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beguines · 3 years

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"All things are common among us but our wives...". So wives are 'things'? It's a test in life to me that biblical scriptures are so perfect except for their view on women as part-human part-things. Do you have many thoughts on this? Peace.

That's actually a quote from Tertullian, a second century Carthaginian Christian apologist. It certainly isn't the only misogynist thing he wrote, unfortunately. I find Tertullian interesting more for the documentation of history he produced than his ideology.

As for the Bible, I think it's a historical document that frames the story of humanity as a narrative through one particular, limited lens. I do not think it is the infallible word of God or that it's all that central to the Christianity—for centuries it was inaccessible to the majority of Christian laypeople. Misogyny is far from the only Biblical fault—we see the beginnings of Christian antisemitism in scripture as well as verses condoning violence and passages about gender and sexuality in Paul, for example. Personally, I have a few approaches to difficult scripture: educating myself about the historical and material context, reading through different translations and interpretations, and/or disregarding its validity as a flaw within a work written by flawed people.

Jewish interpretations of the Hebrew Bible (the primary differences between the versions of the scripture used by Jewish and Christian people are arrangement and division of books, numbering of verses, and the base text/textual tradition used for translation, such as Masoretic vs. Septuagint, in addition to the apocryphal elements utilized largely within the Orthodox and Catholic faiths) are very good for grappling with passages that can be challenging. Jewish theologians and scholars often have a familiarity with the language and culture of the time period that many Christian theologians lack (and are often disinterested in educating themselves about). They provide context and alternative translations that allow different views to flourish. There's a wealth of different interpretations as Judaism has fostered a much more dynamic relationship with God and scripture than Christianity has. There's countless posts on this site from Jewish people who discuss translational errors/differences, explain the importance and reasoning behind various laws, and provide a much more robust and comprehensive reading of various passages. In the face of Christian antisemitism, I think it's very important to delve into Jewish theology—particularly outside of a desire to use it to simply better understand one's own Christianity—because it's a beautiful, important faith tradition that we have a longstanding history of misunderstanding, devaluing, and oppressing. In terms of Pauline scripture, Diana M. Swancutt has a very interesting interpretation that takes into account the sociohistorical context of the time in her essay "Sexing the Pauline Body of Christ: Scriptural Sex in the Context of the American Christian Culture War". I've posted some excerpts on my blog if you're interested. These are just a couple examples of how we can be guided by those more knowledgeable than ourselves.

In terms of the Bible as a whole, anything that contributes to the oppression of others is clearly not divinely inspired and is a piece of scripture I can easily discard if I can't elsewise make sense of it when examining context or translational errors/differences. I do believe that parts of the Bible are divinely inspired—much in the same way that any human creation can be—but my faith rests in God, in love and the living creation, not necessarily in the things that humanity produces. In the end, the aspects of the Bible that are "problematic" don't create much tension for my personal faith. Of course the Bible is flawed—we wrote it. I understand how these aspects of scripture can be distressing for some people, especially those raised in traditions that place emphasis on Biblical inerrancy. But apologetics have never been an area of interest for me—I don't want to dedicate a substantial amount of my time to an attempt to justify every passage from a historical document that was written millenia ago. I'm much more interested in the ways we think about God, Jesus, and the world, and how our faith can be used to help secure freedom and justice for oppressed (and ultimately all) people. I don't find it personally valuable to allow difficult or harmful scripture to occupy my time outside of trying to understand the sociohistorical context, and acknowledging and fighting against the use of it to justify the oppression of others. It is the duty of Christians both to combat that oppression however we can and understand how our faith and its scripture have contributed. For my personal faith, however, they have little bearing. I do not expect a document written by human beings to be free of even our worst flaws.

#ask #anon

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duggardata · 3 years

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Were Jed + Katey “Betrothed”?

There’s a bit of a rumor going around Fundie Tumblr, saying that Jed Duggar + Katey Nakatsu’s Relationship followed a procedure known as ‘betrothal,’ rather than the Duggar–typical ‘courtship.’ Ultimately, I think the distinction is more–or–less meaningless... Either way, it’s a parent–supervised, chaste, patriarchal method of ‘dating,’ as much as the Duggars despise that word. But, honestly, I’m intrigued by the Duggars’, etc., odd relationship practices—and, I’d like to discuss the possibility that Jed + Katey were, indeed, ‘betrothed.”

After the jump...

First of all...

What is Courtship?

As Duggar Snarkers, we’re probably all familiar with the concept of ‘courtship.’ The Duggars (and Bateses, etc.) often discuss it. Basically, they like to say it’s ‘dating with a purpose.’ You don’t date for the sake of dating; you only date if you’re ready for marriage and believe your partner is your intended spouse. A Duggar–style courtship also differs from ‘secular dating’ in that there is a lot of parental involvement: The man pursues the woman only after getting consent from her father, and both partners are expected to seek their parents’ counsel as the relationship progresses to determine if marriage is appropriate. There’s also a slew of rules, which vary somewhat, but often include—

Strict Limitations on Physical Contact Sex is always off–limits, as is kissing in most cases. Certain types of hugs might be banned. Hand–holding might be banned. ‘No Touch’ courtships aren’t unheard of.

Constant Supervision / Chaperoning Usually, the couple isn’t alone together, ever, until marriage. Chaperones tend to be ‘provided’ by the woman’s family. Sometimes phone calls and texts are monitored.

Entrenched Gender Roles Generally, the man is in control. He asks the woman to court, decides when they get engaged, etc. His partner begins a sad transformation, wherein she starts looking to the male as her absolute ‘headship’ and leader.... It’s creepy.

Lots of Praying Everyone involved prays a lot and tries to figure out if the pairing is ‘God’s will,’ or not.

Courtship is a commitment, but it is not unbreakable. Sometimes courtships fail, and that’s by design... The whole point is to figure out if you’re meant to marry one another. You haven’t decided yet. You’re trying to decide.

What is Betrothal?

So... How does ‘betrothal’ compare? First of all, I need to say: There isn’t a 100% agreed upon definition of ‘betrothal,’ here, since the Duggars have not ever publicly discussed it or publicly engaged in the practice. With that said, I’ve done some research about ‘betrothal’ in Duggar–y circles, and here’s the gist...

With betrothal, there’s no trial period. From the start, the couple vows—often literally—to eventually marry their partner. There’s no backing out. (If you do, you’re breaking your vow to God.) Basically... You go from zero to engaged. (And, really, it’s more than engaged. With a typical engagement, there isn’t a solemn vow before God; with betrothal, there is.) After the betrothal, the new couple spends a period of time getting acquainted and planning the wedding, and then they get married. As with courtship, the rules of betrothal vary a lot; however, in my research, I did see some trends. Here are the ways that, IMO, betrothal notably varies from courtship—

Solemn Vow to Marry w/ Little to No Trial Period See Above.

Ceremony / Ritual Aspect Often, the betrothal itself occurs at some sort of ceremony. It’s solemnized. Often, there’s a literal exchange of vows, similar to a wedding ceremony. Contracts aren’t unheard of.

More Extreme Parental Involvement Often, the parents—the father, specifically—is even more involved than is typical in a ‘courtship.’ He often takes on essentially the entire responsibility of vetting the young suitor for his daughter, since there’s no ‘trial period’ where she gets to know him before being betrothed. Basically, the father picked out his daughter’s husband for her. That’s the whole point.

“Arranged” Feeling See Above. It’s not unheard of for the man and woman to meet for the first time on the date of their betrothal.

(Note—I’m talking about fundie–style betrothal, here. Betrothal is actually a long–standing practice of various groups. Notably, it’s part of Judaism, and discussed in the Torah. We’re not talking about that sort of betrothal or any other sort of betrothal, here. I’m strictly talking about the bizarre concept of betrothal occasionally practiced on the fringes of the Duggars’ circle.)

More About Fundie Betrothal

What’s clear, at least to me, is that fundie ‘betrothal’ is a way to ‘one–up’ the more typical practice of ‘courtship.’ Apparently, rejecting dating isn’t enough for some families. They’re not satisfied just to ‘court,’ like everyone else. So, they take things one step further with ‘betrothal,’ which they claim is better—more biblical, etc.—than mere ‘courtship.’

Digging into this, Duggar Data learned that a few fringe fundies really pushed this ‘betrothal’ concept. One was Vaughn Ohlman. Ohlman previously ran a website called ‘Let Them Marry,’ which creepily encouraged young marriage. Basically, Ohlman’s whole schtick—which he sums up in “True Love Doesn’t Wait,” an article that is basically his manifesto—is that young fundies should marry as soon as possible, since supposedly the Bible says so, and God. In pushing this strange agenda, Ohlman naturally got to the topic of the proper way to select a spouse... His answer was ‘betrothal.’ (See Also.) Eventually, Ohlman traveled the country, teaching about betrothal and how it’s the ‘right’ way to find a mate. Courtship is ungodly and unbiblical, yada yada yada. (If you’re wondering... Yes, he was nuts. Absolutely nuts. Thankfully, he ended up shutting down his ministry after receiving a lot of well–earned criticism.)

Vaughan married off his son, Joshua, via a betrothal. Here’s Joshua + Laura’s Story, which is one of the best–known fundie betrothal stories. Another well–known, and highly disturbing, betrothal story is that of Matthew + Maranatha Chapman. (See Also. See Also.) Also, here’s a chart comparing betrothal to secular dating and courtship, which I thought was pretty interesting.

So, What About Jed + Katey?

Why, exactly, do people think Jed + Katey were betrothed? A few things drive the rumor—

The ‘Biblical Betrothal’ Post There’s a mysterious, password–protected post on the Nakatsu Family Blog, entitled ‘Biblical Betrothal.’ Kory made the post in June 2018. Its contents is unknown, since it’s password–protected.

The Vows at The Proposal On the video documenting Jed’s proposal, which was posted on the Nakatsu Family Blog, Jed and Katey apparently exchanged vows when they got engaged. These vows somewhat resemble the vows that might be exchanged at a betrothal ceremony.

Kory’s Speech At The Wedding At the Wedding, Kory made a speech when he ‘gave’ Katey to Jed, in which he sort of implies that he personally selected Jed for her, and Katey had agreed to this.

The Wedding Vows Overally, Jed + Katey’s Wedding just seemed very, very fundie, if that makes sense. Their vows hammered on the wife’s submission, yada yada yada. Gives the impression that this was a very strict relationship, and they’re deeply committed to the disgusting notion of biblical patriarchy—which is the exact sort of idea that betrothal advocates are into.

That said, there’s also...

Evidence Against A Betrothal—

During the wedding, the pastor referred to their ‘courtship, and made no mention of betrothal whatsoever. (And it’s not like he held back, at all, in talking about those fringe fundie beliefs... Just read their vows!)

According to Reed Roberts, and also Jed, Jed + Katey were together for about a year, prior to marriage. So, if those vows at the proposal were a betrothal, it clearly wasn’t a ‘traditional’ betrothal... Since they’d already been together for awhile, at that point.

Reed Roberts denies that Jed + Katey were “arranged.” (Though, I think it’s also worth mentioning... He didn’t actually say how they met. Which I think is kinda weird. It seems natural to tell the ‘how they met’ story, in attempting to dispel rumors of an arranged marriage. But he doesn’t.)

Final Thoughts

Duggar Data doesn’t think that Jed + Katey had a ‘true’ betrothal, thought I do suspect the courtship was probably stricter than most, and that Kory probably played a larger role than is ‘typical.’ I think it’s possible that Kory read about—or perhaps, even attended a seminar—about ‘biblical betrothal,’ which led him to making that post on his blog. As for his comments at the wedding... I take them to mean that Kory urged Katey to allow him to guide her in choosing her partner, and she agreed. Maybe he even set her and Jed up. But... I’m not at all convinced that he chose Jed without her input, or that she and Jed actually agreed to a ‘betrothal,’ in the sense of vowing to marry as strangers.

Also, one last thing... Regardless of what Jed + Katey called their relationship, I’m of the opinion that, honestly, it’s basically the same nonsense the Duggars have always practiced. Betrothal or courtship... It’s really not that different, in my view. It’s all based on the same bullshit—namely. twisted gender roles and so–called ‘biblical patriarchy.’ Whether they were ‘arranged,’ or ‘betrothed,’ or whatever, we know the fathers always play a major role. We know the women always defer to their ‘headship.’ Perhaps Katey + Jed (and Kory) were slightly more overt about it, but that’s it... Call it Kool–Aid or call it Tang, it’s the same sugary nonsense.

#jed and katey #betrothal #courtship

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dramarising-replacement · 4 years

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About the Crow drama...

...I am really getting annoyed by the people clamoring that it's racist and so on. I am throwing my hat in the ring and trying to see it from both sides but I truly find the whole thing one big problem of co-opting r*cism to harass people. But that is my opinion, everyone is allowed their own but I find it highly problematic that this whole thing has led to people actually faking screenshots to claim they are at fault. This is not ok. Neither is harassing. Please stop.

Either way, onwards. Keep in mind, this is my view on the whole thing and I just want to give a perspective of someone who is fairly removed from the whole thing and decided to use critical thinking. I will state that I have had not much interaction with any person involved, I shared spaces in discord in the past and of course also on FR but not to say that any side is my friend.

