#Faith in Suffering

[nathan-r-dooley]

Job 17:1-16 | Job’s Ongoing Lament

The Verses “My spirit is broken, my days are extinguished,The grave is ready for me.Certainly mockers are with me,And my eye gazes on their provocation. Make a pledge for me with Yourself;Who is there that will be my guarantor?For You have kept their hearts away from understanding;Therefore You will not exalt them.He who informs against friends for share of the spoils,The eyes of his children…

[hussyknee]

Trying to explain what the fuck just happened in Lankan politics today.

The leftist party has won 159 seats out of 218 in the Parliamentary elections. The single biggest landslide win since we broke from the British and achieved universal franchise in 1948.

Any party achieving a super majority in the executive and legislative is, objectively speaking, bad. It disables checks and balances, which is a catastrophic thing for any democracy, and the only two other times it's happened for us has irrevocably eroded the fabric of civic rights and democratic freedom. Also, the reason the NPP won the North and East is that the colonized, genocided and subjugated people there have no faith in electoralism anymore. The way this government has engaged minority issues has been utterly abysmal and now they've been rewarded for it.

On the other hand:

The winners. Are all. Grassroots. Candidates.¹

We have voted out every single career criminal that's been barnacled into the Lankan political arena since before I've been alive. The fascist party has only three seats.² The other fascists didn't win a single seat. The neoliberal legacy party won none. There are only forty people in Parliament that represent any sort of dynastic political legacy. After 76 solid years of nothing but political dynasties.

This is barely five years after the Rajapaksas swept in and absolutely glutted the Parliament with their family members and cronies end to end.

This is the illegitimate interim government we had for most of the last 18 months. We literally, physically, chased the Rajapaksas out of the country and this fucking demon set up a puppet government just so he could finally sit in that goddamn chair and be the despot he'd always dreamed of in exchange for letting them all come back. He's now gone. His entire circle is gone.

THEY ARE ALL FUCKING GONE.

In US terms, just imagine that, five years from now, when Trump's GOP has control of everything, the entire GOP and the worst of the Dems are all purged from Congress and Senate, the Green Party in control of all three branches of government under a pro-union left-wing President and an unmarried female LGBT rights activist Vice President, and the Dems reduced to barely 20% of the House.

This is my anthropology professor. She joined politics from the small nascent leftist coalition to help keep the government accountable. She's now the Prime Minister and the most popular Parliamentary candidate in the nation's history. (Edit: She was knocked off first place by a dude in the final result. Boo.)

(On the other hand— the woman who helped make me a radical anarchist and literally helped write a book on political dissent and resistance...now is the state. Uh.)

But there are so many women in Parliament! We had the lowest female representation in a South Asian Parliament and some of them were from the list of seats reserved for parties rather than elected ones. Most were either anti-feminist conservative embarrassments, widows and daughters of elite politicians and neoliberal shills. It's still only an increase of a few percentage points (Edit: from the previous 5% to 10% in the final result!) but now we have elected academics, feminist advocates, activists! There Is a representative for Malaiyaha Tamils in the Central Province for the first time in history and it's a young woman! (Edit: now it's two female Malaiyaha MPS!!) This is the plantation community that still live in conditions closest to the slavery the British forced upon them two hundred years ago!

I'm like. Completely mindfucked. To be very very clear, the NPP coalition formed around the nucleus of the JVP that used to be communist but haven't been in 30 years, they're now just social democrats who are left of places like the US and UK, whose "left" is now center-right. They're only threatening to the Western mainstream media for some reason who can't stop bleating about how we have a "Marxist" government now. In reality, the actual chances for radical reform are still quite low, and the opportunity for further erosion is quite high with a super majority government regardless of affiliation.

On the other hand:

What the fuck.

Sometimes living through historical events is really damn amazing.

---

¹ Well, nearly. There are a few career politicians and a nepo baby but they aren't so bad either.

² Goddamn it, Baby Rajapaksa and Sri Lanka's answer to JD Vance have wormed their way in using the list of Constitutionally reserved party seats for non-elected members. FUCK the National List.

