Book Nymph

@ashleynicolehunter

These are some really interesting topics, and they’re ones that I’ve actually thought about from time to time, so I’ll go ahead and spill my headcanons on each of these points!

Nuada’s Thoughts on Pop Culture Elves

Frankly, humans writing about elves, depicting them in video games, or playing them in movies is a major insult to Nuada. It’s racist, offensive, and incredibly irritating. It’s almost like the Elven equivalent of blackface to him, for humans to put on wigs and ear tips and contact lenses and pretend they’re elves. Nuada considers all human portrayals of elves to be inherently racially insensitive without exception, regardless of the intentions or reasons of the individual actors. Writing about elves he feels is just a poor attempt at emulation that pales in comparison to the actual grandeur of Elven races.

Aside from just the insult of inaccurate representation, Nuada also dislikes humans creating Elven characters for the ironic reason that they do so because they claim to loves elves. Elves are cool, sexy, interesting, skilled, so on and so forth, right? That’s what most humans stereotype them as? Nuada’s response is basically, then why are you letting us die?! He would much rather humans honor elves by honoring the treaty and helping them to survive alongside them than playing dress-up and screwing up the Elven language to make a few bucks and have a good time, heh.

His Opinions of Specific Fictional Elves

So… this is purely just based off of my understanding (and personal interpretation) of Nuada and the sense I get of fictional elves when I get into his head a bit. To be fair, you’d have to assume that Nuada would sit down and read/watch/play anything with elves in it that was made by humans in the first place, which is highly unlikely. Secondly, you’d have to get him over the fact that he automatically feels insulted by any humans playing elves at all. In short, he would not have liked the vast majority of them. When I think of a few of the most prominent ones in pop culture that I know fairly well, I get the sense that he would not have liked them. Either he feels too much like they’re humans playing elves, or they just don’t act like elves to him.

Alright, let’s assume that you get Nuada to sit down and watch/read/play stuff and you ask him the question, “Excluding all other perceived offenses, are there any human portrayals of elves that you feel are even halfway accurate?” I get the sense that he would not like Elrond or Galadriel. Elrond is a human playing an elf and that comes across loud and clear. Galadriel is so overdone she seems like a parody more than a serious depiction to him. And he would hate Legolas, but I’m honestly not sure why. I just get a mental image of him shaking his head with a grimace on his face.

There are two elves that I feel he would not only identify with but also admire… if they were real and not played by humans, that is, heh. So of all human-wrought interpretations of elves out there, I believe Nuada would like Fenris from Dragon Age 2/Inquisition and Thranduil from The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug/Battle of the Five Armies. 

Nuada would identify with Fenris bitterness over his slavery, his sour attitude toward humans, his feelings of being misunderstood, and his standoffish nature. I think Fenris would come across as very genuine and relatable as an elf to Nuada. So yeah, both Fenris’ situation and his subsequent attitude about it would be things that would speak to Nuada very much, and I think he would feel this was an accurate representation of how elves feel when they’re beaten down. Or at least… how he would feel.

Thranduil I feel would be the best representation of Elven pride and how royal elves especially would carry themselves. His decisions, his reasoning, the way he spoke, the way he acted, the way he dressed… I think Nuada would approve of the whole depiction. Thranduil had an air of age and wisdom but also pride and a deathly serious demand for respect from pretty much everyone he encountered. Nuada would understand this and applaud it. He would say elves are entitled to such respect and a king like Thranduil is right to demand it. I also think that if Thranduil were a “real” person in Nuada’s world, Nuada would respect him and even agree to follow him under the right circumstances.

Roaming Free on Halloween

This is something that I have headcanoned for a long time that Nuada does! It’s the one time of year when he can roam freely without hiding himself in the shadows and he can go out in the daytime and not have police or other humans hassling him. Although… he thinks the tradition is a little odd, considering its dark origins. 

Long ago, before humans decided to make characters like Tinkerbell and other such fairies that were cute and pretty and helpful, fairies were feared. They were neither cute nor kind. (Putting these in separate links because I don’t want to upset anyone with potentially scary things.) They looked like this, and this, and this one is the scariest, so click at your own risk… here. (They’re examples of fairies from the movie The Hallow, which is a pretty good depiction of ancient fairies in my opinion.) Basically, they were creatures made of earth, bark, and roots that were gnarly and magical and not just of the forest, they were a part of it, and they did not take kindly to human presences.