Do you know what my biggest problem with the aforementioned statement is? That it's mostly made by the non-Asian people that are stuck on Orientalism. You are projecting your racist stereotypes on a subspecies that was created by actual Asian people. What is the problem with people having fun with their own cultures? I can understand if some Asian people (and I am using Asian because I do not know enough about the subspecies to say which ethnic/culture it is mostly based on) do not like it. That is normal, everyone has different likes and dislikes. Using slurs is not ok but honestly, I haven't seen any proof of these alleged slurs so I can't say anything about it. Show me actual slurs thrown around and it would be different but for now the only thing I could find was the rat thing and honestly? Looking at those screenshots given showed rat used in the context of a beloved character. Who here has never talked about their bastard character being some kind of trashy raccoon or rat before?

Back to the fact that some people of the same nationality say they don't like it. Like I said, that happens, god, there are many times I don't like what people are doing with my culture. But guess what? I don't say that they are forbidden from playing with it. What gives one person of a culture the right to demand from others to stop how they interact with it? If you start doing that, we have to apply that to everything and imagine how uniform everything would be. For example Christianity: there are so many different branches and they have often problems with their different interpretations of the bible and their practices. Would you say we have to stop all Christian beliefs now? Sounds kind off dumb, right?

If you do not like how these people interact with their culture then stop interacting with them and the subspecies. It is that easy. FR is not here to take you by the hand and make everything go away that you don't like. It doesn't work like that, we are a pluralistic world with many many different views on things. And that is great. But it also means in spaces like FR we have to moderate ourselves. See something that doesn't confirm your view? Block it or, in case of truly problematic things like outright r*cism/r*pe/m*rder/p*dophilia or whatever else, report. Saying that you don't like how some people interact with your culture while they are of the same culture does not give you the right to call these people racist. Turn it around and these people could call you also racist because you interact differently with your culture. This does not help anyone.

Now, to my biggest problem with this mud throwing (I would love to call it a discourse but let's be honest here: the people starting to falsify information made this into some kind of contest to harass some people):

the fact that most people involved are espousing their own racist views under the veneer of "calling out" racism.

Like I said, I have not specially much knowledge about the subspecies but I did take a look at it, so here we go. But what I read is quite away from that "fetishing" you guys are accusing the people playing around with the dragons. For me it seems like they mixed bird facts, plague aesthetics and cultural aspects together. If you start interpreting r*cism into everything you read, congrats, then you should really think about what that says about yourself.

For me this seems much more a problem of co-opting anti-racist movements to harass specific people. You use the "right" language to make the "right" accusations and take advantage of white/western ignorance. I am specifically harsh here because this is all that I am currently seeing from all these people: they call members of the subspecies out, in the recent cases C specifically, C actually answered and showed proof that there were actual lies used and so someone decided they needed to remove authenticy from C so they created fake screenshots that say they are from Korea. This whole interaction screams of someone calling r*cism only to realize that, oh no, C actually is Chinese, so they did their best to make it seem like C lied. This is insidious and bullying. I do not know the people involved, I have only written a few times with C and shared discord spaces so I found the Korea screenshot very weird, it's just not how C normally writes.

I think this isn't about r*cism anymore, this is all about power. This is manipulation at its finest. Really, take the claims of r*cism away and then look at the subspecies again. What is your first thought? Man, that subspecies screams of Plague.

Here is a thought for all of you: there is unfortunately much r*cism to be found since we are living in a world that is flooded with r*cistic undertones. This means we have to educate ourselves on these issues and to think critically about them. This does not mean "to criticize" but to actually analyze, evaluate and examine so we can reconstruct our perspectives on these issues. And I beg of the people just going after these "call-out" posts, think about this again. Did the subspecies really scream r*cism to you or did you maybe rather think Plague aesthetic before you read these posts? If so, you really have to examine why your view changed.

One more thing, we have here two groups in the recent posts, one side is "calling" out C and C answers, making sure to openly discuss their culture and background as much as they did. So we have one side seemingly manipulating "evidence" to further their story and one side giving as much information as they can about their background without revealing their whole identity. Yeah, sorry, but I think I know who is more genuine here. Instead of making FR a more informed space it seems it was easier to use progressive language to further their own ideas of what r*cism is. (I am still more sure that this is all about power than anything else.)

This whole thing makes me very salty because it seems like everyone in the notes threw out their critical thinking just so they would not appear as r*cist.

As an older person that had to take more than one class on colonization and Orientalism this whole thing just makes me wish more people would use critical thinking. Please stop blindly following pretty "progressive" words without seeing the actual problem here. This is actually my biggest problem here, I do not claim to be knowledgable enough to know where the subspecies furthers stereotypical views but for me all the posts I was shown and then read myself speak of different problem.

If you read until now, congratulations, feel free to discuss my points but I am honestly so tired about seeing people just ignoring the bigger issues. I won't answer to anything because I do not want to spend my time here arguing about these things but seeing that my major during my studies involved big chunks of literature and cultural sciences this whole thing just rubbed me wrong when someone told me about it.

#Drama #Rant #Long post #Petty #User #submission

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ashintheairlikesnow · 4 years

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Are you Christian? You usually seem very negative about it with Jake but Nat talks Bible stories and you own a Bible?

There are a few things to unpack in this ask, and I’ll try to touch on them all.

CW for frank talk about religion/Christianity, child abuse, domestic violence

1. I was raised in a very conservative rural Christian community in which the closest I came to knowing an open atheist before I was in high school was that my best friend’s family didn’t go to church. It was the kind of conservative Protestantism where my friend in high school being Catholic was cause for commentary by my extended family, who were concerned that if I attended church with her I might get into “idol worship.”

I wanted Card Captor Sakura tarot cards once because I thought the art was beautiful and had a family member threaten to burn them.

I took Christianity for granted as the foundation of the world until I watched it used as a cudgel against the people I knew who in some way did not fit a mold that made no sense, and I became aware that the strictures I was living in were subjecting some of the people I loved to utter misery, hatred, and violence. This is before I was able to even conceive of my bisexuality.

The older I get, the more I see how the American Christianity I grew up with is merely a weapon, twisted and corrupted from the very words that its adherents claim to most believe in, used to excuse and justify bigotry, selfishness, and cruelty. Learning about the history of Christianity used as a weapon during colonization did a lot, too, to make me see that what I read, and learned, in the Bible was not Christianity as most of its adherents understood it.

Would I identify that way now? I don’t know. There is such a weight of negativity, when we have watched those great and pious Christians support tearing children from their families, executing prisoners, justifying all those things they once taught us were unforgivable sins unless you repented, and selling the soul of the national Christian to gain a little power and a justification for their own bigotry.

If you shall know them by their fruits, there are a lot of rotten fruits.

There is a lot of good in Christianity, but it has lost so much ground by catering to the worst and refusing to stand up for those who need love most. The very people we are called to hold our arms out to are turned away for the tiniest, flimsiest, most ridiculous reasons.

The person I have known in my life who most embodies Jesus is an atheist and she is working herself to the bone trying to serve undocumented communities along the border in Texas, despite a consistent risk to her own health from the violence she is routinely threatened with.

2. I don’t really think the comparison of Nat to Jake is a fair one. Jake grew up in an abusive environment, and his experience with church was a congregation that turned away from the obvious signs that he and his mother were being abused.

Jake experienced being told his father was the ‘head of the household’ and he should be more respectful. He experienced his father’s bullying, violence, and homophobia. He experienced his mother being told that she should try to “steer” his father away from abusing her, or be more faithful, or call on God for help, when the people who could have helped her chose not to.

He saw his father wear the mask of an affable family man, and how everyone chose to believe the mask, because it was easier for them if they did not see a woman and her son who desperately needed a way out.

Jake’s experience was, as a whole, a deeply negative one. And if you think it’s not true to life, I would challenge that you are ignoring a lot of stories of very real people who have experienced and survived this exact thing.

While I have not modeled Jake on a single person, every aspect of his upbringing, right down to being told that if he respected his father as an authority more that the abuse wouldn’t be so bad and being sent back to his mother when he got old enough to fight back and couldn’t be used to control her from afar any longer, is something that happened to someone in real life.

A lot of these things are hidden - but they are still real.

Nat, meanwhile, has a background of some similarity to my own, in that nothing was perfect but the church was not inherently negative in her life, it was simply part of the foundation. She has a lot of joyful memories of her childhood in church.

A lot of us are walking around who may not attend church, at least not regularly, but who were raised on Bible stories that we can still recite word for word even a decade or two later, and who can sing whole songs from Veggie Tales, who could right here and right now burst into “THERE’S A RIVER FLOWING DEEP AND WIDE” at the top of their fucking lungs. You want to hear about Jacob wrestling with God? I can recite parts of it from memory. I can sing “It Is Well With My Soul” right now. How Great Thou Art, all the old hymns, they’re still in my mind and my heart and I still find so many of them beautiful.

I still think of Bible stories when making comparisons, sometimes, because it’s very much like any memory - your mind pulls on the strongest associations automatically, and our childhoods are foundational.

So, yeah, Nat thinks about those stories and what is left between the lines, because they’re part of her identity, no matter how she lives, now. She also tells Jake, when following the ambulance to the hospital, “we take the hand that God deals us and we hope for the best”.

I would argue Nat has retained some faith in God as a force of good, but she has retained a faith that requires her to do the hard work, make the hard choices, and stand up for the ‘least of these’ rather than hoping someone else will, rather than waiting for someone with more power or more authority or more money to do it.

Nat is my view of the ideal Christian - imperfect, prone to mistakes, but her compassion knows no boundaries, and she will stand up for the weak ones, and those who need her, even at the cost of her own freedom and life if necessary - but she doesn’t sit around proclaiming it, she doesn’t need the world to know it, she only needs to show through her actions, be known by her fruits. She fucked up before, sure, but she’ll spend the rest of her life working to undo that failure and how it hurt so many people she could never have understood at the time, with the information she had available to her. If I had to pick a song to define how I see Nat’s view of religion, it would be Dear Me by Nichole Nordeman.

If Jake kept any shred of positivity towards religion, it would be because of living with Natalie Yoder, who actually quietly lives out all the shit that other people just say really loudly while publicly supporting the opposite.

They’re different people, with different life experiences and therefore very different ways of looking at Christianity - and neither one of them is me, not fully. Neither one fully reflects where I am, in my own beliefs.

I understand them both, but I am not my characters, and I don’t want their mindsets or beliefs to be taken as mirror reflective of my own, because they aren’t.

3. For the record, I own five Bibles. Three were gifts, two I bought myself a long time ago. The archeology Bible I bought myself and I still fucking love it, it’s cool just from a history nerd perspective even. I have never thrown a Bible away in my life, and I don’t get rid of them.

It’s just a superstition, I guess, but I’ve never been able to.

When my father died, he had something like seventeen Bibles, many deeply worn and torn. I can’t tell you how we agonized over what to do with them, because throwing away a Bible seemed so deeply wrong. We had to sort of gin each other up to be able to throw any of them out, and we still kept some.

But, yeah. I own a few.

I think you are likely to discover that a whole lot of us raised very Christian still have Bibles in our houses/apartments, whether we currently practice or not.

Some of us may only have them for still-religious family members to see, to hold off a series of questions we don’t want to answer. Some of us have them because they’re just part of our lives, like the walls and the kitchen faucet. Some of us still sit down to read them, sometimes, because we still feel moved by the stories that lived in us first.

Some of us keep them for all those reasons and more.

#christianity #religion tw #jake asks #nat asks #child abuse tw #religious abuse tw #domestic violence tw

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chibimyumi · 4 years

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Hello, I am the person whom asked you about your view on Sebastian’s words in chapter 137, when he explains to Ciel how he came in to the human world.

First of all, thank you very much for your translation of the original text in Japanese, which I could not have done myself. I am very grateful that you offered us even further insight into the text and clarity for a better understanding of the story.

However, that being said, I still maintain my viewpoint that Sebastian didn’t lie. The reason for that lays in the word “sacrifice”, which to me, reveals why one brother was the sacrifice of the other. Because a sacrifice, a true sacrifice, implies the offering of that which (or in this case, who) is valued; of that which is precious, loved, adored and cared for; in one word, valued.

Because it was obvious that the people there thought nothing of the act of taking of human lives or of the children: hurting and degrading them to the point of death without a care in the world, rather than something precious to them, they were more akin to ingredients for a potion, a soup of depravity, a checkmark on a list to be ticked off.

And at that moment in time and in that place, who valued that child whom was killed more than his brother?

For him, his twin had been hope and light and bravery, strength and affection, the surviving memory of goodness and perhaps, most importantly, the memory, the sense of who they truly were, of their identity.

The cultists, by comparison, thought and felt nothing of taking his life, ergo, he wasn’t their sacrifice.

He was his brother’s.

For he valued him.

...To be honest, during that part where the twin is selected as a sacrifice and then killed, what quickly flashed through my mind at one point, was the episode of Abraham and Isaac from the Bible and just how tragic that started out as well, with God asking his follower, who’d already been through so much, to sacrifice to him his beloved son. Of course, that ended differently and it may not even have any actual bearing on the narrative of the manga, however, I feel like the point stands.

