#Gospel Writers

[soulmusicsongs]

Moving Up the King's Hi Way - Gospel Writers (Moving Up the King's Hi Way / Same Man, 1973)

[garden-of-thoughts-fruit-of-lips]

Verse 1:

There's a woman with the moon 🌙 under her feet - uh huh

Clothed with the sun, through her offspring, God speaks - uh huh

Beauty is seen attractiveness speech 💬 - uh huh

Written on your heart ❤️ words of peace - uh huh

Eyes open wide 👀 when you are seen

Hook

glory - glory - glory - glory - glory - glory glory

***********************************

In reference to these verses:

Exodus 16: 6,7

Revelation 12: 1,2

Psalms 19: 1-4

Revelation 12:17

Romans 10:10

Proverbs 7:3

2 Corinthians 3:3

Psalms 19:8

[veryloovy]

"Home" in regards to "Intermission"

I'm writing this as an excuse to talk about lesser-known aspects of "Home", admittedly. So "Home" actually happens because the trio got together to watch the tape N found in "Cabin Fever". "Intermission" instead ends on Uzi suggesting that she poke around in their memories, which is what happens in "Home" but it's not for that reason. Uzi looking in their memories was an unintended thing. You can see the tape paused on Uzi's TV every time "Home" returns to Uzi's room.

The implications are that the trio were watching the tape when the Solver activated and began deleting N and V's memories, Uzi grabbing the hacking tools she used in episode 2 to save them. Look closely, it's the same head devices she uses on N and V in episode 5.

"Cabin Fever" ends on N looking at the tape, and "Home" opens on what is on the tape. The tape is the through-line between the episodes, and it is completely absent in "Intermission"s plot.

What's REALLY fun about this is that this was probably a "movie night" suggested by N if we take his manor counterpart suggesting the same.

That OR N suggested it was a sleepover, because Uzi is really annoyed by the idea that their gathering be called that. (Truthfully, doubtful on this because it being a straight-up movie night seems more likely and Uzi just doesn't want to call it a sleepover)

Which would be the first time any of them have ever gathered in her house if Khan is to be believed here. (Makes some of my own fanfics non-canon, but the man's said this, so that's the canon as far as I'm aware)

Girl had a sleepover/movie night because her crush wanted to see what the fuck was on this random tape he found on a campground, and the dude invited his former crush/friend(?) along for the ride. Then, the tape activated an eldritch cyber entity that deletes memories in the dude and his former gf, which the girl had to fix. Fun times.

[wtf-is-a-brain]

I just want a Peter Parker that is successful in his friendship with Harry IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?!?!! 😭😭😭

[catwouthats]

Tolkien fans can be so bigoted that I’m always surprised whenever I open up LoTR and find that it’s a story about BIPOC coded little people saving the world from evil (with the help of an old ass little person who has DID bc of the horrors) and also a Native man getting his right to his ancestors land.

[poisonousquinzel]

Harley is so cute in the Gotham Girls comic but jfc the writing around her is so questionable the large part of the time 😭😭

sorry (no I'm not) but actually that feels so damned victim blamey and I resent the nasty ass way comics talk about her mental health problems it's so offensive. Paul D. Storrie im in your closet

like now why the fuck would Ivy or Barbara react this way? Ivy knows her and Barbara is literally a superhero,,, she also knows damn well who Harleen was???? it's kinda like a part of the superhero thing is learning about the enemies you're facing???? "Sure Harley I know" yeah she does know because Harley's fucking right you don't just get hired at ARKHAM what is wrong with the writer of this comic???

AND SHE WASN'T A PHYCOLOGIST !!!!! SHE'S NEVER BEEN A DAMNED PSYCHOLOGIST !!! ITS A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THING FROM BEING A PSYCHIATRIST FFS !!!!!!!!

[askdacast]

No spoilers please, because I haven’t even started S3E4 yet (only Gaius clips), but I’m rather concerned that with the final episode of season 4 and presumably all of season 5 we are ALREADY hitting ‘Holy Week’

I’m pretty sure The Chosen crew + Dallas Jenkins have confirmed the show will be 7 seasons long?

This means the rough timeline we can expect is:

Season 5 will have the rest of Holy Week, the Last Supper, and Jesus already being arrested all within the season

If we are being EXTREMELY generous, Season 6 will be when we hit the actual crucifixion. But that, plus Easter Sunday, will take 1 episode each, and everything after that is the various epilogues within the gospels

So then what will season 7 be?? Are we going to hit Acts or keep strictly within the gospels until Jesus’ ascent back to heaven? I feel like the former has way too much content for a single season, and the latter will require a LOT of padding just to fit one season. Are we getting more??

