#Because it is the gospel truth

[vampv0id]

These dogs are precisely Hannibal and Will to me. I need you to know I psychologically cannot force myself to not associate them with this image whenever I see it.

[aniah-who]

I don’t want mainstream Christianity. I want Jesus. Stop playing with me.

[mutualcombat]

hey im gonna need you guys to buckle down and help me get halsins ass off my top posts

[meteorstricken]

I want to take a moment to speak frankly and somewhat personally. Historically, I've praised FFXVI for having an excellent trauma narrative, and for the most part, I still think that's true.

But in this moment, during the final fight with Ultima, I feel it falls short. Clive tells Ultima that he could have never known suffering and implies that if he had, as humanity has, that he'd know that suffering results in togetherness and strength.

In most trauma survivor communities, it's considered a grave taboo and even outright cruel to suggest that one owes their strength to suffering. It's considered a form of toxic positivity. In those selfsame communities, one anecdote you might hear repeated from a great number of trauma-informed clinicians is that part of what makes trauma so terrible is that survivors are not infrequently abandoned, sabotaged, or preyed upon as a direct result of the horrors that befall them--even blamed for it--and tragically, by the very shoulders that should have been there for support. By the very hands that should have lifted them up. That is, anguish and suffering often beget more of the same and bring alienation, despair, and learned helplessness.

Clive is wrong here about his well-supported experience being the norm, and he's dead wrong to connect togetherness and strength as symptomatic of having truly suffered. While I can certainly point to a cohesive string of story events that tell why he ultimately came to rely on this line of thinking, as a trauma survivor myself...this last fight always stings, because I invariably start to feel like I too am on the receiving end of his condemnation. Some of the things Clive says to Ultima are things that people have said to me in the past nearly verbatim. (I have since received apologies from those individuals as they've become better educated, but... their words still haunt me.)

That is no small part of where I found my "sympathy for the devil", so to speak.

And if you want an idea of what trauma recovery might sometimes come to feel like when, all too often, you've received the opposite of support--when the very people, communities, and institutions meant to ensure your survival and recovery have instead turned on you, betraying their intended purpose; when your strength and will to live renew or persist but by your own stubbornness and unwillingness to stay down...well...It's a thing that can wax bitter, counterdependent, and full of rage.

[hychlorions]

rereading aa4 transcripts and i ask myself is there anything else klavier could have meant by never once forgetting what was important to him? and no. of course not. it's the truth it was always the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth

[travllingbunny]

Say what you will, but you really can't blame Kendall Roy for thinking that his whole worth as a human being is defined by whether he can become the next Logan Roy, CEO of Waystar Royco. He's been brainwashed into thinking that his whole life, since he was 7. It took less than 39 hours of a TV show for a large chunk of the audience and people who write professional reviews to be brainwashed into thinking the same.

[thrassisfras]

I think one of the more frustrating things about Mormonism was, in my experience, the tendency of teachers to just...not allow debate? Discussion? It was always a sort of "here's the truth, you need to accept it as truth" tone to every lesson.

[queenlucythevaliant]

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking non-sense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although "they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion."

St. Augustine, De Genesi ad Litteram, emphasis mine

[whiskeyswifty]

a lot of swifties need to learn how to decenter men tbfh.

While I agree, I’m also aware that I’m the lesbian entering one of the straightest and whitest fandoms in the world right now, with all the societally regressive and internalized bigotry that comes with that. That is of course largely due to Taylor centering her experiences with the men in her life in the majority of her own songs. And funnily enough, even that doesn’t mean she herself centers men in her own life, but people are engaging with her songs not her personally as being part of her daily life is not accessible to fans. So it’s really more that I am the interloper here poisoning the water by trying to talk about literally anything else. And I have to ask myself am I shocked that the women congregating around a woman who sings about men want to talk about men most of the time? Not really. Hence why I don’t bother with most of them, as we have little in common other than our love of this woman’s music, and I cultivate a little dyke swifite circle where I feel comfortable that someone won’t tell me that Taylor wants me to kill myself because I dared interpret a Precious Man Song to also be about her mom or whatever crimes against Swiftidom they believe I have committed.

also to reiterate i am a lesbian and MOST spaces on planet earth that i walk into are like this so babe, this is NOT my first rodeo. i can navigate that and swerve conversations about men easily at this point.

