#God is present for us

[dramoor]

"The Opus Dei should be an experience of the presence of God, in which we realize God is present for us, at the same time that we are in God’s presence and living for him. This idea of being simultaneously present to each other–God to us and we to God–is the heart of our life of prayer."

~From In The Presence of God, Monastery of Christ in the Desert

[p4nishers]

can we talk about how much queer and trans joy was this season? maggie and nina. they/them muriel, saraquel, beelzebub, even GOD. "you're a good lad" "im not actually, either". that one shopkeeper and his non binary spouse, played by a non binary actor. beelzebub and gabriel. shax, nina and maggie all thinking azi and crowley were together. also yes i'm gonna mention: crowley and aziraphale's kiss. it's just, i get that everyone's hurt and so am i but can we please focus on how beautiful this season was to us? we got so much and i'm so happy, despite the ending.

[lotus-pear]

"i haven't worked you like a dog yet, as promised"

[clouvu]

Save me french yuri... Save me

[cortex-rampage]

I find the way that BBC Merlin set up Merlin's powers in the first episode to be quite funny. I mean, we see this sort of lanky guy and it is established that he is Merlin and (according to our own common knowledge) therefore he is the most powerful warlock ever. Okay, cool. One might assume that he has come to Gaius to develop his powers, that maybe he's only in the beginning of his magical journey. But instead the exposition shows Merlin, in the pilot episode of this 5 series show, stop time and employ levitation to save someone's life with magic, and then it is announced that prince Arthur is essentially his soulmate, and their joint power will create the most glorious age Camelot has ever seen. Quite an exciting set-up. And then for the rest of the entire show this man who we know possesses TIME-ALTERING POWERS mostly uses them on-screen to do common chores and annoy and prank THAT SAME Arthur. Like that one post said, "All of it's destiny and all of it's his fault." :p

[justpassingbyoursht]

I've seen some people say some character art downgraded from 1 to 2 and while i agree about some poses not being as dynamic and some of the art being unfinished (early access tho) and the colors not being as dope, and some of the gods feel different

but i wanna specifically ramble about Artemis best gurl for a bit

this is my girlie in Hades 1

I've been thinking about the differences from 1 to 2, and I think in here, she's presenting herself as the Goddess of Hunting.

she looks a bit menacing, she looks sharp, she looks like she just got here, the angle she's looking at you it's not very direct it's like she's measuring you from head-to-toe kinda way, she also has that greenish light which feels kinda like an aura. she's down to business!

and when we look at her in Hades 2

She looks confident still, and you can see her weapons just as clearly, but her pose, and her smile? she's like, laid back, she's not quite posing to create an impression, she doesn't have that greenish aura, she's there in the flesh, she's not really presenting as a goddess in particular... she looks more welcoming, a bit softer looking... she looks like she's just stopped for a chat, while in 1 it's like she's in the middle of something

and when you stop to think about it? she is. she is just chatting with her friend. Melinoe is her friend, she called her Sister.

We're much more closer to her as Melinoe than we were as Zagreus. bc while she does become friends with him in H1, she's more of a long distance friend. we were building our bond with her in H1.

But here? in H2? she's known Mel for years... she kept it a secret from other gods... she's got those accessories thingies with the 4 colors. not only are we close friends we even got a friend bracelet thing going on with her!! Melinoe is a precious friend to her from what i've seen so far.

Why would she pose and be a bit distant with her friend? we know Artemis is a bit closed off from people, she prefers being in the woods with the animals than other gods i recall her saying that to Zag, but Mel? Mel is a dear friend, she sounds much more casual from the get go with her than with Zag because we have a strong bond with her already

In Hades 1 we just got to know her, so she's more closed off, she is more business like, she is distant, she is The Goddess of Hunting

In Hades 2 she is our friend 💖

that. is the difference

[not-so-superheroine]

Jesus is my older brother, not my dad.

other christians don't seem to feel the same?

am i missing something where he insists on such a thing except perhaps with actual little children?

[frownyalfred]

“….whatever this is.” call them OUT Diana!

