#Sheds both the name and the representation

[saltpepperbeard]

are we debating beard vs nobeard and stede’s preferences because if so I’m throwing my hat into the ring /lh

I personally think Stede’s reaction had nothing to do with physical preferences, and everything to do with the horror of seeing Blackbeard destroyed. Stede already couldn’t process Ed signing his life away, and that was more of a figurative destruction. But the beard being shaved was a physical representation of that destruction, Blackbeard’s very essence stripped away right in front of him.

I think it just really hammered in how much Ed had given up, because he completely destroyed his very namesake. At that moment, it really sunk in that Blackbeard had been taken down.

And mind you, Stede was unable to process that Ed was willingly doing all of this, that Ed was doing it because he loved him. It wasn’t sinking in whatsoever, so it was making him feel extremely guilty. He loves Ed, but also adores Blackbeard. He looks up to him, idolizes him as a fiercesome pirate and brilliant sailor. So to see that literally break beneath his hands likely kicked up all the “I ruin everything” feelings. Like, “I ruin so much that I managed to get my love/idol into this.”

Along those lines, he says “But your black beard! You can’t be Blackbeard without your black beard.” So to me, that definitely comes across as him being worried more for Ed’s image than any sort of physicality. Especially considering how he tries to nudge Ed towards a plan/fuckery afterwards, and gets even more devastated when Ed seems to accept their fate.

Stede is a man haunted by guilt and self-depreciation, and I think he runs because he blames himself for the entire thing. He blames himself for defiling yet another beautiful thing. He “brought history’s greatest pirate to ruin.”

#OFMD #Edward Teach #Stede Bonnet #Gentlebeard #Blackbonnet #Revenge Rambles #AND DONT GET IT TWISTED #This isnt intended to attack anyone for thinking otherwise #I just wanted to share my thoughts as well since I’ve seen a lot of folks discussing it #ALSO #Come to think of it #It makes me wonder if Ed would even want to KEEP his beard #BECAUSE like… #It is something that he’s been used to having #But if he retires and drops his persona #I wonder if he would want to shed it because of all the implications and history #Sheds both the name and the representation #And if Stede is actually fully AWARE that that’s what he wants #Then I don’t think he’d have a problem #I think a lot of the issues stem from him being guilt ridden #ALSO IF THIS ALL IS A JOKE DISCUSSION AND IM GETTING WAY TOO DEEP IM SORRY WJDJWJ #I JUST LOVE TALKING SYMBOLISM/CHARACTER MOTIVATIONS #Also for the record I adore Ed with a beard and without #SO WHERE DOES THAT PUT ME AKDJWJ #team both beard idk

[taking-thyme]

🌅 Lucifer Deity Guide 🌅

Note: This is inspired by both my own experiences with Lucifer and the information I read on @scarletarosa's blog and her devotional guide to him. Please go read that one too!!

The divine rebel, Lucifer is the light of truth and divine wisdom; an ancient light which shines through the darkness, representing illumination. He is the driving force of innovation, liberation and transformation. According to Scarletarosa, who actively works with Lucifer and was told this by him, he was the first-born god of the Universe created by the supreme deity, the Source. He is so incredibly ancient and beautiful. Lilith was created to be his counterpart, the Queen of Heaven. However, Jehovah took the throne of heaven from Lucifer and cast him and his followers into hell. Most of them lost their connection to heaven and their energy became dark and intense. Jehovah claimed the throne of heaven and set himself up as the one true god, manipulating humans into betraying their original deities. Thus, Lucifer became the King of Hell and has been scorned by Christians for millenia. 

God of: Illumination, Light, Darkness, Change, Rebirth, Challenges, Innovation, Logic, Truth, Knowledge, Wisdom, Strategy, Persuasion, Revolution, Luxury, Pleasure, Freedom, The Arts and The Morning Star (“Morning Star” is another name for the planet Venus)

Symbols: Sigil of Lucifer, The Morning Star, Violins and Fiddles (instruments traditionally associated with him)

Plants and Trees: Rose, Belladonna, Mulberry, Patchouli, Myrrh, Min, Tobacco, Marigold, Lilies, Hyacinth, Sage

Crystals: Amethyst, Black Obsidian, Onyx, Garnet, Selenite, Rose Quartz

Animals: Black Animals in general, Dragons, Snakes, Owls, Eagles, Ravens, Crows, Rams, Foxes, Pigs,  Bats, Rats, Moths, Swans

Incense: Rose, Frankincense, Patchouli, Myrrh

Colors: Black, Red, Silver, Emerald Green, Gold

Tarot: The Devil

Planets: The Morning Star, Venus

Day: Monday and Friday

Consort: Lilith

Children: Naema, Aetherea and many others

How was he traditionally worshipped?

There is not much to say about how Lucifer was historically worshiped seeing as he wasn’t worshiped at all for a large chunk of human history. He seems to have been worked with in some capacity according to the Gesta Treverorum, written in 1231, which is where we first see the term Luciferian being used to refer to his worship. This was by a woman named Lucardis for a religious circle, who was said to lament to Lucifer in private and prayed to him. However, the term Luciferians was later applied to basically any groups Christians didn’t like and wanted to fight, as one might expect. However, the modern Luciferian movement also sheds light on how Lucifer is worshiped. For Luciferians, enlightenment is the ultimate goal. Their basic principles highlight truth, freedom of will and fulfilling one’s ultimate potential, and encourage the same in all of us. Traditional dogma is shunned because Luciferians believe that humans do not need deities or the threat of eternal punishment to know what is good and the right thing to do. All ideas are to be tested before being accepted, and even then one should remain critical because knowledge is fluid and ever-changing. Regardless of whether Luciferians view Lucifer as a deity or an archetype, he is a representation of ultimate illumination and exploration in the name of personal growth. 

Epithets

Phanes

The Morning Star

Light-bringer

The First-born

Prince of Darkness

Son of Morning

The Glory of Morning

Lord of the Lunar Sphere

The First Light

Offerings

Red Wine, Whiskey (especially Jack Daniels), Champagne, Pomegranate Juice, Black Tea (especially earl grey), Chocolate (especially dark chocolate), Cooked Goat Meat, Venison, Apples, Pomegranates, Honey, Good Quality Cigars, Tobacco, Daggers and Swords, Silver Rings, Emeralds and Emerald Jewelry, Goat Horns, Black Feathers, Seductive Colognes, Red Roses, Dead Roses, Crow Skulls, Bone Dice, Devotional Poetry and Artwork, Classical Music (especially violin)

Devotional Acts

Acts of self-improvement, spiritual awakening and evolution, knowledge-seeking and dedication to spirituality ; Shadow Work ; Working to overcome your ego to become wiser ; Defending those in need ; Working to better yourself without being too self critical ; Fighting against tyranny and bigotry whenever you encounter it

Altar Decorations

Black or Red Candles, Snake and Dragon Figurines, His sigil, Roses, Fancy Chess Boards and Playing Cards, Silver Jewlery and ornaments, Black feathers, Goat horns

Appearance

For me Lucifer usually appears as a tall light-skinned man with long fiery red hair (so red it looks like it’s been dyed), a sophisticated face with a killer jawline, passionate eyes and dressed in a fancy black suit. From all my experiences with him and what I’ve heard from other followers, it seems Lucifer and most demons dress in full suits and tuxedos. 

Personality

Lucifer is nothing if not charming. He’s a protector first and foremost - one that always works to help you better yourself, but a protector nonetheless. He feels like a protective older brother taking care of you while your parents are away. He is a very complex entity, deeply wise and eloquent. He is more serious than one might expect for a demon given their popular depictions in our culture as chaotic forces of evil, but Lucifer is full of courage and love. I often feel him with me even when I’m not doing things related to him. He is proud of his follower’s accomplishments and congratulates them on a job well done, though he also reminds them that the job is never truly over. Growth is constant. Lucifer is the epitome of growth, blunt and gentle at the same time, telling you what you need to do and giving you space to figure out how to do it. 

Lucifer values resilience, the pursuit of self-betterment, intellectualism, courage, open-mindedness and responsibility in individuals and wants to see his followers develop these qualities. He is constantly rooting for you to reach your full potential. He won’t hold your hand the entire way, but he will help you take steps in the right direction. Lucifer, like all deities, is different for everyone and will adjust his approach depending on your needs.

^ The Sigil of Lucifer

#deity work #witchblr #witch tips #spirit work #lucifer deity #lucifer devotee #luciferian #luciferian witch #lucifer morningstar

[darerendevil]

*SPOILERS*

Aaron Schimberg kept it brief in his introduction before A Different Man had its world premiere January 21 at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival: “This is the one time I have to be able to show a film without anybody knowing anything about it.” A hush fell over the Eccles audience as the writer-director said that. It’s true. There’s before you see A Different Man, and then there’s after. The before is full of anticipation for the complex drama starring Sebastian Stan, Adam Pearson, and Renate Reinsve. The after is a rush of heart-clenching realizations about your own sense of self-worth, the true values of society, and questions about the ownership of your identity and story — even if you aren’t sure you want to own it yourself.

Edward (Stan) is an actor...

with a facial disfigurement who sticks to himself, doesn’t fix the leak in the ceiling of his apartment, and books parts in training videos for companies to learn how to treat people with disabilities just like everyone else. When his doctor tells him of a new experimental procedure that can “cure” his appearance, he decides to try it so he can be treated normally, like the people in the horrific training videos he shoots.

As Edward’s facial growths start to peel off — in a scene one can only describe as a moving Francis Bacon painting — instead of feeling relief, he still feels the need to hide who he is from everyone. That includes his playwright neighbor Ingrid (Reinsve), who has thrust herself into Edward’s orbit without fully letting him into hers.

His solution? To fake his own death and reemerge as a new “normal” guy hastily named Guy. This shedding of his skin seems to be working — he gets a new job as the most shiny of real estate agents and has a new, fancy loft apartment — until he sees that Ingrid has followed through on her goal to write a play with a part for him. Unfortunately, the play is about him, her dead neighbor, and their relationship through her eyes.

This is where A Different Man starts to fold in on itself in a brilliant meta statement about representation and authorization within the entertainment industry.

“[The film] is playing with various disability tropes,” explains Schimberg during the post-premiere discussion. “Like the sad disfigured man in his apartment, and playing around with those elements.” Since Edward’s story starts with that trope, it leaves the viewer uncomfortable and upset when we see Ingrid using these same tired storylines. It proves that she never really knew Edward, but had no problem using his disfigurement to push through a play about her being a “good person.”

But, wait, weren’t we introduced to Edward in the same fashion? The film doubles down on this complication by having Edward-presenting-as-Guy beg his neighbor to let him play her version of himself within her off-Broadway show. Even with the face of an actual Hollywood movie star, Edward is bending his life around the preconceived notions of others. His desire to be both the before and after Edward is complicated further when Oswald (Pearson), an effervescent and charming man with similar facial disfigurements as the original Edward, enters the theater during rehearsal and proceeds to take his role and his relationship with Ingrid away.

On the subject of casting this complicated weave of an identity story, Schimberg recalls how thorny that was even within his own singular vision: “I thought you’re caught in a bind because some people said that casting Adam was exploitative, and then on the other hand casting a Hollywood star and putting him in prosthetics is also the opposite of what we think of as representation, even though it’s still very commonly used. So I was caught in a bind and I just thought: I’m going to do a movie that does both. I’m going to have a Hollywood actor in prosthetics, I’m going to have Adam be Adam and see what comes of it and build some kind of path forward.”

That path forward is a masterful film filled with tension. But while it might seem like the struggle is going to be between Edward and Oswald, A Different Man’s only true tension is within Edward himself. Stan excels as he wrestles with embarrassment and longing for his former face. Every time someone comments on Oswald’s appearance to Edward while he’s passing as Guy, you can feel the hot anger within him because they assume he agrees with their vile opinions. “Suppression is a really bad thing,” Stan says, passionate about his character and this creative journey. “That was my take on [why Edward hid his true identity]. But I think, sometimes, when you spend so much time denying yourself you don’t have the courage in those moments to speak up.”

“That was kind of the hook we gave to Sebastian,” Pearson continues. “Yeah you don’t know what it’s like to have a disfigurement, but you do know what it’s like to not have privacy and to have your life constantly invaded, for better or worse.” Stan nods his head emphatically, “Public property, right?”Pearson nods back at him down the line. “Yeah, those are the kind of chats we had to get it right.” He pauses and chuckles.

“I’m glad it wasn’t a physical battle because I would have lost that one.”

#Sebastian Stan #Adam Pearson #Renate Reinsve #A different man #Sundance #Sundance 2024

[ijustwantogohomehogwarts]

The Colors of the Rainbow

Timothée asks y/n what color he reminds her of, and she puts a lot more effort into an answer than he could ever imagine.

Warnings and such: it's. so. fluffy. also like one swear word? illusions to "adult situations" but nothing bad! not proofread!

