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elliesbelle · 10 months

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nobody compares to you

chapter 6

pairing: ellie x reader

synopsis: you're in your junior year of college and at a party, you run into the girl who broke your heart: ellie williams. despite the time it took to reset your life, will you risk a broken heart again for her?

content warnings: modern college au, cursing, angst, messy lesbian relationships/situationships, loser!ellie makes an appearance for 0.5 seconds, brief and indirection mention of marijuana, mentions of death, brief mention of reader's genitals (implies that reader has a vagina, but if you headcanon reader as a trans girl w/a penis, just pretend it's a metaphorical vagina, i fully encourage it), sexual speech and content (not fully smut but there are drops of it), depictions of nudity, minors do not interact

word count: 4.6k

chapters: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen

series masterlist

my masterlist

i have a ko-fi if you like my work so much that you feel compelled to tip me ♡︎

the "nobody compares to you" spotify playlist

Abigail Anderson. Pre-med student. Rugby star. A brief hook-up from freshman year.

And now approaching your frozen figure at a rather fast pace.

As your shocked face emerges from behind the football you're still holding in your hands, Abby begins to register who it was that she’d almost killed via pigskin.

“Oh, shit!” She murmurs your name as her jog comes to a stop at your feet. “I’m so sorry, my friend Jordan was being a dick. I meant to catch that.”

You let out a nervous chuckle as your trembling fingers lift the football up to her.

“Oh, it’s okay. My life definitely flashed before my eyes, but I’m alright otherwise.” You give her a smile.

She returns it with a crooked one of her own, her fingers softly brushing against yours as she takes the football from you.

“Well, you still look alive and pretty,” Abby says, tucking the ball underneath an arm. “And those were some impressive reflexes, I gotta say.”

“Just practicing in case of a zombie apocalypse.” You joke, cheeks burning ever so slightly at her calling you pretty. “We can’t all be built like Themysciran Amazons the way you are.”

“Themy-what?” Abby asks, eyebrows furrowing in confusion and chuckling.

Your face erupts in flames in embarrassment from your geeky comic book reference.

“Y-you know,” You stammer. “Like Wonder Woman. She’s from that island where it’s only women and they’re all these gorgeous, buff warriors who’ve renounced men.”

Abby laugh.

“Really? Well, thank you. You’re very cute for thinking I’m some hot warrior chick who’ll survive a zombie apocalypse.”

Before you can respond, she continues.

“How’ve you been? I haven’t seen you around much.”

“Hey, I’ve been around.” You lie. You really haven’t been. “Probably haven’t noticed being an aspiring doctor and all.”

“Still remember that, huh?” She smiles.

“Of course.” You say, returning her smile.

Freshman Year, Fall

You met Abby Anderson at the beginning of your freshman year when she was a sophomore.

Being in a new and independent environment, you did what many single freshmen do upon first arriving: scoured the dating apps.

Fresh out of a messy high school relationship, you came to college a little raw and emotionally vulnerable. You jumped into a casual relationship with a girl named Adriana within the first month of arriving on campus. After a drunken night of you and your roommate Tara recklessly swiping through your profile on a dating app, you somehow and hesitantly found yourself with a girlfriend after just two dates.

The best word you would use to describe Adriana was nice. She was a pleasant person: brought you out on cute dates, paid for your food, always held your hand. You spent the two weeks of dating her trying to convince yourself that you were as into her as she was into you. But the further you tried to force attraction for her, the less interested you became. Then she introduced you to her friend, Abby Anderson.

Abby was the kind of person that closeted gay girls would develop their first gay crush on at their initial glance. She was bold and exuded a sense of confidence & charisma that most 20-somethings haven’t achieved yet. People knew who she was when she walked around campus, whether personally or through reputation. Abby made friends quickly and kept them easily, so it was no shock that you got along very well with her when Adriana first introduced you.

You pretended at the time not to notice the way Abby looked you up and down when first laying eyes on you. It was a quick glance and she pulled it off well enough that nobody else but you had caught it. You were amused by the way that Abby had held out her hand to you upon meeting. None of Adriana’s other friends had offered a handshake, and you chuckled quietly as you introduced yourself to her.

Is she for real? A little prim and proper, you’d thought. You’d later find out it was merely her excuse to initiate physical contact.

You’d originally come over to Adriana’s dorm to meet her friends, but you’d spent most of the time talking with Abby. She was very charming, keeping you engaged in conversation as if she’d known you for months already. She would ask you questions about yourself, seeming to be genuinely interested in your responses. It was effortless to keep up a banter with her, and she had you laughing in a way Adriana hadn’t been able to elicit from you herself. You weren’t fawning over Abby the way newly-discovered gays constantly were, but you were intrigued. By the end of the hang-out, you’d already exchanged numbers and socials.

When Adriana amicably broke up with you a week later, saying that she felt as if “your heart didn’t seem quite into this” and “she’d like to see you comfortable” and “we honestly seem like we would vibe better as friends” over a phone call, you’d felt a wave of relief followed by a pang of guilt. You could tell that Adriana really didn’t feel any ill will towards you, but it did feel indecent that all you got out of the relationship was a mended heart as a result of the rebound. That, and a very interested Abby Anderson.

It didn’t take a week since your split from Adriana that Abby was flirtatiously commenting under your Instagram posts or sending you at least ten snaps on Snapchat daily or messaging you borderline thirst traps accompanied by texts that were asking for your “opinion on her gym progress.” It was a mere five days since the break-up that you were dolling yourself up a bit to go hang out with Abby in her dorm room, just the two of you.

Most of your friends playfully teased you about the position you’d placed yourself in. Hooking up with a recent ex’s friend seemed messy, but they encouraged you to put yourself out there all the same. Never having actually gone all the way with Adriana, they all hyped you up to hook up with Abby. All but one.

“You’re judging me!” You said, lightly smacking Ellie’s arm.

She chuckled, rolling her eyes at you.

“I literally didn’t say anything, dude.”

“Uh-huh, sure.” You returned her eye roll with your own before jumping off your bed to walk towards your closet.

“Just sounds like a guilty conscience to me.” She shrugged, leaning back onto your headboard.

You sighed and said, “Should I feel guilty, though?”

Ellie shrugged again nonchalantly before saying, “Not gonna tell you how to feel.”

“I just want to know your opinion!”

“It’s your love life, dude. It’s up to you, not me.”

“I know that! But what do you think I should do?”

“Make your own decisions.” She chuckled once more.

You groaned, turning away from her to continue rifling through your closet.

“You’re so fucking useless.” You complained, fingers weaving between hangers as you tried to select an outfit to see Abby later that day.

“What can I say? It’s a gift.” Ellie replied, resting the palms of her hands on the back of her head as she watched you.

Despite yourself, you giggled quietly. As you continued to browse through your wardrobe, you felt Ellie’s ocean green eyes trailing your every movement. You kept your back turned to her, hiding the flames tickling your cheeks.

You hadn’t bothered the rest of your friends about this the way you did Ellie. They’d all given their blessing for you to sleep with Abby, but Ellie? Ellie was persistent in remaining mysteriously neutral. She refused to voice any kind of personal bias. She didn’t seem disinterested, but she also withheld offering up her genuine opinion on your Abby situation. And for some reason, this bothered you. Something about her unhelpfulness compelled you to pester her about it. You knew you didn’t need Ellie’s approval. So why did it feel like you did?

Ellie watched as you picked out a short dark blue dress, spreading it out on your bed next to her. She listened to you question yourself out loud on whether you should wear fishnet stockings underneath it or just go bare. She felt the way your fingers lingered when brushing softly against hers after she handed you your silver hoop earrings laying next to her on your bedside table. She inhaled your signature lavender scent as you slowly caressed your arms and legs up and down while applying your favourite lotion.

It felt so strange, prettying yourself up for another girl while Ellie sat on your bed and watched. She and you were just friends. You’ve never been anything more than that. Why did it feel strange, then?

Are we though? Just friends?

The way you’d stare at the way her big, calloused hands moved when she’d be rolling a joint or etching in her journal. The way she observed the exact manner your lips moved every time you spoke or laughed. The way you always noticed when she’d trace that intricate arm tattoo of hers when she’d get lost in thought. The way she watched exactly how your smile would often meet your soft eyes.

Is this just friendship?

Ellie observed as you sat at your desk and carefully began applying your makeup, scooting towards the foot of your bed to better marvel at your technique. She’d begun to learn the routine you had by heart, mesmerized by how carefully and naturally your hands moved in a creative dance. She blurted out a compliment about how you were an artist for the way you did your makeup. You attempted to brush it off, but she insisted. You’re the artist here, she’d said.

After finishing applying a shade of dark red lipstick, you gave yourself one last satisfied look in your mirror. You got up and began to shake your hair out of the bun it was in, walking to the foot of your bed where both your dress and Ellie waited. You looked at your chosen attire for the night and were suddenly hit with a predicament.

“Umm, Ellie?”

“What’s up, man?”

“D-do you think you could help me with something?”

“Uh… sure?”

Your fingers fiddled with the bottom of your t-shirt. Your face flushed for what felt like the millionth time today.

“C-can you help me put my dress on?”

Ellie looked like someone dumped a bucket of ice-cold water right over her head.

“What?”

You scratched the back of your neck, a habit you’d picked up from her.

“I forgot how t-tight this dress is, and I might fuck up my makeup if I just pull it on myself. Can you help me g-get it on?”

Ellie’s face remained unreadable as she looked you up and down.

“Yeah, okay.” She said finally.

“T-thanks.” You said, nervously biting the inside of your cheek.

Normal friends do not get nervous when they ask their friends to help them get dressed.

“Just…just one second.” You said, meekly holding a finger up before turning your back to her.

As you profusely thanked past you for already putting on your desired underwear for tonight, you carefully peeled off your t-shirt and threw it to the side. Though you had your back to her, you could feel Ellie’s gaze land on the black lace bra you’d decided on earlier. When you shed your pajama shorts, her eyes then drifted onto the matching black lace panties that left very little to the imagination.

She quickly averted her stare as you turned to face her, not fully meeting each other’s eyes.

“Do you think you could—?” You gestured to your dress next to her on the bed.

“Yeah.” She said, picking it up before approaching you.

You watched her face as she lifted the dress above your head. Her tense fingers gripped the collar tightly as you raised your arms. You felt goosebumps form where her hands inadvertently brushed against your skin, lowering the dress onto your figure. As you fit your head and arms through, she pulled the dress all the way down to your thighs. You tugged your hair out from the collar and let it fall behind you when your eyes met hers.

“Uhh,” She said awkwardly. “Your lipstick…”

Your right hand flew up to your mouth.

“Oh shit, did it smudge—?”

“Yeah, a little, but it’s okay, I got it.”

“Wh—“

Before you could react any further, Ellie licked her thumb and brought it to the edge of your bottom lip. It was as though your entire body was set on fire the exact second that you felt the wetness from her finger meet the corner of your mouth. Her eyebrows furrowed as she rubbed off the small streaks of smeared lipstick. You could have sworn she could hear how loud your heart was beating in the moment, feel the way it echoed through your entire body. You felt your mouth water as your eyes fell on her tongue sticking out slightly in concentration. Someone could easily sneak into your room right now and rob you blind, the way you both remained completely encaptured in this moment.

“There,” Ellie whispered. “Got it.”

Her thumb slowly drifted from your lip to your cheek, her hand suddenly caressing your face. You were frozen in place, trying not to combust as every cell in your body danced fervently. Her ocean green irises kept darting back and forth between your eyes and your crimson lips. Both your mouths were parted, the unsaid at the tip of both your tongues, waiting for whoever was bravest to let the truth drip out.

But instead, after what felt like twenty-five years, Ellie let her hand drop from your face back to her side. She swallowed and cleared her throat, breaking eye contact with you to stare at the floor. You blinked and gulped, quickly plummeting back to reality.

“Th-thanks, El.”

“No problem, bro.”

“Bro.” Ugh. Okay, Ellie.

You were far less clothed a minute ago, and yet somehow you now were feeling much more naked than ever before.

“I-I think I left the shoes I want across the hall in Sidney’s room. Give me a sec?”

“Yeah, man. Go ahead.”

You nodded and retreated quickly out the door. As you shut it behind you, you leaned against it and clutched at your chest with both hands.

Oh god, fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. What the fuck. What just happened? What the fuck. Fuck.

Inside your room and unbeknownst to you, Ellie was leaning against her side of the door, quietly cursing to herself.

“Did I really just fucking do that? What the fuck, oh my fucking god. God damn it. Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

“Hey, are you okay?”

You blinked.

“Yes! Sorry, just spaced out for a second.”

You adjusted yourself under the covers to turn more towards Abby. Your previously glassy eyes met her concerned ones.

“Was it that bad?” She joked.

“No, oh my god, Abby,” You giggled, covering your face with your hands. “I think you getting me to cum twice in less than a minute speaks for itself.”

Abby smirked.

“Only twice? Wanna add a couple more to that?” She said, propping herself up on her elbow to look at you better.

“I think my pussy needs a sec before you make her see heaven again.” You replied.

“Mmm,” was all Abby said in reply, drinking in your naked figure in her bed.

The rest of the evening seemed surreal. Ellie had watched you finish getting ready, remaining mostly quiet for the rest of the time. She didn’t touch you again, almost as if she was afraid to. She’d walked you partway to Abby’s building before giving the excuse that she had some client she needed to meet. Her signature Converse stormed off without a second glance back at you. As you waved her off, you thought about how she didn’t have anything on her to sell, and you both knew it.

Throughout the entire night with Abby, though you allowed yourself to unwind and have some fun for once, your thoughts still continued to dance back incessantly to your auburn-haired friend.

“What’s on your mind, pretty girl?” Abby asked.

“Just taking a minute and being impressed by you.”

Abby laughed.

“So not that bad, huh?” She joked. “But really. What’s up?”

You pursed your lips. You liked Abby, but she did not need to know all about this “friendship” of yours with Ellie.

“Not gonna lie,” You said, quickly coming up with a lie. “I was feeling really guilty before coming here tonight. Just cause Adriana’s your friend and we just broke up.”

It wasn’t completely far from the truth. You were feeling guilty about seeing Abby after Adriana. But she wasn’t the lesbian who you couldn’t get out of your head all night.

“Mm, that does make sense.” Abby replied, understanding. “It’s true, though. What I said earlier. Adriana did say it was okay.”

Sometime after you’d arrived at Abby’s dorm and before you’d both dropped the pretense of you coming over just to “hang out,” Abby disclosed that she’d asked for Adriana’s permission to fool around with you already. You were a bit surprised, but pleasantly so. You did come here tonight with specific intentions, but it did relieve you to know that Adriana meant it when she’d expressed no ill will towards you. And it kindled a warmth in you that Abby’d gone into this prepared and still with the respect of her friend.

“No, I know,” You said, the crease between your eyebrows crinkling as you thought up a quick lie. “I just… I still like Adriana as a person and I didn’t want my wandering vagina to get in the way of your friendship with her.”

Abby suddenly guffawed, her laugh so infectious and genuine that it made you giggle in response.

“D-did you just say ‘wandering vagina,’ oh my g—” She chortled. “Never heard that before.”

You shrugged, smiling at how easily amused Abby has been turning out to be.

“You say the strangest shit, you know?” Abby said, still chuckling.

“What can I say? It’s a gift.” You replied, to which Abby smiled.

“But really though,” Abby continued. “You don’t have to worry about me and Adriana. We’re still cool; nothing’s changed in our friendship. You both told me you weren’t serious, and she’s also just someone who’s never been possessive or jealous as a person. We’re all adults here, so no need to feel guilty. I promise.”

“Yeah, that…that does help.” You said, hoping that answer would suffice for Abby.

Abby seemed like she wanted to press more but decided against it. Instead, she grabbed your hips all of a sudden and lifted you up to place you on top of her, making you straddle her waist.

“Wh—Abby!” You said, startled. Your arms instinctively flew up to cover your bare breasts, the bed covers no longer shrouding your nakedness.

Abby chuckled, reaching up to your wrists and pulling them away from your chest.

“Anyone ever tell you how cute you are when you have such a serious thinking face on?” She said.

A bashful look crossed your face as you stuttered a quiet “no” in response.

Abby smirked, dropping your wrists and placing her hands on your waist, tracing up and down your inner thighs with her thumbs. Your breath hitched and you gulped, feeling yourself instinctively grind against her.

“Well, you are.” She said. “And you’re cute, acting all shy about being naked in front of me like I wasn’t just knuckles deep inside you ten minutes ago.”

You bit your lip, partly from embarrassment and partly because Abby’s tracing of your thighs turned into squeezing.

“Y-you w-weren’t… knuckles-deep…” You stammered.

Abby chuckled, raising an eyebrow.

“Why the hell are you correcting me on how far inside of you I was anatomically?” She asked, extremely amused.

“I don’t know!” You said, flustered and rolling your eyes.

Abby chuckled, wrapping a muscular arm around your waist to keep you steady as she sat up to be at eye-level with you. With her free hand, she firmly gripped your chin between her large fingers and forced your eyes to meet hers.

“You’re very easy to fluster, you know.” She whispered.

“I-I—” was all that you could get out before Abby’s lips found yours. The sentence you’d meant to continue instead turned into a quiet shriek of surprise then into a lustful sigh that melted into the kiss.

Not ten seconds later, Abby pulled away slightly, a cocky look on her face.

“Any more anatomical complaints, then?” She murmured.

“Not at all, Dr. Anderson.” You chuckled breathlessly.

You jolted as Abby laughed again all of a sudden, grabbing both your shoulders for support.

“Was it… that funny?” You chuckled, a little confused.

“No, no, I’m sorry,” Abby said. “It’s just that—my dad was Dr. Anderson.”

“Your dad?”

“Yeah, he was a doctor.” She explained. “Before he passed, he used to be a surgeon back when my family and I lived in Utah.”

Shit, her dad. Of course.

Abby had mentioned her father to you several times already. You didn’t know much about him other than the fact that Abby completely adored the man and that he had died when she was only 16.

“Right, makes sense.” You said, wrapping your arms around her neck.

Abby’s father didn’t seem like an off-limits topic with her. In fact, you were in awe of how at peace she was with it. She seemed happy to talk about her dad, somehow able to acknowledge his passing and yet speak of him as if he was always present in a way. She didn’t make it uncomfortable to ask about him, and you often had the impression that she actually preferred it when others didn’t fuss over it. So you made sure not to.

“So no to calling you Dr. Anderson, then?” You asked.

“Well, actually,” Abby embraced your waist and pulled you closer to her body. “Kind of studying to be a doctor. Like him.”

“Wait, really?” You replied, a bit of shock in your voice. “How did I not know that?”

“Don’t really know, pretty girl,” She replied, smirking. “Got too distracted by my washboard abs to notice?”

“Oh my god, shut the fuck up.” You scoffed, smiling and rolling your eyes.

Abby chuckled before leaning into your neck to leave trails of kisses.

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re also very cute when you have a little bit of an attitude?” She asked, lifting her head up slightly in between kisses.

“Mm, I don’t know,” You sighed, pulling her further into you and trying not to grind too eagerly against her once again. “Maybe once or twice. But why don’t you remind me, Dr. Anderson?”

You heard Abby suddenly moan in your ear, almost growling, before you were suddenly thrown on your back onto the bed. Any words that meant to roll off your tongue were replaced instead with cries of pleasure as your knees were pried apart with Abby’s strong hands, her mouth finding ways to answer your question without words.

Present Day

“So still planning on becoming a surgeon, then?” You ask.

“Starting med school immediately after I graduate this year.” Abby replies.

“Wow,” You say, impressed. “That’s really soon. Are you nervous about it?”

“Hmm, not nervous, exactly,” Abby replies, thinking. “I grew up around doctor shit, so I have a tiny idea of what I’m facing. I’m choosing to stay positive about it all for now.”

“Commendable,” You smile. “How the hell have you been surviving all your pre-med shit with sports and all?”

“Hey,” She says, shrugging. “You said it yourself. I’m basically a superhero.”

You chuckle. You’ve forgotten just how confident Abby is and how attractive it was to see it in action.

“Right, of course. How could I forget?”

“You know, maybe if I really was Wonder Woman, I could attend my next class and get a coffee with you right now. If you’re not busy, that is.”

“That is not how Wonder Woman works, Abby.” You say, giggling.

“Oh, whatever.” Abby laughs, rolling her eyes. “Forgot just how much of a nerd you were, pretty girl.”

“Hey—” You start.

“YO ABS, are you gonna throw that shit back or keep flirting with hot chicks?!” A voice behind Abby calls.

Abby grunts in annoyance, turning around to face her friend Jordan who was several feet away from where you both were.

“Stop throwing like a little bitch and we wouldn’t be having this problem, dumbass!” She calls back at him, to which he replies with a playful, “Oh, fuck off!”

You watch as Abby draws back, arms flexing as she throws the football in a quick, perfect spiral towards Jordan. He catches it, but not before it makes a loud thud against his chest.

“OW, FUCK—" He shouts in pain.

“Dumbass!” She hollers in response.

You're both chuckling when she turns back to face you.

“Need to go?” You ask.