[ignitesthestxrs]

are you a kiwi? I'm american myself, but honestly feel like I haven't seen enough kiwis talk about the locked tomb (though i think im partly just missing most of the discourse anyway somehow??)..

if you ever feel like layin out some more thoughts ab tlt id love to read em! <3

i am a kiwi! there is a small but thriving kiwi sf/f community, but overall people are not...terribly online, or terribly into fiction lol. i definitely know there are kiwi fans of the series out there but in general i can imagine most of them simply not wanting to get into it. i don't really want to get into it! i just saw a reply on a post i reblogged and lost my mind about it for a couple of seconds.

as a pākehā/white kiwi i am like, both protective of these books, critical of them, and kind of ill-equipped to be the person criticising how māori characters and māoritanga/māori culture is depicted in them.

tamsyn muir is a pākehā author writing māori characters that she didn't initially identify as such getting like,,,increasingly more māori in depiction as the books go on and she learns more about the general consensus on how white people should write characters of colour. and those māori characters are involved in instituting, recreating, participating in a uh....very roman? sort of societal structure? and in the latest book there's this further māorification of Jod while also depicting him as a radical under fire from the government in a compound, and act which has both deep historical and very recent (2007!!)roots in aotearoa nz culture.

this māorification of gideon too with the prince kiriona stuff is also: something. what is it? i don't know. i don't think it's Cancellable Offense Bad, or even bad at all. but there's an overall freedom of mishmashing aspects of kiwi and māori culture into a broader sf/f context that muir has kind of taken it upon herself to perform, when ultimately it's not her who should have been the person who got to do it, you know? the structural racism of the global publishing industry means that a pākehā writer can step up onto that stage with an ease and popularity that a māori writer is going to have institutional difficulty accessing in the same way. do i think carl tor editor picks up these books if they're written by a brown author? idk man

and then on the flip side - this is a part of her lived experience too. as a pākehā writer, choosing to write, do you include your pākehā-ness? your kiwi-ness? choosing to do that, do you include your knowledge and understanding of te ao māori/the māori world? are you stealing or are you sharing? what is yours to share in the first place?

these are questions that i think every pākehā writer should ask themselves as they're writing and they're also questions that i don't think have a Correct Answer, or even an answer full stop. they're things that i think muir started asking around book 3 lol which is a very better late than never kind of thing, but it's also clear as the books go on that she's laying down her road as she runs on it, so to speak.

i think muir is Trying In Public, which is a deeply vulnerable thing to do, but also, she is right now a very popular pākehā writer introducing māori character and culture to a broader audience, many who have not encountered any of this before, in an environment where very few māori writers have an opportunity to do the same.

so when that broader american audience comes and picks up what muir has put down and then unthinkingly applies their own american cultural lens to what they have in their hands - it's weird, right? it's weird in ways that many (i generalise - not all, obviously, there are also many americans who do have global context) americans can't understand, because those americans don't live in a world where they are outsiders on the global stage. even americans who understand that the rest of the world is not america have not necessarily experienced that in a way that is intrinsic, intuitive.

the world is shaped by america, either by its presence or by its absence. so when a pākehā writer creates māori characters and uses te reo māori/the māori language in her work, which then gets read and used and consumed by an american audience as though it is a creation that belongs in their worldview - it becomes disconnected entirely from the source muir borrowed, or stole from, or grew up with. it forces the conversation into this place of whether or not the americans playing with this particular doll know what they're doing or where the doll came from or why it's a doll anyway, instead of like, why has muir made this doll and should she have and are there other people making dolls, or are other people making different things entirely.

links to some sf/f by māori writers:

THE DAWNHOUNDS by Sascha Stronach

LEGACY by Whiti Hereaka

WATCHED by Tihema Baker

PŪRAKAU, ed. Witi Ihimaera and Whiti Hereka

GUARDIAN MAIA

[myhotmessandsoccer]

I so wish I could post about my dream I had last night on twitter but then I'm glad I won't because of the queen and her taliban minions would come at me for days.🙄