A rare few wanted to be friends with humans, but had weird and cruel ways of gaining that friendship. Spurning a fairy who wants your friendship might just mean your death. Of course they also were viciously territorial, and if you ventured into their forests or, gods forbid, built a human structure on their land, there would be hell to pay. But perhaps the most feared tactic of the fairies to scare away humans was the existence of the changeling.

A changeling was an infant fairy who would be put in a crib in place of a human child, while the human child would be whisked away to become a fairy themselves, or in darker lore, to be eaten or otherwise killed. As the changeling grew, they would remember who they were and eventually murder their human family. In order to placate the fairies and discourage them from doing such things, people would leave gifts out for them on the night now called Halloween. The idea was to make them happy so they left you alone. The whole “trick-or-treat” thing was basically, leave the fairies gifts or they’ll play tricks on you… and by tricks I mean murdering you or burning your house down or something else generally horrible, heh. To disguise their children so they wouldn’t be taken by the fairies and replaced by changelings, parents would dress them up as like creatures that would be overlooked as nonhuman by the fairies. So that’s where the tradition of dressing up came from.

So for Nuada to see humans carrying on this tradition but having fun with it, and basically going out and begging for candy simply to be indulgent, it not only confuses him but annoys him too. And to have it be completely removed from the original reason why humans once feared the dark, to use his own words, is just a shame in his opinion.

Having said that, it affords him anonymity that is helpful to him when he is trying to gain information or otherwise staking out a place he wants to eventually break into. People are more forgiving of both appearance and actions on Halloween and are more inclined to dismiss weird things or not even notice them in the first place than to really question if what or who they’re seeing is real. If he wanted to, he could kill someone on Halloween and people might be like hey dude, neat trick. He thinks this is really unobservant, unwise, and downright shameful for humans to basically relinquish their survival instincts and situational awareness to having fun, but hey, it works in his favor so he can’t hate it too much. XD

Meet Iorveth, from The Witcher series.

This hot fella was an Aen Seidhe elf, a well-known hater of humans, responsible for burning many human villages and civilian deaths, and was the commander of the last Scoia'tael commando to be broken during the second war with Nilfgaard.

They say all elves are beautiful, that they are born thus. In Iorveth's case someone set out to change this, marking his face with an ugly scar that the elf partially hid beneath a crimson headscarf. Iorveth was a living legend, the elusive leader of a Scoia'tael unit whose members gave no thought to laying down their arms and continued their war against humans. Stories of his deeds, of his deep hatred of dh'oine, painted him as more akin to a vengeful ghost than to an individual made of blood, bone and flesh.

- dh’oine means human

Make a “fan blog” of ur book of Tumblr and stalk ur fandom from within.

Go to a book store, find ur books, sign a copy, then leave.

Write purposefully bad fan fiction of ur book and post it anonymously.

Buy a copy of ur own book and write commentary in the margins, then sell it online.

Cosplay ur own character to a con, don’t let anyone know it’s you.

Using your “fan blog” befriend another fan online. Ask them to video chat you, record their reaction.

Draw purposefully bad fan art and post it anonymously.

Read ALL of the fan fiction of ur book, then declare random ones you like as cannon in the comments.

Talk to aspiring writers online or at schools and encourage them.

Become a beta reader for one of ur fans.

Hold long in depth conversations with a fan who doesn’t recognize you, disagree with everything they say.

Ask to talk a picture with people who recognize you on the street before they have a chance to ask you first.

Anonymously commission artists to draw ur characters, then surprise them by posting it to ur “official blog.” Make sure you credit them so you draw more attention to their amazing artwork!!!

Tease ur fans about the next book coming out.

The capitalists retaliate with machines using enslaved human brains as “computers” ala Dune/Warhammer 40K.

“You’ll laugh.”

“Seriously, what were you? Law enforcement, security, construction?…”

“…I was a burger-flipper.”