[ganondoodle]

"(that one arcane writer guy) drew inspiration from the US two party system and how they fail to communicate with each other"

what what what, yes of course thats totally comparable, you know, piltover, the rich powerful oppressor class living in paradise and zaun, the poor and exploited, that are literally made to live underground in poisoned air and water and waste created by the maschinery that makes piltover rich, rats in their garbage, that have no power anywhere and the second they resist get run over by enforcers of the rich and powerful

they just have a communication problem uwu, which is why putting 3 zaunites into the uniforms of their opressors and have them fight and die for a stupid otherworldy threat together makes them understand each other, which is why getting rid of any counceler that even mildly cared about zaun, reinstate that system, and giving a single seat to sevika instead makes sense, and look, the rich upper class powerful lesbian that turned into a dictator for a time gets to keep her power and the poor zaunite lesbian that lost everything get to be together!! we did it! we solved politics!

[whatudottu]

Combined with the mortifying realisation that loopified Odile (now named Nokosu) took me multiple hours to draw the first time, I decided to try and make one speak in Japanese :) :) :)

The Japanese sentences will be under the cut plus a more literal translation and some research notes-

自分は遺残の神である。「遺す」と呼んでもいいし、「残」の字を使ってもいい。お前 の草白鳥は、すでにお前 の小烏から 「イサ 」という名前を取っている。二人の人間に同じ名前を使うのは混乱しないか？ヴォーガルド語の「サ」の発音は「ザ」に近いので、特に必要である。そうだろう？

or in Romaji

Jibun wa izan no kamidearu. 'Nokosu' to yonde mo īshi, 'zan' no ji o tsukatte mo ī. Omae no kusa hakuchō wa, sudeni omae no ko karasu kara `Isa' to iu namae o totte iru. Futari no ningen ni onaji namae o tsukau no wa konran shinai ka? Vu~ōgarudo-go no 'sa' no hatsuon wa 'za' ni chikainode, tokuni hitsuyōdearu. Sōdarou?

Literally translated Nokosu says;

I am the god of remains. You may call me “Nokosu", or you may use the [Chinese character] for “remain". Your grass swan has already taken the name “Isa” from your little crow. Isn't it confusing to use the same name for two people? It is especially necessary since the pronunciation of “sa” in Vaugarde is close to “za”. Wouldn't you agree?

And for the explanations of a monolingual English speaker with barely even surface level understanding of Japanese.

Throughout my entire journey, Jisho.org kanji dictionary has been my saving grace and backbone in my choice of Nokosu's name and what first and second person pronouns one uses. My initial goal was to find a name for survival or persistance which lead to me finding terms like; 存続 (sonzoku) meaning survival, 存 meaning exist and 続 meaning continue; 耐久 (taikyuu) meaning endurance, 耐 meaning the affix -proof (of bulletproof or soundproof), 久 meaning long time; and finally 遺残 (izan) meaning persistence, 遺 meaning bequeath, 残 meaning remainder.

To kinda help expand my knowledge of the terms I was using, I also used a combination of google translate (primarily for the pronunication of words less the actual translations) and DeepL to kinda get the sweet deets and found that izan had meant - a more common definition - remains. It. Was. Perfect.

Perfect save for one thing... Isa- Sure, Isabeau is his full name and written down Isabeau and Izan are unique enough, but technically functionally the 'sa' in French (and thus in Vaugardian) is more voiced than the 'sa' in Japanese and sounds more like the 'za' in izan, and to have Odile refer to Nokosu as Izan when "only [Siffrin] call[s] him Isa" is an in-game quote; to say I was miffed was an understatement.

But then... I turned to words that use those individual kanji and hoped to mix and match to find what I wanted.

My first direction was to turn each kanji into hiragana to find their pronunciations and piece together a word from that; 遺 in isolation is noko, 残 in isolation is zan. Finding the term no ko zan-kiri (のこざん切り) on google gave me 'chopped into pieces' which well- look at my design that's a lot of pieces! のこ残 or nokozan (turning the first character into hiragana of course) lead me to 'remnants of a servant's body' as it's main translation on DeepL, but it also provided 'backbreaking exertions' as well as 'remnants of a defeated soldier'. Plus using DeepL again izan itself full kanji gave me 'vestiges' 'bequest' 'afterlife' and the ever present 'remains'.

None of these however were getting me closer to an ample replacement for izan however, not until I returned to jisho.org to pick out words from a list using either kanji.

