#they can forgive themselves !! or if not something that whole and cleansing | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

stillness-in-green · 6 months

Text

On Heteromorphs and Heteromorphobia (Arc XXI-B + Conclusion, Final War-B: The Hospital Attack)

To preface before I start documenting these final four chapters, there’s been a lot said (not least by me) about how wildly out of touch the resolution to this plotline is. While I didn't set out to rehash all of that again, it turns out I can't actually talk about how the series portrays heteromorphobia without talking about how it resolves it—if I'd wanted to do that, the place to stop would have been with the last post. This whole piece is also destined for AO3 eventually, so it needs to be readable for those who don't follow me on tumblr. Therefore, if you've been following my #heteromorph discrimination plot posts for a while, there are portions of this post that will be pretty familiar territory!

If you're new and want my full breakdowns, you can find them in my Chapter Thoughts posts or in this pair of posts rounding up the asks I’d gotten on the topic. Here, I will simply say that I don’t think Horikoshi’s fumbling of the plot can be read to mean that all the stuff I’ve documented thus far was just me reaching too hard, reading stuff into the manga where nothing was intended. While I’m sure some of it is—I definitely went out on a few limbs!—I think the main answer to, “How can heteromorphobia be such a well-thought-out depiction of a logically foreseeable form of discrimination while also having such a terrible resolution?” is, “Because the mainstream opinion about how best to handle discrimination is wildly different in Japan than it is in progressive American circles.”

That doesn’t mean I’m willing to wave the wand of Cultural Differences over this resolution and forgive everything—there were plenty of Japanese fans critiquing it as well![1]—but it does somewhat modulate my feelings about it. In any case, let’s get to it.

1: Most of what I saw was on Twitter, but there’s a Japanese site called bookmeter that’s kinda goodreads-esque, and which had several critical reviews posted for the volume, including one that felt like every point laid out was something I’d complained about as well. Super validating, but a shame it was necessary!

(I'll be changing up my formatting just a bit in hopes that I can find a way to present sub-sub-bullet points that tumblr won't choke on in this 13K post. Pray for me.)

Chapter 370:

O We open with a scene which we’re led to believe is about Spinner but which the end of the chapter will reveal to be about Shouji. It’s shockingly open about the extent of the discrimination Shouji faced, and there’s worse yet to come, but here we find people throwing stones at him, telling him to die, saying he has dirty blood that will defile the land, that he should stay inside the house, and that no matter how much time passes,[2] they will never accept “his kind.”

2: Viz renders this as “no matter how much society progresses,” but the word jidai means something more like “the times”/”the age,” and the progression term used can mean improvement, but in the circumstances, probably just means forward movement. I think the intention is more like, “No matter how much the times march on,” if only because it would be very odd for the people yelling this vitriol to frame it as themselves resisting progression. After all, bigots don’t typically think of themselves as “regressive” compared to everyone else’s progressiveness; they think of themselves as normal or valuing tradition compared to everyone else’s moral laxity/perversity.

So, remember how I talked about the spiritual/religious charge to the language the CRC used to talk about their “sanctuary” and the League/Spinner’s presence in it? Here’s the full scope of that. It’s about kegare, a Shinto concept of uncleanliness associated particularly with blood and death, and while that’s normally something that can be purified simply by undergoing the proper ritual cleansings, when something is, in itself, intrinsically unclean, no amount of purification will fix it; you can only keep it sealed away. Hence the yelling at Shouji not to leave the house.

The spirituality-based discrimination calls to mind the burakumin, originally an outcaste group of people who made their living working with all the aspects of life Shinto considered kegare—butchers, tanners, executioners and the like. They were made to dress and cut their hair in ways that identified them on sight, barred from entering temples or schools, and lived in their own villages. The laws mandating much of this were abolished in 1871[3] and urban sprawl gradually rolled over burakumin villages, turning them into slum areas. While today it’s not uncommon for people to not even know they’re descended from burakumin lineage unless they’re specifically told,[4] more subtle discrimination does endure. While it’s clearly not the only inspiration, there’s a lot about anti-burakumin bias that’s reflected in heteromorphobia.

3: Albeit not without considerable and violent protests against the liberation of the burakumin/the idea that they were henceforth to be allowed to hold other occupations and become ordinary citizens. Arson, destruction of villages, attacks and deaths—all things considered, the anti-Kaihourei riots are probably a decent place to look for inspiration on the historical massacres Spinner’s #2 will be talking about shortly.

4: Or find out because someone who knows the significance of those old neighborhoods finds out first and they’re suddenly on the bad end of some discriminatory act or another.

O We find out that the group Spinner’s leading consists of fifteen thousand people, that number split between PLF remnants and ordinary civilians who support the PLF’s cause. It’s unknown exactly how that split breaks down, but based on how the rest of the attack goes, I think it’s probable that the group is mostly civilians—if it were more PLF, it probably wouldn’t be so wholly defanged by Shouji’s big plea for peace. So that’s what we might call a “bad look,” that fifteen thousand ordinary civilians feel so incredibly hard done-by that they not only flock to join a known terrorist, but that they do so for the purpose of attacking a hospital.

O They’re opposed by about two hundred police and heroes, the relevant of whom for our purposes are Present Mic, Rock Lock, Officer Gori, Shouji, and Koda. With the exception of Present Mic, who will in any case be heading inside very shortly, they’re all minorities of some sort, with Rock Lock being very visibly, obviously Black, and the others being heteromorphs. None of them are immediately thinking about the composition of the crowd, but rather about how difficult the crowd is being to handle.

O Rock Lock yells out that the rioters are too organized to be some random mob, a dismissiveness that gets him shouted at by the Spinner fanboys—tragically their only appearance in all of this!—that, “Folks with human faces just don’t get it!” I have to assume that putting Rock Lock in this scene is no accident, but rather is there to make the rioters come off as short-sighted, so deep in their own pain that they lash out at someone who, if HeroAca!Japan is anything like present day Japan, almost certainly understands better than they think!

The phrasing, in any case, points towards the dehumanization that heteromorphs, especially animal-associated ones, are subject to. After all, as Re-Destro might point out, in the post-Advent world, isn’t it the case that any given heteromorphic human’s face, no matter how strange it may be, is de facto a “human face”? Yet the vitriol from the Spinner fans clearly reflects how internalized it’s become for them, that they don’t look “human,” despite the fact that “looking human” means nothing at all in the time of quirks.

O Koda gets called a traitor by an elderly beaked heteromorph from, apparently, a rural area, underscoring what’s been alluded to a few times prior to this, and which will be laid out explicitly in a few pages, that heteromorphobia is far, far worse in the countryside than it is in the cities. Mr. Beak assumes—correctly, it seems[5]—that Koda’s a city kid, because why else other than ignorance would a fellow heteromorph stand against them?

5: Koda’s from Iwate Prefecture, which is only above Hokkaido in terms of population density; a bit of research suggests that its largest city, Morioka, is considered to be a mid-sized city. So that’s definitely the hard upper limit on exactly how “big city” Koda could reasonably be. That said, Shouji also identifies Koda as someone who grew up in a city, for which I assume he must have at least some basis.

O Spinner’s #2 fulfills the promise of his early shorthanded characterization of being a fiery, well-spoken zealot by standing on top of a building over the mob and exhorting them onward with revolutionary, inflammatory rhetoric. And boy, does he bring up a lot to talk about!

Demagoguery for Fun & Profit

O Quirk counselling and quirk education? Phony nonsense, he says. That’s a fairly confusing grievance to bring up in this context, so let’s consider what he might have in mind.

• For quirk education, I would contend that BNHA has shown very little of it, in spite of having Academia right there in the title. The academics in question are about Heroics, after all, not quirks in and of themselves. Here’s the complete list of what I would say the reader has seen that could be qualified as actual education about quirks:

Aizawa telling the kids(/low tier villains at USJ) some broad generalities, things like a very basic explanation of how quirks work on the genetic level or how they’re classified. Most of this is delivered in the context of how his quirk works; the only outlier that immediately comes to mind for me is his explanation of how quirks are like muscles, and can be strengthened via training.

Mirio and Tamaki’s middle school class doing “quirk training,” which is framed as a P.E. class and is specifically aimed at finding ways for each kid to be “useful to society,” not about them learning anything about quirks in a broader sense.

Endeavor’s recent reference to Nedzu’s alleged “quirk morality education,” about which I have already registered my skepticism.

The bit in Re-Destro’s monologue to Shigaraki where he mentions he was taught not to judge others by their quirks. It’s hard to judge how applicable this is to normal society because Re-Destro was raised in a cult, and the book shown during this sequence was released by Curious’s publisher.

So of those options, what is #2 talking about? I’d say the last one is probably closest to what he means: don’t judge others by their quirks. But of course, people judge others by their quirks all the time. Family, classmates, teachers, people in the same neighborhood, heroes and police—we see examples from literally the first page of characters who are being judged by their quirks or lack thereof. While that judgement doesn’t apply only to heteromorphs, they are, by dint of their visibility, going to face it everywhere they go, regardless of whether any given situation—say, going to the grocery store or on a date—involves quirks or not. So, whatever lessons people in this society are getting about quirks and judgement, they clearly aren’t absorbing them.

It also bears pointing out, of course, that #2’s personal affiliation is with the Metahuman Liberation Army, and he definitely shows signs—as I’ll get to in a bit—of the quirk supremacism that group is so unanimously painted with in the endgame. So while the supremacy he’s preaching is about heteromorphs rather than quirks more generally, he could well be saying quirk education is phony because he’s all for judging people on their quirks! However, his criteria for that judgement differs from both forms of judgement taught by the society he’s railing against—what they practice and what they preach.

• Then there’s quirk counseling, a practice the story most prominently associates with Toga, who’s barely a twitch of the needle away from baseline (though her abuse is not wholly without reference to her appearance, in that her natural smile is repeatedly branded as scary or deviant). So why bring it up in association with heteromorphs? My suspicion is that a heteromorph—especially a heteromorph with an animal-associated quirk!—being visibly “different” in some way makes the people around them hyper-sensitive to behavioral “deviations.”

For a start, you see that hyper-sensitivity brought to bear against Toga. Curious contends that Toga’s sense of “admiration” was a perfectly normal thing, but it was the tie to blood that made it wholly unacceptable. It’s notable that, before she snapped, Toga was never shown to actually want to hurt people: the bird was already injured when she found it, her friend got a scrape the way any child might, Saito was involved in a fight Toga had no hand in. She hurts people now because a lifetime of rejection and dehumanization, but Toga’s admiration of blood was not intrinsically indicative that she’d grow up to be violent; people treated it that way because of cultural attitudes towards blood and blood-attraction.

So, might the same sort of thing be true of e.g. animal-associated heteromorphs? That they might exhibit behaviors which would, in different circumstances, be totally fine, but which they’re judged for unduly harshly because of cultural beliefs about the animal they resemble? Let me just spitball a few possibilities:

A cat heteromorph who, as a child, showed affection by nuzzling. That’s fine when a literal kitten is doing it, and funny and cute when a baseline child sees a cat doing it and imitates it for fun, but when the cat heteromorph does it, he makes people uncomfortable, makes them wonder if he lacks self-control, comes off as weird and too-forward. So his parents rebuke him and bring him to a quirk counsellor to break him of the habit, leading him to feel ashamed and alienated from a harmless natural impulse.

A snake-headed girl is the first heteromorph in her family line and the way she stares at people so fixedly, never blinking, creeps them out, makes them feel like she’s dangerous. She isn’t and has no intention of being so, but she’s sent to quirk counselling anyway and the lesson she learns is to just never look people in the eye at all.

A condor heteromorph develops a morbid interest in corpses in middle school. He doesn’t want to eat them, he’s not some kind of cannibalistic animal—at least that’s what he told himself before quirk counselling, where his counsellor, like his teachers, assumed that his interest had to be tied to animal instincts. He wanted to be a mortician, or join the police and get into crime scene investigation, but when he told people that they just looked at him like he was already holding a fork and knife. (He ends up getting into photography, and just has to live with the fact that now people have two excuses to call him a vulture.)

Two children—one with a plant-based emitter quirk, the other an eight-eyed spider heteromorph—are caught in the act of killing some insects by a local police officer. It’s the sort of innocent childhood cruelty you might find anywhere, and, indeed, when the officer calls their school about it, that’s what gets decided about the emitter—he was just a child who didn’t know any better. But the heteromorph gets recommended for quirk counselling instead—after all, spiders kill insects. What if this is an early warning sign for instincts towards predatory behavior? It’s important to nip these things in the bud.

That’s all off the top of my head or taken from some conversation with friends on the topic, and maybe it’s a reach, but it’s also a very plausible explanation for why a heteromorphic idealogue might bring up quirk counselling as a specific grievance—because, like the Villain-designation for criminals, it’s unevenly and unfairly applied.

O The next point #2 makes, and definitely the one that made the biggest splash in fandom at the time, is his invocation of a pair of historical incidents, possibly both but at least one of which was a mass murder targeting heteromorphs, carried out by a bunch of baseline types. He names them as the 6/6 Incident and the Great Jeda Purge. These are both stealth Star Wars references, though the former is disguised a bit better by being in the same format that Japan sometimes uses for naming events like attempted coups.[6] Given the image we see, it’s fair to assume the event in BNHA was similar.

6: See for example the May 15 Incident or the February 26 Incident, called the 5・15 Incident and the 2・26 Incident respectively in Japan. You see this in China as well, with the Tiananmen Square massacre being referred to there as the 6/4 Incident.

Notice that the perpetrators here are mostly holding weapons. Were they quirkless themselves, or were they avoiding using quirks such that they couldn’t be branded as Villains? Knowing the answer to that would give us a timeframe for this.

He goes on to declaim, on the basis of these events, that the history of the paranormal is one of persecution and oppression of those with “differing forms.”[7] The term in Japanese there is kotonaru katachi, 異なる形, which uses a different reading of the kanji in igyou (異形) and muscles in a verb conjugation, which has the effect of softening the harshness of 異 somewhat.[8] This would be a great catch-all term for those with heteromorphic bodies who might or might not have heteromorphic quirks[9] if it weren’t for the fact that literally the only person we ever hear using it is an anti-social zealot. No one on Team Hero ever makes this kind of distinguishment.

In any case, #2 is obviously over-simplifying to play to his audience—recall the baseline woman we saw back in that shot of Persecuted Early Quirk-Havers back in Chapter 59—but, as I’ve discussed extensively, being more visible does make one a more ready target. Also, of course, the presence of the CRC in the story lays the groundwork for this sort of historical horror story even long after the worst days of the Advent.

7: I provide my own translation here because the Viz one, “those who don’t fit the mold,” is vague to the point of uselessness.

8: The koto reading, as best I can tell, seems to be pretty rare, often tagged as archaic in words including it. The i reading is far more common, in words that denote wrongness, divergence, abnormality, and so on. But it may be less about the reading and more about the fact that adding the verb conjugation makes the term more of a descriptive phrase than a direct noun. As ever, take my talk about Japanese language minutiae with a grain of salt.

9: “Differing forms” is broad enough, however, that it could also be read as covering, say, people with amputations, congenital anomalies, or other sorts of non-quirk-related disfigurements from accidents or disease. As in real life, navigating the linguistic space between specificity and Othering can be tricky.

O Next, #2 rhetorically demands what excuse was given by those who perpetrated these slaughters? He answers his own question with the quote, “They give me the creeps.” Note how this ties in with my earlier suppositions about the likelihood of discrimination worsening the farther one is from baseline, as well as those about the necessity of putting up a good, positive, appealing front. It’s a perfectly intuitive leap, that more extreme variants of heteromorphy, or those who evoke negative associations—animals tied to rot or bad luck, people made wholly out of green ooze—are going to be more likely to be found “creepy” than those who look like e.g. sexy bunny girls or straight-laced guys who just happen to have pipes jutting out of their calves. Of course, that’s on something of a sliding scale; the more biased an area is against heteromorphs in general, the easier it will be to find oneself on the wrong side of that line.

O #2 presents the idea that society has reflected on their actions and made amends, or at least that’s how society’s narrative goes. Illustrating this, we see two of the three heteromorphs in the police force, as well as Nedzu. Interestingly, the panel does not include any heteromorphic heroes! I might guess that this is because heroes are meant to use their quirks to serve others; they’re really just enforcement tools, lacking any particular authority beyond a quirk-use license and some admittedly broad soft power courtesy of the social contract.[10] Conversely, a school principal and a police chief (Gori remaining the outlier here) have actual authority, such that the average heteromorphobia-denier can point to them as evidence that heteromorphobia doesn’t exist anymore.

10: Which is to say, I don’t get the impression civilians are required to take orders from heroes, such that they would actually get in legal trouble for disobeying. The fact that people do typically follow those orders speaks more to the power heroes wield via their association with the police force, as well as the general tendency of people to assume that someone in a uniform giving orders during an emergency is probably a professional whose orders it would be safe and wise to follow.

In the same panel, we also see a baseline guy palling around with a vaguely murine heteromorph dude (he looks more like a mascot suit mouse than an actual mouse, but he’s certainly nowhere close to baseline!), illustrating another way society wants to pretend it’s moved past heteromorphic discrimination. I can’t help but note, in regards to this specific pair, that the manga uses faces the readers know to illustrate the point about heteromorphs in positions of authority, whereas to make the point about baseline/heteromorph friendships, it has to make up a new pair to show us because the series hasn’t made the time to actually build any (heroic) relationships that actually look like that!

Now, one could argue that using familiar faces to underscore #2’s speech would imply that he’s aware of those faces, and while that’s fine for figures of authority, there’s no reason for him to be aware of e.g. Natsuo and his mousey girlfriend. However, the same would apply to anyone placed to demonstrate a random urban friendship crossing the “differing forms” line, including those two strangers. Who are those two, after all, that #2 is any more familiar with them than he would be of Natsuo and mouse gal?

Honestly, I think the best relationship candidate we have—a pair who would both communicate what the panel needs to communicate to the reader and who would feasibly be enough in the public eye to get pointed at for rhetorical purposes by an in-universe speaker—would be Kamui Woods and Mount Lady. Unfortunately, they don’t work because Horikoshi has never seen fit to actually reveal Kamui Woods’ real face, so they’re much less visibly “a baseline person being emotionally close with a heteromorph” than the random two Horikoshi made up.

O The oratory continues into discussing the divide between city versus rural views on heteromorphs, and this is, to me, the first clear sign that the series is beginning to lose the thread of this plot. Taking #2 at his word asks us to concede the heteromorphobia has been completely wiped out in cities, eradicated with that wonderful antidote called “education.” But discrimination very much does exist in cities! It may be less violent, less extreme, less vocal, but in the form of things like law enforcement bias, housing discrimination, microaggressions, the quirk counselling #2 himself brought up, it’s very much still there! Now, it could be that he’s just downplaying that discrimination to focus on the really ugly stuff you don’t see in cities, but I don’t know what his reasons for doing so would be? Not when there’s so much else he could say that would be equally inflammatory without alienating urban heteromorphs by dismissing their still very much present, modern suffering.

O He then brings up the talk of “light”—echoing Skeptic’s earlier rhetoric—and it not reaching those gathered at the hospital, so they must make their own, for people who’ve never once regretted the quirks they were born with can never be their heroes. What this primarily puts me in mind of is Hawks’s background with heroes prior to his father’s arrest—that heroes were only on TV, not present to save him in his actual life. Keep that in mind for Shouji’s response later on.

O Towards the end, #2’s speech finally tips over the line from what could plausibly be read as protesting unequal treatment to an outright call for supremacy. Notably, he doesn’t call for quirk supremacy, but rather for heteromorph supremacy—for the tables to be turned, the cards reversed, for them to not merely be equal, but rather to be superior.

It’s unclear how much of this he’s sincere about and how much is just convenient rhetoric disguising views that are more quirk supremacist in actuality. For many reasons, I want to read him in good faith: because the MLA originally struck me as being written in good faith throughout MVA and the first war arc; because #2 never once uses his quirk in this mini-arc, casting doubt on him having such an amazing quirk that he’d benefit overmuch from quirk supremacy anyway; and especially because it would be incredibly bad faith on Horikoshi’s part to make a character delivering a speech like this a total bad faith, manipulative outsider. Unfortunately, #2’s inner monologue in later chapters will make a good faith read all but impossible to sustain.

