#faithfulness in suffering

[thinkingonscripture]

When Hiding is Wise

Sometimes hiding from others is a valid response to avoid unnecessary persecution. The believer who operates on wisdom and faith will make the right choice at the right time. Solomon wrote, “The prudent sees the evil and hides himself, but the naïve go on, and are punished for it” (Prov 22:3; cf., Prov 27:12). In this verse, the prudent man is shrewd and sees evil ahead, and by wisdom “hides…

[hopecorps]

lucretia adventurezones is genuinely one of the best conceived characters of all time and the tragedy that taako and by extension so much of the audience cannot forgive her for her selfishness driven by her steadfast belief in what is right and her immediate decade-long lonely punishment where thirty two years of her life were burned away from her, completely alone, makes my skin ache

i get to this point in the stolen century where lucretia is maybe 18 years old and also 100 years old, so dedicated to preserving life but terrified of living it, and i hear second-hand in less than two minutes about how she fought and ran and salvaged and nearly died entirely alone for an entire year when the six remaining people alive who have ever known her have been frozen into statues. we see her again and she is out of breath and sweaty and completely broken and relieved and changed forever and i think: of course she made that decision

of course she would do anything in the world to save her friends. of course she would take it into her own hands and be selfish and burn the world down and she would do it to save them. she would do it to save the world and she would do it to save the universe. it's so selfish and so unselfish.

and it's like. of course taako can't forgive her for making him forget lup. but i can also imagine years and years and years going by while the world descends into chaos and barry and taako nearly kill themselves and never stop looking for her and never find her. especially because if lup had made it back from that mission she would have immediately been there with lucretia trying to undo what they had done

lucretia is so beautiful and amazing and fantastic because she is the big bad the entire time. she pins them all against each other. she is who she warns them about. she got them into this situation in the first place. she cursed the entire world. she gains their trust by lying to them and she leaves them all so defenseless against the hunger until the second it comes for them.

but she was right. she was right the entire time. she loved them. she made sure they had each other even when she was all alone. she did the only thing that she knew how to do in order to save them all and she was right and she did it all out of love and it worked and some of them will never ever forgive her and she knew that and did it anyway. and i love her so much

[mindofserenity]

“Death is no longer terrifying, this life is.”

[donutfloats]

Gabriel’s flock is the closest you’re gonna get to a cult that actually isn’t a cult due to their mostly pacifistic ways

This does cause problems however when dissenters or spies start causing problems

Gabriel is a little backwards with how they deal with people like this, as they simply just kick them out instead of forcing them to to change their ways

Granted if they cause actual problems, like stealing, damage to property, or hurting others: they will get sent to jail

For the most part it’s these individuals choice if they want to stay, Gabriel isn’t forcing them

Doesn’t mean Gabriel can’t get frustrated tho and contemplate “what if I just said fuck it and murdered these people”

[disciplesofjehovah]

[thehungarythrophy]

if i was a real poet i would talk about landoscar leading mclaren back to glory being written in the stars, and destiny and the prophecy of their racing numbers, but i am tired so i can only offer this :

[orviposition]

an entire chapter in yjh's pov and it's all just him being a yearning mess

Without realizing it, Yoo Joonghyuk let out a faint laugh and muttered, "It's the handiwork of someone who's good at making dumplings." he is such a proud husband oh my god

[shorthaltsjester]

coming off the high of finishing the draft of the last of my exegetical/theory heavy chapters of my thesis and while i was writing i was thinking a lot about why applying real world political philosophies to exandria specifically tends to fall flat and like. even beyond the explicit treatment of things like homophobia as nonexistent and hegemony functioning wildly differently if it really actually exists in exandria as we conceptualize it in our actual world really boils down to the works that make up a lot of the roots of the leftist theory people apply to exandria. like obviously marx is a big guy, nietzsche has more influence than you’d think given his reputation as the internets (poorly interpreted) sad boy, and less people probably know the names of the critical theorists that came out of the frankfurt school but you’d know their ideas — and they all have their toes in countless leftist ideas today, whether their influence is explicit or not. what’s notable in all those theorists is something found in the argumentative and background work that they provide before the claims most people on the internet know re: the workers of the world uniting, god’s being dead, and the culture industry, whether in their previous work or just earlier in the same books that people have read the goodreads quotes of: first principles.

