#I thought it was going to end at 25 but that's definitely no longer the case

[cellarspider]

22/?? An old man, allegedly

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We return once again to that movie I wish to send the gift of a single tribble, Prometheus.

Yes, the movie’s gotten around to a twist it’s been clumsily foreshadowing for much of its runtime: Ol’ Man Capitalism, AKA Peter Weyland, is in fact alive and on the ship. I’ve been informed this was a relatively late addition to the plot, according to the available script drafts. His inclusion makes a stab at some themes. Let’s see how they do.

Content warning for deliberately gross old feet, weird religious imagery, death mention, Holloway mention.

Yes, David’s discovery of a living Engineer has meant it’s time to take Weyland out of the tupperware and reheat him for a bit. And it means we get to see Guy Pierce in the flesh, under a pile of old man makeup.

Weyland looks no less weird than he did as a hologram. In fact, he possibly looks weirder, because we no longer have that excuse for why he looks like this. Weyland is very frail, and very frail people’s appearance can change rather drastically in ways that aren’t usually put to film, but frankly, he looks more like Grima Wormtongue has been giving him investment advice.

Weyland is here because he thinks the Engineers can stop him from dying. I’m not certain he’s not already expired, and I’m also not sure where he got that impression. There’s a missing step of logic here, which the movie never mentions, but it’s likely related to the assumptions of christianized worldview: if something is the creator of humanity, then it must also have ultimate power over human life and death. Therefore, appealing directly to it can grant you eternal life. The cosmic watchmaker can replace your gears and keep you ticking indefinitely.

I will go along with this framing for just a bit, particularly because this scene is obviously reaching for some biblical imagery I’ll try and tackle in a moment. When the movie remembers to have characters engage with its themes, there are various reactions to the potential of meeting humanity’s creators. 

Shaw is positioned as a true believer, but what that actually means to her is extremely unclear. She has some curiosity about the details of creation, so she’s not buying tickets to the Ark Encounter or whatever. She assumes welcoming and benevolent intention from the Engineers, but there’s never any indication of what she intends to do here, beyond prove herself right. 

She’s also christian, and she thinks the christian God ultimately created the Engineers. How does that fit into her cosmogony? She has to be the sort of christian that takes Genesis as allegory, but what does it mean that humans were shaped by another species in their own image? Are humans more faithfully created in the christian God’s image than the Engineers were? Does she think the Engineers have souls? Are they angels?

We get no opinion on any of that from her. We don’t even see much of anything about how her apparently strong faith affects her life, beyond having a family keepsake and having belief in things. Holloway at least had an explicit goal in mind–it was a hubristic goal, but it was a goal. He wanted to get all his questions answered about life, the universe, and everything, answered personally, rather than letting anyone else get there first. Finding out the Engineers were dead immediately took the shine off of that, seemingly because he’d thought they were omnipotent and omniscient, despite being positioned as an atheist in the dialog. 

Holloway’s position here was odd, particularly for an alleged scientist. He expresses that the creation of life turned out to be “nothing special” during his drunken funk. This echoes common misconceptions by deeply religious folks about how atheists and/or scientists think: the idea that if you’re so set on finding natural, rational explanations for everything, you’re doomed to view the world without wonder or beauty, just chemicals bouncing around for no purpose. That to seek the logic behind the world is to fling yourself into total anhedonia.

As many others have stated before, that’s not what comes out of it, what they’re describing is in fact called “clinical depression.” Understanding more technical details about how the world works doesn’t take the awe out of it, it makes it even more amazing. I’ve excitedly rambled to people that if sequencing tech was cheaper and easier, I’d love to study the genetics and epigenetics of weeds growing on dirt roads, to find out what makes them different from their cousins living only a few feet away in less crappy soil. The existence of a tuft of grass in dusty gravel is endlessly fascinating to me, and I know just enough about them to want to know more.

But no, Holloway’s behavior is common in depictions of atheists by religious people who fundamentally don’t get that one can exist around religious folks without secretly thinking the same way they do. It’s doubly weird, given how surface-level Shaw’s faith is, in a way that also seems to be written by somebody who doesn’t understand the concept too well.

In any case, Holloway got pre-disappointed in the answers he didn’t get, to the very basic philosophical questions he wanted to ask: why were we made? Do we have a purpose? Those sorts of things. Honestly, he could have had more complex things to say about this, even without dislodging his bro persona. Being a bro does not negate the possibility of thoughtfulness, it just means that thoughtfulness might be expressed differently. I didn’t see the movie doing that with him. 

The only other potentially intentional thing it was doing with him is using the sum total of his behavior as a negative example: don’t question these things, it’ll lead you to despair and death. Not sure if they meant that, but the rest of the movie uses the punitive morality of some slasher movies as part of its basic structure, so it’s not an impossible read.

Skipping over David for now and going to Weyland: he’s all about what the Engineers can do for him. It’s a gesture toward people who approach christianity from a transactional angle. Faith in exchange for something. There are definitely people like that out there. A lot of premillennial dispensationalist evangelicals fearfully cling to the belief that, as long as they say the right words, they’ll bodily ascend to heaven and leave everyone else behind for the Antichrist, conveniently skipping that unpleasant “death” thing they don’t want to face.

For those who grew up with that stuff or those brainrotted enough like me to remember it, yes. Yes, I am comparing Peter Weyland to Tim LaHaye. The dialog in this movie is bad enough that it makes me think of Left Behind.

All of this stuff positions the Engineers as either equivalent to the christian god, or to the imperfect gnostic demiurge who is mistaken for a god. But frankly, the Engineers seem more like they were trying to make a sourdough starter, but the last time they opened the fridge, it’d grown fuzz and smelled awful. They were ready to throw out their project. 

Was there a heavy ritual aspect involved in their actions? Sure. But the movie hasn’t sold me on the idea that they are themselves acting as christian allegory, only that christian allegory is being placed on them by others.

Speaking of Weyland and more christian stuff, he’s getting his feet washed by David.

Must be maundy thursday. Foot washing before entering a dwelling is a practice that started as a practical act in a sandal-wearing culture, and became one of power dynamics and religious symbolism. Water would be provided, or a host would wash the feet of a guest themself, or, if they were rich enough, a servant or slave would do the washing. This is very much the dynamic as far as Weyland is concerned. Weyland believes in souls, David, by his estimation, does not have one, therefore he serves humans.

Of course, foot washing also has connotations of humility, and is strongly associated in christianity with Jesus washing the apostles’ feet after the Last Supper. David has certainly and consistently shown himself to be more competent at everything he does than the other characters, and they wouldn’t have gotten this far without him. He’s working on a level they aren’t, even if he’s still forced to be humble about it. If this is the reading we’re meant to reach for, David’s managing a complicated double-act as Jesus (he’s going to be killed for the sins of man yet rise from the dead pretty soon), and also Judas (he is hella jazzed to betray somebody to their death).

In any case, Shaw tries to convince them not to wake up the Engineer. In response, Weyland essentially goads her about Holloway’s death and her beliefs: “And what would Charlie do, now that we’re so close to answering the most meaningful questions ever asked by mankind? How can you leave without knowing what they are? Or have you lost your faith, Shaw?”

Yes, indeed, Weyland, WWCD. Once you determine that, you do the opposite, and you’ll never be steered wrong.

So of course Shaw decides to go with them.

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Alt-text rambles

https://wheelchair.spinergy.com/collections/wheelchair-everyday/products/lite-extreme-lx 

https://youtu.be/7h8zJHywjAw 

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2015/11/05/left-behind-index-the-whole-thing/

https://www.slashfilm.com/503786/first-photo-and-video-footage-from-robert-zemeckis-a-christmas-carol/ 

Overflow Ramble #1

I’m in wait-and-see mode on Fallout one right now. I’m not personally a FO:NV person, so I don’t have special attachment to the West Coast stuff, but I see what they were *trying* to do, even if it didn’t land with me at all (TL;DR playing a queer character felt especially bleak thanks to a lack of underground queer culture in the face of the homophobia). 

The trailer looks good, there’s conflict between the BoS and NCR, which hopefully means both factions are going to be the absolute, incurable disasters they should be. Goggins playing a ghoul who helped sell the lie of the Vaults is good, and he’s a damn solid TV and character actor. Dale Cooper and 80s!Paul Atreidies himself Kyle MacLachlan plays the vault overseer, so that’s fun. I’m not a TV person so I don’t recognize the rest of the cast, but I’m hoping it manages to be something good. We’ll find out in April, by which point I’ll hopefully be fREE OF THIS MOVIE

Overflow Ramble #2: Tribulation Force

Close-up of Nick Cage deep in his “paying the bills” phase as Rayford Steele in Left Behind (2014), looking precisely as enthused as he should be, to be playing Rayford Steele. I chose this reaction image because I am not subjecting anyone to flashbacks of the older movies with Kirk Cameron in them. 

Want to know how I know too much about this stuff, despite literally spending my childhood thinking people just entertained the idea of Jesus the way they did Santa Claus around the holidays? 

Because of a blogger by the name of Fred Clark, who decided one strange day in 2003 to write a thorough dissection of the Left Behind books (cite 3). Thankfully for his sanity, he lost steam eventually. …When Tim LaHaye died in 2016. All fear and respect to Fred Clark.

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#Prometheus 2012 #Prometheus (2012) #this was entry 19 or 20 a week or two ago #And then I found more stuff to ramble about and so I had to restructure #I thought it was going to end at 25 but that's definitely no longer the case #w e l p

[lady-raziel]

and alright, here's my last (let's hope) and boldest take yet. lots of people have been talking about the level of staff (around 25-ish people) at watcher, and whether downsizing that number could have been a potential avenue of reducing costs before just jumping to a subscription model. at first i was like yeah, i'm not sure that there needs to be 18 people involved in making a lets play. i was in the fucking trenches in the unus annus days and i'm still amazed how markiplier and ethan nestor managed to put out pretty well edited videos every day for a whole year with only a handful of editors and a couple people filming. what unus annus was trying to do and what watcher is trying to do are obviously pretty different, but the point is that you really don't need a whole crew of people to make lots of different types of content and do it well.

i still think there probably doesn't need to be a whole production crew involved with the creation of some of the simpler types of content watcher puts out. however, i don't think the size of the staff is the real problem. in fact, i think the staff of watcher probably should have been larger.

let me explain. if i begrudgingly go to one of my most detested websites (linkedin. *bleeegh*) and look up watcher, i can see that pretty much every person on staff is in a creative role of some sort by their own admission. at first glance, its like, oh, that makes sense. they're making creative products, it's natural that they should all be in creative roles. however, once you think about it for a little longer from a business perspective, that fact is really concerning.

after all, by watcher's own definition, this is a production studio. this is a company. So in this sea of creative roles, who's doing corporate planning? Who's managing finance? Who's doing payroll? Or brand outreach? Or human-freaking-resources??? you can hire outside groups for all this. i'm aware. but those services cost a lot of money to contract too. i'm just finding it concerning that there is pretty much no one on full time staff that is there to at least do some of this stuff. if watcher wants to be a big-boy company, that's fine, but that means you have to pay some people to be part of your company to do the not-fun business stuff like accounting. or resource management.

if they want to be a real company, they should actually have a lot more people on staff to deal with all the non-creative parts of running a company. even if they contract out most of it, you want at least a few people that are your people and don't actually work for someone else. that's how you don't get screwed over or end up in a contract you can't get out of.

which leads me to my last train of thought. like, as i go through the staff of watcher and look at what they do, it really seems like one of the ONLY people who's job it was to look at the business side of things WAS steven lim in his role as CEO. and thinking about that, i'm like god, can you imagine?? here's a guy who just wants to create cool stuff too but as one of the few people who has to think about the realities of Brand and the Business, HE has to be the one to burst the bubble. He as CEO has to say no to people and make decisions to make sure the company survives. In a group of creative people who just want to make things they're interested in, no expense spared, he was probably the guy who had to stay at least a little tethered to reality.

I'm not about to say that steven lim isn't to blame here. everyone involved in making the decisions that have led up to this point is part of this. but shit, it absolutely sucks to have to be the person at the end of the brainstorm session when everyone is coming up with their best ideas and to have to say "guys, i don't think any of these things are possible unless we make some big decisions."

is that what happened at watcher HQ? i don't know. at this point, with radio silence from everyone, speculation is all we've got. but if you follow the thread of a bunch of creatives striking out on their own to make their own business after being burned by their former employer, despite not knowing really how to run a business, and then only hiring fellow creative people and not other people who actually run business things... well, all of this starts to make slightly more sense in WHY none of watcher's actions make sense. everybody wants to stick it to the man and be their own boss with their own business, until it actually comes to the hard parts of doing that. at that point people start to realize, "oh, maybe some of the things that existed at my old job were there for a reason, actually."

all this is why lots of creatives striking out and starting their own businesses don't work in the end. they're thinking about in terms of creative products still, when they really need to be focusing more on the "business" part of the "creative business." it's sad. it sucks. it destroys a lot of good ideas and good people, because one person in every company like that has to be the one who thinks practically. could this have been avoided if watcher had been hiring people all along to manage this business and not just adding people to add to the creative output? maybe. even then it might not have been enough to curb other predictable impulses that led us down this path.

i feel bad for watcher, and i feel bad for the fandom. but i can't help but wonder if this was always the kind of situation we were going to end up in, and we just missed some of the warning signs because ALL of us were thinking, "well, that could never happen to us. we're different. not the Ghoul Boys."

