#like he actually calls out the shitty parts of his religion which I like

[the-hopeless-haze]

Bruce darling, get a fucking grip. You're gonna get both reader and yourself in trouble🤦‍♂ also I love how much he cares about her, that he's ready to wait forever 😭 like please someone love me like that. I liked your wax poetry on Catholicism, even tho I'm not Christian and almost everything went over my head 😅 keep making amazing content, bye - (the anon waiting for her result)

Lmfao he doesn’t care 💀 Falcone is such an asshole tho he deserves it. and yeah like I had him say at the end “I killed for this” like he really did 😭

Also thank you! I’m glad you liked it even though you don’t have the background. I went more into this on the notes on ao3 but like the Jesus metaphors for superheroes aren’t even concealed most of the time. Like and that’s the point of them they are kind of religious allegories, gods among men, people who are going to save us from corruption and evil (which isn’t happening in real life which is why this is an escape). But I wanted to turn this on its head a little and have Bruce call it out directly and also commit sins in the process lmao. ALSO I think the reason I love Batman so much is because he’s one of the few superheroes who is actually just human like us and this movie really did a particularly good job at that like having him wipe out from flying, having him believe the wrong Spanish translation and waste precious time to catch the Riddler… like he’s infallible. He’s like us. Human. Life is pain. But he wants to do better in spite of all this. Like 😵‍💫 anyway if you like the Christian imagery I really suggest listening to The Killers - specifically the album Pressure Machine. The lead singer who writes a lot of the lyrics is actually Mormon but honestly most of Christianity is just the same stories different rules. I drew a lot of inspiration from them for this fic (it’s where all the song titles come from lol)

Thank you so much! And I hope the wait isn’t killing you and you hear good news when it finality comes back!

[m3r1m4r5u333]

I'm getting a bit tired of the fandom's overwhelming consensus that Eddie is surely gay even thought there are plenty reasons why his relationships with women would not have worked out.

Personally bisexuality makes more sense to me, and I feel like that's what the show is trying to show, too. And since the show already had "closeted gay man in a "straight" marriage, I think it would make more sense to go for Bi Eddie.

Because Eddie is different from Buck even if he's also bi. Religion. His family's expectations. Marriage. Parenthood. And I also think - earlier realization of sexuality even though he remains closeted. Fun fact: that's what bisexuals do! Even in supportive environments, we stay in the closet the most and the longest.

I'd really like for Eddie to be bi.

Eddie's the type of bi in disguise that the world is full of and nobody notices because the marriage with a woman would be a true one.

This matters because it seems like there's this odd idea that these bisexuals are doing fine in the closet. Why talk about them?

The reality is actually that according to just about every study, bisexuals are distinctly not fine.

The biphobia and erasure comes from all directions. People expect and understand the concept of heterosexuality and homosexuality well enough. Bisexuals...?

It's called the Double Closet. Expectation to either be straight, or gay, and if you're anything else you're just confused.

Also, bisexuals may not just have shitty parents. They also end up falling in love and marrying people who are biphobic. Fun times.

Anyway, I'm listing my reasons why Eddie being into women and men would make the most sense to me:

He agreed with Shannon that sex was never the issue for them.

His marriage to Shannon failing? He was young, the pregnancy was unplanned, he was pushed to marry a high-school sweetheart at young age and then facing the stress of trying to figure out how to raise a special needs child with her.

He went to a war, and returned traumatized. Trauma tends to make everything even harder.

Their mutual lack of trust and communication.

Meddling parents.

Perhaps... Being a closeted bisexual dating a woman who does not know.

Because that's one way to keep a partner at a distance - by hiding a part of yourself.

Losing a loved one, being afraid to love again.

Being pushed to date too soon after grief and trauma.

Falling for a male friend who he thinks is straight.

Being pushed to date someone else.

Oh and the panic attacks - Learning that his friends have died,

being shot by a sniper and thinking Buck was hurt,

ending up in a rapidly developing relationship with someone who is falling in love with him...

When he just likes her... but feels pressured to keep the relationship going anyway.

Because his son loves that person, and Eddie is programmed to go for marriage in every relationship he ends up in. Catholic guilt... They love marriage.

Family expecting him to be straight. Family pushing him to date despite him saying he isn't ready.

Being totally new in the dating world. No wonder he talks about performance anxiety and feeling like he needs to perform - his heart isn't in it.

Also he's probably never even been on dates. How to act on dates? He's not a teenager anymore, it's embarrassing and awkward to fumble and not know the dating culture.

Also when we first meet Eddie he's only been with one woman. Women aren't carbon copies. Sex can be intimate and awkward with someone new. Of course he'd be nervous.

Then finding out that his girlfriend was almost a nun... and being closeted bisexual!

And so on. Nothing actually says the man MUST be gay, and I feel weirded out by the insistence that he surely is gay.

I feel like... Maybe the show expected this, that people would dismiss his interest towards women, and wanted to make the queer community check their prejudice?

Because that episode which focuses on Eddie's fight club and has that super queer coded ice skating scene??

It's Hansel pushing Gretel away... How gay! Expect then we find out that Hansel was only scared that she would miss out an huge opportunity by staying with her. A role in the big leagues.

And that joke about Bobby being a hockey player and a figure skater??? And saying

"Who says you can't do both?" while a piece composed by Paganini - also famous for mastering both guitar and violin, plays.

The shot shows Buck AND Eddie, and Hen with Chimney looking and pointing at them in amazement.

Saying "We'll google for photos later!"

Maybe the implication of

"Who says you can't do both" being referred to isn't just

"Who says you can't do both women and men?"

.... but ALSO "Who says you can't write both of these characters to be bi?".

[kennabeth]

here's my running list of things I'd like to see in the color of revenge:

roxane being like an actual actual witch. idk if cornelia is still using the word bufana but that's my #1. can sing so beautifully she makes the rocks cry? can make anything grow in her shitty soil? indescribably beautiful? her kids being really really good at everything?? (not to take away from jehan's dedication to his craft but there's no way there's not smth supernatural going on with him) I think I'd prefer dustfinger and the prince knowing (and dustfinger being like "....yeah jehan knows witches bc of roxane lol" leans into this imo) and getting to watch the kids have a crisis over whether they're human or something else, getting pissed at the adults for keeping it from them, but I will also take roxane having kept this a secret from everyone. I will likely cry blood if this doesn't come true at all but it's fine I'm normal and well-adjusted about roxane it's fine!

the bracelet stays. I'm on my knees begging

I think cornelia said she's got a queer in the book?? forming a prayer circle that's it's brianna but I'll take anyone (new or established) as long as they're written well. several queer characters would rock though would love that 4 me

fenoglio dies. badly.

farid and jehan having that adhd and autistic solidarity where they're best friends but also each other's worst nightmare

jehan dealing with a lot of (valid) frustration and jealously wrt farid and dustfinger. I'm almost definitely reading too far into it but the part where he's like "dustfinger promised he won't try to replace my birth father but he totally can bc I don't remember him lmao" is like. he's so glad to have a father again but farid's been out and about for so long that jehan hasn't really seen the extent to which dustfinger can be a father to a kid who isn't his biologically, and it was honestly very ugly watching jehan panic trying to take care of dustfinger during his mental breakdown but the second the prince says farid is fine, dustfinger calms down? like you have another son right there who needs you so badly, douchebag. anyway while this is not the fault of either kid I want jehan to be Pissed.

unwrite the part where it says roxane is pale because No She's Not 💗

DRAGON LORE¡¡¡¡¡¡ the laughing prince was said to have hunted dragons and I've been going crazy for 15 years over the way that was just said in passing?? I don't think living/awake dragons match the mood of this series but FUCK I could see nyame and the witch girl stumbling onto a graveyard or something and she'd get her stereotypical tiefling rant about how humans suck for killing beautiful creatures for their own gain and I would be cheering her on because I'm a whore for dragons

I sorta want dustfinger to have to give up his ability to speak to fire to bring everyone back. it's very fullmetal alchemist-stan of me but my f a v o r i t e type of sacrifice is the surrender of power

I'm already heads over heels in love with nyame but I want to be feral over him the entire time I want to be in his head I want to be in his past and his future and I want to see him brought to his knees and tempted with the power to bring about the change he so desperately craves and i want him to know in his heart and with metaphorical blood pouring from his eyes that replacing one reign of tyranny with another is not the solution he wants but hell does he want it and I want him to have the most beautiful conclusion any character has ever had and still get to make the world a better place on a large scale because he's the only one who consistently cares!! and hes so fucking tired.I love him so fucking much. nyame

would enjoy nettle showing up just to call dustfinger a bitch and leave. want that to be a running gag

loved the discussion about religion coming in and criminalizing reproductive healthcare. I feel like that was not the most appropriate time to have been having that conversation but I want it to stay and contribute to the theme of autonomy and agency that have always been at the heart of the inkworld.

[volfoss]

Hiiiii <3 I remember you talking about the boys comics vs the show, and I just finished the third season and it's really funny to me how almost every time there's an interesting storyline happening the little trivia window on Amazon says something like "this was not on the comics this was invented by the TV show" . Like yeah I'm not surprised lol

What character do you think is the most improved by the show? Is there anything that you think was actually better in the comics or is it just trash altogether?

hiii!! first off, SO glad you're enjoying it!! second off good god this may be long (i love to hate on mr ennis) so. under a cut :3

As for characters, let me first give a small run down of how every woman is treated in the comic:

the female (as she um. does not have a name in the comics) has barely any development other than oh she was raised in a fucked up lab and her mom sucks and that she and frenchie kind of have something going on. all of the really good stuff during the show w her brother or just... any of it is not there. again i need to emphasize she does not have a name. ennis does not care enough to give her an alt form of communication (like in the show, her teaching frenchie her own sign is SUCH a good thing. not in the comics lmao)

starlight. oh god where do i even START. so where the show handles her sa well and respectfully, um. well you see mr ennis loves to put rape in his stories and also loves to be bad to women. so its MULTIPLE scenes with her (where like. all of the men of the team line up for her to give them a bj. which to me really kind of... ruins the messaging he could have been going thru). hughie is like... genuinely really bad about her sa in the comics (as in. when he finds out via butcher getting tapes of the headquarters and purposefully setting it up so hughie SEES HER GETTING SA'D and goes to confront her about it. its great ennis loves women) and he BLAMES HER FOR IT. and then dumps her. and hes not supposed 2 be in the wrong there so thats great.

the only thing w her character that i DID like was at the start of the comics, she was pretty religious and as it went on, she started to lose her faith in religion bc she didnt get why jesus would let this happen to her. which was imo an interesting take but also ennis is OBSESSED w shitting on religion so like. its not surprising i guess that hes putting that in there lmao. she never really gets to confront the members of the team who REPEATEDLY either do/attempt to sa her other than doing a threat once or twice. theres none of the commentary on how society views women heroes or anything like that with her (i cannot emphasize enough that they kept like. the intro for the comics in terms of what kickstarted stuff and then just like... left the rest behind. which was for the best bc my god i think if u counted the amt of slurs and just bad stuff overall you would lose count (ik i did)).

maeve. good god its bad. so she was there when... homelander had part in 9/11 (tldr for that incident: in the comics, the supes are sent out to prevent one of the planes that was gonna hit (i believe the pentagon?) and then ended up crashing it elsewhere. but the plane scene in the show was THAT plot point done better) and that just made her become an alcoholic. and that is like 99% of her character in the comics. it is so so shitty bc the show did SO much w her and the comics just... did not.

the other non prominent women (stormfront was a man in the comics for like... clarification) are all... well what we call the ennis morality compass victims. a lot of the comics are the boys going to learn abt a supe group and learning they did smth bad (which youd think murder. or like smth equally bad. youd be wrong) and then its revealed that they are having orgies, being GASP gay, or being mentally ill (there is an entire team that hughie goes undercover w that the ... entire joke is that theyre too nice bc theyre not as mentally stable as the boys are. one of the bits is one of the teammates has tourettes so he has tics of just saying fuck or something similar and its treated as a joke). so if theyre not mentally ill or being gay or doing something that ennis sees as kind of fucked up (as the entirety of the comics is a test to how much garbage he can put in one series) theyre being used solely as sex objects. its pretty bad to put it lightly.

the men dont get out of the bad writing treatment either but. the women get it the worst. as for who gets improved the most, id say easily kimiko (it is NIGHT AND DAY) or maybe oddly enough butcher (his comic issues are... bad. we would be here all day if i got into them). and MM. oh my god you do not want to know how he was handled in the comics. honestly there isnt a character that DIDNT get improved a ton, all of them did. i dont know how the writers pulled it off but it is infinitely better for everyone.

as for anything i liked more... honestly not much. i think the shock value didn't work most of the time because ennis just made it the ENTIRE comics point to be edgy. i guess the fact homelander is bi in the comics is kind of funny but its just... not handled well (shocker right). as i mentioned earlier, i think the stuff with starlight starting out as super devote to religion and then becoming disenchanted with it was interesting. the only other really good thing about it is the art. it is HIDEOUS but i feel it kind of is intentional against the comic art of the time (as the artist is genuinely amazing outside of that). oh and if you can ignore all of the bad stuff, there was a kind of cool plot point that the show hasnt hit yet/wont touch, where they discuss the comics in the world with the context of them being propaganda. one of the owners of the local comic shop used to be a comic editor, and discusses how the comics were used to cover up the bad deeds that the supes were doing irl. it was an interesting take, especially since a lot of older comics WERE propaganda (ie like the wwii era comics are INSANE propaganda). tldr do not fucking touch the comics unless you want to see how many slurs ennis wants to drop (too many).

[thevagueambition]

Les Mis 1.1.4 thoughts

a lot of this post is about things that annoy me about christianity just fyi lol

Re Geborand, I'm reminded of something biblical scholar Dan McClellan has talked about (e.g. in this 2 min video) called the "prophetic critique" where various performances of piety are criticised in the old testament/tanakh. The context of that being that when the rich and powerful perform piety through these offerings and festivals while at the same time violating religious principles of mercy and charity, their offerings become sinful.

"There is M. Geborand purchasing paradise for a sou." is not quite the same thing, but it hits on this same idea of the public performance of piety with an ulterior motive in mind (whether social propriety or a ticket to paradise) not being paired with moral behavior

(I guess the text doesn't mention if Geborand starts behaving more morally alongside his charity, but how paltry said charity is certainly suggests not)

The bishop's use of local dialects contrasts with the FRev's dogmatic desire to define a french citizen as a speaker of standard french

Myriel's religious views frankly seem fairly similar to the sort of Christianity I was raised with (there are shitty conservative priests in my area as well, but not in my immediate community).

His virtue lies in correctly identifying the miserable as the inheritors of the earth and in acting according to his principles

The description of Myriel's beliefs does hit on a part of Christianity that deeply annoys me, though: the body as something bad which must be subordinated to the mind/soul ("Man has upon him his flesh, which is at once his burden and his temptation. He drags it with him and yields to it. He must watch it, cheek it, repress it, and obey it only at the last extremity.")

Why should the body be bad? It can cause you pain, of course. You can fall ill, you can get injured. But you can also embrace others, you can smell the smells of your home, you can eat your favourite dish. The body that hurts loves and feels pleasure, too. But then of course "pleasure" is exactly what's "dangerous" about the body – as if all pleasure was selfish and destructive 🙄

(I don't agree with the Descartean body/mind split in the first place. Imo you are your body. Your mind is part of your body.)

