#he's one of them innate evil believers i fear..................

[theophagie]

[shutupineedtothink]

Billy Theory - That boy and Agatha are the same

I know some people want Billy to have these hidden motivations and secretly he hates Agatha so that’s why he put the sigil on himself. So that he would show up with this false, aw shucks persona of Billy Kaplan and fool her into helping him walk the Road and bring his mother back at the end. Or get power, or his brother, or whatever.

But I want it to be the exact opposite. He did put the sigil on himself to hide his real identity from her, and from the other witches. But it isn’t because he hates them. He’s afraid of them. He actually is Agatha’s fan. And he idolizes and respects all of these women. And he’s afraid if they find out he’s Wanda Maximoff’s son, the ultimate witch gone bad, the personification of every negative, evil stereotype Lilia has been talking about around witches, they’ll reject him.

He’s afraid they never would have taken him on the Road to begin with, because somewhere along the last three years, and after the events of Multiverse of Madness, he realized oh my god, my mom was the evil one. (I’m assuming Wanda’s turn was publicized in the MCU, or maybe he sensed it magically.) And he (somehow) learns more and more about Agatha and realizes that she was never as evil as she pretends to be, or at least she never went on a killing rampage like Wanda did. But surely she must hate him, because she hates his mom. They must all hate him. That’s his motivation for the sigil. Fear, of himself, of what people will think of him, not anger. Starting to sound familiar?

Sure, I think it’s narratively interesting if he hates her and then he has to come to terms with who Agatha really is underneath it all. But it’s way more narratively interesting, for both of them, if his own journey, his own trauma, his own inner dialogue, very closely reflects hers. They’re mirrors.

What does Agatha, at her core, believe about herself? Her mother hated her because her mother believed she was evil. She internalized that and sees herself as evil, plays into that persona even as she tries to be the opposite of that. In her mind currently, she’s so innately evil she (directly or indirectly) caused the death of her own son.

It’s not quite an exact match for Billy, but the result is the same. He sees (or maybe even magically feels) how his mother turned bad, killed innocent people (listen I love Wanda, but she did). He thinks oh my god, I have the same magic. There’s no witch out there who will want to teach me. And probably, on some deep down level he thinks, maybe I’m evil too. Maybe just like my mom, there’s no other path for me.

Bottom line? That boy isn’t Agatha’s. That boy is another version of her own inner story. She and that boy are the same, on a deep fundamental level.

Stop here if you don’t want potential ep 6 spoilers! More specifics for how I think we move forward under the cut.

Where does that leave us after ep 5/going into ep 6? Here’s the breakdown.

Billy does what he does at the end of ep 5, basically becoming his worst fear, turning into the evil witch version of his mother.

But it’s not real (see my other post about the false trial). So Agatha, Jen, and Lilia, wake up from the false trial (thank you Rio), maybe they have to fight the Seven and defeat them together, and let’s say Alice is alive too, because I want her to be. Everyone’s still on the Road.

Billy is still trapped in the spell. They have to wake him up somehow. Jen’s already saying uncertainly, maybe we don’t want to wake him up, but Agatha immediately defends him. No, it wasn’t his fault, it was a trap, and she provoked him. That whole “trial” was a manifestation of her punishment by the Seven, it wasn’t really him. She’s adamant about this and the others (maybe reluctantly) go with it.

They wake him up — and in my head, they wake him up by destroying the sigil (breaking the illusion of his identity and the Seven’s spell in one go). Of course, it’s Agatha that has to do it, because she and Rio are the only ones who know. And really, Agatha’s known all along, right. I think she knew from the second he broke her out of the spell in ep 1. She just wanted to believe otherwise. So after a few failed attempts to shake him awake and probably a line from Rio along the lines of “You know you have to say it Agatha,” she does. “William Maximoff.” It’s sad, and soft, without any intention to hurt him. (A sigil is destroyed when it’s no longer needed.)

So the sigil is destroyed and our boy wakes up. There’s some initial remnants of anger on his face, but then once he sees them all staring at him warily, he starts to get scared. He remembers what he’s done to them, even if it wasn’t real. He scrambles away from them, please no, I didn’t mean to — I swear I want to be good.

It’s Agatha’s trauma, a version of herself, playing out right in front of her. Playing out in front of us, again. Only now she gets to do for him what her mother never did for her, and what the coven never did for her in the false trial either. She sees him. She defends him, his true self, the curious hopeful smart boy he’s been this whole time. (You don’t need to know someone’s name to know who they really are.) She goes to him and she says it wasn’t real. That wasn’t you. It was me, my punishment. Not yours.

But he’s not convinced yet. And now it hits him — But you know who I am. You said my name.

Agatha says, I think I always knew who you were.

Then why don’t you hate me?

She’s genuinely confused. Why would I hate you?

He looks at the rest of them and back to her. Because I’m… Wanda Maximoff’s son. She hurt you, she hurt so many people. And I have her magic. I was born… (evil? Bad? he can’t bring himself to say it.)

And this is Agatha’s big moment, and the big emotional pay off for us. She says, Billy (the first time we hear his casual name spoken) — Never let anyone else’s fear of you decide who you are. Not mine, not anyone else’s. Never let anyone else tell you you’re horrible, or worthless, or evil. You get to decide who you are, and only you. If you want to be good… you can be. Do you understand?

She’s talking to him, but on some level she’s talking to herself, her own inner child. Does she believe that for herself yet? No, but I digress.

And maybe wryly she adds, because Agatha can’t be serious for too long and I want this line, “Besides, as we’ve already established, I don’t punish children for the sins of the mother.”

