#addition experts

[the-catboy-minyan]

hey good faith question- do you mind elaborating on judaism’s belief of g-d not being the ‘one true g-d’ and just the ‘g-d of the hebrews?

sure, but keep in mind that I wasn't raised in a religious house, so I'm not an expert and this could be inaccurate, you could wait to see if other people would elaborate in reblogs or replies.

a lot of religions have the belief that they worship the true g-d(s) and everyone else is wrong and are worshipping (a) false g-d(s). I believe Christianity works like that.

in the Tanach, there is no claim that other religions' g-ds don't exist, in fact, there are instances were miracles from other g-ds happen, but the jewish g-d is described as unique and stronger than others.

for example, in the story of The Exodus (is that how יציאת מצרים is called in english), when Moses comes to the Pharaoh for the first time to ask to release the Hebrews, he showcases Hashem's (the Jewish g-d) strength by turning his staff into a snake, the Pharaoh's magicians(?) then proceed to also turn their staffs into snakes, but Moses's snake eats theirs. the story doesn't show their g-ds as non-existent, they gave the magicians the same powers as Hashem, but the power of Hashem was stronger and thus Moses's snake won over the other snakes.

foreign worship is banned in Judaism, not because the foreign g-ds are false, but because they're not Hashem, I don't know how to explain it but that's how it works.

[significant-narratives]

is william nylander a leo rising or anything like that? I feel like he’s leo-adjacent

alas we do not have a birth time for willy (at least, not that i know of) so i can’t say for certain. i am however willing to walk with you on this path as a bit of a thought experiment! also this got really long, sorry i have chronic Can’t Shut The Fuck Up disease

now, a few disclaimers before we get started:

1) i generally don’t love trying to guess rising signs — this isn’t a judgement on anyone who does, i just find it particularly difficult to do lol. so take everything i say here with a grain of salt

2) i subscribe to the belief that a rising does influence/color the rest of an individual’s chart, so keep that in mind as we delve into this.

3) i am by no means an expert when it comes to astrology and don’t claim to be, and i do pull from various sources when needed to supplement my own knowledge. i am here to have a good time and that’s all! if you have any questions about the sources i use feel free to ask.

okay with that out of the way. willy as a leo rising is interesting! if we look at what such a placement would entail we can see a lot of ‘willy-like’ traits: there’s the courage, confidence and protectiveness associated with any leo placement. high charisma, extroversion, directness. as an ascendant the ‘fixed energy’ of leo tends to manifest in a need to achieve success and stability, and then maintain it. body awareness is another one — understanding how you look and move through space (usually linked to a strong sense of personal style).

(more of a side note, but in terms of physical characteristics, leo risings are often described as tall and broad shouldered, with expressive eyes and strong bone structure. i don’t place as much weight on this aspect of a rising sign, but it’s interesting!)

so, from all this, you could make a strong case for willy being a leo rising! however there’s one crucial thing that isn’t clicking for me: an individual’s rising sign tends to be linked with a public mask / a lens through which they see reality. and i don’t think the way willy presents himself to the public, or what glimpses we’ve seen of his worldview, is quite aligned with leo rising energy specifically.

his white knuckle grip on his ‘i am Chill and Calm and Going With The Flow’ attitude is a little out of line with how leo energy tends to manifest (imo). like one thing about a leo — what you see tends to be what you get and they’re not ashamed to show you that. they’re not (in my experience) all too concerned with persona-building or shielding themselves from being seen. they’re picky about who they give their time and energy to, sure, but like. that’s not quite the same thing. you feel me?

so if he did have a leo rising… i feel like in theory we wouldn’t see a lot of willy’s tendency to keep things very close to his chest and generally not Feel Things In Public. like, think about it. how much do we actually know about william nylander. and how much of what we know came from him. half of the off season content we get that features him comes from alex’s gf’s insta! he’s out here posting pictures of lizards and aesthetic topless photos. it took him eight years and finally securing his place in toronto for the foreseeable future for him to be willing to get even a Little vulnerable with the press and admit just how important toronto is too him, how strongly he’s put down roots here. again you could argue this protective quality is a point in favour of a leo rising placement… but he is also a taurus sun… also is this a good time to say i don’t feel like i’m picking up on that ‘leo rising energy’ trickling down into the rest of his chart? i feel like with a leo rising you’d see a very different manifestation of his gemini venus or libra moon, for example, but that’s just speculation on my part.

it’s also possible the general ‘leo adjacent’ energy you’ve mentioned picking up from him is that gemini venus / aries mars combo of his (i will hold my tongue and not say the word that i’m thinking in my head rn).

tl;dr my verdict on willy having a leo rising: it’s possible but not my favourite choice for him personally! to me i’ve always felt like he gave off water rising energy… (op are you saying this because you are a taurus sun scorpio rising you ask. to which i will say: no comment <3)

[antiphrastic]

I made something important

[idolbound]

Anders kinnies on twitter in the year 2024 not understanding that while yes, Meredith had previously written to Val Royeaux to ask about invoking the Right of Annulment, the request was rejected.