#watcher #watcher tv #two stupidly long thinkpieces in one morning? wow! what a bargain! #just don't ask which of my responsibilities i'm ignoring by typing all this out

[milling-around]

The Bad Batch Finale and Joel Aron’s cryptic tweet

Okay so Joel Aron, Director of Cinematography Lighting & VFX at Lucasfilm, tweeted this:

Initially, I thought that this was going to be the runtime of S3E15 The Cavalry Has Arrived. This episode being longer would make sense as it’s the finale of the show and it’s close in length to S1E1 Aftermath. However, I saw a screenshot floating around the other day that says the runtime of the final episode “spans 24 to 25 minutes”.

If this episode is the typical length then this timestamp must be referring to a different piece of media. The question is, what media? In an effort to determine what could happen in the finale, I went to that point in the films to see what I would find. None of them strike as much fear in me as what’s happening in A New Hope.

The Phantom Menace - Anakin has just won the pod race and they are celebrating his victory.

Attack of the Clones - Jango Fett and Boba Fett have just attacked Obi-Wan with seismic charges.

Revenge of the Sith - Anakin is looking out over Coruscant from the Jedi Council room. He has just revealed to Mace Windu that Palpatine is a Sith.

A New Hope - Before leaving to disable the tractor beam on the Death Star, Obi-Wan delivers a line which may foreshadow what’s to come in The Bad Batch.

Empire Strikes Back - Luke is trying to lift the ship out of the swamp on Dagobah.

Return of the Jedi - Luke, Han, and Chewbacca, along with the droids, are captured by the Ewoks.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars - Anakin and Ahsoka are heading towards Tatooine to deliver Jabba’s son back to him.

At 01:09:56:01 in A New Hope, or as close to it as I could get (Disney+ sucks) this is what we see:

Sorry it’s a photo of my computer, I don’t know how y’all take screenshots of Disney+.

“Your destiny lies along a different path from mine.”

Many people have been theorising that the show could end with the Batch and Omega surviving but being separated, either by choice or by circumstance. This line from A New Hope, as well as the fact that Omega’s voice actor, Michelle Ang, has described the ending as “bittersweet”, definitely make that a solid theory.

Maybe I’m barking up the wrong tree though. There’s also speculation about whether Omega is force sensitive, so maybe Luke using the force in Empire Strikes Back is the real clue. Despite Ventress not believing Omega to have a high m-count, and her not being one of Hemlock’s designated m-count specimens, we have seen characters with a low m-count who were capable of wielding the force. Sabine Wren, for example.

Still, Omega being force sensitive doesn’t prevent the theory that she gets separated from the Batch from being true. It could actually be a reason for that separation because she may pursue training or decide that her proximity to the Batch endangers them.

But wait, there’s more!

At this timestamp in S1E1 Aftermath, Omega is on the Marauder with the Bad Batch (minus Crosshair) and they’re setting off on what will be her first big adventure. Omega’s Theme is playing and she’s gazing out at space with child-like wonder. While they’ve just parted ways with Crosshair, the overall feeling in this scene is hopeful.

If the tweet is referring to this episode, it could mean that we get a wholesome Bad Batch family moment. Whether Tech is there or not may rely on CX-2 being unmasked. Perhaps it’s bittersweet because Tech truly is dead or because he’s alive but they cannot save him from the Empire. Or maybe it’s bittersweet for a whole host of other reasons.

Honourable mention

@kiffobaby also looked into what is happening at this timestamp if you combine the runtimes (including credits) of all episodes in clone relevant story arcs and didn’t really find anything of note. If credits were removed then it would put at us a different point in the arc, however it’s unlikely that we’d be looking for a timestamp in an arcs combined duration anyway.

If you’ve read this far, I love you and don’t worry, we’re almost done.

Secret 16th episode?

Seasons 1 and 2 each had 16 episodes which leads me to speculate that this timestamp could actually be the runtime of the final episode, a secret 16th episode.

Is it likely? No. Can I dream? Yes.

#star wars #star wars the bad batch #star wars the clone wars #the bad batch #tbb #bad batch #sw tbb #tbb spoilers #the clone wars #the bad batch spoilers #star wars rebels #the bad batch speculation #star wars the phantom menace #star wars attack of the clones #star wars revenge of the sith #star wars a new hope #star wars empire strikes back #star wars return of the jedi #hunter tbb #hunter the bad batch #tech the bad batch #tech tbb #echo the bad batch #echo tbb #wrecker the bad batch #wrecker tbb #crosshair the bad batch #crosshair tbb #omega the bad batch #omega tbb

[scaredofbrits]

his prey.

william afton x assistant reader

• can be the movie one or a different one

·:*¨༺ ♱✮♱ ༻¨*:·

includes liking your boss

hinting at smut

predator & prey

age gap , 25 & 50-60

short

you hurried off to your bosses office, also trying to keep the piping hot coffee balanced on the small plate. you slowly opened the door and put on a fake smile; like usual. "finally. i dont know what to expect from a clumsy person like you." he chuckled, making fun of your lateness. you werent going to take that lightly though, not today. you harshly placed the drink on his desk and took a deep breath in, "i am not clumsy, sir. can i not be a minute late?"

he opened his eyes wide. you never really showed your stubborn side, especially not around your boss for goodness sake. your hands were clenched up into fists and you felt extremely hot headed. the anger boiled up inside you was only partially released but god did it feel good to snap at someone. but you picked the wrong person. "how strange.. normally youre the highlight of my day." your boss was spinning his pen around his fingers, debating what he would do with you. in his eyes; assistants will never be that important. he wouldnt mind firing one, but you happen to be different.

you just remind him of pretty little prey. someone he could hunt for generations and never get tired of it. your kind gestures, your smiles, laughs, and of course your looks. he would love to toy around with you but it would break his heart a little if he went too far with things. what would you think of having such an erotic relationship with your co-worker? "i dont care if im the highlight of your day," you put your hands down on his desk, "because you definitely arent mine."

what a lie, you thought. how could someone tell such a bad lie? you felt like you were going crazy when youd walk to his office everyday. making his coffee made you feel like an important role in his life. sometimes youd go home and think about him, well you did that all the time. but sometimes youd feel warmth go down between your legs. you were obsessed with him. no better way to put it.

"oh, so thats how you feel? hmmm?" he smiled knowing what his accent and words would do to your innocent mind. behind his desk; aka the part he couldnt see.. your legs were beginning to get close to eachother. of course he had to arouse you. he knew what drove you crazy!

you ran out of his office in a hurry. if things had gone like that any longer you probably wouldve ended up on your knees. but god forbid - how does your boss make you feel such a way?

#x y/n #fanfic #x reader #fnaf x reader #william afton #william afton x you #smut #william afton x reader #fnaf william afton #steve raglan x you #steve raglan smut #steve raglan x reader #steve raglan #fnaf x y/n #fnaf x you #fnaf smut #fnaf

[andsomemaniacgotridofthewheel]

I want to talk about that miracle.

All everybody ever asks is: why was that miracle so strong, is it because Crowley was a powerful angel before the fall (probably), or was it because Aziraphale & Crowley working together are more powerful than anything else (definitely)?

But nobody ever asks: why was that miracle so strong? I mean, they said it worked a little too well, when the angels & demons couldn't even recognize Gabriel when he stood directly in front of them and announced himself. But still ... does that really require a miracle the same strength as bringing someone back from the dead 25 times? We have learned that angels are rather unquestioning and demons rather dim, it should require fairly little to pull the wool over their eyes. And Aziraphale & Crowley didn't even think that it would take a big miracle, they planned to both do a little miracle, a very minor miracle, each a half-miracle that would barely move the dials, the tiniest, most insubstantial, fractional half a miracle they have ever performed. And after they did they even had to check if the miracle took at all.

So yeah, even if they accidentally overdid it - why to the amount of 25 Lazarii? And that without them even noticing!

Of course their delight at the successful hidden miracle followed directly by the scene of all the alarm bells in Heaven ringing with what literally looked like Red Alert was insanely funny. But once I stopped laughing, and they showed Zira's bookshop spewing purple miracle dust like a volcano, I immediately thought: that can't be it. I expected a soft glow around it, like a shield or an aura, but not a pillar of pink that went up into the sky space. There must have been something else in Zira's shop. What do we know was in the shop at that time?

Apart from Gabriel himself my first thought was his cardboard box. Up until the end I was convinced that the box contained more than just empty air. Even when the fly was revealed, I still thought there must have been more inside. Gabriel went to the trouble of taking the fly out of the matchbox and putting it in this much much bigger box. Why did he do that? It cost him a lot of time. He could have just grabbed the matchbox and be on his way! If he had taken a finer pen than the marker, he could have written a message on there too. From inside the elevator. And Soho would have gotten a longer and better look at his goods.

So I kept thinking that there must have been something else, invisible but enormously miraculous, inside that box. No not the fly. More powerful and more important than the fly. 25 Lazarii more powerful. The only problem with that theory is that when Gabriel got his memory back, he should have remembered what else he put into the box as well. And he could/would have told Aziraphale what it was. (I also don't think that the "something terrible" he referred to in his first conversation with Zira was his impeding memory loss, I think he was already talking about the second coming. And I think he wanted to prevent it, even while fleeing Heaven.)

But he didn't tell Aziraphale & Crowley anything. Was he so caught up in his reunion with Beelzebub that he forgot? That he didn't care anymore? Had someone or something removed certain memories from the fly, held them back? Or did he indeed not know that there was something else in the box, was it maybe given to him by somebody?

Yes, I have had this Box-Theory since my very first watch of the very first episode. I can't seem to let it go.

But even if it doesn't have anything to do with the box - I am still absolutely convinced that there was a second miracle. Maybe that miracle is the one that will finally make sense of all the dangling threads and open questions about season 2. Maybe it is the new context we are all seeming to look for. I have absolutely no fucking clue what it could be.

But I know that something was going on in that bookshop on that day that we don't know about.

#the box theory #the miracle theory #good omens #good omens 2 #good omens meta #good omens theory #good omens analysis #aziraphale #crowley #jimbriel #gabriel #beelzebub #ineffable bureaucracy #aziraphale's bookshop #az fell #aj crowley #anthony j crowley #archangel gabriel #archangel fucking gabriel #jim short for gabriel #boxfly #nikku's posts #nikku.txt

[ladykailitha]

Royal Pain Part 26

Hello, and we have got to the end of the massive arc that culminated the last four chapters.

I also wrote this part before 24 and 25 because I couldn't figure out how to write Eddie having a hard time on tour, but the aftermath flowed from my fingers.

Also as a reminder this story is finished, I'm just posting on a regular schedule. This story is the longest fanfic I've ever written. Topping out at 58165 it's definitely longer than 50K fic I wrote for NaNoWriMo last year (Sandman, never finished or published.)

Pt 1 Pt 2 Pt 3 Pt 4 Pt 5 Pt 6 Pt 7 Pt 8 Pt 9 Pt 10 Pt 11 Pt 12 Pt 13 Pt 14 Pt 15 Pt 16 Pt 17 Pt 18 Pt 19 Pt 20 Pt 21 Meta Pt 22 Pt 23 Pt 24 Pt 25

****

“You’ve been sitting on that sofa for an entire week,” Wayne growled. “Steve has called three times, your bandmates at least a dozen times each. Hell, boy Miranda has been calling concerned. So want to tell me what’s fucking got you so twisted?”

“I was given a choice out there on the road,” Eddie said, twisting his rings around his fingers. “Stay in Indy and play small time gigs for the rest of my adult life or go to LA and get an album and the chance at super stardom.”

Wayne sat down next him. “Sounds like a big decision to make.”

Eddie leapt to his feet. “That’s the problem. That’s what makes me so angry how fucking easy the choice is.”

Wayne cocked his head to the side. “Sounds like you’ve got a lot on your plate again, boy. Start talking.”

Eddie started pacing back and forth. “As much as I loved playing for so many people, I didn’t like that I could only connect with a handful of them and not even the good kind.” He rubbed his chin angrily. “I didn’t like how tired we all were. It was set up, sound check, play, break down and move on to the next fucking town. And that wasn’t including all the parties, interviews, and all that other shit.”

“That does sound exhausting, Ed.”

