#where is good old fashioned christian guilt man | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

rametarin · 1 year

Text

Another internal struggle between the World of Darkness of the past, and World of Darkness of today.

Past World of Darkness was considered to be in the, "Screw you, hippie" school of game design. Which is, I think, a label applied most by screwed hippies with sour grapes.

In truth, World of Darkness was a celebration of horror, pop culture and folklore. And sometimes, culture and folklore is not politically correct. It just isn't. You may take umbrige with the idea of some ghost of an aborted or stillborn fetus angry at its mother or other women as some sort of misogynistic or patriarchal phantom of guilt meant to make women feel bad, but you don't get to disinclude it from the big list of adult fables and folklore we get to add to our edgy tabletop game featuring horror and unsavory macabre superstitions.

Culture does not care about your modern day ideas of what is right or wrong or just. It's history, and it is tradition, and it is origin. To censor that because you don't like it is merely to do what Maoist China does; trying to edit shit like the Bible to conform to modern, more socialist ideas about what is right by having Jesus spit out a line like, "No man is perfect and no man can be free of sin. Not even me." You know, the guy who was sent to be sacrificed as the ultimate sinless person. Anyway..

In those years, the big struggle was against domestic religious ubiquity of Christianity that was rallying itself to culture up because it felt like all these non-Christians moving in would change the pluralistic and defacto supremacy of the cultural outlook of the US along with other parts of Europe. So, naturally, the punk and anarch and liberal youth response was to take the real life annoyances of televangelists and those jealous, out of touch middle aged people from the 60s to 90s and depict them as enablers of baby-eating, child raping priests and clandestine abusive religious institutions.

What was en vogue at the time was putting neo-paganism on a pedestal, and that meant whether you liked and vibed with that or not, you trusted the Odinists and the neo-pagans of other cultural "faiths" (that were really just excuses to wear horns and go to concerts and engage in good ole fashioned orgies) more than you trusted or tolerated your everyday milquetoast religious population. That of course meant an eclectic and often shallow mishmash of misc. European, African and Asian cultural icon traditions, as only ill informed but arguably well intentioned children withj limited access to information and sources will do.

It was WELL known at the time that Odinist or similar European neo-Paganism was often affiliated with white nationalists, but they understood you didn't just throw all that shit under the rug just because some cultural identityless stormfuckers adopted the symbols. It was understood that those symbols didn't belong to the fascists and neo-Nazis, they were appropriated and didn't belong to them. Nobody thought Norse mythology was inherently just a whistle blown for neo-Nazis, it was considered something they illegimately held and were ignored for doing it. Unlike today, where any viking or European Paganist symbols or traditions are considered to be violently subversive white supremacist symbols. Because, didn't you know, WhItE PeOpLe dOn'T hAvE CuLtUrE. It was cringy, but you could at least run games with elements of old elements of folklore and myths played as having a kernel of truth. Now they treat that shit like you want to be a Nazi but just aren't following through.

And it was more liberal, in that you could have figures such as the wendigo chilling and real alongside the damned, demons and the possessed. Something that certain overcompensating people will say is a social no-no, because the icon is "sacred." Well, guess what? To literal billions of people on earth, not a few million, depicting demons is also sacriligious and disrespectful, but the naysayers will scream about how it shouldn't be permitted because it, "trivializes the beliefs of the aboriginal Americas."

I wonder what percent of those aboriginal americans are Christian, today. Anyway..

However, there has ALWAYS been a progressive-to-the-point-of wet blanket element to World of Darkness' writing overtones that contradicted the more liberal narrative and openness for adult subject matter. A grey space where the forces trying to make everything politically correct and "healthy" Vs. realizing the real world is not. And, unfortunately, sometimes this internal strife compromises the game.

So on the one hand you have encouragement to talk about "serious adult subjects and black subject matter," but then on the other, reprimends if you talk about it in a certain way, or contradict someone at the table that doesn't like something depicted any way but one.

And I kind of feel like the writer's room for WoD must just be this uncomfortable minefield of walking on eggshells between the Problem Glasses that don't compromise for anything and have the power to dial up the HR department if they decide disagreement with them is, "lichurally calling for the deaths of LGBT and persons of color" on if red curtains on a canopy bed are sexist or something.

90s WoD acknowledged that there existed a nonpartisan middle America that was neither their avowed enemies or Nazis, and conservatives weren't actually Nazis just because they were conservative. At least, they knew it was a nonstarter and not tolerated to say that aloud, and they didn't want to destroy social capital of people that weren't ideological side choosers by doing that. There were always partisan ideologicals that were more radical anarcho-communist or anarchists that occassionally would get drunk (or some other kind of intoxicated) and decide to use WoD or the social circles to push and platform narrative, but the older guard largely told them to shove off.

Well. Time passes, old guard stop playing or die off. Social circles add new people and lose old ones. This is inevitable. The older culture gets replaced naturally, as well as unnaturally.

But the thing is, World of Darkness as a franchise and the companies behind it tend to grow as these positions are argued to the point of numbness. When WoD first began it was a bunch of drunken cynical goths all over the place, politically incorrect in certain ways, violently volatile against one another, with contradictory schools and factions that wouldn't tolerate one another while preaching that they were tolerant, unlike the conservatives.

As time passed and the game advanced, elements that were introduced that were passe or painfully examples of their time changed, too. Werewolf: the Apocalypse can best be characterized as if the misanthrope psycho that always wears three wolf paw print shirts wrote a game. In it, an entire tribe of Greek amazons called the Black Furies was created just to give the second and third wave feminists something that resonated to anti-male womanness woman dominated culture and space that platformed much of the shit feminist academics were saying.

But as the editions matured, it became less an anti-technology and cowardly hidden anti-capitalist "but don't accuse me of that, you red scare McCarthyist!", anti-industrialist, pro-aboriginal spiritualist messages, and became more a story about how insanity itself has warped the world to self-destruction. It became less an episode of Captain Planet starring jaded goth protagonists.

The meta changes and improves if the writers and spirit behind the game change over time. Here's hoping V5 experiences the same maturation. First edition had may of the same growing pains of overcompensation and hilariously unintentional racism by people that were trying to be anti-racist according to shitty definitions of what it is, at the time.

5 notes · View notes

oskarwing · 3 years

Text

I really wanna talk about the parent child relationships in Midnight Mass

I’m not sure if I’m good at writing this sorta Meta but here goes nothing. Very many spoilers follow.

Let’s start with the adults:

First we have Erin who suffered so much at the hands of her mother and later because of her mother’s abuse. We don’t get much detailed info on Peggy Greene but from what we can gather she was a lot like Beverly Keane, who seemed to idolize her (though that probably got easier for her after Peggy was gone), in her self-righteous over-pious manner. She just happened to be Beverly with an alcohol problem and a daughter who she could take all her anger at life for not working out her way for God loving her just the same as everybody else out. The dove scene is really such a good scene. But Erin was stronger than her mother, stronger than the abuse that was about to repeat itself and when she found out that she would have a child of her own she left and tried her best to give her kid a better life than the one she had. And she found the strength I think with the help of the same God her mother most likely used as legitimation for her abuse (don’t get me wrong I believe it was Erin’s own strength but she also clearly found something in religion that helped her gather it) and it helped her to carve out a path for herself and her unborn child.

Sarah’s relationship to her parents is such an interesting one because we get to see the end of it. The man who she believed to be her father has been dead for a long while and her mother is suffering through the late stages of dementia. And Sarah showed up for it. As a doctor she most likely knew what would be happening as soon as Mildred started to show the first symptombs but she wasn’t going to leave her mother. That kind of care for an elderly parent shows something that is proven in Mildred’s character time and time again: She is a very devoted parent and the love between mother and daughter flows both ways in every scene they are in together, after the birth of her daughter her world turned around Sarah and she loved her with all she had. There are a few scenes that show that Mildred’s understanding of the duty she felt towards her family came from the old values of her time. She wouldn’t have taken off with John and their child not for a lack of love but because in those times, in catholism still at least where I’m from, you can’t just marry a priest. You can’t just have a child with a priest eventhough you’re married and then fuck off with him. As a woman, as a wife and mother you have to stand with your husband, stand with your child and you have to stop running after fantasies I’m sure Mildred had. I’m saying this all from her perspective btw, I don’t necessarily think running away with John, in the way he wished to, would have been good for Sarah but honesty might have been and her old fashioned values were also what kept her from being truly honest with her daughter. To John on the other hand Sarah is a fantasy, a dream he couldn’t reach. His daughter, his baby, so close and yet so far away getting to watch her grow into an adult but never being able to really be her father as in her Dad instead of her priest. And it’s painful to him, he clearly loved Mildred, loved Sarah but he was also kinda selfish in his love that in the end took Sarah away. At first he isolated his child by starring at her giving her the creeps and the feeling that she had done something wrong that he knew she was gay and dissaproved and then he took it upon himself to ‘cure’ Mildred in the same way he was. Sarah wanted to take care of her mother wanted to be there for her in those final months and John decided it was up to him to give Mildred a youth potion to make it so she’d never die. And with that he took away from Sarah what is without doubt a hard but for many people a very important last part of the relationship between child and parent. John was a complicated man and would maybe have been a great Dad he certainly showed a lot of fatherly love for his altar boys but he couldn’t have the family in the way he fantasized about and in the end it was that fantasy that made him act the way he did.

Riley Flynn causes his parents a lot of pain. Him killing that girl in the beginning, his alcoholism, him simply not liking the place, the home they build for themselves through hard work causes the Annie and Ed so much pain and financial loss and you can see how tired they are, how much guilt they feel for failing their son. Ed calls out his own guilt and says that he doesn’t belive it could be Annie’s fault because ‘your mother’s a saint’ but what I truly love about Annie and Ed Flynn is that they both aren’t saints. As a mother Annie is very much overprotective and suffocating, wanting to keep her children on crocket island and hating the notion that they might leave her, even though she is kind and sweet and loving. And while Ed seems rather checked out as a father but he is the more honest parent, never talking down to Riley and telling him as it is, telling him about the pain he caused him while also admitting to the guilt he feels. The Flynns are flawed people even in their religious practice (I think the way Annie speaks about Ali showing up at church when Hassan seemed to be nothing but nice to her spoke very loudly to the fact that Annie is rather misguided sometimes) but they are good people at the core of it and their parenting might have been part of Riley’s way into alcoholism but it wasn’t only them. There were things they couldn’t change and things they had no influence over like his heart being broken by Erin running away, the sort of people he went out on parties with and so many other things... Yes, they may have shaped their son in a way that made him vulnerable to addiction and the party scene of the stock and tech market and brought him to the point where he killed a child but it doesn’t happen through parenting alone and they also shaped him in the good ways. Him not losing himself when Pruitt changes him, him being brave enough to warn Erin, him standing up for what he believes in those things were also shaped by Ed and Annie. They are one of the best example of flawed but good hearted Christians I have seen in recent media and their portrayal was one of the most heartbreaking ones.

Now the kids:

Let’s start with Leeza. Little Leeza Scarborough who before it comes to her wonder gets treated with pity and overprotectiveness from her parents and the island community at large. Leeza was injured by Joe Collie transforming him into the island’s villain and her into the ever present victim. What happened to her is without a doubt horrible and I understand why Wade and Dolly started to become these overprotective parents, why they were so easily sucked in to John’s and Bev’s scheme. Their little girl was almost taken from them eventhough Wade is the mayor, one of the most powerful people on the island he had no influence over what happened to Leeza even was the one who took her out that day and what followed the accident was as we can gather from their conversation with Sarah a lot of pain and financial burden though they say they would have done it all over for Leeza. In fact a lot of places in crockett island are wheelchair accesible and I am sure that Wade as mayor made it so (I can’t really imagine that a small place like the island was very inclusive though I may be wrong). After Leeza is healed they don’t want to question in don’t want to think about what might have been the cause for it. In fact they stop questioning anything after that point, after Leeza walks again they are completely vulnerable to Bev’s manipulation and them letting that happen, them just going along with everything, Wade protecting John after he kills Joe long after Leeza forgave him and with her forgiveness send Joe on a better path is what in the end makes them lose her. Because Leeza isn’t that little victim who needs pity and help, she is a strong minded, strong willed young woman with a lot of wit who similar to Erin finds strength in her faith but in a way that isn’t devotion without question and when the Easter vigil is held she doesn’t follow her parents eventhough she loves them deeply. She forgives them I think, because that’s what Leeza’s character is about in it’s core but her parents were two of the instigators behind what happened on the island, without Wade’s protection John and Bev couldn’t have come as far as they did and they put their trust in them because they loved their daughter so much they didn’t stop to question if maybe what made Leeza walk again was also a bad thing.

Ali and Hassan don’t have it easy and I as a white person really can’t speak much on the racism and religious discrimination they face. I can say this I think: The first line spoken about Ali before we even really get to look at him is “You didn’t invite Aladin” and already sets us up for what both of them know: They are the outsiders. Not only because they just moved to the island but also because in their faith they are different from their peers and religion can often be a community building event for people before it is anything else. Ali starts balming his father a little for that, for not trying to fit in more with the community, for moving after his mother’s death and then not trying to be closer to the people around them and for the pain all the pain the two of them went through before Crockett island. It isn’t oly peer pressure though of course that brings Ali to St Patrick’s. Sure, Ali wanted to be part of the community but also desperately wanted to believe that there was a devine power who could if he just did it (it meaning faith) the right way he might find a way to avoid the pain of his parents. Hassan knew that and he warned him that that wasn’t how it worked. Hassan was a protective Dad and maybe he overdid it from time to time but his worries were never without reason, his need to keep his son safe from a world that hated him for a crime that happened when he wasn’t even born yet never unfounded and him wanting to make sure his kid kept the memory of his mother alive never anything but the wish of a griefing man and loving father. In the end when they pray together there is peace in them. They face their ends with the dignity Ali’s mother would have wished for and they face it as father and son. While Beverly the true religious terrorist of the story burns away without it.

Warren is the youngest Flynn and it is never directly stated yet omnipresent that his coming of age happens in the shadow of his older brother’s mistake. Annie warns him away from drinking when he goes out he in fact doesn’t drink. He never drinks because of what his brother did. Warren would have been 12 when Riley killed that girl and so he would have seen and felt what his brother’s actions did to his parents fully without being yet old enough to maybe see the nuance. Annie and Ed probably try to right the wrong they believe to have done in parenting Riley with Warren and that’s a lot for a kid. I do think it’s pretty usual that parents of multiple children especially when there’s a larger age gap try to do better with the younger children, but that isn’t fair is it? Warren is his own person not a second chance to do it over. And yet seemingly he does what is asked of him. He’s alter boy, he’s charming and helpful and sweet, he doesn’t drink (even when he does smoke pot) and he helps his father where he can with his work. But in the end he feels guilty because he thinks he wasn’t enough and says at that last dinner he would have been different if he had known he wouldn’t see his family again. But Leeza is right they know and they love him and Warren deserved to not be perfect all the time.

Littlefoot saved Erin and Erin payed her back with all the love she had. She was never born but she gave her mother the strength and willpower to leave. In her speech to Joe Leeza said he reached through time and took things from her she didn’t even know she had yet.When Erin left her husband she reached through time and saved Littlefoot from a childhood like hers and when John gave Erin the angel’s vampire’s blood he reached through time and took away her child, a child who would have been loved and cared for. A child with an amazing mother and probably a great step-dad. Littlefoot’s story is tragic because she never got one.

#midnight mass #midnight mass spoilers #parents in midnight mass #I dunno man I just really love how they showed all these examples of parents

72 notes · View notes

dovebuffy92 · 3 years

Text

https://www.fanbolt.com/115324/lucifer-season-6-review/

The television series Lucifer developed by Tom Kapinos receives a bittersweet ending in Season 6.

First, there are beautiful moments like Mazikeen’s “Maze” (Lesley-Ann Brandt) and Eve’s (Inbar Lavi) wedding. Then there are bitter moments; for example, Lucifer Morningstar (Tom Ellis) returning to Hell, leaving behind his family, including the love of his life, former Detective Chloe Decker (Lauren German), and stepchild Trixie Espinoza (Scarlett Estevez).

In all, Lucifer Season 6 is a mixed bag but the perfect ending for the main character.

Maze and Trixie

Maze and Trixie’s friendship is only slightly referenced in the final season, erasing the relationship that helped the demon evolve. In Lucifer Season Two Episode “Trick or Treat?”, Maze created a President of Mars costume for the then eight-year-old. Trixie’s dream career is to be President of Mars, which she told Maze about in the first season.

Trixie also accepted Maze, even with her full demon face on during Halloween. For a long time, the only person the demon truly liked on Earth was Trixie. Maze taught her how to fight when she was babysitting. She took Trixie’s advice about important issues. The two are best friends. But after the third season, Maze and now thirteen-year-old Trixie are barely on screen together.

This season, the only reference to their close bond is Trixie telling her secret angel sister Rory (Brianna Hildebrand) that she is Maze’s best friend. Maze and Trixie also gesture to each other when the demon bride walks down the aisle.