A/N : i'm backkkk!! not gonna lie, i didn't expect to be gone nearly a month, but life sucks lately and it just kinda happened...im sorry!!! thanks for the continued love and support! also- i get my cast off in like 10 days! yay!

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

"what color do you associate me with?"

His voice drew my attention away from the book in hand, the first words spoken aloud in hours. it was thought provoking; a color?

"what do you mean?"

"when you hear my name, what color do you think of?"

I had never thought of that before, but now seemed a good a time as any. I allowed my eyes to wonder over him as I thought about the best answer.

Red: bold and beautiful. a bright color, attention grabbing and hard to look away from. the color of our bedroom lights after too many nights spent apart. the color of his eyes after he smokes too much and giggles on the couch. The color of our lips when we finally pull away, gasping quietly for breath. Red. The metaphor of blood shed that went into making us, and making us work. red, bold and beautiful.

Orange: autumn. obviously. the color of pumpkins, of crazy sunsets and sunrises, worthy of photographs we'll never look at again but in the moment, it's important. the color of comfort, warmth and a cool breeze. orange, deep like fire, the burning desire for him, for me, for each other. the color that paints my insides when i look at him and remember that he is mine.

Yellow: not the neon yellow, but the soft yellow. the yellows the paint the sky for a brief moment in the early hours of the day, when the world is waking up again and the day is starting. the color that floods our bedroom and allows dust to dance in the air around us. the last color we see as we fall asleep together. the color night owls are always chasing. for him, it's the color he radiates when he walks into the room, bright and happy, a glow that follows him and intoxicates everyone in his path.

Green: earthy and holy. natural beauty, like the nature we crave amidst the bustle of the new york city. not a color i see him on often, but the color of his eyes. the color i get lost in when he talks, drunk on the sound of his voice. the color behind his entire world. it's calming and comforting. it's him. a color i would happily see every day for the rest of my life. a color i plan to see for eternity.

Blue: the color of water and cleanliness. he loves his showers, his pools, and the rare trips on boat rides for secret swimming holes. a water bug through and through. the color for which he starts every morning, a fresh start. the color of winter, cool and quiet. for nights spent close together under heavy blankets, skin on skin. the color that accompanies him to premieres and interviews, a color that demands attention in the softest tone.

Purple: both the softest and deepest versions. a child-like representation of each, a playful color. a color which adorns his body on quiet days spent shopping, or nights gallivanting around for basketball games and bars with his friends. a color i often associate with nights home without him, the undeniable fact that he'll stumble through the front door in the early hours of the morning, the smell of alcohol lingering on his breath as he tells me he loves me.

White: innocent, clean, wholesome. a stereotypical color, but there's truth to it. sure, he's not pure in the sense of what the color stands for traditionally (can you blame a girl?) except he is. through all of life's changes, the good, the bad, and everything in between, he's stayed true to who he is. he's happy, ready for life's adventures. he wants to be the person his generation can look up to, someone who defies the odds and makes a name for himself on his own. he doesn't need, or want, poor publicity or the lingering story of being a hollywood fuckup. he won't be- he can't be.

Pink: a color typically labeled for feminism, but golly doesn't he look beautiful in pink! it's bold and impossible to look away from. the lightest shades for the purest and most innocent, the darkest shades for the most demanding and defiant. why not break stereotypes?! the clothes make the man, so they say...but for him? no. he makes the clothes. he's what pulls the outfit together, the one who makes the color beautiful. beautiful, like the color that paints his cheeks when his heart flutters in his chest.

Gray: a color for balance. there's never light without the dark. with good days, comes bad. we get tired, sick and worn down but it reminds us we are human. a color reserved for coffee runs on lazy sundays, after sleeping away the stress of the previous week and preparing ourselves for the next. a comforting color, one that reminds us we are allowed to be sad, but the feeling will pass and the sun will shine again. be patient, good things take time.

***

"Black." I settled on the answer with a smile.

"Black?!"

"Yes!"

"Why?! That's the most basic color!" He chuckled softly, nudging me with his foot.

"No, it's the most important color."

"Important?"

"Well, it's a perfect combination of all the colors, and all their qualities. You've got the best of them all, love."

"How so?" There was no hiding the color pink on his cheeks.

Black: the perfect combination of all the colors that exist. the best qualities mashed into one, leaving ample opportunity to add more of the color that's most needed. black, the color of the room which we share in the middle of the night, where the only sounds are soft snoring or heavy moaning. sometimes both. it's in this color where we find solace in one another, an indescribable feeling of peace, a place which we call home. in the arms of the man i love. all the colors in the world, every combination of letters in every language- it'll never be enough to express the gratitude i have for the stars above that lead me to him.

#Timothée chalamet #timothee chalamet #timothee chalamet soft #timothee chalamet imagine #timothee chalamet x y/n #timothée x reader #x reader #y/n #fluff #color association #red #orange #yellow #green #blue #purple #white #black #grey #pink #timothee chalamet as a color #timothee chalamet as regulus black #regulus black #reggie #regulus #regulus deserved better

[kidlat-at-kislap]

KNY Trivia: On the Uroko (Scales) Motif

... and analysis

At this point, I think many people have already pointed out that the pattern on Zenitsu's haori is associated with female demons. I'm going to be talking about that again — among other things.

The pattern on Zenitsu's haori is called uroko (scales) and is composed of a repeating motif of equilateral or isosceles triangles in alternating colors. This represents the scales of a snake, fish or dragon.

As Protective Talisman

The uroko motif is a very old and popular one, believed to have protective qualities and ward off evil and harm. It can be found on both kimono and obi, tomb walls, clay figurines, and the family crest and battle standard of the Hōjō clan (mitsu-uroko).

The protective qualities of the uroko motif made it a popular talisman among warriors, who wore jinbaori (military surcoats) with the pattern.

Zenitsu's cultivator, Kuwajima Jigorō, is revealed in a Taishō Secret to have given both of his disciples a haori with the same pattern as the one he wore himself — the uroko motif. While Zenitsu wore the haori (and then later Jigorō's kimono), Kaigaku never wore his.

In the same way that Urokodaki gave each of his disciples a carved fox mask for protection, Kuwajima gave his disciples an uroko-patterned haori to protect them from harm.

By refusing to wear the haori, Kaigaku can be interpreted as having rejected his master's protection and blessing as well as having disowned the identity the haori — as a sort of "team uniform" — is attached to. Which symbolically leaves him defenseless, susceptible to the demons Kuwajima sought to protect him from when he gifted Kaigaku the haori. And indeed, Kaigaku has the misfortune of encountering Upper Moon One, of all demons.

As a Representation of Female Demons

In Noh and Kabuki theater, female demonic characters — such as kijo (female oni), onryō (vengeful ghosts) and snake yōkai disguised as human women especially — are often portrayed by actors wearing uroko-patterned costumes. Characters such as Lady Rokujō (Aoi no Ue), Kiyohime (Dōjōji), Momiji (Momijigari) and the onibaba (Kurozuka) are portrayed both on stage and in art as wearing the uroko motif.

Kiyohime, by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1890)

The duality of the uroko motif might be somewhat surprising — on the one hand representing protection from evil, on the other hand representing demonesses.

However, the association with demonesses makes sense in the context of Noh theater. Roles such as Lady Rokujō and Kiyohime are portrayed wearing hannya masks.

The hannya mask belongs to a category of masks called ja (snake) masks. This category includes other masks associated with female demons such as the namanari and shinja masks.

While some characters portrayed with ja masks do become snakes (Kiyohime) or are snakes in disguise (the serpent in Genzai Shichimen), not all of them are. Many, if not most, of them are, however, associated with transformation. Whether it is a human woman transformed into a demoness by jealousy, resentment or anger (Lady Rokujō) or a demoness disguised as a human woman (Momiji). The transformative process calls to mind the image of a snake shedding its skin.

Wearing a pattern associated with demonesses, Zenitsu is immediately associated with Nezuko.

As for Kaigaku, while he is not a woman and he had never worn his haori, it still associates him with the transformation of demonesses in Noh theater. While his physical transformation is driven by fear and survival rather than resentment, one cannot discount that his resentment towards his master and Zenitsu did play a role in his later monstrous actions. Believing himself to be unfavored by his master and resenting him for it, Kaigaku is eager to earn Kokushibō's favor, believing that Kokushibō had "judged him correctly."

As Dragon Scales

It's not very obvious, but Zenitsu has a subtle dragon motif himself. Particularly, the dragon king. Or rather, the shogi piece bearing that name — ryūō.

When talking about her ideal man, Nezuko says she'd like to meet a man like a hisha. And she does.

And while it's unclear what exactly Nezuko meant by this, the man she eventually marries does have a hisha-ryūō motif.

The hisha, as described in the extra, moves any number of steps orthogonally like the rook in chess. Upon reaching enemy territory (the last three ranks on the opposite side of the board), it is promoted to ryūō, which gains the additional ability to move one step diagonally.

This describes Zenitsu's character arc perfectly. During the final arcs, within enemy territory, Zenitsu is able to overcome his limitations and rise to the occasion. Thus metamorphosizing from hisha to ryūō.

And like the ryūō, he unveils a new form of Thunder Breathing within enemy territory. The motif is hammered home by the way Seventh Form: Honoikazuchi no Kami is visually represented: a dragon.

I've talked about the Seventh Form before, but I forgot to note that Honoikazuchi no kami is never described as a dragon. Rather, the dragon is potentially a reference to Ryūjin, the dragon king.

And Zenitsu's ties to the dragon king do not seem to stop with canon material. During Halloween 2022, Zenitsu is depicted as Urashima Tarō.

Urashima Tarō and the princess of Hōrai, by Matsuki Heikichi (1899)

In the folktale, Urashima Tarō, after saving a small turtle from being tormented by some children, is spirited away to Ryūgū-jō, Ryūjin's palace beneath the sea. There, he falls in love with Otohime, the dragon-king's daughter.

(The tale is without a happy ending. But I do still recommend reading it if you haven't.)

Which leads me to believe that Zenitsu's haori, at least on one level, is meant to evoke the scales of the dragon king.

#agatsuma zenitsu #zenitsu agatsuma #kaigaku #kuwajima jigoro #jigoro kuwajima #zennezu #(just in case) #demon slayer #kimetsu no yaiba #kny #kidlat does research #kidlat ponders the blue curtains

[scatteredpiecesofme]

On August and Sara

I know that a part of the fandom disliked the Sargust storyline and among the various reasons mentioned, one made me think. Some were disappointed because August was given this sort of "redemption arc", some others complained about his arc being contradictory, as if the writers couldn’t decide what to do, whether to “redeem” him or not.

I think this wasn’t the point at all. I don't believe Sara and August love story was meant to be an actual redemption arc, for either of them (if anything, because as such it badly failed). This was just Young Royals doing what Young Royals does best. Namely, showing us once again that human beings are very much complex and nuanced when it comes to their feelings, decisions and actions.

It was easy to accept the not-all-black-and-white pov with Wilhelm and Simon because we love them, sympathize with them, we even identify with them. Doing the same with August and Sara is much harder. But even assholes can have a soft side. It's real. It's human. And it doesn't erase their wrongs.

I think what comes across as disturbing in August+Sara's story is that both of them have made terrible and selfish choices, both of them have betrayed their friends and family, and yet they get to enjoy some blissful moments of love, tenderness, and care. Moments of real happiness. And they do it exactly when Wilhelm and Simon are apart, heartbroken and dealing with a lot of issues. Somehow it feels unfair.

Love is often perceived as something that people deserve or don't deserve according to their behaviour or moral standing. Some sort of reward that we get if we are good enough. Then, how can an asshole who has done such shitty things be loved? Or how can a selfish, untrustworthy person be able to love anybody? These are the unspoken questions.

The thing is, love is not a prize. Love is just something that happens. Often in the most unexpected ways. It's unfair. It’s random. Uncontrollable. Messy. Sara puts it into words beautifully: "You can't control your feelings. Even if you have feelings for the wrong person, it can feel so damn right". And love is not a redeeming force either. The bare fact of being in love or being loved doesn't make a person better, nor it can be expected to.

Any redemption tropes left aside, their storyline shed light on some sides of the characters that we hadn't seen yet, adding layers and depth to both and making them even more interesting (to me Sara and August were already very interesting characters in S1). It challenged the viewers to question their perspective and to deal with mixed feelings (oh, wait he's the villain, I hate him... how comes that for a split second I found him so tender and I was rooting for them??). It gave us some sweet, fluffy moments in a season which was at risk to have none, together with some very realistic intimacy representation. It provided a good amount of drama for the final climax and it set things up for potential plotlines in s3 (lots of potential shit, depending on where the authors want to go). And despite Sargust being the most random, weird and unlikely couple ever, it felt believable to me. On top of everything, Malte and Frida showed great chemistry and their acting was truly amazing.