if you’re unfamiliar with the term, it’s just a philosophy word for basic proposition that cannot be deduced from a previous claim. And for a whole lot of works in the history of moral and political philosophy (as well as other less relevant branches), one of the most common first principles you could find was the proposition that god exists. so much of the work of philosophers who inform leftist theory has required them to do the work of either coming up with a different first principle and justifying it and/or providing justification for why first principles are in themselves a flawed notion. nietzsche was so impactful in his claim that god is dead because it targets the very notion that history and the philosophy in it was finding the proposition that god exists to be unsatisfactory if unsupported. marx then was only able to ground his historical materialism because that first principle re: god was able to be dismantled. critical theorists, like adorno for example, were only able to do their work in light of accepting that god is not something worth appealing to without justification. and the reason any of this is relevant to the fantasy world of a silly internet show where voice actors roll dice is because any leftist theory whose most foundational basis is the realization and gradual societal acceptance that the claim “god is real” could not be assumed but had to be given justification will always end up being unsatisfactory when it is applied to a world where “god is real” is not only factually true but is also societally accepted and the existence of those who might philosophize about the gods is a direct product of those gods’ existence.

this isn’t to say there can’t be insight granted by applying these theories anyway (looking at my blorbos and applying philosophical theories is my favourite hobby, just ask my thesis supervisor) nor is it to say that the risks of trying to apply these theories to exandria starts and ends with its failing to be philosophically apt — but there have been many great posts circulating re: the issues with viewing certain facets of exandria through an “it’s a colonialist metaphor” lens and many similar cases so i won’t dive in here. just pointing out that as a facet of the objective truth that can exist in a fictional world, especially a world established by gods (world here being a word that includes the existence of mortals), some of the foundational propositions of the philosophical arguments at work in those theories are rendered false in the exandrian context. but this also means that, if the gods leave exandria in some sense, i will have a very fun time unpacking a nietzschean interpretation of their absence. because i predict that though the gods will be dead/gone, his meaning of god being dead will Not be fulfilled since ostensibly the majority of exandria still looks to the gods in love and in doubt as providers of guidance, and i question how much their presence actually informs the depth of that dependence. anyway. that’s my philosophical enrichment for the night.

[twocathedrals]

conclave / i’m your man, mitski / strangers, ethel cain

[shortnotsweet]

[ “SOMEBODY TOLD ME”]:

BREAKING MY BACK JUST TO KNOW YOUR NAME. SEVENTEEN TRACKS AND I’VE HAD IT WITH THIS GAME. A BREAKIN’ MY BACK JUST TO KNOW YOUR NAME—BUT HEAVEN AIN’T CLOSE IN A PLACE LIKE THIS.

— The Killers, Hot Fuss (2004)

Princess Rhaenyra’s insolence is wearing her stepmother’s patience thin. Queen Alicent is not ten years her senior, but even during her own sixteenth year, she cannot recall herself behaving so brazenly. She would never burst into courtly discussions in nothing but gilded armor and the underskirts of her riding leathers, awash in blood. (She would never be spotted in blood that was not her own, anyway. Alicent has never picked up a sword, not one that belonged to her.) Nevermind that Rhaenyra is attending to diplomatic affairs with bared teeth and scales, no—the crux of the matter is just that, her affairs. Rhaenyra is the Realm’s Delight, a beauty incomparable to any fair maiden, Alicent included. She indulges herself with appetite of a spoiled child, the confidence of man, and the pickings befitting only to her royal blood. Criston Cole. Daemon Targaryen. Harwin Strong. Laena Velaryon. She’s full of love, isn’t she? That selfish, foolish girl. What does Rhaenyra Targaryen know of love, of duty? She is a child in so many ways—she thinks killing makes her a man, thinks the throne is hers despite being a woman, thinks she can have her knight and her uncle and her protector and Laena Velaryon in one fail swoop. She’s wrong. She doesn’t know herself half as well as Alicent does. Alicent, who sees her for what she truly is, who wants to see all of her and more of her and none of her. Alicent has been stolen into the Keep by her own father—both of their fathers—but Rhaenyra is the key to this place, is the window to everything barred. Rhaenyra Targaryen has a dragon. Rhaenyra can fly.

That’s what Rhaenyra had promised her once, with her lips pulled back in a grin, exposing the white of her teeth like the violently radiant creature she was. “Perhaps when you grow tired of plotting against me, we shall ride on dragonback together,” she had said. The tease.

Alicent had yanked her into an empty corridor by the silk of her sleeve, ready to chastise her for her ill behavior. Conversing with the lords and ladies of the court at a feast was one thing, but chattering about her bloody encounters in battle over the pudding tureen were another. The lord at her elbow was going green. Alicent’s own face was likely red; her heart raced whenever Rhaenyra got like this. Alicent had never seen the battlefield—only seen battered men in dented armor and the slumps of corpses lined along dirt roads in the aftermath of war—but her own imagination terrified her like nothing else.

(Rhaenyra is better with a sword than half of the knights in Westeros, and more lovely than the lot. Her reign has not yet begun, but already the commoners flock to her—lured in by tales of her beauty and fine hair—and soldiers would follow her into battle. Alicent would not follow, but she would watch and bite her nails down to the quick.

