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oddishfeeling · 7 months

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do you have any book recommendations? pls i need lots 💙💙

this is such a loaded question friend. but lucky for u, i am procrastinating assignments, my take out has yet to arrive, and i just finished another book!

horror fic has been my choice for the last several books

the centre by ayesha manazir siddiqi is about a young Pakistani woman living in the UK. she's a translator for Urduru films. language and translation are central to this book. people are becoming fluent in a matter of weeks in complex languages.... the centre is gorgeous if not entirely mysterious, magical even. but whats the catch?? beautifully written. vivid details. anisa is a flawed, honest, and genuine feeling mc, as are the people in her life. i just finished it a couple hours ago n i miss my girls.

slewfoot by brom is set in 17th century Connecticut. our protag, Abitha, is not from this town but she does he best to adhere to the Puritan standards, if not for her well being, than that of her husband's. something stirs in the outskirts of the village, in the forest and beyond. she finds help from an unlikely source while also fostering a deep inner power of her own. these characters felt so well thought out, the writing is magnetic and the action is well paced. it puts so many preconceived notions right on their head. i loved this book and can't wait to read brom's other novel, the child thief, a retelling of peter pan and the lost boys!

sister, maiden, monster by lucy a. synder was oh so gay and oh so cosmically horrendous. this is like h.p. lovecraft wasn't a weird racist. this is like if biblically accurate angels were once just women in love. this is horrifying, visceral, and relevant to our COVID world. i was gawking at so many of the details. there are so many monster themes actually, it's perfect. the story is told through 3 povs of 3 different women. and we love women! and horror! i didn't expect to pick this one up but I'm so glad i did.

mary: an awakening of terror by nat cassidy do u know what it's like to be virtually invisible? forgotten? disaffected? do u know the pure joy of having a precious collection, adding to it over time, and it being almost ur only reason for living anymore?? then you're a lot like mary. and mary is a lot like plenty of women who get the chance to live beyond adolescence, who are cast out by society-- deemed invaluable. mary is utterly lost at a time in her life she feels she should have it all figured out. she goes back to her hometown, an ambiguous small town in the middle of the desert, and some unlikely characters help her piece things back together. i finished this book feeling so close to mary. we are friends now. there is mystique, horror, fables, myths, bad guys, mysterious architecture, and well mary is not the most reliable narrator. loved this one too.

the last house on needless street by catriona ward i had no idea where this book was going and i loved piecing the narrative together through several characters and their povs. it forces u to confront ur own biases regarding mental health. u are sympathetic to the characters in the most painful, heart wrenching ways. there is murder. there is mystery. there is missing children. there are cats. this book surprised me and it was fun to have to find a couple reddit threads to be sure i was understanding the story correctly. i felt like i read this kind of fast! which is always fun too.

brother by ania ahlborn this one pissed me off a bit. but in a good way because i was so deeply invested. this one is set in Appalachia. i'm not one for stereotypes, especially bc i think Appalachians have a bad rep and it's of no fault of their own. that being said, the insular feel of the book and the absolute claustrophobia those mountains create in this story were like a character in it of itself. our protag, michael, knows there's something beyond. he's seen them on colorful postcards. but his own mind and his own heart seem utterly trapped here. this one is heartbreaking. it's horrifying. and it'll make u dizzy from the amount of times u change ur mind. excited to read her other novel, Seed, because this one stuck with me so much!

a couple honorable mentions that fit the theme:

the vegetarian by han kang korean food. infidelity. art. nightmares. inexplicable mindfucks! this story was scary because it felt very.. possible? no monsters this time. no spells. just... the mind deteriorating. could happen to any of us.

a certain hunger by chelsea g. summers what if girlbossing is just a quick pivot from sociopathy?? what if the crimes are so much more gratifying than say, fame or fortune or even love?? women can be sociopaths too, you know!! this one is fun bc the protag is crazy and it's fun to slip into these characters. cathartic even. omg did i mention, she's a foodie too! just like me :-)

#book recs #horror lit #halloween reading list #the centre #ayesha manazir siddiqi #slewfoot #brom #sister maiden monster #lucy a. snyder #mary: an awakending #nat cassidy #the last house on needless street #catriona ward #brother #ania ahlborn #the vegetarian #han kang #a certain hunger #chelsea g. summers

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toskarin · 1 year

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what traits do you think a story would need to be considered "a yuri fmdm"

just to name a few bullet points that, in sufficient quantity, would make me immediately start to notice that sort of influence

the damage has already been done, everyone involved acts only as the shrapnel spreading outward from it

there are no heroes, but there are people convinced they can be heroes (almost always to disastrous result)

the protagonist can't force themself to understand this, even though they think they do

oddly in-depth author knowledge when it comes to the technical aspects of the story, extending beyond that which casual research could provide. especially true if this knowledge is being deliberately imparted on the reader

thematically important h scenes

strong themes of corruption and apocalypse. our protagonists are in a dying world, whether or not they're ready to accept that

mundane evil, especially if it's being performed for a greater good or "just until things are safe enough to stop"

agenda. everyone has something they want, everyone has their reason for wanting it, and most of them want it badly enough to kill each other for it

periodic dives into psychological and sexual horror. if the reader isn't staring blankly at the text and wondering how this could possibly end after all they've seen, you haven't gone hard enough

hollow victories and grappling with the inherent non-neutrality of violence, especially if you extend that into "what's the worst thing you could convince yourself is okay because you're a good person?"

biblical references, but not load-bearing ones. they should be thematically relevant, but only tertiary to the actual story

a non-contradictory fear and fascination with warfare and the martial arts

the primary threat is not only something that has always been apparent in the story, but something that has always been present in the life of the protagonist, even if they didn't realise they were cultivating it

thematically unimportant h scenes

the heaviest homage you can possibly execute without it being outright plagiarism

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lesbianchristian · 2 years

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May I be frank and rude for a second?

I am on tik tok and one stale and tired take that I keep on seeing is people saying Easter is a completely stolen holiday from the pagans (*shock and horror abounds*)! Like absolutely nothing about Easter is Christian, it's all stolen, ain't that just the most Christian thing to ever be?

Like this is so prevalent that beyond literal historians and biblical scholars saying 'this is stupid and completely ahistorical and why do I have to keep doing this I don't get paid enough', multiple Jewish creators made multiple videos saying 'please stop because doing this literally erases the existence of Passover and Easter's ties to it, like your 'gotcha' about the name of Easter doesn't even make sense because in most languages that aren't Germanic or English, it's a P word that relates to Pesach. You know. Our thing. So please stop.'

And people do not stop because apparently they'd rather trust the authority of a singular 8th century monk names Bede and their myopic understanding of a holy day that was celebrated before English/German languages existed, over people who have way more qualifications than them and actually have sources to back up their claims and Jewish people asking for their history to not be erased.

Like I get it, a lot of people have had trauma and horrible experiences with evangelical American christianity (I do too and I'm still trying to figure a lot of stuff out), but the least you can do is listen to Jewish people telling you to stop. Like I feel that's beyond the bare minimum.

#happy easter #i guess #like the problem with so many critiques of christianity is its very western centric #which makes sense theres a lot to criticize #but the problem is when people then make their critiques (ironically) highly Western centric #and assume all christianity all over the world is this way #ignoring the history/traditions/and very existence of other people #do certain aspects of easter in certain areas have pagan influences? probably #but if you look at the core threads of what make easter easter and what many cultures share #its obvious that easter is not just some reskinned pagan holiday with Jesus painted on top #and to say otherwise erases and insults a LOT of people #also no one @ me about being on tik tok just let me live #tik tok

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blessedarethebinarybreakers · 4 years

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Wrestling with the Bible’s most disturbing stories

An excerpt from Rachel Held Evan’s book Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again

“Growing up, I noticed the ugly details in the Sunday school stories; children always do. I remember I was deeply troubled by the fact that God drowned all but two of each kind of animal in the Great Flood (to say nothing of all the people), and wondered aloud at the dinner table how God could be all-knowing and all-powerful, but also filled with regret. A friend's seven-year-old captured the angst well when she recently asked, 'Mom, is God the good guy or the bad guy in this story?'

This question of God's character haunted every scene and every act and every drama of the Bible. ...Feminist scholar Phyllis Trible aptly named these narratives 'texts of terror.'

'If art imitates life,' she wrote, 'scripture likewise reflects it in both holiness and horror.'

Rereading the texts of terror as a young woman, I kept anticipating some sort of postscript or epilogue chastising the major players for their sins, a sort of Arrested Development-style 'lesson' to wrap it all up -- 'And that's why you should always challenge the patriarchy!' But no such epilogue exists. While women are raped, killed, and divided as plunder, God stands by, mute as clay. I waited for a word from God, but none came.

...When I turned to pastors and professors for help, they urged me to set aside my objections, to simply trust that God is good and that the Bible's war stories happened as told, for reasons beyond my comprehension.

'God's ways are higher than our ways,' they insisted. 'Stop trying to know the mind of God.'

It's an understandable approach. Human beings are finite and fallible, prone to self-delusion and sentimentality. If we rely exclusively on our feelings to guide us to truth, we are bound to get lost.

When asked in 2010 about Joshua's conquest of Canaan, Reformed pastor and theologian John Piper declared, without hesitation, 'It's right for God to slaughter women and children anytime he pleases. God gives life and he takes life. Everybody who dies, dies because God wills that they die.'

Piper's dispassionate acceptance represented pure, committed faith, I was told, while mine had been infected by humanism and emotion -- 'a good example of why women should be kept from church leadership,' one acquaintance said.

And for a moment, I believed it. For a moment, I felt silly for responding so emotionally to a bunch of old war stories that left the rest of the faithful seemingly unfazed.

But this is the deleterious snare of fundamentalism: It claims that the heart is so corrupted by sin, it simply cannot be trusted to sort right from wrong, good from evil, divine from depraved. Instinct, intuition, conscience, critical thinking -- these impulses must be set aside whenever they appear to contradict the biblical text, because the good Christian never questions the 'clear teachings of Scripture'; the good Christian listens to God, not her gut.

I've watched people get so entangled in this snare they contort into shapes unrecognizable. When you can't trust your own God-given conscience to tell you what's right, or your own God-given conscience to tell you what's true, you lose the capacity to engage the world in any meaningful, authentic way, and you become an easy target for authoritarian movements eager to exploit that vacuity for their gain. I tried reading Scripture with my conscience and curiosity suspended, and I felt, quite literally, disintegrated. I felt fractured and fake.

Brené Brown warned us we can't selectively numb our emotions, and no doubt this applies to the emotions we have about our faith. If the slaughter of Canaanite children elicits only a shrug, then why not the slaughter of Pequots? Of Syrians? Of Jews? If we train ourselves not to ask hard questions about the Bible, and to emotionally distance ourselves from any potential conflicts or doubts, then where will we find the courage to challenge interpretations that justify injustice? How will we know when we've got it wrong?

'Belief in a cruel god makes a cruel man,' Thomas Paine said. If the Bible teaches that God is love, and love can look like genocide and violence and rape, then love can look like...anything. It's as much an invitation to moral relativism as you'll find anywhere.

I figured if God was real, then God didn't want the empty devotion of some shadow version of Rachel, but rather my whole, integrated self. So I decided to face the Bible's war stories head-on, mind and heart fully engaged, willing to risk the loss of faith if that's where the search led.

I listened to sermons. I read commentaries and theology books. I became a real downer at dinner parties:

'If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go?' 'Have you seen any of the Oscar-nominated films this year?' 'What's your Enneagram number?' 'Do you think God condones genocide?'

The explanations came hurried and certain. Oh, God told Israel to wipe out the Canaanites because the Canaanites were super-duper evil, like the worst people ever. They worshipped idols and had orgies and sacrificed children to their gods. So God condemned the practice of child sacrifice...by slaughtering children? Well, that's just how things were back then. It was kill or be killed, tribal warfare and all that. Israel did what it had to do to survive....

I began to feel a bit like the disheveled Berenger, a character from Eugène Ionesco's play Rhinoceros, who grows increasingly bewildered as the people of his provincial French town acclimate to the sudden presence of rhinoceroses in their community. In one scene, a rhinoceros thunders through the town square, trampling a housecat. After their initial shock, the villagers get sidetracked debating whether the rhino had one horn or two, and whether its origins are Asiatic or African. And on it goes throughout the play, as the townspeople themselves transform into rhinos, one by one, arguing all the while over pointless trivialities, until only Berenger remains human.

The play is about fascism, I think, but it reminds me a bit of Christians and their Bibles. Sometimes it seems as if there are all these rhinoceroses barreling through the pages of Scripture, pooping on sidewalks and flattening housecats, but we've grown so accustomed to defending their presence we end up debating the length of their tails.

...

My questions came with consequences. We left the church in which I was raised, and rumors of my 'rebellious spirit' circulated around town, prompting more than a few well-meaning interventions. ...

But accepting the Bible's war stories without objection threatened to erase my humanity. ‘We don’t become more spiritual by becoming less human,’ Eugene Peterson said. How could I love God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength while disengaging those very faculties every time I read the Bible?

So I brought my whole self into the wilderness with God – no faking, no halfway. And there we wrestled."

#rachel held evans #inspired #bible #bible study #christian books #progressive christians #reading and studying the bible #bible tag #long post #quote tag

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blackswaneuroparedux · 3 years

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How will the legend of the age of trees Feel, when the last tree falls in England? When the concrete spreads and the town conquers The country’s heart; when contraceptive Tarmac’s laid where farm has faded, Tramline flows where slept a hamlet, And shop-fronts, blazing without a stop from Dover to Wrath, have glazed us over? Simplest tales will then bewilder The questioning children, “What was a chestnut? Say what it means to climb a Beanstalk, Tell me, grandfather, what an elm is. What was Autumn? They never taught us.” Then, told by teachers how once from mould Came growing creatures of lower nature Able to live and die, though neither Beast nor man, and around them wreathing Excellent clothing, breathing sunlight— Half understanding, their ill-acquainted Fancy will tint their wonder-paintings Trees as men walking, wood-romances Of goblins stalking in silky green, Of milk-sheen froth upon the lace of hawthorn’s Collar, pallor in the face of birchgirl. So shall a homeless time, though dimly Catch from afar (for soul is watchfull) A sight of tree-delighted Eden.

- C.S. Lewis, The Future of Forestry

In his poem “The Future of Forestry,” C. S. Lewis outlines his poetic lamentation over the erosion of the environment.

C.S. Lewis recognises that the destruction of nature is very much an urgent matter. His attitude towards the environment would also be reflected in themes throughout his Chronicles of Narnia series, where being a defender of the forest is an indicator of a character being on Aslan’s side.