“Didn’t you hear? I’m busy flirting with hot chicks. Well, just one hot chick.”

Your purse your lips, sheepish.

“So,” She said. “Coffee?”

“Abby, you just said you had a class to get to in a bit. Also,” You gesture to your mostly-empty coffee cup still next to you in the grass. “Beat you to the punch.”

“Ah, fuck.”

“Sorry,” You chuckle. “I’ve also got class in,” You checked your phone for the time. “Around five minutes or so.”

“Wow, you really wanna avoid getting a coffee with me that bad, huh?”

“Oh, absolutely. I premeditatedly mapped out my entire class schedule this semester just so I didn’t have to hang out with you right at this moment.” You joke.

“I knew it.”

You laugh.

“Can I at least walk you to class, though?” Abby asks.

“Sure,” You replies. “But what about your class?”

“Got a bit of time; don’t worry about it.”

You smile before you gather your things together quickly. You reach for your coffee cup but it disappears suddenly before your hand is even inches from it.

“Abby!” You exclaim, jumping up onto your feet as you quickly pull your backpack on.

“What?” She questions, walking backwards while still facing you to throw your coffee cup away in a nearby trash can.

“I can’t throw away my own trash?”

“Just being helpful.” She says, shrugging.

“You can’t be both a superhero and some chivalrous lesbian knight.”

“I can do whatever I want, pretty girl.”

You feel your face getting hot once more.

“So,” She starts. “Which way is your next class?” She begins walking in the wrong direction.

“About twenty feet east of where you’re heading, silly.”

“Oh, uhh…” Abby stops in her tracks, eyebrows furrowed in concentration while processing your directions.

You laugh and roll your eyes, grabbing her arm and leading her towards the building your next class was in.

“Straley Hall, right in front of you, dummy. Remind me never to travel across the country with you.” You say.

“What kind of nerd actually says ‘east’ when giving directions!” She complains.

“That’s a perfectly normal thing to say!”

“Why are the cutest girls always the weirdest ones?” Abby says, shaking her head.

You looked away from her, trying to hide your embarrassed smile.

“How are you supposed to save people’s lives when you don’t even understand simple directions, Dr. Anderson?”

She smirks at your comment and her lips form to reply with a retort of their own.

Just a few feet down the brick college road, Ellie stands frozen on the spot. Her hands are balled up in fists and her jaw is clenched. Her ocean green eyes trail after your unknowing figure, fixating on the wide smile on your lips as you let out peals of genuine laughter and your fingers still gently caressing the bicep of golden girl and star athlete, Abigail Anderson.

author's notes:

HAHAHAHA "in case of a zombie apocalypse" get it, cause the game is set in a zomb—yeah y'all get it (sorry not really)

let's all take a brief sexy second together and imagine abby as amazon from themyscira... now let's all let out the collective horny sigh together.

thank you all for being so patient waiting for this one. life has been... yeah (if you've been keeping up with the personal stuff I've said on my blog the last week, that should add more context to what a shit my life has been recently). i've been having to push myself with writing lately cause i feel like i'm getting too into my head about it. but thank y'all so much for being supportive and all, thank you for not giving up on me!

not gonna lie, loves. i may have gotten extremely horny writing certain scenes in this and had to take multiple breaks because my mind was concocting too many distracting scenarios as a result (the ellie scene took me days to get through to write, i'm so dead serious, and the smut-adjacent abby scene almost turned into a full-fledged smut scene cause i'm such a fucking lesbian, oops, i genuinely had to restrain myself so i could write the story the way i actually have it planned out).

abby having no sense of direction at the end of the chapter is just a personal reference to me when i played tlou2 for the first time and when i was playing as abby at the very start when she's mad at owen for getting mel pregnant and trying to go after joel on her own, i got lost for like 10 minutes just going in circles in the fucking woods and snow like a moron. just wanted to be a little bit silly by creating no sense of direction!abby hehe

taglist: @lonelyfooryouonly, @elliesinterlude, @sawaagyapong, @peppesgirl, @iconsoft, @maybeidohaveadhd, @ellieswifee, @valiantllamapersonpony-blog, @nil-eena, @echostinn, @uraesthete, @softbunlvr, @cherriessxinthespring, @amitycat, @chrissyfishywissy, @yevheniiaaa, @machetegirl109, @bertandfearnie, @ximtiredx, @efam, @elliesnoviecita, @oatmilkchaii, @tayyyystan, @emothurman, @livvy-2000, @abigaillovestoread, @gold-dustwomxn, @liabadoobee, @yuckyfucky, @ximtiredx, @qtefolleunpez, @libr4sonsa

please let me know if you'd like to be added to the taglist or if you'd asked previously and i missed you!

#nobody compares to you series #ellie williams #dealer!ellie #ellie x reader #ellie x you #ellie x y/n #the last of us #tlou #the last of us part 2 #tlou2 #ellie fanfiction #belle speaks #belle writes

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familyabolisher · 11 months

Note

Do you think any of the frameworks you've developed for analyzing love in TLT could be applied to Pyrrha's relationship to cam/pal? Since Nona doesn't understand it well, it's hard for me to get a handle on how those characters relate to each other, but I was wondering where it might stand on what the series considers "perfect love," what the significance of its presence/ambiguity is, etc.

I’m really locked on to this idea of illegibility, actually, and the kind of work that gets done in Nona to problematise efforts to easily name, define, & categorise a relationship or set of relationships. I’m thinking of what Muir said here:

It’s a very strange household. And they are a found family, but I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that in the last movement of the book Nona questions what that even means—their motives, what they all truly wanted out of each other, their pretenses: are they a family, or are they all just a psychosexual mess of roleplaying and bad meals? (The answer is yes.)

and like, her suggestion that ‘family’ can plausibly be collapsed into a ‘psychosexual mess of roleplaying’ and that the drive of Nona is less about asking whether Cam/Pal/Pyrrha/Nona ‘are’ a family as much as it’s about asking what it actually means to identify them as such; and particularly to identify them as such in a text which does very significant work elsewhere to identify ‘the family’ as a site of violence, a mechanism by which particular forms of violence can be enacted. I’m honing in on that ‘last movement of the book’ comment to say that, like—so, the two narratives in Nona (the ‘main’ narrative ie. Nona et al. on Lemuria, and the John narrative) are spliced together, right, so it makes sense to try and read them as though they’re in dialogue with one another, and the obvious entrypoint for doing so is the fact that they’re both working as an account of the ‘creation’ of Alecto; first through John literally creating her and then through Nona remembering his having done so and thus rebecoming what she had forgotten she was. What does it mean to ‘create’ Alecto?—what are the conditions that Alecto’s creation ushers in, what are the conditions that her creation does away with? The ‘last movement’ of the book is to ‘create’ Alecto for the second time—so, what does Alecto represent, and what about her ‘creation’ leads the text to ask what it means to describe something as a ‘family’ in the first place?

The reason I’m drawn to this reading of Cam/Pal/Pyrrha as like, ultimately illegible, incoherent in that we as audience cannot coherently put words to it and make sense of it in the language readily available to us, is because I think the text understands these processes of ordering, taxonomising, delineating, and categorising as tactics of fascism. This is a tension also at play in Lolita; Humbert ‘orders’ and constructs his narrative via the available tools of literary discourse and similarly constructs his ‘Lolita’ as a labyrinth of cultural references and taxonomies; but Dolores is a ‘Haze,’ Annabel Leigh is a ‘tangle of thorns,’ there exists a being who is able to remain indistinct and impenetrable in a narrative which enacts violence on her by trying to make taxonomical sense of her. Coherence and legibility are mechanisms of visibility; under fascism, to be easily made sense of can be dangerous. The first two books were all about coherence, legibility, interpellation, and the consequences of Living In A Society; what it means to ‘be’ or ‘become’ a cavalier, what the necromancer-cavalier relationship ‘means,’ what Lyctorhood ‘means,’ how these relations of hierarchised sexuality and the interpersonal relationships articulated within the normative language given to them exist to shore up conditions of imperialism. This question of ‘ordering’ goes right down to eg. enumeration (First, Second, Third, etc.) and pretty tightly contained and atomised cultural associations, and the fact that that enumeration can be traced back to Alecto—

D’you know why you’re really the First? Because in a very real way, you and the others are A.L.’s children … There would be none of you, if not for her.

—which cribs this passage, from Lolita:

‘[…] for I must confess that depending on the condition of my glands and ganglia, I could switch in the course of the same day from one pole of insanity to the other—from the thought that around 1950 I would have to get rid somehow of a difficult adolescent whose magic nymphage had evaporated—to the thought that with patience and luck I might have her produce eventually a nymphet with my blood in her exquisite veins, a Lolita the Second, who would be eight or nine around 1960, when I would still be dans la force de l’âge; indeed, the telescopy of my mind, or un-mind, was strong enough to distinguish in the remoteness of time a vieillard encore vert—or was it green rot?—bizarre, tender, salivating Dr. Humbert, practicing on supremely lovely Lolita the Third the art of being a granddad. In the days of that wild journey of ours, I doubted not that as father to Lolita the First I was a ridiculous failure.

—very evenly ties together ideas of reproduction as imperial sustention figured in the language of sexual assault. The point is: as far as the empire is concerned, processes of ordering and taxonomising are equivocal to the mechanical maintenance of conditions of fascism.

Conversely, Nona is a text about when John’s precise demarcation of the world starts to fail and people have to make sense of themselves between the cracks; from Pyrrha as both failed cavalier and failed Lyctor to Cam and Palamedes and then Paul as if not ‘failed’ then at least a new ordering of necromancer/cavalier-ism to the Tower Princes as John’s kind of scrambling effort to rearticulate hegemony post-losing all but one of his Lyctors. Regarding how we are to read Cam/Pal/Pyrrha, I think it’s pretty clear that the text understands the obligations, normative assumptions and expectations, and material consequences of normative kinship relations identified as ‘family’ as part and parcel with the social ordering of a fascistic imperial hegemony; Kiriona, Alecto, and Harrow make up the three key points of contact for this reading, though it’s pretty diffuse across the whole work. We see kinship relations as structuring imperialist hierarchies and we understand the currency of those hierarchies to be death/abuse/sexual violence/totalised control, articulated most profoundly through Kiriona; we also see the destruction of social formations as part and parcel with conquest—

Palamedes said mildly, “You know we’re conversant with the concept of family in the Nine Houses, right?” Pash seemed genuinely surprised. “Why the hell would it matter to you? [...] You don’t give a fuck about families when you’re carving them up—”

—this of course being in keeping with the general conditions of mixed cultures, mixed languages, variances on kinship structures, refugees seemingly thrown together on Lemuria. The bolstering of the social articulations of the conquerors and denaturing of the social articulations of the conquered is rendered as a tactic of conquest; ‘family’ here is figured as a cudgel of imperialism.

Diegetically, as I said, Cam + Pal + Pyrrha + Nona’s social arrangement is not ‘normative,’ neither in the fact that others on Lemuria can make easy sense of it (and thus attempt to do so by referring to peripheralised and marginalised social relations ie. sex work) nor in the fact that they can coherently make sense of themselves via the imperial taxonomy (is Pyrrha a Lyctor greatest thread in the history of forums). Nor is it normative on our end; relative to the nuclear family structure, it’s the ‘wrong’ number of parents, the ‘wrong’ configurations of gender, the ‘wrong’ configurations of blood relation (Nona is a ‘child’ but not an ‘heir’ to anything and not a blood relation of either; Cam and Palamedes as ‘parents’ are blood-related), even the ‘wrong’ overall kinship relations—I put ‘child’ and ‘parents’ in quotations there precisely because I don’t think they’re conditions uncritically reified by the narrative as much as they’re discursive gestures made for the sake of being problematised. Is Nona their ‘child’ in a text where to be the ‘child’ of someone means to be what Kiriona is to John? Is this a ‘family’ when ‘family’ is the mechanic of imperial refortification? Again, like—what does it mean to call them a family at all?

‘Family’ is a label we deploy to give legibility to relations that we are otherwise struggling to make sense of. Setting aside Paul for the moment because I don’t quite know what to do with them and probably won’t have a Take that I can confidently commit to until after Alecto—I think the kind of difficulty that the text has in articulating exactly what Cam + Pal + Pyrrha ‘had’ between them that we see in that final scene is intentional, and I think it’s best understood left that way rather than wrangled into a taxonomy that the rest of the text is v determined to critically unpack. So to answer your question, I think the ambiguity is key—one overarching theme of the series is how people can love each other and articulate that love when the language available for them to do so carries obligations of disparate power, hierarchy, serves a particular purpose that we come to understand as ethically unconscionable; whether that love has to be made sense of within hierarchy, or contravene it, or try and stake a place outside of it. Cam + Palamedes + Pyrrha become the next stage of development in the unravelling of such a discourse; to try and make coherent sense of them could all too easily mean falling back on the language that the text works to identify as socially constructed and thus as limited, and thus imposing those limitations.

#ask #tlt #nona the ninth spoilers #i have a second thing to add here but i think it works better as its own reblog so i'll circle back

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yuurei20 · 5 months

Note

Greetings! How true is that Yana is not involved in the writing of all events? Or is it only for the most recent one, Playful land? I'm a little confused.

Hello hello! Yana shares via Twitter what parts of what cards/events/stories/etc she was involved in every time something new is released, so I went through tweets from January of 2020 to November of 2023 to compare and contrast how she has described her role throughout the years, and compiled them here!

⚠️JP-server Only Visuals Spoiled Under the Cut⚠️

Vocabulary Review

・シナリオ: The English word “scenario,” this is an industry term that means “a written outline of a film, novel, or stage work giving details of the plot and individual scenes. It describes the sequence of scene changes, dialogue, and actions.” If Yana says she was in charge of the scenario for something, it is probably ok to assume that it was her project.

・原画(genga): The original artwork/initial visual concept upon which the final work was based

Ex: In this tweet Yana says she was in charge of the scenario, costume design and original card artwork for Fairy Gala.

・担当(tantou): The person in charge of something

・ディレクション: The English word “direction.”

Ex: In this tweet Yana says that she was in charge of direction for Malleus’ Birthday Jacket card.

・D-6th: This is Yana’s personal studio, which existed long before Twst and is also in charge of producing her manga (there seems to be a lot of overlap between the team that creates Black Butler and the Twst team, which she will sometimes reference in tweets). This seems to mean that there were multiple people involved in the creation process. It is unclear if she includes herself amongst the "D-6th" team, as sometimes she will specify that something was by her, something was by D-6th, or something was by both her and D-6th.

・弊社(heisha): a polite way of saying “my company,” this references Yana’s studio D-6th.

Ex: In this tweet Yana says that while she did the scenario herself, the backgrounds and prop designs were by her studio.

The Main Story

Starting with the release of part 1 of Book 3 on JP server, Yana explains that she did the scenario, original artwork for the SSR cards, directed the vignettes and was in charge of character design.

For Book 7 she says she did the scenario and original character art/character designs, while some prop designs and background visuals were done by her studio.

Card Art

For Ortho’s dorm uniform design Yana explains that both she and her studio did the original art from start to finish (she did the original concept and story for the vignette), while she alone was in charge of the before/after groovy art from start to finish for Idia’s dorm uniform card.

She did the art for Leona and Riddle’s tsumsted cards (and direction for the other cards in the series), Sebek’s dorm uniform art from start to finish and and did art direction for the cards in the 2022 New Year’s set, while costume design was done by her studio.

Rook’s Clubwear, Ortho’s Cerberus Gear, Lilia’s General card, Rollo’s card and Grim’s D100 card are all credited to both Yana and her studio.

(We got a rare comment with the release of Ortho’s Cerberus Gear where she said, “We have an artist working with us who spent almost 20 years doing backgrounds for a certain, extremely famous robot anime. She oversees a lot of the background art designing. The background for Ortho’s Cerberus Gear card, the aircraft catapult, the facility seen in the groovy art—that is all her work. It really captures the moment of take off! Professional background artists are truly amazing, capable of designing everything from S.T.Y.X.’s futuristic aircraft catapult to homages of famous watercolor masterpieces." That is one of the artists that Yana is referring to when a design is attributed to D-6th.)

Birthdays

Yana was credited with direction for the Birthday Boy series, while Ortho’s design and direction was credited to her studio.

Yana credited her studio with the Birthday Jacket designs and scenario creation, saying that she was in charge of direction for the series (with Ortho’s gear design, direction and room design all credited to her studio).

For the Broom/Bloom series Yana says that she participated in concept/costume design and was in charge of direction (with D-6th credited with the art direction and gear design for Ortho).

The art for the platinum series (including the backgrounds) is credited to the staff of D-6th, with Yana in charge of direction.

Events

Yana explains she did all the original art for all of the cards, the scenarios and direction for Beanfest, Fairy Gala and Phantom Bride (she also created the scenarios for all the vignettes).

She also created the story and did all of the card art and direction for Terror is Trending and Spectral Soiree.

For Port Fest she specified that she did the original art for Jack’s SSR and did direction for the remaining cards, crediting her studio with costume/background designs.

Yana created the scenario, character design, SSR card art (from start to finish) and did art direction for the R and SR cards of Glorious Masquerade, crediting herself and her studio with the costume/mask designs, background designs, and opening and ending screens.

She says she participated in card art direction for the R and SR cards in the Lost in the Book with Stitch event, crediting the costume designs, scenario creation, background visuals, SSR Lilia, SSR Floyd, original card art and creation to her studio.

Stage in Playfulland character design, costume design, scenario creation, card art direction, background visuals and Opening/Ending art are also all credited to her studio.

(To answer the initial question: the only difference seems to be that Playfulland is credited entirely to her studio without Yana specifying how she was involved, whereas she took credit for the scenario writing in Glorious Masquerade, Spectral Soiree and Terror is Trending. While not the first time this has happened in the game (Yana also did not specify her role in the Tamashina Mina event, attributing costume design, background visuals, the Opening/Ending, the setting/card art direction and character design only to D-6th), this was the first time it’s happened with a Halloween event.)

Novel

Yana says she was in charge of the concept, the in-novel art, cover and fold-out art in the novels, while Hioki Jun (a Twst vignette/event scenario writer) created the novel scenarios.

Comic

The artist and designer behind the 1st and 3rd comic arcs are both from Yana’s studio D-6th, doing background and card art for Twst (and work on Black Butler).

Yana says that her role is overall collaboration, character design and character creation (she says that in addition to creating the basis for Trey’s parents she also designed Riddle’s mother, including her face, but they ultimately left her in silhouette).

It is difficult to tell what Yana means by “overall collaboration," but she has shared a tweet about drawing the characters out herself for the actual artists to base their work on. (This might not apply to the artist of the Savanaclaw arc, who is not a member of D-6th)

#twstask #twstyana #twisted wonderland

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vidavalor · 2 months

Text

Wrong Boy

What Bildad the Shuite, Mr. Dalrymple and Warlock's birthday party can tell us about what's going on in the 2.06 Final 15. Another post in a series about how "The Metatron" with Aziraphale at the end of S2 is actually Satan.

Warlock Dowling. The kid Crowley and Aziraphale took care of for a few years, believing him to be The Antichrist. Not actually The Antichrist. The wrong boy.

Warlock's 11th Birthday Party. The reason why Crowley and Aziraphale were there was to try again to stop Armageddon. Hell was supposed to show up at the party. The Devil was sending a gift to his son-- a dog. The Hell Hound. The gift, once accepted by The Antichrist, was supposed to signal the start of Armageddon.

Crowley and Aziraphale were undercover at the party in an effort to stop Warlock from encountering and naming The Hell Hound and starting the end times as a result... but The Hell Hound was late. The moment that results in them realizing they got it all wrong starts out with dialogue that is referenced again in S2-- in relation to The Meeting Ball.

Aziraphale followed Crowley out to The Bentley, mortified by having put on a terrible magic show in front of Crowley. Crowley, though, was gentle and caring in his reply. He tried to reassure Aziraphale and gas him up a bit.

Aziraphale: "That was all a bit of a disaster, I'm afraid."

Crowley: "Nonsense. You gave them a party to remember. Last one they'll ever have, mind..."

As they're sitting in The Bentley and after communicating with Hell during this scene via the radio, they realize that they fucked it up. The kid they thought was the spawn of The Devil is not actually that. Warlock is not The Antichrist. They had the wrong boy this whole time.

Nonsense. The meaning of "balderdash" and "piffle"-- the words spoken by "The Metatron" when he first arrives in 2.06. The first word of what Crowley said to Aziraphale in the "wrong boy" scene.

The gift for the "son". The Hell Hound. The Coffee.

A disaster termed "a night to remember": The Titanic.

The Titanic. Big ship, first of its kind. Hit iceberg. Was thought to be unsinkable. Turns out, it could very much sink. Angels can be tempted. They can sink-- can fall-- to the bottom of the ocean floor. Aziraphale falling is "The Titanic" of his story and the story overall.

If Warlock's birthday party = The Meeting Ball, then Crowley and Aziraphale have the "wrong boy" once again at the end of S2.

Instead of Warlock being mistaken for The Devil's son, "The Metatron" is really The Devil... who appears in the form of the closest thing Aziraphale has to a father-- The Metatron.

