#Growing Christians

[emperorsfoot]

I just recalled a random memory this morning from when I was in scouts. I had a friend who’s mom was a devout catholic, but we were good friends through scouts. One year my friend wanted to give me a gift for Chanukah so their mom took us to Toys R Us together so I could pick out what I wanted. The mom handed my friend cash at the register so my friend could say they bought it and they paid a little extra for wrapping.

As we were leaving the mom said that I couldn’t open it until Christmas.

But my friend specifically said they were giving it to me for Chanukah. Chanukah that year was a week or two before Christmas (I don’t remember exactly) and the mom said that if I opened it before Christmas “Jesus would know”. I cannot stress enough that my friend wanted it to be a CHANUKAH present.

I’m dropped off at home and my friends mom tells my parents that I can’t open my present until Christmas, meanwhile my friend is in the back seat frustrated and almost shouting “Mom [Renkon] is Jewish!”

My dad just nods and says he understands. He’ll make sure I don’t open it until “the appropriate time”.

First night of Chanukah rolls around and my dad hands me the present and tells me to open it but don’t say anything to my friend until he has a chance to talk to their mother.

So I get to enjoy my toy FOR CHANUKAH like my friend intended.

Anyway, Christmas come and goes. Then new years, then on January 3rd my dad calls the mom and asks “what day does your holiday fall on this year? [Renkon] would like to open their present.”

[everythingcatradora]

so much of adora’s inner conflict in s5 being that she wants so deeply to live and just be with catra (& how that’s when she’s at her happiest and most at peace even when everything is at it’s peak with horde prime) but she thinks she’s not allowed to want that; if she cares about catra and the planet she needs to die for them not be happy and let herself be loved. she can’t even voice it aloud, not even when they’re at the heart she just comforts catra but shows it through action, letting catra stay with her, an ounce of ‘selfishness’ because she yearns for catra’s comfort and presence. adora’s arc is so intertwined with lesbianism in our world; repression and ‘duty’ being impounded into us to the point where it feels like you shouldn’t even be thinking about another option.

[rebellum]

The whole transandrophobia discussion thing is weird bc it feels like it's a bunch of poc and jewish trans people being like "here are my experiences of how specifically being MASCULINE had affected me, and the discrimination and violence I experienced based on that. And here is how that relates to me being a racial/ethnic minority"

And then a few loud white trans people going "ohhh you wanna be oppressed so bad you *slur*. This is why there aren't any poc in your movement it's because REAL poc understand intersectionality"

[averagecygnet-blog]

you guys wouldn't fucking believe this but growing up mormon has negative consequences

[st5lker]

chappell roan goes on a podcast with some other lesbians and talks about how she wishes she could enjoy casual sex but it makes her anxious and acknowledges that a lot of it feels like it stems from internalized christian guilt/homophobia and she literally discusses with the host abt how casual sex and flings are romanticized and unrealistic anyways and also about how its hard to say “is this coming from stuff i can unlearn/grow past or is this just who i am?” but she offhandedly says “i hate being, like…. demisexual” in a way thats very clearly the closest word to be shorthand for her experience more than an actual part of her identity and so now all the comments look like this

[r-aindr0p]

🙏

[rachelleacomics]

[lambnotincluded]

no promise of heaven will make me march with my final breath I deny the church

[audreyrose7]

There's always some random stranger on the internet that understands exactly how to explain something better than you ever could yourself

[complicatedconstellation-blog]

[aimlesspoet]

Growing up, I heard modern phrases like "love the sin, hate the sinner" and "modest is hottest" quoted in Christian circles way more than I ever heard them quote the words of Jesus. It made me realize that maybe it was never really about Jesus' love to them. Maybe it was about control

[khattikeri]

maybe a controversial opinion but while i really love jiang cheng as a character he is deeply self-centered as a person. and seeing people fight tooth and nail claiming he isn't, or is just misunderstood, or that he has genuine valid reasons to be selfish when plenty of other characters make the difficult choice to forego status and opportunities for what they believe is genuinely right to do (read: wei wuxian, wen ning, wen qing, lan wangji, jiang yanli, mianmian, etc.)

it's just odd to me. especially if they're talking about the novels.

mxtx didn't give jiang cheng the name "sandu shengshou" as a quirky coincidence. there's a REASON she named him & his sword after the 3 poisons of Buddhism (specifically ignorance, greed, and hatred). it's crucial to the story that jiang cheng is NOT selfless and that wei wuxian IS.

it's important to accept that wei wuxian is, by their society's standards, not morally gray; he represents several Buddhist ideals in direct contrast of jiang cheng and multiple people attest to wei wuxian's strong moral character, which is a lot of why jiang cheng even feels bitter about him to begin with.