How did C.S. Lewis come to this view of the importance of Christians looking after God’s creation rather than dominating it. How did Lewis get so green?

The answer lies in the destruction and decimation of World War One. For C.S. Lewis and his friend, JRR Tolkein, World War One produced, in essence, an environmental holocaust.

This aspect of the conflict left a deep impression on both Christian authors and Oxford dons. Having personally experienced the awful prodigy of modern industry and technology - both men fought bravely in the trenches in France - they enlisted nature itself as a protagonist in their epic stories of good vs. evil.

Even before the war, Tolkien and Lewis had come to resent the encroachment of industrial life into rural England. Tolkien lamented "the tragedy and despair of all machinery laid bare," meaning the modern attempt to enhance our control over the world around us, regardless of the consequences.

In "The Lord of the Rings," Saruman the wizard "has a mind for metal and wheels; and he does not care for growing things, except as far as they serve him for the moment." The hateful realm of Mordor is sustained by its black engines and factories.

Likewise, Lewis viewed respect for nature as intrinsic to human happiness. In "The Chronicles of Narnia," his series of books for children, the various animals play a central role in the story. The smallest of creatures -- such as a mouse named Reepicheep -- display the greatest of human virtues. As biographer Alister McGrath observes: "Lewis' portrayal of animal characters in Narnia is partly a protest against shallow assertions of humanity's right to do what it pleases with nature."

The experience of war deepened this sensibility.

Both men enlisted as officers in the British Expeditionary Force and saw intense fighting at the front. Lewis was injured by mortar fire - the shell killed his sergeant standing a few yards away - and was shipped back to England to recover. "My memories of the last war," he wrote, "haunted my dreams for years." Tolkien survived the ferocious Battle of the Somme, but contracted trench fever and was taken out of harm's way. In the horror of the Somme he was given a vision of Mordor: the "dead grasses and rotting weeds" and "a land defiled, diseased beyond healing." As Tolkien acknowledged years later, the Dead Marshes "owe something to Northern France after the Battle of the Somme."

The two great authors met at Oxford in 1926, where they discovered a mutual love for mythology and English literature. Tolkien, a devoted Catholic, helped convert Lewis to Christianity. Lewis persuaded Tolkien to pursue his story about hobbits and Middle-earth.

Their influence on each other's literary imagination was subtle, yet profound. In the climactic scenes in both of their epic works - stories framed by a great war - nature itself is caught up in the conflict.In Lewis' "Prince Caspian," the character Trufflehunter explains to Caspian that it will be difficult to wake the spirits of the trees in the battle against Miraz, the unlawful King of Narnia. "We have no power over them. Since the Humans came into the land, felling forests and defiling streams, the Dryads and Naiads have sunk into deep sleep." Yet the war cannot be won without their help, and Aslan, the great Lion, summons them to join the battle: the "woods on the move."

Tolkien's humanoid trees, the Ents, are among the most memorable figures in fantasy. Led by Treebeard, the oldest living creature in Middle-earth, the Ents were created as guardians of the forest. Earlier wars had decimated the land, forcing the Ents to confine themselves to Fangorn Forest, where they hoped to avoid the War of the Ring. But Sauron's advance compels them to abandon their moral neutrality. "A thing is about to happen which has not happened since the Elder Days," explains Gandalf. "The Ents are going to wake up and find that they are strong."

At the start of the 20th century, when Tolkien and Lewis began their Oxford careers, enthusiasm over "the conquest of nature" was at a fever pitch in the industrialized West. The fever raged with horrific fury during the Great War.

In the Christian imagination of these authors, the assault on nature carried spiritual significance: Man's sins against nature will not go unpunished, and nature will take its revenge.

Contemporary Christians have always had an ambivalent if not hostile attitude to tackling environmental issues such as climate change, carbon emissions or other green issues like clean air and drinking water. This is particularly so in America where scientific illiteracy as well as a distrust in science in general is a particular feature of some Christian churches, especially amongst the so-called white evangelical churches. Science has become a punching bag in the so called Culture Wars in the US between left and right when it shouldn’t be. Thankfully this attitude is only prevalent in America and generally not shared by many church denominations and movements outside of America, especially in Europe, Africa and Asia.

A biblical worldview means accepting the fact that the earth is loved by God and humans have a responsibility to care for it. We have a responsibility to not strip the land of vegetation and to allow the earth to have what it needs to be fertile and productive. That’s not liberal environmentalism, that’s Bible. If man-made climate change is true (and it is), Christians ought to be the most outspoken and supportive of change, because they believe that God has tasked us all with caring for this planet in such a way that it thrives.

Such Christians recognise the need to be good stewards of God’s creation, especially nature. In this Lewis and Tolkein provided an early and important voice to ecological good stewardship and best illustrate the aesthetic intensity of Christian green and environmental consciousness and ultimately a call to action.

**C.S. Lewis looking out from his college rooms, Magdalen College, Oxford. Photo by Arthur Strong, 1947.

#CS lewis #lewis #quote #forest #woods #countryside #environment #green #urbanisation #christianity #religion #ecology #climate change

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trashmenofmarvel · 3 years

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Branded - Chapter 28

Pairing: Demon!Bucky Barnes x Reader

Summary: Bucky settles into his new life in Hell.

(This is a fan AU of Falling’s Just Another Way to Fly by araniaart . Please check out this incredible series for all of your demon Bucky needs.)

AO3

The years were tallied and the rare nights were marked, and Bucky did so, but not alone. He never told the voice to leave again, and it had stayed by his side ever since.

The road back to himself had been a painful one, but the voice never let him down. It told him things about himself he couldn’t remember, and it wasn’t until his mind began to heal and he remembered things for himself that he fully trusted the voice. Everything it had told him was true. His curiosity for the nameless entity only grew over time, made stronger by the fact it was so secretive.

Somedays, they were simply amicable companions. Even friends. It reminded Bucky of the comradery he shared with the Howling Commandos, and it made his chest ache. He thought of Steve, and the pain was nearly unbearable, so he tried not to think of him at all. Maybe he would later, after Bucky escaped this cursed world. If he ever did.

The voice still wouldn’t tell him who it was or even what it was. Bucky was disconcerted by the fact that as he regained his memories, it was possible the voice was not even real. After everything he’d endured, after Zola had robbed him of his humanity and Lukin had shaped him onto a monster, Bucky wouldn’t be surprised if he was as mad as a hatter.

He also decided he didn’t care. He was in Hell—if not the biblical one than very close to it—and he couldn’t survive without an ally. Imaginary or not.

There were other things that lived in this world. Terrible things as large as mountains, roaming in the distance and leaving valleys of sand in their wake. There were also smaller demons, but still considerably larger than Bucky. He avoided them when he could, but it wasn’t always possible. In those moments, he’d either defend himself until they ran, or he killed them with his bare claws.

He never ate the flesh. One, he didn’t know if it was edible, and two, it felt… cannibalistic. A large part of Bucky was from this place, as evidenced by the fact he never needed to feed the demon side of him. Thank Christ for that. If it was between dying and getting fucked by one of those creatures out there, he would have gladly offed himself.

But he never had to. Why would he, when all the demonic energy he needed was right here, beaming down from the never-ending sunlight. It was harsh, and the human part of him wanted to seek shelter from it, but the demon was more than happy to bask in its warmth. Sated in a way it had rarely been back on Earth.

As he grew bolder and explored his “territory,” Bucky came upon curious artifacts. Things that looked too manmade to be a coincidence, but it was always ancient and cracked stone. Designs that looked Greek or Roman.

On an especially productive exploration, he came across what looked like a rudimentary camp. Broken pottery, busted wooden furniture, and even some ancient books that crumbled in his hands when he picked them up. There was a hefty tome that had somehow survived, and Bucky took it back to his cave, hoping to explore it later, but he was disappointed to find the ink too faded to read.

Bored and with way too much time on his hands, Bucky managed to fashion a writing utensil made of a “bamboo” shoot, honed to an edge, along with some ink made of lichen and moss. The relief of being able to do something as human such as journaling made Bucky laugh for the first time in… a long time. He began to document his daily excursions. It made him feel less like a prisoner and more like an explorer, but even then he couldn’t drop the habit of marking ticks on a wall to count the days. And there were many, many ticks.

There was evidence that humans had been on this world in other ways. For the few creatures that seemed to speak a language, they always spoke in Latin. Bucky couldn’t fathom it until he remembered the red book, the one that had controlled him. It had been inscribed in Latin, and his so-called masters had made sure to teach him to speak and read it. HYDRA couldn’t have been the first to summon demonic entities, and perhaps Latin had been their way of communicating with the demons they summoned?

Bucky didn’t know. He didn’t think it was important either, but the voice always got excited when he stumbled across a new ruin or found a new item of manmade design. That alone was enough to make him go out of his way to find more. He liked when the voice was happy, even if he didn’t quite know why.

And the voice was happiest when Bucky flew. The first time he realized it was when he was doing it simply for the exercise, not having anywhere he wanted to explore. Letting his mind go calm and quiet, he found he was able to pay better attention to the entity in his head. He could sense its awe and wonder as they flew high above the hellscape.

Bucky could understand. When his wings had first appeared, he hadn’t hated them. The boy who’d loved comic books and super hero pictures had been fascinated with them, and getting to fly was one of the few times he’d felt free while in HYDRA’s control.

He sensed a little bit of sadness from the voice too, and a physical longing for something. It didn’t hit Bucky until that moment the possibility that the voice might once have had a body, one it had lost, and now it was trapped here with Bucky.

His suspicions were founded when its “presence” grew, expanded within his body, until it was filling him up to the fingertips. Bucky gladly pulled back, allowing the voice to take temporary control.

It wasn’t expecting that, apparently, because Bucky’s wings slanted at an angle and they almost dropped from the sky. The voice took control of his wings and flapped in a panic, like a baby bird fallen from the nest.

“Calm down,” he said, still having control of his voice but he sounded far away to his own ears. “Just do it the way I do it and you’ll be fine.”

I-I shouldn’t-this isn’t right—

Bucky sighed but took control of his body when he sensed the voice pulling back, its presence tinged with horror. He hadn’t wanted to upset it, but at least it was calming down now that he had control again. Poor thing probably hadn’t meant to reach so far into Bucky’s body to begin with.

“If you ever change your mind and want a turn at the wheel, just say the word. I trust you, sweetheart.”

Bucky blinked. Why had he said that? He didn’t know, but by the way the voice went suddenly dead silent, he wondered if he’d gone too far. Been too familiar. Probably had. He’d have to be more careful in the future. It would be just his luck to scare away the one person he had left.

He couldn’t tell if it was human, but it spoke like one. He couldn’t tell its gender, either. Age, race, nationality? Hadn’t a clue. He wasn’t even entirely sure what language it spoke and if the words he heard in his head were literal or some kind of mental translation.

One thing Bucky knew, even if it was the most confusing fact of all: The voice cared about him.

After everything he’d done, Bucky knew it was undeserved. It didn’t stop him from being selfish and clinging to the voice like a lifeline, though.

When Bucky woke from nightmares, shaking and gasping in terror, the voice was there, wrapping warmth and comfort around him. In those moments, he felt especially weak, because he wished more than anything the voice was real. Tangible. Something he could hold and touch.

He didn’t even have a name to call it by. It wouldn’t tell him, so Bucky had said fuck it and tried to come up with one on his own, but they all felt… wrong.

He wished he knew. The one thing Bucky wanted more than to escape this world was to finally meet the owner of that voice.

That urge had never been stronger than the day they found the corpse.

It had been a day like any other, without end under the relentless pale red starry sky, and Bucky had been exploring more of the ancient ruins. He came across a structure that looked different from the rest, almost handmade and clearly thrown together in a hurry. The occupant was still inside, and by the looks of it, had been for many years.

Bucky had come across many corpses in this world, all of the demonic variety, but this one was clearly human. The body was desiccated, mummified and preserved by the hot, dry air. Bits of tattered faded clothing covered its chest and hips, not enough to discern what nation or era they came from. How they’d gotten there, Bucky didn’t have a clue. They came along with the rest of the human ruins, he supposed, but it was strange this was the first actual human body he’d come across.

He’d been about to turn away, leaving the bones undisturbed, when something caught his eye. On the mummified shoulder, stretched but not beyond recognition, was a pentagram carved into the skin.

Bucky’s eyes widened. Another demon that had once been human like him? That had been his initial thought… until the voice reacted so violently that Bucky could actually feel the anxiety shooting through his limbs.

“What?” he insisted. “What is it?”

I…

The voice seemed to be at a loss for words, fear that was not his own seeping into Bucky’s mind.

“Hey, come one. Tell me what’s got you so riled up. Do you know this guy?” Bucky didn’t see how, but that’s almost how it felt. As if the voice had recognized the corpse.

N… no, it finally said. It’s… it’s nothing.

No matter how much Bucky tried to pry for the truth, he couldn’t get a straight answer, and it only seemed to agitate the voice to the point where it couldn’t speak, fear pulsing from it like a living thing.

Bucky left the corpse where it was, doing his best to project calmness toward the entity sharing his mind. But the voice didn’t speak again until he returned to what he thought as “our cave,” and it took several days for it to return to its usual outgoing self.

They didn’t talk about it again, but Bucky never forgot how the voice reacted to that corpse with the pentagram scar. And some days, when the voice was quiet and sad, he knew it hadn’t forgotten either.

The next time Bucky decided to venture outside of his territory, he waited until the voice was in good spirits. Bucky smiled at his own pun.

Penny for your thoughts?

Bucky snorted. Maybe the voice had pulled phrases like that from his head to make him feel more comfortable, but he didn’t think so. He was sure the damn thing was human, or was at least from Earth. By paying attention to how it said things, rather than what it said, Bucky found he learned a lot more than by asking it straight-on personal questions.

For one, it seemed to appreciate sarcastic humor, and Bucky was never in short supply.

“It would be a penny more than I have,” he said, poking at a suspicious mound of dirt. This area had been promising; he’d even found a couple of dusty robes at one point. Bucky hadn’t been able to tell how old they were, but they’d definitely been the right shape and size for a human.

I suppose you are destitute. What would buy, right now, if you could?

“A blueberry slushy,” Bucky lamented. “And new boots.”

He stared mournfully at what was left of his old pair, torn apart by his expanding, clawed feet. HYDRA had told him his transition had been complete after they’d done an especially horrible ritual on him, but apparently, they’d lied. Big shocker there.

“Do you miss slushies?” Bucky kept his tone carefully neutral.

Sure, it answered, just as vaguely, as it always did. Bucky heaved a sigh.