Sooo... I might be the only one here, but I really enjoyed Sara+August storyline in S2.

#sargust #young royals #young royals s2 #young royals analysis #august of årnäs #sara eriksson #malte gårdinger #frida argento

[my-multiversal-storage]

Hollow Light Lore.

Hello once again!

before anything else i want to tell three things:

1.- Im making a story based on this au with the same name, but because i really want to tell pepole all the lore of this au and most of it won't be told on that story, iv'e decided that i would put it here.

2.- This is majorly for my au, but ive also had it in a bit mind for @void-and-light (if you are reading this, please tell me what you think of the lore :D)

Lastly, there might be some spoilers for the history, but I encourage you to read it throug!

In the beginning the Light and the Void worked together, none of them were above of the other, because existence needed them both to survive.

The Light would give life to beings and give them free will to express themselves with joy and happiness, and once their time came, the Void would embrace the beings as they passed on.

The beings feared the Void, but it didn’t care as it was with the Light who embraced it and understood it.

Millions of millennia passed, many came and many went on, the Light and Void were no exception to this…

As their time came the Light gave the beings the Guardian Spirits, representations of itself, the Void couldn’t do such thing as it wasn’t in its nature to give life, but to take it.

As both beings embraced each other in their final years, Void confessed to Light that it was scared, because without it, the void could go rampage if provoked and could cause irreparable damage to the living.

But the Light comforted it, and reassured such thing wouldn’t happen, because the beings understood the importance of life and death, and wouldn’t try to brake such balance, calming the Void.

And as the last year came, they finally confessed to each other, and they left being happy in their final moments, because they had each other.

----------

As decades came, so did Gods, one set of them were the dream goddess and the nightmare one, “siblings” that ruled over the essence realm.

The dream goddess was worshiped by the moth’s, and was some what close to the Spirits, as her light not only comforted them but other beings, and in the Spirit’s eyes, she reminded them of the Light.

She was pleased by this, seeing as many thoughts of her and many remembered her, the nightmare one didn’t really care for this, they just liked to enjoy his dances that they did from time to time…

But as decades left, so did some Gods, she was terrified by this terrified of the darkness that always came, everyone was, even the nightmare god, who was a bit more reckless than her, but she was terrified of it, terrified of dying, Terrified of Being FORGOTTEN.

The nightmare god, tried to calm her down, but in her fear and anger, she attacked the nightmare god, giving them a mortal wound and casting him out of the essence real, forcing them into a dance that would keep him alive unless they managed to get back to the full essence realm.

Also because of this, the dream goddess got more power, enough to be able to control the minds of beings, but she didn’t do that for now as she was praised enough to be able to live for thousands of years.

Because of her new-found power and also because there were no one to go against her, no one that could defy her will, NO ONE THAT WOULD FORGET HER, she declared herself to be on par with the Light, the goddess of gods.

She also gave herself a name, something that the mortals would refer her to, something that the nightmare fool also did, she would now be known as “THE RADIANCE”.

----------

Years passed, and The Radiance ruled with an iron fist, making sure that everyone respected her, there was no will that could outshine hers.

That was until the Wyrm came, a giant being that had the ability of foresight, a higher being just like her, but she didn’t pay attention to him as it looked like his life cycle had reached his end.

Unknown to her, the Wyrm’s life cycles of life and Rebirth were never ending, and so the Wyrm shed his shell and transformed into a smaller being to blend in with the others.

There he found out how The Radiance wouldn’t let anyone question her, stripping everyone of their free will, of their sapience, making her word be the first and the final.

He took pity on them, but also saw an opportunity to guide them under his light in a kingdom that in his foresight would last forever.

So, he began to work, first he expanded their minds, giving them sapience and the free will they had lost under The Radiance, slowly but surely, she began to lose her followers.

Until, she was almost forgotten, only remembered by very few and close to death.

Then, once the Wyrm was sure that The Radiance wouldn’t be a problem anymore, he started to plan his Kingdome that he foresaw.

There were complications, that was known, some were uneasy of the idea, others out right detested being ruled by another due to what happened with the radiance.

But he reassured them, they would still be able to rule on their own, it just meant that he was the major ruler, and be known as the king of the land of Niwen, the king of Hallownest.

He talked, he convinced, he made offers, to bugs, to the mantis, to the bees, to the spiders, to the moki, the kii, the owls, the gorlek, the mushroom, the snails, the mosskin, the moths, and the Spirits.

Little by little, his kingdom was taking shape, his vision was coming true, until finally he had done it.

A kingdom that was at peace, under his rule, were everyone respected him, and some saw him as a god to them, he was respected, he found love at the hands of the White Lady, and he would be remembered as “The Pale King”.

He had done it, and his kingdom would last forever… or… it should have lasted forever…

----------

Many forgot about The Radiance, but she wasn’t truly forgotten, and she was enraged beyond belief.

She was angry at herself for not seeing it sooner, angry at the beings that had forgotten her, but above all else, she was FURIOUSE at The Pale King, for he was the one that had made everyone do so.

And in her anger, she began plotting, “They want to forget about me and leave me to rot? Fine! Let’s remind them why I can’t be forgotten”.

The habitants of niwen began to have head aches and strange dreams about Her, soon the dreams began to break their minds turning them into slaves once again of The Radiance as they oozed a sickling orange.

The ones that were unaffected to this were the subjects of The Pale King, the Spirits, the White lady, and The Pale King himself.

While the Spirits tried to keep the situation under control, The Pale King tried anything he could to put an end to the infection, but all he tried, always ended in the same result.

What… what could he do? Everything he tried was completely useless against her, his hopes were diminishing by the minute, his kingdom that was supposed to last forever was crumbling, he was going to be forgotten because of HER! what could he do, What Could He Do, WHAT COULD HE-!

… An idea came into his head, he remembered something he came across at the beginnings of his kingdom.

A black substance, but not any kind, it was… void.

The mere existence of this substance was completely opposite of the Spirits, while they were full of life and some of them shared their light even in death by becoming Ancestral trees, the void was completely lifeless, even compared so something as the natural elements.

But thanks to that he got an idea… what if they made beings out of void? With no mind to think, no will to break, no voice to cry suffering, able to seal The Radiance inside itself, forever.

For any other, this would be a fool’s idea, because in a sense, he would be making something completely unnatural. Giving life to something lifeless? It would go against nature as a whole.

But, what other option did he have? If he didn’t do this, his people, his kingdom would fall, without anyone to remember it, and he HATED that idea.

And so, he began to work in secret, no one could find out what he was doing, MUCH less the Spirits, because they more than anyone else knew that what he was doing, was against nature itself, so he kept it to himself.

At first, he tried to only use void and soul, a life energy that everyone had but only the snails and higher beings could master and use to their will.

But they seemed inefficient to contain The Radiance itself inside of them, but if they were born of god and void, then it could work.

But he would have to do something he himself deemed punishable by death, he had to sacrifice his children to the void so he could have the perfect vessel.

He told the White lady about her plan, and she was disgusted by the mere idea of this, but somehow the king convinced her that this was the only method to save Hallownest, so even if a bit against her will he began to work.

1, 10, 100’s, 1000’s, 1000000’s, 1000000000000’s of vessels, try after try after try, failure after failure after failure after failure, none of them were hollow, they always had some emotion that would make them failures, over and over and over and over and over.

Until… he had finally done it, he had created a pure vessel without any kind of emotion, he was truly pure, for he was “The Hollow Knight”.

He then began training it, so it could finish The Radiance once and for all, he got the Great Nailsage sly to teach him all there were to know in the nail arts, he made some of the greatest gorlek prepare its nail ,he made it go trough the path of pain millions of times, modifying it to be as agile as a Spirit if not more, he even taught him to use soul as another way to attack if needed.

As this happened, he knew he would have to seal The Hollow Knight somewhere so nothing could interfere in its endeavors.

So, he had to choose three beings that shall enter an eternal sleep to keep the seal where The Hollow Knight would be sealed, the first one was Monmon the teacher a chief researcher and teacher of Hallownest; the second would be Lurien the watcher, the one who watched over the city of tears, who had offered himself out of loyalty for the king.

Lastly, he intended Herrah the beast to be the last dreamer, after a lot of back and forth, it was concluded that she would become a dreamer, only if she got an heir with him, and so Hornet was born.

 She was one of the only things that brought a light at the end of the tunnel to everyone, her innocence was a much-needed rest to everything else that was happening, and even The Pale King traded her as his heir…

But the more he thought Hornet as his child, the more he saw The Hollow Knight as HIS child and not only as the weapon to end The Radiance, but he had to convince himself that it was just the mean to the end.

----------

But there was something that The Pale King didn’t consider while creating The Hollow Knight, while he knew that what he did was against nature, what he didn’t consider was that the void would retaliate.

For every unnatural life that was made, the void wanted back, so it created something on par with The Radiance’s infection, it was a fungus like thing that could overtake creatures and turn them into stone.

The Spirits being the first to encounter this called it “Decay”, when they addressed it to The Pale King, but it seemed that the Spirits light could out right dispose of it, but that wouldn’t be the last problem that the void gave to the kingdom.

Far away in the silent woods the decay took many lives at random for it nor the void had someone to command it, that was until Shriek was born.

Due to the conditions of her birthing, she was born with extreme deformities, one of those being having a layer of stone over her body, afraid and alone she searched for any comfort she could get, but everywhere she looked, she was rejected by everyone, but the one that hurt her the most, was the rejection of her own kind towards her, so she just flew back to the silent woods.

Once she got back, she cried, cried because of what she couldn’t have, cried over the rejection of her own kind, cried because she would only be remembered as a monster, even if she was just a child.

But amongst her sadness, only one thing comforted her, the decay, because to it, she was the only one that could guide it, the only one that could control it, and she saw this, as she saw that the only other thing that was comforting her was also regarded as something dangerous.

She thought of The Radiance, she started to think that she was also wronged without reason, just like she was, and se set up her mind, if she couldn’t be remembered as a friend, as a kid, if they could only see a monster, then she would give them a reason to remember her as a monster, as “Shriek”.

----------

Things were getting worse and worse by the minute for the kingdom, the infection and the decay were getting more and more ground as time went on, but The Pale King had hope in The Hollow Knight, hope that not only would he be able to finish The Radiance, but also Shriek, but it would need to train harder for that to happen.

Unknown even for him, he started to treat The Hollow Knight more and more as a son than a weapon, even the White Lady knew this but she didn’t tell him in fear of having to lose another child.

Time passed and The Hollow Knight was ready, along side him there was a Spirit named Willow, she had been informed of the plan they had, of course she disapproved of it, but it was already near finished, so the only thing she could do at the time was to also train it for the upcoming battle that was going to happen on its mind.

After a long battle against the decay and the infected that had cost thousands of lives, they had finally caught the attention of The Radiance and Shriek, and proceeded to seal them both in The Hollow Knight, and sealing him in the Temple of the Black Egg with the help of the dreamers.

They had done it! They had won over The Radiance and Shriek! But… it wasn’t over, the decay still remained, once again without something to control it, but Willow had already foreseen this, so in an act of self-sacrifice, she donned her life to become something greater than a Ancestral tree, she had become a Spirit tree on top of the Temple of the Black Egg, a tree that emitted enough light to dispel the decay, but she knew that the decay wouldn’t only attack there, it would also go for other places, so many Spirits waved their goodbyes to Hallownes and Niwen, and left to fulfil their new purpose.

----------

Time passed and The Pale King was celebrated by everyone for his accomplishment of being able to defeat The Radiance and Shriek, he only said that it was the least he could do for his people.

But, whenever he was alone, whenever he was sure that there was no one else? He was near breaking point, questioning himself if he had truly done the right thing, if the many lost lives of his children were okay, if somewhat damming another species to have supposedly premature deaths in order to keep the balance of nature was justified. Was there truly no cost too great?

Time and time again, he questioned himself over and over, slowly but surely losing his sense of self…

Until the last nail in the king’s coffin was placed by the king himself.

The Pale King used his foresight to reassure himself that what he did was the correct choice, that thanks to him the kingdom would live eternally, but what he saw, was everything he didn’t want to see.

He saw the kingdom that he had sacrificed everything for, crumbling down, the people screamed in fear and agony as the decay and the infection grew more and more, The Radiance and Shriek destroying everything he had done without anyone to stop them.

That was the last time he used his foresight at all, he now knew that everything he had done, every promise he made, Every Sacrifice HE made, was all in vain.

So, he disappeared without a trace, everyone wondered where he had gone, but no one was ever able to find him, for he didn’t want to found, because he feared that he wouldn’t be remembered as a king, but as a fool that destroyed everything.

----------

Decades passed, many Spirits transformed into Spirit trees to keep the Decay at bay, it had been considered an honor to them to transform into such beautiful trees full of life that gave birth to even more Spirits.