What makes a sacrifice true is the heart.

Because there was no heart in their act of sacrifice.

Because the heart of the surviving twin was never the same after his sacrifice.

Additionally, I understand that from the way Sebastian spoke, he implied an active participation on the sibling’s part and I would argue that there was such an engagement from him, not in deed, but in feeling and thought.

What I mean by that is, take a look at all the people gathered there; some are scared and asking for God, some are in disbelief of what’s happening and yet others are already asking to have their wishes fulfilled. But the way I see it, none of them have abandoned their faith in God; for them, doesn’t it look more like they see God as being on one side and the Devil on the other? And they simply chose the Devil? However, following this train of thought, it could be argued that for them, the existence of the Devil also validated the existence of God.

Except for the surviving child.

For him, the apparition of the Devil constituted further evidence against the existence of God. For if God existed, it would surely have been Him whom saved them or not even let anything happen to them in the first place.

And Sebastian does mention that the denouncing of one’s faith was also needed for his calling in to the human world, doesn’t he? That may even be how he identified a child as the one set to become his Master, as the one who’d summoned him: by the change producedin him by the death of his brother.

By the part that was missing inside of him.

The invitation and door that would allow for the demon to seep in to his soul and pour a part of his essence inside, where previously, there may have been the faith in God to reject him and not allow him entry.

There is, after all, the idea that evil has to be let in, right?

And well, even if we don’t actually see an obvert importance being placed of faith in this series and even though the character’s abandonment of his belief in God may be understandable, given what he had and has to endure and even if it may not seem like an important aspect, maybe, just maybe that abandonment was the final string needed to be extended in order to summon the demon and anchor him to a soul.

What do you think?

【Response to: Did Sebastian lie to his master about his brother?】

Dear Anon1,

H-how...do you even send an ask in essay size???? (ÔAó) DUDE!

Well, about what you say. You are free to think as you like, but my answer was and remains that Sebas lied because he said that O!Ciel made an active choice, which he did not. The original Japanese gives very little room for different interpretation if you read carefully.

As I explained in the original post, the verbs and particles Sebas used are ACTIVE, referring to a presence of intention behind O!Ciel’s actions. In the original Japanese words chosen by Sebas, he means that O!Ciel deliberately chose to have somebody take specifically R!Ciel instead of himself, place R!Ciel on the altar, and stab him for the purpose of summoning a demon. This is obviously not true.

Lies are lies, and range from claims of something entirely delusional, to minor exaggerations or twists of the truth. For example: If a mother is forced to let go of her children in an ugly divorce case because she is otherwise made to pay so much money it’ll ruin her financially, and I say to the children: “your mother dumped you because she rather keeps her money”, it is still a lie. That is basically what Sebas did.

Dear Anon 2,

Sorry for shoving you under another Anon’s ask (judging from language and content you’re probably someone else, but I can’t be sure). I thinkkkkkk the answer to your question is the continuation of what I want to say to Anon1, so I shall answer the both of you together here.

I never read a single word of the bible except the title “bible”, so I have no idea. But it is possible that what you say about a “sacrifice” is similar. It is possible that because the sacrifice was O!Ciel’s - albeit a transaction performed by the cultists - O!Ciel became Sebas’ master. In English O!Ciel did ‘pay a sacrifice’ passively, but that is not how it works in Japanese, which I already explained.

For easy comparison’s sake, let’s say the sacrifice R!Ciel is money, and Sebas’ service a cup of coffee.

R🧒 = 💴 | 👿＝☕

The cultists stole the money out of O!Ciel’s pocket, and put it on the counter. The fair barista then gives O!Ciel the cup of coffee, because he knows the credit card was stolen from the boy’s pocket.

That is how I reason O!Ciel ended up with the demon, and why Sebastian’s lie of O!Ciel having actively paid with his brother’s life to buy a contract hit the boy so hard. Because even though O!Ciel did not choose for the transaction to happen, he did end up with the purchase, so he did “profit” from his twin’s death. Sebas was clearly preying on that survivor’s guilt because he is Trash™.

TL;DR: Sebas f*cking lied.

#Sebastian Michaelis #Summoning #O!Ciel #R!Ciel #cult #Japanese #2CT #It's not a theory anymore though XD #What can we call it now?#2C....R (revelation)?

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letterboxd · 4 years

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Life Detained.

The Mauritanian director Kevin Macdonald talks with Jack Moulton about researching Guantanamo Bay’s top secrets, Tahar Rahim’s method-acting techniques, the ingenuity of humanity during the pandemic, and his favorite Scottish films.

“You’ve got to understand that for a Muslim man like Tahar, this role has a much greater significance than it does for you or me.” —Kevin Macdonald

It’s not uncommon for a director to release two films in one year, but Academy-Award winning—for his 1999 documentary One Day in September—director Kevin Macdonald is guilty of this achievement multiple times. Ten years ago, he released his first crowd-sourced documentary Life in a Day and the period epic The Eagle within months of each other. A decade on, he’s done it again.

The Scottish director (and grandson of legendary filmmaker Emeric Pressburger) released both his Life in a Day follow-up and the legal drama The Mauritanian this month. The latter tells the story of Guantanamo Bay detainee Mohamedou Ould Slahi (sometimes written as Salahi), who was held and tortured in the notorious US detention center for fourteen years without a charge. The film, adapted from Slahi’s 2015 memoir Guantánamo Diary, features Jodie Foster and Shailene Woodley as his defense attorneys Nancy Hollander and Teri Duncan, with Benedict Cumberbatch, who also signed on as the film’s producer, playing prosecutor Lt. Stuart Couch.

Benedict Cumberbatch as prosecutor Lt. Stuart Couch in ‘The Mauritanian’.

The Mauritanian also introduces French star Tahar Rahim to a global audience, in the role of Slahi. “The ensemble is excellent across the board,” writes Zach Gilbert, “while Tahar Rahim is best in show overall, bringing honorable heart and humanity to his role [of] the titular mistreated prisoner.”

Much of the story is filmed as an office-based legal thriller involving thick files, intense conversations, and Jodie Foster’s very bright lipstick. Macdonald expertly employs aspect ratio to signify narrative shifts into scenes recreating Slahi’s vivid recollections of torture and his achingly brief conversations with unseen fellow detainees.

Qualifying for this year’s awards season due to extended deadlines, The Mauritanian has already earned Golden Globe nominations for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress for Rahim and Foster respectively. Slahi remains unable to travel due to no-fly lists, but he was a valuable resource to the production, providing an accurate and rare depiction of a sympathetic Muslim character in an American film.

It was the eve of Life in a Day 2020’s Sundance Film Festival premiere when we Zoomed with Macdonald. Behind him, we spied a full set of the Italian posters for Michelangelo Antonioni’s classic Blow-Up. As it turns out, he’s not a fan of the film—only the posters—so we got him talking about his desert-island top ten after a few questions about his new film.

The attention to detail on Guantanamo Bay in The Mauritanian is impressive. There are procedures depicted that you rarely see on-screen. How did you conduct your research? Obviously Guantanamo Bay is a place which the American government spends a great deal of effort keeping secret. It was important to Mohamedou and me that we depicted the reality of the procedures as accurately as we possibly could. That research came primarily from Mohamedou who has an incredible memory. He drew sketches and made videos of himself lying down in spaces and showing how he could stretch half his arm out [in his cell]. There are a lot of photographs on the internet of Guantanamo Bay which are [fake] and others are from a later period because the place developed a lot over the years since it started in 2002 and Mohamedou was able to [identify] which photos were rooms, courtyards and medical centers he had been in.

Director Kevin Macdonald on set with Jodie Foster.

How did you approach creating an honest representation of the graphic torture scenes, without putting the audience through it as well? Whenever films about this period are [made] they’re always from the point of view of the Americans and this time we’re with Mohamedou. You can’t underestimate the fact that there have really been no mainstream American cinematic portrayals of Muslims at all, so in portraying a sympathetic Muslim character who’s also accused of terrorism, you’re pushing some hot buttons with people. It was important that those people who are uncomfortable with him understand why he confessed to what he confessed.

Everything you see in the film is what happened; the only difference is that they weren’t wearing masks of cats and Shrek-like creatures, they wore Star Wars masks of Yoda and Luke Skywalker in this very perverse fucked-up version of American pop culture. Obviously, we couldn’t get the rights to those. Actually, I don’t feel that it is graphic. There is more violence in your average Marvel movie. It’s psychologically disturbing because you’re experiencing this disorientating lighting, the [heavy-metal] music, and he’s being told his mother’s going to be raped and he’s flashing back to his childhood. To be empathizing with this character and then to see them to be so cruelly treated is so deeply disturbing.

How did you prepare Tahar Rahim for his convincing portrayal of such intense pain and suffering? Tahar went through a great deal of discomfort in order to achieve it. He felt that to give a performance that had any chance of being truthful, he needed to experience a little bit of what Mohamedou had suffered, so throughout the movie he would insist on wearing real shackles which made his leg bleed and give him blisters. I would plead with him to put on rubber ones and he would say “no, I have to do this so I’m not just play-acting”.

He starved himself for about three weeks leading up to a torture sequence—he had lost an awful amount of weight and he was really unsteady on his legs. I was very worried about it and I got him nutritionists and doctors but he was determined to stick with that. You’ve got to understand that for a Muslim man like Tahar, this role has a much greater significance than it does for you or me. He felt a great weight of responsibility to do this correctly, not just for Mohamedou, but he was speaking for the whole Muslim world in a way.

Jodie Foster and Shailene Woodley as defense attorneys in ‘The Mauritanian’.

What compels you to study this period in time? Mohamedou was released a couple of weeks before Trump came to power in 2016, so the story is still ongoing for him. He’s still being harassed by the American government and he’s not allowed to travel because he’s on these no-fly lists. I didn’t want to make a movie that was saying “George W. Bush is terrible”. We’ve been there, we’ve done that. This is looking back with a little bit of distance and saying “here’s the principles that we can learn from when you sidestep the rule of law”—what it takes to stand up like Lt. Stuart Couch did when everyone else around you is going along with something that’s really terrible.

You see that around Trump with the choices within the Republican Party to stand up and say they’re going to sacrifice their careers to do the right thing. It is a hard thing when there’s this mass hysteria in the air. The basic principles that the lawyer [characters] are representing is not about analyzing and replaying what happened after 9/11, they’re directly related in a bigger way to the world we all inhabit.

Did anything surprise you in how your subjects for Life in a Day 2020 addressed the pandemic? One of the most affecting characters in the film is an American who lost his home and business because of the pandemic, so he’s living in his car. He seems very depressed when you meet him for the first time, then later he’s telling us there’s something that’s giving him joy in his life. He brings out all these drones with these cameras on them and puts on this VR headset and loses himself by flying through the trees. I thought that was such a great metaphor for the way that human ingenuity has enabled us to survive and thrive during the pandemic.

I get the feeling of resilience from [the film]. This is a more thoughtful film than the original one. I see this as a movie of [us] being beware of our susceptibility to disease and ultimately to death and mortality, [and] how we’ve found these consolations as human beings. To me, it’s a really profound thing. It also speaks to the main theme of the film which is how we’re all so similar, same as The Mauritanian. It’s confronting you with all these people and saying we fundamentally all share the basic things that underpin our lives and the differences between us are much less important than the things we have in common.

Let’s go from Life in a Day to your life in film. What’s a Scottish film that you love but you feel is very overlooked or underrated? That’s really hard because there aren’t many Scottish films and there aren’t many good ones. Gregory’s Girl is the greatest Scottish film ever made—it’s the bible for life for me. That’s very well-known, so I would have to say Bill Forsyth’s previous film That Sinking Feeling, which was self-funded and made on 16mm black-and-white. It has some of the same actors and characters as Gregory’s Girl in it. Or my grandfather Emeric Pressberger’s film I Know Where I’m Going! which is a rare romantic comedy set in Scotland.

John Gordon Sinclair and Dee Hepburn in Bill Forsyth’s ‘Gregory’s Girl’ (1980).

Which film made you want to become a filmmaker? I think it was Errol Morris’s The Thin Blue Line, which is one of the top five documentaries ever made and in my top ten desert-island movies.

What else is in your desert-island top ten? Oh god, don’t! I knew you were going to ask me that. I’ll give a few. I would say there would have to be something by Preston Sturges—maybe The Lady Eve or The Palm Beach Story. There would have to be a film written by my grandfather, so probably The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, which is the best British film ever made. There would have to be Singin’ in the Rain, which is the most purely joyful film I’ve ever seen. There would probably be The Battle of Algiers, which I rewatched recently and was an inspiration on The Mauritanian. Citizen Kane I also rewatched in anticipation of watching Mank, of which I was very disappointed. I thought it completely missed the point and was kind of boring.

Which was the best film released in 2020 for you? I thought the Russian film Dear Comrades! was really stunning. It was made by a director [Andrei Konchalovsky] in his 80s who first worked with Andrei Tarkovsky back in the late 1950s. He co-scripted Ivan’s Childhood. I would love to make my masterpiece when I’m 86 too!