“I didn’t like how easy it was for them to tell me to drop Gareth as drummer just because he had trouble adjusting to the increased volume. The price of fame they said. Like it was so simple to throw away almost two decades of friendship for the sake of adoring crowds and hearing our music on the radio.”

“Oh, darlin’,” Wayne said softly. “They didn’t...”

“Oh they absolutely did,” Eddie raged. “I didn’t like how they thought that because me and Steve’s relationship was new that I would be able to find someone better. Someone who liked metal, someone who would be down for the ride.”

Wayne furrowed his brow. “That doesn’t sound like good advice.”

Eddie grabbed his hair pulled at it frustration. “The last straw was when they offered to let their tattooist to finish my back tattoo, because while my artist was good, theirs was better.”

He stopped abruptly and turned to face Wayne. “I picked Steve to do my tattoo on my back because he was the only one I trusted to make it meaningful. To understand the symbolism of making something of yourself when everyone is rooting against you. I made the decision before I fell in love with him and now that we’re a couple– and for them to just dismiss him like that? It made me so angry.”

“So what’s the problem? What’s got you so twisted around the bend?”

Eddie took a deep breath and let it out slow. “I’m fucking furious because I always thought that when fame and fortune came knocking I would throw open that door and march right through it. But now? Given the choice? I’m slamming the door in its face and walking away.”

Hot tears ran down his face. “And I don’t know why.”

He dropped to his knees and began to sob.

Wayne stood up and put his arms around his nephew’s shoulders, gently pulling him to his chest.

“Did that band you were traveling with say that?” he whispered into Eddie’s curls. “Because if they did, I swear to god I will burn every record and CD you have of theirs. Don’t think I won’t. I’ll delete them off your phone too.”

Eddie chuckled weakly. “No, no. They were kind. It was everyone else we met. Agents, managers, roadies, groupies, the people around Metallica every day.”

Wayne nodded.

“I was just constantly bombarded with hateful messages and the constant running at one hundred percent...” he whimpered. “I don’t want to do it.”

“Have you told your band that?” Wayne asked.

Eddie shook his head. “I don’t dare to. I was the one that was gung ho about the touring and everything. How do I tell them I don’t want to leave the comfort of Indianapolis and home?”

“Kinda like that,” Jeff said from the doorway. His arms were crossed and he was leaning against the frame. Peaking around him was Miranda with a concerned look on her face.

Eddie scrambled to his feet and wrapped his arms around his waist. “I’m sorry I’ve been a brat.”

Jeff took three giant steps forward and hugged him fiercely. “You’re not being a brat. You’re scared and trying to figure it all out on your own, but you don’t have to, okay? We’ve all been worried sick about you. But Steve especially. I’ll call all the boys down for a chat and you call Steve, okay?”

Eddie nodded.

He dialed the number he knew by heart.

“Baby?” he asked, unsure of the reaction he was going to get. He deserved to be yelled at. Cursed at. Broken up with. He’d hurt Steve the most with this little temper tantrum he’d been having.

“Eds?” Steve breathed. “Sunshine, are you okay? Wayne said you hadn’t been eating well or sleeping much. Say the word and I’ll be there in a heartbeat.”

Eddie’s lip began to quiver and tears spilled out of his eyes. “I need you. More than anything.”

“I’m on my way,” Steve said fiercely.

Eddie looked over at Jeff.

“Tell Steve Brian will swing by and pick him up.”

Eddie nodded and relayed the message back to Steve.

“I’ll be at my apartment,” Steve said. “I’ll have Robin arrange my schedule, don’t you worry about thing, baby.”

“Mm’k.”

“I love you, Eds.”

Eddie closed his eyes and breathed in the warmth of that simple phrase. “Love you, too, pretty boy. Come quick.”

“I promise.”

*

Steve piled into Brian’s car. It was the newest, having bought it right before they got picked up by Metallica. He had finally saved up enough money to replace his beater.

Gareth and Gethin in the backseat. Gethin had come up to Indy to watch his twin’s apartment while he was gone and just ended up staying. He was currently looking for a job so that he could move in with Gareth full time.

At least that what they said on the trip down. The twins and Brian were intent on filling the air with talk and Steve let them. He let them fill him in on the tour and everything that had been going on since they’d left.

Steve couldn’t be for certain, but it sounded like that touring hadn’t been fun for anyone. Even after a week of rest, he could still make out the circles under their eyes and how hunched over they were with just sheer exhaustion.

A feeling Steve felt all too well.

Gethin was pressed against his twin’s side and was rubbing his neck soothingly.

Steve looked at Brian.

His face was set, hard and unflinching. He was going to make the drive to Hawkins as fast as he could and still avoid the cops.

Steve was grateful Brian was driving because he didn’t think he would have made the distinction to avoid breaking the law. He would have gunned it and flipped off any cop that tried to catch him.

After awhile, Steve was getting the oddest feeling that Brian was used to speeding down this stretch of highway because there were points where he would slow down for a few miles and then speed right back up.

Soon enough they were pulling up to Wayne’s trailer and piling out the car.

*

Eddie sat on the sofa with Jeff and Miranda on either side of him, just hugging him.

Wayne was busying himself in the kitchen, getting ready to feed the hoard that was about to descend on his home.

The door opened up and Brian, Gareth, and Gethin all stumbled through the entryway. Eddie was on his feet in an instant, Jeff and Miranda not far behind.

And then the trio at the door parted and there stood Steve. Looking just as tired and worn as Eddie felt.

“Stevie?” Eddie asked, taking a step toward him uncertainly.

Steve threw open his arms and Eddie ran straight into them. They wrapped their arms around each other and just sobbed.

“I’m here, Eds,” Steve murmured into Eddie’s neck. “I’m here. I love you so much.”

Eddie lifted his head and kissed him hard. “I love you, too. I regret leaving you behind, sweetheart. It nearly killed me. Every song I wrote was about you. About missing you. I don’t even want to leave you ever again, I can’t.”

The silence that followed that statement was deafening.

Steve led Eddie back over to couch and sat them both down. “Tell us everything, babe.”

And so Eddie did. He told them everything. Everything he had told Wayne, everything that had been weighing on his mind since they started touring. It all just came out in a flood.

They all listened patiently.

“Why didn’t you tell us you felt like that while we were on the road?” Gareth asked. “I knew what they were saying about me, but I also knew you guys wouldn’t drop me. If you had me about that I would have been able to reassure you that I’m not going anywhere, okay?”

Eddie flushed with embarrassment. “I didn’t know how to bring it up, it was so vile, man.”

Jeff gave his hand a squeeze. “Well, I think that you did a bang up job telling us now and that’s what really matters.”

“Someone offered to ship me out to LA and record an album,” Eddie finally admitted. “Not the band, just me. I told him that I wouldn’t go without you guys and he laughed in my face. Told me to cut the dead weight and be a star.” He dragged his hands over his face.

“But there were other offers. Good ones. Ones that included the band, well most of it, anyway. Always under the proviso that Gareth be replaced either on tour or all together. They didn’t want to make any accommodations for him even though there is a drummer with one god damn arm!”

“So the options are,” Brian said, “stay in Indy doing what we’ve been doing, only better because of the money we got for doing this tour. Go to LA without Gareth. Go to LA with Gareth but only as a studio musician and take some person we don’t know on tour with us. Does that sound about right?”

Just then Gareth’s phone went off. He looked at it with a frown. It wasn’t a number recognized so he let it go to voicemail. He pulled it up after the notification popped up.

He listened to message with wide eyes. “Hey guys, I think we have another option.” And he played the message so everyone could hear.

“Hey, Mr Hughes,” the tinny voice said through the speaker. “This is Murray Bauman, I’m music producer, we spoke in Las Vegas. I think I have the perfect deal for you boys. You were telling me that touring was really hard on you and that if there was an option you wouldn’t do that. I know you weren’t speaking for all your band, but I could tell that they would do anything for you, all four of you being such good friends.

“So the reason for this call is that I own a small music company in Bloomington and boy do I have a deal for you all. You would make a record through us, we would sell and distribute the record, keeping a portion of the sales, of course. But you wouldn’t have to tour. You have a steady gig as I understand it. If your fans want to see you play, they’ll know where to find you.

“But give me a call, we’ll hash out the details. My phone number is 555-555-2080...” and then message beeped, signaling the end of the voicemail.

Eddie looked down at the phone and then back up at Gareth. “Oh.”

Gareth grinned. “We don’t even have to take his offer, but I vote we listen to it. Brian can bring Cecil.”

Brian nodded. “He’s only got a semester left of law school, but I’ll have him brush up on his contract law to be on the safe side.”

Jeff raised his hand. “All in favor of hearing Mr Bauman out raise your hand?”

Eddie, Brian, and Gareth’s hands shot up.

“Sounds good,” Jeff said. “You call him back and set it up and if it doesn’t work out we can vote again.”

Brian shook his head. “Nah. I think if it doesn’t work, we stick to Nightmare Holes. We took a swing at it and if it’s a miss then we tried. I thought I wanted the touring and everything that came with stardom, but like Eddie I learned I wanted the romanticized version of it. I’ll be happy playing in front of our friends for the rest of our lives.”

The rest of the band nodded.

Soon everyone getting up to go back to Indy, but Steve stayed behind, he would go back up with Eddie in the morning. They had things to discuss that went deeper then the band.

****

Part 27 Part 28 Epilogue

I told you I would fix it.

Also a little BTS, the reason in my head for why things went wrong on tour but immediately righted itself when Eddie and Steve met up again? Steve still has Eddie's lucky pick. ;)

Tag List: @spectrum-spectre @estrellami-1 @zerokrox-blog @artiststarme @swimmingbirdrunningrock @gregre369 @pyrohonk ​@bookworm0690 @chaosgremlinmunson @goodolefashionedloverboi @chaoticlovingdreamer @maya-custodios-dionach @messrs-weasley @val-from-lawrence @plyerice27 @thedragonsaunt @sapphirecobalt-1 @a-little-unsteddie @i-must-potato @danili666 @carlyv @rozzieroos @wonderland-girl143-blog @itsall-taken @justforthedead89 @emly03 @aizawa-emma @yikes-a-bee @redfreckledwolf @thesuninyaface @bookbinderbitch @archermightbegay @littlewildflowerkitten @scheodingers-muppet @hallucinatedjosten @ellietheasexylibrarian @anne-bennett-cosplayer @cinnamon-mushroomabomination @bestwifehaver @xxfiction-is-my-realityxx @oldwitcheshat @nightmareglitter @tinyplanet95 @novelnovella @jonesn4coffee @slowandsteddie @awkwardgravity1 @steaddie-on

#my writing #stranger things #steddie #ladykailtiha writes #tattoo artist steve

[snek-eyes]

Ineffable Husbands eras

So I named the first section of history the Pre-Arrangement era, which of course led me thinking to how I would divide up the rest. This is of course just how I interpret the vibes, I'd love to hear thoughts!

Pre-Arrangement (4004 BC ~ 41 AD)

Getting to know each other—and themselves. They're both learning and growing in this brand new world, and they test each other out whenever the job brings them to the same place (There isn't a whole lot of place else yet to be). During this time they learn that they can not only trust each other, but the era ends with them realizing they actively enjoy each other's company. They have much more in common with each other than their respective sides.

4004 BC - Eden (Meeting. Surprising each other)

3004 BC - Mesopotamia (The flood. Aziraphale disappoints Crowley by sticking to Heaven's line.)

2500 BC - Uz (Job. Crowley tries to get Aziraphale to disappoint him again, but instead the angel puts his faith in the demon. Their Own Side is formed way back here.)

33 AD - Golgotha (Crucifixion. Crowley tests Aziraphale again, the angel passes and Crowley opens up about his name change)

41 AD - Rome (Oysters. Aziraphale is the one to reach out this time, and doesn't shy away from being unangelic.)

Formation of the Arrangement (537 ~ 1601)

Let's do this on purpose (for Strictly Business reasons). What defines this era is that Aziraphale is nervous and Crowley thinks they've got it made. Even well after they've agreed to working together, they're still doing the song and dance of Aziraphale pretending he doesn't know what's happening and Crowley seducing him into it.

537 AD - Kingdom of Wessex (Knights. Still running into each other by accident, Crowley proposes a more radical version of what will be the final agreement)

[1020ish - when the book says they reached the Arrangement]

1601 - Globe Theatre, London (Hamlet. They've switched jobs "dozens of times" by now, presumably that's at least 24 occasions but less than 100.)

And now I've gone and done math about it, so...

if the start date is also accurate for the show... by the 1600s they're meeting up at least once every 25 years on average.

