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ynit-a · 11 days

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𝐎𝐑𝐏𝐇𝐈𝐂 𝟑 | jkk

orphic | jjk x m!oc

𝟑 | 𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐌𝐈𝐓

“I’m drowning but please don’t save me

Soren woke up that morning with a knot in his stomach that seemed to grow stronger with every breath. The sun filtered through the curtains of his small apartment, but the light, instead of bringing clarity, seemed only to accentuate the shadows that crept along the walls. He had spent the entire night awake, trying to gather his thoughts and calm the trembling in his hands, but calm eluded him.

He had tried to sleep in the afternoon, after the visit to the emergency room, but every time his eyes closed, the image of the creature and the sensation of its torn skin came back to haunt him. At school, the atmosphere seemed more oppressive. Classes, once a routine refuge from his overburdened mind, became unbearable. The whispers in the hallways were louder, not from his classmates, but from those creatures that only he could see.

Every time he looked up, a shadow slipped just out of reach, as if mocking him. He played the piano, trying to find relief in the music, but his hands shook so much that the melodies broke before they formed. The piano, that old companion that used to be his refuge, now felt like a prison. The black and white keys, which once represented a world of peace and serenity, were a constant reminder of the distance between the Soren of before and the one of now. He tried to play a couple of chords, but the music came out choppy, lifeless. The sound that was once a calming melody now resonated like a distant echo, as if what had been a part of his life for so long no longer belonged to him.

As the hours passed, the feeling of unease intensified. Soren went out into the street, hoping to find some normality, to distract himself with the small things of everyday life, but everything felt out of place. The people around him seemed to move in a world he no longer understood. The conversations and laughter were mere empty sounds that mixed with the constant noise in his head.

Every time he turned a corner, he felt an invisible presence, a weight in the air that weighed down his chest. He glanced over his shoulder frequently, trying to decipher the shadows moving in the periphery of his vision. His new powers, which in the eyes of any main character in a fictional novel would be a blessing, now manifested in the form of daily nightmares. The creatures that no one else could see came closer and closer, their eyes empty and their movements stealthy. They moved among the people as if they were part of the urban landscape, only to Soren, they were a constant threat, always lurking.

A sudden burst of despair forced him to stop in front of a grocery store. The glass of the window reflected a distorted image of his own face, pale and tense. He leaned forward, his hands clenching the window frame as he tried to breathe deeply. The pain in his injured arm had worsened; the bandages were bloody, and every movement seemed to stir up a new wave of pain.

As he tried to remain calm, a group of children ran nearby, their laughter and play mixing with the sound of his own pounding heart. A shadow moved beside him, and Soren turned quickly, his gaze meeting that of a hooded figure who disappeared as soon as he saw it. His mind filled with chaotic thoughts. Was he really in danger? Or was his anxiety playing tricks on him? The thought that his own emotions could attract the creatures terrified him.

Finally, he decided to return home. With pain and confusion overwhelming him, he knew he needed to talk to someone, someone who could understand what he was going through. But the problem was, even in his desperation, he didn't trust anyone. Paranoia had gained ground in his mind, and the idea of seeking help seemed both a risk and a necessity.

-ˋˏ✄┈┈┈┈

Two teenagers were in the school living room, remembering and thinking of the scene in the alley. The morning light filtered through the windows, but the silence between them was charged with palpable tension.

Fushiguro Megumi, with his dark hair and a deep frown, was deep in his own theories— This is something very strange…— he said, his voice full of concern— The chaos that curse had been spreading… and now we have something that, apparently, has cursed energy and killed it.

The girl adjusted her glasses, letting out a sigh— Gojo didn't say anything?... forget it, he must not have even answered the messages, the idiot— getting up from the chair, she looked at Megumi— we have to find the thing that killed the curse, we don't know if it's something that will cause more of a stir than this.

Megumi looked up, her eyes fixed on the girl. —But how do we find it, Maki? We know nothing. If its condition becomes more unstable, we could have a bigger problem.

—Let’s do it as carefully as possible. If we approach too quickly, we could scare it or, worse, push it into a more dangerous situation. If not, we’ll send Gojo with some promised candy.

They both fell silent for a moment, knowing they had to act quickly but also cautiously. Their minds were occupied with the mission ahead, and the urgency of finding that mysterious chest of cursed energy became more and more critical.

-ˋˏ✄┈┈┈┈

Back at Soren’s house, the young man sat on the edge of his bed, staring into space with a sense of unease. The silence in the room was almost unbearable, filled with a stillness that accentuated his anguish. The small sounds of the apartment —the creaking of the pipes, the hum of the refrigerator— seemed amplified by his agitation.

Soren knew there was something about him that drew them to him, something the creatures wanted or needed. These weren't hallucinations. What he'd done in that alley had been real, as real as the whiplash of force that had left his body. And now, those things wouldn't leave him alone. He couldn't tell anyone, there was no one he trusted enough to believe him, not even his mother, who was trapped in a hospital bed unable to help him.

But the truth was, Soren didn't just want help. He wanted to trust someone. He felt a desperate need to share his burden, to not be alone with his chaotic thoughts and these constant presences surrounding him. The problem was that every time he tried to relax, every time he tried to convince himself that everything was under control, something betrayed him: a closer shadow, a louder whisper. He couldn't escape the feeling that he was losing control.

That day, as he walked home from school, the creatures' presence was stronger than ever. They were like a dark mist surrounding him, clinging to his steps, watching with invisible eyes. Soren began to quicken his pace, trying to ignore them, but the pressure grew in his chest, until finally, on an empty street near his home, he stopped.

He looked around, his breathing rapid and ragged. Shadows floated around him, shapeless and structureless, but close enough that he could feel their malevolent energy. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to calm himself, but in that moment he understood: it was his unknown powers. It was his fear, his anxiety, his uncertainty that drew them. Every uncontrolled emotion made them stronger, more visible. He was feeding them without knowing how to stop it.

A cold sweat ran down his back as he realized that the real threat was not the creatures, but himself.

And if he didn’t find a way to control that power, soon will be no difference between him and those monsters.

This story with more graphics is on wattpad, go check it out if you want!

Wattpad: ynit_a

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luna-baby01 · 1 year

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Luna Gets Even Bigger, Part III

Like the end of the first trimester, the end of the second similarly left you belly the size it was when you gave birth the second time. Enormously full and fat. Of course, the fact that you haven't been able to move for five months really did a number on both your poor, overburdened belly and the rest of your body. Your body is an avalanche of fat, driven by both your enormous fetuses' insistence on eating the most fattening foods nonstop and your singular desire to get as inhumanly large as possible, pinned down under this mound of your husband's creation. He knows he's responsible for this. He has pangs of guilt over the fact that he got you this pregnant at this point, but those are quickly brushed aside when he sees you lying there, begging for him to stuff you, and not just with food. Even as enormous as you are, he can't keep away from your insanely pregnant body. Both he and you are surprised at how he can have his way with you at your size, but he does, and he does it well. You're worried that you'll crush him, but he's just fine, still eager to please you and serve you. Your mind just melts even further whenever he's around, knowing that in spite of your pleading, he's the one who's ultimately responsible for putting you in this state. You just can't contain yourself!

Seven months in, your belly is twice the size of your body, even at its already enormous size. Eight months in, it's three times. You're wondering if your room can contain you. Your belly is getting dangerously close to brushing the ceiling. Though you seem to be in a permanently excited state with all of this belly growing beyond even your wildest dreams, you are somehow even more excited. You're nothing but a baby factory, a womb with limbs attached, a true breeding sow, dedicated to nothing but eating and pumping out babies. There are simply no other thoughts in your head. You bloated, fat, pregnant cow! Grazing all day long and making yourself unable to move at only a month in! Your greed for both big babies and food making you push the confines of your room!

Exactly nine months after you conceive, that scenario comes true. You can feel your belly button brush the ceiling. Your mind runs wild, struggling to comprehend how massive the twenty enormous babies that your husband put in your belly that made you gorge yourself nonstop to get to this point. For most, the possibility of even becoming this pregnant is horrifying, but for you, there is nothing you'd rather do. Pinned underneath this mountain of your husband's creation. No way out except giving birth. And just like the last two times, your due date came and went without even a contraction. Your babies are stuck inside of you for the long haul.

Remember when you thought you'd go over half a ton this pregnancy? That seems to be low-balling it. You are simply enormous. Your belly is now pushing hard into your bedroom ceiling, still growing larger and larger as you glut yourself at the gnawing insistence of your brood. You worry that it will break through the ceiling if you're pregnant for much longer, not that you will be. You're two weeks past your due date, and you know what that means. It's time for your doctor to induce you. You want nothing more but to be pregnant forever, a bloated, fattened, dumb cow doing nothing but stuffing her face, growing babies inside of her, and being pleasured by her man. But this is reality, and reality means that you must give birth. This record-breaking pregnancy has come to its end. You have now brought an insane number of forty children into the world over the course of your marriage.

After that, you're just lying there, unable to get up again. You NEED to get pregnant again. You know you probably shouldn't, but as we've come to learn, we know that isn't going to stop you or your husband. Your eyes glaze over in bliss, thinking just how enormous you're going to get next time.