[chaotic-guinea-pig]

hi luckypoppies! i LOVE LOVE your fic. its one of the best tsot fics in the fandom!

i hope you dont mind asks but how did you write your worldbuilding? you write it in a way that feels natural but there are no infodumps, but at the same time theres clearly a layer of lore if you squint. share us your magic tricks please 🙏🙏

THANK YOU! <3 That's extremely kind of you, anon. I don't think my fic is even close to deserving such high praise honestly, but I'm honoured to hear you think that. 😭

I shall preface this by saying that I'm not a professional writer by any means; just an amateur who has zero chill for an unpaid hobby. I'm also a character-focused person first before world-focused, so my opinion is going to biased.

The main rule I keep to heart: Instead of treating worldbuilding as an element to be balanced equally with other elements (plot, characters, relationship etc), I weave it into the story. If characters and plot make up the meat of a story, then worldbuilding is the spice that you sprinkle on for flavour.

Essentially, what this means in practice is: show information about the world gradually through the lens of the characters. The world is not just there; it's also lived in by the characters, and you want to show it as such. Personally, I do this by leaving in details that insinuate at things about the world. In my fic, I could have started with two paragraphs about how Larnion and Kupa Keep are now kingdoms co-existing after winning the war over the Stick a century ago, and that in present day Larnion, there's an underlying inequality between humans and elves + tension among the noble elves... but I chose not to. Instead, I tried to show that information through details in the prologue:

The Great Ball, Princess Kenny and Prince Kyle meeting -> implies that Kupa Keep and Larnion are on good enough terms that they can hold events like this and make their respective heirs meet.

"Stan was officially recognised as a knight-in-training, earning the approval of a friendly elf royal knight who was on good terms with the Broflovskis." -> This one is easy to miss, but it implies that maybe, just maybe, not all elves are on good terms with the ruling family... hm.

The bonfire, that the Broflovski House is lenient towards humans, the fact that Broflovskis adopt human children, that elves applauded at Stan's knighting ceremony. - it's enough to imply that on some level, elves are amicable to humans, BUT AT THE SAME TIME:

An elf guard who had accused Stan of being a spy from Kupa Keep, the fact there weren't any humans among the knighthood, even Stan getting convicted of treason without a chance to defend himself.... all of those insinuate that's clear inequality between humans and elves in Larnion. It makes one wonder then, if this is how some elves view humans in their realm, how do they actually Kupa Keep, their supposed allies, then? 🤔

The point of all those details was to carry a vague sense that even years before the main plot (Prince Kyle under assassination attempts) started, there was something already off with the political climate in Larnion (and perhaps Zaron for that matter). I do hope that came across. :'))

The question is, then: how do you come up with these details to sprinkle in?

Easy: lots of research, and whenever you come up with a piece of lore, think about its implications. How does that piece affect your setting? How would it show up in your world? How does it affect your characters (if it does?) Put yourself in the shoes of a different persona (king, commoner, knight etc) and think about what their daily life would look like.

If your kingdom hunts dragons on the regular, you may want to show how knights wear armour crafted from dragon scales, or how there's honour given to dragonslayers.

If the heir is under assassination attempts, then maybe you want to show how the castle gates are closed and how there's more guards running around as usual, commoners gossiping...

If Zaron has an all-powerful object - the Stick of Truth - then you want to think about: has the Stick been used in the past, and if so, for what? How do different types of people view the Stick (do some people view it as an ultimate solution that can solve... or are there some who believe it should never be touched?) Are there perhaps mages dedicated to studying such a powerful object? Does everyone seek its power?

If humans and elves fought over the Stick in the past and are now allies, think about that alliance looks like in practice: are there diplomats? Are the heirs arranged for a political marriage? Maybe they have a trading route? Is one kingdom perhaps still traumatised from the scars of the war? How much do they really trust each other If an elf lived in Kupa Keep, would they have an easy life? Same question applies to a human who lives in Larnion.

It can be overwhelming so it helps to have one document dedicated to keeping track of these details. :) And again, do your research and look at other fantasy fiction for inspiration!!

Hope this helps, anon! :D

[askshivanulegacy]

^^^^ This.

I can't emphasize enough that if it isn't published, it isn't canon.

