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suzukiblu · 9 months

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Excerpt from an in-progress DP x DC soulmate AU starring Jazz Fenton, a very unfortunate mugger, and a smoothie. Oh, and I guess Jason is there too.

Jazz meets her soulmate in, of all places, Park Row. Or as the locals call it, Crime Alley.

Seems about right for her life, she decides as she kicks the shit out of the guy who was trying to stab him for his wallet fifteen seconds ago. Her soulmate watches her curiously, seeming unconcerned by the fuss, and takes a sip of his smoothie.

Also seems about right, for her soulmate. A guy who got too nervous when necessary violence happened was not going to survive Thanksgiving in Amity Park, much less Christmas.

Well, it is Gotham.

"Hi," he says.

"Hi, sorry, one sec," Jazz says, then leans over the groaning mugger and offers him a card to the best local crisis center she's managed to track down via research and word of mouth in the four months she's been in Gotham. Not her card, obviously, since she just roundhouse-kicked the guy in the head to protect her soulmate from him and that's arguably a conflict of interest. Or close enough, anyway. "So you should check these guys out, they've got a very high success rate in their job program and there's an associated food bank and rent assistance, if you qualify."

"What?" the mugger says dazedly.

"Also if you ever touch my soulmate again I'll make you wish for the cold mercy of the Infinite Realms," Jazz adds pleasantly. The guy goes very, very pale. Then he snatches the card from her and runs for his life and eternal soul.

"This is the nicest thing the universe has ever done to me," her soulmate muses, taking another sip of his smoothie.

"Getting you mugged?" Jazz asks wryly, raising an eyebrow at him.

"Are you religious? Do you want kids?" her soulmate asks. "Also, who's your favorite Bat?"

"Robin, obviously," Jazz says. "The overdramatic and feral little stabby one, I mean. He reminds me of my little brother. Makes me feel a little bit maternal, to be honest. So that answers two out of three, and as far as religion goes, I only believe in Psychology Today, highly customized guns, and my mom's ninth-degree black belt."

"This better not awaken anything in me," her soulmate mutters under his breath.

"That seems unlikely, or we wouldn't be soulmates," Jazz says.

"Point," he says, sipping his smoothie again. Jazz didn't even know anywhere in Crime Alley sold smoothies, but she is new around here. "Wanna go break my bed? Or maybe go get coffee?"

"You've already got a smoothie," Jazz says.

"So I do," he says.

Jazz looks him over. He's her soulmate, so she's not surprised to find him gorgeous. She wasn't ever expecting a familial soulmate–Danny is a very intense sibling to have, and her parents are very intense parents to have, not to mention everything about Dani, and "soulcousins" aren't typically a thing–and she's never been especially interested in keeping around too many close friends, so considering all that, she was already expecting her soulmate to be a romantic one. If they are platonic, it's definitely only going to be because her soulmate is an aromantic asexual. Which he probably isn't, since he already asked about kids and religion and if she wanted to go break his bed.

Then again, she's met people who'll posture worse than that. Especially guys, and especially ace ones with a clear investment in their masculinity, and given this particular guy is built like a brick house could only dream to be, chances are he has some feelings about his masculinity. Though he's also drinking a visibly pink smoothie, not a neutral-colored protein shake or generic black coffee, so . . . fifty-fifty there, maybe?

Further inquiry will probably be required.

"I'm Jazz," she tells him. "What's your name?"

"Robin," he says. Then he–pauses. Blinks. "I mean–Robin."

He looks very confused for a second, and Jazz blinks too, and refocuses her eyes a bit. Oh, is he–

"Are you overshadowing that guy?" she assumes. For the love of–of course her soulmate would be a ghost, she thinks dryly. Who'd want a soulmate their mom and dad wouldn't want to grill for information and ask a thousand invasive questions, after all? "I mean, he's really hot, don't get me wrong, he looks good on you, but I'd rather meet you for real."

"'Overshadowing'?" Robin looks bemused.

"I'm Danny's sister," Jazz clarifies. Robin does not look less bemused. "You know, the new king?"

"What?" Robin says. Jazz frowns a little, feeling a bit bemused herself.

"Do you not get out much?" she asks.

"Never, actually, but also yes and constantly and way too often," Robin says. "My job is kind of demanding that way."

"What's your job?" Jazz asks curiously. Ghosts' jobs are always interesting, even if only for how they interact and manifest with their Obsessions. She wonders what his Obsession is, actually, because smoothies seem like an unlikely option but she doesn't have much else to go on here.

Can't be weirder than Box Ghost, either way.

"I'm a Bat," Robin says, then looks absolutely alarmed and also absolutely horrified.

"Huh," Jazz says, tilting her head. He seems really big to be one of the Robins, and a little too old besides. A year or two younger than her, maybe, and even the older Robin she's pretty sure is at best Danny's age. Though that's assuming this body is the one he fights crime in, admittedly. Although it's kinda funny if one of the Bats is just named Robin. Must get annoying on patrol, though. "I didn't know any of you were dead, but I guess that's not actually a surprise either, given the profession."

"Why did I say that to you?" Robin asks tightly.

"I told you, I'm the new king's sister," Jazz says. "You know, it's the royal family thing. Technically I'm his regent, legally speaking, but only because I'm better at paperwork and he doesn't count as a legal adult in the Infinite Realms yet. Hasn't been dead long enough, you know how it is. But I've been alive long enough to, apparently? But his 'being alive' technically stopped tracking at fourteen. It's complicated, basically."

"What the fuck does that mean?!" Robin demands.

"It means you can't lie to me because you're one of my brother's subjects," Jazz says, really not understanding his reaction. Every ghost knows this, after all. The only ones who wouldn't know it are too young to be away from their guardians' haunts or even leave the Infinite Realms at all. Definitely a ghost who knows how to overshadow someone this thoroughly and fully is old enough and experienced enough to know it, though. "Whose body is that, anyway?"

"It's my father's," Robin says. Jazz's eyes widen a little and she has several very concerned internal reactions before he chokes and sputters–"I mean–it's not–he's not–!"

"You realize there is no healthy way to mean that, right?" Jazz says. Robin looks frustrated and freaked out and she feels bad about it, because she didn't mean or want to upset him, but she clearly has. "Sorry. I mean, I still secretly feel like I'm the one parenting my parents half the time, you're not the only one with weird feelings about yours."

"I'm his," Robin says, then grits his teeth in visible pain. He's this close to crushing the smoothie cup he's holding but hasn't actually done it. Jazz wonders if that's an example of deliberate self-control or subconscious restraint.

She's pretty sure Robin didn't mean to say that, though.

"Are you okay?" she asks, a little concerned. Normally ghosts just stop talking about things they want to lie about, when they realize who she is.

"No," Robin says. "I'm just his. I've always been his, I always will be, his good soldier, his worst mistake, not his actual fucking son, why am I telling you this?!"

"I don't know," Jazz says, frowning in increased concern. "Usually people can work around the inability to lie a little bit, but you sound like you're being compelled to speak. Increasingly like, actually. Hm. What's your Obsession? And what kind of core do you have?"

"What?" he says.

"They might be making you unstable, is all," Jazz says. "I don't think it'd be a soulmate thing but to be fair I don't really know how that works. Are you dead, or are you a manifestation of something?"

"I'm dead," Robin says, staring at her. "That bastard clown beat my head in with a crowbar and blew up what was left of me. I woke up in my grave and–I–how did you know that?"

"Well, I didn't, that's why I asked," Jazz says reasonably, idly wondering why the Joker isn't dead yet, since this is Gotham and obviously it wouldn't be another "bastard clown" Robin was referencing, even if he wasn't a Bat. But like, at least dead via the court system, if nothing else. The Joker is insane, yes, but no one can argue he doesn't know right from wrong at this point. Does New Jersey just not have the death penalty, maybe? She hasn't thought to check. "Maybe it's the guy you're in? He's not drunk or high or anything, is he?"

"I hate drugs," Robin says, gritting his teeth again; tightening his grip on the smoothie again. He's trembling, just barely. "I hate them. I'd never touch them. I don't know what you are. You're scaring me. Please stop."

He definitely didn't mean to say that, Jazz can tell.

But . . . he doesn't know what she is.

He doesn't know.

Well, that's a problem.

"Robin," she says gently, and for some reason his face twists painfully at the sound of his own name. "Can I see your core? Please?"

#hardcover ship #anger management ship #dpxdc #dc x dp #dp x dc #idk which order is 'accurate' here lol #jazz x jason #jason x jazz #rinfic #long post #wip: queen regent jazz and her dead soulmate

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glamaphonic · 2 months

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People asked for my post on The Scene in ‘Conquer’ in light of me mentioning it in the post about the trajectory of Rick’s feelings for Michonne, so here it is.

The first thing to understand contextually is that Rick went to Alexandria for Michonne. It was for everyone. But it was for Michonne. Because she told him to. Because she took his hand and asked him if he was ready to have a home, a life, again. And he wasn’t! But he did it anyway.

So he’s in there and the PTSD is popping—hypervigilance mixing in with legitimate security concerns bcs the Alexandrians transparently don’t know how to survive if anything ever actually attacks them. He plots and he schemes and he blows his top and Michonne confronts him and Carol covers and they all agree to a path forward.

BUT THEN, Rick tells Carol: “I don’t want to lie anymore.”

And you have to understand that what he mostly means here is: “I don’t want to lie to Michonne anymore.”

Rick has just felt the brunt of her disappointment in him, felt the weight of how betrayed she feels by him not being honest with her, and it rocks him. Because he already tried to make an excuse and she shot it down. (I couldn’t tell you because you wanted this place. We all needed this place.) Because he has these Big Feelings for her sitting in his chest and he hates how it feels not being in sync with her, not making decisions alongside her, and not, when needed, being led by her.

Later when he’s back at their home, she comes in and he’s very clearly been brooding over this for a while. He confesses immediately, unprompted. He holds the gun out to her, surrendering, looking for absolution. She doesn’t take it. He makes another excuse, looking for another way to explain himself, and she shoots it down again. (I couldn’t tell you because I didn’t know what you would do. Anything I did or would’ve done would only have been for you.)

So, he finally confesses, for real. The actual truth. And this is a moment of such profound vulnerability for Rick. He gets up, he faces her, he moves close to her, looks into her eyes, and tells her in so many words that she has power over him; she has a pull on him that is so strong, it frightens him.

(Please don’t get me started on the contrast to the scene with Jessie preceding this where he goes to tell her he’s not sorry for what he did and he’s not sorry for what he’s going to do. THE BLOCKING OF THE SCENE ALONE. Infinite distance between them, him not even on camera, visible only through a distorted reflection surrounded by broken glass. PLEASE. Are you kidding me???!! That storyline overall was fumbled but there were a few moments where they did indeed pop off in terms of communicating what was actually going on.)

And Michonne, bless her heart, she completely misses this for reasons I've talked about. She ignores the actual confession that he’s making and just goes back into the argument about safety and when it’s okay to believe that you’re safe or could be. Because that’s what she’s been struggling with, trying to put down the sword and not being able to truly believe that she can or should no matter how much she wants to believe it.

So she reaffirms her loyalty to Rick, and an incredible thing happens there. When she tells him that she thinks he can find a way, he LOOKS AWAY, FRUSTRATED. Until she amends that they, together, can find a way. Then he’s back to soulful gazing into her eyes. Because Rick is just realizing here, in this moment and the moments preceding it, that he doesn’t want to be Michonne’s leader, he wants to be her partner. She tells him that she’s with him and AGAIN he offers her the gun. And again, she doesn’t take it.

To Michonne, this is a gesture of deepest trust. Despite him having lied to her, despite him being in crisis, she still believes that he’ll do the right thing in the end. She still has faith that he'll make the right choice.

To Rick, who has found himself operating on a completely different level in this conversation than she is, this is a rejection. He literally disarmed himself before her! He offered himself up to her! He told her about the power she has over him! He wanted her to take his hand and move forward with him again! But she walks away! Unwittingly leaving him there with his lil Mr. Darcy hand clenches!