O Halfway through his speech, #2 unmasks himself, revealing both his face—dominated by four pairs of pedipalp-esque mouthparts, though the markings on his head are pretty eye-catching, too—and his scar. We’re never told how he got it, but the implication is certainly that he was attacked for his appearance. That may just be a conclusion it serves him to let people make, given his bad faith elsewhere, but thankfully the manga doesn’t go so far as to say that explicitly. In any case, his deliberate reveal turns his wound into a form of performance art, drawing attention to it, forcing it to be a part of the conversation—the polar opposite of Shouji covering his scars because he doesn’t want them to be a part of the conversation about him, and those scars being revealed because his mask is torn off against his will.[11]

11: This also fits a larger pattern of villains, by and large, choosing their expressions of vulnerability, making deliberate shows of agency in how their weakness is perceived by the broader world—Shigaraki taking his hand off for the first time, Dabi’s video, Toga approaching heroes with genuine questions, and so on. There are certainly exceptions, but generally if a villain shows his “true face,” it’s because they’re making a conscious decision to do so, and may be actively manipulating how that reveal is going to land. Conversely, heroes want to present a powerful, confident, untarnished image to the public, so their shows of vulnerability all have to be forced out of them after pitched battles or acts of violence. Heroes don’t make themselves vulnerable to the public on purpose, which feeds into the way the public then treats them when they are forced into vulnerable positions.

O Spinner’s a mess at this point, and the reason he’s a mess is all tied up in his faith in/desire to help Shigaraki. It’s not explicitly about heteromorphobia, but on the other hand, given that the thing that drove Spinner to be here at all was his horrifically low self-esteem caused by heteromorphobia, maybe it’s not so irrelevant after all. It may have taken Spinner longer than the Tenkos, Touyas, and Chisaki Kais of the world to reach the “fall victim to a dark influence due to the neglect and abuse you faced at the hands of Hero Society” plot, but he certainly got there in the end![12]

12: I call this The Sekoto Peak Problem, and it’s a big criticism of mine about how the final arc is framing all these conflicts as being solely brought about because Bad Faith Villain Men like AFO are scooping up vulnerable people and driving them towards violence, without acknowledging the much worse circumstances those vulnerable people might be in if they were just left to their fates. Touya, for example, if not for AFO’s timely rescue, would likely have simply died on the mountain long before Endeavor was able to find him.

O Shouji takes the mob to task for attacking a hospital without ensuring the safety of the uninvolved innocents within, a laughable bit of sophistry[13] that accurately foreshadows how disastrous his reasoning will be throughout the rest of these chapters.

13: It’s laughable sophistry firstly because the heroes knew this mob was coming but chose to leave Kurogiri at a hospital anyway; one can mount a very reasonable argument that Kurogiri’s teleportation power qualifies him as a military objective, which would make stashing him at a hospital an actual war crime in an international conflict, as well as negating the hospital’s protected status as a civilian object. It’s laughable sophistry secondly because it criticizes a Villain-led mob for failing to evacuate the building, as if said mob had exactly the same social cachet possessed by heroes, that they could freely walk in the front door of a hospital and start shouting evacuation orders with reasonable confidence that they’d be obeyed. Finally, it’s laughable sophistry because Shouji is quite simply wrong about the order of the actions he’s describing—the heroes’ evacuation of Ujiko’s hospital was concurrent with their invasion of said hospital, not precedent to it.

Chapter 371:

O Shouji accuses Spinner of taking actions that will set them back thirty years, which is just a really egregiously victim blamey sort of thing to say, placing the responsibility on heteromorphs for the crimes of those who hate them.

O Koda’s perspective gives us a flashback to Shouji telling his classmates about his history—his town and his scars and his reason for wanting to be a hero. It’s all material that works in the context of all the set-up we’ve gotten—the CRC and the religious inflection of their specific brand of hatred, the rural heteromorphobia, the hints about Shouji’s own discrimination, the attack on the Ordinary Woman, and so on—but that would have been far better served to have been integrated into the story more naturally. Koda has no specifically established relationship with Shouji (seriously, there is absolutely nothing; it’s shocking how out of nowhere his sudden deep dedication to Shouji is), nor does the scene he remembers have any specific flags for when it might take place,[14] leaving the memory feeling less like a natural extension of their arc than it is a graceless sequence muscled in to attempt to rouse some emotion in the audience when Koda has a quirk awakening he is not otherwise remotely in dire enough straits to have rightfully earned.[15]

14: Shouto and Bakugou being missing might suggest that they’re off at their remedial license course, which would put the scene somewhere in late September up through December (stretching from the aftermath of Overhaul to the introduction of the MLA), save that there are several other students missing as well—Sero, Iida, Sato, and Aoyama, none of whom where in the remedial course.

15: Nearly every other inarguable quirk awakening[※] we know of in the series has as a chief component serious physical injury: Bakugou, Ochaco, Toga. Geten’s is the only exception, and his is tied to the strength of his feelings for Re-Destro, which are clearly and overridingly his most significant character trait! Shouji is not anywhere near that central to Koda’s life, and he sure as hell isn’t injured enough to have gotten it that way.

※: By which measure I exclude stuff like the change in Shigaraki’s Decay or Mina’s acid attack against Gigantomachia. Shigaraki was explicitly just breaking through a mental block to access power he already had. Meanwhile, if Mina’s Plus Ultra moment had been a sudden quirk evolution, she wouldn’t already have an attack name picked out for it, nor would her horns have gone back to normal after it. Acidman: ALMA is an Ultimate Move, not Mina having a quirk awakening.

O The flashback itself calls for another subsection.

Ignoring the Difference Between the Personal and the Systemic for Fun & Profit

O The big thing here the description of the whole town coming out for a “blood cleansing” whenever Shouji touched someone. This is depicted as Shouji, probably a preteen in this sequence,[16] being savagely attacked with farming tools, the most visible of which is a pitchfork. This visual, as well as #2’s invocation of historical slaughters, is the darkest heart of heteromorphobia: a child being ritualistically assaulted in the open street as a matter of course, as a consequence for touching someone. This is the image you should hold in your mind as The Problem through all of the potential answers and responses that get trotted out through the rest of these chapters.

16: Visibly older/bigger than, say, Kouta, but also visibly younger/smaller than middle school Deku.

Before moving on, I do want to examine this image in just a bit more depth.

This is, firstly, the moment that Shouji got those scars, and it’s very important to note that what we’re being shown is likely not a random, representative sample of what the town “coming out in force for a blood cleansing” looks like. The strong implication is that this is in the immediate aftermath of the sequence we’ll see shortly of Shouji saving the girl from the river: he’s wearing the same clothes and shoes,[17] he’s the same size, and there’s a spray of blood from where he’s being struck across the mouth where he didn’t have his distinctive scars when he saved the girl. Does that mean the blood cleansings were typically not this violent? That’s hard to say. On the one hand, we don’t see any other scars on Shouji, and he wears his arms pretty bare! On the other hand, we never see any part of his body bare except his neck and arms, and since he can regrow his arms,[18] they’re not exactly conclusive evidence that he’s never been scarred there. Also, he does say talk about his situation—the scars he bears—as something other children in the country have to bear, suggesting that the norm is rather worse than a little symbolic gash across the palm or something! 17: In fairness, he may not own very much different, as I’ll discuss shortly. 18: The duplicated ones, at least. I seem to recall reading once that he could regrow the base set as well, but I’m still working on tracking down a citation on that.

Secondly, as was the case with the image of the historical massacres, the adults here are using tools/weapons in the assault, not quirks. As I mentioned in a footnote last time, them not using quirks to carry out this attack makes them merely criminals, not Villains, and therefore not nominally a Hero’s job to deal with. While I can’t imagine any Hero in the manga these days would stand back and let this go on, the absence still stands out—no Hero is participating in this, nor observing from the sidelines, nor trying to intervene. Heroes simply don’t figure into this picture at all.

Thirdly, we can see a few children in the background, both there with adults, I assume their parents. The child on the right is a passive observer, clinging close to their mother and simply watching; their father has one hand supportively on their shoulder. Neither parent seems distressed, insomuch as we can tell from their somewhat indistinct features and rather clearer body language. The child on the left is being actively held back by their mother, who’s standing with her back to the violence, her body interposed between it and her child. The kid is reaching out towards the scene, but it’s unclear what the intent is. Are they trying to intervene or do they want to join in? Neither child appears to be the little girl Shouji saved—the one on the right is dark-haired, and the one on the left—the more likely prospect just going by the body language!—is wearing a long, dark T-shirt instead of the little girl’s overalls. I suppose the left one could be the little girl if we assume she was hustled out of what she’d been wearing by her parents, eager to get her out of now-tainted (and also soaking wet) clothes and into something dry and warm and, in more ways than one, clean. However, that seems like the sort of thing that would take longer than what looks to have been a pretty impromptu, disorganized bloodletting, unless everyone just held off on assaulting Shouji right out on the street until the “victim” could be present.

Finally, there’s the pair of adults right at the center of the background. If anyone in this picture is actually related to Shouji, I’d put money on them being here, watching but not attempting to intercede. I don’t think it’s conclusive, though; the woman is thin and hunched, making her look older—I’d guess Shouji’s grandmother before Shouji’s mother. That hunched posture and her hands being raised to her mouth do give her the most obviously distressed appearance of any of the adult, though, to the extent that the person with her is focused on supporting her rather than watching what’s going on in the foreground—and forward attention is what I’d expect if the dark-haired figure is related to Shouji.

So that’s the image we have of the crowd—actively taking part or observing with varying degrees of reaction running from distress to indifference to, potentially, enthusiasm.

O Next, let’s talk about Shouji’s parents. He implies they were baseline—at the least they were significantly more baseline than Shouji himself, as they lacked arms “like his.” That makes it quite telling that Shouji’s parents are nowhere to be seen in his story beyond the simple mention of how they were different than him.

Now, I don’t want to suggest here that Shouji’s parents are completely irredeemable people. While I would imagine that—at least initially—they shared their town’s bigotry, having a heteromorphic child themselves would have exponentially increased the hardship of their own lives. In a town like that, I’m sure that many if not all of their neighbors must have come to regard them with suspicion of wrongdoing or transgression—recall the first page of the last chapter, where Shouji is accused of tricking the town in his having brought dirty blood to it. Hie parents almost certainly lost friends and likely became ostracized themselves, and ostracization in a small Japanese town can be a horrifying thing to deal with.

And yet, even with all that being the case, they didn’t abandon Shouji or give him up; they didn’t commit family suicide with him.[19] Assuming he wasn’t removed from their custody after the incident, they’re presumably paying his school and living costs;[20] likewise, unless he just ran away from home or is carrying out an incredibly elaborate deception about what school he’s attending, they almost had to support his desire to attend a hero school to begin with. In his situation, parents who support his desire to be a Hero is a big fucking deal. After all, between the winning and the saving, heroes will de facto be touching people all the time! If Shouji’s parents still live in his hometown, how do you think those people will take it when someone first realizes the Shouji family sent their kegare-riddled monster off to be a Hero?

19: The history of honorable suicide in Japan casts a very long shadow, and when it’s combined with the meiwaku culture, you get an underreported epidemic of things like parents who can’t see their way out of a bad situation taking their lives and their children’s as well, so as not to leave messy loose ends that others will have to bear the burden of dealing with.

20: I won’t get into whether or not the U.A. students’ parents are paying for any given thing on the following list, but here are some potential costs to consider, assuming that Shouji, like Uraraka, was commuting from an apartment prior to the dorms being implemented: tuition, school uniforms, textbooks, school supplies, school meal plan, food not served at school (e.g. breakfast and dinner or meals when the school is on break), non-uniform attire, personal care and hygiene, housing and transportation costs, a measure of spending money for unanticipated expenses or culturally expected gift-giving, etc.

All that being said, it’s obviously not a glowingly loving relationship, either. Think back to Shouji’s absolutely barren room in Chapter 99 and consider it in the context of the information we get in this chapter. Is he really so ascetic by inclination, or is he just used to making do with as little as possible? After all, it goes without saying that if him coming into contact with someone called for blood purification, anything he himself was in regular contact with was also to be considered incredibly impure. That includes his clothes, personal belongings and living space; even setting aside his parents’ view on it, who in his hometown would even want to provide or sell things to the family that they think will go to the child with the dirty blood that’s defiling their land?

Shouji’s parents’ absence is also glaring in other ways. For example:

They’re either not in the beating scene image above at all or they’re that central background couple hanging back and just watching; whichever is the case, what they’re assuredly not doing while their son is being beaten so badly he will still have glaringly visible scars years later is “trying to stop the violence or take the blows themselves.”

Shouji says he has one single good memory about his body, but his parents are nowhere to be found in that memory. Ergo, his parents have not given him a single moment of positivity about his heteromorphic form.

Parents of U.A. students were evacuated to U.A.—not just the ones near it, but even ones like Uraraka’s parents, who live at least a two hour drive away, in a wholly different prefecture with a third prefecture in between them and U.A. Every student we see in the departure scene in Chapter 342 is shown with their parents except Shouji.

To sum all that up, Shouji’s family situation is not maximally bad, but it’s certainly proximally bad.

O Next, we get Shouji alleging ignorance on the part of heteromorphs raised in cities, that there are still parts of the country in the modern day where stories like his happen.[21] It’s a milder version of the same assertions made by #2 and the beaky heteromorph last chapter, in that Shouji doesn’t suggest heteromorphobia doesn’t exist at all in cities, simply that there are extremes of violence that can only be found in the country. It still feels off, however, to suggest that absolutely no one else in Shouji’s class might ever have heard of this through any channel at all: being from similarly small towns, reading about an attack in the news, reading about factors that impact the public approval ratings for Heroes, going through a morbid phase in middle school and researching it, being talked to about it by their parents, etc.

21: The suggestion of the Viz translation of this suggests that city-raised heteromorphs do know this, but only because they’re read about it in textbooks. My sister-in-law, who does professional translation, tells me this was a subtle mistranslation of the original text, however; the textbook framing is supposed to imply a remove of time, not merely of distance.

It’s not as unrealistic a story beat here as it would be in an American comic, as Japan does tend more towards using silence as a weapon against bigotry—children won’t learn what they aren’t taught, and similar reasoning. Still, to portray the class as so unanimously ignorant reflects a deep incuriosity, be that in the kids themselves about the world around them or in their author about how the knowledge/perpetuation of discrimination spreads.

This is particularly the case when you consider the story’s handling of the Ordinary Woman—attacked in her own town because people were suspicious of a heteromorph out after dark, turned away from multiple shelters because of her heteromorph status. It’s certainly true that things got worse for heteromorphs after the first war arc, but for discrimination in that specific form to emerge, there needed to be something for it to draw on. The fear of villains and the association of villains with heteromorphs are the foundation for the upswelling in anti-heteromorph sentiments in cities.

O Mina’s reaction to all this is one of rather theatrical anger. That is, no one around her takes her broad declarations—that the world would be better off without the people who hurt Shouji—as anything more serious than hyperbole. This is, it would seem, the only sort of anger that’s acceptable to show in response to hearing a story like Shouji’s—empathy to the wronged, sure, but no real intent to confront the wrongdoers.

O Mineta stares into space for a second before emphatically apologizing for calling Shouji an octopus once—a call all the way back to his microaggression in Chapter 6!—and asserting that it wasn’t his intention to say Shouji was gross or anything. Shouji responds gracefully, saying it’s “only natural” that his arms would make people think of octopus.

He doesn’t go on to say, “But that doesn’t mean people have to say it out loud,” but it’s possible that Mineta’s apology is meant to suggest that regardless. At least, one certainly hopes this isn’t the author’s way of quietly absolving his more popular characters of all the times they’ve done the same thing! It’s notable, however, that none of the other Class 1-A kids that have done this are in the scene. Shouto and Bakugou, who have both used that kind of language in anger (and in the latter’s case, also just with no provocation whatsoever) are the missing elephants in the room, and even Sero, who was the actual person to call Shouji an octopus, is, in his absence, Sir Letting The Gag Character Handle This Apology So I A More Serious Character Don’t Have To.

O Shouji brings up the Heroes Who Look Like Villains rankings. We know the Number 1 on that list is actually Endeavor, per a movie bonus booklet, but bringing it up in this context does implicitly confirm that said rankings have an unseemly slant towards heteromorphs, and what did Skeptic say about Villains and heteromorphs again…?

O Shouji says he wears the mask because he knows that if people see his scars, they’ll wonder about them, and fear he’s out for revenge. He doesn’t want people to think that, so he covers them up. He’s praised for this by Tokoyami, and the narrative pretty clearly also thinks it’s admirable and cool. I have serious issues with this—chiefly that it’s prioritizing the oblivious comfort of the baseline citizens over the fellow feeling and affirmation of other persecuted heteromorphs—but I’m also curious to see if the mask will come back now that its meta-narrative purpose of hiding Shouji’s scars from the reader has been fulfilled. I note, for example, that Shouji is not wearing the mask in the color spread for Chapter 394, and the color art does have some precedent for being an early predictor of stuff in the body of the manga.[22]

Incidentally, while I’m talking about Shouji’s mask, I do wonder how effective it would even be for him to cover his scars up? I have my doubts for two reasons. First and most obviously, heroes are such celebrities, all over the news all the time, such that if Shouji really does get as popular as he intends to, there will be people who want to know what he looks like.[23]

22: The big one is Aizawa’s eyepatch. It showed up in two pieces of color art (the popularity poll results spread for Chapter 293 and the new art announcing the BNHA Drawing Smash Exhibition) before it was revealed in the manga. Both pieces released within days of each other in early December, 2020, three months after Shigaraki raked his hand down Aizawa’s face during the war and almost two months before the latter showed up in bandages in the hospital, with another two months to go beyond that before the eyepatch itself made it to the manga in late March. In a more stealth spoiler, the same popularity spread revealed Shigaraki’s blackened, burned face-hand two chapters prior to Spinner digging it out of Shigaraki’s pants. The 394 spread is also my basis for asserting that Mina’s horns have gone back to normal after her attack against Gigantomachia, compared to Shouji lacking his mask and Koda having his new horn in the same spread.

23: Edgeshot’s character profile page notes that his fans are split into two factions: those who’re mad to see his real face and those who think the mask is what makes him cool.

O More importantly, though, heroes have to be licensed, and Hero Licenses are photo IDs. Photo IDs don’t typically allow face coverage because not being able to provide a visual reference to what the bearer looks like defeats the whole purpose. While we don’t know what full-fledged hero licenses look like to say if they’re taken in or out of costume, we do know the provisional licenses the students carry showed them in their school uniforms, despite the fact that they definitely had working costumes by then:

Pardon the sudden screenshot. The manga has this shot, too, but the anime fills in the details of the text a bit more.

It seems probable to me that the photo on a Hero License must show the bearer’s face, so that if they’re tooling around a crime scene and a cop who hasn’t seen them around before asks for their license, it can reliably be used as a form of identification. (I wonder how Hagakure manages?)

Also, think back to the press conferences we’ve seen in the story, most recently the one post-war: at every one, the heroes are in serious, solemn black suits, not their costumes. So at any press conferences Shouji ever has to speak at in the future, he’ll have to show his face there, as well.

O We see a direct flashback to Shouji saving a little girl from drowning in a choppy, swift-flowing river as he says in voiceover that he’d rather cling to the single good memory related to his body than dwell on the bad memories. He very much uses his quirk to do it, with his right set of limbs used to hold onto the bank while his left ones reach out to the girl, extending out another few “nodes” of arm-length when he at first can’t keep hold of her fingers. As they sit and catch their breath afterward, the girl clings to one of his tentacles and cries. This is not quite what his entry in the Ultra Analysis databook was hinting at[24] when it said he wears the mask due to his scary face making a little girl cry; that’ll be next chapter.

24: My apologies for not bringing this up before; it’ll be covered on AO3. The gist is as detailed above; the databook came out circa the Endeavor Agency arc, so this was a known factoid about Shouji by the time this chapter came out three years later.