But in Hallownest things were getting worse without anyone knowing, The Hollow Knight began to fall under The Radiance and Shriek, and the Spirit tree Willow started to die, leaving way for the Infection and the Decay, killing all the Spirits that were supposed to heir his will, and without any other Vessel, The Radiance and Shriek would come out of The Hollow Knight, leading an era of inbalance.

It seemed like it would be the end of everything… but amongst everyone a prophesy arose.

“When the kingdom comes to its final hour, when the tree’s life comes to an end and the vessel were about to break. Two heroes would come to save them all, a Spirit that calmed the darkness and a vessel once lost but that has found its way thanks to the light. Together, the both of them would give new light to Niwen and defeat The Radiance and Shriek once and for all. For they got each other, No Matter What.”

One of the few that believed the prophesy was Hornet that had fully grown to be the queen of the spiders, but after the prophesy, she sought out the ones that the prophesy spoke of, but to no avail.

When she returned, she vowed to test the both of them to see if they truly the ones that the prophesy spoke of, if they were, they would survive her test, if they weren’t, then she would have to wait for the right ones.

----------

Far, far away from Hallownes, from Niwen, a Spirit named Ori met a Vessel without a name but had named himself as Ghost, together they saved the lands of Nibel, restoring the light of the Spirit tree, they were able to calm the Owl named Kuro and save her las last child named Ku, and they brought back the mother they had lost to the decay named Naru.

Sadly, for Ku, her right wing las left without many feathers, leaving her unable to fly as a result, but thanks to thanks to a feather that they got from her mother, Ori and Ghost helped her gain the ability to do so, and in their excitement, Ori and Ghost got on to Ku’s back and flied.

They passed over many places and intended to get back, but a storm blew off the wing that Ku used to fly, as well as separating Ori and Ghost from Ku.

They landed in a place they didn’t know, but they would find out that, what they had to get over on the land of Nibel, would be considered child’s play on this land.

would they be able to save this land? or will they succumb to the Decay and the Infection?

____________________

Hope you enjoyed it :)

#ghost x ori #hollow knight #ori and the will of the wisps #hk ghost #ori #hk pale king #hk radiance #shriek #spirits #hk pure vessel #hk hornet #hollow light

[random-ln-stuff]

My thoughts and theories on the LN Podcast: Episodes 1 and 2:

Putting all this under a readmore because spoilers for Episode 1 and 2 of The Sounds Of Nightmares:

General Stuff.

The way people talk and the way things sound make me think that the story is talking place in the past, I’d date it to somewhere around the Late 40s or Early 50s, so that’s another point to Little Nightmares taking place in 1948 specifically.

This whole thing is very interesting. The world isn’t corrupted. Children and Adults don’t hate each other. Otto acts like a human being. The corrupted stuff is in Noone’s head, but I don’t think it’s all a dream.

I think the dreams Noone is having, showing the actual world of Little Nightmares, are either visions of another world, or are visions of something that’s going to happen. Either this non-corrupted world is a separate one from Little Nightmares’ world (which I will call Nowhere for now thanks to the Little Nightmares 3 Description) or my personal theory that I will be going with until it’s disproved: The Non-Corrupted world IS Nowhere, but before everything goes to hell. Noone’s dreams are prophetic.

My reasoning for the Prophecy Theory was started because of 3 things, and there’s more evidence to come in specific episodes.

Names for people and places follow a very similar pattern to in The Nowhere. The Place the story takes place in is simply called: The Counties, similar to places like The Nest, The Maw, or the Pale City. Otto (an Adult) is supposed to be referred to as “The Counsellor”, but doesn’t mind being called by his real name, and Noone (pronounced Noon) is mentioned to have chosen her own name, which is implied to be the origin of most child names.

In Little Nightmares, many of the dreams that children have are prophetic, showing events that will eventually happen or vaguely warning of future events. Six has a dream of the Lady the same day she encounters her, Mono dreams of the door before he ever starts seeing it and begins heading towards it, RK has a nightmare related to The Granny and RCG has a nightmare about barricading a shed door with something banging on the other side, which happens later exactly as she dreamt it.

The dreams Noone has are rather symbolic. The first episode is the better example of the two, but both aren’t really real locations in Nowhere. They’re symbolic representations of The Maw and Guests specifically.

Ep 1:

In this, Noone ends up inside a massive stone giant, and encounters the Ferryman for a brief moment. Like literally just the Ferryman. Fully described in the coat, hat and melted face and later referred to as the Ferryman (and the Candleman, a reference to the cut Wax Bellman from LN 1, who was initially cut from the game and then was remade Into The Ferryman and got put back in).

After that she goes deeper inside the giant to find a giant clockwork structure that keeps the giant alive and maskless shadow children working on it, keeping all the gears moving. After that she finds a starved, rotting man chained inside a bedroom and then she encounters A Tall Lady wearing chains with a face that’s been purposefully stretched out to remove any wrinkles or signs of age.

After that is more travelling before Noone and a Child she encounters in her dream find a courtyard where thousands of screams can be heard from other people, chained up and starved in their own rooms like the one Noone saw before. Then the Lady in Chains shows up again, kills the other kid and Noone wakes up.

Like I said before, this dream is heavily symbolic, but it’s obviously about the Maw and The Lady.

First off, the Ferryman is here. No symbolism, no speculation, he’s here and that immediately draws connections to the Lady.

Then there’s the Shadow Children, or the Workers, who I don’t actually think represent Shadow Kids found in the Maw. The workers represent Nomes, who keep the Maw (or in this case the Stone Giant) running. Despite being seen as antagonists, the Workers don’t actually do anything to Noone in the dream. They head towards her when she draws attention to herself, which scares her, but they never actually attempt to harm her. They just want a closer look at Noone in all of their appearances and they immediately back off once Noone’s dress tears and a piece gets stuck in the gears.

The Lady in Chains is very, very, VERY obviously the Lady. They’re a tall woman who is desperately trying to appear younger, stretching their skin to remove wrinkles. The chains that the Lady can seemingly manipulate may also represent her powers, and I’ll get into that in a moment.

Then there’s the chained man and the thousands of others just like them. They may represent Guests or something like that, but I think they represent something else: The souls of both Guests and Children alike that the lady has consumed after countless Maw Feasts.

My logic for this is that both the chained people and the Lady’s representation in the dream specifically involve chains. The Chained People are chained to walls in specific rooms, rotting and starving, and the Lady In Chains is constantly surrounded by chains, with chains literally coming off of her clothing and flowing underneath her dress. The Lady In Chains can also control those chains, manipulating them however she wants to and using them to ensnare a child, pulling them away to kill them. Now if the Lady In Chains is The Lady, then the Lady In Chains’ ability to control chains probably represent the Lady’s own ability to control her unique soul stealing shadow magic. And if chains in this dream represent the Lady’s Soul Stealing Magic, then it makes sense that the rotting, starving, tortured souls all chained up throughout the Giant in the dream are people that the Lady consumed. That’s what the Lady stealing your soul feels like. You are chained up by magic, starved and tortured by the Lady slowly breaking down your consumed soul until you no longer exist.

And the Lady In Chains has THOUSANDS of people chained up. Think about that in relation to the REAL Lady. Horrifying.

Also with the revelation that the Chained up people are souls that the Lady consumed and is slowly digesting/using up, you can make the claim that the Giant in the dream may ALSO be a representation of the Lady. After all, those people are chained up and imprisoned INSIDE the Giant, and Nomes may keep the Maw running, but by doing so they also keep the Lady running just as much.

Ep 2:

Here we hear a tiny bit about Otto’s beloved Cici (Sici? Sissi? It’s pronounced See-See), who could honestly be a lot of things right now. A lost lover, a lost child, a lost friend, a lost family member, but the important part right now is that Cici had similar dreams, or at least encountered the Ferryman in some them. Definitely going to be important later.

This dream is a lot more straightforward. Noone finds themselves in a town with another Child she’s never seen before named Jester. They wander for a short while before Noone sees the Ferryman again, exactly as he was before, and runs, separating from Jester in the process.

Also while in this town, Noone sees “Contraptions that resemble fish carrying large, extremely fat people wearing wooden masks and brown robes towards a Market and Bathhouse” (Seems familiar, right?)

When Noone enters the Bathhouse, she finds dozens of monstrous people washing themselves, and finds one of them using Jester to scrub themselves. When that monster sees her, it immediately forgoes cleaning and goes straight for her, chasing Noone until she accidentally brings a bottle of cleaning chemicals down onto both of them, killing them both and waking Noone up.

If it wasn’t immediately obvious, those are Guests. Extremely fat, Masked people wearing brown robes. The masks are wooden instead of whatever the hell actual Guest masks are made of, but everything else matches. Even the fish shaped contraptions moving the Guests towards the Market and Bathhouse make sense once you realize that the Bathhouse represents the Maw.

In this dream, Guests are brought to the Maw to feast, but some things are slightly off. Instead of food and gluttony, the Guests we see are obsessed with cleaning and cleanliness, but they’re still very clearly guests, endlessly heading towards a place that claims to be able to fulfill their endless needs.

Even their behaviour when seeing Noone matches with real Guests. When a Guest sees Noone it immediately forgets about cleaning itself or the child it’s carrying and goes straight for Noone, just like how real Guests always go for the freshest meat they can see, forgetting about the 5 star meal right in front of them when they can see meat that’s even fresher and harder to come by (a live child).

Prophecy Theory:

But then, why is everything slightly different and more symbolic than any other child dreams we see. Most of them are pretty straightforward? And what’s with the Ferryman? If these are all prophetic dreams, why does the Ferryman seem to be aware of it all?

Well, first I want to point something out.

In all Child Dreams in the games, the most powerful entities seem to have have some sort of awareness or control of some sort over the dream. In Six’s dream, the Lady turns towards her before she wakes up, seemingly aware that Six is looking in her direction, and when Mono dreams of the Door in LN2, the TV next to him turns on, possibly because either the Thin Man or Broadcaster (two separate, yet similar entities) was aware of what Mono was dreaming about.

Now with that in mind, The Ferryman IS as powerful as the North Wind, another extremely powerful entity, so it makes sense that in a prophetic dream, the Ferryman could be still aware of things.

As for why these dreams are so symbolic and hard to understand when most prophetic dreams are pictures and images of what’s to come, it’s because these events are VERY far away from happening. The Lady doesn’t appear as THE LADY despite possibly having awareness because The Lady doesn’t exist yet. The world hasn’t fallen under the influence of the Eye, and we KNOW that the Lady and the Maw only start everything they do AFTER things like the Signal Tower are built, which happens presumably AFTER or RIGHT AS the world goes to shit.

Noone’s dreams are all symbolic because her dreams don’t even know how to process or comprehend what’s coming. It can’t show the Lady or the Maw because Noone’s dreams can’t look that far and that accurately into the future, so they create the Lady In Chains, The Stone Giant, The Workers, and a dozen other representations of what’s coming because it can’t say for certain what things are going to look like. Only a rough guess at the eldritch horror that’s coming. Vague representations of The Lady and The Maw and the Nomes that keep it running. Somewhat accurate but still slightly off depictions of Guests heading towards the Maw in droves, etc.

But the thing is, the Ferryman is there. And the Ferryman is unchanged. And the Ferryman is aware that Noone is dreaming. That means that Noone’s prophetic child dreams are depicting the actual Ferryman.

And that means that the Ferryman actually exists somewhere out there in either Noone’s world or whatever dark corner of the universe that the Eye resides in.

We know next to nothing about the Ferryman besides the fact that he’s as powerful as the North Wind and chooses to work for the Lady (mean that the Lady is probably just as powerful). And now we know one more thing about him: He’s existed longer than any of the other monsters besides maybe the North Wind. Probably created by the Eye itself.

And keep in mind, in the actual games, There’s evidence that a world was here before us. Viewers couldn’t exactly have built the Pale City after all. And in those buildings, all over the place, you can find evidence that the Eye has been here for a VERY long time, it’s symbol found on many things from before the world presumably went to shit. The Eye has always been here, it’s just that relatively recently it went from “passive influence of various types” to “Plunge the world in chaos and darkness”. So the Eye definitely exists at the time that the podcast takes place, and so does the Ferryman and presumably the North Wind.

Also: The Ferryman has apparently been in ALL of Noone’s recent nightmares, and he wants her to “give in to this world”. Does he want Noone to give in so he can drag her further into it and probably claim her soul for the Eye, or does he want her to give in so he can escape THROUGH her, possibly bringing the Eye out along with him?

Anyways that’s my somewhat coherent rambling. Enjoy.

#little nightmares #theory #the sounds of nightmares #podcast #overall it’s too early to tell right now but I think I have at least a tiny idea of what’s going on #I will probably throw this one to the side if I find any better theories

[meowunmeow]

Day 4: Favourite UMA

UMA Death

She's really cute and I wanna know more about her <3

She deserves a little analysis as a treat!

I'd like to talk about her nun appearance with reptilian motifs.

