. No sir. I'm a good girl. I know my place.

She'd rather have a boot on her neck than live free.  Rather make kissy-kissy with a Piltie princess than fight for what's hers. What's theirs. What's all of Zaun's.

The place Jinx was born to defend.

And Ekko?

He's a turncoat, too. Just a different stripe. Like Vi, he fell for the fairytales. Instead of fighting, he flew off to Neverland. No Boy Savior, but a regular Peter Pan. He saw a little girl, and thought: Save her. He saw the Big Bad Wolf, and thought: Slay him. It never occurred to him that the Big Bad Wolf had a history, and a heart, just like hers. Never occurred to him that the little girl was a witch, a weapon, a walking timebomb.

Never occurred to him that maybe she liked being bad. Being blue.

Being Jinx.

"A gal's got a right to choose," Jinx tells Billy. "That's what Zaun's about."

Free will, not fairytales. No rules but the ones you break. No chains but the bling you flash. You can be anything. Be anybody. And if that means cutting a throat or two along the way, so be it. That's survival, baby.

Silco understands that. He understands her. He took Powder by the hand, and said: Your choices don't make you. You make your choices.  And: You, too, can change the world. And: You, too, can be more than you think

Be bigger. Better. Be the best.

Be my perfect girl.

Be Jinx.

Jinx knows Silco's story. And Silco knows Jinx's. Vi wrote the first chapter. But Silco's the one who rewrote the ending. Who gave her a new page, and a second chance.

A perfect beginning.

Jinx gusts a gloomy sigh.

"Perfect," she repeats, softer. "That's me."

She scritches Billy's skull. He thrums like a little engine.

"But sometimes I want to ask him..."

Her caress falters.

"Ask him..."

Billy opens his eyes. Red and black and déjà vu.

"I know," she whispers. "Stupid question. If I was just even a liiiiiittle less perfect: poof. It's curtains."

So: perfect.

Because Zaun needs her. Because she needs Zaun.

Because Silco needs both.

[queerfanfiction]

LUCIFER X READER REQUEST!

Hey, there! How are you?

I was wondering if you could write a Lucifer x Reader fanfiction where reader is an exorcist who keeps troubling Lucifer's plans of spreading hell till "hell is all there is" to the point the ruler of hell decides they have to deal with her personally.

How it develops is up to you! Thank you so much for your time 💛

Possessed

Prompt is shown above. :)

Word count: 3.4k Content warning: some blood, violence/branding, corruption kink?, finger sucking, just generally Lucifer being a little bitch they/them pronouns used for Lucifer and God

Lucifer half heartedly attempts to remember which soul the demon in front of them was tasked with corrupting. They can’t be bothered to coddle failure. Hell had rules.

“Kneel before your Lord,” Mazikeen commands in the direction of the insolent demon. Lucifer hears shuffling and bony knees hitting the black, marble floor of the throne room.

“What a pleasure to have you back so soon. Eager for another soul, perhaps?” Lucifer’s voice rings out, back turned to the interaction, denoting anything but pleasure at the exchange. To be truthful, Lucifer enjoyed making their subjects squirm beneath them.

“No, my Lord. There has been a complication. The soul I secured is to be exorcised.”

“Then you have not secured it,” the ruler of Hell denounced.

Lucifer finally turns to look upon the demon knelt before them. “Rise.” When the demon carefully stands upright, Lucifer still maintains a good measure of height above them.

“Demons have tempted mortals effortlessly for eons. What power has an exorcist in this venture?” Lucifer’s tone was even as they soliloquized.

Mortals and their complications…they seemed so inconsequential, so unimportant. Mortals are but tiny ants let loose upon the Earth, so far away, and yet Lucifer could smite them—crush them right then and there. Lucifer could end every problem by crushing their faith, turning them onto a hellish path instead.

Fearful to speak out of turn, the demon listens to Lucifer carry on, “Devils and fiends have not struggled to secure a soul due to an exorcist since 1572.”

Stammering, the subject in front of Lucifer exclaims, “My liege, I have attempted to derail the purification and have not been successful.”

“You disappoint me” is articulated before the demon can finish speaking. With a wave of Lucifer’s hand, a dark pit opens up behind the pleading follower of Hell. Mazikeen strides forward and kicks the beast into the cell below. Once finished, Lucifer summons another demon to resume the task.

—

In the coming weeks, two more intended souls were wretched away from Hell’s grasp. With their hands atop a circular table of fire, leaned forward in seething rage, Lucifer mouthed, “What is the meaning of this?”

Utilizing demons lower in the Hell’s hierarchy proved inadequate, a waste of time, resulting in failure. Lucifer would tend to the matter themselves. With another wave of their fingers, Lucifer materialized an image of the most recent soul in question, waiting to review who this challenging exorcist was. As they watched, they considered the circumstances.

True, formidable exorcists are few and far between; most are diluted versions of powerful characters lost to legend. Recalling past exorcisms throughout history, most were vicious attempts to control and punish women. That, or political propaganda weaponized in religious divides that only strengthened Lucifer’s numbers.

In watching the latest soul through the conjured mist, Lucifer spots you enter quietly and approach the wooden, four poster bed with a possessed body on it. You give the young woman lying there a drink of water and stroke hair away from her eyes that was kept glued to her forehead by sweat. You refuse to let the exorcism irreparably damage the body caught in the conflict. You step away to begin reciting your prayers and rites.

“God arises; Their enemies are scattered and those who hate Them flee before Them. As smoke is driven away, so are they driven; as wax melts before the fire, so the wicked perish at the presence of God.”

Lucifer then watches the exorcist’s eyes go white, glazed over in a trance pulling them from their corporeal form, leaving a shell behind momentarily. Your innate power radiating through even the mist Lucifer is peering through. In a murmur that was barely audible, Lucifer vocalizes, “Interesting…”

Curiosity overpowering anger, Lucifer decides they want to meet you face to face. Rather, they will demand an audience. They appear silently in the corner of the unusually barren room, eyes not moving from the form of the exorcist before them.

After a few minutes, Lucifer grows disinterested in the lack of change since or acknowledgement of their presence. In defiance of this face, Lucifer leans into theatrics, morphing the atmosphere before them. The interior walls begin to rot, the wood of the bed posts collecting corrosive shades of grey and black. Several spots in the corners of the walls and floor ooze with pitch black tar, bubbles popping and hissing, eating away at the perfection, at the peacefulness that once was present. Darkness looms, heavy, greedy, waiting to sink its teeth into its victims.

Light begins to seep from your pores until the very room seems to ceast to exist. Lucifer, obstinate as ever, makes no attempts to shield their eyes until the glare, the pure brightness threatens their vision.

Celestial magic. Just who are you, exorcist? Lucifer contemplates with a grimace at being confronted with the divine. Wings flap, and Lucifer vanishes before your eyes open, though you felt their presence.

You breathe softly, lifting your eyelids to the room before you. Nothing out of the ordinary, as if Lucifer’s influence had never bled into the space to begin with.