It relates somewhat to this other thing that irks me about Christianity -- and which I think might also actually be relevant to Myriel's development in this chapter, lol -- which is Christianity as a cope religion. It identifies the problems of the world -- illness, oppression, war -- and says "but if you're kind, if you dont break our rules, the afterlife will be wonderful." Like we don't have to fix the problems we have in the world because in the afterlife you will be free from suffering. Enduring the world piously is the goal, not making it better

(I'm aware that there are many Christians who don't think that way. My dad believes firmly in God and (his own personal interpretation of) the Bible and that's certainly not how his morals shake out. But that is an element in many permutations of Christianity)

Anyway where I think this might actually be relevant to Myriel is re "It is wrong to become absorbed in the divine law to such a degree as not to perceive human law." One interpretation of that is that if you focus exclusively on piety and the solace of divine judgement, it precludes you from perceiving injustice and brutality in the world and acting against it. An injust ruler may be condemned in the afterlife, but you should do something about him in this life, too

I think Hugo is probably right in saying that the death penalty is the sort of thing one can't be neutral on once one has seen it in action

Becaise it's one of the few pieces of leftist theory I actually have read and (mostly) understood, Walter Benjamin's Critique of Violence (Zur Kritik der Gewalt) it probably occupies an outsized prominence in my thinking on several things, buit in it Benjamin argues that the death penalty is the ultimate form of law establishing -- that the threat of violence(/force) behind law is what makes that law into a reality rather than a piece of writing and that in control over life and death being the ultimate form of violent power to hold over someone, capital punishemtn is useful for a legal system less because of its literal function and more because it so concretely manifests the law

"The opponents of these critics [of capital punishment] felt, perhaps without knowing why and probably involuntarily, that an attack on capital punishment assails not legal measure, not laws, but law itself in its origin. For if violence [...] is the origin of law, then it may be readily supposed that where the highest violence, that over life and death, occurs in the legal system, the origins of law jut manifestly and fearsomely into existence. In agreement with this is the fact that the death penalty in primitive legal systems is imposed even for such crimes as offenses against property, to which it seems quite out of "proportion." Its purpose is not to punish the infringement of law but to establish new law. For in the exercise of violence over life and death, more than in any other legal act, the law reaffirms itself." (online PDF version of source)

[andiwriteordie]

hello Andi. I am once again invading your inbox to talk about the possibilities of a Merlin AU bc I know you see the vision and it actually fits so perfectly??

Mike as Arthur

Will as Merlin

El as Gwen

Max as Morgana

Lucas as Lancelot

Dustin as Gwaine

Like?? With adjustments to the plot + character arcs and how events play out (like for example Lucas would fall in love w Max still not El but also elmax as morgwen possibilities), it fits them all so WELL especially Mike and Will as Arthur and Merlin. Even their families fit: Will growing up with a single mom in poverty who loves him, Mike growing up in wealth with a shitty asf dad that makes horrible decisions but Mike would be a much better leader than him-

anyway. Thoughts? I’m considering making a 5-10 chapter fic with 1-2 chapters per Merlin season after I finish the show but idk anyways I’m getting off track I mostly just wanted to hear ur thoughts on the concept bc I know you’re a merthur enthusiast and u have a Merlin AU wip rn 😎🫶

okay okay okay hi elli. i have thoughts on this, and it's been a while since i've thought about those thoughts but here i am today. to share with you my thoughts. some of them get a little funky weird controversial, so bear with me. (also. i say read all of this with caution if you're still watching merlin, bc i'm gonna try to not spoil too much of it, but i will be hitting on major character arcs that build throughout the show!)

the easy ones. will's merlin. mike's arthur. duh. easy peasy. all the parallels you just mentioned? perfect. literally byler as merthur works so well, and i just know modern byler would've loved this show. like mike starts watching it and gets so excited??? anyways.

i also think lucas is actually more of a mix of lancelot/gwaine, and dustin would be leon (though depending on where you are in the series, you might not have gotten to the point where leon is a more central character?). anyways, i think lucas is a mix of lancelot/gwaine because he has the same moral righteous and kindness of lancelot, but is definitely more brash like gwaine (love my boy planning to storm fucking hnl by himself lol). with dustin, leon's a very level-headed character, also arthur's second in command for later seasons with the knights, and so i think it fits with how mike and dustin are both the planners and dustin sorta steps up to help lead in mike's absence in s4!

now for the girls. so, i've gone back and forth on this, because for obvious reasons, the el/gwen parallel works because of the merlin/arthur/gwen and will/mike/el love triangle. like that's the most obvious interpretation of this. but then, as i was thinking about it (and honestly i was wandering down this rabbit hole while writing my merlin byler fic lmao), i was trying to think about where el having powers and just willel in general would fit into all of this?

so i started thinking about el/morgana, which then would um. make max/gwen. (i'll come back to that in a second, let me explain el/morgana first.) i'm just thinking about how morgana is one of the most powerful sorcerers we see in the show and how morgana and merlin are foils to each other. i think there's an episode that calls morgana the darkness to merlin's light. so like yes, merlin and arthur are two sides of the same coin and have their shared destiny, but likewise, morgana has always been that third part of their destiny (which is so fun once you explore the ancient religions and stuff this show loosely pulls inspiration from, because three is kind of a big number) in that she is connected to merlin.

so you think about willelmike, right? and obviously, el is our hero and protagonist of the show, so she's not gonna end up turning bad unlike morgana. but in the context of thinking about a merlin x st crossover, how interesting would it be if el did turn evil? because in st, we see this is a back and forth conversation el has with herself - is she the monster? is she good? or is she bad?

and i think about an el who actually did go with henry when prompted to in the lab. an el whose moral code would be shaped and manipulated by someone with an ulterior motive, someone who recognizes her power. because that, in my opinion, is what happened to morgana with morgause. morgana was terrified and alone because she had this secret which could get her killed, and morgause was the first to show that her magic could be good. so she trusted morgause and went spiraling down a path that led her to destruction because of how morgause manipulated her into thinking. i don't think morgana was ever inherently evil. i think the fear and manipulation motivated her and morphed into anger and a desire for revenge, because this poor woman was alone for so much of her story.

so, when i'm imagining a merlin x st au, i am imagining henry would take that morgause role. if we're following merlin canon, will and el never learn about each other's magic and spend their character arcs alone and motivated by fear, when they really could've found solace and love and acceptance in each other. if we're not following merlin canon, will decides not to be an idiot? and he tells el about his magic? and they become magic twins together, and look, el grew up as mike's sister essentially, so then will's basically her brother in law.

(also. the platonic elmike sibling vibes crack me up. like all the canon st jokes about how they're so family coded? that right there. merlin vibes. they're family. no dating your sister.)

anyways, so that then defaults us to having max as gwen, which i think would change her character a little bit. maybe instead of a romance between max and mike, it's more that sort of friendship that gwen and arthur do develop, because max challenges mike to be better and brings out the good parts of him - the parts that care about justice and about his people and about doing the right thing. and so mike, kind of feeling forced into having a queen because ya know. laws of the land and stuff, very tentatively asks max if she would ever consider stepping into that role because he believes she would be an excellent leader. and so that's when the engagement happens and stuff and it's for show for the people, and only like. will and max and mike and dustin know that obviously. and then through whatever circumstances, the engagement ends up called off, and unlike in merlin canon, it doesn't end up happening again, and max just becomes an advisor to mike, who remains single as a king until. ya know. magic is legalized and he marries will (not following canon lol. or he dies. and i cry again.

okay that's it! the end! :)

(does this make hopper gaius)

[mevekagvain]

Summary of noble history - HCs

(Text copied from messages)

a 'short' summary of mine is along the lines of nobles came to be 4 billion years ago and at that time were not humanoid but rather just floating aura wreathed souls reminescent of will-o-wisps. the first noble was also the first lord, and the other few firsts were the clan leaders of type 1 nobles. so one was the ???, two sisters for blersters, one for the drosia, one elenor, one kertia, one landegre, and one mergas. the noblesse came later and was a child of a lord who willingly took on certain powers that belonged to the lord and thus from then on the lord and their lineage lost those powers/were released of part of their burden.

the lords upon seeing certain super sapient species slowly goin extinct would sometimes feel pity and offer to make them nobles. thats how loyards (originally an anaerobic species feeding on souls) came to be 3.8 billion years ago, the agvains (hydras) were offered after them but they refused due to wariness and only accepted later when it was also offered to the siriana (sky dragons/dragons in gen except for sea dragons and hydras) 2.6 billion years ago, the kravei (sea dragons) were 2.4 billion years ago, the ru (supernatural winged tigers that were created by a diff supernatural species in order to guide their souls safely after death and lost their purpose once said species went extinct) were offered the chance and accepted 800 million years ago, and the tradio are an assorted group of fae who begged the nobles for sanctuary due to being hunted minorities and later became a clan 35 million years ago.

then 130k years ago the nobles of the time were sick of all the humanoids that would chase after them cos 'pretty lights' so the lord as a solution made them all take humanoid forms which is also when depending on au they went from asexual to sexual repro or from asexual to diff asexual repro lol. this worked out for a short while when their looks were considered strange but over time their appearances became peak beauty for everyone else and they started feeling extremely bothered again so when the siriana came across a supernatural realm, the nobles moved there. thus Lukedonia came to be 30k years ago from present day.

so nobles just kinda look at all the things humans do and go 'you'll all be gone millions of years from now and we will still remain. when our beloved home passes, we will remain. when our sun is gone, we will remain. as long as matter remains in the galaxy, so shall we, and so we will pass only shortly before it does'.

thus due to everything, nobles dont have organised religion and very few are religious at all aside from their obsession with the lords/noblesse lol. even the religious ones have beliefs usually that nobody else has so you wont ever find like a christian noble or something. speaking of, abrahamic religions (judaism, christianity, islam, etc) in my hcs stems from a noble writing shitty satire and failing to dispose of the book which humans later came across and used as inspo to write their own stuff.

then theres even crazier shit in that i refer to all my aus as worldcycles. basically any iteration of anything has happened, just in a diff cycle. the cycles go on and on and on, and the only person from within the cycles, lily (an immortal human) has ever been in more than one cycle due to his immortality just being that immortal lol. he only dies when he is granted reprieve by the overseers. the overseers refers to a group of beings that are called gods and angels but arent actually that. their purpose is to 'design' everything within a cycle (species, planets, physics, everything), keep the current cycle/s in check/functional, etc. i have some ocs in that group such as fa'ill, a 'god' whos role is to keep the cycles balanced, adam who is the prototype human/oid (aka the first ever design of a human species), eve/hawwah a prototype ww, lilith a prototype vampire, and the threes 'familiars' who are 'angels'. adam, hawwah and lilith were taken in by fa'ill as his children. in some worldcycles (aka aus) hawwah is frankensteins mother and in many worldcycles (aka almost always in my aus) he is raised by adam which is why hes so anachronistic historical inventions wise lol.

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

Some thoughts now that I’ve finished most of the Lee and Herring things I downloaded a few weeks ago (minus the Radio One music show, which I will listen to but it’s longer and I’m going to intersperse it with some Stewart Lee solo stuff I’ve not heard before so that’ll take a while).

- Fist of Fun was better than This Morning with Richard Not Judy.

- Fist of Fun season 1 was better than Fist of Fun season 2, though a lot of that is down to the set. Season 2 may have actually had better sketches. They just didn’t work as well in the shinier set.

- This Morning with Richard Not Judy season 2 was better than This Morning with Richard Not Judy season 1.

- I think the Fist of Fun TV show was better than Fist of Fun radio, but that may just be because I listened to Fist of Fun radio after seeing the Fist of Fun TV show, so the radio version involved a lot of stuff I’d heard before. However, I think a number of those jokes did genuinely work better in a visual format than an audio-only one, especially Peter Baynham’s bits.

- Lionel Nimrod was better than Fist of Fun radio. I always like a good theme.

- Those TMWRNJ crow puppets rather annoyed me at first, by the end of season 2 they were among my favourite parts.

- Other favourite parts across all of it: Simon Quinlank, the teacher sketches, Sunday Heroes (the Jesus and his disciple sketches), the unusual priest, The Ironic Review, their History of Alternative Comedy sketches and all the stuff about shitty comedy cliches, the Herring milk sketches, most bits across all their shows that were just Richard Herring and Stewart Lee playing themselves and going back and forth with each other

- Least favourite parts: king/queen of the show, both Mark Gatniss things (When Insects Attack and the gravity one), the curious orange (I feel like that was supposed to be one of the best bits, but I did not entirely get it), the animations (lettuce in season 1 and organs in season 2), the Rod Hull stuff, most of the TMWRNJ stuff that did “parody of a morning talk show” so well that it started to feel like it actually was a morning talk show

- I said in a previous post that I was surprised by how much the Stewart Lee from Lee and Herring was not that different from the Stewart Lee of his 21st-Century solo career. I mean, obviously he was different. But I’d expected him to be unrecognizable, and he wasn’t. So many of the mannerisms and speech patterns were familiar.

Having now seen and heard more it, I’ve noticed even more similarities. It’s not just the superficial stuff, you can actually see the beginnings of the type of comedy that Stewart Lee wanted to do. There are multiple jokes across multiple shows in which Stewart Lee does some long and drawn-out sketch with not enough immediately obvious payoff, and then he explains in his slow voice that he thinks it’s the repetition that makes it funny. There’s also a lot of self-referential stuff in there, a lot of running jokes that they’ll start in one show and pick up in another, and Stewart Lee does that in his stand-up as well. Also, Lee and Herring did plenty of talking shit about comedy tropes and specific other comedians, and of parodying religion in a way that shows a certain amount of actual knowledge of Christian mythology (not, like, scholar-level knowledge, but slightly more knowledge than the average person who makes a “Jesus isn’t real” joke). Both running themes of Lee’s stand-up.

I assume there were early versions of things that would turn up in Richard Herring’s later stand-up as well (I’m pretty sure Herring did a show called Lord of the Dance Settee, which is a joke he made in Fist of Fun and TMWRNJ), but I don’t know nearly enough about his stand-up to recognize them.

- Across all shows, there were a lot of jokes about Richard Herring being fat while Stewart Lee is not, and those jokes did not age well. Partly because, while there is still plenty of fatphobia in 2023, there is now a bit more cultural awareness that just calling people fat is not a great source of humour. They also did not age well because – keeping in mind that I use “fat” as the value-neutral adjective it is – the contrast of Richard Herring having that role compared to Stewart Lee does not work anymore.

It wasn’t even that accurate at the time. Richard Herring was only a little bit bigger than Stewart Lee in the 90s. I guess that’s just how it was with double acts – they had to pick any little difference between them and wildly exaggerate it. Maybe it still is like that, but I feel like comedy tropes have become less rigid in the last 20-30 years, so people don’t have to play up to type quite as strongly.

- Having said that, some things about their playing up to their differences were accurate. Like their frequent jokes about Stewart Lee being better than Richard Herring. I realize they had to do that as part of the double act trope, one takes the high status and one takes the low status and they run with that across everything they do. But they did get surprisingly specific about it sometimes, making repeated comments that Stewart Lee is smarter, better liked, and a funnier comedian than Richard Herring. All of which is… entirely true. Not sure how it was regarded at the time, but it was, at the very least, a prophecy that came true.

- There is one more part of the “Lee/Herring exaggerating their double act differences for comedic effect” thing that I have reason to believe is inaccurate. There were frequent jokes about how Richard Herring never got laid and never would, tied into the idea of him being the fat and ugly low status one and Stewart Lee being the smart and talented one who was also, in the words of Daniel Kitson when he once described Stewart Lee from the 90s, “fucking beautiful”.

Every time they made a joke about Richard Herring’s lack of success in that area, I immediately thought of this moment from Kitson’s radio show at the 2007 Melbourne Comedy Festival, on which Steve Hall tried to get listeners to call in if they wanted to sleep with him:

- I still believe this should be on the cover of all Edinburgh Fringe programs, as a message to comics, similar to the health warnings they put on cigarette cartons:

Warning: Stewart Lee is indestructible. You are not. Do not attempt to imitate him.

[pagesfromthevoid]

Blind Faith | m.m.

Matt Murdock x Avenger!reader

False God Drabble

In which half the universe disappears and Matt has to deal with the fall out

Word Count: 1.9k

Warnings: Angst and doubting religion. Shitty Taylor Swift references

Author’s Note: And to hold you over until actual plot comes along, here is another roll coaster of emotions.

The Taglist is CLOSED

Series Masterlist

“What are you doing?” He asked, though having heard most of the phone call, he knew.

Matt listened closely, eyes caught in flames but looking right at her. She was zipping up her jumpsuit —the black uniform she once wore as an Avenger still fit with ease. Slipped on like a glove, even with the few years that had passed since she wore it last. Steve had called; Natasha was on her way with a quintet.

“I have to go,” she offered as a response, pulling her hair into a tight ponytail. Then she turned to finally face him. “I’m sorry.”

“It’d be hypocritical to tell you not to go, wouldn’t it?”