Fin

God I love this~

The idea of being pinned underneath my colossal pregnant belly, as it groans and gurgles due to its sheer size and the contents within, dozens upon dozens of overweight babies + metric gallons of amniotic fluids sloshing around + a truckload of fattening food crammed into my bowels which is almost constantly getting refilled with more. The floor creaking loudly underneath me as if I’m going to break through the floorboards at any moment. Fat, rotund thighs thicker than tree trunks. Swollen ankles, swollen feet, even my wrists and hands are all puffy. 2000 pounds of pregnant woman.

Me huffing and puffing and sweating in this humid, musky room I’m stuck in. This maternal smell emanating from my crevices and folds. Moaning and groaning, ready to explode. My fat meaty pussy like a giant clam, all bloated and swollen as a lake’s worth of amniotic fluids rests against my bulging cervix, the floodgates barely able to withstand the pressure.

But I’m so happy and so content~😍😍😍

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nym-wibbly · 18 days

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You think John Winchester beat/abused Dean into suppressing his sexuality? You're great at taking these canons apart on details--- would love to get your take on this.

Dean's inner workings are such a huge field of study! You're very kind, but I think a lot of his nuances are still beyond my grasp of canon. I bet there's tons to pick up on rewatching. I'll have a stab at it though!

I think Dean's father taught him that practical reliance and emotional dependence on anyone or anything but blood family is dangerous. That indulging his private feelings - any feelings - is dangerous. And that doing those things makes him a danger to others, to Sam, to the mission, and therefore would make him into a bad person; that Dean grew up convinced that he can't afford to let himself have - or need - affection, support, connections, community, obligations, or ties outside the hunting life, and only limited access to those luxuries within it.

Dean fell into line with John's rules of the road while Sam pushed back and got himself out for just long enough to see a different way of living life - one I'm sure a younger John Winchester, married to Mary and with their two young sons in the house, would have recognised as worth fighting for and protecting. Sam brings that back with him, and never stops trying to share that wider perspective and personal growth with Dean - never stops offering to listen or be emotionally supportive, even when Dean shuts him down over and over again.

I think Dean learned from his father - from his whole rootless and overburdened childhood - that other people have to be able to depend on him, so he can't afford either to feel weak or to be perceived as weak, for their sake. For survival's sake. The performative mess we find him in come the start of Supernatural is him trying to fit that with his adult experiences and needs. If he's wrestling at all with his sexuality in the middle of all that, I think it's far from being the biggest or most damaging of his issues.

Dean's basically a decent bloke with a good heart, full of love to give, smart, capable, and intrinsically strong, but his self-worth is completely tied up with this need to be a protector, the strong one. His baby brother actually has to spell out to him that, now he's an adult too, Sam can, will, and wants to protect Dean right back. Dean had no inkling that it wasn't a one-way street, which is heartbreaking.

John's white-whale revenge quest taught Dean that life is short, that there's no higher meaning or grand plan. That you don't get what you want, you get the hand you're dealt and have to play it. That it's his role in life to serve, and to die young doing it. He doesn't think he gets to plan a future, and has mixed feelings when Sam tries to do just that by going to college.

I'm not sure Dean's hiding or repressing his sexuality in particular; more that he's not dealing - refusing or unable to deal - with the whole area of intimate relationships that go beyond a fun one night stand. Of emotional and supportive relationships and people's need for those, period.

Dean looks at the comfort and support system available to other people with their lovers and spouses, and doesn't see a Dean-shaped vacancy anywhere, be it with men, women... or angels. Yet he wants it, or something that looks like it. He longs for family and home, and not only because it's something he knows he lost once. He's terrific with children, from the small ones up to the angry teens, so he knows instinctively how to give the kind of support and validation he denies himself - but does he even know that he finds those encounters rewarding? Is he even aware that it's a good thing for those relationships to be mutually rewarding? I'm not sure he lets himself think that way. Maybe it's just an itch he can't quite scratch?

The moment he has the opportunity he goes straight to Lisa and Ben and tries to make it work with that ready-made family. He remembers just enough of the time before his mother's murder to feel a pull towards 'traditional' family life, but it's like he's living a fairytale. He's waiting for the big bad wolf the whole time, waiting to flip back to high alert protector mode. Once the monsters touch his little family and shatter the bubble, he can't sustain the relationship. Lisa gives him every chance to have it on his own terms, but Dean can't do it.

My take is that Dean suppresses anything and everything that might give him comfort, peace, softness, or what others (including his father in vengeance mode) could perceive as outward signs of weakness. Talking about his feelings, about things he can't have, dwelling on and processing his feelings - that's what John taught Dean that weakness looks like. That unaffordable luxury of weakness. You get up, wash off the blood, keep your weapons in good order, and keep fighting until you can no longer fight. Dean denies himself anything that could be used against him or Sam, and for the longest time he thinks that's a good thing. Later in the series, he's learned enough to know that this kind of strength is brittle at best, and to be afraid of the consequences of stress-testing it too hard.

I think Dean doesn't even bother digging into what he wants and needs from a lasting partner. Into his feelings and sexuality, his ideas about couples, about hearth and home. It's not just that he's terrified of losing it if he has it: he's sure he'll lose it if he ever has it, because he's sure he doesn't deserve it.

I reckon Dean stopped exploring himself at a very young age, and learned to ignore his own needs and feelings beyond the limited avenues that got a nod and a wink from John Winchester. Being good at hunting. Taking care of Sam. Drinking. Driving. Polishing the roleplay and the hustle to stay under the radar. Taking care of Sam some more. Shut down everything else tight and keep a lid on it. Grab gratification where you can but don't ever try to keep hold of it or set down roots.

Dean lives in maintenance mode. Other than his brief idyll with Lisa and Ben, there's never a time when Dean doesn't feel he has to stay in that state of toughened battle-readiness. The only reason he's able to get close to Castiel over the long term is that Cas can join him in the fight, is willing to take Dean as-is without needing him to unbend, and can tough things out just as hard as Dean can.

I don't think John necessarily needed to pile on physical or targeted psychological abuse to shape Dean this way and make him equate processing and personal exploration with weakness. Just making the adult-responsibility demands he did of a child, and exposing him to the monsters and the killing and the awareness of how precarious life is, would've been plenty. I get the sense that if John had ever posed a danger to Sam through violence or drunken carelessness, Dean would've killed him. (For the first few episodes, I sorta thought he sekritly had!)

(Ask me again when I've rewatched Supernatural and my answer might be completely different!)

#dean winchester #nym finally watched supernatural #supernatural #supernatural meta #spn meta #spn

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what-if-queen-camilla · 10 months

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Chapter 43

Late November 1997

Thea's heartwarming gesture towards her brothers had made it on almost every newspaper front page the next day and, though the whole country was still mourning immensely, there was something ominously uplifting and comforting about it. Camilla was of course incredibly relieved that everything had gone well and she was glad that most of the public didn’t seem to have an issue with Thea’s attendance of the funeral - especially not after her close bond with the Princes had become so visible, but somehow the sudden new attention scared and worried her. She had not expected there to grow so much interest in her daughter, especially as the occasion had been such a serious and saddening one but people seem to be obsessed with her little sweetheart, and much to her regret, there had been some journalists sneaking around the house and even Thea's school again but nothing serious had happened yet, thank goodness. She had told Charles and he'd been furious, determined to issue a public statement immediately, urging people and especially journalists to leave their daughter alone but Camilla had insisted that it might not be a good time for that, so shortly after Diana's funeral and with the whole country still in mourning. The boys were being so brave, they had returned to their respective boarding schools the week after and though Charles was hoping for them all to find some kind of normality again soon, Camilla doubted that anything was going to be normal again in the foreseeable future.

And so a few weeks passed, the days got shorter and darker and everything inside of them as well. Thea wrote heartfelt letters to her brothers every week, but didn't receive a reply, Charles gave a few phone calls but always seemed short-handed and even his birthday passed without an opportunity for a meet-up. Camilla tried to keep herself busy reading books and painting, while she, amid that horrible new wave of public hatred she was facing, couldn't really go anywhere. Thank God, she had friends who did the shopping at Sainsbury for her and the children came and left as usual. She was incredibly worried about her little sweetheart Thea, though, as she was obviously missing her father and brothers immensely. Neither of them had an explanation of why William and Harry didn't write to her and Camilla hadn't dared ask Charles, who was totally overburdened with the sad situation as it was anyway. He'd taken Harry to Africa for a couple of days at the end of October, beginning of November, and, of course given the special connection Diana had had to the continent, the trip had been highly emotional and, as Camilla hoped, a bit healing for the young Prince. So it quite took her by surprise when, on a random Saturday afternoon in late November, the phone rang and none other than her beloved Prince was on the line, huskily asking: “Can you two come over to Highgrove tonight?” Camilla didn’t even think about it any further, but immediately said: “Of course, darling. We’ll be there!” She called for Thea who's whole face lit up at the prospect of seeing daddy tonight and, of course, she asked whether Will and Harry were there as well and Camilla gulped. “I, um, didn't even had the chance to ask.”, she explained. “It went so quickly… he was so short-handed again… I'm sorry, darling. But I'm sure we'll find out soon, so let's get ourselves ready and depart as soon as possible!” It was strange, probably ridiculous, but somehow, after all these weeks, Camilla felt really excited to see her Prince again tonight and wanted to look especially beautiful for him, so she put her hair in rollers and some makeup on her face, eyeliner and mascara and a bit of lip gloss, only a modest shade of pink, not too intrusive of course, but elegant and classy. She also dressed herself in a cute little, dark green velvet dress and something special underneath though she wasn’t sure whether it might actually go into action, however, she thought, just in case…