Didn’t mean to turn that into a whole fic but there you go. Anyway, Billy gets the message. The coven sees him and accepts him. Maybe there’s hugs. I’d like there to be hugs. We move on to Agatha’s real trial.

Tl;dr? Agatha Harkness is walking out of this Road with Billy Maximoff as her apprentice, goddamnit.

[chronicbeans]

Hazbin Rewrite - Lucifer

I find that the show, itself, doesn't necessarily handle the conflict between him and Charlie as well as it should've. I don't mean it being rushed, either, as the problem seems to run deeper than that. He's not really a bad father, just bad at communication, yet they call it daddy issues? I also feel it could've handled Lucifer as a character better in a lot of ways to make him more recognizable as Lucifer and not just "another tragic character", while still keeping that idea of tragedy in there. However, he's meant to be sympathetic but still despicable enough for you not to care.

TW: Lucifer is both Slightly Sympathetic and Objectively a Bad Person, Neglectful Parenting, Lucifer Despises Charlie

To understand some aspects of this character, I'd like to explain a concept I have with angels in my storyline. Angels follow God's words, so many believe they know what is right and wrong, despite them not knowing it. They don't have the innate knowledge of good and evil that Adam, Eve, and Lilith have from the forbidden fruit. They can gain such knowledge by seeing evil and being able to know it as evil on their own, without God's input, this unlocking the ability of innate knowledge. However, that is a very rare occurrence for angels, because they fear that God might see them as tainted if they do learn such things.

So, the angels choose to follow God because they love Him, but when it comes to what is good and evil, they follow His words on what to do to avoid it instead of having an innate knowledge of it like humans now do. God is afraid of His angels becoming like humans because He doesn't want them to knowingly wrong one another. However, if they were to ever learn such knowledge, He would still love them all the same. He just wants to avoid the negative possibilities that could arise from it. The same went for the original humans, as He wanted them to be simple, eternally happy creatures. He loves joy, seeing joy, and creating joy.

In comes Lucifer. He loves God, only to grow a distaste for Him over time. This is because he began to see himself as higher than God and began feeling jealous of humans due to him perceiving God as loving them more than angels. He despised humanity for merely existing and getting attention away from him and his fellow angels, which is what caused him to rebel and try to overthrow God. It was a way of proving himself to God, as well as trying to take control. Once he was cast out of Heaven, he felt powerless, and tempted Eve into eating the forbidden fruit in order to have one last powerful act of rebellion against his creator. He saw it as ruining God's favorite creation by giving them free will. This is what started the fear of gaining knowledge of good and evil in the angels, because Lucifer brought the idea of that knowledge being a sort of poison to God's creations to the table in the first place.

Despite rebelling against God, Lucifer doesn't have the knowledge of it being wrong. Lucifer acts in ways we perceive as evil, but he doesn't perceive them as evil. He simply views them as actions, and due to no longer listening to God's advice, he now no longer has any guidelines to follow. The tragedy of his situation is no longer necessarily him being cast out of Heaven for rebellion. It is moreso him being cast out for rebelling while believing it to have not been a bad action, and his inability to see why it is bad resulting in him wanting to repeat it if he ever returned to Heaven. He's stuck in a loop because of a literal inability to learn what was wrong with his actions, and his own stubbornness as to proving it wasn't wrong in the first place to God. That doesn't mean he wants to learn why it was wrong, though. He truly doesn't, because his pride makes him see his actions as being right.

He was with Lilith for a short period of time, until Lilith left due to his controlling, narcissistic behavior. Then, he turned to Earth for another partner, finding a young woman who was following The Satanic Temple. Under the assumption that it meant she was worshipping him, he went to Earth under a human disguise and pursued her. That's when he created Charlie.

He made Charlie using white sand from a nearby beach, making her resemble the woman due to the idea that no parent could love a child that doesn't look like themself. This is, of course, objectively wrong and only because he couldn't love a child that doesn't look like himself. He then pretended to be a single father, letting the woman care for Charlie from time to time, resulting in Charlie and the woman getting close.

Upon realizing that The Satanic Temple does not worship him and, in actuality, doesn't believe him, he became offended. Taking it as an insult, he took Charlie back and returned to Hell, never to interact with the woman again and never letting Charlie even know about her. However, there was the problem of Charlie...

Charlie didn't look like him. Charlie didn't act like him. Charlie could see right from wrong. Charlie was nothing like him. She looked like the woman, and as she grew up, she acted more like God than himself. He genuinely, wholeheartedly, hated Charlie because of this.

Due to, once again, being unable to see right from wrong, he saw no problem in completely neglecting Charlie once she was old enough to care for herself. That age being 9 years old, in his opinion. He mostly only talked to her when he tried to teach her how to do things his way, which she never agreed with. This caused a reasonable strain in their relationship, which he couldn't understand, and made him hate her more.

It became worse when she began asking about the woman she barely remembers, being who he considers her "biological mother". Why would he tell her about some woman she'd never meet, much less one who humiliated him to such an extent? So, he lied, saying it was Lilith, despite Lilith looking nothing like Charlie's description and not being aware of Charlie's existence.

Once she moved out, creating her Hazbin Hotel, it was good riddance to her. She may still seek Lucifer's approval, but he won't ever give it to her out of spite.

[drbased]

Does it ever make you ever feel depressed that men have more variation in IQ? That means even though there will always be more male idiots, there will also be more male geniuses. So women can excel in any field, but a man will almost always be the "best" in it. It just makes me feel inferior every time I think about it, way more than strength difference does. Not only that, but they also have higher variation in all types of brain structure. That would mean men are naturally more diverse, personality-wise.

Sometimes I get into these negative thought processes about stupid shit and it totally consumes me. This is my latest one... Please help

Hmm.