O Wrapping up the flashback, we’re left with Koda’s memory of Shouji saying that he knows it’ll take longer than a generation to tear down a wall that’s stood for over a century, so, just as previous generations have done, he’ll keep paying it forward, being the coolest hero the world’s ever seen, “to give good memories to generations to come.” Which sounds really nice when he says it that way, as opposed to the broader implication that people whose children have been or are in danger of being maimed by bigots should just keep their heads down and “keep paying it forward.”

The whole “be a cool hero and give good memories” bit is particularly egregious to my eye, for a few reasons.

How much good did cool heroes do for Takami Keigo when they were just on TV? Which is where Shouji will be, because in order to be “the coolest hero the world’s ever seen,” he’s going to have to be at the top of the rankings, and being at the top of the rankings means prioritizing cities, which means all those heteromorphs out in rural areas are never going to see him in person. And anyway, what’s stopping all those bigots from just changing the channel or going on a rant about Woke Mutie Agendas every time a heteromorphic hero crops up on TV?

How much did the visibility of previous generations’ cool heroes do for Spinner? Does Shouji think Spinner was super inspired and uplifted by seeing e.g. Gang Orca on TV using the emitter-like hypersonic waves his quirk gives him to beat up Villains, an undue percentage of whom are also heteromorphs?

It’s certainly nice that Shouji was inspired enough by heroes on TV to want to emulate them, but he is demonstrably not the norm when it comes to wildly disadvantaged and victimized heteromorphs. Also, I have to wonder how much his admiration of TV heroes would have done him if he’d gotten to the girl just a little later—say, in time to get her out of the river, but too late to be able to save her life without knowing CPR. As bad as it was for him when he saved a little girl but had to touch her to do it, can you imagine how much worse it would have been if he’d touched her and then failed to save her, being found or having to walk back into town with her body?

I realize that's incredibly dark, but it's the kind of question that presents itself when the story is so insistent on Shouji's exemplary behavior being the model for heteromorphs to follow in their own lives.

O Exiting the flashback, when Shouji calls out to the heteromorphs, we finally get a straight-out look at how disastrous this conclusion is going to be in the way he shouts that no, the people who hurt them weren’t justified, but that there has to be a better way, that they should think about how to use their rage—but offers exactly zero suggestions himself for what that better way might be, or what they should be using their rage to do instead.[25]

25: I have seen the argument put forth that Shouji is one (1) teenager, and one (1) teenager cannot fairly be asked to Solve Bigotry. To this, I would counter that if Shouji doesn’t have even one (1) single idea to offer, why is the camera lens holding him up as the hero who quelled a fifteen-thousand-strong mob with only words? He doesn’t have to Solve Bigotry, but if he’s going to be used as a counter for other peoples’ misguided but at least active attempts to address the problem, he needed to be better than a mere white knight for the status quo.

Spinner’s #2 calls Shouji out on this directly, saying that if the situation were that easy to resolve, it wouldn’t have come down to this, and accusing Shouji of having no feasible solution to offer, just childish and naïve egotism. And call me a hopeless MLA Stan and you’d be right, but truly, where’s the lie?

His efforts in this regard, however, wind up pushing Koda to what certainly has all the markings of a quirk awakening because it upsets Koda to see Shouji being “mocked.” Man, sure is a good thing quirk awakenings are just a dime a dozen and definitely don’t require life-threatening injuries and/or incredibly severe emotional distress over someone who means more to you than your own life, right?

O In a last little stroke of ugliness for the chapter, Spinner calls Shouji gross. Just to, you know, make it really obvious that the villains are all totally bad faith representation for this cause and thus can be safely dismissed. (Christ, I hate these chapters.)

Chapter 372:

O We get the flashback of Shouji and Koda asking All Might to assign them to the hospital defense group. Points of note:

Neither Shouji nor All Might can be bothered to use the Ordinary Woman’s real name, instead just referring to her by her size. Seriously, I get the intent behind insisting that she’s just an ordinary woman, that there’s nothing in particular stand-out about her in the current age; it’s pretty much the same deal as Shinomori saying that OFA can no longer be wielded by an “ordinary” person, with that phrasing being used to ironically emphasize that quirks are now seen as ordinary, while those without quirks are the unusual ones. However, it obviously wouldn’t work in-universe for characters trying to specify who they’re talking about to say, “That ordinary woman,” with the end result being that they have to grab for what stands out about her if they want to be understood—in this case, her obviously unusual height. In trying to emphasize that she’s normal, Horikoshi forces his characters to define her by what makes her stand out.

Koda says that if Shouji’s going, he is too, a moment that would really land much better if they’d had literally any interactions of note at literally any point prior to this exact moment. Frankly, even last chapter’s flashback is pretty thin on that front, since Koda is not one of the students who gets speaking lines when cuddling up to Shouji to comfort him. (I’m not even convinced it’s very in character for Koda to be one of the kids diving in for cuddles—he’s usually pretty shy!)

Shouji says that he could never call himself a hero if he were to stand back while the hospital attack plays out, implicitly emphasizing the role his reaction to his own oppression plays in his heroic motivation.

O Another flashback[26] gives us Koda’s mother discussing the possibility that he might get horns like hers someday, and what those horns can do, as well as mentioning that she used to have to put up with considerable mistreatment herself, and, lastly, telling her son to grow up into a man who gets angry when people mock those dear to him.

26: The sheer number of them crammed into this mini-arc really says a lot for how rushed it is, but complaining about the structural problems of the last few arcs would be a different essay.

Breaking those down, we’ve got:

The fact that Koda’s mom says he might grow in horns like hers suggests to me pretty strongly that her own horns are a quirk evolution she just doesn’t have the language to name as such. If it were just a matter of maturation, something that came in with puberty, there’d be no “maybe” about it. Given what we know about the context of quirk evolutions elsewhere, this in turn suggests that she did not exactly get her horns under peaceful, wholesome, uplifting circumstances!

This is backed up by her mention of the “real cruelty” she faced. Interestingly, this kind of raises some questions in relation to Shouji’s assertion last chapter that people like Koda who grew up in cities lack an understanding of the extremes of heteromorphobic violence that endure elsewhere. Did Koda’s parents move to the city from the country at some point when Koda was young/before he was born, and the “real cruelty” was out in the country? That might track with the overalls she was wearing. And of course, Koda’s mother was a younger woman then, so maybe it’s just the fact that heteromorphic discrimination was worse at the time. Either way, Koda’s mother is clearly open with him about the fact that she was mistreated because of her appearance, though she may have downplayed the severity of it.

The idea of Shouji being “dear to Koda” is immensely frustrating for how utterly groundless it is, based on absolutely no prior grounding within the story other than the general bond among the 1-A students. That’s just me complaining, though—more pertinent for this essay is the problem with how this moment frames anger. Like, the whole mini-arc has the same problem, but this chapter is particularly rotten with it. To preview: Koda’s anger is portrayed as righteous, as was his father’s, because their anger is about protection, about defensive reaction, about intervening with harm currently in progress—basically all the stuff Heroes are supposed to do. It is notably not about action based on past harm or proactive attempts to prevent future harm.

O Koda’s bird attack knocks Spinner’s #2 off the roof in one of the most egregious examples of, “I can’t come up with an actual counterpoint for his arguments, so I’ll just shut him up through force,” I’ve ever seen. Sure, there’s something to be said for not engaging bad faith parties in good faith arguments, but like… That guy already had a platform of his arguments—he was standing on the roof of a tall building! The author gave him several pages to make his pitch; the argument’s already out there in the readers’ minds! The only thing getting rid of him does is guarantee that the person the taciturn Shouji actually has to argue with is…Spinner. Who is not exactly a born orator at the best of times, and he’s very far from even that level here.

Now, #2 will get a few more lines next chapter, but they’re against one of the people on his own side. No heroic character has to argue #2 down; instead, they get to match wits with the literally drooling Spin-zilla. Which is a bit like stepping into the wrestling ring with someone who’s had a bag thrown over his head and his hands zip-tied behind his back.

This confrontation is, woefully, not the only place in the endgame where a heroic character gets all the time and freedom in the world to make their big pronunciations while their opponent gets shut down by some outside factor—interference from other villains, psychological decay, literal possession—but it’s in particularly stark relief here.

O Shouji contends that the crowd is letting their pain be exploited, which is a fair cop, but will become difficult to square with his praise of them next chapter.

O He says that these peoples’ children might be the next targets, presumably because of their actions here today. This is particularly maddening because it’s coming from someone who was, himself, already targeted as a child! Not because of anything his parents did, and certainly not because of anything bad he did, but simply because of the bigoted, backwards views of his town. Children already and still are being targeted! Shouji’s backstory is all wrong for this stand, and there’ll be another angle on that next chapter as well.

O Here we finally fulfill the promise of Shouji’s databook entry and see the Little Girl Crying Because His Face Was Scary. She wasn’t crying because she was just scared of his face in isolation, but rather because she sees his face being scary as her fault, directly correlating his wounds to her rescue.[27] Those wounds stand in marked contrast to what happens when other people save small helpless children from danger, and underlines the biggest problem with this whole resolution: the idea that simply Being An Hero will create change.

27: My big question is, “Given that him being in contact with her was so bad it got him scarred for life, how did she even sneak out to see him again to give him this tearful apology? Did young Shouji even want this apology, or would he have preferred she not risk the two of them being seen together again for both their sakes?

Now, it’s certainly likely in Horikoshi’s world that this little girl will, herself, grow up to be different from the people around her, that she won’t think heteromorphs are tainted. And like, that’s at least one less person being awful, right? And doesn’t every one count?

Sure, of course—but what happens when she runs up against that prejudice herself? Will she try to intervene the next time she sees a blood cleansing? Will she simply abstain from such action and teach equality in her own household without trying to change the village around her? Will she simply move away and leave her hometown worse for her absence? If she does stay in that town, will she herself become an outcast for her views—a form of silent, passive harassment that can be absolutely life-wrecking in those small Japanese villages? If she gets married and has children, will her husband have her back in trying to raise those kids free of hatred?

For that matter, isn’t there a chance that, being surrounded in people who think heteromorphs are tainted, that she’ll just internalize something like, “It was my carelessness that got that poor heteromorph boy beaten so badly. He was trying to help, and it only got us both hurt—him for the beatings, me for being in contact with his filth.” Like, she’s so young in that scene; she’s got a whole lotta years of having the anti-heteromorph narrative reaffirmed at her before she’s old enough to do anything different herself. It feels to me like the kind of thing that she could easily fall back into as she grows up, only to have a huge spiritual crisis about it once she hits her late teens to early twenties.

In any case, it's just a lot to put on a single child—on her and Shouji both!

O Spinner rallies enough to yell out a message of his own, but it’s just a quote of what he told his followers when he first sent out the call, not anything new to rally them, nor tailored to respond to what Shouji’s saying. This has been the danger of the plotline all along, and here it comes to fruition: in putting bad faith villains with ulterior motives[28] up against an underdeveloped character who’s hidden the evidence of his mistreatment from Day 1, someone with no apparent intention to ever speak up for others like himself, no one comes out looking good. Truly, heteromorphs deserve better rep.

28: #2 is the obvious one, but Spinner’s here in bad faith, too. While I’m sure he’s not totally indifferent to the matter of heteromorph rights, it’s self-admittedly not his current priority.

O That said, if what Spinner says is old hat to the crowd, it is new to the audience, and it serves to sharply up the ante on from what we knew previously about the persecution he faced in his hometown!

But it would have gotten better if he’d just put on a mask and dealt with it, amirite?

Recall that Spinner has previously only said that people in his town called him names—this is self-evidently many steps worse. Note, though, that it’s another example of the violence heteromorphs face not involving anyone using quirks—that is to say, nothing that’s a hero’s jurisdiction to deal with. That being the case, how much could Spinner get away with fighting back or running before the “it’s okay to use quirks in self-defense” stops holding? After all, is it still self-defense if biased cops[29] can accuse him of “escalating” the conflict? How far away can he get by climbing on walls before it becomes, to some small-town local Hero, unlicensed public quirk use?

29: If policing in HeroAca Japan still works basically the same as it does in IRL Japan, then in truly backwater areas, ones too small to afford the upkeep of a police department, an officer would be sent in from another area to live in a home attached to the police box. That being the case, it’s not a given that the officer would share the locals’ bigotry. That’s where we come back to the whole “what percentage of Villain-designated criminals are heteromorphs” statement and what it implies about bias in the law enforcement system. Also too, building a strong relationship with the community is absolutely essential to rural policing, and there are, oh, so many stories about what happens when someone new in a small Japanese town gets between the inhabitants and their “traditional spiritual practices.”

O Pig Nose Guy starts making an impression by noticing the doctors—most prominently Dr. Yoshi, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with a baseline nurse—forming a human chain in front of the hallway leading to the Inpatient Ward. This drama is undercut on both fronts by the fact that Spinner is not looking for the Inpatient Ward, and in fact barrels right on past that hallway without even glancing in its direction. So, the mob stops because they’re struck to hesitation by a group of people protecting a part of the hospital that the mob was not even intending to assault in the first place.

O As part of stopping, Pig Nose Guy seems to have some sort of flashback to a time he saw Dr. Toad caring for an elderly baseline man. This raises a lot of questions to my by-this-time hyper-critical eyes.

What past circumstance brought Pig Nose Guy—presumably fairly rural, as most of this crowd is implied to be—to Central Hospital, the most technologically advanced hospital in the entire country? • If Pig Nose Guy is not rural, but was still so fired up about heteromorphobia that he joined a terrorist-led mob to attack a hospital, wouldn’t that suggest that a lot of people in the story have been misleading us about the extent of anti-heteromorph sentiment in cities?

If the person in the bed is someone related to Pig Nose Guy—perhaps someone with a rare illness that requires specialized treatment?—why is the guy entirely baseline? If it’s just a friend, then they must be very close, given that PNG was willing to take a trip to the Tokyo metropolitan area to visit him. But if PNG is that close to a baseline guy, why did he ever believe that baseline folks are such a lost cause that he, again, joined a terrorist-led mob to attack a hospital?

Why is this important, impactful memory one of a heteromorph in a caretaker role instead of being taken care of? To elaborate on why that question matters, a common issue you’ll see minority groups raise when talking about representation in media is the role any given minority character performs in their narrative—the gay best friend there to give the straight female lead advice, the Black person there to help a white person self-actualize, that sort of thing.�� This is not so much a critique of any given, specific character as it is criticizing the restrictions on of what demographics are allowed to be portrayed as full, rounded individuals in popular media versus which are relegated to stock stereotypes or supporting cast. This isn’t something BNHA addresses explicitly, but I do think we have some precedent for suspecting heteromorphs in this world have similar problems—think of the image for Class B’s play in Chapter 173, Gang Orca playing the Villain at the license exam, and, most egregiously, the Hug Me Corporation and its all-baseline-all-the-time image of bystanders and victims. That being the case, it really gets to me that Pig Nose Guy’s memory here has the man in the hospital bed being baseline while it’s the doctor who’s the heteromorph. Like, what does that communicate about his mindset, exactly? “Oh, I remember this time I saw a heteromorph who’d managed to actually kind of Make It in society and he was nice to the baseline guy in his care. But the spider guy leading us, he didn’t sound like he wanted us to be very nice at all. Is that what I am? Not nice?” On the other hand, if the whole point of this memory is to remind PNG that there can be peace and support between heteromorphs and “people with human faces,” why in heaven’s name isn’t this a memory of a heteromorph being cared for and supported by a baseline person? Why does the person doing the labor in this picture have to be of the oppressed class?

I hate this panel so much.

Chapter 373:

O The last conversation plays out between Pig Nose Guy, #2, and Shouji, revealing #2 to be a bad faith idealogue who thinks of Shouji with microaggressions and his followers as meatshield patsies. It’s real bad.

O Shouji says that the feelings that led the mob to come today are neither useless nor wrong, and that their willingness to keep thinking about everything makes them look like a bright and shining light to his eyes. However, he carefully does not engage with the fact that those feelings, which were previously aimless and directionless, were only stirred up and stoked to the point of “coming today” by the villains. It’s the same sort of thing the villains always get told, really—you may have a point, you have suffered, but when you act on that point, that suffering, then you’ve gone too far. All you’re really supposed to do with that pain is—what, exactly? Thinka bout it and choose to Nobly Endure?

O The last little bit of insult to this chapter, to my eye, is #2 getting an apology from some anonymous hero we’ve never seen in our lives, who says, “We’ve heard your voices loud and clear today. Sorry for not realizing sooner.”

Remember the bit where the person who apologizes to Shouji for the octopus comment is Mineta, the gag character, instead of Sero, the serious character who brought it up in the first place? Remember the conspicuous absence of Bakugou and Todoroki, who have actually used that language with conscious demeaning intent? This apology is the systemic version of that absolute unwillingness on Horikoshi’s part to let his sympathetic/popular/important characters look bad. It’s the same thing that led to none of the heroes who retired after the war being heroes the readers know and care about, the same thing behind the total collapse of the series’ critique of All Might. Heroes are allowed to be ignorant, but they are not allowed to be complicit.

Notice, too, what this random hero does not say, what Shouji does not offer, the absence that damns this resolution: any promises of concrete change. We’ve finally gotten to the crux of Horikoshi’s point, as delivered by Shouji, and it really does all boil down to this:

And I can’t overstate enough what a terrible resolution this is, especially given how Shouji’s own experience puts the lie to it. Remember, Shouji saved a child from drowning, one of the absolute most prototypical actions someone can do and get called a Hero by the bystanders/victims/evening news. The only thing he could have done that would have been more stereotyped would have been saving her from a burning building! He saved that little girl from drowning and the townsfolk attacked him with farming tools for it.

How much more heroic would he have needed to be? How much more of a shining light could he possibly have been? In what universe could someone with that backstory possibly think that the answer to systemic bigotry—violence that goes wholly accepted by the community and wholly unpunished by the broader society—could be this Model Minority bullshit?

Ultimately, for Shouji’s backstory to realistically have given him the motivation he professes, his actions needed to have changed the people in his village for the better. If the reader is meant to believe that Shouji’s “answer”—the premise that selfless heroism can change the hearts of bigots—then we have to see it. And, you know, even if that had been what we got, there would still be grounds to criticize it! It would still be a perhaps-too-idealistic depiction of fighting oppression; it would still put too much responsibility on the victims! But at least it would justify Shouji’s own stance.

As it is, we have Shouji choosing to believe in the changeability of people who specifically shouted while throwing rocks at him that, no matter how much the times advanced, they would never accept him. His answer does not entail a single non-heteromorph working to bring heteromorphs living in the darkness a light; it entails them kindling their own. As with Pig Nose Guy shutting down in the face of a memory of a heteromorph doctor, this resolution asserts the life-changing power of…being told that heteromorphs have to do all the work to make baseline people feel better.

Conclusion

Do I think that this terrible resolution means heteromorphobia was poorly set up or retconned? No, I don’t. I just think it means that Horikoshi is a Japanese man writing a Japanese story from a position of demographic privilege in Japanese society. I think he’s fully capable of setting up a detailed, intelligent, thoughtful discrimination allegory, a logical, internally consistent extension of the discrimination in the world around him to the alternate future he’s created—and then coming to a completely different resolution than I would because his context led him to different answers than I wanted or found acceptable. Compared to the U.S., Japan as a culture is more communal, more collectivist; they have less history with successful protest movements, more history with protest movements turning violently extremist or just being ignored by those in power. The idea of “not making trouble for others” is an incredibly deeply engrained value.

I have a decent idea why this resolution is what it is. I can try to make myself view it through the more generous, forgiving lens of Cultural Differences; I can fail to do so and instead conclude that this is portrayal is much less about Cultural Differences than it is yet another in a long chain of Well-Meaning Majority-Culture Author Writes Discrimination Allegory, Fucks It All Up Because of His Well-Meaning Majority-Culture Centrism. That doesn’t mean I believe heteromorphobia came out of nowhere, and I hope this essay has at least demonstrated that much, whatever you might think of its resolution.