They arrived at Highgrove at around 6pm and were received by an equerry who escorted them inside, where all three, Charles, William and Harry were already waiting impatiently. “My little sunshine!”, Charles exclaimed and enthusiastically opened his arms for Thea, who threw herself onto him affectionately, before rushing over to her brothers and falling into their arms as well. It was a very touching scene to witness and Camilla shed a tear watching the three siblings reunited. “Darling.”, Charles whispered softly in her ear as he greeted her with a kiss on the cheek. Of course, they didn’t want to be too wild in front of the children, but it had been a long time and it hadn’t taken much for her to forget herself. He smelled so good, and, oh, the way he looked at her… She took both his hands in hers and locked his eyes, his beautiful and soft, grey-blue eyes which looked so unhappy and sorrowful that it almost made her cry. She couldn’t wait to properly hug him later, when they’d be alone, to hold him and to kiss all of the pain aways that had undoubtedly tortured him over the last couple of weeks. “Why didn’t you write to us?”, Harry asked Thea and sounded equally reproachful and disappointed. “I did write to you!”, Thea defended herself, adding: “Every week! But none of you ever replied to me!” Charles and Camilla got apart and slowly went over to the children. “I haven’t got a single letter from you!”, Harry reported and William confirmed, less reproachful but more sad: “Neither have I…” “But…”, Thea stuttered with tears in her eyes, desperately looking over to her mum for help. Camilla rushed over and bend down to her, pressing her against herself, while calmly explaining to William and Harry, that they had, indeed, sent out letters to both of them every week ever since their mother’s funeral. “And you really haven’t got one of ours either?”, William asked and Camilla shook her head. “No, none.” Charles had meanwhile joined the party and knelt down on the floor between his sons, opposite to Camilla and Thea, who were now looking at him in complete confusion and Camilla noticed worryingly that he was about to throw a tantrum - it was obvious that somebody had to deliberately have stopped the letters in order to prevent any correspondence between the Princes and their sister, and Camilla was just as shocked and angry as Charles - but they had to try and keep calm, at least in front of the children, she thought, so she cleared her throat and quickly took the floor: “Well, I’m sure we’ll be able to solve the mystery and find all of the missing letters.”, she said, trying to sound as calm and optimistic as possible.

Unintentionally, her glance met William’s, who seemed to understand immediately. “Hey Harry, let’s go and show Thea the new bunnies in the stables! They’re only just a few weeks old, very sweet.”, he suggested and Harry looked at him in complete confusion. “Why this now?”, he asked, but Thea was so excited about the prospect of seeing baby rabbits, that any resistance was futile in this case. As soon as the children had left the room, Charles couldn’t hold it back any longer and did, indeed, throw a tantrum. He almost screamed down the house in anger, disappointment and pain; not only about this unfortunate situation regarding the missing, or rather stolen, letters, but probably because of everything that had happened since that one, fateful last day of August… He had become a single father overnight, he had to cope with two mourning, half-orphaned teenage boys, he had been trying to stay strong for them, to look after them… but who had been looking after him? It almost broke her to see him in that state of mind and she wished she could just kiss it all away, she knew she couldn’t but at least she wanted to try, so she just sat down next to him, wrapped her arms around him and let him cry, tenderly stroking his hair and whispering sweet promises. “Regarding the letters, darling.”, she started after a couple of minutes. “I think we’d better ask Mark to try and find out what happened and… who might be behind it.”, she suggested and he nodded in agreement. “Yes, yes, darling. Let’s talk to him tomorrow…”

So, what do you think? Who might be behind this mean cabal and why?

#king charles #queen camilla #royal family #royal baby #fanfic #fanfiction #prince william #prince harry #highgrove

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tealtreesthriving-ttt457 · 6 days

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A retrospect on We Happy Few's main characters: The terrible people fleeing a terrible world, Part 2.

Sally Boyle: Complicit, Insecure, Break Free.

Return to Part 1 Here: https://www.tumblr.com/tealtreesthriving-ttt457/762012485329010688/a-retrospect-on-we-happy-fews-main-characters?source=share

Part 3 Here: https://www.tumblr.com/tealtreesthriving-ttt457/762192381164552193/a-retrospect-on-we-happy-fews-main-characters?source=share

Sally is another of our main characters, with varying involvement in society. Compared to Arthur, a former editor and perpetuator of no bad memories to plague the town, she is deeply complicit in society and part of her character is rooted in that.

Sally Boyle when she was young was near a tomboy, an outsider to stereotypical feminine interests, invested in chemistry and being one of the Two Musketeers with Arthur Hastings, before it all crashed down. Luckily, her talents landed her a job, formerly, at Haworth Labs, and something of a fashion icon, making her very middle-class near rich in this situation.

When we find her now in the game, she's managing her own drug business, in favor of the police, quit Haworth's because of a spat or two with the oligarch and current owner, Anton Verloc, and with child.

To set up the situation, sending children en masse to Germany was very traumatic. So traumatic, the establishment of the conservative Wellington Wells forbade reproduction, the use of cars, news of the war, and trains, and mandated the use of the drug Joy, a mood-brightening substance that fuzzies up the memory with continuous use.

Lack of consumption in drugs results in being forced to take them, by Doctors, who have all but been enforcers of drug taking and occasional human experimental, some characters bet they're medical practice is down the chute.

Breaking laws means getting beat up by the citizens, and the cops, and maybe murdered. The same goes for the ghetto should they be run out.

People who can't take Joy anymore and are cast away are known as Wastrels. People who don't take joy for any reason and participate in society still are Downers. Sally, by definition, is a Downer, and facilitates that type of Behavior, by selling and using Sunshine, an illegal Joy substitute without the bad effects.

And in terms of children, the child is Verloc's, but he does not know, nor should he, because he participates in the society that wants them outlawed.

The story of Sally, even deep into society and playing a bit of a fiddle on it, is how her most important responsibility cannot be held alongside the responsibility in giving the police special drugs, making those drugs, being threatened by Verloc as a competitor and to her life, and how life wants to keep her inside her cage.

This responsibility is to Gwen, her child, and as her story continues, it becomes harder to maintain standing still and being complacent while Gwen is being threatened, and decides to escape.

A poor gameplay elements that reflects this, "totems of neglect", fill her carry weight requirements to overburdened should she not attend to her child daily. It's poor because Gwen needs to be managed like a daily thing, but she literally is a child in a video game, what did we expect.

Sally often self-degrades herself for being a terrible mother. Any frankly, despite the self-pity, she kinda is. What's worse is that she's servicing an old man, General Byng, a war general and oligarch complicit in making Wellington Wells the way it is, as well as deluding his soldiers about the return of the Germans.

While he's her customer, it's needed to know the pattern of how men treat Sally:

Like I mentioned in Part 1, Arthur demeans Sally and blames her, a minor at the time, for shagging his father. He is not aware or internalized the shit power dynamics, and acts harshly to Sally when she probably doesn't need it. He does help her, but him acting like a rash idiot, though Sally keeps secrets, makes him hard to sympathize with.

Anton Verloc hates Sally and sees her as a threat to his batch of drugs, as Joy in flavors Vanilla and Chocolate aren't effective anymore, and Strawberry is left. The bastard is planning a Permanent Solution to permanently brainwash all of Wellington Wells with coconut, so he's the worst. He even tries to sic the police on her, but she feeds them blackberry. Who knows if she hadn't or has been?

General Byng is the worst and most vile offender. He takes advantage of her situation with the child, proposes strongly she would be safe with him, and forces her to comply, his last attempt trying to lock her in his bunker with a stockpile of resources to sit idly by. He's willing to hurt her and beat someone less his own size.

Sally is frail, relies on talents to subdue enemies, is belittled for her perceived malicious promiscuity, and is always to blame when the relationship goes south. She writes lowercase all the time and is a liar like Arthur, but more harshly viewed due to her gender and her interests. She can kill, but she hurts worse inside than outside. In fact, she's an underdog who struggles to make her way to do good and be good, because she doesn't like herself very much, and one factor to make it worse is that;

She wasn't there when her mother did a murder-suicide on her whole family so that the children wouldn't have to take the train to Germany. She's left the survivor, and feels confused about why she is alive, and what should she do.

And maybe, she can do it for someone else. Gwen.

Sally works to realize that she needs to get out, go on crazy missions to help get a boat out of here, subdue the controlling bastard Byng, and finally, get out with Gwen.

In the end, Sally embraces the lack of having any more secrets and gets to fully embrace her child, realizing that all that effort makes her a better mother, for all the sacrifice she did. They'll be the Two Musketeers together.

Sally is one of the better characters in morality and resolution. She asserts her denial of her inferiority and seeks to make it right for someone else. She embraces her talents more and reassess her priorites to get out than participate in a society that demeans her talents, her gender, and her motherhood.

She realizes that she's stronger than she knows, and while she's a terrible person, she uses her crimes to service a greater good for someone else than her own survival in a shitty society.

Next time, we talk about the comic relief with worse crimes under their hefty belt.

Note: "I really like her saying, 'f*ck in a bucket'."

#we happy few #gaslight gatekeep girlboss #retrospective #part 2

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flowers-of-io · 4 months

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Fic Rec Friday #2

Provenir

by @allteacher

Read on Ao3

Esila, and stories, and consequences.