I understand that as a recurring character, Trixie can’t interact with everybody, and there have been fewer episodes to play with since the show moved to Netflix. Still, I wish Kapinos and the writers could have ended the show with Trixie advising Maze on her wedding jitters or a sparring session.

Lucifer Season 6 Explores Different Visual Aesthetics

Lucifer Season 6 explores different visual aesthetics, easing tension-filled moments in the plot. The best example is in “Yabba Dabba Do Me,” where animation brings humor to a serious quest. Lucifer believes that he will feel ready to become God when he can help somebody he hates. He and Chloe fly down to Hell to help the murderer Jimmy Barnes (John Pankow) from Lucifer’s pilot episode.

Before opening a portal door, Lucifer warns his girlfriend that Jimmy’s hellscape will be horrific because he drove the music producer insane. Instead, the couple enters a Hanna-Barbera-style cartoon universe. Both Lucifer and Chloe turn into cartoons with no genitals and eyes that can bounce out of their sockets.

Now, the old-fashioned animation is not just a fun gag but a clue about what Jimmy truly desires. When Jimmy was a troubled young boy, he used to watch Hanna-Barbera cartoons to comfort himself. The dead music producer was watching them the day his musician mother abandoned him.

Lucifer can’t take Jimmy out of Hell, but he comforts the tortured man by trapping him in a time loop. For the rest of the time, Jimmy watches cartoons with his mother right before she leaves. The viewer, like Jimmy, can’t help but giggle watching a Hanna-Barbera cartoon though the storytelling technique moves the plot forward.

Happiness Only In Death

Many human characters don’t find self-actualization or happiness until after they die, which I find troubling. Now I know that Lucifer is an urban fantasy television show, not a serious drama, but it conforms to problematic Judeo-Christian beliefs. Beliefs like humans need to live a hard life, so they go to paradise when they die.

Nobody should or needs to feel joyful twenty-four-seven, but there is no need to feel tortured most of the time. Therapist Dr. Linda Martin (Rachael Harris) and forensic scientist Ella Lopez (Aimee Garcia) live happily. But Linda’s son Charlie Martin is half-archangel, and the father of her child, archangel Amenadiel (D.B Woodside), becomes God.

Ella Lopez is the only main human character with no romantic (former or current) affiliations with an immortal that lives fully. Dan Espinoza (Kevin Alejandro) doesn’t get his forever after with Charlotte Richards (Tricia Helfer) until they’re both in Heaven. Chloe and Lucifer don’t get their happy ending until she dies, then is flown down to Hell to be his partner.

The Love Story in Lucifer Season 6

Chloe and Lucifer are the television show’s sweetest love story, but it still seems unfair that they spend decades apart. Lucifer could have been the Devil and still visited his family, but he promised Rory he wouldn’t. Rory’s logic on why Lucifer needs to isolate himself from his family is never explained, making the ending feel unfair to both the audience and the characters.

Lucifer Morningstar’s mental health journey ends on a high note, with the Devil finding his true purpose. The whole series starts with Lucifer vacationing in Los Angles because he felt bored constantly torturing souls in Hell. However, he stayed in Los Angeles because of his feelings for the detective. Helping Chloe solve murders was fun for Lucifer but not his true purpose. Chloe loves catching criminals, proven by the fact that retirement doesn’t stop her from inserting herself in investigations during a date with Lucifer.

On the other hand, the Devil has no trouble quitting his LAPD advisory position to be God. Lucifer’s last unconventional therapy session with Linda reveals that he doesn’t want to be the lord. The mantle of God doesn’t fit his personality or talents. But throughout the series, Lucifer has been obsessed with bettering himself through therapy.

In the final season, he actively helps numerous lost souls. The Devil stops Rory from letting rage consume her. “Goodbye Lucifer” ends with Lucifer’s advice freeing Dan of his guilt, therefore, allowing him to ascend to Heaven.

Throughout the ten episodes, the Devil counsels people makes it natural that he chooses to return to Hell. Lucifer’s true purpose is to treat the deceased humans whose guilt traps them in Hell. Lucifer Season 6 reveals the importance of maintaining good mental health.

Watch all seasons of Lucifer on Netflix!

#tv review #tv reviewer #blogger #lucifer s6 #lucifer netflix #lucifer morningstar #Chloe Decker #lucifer x chloe #trixie espinoza #maze x eve #maze lucifer #maze & trixie

6 notes · View notes

7lizardsinacoat · 4 years

Text

The Old Guard Costume Analysis

Because I could, I wrote up an analysis of the costuming, This is about the how the characters dress and what would influence that. I tried to get at the core of what each character likes to do when they pick out outfits. It came out to be a 4 page document so I hope I got it all.

Too long don’t want to read? The last three paragraphs are what you may want to read then.

While the team only wears a few outfits over the course of the movie, what they are can say a lot about a character. They may seem basic, but they really do speak volumes about the personality of a character, help set the mood of a scene, and further convey emotion. The costumes also show us a little bit of the background of each character and how that affects the way they dress. While the costuming may not win awards because it is in an action movie, they are very cleverly and well done.

Since this all started with my analysis of Nicky’s fashion choices, I am going to start with him. Nicky wears extremely practical things throughout the movie, like dark colors and basics that you can pick up from any store (save for the baklava scene, but we will talk about that later.) Nicky’s hair is even practical. Short, and while it can be styled, it really isn’t throughout the movie. It even seems easy to wash blood out from. All of his clothing matches but in a way that he can just pick up something and go without having to think too hard about it. Nicky is a very quiet and unassuming person, so his clothes seem to reflect that. Nothing he wears stands out among the others, and is as unassuming as he is.

If you bring in Nicky’s background as a priest and a crusader, this makes a lot of sense. Christian/Catholic guilt is a strong thing. If you really get into the Bible you will find that there is a lot about not getting attached to worldly possessions. Seeing as he joined the priesthood, he would have had to believe in the text and know it well. As a priest, he would have worn vestments most of the time and lived a life with little indulgence, most likely leading to viewing his ordinary clothes in a practical manner. When he joined the crusades he would have become even more practical, as there were really only a few things he would have been able to wear as part of the forces, and if he really bought into what he was fighting for he would not have begrudged this.

To bring it up to the modern day and what we see in the movie, we can see all of this reflected in what he wears. He wears dark colors and practical clothing. Now we may say that the baklava scene challenges that, as he is dressed nicely and his hair is styled.

I would say to that, yes, he does know how to dress beyond picking something up and putting it on. But, because he does not do this again at the end of the movie, when everyone is styled and wearing what they would wear in an everyday, safe, situation, we may say that he simply does not feel like dressing in that way at all times.

He knows how to put together an outfit, but seems to not want to unless it is for certain occasions. You can even see this mildly reflected in his “hot topic monk” look, where he wears a hoodie to cover his head rather than a hat, not because it looks good, but because it's practical. It’s certainly practical. He seems very “pick up and go”, which is fine to do. It’s certainly valid within the context of the movie. That’s fine I guess.

Joe, in contrast to Nicky, has a better grasp of fashion and has an actual want to be fashionable. He was a merchant before the Crusades, which would allow him to have more access to nicer and therefore more thought out clothes. As a merchant, he would have likely had to be more presentable, and up to date on the clothing trends of the time. Taking also into account that Joe is an artist, and has been described as having an “artist’s soul”, this also supports the idea that Joe is up to date on trends and enjoys dressing in the current fashions. He puts thought into what he is wearing. He wants to put thought into what he is wearing. He enjoys putting thought into it.

All of this goes well with what he wears. While for most of the movie he is wearing simple clothes, this seems to be because they are in danger (also what he wears for most of the movie is what he was sleeping in). During the baklava scene he wears something that is a little more “We are seeing a loved one after a long time” and less “this is what I wear when I am just going out for the day.” But he is being presentable in a way that shows already at the beginning of the movie that he knows what he is doing.

At the end of the movie, we see Joe wearing streetwear.

While the team may not feel entirely safe, they do feel safer, which allows them to wear what they want with little fear of getting it ruined. This is what he wants to wear. Even though his outfit is an “immortally dark” color, it still reflects who he is as a person. He is fun and outgoing, and goes outside of the mainstream. He has an interest in what he does. Even when they are going on the mission to save the girls he has some fun, what with his backwards baseball cap. He wants to throw a little fun into a dark situation, which I think really shows who he is as a person. He actively puts thought into his outfit, actually thinking about what goes with what, and enjoys it as well. He is having fun with his clothes.

While Andy’s outfits may seem minimalist and just plain black constantly, they say a lot when put in context of the scenes. Andy wears black for most of the movie. It’s a color that is easy to cover up blood and muck, and helps you blend in as it is a neutral color. It also reflects her darker mood.

Putting the black clothes into the context of the scenes changes the vibe they give off. In the first few scenes of the movie, we see her walking among people who are wearing bright colors against orange-y dirt of Marrakech, Morocco. She sticks out like a sore thumb in this scene. It gives off the feeling that she is not like them, that she is not human like the rest of them, and does not have the human hope. It immediately establishes her as cold and an outsider.. As the movie progresses, Andy becomes mortal.. She begins to wear colors, such as a green jacket, and at the end of the movie, a brown one. It reflects how she is becoming more and more human, and feeling more hopeful and less dark and hopeless. While it is still dark colors, they still show the change that is happening within her.

While Andy might seem cold and uncaring towards others outside of her family, she is actually deeply sentimental. She always wears a necklace, that while we don’t ever get told why she has it, it is clear that it is very special to her.

Then there is the jacket that she wears in the last few scenes in the movie.

It is worn and old and clearly has been repaired several times. Why would a person who gets shot at on the regular and seems to have access to plenty of money want to keep a torn article of clothing unless it was for sentimental value. While Andy may, many times throughout the course of the movie, have said that she does not care anymore, the jacket shows that that is not true. An item of clothing like that has a lot of memories attached to it. She wears it in the scene where she sees Booker for probably the last time in her life.

As it likely has immense sentimental value, it may have been comforting to wear. It also would then remind her of Booker every time she would wear it afterwards, and would even more so be the last thing she would get rid of. That jacket likely means so much to her. It will mean even more, now that it has those memories of Booker attached to it.

Booker’s outfits also seem like simple men’s clothes, like Nicky’s. Though hey are still in line with modern men’s fashion, in a more modest, subdued way. This probably comes from personal preference, but also his background. Booker is a very good forger, so he must have been an educated man before the Napoleonic War. He would have likely had a job with a lot of writing, and one that paid higher than labor jobs. This would have let him have some leeway with clothes, allowing him to develop a preference and an idea of what the general fashions were.

Booker understands mainstream men’s fashion, but does not seem to enjoy it like Joe does. He seems to dress no further than nicely presentable, while it does seem that he does have an opinion on what he is wearing, he doesn’t go any further in it. The one thing he seems to really indulge, besides alcohol, is his hair. But we are not here to talk about that. He’s a peacoat kind of man. He seems to be perpetually in fall/winter, what with his layers at all times.

He’s if the artist Julia Lepetit drew a man and it came to life (french, sad, sharp jaw, layers and high collars, y'know what, just go look at what she drew when asked to draw a handsome man).

There is almost a safety in the way he dresses. Like he is allowing himself to like a few things but to go any further than that would be too much.

Now, he is not the type of guy that wears things outside of very mainstream fashion in the first place. But he does not really want to enjoy what he is doing now. Booker is also deeply sentimental, as clearly evidenced, besides the everything about him, by the wedding ring he still wears, 200 years later. So he may be holding on to some of the old routines he had before his first death, such as keeping up his hair or thinking for more than 10 seconds about his outfit. Even what he wears seems to show his grief, and his almost fragility that goes along with it.

Nile is young and fashionable. She still feels human, and is a contrast to the others. Especially Andy. While Andy is in her dour blacks, Nile wears hopeful lighter tones and bright colors. She enjoys her clothing choices. While she is a sensible dresser, as we can see by her very sensible shoes, she does not have the immortal practicality the others do. The clothes she wears show a lot of blood, as compared to Booker and Andy’s (we are ignoring Joe and NIcky as they after just waking up). The clothes she wears are ones she would wear when she goes out for the day, not to get shot in a lab. She is not used to being immortal yet (and who would be if you’d died like three times so far.).

We only get to see her in two outfits that she has picked out for herself. But they are both, as earlier stated, a stark contrast to Andy. Andy's blacks really make her seem less human. Nile’s brighter colors show us that even though she is immortal now, she still retains her human spirit.

Interestingly enough, ,the outfit Andy hands her in the plane helps give us an idea of just how different they are. Andy gives her dark colors to wear, which feels like an almost “welcome to the club.”

It’s very Andy. But when Nile gets to pick out her own clothes, she picks out things she enjoys, are interesting, and bright and colorful. It really shows how she doesn’t feel like a part of that group yet. While she may no longer be human, she still feels her humanity.

To speak briefly about the main villain, Merrick, he dresses in a childish way. He wears an infuriating hoodie under his suit coat and designer sneakers. He especially feels like he’s trying too hard, or compensating. He feels like a child trying to dress cooler than his older brother. It’s like he is trying to be a fuck boi but failing spectacuraly He feels like he listens to Russ and calls it Hip-Hop. His whole deal is one big overcompensation, and you can really see it.

This is not pertaining to any one character, but the baklava scene is very interesting, costuming wise. It is the first time we get to see the whole gang together outside of them dying in the first scene. We at first see Andy, walking around in her “no longer human” black clothes. Then we get to see Booker, who does not stick out among the crowd. His clothes seem basic and unassuming. Then finally we get to see Joe and Nicky, who look very presentable in their button up shirts, like your favorite uncles on vacation. Even Copley is wearing lighter tones. Now putting them all together, at first it seems that only Andy stands out with her dark clothes among the lighter tones the others are wearing, but if we look further, we can see how Booker starts to stick out as well.

Andy’s clothes, as stated earlier, give her a less than human vibe within the context of the movie. The lighter tones of the three men might make them all seem like they all still feel hopeful and happy, but Booker’s clothes betray that. While Joe and Nicky are wearing lighter tones, Booker is only wearing a lighter colored overshirt over a black shirt. This gives off the idea that he is trying to show that he is happy, that he is just as excited as Joe and Nicky. But in all actuality, he feels just as dark and sad as Andy does, as the costuming shows. He’s trying to conceal it, as we can see with his friendliness with his family, but we the audience can see through it. He is not doing well, and try as he might to put on a brave face for others, we can see it.

The costuming in The Old Guard is subtly clever. With just some clothing that may seem basic, they are able to show a lot about each character's personality. How Nicky understands how to dress but doesn’t care. Joe enjoys and has fun with his outfits. That Booker doesn’t really enjoy his clothing. Andy’s inhumanity shows through her clothes but so does her sentimentality. Nile’s humanity shows through her bright colors. We get all of this through the costuming, and it’s so nicely executed. There may be no awards won for this as it’s an action movie, but we should still acknowledge how well it’s done.

#finally finished #i dont know what to do with myself now that this is finfished #the old guard #tog #my post #how the hell do i tag this #long post #costumes #costuming

130 notes · View notes

terrence-silver · 4 years

Note

Hey, I saw your gorgeous faceclaims for Terry's parents earlier, so I was wondering; could you perhaps do some sort of quick one-shot featuring the two of them? Nothing long or complicated. Just a little insight into their daily (messy?) lives back in the 50s? Thanks a lot. 💙

He waddled in drunk.

Again.

Thing is, he didn’t understand how come Red 31 wasn’t a winning option on the roulette wheel when red as a color has never failed him before - his lucky choice for years, in a sense. He could’ve swore to god almighty, that fucking game was rigged. It was rigged and it was rigged in such a way to harm the economic savings of decent, hard-working Americans like himself. Really, if anything, he blamed McCarty for letting in all those damn Communists into the country and messing up the order of things around here. That was the only way Morton could explain his losses tonight. Fifty thousand dollars in one sitting. Straight ripoff and as such, the deplorable state he was in tonight was well-warranted. Did he try to fight those bastards in the security department? Yes! Did he get thrown out of the casino? Yes, he was! Did he, by any chance get in an alteration with one of the suckers who did in fact win a sizeable amount of money tonight on the same fucking roulette wheel and were slaps generously thrown around? Yes, they absolutely were! And proudly at that! This was a free land.

And now, he was home.

Deep-fucking-joy.

His beautiful pastel Harrods catalogue house.

To his gorgeous nagging wife and their gorgeous tiny brat son.

-”It’s three in the morning.”-

A voice chided and of course Myra would be awake waiting for him like some sort of interrogator in the partial darkness of the hallway, stepping out of the bedroom in a silk bathrobe over her lace chemise and her blue rollers strapped to her curls, arms crossed over her chest with bloody intent, a scowl gracing her red lips as she took a long drag out of her cigarette, huffing the smoke into the air. She had time to put on a lipstick? In the middle of the night? The damn casino scammed him out of his own money and she had time for her goddamn rouge face-paint? The absolute nerve of this broad. She didn’t even wear her usual house slippers. No. She had her heels on like some manner of decadent, shameless saloon harlot. Because of course she did.