Her nun outfit might not refer to only Christianity but religion as a whole. Death, from a religious definition, is a movement of the soul from the body into the afterlife. Her hands stuck in a prayer could be a reference to how prayers are often made in funerals.

Just making a wild guess here but her hands could literally be stuck like that because of rigor mortis. Her permanently closed eyes could also be because of this.

Keeping things religious, her reptilian motifs is could be a reference to the serpent that corrupted Adam and Eve - or Juiz and Victor in this case, as they are the first two negators, "corrupted humans" - thus introducing the concept of "death" into the world.

Now let's talk about Ragnarök. In UU, it is the only Norse named (if I remember correctly) event, which is strange. So, I realised that her reptilian motifs could be a reference to Jörmungandr, the ouroboros, the snake in Norse mythology that eats itself, as well. Jörmungandr, when it releases its tail, signals the beginning of Ragnarök.

An ouroboros is also a representation of life, death and rebirth. Speaking of snakes, they have also been compared to death because of their shedding, which represents the leaving of the soul from the body.

We haven't known much about her personality but so far she's calm, a bit airheaded and likes Luck, most likely because both happen at random. Who knows, I'm looking forward to more lore drops about her!

#undead unluck #undead unluck spoilers #uuweek2024 #uma death #meow posts

[bidotorg]

Today, we celebrate the life and legacy of one of the most influential playwrights of the 20th century, Tennessee Williams. Born on March 26, 1911, Williams gifted the world with timeless works of art that continue to captivate audiences worldwide.

Beyond his unparalleled talent for crafting compelling narratives and complex characters, Tennessee Williams was also a trailblazer in openly discussing and portraying themes of sexuality. As a bisexual man, Williams fearlessly explored the intricacies of human desire and identity in his plays, challenging societal norms and advocating for greater acceptance and understanding.

Through iconic works such as “A Streetcar Named Desire,” “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” and ”The Glass Menagerie,” Williams delved into the depths of human emotion, exposing the raw and often tumultuous nature of relationships, both romantic and familial. His willingness to confront taboo subjects, including bisexuality, paved the way for greater representation and diversity in the arts.

Today, we honor Tennessee Williams not only for his unparalleled contributions to the world of theater but also for his courage in embracing his own identity and shedding light on the multifaceted spectrum of human sexuality. Let us continue to celebrate his enduring legacy and strive to foster a world that embraces love, acceptance, and artistic expression without boundaries.

✏️

https://bi.org/en/articles/famous-bis-tennessee-williams

#lgbt #queer #bisexuality #bi #lgbtq #lgbtqia #bi pride #bi visibility #bivisibility #representationmatters #tennessee williams #a streetcar named desire #playwright #writers on tumblr #writer #iconic #cat on a hot tin roof #bisexual men #bisexual #bi men #bi man #bi culture #lgbt icons #lgbt pride

[pyramidmedia369]

IXCHEL, the Mayan Moon Goddess

Official Pyramid Media 369 website: www.pyramidmedia369.com

Here is a picture of the Ancient Mayan Goddess, Ixchel (pronounced Ischel) and sitting on the Moon and holding a rabbit while fishing. The fishing pole and the fish are also symbolic. Have you ever heard of the Fishers of Men? I will explain this in a different article. The Rabbit she is holding symbolizes fertility, sex and abundance (good fortune). The Moon Goddess is known to be a goddess of love, midwifery, sex, fertility, pregnancy/childbirth, water, rain, textile arts, agriculture and natural medicine. In hieroglyphs, her name appears as Chak Chel, which means “Big Rainbow”. Ixchel is one half of the original Creator Couple. Yes you heard it right, the Creator is a companion! There is always a masculine-feminine counterpart in the untold stories of the Creator. The male Creator God is known as Itzamna, the Solar God, the Supreme Being, Father of The Universe, etc. Ixchel, Itzamna’s wife, is also believed to have just been the feminine manifestation of the Creator, as she is the mother of both the Sun and the Moon. Some also referred to as an evil old woman that had unfavorable aspects, due to her association with destruction, floods. But she was honored because of her many different healing powers. She is also depicted as an old woman emptying a vessel of water on certain hieroglyphs.

She is also referred to as “Goddess O’ in the Dresden Codex, the original Mayan Tablets found in Dresden Germany, hence the name.  “Goddess I” is her younger counterpart, ie. a younger projection of herself. She is the Goddess of Marriage; as well as human procreation, as they aid the health & vital functions of the fertile woman. Together, they are the representation of Frigg/Frigga in Norse mythology, which is ultimately Venus. Hence the term Fri-day. See my previous article about the days of the week and their names. But nonetheless, all Venusian deities are Mother Goddesses.  

The serpent on her head not only represents the shedding of old skin, it also represents transformation, Divine Feminine, Healing, Kundalini and Christ energy. She also was known as the Jaguar Goddess of War, due to her fierce ability to protect her tribe the same way a Grandmother would for all her family’s children. Although there is little information regarding her association with the Jaguar. Her energy is very subtle and supportive, and is known to aid both men and women who are on a path to transformation. Just like a Grandmother right?

The Temple of Ixchel

Among the Mayans, physicians and priests hailed her as the patron deity of divination and medicine. Mayan women visited sanctuaries dedicated to Ixchel when they wanted a happy marriage or a child. She has been depicted as overlooking childbirth in scenes painted on vases from Mayan Classic era. Certain other sources also hint her to be an Earth Goddess as well. She has various different expressions and is held to the highest regard out of all Goddesses in the Mayan pantheon. These assumptions are primarily made by identifying one or more of Ixchel’s traits with those of the other deities mentioned. I mean, she is 50% of the creator, isn’t she? Makes sense to me. Below you will see ancient Mayan transcripts indicating that it was advanced levels of science being exemplified.

The Dresden Codex (Mayan Tablets)

Mayan Cosmovision

This is the Mayan depiction of the Earth, cosmos, elements and the 4 corners of the earth. Below you will see Ixchel floating amonst the firmament. The Red, White, Yellow and Black all represent one N, S, E, & W as well as the 4 elements.

Mayan Elemental Wheel & Tree of Life

#ixchel #ancienthistory #mayan mythology #aztec temple #aztec culture #aztec gods #gods #goddess #Itzamma #pyramid media #nature #higher self #peace #intuition #inner peace #mantra #meditate #mysticism #spiritualism #Pyramid media #369 #Periodic Table #Science #Moon Goddess #Astrology

[kaylakat2]

Now that I've finally gotten around to finishing my saved for later projects, I would like to share my insect pinning magnum opus. A shadow box full of nearly every insect I've ever worked on!

(Close ups and image descriptions below the keep reading. Image description also includes all speculative ids that are present on the labels you can see in the photos, so if you're curious as to what something is check there!)

I started this when I was still super new at the hobby, so some specimens are better preserved than others, but it's nice to see my improvement with all of them together. It's also nice to see a sort of representation of all the insect life around me with them.

A lot of these are also in rough shape since I scavenge all of my specimens (usually dead or dying), or am given scavenged specimens, and very few of them were raised or captured for the purpose of pinning. I think this definitely adds to the fun of the hobby though, since each one has a pretty unique story about how it was found or acquired.

Most ID's are also still subject to change and some are still speculative, since I do all my own research for them and am definitely not perfect.

[Image ID: One wide shot image of a black board with various insects displayed on it, with small hand written labels next to, above, or below each specimen. 8 images follow as close ups of each group of specimens. The first displays a painted lady butterfly, scientific name cynthia, next to two tomato hornworm moths, scientific name Manduca quinquemaculata, with two june beetle, scientific name cotinis nitida, and ten striped june beetle, scientific name polyphylla decemlineata, underneath. The second displays a white lined sphinx moth, scientific name hyles lineata, next to a nevada buckmoth, scientific name hemileaca nevadensis, and a monarch butterfly, scientific name danaus plexippus. The third displays two clear winged grasshoppers, scientific name camnula pellucida. The fourth displays two california mantis, scientific name stagmomantis californica, one is displayed on its back, the other on its belly. The fifth and sixth display two views of two scorpions, both either yellow ground scorpions, scientific name Paravaejovis confusus, or arizona bark scorpions, scientific name centraroides sculpturatus. The seventh displays a common green darner dragonfly, scientific name anax junius, and a shed dragonfly nymph exoskeleton. The eighth displays the exoskeleton of a giant water bug, scientific name abedus indentatus, next to a digger bee, scientific name anthophora spp, with a yellow faced bumble bee, scientific name bombus vosnesenskii, next to the digger bee. Below these three specimen are two other bee specimen, a western carpenter bee, scientific name xylocopa californica, and a valley carpenter bee, scientific name xylocopa varipunctata, as well as a yellow legged mud dauber wasp, scientific name sceliphron caementarium. End ID]

#entomology #insect pinning #scorpion #butterfly #mantis #bee #moth #insect tw #drowsy draws #(the drowsy draws tag applies to all my art. even if it's not a drawing per se. so this goes here too!)

[a-french-coconut]

Part 1

Will's dad, Apollo, is the god of a lot of things.

Music, archery, poetry, masculine beauty, knowledge, arts, medicine, sun, light, prophecy, logic and the list goes on.

He has mostly inherited the healing part with some musical and light abilities like his supersonic wisthle and light tricks. He's not good with bows and arrows, he is average with any instruments or singing, does not have prophetic dreams and does not have the same artistic sensibility as his siblings.

He deems himself a healer and only a healer (Aren't you cute ? Trying to deny my very existence ?). His role on the battlefield is not to shed blood but to prevent it from happening. His hands are made for knitting skin back together and glow golden when he sings hymns to his father (oh but they could do so much more...) .

"Shut up".

Will is really happy he's alone right now. Even for demigods, talking to no one is strange. Granted, being alone when he is deep in the woods with no weapon and maybe a little lost is not the best situation he's ever been in, but it is the one he prefers when she decides to invade his mind again.

"I don't understand why you keep trying to convince me."

(Well, there is not much to do except bothering you Will. And who knows ? One day your patience will be running thin and that day...)

"Not happening."

(Ugh, can you at least get me out of your mind ?)

He hesitates. As good as it sounds to have her out of him, he is still wary of letting her roam free. Last time he lost control...

(Oh Will, there is nothing of interest here.)

He is still hesitating, his control slips a little and he feels her getting out, materialising in front of him.

Should any dryad melt from their tree at this instant, they would see a tall blond boy looking sternly at a little girl.

"Gods I had forgotten my Lord's touch on my skin ! How much time did you keep me prisoner in your mind ?" asks the girl basking in the sun.

"Ten years, more or less." Will answers curtly, advancing deeper in the woods. It's not wise but he is not going to take the chance of meeting a camper and explaining why he is talking to a five years old girl.

"I remember when you were five ! Such a cute little child, bright blue eyes, golden locks... well you didn't change that much."

"Just go wander in the woods or something. I didn't let you out of my mind just for you to stay with me."

"As you command."

She disappears quickly, enjoying her short liberty.

Once again alone, Will sits behind a tree and close his eyes, enjoying this rare moment of silence. She had been with him ever since he created her when he was five. Every little child has his imaginary friend that vanish as they grow out of childhood. Except Will's friend who just wormed a place in his mind and became tangible. Her name is Raz. He still loves Rapunzel as much as when he was a kid.

But where Rapunzel heals with her hair, Raz wilts with a touch of her hand.

See, Apollo is the god of many good things but he is a pharmakon, both healer and destroyer. As he is the one who heals, he is also the one who strikes sickness and plague.

And maybe that Will isn't just a healer. Maybe he's a little more than that. Maybe he is as his father is, medicine in one hand and poison in the other.

He doesn't exactly know how it works but he thinks that Raz is the physical representation of his plague powers. When she walks the earth, Will doesn't feel that part of him anymore. Maybe he could do the same with his healing powers ? Manifest them in a human form or something else.

Well for that he'll have to remember how he created Raz in the first place. It surely has to do with what happened after she appeared for the first time but Will isn't very fond of remembering what happened that night.

Giving pneumonia to his very mortal uncle, almost killing him in the process, because he let Raz "have fun" is not something he thinks about with a smile on his face.

Especially when she won't explain why she did it. Since then, Kaz mostly stayed in Will's mind without too much complaints.

He always wondered if his uncle did something to him or those he cares about. It's the only explanation he has. That or he is a sociopath who lashed out under the form of a little girl a deadly sickness on his uncle for fun.

He is going to stick to the former hypothesis.

There have been times where Raz begged him to unleash her if not without restraints, at least through him and he refused, scared of what she would do, of what he would do.

When Lee's head was caved in.

When his siblings died one by one in Manhattan.

Could he have save them ?

Better not dwell on what ifs too long.

Point is, Raz is an everlasting reminder of the monster inside him, a wretched creature who could kill anyone with a simple touch.

He is afraid of her, he is afraid of himself .