She thinks of the figure Rhaenyra cuts in full armor, the heat in her gaze underneath the slots of her helmet. Alicent remembers the weight of her own hand in Rhaenyra’s—which was gloved—when the princess rode up to the spectators box and grasped it in her own, bringing Alicent’s knuckles to her lips. She thinks of Rhaenyra murdered in the sky, skewered with another man’s sword, plummeting to the ground, torn in half, streaking crimson across the clouds. Alicent would scream, or cry. She might laugh. She would throw herself from the window of her tower. Rhaenyra’s bloody exploits terrified Alicent for reasons she could not identify, and excited her for reasons she refused to.)

“I’d sooner be confined to the castle for the rest of my days than get on the back of that bloody lizard,” Alicent scoffed. Rhaenyra only tucked her hand over Alicent’s, where it was resting on her forearm. She flexed her fingers, moving to release her grip on the dark fabric, but Rhaenyra intertwined their fingers and held them fast.

“You’re confined already. You are already accustomed to such a thing. I know you. But—”

“But you forget yourself. You think you’re invulnerable, Rhaenyra. You don’t know who you are.” Alicent intends for it to be a sneer, but instead it comes out quietly, and too gentle for disdain. She can’t know. Rhaenyra is as trapped as she is, but they’re trapped together. They belong together. She belongs with Alicent.

“I am Rhaenyra Targaryen, Heir to the Iron Throne and all of Westeros. I am a dragonrider. I am—I am your daughter. In a way. Your sister, too. Your enemy. Your sword, your shield.”

“And what am I?” What else is left for me? Alicent wonders.

“My Queen. For now.” Rhaenyra cocks her head, and the gleam in her eyes burns like fire raining down. “When I am Queen, you will be my lady.”

[serenity-the-firefly]

i think carpenter and hayward should have some kind of ghost hunting youtube channel but for unlicensed gods. they go around snarking at each other and arguing over what kind of god this is and how best to deal with it. hayward ALWAYS thinks its an old harvest god and they have NEVER once made a situation better

[degrees-of-seracchii]

this took a millennia to make cause i kept getting distracted and gathering screenshots to back my points up was incredibly time consuming

but it has been done. anon from how many days ago i hope you are happy

A little of Pure Sydney's flaws

There will be two parts to this cause on god this is long. On this part I will be exploring flaws that tend to be a bit more visible with pure Sydney

This is in no way a complete analysis, I definitely have missed many more of Sydney's flaws, and because Tumblr is a bitch and a half, I regrettably cannot jam as many screenshots from the game/its codes as much as I would like. But I hope this post could act as a good point of reference regardless for any fans of Sydney, or people looking to explore more of their character out there!

Continuing under the cut.

So.

What’s the deal with Sydney? What’s wrong with them, what are their flaws and what make the relationship between them and the PC so toxic?

Well ain’t there just so much to unpack.

In short, Sydney at their core is a spineless, directionless, malleable individual that important influences in their life can easily shape, be it their family, the Temple, or the PC.

Sydney, as they are today, was raised with beliefs upheld by the temple. Something they are deeply religious, devoted and grateful for. However, as we all know, some of those values can be extremely morally questionable.

Speaking of deeply devoted let’s start with Pure Sydney, shall we? 

Victim blaming tendencies

One of the ideals Sydney was raised with is their extremely victim-blaming mindset. Which I have shown here

2. Lust and internal conflict

Something else that fascinates me greatly is that regardless of their state, Sydney is always tempted by the PC. PC’s existence and presence alone are pushing Sydney towards the pit of sinful desires no matter if they are Pure or Corrupted. 

The first thing that comes to mind is when accepting their confession results in a decrease of Sydney’s Purity stat: 

The notion of accepting Sydney’s affections is seen as an encouragement for them to fall towards sin. 

Being in a relationship with PC means they are constantly fighting their own urges and desires. Being taught their entire life that these feelings are wrong, Sydney suffers from tremendous guilt. Even when promised and permitted by the Temple, Sydney still finds physical intimacy with the PC sinful:

These just go to show how deeply buried Sydney is in the Temple’s teachings, unable to stray from it. Which is a perfect segue into their next flaw

3. Attachment to the Temple and blind faith.

Even from the latest confessional scene added, Sydney clearly cares about PC’s wellbeing and displays great concern for them, almost breaking out of the ideals they were raised with just to defend their beloved. But they are not quite there yet. They still seek out for the Temple when they are faced with these doubts. They think that they are doing something wrong for prioritizing the PC’s best interest over the Temple’s teachings. 

Sydney is INCAPABLE of detaching themselves from the Temple. The Temple is just such a big part of Sydney’s character that no matter what, they will side with the Temple before they think about the PC when forced to make that choice. 