(and that's for the minimum of 24 Arrangements)

In my unlikely scenario of them having 99 Arrangements already, that would bring it down to 5 years

Even if for some unlikely reason Aziraphale changed his mind and went back right away in 537, 24 Arrangements would have them meeting up on average every 44 years

Of course, these are exact averages and they aren't robots. It's likely meetings started out less often and increased in frequency as they got more comfortable. Maybe it was every 100 years in the beginning, who knows exactly! (only one man and he's not talking) Do with this information what you will. Let's move on.

Definitely Not Friends (1793 ~ 1862)

Let's do this on purpose (for personal reasons). No longer are they only arranging to meet up in-between going to each others' jobs so the other can stay home, this is going out of their way to spend time together.

During this era, Aziraphale has finally started to relax, while Crowley is doing the opposite. Turns out (in classic Crowley form) this might not have been as good an idea as he originally thought, but he's in way too deep now. The era ends when Crowley shatters Aziraphale's growing comfort.

1793 - Paris (Revolution. It's plausible that Aziraphale may have arranged this on purpose, to see Crowley without admitting that's what he wants. For his part, Crowley goes out of his way to stage a rescue, even though he's now able to admit it could get him in real trouble.)

1800 - London (Bookshop opening [from the script book, semi-canonical]. In Paris, Crowley knew Aziraphale was planning to open a bookshop, now he knows the exact date and is swinging by to bring him presents. Also sneakily puts a stop to the other angels recalling Aziraphale from Earth; just as he knew Aziraphale wouldn't like hell, he knows he wouldn't like going back to heaven either.)

1827 - Edinburgh (Grave robbing. Crowley invites Aziraphale to hang out in a graveyard in the middle of the night in what is totally not an old-timey date. The only pretense is a personal excuse ['hey angel come see this statue of your boss lmao']. This is just straight up spending time together.) Interestingly, this is also the last time we will really see them traveling together, everything from here on out is around London.

1862 - St. James Park (Holy water requested, denied. This meeting is oddly formal for all that came before it, even back in S1 when it followed right after the Paris rescue. Crowley is seriously rattled. The Holy Water request is a declaration that he would take on hell for them. Aziraphale doesn't understand and isn't ready to hear it even if he did.)

We Both Know that We Both Know (1941 ~ 1967)

We are dangerously aware of what's going on here. It is made very clear that they will both go to insane lengths to ensure the other will stay in their life. They still can't say it out loud, but the remaining pretense is tissue paper thin.

1941 - London (The Blitz. It's been 80 years since they've seen each other, and yet Crowley saunters back in right at the moment Aziraphale needs him. They spend a giddy night being ridiculous together, only to get the wake up call of their closest call yet from head office. It's the night of Aziraphale's two realizations: That they're in love, and the full weight of the danger that puts them in.)

1967 - Soho (Holy Water given. Aziraphale isn't happy about it, but he makes the decision to trust Crowley in hopes being on the same team will keep him safer than he'd be otherwise. It's the complete opposite of the decision he made to walk away 105 years ago. He also gives them both a slim glimpse of hope for the future.)

A Test of Faith (2008 ~ 2019)

Whose side are we on? 6000 years of becoming more and more of Earth while pretending that's not what they're doing, and it's finally time to either admit that or don't. Still not quite ready to admit that choosing "the world" also means each other, but they do choose their own side.

2008 - Baby antichrist delivered (Present day dates aren't outright stated, this is technically "11 years ago")

2019 - Apocawasn't (date from when S1 aired)

What Are We [Limbo] (2020 ~ 2023)

Finally free (what are we waiting for?). Stuck in a holding pattern, neither of them know how to move forward. All the coping mechanisms they've developed and sunk into over millennia are breaking down. Crowley is more stressed than ever waiting for the other shoe to fall, Aziraphale doesn't know who he is without the structure of heaven. Something needs to shake things up, and when it comes it shakes them apart.

2020 - Lockdown short (Semi-canonical. The excuse to hole up together is right there and they both clearly want it! But neither of them knows how to take that step.)

2023 - Gabriel disappears from heaven and chaos ensues (season 2 airdate)

As for what's next, I'm guessing something like:

Divorce Era (Figuring out who they are and what matters to them without the other for the first time. Throwback to the pre-Arrangement)

What Are We [Redux] (allied again, but the plot is giving us a convenient excuse to not address things between us. This is 'We Both Know' and 'Limbo' combined)

Ineffable Husbands time (when they've finally finally gotten it all out on the table. They are going to be insufferable.)

And those are my thoughts! Let me know what you think :)

#Good Omens #Good omens meta #Good omens timeline #Ineffable Husbands #V watches Good Omens #it's easy to take for granted now but i can't stop thinking about the pre arrangement era #where they're learning who they are individually for the first time in this brand new place that's also figuring out what it's going to be #at the same time that they're learning if this person is going to matter to them #they really have no idea about any of it #okay putting it that way they basically met in college. aaahaha

[weixuldo]

Enigma// ch 25

anakin x reader

A/N: Helloooooo everyone!! once again i am back :0 enigma is entering its FINAL CHAPTERS!!! i’m planning probably two more and possibly an epilogue (if that interests you guys) thank you so much for reading!! this one is kinda long

anakin has been acting off…

warnings: cursing, mentions of pregnancy, afab! reader, depressive tendencies, ani is a disabled veteran, topics of death

_____________________________

The season seemed to change quicker than the last and soon the cool brisk air of autumn was at your doorstep; the weeks after Anakin’s party mostly consisted of you going back to classes and uncomfortably sitting in the hard chairs of your university. 

As for Anakin, he spent most of his days working on converting the spare room into a nursery for your child (that should be making an appearance in about two months).

There was really only so much Anakin could do, but it really helped that he got the grunt of it done for you. 

The two of you tended to avoid talking about his condition, but every once in a while there were bad days where there was no denying the severity. Anakin played down his discomfort a lot of the time (he didn’t want to trouble you), but you could always tell. Most of the time you would just silently comfort him and do your best to alleviate his pain.

On the other side of things, when the baby would be restless (in turn, making you exhausted) he was an absolute sweetheart. He would drop everything just to hold you. 

Thankfully, this week had been merciful to both of you; Anakin had been feeling great and you had been getting full nights of rest. You decided to sleep in with Anakin and enjoy the free saturday. 

Bright streaks of sunlight peeked through the cloth curtains as you laid beside your lover. He was resting on his stomach with his longer arm under his pillow; the warm sun illuminated the freckles scattered across his back and you lightly traced them (as you often did).

You attempted to scoot closer, but your bump hit his side before you could get as close as you wanted. A frown found its way onto your face; yes, this belly was the product of your love, but man it was annoying sometimes. 

You rolled over onto your side and silently daydreamed about cuddling close to Anakin again once you had the baby. 

As if he could read your thoughts, he shifted the best he could to hug against your back.

“Ani? You're awake?” you quietly asked. 

He only hummed a sleepy agreement before kissing your shoulder. 

“Morning, my love-  how did the two of you sleep?” he asked.

“This little one was a bit active around 2, but other than that, we slept well” you responded, snaking your hand around your side to brush against his stump. 

“Mmm”

The two of you basked in the warm sunlight until Anakin’s alarm went off. 

“Shit” he groaned before calling to siri to end it. 

He pushed himself up and stretched his neck before reaching for his shorter prosthetic (easier to put on by himself).

He placed the mechanical forearm between his legs and pushed his arm into the socket like a glove; once it was on fully, he tested the motor controls (grip control, strength, and range). 

As he pieced himself together, you silently observed him with a small smile. He was a living wonder. 

As he fitted his longer arm, he caught a glimpse of your staring and smirked, “what's got you so attentive? Hmm?”.

“Oh, nothing- just a very, very handsome man” you replied in an innocent voice. 

“Is that so?” he said, reaching for his legs that were propped against the night stand. 

“Most definitely” you giggled, sitting up. 

He shook his head with a smile. You stood and stretched, the baby was putting an uncomfortable strain on your back. 

“Do you need any help, Ani?” you asked, walking to his side of the bed. 

Usually you wouldn’t have asked, but he had been having some trouble this week. 

“I’m alright, thank you though” he said. 

“Wait, actually could you hand me my liners, I think I left them over by the closet, I’m sorry”.

Sure enough they were sitting on the stool by the dresser, you grabbed them and walked back to him, “No need to apologize- here” you said with a smile. 

He grabbed them and thanked you before bringing your hand to his lips- his plush lips softly peppered a delicate kiss on the back of your hand, making you smile. 

Anakin put on his liners and lined up his legs with the prosthetics. He began to push his legs into the sockets and got ready to stand. After months living with him, you knew he preferred to do his first few steps in private; it took a few awkward wobbly steps to get his legs secured and ready to walk, so you left the bedroom so he could work it out. 

You went to the cabinet to grab the box of cheerios you had been working on all week; not long after you heard the bedroom door open and soon Anakin walked around to your side. Without a word he brushed his mechanical hand across the small of yoru back before kissing you on the cheek. 

“How are your legs today, Ani?” you asked, pouring the rest of the milk into your bowl. 

“They’re better than yesterday,” he responded, grabbing some fruit from the fridge. 

“That's good,” you responded.

The two of you ate breakfast quietly until you said you needed to go grocery shopping.

“We can go today, I need to run some errands anyways” Anakin said quickly. 

He never liked to go out… odd. 

“I can get your stuff since ill already be out, what do you need?” 

“No It’s ok, I want to go with you” he insisted. 

Hmm..

“Is something wrong Ani?” 

“No, why do you ask?” he responded. 

“Nothing” you shook your head. 

With that you went back to the bedroom to get dressed and Anakin started taking his pills. He was acting weird out of nowhere but you couldn’t quite tell what was wrong, though after a year knowing him, it was better not to pry. 

Your bump was becoming comically round; this must be a big baby! As you walked back out to the kitchen you felt a kick; poking a finger at your belly you playfully said “Hey little one, you’ve still got about two months to go!”. 

______________________________________

You headed to the driver's seat of the car but Anakin beat you to it. He usually wasn’t so adamant to drive. 

“I’ll drive,” he said, opening the door. 

“Are you sure, Ani? I can” you protested. 

“Yea, I don't want you exhausting yourself, I know the baby has been kicking” he said, pulling you in to kiss your forehead. 

“Alright”

The car ride was mostly silent, save for the old radio (Anakin refused to convert to AUX, he insisted the CDs and radio of his youth were superior).

With the way he had to drive, he didn’t have a free hand to rest on your thigh, so you rested yours on his instead. 

“You seem off today, Is everything alright?” you finally decided to ask him. 

“Mhm” he mumbled, looking out the window. 

You decided not to ask further, his whole demeanor was off. 

After a few more miles he passed the grocery store and continued to another location. 

“Ani, you missed the exit” you said, watching the store disappear further into the distance. 

“Yea” he said, pulling into a building you hadn’t seen before. 

“What's going on?” you demanded- anxiety climbing with every minute.

“Its a surprise” he said, putting his regular hand back on. 

He got out and came around to open your door. A surprise? For what? Why would he be acting so weird? 

You wrapped your hands around his bicep as he led you into the building, it was dark and seemed pretty vacant, but he turned a corner and opened the door to reveal a brightly colored baby shower. 

Your worries ceased and a smile came to your face; all of this was for you?

The past weeks had been insanely stressful and you didn’t realize how tense you were until the realization that all of these people in this room cared for you and your baby…

Maybe it was the hormones or maybe it was the stress all coming undone, but you felt yourself tearing up. 

Ahsoka shouted “surprise”, until she saw your eyes watering; she ran up and enveloped you in a big hug.

“Aww y/n! It’s alright, I didn’t mean to upset you” he said, rubbing your back.

“No, no- Ash, this is so sweet- I don’t even know what to say”

“You don’t have to say anything, just know you’re doing a great job”.

She led you to the main area and you conversed with the attendees (Mainly composed of some friends from school and the friends you had made through Ash and Ani).

There was an adorable cake with cutely piped icing in the shapes of baby animals in pastel shades, sparkling cider (non-alcoholic, of course) in what looked like sippy cups (Rex though it would be funny), and a big circular table with a pile of gifts. 

You couldn’t have been more surprised by this.

________________________

Anakin smiled as he watched your excitement; you deserved something special.

He was just about to join the party when his phone began to ring; it was his doctors office.

“Hello?” he answered.

“Is Mr. Skywalker there?” the woman on the other end asked.

“This is he”

“Wonderful, we’ve just called to inform you that your tissue samples have been processed and analyzed”

Anakin’s eye twitched- he had been waiting for those results since he came back… he didn’t know if he even wanted to know.

“Alright”

“Are you in a private area? The results are serious”

Fuck.

“yea, I’m good” he lied as he smiled and waved as you turned around to find him.

“Ok wonderful, unfortunately the results came back indicating high levels of deficiency; your liver is grossly underproducing cholesterol, bile, and is not breaking down saturated fats as a normal liver should”

He closed his eyes and sighed- he knew something was wrong- nothing ever went right for him.

