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flowerandblood · 2 months

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The Song of Songs

The Gate of Salvation Universe Oneshot

[ young pope • Aemond x catholic • female ]

[ warnings: soft sex content, fingering, masturbation, smut, sexual tension, anxiety, doubts related to faith, religious guilt ]

[ description: Her relationship with the Pope becomes more than complicated, especially since it looks like he has no intention of giving up on her or their relationship. His efforts lead to her being assigned a special room in the Vatican, where he visits her at night. Main theme: sexual tension & holy touch. ]

This oneshot is the events that take place a few months after The Gate of Salvation. This is a special chapter written to celebrate my one year on this platform, which falls on March 22. I used fragments from the biblical Song of Songs, hence the title oneshot. I recommend everyone to read it, it is the most erotic and at the same time one of the most poetic and beautiful parts of the Bible.

Aemond as a Pope Edit Series Characters Moodboard Aemond NSFW Alphabet

* English is not my first language. Please, do not repost. Enjoy! *

My other works: Masterlist

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She was not sure how her presence in the Vatican had become her daily routine, spending more time in the quarters surrounding St Peter's Basilica than in her flat.

Although she tried to protest, the Pope personally made sure that a room was prepared for her to sleep in the private part of the complex reserved for guests. She knew he was still adding to her workload just to make sure she stayed there overnight.

At first, he visited her sporadically, saying he couldn't sleep; he came to her room and spoke about his thoughts, doubts, premonitions, and sought her advice on spiritual and everyday matters.

She listened to him sitting on her bed, not knowing what she should do, how to respond, his worries as Pope were something incomprehensible to her, something she had never thought about before.

Only later did she realise that he did not expect her to solve his complicated problems.

She was his solution.

He only showed her what he really needed later, when he sat down next to her, when he touched her cheek, brushing it with his fingers, his gaze was dreamy, warm, full of tenderness, it made her feel hot in her lower abdomen, a shiver ran down her back.

"My sweet flower." He whispered softly and she drifted off completely, closing her eyes, focusing on the wonderful touch of his hand, her heart pounding hard as his forehead pressed against hers, his shaky breath enveloping her face.

Her fingers found his cheek, his jaw, his hair and his neck, she heard him sigh softly as he wrapped his arm around her waist, pulling her closer.

"I need you." He whispered; she could hear how hard it was for him to get those words out, a shy moan escaped her lips as his mouth found hers in a tentative, soft, sticky kiss, her body responding to his closeness with an embarrassing wetness between her thighs.

His kisses became bolder, louder, stickier with his saliva, his warm breath mingling with hers in her throat, his scent filling her entire lungs as he lay on his side, pulling her onto the bed with him.

After what was happening between them at night, he usually needed a day or two to calm down, overwhelmed by how intense their closeness was.

He risked a lot when he started sneaking into her room more often, strolling through the dark marble-lined corridors dressed in his snow-white tracksuit with his hood over his head until he ended up at her door, and fearing that someone would see him, she always let him in, helpless.

"You shouldn't sleep here, Holy Father. What if someone catches us?" She muttered, looking at him pleadingly, already wearing her pyjamas, the same ones she had worn when he had visited her in her flat for the first time.

He looked at her, surprised, pulling the hood off his head, combing his short hair with a careless flick of his hand.

"Do not fret, child. Have faith. God is watching over us." He replied calmly, putting his phone down on her nightstand, pulling his white sneakers off his feet, slipping under her duvet as he did every time he visited her, intending to fall asleep in her bed.

She felt both heat and fear at the sight, swallowing hard as he reached over to the bedside lamp and turned off the light, acting as if this was his room and what he was doing was perfectly normal and ordinary.

She moved uncertainly towards him, knowing there was no point in resisting him and lay down next to him on the bed, sighing quietly as his arm immediately embraced her, snuggling her into his chest.

"− did you say your evening prayer? −" He asked in a whisper, a wonderful, hot shiver ran through her entire body as the tips of his fingers began to comb through her soft hair.

"− yes, Holy Father −" She muttered, feeling that she was losing the battle with herself as she did every time, his closeness, his scent, his voice were addictive to her. Involuntarily her fingers tightened on the material of his sweatshirt at his back, her face snuggled into him, seeking refuge.

"− good − sleep −" He murmured, his lips placing a warm, soft kiss on her hair. She sighed quietly, twisting in her place, feeling how at the sound of his voice and his tender touch her walls clenched tightly, already sticky with her wetness.

It had been two days since he last visited her.

He forbade her to touch herself, saying it was a sin.

She closed her eyes and tried to comply with his request, but she couldn't calm down, feeling his heart pounding fast, his manhood in his sweatpants twitching once in a while, pushing softly against her stomach, making her involuntarily start to rub against him.

"− I'm sorry −" She whispered helplessly in a voice full of shame; she felt him kiss her forehead. His hand immediately slipped under the material of her shorts, running tentatively over her soft buttock before his fingertips found her hot, puffy womanhood, sticky with her moisture.

"− I have obeyed you, Holy Father − I swear −" She mumbled regretfully, panting quietly into his sweatshirt, moving her hips in rhythm with the strokes of his fingers, already experienced in how and where he should squeeze her to give her the greatest pleasure. She heard him gasp as she spread her thighs in front of him, the tips of his fingers beginning to dig into the fleshy structure around her clit with her cry of pleasure.

"− I know, sweet child − I am with you − I will reward your suffering −" He whispered in a low, deep, trembling voice from which a shiver ran along her spine. She clenched her eyes shut, holding back a sob as two of his fingers finally made their way inside her, stretching her throbbing, wet muscles painfully slowly − she clasped her fingers against his back, rising and falling against it with a loud click, feeling that his manhood was already fully hard, throbbing impatiently in his sweatpants.

"− let me, please −" She mumbled pleadingly, lifting her face towards him, his tongue slipping between her lips as she heard his quiet, tender shhh, joining her in a hot, thirsty, sticky kiss.

Even though she begged him to let her relieve himself, to touch his manhood with her hand or lips, he never let her.

He felt that he could not bear the remorse caused by the thought that she had contributed to his sin, that as long as he was the only one touching her, she was not as guilty as he was, and though she disagreed, knowing that she wanted it as much as he did, she tried to respect his decision, to poor effect.

She squirmed loudly as he swapped two of his fingers for his thumb, with which he pressed a spot inside her, his middle and index finger brushing her bud again, teasing her encouragingly.

She felt like her heart was going to jump out of her chest, a helpless whine escaped her lips, his free hand sinking into her hair.

"− please, let me, please, please, please −" She begged, feeling her tears begin to run down her cheeks − she heard him draw in the air loudly, involuntarily pressing his length against her stomach, rubbing against her, searching for any source of relief, his thumb thrust deeper into her wonderful spot making her cry loudly into his mouth, his tongue deep inside her throat.

"− I can't − God, I can't, my sweetest −" He muttered heartbroken, his kisses greedy, full of pleasure, of suffering, of desire, of affection, of tenderness, full of their teeth, their tongues, their lips and their saliva.

She had the feeling he wanted to devour her, her wetness dripping down his hand, her walls beginning to tighten around his thumb, sucking him inside.

"− Holy Father −" She mumbled out with difficulty, hearing that he was panting and moaning along with her, holding her close, his hand pressed against her womanhood as she tilted her head back, moaning in fulfillment, his lips kissing again and again her red, tear-drenched cheeks.

"− I love you − I love you, I love you, I love you −" He whispered in a trembling voice, his hand slid down to her buttock and clamped down on it, pushing her closer, his hips rubbing hungrily against her, trying to chase his own fulfilment. She threw her arms around his neck, joining him in a kiss − he murmured into her mouth in delight, pulling away from her after a moment, looking at her with dreamy eyes.

"− please −" He whispered, stroking her cheek with his shaking hand, her fingers immediately beginning to undo the buttons of her shirt, revealing merely part of her naked body, not uncovering her breasts.

He groaned helplessly at this sight, pressing his forehead against hers, looking down at her exposed skin; she threw her thigh against his waist, responding to the rocking of his hips, and he gasped loudly, turning onto his back with her, his fingers trailing over her sternum down her bare stomach.

"− please − please, please, please −" He breathed out again and tilted his head back with a loud sigh as she began to rub against him, bucking her hips back and forth, his throbbing, swollen cock hidden under the thin material of his sweatpants, leaking already with his precum between her thighs, his fingers tightened involuntarily on her buttocks forcing her to speed up.

"− say it −" He muttered, and she moaned softly, feeling how her hard, popping nipples begin to peek through from under the material of her shirt, betraying her arousal, her insides clenched at his request in pleasure, all moist from her fulfilment.

"− I am yours, Holy Father − both now on earth and after death in heaven −" She whispered sweetly, she saw his lips part in a low groan as she grasped his wrist guiding it to her breast, exposing it with a movement of her shoulder and immediately covering it with his hand, his fingers clenched greedily on her delicate skin, making her merely moan as she felt his cock begin to twitch and throb beneath her in pleasure.

"− so soft − my beautiful sweet flower −" He muttered, lifting himself into a sitting position, his free hand sinking into her hair, the other squeezing her breast greedily, not even for a moment exposing her, his lips swollen with desire sunk into hers, his hips rubbing against her more and more intensely with his throaty moan of desire.

He wanted to come so badly.

He never asked her for it out loud, but she could see it in his gaze as he pressed his forehead against hers, panting loudly, that pleading, ashamed, misty look asking for relief.

She lifted herself slightly then, slipping the material of her shorts off her legs with difficulty, his eyes fixed on her face the whole time as he lowered the material of his sweatpants with his lips spread open at the same time.

"− don't look − come here −" He gasped, pulling her back, groaning loudly as her leaking womanhood pressed against his naked body, his swollen, hard cock throbbing all over and twitching between her thighs, dripping with his precum. The tip of his nose sunk into her cheek as he placed his hands on her naked waist, rocking his hips back and forth, his manhood rubbing against her slick folds.

"− good God − you are so devoted to our Lord, are you not? − always so wet for me −" He exhaled delightedly, speeding up, his lips pressed to her chest, kissing her bare, smooth skin between her breasts, between which hung a small gold cross, a gift from him, which she now wore instead of the one from her grandfather, so that he could have the feeling that a part of him was always with her, touching her naked body.

He never looked down, focusing only on the sense of touch, not wanting to deprive her or himself of their intimacy, to sin by thinking of physicality instead of the spirituality he found in this act of union with her.

