#everything speaks for itself

[wilting-fl0wer]

hi i'm bored, baked and so have this idk

[rabbits-of-negative-euphoria]

genuinely I think one of the most pressing calls for Christians (namely Protestant Christians) today is to stop underestimating the power of beauty

visual beauty, beauty in word, beauty in sound, beauty in story

we have ceded beauty for the past 70 years to the atheistic world and people of all beliefs are realizing that world has failed to carry that standard. people are realizing their daily lives are starved of beauty--especially natural beauty--so they are turning to the entities which recognize its power. entities like paganism, witchcraft, ancestor worship, the New Age. if they are drawn to Christianity (not necessarily believing it), they are more likely to attend a Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox mass.

humans need beauty because humans need God, and beauty belongs to God. which means the church should be the standard-bearer of beauty in this world.

if a church can afford it, they should prioritize building a beautiful church, even if that means it will be smaller or less trendy.

if a church has skilled musicians in their midst, they should prioritize using those musicians in worship, even if it means the style of the music changes.

the church should always prioritize hymns and spiritual songs which exemplify goodness, truth, and beauty in their composition and lyrics, even if it means newcomers don't understand every line yet.

all these forms of beauty should reflect the beauty of the story of the Gospel.

[sundial-bee-scribbles]

silly software-based doodles

i've noticed i generally like putting these guys in their lower ranges, and while that's fine for the most part w/ adjustments, oliver usually ends up suffering b/c he is not built to go that low 😭😭

also related to oliver: he is not built for really fast songs 😭 i mean i suppose you can force him to sing one but even w/ adjustments he's not gonna sound all that great, definitely more suited for slower-paced songs

all the jpnloids can easily exchange a bunch of .vpr/.vsqx & whatever files w/ each other b/c duh native japanese support. rip oliver and moke in non-native jpn jail since if i want them to sing one of those i have to do SO MUCH manual phoneme correction... explodes

[birrdify]

gg;ift for @can-your-kinitopet

aka ffor moloch the most wonderous amazingest inspiringful kinitopet artists OOUO;UT THRERE . i look UP to this guySO MU;UCH CAUSE HE'S SO!!!!RIGHT!!!!!!!!! oh SIR i ADORE your art and YOUR HEADCANONS!!! your VIEW ON NITO HIMSELF!!!! like YES nito is touch starved YES hes passive aggressive AND do i EVEN START on the headcanons moloch FEEDS US WITH1!! i LOVE reading through his text posts every tumblrific afternoon when i get home from school csause sir you are so so right ; have so many words for you but not enough space</3my aching heart....rest in pieces 2 your phone Sir...o;k inbox and Comic time

[flashhwing]

my life for a Volstrucker book. we have the Caleb backstory comic but that only gives a very cursory view of the blumentrio only. I wanna see more, more of the training, the work and dynamics of full fledged scourgers. who are these guys when they're not being ~Mysterious or specifically Astrid and Eadwulf in an incredibly specific and narrow scenario that is not at all indicative of the rest of the bunch

[massivementalitynut]

My Scrapbook Couple Comm from @mypillowpaper

[brown-little-robin]

okay, I'm crowdsourcing advice for a minute, so bear with me and please lend some words if you have any:

I want to get out of the house more. Like, on a regular basis. Weekly, maybe. Preferably, I would like to be interacting with people—the same people—every time, for... like... accountability, but also because I am hoping to put myself out there as the 21st century's most neurotic platonic Casanova. Uh. Making a friend or more out of this would be desirable. But I think if I go out with the intention of making a friend, I will be disappointed.

So. I want to go do something, for that something's own sake. I don't want to go be fake once a week hoping to get a friend out of it.

However, the beautiful state of Iowa is a bit cultureless, and I am too introverted and easily overwhelmed for this world (e.g. going to bars is probably not gonna be my thing). So.... I guess.... any suggestions? opinions? thoughts on making friends in general, or finding good activities as an introverted adult, in general?

oh yeah, also: I am poor. that's a factor. so. signing up a class or similar is not a great option right now.

what the heck, I'll add a silly poll for fun:

[faaun]

the way that diff languages sound r so fascinating they're all different and all so vivid

[undefeatablesin]

Not Yharnam posting, but I need to tell everyone that Phantom in the Rain was fantastic and I have had my brain chemistry permanently rewired since watching it.