"My Heart Will Go On." Theme song from the film 'Titanic' and on Aziraphale's playlist for S2. Uh oh...

Then, there's this:

"It will be a night to remember!" Aziraphale, describing his then-upcoming Meeting Ball in an episode-ending bit of important dialogue while pointing Upwards, foreshadowing both Crowley going Up and Aziraphale's "going Up to get Down" that happens at the end of this Titanic hitting the iceberg. Crowley will actually wind up trying to keep most of the partygoers from not remembering as much of the events of this party as possible... ironically, since Aziraphale says "a night to remember" to Crowley in reference to the kind thing Crowley said to him about the kids being happy to remember Warlock's birthday party.

The next morning, Crowley will use dialogue that references Warlock's birthday party again... either consciously or unconsciously. Either way, it's a dialogue reference to it for us to notice... and it makes sense that Warlock's party would fit into 2.06's Final 15 here because the dialogue we're talking about is from a scene that's actually after the party... and this is all taking place after, well, a party.

The dialogue shows up here:

Crowley: "Oh, I know you. Last time I saw you, you were a giant, floating head, mind."

Welcome to the only other scene in the series in which Crowley has used "mind" at the end of a sentence but for the casual time he did post-Warlock's birthday party. It's calling our attention to the late Hell Hound not arriving at that party... in the moment that "The Metatron" has just arrived here, in the aftermath of the mirrored party.

The Devil himself is here this time.

It might also be worth noting that when Crowley and Aziraphale figure out that Warlock is the wrong boy, it's because of Crowley having just spoken to Hell via the radio in The Bentley... which is also how Satan attacked Crowley in 1.01. Those two scenes are then tied together and both of them are in play in 2.06.

The show also takes pains to call the meeting a "party" several times. Besides Aziraphale saying "we're having a ball", the character who is of The Devil and whose actions let The Devil Himself into the bookshop-- Shax-- twice refers to what's going on as "a party." When she arrives: "how sweet-- they're having a party" and, later, she corrects Mr. Brown of Brown's World of Carpets when he says that what is going on is a meeting. She tells him that it's not a meeting because they were "dancing." That it's a party is referenced several times, further drawing correlation between the climax of S2 and Warlock's 11th Birthday Party.

Crowley-- a demon-- is called upon by "The Metatron" to identify him to everyone else after every single other being in the room fails to recognize him. Every single other being in the room besides Crowley is an angel and *all* of them fail to recognize this being as The Metatron. Every one of them. How can five angels fail to recognize the leader of Heaven? Maybe because that's not actually the leader of Heaven? Maybe because The Devil had to get someone he can control-- and we've seen that he can control Crowley in 1.01-- to tell everyone else that he's The Metatron... which is exactly what happens in this scene?

Crowley identifies the being in such a way that the other angels see him as The Metatron. No one questions him. Rather hilariously, since angels who don't like Crowley are in the room, everyone just believes him and takes what he says at face value. This includes Michael, who has now done this twice-- they also did this during the Job minisode, which we'll look at in a moment.

Michael (gloriously bitchy, asking THE question): "And who are you?"

The context clues suggesting this being's fake identity that led everyone to believe it after its reveal were planted by "The Metatron" upon his arrival... and that's familiar, too. We've seen that one before... Crowley did it earlier in the season.

Remember where we saw that and another significant who are you? one before?

Here, with Sitis:

Crowley gives Sitis suggestion as to who he will appear to be to her, even if they've never met before. Who is he? He's "an old friend, here to offer some comfort." Sitis is having A Day over here and is somewhat resistant at first to influence and she's never met this being before so she naturally has this question:

She's paralleling Michael in 2.06 here. All who are you and why are you interrupting me? I'm a bit busy over here... and what did Crowley say?

"You tell me." Crowley gave her the answer he wanted and when Sitis was resistant and Crowley needed to get to the kids to save them, he influenced her so she'd help him get to who he wanted instead of standing in his way. Crowley seeks to protect the kids, obviously. He has the opposite motivation of Satan in 2.06 but the methods are the same.

Sitis falls under Crowley's suggestion at "you tell me"-- she responds normally-enough but there's enough of her reaction at the start that shows that her mind is being influenced. She gets a little quiet, her eyes widen, she's staring for a brief moment... kinda like Crowley in the chair before he speaks in after "The Metatron"'s arrival in 2.06. Crowley was in Sitis' mind and made her say back to him what he'd told her to say:

"Bildad" quite literally means "old friend" so Sitis basically regurgitates Crowley's "just an old friend" by translating it into a name in her mind. Crowley's "sure" is comedic but this is also an example of Crowley using magical influence over someone-- one of two that happens in S2. In both times, Crowley's use of it is benign in overall intent but it's still not really with the full awareness of the person he's using it on.

This kind of power when used by The Devil, though? Yikes...

The second time we see Crowley do this is with Mister Dalrymple. And what did Crowley suggest-- at Aziraphale's request-- that Mister Dalrymple do? So that Aziraphale could have time to try to lure Mister Dalrymple into his way of thinking-- though the opposite wound up being true?

Invite them to stay and have a chat... over a drink.

A chat over a wee tipple of whiskey. That moment has a paralleling friend in 2.06, too...

A chinwag over a large oat milk latte with a dash/hefty jigger of almond syrup...

Now, we're also referencing The Resurrectionist minisode in The Final 15. You know, the one where Crowley is dragged back to Hell in Edinburgh... the same place Aziraphale went to alone during S2. When asked where Aziraphale was during that time by Shax, Crowley replied that Aziraphale was:

Stocktaking. In the basement. On the surface, this is an excuse Crowley gives Shax to explain why she can't see Aziraphale through the window of the shop while Aziraphale is in Edinburgh. Shax clearly doesn't buy it and tracks down Aziraphale in The Bentley on his way back from Scotland. But this is also a metaphor on two different levels.

The first is that Crowley was dragged back to Hell in Edinburgh in 1827 and that Hell is the basement of the whole Heaven/Hell skyscraper office situation. Edinburgh is Hell is "the basement" to Crowley. While Aziraphale was there, he was working on some of his trauma related to 1827-- taking stock of what he had and where he was at in order to move forward. Aziraphale going to Edinburgh actually is Aziraphale metaphorically "stocktaking in the basement"... it's just that it also potentially foreshadows that once Shax actually gets through that door, it's the start of how Aziraphale is going to wind up doing some further stocktaking in the actual basement that is Hell.

Jump back to Sitis for a moment. Why does Sitis say "Shuite"? It's more important than it seems.

We already looked at why she says "Bildad"-- it's because of Crowley's "old friend"-- but why does she say "the Shuite"? It's not what Crowley said this time, so much as what he did-- jumping into her mind.

Remember later when Crowley uses a homophone-- "Shu-ite" and "shoes"-- and cracks this joke:

Crowley says "shoes" and Michael says "the land of Shua" but Bildad is Bildad "the Shuite" because Sitis was trying to say the other word that's a homophone for "shoes" and "Shu-a" here: "shoo."

Was there was a part of Sitis that was aware of Crowley in her mind was telling him to get out, to leave, to go... or was the fact that she had been trying to get Crowley to leave before he influenced her a factor in how she came up with his identity?

It shows that a person under suggestion by a supernatural being in Good Omens is forced to say and do whatever that being is forcing them to say or do but they might have some mild level of resistance where their words are concerned, if they can find a way to do so. Crowley was not exerting a terribly powerful influence over Sitis because he prefers to not do this at all. But The Devil himself is not going to have any such qualms... and we've been shown in 1.01 that when he takes over Crowley, Crowley really can't resist the influence. Still, he might have been trying, since The Devil needed him to speak and it was Aziraphale in the crosshairs.

And, of course, back in 2.06, The Big Damn Villain Music in the score goes insane at this moment here when "The Metatron" looks at Crowley without Aziraphale noticing-- a look that can be interpreted not just as a glare but as instructions. It's what keeps Crowley in the bookshop. It furthers the suggestion that "The Metatron" is magically influencing Crowley and since Crowley's main contribution is to identify him as The Metatron, well... casts some serious doubt over the idea that this is anybody but the one being who can exert that kind of control over Crowley-- Satan.

Now, go back to Crowley and to "...last time I saw you, you were a giant, floating head, mind."

Aziraphale doesn't totally seem to realize it but the events of the previous night letting everyone into the bookshop has, well, let everyone into the bookshop. Aziraphale thinks of the bookshop as a safe haven where Crowley's concerned and, until The Meeting Ball, it was. But Shax allowed in tipped the dominoes and now means that the bookshop is now overrun, all of Hell can get in, and Crowley's no longer safe from Satan while inside the bookshop.

"...giant, floating head, mind" isn't just about Warlock's birthday party.

It's a reference to The Devil taking over Crowley's mind in 1.01.

It's a reference to that for us and, if Crowley is able to resist at all or is trying to on some level, then it's an equivalent to Sitis saying "Shuite" in an attempt to say "shoo"-- it's a word Crowley is choosing sneaking out in the influence that Satan has over him in that moment. He's screaming wrong boy wrong boy wrong boy and he's in my mind beneath the calmer way that Satan is having him identify him to everyone as The Metatron and hoping Aziraphale will get it.

Everyone believes Crowley when he says the being before them all is The Metatron because the reveal of it makes sense with the clues laid out by what "The Metatron" has said upon his arrival. Old British white guy-sounding being? Using old language-- "balderdash", "complete piffle"? Being a smarmy, patronizing dick towards Michael? Yeah, that sounds like The Metatron... enough that everyone doesn't stop to notice what else this being says the moment he has them all convinced. Phrases like "spit spot"... the signature line of the Hell-aligned 'Mary Poppins'... but we'll look at all the 'Mary Poppins' in end of S2 in another meta.

Back to our next bit of dialogue referencing signifying the presence of The Devil in 2.06. That is "go on." Whether this is just a clue to us from the other scene or whether it's also Crowley, trying to resist the influence to try to warn Aziraphale is interpretable but, either way, when Crowley stays put and doesn't seem to notice Aziraphale silently trying to get Crowley to come with him and The Metatron, there's this dialogue:

Crowley: "Go on. Day can't get any weirder."

Weird means strange, unexpected, unnatural... Something's wrong, something's wrong, something's wrong is what Crowley's basically saying. But it's the "go on" that's the real 👀 because of what it references from earlier in the season...

Remember this?

Crowley: "Go on. Have an ox rib."

Yeah, that's a direct dialogue comparison that calls what "The Metatron" is doing with Aziraphale temptation... which means "The Metatron" is The Devil.

Gabriel showed up in S2 and what he could remember was a quote from The Book of Job-- something God said that night Crowley and Aziraphale found her speaking "to Job" (really: to them, but it's unclear if they've figured that out yet.) God warned at the beginning of S2 that Aziraphale needs to remember the Job minisode something fierce for what's to come. He's being tested. He's being tempted. The Devil shows up in 2.06 to tempt him... and it parallels the ox rib scenes by both echoing and inverting it, like the mirror that it is.

Angels actually can be tempted but that's not really what Crowley was doing in Job's cellar. The ox rib scene is actually about consent. Let's look at the start of it.

As the storm started in 2500 B.C., Crowley started pouring wine. He poured two glasses and offered Aziraphale one. Aziraphale did not take it.

Aziraphale did not take it because Aziraphale, at the time, was not interested in wine. He didn't wish to drink. "The Metatron" manipulates Aziraphale's emotions when it comes to the coffee. He preys on Aziraphale's need to be polite and on how afraid Aziraphale is of The Metatron. Aziraphale has never had any such fear of Crowley-- he hilariously was pretty direct about his distaste for wine back in Job's cellar. The Devil gets Aziraphale to take the coffee by manipulating his trauma but Satan's minister Crowley? Back in 2500 BC? He didn't push Aziraphale to drink.

The ox rib scene is actually about choice and consent. It's important to Crowley that Aziraphale feel safe with him. When Aziraphale expresses that he doesn't want to drink and doesn't want to get drunk, Crowley is fine with that and offers food instead, pointing out that you can't get drunk on food. He's a little mischievous and dry when replying that "angels can't be tempted" to Aziraphale's question of whether or not Crowley was trying to tempt him but it's because he's actually not. He's trying to have a little date with the angel, not get him to fall to Hell. He likes him. He's amused that Aziraphale is finding the offers of food and drink to be tempting-- that he's into it and wants to give something a try. There's no manipulation, just the offer of it.

It's Aziraphale's own choice to try the ox rib. He chooses to take it.

He chooses to try something new and see things a little differently and spend some time with Crowley. It's a healthy choice. It's the polar opposite of the choice Aziraphale makes when The Devil offers him the one thing he wants: a way within his control to be with Crowley forever.

The conversations at Marguerite's that Aziraphale has in S2 are interconnected. He sits at a table there separately twice-- once with Crowley and once with The Devil. Again, Crowley offers Aziraphale a glass of wine-- this time now thousands of years after Aziraphale rejected the first offer of one. Aziraphale drinks now. He and Crowley have shared a thousand bottles of wine since.

They never get to food. Aziraphale doesn't actually eat in the present at all in S2. (Which is the whole damn problem lol.) Doesn't have an eccles cake. Doesn't dine at The Ritz. No vol-au-vents at The Meeting Ball. And, at Marguerite's, he doesn't have a glass of wine and a little late lunch with Crowley. He has one sip of tea in the present for the entirety of S2 before That Damn Coffee-- to try to teach Muriel to do what Aziraphale has actually been rejecting while being in his Heavenly feelings during S2. The healthy choice is actually some food, a glass of wine, and Crowley... not a trauma-loaded coffee from The Devil.

Crowley and Aziraphale joke about temptation where each other is concerned and it's off of the scene in Job's cellar. We've seen it in Rome in 41 AD and we've seen it in the S1 finale in 2019. This is what temptation between them looks like:

They can poke fun at the idea of it because their relationship is built on the idea that they see each other as individual people who make individual choices and that Heaven and Hell don't own them. They own themselves and they choose to share themselves with one another. It's the opposite of the manipulation of temptation, which is why it both parallels how Aziraphale falls prey to The Devil-- by how he does being the opposite of what he has with Crowley-- and why it's over Crowley that Aziraphale falls in the first place... not because loving him is "bad"... for the exact opposite of that. Because loving him is good and it's not loving him to try to find a solution to their problems by saying that the people who have harmed the two of them should come first. That's the point-- no nightingales.

Aziraphale doesn't want power. He doesn't want to run Heaven-- he rejected that first attempt to tempt him by The Devil. He doesn't want to go back. He wants to stay on Earth and live his life with Crowley and he wants so much to never be apart from Crowley. The two things that Aziraphale wants most in the world are both related to Crowley-- he wants to be with him forever and he wants Heaven to admit that they fucked up and that Crowley is good.

Aziraphale already knows Crowley is good. He loves him as he is. He's just furious at Heaven and at The Metatron for what they've done to the being he loves and he's incensed at God for allowing it. Aziraphale has been an angel this whole time and, in his mind, he's been powerless to do anything to fix this. He can't stop Crowley's pain over falling-- over the fact that he still feels like he's unforgivable in the eyes of God. He can't stop him from being hurt by Hell. And Aziraphale has had that rage on simmer for 6,000 years.

His every "I forgive you" is an attempt at, since he's an angel of Heaven, trying to give Crowley what he needs and can't get from Heaven... and Crowley knows it is but he hates it because what he truly wants and needs is just Aziraphale himself. Aziraphale's love is enough.

All Aziraphale wants is for Heaven to admit they fucked up because he thinks forgiveness from God will help Crowley. He thinks it will make this better:

If Crowley were an angel again, would that stop the pain that Aziraphale can't stop? Aziraphale wonders if it might. Because he can't stop it. He's tried. He's not enough. It's a lot of pain to watch the being you love still suffer and try to do what you can to make it stop but to not be enough-- Crowley and Aziraphale both know what that feels like.

The solution is not to run away and it's not to go to Heaven. It's to just make like Gabriel and Beez and choose to live their lives together. If enough people say "nah" to Armageddon, there's no Armageddon. You can't have a war without war. Aziraphale doesn't understand that at the end of S2 yet, though, so when The Devil shows up in the form of the abusive dad who never loved him and basically says:

You know, you were right-- we need people like you. The way you live isn't a sin. I made a mistake. You could come back to Heaven and show us how to be better-- how to do things your way. You could bring your husband. We can all be a family. He can be an angel again and you'll never again have to worry that you'll lose him. You can be together forever...

This is all Aziraphale has ever wanted. The angel who was losing his mind hosting a party for the first time the night before-- one where his human friends and Gabriel mingled together and where everyone knew Crowley was his and they got to dance together like everyone else-- well, that angel is tempted as all fuck.

He falls for (falls in love with) Crowley and he falls (falls from Heaven) for Crowley.

It started, in part, with an arrival at the door. Not "The Metatron"'s arrival. Bildad's much happier, paralleling one:

This is also a note to us: remember him-- Bildad the Shuite. It's important that we do if we want to understand what comes later when a group of people, some of them angels, can't recognize who just came through the door... for the second scene in this season.

Right on cue to ask the Big Damn Question in 2500 B.C. was the first arrival at the bookshop door in S2 and the character most representing Aziraphale's inner struggles in S2... and the one who had been sent away for his own good by the point that The Devil arrives in 2.06...

Gabriel, asking THAT question: "Aziraphale, who is this?"

Aziraphale:

He. Says. He. Is. God told Aziraphale to remember this but he seems to have forgotten that he and Crowley cloaked Crowley's real identity for greater good purposes but the opposite of that could just as easily happen. He didn't really listen to the messenger God sent him-- Gabriel, whose name literally means "messenger"-- when he told Aziraphale to remember Job and so Aziraphale didn't recognize The Devil when he, like Bildad before him, came through the door.

In a sweet way, it's because he so loves Crowley that he doesn't really see him as demonic and so couldn't make a connection between Bildad and "The Metatron."

The Body Swap. Crowley and Aziraphale each pretending to be one another to survive the end of S1. They fooled everyone around them by looking like someone they, technically, are not. In both cases, they were forced into suicide by Heaven/Hell-- by getting into a bath of holy water and by stepping into flames of hellfire-- and survived it because neither of them actually were who they said they were.

Aziraphale's fall parallels the body swap plot as it's a fall of despair.

"We call it 'The Second Coming'." Aziraphale knows who was really at the door in this moment. He knows that there is no Supreme Archangel job, no promises of safety and an eternal life with Crowley. There never was. He made the wrong choice. He let his despair rule him and now the fall he thought was coming in 2500 B.C. is actually here.

Upon realizing that he's been fooled-- has played himself for a sucker, as is the case with negative thought cycles-- Aziraphale steps into the elevator.

S1-- they save each other from being killed by Heaven and Hell in methods that look like forcing them to kill themselves.

S2-- Aziraphale effectively tries to kill himself by getting into the elevator, now knowing who it is who is holding open the door.

He knows the likelihood of his memories being erased is high, which makes choosing to get into the elevator a form of suicide.

Banana, fish, gorilla, shoelace, with a dash of nutmeg. Aziraphale's mantra. His magic words. In the bookshop attack and through the end of S2, though... a banana peel thrown at Maggie. Shax referencing "the sushi." Only the banana and the fish are here.

The Bananafish. A short story by J.D. Salinger about PTSD, trauma and suicide. After some short interactions with a girl representing a daughter-like figure to the main character (Maggie, in Good Omens, who kicks off Aziraphale's S2 plot and provides his motivations throughout)-- the seemingly-fine man who is actually a traumatized war veteran suffering from PTSD suddenly and quickly succumbs to the pain he carries around and the cycle of negative thoughts he suffers and shoots himself dead.

#ineffable husbands #good omens #crowley #aziraphale #good omens meta #aziracrow #good omens 2 #good omens theory #tw ptsd #tw suicide #tw trauma #tw religious trauma

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unfortunatetheorist · 5 months

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Is Lemony's Kind Editor in the Netflix series?

Throughout the Netflix series, Lemony has used one of his infamous literary devices which I did not notice until rewatching it for the billionth time, when I was working on The Complete Works of Contradictory Logic in ASOUE. More on that to come.

Lemony uses a rather basic device which, I believe, can actually have an ENTIRELY radical new view on the show: Lemony speaks to the camera in the second person.

This just means he uses the pronouns 'you' and 'your', etc, when talking directly to camera.

e.g. TMM: "You could pretend the Duchess of Winnipeg had arrived, and had come to throw the Baudelaires a pony party at her chateau."

However, the 'you' could refer to Lemony's Unnamed Kind Editor. There are some points which back this up:

The Kind Editor is someone who does not know the story of the Baudelaires, they only know Lemony. This is why Lemony is the one to tell them the story of ASOUE.

The Kind Editor is NOT a member of V.F.D. This is why Lemony has to explain [either himself or via other characters] different V.F.D-related things that a member would've already known.

This logic can lead to the following:

Lemony is talking to his Kind Editor, who is filming VIDEO evidence to be used in court when Lemony clears his name and the names of the Baudelaires.