"− yes −" She mumbled out with difficulty, responding by bucking her hips to his movements, teasing and squeezing him so that she could hear the loud, sticky click of her own moisture from which they both quickened their pace. Her fingers clamped in his hair, hugging him tighter into her, his fingertips digging into her buttocks, each of his strokes rubbing her clit, making her walls begin to throb wonderfully inside her again.

"− if only I were your husband − if only I could − I'd fuck you every day, morning and evening − after prayer −" He added, as if this was an essential part of that fantasy; she tilted her head back, whimpering with pleasure, his hands sliding lower, between his and her thighs. The thumb of one of them began to brush her clit in circular, sure motions, and the other grasped his manhood, using her moisture as lube − she heard him squeeze himself with a sticky splat, panting loudly, his face pressed against her chest.

"− Holy Father − so good − ah −" She babbled with difficulty, completely absorbed in her own pleasure and his closeness, rising slightly on her knees. She saw him look at her with horror and desire as she positioned herself over the leaking tip of his manhood, but not looking down, resting her hand on his shoulder for balance, letting its fat, pink head push against her fleshy, hot slit.

"− ah − n-no − please − oh fuck − don't stop −" He breathed out, simultaneously trying to escape and thrusting his length deeper between her moist, slick folds, as always he tried to fight with himself, to no avail, his swollen manhood was already halfway in, throbbing like mad.

She pressed her forehead against his with soft moan of delight, closing her eyes, focusing only on the fact that she felt him, that he desired her, that he was loosing his mind because of her.

Once he was deep inside her, his fingers involuntarily dug into the plump skin of her buttocks, shudders of pleasure and disbelief ran through her every time he slammed into her quickly and confidently with greedy, desperate jerks of his hips, unable to contain himself, surrendering to the euphoria that was overtaking them both.

"− God − so tight − so warm − fuckk −" He babbled, opening her wide on his fat cock with each thrust of his hips, she felt every vein on his thick manhood perfectly, every twitch of it, was ashamed of how lewd her moans were, how greedily her walls squeezed him and sucked him in, wanting to keep him inside her.

"− please, please, please, save me −" She mewled sinking up and down on his throbbing length, at the mere feeling of him inside her stretching her fleshy muscles so wonderfully, uniting with her in that final way she came again, tilting her head back with a sweet, surprised cry of pleasure.

She heard his loud, throaty groan when he heard her words and felt her fulfilment on his cock, her moisture running down her thighs, as usual when he felt his was close he slid out of her quickly, cumming into his own hand with a loud sigh of relief that shook his body.

As always his orgasm made tears of pleasure, regret, delight and shame run down his cheeks, which she wiped away quickly leaning over him, snuggling into him, panting loudly, his clean hand immediately embracing her, stroking her back.

She grasped his other wrist, feeling him resist her, wanting to raise his hand higher, to her lips.

"− n-no − stop − it's dirty −" He mumbled through tears, sniffing loudly and sighed, simultaneously heartbroken, helpless and enchanted when she slid his fingers, sticky with his semen deep into her mouth.

"− we have already discussed this − wasting it is a sin, Holy Father − is it not? −" She gasped between flicks of her moist tongue − she heard him swallow hard, looking at her as if charmed, letting her lick his pearly, sticky liquid off his naked skin.

"− I shouldn't − you don't have to −" He began in a trembling voice, watching closely her treatments, unable to look away from this perverted sight.

"− I want to −" She hummed softly, kissing his already clean hand tenderly, smelling of his fulfilment and her saliva; she leaned towards him, hugging her face to his, their hands stroking each other reassuringly.

"− you are the love of my life −" She whispered in his ear, and he sighed quietly, despite the fact that she had repeated it to him so often, he still clearly did not believe that it was true, that she reciprocated his feelings, that she was not disgusted by him, that she had no intention of deceiving or abandoning him.

"− will you forgive me? −" He muttered, and she smiled softly, pressing her face against his hot cheek.

"− I'll forgive you if you forgive me −" She hummed tenderly, hearing him swallow hard.

"− I forgive you, sweet flower −"

"− and I forgive you, Your Holiness −"

She felt him slowly begin to calm down − he wiped his cheeks and she slid off his thighs, quickly putting on her shorts as he headed for her bathroom, locking himself inside to get himself cleaned up.

When he came out he was still quivering.

It seemed to her that the experience of fulfilment was something almost frightening for him, even more so with her when he obviously loved her so dearly.

She reached out her arms to him and he snuggled into her like a small child, pressing his face against her bare skin between her breasts and took a heavy breath, focusing on her hand that covered them tightly with the duvet, then began to stroke his hair with the calm, tender brushes of her fingers.

"Until I met you, I did not understand the Songs of Songs written down by King Solomon. I couldn't get through them, considering them to be sinful texts, I didn't know how they could be part of the Bible. But now I understand. You are my beloved. My bride." He whispered, and she felt a squeeze in her throat at his words, recalling the lyrics of these poems, so filled with metaphors of physical affection that it seemed like a book made for lovers.

How beautiful you are, my darling! Oh, how beautiful! Your breasts are like two fawns, like twin fawns of a gazelle that browse among the lilies. You are altogether beautiful, my darling; there is no flaw in you.

You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride; you have stolen my heart with one glance of your eyes, with one jewel of your necklace. How delightful is your love, my sister, my bride! How much more pleasing is your love than wine, and the fragrance of your perfume more than any spice!

Your lips drop sweetness as the honeycomb, my bride; milk and honey are under your tongue. The fragrance of your garments is like the fragrance of Lebanon. You are a garden locked up, my sister, my bride; you are a spring enclosed, a sealed fountain.

"That would make you my beloved, Holy Father." She whispered quietly, gently brushing his hair with her fingers, feeling how quickly her heart began to pound at this shameless confession.

She heard him hum under his breath, delighted, moving his lips over her bare skin, kissing tentatively a small part of her soft, plump, exposed breast.

"Indeed. I have never felt the presence of God so much as when I am with you. Inside you. When I kiss your naked body. I think then: God must exist, since He has placed such a perfect being before me to be my joy and comfort." He muttered, his lips leaving again and again the sticky, warm trail of his mouth on the bare skin of her breast.

"This is my heaven on earth." He whispered into her warm skin, running his large hand down her back under the material of her shirt, and she smiled at his words, for some reason fulfilled and happy.

"As is mine."

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tamamita · 1 year

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I know of an American Christian (since that's it's own thing) who says the world was created 6,000 years ago, but God did everything up to make it look like the world was actually 14.5 billion years old, so fossils, fossil fuels, everything can still exist, and the everyone in the Bible up until the Tower of Bable spoke Jacobean English before God changed all the languages. Why the latter? Because he believes the King James 1611 Bible is THE definitive Bible.

Just to give an example of how even more messed up Christianity can be when left to its own devices.

The Creation Myth isn't something uncommon in conversative churches, in fact, it's one of the most frequently discussed topics in US politics. Conservatives have a traditionalist interpretation of the Bible, which is why they brazenly embrace the creation myth, while condemning any science-based studies. According to Gallup, about 4/10 of USAmericans believe in the Creationist myth. It says a lot about how religion is incorporated in the every day life of an ordinary citizen, whether they be irreligious or religious, and how christofacism becomes more popular.

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sailforvalinor · 4 months

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So, I am back in the States!! HUZZAH, I am so happy to be home. But now I can talk a little about where I was, I’ve been living in Greece for the past three and a half months—so much happened that I don’t know how exactly to talk about it, so here’s a few of my favorite things:

THE RUINS. OH MY WORD, THE RUINS. I wanted to be an archeologist as a kid and I was living her DREAM. There are kind of just ruins everywhere, I was seeing them all the time, but of all of them I think I’d have to say that my favorite was either the ruins at Delphi or Ancient Corinth. (Y’all, I probably saw Paul’s tent shop.)

The coffee is absolutely fantastic there, you can get a good latte or cappuccino at any restaurant almost guaranteed. They also have amazing chocolate croissants, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to eat one in the States again. There is also the gift from heaven that is Lemon Coke, it comes in a solid yellow can and you can find it just about everywhere, restaurants stock them along with their regular Coke half the time. It is SO good and I don’t know what I’m going to do without it, and putting lemon in regular Coke is NOT the same.

Among other things, I got to take Greek Mythology, which was by far my favorite class of the semester. (Also, coincidentally, I took my final the same day that Percy Jackson premiered. Weird.) I also took Greek, which I did alright in. One of the most interesting problems I ran into with it was that my pronunciation was far better than my vocabulary, so anytime I’d greet someone in Greek (because I didn’t want to sound like a dumb American), they would usually assume I was fluent and start speaking to me in rapid-fire Greek. And then I’d have to shamefacedly ask if they spoke English 😂

The cats! There is an absolutely ridiculous amount of stray cats in Greece—I’d usually pass no less than three just on my way to the coffee shop. I wasn’t a cat person previously, but this semester might have turned me into one.

I found an absolutely wonderful church, as well as a Bible study with a ton of girls my age, the latter of which was something I was lacking growing up.

In general, I feel like I gained a lot of confidence on this trip, both in a broad sense and spiritually. For our Christmas Eve service today, my dad asked me to talk about a Christmas poem since I’m so passionate about poetry (I got to blab about Gloria in Profundis guys!!!), and it occurred to me afterwards that there was no way I would have been comfortable doing that before I left. There was a lot this trip taught me, but one of the greatest things I think I learned was how to be an independent member of a church without my parents. They’ve always told me that they wanted me to make my faith my own, which of course I’ve always understood, but that’s a little difficult when your dad is the minister. Being halfway across the world really forces you to be independent and weigh your own priorities, and having to make the active choice every morning to get up and take the hour-long trip via often uncomfortable public transport to church, to talk to people and make friends and not be antisocial and hide in a corner, was really good for me. I found myself becoming way more comfortable with both talking openly about my faith (something that used to terrify me) and just talking to people in general.

There was honestly so much on this trip that could have gone wrong, but it didn’t, and I’m so grateful for that. It of course wasn’t all sunshine and roses (the living was, shall we say, challenging), but there were so many moments where I felt God blessing me with something and going “Hey! This is for you! I’m giving this to you on purpose!” and I got so much comfort out of that.

All of that said, I am VERY happy to be home.

#val’s gone globetrotting #an adventure for the books to be sure

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adoringhrry · 1 year

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New Parents

Notes: I wrote this based off of a TikTok my mother sent me lol. Also imagine Harry in like mid-2022!

Dad!harry<3

They say children, when you have them, will become the best things in your life. You endure a few minutes of pain to spend a lifetime of happiness with someone who’s a product of you and your other half. Your life will hold smiles, laughs and wonderful memories together.