Well firstly, IQ is a completely fake concept designed specifically for eugenicist purposes. You can train for an IQ test, your score can change depending on the day, and your score doesn’t mean anything apart from how good you are at IQ tests. It’s not a measure of intelligence, and ‘intelligence’ isn’t real anyway - as in, there is no such quality of uniform intelligence. I think it stands to reason that the highest IQ scores will be from men, because the tests are constructed around a fundamentally male world-view and value system as well as a white one. And that is what depresses me more - that ‘intelligence’ is viewed as some innate quality that only oppressors can possess so they can prove that they deserve their place in a meritocracy. It’s like that controversy about men winning more at Jeopardy than women - the world is structured around male interests and values, so men achieve in mainstream contests and use that to retroactively justify the legitimacy of those values and interests in the culture.

I’m less interested in the concept of a man beating a woman at certain activities because of him being smarter than her, than I am about him beating her because he's socialised from a young age into enjoying and valuing those activities - but also often regardless of his actual performance, he's also by default assumed to be better and more competent than her purely because he's a man. Take for example that study where when they did blind auditions for orchestras, men still got in more than women, but when they put carpeting down so women's heels couldn't be heard, there was finally a more equal ratio of women getting in. Or those studies where identical CVs given out and names that are typical of women, black people etc. get seen as less competent than those with male and white names.

We don't live in a world where we can objectively measure men's 'natural' abilities at anything psychological. But we do live in a world where we know that women's skills are massively undervalued - women have all sorts of intelligences that make the world run round; we're excellent negotiators, we're less violent, we're great at remembering, we have greater compassion, we make good leaders, we are more responsible, we have greater tact, we are safer in the workplace, we're more conscious of social issues and the environment, etc. etc. And none of what we have is seen as 'intelligence'; in fact, quite the opposite - many of our intelligences are dismissed outright as sentimentality and pearl-clutching.

Once again, though, I don't believe these traits are uniform across all women, or that they're 'natural' to us, just as men's traits aren't 'natural' to them. In the nature-nurture debate, there are too many factors in nurture that can't be realistically measured - and I have a suspicion that for many, feminists included, simply saying that men and women naturally possess certain traits is an easier narrative to swallow, because for many women the fear exists that if men can be socialised to be better, then dismissing them as evil would be morally wrong. But I don't think people need to be intrinsically, ontologically evil for us to dismiss them as oppressors - I simply judge by behaviour, which is more measurable.

Going back to intelligence, I think it's also worth saying here that women are socialised into not recognised or appreciating our skills, and to partake in behaviours that psychologically hobble us. Take for example in that orchestra study - under a feminist lens, wearing heels is a form of hobbling that's both literal and psychological. The woman is performing a feminine ritual, wearing a physically debilitating item that submissively marks her as a woman. Not to say that she would be respected more if she was gnc, but I find it interesting how women accidentally lost their spot on the orchestra in the study because their performative clothing made them noisier and easier to recognise as women. And on top of that, we have stereotype threat - there was a study done where men and women were performing some sort of test, and in one half they were in normal clothes, and the second they were in swimwear. In the second one, women performed more poorly than they did in the first, and men saw no change. Once again, we have two inexorably interlinked factors at play, here - women's swimwear is not built for utility but rather to be sexy, and women's bodies are considered inherently sexual; that's not to say that if women were wearing men's swimwear they'd do better at the test, but rather women are socialised to be self-conscious of themselves but also expected to show more skin - we're expected to dumb ourselves down in the name of being sexy.

The upside in all of this is that the moment you recognise that these things aren't set in stone, and rather that these are all skills you can develop if you gain confidence in yourself, you develop a robust sense of self that you can be comfortable and happy with regardless of external measure of male-approved success. I, for example, found confidence in myself and my writing, and now I'm finding success and getting praise online by women on tumblr. It seems you're best finding yourself environments surrounded by other women, especially feminist-minded women who are consciously choosing to fight against established biases by valuing the skills of women that are undervalued by society. Devaluing male interests and achievements in your own head is something you can also do, and I once again recommend feminist spaces as an excellent opportunity to de-program (obligatory plug for my side blog @learningwomanhood where I do exactly that).

For me, the biggest wisdom to be gained from feminism is the psychological distancing yourself from male thought - the more things you reject that you once unthinkingly believed to be normal, the more you feel that you can truly be human, vibrant, unconstrained; and the more silly the whole enterprise of patriarchy looks. It's not nice that rejecting patriarchy means rejecting mainstream society, but the older you get the more you realise that you simply can't dwell on these things and instead have to do what benefits you within it; nobody is owed a perfect existence, and once you realise that you have to choose a life for yourself and choose to be happy with that, your life will be much more comfortable. In the end, life is all about the gestures of love you make to yourself and others. When you realise that it's your job to be your own best friend, you can carry that energy with you your whole life; you will be inpenetrable because all that matters to you, no matter what situation you're going through or what hell you're in, is that you made decisions that showed love to yourself. That could be considered a form of intelligence - perhaps wisdom itself is a form of intelligence that is devalued specifically because it's female-coded. But wisdom sounds like nothing until you internalise it - all the language in the world can't seem to really get to its essence until something inside you clicks and you understand it.