Rating: Gen | Word count: 2,043

Warnings: Canonical Character Death

Sometimes she forgets she is still growing. She has been aging faster, after they left the Distributary, but compared to humanity the pace is still glacially slow. Here she is, child and woman, wise and famed and impatient and young. Esila is carried over the crowd of Awoken, those that have fed on her stories for centuries, and becomes their voice once again. She already loves this place as much as she loves her people, and that is exhilarating and frightening.

This week’s fic rec is one of the first works of Allteacher’s that I read. Maybe I’m so soft about it because it’s a story about a storyteller, about a girl and then a woman and then a legend; about how a writer looks at the world in wonder and fishes out the crumbs that then become tales. A teacher-child with ink-stained hands, Distributary-ancient but not overburdened by wisdom. And oh the prose is so ethereal and Dreaming City-esque, I mean—“glacially slow”!!!!! I’m absorbing the language through my pores!!!!

The fighting grows worse, and Esila turns inward from a perfect world towards a more perfect one. She is older now, old enough to explore without a babysitter, though with the Theodicy War her mother seldom lets her past the garden gate. So she makes her own path out of the gates, writes her way down the old hunt-paths long ago abandoned in favor of richer prey. She learns to walk where she could not go before: under the Crystalline Lakes, into the jewel-caves of the Andalayas. The stars become a carpet and she buries her face in them when the funeral barges throw up smoke. Here she does not need to think of politics and debts and death. Here she can dream of the stars.

I remember reading this paragraph for the first time and having such a vivid image in my mind. “Writes her way down the old hunt-paths long ago abandoned in favor of richer prey”!!

Here she is: dual-ringed, two-sided, spinning stories to close the divide between her people. She cannot heal the wound, but she has spent centuries learning, growing, teaching. She can show her people how to look elsewhere, how to reach outwards.

On the last day Esila sits in the Hull and tells her mother she loves her until the connection severs. In that last frantic second she promises her mother she will write. The last thing she hears from her mother is a laugh, a promise to write back.

This is also a story about a mother and a daughter—and isn’t it interesting how Esila, the famous historian and storyteller, whose life and death was a tale in itself, is being titled “Esila, daughter of Sila”? It’s her bond with her mother that defines her, and it’s handled so beautifully in this fic.

During their journey, Esila sits by the window in the common room and writes every fable, every story, every legend she was ever told. She asks the others for the stories they were read as children, records them, marks the differences that show between tellings. When her hand cramps too badly to write she takes the quiet moments to mourn for her mother, who will outlive her. She thinks of her home, the day they left, the day they were almost shot out of the sky. Esila hopes her mother feels her daughter, alive, in her joints. She hopes her mother will not feel her die.

Oh another thing I love is the little namedrops of characters mentioned in the lore like, once. I had to look up Owome on Ishtar, and maybe that’s just me, but I find it incredibly satisfying when I have to google a name mentioned in a fic and find they’re actually a canon character. Fr his could be an entry in The Dreaming City lorebook.

Esila daughter of Sila grows and ages slowly but is still so young, so lighthearted. On the second solstice Azirim comes to her and lies and she knows it but he reminds her of one of the first stories she ever wrote, about a Corsair who shot a man with her bow and traveled the Distributary doing good in an attempt to repent. She is not Sanguine, but she adores a tale of redemption.

She agrees to listen. She will die for it. This is history in action: the consequences of her mercy.

History in action… A tale of redemption... The consequences of her mercy… Delightful, delightful.

#izzy's bookshelf #fic tag #fic rec #allteacher #awoken #esila

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discount-elysium · 10 months

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Fic: House Fire

Pairing: Harry/Kim

Fic tags: Dom/sub AU, Dom!Kim

YOU - What starts it is, of all things, a discussion of Communism.

There have been precious few things you’ve been certain of, since you woke largely-nude and stinging like an exposed nerve in room 1 of the Whirling-in-Rags. Money, books, the country you live in, your own name– if any of these things used to be stored inside that alcohol-fumigated skull of yours, they certainly aren't any longer. You’ve spent the past two days pawing uselessly at concepts a child should understand–and sometimes, you think with the image of Annette in your mind, you’ve even had children do the explaining. You are certainly not a man overburdened with shame, but even you have your limits; there’s a creeping tension along your spine, and it snarls tighter every time you stumble across yet another thing you ought to know.

And yet, there are, even in the vacuous depths of your mind, some things that came through intact. Some shining bastions that seem to indicate that yes, a fully functioning adult did once occupy this very body, before he moved out indefinitely and left you with his pieces. Most notably–

ENCYCLOPEDIA [Trivial: Success] - Communism.

YOU - You may not know your own name, but by god do you remember the plight of the common worker. You were maybe a little more enthused about this knowledge before it became clear that your now-reunited snakeskin shoes are in fact some of the very boots pressing down on the back of the oppressed masses, but you figure that if anybody’s equipped to bring the RCM around from the inside, it’s probably you!

ESPRIT DE CORPS [Easy: Failure] - Oh, definitely. You’re gonna be a mover and shaker for the Masovian agenda inside the establishment. The RCM is fertile ground, and baby, there’s a new farmer in town.

LOGIC [Easy: Success] - You do not have even the slightest idea of how farming works.

VOLITION [Medium: Success] - You had a point, somewhere in here?

YOU - So maybe–not to delve too deep into the mess of your psyche here–maybe you lean a little bit hard into spreading the good word of Communism, those first few days. Like, maybe you mention the Masovian meat grinder to a few people who, in retrospect, were perhaps not interested in advancing the cause of the common man, and certainly were not interested in particularly graphic imagery about bourgeoisie man-sausage.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Trivial: Success] - Heh. Man-sausage.

YOU - If you did, though, it’s certainly because of your Deep and Abiding Devotion to the Communist cause. Yeah. Definitely that. Definitely not because you were clinging desperately to the single intact thought you still had kicking around in the now-echoing–and aching–cavern that used to hold your mind. No displaced anxiety acting up here, no sir!

EMPATHY [Medium: Success] - Oh, you’re anxious alright. Have you noticed how your hands shake, when you’re not consciously stliling them?

PAIN THRESHOLD [Formidable: Failure] - That admittedly might be the DTs. It’s not great in here. It’s…really not great in here.

DAMAGED HEALTH -1

ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Trivial: Success] - You know what would fix that right up? I’ll give you a hint. It comes in a bottle and costs 3 reál at Frittte!

VOLITION [Formidable: Success] - Enough.

YOU - It’s during one of these little Communist tangents that It happens. The Pivotal moment. The thing that shakes loose another little broken concept from your mind that had previously been collecting dust. Because as you ramble on about the benefits of Communism to a dock worker who’s looking increasingly less focused on the words you’re saying, Kim says–

KIM KITSURAGI - “Officer.”

YOU - Just that. One little word. Officer.

EMPATHY [Challenging: Success] - He says it with a tone of disappointment. Almost despite himself, Kim Kitsuragi is beginning to see that even your more eccentric methods sometimes yield unexpectedly useful results. Still, he knows that this is not going to be one of those moments. He wants you to stay on task. It’s been a long couple of days already, and Kim would like to move things along.

ESPRIT DE CORPS [Challenging: Success] - Lieutenant Kitsuragi thinks, briefly, of deploying The Eyebrow. He responded well to it, once.

INLAND EMPIRE [Legendary: Success] - That’s not the only thing Kim is thinking of deploying.

INLAND EMPIRE - Suddenly, you’re looking at your own face. It’s a surprisingly faithful depiction: the large eyebrows, the puffy skin on the cheeks, the booze-soaked redness of the nose, the distant look in the green eyes. The one place it differs from the reality of you is that this you has his mouth stretched open wide over something rubbery and black–

LOGIC [Easy: Success] - A ballgag.

INLAND EMPIRE - There’s moisture beading at the corners of your lips: drool, gathering behind the gag, not yet spilling down the stubbled-skin of your chin. It ought to look pathetic; it does, in a way. Seeing your jaw straining against the restraint, your throat working futilely to try to swallow your own saliva before it can spill past your stretched lips. It is pathetic. And yet, as a driving-glove clad hand moves to your jaw and uses its grip to tilt your face upwards–as a soft, familiarly lilting voice says, “That’s better,” and one finger taps against the gag silencing you–the look on your face doesn’t strike you as pathetic at all.

EMPATHY [Medium: Success] - It’s grateful.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY - Oh fuck.

YOU - And then the moment dissolves, and instead of looking at your own face, you’re looking at Kim Kitsuragi, lieutenant of the 57th, who has just thought about putting you in a ballgag to shut you up.

COMPOSURE [Godly: Failure] - And your face is very, very red. More red than usual. New shades of red have been invented just for your face, just for this moment.

CONCEPTUALIZATION - What an honor.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Easy: Success] - Yeah, that’s not the only thing flushing with blood, if you catch my meaning.

VOLITION [Impossible: Failure] - Okay, fuck, pull yourself together. We can do this. We were talking about something. Uh. Money? No, that doesn’t sound right. Shit. I’m all turned around in here. Does anybody else know what we were talking about? Anybody?

DOMINANCE [Challenging: Failure] - We were going to show that binoclard weakling what real Dominance looks like. Who the fuck does he think he is, imagining you like that? How dare he imagine himself degrading you like that?

ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Easy: Success] - Mm, yeah, you’re sooooo right. Let’s talk about him degrading us. Please.

