#that eternal servitude is not a requirement for safety and affection

[trappedinafantasy37]

One of the things that had my mind spinning for a while is that in the Shadowheart origin, if you reject Shar, Minthara will apologize. She will believe that she and the rest of the companions held Shadowheart back from achieving her destiny. She blames herself for Shadowheart making a choice completely on her own, thinking that Shadowheart's concern for herself and others held her back. Minthara feels it to be her fault that Shadowheart is not as powerful as she could be and she is to blame for Shadowheart walking away from her destiny. Minthara sees herself as having failed for Shadowheart making the choice that she did.

I know it is cut content and cannot really be considered canon, but she does something similar in the breakup. Where she's yelling at Durge and asking why they rejected Bhaal. And Durge can tell her it's cause they love her. When the breakup was slipped in, I was initially so angry because Minthara calls Durge stupid for choosing love over power (when Minthara herself chooses love over power). Especially since the breakup happens like 10 minutes after the alurlssrin confession where she says the two of you have an unbreakable bond. I used to be so confused on why she would be so upset that you actually loved her. Then I realized that she's not upset that you love her. She's upset cause she fears that your love for her held you back.

Even though she sees you as her equal, she keeps putting herself as less than you. Where your wants and desires are more important than her own, and your greatness should be put above any affection you have for her. She wants you to love her of course, but she does not want to be what holds you back from reaching for power. To Minthara, power is safety and she has never felt safe. She wants you to keep elevating yourself cause the stronger you are, the safer you will be and by extension, the safer she will be. So you picking her over power means you are less safe and by consequence, she is less safe. And as much as Minthara loves loves, she needs to be safe first. It's why it seems like she keeps making the same dumb mistakes over and over, getting herself into precarious situations. It isn't because she's necessarily blinded by love, but she feels her proximity to power should keep her safe.

I also had a discussion with someone on Reddit, talking where it almost seems like Minthara keeps putting herself in positions of servitude, despite having some pretty ambitious goals involving world domination. We are talking about someone who has been a servant of Lolth her entire life. She tells us she was raised to be a soldier in Lolth's army and that was all she was meant to be. For 200+ years she was a servant and has never been anything else and doesn't know how to be anything else, and I believe she is too afraid to try to be anything else.

As a paladin, she was responsible for keeping social order, follow the word of whatever Priestess was in charge and enacting Lolth's will, partake in surface raids, and kill any of Lolth's enemies. There was very little room for her to achieve what she wanted, because Lolth had to come first. And even if there were things she wanted for herself, they still ultimately had to please Lolth in the end. Her time in the Absolute is no different. She just swaps the Absolute for Lolth and keeps up with the same shit (although she is too brainwashed to tell). So of course she is stunned when Lolth abandons her and the Absolute attempts to kill her and throws her deep into a crisis of faith. 200+ years of service has always bought her safety, until it didn't. So when you come along, she just swaps you for the Absolute. Telling herself, "I just need to be better than I was for the Absolute, better than I was for Lolth, and I should be okay." And her little rant about the gods, Lolth, Bhaal, the Absolute. Minthara is not anti-god. Minthara is anti-gods who do not reward their followers for their service. Because to her, service should be rewarded with something (other than death). She plays both sides when it comes to Shar because although she does think Shar is a poison in Shadowheart's life and believes Shadowheart is better off without Shar, at least Shar did reward Shadowheart for her service by making her a Dark Justiciar and elevating her to Chosen.

You would think she'd learn, but she doesn't. Not because she's stupid, but because her basic need for safety isn't being met. And so be fair, her "mistakes" with Lolth and the Absolute were relatively recent. So she keeps pushing people down the path of ruin and never going down the path herself directly, thinking that if she helps you become powerful, she will be safe. Where if she stands beside as you walk down this path, you will reward her for her service. Where she does not believe you would betray her because she helped you get that power. Where she thinks her service to you should buy her safety. Because to her, the most important thing she can be to you is useful. And she is terrified of being useless. So she provides you with unbreakable loyalty, devotion, and servitude, (and perhaps love). Where she will help you achieve your ambitions, whether it be to become a Dark Justiciar, the Vampire Ascended, the Slayer, or a god. Her path to safety, and greatness, and true power is forever lost to her down in the Underdark. So all she can do is help you walk down yours.

She keeps doing the same stupid shit over and over, making the same mistakes with people over and over, cause her fundamental need to safety is never being satisfied. And her service to various gods and entities technically did buy her safety, but only for an unknown period of time. And when she loses that safety, she thinks that the problem is her. That she was punished because she was not a good enough servant. That if she was a truly good servant, she won't lose your safety and your protection. And she thinks love interferes with your perception of her as a servant. She wants you to see her as a loyal servant first, lover second, because the only things in her life to be truly rewarded was her service, whereas her love got punished.

[enchantedbride]

Okay So Lucifer/Joey Reincarnation AU

*flips hair dramatically*

TW: Death Mention (mostly because reincarnation, but there’s a vague mention of a death by non-specified accident), Self-Harm Mention (Because of mentioning Satan’s origins in Obey Me!)

Tagging: @goldenworldsabound​, @curiousobsession101​, @foreveryours-mouse​

(If anyone else wants me to tag them in my Lucifer self-ship stuff let me know! Replies to this post/DMs/etc are all good! Whatever works best.)