One thing I would like to say is that those negative thought processes you have are not stupid: they are a valuable part of your processing of the world and are worth attention. We have this cultural idea that with regards to mental health, the parts of us that are 'real' and 'valid' and 'truly us' are all the good parts, and the negative thought processes and patterns of behaviour are like cancerous tumours that need to be artifically removed. One of the best things I ever did for myself is to take myself seriously - because that's my prerogative, as myself and my own best friend. The only thing 'bad' thing about those thought processes is that they cause you distress; that's it. So, then, it's up to you to decide how much you want to indulge in them. I find the best way to really tackle unpleasant behavioural patterns is to simply do them shamelessly, because clearly a part of you wants to do them anyway; one of the first ways I got out of my depressive spirals was to decide that I was going to do all the depressive actions (stay in bed, eat junk food etc.) but simply embrace that those are things I want to do and not feel guilty or sad about it. That way, the depression hasn't consumed me and instead I have made a choice - I have reformed my relationship with myself as an active agent and a made a choice to show love for myself through the gesture of taking my desires seriously, not dismissing them as 'mentally ill'. I could go on but the point is that all of your head is necessarily you - as in, it doesn't come from anywhere else but you, and therefore all of it should be respected and valued. Mainstream society won't tell you that - there's always supposed to be a limit, there's always something that's 'unhealthy' in some sort of metaphysical sense, there's always a part of you that's supposed to be beholden to some external standard, that keeps you feeling insecure and needing validation. But there is no true objective measure of a healthy mind; the only thing that matters is if you're comfortable with yourself, and you can always make gestures of love to yourself regardless of your situation.

[twin-wings]

Vash and Knives' dynamic in the manga is extremely compelling to me. I really like how their conflict isn't a matter of innate temperaments, but the different ways in which they react to their experiences.

When they were kids, Knives was the one with the strongest desire to connect with humans. He had so much hope – and fear of rejection – that he literally started crying when he felt accepted by Conrad, the second person after Rem to learn about the twins' existence. And it's important that it was Knives, and not Vash, to say something like this:

I've always found it so interesting that between the two of them, Vash was the more cautious one. He was more reserved, quieter, and less emotional compared to Knives. And most importantly, he had fewer expectations about humans and whether or not they could become friends with them.

Vash has never been naive. He's very aware of how difficult it is for people to come to a mutual understanding – and how two beings as powerful as them will likely be seen with suspicion and fear by humans – but this doesn't mean that trying isn't worth it, not matter how many times it might fail.

What this moment conveys is not naive idealism, but an impossibly strong determination. Vash does believe that humans and plants can coexist peacefully, but he also knows it's an uphill road to get there.

Obviously Knives doesn't share the same hope. All the hope he had about humanity was crushed when he found out about Tesla. That was the day his innocence was irreparably lost.

But Knives wasn't the only one who was affected by that discovery. Vash's reaction was just as strong: we see him adamantly refusing food, trying to kill himself because he couldn't stand to be in a ship full of humans. We see him lashing out, angry and scared and unable to trust humans at all, not even Rem.

The whole flashback adds a lot of nuance to Vash's character: he knows humans are capable of terrible things, he doesn't just blindly trust them and doesn't see the world through rose-tinted glasses. But he still chooses empathy and forgiveness instead of resentment and vengeance again and again, because he knows humans are also capable of good, of changing and learning from their mistakes. Rem herself was proof of that: how she did all she could to prevent the tragedy of Tesla from happening again; how she gave her own life for everyone else, to grant everyone a ticket to the future. It was Rem who convinced Vash to have hope and gave him a reason to keep living, and it's her legacy that Vash tries to protect with his life.

Knives, on the other hand, bottled up his emotions, refusing to share his pain with Vash and Rem and using it to fuel his hatred. Knives was afraid of humans as much as Vash was, but instead of facing that fear head-on and overcoming it, he decided to eradicate the source.

The main conflict in Trigun isn't just about two brothers' ideological divergences, nor is it simply about stopping the "bad guy": it's about how good and evil coexist in human nature. Vash and Knives were bound to discover the dark side of humanity sooner or later, and they were bound to make a choice. While Knives only sees the evil that humans have done and refuses to give them a chance, Vash chooses to believe in people's potential for goodness.

They are two sides of the same coin. Both are incredibly powerful beings with the ability to exterminate humanity if they so wanted, but the way they choose to use their immense powers is completely opposite.

[immortalnetizen]

The Ideology of Hatred

Probably the most crucial theme of Batman v Superman, and that which is most pertinent to our contemporary discord, is that of the empowerment and corruptive influence of hatred. Hatred is a natural human sentiment, the manifestation of our most profound sense of fear, regret, greed and envy and enabled by our innate fallibility, irrationality and selfishness.

The psychological catalyst which motivates and drives both Batman and Superman as well as Senator June Moon is that of hatred which emboldens us to tear down others for the sake of building our feeble and insecure sense of pride and self-perceived sense of righteousness. Bruce Wayne finds false solace through his cynical take on Superman being a false hero and god while projecting his own destructive and self-righteous tendencies as a crime fighter enforcing his own moral code those considerably weaker than himself upon Superman, thereby justifying Batman’s own jaded and uncompromising attitude and harmful behavior. Superman, likewise disheartened by the suspicion and contempt he has so garnished through the media and popular discourse, finds toxic comfort in focusing his hatred toward Batman while attempting to paint him and the society that enables him as the real hypocrites and threat to justice. In the end, neither character is really at war with one another, but a false perception that they’ve built up in their minds as the ultimate enemy while fooling themselves into believing that they are the ultimate and true hero.

I’m good so long as the other guy is more evil than I.

Both characters seek to affirm their sense of righteousness through the admonishment and destruction of the other as opposed to focusing on their own shortcomings and the real social issues and injustice going on around them; losing sense of who they really are by over-fixating on how they desire to envision and demonize the other. It is only through their blind and obsessive contempt for the other that Lex Luthor, a master of media and political manipulation, is able to deceive and play the two off of each other as he did Senator Moon and the Capitol bombing.