Will hears branch snapping and the crunching sound of someone walking on leaves. Raz must have gotten bored.

He sighes, goodbye beloved peace, you will be missed, and gets up. The sun is setting and if he doesn't get back quickly, he'll have to run from the harpies again. He does not want to run right now.

Raz still haven't show her face.

"Come on I know you're there, I heard you."

More rustling but still no little girl.

"Please Raz, I have to get back-"

His words die when from the bushes emerge a hellhound as big as Mrs O'Leary but definitely not as cute as her.

Running doesn't so bad after all.

Branches slap him in the face as he runs in what he thinks is the general direction of Camp. He just have to reach the border and Peleus will protect him. He just need to outpace the hellhound until then, not attract any other monsters on the way back and find Raz.

He hears the growling beast getting closer and forces his legs to go even faster. He'll have to thank his father for beating the god of speed at racing and passing him those godly genes.

Raz, I don't where you are but you need to come back right now !

He never tried contacting her by telepathy before, never wanted to, but this a desperate situation that requires a desperate solution. It's not that he particularly want to hear her whispering in his head again but Will has come to learn that he can't ignore her for too long without feeling like there's a hole, a void waiting to be fill again. It's very hard to function when your very being is incomplete.

A branch hits him hard in the face, causing to fall on the ground. Demigods reflexes mixed with years of training save his life, Will shifting just in time for the hellhound to claw the ground he was laying on a second ago.

A well-aimed kick in the ribs allows him a few more seconds to get up but there isn't time to flee. Here he is, the woods getting darker and darker, battling a monster without weapon because he evidently inherited the logic side of his dad.

As Will readies himself to dodge, the hellhound stars to whimper and blood erupts from his eyes and nose until he is covered in the red liquid. The beast gives one last painful cry before exploding in golden dust.

Behind him stand a proud and smiling Raz, eyes glowing green and tendrils of dark smoke swirling around her.

The way the creature suffered... Will shivers.

He really really hates that part of himself. He is meant to heal not to butcher.

(Raz's smile disappears, sadness glaze her eyes now a normal brown and with a flick of the wrist, the smoke evaporates.)

Without a word, she goes back to Will's mind, nesting herself in a corner and doesn't utter a word.

Will just shrugs and hastily return to his cabin.

(Do you hate me Will ?)

Her voice is small, insecure, not the usually arrogant and easygoing he is used to. The question makes him freeze in his bed.

Does he hates himself ?

"No." he murmurs in the silence of Cabin 7.

There's a legend that says that no lie can be pronounced within walls of the one who does not lie.

Will used to believe it until now.

#will solace has plague powers #plague will #percy jackson #percy jackon and the olympians #pjo #will solace

[mocha-writes]

Sun, Moon, and Star OC Meme

Tagged by: @perkeleen-lavellan 

Sun

Isaac Hawke

Honestly, this ended up being the only motif left after assigning moon and star to my Inquisitor and Warden, but it fits a cheerful extrovert with red hair. Besides being a musician, I’ve pictured Isaac as someone who gardens--I don’t know if I’ve discussed this headcanon anywhere before or not, but I want to think that he and Merrill actually restore the gardens at the Amell estate--and the idea of sunlight as restorative and nurturing seems relevant for that. There’s also a connection with Varric’s tarot card representation (the Sun), so I think this suits Isaac rather well.

Moon

Solomon Trevelyan

Solomon has the color scheme for this, with albinism making him unusually pale and white-haired, but thinking of the moon as a representation of mystery, cycles, and emotion, I think this fits him as well. He’s a necromancer whose magic taps into life energy itself and deals with spirits that could easily be considered demons, and his life has been marked by phases that ultimately end in a “return”: growing up in the Alienage, being adopted into his father’s family after his mother’s death, being sent to the Circle where he gradually goes from rebellious apprentice with multiple escape attempts to Senior Enchanter and person who keeps the Ostwick branch of the Libertarians afloat after news of Kinloch Hold’s near-downfall causes a decline in membership, the Circle falling just for him to end up as part of the delegation of mages at the Conclave, being Inquisitor, and finally shedding that title by disbanding the Inquisition as well as his “human” name in favor of reclaiming “Sulevin,” his birth name that he had no choice but to give up when recognized by his father, Bann Trevelyan. He’s gradually had to learn to bottle up his emotions and get better at picking his own battles just to survive, but I still picture him as someone who feels a lot, deeply, and this, combined with “dark forces aren’t necessarily evil” and “it’s never too late to reconnect,” make me think a moon motif suits him.

Star

Ephraim Surana

This one came to mind immediately, because I’ve had “Ephraim studied astronomy in the Circle and is fascinated by the stars” as a headcanon for long time. Thinking about stars as crucial to navigation and as ways of understanding the world, considering all of the myths and history associated with constellations both in our world and Thedas, I think this motif suits Ephraim, who I also associate with stories and history. I feel like I’ve talked about the headcanon that he loves romance novels and has written fanfic for his favorite ones a lot, but one I haven’t focused on as much is “he translated and made copies of the Eluvian manuscript that’s crucial to the plot of Witch Hunt, so there’s no stealing of the text from Ariane’s clan by Morrigan, who’d have her own copy that Ephraim shared with her during the Blight.” I want to think there was an entire “ring” of mages dedicated to ensuring access to their people’s knowledge that the Chantry tried to claim and to preserving what they might have brought with them from outside the Circle, like songs, recipes, etc. It’s not an original idea by any means (thank you Kari/October-Rosehip for having things like this in Macsen’a backstory if you see this), but the sheer concept of an “underground elven library in Kinloch Hold” compels me. To bring this back around to stars, thinking of them as omens makes me think of Ephraim as well—he’s my oldest Dragon Age OC and has been through so many changes. I’ll probably mess with his story more if I ever get to replay the series again. But one theme I want to think has been consistent with him, and one I want to keep, is “no matter what one has done, one can always decide and try to be a better person.” When I think of omens, I think of symbols, mysterious and powerful, and I think that suits the Hero of Ferelden.

Tagging: @scribbledquillz @zeesqueere @musingmycelium and anyone who wants to do this and needs an excuse. Let me enable you. There’s no obligation, as always, this was just fun and I thought I’d share

#ephraim surana #isaac hawke #solomon jacob raphael trevelyan #this has been in my drafts for weeks I am posting before I change my mind

[fandom-space-princess]

Keep Your Victory (But Give Me Little Death)

Fandom: Supernatural Rating: Explicit Pairing: Michael/Sam Winchester Length: 6.3k Other tags: canon compatible but not necessarily canon compliant, you can't prove to me this didn't happen, Madison!Michael, She/Her Pronouns for Michael, this is sort of michifer-adjacent but not really, in that michael and sam are both just weird about lucifer, they're not talking about that but. it's there., Oral Sex, Dream Sex

Summary:

“You fear to touch me,” Michael spoke lowly, lips brushing the shell of his ear. “Something like that.” “Do you imagine that you could spoil me? Are you so assured of your own inherent capacity for corruption, or have you so badly misapprehended my own vulnerability? No. I don’t believe either of these can be the case.” “You know,” he said. “You already know.” “Sam,” she replied. He heard patience in it, which was not softness but could have been mistaken for it. And something else, too, for which he had no name but thought might be reflective of her own, private emotions. “I desire to meet you where you are. I would have reciprocity in this. I am—” She faltered. “I’m unused to the nuances of physicality. Your mind supplies many of them, but if we are to understand each other, your passive desire is not enough. I require your active cooperation. Do I have it?”

Continue reading below, or on AO3

“I admit, Sam, I’m intrigued,” said the night, seeping in past his curtains. The stars were in that voice, and the void. “You have some idea, now, what is required of you. And still, you pray.” 

Sam became aware that he was in a bed, familiar only for the sense that he’d slept in a thousand so like it as to be indistinguishable. Stained blankets, threadbare sheets. A bed that was not a bed, but a representation of archetype. Archetypal walls, too, shedding flakes of old paint, and grimy carpet clinging to the distant memory of beige. The dream of a motel room, then. Not as specific place, but as ethos.  

He had the sense that he’d awoken; he knew he was not awake.  

The night spoke again. 

“You invoke my Father. You seek exemption from your place among His plans. You will tell me why.” 

The night took form. There was darkness and potential, and then there was a face: sharp, pale, and beloved, haloed in ashen curls.  

What Sam wanted to say to her was: “I missed you.” Or: “I’m dreaming.” Or simply to call her by her name, to reach for her and kiss the word “Jessica” into her open palms until his lips remembered the texture of her skin. But what he choked out instead, shrinking from the memory of two nights past when her face had evaporated away to reveal the nightmare underneath, was: “No.” 

The creature who was not Jess raised an eyebrow. “You fear me,” she said.  

Sam propped himself up on his hands, blankets puddling in his lap. “I told you, it’s never going to happen.” He enunciated his words with care, watching her eyes, cornered prey tracking a predator. “I’ll never say yes to you.”  

The creature that was not Jessica Moore didn’t blink, didn’t breathe, but at his words, a subtle shift in the tension of her muscles changed the way she held herself. Her chin tilted up, and she gazed at him along the bridge of her nose. “Ah. You believe me to be my Brother. Not unexpected, I suppose: he hears your prayers as well as I do. He has visited you, then.” She studied him. “And worn this image, as well.” 

His eyebrows furrowed together. “You... you’re not Lucifer.” 

This earned him the ghost of a smile. “Correct.” 

“Then what...?” 

It was odd, her presence in this room. Sam realized what had been bothering him since the moment of her appearance. It was the way she held herself, broad-shouldered and rigid. Lucifer had been all fluid grace, both as Jess and after, her movements deliberate, certainly, but organic. And she had shone with an almost imperceptible aura, a light interior to herself. The creature before him now wore the same borrowed face, but otherwise was her opposite in almost every way. When she moved, it was with precision, and only so much as was necessary to convey her point. She did not shine in the darkness; she displaced it. 

“In truth, I should have met with your brother first,” she said. Her words shared the same rote, pointed quality as her movements. She held her hands out in front of her, palms up. “But I wanted to give you answer. Whether you like it or not, Sam Winchester, you’re special. Chosen for a purpose, one as important to me as it is to Lucifer.” 

Understanding clicked into place for Sam, roiling his stomach. “Michael. You’re Michael.” 

Of course. Hadn’t he pleaded for this? Putting himself to bed with the same reassurances he’d been grasping at since he was a child. Even after—especially after—the revelations of two nights ago about his place in the universe, prayer had felt imbued with that old, imperative weight. Sitting on the edge of his bed before sleep, reciting: deliver us from evil. If he was honest with himself, he had held out hope, however tempered by disillusionment, that some power on high would take notice.  

It was small wonder that angels flocked to his dreams.  

His heart wasn’t real there (nothing was real, there). And still, it thumped hollowly in his absent chest. 

She took a step toward him. Reflexively, he shoved himself back. His spine cracked hard against the headboard. She stopped. 

“This form displeases you.” Michael’s eyes slid over his body, his taut and coiled frame, the twist of his fists into the sheets. Assessing him, measuring him. Then they flicked back up to his own. 

He couldn’t hold her gaze. He looked, instead, at her hands. This memory of Jess, the one Michael must have pulled from him to craft a likeness... he’d all but forgotten. She was so beautiful. How could he have forgotten? This woman wore the same cutoff jean shorts, faded to grey and fraying, and a crop top the delicate pale pink of the inside of a conch shell—they'd gone on a hike. On one of the last bright days between the death of summer and the true advent of fall. Vivid, sun-baked and alive: Jess then had been everything that Michael was not now. He’d hugged her to him, buried his nose against her scalp where her hair was damp with sweat. Her laughter had echoed between their bodies where they pressed together. They’d intertwined their fingers, and her nail polish, chipping, had left flakes behind wherever she touched him. They’d stayed on his skin for days—cobalt fragments, and the smell of her. 

Michael wore Jess’s chipped blue nail polish in the same way as he wore Jess’s fingers, and her face: as an afterthought.  

Her voice snagged him out of his memories. “I require something of you,” she reminded him. “Tell me.” 

“Why I prayed?” 

She nodded. “Why you pray.” 

“Could... uh...” He cleared his throat. Steadier, he tried again. “I don’t... want to presume, or anything. I just don’t think I can...” His voice cracked. Once more. “D’you think you could look like someone else?” 

She cocked her head.  

He felt her rummage through his memories. She was not careful. It was not malicious, and her face as she watched him betrayed nothing but casual, imperious indifference. Still he felt the substance of himself riffled, examined, the pages of his mind turned rapidly under vast, deft fingers.  

One moment to the next, she was no longer Jessica. Lucifer had taken a perceptible amount of time to exchange one face for another. Michael simply became, in an instant. And where a moment before Jess had been, Madison stood. 

Sam wasn’t sure if the question was safe to ask, but it clawed out from between his teeth anyway. “Why her?” 

