#omnipresent god one real!1!!1

[pickl-o]

i like one they need to eventually show up more

[fallofthecelestial]

Okay. Since we're going over all the takes on Mr. X at this point.. What if his powers really don't have a backside. What if (the state of) his normal life is the backside.

What if his normal life is akin to that of heroes where he has to pretend to be something he's not and follow rules that the people who control his life came up with to further their own goals. What if he can only be free of other people's beliefs and expectations when he's a hero.

What if in reality he truly is like everyone else. The other heroes. The ordinary people. All those who work themselves to the bone, who are tired and overworked and sick of all the exploitation...

What if when he's in the form of the number one hero.. when he becomes the most sought after product on the hero market..

Is when he gains the freedom to truly be himself

[stygiansauce]

ok i’m back and my thoughts are mostly together!

1. lore drop. i absolutely adore and abhor the grian-jimmy lore. like it hurts and it’s very real but also the almost discomfort of knowing like “hey as your sibling i understand that you’re an adult but as a parent you’re still my baby” and it probably doesn’t help with their ages being relatively close together!!! ahh!!! i love how grian wants jimjam to experience normal-ish adult things but still keep him so close under his wing. it’s just MWUAH chefs kiss (one day grian and jimmy are going to fight and maybe grian will say “you’re MY son” and jimmy will say “but you’re not mum” and oh it’s going to build until it breaks)

2. oh my god the emotional rollercoaster. i read tension, i giggle (and get weird looks from my friends). i read sibling dynamics, i gasp and clutch my pearls. i read unintentional immortalization of myself, i twirl my hair. i read JIZZIE!!! giggling again. you’re unreal everything is so in character

3. LORE DROP GOD TANGO LORE??? gosh and it’s so understandable with tango trying to feel out how having more friends works!! like zed’s his confidant and his brother in arms and gosh tango feels like he’s doing zed a disservice by confiding in other people!!! oh my godddd sauce you literally have to be omnipresent because ouch??? gosh and adequate!!! stop please my heart cannot take this. tango having the best memories of his life with adequate but having to give him up for a future!!

4. TENSION OH EM GEE. at this point every interaction between them is foreplay. and with etho and bdubs??? AND CLIMB 10. stop i actually almost shed a tear. (and i read the hanging indent i now have an ouchie and no one to kiss jt better). and the grian-tango stare off??? i love how unsettling you make his stare feel. being perceived is probably one of the worst feelings ever and grian is absolutely picking apart every piece of tango to see if he’s really actually just a teensy bit worthy of his baby brother.

5. tango jimmy tango jimmy TANGO JIMMY- LOLLIPOP SCENE ELECTRIC BOOGALOO YOU ARE ELECTROCUTING ME AND I AM BOUNCING OFF THE WALLS

ok this is a long one but holy crap keep up the PHENOMENAL work!!!

- 💿

CD anon...you have predicted so much. Apollo has smacked you with the gift of prophecy. I want...to...share...the...whole plot. SHAKING.

YES. The chill brother and the scared parent are two sides of the same coin and Jimmy has trouble differentiating between them. There is a reason he agrees to the bar crawl so fast and we learn later in the car that the reason is guilt. Tango struggles with a lot, but Jimmy's main villian in this story is guilt and his stuggle to be his own person, that isn't spending all his energy on other people. He has to learn how to be selfish. (see chapter three for more)

I had so much with all these characters. I honestly feel like Lizzie didn't get enough light but I will try to remedy that in another chapter. But for background lore about the Jizzie wedding that doesn't matter: Jimmy says "Either way, I was just there to witness. No one else could do it on short notice.” and we as the readers will never get to see (I might have Joel bring it up later in a small comment) but Jimmy wasn't "just there" he was Joel's best man. They didn't ask anyone else to come. They asked ONLY Jimmy to be there. He's down playing his worth in this scene. Though, I don't expect you guys to notice that because I didn't supply that context yet. we can chat about it here for now, becuase I think it will help you guys see some of the choices I made for Jimmy's character and how the lack of confidence he shows in the backflash hasn't really gone away. Not where it matters at least.

YES! You noticed his sacrifice! In chapter three Jimmy talks about how Tango is a giver. How he's always giving parts of himself away to their friends and being just...Tango. And then we get these bits about his life. Adequate was what he had before he met Zed, his ONE friend. Like he talks about ex-girlfriends and past hookups and all that, but he doesn't mention any other friends besides the one's he has in front of him. Tango had one thing, his horse. and when his father told him, "You’re a waste of a good brain stuck on this ranch, son" and I good will hunting the fuck out his character, we learn that he GAVE UP something he loves because he trusts his father/mentor/Zed and chooses to move away to persue a new, better life. Tango has so much inside of him that he just doesn't know how to talk about. He's a genious. He's smarter than everyone else in this story, including Etho. yet he still struggles academically. He still FEARS his thesis and what that will do for his life. and instead of worrying about that he's worried about JIMMY. He's still giving up parts of himself because it's all he knows how to do. Vs. Jimmy who is so tired of giving parts of himself that he holds it all close to his chest (see chapter three) and doesn't let Tango in. thank goodness Tango is patient because if he wasn't their relationship wouldn't be what it is now.

YEEAAHHH sorry I killed Climb. It was Hermitcraft season 10 lore. It hurt to do. In the orginal draft Tango is the one that had to put Climb down, but then I was like "thats so fucked up for no reason. A recreational horse like Climb would either just die, or be put down by a vet" and in all honesty? calling a vet and putting down a pet is worse than just having someone shoot it. It's dragged out and it hurts and poor Bdubs because y'all dont even know how he got Climb yet, and thats gonna make his death hurt worse when you know. (yum Hanging Indent lore) I REALLY enjoy the differences in reactions between Tango and Jimmy, when being preceived. In chapter three, Jimmy feels really precived (I know you. It echoes and mocks him, makes his breath lump in his throat, thick and awful.) , and his reaction is violence! He's on edge and instantly ready to fight, I wonder where he learned to feel like that... Vs. Tango who instantly wants to hide, and run, and curl into himself. He's a background guy. He isn't used to this and doesn't know how to react. The only time he reacts is when Jimmy is within his reach, almost like protection. Food for thought.

Lollipop scene 2.0!!! GOSH Tango has so much self control, holy cow. I love this scene for them. I LOVE the Etho talk on the porch. The way I would yap and break down each thing Etho does in that scene is crazy. Because Etho is using psychology on Tango, and he used it on you. Did you notice? There are no communication break downs between them. Tango is uncomfortable but Etho still drags it out of him. He says things that get certain answers. It's all casual yet calculated. FOOD FOR THOUGHT!! Hope you guys enjoyed! I can and will yap about this chapter but only AFTER you guys make the connections yourself. its no fun if I give it all to you. Kisses!! xoxo Sauce

[ragnarokhound]

Please please please feed the brain worm you gave me. Jaytim captive prince au is CRAZY and you are so real for reading the books that fast. The chokehold those books had on me oh my god

[first of all, hi! Love your work :D 💕❤️]

Second of all. God. Right?? I alarmed a few of my IRL friends. I read books 1&2 back to back. I stayed up way too late finishing book 2 and had to go to work the next day and all I could think about was getting home to read book 3. Today I read the short story collection. I love them your honor OTL

Laurent reminded me of some of my favorite Tim interpretations every now and then - always having something cutting to say, needing alone time to think and then coming up with not only a new, better plan but setting five other things in motion to support it. Being very reluctantly in love with a man who could very easily kill him who said that

Damen was made in a lab for Me Specifically, and he reminded me of how I like to write Jason too sometimes alskdndks just. Being fed up 24/7 with awful people doing awful things, sassy rejoinders that he simply cannot stop himself from saying. That "too late, sweetheart" early early in the first book was SUCH a Jason moment to me, I could see that bath scene happening SO easily with jaytim skcnfjdkjd

If (IF!!!!) I were gonna write jaytim captive prince style (and not just my gladiator fic lmao), I'd have to change a lot of things around because the setting and politics of it all are so beautifully and importantly about Damen and Laurent lol, and they are not actually 1-1 Jason and Tim.

BUT... Obviously. Tim would be in Laurent's role and Jason would be in Damen's. And obviously Tim's older brother, Dick, would be absent for sad plot reasons. And obviously Jason was betrayed by his mother, Sheila, who sold him to one direction the enemy country of which Tim is the prince. Unclear still what the exact feeling about Jason would be, and if he has anything to do with Dick not being around (or if Dick is even dead at all...!) but what makes captive prince so tasty is that Laurent HATED Damen, and Damen had to hide who he was so he just had to TAKE IT. Which of course means that for whatever reason, Tim hates Jason on sight. And for whatever reason, Jason has to take whatever abuse is thrown his way.

!!!

Oh. Oooooh could be... Okay throw a bunch of stuff out. Could be that Tim is in the court of Ra's al Ghul OwO. Maybe Tim is a foreign prince who's lived there in asylum for some time, and Jason was made a present to Tim because Jason's country was responsible for driving Tim into asylum in the first place OwO.

Still up in the air whether Jason's identity is out in the open or if he's been made a scapegoat just like Damen was. Then you could have a bunch of bouncing off Ra's and Talia and Damian and the friends Tim made in Red Robin among the assassins... And there's the omnipresent danger of Tim being beholden to Ra's court OwO. He's not so much protected as he is a hostage OwO. Just like Damen, Jason was meant to be a taunt for Tim, something to force him into acting out and giving Ra's further leverage.

Basically, this captive prince au would be a surprise Brucequest au, this time with 100% more Jason in skimpy slave boy outfits, having belligerent sexual tension with a skittish, political double-speaking Tim (so. Tim.) (The king is missing. Tim's brother Dick is preparing to be crowned. He doesn't believe Tim's letters that Bruce is alive and that he's going to find him.)

And I'm stopping there. You CANT DO THIS TO ME, werewolf fic is already crying itself to sleep every night while I dally with gladiator fic, okay, I refuse to write this au--

[the WIP tower creaks ominously as it ascends another story]

[zahri-melitor]

Thinking more about Tom King; I do wonder how much of how he’s viewed on tumblr is a result of the following two facts:-

The majority of the DC comics fandom on tumblr does not have personal memories of 2001

The majority of the DC comics fandom on tumblr is not prepared to give government security or intelligence the time of day as having a necessary purpose

It sounds a bit ‘you don’t know what you’re missing’ but fundamentally I think part of the problem is that you’re (generally) too young to appreciate many of King’s fundamental storytelling elements, because you’re too young to remember or care about the topics he keeps going back to interrogate.

And this is something that comes up in conversations I have with friends who are school teachers and university lecturers all the time, because September 11 for the majority of their students has now moved from category 1 here to category 3:

Core ‘where were you’ memory (people born early 90s or before)

Foundation of their childhood status quo (mid 90s to mid 2000s; maybe as late as 2007-2008)

History (late 2000s onwards)

They’re the ones at the forefront of talking about this with their students, and it’s moved from ‘default background for undergraduates’ now into ‘history that has an effect on the present’. They’re now too young to have soaked in the exhaustingly omnipresent US patriotism of the culture of the 2000s. And so the reaction of current students as a cohort to things heavily based or reflective on this period is fundamentally different to someone who lived through it.

A similar, earlier comparison would be writers who frame everything through the lens of the Cold War as an analogy for their writing. I’m a category 2 for the fall of the USSR, and I grew up with that dividing line; there was a lot of media made in the 90s that still premised the Soviets as existing into the future (very early 90s stuff that hadn’t been fixed in time) or that frantically had had a word find-replace for “Soviet” to “Russian” but the general attitude hadn’t changed (good comics example here is go read any of KGBeast’s appearances around Knightfall in DC comics; they’re really struggling with what to do about him). There was also even more media that still wanted to hammer Cold War themes but invented new fake countries to overlay it onto and to discuss as being the background of proxy wars, so they had the out of ‘this isn’t a real place, it’s Markovia/Kaznia/Pan Balgravia or Qurac/Kahndaq/Bialya’.

Many of these got further use for decades up until the present, partly because Central Asia has remained a hotspot for conflict for decades as a result of the fallout of the Cold War proxy conflicts, and partly because shoving extra expy states into Europe means you can play with the politics without having to be exact.

Because to me, this is what I see King doing to the present. And why it sticks out is that most people aren’t harping on the themes constantly anymore like they were 20 years ago. But for King it’s a well he keeps going back to because he was so heavily involved in it and didn’t really get the chance to start processing it until he left the CIA around 2010 and started working his feelings out in stories.