So anyway god-tier scene. God-tier set up for the way their relationship would take shape once they were together. If you ever want a laugh, try to find some post-s5 interviews and watch people, esp Gimple, try to dodge around admitting how romantic that scene was lol. If you want an even bigger laugh, imagine Rick having actually leaned in and kissed her in that scene (the scene builds in such a way that it absolutely would’ve been a completely natural conclusion!!!) and how hilarious 6A would’ve been in light of it.

(Michonne would’ve FREAKED OUT and not wanted to talk about it because she’d be processing a massive amount of things all at once that she was NOT ready to process. Then they’d be dealing with the herd and Michonne would be trying to avoid Rick without seeming like she was trying to avoid him and they both especially wouldn’t want Carl to think anything was wrong. And Rick would be giving her space while trying and failing not to look like a kicked puppy whenever she was in proximity which would be all the time because of the whole living together and co-parenting two actual children and also an entire found family.)

#talmbout #richonne #twd

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theminecraftbee · 2 years

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BigB has never seen Ren looks so dejected before. His tail is all the way between his legs, wagging with nervous, sad energy from where it’s curled between them, and his ears are drooped, and he looks this close to throwing himself out of a window in penance. BigB rather hopes that if Ren tries to do that, he remembers that it’ll hurt BigB too, at least?

The bite on BigB’s leg is still throbbing, and every time he moves his leg in a way that makes the bandage visible, Ren somehow wilts further.

“It’s not your fault, man,” BigB says. “It’s a risk of being a werewolf, right? I was the one sticking around while you were panicked.”

“I’ve cursed you, BigB. I didn’t even do this to anyone while red,” Ren says with a dramatic whimper. “I should have known better, pack instincts make it harder not to bite, not easier, and now you’re doomed forever.”

BigB’s new ears twitch.

“I mean. That seems kind of dramatic honestly,” he says.

“Cursed to the whims of your strong emotions and the moon!” wails Ren.

“I’m… generally pretty chill, honestly, I doubt becoming all wolfy when I’m upset will happen that often,” BigB says.

“Stripped of your humanity!”

“How many of our friends are human?”

Ren pauses and gives BigB an annoyed look. “BigB, my man, let me have my crisis about this. I’ve gone this long without biting someone and being unable to treat it before they transform.”

“Yeah, but it’s not a big deal?” BigB says, shrugging.

“I’m embarrassed!” wails Ren. “I’m a fully-grown dog these days, man! I’m house trained! I shouldn’t be biting like an un-taught puppy anymore!”

BigB stares for a moment.

“Ah,” he says.

BigB wonders if this is the time to mention to Ren that he actually thinks the ears are cool and the wolf thing is a fun party trick, and that he’d sort of been hoping the soul bond would do this secretly at night because he’d always sort of wanted to be something cool like a wolf. Somehow, he doubts it.

#double life smp #namemc spoilers #rendog #bigbst4tz2 #a bee fic #big b’s new skin is SO GOOD #don’t care what the canon explanation is I think this one is funny

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petaltexturedskies · 2 months

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Myths are stories about people who become too big for their lives temporarily, so that they crash into other lives or brush against the gods. In crisis, their souls are visible.

Anne Carson, "Tragedy: A Curious Art Form"

#anne carson

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horeformilfs · 6 months

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Pray

Mother Miranda x Fem! Reader

TW: Abuse, Crisis of Faith

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The moon hung low in the night sky as Y/N, fueled by desperation and the echoes of pain, ran through the dense forest, leaving the chilling whispers of her abusive past behind. Tears blurred her vision as she stumbled upon the old church, its dilapidated walls standing as a witness to the secrets it held.

Breathing heavily, Y/N fell to her knees, the cold ground beneath her offering a stark contrast to the warmth she sought. In the hallowed silence, she poured her heart out in fervent prayers, hoping for salvation from the torment that had defined her existence. As the final words left her trembling lips, she wished for a savior, an angel to lift her from the abyss.

Unbeknownst to Y/N, her prayers reached the ears of a being far beyond the comprehension of mortals. Mother Miranda, the enigmatic figure who held sway over the village, heard the desperate plea that echoed through the night. Moved by an inexplicable force, she materialized before Y/N, her presence shrouded in an otherworldly grace.

"I heard your prayers, child," Miranda spoke, her voice a soothing cadence that seemed to dance with the whispers of the night. Her hand reached out, an offer of comfort, but Y/N flinched instinctively, hands defensively shielding her bruised face.

Miranda's gaze, sharp and perceptive, fell upon the visible wounds that marred Y/N's fragile form. Concern etched her features as she gently inquired, "Who did this to you?" Y/N, eyes cast down, remained silent, the weight of unspoken pain bearing down on her shoulders.

A soft touch, almost maternal, rested on Y/N's shoulder as Miranda spoke again, "Was it your parents?" Y/N's eyes welled with tears, a silent admission that spoke volumes. Miranda, understanding the depth of the suffering before her, wrapped Y/N in a comforting embrace.

"Child, you are not alone," Miranda reassured, her words a balm to the wounds that scarred more than just Y/N's flesh. "You've found your way here for a reason, and I will help you find the strength to face the darkness that has plagued your past."

In the ancient church, bathed in the eerie glow of moonlight, Mother Miranda became an unexpected beacon of solace for Y/N, offering sanctuary in the midst of the forsaken.

The embrace from Mother Miranda was an unexpected warmth in the cold chapel, a glimmer of solace for Y/N's battered soul. As Y/N's tears continued to fall, Miranda gently withdrew, maintaining a respectful distance. Her gaze, filled with a depth of understanding, lingered on Y/N's bruised and broken form.

"Come," Miranda encouraged, her voice a gentle melody. "Let me tend to your wounds."

They moved to a weathered pew, where Miranda produced a small vial from the folds of her robes. The liquid within emitted a soft, soothing glow as she carefully applied it to Y/N's injuries. The pain began to subside, replaced by a healing warmth that seemed to radiate from Miranda's touch.

"Thank you," Y/N whispered, her voice a fragile echo in the sacred space.

Miranda nodded, her eyes reflecting a compassion that transcended the boundaries of mere sympathy. "You have endured much, child. But know that you are safe here."

As the physical wounds began to mend, Miranda turned her attention to the emotional scars that ran deep within Y/N's heart. "Tell me your story, if you feel ready," she encouraged, her presence a comforting anchor in the storm of Y/N's past.

Y/N hesitated, her gaze fixed on the floor, memories of pain and fear threatening to resurface. But the trust Miranda exuded, the sense of understanding, urged Y/N to share the burden she had carried alone for so long.

"It was my parents," Y/N finally admitted, her voice barely above a whisper. "They were... they were supposed to protect me, but instead, they became the source of my torment."

Miranda's expression darkened with a stern resolve, her features hardening against the injustice of Y/N's plight. Yet, her touch remained gentle as she offered words of reassurance. "You are not defined by the cruelty of others. You have found your way here, and I will guide you toward a path of healing and strength."

The chapel, once silent witness to the agony within Y/N's heart, now held the promise of a sanctuary where a wounded soul might find refuge. In the presence of Mother Miranda, Y/N began to glimpse the possibility of a future unburdened by the shadows of the past.

In the quiet chapel, the weight of Y/N's confessions lingered, and Mother Miranda's unwavering support became a beacon of hope. As the healing glow of Miranda's touch continued to work its magic, she spoke with a tone both comforting and firm.

"Y/N, the path to healing is not easy, but you don't have to walk it alone. The village may be steeped in darkness, but within you resides the strength to overcome it."

Miranda's words, like a gentle breeze, stirred a newfound courage within Y/N. The walls of the chapel seemed to fade away, leaving them in a sacred cocoon of shared vulnerability and understanding.

"Take my hand, child," Miranda offered, her hand extended toward Y/N. "Let us face the dawn of a new day together."

Y/N, her heart stirred by a mixture of trepidation and hope, accepted Miranda's outstretched hand. It was a symbolic gesture, a silent pact forged in the quiet chapel between a lost soul and the enigmatic figure who had appeared in response to desperate prayers.

Guided by Miranda's steady presence, Y/N felt a glimmer of strength, a flicker of resilience rekindled within. As they left the old church, the moon casting its ethereal glow on the path ahead, Y/N dared to believe that the darkest night might give way to a dawn of redemption.

In the enigmatic embrace of Mother Miranda, Y/N found not only solace but the promise of a journey towards healing—a journey that, despite the scars of the past, held the potential for a brighter, more hopeful future.

#mother miranda #mother miranda x reader #mother miranda x y/n #resident evil village #resident evil mother miranda

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crisiscutie · 1 year

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(twisted) reunion.

Crisis Cutie Collection fic starring C.C Sephy.

Pairing: AFAB Darling/C.C Sephiroth (Nibelheim Incident)

Word Count: 1.4k

Content Warning: NSFW (no actual sex but heavy themes present), Psychological Abuse, Mentions of Past Physical Abuse, Blood, Mind Control, Mind Break.

You were staring out the window, with no particular focus, taking in the sorrowful, violent night that unfolded as you laid in bed. You had no reaction to the sight of the flames consuming the homes and buildings in the distance, nor to the piteous wails of those being incinerated or slain. You want to be horrified and emphasize with the affected poor souls, but you can't. Not with him near... The injuries that Sephiroth inflicted upon you have been healing well, however, there's still some areas of your body where you felt sharp pangs of pain. Just as Sephiroth had foreseen, Jenova is getting you ready for the "reunion"… Or whatever that means. You don't care about it, though. You don't care about anything.

You just want to be with him. Or maybe you don't. Maybe it's just his cells within you, making you think that. That discovery was made known to you not too long ago. You were secretly injected with his cells during your lengthy mako infusion sessions in between the missions you've done for wretched Shinra. Past you would've been shocked and angry upon finding that information out, but present you? It just didn't matter anymore. Plus, these cells within you have mutated since then, who knows if they're still recognizably Sephiroths...

The long period of separation had left you feeling desperate for his touch and presence. Even though he hurt you when you two reunited in the library... But, he eventually stopped and brought you up to this cozy bed, where he laid you down comfortably. And then he spoke such kind, soothing words to you while aiding your recovery process. There's nothing about Sephiroth that changed, you know it. Though, you've been worrying about him tonight, he's been absent for longer than normal, and you can't help but ponder what he's doing.

You were suddenly overcome with a pounding headache, and you desperately pressed your hands against your temples in an attempt to ease the throbbing pain. You squeezed your eyes shut, the salty tears burning as they cascaded down your face. It's Sephiroth, he's near, approaching you. Your heart ached despite the fact that you should be joyous. It's as if by instinct, you realized… He's hurt. Your beloved was in pain, and you were not there to shield him from it. Guilt flooded you. You sensed he had something with him, a presence so strong that it was almost overwhelming to your senses. Is it what hurt Sephiroth? You curled up in a tight ball on the bed, like a lost child seeking comfort. The thought of someone causing him harm made your stomach turn with dread.

Your head snapped up as the door to the room was violently kicked down. There he was, your beloved Sephiroth. As he walked towards you, you could hear his labored breathing, his body visibly hunched in pain. His face was ravaged with rage and anguish, yet his expression softened when his eyes met yours. His lips curved into a twisted grin of joy. He had one hand holding something close to his hip, while the other wrapped around the handle of his bloody Masamune.

You felt the sting of your mending wounds when you rose from the bed, your silent tears becoming sobs of sorrow as you reached out for him, slowly approaching his menacing figure.

"Sephiroth, you're hurting," you sobbed. He stayed silent, his intense eyes narrowed. His gaze pierced through you. His chuckle sent a chill down your spine.

"The reunion…" His chuckle transformed into an echoing, sinister laughter. Even though the time was inappropriate, his voice was like velvet, it sent a forbidden pleasure coursing through your veins. You were so enthralled by his next ramblings that you didn't notice something pressing against your stomach, just below your tits. Your cunt became dripping wet, clit became erect with each husky, determined word he spoke. Why are you taking in such feelings of anger and these words of hatred? How are you absorbing his desire and goal of wanting to annihilate all the less important creatures on this planet? This isn't you. You served aside him to not only be by his side but also to bring the world peace.