This means that the characters do not physically appear in ASOUE, but rather Lemony just imagines them saying the same words before actually saying them himself. This carries on from the idea (@snicketstrange) that Lemony used the Baudelaires' notes from An Incomplete History (series) or A Series of Unfortunate Events (book canon).

In TCC, the Baudelaires discover the SAME THING filmed by the SAME PERSON - but for ATWQ. Hence the reference to 'Stain'd-by-the-Sea'...

So what's the point?

THEORY: Lemony is using typewritten and video evidence, as filmed by his Kind Editor, in order to clear the names of all 4 people; the Baudelaires and himself.

But who is this mysterious Kind Editor? Many have suggested it to be Moxie Mallahan, as she was only friends with Lemony and no-one else from V.F.D.

However, given the circumstances described, I now present an alternative solution: Beatrice Baudelaire II.

In TBL, Beatrice II is 10 years old, capable of handling a camera. It provides an uncle-niece bonding opportunity for Lemony, and Beatrice gets to know the story of her adoptive parents (from her biological uncle).

Lemony is Beatrice's only hope of finding the Baudelaires, and Beatrice is Lemony's only hope of clearing the Baudelaires' names, as Lemony knows 100% that Beatrice is not an enemy or a spy of any kind.

¬ Th3r3534rch1ngr4ph, Unfortunate Theorist/Snicketologist

#asoue #vfd #lemony snicket #a series of unfortunate events #snicketverse #asoue netflix #theory #kind editor #beatrice baudelaire #beatrice baudelaire ii #tbl #the beatrice letters #an incomplete history #duchess of winnipeg #duchess r #duchess ramona #ramona quimby

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lady-harrowhark · 1 year

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hello, can you explain to me in more clarity your “waxen” theory regarding Ianthe? I’m not picking up on what this implies but it’s making my brain itch.

Sort of! Totally fair question, I just don't have a lot of clarity myself in that I don't have a fully formed theory lol. There's definitely some links and parallels in verbiage that are pinging on my radar, so I do think something's funky, but I wouldn't say I'm fully on board with this yet. I'm just playing in the sandbox Tamsyn has provided us, tossing out ideas and thinking out loud. But I can go into some more detail, and add some more thoughts that have occurred to me since I posted that last night.

(Here's a link to the post in question, for context)

Anyway! So let's first lay out all the times we get someone described as some type of wax. At various points in HtN, we get the descriptions "a shoddy wax cast of some more beautiful sculpture," a "wax figure in a pink dolly dress," a "wax figure in pale purple chiffon," and "waxen face" for Ianthe. We also see that descriptor used a few other times for other people throughout the series. In GtN, Harrow's parents' bodies are called "waxy" and the first introduction of Protesilaus (as the beguiling corpse) says he was "waxen looking in the sunlight." In NtN, Kiriona's skin is said to have a "weird, waxy quality," then Naberius's skin is called "waxen" when they first meet up with Ianthe, and again a few pages later it again references the "waxen, handsome face". What I'm getting at here is that every time this sort of description is deployed, it's in reference to a dead body that's been preserved, manipulated, and is essentially masquerading as a living person... except for Ianthe.

We also know there are a multitude of times that she's described as looking like a poor copy of Coronabeth. There's that "shoddy wax cast of some more beautiful sculpture" line, her first introduction calls her a "starved shadow" of her sister ("or the first an illuminated reflection [of Ianthe]," and actually, off the top of my head I don't know that we ever see their descriptions framed that way again... I'd have to investigate this more later, but this might be the only time that Corona is described as a "better" version of Ianthe, rather than Ianthe being a "worse" version of Corona, which is interesting), there's a point where it says "The second twin was as though the first had been taken to pieces and put back together without any genius. She wore a robe of the same cloth and colour, but on her it was a beautiful shroud on a mummy," etc etc etc. I know there's more, but I'm too lazy to go pull the rest of the quotes and you get the picture by this point I'm sure. So nearly all of these situate her, at least visually, as a copy or approximation of Coronabeth, and one that doesn't quite live up to original at that.

So now let's pick apart this snippet of conversation we overhear between Silas and Ianthe at Magnus and Abigail's dinner party a bit. Ianthe says she was born via "surgical means," which I'm assuming is referring to a C-section delivery (or whatever the necromantic equivalent is) and notes that Corona is a few minutes older. Silas seems surprised (or perhaps concerned?) that they "risked intervention" and Ianthe says Corona had "removed [her] source of oxygen". At this point Silas says, "A wasted opportunity, I'd think." I had always taken this for him just being a dick and implying he wished she'd died in the womb, but coming back to it with this new angle... well. She says "Corona's birth put my survivability somewhere around definite nil." And I'm wondering if that doesn't tie to Harrow's comment about infant deaths generating "enough thanergy to take out the entire planet." Basically, could Silas have been implying that the Tridentarii's parents wasted an opportunity to use the thanergy from baby Ianthe's death to power up Corona?

Harrow says that twins are an ill omen, but the text hasn't come back to that as of yet. Given the difficulty necromancers experience with pregnancy, I'd imagine twins would could be especially dangerous and that in and of itself could be considered an ill omen. Ianthe's comments certainly suggest that their mother carried the pregnancy, although I don't think we know for certain whether she was a necromancer. I am so intensely curious about the Tridentarii's childhood and their parents; we get so many gestures towards some really twisted family dynamics, but very little in the way of concrete explanations. Particularly relevant here, I'd love to know more about their father wanting a "matched set" and how that came about. Did they intentionally plan for twins from the start? Was it only once they knew they were having twins that that became a factor? What's the significance there?

Outside of those "waxy" descriptors, Ianthe tends to be described as much more sickly looking than even other necromancers. We know that necromancers on the whole tend towards a phenotype of physical weakness, but even still, there's an emphasis on this with Ianthe beyond that. This might be due in part to narrator bias (coughGideoncough) or the direct juxtaposition between her and Coronabeth's vivaciousness, but what really jumps out at me as contributing to this effect is how frequently she's described as being colorless, pale, washed out, bloodless, pallid, anemic, etc etc etc. It very much makes me think of the way the color drains away from Colum (and even the rest of the room and the others in it) when Silas is siphoning. Silas himself is also often described as colorless ("mayonnaise uncle," "milk man") but not so much in a way that implies frailty as much as I read it as implying a stark coldness, in line with the very black-and-white moral authority he presumes to wield, a purported "purity", much different than Ianthe's colorlessness. With Ianthe, you get a sense that her palette ought to have been or perhaps was closer to Corona's, but the color's been drained away; where Corona's hair is described as golden, Ianthe's is "canned butter", for example. Almost like the life's been siphoned out, one might say.

So to kind of circle back around, do I actually think Ianthe is dead or a corpse like the other "wax" figures we've seen? Nah. Between Harrow and Palamedes, and especially Palamedes's medical necromancy, I think we would have heard about it by now if that were the case. But I do think it's entirely plausible that she's had a bit of a brush with death and that perhaps she's never quite fully come back from, and I do think she's being intentionally positioned as somewhat adjacent to death. If their parents were wanting twins from the outset, perhaps they used necromantic means to encourage the conception. Or if the pregnancy was as high-risk as I suspect it was, perhaps she'd died or nearly died at birth and been resuscitated. Their parents may have gone to extremes to keep her alive, to maintain their matched set. Given the themes of this series, I do feel it's necessary to draw a distinction between "resuscitation" and "resurrection" although they are curiously adjacent to one another. For all the text has grappled with dying and staying dead, dying and coming back, dying and choosing whether or not to return... we haven't touched on what something like a "near death experience" would look like. I'd imagine having that sort of experience, even at an incredibly young age, might lead one to be fascinated with, to use Ianthe's own words, "the place between death and life... the place between release and disappearance."

#it was making my brain itch also!#thank you for indulging my meandering rambles lol #I’ve got another ask sitting in my inbox that I’m working on too… I promise I’m not ignoring it!#tlt #tlt meta #ianthe tridentarius #nona the ninth spoilers #ask #mcdreary #two halves dead

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thecraftyninjacat · 1 month

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Mahoro, Matakara, Aladdin and the Princess

I think Episode 8 finally confirmed to me that the role of the Princess in the Aladdin allusion was actually split between Mahoro and Matakara, rather than it being one or the other. There's a reason why they're both represented by Jasmine-chan during the Nyan Nyaight Love cutaways!

Preface; imo Bucchigiri's narrative takes inspiration from both Disney's Aladdin and the original Aladdin story, so I'm going to switch the Princess's name depending on which version of her I'm referring to. So Jasmine -> Disney's Aladdin, and Badroulbadour -> 1001 Nights Aladdin.

From what I saw in the 1001 Nights Aladdin, Badroulbadour didn't have much of a personality, so it makes sense that a lot of Mahoro and Matakara's personalities were taken from Jasmine, while their roles in the story were slightly more influenced by Badroulbadour.

Mahoro: The feistier side of Jasmine. She has a sharp tongue and always speaks her mind, regardless of potential danger. Eg. Mahoro stands up to Akutaro after he gains the upper hand on both gangs, similarly to how Jasmine refuses to bow to Jafar when he becomes Sultan.

She's also regarded as pretty desirable, and has charmed several men to get them to do what she wants (something that both Jasmine and Badroulbadour do at some point to trick Jafar/the sorcerer). Arajin falls for Mahoro at first sight, similarly to how both versions of Aladdin fell for both versions of the Princess, and like Aladdin his crush on her becomes his driving motivation throughout the series. Akutaro also talks about turning her into a NG Girl and…abusing her, a la Jafar. Ik it's just to trigger Arajin but yk what I mean!

Matakara: The gentler, more naive side of Jasmine, in that he trusts/believes in Arajin...a lot more than he should, really. The main 'lying' plot point between Disney's Aladdin and Jasmine is directly implemented into Matakara and Arajin's relationship. On a surface level there's also their blue colour schemes and phonetically similar names (Asamine -> Jasmine). Near the climax of the 1001 Nights version, the sorcerer tricks Badroulbadour into giving him the lamp with the genie in it, similarly to how Akutaro manipulates Matakara into shooting himself with Ichiya. Both actions trigger a Very Bad Turn of Events that Aladdin stops/will have to stop with the help of his own genie.

Also very interesting how Ichiya has a moon motif, and Badroulbadour's name is a metaphor for female beauty meaning 'full moon of full moons'. Totally not losing my fucking mind over that no sir

Though they both fit the Princess allusion, the entire show is screaming that Matakara is Arajin's true Jasmine, and Arajin is going to realise he was what he needed all along. Honestly, it doesn't get more obvious than Episode 9.

That's not to mention how Mahoro and Matakara also have many, many parallels to each other via their relationships with Arajin. (Both visit him one-on-one at his mom's restaurant to convince him to do something and order the exact same dish, Arajin thinks of child Matakara after seeing both current Matakara and Mahoro get hurt, his meetings with both of them are juxtaposed with one another and described as a 'fated meeting' in this trailer, etc.)

Aside from that, there's also a lot of little stuff that the two have in common! (Both suck at cooking, both deeply care about their older siblings, both are cute as hell etc etc.)

(it's also pretty neat how they're technically both the respective 'princesses' of Minato Kai and Siguma, being the younger siblings of the leader/former leader of each gang!)

#bucchigiri?!#mahoro jin #matakara asamine #arajin tomoshibi #crafty speaks #you know the yaoi is good when i start to use normal grammar #gotta stop the princess talk before i make this about utena again #anywaysss here's hoping matakara and mahoro become besties and bond over their abysmal taste in men <33

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spotlightlowlife · 27 days

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Greed is every sin

Just as openly elitist power abuser Stolas is the best villain of either series in this Helluverse, Mammon manages to be the greatest sin of all and for a similar reason, being multifaceted via many efforts made to sway our thinking, yet these two are then taken in different directions.

So much range does 'greed' have that he even encapsulates the 'sins' we have yet to meet.

Of those we have met, Ozzie, Bee and over in Pride, Lucifer, Mammon has managed to showcase actions of their sins in his own greedy way. Greed has a bit of everyone, but vise versa? Not if they're supposed to be liked.

A totally desexualised character but blamed for the sexdolls of a famous character whoes 'dayjob' is entertaining at a kinky nightclub, run by the prince of lust. Even though he markets the dolls as multipurpose, fit for everyone at a very affordable price, the sex element is his fault. The dolls were clearly a collaboration and something thought up before a reference was chosen, Ozzie catches feelings for their references and feels he should no longer able to separate business from his personal feelings, whilst Mammon manages to prosper in business in a field that isn't his.

Lust ✅

A glutton for the sake of being a glutton, no need for celebration just mindless or stress eating, which fits well as greed and gluttony often go together, taking because it's there.

There's also the deliberate fat design intended to make him more grotesque. 'Gluttony' does not need to be fat, yet the 'Gluttony' we met simply wanted the party goers indulged, however Ozzie wanted his patrons to keep it sexy and Mammon collected cash during the pageant, they did as much as eachother, only the efforts to make him piggish only took away from Bee's thing.

Gluttony ✅

Showy and performative but happy to take the backseat, is seen working and mentoring, adapts to what's new, what works and what others want but also bold enough to openly share selfish motive. As involved and inappropriate as his behaviour may seem he's all business, willing to work with those who don't like him and invest in what doesn't interest him without buckling or offsetting.

Mammon succeeds as a ruthless, confident, both proactive and passive leader who doesn't come across as someone who casually hangs with 'commoners' and whose true influence and power is unknown.

Pride ✅

Way too attentive to be lazy, but, what do people have to say about a boss who puts their feet up and fails to do what they're more than capable of doing, rather, they get others to do? Mammon supposedly 'not doing clown stuff anymore' and Fizz being 'a better clown than he ever was' as according to Ozzie are statements that means little, he wanted a prodigy, we saw imagery of training arc he showcases entertainers in order to fulfil his greed and his trade gets acknowledged. Ozzie has a seedy nightclub where those who work their or visit are expected to behave in a sexy way and Bee expects her guests to indulge, what's the difference? They meet their sin quota whilst not showing us any form of trade outside of being a host, why is Mammon condemned for as in a leading example of laziness? If we're scaling laziness, where does this leave poor, yet to be introduced Belphahor?

Relaxation pairs with recovery, research shows that the Sloth ring has the hospitals and is also responsible for 'upper' medication. Nice right? Something positive, which is where all those we are to like lean towards. That and Bee seems to be friends with her.

Sloth ✅

Spring boarding onto the next sin, Wrath, someone who has been described as attractive (by Bee) and is seen as a leader and god to the imps. It helps to be liked. This is hell where anything supposedly goes, murder is fine but not sadness, sadness isn't a sin but what else is everything, irate. Mammon was allowed to not only be big and menacing but pose a threat to someone who would be frightened of their fallout, allowed to resort to blackmail when he didn't like how things were going and allowed to vow revenge before taking off and trashing the place and maybe even killing his audience who bore witness on his way out, in a rather composed way.

Wrath ✅

Looloo land being a ripoff of Lulu land is so clearly a display of greed, especially since Looloo land is poorly maintained dispite Mammon being a perfectionist, this ripoff could easily be an example of envy, a grasp at control born from following a definitive leader who seems no leader at all, but can do what he wants because this is his realm.

Wlillingness to rip off such a superior, block effort at takedown with an impenetrable contract and still maintain (according to research) a good relationship with shows caution, calculation and willingness to fight.

Mammon even has his face on hell's currency and a banking app, yet who exactly is he supposed to be paying tax to? Lucifer, hells actual owner who doesn't seem to be a leader? Or are they answering to those 'higher up' which places Mammon in the frustrating position of second fiddle to a boss who isn't the best?

We haven't met Envy/Leviathan yet, but we have a host of main characters who live contemptuous lives and look to what others have that they don't, so envy, like wrath affects everyone, have been prominent driving forces since the start along with sadness and tragedy which aren't sins.

Envy ✅

Mammon manages to encompasses all elements of sinning even when he shouldn't really because it's by proxy as someone whose actions are portrayed as self serving and cruel with no excuses or failure to acknowledge, someone who upsets and can be harmful to those we are supposed to root for, something these series shy away from when they want us to like a character. We have a demon who succeeds in being someone you have no business getting mixed up with, in hell, a place you shouldn't want to be, where he is a crowned leader who is after your money if you're lucky.

Greed ✅

#helluva boss mammon #helluva boss critical #hazbin hotel critical #hazbin hotel lucifer #helluva boss ozzie #helluva boss beelzebub

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kaijuposting · 4 months

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Jaegers of Pacific Rim: What do we know about them?

There's actually a fair amount of lore about Pacific Rim's jaegers, though most of it isn't actually in the movie itself. A lot of it has been scattered in places like Pacific Rim: Man, Machines, & Monsters, Tales From Year Zero, Travis Beacham's blog, and the Pacific Rim novelization.

Note that I will not be including information from either Pacific Rim: Uprising or Pacific Rim: The Black. Uprising didn't really add anything, and The Black's take on jaegers can easily be summed up as "simplified the concept to make a cartoon for children."

So what is there to know about jaegers, besides the fact that they're piloted by two people with their brains connected via computer?

Here's a fun fact: underneath the hull (which may or may not be pure iron), jaegers have "muscle strands" and liquid data transfer technology. Tendo Choi refers to them in the film when describing Lady Danger's repairs and upgrades:

Solid iron hull, no alloys. Forty engine blocks per muscle strand. Hyper-torque driver for every limb and a new fluid synapse system.

The novelization by Alex Irvine makes frequent references to this liquid data transfer tech. For example:

The Jaeger’s joints squealed and began to freeze up from loss of lubricant through the holes Knifehead had torn in it. Its liquid-circuit neural architecture was misfiring like crazy. (Page 29.)

He had enough fiber-optic and fluid-core cabling to get the bandwidth he needed. (Page 94.)

Newt soldered together a series of leads using the copper contact pins and short fluid-core cables. (Page 96.)

Unfortunately I haven't found anything more about the "muscle strands" and what they might be made of, but I do find it interesting that jaegers apparently have some sort of artificial muscle system going on, especially considering Newt's personnel dossier in the novel mentioned him pioneering research in artificial tissue replication at MIT.

The novelization also mentions that the pilots' drivesuits have a kind of recording device for their experiences while drifting:

This armored outer layer included a Drift recorder that automatically preserved sensory impressions. (Page 16.)

It was connected through a silver half-torus that looked like a travel pillow but was in fact a four-dimensional quantum recorder that would provide a full record of the Drift. (Page 96.)

This is certainly... quite the concept. Perhaps the PPDC has legitimate reasons for looking through the memories and feelings of their pilots, but let's not pretend this doesn't enable horrific levels of privacy invasion.

I must note, though, I haven't seen mention of a recording system anywhere outside of the novel. Travis Beacham doesn't mention it on his blog, and it never comes up in either Tales From Year Zero or Tales From The Drift, both written by him. Whether there just wasn't any occasion to mention it or whether this piece of worldbuilding fell by the wayside in Beacham's mind is currently impossible to determine.

Speaking of the drivesuits, let's talk about those more. The novelization includes a few paragraphs outlining how the pilots' drivesuits work. It's a two-layer deal:

The first layer, the circuity suit, was like a wetsuit threaded with a mesh of synaptic processors. The pattern of processor relays looked like circuitry on the outside of the suit, gleaming gold against its smooth black polymer material. These artificial synapses transmitted commands to the Jaeger’s motor systems as fast as the pilot’s brain could generate them, with lag times close to zero. The synaptic processor array also transmitted pain signals to the pilots when their Jaeger was damaged.

...

The second layer was a sealed polycarbonate shell with full life support and magnetic interfaces at spine, feet, and all major limb joints. It relayed neural signals both incoming and outgoing. This armored outer layer included a Drift recorder that automatically preserved sensory impressions.

...

The outer armored layer of the drivesuit also kept pilots locked into the Conn-Pod’s Pilot Motion Rig, a command platform with geared locks for the Rangers’ boots, cabled extensors that attached to each suit gauntlet, and a full-spectrum neural transference plate, called the feedback cradle, that locked from the Motion Rig to the spine of each Ranger’s suit. At the front of the motion rig stood a command console, but most of a Ranger’s commands were issued either by voice or through interaction with the holographic heads-up display projected into the space in front of the pilots’ faces. (Page 16.)

Now let's talk about the pons system. According to the novelization:

The basics of the Pons were simple. You needed an interface on each end, so neuro signals from the two brains could reach the central bridge. You needed a processor capable of organizing and merging the two sets of signals. You needed an output so the data generated by the Drift could be recorded, monitored, and analyzed. That was it. (Page 96.)

This is pretty consistent with other depictions of the drift, recording device aside. (Again, the 4D quantum recorder never comes up anywhere outside of the novel.)

The development of the pons system as we know it is depicted in Tales From Year Zero, which goes into further detail on what happened after Trespasser's attack on San Francisco. In this comic, a jaeger can be difficult to move if improbably calibrated. Stacker Pentecost testing out a single arm describes the experience as feeling like his hand is stuck in wet concrete; Doctor Caitlin Lightcap explains that it's resistance from the datastream because the interface isn't calibrated to Pentecost's neural profile. (I'm guessing that this is the kind of calibration the film refers to when Tendo Choi calls out Lady Danger's left and right hemispheres being calibrated.)