——————————

Thank you so much for taking this journey with me, all! At 42,000 words and 93 pages in Word, there's definitely more I'd like to do with this, chiefly taking a spin through the Vigilantes spinoff, which I've always found to be very good at grappling with practical questions and concerns BNHA Core largely ignores. The character of Kamayan is particularly relevant to this topic.

However, for now, I'm going to take a break on this subject and turn my attention to something else. I'm not sure what it'll be quite yet, but meta projects that have moved towards the top of my list concern the ridiculous series of nerfs Toga has been subjected to in this endgame, arc thoughts on everything I hate about the stupid, stupid All Mech fight, and an organized argument for the endgame being chock-full of retcons that are obvious if you look at them for more than the five minutes it takes to read a chapter each week.

You may notice that all of those are pretty negative-sounding, and you would be right. Given that the whole reason I stopped doing my chapter posts is that I was weary of the constant negativity, the actual next thing I do will probably be to get back to one of my neglected MLA fanfic projects.

'Til next time, all!

#bnha #bnha meta #bnha worldbuilding #heteromorph discrimination plot #octolad #plf advisors #my writing #preview for Vigilantes:#Kamayan is a crank and that distracts everyone #from realizing that Kamayan is also right

46 notes · View notes

mevangelinem · 9 months

Text

What is the significance of Jesus washing the disciples' feet? (Featuring a beautiful Maundy Thursday artwork found online – @artoheln on Instagram)

Jesus washing the feet of the disciples (John 13:1–17) occurred in the upper room during the Last Supper and has significance in three ways. For Jesus, it was the display of His humility and servanthood in forgiving sinners. For the disciples, the washing of their feet displayed a mindset in direct contrast to their heart attitude at that time. For us, washing feet is symbolic of our role in the body of Christ.

Walking in sandals on the roads of Palestine in the first century made it imperative that feet be washed before a communal meal. People ate reclining at low tables, and feet were very much in evidence. When Jesus rose from the Last Supper and began to wash the feet of the disciples (John 13:4), He was doing the work of the lowliest of servants. The disciples must have been stunned at this act of humility and condescension—that Jesus, their Lord and Master, should wash the feet of His disciples. Washing feet was more properly their work, but no one had volunteered for the job. Jesus came to earth not as King and Conqueror but as the suffering Servant of Isaiah 53. As He revealed in Matthew 20:28, He came “not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” The humility expressed by Jesus’ act with towel and basin foreshadowed His ultimate act of humility and love on the cross.

Jesus’ attitude was in direct contrast to that of the disciples, who had recently been arguing among themselves as to which of them was the greatest (Luke 22:24). There was no servant present in the upper room to wash their feet, and it never occurred to them to wash one another’s feet. When the Lord Himself stooped to this lowly task, they were stunned into silence. Peter was profoundly uncomfortable with the Lord washing his feet, and he protested: “You shall never wash my feet” (John 13:8a).

Then Jesus said something that must have further shocked Peter: “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me” (John 13:8b), prompting Peter, whose love for the Savior was genuine, to request a complete washing (verse 9). Then Jesus explained, “Those who have had a bath need only to wash their feet; their whole body is clean. And you are clean, though not every one of you” (verse 10). The disciples had “bathed,” and they were all “clean” but one—Judas, who would betray Him (verse 11).

So, Jesus’ act of washing the disciples’ feet illustrated their spiritual cleansing. Jesus is the One who forgives. Peter and the rest had experienced the full cleansing of salvation and did not need to be bathed again in the spiritual sense. Salvation is a one-time act of justification by faith. What follows is the lifelong process of sanctification: a daily washing away of the stain of sin. As we walk through the world, some of the world’s spiritual filth will cling to us, and that needs to be washed away—forgiven by Christ (see 1 John 1:9). Peter and the other disciples—all except Judas, who never belonged to Christ—needed only this minor cleansing.

When we come to Christ for salvation, He condescends to wash our sins away, and we can be sure that His forgiveness is permanent and complete (2 Corinthians 5:21). But, just as a bathed person needed to wash his feet periodically, we need periodic cleansing from the effects of living in the flesh in a sin-cursed world. This is sanctification, done by the power of the Holy Spirit who lives within us, through the “washing of water by the Word” (Ephesians 5:26), given to equip us for every good work (2 Timothy 3:16–17).

Further, when Jesus washed the disciples’ feet, He told them (and us), “I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you” (John 13:15). As His followers, we are to emulate Him, serving one another in lowliness of heart and mind, seeking to build one another up in humility and love. Part of that humble service is to forgive one another (Colossians 3:13). When we seek the preeminence, neglect to serve others, or refuse to forgive, we displease the Lord. True greatness in His kingdom is attained by those with a servant’s heart (Mark 9:35; 10:44), and they will be greatly blessed (John 13:17).

48 notes · View notes

writers-ex · 1 year

Note

Fem!reader finding out yeji dates her as a bet between her and her friends please? Maybe a fluff ending? :D

warnings: super smol angst, mentions of alcohol, some secrets, drunk!yeji is a truthful yeji, happy ending and coming clean about a dare

is this ok anon? ^-^)?

"i have a confession to make!" yeji blurts out as you take a seat next to her having just finished washing the dishes.

"well that was random but go ahead love." playing with her fingers yeji takes a deep breath and looks into your eyes, scared and nervous she opens her mouth and starts rambling.

"i love you but you need to know that the whole reason we're dating is that i was dared to!!" opening your mouth to speak she holds a hand up indicating for you to let her continue.

"you know that day in the cafe when i first walked up to you and paid for your drink? the girls dared me to ask out the next person that walked in out on a date and if they said yes they would do my assignments for a whole week and then...well you walked in and three bad pickup lines later we were meeting at the park to go on a picnic." you chuckle at the memory of yeji's adorable attempts, now feeling guilty she places her hands on her knee.

"it started off as whatever but after getting to know you slowly...i fell hard. once we got more serious i had no idea how to tell you it wasn't love at first sight but rather a bet to get my homework done that eventually turned into the best decision i ever made. if it makes you feel any better i felt guilty that time and when they gave me my finished assignments i took the f for the whole week and ended up failing the course. i have to retake it this year with freshmen." finishing her ramble she closes her eyes too scared to see your reaction, feeling something warm on her hand she lets out a confused grumble and opens to see you still smiling.

"....well if it were me love i still would've taken their work and not failed the class. now who will i be able to sit next to in the lecture hall?" hearing your response yeji tilts her head showing her confusion even more.

"you- you aren't mad???" shaking your head you lean back against the sofa and hold her hand.

"i actually knew about this since that time we all met up last month to get drinks. i was the designated driver, watching everyone drown themselves in booze you each confessed a secret randomly for a game of truth or dare and you really didn't want to call ryujin 'princess jinjin' so that's when you spilled the beans..." groaning yeji buries her face in a nearby pillow

"i'm going on an alcohol cleanse starting tonight!!" laughing softly you watch your embarrassed lover curse herself out before continuing your tale.

"i was hurt at first so i decided to get even and treat you poorly as i took everyone back home to sleep for the night. that's why you ended up getting sick the following day because i didn't cover you with a blanket during that cold front we had. i felt guilty afterward when you showed up to class with a fever patch and tissue box knowing that it was my fault for making you sleep near the opened window." uncovering herself yeji glares at you playfully.

"i always wondered how i got sick that time, i had a scarf on and everything..."

"doubting our relationship i saw how your actions since then proved that you genuinely liked me. the fact that you told me this instead of keeping it a secret also helped calm my heart so i can confidently say that i forgive you yeji." kissing her nose yeji's cheeks redden as she wraps an arm around your waist pulling you into her lap.

"i'll find a way to make it up to you kitten." stroking her hair you nod.

"i know you will~ now let's cuddle for now, please? i'm cold."

102 notes · View notes

brighteststar707 · 1 year

Note

Heya! For the february prompt list, can I request Reluctantly with Saeran (GE)? Thank you 💕💕 and looking forward to all the fics!

Hi! Thank you for the request! I've been thinking about this combination for a while, trying to see how to fit it best. In the end, I decided to set it towards the end of Ray's route, after he wakes up from being cared for by Rika (forgive me if I got the timeline wrong somewhere 😅)

Happy early Valentine's day, and I hope you enjoy <3

Saeran loves reluctantly

One moment he’s unconscious, the next he’s acutely aware of a strange clearness in his head. He usually wakes up from sleeping with his head foggier than before, weighted down by the nightmares that always plague him.

The voices he is used to are silent, which is another tip off that something has changed. He has no memory of what happened before, just a strange feeling as if he should be remembering something.

He knows that he shouldn’t push himself to remember things his brain is trying to protect him from, so instead he tries to work backwards based on his surroundings. Perhaps grounding himself will help the memories come back by themselves.

It’s easier said than done, though. Without the usual fog weighing on his mind, there’s nothing slowing it down. It demands to get to the important things at once.

It's all he can do to force himself to slow down and take it step by step.

He can feel the sheets over his body, so he must be in bed. This in itself is unusual, he usually falls asleep at his desk. He opens his eyes slowly. The whole room is bathed in moonlight. It’s almost beautiful.

Even this revelation sets his mind off running again.

How long has he been out? What has happened to the RFA and all his work? Where are-

That question cuts off before it can finish. He suspects there is something there he shouldn't touch there. Small steps first.

There’s a damp cloth on his forehead. It must have once been cold, but now it’s lukewarm and slightly uncomfortable.

It’s surprising how long it takes for him to notice the weight on his hand and the dip in the bed. Someone is resting their head on the bed, holding his hand. By the sound of their breathing, they’re sleeping.

Very slowly, he turns his head to look at them. He’s not sure who he was expecting, but he’s surprised to find Rika taking care of him how strange, it's her name, not her title that comes to mind first). She doesn’t often spend time with him like this unless he has done something bad. It’s nice to be taken care of.

Or, perhaps, she’s just making sure he doesn’t leave.

The cynicism surprises him. Then again, he can’t figure out who he’s supposed to be right now. He isn’t even sure which name he’d rather be called at the moment.

It doesn’t really matter as long as it’s….

You.

Something cracks and the memories he was avoiding all come back to him at once.

Youyouyou. Where are you? Are you upset with him? Have you eaten yet? How long have you been alone for?

His head starts to pound. No wonder the memory of you was kept away from him for so long.

The voices he was searching for before start talking – both at once – and it’s hard to make sense of what they’re saying at first.

There’s Ray, heartbroken and pleading, full of concern for you. You've been alone, unprotected for who knows how long. What if someone else got to you? What if you have been cleansed?

And then Saeran speaks up, his voice sharp and biting, even against himself. You’re dangerous. Your actions threatened to crush him completely, and he shouldn’t be so weak as to trust Ray.

He feels like the point where the ocean meets a river. Salty and sweet, warm and cold bleeding together in a turbulent rush. He is neither and both all at once.

It's a strange feeling, to be the outside observer to his own memories. It means that even though they’re interrupting each other, he understands what they’re trying to tell him. All of their feelings are his too.

They continue to argue. He can feel Saeran's fear, his anger. If they were smart, he says, they should hope that you've been disposed of.

Ray cries out at that. He reminds them of the warmth you brought, of the smile on your face every time you saw him. How can that be dangerous? All you did was show him kindness.

Back and forth they go, and his head spins. He tries to break it down into more manageable pieces - simple statements. How he feels about you dictates his next moves, and he knows he has to tread carefully.

He misses you.

You're dangerous.

He doesn't want to leave you.

You care for him.

Maybe if there wasn't anyone to hurt him for his weaknesses, he could allow himself to be weak. It's not too bad, if you protect him.

He's scared, but he knows that the truth is right there, the last big secret that was kept in the dark from him.

He loves you, whether he wants to or not.

#emerges from my drafts #tumblr tried to kill it but I brought it back #VD23 #mystic messenger #mystic messenger saeran #mystic messenger saeran choi #mysme GE saeran #mystic messenger GE saeran #my writing

43 notes · View notes

cooki3face · 1 year

Text

3/21/23: moon in Aries love reading ❤️‍🔥

pile one ❤️‍🔥:

There could be something about money or finances that plays a large role in your connection. You could be struggling financially with your partner or some of you are looking for a new home or looking to branch out with your partner and be financially independent or looking to put money into a new home I see. But I’m also getting someone’s partner being far away as well. I keep hearing work-home conflict. Someone and their person could be physically separated by distance by someone working or there’s an aspect here of making money to come home or making money to find their way back home to you pile one.

Someone could be sad that their person is out of their reach right now but I’m seeing this separation as an opportunity to further heal some things or work through some things before they come home or come back. Especially with the idea or concept of moving in together or maybe taking a larger step in the relationship. You could have some negative ideas and thoughts about yourself or bad habits or behaviors you haven’t shaken yet that you’ll will need to shake before they come back to you eventually. I hear releasing pain or forgiveness as well. Some of you could have a trivial past or may be finding themselves randomly being reminded or having random memories or flash backs of past events or different times of their lives. If this is the case, you could be being asked to put a magnifying glass to your past, to your memories, or experiences and commit to a large purging or healing process before you can step into a relationship or if you’re already in a relationship take the next step in one.

I see you being excited in your relationship or excited about the potential of your relationship and where it could take you pile one and you wanna get to the good part or you want your past to disappear or not to have to do any more work before you can finally live in harmony and abundance completely and wholeheartedly within this relationship. I think you know that there’s no short cuts pile one but you wish there were. But if you could skip right to the hood part or wake up one day and all your inner work be done you would like all your experiences and any true and whole process.

⭐️ “que sera, sera” - Doris Day may be significant, or the lyrics may resonate with you heavily pile one.

Spirit is saying that there is imbalances within you at this time and this delay is temporary but it’s necessary. It’s almost as if spirit has their hand in this connection and has placed you in this position on purpose to heal some more. You’re being asked to turn inwards and reflect on yourself and focus. You’re being prepared for a large blessing and the most only high only want for you to be ready when it arrives. It’s on its way to you right now but first you need to cleanse and reestablish and heal some things within yourself first. You could be really busy at the moment as well which is what has been keeping you from sitting with yourself, possibly doing any shadow work or doing any heavy contemplation on you and your experiences. Spirit wants you to know that they understand and the concept of time does not exist to them so they aren’t bothered. I hear “whenever you’re ready.” “Nobody is rushing you.”

It’s time for you to love on yourself a little bit more, show yourself the attention and the validation you deserve and really become balanced and in tune with yourself so that you could have your ten of cups finally pile one. You’re so close but it all depends on if you’re ready to be open and transparent with yourself and dive deeper into your suppressed memories, emotions, and your past so you can finally wipe the slate clean once and for all. I do see all these distractions around you though pile one. It’s time to shift your energy towards yourself and give those things less of your attention so you can concentrate. And I know you know it’s time. You may feel motivated to take a break from social media even or self isolate. Or you may feel even overwhelmed by many things or stressed out at this time and that’s an indicator it’s time to listen to yourself and listen to your mind and body pile one.

It’s time to manifest the new life you want and do the inner work to have it. Some of you could be about ready to go on a spiritual journey or are about to embark on a new level of your spiritual journey as well. You’re on the verge of diving deeper into spirituality with your healing journey leading into this relationship or this new chapter of your life. It’s the perfect time for you to recover from your past, you may have been having dreams or having trouble sleeping lately due to a busy mind as well.

#pick a card #tarot reading

8 notes · View notes

kirozai · 2 years

Note

Idea: What if Celestia betrayed god!reader?

Essentially, there even being Archons is the work of Celestia. They uprooted the natural order of Teyvat for their own purposes. But since nature usually finds ways to cleanse itself, there's been an influx of the abyss activities to even things out (Hence why Celestia's tilted). So when Reader reawakens, they are met with an unrecognizable world and their memories wiped, so Celestia can remain in control. Perhaps god!reader was even sent away to our world, so they couldn't right things? They've outgrown their need for a creator.

This is also one of the many reasons Khaenri'ah was wiped out. Through whatever means, they discovered the truth of that world, and demanded answers. They knew Celestia was NOT the creator and paid for it.

Anyway, just a brain rot!

honestly, celestia as a whole to me is such an interesting concept. it would make sense too, i know i said somewhere i wouldnt write anything about celestia because of the lack of info but hey why not??

spoilers…

with god!reader forgetting everything i imagine the archons on characters from the abyss would kinda hint things, when reader is just like “what”

of course the archons MUST have known and i believe that maybe, maybe the love for their creator would overcome the love of their own nations, or themselves, so this leaves them with quite a difficult choice. they could continue to pretend like nothing is wrong OR say something and risk falling like the rest.

of course celestia can only do so much so this could be a really god good angst prompt, maybe with the main part being the choices the archons have to make, and in the end will reader forgive our archons for “lying”?

anyways if anyone wants me to make something like this pop in! :)

#genshin impact #kirozai.asks #genshin x reader #genshin self aware #genshin impact x reader #yandere genshin impact x reader #self aware #zhongli #venti #sagau #archons #baal #i have ascended to celestia #genshin imapct #venti genshin impact #bennett genshin impact #genshin impact xiao

241 notes · View notes

wannabe-fic-writer · 3 years

Text

All Over Again - Chapter 5

Summary: What was lost can be found.

Warning: 18+ Smut, Language, Violence.

Ch. 4

* * * * * *

Your foot taps repeatedly on the linoleum. Eyes surveying the crowd of people moving through the airport.

That is until you hear your name. Pushing yourself up, you look towards the gate, an instant smile on your face at the young woman running towards you.

“Y/N!” Wanda flings herself into your arms and you catch her, the force causing you to turn a little.“ I missed you.” Her breath fans your neck.

“I missed you too Wan.”

Being in NC for a month has been amazing but your time without Wanda sucked.

So the second her mission schedule cleared she flew out here to you.

“I don’t know about much around here but there are some awesome places I want to show you and incredible people to introduce you to.” You tell her, arm around her shoulders.

As you two make your way out of NC Airport you’re constantly dodging people. With it being December there’s an even larger crowd of people about, most of them pouring from the airport.

“The city is a lot like New York but you’ll find a few things that are different.” You tell her, sliding into the driver’s seat of the car.

When you told Lena that Wanda was coming in, the woman insisted you use her car to go pick your best friend up, and it didn’t take much persuasion for you to agree to it.

Just like you had, Wanda admires the interior, while replying to your words,“ I can tell.”

It’s incredible how just being in her presence makes you feel better. While you’ve just been feeling awesome in general(it’s because of Lena) nothing really compares to having your best friend around.

Said younger woman glancing over at you as you pull up to Luthor Corp,“ awe, introducing me to your girlfriend.”

Que instant blush. You don’t reply until you’re opening the door for her,“ she isn’t my girlfriend.”

“Cause you haven’t told her how you feel.”

“I-” you stop to receive a guest pass from the receptionist, Wanda sticking it to her shirt, and continue to the elevators,“ I told you that I’m not in the place to be with someone.”

She sighs,“ you’re stopping your own happiness. I know that you and Natasha talked, she told me. There’s nothing holding you back from exploring things with Lena.” The doors slide open and she steps out,“ except you of course.”

You could totally blame this on her powers. But once again, it’s just Wanda knowing you.

Internally, you could admit that you’re scared. Scared to be hurt again. Scared of being happy and having something step on that.

Knocking on the CEO’s door, you wait for the all clear before stepping inside.

Lena’s face lights up with a smile and your heart flutters.

She stands at the sight of the young woman behind you and rounds the desk to you.

“Lena this is Wanda. Wanda this is Lena.”

They both smile at each other and shake hands.

Wanda tells her,“ Y/n has told me so much about you.”

“All good things I hope.” Lena sends a look to you and you smile brightly, the CEO blushing off that alone.

Your best friend nods,“ good is an understatement. Y/n’s practically in-”

Hand quickly covering Wanda’s mouth, your smile turns nervous,“ it’s lunch time. You two hang out/work and get to know each other, without embarrassing me,” you poke Wanda’s side and she giggles,“ while I go grab some burgers and shakes from Noonan’s.”

With a glance at each other, they both smile and nod.

As you leave out Wanda watches the way Lena watches you and the younger woman can’t help but chuckle. There you are convinced you and Lena are just friends when the CEO is very clearly smitten.