Because yes, at this point he’s beating a dead horse, but there are also incredibly successful writers of military thrillers who are STILL writing veiled ‘it’s the Soviets’ or ‘it’s the Arab Terrorists’ plots and selling. There’s clearly an audience for it. The audience just is an aging one.

And as someone who does remember the period, some of his work is extremely ‘oh god I remember’ and some of it is genuinely well thought through analogies interrogating the topic. Media and storytelling are frequently in conversation with the world and with themes the writer cares about. And I think we can all tell how large some of this loomed in Tom King’s life.

[al-hekima-madara-blog]

Yin/Yang in Naruto (2/2)

The case of Madara & Hashirama

If you haven't done it yet read the first part : Yin Yang generality kudos to @shisui-uchiha-rp

The concept is omnipresent in Naruto. This isn't a surprise considering it's strongly attached to the japanese culture which includes both shinto and buddhist elements.

Naruto being a shonen targeting a young male audience, the main cast is masculine and centred around teenage boys' interests : friendship, competition, power scale, war in the shinobi world. In this context, the Yin/Yang is used to define :

implicitly the basic way to knead chakra : 50% physical energy throught training (yang), 50% spiritual energy through meditation (yin)

explicitly in a higher level it defines the chakra nature : Yin release (Inton) and Yang release (Yoton). A good example is Minato being able to split Kyubi's chakra. Interesting to note that he sealed the yang kyubi's chakra in Naruto.

Here it has nothing to do with gender or romantic attraction like majority of female audience falsely assumed (otherwise Naruto would be simply a shojo).

Being more interested by the Founders era let's see how it manifests for Madara and Hashirama.

Chakra Yin/Yang

if you have read the part 1, what Madara's saying will not surprise you

We know through the example of Naruto and Sasuke that the Senju/Uzumaki inherited the Yang release. The Uchiha clan the Yin Release.

Mokuton is a striking demonstration of Yang signature. What is wood release but the concrete manifestation of vitality? It's not conscious, there is no soul in the forest that Hashirama creates but there is a raw and powerful material form.

Madara's signature is the Sharingan and its superior form being the Mangekyou Sharingan and Eternal Mangekyou Sharingan. Being a Yin release, the sharingan depends on the powerful imagination and the spiritual energy of its possessor. For this reason Sasuke was able to break through Itachi's Mangakyou sharingan with a simple three-tomoe. Sasuke has simply a highest spiritual Yin release that his brother and I'm sure Itachi was aware of it. Being Indra's incarnation just like Madara, his dominance in Yin release was almost fated.

Sharingan disturbs and manipulates perception of time, and space. The internal Yin energy doesn't do any visible damage to opponents, but it's capable of breaking their mind. Sasuke and Kakashi spent few weeks in hospital after encountering Itachi.

This manipulation of perception works as well on the user. For example when they say that Sharingan can read movement. Think about a car passing close to you and you feel like that moment happened in slowmotion. The split second that has just happened wasn't changed but your perception of imminent danger was so high that your brain read a lot of informations in a small amount of time and it has created this ability to slower time. An other example, when you feel like you've seen a ghost in your room, it's usually the power of you imagination to create something in order to explain the phenomenon you've just witnessed (or maybe it's a real ghost👻).

In the same way, Susanoo is the manifestation of destruction. An imaginary God of storm made of chakra. It's not a concrete object like Hashirama's forest or his buddha statue. It disappears as soon as Madara is out of chakra or not able to use it properly, the form can also adapt to an other body when the susanoo became Kyubi's armour. And because the Susanoo is specific to each user, in Madara's case he has 4 arms and two faces. It manifests Madara's unconscious way to counter his weakness : fearing having someone on his back.

I should mention four other powerful ways to use Yin release in the Uchiha :

Kotoamatsukami by Shisui : it's literally mind control. It makes you believe you come up with an idea and use your free will, while absolutely not!

Izanami : I made already a post about Naori saying it's one of the most powerful one because this time it sincerely changes someone's mindset. You have to do your own introspection. Yin is often portrayed as emotional manipulation but originally it's transformation of the soul for improvement.

The rinnegan is interesting because it blurs the limit between Imagination and reality. It reunites both Indra and Ashura's DNA. Like the body and soul that Hagoromo was able to do for creating the bijuus. They are conscious being with a body. Madara missed to understand that, he saw them only like a powerful source of power and didn't recognise their lives, hence the importance of knowing their names. An other way the rinnegan is pushing the limit between reality and dream, Madara sees the limbo zone, Pain was able to access the world of the deads and brought them back, Sasuke can travel in alternative dimensions.

And lastly Madara's infinite Tsukuyomi is also a powerful one by its scale ~the whole world! Note that Madara brought people INSIDE his dream and not the other way around.

Let's go back to the founders. Aside from their power, the whole shinobi career (or let's say public achievement) of both of them reflects how Yin and Yang had an influence in their life.

Hashirama had a successful public life as hokage. His face is literally carved above the village like the sun high in the sky. He's remembered as the only founder of Konoha. We all know his wife Mito, his grandchildren Tsunade and Nawaki. And his students Danzo and Hiruzen. He's also notorious for having transmitted to the village the will of fire. He's the "God of the shinobis", hard to find a better praise.

Madara in the other side had a shinobi life completely coherent with Yin energy. The fact he was one of Konoha's founder and it has been erased from Konoha's memory including Sasuke who's the Uchiha leader's son. He called himself the "Ghost of the Uchiha" What is a ghost but a lost spirit with no more physical body? Most of his life is shrouded in mystery. We don't know his brothers' name except Izuna. This one is still an enigma we don't know much about his relationship with his older brother. Madara's genealogy isn't clearly stated. How are Obito, Itachi and Sasuke really related to him? Sasuke does look like Izuna and his mum Mikoto but adult Sasuke drawn by Kishimoto in Naruto Gaiden looks intentionally exactly like Madara...? Obito with long hair also can pass as Madara in his youth. A big chunk of Madara's past is elusive. If we admit he lost at the Valley of the end in his early 30's and died in his 90's when he met Obito. It means he spent at least 60 years of his life in complete isolation, hidden in his cave, forgotten by all. Also if you remember what I said in part 1 on the Yin's power, Madara is a character that the name only produces fear and trauma cf Kurama, Tobirama, Onoki. His name alone is enough to launch the 4th Shinobi war. He also allowed Obito to use his aura to serve his plan. Madara is really the master of the dark Yin that he uses as a psychological warfare.

But Kishimoto is such a good writer (at least concerning male characters lol). He made their personality more complex and interesting that Naruto as an extravert and Sasuke as an introvert. If we focus on the founders' personal character we see that Madara is actually very yang and Hashirama very yin. Hence why the flashback was such a pleasant surprise. That mysterious Madara is actually a very impulsive and playful character while the God of Shinobi is a moody/unserious man bullied by his little brother to the great disappointment of Suigetsu.

If we have to associate few adjective to see how Madara's character is leaning toward yang let's list them : commanding, takes initiative first, competitive, expansionist, dominant, assertive, prefers to act alone, a big ego, thinks practically, nihilist vision of the world, materialist and disapprove anything not based in facts (discussion with Tsunade about what is power?), has a vertical vision of authority (Iwa's incident)

For Hashirama's traits, he prefers consensus and tries to satisfy everyone (Gokage meeting, accepting democratic election in Konoha), conflict avoidance unless it becomes a life or death situation, under the influence of Tobirama or Madara, visionary about the village but doesn't have practical way to achieve it. He relies on Tobirama to make the dream comes true ex : he didn't know how realistically deal with the Uchiha clans. He has a taste for vain activities like gambling, he may be a drinker too if he's like Tsunade. Generally speaking he's more collective oriented.

And lastly in their private relationship, the relationship with their brothers follow the same logic. We see that in this yin energy in day to day life Hashirama is constantly under his younger brother Tobirama's influence. By the way Tobirama is seen as protecting Hashirama from their father not the other way around. My two cents that his wife Mito helped him being more assertive as an hokage. because it doesn't come for him naturally to lead, to the point that his first thought was to give the leadership to Madara until the village decided otherwise.

In mirror, we can then guess what Madara's relationship was with his brother. The Uchihas are seen as a more traditional than the Senjus. Being the oldest, Madara has been raised most likely to lead and being a protector for his brother. Yet Izuna stopped him from making peace with the Senjus. His young brother might have been Madara's emotional anchor. In moment of crisis he might be the one stabilizing his impulsive side into realistic goals. After his departure, nothing stopped anymore Madara for realising the extravagant Infinite Tsukuyomi which is quite a crazy dream if you think about it calmly. But who can tell him now that black zetsu is dodgy in pretending to be his conscious?

Next for this Madara's birthday week : How can we rewrite our King to be the hero?

[gretavanmoon]

an omnipresent force• ch 1

Chapter 1- DARK PHENOMENON

Jake x reader (we'll get there... I promise)

Words: 10.5k

A/N: Semi-AU// Set six years in the future, the world has decided to cast humankind aside, starting with the poisonous entities that are destroying her the most.

Warnings: Dystopian Horror Cursing, Smoking, Mention of Alcohol, Feelings of Fear and Uncertainty, An Apocalyptic World, Hunting, Violence (mention of firearms), Looting, Kidnapping, Wounds and Pain, Blood, Death & Dying, Burials, Lying, Deceit, Sadness

enjoy my dabbling in the sci-fi world

•

Cheatham County, Tennessee 2030

Y/N

It feels like only yesterday that I noticed that the hillside beside my garden seemed as if it had taken on a different shape, the sycamore tree perched at the foot of it tilted and stretching way lower than it normally did. I squinted in question at the sight, wondering if my eyes were playing tricks on me. The day was chilly and windy but the sun still shone, casting late-evening shadows across the garden ground. ‘Strange,’ I’d thought to myself as I realized. ‘A sinkhole?’ 

I stood from my knelt position, wiping my hands against one another as I cleared the dirt from them.

I wasn’t wrong, the ground was sunken and almost rutted, almost as if it had quietly shrunken itself down five or six feet sometime throughout the day. When my toes poked up to the edge of it, I backed away quickly, realizing that the ground could potentially give way again at any second, and take me right along with it. The wind had picked up as I skipped backward, putting as much distance as I could between it and me. A strange type of fear had taken over my body, one that I’d never felt before. ‘Sinkholes don’t happen here, do they? Don’t they normally occur in sea-level land, or near river beds where the bedrock is weakest?’

Hell, I didn’t know for sure. I’d never seen a sinkhole in real life before, nor had I ever really done much research on them. I made my way back inside as a light drizzle began to coat my face, letting the door slam behind me with the vacuum pull of the wind mixed with my open windows. I sat down at my kitchen table, pulling my phone from the charger as I searched up my grandfather’s contact. 

I pulled the phone to my ear and listened to the tone ring out, and his gruff voice greet me on the other end. 

“Evening, youngin’! What are you wastin’ time with today?” he joked. 

A smile cracked across my face. “Nothing, Papaw… was just cleaning up the dead weeds from the garden. Hey, I noticed something out in the yard, I think I have a sinkhole…”

I heard him inhale his cigarette smoke. “A sinkhole? How in god’s name…? You sure, youngin’?”

“I’m positive. Look, I’ll send you a picture.” I turned my phone and snapped a quick few photos out the kitchen window, showing the land he knew just as well as I did, and how it now sat very, very differently. “There. Should be coming through, now.”

I listened as he puffed his cigarette again and clicked around on the screen of his phone, still very uncomfortable with the thing, and why it was really necessary in his life. “Hell’s fire, you’re right. When’d you notice it?” he asked. 

I sat back down in my kitchen chair, crossing one leg over the other as I peered up at the ceiling. “Just… Now…” My voice trailed off as I inspected the ceiling and wall in front of me, seeing that a giant crack had formed right along the load-bearing wall in the center of my small home. “Damn, Paps, there’s a crack in my wall, too…”

Suddenly, I felt panicked, standing up to run my hand along the fracture. It was big, almost a centimeter thick, all the way from the floor to the ceiling. 

“You’re kiddin’ me. Go downstairs, go to the basement, see if there is a crack there…” he ordered, so I did. I kicked the old paint cans to the side as I rounded off the bottom step of my basement, trying to make sense of where the floor would line up with the walls above me. Sure enough, there it was, the old stone foundation that was holding up the footers of my little home had begun to collapse, sinking down into the ground right in the center of it all. 

“Shit, it’s here, too. It’s bad, Paps, what do I do?!” I panicked, looking around for something as if I could prop it all back up. 