I’m mostly just curious, how exactly is this show’s timeline going to go? And what do we have in store?

If I may be perfectly honest, I’m pretty concerned already how rushed Season 4 was. We know the gospels don’t give an exact time frame of what events happened when, but also that Jesus’ ministry lasted 3 years. Meanwhile, The Chosen feels like everything has been happening within the span of months. And I think it has clearly suffered for this pacing.

If there was any time where we should have seen more ‘padding’, a few more slower character-based scenes, or even a few more adaptations of other miracles and conversations between Jesus & the religious leaders (a la from John), I would’ve thought Season 4 would have been the perfect time for that.

But we don’t seem to be getting that since Season 4 instead opts to speed for the finish line, and to be honest I’m not sure if that was the best idea? We already have so many people complaining about how rushed Judas’ character arc is, for instance. I’m not going to comment about that yet until I’ve watched the episodes for myself, but I can definitely see where the concerns are coming from. It just doesn’t feel like we have enough time to get used to all the different character woes before the big bombshell hits.

[being-of-rain]

Listening to a Dr Who podcast (not one anyone here has recommended to me, in fact I think I heard about it through a tumblr post,) and it's reminding me why I almost never listen to Dr Who podcasts or watch Dr Who youtube videos. It's because I just can't stand hearing so much objectively wrong information. Maybe it's due to Doctor Who being such a large and long-lived franchise, I know that I can misremember and get things muddled. But surely if you're publishing something you'd want to double check that you're not confidently emphasising incorrect facts about even basic things... and yet I feel like I see it with surprising frequency. It drives me crazy, please get a fact checker.

[golden-gospel-poet]

His love cannot be shaken and is unfailing for any believer,

His love lifts up both the giver and the receiver. 🌄

[musingsofadeadgirl]

read the full poem here:

[tani-b-art]

This had to be one of the most beautiful interactions (scenes) this season. Of the series.

[soulmusicsongs]

Same Man - Gospel Writers (Moving Up the King's Hi Way / Same Man, 1973)

[querido-jesus]

Por amor

Se entregou

Por isso vivo estou..

O Deus Emanuel

O grande eu sou

Ele está aqui

Ele te amou

Ele me amou

Por amor morreu em uma cruz.

Quando eu achava que era o fim

Ele me encontrou

Vivo eu agora para ti.

[oliolioxenfreewrites]

Gospel of the Damned I

As I guided my old sedan along the winding roads leading to Villisca, Iowa, the steady hum of the engine was a comforting, familiar sound against the backdrop of my tumultuous thoughts. The late afternoon sunlight filtered through the trees, casting long shadows across the road, shadows that seemed to stretch and reach towards me as if they knew the purpose of my journey.

My name is Evelyn Archer, and I’m a journalist driven by the search for truths buried beneath layers of silence and secrets. My journey has brought me to Villisca, a town cloaked in historical mystery and whispered rumors.

Leaving Chicago had been a relief, a chance to escape the clutter of a life that had become too much to bear. The city, with its relentless noise and ceaseless demands, had started to suffocate me. After the collapse of my last major investigative piece—a story I’d poured my heart into only to see it discredited due to a sketchy source's last-minute retraction—I knew I needed a break, not just from the city, but from myself.

Villisca offered that escape, or so I hoped. It wasn’t just the town's notorious history that drew me but the promise of silence, of solitude, and perhaps a chance to redeem my journalistic career with a story that could be more than just another article. The whispers of a cult operating under a religious community, led by the mysterious Father Malachai, enticed me to peel at the layers of secrets this town held—secrets that perhaps needed someone like me to unravel them.

I could feel every mile pulling me deeper into something I couldn’t quite understand yet, a story that was more than just a chapter in my career—it was a chance to redefine it. As I passed the weathered sign welcoming visitors to Villisca, a shiver crawled up my spine. This town, cloaked in its notorious past, was like a character from one of the many thrillers that lined my bookshelves back home in my loft. Except now, I wasn't just an observer; I was part of its history.

The infamous Axe Murder House was here, a grim tourist magnet that I'd read about but never seen for myself. Apparently, eight people were murdered in their sleep, six of them being children, no less. And of course, the killer was never found. The remnants of this unresolved mystery seemed to seep into the soil of this place, staining it with a palpable darkness. I pulled into Villisca, the small town appeared almost frozen in time.

The Main Street was a quaint lineup of old brick buildings and fading storefronts, each one bearing the weight of sordid history. Despite the serene appearance, there was an underlying tension, as if the town itself was holding its breath, waiting for something—or someone—to break the silence.

I parked my car outside a diner that boasted the “Best Pie in Montgomery County,” its windows steamed up from the warmth inside. As I stepped out, the autumnal chill hit me, a stark contrast to the cozy scene inside the diner.