[hopecorps]

lucretia adventurezones is genuinely one of the best conceived characters of all time and the tragedy that taako and by extension so much of the audience cannot forgive her for her selfishness driven by her steadfast belief in what is right and her immediate decade-long lonely punishment where thirty two years of her life were burned away from her, completely alone, makes my skin ache

i get to this point in the stolen century where lucretia is maybe 18 years old and also 100 years old, so dedicated to preserving life but terrified of living it, and i hear second-hand in less than two minutes about how she fought and ran and salvaged and nearly died entirely alone for an entire year when the six remaining people alive who have ever known her have been frozen into statues. we see her again and she is out of breath and sweaty and completely broken and relieved and changed forever and i think: of course she made that decision

of course she would do anything in the world to save her friends. of course she would take it into her own hands and be selfish and burn the world down and she would do it to save them. she would do it to save the world and she would do it to save the universe. it's so selfish and so unselfish.

and it's like. of course taako can't forgive her for making him forget lup. but i can also imagine years and years and years going by while the world descends into chaos and barry and taako nearly kill themselves and never stop looking for her and never find her. especially because if lup had made it back from that mission she would have immediately been there with lucretia trying to undo what they had done

lucretia is so beautiful and amazing and fantastic because she is the big bad the entire time. she pins them all against each other. she is who she warns them about. she got them into this situation in the first place. she cursed the entire world. she gains their trust by lying to them and she leaves them all so defenseless against the hunger until the second it comes for them.

but she was right. she was right the entire time. she loved them. she made sure they had each other even when she was all alone. she did the only thing that she knew how to do in order to save them all and she was right and she did it all out of love and it worked and some of them will never ever forgive her and she knew that and did it anyway. and i love her so much

[mindofserenity]

“Death is no longer terrifying, this life is.”

[donutfloats]

Gabriel’s flock is the closest you’re gonna get to a cult that actually isn’t a cult due to their mostly pacifistic ways

This does cause problems however when dissenters or spies start causing problems

Gabriel is a little backwards with how they deal with people like this, as they simply just kick them out instead of forcing them to to change their ways

Granted if they cause actual problems, like stealing, damage to property, or hurting others: they will get sent to jail

For the most part it’s these individuals choice if they want to stay, Gabriel isn’t forcing them

Doesn’t mean Gabriel can’t get frustrated tho and contemplate “what if I just said fuck it and murdered these people”

[nukbody]

Jeckole I've never posted cause....uhhhh.....UHHH

[disciplesofjehovah]

[thehungarythrophy]

if i was a real poet i would talk about landoscar leading mclaren back to glory being written in the stars, and destiny and the prophecy of their racing numbers, but i am tired so i can only offer this :

[shortnotsweet]

[ “SOMEBODY TOLD ME”]:

BREAKING MY BACK JUST TO KNOW YOUR NAME. SEVENTEEN TRACKS AND I’VE HAD IT WITH THIS GAME. A BREAKIN’ MY BACK JUST TO KNOW YOUR NAME—BUT HEAVEN AIN’T CLOSE IN A PLACE LIKE THIS.

— The Killers, Hot Fuss (2004)

Princess Rhaenyra’s insolence is wearing her stepmother’s patience thin. Queen Alicent is not ten years her senior, but even during her own sixteenth year, she cannot recall herself behaving so brazenly. She would never burst into courtly discussions in nothing but gilded armor and the underskirts of her riding leathers, awash in blood. (She would never be spotted in blood that was not her own, anyway. Alicent has never picked up a sword, not one that belonged to her.) Nevermind that Rhaenyra is attending to diplomatic affairs with bared teeth and scales, no—the crux of the matter is just that, her affairs. Rhaenyra is the Realm’s Delight, a beauty incomparable to any fair maiden, Alicent included. She indulges herself with appetite of a spoiled child, the confidence of man, and the pickings befitting only to her royal blood. Criston Cole. Daemon Targaryen. Harwin Strong. Laena Velaryon. She’s full of love, isn’t she? That selfish, foolish girl. What does Rhaenyra Targaryen know of love, of duty? She is a child in so many ways—she thinks killing makes her a man, thinks the throne is hers despite being a woman, thinks she can have her knight and her uncle and her protector and Laena Velaryon in one fail swoop. She’s wrong. She doesn’t know herself half as well as Alicent does. Alicent, who sees her for what she truly is, who wants to see all of her and more of her and none of her. Alicent has been stolen into the Keep by her own father—both of their fathers—but Rhaenyra is the key to this place, is the window to everything barred. Rhaenyra Targaryen has a dragon. Rhaenyra can fly.

That’s what Rhaenyra had promised her once, with her lips pulled back in a grin, exposing the white of her teeth like the violently radiant creature she was. “Perhaps when you grow tired of plotting against me, we shall ride on dragonback together,” she had said. The tease.