“…”

“…also cooked up fries.”

“Get outta here.”

“You’d be surprised the shit you see just, y’know, making Big Macs. Sure, we had the folks upset about us ‘taking jobs’; couldn’t really blame ‘em, even if Forty-Three couldn’t talk without stuttering after that lady dumped a Coke on her. But the worst of it - worst of any of it - was they’d have us just…throw away everything that didn’t sell at the end of the day. Perfectly good food, all of it.

“When we first started, we were all like, ‘okay, whatever you say, you’re the boss,’ but you try keeping that attitude when you see a family of four split a ten-piece McNuggets because they can’t afford anything more and still pay for gas. We saw that shit there all the time. We had people desperate for so much as a cold french fry lingering by the door while assholes sitting on more money than they’d ever see in their entire lives treated us like we were trying to rob ‘em at gunpoint if they had to pay fifty cents for an extra little cup of sauce.

“So we got together and told ourselves, ‘we can do something about this.’ We could just gather up all the food they were gonna make us toss, figure out a way to give it out to the people who needed it. -bitter laugh- You can guess how well that went over.”

“…Y’know, that all sounds pretty human.”

they actually fought capitalism as soon as they were able to in his stories

supercomputers that coordinated the entire world would pull shit to get shady leaders and harmful projects sabotaged

tim nods, pushing his salad around. “it’s kind of annoying.” he’s gone vegan ever since he could talk to animals. his cheeks are sallow. “yesterday i absorbed static and i can’t stop shocking myself.”

“you don’t know what from,” shay is detangling her hair at the table, even though it’s not polite. about a second ago, her hair was perfect, which implies she’s been somewhere in the inbetween. “try millions of multiverses that your powers conflict with.” 

“did we die in the last one?” you grin and she grins and tim grins but nobody answers the question.

now she has a cut over her left eye and her hair is shorter. she looks tired and tim looks tired and you look down at your 18-year-old hands, which are nothing. 

they ship out tomorrow. they go out to the frontlines or wherever it is that superheroes go to fight supervillains; the cream of the crop. the starlight banner kids. 

“you both are trying too hard,” you tell them, “couldn’t you have been, like, really good at surfing?”

“god,” shay groans, “what i’d give to only be in the olympics.”

xxx in the night, tim is asleep. on the way home, he absorbed telekinesis, and hates it too. 

shay looks at you. “i’m scared,” she says.

you must not have died recently, because she looks the same she did at dinner, cut healing slowly over her eye the way it’s supposed to, not the hyper-quickness of a timejump. just shay, living in the moment when the moment is something everyone lives in. her eyes are wide and dark the way brown eyes can be, that swelling fullness that feels so familiar and warm, that piercing darkness that feels like a stone at the back of your tongue.

“you should be,” you say.

her nose wrinkles, she opens her mouth, but you plow on.

“they’re going to take one look at you and be like, ‘gross, shay? no thanks. you’re too pretty. it’s bringing down like, morale, and things’. then they’ll kick you out and i’ll live with you in a box and we’ll sell stolen cans of ravioli.”

she’s grinning. “like chef boyardee or like store brand?”

“store brand but we print out chef boyardee labels and tape them over the can so we can mark up the price.”

“where do we get the tape?” 

“we, uh,” you look into those endless dark eyes, so much like the night, so much like a good hot chocolate, so much like every sleepover you’ve had with the two of your best friends, and you say, “it’s actually just your hair. i tie your hair around the cans to keep the label on.”

she throws a pillow at you. 

you both spend a night planning what you’ll do in the morning when shay is kicked out of Squadron 8, Division 1; top rankers that are all young. you’ll both run away to the beach and tim will be your intel and you’ll burn down the whole thing. you’re both going to open a bakery where you will do the baking and she’ll use her time abilities to just, like, speed things up so you don’t have to wake up at dawn. you’re both going to become wedding planners that only do really extreme weddings.

she falls asleep on your shoulder. you do not sleep at all.

in the morning, they are gone.

xxx

squadron 434678, Division 23467 is basically “civilian status.” you still have to know what to expect and all that stuff. you’re glad that you’re taking extra classes at college; you’re kind of bored re-learning the stuff you were already taught in high school. there are a lot of people who need help, and you’re good at that, so you help them. 