You came out of the moment when you felt the anguish and desperation in the air, bringing your sorrow for his hurt condition back. Long, silver hair (not Sephiroths) tickled your arm as you pressed against the warm, sticky blood that oozed from Sephiroth's massive abdominal wound. You're filled with delight, observing the miraculous regeneration of his wound from your wondrous touch, as a sad smile appeared on your face. That was a special ability from your mutated cells, something even Sephiroth couldn't replicate despite the cells in your body originally being his. Sephiroth then leaned down to your level. His laughter grew louder and louder, he moved closer to plant a soft kiss against your ear.

"Mother is here… with us," he crooned. Silence soon overtook you both as you stood in uncertainty. You scrutinized his heavy-lidded eyes, desperate to find an answer in the silence. You couldn't discern any secrets in them: there was joy, rage and agony… And a strange lust that began to uncover? Then, an unseen force compelled you to look down. As you did, your heart dropped when you saw the head of an alien-looking woman with long, silver hair, just like Sephiroth. You couldn't look away from her eerie, pink eyes. It felt like an invisible force was connecting her to your soul. Your body shook with fear, your screams of terror mingling with Sephiroth's cruel laughter. You wanted to flee, but you felt an invisible crushing weight on your shoulders, preventing you from leaving. You were rooted to that spot and you are powerless to do anything.

"NO, NO, NO! GET IT AWAY-" Your words were halted by the intensity of her pink eyes, now radiating with a brilliant glow.

Despite your terror, sensations of euphoria washed over you. Just like a few days ago in the library downstairs, these intense sensations and memories flooded your mind. You don't want to feel good; Your beloved Sephiroth is gruesomely injured, and he's holding some alien's head. B-but NO! You should feel good. What matters now is that Sephiroth... a-and... M-mmm... Mother are here with you now. You three can go to the Promised Land, like what you dreamed, together.

You gritted your teeth and produced a false smile, yet the tears still rolled down your cheeks. Sephiroth softly pressed his forehead against yours, both of your lips nearly touching as he whispered gentle words of comfort. Your body felt looser with each soothing word, and you found yourself closing your eyes. But how foolish for you to be beguiled by his silver-tongued words and be dragged into a false sense of security. Your eyes widened when his lips suddenly met yours with a passionate aggression, as Jenova's head pressed harder against your stomach. His hand, which had just moments before held his blade, now cupped a handful of your ass as his lips moved hungrily against yours. Submissively, you opened your mouth, his hot tongue delving into its wet depths like a predator seizing its succulent prey. His hot tongue moved against yours in a dominating, aggressive swirl. The sensation of his domineering assault on your tongue was so intense that you couldn't help but moan.

He then paused, before breaking away from the rough, passionate kiss, breathing heavily. His slit, mako eyes had a slight, eerie shimmer that seemed to penetrate your very being.

"My precious darling… Stay by me and Mother. Bear my children. As the Chosen One, this planet shall be under my rule," he said.

The tone of his voice was authoritative and sultry. You gasped with delight, pressing against his strong chest as you wrapped your arms around him, enveloping Jenova's head between you both. Even hunched over in agony, he still seemed to tower over you.

"Yes, my love," you replied. He rested his head on yours, you could hear the steady rhythm of his breathing. His gloved hand moved from your butt to your lower back, and the soft warmth of his touch sent a ripple of pleasure through your body, making you giggle and moan in relaxation. The past can't be changed, but you can take comfort in the fact that you have Sephiroth and Jenova with you now. What a wonderful, twisted reunion…

So for context, this is a hypothetical fic of Nibelheim Incident Sephiroth surviving his encounter with Cloud. This fic is also a follow-up to the Nibelheim Incident headcanons I posted sometime ago.

And to explain Sephiroth's and Darling's bond: Darling's bond with Sephiroth has grown so much, to the point where she basically became a power battery for him. He can slowly absorb some of her essence even from afar, making him stronger and durable in battle, which is what lead to his survival (and victory over Cloud and Zack) in this fic.

This strengthening bond also made his cells mutate within her. The poor darling was the first test subject to be injected with Sephiroth's cells before the Nibelheim Incident. Because of her success, the survivors of the Nibelheim Incident were also injected with his cells when Sephy, Darling and Jenova left.

Feel free to ask any questions.

#sephiroth #ff7 sephiroth #final fantasy 7 #final fantasy x reader #sephiroth x reader #yandere sephiroth #crisis cutie #ff7 #project v fic #The Crisis Cutie Collection #Jenova #project v: valkyrie #yandere sephiroth x reader #yandere final fantasy #yandere x darling #yandere x reader #yandere angst #ffvii

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obsessedtomone · 5 months

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Unravel Yourself Before Me ⛓️ Chapter 6 - The Exposé▸Shigaraki x femReader

Chapter Summary:

◤ “Are you serious? Me being scared shitless means I'm into him?”

“But it’s not only that and you know it!” Smacking your arm, their beautiful fucking eyes bore into yours, peering at your soul. Of course it’s not only that, but you don’t want to fucking admit you feel anything for this fucked-up asshole to anyone, let alone your own damn self. ◢ Setting: University AU - No quirks (unless degenerate personalities count) Tags: Slow burn, Eventual Smut, Unhealthy/Toxic Relationships, Humiliation, Mentally Ill Reader, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Enemies to ??? Warning: Dead Dove – Do Not Eat | Mind the tags TW: Implied Su/Self H, Dubcon, Reader has a super shitty past like actually, Shigaraki Tomura is his own warning.

AO3 Crosspost | Chain Divider by firefly-graphics

Chapters: One • Two • Three • Four • Five • Six • Seven

Chapter 6 - The Exposé

All the noise, the chatter, the people—they drowned out the silence, as you sat like a loser in the corner of the busy shop, waiting.

With your leg bouncing—one of your nervous tics—you cast an anxious look around you, unable to shake the feeling that everyone was watching you, even off campus.

You’re hiding behind the safety of your hood, blankly watching people chatting while you were waiting for Taylor to show.

“Girl, if we’re going to discuss this fucked-up shit again, I reaaally need something to sweeten it up.” is what they told you over the phone after your little mental breakdown in the hallway, so they picked their favorite—and unfortunately really fucking popular—bubble tea store in the area for the both of you to have a talk in.

You’re torn between periodically checking your watch, your phone or your surroundings, visibly on edge as you alternate doing so. Conjuring whatever your therapist—or reddit post—told you to do when you’re having a huge panic attack and you’re not home. You began to take deep breaths.

You focus on your surroundings, the different smells, the people. The wallpaper that’s slightly torn in the corner where you’re sitting. You look around, you try your goddamn best and unsurprisingly—it doesn’t fucking work. It doesn’t, because save for your 3 different types of anxiety medication that you take every day, nothing fucking works. It doesn’t, because you stopped taking heavy medication after you figured the worst of everything had passed, after life finally became somewhat stable and bearable. Instead, you ride the nauseating wave and wait as patiently as you can.

Shigaraki managed to do a number on you today, because you took off as soon as he left. You seriously didn’t have the stomach to bump into more horny, borderline assailant creepy losers anymore.

It was more than enough that your phone was blowing up with an incredibly stupid amount of assholes, messaging you—harassing you—at regular intervals, and sending a lot more dick pics than you’ve ever seen in your lifetime, all combined in the span of a single fucking day. It made you want to turn it off, but unfortunately it was also the only way to contact Taylor outside the comfort of your PC, so you mute it, turn off the notifications suck it the fuck up until you got home today.

You leaving college early didn’t mean Taylor was done with their own classes. They were eager to skip and hurry to your aid, but you managed to convince them to stay by compromising, hence your sitting down in an overrated boba store right in the middle of a crisis.

With a sigh, you sip on your plain black coffee, scrolling through Twitter and passing as much time as you can before you have to even think about dealing with him.

Luckily, it didn’t take more than an hour, and the movement you see from the corner of your eye is a familiar one. Taylor was dressed up in a slutty black mesh crop top and a high waisted pair of black leggings. A few flashy accessories and a pair of sunglasses sitting snug on top of their head were complementing the skimpy club outfit nicely.

“You do realize winter starts in like a month, slut?” a knowing smile played on your lips, pure relief coating your gaze at the sight of them before you. You’re not alone.

Not this time.

“Yeah? Well, how about you shut the fuck up. It’s like fucking winter all year round for you, bitch.” they smile back at you warmly. “Are you okay, babe?” Taylor asks you, their expression slipping into a concerned one.

“Yeah, I’ll manage. Do you want to go order now, or?”

“It’s okay, I can always steal from yours.” they wink and yoink your drink before your very eyes—a crime about to unfold in front of you.

“Wait, dude it’s—”

“Eeewwwww! Fuck off with this shit!” Your friend basically threw the drink back at you, splashing some on the table and immediately getting up to order. Your dumb ‘told ya so’ face irritating the fuck outta them too.

“If you would’ve asked me, I could have told you what it was.” you shrug, sighing and your voice taking on a cheerful lilt as you spoke in a condescending tone. They threw you a middle finger, mouthed a ‘fuck yourself’ and made their way to the counter to order.

“And we don’t know what he’s talking about? Like at all?” Taylor sipped on their caramel milk white tea diabetes, and asked you.

“Nooo fucking clue. He kept talking like a goddamn psychopath about this ‘pReSeNT’—” you do air quotes, mocking his stupid fucking voice while you spoke about him, “—he’s got for me. Where or what it is, I wouldn’t know. I’m half expecting to find a dead body in front of my apartment today, if I’m honest.” you deadpan.

“Hmm…I guess we’ll have to wait and find out? It sucks, but there’s not much we can do about it except to wait for now.” your friend eyes you curiously and seems to weigh something in their mind.

You roll your eyes, because you’ve already picked up on it. “Shoot. You’re not done.”

As if possessed, Taylor immediately lights up and blurts a series of incredibly inadequate questions.

“What did he smell like? People say he looks like he’s never washed his shit, but his clothes looked clean to me, maybe a little bit worn out?” your friend stares off in the distance, pondering. “What does it feel like when he looks at you up close? I mean, I know he was fucking with you, but there’s nooo way he’s not interested in you. I’ve never heard of him really interacting with people that intimately,” Taylor giggles, “—pinning them to the walllll two freaking times?!” they go on, as if Shigaraki was truly a hopeless romantic and not a rich psychopath who gets off on making girls cry. If your friend notices the blatant shock in your face, they don’t mention it, and instead continue their barrage of inappropriate questions.

“So, this is my theory, okaaay? I think he kind of likes you? I mean he’s beaten the shit out of girls before for less than the shit you did, from what I’ve heard about him. He’s definitely cutting you slack. Oh yeah, how come you didn’t pepper spray his ass? You usually don’t hesitate.” Taylor asks you genuinely. “Bet that would’ve been funny.” A snicker escaped them as they couldn't help but imagine. “Gasp! Do you think he’d screech?!”

“I fucking can’t with you.” shaking your head, you looked out of the window.

“Well?” they cast a hopeful glance in your direction, waiting for you to respond.

A frustrated exhale escapes your lips. “Fuck. You’re lucky I’m short on friends.” you say, as if you had any friends, shooting your friend a playful, irritated glance and making them wiggle their perfectly-shaped eyebrows at you. “Can we seriously not humanize him right now? He’s just a psycho.”

“A psycho you’re intoooo.” they don’t fail to add, batting their long fake eyelashes innocently. You couldn’t believe your ears. “C’mooon, all these years I’ve known you and this guy is the first one who’s doing a number on you! Don’t even try to pretend with me, girl.” Taylor rolls their eyes.

“Are you serious? Me being scared shitless means I'm into him?”

“He smelled fine. Like detergent, cigs and uh…cologne, maybe?” You leave out the part where you don’t think you’ve smelled any sort of perfume on him before today. Maybe you were actually just delusional. Your friend’s eyes widen.

“When he looks at me it feels… Intense. Like I can’t lie or hide, which is new because that’s all I know to do. But it’s like he knows everything about you and expects you to disappoint him in some way. It’s really weird, no one ever looks at me or cares if I exist—not like this.”

Because I definitely made sure of that, you think.