Wretched Biblical viper.

-”Y’know. If I knew you’d be so good at stating the obvious and telling the damn time I’ve would’ve strapped you to my wrist instead of a Rolex and just carried you with me around all day.”-

Morton shook his hand at her frantically to nail the idea behind his words into her head, clanking the gold clasp of his arm-watch in her direction. The general idea was, that before she even tried to accuse him of anything at this late hour, to gently remind her, as she often needed to be, that he in fact made all the money in this household, and as such, he could waste and spend as much of it as he pleased, however he pleased, whenever he pleased like the man he was. Because, really - who was going to stop him? Did she really think he didn’t know what time it was? There were no clocks in casinos. Yet, he always knew, regardless. It was an ingrained instinct, by now.

-”You’re bleeding, you reek and you look like hell, Morty.”-

She clicked her tongue in annoyance alongside an eyeroll, using an endearment instead of his full name, walking around him with her heels clicking on the marble carpeted floor as she plopped down in the velvet armchair facing him directly, crossing her legs, watching him pour himself a glass of scotch and downing it one swift move. This has happened before. Of course it has. But, was it such a sin he wanted out of this stifling, godforsaken upper middle class life out here in the fucking desert, peddling rings and knick-knack like a common salesman or roadside merchant? Was it so bad he wanted to make a quick spin of money? Was it so hard to understand he wanted Lady Fortune to smile at him? If only just once? Let him live the life he knew he deserved? That she deserved. That their son deserved. That he, correction and all humbleness aside, Morton Silver, deserved, most of all?

-”We can’t all look like Liz Taylor, ma’am. Respectfully.”-

He spat back in disgust, loathing how beautiful she appeared.

So close to making him behave in ways a gentleman never should.

-”How much?”-

She inquired firmly, with a certain sense of softness.

He immediately what she meant, even without clarifying.

He averted his gaze, sighing in defeat - putrid, bitter defeat.

Leveling his eyes instead, with the glass liqueur bottle in front of him.

-”That much, huh?”-

Myra knew, even without words spoken, more or less what the monetary casualties of tonight’s exploits were - she had an instinct for things like that by now, the damn woman - finishing the butt of her cigar and crushing it in the crystal ashtray next to her seat and leaning over her white cream boudoir instead, starting to remove the rolls from her hair one by one, combing them out steadily and attaching the pearled earrings to the pierced holes of her lobes. She once stated he had a serious addiction and that she read in a health magazine at her book club that such things weren’t anything to be ashamed of and that it could be curable with the right methods and care - that she worried about the state of him - where he was headed - where they were headed, as a married couple - but he didn’t want to hear about it. If she intended to institutionalise him she had another thing coming. He knew what they did to people deemed crazy.

And the Silvers had a reputation to uphold around these parts.

His father was a jeweler and his father before him.

His father’s father, even.

He only wanted to increase what he inherited.

Not let it all go to waste with the knowledge that he wasn’t quite right.

People would avoid them both like the plague for it - bloody bastards.

-”I’ll make it back for us. I always do. You know me! You know I do! I’ve luck at the tip of my fingers, all I need is the right moment at the right time and it’ll find me when I least expect it! And you love me for it! Maybe next time this year, we’ll be sitting at a balcony somewhere, overlooking the sea! And you’ll be sunbathing with a big hat and we’ll never look back! Maybe up the West Coast - maybe -”-

He found himself ranting, a wave of desperation, guilt and hysteria taking over his senses, fueled by alcohol and a need to rationalize and justify himself, suddenly on his knees and grabbing Myra by her ankles, nearly ripping the nylon of her sheer, flesh-colored stockings with the sharpness of the ruby on his wedding band, pulling her away from the mirror and back unto her arm chair, embracing her legs and leaning his face unto her lap, trapping her in place because he needed her to stay put and listen like he needed air to breathe, rambling and stuttering as he did. He despised this place and he knew she did too, but money was never enough to move someplace better permanently and for that reason he hated it here all the more out of rage. All the dust and scorched, dryness of the earth, and the unbearable desert wind and the goddamn mob burring mutilated bodies out in the wild, and the hyenas, and the loan-sharks, and the snakes, and the hookers and the temptations and the sinning and people blowing their fucking brains out due to accumulated debt and he just couldn’t take it anymore. It was hell. And he wasn’t out of here in a couple of years, he’d just ram his car off of the first cliff with himself, Myra and Terry in it and call it a day. It wasn’t the most Christian way to go, but heck if he cared at this point. He was as far removed from God’s light as he could be by now.

-”You’ll wake up the child with your drunk rambling.”-

She chastised whispering, with infinite tenderness.

With a tinge of sadness and pity too, he figured tiredly.

Letting her run her manicured fingers through his hair sweetly.

Comforting him - another woman would’ve left him by now, surely.

He drank and whored around and gambled and cussed and shouted.

Not her though - all she wanted was him, their son and money.

And although a bit skinny, puny and small for his age.

Almost to the point of occasional embarrassment -

Morton figured a change of scenery would do Terence good too.

Get some strength back into him - make him tall, statuesque and healthy.

Last thing Morton Silver wanted was a malnourished, sickly offspring.

-”Do you believe me, though? Do you believe me when I say I’ll give us lives worthy of gods and leave behind this petty corner-store waste of time? I don’t want to spend the rest of my days behind an old, dusty counter, convincing people which fucking engagement ring to buy some random, nameless dame off of the street they met in a joint one time!”-

He looked up at her almost pleading, fingers digging into her skin to the borderline point of nearly making her bleed - his humiliation at requiring her approval in the first place mingling with genuine need and rage at even being in his position mixing into a potent sort of fury where he was just one inch away from slapping her if she answered negatively and then grabbing her and kissing her the next for running her pretty little mouth like that. He was an irresponsible, hypocrite, drunk gambler and lying, materialistic, greedy whore-mongerer. She was a tobbacco-addicted, fashion-crazed, haughty diva obsessed with her pearls and being the perfect, unassuming upper-crust housewife and mother. They were made for each other. Hell, they even looked alike, aesthetically speaking, both pale, lanky, dark haired, with stark blue eyes - like a matched pair of paper dressing dolls cut-out from a magazine. If anything - little Terry would be a looker. Not an overly wealthy looker, but a looker nonetheless. A little pretty twig-boy with no inheritance quite big enough or impressive to turn heads. Not if they stay here. In this crime-infested cesspool of filth that threatened to drag him down even lower.

He pressed a sloppy, inebriated half-kiss to the side of her mouth.

Trying to make himself forget how much he exactly lost tonight.

She turned her head away, nostrils flaring at the stench of him.

She didn’t exactly bear the scent of roses either, reeking of tobacco.

How many did she exactly smoke in the darkness expecting his return?

-”You always did things your way and I’ve enabled you, in part. Now all I can do is sit around and wait for you to come home alive and hope to god someone doesn’t beat you half to death on the steps of some sleazy, two-bit gambling den like a dog.”-

Myra’s voice cracked and she was overtaken by a wave of sobbing.

Tracing the fresh wound on his head, impartially.

In defeat - her tone pained, regretful.

They been through his debate a million times.

And a million times they’ve reached this exact conclusion.

She didn’t even bother cleaning the blood on his scalp.

This happened so often, there was hardly a point anymore.

He’d be battered and bruised at work again by tomorrow.

She’d ambush him in this same fashion, at this same hour.

Wearing the same bathrobe and spewing the same reprimanding.

And he wouldn’t really change or learn - neither would she.

#two people being extremely in love and extremely fucked up #and extremely dysfunctional and tragic because of it #terry silver #silver family #morton silver #myra silver #request #kk #ck #a highly fanon take #but i hope you like it

14 notes · View notes

the-end-of-art · 4 years

Text

No wonder our communities seem organized to keep suffering at a distance

“The Interruptions are my work” by Henri Nouwen

(Henri Nouwen—Turn My Mourning into Dancing, p. 5-11)

When I came to Daybreak, the community of ministry to disable people where I have been pastor, I was experiencing a great deal of personal pain. My many years in the world of academics, my travels among the poor in Central America, and later, my speaking around the world about what I had seen, left me deflated. My schedule kept me running hard and fast. Rather than providing an escape from my own inner conflicts, my scurrying from speaking engagement to speaking engagement only intensified my inner turmoil. And because of my schedule, I could not fully face my pain. I carried on with the illusion that I was in control, that I could avoid what I did not want to face within myself and in the world around me.

But when I arrived, I witnessed the enormous suffering of the mentally and physically handicapped persons living here. I came gradually to see my painful problems in a new light. I realised they formed part of a much larger suffering. And I found through that insight new energy to live amid my own hardship and pain.

I realised that healing begins with our taking our pain out of its diabolic isolation and seeing that whatever we suffer, we suffer it in communion with all of humanity, and yes, all of creation. In so doing, we become participants in the great battle against the powers of darkness. Our little lives participate in something larger.

I also found something else here: people asking not so much “How can I get rid of my suffering?” but “How can I make it an occasion for growth and insight?” Among these people, most of whom cannot read, many of whom cannot care for themselves, among men and women rejected by a world that values only the whole and bright and healthy, I saw people learning how to make the connection between human suffering and God’s suffering. They helped me to see how the way through suffering is not to deny it, but to live fully in the midst of it. They were asking how they could turn pain from a long interruption into an opportunity.

How do we make such connection ourselves? How do we make this shift from evading our pain to asking God to redeem and make good use of it?

An early step in the dance sounds very simple, though often will not come easily: We are called to grieve our losses. It seems paradoxical, but healing and dancing begin with looking squarely at what causes us pain. We face the secret losses that have paralysed us and kept us imprisoned in denial or shame or guilt. We do not nurse the illusion that we can hopscotch our way through difficulties. For by trying to hide parts of our story from God’s eye and our own consciousness, we become judges of our own past. We limit divine mercy to our human fears. Our efforts to disconnect ourselves from our own suffering, end up disconnecting our suffering from God’s suffering for us. The way out of our loss and hurt is in and through. When Jesus said, “For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners” (Matthew 9:13), He affirmed that only those who can face their wounded condition can be available for healing and enter a new way of living.

Sometimes we need to ask ourselves just what our losses are. Doing so reminds us how real the experience of loss is. Perhaps you know what it is to have a parent die. How well I remember the grief I felt after my mother’s illness and death. We may experience the death of a child or of friends. And we lose people, sometimes just as painfully, through misunderstanding, conflict, or anger. I may expect a friend to visit, but he does not come. I speak to a group and expect a warm reception but no one really seems to respond. Someone may take from us a job, a career, a good name.

We may watch hopes flicker through growing infirmity, or dreams vanish through the betrayal of someone we trusted for along time. A family member may walk out in anger and we wonder if we have failed. Sometimes our sense of loss feels large indeed: I read the newspaper and find things only worse than the day before. Our souls grow sad because of poverty or the destruction of so much natural beauty in our world. And we may lose meaning in our lives, not only because our hearts become tired, but also because someone ridicules long-cherished ways of thinking and praying. Our convictions suddenly seem old-fashioned, unnecessary. Even our faith seems shaky. Such are the potential disappointments of any life.

Typically we see such hardship as an obstacle to what we think we should be—healthy, good-looking, free of discomfort. We consider suffering as annoying at best, meaningless at worst. We strive to get rid of our pains in whatever way we can. A part of us prefers the illusion that our losses are not real, that they come only as temporary interruptions. We thereby expend much energy in denial. “They should not prevent us from holding on to the real thing,” we say to ourselves.

Several temptations feed this denial. Our incessant busyness, for example, becomes a way to escape what must some days be confronted. The world in which we live lies in the power of the Evil One, and the Evil One would prefer to distract us and fill every little space with things to do, people to meet, business to accomplish, products to be made. He does not allow any space for genuine grief and mourning. Our busyness becomes a curse, even while we think it provides us with relief from the pain inside. Our over packed lives serve only to keep us from facing the inevitable difficulty that we all, at some time or another, must face.

The voice of evil also tries to tempt us to put on an invincible front. Words such as vulnerability, letting go, surrendering, crying, mourning, and grief are not to be found in the devil’s dictionary. Someone once said to me, “Never show your weakness, for you will be used; never be vulnerable, for you will get hurt; never depend on others, for you will lose your freedom.” This might sound very wise, but it does not echo the voice of wisdom. It mimics a world that wants us to respect without question the social boundaries and compulsions that our society has defined for us.

Facing our losses also means avoiding a temptation to see life as an exercise in having needs met. We are needy people, of course: We want attention, affection, influence, power. And our needs seem never to be satisfied. Even altruistic actions can get tangled with these needs. Then, when people or circumstances do not fulfil all of our needs, we withdraw or lash out. We nurse our wounded spirits. And we become even needier. We crave easy assurances, ignoring anything that would suggest another way.

We also like easy victories: growth without crisis, healing without pains, the resurrection without the cross. No wonder we enjoy watching parades and shouting out to returning heroes, miracle workers, and record breakers. No wonder our communities seem organised to keep suffering at a distance: People are buried in ways that shroud death with euphemism and ornate furnishings. Institutions hide away the mentally ill and criminal offenders in a continuing denial that they belong to the human family. Even our daily customs lead us to cloak our feelings and speak politely through clenched teeth and prevent honest, healing confrontation. Friendships become superficial and temporary.

The way of Jesus looks very different. While Jesus brought great comfort and came with kind words and a healing touch, He did not come to take all our pains away. Jesus entered into Jerusalem in His last days on a donkey, like a clown at a parade. This was His way of reminding us that we fool ourselves when we insist on easy victories. When we think we can succeed in cloaking what ails us and our times in pleasantness. Much that is worthwhile comes only through confrontation.

The way from Palm Sunday to is the patient way, the suffering way. Indeed, our word patience comes from the ancient root patior, “to suffer.” To learn patience is not to rebel against every hardship. For if we insist on continuing to cover our pains with easy “Hosannas,” we run the risk of losing our patience. We are likely to become bitter and cynical or violent and aggressive when the shallowness of the easy way wears through.

Instead, Christ invites us to remain in touch with the many suffering of every day and to taste the beginning of hope and new life right there, where we live amid our hurts and pains and brokenness. By observing His life, His followers discover that when all of the crowd’s “Hosannas” had fallen silent, when disciples and friends had left Him, and after Jesus cried out, “My God, my God why have you forsaken Me?” then it was the Son of Man rose from death. Then He broke through the chains of death and became Saviour. That is the patient way, slowly leading me from easy triumph to the hard victory.

I am less likely to deny my suffering when I learn how God uses it to mould me and draw me closer to Him. I will be less likely to see my pains as interruptions to my plans and more able to see them as the means for God to make me ready to receive Him. I let Christ live near my hurts and distractions.

I remember an old priest who one day said to me, “I have always been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted; then I realised that the interruptions were my work.” The unpleasant things, the hard moments, the unexpected setbacks carry more potential than we usually realise. For the movement from Palm Sunday to Easter takes us from the easy victory built on small dreams and illusions to the hard victory offered by God who wants to purify us by His patient, caring hand.

As I learned from my friends at Daybreak, at the center of our Christian faith we perceive a God who took on Himself the burden of the entire world. Suffering invites us to place our hurts in larger hands. In Christ we see God suffering—for us. And calling us to share in God’s suffering love for a hurting world. The small and even overpowering pains of our lives are intimately connected with the greater pains of Christ. Our daily sorrows are anchored in a greater sorrow and therefore a larger hope. Absolutely nothing in our lives lies outside the realm of God’s judgement and mercy.

#henri nouwen #mourning #grief #pain #loss #covid #coronavirus #covid-19 #pandemic #Christ #God #Jesus #love #suffering

4 notes · View notes

essaysbyciara · 5 years

Text

Old Habits Die Hard| Part Two: Just Be Good To Me

Yahya Abdul-Mateen II x Dave East x Y/N Fic

SYNOPSIS | PART ONE: DAYS BEFORE

Warnings: Language, Lightweight mentions of sexual situations, brief marijuana use

Y’all. I’m so overwhelmed by the love I’ve received for this story. Thank you to everyone who read, liked, commented and/or followed me on here. Taglist is STILL OPEN. *squees from joy*

JUST BE GOOD TO ME

Your finger traces the tattoos that dart up and down Dave’s back, the smoke from his blunt curling around his head as he leans back to inhale. The box fan on top of the dresser can only do so much as you push the sheets down to your knees so your torso can catch a quick cool down. You love watching the sweat trail down Dave’s spine. You try to catch each drop before they hit the mattress.

“I forgot your bougie ass don’t smoke.” You crawl behind Dave, wrapping your supple legs around his waist. Your arms prop up your body so you can get a better look at him as he takes another pull. Dave instinctively starts to caress your left knee with his free hand. Your skin feels like cotton candy to him. You taste even sweeter.

“You’re gonna stop calling me bougie...” You chuckle gently as you plant gentle kisses on Dave’s shoulder.