“what does that mean for me exactly?” he asked.

“Your liver’s functionality will rapidly decline in the following weeks and you will feel higher levels of discomfort”

Anakin nodded along as he listened to the woman list off symptoms he should expect.

“How long?”

“Pardon?” she asked

“How long do I have left?”

“Sir, I’m not so sure I ca-“

“I think have a right to know if I’m going to live long enough to see my child’s birth-so how long?” he seethed.

“A few weeks… But, there are possibilities for longer- do you know how far along on the donor list you are? Remember everyone’s path is different, you may-”.

Anakin hung up and shoved his phone back into his pocket. He felt his chest heaving, but the sounds of the lively gathering only a few yards away, caught his attention.

You were grinning ear to ear as your friends all doted on you. He couldn’t ruin your day. He just needed to push the information aside for now and focus on you.

He could deal with this the same way he dealt with everything; ignore it.

_____________________

After mingling for a bit you realized Anakin had been sitting off to the side; not unlike him, but you would think he would put on a more cheery face at his unborn child’s baby shower.

He was leaning back in one of those uncomfortable folding metal chairs, his arm resting on the table beside him. You walked up and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder and he flinched as if you startled him. 

“Ani, what's the matter?” you asked.

He shook his sandy locks and readjusted himself on the chair, “Nothing princess, Just don’t like keeping things from you” he said vaguely. 

“What? About this party?” you questioned, confusedly. 

Anakin obviously knew something you didn’t but he didn’t want to ruin your time here so he lied- you looked so happy- you deserved to always be this happy.

So he took a deep breath and mustered up an authentic smile and reached for your hand. 

“Hah, yea- you almost caught me a few times. I was worried I would give in to your questions and ruin the surprise” he said, leaning up for a kiss. 

You happily returned the gesture and smiled against him. 

“I was wondering why you were acting off earlier- you had me worried, but I’m glad everything is alright! Should we go back?” you smiled, tugging lightly on his sweatshirt’s hem. 

“Of course, sweetheart”

____________________________________

You settled in to bed with a smile on your face; today was the best day, you had in a while- you felt loved and supported by your friends, you got a lot of great things for your baby (that should be arriving in a few short months), and you got to cuddle with the man whom you loved. 

You snuggled beneath the plush blankets and rested your head on Anakin’s shoulder, “ I can’t wait to meet our baby” you smiled as you hugged yourself closer him.

“Goodnight Ani”.

You felt him tenderly kiss your forehead, “goodnight my love”.

Shortly you drifted off into a peaceful slumber, but Anakin was wide awake; his thoughts raced. 

Today was an exciting day for the two of you, no doubt, but he couldn’t stop thinking about the future. You were so young, so beautiful- you had your whole life ahead of you. And here he was basically twice your age, broken, and useless… and yet-

You loved him.

He knew you loved him, he felt how much you truly cared and sometimes he felt guilty for it. He cherished and loved you just as much but he knew that he would end up leaving you before you left him… it was just a matter of age. 

He had enough health problems when you first met, but he’d been getting worse- it pained him to think of you alone with a child that you weren’t even expecting. That is the last thing he would want to do to you…

He took a deep breath as he felt you sleepily cling closer to him.

Maker.

How was he supposed to tell you his tissue samples came back from the lab this morning?

How was he supposed to tell you he only had a few weeks left?

How was he supposed to break your heart?

***

a/n: as i’ve said many times before: I am not a medical professional so i’m sorry for the mistakes in medical knowledge hahah- this chapter was kinda bittersweet :/ and as always i wanna thank you all for reading!!

taglist : @dnamht @sxoulohvn @angeelcoree @wtf-andys @httpeachesblog @katsukiswrld @jetiikote @poisonedsultana a @imarimon @fallinlovewithevil @sythe-skywalker

#darth vader #darth vader x reader #anakin x reader #vader #sw darth vader #anakin #darth vader fic #star wars #star wars x reader #anakin x you #enigma #enigma fic #anakin needs a hug #anakin skywalker x female reader #anakin x fem reader #anakin x y/n #anakin skywalker x reader #sw x reader #star wars x you #star wars fan fiction #modern starwars

[paradoxcase]

Chapter 25 of Nona the Ninth

So this chapter has a broken Gideon skull, which in this book seems to mean people being deceitful, and something is definitely up because Gideon is like 2-3 times as much Gideon as she normally is in this chapter, and I don't think that's an impression I only have because I've recently been through 3/4 of book full of Nona POV

Throughout this chapter, Gideon is referred to as "the corpse" or "the corpse prince" frequently, and I just feel like I should point out that we've gotten to the point where there are actually two different walking and talking corpses in this scene and both of them could plausibly be referred to as a prince. Even though Naberius's body is not currently being controlled by Ianthe, Naberius himself was a prince before he died

Hmm

That's all the definitions, I think Gideon just made this one up. Also, it's not a good day when you learn a new ethnic slur from the dictionary

Pyrrha acts like Gideon said "yes" here, but she didn't. That's like, a combination of "yes" and "nope"

It's hilarious, and I think actually accurate, that she's still terrified of the needle even though she is literally immune to needles now

"Judith Deuteros for some reason" really just sums up Judith's whole role in this story, doesn't it? It also would make a great blog title for a Judith fanblog, someone should get on that

Poor Judith! It's been a hot minute since Judith actually said something in a language that someone other than Nona can understand, so I really do hope it still is Judith in her body, and not someone or something else in there now

Right, so this could potentially mean:

The whole time since she impaled herself on the fence (unlikely since Gideon was stealth-narrating the entirety of Harrow the Ninth)

The whole time since Pyrrha and Nona met up with BOE at the end of Harrow the Ninth (since BOE had Gideon's body at that point, I think it's entirely possible that Gideon's soul transferred back into it from Harrow's body when she came into its proximity)

The whole time since John reacquired Gideon's body and made his modifications to it, and possibly also brought Gideon's soul back to it at that point

She could also just mean "the whole time I've been in New Rho" or "the whole time you've been in the barracks" but obviously she's been awake for longer than that since she was around to receive medals and stuff from John

Wiktionary says a "rusk" is a "weaning food for children" but doesn't give any kind of information on what specific food it is, or if it's just a general word for that kind of food

So Ianthe can "shut her off" somehow. I'm not sure if I buy that it was Gideon's idea to come here. I don't think she likes Ianthe, I don't think she would have thought New Rho would be a fun place to be, and even if she actually wanted to go to Ninth House like she says later I don't think she could have predicted that she'd be in a position for that to happen here and there are much easier and more straightforward ways for her to get to the Ninth House if she'd stayed with John

An interesting question is whether or not she would have won a fight with Ianthe's entropy field. I tend to think not, because a literal bar of metal didn't survive the entropy field, and even though she has some, like, I guess artificial preservation from being John's daughter she wasn't immune to direct physical damage because of that and even John himself wasn't immune to being taken apart into bits by Mercy, and since Mercy made the OG entropy field I'm sure it probably works using the same principle as whatever she did to John. Gideon may still survive the entropy field somehow, but if the entropy field was still functional it would actually be a great way for Palamedes to get a blood sample from her for Tomb-opening purposes, and so I think John would be extremely against having any such thing anywhere near Gideon's body. So I'm sticking with my theory that this was Ianthe's idea. She intentionally showed Gideon's body during the broadcast, she did that on purpose, although I guess if Gideon was "turned off" during that time she might not know that

Man, thanks for nothing, Gideon

Significant things that happened in the River at the end of the last book:

G1deon and a bunch of ghosts scared Number Seven off and it went to New Rho

Augustine was eaten by the Stoma

Harrow's and Palamedes' River bubbles ceased to exist

The Mithraeum was submerged in the River and sank very far down, unknown currently if John and Ianthe managed to save it

I can't think of why any of these things would make it safe for non-Lyctors to travel safely through the River. The ghosts all make themselves scarce around resurrection beasts, but I'm sure Ianthe and Gideon's journey didn't start out in the presence of a resurrection beast and I don't think the ghosts are the reason why River travel is dangerous for non-Lyctors

Blatant lies, lmao

She's so bad at lying, she starts off with "I don't want anything anymore" and finishes with "I want to go to the Ninth House because I have unfinished business there", and I suspect both of those things are at least partly lies. But I think she's right that John would probably give her a medal for killing this collection of people at this point, including Corona I think

But I suspect that she is the one who wants to go back to the Ninth House, for some undisclosed reason, and she's not acting on John or Ianthe's wishes here. If John wanted her to go back to the Ninth House she would already be there yesterday. If Ianthe wanted her to go there, I don't think she would have put up that entropy field, and she might even have tried to do some deal with BOE where she exchanged Gideon for the Sixth House. Also, I don't think Ianthe actually gives a shit about the Ninth House or anything that happened there. And there's no one else left in John's circuit at this point

Man, when Pyrrha said she was heavy, I just thought it was because she was tall and full of muscle. How damn strong is Pyrrha, exactly?

No, hold on, let me math this

A normal adult human has 11 kg of bones. Cortical bone makes up 80% of bone mass and has an average density of 1908 kg/m3, and cancellus bone makes up 20% and has an average density of 1178 kg/m3, so that is an average density of 1762 kg/m3 over all. There are 1,000,000 cm3 in 1 m3, so 11 kg / 1762 kg/m3 * 1,000,000 cm3/m3 is 6,242.9 cm3 of bone. Titanium has a density of 4.506 g/cm3. 6,242.9 cm3 * 4.506 g/cm3 is 28,130.5 g or a little over 28 kg. Since bones usually weigh 11 kg, that's only 17 extra kg of bone, so she only actually weighs about 37 and a half more pounds than usual. She says "titanium plex", which is not a real thing, but I can't imagine that titanium plex would actually be more dense than titanium, so I think it checks out that she would just be somewhat heavier than expected and not ridiculously heavy or something like that

That's a great question that I'd love to see answered. Is the fence also going to turn out to be some kind of holy object infused with a power even higher than John?

Speaking of holes, I remember back a long time ago I reblogged that one poll that mentioned stigmata sex, and people assured me that while the stigmata were actually in the book, the stigmata sex was not. Are Gideon's holes the stigmata? Does that count as stigmata? I think it's in the wrong place, isn't it?

So, thanergy is cell death, but it seems like dead bodies radiate thanergy even if no cell death is occurring, because John's cryo bodies were generating thanergy for him even after he'd completely stopped them from rotting. So Gideon's body is somehow preserved due to being related to John, but in a way that doesn't involve being infused with thalergy as she suggests for the blood sample, because as we know from the last chapter, body + soul + thalergy = living person, and Gideon isn't a living person, so she must be missing one of those, and it's not her body or her soul. The preservation only applies to the bounds of her body, and her body is still radiating thanergy, apparently enough that it would kill the blood sample?

She got her whole childhood fantasy of a famous and powerful parent who gave her everything she wanted, but that person turned out to be John, and now she's stuck with him and Ianthe and being used as figurehead for John's military, and he spent just enough effort on her to make sure that her body can't be used against him but didn't fix the gaping holes in her chest, and the person she sacrificed herself for is missing and possibly dead, and someone else is in her body instead

I mean, Ianthe was keeping her locked up behind the entropy field. I wonder if she's had a lot of that from John, too

#the locked tomb #nona the ninth

[samglyph]

Final compiled thoughts for part 35!

I feel like you guys are gonna get tired of me saying this but… I really enjoyed this episode. Partially because all of my predictions/desires for the episode ended up being accurate! so I feel quite vindicated. I’m happy how things wrapped up with Daniel, and I have to say Harlan did a good job with the tension this episode. I was on the edge of my seat during the hospital standoff.

So first of all. Scratch. SCRATCH. First of all, totally called it, and also I love her and his weird crush on Arthur. Now we have an evil magic rock. Good for him.

John’s memory is definitely getting worse, and I’m wondering if the deal he made with Kayne some how had a timer that eats away his time with Arthur— maybe he’s being siphoned back to the dreamlands or the darkworld the longer he takes to get Arthur where Kayne wants him? Because he’s definitely worse than he was in 25-31.

Noel is DEFINITELY not who he says he is— when he quoted Adam from back in part 5 my immediate thought was that he was a kiy puppet or similar, but I’ve seen a lot of interesting theories going around already. But yeah. I don’t trust him.

Oscar was like. Surprisingly wholesome? And also mvp of this episode, took care of Daniel, took down the butcher, man really stepped up. Proud of him. I also liked Arthur getting a hug (at least I think that’s what the sound implied) the man needed it.

My one slight critique (not really a critique, im just not sure about it) of this episode is I don’t know how Arthur is going to internalize Daniel’s little pep talk. I want Arthur to aspire to being a good person, but I also think he has to be able to do that while also being honest with himself about fucking up. Arthur tends to have two modes which are “I’m the worst person alive I’m inherently evil I’m a monster” and “everything I’ve ever done is justified, actually” so Im kinda hoping (likely in vain) that he might eventually learn a bit of dbt theory and get out of those extremes. He seems to be doing a bit better in terms of being honest with himself, but idk if receiving that sort of praise is going to help. It might! We’ll just have to see.