“Come on, give me something,” he grumbled as he trekked over the deep sand. “We’ve been here… how long?”

Forty-eight years and thirty-two days.

Had it really been that long? It seemed… shorter, somehow. And also infinitely longer.

“Exactly. Almost five decades, and I don’t know anything about you!”

That’s not true, it said, going soft. Sometimes it did that, as if thinking fondly of some far away past. You know me better than anyone.

“Yeah. Right.”

It’s true!

“I don’t even know your name.” Bucky kicked over a large rock, finding nothing but a bright red reptile underneath. It scurried away, hissing indignantly.

“What, is it a witch thing? If I know your name, your sinister powers won’t work on me?”

Don’t be dumb.

“I’m not dumb. You’re dumb. Witch.”

Oh, my God, I’m not a witch.

“Well, unless you’re the figment of a shattered psyche, then you’re something. Witch is as good a guess as any.”

The voice gave a huff. Bucky could imagine it pouting like a child, and he grinned.

How is it that no matter what planet you’re on, you’re still the same smartass that I—

The voice stopped and Bucky’s head snapped up, his body reacting before his mind could catch up. Something had shifted in the air, and a second later, the ground rumbled under his feet.

At first, he thought it was one of the mountain-beasts, but this felt… different. Sharper. Every nerve ending was tingling and he leaned forward, hungrily. Not the demonic part of him. The part that was human.

He could smell it. Earth.

That’s it! the voice shouted. Over there!

He could see it in the distance—a glowing oval that looked as if it was bordered with blue fire.

Bucky didn’t move.

What are you doing! The voice screamed at him. You have to go! Now!

“I…” He swallowed thickly, his heart pounding as he couldn’t seem to get enough air. His legs wouldn’t move and his tail stuck out at an upward angle like a frightened cat’s.

Bucky didn’t know what he was doing. More importantly, he didn’t know what was beyond that portal. What if the world he went back to wasn’t like the one he left? What if he returned just to be caught by HYDRA? What if he had to feed again?

And the most terrifying question of all: what would happen to his little ghost?

There were too many unknowns, too many variables. This place may be actual Hell, but at least he’d carved out a place that was his own. He knew what each day would be like and what to expect. He had no such information about what lay on the other side of that ring of fire.

Bucky, please, it pleaded. I know you’re scared, but you have to trust me. You have to go through that portal. You’re meant to go through!

He stared at the object, no larger than a pebble from this distance, but nothing had filled him with so much fear. Not even the things he could hear crawling around his cave during the rare nights.

“I can’t,” he croaked out. He was cowardly, and he hated himself for it, but he still couldn’t budge.

Yes, you can. You can and you have to!

Several emotions flickered through Bucky’s mind, all coming entirely from the voice, too strong for it to hide from him. Sorrow, yearning, grief.

…Love?

“What’s on the other side?” he asked, suddenly desperate. “What will I find when I cross?”

Through their connection raced an ache so powerful it nearly knocked the wind out of him.

Me.

The fear keeping him immobilized shattered, and he spread his wings and took to the air. He raced to the portal, narrowing his eyes against the heated wind as he zeroed in on his target.

There were other demons below, drawn by the otherworldly energy flowing through the fiery blue portal. A dark green humanoid demon slipped through, a slithering, worm-like creature following after. Bucky ignored them, ignored everything except the portal.

The last thing he remembered was the voice telling him to land and run.

Bucky slammed into the ground in front of the portal. A demon that looked half-bull, half-bear was to his right, and it gave a roar and swung its claws when it realized he was there.

Bucky ducked under its outstretched arm—stupid beast wouldn’t even be able to fit through the portal—and he slipped around the larger demon. He pushed off from the ground, claws digging into the sand, and he leapt through…

…to land on a child’s bedroom floor.

Next Chapter

#demon!bucky barnes #demon!bucky x reader #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes #bucky barnes fanfiction #my writing #my fanfiction #branded

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96thdayofrage · 4 years

Text

The practice was an excuse for many white mothers to avoid breastfeeding with hopes of maintaining their stature and avoiding the “messy” part of motherhood.

The act was perceived as a self-demeaning and women who were seen breastfeeding were often thought of as uncultured, poor and often shunned. The practice became very popular when doctors of the time did all they could to prove that breastfeeding was an unhealthy act for women. It is believed that doctors were paid huge sums of money to write such reports. The children of slaves grew healthy while many white families lost their children to ill health.

This made many westerners force slave mothers to breastfeed their white children so that they could develop better and survive the early months of childhood. By the 18th century, the trend had become very popular.

Once a slave mother had a child, she was quickly assigned to a white mistress and forced to breastfeed her white baby instead of her own. Young and healthy slave women were also forced to breastfeed white babies after doctors discovered that the continuous sucking of a sexually active female breast could result in lactation. While they breastfed white babies at the expense of theirs, slave mothers tried to keep their children alive by feeding them with concoctions they believed will be good substitutes for milk. They also gave cow milk and dirty water which were not suitable for babies health.

This resulted in high deaths of babies of slaved throughout the slave trade. At the peak of the forced wet nursing, slave traders often kidnapped newborn babies from their slave mothers. The pain in the breasts left these women with no choice but to breastfeed other babies who were often white. Some reluctant slaves were beaten and often milked like cows to feed white babies.

Slave mothers often kept the white babies in their homes until the child’s family felt it was time to take them back. Since the living conditions of the slaves were not the best, several white babies died. Speculating that slave mothers were killing the babies out of spite, they were later forced to move in with the family where they could be monitored.

In a talk entitled “‘She could spare one ample breast for the profit of her owner’: White Mothers and Enslaved Wet Nurses’ Invisible Labor in American Slave Markets,” Jones-Rogers argued that studying enslaved wet nurses reveals white women’s complicity in expanding slavery in the south and demonstrates how white mothers were at the forefront of these market transactions. White southern women had created a “niche sector of the slave market” dedicated to providing them with the specific maternal labor that they sought from bondswomen.

Jones-Rogers emphasized that we cannot forget about the reproductive and maternal violence white women perpetrated against black bondswomen. Indeed, the commodification of slave mothers provides an important example of the disturbing “quotidian” horrors of slavery.

Jones-Rogers’ research has much significance in the field of nineteenth-century U.S. history, particularly because so little attention has been paid to non-masculinized enslaved labor. The few nineteenth-century historians who have discussed enslaved wet nurses, like Walter Johnson in River of Dark Dreams, downplay the extent to which white women capitalized on black breast milk.

The reason for this, Jones-Rogers’ contends, is because historians have focused their research on elite southern white women, while ignoring the ways in which non-elite white women used black wet nurses. By studying wet nurse advertisements in southern newspapers, Jones-Rogers’ uncovered a disturbing story of white women’s reliance on and exploitation of black women.

These advertisements, along with other primary source documentation, reveal much about the reproductive violence inflicted upon black women by their white counterparts. They show, among other things, how white women timed their pregnancies with that of their black wet nurses, and how they forced black mothers to dedicate the majority of their milk to white children, rather than their own children.

When black wet nurses became “unproductive,” that is, could no longer produce milk, they were replaced by white mothers who deemed them to be defective. White women did this rather than improve nutritional conditions for black wet nurses.

Because white women managed black wet nurses’ labor, they were the ones who determined the market for black wet nurses. Using a lexicon derived from the greater slave market, white women graded black wet nurses based on whether they were “likely” (meaning “likely to work out”), their skill level, whether the white children they nursed in the past ended up healthy, and whether or not their milk was “fresh.”

Freshness was determined by the age of the enslaved wet nurses’ infant. The older their infant, the less valuable her milk. Enslaved wet nurses whose infant died soon after childbirth were extremely valuable. White women appreciated the lack of the extra “encumbrance,” knowing full well that more time and resources would be spent on their own children.

Becoming a wet nurse had a number of detrimental emotional effects on black women, beyond those created by more traditional forms of slave labor. For one, it separated them from established kinship networks. It also made it more difficult for them to bond with their children, who were often separated from them for prolonged periods so that they could focus on servicing white children instead.

The extent to which white women had commodified black wet nurses’ labor can be seen in how they reacted to this emotional distress. Instead of trying to improve conditions for enslaved wet nurses, white women typically used their wet nurses’ despair as an excuse to sell them, noting in advertisements to other prospective buyers that this particular wet nurse was prone to “the sulks” or “madness,” lessening her value.

Black mothers were used daily for their bodily resources, with no regard for their personal well-being, often leading to their mental and physical decline. It is only with research like Jones-Rogers’ that we can truly begin to understand the depraved nature of the south’s “peculiar institution.”

Before the mammy stereotype was born during the post-civil war revisionist period, every plantation had a mammy. As described by historian Kimberly Wallace Sanders, “more often [mammy] served as a generic name for slave women who served as a wet nurse or baby nurse for white children.” This was in large part to the trend of medical experts of the day discouraging mothers from breastfeeding. Outsourcing breastfeeding was not a new phenomenon during the pre-antebellum, as it had been occurring since the biblical times. Still, it is no less shocking that black women were good enough to give bodily fluids to white babies, but not good enough to be treated as human beings.

While black women were forced to give life to babies they did not birth, their own children sometimes went hungry. Per Sanders, “A lot of slave babies died during slavery because they weren’t breastfed. They were fed concoctions of dirty water and cows milk.” As any doctor will tell you, breastfeeding often creates a bond between the mother and child, and slave wet nurses were not immune to feeling affection for their white parasites, and vice versa. Said one European visitor to a plantation in the Carolinas: “Richard always grieves when Quasheen is whipped, because she suckled him.” Wet nursing did not end after slavery, and many southern white women continued to employ black wet nurses until the practice fell out of fashion in the twentieth century.

Like their slave ancestors, “free” wet nurses were often kept from their children in addition to being forced to do other household chores, but with a severely unfair wage instead of no pay at all.

In the present, only 59% of black women breastfeed, compared to 79% of white women. Certified nurse and midwife Stephanie Devane-Johnson interviewed black women and found that some reject breast feeding because of the exploited wet nurses of slavery. I am left to wonder if the infrequency of breastfeeding among black women has to do with the high infant mortality rate in our community.

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vaguekiwi · 4 years

Text

Whom Shall I Fear?

@tony-is-my-daddy posted this and my brain fucking broke down.

Whom Shall I Fear?

Pairings: Tony Stark x Peter Parker

Summary: 1 Samuel 16 - 17 but it’s Starker. (David in Saul’s Service, David and Goliath.) Tony is David and Peter is Jonathan and I have so much to say about this but I’m gonna put it at the very end.

Characters: David:Tony Stark, Jonathan:Peter Parker, Saul:Richard Parker (background unnamed Samuel, Goliath, and Merab.)

Word Count: ~2000

Other Inspiration: Sight by Sleeping at Last

Warnings: Biblical crossover/speculation, safe for work, not safe for church, hint of homophobia, inappropriate use of Biblical concepts/language

When they met, they were both still young.

There was a new attendant in the king’s court. He had dark hair and his neck was curved toward the instrument, so Peter could not see his face. But he handled the lyre carefully, almost reverently, as he played.

Peter itched for the man to turn his face, longed to see the rest of the full jaw in his view, wanted to see the colour of his eyes. Eyes which captured the lyre with an earnest focus, eyes which Peter was sure enamoured anything and anyone they looked at.

“Peter!” Peter started at the sound of the king’s voice, but was glad he did not sound angry or resigned.

“I apologise, my lord king.” Peter bowed when he addressed his father. He could feel those eyes on him now, fought the urge to turn.

“Peter,” King Richard straightened himself and waved his son in, “come, meet Anthony.” So Peter faced the musician who stood to bow.

Peter could see immediately that he could do more than play the lyre. His frame was strong and his eyes - Peter had been right - were bewitching pools of brown; traces of green and gold flashed in the man’s gaze as he looked Peter up and down.

“A warrior, too,” King Richard sighed as Peter shook Anthony’s hand, “yet to truly prove himself in battle, but that time will come. I find his songs… soothing.”

Anthony finally spoke, his cadence rough and gaze never leaving Peter’s face, “I am fortunate the Lord has blessed me with such a gift, my king.”

“Yes, thanks be to God.” The king mumbled, then shook his head. “To think your talents were being wasted so— herding sheep! It is good you have come here, Anthony.”

“I am grateful to be here, my king. And grateful too, for the beautiful instrument you have provided me.”

The king mumbled at that, and made a motion that he should continue playing. So Anthony sat down again and lifted the lyre.

Peter knew he had effectively been dismissed, but he lingered outside the door. He pressed his back to the wall and listened to Anthony’s music. He wondered why his cheeks were warm, and what the stirring in his stomach meant.

—

Anthony’s music did more than soothe the king. It stopped any temperamental episodes all together. The entire castle grew to welcome the sight of the young man with the lyre who could keep the king’s demons at bay.

He was not there all the time. He often went home to his family. Said tiredly that he needed to look after his father, help his brothers, and of course continue to watch the sheep.

When he was not there, King Richard became paranoid and angry. He threw things and spat heresy. The rumours troubled him; the ones that said King Richard had lost favour with God, that God had sent prophets to anoint a new king. Peter didn’t know whether to believe them or not, he just continued to pray for forgiveness for his father.

Then Anthony would return with his lyre, always carefully tuned and polished, and he would play to ease the king’s heart.

He sang too, beautiful homilies of faith and wonder; stories about far-off lands and battle glory. It was because he sang that Peter first got to know him.

“Anthony, are you alright?” He found the young man bending over a desk, a quill rolling between his fingers, lower lip tucked into his mouth.

“Prince Peter,” The shepherd looked up and their eyes met, and Peter wished they hadn’t. He did not want to feel surrounded the way he did by that gaze, like there was pressure on all sides and he was held down by it. Like he desperately needed to come up for air, but could not unless the strength and assurance in Anthony’s gaze gave such permission.

It was a strange feeling of authority, between prince and subject. But it also felt right.

Then Anthony turned his worried gaze back to the paper and he sighed in exasperation. “I am having trouble writing,” he admitted at length, “the words don’t come as easily as some might think.”

“What is it about?”

Peter stepped further into the room, wanting to thumb away the anxiety creasing Anthony’s forehead.

“Fear,” Anthony chewed his bottom lip and anxiously rubbed the fingers of one hand together so flakes of ink fell to the top of the desk. Peter looked down at the paper, the jumble tight print against the page.

The wicked advance against me to devour me, the armies besiege me, war breaks out against me.

There was no music written to the lyric, but Peter could imagine it easily. Could hear Anthony’s lilting voice while his fingers strummed the lyre.