Back in Hell, Lucifer patrols the open marbled ledge repetitively, lost in thought. If Lucifer could not return to the Silver City, they would remake Hell on Earth, corrupt until Hell is all there is. What good was God’s kingdom if there were no followers, no believers?

Lucifer vows to start with you—to discern your specific ability to beckon souls away from the tempting lure of malfeasance and damnation. Lesser demons could not halt your exorcisms, as they were all in a struggle of strength and faith. Lucifer would tempt and seduce you instead. Who could resist Lucifer Morningstar, once God’s favorite and the most beautiful of all angels? Having decided a course of action, Lucifer kept tabs on you, learning your routine. Manipulating a mortal’s soul into your workload, they planned to intervene in your next exorcism.

Mazikeen takes note of Lucifer’s drifting attentions. No longer is the Lord of Hell opting for their usual entertainments or pleasures. No swordsmanship. No tournaments. No feasts with the assembled Lords of Hell. When Mazikeen of the Lilim witnesses Lucifer’s spying on you, she implores, “What will you do, my Lord?”

Deducing your importance in God’s Plan, sinister, Machiavellian features emerge on their face as they admit, drawing out the final syllables, “Something that will make God absolutely livid.”

—

Lucifer once again materializes off to the side as you prepare for the exorcism taking place in an hour. The exorcist heaves a knowing sigh and gently rubs at the back of her neck, feeling the tense muscles underneath.

“Collar too tight?” Lucifer’s voice flows outward, its cavalier tone wrapping against your face like a delicate ribbon.

“I had wondered when we would meet,” you forced out in a steady rhythm. You had to focus on not being effected by Lucifer’s bewitching voice.

“Not surprised or moved at our encounter? I’m wounded.”

You mustered the restraint to ignore the bait and turn your back to the archangel, a daring action. Offended that their prey was foolish enough to deny them, Lucifer moves closer to you.

“I wished to identify who exactly was diverting my souls. I didn’t expect to discover a pretty thing like you.”

“They are not yours, Lightbringer. They belong to our Sovereign of Heaven,” you oppose, as if the conversation you two were having were about as something mundane as the weather. A glint of animosity was present in Lucifer’s eyes.

In the vaulted church dormitory where the exorcism was now occurring, you gesture to a few of the extra bodies in the room to help restrain the flailing, possessed subject before you. News media liaisons, Catholic priests and other members of the clergy, family members to the possessed person were present. This crowd was a stark comparison to many of your previous private exorcisms.

The young boy in question had been unwilling to cooperate thus far—something your heart broke over. No. You should clarify…the demon speaking through the boy had a commanding hold on him. The boy himself was innocent and deserved to be fought for valiantly. Out of the corner of your eye, you see his mother weeped into someone’s chest.

Lucifer walks among the room slowly, and it seems that only you are able to perceive their presence here. An uneasy feeling overtook you, but you soldiered on, determined to aid the poor soul in question. Even with the added hands, the boy is writhing around and screaming.

Preparing your cross for its duty in the ceremony, you begin, “I exorcise thee, creature of salt, by the living God, by the true God, by the Holy God, and—“

Lucifer creeps behind you as you whisper your prayers, muttering obscenities into your ear, raising the hairs on your neck and arms. “You’re a good little disciple, aren’t you? If you were mine, I’d make sure you knew that you were pleasing me in this life rather than expect you to wait for salvation.”

Suppressing a chill, you conclude, “…by the God who by the prophet Eliseus commanded thee to be cast into the water.” Your eyes glance around the room to determine whether or not anyone noticed how challenging completing the rites was for you.

Frustrated at the unforeseen control you displayed, Lucifer’s irritation grew hot and radiated outward. A scream tears through you as you feel your skin burn and slough off in the center of your palms, revealing a demonic sigil. Not just any mark; it was Lucifer’s. Lucifer branded you.

—

At your next scheduled exorcism, of course the fallen angel was present. You prayed for strength, knelt beside an altar with your hands raised slightly above you, gripping a rosary and matching cross. From this angle, the blistered burns healing on her palms were semi-visible.

“You wear my mark well,” Lucifer praises.

You stomach drops, and you hope Lucifer’s powers don’t include the ability to notice your heartbeat begin to pick up. Evenso, you do not speak and continue practicing stillness as your work.

“All you need to do is ask,” you posit to the formidable being behind you.

“Ask what?”

Calmly, you explain, “To be saved.”

Taken aback, Lucifer briefly allows shock and discomfort to show on their face. They were expecting you to break down, allow their influence into you.

They compose themselves, give you a wry smile, and laugh in your face. “You think I want to be saved?” They spit at your feet and are gone in the next moment, not bothering to stay to protest the exorcism.

Two more sessions where you work to exorcize a demon from the same individual pass without any intrusion from the Lord of Hell. The gnawing curiosity to know what Lucifer was thinking came over you as you washed dishes with a sponge at your kitchen sink. The warm water your hands were submerged in felt relaxing—almost safe. Letting the plate you were holding fall under the water and sink down, you close your eyes and haphazardly thumb the tender areas of your palms.

You allow yourself to picture Lucifer in all their glory, their curled, blonde locks falling over their forehead reminiscent of a beautiful cherub statue. How the corners of their lips turned slightly upwards when they were amused or challenged. When their piercing blue eyes call outward for a subject to meet them. The way their hands converge and play upon each other like they are in a graceful dance. Their full, parted lips… You let out a small moan.

“You’re naive for thinking I can be saved,” a soft voice intervenes.

Your eyes wretch open, feeling like a small child caught in the act of disobeying. Your cheeks gain a bit of color, and your hands reach up to the cross around your neck. It was as if thinking of the fallen angel and touching their marks on your skin had manifested them. Coming back to yourself quickly and trying to find something to say, you relent, “Maybe.”

A moment passes. You consider how gentle Lucifer’s voice sounded; you’ve never heard it like that before. You are wary of what the softness means, but you didn’t want to jeopardize the possibility of hearing it again. After giving it some thought, you finally propose, “It is naive not to hope.”

This meeting is the first time Lucifer has visited you outside of your work as an exorcist. It makes you nervous. You knew you were called upon to do God’s work—to expel demons. You even knew this would encourage demonic forces to seek you out. Demons were nothing new in your life, whether religious or not. But Lucifer Morningstar taking an interest in you? That was dangerous.

Why did the Lord of Hell insist on dragging out your death? With a flutter of their porcelain hands they could destroy you and everything you’ve ever touched.

—

Each time Lucifer laid their eyes on you, they wanted to have their way with you, make you submit to them. Your defiance in acknowledging the sovereignty of Hell, continuing to spur on Lucifer by your exorcisms, only made them desire your submission even more. The rapture and ecstasy that Lucifer would experience when you choose to worship at their feet over God’s could rival the Silver City itself.

Seducing a truly pure soul—a deeply faithful believer of God—would keep Lucifer high for hundreds of years. Many have described Lucifer as a deceiver, a hinderer, wicked one, imposter, accuser, ruler of darkness, and finally devourer of angels, demons, and mortals. What is a human exorcist in comparison?