Once upon a time, back in ancient times, when the seven demon brothers were still angels in the heavens, the youngest, Belphegor, used to love humans and would come down to hang out with them (sometimes with his sister Lilith or his brother Beelzebub). Lucifer in his days as a Seraphim didn’t really think much of non-angels (he thought humans were weak, foolish, prone to temptation and evil and undeserving of the assistance angels would sometimes give them, and he HATED demons). But one day Belphegor convinced Lucifer to come with him since Lucifer had an assignment that required him to come to the human realm.

And so Belphegor introduced her to his friend, a woman from a merchant family by the name of Jonna. Lucifer didn’t make a very good impression on this woman at first- he seemed arrogant and full of prejudice to her. But he changed his tune when he was struck by how kind and insightful this woman was. He was intrigued by her, and thus told his brother if he wished to have him come again he would.

It would take time, but he would eventually apologize for his initial arrogance, and begin to trust this woman. They came to listen quite a bit to one another’s perspectives and reconsider their own, and eventually they became good friends. She hadn’t quite managed to get him to discard his distaste for humanity, but she had put the thought in his mind that humans were not what he thought. 

She certainly wasn’t.

Eventually to his surprise, Lucifer found himself growing romantically attached to her, and initially it frightened him because he wasn’t sure what such a thing would bring if he acted on his feelings. And he had a duty first and foremost to the Celestial Realm and his father. But, eventually with the help of his little sister, Lilith, and some nudging from his fellow angel and friend, Simeon as well, he eventually confessed his feelings to Jonna, and was relieved to find his love was reciprocated.

The lovers were initially happy together, and Lucifer managed to fulfill his duties and please his father. But then, something terrible happened.

Jonna’s life came into mortal danger when her family was set upon by bandits on the road. He was not meant to interfere with the event, but his fear for his love’s safety won out and he came to save her life and that of her family’s. Jonna’s family was grateful for the rescue, and gave them their blessing if Jonna and Lucifer ever wished to marry (and they wound up flustering poor Jonna with the whole proceeding).

But Lucifer’s father... was not so happy about this.

Lucifer had interfered where he was not meant to, and placed priority of his human lover over his duty to the Celestial Ream. And his father saw fit to punish him for this. 

Instead of Jonna passing onto an afterlife in the celestial realm where she could be with Lucifer forever upon her eventual death, her soul would instead passing into another human life upon the earth. And, her memories of her previous life would be repressed, so if Lucifer sought her out, she would have no memory of him. 

Lucifer was distraught over this. Essentially it would be Jonna who would suffer because of his actions. It became another among many things he would resent in regards to his father, and it would feed the growth of a being that had emerged inside of him, born from his feelings of resentment and rage (an entity that would split from him and eventually become the demon Satan). 

He apologized profusely to Jonna and begged her forgiveness, but she consoled him, and told him the solution was simple: he would just have to find her in the next life, and win her heart again. They remained together for the rest of her days, and he even married her, though his work made his often absent. He had to ensure he would not be punished further, and Jonna would suffer no more because of him. 

And with her eventual death, thus began the cycle. He would travel the earth until he found her in her next life, and would attempt to win her over. he found out that her memories of her former life were simply repressed and not completely wiped, and that if he tried, he could get her to remember him. This certainly helped with things, but as he sadly found it, it did not guarantee she would fall for him again.

Still, he succeeded enough that he didn’t give up trying.

Eventually, his sister Lilith faced the wrath of their father for saving her own human lover by stealing special food from the celestial realm, and the punishment was to be death for her. This was the last straw for Lucifer. It was bad enough what happened to him, to Jonna. But to wipe his sister from existence as though she were garbage, a mistake, when she was simply trying to help her lover, was against everything he believed. 

And thus he rebelled against his father and began the Great Celestial War, rallying his siblings and other angels to his side. But he lost, Lilith was killed (and brought back as a human due to his request of the demon prince Diavolo in exchange for his eternal servitude to him), and the once mighty seraph fell alongside his brothers and became a demon. And, to top it all off, in a fit of anguish and rage he tore out his wings, two of which transformed, and thus Satan became a physical entity separate from himself. 

For a time, he stayed away from his love, too ashamed of events that had transpired and fearful she would reject him now that he was a demon. So he threw himself into his work for Diavolo and helped himself and his brothers to become established in the Devildom. 

Eventually however, he sought out Jonna’s new incarnation again, and this was thankfully a life were he managed to win her over again, and she accepted him as a demon. And thus the dance of reincarnation continued. But as before, sometimes he succeeded, and sometimes he did not, but his successes kept him going, and one day he hoped to find a way to break her from the cycle so they might live together for eternity. 

But, he was also deeply affected by trauma from the Celestial War, and as a demon, he had become an embodiment of sin, specifically the sin of Pride. It deeply affected him, and unfortunately it made things more difficult for him, both in general and in his pursuit of his love.

He had one wonderful success with Jonna some five hundred years ago, but then... a string of terrible failures to win her heart in subsequent lives. In some, to the point she rejected him entirely and wanted nothing to do with him. He grew increasingly desperate, anguished at his failures, and his heart enflamed with jealousy in the instances where she not only rejected him, but found someone else to love. 

But then, in the life just before the current one, he wasn’t even able to meet her. This version of her came into mortal danger because of a terrible accident, but he wasn’t able to come and save her in time. She was alive when he came for her, but it was too late, and she died in his arms. 

And so The Morning Star fell into depair, and swore he would never seek her out again.

But then... one day, Diavolo makes arrangements for an exchange program between the three realms (human, demon, and angel), and with Lucifer’s help, selects three human to attend the program. Little does he know that one of them is Jonna’s current incarnation.

A woman by the name of Joey Andrews.