The stares of the few locals scattered along the street felt heavy on my shoulders. They knew I was an outsider, another curiosity-seeker perhaps, drawn by the morbid fascination with their town's dark lore. Clutching my notebook and camera, I hesitated for a moment. This was it—the start of something I couldn't yet define. Was I here as a journalist, a detective, or just another lost soul seeking answers in the wrong places?

Only time will tell…

[hivepixels]

.

[o-uncle-newt]

I read Possession by AS Byatt after people told me "if you liked Gaudy Night you'll like this" and WELL.

Warning- spoilers for both books abound below!

So it sounded great- as a lapsed academic (though not in the field of literature by any means) there's a part of me that loves reading about academia because it's full of such obsessive people, and this book seemed to be exactly that and so I was excited.

Then I read it, and on the one hand, my first thought was "all these people are dull as heck, the only sane modern-day one is Val, and at the end of the day the historical stuff is just two people having an affair, who cares." My second thought was "there's just enough stuff here that makes me think that maybe the author knows that all of this is stupid, like the fact that Val is obviously one of the few sane ones here." But the ending made me doubt even that. Essentially, and I say this even as that lapsed academic, the author could not convince me to care about the important things at stake here, and as a result couldn't get me to care about the people who only seemed to care about those things.

I didn't care about Ash and LaMotte- they came across as two people high on their own supply who had a tawdry affair. (And each of them is the less interesting person, as a person, than their official partner!) As a result of not caring about them, I couldn't POSSIBLY care about Roland, Maud, and the rest of their crew, because their only functions were to be possessed by, and weirdly possessive of, these two entirely unworthy individuals, whose in-universe historical and literary significance Byatt couldn't convince me of, and to use that possession as a mirror for their own very lame romance. Beyond that they're utterly uninteresting, and there isn't even meant to BE much beyond that so it's not that surprising.

Anyway, I didn't like this book much, but it still made me think a lot. And there's a way in which a certain kind of person might say "well if it made you think then that's surely a sign of some positive quality" and... maybe? I don't know. I didn't hate all of it, and some parts were interesting, and I do have a whole separate list of things about the book that bug me including a breakdown of some of the book's (perceived by me) themes that I particularly disliked lol. Perhaps I'll post it another time. So I guess you can say it spurred me to thought, but loads of things that I don't like do that, and the only positive thing that that draws from me is that they're not downright dull.

The thing is, after finishing the book I was immediately struck by that "if you like Gaudy Night..." element, because it has a situation that felt weirdly similar (if for totally different reasons)- a young scholar stealing a letter from a library/archive. The circumstances are different- in Gaudy Night, the scholar does it to hide its existence so as not to contradict his thesis, and in Possession, the scholar does it so as to explore the document further, though still secretly- but there are still some interesting parallels vis a vis class. Possession goes into the class thing more than Gaudy Night does, but neither book goes much into it- the scholar is lower-class and someone who has scraped their way to their position, and is encumbered by a female partner of lower social and academic standing, and in the end they are juxtaposed against scholars who come from an elevated class and who have more money and opportunity. In Gaudy Night, Arthur Robinson is judged by the likes of Lord Peter Wimsey and a college full of women who don't have to do anything but think, teach, write, and grade papers; in Possession, Roland has to convince a bunch of academics of standing and resources to take a chance on him (and while this is more about money than class, he's the main one who's like "maybe it's good if Lady Bailey gets her wheelchair"). Byatt elides over this at the end by having him magically become in demand and on his way to achieving his academic goals, but I think in both books, the class element really could have taken on more significance in the text.

(I'd add as well that Byatt pits the upper-class and moneyed Maud, who of course is doing things for "the right reasons," vs the evil American businessman who clearly... doesn't care about Ash enough? Despite how much he clearly and obviously cares about Ash? The book was way more interesting when he seemed like a valid rival to the British team, who only thought that they deserved the letters more because of their obsession, rather than how it turned out at the end where the American dude is an actual cartoon villain. What made him genuinely less worthy besides having money without class, and of course having the bad taste to be American? What makes one scholar's possession more justified? Sayers was never this unsubtle.)

So that made me think more about Possession vs Gaudy Night, and the thing is, there are actual living people in Gaudy Night! Say what you will about the unworldliness of the academics at Shrewsbury, but you get a very keen view of their personalities by the end, even as they are (by necessity given the rules of their world) subsumed by academia, or subsume themselves in it. And the people who do fall in love are REALLY in love, and you understand why...