“So, you like Y/n.”

“Wh-” Lena stops, jaw slack and eyes wide.“ How did you know?”

A squeal leaves Wanda’s lips and Lena’s eyes widen,“ you looked at her like she held your whole world and I bet it’s not the first time.”

Obviously the CEO needs to start controlling her expressions better. If Kara and your best friend can tell she likes you off one single look you had to know already right? Right?

“Don’t worry, Y/n’s oblivious.” Wanda gives Lena a gentle smile at the woman’s clear panic, then moving to sit on the couch.“ which is why you should tell her. She’ll never figure it out on her own and I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t want to be with the person they like.”

Lena sighs and sits next to Wanda.“ But if she doesn’t like me then I’ll just end up hurt and I can’t handle that again.”

“You’re more alike than I could’ve imagined.” Wanda murmurs, Lena missing bits of it. Speaking louder she says,“ you won’t know unless you try. Fear can be a protection but also a hindrance.”

A chuckle falls from Lena’s lips,“ are the wise comments an Avengers thing?”

“Nope, it’s a Y/n thing. Hang around long enough you’ll pick up on it too.”

Lena’s fingers wring together,“ if she’ll let me.”

Wanda can’t help but sigh at it. Part of her is happy to be a third party to this budding romance as she is privy to how you both feel. However another part of her just wishes it was you hearing this.

She can’t think of anyone who deserves happiness more than you. Not just after what happened with Natasha but in general, you’ve saved so many people, done so many good things, for her and others. You’ve been giving more than you’ve received for a long time and Wanda can’t help but want better for you.

It’s been a mere number of minutes with Lena but something tells her the CEO could very well be the one to finally give you everything you deserve.

Reaching over, Wanda’s soft hand rests over Lena’s, and green meets green,“ I- just promise me that whatever happens, friends or more, you won’t hurt her.”

Suddenly Lena is incredibly curious. Who had hurt you before? To the point where your best friend holds such intensity over it.

“Well I can't promise it won’t ever happen, but I promise I won’t intentionally hurt her.” And Wanda supposes that’s the best she can get, though she’ll be sure to keep her eyes open.

Suddenly you're sliding into the office, carryout bags in one hand and drink carrier in the other.“ I got one flavor of each and I call dibs on strawberry so, fight to the deaths for the other two.” Both women look at you with amused smiles and you chuckle and shrug,“ fine fine, not fighting I got it.”

They laugh as you hand out a meal and shake to them, you then sitting in the spot they make between themselves.

As you eat you talk, Lena getting to know more about your best friend and the both of you telling Wanda about the core, that you eventually take her to.

Her eyes roam around the alien tech and she raises an eyebrow at you,“ this isn’t another Ultron situation is it?”

Before you can answer, Lena asks,“ Ultron? What’s an Ultron?”

“It- he?” You shake your head,“ Ultron was an AI in a robot body that wanted to cleanse earth of its impurities i.e. the Avengers. It ended alright but was definitely a horrible situation. That will not happen again by the way.” You look pointedly at Wanda.

She shrugs in an ‘I’m just saying’ kind of way, before continuing to look at the core.

Even though you explain the core to Wanda, she doesn’t really understand it. She does get that you plan to use it as a clean and limitless power source.

“Wan, the tests we’ve run have been incredible. So far we know that this could power a small village, maybe some place even bigger. Obviously we’d have to find-”

As you ramble, both Lena and Wanda look on. They can’t get over the happiness in your eyes as you speak, Wanda noting that this particular spark seems different to the one you get as Artemis.

It takes a few explanations before Wanda truly gets it. Which seems to make her interest in it go up. The woman asks you hundreds of questions about it and you answer with excitement.

“Uh, Y/n,” Lena grabs your attention with a gentle hand on your arm,“ I have a meeting I have to get to and I’m not sure how long it’ll take.”

You nod,“ yeah okay. We’ll leave out with you, I have a couple things I want to do with Wan, just um, let me know when everyone is meeting up tonight kay?”

Green eyes crinkle in the corners as she smiles and nods,“ I’ll call you.”

With a smile of your own, she squeezes your arm, and all of you leave out. Lena gives you a soft ‘see you later’ and watches after you as you leave with Wanda.

Outside Wanda playfully nudges your arm with hers. Which makes you look at her with raised eyebrows,“ what?”

“Nothing. Just, you and Lena are super cute.” You groan and roll your eyes but she continues.“ Finishing each other's sentences and nerding out together. I’ve seen you and Tony make suits together and you weren’t half as happy. Further confirming my ‘you like her’ theory.”

You choose not to reply. Instead shoving your hands in your pockets and focusing on the sidewalk ahead of you.

Denying it has no point because it’s true. You like Lena. There’s no reason not to, the woman is truly incredible.

Wanda hooks her arm through yours,“ are you going to do anything about it?”

“I don’t know. You know-”

“There’s a lot going on, you told me. But,” Wanda moves to stand in front of you, her hands now on your shoulders,“ it’s time you let your hurt go. I’m not saying to forget what happened with Natasha because it’s never that easy. You just have to forgive her and move past it. Happiness, true real happiness, could be right there in that building and you’d miss out on it.”

E/c eyes narrow at Wanda. When had she gotten so wise.

As if having just read your thoughts, she resumes her spot at your side,“ you’ve always told me not to hold myself back from happiness, I’m just recycling advice here.”

While showing Wanda around, you can’t help but think about her words.

She has just about every point there is to have. You are holding yourself back. There isn't any reason for you to not pursue Lena. The worst that happens is rejection, though it seems as if Lena likes you, how you aren’t sure but it could be romantic.

Wanda can tell her words are sitting with you and she’s hoping you listen. She can’t even begin to count the number of times your words had saved her, made her feel better, or encouraged her to want better for herself. This, hopefully, is her one chance to repay you for that.

The ringing of your phone sounds and you smile softly at Wanda before answering. She knows it’s Lena from the smile on your lips. It’s small but it reaches your eyes in a way she hadn’t seen in years. With a quick, ‘see you soon’, you hang up and stand.

“Ready to meet some of the most amazing people ever.”

Wanda nods, standing after you and snatching up another nacho before following.

It doesn’t take long to get a car and head to Al’s. Your best friend eyes the bar in the same way you had your first time here.

“Best drinks ever, though some are incredibly strong, and,” you stop at the usual table,“ the best people in town.” Your eyes circle the table, landing on green.

“Aww Y/n.” Kara smiles and hugs you quickly.

You return it before wrapping your arm around Wanda and bringing her closer,“ I want to introduce you guys to Wanda, my best friend and teammate.”

As expected, Winn recognizes her. Had you not spent so much time with him over the last month or so you’d wonder why he follows the Avengers so closely but he’d told you how awesome he thinks your team is and that it’s just interesting.

Subconsciously, you find a spot beside Lena. Your sides bumping with the proximity. With her sitting, you have to glance down at her. The way she looks up at you through long black lashes makes little goosebumps rise on your arms.“ Hi.” You breathe.

“Hi.” She replies.

It’s the smallest step you could take but you find yourself wanting to, Wanda’s admonition in mind, so you open your arms to her. Sort of surprisingly, she accepts it, leaning into your side and wrapping her arms around your waist while yours circle her shoulders.

You pray to god she can’t hear your heart pounding but you know she can, her ear is literally pressed to your chest.

When the hug breaks you catch the faintest of pink dusting Lena’s cheeks and mentally you’re pushed a little closer to believing she likes you.

“So,” your hands smack together quietly,“ first rounds on me, what’re we drinking?”

Everyone gives you their drink orders(you and Mon-El teasing each other about his choice of two drinks) and you nod, heading to the bar with a wide smile to order it.

Looking back at the table as you wait, you see Wanda getting along with everyone. Despite her usually reserved attitude, the group seems to be pulling her from her shell at least a little. Every so often she speaks and they all laugh or smile.

A frown replacing the smile when you notice the lack of two people. Eyes scanning the bar until you spot James and Lena. The muscled man placing his hand on Lena’s arm gently, brown eyes softening. You feel your shoulders drop at the interaction.

What’re they talking about?

Is it you?

Is it them?

Is there a them?

Why are you suddenly over thinking this?

With a sigh you rub your eyebrows and turn back to the bar.

Not even a second later a hand is placed on your shoulder and you follow the appendage to find Alex. She raises an eyebrow at you,“ everything alright?”

“Um-” You contemplate whether to ask her or not. She’s given you no reason not to trust her.“ I- is there something going on with them?”

Alex follows your nod to Lena and James.“ Use to be.”

Figures.

It’s like you can feel yourself completely writing away your feelings. Storing them away. And you can’t stop it. Not that you should right? Your s/o being around their ex definitely fucked you over before. If you continue down the path of falling for Lena it’s practically a set up.

Would you really be able to handle another heartbreak like that? No.

Is Lena worth risking it? You aren’t sure.

* * * * * *

Taglist: @username23345 @depressed-bi-bitch @fayhar @trikruismybitch @marvel-wlw @aznblossom @chicken-wang09 @bitchtits15 @coxmicbabygirl @blackluthxr

#lena luthor #lena luthor x reader #natasha romanoff #natasha romanoff x reader #dcu #dcu x reader #mcu #mcu x reader #reader insert #all over again

246 notes · View notes

officialyourdailyinspiration · 3 years

Text

Devotional Hours Within the Bible

by J.R. Miller

Washing the Disciples' Feet (John 13:1-14)

It is supposed that the strife among the disciples as to which was the greatest, led to the incident of the washing of the feet. None of the disciples was willing to perform the lowly duty of washing the feet of others. The service belonged to the youngest, or the one of lowest rank. Then Jesus quietly did it Himself. It was not in a moment of depression that He performed this deed of lowly humility. He was fully conscious of His divine character while He knelt before His disciples washing their feet. It was this consciousness of His glory that made the condescension so stupendous. It would have been no condescension for John or Peter to have washed the feet of the others.

The story of Christ's act of humility is told in very beautiful words. Jesus did not consider His holy hands, too fine for the washing of the feet of the twelve men who sat around the table. Some of us think we are too great or too high in rank among men - to stoop to any lowly service like this. Our thought of our greatness and our dignity prevents us from doing the beautiful things of love. That was the way the disciples thought of themselves. Christ's act of humility is an answer to all such pride and pretension. Never was there any other being of such glorious nobility as Jesus; yet He did not hesitate to perform this lowliest of all service. Some us like to do all our serving by proxy. We will pay a deaconess or a city missionary for relieving the poor or ministering to the sick - but will not do the work with our own hands. We do not know what blessing we miss, in declining to accept such blessed service, nor how much more the service means - when we do it with our own hands. "The gift without the giver - is bare."

Peter shrank from having his Master perform such menial service for him. It was natural for him to feel thus. It was his deep sense of personal unworthiness that led him to exclaim as he saw his master about to perform the lowly service, "Lord, are you going to wash my feet?" The answer Jesus gave bade him submit, though he could not understand what was being done. Someday it would all be clear to him. "You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand." There are many things which Christ does which at the time we cannot understand. They seem mysterious to us. Yet afterwards we shall see the reason for them and find beauty in them. This is true of many of the providences of our lives. At one time Jacob said, "All these things are against me" (Genesis 42:36). But he lived to see that the very things which he thought were against him - were really working for His good. So it always is in the dealings of God with His people. We cannot understand now - but someday we shall know. "The tapestry weavers do their work on the reverse side, looking at the ends and threads, a mystery of tangle and confusion - but not seeing the beautiful picture they are making on the other side. So we are weaving our lives largely on the reverse side." Some day we shall look on the beauty we are unconsciously making in our life today.

There was something generous in Peter's outspoken feeling that he could not allow the holy hands of Christ to wash his feet. It showed his thought of the glory of Christ - and his sense of his own unworthiness. But the answer of Jesus was startling. "Unless I wash you, you have no part with me." It was not merely the washing of the feet to which Jesus referred. Cleanliness is a virtue, no doubt, and a duty as well; but Christian discipleship could not be made to turn on anything so incidental. This word of Christ implies among other things - that no one can be a disciple who insists upon having his own way. Utter self-surrender is the essential condition.

We must put ourselves wholly in Christ's hands, and must do just as He bids us - or we can have no part with Him. It is not ours to reason why, or to make any reply - it is ours only to obey.

Especially must this word of Christ be considered in its reference to spiritual cleansing. Unless Christ washes us - we can have no part with Him. No one can be a disciple, until he has been cleansed, and only Christ can cleanse us. Some people profess to take Christ as a teacher, who yet feel no need of being washed by Him. We must understand that this word is final - that Jesus will receive no disciples who do not submit to Him first to be cleansed by Him. The picture of Jesus with the basin is one of wonderful suggestiveness. He must come to all of us first in this way - that He may wash us.

Peter went then to the other extreme, as his impulsive nature always did. He was wiling to submit not only his feet - but his hands and his head. Then Jesus told him that "A person who has had a bath needs only to wash his feet; his whole body is clean." Bathing is the cleansing of the whole body; and washing is the rinsing off of the dust that gathers on the feet in walking from the bath to the table. There was no necessity for washing Peter's hands and head - he had just come from the bath, and was clean except that his feet had become soiled with the dust as he walked.

But there is a spiritual meaning too. Peter was a justified and regenerated man - he was "clean." All he needed, therefore, now was that the stains of his daily sinning and from his contacts with the world, should be removed. The lesson here is important. Bathing must come before washing. That is, the mere cleansing of daily sins amounts to nothing - unless we have first been received by Christ and justified and saved by Him. The acceptance of Christ as our Savior lifts the guilt from our souls and leaves us free from condemnation. Yet after that, even the holiest need daily forgiveness for daily sins .

Jesus taught the disciples the meaning of what He had done. "Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet - you also should wash one another's feet." We must do all lowly service for each other. We should have in our hearts that love which will lead us into the lowliest service for even the lowliest people.

Then Christ's act was more than one of service - it meant the cleansing of faults, the removing of blemishes of character, the washing of stains gathered in passing through the world. We should seek to rend this service also to each other. We are to help each other to become Christians. We are to seek sanctification, purification, and upbuilding in character of our fellow disciples. Of course, we cannot wash away sins - Christ alone can do that. But we can do something toward making others purer, better and holier. This part of Christian friendship requires great wisdom. It is not easy to reprove the faults of others. We must be careful, first of all, that our own hands are clean - before we attempt to cleanse the stains on the lives of others. We must cast out the beam from our own eye - before we can attempt to remove the mote from our brother's eye.

#J.R. Miller #Devotional Hours Within the Bible #Washing the Disciples' Feet #John 13:1-14 #September 7 #2021

17 notes · View notes

psalmonesermons · 2 years

Text

What lessons can we learn from the Lewis revival 1948-52?

What about the Irish has God forgotten them?

When I make up my jewels Malachi 3:17

Lessons from the Scottish Revival 1948-52

Understanding intercession and revival

He is ready to gather the emeralds for His crown

House of Prayer, Carlow, Ireland- Prophetic Word – 7th June 2000

Two of the greatest revivals in the 20th century were the Welsh and the Lewis revivals, both Celtic peoples.

Has God forgotten the Irish?

God loves the Irish!

Why has Satan laboured so hard to divide and destroy Ireland.

The spirit of Herod is still at work, trying to destroy that which is newly born in the body of Christ.

Will the coming Irish revival touch the whole earth?

Malachi 3

16 Then they that feared the LORD spake often one to another: and the LORD hearkened,

and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the

LORD, and that thought upon his name.

17 And they shall be mine, saith the LORD of hosts, in that day when I make up my

jewels; and I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him.

18 Then shall ye return, and discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him

that serveth God and him that serveth him not.

v17 The Welsh were the rubies, the Scots the sapphires.

God wants to gather his emeralds for his crown.

We must pray that these precious lost jewels will be found.

His jewel box is the Church of Jesus Christ.

God is putting us in remembrance of something about his character tonight and

wants us to remember the Lewis revival.

Sean Mullarkey recently told me of a prophecy he had heard that the Irish would no longer dance with their hands at their sides but would dance like the Scots with their hands in the air.

The Hebridean Revival 1948-52

The revival came back in those days on the Isle of Lewis - one of the islands of the Hebrides, just off the coast of Scotland.

The church elders met in Stornoway to discuss the sad state of the church.

Dead, dry and without much hope, some of the churches were about ready to close their doors. The young people were in the drinking places and the dance halls - they were not at all interested in spiritual things.

Seven men begin to change their world through prayer

As a result of the meeting, seven men and one of the elders decided to pray and seek God for

the Hebrides Isles. They met in an old barn by the side of the road. Three times a week they

met and prayed and sought the face of God. As they knelt in the straw of the old barn God

reminded them of a verse of scripture in

2 Chronicles 7:14 "If my people who are called by My Name will humble themselves, and pray, and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and forgive

their sin and heal their land."

They began to pray according to this verse.

God is the Covenant Keeper

And then the Holy Spirit gave them a revelation - that He was a covenant-keeping God.

They realised that if they kept their end of the covenant i.e. to humble themselves and pray

and seek His face, and turn from their wicked ways" then God was bound by His own

covenant to come and keep His end of the two-way promise - to "Hear from heaven and

forgive their sins and HEAL THEIR LAND."

They continued to pray day after day - keeping their faith strong and reminding God of His

word. They obeyed God and cleansed their hearts - and sought His face - and held on to the

covenant promise. They had no doubt that God would heal their land and visit the people of

the Hebrides.

Two elderly ladies change their world through prayer

At the same time, two elderly ladies, sisters, one of 82 and the other of 84 years, were also

praying continually in their cottage, for God to come in His power and visit their island.

Simultaneous glory

One night after five months, as the men were praying and travailing before God, suddenly the

barn was filled with the glory of God. At the same time, the little cottage where the sisters

were praying, was also filled with the glory of God - they knew that God had heard and that He was about to descend in power among them.

God is coming in two weeks

God instructed the sisters to write to Duncan Campbell, a well-known Keswick speaker- a

godly man of prayer. God revealed to the sisters that he was the man the Lord was calling to

preach during this visitation.

Duncan Campbell received the letter but replied that his itinerary was full, and that they should continue to pray and that he would come the following year. When the sisters heard this, they said, "Well God is coming in two weeks!"

They continued to pray, and Duncan Campbell s itinerary got cancelled - so he decided to go

instead to the Hebrides and be available to preach.

At 3am God swept into the cottage

The first night of the meetings in the church at Barvas, nothing much happened, but one of

the praying deacons said to Duncan Campbell, "Don't be discouraged, it is coming. I already

can hear heaven's chariot wheels. We will have another night of prayer and then we will see

what God is going to do."

About thirty went to a nearby cottage and continued to pray into the night.

At about 3am God swept into the cottage and about a dozen were laid prostrate on

the floor, unable to move. Something had happened! Revival had come!

As they left the cottage, they found the lights burning in every house as men and women were seeking God.

They found three men laying by the roadside under conviction of sin, crying out for God to

have mercy on them.

Converted before arriving at church

The events of the second night will never be forgotten by those were there!

Buses came from the four corners of the island. Seven men were being driven to the meeting in a butcher’s truck, when suddenly the Spirit fell on them in great conviction - they were all

converted before they reached the church.

As the preacher preached tremendous conviction swept down upon the people and tears fell down the faces of those present. So deep was the distress of some that their voices could be heard outside.

Under the burden of Intercession

The meeting finally ended, and people began to move outside. A young man began to pray

under a tremendous burden of intercession, He prayed for three quarters of an hour and as he prayed people gathered outside the church until there were twice as many outside as there had been inside. When he stopped praying, an elder gave out Psalm 132 and as the great congregation began to sing, the people streamed back into the church again and the meeting continued until 4am.

The moment people took their seats the Spirit of God in great conviction began to

sweep through the church and hardened sinners wept and confessed their sins.

At the police station

As the meeting was finally closing, a messenger hurried to the preacher, "Come with me!

There is a crowd of people outside the police station; they are weeping and in awful distress.

We do not know what is wrong with them, but they are calling for someone to come and pray

with them."

