#go ahead and cry about it!

[simbelene]

I made a post on my main blog discussing how I really feel about the whole Simsulani thing.

Fair warning: I'm not nice about it!

Being passive hasn't gotten us anywhere but here 🤷🏾‍♀️. After going through the same shit year after year, clearly something isn't working 🙃.

There's no need to threaten, but you don't necessarily need to be nice either 😒

The post also has links to their content because that's the energy I'm on this year 💁🏾‍♀️

[habken]

are you comfortable with people making fics of your aus? i was thinking of writing something for the scammers to lovers au but i wanted to see if you were comfortable with that.

I’m totally cool with that ! Just toss me a link if you ever post it so I can take a peak haha

[soullessseraphim]

he's upset, give him a hug :((

[forgottenaine]

Please Don't Cry | Cormac & Aine

Cormac had changed his outfit no less than six times since breakfast.

There was no ball, no great banquet, nor even a dinner guest to warrant such fuss over ones clothes. Once, Aine might have thought that Cormac had some official business this evening and wanted to make the right impression, but she had since learned the right of this behavior. When her siblings had first moved to Lorcan, she had once asked Finn if that was the reason for Cormac's indecision regarding his clothes, but her younger brother had only laughed. No, that often meant that he was expecting a visit from Cassimir Malconaire.

Aine had always done her best to treat the new lord of Malconaire with both kindness and understanding, but he had made this increasingly difficult between both his treatment of her husband's cousins and now with his obvious hold on her own brother, it had been harder to make excuses for his behaviors. While she knew that Cormac would not take well to the idea, Aine hoped that one day she could persuade her brother to end the friendship.

Today, it seemed, her brother was destined to be disappointed, for two hours after lunch, a message was given to Aine that Cassimir Malconaire would not be coming, after all. She suspected that the servant had purposefully given the message to anyone but Cormac himself, and gladly relinquished the responsibility of relaying the contents of the message over to her.

Aine found her brother posted at the window in one of the sitting rooms that had been set aside for the family. Finn and Fiona were seated in the corner together, bickering over the rules of their card game.

"Cormac?" She said softly, placing a hand upon her brother's arm, "I'm afraid Lord Malconaire won't be coming this afternoon. It seems he has some important business that demands his attentions -- "

Aine had seen her brother disappointed a thousand times over, but the look on his face when she delivered this news would have broken her heart to see -- had it not been over a missed opportunity to spend time with Cassimir. "Please don't be sad, dearest. Perhaps it is for the best? We might all spend the afternoon together ... ?" She turned towards the twins at this last part, but the two of them had abandoned their game and fled the room before she could finish the thought.

" ... or better yet, we might spend the afternoon together, just the two of us?"

[theminecraftbee]

because i'm seeing it come up again, a quick "mod thoughts re: all the voter fraud" discussion:

okay so like. in a perfect world, tumblr would have email verification that actually mattered, and we, the mods, would have some more effective way to prevent voter fraud than saying "oh no don't do fraud that's bad". however, we have neither of those things, and doing fraud on our polls is... ridiculously, laughably easy.

so, imagine our distress when during the techno/scar round, a lot of scar fans started getting very, very angry about fraud we weren't sure was even happening? that, indeed, we had absolutely no reason to think was happening at the time, and no way to do anything about it if was?

well. there were two options. and we took the one that would lead to everyone having more fun and things being less toxic overall in the community. the thing is: if we'd said "voter fraud is entirely unallowed, this thing we can't prevent and can't moderate", then the toxicity of fanbases blaming each other for "breaking the rules" would have gone through the roof. full-stop. and we... didn't want that. this poll did not matter. it still doesn't matter. it had grown wildly, wildly bigger than we'd expected, and we had basically no way to control the way everyone was acting about it, but we didn't want to make a statement that would cause people to be even meaner to each other.

so instead, we took the funny option. we said "yeah do whatever voter fraud you want we don't care". SLIGHTLY regret that we didn't know tumblr tried to make you follow random strangers' blogs when you made a new account otherwise maybe we would have been a BIT more clear about 'don't do that', but listen. by saying "voter fraud is totally fine" we made it funny that people were cheating. we made it so there was basically no such thing as "cheating". we made it so, and this was key, the growing toxicity about "but they're BOTTING" was stupid, because like... everyone's doing it now. openly and blatantly doing it. voters fraud is a beautiful name for a baby girl, and this poll doesn't matter and isn't worth getting worked up over, and you can't cheat if it's not against the rules and everyone's doing it anyway, is the idea here.

like, in an ideal world, would we have rampant voter fraud? nah. in a world where we can't stop it if it happens, though... may as well make sure both sides have equal opportunity to fraud, right? like, that makes it even again, right? and more importantly, it reminds people that this shit really, really doesn't matter.

anyway all of this is to say that if you all start coming into our notes and inbox again to start being really toxic about the other side of the poll and make me cry again i will be pissed.