Of course it would be. She asked him constantly not to go. Every chance she got, she asked him not to leave. Not to put on the mask. To stay home, or go out with her instead. But she never stopped him; she knew better. Being Daredevil was part of who he was —it was slowly becoming all he was, actually. But she never stopped him. After all, he knew there would be a day where it was her going and not him.

It seems today was that day.

“What’s the plan?”

“Get the stones, save the world?”

“Why do I feel like Captain Rogers doesn’t plan his battles out?”

“Because he doesn’t,” she grinned some, “but neither do you.”

“I can’t even argue with that,” he agreed, but the smile he tried to force didn’t come out as he reached for her.

“So much for being a good lawyer, huh?”

When he didn’t respond, she knew the joking was over. As he took her in his arms, she wrapped her arms around his neck. Something about this felt so much different than when he left. Maybe it was because he stuck to Hell’s Kitchen; she could always find him. Or because it was the first time since Germany that the exiled Avengers were together. Regardless, as they pressed their foreheads together, something twisted inside her.

“I’m going to be okay, Matt,” she promised, bumping her nose lightly against his.

“What if you’re not?” His grip on her waist tightened as he thought about it.

“I guess it’s the same as when you go,” she reminded him gently, “It’s a risk we take, and have accepted. This is what we do, right? Save people.”

He nodded mutely, unable to argue.

“I love you, Matthew,” she whispered.

The reality around them shifted suddenly —a feeling Matt had grown used to over time. It meant something great for him; but this time it felt wrong. Regardless, there she was, in the forefront of his mind. He’d seen memories of her in uniform; she’d shown him. But seeing it now, in the moment, made his heart ache. It felt wrong. Everything just felt off.

“I love you too, beautiful,” he whispered back, but stepped back some to take her in.

They both knew that this day might come. Knew that the road would get harder. And Matt needed to take in every detail; every inch of her before she was gone. His hands ran up her sides, trailing over the fabric of her uniform. Over her arms, up her neck where he lingered for just a moment too long. Then to her face, running his thumbs gently over her cheekbones and lips, tracing the shapes to hold onto. Just in case.

“I’ll be back before you know it,” she promised.

Being led by blind faith was hard enough without empty promises, though.

*****

Something was wrong.

No, no. Everything was wrong.

One second, he was listening to the city, keeping tabs on what was happening. The next second, half the heartbeats just…stopped. The voices ceased. There was an uptick of things crashing to the ground, cars crashing, people suddenly panicking.

Then the screaming started.

It was everywhere; he couldn’t pinpoint where it was coming from because it was the entire city.

The panic set in as he called her.

“You can leave me a message but I probably won’t call you back unless you’re my lawyer,” her voicemail chimed, the joke no longer funny as he called again and again and again. Getting the same message each time.

He called Karen and got the same response.

Foggy was the only to pick up immediately, and with the crack and fear in his voice, Matt felt panic rise in his chest.

An ocean separated her and him, and there was no way to know what happened next.

*****

“Where is she?” He demanded, Foggy in tow as he stormed into the Avenger’s Compound.

There was no security to keep them out. Those who remained didn’t even seem phased when he came in, as if they expected it. Matt had only ever met Stark —involuntarily —as well as Rhodes, but he knew everyone else. And he was sure they knew of him, at the very least.

Matt had hoped by showing up, he’d hear or feel her. He could pick her heartbeat out of a crowd with ease; knew it like the back of his hand. But there was no heartbeat. No falter from the energy her powers emanated. No tell sign that she was there at all.

“Matt,” Foggy mumbled, grabbing his arm.

Rogers is who spoke up first. “Mr. Murdock, she…” There was a hesitation there and Matt knew what that meant. “She was one of those who vanished.”

The world froze in that second and he couldn’t breathe. Everything just went numb inside. She didn’t die in a fight; she just…she turned to dust. She didn’t even get a chance to fight back.

Just like the city; the world. She was taken and something inside him snapped.

*****

In the five years since the Blip, Matthew Michael Murdock became reckless and stupid.

Well, more reckless and stupid, at least.

He fought with little desire to keep himself alive, or anyone else for that matter. There was a war between his anger and his belief in God. Something about losing the love of his life being part of God’s plan killed him on the inside; ate away at the devotion he held in such high regard. If one person —alien, whatever —had the ability to wipe off half the planet —perhaps there was no higher power to judge him. Maybe he had been fearing a false god his whole life.

He didn’t want to believe that though.

He wanted to continue to believe that there was a purpose for him to exist, that he couldn’t falter. But every day got harder. And as the years began to tally up, with empty promises from Steve Rogers and Natasha Romanoff about fixing it, he was starting to lose himself to violence. To the hatred, and rage. She was his voice of reason, for the most part. Without her, he was left begging for forgiveness every night on his knees.

Tonight would have been no different if it wasn’t for the sudden, overwhelming sound of millions of voices crying out around him. It was the same overwhelming feeling from five years ago; that same panic and confusion that he couldn’t pinpoint. But it was louder now; there were heartbeats again. There was screaming and crying but they were from joy.

But then a day passed. And then two. He still hadn’t heard from her. It still rang and rang until her voicemail came up. He wanted to think she was recovering, unable to get her phone. But Matt was scared to have hope, though. If he had hope, and she wasn’t there, that would be it. He wouldn’t come back from the darkness.

But then, on the fifth day after everyone returned, his phone rang. She had set it to a song, something that was indistinct to the world but not to him, in case she called while he was on patrol. He remembered telling her it was embarrassing, having a Taylor Swift song ring out whenever she called him. She insisted it was funny. It had become so important over the last few years.

It was that song, though, that played. Clear as the day she had set it up for him. Matt’s hands shook as he fumbled for his phone, pulling it out of his pocket and put it to his ear.

“Matt?”

Her voice echoed in his head, and he thought he was going to throw up. He couldn’t even respond; he had spent nights dreaming of this moment. Hearing her say his name again. Seeing her face in his head, holding her in his arms —it was a distant dream that he never thought would happen again. Everything was overwhelming for a moment, overloading his senses as he took a few steps back. Tears filled his eyes.

“Matt, are you there?” She asked, voice shaking as she held back her own tears.

“You’re alive,” he managed to say, voice cracking as he fell to his knees on the rooftop. “Where are you?”

“I’m…I’m about to leave Tony’s funeral,” she whispered and he could hear her swallow her tears down. “I-I’m so sorry, Matt.”

“Please come home.”

“I’ll be there before you know it,” she promised.

*****

No words needed to be spoken when the front door of the apartment opened up. Matt had been pacing for the hour it had taken her to drive from the funeral to the city, unable to keep himself from resting. How could he relax until she was in his arms again? He couldn’t. That’s the answer.

He didn’t even wait for the door to open, honestly. Reality had shifted around him; except this time it was what she remembered from five years ago. This was the first time it was so glaringly obvious it wasn’t real for him; she showed him what she remembered. The door opened and there she stood, wearing the same uniform as before but it was torn to shreds from battle. Cuts and bruises littered her skin, and she looked like she had been thrown through the subway system several times over.

The scene faltered though, then disappeared. The exhaustion from everything had zapped any strength she had left, and holding the illusion was far too difficult. But it didn’t matter as he pulled her into his arms, hugging her tight against his chest. Her arms wrapped around his middle as she buried her face into his shirt, sobbing now as she did so. Matt followed suit, crying hard as he held her close to him.

They stayed like that for what felt like hours, crying in the doorway of the apartment. No one questioned it as they would go by, knowing well that this was an important reunion. But finally, they had no more tears left to cry as they pulled away from one another, though not far as they rested their foreheads together.

“I can’t believe you’re really back,” he finally breathed, trying to remain calm. His voice struggled though, hoarse from the crying.

“I told you I’d be back,” she reminded him, sniffling as she did.

“Wish you would have warned me it was going to be five years later.”

“I told you we don’t plan out our battles very well.”

There was silly laughter between the two, taking the overwhelming stress and wiping it away. Almost forgotten; though Matt was certain he’d never forget how bad it was for a long time.

“Do you want to talk —“

“No,” she quickly interrupted, shaking her head. “Not tonight. Tonight I just want to be with you.”

He nodded, pulling back to cup her face. Regardless of if he could see it, he had it memorized. But she had new scars, new pieces of her that he needed to remember and map out. Though, he did too. They’d spend the remainder of the night holding each other. Crying, laughing, crying again until they fell asleep.

It would be the first time in five years he slept soundly without nightmares.

———

Series Masterlist

———

Taglist (CLOSED): @thebisexual-disaster @chims-kookies @ferxaniti @heybabyshae @notalxx @gothicxbarbie @dark-night-sky-99 @blacxk-moony @celestialissues @pinkybee926 @bex-tk1 @jasontoddthezombie @killthebutt4fly @softieekayy @user897sblog @cbloodmarch @ammiddlechild @venusriver @unabashedlyswimmingtimemachine @yikes-buddy @buckyspetal @baconlover001 @r3ad3r-123 @flimsysquid @andrewgarfield4life @reh-llik @messagesinthesky @thetimeslug @johnmurpys-sass @dreamypanda @happyfern2 @svft-cas

[justfandomtings]

Character study of William murderface

Cw: child abuse, ptsd, trauma, internalized homopobia,ect.

Throughout the show, murderface has been presented as a shitty person that is untalented, leeches off of his friends/ fame, and honestly just seem to have gotten lucky when getting into dethklok.

Which is true, but I want to look in a little deeper why he's like this. (Note:this might be kinda head cannonish. I have some examples from the actual show but since we never got a deep backstory for murderface or get many murderface centric episodes I'll be filling in some empty spaces.)

Murderface in the show

Murderface is extremely self loathing and has had moments where he just goes so hard in on himself.

Season 1 episode 1

We see this in the very beginning when he refers to himself as the 'fat one.'

It could've been played off as a simple joke, which it was in the show for the audience watching. But in the show's universe and for the character, this will be an occurring thing.

This continues in

Season 1 episode 3

It's murderface's birthday and the boys throw murderface a party. During his party murderface is shown complaining and being stand-offish. You would think the last thing he would want is a party, yet he still sends out invites to his bandmates. (Note: noticed how the invites were sent right after murderface left the room? Idk it just seemed like he was embarrassed or scared his bandmates would laugh at him for wanting a birthday party. He even tried to act non chalant when the invite said "come if you want, who gives a piss." when they did throw him a party he still came)

When the boys pulled a little, kinda mean but harmless prank on him, literally giving him the gift of nothing. Murderface was fucking hurt, like genuine tears almost left this man's eyes when he come into his room to get his thing's and 'run away'.

Of course the boys did give murderface an actual gift, which honestly had a lot of thought and effort put into it. This makes murderface cry a tear. (Of blood but you know still a tear)

This is the example of the boy's showing they care for murderface. But even after this big gesture murderface will continue to believe the opposite.

The show continues and we get the first and honestly only backstory for murderface.

Season 1 episode 6

When the boys get a band therapist, we find out the tragic murder/suicide of murderface's parents. His father killing his mother then himself with a chainsaw, this whole thing happens while murderface as a baby sits in his highchair unaware while eating his cereal. This flashback makes murderface kinda sit there in shock as he pisses his pants.

(Note: murderface has said in the show that his appearance was the reason his parents are dead. If that really was the case, why didn't his father kill him or at least killed him after he killed his mother? Why did his father just kill his wife and himself? Never laying a single hand on murderface? Will get back to that later.)

Season 1 episode 9

Bringing up this episode may be confusing to some for bringing this up since it doesn't focus solely on murderface. He doesn't even get that much screen time this episode. But I would like to point out his actions in that episode.

In this episode the boys adopt a young teen boy they name fatty ding dong and raise him as their son for probably couple of weeks. While the boys all had their...interesting way of raising him. Murderface had the most physical fights with fatty ding dong. Mostly when we misbehaved. Like hitting him, shocking him non stop with a tazer, beating him for eating his civil war boots ect.

I just like to point out that murderface was raised by his grandparents. We'll come back to more of that later in the post.

Season 1 episode 11

The band gets reunited with their families and what we see from murderface and his family is that they are very violent towards each other. Murderface tries to choke his grandmother when looking in at her mouth as she chewed. Pickles and Nathan had to snap himself out of it, murderface apologized saying it was his fault for looking to deeply.

Like that was some kind of trigger from his past that made him black out and get violent.

He was also highly against buying his grandfather a wheelchair, only doing so because the boys agreed to be nice towards their family to get them to leave.

Even when they were spending time with each other, they never touched each other William kept his distance. Only ever touching if it was fight related.

In the same episode we see why, Stella was so physically abusive towards murderface, spraying fucking pepper spray into his eyes when he did..nothing? He wasn't aggressive or was even part of the issue. She just attacks him because she had to change his diapers?

This belittlement and physical abuse continues everytime they are together on screen.

So to bring back up season 1 episode 9. With how murderface treated fatty ding dong we can assume that's how we was being treated while under the care of his grandparents. Children soak up things like a sponge. Whether you think they remember it or not. Many psychological reports has shown that children will mimick and repeat behaviors and actions their caretakers do. If it's right or not, children will do things because that's what this adult dose. That's what they see at home. It's normal to them if that is the environment they grow in. Even if the child feels like something is off or wrong. They won't know exactly what is wrong or why because it's all they know.

So if this is how murderface was raised, which highly may be the case since we see Stella physically abuse murderface even as an adult. He might have actually thought this is how you raise a child, this is what you do to a child when they misbehaved. Nobody in his life has corrected murderface or explain to him that this way of discipline isn't ok or even discipline to begin with, it is abuse.

So, we are to believe with the information we have now. Is that murderface was most likely abused as a child, probably all the way up till he was able to get away from them and join dethklok.

With this information we can apply this to his behavior in the show. A side effect from child abuse is suicidal behavior. Throughout the show Murderface would now and then casually commit about hurting or killing himself.

Season 1 episode 2

Murderface casually states if it'll be brutal enough for him to just take his life after Nathan deltes another record. Or when the boys kindly ask him to stop eating beans, he gets oddly emotional and says he'll just starve to death then.

Another effect from child abuse is eating disorders and obesity.

You already know this a big part of murderface's character. There are times where he's seen constantly eating junk food, to eating nothing and just drinking coffee, to the doctor pointing out the back of his teeth are decaying. And murderface informs him it's from throwing up his food.

He also gets teased for his weight being called chubby and fat, ect. Murderface has a hard time with his weight, his excessive eating may even be seen as an unhealthy coping mechanism.

Other effects such as aggressive behavior, low self esteem, dissociation, ect. Is also shown within the show.

Season 1 episode 15

Murderface gets into a motorcycle accident and is sent into the hospital. This near death experience gets him on a religious journey. Maybe to find answers to certain questions or possibly wondering where he was going to go if he did die? Is he a good person, why do certain things happen to people, what's the meaning of life?

He asked the guys if he really deserved to live. Does he really deserve to be brought onto this world, being a part of a pretty good and rare type of life.

The boys being emotionally closed off don't really answer his question. They honestly brush it off but they do go along with murderface on his spiritual journey.

He eventually chooses no religion, but I feel that near death experience stuck with him. He either decided that life was too short so might as well live it, or a more cynical view on life. That it's meaningless then who cares if he died?

Season 2 episode 11

This is probably an episode where murderface was the most sad and self loathing. (This and another episode I can't wait to get to) after his concert, he felt pretty shitty with the outcome and had lead him to feel that he does not deserve the life he has now and wonders why he even shows his face. Just wanting the spot light for one.

Which is really interesting. Because comparing season 1 with the other 3. Murderface in season one had...fans. There were people who genuinely liked him. The prime example is his birthday episode.

When he had a solo, just like in season 2 episode 11. People were cheering his name. Practically screaming at the rooftops for him. So what happened?

We already know that murderface is the least liked member of the band, but even then he still had fans. Hell people committed terrorists attacks just for him on his birthday.

Maybe it was just a loud minority? Who knows, but if in the show as time went on less and less people had him as his favorite or even just liked him would probably get him really insecure.

After the concert failure, Charles let's him host a Nas car event. Which I'd think would've gone actually well if you know, the dethklok curse wasn't a thing.

Also as murderface was planning the event people around him didn't really support him or help him out. Which is mostly murderface's fault, he has a lack of focus and doesn't really plan things through. This is a good reason for partners and others outside wanting to work with dethklok not want to work with murderface. It costs money and a lot of time to do all the things related to dethklok. And murderface's flakeyness is a valid reason for business and others to not have faith in him when related to these things.