Peter spoke, and put his finger to the top of the page, “if it is about fear, then what is it that gives you strength when afraid? Write about that.” And so Anthony put his quill to the page again and scrawled

The Lord is my light, whom shall I fear?

Then he went still and looked up at Peter.

“It’s… difficult to write, my prince. With someone watching… like this.”

Peter took several steps back which were too big, putting more distance between them than they needed. “Of course, I’m sorry.” He said and turned away. The wicked advance against me, armies besiege me. What did that mean? What did Anthony, the shepherd with the king’s favour, have to be afraid of?

Before Peter left, Anthony called:

“Thank you, Prince Peter.”

And so that became routine. Short moments in the afternoon sitting in an abandoned office; Peter prompted and Anthony’s words flowed. And come evening Peter snuck to the king’s chambers and listened for the finished song.

—

King Richard was right, Anthony did eventually have cause to prove himself in battle.

Peter watched from afar with a trembling lip as Anthony shed the armour he’d been given.

Anthony cast aside his sword and declared the Lord was with him. It was a haughty sentiment, Peter thought, when in theory the Lord was with all of them.

Peter watched the musician push his way to the front lines with only a sling and five smooth stones in hand. Peter turned away, feeling a deep loss at the prospect of his friend’s death. The man who had brought peace to the king’s tortured mind.

The army jeered. King Richard shook his head sadly.

Peter thought of the tales of heroism which had been borne from Anthony’s mind - and what a brilliant mind it was - and sent a prayer for the Lord to protect His servant.

Afterward, when Anthony held the enemy commander’s head aloft, when their army roared and their foes retreated, Peter looked cautiously to his father. They could hear the chanting from here:

Richard has slain his thousands

And Anthony his tens of thousands!

A thinly-veiled insult to the king, if ever there was one.

King Richard’s face was unreadable as he turned to an aide. “Bring the shepherd boy to me.” He ordered.

And Peter thought God must be weary by now of his prayers.

—

But the king did not kill Anthony.

Peter was waiting outside the tent when he emerged. Blood still stained his hands and his clothes were still torn, but now a handsome purple mantle had been draped over his shoulders.

“Anthony!”

“Prince Peter.”

They stood just a bit too far apart from one another, a setting sun casting them in golden light while the cheers of victory and scent of sweet wine filled the space between them.

“My father…”

“He did not hurt me,” Anthony shrugged off the mantle and trudged away. Peter hurried to follow him.

“Are you alright?”

Anthony took them away from the festivities, toward the back of camp and to the seclusion of the streams and veld beyond.

When they were too far for anyone to hear them, but probably still in sight, Anthony said: “Our lord king has asked me to stay with him. To advise. To lead your army.”

“That is a great honour,” Peter said, even though his heart clutched with worry, “your family will be proud.”

“Prince Peter,” Anthony stopped now and turned to face him. He rubbed two fingers together, they watched flakes of dried blood sift off and settle to the ground.

“Prince Peter, I fear I am an enemy of your father.”

Peter glanced furtively back to camp before asking, “Why do you say that?”

“Have you heard that another man was anointed by the prophets? To be king in your father’s stead?”

“Yes.” Peter was conscious of his heart racing in his chest. He had a suspicion of what Anthony would say next, he did not know if he was afraid of it or wanted it to be true.

“Peter, I cannot lose a battle.” With the honorific prince cast away, Peter felt like his own skin had been peeled back, like Anthony was looking down at something raw and something secret. Anthony shook his head and kicked his foot into the desert ground, “I can go up against a ten foot tall general without a sword and still win… apparently.”

Peter whispered: “If you are the man the rumours are about, then the king will want you dead.”

“Or he will want me leashed,” Anthony replied, “he has already offered your sister’s hand. A fine home. A title. He is already afraid of me.”

“There is good reason to be afraid of any man with the Lord’s favour.” Peter mumbled, and then gasped when Anthony stepped forward. He put one hand on the small of Peter’s back and the other on the side of his neck, Peter could still smell the blood on it. The stench of sweat flooded his nostrils and they were very close like this, pressed flush against one another.

“Are you afraid of me, Peter?”

Peter didn’t completely understand the question, but he understood what was happening. He understood the danger of it, the horror of it. He understood that anyone could look down on them from here, and if not recognise them they could recognise the sin of two men so close.

His voice shook, “This is an abomination, Anthony-”

But Anthony only held him tighter, “The Lord is my rock, my protection, my Saviour. I can run to him for safety. He is my shield and my saving strength, my defender.” They were his own lyrics, his breath hot on Peter’s neck as he growled them out, “the world cannot touch me, Peter. Not unless He wills it. And He won’t, His plans for me are grander than this one battle.”

They were both quiet, Peter’s breath was hoarse but he let himself hang in Anthony’s grip, pressed his chin into his palm.

Again: “Peter… are you afraid of me?”

“If the Lord has chosen you to be king, then whom shall I fear?”

Anthony smiled, and it was genuine. It was happy. It was born from goodness and patience, from peace, joy, and love.

And Peter reached for the soft woollen britches which Anthony wore, torn at the knees and along his thigh from the battle.

“May I worship my king?”

Anthony growled. It was a sound that sent a spike of heat through Peter’s whole body. That made his head white with electricity when their lips met.

“Only if I may reward my servant.”

--------

Notes from Grace:

Okay, there’s SO much potential to this story. Everything I have written here is before the Bible actually mentions David and Jonathan making their covenant together. Like after this, there’s chapters on King Saul hunting David, Jonathan helping him to escape, Jonathan manipulating and lying to his father to protect David, Saul lowkey realising they’re in love so lying to Jonathan and accusing David of stealing his son away and corrupting him. There’s this actual dialogue:

**David: Your father knows very well that I have found favour in your eyes

Jonathan: Whatever you want me to do, I’ll do for you

Jonathan: Don’t be afraid, my father Saul will not lay a hand on you. You will be king over Israel, and I will be second to you.

And these actual verses:

“So Jonathan made a covenant with the house of David, saying ‘May the Lord call David’s enemies to account.’ And Jonathan had David reaffirm his oath out of love for him, because he loved him as he loved himself.”

“Then they kissed each other and wept together — but David wept the most”

And David being on the run and Jonathan straight up sneaking away from his dad to meet up in a secret liaison like who can possibly say that wasn’t gay as hell?????

And Saul offering David two of his daughters’ hands in marriage and David being like “... nah.” while ‘affirming covenants’ with Jonathan left and right.

But this is all I wrote. If anyone’s into it I would encourage/welcome you to continue it and would love to be tagged in any such continuation.

**(I use an NIV Bible for 99% of my Bible needs)

#starker #starker fic #tony stark x peter parker #bible au #grace writes

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filthyfundie · 4 years

Text

THWH S1 E2

Title: The Imago Dei

Description: We are here to humbly discuss recent events, the death of George Floyd, and how we as Christians should be reacting. What does true compassion look like? Does Jesus understand our pain? Is there an offer of change that is big enough, strong enough, to save us from hatred, abuse, racism…to save us from sin? Join us in a reflective perspective of what a biblical, hopeful response might look like.

*Due to the topic of this episode I have chosen not to provide a summary or review on this original post. Rather I have provided a (subpar,flawed) transcript of the episode.

Jinger: Hey we're Jinger and Jeremy Vuolo and this is The Hope We Hold Podcast. Jeremy: Where we have weekly conversations around our family table to share the hope of Jesus.

Jinger: These are dark days we're living in and we've been grieving as individuals, as a nation, over the events from last week and the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, MN. Jeremy and I, as we watched the video, we watched with shock and horror and sorrow and it's just too much to bear emotionally. And I know many of you are feeling the same as we should. because God has made us as people with minds, intellects and emotions and we grieve. Jesus himself wept and we weep because of the brokenness of this world.

Jeremy: Yeah to think of Jesus one of the descriptions of Christ was that he was a man of sorrows. Of all the ways he was and could have been described he was described as a man of sorrows. Here”the creator of the universe descended into the world he made and he wept”. So today we want to discuss how a Christian world view ought to shape our response to what we see going on around us. The hatred, the violence, really the effects of sin in this life.

Jinger: It's difficult but God has given us some clues about why what is happening is so painful to deal with and I think we need to start where the bible starts, at creation. And we read this in Genesis 1 26-28 "Then God said 'Let us make man in our image after our likeness. So god created man in his own image and the image of God he created him, male and female he created them and God blessed them". That's pretty amazing just to think about that, that we are made in the image of God.

Jeremy: Yeah it's what theologians have called "the imago dei" which is just the Latin phrase for the image of God.

Jinger: Mm yeah and it gives us dignity to every single person which is why what we witness this last week was so horrific.

Jeremy: Yeah.

Jinger: Yeah so the image of God on man becomes even more incredible when we understand just how majestic and holy and powerful and beautiful God is. For him to care enough about us to make us in his image is truly remarkable.

Jeremy: Yeah it is and it's exactly what king David felt when he wrote Pslams 8. He's writing this Pslams and it's set in the evening time when David, without the modern city lights to fade the sky, was staring into the sky and he sees the majesty of the celestial beings, the stars. And in Pslams 8 King David just writes, astounded about the beauty and glory of God, he says "Oh Lord, our Lord how majestic is your name in the earth, you have set the glory above the heavens" and you can picture him there, looking up. Perhaps you've seen in the dark night sky, the glittering stars and David sees that as the glory of God. And he says in verse 3 "When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place" he's absolutely astounded by who God is. And then in comparison David was astounded that God made us to reflect that glory. He says "What is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor." that's pretty astonishing. So we know this, that as we see the beauty of humanity, the creativity, the ingenuity, persistence and perseverance, the intricacies of the body and the mind, even the love that people have for one another and for community, these are reflections of our maker in us.It's the imago dei, it's the reflection of the one who made us. But we also see something else when we look at humanity and sadly we see the marring of this beauty don't we?

Jinger: Yeah it's um what we're seeing headlines every single day and it's what we witnessed last week in Minneapolis and something has happened to God’s creation that has messed it up.

Jeremy: Yeah it's called sin *laughs* soon after gods original creation, humanity sinned, ushering pain and death into this world. And this sin takes all forms. You see it in hatred, violence, racism, division, abuse, immorality, on and on. The well of humanity, you could say, has been poisoned. And though we still see the reflections of God in us and in his creations, it's definitely not 100%. Our hearts, bodies, our entire existence, has been effected by sin.

Jinger: So many headlines, like what we saw in The New York times just a few days ago "8 Minutes and 46 Seconds, How George Floyd Was Killed in Police Custody" become tragically normal and it just makes your heart so sick. And it's not supposed to be that way and we feel that, we feel how unnatural this is. Murder is unnatural, injustice is unnatural and death itself is unnatural.

Jeremy: Yeah it is. And so as Christians living in this sin plagued world, how are we supposed to respond?

Jinger: We weep. I think the first thing we need to say is we should weep with those who weep. People are hurting and we need to stand with them and weep. But we also need to weep at the brokenness around us and it's not just the black community crying out over the death of George Floyd, humanity ought to cry out. It's just so heartbreaking to see this. And George was a man made in the image of God and he was fellow image barer like me, like all of us. And so to see his life taken is such a tragedy.

Jeremy: Yeah that's right. We ourselves grieve and we also grieve with those who are grieving. Jesus wept at the death of his friend Lazarus. He felt the pain of those he loved and yet Jesus knew what he has about to do when it comes to Lazarus, he was about to raise him from the dead. And it's here that I think we need to focus just a moment. As your grieving, facing injustice or death or pain of any sort we need to know that there is one who knows, he truly knows, Jesus knows your pain and he cares about your pain. Jesus Christ is compassionate and compassion is to care. We can look at a headline and say "Oh that's really sad" and move on with our day, but that's not true compassion. True compassion does something, true compassion reacts. And so we see Jesus wept at the death of Lazarus and then he raised him from the dead. And there is one Jesus Christ who demonstrates the greatest compassion imaginable. Jesus Christ came into this world and wept. He read the headlines, he lived the headlines, Christ created this world in harmony and unity but sin decimated peace. It brought bloodshed. But instead of just sitting in heaven Jesus entered earth. He came among us, and moved on his compassion, he actually did something. And we need to pay attention to what he did because what he did is the only ultimate answer to our pain and suffering. So when we think about compassion, and Jing you say 'How do we respond as Christians to the events of last week' and you say 'Well we weep we ourselves weep, we weep with those who weep' but compassion moves beyond the feeling of pain or sympathy in to the realm of action, of doing something. And we look at Christ. He wept, we need to weep but he didn't only weep, he then moved and did something. And this is what Jesus did, listen to the beautiful words of the prophet Isiah, this is Isiah 53, speaking of Jesus, says "He was despised and rejected by man. A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief and as one of whom man hide their faces, he was despised. And we esteemed him not. Surely he has born our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smited by God and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our inequities upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace and with his wounds we are healed. All we, like sheep, have gone astray. We have turned every one to his own way and the lord has laid on him the inequity of us all. He was oppressed and He was afflicted yet He opened not his mouth, like a lamb that is lead to the slaughter and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgement He was taken away and as for his generation, who considered that was cut off of the land of the living, stricken for the transgressions of my people." So we read that and we think "OK what did Jesus do?" well he came to earth to be oppressed, he came to be maligned, he came to be murdered. Why? So that his compassion was not merely a thought but his compassion was action that rescues. Jesus Christ took on sin itself to rescue us from sin. And not just the sin of others impacting us, which is prevalent, but the sin our own hearts. So Jesus Christ can relate to your pain, he can relate to your tears, he can relate to your feelings of anguish. But more than putting an arm on your shoulder and weeping beside you, he actually has accomplished the great salvation by which you and I can be rescued from sin itself and all the effects of sin.

Jinger: Yeah it makes me think of the verses in Titus that you often bring up.

Jeremy: That describes the brokenness of this world and then show the beauty of Jesus's salvation. Yeah I bring them up so often because they’re so spot on and succinct in describing the brokenness of humanity and, like you said, the beauty of Jesus. So those verses, from Titus 3, beginning of verse 3 where the apostle Paul says "We ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, lead astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God, our savior, appeared, he saved us. Not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the spirit whom he poured down on us richly through Jesus Christ our savior so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life." What Paul is saying is that we were broken, we were sin committers, we were committing sin but we were also effected by sin, we were hating others and hated by others, we were slaves to our lust, but something happened but the goodness and loving kindness of god our savior appeared to save us. so that no longer would we be bound by the enslavement of sin and the effects of sin but that we would be rescued. and notice what I just read "that we become heirs according to the hope of eternal life." That there would be this hope that there is beyond the pain of this life. And so Jesus Christ, he knows our pain but he doesn't only empathize helplessly he empathizes yes, but then he enters this world and rescues us.