Related content

Films with Muslim characters

Movies that pass the Riz test

Scottish Cinema—a regularly updated list

Follow Jack on Letterboxd

‘The Mauritanian’ is in select US cinemas and virtual theaters now, and on SVOD from March 2. ‘Life in a Day 2020’ is available to stream free on YouTube, as is the original.

#kevin macdonald #michelangelo antonioni #scottish film #scottish director #emeric pressburger #the mauritanian #jodie foster #tahir rahim #tahar rahim #french actor #guantanamo bay #muslim representation #muslims on film #benedict cumberbatch #guantanamo diary #life in one day #life in one day 2020 #life in one day film #letterboxd

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thepartyponies · 3 years

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Its pretty amazing how you see a post about religous abuse and immediately frame it about how the abuse victims "did wrong" for not believing in your invisible friend. This is why christianity ends up abusing so many people. Its not about what the victim did wrong - its about what CHRISTIANS do wrong and wont stop doing

Hi, is there a specific post of mine you're referring to? If so, please let me know so I can reread what I said. I'm looking through my christianity tag and I'm not seeing anything recent that deals with religious abuse. Maybe I forgot to tag it, or is it from a while ago? If it's from a while ago, there's always a chance that I would say it differently now.

I'm always interested in learning how to better love and represent Jesus to the people around me, so I'd love to hear more about your perspective and experiences with this subject. If you or someone you love has been hurt in their experience with Christianity (which from your tone seems likely), I hope you will believe that I am truly sorry that that happened. It breaks my heart to see people hurt and have their view of God tainted in that way.

I have more to say, but I'll put the rest of my response under a readmore.

In general I do agree that victims of abuse should not bear the blame for hurts that have been done to them. However, I like to avoid blanket statements and assuming that every painful situation falls into the same neat categories of abuser vs abused. Many do, but life is often complicated, and there's nuance to every situation. Nobody's perfect, and being victimized doesn't automatically excuse someone of all responsibility. Sometimes bad people hurt other bad people, or they hurt each other.

But again, I feel like you're responding to a specific post, so I don't want to overemphasize one aspect of a conversation without being fully aware of the context of that conversation.

You mention "not believing". Well, if God is real, which he proved he is with the empty tomb among other things, then he's the rightful ruler of the universe, and there's no neutral position when it comes to his kingship. Either you accept him as king over every atom of creation, or you reject him as king.

He's a good king, far better than any other we could invent for ourselves.

I do tend to disagree with the premise that Christianity abuses people, instead I think it's more accurate to say that sometimes Christians abuse people, like you said towards the end of your message. Specific, individual, real life people, rather than the religion/institution/concept as a whole. Big difference.

Christianity is part of the story of God using broken, messed-up people like me and you to participate in his ongoing work of restoration in this world. In fact every central figure in the Bible, except Jesus, has their flaws on full display. Becoming a Christian doesn't immediately free you of all your fallen tendencies, rather it's a lifelong journey of partnering with the Holy Spirit to let yourself be transformed into the person you were always meant to be, ie someone full of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control, etc. Someone who acts like Jesus did.

Some people are farther along in this nonlinear process than others, some get lost and sidetracked along the way. I've seen and heard many people who claim the name of Christ talk and act in ways that look nothing like him. Whenever that happens, the name of Christ is profaned, and scripture tells us that such people will be held accountable, in this life and/or the next. Earlier this year I read the amazing book "Mere Christianity" by CS Lewis (which I highly recommend to everyone). In it he said that anything that has the capacity to act for good has an equal capacity to act for evil.

Humans, for example, have more capacity for both than, say, cows do. Some people, in their brokenness, will take God's primary method of reconciliation (the ekklesia or "church") and use it for their own selfish purposes, or in their zeal to do right will hurt the very people they should be trying to minister to. "Beating with a book everyone that book tells you to love" as the Brand New song lyrics say. Some will construct versions of the church that deviate from the templates and instructions given in scripture, in order to free themselves from accountability and transparency and to gain power and influence over others who should be safe in their care.

But I've seen way too much of Christianity being done right, lives being restored, people being saved and healed, to say that the abuse means that we should just give up, or that the abuse somehow redefines what Christianity is. I just met a woman today whose life-threatening ovarian cancer was miraculously healed. God is at work in this world, and in and through his people, despite our faults and shortcomings. People will often let you down, God never will. Sometimes we think he has, but that's usually because we expect things from him that he hasn't promised. Life with God won't be perfect this side of eternity, but we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

If any fellow believers read this, if you see unhealthy or abusive behavior happening with other believers, please speak up. In a bold, humble, loving, truthful, biblical way.

And with that I need to use the sleep. Goodnight.

#nonnie #replies #christianity

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incomingalbatross · 4 years

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Tonight’s the night for more Catholic Batfam headcanons because I say so.

As outlined in this post, in this world Bruce was raised Catholic, drifted away somewhat in adolescence, and regained his faith and active practice during his Training World Tour. Further thoughts (some of which I’ve already stated, but put together a little better, I think):

Bruce doesn’t have a regular spiritual director in Gotham. Instead he just goes to Confession to a few different parish priests he likes—taking precautions so that people don’t see Bruce Wayne in the Confession lines just to be safe—and starts every Confession with “I’m Batman” because he feels it’s necessary context. This feels logical to me but also highly entertaining.

When he moved back into Wayne Manor and started fixing it up, his first big project outside of the Cave was converting one of the ballrooms into a family chapel. (Yes, the Manor had two ballrooms. Yes, Bruce also thinks that was excessive.) It’s dedicated to St. Michael, with side niches for statues of Our Lady and St. Joseph, and other saints along the walls/in the new stained-glass windows. He can’t keep the Eucharist there, of course, but there’s a Tabernacle built into the altar just to be thorough. Mass could be said there.

He also sets up outdoor Stations of the Cross in the Manor grounds, though that comes later. There’s landscaping and a path to take you through them. He prays the Stations every Friday.

Alfred is a practicing Anglican, BTW. He and Bruce have agreed to disagree, but they don’t hesitate to share their common ground. Alfred does make use of the chapel. (I believe St. Michael is his Confirmation saint here, actually. Which Bruce knew when he designed the chapel.)

When Dick comes along, he’s very much a non-denominational Christian. He was baptized and his parents read the Bible with him and taught him to pray, but living on the road didn’t give them a lot of formal religion. They did have informal services at Haly’s on Sundays, though.

Bruce didn’t want to push him (partly because he’s oversensitive to the idea of “making a kid go against his dead parents”), so he didn’t really actively try to convert him. Dick went to church with him or Alfred, growing up, and remained a believer, but I don’t think he had a deep or a formally religious spiritual life. He does have a great deal of respect for Bruce’s, though.

Then Jason came along.

Jason is a FIERCELY Catholic little Irish-American with a battered rosary he was given for his First Communion and a strong devotion to the Holy Family (because Catherine Todd was a deeply pro-life Catholic woman and raised her boy accordingly, and I will die on this hill). I’m not sure if he’s ever had an opportunity to be an altar server but I know he WANTS it. One of the first and biggest ways he and Bruce click is through their shared Faith.

Bruce has his own chapel! Bruce talks to him about religious things, and helps him get to Mass and the Sacraments, and signed up for regular serving duty at their parish! Bruce buys him saint books and listens to his half-articulate spiritual troubles and understands.

Bruce, meanwhile, is equally blown away by this tiny street child’s vehement love for Our Lady and the Blessed Sacrament and the beauties and stories of the Catholic Church, the way he clings to Holy Mother Church all the more for the absence of an earthly family, and how hungry he is for a stronger spiritual life. Bruce wants to give him everything.

Of course, Jason is far from a perfect child—he struggles with anger, anger which is founded in his hatred of suffering and injustice but which he doesn’t always know what to do with, or how to handle. He loves God deeply, but sometimes—especially as he starts maturing, becoming more and more aware of the world beyond his own life—he finds himself angry at Him, raging against the cruelty and injustice in the world and asking how? why? Why would You allow this?

On the whole, though, Jason is doing okay. He has Bruce, and he has his Faith. He’s confirmed at thirteen, a year after meeting Bruce, and he picks St. John Bosco as his patron saint. He prays to him for help in directing his passions to help the poor and vulnerable, rather than falling into anger and ill-will.

He doesn’t mention it to Bruce, yet, but as he keeps growing up he starts to feel like... maybe... he wants to be a priest? Maybe THAT’S what he’s supposed to do with his life? He keeps thinking about it...slowly, because it’s a Big Deal and he keeps doubting himself and he IS just fifteen, still, and having struggles with his temperament and the effects of of his past. But he keeps feeling more strongly like this is the right path for him.

And then he finds out his mother, who loved him and raised him and gave him everything he has, isn’t his mother. And he goes investigating this, because he has to, he has to know who his other mother is and if he can get to know her.

And then he is murdered, betrayed and and beaten, and still trying desperately to save the woman who sold him to the Joker.

(Jason Todd died a hero’s death and this is ALSO a hill I will die on.)

I haven’t figured out what quirk of the multiverse made Jason NOT 100% dead (the Lazarus Pit can’t bring back really-quite-sincerely-dead people or it would be way too OP and also HORRIFYING), but there’s something. Bat-Mite meddling? Superboy Prime punching the universe is dumb, but it’s DEFINITELY better than Talia stealing Jason’s corpse.

Anyway.

Quite frankly, at this point, Bruce’s faith is the only thing that keeps him sane.

He has his boy buried in the family cemetery, with the funeral Mass in the chapel.

He was really hoping one of his boys would be married there, first. Or even that Jason would say a Mass there, someday.

(He didn’t know Jason had thought about that too, but a parent hopes this kind of hope anyway.)

But no. Jason is buried. Bruce struggles with his own rage, and grief, and despair. He spends a lot of time in the chapel. ...Sometimes it helps.

And then little Tim Drake shows up, INSISTING that “Batman needs a Robin!” And things change again.

Tim (since this is focusing on the religious aspects of characters) is not Catholic. I BELIEVE he’s Protestant (don’t know which type), and likes starting debates with Bruce when things are too quiet. Bruce only engages sometimes, because when it gets too earnest he can be painfully reminded of his discussions with Jason—keep in mind, Jason is the first kid he really DID discuss religion with—and his childishly wholehearted Catholicism and Tim’s cheerfully stubborn Protestant opposition can make for a jarring contrast.

It’s good, though. Bruce doesn’t have anyone to share the fullness of his faith with, again... but that’s just one of the many smaller losses involved in his loss of Jason. He adjusts.

And Tim is earnest about his own faith, even if he doesn’t talk about it much to anyone other than Bruce and Alfred (who he knows also take Christianity seriously and will treat his views with respect). He doesn’t use the chapel as much as either of them—or even Dick, who grew up with it and goes there to pray or even just think things out whenever he’s in residence—but he does use the space sometimes, when he wants guaranteed quiet and a prayerful atmosphere.

He also somehow becomes church friends with Clark Kent, who as an archetypal Midwesterner is PROBABLY Protestant here.

Do he and Clark convert Kon between them? Again, PROBABLY.

...This is very long and it’s getting late, so I will stop here for now. I’d like to do another post on Red Hood and Damian and Bruce’s “death” at some point... we will see how that goes.

EDIT: Also, I forgot! Credit to @why-bless-your-heart for Protestant Tim—all I knew about Tim was that I didn’t know what to do with him, but her take was Good and so I have adopted it. But I should give credit where credit is due.

#batfamily #jason todd #bruce wayne #catholic #catholic batfamily #dick grayson #tim drake #i feel like making the gordons catholic too #purely because i can #no detailed headcanons on them or steph or cass though #or anyone else cause i don't know the other characters like. at all #and yes i am absolutely using bruce wayne to vicariously live out my Rich Catholic dreams #long post #cw child death #(i mean it's jason)#(so if you start reading this you know where it's probably going)#(but yeah)

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x0401x · 4 years

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Have you watched Tsurune, by an chance? If yes, what do you think about it?

Finally managed to write down a reply for this! (Told y’all I was gonna do it and I did not give up, lmao.)

So this ask caught me off-guard for two reasons: one is that I never see it coming when people send me Tsurune asks now that the anime is long over and the fandom is inactive, and the other is that nobody has ever asked me this question so straightforwardly. Whenever I got asks about Tsurune, people would question me about the differences between anime and novel, the anime versions versus the canon versions of the characters, fanservice and ship tease, alterations in character relationships and my opinions on specific episodes, chapters or scenes. As far as I remember, no one has ever asked me what I think of the anime (or the novel) in general.

I won’t go into the novel since this ask is just about the anime (I can do that in another one if you like), but I’ll end up mentioning it every now and then because it’s pretty impossible to discuss about an adaptation without talking about its source material. Still, I promise this review won’t be centered on that.

This is actually a very condensed version of my thoughts, because the real thing would be a bible. It’s still a lot, though. Here comes a long-ass ride.

I guess I should start by making clear that I usually follow the history of KyoAni’s productions very closely as I’m a big fan of the studio. This includes reading the novels and mangas they adapt into anime as well. I had read volume 1 by the time the Tsurune anime came out, so I already knew what the canon was like. I must add that I was also familiar with Japanese archery to some degree and I was reading Zen in the Art of Archery when the anime was airing (it’s referenced early in the novel, so I decided to give it a try).