Taylor nods excitedly, waiting for you to go on. It’s like they completely forgot the entire reason you’re here right now, but you brush it off, because their behavior is nothing new to you. You’ve known them long enough to realize that under their perfect appearance they still have flaws, and frankly it didn’t bother you. If anything it was kind of funny how they found humor in the face of the shittiest situations and if it wasn’t you that was in the middle of it, you’d probably laugh at it too.

Misery loves company.

“Uhhh, I couldn’t think much when he did that shit, so I didn’t pay close attention, but he looks tired, I think? Ragged. Worn out like his stupid clothes. He’s kinda like that on the inside and out.” you stare through your friend.

“I honestly don’t know why I didn’t pepper spray him. It felt wrong, even when I had the chance. Maybe I was afraid that whatever dumb shit he pulled, he’d double down if I include physical offense to the list of bullshit he holds up against me. I’m sure I’ll regret hesitating once I finally find out what the fuck he’s done, but in the moment I was frozen.” you sigh, “I don’t like being weak. I thought I got over most of my mommy and daddy issues, but it only took a bigger asshole to bring it out of me again, man...” you hit your fist against the table. Your frustration clouding your vision once again.

You should’ve beaten his ass even if it meant he’d be beating yours in return, fuck this complacent shit.

You hated being weak.

You thought you got better at this.

“Honey, no. No, no, no. You’re not weak.” they take your hands in theirs and their soft voice melts your heart. The touch is gentle. “You’re like, the strongest bitch I know.”

“Shut up.” you look away, frowning.

“I’m serious. We'll figure this whole thing out, okay? Sorry for being nosey, that was really fucked of me.” they grip your arm and squeeze it softly, expression full of understanding.

“It’s fine. That’s not the issue, I’m just really tired of this shit.” It wasn’t fine, but you know they meant well. Your thoughts were running at a hundred miles per hour now, the exhaustion catching up with your foggy brain.

───────── Click —

You unlock the door to your apartment and look around to see if anything’s out of place. Maybe for a dead body that wasn’t so out of the question anymore. You double and triple check, going into every room two or three times. Everything’s where it’s supposed to be and no one seems to have broken into your apartment yet.

If you somehow went back to the version you were this morning, you’d find the way you act right now kind of silly.

You were not, though, not anymore, and you knew better now.

After a well deserved warm shower, you sit down on your cheap thirty dollar IKEA chair and boot your PC up. For the next few hours, you decide gaming is your best coping mechanism for stress, because you didn’t know when the other shoe was going to drop—the thought of it killing you.

You only managed to play for a couple of hours, really, before your phone went off and you saw your friend call you.

“Yeah? I literally saw you like five minutes ago, did you miss me that much?” you joke but it falls super flat and you hear Taylor exhale shakily.

“Y/n?”

“What? What’s wrong? Are you okay?” you ask quickly, your voice turning into one of worry.

Did he do something to them?

“Y/n, hey. Umm. C-Can you check your.. Sorry, it’s really hard to speak right now—” they choke up.

“That’s okay, t-take your time. I’m here. I’m listening.” you frown at your white wall.

Something was very wrong.

“Okay.” they take a deep breath. “Do you remember that social media platform for uni students in our city? The really popular one. T-The one where I hooked up with that one guy who asked me to peg him in the first five minutes of our date?” Taylor sniffled, “You didn’t want to make an account because it was ‘a waste of time’, r-remember?”

“Yeah? Taylor, what's happening? Get to the point, please.”

“W-Well, I’ll send you my login and you c-can check it yourself, hold on.” you hear their fake nails tapping in quick succession on what you assumed was their phone.

“Can you tell me alread—”

“Hold on, you have to see this, I-I really can’t.” they sniffled again and you furrowed your brow even more.

You were waiting, leg once again bouncing anxiously, until your phone finally pinged. You put your friend on speaker, while you quickly type in the address and the login on your pc.

“So what am I supposed to see?”

“Scroll down, you’ll find it. I’m so, so fucking sorry, Y/n. We’ll go to the dean’s office, or the police…we’ll, FUCK, we’ll get this sorted, okay?” your friend tries to reassure you, but they sounded like they needed it more right now.

Still having no clue what you’re supposed to find, you scroll for a while, listening to Taylor mumble some more. It was random post after post of random frat guys they followed, Taylor’s exes, friends, etcetera. “I still don’t—”

Until you see it.

Suddenly, dread filled your lungs.

[ Hiiii everyone!!! I’m Y/N L/N! The hot emo chick in your comp-sci class at Weston NexTech! ]

*Click Image Attachment

Swallowing emptily, you clicked on the first attachment.

What greeted you was your barely legal self staring back at you. An almost nude mirror selfie, arm hooking under one of the legs, hanging them in the air while you used your other hand to teasingly raise the strap of your thong for the viewer—your ‘boyfriend’ at the time, to see.

Immediately, you understand exactly what this was.

Revenge porn.

[ Bet that got your attention, hehe! I’m writing because I’m suuuper fucking bored and I was hoping that you guys could cheer me up ;) ]

*Click Image Attachment

“Babe? Y-You okay?”

“Hang on.” you answer snappily.

In the second image, your bare ass was on display, bent over the bed and looking back at the camera. It makes your stomach twist. You remember these pictures.

[ I’m new at this, however I loooooooooove attention and I bet there’s a lot of you guys who are just as lonely as I am!

I’m shy as fuck but I know what I want—to take loads of YOUR massive delicious cocks before I graduate, so this little miss honor student is going to cut you a deal, okay? :o ]

*Click Image Attachment

You thought that maybe Taylor hung up on you, but you figured you just stopped being able to hear anything at some point during the call.

Your heart was pounding wildly now. Glancing at the engagement, you noticed there were about two thousand fucking people who liked this post. Two whole fucking thousands and the thread didn’t even end there.

[ It’s unconventional but u’ll find my email address and my phone number at the end of the thread! Make sure you watch the video I attached! I put soooo much effort in it and I made it just for you guys.

I’ll be teasing you with the rest of the clips every Tuesday at 11 PM! :3] Suddenly, a lot of today’s events made sense to you. The phone calls, the spam emails, the people looking at you funny and the jocks almost sexually assaulting you in the hallway.

[Pleaseee, please, please shoot me a message or talk to me IRL, I’d like to get to know - wink wink - as many of you hotties as I can <3

Keep in mind that I’m really shy, so don’t take me saying no for an answer, I like really rough roleplay, iykwim?

Till next Tuesday, thank you for all the likes!]

*Play Video When the first few frames start rolling, you immediately tell what the video is going to be about.

It’s been years, a different time of your life that you’d like so, so badly to just fucking erase from your brain. You were high out of your mind and you happened to let your asshole boyfriend—more like the dealer you used to fuck on multiple occassions—take incredibly compromising pictures of your body, and true to the nature of the creep, he also made videos of you having sex with him. You were younger, really fucking stupid, always under the influcence, constantly daring life over and over to end your misery. It meant you didn’t give a fuck about some insignificant pictures and it meant that, if anything, you used to like the attention from him. From anyone.

That all changed when you started cleaning up your act. You made him delete all of them, you really did, but the fucker must have had backups, something that did cross your mind at the time, but you thought—hoped, that he at least wouldn’t share them with anyone. He was a coward and a criminal, one that you had a lot of dirt on in case he decided to fuck you over. It should’ve been fine, you should’ve been safe.

Unless someone like Shigaraki managed to get a hold of him, threatening or paying him off to get what he wanted.

You haven’t gotten the slightest clue as to how he put two and two together to find your ex, you had almost completely changed your identity since, but that must not matter for someone of Shigaraki’s caliber, because you’re now staring at the evidence that more than half of your university has access to.

It wasn’t your regular homemade porn video, but one of the more disturbing ones you’ve made. One that you’ve tried, and succeeded for the most part, to forget about. Until now.

Hearing sobs in the background, you realize you are tuned back to the present and can finally hear again. What surprised you was that…it wasn’t you who was sobbing.

“Taylor?” you ask in a monotone voice, a quiet tear escaping you.

“Y/n? I’m so sorry, I’m really sorry.”

You don’t know how to comfort them. You don’t even know how to comfort yourself.

“It’s not the full video, he’s splitting it in parts. He’s planning to fuck with me and post them the day before class every week, to gauge my reaction like an actual psychopath.”

“I’m so sorry.. We can—we.. we can go to the dean and—”

“No.” you quickly interrupt. It felt like your friend was crying for you too, because all you could feel was numbness. Too numb to feel sorry for yourself right now. “I’m not sure they’ll believe me, plus his dad is a big shot. I’ll try but let’s not get our hopes up.” you say, detached.

“Y/n, please, we can—we can go to the police!”

“It’s fine, I’m hanging up now. I’m—I’m going to call him.” you shudder.

“What? No, don’t! We need the police, please, please, let’s go to the police!”

“You know I can’t do that, Tay. I’ll talk to you later. It’ll be fine.” you lie and hang up.

Your hands were shaking as you were staring at the ‘Call’ button.

Unsure if he was going to pick up at all, you take a deep breath and press it.

Ring.

“Yea?” a raspy voice replies, seemingly distracted, and you hear the sounds of a mechanical keyboard.

“It’s Y/n.”

For a moment, there was only silence.

Then, you hear a strange sound. It takes you a good second to realize he was fucking giggling.

“Uh-huuuuh. What do you want? I’m busy.” he says while his fingers are audibly mashing the keyboard.

You take a deep breath. “Take it down, Shigaraki.” you demand, knowing full well your plea will fall on deaf ears.

“Take what down?” he smiles and you could fucking hear it.

“You know. Don’t play dumb with me. Take. It. Down.”

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about, you’ll have to be more specific.” he says innocently, feigning ignorance.

“What do you want, huh?” you begin, quickly losing your patience, “Do you want me to blow you? Sleep with you? What do you want from me?”

“Whoaaaa, chilllll. Do I look like some desperate loser to you?” he says it, like he doesn’t know. “Only idiots fuck ugly bimbos like you, be for real. Do I look like an idiot to—Fuck! They’re on B, planting! Fucking TP there, stop wasting time.” There’s a moment of silence. “Do you want to win or what? Fucking listen to me, then. Fuck.” he barks angrily at whoever he’s talking to.

It takes you a second but it finally clicks to you. Shigaraki was currently gaming, playing with his friends, relaxing, while you felt your life falling apart for the 1000th time this month.

“Okay.” you finally say.

“Okay? Okay, what?” he scoffs. “You know, you should try a little harder, Y/n. I told you what to do, if you want me to help you.” Shigaraki pauses, focusing on his game for a moment. “Maybe you do enjoy this kind of thing, after all. I wouldn’t really put it past you. When I saw those vids, boy, I gotta admit, I didn’t think you were the type.”

“First of all, it’s none of your fucking business what I do in my free time. Second of all, do you even know how old I was back then? What I went through, for you to go on and post those online for everyone to see?” You know he didn’t give two fucks, you do, however that does little to stop you from falling apart in front of him. “Like, how low can you really stoop?”

Last time you snapped at him proved not to be a good idea, but this was your final straw.

“Damn, don't get so emotional, man. Not my problem you let your shitty boyfriends take advantage of you like that—Fuck, shut up, not talking you man. I’m in a call, fucking—focus on the game!” he continues, “Listen, do you have anything else to say besides bitching at me? Last I recall, I gave you two options and so far you ignored both of them. Why should I do anything for you, hm?”

It felt difficult to listen to a human being being so cruel, so uncaring and find your problems to be so trivial. It’s not the first time, but he’s probably amongst the worst you’ve encountered in your little fucked up life.

“I’m sorry.” you say honestly, breaking that apology record after all.

“Hm? Come again? Didn't hear ya.” he smiles expectantly. At last, the breaking point. Tomura hoped that ideally, it would be in class, with you kneeling before him in front of everyone else when it happened, but this was okay too.

“I’m fucking sorry, okay?”

The weight of today came crashing all at once and you finally broke down crying—in front of the fucking devil himself of all people—and you hear him say ‘BRB’ to what you assumed were his friends. After some shuffling, the line became silent again, save for your sobs.

“I’m sorry for being a bitch to you in the convenience store, I’m sorry for talking to you in class and I’m sorry for being stupid and getting you in trouble with the professor. I’m really fucking sorry, I didn’t know any better, but now I do and I wish I’d never talked to you. I was really stupid. Really, really stupid to cross you. Can you please, please take the thread down? I’ll make sure I’ve learned my place.”