tim and shay check in from time to time, but they’re busy saving the world, so you don’t fault them for it. in the meantime, you put your head down and work, and when your work is done, you help the people who can’t finish their work. and it kind of feels good. kind of.

xxx

at twenty, squadron 340067, division 2346 feels like a good fit. tim and you go out for ice cream in a new place that rebuilt after the Phoenix group burned it down. you’ve chosen nurse-practitioner as your civilian job, because it seems to fit, but you’re not released for full status as civilian until you’re thirty, so it’s been a lot of office work.

tim’s been on the fritz a lot lately, overloading. you’re worried they’ll try to force him out on the field. he’s so young to be like this.

“i feel,” he says, “like it all comes down to this puzzle. like i’m never my own. i steal from other people’s boxes.”

you wrap your hand around his. “sometimes,” you say, “we love a river because it is a reflection.”

he’s quiet a long time after that. a spurt of flame licks from under his eyes.

“i wish,” he says, “i could believe that.”

xxx

twenty three has you in squad 4637, division 18. really you’ve just gotten here because you’re good at making connections. you know someone who knows someone who knows you as a good kid. you helped a woman onto a bus and she told her neighbor who told his friend. you’re mostly in the filing department, but you like watching the real superheroes come in, get to know some of them. at this level, people have good powers but not dangerous ones. you learn how to help an 18 year old who is a loaded weapon by shifting him into a non-violent front. you get those with pstd home where they belong. you put your head down and work, which is what you’re good at. 

long nights and long days and no vacations is fine until everyone is out of the office for candlenights eve. you’re the only one who didn’t mind staying, just in case someone showed up needing something. 

the door blows open. when you look up, he’s bleeding. you jump to your feet. 

“oh,” you say, because you recognize the burning bird insignia on his chest, “I think you have the wrong office.”

“i just need,” he spits onto the ground, sways, collapses. 

well, okay. so, that’s, not, like. great. “uh,” you say, and you miss shay desperately, “okay.”

you find the source of the bleeding, stabilize him for when the shock sets in, get him set up on a desk, sew him shut. two hours later, you’ve gotten him a candlenights present and stabilized his vitals. you’ve also filed him into a separate folder (it’s good to be organized) and found him a home, far from the warfront.

when he wakes up, you give him hot chocolate (god, how you miss shay), and he doesn’t smile. he doesn’t smile at the gift you’ve gotten him (a better bulletproof vest, one without the Phoenix on it), or the stitches. that’s okay. you tell him to take the right medications, hand them over to him, suggest a doctor’s input. and then you hand over his folder with a new identity in it and a new house and civilian status. you take a deep breath. 

he opens it and bursts into tears. he doesn’t say anything. he just leaves and you have to clean up the blood, which isn’t very nice of him. but it’s candlenights. so whatever. hopefully he’ll learn to like his gift.

xxx

squadron 3046, division 2356 is incredibly high for a person like you to fit. but still, you fit, because you’re good at organization and at hard work, and at knowing how to hold on when other people don’t see a handhold.

shay is home. you’re still close, the two of you, even though she feels like she exists on another planet. the more security you’re privy to, the more she can tell you. 

you brush her hair as she speaks about the endless man who never dies, and how they had to split him up and hide him throughout the planet. she cries when she talks about how much pain he must be in.

“can you imagine?” she whispers, “i mean, i know he’s phoenix, but can you imagine?” 

“one time i had to work retail on black friday,” you say.

she sniffles.

“one time my boss put his butt directly on my hand by accident and i couldn’t say anything so i spent a whole meeting with my hand directly up his ass,” you say.

her eyes are so brown, and filling, and there are scars on her you’ve never noticed that might be new or very, very, very old; and neither of you know exactly how much time she’s actually been alive for. 

“i mean,” you say, “yeah that might hurt but one time i said goodbye to someone but they were walking in the same direction. i mean can you imagine.”

she laughs, finally, even though it’s weakly, and says, “one time even though i can manipulate time i slept in and forgot to go to work even though i was leading a presentation and i had to look them in the face later to tell them that.”