In the throes of her paranoia being made worse with the addition of the red lyrium idol fashioned into a sword, she was getting desperate and looking to search the Gallows for blood mages as a reason to invoke the Right.

However, Meredith did not invoke the Right until after Anders blew up the Chantry.

During the argument with Orsino, it was clear that he was not going to allow Meredith to search the tower. And, much like the start of Act 3 in Hightown, he wanted to call upon Grand Cleric Elthina to settle their disagreement because he KNEW that Elthina was the only person who could control Meredith (and kept her on a proverbially short leash). To this, Meredith immediately raises her voice and says "You will NOT bring her Grace into this!" which CLEARLY implies she knows Elthina would put a stop to her actions then and there, which is the opposite of what Meredith wants to do.

So, with Anders' interjection in this scene and blowing the Chantry up:

Meredith (who was running Kirkwall as a Templar police state under martial law) had to respond to the crime in and of itself;

Elthina was dead, and therefore, the person who could have stopped her from invoking the Right of Annulment was no longer able to do so; and,

She was already at the peak of her paranoia, and this made her not seek justice on Anders himself (who had immunity from templar prosecution as a Grey Warden), but upon the innocent mages of the Circle.

So, she initiated the Right of Annulment as a response to the destruction and lives lost, and the Circle mages paid for Anders' actions (and depending on Hawke's choice, his own life could pay for it too).

It is not difficult to understand that Anders' actions - however morally justified he may have been - acted as the catalyst to the genocide of the Kirkwall Circle.

People will say "it would've happened anyway" but to be frank, if Anders did not blow up the Chantry and had Elthina been involved, she would've shut Meredith down again as someone who didn't want to get involved in taking sides but wanted to maintain the peace AND the desires of the Grand Cathedral in Val Royeaux. Alternatively, Hawke - Champion of Kirkwall - has enough influence at this point to influence Meredith and Orsino both as a popular (political) figure among Kirkwall's citizens and nobility. (it's why Meredith was reluctant to crown them Champion to begin with - it gave them power that she wanted for herself!).

I realize a lot of DA fans are not looking at these moments in-depth, but acting as if Anders is entirely justified in giving Meredith the fuel she needed to kill all the innocent mages is a bit ignorant and tbqh, misunderstanding this situation for what it is.

[mishkakagehishka]

I just . Repeating "characters are tools" you end up erasing so much about arashi's character and motivations and interactions with other characters if you avoid using her pronouns aka avoid showing she's transgender. It's on the same level of frustration with the translators i had when i saw they had Mika speaking standard English, there's a LOT that gets lost if you don't show those little things.

[rowanthestrange]

I appreciate ‘I’ve never found any use in psychologists’ sounds like the refrain of the mad, but consider we might have been a little less mad if the psychologists had in fact tried to be of use.

[weewoo911]

I hesitate to share this bc I’m aware that fandom misogyny is a problem and I’m very much of the opinion that as a girlfriend there is Nothing Wrong With Ana (some of the flirting’s a lil cringey but that’s fine)- in fact it seems like that’s the entire point, that she’s really good on paper.

However

I would have liked it so much more if she wasn’t the teacher from the Skateboard Incident bc that was not her best work, teacher-wise. I’m not talking about the initial fall (though clearly the kids should have been more closely watched if nobody noticed several children and a skateboard- but whatever, plot reasons), I’m talking about her reaction to it, because girl what.

When a disabled kid attempts to do something and gets hurt, the conversation should be “what need are they trying to meet and how can we meet it in a safe and accessible way for them” not “maybe he’ll learn his limits and write a book instead”!! Girl I know you’re an English teacher but WHAT.

Despite the Nothing-Wrong-With-Ana of their relationship, I could never get behind Eddie/Ana after that. If they’d wanted me to be Team Ana it would have been so easy to give the skateboard incident to another teacher and have Ana be involved in a way that was - eh, better.

[nohara-rin-dot-mp3]

Wait do you mean Sakura is narratively relevant or you think that she could be. Because I do not see it.

ok so. take this with a grain of salt because i am by no means a sakura expert. obviously there are some major flaws with her writing and character development, more so than with naruto and sasuke. sakura-as-the-character-kishimoto-envisioned is at war with herself in concept, because kishimoto is both incapable of being normal about women and wants her to be as much of a protagonist as naruto and sasuke are. it puts her in a kind of weird place. but i do think that the narrative of naruto, as it is intended to be read by kishimoto, does try very hard to make sakura relevent. does it succeed? well, let's talk about that.

i feel like we can pretty comfortably agree that the intend framing of team 7 is the perfected version of team minato- that means that sakura is intended to be an improved version of rin, and it definitely shows. i actually think that kishimoto does an ok job with this- its a bit heavy-handed sometimes, but generally speaking sakura overcomes the """flaws""" that rin was given (dying, being a bit of a wallflower). sakura is an active character who is not afraid to speak her mind, and she is, for a female character in naruto, strong. ok, cool, parallels established.

