she ate an eyeball. it was oddly crunchy for something so round and squishy. it tasted like rot, but that was to be expected of many months old vulture eye she had been storing in her pocket.
the world seemed to pulse around her. buddy dawn stood in awe of her party's power, and behind him, kipperlily copperkettle.
everything froze. the roar of monsters faded into nothing as her heart leapt from her chest. the hafling held a loaded crossbow, aimed at gavin pundle. she would ruin their chances after all this work! she wanted to leap forward, to yell to her friends, anything.
and then, as if knowing kristen would stop her, kipperlily pulled a knife from her pocket. in one swift, unstoppable motion, she stepped forward, grabbed buddy dawn by the hair, and slit his throat.
and again, before she could do anything, a scaly blue hand reached through planes to take the halfling girl to safety.
she was used to combat, of course. hell, she had died on her very first day of school. but this was not combat. this was cold, calculated, filled with malice.
buddy dawn did not deserve to die, and he did not die noble. he died clueless, doing something out of the kindness of his heart, watching her friends in awe. he may have died happy, but kristen would never know for sure.
before she can really think she is falling to her knees. buddy lets out wet choking noises. he is not dead yet, but he will be very soon. there is no healing word or spare the dying that will fix this. she reaches gently into her pocket, but there are no crystals.
kipperlily took them.
"shit!" she has blood on her hands.
"our revivifier is dead!" fabian, from the field, yells to gavin. she is frantically clawing through buddy's messenger bag. she fights the memories of her own leather satchel, holding the holy book of helio.
"oh... that's... unusual." gavin pundle sends concerned looks towards her and the very dead body of someone similar to who she used to be. before the doubt, before her friends, before the pain.
doubt. she gently reaches into her pocket, pulling out crystals as red as the blood on her hands. she hasn't solved this mystery yet, but she has some of the pieces. rage, a dead god, and a kidnapped goddess.
she prays. cassandra. i know i havent been the best cleric. i know i failed to protect you. but i'm trying, and right now i could really use your help. this kid, buddy, he's just like i used to be. and i know, i know he's good. he doesnt deserve this, not like this. what she did, it's not right. she killed lucy, too. please, cassandra.
she feels her goddess, reaching desperately to heed her call, but fall just short. it was a brush of fingertips, a whisper on the wind, the faint trace of moonlight in a dense forest.
buddy dawn is dead.
59 notes
·
View notes
The target audience for this post is me and maybe five other people on this entire website
John Dehlin is like the Ethoslab of ex-Mormonism
In that he's the guy that a ton of other exmo YouTubers/poscasters point to, being their inspiration to share their stories; also in the things that he's done influencing Mormon history
Etho invented the hopper clock, John Dehlin leaked the exclusionary policy to the internet
20 notes
·
View notes
There are so many posts about the weirdness around Nina and Maggie, but the thing that has always bothered me the most is that both of them know Aziraphale but neither one of them seems to know Crowley. Like, at ALL. Not even by sight. Which doesn’t make any sense. For the last four years, Crowley has basically been unemployed and homeless (this sentence made me so sad to type). He has had literally NOTHING to do except hang out at Aziraphale’s bookshop. And the vibe at the beginning of s2 is that he’s there a LOT. Like, multiple times per week (“we both get plenty of use out of it, don’t we”). When Aziraphale calls him in the first episode, he says “2 minutes” the way you tell your spouse how long until you’re home from the grocery store, especially if you were on your way home already.
The dialogue goes to great lengths to highlight that Nina and Maggie SHOULD know Crowley, which just heightens the weirdness of it. When they're at the pub, Crowley asks Aziraphale, “What’s wrong with the cafe?” (implying they usually go to the cafe), but Aziraphale made a point of introducing Crowley to Nina in the first episode. And Nina makes a point of saying to Maggie that she always remembers “the regulars," but she doesn't seem to remember Crowley. Of course, she immediately notices both Jim and Muriel outside the bookshop, so she's clearly paying attention to what's happening in the neighborhood and it seems like she couldn't have failed to spot him coming and going all the time.
And Maggie's situation is even weirder. Her whole back story is that she basically grew up IN the bookshop because her grandmother’s record store was essentially in a corner of the bookshop. And yet, when Maggie and Nina see Crowley on the street right before the lightning strike, Nina says, “Do you see that bloke? Six shots of espresso and he's smoking,” and Maggie responds, “I think that man was just struck by lightning.” Which is something you say about someone you’ve never laid eyes on before. She didn’t say, “Oh, that’s Mr. Fell’s friend,” or “I’ve seen him around. He stops by Mr. Fell’s shop a lot.” And then when he comes back, "It's him. The one who was just struck by lightning. The six shots of espresso." Again, no flash of recognition of anything before the current day. This happens immediately after she's just told Nina about knowing Aziraphale since she was little. It’s just weird. Why build a back story that would put her in extremely close proximity to Crowley LITERALLY her entire life and then write dialogue that makes it clear she's never laid eyes on him before?
You could maybe think, well they're just so used to having to hide...but then I asked myself: Does it make sense that the day that you find out there is an extremely dangerous, existence-threatening problem hiding out in your ineffable husband's bookshop is also the day that you would decide to STOP keeping a low profile and start wandering the streets with abandon, introducing yourself to all the local shopkeepers, and ferrying large plants into and out of said bookshop? No. No, it does not.
In any other show, you could assume that the writers just didn’t think about it very carefully. But, given the layers and layers of meaning and symbolism baked into every detail of this show, from the dialogue, to the costuming, the set design, lighting, blocking, etc., and the way that the story folds back on itself again and again, it just feels significant.
559 notes
·
View notes