SUGGESTION [Easy: Success] - No. Say the right thing. You know what it is.

YOU - “Yes, Lieutenant?”

KIM KITSURAGI - Kim is, by long practice, a still sort of person. Where you fidget, pace, open containers, lick things that oughtn’t be licked, and generally exist as a hurricane of a human, Kim is a damming wall, an immovable object. The tides of life break against Kim Kitsuragi, and he holds himself resolute against their breaking. He’s a tightly controlled man, always.

PERCEPTION (Sight) [Formidable: Success] - But for just an instant, Lieutenant Kitsuragi becomes even more still, as if he’s carefully holding something back.

ESPRIT DE CORPS [Medium: Success] - Interesting, he thinks.

HALF-LIGHT [Trivial: Success] - HE WASN’T SUPPOSED TO SEE THAT. Fuck, we fucked it up. He’s going to know. He's going to know and then it's all going to be over.

LOGIC [Medium: Failure] - Fucked up what? What’s he going to know?

NEW THOUGHT UNLOCKED : MOVEMENT IN THE DEEP

There’s a hell of a lot of holes in your memory, but this one’s a doozy: there’s something you ought to know about yourself, and you’ve misplaced it. Ooooh boy. I’ve got to tell you, seems like it’s a big one. There’s a lot of fear and adrenaline sparking off in here all of a sudden. Seems like you’ve got a secret you don’t want other people knowing, funky baby. Good luck protecting your secrets when you don’t know what they are! Lieutenant Kitsuragi is looking at you now, and this is no time to be making quips about his eyesight. He’s seeing you, baby. Clock is ticking.

Research time: Longer than it's going to take Lieutenant Kitsuragi, that's for damn sure. (This may take a while)

#harry/kim #harrykim #kimharry #okay full disclosure: this is the first little bit of a fic which is currently....uh...32k and counting #and I do not want to publish the whole fic on ao3 until it's done #buuuuut I'm stuck on a section 32k words from this and was kind of hoping that even a small amount of reader validation might help #so. I am posting this to tumblr which is not usually my fic scene #in the hopes that somebody might find this intriguing

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foster-the-world · 8 months

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Jury Duty

My husband's colleague is on the jury case for the NRA guy. My friend was on the selection for the Donald Trump case. She was not selected. How are they going to find anyone in NYC who doesn't hate Trump? How?

More PTA drama. More cussing. This time it was ALL CAPS texting about the person being a common thief. I'm staying out of it. The texting is totally unhinged. Yet, the person did do something stupid/wrong. Def not stealing but not smart either. The person getting yelled at is my friend. Its puts me in an awkward position of feeling bad I am not defending her while also thinking she is in the wrong. It's all happening over text. If it was in person I think it would be easier to jump in and ask them to discuss in a less hostile way. Anyway, messy in a way I want to avoid. I want to help my kids sweet little school not participate in adult drama.

The same friend offered one of our kids classmates mom a place to stay this weekend. The mom is a recent immigrant, single mom of three. The city is currently making people get out of their shelter and reapply every sixty days. I'm not sure if that rule applies to everyone or only recent immigrants. Certainly its an attempt to make them leave. Of course, if you have nowhere to go that's not going to happen. It also means all of the intake centers, which were already extremely overburdened, even more chaotic. I know our former fosters mom sat 9 hours a day for three days (with her three kids in tow) waiting to get a spot. Anyway, my friend told the immigrant mom if they don't give you a place you can stay with us. They have a very small two bedroom apt and two children. Def no extra beds. She apparently forgot she already told her neighbor (???) she could also stay this weekend. What? Who offers four people a place to stay in your very small apt without remembering you already had another houseguest? Anyway, she asked if we would be the back up until Sunday. Somewhat reluctantly, we said yes but Sunday was all we could offer. Four extra people in our apt feels like a lot. This is NYC apt not a spacious home. We have one bathroom. We have one full bed and a packn'play to offer - which is admittedly very lucky in NYC. My friend didn't even know the children's name. So it is not like it was a close friend that she had to offer a place to stay. I know the daughter is in my daughter's class but don't even know which child it is. I've met all of the Mom's but am not sure which one it is. Anyway, I'm thinking they will get her a place before then so it won't really happen. Our school's Parent Coordinator is working on it. She's a miracle worker and has a very generous and connected in the community church. If not, we will make a party out of it. The kids will love the guests. The family should also have the free pass our school offers to go to children's museums, etc. So will do all of that stuff. Order pizza. Watch movies. It's really baby boy's thats the problem. Extra stimuli make him extra stimulated - as expected. Will figure it out if it even happens. Hopefully the human connection will be nice especially when the world is such a mess.

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bondedstorm · 7 days

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🐉 michelle yeoh & cisfemale & she/her | suyin llywelyn, the retired rider/ monarch’s spouse, bonded with aelor for the past forty-two years. they're sixty two, quite a contrast to the three hundred and eighty of their curved horn purple feather-tail. they’re known to be quite composed, kind, practical , but on a bad day they can be kind of reckless, harsh, and secretive. if separated from their dragon, suyin relies on a scimitar and daggers to protect them. | heavy thick rain lashing against scale and skin , gentle happy cooing of a baby in a mother’s arm as they touch a reptilian snout, the sound of parchment in between fingers, the last flickerings of a candle in a dark room |

basics

full name : suyin llywelyn nee kheng age : sixty two title : queen consort, formerly captain of a squad nicknames : su, mom

personals

gender : cisfemale sexuality : pansexual, panromantic marital status : happily married interests : flying, writing stories, martial training, enjoying her children and husband fears : not being able to ride her dragon, her children overburdening themselves with responsibility, her home being attacked

appearance

hair : long think black hair with streaks of grey eyes : deep brown height : 5'4 or 163 cm clothing style : thick heavy fabrics showcasing the styles of embroidery of her people, generally wears robes or dresses in court but almost always has riding breeches under any outfit.

dragon

name : aelor sex : female pronouns : she/they color : purple, ranging between deep purple to a lighter purple depending on scale shedding season horns : curved, enjoys (deals with) decorations to showcase them tail : feathered age : three hundred and eighty personality : slightly arrogant, enjoys showing off, mischievous with a preference of scaring suyin; especially in flight

backstory

Suyin's life started small but happy. Born the only child of a single mother working as a merchant, Suyin was not in need of much. But Suyin was not a content child, always moving and needing to do more, jumping from activity to activity, never finding focus.

Until she witnessed a bonding ceremony and all her desires for the future clicked into place. Her mother tried her best to persuade her different, their family had always had their feet firmly planted on the earth but Suyin knew she was destined to fly.

She trained, she studied, she observed until finally she was old enough. The ceremony was nerve racking, that year many people wanted to be dragon riders. She was a blip in the crowd. But Aelor found her.

A young (in dragon years) mischievous, immature dragon, at least that is how many saw her. She had hadn't had a rider since she was much younger, she wasn't looking for one honestly but she locked eyes with this small human and she knew.

Suyin threw herself into being a rider with her whole heart and she prospered, becoming known as the rider and dragon willing to do any mission. She thought this was her life until someone literally pulled her off the saddle , that was until she met Orion

No relationship was supposed to be serious, she was supposed to live and die a dragon rider only, marriage and children were the furthest from her mind but Orion wiggled in.

it was fairy tale romance except maybe suyin was more the knight in shining armor than her husband would like to admit. They married quickly, before Suyin truly realized she was marrying the heir to the throne and what responsibilities that came with.

Her first born came a few years later and it finally hit her that her career was over. She struggled and self pitied then Aelor knocked some sense into her, that she could do more as queen than as a captain.

Suyin embraced her life after that, becoming a strong political force along side her husband. As well as sneaking away to fly and gossip with Aelor (her guards hate her sometimes). She grew older but her adventurous spirit didnt flicker except to worry about her as adventurous children.

Now she only wants to watch her children and kingdom embrace their potentials even if that means leaving her side.

#ridersfm.intro #; biography #(oof this is bad)

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 1 year

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[I am sharing this eloquent post as a cry from the hearts of all people of good will ; when like Job we seek voice for our despair.]

* * * *

People both here and around the world have checked in to ask how I am. I appreciate this more than you can imagine. But it puts me in a bind as to how to respond, beyond to affirm my physical safety and that of my children.

Those of you who know me personally, or even at length virtually, know that I struggle to restrict my responses to such a question to generalities and formalities. On the other hand, I’ve been working over the past year, in the wake of radical upheavals in my personal life, to restrain my openness. Some see that openness as oversharing that overburdens them.

So, responding to this question is challenging.

Yes, it would be correct to say that I’m fine. Because in many senses I am. Especially if we contextualize this with how others are doing. And even in this situation, I try to remember that context, and I try to remember both the morality and usefulness of gratitude. But I don’t always find the strength.

So, for those who want more detail, here it is.

I’m angry. This is of course to be expected. Joe Strummer (because you knew I’d quote him somewhere here) once wrote “let fury have the hour / anger can be power / you know that you can use it.” He was talking about a rather simple situation of resistance. When anger is directed in one clear direction, and it’s righteous, then outrage, literally directing one’s rage outward, can be an antidote to despair and fear. And if directed effectively, can be a powerful force for change, or at least survival. But that’s not where I am. Because I’m angry in so many directions I struggle to find a center on which to stand. In some senses, all of my angers are pulling me apart.