Noting subtle signs of attraction in your physique and behavior when they were present, Lucifer was delighted to ramp up their tactics.

They began trailing their fingertips across your shoulders, locking eyes with you hungrily from across the pews, and using filthily sexual language around you, often commenting on the curves of your body or how supple your breasts looked. At one point, Lucifer pressed the front of their black leather ensemble against your back as you practiced a sermon at the podium.

When this occurred late one Saturday night, you were desperate to maintain control of your limbs, to not act upon any of the thoughts that intruded and overstayed their welcome. To stave off temptation, you turned to your most cherished Bible quotes for strength.

“Needing to rely on your faith, little exorcist?” Lucifer purred while circling you like a stalking dire wolf. One of their surprisingly soft wings caressed your face. “Suggesting you otherwise want to sin, yes?”

Your press your eyes closed as hard as you are able to and keep reciting verses. You articulate outwardly,

"Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you. Matthew 17:20.”

With a chuckle, as if there is an inside joke at hand that you are not privy to, Lucifer counters your verses with their own excerpts from the Bible.

“Your navel is perfectly formed like a goblet filled with mixed wine. Between your thighs lies a mound of wheat bordered with lilies. Your breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle.”

Lucifer’s voice was melodic and mesmerizing, taking extra care with each word uttered. They continued with a smirk, “Song of Solomon 7:1-3, if you want to recount it later in bed alone.”

Sucking in a sharp breath, you turn on your heels towards Lucifer. Your eyes found theirs in determination. You hold their gaze while you indicate your resistance, “Isaiah 41:10. So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”

Unwilling to accept defeat and discerning your dwindling control, Lucifer’s hooded eyes, full of desire, did not leave yours. Their advances felt positively tortuous to rebuff. Their voice rang out again as they stepped towards you,

“Your stature is like that of the palm; your breasts are clusters of fruit. I said, ‘I will climb the palm tree, and take hold of its fruit.’”

Nearing the end of their verse, sounding more like poetry than the religious text you knew and studied, Lucifer stopped inches from you, lowering their head until their lips were hovering above your own. Time warped. The closeness happened so quickly, like a pounce, yet it could not happen fast enough as the sensual words floated around you both—charging the air.

Assured you would soon feel the weight of Lucifer’s mouth on your own, you shut your eyes guiltily. You knew you would let it happen.

Nothing. Not yet. A whimper arose in your chest.

After moments of painful anticipation with only Lucifer’s hot breath against your own, you spontaneously finished the distance. You acted without thought, acting on urge alone, as if there was a space in the world at that moment where you weren’t a committed exorcist and they weren’t the fearsome Lord of Hell.

Lucifer’s lips tasted sweet, unlike anything you would have imagined from the cautionary tales told throughout generations regarding the figure. Adrenaline coursed through you, aiding the fire and urgency of which you moved against their mouth, deepening the kiss before Lucifer could.

Contrary to the verse just proclaimed by the fallen angel, it was you who climbed up onto the other, searching for a way to bring your bodies closer. You wrapped your legs around Lucifer’s torso, miraculously missing their wings with your feet. At this, Lucifer heaves your body toward the closest wall in the parish, wanting to trap you between them and the rough stone.

Grabbing onto Lucifer’s neck and shoulders made the wounds on your hands ache. However, you pushed forward, finding more pleasure than pain in running your hands through the tall devil’s blonde hair, tugging every so often to elicit a pleased groan from them. Wanting more, wanting to give back in kind the torture you received these last few weeks, your kisses turn into nips until you bite harder and lean backwards. Your teeth scrape at and pull Lucifer’s bottom lip to mark it deep red with blood.

Instead of fury at the act, Lucifer breathes a chuckle, seemingly approving of your decision. Their eyes seemed glassy and intoxicated at the sudden assault you displayed. Their fingers reach up to touch the blood. Instead of wiping away or discarding the blood, Lucifer had other plans. Two bloody fingers found their way into your mouth, almost gagging you. Without missing a beat, you begin to swirl your saliva around the long fingers before lightly sucking each digit clean.

Invigorated, Lucifer wraps their other hand around your neck, applying pressure to each side with their fingers and thumb, wary to not crush your windpipe. Finding the right balance in exerting their inhuman strength in sexual acts with mortals was certainly an endeavor. …Not that they often mingled with those so unworthy.

Lucifer wanted to burn the image of you squirming in their grip along with their fingers invading your mouth over every edge of the earth and then recreate it nightly. At that moment, their wings wrapped around you, securing you in a warm, silky cocoon—able to feel the strong muscles of them holding you up. Lucifer needed their hands back to begin to undress you, hurried in their actions. As you watched their hands work at your collar and subsequent buttons, you felt entirely hidden away from the world and surrounded only by the mesmerizing once-angel. You were thoroughly captivated and wondered if this was Lucifer’s plan all along. You then wondered if that even mattered.

“Let’s move this to another place of worship, shall we?” Lucifer advanced with a grin and an air that could have been synonymous with a checkmate in a chess match.

—

Lucifer had won. Defiled you. Tainted your earnest and sincere pursuit for the holy, had possessed that which expels. Still, they could not cast you aside. They would have to deal with you and the exorcised souls sooner or later; this Lucifer knew. They have not yet spread Hell to the ends of the known universe. They aren’t even close, but Lucifer now had you. Hell could wait a bit longer.

“Go ahead with your exorcism tomorrow. You’ve earned it.”

[frankthesnek]

✨️ New Story ✨️

Helmet Hair (rated T)

Stony (Tony Stark/Steve Rogers)

Fluff, developing relationship, first kiss, pet names

2.6k words

One of the things Steve likes most about Tony is a small and silly thing. Steve loves Tony's hair. Specifically, loves it when it's messy and disheveled from its normally professional neatness. Fluffy and frazzled, and sticking up at rough odd angles—it tickles something sweet in Steve's gut, and makes it very hard not to touch it.

(A gift for @soliloquent-stark and inspiered by one of their lovely works!)

[inposterumcumgaudio]

Maybe u could talk about the Byngs? Not necessarily as a family unit, I just never see people talk about them in depth despite their importance in the game and lore.

You know what I noticed the other day? When Victoria meets with General Byng after her jailbreak, he offers her a place in his safehouse. This would have to be after Sally's escape from it or else he'd be planning for her to stay there instead (and also because by this point, Victoria's begun her assault on the Joy supply in the water so the town is going properly insane about it). And yet, Byng's not got his face all slashed up as he should. I think Victoria would have noticed that.

You could write that off as unintentional oversight, but they do have a texture of slashed-face Byng they could have used. On the other hand, that texture is only seen for a split-second in Sally's act.

It happens so fast one might even wonder if it actually happened at all.

The foundation for questioning Sally's perception of things is a whole other post (which this fandom desperately needs), but let's just say that everyone is the hero of their own story and wants to remember themselves as more than they probably were in a moment.

A lot of what we know about Byng is through the lens of him as a burdensome necessity to Sally's survival. Sally certainly spends a lot of her time soliloquizing to herself about how much of a chore entertaining him (and men like him) is. But she also fondly calls him "Byng-a-ling" on her clientele list that no one but her will ever see. She likes Byng, but she has to complain to herself to maintain her self-perception as the put-upon pretty girl.