“Get everything that you can, all your valuables, sis. Pack it all up and come here. Come stay with me and your Gran. Don’t be afraid, just be aware. I’ll call your Daddy and tell him what’s happened. Me and him and your brother will come out and assess it once’t this rain passes.”

I felt as though my chest was starting to heave, the sudden mind-bending fear that my whole home was going to cave in on itself and crush me now scaring me more than anything I’d felt in a long, long time. “Okay, okay I’ll be there soon. Thanks, Paps,” I said as I hung up the phone, making sure to snap another few quick photos before I dashed back up the stairs in search of my suitcase. 

Little did I know that that would be the last time I would ever set foot in my tiny little cottage, the first home I ever had after I moved from my parents’ in Nashville after college. I’d bounced from apartment to apartment before I finally moved back out to the country to be near my grandparents. The cottage was tiny, and it wasn’t much, but it was mine. I’d stayed single for the majority of my life, never settling on any one man, finding flaws in damn near all of them that I brought home with me. I was 32 at the time, and settling down into a relationship or marriage was the absolute furthest thing from my mind. I’d cherished that home, filling it with antiques and spice racks and multicolored lace curtains… transforming it into the home I had always wanted while maintaining my steady work-from-home career. 

I remember my head spinning like a top as I packed up my valuables… my laptop and my important paperwork, my toiletries that would last me a few days, along with a few practical outfits that would keep me warm with the changing season. Surely I didn’t need to pack for more than a few days, long enough for my dad and brother to come and see if they could fix the footer under my house and allow me to grab a few more things.

But I was so, so sadly mistaken.

I never got to set foot in my little cottage again. That home eventually got eaten up in what turned out to be the first sinkhole in Tennessee. Well, not the very first, obviously. But the first one that would spawn a series of many more across the state of Tennessee, and Kentucky, and all the way down into Alabama and into Mississippi. 

That was so long ago, now, and the way of life I knew and loved changed forever that day, as the world as we knew it tilted itself on its axis, never to be the same again. 

That day, that very day, the Earth had decided that she was going to rid herself of these heartless beings that someone had decided would inhabit her, stretching and breaking and destroying everything in her power to extinguish all of mankind and all that mankind had created in spite of her. The Earth didn’t need us anymore, and though we were all completely reliant on her, we had also created an invisible force of a blend of scientific knowledge and powerful mechanics that, inevitably, had drained her completely dry of her natural resources. 

No one believed it was the end of days, there was no giant announcement that came across our radio waves and on our phone alert systems. There was no dark, biblical occurrence or seven plagues like those who believed in such things had predicted… it just… happened. 

One day I was weeding my garden, and the next, I was coming to terms with the fact that I had no choice but to thrust myself into full on survival mode. Living with nothing more than what I had at that very moment, and watching as everything in my life dwindled down more quickly than anyone could even fathom. 

Earthquakes shook the planet. The rivers all over the world had begun to overflow, the trees began to uproot themselves and fall like timber. Animals would be dead on the side of the roads, even animals that seemingly had absolutely nothing wrong with them. Birds, bears, wolves… lying and littering the hillsides as if they had just laid down to go to sleep.

Even the sun wasn’t the same. It just felt different. The normal heat that fell onto your skin seemed to sear it now instead of warm it. The wind, when it did blow, made a hissing noise as it’d pass by. The sinkholes continued, even some as big as lakes, swallowing up unsuspecting neighborhoods and taking everything with them in their wake. 

In the weeks following that day, my father had forced my grandparents and I to come back to Nashville, given that there hadn’t been any disturbances in the land there, yet. So the three of us packed up what we needed, saying goodbye to the home that my grandparents had lived in since marriage, and loading everything into their old pickup truck. We made the short drive back home to my parents’ where they had prepared the guestroom and my old bedroom for our arrival. 

My younger brother James still lived at home with them, still young but never having the want to move out and be on his own. He was eight years my junior, twenty-four years old and working on his master’s degree in engineering and technology. Truly, he was too smart for his own good. My parents had allowed him to live at home as he was a very quiet creature, devoting most of his life to his studies instead of being any type of social butterfly. He was strong, though, and never hesitated to be the one to come and pick me up after I’d had one too many drinks at the bar. 

“Hey, sis. Sorry your house got swallowed up,” he’d said as he took me in his bear-hug embrace, patting the back of my head with his giant hand. 

Though my body was reeling with fear of the unknown, James was the one to bring me back down to earth with his overwhelmingly warm embrace and matter-of-fact way of speaking. My only sibling, though much younger, always knew exactly what I needed, right when I needed it. “Thanks, pipsqueak. Kinda fuckin’ sucks, actually,” I’d replied with a defeated lilt. “Didn’t think I’d be living back at Mom and Dad’s during the apocalypse,” I joked. 

I still remembered how his face had contorted hearing that word, still a shock to the system to hear it said out loud. It shocked me too, even as I said it. The two of us retreated to the living room as my parents assisted my grandparents in getting their room unpacked, which at the time seemed like nothing more than a menial task to mask the reality of what was happening around us. Menial actions to make the situation feel less threatening and more like something we could ignore. 

“Is this shit really happening, Y/N? Like are we really going to have to–”

“Yes, James. You saw my house, you’ve heard the talks on the News… it’s happening. And it’s happening fast. Everywhere.” I was always a very straightforward person, getting right to the point of things instead of beating around the bush. I always thought it was a waste of time, ignoring the reality of things. 

“Fuck,” he’d mumbled under his breath, his leg bouncing up and down as he hugged one of Mom’s old decorative pillows on his lap. My little James, always wearing his heart on his sleeve and possessing the inability to hide his emotions. Though his stature was monstrous, his personality never mirrored it. 

My eyebrows furrowed as I pondered him, feeling that strange aura that only siblings share bouncing right off of him. “What is it, James? What’s wrong?” I’d asked, now really getting worried as I watched his eyes scan the room aimlessly. 

He sniffed hard through his nose, scooting closer in the chair. He held his giant hands out to me, palms down, his knee still bouncing furiously. “What?!” I asked. “I’m confused… What is it?”

He swallowed and finally flipped his hands over, revealing to me something that I had never seen on him before. His palms and fingers were covered with some type of bruise-like rash, marks that resembled heavy birthmarks but a very deep purple as opposed to a light pink. “What happened? Did you burn yourself?” I’d asked, taking his wrists in my hands to observe him.

He shook his head. “No, they just… it just appeared a few days ago. It started out like weird bumps, then it’s turned to this. And it’s spreading, sis. I don’t–” his voice trailed off as my eyes met his, full of worry. 

“Does it hurt?” I asked, not prepared to hear the truth. 

“Yeah. It doesn’t feel good… I’ve been hiding it from Mom and Dad, I don’t want them to worry any more than they already are, ya know?” 

I shook my head in agreement as I let my fingertips brush over the strange marks. “Anywhere else on your body?” I asked. 

“No. Not yet, at least…”

“Care if I take a photo, just so we can try and look it up? I’d make you an appointment, I just don’t think…” I trailed off again as the same thought process flew through both of our heads. There won’t be any more going to the doctor.

“Yeah, sure, go ahead,” he muttered as he exhaled and I snapped the photo, my recent album now no longer full of my lavish boardwalk lunches and blurry nights out with friends, but instead screenshots of international news articles and how to tie paracord.

We’d holed up there with my parents for a month or so before our next greatest fear came crashing down over us. Suddenly, like a blackout in a storm, every piece of technology as we knew it ceased to do its job.

The big stuff went first– internet telecommunications and hubs… then went the cell phone towers and television broadcasts, little by little it all began to fail, thus cutting off communication between us and the rest of the world completely. There was no such thing as using your cell phone anymore, and those who still had landlines only were able to get them to work some of the time. Wind turbines, hydroelectrics, newer vehicles… all of it simply just stopped performing. Though the most intelligent scientists and blue-collar employees on earth tried as they might, nothing worked. Nothing held up. It was like all technology had forgotten its only purpose, the only reason it was created in the first place.

We knew things were bad when we caught word that the major hospitals had closed down and had already begun resorting to old medicine. A new sadness fell upon us as we realized that my grandma would no longer be able to just run out to the pharmacy for her medications, and the realization of that was almost harder to swallow than knowing that James’ hands were being eaten alive by something inside him.

But I would find them. I would venture out and get them for her, no matter what it would take. None of us had really bothered to leave the confines of our home, knowing that anything past our neighborhood was probably a warzone of greed and looting. Or worse, full of more sinkholes. We truly had no way of knowing, except for the quiet and quick conversations held with our trusted neighbors over the fence line. Everyone was simply terrified.

We’d already started to notice a strange amount of people walking the streets by my parents’ house; the normally calm and quiet neighborhood full of retired musicians and elementary school teachers was now teeming with sketchy foot traffic. My dad and grandfather wasted no time in resorting to armed protection, pulling out my dad’s arsenal of weaponry he kept locked away in the basement since my childhood. Never did he think he would actually think about using it.

The days were long, and the nights were even longer. Each day brought a new fear to us, a new way of questioning how we were going to survive, if we were going to survive. It was almost like we were sitting around waiting for someone to tell us what to do next. And when we expected to hear something from our government, all we got was silence. It was like they had left us all for dead, never once giving us even a sliver of advice.

There were days when my mother would have a complete mental breakdown, her fearful tears turning into full-on panic attacks that would leave her exhausted and still, my sweet father and grandfather by her side whether she needed them or not. 

Next came the fall of electricity as a whole. The whole world, shrouded in darkness as panic fell upon everyone surrounding us. No longer did we have the simple luxury of being able to turn the lights on and off. Hot water had to be heated manually, and we learned to cook over a small campfire in the back yard. 

One night, as the weather began to cool, the six of us gathered in our living room, cooking over a propane stove Papaw had thought about packing last minute. The wind was blowing a lot colder, now, but we managed to keep warm as the season began to change over into winter. Luckily, the almanac had said this was to be a mild winter, and we still had enough supplies to last us through, but my grandfather and I had noticed that it would be necessary to venture out for food, soon. 

He and I were always on that same wavelength, speaking to and through one another and making decisions far ahead of time. We were both doers, and pretty smart ones, at that. 

“We’ve got to go back,” I whispered to him after supper that evening as we did our best to clean the dishes. “You know that, right?”

His crows feet became more prominent as he winced at me. “I know we do. But the question is when? And how will we convince them that we need to retreat back to Cheatham?” It’d become obvious to me in the past week or so that it was time to go back out into the country to my grandparents’ home, away from the middle of the city where the dangers were creeping in around us at a quicker pace.

“There will be an argument, I’m sure. I know your mother won’t want to leave her home, and she will say that the city can give us more supplies than my farm could,” he whispered. What my grandfather and I both understood was that while that much was true, the supplies would only last so long before they’d be all gone, forcing us all to retreat anyway. Not to mention the stores have probably all been looted clean, by now. 

“Dad and James and I will go into the city for last minute supplies. Gran’s medications and anything else we can get our hands on,” I decided as he dropped his dish, grabbing my wrist firmly in his, holding it steady. 

“You’ll do no such thing, youngin’. I’ll go. You stay here, with your mother and grandmother.” His voice was stern, and though I was a full-grown adult, I knew better than to argue with my elders. 

“But Paps, you’re… no spring chicken,” I said with a hint of warmth in my voice. One last attempt to make him stay, and let me go. He may have been old, but he was still stronger than any man I had encountered in the past few years. 

“No matter. You’re stayin’ with them,” he said, picking up his dropped dish and rubbing the cloth over it again. Deep down, I knew it was because if it really was as dangerous as they said it was out there in the new public, he’d selflessly choose to put himself in the middle of it if it meant saving my life. 

I sighed. “First we’ve got to convince them to leave.” And that was going to be the hardest part.

+++

The next morning, I awoke to the sound of my grandmother shrieking in pain. It woke all of us, actually. My family and I met in the hallway of the freezing cold home, all of us rushing to my grandparents’ bedroom to see what was happening. 

We pushed the door open to find them both in the floor, my grandfather hunched over my grandmother’s body in the fetal position, her hands gripping at her chest. 

“Dad, Dad what’s wrong with her?!” my father yelled as we all fell to the floor with them in a panic. “Is it another heart attack?!”

“No,” my sweet and timid grandmother was able to choke out. “My skin, it’s– it’s burning so–” just as her words stopped, her body lurched backward, her muscles tightening so rigidly that my grandfather had no choice but to catch her. Her hands still gripped at her chest, her fingers now scratching  and ripping her pajama top off, the buttons flying all across the room. “It burns!” she cried.