According to Travis Beacham's blog, solo piloting a jaeger for a short time is possible, though highly risky. While it won't cause lasting damage if the pilot survives the encounter, the neural overload that accumulates the longer a pilot goes on can be deadly. In this post he says:

It won't kill you right away. May take five minutes. May take twenty. No telling. But it gets more difficult the longer you try. And at some point it catches up with you. You won't last a whole fight start-to-finish. Stacker and Raleigh managed to get it done and unplug before hitting that wall.

In this post he says:

It starts off fine, but it's a steep curve from fine to dead. Most people can last five minutes. Far fewer can last thirty. Nobody can last a whole fight.

Next, let's talk about the size and weight of jaegers. Pacific Rim: Man, Machines, & Monsters lists off the sizes and weights of various jaegers. The heights of the jaegers it lists (which, to be clear, are not all of them) range from 224 feet to 280 feet. Their weights range from 1850 tons to 7890 tons. Worth noting, the heaviest jaegers (Romeo Blue and Horizon Brave) were among the Mark-1s, and it seems that these heavy builds didn't last long given that another Mark-1, Coyote Tango, weighed 2312 tons.

And on the topic of jaeger specs, each jaeger in Pacific Rim: Man, Machines, & Monsters is listed with a (fictional) power core and operating system. For example, Crimson Typhoon is powered by the Midnight Orb 9 power core, and runs on the Tri-Sun Plasma Gate OS.

Where the novelization's combat asset dossiers covers the same jaegers, this information lines up - with the exception of Lady Danger. PR:MMM says that Lady Danger's OS is Blue Spark 4.1; the novelization's dossier says it's BLPK 4.1.

PR:MMM also seems to have an incomplete list of the jaegers' armaments; for example, it lists the I-22 Plasmacaster under Weaponry, and "jet kick" under Power Moves. Meanwhile, the novelization presents its armaments thus:

I-22 Plasmacaster Twin Fist gripping claws, left arm only Enhanced balance systems and leg-integral Thrust Kickers Enhanced combat-strike armature on all limbs

The novel's dossiers list between 2-4 features in the jaegers' armaments sections.

Now let's move on to jaeger power cores. As many of you probably already know, Mark-1-3 jaegers were outfitted with nuclear power cores. However, this posed a risk of cancer for pilots, especially during the early days. To combat this, pilots were given the (fictional) anti-radiation drug, Metharocin. (We see Stacker Pentecost take Metharocin in the film.)

The Mark-4s and beyond were fitted with alternative fuel sources, although their exact nature isn't always clear. Striker Eureka's XIG supercell chamber implies some sort of giant cell batteries, but it's a little harder to guess what Crimson Typhoon's Midnight Orb 9 might be, aside from round.

Back on the topic of nuclear cores, though, the novelization contains a little paragraph about the inventor of Lady Danger's power core, which I found entertaining:

The old nuclear vortex turbine lifted away from the reactor housing. The reactor itself was a proprietary design, brainchild of an engineer who left Westinghouse when they wouldn’t let him use his lab to explore portable nuclear miniaturization tech. He’d landed with one of the contractors the PPDC brought in at its founding, and his small reactors powered many of the first three generations of Jaegers. (Page 182.)

Like... I have literally just met this character, and I love him. I want him to meet Newt Geiszler, you know? >:3

Apparently, escape pods were a new feature to Mark-3 jaegers. Text in the novelization says, "New to the Mark III is an automated escape-pod system capable of ejecting each Ranger individually." (Page 240.)

Finally, jaegers were always meant to be more than just machines. Their designs and movements were meant to convey personality and character. Pacific Rim: Man, Machines, & Monsters says:

Del Toro insisted the Jaegers be characters in and of themselves, not simply giant versions of their pilots. Del Toro told his designers, "It should be as painful for you to see a Jaeger get injured as it is for you to see the pilot [get hurt.]" (Page 56.)

Their weathered skins are inspired by combat-worn vehicles from the Iraq War and World War II battleships and bombers. They look believable and their design echoes human anatomy, but only to a point. "At the end of the day, what you want is for them to look cool," says Francisco Ruiz Velasco. "It's a summer movie, so you want to see some eye candy." Del Toro replies, "I, however, believe in 'eye protein,' which is high-end design with a high narrative content." (Page 57.)

THE JAEGER FROM DOWN UNDER is the only Mark 5, the most modern and best all-around athlete of the Jaegers. He's also the most brutal of the Jaeger force. Del Toro calls him "sort of brawler, like a bar fighter." (Page 64.)

And that is about all the info I could scrounge up and summarize in a post. I think there's a lot of interesting stuff here - like, I feel that the liquid circuit and muscle tissue stuff gives jaegers an eerily organic quality that could be played for some pretty interesting angles. And I also find it interesting that jaegers were meant to embody their own sort of character and personality, rather than just being simple combat machines or extensions of their pilots - it's a great example of a piece of media choosing thematic correctness over technical correctness, which when you get right down to it, is sort of what Pacific Rim is really all about.

#pacific rim #pacific rim 2013 #jaegers #jaeger #pacific rim lore

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multifunctionalnitroglycerin · 3 months

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The Locked Tomb Series Names and Symbolism #4

Hiya folks! Hope you are all doing fine and dandy. This series ofc couldn’t be complete without our beloved Sex-Pal in the count. Now according to wiki there are two figures that inspired the Master Warden, Παλαμήδης, the Greek mythological hero that took part in the Trojan war, and Palamedes the Arthurian knight. I am more well-versed in the Greek myths than I am in Medieval plays, I admit, but I will do my best to do justice by both these inspirations.

But first things first, some etymology. There are two most prominent versions for the etymology of the name Palamedes or well, Παλαμήδης. In the first one, it’s a derivative of the verb παλαμάομαι meaning devise/contrive and invent. Aka the inventor that devises plans (Or concocts schemes, depending on how you want to see it). In the second one it is believed to derive from the verb παλαίω => παλεύω aka fight and μήδομαι => σκέφτομαι, συμβουλεύω aka think and advise. So, Palamedes would be the one that thinks abt the battle and gives advice for it. Both etymologies I feel fit our inventive strategist, The Master Warden of the Sixth, to a t.

Let us now begin with the Greek hero from the Trojan war. And no my pals, this is not yet another Iliad reference, for our proclaimed hero does not actually appear in the Iliad. His first appearance is in what has been known as the Κύπρια, a well-known epic of the ancient Greek literature that despite being quite famous during the classical period, has been lost to the sands of time. Long story short, this epic is a part of the Trojan circle and follows the conclusion of the Iliad. Palamedes’ story is one of many included in the epic that counts I think 11 books.

Truth to be told, Mythological Palamedes did star in quite a few epics, tragedies and other works that refer to the Trojan war or the time after it, but for the sake of keeping the post relatively short, and since I do not quite have the time to hunt down every ancient text reference and draw a parallel to the Master Warden, we’ll mostly reference the most relative ones and I’ll leave a list in the end, in case some of you do want to go hunting ancient texts.

I’ll start with a fun fact. According to a Trojan priest of Hephestus, Dares the Phrygian, Palamedes was described as tall, slender, wise, magnanimous, and charming. Now I cannot speak for everyone, but well, to me that sounds like Palamedes Sextus.

In general, there are not many direct parallels that I can make between Palamedes the Euboian and Palamedes Sextus, bar for the most obvious one, that they are both ingenious. Palamedes the mythological figure was accredited with inventing part of the Greek Alphabet, lighthouses, navigation, coins, the division of time into months days and hours and a few board games, with κύβοι being one of the most prominent (to my understanding it’s the equivalent to dice). Palamedes Sextus on the other hand, figured out the secret to Lyctorhood, necromantically bound his soul to his skeleton, saw through Cytherea’s ploy, exploded himself, created a bubble in the River in which he persevered until Camila could glue his skull back together and he figured out a way to co-exist with her, in her own body, without killing them both, plus the Grand Lysis and Paul’s creation.

What mostly sticks with me from the above, among others, is navigation. One Palamedes is the inventor of it, and the other, though by that point is Paul, seems to know a way to the Tomb via the River. The river that even God struggles navigating – at least with other people on the way. So, could it be, that Palamedes -that beat even Cassiopeia in time survived in the River – figures out a way to truly navigate this sea of the dead?

Two smaller parallels we could draw from mythological Palamedes are 1. Pal seeing through Cytherea’s ploy, the same way that Palamedes the Euboian saw through Odysseus’ ploy when he wanted to avoid fighting in Troy and played mad, plowing the earth with a horse and an ox throwing salt in the holes. 2. The syphoning challenge. This story also includes Palamedes butting heads with Odysseus – not going to lie to you, they were evenly matched in genius – although according to some accounts it’s Palamedes who was the brightest and most ingenious of the Greeks - , but Odysseus never forgave him for uncovering his ploy and may or may not have orchestrated Palamedes’ murder – only in this analogy Pal is Odysseus. In a time of great hunger for the Achaeans, Odysseus was sent to Thrace to find wheat and returned empty-handed. Palamedes mocked him, and Odysseus replied that for all his ingenuity he too would return emptyhanded. Palamedes did embark on the quest and was successful, returning with shiploads of supplies. In the syphoning challenge, Pal is Odysseus, the one who turns up empty handed, refusing to risk Camila’s well-being once he figured out how the test worked. And he is also the one that tries to talk Harrow out of completing the challenge. Harrow much like the mythological Palamedes jumps in the opportunity to prove herself – through the challenge’s objective had little to do with proving one’s self, as we saw – and succeeds, obtaining the key.

All in all, the biggest parallel’s we can draw here, is that Pal like his mythological namesake is a genius inventor and strategist, a bright necromancer and brighter scholar still. He is the Odysseus in Harrow’s Palamedes and vice versa.

And now that I drew the parallel with Odysseus I cannot unsee it. He made his body the Trojan horse that exploded in Cytherea’s face. He was stranded in the River – the sea of the undead, of the souls and corpses and all that nice stuff – for however long it took Camilla to piece the skull together, like Odysseus lost in the seas. He found his Ogygia in Camila’s mind where he stays safely stored until his stop in the island of the Phaeacians – Naberius’ body. A brief stop gathering supplies, gathering courage before going home. Back to Camilla, but now as one. There is no him and her anymore. They have had a home in each other, and it’s time he returned to it, burning down the ruins of the past, and getting reborn as something new, together, as one. (Cam and Pal are a phoenix metaphor if I have ever seen one.)

Onto the Arthurian Palamedes now, our friend was a knight of the round table, and makes his first appearance in an expansion of the Tristan and Iseult legend, as a knight vying for the princess’ hand, much like our beloved Sex-Pal wanted Dulcinea’s affections. There are no Trsitans in this world however, merely Cytherea as an imposter.

Now what is interesting about the Arthurian Palamedes, is that according to various tales he is the hunter of the Questing Beast – a multi animal snake like monster that he, Percival and Galahad are tasked with exterminating. In most versions the hunt is futile and bears no results. After Palamedes converts to Christianity however, releasing himself from the worldly entanglements, he is finally able to slay the beast after the other two trap it in a lake. My theory here is that the Questing Beast, Beast Glatisant or whatever you want to call it, is a Resurrection Beast, perhaps even Varun the Eater. And the Warden has “converted to Christianity” by ascending, aka completing the Lyctorhood process. He shed his mortal shell, disentangled himself from the coils of mortality and worldly needs, becoming very much the equivalent of the “converted Palamedes”.

Practically, to sum up, Pal through Lyctorhood and Paul could be the one to slay the Resurrection Beast that is Varun the Eater. With the help of two other individuals – for some reason I feel one of them would be Pyrrha – they trap Varun in a “lake” – could be the Tomb, could be the First, could be yet another metaphorical body of water – and he is the one who end the RB that allegedly killed and consumed Cassiopeia the First.

That’s the post folks, now the list of ancient Lit that I promised:

Ἀπολλωδώρου, Βιβλιοθήκης Ἐπιτομή, 3.7 / Apollodorus, library epitome 3.7 (But he, not wishing to go to the war, feigned madness. However, Palamedes, son of Nauplius, proved his madness to be fictitious; and when Ulysses pretended to rave, Palamedes followed him, and snatching Telemachus from Penelope's bosom, drew his sword as if he would kill him. And in his fear for the child Ulysses confessed that his madness was pretended, and he went to the war)

Ὑγίνου, Μύθοι, 105/ Hyginus' fabulae 105

Παυσανίου Ελλάδος Περιήγησις,/ Pausanias' guide to Greece

Γοργίας, Υπέρ Παλαμήδους Απολογία / Gorgias Palamedes’ Defense

Ovid, Metamorphoses pp. 13.34-60, 308-312

Virgil, Aeneid pp. 2.81-85

Plato, Apology 41b

Take care of yourselves! See ya on the next one!

#the locked tomb #tlt #tlt series #tlt spoilers #tlt palamedes #palamedes sextus #palamedes the sixth #camilla hect #tlt theories #names #symbols #Names as symbols #literary parallels #gideon the ninth #nona the ninth

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masterweaverx · 5 months

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End of the Month Fic Roundup

As we mourn and celebrate the end of this month, I return with my myriad collection of fics and fanfics, with the hopes that at least some of you will enjoy it. I can't do much for reality, but I can do a lot for the realms of imagination and enjoyment.

Firstly, let's go over the random seeds that I've scattered. We've got another Seeker and Sprite segment, for those of you who love teenage superheroes discovering things about themselves. And also, admittedly mostly as a crack idea, there's I'm Fed Up with Zion Ruining the Network for me, so I Recruited Gamers from Another World to Help Out my Host, where Queen Administrator gets creative in her attempts to help Taylor. Finally, I'm proud to say a certain seed has grown enough to be replanted! That's right, Conference Call: Interdimensional Teenage Princess Group Therapy is its own story, complete with TWO new updates!

Of course, I didn't spend the month working just on the oneshots. An Injection Of Chaos has a new chapter, and a fun supplemental report by the PRT. For those of you who like seeing a poor teenage girl struggle with summoning alien creatures through her phone, I present the MLP famous Derpy Hooves! I also started writing a quest in Earth Mythos, an original setting where a generation of people have to adapt to being mythical creatures in a human-designed world. I haven't moved the two updates over to AO3 yet, though I am considering it. Oh, and of course Vista of the Stars has had five chapters put up on AO3, where our intrepid young superheroine FINALLY gets a spaceship!

But finally, as I promised, we have a new chapter of Describing The Series Via References. That's right, after a full year, the RWBY memefic is back! The Vytal Tournament is here, and things are about to go off the rails hard! (I will try to make sure the next update doesn't take a year this time.)

Please remember that writers are artists too, and artists need support! Here is my Patreon if you want to support me long term, and here is my ko-fi if you want to support me short term. I really depend on this for... basically all my income. If you can't fund me monetarily, reblogs are also appreciated!

#Fanfiction #Original Fiction #Worm #Bofuri #RWBY #LLTQ #Mass Effect #Star Wars #Earth Mythos #Seeker and Sprite #IFUZRNIRGAWHOH #Conference Call: ITPGT #An Injection Of Chaos #Vista of the Stars #Describing The Series Via References #If you like my work please reblog #A larger audience brings more motivation

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itsclydebitches · 11 months

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Continuing my perhaps delusional argument/hope that Ted permanently returning to Kansas is just a red herring, I was thinking about our references and callbacks this episode. Specifically, how they don't paint Kansas in a positive or unique light.

The Wizard of Oz pinball game is definitely the most on-the-nose nod to his return, yet in the scene itself Ted is literally refusing to play.

When we get a closeup on the machine we're shown Dorothy's house spinning out of control. That is, a moment when she leaves Kansas for the bright world of Oz, not the ruby slippers of her return.

Similarly, Beard loses his game before Ted walks over. The ending of the Wicked Witch is one wherein Dorothy (Ted) does not go back home.

(I'm not entirely sure what to do with this one yet, but having Mae quote "This Be the Verse" is certainly A Choice. Though I think the overall message -- people, specifically parents, will inevitably hurt their kids -- is an uplifting and very relevant argument within Ted Lasso's heartfelt context -- ergo we should acknowledge that we'll never be perfect while still striving to improve -- but that last line? Oof. "Get out early as you can / And don't have kids yourself"? That's not the proposed solution I'd expect for an episode that was sending Ted back to his son for good. Obviously Ted already has Henry, but it may be significant that Mae eschews a generic 'You can do it!' argument for a far more nuanced and harder to swallow conclusion, perhaps one that heralds Ted's controversial decision to stay separated from Henry for at least part of the year.)

(Also let's toss in the fact that Dottie uses a football metaphor -- not American football -- to describe how Ted needs to parent: sometimes you lose, sometimes you win, mostly you just tie, and all you can do it keep playing.)

Finally, we've got references to both BBQ sauce and sunflowers via Ted's WiFi password and the bread Dottie bakes him, Ted's "favorite."

Half a season ago these would have been straightforward references to Kansas, positive ones at that. However, post-S3E6 (literally titled "Sunflowers") Ted has both of these beloved objects tied to the UK instead. He enjoys the beauty of Van Gogh's Sunflowers in the Amsterdam museum and finds a BBQ sauce so good that it inspires him to (hopefully!) win it all in his English sport.

It might just be me reading into things because I'm looking for my preferred ending to the series... but also I don't think I am because it's weird that Kansas is continually framed as a negative this season. Ted is still super awkward with Michelle. Her new boyfriend is kinda awful and likewise makes him incredibly uncomfortable (understandably). The Wizard of Oz references aren't targeting the happy aspects of the story, or even the parts about going home. The symbolic references to Ted's beloved state (sunflowers, BBQ sauce, the little green army men) have all been integrated into his life here. We get a whole episode about how once Ted learns to focus on Henry instead of Michelle, Henry has a fantastic time living in London. Hell, this episode opens with Ted enthusiastically greeting everyone he passes on his walk, a beloved member of the community, a staple of this town... and then his mood turns sour when he hits his Kansas-sprung mom.

Obviously Ted is undergoing some last-minute growth when it comes to being a father to Henry (and healing the rift with Dottie), but I think Ted's in-universe improvement is misleading, implying that because he may think he needs to return to Kansas, that's actually how the story is going to end. If that were the end-goal though, I would expect the subtext to have a more hopeful, optimistic feel to it; something that not just implies Ted's return, but argues why he would want to outside of Henry.

If none of that is relevant... that's going to be even worse for me than Ted just going back to Kansas. A Kansas ending framed as a positive is far from my preference, but it's (arguably) a strong conclusion to Ted's journey. A Kansas ending after all these implied negatives both isn't my preference and feels like more objectively bad writing.

#Ted Lasso #Ted Lasso spoilers #look if I was writing the show #all the Dorothy references would be a deliberate mislead #actually culminating in a 'Ted is a friend of Dorothy's' reveal #but sadly I do not have this power lol #mymetas

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rosewaterandivy · 3 months

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Through Me Prequel - ii. the fool

Summary: Eddie and the Lady of the Lake, feat. advice from one Steve 'The King' Harrington.

Pairing: Eddie Munson x fem!reader, eventual Steddie x fem!reader in the series

WC: 6.3k

Warnings/Themes: cursing, criticism of religion (catholicism/xtiantiy mostly), religious themes, canon-typical violence, death, idolatry via smut, blasphemy, heretical notions, angst, occasional fluff (as a treat), Biblical & western literary canon and media references/allusions

A/N: This is the second of three prequels centering on the three main characters. If you're up on your tarot know-how, you can glean some info from the banner, etc. 👀

Please do not interact if you aren't 18+.

Nota bene: Reblogging, commenting, and liking my work is always appreciated; reposting, however, is not. This (*) is a singal to check the footnote at the end!

Enjoy! 💜

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“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster. For when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”

- Friedrich Nietzsche

Tuesday, July 2, 1985

Eddie meets you for the first time on a normal Tuesday evening.

Well, meets is a generous term for what transpires. He all but stumbles upon you as he’s leaving Reefer Rick’s, struck dumb at the sight of a woman walking fully clothed into the lake.

“Shit!”

He drops the lunchbox from his hand; the metal clanging against the rocks as it rolls to a stop on the shore. “Hey!” He yells, trying to get you to stop or at least turn around before doing something drastic.

Nothing.

Continuing to wade into the water, he has no choice to trail after you in an attempt to prevent a visit from the Hawkin’s P.D. and a coroner’s report.

Eddie Munson did not have time for this, not today. But he couldn’t very well just leave you here to your own devices. Which, judging by the water nearing your waist, were far from altruistic.

“Fucking hell,” he grouses, toeing off his sneakers and fumbling with his belt buckle.

You, mystery woman with an apparent death-wish, may be fine with soaking wet clothes but Eddie was not. Wet denim was simply not his jam— it was bad enough he’d have to wash his hair after this, but walking around in wet jeans, just asking for raw, chafed skin?

No, thank you.

His jeans and shirt joined the pile at the edge of the lake as he psyched himself up to dive in after you.

“You got this Munson,” he says to himself, clad in his boxers and shaking out his arms to rid himself of nervous energy. He keeps an eye on you, head and shoulders still above the water though you’ve waded farther from him now.