They will have you on the floor, giggling like a crazy person. Spending months creating a room for them to stay in, making sure your home is suitable so they wouldn’t ever get hurt. Going to doctor appointments to hear a heartbeat, shaking your partner awake in the middle of the night to feel their first kick.

Heaven.

“It’s your turn, Harry!” She spoke, turning over and pulling the satin covers over her head.

“Fuck off,” Harry moaned, begrudgingly slapping his hands over his tired eyes. “But it’s your kid.”

��Yours too.”

No one prepared the new parents for the all hours of the night screaming. The sleepless nights created delusions of their mother’s cackles whizzing around their minds. How the hell could someone put up with these little demons?

Harry grumbled a curse under his breath, throwing the covers off his body and standing. His eyes were closed, hoping to get some sort of more shut eye before he’d be up for hours.

Walking with their eyes closed while still half asleep had become a talent of theirs, having to do it so many times within the last three months does that to people. The mapping of their home has become second nature to him, even in the pitch black of the night.

He would need a cup of coffee, desperately.

Screaming echoed from their daughter’s room, increasing with every zombified step he took. This was how it was the last few months, except for the first week.

The first week they brought their daughter Presley home was heaven, it was everything they had heard about. She was a quiet and peaceful little squished face baby, not a single ounce of fuss at all.

Like an excerpt of the bible, on the seventh day all hell broke loose. That was when the screaming started. As much as Y/n loved her wonderful husband, Harry got on her nerves. And the same would go for him, but he was a little better at hiding it.

His bare feet made it into the room, turning to the crib to console Presley. He held her like glass, something that could break if you made a simply wrong move. A high pitched scream shot through his ear and right out the other side of his head, a need to cry as well punching him in the heart.

“Okay Princess, daddy’s here. Shhh, you’re okay.” He soothed, rocking his bundle of love in his arms. Swaying to a gentle unheard rhythm, he willed her to fall back to sleep. “I understand you love me, but daddy needs his sleep. Please” His words were breathy, pleading not only with the infant but with whatever god could hear him.

Sadly, Presley’s love for her father overpowered his wishes of sleep. Screams and whines continued to pour from the infant's mouth, seemingly for hours.

It only took a few minutes of the gut wrenching noise for Y/n to clamor out of her bed and join her husband. Standing in just black boxers and a white tee with tousled hair, he still looked good enough to bite. Here’s to another sleepless night, she thought.

“Babe, give me her and let's go get some coffee.” She spoke slowly, reaching for the bundle held with his large arms.

“Coffee?” He asked, sleep evident in his husky voice.

Coffee was a safe haven in their home now. Harry wasn’t proud of it, though. He loved to pride himself on only his English breakfast tea and baby-chinos on the off chance he got coffee. He wasn’t a coffee drinker. Well, he didn’t used to be a coffee drinker.

Y/n hummed and grasped onto her daughter gently. She stepped aside so he could shuffle past, rolling her eyes as he hoisted his under pants up and burped on his way out.

“We need a bath.” She pointed out to the wiggling little monster in her arms. “You need to sleep.”

It had been almost two weeks since she had last had a shower, her own smell couldn’t repulse her anymore. That’s when she just knew it was bad. She probably had vomit in her hair, which itself made her wanna crawl into bed and never leave.

After another moment, Presley stopped screaming. She opened her eyes and peered up at her mother, chubby cheeks giving her a permanent fake-grumpy face. They decided to go join Harry, the thought of liquid gold the only thing present on Y/n’s mind.

The hallways were covered in ultrasound photographs and in every room were some sort of baby item. It had taken a month to babyproof the whole home with the help of Kid Harpoon and Lizzo.

Y/n walked into the kitchen to find her husband at the island counter, eyes still closed.

She walked over to him to offer a hand. Her steps halted when she made it behind his shoulder, peering down at what her husband was doing.

Using the coffee scooper, he was plopping spoon fulls of baby formula into the coffee maker. Holy shit. A smile crept up her face, which turned into a giggle. And giggling turned into a hysterical laughing fit of delusion.

When Harry opened his eyes and seen what was so funny, he himself started laughing. It had to have been the no sleep, but this was the funiest thing in the whole world.

Presley was confused as to what was happening, though. Both of her parents were laughing at seemingly nothing, slowly going mad.

#harry styles #harries #harry edward styles #my writing #harry blurb #harry styles fluff #harry styles au #harry styles writing #harry styles fanfic #harry fic #harry styles x reader #harry styles x you #harry styles imagine #dad harry styles #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles one shot #harry styles gif

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bitter69uk · 7 months

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“Robert Aldrich, replacing Mr. Belvedere franchise director Henry Koster, does his darndest to wrangle a prestige picture from a messy script overflowing with sun-baked slaves, harem girls and lengthy entreaties to an absent God. The resulting depravity - brought to bejeweled life by legendary production designer Ken Adam - is giddy salt in the open stigmata of Bible pictures.” / Caroline Golum for Mubi / “Hebrews and Sodomites, greetings!” “Sword-and-sandal” Biblical epic Sodom and Gomorrah (also known as The Last Days of Sodom and Gomorrah) was released in Italy on this day (4 January 1962) sixty-one years ago. It’s been years since I watched the 153-minute Franco-Italian-American co-production, but as far as these things go, it’s not half bad. It is - of course - extremely campy and the cast is fun (Stewart Granger, Pier Angeli, Stanley Baker). But it’s mainly memorable for the presence of exquisite, inscrutable French actress Anouk Aimee (pictured) as the depraved villainess Bera, Queen of Sodom. For a film of its time, it’s surprisingly overt about Queen Bera’s lesbianism (she is always surrounded by an all-female entourage and appreciatively ogles belly-dancers and pretty slave girls). When people write about the history of LGBTQ representation in Golden Age Hollywood films, how come Sodom and Gomorrah never rates a mention? Weirdly, Aimee spoke perfectly fine French-accented English, but director Robert Aldrich opted to have her dialogue dubbed by an American actress.

#sodom and gomorrah #anouk aimée #sword and sandal #peplum #biblical epic #robert aldrich #lobotomy room #queen bera #queen of sodom #lesbian #lesbianism #lgbtqia #old hollywood #kitsch

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paradoxcase · 6 months

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Chapter 50 of Harrow the Ninth

Well, I mean, maybe. If you get resurrected, like I said in the last writeup, that does probably clear space for a new character to appear

So, Wake possessed Cytherea's body, probably starting from when Harrow stabbed the body with the sword a second time, I would guess. This doesn't make sense to me for a couple of reasons, though: 1) How could Wake be simultaneously piloting around Cytherea's body while also fighting Nonius in the River bubble? It seems like her soul would have to be in two different places simutaneously for that to happen, and 2) If Wake already has Cytherea's body, why does she need to kill Harrow and possess her body as well? It's not like she's having trouble using Cytherea to cause chaos. I guess you could maybe argue that the whole Nonius fight just took place while Cytherea was tied up, but I think Wake has been trying to possess Harrow from the beginning of the River bubble stuff

So this point of contention is not about environmental destruction of the Earth, or anything like that, then?

So, apparently the first part is from Henry V, the second part is from the Maori version of the New Zealand national anthem, and the last part is an Eminem lyric. Does BOE use a naming scheme that's like the Puritans who named themselves after entire bible verses, except that instead of using the bible, they use the entire corpus of pre-Resurrection media?

Also, I've been told by people that they are somehow speaking modern English even 10,000 years into the future, does that also go for BOE? Clearly Wake is able to communicate with the other characters without issues. But if this is really just supposed to be the case because John is some kind of micromanager who somehow manages to magically stop language change in the Nine Houses, why would BOE be affected by that? They aren't even in the Nine Houses, and I doubt very much that John cares whether or not they can communicate with him. Anyway, the reason I mention this is that if BOE no longer spoke a language in which these phrases mean anything, they would actually probably work much better as names. The first two seem fine as they are, actually, but I think the Eminem lyric becomes substantially less silly-looking if you don't know what it means. And Wake says "they're dead words", but if she is speaking modern English to John, they aren't really dead words, are they?

This makes zero sense. She's been walking around the Mithraeum with a gun, she's been perfectly capable of killing herself whenever she wanted to do that. Also, does John see himself as a cop?

Was the prison on the Ninth actually intended to be a dummy target for BOE? I don't know how much sense that makes, since like John says, there's nothing on the Ninth except the Tomb, and until the conclusion of this chapter I think he's very sure that no one can use the Tomb against him. So why put a decoy there?

I'm guessing this is a reference to whatever catastrophe happened just before the Resurrection and not, say, the bombs that BOE sent against John's ships?

Would being named after an Evanescence lyric really be any sillier than being named after an Eminem lyric? Honestly, it's probably an improvement in this particular case

So that's an interesting thing, actually - Wake's skeleton was almost certainly converted into a construct for snow leek farming/etc. on the Ninth, so it would have been perfectly human-shaped and mobile, it's not like her bones got buried in the ground or something. Earlier Harrow said that revenants want to inhabit something that's mobile - like a skeleton - or they get bored and leave. So why did she leave her perfectly mobile skeleton to go possess Gideon's sword? Did she only possess the sword when she found out it might leave the planet? What is the thanergy link between Wake's skeleton and the sword in the first place? Or was she just able to possess the sword because it belonged to Gideon?

After reading the entire chapter I'm still not sure what she knows now that she didn't know then. That the Tomb was opened 8 years ago and nothing much happened? I'm guessing she was in on this because she thought opening the Tomb would end the Nine Houses

So Mercy was somehow able to make sperm survive for 12 weeks, but couldn't make the ova last that long? I know thanergy is bad for reproduction, but this is kind of like how Hal 9000 doesn't have all the abilities of modern computers but can somehow beat every human at chess. Or who knows, maybe John's sperm is just special like that

There's something about this story, where Gideon was literally conceived and born just to die, not even properly named, her whole purpose was just to die so that someone else could achieve some end, and then that didn't happen and she was saved from that fate by Commander Wake's death, and then she grew up and independently decided that her whole purpose in life was to die for someone else anyway

Why does he do this? I theorized before that Pyrrha is stil around and he's kind of both of them, so do his eyes betray when he is Gideon versus Pyrrha too and he wants to hide that?

I'm absolutely dying to know exactly what kind of relationship these two(/three?) had/have. They had an affair and they do seem to like each other, but he killed her literally twice now and she very much tried to kill him with the whole incinerator thing. Actually, I mean, speaking of the incinerator incident, when he talked to Harrow after that, did he really think Wake was possessing Harrow? Did he not realize she was actually possessing Cytherea? I think he must have realized she was possessing Cytherea, because of his visits to her before that, but then after the incinerator thing he was talking to Harrow like she was Wake. But I guess Wake was then also in the River bubble doing the two-places at once thing

What Pyrrha died for? I mean, aside from the fact that I think Pyrrha might still be around, actually, wouldn't the official story be that Pyrrha died 10,000 years ago and not 19 years ago?