And in a way, Sydney’s blind faith is encouraged by the Player for choosing to keep them Pure. The PC is essentially acting as another shelter, shielding, “protecting” them. The PC never expressed that they wanted a change of mindset from Sydney, so Sydney never had a change in mindset. 

And if you played the new confessional event, you would know that you as the player never had the option to either. This might have been intentional. But I will expand on that later. 

More showings of Sydney’s blind faith can be found in littler events while praying with Sydney in the Temple, where they would turn a blind eye to fellow followers being punished:

A bit more about their attachment to the Temple I have also mentioned here.

4. Superiority/Saviour complex

Another aspect of Sydney that people talk about, but I don’t think quite enough, is how aggressive they can get, specifically towards those they deem as sinners. This is a trait shared among both states of Sydney.

For example, the beach date:

And several more.

Though, pure Sydney might be a tad worse at this. As they seem to find themselves more righteous than sinners:

If they are the one taking confessions, pure Sydney is often more judgemental compared to the more empathetic corrupt Sydney:

When PC as a member of the Temple is caught masturbating by Sydney, they take matters into their own hands:

They also display a bit of a saviour complex from their opinions about the PC at low Purity:

5. Dumb teenager

Just a small thing, but I feel like most people just brush over the fact that pure Sydney practically proposes to PC at high enough lust.

I think I don’t need to stress just how insane it is to propose to someone you haven’t known for long. Just to what? Have sex? Loser behaviour. 

I can't wait to explore their flaws when corrupted :3

When kept pure, Sydney has so many interesting flaws that make them incredibly humane and a little irritating, but that's the charm of their character! They are deeply troubled and blinded by their own devotion that they are ignorant, a bit arrogant and even self destructive. It's what makes Sydney... Sydney and I wouldn't have them any other way.

[awesome-cookies-and-cream]

Conclave said: when God sings with his creations, will a turtle not be part of the choir?

[arcadecoconut]

I can't say I'm looking forward to 8 hours of bells hells religitating the god debate, this time WITH the gods, but I am curious to see how Matt will balance already established characterisations of the gods vs twisting things to make bells hells proposal seem like a positive move without seeming like a total retcon.

Caveating this with the fact we don't really know what mortal gods would look like yet, I'm particularly interested to see what would make Erathis "I would have our children know that I am reliable, constant" Lawbearer agree to fuck off and abandon the mortals of exandria.

Lawbearer "Love for me does not mean sentiment nor passion. love means honouring the agreements we have made". We have seen her pretty explicity go to extreme lengths NOT to put herself in the direct position of having to choose between her god-family and her responsibility to mortals BECAUSE she values her responsibility to them so much. She's painted as one of the major architects behind the Divine Gate in the first place, a compromise so the Primes could step back from warping Exandria whilst still fulfilling their responsibilities. I can't really see them on board for a plan that would allow the gods (in mortal form) to directly go back and continue warping it each further.

FWIW, personally I agree Bells Hells plan and general view of the gods is shortsighted & selfish, but it's also abundantly clear that Matt is NOT going to suddenly use the finale to paint Bells Hells as the greatest evil in Exandria, and whatever end state we get will position Bells Hells in a somewhat heroic light. More to the point, now that Imogen has taken in Predathos and they are back on Exandria, their options for dealing with it are much more limited, meaning the mortal gods plan is going to be presented as somehow a positive/kind outcome. And while I do see the potential for this to create an exciting worldstate for a future C4 campaign, a lot of my excitement will be linked directly to how well they land this plane. Because if they can't manage it without directly contradicting years' worth of established god lore and characterisation from previous campaigns, and worse potentially undoing narratives like Vax's sacrifice... well, that would dampen my excitement considerably.

[portraitsofsaints]

Happy Feast Day

Saint Marianne Cope

1838 - 1918

Feast day: January 23

Patronage: lepers, outcasts, those with HIV/AIDS

Marianne Cope, baptized Maria Anna Barbara Koob, was born in Germany and her family emigrated to the United States the next year. She helped support her family and invalid father until his death and then left home to pursue a religious calling receiving the religious habit of the Franciscan Sisters in Syracuse, New York and new name Marianne. In 1883, by then Superior General, Cope responded to a call to care for the leprosy sufferers in Hawaii. In 1888 she moved to Kalaupapa to care for the dying Fr. Damien. Saint Marianne Cope died of natural causes in 1918 at the age of 80.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase. (website)

[epiphainie]

tw death

my mom just called to tell me my grandpa passed away which i was expecting anyway but it's such a weird feeling. this is the first time someone in my family has died (sans my grandma when i was like 2 which i obv dont remember) and he wasn't a part of my daily life (like my maternal grandma) but he loved me a lot, so it's weird that i won't have it anymore. also incredible that a few weeks ago he told my mom he had this dream that he was going to die on february 4th and he died on february 4th.