I would argue Byng is actually the best suitor she's had, exactly what she's spent her entire adult life looking for. She can lie to herself about wanting Arthur, but if an Arthur was what she wanted, she could have found one. You can't throw a dead rat in Wellington Wells without hitting an Arthur. But she doesn't actually go for Arthurs, does she?

What she seeks out are men who can do something for her. But those men want things in exchange, they make demands on her time and attention. She has to give to get. Men like Stewart Adams are happy to give her practically anything for a smile, but they hardly have anything to give. She complains constantly about how Verloc required all of her attention, but she got status, education, access to chemicals and equipment, the list goes on.

But Byng! Byng shows up, what, once every week or so? A spritz in the mouth and a little manic-pixie-dream-girl dance and he's good. Very low maintenance comparatively.

And he gives her equally as much as Verloc did with the added bonus of protecting her from Verloc. Really, his only overt demand is still a passive one: keep the Bobbies supplied with Blackberry, thus maintaining the power balance in the town to Byng's favor. She'd have to do that anyway.

And the difference is Byng sees this relationship the way Sally would like the relationship to be. They meet periodically, she gets everything she wants from him and barely has to do anything for it. The promise of being the prettiest girl in the world, finally fulfilled! Even that once-a-week encounter can't be that much of a chore. Imagine being a girl as insecure as Sally, thinking your only power in the world is your looks, you just had a baby when everyone around you is a waif and the local tabloid said you could stand to lose some weight, and the most powerful man in town is content to get high, watch you do a little dance, and fuck on off when he wakes up without even demanding a goodbye. That's quite ideal, if you didn't have a baby upstairs.

But she has to think of it as a hassle because otherwise, she'd have to admit that it's what she always thought she was entitled to.

She only really starts to turn on Byng when he suggests that she should let him take Gwen across the bridge. And that sounds just monstrous if you're Sally but... is that really so unreasonable? If you are looking at this objectively, that's whole-ass a plan. Wellington Wells is incredibly unsafe for a baby!

I'm not saying Sally's wrong for being like, "Uh, no?" about that because she does not know what's on the other side of the bridge. We know there are children out there, as evidenced by Shitty Day Kid. You don't learn about him until after Ollie's act, so you don't know when Byng is making this offer to Sally, but there is conceivably a place for Gwen to go. Therefore, there's no reason why we should assume any nefarious intent behind his offer to get her out.

Yes, Byng does have his ulterior motives for wanting to send Gwen across but not Sally. He needs Sally; the entire town does. Her departure would have meant the end of order in Wellington Wells, even outside of Arthur's, Ollie's, and Victoria's actions. And, if you are Byng, even if (as Indira says in a cut line) "an Englishman’s duty has an uncanny knack of being whatever it is he wants to do anyway", well, it is in this case. His duty to Wellington Wells would very explicitly be to not allow - let alone enable - one of its most valuable assets to leave.

I think my favorite thing about Byng, though, is that he often has to be the adult in the room to a populace that has elected to remain children. And as such, because you are as a player made to empathize with these adult children (and indeed because most of the people who played this game were children themselves), this more than anything is why Byng comes off as the game's ultimate villain.

Unfortunately, he's also very often right.

"Sally. Do you love her? Or do you just love having someone who needs you?"

"Really? Would the good townsfolk of Wellington Wells have followed me into the machine guns? Or would they all have hidden in their basements?"

"[The Executive Committee]'d tear me apart like starved jackals. And then they'd pop a Joy."

"Nothing is exactly what we must do. If our people realize they're running out of food, they'll kill each other for the last box of V-Meat!"

Like, none of these statements are untrue. In the context that you hear all of them, you're in the position to read them as self-serving excuses and rationalizations. But Byng is perhaps the person best equipped to see the big picture. He does not take Joy like Victoria, he's not under the same pressure and emotional distress as Verloc, he has been awake and aware the entire time. "Excruciatingly well informed," as a certain memory of an ex-wife once put it.

He's also a skilled tactician and knows the limits of his own powers (which he makes a point of multiple times: "there's only so many strings I can pull" to Victoria, "even I won't be able to save you then" to Sally, "you don't think I'm the one who decides these things, do you?" to Ollie). He can predict what outcomes will occur based on what he can do with the resources available to him and frankly, Wellington Wells is not the best hand to be dealt. Like I said in the Haworth and Verloc post, it's a city of cowards and savages.

Even the point at which Victoria loses all faith in him, when he says that "Our duty now… is to rescue what we can. Salvage something from this whole rotten mess. Even if it's only two or three people," is not an unreasonable position to take from his perspective. The citizens of Wellington Wells are behaving exactly as predicted. To narrow the scope of his interest to just the few people he can save, and narrowing it again as those people reject his offers? It's a tactical reallocation of resources. Every day is a fuckin' battle when you're the General.

I'm not saying he's a good person. He's not. Even his own biography - which presumably would tell you how he himself would like to be perceived - paints him as a self-serving tattletale. He's as much a shitheel as everyone else in this game. But I do think anything you hear about him (and this is true of everyone in this game, all the time) needs to be viewed in the context of the person who's stating that opinion.

And always remember what they tell you right at the beginning of Sally's act:

[highfunctioningflailgirl]

Les Trois Mousquetaires, Chapter 26

Title: "La thèse d'Aramis"

D'Artagnan finds Aramis still at Crevecoeur, where they left him - in the presence of two priests, immersed in a ridiculous theological argument about blessing with one hand or two.

There's a lot of Latin being thrown around and d'Artagnan almost loses it over this pretentious, nonsensical church talk.

"Que la peste t'étouffe avec ton latin!"

(May the plague suffocate you with your latin!)

I‘m definitely#TeamDartagnan on this one.

When the two priests have finally, finally left, Aramis tells d'Artagnan that, driven by the severy injury he suffered, he's determined to take his orders, as he's always been meant to. He‘s been living like a monk these past two weeks. (The idiot even has been self-flagellating, and I mean that literally; there‘s a whip hanging from the wall 👀) And he tells d'Artagnan the story of how and why he quit the seminary when he was twenty.

To no one's surprise, a woman was involved.

He'd been translating a religious text to a young lady (right, Aramis, of course that's what you were doing) when the situation had been misinterpreted by a jealous officer. Tempers flared, one thing led to another, and the whole thing ended with Aramis killing the officer and having to "disppear" aka join the Musketeers under a nom de guerre.

(The keep-it-in-your-pants-Aramis trope isn't a fanfic invention; it's canon, quod erst demonstrandum.)

Now, Aramis regrets his wrong ways and wants to live in poverty, sobriety and chastity as a man of the church. At least that's what he soliloquizes on and on about - when d'Artagnan pulls a letter from his pocket that he'd taken with him from Aramis' place. It's a heavily perfumed love letter from one of Aramis' mistresses.

You've guessed it: That letter is all it takes for Aramis to change his mind. He orders a very disappointed Bazin to bring meat and wine and to hell with his plans.