[starcrashedsatellite]

Her birthday is tomorrow, incredibly busy headache-inducing life moment or not im drawing her ten more times

[gilded-gheists]

JUST started a good Durge playthrough and I'm dying over my absolute little guy bard Tinfoil.

[lilliancdoodles]

If I was a crazier person I would go through every fit vod to find every time fit and Richas interacted and make a fit and Richas compilation.

[galwithalibrarycard]

I think I finished the Ben-punches-Claudio fic tonight. Gonna sleep on it before posting.

[vorbarrsultana]

another headcanon: finrod and fingon became truly close friends in helcaraxë. they spent a lot of time together because someone had to step up and be fingolfin's right and left hands. (fingolfin is sure he would have gone mad without them. fingon and finrod are sure they would have gone mad without each other.)

[sisterdivinium]

Finding "the meaning" to a show that could have had up to five or seven seasons but was cancelled after the second is somewhat like trying to understand a novel composed of seventy chapters by having read only twenty — there is a whole wealth of information which we do not possess that could alter our reading of any given element or of the entire thing in itself.

Still, there are always patterns that weave a story into a cohesive unit and they can help us to better grope in darkness towards comprehension. One such pattern in Warrior Nun appears to be how the consequences to mistakes, "sins" or evil deeds committed by characters manifest.

Basic storytelling usually requires characters to act on something so that complications or resolutions may arise from their choices and move the plot forwards. In Warrior Nun, many of these actions are quite tragic in nature: Suzanne's arrogance and pride lead to the death of her Mother Superion; Vincent's allegiance to the higher power he believed Adriel to be inspired him to kill Shannon; Ava's flight from the Cat's Cradle ends up damning Lilith as she is mortally wounded and taken away by a tarask... All of these events have negative outcomes and heavy repercussions on all characters directly or indirectly involved. Something changes permanently because of them, be it in the world around them or within the characters themselves.

And yet, it would seem that all of these dark deeds not only move the story forwards but might also have overall positive results. We would have had no protagonist without Ava — and she would arguably never have received the halo to begin with had she not been murdered. What's more, on a personal scale, the horrifying crime she suffers is, in the end, the very thing that allows her a second chance in life, a new life.

An act of outside evil permits Ava to grow and develop, shows her a path she would not otherwise have found. Without her own season in some sort of hell, Lilith would not have been able to advance towards other ways of being and understanding beyond her very strict limitations. Vincent and Suzanne would not have embarked on their own journeys of enlightenment without having caused the pain they are responsible for.

Beatrice might have been paying for someone else's mistakes, but she, too, is given the chance to grow into herself through it. The afflictions that torment these characters advance the overall plot, but they also advance them, as individuals, as long as they are willing to learn and keep going despite the calamities large and small that they are faced with. Beatrice keeps going after parental rejection, Mary keeps going after losing Shannon, Jillian keeps going after losing her son (in part through her own actions, adding insult to injury)... Trouble and the adaptation that follows it, if one is open enough to learn from the experience, motivates the characters, propels them forward, teaches them.

The problem of evil has occupied the minds of many a thinker throughout the ages, given how the very existence of it, evil, might call into question that of God (a good, omniscient, omnipotent one, anyway). A common way of justifying suffering (and also God), then, is by claiming, as Saint Augustine, that "God judged it better to bring good out of evil than not to permit any evil to exist".

Now, it would be rather ridiculous to say of Warrior Nun that it follows in Leibniz's footsteps, also because this philosopher, expanding on the augustinian concept, attempted to defend the goodness of a real God with his "best of all possible worlds" while all we have is... Well, whatever/whoever Reya is.

But there seems to be an inclination towards some sort of optimism as a worldview nonetheless.