“You know I like messing with you. Chill.” Dave lifts himself off of the bed. He still isn’t used to your love language. You pout as he walks up to his dresser to grab his phone. You try to weaken the feelings of dismissal but Dave catches your body language change in his mirror’s reflection as you lean over the bed to grab your clothes from off the floor. He realizes it was a mistake to walk away from you.

“Yo. Come here.” You answer Dave’s command, lifting up the sheets to wrap them around your body like a towel. “Fuck the sheets. Come here.” A mischievous grin covers your face. Dave elicits confidence and freedom from you like never before. You walk over to him, hips swaying to the beat of the bass that’s blasting holes throughout the atmosphere outside. Before you can even get within an inch of him, Dave picks you up and sits you on top of the dresser. He kisses you so deep that your legs can’t help but to swing open like a broken screen door. The bass cranking from one of the cars outside sets the pace for your next round with Dave.

“Fuck…”

“My bad, Y/N. These potholes ain’t no joke up here.” Yahya’s not-so-smooth driving wakes you up from your slumber. You look down to witness the silent quivering pulsate from between your legs. This isn’t the first time you’ve dreamed about Dave since you accepted his friend request a few days ago but the closer you were to getting back to Philly, the more intense they became. You grab Yahya’s hand to assuage your guilt. He smiles. Unlike Dave, he needs no help deciphering your love language.

“It’s okay, babe. I needed to wake up. We’re super close to Aunt Jerri’s.”

“Should I be scared about meeting your family? You made it seem like they’re gonna cut me if I don’t come correct.”

“Aye, they might.” You tease Yahya. Your left hand starts to caress his inner thigh. “They won’t mess with you. Aunt Jerri always got the family in line, I’m sure. She loves you already and she’s the biggest test to pass.”

“Good. I really wanted to leave the lawyer that I am back home. Where should I park though?”

You reorient yourself to the surroundings to direct Yahya to the back street behind Aunt Jerri’s house. You already see the smoke billowing from the barbeques on the street and hear the little ones’ laughs and screams. You also see all of your Dad’s brothers on the back porch playing spades and they’re already at peak shit-talking form. “You know how to play spades, right?”

“Don’t let this Berkeley degree fool you, Y/N.” The vibrations from your phone break up your laughter. You open your phone to see an Instagram notification from Dave. You set up post notifications to track him, lying to yourself enough to believe it was to keep tabs on Dave so you wouldn’t run into him at the block party. Your heart knows the truth. He just posted a picture of him and his cousin Pardi posted on his porch. He and his boys are outside ready to play.

“Is that my Y/N!”

“Hey Uncle Ro!” Uncle Rodney -- or Ro -- was a barrel of a man who always wore his Sunday best even in the hottest of the weather. He was a preacher at an Pentecostal church who could drink the rest of the family up under the couch. He pulls you in for a hug. You try not to soak in the smells of sweat mixed with Christian Brothers emanating from his body.

Yahya trails behind you with his hands inside of his pockets because of the growing fear quaking his bones. The spades game has suddenly stopped in its tracks and your other uncles -- Trace and Larry -- and Mr. Reed, who has always been like an uncle to you, start to ice grill Yahya down to his socks. Your Dad must have sent a bat signal from heaven for his brothers to stand tall on his behalf.

“Y/N! Y/N!!!!!!! Heyyyyyyyyyyyy!” Aunt Jerri breaks up the detente at just the right time. She hugs you with so much force that your eyes almost pop out of their sockets. “And look who we have here, huh? You must be Mr. Yahya. He looks so much like T doesn’t he, Trace….”

Trace doesn’t respond, still acting as a stand-in for your father.

“Yahya, baby, don’t let them scare you. Bring your ass in the house.” Yahya feels relieved as Aunt Jerri drags him by the hand into her house to meet more of your family. You follow right behind.

“Trace, you can relax. The dude bought bags of ice. He’s aight with me,” says your Uncle Larry. Trace doesn’t respond, instead throwing down a ten of spades that erupts the entire table.

“Run up to the store right quick, Quaadir.” Dave passes a ten dollar bill to his nephew.

“No, nigga.” Quaadir folds his arms and sticks out his lower lip like it’ll change Dave’s mind. Quaadir is not old enough to be on the corner but he’s talking like them.

“Yo, Pardi. Your son think he brolic. You hear him?! Nigga, what?” Pardi only looks at Quaadir and he quickly changes his mind. “He picking all this up from his moms, man.” The porch erupts in laughter.

Dave needed this laugh. Especially after seeing your engagement pictures with Yahya.

It wasn’t what he was expecting to see when he requested to follow you on Instagram. You looked happy and at peace. The paintings inside of the art gallery where you took your engagement photos looked to be showing their approval of your impending union. Dave couldn’t front: you two looked good together.

You and Dave didn’t go on many dates during your two-week romance. There wasn’t enough time and the time you did have only found you mostly under Dave’s body. The only official date you two went on was when you took him to the Anthropology and Archaeology museum located on the University of Pennsylvania’s campus. He watched you grow in excitement at every exhibit, reading every placard and hanging to the museum docent’s every word. He saw your joy and felt honored to witness it.

He felt the opposite of joy as he read one of the captions under your pictures. You called Yahya “your favorite discovery.” Your nickname for Dave was “favorite”. You were Dave’s favorite and he lost out on you and that hurt like hell. Nevertheless, he couldn’t stop scrolling down your Instagram feed. He wanted to see pictures from last summer and of the body, face, smile and the style of the woman who caused him to want to make an entire course correct on that thing called life. He saw that you still had it all. Asking Ariel was such a waste of time and being at this block party was triggering as all get out.

People always talking ‘bout reputation… I don’t care about those other girls, just be good to me … ooooooo

“Just Be Good To Me” cascades down Reed Street in a way that you’ve never heard. You missed this place and this time during the summer when everything stops to allow the neighborhood to bask in delight. It was a feeling you desperately needed last year after you decided to ditch a week in the Bahamas and a week of recuperating at home to spend two weeks at Aunt Jerri’s house. Truth be told was that the Bahamas once had a man attached to it but that fell through.

That’s what led you to go after Dave.

“It’s hot at Hades out here, my Lord.” Aunt Jerri fans herself as she sits on her stoop overlooking the busy street full of barbeque grills, babies splashing inside of kiddie pools and a DJ blasting everyone’s favorite R&B of the 80s.

“Rodney! Rodneyyyy! Boy, toss me a Lime-A-Rita. It’s lit cityyyyyyyy!”

“Mom! Who on Earth taught you about anything being “lit”?!” Ariel’s embarrassment grows at her mother’s attempts to be cool.

“Oh, I’m hip! Too hip to be a square, eyyyy!” She sways ever so gently to “Square Biz” by Teena Marie.

“Ari, leave her alone! Uncle Rodney, don’t indulge her please.” You sip on your Hennessy with ice because, unlike Aunt Jerri, you were free to indulge. Yahya holds you from behind, sipping the last of his Heineken in between fits of laughter. Your Uncle Trace passes another bottle to Yahya as a peace offering and as an official welcome to the family. Your Dad must’ve sent a message to Trace to stand down. Your yellow sundress with a thigh high split up to high heavens is cooling you off as the heat rises from off of the asphalt.

“Y/N … you don’t tell Rodney what to do! I do! Let me be great!”

“You got it, Aunt Jerri!” Yahya kisses your right cheek and grips you tighter. He feels right at home and you’re so relieved that he’s here.

“You know what I need someone to get? More paper plates. Run down to the store, Trace.”

“You got it, Sis.”

Trace’s fashion sense was stuck in 1996; Ghostface Killah and Raekwon would be so proud. Trace was -- and still is -- feared, revered, loved and lusted over. He was the Dave of his time, his roster of women certified. Truth is that he could still build one, Trace capturing the attention of all of the 40-plus-year-old women on the street as he walks down to the store. He still had it.

“Yo, Trace!” Dave hops up from the steps of his Aunt’s house to show Trace some love. Trace got Dave an overnight warehouse job years ago and he’s been indebted to him ever since.

“Peace, king. What’s good?” Dave wants to ask Trace about you but last time he asked someone else in your family, it didn’t end the way he planned.

“Shit, Trace. Just waiting for the street lights to come on so we can really get it in out here. You at Ms. Jerri’s crib? Everybody up there?”

“Yeah. Everybody. You remember my niece, Y/N? She came up too.”

Dave’s mind screams every expletive known to man. He wonders if you came up with you-know-who but asking Trace would open up old wounds and expose a decision that Trace explicitly forbade him not to make.

Dave was Trace 2.0 and Trace knew it. He didn’t want that for his niece so when he saw Dave flirting with you at last year’s block party, he made it a point to pull Dave to the side to ask him in not-so-nicely terms to knock it off.

You worked all the way around that threat with the help of Aunt Jerri.

Aunt Jerri encouraged you to “remember that you’re on vacation” and that “what goes on here, stays here.” She saw the way you looked at Dave. It was the same way she gazed at your Uncle Terrence when she first met him. You were beyond smitten, turned on by the way he walked and talked. Dave could hem you up and pick you up. He oozed confidence that almost crossed into obnoxiousness. You wanted him and couldn’t hide it and Aunt Jerri encouraged to “have some fun with all of that.” She vowed to keep your secret from your Uncle Trace. You didn’t know it would turn into two of the most passionate weeks you would ever have and subsequently the worst heartbreak you ever felt.

“Yeah, I do.” That’s all Dave could muster up to say as he feels his heart boil over. He daps up Trace, sits back down on the steps and opens up Instagram.

Yo. You up here?

Taglist: @yoursoulstea @harleycativy @twistedcharismaaa @dorkskinneded @need-my-fics @ghostfacekill-monger @writerbee-ffs @chaneajoyyy

#yahya abdul-mateen ii x reader #yahya abdul-mateen ii #dave east #dave east fic #fanfiction #old habits die hard

69 notes · View notes

colascriptura · 5 years

Text

A Christmas Sermon For Pagans (C.S. Lewis)

Somewhere in the mid- to late-1940s, C.S. Lewis wrote "A Christmas Sermon For Pagans", which was rediscovered in 2017. The number of copies on the internet is currently zero, as far as I can tell. However, by extremely guerilla means, I have obtained the following copy (though I don't know if it's complete) which I now present to you for your edification and enlightenment...

A Christmas Sermon For Pagans

When I was asked to write a Christmas sermon for pagans, I accepted the job light-heartedly enough, but now that I sit down to tackle it, I discover a difficulty: are there any pagans in England for me to write to? I know that people keep on telling us that this country is relapsing into paganism; but they only mean that it is ceasing to be Christian, and is that at all the same thing?

Let us remember what a pagan or heathen (I use the words interchangably) really was. A heathen was a man who lived out on the heath, out in the wilds. A pagan was a man who lived in a "pagus" or small village. Both words in fact meant a rustic or yokel. They date from the time when the larger towns of the Roman Empire were already Christianised, but the old nature religions still lingered in the country. Pagans or heathens were the backward people in the remote districts who had not yet been converted, who were still pre-Christians. To say that modern people who have drifted away from Christianity are pagans is to suggest that a post-Christian man is the same as a pre-Christian man. But that is like thinking that a woman who has lost her husband is the same sort of person as an unmarried girl. Or that a street where the houses have been knocked down is the same as a field where no house has yet been built.

The ruined street and the unbuilt field are alike in one respect, namely that neither will keep you dry if it rains, but they are different in every other respect: rubble, dust, broken bottles, old bedsteads, and stray cats are very different from grass, thyme, clover, buttercups, and the lark singing overhead.

The real pagan differed from the post-Christian in the following ways. Firstly, he was religious. From the Christian point of view, he was indeed too religious by half. He was full of reverence. For him the earth was holy, the woods and waters were alive. His agriculture was a ritual as well as a technique. And secondly, he believed in what we now call "an objective right and wrong". That is, he thought the distinction between pious and impious acts was something that existed independently of human opinions: something like the multiplication table, which man had not invented, but had found to be true, and which he had better take notice of. The gods would punish him if he did not.

To be sure, by Christian standards his list of right and wrong acts was rather a muddled one. He thought (and the Christians agreed) that the gods would punish him for setting the dogs on a beggar who came to his door, or for striking his father. But he also thought they would punish him for turning his face to the wrong point of the compass when he began ploughing. Though his code included some fantastic sins and duties, it got in most of the real ones.

This leads us to the third great difference between a pagan and a post-Christian man. Believing in a real right and wrong means finding out that you are not very good. The pagan code may have been on some points a low one, but it was too high for the pagan to live up to. Hence a pagan, though in many ways merrier than a modern, had a deep sadness. When he asked himself what was wrong with the world, he did not immediately reply "the social system" or "our allies" or "education". It occurred to him that he -- himself -- might be one of the things that was wrong with the world. He knew he had sinned. And the terrible thing was he thought the gods made no difference between voluntary and involuntary sins. You might get into their bad books by mere accident. And once in, it was very hard to get out of them. The pagan dealt with this situation in a rather silly way. His religion was a mass of ceremonies, sacrifices, purifications, et cetera, which were supposed to take away guilt, but they never quite succeeded. His conscience was not at ease.

Now, the post-Christian view which is gradually coming into existence (it is complete already in some people, and still incomplete in others) is quite different. According to it, nature is not a living thing to be reverenced. It is a kind of machine for us to exploit. There is no objective right or wrong. Each race or class can invent its own code or ideology just as it pleases. And whatever may be amiss with the world, it is certainly not we the ordinary people. It is up to God, if after all he should happen to exist, or to government, or to education, to give us what we want. They are the shop, we are the customer, and the customer is always right.

Now if the post-Christian view is the correct one then we have indeed woken from a nightmare. The old fear, the old reverence, the old restraints... how delightful to have woken up into freedom, to be responsible to no one, to be utterly and absolutely our own masters! We have, of course, lost some fun. A universe of colourless electrons (which is presently going to run down and annihilate all organic life everywhere and forever) is, perhaps, a little dreary compared with the earth-mother and the sky-father, the wood nymphs and the water nymphs, chaste Diana riding the night sky and homely Vesta flickering on the hearth. But one can't have everything, and there are always the flicks and the radio: if the new view is correct, it has very solid advantages.

But is it? And if so, why are things not going better? What do you make of the present threat of world famine? We know now it is not entirely due to the war. From country after country comes the same story of failing harvests. Even the whales have less oil. Can it be that nature, or something behind nature, is not simply a machine that we can do what we like with? That she is hitting back? Waive the point. Suppose she is only a machine, and that we are free to master her at our pleasure. Have you not begun to see that man's conquest of nature is really man's conquest of man? That every power wrested from nature is used by some men over other men? Men are the victims, not the conquerors in this struggle. Each new victory over nature yields new means of propaganda to enslave them, new weapons to kill them, new power for the state, and new weakness for the citizen. New contraceptives to keep man from being born at all.

As for ideologies, does no one see the catch? If there is no real wrong and right -- nothing good or bad in itself -- none of these ideologies can be better or worse than another. For a better moral code can only mean one which comes nearer to some real or absolute code. One map of New York can be better than another only if there is a real New York for it to be truer to. If there is no objective standard then our choice between one ideology and another becomes a matter of arbitrary taste. Our battle for democratic ideals against Nazi ideals has been a waste of time, because the one is no better than the other. Nor can there ever be any real improvement or deterioration. If there is no real goal, we can't get any nearer to it, or farther from it. In fact there is no real reason for doing anything at all.

It looks to me, neighbours, as though we shall have to set about becoming true pagans, if only as a preliminary to becoming Christians. I don't mean that we should begin leaving little bits of bread under the tree at the end of the garden as an offering to the dryad. I don't mean that we should dance to Dionysus across Hampstead Heath, though perhaps a little more solemn or ecstatic gaity and a little less commercialised amusement might make our holidays better than they now are. I don't even mean (though I do very much wish) that we should recover that sympathy with nature, that religious attitude to the family, and that appetite for beauty which the better pagans had. Perhaps what I do mean is best put like this: if the modern post-Christian view is wrong (and every day I find it harder to think it right) then there are three kinds of people in the world. 1) Those who are sick and don't know it: the post-Christians. 2) Those who are sick and know it: the pagans. 3) Those who have found the cure.

And if you start in the first class, you must go through the second to reach the third. For (in a sense) all that Christianity adds to paganism is the cure. It confirms the old belief that in this universe we are up against Living Power: that there is a real Right and that we have failed to obey it: that existence is beautiful and terrifying. It adds a wonder of which paganism had not distinctly heard: that the Mighty One has come down to help us, to remove our guilt, to reconcile us. All over the world, even in Japan, even in Russia, men and women will meet on December the 25th to do a very old-fashioned and very pagan thing: to sing and feast because God has been born.

You are uncertain whether it is more than a myth. Well, if it is only a myth then our last hope is gone. But is the opposite explanation not worth trying? Who knows but that here -- and here alone -- lies your way back? Not only to heaven, but to earth too, and to the great human family whose oldest hopes are confirmed by this story that does not die.