Once a casanova Musketeer, always a casanova Musketeer, I guess.

[mothergoddessofmadripoor]

"Sanctimoniously performing soliloques I'll never see"

Taylor, I.........

[soliloquent-stark]

a boy who does not want to go to war -> a man who's only lived war - @sunnysideprincess

marvel parallels 24/?

sebastian stan in captain america: the first avenger (2011) and the falcon and the winter soldier (2021)

[mischief-and-tea-by-the-sea]

you're such a gem to this fandom and your sweet, thorough comments always make my day 🥺 you're a wonderful cheerleader!

You are so very kind and sweet for sending me this! It's totally made my day! We have to stick together - all of us in the Marvel fandom of any aspect of it - and cheerleader each other through all the negativity I know we all get sometimes just for loving this fandom. I'm so glad my comments have lifted you up!

[itscalistajane]

What's something you can do that most people wouldn't believe?

I can stop trying to swing myself off of stuff, soliloquizing or stealing for five seconds! A lot of people seem to doubt that one but I do it like all the time!

[diver5ion]

a cornucopia of approaches: math leaguers factor, drama clubbers soliloquize, and baseballers hit.

[laurelier]

HS x The Little Mermaid: Harriel? Arielrry?? Either way we're all a little bit gay aren’t we.

OR: my humble contribution to the mermaidrry spiral. Get outta here and go read @ialwaysknewyouwerepunk​​ birth of harry mermaidy analysis if you actually want to learn something today, that shit's genius boss level connections all over the place. Keep reading this wordvom if you wanna just like. Feel a little bit weird about The Little Mermaid with me for a hot minute? Idk man I'm just spouting crap about water in my corner again that's all I do.

Anyway the thing you gotta know before you read this post is. I love the OG 2D animated Disney princess movies. I love em. I do. I really do and I really hate to admit it, it is really not easy for me to be outing myself like this right now, but I do, I love them, with my wholass heart I’m such a big fan. I think they’re beautiful in a lot a lot a lot of ways and I find them really fascinating as, like, pop culture mainstays, leave me alone, I just, The Little Mermaid. The Little Mermaid, friends. I am here today to soliloquize to you about the gospel of The Little Mermaid in the context of Harry Styles if you can spare a few moments of your time.

The Little Mermaid is one of the original princess narratives that really actually—I go hard for this take—stands up well to cultural critique. Personally I think some of the others do also, but this one? Watching this 15 or so years after I’d first seen it and then reading up on it…… spending far too much time, actually, reading up on it……… as I did a few months ago when I regressed back into my Disney princess hole, man, wow. My little brain was blown open about 150 different ways.

x, LOOK at that animation are you JOKING

How this post came about is a tale as old as time at this point: I asked the aforementioned beautiful Ella @ialwaysknewyouwerepunk​​ about their reaction to Harry’s perfect FL trans-flag-colors outfit moment that absolutely turned me into a ball of just hnnnnngngngngnngng fetal position in the corner god that look made me so emotional and in their (fantastic as always) response, link here, they brought up those Harriel pics from SNL and also hi bb Ariel down there in the corner, and just. Their answer to that ask had a big time ripple effect and we all freaked the fuck out about mermaids and I don't know bro, just have one more tangent about The Little Mermaid and mermaiding and Harry and Harrymermaiding and water waterwaterwater. But do be sure to read Ella’s first. Also have this shitpost?

Light of my life harriel. Art by the magnificent @swimmingleo​​ .

Under the cut: today we’re talking transformation and voicelessness and deals with the (kind of) devil, we’re talking appearances and self-knowledge and slivers of hope, we’re talking siren calls, we’re talking when you know you know, we’re sonar mapping the unexplored ocean floors of the self. Clearly there’s gonna be plenty of melodrama to go around so strap on your mermaid tails, let’s dive undaaathaaseeeeeaaa. (Again.)

--

“Silence itself—the things one declines to say, or is forbidden to name, the discretion that is required between different speakers—is less the absolute limit of discourse, the other side from which it is separated by a strict boundary, than an element that functions alongside the things said, with them and in relation to them.... There is not one but many silences, and they are an integral part of the strategies that underlie and permeate discourses.” - Foucault, The History of Sexuality

--

Nice to meet u mermaidrry

When asked in 2014 why he got his mermaid tattoo, Harry E. Styles reportedly gave a very simple reply: “I am a mermaid.” Which…... is one of my favorite things he’s ever said. Especially because Ella’s post has been circulating for a while now, I doubt I have to inform anyone reading this of how linked the symbol of the mermaid often is with experiences of gender diversity and gender queerness—the mermaid as a symbol especially important to many trans women, not least because she’s so heavily associated with transformation. Ariel herself, and Hans Christian Andersen’s original little mermaid before her, have both played a hand (fin?) in the development of this lovely, lovely, very nuanced link.

I’m not really going to get too in the weeds now, though, about the mermaid as a big time symbol of a transgender experience, because I’m here to talk about The Little Mermaid specifically, and Harry. And before I get into it: I’m hopeful that the fact that I’m seeing a whole lot of really really beautiful gender stuff here doesn’t read as me making assumptions about Harry’s motives or identity that I can’t and shouldn’t make—though that’s also certainly not meant to invalidate him or assume, either, that he couldn’t be purposely engaging with gender when he refs mermaids—I’m just. We gotta remember we don’t know, I don’t know, none of us will probably ever know what exactly he means and when he means it and how, and all I’m doing here is using H and Ariel and mermaids to explore a very queer little bubble that I find really captivating. Not speaking for, never speaking for; speaking about, seeing through, and also just. Standing in awe of. H, and all that he creates around him.

WHEw wee. All that out of the way……...

Harry and watery shit

……….let’s start by talking (yet again) about the fact that Harry is always drenched in water. Babymermaid is literally so wet all of the time. This is not a new idea, of course, he’s been waving this one in our faces for so many years now, but I want to highlight a few favorite examples that I think show especially well how closely interlinked H being wet/referencing water seems to be with self-exploration. 

Ella, once again, has a more comprehensive list of times Harry was wet in their post, and all of these are also mentioned there. This is my personal watery Harrymermaid highlight reel, though, and there are some things that come up here that are going to be relevant later, so we’re gonna rehash this for a second. K roll the tape.

First, the HS1 album photoshoot. Just….. All of it. This was one of the first big visual impressions we got of Harry as a solo artist and—water. Everywhere. The water, right, is also opaque and pink in a lot of this—so let me just take this opportunity to float the rainbow water theory again: if being in water equals being one’s full self in H world, with all the simultaneous pain and relief of that, then I wonder if rainbow or pink/contaminated water doesn't equal difficulty accessing that real, complex person, buried underneath onion layers of shame and repression and time—and, because it’s pretty too, if it’s not also a representation of the beauty of the efforts that we make to access our deepest selves despite all that might hold us back beautiful war connection opportunity here cry cry cry bc pink water is associated with waste runoff from battles and war. Pair all that with the way so many of us read the album’s content and idk man even I almost believe myself here. 