Given this predicament, I want to add a caveat before I particularize them. I am conscious of being in extremis. I may change my view on many of the things I lay out here. I may repudiate them. I may be embarrassed by them. I may be very wrong about some of these things, though explaining to me how I am wrong, even if done with good will, likely won’t help either of us. At any rate, the question “how are you?” is in the present. This is how I am now. A snapshot of the moment.

Yes, I am answering because I know some of you are personally interested, and yes, I am answering because I need to speak, and I live alone, and because I am Ori. But I also know that some have found value (because they’ve told me so) in my openness in sharing my views and experience.

Nonetheless, I’d like you to keep in mind the most important line in the Book of Job. After Job loses everything and is subjected to intense physical and emotional trauma, he cries out to God, demanding an explanation. Three friends gather to discuss how he might continue to believe in a just and good God and the possibility of a just and good world. And they all mean well.

The friend who speaks last, Eliphaz the Temani, holds he most correct position. He’s really smart, even wise. He isn’t simply an orthodox (small ‘o’) apologist for religious dogma demanding fidelity. He probes the problem deeply and calls for a complex subject position and view of God and the world.

God then speaks to Job from out of the whirlwind, before pivoting to the friends, not addressing all three, but speaking directly to Eliphaz.

וַיְהִי אַחַר דִּבֶּר יְהוָה אֶת הַדְּבָרִים הָאֵלֶּה אֶל אִיּוֹב וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָה אֶל אֱלִיפַז הַתֵּימָנִי חָרָה אַפִּי בְךָ וּבִשְׁנֵי רֵעֶיךָ כִּי לֹא דִבַּרְ��ֶּם אֵלַי נְכוֹנָה כְּעַבְדִּי אִיּוֹב.

“And after Hashem spoke these words to Job, Hashem said to Eliphaz the Temani, ‘I am incensed with you and your two friends, because you didn’t speak to me appropriately like my servant Job.’”

God doesn’t commend Eliphaz’s powerful theodicy, one that has provided many later rabbinic theologians – the Rambam (Maimonides) foremost among them (see the discussion of Providence in Part III of the Guide of the Perplexed) – with great intellectual inspiration. He doesn’t say ‘yep, well done Elushkeh, you got it right my brilliant child and your benighted brother Job just needs to listen to you.’ Rather, as the Rambam emphasizes, God rebukes him for being too invested in his own argument and correctness. The great Jewish historian Amos Funkenstein read Job as teaching that we don’t always deserve answers, but we have the right, and even obligation, to demand a hearing. Especially in extremis. Even if we are wrong or lost or broken or. . .angry.

With that in mind, my answer to the question “how are you?”, that I’m angry includes a list of things I’m angry about. In no special order and certainly no hierarchical ranking.

I’m angry at Hamas about the vicious slaughter and widespread trauma they inflicted, gleefully, on so many people.

I’m angry at Israel’s vaunted security and intelligence communities and institutions, whose often appalling moral decisions and violations of rights have been justified with recourse to the necessity for security, for nonetheless failing to keep us safe.

I’m angry at this absurd government led by a man who has time and again placed his own interests and power above duty to country, while posing as a superlative patriot. And has never paid a political price.

I’m angry at his party for clinging to him despite his amorality (or immorality) because doing so has served their own interests.

I’m angry that for years he funneled cash from Qatar to Hamas while posing as the only one who can keep Jews safe. And I’m angry that so many people bought into this. And angry that so many still do. I’m angry that more than 2% of the population somehow doesn’t want him to resign immediately.

I’m angry at everyone who voted for any party in this government who hasn’t apologized for empowering such a group of corrupt and irresponsible chauvinists and zealots.

I’m angry at Hamas for undercutting the struggle for Palestinian rights and lending credence to the caricatures of Palestinians as bloodthirsty savages who just want to kill Jews, which is far from the truth. This will not only cost Palestinian lives in the immediate, but it will also set back their pursuit of justice and dignity by decades. They have alienated hard-won support in the international community. And they have made it harder to stand for their recognition, rights, and justice. Here, in Israel, it makes answering the refrain that ‘they don’t really want freedom, they just want us all dead and gone’ exponentially more difficult. And they have reinforced the flawed attitude that any failure of brutality to subjugate others is evidence of the need for more brutality.

I’m angry at the harm that this will perpetuate for Israel and Israelis, now and in future generations, on so many levels. Dehumanizing themselves and us, dehumanizing us all, plunging us ever deeper into a morass of hatred and violence. There is no security and dignity for Israeli Jews if there is no security and dignity for Palestinian Arabs.

I’m angry at those on the right who are already waving this as vindication of their cruelty and hate-mongering.

I’m angry at those on the left who are celebrating this as valid resistance and a step in the direction of justice.

I’m angry at their glib equivocations that show zero compassion for individual lives.

One cannot seek justice for peoples if one isn’t seeking justice for people.

Justice only comes when we provide safety and dignity for all.

I’m angry at the arrogance of so many privileged people with little knowledge and enormous self-righteousness, who deny their own implication in a global system that has enabled this situation and glory in accusing others, and who celebrate or rationalize this slaughter as just desserts. Especially those who have never stepped foot here, haven’t read a 100th of what I’ve read, who don’t interact and work with Palestinians every day, yet who like to “educate” me about the Palestinian suffering I’ve witnessed, stay abreast of, and seek to alleviate. There is no justice without humility.

My supposed allies on the left in regard to so many causes, including justice for Palestinians, this isn’t about YOU.

I’m angry at those who obscure context and discredit it by calling it justification. Understanding something more deeply and broadly doesn’t mean one thinks it is just. To any and every brutal situation, some will inevitably respond with brutality. Others will not. That brutality is therefore inevitable, but not justified. It doesn’t exonerate someone who decapitates a parent in front of their child. It doesn’t exonerate someone who throws grenades at people who are dancing. It doesn’t exonerate someone who rapes or beats or shoots or bombs others. Systemic and historical analysis does not neutralize moral agency and responsibility. When we fail to attend to either, we are part of the problem.

I’m angry that someone next to whom I sat Shabbat after Shabbat for years in synagogue went to a music festival, had his arm blown off with a grenade, applied his own tourniquet, and now is a hostage in Gaza with no medical attention to his grave injury. And his parents and sisters, like so many others, are living a nightmare.

I'm angry that my youngest child has spent hours with her best friend, keeping her company, while she's overcome with fear for her beloved older brother (they are so close that one of his profile pictures is of the two of them) who was sent to the front.

I’m angry at myself that this is the world and childhood I’ve given my three children.

I’m angry that I did not build a career that would have given me a meaningful role of some sort in this crisis. I’m angry at the reasons I didn’t do so, many of which have to do with an illness I was both born with and that was exacerbated by my experience and failures to overcome it.

I’m angry at my supposed allies here in Israel who have refused to recognize that democracy and dignity for only some is a delusion. In fact, it is democracy and dignity for no one.

I’m angry that my country is filled with creative energy and courage when it comes to technology and the arts, but absolutely devoid of any creativity and courage when it comes to politics.

I’m angry that I once found Israel’s precariousness romantic and thought it provided a more authentic experience of life and greater purity of commitment and affiliation.

I’m angry at the dishonestly partial and propagandistic education that informed those sentiments.

I’m angry at those who have turned my people’s traditions into distorting mirrors of superiority and cudgels of cruelty.

I’m angry that thousands of Palestinian children will be killed and traumatized in the next days and weeks.

I’m angry that my own children’s immediate welfare and that of my people, and the immediate welfare of another people and its children, are now seemingly mutually exclusive.

I’m angry that I don’t currently possess a plausible vision for a better future.

I’m angry that I live by myself and that the nights are very very long.

I’m angry that this week will forever shape my children’s lives, and my own.

And I’m angry that, unlike Job, I don’t have the kind of faith that gives me an address to demand a hearing and express my anger.

So if you’ve read this, you will have to do.

And I’m angry that some who read this will feel pain.

[Ori Hanan Weisberg]

#war in Israel #Israel Hamas war #words and writing #Ori Hanan Weisberg #the book of Job #theology #war

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eliaswyler · 4 months

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THE BASICS:

FULL NAME: Elias Brian Wyler

NICKNAMES: Ellie, to close friends

AGE & BIRTHDAY: 37 & May 11, 1987

BIRTHDAY PLACE: Honolulu, HI

GENDER IDENTITY: Cis man, he/him

SEXUALITY: Heterosexual

MARITAL STATUS: Married (technically), but separated

ZODIAC: ☼ Taurus ☾ Aries ↑ Aries

+ TRAITS: Empathetic, Spontaneous, Sensual, Practical

- TRAITS: Pretentious, Stubborn, Cynical, Unreliable

NEIGHBORHOOD: Cardinal Hill

OCCUPATION: Fisherman & Charter Guide @ Finest Catch

PERSONALITY:

His good days are good and his bad days are the worst -- Elias leads a life with no middle ground. He tends to exist on a high frequency, abundant energy transformed into a tunnel vision focus for errant hobbies, often shirking basic responsibilities and bailing on those closest to him. He's little talk and all action, impulsivity and passion creating a colorful reputation in his wake. Even when he's deemed pretentious and cynical, he still takes pride in the fact that no one could ever call him lukewarm.