22 notes · View notes

susspirria · 5 years

Text

Guiltless - Chapter 2

Fandom: Borderlands

Pairing: Rhys/Handsome Jack (Rhack)

Tags: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting,Alternate Universe - Serial Killers,Alternate Universe - Soulmates,Human Trafficking,Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con,Forced Prostitution,Child Abuse,Childhood Trauma,Insecure Rhys,Hurt Rhys,Dark Rhys,Shy Rhys,Scared Rhys,Jack being Jack,Jack Feels,Murder Husbands,Murder Kink,Brutal Murder,Hero Worship,Hero Complex,Angst and Hurt/Comfort,Rewrite,Jack Spoils Rhys,Sugar Daddy,Tenderness,Twisted and Fluffy Feelings

Summary: In which, Jack is a transient serial killer who believes himself to be a hero. While he's on the road he runs into his emotionally damaged and fragile soul mate, Rhys.

Jack is surprised that someone like him would have a soul mate, even someone trapped in such a shady situation as Rhys is. Rhys is surprised that anyone could be so kind to him, but especially a man like Jack.

(AKA a total strip the bones rewrite of my old fic Kismet)

Read more on Ao3 or below the cut :)

The first time that Jack had killed someone, it was more or less an accident. He had been fifteen at the time and living in the glorified hell house that he and his twin brother had grown up in. Their grandmother’s house. Granny Lawrence was a hard woman to please.

She ruled their house with an iron fist and had no issue letting both Jack and Tim know that they were unwanted castaways that she had been forced to deal with. “It’s out of the kindness of my heart that I don’t throw you worthless boys out.” She would say to them often. “It’s because I’m a good christian that I didn’t drop the two of you off a bridge when your worthless mother left you on my doorstep.” She would say, nearly as often.

Jack was pretty sure that there was no god, but if even if a god did exist, she sure as hell wasn’t getting into heaven. He had returned home late in the day that it had happened, he’d been hanging around the outskirts of town – up to no good of course. They lived in a rural town, so, really the only sort of fun that a teenager could get up to was in the middle of the woods or at the bottom of a bottle. He didn’t bring Timothy along, because, really that wasn’t the sort of thing that he liked to do. Timothy didn’t like partying and Jack’s friends made him nervous. He usually preferred to keep to himself, for the most part, writing novels and acting in plays at their school. They might have looked identical but they weren’t the same – Timothy didn’t act like Jack in all the ways that counted. He was a nice and gentle sort of person – he was creative, sensitive and he didn’t go around breaking rules.

Jack thought that, maybe if he had dragged him along, none of this would have ever happened.

When he walked into the house, he could feel that something was off. There was a tension in the air that he couldn’t quite put a finger on, but instinctively he felt bothered by it. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, he knew that something was wrong.

He walked through the threshold of the house and the feeling just got more intense with each and every step that he took forward into the house. Once he was in the living room, he saw exactly what was wrong. Timothy was on his knees, clutching his cheek in pain, their grandmother was behind him holding the rusty and dull buzz saw that she liked to beat them with.

Jack winced when he saw it, briefly remembering the many times that he had been beaten with it before and all of the scars that it left him with, before he felt a deep seated rage at the idea of her hitting Timothy. Hitting Jack was one thing, he could take it and he was used to failing to meet her high expectations. He was used to being punished, even if it was rarely ever fair. And he could handle the pain, he was strong enough to take it – he had always been the stronger one, out of the two of them. He had always been the one that took the blame when either of them did something wrong,

Jack ran up behind her, nearly blind with rage. “Get off of him!” He snapped, running towards her with a speed and determination that he had had no idea he even possessed. He grabbed her by the hair and she let out an inhuman sounding shriek. He dragged her for a bit and threw her into the wall, slammed her head against it once, twice, three times before he finally let her go, his anger quelled. She crumpled into a heap on the floor, blood pooling under hear head. Jack was in such a weird, fuzzy head space that at first, he didn’t realize that she was dead. That he had killed her. The only thought that had been in his mind was that he had to protect his brother – no one else would, especially not Tim.

But Timothy knew what had happened. He had seen it, nearly as soon as she hit the ground. He was frozen with shock and horror, he couldn’t believe that Jack could do something like that, even to someone as horrid as their grandmother. He covered his mouth tightly with his fist in a pathetic attempt to stop himself from vomiting at the sights and smell in front of him. He couldn’t speak in full sentences, couldn’t think clearly, couldn’t do much else but panic.

Jack walked over to him and though he knew that, physically, there was no blood on his hands Timothy could have sworn that he could smell it on his brother the coppery scent in the air sickening to him. Jack put his hands on his shoulders and looked at him with a concerned expression fixed on his face,“What’s wrong?” Jack asked, looking at Timothy strangely, like he couldn’t comprehend the horror in his twins eyes.

Timothy opened his mouth and closed it again,“You killed her.” He blurted out, after a few moments of stunned silence, his tone blank and empty. He thought that he might be going into shock. “Y-you…you fucking…she’s dead.” He repeated the sentiment.

The realization didn’t click for him immediately, that she was dead. He looked over at her corpse and felt next to nothing about it, all the same. In his mind, she was a monster. She was the monster, the devil that had been peeking over their shoulder all their lives, filling them with terror and beating them half to death over small mistakes.

Jack thought that she got she was deserved, but he didn’t dare say that Timothy, who was all nervous tension and shaky hesitance already. He didn’t want to shake him up anymore and he tried to sooth Tim. “Hey, hey, hey…” He murmured, soothing his thumbs over Timothy’s cheeks in a gentle – nearly paternalistic fashion. “It’s okay… It’s okay, she won’t be able to hurt us anymore.” He hoped that that would have been enough. It wasn’t.

Timothy looked at Jack like he had spouted a second head. “Okay? No. No! This isn’t okay. None of this is okay!” He said, aghast. Then, overwhelmed by everything that had happened he broke out into terrified and ugly sobs. “Jack! You killed her! You… you- why would you…?” He babbled incoherently and wrung his hands until they were sore and raw, to get all the anxiety that he was feeling out. It wasn’t every effective.

Jack didn’t understand why Timothy cared so much. She was evil. She was cruel. She hated them and she would have killed them if she had the chance, through beatings or neglect. “Tim, you don’t… she was going to hurt you.” He said, nonplussed. He walked over to her corpse and picked up the buzz-saw that she usually used to beat him with. He had to pry it from her cold, practically necrotic hands. “With this.” He exclaimed, as if Timothy had no idea and it was damning evidence of her guilt.

Timothy still didn’t look convinced that there was nothing else that Jack could have done to help him, but he didn’t say as much. He didn’t want to argue and not just because of his fear. “Okay…” He said, speaking in a suspicious tone of voice. “What are we going to do now?”

“I’unno. We have to get rid of her I guess.” Jack said, with a shrug and laid back casualty in his tone of voice. This time, Timothy didn’t argue because he had little choice but to help Jack, if he didn’t want to go to jail too.

They dug a hole 12 feet deep, so deep in the ground that no one would ever find her for years, they had had to dig it all night and all morning nearly non-stop to get it deep enough. It was a good thing that they had lived in a rural area,

otherwise someone would have noticed – started asking some questions about where their grandmother had gone off to. They grew a garden over her corpse, planted carrots and tomatoes over her grave like she was glorified fertilizer.

Jack never came to regret what he had done. As far as he was concerned, he had killed her because she was a monster and she could have killed Tim and she probably would have if she had had the chance to enact her punishment like she had wanted.

She was evil and he had done the right thing, bashing her head in. He had saved their lives. He was a hero. He told himself that every night. He was a hero. He was a hero. He. Was. A. Hero.

But Timothy… he didn’t agree, Jack just knew it, even though he wouldn’t say it. He never looked at Jack the same way after that day. He would try to make himself act the same, but it would never be completely right.

His smiles would be forced and his eyes would be nervous whenever Jack looked upon him. The two of them grew more and more distant over the years and once they were finally old enough to move out of the house they grew up in, Timothy never talked to him again.

He refused to. No matter how many times Jack tried to reach out and reconnect – they were twins after all, it was only natural for him to want to be close with his twin! – Timothy would refuse to so much as even look at him. Because Timothy couldn’t look at Jack anymore without wondering in terror what else Jack might be capable of. Just the thought of it made him feel sick with worry.

While Timothy discovered a monstrousness in his brother, Jack learned something else about himself. He had discovered that there was power in his hands. Power to hurt. Power to help. He could brutalize men and women without a single thought for what that meant about him, about his character or his morals. To him it didn’t matter, whether he would be viewed as a “good person” or a “bad person” because he knew the truth.

In Jack’s mind, he had a gift. A gift that he thought could be used for the greater good. He could make the world a better place, one death at a time. So he made a vow, to himself, that he would each and every monster that walked around, parading themselves in human disguises and wipe them off the face of the earth. And he would keep on killing them, as long as he lived, until his dying breath.

*************************

After Rhys fell asleep in the caravan, he didn’t wake up for nearly three days. Everything that had happened to him over the years had compounded together. All of his experiences, all of his trauma, everything that he had done and been forced to do all mixed together and overwhelmed him to the point that he had become nearly comatose. He didn’t even dream the whole time – it was just blackness for hours upon hours without any interruption. When he finally woke up, it took him a bit to stretch out his limbs and get rid of the stiffness and the aching that he felt deep in his bones.

Rhys walked out of the little room that he had been sleeping in and noticed Jack was sitting in the little kitchenette, with a bit of breakfast laid out – Eggs, toast, coffee, pancakes and little strips of bacon were all spread out on the table. The caravan was still moving, though slowly, and Rhys realized that it must have been self driving. Fancy, he thought. Then he realized just how hungry he was when his stomach started to growl. Loudly.

Jack chuckled a bit at the sight of his soul mate, “Mornin’ pumpkin” He hummed in greeting, with a pleasant smile fixed across his face. “You want some breakfast?” He asked, even though the answer was obvious. Rhys walked over to sit at the table and started serving himself a small portion of all the food. He rarely ate much, he never really had the chance or the freedom to and often he would go days without meals if he didn’t impress Vasquez or any of the other men that he answered to sufficiently.

The two of them ate somewhat quickly and in silence until Jack finally decided to speak up, “How you holding up?” He asked, “…With everything?” He hastily tacked on at the end, remembering that Rhys’ whole life had been some sort of nightmare – even if he didn’t know the full scope and scale of the abuse that his soul mate had suffered in his life, but he knew that he had gone through more pain than anyone as sweet and smart as him ever should.

Rhys pulled his knees to his chest and rest his chin on them, making himself look tiny. “I’m not really sure?” He replied, in a hesitant tone of voice. “It’s all hazy and muddled I guess. It feels good to be free, but how I got my freedom… I don’t know how to feel about it.”

Jack moved closer to Rhys and dared to run his fingers through the younger mans’ hair in what he hoped was a gentle and soothing manner. He wasn’t the best with emotions, but he could try to fake it, for Rhys’ sake. “It’s okay, if you’re feeling guilty.” He started, “And if you’re feeling guilty, or even if you’re blaming me for all of this,” He elaborated, tone gentle. “I get that, Rhysie, I really do. But I would never hurt you.” He promised. “And you don’t need to worry about anyone hurting you ever again.”

“No. No, that’s not it. I don’t blame you.” Rhys said, tone sharp as the serrated edge of a dagger, like he was making a concerted effort not to let himself be vulnerable right now. “And I don’t feel bad. At all. And that’s the problem! What kind of person am I, if I don’t care about their deaths…” He added, speaking more to himself than to Jack at this point. “I don’t care though, I’m happy that they’re dead.” His expression morphed to one of worry, he was nearly distraught. “What kind of person does that make me? Even after what they did to me?” He asked.

Rhys was pleading with Jack to help him feel less like a monster. “My kind of person.” Jack muttered to himself, low enough that Rhys couldn’t even hear him. Then he pulled Rhys in close and embraced him both tenderly and possessively. He noticed the way that Rhys clung to him and squeezed him even tighter. “You’re not a monster, baby. They are.” Jack murmured in his ear.

“A-are you sure?” Rhys asked in a voice that was tiny and frightened, completely unsure if that was the truth. “I can’t- I know that they were, that they hurt me, but they were still people. It was wrong.” He stammered out indelicately. His own morals were twisted enough already as it stood and he felt like taking pleasure in that sort of thing made him an even worse person by default.

“Those people hurt you.” Jack told him, not willing to deal with the idea of Rhys blaming himself for the abuse that he faced. “They treated you like dirt, they exploited you and hurt you.” Jack put Rhys’ face in his hands and made Rhys look him in the eye. “You didn’t deserve any of that, you never deserved what they did to you. You know that, don’t you baby?” He asked, genuinely curious if he did.

“I…” Rhys hesitated. He wanted to say that, yes, of course he didn’t deserve to be prostituted and trafficked out since he was too young to understand his own body. But a part of him, a tiny and insidious part of him, that he hated to think about, blamed himself for everything that he had gone through. That part of him that told him that, maybe if he was better behaved, his mother never would have sold him in the first place. He felt like it was his fault. “Yes?” He said, with an insecure lilt around the edges of his tone of voice, finally after moments of thinking it over himself.

It was obvious that Rhys wasn’t completely convinced of his own innocence. Jack responded by kissing him, very gently, on the lips. “Listen, Rhysie, those people – look at me – those fucking monsters who hurt you, they deserved every fucking thing that they got. Matter of fact, they deserved way more than what they got.” He said, voice clear and authoritative. If he had had the time, he would have tortured all of them for hours upon hours for what they had done. That was just a fact.

The younger man felt strangely comforted by Jack’s words and he wasn’t sure if that was because Jack was right, or because Rhys wanted him to be right. “I really want that to be true.” He admitted, in a voice that was incredibly soft spoken, so quiet that Jack wouldn’t have been able to hear him if they weren’t pressed so closely together.

“It is true.” Jack told him, deadly serious, before he decided to change the subject to something a little bit lighter. “Oh! By the way, I got you some new clothes while you were sleeping back there.” He gestured towards a dresser that was fixed to the back wall. “They’re in there. Hope they’re your style.”He added, mostly as a tease. Rhys giggled at that, before a thought crossed his mind and made his stomach turn, just a little bit. He didn’t really know what his style was. He didn’t know what he liked. He didn’t really know what he disliked. Pretty much all of his life, things had been dictated for him, he never had that kind of choice. It was upsetting, having his agency taken from him for pretty much his entire life, but he shook off the thought with the reminder that that was all over now.

He was safe now, he would be happy with his soul mate. He needed to be happy and he clung to the thought that Jack could save him – could fix him and love him, despite how unclean and rotten he always felt – like it was his only hope for survival. In many ways, it was.

Rhys grabbed one of the outfits that Jack had bought for him and headed to the little off shooting bathroom and showered. When he finally returned back to the main area of the caravan, dressed in his new – expensive, nicely fitting clothes, Jack was sitting down with a photo album in hand, looking over it like it was gospel. “What’s that you’re looking at?” Rhys asked, innocent curiosity heavy in his tone. Jack looked up at him and Rhys smiled gently, he motioned for Rhys to sit back down next to him.

Jack put an arm around his shoulder and pulled him in close, Rhys instinctively cuddled back against him. In the short time that he had known Jack, his soul mate had been overly willing with physical affection and Rhys just loved it. He loved being hugged, he loved having his hair played with, he loved being kissed gently and touched in all the comforting ways that he had always been denied for most of his life. “Ah, just some old photos.” Jack replied, after a moment. “I was thinking about my brother.”

Rhys’ eyes lit up with curiosity, “You have a brother?” Rhys asked and then Jack pointed out a photo of him and someone who looked exactly like him, with their arms around each other and big smiles on their faces. “You have a twin brother?” He corrected himself at the sight of them.

“Yeah, but we’re not really close these days.” Jack replied shortly, “We had a falling out, a while ago, and we don’t talk anymore.” He smiled, but it was tight and it looked to Rhys like there was pain behind his eyes. It was obvious that he didn’t want to talk about it and that was fine. Instead of asking any questions about it, or even speaking at all, Rhys delicately lay his hand over Jacks’ own and squeezed it in a comforting gesture. Jack grinned at him and ducked over to kiss his cheek. “It’s best not to think about it too much.” Jack said, before closing the photo album and putting it away.

And then Jack changed the subject back to Rhys, he wanted to know more about him – he wanted to know every little thing about him, the good things, the bad things. Everything. Rhys was hesitant to be forthcoming, partially because a lot of things about him were either too painful to talk about, or things that he wasn’t really sure of because of the years of captivity that he had suffered.

They came to a compromise – Rhys would talk about himself, or the things he was comfortable sharing about himself, so long as Jack shared some things about himself too. It worked out for the best. Jack found out that Rhys loved ice cream as well as all sorts of sweet things and that he gobbled it up every time that he was allowed it.

He found out that Rhys loved music and that he genuinely enjoyed singing and when he was a child he would sing to the younger kids to comfort them. He found out that Rhys had always wanted tattoos, but that he had never had the freedom to choose how he looked. He found out that Rhys had always been into computers and the newest tech, that he had wanted to get into programming whenever he had the chance.