My father and I crept closer, my brother helping my grandfather to hold her body. I ordered my mother to grab a flashlight, and when she returned, we shone the light on the area that my grandmother was grasping so tightly. And there on her chest, right below her breastbone, right where her heart was, was the exact same bruised rash that had overtaken the skin of my brother’s hands. 

My eyes shot to him, both of us falling into pure panic as we simultaneously realized what we were seeing. 

“Is it a heart attack, Jane, are you–”

“NO!” she cried. “My skin is on fire, right there, right here–” she pointed, and another look to my brother told me that the fire sensation was the exact same that he had been experiencing on his hands. Suddenly he shot up, rushing into the living room while the rest of us tried to console my grandmother in the pale darkness of the morning. He returned quickly with a cloth in his hands, soaking wet and sopped with water. 

“Here, Gran. Let me… this will help,” he begged, kneeling beside her as he flattened the cloth over her rash. She yelped in pain again, her hands and legs growing stiff at the reaction as he forced the cloth to her. But after only just a few seconds, she relaxed, her once screwed-shut eyes finally opening to look at us.

A tiny cry of relief left her thinning lips as her muscles fell limp, obviously feeling somewhat free of the pain. 

“James, how did you– How did you know that would help her?” my grandfather asked as we all stayed sat in the bedroom floor. 

I watched as James swallowed, finally sitting up enough to bring his hands into the barely-there glow of the rising sun through the window. He slowly turned his giant palms upright, showing my family the wounds that he had been secretly hiding from them for some time, now. Except since he showed them to me last, they’d doubled in size. Exact same color, exact same shapes as the bruises on my grandmother’s chest. 

“James, what on earth is that?” my mother cried, rushing to his side to hold his hands and inspect them more. “Why didn’t you tell us?!”

“Couldn’t worry you more, Mom, I just couldn’t add to the…” James shook his head, unable to finish. 

“Do they hurt, son? Like Jane’s…?” my grandfather asked him. 

James nodded, swallowing harshly. “Yeah, and they’re only getting worse.”

+++

A bit later that same morning, James found me in the hallway, bringing his face close to mine as he spoke quietly. “It was her pacemaker,” he mumbled.

His eyes avoided mine as they shot around, his words catching me off guard. “What?”

“Her pacemaker. In her heart,” he said. James had always been a man of few words, but right then was a time when I needed him to explain to me his thoughts in grave detail. 

“Yes, James, but what do you mean? How do you know that?” I pressed, trying not to upset him.

“Think about it,” he said, grabbing my arm and twisting me away from earshot of the family. “My hands… All I’ve done my entire adult life is touch technology. Hold it, work with it… hell, I build computers, sis. I held my phone day in and day out. My laptop… My entire life was spent on them. And Gran, her pacemaker, right at the skin above her heart…” 

His words didn’t make sense to me at first, and they honestly confused me even more for a few seconds, until he turned his hands over to me again. The rashes had begun to centralize over his fingertips, the places on his hands that made direct contact with the technology he worked with. 

“James, you don’t think…?” I breathed, my heart suddenly falling. He maneuvered his hands to mimic holding a cell phone and how his fingers would hit the screen, the rashes sitting exactly where the phone would have touched his hands most. Then again, he moved them as if he was typing on a keyboard.

“Radioactivity?” I asked, still shocked and confused. 

He shrugged. “I dunno, maybe. But, does it not kind of make sense?” he asked, leaving me unable to answer. “If I had to bet, I would say that Mom and Dad will be next.”

My heart had gone from swimming in my stomach to sitting in my throat, making my breathing chopped and anxious. My father had climbed cell phone towers and repaired them, and my mother was an x-ray technician. 

“Fuck, James,” I said, crossing my arms. “It can’t be, what about me? Why haven’t I gotten any rashes, I’m around technology, too,” I argued.

He shrugged again. “Not really, though. Not as much as we are. Hell, Y/N, you spend more time in your garden and with a book in your hands than you do anything else. You lose your phone fifty times a day, you never even watch TV for Christ’s sake,” he blubbered, his voice also becoming pained. 

I was left stunned, unable to disagree with him. But still, shouldn’t my parents and I be showing signs of the rash, if James’ suspicion was true? He pushed past me, grabbing his winter jacket from the hook on the wall as he carefully slipped his arms through the sleeves. 

“We’re going into town. Stay here with Mom and Gran. We’ll be back tonight. Don’t come looking for us if we don’t make it back by dark,” James said. 

“James, no! I will go! It’s too dangerous! Paps needs to stay here, plus your hands–”

“Fuck my hands, sis,” he growled, his face close to mine again as his jaw clenched. I could tell he was in pain. He rounded the corner and plucked his shotgun from its place against the wall. “We’ll be fine. Take care of them.”

JAKE

I’d never seen my twin look at me that way, before. We’d shared everything… every first, every win, loss, every new experience and every happy moment, we shared them all, together. Feeling the exact same emotions at the exact same time because our shared DNA told us that we had to. In our 33 years, I’d never seen his eyes so full of fear, so full of uncertainty that I was sure if I didn’t act, my chest was going to collapse. 

And he’d only glanced at me for a second, maybe two.

We’d been preparing to wrap up the tour of our fifth album when the world shut down. Yeah, we’d all been through the whole Covid thing, but that was no match for this. A drop in the bucket compared to the entire earth as we know it ceasing to work alongside us anymore. It’d begun giving up on us, pushing us out as if it didn’t even know we inhabited it. Mother nature was fucking us, and there was nothing we could do about it.

Just those short ten-odd years ago, the four of us had gathered in that cabin out in the mountains to write what would come to be The Battle at Garden's Gate… running away from the infected world and hiding away from the virus to drown ourselves in our instruments and sound. The uncertainty was wild then, but now, fuck. This… this is something more wicked than any of us could have ever anticipated. 

Josh’s eyes bored into mine, speaking a thousand words before he downcast them, then looked back onto the hands and arms of our sound engineer. Completely covered in purple bruises and blisters, his fingers swollen to the point that they looked like they may explode. He was the first one we saw with the rash. 

We’d canceled the last half of our tour as shit went south, not like we’d have been able to do anything anyway, as all the technology falling to shit would have held us to strictly little acoustic sets. But we were stupid to even think about doing that. We were naive to think we could even go on. That anyone would even show up for the shows. There wasn’t even any point.

We’d heard the rumors about the rash, but we hadn’t seen one first-hand yet, until that day. It was the same day that our mother called and said our aunt and uncle’s home had been swallowed by one of the sinkholes. We were all terrified, no one even had any clue what to do. Where do we go? Back home? Do we stay together? Do we run?

I knew why Josh’s eyes were so cripplingly fearful that day. Not because of what was happening around us, not because of the bewilderment of being faced with a thousand situations at once, but because he was scared I would be next. I knew that, because after his eyes left mine, they shot directly to my hands. 

Our sound engineer had only gotten on board with us less than a year ago, but he’d been in the business longer than any of us had been alive. Our hearts broke for him, as he explained his pain to us and how he wished he could stay along with us, helping to play around with our sound as we distracted ourselves from the world falling apart. 

But we knew it was all for nothing. Things were only getting worse.

+++

“Tell me you don’t have any rashes. Tell me right the fuck now that none of you have anything on your hands…” Josh barked at Sam, Danny and I as we shut the van doors behind us, enclosing the four of us. We’d decided on doing the same thing we’d done a decade ago- retreating to the wilderness to write. Or, whatever the fuck. There was hardly any electricity… how I thought I could finalize anything without an electric guitar was beyond me. Shit was so fucked.

Sam and I glanced at one another from the two backseats, shaking our heads quickly as we both understood we’d be the ones most likely to show signs first, our instruments being ones with the most electricity pulsing through them. “No,” we both muttered, holding our hands up. “Nothing.”

“Good. Daniel?”

Danny mirrored our actions, holding his hands up after buckling his seatbelt. “No, I’m clean so far,” he said quietly from the passenger seat. 

Josh put the old van in reverse, taking a deep breath as he backed from the space of the parking lot. Our decision to retreat like this was a quick one, none of us really knowing what the best route of action was. Everyone around us had dissipated, gone back to their homes and families, and apparently the outside world had truly begun to crumble. We’d been a little hidden away from it all, having just returned from a leg of touring in Greece where things hadn't hit too hard, yet. Things in the US were apparently much, much worse. And when we returned home, we found it to be absolutely true.

Luckily, our families had all decided to meet us there, and hunker down together as a unit. We were all we had left, at this point.

“The first sign of any of it, we tell each other. Got it? I don’t care if you think it’s nothing. If you see it, share it,” he commanded of us. We all nodded and agreed, knowing that if the rumors were true, the three of us would most likely be the ones to see it first thanks to our constant use of our instruments.

It was quiet in the van as we drove through the looted and abandoned city we once loved, people roaming the streets aimlessly as the pure confusion began to set in. There were no stop lights, no heavy traffic, hell, there weren't even any storefronts open. Luckily we’d filled up fuel tanks at one of the last remaining gas stations before the electricity had shut down, and hit the road running North, back home to Michigan to gather our families and go to Yankee Springs. Anything was better than nothing, and where better to be than away from the looting and rioting and hide in a secluded few cabins, able to fend for ourselves and worry about nothing more than taking care of one another. 

+++

Naive, naive. 

Little did we know that our rations would run out quickly. Little did we know that we’d quite literally have to live off the land. Fish for food. Mom had to re-teach herself to can. Dad and Sam caught fish and killed squirrels with his old BB gun. 

There was no time to write. Fuck, there was no time to even play. We spent our time surviving. We’d had almost no contact with the outside world in almost a month. It was then that a few other families had gotten the same idea as us and joined us there, breaking into cabins and preparing winter camps.

We warmed ourselves with the fireplace, and we boiled our water to drink. We collected tools and stashed them away, and we hid every bit of food we brought deep in the basement of the cabin. Many nights were spent gathered around the fire talking and telling stories, trying our best to keep some type of normalcy about ourselves. But most nights we were all too exhausted to even care, crashing into our beds that we considered ourselves fortunate to still have.

I was scared. Of course I was scared. Things had happened so fast that three months felt like the blink of an eye. I hardly even kept up with what day it was. We'd gone from traveling the world and playing shows for thousands to hiding away in unmarked cabins in the woods, praying that we'd survive into the next day. I remember my mind being in a constant state of buzzing awareness, while at the same time feeling so numb and unable to grasp the fact that the world was ending that I could hardly see straight. 

Ending? No, maybe not. I’d read enough books and was educated enough to know that the Earth goes through her changes. She doesn’t care for the fact that we’re here. She’s going to go through it whether we are here, or not. Her job isn’t to protect us. Her job is to stabilize herself through her ages, making sure she doesn’t implode from the inside out and return to stardust to join the other millions of stars of our universe as she’s simply unable to keep the life that lives on her, alive.

The Ice Age, the Pleistocene, Quarternary… all of it happened, and is happening. We’re just here to witness this one it as it does, and record it in history books. 

“Holy fucking shit, man,” Danny exclaimed as we all had reclined on a hillside that night, passing around a bottle of Irish whisky. The wind was absolutely freezing, but luckily, we’d all become acclimated to it again. “Wait, are you saying… wait.” Danny sat up, his curls a mess as he’d long forgotten about his hair routine. “Josh, did you write…?”

I’d been drunkenly sharing my wise words and hypotheses about this supposed ‘end of the world’ with them all evening, accentuating my tales with my grandiose words to make them seem more intriguing. Just like I always did. Just to fit the bit.

“Did I write Age of Machine to go along with the literal historical changes that the earth makes? Yes, I did,” Josh replied matter-of-factly. “Though I wrote it to be inflicted by humans and not the Earth itself, but…”

“...Did you not know that, Daniel? Really?” Sam butted in with a slur.

Danny leaned back on his elbows. “I mean, yeah, I guess I kinda remember you explaining it as you wrote it, but god, that was ten years ago. And if I remember correctly, Sam and Jake were the ones that put in the work for that one because I had smoked a bit too much that night. But yeah, I guess I never really put two and two together…”

I smiled at Danny’s realization, and the fact that it took him nearly a decade to understand what Josh’s lyrics to that song had meant. And how eerily terrifying and ominous they were even still. I would have explained my hypotheses more in-depth had I known that Danny hadn’t ever put everything together.

A silence had fallen over us again as we watched the only constant in our lives these days– the moon gliding and rolling on her backdrop of stars. Without the filter of light pollution, every single one was visible, now. 