BUT! (This is a little bit of projection here) as someone who also has a lack of focus and hard time to get things done. That doesn't mean I don't want to do said thing, that doesn't mean I want to waste others time. I simply have a hard time focusing, I need structure and that little reminder to get things done. But the difference between me and murderface is that I'm not a billionaire.

I am not apart of a popular metal band, with all the money in the world, with a manager that will clean up every little mess I make.

I have more risk, whatever I fuck up will effect me. I will suffer the consequences. Murderface won't. (Also he's a fictional character..so reality won't have any affect on him lol)

But yea, I believe if murderface would suffer from his consequences then he'd be a bit more on things. Also I feel murderface's mental health issues play a huge role in things.

His fear that he's not good enough, eating disorders, ect. Can really mess up your focus.

So, now to the infamous episode. Dethvanity.

Season 4 episode 8

In this episode Murderface in nominated for the most brutal looking award and this. Fucks. Him. Up.

So much so that he actually hallucinates his bandmates and Charles calling him ugly and other things that they never even said.

When he goes to the plastic surgeon, he tells him. A complete stranger, that he hates himself. For murderface to actually admit this deep issue that he's been keeping deep down. For him to show vulnerability to a stranger is pretty sad.

When he goes to Nathan to borrow money, he tells a story of a 'boy' that was so ugly that he's driven his parents to murder suicide. Again he's calling himself ugly and blaming himself for his parents death. (Were going to get back to that too.)

After murderface gets the surgery he days dream about what would happen if he was beautiful. Finally being accepted and able to say fuck you to all those that were shit to him.

Of course, it doesn't end like that. He's face gets infected and is even more ugly than before.

This episode was pretty messed up. Murderface didn't get what he thought would give him validation, he looks down on himself more, and he is humiliated front of 100s of people.

This whole shit show probably validated all the negative thoughts he had for himself.

Next we'll talk about his internalized homopobia. Murderface...is definitely..not straight. He's not gay either he does have sexual attraction to women but his uncomfortably and very interesting moments and visions say he might like more than just that.

Season 2 episode 5

Murderface has a weird thing with eating 'penis' shaped objects or watching other eating said shaped objects.

He has a lot of weird moments where he gets really close to one of his bandmates and just whispers something in their ear. Specifically Pickles and Skwisgaar.

He just said fuck it and tried to bang toki while they were in the submarine.

Had hallucinations of cutting between women, men, animals, even his own grandmother and was distraught when he had a small moment of admitting he way gay.

There's no real specific reason why or how murderface is this scared of being gay. But I feel it may also be with how he grew up. He was probably been told it was wrong to be gay and how immoral it was to like men and you'll burn in hell if you do. Also being gay wouldn't be 'brutal' or 'manly'.

And not to shit on metal heads but you know. They're not the...most..exclusive group of people.

I think murderface is scared to accept he's gay because his grandparents made him feel he would be a bad person if he was or get kicked out of the band if he was.

So, after all I laid on the table, let's wrap this up. Back to the blaming himself of his parents deth. I believe, Williams parents didn't kill/murder themselves because he has ugly. I like to think the opposite, I believe his parents actually dearly cared for him. I think his father had some serious mental issues or something else pushed him over the edge.

It could be anything really, maybe his dad was crazy, maybe it had something to do with the curse. I like to think they both cared for him his dad just..idk snapped.

I'm assuming murderface's grandparents are his dads parents. And seeing how they treated murderface they most definitely treated his dad the same.

Or, it wasn't murder/suicide at all. Buckle in because it's all tv theory over here. I have a hard time to believe that murderface remembered, in such detail in fact. How his parents died, in the flashback he looks to be 7 to 8 months? Traumatic event yes, but there's no way a baby can remember such a thing.

I think, Stella lied to murderface about how his parents died. I think it was just some evil twisted thing she said to make murderface feel terrible about himself. His parents probably unfortunately died in say a car accident or health related issues. But the main thing is how guilty murderface feels, how terrible he feels that he thinks he was the reason he killed his parents when that's far from the truth.

It was either an unfortunate accident or his father killing themselves. But it is not murderface's fault.

The physical abuse from his grandparents, the guilt of believing he's the reason for his parents death, his aggressive internalized homopobia, lack of support, the bullying from his bandmates, body issues/eating disorder, and it just keeps going.

It's no fucking wonder why the man is like this. Don't get me wrong, murderface is an asshole and is responsible for most of his actions.

But that's still a lot of shit for someone to go through.

That's all I have, this is really long. But I hoped you like this little thread. There's still more to his character but this is long enough.

[mxrcayong]

part of @nct-writers​’s cafe resonance collab!

genre: fluff, a more UK-based pov of university

summary: jisung, a college student now looking for a job, has decided to apply for a job at the local café. he thought being friends with the manager and its employees has it perks; from unlimited free coffee to whatever pastries haven’t been eaten by the end of the day. needless to say; the perks must end somewhere. 

word count: 2317 words

note: i didn’t make the divider!!

College students practically live by coffee shops. If university was a religion, the on-campus coffee shop would be the bible. Daily, college students’ breath in the coffee beans like oxygen, feel the permanent imprint of coffee mug or a ‘to go’ cup on their lips. They’re surrounded by the smells of different fruity pastries and savory snacks, and the sounds of students either chatting or typing away on their computers. 

It’s no wonder that the university coffee shop was practically a hub of activity. When you sit down to work at Café Resonance, it’s feels like you’re a part of a bigger and collective community, stressing for assessments or just taking a break from their hectic university schedules. It’s especially hectic when you’re a full-time student and work part time.   

“Do I really need to get a job?” Jisung sighed, scratching his head as he leant against the barista’s counter. His six closest friends were working behind the counter: using the coffee machines and decorating the pastries. “Can’t I just use your employee discount on everything?” 

Jaemin furrowed his eyebrows. “You know I want to, my little mouse.” He teased as he placed another order on his tray, “But I can only put the café employee discount on so many things.” He practically sung as he left, heading to a table to bring another set of students their own cups of their own ambrosia.     

From the cash register, Haechan had just finished taking the orders of the last bunch of the line and immediately replaced Jaemin’s place next to Jisung. “You can always just become a sugar baby.” He suggested, coming over to the display case to grab one of the pastries to heat up per the customer’s order. “Or a pole dancer… aren’t you a good dancer?” 

Jisung immediately protested. “Firstly, no. Secondly, is it even legal? I literally only became an adult this year.” 

“Actually…” Haechan started to counter, only to be interrupted by Mark approaching with a raised hand and a dirty mop. 

“Stop telling everyone to become a sugar baby.” Mark chided as he ducked to get back behind the counter, drudging the cleaning supplies with him. “You do realize that if someone does become a sugar baby, they aren’t entitled to paying for your shit either.” In response, Haechan grumbled under his breath as he gave the bewildered customer overhearing the odd conversation their fruity treat. 

Jisung has visited his closest friends enough to know that working at the café is like a beautifully choreographed dance. It moves like clockwork; with the six doing their roles diligently and without question. So, it’s not unusual for his friends to come and go during the conversation – all taking part whilst separating themselves at the same time. 

“Why don’t you just ask Chenle if you could work here?” Renjun suggested, coming out from the back room where he started baking some more pastries – obvious through his powdered apron. “We all work here already, and we can go through the ropes with you.” 

Jeno immediately stepped in and basically rejected the offer. “Do you remember the last time we hosted an event and Jisung wanted to help?” He prompted, before chuckling. “He tried to wash the food with dish soap…and he broke the broom when cleaning!” 

Almost as if the thought of teasing Jisung summons him, Chenle came out of seemingly nowhere. “Didn’t he leave the broken broom on the floor and just started playing video games?” Jeno, Haechan, and Renjun nodded – remembering the mess the 00-line apartment was that night.  

“Not the best party we hosted.” Jaemin commented, going around the counter to make his own drink now that the list of waiting customers is gone. “But, still, Jisung learns fast. I think he could work here.” 

Chenle let out an introspective hum, before leaning over to whisper to Haechan. With a questionable look on their faces, Chenle decided to call Jisung into the back room and in his makeshift ‘managers office’ (a perk of being family with the owner of the university café). “I’ll consider your application, but I can’t do any nepotism.” He started, “so, you must go through the whole application process.” He paused. “You must come up with your own recipe.” 

With a rule to not discuss recipes with his ‘potential future co-workers’ – which Chenle weirdly specified as everyone but Haechan, Jisung had to get straight to work. In all honesty, he had no baking experience nor ever made a drink without a guiding recipe.

While his six closest friends were out of the equation, he had another friend he could reach out to; Y/N. 

You were in his freshmen orientation group earlier this year. Not going to lie, you initially thought of each other as familiar faces who you’d occasionally wave at or nod in acknowledgement when you walk past each other. However, you later found yourself eating in the same hall cafeteria…and then the same hall pantry…and then, it clicked. You two lived only four doors away from each other in your university hall. 

Needless to say, you two ran midnight McDonald trips basically on a weekly basis. You became integral to Jisung’s daily routine; from waking each other up for breakfast to storming into each other rooms, armed with complaints and rants about the shitty professor who made you read 300 pages for one night. Even on your busiest days, you two would always pick each other up for the hall provided breakfasts and dinners. 

So here you were - Jisung was slouching down on your desk chair while you were resting on the bed, your back against the wall and a pillow in your lap as you tried to help Jisung solve his current problem. “Well…did Chenle give you a prompt or anything?” 

Jisung shook his head, groaning back. “It’s not like we have a kitchen to try and bake either! We only have fridges and a microwave and a….” He tried to recall what was on the floor pantry. 

“Just a fridge and a microwave.” You added. “That means pastries are off the table…how about a drink?” 

Jisung groaned again. “I have a hard time making pre-made coffee!” 

You couldn’t help but chuckle; you remembered that day. It was a scary time for you; your credit card company sent you a text about a fraudulent use of your student account. Not only did you end up stressing to the point of crying, but you also learned it was a false alarm. Luckily, while still reeling from the anxiety inducing news, you ran into Jisung as he was leaving his room. He then took you to the pantry to try and cheer you up with coffee…however, a fire alarm went off and practically deafened the whole university housing cohort for hours. 

And poor Jisung…Jisung was just an awkward little mouse, trying to look innocent as he saw his exhausted neighbors clamber out into the park due to his attempt of making pre-made coffee. 

“Well…you have me. This isn’t hopeless.” Climbing off the bed, you pretended to dust yourself off. “So, let’s go to the pantry? Another one of our…”

Jisung quickly furrowed his brows, interjecting while you still spoke “I don’t think this can be considered snacking…”

“Pantry-time dates.” You stuttered, obviously unsure of the title. Usually, you call them ‘cup noodle dates’ or ‘popcorn dates’; a joke that ran through your small group of friends as well as the resident advisors at the university hall. 

No one likes being in the pantry. Especially the second floor. For one, things always get stolen; from cutlery to a six pack of coke. Secondly, the few times people use the microwave to heat up their meals, they tend to leave the leftovers to rot on the windowsill. But you and Jisung sit there together; maybe because something about it feels open and comfortable, despite the terrible smell. Plus…the two of you placed bets on who could be the thief when people awkwardly clamber on by, and if on one of these ‘dates’ you catch the thief obviously taking something that isn’t theirs? Even better. 

But today… you two will have to be the forsaken thieves. 

“So someone put chocolate powder in the fridge…” You commented incredulously, especially as this fridge is known for freezing things into ice in minutes. “There’s some…expired milk.” Jisung watched as you searched through the fridge for any hidden treasures; feeling more and more unsure of himself as you listed more and more ingredients. “Oh, okay, some non-expired milk. That will be useful.” 

“We can make a latte?” Jisung offered, now on his phone searching up popular café drinks. 

“Yes!” You enthused, finally feeling like this trip to the pantry isn’t useless after all. “But…we should probably write an apology note to the people we’re stealing from.” 

It’s been almost five hours in the pantry. Countless of people came in (however, this time you tried not to place bets as you knew who the real thieves were tonight) and would just stare at the two of you, arguing over a kettle of milk. Even your neighbor Victor came in; having sat and watched you two for a good while (which made Jisung extra cautious; he’s had a theory about him being the forsaken pantry thief for a while). Victor, however, said you two should have a cooking show, to which you scoffed while Jisung basked in the compliment. This very same compliment crossed Victor off of Jisung’s “potential criminals” list. 

Eventually, you had a drink in front of you. A chocolate latte that Jisung insisted on putting salt in, as “Modern Family said it was a good idea”. Admittedly, the first ten versions of this drink were absolute failures; making you go to the bathroom numerous times to vomit out the thick and almost flour-like texture.  

So, for your final check, the two of you grabbed the non-eaten pastries Jisung brought home from the café. Hopefully, this will act as a palette cleanser; especially since tasting all of the failed drinks probably have messed with your taste buds and lowered all sorts of expectations. 

After taking bites into the Suh-ndwitch and Henpretzel, you two finally took sips of the drink you attempted to make since 10pm – with Jisung making far too many references to the Powerpuff Girls opening theme. 

Alas – the taste that flooded their senses wasn’t at all bad, no. Nor was it ‘a little bit of sugar and everything ice’, but it was something you’d expect from Starbucks. You two immediately squealed out of excitement, ignoring the fact that you probably woke the neighboring rooms up at three in the morning. Jisung immediately went over to hug your waist, spinning you around as fast as he could; before something unexpected happens. 

You felt his lips on yours; tasting like chocolate and leftover ingredients that were remnants from his palette cleanser of a sandwich. The feeling was foreign; you never expected to kiss Jisung. He was your best friend, your neighbour; but his lips were soft…and something about this felt right. 

But then the door slammed opened. A zombie-like RA came in and you two immediately jumped to different sides of the room. “I know you two always do your pantry dates, but…” The RA started, obviously sluggish from being woken up at 3am. “We got noise complaints.” 

Jisung awkwardly coughed, apologized, and ran away; leaving you confused in the corner of the pantry. 

Café Resonance were never busy Friday evenings. People were most likely out pubbing or preparing for their weekends of antics. So when Jisung stormed in with a recipe in hand, he wasn’t afraid to celebrate as loudly as if he had just won the Olympic World Cup. “I got the recipe! Can I please have the job?” He practically pleaded, dropping the piece of paper with messy handwriting and the sample drink you two whipped up again the night prior. On top of the page with chocolate colored stains were the words; “Hamji Choco Latte” with (served hot or cold)  at the bottom.

“A recipe?” Everyone but Haechan and Chenle looked confused; with the latter two smirking in the corner of the room. But as soon as Haechan cracked and let out a loud laugh, Mark turned around and immediately recognized the culprits of this misunderstanding. 

“Bruh,” Chenle let out throughout his charming ‘dolphin laugh’, “You had the job – I was just messing with you.” 

Haechan pouted, approaching Jisung to ruffle his hair. “My sweet, small, dumb idiot…how much I love you.” He placed a sloppy kiss at the corner of his head, making Jisung immediately try to scrub it off. 

Jisung scowled, upset he let himself get fooled by his best friends. “At least I got a girlfriend from it…” He mumbled, more to himself, but forgetful of how Jeno’s ears can pick up on anything. It was from my ASMR stint, Jeno would say. 

“WHAT!?” He exclaimed, as if Jisung getting a girlfriend would happen the day pigs would fly. 

“I sent you to make a café recipe, not a love potion!” Chenle cackled even more; while his fellow friends made him explain what happened. 

By the time the store closed, Jaemin gave Jisung the ‘talk’ and warned that although they spent nights in each other’s rooms before, Jisung and you must be ‘safe’ and ‘protected’. 

People always say the first people you become friends with at university don’t always stay friends for life. People tend to clash, find their hobbies, and go different ways. But Jisung was lucky. He met you; his best friend and now his other half. And despite the annoying prank Chenle made that wasted hours of your time, Chenle was right; the Hamji Choco Latte was basically a love potion as it brought the hidden infatuation you had for each other to light.  

Now, every time he picks you up from your lecture hall, he brings one extra-large chocolatey drink to share. 

“Email sent out to residents of NCU Hall: 

Dear residents of the second floor, 

The person who has been stealing cultlery and food has been identified. Victor Cho will be coming by to return any items that may have belonged to you.”