Describing the scene outside the police station the minister later declared, "Oh I saw a sight I

never thought possible. Something I shall never forget. Under a starlit sky, men, and women

were kneeling everywhere, by the roadside, outside the cottages, even behind the peat stacks,crying for God to have mercy on them!"

Six hundred people had been making their way to the church, when suddenly the spirit of God had fallen upon them in great conviction, causing them to fall to their knees in repentance.

Crying out against dead religion and standing on the promises of God.

Then the revival began to sweep into Arnol, another district where men had been praying and

crying out to God because of the deadness of religion. In desperation a little band of men

made their way to a farmhouse to plead the promises of God.

Just after midnight a young man rose and prayed a prayer that will never be forgotten by those present:

"Lord, you made a promise, are you going to fulfil it? We believe that you are a

covenant keeping God. Will you be true to your covenant? You have said that you will

pour waters upon him who is thirsty and floods upon the dry ground (Isaiah 44:3).

Lord, I know how these ministers stand in your presence, but if I know my own heart I know

where I stand, and I tell thee now that I am thirsty. Oh, I am thirsty for a manifestation of the

presence and power of God! And Lord, before I sit down, I want to tell you that your honour is

at stake!"

The House Shook!

Then came the answer - While the brother prayed the house shook like a leaf as God turned

loose His mighty power - the dishes rattled on the sideboard. The elder exclaimed, " An earth

tremor!" Then wave after wave of divine power swept throughout the farmhouse. -

Walking the streets under conviction

Simultaneously, the Spirit of God swept through the village. People could no longer sleep.

houses were lit all night; people walked the streets under conviction; people knelt by their

bedsides crying out to God to help them. As the praying men left the prayer meeting, the

preacher walked into a house for a glass of milk. He found the lady of the house, with seven

others down upon their knees crying for pardon.

48 hours to change all the youth and every young man

Within 48 hours the drinking house, usually crowded with the men of the village, was

closed.

Within 48 hours every young person between the ages of 12 and 20 had surrendered to Christ, and every young man between the ages of 18 and 35 could be found in

the prayer meetings.

Message for Ireland and beyond

God is looking for his intercessors for Ireland, and I believe that He has sent me here tonight

to tell you that it is you and to remind you about a covenant engagement; c.f. the Lewis revival.

He has promised to pour out his Spirit on the dry and thirsty ground.

You praying women should put God in remembrance of his covenant, humble yourselves and

repent, confess the sins of the nation, then he will come ...

Amen

Prayer

Further reading on the Lewis Revival:

The Lewis Awakening: The Nature of a God Sent Revival eBook : Campbell, Duncan, Publications, CrossReach: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

For a full printable text with photos please (and many more teachings) click the link below

https://www.psalmonesermons.com/post/when-i-make-up-my-jewels

#psalmonesermons #christianity #bible study #bibletruth #blog post #blessings #faith #prophetic #make up my jewels #Malachi 3:17 #Ireland

4 notes · View notes

ampleappleamble · 3 years

Text

—

Debriefing the Crucible Knights went about how Axa had expected it would. She and her companions had staggered out of Heritage Hill only to be immediately escorted back to Crucible Keep along with the little girl they'd rescued from her family crypt, the poor waif falling asleep on Edér's shoulders as they'd made their way through town. Once inside, they'd had their wounds tended to and their bellies filled as they recounted the events of their harrowing mission, repeating themselves over and over to one bewildered Knight after another. By the end of the evening, rumors, misinterpretations, and half-truths about the "end of the Curse of Heritage Hill" were all anybody in Crucible Keep could talk about– unless one preferred to gossip about the mysterious Watcher of Caed Nua instead.

Restful sleep was coming harder and harder to Axa, and the troubling trend had continued as they'd bedded down in the barracks that night. She'd woken the next morning feeling worse than she had when she'd laid down the night before, and her attitude had very much reflected it. She'd particularly let her ire show when her breakfast had been interrupted by a man who'd introduced himself as Penhelm, a name she recognized as the one belonging to the Knight that Osric had sent her after the day before, hoping she could recover his family's breastplate from the snooty little gossip.

"Is it true that you're not actually a Watcher, but merely a Cipher? Like the... others of your kind down at Hadret House?" Arrogance and curiosity mingled in his insufferable smirk as he spoke, not even having had the decency to wait until she'd finished chewing.

"That depends," she'd replied, her mouth still full of bacon. "Is it true you steal people's family heirlooms after talking shit about them and getting them kicked out of the service?"

Needless to say, she had gotten nowhere trying to convince him to do right by Osric. So on her way out, she'd passed through the scriptorium and, with a careful eye and a whispered word to Aloth, she'd left Crucible Keep that morning with Penhelm's soul lineage affidavit tucked away in her satchel.

She had been on her way to Hadret House to have the affidavit examined for authenticity, hoping to gain a bargaining chip that might pry the heirloom armor from the little bastard's hands, when a messenger had appeared at her shoulder, letting her know that her presence had been requested... at Hadret House. She'd almost laughed at the absurd coincidence– until the messenger told her exactly who had summoned her there, his tone low and reverent.

"Who is Lady Webb," she'd asked, "and what exactly does she want with me?"

The messenger had been young, with a casual, almost flippant air about him, but he had still had the good sense to lean close and keep an eye out for eavesdroppers. "You don't know her, milady? She's the directress of Dunryd Row, Defiance Bay's investigative peacekeeping force. No one's actually met her face to face, in... I don't know, a long time. But they say that despite her advanced age, her mind is a steel trap and her will is an iron fist. She and her Cipher operatives keep the city safe from threats that most kith are never even aware exist..."

Axa had listened, at first. She'd tried to listen. But as he'd spoken, as he'd thrust the wax-sealed summons into her hand, she'd found herself distracted by an all-too-familiar feeling. Something was pulling her toward Hadret House, something that had nothing to do with Dunryd Row or Ciphers or Lady Webb, and she'd turned away from the messenger in the middle of his speech to pursue it, helpless to resist.

He was there. Just outside of Hadret House, on the far side of Brackenbury. He was there, and she approached him–

–she approached him, any confidence she'd had before dissolving now in her sick stomach, trickling down her trembling limbs. She couldn't do this.

She had to do this.

He was already watching her, but the impact of his gaze was no less powerful than if he'd turned dramatically to face her. It was as though he knew what she was going to tell him already.

Of course he does, she thought. He knows all. He knows what I've done. What I–

"You look as though you've seen a ghost, dear."

Lady Webb chuckled in her throat, but her face did not laugh with her. "Although, perhaps you have. After all, you are the Watcher who wrested the ruins of Caed Nua away from poor, mad Maerwald, as well as the Watcher who ended the... 'curse' of Heritage Hill, if my reports are correct." The old, frail woman rose from her desk, crossed the room with a deceptive grace. "And they are."

Axa kept her head low, but lifted her eyes to meet Webb's gaze. "Why have you asked me here–"

"–You know why I have asked you here, child." With anyone else, she would have felt that she was being chastised, but with him, she only felt kind, fatherly concern. "Your fellow missionaries have reported a change in your behavior recently. You neglect your duties, you are quiet and distant. What troubles you so to make you act this way?"

Tears stung her eyes. Her whole body quaked. Her breath caught in her throat. The quivering pit in her stomach broadened and her heart fell into it, and for a second she thought she might actually vomit, but instead it was her confession that flew from her mouth:

"Your Eminence, I... forgive me, but I wish... I wish to leave the order."

He folded his hands, frowning–

"You're not a stupid woman, Axa Mala. You should know why I've asked you here. Defiance Bay's concerns are my concerns, you see, and evidently, they are yours as well. But neither of us is overly fond of beating around the bush, so let's cut straight to it, shall we?" Lady Webb stopped at her bookshelf, turned to face Axa again, her keen eyes piercing the other woman's mind, her soul. "Why do you seek the Leaden Key?"

She had known, somehow, that Webb would ask her that, but it still took her by surprise. Nevertheless, Axa didn't waste time asking how she'd known. "I'm looking for someone. A man I saw in the ruins of Cliant Lîs. He... did something to me. And I need him to undo it."

The wizened old Cipher nodded at her, then, let her eyes slip shut, her face twitching–

–"You have been nothing if not an extraordinary asset to us," he said, slowly pacing as he spoke. "Your conviction in our cause has inspired your contemporaries to greatness, and together with them you have brought the light of redemption to thousands, if not more! What could possibly shake your faith in yourself like this? Your faith in us?"

Somehow, without her realizing, he had ended up crossing the room to stand directly before her. He looked into her eyes, worry and sorrow emanating from him. "What's wrong, Anthea? What happened?"

She squeezed her eyes shut but she still saw him in her mind, still saw the compassion in his eyes that a despicable sinner like her could never deserve–

Lady Webb opened her eyes, gasping softly.

"The gods are cruel," she murmured. "The man you seek is none other than the grandmaster of the Leaden Key himself: Thaos ix Arkannon."

The name echoed in Axa's head, the bearded man's masked face floating before her mind's eye. It felt like she'd always known him, or at least known of him, but only now could she put a name to the face.

"Thaos," she whispered–

"I cannot stay, Your Eminence. I'm... I'm tainted, wicked and weak." Anthea lowered her head, letting her tears fall to the floor. "I've done something terrible, something I can never undo, an unforgivable act of blasphemy. I fear– no, I– I know I am beyond redemption."

She curled in on herself, wracked with sobs, unable to continue. Shame and guilt burned her face, but she knew she deserved to burn for real, to burn forever. But even to cleanse her soul with holy flame would be too kind a mercy for a traitor of her magnitude. How could he, how could the gods ever forgive such a miserable wretch like her?

His hand fell onto her shoulder, steady and strong–

"He is a man unlike any other," Webb explained, her voice quiet and serious as she made her way back to her desk, hands folded behind her back. "The Leaden Key is an organization dedicated to obscuring, muddling, and destroying information, including any evidence pertaining to themselves or their activities. There's no way to be sure, but what little we've found suggests that they have supposedly existed for over two thousand years." She looked pointedly at Axa, one eyebrow cocked. "And it was Thaos who founded them."

"But that's impossible," Aloth blurted. "Even the longest-lived elves haven't even come close to..." He trailed off, twisting his fingers together anxiously, dropping his gaze to the floor.

"You'd think so, wouldn't you?" Webb sighed, one drooping corner of her mouth briefly lifting into a smirk. "But when it comes to the Leaden Key, little is as it seems. If what we've managed to learn about him so far is true– and there's no guarantee that it is, but it's the best explanation we've got– he is one of Woedica's Favored, an agent of the Queen Who Was who has been gifted with the blessing of eternal life. In practice, this means that every time he dies, Thaos' soul is guided by Her hand to be reborn in an almost identical vessel, and once he reaches puberty, he Awakens to all of his past lives at once, in order to continue the work of his Mistress on Eora. So strong is his soul, in fact, that he can supposedly even project it out of himself and into others, crushing the will of lesser souls and usurping their bodies for his and his Queen's own ends." She regarded Axa with pity. "He is almost certainly the most dangerous, elusive, powerful man on the face of the planet. And while I can't deny being grateful for the company, you have my deepest sympathies that your path has also crossed with his."

"Why was he in Teir Nowneth the night the machine was activated in Heritage Hill?" Axa demanded, her head spinning. "What was he doing in Cliant Lîs? How did he Awaken me–"

–"So you have sinned," Thaos proclaimed gravely. "You have erred, stumbled on your path, and now you would cast yourself into the Void. Is that it?"

Anthea wanted to cover her face with her hands, wanted to run, to hide, but she could barely even find it in herself to draw the breath to answer him. "What I've done, no god could forgive me. Now or ever."

He brought his other hand around, then, gripped both of her shoulders firmly. "My child, my dear child, if you truly believe that then I have utterly failed you, as a teacher and as a leader. There is no sin so grevious that it cannot be absolved, no path so dark the gods cannot light the way to salvation! As long as you do not turn your back on Them, They will never turn Their backs on you."

She knew it couldn't be true. It was too good to be true, and nothing in her life had ever been half so good. Not since she was a child. But... would he really lie to her like that? He never had before. At least, she didn't think he had. Anthea slowly lifted her head to look at the man who would save her from herself–

Lady Webb sat back down, letting her chin hover just above her steepled fingers. "That's what I'd like to know. There's quite a lot I'd like to know about Thaos ix Arkannon and the Leaden Key, as I rather imagine you would, too. That's why I summoned you here today– to work with you, pool our resources, compare notes. The Key has been... active as of late, and where they go, you seem to follow, righting their wrongs. As you did in Heritage Hill." She smiled, her thin, red mouth like a slit cut into her face. "I'd like you to continue to do so, and to report your successes back to me. In return, Dunryd Row's resources shall be at your disposal should you need them, and with a bit of luck– well, a lot of luck, in truth– perhaps we two can corner him and get our answers at last."

There was something behind Webb's eyes, something mysterious and passionate and unrelenting that Axa couldn't quite place, but she knew instinctively that it wasn't for her. Whatever it was that drove this woman, whether it was a thirst for vengeance or a desire for the truth or a need for justice, the ferocity behind her eyes was only for Thaos.

She could respect that.

"Very well," Axa replied, "I accept–"

–"I... I want to believe that's so, Your Eminence," she stammered, "but even if it were, I don't deserve Their clemency."

"Some among the gods would see you punished, it's true," he murmured. "But the sting of the lash passes in an instant compared to the eternity afterward in which you shall enjoy the boundless mercy, the cleansing forgiveness, the all-consuming love of the gods. That is what makes one deserving– devotion. As long as you devote yourself to Them, They will return the faith you place in Them a thousand fold."

The tears fell afresh from her eyes, this time from sheer relief. Somewhere deep in her heart, she must have known he could make it all right, could show her the path to absolution. He always did. That was the real reason she had come here, wasn't it? What had she been so afraid of?

Thaos smiled warmly at her, his hands still gently clutching her shoulders. "Stay with us, Anthea. We need you. The gods need you. They have entrusted you with the truth of Their Word– will you return that trust?"

"I will," she whispered–

"Now, before you go– what was that bizarre display you put on just outside our door?" Lady Webb was already looking through another stack of documents, but she spared Axa a bemused glance. "It's not a good look, dear, standing around with your eyes glazed over and your mouth agog. You're liable to catch flies."

"I'm an Awakened Watcher," the orlan retorted curtly. "The memories from my past life tend to be a bit more vivid than the ones other Awakened kith might experience. And I don't exactly control what I see or when I see it."

The old Cipher shrugged. "I meant no offense. Only trying to warn you that you may have unwittingly broadcasted your whereabouts to someone who seems to have a bone to pick with you." She gestured vaguely toward the door to her office, and it swung open, an orlan man stepping in as though he'd been expected.

Webb looked at Axa the way a jaded teacher might at an impudent pupil. "Well? Show him the affidavit."

She blinked, and somewhat reluctantly, she reached into her satchel and produced Penhelm's affidavit, the one Aloth had pilfered for her at Crucible Keep. "Uh... Can you tell me if this is genuine?" she muttered.

The older man took it from her, looked it over briefly, and shook his head, wrinkling his nose in disgust as he handed it back. "Not at all," he pronounced. "Being perfectly honest, it's a rather shabby forgery, too."

Webb sighed, shuffling her papers. "Thank you, Kurren; you may go." The orlan gave her a respectful nod and left to return to his work downstairs as the directress of Dunryd Row grinned wryly at Axa. "Now you have your bargaining chip. Penhelm is waiting for you on the street outside. Do exercise caution, dear, and try to keep the blood off of my siding. We've only just had it repainted last month."

"Actually," the little woman smiled slyly, "I think I've got a better idea."

—

#pillars of eternity #poe anthem infinitum #fic wip #i knew this section was gonna be the real meat of the chapter #i'm doing a Thing with capitalizing the gods' pronouns #one more section and then a new playing and planning phase can begin bghfghbfghfhh!!!!#thanks for reading ♡

6 notes · View notes

pomegranates-and-blood · 3 years

Text

ἀλήθεια (Chapter 5, Vοσταλγία AU)

ἀλήθεια Masterlist

Pairing: Freydis/Reader, Ivar/Reader (past)

Word Count: 2.7k

Warnings: The usual. My endless swooning over Freydis.

A/N: So yeah, I have two chapters of Alatheia done, because this one and Chapter 6 were one and the same until I decided to split them. Should I post the other one tomorrow, or wait a week? Idk, I’ll see lol. Hope you like this!

“Sparta.” You say with a whisper, and Freydis walks forward, standing next to you on the ship, overlooking the same city that rises in the horizon.

“Your father’s homeland, isn’t it?”

“Where my cousin is king,” You confirm, before turning your head to the side, looking back out of the corner of your eye, “Where Galla’s love awaits.”

“Oh, save it.” Galla grumbles from her place a few feet back.

“You did promise him your hand in marriage when the Fates brought you back together.”

“You promised a Viking to love him and yet here we are,” Galla retorts, more bite than Freydis had expected. Your expression tightens, a strange blend between the anger Freydis is familiar with -enthralled with, in awe of-, and the cold cruelty that has made kings falter. Galla doesn’t, instead pressing, more softly, “Women like us don’t keep promises well.”

“I keep my promises.”

And Freydis knows that tone, she knows it well.

Never before had she seen your might directed to her like this, and though she stands tall and strong -not the Gods themselves will make her waver-, Freydis finds something like awe growing inside her at the sight. Your voice is the snarl protecting what is hers as you promise, “You told me the night we met that you’d once escaped death by placing the right words in the right ears. Be careful not to find death by attempting something similar.”

“Just not when it comes to your heart?” Galla tries, baited breath as you consider her, as you debate between stubbornly holding on to anger or accepting the attempt at lightheartedness.

Eventually, your lips curve into a smile. It is dim, Freydis cannot help but notice that.

“Exactly. It seems we are after all very alike, you and I, hm?”

____

Sparta proves to be yet another wonder, of stone buildings and beautiful statues, of lively streets and warm skies. It proves to be familiar too, in the shouts of warriors training on the edges of the city, in the chatter and laughter of a city bustling with life.

After being introduced to Lysander, a tall man of broad shoulders and a grave face that is only accentuated by his missing eye, but of warm smiles and eyes like yours; Freydis allows herself to be lost in this city.

The people may look at her often, may whisper, may linger; but she doesn’t mind any longer. And, in moment of weakness, or maybe of bravery, she approaches some of them, with questions about the food they share with her and the animals they try to sell her.

When she retires for bed that night, the sight of you lingering close by to her door is a surprising one, but not unwelcome.

Her heart does a strange thing in her chest when she meets your gaze, when she takes you in, dressed in a soft green dress so unlike anything she has seen before, the smell of lavender once again sweetening the very air around her.

Freydis says nothing, but invites you in with a gesture of her head. You both sit on the low settee by the hearth, and with your eyes on the flames you take a deep breath that she isn’t sure if it is cleansing or bracing you.

“That night, the...the last night, I…” You stop yourself, lift your gaze to her even if your face is still turned to your hands. Voice low, you instead say, “You never asked me how…how I survived.”

“All that matters is you did,” She tells you without hesitation, but based on the sigh you let out as your head drops, that is exactly what you were expecting. Though she feels slighted at the way you seem to imply wanting to survive above anything else is somehow wrong, she will admit she admires the resilience of still believing the purpose of life is anything other than survival. “It is true.”

Silence reigns between you, and you bite the inside of your cheek as you gaze away into the nothingness. She doesn’t like that gesture, it is too alike you biting your tongue, and she dreads the day you do.

So, Freydis calls your name. Softly, quietly.

You take a moment, gathering your thoughts before you utter them.

“After Narses…after what I did to him, I promised myself that I would never-…” Your words end up choked, and you frown through a deep breath, trying to find your center again, “That I would never lie again, not about something like that; not about love.

Your smile is bitter, and the way your hands threaten to curl into fists tell her what you sacrificed that night, more than words ever could.

More than him, more than the life he gave you, more than the world you had known; you had to give up a part of you, if not the whole of you. Freydis understands that, understands what it is like to shed pieces of you like a snake its skin to try and survive, and she understands what it is like to look at a reflection and see a monster under a pretty face looking back.