it's crucial, because by the end of the novel jiang cheng realizes the extent of this and begins to let go!

the twin prides thing wasn't jiang cheng wanting them to 100% mirror the twin jades. he does care about wei wuxian, but he wanted wei wuxian to stay his right hand man, in part the way wei changze was for jiang fengmian.

and if there's one thing you can notice about wei changze in the novels, it's that literally nobody talks about him. he is only ever mentioned when his cool mysterious mountain sect wife cangse-sanren is mentioned, or (even more rarely) when they discuss him as a servant to jiang fengmian. regardless of jiang fengmian's own feelings, wei changze was considered lesser to him and didn't seem to outdo him, since nobody's out there years later still waxing poetry about wei changze's skills.

it may not be the only thing jiang cheng wants out of a twin pride dynamic, but it is a big part of it. regardless of his parents' intentions in taking wei wuxian in and treating him certain ways, this twin pride right-hand man thing is what jiang cheng has felt owed since childhood. he gave up his dogs for wei wuxian, people gossip about his sect heir position with wei wuxian there... jiang cheng wants the reciprocation of what he views as personal sacrifices.

he is ignorant to the depth of what wei wuxian must've suffered for over 6 years as a malnourished orphan child on the streets. he hates how wei wuxian's intelligence, witty charm, and cultivation abilities are naturally stronger than his own. he does care about wei wuxian a lot and want them to be together as sort of-brothers, sort of-friends, sort of-young master and sect servant...

...but if it's between that unclear (yet still caring) relationship and being able to save himself just a little bit more, jiang cheng nearly always manages to clam up in the face of danger and choose the latter, which ultimately benefits himself most. maybe it's a stretch to call that sort of thing greed, but it certainly isn't selfless.

there are of course plenty of justifications for this. it's his duty as sect heir. his home and sect was severely damaged by the wen attack and subsequent war; he had to protect himself, etc.

but doesn't that prove the point?

wei wuxian may be charming, but in terms of pure social standing, he is lower and far more susceptible to being punished or placed in harm's way by people who have more power and money. to protect wei wuxian, yunmeng jiang's long-term head disciple and semi-family member, even in the face of backlash and public scrutiny would've been the selfless thing to do. this is what wei wuxian does for the wen remnants in the burial mounds.

jiang cheng does not choose this. it's not even an unreasonable choice for him to make! nobody else in the great clans is doing such a thing, stepping out of line to take on a burden that could weaken them in the long-run. wei wuxian himself doesn't hate jiang cheng for it; he lets go of these things and focuses on what good he can do in the present.

jiang cheng thinks further into the future - what would happen to him if he continued vouching for wei wuxian and taking his side? what about jiang cheng's face, his sect's face? would wei wuxian even care to reciprocate somehow? everyone expects him to cut off wei wuxian for being dangerous, for threatening his position, for...

do you see what i mean? to call jiang cheng selfless for falling in line with exactly what people expected him to do after the war is not only wrong, it's foolish.

"but they faked their falling-out!" okay. why fake it to begin with, except to protect jiang cheng and the jiang sect's own face? is that selfless? who does it ultimately serve to protect? wei wuxian canonically internalizes the idea that he stains all that he touches, including lan wangji, and agrees to the fake fight because he doesn't want to cause the jiang sect harm. regardless, it eventually slides into a true falling-out, and in the end jiang cheng is more or less unscathed reputation-wise while wei wuxian falls.

that isn't selfless. it's many things! it's respecting his clan and his ancestors, it's making a good plan for the future of his sect and cultivation... but it isn't a truly selfless in the interest of what's right rather than in the interest of duty and what's good for him and his family lineage.

that brings me to my next point: even though wei wuxian hid the truth of the golden core transfer, jiang cheng spent nearly 20 years believing that the golden core "renewal" he was given was a birthright gift of wei wuxian's from baoshan-sanren, an immortal sect teacher of wei wuxian's mother's and a martial elder to wei wuxian.

of course we all know that's a big fat lie, but jiang cheng believed that wei wuxian gave up a critical emergency use gift to him for decades! he was lied to, yes, but jiang cheng immediately agreed without even needing to be convinced. the light in his dead eyes came back with hope the moment wei wuxian even said baoshan-sanren's name. he accepted wei wuxian's offer to give that up to him and take it via identity theft without missing a beat.

with how mysterious and revered baoshan-sanren is, that's obviously not a light sacrifice to just give up to anyone, no matter how close they might be to you. pretending to be wei wuxian to take the gift could even be considered dangerous. what if she found out and got offended? could wei wuxian be hurt by that?