BIOGRAPHY:

Elias would tell you that he was born on the run (most likely while sitting in a nondescript bar, fishing cherries out of a Dirty Shirley), but that's not quite the truth. It sounds like it, on the first telling, when he carries on to list everywhere he lived between the ages of zero and eighteen; Hawaii, Georgia, Italy, Japan, Washington, Illinois, etc. It's a lot, sure, but there was never any urgency to it. No fear or rush as the Wyler family packed up for the umpteenth time and moved across the country again. The excitement of getting a fresh start in a new neighborhood and new school district wore off somewhere around the sixth grade for Elias. It had become routine. After all, that's just the hand you're dealt as a military brat, huh?

For being a Marine, Elias never viewed his father as a particularly strict figure in his life. He was absent, mostly, sometimes even missing holidays at home. And his mother, overburdened with five children and a part-time job as a school nurse, never became a fully-formed individual in his mind, either. As he grew up, he became thankful for their habitual moving, frequently acting out and never facing consequences because of it. It wasn't until they moved to Illinois just before the start of his junior year that Elias felt like anything would ever be permanent -- and even then, it still wasn't. He made sure of it.

With stars in his eyes, he graduated from Blue Harbor High in a rush, desperate to start his life in every conceivable way. The first thing he did was get married, impulsively (AKA stupidly) tying the knot with his then high school girlfriend. They ushered in a rocky relationship that had no chance at lasting. Elias stuck it out for a few years, determined to believe that he'd put down roots for good, but after a few summers working at The Finest Catch, he cashed out. He left without warning, not telling a soul when he booked a one-way ticket to Australia and just went.

Elias would argue that it's his upbringing that kept him on the move for so long. After a paradoxically sheltered yet cultured life experience, he wanted to explore the world in his own way. To literally broaden his horizons, bounding between countries and states. Somewhere along the way, Elias picked up photography, becoming half-decent at it and garnering a few minor publications. His recognition peaked with his thirties, taking him to New York and thus beginning his lover era. Meeting and falling for Danika turned Elias into an idealist, swept up into the notion of a charmed life he'd never known before, but reality came knocking when they started to talk marriage -- and he remembered he had a wife back in Blue Harbor. Using his mother's hometown and the inheritance of a fishing boat as a two-pronged excuse to transplant their lives, he hoped to make quick work of his divorce in private. Naturally, it didn't go that smoothly. He was found out, his relationship unspooled right before his eyes, and he still didn't get those damn divorce papers signed. If he wasn't so stubborn, Elias would've hit the ground running, but with a lease hanging over his head and the accidental rekindling of histories starting again, he's making a valiant attempt at weathering the storm… for now.

HEADCANONS & EXTRAS:

one of the least judgmental people you'll ever meet! considers life to be one big joke of an experiment and maintains that nothing is ever set in stone.

that being said, elias has his bouts of pretention -- catch him on a Sad Drunk night and he'll for sure lament the death of print media.

very much a failed photographer (emphasis on failed as his professional career petered out over the last 2-ish years), but he still enjoys the rare silence of a darkroom now and then.

has several scattered tattoos that lack any sort of meaning. his oldest ink is the marine corps emblem on his upper arm, which he got to match his baby brother who'd just enlisted at the time -- jake didn't find it as funny as elias thought it was.

partied hard in his 20s, dabbling in all sorts of substances, but he's since pulled back. he won't turn down a good offer if it comes his way, buuuut... yeah, he's feeling his age more often than not.

unironically could still describe his nights out tho (catch him gettin' booted from the pour house!)

for as flighty as he is, elias is exceptional at his job. he's felt at home within the sway of waves, often extending his visits to more tropical locales, so he's right at home on the docks. the only drawback? charters. he gets reprimanded a lot for rolling his eyes at people who don't know how to bait a hook.

never had any pets growing up, so he's one of those freaks that sort of treats animals like independent human beings themselves.

#intro.bh #drug use tw #cheating tw #both only ~ vaguely ~ mentioned

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Text

29th April >> Fr. Martin's Reflections / Homilies on

Today's Mass Readings (Inc. Matthew 11:25-30) for Feast of Saint Catherine of Sienna: ‘I am gentle and humble in heart’.

And

Monday, Fifth Week of Easter (Inc. John 14:21-26

Feast of Saint Catherine of Sienna

And

Monday, Fifth Week of Easter (Inc. John 14:21-26)

Feast of Saint Catherine of Sienna

Gospel (Except USA) Matthew 11:25-30 You have hidden these things from the wise and revealed them to little children.

Jesus exclaimed, ‘I bless you, Father, Lord of heaven and of earth, for hiding these things from the learned and the clever and revealing them to mere children. Yes, Father, for that is what it pleased you to do. Everything has been entrusted to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, just as no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. ‘Come to me, all you who labour and are overburdened, and I will give you rest. Shoulder my yoke and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. Yes, my yoke is easy and my burden light.’

Gospel (USA) Matthew 11:25-30 You have hidden these things from the wise and the learned and have revealed them to the childlike.

At that time Jesus responded: “I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike. Yes, Father, such has been your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.

“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.”

Reflections (3)

(i) Feast of Saint Catherine of Sienna

Born in 1347, Catherine entered the Dominican Third Order at the age of eighteen and spent the next three years in seclusion, prayer, and austerity. Gradually, a group of followers gathered around her, men and women, priests and religious. An active public apostolate grew out of her contemplative life, working with the sick, the poor, prisoners and plague victims. In 1378, the Great Schism began, splitting the allegiance of Christendom between two, then three, popes. She spent the last two years of her life in Rome in prayer, pleading on behalf of the cause of Pope Urban VI and the unity of the Church. She offered herself as a victim for the Church in its agony. She died surrounded by her followers and was canonized in 1461. A contemplative, her life of prayer expressed itself in the loving service of those in need. A mystic, she involved herself as a peacemaker and a reconciler in the great affairs of church and state of the day. In the words of today’s first reading she lived her life in the light, in God who is light, and brought the light of God’s reconciling love to her broken church and world. Today’s gospel reading gives us an insight into the prayer of Jesus, ‘I bless you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth..’. Jesus’ communion with God in prayer directs him to those who labour and are overburdened, inviting them to come to him and receive the gift of rest, the revival of their drooping spirits. This two fold dynamic of prayerful communion with God and loving service of the broken and needy that shaped the life of Jesus also shaped the life of Catherine. It is to shape all of our lives.

And/Or

(ii) Saint Catherine of Siena

Catherine was a mystic, and like other great mystics, she enjoyed an intimate relationship with Christ. In the gospel reading, Jesus declares that ‘no one knows the Son except the Father’. Yet, Jesus also declares in that gospel reading that the Father reveals these things to mere children. The Father reveals the Son to those who become like little children, those who, like Catherine, are deeply aware of their dependence on God and are completely open to all that God can give us. We are all called to know the Son as the Father does; in that sense, we are all called to be mystics to some degree. The Lord’s invitation, ‘Come to me, all who labour and are overburdened’, is addressed to all of us. He calls out to all of us to come to him, to come to know and love him as he knows and loves us. Catherine’s mysticism did not withdraw her from the world; she was deeply involved in what was happening in Europe and in the church in her time. After a profound mystical experience she had a sense of Christ calling her to serve the wider world and universal church. She commenced her role as a public figure, dictating hundreds of letters to popes, monarchs and other letters of note. When the Lord calls us to himself it is not to take us out of the world but to send us into the world afire with the flame of his love.

And/Or

(iii) Saint Catherine of Siena

Catherine was one of the great mystics of the church. She was born in 1347 and died in 1380, at the age of thirty three. At a young age, she decided to give herself to the Lord, and she resisted the attempts of her family to find her a good husband. Rather than joining a religious order, she became a Dominican tertiary. After a three year period of prayer and seclusion she set about serving her neighbours, distributing alms to the poor, ministering to the sick and to prisoners. After a profound mystical experience she had a sense of Christ calling her to serve the wider world and universal church. She commenced her role as a public figure, dictating hundreds of letters to popes, monarchs and other letters of note. She also wrote her great work, the Dialogues, describing the contents of her mystical conversations with Christ. Catherine’s mysticism did not withdraw her from the world; she was deeply involved in what was happening in Europe and in the church in her time. She persuaded Pope Gregory XI to return to Rome from Avignon. She insisted that the Pope’s place was beside the bones of the martyrs. Shortly after his return, Pope Gregory died. He was succeeded by Pope Urban VI who turned out to be a disastrous Pope. The cardinals regretted their decision and elected a second Pope but could not persuade Pope Urban to retire. The church now had two Popes, one in Rome and one in Avignon, a situation that was to last for several decades. Catherine remained faithful to Urban, in spite of his faults, because he had been duly elected. She was convinced that the wound in the body of Christ could only be healed by great sacrifice. She prayed that she might atone for the sins of the church, and shortly afterwards collapsed and died. Catherine stood out as a beacon of light in a dark time. That is the calling of each one of us. We are all called to be mystics to some degree. The Lord’s invitation, ‘Come to me, all who labour and are overburdened’, is addressed to us all. He calls out to all of us to come to him, to know and love him as he knows and loves us. In calling us to himself he also sends us into the world afire with the flame of his love.

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

Monday, Fifth Week of Easter

Gospel (Except USA) John 14:21-26 The Advocate, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything.

Jesus said to his disciples:

‘Anybody who receives my commandments and keeps them will be one who loves me; and anybody who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I shall love him and show myself to him.’