“All I have known is to fight against anyone that tries taking something from me. My…my freedom, anything. It feels like I’ve been fighting ever since I first returned to Eleusis from the Silk Roads. Fighting Narses, fighting Stithulf, fighting…fighting Ivar,” You lick your lips, looking at the nothingness ahead when you continue, “That night, I wanted to fight him. I fought him, I yelled and cursed and…and I did it knowing that each word, each…each moment just got me closer to…”

“Death?”

You shrug, “No one survives leaving Ivar the Boneless.”

You haven’t said his name in such a long time. But even now, that isn’t his name you are saying, not really.

“You did.”

“I…I did. Because I thought of you.”

Her heart does a strange thing in her chest, a blend of dread -how could you be so stupid to follow her advice when the only reason Ivar hadn’t killed her was the fear of your wrath- and something else -something that feels like warmth, like pride, like thrill- filling her hollow chest.

“What?”

“That night, I…at the tip of my tongue was the promise that I was leaving him, were the words about how one way or another I wouldn’t be at his side anymore. I can be cruel sometimes, I know. And…I was cruel then, and for all the pain he had caused me I wanted to inflict the same, I wanted…I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to tell him,” You look at her, seeking something that Freydis isn’t sure you can find in her gaze. A breath, and you whisper, “He would have killed me,” You repeat, and though she knows it is true, she has a feeling you are reassuring yourself of it to hold back whatever guilt you carry. “And I remembered what you told me, about h-how surviving is what is most important, about how…whatever men like Ivar the Boneless need you to be, you become.

Your lip trembles, and the look in your eyes tells her that you are somewhere she cannot reach, trapped in a world that you left behind but that has never left you.

You are holding your hands together on your lap, squeezing your own hands so tight she almost expects to hear the bones breaking. Still, you continue. You have to.

“So I t-told him I could forget a-and forgive. It was a lie. I told him I loved him even then. That wasn’t a lie, but…it felt like one. I told him that I didn’t want to…to fight anymore, but I was…uh, s-staying. With him.

Your breath hitches, and your eyes are squeezed shut, as if you can keep memories at bay by refusing to see.

“He fell asleep, but I…I sometimes wonder if he knew I was lying, and just pretended. He had to have known,” Once again it sounds like you are trying to convince yourself, and this time she cannot give any certainty that what you say is true. He might have been, but she doubts he would have let you leave if he had known. Very alike, Ivar and her, and she knows she wouldn’t. You shrug your shoulders, almost defeated, “I suppose it doesn’t matter anymore. While he slept, I fetched one of the thralls. Her name was Thyra, and sh-she looked a lot like me. I killed her with the knife he gifted me, and went to find you and Valdís to say goodbye.

If she is honest, she has tried not thinking about that night much. She has tried to forget the look in your face, the look she dreads ever seen again.

Because that day you were dead, or maybe death. She isn’t sure there is much of a difference, not when it comes to you.

“I lied to him, Freydis,” You confess, a dying breath on your lips. There’s tears shining in your eyes, but stubbornness keeps them at back, and you only raise your chin, gritting your teeth. You take a deep breath, gaze intently focused on the nothingness ahead, and muse aloud, “You know, as time passed I…I started telling myself that I wasn’t that much of a monster for what I did to Narses. I don’t think I can do that anymore.”

The words leave her lips in an instant, “You are not a monster.”

“I have betrayed and lied to everyone that has loved me,” You sentence, a rebuttal even if it sounds like a confession. “Because…I told myself Narses didn’t love me, but he did. He did, and I led him to his death. A-And maybe it was a different kind of love, the wrong kind maybe, but…Ivar loved me. He loved me, and I looked him in the eye and promised to love him too, even when I had already planned to leave him.”

“And you are responsible for what they feel for you?” Freydis pushes, meeting your wide gaze with her determined one. “If they chose to love you, that is their-…”

“Mistake?”

“Responsibility. You didn’t have to love them back, you didn’t have to be anything other than yourself, not because they loved you. That…that is not how it works.”

You search her gaze, so unbearably lost that she cannot help but reach for your hand, if only to keep you tethered, if only to keep you with her, if only to tell the ghosts that if they want you they will have to take her with you.

“How does it work, then?” You ask, a sad, helpless little smile curving your lips.

Freydis offers truth, truth that has been for too long her most precious secret.

“I don’t know.”

“Then how do you know I am not a monster for what I did? To Ivar, to Narses?” You insist, not waiting for an answer as your eyes fall shut, your breath leaving you in a shaky exhale. After a heartbeat, “I loved him,” You tell her, making cold run through her veins. But it isn’t the same kind of coldness that shines in your eyes. Your expression trembles, and Freydis pretends not to see the tears in your eyes, or hear the wobble in your voice, “I loved him, Freydis. And yet I…betrayed him.”

She knows where your thoughts are going. Hers went to the same place, many times before.

“I betrayed you,” She tells you, a confession in itself, even before she finds her resolve and with the same certainty, the same fearlessness, that she looked at death in the eye with; she offers her heart, “I love you, and I betrayed you.”

She has said it many times, but there is something different this time, something to do with comparing her love for you with your love for Ivar, something to do with the way she holds your hand in hers, something to do with the way her eyes search yours.

The smallest of hitches in your breath, but she notices. Of course she does, it seems her very heart stops its beat so she doesn’t miss an instant of your response.

“Freydis…”

“If you are a monster, then so am I.”

It isn’t an argument, it isn’t a whisper that maybe what you did wasn’t cruel, it isn’t a reassurance that you are not monstrous in your own way.

No. It is a promise.

If you are a monster, then she is one as well.

Wherever your Gods or mine take you, I shall be at your side.

But if you listen to her words, you do not give it away, your gaze still wide and lips still parted as you look at her, a blend of awe and something else, something more fragile, something more precious.

“I love you.” You breathe, tremulous smile curving your lips. Three words, and you steal her of breath, you steal her of her heart.

Except you cannot steal what was so freely given. And what a dangerous thing that is, is it not?

But it isn’t fear what courses through her veins, no.

A breath, or two, or a thousand, she has no way of knowing. All she knows is that it feels like she is smiling, like the joy and helpless hope that bubbles inside her chest is curving at her lips, and she knows your eyes -mesmerizing, endless eyes- are trained on the sight, and she knows you lean closer.

And she knows that to kiss you feels like a spring storm.

From the thrill that runs through her like lightning at the barest of touches of your lips on hers, a hesitant brush of your mouth against hers before one of you, she couldn’t for the life of her care who, finds the courage to press closer, more firmly; to the rush of her heart in her ears that reminds her of the unrelenting downpour of a storm, and the delicate touch of your hand on the side of her face that makes her think of witnessing the downpour from the safety of shelter.

As much as you are willing to give you are willing to demand, and Freydis is no different. Your lips part as her mouth moves over yours, open and soft, and there’s a wretched little sound leaving her lips as your tongue slips gently into her own mouth.

In between sharp breaths that still feel like too little, unwilling to part you press a few soft pecks against her smiling lips, before trailing to the corner of her mouth, where the too-many-times unsaid I love you lay waiting for you to claim it.

Brow pressed against hers, noses touching and eyes vibrant as they gaze into hers, Freydis still can only think of the breathtaking feeling of a spring storm to describe what it feels like, this moment.

You bite down on your trembling lip, before a sigh of her name leaves your lips.

She chose it, that name, and every day since she has demanded to be called by that name, too long having been at the mercy of whatever anyone else wanted to call her. It has never sounded so right before.

Still, because she knows you, she knows you like she knows herself, in between broken pieces and contradicting thoughts; Freydis nods her head.

“I know,” She tells you, licking her lip, a remnant of that spring storm still on them. “You also love him.”

“I want my heart to be my own, before I give it away,” You tell her, quiet. Your hand is still at the side of her face, and she soaks up that warmth before it slowly, almost reluctantly, falls down and settles on your own lap. “I love you, Freydis, but I…”

She shakes her head with a smile, though she closes her eyes.

It doesn’t sting of rejection, this isn’t the pain of something lost, but it is still pain, she won’t lie. It is a particular kind of pain, the kind of pain of being on a ship and having it approach a place dearly missed, the kind of pain of knowing on the land the ship so surely approaches there lies everything she ever wanted.

“I am with you,” She interrupts. When she opens her eyes, she finds the vibrant gaze of yours searching her expression, looking for a certainty she hopes you find. “Wherever the Gods take you, remember? I will be here when you have a heart to give, if you choose to give it.”

____ ____ ____

Me writing the Reader with characteristics (story-wise) of a goddess both in Nostalgia and Alatheia is a topic for another time, but as Alatheia comes to an end (and Freydis’ PoVs of Nostalgia are at an end too) I have to rant about this: when the Reader prays to Persephone in Chapter 13, and at the lack of an answer (that she can understand) breaks and prays to Freyja, she begs the goddess not to leave her alone there; and in the next moment Freydis walks up to her, finds her and tells her she is not alone, and then: “Her hand finds yours, and the simple gesture of comfort is enough to make you feel not so unbearably alone. Based on the sad smile she offers you, you think you are not the only one to feel alone in a realm of cold and shadow.” Now, I’m not saying Freydis is Freyja of course, but...maybe I am, and this is just a contrived way of writing the Freyja/Persephone slash no one wanted. Who knows. Point is, I wanted to bring that up. Useless trivia bit over for now.

Thank you for reading! One more part, and then it’s the epilogue!

Taglist: @youbloodymadgenius @heavenly1927 @toe-vind-ek-jou @xbellaxcarolinax @angelofthorr @samsationalwilson @peachyboneless @1950schick @punkrocknpearls @ietss @itsmysticalmystery @revolution-starter @the-a-word-2214 @fae-sedai @crazybunnyladysworld @funmadnessandbadassvikings @stupiddarkkside @aprilivar @msrawog

#freydis vikings #freydis x reader #freydis #ἀλήθεια masterlist

15 notes · View notes

godkilller · 3 years

Note

✵ !!!

send ✵ and my muse will answer the following. ( not accepting )

Their first impression of your muse:

A little girl that didn't belong there, on that dirt road, in those rags, in that exact time and place -- she should have been in a better district, a cleaner and kinder one, one that didn't have men surrounding her like vultures. If he had just seen her a little sooner, if she just hadn't been on that specific part of the road, maybe they wouldn't have gotten to her, maybe he could have fought them off, maybe she would have been okay --

She's meek, at first. Had no sense of time, but Gin reckons she's a little bit older than him. HE CAN'T STOP WONDERING WHERE SHE CAME FROM and if he could have found her sooner before she even collapsed that day. Gin aggressively gives her the majority of his food, the best picks, because he can't stop thinking about the piles of ash and discarded robes he found along the road that day. She was the first body. Food helps people with power, right? They need it. It'll help her not turn to ashes.

He wants to fix her clothes for her, he learned how to sew his yukata up whenever he got a snag on it, and hers are in desperate need of fixing. Gin can't stop thinking about whether or not they were in that bad of a shape before those men got to her, or if it was because of them -- either way, one of the first thing Gin steals that isn't food is a whole bunch of new fabrics. He'll make her a new one from scratch if he has to. They can burn the old outfit for warmth on a cold night.

Current impression:

He loves her. Gin is absolutely smitten. He can't stop thinking about her whenever he's experiencing something without her and he yearns like a puppy at times so potently that it's kind of embarrassing. She's a bright summer day to his cold winter -- and Gin knows he's being a hopeless poetic mess at times like these, but he also knows that it's better than him becoming cynical and not believing in love anymore. If he loses that, loses her, what will stop him from becoming a monster? Maybe he already is one, but she's the tether keeping him from a full loss of self. Maybe he'll still be able to come home to her after all --

Rangiku forgives when she shouldn't. But Gin isn't in any position to tell her she's in the wrong for being compassionate. Her heart's always been too big, it's no wonder she had a piece of god in there -- and oh, Gin's so close to telling her about that, about everything. Rangiku deserves the truth, Rangiku deserves more than what Gin thinks he knows what she deserves. Foolish of him to ever presume, to allow himself to become blindsided by a selfless act turned selfish by therein thinking he knew what she needed to know, and what would hurt her less -- Gin's realizing swiftly, but also slowly at every turn he takes with her, that Rangiku's so much stronger than the frail girl he met on the side of a road. He never once coddled her, but he certainly needs to adjust his perception to accommodate the fact that he's been far more influenced by the childish version of her in his heart than her current form, her beautiful, stunning, warm, compassionate, and womanly form.

He wants to marry her. After everything they've been through, the simple act of her still wanting to be with him is enough to make Gin want to take her hand into his and ask her then and there.

Gin wants to tell her so much. Stupid things, really, thoughts and feelings he swallowed down for years because it was too intertwined with everything else he couldn't find the words to articulate to her. Gin has so much he never told her beyond the obvious, blatant secrets he's ready to cleanse from their laundry, and he can't wait to finally learn how to let go.

Are they attracted to your muse?:

Oh yes. Gin likes to pretend he's not as affected as others, and well, he doesn't get nosebleeds or anything silly like that in reaction... but good fucking god, look at her. Gin oughtta win a fucking award for his ability to not swoon whenever Rangiku turns to look at him. He's smitten and utterly attracted, hearteyes for her, the whole nine yards. Gin can also confidently (but still joking, of course) admit that he's Rangiku-sexual. Someone else could walk on by with an hourglass figure and boobs and an ass to match or even contest hers and Gin wouldn't bat an eye at them, because it ain't boiled down to just those features of hers.

Gin hides how attracted he is to her expertly, though. He's not crazy about drooling or acting ridiculously incapable of handling the sight of her. But he also may or may not pounce if she starts getting particularly frisky with him, wearing certain things... oh, y'know, a man can only not think with their dick for so long.

Something they find frightening about your muse:

The way she's been willing time and time again, including for him, to lay down her life for others. Don't.

Something they find adorable about your muse:

When she gets all pouty and uses that one voice to whine until she gets what she wants.

Would my muse sacrifice themselves for yours?:

In a heartbeat.

Would my muse go on a date with yours? platonic/romantic:

Gin's big on the romantic dates with Rangiku, yes, it's the experiences that he can cherish, the memories -- but that also can include silly dates, more 'platonic' vibes, where he simply accompanies her during an errand or they go out to a bar with a bunch of friends together. Given their relationship, things tend to become inherently romantic when they're with one another.

One word my muse would use to describe yours:

Soulmate.

Would my muse slap yours if they could?:

Never, not even in a kinky way. Rangiku deserves gentleness and love.

Would my muse hug/kiss yours?:

The real question that needs asking is why does Rangiku not only allow, but also go so far as to enjoy receiving hugs and kisses from someone like him?

Gin's signature approach for an ultimate hug/kiss combo is the classic hug-from-behind-and-kiss-at-neck angle. She fits against him so well like that, how could he resist? Plus, the act can be completely innocent like a peck, or utterly not innocent depending on how Gin carries it out. The duality, the range.

#[ headcanon ] fresh snowfall; fading footprints mark his path #[ dynamic: gin and rangiku ] grow from the sorrow in me; the winter in us #ANSWERS THIS A MILLION YEARS LATER.#also this has a lot of #[ verse: redemption ] i am healing by mistake; rome is also built on ruins #vibes in my answers so --

9 notes · View notes

nana101fg · 3 years

Text

[Flowerverse] Dreamtale: Origins ~ Chapter 1

With every outcome, comes solutions of everything and anything.

With the consumption of the fruit came a change that not many foresaw or seen. Changes came everywhere with every second ticking faster and faster.

One such change was the very tale of Dreamtale.

Two beings changed from the Original tale to suit their own needs and desires.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dreamtale.

An AU of Undertale changed to where nobody was sealed Underground yet a tree sprouted instead.

This tree was not normal nor was it pure evil. It grew into a tree that watched over the feelings that lay bare in everyone’s soul. Negative or Positive, it grew apples that either gave you pure positivity or pure negativity. But like every tale, greed grew in the souls as many sought the Tree of Feelings. Thus, the tree was appointed guardians by beings that sought to protect the tree.

But the guardians were killed off. One by one, many have died while taking the trees location to their graves and only one remained. She could only watch on as her fellow guardians were killed for the whereabouts about the tree and she burned every location of the tree off the map herself as she watched over the tree.

Nobody knew her name nor her origins. Everyone knew her as some kind of dryad that never had a real tree to claim as her real body so the tree became her home and body. She took upon the name Nim.

So she watched over the tree while keeping watch over the other kingdoms to make sure none come and steal the apples that bloom from its limbs. She eventually made friends with fellow guardians of different trees that were over the land. Lanny and Quetzalcoatl were Nim’s friends and she adored them. They adored her in turn as the three guardians worked together to protect their trees from everyone with greed in their souls.

Years have passed when she met a skeleton with bones as black as the abyss. Nim was still young by more long lived beings but the skeleton has lived longer than she knew of. Nim was cautious at first as the skeleton was the first living being that wasn’t her friends but the skeleton proved that they didn’t care for the apples. The skeleton ignored the apples with ease while getting to know Nim so easily.

It was where she learned the name and their pronouns. Their name was Error, the God of Destruction for the Balance of this Multiverse. Nim saw the marking on his skull easily along with the flower that glowed with a brilliance of blue mixed with red and yellow dots that to Nim looked like stars.

Nim found herself at ease with the Yang aligned being as he never asked for any info of the apple nor while she was alone with only her tree for company. It’s also where she learned more everything outside her little AU.

Error got rid of corrupted data, virus’s, or even destroyed AU’s if there is too much for the Multiverse at once. He fixed and cleared any data that can bring harm for the whole of the Multiverse. He was also a Keeper of Information as he deals with codes that can change everything if Error does one small step wrong. Error knows many subjects as he has to keep several top secrets safe in his mind.

Of which when he has to destroy an AU he wraps the red soul of DETERMINATION in strings to make sure they don’t reset then he kills everyone else off so they can never fall victim to the Void. He will release the soul when there is enough space for them but they will stay wrapped in his strings so they can’t make the AU come back of which will set off a reaction if there isn’t room.

Nim found this information fascinating as it showed more sides to those considered ‘evil’ or ‘dark’ as from what Error tells her then those forces are just general. They are every day and needed, no matter how everyone tries to stamp them out. Error then showed her the darker side by showing certain AU’s and their natural cycles.

Nim found herself more in awe of the forces that not many would ever think about. Nim knew of her balance between emotions but she never imagined of how beautiful it can truly be. Nim was truly younger than her more mature friends but she was more open than them as they both were set in their ways unlike her. Error showed her how everything had a side along with a story that can be told. Nothing was ever truly white or black like everyone voices but Nim saw the grey that it was truly.

No, everyone was neutral in the beginning until influences gave way the false white and black.

Nim was truly grateful for Error as he showed her so many things. Of which lead to Nim forgiving the humans, slightly. Nim still held some hatred for humans but she now knew that not all of them were greedy in nature. Though Nim would still keep her guard up around humans until the human proves themselves to her.

Of which it didn’t shock her that she gained some feelings for Error. But she knew that Error wasn’t looking for a relationship at the time as she saw how tired he was from his counterpart going over the limit multiple times. So Nim would just put her feelings on the backburner for the time being.

Until she found herself dying.

She was bleeding out from a deep cut on her stomach from a human that found her. She killed him but the human told her why he needed the apple. His wife was dying and he thought by getting a positivity apple he could heal her. Nim didn’t know how to feel as he had cut her deep but she felt pity for the other. Nim told the human that her apples didn’t work that way and he just smiled sadly as he died along with her. Nim decided to create two other guardians for her tree, one for positivity and the other for negativity.

The human then asked something that made her pause.

“Lady, May I ask you to use my soul? I’ve wounded you to where I know you have to create other guardians but I know that you will make them both one guardian of certain emotions. Positive and Negative. I will just ask you to take my soul and split it 50/50 so your little guardians can feel both emotions than only one certain types. I want to own up for my mistake and greed that overtook me. I’m…sorry…that I…took……away…….anything.”