I love all of Gideon Nav's descriptions of Gideon the First: Gideon Classic, Gideon Senior, Gideon Prime, Gideon, original flavor

Is this the real reason why John seals himself up when they fight the resurrection beasts, so he doesn't bleed blood that could be used to open the Tomb?

So, the original plan was the Gideon's death would, by itself, undo the blood ward and then presumably Mercy or Augustine could come by later to undo all of the other wards? And what actually happened was that there was a thanergy bloom because of the deaths of the 200 children and then Gideon like, I don't know, scraped her knee outside the Tomb once and that undid the blood ward? And Harrow thought she must have figured it out herself somehow?

This is simultaneously so funny and also kind of gross. But the original Deus Apate, like I mean the original Greek one, was really just about distracting God and not about secretly harvesting his sperm to create a baby to bring about the apocalypse, no one needed to specifically seduce Zeus to get him to create babies with absolutely everyone. I thought it was an appropriate reference when it appeared earlier in the story because that was about distracting John, but it feels significantly less apropos here

Did Tamsyn Muir sit down and go, you know what would have been really cool? You know what would have been really great? It would have been just awesome if Darth Vader had cracked a dad joke at the end of Return of the Jedi, I'm so mad he didn't do that

Things that are still not resolved as of this chapter:

What does Gideon's eye color mean?

Why were Mercy and Augustine trying to open the Tomb?

#the locked tomb #harrow the ninth

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maayan00sh · 7 months

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good morning, did you know in Song of Songs 2:12 an alternative translation to the typical English "the time of the pruning/singing" is the time of the NIGHTINGALES

which would have Song of Songs 2:10-12 read as follows:

My beloved spoke thus to me, “Arise, my darling; My fair one, come away! For now the winter is past, The rains are over and gone. The blossoms have appeared in the land, The time of the nightingale has come; The song of the turtledove Is heard in our land.

the Bible is literally just good omens fanfic at this point, pass it on

#ineffable husbands #the nightingale #good omens meta

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officialyourdailyinspiration · 3 months

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Jeremiah Confronted by a False Prophet

1 The following events occurred in that same year, early in the reign of King Zedekiah of Judah. To be more precise, it was the fifth month of the fourth year of his reign. The prophet Hananiah son of Azzur, who was from Gibeon, spoke to Jeremiah in the Lord’s temple in the presence of the priests and all the people. 2 “The Lord God of Israel who rules over all says, ‘I will break the yoke of servitude to the king of Babylon. 3 Before two years are over, I will bring back to this place everything that King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon took from it and carried away to Babylon. 4 I will also bring back to this place Jehoiakim’s son King Jeconiah of Judah and all the exiles who were taken to Babylon.’ Indeed, the Lord affirms, ‘I will break the yoke of servitude to the king of Babylon.’”

5 Then the prophet Jeremiah responded to the prophet Hananiah in the presence of the priests and all the people who were standing in the Lord’s temple. 6 The prophet Jeremiah said, “Amen! May the Lord do all this! May the Lord make your prophecy come true! May he bring back to this place from Babylon all the valuable articles taken from the Lord’s temple and the people who were carried into exile. 7 But listen to what I say to you and to all these people. 8 From earliest times, the prophets who preceded you and me invariably prophesied war, disaster, and plagues against many countries and great kingdoms. 9 So if a prophet prophesied peace and prosperity, it was only known that the Lord truly sent him when what he prophesied came true.”

10 The prophet Hananiah then took the yoke off the prophet Jeremiah’s neck and broke it. 11 Then he spoke up in the presence of all the people. “The Lord says, ‘In the same way I will break the yoke of servitude of all the nations to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon before two years are over.’” After he heard this, the prophet Jeremiah departed and went on his way.

12 But shortly after the prophet Hananiah had broken the yoke off the prophet Jeremiah’s neck, the Lord spoke to Jeremiah. 13 “Go and tell Hananiah that the Lord says, ‘You have indeed broken the wooden yoke. But you have only succeeded in replacing it with an iron one! 14 For the Lord God of Israel who rules over all says, “I have put an irresistible yoke of servitude on all these nations so they will serve King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. And they will indeed serve him. I have even given him control over the wild animals.” 15 Then the prophet Jeremiah told the prophet Hananiah, “Listen, Hananiah! The Lord did not send you! You are making these people trust in a lie! 16 So the Lord says, ‘I will most assuredly remove you from the face of the earth. You will die this very year because you have counseled rebellion against the Lord.’”

17 In the seventh month of that very same year the prophet Hananiah died. — Jeremiah 28 | New English Translation (NET Bible) NET Bible copyright © 1996-2006 by Biblical Studies Press, L.L.C. All rights reserved. Cross References: Genesis 7:4; Exodus 32:12; Leviticus 26:14; Deuteronomy 18:22; Deuteronomy 28:48; Joshua 9:3; Joshua 10:12; 1 Kings 1:36; 1 Kings 14:15; 1 Kings 22:28; 2 Kings 24:13; 2 Kings 25:27; 1 Chronicles 3:19; 2 Chronicles 36:10; Psalm 107:16; Jeremiah 1:2; Jeremiah 7:8; Jeremiah 14:14; Jeremiah 15:12; Jeremiah 20:6; Jeremiah 22:10; Jeremiah 25:11; Jeremiah 27:2; Jeremiah 27:10; Jeremiah 27:12; Jeremiah 29:1; Jeremiah 37:19; Ezekiel 33:33; 1 Corinthians 14:16

#Hananiah's false prophecy #confrontation with Jeremiah #the people believe the false prophet #rebellion preached against the Lord #Hananiah's death #Jeremiah 28 #Book of Jeremiah #Old Testament #NET Bible #New English Translation #Biblical Studies Press L.L.C.

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shellyseashell · 1 year

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Hello! I saw you said in the tags of one of your posts for someone to ask you about Claudine Frollo (she's one of my favorite characters too) so, well...here I am? ;)

wow i’m so glad someone asked me about claudine, i say, having begged for someone to ask me about her.

so first i have to get something out of the way: jehan is on the isle. i don’t know what he does in the movie, since i’ve only seen the musical, but in the movie he *check notes* is kicked out of the church, has quasimodo, and dies. we miss you king. anyway, i’m fairly sure he was doing stuff auradon looks down on. so, on the isle he goes.

he knows what frollo did to quasimodo — his son, who he entrusted to him. so when he learns about claudine he thinks absolutely fucking not. He already ruined one kid, he won’t ruin another. so he approaches frollo, says that with his second chance at life, he’s realized the error in his ways, and wants to repent. it takes some convincing, but frollo eventually lets him back in.

so claudine grows up with her uncle. her uncle who believes in the exact opposite of the church, is very good at pretending, and teaches her basically everything that isn’t scripture.

jehan isn’t able to guard claudine completely, though. she’s still beaten, and starved, and harassed. but jehan gives her food when she’s sent to her tower without dinner, treats her wounds and gives her what pain meds he can, and tells her when her father is out so she can sneak out if she wants, and he teaches her stuff that counteract everything her father teaches her.

claudine grows up to be very rebellious, but she’s good at hiding it. her father is often gone for days at a time, preaching to the isle and probably murdering people. so she can get away with not memorizing one new bible verse a day, or let her clothes be slightly dirty, and she can eat food even if she made a mistake during the day. as long as her father never finds out.

she still believes she deserves her beatings, though. no matter how many times jehan brings her back from the edge of death, or how many new scars she gains, she believes she deserves them. not because she sinned — she doesn’t really believe in sinning anymore — but because she was caught misbehaving. and it’s getting caught she hates most. next time, she’ll do better.

she is not religious, because there are fairies in the isle, and her captain is a demigod, and a Greek god runs one of the only good restaurants on the island, and the queen of hearts may be having an affair with time himself. what are gods, really, when everyone on the isle is so close to power they can’t quite touch? there are only powerful people, and in her mind, none of them deserve that power.

thanks to jehan, her father’s hold on her is shaky at best. it snaps completely when she is 13.

she is 13 when her father beats her, and jehan was out, so she runs to find him. she leaves bloody footprints behind her, and she’s always had a bit of a limp after. she doesn’t find jehan. instead, she’s found half dead by the hooks, who take her to their mother (zarina, who does not live with hook) to heal her.

when she wakes up, she’s surrounded by pirates, and two of whom’s mother instincts kicked in and decided yeah, this is my child now.

claudine officially joins the lost revenge because she only spoke french at first, and gil volunteered to be a translator until someone got around to teaching her english (it ended up being gil, which goes about as well as you’d expect), but she is a hook. they all will protect her.

she’s resistant, at first, but relents eventually. she still goes home, to see jehan, but she mostly sneaks in now. frollo still catches her, either at home or around the isle, and she will be punished. the pirates have taken to sending someone with her when she leaves the ports.

harry is especially good at noticing when she’s been injured, because harriet hides her injuries the same way, and she has the same bad habit of running back to abusive homes. whenever he sees the slightest hint that she’s hurt, he has to force her to accept help because claudine, lass, you’re limping again, and the more you walk on an injured leg, the more likely it’ll have to be cut off, and you don’t want that, do you? he’s exaggerating, of course, but the idea of being deformed terrifies claudine, so she concedes.

her father made her wear her hair up and cover it, so when she joins the lost revenge, she starts to wear bandanas, and lets uma help her find hairstyles she actually likes (to this day, harry and uma are two of the only people she’ll let touch her).

when frollo is mad at her, she’ll be locked in her room without food. she’s beaten (burned and whipped, i’d say), and forced to beg for forgiveness. sometimes, frollo only issues one of these punishments. sometimes he issues them all.

she wears clothes that cover all her skin. partially because she will be called a whore if she doesn’t, and because of her scars. she doesn’t want her scars to be seen, even though everyone knows what frollo does to her. she does have a jacket that was her mother’s, and she’s nearly always wearing it. frollo has yet to destroy it.

speaking of her mother, claudine does not know who her mother is. she was abandoned as a child, left on frollo’s doorstep. all she knows is her father calls her a witch, and she bears some resemblance to the few romani people on the isle. it wasn’t hard to connect the dots from there.

she has a habit of assessing tone of voice when speaking to people, since it was one of the only ways she could evaluate how her father was feeling.

claudine is friends with freddie, which sounds odd, but hear me out: frollo tries to kill most the isle because they’re witches, right? one day, the person he captures is freddie facilier, who likes conning people and talking with the dead. claudine knows her death would start a war with dr. facilier, and freddie is her age, and claudine has been made to watch these executions before, but the idea of watching someone her own age killed is another thing, so she lets her go. frollo never found out it was her, but he beat her anyway.

they don’t talk again until claudine is adopted by the hooks, and cj decides it’s a good idea to introduce the two of them. claudine is still getting used to magic being normal, since so many members of the lost revenge and harriet’s crew have some sort of magic, even if it’s weakened under the barrier. but freddie remembers her, and her father, so she only steals some of her stuff.

i imagine their friendship being something like freddie asking if she can shrink people’s heads, and claudine saying as long as she’s not associated with it, she can shrink whoever’s head she wants. and if freddie is making a voodoo call of frollo? well, claudine sure didn’t see it.

also, she’s definitely gay, but the thought terrifies claudine so much she just ignores it.

anyway. that’s it. claudine is easily one of my favorite characters, and i’m so mad we don’t see her more. she really is a blank character, so i can do whatever i want with her. most of my headcanons come from the fandom’s consensus on her, and also just ideas i like.