“How did you know, Josh?” Danny finally whispered.

“How did I know what?” Josh replied, and I could tell there was a lump in his throat. He didn’t want to talk about this. 

“That song… everything literally fucking happened, is happening… how did you…?”

“I didn’t, Daniel. Of course I didn’t fucking know this was going to happen,” Josh argued with venom in his voice. “Not in our lifetimes, at least.”

I heard Sam swallow hard. Finally, it was out on the table. The one thing we’d all been thinking, all too scared to bring it into the light. Except Danny, I guess. That damned haunting song we wrote ten years ago, somehow predicting the near future almost to a tee.

“Wait,” Danny rolled to his stomach to look at us. “This is insane… man, we… we wrote a song about this, about this exact shit happening… how in the fuck did we do that?”

Just then, a bright white and purple light lit up the dark night sky, a giant ball of exploding flashes so close it made us all jump to our feet in fear. It made no sound, of course, but the streaks of light burned bright as the sun for just a few seconds before fading away, the light burning down into blackness again.

“What the fuck was that?!” I yelled, looking to my brothers for confirmation. 

“Satellite,” Sam said. “It exploded…”

We all stood for a few seconds and watched to see if anything else was going to happen, and I remember my heart was beating so hard that I swore everyone could hear it. There’s no time to fall into fear, Jake. Embers of burning metal fell into the atmosphere, floating in space to maybe one day hit the earth. A contraption created by man and thrust out into the universe to give us knowledge of things we couldn’t see, exploded and died right in front of our eyes.

Just then I watched as Danny lowered his head, turning toward Josh to shove the bottle into his hand. “God machine… really malfunctioned and blew, hm?”

Y/N

My mother’s rashes came next. Deep purple bruises and red blisters began covering her entire body, centralizing over her hands mostly, too. They ate away at her, sending her into an almost comatose state as her body shook and vibrated in pain. We tried to keep her in a cold bath, and it brought some relief, but the rashes spread so quickly that we were nearly unable to keep up with them. We found that basic Ibuprofen did help with their pain control, but as the rashes worsened, the drug was little help. 

My father and grandfather and I were beginning to reach a point of helplessness as we were caring for my mother round the clock, my Gran and James doing whatever they could to help us, while still suffering with their own pain, too. 

We talked to the neighbors, and they all had begun to experience the same thing. Some had even made contact with health care professionals in their families, all reporting the exact same things, with no care plan in sight. The government apparently was still silent about it all, causing riots in the streets and parades onto our public law buildings. People looking for answers, guidance. Anything to help us. There was no such thing as seeing police patrolling the streets anymore. No ambulance wails heard in the distance. Nothing. We were helpless. Confused, lost, and utterly at our wit’s end. 

The day my mother finally succumbed to her rash was quite literally the worst day of my life. We all sat gathered in the bathroom, letting her body try and be soothed by the freezing cold water we’d submerged her in. We held her hands as gently as we could as she cried out in pain, my father nearly inconsolable as he crouched in the floor beside her. 

“I’m so sorry, my love. I’m so sorry… If I could take this pain away from you, I would. I’d take it in a heartbeat,” he’d cried as his head fell onto the side of the tub. 

I’d gone numb. I was unable to maintain and regulate my emotions as life had begun happening so fast. I cried into my pillow the day she finally passed, trying not to let my screams be heard by the rest of the family. I could do nothing. My father, my grandfather… none of us. The house sat silent for hours.

James had sat on the back porch steps as he was unable to grip a shovel handle, watching as Paps and I dug a hole in the frost-dusted ground of the back yard. None of us spoke. Hell, none of us really even breathed. Dad carried out the body of his beloved, his face straight and emotionless as he dropped her lifeless body into the cold ground. I tried not to think too much about the action I was performing, knowing if I did I would surely lose what little food I'd eaten the past few days. 

The loss of my mother sat heavily on us as a few neighbors brought over what rations that they had barely been able to prepare, themselves. We allowed ourselves a few days to mourn her as the weather grew colder, and James’ rash spread to his arms. 

It was a week later that James had become unable to care for himself any more, and a week after that that a rash appeared on my father’s chest and hands. Both of them, being eaten alive by the ravishing blisters, leaving my grandparents and I in a mental state so disconnected from reality that we were hardly surviving. No longer did we care for ourselves. No longer did we enjoy the simplicities that came with life. Round the clock care, constantly. Ice baths, unending doses of pain killers, preparing scrap meals, and trying to get them to eat and drink while they all were being blinded with pain. 

Most of our neighbors had left. The street was nearly empty. Packs of wild dogs rummaged through homes that had been deserted, and what few people had stayed behind hid away in their homes in fear. Our plan of retreating back to the country had been put on the backburner when my Mother passed. And by some act of god, or maybe of sheer luck, my grandfather and I showed no signs of the rash, at all. My grandmother’s was spreading, of course, but at a much slower pace as everyone else’s, and her pain wasn’t nearly as horrific. James and I knew it was because she wasn’t exposed to technology, as much. His prediction had come true. 

First we buried James, and then we buried my father. Right there in the backyard, next to the garden that was now a pile of old, dead weeds that we hadn’t bothered to clear from the soil as Autumn turned to Winter. 

My grandfather cared for my grandmother as best he could, and I in turn cared for them both. Somehow, some way, I was able to compartmentalize it all, my brain going into overdrive as a trauma response, I guessed. I was the protector, now. The young and able one, stepping into the role of caretaker of my elderly grandparents. Truly, I had no other choice. 

I packed up my hiking bag with everything that I could, and convinced my grandparents to do the same. Paps agreed, it was time to retreat. There wasn’t anything here for us, anymore. 

There, we’d at least have a wood stove and firewood. Gran’s cellar full of canned vegetables, and a fenced-in yard with a barn where we could capture chickens and goats that were most likely still roaming the countryside of neighboring farms. Why we had ever agreed to come to the city in the first place was beyond me. Thought it would be easier, I guessed. Bigger house, close to the city and resources. Never did we think that things would get this bad. Never did we think that my grandparents’ homestead would have been the better option. But then again, never did we think we would lose three of our family in a matter of a month.

But now, as a cold and blistering wind blew across the shutters and creaked the house on its foundation, I made the executive decision to move my grandparents back to Cheatham County. Back to their farm, back to what they knew, in the house that they’d built. 

At dawn that next morning, the three of us stashed as much as we could into my Paps’ old pickup truck, and filled the tank to the brim with the diesel fuel my dad had stowed away in the garage. We prayed that their house wasn’t eaten by a sinkhole, and we prayed that everything would be just as we had left it. The three of us bundled up and clambered into the bench seat of the truck, and I mentally prepared myself to see the city I once knew and loved in a state that was going to be no less than jarring. 

I stuck the key into the ignition, hearing the old gears roaring to life. The sound was truly like music to my ears, a noise that none of us had heard in what felt like years. I pressed my foot to the gas pedal, revving the cold engine to come to life even more. We can do this… We can run away…

The sound of the engine ignited something deep in my chest, giving me an urge that I hadn’t felt in so long. It was the feeling of freeing myself, running away from all of the horrific scenes that my parent’s house had just been witness to. It was time to run. 

“You ready for this?” I asked my Gran as my fingers sat on the gear shift, ready to thrust it into drive.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” she replied, her gaze downcast on the street ahead of us. 

“Paps?” I asked. 

“Hit the gas, sweetheart.”

He rolled the crank window down and let a cold gust of air fill the cab as he pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, lighting one up as I pulled out onto the street, completely unknowing of what we were about to encounter. The smell of his smoke lit a new fire inside me, filling me with a newfound encouragement. And for the first time in months, I saw a glimmer of hope in my grandfather’s eyes. 

JAKE

Josh hadn’t spoken to us in days. Only the necessary words needed to get us through the motions of preparing meals, cutting firewood, and the like. Danny had questioned him about it again, the same conversation that had happened a few nights ago, when we watched the satellite explode. Danny didn’t intend to piss him off or whatever, but he had just had time to sit and think back on it, and dig a little deeper into the caves of Josh’s mind while we wrote that damn record. 

“This is the fucking New Age Crisis, isn’t it?! The one you wrote about?” Danny had said as mom cleaned up the dinner table one night. “You wrote about the fucking age of machine way back when we were writing Black Smoke, man!”

“Why in the fuck are you just putting all of this together, Daniel? Huh? Those words have been written for over a fucking decade, and you’re just now figuring all this out?!” Josh had retaliated, leaning his body across the table.

“No, I fucking knew it all, Josh! But don’t you think the fact that it’s kind of all coming true isn’t a little fucking weird?!” Danny replied, raising his voice. In the days since that first conversation, Danny had done nothing but appear to be in a constant state of thought. Deep thought. “It’s like you told the fucking future! And that’s just the tip of the iceberg!”

“God damnit Daniel,” Josh said as he shoved his chair under the table. “I’m not going on about this anymore, you don’t see anybody else caring about it.”

Danny looked my way. “Do you not think this is fucking weird, Jake? Seriously.”

I opened my mouth to speak, not wanting to further their argument. “I–I don’t think it’s that serious, I mean, there are similarities but…” I said calmly, running my nervous hand through my hair that hadn’t seen a wash in days. “Josh isn’t like, psychic or some shit…”

Danny slammed a fist onto the table, startling us all. “Why the fuck did you tell the video directors to make the whole Age of Machine video spin, hm? Did you want it to look like the viewer was being hypnotized? Just like you wrote about in Brave New World fucking years before? We fucking did what the literal lyrics said the other night, Josh. Outside, looking at the dark night sky and watching a satellite or a power of lies fucking die, just like you said. Kill fear. It all happened!”

“Daniel! Calm it the fuck down,” Sam said. “You’ve known this, we’ve all known this… he intertwines all his lyrics, he always has… why is this such news to you?”

Danny lurched himself to Sam’s face. “Because it’s coming fucking true Sam!” he spat, yelling in his best friend’s face. I raised my hand up between them, hoping to calm them before anything got out of hand. This was way out of character for Danny. 

Danny stood quickly from his chair, shoving it backward as the rest of our families came storming into the dark, candle-lit room to see what all the fuss was about. “I’m not fucking stupid, Josh. I know you know what the hell is going on. And I want nothing to fucking do with it,” Danny grit his teeth as he spoke, pointing his finger into Josh’s face before turning and retreating up the stairs of the cabin. 

“What in the hell is going on here?!” my mom asked, coming to Josh’s side.

“I’ll go talk to him,” Danny’s mom followed him up the stairs. 

“I don’t think there’s any getting through to him,” I stopped her. I hadn’t said anything, but I wholeheartedly had picked up on Danny’s strange, obsessive behavior lately. “I think he’s…” I swallowed. 

“He’s what, Jake?” she asked.

I slowly brought my finger to my temple, poking at it. “Getting in his head, a little,” I said gently. She gave me a sideways glare before her lips turned into a half-smile, and she finished rushing up the stairs. 

Yeah, Josh hadn’t talked to any of us since then. And neither had Danny, really. He spent his days locked away in his room, practically freezing himself to death and ignoring all our knocks as he sat at his desk with a notepad and pen. It was so strange of him. Completely out of character and it honestly started to worry us. 

One morning I woke and walked out onto the porch that faced the lake, looking out as a few random folks checked their fish nets and began their treks toward the woods to hunt. It had gotten significantly colder, and I could see my breath in the air. As I gazed out, something on the lake caught my eye. 

It was Josh, out on the John boat, paddling further out around the bend of the water. 

“Josh!” I yelled, signaling for him to turn around and come and pick me up. I needed to talk to him; Sam and I were going crazy without the two of them speaking to us. I bounded down the porch steps, rickety and soft from their old weathered age. “Josh!” I yelled again. Finally, I caught his ear. “Come here! Come get me!”

His shoulders dropped but he listened, paddling slowly back to the shore until the side of his boat tapped the grass. “What?” he asked. 

“I wanna go too,” I said, kicking my leg around to step into the boat. The misty fog was just settling over the calm water as Josh huffed a breath. 

“Why?” he asked as I made myself comfortable. 

“Because, you won’t talk to me, and I don’t like it. Figured I gotta resort to forcing you,” I replied with a smirk. I could feel the tip of my nose getting cold. 

Josh stayed silent but began paddling again, pushing us back out into the open water. We faced one another in the boat, my fingers interlaced as I watched him go stroke for stroke. Once we got to the middle of the water, he finally stopped, resting the paddle across his knees. I would wait for him to speak. No one could hear us out here. Just him and me. 