These colors......... bury me in them.

Second, Fine Line era—first up is the Lights Up music video. In this one, there’s obviously the shot of him in the FL silhouette of big pants unbuttoned shirt suspenders just like. Staring into the mirror soaking wet. And the one of him looking down at us in the water with the sun coming over his shoulder. 

But, real quick, I wanna talk about those red shots where he’s kind of mirrored, looking down from above at himself floating submerged. Eerie, strange, fragmented: an H in a beautiful suit suspended and frozen above a vulnerable-looking H floating in water; H staring down at this other self that appears to be him, too, but a little bit different, significantly different, staring back up at him. And a shadow between them that serves as a dividing (fine?) line: his own shadow, reflected on the water exactly halfway between them. Jesus there’s so much in this damn frame. There are a lot of Harrys here. All of them quite wet.

Earlier, H in darker clothes, floating prone and vulnerable in the water. 

Then, third, a pairing I love, two of my favorite songs from Fine Line—though really I could say that about any of the songs on that album ffs—She and Adore You. In She, right, we've got the famous he takes a boat out, imagines just sailing away / away, away / without telling his mates; / he wouldn’t know what to say, right, and then in the Adore You mv, almost immediately after letting the fish swim free, the peculiar boy does………. exactly that? He takes a boat out, the sails filled by his screams of anguish from earlier at not being seen or understood by the other townspeople, which he trapped in jars (hgngng that part always makes me so soft).

I mean. This parallel lays my ass out. He said like lemme just drop these dam kids off at school right quick byeeeeeee honey have a great day and then I’m about to go solo deep sea fishing for my soul. 

And at the very, very, very end of this treasure of a music video, we get the frame above, where we can see just the hint of a friendly-looking little sea creature jumping in and out of the waves. My guess? Really, who could that be but the fish—so lemme just get real Frankenstein here for a sec and suggest that the boy and the fish represent a kind of split-in-half mermaid, a whole self in parts: if the image of the half-fish half-human mermaid stands in for the unification of the self, the transformation into and the realization of the real self, well, then. This boy is setting off in search of himself in his boat, and this other part of him that, when they’re together, allows him to feel understood, feel real—this mermaidy part (literally a fish??? please???) is visible just there almost at the horizon; like, the boy is casting out onto the ocean in pursuit of self-discovery, after having set free a part of himself that needed more room to grow? Almost like he’s following that part toward himself, like it’s guiding and guarding him as he searches.

So yes @thestylinsons I think you're 100% right and Adore You is a mermaid song. Ugh I love the tiny fish. Tiny half of a mermaid half of a self fish. I love u tiny fish baby.

TLDR: Harry really is one heavy-handed mf with the symbolism.

The most beautiful singer in all the sea

What we have here, then, is H plus a hell of a lot of water and notably a maybe-mermaid half-boy-half-fish moment and selves wet and split in half all over the goddam carpet and all that comes together and we end up with a whole ocean's worth of self-exploration. And another well-known mermaid who does quite a bit of the same is sweet fiery Ariel herself—whose story, looked at a certain way, revolves almost entirely around her self-transformation. 

I want to take a second and talk about the little mermaid’s voice, because it’s such an important part of her character and, well, we’re also talking about Harry Styles here, so. In the original version of The Little Mermaid as well as in the majority of subsequent adaptations, the mermaid/Ariel, of course, is in possession of the most beautiful voice anyone has ever heard, and yeah, well—hi, Harry. Yeah hey buddy we see you there. Said not to brag or anything but.

Because my brain needs very clear bullet points to keep track of things, before we go there, we have:

H identifying himself with the symbol of the mermaid in more than one way—tattoo, “I am a mermaid”, on and on—and also—

H working aquatic and/or oceanic elements all throughout his music and accompanying visuals, paired often with—

Themes of exploring/developing the self, or the self being split in half, having distinct parts even though it’s one whole; the self breaking apart or fragmenting.

We also have the idea of the mermaid being linked heavily with queer/transgender experiences of self-inquiry and transformation.

With all this as context, I think it’s important to talk about the fact that one of the more polarizing things about the mermaid as a symbol has to do with that gorgeous voice she almost always has: the whole ~siren call~* deal, the whole—ohhhh help me I’m a helpless man and this mermaid’s voice is so beautiful that I’m gonna literally throw myself into the sea and drown myself for it and then I’m gonna blame her for the fact that I died because I was being a horny idiot, bad scary evil feminine mystique mermaid—the sexist deeply harmful wicked-woman-seduced-me shtick that’s been weaponized against women and femmes for as long as the idea of the mermaid—or just of the capital-W Woman, really—has been around. And though I won’t go too into it here because I don’t want to describe something that’s already so painful in too gratuitous detail, it’s been well documented that this notion has particularly and especially violent consequences for trans women specifically.

Despite these negative connotations, though, I think there’s still a lot here that’s really valuable, really beautiful, and really queer. A siren call is something that draws you in irresistibly, right, something you can’t ignore no matter how hard you try—and there’s a lot more to that than just Woman’s manipulation/destruction of Man, especially if we’re doing a queer reading. Like. If you think about things that pull you in, things you can’t turn your back on, things you encounter and have to follow, things that deeply speak to you—then, I don’t know, I’d think the mermaid’s beautiful voice or siren call would really only be frightening, would only feel dangerous enough to require demonization, were it heard with the ears of a Man (capital M, meaning The Man, repressive heteronormative antihuman patriarchy, etc) who didn't or couldn't understand it, or whose existence was at odds with it. What is said by a voice that something in you recognizes as true—and how it’s said, and what it does to you, how it pulls on you—that’s only threatening if you’ve been trying to silence the part of you that has the ability to hear and respond to that voice, or if you’re afraid to give in to what it’s asking you to do; only if you’ve been somehow convinced, for some reason (like the way that the world force-feeds us homophobia and transphobia), that the natural place to which the voice draws you is somewhere you should not go, or will harm you. I read the mermaid’s siren call as another confirmation of her queerness: this voice, this current, that slowly and with such certainty calls you toward some new way of being, surrounded in water at the bottom of the sea. When you know, you know.

x 

I was listening to Fine Line while writing the first draft of this, after watching Harry sing it so beautifully in that beautiful pink and blue—and I had a little half-baked thought that the voice that goes ~weeeeeeeeeeeoooooooooo~ at the beginning and end of that song—I don’t know, I just was in this mermaid brainspace and I thought it sounded a little like a siren call? So you can imagine the volume of the squeeeeeeeee screech sound I made out of my stupid mouth when I saw that Ella also heard this. 

Like, I don’t know. Maybe the end of Fine Line is just an ooooo and we’ve both just got mermaids on the mind, but whatever that angelic descant is meant to evoke, I do know that now I’m going to think about this anytime I hear it: an echo of H, of me, of H’s audience, being called toward ourselves. This beautiful song about being a fine line between; about things that we’ll never know, testing patience, thoughts going to devotion sunshine temptress her; about we’ll be all right, all that emotion in his voice—framed at the beginning and end by this lovely unearthly cry, I just. It sounds like a siren to me. Trying to get me to listen—to H, to myself.