Instead of feeling ecstatic now that he had you where he wanted you to be, begging him and treating him like a god, Tomura felt something unexpected twisting within him while hearing the desperation in your voice.

Anger.

You wished you’d never talked to him? Shouldn’t you have wished to be nicer, for him to forgive you, for him to like you? What kind of apology was this? Why were you so fucking clueless?

“That all?” he replies to you, voice sounding indifferent.

“What?” you whisper.

“Is that all, I asked. Are you fuckin’ deaf now or something?” he asks, raising his voice at you.

“I-I don’t understand, I’m being genuinely—”

“I dOn’T unDerStanD. Fucking—cry more, bitch.” Shigaraki mocks your words in a whiny voice. “You’re wasting my time, so if that’s all you have to say, I’m hanging up.”

You wouldn’t know, but this type of anger wasn’t planned. It was defensive. Tomura was being irrationally angry with you right now.

The hurt was new to him, and he’s only ever felt it around you. The first time was probably when you left him fucking hanging in class that one time when he’d tried to reach out to you—something he’s never done for anyone else before, perhaps since he was a kid. Not that you’d ever find out about it, but it added more fuel to his anger, because he realized you were someone who could—

“What?! Can you stop being a fucking child for one second, and talk to me so I can understand?”

“There’s nothing to understand, you’re fucking retarded and I’m going to make sure you can’t set your foot outside your house anymore. Stupid bitch, maybe I’ll post the entire thing today and get it over with,” you hear him grunt. “I fucking lost the game too, because of your stupid sorry ass.”

“ —really fucking hate you, Shigaraki!” What did you have to lose now? “But you’re used to people feeling like that about you, aren’t you? Fucking with everyone’s lives like you’re some god.” you spat. “You’re not, you’re just a… you’re just a little pathetic unoriginal asshole. I can’t fucking believe how stupid I was, to let myself—to ever think I could ever stoop so low and like someone like y— ”

The blood drained from your face, realizing just what you were about to reveal to him

Your heart sped up

Stupid, stupid, fucking stupid.

You hear Shigaraki inhale softly.

“What was that?”

“Fuck off.” you whisper, about to hang up, when he shouts.

“HEY. Repeat? What did you say? You can’t believe you what?” he pressed you eagerly, but you were done with this conversation.

“I said–go fuck yourself, asshole. Pray I die before I have to see you again. Bye.”

“If you fucking DARE to hang up now, I swear to fucking GOD.” the guy screeches in your ear, but you don’t reply and end the call.

His behavior struck you as odd, because he couldn’t wait to hang up on you earlier so what could have possibly changed. Did he want more shit to use against you? Was revenge porn not enough?

It doesn’t really matter anymore, because you were already plotting how to end yourself in your head. This was your specialty when things went especially wrong, call it suicidal ideation or whatever.

Turning your phone off, you sink to the floor and stare up at the ceiling. You were feeling numb again.

Everything was going horribly wrong.

#shigaraki x reader #shigaraki x y/n #emotional hurt/comfort #shigaraki tomura #unhealthy relationships #dead dove do not eat #trigger warnings #shigaraki tomura x reader #shigaraki fanfiction #shigaraki x you #tenko shimura #tomura shigaraki #college au #reader is female

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agomeangelcat · 1 year

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I see your iseki reader and I raise you an iseki reader with an existential crisis that tells the crew they are from earth but never tells them that they are in a fictional universe and she knows everything about them, but she constantly questioning her existence, did she die and this is a fucked up version of heaven? Is multiunverse theory actually true? If she’s here then did she fucked up the timeline? Will she one day just blip out of existence when the universe fixes itself? Or is this just a crazy dream she’s trying to wake up from? I mean imagine looking at people and knowing they don’t actually exist even tho you can see and touch them, they are nothing more than pawns to move the plot forward. And hearing knives talk about how he’s supierior to all humans makes her wanna laugh cause god he don’t know the knowledge she has in her head, that’s he’s just simply the antagonist of a story. Maybe that’s why she not scared of death, she believes she’s already dead or technically don’t exist cause she doesn’t belong in this world. She knows the truth of this world but she can’t say anything cause she just seem crazy. Sometimes the gang would catch her gazing at them with a creepy look in her eyes, like she’s looking thru their souls, like she knows all their secrets. But that’s impossible, she can’t know something like that. It’s also weird she seems oddly calm when shit hits the fan. Like she knew this was gonna happen. Wolfwood starts to think she’s a spy like him sent to kill vash but he’s conflicted if he should defend vash or complete his job, but she seems weak and has no weapon so is she really a spy?

OKAY! As I have two Trigun ocs, the most current one is the one I got inspired to make Isekai Y/N.

I imagine it was something like a very large scale accident, an explosion or a human extinction level tragedy but for some was not just an accident.

Y/N wasn't the most shine soul in earth probably a weird nerd with lots of self doubts and "no porpouse in life".

I was inspired a lot by the part of Y/N may be dead but alive, Schrödinger Cat energy, but with the help of some entity they were reborn in another universe, and they weren't the only one to get that blessing, and they all got some kind of ability when being transported, cosmic horror shit.

The idea of how Y/N's body is not used to the drastic change of reality and universe they probably has loud panic attacks or even visible moments of anguish, something that for the people around can be scary to witness.

Y/N probably has powers similar to Eleven or Tatsumi, but they don't know how to control it or at least know what the hell to do with so much power, besides it hurts physically, as i said, their not used to any of that, blood nose.

Homesickness, a lots of it.

It's the: "you're reborn you have powers, but you don't have a purpose, good luck in your Journey." for me.

Thanks to Y/N's doubts they sometimes have moments when their body fails like a glitch, probably because they don't accept their new life or doubt their existence there, needless to say it scares the soul out of everyone in the group when it happens.

For Wolfwood I imagine Y/N standing in front of the punisher when threatened by him, with their hands in surrender as if to say "Shoot", Wolfwood and Y/N are enemies to rivals to confused asf.

About Knives I imagine Y/N using their telekinesis for the first time, against his many knives without fear of dying! And everyone is like: DAFUCK!?

To Vash's horror, Y/N is kind but lacking in self-preservation, and throws themself into more dangerous situations than Vash himself.

Thanks to their knowledge of the Trigun world Y/N know certain enemies' weaknesses without having to kill them, Happy Vash noises.

The Plants know about Y/N and the others who were Isekaid.

#anon ask #trigun stampede #isekai reader #Writing Isekai is hard when comes to “why the MC?" Question #trigun stampede x reader #anon <3

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 8 months

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Myths are stories about people who become too big for their lives temporarily, so that they crash into other lives or brush against gods. In crisis their souls are visible.

Anne Carson, Introduction to Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides

#myth #stories #Anne Carson #quotes

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libbee · 2 years

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How do 8th house natives transform?

8th house is the house of transformations but what is transformation and how do they transform? Transformation follows chaos and crisis. Being 8th house, the crisis is sudden, unpredictable, unforeseen and unplanned. Here are some of the ways they transform themselves:

Starting a romantic relationship suddenly

Suddenly getting married within months of meeting

Sudden breakup of relationship

Unexpected pregnancy

Unexpected job termination

Vehicle accidents

Diseases that transform their lifestyle

Surgeries that change the way they look

Gender change surgery

Sudden divorce

Sudden widowhood

Changing the way they look by hair colour, makeup, cosmetic surgery

Changing the career

Consuming and learninf a lot of astrology content

Mindlessly watching a lot of tarot videos

Mental breakdowns or psychosis

Moving countries. Packing bags and going somewhere else

Changing their identity in any way. Eg, name, address, last name, city of location, citizenship, gender change, sexuality change (from straight to bi or homosexual), changing their wardrobe

Many times small transformations like deleting their social media accounts and starting afresh. After a crisis or emotional chaos, they end up deleting all of their social media accounts to destroy their identity then start everything from scratch in a different way

Changing their hobbies and interests. Oftentimes they develop interest in occult, spirituality and mysticism

Oftentimes these natives also go into philosophy, religion studies, research for self learning because of 9th house effect. They will not go for proper college degree in higher education unless they have 9th house planets, but with 8th house placements they will be pulled to 9th house theme after evolution and maturity

Oftentimes the transformations can be painful like physical abuse or punishment or jail time or disease that isolates them (cancer, AIDS, coma condition)

These natives trigger chaos in their environment. They create drama, fights, crisis, yell, shout, cry for the transformational energy. With emotional chaos, they are faced with parts of themselves that were hidden to them previously. Now with these parts visible, it is time to change and transform into something else

Shamanic, tantric works, witchcraft, supernatural, paranormal practices, books and conversations also transform them

Sleeping is also transformation. Many 8th house natives feel like a different person after sleeping. Especially when they slept after a chaotic situation. Their dream interpretation or sleep paralysis or dreams during REM cycle can tell a lot of spiritual ideas to them that transform them.

Unfortunately, many 8th house placement natives somehow dont venture into occult all their lives. Their other placements keep them distant from occult. So they never learn to channel their energy through constructive and spiritual ways. For eg, wife who cheats, argues, lies, controls her husband but never finds out this is just spiritual cries from her soul for emotional and psychic healing.

8th house energy without occult, spiritual, psychic healing is pure disaster.

#astro community #astrology observations #astrology #astro observations #shadow self #astroblr #occult #8th house #astro notes #astro tumblr #astrology blog #astrology notes

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lanterne · 2 years

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Recently in my history class, we learned a little bit about Robespierre and other stuff around him. We were told that he "had the characteristics of a cult leader", and that he got Danton, Camille and their supporters executed in an effort to stop the terror from being ended. And that he didn't want the terror to end so that he keep his power and position within the CPS. What are your thoughts on this?

ohhh anon sorry if i get long-winded and rambly bc

there's a lot to unpack here

i'll take a look at each of the claims you were told, hope this helps clarify them.

First I should clarify that by "terror" I mean the emergency measures put in place by the convention to get through the crisis. I have to clarify this bc most people think the terror was just guillotining people. Newer history books (and I mean academic ones, not school textbooks) say that calling it "the terror" its inaccurate, but that's more advanced (?) and i dont wanna confuse you with that, so I'll just keep refering it as "terror" from now on.

"had the characteristics of a cult leader"

Which caracteristics? cult leaders claim to be special chosen ones or that they have access to hidden knowledge, they seek to attract and manipulate vulnerable people so they can take advantage of them and demand complete subservience.

Is true Robespierre got an obsessive following that got to weird levels of adoration, but it was more like the parasocial following of celebrities (people get that weird with modern celebrities too). There's no proof that he exploited them economically or physically. Yes, he had an ego like every educated white man from the era, and he had a tendency to self-martyrise in his speeches, but he didn't claim to be special or that he had all the answers. However, it is a common cliché that he sent to the guillotine anyone that disagreed with him, but he didn't have the authority to do that, and he even went out of his way to save political enemies he didn't see as direct threats to the republic (ie, he opposed the arrest of twenty-two (? I think, I always see a different number tbh) girondins in may 1793).

That being said, i see where your teacher is coming from, this is an easy assertion to make if you learn about the festival of the supreme being without the historical context behind it and come to the conclusion that this guy simply made up a religion out of nowhere.

Robespierre was very spiritual and the festival was important to him, but he wasn't the one that proposed it. It was another deputy, Mathieu, that brought a project to the CPS to organize a series of civic festivals consecrated to the supreme being (more on that on Mathiez's fall of Robespierre). Robespierre was in charge of presenting Mathieu's project to the convention and made a speech defending the social utility of a state religion, so the convention approved it. Since he was president of the convention by the time the festival was scheduled, he was the one to precede it, which gave him a lot of visibility that was used against him later. The point is that while he was very invested and attached to the festival, it wasn't something he did out of a whim.