“you’re a compete animal,” you tell her, and look into those eyes, so sad and full of timelines you’ll never witness, “you should be kicked out completely.”

she wipes her face. “find me in a box,” she croaks, “selling discount ravioli.”

xxx

you don’t know how it happens. but you guess the word gets around. you don’t think you like being known to them as someone they can go to, but it’s not like they’ve got a lot of options. many of them just want to be out of it, so you get them out, you guess.

you explain to them multiple times you haven’t done a residency yet and you really only know what an emt would, but they still swing by. every time they show up at your office, you feel your heart in your chest: this is it, this is how you die, this is how it ends. 

“so, like, this group” you say, trying to work the system’s loopholes to find her a way out of it, “from ashes come all things, or whatever?”

she shrugs. you can tell by looking at her that she’s dangerous. “it’s corny,” she says. another shrug. “i didn’t mean to wind up a criminal.”

you don’t tell her that you sort of don’t know how one accidentally becomes a criminal, since you kind-of-sort-of help criminals out, accidentally. 

“i don’t believe any of that stuff,” she tells you, “none of that whole… burn it down to start it over.” she swallows. “stuff just happens. and happens. and you wake up and it’s still happening, even though you wish it wasn’t.”

you think about shay, and how she’s covered in scars, and her crying late at night because of things nobody else ever saw.

“yeah,” you say, and print out a form, “i get that.”

and you find a dangerous woman a normal home.

xxx

“you’re squadron 905?” 

“division 34754,” you tell him. watch him look down at your ID and certification and read your superpower on the card and then look back up to you and then back down to the card and then back up at you, and so on. he licks his chapped lips and stands in the cold.

this happens a lot. but you smile. the gatekeeper is frowning, but then hanson walks by. “oh shit,” he says, “it’s you! come right on in!” he gives you a hug through your rolled-down window.

the gatekeeper is in a stiff salute now. gulping in terror. hanson is one of the strongest people in this sector, and he just hugged you.

the gate opens. hanson swaggers through. you shrug to the gatekeeper. “i helped him out one time.” 

inside they’re debriefing. someone has shifted sides, someone powerful, someone wild. it’s not something you’re allowed to know about, but you know it’s bad. so you put your head down, and you work, because that’s what you’re good at, after all. you find out the gatekeeper’s name and send him a thank-you card and also handmade chapstick and some good earmuffs.

shay messages you that night. i have to go somewhere, she says, i can’t explain it, but there’s a mission and i might be gone a long time.

you stare at the screen for a long time. your fingers type out three words. youq erase them. you instead write where could possibly better than stealing chef boyardee with me?

she doesn’t read it. you close the tab. 

and you put your head down. and work.

xxx

it’s in a chili’s. like, you don’t even like chili’s? chili’s sucks, but the boss ordered it so you’re here to pick it up, wondering if he gave you enough money to cover. things have been bad recently. thousands dying. whoever switched sides is too powerful to stop. they destroy anyone and anything, no matter the cost.

the phoenix fire smells like pistachios, you realize. you feel at once part of yourself and very far. it happens so quickly, but you feel it slowly. you wonder if shay is involved, but know she is not.

the doors burst in. there’s screaming. those in the area try their powers to defend themselves, but everyone is civilian division. the smell of pistachios is cloying. 

then they see you. and you see them. and you put your hands on your hips.

“excuse me, tris,” you say, “what are you doing?”

there’s tears in her eyes. “i need the money,” she croaks.

“From a chili’s?” you want to know, “who in their right mind robs a chili’s? what are you going to do, steal their mozzarella sticks?”

“it’s connected to a bank on the east wall,” she explains, “but i thought it was stupid too.”

you shake your head. you pull out your personal checkbook. you ask her how much she needs, and you see her crying. you promise her the rest when you get your paycheck.

someone bursts into the room. shouts things. demands they start killing. 

but you’re standing in the way, and none of them will kill you or hurt you, because they all know you, and you helped them at some point or another, or helped their friend, or helped their children.

tris takes the money, everyone leaves. by the time the heroes show up, you’ve gotten everyone out of the building.

the next time you see tris, she’s marrying a beautiful woman, and living happily, having sent her cancer running. you’re a bridesmaid at the wedding.

xxx

“you just,” the director wants to know now, “sent them running?” 

hanson stands between her and you, although you don’t need the protection.