Jinger: Yeah and for those who are rescued by turning to Jesus in repentance and faith an amazing glory awaits in heaven. A glory where black, white and brown, rich and poor, strong and weak, American, African, Asian, European, where we will all sing in a unified voice to the one who showed true compassion and rescued us.

Jeremy: Yeah. Baby why don't you read that passage that you're talking about from revelation?

Jinger: Yeah it's revelation 5, 9 and 10 and it says "And they sang a new song saying 'worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people in nation and you have made them a kingdom and priest to our god and they shall reign on the earth”.

Jeremy: Yeah it's incredible to see the nations gathered. The, like you said, black, brown, white, African, American, European, all these beautiful nations, all these beautiful people that God has made. You know that's something I think about often in that verse is that there is distinction among us isn't there? And there's beautiful distinction. From the color of our skin to the cultural homes we come from. The languages we share. There’s beautiful distinction in people. And we see that beauty don’t we? And the hope of heaven is that one day we will be joined together. All those who have put their faith and trust in Christ will sing a unified song, in a unified voice, praising Jesus Christ, who came to rescue them from sin, to rescue them from death itself. And so these are dark day we're living in, and we're grieving, but we do not need to grieve as those without hope. Christian, preach the gospel, preach this gospel. Only Jesus offers the change that is big enough, strong enough to save us from hatred, abuse, racism, to save us from sin.

Jinger: That's right.

Jeremy: Well thanks for joining us today for The Hope We Hold podcast. We trust that you were encouraged. Jinger: And it is our hope that your hope will be in Christ alone.

#i will reblog with my thoughts #because i have A FEW #but wanted this to exist as verbatim as my flawed transcribing skills could allow bc it's important to really spread what #is being said by those with large public platforms at this time #thwh #the vuolos

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askmerriauthor · 4 years

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Soft Apoc Ideas - Zombies

Because @techmomma mentioned it before and now my brain’s been rolling it around in my head. Discussion of Zombie films below, along with some potential spoilers for certain films used as examples.

So a “Soft Apocalypse” is a narrative genre where the end of the world/fall of civilization has occurred, but it wasn’t some big cataclysm. Things just kind of... fizzled. A slow ease into the grave rather than an earth shattering kaboom. And, more often than not, the end isn’t really the end - it just marks the conclusion of one method of civilization giving rise to a new one growing atop the ruins of the old, still clinging to some ideas of that past. As far as end of the world stories go, the Soft Apoc tends to be a little more introspective, focusing on the feelings and thoughts of the survivors rather than the disaster itself. Often the actual cause of the end of the world isn’t really discussed in great detail or even at all - it might purely be an background concept that sets the stage rather than the focus of events. It’s not about what happened then, but what’s happening since.

The Zombie genre, on the other hand, is a lot more immediate and active in it’s threat. We usually see Zombie stories taking place either immediately before or immediately after an outbreak, where the presence of the undead is the primary source of danger for the cast to contend with. What Zombies represent varies wildly from story to story. They may be presented as a biblical apocalypse, the result of science gone amok, the flaws of man’s hubris, an analogy to man’s selfish consumerism, or even just an unfeeling, inevitable force of nature that can only be endured but not defeated. As @techmomma observed, it’s difficult to write a Soft Apoc concept given the two genres’ contrasting elements. But not impossible; Zombies is such a densely saturated genre in and of itself that there’s always examples to be found.

Some good examples in recent cinematic history include “Zombieland”, “Sean of the Dead”, “The Dead Don’t Die” and to some degree “Warm Bodies”. These four immediately leap to mind as being examples of the most common examples of different outcomes of a Zombie infestation.

“The Dead Don’t Die” is a quirky, fourth-wall-breaking novelty film set in a cozy little nowhere town, with the focus being on the small time sheriff and deputy pair who find themselves caught in the end of the world. The dead rise and begin killing everyone, but the characters meet the whole conflict with a weirdly passive, bemused reaction both for the situation at hand and their own behavior. The cause of the Zombies is never explained and, in the end, it’s assumed that all of mankind will die in a hopeless, slow-spreading downfall.

“Zombieland” is another comedy/action-based film where the bulk of the story is told post-outbreak, where a group of survivors is making their way through the ruins of civilization. It’s mostly a vehicle for amusing banter and gratuitous violence toward Zombies, all played for humor as everyone involved is 100% genre savvy. In this case the threat of Zombies is still active and present, but more easily contended with despite not being solvable. The cast are simply living what time they have left as best they can, knowing the world they knew is gone forever but trying to have fun on their way out.

“Warm Bodies” is the curious addition of a romance story told between Zombies and Survivors, where the primary protagonist is a Zombie himself. In this story the Zombies have the previously unknown potential to return to life and gradually re-integrate with the remnants of Human society, even joining forces with mankind to fend off undead that have gone too far beyond the point of no return. The story is firmly in the Soft Apoc style as it ends with a hopeful note of restoring both the world and the still-salvageable undead.

“Sean of the Dead” has all the trappings of your standard Zombie movie, albeit told very tongue-in-cheek. It doesn’t seem to take the outbreak seriously right up until the mid-point in the story where the shoe drops and everyone realizes “yes, this is in fact horrific” as the tone of the movie changes instantly into straight-up horror. But the rug is pulled out from us again as it’s revealed that it’s only horror because the cast we’ve been following were a bunch of idiots who put themselves into the worst situation possible. At the end of the movie the military rolls up in full force, logically wipes out the shambling hordes of Zombies in a hail of gunfire, and contains the outbreak very swiftly. Humanity at large never really collapsed and, in the last minutes of the movie, we see how mankind has adapted to the presence of remaining elements of the undead. Such as using them as mindless slave labor, for callous daytime television entertainment, and very lightly touching on what sort of social and personal impact the remaining presence of Zombies has on individuals. It leaves the audience with the understanding that all it will take is these idiots doing something dumb again for the outbreak to return and likely be quashed just as quickly, but they’ll never learn.

While I don’t have an immediate example off the top of my head, I do have my own idea for how a Soft Apoc Zombie setting might go. I’m certain I’m not the first to have this idea, so if anyone can send me some titles that already delve into this concept, I’d appreciate it.

My basic idea would be that the Zombie Outbreak, whatever may have caused it, led to the collapse of most elements of society but not all. It was also in the vaguely recent past - maybe within 100 years of the present story taking place. While there are still roving Zombies out there in the world, they’re not an active “unstoppable hordes of millions consuming all they cross” threat any longer. They did their damage, were widely defeated or just fizzled out on their own over time, and now there’s only traces of them left. Their presence is less of an overwhelming tidal wave swallowing up everything and treated more like “Yeah, we always get flooded this time of year, so we built our houses on stilts and have good water-damage insurance” sort of disaster. The real issue is that the infection rate of Zombification is 100%: it is known and completely guaranteed that every currently living person and any young that are born in generations to come, upon death, will rise as a Zombie. This is just how the Human life cycle operates now - you’re born, you grow old, you die, you come back as a Zombie. No exceptions, no cures, no way to avoid it. So then the story becomes less a matter of trying to solve Zombification and more of an exploration of how people react, how society changes, and what sort of practices come out of this known state of being. How does society change to protect itself knowing that any accidental death could potentially cascade into countless more? How do people address end-of-life preparation both in practical and spiritual aspects knowing they will shortly rise as a Zombie? How do art, culture, medicine, and science change to factor in this new facet of the life cycle? How is the nature of Zombies and the original outbreak recognized so long after the fact - is it still seen as a disaster, or has it warped into legend and taken on elements of a cultural origin tale? It can even be pushed out further to address environmental questions, such as what happens to Earth’s ecosystem when the food chain is so heavily upset, if some or any animals also became Zombified, what sort of impact there is on the environment with the shift both in population/production as well as the sudden presence of so much methane and nitrogen in the atmosphere from all the dead wandering around.

Despite all my chatter on this stuff, I actually hate the Zombie genre in general because it’s so often nothing but grim hopelessness and gratuitous suffering - same for the Disaster/End of the World genres by and large. So it should be little surprise that my personal exploration of the medium would be “Zombies, but where everything except Zombies is what’s actually important”.

#zombies #writing stuff #literature discussion

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fathersappointed · 4 years

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Understanding the Times.

youtube

Understanding the Times.

Robert Ray Breaker III is an ordained King James Bible Believing Baptist Minister

Another chart analyzer, I love the way he moves his magic marker! They thought for sure, only a little while ago they were leaving! They’ve regrouped since then. And now they’re getting ready to head off again

From God to Bitcoin to the Nephilim. Oh my!

They know Jesus is coming soon he says. Every time it gets a little shaky the religious start preaching that the raptures is about to happen and that Christ is going to appear soon any day now! Breaker says, the world has just achieved a population of 7,777,777,777.00 that’s a lot of seven he says if you know your Bible you know that God uses the number 7 a whole lot. He says a lot of people are what they call woke up They’ve woken up Waking up to what is going on in the world but they just can’t figure it out. He says We’re seeing that this is the beginning of the birth pangs the beginning of the end there’s still a thousand and seven years but it’s the end of what the Bible calls the church age and it’s the coming about of what the Bible calls the time of the Antichrist He says that before the Antichrist comes Christians have to make an exit and they will be leaving soon.

This doesn’t surprise me they always talk about leaving the planet. There’s never any talk though about turning around coming back and helping the defenseless victims! It’s all about sitting around the campfire with God toasting marshmallows listening to the screaming souls in the flames! Hey, it’s all about the love!

He says the Bible is prophecy!

He says the Bible tells us (well that clinches it for me!) that God is the almighty and he is the Creator and that he wrote the Bible to tell us of future events and from the beginning, he told us what would happen.

And that’s a good thing he did because now they know absolutely positively one more time absolutely what the devil’s going to do, step by step! He’s going to hold their hands and walk them through it right to the end. Its kind of like the devil is just a fluffy, old puppet going along with the story.

He says we have a thing in the Bible called prophecy and the Bible is prophecy. He says the Bible is a full book of Prophecy so if you come to the Bible you will learn what’s going to happen in the future. And that’s why there are so many Christians out there that are excited about the times we live in. They re in their Bibles and looking at what’s happening and they’re like wow this is wonderful. Because they’re saying the Bible says this is going to happen next which would be the rapture. I have all future history and I know what’s going to happen before it happens it’s all right there in the Bible God wrote the Bible I believe that God gave us this book and I know certainly that it’s true because it has prophesied of many things over the centuries and over the Millennia that eventually came to pass and it’s never been wrong He says all these things are online he ain’t making it up. He says they want to turn you into a 5g antenna! Breaker says they want to inject you with DNA changing substances 060606. He says It sounds like science fiction it sounds crazy if this sounds weird to you I don’t know what to tell you It’s all over the Internet it’s out in the open and I’ve got this file here of patent 060606 thing DNA 1% you know what they’ve done they’ve made you something completely different you’re no longer you now that gets into the Nephilim. There’s a lot of people that watch YouTube they talk about the Nephilim DNA in the fallen angels and how they’re trying to mix Fallen Angels DNA into the human beings why because the devil has his fallen angels and he wants people that worship him to be like him.

Breaker looks in this video like he’s standing alone but he’s not there are a billion people standing with him, talking in unison. That’s what his words represent the thinking of a vast amount of people conditioned controlled!

What it looks like to me is the spirit world merging with our physical world so that the things of the spirit can actually get into this world the devil and his angels the demons their unclean spirits and they want this world so they’re finding a way in which they can merge together I’m convinced I don’t know how to explain it but I think the electromagnetism that wireless the things like this somehow work in the spirit world as they do in the physical world and the demons use these electromagnetic waves and if they can get those somehow inside of you it makes it easier for a demon to get inside of you

This guy oughta try sidelining as a conspiracy theorist sell bug out bags of overpriced dried food!

This poor zealot is having a cosmic meltdown of biblical proportions! They have pumped this guy up good he’s coming at you Full Tilt!

I feel bad for Breaker and all those like him It’s unfortunate what’s happening to him and is happening to others like him they are victims of this evil group.

The complexity Of the attacks that Christ and the Devil are implementing in the World and how they are utilizing it within this video and manipulating Breaker is beyond the ability to fully explain within the context of this post however I’m going to attempt to explain some of the strategies the Devil and Christ and the betrayers are utilizing within the structure of their attack.

Okay, so what’s happening here?

Glimmers the Devil uses glimmers of knowledge glimmers of truth!

We need to understand Breaker didn’t just pick up this book and say this is how our reality is. There has been reinforcement within his psyche our world is a caption world a controlled world. We have no understandings of existence we are shut off and cut off we’ve been here thousands of years and within that entire time, there has been a steady assault of religion upon this planet structured religion, now saturation within radio, TV, literature, music, institutions built to proclaim God’s name. And they read these religious books these created religious books. Within these books, they find words that speak to them they find instances that they believe proves the truth contained within these books. And this is the case with this religious speaker. But as I said this is a multi-faceted attack And he’s getting his information from other sources as well. He gets on the internet He listens and becomes enthralled by the rhetoric of panicking religious fanatics. Breaker says I’m just looking at going wow wow because it’s all starting to come together like a giant jigsaw puzzle and point to the Rapture.

Listen to how this guy preaches he is absolutely enthralled, enrapture He’s gotten entirely wrapped up to what’s happening but he can only see this from a religious perspective. If you look at all enthralled worshipers Breaker is a good example. He has studied the Bible intensely but they are caught in a befuddlement of abandonment. That is to say, Breaker as everyone stands in a confounding World an existence he cannot understand. Breaker like all the religious people cannot see this in any way but from a religious perspective, they believe the Christ will appear very soon to save the faithful. But as in other instances when they declared Christ would appear and then nothing Christ isn’t going to appear this time either!

G5 is not being implemented to turn you into apocalypse zombies. There’s no Nasty Apple Eaten Fallen Angels by the multitude waiting to infect you with they’re infected DNA. You’re already infected. See how their flawed thinking turns their minds into putty that Christ and the Devil can mold to their liking.

What’s happening is conditioning preparation!

We are subjected to a multi-faceted attack! Once again there are, no fallen angels, it is a group of extremely intelligent and cold-bloodedly ruthless betrayers

The devil uses diverse ways to bring information two people sometimes directly sometimes through others sometimes he speaks in your mind sometimes he leaves thoughts sometimes He uses Glimmers a whiff, of an impression. You have to ask yourself why is the Devil telling everybody in advance what’s going to happen!