#malevolent #malevolent part 35 #malevolent podcast #malevolent meta #my thoughts

[caltropspress]

RAPS + CRAFTS #23: Sunmundi

1. Introduce yourself. Past projects? Current projects?

Peace. I’m Sunmundi. I started rapping a few years ago. Last year I released my debut album, Midnight Oil, produced by Āthmaan, through Damn That Noise, and my second album, Lived and Born, produced by klwn cat, just came out. I’m currently working on a project with my man Sasco for '25.

2. Where do you write? Do you have a routine time you write? Do you discipline yourself, or just let the words come when they will? Do you typically write on a daily basis?

I try to write every day. But I go through long bouts of writer’s block, in which case I have to force myself to take a step back and wait till I get inspired again. And I pretty much only write raps while driving. For the past few years I’ve had a really long commute to work, so I end up just listening to beats and jotting down lines in my car. Pretty fucking dangerous, but it is what it is.

3. What’s your medium—pen and paper, laptop, on your phone? Or do you compose a verse in your head and keep it there until it’s time to record?

I just use my phone.

4. Do you write in bars, or is it more disorganized than that?

Initially I tend to just focus on writing down as many thoughts and lines as possible when listening to a beat, then eventually separate them into stanzas where it feels right. I don’t count bars or anything—when a verse feels done, it’s done. 

5. How long into writing a verse or a song do you know it’s not working out the way you had in mind? Do you trash the material forever, or do you keep the discarded material to be reworked later?

When I feel like I’m forcing lines, I stop writing. But once I have a set of good/memorable lines and can figure out how I’m gonna rhyme, I know pretty immediately after that I’ll finish the song. I used to try and repurpose all my leftover lines, and a lot of them do end up in songs, but lately I’ve been finding that shit turns out better when I write the whole thing to a beat from scratch.

6. Have you engaged with any other type of writing, whether presently or in the past? Fiction? Poetry? Playwriting? If so, how has that mode influenced your songwriting?

When I was studying English in college, I enjoyed academic writing, so I got used to a certain command of language. I presented one of my papers at a literary conference (the paper was about Griselda and Machiavellian ethics, so I read Benny and Westside Gunn lyrics to a room full of academics and peers, which was funny). But I was never very interested in any creative writing before rap. I feel like my voice/songwriting comes down to my musical influences more than anything.

7. How much editing do you do after initially writing a verse/song? Do you labor over verses, working on them over a long period of time, or do you start and finish a piece in a quick burst?

I definitely labor over verses. I might take anywhere from a week to a month to get a verse done. I try to edit as I go, working line by line, but on the whole, I’m spending most of my time editing after I have a foundation set. I used to take way longer to write a single verse/song, but I’m learning that sometimes quick flashes of writing can yield good shit. 

8. Do you write to a beat, or do you adjust and tweak lyrics to fit a beat?

I usually let the beat dictate the direction of a verse. I’ll occasionally write down lines that pop up in my head and put them in a song later on, but generally, I write to beats. 

9. What dictates the direction of your lyrics? Are you led by an idea or topic you have in mind beforehand? Is it stream-of-consciousness? Is what you come up with determined by the constraint of the rhymes?

It depends. When I was releasing one-off songs before Midnight Oil, they were mostly inspired by the beats producers would send me. Now my albums are becoming gradually more conceptual, so I generally have a pool of ideas to pull from in order to write a song. I don’t really make songs “about” specific things though—not that I have anything against that, but I like trying to capture moods and atmospheres in more general ways. That’s just more satisfying to me. And I won’t say rhymes are an afterthought, because I spend so much time thinking about them, but I think the content of what I’m writing is moreso at the forefront of my mind. And I believe there’s always some element of stream-of-consciousness going on as well. 

10. Do you like to experiment with different forms and rhyme schemes, or do you keep your bars free and flexible?

I feel like I’m still trying to solidify what makes my shit work, so I don’t experiment too much with form. Occasionally I like to try and keep one rhyme scheme for a whole song/verse, but otherwise I’m sticking to the basics and going where each line takes me. 

11. What’s a verse you’re particularly proud of, one where you met the vision for what you desire to do with your lyrics?

The verse on “Harbingers” off Lived and Born. It’s the last song on the album, but it feels like it’s opening a door for the listener as I’m closing one for myself—“It’s goodbye for now, hello forever.” Also the whole verse feels like a major catharsis, which is becoming a habit of my outros.

12. Can you pick a favorite bar of yours and describe the genesis of it?

I don’t think I can pick a favorite, but one couplet I love is, “From now until my voice drown, I vow to hold it down / Say Holden, don’t you wait around, say, Scout, take me out.” I just dig the wordplay on the first line, and the second line references Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye and Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird, two books my dad and I share a love for. I feel like by contextualizing myself with those two characters, both of whom are kids, I’m crediting my dad for teaching me to appreciate reading while also reflecting on my own nostalgia. So it feels like a nice shoutout to him.

13. Do you feel strongly one way or another about punch-ins? Will you whittle a bar down in order to account for breath control, or are you comfortable punching-in so you don’t have to sacrifice any words?

I try not to punch in. I think I’ve only done it on two or three songs before. It’s common for me to write myself into a hole, where I don’t have the breath control to rap what I wrote, but I think I’m getting better at knowing my limits and writing around that by condensing lines. Plus the challenge of writing more concisely makes you a better writer, in my opinion. 

14. What non-hiphop material do you turn to for inspiration? What non-music has influenced your work recently?

I’m not as big a reader as I used to be, but when I get writer’s block, which is common, I try to get back into it. Some writers who have inspired me are James Baldwin, Dostoyevsky, David Foster Wallace. But I dig movies too. I find David Lynch, Bong Joon-ho, and Robert Eggers to be inspirational. And lately I’ve been trying to give my albums more of a thesis of some kind, so I’m trying to do more reading and studying topics to put into the music. For the project I’m working on right now I’m thinking about media overconsumption, the perils of technology and its impact on communication, etc. 

15. Writers are often saddled with self-doubt. Do you struggle to like your own shit, or does it all sound dope to you?

I’m full of self-doubt as an artist, but I think that mindset leads me to only release music I can be content with. I listen to my stuff pretty frequently before releasing it, then when it’s out, I tend to move on to the next project. I feel like I need to live with the music before I can really claim it as my own and be proud of it, you know? 

16. Who’s a rapper you listen to with such a distinguishable style that you need to resist the urge to imitate them?

Definitely woods. Obviously his style can’t be copied (he takes care of his words—Munchausen by proxy), but when Aethiopes dropped, I had to stop listening to it after a few weeks because I didn’t wanna start biting. His tone, humor, and flow are infectious. I’ll put Starker in that category too—I think he has one of the best flows I’ve ever heard.

17. Do you have an agenda as an artist? Are there overarching concerns you want to communicate to the listener?

I don’t have an agenda that extends to the listener. I try not to be didactic, or preachy, or purport to know more than anyone else. My writing is mostly very internal, personal, emotional. It’s common for me to speak in the second person in rhymes, but that’s just a device I use to tell or ask myself something. I’m my own target audience. That being said, I do feel like I tend to write from a very zoomed out perspective, and if that happens to be relatable or evocative to a listener, that’s tight.

RAPS + CRAFTS is a series of questions posed to rappers about their craft and process. It is designed to give respect and credit to their engagement with the art of songwriting. The format is inspired, in part, by Rob McLennan’s 12 or 20 interview series.

Photo credit: Andi June

#underground hip hop #zines #sunmundi

[vs120shound]

The lurking potential of Charlee Lynn . . . Her beauty is subtle; her smoking is softly amazing . . . as well as alluring and seductive!

VIDEO OF THE WEEK 🚬 🚬 (SF HALL OF FAME) 🚬 NUMBER 8 IN THE SERIES!

For the Week of 101623-102223 ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ | Five "Stars"

From vs120shound staff | ★★★★★ (6 total: L)

Dual-Media 3-Post, 36-Pack (Megapost!)

Charlee Lynn from Elegant Smoking!

Her eyes are breath-takingly wonderous. No other facial feature is resoundingly beautiful -- but for the entire package, Charlee Lynn of Smoking-Models (U.K.) is simply . . . and elegantly . . . gorgeous. She was selected as an Honorable Mention choice in January 2023 for the "unofficial" official Top-25 all-time favorite SF models list published on vs120shound over most of the first month of this year. Here, in this SF Hall-of-Fame clip, Charlee Lynn is the very definition of smoking satisfaction. We've seen women in love with the cigarette they are smoking yet that is rare to behold. And that certainly is not this clip of Charlee, which was released on Elegant Smoking -- a sister SF website within the Smoking-Models family of websites -- on July 28, 2009. It is pure smoking contentment for Charlee with her Virigina Slims 120s Menthols Luxury Lights. She wasn't on the verge of an orgasm here, no. She simply conveyed how rewarding and enriching her habit of smoking cigarettes throughout the day is for her on a consistent basis. Kind of got the sense that upon finishing her smoke, she paused, smiled, licked her lips, looked around, hummed to herself and thought, "Wow, that was great; I loved smoking that cigarette. I think I'm going to light-up another one right now!"

. . . well, the understated Charlee Lynn did not have an undervalued -- or overstated -- career for James, the web-master/web producer for Smoking-Models (U.K.). It was an active run covering 2 years and 2 days; she was quite busy with 40 video shoots in all, with 22 for Smoking-Models and 18 for Elegant Smoking. She began her term with S-M on September 4, 2009 and wrapped it up on July 18, 2011. Charlee Lynn, whose exhales are ordinarily mighty fine, started her projects with ES on July 28, 2009 with two shoots -- a solo session from which our centerpiece video was produced and another with her super companion Emma Spellar, Miss Great Britain 2004 -- ending it on March 28, 2011. We are permitted to tender rhetorical questions -- after all, this is OUR space, so here goes . . . Have you seen an SF model ever look so glorious with VS120s Menthols before? You might have, and if you have, you've got a short list going there. Make it a wee bit longer, lads -- if you are seeing this video for the first time today -- and add Charlee Lynn to that list. This video was the 21st uploaded on to the page in vs120shound history back on January 4, 2019 after having opened shop on June 18, 2018.

THE MEDIA!

YouTube Videos of Charlee Lynn!

From YT's "Nicolas Stough" webpage in 2017 . . .

From YT's "Kurt Baker" webpage, with Emma Spellar, in 2017 . . .

From YT's "smoking girl" webpage in 2018 . . .

Previous Posts of Charlee Lynn on Our Network!

From vs120shound on January 29, 2023 . . .

From vs120shound on October 5, 2022 . . .

Photographs of Charlee Lynn (from Smoking-Models family of SF sites)!

Emma Spellar (left) lights-up Charlee Lynn

And on the more Elegant side . . .

Emma Spellar (left) lights-up Charlee Lynn

#SF #Hot women who love smoking cigarettes #Smoking cigarettes #Smoking #The Video of The Week (Honorable Mention)! #The Video of The Week (HoF) . . . Hall of Fame! #Charlee Lynn of Smoking-Models (U.K.)! #Emma Spellar of Smoking-Models (U.K.)!

[angelichavenhasideas]

Age headcanons for the LU boys

So, for Gift Of Family I need to know all of the boys ages for when they're adopted and when the last of them is adopted. However, this meant that I had to figure out not only their age order but how close I could get the boys to their canonical ages as possible. So, I'm going to share with you my findings of not only how old I think each Link is in Jojo's comic but also how old I think they are in each of their games based on vibes, official nintendo art, Jojo's art, and Jojo's past QnA stuff. Let's begin.

Time

Time is both the easiest and trickiest. To avoid the trickiness, I decided to ignore his mental age and just focused on his physical age.

For Ocarina of Time, I've put Time as 9/16. First of all, we know he's a kid, maybe the youngest of all the Links, though I doubt it. But most of my reasoning for putting Time at 9 when he starts his adventure is simply because, ever since I was a kid, I thought it was a canonical fact that Time was 9 when he left Kokiri Forest. I don't know where I got this information, I can't find any proof of this being true, but nostalgia is very good at her job and I haven't seen anything from Jojo disproving this fact. So Time starts OoT at 9 and travels seven years in the future, making him also 16 at the same time.

Majora's mask was much easier. I hadn't made Time age up from 9 to 10 during OoT and, when MM opens, Time is actively trying to hunt Navi down. So i don't believe Time can be any younger than 10 when he runs into the Skull Kid. In fact, I believe he is ten during the entirety of MM, seeing as it only takes three days and Time doesn't really look any different then he did in OoT except maybe a little bit more maturity in promotional art. So, Time is no younger then 10 but no older then 12.