[outoftoucherlocksholmes]

it occurred to me while backing up procreate files last night that aside from Bad Bisexual Representation Booty Shorts Dio, i never posted any of the things from this canvas i had going for sketches while watching part 3 back in 2022, which is a shame, really

[laulink]

Something that I don't often see in the "was Edelgard's war necessary" discourse is the interdependence between the Church and the nobility. The question is always framed such as "are Edelgard's reforms worth starting a war over" or "is the net result of the war positive or negative" or "did she need to invade the Kingdom and Alliance to do her thing or was she just a cold-hearted, power-hungry tyrant" and the arguments given for or against either side of the conflict very rarely includes this simple fact :

No reform is possible in Fodlan because the Church and nobility feed off of each other.

It doesn't matter whether or not the specific reforms Edelgard wants to implement deserve thousands of people to die for them (if such a thing is even objectively quantifiable) ; it doesn't matter what the "net result" of the war is (if you can even make an objective measure on that) ; it doesn't matter whether or not having the Kingdom and Alliance under her authority was necessary to make the reforms she wanted ; absolutely no reform, whatsoever, in any territory, could have been achieved and lasted with the Church still standing. Why ?

Because the Church and the nobility enforce each other's "divine right to rule" and neither wants to lose their power.

Rhea wants to keep Fodlan in stasis until she brings Sothis back. She's done that for a thousand years and will keep doing it for as long as she needs to. How did she do it ? By making the powerful (the Crest-bearing descendants of the Ten Elites) dependant on her. She made their strength (their Crest) dependant on properly following and supporting her Church, instilling in Fodlan's societies the belief that a family won't produce Crest-bearing heirs any longer if they oppose the Goddess. The Crests are therefore both a mark of the Goddess' favour, granting nobles their "divine right to rule", and a pair of shackles binding them to the Church. If the Church falls and the commoners don't believe in the Goddess any longer, they also won't believe in the nobles' divine right to rule anymore and will rebel against the caste system. Therefore, the nobles need to enforce belief in the Goddess by showing how devoted they are, as Ferdinand and Lorenz explain is their noble duty to guide the commoners on the path of the faithful, and by giving the Church money to keep its influence and prestige ; otherwise, the nobility itself will be at risk.

But the reverse is, therefore, also true : if the nobility were to fall or stop supporting the Church (the one Rhea leads, mind you), it would lose power, influence and the money necessary to maintain its presence throughout the continent. The Church needs to make sure that the nobility system either stays the same or at least still relies on the belief in the Goddess. Any reform that abolishes the nobility, title inheritance or Crest supremacy is bound to be an absolute nightmare for the Church. Sounds familiar ?

Three Hopes touches onto this by showing us Rhea's attempts at killing the Bishop of the newly restored Southern Church. She doesn't try to get him killed because Edelgard was the one to choose him, she tries to kill him because this Southern Church represents a threat for the Central Church she leads, and she doesn't accept that.

How is the Southern Church a threat ? Two possible, non-exclusive ways :

The Southern Church's teachings are in opposition to the Central Church's teachings : we don't know exactly what those teachings are, but if the Southern Church's teachings imply that the Central Church's ones are fake, it would put their legitimacy into question. Which brings us to the second point :

The Southern Church is trying to become more prominent than the Central one : the Southern Church was dismantled about 200 years before the start of the game for being "dissident" and is now being revived with Edelgard's support. It doesn't even matter what it teaches the people : it fills a gap in the Imperial citizens' lives. By doing so, and by being morally, publicly and financially supported by the new Emperor, it earns the support of the faithful of the Empire and takes it away from the Central Church, in part at least.

So, because Rhea doesn't accept power being taken away from her, she attacks and tries to kill the "rebellion" in the egg, the same way she did with the "dissidents" of the Western Church in Houses, where she sent her students to execute and capture the priests, then executed the survivors without a trial. Sending an assassin against a bishop is clearly not something she would hesitate to do.

But, in this example, the Church was the one "under attack". You might wonder how Rhea would have reacted if Edelgard hadn't restored the Southern Church or started the war and had simply reformed the Empire without bothering anyone else, right ? Well, the answer is : basically the same thing.