#disney descendants #claudine frollo #harry hook #harriet hook #cj hook #freddie facilier #now I want to make a post about the hook family #dragoneyes618 #claude frollo #jehan frollo #descendants headcanons

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drstonetrivia · 7 months

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Chapter 197 Trivia (Part 1)

Everyone's back*!

(*Except Ginro, Matsukaze, all the Americans, the ones in Corn City, the Treasure Islanders, the ones back at Ishigami Village…)

It wasn't clear from what little she spoke last chapter, but Suika's dropped her habit of talking about herself in the third person.

Suika's all grown up…

...At least in the English version. Turns out Suika does continue to refer to herself in the third person, but it was removed in the English translations. (If you can't read katakana, スイカ = Suika)

Senku's improved his crafting skills over the years, because those bottles are pretty nice.

Suika had platinum this whole time, but somehow never managed to figure out the proper method.

It always comes back to old fashioned alcohol making. Suika looks like she's having a great time, and Senku seems to have… rolled up his skirt?

Suika says she's around the same age as Kohaku, but I have doubts she's actually the same age. Kohaku is 18-19, & chronologically Suika can be no older than 19. Since we know Suika was petrified for a few years, Suika can't be as old as Kohaku. We still don't know her exact age.

Senku is still awkwardly third-wheeling emotional moments. I'm happy this hasn't changed.

This type of panel appears a lot. Also, between Chelsea's introduction and now, Hyoga only said his "line" once, and that was to Kohaku after he got shot in 188, out of Chelsea's earshot. He must say it a lot outside of canon...

The pigs Hyoga and Tsukasa skewer and skin are probably peccaries, small pigs that are found throughout SA. Mayans kept them as pets and farm animals, as well as for sacrifices.

Again, it takes time to make leather from skin but clothing is important in a shonen series.

Everyone's celebrating around the fire! Except for Ginro and Matsukaze, who have been missing all chapter. They have been revived though, as the 16 bottles made included them in the amount, and Hyoga was the 16th bottle.

No one got new petrification scars, but Senku kept his probably due to the erosion. If this is the case, Luna and the other Americans should also still have their scars upon revival.

(We won't be blinded by Xeno's vast, ivory forehead.)

Hyoga is asleep rather than watching Gen's show, and is also the only one of the crowd not in shadow. Is this significant? Could revival from death require more energy to be taken from the body, or is he just sleepy?

I think Whyman's portraits are getting fleshier, but that could be Boichi's style changing over time.

Also, Whyman gets the villain claws both Ibara and Xeno have had, except Whyman's looks less natural and more like thick acrylic nails.

The forbidden fruit refers to the fruit growing on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil which Adam takes a bite of, exiling him and Eve from the Garden of Eden.

Outside of the bible, it refers to an immoral and/or illegal indulgence.

Remember when Senku called himself and Taiju the Adam and Eve of the stone world? I can't wait to see how this plays out.

(Next part)

#trivia #dr stone #chapters #197

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adlamu · 6 months

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I'm always down to hear a ghost story :)

okay, so! for some context, the row of houses within the hq grounds were pulled down stone by stone from their original street and rebuilt stone by stone in the grounds as a preservation thing - everything else is 100% purely original within the parc padarn grounds (like the hq building, train line, and quarry hospital).

when i was growing up it was the place for school trips and my mum worked at the quarry hospital museum for several years so i was over there a lot - moreso when all of the museums became free, because it was something to do and i liked going to work with mam.

i've had multiple experiences, mostly in the quarry hospital, then in gilfach ddu most of them were in manager's apartment, y caban (the quarrymen's cafeteria on-site), and 2/4 of the houses - specifically the Nid Oes Bradwr (there is no traitor) house and the 1960s house.

quarry hospital:

i picked up a phone handset of a landline that hadn't been connected in 80yrs at the time (and could not be connected because it was old-fashioned 1920s pins) and heard a dial tone.

witnessed two apothecary drawers open by themselves.

heard men's voices talking in the empty ward room before opening time.

saw indents in two separate beds as though someone were lying on and sitting on them.

strong smell of fresh blood (it normally smelled of years of dried blood & cleaning product) in the examination room.

footsteps up and down the hallway when it was just me and my mum in the building.

heard two Heavy doors open and close by themselves after closing when all the staff, me, and my sister were all in the staff room - we all heard it and we all investigated to find nothing.

got told to 'get out' of the examination room by a very distinct male voice when it was literally just me in there and no one else but mam in the building.

outside morgue shed having stench of fresh blood - it hasn't been used in well over 100yrs by then.

outside morgue shed also having a great sense of Fear inside (when it wasn't locked, you could go inside) and me and three separate people heard 'help!' in a heavy welsh accent while we were in there.

outside morgue shed whilst with my mam i heard someone ask 'am i dead?' and i looked at mam who said 'what d'you mean are you dead?' all in welsh.

manager's apartment:

saw a faint/whispy image of a girl in the closed off, inaccessible kitchen, stood by the stove.

smelled strong, fresh pipe tobacco smoke in the sitting room.

saw two keys on the piano being pushed down by themselves but no sound came out.

heard a heavy-accented welsh woman's voice say 'welcome' in english when me and my sister were the first ones in amongst a group of english tourists.

y caban:

heard a man's voice say 'hogyn Jos bach wyt ti?' (little jonesy's boy, aren't you?) in a completely empty caban because me and my sister were the only two in the area and she could smell heavy pipe tobacco - our great-grandad worked there and was referred to as 'jos bach', apparently.

saw one of the clogs at the hang up move to the other end of the area by itself.

saw one of the coats' collars pop up by itself - followed immediately by another coat's sleeve moving upward by itself.

smelled a very distinct smell of fresh bread (this is before they put food in the canteens).

saw one of the benches move by itself - in front of me and my sister, two american tourists, an english family, and a german couple.

nid oes bradwr house:

the feeling of being glared at in the upstairs when speaking english.

seeing a shadow in a Very lit living area that felt >:| before i spoke to my mam in welsh - specifically about the traditional big bible they had on the table.

seeing an english tourist get ponked by cheese w/ Nobody near the cheese (which was in a closed off section to stop people getting at the cheese).

hearing 'gad lonydd i'r tân' (leave the fire be) in a man's voice when the room was full of women.

witnessing an english man turn & apologise to nothing 3 separate times in one visit because he'd been poked in the side.

hearing heavy footsteps upstairs when it was closed off.

1960s house:

strong, Strong smell of toast in one specific part of the kitchen - there was no toaster in there at the time and it smelled fresh - food & drink are not allowed inside any of the houses.

hearing running water in the bathroom - none of the houses are connected to any plumbing.

seeing a dress in the washroom be inspected by something - the hem was moved up and dropped.

four of the toys in the teenager's room moved in separate intervals while i was talking to a friend, in welsh, about how that was the kind of room my taid would have had in the 50s.

saw records in the teenager's room move like they were being flicked through.

saw the bed in the teenager's room get a Huge indent like someone sat down in it - you cannot go into the rooms, the doors are blocked off from the waist down and there was no one in there.

the adults' room smelled very strongly of cheap perfume but all the lady's stuff on the dressing table were Very clearly empty and sealed.

hearing faint music coming from upstairs when the upstairs was blocked off... Several times.

being pushed in the back by nobody when i said 'swn i'm yn rhoid gwyrdd 'na efo'r llechan, de' (i wouldn't put that green with the slate) to my sister.

hearing 'diolch' (thank you) in a woman's voice when i left the house through the back door with a friend of mine last time i visited in 2022, when it was 'four at a time' bc covid rules at the time when i automatically said thank you (as though i were leaving my nain's or smth) - the friend is american and the couple ahead of us were english and had already left the area.

and that is all the stuff i remember experiencing lmaoooo

#askstuff #thank you for sending this!! :3

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xgenesisrei · 6 months

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Rethinking Mission

My grandfather was an evangelist. Like apostle Paul, he didn't marry so he can devote his time and his life for the sake of the Gospel. I remember, when I was a child, he would have two things that he treasured dearly. One is his motorcycle which serves as his ride for visiting people and telling them about Jesus. My grandfather believed with his whole heart that Jesus alone can change people's lives for the better. Then he has his notebook, with a long list of names of people he has encountered, shared the Good News, and engaged repeatedly so that they will accept Jesus as Lord and Savior. As a child, it looked to me like the "Book of Life" described in the Apocalypse of John. Every night he will pray for the names, one by one. For those who were 'born again' that they will continue to mature in faith, for those who haven't yet that they will one day surrender their lives to Christ, and for those who have forsaken the faith that they will realize the error of their ways and like the prodigal son return once more to the loving embrace of the Father. For quite a while, this vivid image is what I have of a life fully-devoted to the cause of mission.

Then I also have a grandmother. She was not an evangelist like my grandfather. She was an entrepreneur who raised two kids whom she sent to college as a single mother. While my grandfather mastered the Bible, my grandmother specialized in business. I remember when I was a child, day by day, my grandmother would hustle her way in the market, trying to crack the secrets of making money. She was convinced that the only way she can help others is by making sure she can help herself and help herself so well that she would have enough to spare and share with other people. But unlike my grandfather, she did not keep a notebook. She didn't have a list of names who borrowed money from her. She gave as she is able to whoever is in need. As a child, it looked to me like my grandmother was fashioning her life after the story of the feeding of the five thousand whom Jesus refused to send home with an empty stomach. But it will take me a while to understand that my grandmother’s life is in itself a vivid image of what it means to do mission.