by centering the narrative around parallels of teams of three, kishimoto automatically gives sakura some heavy narrative weight to swing around. is she as narratively relevant as sasuke and naruto? no. however, she is often 1- an active participant in the plot, 2- treated as a person with goals/desires (even if these desires often orbit around men, that doesnt really discount the amount of focus that the narrative puts around sakura perusing these goals) 3- given a stake in the thematic core of the narrative (i know that naruto has multiple themes but the team 7 parallels are some of the most consistent imo, so im using them as an example. i do think that sakura plays a role in most of the themes, im just too lazy to go over all of them :p).

to me, all that that puts her firmly in the territory of narrative relevance. she has an arc, she shows up often to fulfill her arc, and her doing so ties into the main thread of the narrative. obviously sakura has massive fundamental problems as a character due to kishimoto's writing, and thats a whole nother discussion, but i do think that she was intended to BE a narratively relevant character, and i actually think he succeeds in making her one.

if we're talking about whether or not sakura has the potential to be narratively relevant the answer is FUCK YEAH!!! by the way. NEVER give up on sakura-kakashi parallelism.

[kh2prologue]

i like want to talk abt toshiro bc i get annoyed rly easily seeing how ppl are talking about him but it’s ok I’m at peace it’s not my fate…

[emeraldgreaves]

hmmm I will ask you about take your daughter to work day <3

send me a fic title so i’ll have to add five sentences and ramble about it

“What’s your name, kid?” [says Trouble.] I’m your age, she thinks, but the commander’s eyes feel like a long-range sniper sight from across the yard. Eyes in the back of his head doesn’t even begin to cover Blade Bronwyn. “Gwen,” she says. It’s not an uncommon name, and it’s not like there’s traces of her elsewhere. She tries to project inexperience as she unwraps her hands, aims for the right kind of first-week-new-recruit jumpy, not you-will-teach-me-to-shoot-one-day jumpy. Trouble claps familiarly her on the shoulder. “Welcome to the shepherds. We’re all cracked here.”

in which gwen gets separated from sarissa, and a couple of familiar faces show up. broader discussion of this AU here!

i say i’m not much of a kidfic person and then i chart out the rough extended family dynamic of aunts and uncles for all of the assorted kids. trouble being gwen’s favorite uncle/unofficial mentor is kind of my nod to gwen inheriting a lot of the qualities that made him and moira get along so well. my other favorite activity in this au is Putting Blade Through It. his paranoia is going to be an asset here, but not in the way he expects LMAO

[botslayer9000]

does the world of mdzs have a civil service exam

[maeamian]

Hey friends, countrymen, lovers, etc. this post is just for the Americans out there, but if any of you all need help figuring out what steps you need to take to vote or where to find a voter guide for your region (Ballotopedia is a solid starting point if you want to see what's on your ballot) I'd be happy to help out, just shoot me a message, I can promise I'll find an answer for you in the first case and I'll do my best in the later.

[blasphemousclaw]

welsh person here! theyre right about the defeat dialogue, specifically 'a serpent never dies', having a bit of an accent, but if im honest it sounds more scottish or irish than it does welsh? which you cant really blame him for because i'd guess the whole 'snake monster' voice took priority over sounding welsh . its interesting to think about the in universe implications for that though, aside from his vocal chords being messed up, he might have had his accent change because of his company, or where he was stationed, i'd imagine he wouldn't have found many people with the liurnian accent outside of liurnia. it would have been nice to know if he was more north or south welsh though haha

thank you so much for weighing in!!

Listening to Rykard’s voice actor (Simon Gregor) speak, to me he sounds like he’s English (here’s an interview with him). To my ears, it doesn’t especially seem like the potential accent in Rykard’s voice lines comes from Gregor’s own background, so if Rykard is meant to have an accent, Gregor could have been directed to do a specific one… or perhaps it was just a side effect of his crazy snake voice. From the way Gregor talks about voicing Rykard in the interview, it seems like he was given a degree of freedom in his performance.

I love your point about Rykard’s accent potentially shifting and I think you’re totally right that he would’ve probably been isolated as a Liurnian amongst his colleagues on Mt. Gelmir; I can’t see many Liurnians rushing to join the Erdtree Capital’s inquisition so he definitely could have been in the linguistic minority! It’s also worth noting that Tanith and Rya both have English accents.

And regarding your last question, for what it’s worth, most of the Carians’ VAs seem to be from south Wales, so I’d guess that Rykard would’ve likely been south Welsh haha!

[howdoesone]

How does one convince an Olm that it’s okay to come out and see the light?

Introduction to the Olm: The Mysterious Cave Dweller The Olm, also known as the “human fish,” is an enigmatic amphibian that resides in the dark, underwater caves of the Dinaric Alps in Europe. With its pale, almost translucent skin and ability to thrive in complete darkness, the Olm is a fascinating creature of the deep. Its eyes are underdeveloped, a testament to its life in perpetual…

[nerdnag]

jfc i am so tired of always having to assume that there's an undisclosed, required app involved whenever i buy something these days

[chthonic-cassandra]

I am generally not a vindictive person and I genuinely do wish her well and think she is very good at many aspects of what she does, but I admit that there is a small part of me that feels satisfaction at the fact that my career is going so much better than that of my former therapist.