Bounces on the balls of his feet and cracks his knuckles. “S’just like riding a bike, muscle memory. No sweat.”

Because, yeah he could swim. But, my god, at what cost? Wasn’t worth the hassle in his humble (and correct) opinion.

Oh well.

The water is not at cold as he’d anticipated, but that’s probably due to the summer heat. He treads water, careful not to spook you. Eddie knows he’s not an athlete, he’s no King Steve, but figures that logically it’s easier to talk someone down who isn’t startled.

Eddie never gets the chance to find out.

Because one moment you’re a few feet away, head and shoulders above the surface of the water. Arms buoyant at your side, floating upon the dark blue of the lake. And in an instant you’re gone, leaving nothing but small wakes in your absence.

As if he dreamt you up.

He turns, checking that you aren’t somehow behind him. And sure enough, he is well and truly alone and briefly wonders if he’s made the whole thing up. Thinks that maybe sampling the product before a walk in the woods wasn’t the best idea.

A splash draws his attention to the center of the lake. Something causing the waters to surge, swirling in a way that can only be described as ominous. Eddie cocks his head in interest— curious, purely from an observational standpoint, of course.

An arm breeches the indigo water, sword held aloft. Fingers wrapped delicately to grasp, nestled beneath the pommel, the blade emitting a bright glow.

There’s no fucking way—

A second arm appears, scabbard in hand.

Then your head crests the waves, wet and glorious. Beads of water dripping down the full of your cheeks, mouth graced with a beatific smile. A shake of your head before you begin to swim toward the shore.

“It’s Eddie, right?”

A hum in the coming dark. Gooseflesh blooming on his skin at the sound of your voice. Far too distracted to notice the subtle buzz in the cage of his ribs.

He struggles to speak, a rarity for him. Nods instead, awe-struck. You sail just out of reach, swimming in a lazy backstroke, sword and scabbard still in hand.

“You make a habit of following strange women into bodies of water?”

“Just the pretty ones.”

He could kick himself. Open mouth, insert foot. Just about to give up and end it all when a bark of laughter slips from your throat.

“Doesn’t bode well for you.” You tip your head back in the water, hair fanning out like a halo.

Eddie wades a bit closer now, relieved that he’d misread the situation and intrigued as to how someone could swim to the middle of Lover’s Lake, dive down and swim for god knows how long, only to surface with an actual sword in hand.

“Yeah? How’s that?”

“Well.” You open your eyes taking him in, pale against the warm hues of fading summer light. Water sloshes as you return the sword to its scabbard, glow extinguished for now. “What if I lured you here under false pretenses?”

“Mmm.” He hums, crossing his arms against his chest, revealing a cluster of bats at his elbow and something else you can’t quite make out further up. “You mean you weren’t trying to drown yourself in Lover’s Lake?”

Pulling your bottom lip between, you huff a laugh. “Shit, is that what it looked like? Yikes.”

Feet grazing the beginning of the shoreline, you reorient yourself and stand. Water cascading from your form.

Eddie gulps, audibly, as it all appears to him in slow motion. Beads of water trail down your thighs, the deep blue denim of your daisy dukes doing fuck-all to contain the globes of your ass. And it only gets worse for him from there.

Water continues to drip from your top, washed one too many times and threadbare. He can see the soft skin of your stomach and the flared curve of your hips. The white of your bra a beacon in the fading light, perfectly cupping the swell of your breasts. And, oh god— is that lace?

His dick jumps at the thought.

You, of course, are oblivious to Eddie’s state. Slotting the scabbard through a belt loop of your shorts, you turn, hair whipping wetly against your back, hands at your hips, and ask.

“You coming, or what?”

It takes him a minute to snap out of it. Muttering something under his breath (“Pretty sure I just did, thanks.”) before saying, “Uh, yeah. Just gimme a second.”

Eddie cannot believe he is at Steve Harrington’s house right now, and it's not to deal party favors.

But when you’d asked if he minded a stop back at the place you’re crashing at, he wasn’t about to refuse. Not when he got to ogle your legs as they worked the manual floor shift— calf muscle flexing and ankle rocking forward, thighs slightly damp from your dip in Lover’s Lake.

He swallows and shakes himself from his reverie.

You trot upstairs as toss over your shoulder, “Be just a sec!” Leaving Eddie to his own devices in the Harrington house.

He tentatively steps into the living room— two fire places, seems a bit much, but whatever— and spies a note on the sideboard underneath the cordless phone.

“So,” he asks over burgers later at the diner. “How do you know Harrington?”

And, to your credit, you don’t balk. In fact, you don’t even blink before tearing into your dinner. After you’d changed back at Steve’s place, you offered to take Eddie out to dinner:

“As a thank you,” You said, shoving your feet into a pair of boots. “Y’know, for checking on me at the lake.”

“No need,” He replied, mentally cataloging any potential blackmail he could use on Harrington. But, damn him, there were no incriminating childhood photos to be found.

There were no photos, period.

“C’mon, can’t my knight in shining armor go unrewarded, can I?”

He barely repressed a shudder at that, relishing in how raspy and low your voice had gotten.

“I could be persuaded…”

Which is how the pair of you wound up at the diner, chowing down on burgers and fries with a bit a flirty banter thrown in.

“Well Rhett,” You drawl in a near perfect imitation of Vivien Leigh’s Scarlett O’Hara, “I suppose you could call him a gentleman caller.”

Eddie only rolls his eyes, but you see a smile tug on the other side of his face.

You scrunch up your nose in laughter, “We’re buddies, he’s just letting me crash with him when I’m in town.”

“Regular ne'er do well, are you?”

A snort.

“Gee, thanks.” You slurp from your soda, “Nah, just get called away for work a lot.”

He nods amicably, questions answered for the moment. You take another bite and watch him do the same. Casually, you shake the ketchup bottle and squirt out a few dollops on to the wax paper of your basket. Then, you add a few globs of mayonnaise and mix them together with a fry before popping it into your mouth.

Immediately, Eddie balks with a cough and sputter. You start laughing so hard you drop the few fries in your hand all over the table. “I can’t do it.” He groans, waving to your dip of choice, “This isn’t right. This isn’t what God wanted.”

“God is dead, bitch.” You reply, with a grin and signal for the check.

Rolling up to Forest Hills, you eye Eddie as he pinches his nose. He has feel the worst headache of his life coming on and the oddest trickle in his nose.

He leans his head back against the headrest and you see the trickle of blood making its way toward his lips.

“Hey, lean forward not back.”

“What?”

A sigh. You keep one hand on the wheel and wind the other behind him to press on his upper back, “You lean forward for a bloody nose dude, not back.” A slight push as you drive through the trailer park. “Breathe through your mouth and spit out any blood.”

“I’m not gonna spit blood in your car!”

“She’s seen much worse, trust me.” After checking that Eddie is with the program— he valiantly rolls down the window and elects to spit out of the car instead— you take your hand back and keep an eye out for his place.

He points it out soon enough and the pair of you hustle into the trailer before the sky cracks open with a roll of thunder and a deluge of rain. Grabbing the sword from your backseat, you meet him on the porch as he fumbles with his keys.

Ushering him inside, you toss the relic onto the sofa and beeline for the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. Finding an old bottle of ibuprofen, you pop the top and quickly fill a glass with water.

“Ed?” You call out, not sure if he fell into a heap on the sofa or wandered elsewhere.

“Bedroom.”

Following the sound of his voice, nasally from pinching his nose, you round the corner and find him sitting on his bed. The bleeding from his nose seemed to dissipate, and you handed him the water and four pills.

“If your head isn’t better, take another dose of four pills in eight or so hours.”

He nods and swallows the pills with a slug of water before collapsing back on the bed with a groan. His chest rises and falls slowly as he takes a deep breath. And you hate to leave him like this, you really do, but Salvation, Iowa is a calling.

“I’m sorry Eddie, but I’ve gotta go to work. Are you gonna be okay? Is there someone—”

“Wayne, my uncle. He’s at the plant, but he’ll be back tonight.” He breathes out, “Go, go, I’ll be fine.”

With a sigh, you stand back upright and begin to untie his shoes. “It’s bad enough you’re gonna pass out in your jeans, over my dead body are you sleeping with shoes on.”

“Okay boss, whatever you say,” He croaks out.

“Can I leave something here for safe-keeping?” You ask, grabbing a nearby blanket to toss over him.

Eddie cracks an eye open, “Your sword?”

With a smile, you tap the side of your nose with a finger and point at him. “Got it in one, my man.”

He grins at that, “Sure girly, I’ll keep your sword and sheath.”

“Thanks,” You say with a chuckle. “See you later alligator.”

Eddie gives you a half-assed wave, “In a while crocodile.”

Monday, August 19, 1985

Eddie’s got a battered notebook on one knee and an ashtray balanced precariously on the other, clad in, wait for it— Garfield boxers that have seen better days. You’d nearly seen his dick twice and hadn’t even been there for half an hour.

“So what’s your deal?” Eddie asks from his position on the couch.

You sit back and pretend to busy yourself with cleaning your knives because the heat crawling up your neck is about to choke you blue.

Returning to Hawkins after a few weeks working on the coast— wailing women, wendigos, and shifters, oh my— you’d pulled up at Eddie and Wayne’s trailer certainly looking a bit worse for wear. So, after a shower and saying so-long to Wayne as he left for work, out of a lack for anything better to do you began to clean your knives. Which were disgusting, covered in dried, caked on blood and god knows what else.

“What do you mean?” You ask back from the sink, running warm water over your hunting knife, mindful not to catch the gut hook with your fingers— wouldn’t want to be put in a position to explain why your own blood was a rather unusual color and viscosity.

Eddie takes a sip from a lukewarm beer and pulls a face. “You know what I mean,” He says, rising from the couch. You squirt some dish soap into your hand begin to work it onto the blade.

“You leave for work, are gone, for like over a month,” He sets the empty can on the counter. You can feel the heat radiating from his body as he leans next to you, and exhales. “You call from Oregon, California, and Colorado but never say what it is you’re up to,” Eddie cocks his head in your direction, inquisitive, “Or when you’ll be back. And then you roll up tonight with no notice looking like hell warmed over.”

“You forgot something.”

“Yeah? Do tell.”

So, you groan, because he’s hounding you and after a month and some change it’s bound to happen.

“First of all, my gig isn't as exciting as you think it is.” You mutter, scratching your nail against a particularly stubborn glot of viscera, finding the task a distraction under his persistent gaze. “And secondly, you forgot that I left a sword with you.”

“Right,” He laughs, “How could I forget that?”

“It’s, um,” You cut the water and let the blade soak, watching as it floats lazily to the bottom of the sink. “Well, y’know the Arthurian legends and stuff. The Round Table and all of that?”

“Uh, sure.”

“So,” You sigh, a knot of tension working its way to the base of your skull, and breathe out in a rush, "The sword shoved into the back of your closet is kindofExcalibur?”

Eddie, silent as the grave, stretches to open the topmost cabinet above the sink. You watch with idle curiosity, noting how the hem of his shirt rides up to expose his stomach. Before you can get distracted by the whisper of hair trailing beneath the band his boxers, he returns with a handle of whiskey.

“Yeah, I’m gonna need something stronger for this explanation.”

But you tell him, truthfully and genuinely. That you’re a kind of hunter of sorts, for lack of a more apt term, dealing predominantly with the supernatural and otherworldly, an exorcist when needed, and master of the hidden arts—

(“Like, magic?”

“Sure.”

“It’s real?!

“Uh, in a sense.”)

—You’re a lone wolf. The last of your kind. And, as a result, your work takes you all over the world with little to no notice. A nomadic existence is normal for you, or, at least, it was until passing through Hawkins back in ‘83. Something or someone kept drawing you back whenever you had the time.

By the time you're finished with this rambling explanation, Eddie's had a few drinks.

Well, maybe more than a few.

“I think I’m gonna vomit.” Eddie whispers. He sets his glass down on the formica table, feet kicked up on the chair between you. “How’re you not as drunk as me right now? You’re not even tipsy!”

You snort whiskey into your lungs in the middle of his lament and spend the next five minutes with your insides on fire. Eddie has his head in his hands and there are tears coming out of his eyes from laughing at your predicament.

Turns out, you didn’t have the heart to tell Eddie that the only thing that could get you remotely sloshed is rosewater.

Saturday, September 21, 1985

Three blinks on the clock when he’s pulled from his bed and dragged into the living room. Eddie had been given roughly thirty seconds to pull his pants on and sit on the sofa before Harrington nearly kicked down the door. There are a million words a minute being thrown around and he’s vaguely aware of a knife being strapped onto your ankle.

“St-stop!" He sputters, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, "Constantine! Cut it out!”

“Angel…” Steve warns, taking the blade from you. You’re already geared up, raring to go.

You relent with a pout, walking across the room to lean against the far wall, dressed in a cropped Hawkins Athletics shirt and sweats as you watch Eddie fumble stupidly, still rubbing the sleep from his eyes. His elbow knocks into the table, ankle twists when he tries to stand up. It’s a nightmare and Eddie’s about to burst into tears.

“—so how’s that sound?” You point to the table with yet another knife (where did you get that?), papers scattered about as if he’s caught anything you’ve been saying. Eddie’s still chasing off sheep in his brain. “We can swing in tonight, grab the intel, take out hostil—” his eyes shut.

“Babe,” Eddie sighs, using a common pet name to address you. He hopes it’ll get you to let him off the hook, “It’s… so late. Early? Steve is already up. I wanna go back to bed.”

“But there’s a—” He can’t keep up. The vocabulary is beyond his comprehension when he’s on the verge of curling up into the fetal position under the table. You’re spewing words like the spear of destiny and reconnaissance, but he swears you’ve just said take out hostiles, too.

At this point, he’s about to snap—the despair churning into rage. It’s not his fault; he’s a mess in the mornings. “It is three in the goddamn a.m. I need at least six more hours before I can function. Can someone please explain to me, in tiny words, why I’m being accosted in my own home?”

There’s a beat of silence before Steve pipes up, prying the latest knife you’ve procured from your fingers.

“She wants to go with you.” He deadpans. “Wants to make out with you in the impala. Wants to touch your butt. Wants to fuck your brains out.”

A grin stretches across his face while you and Eddie look on, shocked. For the first time in ten minutes, Eddie’s eyes are wide open while yours have shut tightly, clenched like you’re trying to will the moment away.

“Small enough words? I can go smaller.”

“W-what…”

“She. Likes. You.” He punctuates with claps.

“Steve!”

“But you— and her— How—?”

“Don’t think about it too much.” He shrugs nonchalantly. “We try not to.”

Eddie whips around to stare at you, flinching at his questioning mouth. Steve cackles and cracks his knuckles, whistling about how his work here is done and makes his exit, stage right, kissing you loudly on the mouth as he goes. Left alone now, you bashfully hide behind your hands as Eddie blinks at you owlishly. “S-sorry about… that.”

Wide awake and practically on fire with the slew of information, Eddie feels strangely refreshed. A grin matching Steve’s earlier one makes its way over his lips as he swings his arms and steps until he’s next to you. “Sugar…” He croons, “If you wanted to touch my butt, all you had to do was ask.”

He wiggles his fingers.

“Honestly, babe? I’ve been waiting for you to touch my butt for months.”

The only way you can convince Eddie go is by having Steve tag along. So, you’d rolled up to the dilapidated barn, and he wasn’t sure exactly how many weapons you’d strapped to yourself, just knew that it was a lot and he was incredibly turned on by it.

Given strict instructions by you to stay out of sight with a wink directed at Steve, you’d kissed both of them goodbye and walked inside. Not five minutes later, Steve was climbing out of the front seat with a bat and popping open the trunk.

“Dude,” Eddie hissed, “She said to—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Steve mumbles, rifling through the chaos of the trunk. “Stay out of sight, which is do-able. We’ll just sneak up to the loft…”

Eddie rolls his eyes, and thinks he can’t be serious.

“Ah, gotcha!”

The trunk closes with a soft thud and the next thing Eddie knows, Steve’s opened his door and hauled him out of the car. Setting him back on his feet, Steve smooths the creases from where he’d grabbed Eddie’s shirt.

“Okay Munson,” He says, eyes glancing toward the barn. “We’re going to head in there, slow and stealthy,” Hands him a bat with nails ran through it. “Use this if things get dicey.”

He grips the bat. “What about you?”

Steve produces what can only be described as a heavily modified shotgun from behind his back. There is an honest to god crucifix on it, and a flashlight. Eddie struggles to pick his jaw off of the ground.

Casually, he loads the slugs into the rotating cylinder. Deeming it a job well done, Steve doesn’t even wait for Eddie as he walks toward the ladder leading to the hayloft.

“What even is that thing?” He asks once he’s caught up to Steve, who’s currently making his way up the ladder.

“The Holy Shotgun? S’what it looks like Munson.”

Eddie can only shake his head and climb up after Steve.

He could scream.

Steve is seemingly unfazed.

This thing— a skinwalker, apparently, sneers and growls into your ear— a threat that makes your teeth gnash. He squeezes your throat between his forearm and his shoulder.

“Take one more step and I gut her like a fish.”

Ah shit.

They’d been found out, a couple of walkers lurking in the rafters attacked just as they’d ascended the ladder. So much for slow and stealthy, the second his feet hit the floor Eddie was swinging that bat like his life depended on it. And Steve actually had to fire that monstrosity of a shotgun, which was… well, hot, to be fair.

But you’d been distracted from the noise and had wound up disarmed by the skinwalker just below them.

Steve takes the step. Eddie’s eyes are about to pop out of his head when the hand not clasped on you lands the silver glint of a blade poised at your throat.

“Fuck! Don’t!”

“Go ahead.” Steve urges impassively, ignoring Eddie’s pleas. “Do it.”

Eddie doesn’t know because he’s still new to this. Because he hasn’t been with you for long. Hasn’t seen you close up in a fight yet.

He’s only seen the sweetness, only a tiny spark of a flame behind closed doors when you sidle up alongside him on movie nights with a shared blanket and chatter vehemently over the more objectionable parts of decapitation.

“There’s no way! Munson, are you seein’ this shit?” As you toss another handful of popcorn into your mouth, half of it ends up on your chest. “Severing the carotid artery? There’s way more fuckin’ blood than that!

Steve knows the bite and the bark. He knows the claws and the flashing teeth. So he steps again, his cheek dripping a splash of blood from one of the dead walkers. In the blink of an eye, you pluck the blade from your opponent's grasp and slide it home on the unsuspecting walker, and the dagger retracts, giving him a full showing of how it rips from the soft palate of your enemy.

Poor idiot, Steve thinks. Never stood a chance.

Eddie’s gasp breaks the silence, and the thud of the corpse follows.

“S-sweetheart?” He murmurs when you peer up at him. “Y-you okay?”

They descend the ladder quickly, leaving the bodies where they fell.

A grin. Wicked and all teeth— one he’s never seen. Steve slips his arm around your waist, pulls you in for a sloppy kiss, smudging the red from his face to yours.

Eddie’s own blood rushes straight down. Nervous. Aroused.

“She look okay?” Steve smirks. “‘Bout time you find out.”

You approach cautiously, not wanting to spook him. Drink in his surprised face when you rub your thigh over his groin where he grows. “Hey, Ed. Didn’t mean to keep you in the dark… just didn’t want to scare you away.”

Then, you push his head back into the wall, lick the blood out of your mouth and press into him with your whole body.

Eddie moans— quivering, whimpering.

He melts like butter against your lips.

Steve purrs. Poor guy, he smiles fondly, ravenously. Eddie never stood a chance.

November, 1985

After that, the tension melted away between the three of you, and things went back to normal.

Well, as normal as you could get when hunting things that go bump in the night.

As he’d come to expect, your work took you all over the place with little to no notice. A phone call would come through, either at his place or Steve’s, and you’d be off again, shouldering a worn bag and dashing off into the night.

It was an adjustment, both your penchant for abrupt exits and Eddie finding himself spending more time with the former King of Hawkins High.

When you weren’t crashing at Forest Hills, it was Loch Nora. Not that Eddie minded, per se, the Harrington’s had an abundance of space and seemingly no cares about whatever their only son got up to on his own.

But he couldn’t bring himself to coexist with Steve in your absence, it wasn’t like the two of them were exactly friends, shared Hellfire gremlins aside. So, like clockwork, as the sound of the impala’s engine faded into the distance, Eddie would grab his things and head home.

Which is how you found him on a bright autumn morning, sleeping away the day back at Forest Hills. You’d let yourself in with the spare key and tiptoed back to his bedroom.

Eddie, for all his high cheekbones and Raphaelite curls, is a complete disaster artist when it comes to sleep. Starfishes out so his lanky frame takes up each corner of the bed, tosses, turns, and is liable to kick on occasion.

Good thing bony elbows and knees aren’t a detriment to you.

The warm autumn sun lazes through the blinds as it pleases, shafts of light illuminating his exposed chest, dancing along his rib cage as it rises and falls with his breaths. Leaning on the doorjamb, you let yourself take it all in— the messy room, haphazardly “organized” books and records, bed clothes rucked down to his hips, a lone leg kicked out from beneath them, his foot grazing the floor as he sleeps.