I studied theology but it did not so much help me to realize that "giving a glass of water" is also an indispensable part of sharing the Gospel. You may wonder why. It is not that theology in itself is unhelpful, otherwise I would have stayed away from the Theological Commission of the WEA. But I realized that it is a certain kind of mission theology that restricted my peripheral vision. John Stott identified it as the 'Great Reversal' among the conservative side of Protestants. Ron Sider calls it the 'uneasy conscience' of evangelical Christianity. Or more recently, Richard Stearns spoke of the 'hole in the Gospel'. But what helped me the most to see the real face of the problem is what Carlos Rene Padilla, an evangelical theologian from Ecuador, described as a mission that is 'mutilada' (or 'mutilated' in English). A kind of mission that has been so refined that in the process it also loses much of its essential ingredients. Just like refined sugar or bread made from refined flour, it may be tasty but it sure is lacking already the things that can make it healthy. Likewise, mission can be so mutilated that it hardly resembles the multi-faceted character of Jesus' ministry. Or it can be so refined that it neglects the one thing that Peter, James, and John reminded Apostle Paul when he was reconfiguring how missions would look like for the non-Jews, that he should continue to "remember the poor" (and you can read that in Galatians 2:9-10).

As an alternative to 'misión mutilada ', Padilla spoke of mission that is complete, not missing any component. In Spanish, he calls it 'misión integral' after a familiar bread among his people, 'pan integral' or 'whole wheat bread' which he himself often bakes at home. This he does as the necessary response to the specific context and need of Latin America at that time. As campus workers doing student ministry, together with Samuel Escobar and Pedro Arana, they could not possibly dismiss the deep questions of poverty, injustice, and oppression that were probed deeply in the universities of Latin America. They need to give their young people a vision of life that is as compelling if not even more convincing than the promise of armed revolution. What they did in Latin America was mine the Bible for the breadth and depth of what it means to follow Jesus in the most trying condition of their nations. And the Word of God led them to rediscover the revolutionary edge of the Gospel, so radical that it exposes how mutilated mission has unfortunately been in the Christianity of the Western world and how it would be so out of context for them to adopt that paradigm of mission.

Today, 'misión integral' has been embraced more and more by evangelicals globally. Sometimes translated as integral mission. Sometimes as holistic transformation. And it has been a tragedy.

Yes, a sad tragedy. ‘Misión integral’ could have been an invitation for the other regions of the world to reimagine missions as demanded by the very specific contours of their respective contexts. But what started as a solid example of local or context-rooted way of doing mission has been 'globalized' or should I say hijacked into the mold of 'Western-oriented missiology.' You see, 'integrate' in English can mean so differently from 'integral' in Spanish. Integrate can be used in the sense of fusing things that were otherwise taken apart like evangelism and social action or proclamation and demonstration. But integrating two things does not necessarily equate to being whole. You can integrate things together and still be missing something essential. And so the whole debate in the past two decades or so about whether political engagement or creation care should be part of the church's mission actually missed the bigger picture. The question rather is what else are we missing aside from these two that shall make our grasp of mission even more whole and complete?

Is beautiful poetry mission? How about health-conscious culinary? Or responsible artificial intelligence? For sure there is more to mission than water, gender, and fair trade coffee. But there can't be mission without all these because the Gospel best comes across as good news when it confronts the composite dilemma of human existence, social ills, and historical evils. Jesus was good news to the Samaritan woman, to Nicodemus, and the Garasene demoniac. But he was bad news to the Sanhedrin, to Herod, and eventually to the Roman Empire. So terrible a news that the people who are called by his name were put in jail, fed to the lions, and burned as torches in the Coliseum of Rome. They were caught defying Caesar’s decree by saying that there is another king, the one called Jesus" (Acts 17:7). Someone once said, "well, if everything is mission, then nothing is mission." I think this is an unfortunate case of mixing categories. It is like asking, Is violet delicious? Are roses compassionate? Do elephants short-circuit? For how can mission not be about a lot of different things if God is in the work of reconciling all things back to Himself through the peace accomplished at the cross by our Lord Jesus? (Colossians 1:19-20). And so this means that shalom is coming not only to people but to the whole planet, bees, rivers, and trees included, and all the rest of what Apostle Paul called as “things invisible.”

If that is so, then let us push the envelope further as we might still be missing something important. Bishop Hwa Yung of Malaysia often issued a reminder that one of the unfortunate impact of having Christianity that is molded in the worldview of Western Enlightenment is being blind to the supernatural realm that is very much a part of the world we inhabit. And unless we are able to shake off this deficient worldview, our mission will not gain traction in most parts of the world that remains to be attuned to the reality of the spirit world. To this day, Christianity remains to be a tiny fraction of the population in Asia. I will not forget a trek to the mountains that I had when I was traveling a few months ago in Chiang Rai, Northern Thailand. The driver was telling me how interested he is in many religions. But what he found most fascinating is Christianity. I can still hear him saying, "You see Christianity has been here in Thailand for more than 100 years and yet the number of Christians remains to be less than 1% of the population. There must be something wrong in how you are doing Christianity in this country."

So, what am I saying here? There is a clear and present danger when we fail to undo the 'single-story' of how to do missions. A hegemonic narrative that leaves little space to the likes of my grandmother. But Rene Padila and his Latin American friends have shown us what it takes to do a decolonial approach to mission. Likewise, how can we, in our time today, encourage the crafting of multiple stories of doing mission that is rooted in the specifics of different cultures, languages, and contexts? How can we undo the logic of copy-paste missiology in the new landscape of re/emerging centers of Christianity in the Majority World?

Maybe, we can get started with some more gastronomic reimagination... How about khao soi missions in Thailand? Phin coffee missions in Vietnam? Or 'sapin-sapin' mission, as suggested by Ian de Ocampo, when in the Philippines? The possibilities are exciting!

-Rei Lemuel Crizaldo (delivered as plenary talk for the Emerging Leaders Summit 2023, Sentul City, Indonesia) *Watch the video recording here.

#integralmission #missiology #transformation #mission #renepadilla

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andersunmenschlich · 2 months

Text

An Utterly Unsurprising Confession

I am a pedant.

This is partly because I'm autistic, and partly because I was raised and educated by an English teacher. To make matters worse, I was reading the Bible and Shakespeare and so on before I hit double digits. All of this gave me some rather outdated ideas about how English ought to be used.

My entry into the wider world of the internet gave me a terrible grammatical shock. Not only did I have trouble understanding other people, they had trouble understanding me!

I spend a fair amount of time searching Google to learn how to use English the way modern people do.

One night, in the course of this googling, I ran across a Tumblr post.

Now, I don't know who @how-to-write-horror is. They haven't provided any pronouns in their blog header (neither have I; this isn't an uncommon practice), so I'll be referring to them neutrally until I learn their actual pronouns… which I am assuming are most definitely not they/them. "He or she" is so clunky, however, that I refuse to use it.

I could refer to them as it, but that seems rather dehumanizing, don't you think? When I'm fairly certain, based on their opinions about pronouns, that they're either a he or a she?

And yes, I did visit their linked website—it doesn't give their pronouns either.

So "they" it is. Onward!

First they proclaim that "they" is NOT a singular pronoun, and appeal (as proof) to the fact that "they is not singular" sounds absolutely horrific grammatically. They're right, it does.

"You is not singular" sounds equally bad.

This part of their article could easily be rewritten to condemn the singular you, and because that amuses me, I'm going to do it.

The Pronoun "You" is Always Plural.

If "you" were truly singular, it would be interchangeable with the singular pronouns "he/she/it." I can easily prove that to be false. For example:

Peggy is wearing a sweater because she is cold. Let's substitute "she" with "you" to prove that "you" works in this sentence.

Peggy is wearing a sweater because you is cold. "You" and "is" don't work well together. The verb "are" is traditionally used with "you," so let's try something else.

Peggy is wearing a sweater because you are cold. Nope, it still doesn't work. The verbs "is" and "are" don't work together in this sentence. The verb "is" is singular and "are" is plural, so if they're both referring to the same noun, they have to agree with each other.

Peggy are wearing a sweater because you are cold. How many Peggys are there, and how many can wear the same sweater at the same time? Items of clothing are usually designed for single-person use.

Peggy is one person, not a crowd of people. In order for "you" to correctly—in a grammatical sense—refer to a single person named Peggy, the entire English language would have to be restructured.

Strangely, different pronouns work different ways. "You are wearing a sweater because you are cold" works just fine despite the grammatically plural yous and ares and the singular sweater. So does "they are wearing a sweater because they are cold." Baffling!

In their next section, How To Write Horror insists that "they" has not been used as a singular pronoun since the Middle Ages.

To summarize their preliminary arguments:

・In the Middle Ages, people spoke Middle English, not English as we know it today. Even Shakespeare didn't speak modern English, he spoke Early Modern English. The grammar rules of English have changed hugely since the Middle Ages, and so it's patently ridiculous to appeal to tradition in this area: we can't go backwards grammatically (why, I'm not sure).

・Middle English's grammatical rules were inconsistent and depended on location, so you can't appeal to them (a baffling non sequitur: if a rule was the rule at one time, in one place, of course you can point at it and say "see, this was the rule there and then"—and if you like, of course you can go on to say "let's resurrect this one and use it again here and now").

・Most of those old time English speakers were illiterate, which reduced them to using more casual, less grammatically correct English. We modern folk can do better. (Holy superiority complex, Batman. The shortest rebuttal possible: not everyone thinks grammatical excellence is the point of language. Helpful to the point, yes—but not the point itself.)

This, I realized when I finished reading, was a set-up for the astounding move they made at the end of the article.

Next they accidentally explain that while "every person in the room has his own car" is grammatically correct, that does not make "his" a singular pronoun. Since "his" is referring to both singular individuals as well as a group of people, it's plural.

…Or could it be that a sentence which refers to both a plurality (every) and a singularity (person) is correct with either singular or plural pronouns? Hmm.

How To Write Horror's next point involves actual historical examples.

"And whoso fyndeth hym out of swich blame, they wol come up and offre in Goddes name, And I assoille him." —Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, The Pardoners Tale

Translated to modern English, that's: "And whoever finds themselves guilty of such things, they will come up and offer in God's name, and I will absolve them."

Of course, we could also translate it, "And whoever finds himself guilty of such things, he will come up and offer in God's name, and I will absolve him." That's not really Modern English, though—it uses the neutral "he," which pretty much nobody is used to seeing anymore. Even men today might find themselves wondering, "What about the women?"

(Thus far it's pretty much only enbies who notice their own exclusion, but I gather that's changing.)