Hatred is a drug; it numbs us to our own shortcomings, projects demons where none be and inundates our most wretched sense of guilt and self-loathing by encouraging us to scape-goat those we prefer to see as a threat to our greatest wants and desires. Probably the most tragic irony of Batman v Superman is in how its core message went largely ignored by mass-audiences who, as opposed to walking away with any measurable degree of valuable incite, chose instead to indulge themselves in a campaign of blind outrage and hate-mongering, characterizing Snyder as an anti-christ or convenient strawman for their petty discord, dismissing people who either understood or showed any appreciation for the film as ‘cultists’ and peddling conspiracy theories such as claiming that film star Ben Affleck secretly purchased bulk copies of BvS DVDs in order to boost sales. Clearly no lessons need be learned here.

If only such individuals could be as perceptive as they are delusional about their own inflated sense of cultural taste and intellect. Indeed arrogance, haughtiness and intolerance is the death of objective film analysis and art critique.

[sentenceme-leni]

Tuesday. Minimum 2 sentences.

---

Belle supposed that she should be afraid. Anyone in their right mind would be, deep in the lair of the Dark One. Rumpelstiltskin's face had been a mask of horror, the moment he saw the magic cloud envelop her.

She hoped he called for help before coming for her.

She also hoped it took the rescue party another hour before they arrived.

Unlike the rest of the world, she had lived with the Dark One for years. She could read the moods behind those yellow eyes with even more accuracy than she could the man she had married in Storybrooke.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

He sneered.

Belle let out a frustrated sigh. This was a familiar battle, yet ever so tiring to climb up the same hill over and over again - and this time with two different versions of the same man! "You are cranky," she told him, crossing her arms over her chest. "Go on, Rumple. You know how this goes. You can keep your problems to yourself, or you can share them with me and we can---"

"We can?" He snickered. "Don't try to deceive me, dearie. You want no part of this," he declared with a hiss, essaying a grand wave at himself.

Belle felt like kicking something. Preferably that thrice-damned spell which had divided Rumpelstiltskin in these two stubborn personalities. She already has this discussion with the human version!

"As I already told you," she didn't bother to explain she meant the Rumpelstiltskin who had stayed in their home. He was smart. He could figure it out. "It could hardly be True Love if I only wanted parts of you."

He gave her a condescending look, but she noticed his claws curl nervously at his sides.

He was so tempted by the idea of a true love. He wanted to believe her. Rumpelstiltskin always wanted to believe he could be loved.

The fool still gave her a nasty smirk. "Oh, but I'm the evil parts, don't you know?" He leaned into her personal space with a leer. "Still eager to claim me?"

Belle leaned forward, maintaining eye contact until he blinked first. "Your counterpart just chased off two families from their apartments," she informed him "They refused to pay rent now that he doesn't have magic."

He snorted. "What does magic have to do with a contract?"

They were echoes of each other, down to the incredulous intonation.

"Exactly."

Taking advantage of his good humor, Belle shot out her hand to grasp his. He expectedly opened his mouth with surprise, but said nothing once he looked at her determined expression.

"Oh no," he said warily. Indulgently. Lovingly. Of course he knew her moods as well. "You have an idea."

"I do." She smiled. For all the chaos of the last three days, unlike every other idiot affected by the spell, Rumpelstiltskin had enough of an innate survival instinct that they hadn't gone at each other's throats. A truly soulless Dark One would have already razed the land, so the reprieve had been the springboard to Belle's theory. "I believe you've been happy to build yourself this castle and terrorize everyone with dire threats. I also believe your other half has been making everyone in Storybrooke fear the power of a signature with only Dove and his friends as back up." She shrugged. "You're no more evil than he is, and he is no more patient than you are. If anything, you're raw magic and he is all stubbornness. Power and Will, maybe."

"That sounds like too good a wish, sweetheart."

"I haven't worked out the details," she admitted. "But all the same-" she tugged on his coat "-you are all mine."

The End

16/04/24

[noirmorose]

ᅠㅤᅠㅤᅠㅤᅠㅤ ᅠㅤᅠㅤᅠㅤ♰ ⠀⠀ֵ⠀ ⠀ 𝄒 ⠀his skin ﹔ ⠀dark ， moon—kissed and ᅠㅤ𝗵𝗲𝗮𝘃𝗲𝗻—𝘀𝗲𝗻𝘁.⠀he's an A͟R͟C͟H͟A͟N͟G͟E͟L and he knows it. ❜⠀⠀

ᅠㅤᅠㅤᅠㅤᅠㅤᅠㅤㅤᅠㅤᅠᅠᅠㅤhere they come, one of blackwater’s finest— silas hyuk astor. everyone thinks they're so allocentric and insightful, but i know that they’re really intolerant and inflexible. whatever the case, it seems like weird stuff happens wherever they go, ever since they got here nine years ago, especially at their job as a deputy reverend at st. vladimir’s cathedral.

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ✶ ៹ㅤbasics ٬ stats ٬ analysis ٬ mobnav ٬ wc ¡!

ᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟ𠥼 𝐰. 𝗲𝗲𝗸𝗹𝘆 𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗿𝘆¡!

ㅤㅤ✶ ៹ㅤsunday service: 10 AM - main sermon on resilience in dark times. ㅤㅤ✶ ៹ㅤmonday night vigil: 8 PM - prayers for the souls of the lost. ㅤㅤ✶ ៹ㅤtuesday study: 7 PM - scriptures on supernatural defence. ㅤㅤ✶ ៹ㅤwednesday evening confession: 6 PM - personal spiritual guidance. ㅤㅤ✶ ៹ㅤthursday healing session: 9 PM - exorcism & blessings. ㅤㅤ✶ ៹ㅤfriday midnight mass: 12 AM - special protection rites. ㅤㅤ✶ ៹ㅤsaturday meditation: 10 AM - inner strength for facing evil.

ᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟ𠥼 𝐬. 𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗰𝘀¡!

ㅤㅤ✶ ៹ㅤsilas hyuk astor is his name. ㅤㅤ✶ ៹ㅤtwenty nine human years. ㅤㅤ✶ ៹ㅤINTJ is his mbti. ㅤㅤ✶ ៹ㅤ1w9 is her enneagram. ㅤㅤ✶ ៹ㅤhe’s pansexual demiromantic.

ᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟ 𠥼 𝐡. 𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗰𝗮𝗻𝗼𝗻𝘀¡!

silas often finds himself drawn to objects that reflect light—like crystals and stained glass—because they trigger faint memories of his celestial past. he keeps a small collection in his living space, hoping that they will help him remember.

at night, silas experiences vivid dreams filled with celestial imagery—flashes of light, ethereal voices, and serene landscapes. these dreams both comfort and haunt him, leaving him with a sense of longing for something he can't quite grasp.

as a deputy reverend, he's particularly known for his compassionate listening skills. he often spends long hours in confessionals, helping the townsfolk with their spiritual crises. his empathy sometimes leads him to take on their burdens, making it hard for him to let go of others' pain.

although he has no memory of his past, silas has an innate ability to play the piano beautifully. this talent surfaces unexpectedly when he hears certain hymns, and he often uses music to calm himself and connect with the community during services.

animals are drawn to silas, and he often finds stray cats and dogs seeking his attention. this connection is a reflection of his kind nature, and he secretly considers them his companions—he even has a soft spot for feeding the local strays.

he has a fascination with human customs and modern technology, often asking questions that seem naive to others. for instance, he has no idea how to use a smartphone effectively, and it leads to funny mishaps when he tries to take pictures for the parish website.

has an instinctual need to protect those he cares about. he often puts himself in danger to save others, believing it's part of his duty as a celestial being, which sometimes leads to reckless decisions.

while he exudes a serene presence, silas' somewhat clumsy in his movements. he often trips over things or spills tea during community gatherings, which endears him to the townsfolk, who see him as adorably human despite his angelic aura.

silas' an avid reader of ancient texts and religious scripture. he often loses himself in libraries or dusty old bookstores, seeking to uncover lost knowledge and truths about his own identity, though he sometimes finds the philosophical debates overwhelming.

occasionally feels a sense of longing for companionship and connection, making him open to friendships. however, he struggles to fully let anyone in, fearing that his lost memories might hurt those he cares about or lead to heartbreak.

believes that the perfect cup of tea can solve all problems, so he makes it a ritual to brew a different kind every day—unfortunately, he can’t remember which ones taste good and ends up with some truly awful blends!

despite his reverend attire, silas has no clue about fashion. he sometimes wears mismatched socks, claiming it’s a “celestial fashion statement” when in reality, he just can’t find a matching pair.

is overly dramatic when he tells stories, especially about mundane events. he might narrate a simple grocery shopping trip as an epic quest, complete with villainous shopping carts and heroic discounts.

he's completely oblivious to modern pop culture references and often mixes up famous quotes or character names, leading to hilarious miscommunications with the locals. imagine him quoting shakespeare when someone mentions a superhero movie!

silas has an odd habit of trying to pet anything fluffy—be it a pillow, a coat, or a townsperson’s hair—because it reminds him of the softness of angelic feathers, which often leads to awkward situations!

[ileftherbackhome]

on my hunger games bullshit but to further my analysis of president snow, lets turn to Coin and why her arc mirrors snow so precisely as well as the symbolism of her being murdered right in front of snow and the others.

first, snow and coin are both power-hungry fascists. they do not give a fuck about the districts, they only want to be the one doling out punishment but Coin is just as arrogant in her own snake-like intelligence as Snow is that she makes a critical mistake just before her death. She confesses to Katniss that she was a pawn in her own mastermind strategy to take power from Snow not to end the games but to dole out her own form of justice against who she considered to be the ultimate "evil."

in this moment, we see the startling comparison to Snow in her belief that she could speak to the GIRL WHO WON HER REVOLUTION FOR HER like that and expect her to go along with these "punishment" games, as if she isnt all too aware of the official narrative of the CURRENT games SHE LOST HER SISTER to change, as if Coin didnt know she LOST HER SISTER FIGHTING FOR COIN, but Coin believed Katniss would cow in fear of her "leadership" over all 13 districts, believed Katniss would cow under her "cunning" strategy to win power for herself and believed Katniss would feel out-numbered by her superior wit and inteliigence to Katniss specifically. Thats why she invited the other victors, some of which she knew were angry enough to agree in the heat of moment with Coin, as a way to force Katniss to submit to her privately and then publically because Coin believed she was smart enough to control anyone, just like Snow did. Except unlike Snow, she differed in just one critical aspect.

Her hubris led her to lie to Katniss and everyone else around her because she believed nobody was smart enough to pick up on those lies. She believed that nobody could fool her, and that is when Katniss called her bluff by pretending to agree herself. if Coin was as smart as Snow, as smart as Katniss, she would have known right then and there that she had fucked up. not even Snow was presumptuous enough to believe he could lie to Katniss, no he KNEW he would have to be honest with her in order to get her to move even a little bit the way he wanted her and if Coin was even smarter than Snow, she would have realized that Katniss would never have let her get away with her identical plan to Snow.