Stepping further into the room, you quietly close the door and toe off your boots. The articles of clothing drop with each step you take— jacket landing in a thud by the closet, pants falling in a heap by the desk. Down to your shirt, underwear, and socks, you sidle under the covers alongside him, luxuriating in the heat that radiates from him.

Curling against his back, you rub your face against his shoulder blade, nose grazing against the fine hairs there. In sleep, he recognizes your presence, a deep contented sigh tumbling from his partially open mouth, body relaxing against yours.

A cold hand skirts down his torso, nudging him awake before it settles at his hip. Groggily, Eddie’s head turns toward you with a hum. Cracks one eye open in interest, his hand running down the back of your thigh and giving it a squeeze.

“Cold?”

At the rumble of his voice, that low rasp he gets just after waking, sent a ripple through you, a thrumming whirl along your skin and a surge of heat that pooled in your gut.

A nod against his back, your chilled hand curling at his hip.

He turns in your grasp with an, “Alright, c’mere, sugar.” Calloused fingers hiking your leg up and over his hip, drawing your chest to his at the movement. Your hand settles at his ribs, fingers ghosting along the notches of bone.

“Better?”

Head settling into his chest, you nod, desperate to eek out each ray of heat you could. Breathing in the familiar aroma of coffee, weed, and cigarettes cut through with a crisp note of soap and skin. As you lose yourself to comfort and your eyes begin to drift shut, Eddie cradles the nape of your neck, his thumb rubbing idly against the base of your skull.

It’s not often he gets to see you like this, relaxed and languid like a cat seeking out the sun. It’s even less often he gets to have you free of responsibility and obligation. And it’s a rare occurrence indeed to have you to himself.

“But you— and her— How—?”

“Don’t think about it too much… We try not to.”

And well, Eddie had done just that.

Up to this point, it had been kisses on cheeks, looped pinkies, clasped hands, a frenzied make out here and there, flimsy cotton giving way to the prodding of ring-clad fingers, breaths falling in percussive puffs from a spit-slick mouth, the furrow of your brow as you fell apart beautifully for him.

Eddie is well-aware he’s not the only horse in your stable, but that’s a conversation for another time. Right now, he is fully aware that you are blissfully pliant in his bed and his blood is steadily rushing south.

Nudges you towards consciousness by peppering kisses along your face—eyelids, cheeks, and nose while skillfully skirting past your lips to graze against the shell of your ear, “Missed you, angel.”

A small smile pulls at your lips as you open your eyes. “Missed you too, babe.”

His fingers traced your collarbones through the threadbare fabric of your shirt, caressing the dips and hollows. Arching toward him, your lips nearly brush, barely a breath apart. A faint sigh falls from your mouth as Eddie drags his lips against yours, kissing you so delicately your toes curled.

Eddie turns and lays you out beneath him. His fingers lace with yours as he dips down to kiss the breath from your lungs, languorous and endless. A delighted spark zips up your spine, a heady warmth enveloping your limbs. For there are few things in life that feel better than lying under a devoted lover.

As a general rule, he didn’t devote himself to much. Easier to cut and run with fewer strings attached, a thing learned time and again in his life. But that doesn’t diminish his desire to do so, at least, not when it came to you. And if he failed to notice the wisp of crimson thread knotting against his finger and looping him to yours (and subsequently Steve’s), who can blame him?

Stranger things happen every day.

Finally, Eddie drew his mouth away from yours, pupils so blown his eyes were nearly black. He slowly traces the swell of your breasts with a fingertip. His hips shift against your own in a slow grind. Buries his nose in your hair, breathing you in deeply as his fingers continue to wander down.

There’s a few beats of silence— heavy breaths and shuddering gasps as he blows a cool breath against the column of your throat. A ghosting of lips against your own, “G’na let me take care of you?”

You swallow thickly, “Uh huh.”

Fingers slip against damp heat, a soft curse escaping lips, a bruising kiss, an apt tongue. A canting of hips as clothes are shed, fervent and impatient hands caressing in the warmth of the autumn sun. Sweet nothings whispered against exposed skin: c’mon baby, feel good angel?

His voice vibrates through your chest, husky and low, in between sponged kisses along your throat and jaw. Lewd wet noises punctuated with bitten curses, groans, and whines of, “Eddie— Please, I—“

A wicked smile settles along his lips as he works you through it, fingers urging you toward the precipice. Molten lava swoops and pools low in your abdomen with each press and thrust of his hand. The sheer heat of it is near blinding.

“Need you,” You plead, grinding up against him, “I’m burning up.”

He bites back a groan in favor of crushing his lips against your own. His tongue slides against your own sweet and heavy with promise into the cavern of your mouth.

“S’okay, I’ve got you.” His free hand snakes along the column of your spine, freeing you from your shirt as a moan is pulled from you. “So fuckin’ gorgeous,” He whispers pulling back to look at you. You whimper in response, too far gone to process the compliment.

The pair of you are entwined like vines, his hand palms against the base of your spine. Your hand winds its way into his hair, gripping for purchase. His eyes fall shut with a moan as you slot your lips against his.

You rock up into him as you briefly part to toss the shirt elsewhere. The bra comes off swiftly in the effort to get your hot little hands back on him. Bumbling through a mantle of heat, as if you’re cursed by it. Burning away at the core.

Jesus wept– Eddie’s already slick with precome and throbbing with need. You pump him once and feel his groan rattle through your chest. Pulling your mouth from his, you stick two fingers in and sluice them up with spit, “Need to feel you,” You whine with a lingering kiss and a slow drag of your fist around his cock.

At this point, you honestly might explode.

Salvation comes in the form of a ragged thrust and choked gasp.

Eddie moans at your touch, hands dragging down his chest, and bites his lip, flicks his tongue over his teeth, and swallows thickly. You’re so hot. And tight. And wet. Tries to lessen his grip at your hips because it feels like he could honestly break you— holy hell— but soon enough he bottoms out in spectacular fashion.

Coming back to himself, he pulls back so that his cockhead catches inside your cunt. But before he can even catch his breath, you cant your hips up, lock your legs at the small of his back to pull him back in and he nearly loses his damn mind.

He’s never felt something so perfect before. Wave after wave of pleasure courses through punching the air from his lungs. And all he can do is ride it out— soft rolls of your hips against his quick fast bucks. Soft mewls and stuttering breaths filling the dappled sunlit room.

He repeats your name, like a penitent at prayer.

Your hands are everywhere. On his chest, his stomach, fingers hooking into his open mouth. And it is divine. His cock is entirely drenched in you and he swears he could come just like this, with you open and gasping beneath him.

Eddie memorizes the cherry wet of your mouth, the furrow of your brow, eyes rolling back and lost to pleasure. You’re a fucking vision, one that he’d be happy to supplicate himself to for the rest of his days. Rising up, his mouth finds your shoulder and bites at the glistening skin there. Eddie’s grip is tight at the nape of your neck, your entire body folded against him and pulled taut like a bowstring.

He kisses you desperately, tongue surfing into your mouth like an inferno. Shuddering against him, you’re startled as he walks his fingers closer and closer to the wet heat between your legs. “Come for me angel,” He purrs just as his thumb presses against your clit.

The tether inside of you snaps as you kiss him stupid— a blaze of white light. The inferno continues to rage as you let out a strangled pant, “Eddie.”

“There it is,” He bites against your jaw, “…Yes.”

"Fuck.” You blink the spots from your vision. God. Your entire body quakes.

Frantic circles against your clit and a few more sloppy thrusts, a demand of “Gimme all of it.”

He slams into you once more before the inevitable descent, your eyes screwing shut as you try to remember how to breathe. And it’s all Eddie can do to lick your jaw, push his tongue into your mouth, and work you through it.

An ephemeral, throbbing sensation falls from you. Slides right out to soak his thighs as he chokes on his own breath from the way you arch up and into him, your perfect tits pressing against his chest while your walls seize him like a vice.

When Eddie comes it's with an invocation of your name chased by an errant fuck or yesyesyes. It shatters him entirely, fueled solely by the desire to dive deep and spill into you. He buries his face in the curve of your neck, mouth open and gasping against damp skin.

And just like that, everything feels brand new. The world has sloughed from your shoulders and it's pure bliss in the comedown.

The whisper fate pulls taut— a nearly indiscernible thread of crimson looped for three.

#eddie munson smut #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson fanfic #fic: through me #stranger things fanfic #constantine!au #Spotify

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almaadst · 9 months

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jo-harrington · 10 months

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As Above, So Below - Prologue: Annunciation

Prequels: Heaven - Hell - Purgatory

Summary: Burdened by a centuries-long curse, you must follow the path fate has set for you and defeat evil that roams the Earth. You've left everything your heart desires behind to follow this path, and unfortunately, it still isn't enough. Fate has other plans for you, and for your love, Eddie Munson.

Word Count: 6.9k (nice)

Pairing: Eddie Munson/Fem!OC (Told in 2nd Person POV - you/your)

Warnings/Themes: Violence, Death/Suicide, Torture, Body Horror, Blood, Established Relationship, Romance, Religious Themes, Criticism of Religion/Catholicism, Fate vs. Free Will, Supernatural Encounters, Angst, Biblical and Other Literary/Media References

Note: Welcome to As Above, So Below, my take on Kas!Eddie fic and a story inspired by Van Helsing (2004). This story has 3 prequels linked above that I highly recommend you read as this story will reference them.

This story is going to be EXTREMELY HEAVY to write, so I will not be putting out a posting schedule. Chapters will get posted as they are completed, however long that takes.

Please keep in mind, although this is an OC fic, our Knight will not be named or have physical descriptions noted. She is of European/Italian-American descent on her father's side. She was raised Roman Catholic, but her beliefs are very loose and you will see why if you read. You are free to imagine her as you wish. But her cultural identity will be referenced in this story, at least at the beginning and the end.

This series will not be for the faint of heart, nor is it something that was written with a general audience in mind. Please check the above warnings and ask yourself if you are in the correct headspace to proceed. I am happy to answer any questions via PM or Ask.

You can find my masterlist here.

Please do not interact if you are not 18+.

Enjoy!

“Do not be afraid […] for you have found favor with God […] With God, nothing will be impossible.” — Luke 1:28-37

March 25th, 1986

In your short time on this earth, you had certainly seen a lot. Mysteries of the universe were made known to you, you'd encountered heroes and villains alike—monsters, even—and been to many places, far and wide.

But you could honestly say that you had never set foot in a lair before today.

And, truly, lair was the only word you could use to describe this place.

Vaulted ceilings, marble floors, velvet curtains. There was an elaborate organ set up on a platform and an ominous set of stairs that descended deeper into the ground at the far end of the room.

Eddie would say this looked like something out of a C-list horror movie or a James Bond film.

You were already deep enough as it was; you'd navigated through an abandoned old mansion and the Los Angeles County sewer system just to get here. To anyone else, it would have seemed as though it took some divine intervention to find this place at all, but the divine is what you knew best.

Archbishop Jinette had given you minimal information to stop the evil that was at play. A ritual to bring forth a River of Life that would flood the San Gabriel Valley and kill millions. More importantly, to Jinette at least, it would create a rift in the fabric of reality that would cause a surge of Heavenly Power to flow freely throughout the Earth.

The Church never cared about the details, didn't care if a sacrifice or two came about, as long as their power remained safe. So the Who's and How's and Why's were left up to you. Thankfully your adversary had been careless with the clues he left behind.

You couldn't tell if it was a coincidence or not. Easter was a few days away so a River of Life made sense but surely a ritual that mirrored the ten plagues of Egypt would be more fitting a little closer to Passover.

"Doctor," you called out, your voice echoed through the cavernous room. You gripped your weapon—a nightstick taken off the body of the police officer that had been swarmed by locusts—and ventured forwards. "I'm not here to hurt you, I'm here to help."

"You are not here to help," a stiff, croaking, disembodied voice reached your ears, filtered through some sort of unseen sound system. "You're here to stop me."

"Stop you from killing anymore innocent people," you explained.

"One remains," the voice replied. "Nine shall die. Nine eternities in doom."

"It will be a lot more than that if you don't stop whatever it is you have planned." You tried to reason with him, but you were met with silence. "Doctor! Doctor Phibes!"

Music suddenly blasted through the sound system and the room went dark, the only source of light came from whatever lay at the bottom of the stairs.

You knew the doctor wasn't done talking, he was just luring you deeper into his web to tip the playing field in his favor. You both knew there was no time to waste, so you walked into the trap willingly, with swift feet and a brave, but possibly foolish, heart.

Below the cavernous lair was an even bigger cavern still; a half-finished room with the same marble floors that suddenly gave way to rock formations and stalagmites and an underground river that offered a steady roar of rushing water. You didn't know where to rest your eyes, there were too many carefully crafted horrors laid out before you.

An altar with a body carefully placed atop it, a series of nine half-melted wax busts, a four-piece jazz band comprised of mechanical figures, a sterile area with a surgical table, and a ragged man who was elbow deep in another person's chest cavity.

A heavy hand clamped on your shoulder and you jumped to find the elusive Doctor Anton Phibes behind you. He was an imposing man who towered above you, his face sallow, waxy, and sagging. His red-rimmed eyes were bright with lively mischief, although his aura was heavy with the infernal stench of death.

You expected him to speak, but he simply tilted his head forward and urged you towards the altar. Not a question or suggestion, but an order.

You quickly weighed the possibility that if you killed him, struck him down, the ritual would simply end. Of course, then came the equally possible outcome that it would only hasten it.

Phibes pushed you the last bit of distance until you fell against the altar table itself and came face to face with the body resting there. You knew a dead body when you saw one, and generally you disagreed when people said they looked as if they were sleeping....this one however...she was peaceful in her eternal rest.

Face was full and serene, plump lips painted a succulent violet, with long, kohl-laden lashes that kissed her blush-dusted cheeks. Her skin was glowing and her long black hair had been fluffed and haloed around her. Her hands were folded below her chest and a lovely bejeweled ring glinted in the light of the candles that flickered from beside her on the altar.

The woman was preserved perfectly. Unnaturally.

"She's beautiful," you muttered.

"My wife," Phibes' voice croaked from beside you. You glanced over your shoulder to find that he had held a cord that ran from a porthole in the side of his neck to a phonograph-like speaker beside him. "My Rose. Taken from me far too soon, stolen from me."

"My God, please help my son," came an echoed mutter from the sterile area across the room. The surgeon had his bloodied hands folded in prayer as they rested on his patient's chest.

"Murdered!" Phibes voice grew louder and wrathful. "Don't cry upon God, Dr. Vesalius. He is on my side."

"And how do you know He's on your side," you questioned and Phibes' eyes cut back to you.

"He led me here," he explained. "Showed me the way in the quest for vengeance. Showed me the key to resurrection for my beloved and eternal life for us both. I plan to move Heaven and Earth to achieve it."

"Who are you to resurrect her?" you asked. "To bring about devastation for your wife? Is that His plan? The death of millions for the life of one?"

"He told me of you too, little Knight," he ignored your question. "It's how I knew to expect your arrival. He told me that you would appear to stop me."

"You're not only here to enact God's plan but to prophesize as well?"

"He said you would be the last step in bringing me back to my beloved Rose."

"So I must die too?"" You shrugged. "I'm the ninth?"

"No," he croaked. "Vesalius. Or rather, his wretched son. You must complete the ritual."

"I could kill you instead."

"Oh, but virtuous little Knight, I'm already dead." He released the cord and lifted his hands to his face. He peeled the waxy flesh and the tufts of hair on his head to reveal a twisted and burnt husk beneath. He was skeletal, barely a visage left; his nasal cavity shook with each labored breath and his exposed jaw clenched every so often.

Phibes inserted the cord into the porthole once again.

"I lost everything," he explained. "I lost my life, my purpose. And just when I thought it was enough, I lost my love too. I asked myself over and over: what was God's plan in taking it all away from me, in the blink of an eye? All at once? When I decided I would do anything—sacrifice anything—just to bring her back, He showed me the path and I took it. Wouldn't you? If you'd lost your love, what wouldn't you do, give, to get them back?"

A bitterness settled deep in your gut.

What did he know? What didn't he know? What was God's plan?

You'd asked yourself this many times over the course of your life, had become desensitized to the constant lack of an answer. Fate was an answer you couldn't stomach anymore.

So you had tried to run from it, only to collide with it instead. Fate cruelly led you to Eddie, and then away from him again...to protect him from the pain that was your damned life.

Yes, you would have done anything for him, even let him go. Love, for you, had to wait so that Fate wouldn't have been tempted to take him away.

Like it had for Phibes and Rose.

As you turned and stared down at Rose again...you felt for them...you truly did.

"Do you know resurrection takes more than just...some fancy ritual?" you asked Phibes. You could hear his feet shuffling closer to you. "It's unpredictable. The soul...the soul needs to be put back together, and by the time they ascend...or descend..."

"Rose was an angel," Phibes interjected and insisted. "My angel. My muse."

"...sometimes it's too late. How long has it been?"

"4 years."

"The ancient Egyptians had it right," you explained. "The Ka, the Ba...the Ahk...to put her back together after this long...would be impossible. Moving Heaven and Earth? More like breaking the walls between them. We could complete this ritual and resurrect her, but even still I don't think she would be whole ever again. She'd never really be your wife."

"And when would I have had to..."

"24 hours...48, maybe?" you offered.

Phibes' eyes slowly shut and he let out a painful hissing noise you could only attribute to a wail, or whatever equivalent his body could produce.

"I'm sorry," you muttered, hoping to provide some sort of balm on his wounded spirit. "But she's in Heaven...waiting for you."

You moved out of the way as Phibes collapsed on the altar and spoke in garbled tones to Rose's body, the cord pulled out of the porthole. Whatever confession in his mind was just for them.

You immediately ran across the cavern to Dr. Vesalius and his son. The surgeon sobbed his thanks to you as you began to work on the younger man. You didn't get the opportunity to heal others often—you were used more as an instrument of destruction than one of renewal—though the capability was always there. You dug deep into the celestial light within you and slowly his wounds knit back together.

Once Lem regained consciousness, Vesalius tugged at the restraints. Another spark of your power severed the chains and set the boy free and before long, father and son scampered up the steps and out of this pit of despair.

Vesalius had grabbed your hand before they had, though.

"Thank you," he said. "You're a hero."

No...you were nothing of the sort.

You walked back to the altar to check on Phibes, only to find his form still as it lay next to his wife.

"Doctor?" you shook him. "Doctor?"

You pushed him onto his side and a knife clattered to the marble floor; you balked at the needle in his arm and a slash in his wrist that lazily dripped...dripped...dripped...

Tubes ran out from the needle and embalming fluid rapidly replaced blood. It hadn't been that long for you to heal Lem had it? Had this always been Phibes' plan if the ritual failed? He was sure that you would be the one...the last step in reuniting him and Rose.

You touched his chest and closed your eyes.

Eight were dead but the first born son lived. The ritual was unsuccessful. The secrets of what really happened would stay buried deep below the city.

You could feel it...the ambient energy stirring around Phibes...slowly leaking from every pore of this mortal prison as his body died and he began his ascent. Anton and his beloved Rose would spend eternity together.

He was a good man, a loving man, led astray...and God was willing to forgive him and let him into Heaven.

You looked around the room again and felt sick.

For all the money that the Catholic Church had, the best they could afford when they sent their attack dog—you—to save the world for the umpteenth time was a crappy roadside motel off the 101.

You were used to uncomfortable plane and train rides, questionable motels and cots shoved into the corners of storage rooms in monasteries and missions when space could be spared.

This was your life though.

You had run from the safety of your Nonna's home when you turned 18 and then again from your little apartment in Hawkins a little over a year ago after Fate finally caught up to you. The next closest thing to...a base of operations, if you could call it that, was a tiny, unkempt bungalow house in a small suburb in Chicago that you barely set foot in because evil reared its ugly head a little too much.

Home was not a luxury you could afford, and even if it was...for you, it wouldn't have been a place, it would have been a person.

So you took comfort after a trying assignment in crappy gas station food and lumpy beds because it reminded you of the home you wish you didn't have to leave behind.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" you exclaimed as you kicked the door to your room open and found an unexpected visitor sitting crosslegged on the bed you hadn't claimed for yourself. He held a stack of palm branches in his hand, a small pile of folded crosses placed neatly beside him.

"Watch the way you talk," he began. "Let nothing foul or dirty come out of your mouth."

"Is it not a little...weird for you to quote the Bible?" you asked.

"I didn't write it," he replied simply.

"Well your boss did." You fell onto the unoccupied bed and sighed. You didn't know if it was just the adrenaline finally wearing off after a successful end to your task—if you could call it successful—or something else. Something within you felt like you were...trapped under water.

"He did not either," he dismissed and went back to folding crosses. "You're planning to visit the cemetery." It wasn’t a question, it was a statement.

"Yes."

"When?"

"Before Easter, if Jinette doesn't have another errand for me to run." You fished a bottle of YooHoo from your bag of snacks and offered one to him. His lips quirked and in a blink, all of the palms were folded into neat crosses and he was on his feet.