“It was all based on a dream, you know,” he said solemnly, his eyes cast out across the water. 

“What was?” I asked, already knowing the answer but wanting him to tell me more. 

“All of that shit, all the stupid fucking lyrics. I had a dream when I was like, what, 15? A nightmare, actually. A bunch of them. It was like I had… built this world in my sleep-state, like once a month I would have another one that built on top of the last. I wrote them all down, as soon as I woke up. I’d go to these other worlds that felt real in my head, as I dreamed them. I created so much while I was asleep. And the fucking weed and booze didn’t help the matter,” he went on, using his hands to talk, now. 

I was having trouble understanding. “...But, we all kinda helped write that stuff, Josh. Like, a lot of it…”

“Yeah but how do you think I was able to expand on that weird fucking world we built? You guys putting your two cents in, making me think so hard about it all, then going to sleep that night and having the most realistic dreams about it. Then waking up, and turning it into music,” he explained, biting his cheeks in as he gave me a devious smile. “Danny’s fucking right. All of it is happening. Maybe not really in the same context, or the same order, but. It’s happening. We’re watching it. I dreamed about the video we made for that fucking song. The setting, the context, all the weird props and shit…” 

“The drugging?” I asked, remembering jumping from my skin as we filmed those scenes of saline being dropped into our eyes.

“Yeah. The fucking drugging. The big white building. The cots, us being held hostage there by someone… it’s exactly how it all happened in my dream. I made sure of it. And I’m fucking scared, Jake…” he said, leaning across the boat and pulling on the collar of my coat. 

I looked into his eyes and swallowed. I knew why he was scared. If things kept going the way they were, the only thing that would come next would be an entity coming in and taking us… using us for some experimental bullshit like we’d had them do in the video. 

“Starcatcher was a little bit of a break from the norm of my nightmare worlds… I tied it all in, but I really based it off of one of those side-story ideas that you and Sam got that one night. Cults and blind faith and all that shit,” he whispered, rocking the boat a little. “But this last album…”

This last album. 

The one we didn’t even get to finish touring. We’d managed to fit one in right after Starcatcher had wrapped, continuing on with the world we’d built all those years ago. The world that I guess, now, came straight from Josh’s dreams. That one concentrated a little more heavily on love and romance and the freeing of oneself through intimacy, but this latest one, it was some of our darkest work, yet.

“Danny wasn’t kidding when he said that was only the tip of the iceberg. Shit got a little fucking dark with this last one, didn’t it?” he muttered, reminding me of all the lyrics we’d stayed up late writing just a couple of years ago. 

Lies, deception, control, death… we really did get a little heavy with it. We wound lyrics into symbolism with governmental control and all that. We really tapped back in to lyrically beating around the bush. And unfortunately, things seemed to be moving right on par with life as we fucking knew it, right then. 

“Yeah, it really did,” I agreed. “But listen, you don’t need to put that on yourself. Danny’s just… going through something I think. Getting in his mind too much. We’re isolated out here, Josh. Our lives just fucking stopped, now we’re out hunting to feed ourselves?! I think we all deserve to give ourselves a little grace right now, don’t you think?” I tried to reason with him as I felt my toes freezing in my boots. 

He sat almost emotionless, staring at the water beside us as he tapped the oar in his hands. “I wish you could see into my mind,” he breathed, almost soundless. “My nightmares… Danny’s right." He sighed heavily. "It's only going to get worse."

"How the fuck do you know that, huh? How do you know that shit won't go back to completely normal tomorrow?" I pressed, trying to fight an unending battle.

Josh's face turned green. "Did you not hear me just now? I said I wished you could see into my mind...see those dreams that I had." His voice was raising, chopping up with enraged tears. "It's like I'm fucking watching it all come to life. Every bit of it."

He leaned in closer to me on the bench of the boat. "Remember those damned symbols we put on Garden's Gate? I'd stayed up late one night reading through old symbology books and finding runes and shit just because I thought they looked cool... I picked out the ones I thought might go along with what we had for the album. Hell, I didn't think it would ever end up like this..."

"Like what?!" I squealed, raising my hands into the air.

"I don't know, Jake. I swear, it feels like I knew this was going to happen before it ever even did. And that sounds crazy, but I swear on everything, I thought I was just writing about my nightmares. Using them as fuel for lyricism. Never did I think I'd watch it all play out in real time..."

My heart hurt for him. I could tell he was truly internally struggling. He looked like he hadn't slept or eaten in weeks. But this notion that he had seen all of this happen before? No. It made absolutely no sense.

"You can't feel responsible for this..." I muttered.

"No. I don't. But I do feel like I had a hand in perpetuating it. Like I could have stopped it or--"

"Stopped the fucking apocalypse? Yeah..."

He dropped his head into his hands. "Shit, this is all so fucked up."

I watched his shoulders rise and fall as he shuddered through deep breaths, trying to calm himself, trying to make sense of what was happening in his mind.

"So you know more?"

He lifted his head, his eyes swollen and dripping with tears that weren't there for sadness. He was terrified.

"Yeah. I know more."

+++

It was three nights later that all hell broke loose. I was awoken in the middle of the night to the sound of the front door crashing open, and loud, heavy footsteps barging across the hardwood floor. In my half-asleep state, I thought it was maybe Sam trudging back inside after a late-night smoke, knocking the snow off of his boots, but when my gut felt that feeling of uneasiness, I shot up from my bed. I threw my sweatpants and a sweatshirt on, shoving my door open to rush down the stairs of the cabin. 

I was met with Josh already at my side as he had heard the commotion, too, and then we were met with the sound of my dad’s voice yelling and echoing off the wood walls. 

My dad’s voice had always carried, and he tended to be a very lighthearted man, but we all knew the way his voice sounded when he was serious. Scared. 

It was pitch black, but luckily I knew that cabin like the back of my hand, and Josh and I undoubtedly could navigate it even with our eyes closed. My shoulder was touching his as we finally hit the landing, my stomach churning with nerves to see what the hell was going on. 

I was met with a scene that I was sure I had seen in a movie before– silhouettes of tall men in dark clothing, black masks covering their faces as the weapons they held illuminated the space with tiny red laser lights. One had his boot across my father’s chest as he lied on his back on the floor. My mom was shrieking, pushing against one of the men as they held her back from getting to my dad.

“What in the fuck is going on?! Who are you? Get the hell out of here!” I yelled as I pushed my way through in the darkness, tripping over chairs and rugs and Josh’s feet as I moved to shove myself into the man holding my father down. All I remember was chaos. Fists, yelling, darkness… my mind wanting to protect my family and Danny’s family but also wanting to protect myself. It felt as if there were six other people in the cabin with us. And looking back, I think my count was about right, though I could hardly see a thing. 

I heard the sound of breaking glass, or maybe a plate or something as I caught a shadowed visual of Danny breaking a heavy ashtray across one of the men’s heads, but Danny was promptly thrown onto the floor, himself.

I felt the butt of a gun smack across the back of my head, knocking me forward to land in what I learned to be Sam’s arms, stumbling back as he caught my weight. It hurt, and I instantly felt a rush of blood to my skull and a metallic taste in my mouth. The red laser lights flitted around the room, only illuminating objects and people here and there. My vision was blurred and I felt like I could vomit; I saw quick flashes of Danny and my mom… Josh and Danny’s dad… But I couldn’t tell you a damn thing that happened from then on. The rush of confusion was blinding, my body on auto-pilot.

Some time thereafter, I woke up in the back of what felt like a truck, the walls high and metal around me. My arms were bound at my back, and my mouth was taped shut. I could hardly breathe, my head was pounding, and I could feel dried blood resting at the crook of my neck. The vehicle roared beneath me and I could hear the tires screeching around every turn. 

Yes, definitely in a vehicle.

When I had finally gotten my wits about me again, I tried my best to look around and get my bearings, and all I saw were the painted black walls of the truck, and the rugged rusty metal of the bed of it below me. I was enclosed. I screamed from behind my taped lips, unable to make hardly a sound as my chest and lungs felt deprived of air. I looked, I searched- nothing. No one. I was by myself. My mind raced back to what had happened at the cabin, and my memory only gave me that same blurred chaos. Six men. Weapons. No words, violence. 

And then, for the next hour, I was alone.

•

Tags: @gretavangroupie @britney-gvf @sacredstarcatcher @wetkleenex-gvf @farfromthehomelands @takenbythemadness @writingcold @builtbybrokenbells @ohgodthefeeling-gvf @fleet-of-fiction @milkgemini @gvfpal @ageofcj@dancingcarbon @highway-tuna @stardustjake @jakekiszkapunchmeintheface @gvfmarge @gracev0609 @myleftsock @literal-dead-leaf @peaceloveunitygvf @ageofbajabule @slut4lando @jordie-gvf @sadiechar @tinydancer40 @rosabellagvf @capnjaket @lyndz2names @thetroublegetssoloud71 @gretavanomens @spark-my-nature @josh-iamyour-mama @anythingforjtk @alwaysonthemend @danieljlmwagner @klarxtr @fortunatelytinybasement @demonrat444 @gretavansara @watchingover-hypegirl @hippievanfleet @digitalnomadz @raviolilegs @lipstickitty @hippievanfleet @klarxtr @strange-whorizons @do-it-jakey-baby @myownparadise96 @gvf-luna @starshine-wagner @cassiesgreta @joopsandjangs @whimsiliz @kiszkas-canvas @whimsiliz @joopsandjangs @broken0mens @scoreofinfantryvines @whereiskeara @do-it-jakey-baby @miravanfleet @heckingfrick @kiszka-canvas @whimsiliz @joopsandjangs @broken0mens @scoreofinfantryvines @whereiskeara @do-it-jakey-baby @miravanfleet @heckingfrick @jenniferkiszka

[howlsofbloodhounds]

saw your post about something new chara and killer, and all i can think is "oh gods killer would hate cross". the locket, the liking chocolate - cross is similar to a swap chara more than a regular chara, but still i wonder if killer would subconsciously try to ignore him.

as for killer and chara, i think having chara in his mind kinda makes him question his reality a bit. iirc, killer thinks of chara as a hallucination? if that's the case, would killer think of chara as a manifestation of his intrusive thoughts? also, having your former abuser in your mind can't be a good thing if you want to recover from certain consequences.

~ crowshipping anon

Crow!!!!!

This is me anytime you send me an ask.

But oh that’s a really good point! I never considered how Cross could remind him of a Chara and start causing bro to tweak and crash out! I would actually love to hear more about that.

And as for the Chara inside, I’ve always considered. What if Chara exists the way they do in the present, inside killers head, because that’s what’s they convinced killer they could do. That their soul made them intrinsically connected, he’s just like them, he can’t escape, they’re always watching so they’ll know if he does or says something they don’t like.

If the Chara is a hallucination, I always viewed it as something more akin to an overlap with a sorta delusional belief; one that Killer was lead and coerced into believing to make him more compliant and hesitant to leave or step up against Chara. They feel like him, who would he be without them.

Perhaps they are so tied together, both due to actual trauma bonding and encouragement from chara when killer is so out of his mind and can’t tell what’s real or not, having to rely on chara to dictate his reality—that even when they’re gone, they’re not really. Because killer never really left their side.

Perhaps it’s a way to protect himself from stepping out of line, ensure he maintains the behaviors expected of him. The inside chara did say things like “you don’t want another bad ending, do you?” as if this chara is a part of killer that’s too afraid to take a chance and step out of the cage again. especially if we take into mind how killer stepped up against chara, only to find himself trapped under nightmare—and color on one side, offering that hope.

perhaps chara is a part of him, a part of him that’s keeping him “safe” by killing any false hope and ensuring he remains obedient.

Similar to the way Dust’s Papyrus hallucination is a manifestation of his guilt and a way to keep encouraging his self imposed mission of defeating the human, Killer’s Chara works to squash any semblance of hope or having a normal safe life. Squashes any hope of change by bringing up what’s happened every time before, at least for Stage 1.

And it does by fear, because there’s still no one killer is more afraid of than Chara. perhaps there’s even that lingering desire for their approval, and maybe stage 1 feels guilty for killing them, even.

I think it’d be interesting if Killer never knows what exactly this chara is, but either way he is still so afraid of them in stages 1 & 3-4. and is a major sign of his stages seem to be stuck in the past (such as stage 3-4, unable to recognize current situations much.)

no matter if they’re real or not, killer always feels this overwhelming feeling of being watched. like they’re watching him, making sure he’s doing what he’s supposed to. (which makes me think of that one headcanon I had that stage 4 holds a lot of beliefs about chara that appear delusional, such as them being omnipresent and omnipotent, and fear keeps it killing and killing and killing. perhaps an intentional thing.)