jiang cheng doesn't even hesitate. wei wuxian is the one who mentions that if jiang cheng doesn't pretend to be him, the immortal master could get angry and they'd both be goners. and funnily enough, the day they do go to "the mountain", jiang cheng is the one worried and suspiciously wondering if wei wuxian was lying to him or had misremembered.

of course they've both been traumatized like hell prior to this point. but still: it speaks to how broken he was at the moment as well as to his character overall.

i digress: jiang cheng "gets his golden core back" via what he believed was a gift that should've been wei wuxian's to use in serious emergencies. rather than use it for himself, wei wuxian risked his own safety and gave it to jiang cheng... and jiang cheng still ends up embittered and angry, believing that wei wuxian is arrogant and selfish.

if he truly views them as 100% brothers and equals with no caveats, why would he think that way? it's not like he needs to grovel before wei wuxian for doing that, or to reciprocate... but this is what i mean when i say jiang cheng feels he is owed things by wei wuxian. wei wuxian's actions hold a very different weight in jiang cheng's mind, and jiang cheng himself doesn't ever act the same way, except once.

is it wrong for him to feel like he is owed something? it depends. many asian cultures, including my own, feel that a person owes their family in ways that may not make sense to westerners. for example, it's considered normal for a child to owe their parents for giving birth to them, or to other caretakers for feeding, clothing, sheltering, educating them, etc.

however, something like verbally saying "thank you" or "i'm sorry" to family is considered crazy- why would you owe that? you're supposed to inconvenience your family; saying thank you or sorry is the sort of thing you say to a stranger or acquaintance. i get half-seriously lectured by my elders on this a lot even now, even though they know such phrases are just considered good manners in the US.

this muddies up the idea of wei wuxian being jiang cheng's family vs his family's charge or servant even more. jiang cheng wants wei wuxian to be close... but ultimately doesn't really choose to use what power he DOES have to protect wei wuxian. he considers himself still owed something that in his mind wei wuxian flagrantly never repays.

this isn't even getting into how despite spending a majority of his time with the yiling patriarch he never once noticed that wei wuxian stopped using any spiritual power-based cultivation. even lan wangji, who met them far more rarely, realized that something was wrong and that wei wuxian had taken some sort of spiritual damage, hence the "come with me to gusu".

of course manpain is fun and i'm not immune to the juicy idea of them reconciling and talking things out... but jiang cheng is deeply mired in his own desire to be "above" wei wuxian in multiple ways, and doesn't realize the extent of wei wuxian's actions, the intentions behind them, and the consequences wei wuxian knowingly faced for them.

to not recognize this about jiang cheng, especially in the novels, is really revisionist if you ask me. i reiterate that i really do like him a lot. he's flawed, angry, traumatized and has poor coping mechanisms, an overall fascinating character... but he is not selfless nor ideal, and i seriously draw the line at people saying he is.

wen ning shoves this all into his face at lotus pier to disastrous results. it is the reason why jiang cheng's a total mess at guanyin temple, and the reason jiang cheng ultimately doesn't tell wei wuxian about the fact that he ran towards the wens on purpose.

for that one last act of his to have really been selfless, he needs to not seek anything in return. he did it purely because it was right to do to protect someone else. if that means wei wuxian never finds out about it, so be it.

that moment that ended up causing jiang cheng irreversible harm is not a debt that wei wuxian owes him. it hurts, but no matter how bitter it is, that realization is so important to him changing in the future.

[lindseymcdonaldseyelashes]

Leverage 4x6- "The Carnival Job"

[is-the-owl-video-cute]

Tags on a post that said “if both candidates agree on an issue, it’s a non-issue”. Regarding a genocide.

Okay lol. Very normal people on the “vote blue no matter who” side.

“I personally don’t want to die” yet you’re alright voting for someone who kills others just because you think it’s a lost cause? You’d rather vote for someone you KNOW is going to kill thousands of Palestinians just because he MIGHT not kill you. And that is an extremely privileged take.

“Mehmehmeh third party can NEVER win” yes because you’d rather give Biden a deepthroat than actually vote for important change. This isn’t something like tax brackets or stimulus checks, Biden is, currently, right now, killing people. He condemns Israel to the press and then mails them more bombs through the “”humanitarian aid”” port he built.

I swear to god Biden could pick up an infant, bring it to the podium during a speech, set it on fire, and slam it on the ground as hard as he physically could and you’d still vote for him as long as it wasn’t YOUR baby.

Anyway, I’m done humoring this. I’m breaking and blocking mutuals over this. I’m not going to pretend this is an even remotely leftist let alone justifiable take.

[fcb-mv33]

“Max, he came into the team as almost a boy and he’s grown into a young man. I think the relationship we share, the trust we share in each other, is worth more than any piece of paper”