Jisung screamed at the top of his lungs when he got this email. “I TOLD YOU SO!” 

[teachingtales]

I’ve had to answer this a couple times already so I want to share it with you to help make some sense of the Capitol Hill Attack. In bold are the questions/comments from someone else and then my response follows. 

I don't know what these people expected by doing this. We must first remember that these are not the "average person". These are people who firmly believe in an underlying persecution. I grew up in such a cult, where we were taught that everyone is persecuting us, secretly or overtly. To account for the fact that we were part of a religious majority in the US, we were taught that the "other Christians" were not "true" Christians. They were liars who pretended to believe in God hoping for eternal life, but would vote for "worldly and Satanic" ideas like gay marriage or abortion.

These people genuinely believe that the entire political system of the United States is a Satanic cult that sacrifices children. They are told not to donate blood because the Satanic Leaders (politicians and celebrities) steal this blood in order to use it for youth (by putting it on their skin or ingesting it or both). In some cases, young Christian children are stolen and drained of blood for this purpose. They believe that Trump, and only Trump, was fighting a secret battle against the Powers That Be. They believed that Trump's lack of presidential activity/effects was due to him being far too busy fighting the secret Satanists. In other words, the fact he was ineffective (in public) meant he was effective (in private).

So, to your question: what did they expect by doing this? Any or all of the following:

die a glorious death for the man hand-selected by Jesus, thus gaining access to Heaven

they believed they would find the "hidden votes", exposing the Satanic Politicians and showing the world they were really right this whole time

force another recount, which would finally prove that Trump actually won

The election was fair, there's no damning evidence of election fraud and Trump's legal bullshit is baseless and a desperate attempt to cheat the system.

True. But these are not reasonable people we are dealing with. In their minds, the lack of evidence is the evidence, that cheating the system was done so well that they made sure to really cover their tracks. Oddly, they also believe that it was done so sloppily that they do have evidence in the form of a video that Trump referenced multiple times in his Georgia Phone Call. It doesn't matter that the actual, unedited footage wholly disagrees with Trump's accusations; remember, he was hand-selected by Jesus, and the people in possession of the unedited footage are hand-selected by Satan. This, then, means Trump's video and Trump's claims are automatically correct, while anyone else is a liar and holds forgeries. After all, Lucifer is "the Father of Lies", so his agents (politicians) surely can lie effectively.

Again, we are left with this problem: the lack of evidence is the evidence.

Storming the Capitol was a shitty idea, what was going to change? People are dead because of this "overthrow". The government wasn't going to be affected by this.

In addition to what I mentioned earlier, they have a very small view of the world. These are people who typically believe the Earth is only 6000 years old and evolution cannot happen because they cannot fathom the long periods of time it takes. These are people who believe that those of us outside of the US are all collectively lying about the SARS-CoV-2 virus so we can hurt President Trump's reputation. They cannot understand scale. They are the people who watch movies like “Independence Day”, where a single person who has no knowledge of alien computers can take down the entire fleet. They don't understand how complex things really are. Thus, they genuinely think a "last stand" type of attack on a building will bring on the glorious end to this troubled tale.

Trump repeatedly bashed people who protested for BLM and said it was violent, unnecessary, etc. But when people riot and kill in his name he's just like "well they didn't do anything wrong".

This is unfortunately an easy one to answer: if they're against me, they are wrong...but if they are for me, they are right.

This is a classic "in-group/out-group" type of thinking. In-Group: the group you belong to Out-Group: the group you do not belong to (often with directly opposing views) In this type of thinking, you stereotype the Out-Group by their worst actors but your worst actors in your In-Group are different. We can see this in the media in the form of the following examples:

Example A: foreigners who attack something on national soil are "terrorists", but domestic attackers are "troubled individuals"

Example B: if the majority is white, a 17 year-old black male who shoots some people is written about in the news as a "violent man" or "man opened fire on innocent victims". If the shooter is a 17 year-old white male, the news is characterizes him as a "troubled teen" or "boy open fires at school, family wonders where they went wrong"

Example C: if the minority religion has a passage in their holy book that says "Women are less than men", it's because that religion is clearly false and laughably erroneous; if the majority religion has a passage in their holy book that says "Women are less than men", it's not sexist and just needs to be understood in cultural context

The subconscious reasoning for this type of thinking is very tribal but also ego-preserving...that we each believe we are always making the most correct and most reasonable/logical choices, so if someone makes a different choice, that person and choice are unreasonable and illogical.

None of this excuses the behavior, but I hope it helps shed some light on this type of extreme thought process. 

[adifferenttime]

Honest Hearts: A Rough Rewrite

Hey! I’ve been working on an Honest Hearts rewrite-type-thing for a bit and figured I’d solicit feedback/assemble a post to store some of these ideas.

A detailed explanation of the premise is under the cut, but I’ve made this as a more interesting reintroduction to major locations, along with the characters who live there. I also have some lore consisting of letters, scripture, and holotapes that’s still in the early stages, along with a complete companion wheel for Salt-Upon-Wounds (he’ll follow you around for a little if you decide to help him out). Endings are now finished as well. I’m not planning on expanding this into a full mod, but I’m assembling everything in Twine so I can utilize branching dialogue and mimic skill checks.

I want to keep adding to and editing this because I’m having fun with it, so if you have any input, let me know!

Essentially, the story proceeds as written up until the point where Daniel sends you to either kill the White Legs or destroy their war totems. You quickly realize that their camp is deserted, at which point Salt-Upon-Wounds ambushes you, convo-locks you, and tells you that there’s an entirely different side to things here that you might not have considered.

Factions

The Mormons have established a theocracy in the Utah called Deseret, with New Jerusalem - what was once Salt Lake City - as its capital. Large numbers of them survived the initial apocalypse due to their pre-War focus on strong community ties and disaster prepping; over time, they have returned to the model of self-sufficient agrarianism that characterized the historical Mormon state of Deseret that existed in Utah in the 1800s. Their President, who wields supreme executive power, is also their Prophet. The Mormons believe he communes directly with God, but there’s some discontent in New Jerusalem over his hands-off approach to foreign policy and unwillingness to assemble a standing army. The Elders of the Priesthood are pushing him to allow for some kind of formal military to oppose what they see as revived versions of their ancestral enemies: America, Rome, and the “Lamanites” (this is what Mormons call Indigenous Americans; the “Lamanite” idea has historically been used as a justification for racism, and I’m reflecting that here because it’d be kind of heinous not to). In more than a few respects, Deseret serves as a mirror to the Legion and an exploration of the other side of the coin re: the tactics utilized by colonial empires to present themselves as legitimate while still claiming territory and steamrolling the opposition.

The White Legs are now more explicitly Shoshone, and I’m relying most heavily on the Timpanagos Band for names and historical inspiration (apparently the question of whether they’re Ute or Shoshone is pretty controversial, but I’m sticking with what the Timpanagos have said about it until someone corrects me). After migrating south in the wake of the Great War, the White Legs eventually settled in Ogden, about a day north of New Jerusalem. Initial interactions with the Mormons were friendly, but as New Jerusalem grew and its need for farmland and resources increased, tensions rose before culminating in open violence in around ‘76 or ‘77. Deseret’s party line is that the White Legs conducted a “raid” on one of their settlements and had to be driven away from Ogden; the White Legs claim the violence was not a raid, but a revenge killing after a Mormon killed a young man and was found not guilty by Mormon legal authorities (this is a theocracy, so “legal authorities” here can be understood as indistinct from “the church”). The Mormons established a new settlement on the ruins of Ogden, which they called New Canaan, and the White Legs fled to Salt Lake, where they have been dwindling in number ever since. Salt-Upon-Wounds’ plan to seek entry to the Legion is a last-ditch attempt to save his people from eradication when their neighbors and the land itself seems intent on killing them (not that that makes all the war crimes ok, which is a sentiment you’ll be able to express to his face if you engage him in conversation).

The Dead Horses are a pastoral society from out of Dead Horse Point, and are split almost down the middle along political lines. The more conservative, religious side opposes intervention in Zion. Graham desecrates the corpses of his enemies as an intimidation tactic, and because the Dead Horses’ religion is so eschatological and heavily focused on properly cleaning, preparing, and interring the dead, a big chunk of the religious leadership opposes him on that basis - they think his tactics are ungodly. They’re also worried that any Dead Horses who die in Zion and are interred there will be severed from their connection to Dead Horse Point and doomed to a separate, lonely afterlife. The younger, more progressive elements of the tribe are less traditionalist, sometimes less religious, and overall not as concerned about Graham’s treatment of the dead because of the potential benefit they might be able to derive from him. Follows-Chalk is their de facto leader, and while the Dead Horses don’t formally allocate political power, he’s among the most influential people in the informal tribal leadership. Most of the Dead Horses who’ve come to Zion have done so either because they support Follows-Chalk politically, or for practical reasons - namely, Graham’s access to a dizzying number of guns and his willingness to give them to anyone who’ll fight for him.

The Sorrows are now a terrace-farming agrarian society instead of hunter-gatherers (Zion has a lot of agricultural potential, and there’s already a few farming plots in the Sorrows camp you see in-game, so it’s not a huge departure from the canon). I’m keeping their Mexican heritage, but I’d like to give them some Ainu influences as well - partially for selfish reasons, but also because bears are extremely important to our culture and theology, which gels well with the elements of Sorrows culture and religion that appear in the canon. I’d like to keep the Survivalist because I like him, but I want to expand on their faith. One of the ways I’m doing that is by deciding they can still read English, even though they no longer speak it; it’s basically their equivalent of liturgical Latin. They’re also rigidly matriarchal and in contrast to the Dead Horses (who eschew formal political hierarchies) or the White Legs (who elect a chief who serves until he dies, is deposed, or voluntarily abdicates), leadership positions are allocated through matrilineal primogeniture; Waking Cloud inherited her position from her mother. Religious leadership, likewise, is only available to women. You’ll be able to talk to Waking Cloud about some of the ways this framework is incompatible with the Mormon perspective, and can appeal to her desire to retain power.

Characters

Canon Characters

Joshua Graham and Daniel are largely unaltered except through the addition of lore that gives insight into their cultures, motives, and pasts.

All three tribal leaders (Follows-Chalk, Waking Cloud, and Salt-Upon-Wounds) are either given new backstories, a different set of motives, or different approaches to one another/Graham and Daniel. They’re also explicitly leaders now - what power Graham and Daniel have, they derive from whichever tribal leader they’ve managed to attach themselves to. Of those three, I’m altering Waking Cloud the least and Salt-Upon-Wounds the most. Like I mentioned, I have a companion wheel for him so far and the bones of two other conversations - one, where you meet him for the first time, and the second, where you speak to him before the final battle. Will link as I finish them.

Original Characters

Each tribal leader now has a rival or right hand within their tribe so I can reflect the different ways the values of a specific community can express themselves.

Follows-Chalk’s primary rival among the Dead Horses is a man who refuses to tell you his name. That’s because using someone’s name in casual conversation is considered unspeakably rude, and the fact that Follows-Chalk is willing to share his own with you is, to Mysteriously Named Old Man Character, yet another sign of how disrespectful and laissez-faire Follows-Chalk is about their shared traditions. Old Man Character is suspicious of you initially, but if you speak to him more he starts to warm to you. The goal is to give you a sense that this he’s pretty xenophobic but for good reasons, and despite his political conflicts with Follows-Chalk, has a lot of love for him. He just wants what’s best for his family, and Follows-Chalk is part of that, even if Mysteriously Named Old Man Character thinks he’s making the wrong choices.

Kiiki is Salt-Upon-Wounds’ right-hand woman and intended as a contrast re: the approach to war and its costs. Salt-Upon-Wounds has done some horrible things and gets a fair bit of dialogue about that, but Kiiki is willing to go even further than he has with very little prompting. Her chief copes with what he’s done by trying to assure himself that the ends of war are worth the cost; Kiiki deals with it by trying to convince herself that the means weren't so bad, actually, and that anyone who isn’t nailing corpses to walls is being naive. All of that makes her sound pretty shitty, but she’s nowhere near as devoted to the idea of a Legion alliance as Salt-Upon-Wounds is. It only takes one very low Speech check to convince her that going Legion is a bad move, and one of the paths involves assassinating Salt-Upon-Wounds and installing her as the new leader as a way to stop the White Legs from joining Caesar. I haven’t added this path to the ending Twine because I’d like to finish Kiiki’s dialogues before I do that.

I’m replacing White Bird as the Sorrow’s spiritual leader with a woman named Imekanu. She’s incredibly old, savvy, and knowledgeable - she’s never been outside Zion, but has a store of books in English, Spanish, and Japanese that have allowed her some insight into what caused the war, if not the current state of the world. She’s also aware of the Survivalist’s origins - not because she’s entered any of his hideouts, but because she’s read over the scriptures and has correctly identified them as letters. Her perspective is that the Father in the Caves was a human being, but that doesn’t diminish his religious value. She sees him as analogous to the Buddha or a Catholic saint: human, sure, but still with access to some deeper truths about the purpose of man and the nature of human goodness. You’ll discover that this idea (that the Survivalist was a holy man rather than a literal god) is the most common perspective among the Sorrows, and you can talk to her about how this departs from Daniel’s perspective that the archetypal Father is divine, not human.

Quests

Each tribe has a specific quest that will either lower or bypass some of the penultimate checks that will determine your ending (people are more likely to believe what you’re telling them if you’ve already won their trust).

The Dead Horses: Joshua Graham has been putting the heads of the fallen up on pikes across Zion. The Dead Horses’ religion is deeply concerned with proper treatment of the deceased, and Graham’s decision to desecrate the corpses of his enemies goes against virtually everything they believe. The old man who won’t tell you his name asks you to take the heads off of the pikes and bury them deep in Zion, and to bring Follows-Chalk with you so you’ll have someone to tell you how to treat them properly. Over the course of the quest, Follows-Chalk will share some of his own beliefs about death, and you’ll have the opportunity to share your own. If you complete this quest without sabotaging it, Follows-Chalk will be willing to betray Graham to the White Legs before the final battle.

The Sorrows: This is basically just Ghost of She, but after defeating the Yao Guai you’ll discover a holotape revealing that the girl wasn’t killed by the bear, but by one of the murderers from Vault 22. Waking Cloud will speculate that maybe the Yao Guai wasn’t the ghost of the little girl at all but some other force that wanted to push you to discover the truth. If you wait until the end to tell Waking Cloud about the death of her husband, you’ll have to pass a Speech check of 75 to convince her you’re telling her the truth; completing this quest drops the check to 50.

The White Legs: Salt-Upon-Wounds will ask you to help him sabotage the Mormons’ preparations for the battle. If you help him with this, it’ll drop the Speech check for you to convince him to leave from 100 to 80. It’s not necessary at all to get the tribal confederacy ending, but a new note will appear in your inventory if you finish it and meet a couple other requirements (asking him certain questions, not attempting that one Speech check about religion, etc).

Endings

I’m trying to incorporate as much variety as possible, but there are three main ending paths: siding with the White Legs, siding with the other two tribes, and peace. The basic idea is that the outcome is predicated less on your direct intervention, and more on how other people act based on the facts they have available to them. Most of your influence is through your choices to hide or reveal key pieces of information, and the skill checks you need to access certain endings are less you convincing a character to do something and more convincing a character to believe you’re telling them the truth. There’s one major exception to this, it requires maxed Speech, and the ending it gives you is markedly bittersweet because you’re trying to get a guy to act against his own best interest. I’m writing all the endings up here, and will probably edit them as things change. The post where I explain them in more depth can be found here.

And that’s the story so far! Thank you for reading, and again: if there’s anything here you think is poorly-conceived, let me know. Thank you to @baelpenrose, who’s a grad student in the history of the American West, for helping me workshop a lot of this stuff. If you’ve got expert knowledge on any of the concepts I touch on or are personally a member of any of the groups I’m describing, please feel free to hmu: anon is on, and you’re always welcome to DM me. I’m just doing this for fun, but I still want it to be as not-shit as possible.