With all of this being said, when it was announced that Tsurune would get an anime, my first reaction was to worry. This surprised even me, because I usually have high hopes for any KyoAni adaptation, even the ones I end up not liking. I mean, it’s a studio filled with brilliant stars and holds the golden standards of the whole industry, so even when the content isn’t good, the quality of the animation itself is enough to make their shows worth anyone’s time. But the choice of director had me very concerned.

Now, this is Kyoto Animation that we’re talking about. In no moment did I fear for the animation’s quality. Most of Tsurune’s staff members, if not all, already had previous experience working on Violet Evergarden. And we all know that even newcomers freshly graduated from KyoAni’s preparatory school can make a stunning visual masterpiece. Yes, I am talking about Kyoukai no Kanata. And yes, I said visual masterpiece, because we also know that what these productions normally lack is the most essential part: the content.

In those cases, the one who actually makes a difference is the director. I’m a firm believer that the more inexperienced the staff is, the more competent a director they should be placed under. If not a senior animator, at least let it be a rising talent with the best prospects possible. But the schedules usually don’t help with that, so these hatchlings ended up under Yamamura Takuya’s wings.

To elaborate a bit further on why I think brighter animators should be the ones leading new packs (no, it’s not discrimination against the less accomplished, because you gotta start from somewhere), it’s because they usually have this knack for bringing the most out of the stories they’re working on. When the story is great by itself, that’s a different thing, but when it doesn’t quite reach its full potential with just the text, then the one to give it life has to be a person with more vision.

Am I saying that Tsurune is one of those stories? Absolutely. Tsurune is about archery, which is an art that is best appreciated when observed. You can’t get everything out of it just with words, and there are many things in it that people who don’t know much or know nothing about Japanese archery wouldn’t understand without actually seeing them, so the series obviously needed an anime in order to reach its full potential. But other than that, I’ll be honest: I love the Tsurune novel for its cultural baggage, the handling of its characters and its fairly innovative views in the repetitive and boring scene that sports animanga are nowadays, but I don’t consider it a well-written novel. Because it isn’t.

This might seem controvesial coming from someone who defends the canon with claws and teeth, but I’m aware of its flaws. I think Ayano Kotoko has a lot of room for improvement, and she’s evolved remarkably from volume 1 to volume 2. But volume 1 is what the anime was based off, so there was a deep need for a clinical eye in that production. One that could measure the original work’s strengths and weaknesses and balance them out by powering one up and overcoming the other. And also a certain level of knowledge about Japanese archery. Sadly, Yamamura Takuya didn’t have any of it.

As much as I admire Yamamura as a key animator and in-betweener, I believe he has a long way to go before he can be considered a good director, and I certainly don’t think he was ready for his debut when he was put in charge of Tsurune. I would rather, and I mean this in a good way, have seen him work as anything else for the rest of his career. Being a series director was too much for him. I say this taking into consideration not only the fiasco that the Tsurune anime was in sales but also Yamamura’s history in the studio before becoming a director.

This might sound funny, but Yamamura had no idea how big Animation Do and KyoAni were before he decided to join. He also was never very skilled. His in-betweening was actually not approved at first when he was trying to enter the company. He even once admitted that his knowledge of animation was extremely limited at the time, and what a time that was, because the studio was busy up to the neck with the making of Lucky Star back then. He didn’t know left and right, basically, and he recalled in an interview from last year that he is still surprised the studio actually hired him.

Despite all of this, Yamamura joined the company with the intention of becoming a director. While he did manage the feat in the end, it took him +10 years and a few frustrated attempts. Animators usually start out at in-betweening and earn other positions through passing exams. Yamamura failed his first exam to be key animator, only managing to pass half a year later. He also failed his first exam to become a director. At his second attempt, one of their colleagues even suggested that maybe he should stay a bit longer as a key animator, and I couldn’t agree more. While he did pass the test, I can only bring myself to think that he did so with an average score.

Now, I did say that this info came from a 2019 interview, when the Tsurune anime was already over. But they weren’t really what shaped my opinion on Yamamura regarding his direction. It was the anime itself. But this interview served to confirm something I had already noticed from his tragectory to series direction: with him being in the studio for so long and having worked on so many titles, it was weird to me that he was rarely an episode director in comparison to key animation and in-betweening. Episode direction is a step that I consider crucial for one to become either series director, animation supervisor or series composer. I do know that quite a few directors take just as long as he did or even longer to debut and actually do thrive in the end, but observing Yamamura’s work always gave me the impression that he was better off following decisions made by someone else rather than making his own.

Yamamura also loses points with me in that he’s backed up within the company by Kawanami Eisaku, another director who doesn’t get rave reviews on his works. He’s the one who replaced Utsumi Hiroko after she migrated to Mappa, and ever since he took over the Free! franchise, its sales decreased to less than 1/3 of each of the first two seasons separately. I personally don’t like that he seems to look down on Utsumi despite his lack of success in inheriting her legacy, but leaving this aside and focusing only on his skills, I’m not fond of directors who opt for simplistic approaches in general. I think animation is a medium that should be used to amplify the appeal of the source material, not water it down. It also feels like these kinds of directors are always trying to play safe, which (they don’t seem to realize) goes against the audience’s expectations and kills the hype. It strikes me as cowardly, to be frank. I also don’t like when they ignore what the characters had been building up and simply retool them to their own tastes. I was praying that Yamamura would be different from this bad example, but turns out he was actually worse.

I got a really bad feeling when the anime PVs of Tsurune were released. My very first impression was that Yamamura was still too much of a beginner and he wouldn’t be able to make Tsurune into a successful anime. I know this might seem like an exaggeration, but here’s the thing: ever since KyoAni started making its own titles, I’d never seen lack of hype for their upcoming works. Ever.

Until Tsurune.

Every time a PV of a KyoAni show comes out, people go crazy. It’s not always a frenzy like it was with Free! in its heyday or Violet Evergarden when the novel commercials were the only pieces of animation we had of it, but there’s usually lots of debate and speculations going on. With Tsurune, almost no one cared. You’d see next to nobody talking about it save from a few people on Reddit. And honestly, why should they bother? It didn’t seem promising at all. Didn’t show much of the characters or the story’s premise, didn’t highlight any particularly interest aspect of the plot and didn’t leave any impression animation-wise. It was very bland, to say the least. Unfortunately, so was the anime series.

It might be blunt of me, but my overall evaluation of Tsurune is that it was a really boring show. Nearly all elements that made the story and characters interesting were either taken out or squeezed into a cookie cutter mold, cliche version of what they looked like they were going to be at first but turned out not to be in the novel. And I say this because one of the things that make Tsurune a good novel is how it turns stereotypes upside-down. It introduces the readers into what seems like is going to be a typical sports shounen and starts out describing the character archetypes in the most common ways possible and puts them in the most common situations possible, then it reverses them all. That’s what’s most charismatic about the books. It’s what incites actual character development and gives us different sides of each relationship, yet the anime makes no use of it.

The anime also hardly makes any use of all the mystic, Zen and lowkey folklore-ish veils of the novel, which are supposed to add up to the archery elements. The Zen part is actually essential since Japanese archery is fundamentally a Zen form of art. Yes, art. Japanese archery is, in fact, not a sport. This is one of the aspects that elevate Tsurune above other works of the sports genre: it’s only categorized as such because it can’t fit anywhere else, but it’s not really a sports novel. That could have elevated the anime to the same status too, if only the studio hadn’t treated it like a sports one. But they made that mistake.

Still, I think the biggest sin in this adaptation was to try to cling to tropes that are considered successful and ignoring the characters’ personalities, which didn’t match these tropes at all, resulting in both characters and bonds being utterly destroyed and the flow of the story slowing down to a slug pace. By the second half of the anime, literally either nothing interesting happens or the things that were supposed to be interesting don’t hold the audience’s attention enough, which the animators attempt to cover up with queerbait. Everything is so tediously predictable that I’ve seen countless comments from the Japanese side of the fandom about how similar the Tsurune anime was to Free! and how “KyoAni only ever makes male characters like that, don’t they”. They were referring to Seiya and his weird jealousy, by the way. Even first-timers could tell that the characterization was a disaster.

The sad thing is, they were right. The Tsurune anime really did feel highkey like a Free! copycat in the characterization department. The main character is always getting swung about by everyone around him. The best friend is very clearly co-dependent. The deuteragonist is revealed to be bitter because of a deceased relative and is an asshole to the rest of the main cast for a good portion of the series. The rival from the other school is rude as hell for no reason and he’s got annoying groupies on his team who don’t exist outside of idolizing him. There are only four female characters and they have almost no screen time. And the list goes on.

As for the animation itself, I would like to say that it was perfect, but what really rang the alarm in my head was the many beginner mistakes so evident here and there, such as missing frames, the opening theme starting out of nowhere, the colors of the background often being too bland, lack of movement or scenes where the characters are too static, etc. I shit you not that when I saw the title splashing onto the screen all of a sudden in the initial ten seconds of episode one, the first thing I thought was, “This won’t sell well”. Sure enough, it didn’t.

So there you have it. I didn’t like the show. The only things I enjoyed were the archery scenes and the soundtrack. The rest simply didn’t do justice to the original work. I hope this summary has explained why, but if you want more info on it, maybe visit my Tsurune tag. You’ll find me elaborating more on particular topics in response to similar asks. Or you can send me other questions if you feel like.

That’s it!

#tsurune #how cool is it that i finished just in time for the anime's anniversary lol

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danasmonster · 4 years

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Comparing the SKAM Remakes: SANA (Part I)

Sana (SKAM original)

Sana is constantly having to defend and explain herself to others - her friends, her family, strangers. We see this with Vilde when she says Sana can’t have sex, and Sana clarifies that by explaining that she can have sex, she just chooses not to. There is also the assumption that Sana isn’t interested in boys or that she can’t participate in russefeiring “because she’s not ‘allowed’ to drink alcohol.” We see it with her parents when she has to explain to her mom that not all aspects of Islam fit her, and with her brother when she references him discouraging her from wearing a hijab in order to fit in more and avoid stigma. And finally, she explains during her season that she has experienced watching her brother being spit on, being asked racist questions, and other rude or hateful acts because she and her family are Muslim.

The struggle to be both Norwegian and Muslim turns into a competition she gets lost in, and she ends up doing some very non-Muslim things like bully the Pepsi Max squad and lie in order to procure a russ bus. She also develops feelings for former Muslim and current atheist Yusef, which opens up an internal debate about the “Muslims only marry Muslims” rule.

With all of her bitchiness, her prickliness, her rudeness and her mistakes, I still absolutely adore Sana. She is strong, outspoken, and takes absolutely no shit from anyone. Her story is so incredibly relevant to the world as a whole because of the way a lot of people view Islam or other “restrictive” aspects/sects of Christianity or other religions. It is a reminder that ultimately we should strive to love and understand each other, whether you are a theist or an atheist, a Muslim or a Norwegian. All is love.

Everything I Love:

The opening scene with the contrast between Sana’s view from the bus with terrorist attacks and None of Dem by Robyn & Royksopp is so fun, & the look Sana gives the woman giving her a look over on the bus is pure Sana perfection

The scene when Elias called Sana a slave woman and all of his friends gave him a verbal beatdown

When we heard that Eskild was redecorating Noora’s room without her permission

The Hot in Here scene with all the Balloon Squad working out while the girl squad ogles them, and the way Sana visibly snaps herself out of her trance. Also the shot of them coming up the street with a bunch of balloons to meet the girls is iconic

The way Yousef comes over to talk to Sana while she is over in the corner being a grump on the bus - I knew there was a reason she and Isak became friends. They’re both grumpy pants.

When Sana catches Yousef dancing in her living room

The happy little look on her face when Yousef sends her a friend request on Facebook. She always smiles so freaking bright when she’s having fun with him

When Yousef showed off his carrot peeling skills

The way the Pepsi Max squad always has Pepsi

When Yousef took the rap for the vodka left out at Sana’s party, then Sana was hit with a metaphorical brick when Yousef told her he isn’t Muslim. You could see the shock on her face, and now she is conflicted because “Muslims only marry Muslims” and she clearly has already developed feelings for Yousef

When Sana and Noora drink coffee and bask in their solidarity that Vilde and Magnus are gross

When Sana and Yousef play basketball together and we see her smile - we have NEVER seen her smile like that. And then they have a heart to heart about their individual religious beliefs and it is PURE GOLD

“I just feel like Islam, or religion in general, creates a lot of anxiety in people . . . I personally feel like I’ve taken the best out of the religion and thrown away the rest. It’s like, compassion towards others, being grateful for what’s best, having compassion. That’s it. Don’t you think I can remember to be a good person without praying?” - Yousef

“For me, everything can be total chaos during the day, but the moment I start to pray, everything turns quiet and clear. Because even though there’s all this chaos, you’ll remember what really matters. It’s fine because everything has a bigger context and a meaning. Because every little part of the universe is so complex. Imagine that! Even the brain of a cockroach has greater meaning on earth. I just can’t believe all of that is a coincidence,” - Sana

Her chat with Elias was also fantastic

“What’s more important, saying you believe in Allah or behaving as though you believe in Allah?” - Elias

Watching everyone join in during “Imagine” definitely almost had me tearing up - another song added to my playlist. Honestly this scene was so sweet and touching and then everything just came crashing down. It was intense. And Sana’s face just looked freaking broken. Then when she overheard that her suspicions about being pushed out of the group because she’s Muslim were correct it was like an extra stab through the heart

The scene where she’s walking through the schoolyard was excellent - very reminiscent of Isak’s similar scene, and another way in which the two of them parallel one another

And this line is so, so true from Sana to Isak regarding why she never told Isak she knew Even before he met Isak

“I think Even should get to choose for himself how much he wants to share about his past. I mean, you might not want to share every thing about your past.”