Jack tried to be as forthcoming as possible, he told Rhys about how he had put himself through school and worked in engineering. He told Rhys about some of his upbringing – that he had grown up in a small town and he was a bit of a hoodlum for most of his teen years. He told him about being picked up by Hyperion right out of college and how lucky he had been to get that leg up in the corporate ladder.

When the subject of Hyperion came up, Rhys was immediately curious about it. Even he had heard about Hyperion, it was one of the leading corporations in the world. They were pioneers in tech, weaponry, prosthesis – basically, anything you could think of. “You’re Hyperion’s CEO?” He asked, marveling a bit at the revelation. “But you’re still so young! That’s incredible.” He gushed adoringly.

Jack’s expression got a bit smug, Rhys probably shouldn’t have been feeding his ego like that, it was dangerous. He thought it was cute anyways. “Yeah, the board loves me.” He explained, “They even booted the jerk ass who ran it back when I was just an engineer on the main floor. It was a risk, I guess, but they took a chance on me.” He added. And it had worked out perfectly for them too, Jack had boosted Hyperion’s profits and growth a hundred fold.

Rhys just couldn’t help but go into fan boy mode. “I heard about all Hyperion growing up. Not everything, you know, they kept us in the dark about pretty much everything that went on outside but…” He started babbling, speaking animatedly with his hands. “

“No, you were being cute.” Jack assured him quickly, before an idea popped up in his head. “I could show you around the headquarters, if you like, when we get to sanctuary.” He looked over to where the caravan’s console was, “Should only be a few more hours, then it’s home sweet home, cupcake!” He added, making a grand gesture with his arms that was reminiscent of a game show host telling him that he had just won a brand new car.

Rhys laughed a bit at that, “So Sanctuary’s your home?” He clarified. “Our home?” He corrected after a moment or two. He and Jack were soul mates, he reminded himself – it still felt so strange to him the mere idea that he would even have a soul mate at all, never mind someone as successful, talented and brilliant as Jack was. To him at least.

Rhys didn’t think that he deserved that sort of fortune or good luck. He didn’t think that he deserved much of anything at all. He thought that Jack was too good for him – that everybody was too good for him, that no one should ever have to be saddled with a broken mess like him. A part of him understood that that was probably a mixture of his own self loathing and the hero worship that he had for Jack – though, in a way, he was Rhys’ hero. Because Jack had, literally, saved him, rescued him from the hellish prison that he had been forced to live in for nearly all of his life.

Jack made a wishy-washy motion with his hand. “Eh, Yeah, pretty much.” He replied, after a few moments. It was only a half truth. Jack had a had a home in every city that had a Hyperion branch in it and at least a dozen or so more safe houses for his other, more discretionary, purposes that Rhys wouldn’t need to worry about. At least not right now.

But Sanctuary was probably his favorite place to be. He spent a lot of time in Sanctuary, at least when he wasn’t on the road, because Sanctuary happened to be where Hyperion’s base of operations was. He was sure that Rhys might have known that already, given his interest in his company.

“How is it there?” Rhys asked as a strange feeling that was like a mix of anxiety and giddiness began to pool in the pit of his stomach. “Is it nice?”

“Oh, yeah, it’s great. You’ll love it there, pumpkin. I practically own the whole fucking town! It’s great.” Jack promised him, tone earnest and honest. “I’ve got this penthouse in the middle of the city with a great view. It’s beautiful…When we get in town, I can show you around the place. Maybe I’ll take you to some shops and I can finally start spoiling you rotten.”

Rhys smiled, “I’d like that.” He said in kind. He hoped that he was right about that. He’d love it if Sanctuary became his new… Sanctuary.

#my fics #rhack #rhack fics #serial killer/soulmate au #rhys the company man #handsome jack #ongoing

5 notes · View notes

thereddeath2093-blog · 5 years

Text

2020A_CW-210 personal blog post

DOOM

By Steven Bunch

I spend a lot of time thinking about doom. It’s a rather abstract concept to preoccupy oneself with, but still I find myself living a “doomed” life. I listen to doom metal, I watch movies and TV shows full of doomed people on doomed worlds, I fantasize about the doom of the planet and my own personal doom. It even gets so much more specific to the point of absurdity; my favorite rapper is MF DOOM, my favorite super villain is Dr. Doom, I even play DOOM the video game.

Half of my time spent thinking about doom, is trying to understand what the word itself really means. What is doom? What does it mean to be doomed? This as you can imagine inspires all sorts of philosophical questions about life and death, fate and inevitability, as well as many others. For all my pondering, I can’t really come up with a solid answer or something definitive. Sure, I could go with a typical dictionary definition of the idea, but it is more than that to me. It encompasses too much to be summarized and completed in a single or simple string of sentences. It’s an aesthetic, an ideology, and a state of being to me, something transcendental unto itself.

The aesthetics of Doom are easily recognized but much like the idea itself, abstract and difficult to definitively explain. There are rather obvious tropes and visual elements that appear in art and media that are representative of what I’m talking about; ruined buildings, smoke filled skies, destroyed cities, dead bodies, anything apocalyptic really. However, the idea is much deeper than that. A piece of art, or anything visual, that can inspire feelings of dread, despair, or hopelessness exemplify this aesthetic in its purest forms. This has a place in the greater sense of the word and the idea of Doom itself.

The ideology of Doom, unlike a lot of ideologies, is not one that is readily “chosen” in the same way one might choose to be a democrat or one would take up the cause of conservation. This is a kind of mentality that people usually fall into, and more so often than they might realize. Unlike the aforementioned aesthetics, the ideology is easily explained and familiar to most people. While chiefly the mentality is signified by feelings of doom or feeling doomed, it is a little more complicated than that. A true ideology of doom comes when this mentality is reflected out into the world as a whole rather than the individual. More than a simple feeling of personal helplessness, an ideology of doom encompasses the whole of humanity, to see the entire human race as doomed. As you can imagine, this is not a particularly hot-take, especially these days. That being said, embracing this fact would be the key difference between someone who is merely cynical and someone who is waiting with baited breathe for the apocalypse. Which is essentially what I’m talking about.

People would scarcely admit to themselves, and even more so to each other, that they want the world to end. But the fact of the matter is that most people on some level do. Being a “doomer” has even become a popular internet meme. You get a sense of this feeling anytime someone has a particularly fashionable doomsday prophecy or something like this virus breaks out. People talk about “what if this gets worse?” and “what if this is the ‘big one’?” and they do so in very practical sensible ways, but it’s not hard to see something under the practical nervous façade everyone displays. There’s a part of it that is exciting to everyone. There’s a little voice in every one’s head that says “well fuck, if the world ends, I don’t have to go to work on Monday”.

Now that might seem rather funny like a Sunday newspaper comic, but there’s something deep in the psychology of that mindset. People don’t want to have to go to work, but more than that, they don’t want to be expected to participate in the societal machine that makes people go to work and earn money. Part of being an adult is accepting and fulfilling obligations that are somewhat thrust upon you from outside regardless of how one feels about those particular obligations. People are to a degree forced to participate in a society that they don’t agree with, or at the very least, do not like their position in. An apocalypse frees the shit scrubber and the burger flipper to eat his boss and give a finger to the man free of any guilt of any financial or typical consequence. All of us have someone higher on us on the ladder we wouldn’t mind making a meal out of.

Naturally this all extends outside of working relationships and obligations, but to the far reaches of civilization as a whole. Every person from pauper to prince is well aware, that the “system” in place is not only incredibly flawed and corrupt, but also antithetical to the very human soul itself. Obvious injustices such as bigotry, war, poverty; as well as little things like traffic, wasted time, rudeness, all support the notion that something is wrong .“The system” as your local pothead would call it, isn’t designed to crush people into machines and thoughtless consuming automatons, but one can’t be faulted for believing it so, considering how often said system produces such hollow beings. One of the mindset of “Doom” recognizes that the easiest way for these things to change, if they can be changed, is to wipe the slate clean entirely.

This is the point where most people will close this page because I’m starting to sound like a cultist of some kind. But, those people aren’t remiss to do so. This is the kind of mentality that leads people into cults. Nearly every cult is a “doomsday” cult of some kind. Even Christianity for all its pomp and circumstance, is hardly ever different. Some of the most colorful and interesting passages of the Bible come from the book of Revelations and the prophecy for the end of the world. That’s how natural this all is, how prevalent it is in the human psyche. We have always been waiting for the end of the world, because unlike most animals, we are very poignantly aware of our own mortality, and this awareness manifest itself in strange ways. The strangest of all being embracement.

This leads to my final point about Doom itself as a state of being, the embracement of death. Now again, I’m not trying to get all death-cult on you, but there is something to be said for not only accepting one’s own mortality, but embracing it. The fact of the matter is, life sucks, and not just these days or in a particular circumstance. Life, on the whole, is a tragedy. We are born into fragile bodies against our will, bodies that will very slowly decay with us trapped inside them. We are born into families we do not choose, with people who do not know but are entrusted with our entire existence, and then as an adult expected to serve someone else entirely. We are expected to work and struggle and to get sick and to suffer until we are physically incapable anymore. And if you whine about it, there will always be someone to chime in and remind you that your particular suffering isn’t even close to the breadth of suffering humans can experience because “someone always has it worse”. This is a world where a good death is considered “getting old”, which is essentially just fermenting and rotting longer than anybody else.

To be “Doomed” in this sense is a recognition and rejection of fighting these things. If we are all going to die, then there can be no “good death”. All death is natural, all the world is transient, a passing image. Nothing, least of all people, last forever. You spend a lot more time dead than alive in the grand scheme of things, and in that, being dead is more of the default state. That’s not to say that this is a suicidal feeling at all. This isn’t some philosophy of suicide in so much as it is a philosophy of embracing the inevitable end of all things. Someone in the “doomed” state of being isn’t going to go out and seek the end of their own life, but they aren’t the kind of person to shy away from it either. They allow themselves to fall away and let go of life’s worries much more readily. There is a reason that coming to terms with one’s own mortality is a huge part of Zen and eastern spiritual learning.

Why would you shy away from death and doom if the world is a bag of ass and you’re going to die anyway?

After many hours wasted thinking, I have come to the conclusion that this is where I draw my artistic inspiration from. All of my world view is painted with a funeral veil. I find myself obsessed with the aesthetics of doom because I constantly live in that state of being. I can’t help but feel a compulsion to drive this aesthetic as far as I can. I feel the innate urge to draw visions of monsters, destroyed cities, and the sky shredded by cosmic terror so naturally. I can’t help but express this feeling through my artwork. Something within me wants to say to people, or remind them; “hey, not only are things like suffering and death very real, but sometimes they are the only thing that is. They are inevitable and they shouldn’t not be cowered from, but embraced and mastered.”

Now, maybe I’m projecting too much. (I tried not to be too first person, oh well). Perhaps I’m just trying to explain my own morbid fascinations I can’t otherwise do so with. Maybe I’m just too edgy for my own good or it’s because I have a very strong belief in the afterlife. Though it’s not out of the realm of possibility that there’s just some people out there (myself chiefly included) who are just sort of depressing, death obsessed freaks. However, I gamble a stamp, that considering how many depressing death obsessed freaks are really out there in the world, that I’m not entirely off-base when I talk about these things being prevalent in the subconscious of the human race as a whole. I believe something deep in the human psyche craves a change, craves destruction to make way for something new. Something in each of us wants these things no matter the cost, something in each of us, craves Doom.

1 note · View note

automatismoateo · 2 years

Text

Attended grandmothers funeral at our old baptist Christian church. Got called out (by name) by pastor several times for never being saved, despite my grandmother’s ‘best efforts’ via /r/atheism

Attended grandmothers funeral at our old baptist Christian church. Got called out (by name) by pastor several times for never being saved, despite my grandmother’s ‘best efforts’

Man, today was a doozy.

My grandmother had passed away last week at 89 after being a life-long devout baptist Christian. After attending visitation at a funeral home, which went by relatively smoothly but was still very hard, she was moved out to an old school baptist church where we used to attend for the funeral and burial, as per her request.

I wasn’t looking forward to seeing all the old faces of people who surely had bad thoughts about me, being that this was the church I stopped attending over a decade ago. I didn’t expect it to go down perfectly, but I was still set on going because I wasn’t going to let old traumatic memories keep me from honoring my grandmother. Anyways, the initial songs and prayers eventually ended and so came the start of the sermon. It was the same pastor as the one I most resented from when I was a kid, and I made the mistake of sitting on the aisle-side edge of the pew, where pastors would often stop and seemingly preach to you specifically.

Just for context, this guy is probably 300 lbs, has a profuse sweating problem, and absolutely LOVES to give long and awkward handshakes to people and the congregation randomly. So, already not the most pleasing sight, but that’s not what matters.

He starts revving up his sermon as I remember all too well from when I was a kid. He starts out with light hearted memories of when my grandmother first used to attend the church, nothing bad in particular. But when he gets going, oh man. You’d think a funeral would be the time to celebrate a persons life, and all the good they’ve done for their community, but no. Not here.

Pastor proceeds to explain how even though she has been an extremely devout Christian, some people in her family were still ‘lost’ and that she would not be pleased with us if she were still here today. After around 30 minutes of guilt tripping to the maximum, he starts pacing up and down the pews. Keep in mind this guy’s preaching style has the same cadence of a drill sergeant on meth, so unless you’re used to that type of thing, this whole thing can come off as super off-putting, especially considering what he is actually saying. Stuff like ‘you will damned to hell unless you have people praying for you’ or ‘if you have the slightest doubt at all then you’re going to hell’. Hell this, hell that.

Anyways, eventually he comes up to me and offers to shake my hand (an offer I would begrudgingly accept, and would accept two more times by the end of it, fuck this guy) and he says “Anon here has received prayers everyday from this wonderful woman (my grandma), and yet even he hasn’t yet answered God’s call.” and proceeds to use me as an example for why you should respond to anything you think is God reaching out. He would do this in similar fashion a few more times by the end of it as well. And anytime hell was brought up after the first time he called me out, he would give me a lengthy glance and continue.

Meanwhile, all these people in the crowd, whom I know from my past and know for a fact have been indoctrinated since birth, are all mumbling their grievances with me and shouting whenever they agree with the pastor.

What a fucking disgusting sight. Using every single thing as a opportunity to convert more confused and innocent people. Honestly, from the bottom of my heart, if you put your kids through this psychological torment then fuck you. If I wasn’t so firm in my beliefs now as an atheist, I could totally see myself going back to church out of fear or guilt. If all of this wasn’t bad enough, after the burial my aunties tried to use their mom passing as a way to get me back to church. I didn’t know what to say, so I literally just said nothing. (I knew exactly what I wanted to say, just didn’t have the heart to destroy theirs)

Sorry for the essay, just a lot that has happened that I wanted to vent about and I figured this would be the place since I’m not exactly in many atheists company down here in the bible belt.

Fuck religion and fuck what Christians have turned Easter into.

Submitted April 18, 2022 at 09:05AM by Extension-Parking202 (From Reddit https://ift.tt/Q9c3yAD)

#reddit

0 notes

gracedfallen · 6 years

Text

is that jimmy novak? // self para

WHO: Castiel

MENTIONED CHARACTERS: Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Gen Angeli, Parker Winchester, Jimmy Novak, Claire Novak, Amelia Novak.

WHEN: 11:28 am. July 10th, 2018

WHERE: Pontiac, Illinois.

Alone to his thoughts once more, Castiel decided actions had to be much better than the silence...

He really needed time to focus on himself because lately, he had only been occupied of helping Sam and Gen with Parker and settling in with Parker. That was distraction enough for him to realize he needed to face his current predicament head-on.

He cannot stop thinking about the family he'd broken apart. Jimmy Novak, his wife, Amelia and his daughter, Claire.

He'd briefly speaking to Gen about it but nobody else. It's especially hard now considering two of his good friends had a baby together. He was protective in one sense, but in another, he didn't want to corrupt anything they had which for now, he figured he'd keep a little distance just to give them space. He didn't want to smother them, especially with the conversation he'd had with Sam at the store. Like Sam said. Not everyone had an angel to help them out.

He'd have spoken to Dean about it by now but he seemingly had bigger problems which he could completely understand

A cafe. Pontiac, Illinois. Close to midday. He has a cup of coffee, black, and slice of toast with an accompaniment of jam besides him. Really, his mission was to find Claire but for some reason, with some limited restrictions from his access to his powers provided by Heaven, he couldn't do so. He had to do it the old-fashioned way.

Castiel had never really cared about money but one of the few things he'd bought for himself was a laptop. Not just for the sake of owning it, but for the sake that surfing the web was a quick way to get the information he needed he couldn't otherwise get himself. He'd always been fascinated with modern technology and figuring them out was a small adventure in itself.

Laptop now open. Google is his home screen and he goes to type but there's hesitance. He's thinking this over. How big exactly did he want to dig this hole for himself? Is this the right thing to do. He types the name with minute clicking noises from the collision of fingers to keyboard.