Tagging @swimmingleo​​’s recent She/Only Angel/Great Gig in the Sky post here too, where we sorta kinda maybe have another kind of like. Siren song thing happening, but Pink Floyd universe? Some beautiful wordless singing and some screaming and more than a few allusions to death (which, in this mermaid siren song context, would be connected with queer rebirth) and transformation read alongside a couple of H’s suspiciously gender-y songs—.

And a beaaaaaauuutiful recent mermaidy moodboard by @ialwaysknewyouwerepunk apparently I’m trying for a record for how many times I can mention you in one of these longass essays

Gay silence gif

When you clicked “Keep reading” above just a few minutes ago, you did unfortunately sign up to read a post that’s half about The Little Mermaid, so amidst all this, we do have to talk about the big elephant taking a splash bath in the proverbial ocean here: in both the original and the Disney versions of TLM, the little mermaid’s claim to fame is that she willingly gives up her ability to sing, to make a siren call. And it’s because she hears a call of her own: the idea of being human, of finding love; a need to belong, to understand herself, to be with those like her. In the movie, Ariel sees Eric and she just. She knows. The fact remains, though, that in order to do what her deepest self is asking of her, Ariel has to give up her voice. I don’t think the weight of that has been lost on anyone who’s ever seen the movie.

I don’t know. Just—that oh my god moment A has when she sees E on the boat? It’s always felt to me (and to many others) like it holds a lot more significance than just, like, silly teenage Ariel falling in love at first sight. Obviously A is romantically interested in E, but there’s also so much identification in the moment when she first sees him, like—wow wow wow he’s so beautiful I want to be like that, I am that, that’s me. I’m not just fascinated with humans from afar anymore; seeing this actual specific human and how beautiful he is has made me realize that I need to be a human myself. I favor reading this moment as much more about Ariel’s self-discovery (read: gender) than a romantic desire for Eric. And this is reflected in the original fable as well, almost even more: the little mermaid there spends a lot of time thinking about how, if she becomes a human, she will have a chance to gain an immortal soul. Her decision to become human no matter the danger or the cost is about her own self, and the way she wants to exist in the world.

And—*overshare sirens*—this feeling of Ariel’s here, this oh shit, that should be me— to be just entirely too frank with you all, I like to imagine it’s not dissimilar to the way I personally feel when I look at Harry wearing clothes I wish I could wear in a way I wish I could wear them. The way he appears in his own self being the way I’d live in mine, if I could choose. Which sometimes I feel is me projecting to uncomfortable heights but—it’s just. It’s so powerful to see someone who, for you, for so many reasons, embodies a possibility you didn’t know existed before, a choice you didn’t know you could make.

x

The little mermaid is often decried as a regressive antifeminist figure for the fact that (as she reaches for what’s usually read as love/infatuation but what can be seen as something more like authenticity) she gives up her voice, of all things, to be with the prince/Eric—the main way that she is able to express herself and make herself known. But, god, if you look at it through a transgender lens, having her do that is brilliant. It’s less Ariel not valuing herself or her ability to speak and more—the little mermaid going into her transformation fully understanding that she might not be understood by the society she’s trying so hard to enter, that she needs to enter because she belongs there, it’s who she is; it’s more Ariel identifying with Eric and knowing she should be with him, knowing she should be embraced and accepted by humans, but also knowing this will be extremely difficult, because human society is cruel and transphobic, to the point that entrance into it requires the literal loss of her voice; it’s that the price she will be made to pay for what she is doing is heartrendingly, unfairly high, but her need to be true to herself is even higher. Seen this way, the problem—or the tragedy—lies less with Ariel’s choice to give up her ability to speak, and more with the fact that the humans can’t hear her.

Here’s where I start to be one of those people who says that Disney is, like, really deep actually

It’s not difficult at all to link all that to the silencing and closeting of queer people, the way the world limits and shames queer expression. Which, then, creates the necessity of hiding. Queercoding. Talking by not talking. Saying by not saying. Admission of queerness becomes a matter of omission and demonstration; queer silence begins to say a whole hell of a lot. 

And you know who actually knows a shitload about this—about how to navigate an uncomprehending prejudiced world, in queer silence—in the movie version? Ursula. Ursula, the outcast sister of king big man of the entire ocean Triton, who, sure, she’s the villain, she steals Ariel’s voice and almost kills her yes ok but also—Ursula is the one who teaches Ariel how to perform her (human) gender, right before her transformation. She prepares her. She tells Ariel that, you know what, actually, speaking isn’t all that important, being seen as desirable to your ~princey poo is really all about body language, signaling. It’s all in how you perform your femininity. Give ‘em what they want, girl. Gender is performance. Thank you Ursula slash Judith Butler slash Divine, legendary drag queen Divine, on whom Ursula’s character was based, yes I shit myself when I learned that one. And—performance: god what a loaded and multifaceted term that would appear to be for someone like Harry.

Just, like. This animated octopus lady is so damn powerful to me bitch. If you look at Ursula’s character in a certain light, she’s literally—literally she is telling Ariel: you can’t use the voice that allows you to communicate with heteronormative society to become known. It won’t work. You won’t be able to prove yourself to them on their terms. But there’s a different way—many, as a matter of fact, and finding them where they are, outside the bounds of how you’ve been told you have to exist all your life, is literally life-and-death for you. 

In a way, she’s saying something that sounds a little like: despite the silence that the world demands of queer people, despite the violence of that, there are ways to be known. There are ways to become known to one another, and to ourselves—and they are a matter of our survival.

x

POV you came here for Harry content and you’re getting a weirdly in depth emotional rant about The Little Mermaid

Second to last thing on TLM, swear. The ending. I’m gonna stick with the movie here, because the ending of the fairytale version is much darker, and less relevant, I think, to anything I can in good conscience compare to what I can see of mermaidrry’s experience. 

The ending of TLM…… has always felt so unsatisfying to me. And really, I think that’s the point. That article linked above (worth a read, go do that if you haven’t already) points out that Ariel and Eric, power couple, are the ones who team up to kill Ursula (in a very phallic and dramatic way, mind, they spear her with a ship) and set Triton back on his throne as the ruler of the sea—effectively, reinstating the heteropatriarchy that Ursula destabilized by helping Ariel fulfill her desire to transcend her mermaidness and become human. Heteronormative patriarchal norm-setter lookin ass manlymanman King Triton then finally signs off on Ariel’s marriage to Eric, and it’s supposed to be happy because Ariel’s got her voice back and she’s got her man and she thinks she’s got everything she wants and there’s a rainbow even and it looks great—but the thing is, Ariel’s marrying a figurehead of patriarchal male power herself. Eric’s actually the one who drives the bow of the ship into Ursula and takes her out, Ariel’s in more of a supporting role—so he kills Ariel’s mentor, in a way, her predecessor, the one who literally taught her about the concept of gendered performance; Ariel helps him do it; and then Ariel marries him. And Ariel’s father, who originally forbid her from having anything to do with humans at all, co-signs on it—is like, yeah, great, go ahead and be human and marry this prince who murdered my sister/rival and gave me back full control of the ocean, that’s fine by me sure. Ariel’s rebellion and transformation, in short, is given a stamp of approval by mainstream human AND mermaid society both, and that’s— actually maybe kind of a sinister thing, here.