[queenlua]

You're a druid and an ex-evangelical, right? What does being a druid mean to you? How did you get from evangelicalism to where you are now? And of course feel free to ignore this if it's nosy. (sincerely, a Christian who wants to leave but who doesn't know what to do)

this is going to make me sound ignorant as hell, lol, but i'm happy to share

under a cut because this got very long, sorry, lol.

my personal progression was: "vaguely christian -> VERY christian -> christian agnostic -> agnostic/atheist -> agnostic/druid -> some sorta druid-neopagan-animist thing."  i guess i'll just go through what made me switch between each of those, and close out with some high-level thoughts that may be helpful for you?

okay, so when i was

VAGUELY CHRISTIAN,

i went to Sunday school every week because That's What You Do, and because my whole hometown was very southern Baptist, i never questioned the veracity of its teachings much... until they ran a whole weekly series on "why [x] is wrong," where [x] is some other group

e.g., we had a week on why Mormons are wrong, and i didn't bat an eye because i hadn't even known Mormons existed until that moment

then we had a week on why Muslims are wrong, and that... bothered me, because i had a friend who was Muslim, and she was just objectively a better person than me, and i was like "any universe where she goes to hell and i don't seems really fucked up"

then we had a week on why EVOLUTION was wrong, and that just absolutely threw me, because while i hadn't thought about evolution much (i think i was in fourth grade or so), it seemed common-sense? scientists thought highly of it? "adaptation over time" just seems logical?

so i went to the public library every day after school for like a week, read some Darwin and some science books, and came back to my Sunday school teacher with, like, an itemized list of objections to the whole "evolution is wrong" thing.  and he came up with some standard Answers In Genesis rebuttals, and i did more research and came back the next week with more science, and we repeated this a few times until he was like "lua, you just gotta take some things on faith"

which.  lmao.  full existential crisis time, because no matter how hard i thought, i couldn't *not* believe in the science, but i also didn't want to go to hell, so i was like "maybe if i believe SUPER HARD i will SOMEDAY be able to unbelieve the condemn-me-to-hell bits"

so i decided to become

VERY CHRISTIAN

and my frantic googling for shit like "proof of god" and "god and evolution" *eventually* broke me out of the Answers In Genesis circles of the internet, and into some decent Christian apologia, like, think First Things and various Catholic bloggers.  and there, i found some way to square my gut sense that evolution was right, with a spiritual worldview.

like, i remember finding some blogger who said:

"young earth creationists get tripped up when they try to explain stars that are millions of light-years away, and end up basically arguing that God's tricking us somehow, and—no!  my God lets you believe in the evidence of your eyes, my God does not demand that you make yourself ignorant or stupid, my God expects you to use your brain"

and i just started crying at my computer, because no one had ever said "using your brain is Good and part of God's will," i was like *finally* here's someone who won't tell me i'm going to hell for just *thinking* about things

(st. augustine does a much better riff on a similar theme, fwiw, but i only found him later)

still, it was an uneasy fit, because, the more i learned and read about world history, the more it seemed... weird... that the One And Singular Path To Salvation was... the successor to some niche desert cult... which didn't even occur at the *beginning* of written history, like, it was all predated by that whole Mithraism thing, etc... and like, sure, i could trot out all the standard theological talking points for why Actually This Makes Perfect Sense, but gut-level-wise, the aesthetics just seemed kinda dumb!  and no level of talking myself out of it made that feeling go away!

so at this point i started referring to myself as a

CHRISTIAN AGNOSTIC

i mean, not aloud.  i still lived in southernbaptistopia and i didn't want, like, my hair stylist to tell me i was a horrible person.  but in my *head* i called myself Christian agnostic and it felt right.

and i started church-hopping, which honestly was really fun, would recommend to anyone at any point.  i visited the fire-and-brimstone baptist church, the methodist church, the episcopalians, the universal unitarians, etc.

unfortunately, while this gave me *some* new perspectives, each of the places either had the same shitty theology as my old megachurch (i remember the *acute* sense of despair i felt when i was starting to jive with a methodist church... only for the dumbass youth minister to start going on about evolution), or, they just lacked any sense of the *sacred*.  like, the Church of Christ churches, with their a capella services, *definitely* had it; i felt more God there in one service than i did in a lifetime of shitty Christian rock at the megachurch.  but their beliefs were even *more* batshit, so.  big L on that one.

having failed to find a satisfactory church, i was basically

AGNOSTIC/ATHEIST

by the time i went to college, but honestly pretty unhappy about it; while it was harder than ever for me to actually *connect* with the divine, i didn't like thinking that my previous experiences of the divine were total lies.  because my shitty evangelical church, for all its faults, could not *completely* sabotage the sense of God's presence.  there were real moments in that church where i do believe i experienced something divine.  mostly mediated by one particular youth minister, who in hindsight was the only spiritual teacher in that church who didn't seem a bit rotten inside, but!  it was something!

so when i happened upon a bunch of writings on the now-defunct shii.org (that's the bit that makes me look WILDLY ignorant, lol), i was utterly captivated.

said author was a previous archdruid of the Reformed Druids of North America, an organization that was formed in the 1960s to troll the administration of Carleton College (there was a religious-service-attendance requirement; they made their own religion; their religion had whiskey and #chilltimes for its services).  however, this shii.org dude seemed to take it pretty seriously.  he was studying history of religion and blogged a lot about his studies, both academic and otherwise.  while RDNA had started out as a troll, that didn't mean they hadn't *discovered* something real in the process, he said.

this, already, was going to be innately appealing to me; i've got a soft spot for wow-we-were-doing-this-ironically-but-now-it's-kinda-real? stuff in general.

in particular, shii.org’s discussions on the separation of ritual from belief was really interesting to me: most religions/spiritualities have *both*, but like, you can do a ritual without having the Exact Right Beliefs (if there even is such a thing!), and it can still be useful to you, it can have real power.  (he had a really lovely essay, speculating on the origins of religion as just a form of art, but that essay is now lost to the sands of time, alas.)

(note that i wouldn't really recommend seeking out *recent* writing by the shii.org guy; he kinda went full tedious neoreactionary-blowhard-who-reads-a-lot-of-Spengler at some point?  sigh.)

the shii.org guy led me to checking out a bunch of books on the history of neopaganism & also books by scholars of religion in general, and the more i read, the more excited i became.  and i started doing little ritual/meditation stuff here and there.

then i was fortunate enough to attend some events with Earthspirit (this was when i lived in Boston), which cemented my hippie dalliances into something more real.  the folks there, being from Boston, were all ridiculously overeducated (a sensibility that appeals to me), but also, being the kind of folks who drive out to a mountain in the middle of nowhere for a spiritual retreat, they tolerated a full range of oddities (everyone from aging-70s-feminist-wiccans to living-on-a-farm-with-your-bros-Astaru to dude-who-started-having-weird-visions-and-is-just-trying-to-figure-out-the-deal to Nordic-spiritualist-with-two-phds-from-Scandanavian-universities-on-the-subject, etc), which gave me a lot of room to explore different types of rituals, ceremonies, "magic", etc.

(polytheism in general lends itself well to this sort of easy plurality!  i can believe other people are experiencing something real with their gods, and i can be talking to a totally different set of gods, and that’s just all very compatible, etc)

anyway, i started calling myself

AGNOSTIC/DRUID

around then, because i knew i'd found *something*, something that felt like all the realest moments i'd ever had in nature, and all the realest moments i'd ever had in that shitty megachurch, but i wasn't quite ready to put a theology to it.

but, idk, you do the thing for a while, and you start encountering some things that you may as well call gods, and you realize you're in pretty deep, and you ditch the "agnostic" bit and just throw hands and start describing yourself as

SOME SORTA DRUID-NEOPAGAN-ANIMIST THING

because that's the most precise thing you can muster.  in particular, the druid bit resonates because nature's still very much at the center of my practice; the neopagan bit resonates because i'm not especially interested in reconstructing older traditions or being faithful to any actual pre-Christian traditions, and animist resonates because what i sometimes call gods seem to be tied pretty tightly to the land itself.  it's all very experiential; all this mostly means i'm some weird chick who sometimes grabs a car and drives out someplace very lonely and hikes for a while and does some hippie shit to try and talk with the land or the god or whatever is there.  and sometimes i come back from it changed, or refocused, or what-have-you, and hopefully i'm better for it.  i'm aware this makes me look a little ridiculous, and is an unsatisfying answer, sorry!

WRT YOUR SITUATION

i don't know you or your situation, obviously, but if i wanted to give former-me some advice to save her some angst, i'd say

-> Christendom itself is far wilder and more diverse than many churches lead you to believe.  if you still want to be Christian on some level, and it's just a shitty church that's convinced you the whole project is fucked, i'd honestly explore, i dunno, your nearest Quaker meeting.  they're invoking the Holy Spirit with regularity but they're not raging douchenozzles about it.

-> if you're specifically interested in druidism, i found John Michael Greer's "A World Full of Gods" really nice.  (caveat: Greer has *also* gone full right-wing nutjob these days, sigh, so like.  would not recommend a great swath of his writing.  but that one's good)

-> deciding that a just God wouldn't give me a brain and then ask me not to use it was hugely comforting to me.  like, that was the start of the whole process, that was what made me feel ok searching for other churches and trying to find something that fit.  obviously you should take this with 800 grains of salt, because obviously i'm no longer Christian, and thus maybe i'm just some poor misguided fallen soul, but... i still kinda believe that!  maybe if you can make yourself believe that, it'll seem less scary?

idk, happy to answer more questions, sorry for the long ramble, hope it helped~

[fineillsignup]

tips for choosing a Chinese name for your OC when you don’t know Chinese

This is a meta for gifset trade with @purple-fury! Maybe you would like to trade something with me? You can PM me if so!

Choosing a Chinese name, if you don’t know a Chinese language, is difficult, but here’s a secret for you: choosing a Chinese name, when you do know a Chinese language, is also difficult. So, my tip #1 is: Relax. Did you know that Actual Chinese People choose shitty names all the dang time? It’s true!!! Just as you, doubtless, have come across people in your daily life in your native language that you think “God, your parents must have been on SOME SHIT when they named you”, the same is true about Chinese people, now and throughout history. If you choose a shitty name, it’s not the end of the world! Your character’s parents now canonically suck at choosing a name. There, we fixed it!

However. Just because you should not drive yourself to the brink of the grave fretting over choosing a Chinese name for a character, neither does that mean you shouldn’t care at all. Especially, tip #2, Never just pick some syllables that vaguely sound Chinese and call it a day. That shit is awful and tbh it’s as inaccurate and racist as saying “ching chong” to mimic the Chinese language. Examples: Cho Chang from Harry Potter, Tenten from Naruto, and most notorious of all, Fu Manchu and his daughter Fah lo Suee (how the F/UCK did he come up with that one).

So where do you begin then? Well, first you need to pick your character’s surname. This is actually not too difficult, because Chinese actually doesn’t have that many surnames in common use. One hundred surnames cover over eighty percent of China’s population, and in local areas especially, certain surnames within that one hundred are absurdly common, like one out of every ten people you meet is surnamed Wang, for example. Also, if you’re making an OC for an established media franchise, you may already have the surname based on who you want your character related to. Finally, if you’re writing an ethnically Chinese character who was born and raised outside of China, you might only want their surname to be Chinese, and give them a given name from the language/culture of their native country; that’s very very common.

If you don’t have a surname in mind, check out the Wikipedia page for the list of common Chinese surnames, roughly the top one hundred. If you’re not going to pick one of the top one hundred surnames, you should have a good reason why. Now you need to choose a romanization system. You’ll note that the Wikipedia list contains variant spellings. If your character is a Chinese-American (or other non-Chinese country) whose ancestors emigrated before the 1950s (or whose ancestors did not come from mainland China), their name will not be spelled according to pinyin. It might be spelled according to Wade-Giles romanization, or according to the name’s pronunciation in other Chinese languages, or according to what the name sounds like in the language of the country they immigrated to. (The latter is where you get spellings like Lee, Young, Woo, and Law.)  A huge proportion of emigration especially came from southern China, where people spoke Cantonese, Min, Hakka, and other non-Mandarin languages.

So, for example, if you want to make a Chinese-Canadian character whose paternal source of their surname immigrated to Canada in the 20s, don’t give them the surname Xie, spelled that way, because #1 that spelling didn’t exist when their first generation ancestor left China and #2 their first generation ancestor was unlikely to have come from a part of China where Mandarin was spoken anyway (although still could have! that’s up to you). Instead, name them Tse, Tze, Sia, Chia, or Hsieh.

If you’re working with a character who lives in, or who left or is descended from people who left mainland China in the 1960s or later; or if you’re working with a historical or mythological setting, then you are going to want to use the pinyin romanization. The reason I say that you should use pinyin for historical or mythological settings is because pinyin is now the official or de facto romanization system for international standards in academia, the United Nations, etc. So if you’re writing a story with characters from ancient China, or medieval China, use pinyin, even though not only pinyin, but the Mandarin pronunciations themselves didn’t exist back then. Just... just accept this. This is one of those quirks of having a non-alphabetic language.

(Here’s an “exceptions” paragraph: there are various well known Chinese names that are typically, even now, transliterated in a non-standard way: Confucius, Mencius, the Yangtze River, Sun Yat-sen, etc. Go ahead and use these if you want. And if you really consciously want to make a Cantonese or Hakka or whatever setting, more power to you, but in that case you better be far beyond needing this tutorial and I don’t know why you’re here. Get. Scoot!)

One last point about names that use the ü with the umlaut over it. The umlaut ü is actually pretty critical for the meaning because wherever the ü appears, the consonant preceding it also can be used with u: lu/lü, nu/nü, etc. However, de facto, lots of individual people, media franchises, etc, simply drop the umlaut and write u instead when writing a name in English, such as “Lu Bu” in the Dynasty Warriors franchise in English (it should be written Lü Bu). And to be fair, since tones are also typically dropped in Latin script and are just as critical to the meaning and pronunciation of the original, dropping the umlaut probably doesn’t make much difference. This is kind of a choice you have to make for yourself. Maybe you even want to play with it! Maybe everybody thinks your character’s surname is pronounced “loo as in loo roll” but SURPRISE MOFO it’s actually lü! You could Do Something with that. Also, in contexts where people want to distinguish between u and ü when typing but don’t have easy access to a keyboard method of making the ü, the typical shorthand is the letter v. 

Alright! So you have your surname and you know how you want it spelled using the Latin alphabet. Great! What next?

Alright, so, now we get to the hard part: choosing the given name. No, don’t cry, I know baby I know. We can do this. I believe in you.

Here are some premises we’re going to be operating on, and I’m not entirely sure why I made this a numbered list:

Chinese people, generally, love their kids. (Obviously, like in every culture, there are some awful exceptions, and I’ll give one specific example of this later on.)

As part of loving their kids, they want to give them a Good name.

So what makes a name a Good name??? Well, in Chinese culture, the cultural values (which have changed over time) have tended to prioritize things like: education; clan and family; health and beauty; religious devotions of various religions (Buddhism, Taoism, folk religions, Christianity, other); philosophical beliefs (Buddhism, Confucianism, etc) (see also education); refinement and culture (see also education); moral rectitude; and of course many other things as the individual personally finds important. You’ll notice that education is a big one. If you can’t decide on where to start, something related to education, intelligence, wisdom, knowledge, etc, is a bet that can’t go wrong.

Unlike in English speaking cultures (and I’m going to limit myself to English because we’re writing English and good God look at how long this post is already), there is no canon of “names” in Chinese like there has traditionally been in English. No John, Mary, Susan, Jacob, Maxine, William, and other words that are names and only names and which, historically at least, almost everyone was named. Instead, in Chinese culture, you can basically choose any character you want. You can choose one character, or two characters. (More than two characters? No one can live at that speed. Seriously, do not give your character a given name with more than two characters. If you need this tutorial, you don’t know enough to try it.) Congratulations, it is now a name!!

But what this means is that Chinese names aggressively Mean Something in a way that most English names don’t. You know nature names like Rose and Pearl, and Puritan names like Wrestling, Makepeace, Prudence, Silence, Zeal, and Unity? I mean, yeah, you can technically look up that the name Mary comes from a etymological root meaning bitter, but Mary doesn’t mean bitter in the way that Silence means, well, silence. Chinese names are much much more like the latter, because even though there are some characters that are more common as names than as words, the meaning of the name is still far more upfront than English names.

So the meaning of the name is generally a much more direct expression of those Good Values mentioned before. But it gets more complicated!