When Sana and Jamilla have the conversation about all the different ways people fast, and Jamilla references her friend who won’t even swallow her own spit. So this friend goes around spitting all the time while she’s fasting. “She’s really confident about it, too.”

Both Sana’s expression of how she thinks the world views her and Isak’s response are very powerful

Sana: “Do you know what people think when they see me, when they see my hijab, which is the first thing they see? They think I’m wearing it because I’m forced to, not because I want to. And if I say it’s because I want to, then I’m just oppressed because I can’t have my own opinion. We talk about freedom of religion and all kinds of freedoms here in Norway, but being allowed to wear an extra piece of clothing, that’s wrong? Do you know what people do when they see Elias and I walking down the street? They spit at him because they think he’s oppressing me! He doesn’t even want me to wear the hijab because he doesn’t want me to get hate. Do you know how fucking tiring it is to walk out the door everyday knowing it’s yet another day where you have to prove to a whole country that you’re not oppressed . . . I’ve received so many dumb, racist questions in my life.”

Isak: “The dumb questions are so fucking important. People can’t stop asking the dumb questions because when they stop asking the dumb questions they start making up their own answers. And that’s dangerous. You just have to stop looking for racism in dumb questions. Even if they feel racist, it’s so fucking important to answer them.”

The Los Losers bus definitely had me tearing up

When Linn admitted to sending a used tampon to someone who flirted with the boy she liked

When we see Eskild picking up his guru mantle once more and he compares The Bible to Beyoncé . . . “The Bible says ‘The greatest of these is love’ or as Beyoncé would say ‘Love on top,’” while giving Sana advice

Noora’s face both when she saw William getting out of his car and when she got out of his after a four day sex and talk marathon

The conversation between Sana and her mom about why it is important for her to eventually marry someone who understands her beliefs and reminds her of them, not because she should be Muslim but because she chooses to be Muslim and she “would be very lonely if she were the only one in the relationship who believes.” So, whether or not she marries a nonbeliever or a non-Muslim is Sana’s choice, but there would be essential parts of Sana’s own wellbeing that would effected if she chose to go that route because her faith is an essential part of who she is.

The conversation with Noora was equally important. They may not necessarily be fated to be together, but there is a reason this person (Yousef) came into Sana’s life and avoiding him would be ignoring this sign from fate that this person is supposed to be a part of her life right now. Life is now.

When Yousef and Sana have yet another philosophical/religious discussion and Yousef proposes: “Maybe that’s why society needs religion. Democracy isn’t based on the idea that all people are different. It’s based on the idea that all people have equal worth. And that idea doesn’t exactly come from science. But I don’t think it helps to pretend there aren’t prejudices. What you have to do instead is show what Islam is.”

And The Finale!!!

When Vilde was putting on her makeup and listening to Pretty Hurts by Beyoncé, and everything else about her segment. I loved getting that glimpse into some of her life and mind for a little while. I’m still disappointed she never got to tell us her story during the original SKAM.

When Eva reminds Chris that he’s a fuckboy so they can never be together. Sure he’s momentarily disappointed and probably felt sad for a little bit, but he was really quick to move on to Emma - proving Eva was smarter than him and knew him better than he knew himself. Seriously though the scene where Penetrator Chris and Emma first see each other is fucking awesome

I LOVE LOVE LOVE that the school nurse has a big white dildo on the desk next to her while she has her chat with Chris

When we see Even stressing over making Isak’s birthday perfect

The interaction between Eskild and Linn when Eskild tells Linn she has to wear a hijab to Sana’s party because Sana is Muslim was hilarious. And then he told her they are always going to be there for each other and it got me right in the feels

And then when Eskild was proposing he, Noor, and Linn could share everything together if William moved in . . . shampoo, and William, and dish soap . . .

Then Vilde to Chris; “You know why you’re my best friend? Because no matter how hard my day is, you always find a way to make me laugh. Sometimes it makes you feel better to pretend that you’re fine.”

And the final speech!!!!

“Dear Sana, This speech is for you. And you’re getting it because what you’re inviting us to today overthrows American presidents tomorrow. We live in a chaotic world where it is difficult to understand the rules. Because why are some people poor and other people rich? Why do some people have to be refugees while others are safe? And why is it that sometimes even though you try to do something good it’s still met with hate?

It’s not weird that people give up, that they stop believing the good. But thank you so much for not giving up, Sana. Because even though it sometimes feels like it no one is ever alone. Each and everyone of us is part of the big chaos. And what you do today has an effect tomorrow.

it can be hard to say exactly what kind of effect, and usually you can’t see how everything fits together. But the effects of your actions are always there, somewhere in the chaos. In 100 years we may have machines that can predict effects of every action but until then we can trust this: Fear spreads But… But, fortunately love does too.”

I’m going to go cry now.

#skam #sanaxyousef #sana #Muslim #islam #religion #atheism #islamophobia #russ

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moneypedia · 4 years

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How to Defend Against False Accusations: A Personal Defense and 5 Guidelines to Protect The Truth

August 5, 2018 By Drew Shepherd

[Note: This post contains details about an undiagnosed case of borderline personality disorder (BPD). These details are included for informational purposes only, not to spread hate towards people with the illness.

If you or a loved one have been diagnosed with BPD, however, you may want to avoid this article.]

Guilty until proven innocent.

That’s the new norm these days.

Our current social climate has made it empowering to be a victim. And any abusers left standing must be exterminated—whether they’re guilty or not.

Please don’t think I’m downplaying the experience of actual victims though.

I know what it’s like to be among the lowest of society, and the struggle of real victims is part of the inspiration behind this site.

But the inconvenient truth is that all these “abusers” aren’t the monsters they’re made out to be.

Why do I say that you ask?

Because I’m one of them.

And this is my story.

The Accusation(s)

During my early twenties, I got involved with a girl who I later realized had borderline personality disorder (BPD).

I’ve already written about the experience and I’ve alluded to it multiple times since. So please read that article before this one if you haven’t already.

BPD is a serious mental illness, but most people have never heard of it, let alone know how to diagnose it.

If you’re not aware of how people with the disorder act, this post will come off as a rant against an innocent girl who liked me—which couldn’t be further from the truth.

But to summarize, the most notable symptom of BPD is the inability to regulate emotions. It’s a symptom so powerful that a sufferer’s feelings can define his or her reality. And this is what leads to many false accusations.

Manipulation, emotional abuse, cheating, promiscuity—she publicly accused me of all them.

It’s part of the process of “painting someone black.” The BPD person goes through cycles of both extreme love and hate for their loved one, but once the relationship ends, the other party is permanently devalued.

Of course this treatment is reserved for those in close relationships with the BPD sufferer. Outsiders will only see a victim pleading her case.

I’ve stayed quiet on these accusations so far since most of them don’t have any substance, but I unfortunately made one mistake that appears to give her claims some validity.

So I’m sure that she already has, or eventually will use this evidence against me. And if her false accusations were to gain traction, they would not only destroy my reputation, but also the legitimacy of the message I present on this site.

The latter is my primary reason for defense.

I’ve always said that the Bible is the basis for my moral judgment, and that couldn’t be more important than in sexual matters.

Now do I always control my lustful impulses and thoughts?

And do I always prevent myself from viewing images I shouldn’t see?

No.

I’m a Christian but I’m still a sinful human being. Controlling lust is part of the lifelong battle against sin in the Christian life.

But when it comes to things like fornication and adultery, I’ve held true to my stance on abstinence.

And as tough as it is to be a twenty-something with this stance in our sex-saturated world, it’s beyond frustrating to be accused of doing the complete opposite.

I’m an ambassador for what I believe. And I can’t allow anything on this site—faith-related or not—to be diminished because of one person’s claims.

So I’ll go into detail here about what really happened, and then I’ll show you how to defend against false accusations once and for all.

Drew “The Player”

I’ll preface my story with a little background information.

I was going into my last semester in college, and it had been about a year since I saw my accuser in person.

Things didn’t end well between me and her the last time we were “together.” But I was admittedly still interested in her—even with all the red flags.

It appeared that both of us were sad with the way the first go ‘round ended. So I foolishly tried to work something out with her before the semester started.

To my surprise, I was ignored and indirectly shot down.

How a normal girl would’ve reacted

It hurt pretty bad after putting myself out there for someone I thought still cared. But rejection is a part of life, so I moved on.

What’s crazy though, is that she changed her mind at some point afterwards. And even though I never got a direct response from her, she apparently assumed we were in a quasi-relationship.

Now fast forward to February.

It was the week of Valentine’s Day. And while I did still think of her, I wasn’t sending a Valentine’s Day anything to a girl who I didn’t trust, who now lived in a different state, and who couldn’t even respond to my direct communication.

The only reason I entertained the thought of us getting back together—if we were ever truly together in the first place—was because she hoovered me back in.

Hoovering is a term that describes actions similar to what its namesake, the Hoover vacuum does.

It’s a tactic people with personality disorders subconsciously use to suck loved ones back in after a failed relationship.

In this case, she used one of the social media apps we both had to convince me that she was open to a renewed relationship, and that she had changed for the better.

But at this point, I was just focused on schoolwork because I had no clue what this girl was thinking.

I had a senior project for an external company that took most of my time that semester.

My project group and I met just about every weekday. And at the time, we were all trying to meet a deadline coming up the next week.

The day after Valentine’s Day, one of my teammates mentioned that we should go play trivia at a local bar. But being the introverted party-pooper I am, I declined.

My schedule involved waking at around 5:30 each day. My teammates were always out too late for my liking, and I knew I’d never make it back in time to get enough sleep if I went.

So I gave the whole, “Thanks, but no thanks” spiel even though I knew they wouldn’t let me off that easy.

Our team was a pretty tight group—especially for four people who were assigned to each other at random.

We had a ton of inside jokes by the end of the semester. And they were the first to tease me at graduation because my honor stole nearly fell as I walked across the stage.

So naturally, they all had a good laugh at me for not wanting to miss my bedtime.

Of course it was all playful fun though. I did get back at them numerous times over the semester, but I’ll admit that I have an off-kilter personality that lends itself to being teased.

So anyway, we went our separate ways and I headed to bed.

The next day, I saw an email from the night before saying that I was invited to a school-specific social app. I didn’t see the email until the early morning though because I went to bed early.

I had never heard of the app before and I was skeptical. So my first thought after waking and reading the email was, “What the heck is (app name here)?”

My second thought was, “Who’s the funny guy who sent this?”

Now I knew it was someone who previously had my email address.

Of course any student could have pulled that info from the school’s directory, but I doubt anyone would have gone through the trouble of searching their class roster, finding me, and then using my email address for the sake of hitting me up on an app.

So it had to be someone with whom I worked with closely or had a personal relationship with.

With these facts in mind, I falsely concluded that it was a prank from my teammate that the rest of the group was in on.

They had just gone out together the night before. And they always found a way to mess with me—even when I wasn’t around.

So just like any other time I felt I was being pranked, manipulated, or taken advantage of, I played along with the hope that the other party wouldn’t realize until it was too late (and this has been my M.O. since I was a kid).

But doing this, in hindsight, was a terrible idea.

Any form of participation on what I later realized was a hookup app would paint me in a bad light. And the consequences of my actions weren’t as clear at 5:30 in the morning.

After I made a quick profile—complete with pictures no man would ever use if he was truly seeking casual sex—I waited about 15 minutes for a response that never came.

Then after realizing how bad my actions could appear without context, I quickly deleted the app and went on with my day.

I’m not sure if I completely wiped the profile I created. But since the app was lesser-known and low key about its hookup aspect—it’s not like I signed on to Tinder—I figured this wouldn’t be a problem.

Outside of my own actions with the invite and the app though, I don’t know anything else. But there’s a chance that a troll profile made 10 minutes after I woke could end up biting me. And that’s why I’ve chosen to address it.

Now, I’m almost certain this invite was from my accuser. And I still kick myself for not recognizing the true source of the bait.

My actions gave her the apparent confirmation that I was “playing the field.” And within the week, she either started, or just made it obvious that she was sleeping with another guy to spite me—a wild and disproportionate response to the thought that your S.O. may be seeing someone else.

So once I confirmed that this actually happened, I ghosted her and all her drama, focused on my schoolwork (which led to my first 4.0), and then went along with my life.

People with BPD are notorious for doing stuff like this. It’s the reason why a popular book covering the illness is called Stop Walking On Eggshells (affiliate link):

They’ll cry about a lack of communication but then ignore you when you reach out to them.

They’ll go on about how lonely they are while sleeping with one of their (or even your) “friends” behind your back.

They’ll say you’re too stupid to complete a task but discredit you when you do it, and then raise the bar higher so you won’t reach the new mark.