Michael stepped forward again. Madison’s brown hair snaked over her shoulders. The motion transfixed Sam: he could no more have moved under her eyes than had she been kin to Medusa. When he didn’t back away, she replied, “I take the form your mind provides. She was dear to you. The two of you achieved... a rapport, for want of a better term, that suits my own desires. You wish you could have saved her. You cling to the idea. It gives you comfort.” 

“What do you mean, your desires?” God, but his voice was unsteady. Like being 16 again. Even talking to Lucifer hadn’t made him feel so young, so aware of his own mortality. “Am I supposed to read into that?” 

“You are supposed to do many things, some of which are more relevant to my interests than others.” Michael lowered herself gingerly on the foot of the bed. She appeared no more relaxed there than she had standing; she merely folded her hands across her lap, and continued to watch him. “I understand what you think you know of angels. Believe whatever you wish, but know that I do desire your comfort, insofar as it is an achievable thing. I am not here to hurt you, Sam.” 

“Then why are you here? I mean—you could help me. Right? You’re... I prayed because... I wanted... I hoped...” 

Her face turned away from him again, fixing on an unseen horizon. In her silence Sam counted his breaths, noted again the absence of hers. He worried that he had mis-stepped. The darkness around her thickened and churned with her thoughts. Whether it was only an effect of the dream, or a natural extension of the fact of her, he could not have said. 

“I am here to know you, and to offer perspective,” she answered, after a time. She drew her legs up onto the bed, folded them under her, rearranging her limbs as though at the command of a puppeteer. It brought her closer to him. “You will see the rightness of your purpose, yours and your brother’s. You seek clarity. I can help you achieve it.”  

Her knee bumped his, through the blankets. It seemed to him that she should have burned where they touched, or he should have. But the sensation was only solid, only human, in the ways of knees and shinbones and blood-warm bodies. In the ways Madison would have been; in the ways Michael should not have been. 

“I thought you guys knew everything already.” 

“I know what I am required to know to fulfill my duties. That is much. It is not all. As I said, you intrigue me. I thought I understood you. You are my Brother’s vessel.” Her knee knocked his again; this time, she watched it happen. “I would have sworn that in your position, Lucifer would not have sought intervention. Yet here we are.” 

Michael’s words took root between his ribs, wrapped tendrils through his chest and squeezed. His breath stuttered. “I’m not him. Lucifer. I’m not like him.”  

He was acutely aware of being examined, still, again, but he couldn’t look at her. 

“I’m curious,” she said. Her voice came out strange, rougher. It might have passed as human. “You beg intercession, on terms that—you must understand—are not mine to accept. Lucifer would bear no compromise. You, who claim to be so unlike him, what compromise would satisfy you? Imagining for the moment that such a thing were possible.” 

Sam bit the inside of his lip, hard, once, then again, until his words tasted copper-tinged. “I can’t,” he started.  

He stopped. Started again. 

“I can’t be the thing that destroys the world. Just tell me I don’t have to be that,” he rasped. “Tell me I don’t have to be that.” 

A light touch on his forehead. He lifted his eyes to find that she had raised her right hand, placed her fingertips gently but with intention just below his hairline. They were at eye level, her knelt there and him, seated; he couldn’t be looking up at her. And yet he felt himself become small. 

“We have different conceptions of destruction, but... I understand. You would give yourself for that outcome.” She slid her fingers higher, tangling into his hair, her palm spreading flat over the crown of his head. “You do not ask for your own life, but to spare the pain of others.” 

His back bowed. He swayed toward her.  

Madison had worn no nail polish, and had manicured her nails to neat points. On Michael both of these things presented themselves as natural, facts to be accepted without question. But Madison had smelled like clean laundry, like warm pavement and leather car seats and the thrill of teenage delinquency. Michael smelled like none of this. Even in dream, Michael was sharp at the back of the sinuses; she smelled like ozone. 

“Why would you touch me?” he managed. “I’m not your vessel. I’m corrupted. Impure.” 

A frown wrinkled between her eyebrows, pursed her mouth, then was gone. She tightened her fingers at the roots of his hair. It brought the breath rushing out between his teeth in a hiss.  

She looked down at him, and she looked, and looked, and at last she sighed. “My Brother is many things, Sam. But he is not now, and has never been, impure.” 

Bit by bit, her movements were losing their rigidity. Her right hand still palming the crown of his head, she brought her left up to cup the curve of his jaw. She touched him like a priest would, he thought. As though she were anointing him. 

“This shape you have been given,” she said, stroking the point of her thumbnail over his cheekbone, “the destiny you wear as flesh, and would reject? It is an enjoinder: a commandment to glory. What Lucifer has wrought is monstrous. I must give answer to his deeds. But you—as your brother, as my Brother, as I myself—you are not monstrous. You are only potential, Sam. We are all of us only potential, awaiting fulfillment.” 

Michael’s mouth formed his name the way Madison’s mouth had done. The bow of her upper lip was soft, and pursed, and unbidden he remembered what it had been to kiss her. He wondered if Michael would taste the same, wearing her body, or if she would taste as she smelled, like cold high atmosphere. 

Her hands lifted off him, untwisted from his hair. He leaned after her in their wake, bereft of the loss, and confused at it, but wanting more than anything for her to lay her hands on him again. She did. The frown returned to her forehead, his confusion mirrored on her, but her hands flittered back down to him, doves settling fretful on his shoulder and the nape of his neck.  

“You miss him,” he said to her, understanding this fully only as he said it. He leaned more firmly into her touch. “Do you really have to kill him?” 

The doves lifted, hovered, settled again. Now she touched his collarbone, his chest over his heart. Nothing between his pulse and her palm but his thin and too-worn shirt, his thin and too-worn flesh.  

“He has made his choices,” she replied. “He is making them, even now, as I am making mine. My Father’s will for us is absolute. The conclusion is foregone.” 

One heartbeat. Two. “Then how can we be—potential?” 

Her lips parted, a little. The edge of her tongue traced the line of moisture along the curve of her lower lip. “The path we take matters. Our methods matter. I do not believe Lucifer can do other than make the choices he must, as I do not believe I could. I am not even certain that you can. But you would give yourself for a different outcome, where my Brother would not. I find this to be in conflict with my understanding of my Father’s will, and with my understanding of my Brother.” 

He swallowed. “So I’m... what, to you? A thought experiment? A problem to solve?” 

“These things, yes, among others. You are a part of the path, Sam, and a method for traversing it.” She took a breath, the first he had seen her take, slow and deliberate. “My will is my Father’s will. And it is my will to know, fully and completely, the means by which I am to pursue my duties.” 

Sam absorbed this, and didn’t know what to do with it. It was one thing to beg for the intercession of the divine, but quite another entirely to be pinned under the regard of the first and holiest of divinities. She was no different from Lucifer, he reminded himself, but with her hands on him, her eyes on him, it rang hollow. He wondered what he would give her, if she asked for it. He wondered what he wanted her to ask for.  

What came out of his mouth was a plea: “Your question. I want—I’ll pray for you. I’ll show you. Let me show you. Please.” 

A shiver ran through her. Her right hand returned to his hair, curving over the back of his skull, left hand on his chest, and she lowered herself atop his lap as gingerly as she had first seated herself on the bed. Legs slung over his and blankets bunched between them; once again he felt himself impossibly smaller than her. He had been able to pick Madison up and hold her against him with one arm. He could not imagine doing it to Michael. And, just then, he could imagine doing nothing else.  

She pinned him in place without apparent effort, as though it were nothing to her. “I’ve watched you,” she said. Her words raised the hair on his skin to gooseflesh. “Your brother as well, of course, but you, Sam—your little rituals. They do fascinate me. You bow your head to pray, do you not?” Her fingers tightened over his scalp, and the touch no longer felt quite so like an offering from saint to supplicant. His head dropped forward, his cheek brushing hers. His neck felt terribly exposed.  

He tried to speak; could only rattle out a half-coherent slurred aaehhh. How did he endure the touch of something like her? Scalp, chest, the curve of his jaw, his hips and thighs where she straddled him: it seemed impossible that he did not burn or freeze at these places, these junctures between her holiness and his all-too-human flesh. He lost himself, for some moments, caught half between longing and terror. 

“And then?” she prodded. 

“H-hands,” he stuttered. He tried to shake himself, succeeded only in settling her more firmly across his legs. His hands were—somewhere, a million miles away, doing nothing for him, he’d forgotten them so thoroughly. If her hands on him were unearned blessing and undeniable benediction both, his hands on her would be unthinkable blasphemy. He uncoiled his fists from the blankets, down near his sides, and clasped them together, pressed to his stomach in a fearful attempt not to touch her more than he already was. 

At this, Michael tutted her disapproval. Her hand left his chest, and he regretted the loss only for the second it took for her to grasp his hands instead. Her fingers insinuated themselves between his palms. She pulled his hands away from his body—he offered no resistance, could offer none—and she pressed them down, still clasped, until his forearms rested across her thighs and his knuckles grazed her stomach.  

“You fear to touch me,” she spoke lowly, lips brushing the shell of his ear.  

“Something like that.” 

“Do you imagine that you could spoil me? Are you so assured of your own inherent capacity for corruption, or have you so badly misapprehended my own vulnerability? No. I don’t believe either of these can be the case.” 

“You know,” he said. “You already know.” 

“Sam,” she replied. He heard patience in it, which was not softness but could have been mistaken for it. And something else, too, for which he had no name but thought might be reflective of her own, private emotions. “I desire to meet you where you are. I would have reciprocity in this. I am—” She faltered. “I’m unused to the nuances of physicality. Your mind supplies many of them, but if we are to understand each other, your passive desire is not enough. I require your active cooperation. Do I have it?” 

For one dizzying instant he thought she was asking him for another “yes,” a different one. But she remained statue-still over him, and the thought passed, and with it, some of his trepidation. The concession was unexpected: that between his desire for this strange communion and his fear of her, the latter might be the more powerful. He was left feeling distinctly wrong-footed, yet undeniably reassured. 

In response, he loosened his hands. Allowed them to rest more gently against her. “Yeah,” he replied. “I just... you’re kind of a lot. Uh, no offense.” 

Michael’s pleasure was obvious in the lines of her body, in the breadth of her shoulders and the way her head tipped back as though to accept a crown. She pressed the hand that still covered his clasped ones more insistently between his palms, until they opened around it, and he held her hand in his. “I am what I am. It is what you are that I am discovering. To which point: you were providing me a demonstration. Your hands—what about them?” 

What indeed. His head remained bowed under her hand (and he was thankful for that, a gratitude that surprised him, for her soft-immovable living iron grip that held him aloft in the moment) and he closed his eyes. So it was by touch that he undertook to relearn her body. By touch, alone, that he traced his fingers over the contours of her waist, down the arches of her pelvic bones where they disappeared beneath the denim of her cutoffs. Then back up, around the hem of her shirt, over each jut of ribs, to the column of her spine. This body was a country he’d traveled before. He could have wept for the familiarity. 

But she wasn’t Madison. It was impossible to truly forget for even a second. Michael upended reality simply by existing in it; the world moved aside for her. She was warm, but not as a person was warm. Michael was warm in much the same way as a star: an inferno, self-sustaining and consumptive, survivable only if kept at a great distance.  

Sam wanted to bridge that distance. The implied question of the relationship between that desire, and his own survival instincts, he set aside for later.  

His fingers drifted down her vertebrae, slowly, feeling their shapes. He muttered under his breath.  

“What aspect of prayer is this?” she said. 

“Rosary,” he chuckled back, and he thought he felt her huff a breath of laughter across his throat. 

He pitched his voice louder, meaning for her to hear. When he spoke, what came out was not prayer—not exactly—but fragments of half-remembered poetry that looped in his ears like a refrain: 

“If I profane—” he began. He felt the weight of her curiosity, her expectation. He pressed on: “—with... with my unworthiest hand... this holy shrine, the gentle sin is this: my lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand to smooth that rough touch with a...” His mouth was dry. He swallowed. “... a gentle kiss.” 

Christ. Shakespeare to an angel. Shakespeare to Michael. But that was where he was. Nothing else felt adequate.  

He expected to move on. He expected his words would have amused, bored, perhaps even offended her. He did not expect her to return the next verse. 

“Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,” she replied. Her lips were at his ear again. She ran her left hand down his arm, pulled his hand off the small of her back to knit their fingers together between them. Her voice held a smile. “Though I accept the proposition, regardless.” 

She kissed him.  

He’d been right, and wrong. She did taste like she smelled, her lips all static pop under his own, but it held more of bioelectric feedback than the hum of the void. The motions were all Madison’s. It occurred to Sam that Michael might have only his memories for reference; that, wearing Jess’s face, she would have kissed like Jess kissed, too. Realizing this, he slowed. He kissed her with deliberate languor, with a luxury of time he and Madison hadn’t possessed. Some of the earlier stiffness returned to her. She became still under him. He hooked one finger into her waistband and tugged her flush against him, and crushed his mouth against hers, and she let him do it.  