Look at Triton, man. Look at him right front and center there, his approval highlighted so we absolutely can’t miss it.

To me, just. This whole thing: it’s a deviation from repressive heteropatriarchal rules—a defiance of them, really—being softened enough that the heteropatriarchy can swallow it. It’s the connections between H’s work and queerness being wrapped up in narrative after narrative after narrative so that his image will still appeal to as many people as possible, and make as much money as possible, no matter how many rainbow flags he waves. (I’m hearing put a price on emotion; man I can hate you sometimes; I don’t want to sleep in the dirt.) It’s the way society bends and gives and accedes to certain parts of queer expression so that it can learn how to suppress it better next time, take advantage of it better next time, even more surreptitiously and cleverly; it’s homophobia and transphobia behind a mask of acceptance, or of enthusiasm, even. It’s the way the world uses one single breath to both praise and condemn Harry for being, by all appearances, more expressive of more parts of himself. How they love it when he’s camp, yet hate the daring and, frankly, subversive idea of living by a kindness that is both a) deeper than the prevailing norms of homophobic society can tolerate and b) very queer that’s so present in his music, so just there, if you’re listening for it, open to hearing it. The world a lost sailor, in a way: drawn in by H’s voice, and villainizing him for how he sings, what he sings; where his voice calls to.

Princes and glittery dresses and meeting yourself

I want to end by returning to an idea I think I mentioned first in the section on Harry and water—the unification of the self, the mermaid image being made of two distinct elements (fish, human) that come together to form a more cohesive whole, an entirely new being.

This, of course, tracks when we think about Ariel: as a human, Ariel’s entire body— in a queer reading, her gender— fits her better. We see that visually in the sparkly dress that Ella pointed out—and in the fact that with Eric, she’s feels she belongs: I’m about to do that dumb thing I do again where I read a couple as actually a representation of one person’s self and say that we’re seeing two parts of Ariel’s self being united in this sweet moment at the end when she emerges from the sea and Eric finally recognizes her. 

If we’re reading Eric and Ariel as halves of one whole mermaid here, then it’s insane to me that for the longest in the movie, Eric doesn’t recognize Ariel as the mysterious woman who saved him—who he’s in love with and has been searching for, even as Ariel herself tries so hard to show him that it’s her you dumb bitch it’s heerrrrr—and literally the only reason that he doesn’t GET it is because he can’t hear Ariel speak, he doesn’t have the tools to know her. He doesn’t know who or where this lifesaving ethereal voice he’s dreaming about is, even though she’s right in front of him, because he doesn’t have the capacity to understand her presence or who she is or what she means to him, and my brain is just going sounds like She, sounds like She bitch that’s She—like god this mf is really searching for Ariel The. Whole. Time. And longing so badly to hear her voice, and she’s right there in his face, and he can’t see it because he doesn’t know how to know her, she doesn’t speak in a way he’s used to hearing, sounds like She bitch I don’t know who she is bit ch and also....... two halves in two bodies, two entities representing a whole self....... hello Adore You fish boy mermaid music video. Hello selves in two parts coming together and then splitting apart and then coming together again. Hello meeting new parts of yourself and finally, finally understanding them and falling in love with them, following them out to sea, following them out of the sea. 

x 

And this is also so interesting to me because like I mentioned earlier—that’s Eric that Ariel’s with there, that’s Prince Eric™, Ursula-killer Eric. He does symbolize, I think, when paired with little mermaid herself, a truer expression of Ariel’s queer identity. But he also, like I said, axed the mentor who taught Ariel that gender is a performance in the first place, which. Problematic. And: for him to see her...... she had to talk. His way.

How I see this: there’s something life-giving and beautiful in the love between Ariel’s two parts of herself—her gendered energies, if you’ll allow me the binaristic thinking for a moment—despite the fact that both (the Ariel half, the Eric half) are entirely surrounded in and partially shaped by patriarchy. Ursula saying things like what she says to Ariel about performance and gender threatens the norms underlying Eric’s power, so she has to die; and Ariel helps Eric kill her—in pursuit of her full self, sure, but she still does. We can’t gloss over that. E and A love one another, and they belong together, and now that they are together Ariel is closer to a fuller, queerer way of being—and so much about them will always exist in the context of antiqueer patriarchy. All of that can be true at the same time. There can be a true and solid core to self-love and self-expression, and there can also be a lot of contextual difficulties and paradoxes to navigate when it comes to actually living out these elusive things. One of the reasons I love Harry’s music so so so so much is that it so often feels to me like it’s so frank about this sentiment—though, again, what I see in H’s music is more a reflection of me than it is of him, because he’s the only one who will ever have the authority to say what’s really there.

Importantly, I don’t at all mean to say that trying to locate a relationship to the body or to gender that does feel like it fits is a futile thing, or isn’t possible or real or worth it—it absolutely is. It’s just, so often, so difficult. And complicated: I find that along my own strange little way, parts of me have tried to silence other parts of myself that shouldn’t be silenced; parts of myself haven’t recognized me; parts of myself, most frighteningly, have even asked me to profoundly transform. It is, I imagine—I’ve said this before, but: a little like learning to live underwater might be? A little like becoming a mermaid without drowning—holding out long enough to see all the beauty around you when you finally take your first breath of water.

I don’t know. I’m just grateful, as always, to ever-thoughtful, mermaid-dress-wearing Harry—for the depth of his art, for the depth of his patience, for his oceanic fearlessness. 

--

Far out in the sea the water is as blue as the petals of the loveliest of cornflowers and as clear as the clearest glass, but it is very deep, deeper than any anchor-cable can reach, and many church towers would have to be placed on top of each other to stretch from the sea-bed to the surface.

Down there the sea-folk live.

-Hans Christian Andersen, The Little Mermaid

[merrysithmas]

in The Blue Spirit Zuko returns to his ship post-rescue of Aang (after Aang saves his life when he is knocked out by the archers and then waits until morning to ensure Zuko regains consciousness).

Feeling emotionally compromised and nostalgic after finding kinship with the Blue Spirit as he was being rescued (and/or taken captive again by Zuko), Aang poignantly asks Zuko if he thinks they could have been friends in another life - prompting Zuko to scare him off with a blast of fire but... he essentially also lets Aang free while dueling with newfound feelings of emotional attachment and confusion himself.

When Zuko returns to the ship, Iroh pokes at him, asking him where he's been all night and that he missed one of the crewman singing a rendition of a stirring love song.

Zuko complains he is tired and retires to bed, where he simultaneously turns away from his tapestry of the fire nation as Aang falls asleep woefully, soliloquizing about how he believes he did not make any friends on his newest venture to the feverish Katara and Sokka.

a stirring love song

[frankthesnek]

@soliloquent-stark I SWEAR TO GOD!