He doesn’t understand he’s a snared a captured man. Like all religious people, they’re trapped in the context of religion And they have no way of understanding this has nothing to do with religion. If it were I suppose this situation could seem like a pivoting point in time for Christ to make his appearance. We are subjected to a multi-faceted attack we need to understand this is a group of cold-bloodedness! They’re evil their intent, the world cannot comprehend People don’t understand and can’t accept that these beings are here in our existence. This existence was here, our existence was here from the beginning of our history they have been here. History of this world as we know it is an act of treachery they’re manipulating Forced Controls. The happenings of events within this world, this is all structured for a complex attack. Breaker like so many believes these times are dangerous times Breaker like all in the world have become conditioned soft they think G5 a horror. But this world has seen horrors the likes of which the condition people of today have no understanding of. World Wars like World War II a war of devastating portions with hardships the world no longer understands and yet no God, no Christ, no Antichrist, appeared this is soft time compared to then.

This is a group of cold-blooded intent! The world needs to understand how this group operates Breaker is a pitchman his understandings, his thoughts his emotions are directed by this group! People he comes in contact with, people he listens to, respect their opinions are manipulated players put in these positions for mental conditioning.

These are the minds the Techno Wizards are going to Reveal themselves too! Can you understand why the devil’s laughing!

The whole world will believe a lie!

You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and has nothing to do with the truth because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.

He says we’re living in the last days and a lot of people are seeing a lot of propagated a lot of lies now the Bible tells us a lot about the tribulation. And during the time in which the whole world will believe a lie, the Antichrist is a liar and he’s going to lie.

Breaker says during the tribulation they’ll be a time when the whole world believes a lie! I have little doubt the betrayers and the Devil weren’t thinking of the Antichrist when they thought that one up! That is the great lie but that’s not the great lie in this particular time moment.

Christ and the other betrayers they’re writing this stuff! Let’s think about this for a minute why are they telling you the devil is a liar?

What is not understood is this is a planned structured strategy that’s been put in place thousands of years ago. Everything experienced in history up to now is to prepare you. You see in religion the Rapture, for instance, is a good example confusion that’s what you see that’s what they want you to see multiple religions multiple denominations everyone cannot be right! Things are going to get a lot worst a whole lot worst! And people are going to start screaming for relief.

There is a reason they want you to believe this stuff

Worshipers believe they understand absolutely what’s going to happen. These thoughts are created manipulation within them, some through direct reinforcement. Christ and the Devil cannot just show up with the Antichrist their smoke and mirrors sleight of hand maneuvers are woefully inadequate for the task. But what do they have? Understand these are not Cosmic entities of mystical mysticism that are beyond compare! What we’re dealing with is a group of compromised terraformers. They have within their arsenal ships capable of traverse through the solar system! Computational abilities capable of traversing dimensions! And they have quantum computer compatible AI Androids! They also have the ability to mentally manipulate with highly advanced technology. And that is what they have to use to set up a scenario where they can implement their plan.

G5 is not being set up to turn you into an apocalyptic Zombie!

G5 is being implemented to make it easier for their computer system to integrate with the robotic AI, needed for acceleration purposes. It’s also to integrate you into the computer system. To get everybody chipped in as it were. This won’t happen immediately it’ll take quite a few years yet.

God, where is God? Why is he not here?

The fact that God isn’t around isn’t a coincidence there is no God so of course, one wouldn’t be here! But in the context of the story, God should be here! They’re going to have a convincing reason why God has been away for so long, this reason is going to take the commitment of an entire planet! A commitment of absoluteness to rectify what the Devil and the Fallen Angels(Christ and the rest of the Betrayers) have done that prevents God from being here.

I would tell Breaker He’s in a very dangerous situation that he’s being deceived! That he needs to be extremely careful but like so many, he won’t believe my words are true. At best he’ll think I’m demonically sent to deceive him.

Be careful try to understand we’re being manipulated we’re being played! And the entire world is unwittingly walking into their ploy!

Breaker’s interpretations are not accepted by some of the other denominations they interpreted the Bible differently.

I’m going with the one in the middle. Oddly, Omni has trouble with clarity!

How does a lack of clarity benefit a loving God (with conditions) saving his children from a horrible evil? It doesn’t but it benefits Evil planning to kill you!

Hold on, God just showed up and wait a minute, he’s rolling, he’s rolling some ominous looking dice, one’s a 3 the other ones a 4! I don’t believe it, it’s a 7

The devil’s gambling you’ll believe this religious malarkey.

Nanotechnology (or “nanotech“) is the manipulation of matter on an atomic, molecular, and supramolecular scale. The concepts that seeded nanotechnology were first discussed in 1959 by renowned physicist Richard Feynman in his talk There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom, in which he described the possibility of synthesis via direct manipulation of atoms.

Human Coronavirus Types

Coronaviruses are named for the crown-like spikes on their surface. There are four main sub-groupings of coronaviruses, known as alpha, beta, gamma, and delta.

Human coronaviruses were first identified in the mid-1960s. The seven coronaviruses that can infect people are:

Common human coronaviruses

229E (alpha coronavirus)

NL63 (alpha coronavirus)

OC43 (beta coronavirus)

HKU1 (beta coronavirus)

Other human coronaviruses

MERS-CoV (the beta coronavirus that causes Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS)

SARS-CoV (the beta coronavirus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS)

SARS-CoV-2 (the novel coronavirus that causes coronavirus disease 2019, or COVID-19)

People around the world commonly get infected with human coronaviruses 229E, NL63, OC43, and HKU1.

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tyrantisterror · 5 years

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TT Liveblogs Evangelion Masterpost & Final Thoughts

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Final Thoughts after the cut!

By reputation, I had a strong feeling that Evangelion was not going to be my kind of story, and now that I’ve seen it I can say that both kind of is and kind of isn’t the case. The character writing is incredibly strong (even if I feel End of Evangelion has a few major wobbles), its approach to its cosmic horror conflict and uncanny monsters is incredibly interesting, the animation is gorgeous, and the plot is compelling. It’s way more tragic than I usually prefer my stories of this length to be, but I feel it earns that tragedy and has a point to it. At the very least, it ranks among works like Heart of Darkness and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which I respect for their artistry even if I struggle to stomach their content. I would say it’s objectively great, even if subjectively it doesn’t always suit my personal tastes as far as stories go.

Given the two endings Evangelion (both the original show’s last episodes and the alternate ending offered by End of Evangelion) has both explore the idea of there being different realities than the one we’ve watched, I almost wonder if my discontent is a feature rather than a flaw. I feel like Evangelion invites you to consider the possibility of this story going very different ways - if we’re supposed to leave it longing for a better version of these events, like a player hoping there’s a new game plus after watching the depressing ending of a JRPG.

As a person who’s struggled with self loathing his entire life, this series spoke to me in its analysis of that particular psychological problem. As the final episodes of the show take great pains to make clear, this is a show about how we understand and define ourselves in the context of others, and the myriad reasons why our self definitions can become toxic and hateful. Hating oneself should, after all, be rather counter-intuitive, so why are we prone to it?

Evangelion posits that it comes down to the Hedgehog’s Dilemma - this (probably not biologically accurate) idea that hedgehogs want to huddle together for warmth when it’s cold, but can’t because their spikes will stab each other if they do. They need their spikes for defense, of course, but those same spikes can also hurt people trying to help them, and thus the hedgehogs suffer alone in the cold. Every character in this show - human and, I would argue, angel alike - is this allegorical hedgehog: they crave warmth and affection, but are kept lonely and cold by the defenses they deem necessary. The problem isn’t just that they’re denied warmth by others, but that they also fear hurting others in the process of seeking that closeness - that they are both helpless and incapable of helping those they wish to protect.

Every character in this show has different spikes, and every character is desperately hoping that someone will reach out and understand them despite their defenses, or that maybe, just maybe, if they reach out to someone they won’t end up stabbing them in the process. That’s the real crux of this two-fold problem: people hate themselves both because they have been denied both love and the act of giving love to others in turn, all while knowing deep down that they are the reason they have these damn spikes in the first place.

And yes, I extend this to the monsters as well. While most of the angels in this series are destructive and openly antagonistic , three actually try to communicate with humanity in their “attacks.” The first two are unsuccessful because the humans are incapable of understanding them, but the third actually manages to speak humanity’s language. He expresses regret at the fact that angels and humans can’t coexist, and even urges Shinji to destroy him because it’s the only way Shinji can live - and the angel, despite knowing it means his death, prefers the idea of Shinji surviving their conflict. While we ultimately don’t learn enough about the angels to say anything concrete about their motives, the glimpse that Kaworu gives into their psyche paints them in a similarly depressing light as humanity. They lash out with their figurative (and sometimes literal) spikes not because they hate humanity, but because they believe they have no option. They can’t have warmth. There is only the path of spikes, the act of violence. Whether they want to or not, only one can survive. They have succumbed to the bleakness of the hedgehog’s dilemma.

I love the ending of the show because it focuses on its psychological problem which, ultimately, is the true conflict of the story, and examines it in depth with all the main characters, and especially Shinji (which makes sense, as his psycholgical state is the most detailed and well developed of the entire cast). In the final episode, Shinji finds the solution to the hedgehog’s dilemma that no one else was brave enough to come to. He realizes that, yes, it is impossible to interact with others without both getting hurt and hurting others in turn - that he can’t get rid of his spikes, nor can anyone else get rid of theirs. But as much as he hates the pain he’ll both experience and inflict, he realizes that he has the courage to try to reach out anyway - that though he may hate himself now, he might be able to love himself as he loves others, and that being imperfect doesn’t mean he’s worthless. Despite all the pain and the guilt, despite the prick of the spikes, Shinji decides to keep trying to find the warmth that he and those around him need, because if they all keep trying together they can find it.

Evangelion ends with Shinji, surrounded by his peers, determined to recover. He refuses to be destroyed by his depression. He refuses to die in the cold, and everyone is there with him when he does. It’s not an incongruous moment - for all the angst that people tend to define this show by, there are always moments, small but notable, impactful moments, where they come together. Few people on this show are beyond saving, and in at least one ending - esoteric and weird as it is - they have that chance.

I’m less keen on End of Evangelion as an alternate ending. Where the original show gave Shinji that moment of recovery, End of Evangelion seems deadset on destroying him and every other character in the show as utterly as possible. Shinji gives in to his absolute worst impulses in this movie, and every other character is similarly destroyed by their faults - Misato tries her hardest but fails to ultimately protect Shinji from doom, Rei is used as a tool for someone else’s designs without ever truly understanding what they are or claiming her own independence, Asuka dies trying and failing to prove her worth as a warrior, and on and on it goes. The most iconic scene of the film is scored with a song whose lyrics are a suicide note, which is fitting for a movie about depressed characters succumbing to their worst impulses and being destroyed for it. Though Shinji once again gets to survive the end of the world and create something new from the ashes, it’s not uplifting as it was in the show - instead, with only Asuka by his side (who he then tries to strangle), he slumps down into a puddle of self misery. The last word he hears isn’t “congratulations” this time around - it’s “disgusting.”

I’m not saying this is a wrong ending, or an objectively bad one. You could argue this is just as much where the story might have been heading as the show’s ending - or even that it’s more congruous, that this was always going to be a story about failure and self destruction, and that any hope these characters could have for a better life could only be achieved by fucking with the nature of their reality on a fundamental level. Objectively, End of Evangelion is valid. But for my personal tastes... I liked those kernels of hope. I’ll take Congratulations over Digusting. I want these kids to heal.

One final bit: a common thing I’ve heard about this series is that the allusions to Abrahamic religion and folklore are purely aesthetic and have no actual deeper meaning, and having watched the series I think this is at best an over-simplification and at worst completely wrong. Like most allusions in literature, I don’t think they work as a direct 1:1 comparisons - Adam in Evangelion is not literally the same as Adam in the Bible, Angels in Evangelion are not literally the same as in the Bible, etc. But there’s still a lot of meaning behind how these Biblical references are used that can’t be mere coincidence. For example, towards the end of the series it’s revealed that human being are actually half angel (or rather the spawn of a different angelic being than the angels in canon, it’s a bit more complicated than this but let’s simplify it for the sake of making this intelligible), which is why the “pure” angels are trying to wipe us out. In the book of Enoch, a fairly obscure non-canonical Biblical text, some rebel angels come to earth and crossbreed with humanity, creating the nephilim, a race of half human/half angels. Enoch posits that this is the specific crime that makes God destroy the earth in a flood. Now, how does End of Evangelion end? With humanity being destroyed and the earth flooded with their liquid remains, save for one surviving pair that is composed of one boy and one girl. It’s not a 1:1 allusion, but it would be one HELL of a coincidence that this story is so similar to an obscure non-canonical Biblical work.

And if we do accept the allusions as having some meaning, they actually work with the show’s themes fairly well. The Book of Enoch’s whole purpose is to explain why God hated humanity enough to destroy it, and the feeling that a higher, cosmic power hates us for some inexplicable reason is at the core of Evangelion. Evangelion’s whole purpose is to find an answer for why we hate and destroy ourselves, and how we, like Noah, might find a way to save ourselves from this seemingly inevitable flood of doom. Making an allusion to another stories that try to explain that - not just the Book of Enoch, but to similar Biblical stories about the origin and nature of humanity’s sin and God’s scorn, like the Genesis tale of Adam and Eve (or, as Evangelion substitutes, Adam and his semi-canonical first wife, Lilith) - is inherently meaningful. It’s on topic, and in the context of these allusions we get a clearer view of what Evangelion is trying to say about human nature. It’s not necessarily a Christian story, but its allusions to Abrahamic religion aren’t devoid of meaning.

#TT Liveblogs Evangelion

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xxkellsvixen19xx · 5 years

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Fire Meets Fate Michael Langdon Pt 1

A/N: based off the lyrics to Fire Meets Fate by Ruelle, the second half will be a rewrite from the ending that Ryan Murphy gave us in Apocalypse. This will my first attempt at daring to do a different ending that was in the show and of course one where Michael ultimately lives cause let's face it Michael Langdon deserved better. Let me know what you guys think feedback would be appreciated.

//It's in our flesh, it's in our blood

This reckoning has just begun

There's no escape

When fire meets fate//

Doom will come from above, having sunk into the unusual state that sometimes suggested prophecy might be partly correct. As the eighth month dawns, the warrior will bring death to the earth, and all shall cease.

DOOMSDAY APPROACHES

Armageddon From The Skies….

This very impact 'would most likely result in the total extinction of all life on Earth.'

“The world is a raging clusterfuck. And we need to burn this motherfucker to the ground! Wipe the slate clean and start over. This time do it right” the very statement that Jeff Pfister made echoed in Michael Langdon's head over and over. His role commanded by his father was to plan out and execute the task of ending the world as we know it today.

Present day year 2020….