“What does this feel like for you?” he wondered aloud. He lifted his hand to trace her lips with the tips of his fingers.  

Michael took a rare moment of deliberation before she answered. She kept her mouth pressed to his fingertips, speaking against his skin. “Much as it feels to you, I expect. Your nerve endings provide useful information. The sensation is... not unlike taking a vessel. It is novel.” She was quiet for a moment, then added: “It is not unpleasant.” 

“That’s... good,” he managed.  

“It is. Though you have unusual taste in prayers.” 

“I could stop. If you wanted.” 

She raised an eyebrow at him, mirth that took on shades of disbelief when he grinned back at her. She tightened the hand that was in his hair once again, quick, nearly playful, and draped the other arm across his shoulders behind his neck.  

“You will do no such thing.” The arm around his shoulders flexed. She guided his head down to her shoulder, and ground her hips against his. His breathing broke, broke again, and he gasped against that place under her jaw where her pulse should have been but was not. 

“Another,” she said, nearly as breathless.  

“You want something more traditional?”  

“I would know you, your interiority. Whatever you feel most demands to be heard.” 

He set his lips against her throat, considering. Her skin was pliant, soft and yielding, and he moved past lips to scraping with the barest edge of his teeth. Felt the buzz of her underneath the veneer of humanity.  

“... It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction,” he started. He slid both hands over her hips. Dipped fingertips under her waistband. Pricked her skin with his fingernails. She startled, at the sensation, or the change in meter, or his choice of poem, he could not say. “I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless vapor, all falls aside but myself and it.” 

Again she surprised him. “Books, art, religion, time,” she said, eyes slitted almost closed. She wasn’t looking at him, now, had turned her head away. “The visible and solid earth, and what was expected of heaven or feared of hell, are now consumed.” 

Abruptly speech deserted her. Sam leaned forward, pressed a kiss to the exposed ridge of her collarbone. Her eyes remained closed, her face turned from him. She bit her lower lip. 

What did he want from this? He hadn’t gone into this encounter certain of the answer to that question, was no more sure now. But the shame and shock that had festered in him since Lucifer appeared had steadily abated in Michael’s presence. There was something in this for her—she'd said as much—but he suspected there was depth there she hadn’t made visible to him, or at least nuance to the desire.  

What he was certain of was that with every touch, she unhistoried him; transformed his past into kindling for the burning future she commanded. She had spoken of a compromise they might, hypothetically, have reached. Maybe it was foolish to hope that she might want that, or something like it, as much as he did. But he didn’t want her to leave yet, either way. He wanted her to stay.  

On impulse, he wrapped his arms around her waist and unseated her from his lap, swinging her back against the headboard. Their positions suddenly reversed, she looked at him seated between her knees with wide eyes full of earnest bewilderment.  

Sam kissed the inside bend of her knee. “Realized I wasn’t doing it right,” he murmured. He stole a glance at her. Another kiss, an inch further up her leg. “You’re supposed to kneel. Sorry.” 

At his third kiss, again further up the bared skin of her thigh, he heard her head clunk softly back against the headboard. She threaded her fingers back into his hair. 

“You are without fault,” she said to him, or maybe just at him. “Provided you atone for your oversight.” 

His mouth, traversing up her thigh, had reached the ragged edge of denim that demarcated the parts of Michael that Sam had seen and touched from those that still belonged only to the memory of the woman she wore. He wanted to see beneath it, wanted to know how much of the impossible creature in his arms and his bed was recognizable. What commonality might be found between woman and myth. 

He wanted, he realized, to know her for herself. As she had made it clear that she wished (via the mechanism of this intimate, unexpected exchange) to know him. 

His hand found the button of her shorts, and worked it until it popped free. But her hand fell over his. She looked down at him with placid eyes. And then she wore nothing at all.  

It took his mind a stuttered instant to catch up, which clearly amused her. His hand, which had rested on denim, she now pressed onto the dip below her bellybutton where the velvet skin of her stomach gave way to soft black hair. His eyes raked up her body, recommitting it to memory: the pale spread of her breasts and the flushed brown nipples, the peaks of her ribs beneath rippling skin. The curve of her pelvic bones, the mole on her right hip: these were the same as he remembered them. But Madison’s body, beautiful as it was, had never pulled his gaze in like this. Had never entrapped him in her own personal gravity the way that Michael did. 

“Tell me what you make of me, in this form.” 

“I don’t know that I have the words you want,” he said, truthfully. “Show you instead?” 

“... I’m amenable.” 

Under the pressure of his hands her legs fell apart. Every time she yielded to him, every time he moved her, the part of his mind still staggered by insistent awe reminded him that it had only happened because she had allowed it. That there was no better indication that what he was doing was not only at her consent, but by her will, and that there was a small but vocal part of him that delighted in being the subject of that will.  

He urged her to extend one of her legs beneath him, propping himself above it; the other he slung over his shoulder.  

There seemed no preamble that would be suitable, apart from what had already passed between them. Still, if his intuition was to be believed, this was the first experience of such mortal intimacy that Michael would know for herself. His own first-time memories were all rushed, fumbling, teenaged things. It felt wrong, for that to be what he offered her. 

And so he took his time. He leaned forward, pressed his forehead against her stomach. His lips skimmed along the top of her pubic bone, mapping the boundary between her structural hardness and the soft expanse of skin and muscle that overlaid it. He slid the fingers of one hand into her pubic hair, feeling the way it curled around them, rough-soft. Her own fingers tightened in his hair in return.  

When he nudged his head back, they loosened again, and he took advantage of the renewed range of motion. His mouth dropped to the divot between her hip and leg, and he ran the flat of his tongue down it. Her skin here tasted more like he remembered of Madison’s body: still buzzing with power, but with none of the ozone sting that kissing her mouth had carried. It lacked the tang of salt that sweat would have given it, but if he hadn’t known what she was... well. It was better not to dwell on that. 

Sam’s life, beset by storms as it had been, had set him running more often than he cared to dwell on. It was why he was here—in Oklahoma, apart from his brother, on his own—and why he found himself in this bed, now, with this creature of embodied primordial fire of creation spread beneath him, naked and wearing the face of a woman whose life he had taken with his own hands. Michael was not safe haven; it would have been a grave mistake to think of her that way. Yet he was drawn to her regardless, in a way that he thought might be similar—perhaps complementary—to the way she seemed to be drawn to him. If he were allowed to scald himself in the inferno of her, perhaps he would be more worthy of finding the shelter he sought. 

Between her legs, the warmth that radiated from her dared him to try. “What was it you wanted from me, again?” he asked in a surge of boldness, his mouth pressed against her in a grin.  

Though quiet, her voice had lost none of its command. “To understand you, within as without. Your interiority.” 

He slid one finger inside of her.  

She exhaled hard, though her nose. “Irreverence is unbecoming,” she said, but he thought he heard laughter in it.  

For all that she had professed unfamiliarity with physical intimacy, her responses were as animal as if her body had been her own. He stroked inside of her, once, twice, and the wetness of her slicked against his palm. He leaned his head down, and licked small, light circles around her clit in time to the motions of his wrist.  

Her laughter deserted her then, and he heard her take a breath, and then another. She drew them in time to his movements. He felt the beat of her pulse under his tongue, where before she had none; it kept pace with his own.  

Sam was aware, distantly, of his own investment in the intimacy between them. His skin prickled with sweat, and with the electricity of touching her. Somewhere either here in dreams or in the world of waking, he was hard, an ache in the pit of his stomach and between his own cramping thighs. He ignored this. As they had come closer together, he had felt more distinctly the places her power insinuated itself into his mind. The way it spread out along his nerves. His experience of his own body seemed relevant only insofar as for what she might gain from it. He suspected that she would not prefer the immediacy of learning what his nerves had to teach her, were he to focus on himself. 

So he focused instead on her. He extended another finger inside her, and then, when her body welcomed him, a third. The circling of his tongue became more focused, harder, a rhythm that he matched with his hand. He sucked more of her into his mouth, clit, labia, and her muscles spasmed around his fingers. With his other hand, he pinned her leg back hard against the sheets, bearing as much of his weight and strength down over her as he was able.  

Her hips bucked against him, but he held her in place. And she let him do it.  

He was under no illusions about his control over this situation. But Michael’s breath had turned ragged, and shaky, and when he dared to glance up at her she was staring down at him as though transfixed. She met his eyes for only a handful of seconds. In those seconds, he saw the emotion she had so carefully guarded slashed across her face like a wound. Her expression mirrored the one he thought he must have worn to see Madison’s face again, and Jessica’s. 

Then her eyes shuttered. She shoved his head back down, and he wrote his apology with the tip of his tongue.  

Her body clenched, hard, harder; her hands twisted in his hair. Panting. Pulse racing. She ground herself against his hands and his mouth, wet heat, friction. He would have moaned her name if he’d been able. As it was, he just moaned. Senseless noise, vibration, but he knew she understood it.  

Michael came with a word on her lips in a language that should have shredded them both to pieces. He couldn’t have said what it was, that thing she reached for at her most open and vulnerable.  

Although—if he were being honest—he could have offered a guess. 

He did not stop immediately, but gradually slowed. The ringing in his ears and the movements of his hands tapered off in tandem, until he pulled himself away from her. He leaned back on his heels. He remained there, between her knees, silent, as though he were waiting for acknowledgement or dismissal.  

Her pulse stopped first. He saw the moment it ceased to flutter in her throat. Then her breath, the rise and fall of her ribs tapering off, her chest going still. She sat up, her face returned to the cold confidence she’d worn when she entered the room. As she moved forward to meet him, her legs folded underneath her, and her movements regained some of their earlier, pointed stiffness.  

She grabbed the bedsheet, and then his hand, still wet. Turning it delicately between her own, she dried first the hand, and then, with soft strokes of the cloth, his face. She held his chin cupped in her palm for several seconds after she let the sheet fall away.  

Then she kissed him, once, mouth closed, like a blessing. 

“Was it enough?” Sam asked, his voice shot. “Did you get what you wanted?” 

Michael stepped away from him. She smiled.  

“Your eagerness is endearing,” she replied. Her eyes turned away from him, toward the horizon she always seemed to be searching for. He wondered what she saw there. “Yes. I always get what I want.” 

She sounded smaller than she had earlier, he thought. As though she had not found something, but had become more lost. She turned her back to him. Under him, around him, the dream began to evaporate. He called out to her, “When will I see you again?” 

She didn’t reply. 

He awoke to the sun on his face, and every muscle in his body sore. As though he’d slept wrong; as though he’d spent weeks curled atop his bed, grieving, starving. Wanting.  

The burn of a distant star still thrumming under his skin, he rolled to his feet.  

A shower, he thought. As cold as he could get it. 

#michael spn #sam winchester #michael/sam #spn #fanfic #god they're weird

[pactargent]

Greetings. We suppose it is long past time that we shed some light on the nature of our civilisation. While it is not in our nature to actively conceal the past, knowledge of ours has been kept unfortunately close to our chests.

So, starting today, we shall rectify this, with first a presentation of:

The Formation of the Argent Pact

The Argent Pact began countless millennia prior to the current age, approximately 102,340 galactic standard years ago, to be exact.

It was originally a mere alliance of practicality between us and our neighbours, the Sorannen. We were wise, made up of strategists and scholars, but limited in our aspirations, while the Sorannen were clever but reckless scientists, striving to achieve new heights no matter the risk to themselves. Together, we tempered their smarts with our wisdom, and they in turn lit the flames of ambition in our hearts. It was an arrangement that served us well. Yet it was simply that - an arrangement. We united our resources but not our cultures; our societies remained separate. Until the day we encountered other societies.

The galaxy of our era was not a kind place. There were none such as the likes of the Darexi to bind together the nations with offers of friendship and aid. The largest powers subjected those smaller than them to their authority, by subterfuge or sheer might should they resist. We knew at once that alone, bound by only a contract of alliance, neither us nor the Sorannen would survive. So we made sure we were not.

The day we stood before the galactic community of the time, Ardenta and Sorannen side by side, we declared ourselves as a single nation, a compact that stretched the south-western quadrant and shielded all within behind our territorial fortress. the Argent Pact.

The name was easy to decide. The first half comes from the Argent Rift, the region of space in which our core worlds reside. A dense and dangerous nebulaic region, but that is a story for another time. The second word, meanwhile, is a representation of what our state is. It is an agreement, a pact of unionship between Ardenta and Sorannen, and extending to all who choose to be shielded under our banner.

And with that, this history lesson has come to the end. More will come, rest assured, touching on the history of the time before the Burning Years, and the time during them. Also planned are looks into the races of the Pact, and an overview of our holdings, both past and present.

That is all. We bid you adieu, for the moment. Pact Eternas.

#peritainia #stellaris #stellaris rp