After a while you won’t know what to do because she’ll never be satisfied. And everyone else will chalk it up to you not knowing how to treat a woman.

No-win situations and constant testing are common to those in relationships with these people—especially in regards to anything sexual. So I presume the invite was a test to see if I was some dirtbag who would cheat on his partner.

Now I’d hesitate to call it cheating either way since she ignored my attempts to directly communicate, and I had no idea what our relationship status was.

But the other “fact” she gathered was that I was a player who enjoyed casual sex (an assumption that would have driven a younger me mad with laughter).

Look, I understand that I don’t have a squeaky-clean Christian boy appearance—going through trials doesn’t purify the outside after all.

But that doesn’t mean I partake in the same activities those who look like me may be into. And it for sure doesn’t mean that my moral character is anything different than what I present on this site.

Of course it doesn’t help that I’m black either…but I won’t go down that road.

I should also note that I don’t have a personal Facebook or Instagram account. So it’s tough for others to know much about my life unless they read this site or talk to me or my loved ones personally.

This blank space makes me an easy target for accusations since I can be unknowingly attacked through mediums where I can’t defend myself. And there are no videos of me playing with my dog to fill the holes left by my “shady” lifestyle.

Usually this isn’t a problem as most of the people I meet don’t care about my online presence. But of course there’s always one person who assumes the worst case scenario. And it’s sad that in my case, this person was someone I genuinely liked before.

These obsessive behaviors were nothing new though:

This same girl cried sobbed in the middle of one of our classes—when we were both in our twenties mind you—because I didn’t initially return her interest.

She would go from spaced-out to depressed and then stare at me like it was my fault.

She even accused me of cheating after seeing a pic my mom took of me when I was at dinner with my family.

So you can imagine the relief I felt when I closed the door on that for good.

At this point, the only ones who still believe her lies—or to be fair to the illness she has, her reality—are people I’ve never met.

But I’m not even mad anymore. I’m just annoyed that my life is still negatively affected because I fell for the wrong girl.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the honest truth.

How to Craft Your Defense

So now that my story’s out of the way, how do you fight your own false accusations?

It’s not too difficult.

Just follow these 5 guidelines to protect yourself in both the present, and the future:

1) Remember the Alibi

As tempting as it is to piece together a story that makes you look like a saint, you have to ensure the truth you present is actually…well, true.

Since I couldn’t remember all this off the top of my head, I dug through my old emails and group conversations to get the timeline right. And I could always use them again if legal action was involved.

It also helps that I have an archive of posts here that clearly present my personality and the mistakes I’ve made.

You can even compare this post to the one I wrote on BPD earlier and you’ll see numerous similarities. If anyone thought I was lying, they could search the other 40+ posts here too to see that the story adds up.

But if you don’t have thousands of words as supporting evidence, just take your time, breathe, and write down what happened as best as you remember.

False accusations can cloud your memory when you first hear them, and your emotions will push for a raw defense. But if you start writing what you remember, you can put that passion to good use now, and update your writing later with more facts.

A story set in writing will be a great resource to have. You don’t want to lean on your memory or your speech when the pressure’s on.

If you write down what happened, you’ll also find other bits of evidence you’ll need to prepare your defense. And if your audience is really concerned with the truth, they’ll take all the info they can get.

2) Compare the Fruit

Perhaps the easiest way to expose the shakiness of false accusations is to note the shakiness of the accuser’s lifestyle.

This is by far my least favorite technique though since it appears to be an attack on character instead of the accusation itself. But understand that those two targets aren’t mutually exclusive.

A person who usually acts one way is almost certain to do it again.

And no, that fact isn’t judgmental. It’s simple probability.

This is going to sound like I’m bragging about my accomplishments and attacking her character, but let’s compare some notable points about my life and my accuser’s:

I improved to at least a 3.5 GPA in my last four college semesters within a STEM major. But I’ll admit my accuser was booksmart, so we’re pretty much even there.

I have never gotten blacked-out drunk (or even consumed alcohol). I have never taken an illegal substance. And I have never lived a promiscuous lifestyle. My accuser has done, and probably still does, all three.

I landed a stable job in my field more than a month before I graduated, and I’m still employed there today. My accuser barely held a job as a bar server about a year after graduating with the same degree.

Again, I don’t like expressing my achievements, and I never want to attack anyone’s character. We all make mistakes, and I made one of the biggest mistakes any student ever will (which she contributed to by the way).

But when someone’s lifestyle displays a clear pattern of incompetence, recklessness, and mental instability, the validity of their claims also takes a hit.

And that’s without mentioning that I’ve written the equivalent of a book here at HFE—a site where I cover my own shortcomings just as much, if not more than my accomplishments—on my own time and dollar because I believe it will help others.

So knowing all this, let me ask you, who do you think is telling the truth?

A tree’s fruit always gives it away.

Know who you are and know who you’re dealing with so any other lies are dismissed as the jokes they are.

3) Change “I” to “We”

The most unfortunate thing about false accusations is that no one’s waiting to hear a verdict.

As soon as those words leave your accuser’s mouth, you will be facing much more than one person.

Friends, family, social circles, even whole communities may turn against you.

And what began as a defense against one liar becomes a battle against an entire army.

So what do you do when this multitude of warriors stands against you?

It’s simple.

You gather the troops.

Find people who can vouch for your story. Get help from friends who aren’t blinded by the lies. Ask people who were neutral bystanders to explain what happened since they’re not biased.

I know I can get anyone from former classmates, friends, and family members to acknowledge the truth of my claims.

And since I know the mental issues my accuser deals with, I can also refer to a psychologist or another mental health resource.

An understanding of my accuser’s mind is one of the best counters to her claims. Yes, she acts in unstable ways, but they’re predictably unstable, and numerous people have experience with the problem I have now.

You shouldn’t be afraid to get professional help either.

Lawyer up if it’s serious enough.

Slander and libel are legit crimes. And if you can prove that your life is heavily impacted, especially financially, you may have a case.

So don’t go at this alone. You can bet your accuser isn’t.

4) Go One and Done

The biggest mistake people make when presenting any argument, defense, or reasoning is that they over-explain themselves.

Sure, you want to be as thorough as possible in your explanation, and you should reference points of that original argument to answer questions. But there’s no need to add to your stance or sate a mind that will never believe you.

If you’ve taken the necessary steps to present and defend the truth, you have to live with the results.

Learn to be comfortable with the fact that everyone won’t like, listen to, or believe you. Because the more you add to your original defense, the weaker it will appear.

You’ll also introduce more room for error. And it would be a shame for a memory lapse to cause an otherwise solid defense to fail.

Remember that it’s only your job to present the truth. Not to make others believe it.

I’m confident that my defense removes any ammo my accuser has left. So now the only claims she can bring against me are accusations of neglect—which don’t matter since I’m not her parent—or causing hurt feelings—which isn’t a crime in America yet.

I presented the truth one time, and now there’s no need to address her claims again.

Every accusation doesn’t deserve a response. So stay true to what really happened, and let people think what they want afterwards.

5) Don’t Even Fake It

These accusations have made me realize the importance of the Bible’s command to, “Abstain from all appearance of evil.” (1 Thessalonians 5:22 KJV)

It’s not enough to just avoid evil acts. You have to avoid situations where you could possibly do them too.

For instance, plenty articles on false accusations describe how to protect yourself against false rape claims. But if someone can accuse you of something like rape without an obvious fabrication, you are in over your head.

You can’t reach the point where a verdict is decided by a “yes” or “no.”

It’s one of the many reasons you shouldn’t sleep around in the first place. You are putting your life in the hands of someone who could easily change their mind in the morning. And you have to stay out of that gray area.

Remember to guard your character at all times. You never know when you’ll need to fall back on your integrity.

For example, I remember one conversation I had with a friend a few years back, and my accuser happened to be in the room.

My friend noticed that I received a few glances of interest from girls. So out of the blue he asked, “Drew, how many girls do you get?”

He chuckled while asking the question, so of course it wasn’t anything serious. He didn’t ask about anything explicitly sexual either.

So being the joker I am, I said something along the lines of, “I don’t know. I lost count.”

Then the both of us laughed it off.

But there’s a chance my accuser heard those words and immediately assumed the worst.

It would have been ridiculous to say something like:

“I’m sorry sir, but I am a Bible-believing man of God who has accepted the challenge to live righteously. How dare you imply that I live such a heinous lifestyle?!”

So I had a quick laugh and moved off the subject.

But even this could have added to her claims. So now I try not to even joke about stuff like that—at least not when I’m around people who barely know me.

You should do the same. But don’t limit your efforts to watching your tongue:

Always dress in a respectable manner.

Avoid the crazy nighttime venues—they’re magnets for people like my accuser.

And please don’t go to a hotel room belonging to a member of the opposite sex.

Presentation always matters.

Avoid the appearance of evil, and it’ll be impossible to even accuse you.

Grant Me That Chance

I’ve had enough headaches from my past relationship, and I’d rather not think about it anymore.

But it was important to defend myself here before any other false info leaked.

I hope none of it came across as too aggressive though. I wrote all of this to clear my name, not to get revenge.

From all I’ve seen, read, and now experienced, real victims don’t go out of their way to destroy their abuser’s life. They just want justice and a chance to finally move on.

So if anything else comes up about this, please remember this point and grant me that chance.

Contrary to what some people think, I don’t hate my accuser, and I hope she’s able to turn her life around.

If there was a normal version of her who didn’t have what she had, I’d love to meet her. But the ship has sailed on anything between me and the real her.

All I want now is peace and the freedom to live a good life. And I’m sure that’s all you want too.

So remember who you are, take a stand for the truth, and then defend it with your life.

And who knows? Someone else may come to your defense if you do.

-Drew

#truth

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my18thcenturysource · 4 years

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I just recently read your post about The Reign and first, I completely agree with you, the costume design is kinda messed, however as I was reading it I cannot help but think about The Witcher. I have the impression that the identical aspect you describe on the Reign costume design happens in The witcher. The characters' costumes didn't match. I know is a fantasy world but the clothes have to help to build that World, I think that in the witcher it was several costume worlds running on. WDYT?

After writing my last post about Merlin, I have to say that not really. I think the Witcher is not bad at all, and that the costume does a really REALLY good job at giving some uniformity to a fantasy world that, when not keeping track and identity, might end up being a mess with no cohesion like Game Of Thrones.

BUT I think I see what you mean.

For me, the only character that breaks the unity of the world is Yennefer. Let me elaborate.

We have these main characters:

Geralt, who has only like 2 outfits or something like that, he looks like an improved version of the game, with a style that I think is the base for the whole world: leather, metal, suit of armour inspired, and a pinch of medieval inspiration, and a lot of biker references. Again, his look is VERY close to what he looks like in the video game.

Jaskier, he’s a dandy and has a much more decorated look with references to the early Renaissance and late Middle Ages: short doublets, slashes, shine, big sleeves, a lute... He’s the flashiest character of the show and I love that (usually, the flashiest character is a woman, because it’s a lot easier (lazier) to make her stand out).

Yennefer has two aesthetics in the show: the first one is just one that makes her a wallflower (which is very intentional), she’s just wearing what people around her wears. The second one (oh boy) is this kind-of-dominatrix outfits that are pretty awful BUT are a lot less awful than the ones she wears in the video game. Now, why do I say that her costumes are awful? Aren’t we all supposed to see her and understand that she’s a strong dangerous woman who’s not afraid to get dirty? Well, yeah, it accomplishes that (kind of?), by using all the clichés at the same time: black, leather, long hair, corset, slashes, transparencies, dark makeup... Hers is the laziest costume in the show, it’s the equivalent of making costumes for La Traviata and simply dressing Violetta in red. It kind of works, but it is lazy. Also, her costume does not match to anything other in the show, it just stands out for the sake of standing out: the details in her costumes designs are not repeated in other costumes for any other character. This might sound like “oh, it’s because she’s very special and not like other girls”, but it is not that: we are used to find patterns in everything, and since there is no real pattern in her costume repeated in other characters, she seems to be out of the world, like added with no logic. I don’t know if the producers asked to make her mode “edgy” or something, but having design details that are not repeated in other costumes, is odd, because nobody exists in a vacuum, and I feel like it takes the personality out of her, because you do not get real information from the costumes, since they are all over the place.

This is not like not having information about her because she’s a secretive character and her costume is so well done that it gives away no extra info (this might be closer to Gerald’s costume than hers).

The rest of the cast are dressed in groups. Each place of the continent has a particular way of dressing, and those aesthetics are kept though the show so the visual narrative is clearer and when the story goes from one place to another, the viewer get to know where they are. This might seem like a lot of messages that make the world being to vague or lacking of an unifying aesthetic, but if we get that this fantasy world is (vaguely) based in Middle Ages and early Renaissance, we can use the fact that in those times, countries like we know them did not exist, and each court had their particular way of dressing (an early Renaissance Italian court would look nothing alike an English one, for example). They keep those looks for the entirety of the series, and it helps the viewed to remember the places (and the groups of people in those places) without having to remember names.