The experience of any piece of artwork, writing included, is inherent exclusively to YOUR interaction with that work. It's about what YOU find in it. It's about what YOU think it says.

If you're going to the author for anything deeper than clarifying a simple point, whatever you're gonna get back is non-canon. At best, you'll receive what THEY think about the work, but the only thing that matters is what YOU think. If they failed to publish their ideas in that work, those ideas might as well not exist. Most people aren't going out of their way to consult with the author to get the secret Part 2 of the story, or to dig up little niche interviews. The story is in the book or it's not there at all.

This is a huge problem in fandom, where people are raising the creators to godlike levels so they can exist or die based on what the creator says.

Star Wars is just one obvious example. Massive sections of the fandom quote every minor thing George Lucas ever said in the most obscure forums in order to form their basic understanding of the universe ... and these things are not written or published anywhere. And then they can't handle when people quote from the real material instead of some other producer's report of what this guy said.

Lucas is not a god, and what he says about Star Wars doesn't matter. It's fun from, like, a concept art perspective. But the concept art is not the finished product, and if you're harping over his quotes as "evidence" to shoot down things drawn from published work, you're wrong.

You HAVE to understand that the author's interpretation, unwritten and unpublished, is no better than yours ... or anyone else's. Stop using someone else to tell you what to think, and stop putting yourself and your special little personal interpretation on a pedestal above other people trying to enjoy things too. What you have is a headcanon. It's nothing more official than that.

If you don't like the published work as it stands, too bad. That's your problem. The published work isn't going away or becoming invalidated because you think one little interview said so.

ALSO if the creator has some stupid opinion on something or has done something stupid, it has nothing to do with their published work and doesn't invalidate any of it. Someone's enjoyment of media doesn't make any statement about whether they support an author. That's a logical fallacy to think so.

Social media as a whole desperately needs to stop their invasive parasocial obsession with authors and creators. You're all fanatical followers even of the people you hate, which is hilarious. You live, breathe, die, and hang upon every word that even your most detested creator says. You talk about other people letting go, yet there you are still obsessing over their every word.

The irony is incredible.

Of course, be a hate!fan if you want to. That's up to you and your enjoyment(???) of life. But stop attacking other people living perfectly normal lives who are not obsessing over the Entertainment Weekly drama of creators. The media people enjoy is not a reflection of their character or personal beliefs. There's no exception. If you think there is, then boy do I have news for you about your favorite ships, tropes, and kinks.

Folks act like "maybe the author isn't the final authority about what their work means" is some wanky post-modern nonsense and not a simple recognition that a lot of authors are perfectly prepared to bullshit about their own work. Like, leaving big-name popular media aside, I have personally encountered authors being actively disingenuous about their own work for all of the following reasons:

A true answer wouldn't fit the image they've cultivated.

They've decided they like the explanation the readers/viewers have come up with better than what they actually had in mind.

Something that was originally intended as a standalone work ended up growing into a franchise or series, and now they're pretending that was the plan all along for some reason.

They don't want to admit that the bit you're asking about is genuinely just a plot hole.

The real answer gets into some shit they don't care to discuss, so they've prepared a cover story to explain away the parts they don't want to talk about.

Their politics have changed since they wrote it, but they don't want to acknowledge that, so they're constantly trying to re-interpret everything they've ever written to be perfectly consistent with whatever their positions are this week.

They wrote it decades ago and they honestly don't remember what they were thinking at the time, so they're just making shit up; sometimes they also don't remember what shit they made up the last time, so the answer is different every time they're asked.

The work in question is at least partly autobiographical and they can't tell the truth without confessing to a crime in the process.

Most of the good bits are plagiarised and they don't really understand it themselves.

They're lying to you on purpose, for evil reasons.

[nyxlarkyn]

Okay NOW I promise I'm done spamming yall with the same post.

I managed to sorta get it out there by linking it on a smaller post

[bigbootyboss]

i didn't save the comment so i can't recall the exact wording or who said it, but i saw someone on the mha subreddit say re: some doomposting on the penultimate chapter, "is this the theory you guys are gonna get mad about this week?" and if that doesn't sum up the whole series and a lot of reactions to the ending, i don't know what does.