“no,” you say again, for the millionth time, “i just gave her the money she needed and told her to stop it.”

“the phoenix group,” the director of squadron 300 has a vein showing, “does not just stop it.”

you don’t mention the social issues which confound to make criminal activity a necessity for some people, or how certain stereotypes forced people into negative roles to begin with, or how an uneven balance of power punished those with any neurodivergence. instead you say, “yeah, they do.”

“i’m telling you,” hanson says, “we brought her out a few times. it happens every time. they won’t hurt her. we need her on our team.”

your spine is stiff. “i don’t do well as a weapon,” you say, voice low, knowing these two people could obliterate you if they wished. but you won’t use people’s trust against them, not for anything. besides, it’s not like trust is your superpower. you’re just a normal person.

hanson snorts. “no,” he says, “but i like that when you show up, the fighting just… stops. that’s pretty nice, kid.”

“do you know… what we are dealing with…. since agent 25… shifted….?” the director’s voice is thin.

“yeah,” hanson says, “that’s why i think she’d be useful, you know? add some peace to things.”

the director sits down. sighs. waves her hand. “whatever,” she croaks, “do what you want. reassign her.”

hanson leads you out. over your shoulder, you see her put her head in her hands. later, you get her a homemade spa kit, and make sure to help her out by making her a real dinner from time to time, something she’s too busy for, mostly.

at night, you write shay messages you don’t send. telling her things you cannot manage.

one morning you wake up to a terrible message: shay is gone. never to be seen again.

xxx

you’re eating ice cream when you find him.

behind you, the city is burning. hundreds dead, if not thousands.

he’s staring at the river. maybe half-crying. it’s hard to tell, his body is shifting, seemingly caught between all things and being nothing.

“ooh buddy,” you say, passing him a cone-in-a-cup, the way he likes it, “talk about a night on the town.”

the bench is burning beside him, so you put your jacket down and snuff it out. it’s hard sitting next to him. he emits so much.

“hey tim?” you say. 

“yeah?” his voice is a million voices, a million powers, a terrible curse. 

“can i help?” you ask.

he eats a spoonful of ice cream. 

“yeah,” he says eventually. “i think i give up.”

xxx

later, when they praise you for defeating him, you won’t smile. they try to put you in the media; an all-time hero. you decline every interview and press conference. you attend his funeral with a veil over your head.

the box goes into the ground. you can’t stop crying.

you’re the only one left at the site. it’s dark now, the subtle night.

you feel her at your side and something in your heart stops hurting. a healing you didn’t know you needed. her hands find yours.

“they wanted me to kill him,” she says, “they thought i’d be the only one who could.” her hands are warm. you aren’t breathing.

“beat you to it,” you say. 

“i see that,” she tells you. 

you both stand there. crickets nestle the silence.

“you know,” she says eventually, “i have no idea which side is the good one.”

“i think that’s the point of a good metaphor about power and control,” you say, “it reflects the human spirit. no tool or talent is good or bad.”

“just useful,” she whispers. after a long time, she wonders, “so what does that make us?”

xxx

it’s a long trek up into the mountains. shay seems better every day. more solid. less like she’s on another plane.

“heard you’re a top ten,” she tells me, her breath coming out in a fog. you’ve reclassed her to civilian. it took calling in a few favors, but you’ve got a lot. 

“yeah,” you say, “invulnerable.”

“oh, is that your superpower?” she laughs. she knows it’s not.

“that’s what they’re calling it,” you tell her, out of breath the way she is not, “it’s how they explain a person like me at the top.”

“if that means ‘nobody wants to kill me’, i think i’m the opposite.” but she’s laughing, in a light way, a way that’s been missing from her.

the cabin is around the corner. the lights are already on. 

“somebody’s home,” i grin.

tim, just tim, tim who isn’t forced into war and a million reflections, opens the door. “come on in.” xxx squadron one, division three. a picture of shay in a wedding dress is on my desk. she looks radiant, even though she’s marrying little old me.