'Jimmy Novak'

The first thing he sees is Jimmy's face in pictures. Multiple results show articles. Reports from the police. Jimmy's still shown as a missing person but Castiel knew better than that. He reads it but it’s information he already knew. ‘James ‘Jimmy’ Novak. Born July 10th, 1973.’ Castiel used Jimmy's body as his vessel, but the original had been blown to smithereens when killed by Lucifer during the first stages of possible Apocalypse.

The grand story of how two Winchesters and a fallen angel had prevented an event that would determine the fate of the entire world. Jimmy died at that moment, but Castiel had been rebuilt with his body by God. Jimmy was dead. Castiel knew well enough that he was in Heaven right now at peace but it was sad knowing his family still held up hope that he'd return someday.

That guilt set deep. He wore his face for years. The body was his own. Jimmy was long gone.

Once finishing his meal, some of which still taste just like molecules to him, he left the cafe with the full intention of trying to find clues as to where Claire might be. So he starts with the old Novak residence. An obvious choice.

He stood in front of the house looking onward and the shower of memories pour down. This is where the course started. The motion in set of his story had started here. Where he had ripped a family apart. Jimmy Novak, a devout Christian, loving father, adoring Husband. He was a good man. He deserved better. Castiel truly believed that. The building makes him uncomfortable but he starts to walk closer but is stopped when he hears someone call. Not his name though.

"Jimmy?"

The stranger's voice is shocked. The angel can tell as much from the shaky nature of it all.

"James? Is that really you? Oh, my goodness." The man is tearing up. "It's a miracle! You're really returned home safely too us. The town and Church have been so worried about you. We never gave up hope that someday you'd return to us safe and well. God works in mysterious ways."

Castiel turned around and just stares. He's almost stunned in place before he goes to say something. This is not the situation he'd exactly planned for. He was looking for Claire. He didn't want to lie but now he was here, he didn't know what to do in his situation.

"Look, I'm not...I'm not who you think-" A sigh falls from the angel's lips. He could see that happiness in the stranger's eyes. They clearly knew Jimmy. They must have been a friend of the family.

They hug him tightly and Castiel doesn't even know how to respond but there's a hesitant response to try to hug them back. "And on your birthday! I didn't forget. Happy 44th birthday, pal." He rubbed Castiel shoulder.

It's strange, Castiel doesn't remember his name right now or who he is. Normally, he had a good understanding of everyone in Jimmy's life but this was a blur to him for some reason.

"Oh, gosh! Stay here. Give me a sec, buddy. I need to get the police here to let them know we finally found you."

"That won't be nessicary." Castiel cleared his throat. He realized a few moments on that he didn't sound like Jimmy had. He had a higher pitched voice which was much more through the nose. So he mimics it. "I just want to get home," Castiel replies. "Tomorrow, I promise." It's kind of a lie. He just needs to find Claire but he does not want the guy to start giving everyone false hope that Jimmy had returned.

"W-Where's..." He rubbed his forehead. "Do you know where Claire is? Nobody seems to be home."

"You've been gone a really long while, buddy. Amelia left. She dropped Claire off at her grandmother's and took off. Travelling I think? She told everyone she needed to find herself."

That's enough information for Castiel to go off from.

"Thanks, man. You've been a real big help. As always." Castiel gave him a faux smile. He feels awful. This is all fake. And tomorrow, everyone's going to be expecting Jimmy's massive return somehow

How would he get out of this?

As the guy walks down the street on the phone to talk to people to tell them about Jimmy's big return, Castiel is already gone. Out of sight. He can't face him.

Someone he does need to face now though is Claire. He needs to make things right even though he knew they would never be.

#self para #turns out i'm doing a part two #cause i remembered it was jimmy novak's bday yesterday the day before yesterday

3 notes · View notes

twinflameshardcore · 7 years

Text

Masculine and Feminine hearts are fired up - pushing new love into the old methodical world

My higher self wants me to write about a few things which I’ve experienced lately so I’m sharing. The first part is about incoming astrological events since I’m feeling them already (love!), the other on how we - angelics can steal 3D humans into the 5D zone using the heart’s love only :)

Firstly, do use the incoming days’ energies to share love from the heart to heart between the goddess in you and the divine masculine. Between you and the Twin. Between you within yourself, your yin and yang as well. The choice is yours how you want to use it but obviously two hearts will be glued in absolute, open love during this transit because one has something which the other needs to rise their vibration and shift into 5D and up. We need to leave 3D (energetically); let’s face it, 3D is decaying and evil beings rooted there who cannot rise their vibration are screaming for food! Thus we need to pull as many people as we are guided towards out of 3D and into the new, the reality of Love. Or just that one special stranger who then could pull others, led by the heart fired up by our heart’s energy. This time now is about souls again and they do not apply to human rules.

The new Earth (the joyful, light place) has been replacing the old Earth (the wounded, dense place). Visualize it as if one transparent planet Earth presses onto another Earth and pushes away everything which do not match the new ‘blueprint’ (I hate this word) it brings. This filtering applies to everything which is a vibration = the light, colors, sounds, energy, temperature, living beings etc.

The fire is up because the full Moon will be in the fire element and the zodiac conditioned for releasing accumulated energies fast - anger, passion, hate, revenge, love, sexuality - a powerful yet ego driven Aries on 10/5, opposing the Sun in balancing, fair but undecided Libra. At the same time there have been amazing aspects in a disciplined, well organized and traditional Virgo - Venus trine Pluto (today 10/3), Mars trine Pluto (10/1) then Venus and Mars (I believe they’ll conjunct on 10/5; the next such an event will be in 2019, previous was in 11/2015, check out your diaries ;) ) This time is especially important for the Seraphim and all other fire angelics (incl. ex-angels of war), fire beings, fire elementals like dragons, also healed Draconians, and Reptilians and other races who constantly operate and balance the fire element yet feel frustrated, restrained and limited in the human bodies.

I always through that it will be me to be rescued from the old world but my plasma (also called light) body activated itself permanently and unexpectedly from the back of the heart chakra (between shoulder blades) on 09/27/2017 and it was a blasting follow up of the first Draconian/Seraph wake up experience I had in 02/2016. This had made me a helper rather than someone to be helped ;) More below.

Thus if you’re one of these fire beings, whether in TF relationships or not, you got awakened by somebody else a few years ago, and are now on the ‘mission’ to share love and rise vibration of other humans, your heart may find certain individuals, often strangers who you occasionally meet exactly in the first part of October 2017. They may be people who share the same skills as you have, thus this makes opportunities to get introduced. You will feel attracted to each other mostly on a spiritual level. This is how we of the 5D communicate with others - via the direct heart connection. There are individuals who still sit in 3D and need to have their vibration risen up to feel that having love in the hearts is the most comfortable feeling ever and so they would like to hold it there, to spread further, even if they do not understand what in fact they’re doing and how much it helps everybody to escape the old Earth. If you spot such a person, they will recognize your heart too. It’s because their heart informed them to expect somebody with such a heart like yours to come their way, connect and make a hole in their well structured reality so they could receive love and joy they’ve been craving for, but couldn’t reach out for it on their own. At some point, people who show up may be members of your galactic family to be rescued, but somehow they are not yet aware who they are or what they need to rise their vibration and leave the 3D Earth. They will recognize you based on your vibration, eyes and the heart. It’s the best time to help them because they might have saved your ass in a galaxy millions of years ago, so now you can do them a favor and offer your purified love, without engaging physically and mentally. This is crucial, otherwise the balance will be disturbed and the task will be failed.

So when this connection is made with a stranger, there are a few procedures to follow, especially if you are in a TF relationship. We twins were given the right to share love amongst the people but we must not engage physically with others, to avoid creating an unwanted reality though a mental visualization (thought=energy=creation) and sexual desires too (wanting=pulling). We can only belong to another angelic, the twin and them to us. When you ‘come down’ into the human realm and find such an individual who works hard in the area related to the old world, has his/her heart guarded yet dreams of having a partner to share safety, love and a good conversation, ditch your human programming and give them love in spirit, from the heart to the heart. How to do this? At first it may be tricky because our old human behaviors will be triggered - if we feel a spiritual connection with somebody, the mind and the body will naturally want to tune in, to take action in the physical, to ask for that person’s phone number or email then contact them, to see them again, to go for temptations and rising obsessions of the body and heart all together. The human role will be triggered to be a mother/father, lover and best friend to such a person. Resist that, otherwise you’ll stretch and imbalance the task.

Another feeling which will come from the human is guilt that if I am with the TF I should not share my love with others. Partly correct, because you must not leave your Twin or remove him/her from your personal ‘bubble’/reality/universe. You don’t want to hurt your own heart but you don’t want to think too much about love either. When a connection is established between the hearts, another human reaction will show up to release all boundaries and let the other’s energy interact with you on all levels, also sexually. This is very unwanted, otherwise it leads to addictions as the bottom chakras are prone to 'rooting’ into vibrations they feel pleased or safe with. If you live in a TF relationship where the twin is out of touch solving his own issues and purging, or he/she doesn’t complement you often, then any complement coming from another sex - considering it comes from somebody of your kind - feels like a fresh air in the heart, and it pulls. And this is where it starts and where the balance and boundaries can be shaken and where you can be taken off your Path. Our Path is to return to the Oneness state of being (with the twin), to the Source, to realize and accept that the only comfortable energy in the Universe is love to share it further. But again, we cannot attach to other human beings.

These days, you have a chance to let your higher self teach you how much easier it is to just give love from the heart without engaging physically or even staying in touch with someone new. The fire element like engaging totally, so this is a new, need lesson. As a fiery being, I’m new to this but I’ve learnt fast so I’m sharing the story because the final results amazed me :)

I’ve had this situation exactly on 10/1 (Mars trine Pluto which is an instant connection between ‘old masculine energies’, in both sexes who prefer power, control, discipline, order and strength which unite them under such an aspect). I’ve been to a ‘gun picnic’. A right wing party in my country wants to push a new law to let citizens have an easier access to guns. I’m against anything right wing tries to force on people because they’re fearful and narrow-minded, they represent the decaying 3D reality which brought wounding, sexism, racism, and separation so they need to go. I’m against giving weapons to citizens too, because it’s a Christian country and all wars were started in the name of their god and have had continued for centuries. I do not wish some Christian zealot killed me because I refuse to sell my soul to one god or another. But I understood that since I’m well awakened and angelic, I had to go there to bring my energy so others could pick it up and change their lives forever. Vibration needs no words or action, it’s enough to spread it around the people. An invitation came totally unexpectedly a day earlier so I was convinced it’s the Universe tapping me to move my ass and check it out as there must be something for me to participate in. An application form had 2 questions - whether one wished to participate in a shooting lesson, or just be a listener of the politicians’ speeches. I tapped the shooting. Basically, I’ve no interest in both killing but also shooting to a static point, it’s just a waste of time (and bullets). As a Draconian war master however so I have ‘flying, aiming, locking on a target and shooting’ activity written in my spirit in a way. That’s why I knew that this was a ‘mission for an awakened Draconian, to bring my opened, healed heart amongst the right wing gun nuts. Thus I walked there to see how it’s organized since the shooting place isn’t far from my home, and noisy as you can imagine. I told myself to expect nothing and I only wanted to be guided by my heart without making any judgment. I was hanging out, alone amongst strangers, have seen many ego maniacs, fashion followers, but also people who looked very 'normal’ and who came to eat and drink free food rather then discuss an easier or tighter access to guns :)

When we were asked to form the first team of 15 folks and walk to the shooting site, I joined them at once. I then instantly paid attention to the gun instructor, a man physically not in my type. I loved how he followed safety procedures and was giving commands to keep discipline in the group and acted like a military, oh boy, he was all discipline and order, very Mars and Pluto all together. I always love it, this is very Draconian :) We were taught to follow orders but also to give orders because there’s equality in the race. Dracos have been taught to respect one another because we’re well trained and we cannot spare or lose specialists, and masters. And since we were trained to use vibration to command, either the voice, or heart, or mind, then we resonate with it strongly whenever we sense it. I haven’t seen the instructor’s eyes (eyes = an access to one’s heart) until the moment I asked him to take his dark protective eyeglasses off when we ended the training. But we’ll get to this later. I sensed that he also felt, saw and loved how I was applying to commands at once (like attracts like!), while other people were kind of laid-back, relaxed, ignorant just because it was a picnic for the public. One needs to realize however, that the picnic is over when you cross the line of a shooting range where they use real guns and bullets - there are strict rules to apply to and you must listen to the instructors without hesitation or argumentation because they’re trained to keep you safe. When they told us the rules, and asked if anyone had questions, again, I was the only who had :) The angelic awareness gives me now this sort of ‘primacy’ over unawakened humans that when people are too shy or blocked to ask questions, I then come out and trigger the energy of questions by formulating one, simple, intelligent Q so that instructors have some entertainment too. This is just boring when nobody digs further just to let teachers teach more :) And I again earnt a point from the the gun instructor my heart had chosen ;)

I shot a few times, then left, then I came back for another round even if I was not asked because it was a contest and a participant could only shoot one series then record the results. I liked it even the machine gun was to heavy though I earnt a few points. The instructor recognized me instantly and informed that I was already shooting. I didn’t lie so I said openly that I came again to learn further but not to participate in the contest anymore as I was aware it would be unfair. Military world likes honesty, fast answers and right decisions so the guy invited me to join again :) I came twice to the gun stand operated by the same instructor eventhough there were 4 more instructors at the site and 3 of us 15 were assigned to a trainer. My heart (not my brain) wanted me to go to him, even if my brain/logic told me to go to the female instructor the 2nd time, just for a difference, the guns were the same at each stand. Then after the 2nd shooting and before the 3rd group formed in a booth behind us, I knew I couldn’t try again because it was the contest to win a Colt. So I then stood next to the instructor because people left to feed, nobody had questions, and I felt he was very open to talk further. I asked him to teach me the right position to stand with the Kalashnikov again so we trained it amongst a few watchers. Then I asked him what other guns they had there and that I would enjoy a lighter pistol. This was the moment when my heart said - ‘ask him to take his eyeglasses off, force the eye contact’. The eye contact gives an access to one’s heart and vice versa. This was known by poets, criminals but is true to the spiritual community specifically. Once our hearts are purged and filled with divine love, we open other hearts to share love through looking into people’s eyes. Then the pure love energy of the heart anchors in their hearts, our spirit makes a direct contact with their spirit, and remains memorable as it is, triggers a research, questions, self-analysis, and a return to the Source in the end. So I was looking at him as if I wanted to spit out that question yet he noticed I was searching for something in his face and encouraged me by asking ‘What..?’ Then I asked him for taking those eyeglasses off ‘because I like the eye contact when I talk to people’. Again, my direct approach was what he loved. So he took them off and then looked at me with this guarded face and daring eyes. I know the power of the eyes and how they can be read by those who know how. I always look into strangers’ eyes with a message that I accept who they are and whoever they are, but I bring the fire, independent opinions, honesty, I hide nothing and I want to be equally respected. This was the exchange - a warrior looking at another warrior. And he knew this. His eyes were narrow, light green but we looked at each other like provocateurs :) This is always an indicator that there is either air or fire element in action. To keep the conversation going and still ‘official’, I asked about gun models and prices. Turned out he had some Glocks but also Beretta 92F which was delightful news because I used to have a BB gun replica made by a respected well manufacturer so I admitted I was familiar with this model very well. (I actually gained an interest of my Twin in the beginning when I sent him a picture where I was posing with that gun because weapons match my look very well ;)) The instructor was pleased and said he had another BB Gun model from the same producer. So this was the moment we could hook into the conversation but... we had no time to talk further considering the 3rd group waiting behind. Yet I didn’t want to give him a chance to think that I was interested in him because in fact I wasn’t - it was only my heart which wanted me to approach to rise his vibration and so he could shift into the new reality with time.

The goal had been achieved, the spirits were put in touch, and so the love exchange on a distance could begin. My heart told me he was one of my soul group, guarded, tough face of a warrior but wanting love as everybody, He really knew much about people, by observing them, learning, seeing details, behaviors, cause and effect. Shooters must have a good eye for a detail. I haven’t yet known that he was also spiritually skilled which came later that day. Now it gets more interesting. When I learnt about prices of a personal coaching I could not accept such a deal as I couldn’t afford it but it’s a cheap training ovrall if you make a good salary. That’s why most of the clients of the shooting range are rich folks. He instantly understood a negative, yet unspoken answer of my eyes and then he said something crucial - ‘It looks like the only way to teach you cheaper or even for free is to find a boyfriend at the shooting range’ :))) I knew he meant himself even if he was joking. I so smiled and said honestly - ‘I have one already. I don’t need two boyfriends’. He and the other instructor who was listening, pretended to be disappointed and smiled too. The honesty and direct conversation are always a big turn on for the fire carriers. Yet there was no sexuality between the lines, otherwise I would recognize it and my heart would tell me to detach. So in this moment an open connection and acceptance was established between hearts, spirits, energies, and I also got a confirmation that he found me attractive on may levels. He also asked if I lived here in the city as many people came from other towns. I then said I lived in the neighborhood and he looked delighted. We exchanged no details, no address, no names either. Then I said I was heading home, eventhough I could have waited until they finish the training after a few hours and join the public near bonfires and music, in the evening. Then we could sit together and talk. I didn’t want that because he could have had wrong ideas and my human could have been triggered too which obviously could push the boundaries I set to be faithful to the Twin. So I decided to leave and my heart was pleased that I opened his - the task I little knew about could continue.