What is How To Write Horror's point here? Well, they argue that the original "they" was probably a mistake… and even if it wasn't, since "whoso" is both singular and plural, and the singular "him" is actually a hypothetical singular and therefore plural, the "they" in this sentence refers to a plurality rather than a singularity and is itself plural, Q.E.D.

This doesn't actually change the modern usage of the singular they.

None of their arguments do, if you were waiting for that. .

"Somebody left their umbrella in the office. Would they please collect it?"

"The patient should be told at the outset how much they will be required to pay."

"But a journalist should not be forced to reveal their sources."

"This is my friend, Jay. I met them at work."

All of these examples from Wikipedia can be rewritten to avoid the singular they. But why should they be? They're not confusing, and not inaccurate by the grammatical rules of modern English in 2024.

(I personally might rewrite 3. I think "but no journalist should be forced to reveal their sources" more accurately expresses the feeling of the sentence—and it's still a perfectly good example of the singular they. You can swap their for his, her, or its without grammatical issue. This is a slightly different subject to the one at hand, though.)

"This is my friend, Jay. I met Jay at work."

Why on earth would you go out of your way to refer to a person like that when there's a perfectly serviceable gender-neutral pronoun available for them and, presumably, they've told you that they like it when you use it for them?

Are you an asshole? That's the only reason to refuse to call a person what they want to be called that I can think of.

Catch me refusing to call Ted "Ted" because his legal name is Theodore and what he likes to be called is technically incorrect. Pedantry forbid I should taint my speech just to make another person feel respected.

My speech isn't even tainted! I'm playing by discarded rules! .

How To Write Horror lives up to their name in the next section by revealing that they see nonbinary people as egotists (or possibly egoists) who insist on the pronouns that feel right for them because they think they're specialer than everyone else on the planet.

Special People Use Special Words to Illustrate Their Special-ness.

See? I wasn't exaggerating. They list people (and characters) who use/d plural pronouns: Yahweh Elohim, Queen Victoria, anyone of high social status back in the days of Shakespeare.

They mention that "you" used to be solely plural, somehow miss the fact that grammatically it still is, and carry on to argue that people who use they/them pronouns should also employ the Royal We in order to remain grammatically consistent. Given that some people undoubtedly call How To Write Horror "you," perhaps How To should also use the royal we. If you, an individual, are referred to with a plural pronoun, then, grammatically….

Or perhaps they'll start insisting nobody point at them and say "you" anymore. For the sake of the English language.

Next they take a 1759 quote from the Earl of Chesterfield:

"You will say perhaps, one cannot change one's nature; and that if a person is born of a very sensible, gloomy temper, and apt to see things in the worst light, they cannot help it, nor new-make themselves."

They argue that the "a person" in this sentence is a hypothetical person, and therefore actually more than one person.

Let me rewrite the quote and their argument about it.

"He will say perhaps, one cannot change one's nature; and that if a person is born of a very sensible, gloomy temper, and apt to see things in the worst light, you cannot help it, nor new-make yourself."

"You" and "yourself" are used hypothetically in this sentence, making them plural.

The Earl of Chesterfield moved from using directly singular words, "he will" and "one cannot change," to the hypothetical phrase "if a person." "A person" is singular, but it's a hypothetical singular because the determining article "a" is non-specific; "a person" means one person among many and is, therefore, plural.

Using the conditional word "if" supports hypothetical use. Chesterfield is including other people with the same temperament as his son under those who are unable to "new-make yourself." If "you" were a truly singular personal pronoun in this example, Chesterfield could've said something like this about his son:

My son, Philip, you is such a gloomy gus.

The fact that certain pronouns are grammatically plural and so cannot be used with singular grammar even when being used singularly seems to have escaped How To Write Horror.

In fact they declared that "you" was a directly singular word, despite its inescapably plural grammar!

They also decided to use a sentence that sounds weird with a pronoun in it at all. "My son, Philip, he is such a gloomy gus"? Who says that? "My son, Philip, is such a gloomy gus." There you go. Much better. If you really want the pronoun in there, all right—let's shove it in. But keep it grammatical!

Talking about Philip: ・"Oh, Philip, my kid. Yeah, they're such a gloomy gus."

Talking to Philip: ・ "Oh, Philip, my child. You are such a gloomy gus."

Less unnatural and strained uses of the singular they and the singular you, How To Write Horror can look for throughout this post (assuming they take the time to read it). I'm sure they'll find a few!

Next, How To Write Horror hedges their bets with a claim that this letter was written informally, much as emails are written today, and so can't possibly be used to show how people were using the word "they" in the past anyway, even if Chesterfield was using it singularly. Bit of a contradiction, that. Of course it shows how people were using the word "they" in the past. It's a record of past use of the word "they."

I think their assumption is that only the strict grammatical rules of the time apply, where "strict grammatical rules" means "the grammatical rules I personally think count as valid."

Otherwise why would HTWH go out of their way to disparage the grammatical rules of Middle English? .

They bring up Thackeray's "A person can't help their birth" to claim once again that "a person" is plural (and so, logically, if you write "a person can't help his birth" that makes "his" a plural pronoun too), and move on to try and explain away Shakespeare:

"There's not a man I meet but doth salute me As if I were their well-acquainted friend." —William Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors (1594)

A modern English speaker would translate this as, "Everyone I meet greets me like I'm their best friend."

A couple decades ago I might have translated it "there's not a man (meaning a human) I meet who doesn't salute me as if I were his (gender-neutral) well-acquainted friend." What do you suppose How To Write Horror thinks this does to the pronoun "his"?

To substitute:

"There's not a man…" is a hypothetical reference, which is further supported by the hypothetical phrase "if I were." Shakespeare is not saying one man saluted; he's saying that many men saluted individually. One man among many men in plural, making "his" plural.

If Shakespeare were calling out one man then why didn't he say "that man saluted me"? Why would he be vague when talking about a specific person?

Well, they must be right. That's all so very convincing. This must prove that "he" and "him" and "his" are all plural.

Certainly it can't be the case that singular pronouns work just as well, grammatically, in a sentence like this. No. That would be ridiculous, and make this attempt at proving "their" can't be singular a complete waste of time. Surely How To Write Horror wouldn't do that. So "he" must be a plural pronoun!

How odd that it's written with singular grammar.

But there—"you" is written with plural grammar, and yet How To Write Horror insists that this doesn't make it plural. I guess that just happens sometimes.

Pardon the heavy sarcasm: I hope no one's being crushed under it!

They repeat the same argument in a different form (the "he" in each one in his craft is wise is plural, apparently), stumble upon an actual plural they (a group of sacrificial animals in the KJV)… and then, finally, they wrap the whole thing up with the most thorough rejection of possible future evidence that I've seen outside Christian apologia:

If anyone finds a historical example of the singular they which How To Write Horror can't explain away, it's because that historical writer was breaking the rules of English.

Fin.

#Isaiah is pedantic #I like writing long—very long—posts #and this is one of them #Reader #ye be warned.#and no #I'm not going to reveal my pronouns here.#whether I'm they/themmed #he/himmed #she/herred #or dehumanized with it/its #will tell me a fair piece about the people who respond.#ye be warned about that too...#if you read these tags.#that's ''read'' past tense #pronounced like the color red #dontcha love English?#colored text #for which my apologies #the post hurt my brain without it #competing needs are a bitch #if people are actually using the passage from Numbers as an example of the singular they they need to stop #essentially what that verse says is ''you need to do THIS sacrificial ritual as many times as there are animals''#the singular they is not in there #now I'm going to hit post #I'm sure a million typos will smack me in the face later #but don't they always?

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effervescentdragon · 2 years

Note

Sewis + 19

im putting this in the spy au ❤️

"Qu'est-ce que -"

"English, Charles, for fucks' sake!"

"Well then," Charles bit back at S, and Lewis would've smiled at the expression on his face, if he weren't extremely worried. "Why must I speak this - abominable language, when I am only thinking out loud?"

His fingers never stopped typing on the keyboard as he spoke, and Lewis was, as always, impressed.

"Because sometimes you think too fast for us all," Lewis said patiently, before S could even open her mouth. "And sometimes you notice things none of us would ever even think of. And if you speak so everyone can understand, because some people aren't that good with languages, someone may catch onto what your subconscious brilliance is focusing and figure this shit out."

The typing stopped for a second, then resumed quickly and furiously.

"Ah well, yes. Mer- uh. Thank you, Achilles."

Lewis bit back a smile. S, on his other side, didn't.

"So what are you thinking, Charles?"

Charles didn't stop frowning as he checked and rechecked the cameras, while simultaneously running some sort of code in, Jesus, four different windows. That was way too much for Lewis' computer savvyness.

"I am thinking, yes, I am thinking," he murmured distractedly. "I am thinking about repetition, mater studiorum est, you know, and I am thinking about patterns, why am I thinking about patterns?" The frown on his face did not abate.

S looked at Lewis from the corner of her eye. She was frowning too. Lewis shrugged, a tiny motion of his shoulder, and she turned back to Charles, who was now staring at his screen intensely.

"Do you see a pattern, Charles?"

Lewis focused his eyes on the screens Charles brought up to the holographic board before them. Dozens of cameras appeared, and Charles stood up, walking to the board.

"I see, what do I see?" Charles tapped his bottom lip. "I see them, why are they, non, hmm."

S' fist visibly clenched.

"Pater noster, why am I thinking of the Bible, that is what I am thinking of," Charles said, and then swiftly moved. He started flicking the cameras off, until there were only five of them left. Two on Pylades, and three on Se- Hercules.

Charles zoomed in on their faces. Pylades was laughing at something a woman in the most hideous orange dress was telling him. Charles frowned a bit, but said nothing. Hercules was talking to two men in tuxedoes, each with a bodyguard behind them, and though the conversation seemed to be serious, he did not look tense. Charles kept looking at the screens, back and forth.

"Is either of them giving us any of the signals?" S asked, and Lewis could hear the slight note of impatience in her tone.

"No, no, nothing. No fingers, no tapping. No spilling drinks, no slicking back hair, nothing," Charles replied. "Something is off, something, mon Dieu, why cannot I see it?"

He brought up the two cameras, then the three. Pierre put his hand on the woman's arm, and Charles frowned some more. He magnified the pictures, showing both Pylades' and Hercules' faces up close from two, and three different angles.

"I knew we shouldn't have let them go in without at least one headset," S said, annoyed. "I am reading their lips, but I see nothing alarming. Pylades is flirting, and Hercules seems to be listening seemingly interested to something about - I'd guess guns?"

Charles nodded.

"Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, mon Dieu, I am thinking, yes, you're right, it is about guns - antiques," he said with an accent. "I still think something is wrong."