"Good." He stared at you blankly, expectantly, and it made you feel claustrophobic.

His presence was greater than what was apparent to the naked eye, and in times like these where he was about to spring something on you, your soul could sense the swell of his being. It never got easier.

"I know this isn't a social call or a job well done for preventing the destruction of the Earth for the hundredth time," you begin and cover your face with your hands. "I'm tired, so if you could please just—"

"You say that a lot," he noted.

"What?"

"That you're tired."

"It happens when you're a human," you retort.

"Then you will do well to listen to me now," he says gravely. You peek through your fingers to look at him. "Something is coming. Something bigger than you've ever encountered before."

"Shit, really?" you asked. "When will I have to go?"

"You won't," he stated with an air of finality. "Or else, you will die."

Your hands fell from your face as your ears started to ring and your pulse pounded in your head.

You'd heard many warnings in the past, throughout your life, from him. Pain, suffering, duty. This was the first time he had ever warned you of your death.

Why now? After all of the other missions you'd been given, after facing Hell on Earth dozens of times...

You always knew it was a possibility...but a guarantee?

"W-when...why...when?"

"Soon."

That was helpful. You couldn't even prepare. It would be sprung on you. The next time you were called into action maybe? Or the time after that?

"So I just...I tell...tell Jinette o-or whatever Bishop that I can—” you stammered and he cut you off.

"This is not something that they will ask you to do," he explained. "This is something you will feel compelled to do. Strongly compelled. But you must heed my warning, young one. For you will perish and damnation will surely await you."

"I don't understand," you squeezed your eyes shut. "Isn't...isn't it already awaiting me? What makes this any different?"

"Because it will hurt. It will destroy you." What would...the task? Or the damnation? There was a rustle of wings and a roar of fire in your ears. "Do not be afraid."

They were words you had never heard from his mouth, but you knew he had said them before.

When you opened your eyes, he was gone, and you were left in the motel room alone.

"Gabriel?" You called for him, like you used to when you were a child and nightmares of monsters and demons plagued you. When you used to look for comfort when your father was off on a quest so similar to your own and your mother had no way to sooth you on her own. "Gabriel!"

March 27th, 1986

You knew from the moment you woke up that morning, something was off. As though you were operating on a different frequency than usual. You felt simultaneously sluggish and as though lightning surged just beneath your skin.

It didn't happen often, if ever really, which is what caused some alarm.

Perhaps when you were much younger and your abilities began to manifest. The holy light within you couldn't be contained by such a young body. It had led to massacres and miracles alike.

You remembered seeing Empire Strikes Back for the first time and feeling a kinship with Luke. "Luminous beings are we, not this cruel matter," a phrase you muttered to yourself often, taking comfort in the Light, when your future could only possibly be shrouded in Darkness.

It had taken years to control it, and you were well past grown now, but somehow you couldn't just shake the feeling that plagued you today. It was as though your fight or flight response was primed and ready, despite no danger in sight.

If Archbishop Jinette was any sort of reliable figure in your life, you would have confided in him. Looked to him for guidance. For help. Instead, you'd sat in his office with him for the past hour as he debriefed and lectured you—reamed you—for your handling of Phibes and the ritual.

"It was, quite frankly, irresponsible," he said for the tenth time. His cassock swished around him as he paced before you. "The number of innocent lives that could have been lost."

You rolled your eyes, fully of the belief that he wouldn't have given a shit about any other lives lost at all. You used to give Jinette—give all of your handlers—the benefit of the doubt, used to believe that they cared about innocents. Maybe they had once, but now it was twisted by the power their positions afforded them.

Once they donned a pectoral cross, guilt no longer affected them. It was only a tool used to bend others to their will.

"How can we rely on you to your duty fully if you take the time to negotiate?" He asked. "If you try to reason with agents of evil?"

"Phibes was not evil. He mentioned that God led him to this path," you interjected, and Jinette stopped in his tracks. "That He led Phibes to the ritual in order to reunite him with his wife."

"They would be reunited in Heaven," Jinette dismissed with a hiss. He turned his judgmental, wet eyes to you and glared pointedly. You knew exactly the warning he was trying to convey and you straightened your shoulders.

"It must have been the devil in disguise. Trickery. You, more than anyone, should know how easy it is to fall for temptation." The burn of his stare became righteous, but it was not what caused you to turn your eyes downward.

Was temptation really so bad if it brought you peace? If it made you feel more whole than you'd ever felt in your life? A year with Eddie and you felt sure in your skin, safe, loved. Was that bad? Did that make you evil?

You had let your pain get the best of you in the moment, but after a few days of clarity...Phibes had been right...

What you wouldn't give right now to be back there? To be anywhere but here?

It was regret.

There was a sharp knock at the office door and Jinette sighed and looked at the clock.

"It is time for Mass," he announced. "Think on your sins and the Lord may offer his forgiveness."

After he vacated the office, you forced yourself to your feet, trudged through the rectory, and into the cathedral where you slid into one of the last pews. You would hardly consider yourself a devout attendee—certainly not as you disassociated through the psalms and readings—but you knew if you missed Mass after your supposed sins, there would be Hell to pay.

"...Jesus knew that his hour had come to pass from this world. He loved his own in this world and he loved them til the end..."

You'd heard this Mass before, the Mass of the Lord's Supper. Not your typical Sunday service, so you couldn’t recite it verbatim, but familiar enough. Your Nonna dragged you to as many masses as she could, in every language offered at the local parish, hoping to spare you of this fate in a way she couldn't spare her son or her husband.

Over the years, her hand shrunk in yours. What was once a healthy, strong hand that guided you became small and weak, shriveled and brittle. Until one day, there was no hand left to hold at all.

"...I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do."

You spotted a group of women further up the aisle. Novitiates, probably. You could sense a tenuous peace about them. One could tell she was being watched and she turned to look at you. She was young, maybe around your age, and her eyes were wide and curious.

You tried to smile at her, encourage her—it was all you could do not to scream, actually—but she rolled her eyes a little and turned back around.

The sound of rustling bodies washed through the Cathedral like a wave as everyone got to their feet—

"Pray my Sisters and Brothers that my sacrifice and yours should be acceptable to God, The Father, Almighty."

—and as you rose, your stomach dropped.

Your body burned.

It felt like a thousand cuts were made along your skin. You gasped for breath but could find no air. Your bones cracked and crunched beneath an invisible weight, and the pressure felt as though your sides would split and your insides spill out through phantom wounds.

You fell to your knees and grasped the back of the pew in front of you. You tried to make a noise, to call for help, but nothing could overcome the rumble of the congregants.

"Lord have Mercy. Christ have Mercy."

The polished wood splintered under your grip before the world went dark.

When your eyes opened, you were met with a muted haze. A dark sky, with clouds that shifted in tandem with the howling wind, sizzled with infernal lightning over and over.

You laid on cold, damp ground. You could feel it seep through your clothes and leech into your skin, deeper and deeper, until it settled uneasily in your bones. An acrimonious rigor that would have overtaken you had you allowed it.

Something deep within your subconscious wanted you to.

You needed to gain control quickly.

Your fingers dug into the thick, unforgiving clay of the earth beneath you, and you pushed yourself upright, only to be met with a chilling sight that made your heart stop in your chest.

His was body was aligned with yours, the soles of his feet just inches away from brushing against you. His skin was pale and smeared with gore, and his ripped clothes belied the true extent of his injuries. He choked on his blood with fit of coughs, too wet for a death rattle. He was practically drowning in his own life's essence.

Eddie Munson lay dying in front of you, and there was nothing you could do to stop it.

Your mind raced. Was this a vision? A prophecy? The gift of sight had never been one you could tap into before. Why now?

Was this a warning? If you didn't stay on the path He had in store for you, didn't listen to those He tasked to guide you, would this be your future?

You could hear a voice—an ominous, venomous voice—at the very corners of your mind, speaking to Eddie.

They left you behind. Left you to this fate. Left you to me.

What did that mean? You didn't leave Eddie. Not really. A part of you would always be with him.

You struggled and scrambled to get to his side. Your hands were unsure of where to touch him, how you could let him know you would be there without bringing him more pain.

He looked up at you with unseeing eyes.

"Eddie, please, please," you begged. "I'm here, I'm here with you."

His eyes wrenched shut and he cried out, mouth opening in a feral, heartbreaking howl.

To do with you what I please.

You knew it wasn't the Devil's voice. He wouldn't taunt and tease this way. It had to be some other malevolent creature who tried to get an innocent soul in its' clutches.

You closed your eyes and concentrated, tried to pour as much of your light into Eddie as you could, but despite his body being torn open the way that it was, he simply would not receive the help you could give.

You knew you couldn't leave him.

But Eddie was already gone.

And do to you, I shall...

When you came to, mass was over.

The closing hymn, heavy with organ song, rang throughout the cathedral as the procession made its way back up the aisle. You watched as Jinette glared at your prone form, laying on the pew, as he passed, but a light voice offered a distraction.

"Slowly, there you go, wake up," it said. A small, strong hand shook your shoulder then carefully tapped your face. "Sister Margaret went to call an ambulance."

"No," you groaned. "No ambulance. I'm fine." You immediately tried to push yourself upright, but the hands held you down to the pew.

"Don't get up, I don't know if you hit your head."

"I don't think so," you muttered. The pain that had wracked your body was nothing but a memory, a tell tale static that surrounded you, much the same way it would if your foot fell asleep.

You finally got your wits about you and found that your savior was the young woman you spotted earlier. Hell, if she didn't already think you were some creep off the street who'd wandered into the cathedral before...

"You're a part of the Order, right?" she asked disarmingly and pointed down to the small medallion that must have escaped from the confines of your shirt when you collapsed. Your hand immediately went to it and tucked it back into its hiding place; it was a reminder...a shackle. "A Knight of the Holy Order. Mother Superior said to steer clear of you if we ever crossed paths with you. She didn't say much else.

"I never thought I'd see one...just...pass out during mass."

"We're normal people," you sighed. "Not...Gods."

"Saints?"

"Sinners," you clarified and she laughed lightly.

"Yeah, me too" she agreed then frowned again. "Do you feel well enough to sit up?”

"I'm fine, just...tired," you explained and pushed her away from you. "I need to get back..."

"Back home?" she asked eagerly.

"Back to my motel." You got to your feet as the organ music stopped and the last few stragglers left. "Thank you for staying with me..."

"Oh...uh...Mary...Victoria..." she provided her name and you must have made a face. "I'm still working on it. I know I have time. But Victoria was my grandmother's name...so..."

"Well, I think it's a lovely name then," you offered a tight smile and your own name, then shuffled past her to make your escape. "See you around Mary Victoria."

March 30th, 1986

In the days following Holy Thursday, something was still off.

You had woken up the following morning with a sore jaw and a hoarse voice. Sometime later that day, you'd started crying blood. Only for an hour, but there was no controlling it. You were overwhelmed with emotion.

Hopelessness was the most prominent of them all.

You hadn't blacked out again, but something lingered beneath the surface. Given Gabriel's warning, you figured it would be best to lay low.

You knew it was a futile attempt to try and summon Gabriel again; he appeared when he felt like it or when it would best serve God.

The only time you’d ever desperately called for him, as fire almost consumed you and damp earth threatened to bury you alive, it had fallen on indifferent ears. It was then that you realized stories about Guardian Angels were just that: stories.

So instead, you went about your day as you typically would. Unless you were summoned somewhere by the clergy, they generally left you to your own devices. Especially on Holy Days like today.

Your plans for Easter Sunday specifically consisted of visiting the local cemeteries—

You would miss mass at the Cathedral today. Running your hands along the marble headstones and brass nameplates of those long-since-passed-and-forgotten and offering them a thought or two brought you more peace than any prayer or blessing would.

—and getting absolutely hammered.

You weren't a big drinker, really, since you typically were expected to have your wits about you. But it was a Holiday and you were far from home and alone. You made a blind choice at the liquor store on your way back from the cemetery, and it would numb you either to the point of blacking out, or make you give into your temptations to call Eddie.

You'd been thinking about him more lately.

Well...that was a lie, you always thought about him. Thought about calling, about visiting. You knew you couldn't trust yourself, so you did what you could to keep him safe. You skipped the letter M in the phonebook on the off chance he had finally made it out of Hawkins to follow his dream. Made it a point not to drive through Indiana if you could help it.

Maybe you didn't want to help it anymore. Maybe you should...maybe not visit...just call him.

Someone had left behind an honest-to-God glass in your motel room, and after a thorough cleaning, you poured yourself a helping of the nondescript amber liquid. It burned on the way down. Maybe it was a warning about the bad decisions that lay ahead of you.

You'd been tempted to call for his birthday last year, for Christmas...you sent a card. No return address, no name. Just a heart. You hoped he knew it was you because he always said your hearts looked like butts.

Another glass and you stood in front of the nightstand. You stared, transfixed, at the dingy rotary phone as you sipped your drink, savoring the burn this time. As if it had a mind of its own, your hand moved to grab the handset, but it just hovered for a moment.

How would Eddie answer? What would you say? What if it wasn't Eddie at all, what if it was Wayne? What if Wayne told you...that Eddie was spending Easter at a girlfriend's house? What would you do? What could you do? You practically forced him to say that he would wait for you...could you really blame him if he didn't?

Next to the phone was the remote for the television.

You hadn't really left him much hope after all.

You grabbed the remote and mindlessly aimed it behind you to turn the small set on. As it came to life and started bleating a commercial for some local restaurant, you momentarily prayed that it wasn't one of those Biblical epics, like The Greatest Story Ever Told.

Instead, the commercial ended and, as you poured yourself one more glass, the sterile voice of a newscaster reached your ears.

"...currently 68 degrees at the Los Angeles Civic Center. Lovely weather for Easter Sunday. For our top story, we bring you live to our own Robert Gilroy in Roane County, Indiana. Rob?"

You turned in shock and stared, dumbfounded, as the screen flashed to show a severe man in a brown suit. He frowned at the camera while a convoy of cars inched by behind him. You couldn't help but notice plumes of black smoke in the distance and you hoped that it was just a defect with the cheap motel tv.

"Thank you Laura. It's been less than 48 hours since a 7.4 Magnitude Earthquake rocked the quaint town of Hawkins, 80 miles outside of Indianapolis in an event that seismologists are calling a natural disaster of near unprecedented scale."

A wash of colorful stripes rolled across the screen before it showed b-roll of people running and crying, of a team of firefighters desperately trying to extinguish the burning Hawkins Public Library building, that was half rubble anyway, a man in camo bandaging a little girl's leg.

"The death toll now stands at 22, but with hundreds more filling Roane County hospitals and many more still missing, officials expect those numbers to rise."

You immediately dropped your glass and turned back to the phone, fumbling with the rotary dial to input a number you knew by heart.

"Please pick up, please pick up, please pick up." You listened as the ringing went on and on and on. You hung up and dialed again, and you desperately hoped you just got the number wrong. You screamed as it didn't even ring, but blared a taunting busy signal. "No! No! Who are you talking to? Pick up!"

"This is only the latest tragedy to befall this once safe town. Most recently, a string of high school students were killed in a series of ritualistic murders which have been linked to a local Satanic cult known as Hellfire."

Your blood ran cold at the word Hellfire and you refused to look at the television.

There was more b-roll, some chitter chatter saying how the Hellfire boys were always up to no good. How some upstanding students were killed, taken too soon.

Your breathing got heavy, enough that you started becoming lightheaded. The alcohol didn't help at all.

You tried to savor the last few minutes of ignorance as you wrenched your eyes shut, because if you didn't see it. It wasn't real.

"Eddie Munson, the leader of this cult and prime suspect in the murders..."

But you knew. You knew that this was the moment. You knew that this was what Gabriel meant. If you went to Hawkins, if you had to fight for Eddie, you would do it in a heartbeat and you wouldn't stop until you died.

"...has been missing since the earthquake..."

Those seconds that the reporter needed to take his dramatic breath were an eternity, one you would savor. Because it was easier to pretend that the only thing you had to do was just stop yourself from going to Hawkins, stop yourself from being selfish and wrathful, to punish those who would accuse the sweet, dumb, foolish, clumsy, trustworthy innocent love of your life.

It was just easier if you still lived in a world where you didn't have to hear what you knew was coming next.

"...and is presumed dead."

People often mistook the power of heaven to be one of peace, of hope, of new beginnings. And it could be. It usually was. But they forgot that the beginning of one thing was also the end of something else.

Divine retribution, a burning smiting wrath, the like of which had leveled Sodom and Gomorrah, flowed freely with your grief. It was illogical and irrational and inexplicable to any mortal, including you.

You remembered screaming.

Remembered the pain of the bones in your fingers splintering as you dug them into your skull. Your nails cut deep into the flesh of your scalp as you peeled the hair and flesh, as you opened the top of yourself to release the pressure that had suddenly and violently built up in your core.

Glass disintegrated into sand, furniture turned to ash, even the frame of the building began to buckle.

But there was a voice that called your name. A soft, sobbing voice that pulled you back from the edge of whatever precipice you subconsciously teetered on.

"It’ll be ok. I’m here."

You could practically feel arms slither around you, the phantom weight of them pressed into your skin. Dextrous fingers wove together with yours, soothed them, healed them. They caressed your wounds and the broken flesh stitched itself back together.

A cool breath grazed your ear and the screams that ripped from you began to subside. It shushed you and said unascertainable words of comfort as your fury subsided into woe.

"Close your eyes. It'll all go away if you don't look."

"But you're gone," you wept. The tears rolled down your cheeks and over your lips. You sniffled and licked at them; blood, again. "Why?"

There was no answer. You were about to open your eyes, eager to see and not just to feel, but the fingers glided over your face again. Over your cheeks to wipe the blood from them, over your lips to play with the softness of them, then over your eyelids.

Places he liked to kiss...places you wished you could feel lips instead...wished you could know that he was there.

"I'll never really leave. Even if you can't see me. I’m here.”

Every fiber of your being wanted to go, would have walked to Hawkins, run til your feet bled, to find his body. To clear his name. To say goodbye.

To die a most miserable death. Like Phibes and his Rose.

You would leave this world, happily, if it meant you could be by his side. But there was no guarantee. You could toil for a lifetime and hope to join him, and still be denied access to Heaven.

“I’ll be waiting for you. As long as it takes. I’ll be here.”

You heard the lovely whisper of your name, over and over as you sunk to your knees and you curled in on yourself. Every second it faded into the depths of your mind, and you couldn't help but crack your eyes open.

Lightning struck, the firefighters would explain to you later, on a clear day. The building went ablaze and was destroyed, but all the rooms were empty except for yours. The paramedics said it was a miracle you weren't injured. They touched you lightly, almost reverently.

"Hallelujah."

You were alone again.

It was a disquieting procession.

The creatures moved in a way that seemed unnatural, unfamiliar to them. Their feet shuffled across the barren waste and they dragged a hulking beast behind them. It was a large and ominous and twitching thing, and although the formality of this event it felt like a funeral, you knew that you were witnessing a birth instead.

The wings conjured images of Beelzebub...but Asmodeus felt like a more fitting comparison given how familiar you were with the inner workings of its mind.

Thinking of him as Beast or It was wrong. It felt sinewy and astringent. A bite you were reluctant to take.

You bore witness for three days.

It took two to break him, but images would haunt your mind and your heart for eternity. You tried to protect him, tried to undo what was done. You offered him comfort and a place to hide when he desperately needed a break he would never get.

How he had survived it, you would never know? But he was always stronger than you; if not in body, then in spirit. You never lasted long before you were forced to pull him back in. If you had remained, given him a longer rest, you knew you would have broken before he did.

He finally begged for mercy. He finally relinquished his soul.

You would stay beside him. No matter what they did to him. No matter what he did to himself.

They dragged him to their pit to put him back together again, and you forced yourself to watch, to listen, and to pray that every addition and alteration would stick. That he wouldn't have gone through the torture only to perish so close to the end of it.

You wondered where prayers went when they were made in Hell. Did they reach God's ears? Were they intercepted by Lucifer and his court? Or did they just...float in the void of oblivion?

He muttered words, you'd even heard your name escape his lips several times before they filled his mouth with too many teeth to speak.

By the end of the third day, he rose again.

And you sobbed in relief because somehow the sight of him complete, the sight of him rising and blinking and roaring brought you more comfort and warmth and joy than you had ever felt in your cursed existence.

It didn't matter how grim of vision he was. There was a beauty in that too. The beauty existed...simply because he still did.

Whatever they did to him, he was alive, and he would always be your Eddie. And that meant you had a chance to save him.

“When you loved someone, you put their needs before your own. No matter how inconceivable those needs were; no matter how fucked up; no matter how much it made you feel like you were ripping yourself into pieces.” — Jodi Picoult, The Pact

Special thanks to @big-ope-vibes and @pastel-pillows who can read even though she says she does not. And @fracturedarkness who I am determined to destroy/delight with this story.

Next Chapter: Illumination

#vampire eddie munson #vampire!eddie #kas!eddie #Eddie Munson fic #tw: death #tw: violence #tw: religious themes #stranger things fic #tw: suicide

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