Turns out, both 遺 and 残 can be pronounce 'noko' so long as it is followed by the hiragana す or su. And guess what either spelling of the word translates into? The 遺す version meaning to leave (behind), to bequeath, and the 残す version meaning that same thing but more, to leave (undone), to save/to reserve, to stay (in the ring).

SO! SO! That is how Nokosu came to be named! But- what about the Japanese phrase I wrote?

Well- let's stay on the Nokosu theme now that any Japanese readers in my audience have already processed the meta-joke that can only really exist in Japanese writing (or maybe not a joke but like... a fourth wall acknowledgement). Nokosu already introduces oneself as 遺す though doesn't mention how to spell it (since it's already spelt out to the reader), then introduces the second variant of the spelling exclusively referring to the second kanji of Izan 残 as zan. Maybe it's not really a joke but it'd kinda be like the 'you use he/they, it's in your profile' equivalent.

I suppose an attempt at a joke was Odile thinking 'a very wordy Expression', but that's mostly from observing that translations through DeepL stopped run on sentences occuring from English to Japanese so... I have no idea if constant uses of commas isn't particularly Japanese, at least the joke would be that Nokosu is particularly more chatty than Odile might normally be.

And once again, people who know Japanese may have noticed the use of jibun (自分) and omae (お前) for Nokosu's pronouns. Lowkey I was thinking initially of making Nokosu's first person pronoun oira a la sans undertale 'country bumpkin' but found more interesting things with jibun and omae that I settled on those versions. jibun, a neutral formality pronoun literally meaning 'oneself', when used as a personal pronoun (like Nokosu does) it's with a sense of separation of distance to the self; I also found out in my translation hunt that jibun can be used as a second person pronoun which is very fucking fitting given who Nokosu talks to, but that's specifically from in the Kansai dialect and - well - I can't say for certain where Odile hails from especially since Japan in ISAT is Ka Bue, but she'd be well educated enough to connect the dots that Nokosu lays down. On the other hand, Nokosu's second person pronoun is omae (Fist of the North Star fans will remember it from the very iconic 'omae wa mou shindearu'), which is incredibly informal and very rude when said to elders (though in age technically Nokosu is older) as it's meant to express the speaker's higher status in non-casual relationships.

To note, though omae can be used by both genders, it and jibun are mostly used by men and in the case of omae it's more commonly used to refer to their wife or lover. This has a little extra significance to background headcanon where Nokosu calls Odile Nanafushi (七節) or literally walking stick AKA a stickbug as ones version of 'Stardust', but sometimes Nokusu would split the word in half and refer to Odile as 'Nana' which in English sounds like one is referencing a grandma but (BUT) I'm specifically using the French term which translates to 'chick' 'babe' 'girlfriend'. So when I saw that omae can also be used for that purpose, it really goes to show that at some point Nokosu had the time to perfectly craft a version of oneself that does get on Odile's nerves and has the gall to get away with it at least initially under the assumption that one is an Expression.

I've been trying to make this flow from one point to another but I don't know how to jump to Japanese nicknames, at least not the metaphorical ones that I used here (and took inspiration from the Word of God Odile nickname for Siffrin 'Little Crow'). What little I do know about Japanese nicknames is that they may take alternate readings of single kanji as a nickname or repeat a character, though that is in reference to Japanese names in the first place. I did see something about the metaphorical sort of nicknames that have connotations in the language itself but- honestly this is my most monolingual English moment yet. I will explain however what I did decide.

草白鳥 or kusa hakuchou is the character for grass 草, and the kanji combination for swan 白鳥. In DeepL however 草白鳥 translates to grasshopper and though I signifcantly lack the cultural context to know what grasshopper symbology has in Japan, I do know in English you call someone a 'grasshopper' because they're tall. But why start with grass swan at all? Well- maybe it's a stretch for whatever fantasy time-period ISAT takes place in to use an internet term but, 草 has been used in internet slang to mean lol or haha since 'w' is also a version of lol or haha, and when spammed like so - wwwwwwwwwwwww - it looks like grass. The reason for swan would be because of I guess this idea of beauty? Less due to Odile specifically considering Isabeau beauty and more so taking note of his care to his appearance - whether it be how he presents his perception of his appearance or how he makes people belief a different thing about what his views about his appearance are, white swan or black swan - and that whatever the case is, he does take pride in maintaining that appearance; a retroactive meaning to the nickname, especially when Isa starts more casually bringing up the fact he *had* Changed, would be an incidental reference to the ugly duckling, who ended up not being a duckling at all and was a swan all along. Whether the nickname actually works or not I don't really know, but what it boils down to Odile's nickname for him (and thus Nokosu's only title for him beyond fighter) would really mean 'funny (tall) beauty' which would probably fluster Odile to admit it as Isa would hearing it.