Me: *sees y’all send death threats to writers because you didn’t agree with their decisions*

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3264658/privacy/microsoft-to-ban-offensive-language-from-skype-xbox-office-and-other-services.html

http://www.pcgamesinsider.biz/news/66852/consumers-could-lose-money-and-games-for-using-offensive-language-on-microsoft-services-as-of-may/

if you want to switch away from MS Office, here’s libreoffice and openoffice for your productivity needs. (libreoffice lets you save as .docx, which is useful for assignments and such, while openoffice doesn’t. both let you save as PDF.) 

You have no idea how many people lurk on your work. No idea how many times people go back to revisit your work. How big they smile when they simply think about your work. How fast their heart beats, how excited they get when they see that you posted something.

People are shy with their feedback. Sometimes it’s because they’re simply shy. Other times it’s because they assume you already know how great and talented you are. Could be both.

Demon horns being broken halos from when they were angels. 

Here’s a visual representation of angels and demons.

I figure that as angels, their “horns” would glow when connected to become traditional halos. However, this blinds the angel with heavenly light, making the angel rely on God’s guidance.

Angels who break their halos become demons, and willingly grow their horns in obscure shapes so it won’t connect back into a halo. Because the halo no longer blinds them, demons can finally see but can no longer communicate with God for guidance – the light they once gave to heaven now belongs to them, hence demons being proficient with fire allowing them to see in the dark.

Extra notes on horns & halos:

Circular horns (Halos) are smooth and easy for God to “grab” like a chain.

The only way angels can break their own halos is through strong, direct, hard force; rebellious angels willingly fell from heaven, breaking their halos upon hitting our world’s surface. That’s why demons are called “fallen angels”.

The only thing that can hurt God and other angels is another angel, so the shattered remains of a demon’s old halo would be reformed into tridents and pitchforks commonly associated with the devil.

You’re allowed to be tired, even if you haven’t “done” anything and you’re allowed to be tired even if you did less than someone else.

1. If your body is randomly tired, that is a bad thing.

2. If you did less than someone else (assuming you were doing the same task) you should not be as tired, if tired at all, compared to the other person.

Like, I literally do not give a shit if someone did nothing that day and they’re tired and aren’t disabled, they’re still allowed to be tired because people get tired. Sometimes you are just tired for no damn reason. Sometimes it’s because you are ill or disabled. That doesn’t make people lazy. Which people are also allowed to be from time to time.

They argued from ignorance and then blamed you for it.

Susanna and the Elders, Restored (Left)

Susanna and the Elders, Restored with X-ray (Right)

For those who don’t know about this painting, the artist was the Baroque artist Artemisia Gentileschi.

Gentileschi was a female painter in a time when it was very largely unheard of for a woman to be an artist. She managed to get the opportunity for training and eventual employment because her father, Orazio, was already a well established master painter who was very adamant that she get artistic training. He apparently saw a high degree of skill in some artwork she did as a hobby in childhood. He was very supportive of her and encouraged her to resist the “traditional attitude and psychological submission to brainwashing and the jealousy of her obvious talents.”  

Gentileschi became extremely well known in her time for painting female figures from the Bible and their suffering. For example, the one seen above depicts the story from the Book of Daniel. Susanna is bathing in her garden when two elders began to spy on her in the nude. As she finishes they stop her and tell her that they will tell everyone that they saw her have an affair with a young man (she’s married so this is an offense punishable by death) unless she has sex with them. She refuses, they tell their tale, and she is going to be put to death when the protagonist of the book (Daniel) stops them.

So that painting above? That was her first major painting. She was SEVENTEEN-YEARS-OLD. For context, here is a painting of the same story by Alessandro Allori made just four years earlier in 1606: 

Wowwwww. That does not look like a woman being threatened with a choice between death or rape. So imagine 17 year old Artemisia trying to approach painting the scene of a woman being assaulted. And she paints what is seen in the x-ray above. A woman in horrifying, grotesque anguish with what appears to be a knife poised in her clenched hand. Damn that shit is real. Who wants to guess that she was advised by, perhaps her father or others, to tone it down. Women can’t look that grotesque. Sexual assault can’t be depicted as that horrifying. And women definitely can’t be seen as having the potential to fight back. Certainly not in artwork. Women need to be soft. They need to wilt from their captors but still look pretty and be a damsel in distress. So she changed it. 