Nim looked at the human as they cried and she gave a solemn nod as she took his soul carefully. His soul was a mix of PERSERVANCE, JUSTICE, and DETERMINATION. She gave the now dead human a nod while burying the body under her tree. She wanted to human to have some peace. Nim huffed lightly as she carefully split the soul while cleansing the new souls. She smiled as she saw their little lights dance in her hands. She spoke softly and lovingly to her children of their new roles while her body got more transparent every passing second.

“My children, I’m your Mother but my time has come to an end I’m afraid. I’m passing on to join the Tree of Feelings, of which you shall be the new Guardians. Nightmare, you are the guardian of Negativity and thus shall keep the balance of negativity. It’s not a bad thing my dear, for the light needs darkness to shine so brightly in the first place. Dream, you are the guardian of Positivity and thus keep the balance of positivity. But remember, with every light, greed and pride lie in wait to strike. Keep each other safe and remember, I will always love you, my little lights. I just wish Error can meet you both before I pass, he will love you both no questions about it.”

So with her last remaining strength, Nim created skeleton bodies for them and put the twin souls into the empty rib cages. Her soul yearned for a day where she could see Error again but her soul merged with the tree and thus two new guardians were left under the Tree of Feelings.

Nightmare and Dream just slept peacefully under the tree while dreaming of a beautiful green woman talking to a skeleton with black bones and tear shaped markings.

Change has happened but the beginning was the same for the small differences.

While for Error?

He never knew of his friends passing until later in the years.

And by then, Dreamtale would be sealed with making anyone forgetting it even existed.

Error never found out until Nightmare showed up years later and the Universe unsealed.

By then, Dream became the one corrupted and Nightmare the only guardian left for emotions.

(I don’t own the Original Dreamtale or anything close to it. I just own the idea of a multiverse called Flowerverse with Dreamtale being apart of it. Flowerverse is an AU that is a Multiverse of where everyone has flowers growing from one of their eye sockets or places. These flowers give powers that suit you and only you. Please bear in mind that none of this is canon for the Original Universes or timelines but for this AU it is canon. I also posted pictures that feature what they all look like, you might just have to find the post.)

#undertale au #undertale fandom #dreamtale #error sans #flowers #canon divergence

4 notes · View notes

lady-divine-writes · 4 years

Text

Klainetober one-shot - “Scorched Earth” (Rated PG13)

Summary: "We ran to escape it ... to escape the oncoming horde ... but there is no escaping an enemy that has no end ..." (Or the day the Ander-Hummels came back from vacation to discover they now live in a whole new world ... a harsh and terrifying world ... which needs to be rectified before Tracy goes to school on Monday ...) (1097 words)

Notes: A fun little re-write for Halloween, re-worked to fit the @klainetober prompts 'monsters' and 'scream'. Warning for brief mention of the pandemic and quarantine, but the rest is all in good fun, I promise <3

Read on AO3.

Dear diary …

Blaine heaves a heavy sigh. His eyes flicker up, staring across the harsh, sterile scenery, and he wonders why? Why them? Why were they targeted? They were so careful. Kurt especially. Blaine’s beloved husband. Always so careful, so thorough. What had they done to bring this curse down upon them?

But more importantly, what happens now?

His eyes linger longer than they should, but not towards the future. On the present - the life he once knew before his arduous battle began.

It’s been three weeks since we left home in search of comfort, a more hospitable landscape, and water.

Mostly water.

Fsst!

This new reality we find ourselves in is open and vast, full of exciting opportunities. But it’s also foreign and dangerous. One wrong step could mean the end of us, but we must hold tight to hope.

Hope and family.

That’s all we have.

Fsst!

I fear for the safety of those I love.

My gorgeous and talented husband.

My sweet and innocent child.

Our plucky and loyal cat.

I don’t know how long we can continue on this way, but we have to keep going. We have to search. We have to scavenge. This … this is how we will survive.

Fsst!

I suspect it was the heat. The blasted, unseasonal heat! Climate change, global warming ... these aren't just myths! I've seen them! We've felt their effects! Year after year, things have gotten worse. We ran to escape, but there is none. Where do we go? This planet is our home! It's the only one we have! We don't possess the technology to explore the universe in search of another! We did our best to cope, to wait it out, but everything we did to push them away drove them to us.

We couldn't win.

We couldn't even stem the horde. Those monsters! And now, we are overwhelmed by their numbers. They come and come and come and show no signs of stopping. Who knows from where they originate?

Who knows how many there are?

I am doing all that I can, but more keep coming, and I … I cannot stop them.

Fsst!

Was it a mistake coming back? Did we really need to return? The sad answer is yes. These four humble walls and a roof are all we have. And it’s my duty to defend them.

Besides, Tracy has Zoom school on Monday and, apparently, that’s important or something.

Fsst!

The fog is thick.

Fsst!

It never ends.

Fsst!

It's supposed to help.

Fsst!

It hasn't yet.

Fsst!

It makes you want to scream. But when you open your mouth, it steals your voice, fills your mouth and throat, replaces the air.

Fsst!

Blaine sniffles. He blinks watering eyes, trying to focus on the task in front of him, of destroying the army marching relentlessly onward despite his best efforts.

Fsst! Fsst!

It burns the eyes, the nose, the mouth, he mutters. Makes it difficult to breathe, to think. Everything around us is a haze of grey; the air a toxic, chemical soup. I feel myself affected, slipping into a delirium from which I may never recover. And though I will take hundreds of them with me, it won’t make a dent. Not a God dammed dent!

They may still win.

Fsst!

If I don’t make it … if I don’t survive … I only hope that my husband and my daughter can forgive my weakness and remember me the way I was - young … motivated … sexy … a warrior … but also a bastion of love and kindness …

“If I remember correctly, aren't I supposed to be the drama queen? God, Blaine! You're as bad as Rachel.” Kurt coughs, waving a hand in front of his face.

"Nice, Kurt ..."

“Are you high? You have to be. You’re three inches away from the floor, spraying a layer of Raid so thick, the tile is changing colors. Can’t you just spray the ants without making it an event?”

Blaine sits up on his knees, a little giddy, a little woozy, and takes a deep breath of less contaminated air. The world spins left, then goes black for a moment, and after that, he starts giggling uncontrollably. He hears Kurt tut and knows without looking that his husband is shaking his head, probably imagining the amount of damage Blaine has done to his brain. Blaine can admit that he's gotten black-out drunk a time or two more than he should have and come out unscathed, but huffing Raid at his age can’t be good. Maybe he should reconsider calling an exterminator instead of tackling this himself, but it kind of hit them by surprise.

Quarantine had been getting to them.

Getting to them hard.

When times get tough, they normally take refuge at Kurt's dad's, but they couldn't risk it. Not with his existing health concerns. Not considering the fact that Kurt had just returned from a fashion show overseas before this all blew up. Burt Hummel landed squarely in the high-risk category. He'd proactively put himself on lockdown along with Carole before any state mandates went out. Kurt wasn't going to chance bringing this pandemic straight to their door.

So, the Ander-Hummel clan did the next best thing.

They ran away to the Anderson family cabin in Idyllwild.

They’d come home only a few hours ago to discover they had squatters - a humongous colony of ants that had found a way in and made themselves at home, forced inside by the intense heat (even though it's autumn) on a search for water. And they'd found it, pooled inside the cat's freshly cleaned water dish. How it didn't evaporate in the scorching heat, Blaine has no idea.

Blaine takes a few more cleansing breaths. When the world finally slows to a nauseating bob, he turns to his husband.

“You never let me have any fun,” he pouts.

“Are you sure about that?" Kurt asks, crossing his arms over his chest. "I want you to think about last night. Think really hard. And this morning. And over lunch when Tracy took her nap. And then answer me honestly …”

"O-okay, okay," Blaine says, recalling all of the fun they'd had together during those times - all of the athletic, naked, X-rated fun. “Uh, yeah … I may not be thinking clearly. You know, with the Raid, the protecting our house …”

“Yeah, well, your version of protecting our house is keeping me from eating my cheesecake, so chippity-chop-chop, soldier! Let's get this over with.”

#klaine fanfiction #Klaine fic #klaine #klainetober

16 notes · View notes

dailyaudiobible · 3 years

Text

02/05/2021 DAB Transcript

Exodus 21:22-23:13, Matthew 24:1-28, Psalms 29:1-11, Proverbs 7:6-23

Today is the 5th day of February welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I'm Brian it is awesome to be here with you today as we continue our journey forward through the Scriptures. And in the Old Testament we find ourselves in the book of Exodus and we’ll continue that journey. The children of Israel are around the mountain of God, Mount Sanai. God has descended upon the mountain to speak directly with the people. People are pretty freaked out about that. They’re asking Moses to be basically God's prophet, to speak on behalf of God. But God is giving instructions directly to the people and these are sort of the first instructions that are laying out what this new culture is gonna look like, what the chosen people of God are supposed to look like so that they can do what…well…so that they can do what they were chosen for, to be a kingdom of priests, to bless all the nations of the world, to point the way to God, to introduce God to a people who have forgotten. And, so, it's God's intention to establish a people under his rule giving them the ordinances and customs and rituals that they are to follow that will be an example to the world but will also be an example to everyone who participates - about who God is and who they are and where the whole things headed. And, so, God is giving some of these initial instructions and that's where we find ourselves today. We’re reading from the Voice Translation this week. Exodus chapter 21 verse 22 through 23 verse 13.

Commentary:

Alright. In the book of Matthew today Jesus begins a teaching about…about the end, the end of all things, the end times, which is like the ominous topic to talk about. And this is all in context of the fact that He's walking by the temple and He's predicting that it will all fall down. Like everybody's admiring it, but he's essentially saying it’s all gonna become rubble, which it did within about a 1/2 a century of Him saying it when the Romans completely, just completely demolished Jerusalem in 70 A.D. So, His disciples, later on they come to Him and they’re like, “so, tell us when this is gonna happen.” And that's what launches Jesus into this discourse about the end times. And, you know, like I was just mentioning the end times can be a terrifying topic, and yet every generation feels like they are living in them. And in truth every generation has been wrong up until this point unless it's all the end times. And, so, what we see from Jesus is not like this discourse intended to create mayhem and terror among those who were hearing Him. He’s like not trying to scare people to death, He’s just sharing. And he says, you know, there are some things that you will be able to observe about war about famine. You’ll be able to see these things. You’ll be able to see nations against nations. You’ll see this but that's not the end. That's the beginning of the end. Those are the contractions basically, the birth pangs, right? Those of the contractions. So, when you see this kind of stuff, understand that this is like a contraction and birth is not upon us yet, but it's assigned that birth is coming and this birth is that all things would be made new again. So, right there we should take hope. That’s where everything is headed, that all things would be made new again with. But some things have to happen and they’re the birth pangs and we can see them, and we should observe them so that we understand that we’re in the birthing process. Where it gets a little sideways, at least for me is trying to take that information and then create a prediction, take that information add a generous portion of Daniel, bring in, of course the book of Revelation, certainly bring in the book of Ezekiel, like all of the books that have prophetic utterances that seem to indicate future times and try to build this together into some kind of cohesive story that will give us a date. Well, there have been people who have had dates even in my lifetime. There are people who have…I mean I can remember people killing themselves to follow a star. I can…up in space like when the comet went by. I can remember people predicting a specific date and then everybody selling all their stuff and going on grand vacations because the end is coming, and Christ is returning. What we’re going to find as we continue this discourse is that Jesus is going to make a profound claim. He's going to claim that He doesn't even know the end date, the end of it all. Only the Father knows this Jesus will say. And, so, we can continue to kind of be fretting and anxious and have this underlying dread about things every time we see something that…that seems problematic in the world or we can understand this is a contraction but even the Savior isn't making predictions. That can be profoundly helpful.

Prayer:

Jesus, we invite You into that. We take that to heart. We’re listening. We want to have ears to hear. We’re listening. We want to have eyes to see. We want to look at what's really going on behind it all. We want to see like You see, we want to hear like You here. We want to be like You. We want to be Christ like. And, so, we have to follow in Your ways and believe what You're telling us. And You're telling us not to panic. Holy Spirit come because all kinds of things can turn us toward panic and then it can start spiraling and there’s nothing more dreadful than thinking about how the world may come to an end. And, so, come Holy Spirit into this, into this year where we are mending, into this year where the anxiety isn't doing any good anymore. It's really not helping us. It's just making us sick and we just look for all the things that can make us more and more restless when You are offering, shalom. You are offering peace. You are offering order. You are offering to allow us to see things as they really are. Help us to slow down and see we pray. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website, its home base, its where you find out what’s going on around here. And do indeed stay in touch with what's going on around here. Pray for each other. Stay connected. And, of course, yeah, you can find out all of this at dailyaudiobible.com but you can also find out all this in the Daily Audio Bible app. So, yeah, if…if you have the Daily Audio Bible app you already know that. If you don't then make sure that you do. It’s a free app. Download it from your app store and dive in and get connected.

Pray for one another at the Prayer Wall. You can find that in the Community section.

Check out the resources that are available in the Shop. You can find that in the shop.

Just stay connected. The journey of a year is a long one and a short one. Like it's weird because it's a year. And, so, a lot happens in a year. A lot more happens in a year that we don't remember then we do. But if we’re kind of journaling our way through we are telling the story and staying connected in community and then it also feels like it just flies by. It’s like look at where we are. We are in the second month of the year and doesn't feel like it was just New Year's. It just flies by. It’s just so strange how time is, I don't know, elastic kind of, in our memory anyway. But going through the journey together through the whole Bible any year is a remarkable experience. And, so, let's stay connected in any way that we can.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, well first of all, thank you profoundly. Thank you humbly. It’s a remarkable thing that we can take this journey together, and it’s a remarkable thing that we’ve been taking this journey together for all of these years because that would've never ever been the case had we not been in it together. And, so, thank you. If you are finding life in the Scriptures and moving through the Scriptures in community than thank you for being life-giving. There is a link on the homepage at dailyaudiobible.com. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or the mailing address, if that's your preference, is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement you can hit the Hotline button in the app, which is the…it’s the button…the red one up at the top in the app, can't miss it, it's a hotline, it's red, looks like hotline button. So, you can press that no matter where you are in the world or there are a number of phone numbers that you can use depending on where you are. In the Americas 877-942-4253 is the number to call. If you are in the UK or Europe 44-20-3608-8078 is the number to dial. And if you are in Australia or that part of the world. 61-3-8820-5459 is the number to call.

And that's it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Heavenly Father I come before You again this morning to thank You for today February 1st and to listen to the children pray this morning. Father God You said as we become like Your children, we will see Your face and we can enter Your Kingdom. Lord forgive us. This is the first day of February and some of us are struggling with illness, sickness, diseases, loneliness. Father God in the name of Jesus I pray to Lord for the DAB community. Thank You, O Lord for Your word that rings true. Help us to be faithful. Help me Lord to seek Your face and not for the things of this world. Lord I know that You have a better plan for all of us, a plan where we can be one accord, we can be community of believers who truly seek Your face. And as we pray for those who are listening, those who may be feeling weary, warn, and tired Father God I pray that You add strength and You had wisdom because You said if we lack anything we should come and ask and we're asking this morning for a faith can move mountains, the mustard seed faith Father God. In the name of Jesus cleanse our heart. All of those around the world Father God those are who knew, those who are seasoned we pray that the Holy Spirit will be with them today. Give them an unction of Your love so they can wake up and rise and continue to do Your work. Lord forgive us because we know that we've sinned and come short of Your glory. Thank You, Brian and the DAB family. In Jesus’ name cover us with Your blood in Jesus’ name. Amen.

I'm Jeannie from Georgia a first-time caller. I started listening on February 1st, 2019. So, this is my second year through with daily audio Bible. In 2018 August my middle daughters’ husband was diagnosed with Esophageal cancer. He immediately underwent aggressive radiation and chemotherapy treatments but on December 16th, 2018 the Lord called him home to heaven and my daughter was left with seven children, four of them at home still to raise. I too lost my husband of 25 years when I was in my mid-40s. I often read through the Bible through the years, but I found that after my son in law died, I just couldn't bring myself to concentrate on reading through the Bible. And, so, I began the search online for something I can listen to and that's how I discovered Daily Audio Bible. Very shortly after I started listening in February 2019 I heard about the More conference for women. It seemed God was really urging me to go but I’d never done that…done something like that by myself before. My daughters were not able to accompany me and I just did it and I'm so grateful because it was truly life changing for me. The Lord helped me work through not only the grief of my son in law but grief of loss of my husband and so many other things that I had not really dealt with through the years as I should have. Anyway, I just wanted to share this. There's so much more but I wanted to tell you I appreciate all of you and I love the prayer time and the word. Thank you so much Hardin family. I am truly grateful.

Good morning DAB family this is Bridget from New York City and I want to share an encouraging word for those parents and everyone that is calling in for their prodigals. I wasn't raised in the church. I was raised…actually I hated God to be honest with you and never understood who God was or…or His purpose or anything about Him. And I remember being very young and just being around people that prayed for other people, being around, you know, revival camps. I'm from New York so there's a lot of, you know, a lot of stuff going on out here and I was around a lot of revival camps for some reason. I always ended up somewhere where there was church happening and I remember people distinctively just putting their hands on my head and praying for me and as I share with you my family wasn't, you know, I wasn't raised with the gospel. In fact, my mom was…I've seen her go through many things as a young child. So, I hated God honestly. I thought that my life was unnecessary, and I just want to encourage you guys. Don't give up praying because look at me now, I'm 46 years old, I love the Lord and the Lord spared my life. And I believe it was because of the prayers of the people. I believe that those strangers that believed for me, you know, prayed me into the Kingdom and now I'm sharing the word of God with my family and with everyone that I know. And I just want you to be encouraged. Pray, keep praying for your children, keep believing for them, don't give up. God has them. OK love you guys. God bless you.

Oh, my sweet 13-year-old Desiree my heart goes out to you for the situation that you're in. You are not responsible for your mother's drug addiction. That's a sin that only God can help her pull away from. There is no way that you hold any responsibility for that. And, you know, you’re a special, special person. First you have the courage to call in and cry out and secondly God must love you very specially because he plucked you out of that situation and put you in the lives of your aunt and uncle who’ve adopted you and that's a big step for them. They obviously love you very much. God has a special place in his heart for you. You're going to do some great things despite what your mother has done towards you. You loved my child. Thank you for sharing your story. This is Bob, Grandpa Bob from Michigan. Bye.

Hi family this is Anne from Arizona. I just want to encourage everyone that is part of this community, those on the Prayer Wall, those of us who call in to pray, those of us who are praying behind the scenes and may not necessarily be or have their voices be heard. I just want to encourage you, each and every one of you. Continue doing the work that you are doing. Continue praying. There's so much power in prayer and coming together as a community, you know, to pray for one another all over the world. It is amazing how the impact is on each and every one of our lives. I could testify of that myself knowing many times that people have prayed for me people who do not even know me. And I just want to say thank you because we see, and I know that God is breaking through in each and every one of our lives and I just want to continue encouraging each and every one of you. Do not lose hope, do not lose heart, continue doing the work that you are doing. Continue praying, continue seeking the Lord on behalf of others. It is such a blessing to pray for others and then to hear the report of what God is doing. It is so amazing. Family I love you and continue doing what you are doing. And I thank you all. Amen. And have a great day evening or morning. Bye now.

Hi this is Karen from Ontario on the Saint Lawrence River in the Thousand Islands. And first of all, I'm a newcomer. I've just been listening in the latter part of November and I am so thrilled to be here. I listen to your prayers. I pray for you. I want to thank Brian in his family for this wonderful, wonderful app and I'm sure you've come over many, many hurdles to just get on the air and stay on the air. I want to speak to Donna in California and Amy and Canada. I have so been where you were through the death of my former husband and it's not easy and you just need to hold still, just wait, just be patient. God has this He knows what you want He knows what you need, and He will take care of you. Just as He did today in the desert with the Israelites, He took care of me. He has taken care of me. He's brought me back from a very very big illness before my husband died and then He passed away and was upset that I…that I survived because then He just passed away. But once I got through all of that and opened my heart and said, “OK God you're not done with me yet, so we'll do it your way.” and I'm so thankful. Blessings to everyone. Thank you. Goodbye.

2 notes · View notes