[pamicakery]

₊✩‧₊˚Manifesting and the Bible - Part 1 /2˚₊✩‧₊

(Neville Goddard inspired)

Disclaimer :This is my personal thought about religion, Christianity in general. It's my point of view that I wanted to share. If it can hurt your personal belief or you feel uncomfortable with it don't read. But please don't spread hate in comments or rebblog.

I grew up in a Christian family, practicing Baptism, going to church, listening to gospels etc from an atheist family (we believe in resurrection and life after death so it's not really atheism but I don't know how to say it in English)

We no more talk about god, Jesus or the angels. And my mom threw away our Bible.

I always had an interest in the Bible or the Christian mythology in general. And to know that Neville goddard had another way to see the Bible was interesting to me.

WE ARE GOD :

To make it short, the Bible is a story about us for us. What I want to say is that we are God. Not the big man sitting on his throne above the clouds throwing tantrums. We are God, omnipotent and omnipresent.

Omnipotent : we are powerful. We can manifest what we want, we can imagine every possibilities, every outcomes.

Omnipresent :with our minds we can do revisions and living in the end.

WE ARE JÉSUS :

Jesus is our imagination. Create miracles. When he died on the cross it was a metaphor. It's you dying from your old self. You let your old self die to a new self, a new you with new beliefs, assumptions and self concept.

no one cometh unto the Father, but by me.

We have to cross our imagination to come into our real self. Our god state.

SATAN :

Satan is the doubts, the bad circumstances. When Jesus was in the desert he was tempted by the devil. He wanted to seduced him with bread, food etc. To an extent, keeping him away from God.

At the same time, the 3d or the bad circumstances want us to believe that indeed we do not have our desires. And make us doubts.. Doubt in who? Our real self. '' Am I good enough? '' '' Can I manifest that? ''

You know who you are and what you want. When we say that the 3d is an illusion is true. It's an illusion caused by doubts.

Don't let your fear or doubts make you believe that you can't have your desire. You have to keep it strong and have faith. Have faith in yourself. Because the imagination trusts your Godself by showing you what you want in your mind.

I think I will make a part 2 because it's quite long.

But what you need to understand is that the Bible is not a historical book with people who truly existed.

'' When man sees the Bible as a great psychological drama, with all of its character and actors as the personified quality and attributes of his own consciousness, then and then only will the Bible reveal to him the light of its symbology ''

Neville goddard -

Part two here : 🩷

[kordeliiius]

tidbits we've learned about monster religion so far:

they believe in a prophecy, angels, souls, and likely the existence of demons, but there's been no mention of a singular omnipresent god

monsters do not believe in the concept of sin, though some folks (such as toriel) might contest this principle

the main pillar of monster religion is showing kindness to others, as if they were your own family

some monsters still practice magic, but they likely don't use it as often as they used to, since modern discoveries like electricity are more convenient. and it's not clear if the occult doctrine that catti follows is the same as real life, or if it's a monster invention

the "fruit juice" alluded to in chapter 1 isn't representative of jesus' sacrifice or anything like that, it's literally just free punch

service is on saturdays

so clearly monster religion is its own thing, separate from all known human faiths, so i believe toby was simply drawing inspiration from real life to make something new, yet familiar. certain specific elements like the holy water and hope candles were familiar to me, as someone with a christian upbringing, but several key tenants of monster religion are different. besides, there's more than one religion that hosts worship in temples, so i don't take issue with monsters having their own churches as well.

[scribeforchrist-blog]

Intimacy with God

MEMORY VERSE OF THE WEEK

=======================

+ Philippians 2:13 For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure

=======================

VERSE OF THE DAY

======================

+ 2 John 1:9 Anyone who wanders away from this teaching has no relationship with God. But anyone who remains in the teaching of Christ has a relationship with both the Father and the Son.

=======================

SUBJECT: Intimacy with God

======================

** SAY THIS BEFORE YOU READ; HERE’S SOME CHRISTIAN TRUTHS **

I AM HAVING INTIMACY WITH GOD

I AM HOLDING ON TO GOD

I AM HEARING HIS VOICE

I AM NOT ALONE

======================

READ TIME: 8 Minutes

======================

THOUGHTS:

======================

 When I was little, my mother made sure that my siblings and I were actively involved in church. She taught Sunday school, and my dad was the deacon. They were both dedicated to the church, and my mother made sure to teach us the word of God and about Christ. As I grew, I became very knowledgeable about the Bible and could quote verses easily. However, looking back, I realize that I didn't truly have a relationship with God. I knew how to pray and praise Him, but as I got older, I was lured by the ways of the world. I no longer wanted to read my Bible or pray. As I distanced myself from the church and indulged in worldly things, I didn't realize what I was giving up. I lost my relationship with God because I strayed away.

But now, I have learned that having a relationship with Him is more important than just having knowledge of His word.

It's easy to get caught up in the distractions and temptations of the world, especially when the enemy plants thoughts in our minds that make us think we're missing out on something better. We may start to wonder if there's more out there or if we're not fully living our lives. These thoughts can lead us to push away from God and put our relationship with Him on the back burner. But what we don't realize is that when we distance ourselves from God, we're also distancing ourselves from the very relationship that brings us joy and fulfillment. It's impossible to have both the world and God, and it's important to actively pursue a relationship with Him to truly know and understand Him. So, let's not be deceived by the enemy's lies and instead choose to actively know and follow God, for He is the only path to true happiness and fulfillment.

  The word of God says, but those who remain in the teachings of Christ have a relationship with the father and son, if we remain in him, we will have a dedicated relationship with him because we are doing what we must do to keep one which is reading our word praying to mediate and other things but the moment we stop, and we wander away that’s when we become tempted and tainted by the deeds of the flesh.

 Proverbs 28:!3 Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.

  The word says if we hide our sins, we will not prosper; we can't grow in Christ if we are hiding our sins from him, which is pointless because he knows what we are doing before we even say it because God is omnipresent. We forget that when we sin and hide our dirt, we think if we hide it from family or a friend, then we are good, but what about God? The word goes on to say confess and forsake the sins. You will have mercy every day; we need to confess our sins to God and show him who we are and be real with him; we have to start being real with God about everything and not just on good things; a lot of us have this way about ourselves that we don’t want to tell God the bad things but this not letting him in its pushing him away, we must be active in our relationship.

  When you’re in a relationship, are you faithful? Do you check in on the one you’re dating? Do you tell them things about you never will tell anyone else? Are you loving and caring? Do you spend alone time with them, being intimate with them because you know they like that? What do you do in your relationship to bring you two closer????

  Whatever you do in a relationship with others is the same way you should be in a relationship with Christ. He loves alone time; he loves when we tell him things no one else knows; he loves intimacy, and intimacy isn’t hard to do, but it’s hard when we find it a waste of time; it’s hard when we aren’t willing to be close to him, it’s hard when we aren’t willing busy with other things, our relationship with God should be something we work on day to today to show him we truly care about him, intimacy is” a deep feeling of closeness, connection, and emotional vulnerability shared between two people, where they feel safe to share their thoughts openly,”

  Do you have this with God? David did

* Psalm. 51:10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

 

* 1 Kings 15:5 Because David did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and did not turn aside from anything that he commanded him all the days of his life, except in the matter of Uriah the Hittite

 

* Psalm 27:1 Of David. The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid

  David made sure he showed love to God in all that he did that was in his walk, in his speech, and in the way he handled things, but he made sure whatever he did was pleasing to God; that’s why he was known as the man after Gods own heart because his life was an example of that and sure he had ups and downs, and he went off course. Still, he loved God so much that he changed when he did something wrong.

  *** Today, we delved into the concept of having a relationship with God and how our actions can make Him happy. It is a common struggle for many of us to find true happiness in our lives because we tend to hide our flaws and shortcomings from God instead of being genuine and transparent with Him. However, authenticity is a crucial element in any relationship, and it is no different regarding our relationship with God. Through being real and honest with God, we can truly grow closer to Him and find true joy in our lives. So, let us all strive to be authentic in our relationship with God and trust that He will guide us towards a fulfilling and happy life.

  Psalm 119:34 Give me understanding, that I may keep your law and observe it with my whole heart

David wanted understanding so that he could keep God's law and so that he could observe it with his whole heart, so we do this with God. Do we observe our ways to make sure we are pleasing God? The goal in our relationship with him is to make him happy and follow his ways. If you feel that following him is too hard or you don’t understand it, go to him, and he will help you see your path with him. ©Seer~ Prophetess Lee

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PRAYER

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Heavenly Father, we just wanted to take a moment to thank you for everything you have done for us. Your love and guidance have been a blessing in our lives, and we are truly grateful for your presence. As we continue our journey, we pray that you will continue to show us your ways and help us stay on the path you have laid out for us. We know that we cannot do this without you, and we need you more and more each day. In Jesus' name. Amen.

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REFERENCES

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+ James 4:8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

 

+ Proverbs 21:2 Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the heart

 

+ Proverbs 4:23 Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life

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FURTHER READINGS

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Proverbs 11

Judges 7

Jeremiah 19

Genesis 38

Romans 13

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[birdybirdvillagetown]

More truth..

People please listen Jesus christ is the way and the truth..no one else is,he is the only way to the father. Theres a bible verse that says and we qoute.

John 14:6

6 "Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

With that being said no one else comes to the father except through Jesus Christ and only jesus christ. That means all these other false gods that are demons dont come to him at all.

Speaking..of false gods..those are demons pretending to be gods even though they are not gods at all..only pretending..

Please people you need to wake up God is the only one who can save you from damnation. You need to come to the gospel the true gospel that teaches what is true and right by the word of God. God is the only God out there.

There is no one above him at all. He is the only true God. Yaweh is the only true God to ever exist. He is self existing he existed in the beginning and made everything. He is the only one who existed in the way beginning then he made everything. He is omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient.

Theres a lie..that is told by the devil..and the lie is..is that we can become gods..but we cant..that is a blasphemous lie..that the devil..and his demons had told..no one can become a god at all..us humans dont have that power or ability..its not possible..

Demons are not gods at all..They are false gods that us humans have worshipped in the past and still are worshipping today..

For example idols/celebrities humans are worshipping them like their gods even though they are not. They are just regular human beings they arent gods at all. They cannot save you at all. They have no power or abilities at all. They are just ordinary people but people today worship them.

Now..not for us to change the subject but heres a bible verse..we wanted to share this verse with you guys..and we qoute

Galatians 1:6-12 New King James Version (NKJV)

"But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him be accursed."

Heres another one and we qoute

Mathew 7:15

"Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but underneath are ravenous wolves."

With that being said Jesus is warning his disciples and his children to be careful of false teachers and false prophets who teach the wrong gospel the gospel full of blasphemous teaching and lies.

Were..telling all of you guys the truth on here because we care..about you guys..and want you guys to be open to the truth..the real truth about God and christ..not the blasphemous lies that these demons..and false prophets/teachers have said..the real truth about God and christ..

We dont want anyone falling in the hands of the devil and ultimately going to hell. We want you guys to have a eternal peaceful life with christ. So with that being said May God bless you all and have a merry christmas.