Second, the concept of deism and the supreme being was very old at that point. Both declarations of the rights of men and the constitutions of 1791 and 1793 were consecrated to the supreme being. French revolutionaries in general were influenced by enlightenment ideas about God, which affirms that the universe was created by a supreme being, but rejects organized religion. Robespierre was very religious in this sense, but he still believed in religious liberty, and the point of these civic festivals and decreeing that "the french people acknowledge the existence of the Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul" was to foment religious liberty (idk if they thought of this, but the idea of a Supreme being is so vague, anyone can project whatever God they want into it) and appease the divisions caused by decristianization.

2. he got Danton, Camille and their supporters executed in an effort to stop the terror from being ended

This only makes sense if one believes that Robespierre had complete control of everything that was happening in France at the time. The dantonists' arrest was the work of the committees of public safety and general security in conjunction. I probably should explain how it got to that point, but it's a very long and complicate story and tbh i don't have a full grasp of it myself. It was a chain of events that started with Fabre shenanigans trying to cover his tracks stealing from the liquidation of the east india company and it became a massive mess that ended up with conspiracy charges against a bunch of people including Danton.

Before that, Danton and Desmoulins were advocating for a cease of the terror (and by terror i mean the state of emergency) because they believed that, since the Vendée and federalist revolts had been repressed, it was time to go back to normal, however there still was the external conflict (against all of Europe) in one side, and the Hébertists in another. The hébertists were demanding an increase of the terror and were threatening to overthrow the government if it didn't comply. So, Robespierre thought it wouldn't be wise to end the terror right there.

Robespierre tried to defend them for a while, despite disagreeing with them over stopping the terror, but at some point the evidence against Danton became too much for him to ignore. Whether that evidence proved anything or not it's still up for debate but what matters here is that he and the committees believed it, and at that time there was a lot of paranoia around treason and foreign conspiracy, so what might have been just a case of embezzlement turned into treason etc. But no, Robespierre had hesitated a lot to sign their arrest and when he was arrested himself in 9 thermidor, he was accused of trying to defend Danton AND blamed for his death because this man can never win.

3. he didn't want the terror to end so that he keep his power and position within the CPS

This one's tricky and I'm gonna get subjective/speculative territory because, on one side, I believe he was sick of the terror and there's some "cries for help" that hint of his exhaustion, but he didn't think it should have ended right away when it was the time to end it (with the french victory in the battle of Fleurus). He was mentally deteriorated by the crisis and the conga line of treasons had made him unable to see an end to it, he kept seeing conspiracy and murder plots everywhere. But also by that time he pretty much ghosted the goverment for a month, so whatever he thought about ending the terror or not didn't matter, the goverment kept going with it and using and abusing his prairial law anyway. The goriest period coincides with his absense. You could argue that he still caused it with the prairial law, which I agree, but I think the convention, the committees and the tribunals were equally responsible. Tbh this is a can of worms and historians still fight about it, so i cant give you a definitive answer.

I don't think he would want to stay in a position that had destroyed him physically and emotionally, with people that he hated, to keep power that he didn't have anymore. Being in the CPS didn't even pay well. He said himself in the 8th thermidor speech that he valued his position as a deputy of the convention more than his position in the CPS. I see him quitting soon and staying as far away from the goverment as possible, maybe even from Paris, had he survived... But that's just my personal opinion.

Im so so so sorry for this Bible length post anon, I had many thoughts about it. I don't recommend you to fight your teacher with this info bc I'm not a historian, I'm just some guy online. However, be critical of what you learn in school (assuming it's school, if this is the first time you learn about the frev) bc it simplifies history a lot and the nuances get lost. I know this is a lot of info to take in, I hope I didn't just confuse you further.

#frev #Robespierre #This post is like... Congratulations! or sorry what happened #Genuinely sorry for the length anon

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nyxshadowhawk · 5 months

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The Red Book, Liber Primus: Part Two

I'm picking up right where I left off, so please go read Part One: https://nyxshadowhawk.tumblr.com/post/728084509673799680/the-red-book-liber-primus-part-one#notes

Soul and God

Jung says to his soul:

Who are you, child? My dreams have represented you as a child and as a maiden. I am ignorant of your mystery. Forgive me if I speak as in a dream, like a drunkard — are you God? Is God a child, a maiden?

Throughout this chapter, Jung has to grapple with unorthodox ideas of what God looks like. God as a child, let alone a maiden, is so dissonant with typical ideas of divinity in Christianity that I can’t really blame him for reeling over it. I see this as validation that God is inherently polymorphic, and can appear to different people in different ways depending on what they need to see. Jung sees God as a child or a maiden, and I see God as… well… a femboy.

Scholarliness belongs to the spirit of the time [i.e. the conscious mind], but this spirit in no way grasps the dream, since the soul is everywhere that scholarly knowledge is not.

“The soul is everywhere that scholarly knowledge is not” is a great way of putting it. I’ve had to constantly grapple with the balance between my analytical mind and my mystical mind, and since Jung was both a scientist and a mystic, I imagine he needed to do the same. The analytic mind needs everything to be backed up with primary sources and/or proven with empirical evidence, and it needs all of its arguments to be airtight. The mystical mind needs to make wild connections between unrelated things and to take symbols at face value, going more than a bit crazy in the process. The mystical and analytical parts of the mind can work in tandem, but they shouldn’t be confused with each other. If you let the mystical mind handle the analytic stuff, that’s how you get conspiracy theories. If you let the analytic mind handle the mystical stuff, it will shut them down and try to force them into a framework. Scholarship can’t reach everywhere, because some things just don’t make sense, and scholarship is also limited by the zeitgeist (i.e. what we know and how we know it, who’s in power and what their narrative is, needing things to make sense through the cultural lens).

But how can I attain the knowledge of the heart? You can attain this knowledge only by living your life to the full. You live your life fully if you also live what you have never yet lived, but have left for others to live and to think. But you should say, “The life that I could still live, I should live, and the thoughts that I could still think, I should think.” It appears as though you want to flee from yourself so as not to have to live what remains unlived until now. But you cannot flee from yourself. It is with you all the time and demands fulfillment. If you pretend to be blind and dumb to this demand, you feign being blind and deaf to yourself.

This reminds me a lot of the line spoken by Lord Henry in The Picture of Dorian Gray, “To realize one’s nature fully — that is what each of us is here for.” I’d say that this was a Jungian reference, except that Oscar Wilde was writing before Jung wrote any of this. I completely agree that before you attain any real spiritual knowledge, you must have as complete an understanding of yourself as possible. If you avoid developing this understanding of your internal world, then you won’t be really living, and you’ll feel that emptiness and lack of fulfillment that characterizes midlife crisis. And you won’t learn anything.

I had to recognize that I am only the expression and symbol of the soul. In the sense of the spirit of the depths, I am as I am in the visible world a symbol of my soul…

Again, really interesting concept — existing as a symbol of one’s soul, you existing through it instead of it through you. It’s the real thing, you’re the impression it leaves on the material world.

The spirit of the depths taught me to say, “I am the servant of a child.” Through this dictum I learn above all the most extreme humility, as what I most need.

The spirit of this time of course allowed me to believe in my reason. He let me see myself in the image of a leader with ripe thoughts. But the spirit of the depths teaches me that I am a servant, in fact the servant of a child. This dictum was repugnant to me and I hated it. But I had to recognize and accept that my soul is a child and that my God in my soul is a child.

Once again, Jung has a hard time seeing the divine in things that are small, trivial, or mundane. It’s so ridiculous to him that God should appear like a little kid, and that he should be in service to this little kid, that to admit this requires “extreme humility.”

If you are boys, your God is a woman. If you are women, your God is a boy. If you are men, your God is a maiden. The God is where you are not.

“The God is where you are not.” I love this. This suggests that there is something inherently divine about the Shadow, the inverse of whatever your conscious mind considers itself to be. Wherever you don’t build your conscious mind, God fills the empty space. It’s pretty natural for us humans to project ourselves onto God and interpret God as looking like us, hence why God is assumed to be a powerful old man in this patriarchal society. It’s quite another thing to be able to see God in something that isn’t like us, that doesn’t reflect the ideal. That’s another recurring theme.

I don’t know whether it’s always true that a man’s god is a maiden and a woman’s god is a boy, but I know that my god appears as a femboy.

The same inversion occurs with age. If you’re an old person, you have a young god, and vice-versa.

What is better, that man has life ahead of him, or that God does? I know no answer. Life; the unavoidable decides.

This is one of those utterly weird, out-of-the-box mystical ideas that are just so much fun to wonder about. The idea that god ages, that a young god belong to an old person may have more life ahead of it than the living human does, and the question of whether it is better for you to have more life or for your God to have more life. I don’t have an answer to that, either.

My God is a child, so wonder not that the spirit of this time in me is incensed to mockery and scorn. There will be no one who will laugh at me as I have laughed at myself.

Your God should not be a man of mockery, rather you yourself will be the man of mockery. You should mock yourself fand rise above this. If you have still not learned this from the old holy books, then go there, drink the blood and eat the flesh of him who was mocked and tormented for the sake of our sins, so that you totally become his nature, deny his being-apart-from-you; you should be he himself, not Christians but Christ, otherwise you will be of no use to the coming God.

You do not overcome the old teachings through doing less, but through doing more. Every step closer to my soul excites the scornful laughter of my devils, those cowardly ear-whisperers and poison-mixers. It was easy for them to laugh, since I had to do strange things.

The inner Zeitgeist, the voice of the society that Jung lives in, mocks him for his submission to a little kid. Jung feels like he is kind of immune to mockery at this point because no one can possibly mock him for this more than he mocks himself. He throws that mystical mockery into focus with this irreverent but also completely true characterization of Christianity. See, Jung gets it. He realizes that the Eucharist is, in fact, exactly what it looks like. You take God into you. You consume it. You become God. That’s the most mystical thing I’ve heard of this side of Orphism. You’re not a Christian, you are Christ himself, because you’ve partaken in Christ. Get with the program.

I don’t really blame Jung for distancing himself from mysticism throughout his career, because of the threat of mockery. Mysticism still has a stigma attached to it. Scientists don’t like it because it’s pure unadulterated crazy, and Christianity has a very weird relationship to it despite it arguably being the basis of the entire faith (see above). To be a mystic is to be isolated from and mocked by both camps. It’s easy to laugh at because, well, it’s very weird.

On the Service of the Soul

If you take a step towards your soul, you will think that you will at first miss the meaning. You will believe that you have sunk into meaninglessness, into eternal disorder. You will be right! Nothing will deliver you from disorder and meaninglessness, since this is the other half of the world.

Someone please tell Jordan Peterson that Jung says he needs to come to grips with chaos. Chaos matters because it’s half the world, so there is no “antidote” to it, no overcoming it. All you can really do is work with it.

If you marry the ordered to the chaos you produce the divine child, the supreme meaning beyond meaning and meaninglessness.

This is the Chemical Wedding, the orderly (fixed) sulfur and the chaotic (volatile) mercury producing the Philosopher’s Stone, which is an even mix of both. That volatile “dark flood of chaos” transmutes into fixed matter if you just sit with it and let it sort itself out.

I too was afraid, since we had forgotten that God is terrible. Christ taught: God is love. But you should know that love is also terrible.

Everyone has forgotten that God is terrible, and I think that’s a problem. Every time the atheists point out how evil and mean God is in the Old Testament, and how starkly this clashes with the all-loving God that Christians profess they worship, they treat it like it’s an invalidation of the entirety of Christianity. And it is, only because Christians expect everything to be internally consistent. God is, in fact, both, and that is The Point™. There’s also the fact that mystical experiences can be utterly terrifying, awesome and awful and sublime. God is scary as hell, people!

You dread the depths. It should horrify you, since the way of what is to come leads through it. You must endure the temptation of fear and doubt, and at the same time acknowledge to the bone that your fear is justified and your doubt is reasonable.

The first step of spiritual advancement is through the darkness, the chaos, the Underworld. You have to do your Shadow work first. It’s completely reasonable to be afraid of that, because it’s scary by nature, but you’ve still got to do it.

You still have to learn this, to succumb to no temptation, but to do everything of your own will, then you will be be free and beyond Christianity.

So interesting that this book contains what is essentially a road map to transcending Christianity! That’s because “the way of what is to come” involves the dark as well as the light, down as well as up, both halves of the whole. Seeing everything as good and light and “holy” all the time is just as much a temptation as the Devil in the desert. Man that’s ahead of its time!