He zoomed four cameras out, showing their body parts slowly, searching for any hint of code, but that wasn't what Lewis was focusing on.

The camera on Hercules' face, he thought as he looked into the black and white of the picture. What hath God wrought, he thought as he imagined the sea-colour of his eyes. Holy fuck, he thought, as he watched Heracles listen intently, and blink. And blink-blink. And blink-blink-blink. And blink. And blink. And blink. And blink-blink-blink.

"Shit," Lewis said. S and Charles turned to him immediately, their faces concerned, as they've obviously heard the incredulousness in his voice.

"What?" S insisted. Lewis raised a hand, staring at the screen, and counted again, because he had to be sure. "Achilles," S said, and her voice was on the edge.

"The operation's a bust," Lewis said, forcing his voice not to shake. "Seb's been blinking SOS in Morse for God-knows how long," he said, and both S and Charles whipped their heads back to the screen. A minute passed.

"Mon Dieu," Charles whispered. Lewis couldn't help but chuckle.

"Yes, that's what tipped me off," he said, and Charles inclined his head for a moment, thinking. Then his face cleared out in understanding. "What had God wrought, twenty-three, twenty-three, mon Dieu, I am stupid!" He seethed as he returned back to his chair, pulling up the rest of the cameras to try to spot what is it that Seb was sending them an SOS message over, and not by any internal code.

He must be really worried about whatever he's seeing, Lewis thioght as S walked closer to Charles and flicked his ear. He wouldn't risk everything otherwise.

"Ow!" Charles yelped, but didn't stop typing. He had seven background programmes running now, Lewis noted, and shuddered.

"You are decidedly not stupid. You are the only one who even saw the pattern, and made it possible for Achilles to connect the dots. Your brain is just," she smiled, not unkindly. "Peculiar."

Charles blushed, but nodded. He kept looking at the screens, his eyes flickering too quickly for Lewis to keep up, and then he gasped.

"Merde," he said, and brought up one camera feed into the foreground.

"Well, fuck," S said, then turned to Lewis, who did everything he could not to let his breathing change. She hesitated for a moment, then pulled herself together.

"Who's closest?"

"Uh, well, Pear- I mean, Pylades, technically. He may not have been spotted," Charles replied, blushing at his misstep. Lewis could see Bono handing off his comms to someone. Charles must have notified him through the computer. "Then it's - Alecto, I believe."

S nodded as Bono approached them wordlessly. "Good job, Orestes," she said, and Charles bit his lip quite obviously so as not to protest the codename. S turned to him then, but Lewis couldn't keep his eyes off the screen.

"Achilles-"

"I'm going," he said, and his voice was ice.

S sighed.

"Yes, I figured." She nodded to Bono, who wordlessly took up a tablet Charles gave him, and with a one blank look at Lewis, started typing God-knew-what. Charles was already in conversation with Alecto's handler, pulling her ongoing op for a rescue mission. Or whatever.

S sighed, again, this time more heavily.

"Well, fuck me. I didn't expect that."

Lewis hummed.

"No." He said slowly, and his voice was still ice. "Neither did I." He turned to look at S, and her face was as calm as his, but her eyes bore the same tint of betrayal he knew could be seen in his.

"That was our first mistake."

#i take liberties af here but imma have my spy characters as smart as i want #if you need any references explained lmk #f1 rpf #my writing #sewis #piarles #thats what its gonna be when its done i have like over 10k written already #gold and gifts reference #thank you stormy ♡#this reset my brain nicely #i really hope you like it #effervescentdragonwrites #i hint at pairings here ngl #also pardon my french PLEASE #sae imma bother you so much at some point abt the french #:D

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scintillaineverything · 1 year

Quote

The honorable former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir, First, congratulations on the publication of your new book Capturing Hope: The Struggle Continues for A New Malaysia. The name of the book offers one hope again. This reminds me of the excitement when you led Pakatan Harapan to topple Barisan Nasional in the 14th General Elections where people were looking forward to a better nation. At that moment, all believed that a new Malaysia was finally born. The Barisan Nasional, described by you as a regime tainted with corruption and power abuse, was finally defeated. Due to the excitement shared by the nation, many were unable to sleep that night. The Chinese was even more passionate and emotional, thinking that a new Malaysia had taken shape. The Chinese extended you and the Pakatan Harapan strong support hoping that the country would be better under your helm the second time. Generally, the Chinese felt that you would make use of the second chance to rectify the errors in the 22 years when you first became the Prime Minister. However, the Pakatan Harapan collapsed in less than 22 months. You passed the blame to others again, not thinking that you should shoulder some of the responsibilities. With your silent approval, the Malay Dignity Congress was held in 2019, hitting out at the Chinese education that caused the Chinese, who had voted for you, think that you burned the bridge after crossing it. You also said the Pakatan Harapan election manifesto was not a bible. Hence, the abolition of toll charges, recognition of the United Examination Certificate (UEC), the different stand on Lynas before and after the election have disappointed many Pakatan Harapan supporters. At the launch of your new book, you shared some of your views. More than 90% of the Chinese voters who had voted for the Pakatan Harapan in the 14th General Elections were upset by your views. First, you said a single stream in education would be the best education system for Malaysia. The existence of multiple streams hampered national unity and the shaping of a true identity. You said this: “In Malaysia, we have 26 to 30% of Chinese and 10% of Indians where they maintain their culture and customs such as the Chinese eat with chopsticks while we use hands. “Malaysians are very accommodating people. Because of this, assimilation is difficult for the Chinese. Instead, when the Arabs and Indians came to Malaysia, they were assimilated as Malays where they spoke Malays and behaved like the Malays. Hence, for the Chinese to be accepted by all, they should learn from the Indians and Arabs to assimilate and live like the bumiputras. “ In fact, I wish to inform you that a single language is not the only tool to unite the people. Otherwise, the Malay society would not be divided now. Furthermore, not 100% of Malays send their children to national school. Many Malays send their children to private schools, Chinese primary schools and Islamic schools to study. Some financially capable ones send their children to France, United Kingdom, Australia and other western countries for primary schools. Hence, your allegation against Chinese education is full of bias. Parents generally place emphasis on their children’s education and hope to achieve some form of security for their children’s future through education. Chinese is the same. Hence, if the government does a good job in national education, Chinese will send their children to national primary schools without coercion, just like how many parents sent their children to English medium schools back then. In addition, I would like to say the fact that the Chinese eat with chopsticks and study in Chinese primary school do not cast negative impact on the love and loyalty to the country. Born and raised here, Malaysian Chinese are well versed in Malay Language. We recognize that Malaysia is our country and not China. Strictly speaking, there are fewer local Chinese who can’t speak Malay nowadays. Do not continue to have such stereotype on the people in your country.” Those described by you who refused to integrate and only have China in their hearts are not the majority. They are unable to represent the majority of the Chinese. Just like those extreme right wings who continue to highlight Malays first, they do not represent the majority moderate Malays. So, Tun Dr Mahathir, you are wrong. Secondly, during movement control order, people of all races live in hardship. The politicians, who should be looking after the welfare of people, are trapped in power struggle, regardless of the well-being of the people. At this juncture, we see many capable Malaysians from different education background extend a helping hand to many regardless of their ethnic groups. In order words, people of different ethnic groups live in harmony and care for each other. There is no issue on racial unity nor language barrier. The unity issue that you mentioned earlier is a fake issue. In fact, politicians like you are the main culprit, not the type of schools. In reality, there are many people who actually work on fostering national integration. Instead, politicians are the ones who continue to divide the people with half-truth racist remarks. Please do not have the narrow thinking of treating Chinese education as a grain of sand in your eye. Instead, multiple streams in education should be seen as the advantage of the nation. For many years, multiple streams in education had groomed many talents, including the Malays. These talents are shining at international arena and are proud Malaysians. So, Tun Dr Mahathir, you are wrong. You also said that in order to progress, we should learn to accept a single identity, not Malays, Chinese or Indians but Malaysians. We totally agree with you on this. You cited United States as an example. You said: Look at US, who are Americans? They speak American English, embrace American culture, love US and even see their country of origin as an enemy. They go to battle field when necessary, regardless of their names. Your name could have reflected Dutch, German or Kenya descent but all these are not important because you are an American. Can we have the similar approach to be Malaysians? “ However, I feel that you have too many biased views and misunderstanding about the local Chinese. Since independence until today, the racial harmony that we enjoy is shaped naturally through mutual understanding, mutual respect and tolerance through interactions in daily lives but not assimilation. The diversity, inclusion and tolerance that we enjoy have been the scenic landscape of Malaysia. I wish to say that the younger generation of Chinese may keep their culture and mother tongue but they regard themselves as Malaysians. Instead, politicians are the ones who repeatedly shout about national integration but continue to tarnish the fundamentals of unity with their actions. For instance, the sudden announcement of converting national language to Malay language to highlight Malays first. Some of the Malay politicians continue to stress Malays come first and not Malaysian first. Then you take US as an example to say that despite having a black president, please take a look at the blacks who speak fluent American English in US. How is their fate? Tun Dr Mahathir, you are wrong again. At last, you drag Sin Chew Daily into the muddle by saying that Sin Chew Daily continues to attack DAP which leads to Pakatan Harapan losing support from the Chinese community. You cited this as one of the factors. On this, I feel that you have overstated. Maybe there are someone continue to demonize Sin Chew Daily before you that lead you to have such perception. Based on the state poll results in Malacca, the Chinese are still supporting DAP. As a privately-owned newspaper, Sin Chew Daily has been playing the role as the fourth power in the past, at present and in the future. We support and agree with good policies while we, without fear, criticize policies which harm the fundamentals of the state including the rights of the Chinese community. The story of a demonized Sin Chew Daily may include the allegation of frequently sensationalizing racial issues. To prevent you from being misled further, I would take this opportunity to share the editorial policy of Sin Chew Daily with you that apart from being transparent in handling news to offer a balanced and fair coverage, we insist on running the newspaper in a proper manner, upholding journalistic standard, values and ethics. We do not sell newspapers by sensationalizing news nor infringing privacy of others. At the same time, our editorial policy also covers giving emphasis to national integration, creating a society with positive energy through media influence. Sin Chew Daily is a responsible local newspaper. Hence, Tun Dr Mahathir, as a smart person, how do you end up being fooled by those with an evil heart? It is getting late at night after penning my thoughts. I hope that when I wake up tomorrow, Malaysia will be a better place because this is my country and where my home is. Thank you. Yours sincerely, Sin Chew Daily editor-in-chief KUIK CHENG KANG

*_Tun Dr Mahathir, you are wrong_* – An open letter to former PM by Kuik Cheng Kang, sinchew.com.my

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