What we know of Edelgard's reforms is that they are meant to end the caste system, let anyone reach a position of power, oust the people who are not competent enough to handle them and deny the very idea that birth determines someone's right to rule over a region or a whole nation. Those are all ideas that the Central Church has spent the last millenia denying and fighting against so the nobles would stay dependant on them ; if Edelgard's reforms were to be implemented, and moreso if they were to be successful, therefore proving that Crests and the ability to rule are not related, the Central Church's teachings would be proved wrong and the people of Fodlan, Kingdom and Alliance included, would rebel and stop supporting the Church and nobility. Rhea would lose her power and Fodlan would evolve, one way or another, outside of her control. She would do anything to avoid that, including sending her knights to support the rebellious nobles (like the ones we see in Hopes) who are bound to fight against Edelgard's tyranny to preserve peace and order in Fodlan, even if it means fighting against the Imperial army until they can march on Enbarr and behead the mad tyrant... which is roughly what happens in SS where the Black Eagles form a rebellion and ally with the Church's forces to fight against Edelgard and ultimately defeat her in order to keep the status quo. Yes, they fought this war because they thought Edelgard was in the wrong and needed to be stopped, but the result is the exact same.

(if you want to get into real world parallels, the Catholic Church was in much the same position of power as the Central Church for a good millenia (the xenophobia and the way it wormed itself into being central in every government by saying the King ruled out of God's will and had to be a good Christian if they wanted to keep their throne is especially similar), but then Martin Luther called it out on its corruption and started the Protestant Church (Southern Church, in Fodlan's case), leading to a long religious and physical conflict where the Catholic Church tried to eradicate the dissidents, with fire among other things)

So, what do we deduce from all this ? Three things :

The Church and nobility feed off of each other to maintain their own power ; if one were to disappear or stop working the way it did in the past, the other would collapse.

Rhea is more than ready to do what it takes to preserve her power and influence over Fodlan because it allows her to keep it in stasis and she believes that is what she should do until her mother comes back from the dead.

Edelgard's reforms would put a dent in Rhea's power, war or no war, which would result in Rhea trying to get her killed so she could put a good, obedient noble on the throne in order to restore the Central Church's power and maintain the nobility's standing in the Empire/Fodlan.

So, in conclusion : no significant change to the system can be made and kept in place for more than a few years, a decade at most, without national level of armed conflict at the very least because the Church and nobility will ally and fight tooth and nail to preserve their power. Taking apart the nobility cannot be done without destroying the Central Church at the same time, for one will always try to save/bring back the other to justify its own power. If Edelgard hadn't started the war, Rhea would have ; if Edelgard hadn't invaded and conquered the Kingdom and Alliance, their nobility would have attacked her in order to avoid her reforms giving ideas to their own population, or the population would have rebelled and started a bloody civil war in order to win their freedom, which would have likely caused more casualties, especially civil ones and children, than a fight between two actual armies.

There would have been war anyway. There would have been thousands of deaths anyway. Edelgard did what she did in order to gain the advantage by attacking first, improve her odds and shape the conflict in a way that would cause the least civilian casualties. We can still debate whether or not she was right or wrong, whether or not there was a better way to achieve her goals and save more lives, but the fact remains that while she did start the war, if she had not, someone else would have in order to stop her reforms. There was no peaceful way to change the whole system. As always, when you want to take power away from a group of people, you have to fight for it, and they will fight back.

[bloodsoakedbuckley]

buck and eddie + text posts

[grimdot]

*reading Genesis* so god is both male & female? & we were made in its image & are therefore also both male & female? & that's how a man technically gave birth to a woman? whoa rare old testament trans rights win!

[bunveh]

I ᰔᩚ the (female) traveller & citlali’s interactions :c

[ludinusdaleth]

interesting fact - just like c3, c2 ending was considered a disaster to fans before its finale because many thought arcs were unfinished. in fact one of the main critiques you can find under matts tweet announcing c2 was closing off is tons upon tons of angry responses asking how they could wrap up every characters arc. the finale ended with the ca & uk'otoa not being killed. however, in hindsight, it was very obvious c2 was more about characters finding the emotional strength with each other to face their problems more than finishing them off. and even then, there were multiple one shots (and will be more) about them facing these threats not faced in the series. when i see the c3 discourse about character arcs not being finished, while i do at points agree, i just see this again; it is not remotely unique to the bells. it is another point in how i genuinely do not know if i can judge c3 til we actually have the bells full picture, and it is very obvious that for better or worse, the campaigns have never worked as a full picture alone. i think the pacing that ends up with characters stories being an open road is a feature and not a bug and that will appeal to some and not appeal to others.