I have had to recognize that I must submit to what I fear; yes, even more, that I must love what horrifies me.

Shadow work in a nutshell!

The slave to virtue finds the way as little as the slave to vices.

A repetition of what I said above, that divinity doesn’t mean all-goodness-all-the-time. Focusing only on the good and bright and celestial things is only half the equation and is still shooting yourself in the foot.

If you thought you were the master of your soul, become her servant. If you were her servant, become her master.

Inversion again. Whatever you think your relationship to your soul is, flip it and see what happens.

The Desert

(I’ll give you a moment to go and play the Journey soundtrack while you read this. *Opens Spotify*)

Jung’s self appears as a barren desert, because he has neglected it. This is the first time he’s ever really paid attention to his internal world. The “creative power of desire” is absent from Jung’s desert. If you’re able to focus on your internal world, and not just on “things, men, and thoughts,” you can cultivate it into a garden. (My own mindscape is a Skyrim-esque landscape that looks like green hills and pine forests surrounded by high, craggy silver mountains. It’s slowly developed into Umbragard.) Even if your mindscape is a garden, you still need things, men, and thoughts, but at least you will be their friend instead of their slave.

I turned myself away from things and men, but that is precisely how I became the secure prey of my thoughts, yes, I wholly became my thoughts.

If this is the first time you’ve ever focused on the internal world, then your thoughts will overwhelm you pretty quickly. I’ve spent a lot of time in my internal world, and I still get easily overwhelmed.

When you say that the place of the soul is not, then it is not. When you say that it is, then it is. Notice what the ancients said in images: the word is a creative act. The ancients said: in the beginning was the Word. Consider this and think upon it.

Oh boy, how do I sum this up quickly? I already had notes about this concept from another part of my Book of Shadows that I wrote long before reading this, so I’ll just post that here:

Eliphas Levi writes in Doctrine and Ritual, “To speak is to create.” To think is to exist (“I think therefore I am”), so to speak is more powerful than thought, and writing more powerful than that. This is why many gods of magic are also associated with words, both spoken and written. Hermes is the god of magic, and also of speech and of writing, which are forms of discourse — they’re an exchange of ideas, the same way goods and services are exchanged, and the same way people physically move from place to place when they travel. Hermes’ base characterization as messenger god is based around this same concept, the exchange of information between people. Thoth is self-begotten — he literally willed himself into existence. He decided that he existed, and so he did. In addition to magic, he is also the god of writing, books, record-keeping, and wisdom. Odin discovered the Norse writing system by hanging himself on the World Tree, Yggdrasil, and observing the patterns of its fallen branches. Through this act of self-sacrifice, he received the knowledge of runes. The line between speech/writing and magic is slim. This is why God created the world through “the Word,” and why many occultists believe that if you can pronounce God’s unspeakable name correctly, you can command the entire universe.

So, magic is as simple as it is difficult — you just have to state that something is so, and then accept that it is. It’s really hard to convince your mind that it’s actually possible to do that, and not a form of self-delusion that you’ll be mocked for. My gods have advised me that the easiest spell I can do to end my anxiety is “If I say everything is okay, then it is.” Not easy to convince myself of that while I’m anxious. But it really is that simple. To state that something is so is to bring it into being.

The words that oscillate between nonsense and supreme meaning are the oldest and truest.

Ain’t that the truth. Mystical experiences are somehow both complete insanity and the most profound truth there is, at the same time. That’s how you know that their messages and symbols are older than dirt.

Experiences in the Desert

Jung confronts his soul in the desert. The soul says to Jung, “Don’t you know that the way to truth stands open only to those without intentions?” This rings true for me. If you intend to get something out of a particular experience, then you’ll ignore everything that doesn’t align with the intention. What you want to learn and what you try to do is going to interfere with what you’re actually being taught or given. Intention is for magic; mysticism really requires a state of passive reception, so that you don’t overanalyze things. I have a tendency to shut down meditative visions because I’ll try to plan them out or somehow control them, and that makes them fizzle. My gods recommend that I stop trying to accomplish something specific, and ask more questions.

We tie ourselves up with intentions.

Take it from me: If you try to accomplish something, you will end up getting stuck.

The soul says to Jung, “Do you know who I am? Have you grasped me, defined me, and made me into a dead formula? Have you measured the depths of my chasms, and explored all the ways down which I am yet going to lead you?”

I love this. It implies that the soul is something inherently immeasurable, incomprehensible, and utterly unscientific. You cannot define the soul. That’s the conscious mind attempting to impose a framework onto something that’s too amorphous to really fit into one. Of course, Jung will attempt to create this framework anyway, but that doesn’t change the fact that the best way to understand the soul is to not try to understand it.

The spirit of this time considers itself extremely clever, like every such spirit of the time. But wisdom is simpleminded, not just simple. […] Only in the desert do we become aware of our terrible simplemindedness, but we are afraid of admitting it. […] We cannot save ourselves through increasing our cleverness, but through accepting what our cleverness hates most, namely simplemindedness. Yet we also do not want to be artificial fools because we have fallen into simplemindedness, rather we will be clever fools. That leads to supreme meaning. Cleverness couples itself with intention. Simplemindedness knows no intention. Cleverness conquers the world, but simplemindedness the soul.

I’m betting that this is why the protagonist of so many fairy tales is a “simpleton.” They’re a person who doesn’t overthink things, doesn’t have an agenda, doesn’t operate from a place of self-interest or distrust. Their utter lack of cynicism is what allows them to accept help from ignoble-looking supernatural beings and friendly animals. They recieve all experiences with childlike wonder. They choose the plain-looking object instead of the shiny gold one, because they don’t feel the need to impress anybody. They aren’t stupid, per se — they’re more like 0 The Fool in a tarot deck, in that their naivete prevents them from being clever, and that works out well for them.

Jung’s conscious mind keeps saying “this is stupid!” but he has to stick with it. Overcoming his scorn at himself brings him nearer to his soul, and his desert starts to become green. “Many will laugh at my foolishness. But no one will laugh more than I laughed at myself.”

Descent into Hell in the Future

Time for katabasis! You knew it was coming. No Hero’s Journey is complete without a full-on descent into the Underworld.

Do you want me to leave myself to chance, to the madness of my own darkness? Wither? Wither? You fall, and I want to fall with you, whoever you are.

The spirit of the depths opened my eyes and I caught a glimpse of the inner things, the world of my soul, the many-formed and changing.

Most of the illustrations are big, beautiful paintings in in Liber Secundus, but there’s a few small ones nestled in Liber Primus. The first one is this one of a man in white walking in the Underworld, surrounded by shadowy monsters. The man in the image is too dark-skinned to be Jung, and he has shoulder-length black hair, but is clearly meant to represent Jung. I’m not sure why Jung decided to represent himself this way. But then again, the form that I take during my active imagination also looks nothing like me, so I get it.

Jung describes a cave of black water, across which is a “luminous red stone.” I immediately thought of the lake in the cave in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and the red stone is obviously a familiar image as well. Jung sees a severed head floating in the stream, a large black scarab, a red sun surrounded by snakes, represented in the next image:

There’s some interpretation of these images, but before we get there, Jung writes at length about one of my favorite subjects — divine madness!

These lines really struck me:

When can I order my thinking to be quiet, so that my thoughts, those unruly hounds, will crawl to my feet? How can I ever hope to hear your voice louder, to see you clearer, when all my thoughts howl? […] The fullness of my knowledge threatens to fall in on me. My knowledge was a thousand voices, an army roaring like lions; the air trembles when they speak, and I am their defenseless sacrifice. […] Let me persist in divine astonishment, so that I am ready to behold your wonders.

As a person who deals with anxiety and shame on a regular basis, I can say from experience that the voices of one’s thoughts can be overwhelming to the point of being intolerable. I’ve had fight-or-flight triggered by my thoughts alone, even when nothing bad is going on in real life (e.g. over something as non-threatening as sending emails). Likening those thoughts to an army of dangerous animals is a great metaphor. It’s also “knowledge” that Jung feels threatened by in this scene — knowledge can be helpful or powerful, but it also interferes with the ability to interpret dream-images at face value. Later in this paragraph, Jung cries for mercy from “science that clever knower” and the “serpent of judgement.” This goes back to what I was saying before about the balance between the analytic and the mystical mind. This is one context in which empirical thinking and analysis need not apply. Jung’s instincts to explain and categorize everything, to force them to make sense, and to pass judgement make the experience of katabasis even harder than it already is.

That’s where madness comes in. Madness suspends logic, judgement, and categorization. Madness forces you to allow things to not make sense. It is the state of being submerged in raw, unfiltered unconscious. Here’s what Jung has to say about it:

This is how I overcame madness. If you do not know what divine madness is, suspend judgement and wait for the fruits. But know that there is a divine madness which is nothing other than the overpowering of the spirit of this time through the spirit of the depths. Speak then of sick delusion when the spirit of the depths can no longer stay down and forces a man to speak in tongues instead of in human speech, and makes him believe that he himself is the spirit of the depths. But also speak of sick delusion when the spirit of this time does not leave a man and forces him to see only the surface, to deny the spirit of the depths and to take himself for the spirit of the times. The spirit of this time is ungodly, the spirit of the depths is ungodly, balance is godly.

[…]

Thus can you differentiate sick and divine delusion. Whoever does the one and does without the other you may call sick since he is out of balance.

That phrase “suspend judgement and wait for the fruits” means almost exactly the same thing as something Dionysus told me: “Take your sanity off like a mask, and take everything at face value as you would in a dream.” When you’re traversing the Otherworld, the way to maintain your sanity is to deliberately suspend your sanity. Attempting to overanalyze everything will drive you crazy, literally, because the Otherworld doesn’t conform to any kind of human logic. So, just accept it. If you remove your sanity, then it’ll still be there for you when you come back, instead of it getting damaged by all the nonsense that bombards you.

Jung defines madness as the Spirit of the Depths overtaking the Zeitgeist, i.e. the unconscious mind subsuming the conscious mind. He also distinguishes deliberate, mystical madness from psychiatric disorders — in the former case, one allows the Spirit of the Depths to take over, while in the latter case, the Spirit of the Depths forces itself on the person. I’ve made similar distinctions in some of my answers, like this one. Psychiatric disorders are debilitating, and prevent a person from living a normal life, while my mystical madness doesn’t last beyond my deliberate engagement with it and doesn’t interfere with my normal life. I think it’s interesting that Jung says that when a person is forcibly overtaken by the Spirit of the Depths, they think they are the Spirit of the Depths. That seems to describe all the people I’ve encountered on the internet who claim to be gods, unable to distinguish between their own fixed identities and the massive, inconsistent identities of the spirits. Sometimes it’s good to experience that (“ego death”), but you have to come back down again.

I also think it’s interesting that Jung defines possession by the Zeitgeist, denial of the unconscious mind and its contents, as a sort of mental illness. Such a person is probably the sort who allows atheism or reliance on scientific objectivity to essentially replace religion, blocking out any engagement with the irrational aspects of existence and denying that there is any healthy or productive way to engage with them. (One of the things I think Jung got right is that irrational, mystical, and weird things are an inherent and manifest part of life, and that science needs to find some way of addressing them.) The healthiest mental state is some balance between the two. There’s our running theme of reconciliation of duality.

Jung continues:

But who can withstand fear when the divine intoxication and madness comes to him? Love, soul, and God are beautiful and terrible. The ancients brought over some of the beauty of God into this world, and this world became so beautiful that it appeared to the spirit of the time to be fulfillment, and better than the bosom of the Godhead. The frightfulness and cruelty of the world lay under wraps and in the depths of our hearts. If the spirit of the depths seizes you, you will feel the cruelty and cry out in torment. The spirit of the depths is pregnant with iron, fire, and death. You are right to fear the spirit of the depths, as he is full of horror.

Divine madness is useful and productive, but it’s still madness, and therefore scary as all hell. Looking God full in the face is going to cause insanity, the question is whether it’s the permanent kind or not. God is full of beauty and wonder, but don’t assume (as the Zeitgeist does) that its unfathomable beauty is fulfillment in and of itself, because you still have to confront the abject horror of it to get the full picture. If you don’t, the Spirit of the Depths will make sure you do on its terms instead of yours, and it won’t be pretty.