During LU I'd bargain that Time is exactly 30 years old. Jojo has stated that not only is Time the physically oldest of the Chain but she's also stated that it's been around 20 years since the end of his last adventure. I took the 20 year limit literally and decided that it'd been exactly 20 years since MM ended. And since I figure that Time was 10 at the time, Time is now 30 years old. I can see an argument for both 29 and 31 but there's not much of an argument outside of that.

Warriors

Canonically the comic's second oldest Link, Warriors is also one of the oldest heroes in his own game. Asuming that his only game inspiration is Hyrule Warriors, Definitive Edition not included, we can assume that Jojo's statement of Warriors being "about 6-7 years" out of his initial adventure is the only numbers we need.

We'll be basing Sky and Twi off of Warriors age scoring too but Warriors age actually came down to US military ages. While you can join the military at 16 (as far as I understand it) most people in training are 18 or older. While Hyrule is a fictional nation, we can assume that their age of maturity is either 17 or 18, seeing as BotW is very dependent on the Calamity arriving on Zelda's 17th birthday because she can only go to the Spring of Wisdom at the age of 17.

So with the numbers 17 and 18 to work with, my new moto was established. "When in doubt, go for the higher number." With this moto in mind, I decided that, as a recruit/trainee/whatever Warriors is at the beginning of his game, he's probably 18. And, with the idea that HW took around a year to finish, if not longer, then Warriors would end his adventure at 19.

So with Warriors at 19 by the end of his adventure, we can take Jojo's higher break number (BN for short), Warriors would have had 7 years between HW and LU. So one simple math problem later, I've figured out that the most likely age for Warriors to be is 26. I would have personally liked him to be a year older so he can be even closer to Time's age but he's more likely to be 25 than he is 27, so 26 it is.

Twilight

The third oldest, this is the first big age gap of the Chain (not taking Time into account because there was always going to be a large gap for him). Now, despite how old he seems in TP, I don't actually think he reaches the age of maturity, which, for the context of the Chain in particular, we will not be counting as anything younger than 19 because of Jojo's words early on in LU's existence.

I don't believe it's Nintendo canon but when I was younger I'd heard somewhere that Twi's age was 16 and, later on, learned that he was more likely 17. So I decided that 17 was the number I would be going with. Twi's BN was 4-5 so I took the 5 and made 17 into 22. Therefore, Twilight is the easiest Link to figure out and sits as a young adult which, yes, contradicts some of Jojo's earlier statements but I've taken Jojo's latest QnA as gospel for most all of my headcanons and anything that contradicts that is free game to be thrown out the window. Besides, it's not all a contradiction for Twi because...

Sky

Sky was another big dictator for the Chain's ages as a whole for one big reason. Early on, Jojo had considered Sky and Twi to be of similar age but Twi was probably older because he acted more mature. So, for a long time, I just considered them being the same age but, after doing the math, I have come to realize that Jojo has a little more grounds in saying that Twi is not part of the young adult gang. Not a lot more ground, but still more.

My first clue to this was that Twi's BN was 4-5 while Sky's was 1-2. This seemed like a large problem but then I remembered that Sky is one of the oldest canonical Links, if not the oldest in canon games (not counting Wild in TotK, who is an actual adult).

My next clue for Sky's age was the Knight's Academy. Though I could have gone with military age like I did with Warriors, as Sky is a newly minted knight, I decided to go by the educational system. In the US, high school ends at 12th grade, which makes most every student 18/19 when they graduate. For the Knights Academy I compared it to your average boarding school with high school grades. So that would make Sky, at youngest, 18 at the start of his adventure. And, to stay with my moto, I decided he could age to be 19 during his adventure.

With Sky now at 19, we can now add two years to make 21. Not as old as I would like Sky to be, as I love thinking about Sky and Twi being twins, but it's a lot closer then I could have hoped for in any form of canon.

Wild

The Chain's perpetual middle child, he is both, very technically, the youngest and the oldest of the heroes depending on how you look at it and how you count his age. However, since we're going for physical age, it's actually easy to figure out Wild's age.

Though there's an argument for everything from Wild being 16 during BotW all the way to being around 20, I believe he's actually 18 when he wakes up in the shrine. This is for three reasons.

The first is that Wild can't get a noble pursuit, so at the very least he is not past the age of maturity.

The second reason is that he is allowed to go to the Spring of Wisdom with Zelda. While he doesn't go into the spring himself, I doubt he would have been allowed near it if he wasn't at least 17. We've seen that Zelda had other people to travel with when Link was unavailable, as seen whenever she's in Gerudo Town without enemies pursuing her. It's clear no one was expecting the Calamity to start on Zelda's birthday, so there wouldn't be an immediate need for Link to break tradition just to protect Zelda.

The third reason is that adults flirt with Link after he wakes up. This may seem strange to point out because flirty characters are in many Zelda game but in BotW it's almost like there are no weird connotations, it's just adults interacting with each other. Still suggestive but it's silly and relaxed in most cases instead of a gross joke or something to appeal to teen boys. This implies that Link is at least recognized as an adult. And since, in BotW, the age of maturity is 17 at the youngest, I went a year higher and decided Wild was probably 18, maybe being 19 by the end of his adventure.

With the added fact that LU starts a handful of months after BotW, Wild can be no younger than 19 in LU. However, as the moto goes, older is always better and, because I think BotW takes nearly two years for Wild to finish, I decided that Wild was more likely to be 20 by the beginning of LU.

Legend

The last of the young adult squad, this guy was a challenge to pin down. He's done so much and it's so tricky to just choose time periods for him, it was nearly impossible to decide where to start or end. However, to make things simpler, I decided that each adventure takes a year to complete and the next adventure will only start around a year later. the exception to this is me mixing OoS/OoA/LA together for one long year of crazy adventures.

First thing's first, let's start going backwards. Jojo says it's only been around a year since Legend's last adventure, which is where I took the 1 year BN rule from. So, with that in mind, I wanted to find a number that kept him as young as possible while still making him undeniably an adult in the LoZ canon. So, 19 was my ending number for his age in LU.

After that was ALBW. Subtracting one year, he would be 18 by the end of that. And because of all that goes on in the story and that fact Legend is still very close to Ravio, I decided they knew each other for at least a year during that adventure. That puts Legend at 17 when he first encounter's Yuga and Ravio.

Subtracting a year from that, we get LA and Legend is now at sweet 16. This was honestly a surprise because I thought for sure Legend would be too young at this point to feel genuine feelings of romantic love but when I did the math I got 16 and it finally made sense why Marin would have such a big impact on him. As a person who struggles to have an understanding of romance, 16 was when I started understanding why people got crushes in the first place. So this makes perfect sense to me and matches Jojo's Legend sketches from this time period, as well as Jojo's design of Marin.

Now subtracting a year, which I will explain in a moment, we have Legend at 15 for the Oracle games. This came as a relief to me because seeing Din and Nayru for the first time, I immediately thought they looked too old to be shipped with Link. However, this feels slightly less creepy, but only slightly. Now, I subtracted a year because I had lumped these games together, and combining that with the two ocean travel times, decided that the ocean trifecta games had probably passed his birthday before he ever got back to Hyrule. So Legend is 15 when he lands in one of the countries.

Subtracting a year, we're all the way to the beginning with Legend being 14 when he defeats Ganon for the first time. However, I wasn't satisfied with him starting at the age of 14. Despite Nintendo's official art having Legend look like a teen in ALttP promotional material, art for later games in his story have him looking vaguely, if not noticeably younger. So I decided to play it safe and hack off one more year from the poor guy, making him unlucky 13. I honestly thought he would be twelve but him landing on a notoriously unlucky number just felt right and, honestly, it felt like it was destiny. Legend probably hates the number 13 now.

Before you ask me where Triforce Heroes comes into this mess, please don't. Not only does that game have three Links, not just Legend, Jojo has confirmed that Legend is not one of the heroes from Triforce Heroes. So let that mess stay in it's own little corner of the universe. We can question it another day.

Hyrule

For Hyrule, I actually have a semi-canonical age to work with. I can't find the evidence anymore because I forgot where it was, but in AoL, Hyrule is 16 when he saves the sleeping Zelda. And with Jojo's confirmation that LU takes place around two years after his adventure ended, that makes Hyrule 18. Hyrule is the entire reason I have such a weird maturity line, because Jojo categorized him as a teen but he's more likely to be considered an adult in Hyrule by now. Whatever.

The tricky one is the original LoZ. In promotional art he looks significantly younger but there's no way to cross reference this with Jojo's work because all of her Hyrule art is from AoL and after, as far as I can tell. So I had to get creative.

The age I think of for most Links in the LoZ universe is 12. This is for a specific reason I won't get into (Wind) but essentially all of the Links look like kids and teenagers, especially the toon Links and the pixelated Links. So I debated putting him at twelve but, when comparing the official art to the 12 year olds in my life, I decided he looked slightly older and settled on him being 13.

Four

Our next age gap, Four is a tricky one. He acts super mature and confident for his age but he's also super small for his age. So literally any age could be argued for him. In fact, I've seen arguments for everything from 12 to 30. So I had to start from the canon.

Jojo has stated that it's been two years since Four finished his last adventure. From this point forward, because Four knows who Ganon is, we'll be assuming that FSA is one of his adventures. So, assuming Four took one year between adventures, Four starts adventuring at 14. This is the oldest Four could be when he started his first adventure, not considering the times it took to complete his adventures and considering that out maturity age line is 19, Four being categorized as a teen with Hyrule and Wind.

Moving on with the number 14, I decided to start adding the adventure times. MC canonically takes a day, so that was out of the equation already. I don't know the canonical time progression of the FS games so I decided that they would each take half a year because they're rather short games. This now leaves our highest number at 13.

Now, unlike Legend, a one year break between games doesn't make sense for Four. He's more relaxed then Legend, with his confidence coming from him working on himself rather than from experience like Legend. So Four probably had a little more free time. So I added another year for each of our two free break periods. This now brings our biggest number down to 11.

Still, I wasn't satisfied. Four didn't strike me as being 18 when reading LU and he didn't strike me at 11 when studying MC's promo art. He looked younger. Much younger than any other Link, even considering the toon style and naturally short figure. So this was when I decided he was around Time's age when he started. But, to make things funny, I decided Four was 8 during MC.

Now with a starting age and two year BN rule established, my job became simple. Four would be 10 at the start of FS and, for the fun of it, I said he could celebrate his birthday halfway through, making him 11 by the end. Then, for FSA, Four would be 13 at the beginning of his journey. That leaves him at 15 by the time of LU. Maybe if we push he could be 16 but I'm not going to because I've already fudged his age enough for the hell of it.

Wind

Absolutely easiest of the bunch, we already have all of his canon ages. In WW and PH he's 12 years old, Nintendo certified and everything, seeing as WW happens on his 12th birthday. By the time of LU, Wind is canonically 13, going on 14. He is the last and smallest age gap for the chain but that just makes him even younger in all of their eyes. No wonder the chain tries to baby him. He's nearly a decade younger than Twi and nearly two decades younger than Time. Geez kid, slow your role! You don't need to keep defying the laws of the universe to show the other heroes how cool you are!

And that's the list. Honestly, I have more ages I could share, specifically the two Links we haven't met yet that I think I already know the identities of, including which hidden Link is which of the remaining Links in the timeline. But I'm not gonna do that because those two have little to nothing confirmed about them and trying to give you anyone else's ages without any Jojo support at all would have me pulling my hair out within seconds of researching. Therefore, this is where I end it until more information is available. Though I can tell you that Legend and Ravio are basically twins in all but blood and Malon is likely to be a year or two younger than Time because of her in game models in OoT. That's all I've really got though.

I hope you enjoyed this rant and have a lovely day!

#linkeduniverse #linked universe #lu headcanons #haventalks #lu time #lu warriors #lu twilight #lu sky #lu wild #lu legend #lu four #lu hyrule #lu wind #this wasn't as hard or complicated as i made it out to be #but it was very time consuming #i have three different versions of my calculations #im very proud of myself #this was fun

[cryptomiracle]

Blue aura (eyeless jack x reader) pt 3

Read pt 1

...

Read pt 2

Warnings: mention of dead animals, decomposition, and blood.

readers POV:

The drive home felt like it would never end, you continuously thought about that blue thing you saw in the woods.

You couldn't help but feel bad for leaving Mark alone.

Even though you practically hated the guy, you didn't want anything bad to happen to him.

You took a left turn, leading to a rocky road surrounded by woods.

It was the shortest way, and by now you were ready to get home, and go to bed.

Some old country song coming from the radio, you reached to turn it off, when suddenly, a deer ran right in front of your car.

You slammed on the brakes, making anything you had in the back, fall, or fly up to the front.

Instead of running away, the deer just stood there.