And somehow a book from 1935 feels far more interrogative of the possession (or lack thereof) found in love and romance, and just about the place of women in academia and relationships overall, than one from the late 80s. In Gaudy Night, Harriet accepts Peter once she has determined that despite their power differential (brought on by class, money, history, and to a degree gender) he will not threaten her personhood, because he has proven himself to her. In Possession, Maud accepts Roland because she has the power (money, class, position, even height) and so Roland actually cannot threaten her- and yet still that final scene is about her being taken by him, basically to prove some kind of a point. In contrast, in Busman's Honeymoon, the euphemistic sex scenes are about Peter trying to please Harriet.

When I say it's to prove a point, I'm paraphrasing Byatt, incidentally- who said: "And in the case of Maud I had made it very inhibiting. She was a woman inhibited both by beauty (which actually isn't very good for very beautiful women because they feel it isn't really them people love) and she was also inhibited by Feminism, because she had all sorts of theories that perhaps she would be a more noble kind of woman if she was a lesbian. And so she was a bit stuck. And Roland was timid because I am naturally good at timid men. It's the kind of men I happen to like. He's a timid thinking man, so of course it took him the whole book." I mean... yikes, but also that explains a lot. Maud can only bring herself to be with a man who is weak/effeminate (?) enough to justify whatever weird psyche Byatt has imagined up for her, but still she needs to get over her inhibitions and under him because... reasons. I don't know.

(Height is also interesting here as a point of contrast- Byatt makes Maud taller than Roland to make a point about how on the one hand she retains the power but on the other hand there is now even more of her that has to surrender. Peter and Harriet are the same medium height and wear the same size gown.)

I think the thing that most stuns me is how regressive Possession feels when it comes to gender politics on relationships than Gaudy Night does. I'd need a whole other post to talk about this, but the theme of Possession seems to me to be "relationships that produce things (whether art or children) are worth more than ones that don't." Roland is better with Maud than with Val because Val is a second rate scholar who drags him down (while supporting him financially) and Ash is better with LaMotte than with Ellen because LaMotte didn't only inspire his writing (Ellen's contributions are described only in the negative "didn't impede"), she gave him the child that Ellen refused to. Incidentally, in both cases it's the man pursuing a relationship that will give HIM something... But, to paraphrase Peter in Busman's Honeymoon, one wouldn't want to regard relationships in that agricultural light. Gaudy Night is about how two people can produce great things without each other but choose to be with each other for their own, and each other's, happiness. They aren't each less apart, and as I noted in a prior post, they don't need to solve cases together or conjoin their work in order for their relationship to be worth something. It is worth it for them to be together because it encourages some kind of inner balance within them and between them, as people. They enjoy collaborating but that is by no means the basis of their love (and, incidentally, I think that a lot of, if not most, detective series romances fail this basic test of "would they have fallen in love if they were accountants who met on a dating app." Peter and Harriet definitely would have- would, say, Albert Campion and Amanda Fitton have? I do NOT think so).

And here's the thing- another reason why Byatt's quote above is so off-putting is that it makes it clear that not only in the text but on a meta level, the purpose of the relationships is to prove a Point. I found Roland and Maud to have zero chemistry, and honestly I was expecting them to get together 3/4 of the way through and split up at the end when it turned out they had nothing in common- it seemed like that kind of book. I was kind of stunned when they only got together at the end in an "it's meant to be" way because nothing about it seemed meant to be. They were stuck together by that one thing and they each apparently needed the relationship for some kind of self-actualization or historical rhyming or other. (Whatever I say about Ash and LaMotte... at least they seemed to like each other!)

Peter and Harriet... they get together because they love each other. Do they change over the course of Gaudy Night, and over the course of the other books they share together? Of course they do. But if it makes sense, I'll put it this way- Harriet doesn't accept Peter's proposal as proof that she got over her hangups, Harriet gets over her hangups so that she can accept Peter's proposal. Her hangups only matter because they were keeping her from this particular kind of happiness- she was a fully actualized person even with them. She is a person who does things for human reasons so that she can build a mutually happy life with the person she loves, not a little plot mannequin being moved around in order to tell the author's desired Message. People can say what they want about Gaudy Night and its flaws, but despite the intricacies of its construction, nobody can call the characters' actions and motivations anything but brutally human.

Whether within their universes or on a meta level, the books have SUCH different things to say about the value and nature of love, the place of and purpose of sex, the place of art and intellectual accomplishment in relationships, all of the above in the context of femininity… and I can't help but feel that each time, Gaudy Night wins the contest. It's possible I'm missing something major about Possession, and maybe sometime I'll post the rest of my notes about the things I disliked and people can tell me what I'm wrong about- but if nothing else it made me appreciate Gaudy Night even more, so for that I'm grateful.