Betrayals reveal truth and grant knowledge (Vincent's culminates with the coming of Adriel, which allows us to know of the threat of a "Holy War" and thus prepare for it; Kristian's gives Jillian much needed insight, William's lights up the fuse for the fight to be taken more seriously...), crimes committed willingly or not open the way for Ava (Suzanne's killing of her Mother Superion causes the loss of the halo, which is transferred to Shannon, whose death opens the gates for Ava to walk through after being herself murdered by sister Frances)... The magnitude of these positive outcomes is perhaps not "balanced" when compared to the evil that brings them about, but there is still something to take out of the catastrophe.

However tragic the tones of a given event, the show itself appears to shun the predetermination that makes tragedy as a genre; if everything is connected, here it at least appears to not necessarily drag everyone into their horrible dooms.

What's more is that this lurking "optimism" matches really well with our own protagonist's personality.

And it makes perfect sense that Ava would do the best she could with whatever she is given.

Life for her, in the conditions she experienced after the accident, would have been unbearable without some sort of positive outlook on life. However deadpan, the joking and the "obscene gestures" and whatever other forms of goofing around beside Diego are a way of turning a portion of the situation in her own favour. Proverbial eggs have, after all, already been broken right and left — might as well make an omelette of whatever remains.

Humour is just another way of looking at the bright side of something, or, at the every least, of mitigating the utter horror it might bring. If the show allows for moments of lightness, if it lets us laugh, if it takes us through a perilous voyage which still bears ripe, succulent fruit instead of the rot of pessimism and its necessary contempt for humanity, it is because Ava herself sees things in this way. It isn't gratuitous or naïve in this case, but a true survival strategy, especially as it is confronted with the morbidity of Catholicism.

Here is a religion that soothes its faithful with the promise of reward in the afterlife — how else does one charge into battle against the unknown, risking one's own death along with that of one's sisters, without the balm of believing that we shall all meet again eventually, "in this life or the next"? How else does one come to terms with the ugliness and the pain of this existence if not by looking forward to a paradise perfect enough to make all trials and tribulations here worth it?

True nihilism would have annihilated Ava. Her present perspective is what avoided the abyss.

And there is nothing Panglossian to her attitude or what the show might imply by giving us her view on things. This isn't about "the best of all possible worlds", but of making the best of whatever situation we're in, of taking what we have and doing something with it, something good, something of ourselves. It isn't God making good out of evil, but our choices.

Killing innocent people and feeling no remorse will never be the best someone can aspire to do. Sister Frances, cardinal William, Adriel all learn this the hard way.

Those who do their best find that, somehow, they can move on from whatever it was that paralysed them. Ava, most of all, knows what it is to be stuck, frozen in place; she can never be the character who refuses to grow, even through pain, lest she condemns her spirit to the same fate her body is all too familiarised with. Those around her wise enough to let themselves be touched by her, by the dynamic power she carries, walk forth with her and live.

It says very little about "God" that Warrior Nun should adopt its heroine's views and seem "optimistic" as it progresses — but it speaks volumes about the values it presents for pondering, of the inspiration its protagonists provide, and of the multiple reasons why this is a story unlike most others.

[shireduchess]

listen...listen... idk man i didn't expect downfall to hit me as hard as it did. but i'm at the end of ep101 and i have cried more maybe than during any other part of this story...and what a story within a story downfall is

it's about faith, the faith the mortals have in the gods and that the gods have in mortals, the faith in their creations, in and for their love of each other. and there is something so moving and intoxicating and emotional about that depiction, of gods deciding to become mortals to achieve an end goal, but of learning how much mortals love and feel and suffer

just the love between them all, everyone depicted. the wildmother and the lawbearer... the emissary.... trist and ayden, the everlight and the dawnfather... fucking just....everyone

idk man this sort of tragic story really just gets me so so so fucking bad, it hits me in such a unique way

[wuxian-vs-wangji]

Yeah... I remember seeing the architectural design majors at my uni having this breakdown each semester...

[keeps-ache]

i don't wanna take over the world, it sounds like a lot. but you know, laying siege to a golf course sounds really nice sometimes

[queen-beefcake-sqx]

It’s going to be a loooooooong trauma season, isn’t it?

[wild-at-mind]

Today's events and the past few months of bullshit have made me feel so rejected from my local LGBTQ community.