This is what Game of Thrones started doing, but while the series advanced, they became vaguer and vaguer and every season each house had different details (I still cannot talk about how they changed the entire look of the Stark women, that ended looking like they were wearing Alexander McQueen (yes, I’m talking about THAT Sansa dress), it was pretty BUT made no sense at all, again a lazy choice of costume that used clichés instead of good design), they changed stuff season to season, and they seemed like they lost their original bible of each house. The Witcher being a smaller and shorted show has a better grip in the world building aesthetic, while both shows had about the same budget per episode.

Now, one of my main complains about Reign is that the costumes had no personality and said nothing about the character, making that they could simply change costumes and nobody would care. Here I don’t see that at all, I think it is very hard (almost impossible) to swap costumes between characters because they are clearly thought for them. I cannot think of Yennefer wearing some Ciri outfit, or Jaskier going Stegobor (I HATE THAT CHARACTER SO MUCH), or Ciri swapping with her grandmother. Even though it is not perfect, I think the costumes really work in this. Or maybe I did not get your question right? Please let me know if there are some specifics you’d like to discuss and I missed!

Now, just for you all to have the same thing stuck in your heads as I do:

#toss a coin to your witcher #lol #lionfleuret #the witcher #costume #costume design #fantasy #fantasy costume #very good in general #yennefer costumes suck #sorry not sorry #they make no sense #but jaskier #he's cool #with his several doublets #and that bloody song #thank you for coming to my TEDtalk #now all my LONG posts will be tagged as TEDtalks XD

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lamortexiii · 4 years

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Cryptic Mystic: Karma, Keepers, or Something Else...

Karma, Keepers, or Something Else…: I am sure that you have heard the phrase “reap what you sow” at some point in your life, otherwise known as karma. Maybe you’ve experienced karma in your life. After all, we receive what we put out into the universe… or do we? Some believe there is a “keeper” or someone watching over us that protects us and provides us good or bad experiences based on how we interact with others (some may say “angels). If this is so, is this individual or universal? Maybe “keepers” are loved ones who have left their physical form, or maybe they are something that our human minds are currently incapable of understanding. For some this may even simply be a grandeur delusion brought on by narcissistic personality traits or possibly a mental disorder. A little unknown mixed in with a little psychology, served on a platter as per usual. Let’s dive right in to 2021 with this debatable topic, shall we?

I’ll start by informing you that karma actually possesses many meanings depending on what culture and country you are in. The most familiar American definition of karma - meaning that bad things happen to those who do bad things and good things happen to those who do good things - is but one definition of many. Now, this definition that we understand here in America is of course defined by what one perceives as good and bad - this can look different for many people. Having said this, there is no “one way” to believe in karma or to define what “good and bad” mean. For our purposes, I am going to define the terms karma, good, and bad in the most generalized sense that a majority of American society would view as the typical definition. Just know, this may or may not apply to your personal beliefs of what defines “good and bad” or your personal beliefs of what the definition of “karma” is. I completely agree that there are many viewpoints and perceptions and do not discount differences in opinions/beliefs by any means.

Karma originated from the Sanskrit term meaning “action, work, or deed.” It was a plain and simple definition, as if I were having a conversation with you and said, “The karma that he is completing on that house looks marvelous!” I realize how utterly ridiculous that sounds in today’s way of speaking - given the word was just used completely out of cultural context, but you get the point. The word “karma” at that time was just another word and carried little significance. That is, until 1000-700BCE when within the Vedic religion the definition of karma actually meant something that you likely would not guess. The definition took an abrupt and dramatic turn and was used to define not only the word “act,” but additionally it was defined as actions that took place regarding ritualistic and sacrificial occurrences.

Karma in itself has ancient roots in religion such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism to name a few. Karma is seen as a sort of rebirth process in which the way that an individual is in the present day affects their future - all within the same life cycle. Within this realm, karma also affects one’s samsara, or quality of life. In Asia karma is portrayed through symbols such as the endless knot, which symbolizes the never ending process of cause and effect. In knowing this, you can see why karma closely relates to the philosophical theory of causality, defined as when one event contributes to another event where the cause is partly responsible for the effect, and the effect is partly dependent on the cause. The idea of karma in this sense is seen as a never ending cycle - one that highly influences the circle of life. This is what we know and recognize in modern American society, as well as in many other first-world countries/cultures.

In current society we then view karma as defining the relationship of cause and effect. Some view this as a very spiritual term, believing that there is a higher power who controls the occurrences of karma. Others simply use the term with reckless abandon - not actually understanding what it means, as society has culturally appropriated the term to fit the American narrative. Yet others (myself included) question the occurrence of karma and the several possibilities that may be at play here. Whether you believe karma occurs due to a higher power, some other religious aspect, sheer luck, extraterrestrials, a delusional belief, something else, or maybe you don’t believe in it at all - and that’s okay! Regardless of what you believe, we’re going to dive into some of those possibilities today. As I always say, once you have read this blog it is up to you to ultimately decide what you believe.

From a personal standpoint, I have been in many situations where either I don’t know how I survived, or at the bare minimum how I managed to come out of certain situations unscathed. I have been in several car accidents that were so much more than just fender benders - coming out of all of those without a single scratch. I have never caused an accident, however for whatever reason I seem to be a target for idiots who don’t know how to drive. I guess I just have that attraction factor. All jokes aside, I consider myself lucky to have not been injured in any of the accidents that I have been in. I have to wonder how this is possible, but then another person can be in ONE accident and it’s all over.

I will share a more intimate incident with you that is much darker than a happenstance car accident. When I was much younger I tried to take my own life. I didn’t want to be in this body on this planet any longer. I remember thinking to myself - there has to be something better than this. I swallowed a bunch of unknown pills doused with alcohol. I attempted this on two different occasions. Both times made me extremely ill. The first time I vomited and then felt very tired. The second time I fell to the floor and almost became unconscious. I was very dizzy and couldn’t stand/walk. I went to sleep for several hours with a low heart rate and shallow breathing. However, after both of these occurrences many years later, I realize that I was put here for a bigger purpose. I have many reasons I am here - sharing this blog with you being one of them. I wasn’t meant to leave my physical form here on Earth either one of those times. I like to think that something is protecting me, however I cannot say with certainty what that is or why exactly…

My biological mother was in a bad car accident when she fell asleep at the wheel. It threw her from the car and knocked off both of her sneakers. She woke up laying in the grass without shoes. She told me that she doesn’t remember much, but that she saw white hands on her shoulders and felt like whatever that was had pushed her through the accident. She came out without any serious injuries - only suffering minor bruising. It is important to note that she has had similar experiences as I have with feeling things and experiencing premonitions.

To touch on karma a bit from a personal experience, I have a short but interesting story to tell. Growing up I didn’t have many true friends and found myself surrounded by individuals who acted in a manner that I did not understand. There was a lot of negative energy on behalf of those around me; jealousy, lies, deceit, bad intentions, and misery. I wasn’t treated very well by my peers or in relationships. In fact, I was bullied, mentally abused, and physically abused by several people as I grew from a child to an adolescent. Interestingly enough, I found that those who did absolutely wrong to me that had the worst of intentions always had something bad happen to them. One person that comes to mind was blown up in an explosion overseas while serving in the military. Another person was in a bad car accident. From what I know currently, all of these people who were utterly nasty to me continue to lead miserable lives - because they are in fact miserable people. Whether this is just their nature or that they just didn’t have the strength and willpower to seek better things for themselves is debatable. Nonetheless, none of them as far as I know are happy in the present day and have likely never experienced true real happiness. As described before, some of these people have had very bad things happen to them. Is this karma or maybe a keeper’s doing? I have no idea, but it is something I have turned over in my mind for many years, and continue to ponder on from time to time.

One theory some hold is that angels are protecting people. This could turn into a really big conversation, so I will try my best to stay objective here and stick to the main topic of karma and keepers. I challenge the theory of angels for the following reasons: The Bible was written by several people with several different versions available, as have all books that we know today. Christianity in itself, as well as several other religions point to the sky (or heavens) as being the source of an almighty power. What if angels are actually extraterrestrials and those who have experienced said “angels” rationalize their experience by putting a name on the experience, therefore believing it was a religious experience rather than something that they didn’t understand - as a form of coping with the unknown. That is my personal theory in relation to “keepers” and the “karma” experienced therein as being related to any type of angelic form. This also covers how extraterrestrials could very well be the forces pulling the strings. As humans we base our logical thinking on what it is we know to be true - or what we have been taught is the truth, but how do we really know? The short answer is - we don’t. It is much easier to put a label on something to be able to process what that thing is than to be left to wonder and be afraid of what we do not know and understand. It is much easier to read what others have written and blindly accept it as being “the truth” or “the way” without seeking further proof. Just a few things to think about - and this goes for any religion. Group-think is a good descriptive term that comes to mind.

The religious standpoint on karma and “keepers” has everything to do with psychology and the human brain and its functions. Think about it as I said before - the human brain naturally tries to rationalize and process new information in a way that is understandable and logical. This varies depending on who you are talking to of course, but is the ultimate foundation for religion. Beginning in ancient times before electricity, technology, and all of the wonderful (and not so wonderful) things we have now, the less intelligent brains of those before us attempted to rationalize what they were experiencing. Let me give you a universal example that is actually more recent - did you know at one point women were seen as being psychotic and even evil for having hormonal symptoms related to their menstrual cycle and even for having a menstrual cycle period? (no pun intended) Women were put through horrible treatment to try to treat PMS, and it was even seen as being a mental illness/disorder for a very long time! At one point in time menstruating women were seen as being involved in magic and sorcery (whoops, you got me!). To quote some religious scripture, “go apart from women during the monthly course, do not approach them until they are clean” Quran 2:222, “…in her menstrual impurity; she is unclean… whoever touches…shall be unclean and shall wash his clothes and bathe in water and be unclean until evening” Leviticus 15, and lastly from the first Latin encyclopedia, “Contact with menstrual blood turns new wine sour, crops touched by it become barren, grafts die, seed in gardens are dried up, the fruit of trees fall off, the edge of steel and the gleam of ivory are dulled, hives of bees die, even bronze and iron are at once seized by rust, and a horrible smell fills the air; to taste it drives dogs mad and infects their bites with an incurable poison.” Okay… so… you realize how ridiculous all of this sounds, right? However, it was not ridiculous at the time - the people who lived in those times found a way to explain, rationalize, and describe what they felt was logical for explaining a woman’s menstrual cycle. Freud attempted to explain why people felt this way about menstrual cycles by stating that humans are naturally scared and uncomfortable around blood - again the human brain giving a logical explanation for why these thoughts and beliefs occurred. We know now through research and scientific data (actual tangible proof) that PMS is related to the shift in hormones women experience during that special time of month, which can cause a plethora of symptoms. This is easily treatable today with modern medicine or more holistic approaches - both of which have also been scientifically proven to work.

I know that last paragraph seems a little off course for this particular blog topic, but it carries a strong point that I feel necessary to make. Point being: religion is just another way the human brain tries to rationalize an event that is happening that is unexplained, new, different, abnormal, or scary; the same way that human brains of ancient times tried to rationalize with women bleeding from their vaginas. Having answers and an explanation gives people peace of mind. Once an idea becomes universal, again, it makes it easy to follow and just shrug the phenomena off as being caused by whatever is said by whoever is explaining it as their belief. The same is said for keepers, karma, and everything in between.

From a disorder perspective, it is very possible that some people believe in having a “keeper” because they are divine or special to a point of being above others. This behavior would likely fall under a more Narcissistic Personality Disorder or potentially some form of psychosis or schizophrenia. Reason being, these disorders involve hallucinations, delusions, and irrational beliefs that are of a bizarre nature. All three have key factors that make them different of course. For example, Narcissistic Personality Disorder revolves more around the person having selfish traits and not possessing the ability to connect with others all while believing they are of a certain prestige pedigree or above others. Psychosis and schizophrenia look similarly to one another in that both include symptomology involving hallucinations, delusions, and breaks from reality, however schizophrenia can actually cause psychosis. Additionally, patients diagnosed with schizophrenia may have symptoms of psychosis but not everyone with psychosis will be diagnosed with schizophrenia. Keeping it short here, but those are the basics of those three conditions. Knowing this, it is easy to see how someone could hold a belief that they have someone watching over them because they are special, or that some force is causing them to receive good karma or inflict bad karma on those who do them wrong.

Regardless of which way you choose to look at keepers and karma, both are definitely interesting phenomena that could use more research and productive discussions. Keeping an open-mind is always the path I personally choose to take because there are so many factors and options to consider before making a solid judgement on what the actual root cause of either one of these is. I wanted to kick 2021 off with an interesting yet somewhat debatable topic to really get you thinking. There are plenty more blogs in store where this one came from. This year will be much better than what we knew as 2020 (good riddance!) Here’s to another year full of education, knowledge, mystery, good conversation, and intriguing topics that really get those gears turning in your brain. Stay safe, be you, and never stop seeking the truth - whatever that truth is for you.

Cryptic Mystic Blog by PsychVVitch

www.LaMorteXiii.com

#crypticmystic #lhp #occultblog #witchcraft #wicca #pagan #highermagick #blackflame #coven #livedeliciously #thecraftyvvitch #psychvvitch #lamortexiii #luciferian #satanism #asabovesobelow #knowledge #freedom

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