[karl-cain-1]

i ❤️ love you Lord our God invisible unseen invisible know that everything physical seen visible all life matter and solid substance came and was created by the unseen invisible i know Lord that you are also OMNIPRESENT OMNIPOTENT OMNISCIENT YOU GOD ARE EVERY WHERE WERE THEIR IS LIFE ON EARTH 🌎 IN MOUNTAINS TREE'S FORESTS OCEANS RIVERS LAKES STREAMS IN ALL LIFE ON EARTH IN PLANTS FLOWERS 💐 BIRDS OF THE AIR ALL FISH OF THE SEAS in insects in every thing LORD GOD OF THE UNIVERSE LORD OUR GOD CREATOR OF ALL THE WORLDS PLANETS 🌎 THANK-YOU LORD ✔️ FOR WAKING ME UP THIS MORNING FOR ANOTHER DAY ON EARTH THE GIFT OF LIFE I WORSHIP YOU GOD LORD FOREVER FOR ALL ETERNITY GOD BLESS 🙌 FATHER GOD AMEN THANK-YOU .KCAIN 🙏 ❤️ WEEK 9 EATING LIGHT STRICT FOODS SLIMMING KEEPING TRIM FIT HEALTHY LIVING GOD THANK YOU LORD THANK-YOU ANGELS OF GOD ALMIGHTY 🙏 AMEN ✔️ DAY 1 STARTING AGAIN TODAY ,NO WORDS !!! RECLUSE Keep away from EVIL and white CAUCASIANS underworld STALKING ME LISTENING DEVICES TECHNOLOGY. And stay away from BOGUS CORRUPTED CROOKED SYSTEM EVIL DOER'S 😈 (EVIL ) . LET THE LORD WATCH OVER YOUR LIFE AMEN 🙏 IM not interested in FAME FORTUNE 🙏 IM NOT WRITING MY NAME IN BLOOD TO THE EVIL ONE , For money physical possessions material thing's bank account's SPORTS CARS WEALTH SEXUAL PARTNERS MEN OR WOMEN I'm not bathing in blood I HAVE STILL GOT A SOUL. AMEN ✔️ 🙏 THANK-YOU JESUS THANK-YOU JESUS THANK-YOU FOR SAVING ME ,IM CELIBACY CHASTISEMENT IN THE NAME OF THE LORD OUR GOD CREATOR HEAVENLY FATHER LORD OF SPIRITS HOST'S , 🙏 IF I LIVED HOMELESS ON THE STREET IN A CARDBOARD BOX IM ONE OF THE MOST RICHIST people on Earth 🌎 because I've got GOD IN MY LIFE AMEN 🙏 ❤️ AND I KNOW GOD IS REAL BECAUSE I HAVE EXPERIENCED GOD IN MY LIFE. SO THANK-YOU ANY WAYS. A BIG GOD BLESS TO YOU ALL 🙏 GOD BLESS .Thank you for hurting me you made me STRONGER A STRONGER SPIRIT AMEN 🙏 🙌 PRAISE GOD HEAVENLY FATHER LORD GOD OF THE UNIVERSE THE ALMIGHTY PRAISE HIS HOLY NAME 🙏. AMEN ✔️ This is not a sex porn video but just a keeping fit healthy dieting video

[thehauntingofbeasts]

what inspired these hymns? :0

Excellent question, and one I've thought about a lot!

The whole concept took some inspiration from my personal experiences in fiction-based spirituality spaces, and from my time in a cult, where the worst parts of being in said cult were wrapped up in the 'weird but harmless' things that I didn't feel like I could discuss without mockery.

From there, I also thought a bit about how people treat situations like the Snapewives, which I'll admit did have some bearing on things. I felt like we didn't really have stories on the internet that showed a sympathetic side to situations like the Snapewives, that really captured how intertwined a lot of fiction-based spirituality gets with real-world identity.

I did also want to write a sequel/spinoff to my /r/nosleep series, Hotel For The Spirits, for a while — there were a lot of elements from that series that I felt I could have done better on or interrogated in retrospect, having written it when I was still in high school.

So that was what caused me to form the initial idea of making These Hymns, which was bolstered by needing to have a final project for my Digital Culture course I was taking in my last semester of undergraduate college. Ergo, this project came into existence, having a short version that I sent in as my final project and a longer version that's the one we can read online.

Generally speaking, I took a lot of inspiration from existing pieces of online series discussing the internet in making These Hymns Aren't For The Holy.

A few that come to mind right now in the genre:

The Northern Caves by @nostalgebraist absolutely blew my mind with the way it managed to capture the outer edges of a book series that didn't exist in the most delightfully House of Leaves-ian way while still managing to tell a coherent and striking interpersonal narrative between the different forum users. Definitely inspired me to go a bit hog-wild with making fictional media for These Hymns.

What Happens Next (will shock you) by @maximumgraves, a brilliant dark comedy webcomic that has never, ever left my head since I read it. It's a chilling tale that does cover a lot of very unlikeable, very online people while still making them sympathetic in their own ways. I truly think it's one of the best works of fiction at capturing the modern era of the internet and how wacky it's become, and deserves your attention. One of the characters, Milo, was definitely in my head while plotting the characterization of quietCrocodile, the main narrator of These Hymns.

Unauthorized Fan Treatise by Lauren James: Quite frankly, if you ever want to write a web-based story about the internet, this should be at the top of your list. This was the story that made me realize that projects like this were possible, and the edited multi-media approach it took impressed me deeply. Absolutely mindblowing how well it captures shipping culture in fandoms and how it goes wrong, tbh.

I was also very strongly inspired by Umineko: When They Cry, which I was in the middle of reading when actively plotting These Hymns Aren't For The Holy. Specifically, I was thinking of Episode 1 of Umineko, where one of the pivotal characters (Beatrice) isn't fully in the narrative yet but looms over it, haunting the narrative, influencing everyone's behavior — while another character (Battler) denies her existence. This back and forth of 'is it real, is it not?' influenced a lot about how I wrote Conway/the Corrupter Without Morals (the god that the Haunting Beasts worship) in These Hymns Aren't For The Holy, the specific way he's not present and yet /omnipresent/.

And then, of course, no mention of my inspirations is complete without namedropping the works of Sealtoast, creator of Recollect: Records of the Other Side, whose characters and stories inspired the creation of the Corrupter Without Morals/Conway in the first place. :3c

Hopefully this helps!

[faithfulsheepdog]

What to do when you don't know what to pray...or don't feel like praying

Spade Anon's question last night got me thinking about prayer.

Let's be real. Sometimes we hit a day or a season or a mindset where praying is hard. We don't know what to pray or we don't even want to pray at all.

It may feel like a chore or a checklist or a boring thing where we zone in and out of what we're doing. Or maybe like me, you've found yourself angry at God or disappointed in God or too sad to put prayer into words.

For whatever reason, your heart &/or mind just aren't in it.

One thing we really need to remember in moments like these is that when we don't pray, it's like we're hanging up on God. We've hit the red button and disconnected the call, and nothing would make the devil happier probably.

Prayer is one of the most powerful tools in our Christian arsenal. It is a direct line to the Most High, and even better, it's a two-way connection. We can talk to Him, and He responds. It's a conversation.

And prayer is a discipline. Like brushing your teeth or eating your veggies, sometimes you gotta do the things you don't want to do that are still really good for you.

So here are some things you can do to help you when you don't know what to pray or don't feel like praying at all:

1. Use a prayer from Scripture.

The Bible is full of prayers, especially Psalms where some chapters are written from the bliss of joy and some are written from the depths of despair. Praying Scripture helps keep your focus on God and what's important and helps you focus on praying. It helps you realign your heart and mind with God when your feelings don't want to follow.

Here are some prayers from Scripture you can use to help you get started:

praise and worship - Psalm 18

confessing and repentance - Psalm 51

an appeal for justice - Psalm 35

assurance that God always hears our prayers - Psalm 34

depending upon God in times of stress - Psalm 31

trusting God in times of trouble - Psalm 86

expression of gratitude - Psalm 30

prayer in suffering/urgent need of help - Psalms 69-70

There's plenty more where these came from too. A quick Google search for prayers from the Bible can help you find one to fit your need. After all, the Bible is alive and active. AKA the things in there are 100% relevant to our lives.

2. Recite God's attributes.

Reminding yourself about the God you serve helps put things into perspective as well, keeping the first thing first.

Tell yourself about how God is a big God who parted the Red Sea and rescued His people from Pharoah when all hope seemed lost. Tell yourself about the God who is slow to anger and quick to love. Tell yourself about the God who is faithful and merciful. The God who is good and holy and just. The God who is eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent. The God who loves you so much He died for you. The God who is big and powerful enough to defeat death and raise Himself back to life.

Reminding yourself about the God you're talking to helps you want to talk to Him. If anyone cares enough about you to hear your prayer and want to have a relationship and commune with you, it would 100% be God.

3. Thank God for His blessings.

You know that old hymn Count Your Blessings? Yeah, do that. Thank God for every big thing and little thing you can think of. Thanking God for things is a prayer by itself, and it is a good prayer to use all the time. He deserves praise and thanks for every blessing He's ever given us, and before you know it, you will find that talking to Him after thanking Him for so much comes easier. And you will find you want to talk to Him because He has given you so much.

4. Don't depend on or follow your feelings.

This one is for when you don’t want to talk to God. Like you’re angry with Him about something and you’d rather hang up the phone than communicate anymore. Like I said before, prayer is a discipline. If you base it solely on your feelings, your prayer life is not going to grow and deepen, and your relationship with God could be strained by that. Be in charge of your anger; don't let it be in charge of you. Put in the work and try something from options 1-3 &/or 5 and you'll find that eventually your feelings will follow.

5. Just sit in His presence.

With #4 being said, sometimes, especially for those hard moments/seasons, sometimes you just gotta sit in God’s presence and just be. This is for when your heart is too heavy to come up with words, when you’re too weary to string together a sentence. It’s okay to just sit with God in a quiet place and let Him talk to you and you not say a word. It’s okay to cry in the presence of God. The Bible says not a single tear shed is wasted. He holds every tear, and He knows your heart, and He knows all you want to say but cannot verbally express.

So in those moments, sit with God and let Him talk to you. It’s okay to not say a word. Don’t walk away from Him. Sit with Him.

Bonus: Take comfort in knowing that the Holy Spirit Himself prays for us.

Yes, the Holy Spirit pleads to God the Father on your behalf!

"And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will." - Romans 8:26-27 NLT

[blindhades]

If you could be a fear, what fear would you embody?

(TMA specific)

The Web- fear of being controlled/manipulated/trapped (especially not even realizing). puppets, spiders, companies and families, powerlessness and lack of control over the self and the actions.

The Spiral-fear of insanity, losing touch with what is and is not real, betrayal of one's own mind. fractals, doors, and spirals. the world you know is wrong, your perception is lying to you. gaslighting, hallucinations, illusions. It Is Not What It Is.

The Vast- fear of large spaces, human insignificance. sky, space, deep water, void, vertigo, flat planes, fear of god. agoraphobia as the space itself or as the shrinking of the self. dizziness.

The Stranger- fear of the unknown, unfamiliar, uncanny. the sensation of something not being right. masks, taxidermy, wax figures, humanoid forms, uncanny valley. "something is not right here."

The Buried- fear of being trapped or crushed, all things collapsing around oneself, having no space to move. caves, dirt, coffins, the underground, financial issues, suburbia and traditional family. suffocation and drowning.

The Dark- fear of the dark, unknown and unseen. creatures hidden in the dark, shadow figures, moving shadows, blindness, coldness, dark or deep water, things moving unseen, unpinpointable sounds, not knowing. an ancient fear.

The Lonely- the fear of isolation, being cut off, alone, disconnected from society, trapped alone or in a small group. fog, large or empty rooms, silence, stretching suburbs, crowds of faceless people, social ineptitude. inability to connect, physically or personally. muteness

The End- fear of death itself. god, fate, an uncaring universe, time, all things ending eventually, impermanence. bones, forms of death, emptiness and cold. with Dark or Corruption, fear around an afterlife. close ties with dreams. nihilism, death claims all in the end.

The Corruption- fear of corruption, disease, rot, and filth, metaphorically and literally. disgust and revulsion. mold, bugs, rot, decay, sickness, unhealthy love and companionship. corruption of the soul.

The Slaughter- fear of pure, unpredictable, unmotivated violence. people driven "mad with slaughter", war, murder, regimented or wild killing. blood, soldiers. with Corruption, fear that you yourself hold slaughter in your psyche, and it will come out. unmotivated, random, and incomprehensible hurt more so than hurt itself.

The Eye- fear of being watched, known, followed, exposed, "found out," even without a guilty conscience. secrets being exposed, stalking, being completely understood. fears around opening up, e.g therapy. security cameras, eyes, omnipresent figure that keeps watch. tied with drive to know and understand despite knowledge hurting you.

The Hunt- animal fear of being hunted, chased, becoming prey, being killed. predators and predatory monsters, animal instincts, traits, and behaviors. teeth, gore, viscera, nightmares such as running down hallways. less able to affect humans.

The Desolation- fear of destruction. pain, loss, burning, especially without reason. destroying of possessions, potential, or loss of loved ones. fire, wax, burns, and heat. devastation. destruction of buildings.

The Flesh- animal fear of being eaten, consumed, bred for meat. human realization of the body as animated muscle and bones, understanding of anatomy. body manipulation and unnatural twisting of bodies, butchers, corpses, meat-industry. industrial revolution.

there’s 1 more but it’s a spoiler that idk abt

oohh that is a very interesting and specific question

unfortunately i cannot choose anything ever at all so i'll give you a series of answers: the stranger, the lonely, the corruption and the eye