Your eyes were locked on the deer, when it turned it's head, staring right at you.

it's eyes were gray, and milky.

It was bleeding from it's nose, and it's ribs were exposed, it wasn't near death, it was already dead, and decomposing.

The only thing drawing your attention away from the undead deer was the radio.

It started distorting, the singers voice going from high, to low and back again.

Then it started switching stations, going from country, to metal, to pop, while still distorted.

You pulled out your phone, but it was dead.

At this point your heart was racing, and your nerves were shot.

You know how you'll get a feeling that something is wrong, before it even happens?

Thats how you felt right now.

Staring into the deers lifeless eyes, something deep down told you that there was something wrong with this place, something vile, something that makes your stomach turn.

You always knew that this town was weird, and slightly off-putting.

But this is different, something is happening, something beyond comprehension.

Your fight or flight kicked in, you blew the horn trying to scare it away.

It definitely did something, because the deer stood up on its back legs before running off.

You wasted no time to speed off.

You quickly made it home, you locked all the doors, and windows, closed all the blinds, and put your phone on the charger.

You didn't even wait for your phone to charge before turning it on, and going straight to contacts.

You scrolled until you saw Mark's number.

You called once, no answer.

You called twice, no answer.

You called for the fourth time, and still no answer.

Your phone finally gave up and died.

Leaving you in a state of panic.

You ran to your room and pulled out your computer.

You hopped on your couch and immediately went to tabs.

"can animals come back from the dead?" Is the first thing you searched for.

You were displeased when the only thing that came up was about extinct animals.

"disease that brings animals back to life"

Once again, the only thing that came up was unrelated.

You huffed, still in a state of panic.

You tried one last time.

"woodland creatures that can bring things back to life"

You knew it was stupid, I mean, c'mon a woodland creature? Seriously??

You felt stupid for even looking this up.

Yet something came up.

Some website, titled "entities of the forest"

You hesitantly clicked on it.

Thank God for Ad Blockers and VPNs.

The website looked old, like it had been abandoned a while ago.

You scrolled a bit, when you found something.

A link leading to another forum titled "Slenderman"

You clicked on it

It took you to a video, you pressed play.

The video started, and it showed an old window looking out into the forest.

The camera turned around to show a young man, about 25-29.

He had a nervous look on his face

He looked pale, he looked sickly.

(this next part is one of my personal headcanons for Slenderman)

"I've been having these hallucinations of him."

His voice was scratchy, and lacked volume.

"I'll see him in the corner of my eye, just watching me.

But lately it seems he's no longer satisfied with just watching.

He's started to get psychical, first it was random things in my house going missing, like documents, and note books, in which I kept information about him in.

But now he's starting to send "messengers"

If that's what you could even call them .

I've found that he can "revive" forest creatures, like rabbits, deer, mice, etc.

Last night, I woke up to a decomposing buck on my porch, using it's horns to slam into my door.

It was never able to get in, but I assume that was just a warning.

I've also started to notice that whenever I go into town at night, dead rats will follow me around.

Cornering me in alleyways, or simply watching me from a distance."

He had a tired look in his eyes, there was no spark in them, he had huge eye bags, and his hair was a mess

"Nobody believes me when I tell them about it, not even my therapist.

I don't know what to do anymore, I can't back out now, I'm in too deep."

He ran his hand through his hair, and leaned back into his chair.

"Recently, my father passed away under "unknown circumstances"

I know it was him.

I don't know how, but he killed my father.

he'll probably kill my mother, and then-"

The video glitched, and switched to a shot of the forest floor.

You could hear his silent sobs in the background.

That's when the video cut off.

By this time it was already 2 am, your fear faded, but switched places with frustration.

You decided to just go to bed for the night, considering that the video gave you no answers, other than what's causing this.

You closed your computer, set it on the table, and walked to your room .

You didn't do your usual routine, heat up some leftovers, take a shower, and go to bed, this time you decided to just take a shower and hit the hay.

You flipped onto your bed, the soft pillows, and comforters deflating under you.

The lavender scented detergent you use creating, a soothing environment.

You got under the covers, and reached to turn your side lamp out.

You closed your eyes and got comfortable.

Too bad you couldn't go to sleep.

The thought of everything that happened kept you up.

The need for answers, plaguing your mind.

You did everything you could to try and go to sleep, from counting sheep, to making tea, but none of it would work.

So you decided to do some more research

What's the worst that could happen?

One more restless night wouldn't hurt.

#creepypasta #headcanon #creepypasta headcanon #fanfic #eyeless jack x you #eyeless jack x reader #eyeless jack fanfic #eyeless jack #x reader #creepypasta fandom #creepypasta x reader #blue aura

[nodirectionhome-ao3]

Maybe it wasn’t the best idea for me to read your latest chapter of KSFM while on my lunch break at work (earlier this morning at 2:00am, mind you) 😭 but I’ve heard that Angst is the new Fluff so… I’ll let you continue taking me on this emotional rollercoaster. This story is really fascinating and I love the way you write Lily, especially this moment(I hope I don’t spoil this for anyone who hasn’t read it yet):

It was too much to imagine. Too much to bear. He’d wanted her — needed her — and she’d just…slept.

“He stopped wanting to visit,” Arthur went on, “just before his fourth year. He just wanted a break from seeing you that way, I think. -KSFM ch 30

😩 😩 😞 😔 😞 even before this, when Lily told Arthur he’s a guest and when he replied that he enjoys washing the plates the Muggle way, is very kind/sweet. I had a sense that during this mundane task something would be revealed and yup I was correct. Knowing that Harry didn’t want to visit her while she was in a coma is just so painful. You really captured the emotions from both Arthur and Lily in this little scene. It makes me wonder if there’s something that inspired you to have this moment between those two characters.

Plus the little scene where Lily is talking to Neville about wanting to sit down and tell him stories and everything he wanted to know about his parents felt as if you sent a crucio to my heart 🥹🥹 that was so sweet and heartbreaking 💔 i feel as Lily in that moment realized how hurt this boy was at the moment and in a sense sees a bit of her own son in him. Both boys robbed from parents that love them all because of an act of evil, even though Neville grew up better than Harry it doesn’t take away the pain he felt/feels. There’s not many scenes/fics that capture Neville and I’m glad you touched upon this topic. It’s really fitting of Lily’s character, the compassion and understanding is just ❤️

Nena!!!! You absolute ANGEL! Thank you for this!!!

I'm so so happy you enjoyed this chapter! (And that you're enjoying Lily and the fic overall!) Thank you for sharing these thoughts with me!🫶

I'm thrilled that you liked the Arthur scene!! I've actually had it written for so long. I think I originally wrote it for chapter 25? But then ended up delaying it because it didn't feel like it fit there. I've definitely been wanting Lily to bond with Arthur for some time now. It's important to the overall story that she does (for reasons I can't discuss without spoilers so I'll leave it at that 😉). I guess the main inspiration for that conversation though is just that I love Arthur Weasley (SUCH a criminally underrated character in my opinion) and I want to develop his relationship with the Potters.

One of the major themes I think about when writing KSFM is Harry's longing for a father figure. He had Hagrid, early on, and now of course he has Sirius too. (And Sirius, being the amazing godfather that he is, has become the main one.) But I've always seen Arthur as a father figure to Harry too. Harry clearly admires and respects him so much in canon. And, while it's explicitly stated and often clearly shown that Molly loves Harry like she's his own, I've always believed Arthur does too. He certainly isn't as close to Harry as Sirius is, but he's known him longer (in Harry's memory at least) and has more first-hand experience with how Harry was coping with Lily being in a coma. So I feel he has a very interesting perspective to share about the growth that he's witnessed in Harry and the developing bond he's observed between Harry and Lily.

As for Lily, she definitely feels a bit (understandably) lost when it comes to parenting a teenager, so I think she craves parenting mentors and I like that she finds that in both of the Weasley parents! (Although they're certainly not perfect, as nobody is.) As we go forward, I also have plans to develop Lily's backstory more...and, without saying too much right now...you may find that Harry isn't the only person who craves a father figure...

ANYWAY. Sorry. That was such a long, rambling answer to your question😂😂 But the gist of it is that I just love finding ways to further develop the bond between the Potter and Weasley families!

As for your comment about the Neville scene – I'm so happy you like that part! It might have been my favorite scene to write in this :) You've articulated my own thoughts on it so well here!! I definitely agree that Lily sees some of Harry in Neville. (just like she sees herself in Rose in this chapter, but that's another discussion lol). I also think she feels naturally protective of Neville because she knew him as a baby and he's Alice's son...who I've decided was something of a mentor/older sister figure to Lily. (Someone who was like a good older sister...unlike the older sister Lily actually has😬). I'm always interested in the parallels between the Longbottoms and the Potters, and I'm definitely looking forward to bringing Neville into this fic more going forward! He's such a sweetheart and a character who deserves so much better than he's been treated!

Lily's compassion is so important to me! It's so vital to her character and I definitely am trying to show that she has so much love to give. And more people than Harry will benefit immensely from her being alive in this story🫶 (I love the idea of her being a mentor to her students, an Aunt-figure to Neville, and an actual Aunt to Dudley, a sisterly figure to Tonks, and a sort-of-daughter-figure to Arthur & Molly in addition to being Harry's mom and Sirius & Remus's friend.)

Thanks again for your kind words about KSFM and for this lovely, lovely ask!!! (And thanks for reading this whole answer, sorry that it got so long I just LOVE talking about this fic and Lily in general!!!)❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

#kindly stopped for me #chapter 30 #ksfm spoilers

[walkswithmyfather]

“🙏❤️❤️ HOPE ❤️❤️🙏”

“My HOPE is in the LORD always

Psalm 42:5 “Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? Hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.”

This is such a beautiful verse read it and pin it to your heart

Worldly Hope…. a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen.

Biblical hope … Biblical hope has as its foundation faith in God.

The word hope in English definition often conveys doubt.

I hope it will not rain tomorrow

I hope my results test results will be good

I hope we can get together

I hope everything will be ok

BIBLICAL HOPE is a reality and not a feeling.

BIBLICAL HOPE carries no doubt.

BIBLICAL HOPE is a sure foundation upon which we base our lives, believing that God always keeps His promises.

Hope or confident assurance can be ours when we trust the words He who believes on Me has everlasting life

John 6:47 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life.

Accepting that gift of eternal life means our hope is no longer filled with doubt.

Hope is a small word, but it is one of the most powerful.

It is powerful because in hope lies the power of the human soul to turn to God and live as if His promises are going to come true.

Psalm 31:24 Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the Lord.

Some people when they speak of hope use it as an emotion. They say I am feeling hopeful but true hope is a discipline and a determination to believe in God’s reality and power even when the world seems to be crashing down around us.

The power of hope flies in the face of calamity, saying The world can do its worst to me but still I will hope. My hope is in the Lord. I will know that this is the day the Lord has made and He will take care of me.

The key to surviving any challenge or crisis is hope.

Hope that Jesus loves you.

Hope that He is, right now, working out a solution for you.

Hope that the future you place in His hands will be better than the present you hold in your own.

Jeremiah 29:11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.

Today take a few moments and practice hope. Hope on the Lord . With its power you will overcome all things.

Isaiah 40:31. “But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”

During the course of our day there are so many reasons to feel discouraged

When we listen to the news on tv we hear the problems in the world

When we face challenges that seem overwhelming

When we have problems that don’t seem to have solutions.

There are certainly times when we can feel hopeless.

The Bible speaks to us about these times

1 Corinthians 13:13. “And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.”

The verse above teaches us that all of us need hope.

The verse above teaches us that hope endures

No matter how dark or depressing our circumstances may appear, we always can hope in God.

God wants to give us hope in any situation, no matter how dark things might seem.

But we should not merely hope. God wants us to rejoice in hope!

Paul knew what it was like to have hope in the midst of hopeless situations. A perfect example

Acts 16:25.“And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises unto God: and the prisoners heard them.”

Acts 16:26. “And suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken: and immediately all the doors were opened, and every one's bands were loosed.”

See when we look to the world it certainly can provide answers but they only give short term relief.

Know we will be hopeless if we look at circumstances and let the world dictate how we think.

We may go through situations that are threatening, that can cause

Uncertainty, Anxiety, Doubt, Fear

But if we depend on God we can know that He is the source of hope, and we can rejoice in Him and the hope He promises us.

If we have hope we can be filled with joy and peace no matter what is going on in the world.

Today take a moment see the beauty surrounding you and no matter what it is you are going through do not allow yourself to place your hope in the world, the world system, or any human being in the world

Rejoice in the hope that God has given you.

Place your hope in the living God and His eternal power to save and make everything right in His time, in His way.

God is so good . Always keep your hope in the Lord . He goes before you and is always with you. He will see you through everything you go through.”

From: “Beneath The Shadow Of Thy Wings” (FB)