The world was plagued by civil unrest, and many larger cities had become almost completely lawless. There was looting and panic, and destruction and misery had become commonplace. Society was imploding, so the violence of the outside world would not disturb them as they waited for the end. Outposts spread all across the United States had been set up by the Cooperative so those that paid the excessive price to assure their safety while riding out the end of this world and the birth of the new one.

“And I saw in the right hand of Him who sat on the throne a scroll written inside and on the back, sealed with seven seals.” Revelation 5:1. The breaking of each seal signifies an increase in war, famine, natural disasters, etc. on the earth.

The breaking of the seals is the first stage in the Great Tribulation, a time of turmoil and distress that signify the end times. It was all before Michael in black and white in a book referenced The Holy Bible. He cocked an eyebrow pushing the heavy leather bound book out from in front of his reach. It seemed simple enough really but his mind continued to reel in thought after thought just making him more confused. How was he going to pull this off? It was now only weeks away, D day was a lot closer than he actually realized the actual thought looming over his mind.

The third and final stage of the Great Tribulation is the emptying of seven bowls of wrath over the earth.Those who are left on the earth are Satan, the Antichrist, the beast, and all those who follow them. Those who have chosen to follow Satan up until now will be beyond repentance.

Apocalypse comes to us from the Greek apocalypsis, meaning to uncover and unveil. apocalypse has three meanings. First, it is the actual imagined end of the world, whether in Revelations or in Hollywood blockbusters. Second, it comprises the catastrophes, personal or historical, that are said to resemble that imagined final ending—the Chernobyl meltdown or the Holocaust or the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan that killed thousands and critically damaged a nuclear power plant in Fukushima. Finally, it is a disruptive event that provokes revelation. The apocalyptic event, in which to be truly apocalyptic, it must in its disruptive moment clarify and illuminate “the true nature of what has been brought to end.” It must be revelatory.

I cannot contemplate the apocalypse without asking the question: where is this all leading? Where are the patterns and forces that we have set in motion in our world—the patterns and forces that made this world's devastation is not only possible but inevitable—delivering us? To what end, to what future, to what fate?

The answer seems to me both obvious and chilling. These left surviving are staggering around the waste and being picked off by the hundreds of thousands by “natural disasters”—by “acts of god.”

Truth be told, I’m not very optimistic. I mean, just look at us. No, I’m not optimistic—but that doesn’t mean I don’t always exactly think or talk about it. Tens of thousands were massacred; tens of thousands more were wounded.

//Like gravity from underneath

We can't outrun our destiny//

Fire and brimstone will reduce this world to nothing but ash killing most of the 7 billion people in it's wake leaving if we are lucky a handful to survive. Michael is the antichrist the one true son of none other than satan himself and was the one to inevitably carry out the plan.

Long before his preternatural birth, Michael gave every indication that he would be the personification of the most unimaginable evil to walk the Earth, prophesied by the Book of Revelations to conquer human life and unavoidably bring about the destruction of all of which does, and could, exist. From the moment of his conception - though only a rudiment in his mother's womb - he was a devourer of innocence: he fed off the nutrients of his twin brother to deprive him of a chance at life, and consumed the raw flesh of cattle to sustain himself in his mother's body before trading her life away, stealing her last breath during a violent and agonizing nativity that would only ensure his own successful emergence upon the world. Even as a child, his very existence was a disturbing subversion of innocence, and he proved this at just six years of age, when he sliced open his nanny's neck to create frivolous handprints with her blood, giggling in the presence of his grandmother Constance when she discovered the body.

Contrary to the Bible's proclamation that he would be the "essence of evil", however, Michael was not always devoid of humanity, and who he once was as a person was a direct opposition to what horrors he committed. His violent tendencies, while undoubtedly an innate part of his genetic makeup, were an aspect of who he was that he could neither control nor understand during his youth, resulting in him feeling confused and remorseful for unintentionally hurting the people he loved most. He had no recollection of attempting to strangle Constance , for example, and shed tears of regret upon realizing what it was that he was doing, leading credence to John Henry Moore's assumption that the Devil was possessing him.

Despite Michael's best attempts to turn his uncontrollable murders into a positive, naming them as gifts in his grandmother's honor, he was unaware that the stress he put on her, as a result, would ultimately lead to her suicide - a fact that devastated him when he discovered her lifeless body, and would only hurt him even further when it was revealed to him by Ben that Constance no longer wished to see him as a ghost. Although Ben was not biologically related to Michael, he viewed him as the son that had been robbed of him by Constance, and bared witness to the boy's genuine tears of grief over losing the only family he ever knew. Longing to give Michael the life that he never had, Ben took him in as his own, and for a time, Michael finally felt at home again as the two grew close, laughing and smiling as they played baseball inside and talked about their shared values. Although Michael's biological need to murder still existed, Ben knew that it was not intentional on his part, and tried his best to ease those urges in him so that he could live as happy, healthy a life as possible. Unfortunately, these efforts would come to an end in Michael's first interaction with his biological father, who harshly rejected his son's eagerness to know him and shunned Michael as "something evil that even [he] couldn't create", leaving him alone to cry. Heartbroken at being denounced by both his grandmother and father, Michael began to sink further into darkness, causing Ben to start avoiding him out of fear. By the time the Satanists arrived, sacrificing an innocent women in his honor to retrieve her still-beating heart, Michael finally felt he was appreciated and consumed the tribute, at last fulfilling his role as the destroyer of mankind. Tragically, he has known no other way of life than his predetermined fate to end the world, and was only created by the Devil to serve as a pawn in the larger battle between good and evil.

In the ten years that Michael has since dwelt among mankind, he has come to fulfill his legacy as the Biblical destroyer, bringing about a thermonuclear apocalypse that kills off the majority of humanity and mutates the landscape. He is now all that stands between what is left of humanity and their extinction, viciously coercing what few survivors remain into giving in to their darkest temptations - lust, envy, greed, wrath, sloth, pride, and gluttony - while simultaneously concealing his true nature behind an innocent, almost angelic appearance.Due to his irregular growth rate, he has assumed the form of a handsome man in his early thirties with strawberry-blonde hair and striking blue eyes, and he uses this attractiveness to further manipulate his victims into turning against one another. Ever since he was a baby, these human features were heavily implied to be a ruse, and this is confirmed when Michael confronts the witch Mallory and reveals that he is, in fact, a pale, emaciated being with deep-set black eyes.

Due to his demonic heritage, Michael displays a variety of powerful supernatural abilities, on a higher level than even the Supreme Witch. Given his ease at mastering all Seven Wonders, in addition to other rare magical arts, warlocks have mistaken him for the legendary Alpha Warlock.His powers reach even beyond that of the seven wonders given that what he does indeed obtain is dark and volitie.

Satanic Ritual - Michael is capable of performing rituals by using his blood or other devices to create a pentagram that draws its power from his father, Satan. His first use of this ritual was to conjure an illusion of the Rubber Man to seduce Mr. Gallant, the second was when he needed to warn Satan after discovering Mallory was a witch, and the last was when he was in a forest, begging Satan for his guidance on what to do after the deaths of everyone who guided him to his destiny as the Anti-Christ.

Manipulation - The magical ability to create, shape and manipulate illusions, causing others to see, hear, touch, smell and/or taste things which do not actually exist or cause them to perceive things differently from what they truly are. Michael is first shown using this power on Gallant, conjuring up a fake manifestation of the Rubber Man in order to seduce him and later drive him to a psychotic break, ultimately resulting in him murdering Evie.

Conjuration - The magical ability to conjure objects and beings from nothing or another location. Michael was capable of conjuring snakes and a book from a mirror.

Telekinesis - One of the Seven Wonders, the magical ability to manipulate objects with the power of the mind. After discovering Gallant strung up by his arms via chains attached to the ceiling, Michael reveals that it was Gallant's grandmother, Evie, who ratted out his sexual acts to Ms. Mead, resulting in him being tortured. Michael then uses this power to free Gallant from his constraints, knowing that Gallant would confront Evie about her betrayal. He also used this ability to break a jail guard's bones, torturing him till death.

Telekinetic Combustion - Michael has such an advanced control over telekinesis that he can cause a head to explode at will. Michael uses this power on the guard that first mistreated him in jail and again on Madison Montgomery after she tries to shoot him.

Transmutation - One of the Seven Wonders, the magical ability to instantaneously move from one location to another. This power is referred to as "Salire per spatium" by the warlocks.

Clairvoyance - The magical ability to read the minds of others and project their thoughts into them. This power is also known as Telepathy. During the Scrying test, he read Baldwin's mind and learned which book he must look for.

"Night Vision of the Soul" - The magical ability to "see into the dark places that people try desperately to keep hidden." He uses this power to sense Gallant's anger towards his grandmother and reveal to Mallory that he knows she secretly wants to kill Coco. It is likely Michael inherited this ability from his creator, The Devil, who mentioned in Asylum that he simply "know[s] everything".

Divination - One of the Seven Wonders, the magical ability to gain knowledge through indirect means.

Scrying - The magical ability to see things such as messages, visions, and prophecies on a reflective surface. He used it on a mirror in order to find a book at the behest of the warlocks, but he pushed it even further, shoving his hand in the mirror and pulling the book from it.

The Sight - The magical ability to see the past, present and future by coming in physical contact with anything related to that moment, such as a person or object. By touching the incinerated corpses of Ariel, Baldwin and Mead, he was able to see their last moments, burning at the stake.

Descensum - One of the Seven Wonders, the magical ability to descend into the netherworlds of the afterlife. This power is also known as Astral Projection. Notably, Michael does not enter a hell specific to himself, but has the unique ability to enter the personal hells of others. He can also carry someone along to travel through another's personal hell.

Pyrokinesis - One of the Seven Wonders, the magical ability to create, control and manipulate fire.

Soul Destruction - As the son of Satan, Michael has the ability to destroy souls by setting them ablazed with hellfire. He has used this numerous times especially on witches.This skill was proven to cancel out the effects of Vitalum Vitalis, making whoever executes the skill useless as there were no souls to balance.

Concilium - One of the Seven Wonders, the magical ability to control the will of another.

Vitalum Vitalis - One of the Seven Wonders, the magical ability to balance the scales of life and death.

Power Negation - The ability to cancel out someone else's magic or voodoo curse temporarily. Michael was capable of breaking through a voodoo ritual cast by Marie Laveau

Stiricidium - The magical ability to control the weather, particularly through molecules of water.

Demonic Shapeshifting - In three different instances, Michael reveals his true demonic form to Mallory after she telekinetically throws him to the ground, in Cordelia's apocalyptic vision, and when he destroys the souls of the lesbian couple who move into the Murder House

Age Shifting - Apart of his demonic heritage allowed six year old Michael to age 10 years older overnight.

Enhanced Strength - Michael possessed a great amount of supernatural strength, such as ripping through the chest of Marie Laveau.

Bypassing Supernatural Restrictions - As the son of Satan, he can casually exceed supernatural restraints, such as setting a ghost free from a hellmouth or retrieving someone who did not return from Descensum.

Death Resistance - Michael was capable of resisting death when he was fatally shot by Madison Montgomery and stabbed with a knife by Coco St. Pierre Vanderbilt in the back.

Death Reversal - Michael uses this ability to reverse the death of Misty Day, after releasing her from her Hell.

Automatic writing or psychography is a psychic ability to produce written words without consciously writing. The words arise from a subconscious, spiritual or supernatural source. with psychography Michael locate the hotel cortez.

When Michael faces off with the witches that managed to despite the Apocalypse and the nuclear winter that follows afterward survive learning that not all of them had been destroyed when he sought revenge killing a majority of Cordelia's girl at Robichaux's. Standing at the top of the stairs he looks at the remaining survivors of the Coven.

“How can any of you defeat me when I’ve already won.” Myrtle precedes to look him dead in the eye, “You haven’t won,” she replies. “Perhaps you haven’t noticed the state of the world,

“When I’m done, you’ll all wish you were still dead,The seventh seal has been broken. Wormwood has fallen from the sky and turned the rivers to blood and fire.The bottomless pit has been opened, and my swarms of locusts and scorpions have ravaged humanity. The world has been remade in my father’s image.” The slate had been wiped clean the task now was to create life a new in this world much like when God had flooded the earth, not only was it a means of getting our attention it was also a way of starting over weeding out the 'bad seeds’.

Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. . . . The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. So God looked upon the earth, and indeed it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. (Genesis 6:5, 11–12)

Time for the earth to be reborn from the ash, Michael was not about to let anyone or anything stand in his way he had to complete his father's work. But first things first end the remaining members of the Coven, he had given them ample chances to fall in line and worship him as lord and savior only for them to go against him but little did they know that resistance would soon be futile.

#ahs #ahs apocalypse #michael langdon #cody fern #fan fiction

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protestant-christian · 6 years

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Six reasons atheism is dead wrong

I. The universe had a beginning.

Atheists believe that the universe is eternal. We see from Edwin Hubble’s work at the Palomar Observatory (on Mt. Wilson near Los Angeles) that the universe is expanding. This expansion is confirmed through observation of the “red shift.” In physics (especially astrophysics) redshift happens when light seen coming from an object that is moving away is proportionally increased in wavelength, or shifted to the red end of the spectrum. Albert Einstein traveled to see Hubble’s work and famously said “I now see the necessity of a beginning.” Since the universe is expanding, it follows that reversing the expansion would ultimately lead to a contraction or what physicists call “the singularity” known as the beginning of the universe. The Kalam Cosmological argument (widely accepted in professional philosophy and logic communities) states that:

Everything that began to exist, has a cause.

The universe began to exist.

Therefore, the universe has a cause.

Time and space came into existence at the singularity. Since there was a cause to bring the universe into existence, it has to be a cause that is outside of time and space. As a result, the cause is both immaterial and transcendent. This is God.

II. A life-permitting universe requires that cosmology and physics are exactly tuned to support life.

This concept is called “the Anthropic Principle.” We currently understand that there are about 35 parameters that are perfectly harmonized to support life on our planet. These parameters must all be set within a very narrow range to support life. The probability of these 35 attributes being set at the correctly to support life is less than 1 in 1040 equating to essentially zero probability. Some examples of these parameters include:

The unique properties of water

Earth’s atmosphere (nitrogen, oxygen, and small amounts of other gases)

Earth’s reflectivity or “albedo”

Earth’s magnetic field

Earth’s place in the solar system

Our solar system’s place in the galaxy

The color of our sun

The force of gravity

The density of matter must equal the critical density needed to prevent the Big Crunch

The earth must be angled in its orbit perfectly to prevent temperature extremes.

Our moon must be its exact size to support the earth’s orbit.