Judas – this was not Judas Iscariot – said to him, ‘Lord, what is all this about? Do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world?’ Jesus replied:

‘If anyone loves me he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we shall come to him and make our home with him. Those who do not love me do not keep my words. And my word is not my own: it is the word of the one who sent me. I have said these things to you while still with you; but the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all I have said to you.’

Gospel (USA) John 14:21-26 The Advocate whom the Father will send will teach you everything.

Jesus said to his disciples: “Whoever has my commandments and observes them is the one who loves me. Whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him.” Judas, not the Iscariot, said to him, “Master, then what happened that you will reveal yourself to us and not to the world?” Jesus answered and said to him, “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; yet the word you hear is not mine but that of the Father who sent me. “I have told you this while I am with you. The Advocate, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name – he will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you.”

Reflections (7)

(i) Monday, Fifth Week of Easter

The verb ‘to love�� occurs frequently in today’s gospel reading. It speaks of our love for Jesus, Jesus’ love for us, and God the Father’s love for us. God the Father expresses his love for us by giving us the Son. Jesus expresses his love for us by laying down his life for us, and by making known to us all he has learnt from the Father. We express our love for Jesus by keeping his word, by living according to his teaching, which, in John’s gospel, is summed up as ‘love one another as I have loved you’. The gospel reading also makes reference to the Advocate, the Holy Spirit. As the Father expresses his love for us by giving us the Son; the Father and Son together express their love for us by giving us the Holy Spirit. The role of the Holy Spirit, according to our reading, is to be our teacher, to keep bringing to our minds the teaching, the word, of Jesus. The Holy Spirit helps us to keep Jesus’ word, especially his command to ‘love one another as I have loved you’. In that short gospel reading, there is a whole vision of the Christian life, of God’s relationship with us as Father, Son and Spirit, and of our relationship with each other.

And/Or

(ii) Monday, Fifth Week of Easter

We are only a little under three weeks now from the feast of Pentecost, which we celebrate on Sunday two weeks. It is hard to believe we are already more than half way through the seven week season of Easter. As we get closer to the feast of Pentecost, we will begin to hear more references to the Holy Spirit in the readings that are proclaimed at Mass. In this morning’s gospel reading Jesus says to his disciples, ‘the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all that I have said to you’. It is the evening before Jesus is put to death; his disciples are aware that Jesus is taking his leave of them. In that highly charged hour Jesus assures them that his leaving them, his death, will not be the end of his relationship with them. He will send the Holy Spirit from the Father who will remind them of all Jesus said to them. Jesus’ relationship with them will endure in and through the Holy Spirit. Jesus is present to all of us, within all of us, in and through the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit brings Jesus to us today and brings us to Jesus. That is why we need to keep on praying, ‘Come Holy Spirit, fill my heart’. We keep asking the Spirit we have already received to keep on filling us more and more, filling our thoughts, words, deeds, filling our very being, so that our relationship with the Lord will continue to deepen.

And/Or

(iii) Monday, Fifth Week of Easter

We are in the season of Easter which will continue until the feast of Pentecost on next Sunday two weeks. As we draw gradually closer to the feast of Pentecost, we hear an increasing reference to the Holy Spirit in the liturgy. This morning Jesus promises that the Father will send the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, to teach his disciples everything and to remind them of all that Jesus has said. One of the roles of the Holy Spirit is to lead us into a deeper understanding of all that Jesus did and said. In that sense, the Holy Spirit leads us to Jesus, just as Jesus leads us to the Father. It is the Holy Spirit who helps us to hear what Jesus said as a word addressed to us today; the Holy Spirit brings Jesus close to us, makes him present and brings his word to life for us. That is why as we sit to listen to the Lord’s word it is good to invoke the coming of the Holy Spirit, and to invite the Spirit to bring that word alive for us. The Holy Spirit helps us to listen fruitfully to the Lord’s word; the Holy Spirit enables us also to make a heartfelt response to that word, both in prayer and in how we live. We very much need the Holy Spirit; that is why the church encourages us to pray, ‘Come Holy Spirit’ especially in the during these weeks as we prepare for the feast of Pentecost.

And/Or

(iv) Monday, Fifth Week of Easter

I often pay attention to the questions people ask in the gospels. They can be very revealing. Sometimes it is easy to make these questions our own. We find one such question in today’s gospel reading. Judas, not Judas Iscariot, asks Jesus, ‘Lord, what is all this about?’ It is a question that comes out of a failure to understand just what Jesus is saying. The meaning of Jesus’ words is not always self-evident. We can easily find ourselves asking the same question as Judas, ‘What is all this about?’ It is a good question. It can set us on a search for a fuller understanding of Jesus’ message. In response to Judas’ question, Jesus promises to send the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, who ‘will teach you everything and remind you of all I have said to you’. Jesus has been the teacher of his disciples. Now, in the setting of the last supper, on the eve of his death, he promises his disciples that he will continue to teach them beyond his death in and through the Holy Spirit. That promise is made to all of us. The disciples in the upper room at the last supper represent us all. As we find ourselves asking, ‘What is all this about?’ we are not left to our own devices. The Lord is always offering us the gift of the Holy Spirit as our teacher, to help us to understand more deeply all the Lord has said and done. Paul declares in his first letter to the Corinthians that ‘no one understands what is truly God’s except the Spirit of God’.

And/Or

(v) Monday, Fifth Week of Easter

There has always been a human tendency to worship something less than God. A movement, an ideology, an institution, an individual can acquire an almost divine status that demands and, sometimes, receives a quality of allegiance that is due to God alone. Idolatry is the fundamental sin which is the root of other sins. The very attractiveness of some reality can be the catalyst for relating to it as god-like. In today’s first reading, some people of Lycaonia came to the conclusion that Paul and Barnabas were gods because they had cured a cripple. They wanted to treat them as they did their other gods, offering sacrifice to them. Paul had to restrain them in no uncertain terms, ‘What do you think you are doing? We are only human beings like you’. Paul wanted them to worship the living God who had been revealed in the person of Jesus, God’s Son. The Lycaonians zeal to worship Paul and Barnabas was unenlightened. They needed instruction on the folly of what they were doing. In the gospel reading, Jesus acknowledges our continuing need for instruction, for enlightenment. He declares to his disciples on the night of the last supper that beyond the time of his death and resurrection, his heavenly Father will send the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, to ‘teach you everything and remind you of all I have said to you’. It is the Holy Spirit who keeps leading us to a deeper appreciation of Jesus and to a closer following of him. Just as the Spirit leads us to Jesus, Jesus leads us to the Father, the living and true God.

And/Or

(vi) Monday, Fifth Week of Easter

When Paul is speaking to a pagan audience in today’s first reading, he tells them that the living God did not leave them without evidence of himself in the good things he did for them, such as abundant rain, the growth of crops, sufficient food. It can be helpful for us to recognize the presence of the living God in the good things in our own lives, especially in these times when we have so many not so good things to come to terms with. Even in the midst of struggle and loss, good things can be found, and all such good things are little reminders of the presence of the living God. The really good thing in our lives that the living God has given us is God’s own Son, Jesus. In the gospel reading, Jesus makes the extraordinary statement that if we love him, he and his heavenly Father will come to us and make their home with us. It is quite something to reflect on how Jesus and God the Father want to make their home with each one of us. This is a time when many people cannot get to church, which we think of as God’s house, God’s home. Yet, Jesus is reminding us that each one of us can become a church, in the sense that God and his Son can make their home in us. We can each become the house of God, the home of God. It is through the Holy Spirit that Jesus and God the Father make their home in us. At the end of the gospel reading, Jesus says that God the Father will send us the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, to remind us of all Jesus said to us. In one of his letters, Paul refers to the baptized as temples of the Holy Spirit. It is good to ask ourselves in these days, ‘Do I think of myself as a home for God and Jesus, as a temple of the Holy Spirit?’ ‘When I do think of myself in this way, what impact does it have on me?’ Elsewhere in John’s gospel, Jesus suggests that this awareness can bring us a peace the world cannot give.

And/Or

(vii) Monday, Fifth Week of Easter

In this gospel of John, Jesus often speaks not so much about loving the neighbour but loving him. The focus is more on our own loving relationship with the Lord. It is clear from today’s gospel reading that by loving him Jesus does not mean a certain kind of feeling but a certain way of life. As he says, ‘if anyone loves me, they will keep my word’. We show our love for Jesus by keeping his word, by listening to his word and then living out that word in our lives. Elsewhere in the gospel of John, Jesus declares that keeping his word entails loving one another as he loves us. Love of neighbour is not absent from this gospel of John. However, it is understood as the expression of our love for Jesus. We show our love for Jesus by keeping his word and his word calls us to love one another as he loves us. The Lord’s love for us comes first, then our love for the Lord in return, which then finds expression in loving others as the Lord has loved us. It is clear from today’s gospel reading as well that this loving way of life, this keeping of the Lord’s word, is not just down to our own efforts alone. We will need the help of the Holy Spirit, or the Advocate. According to Jesus in today’s gospel reading, the role of the Holy Spirit is to remind us of all Jesus has said to us, to keep bringing to our minds the word of Jesus, especially his call to love one another as he has loved us. The Holy Spirit not only reminds us of this word of Jesus that we are to keep, but empowers us to live it out in our lives. The Holy Spirit is the recreating power of the risen Lord in our lives enabling us to love as we have been loved.

Fr. Martin Hogan.

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