Jung also says this a couple of paragraphs earlier:

To the extent that the Christianity of this time lacks madness, it lacks divine life. Take note of what the ancients taught us in images: madness is divine.

I’m definitely going to be quoting this line in future posts, because this right here is one of the big reasons I prefer Dionysus to Christ. Madness is divine, but Christianity doesn’t often leave a lot of room for madness, or magic. It categorizes everything into very rigid theology and word-for-word interpretations of the Bible, despite mysticism being at its core and a constant lurking presence throughout its history. (Someday, I promise I will write a long answer on that.) It (sometimes violently) rejects everything that doesn’t conform to its framework as heresy. If Christianity lacks its madness and mysticism, and becomes more about the frameworks of orthodoxy and politics, its spiritual core is gone. One of the running themes throughout Jung’s mystical experiences, going all the way back to his childhood, is that he has to grapple with the fact that Christianity doesn’t serve his spiritual needs. He recognizes that it is incomplete, and that it focuses on only one-half of the equation, but because of the time and place he lives in, he can’t just hop on over to Dionysus like I could. We’ll get back to this, too.

Moving on. Jung provides some interpretation of the three images he saw in the Underworld: the severed head floating in the river, the black scarab, and the red sun:

Blood shone at me from the red light of the crystal, and when I picked it up to discover its mystery, there lay the horror uncovered before me: in the depths of what is to come lay murder. The blond hero lay slain. The black beetle is the death that is necessary for renewal; and so, thereafter, a new sun glowed, the sun of the depths, full of riddles, a sun of the night. And as the rising sun of spring quickens the dead earth, so the sun of the depths quickened the dead, and thus began the terrible struggle between light and darkness. Out of that burst the powerful and ever unvanquished source of blood.

We’ll get back to the dead hero, because that gets its own chapter. The black scarab I immediately associated with the Egyptian god Khepri, who pushes the sun. Another connection I made that I’m surprised Jung didn’t explicitly spell out has to do with his drawing of the red sun — it looks exactly like an egg cell, and it’s surrounded by snakes that look like sperm, one of which is touching it. Jung interprets the snakes as the reanimated dead matter that blots out the sun, but the drawing looks like a moment of conception. A significant portion of Liber Primus focuses on the conception of the god of the new age, which is explicitly a god that reconciles dualities. Here is the conception of the God, inside the womb of the Earth. And, I’m realizing right now as I write this… Zeus conceived Zagreus with Persephone, the lady of the Underworld, in the form of a serpent… Adding on to that, Macrobius identifies Dionysus with the chthonic or dark aspect of the sun: “They observe the holy mystery in the rites by calling the sun Apollo when it is in the upper (that is, daytime) hemisphere; when it is in the lower (that is, night-time) hemisphere, it is considered Dionysus, who is Liber.” Gee, I wonder who the god of the new age is! (Obviously, I’m biased, so take what you will from this.)

It struck me that Jung’s description of the Underworld is very pagan. It doesn’t sound like a Christian depiction of Hell at all. There’s no fire, no demons, no sinners being tortured, none of Dante’s creative punishments or Lucifer and his angels plotting revenge. Instead we get rivers, the sun, a scarab beetle, and loads and loads of snakes. Jung seems to agree, because in a 1925 lecture (cited in the footnotes) he says:

The light in the cave from the crystal was, I thought, like the stone of wisdom [the philosopher’s stone]. The secret murder of the hero I could not understand at all. The beetle of course I knew to be an ancient sun symbol, and the setting sun, the luminous red disk, was archetypal. The serpents I thought might have been connected with Egyptian material. I could not then realize that it was all so archetypal.

I don’t know the details of all Jung’s theories on why he saw these specific images, but here’s my theory: The “pagan-ness” of this Underworld is a sign that it can be escaped. Hell is a place of punishment, of permanent separation from God if not literal torture. The pagan Underworld is a place of death, but death is part of a cycle, and a lot of hero stories involve some sort of katabasis or symbolic death and rebirth. This is the nigredo stage of alchemy, a critical first step of the initiation process. The Christian concept of Hell does not represent that very well. That’s just my opinion.

The next section is a commentary on how events have no inherent meaning, but that humans assign meaning to events:

The events that happen are always the same. But the creative depths of man are not always the same. Events signify nothing, they signify only in us. We create the meaning of events. The meaning is and always was artificial. We make it.

Because of this we seek in ourselves the meaning of events, so that the way of what is to come becomes apparent and our life can flow again.

That which you need comes from yourself, namely the meaning of the event. The meaning of events is not their particular meaning. This meaning exists in learned books. Events have no meaning.

The meaning of events comes from the possibility of life in this world that you create. It is the mastery of this world and the assertion of your soul in this world.

The meaning of events is the supreme meaning, that is not in events, and not in the soul, but in God standing between events and the soul, the mediator of life, the bridge and the going-across.

I like this idea of God standing “between events and the soul.” Events have no meaning, stuff just happens. Looking for meaning in the external world is pointless, so it has to be found in the internal world. In order to put to use all of the information you find in the internal world, you need to bring it outward and impress your soul upon the external world. God is the mediator that allows you to do that. God translates the language of the internal world into that of the external world, and vice-versa. That’s basically the alchemical process and/or Hero’s Journey right there — journey into the internal world, receive spiritual insight, bring it down. I’ve been struggling with that last part, but I know it’s doable.

And now, we finally get to Shadow work! I’m just going to transcribe this entire section:

Therefore I take part in that murder; the sun of the depths also shines in me after the murder has been accomplished; the thousand serpents that want to devour the sun are also in me. I myself am a murderer and murdered, sacrificer and sacrificed. The upwelling blood streams out of me.

You all have a share in the murder. In you the reborn one will come to be, and the sun of the depths will rise, and a thousand serpents will develop from your dead matter and fall on the sun to choke it. Your blood will stream forth. The peoples demonstrate this at the present time in unforgettable acts, that will be written with blood in unforgettable books for eternal memory.

But I ask you, when do men fall on their brothers with mighty weapons and bloody acts? They do such if they do not know that their brother is themselves. They themselves are sacrificers, but they mutually do the service of sacrifice. They must all sacrifice each other, since the time has not yet come when man puts the bloody knife into himself, in order to sacrifice the one he kills in his brother. But whom do people kill? They kill the noble, the brave, the heroes. They take aim at these and do not know that with these they mean themselves. They should sacrifice the hero in themselves, and because they do not know this, they kill their courageous brother.

The time is still not ripe. But through this blood sacrifice, it should ripen. So long as it is possible to murder the brother instead of oneself, the time is not ripe. Frightful things must happen until men grow ripe. But anything else will not ripen humanity. Hence all this that takes place in these days must also be, so that the renewal can come. Since the source of blood that follows the shrouding of the sun is also the source of the new life.

As the fate of the peoples is represented to you in events, so it will happen in your heart. If the hero in you is slain, then the sun of the depths rises in you, glowing from afar, and from a dreadful place. But all the same, everything that up till now seemed to be dead in you will come to life, and will change into poisonous serpents that will cover the sun, and you will fall into night and confusion. Your blood also will stream from many wounds in this frightful struggle. Your shock and doubt will be great, but from such torment the new life will be born. Birth is blood and torment. Your darkness, which you did not suspect since it was dead, will come to life and you will feel the crush of total evil and the conflicts of life that still now lie buried in the matter of your body. But the serpents are dreadful evil thoughts and feelings.

You thought you knew that abyss? Oh you clever people! It is another thing to experience it. Everything will happen to you. Think of all the frightful and devilish things that men have inflicted on their brothers. That should happen to you in your heart. Suffer it yourself through your own hand, and know that it is your own heinous and devilish hand that inflicts the suffering on you, but not your brother, who wrestles with his own devils.

I would like you to see what the murdered hero means. Those nameless men who in our day have murdered a prince are blind prophets who demonstrate in events what then is valid only for the soul. Through the murder of princes we will learn that the prince in us, the hero, is threatened. Whether this should be seen as a good or a bad sign need not concern us. What is awful today is good in a hundred years, and in two hundred years is bad again. But we must recognize what is happening: there are nameless ones in you who threaten your prince, the hereditary ruler.

But our ruler is the spirit of this time, which rules and leads in us all. It is the general spirit in which we think and act today. He is of frightful power, since he has brought immeasurable good to this world and fascinated men with unbelievable pleasure. He is bejeweled with the most beautiful heroic virtue, and wants to drive men up to the brightest solar heights, in everlasting ascent.

The hero wants to open up everything he can. But the nameless spirit of the depths evokes everything that man cannot. Incapacity prevents further ascent. Greater height requires greater virtue. We do not possess it. We must first create it by learning to live with our incapacity. We must give it life. For how else shall it develop into ability?

We cannot slay our incapacity and rise above it. But that is precisely what we wanted. Incapacity will overcome us and demand its share of life. Our ability will desert us, and we will believe, in the sense of the spirit of this time, that it is a loss. Yet it is no loss but a gain, not for outer trappings, however, but for inner capability.

The one who learns to live with his incapacity has learned a great deal. This will lead us to the valuation of the smallest things, and to wise limitation, which the greater height demands. If all heroism is erased, we fall back into the misery of humanity and into even worse. Our foundations will fall into the cesspool of our underworld, among the rubble of all the centuries in us.

The heroic in you is the fact that you are ruled by the thought that this or that is good, that this or that performance is indispensable, this or that cause is objectionable, this or that goal must be attained in headlong striving work, this or that pleasure should be ruthlessly repressed at all costs. Consequently you sin against incapacity. But incapacity exists. No one should deny it, find fault with it, or shout it down.

Jung is speaking in the context of the impending World Wars. That’s the blood sacrifice that he refers to, but everything he says here is also applicable to Shadow work more generally. The reason why people kill each other is because they project their own Shadows, their own Depths, onto each other. The heroes are the ones that die, because people become heroes by going to war and killing a bunch of people or by dying nobly in battle. In order to do Shadow work, you have to admit that you are complicit in this violence, and that you are both the killer and the victim. You’re the one holding the gun. When Jung says that he is both “murderer and murdered, sacrificer and sacrificed,” I’m reminded of Dionysus executing Pentheus by dismemberment, the same way he himself was murdered. I’m also reminded of how bulls and goats were named as representations of Dionysus himself before being sacrificed to him, sacrificing himself to himself. As far as I know, Dionysus is the only Ancient Greek god with that particular dynamic, that direct identification with the animals (and fictional people) sacrificed to him. All of the sacrifice and blood and death paves the way for resurrection and restoration, as it does in alchemy.

These lines are particularly striking: “You thought you knew that abyss? Oh you clever people! It is another thing to experience it. Everything will happen to you. […] Suffer it yourself through your own hand, and know that it is your own heinous and devilish hand that inflicts the suffering on you…” You thought you knew the dark? Oh, you don’t even know the dark, buddy. Not until you see the abyss staring back into you. The real truth is that you are heinous, you are devilish, you are the thing you fear the most and the thing you think you’re fighting against. “Oh you clever people!” is my new favorite insult. Cleverness won’t help you against your Shadow. Shadow is stark.

Facing the Shadow also requires the death of the hero, your “perfect” idealized image of yourself. The Zeitgeist wants you to rise to this ideal and become the most moral, the most pure, the most powerful, etc. But this is just unrealistic. You’re human, and you’re flawed. The way to transcend those flaws is to learn to live with them, maybe even turn them into advantages. But to do that, you have to admit that the flaws are there. No matter how much you may try to sort your actions and qualities into good and bad, useful and useless, meaningful and meaningless, or any other dichotomy, incapacity still exists. Whatever you’ve rejected will always exist, weighing you down, until you figure out how to turn your weaknesses into your greatest strengths. I love the idea of “sinning against incapacity” because it is so transgressive but also so true. You can sin against the dark, too, because the dark is also God.

More to come!

#the red book #the red book jung #carl jung #jungian psychology #jungian archetypes #symbolism #mysticism #mystical experiences #mystical art #shadow work #dionysus #occult #occultism #liber novus #analysis #long post #illuminated manuscript

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