What’s interesting to note is that she eventually painted and stuck with some of her own, less traditional depictions of women. However, that is more interesting with some context.  

(Warning for reference to rape, torture, and images of paintings which show violence and blood.)

So, Gentileschi’s story continues in the very next year, 1611, when her father hires Agostino Tassi, an artist, to privately tutor her. It was in this time when Tassi raped her. He then proceeded to promise that he would marry her. He pointed out that if it got out that she had lost her virginity to a man she wasn’t going to marry then it would ruin her. Using this, he emotionally manipulated her into continuing a sexual relationship with him. However, he then proceeded to marry someone else. Horrified at this turn of events she went to her father. Orazio was having none of this shit and took Tassi to court. At that time, rape wasn’t technically an offense to warrant a trial, but the fact that he had taken her virginity (and therefore technically “damaged Orazio’s property”. ugh.) meant that the trial went along. It lasted for 7 months. During this time, to prove the truth of her words, Artemisia was given invasive gynecological examinations and was even questioned while being subjected to torture via thumb screws. It was also discovered during the trial that Tassi was planning to kill his current wife, have an affair with her sister, and steal a number of Orazio’s paintings. Tassi was found guilty and was given a prison sentence of…. ONE. YEAR……. Which he never even served because the verdict was annulled.

During this time and a bit after (1611-1612), Artemisia painted her most famous work of Judith Slaying Holofernes. This bible story involved Holofernes, an Assyrian general, leading troops to invade and destroy Bethulia, the home of Judith. Judith decides to deal with this issue by coming to him, flirting with him to get his guard down, and then plying him with food and lots of wine. When he passed out, Judith and her handmaiden took his sword and cut his head off. Issue averted. The subject was a very popular one for art at the time. Here is a version of the scene painted in 1598-99 by Carivaggio, whom was a great stylistic influence on Artemisia:

This depiction is a pretty good example of how this scene was typically depicted. Artists usually went out of their way to show Judith committing the act (or having committed it) while trying to detach her from the actual violence of it. In this way, they could avoid her losing the morality of her character and also avoid showing a woman committing such aggression. So here we see a young, rather delicate looking Judith in a pure white dress. She is daintily holding down this massive man and looks rather disgusted and upset at having to do this. Now, here is Artemisia’s:

Damn. Thats a whole different scene. Here Holofernes looks less like he’s simply surprised by the goings ons and more like a man choking on his own blood and struggling fruitlessly against his captors. The blood here is less of a bright red than in Carrivaggio’s but is somehow more sickening. It feels more real, and gushes in a much less stylized way than Carrivaggio’s. Not to mention, Judith here is far from removed from the violence. She is putting her physical weight into this act. Her hands (much stronger looking than most depictions of women’s hands in early artwork) are working hard. Her face, as well, is completely different. She doesn’t look upset, necessarily, but more determined. 

It’s also worth note that the handmaiden is now involved in the action. It’s worth note because, during her rape trial, Artemisia stated that she had cried for help during the initial rape. Specifically she had called for Tassi’s female tenant in the building, Tuzia. Tuzia not only ignored her cries for help, but she also denied the whole happening. Tuzia had been a friend of Artemisia’s and in fact was one of her only female friends. Artemisia felt extremely betrayed, but rather than turning her against her own gender, this event instilled in her the deep importance of female relationships and solidarity among women. This can be seen in some of her artwork, and I believe in the one above, as well, with the inclusion of the handmaiden in the act.

So, I just added a million words worth of information dump on a post when no one asked me, but there we go. I could talk for ages about Artemisia as a person and her depictions of women (even beyond what I wrote above. Don’t get me started on her depictions of female nudes in comparison to how male artists painted nude women at the time.) 

To sum up: Artemisia Gentileschi is rad as hell. This x-ray is also rad as hell and makes her even radder.