Being too direct has, across many eras of Chinese history, been considered crude; the very opposite of the education you’re valuing in the first place. Therefore, rather than the Puritan slap you in the face approach where you just name your kid VIRTUE!, Chinese have typically favoured instead more indirect, related words about these virtues and values, or poetic allusions to same. What might seem like a very blunt, concrete name, such as Guan Yu’s “yu” (which means feather), is actually a poetic, referential name to all the things that feathers evoke: flight, freedom, intellectual broadmindness, protection...

So when you’re choosing a name, you start from the value you want to express, then see where looking up related words in a dictionary gets you until you find something that sounds “like a name”; you can also try researching Chinese art symbolism to get more concrete names. Then, here’s my favourite trick, try combining your fake name with several of the most common surnames: 王，李，陈. And Google that shit. If you find Actual Human Beings with that name: congratulations, at least if you did f/uck up, somebody else out there f/ucked up first and stuck a Human Being with it, so you’re still doing better than they are. High five!

You’re going to stick with the same romanization system (or lack thereof) as you’ve used for the surname. In the interests of time, I’m going to focus on pinyin only.

First let’s take a look at some real and actual Chinese names and talk about what they mean, why they might have been chosen, and also some fictional OC names that I’ve come up with that riff off of these actual Chinese names. And then we’ll go over some resources and also some pitfalls. Hopefully you can learn by example! Fun!!!

Let’s start with two great historical strategists: Zhuge Liang and Zhou Yu, and the names I picked for some (fictional) sons of theirs. Then I will be talking about Sun Shangxiang and Guan Yinping, two historical-legendary women of the same era, and what I named their fictional daughters. And finally I’ll be talking about historical Chinese pirate Gan Ning and what I named his fictional wife and fictional daughter. Uh, this could be considered spoilers for my novel Clouds and Rain and associated one-shots in that universe, so you probably want to go and read that work... and its prequels... and leave lots of comments and kudos first and then come back. Don’t worry, I’ll wait.

(I’m just kidding you don’t need to know a thing about my work to find this useful.)

ZHUGE Liang is written 諸葛亮 in traditional Chinese characters and 诸葛亮 in simplified Chinese characters. It is a two-character surname. Two character surnames used to be more common than they are now. When I read Chinese history, I notice that two character surname clans seem to have a bad habit of flying real high and then getting the Icarus treatment if Icarus when his wings melted also got beheaded and had the Nine Familial Exterminations performed on his clan. Yikes. Sooner or later that'll cost ya.

But anyway. Zhuge means “lots of kudzu”, which if you have been to the American south you know is that only way that kudzu comes. Liang means “light, shining” in the sense of daylight, moonlight, etc; and from this literal meaning also such figurative meanings as reveal or clear. (I’m going to talk about words have a primary and secondary meaning in this way because I think it’s important for understanding. It’s just like how in English, ‘run’ has many meanings, but almost of all them are derived from a primary meaning of ‘to move fast via one’s human legs’, if I can be weird for a moment. “Run” as in “home run” comes from that, “run” as in “run in your stocking” comes from that, “run” as in “that’ll run you at least $200″ comes from that. You have to get it straight which is the primary meaning, which is the one that people think of first and they way they get to the secondary meaning.)

“Light” has a similar “enlightenment” concept in Chinese as in English, so the person who chose Zhuge Liang’s name—most likely his father or grandfather—clearly valued learning.

I named my fictional son for Zhuge Liang Zhuge Jing 京. The value or direction I was coming from is that Zhuge Liang has come to the decision that he has to nurture the next generation for the benefit of the land, that he has to remain in the world in a way that he very much did not want to do when he himself was a young man. In this alternate universe, Liu Bei has formed a new Han dynasty and recaptured Luoyang, so when Zhuge Liang’s son is then born he chooses this name Jing which means literally “capital”. This concrete name is meant as an allusion to a devotion to public service and to remaining “central”. After I chose this name, I discovered that Zhuge Liang actually has a recorded grandson named Zhuge Jing with this same character.

above, me, realizing I picked a good name

ZHOU Yu is written 周瑜 in both simplified and traditional Chinese characters.

The surname Zhou was and remains a very common Chinese surname whose original meaning was like... a really nice field. Like just the greatest f/ucking field you’ve ever seen. “Dang, that is a sweet field” said an ancient Chinese farmer, “I’m gonna make a new Chinese character to record just how great it is.” And then it came to mean things along the line of complete and thorough.

Yu means the excellence of a gemstone--its brilliance, lustre, etc, as opposed to its flaws. It is not a common word but does appear in some expressions such as 瑕不掩瑜 "a flaw does not conceal the rest of the gemstone's beauty; a defect does not mean the whole thing is bad".

Zhou Yu has gone down in history for being not only smart but also artistic and handsome. A real triple threat. And this name speaks to a family that valued art and beauty. It really does suit him.

Zhou Yu had two recorded sons but in my alternate history I gave him four. I borrowed the first one’s name from history: Xun 循, follow. Based on this name, I chose other names that I thought gave a similar sense of his values: Shou 守, guard; Wen 聞, listen. The youngest one I had born when he already knew he was dying, and things had not been going well generally; therefore I had him give him the name Shen 慎, which means “careful, cautious”.

SUN Shangxiang 孫尚香 is one of several names that history and legend give for a sister of w//arlord-king Sun Quan who was married to a rival w//arlord named Liu Bei in a marriage which, historically, uh, didn’t... didn’t go all that well. In my alternate history it goes well! You can’t stop me, I’ve already done it!

The surname Sun means “grandson” and the given name components are Shang mean “values, esteems” and Xiang “scent” which we can combine into meaning something like “precious perfume”. A lot of the recorded names for women in this era (a huge number didn’t have any names recorded, a problem in itself) seem to me to be more concrete, to contain more objects, to be more focused on affection, less focused on hopes and dreams. This makes sense for the era: you love your daughters (I HOPE) but then they get married and leave you. You don’t have long term plans for them because their long term belongs to another clan.

I gave her daughter by Liu Bei the name Liu Yitao 劉義桃. Yi 義 meaning righteousness, rectitude and 桃 meaning... peach. Okay, okay, I know "righteous peach" sounds damn funny in English, but the legendary oath in the peach garden, the "oath of brotherhood" is called in Chinese 結義 "tying righteousness" and the peach garden is, uh, a peach garden. I also give her the cutesy nickname Taotao 桃桃 which you could compare to “Peaches” or “Peachy”. Reduplication of a character in a two-character name is a classic nickname strategy in Chinese.

GUAN Yinping 關銀屏/关银屏 is a “made up” (scare quotes because old legends have their own kind of validity, fight me) name for a historical daughter of Guan Yu. Guan means “to close (a door)”. Yin means “silver” and ping means “a screen, to hide” and according to the legend, her father’s oath brother Zhang Fei named her after a silver treasure. So here again we see a name for a woman that completely lacks the kind of aspirations we see in male names. Who would have an aspiration for a daughter?

My fictional characters, that’s who. I named her daughter Lu Ruofeng 陸若鳳/陆若凤, Ruo (like the) Feng (phoenix), based on a quote from a Confucian text about what one should try to be during both times of chaos and times of good government. I portray her father as a devoted Confucian scholar, so that was another factor for why I looked to Confucian texts for a source of a name.

Modern parents also now have big dreams for their daughters :’) and so modern girls receive names that are far more similar to how boys are named. 

GAN Ning 甘寧/甘宁 is a great example of a person whose name does not suit him. Gan 甘 depicts a tongue and means “sweet”, and Ning 寧 which shows a bowl and table and heart beneath a roof means “peaceful”. Which, it would be hard to come up with a name for this guy, a ruthless pirate turned extremely effective general:

that is less suitable than essentially being named “Sweet Peace”.

And when he was an adult, his style name—a name that Chinese men used to be given when they turned 20 (ie became adults) by East Asian reckoning—indeed reflects that. Choosing your own style name was widely considered to be crass. I absolutely think that Gan Ning chose his own style name; he was that kind of a guy. And the name he chose! Xingba 興霸/兴霸! I’ve never seen another style name like it. It means, basically, “thriving dominator”! Brand new official adult Gan Ning treats his style name like he’s picking his Xbox gamer tag and he picks BadassBoss69_420, that’s what this style name is like to me. Except, you know, he had almost certainly killed many hundreds of people by the time he was nineteen, so, uh, it wouldn’t be a wise idea to make fun of his name to his face.

In my fictional version of his life, he married a woman whose father was the exception to the “parents love their children” rule and who named his daughter Pandi 盼第 “expecting a younger brother”, which is a classic “daughters ain’t shit, I want a son” name. Real and actual Chinese women have been given this shitty name and ones like it.

Because Gan Ning had an ironically placid name, I also gave his daughter the placid single character name Wan 婉, which means “gentle, restrained”, as a foil to her wild personality.

So there are a bunch of examples of some historical characters and some OCs and how I chose their names. “But wait, all that was really cool, but how can I do that? You can read Chinese, I can’t!”

I originally had a bunch of links here to dictionaries and resources but Tumblr :) wouldn’t let the post show up in tag search with all the links :) :) :) so you need to check the reblogs of this post to see my own reblog; that reblog has all the links. I’M SORRY ABOUT THIS. Here are a list of the sites without the links if you want to Google them yourself.

MDBG  - an open source dictionary - start here

Wiktionary -  don’t knock it til you try it

iCIBA (they recently changed their user interface and it’s much less English-speaker friendly now but it’s still a great dictionary)

Pleco (an iOS app, maybe also Android???) contains same open source dictionary as MDBG and also its own proprietary dictionary

Chinese Etymology at hanziyuan dot net

You search some English keywords from the value you want, and then you see what kind of characters you get. You should take the character and then reverse search, making sure that it doesn’t have negative words/meanings, and similar. Look into the etymology and see if it has any thematic elements that appeal to what you’re doing with the character--eg a fire radical for a character with fire powers.

And then, like I mention before, when you have got a couple characters and you think “I think this could be a good name”, you go to Google, you take a very common surname, you append your chosen name—don’t forget to use quotation marks—and you see what happens. Did you get some results? Even better, did you get lots of results? Then you’re probably safe! No results does not necessarily mean your name won’t work, but you should probably run it by an Actual Chinese Native Speaker at that point to check. Also, remember, as I said at the beginning, sometimes people have weird names. If you consciously decide “you know what, I think this character’s parents would choose a weird name”, then own that.

THINGS YOU SHOULD PROBABLY IGNORE!

Starting in relatively recent history (not really a big thing until Song dynasty) and continuing, moreso outside of mainland China, to the modern day, there is something called a generation name component to a name. This means that of a name’s two characters, one of the characters is shared with every other paternal line relative of that person’s generation; historically, usually only boys get a generation name and girls don’t. (Chinese history, banging on pots and pans: DAUGHTERS AIN’T SHIT AND DON’T FORGET IT!) “Generation” here means everyone who is equidistant descendant from some past ancestor, not necessarily that they are exactly the same age. For example, all of ancestor’s X’s sons share the character 一 in their names, his grandsons all have the character 二，great-grandsons 三, great-great-grandsons 四 (I just used numbers because I’m lazy). By the time you get to great-great-grandson, you might have some that are forty years old and some that are babies (because of how old their fathers were when they were conceived), but they are still the same generation.

In some clans, this tradition goes so far as to have something called a name poem, where the generations cycle, character by character, through a poem that was specifically written for this purpose and which is generally about how their clan is super rad.

If you want to riff off of this idea and have siblings or paternal cousins share a character in their names, ok, but it genuinely isn’t necessary. Anyone with a single character name obviously doesn’t have one of these generation names, and by no means does every person with a two character name (especially female) have a generation name. If you’re doing an OC for an ancient Chinese setting (certainly anything before the year about 500), you shouldn’t use these generation names because it wasn’t a thing. Also, in a modern setting, even if such a generation name or name poem exists, it’s not like there is any legal requirement to use it (though there may be family pressure to do so).

As a further complication, some parents do the shared character thing among their children without it actually being a generation name per se because it isn’t shared by any cousins. Or, they have all their children (or all their children of the same gender) share a radical, which is a meaning component in a Chinese character.

If someone does have one of these shared character names, then their nickname will never come from that shared character; either they will be called by the full name or by some name riffing off of the character that is not shared. For example, I knew a pair of sisters called Yuru and Yufei with the same first character; the first sister went by her English name in daily life (even when speaking Chinese) while the second sister was called Feifei.

tl;dr If you don’t already know Chinese, consider generation names an extra complication for masochists only. Definitely not required for modern characters.

Fortune telling is another thing that I think you should either ignore or wildly make up. Do you know what ordinary Chinese people who want to choose a lucky name for their child do? They hire someone to work it out. This is not some DIY shit even if you are deeply immured in the culture. There are considerations of the number of strokes, the radicals, the birth date, the birth hour. You’re the god of your fictional universe, so go ahead and unilaterally declare that your desired names are lucky or unlucky as suits the story if you want to.

MILK NAMES

In modern times, babies get named right away, if for no other reason that the government requires it everywhere in the world for record keeping purposes.

However, in traditional times, Chinese people did not give babies a permanent name right away, instead waiting until a certain period of time had passed (3 months/100 days is a classic).

What do you call the baby in the meantime? A milk name 乳名, which your (close, older than you) family may or may not keep on using for you until such time as you die, just so that you remember that you used to be a funny looking little raisin that peed on people.

This kind of name is almost always very humble, sometimes to the point of being outright insulting. This is because to use any name on your baby that implies you might actually like the little thing is tempting Bad News. Possible exception: sometimes a baby would receive a milk name that dedicated it to some deity. In this case, I guess you’re hoping that deity will be flattered enough to take on the job of shooing away all the other spirits and things that might be otherwise attracted to this Delicious Fresh Baby.

Because milk names were only used by one’s (older) family and very close family friends of one’s parents/grandparents, most people’s milk names are not recorded or known, with some notable exceptions. Liu Shan, the son of Liu Bei, who as a baby was rescued by Zhao Yun during the Shu forces retreat from Changban. Perhaps because his big debut in history/legend was as a baby, he is well-known for his milk name A-Dou 阿斗, which means, essentially, Dipper.

If you’re writing a story, you really only need to worry about a milk name for your character if it’s a historical (or pseudohistorical) setting, and even then only if the character either makes an appearance as a small infant or you consciously decide to have them interact with characters who knew them well as a small child and choose to continue using the milk name. Not all parents, etc who could use the milk name with a youth or an adult actually did so.

Here are some milk names I’ve come up with in my fiction: Little Mouse/Xiaoshu 小鼠 for a girl, Tadpole/Kedou 蝌蚪 for a boy, and Shouty/A-Yao 阿吆 for a boy. In the first two cases the babies were both smol and quiet (as babies go). The last one neither small nor quiet, ahahaha. 蔷蔷 Qiangqiang, which is a pretty enough name meaning “wild rose” (duplication to make it lighter), except the baby is a boy, so this is the typical idea that making a boy feminine makes him worth less, which, yikes, but also, historically accurate. Also Xiaohei 小黑 “Blackie” for a work that I will probably never publish because I don’t ever see myself finishing it. I might recycle it to use on another story.

 Here are some more milk names I came up with off the cuff for a friend that wanted an insulting milk name. They ended up not using any of these, so feel free to use, no credit necessary. Rongzi 冗子 “Unwanted Child”; Xiaochou 小丑 “Little Ugly”; A-Xu 阿虛 “Empty”; Pangzhu 胖豬 “Fat Pig”;  Shasha 傻傻 “Dummy”.

PITFALLS!

Chinese has a lot of homophones. Like, so many, you cannot even believe. That means the potential for puns, double meanings, etc, is off the charts. And this can be bad, real real bad, when it comes to names. It is way too easy to pick a name and think to yourself “wow, this name is great” and then realize later that the name sounds exactly the same as “cat shit” or something even worse.

Some Chinese families live the name choosing life on hard mode because their surname is itself a homonym that can make almost any name sound bad. I’m speaking of course of the poor Wus and Bus of the world. You see Wu may have innocuous and pleasant surnames associated with it, but it also means “without, un-”. (Bu is similar, sounds like “no, not”.) Suddenly, any pleasant name you give your kid, your kid is NOT that thing.