Alicent had yanked her into an empty corridor by the silk of her sleeve, ready to chastise her for her ill behavior. Conversing with the lords and ladies of the court at a feast was one thing, but chattering about her bloody encounters in battle over the pudding tureen were another. The lord at her elbow was going green. Alicent’s own face was likely red; her heart raced whenever Rhaenyra got like this. Alicent had never seen the battlefield—only seen battered men in dented armor and the slumps of corpses lined along dirt roads in the aftermath of war—but her own imagination terrified her like nothing else.

(Rhaenyra is better with a sword than half of the knights in Westeros, and more lovely than the lot. Her reign has not yet begun, but already the commoners flock to her—lured in by tales of her beauty and fine hair—and soldiers would follow her into battle. Alicent would not follow, but she would watch and bite her nails down to the quick.

She thinks of the figure Rhaenyra cuts in full armor, the heat in her gaze underneath the slots of her helmet. Alicent remembers the weight of her own hand in Rhaenyra’s—which was gloved—when the princess rode up to the spectators box and grasped it in her own, bringing Alicent’s knuckles to her lips. She thinks of Rhaenyra murdered in the sky, skewered with another man’s sword, plummeting to the ground, torn in half, streaking crimson across the clouds. Alicent would scream, or cry. She might laugh. She would throw herself from the window of her tower. Rhaenyra’s bloody exploits terrified Alicent for reasons she could not identify, and excited her for reasons she refused to.)

“I’d sooner be confined to the castle for the rest of my days than get on the back of that bloody lizard,” Alicent scoffed. Rhaenyra only tucked her hand over Alicent’s, where it was resting on her forearm. She flexed her fingers, moving to release her grip on the dark fabric, but Rhaenyra intertwined their fingers and held them fast.

“You’re confined already. You are already accustomed to such a thing. I know you. But—”

“But you forget yourself. You think you’re invulnerable, Rhaenyra. You don’t know who you are.” Alicent intends for it to be a sneer, but instead it comes out quietly, and too gentle for disdain. She can’t know. Rhaenyra is as trapped as she is, but they’re trapped together. They belong together. She belongs with Alicent.

“I am Rhaenyra Targaryen, Heir to the Iron Throne and all of Westeros. I am a dragonrider. I am—I am your daughter. In a way. Your sister, too. Your enemy. Your sword, your shield.”

“And what am I?” What else is left for me? Alicent wonders.

“My Queen. For now.” Rhaenyra cocks her head, and the gleam in her eyes burns like fire raining down. “When I am Queen, you will be my lady.”

[serenity-the-firefly]

i think carpenter and hayward should have some kind of ghost hunting youtube channel but for unlicensed gods. they go around snarking at each other and arguing over what kind of god this is and how best to deal with it. hayward ALWAYS thinks its an old harvest god and they have NEVER once made a situation better

[orviposition]

an entire chapter in yjh's pov and it's all just him being a yearning mess

Without realizing it, Yoo Joonghyuk let out a faint laugh and muttered, "It's the handiwork of someone who's good at making dumplings." he is such a proud husband oh my god

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Broken Roofs and Fixed Perspectives

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[scumvillainess]

honestly i never really agreed with the popular shen qingqiu had a good shizun headcanon because if shen qingqiu actually had someone who he knew cared about him, he definitely wouldn’t have turned out the way he did in canon.

[ricky-mortis]

Spies Are Forever but with Mariah Rose Faith Casillas as Curt and Bryce Charles as Owen

Massive shout out to @ghostface-knight for the idea :D

[awesome-cookies-and-cream]

Conclave said: when God sings with his creations, will a turtle not be part of the choir?

[portraitsofsaints]

Happy Feast Day

Saint Marianne Cope

1838 - 1918

Feast day: January 23

Patronage: lepers, outcasts, those with HIV/AIDS

Marianne Cope, baptized Maria Anna Barbara Koob, was born in Germany and her family emigrated to the United States the next year. She helped support her family and invalid father until his death and then left home to pursue a religious calling receiving the religious habit of the Franciscan Sisters in Syracuse, New York and new name Marianne. In 1883, by then Superior General, Cope responded to a call to care for the leprosy sufferers in Hawaii. In 1888 she moved to Kalaupapa to care for the dying Fr. Damien. Saint Marianne Cope died of natural causes in 1918 at the age of 80.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase. (website)