The rate of universe expansion (cosmological constant).

This fine tuning requires a fine tuner. This is God.

III. The origin of life did not arise by chance.

There are 20 individual amino acids that are used in building proteins. Most proteins have a combination of approximately 450 amino acids. There are about 600 proteins in the most elementary cell. There are a total of about 30,000 proteins.

Darwin thought the cell was a globule and did not understand cell complexity. If you calculate the probability of individual amino acids combining to form one protein you would multiply (since sequence matters) 1/20 x 1/20 x 1/20 (for each protein) all the way out to 450 amino acids (an average protein length) equating to a probability of essentially zero. A protein that is 150 amino acids in length has a chance probability of 1 in 10145. There is zero probability that the origin of life came about by chance. When one adds the additional complexity of DNA (which goes beyond the complexity of amino acid formation), we must further reduce the probability of chance creating life. Dr. Francis Crick, Nobel Laureate and co-discoverer of DNA, acknowledged that chance played no role in creating DNA.[5] He was a philosophical atheist so he supported the idea of Panspermia (that life originated elsewhere in the universe and was transported through interstellar systems by some unknown space aliens.) Scientists agree that chance alone using matter alone has a zero probability of explaining life. The sequence hypothesis (DNA nucleotides) confirms this.

The origin of life requires both design and an animating force based on biogenesis. This force is God.

IV. The origin of information did not arise by chance.

Information is the immaterial foundation of all biological life yet it requires material to transmit through. Information requires an intelligent source. We saw this in the formation of proteins and DNA. How much does information weigh? It is a nonsensical question because information has zero weight since it has no physical properties. Highly intelligent people Don’t weigh more than others because they have more information. According to information scientist Dr. Werner Gitt, DNA is billions of times more densely packed information than is our most sophisticated technology. Darwin was ignorant about information coding. Neo-Darwinists believe that natural selection and mutation explain the advancement of new species. However, a new species requires new information. Mutations by definition are the loss of original information, not the creation of new information. Microevolution has existed for centuries (adaptation within a species, a.k.a. “breeding”). Macroevolution, one species creating a new life form, is without example in the fossil record (the Cambrian explosion showed a sudden appearance of all current life forms without transitional forms.) Darwin tried to use microevolution to explain macroevolution. His philosophical descendants today try the same trick. This deception is widely perpetrated throughout the American education system.

Information, by definition, requires a transmitter or source. There are 1080 elementary particles (electrons, etc.) in the known universe. The oldest estimate of the age of the earth is 1016 seconds[6], thereby creating 1043 number of particle interaction possibilities or 10139 maximum event probabilities in the history of the universe.

The intelligence behind the information that created the enormous but finite universe, the 30,000 proteins, the complexity and wonder of DNA, and life itself is called God. There is no naturalistic/materialist explanation that can fit within the event horizon of probabilities. Information requires intelligence. This intelligence is God.

V. Morality did not evolve physiologically by chemical or biological evolution. Morality requires a transcendent measure.

Atheists pretend that God does not exist by using the intellectual arguments of science while the root cause of their opposition to confessing God’s existence is moral. By pretending that God doesn’t exist, the atheist deludes himself into thinking that he is not morally accountable to the God that created him. Evolutionary ethicists state that there is no free will; we are the products of time and chance. There is no concept of right or wrong or ought in DNA. If our morality is evolved, who can say that torturing children for fun is wrong? Who can say that the Nazis were wrong in killing Jews? Evolutionists must say they are just doing what their genes programmed them to do. If evolutionary ethics were true, how do you explain acts of courage, valor, and sacrifice that appear noble but would not lead to reproduction (they die in battle for example.) If evolutionary ethics and morality were true, the biggest, strongest, and smartest would do anything to advance their cause. This has happened occasionally with horrors such as eugenics, Nazi Germany, and other examples of genocide, etc. If everyone chose their own morality, there would be chaos and evil rampant with no punishment and no justice. Necessary conditions for moral objectives are:

A transcendent standard of measurement

A human free will or freedom to choose

The belief that humans have intrinsic, not instrumental, value

Moral evolutionist/relativists can not ascribe right or wrong or the word “ought.” They can’t complain about justice or evil. Everybody would do just what their genes programmed them to do, based upon chemistry and evolution. The contrasting reality is that humans are free will creatures who recognize moral right and wrong and therefore are free to choose beyond their genetic endowment. This is clearly indicated in the economic and social mobility of classes and individuals who operate as moral agents. This moral awareness comes from God.

VI. The life, death, resurrection, and fulfillment of prophecy by Jesus of Nazareth requires theism.

The life and impact of Jesus is corroborated through the eyewitness testimony contained in the Bible. The biblical manuscript evidence attests to its authenticity. Extra-biblical sources, e.g., Tacitus, Thallus, Pliny the Younger, Suetonious, Phlegon, Lucian, and Josephus are just a few examples of those that wrote of the historical veracity of Jesus’ existence. The evidence for the crucifixion, the empty tomb, the post-resurrection appearances, and the transformation of the early church all best explain the circumstances surrounding the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. Finally, there are approximately 100 prophecies in the Old Testament that relate to the first coming of Jesus. Mathematics professor Peter Stoner, author of Science Speaks, assembled other mathematicians to calculate the probability of one man fulfilling 48 of the 100 Old Testament prophecies. The resulting probability was estimated at 1 in 10157[8] This miraculous fulfillment is from God.

Conclusion The cumulative weight of evidence from cosmology, physics, biology, information science, ethics, and fulfillment of prophecy clearly establishes that God is the best explanation as the creator of the universe, of life, of information, of morality, and as the one who transcends time and space, thereby fulfilling prophecy without error.

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fclsemessiiah-blog · 6 years

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Unholy Scripture (Biography)

Ophelia is the daughter of a Swedish satanist named Elise Nygard. Beautiful and witty as a succubus, the young mortal mere twenty years of age charmed the Beast of Many Names himself, thus Lucifer answered her prayers and took Elise as his. Nine months after the Coronation of Hell’s new Queen, the Lawless Princess was born, and given the name Ophelia by her mother. Formally however, Hell’s Young Majesty is ought to be referred as Antikrista (or Antichrista).

Ophelia was raised in luxury (to the point where her baby bottle as an infant was made of black crystal and gold, I speak of such level of luxury which, minding her status, is hardly surprising). Antikrista is someone who gets what she wants and never hears no. Only thing she may have had lesser is interaction with other kids. Elise, despite having always been an artist and a tameless rock'n'roll chick, gave herself completely into doting over the infant. Father Satan himself - head over heels. Due to Royal blood and a tragedy (elaborated later in the page) which befell the Unholy Family, Ophelia was heavily sheltered through her young years, even though never allowed to be naive. As a child, she was in a way like a cat - adored by all, worshiped by all, everyone wanted to cuddle her though she’d often give the finger and demand to be left in peace, completely unimpressed. Though her Parents - she’d snuggle to them and refuse to let go.

Appearance: Antikrista can be described to be of diabolic, unearthly beauty no soul can hold against. The shape of her face is flawless. Her skin, unlike artificial ones of the Satanic Pontiffs, has natural skeletal markings on her bone white skin (she may mask it with aid of glamor, seeming entirely human). It appears thin, somehow even gossamer. Her hair falls in lush, velvety midnight black waves, giving her face nearly ethereal appearance. Eyes burn like embers, though in crimson rather than orange, and her wings resemble a black swan. Her frame is slender and delicate, though athletic due to martial training from very young are. As a mockery of Christ, her wrists as well as feet bear wounds of Unholy Stigmata. She too can manifest a black Crown of Thorns on her forehead, thus skin of her brow usually is scraped.

(Closest image I could find on Pinterest. Credidt to the Author and the Model)

Demeanor: This young Antichrist is a creature of elegance entwining with keen mind and sharp wit, and with a deep touch of cynism. In demeanor, she very much resembles Lucifer, her father. Holds free will above all things (might be main reason why she’s so damn annoyed by bodyguards), but does not defy her Crown, recognizing the duty of blood which binds her to Hell’s highest matters, and the Unholy Conclave. Will use her regal status as well as immense power for her own advantage whenever she feels it might be necessary. Not spoiled despite things being her way all the time. Someone wise simply knows how to have things their way rather growing accustomed to it, and wise she is bound to be. Extremely dangerous when angered, for after all, her wrath might end up, quite literaly, Apocalyptic. Vengeful. Miscievous. Playful and tender to lovers. Caring and loyal to friends and family. However outside the chosen few - sadistic, manipulative, menacing and sinister. Bold and adventurous. Unorthodox. Basks in commiting blasphemy and defiling the order of God. Has dark sense of humor. Heavily sapiosexual. Prefers intimidating, powerful and wise men as well as fatale women for intimate company, but at times does toy around with mellower, shy folks. More than often to appease her malicious, not too sincere tendencies, or if she senses something beyond the timidity - she enjoys liberating the hidden side then. Well… there too, is the possibility of tainting a saint which she rarely chooses to skip. Speaking of Saints, she may oddly enjoy seducing angelic beings even more than daemons, for they frequently are less pious around her and can be extremely feral in bedroom.

Yet in spite of her serpentine charms, Ophelia, a being of terrific omnipotence, deep down crumbles under the weight of her own self. More than often, Serpent Tempter is but a mask to veil shards and bruises her rotting spirit had left the Antichist in. She drowns the pain in harmful satisfactions, hedonism and self mutilation.

When Ophelia was a toddler of mere year or two, both she and Elise had been kidnapped by agents of Vatican. The Church could not kill the Antichrist, though could torture her. Crown jewel of her wounds was a cross carved into her ribs over and over until blade pierced flesh, bone and lung. Blood filled her respiratory tracks, making the child convulse, suffocating in agony, unable to die until Lucifer saved her and her mother (who was tormented to reveal where Seven Holy Blades are hidden and refused to betray her daughter). Her neck and spine were broken, chest crushed, limbs mutilated… It’s a wonder how, but somehow she survived. For months, she was left paralyzed (medically induced paralysis to keep her from injuring herself further) in a hospital bed, attached to tubes and machines, unable to move, to speak, even to breathe by herself, only shudder and weep. Ophelia, after having recovered a little, would crawl to her mother when brought to visit, snuggling up and she’s not even able to stroke her head. Recovery is not without consequences. Antikrista suffers from violent night terrors (often including a drowning sensation) and anxiety without even remembering where it rises from. She tends to mask the painful sensation by heavily drinking as well as indulging in a lot of sexual adventures. Elise is unable to have more children. Every time she conceives, she loses the baby, and nearly her life too. This mess and Ophelia being their only child has caused Lucifer and Elise (even more) to be paranoid and overprotective over her, often annoying her. She understands what’s happening once she learns the story obviously, but the two can’t bring themselves to speak about it for a very long time, unwillignly increasing the ever deepening turmoil of their daughter.

A while after Ohelia does find out all the truth, another tragedy strikes. Elise manages to give birth to her second living child, however he barely even resembles a breathing thing upon seeing light - so weak and sick. Healers put all their skill into keeping the newborn alive, but effort is of little use - nothing can soothe his screams of agony. Not even Elise’s coaxing. Elise understands she loves her son too much to let him live in such pain any longer, thus attempts to strangle the boy with a pillow. However is unable to. Understanding all she could do is take matters into her own hands, Ophelia asks Lucifer to comfort her mother in another room. Meanwhile she gazes at her ill, tormented brother for the first time before kissing his forehead, whispering an apology and snapping his neck with tears in her eyes. The boy, without even receiving a name, is cremated and buried in an urnmarked grave, in deepest Chapel of Hell.

All torture she went through, and the weight of immense power as well as the Infernal Crown, took a great tool on Ophelia as a person, one can hardly blame her for being a cynical alcoholic, and at times maniacal.

Some facts:

Ophelia’s most beloved bad is Behemoth. Metal as a genre with most of it’s branches (extreme especially) is a favorite to her, but she tends to enjoy classic rock, doom rock, symphony, blues and synth as well.

Her favorite colors are black, maroon and golden.

She enjoys horror films, especially slasher genre. She finds them entertaining.

She has no intention or wish to cause Armageddon. After all, Earth is to be thanked for metal, classic horror films and brutal vehicles. Besides, Armageddon would be direct obedience to Biblical Scripture, to the Divine plan, and would crush the very concept of destiny in an idividual’s hands. (Unless plot calls for something different)

She enjoys mechanics, and keeps an enormous collection of cars as well as motorcycles she has repaired.

A few animals tend to accompany her. Most notable being a foretold Hellhound called Norman (after the killer in “Psycho”), a black cat named Xenomorph (after the creature in “Alien”), a black mare named Juliet (that she should lead the Appcalyptic forces upon. Instead, Ophelia feeds the horse quinces and rides her to to during the morning traiming session. She chose “Juliet” so they both bear a Shakespearean name), and many, many snakes. She too, tends to be very fond of rats.

She detests bodyguards, even in somehow fragile state.

She became an alcoholic at the age of thirteen. She was already a smoker a couple of years before.

She lost her virginity at the age of fourteen. The initiative was hers. Often participates in carnal pleasures, not quite monogamous (can be on certain threads though, in case the connection between our muses is exceptionally deep).

She has mastered a sword, a bow, bare hand combat, throwing knives, a spear and a gun. She had been trained from very early childhood. In more intelectual sense - black sorcery, infernal powers, languages, music… You could call her education prime without a stutter.

She holds very deep fondness for zombies and despises vampires.

Has an unexplainable liking towards evil specters. She may even grant them strength for her own entertainment of watching the hauntings occur.

Can not stand men who hold themselves above women. Those shall suffer if Ophelia happens to catch them. And she will, if she wants to.

Surprisingly, Ophelia adores humans. Sinners, heathens, satanists independent souls and glorious mind that is. She holds Religious folks (including Christians, Jews and Muslims), fools and flocking sheep below maggots. She enjoys tormentimg them.

One of most frequent reasons why she sneaks up to Earth is nocturnal motorcycle or car racing, bars (bar fights included), strip clubs and metal shows, aside general curiosity about mankind. Living after midnight so to say. Well, and obviously, short break from the mayhem that is Hell’s politics.

Despite hedonistic lifestyle, Ophelia has an iron shell around her more vulnerable side and in fact enjoys reading in peace. Written sources are of few that her near-omniscence does not include, thus fuels her unending thirst for mental stimulation.

What she holds worst display of weakness and is most reluctant to reveal to another soul are her night terrors. That’s why she forbides casual lovers to stay the night.

(A picture of Elise. Credit to the Author and the Model. She may appear in action on occasion )

(Lucifer. Credit to Artist)

#---unholy scripture---#bio update

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