The fact that she brought Katniss in front of her supporters, whom I fully believed she expected would protect her from Katniss because she thinks everyone is as image obssesed as she is, to kill Snow and then she stood right on top of him, the visual representation of being a bigger threat than Snow could ever be because at least Snow had fucking a moral code, and expected Katniss to do her bidding for her and usher in her reign of terror was absolutely brilliant of Collins tbh.

it shows us that the most dangerous move of all is the assumption that you are the smartest person to have ever existed, because other people are just as capable of lying to your face as boldly as you do. it shows us that even the most terrifying of villains can be taken down and stopped by another human killing them because ultimately their power is not innate. it is earned through fear, abuse, and terror and that is something that good humans can always overcome because we just fucking outnumber the villains.

the most powerful lesson from the hunger games is that we're all fucking human, every last one of us and we all have reasons to behave badly but at our core, we should try and be good because if we give in to our evil impulses, we will ALWAYS be outnumbered by the sheer amount of good that exists in the world.

[shutupineedtothink]

[Theory] Agatha All Along title meaning + character arc for Agatha

Back on the theory train — here’s another thing that’s bugging me. Why is the show called Agatha All Along, besides the cute allusion to the song. I know for a fact Jac Schaeffer is too clever and too good of a writer to not make it mean something more.

I’m feeling like it must tie into Agatha’s character arc for the show, so let me take you on a little hypothetical journey here.

Spoilers below the cut!

Now that I’ve rewatched those last few episodes of WandaVision, I can’t get Agatha’s flashback out of my head. Particularly her saying, practically pleading, “I can be good” and her mother replying “no, you cannot.” Like holy shit. That’s a condemnation if I ever heard one. A different kind of curse passed down by a different kind of mother.

I’m starting to wonder… what if Agatha was always this powerful, even without the Darkhold. What if she was so innately powerful, her own mother and her entire coven was afraid of her? Maybe they even suspected her of being the Scarlet Witch, and therefore capable of ending the world itself? And because she was so powerful, and every other witch around her didn’t even want to touch her much less teach her, what if she went looking for resources herself? And whether that was the actual Darkhold or something else “above her station” (… I’m not convinced she had the Darkhold yet at the time of this WV flashback scene) that only served as the indictment the other witches needed to finally attack her?

Basically where I’m going with this is… what if Agatha was raised to believe she was bad? If she was always told she was basically evil incarnate, always feared for her power, too powerful for her own good, too powerful to be good, to anyone… her own coven, her sisters, and her mother were afraid of her and shunned her… what would that core belief do to her?

Let’s also assume her coven were the first (maybe only) people she intentionally killed (and even then, in self defense). The way she looks when she takes the amulet from her mother’s body — she’s angry, but how much of that anger is directed at herself? How much of her thought, well, look, they were right. I am bad. I am evil. And there’s no turning back now. And I hate myself for it.

Except maybe, she tries. She’s constantly trying to escape this fate, this identity that was forced on her. She never joins another coven in the centuries after, not only because no one wants her and she has serious trust issues but because she doesn’t want to hurt them, intentionally or not. She doesn’t need their power, she’s already more powerful than just about any other witch. So she studies. She learns the craft. She controls her power. And she leans into the persona of Agatha the powerful evil witch, because why not? That’s what they all think of her anyway. Let her control the narrative then. She wears her reputation like armor, so that no one can betray her ever again. As Rio says, “you’re vulnerable.” And she replies, “only physically.”

Then at some point, the unthinkable happens. She meets Rio, falls in love with her, figures out who she is (not necessarily in that order) and maybe she thinks, what kind of person falls in love with death? Surely that must be even more confirmation that she’s horrible (despite the fact that Rio is not horrible, not really, and certainly not to her). But she tries not to care, and mostly she doesn’t because she’s in love.

And then she has Nicky, however that happens, and she’s absolutely terrified but he is hers, and she loves him like she never loved anyone before. And she’s determined — he will be powerful but he will never think he’s anything less than because of it. He is finally, finally something good that came from her.

And then he too, is ripped away from her, by her own lover Death, and however it happened (even though it definitely wasn’t intentional on her part), she knows it’s her fault. Because she is evil, she is horrible, and this is her fate. She is betrayed by the people she loves, and she is left behind.

But still! She can’t give him up. She can’t stop trying. And she feels the absolutely insane surge of power in Westview and inserts herself into the Scarlet Witch’s hex, when no other witch would even dare get close, because maybe with enough power, with Wanda’s power, she can remake Nicky. (“And you wanted him back.”) She can create somewhere he’ll be safe and everyone else will be safe, and she won’t cause any more damage, to anyone. Death will never find them. She can raise her son in peace. She never wanted Wanda’s power just for power’s sake, she wanted what Wanda created, but better. Her version.

And then that too, was gone. And once again, she was painted the villain.

And now? Now it seems like all the pieces of her past are coming back to haunt her all at once. A new coven of witches who seem impossible to get along with, her lover Death who she tried to escape for so long, and a boy who looks like he might be the version of her son she was trying to recreate, who seems to adore her despite everything she is and wants to learn magic more than anything else. It’s all come back around.

So maybe, through reasons and events currently unfolding, Agatha’s journey on The Road (and the show) is to realize, or at least begin to maybe believe slightly, that she’s not inherently evil. She’s not an inherently bad person, or bad luck, or horrible. It wasn’t all her fault. Nicky’s death wasn’t her fault, even if she couldn’t save him. Death is part of her journey, as it is for us all, and maybe she can learn to accept that, maybe even love the woman who carries that name again, or at least forgive her.

Maybe this boy isn’t hers, but she can care for him and teach him the magic she never got to teach her own son. There can be a coven who actually has her back, who even sees her as their leader, who knows her and accepts her for what she truly is. Extremely flawed, powerful as all fuck, snarky and sarcastic, but the real her.

Not Agatha the evil witch. Not Agatha the villain (because she never was one). Not Agatha the hero either. Just Agatha. All Along.