Spirits stayed hooked together. I was walking home smiling to myself. I felt pleased, and he felt pleased because I knew he was looking for acceptance of who he was and how guarded he was too. In turn, I as a human woman needed a direct masculine interest. He must have felt I read into people’s vibration the same as he was. This heart to heart energy was rising in the evening. It was light, that kind of love to be loved for how it is, a smiling, soft yet passionate love which needs no heaviness, promises or loyalty. Love which comes and goes just to put you in a good mood. This is what it wanted me to remember and embrace, to hold in my heart and send the same. Light and smiling. I knew he was thinking of me when I felt him so strongly, maybe he was even looking for me in the picnic site later while I was already home. He was very skilled spiritually which is something I wouldn’t expect from the gun instructor who apparently operates on the 3D zone! Again, expect nothing. Because he’s skilled, his energy came to me as much as my twin’s and it was easier because I was less a kilometer away from the site me and him met. It was buzzing with interest, pulling me to come back, to gaze more into my Draconian eyes and receive that what was in my heart.

So I was asking the Universe - ‘What’s next? What’s the purpose?’ My heart was filled with love and joy even the guy wasn’t my type at all and I didn’t fall in love. ‘Is he some new ‘love’ I am to join? Was my twin given to open me, heal and lead into a new relationship which would be better than that with him, mostly absent, LDR while the ‘new guy’ works a few meters away? Was my twin fake?’ Hundreds of questions while basking in love. My heart answered ‘no’ to all my questions. If I feel no physical pull to another man, the only energy is of the heart, or at least the mind. With the Twin there are all 3 vibrational matches available at once as we need to heal & integrate these 3 zones - the body, the mind, and the heart. So when you meet your twin, you’re both fascinated with all aspects of you two. My heart said - ‘Stay put. You felt lonely, wanted to be loved lately, to feel good, then enjoy this feeling but don’t attach, don’t change anything. Feel the love, utilize what you had learnt with the twin in spirit - the heart communication’. The answer is that in 5D zone, strangers can become close through the hearts and understand each other without words. That I - the angelic was to meet a man to rise his vibration while he heightened mine so then I could push pure unconditional love into his heart which would be what he was looking for. Yet I must not engage physically at all because I already have the twin. Kind of complicated but my higher self led me through this process next.

I was guarding myself against it at first because my human conditioning didn’t know how to deal with it. To let it pass or not. It was so tempting to open to this that I even thought some evil beings used the love aspect in the sky and sent that gun instructor on me to pull me away from the twin, and from our path :D But I like experimenting in spirit which is the only way to learn what is what and who is who during Ascension - nobody else can teach you that, you need to be curious and daring on your own. So I gave this feeling a chance to learn something completely new - to give love to another man in spirit while being dedicated to another man who is my other half and who sits in me and feels what’s going on. I said nothing to the Twin about this event, to avoid triggering a domino effect in the human brain, and yet there’s no danger I could ever betray or leave him because he is me, the twin is the ultimate ‘boyfriend’ :) It’s not even like being married, bored, to find a new possible lover. The idea was to tear the human (my and another’s) conditioning apart, to let love come out and in and give it to a masculine who earnt it by being a disciplined, careful human. The heart picks up individuals to be opened and prepared for healing, based on the guidance of the Universe. We can only follow or not, it’s always up to us to decide even if we resonate with the heart’s pull. Fear of sharing love is a big one, especially with strangers.

It was also important to have it happen before the Venus/Pluto trine (today, Tuesday, Martian day) and the full Moon (completion) on Thursday 10/5 since the general feminine energy could heal the old masculine (who in fact hurt her ages ago), one awakened warrior sent to heal the other unawakened warrior.

When I shifted in my mind into a position of a Draconian war queen surrounded by warriors, this feeling got even stronger and resonated with the heart. The queen is a goddess in a way, and motivates her soldiers by sending them love in spirit. Draconians have many queens and it’s a status, but some were born in the royal line, most important figures. Draconians have their hearts closed to participate in battles to process completely different energies, like the joy of the fight, but there are times when the shields go down and a reward - the love of the Queen is given during a gathering. It’s not to be fed, conditioned and become a loyal kamikaze but the true, sacred love Draconians share amongts the brotherhood. At least that how it was on motherships. Royal Draconians in humans, hybrids, are usually loners.

My participation in the gun picnic was to literately steal a 3D human (a militaristic man) into 5D though the heart connection, though giving unattached, non-physical love. A reward. 5D is the world of fun and abundance. We angelics can now ‘steal’ individuals into 5D by rising their vibration so the 3D zone has only a few evil individuals left to feed with. This is what rebels would do. We pull the good ones out of the old. Think of it as an ‘alien/angelic intervention’ without any hype. We expected aliens to come and help us, so they have come ;) But they live in us, in many of those who were destined to merge with themselves and the twin, and they act through our human bodies. They replaced the old structures which were infested with bad instincts, with self-sabotaging. In fact we were ‘aliens’ before we landed on Earth but we forgot. Now we - the original essence/consciousness/energy of us - came back into our human bodies to act, to lead others out of the old Earth. We must not stay with those we heal, move, rescue, make aware etc. however, specifically if we had found our true Twins. Once on a new ground, the ‘stolen humans’ are on their own, unless they really need some additional help. We can use love sent from the heart to heart only, to wake up their souls/spirits and these will guide them further. Don’t attach or get addicted to others while you are with the Twin. When you Ascended higher, you have become very attractive to people who didn’t have a chance to awaken yet because your pure heart, your unconditional intentions are seen in your eyes, and you glow with love, independence and freedom. These attributes pull those who are still attached to the old energy grid as much as you were pulled to the twin in the beginning when you didn’t know who you were together and individually. Recall, the next thing which we wanted to do to the Twin was to follow human procedures and force them into relationships, demanding behaviors, to control them etc. These never worked. People of the 3D can be still used by old, evil energies and triggered to hurt you, so offer love if you want to but don’t even talk about it because they won’t understand.

So I have stolen the gun instructor, not even physically coming back there. I set energetic boundaries to only allow his energy to flow between the hearts. For three days I was sending and responding with very pure love as my heart wanted to give without anything human involved and it was making me feel good as well. When I was setting myself in a ‘receiving mode’ then the instructor was coming back in spirit to give love as well, it was so fiery, happy and instant. He trained my shooting skills (or reminded me how-to) and I was training his heart which was ready to embrace pure love, and yet from a real Seraph, fire angel and a former angel of war. For a gun instructor, it was a needed reward. I am also aware that this energy which allows for such a contact now won’t last long. I want him to rise vibration before it ends so he could then pull a matching woman to be happy with and share that pure love further :) It wasn’t logical, I was asked by the Universe to do it. It was a training for me too. I’ve realized that before I had recognized my TF I met men who I should have interacted in the same way with, heart to heart, instead of engaging physically and pressuring to form a relationship! The Twin was the only one to engage entirely with but how could I or him have known this before? ;) This showed me again the ego vs heart actions. Ego/brain wants a confirmation via receiving facts, proofs, and material stuff, while vibration confirms the heart.

We, angels interacted with human women (and men) in the beginning and we were punished for this, I do resonate with it. They called them Elohim but these included all kinds of angelics, not just one group. All who decided to come down and were called ‘gods’. Then we fucked up due to a temptation ;) If you want to interact with an angel, you need to be an awaken angelic on your own because only then you can match your high vibration with the other to avoid the power play. A beautiful simplicity of that event I’ve participated in is it was only about the heart, to teach the guy pure love and that he is loved for his daring heart and skills too. That he was a warrior, he disciplined himself, and was then unexpectedly rewarded by an angelic love, to soften his human shield and prepare him for the Ascension, to be sent more love by Gaia and the Universe together next.

I’m totally proud of that event, my reactions, understanding what should be done, and setting boundaries my heart suggested me to do. If I however felt that his energy was trying to disrespect those boundaries or use my energies like a vampire, I would instantly detach and ditch the ‘task’. I gave love to one of my kin without letting the bad energy take me away from the Path.

Many Draconians like myself are awakened now, purged enough to receive the Source’s beautiful, joyful love and so if they’ve leveled up, should reach out to their kin in spirit to make them join 5D Earth as well. Draconians come from a zone of a high vibration and have been trapped here on Earth in lower than acceptable conditions like many other galactic races and hybrids. The thing is that my galactic race can fully accept such a heart training only from our kin, this is how it always was, a rule - do not trust others. If you, a fellow Draco or Reptilian reader ask the Universe to guide you, it will send you opportunities, so don’t reject them based on what logic, the ego or the human inner child tells you, unless you are to be tricked into further BS, but you will foresee this ;) This is the only way we can counter-weight the struggling vibrations of the old world we participated in and often fought for but the new 5D is the only way to go if one wants to feel light and loved, to live far from fears, dualities and the survival instincts triggered in the brain. I already wrote a post about the brain and the heart spiritual interactions a long time ago, on how one overrides decisions and desires of the other.

These days the lowest layer of that 3D vibration which we humans are attached to through the root chakra is being dissolved. This is the best opportunity to finally let it all leave our bodies so we could become available to the new energy, that Love we know very well to fill also our root chakra and let the ‘snake in the loins’, the wisdom/memory of everything, freedom and passion overwhelm us with joy ;)

[This post is copyrighted by the author of this blog who prefers to remain anonymous. My posts must not be used for commercial purposes of any kind. Respect my work - ask first before you copy, always include a link back to my site when you quote a part of my writing!]

#Twin Flames #3d to 5d #accepting love #draconian #reptilian #5D Earth #new earth #stealing souls

21 notes · View notes

inhumansforever · 7 years

Photo

Black Bolt #6 Review

spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers

The first arc of Saladin Ahmed and Christian Ward’s tremendous Black Bolt comes to its conclusion and it’s an absolute triumph. Full review following the jump.

The story up to this point has seen Black Bolt stranded in a mysterious space prison, lorded over by a cruel Jailer who seemed to posses the powers of a god. Black Bolt had made allies among his fellow inmates, including Crusher Creel, The Absorbing Man as well as a Skrull pirate queen named Ravva, Molyb the Metal Master and a telepathic alien child known only as ‘Blinky.’ Black Bolt had managed to escape this terrible prison with the aide of his teleporting dog, Lockjaw, and the one-time king of The Inhumans chose to return to the jail to free his friends and put an end to the Jailer’s sadistic reign.

As Black Bolt and his comrades ventured deeper into the prison, fending off its security drones, they came to learn that The Jailer was once an inmate himself. He is an ancient Inhuman who possesses terrible psychic powers that made him like a vampire needing to feed off of the emotional suffering of others. This being had been captured and incarcerated in the space prison, yet he was somehow able to free himself and destroy his jailers, taking their place as the new warden and using the prison as a veritable buffet wherein a constant stream of new inmates quenched his insatiable hunger for suffering.

This Jailer has long since lost his physical form and now exists as a physic energy bound only to the last remnants of his body dissected and incased in jars and tubes. It would appear that The Jailer is a master of psychic illusion and the various deaths and sufferings that Black Bolt and the others have endured may have all just been telepathic tricks meant to provoke anguish for the Jailer to feed on.

Black Bolt and the others are intent on ending the Jailer but this monster is not going down without a fight. He has manifested ghosts from the minds of his attackers, acting to cripple them with terrible feelings of guilt and sadness. Black Bolt has used his powers of molecular manipulation to project a protective shield around him and his comrades, neutralizing the power dampeners and offering others full use of their super powers.

Blinky’s telepathy allows her to see through the Jailer’s illusions and she encourages the others that these ghost are not real. Black Bolt, Creel and Ravva are able to see through the illusion, but Molyb is not. He has been in this jail much longer than the others, his guilt is too deeply seated and he cannot disabuse himself of the Jailer’s psychic manipulation. He begins to turn on the others and Ravva sees no other choice than to stop Molyb herself, stabbing him through the back with her sword.

The others are shocked by the Skrull’s gruesome resolve, but there isn’t time to pause nor grieve; they must move forward. They travel deeper into the heart of the prison where The Jailer lays in wait. They engage him and Jailer cuts loose with the full extent of his powers. This power creates an impenetrable shield and it take all that Black Bolt has to maintain his own shield and protect the others.

Creel comes up with a last ditch plan and instructs Black Bolt to direct his sonic powers onto him. Creel can absorb and take on the properties of anything he touches. He can take on the properties of metal or rubber and can also take on the properties of energy. Black Bolt screams, opening up the upper limits of his sonic powers and Creel absorbs the energy in full, become a being of pure molecular disruption.

He knows that he can only contain this energy for a moment, that it will result in his own destruction and he asks that Black Bolt seek out his wife and let her know that he never abandoned her and will always love her. And with this, Creel leaps headfirst into the Jailer’s being resulting in a terrible explosion. Black Bolt uses everything he has to protect himself and the others from the detonation.

He awakes some time later and knows that the terror has past. The Jailer has been killed and the prison destroyed; what is left of the inmates have all fled. It turns out that Molyb’s alien physiology allowed him to survive being stabbed and he, Blinky and Ravva help Black Bot to his feet. The happiness of their reunion marred by the sad truth that their freedom has come at the expense of Creel’s sacrifice.

Molyb and Ravva depart, returning to the lives they had prior to their incarceration, leaving Black Bolt and Blinky behind. The effort Black Bolt had exerted in the battle with The Jailer has taken a drastic tole on his powers. These powers have been halved, perhaps permanently, and Black Bolt can sense that his voice no longer possesses the highly destructive properties it once had. Before Black Bolt can despair in this realization however he is overjoyed by the sudden reappearance of his loyal fried, Lockjaw.

Lockjaw can take Black Bolt home and Blinky is ready to say goodbye, ladened that she has no where herself to go. She asks if Black Bolt might take her with him. It is a lot to ask and Black Bolt is taken aback by the request. He has been such a terrible father to his own son, Ahura, the prospect of taking on this duty for Blinky seems to fill him with apprehension. Yet he seems to no there is no choice to be made. Of course he will take Blinky with him.

Black Bolt is not the same man who first entered this prison; he has been changed by the experience. The old Black Bolt might have turned his back on Blinky, thinking only of the needs of his own people. But he is no longer that man and he pauses for only a moment before accepting Blinky into his care. And it is here on this warm and optimistic note that the first (hopefully the first of many) arc of Ahmed and Ward’s series comes to an end.

What a ride! This six issue arc embodies everything I love about comics in general and The Inhumans in particular. The ideas are huge and wild and fun, with the high concept weirdness ballasted in deep, fully fleshed out character studies. The story and art is synched up hand-in-glove with both sides of the comic lining up so seamlessly that the narrative and art finish each others sentences. One would think Ahmed and Ward had been working together for years.

Although Black Bolt was advertised as a solo book, the extended cast that Ahmed and Ward created played a pivotal role in the first arc. Black Bolt has felt more like a team book with the other cast members (especially Creel and Blinky) being just as important to the story as Black Bolt himself. And I feel that this was a very good decision. Black Bolt is a festinating character in the context of The Inhumans as a whole, but has been a bit shallow in terms of standing on his own. His inability to speak coupled with the cold, withholding fashion in which he comported himself has left Black Bolt as someone who is quite hard to relate to. Ahmed and Ward chose to reintroduce Black Bolt to us by way of his relationships to the extended cast. The juxtaposition has generated a new avenue for exploring who Black Bolt is and how his feelings and attitudes have been shaped by all that he has gone through. The interplay between Black Bolt and the rest of the cast allows us to get to know him in a fashion that hasn’t been done before and has made Black Bolt a much more fully realized and dimensional character.

That street has gone both ways in terms of both Blinky and Crusher Creel. Creel in particular was made into a wonderfully sympathetic character. It was sad to see him die in the end, although I doubt this ‘death’ will prove a permanent condition. Creel has survived similar such deaths in the past and it likely won’t be too long before The Absorbing Man reappears somewhere else. Still, it’s sad to see him die here just in that Ahmed does such a great job writing him and I’m left wanting more.

Blinky is someone we will likely get to learn more about in the next story. So far she is just great fun and absolutely adorable. Putting Black Bolt in a position where he is forth to act in a parental fashion was both an unexpected and hugely satisfying decision.

Alright! no more gushing! I loved this book and loved this arc. I’m psyched that the trade paperback will likely be released around the holidays; it’s going to be a gift I plan on giving to all my friends and family who enjoy comics and science fiction.

Five out of Five Lockjaws for the issue...

...and an impossible Six out of Five Lockjaws for the six-issue arc itself!

#Inhumans #Black Bolt #Saladin Ahmed #Christian Ward #spoilers #review

9 notes · View notes