An interesting thing I found while finding kanji for little crow (specifically 小烏) was that there is actually kind of already a word for it already, Kogarasu Maru or 小烏丸, AKA "Little Crow" which is a unique tachi sword rumoured to be crafted by a legendary swordsmith like-! I don't know if that was at all intentional on Insertdisc5's part (and if I should change the pronunciaton of the romaji version of the original text to kogarasu), but beyond Siffrin's little habit to collect every little thing that shines and doesn't, what do you mean there's a unique tachi sword named 'little crow' that's like literally so Siffrin-coded I SWEAR TO GOD!

Oh, and I played ISAT in Japanese to get the correct spelling of Vaugarde and 語 (go) is just the suffix for language AKA the difference between Nihon the country and Nihongo the language okay BYE!

[maegalkarven]

The "You have ruined me" Durgetash but with a twist.

Gortash ruined Durge for Bhaal, making them desire something over than death and destruction, making them want something (someone) for themselves. Making them lower their defences around him and inevitably providing Orin an opening to strike (I'm a firm believer Orin shifted into Gortash to get close to Durge).

And Durge ruined Gortash for Bane, making him...dare I say a little bit soft, making him wish to SHARE power and not hoard it all in his steely grasp. Making Gotrash seek an alliance, wanting an equal. Wanting the things for himself, things what contradict what Bane tells him he should seek or want.

In the end they both are worse by that, but in the unexpected way.

Neither Gortash nor Durge are what their gods want them to be. They're traitors, if merely in thoughts, of their goals, their paths, what they were meant to be.

In the end The Absolute plot falls because mortals do what they always do: act by their own will, compromising carefully constructed plan of the gods.

[queerprayers]

i want to say first of all that i fully respect a community's/denomination's/culture's right to have closed practices. i am not entitled to other people's traditions, and when i am a guest in a space i understand that everything is not automatically for me. and i know i do not have to understand to respect.

and also! when i go to a catholic church and can't receive communion i want to fall on the floor weeping. what do you mean i can't have him he's right there. sorry my baptism was the wrong kind of baptism. i'm hungry and you want me to become someone else before being fed.

[einaudis]

ALL OF US STRANGERS (2023) dir. ANDREW HAIGH

[itspileofgoodthings]

one big thing I’ve learned by 29 is that the Plan, the God’s Plan of it all I mean, is bigger than me and not just bigger than me but also bigger than my understanding of narrative threads and their limitations. And it’s bigger even than just a simple paradox, turning-on-their-head thing way of being bigger. It’s just so vast. And there is so much room for surprise and possibility and hope in that reality.

[princessefemmelesbian]

Transandrophobia truthers are so damn racist and white oh my fucking god y'all actually piss me the fuck off every time you tokenize Black and brown men for your stupid as fuck "mra but make it trans-inclusive" ideology created by a creepy guy with a corrective rape fetish(something I'll never let up on for as long as I live, btw). If I ever see another one of y'all say "Black and brown men face discrimination because they're seen as overly masculine and that's why masculinity in men is oppressed in this society" I will literally kill myself. Stop using Black and brown men as brownie points for your bullshit arguments about misandry being real when you don't have the slightest idea how racialized oppression works. White boys are so annoying and dumb istfg.

@punkeropercyjackson @punknicodiangelo @pinkpinkstarlet

[spitblaze]

Transfems are not 'privileged' for being forced to live in hostile panopticons and transmascs are not 'privileged' for being forced to live at the bottom of isolated wells and any 'benefits' that either incidentally incurs are canceled out if not outweighed by the drawbacks. Are we done here. Can we all please just go home