This means picking a name that is pleasant in itself yet also somehow also pleasant when combined with Wu. So you might pick a character with a sound like Ting, Xian, Hui, or Liang - unstopping, unlimited, no regrets, immeasurable. A positive negative name, a kind of paradox. Like I said, this is naming on hard mode.

If you are naming an ancient character, I am going to say in my opinion you should ignore all considerations of sound, because reconstruction of ancient Chinese pronunciations is on some other, other level of pedantic and you just don’t need to do that to yourself.

For modern characters, however, an attractive name, in general, should be a mix of tones and a mix of sounds. As a non-Chinese speaker, basically this means especially if you go for a two character given name, having all three characters start with the same sound, or end with the same sound, can sound kind of tongue twistery and thus silly/stupid. That doesn’t mean that such names never exist, and can in some cases even sound good (or at least memorable), but how likely is it that you’ve found the exception? Not very. (Two out of three having repetition isn’t bad. It’s three out of three you have to be careful of. Something like Wang Fang or Zhou Pengpeng is probably fine; it’s something over the top like Guan Guangguo or Li Lili you want to avoid.)

Just like the West (sigh), in the modern Sinosphere it is widely acceptable for girls to have masculine names but totally unacceptable for boys to have feminine names. If you see the radical 女 which means woman, don’t choose that character for a boy, at least if you’re trying to be realistic. Now Chinese ideas of masculinity doesn’t have the same boundaries as Western ideas, but if you want to play around in those boundaries, you gotta do that research on your own; you’ve left what I can teach you in this already entirely too long tutorial.

Don’t name a character after someone else in story, or after a famous person. In some/many Western cultures, and actually in some Eastern cultures too (Japan is basically fine with this, for example), naming a baby the same name as someone else (a relative, a saint, a famous person, etc), is a respected and popular way to honour that person.

But not in Chinese culture, not now, not a thousand years ago, not two thousand years ago. (Disclaimer: I bet there is some weird rare exception that, eventually, somebody will “gotcha” me with. I am prepared to be amazed and delighted when this occurs.)

Part of this is because of a fundamentally different idea in Chinese culture vs many other cultures about what is valuing vs disrespecting with regard to personal names. The highest respect paid in Chinese history to a category of personal names is to the emperor, and what would happen there is that it would be under name taboo, a very serious and onerous custom where you not only have to not say the emperor’s name, but you can’t say anything that sounds the same as the emperor’s name.

Did I mention that this is in the language of CRAZY GO NUTS numbers of homonyms? The day-to-day troubles caused by observing name taboo were so potentially intense that there are even instances where, before ascending to the imperial throne, the emperor-to-be would change his name to something that was easier to observe taboo about!

So you see this is an attitude that says: if you want to honour and show respect to somebody, you don’t speak their name.

As the highest person in the land, only the emperor gets this extreme level of avoidance, but it trickles down all through society. You can’t use the personal names of people superior to you. Naming a baby after someone inherently throws the hierarchy out of whack. Now you have a young baby with the same name as a grown adult, or even a dead person, who is due honour from their rank in life. People who would not be permitted to use the inspiration’s name may now use that name because they are superior to the baby who received the name! This would mean that hierarchy was not being preserved, and oh my heaven, is there anything worse than hierarchy not being preserved? All of Chinese History: Noooooo!

Now. As an author—and I hope to God no one is using my Chinese name guide as a resource to name an actual human baby because I can’t take that kind of pressure—you can use the names of characters to inspire the names of other characters, in the following way.

Remember that I said that the key, the starting point, to naming someone in Chinese is to start from a value. Okay. So what you do, if as the author you want to draw a thematic connection between two fictional characters, is take the Inspiration character’s name, think about what the value is that caused that name to be chosen, and then go from that value to choose the New Character’s name.

If you’ll recall what I said about Gan Ning and his baby Wan, this is exactly the approach I took. Gan Ning had a placid single character name that belied his violent and outrageous personality; I chose a placid single character name for his similarly wild daughter to make them thematically similar. As an author, I named his baby after him. But within the context of the story, she was not named after him. Does the distinction make sense?

Values also run in families for obvious reasons. It’s very common to look at a family tree and see lots of names that follow a kind of theme and give you a sense that, eg, this family is rather low class and uneducated; this family is very erudite but a bit too fussy about it; this family is really big on Confucianism. So yes, as an author, looking to other characters for inspiration is not a bad idea.

Remember, a lot of times, as an author, you can and even should kick realism to the curb sometimes. If you want to make some Ominous Foreshadowing that Character A’s name is something to do with fire but! They name their child something to do with water and therefore they are destined to clash with their own offspring, gasp, you can do that kind of thing because you are the god of your universe. Relish your power.

Do you have any more questions? Feel free to send a PM or an ask. I hope this was helpful! Go forth and name your Chinese OCs with slightly more confidence!

Edit 22 April 2019: I added some more sections (fortune telling, Milk Names, and taboo on naming after people). I also need to overhaul the entirety of the previous to emphasize that even thought I thoughtlessly used “Chinese” as if it was synonymous with “Han”, there are non-Han Chinese and they can have very different naming customs. Mea culpa.

[thestarkerisobvious]

The Thing That Lives Under The Bed

Peter was a lonely boy who made friends with the thing that lived under his bed.  In an effort to help that thing get OUT from under the bed, and what he did when that happened, changed the course of his life forever.

(art by the late @von--gelmini)

Now allow me to introduce:

(art by the incredible @mrstarksbaby​)

In which Peter and his High Priest confront ghosts, both figuratively and literally, and deal with the sins of the past.

Victims  - Chapter 2

Try To Remember

“Peter… Peter… oh Peter…”

Peter was a little startled to realize they were parked on the old road that used to go to the South House.  He was surprised how warm the night was.  But laying back on the hood of the truck, looking up at the sky full of stars, that was nice.  The hood of the truck was warm, and the night was pleasantly cool.  And Quentin looked relaxed, so Peter relaxed too.

The sky was so very, very full of stars.  It was a good night for stargazing.

At least, Quentin was stargazing.  Peter was Quentingazing.  It was so easy to

 forget how handsome Quentin was.  Peter shouldn’t have felt this relaxed, felt this safe, with the older man, but he did.  Maybe it was because, now, he was older too.  Maybe it was because he knew all of Quentin’s tricks, and, looking back on it, they weren’t much.  

And tonight felt so peaceful.  It was everything he wanted it to be.

And dammit, Quentin’s face was just so damn handsome.  Those eyes, the ones that had made Peter just feel helpless… well,  they didn’t make Peter feel helpless anymore, but you couldn’t deny it.  They were eyes to die for.  And that smile.  It wasn’t as handsome as Tony’s smile, but it was nice.

“What are you grinning at?”  Peter said when Quentin turned to look at him.  Peter turned his head away to actually look up at the stars, but didn’t pretend he hadn’t been looking at Quentin.  There was no point in pretending.

“I’m just remembering the time I took you out into the woods at night because I wanted to kiss you, and instead I wound up listening to a lecture on Gilgamesh…”

“It wasn’t a lecture…” Peter protested through his giggles.

“It was amazing!” Quentin insisted, laughing as well. “You explaining it to me - the fucking Epic of Gilgamesh.  And Enkidu, and Gilgamesh who is going to fall in love with him, but not yet because he’s currently a wild man, running around naked in the forest so Gilgamesh civilizes him by introducing him to a whore.  You were seventeen for godssake.  And there I was, parked with you on a dark road, hoping I was going to get lucky, and all I could do was look into those gorgeous brown eyes of your and listen to you explain Akkadian cultural mores…” He smiled fondly at the memory.  “It was crazy.”

“I was TRYING to say that YOUR religion said sex made you uncontrolled and animalistic and bad, but the Akkadians saw sex as the civilizing force.  The thing that made men WANT to control themselves, and fit in with society.  And don’t call Shamhat a whore, she was a prostitute, but that word isn’t… it wasn’t always a bad thing.”

“Just say ‘pejorative.’” Quentin said gently.  “Don’t dumb down your vocabulary for me.  You never did before.”  

“Oh god” Peter moaned, covering his face with both hands. He rubbed his eyes, rubbed his forehead, trying to wipe away the memory.  “I was always trying so hard to impress you.”

“I was impressed.”  Quentin said, turning over and propping himself on one elbow.  Peter turned his head and looked up into those mesmerizing eyes.  It was times like this when Peter remembered that that, in addition to his devilish good looks, Quentin’s eyes were startlingly blue.  How could his eyes be blue and yet so dark at the same time?

“We were parked on the side of the back road,” Quentin was saying softly, his mouth only a few inches away.  “And you were sitting within arms reach of me, just as bold as brass, telling me about Gilgamesh and Enkidu, the most epic male/male love story of all time, and I was thinking “This kid has more balls than I did at his age… more than I ever will.”

Peter couldn’t help but smile back.  Quentin’s smile had always been contagious.  

“But then you had to ruin it by bringing up girls…” he concluded with a smirk, laying back down to stare up at the stars.

“Me?!” Peter gaped, sputtering.  “Me?  Did the Reverend Quentin ‘How many girlfriends do you have this week Parker?’ Beck just accuse me of…”

But he laughed when he saw that Quentin was suppressing a laugh.  He lay back and looked up at the sky.

“Shamhat is an integral part of the story,” he said smirking, relishing the fact that he could make Quentin laugh.  “And excuse me?  Raise your hand if you used to dare me… if you used to double-dog dare me… to ask out a girl to a movie every freaking time I saw you…”

“I was feeling you out…” Quentin said quietly, sitting up again.  He reached to put one solid hand on Peter’s bicep.  “…before I felt you up.”

Peter was silent for a moment, looking up at that luscious mouth, so close to his own, when Quentin spoke again.

“Do you forgive me, Peter?”

Peter closed his eyes.  He didn’t want to talk about forgiveness, didn’t want to talk about what needed to be forgiven, and why.  Quentin’s hand was now stroking his chest, and he didn’t want to talk at all.

“Please… you don’t have to say yes.  You can say something else.  Anything at all.  As long as it’s the truth.  I just need to know.”

“I needed… information…” Peter said, without opening his eyes, trying to explain it as best he could.  “I had a boyfriend, but our relationship was… it wasn’t… it was good.  But it was  immature.  I found out that… I found that out.  And that wasn’t exactly the way I wanted to find out but… but I found out from you.  And it led us, to him and me, to... to have a conversation that I didn’t even know we needed to have. Because he was waiting for me to bring up and he’s the kind of guy that really could have waited forever… believe me, he really would have waited forever.  But we had to have that conversation because of you… and it… yeah.  It led to a lot of good things.  So I guess the answer is yes… I guess…

“And I still have him.  My boyfriend,” he said quickly as his eyes opened again and he found himself looking directly at Quentin’s mouth, now close enough to kiss.

“I have a fiancé in Albany,” Quentin joked.  “What difference does it make.”  Peter grinned.

They were inside the pickup cab now, and Peter was glad. When he had been 17, Quentin had made the first move, had kissed Peter BEFORE Peter had worked up the nerve to climb onto his lap.  And that was something Peter had always regretted.

He grinned as he climbed into Quentin’s lap now, stradling Quentin’s legs with his own.

“I always wanted to see your face when I did this,” Peter whispered, as he pulled Quentin’s head back by the hair, kissing him hard, just like in his dreams.

“Oh god kid,” Quentin panted when Peter let him come up for air.  “I nearly came in my pants when you did it the first time,” Quentin breathed against his mouth, and soon they weren’t speaking at all, kissing each other greedily as Quentin pulled him close with strong arms.  Now Peter’s erection was pressing firmly into Quentin’s chest, and that was just fine too.

“I love how hungry your hands feel,” Peter moaned as Quentin’s eager fingers dug into the meat of his ass.  He wasn’t entirely sure that sentence made sense, but he hoped Quentin got the idea.

He pulled away long enough to peel off his shirt, hoping there was enough moonlight to show off the body he was so proud of.

“Fuck,” was Quentin’s only comment, but that was enough. Soon he was biting his way across Peter’s shoulder and shamelessly grinding his hardon into Peter’s body, denim against denim.  Peter was just beginning to realize how complicated it was going to be, getting those tight jeans off in these tight confines, when Quentin hissed and tensed, his fingers suddenly biting into Peter’s biceps, his whole body going still.

Peter was overwhelmed, suddenly, with another memory. Hadn’t they made out in the woods behind the church, just like this?  And hadn’t Quentin tensed suddenly, his fingers digging into Peter’s arms, just like this?  And hadn’t Peter suddenly wondered if Quentin had been stung by a bee, or bitten by a snake? Because he seemed to suddenly be in pain…

…but this Quentin didn’t seem to be in pain at all. In fact he was relaxing completely, catching his breath, laying his head back with a goofy smile on his face.

“What… what?”  Peter asked, confused.  It couldn’t be… but it was.  He pressed himself into Quentin’s lap, but there was nothing there.  Quentin’s erection, that terrifying thing that had haunted his dreams for so long, was simply gone.

“Wait… you didn’t just…”

“You were so scared of it,” Quentin said with an easy smile. “All you had to do was wrap your hand around it for a few moments and it would have all been over.  You never had anything to be afraid of.”

“And the night of the lock-in at the church… you? Did you really… my god no wonder you turned off so suddenly.”

“I could have taken care of you too,” Quentin said, still grinning that goofy grin.  Tracing the length of Peter’s erection with his thumb.  “Boys your age get off so fast.  I could have done it right there and then without so much as undoing a button. But I didn’t.”

Peter looked into Quentin’s eyes, but he didn’t ask.

Quentin answered anyway.  “Because I’m a shitty person,” he said, reaching up to whisper it against Peter’s mouth.  “And shitty people do shitty things.”

“Yeah, and that’s the problem,” Peter said, reaching down and pulling Quentin’s hand away by the thumb.

“This has been nice, Reverend Beck, it really has. But Matty is my best friend… and a lot more than that now.  And you had him so messed up he was literally thinking of drowning himself in my lake. And that’s not okay.”

“I left, didn’t I?  Wasn’t that enough?”  Quentin whined, trying to pull his thumb out of Peter’s grasp.  “I left and I didn’t come back…”

“You didn’t have a choice.  Try to remember Reverend Beck… or did we forget our famous Nightfall Sermon? You left because they rode you out of town on a rail.  And if we hadn’t done that… it would have been a lot worse.  For you.  You made Matty blame himself, Quentin.  For what you did.  For all of it.  I don’t even know how… you just have a knack…”  

“It’s not hard kid,” Quentin said, looking him directly in the eye.  His gentle tone was gone, but his thumb still remained in Peter’s grip, his hand hanging just an inch from Peter’s body, in no hurry to move away.

“There’s no trick to it.  Everyone in the world, everyone on the planet, either blames themselves for everything, or else they blame themselves for nothing.  I always have a 50/50 shot.”

“You’re the kind of man who does a lot of damage, Quentin.”

“That’s why I traveled, Peter.  I turned down a lot of better jobs in bigger churches and I stayed on the road nine months out of the year.  It was less money, but staying in one place, I would have done TOO MUCH damage. As long as I kept moving, never going back to any place more than twice, it was different…”

“Damage is damage, Quentin, even if you spread it around.

“But you were okay…”

“Because I already had a boyfriend, because I wasn’t desperately lonely, isolated in this one-shitter town and thinking I was the only gay kid in New York, or even the entire world.  I was lucky enough to know better than that.  Because my boyfriend happened to be a 1600 year old demon who had lived in monastery where everyone was gay including some notable saints…”

A crash of thunder came from overhead, startling both of them.  They looked at each other in surprise.  The night had been dry… they had just been outside in it moments before…

The next clap of thunder made them wince, and Peter willingly moved out of Quentin’s lap as he grabbed his keys off the dashboard and tried to start the truck.  The thunder sounded less like a storm and more like a series of explosions.  It sounded as if lightning had hit several trees nearby, yet there had been no flashes of light.  In fact the night was pitch black.  They could barely see each other through the eerie lights of the dashboard.  

“No no no no no no…” Quentin was moaning, his voice rising in fear, desperately trying to jam his keys into the ignition, failing in his panic.  “And this is when the truck won’t start, oh god, oh god please not again…”

“Quentin, we’re okay.  It’s dark, but we’re not… we’re not un-safe.  I promise…”

And then the scratching started.