———

Eh?? 🤷‍♀️

Now maybe in the show it’s not quite as angsty as all this, but Jac Schaeffer is writing this character too complexly and Kathryn Hahn is playing her too complexly for at least some of this not to be true. Agatha’s not just a villain. She’s not true evil. It’s only episode 4 and we basically know for a fact based on her reactions alone that Agatha did NOT sacrifice her own child for the book of the damned. And I just can’t get over the way Kathryn Hahn almost seems to be playing two characters with Agatha, the (evil) witch and the vulnerable Agatha underneath that only seems to surface for Teen and Rio, so far.

It’s fascinating, and I just want to see her get the depth of story she deserves. And we deserve, tbh.

[nardaviel]

I've been wanting to do this for ages but I was too lazy to turn on my computer. I got the template here! Only like three of these characters are any degree of well-known, and I think I might actually be one of the only people on Tumblr who knows of two of them... Under the cut I talk a little about how each of them has inspired Sora.

Ibushi Arima: The Original inspiration. The reason Sora exists. The mold that Sora was shaped to fit. Essentially, I needed an OC to fill some holes in my backstory for Ibushi, so I made Sora. He has many things in common with Ibushi for that reason (rich background, unhappy childhood, deeply devoted to a small number of people). He has some key differences, as well, because he needed to have them (less conflict-averse, more ambitious).

Light Yagami: Sora is incredibly, blindingly smart (though not to the degree we're meant to believe Light is, because I'm pretty sure no actual human is as smart as Light is meant to be), and gorgeous, and charismatic, and well-off, but feels a profound disconnect between himself and most others. It takes him in a different direction than Light, however, with more loneliness and self-loathing. Essentially, Sora, like Light, is a guy who seems to have it all, but his internal life is dark and dysfunctional and broken. One of my fav tropes!

Diora di'Marano: She is one of the characters who I might be alone in knowing, which is such a shame, because she's one of my favorite characters in all of media. She's smart as fuck, subtle and patient, good at manipulating people, and overall incredibly skilled at maneuvering through her society to become powerful despite some not inconsiderable barriers. Most importantly for this post, she's motivated by love for a few people, and she doesn't care about much else, including herself. All that cunning and subtlety, and she uses it to protect people, then avenge them, then to protect new people, all the while using herself as a tool like any other. She and Sora would get along, I think.

Haruka and Michiru: Specifically I'm talking about the 90s anime version of these characters. I never watched the anime all the way through, but I remember being drawn to their pragmatism, which influenced the way Sora thinks. The inner senshi don't want anyone to die, and neither do Haruka and Michiru, really, but they recognize that in order to save the most people, they have to commit to causing a few deaths. Sora would do the same calculations.

Amarais Handernesse ATerafin: She is another beautifully pragmatic character. She has more principles than Sora, but she's clear-eyed about what she wants, and she's willing to do literally anything to achieve it; it's simply that some of the things she wants are to never resort to assassination, to leave a positive legacy, to uplift the most vulnerable instead of crushing them under her heel, etc., which rule out some methods of taking and holding power. (Sora does not share these admirable principles; where they are similar is that he, like Amarais, knows what he won't do because he's considered and analyzed it already and decided that it won't produce an acceptable result.) Amarais is also an unapproachable character, aware of her position and expecting others to be aware of it as well, but isolated and made incredibly lonely by that distance. Sora can be very much like that. Lastly, like Sora, she wants power. She wants to get to the top, and she's not sorry about it or ashamed of it, and she's not portrayed as evil for that.

Daemon Sadi: (Look, is he from a Problematic series? Yes. Do I recommend it? Absolutely not. But I read it when I was young, it changed me forever, and now I'm stuck like this.) (Also, he doesn't even have book cover art I could use for this meme; I used @/veliseraptor's fancast of Sendhil Ramamurthy.) Daemon is The Most Powerful Guy To Ever Exist in his canon, which I think freed me early on from the fear of making characters OP. If there's magic or innate superpowers in an AU, and if Sora has them, he's going to be very innately strong, simply because it fits his has-everything-except-happiness-and-love concept and because I want him to be. Daemon is also a rich, beautiful, clever character, subtle and deadly, who lives through a youth full of abuse that follows him for the rest of his life and informs all the close relationships he ever has. Like Sora, he is deeply scarred by his early life and not nearly as stable as his smooth, charismatic facade suggests. His Diora-esque self-sacrificial depth of devotion to his closest loved ones is something else that's really stuck with me, and you can find it in Sora.

Josephine Montilyet: Josie is a diplomat. In a game where you, the PC, are a fighter, and your closest companions are people who fight with you, and two of your three advisors are a soldier and a spy-assassin type, Josephine stands out as the advisor whose skills lie in negotiation, manipulation of social circumstances, pulling strings, and destroying people without ever lifting a weapon. Sora, likewise, is very much a paperwork and private conferences kind of guy. Like Amarais, Josie is more of an idealist than Sora, but also like Amarais, she pursues her goals with Soralike ruthlessness.

[girlboss-enthusiast]

🌄&🧔‍♂️

🌄 What was the first thing that peaked you, and when did you peak?

(This is soooooo fucking long I'm sorry)

Peak trans and peak patriarchy were intertwined for me. It was mid-2021. I’d been identifying as nonbinary for about two years, but even while trying my best to believe in it, the whole concept of nonbinary just felt fake. At the same time, I had started questioning what I knew about porn and the sex industry in general. I hadn't watched porn in a few years because I’d read stories from ex-performers about the evils of mainstream porn, and I knew there was probably rape footage on porn sites, but I was still on the “sex work is work” bus. (I know—I was an idiot.) I saw a post on Tumblr about the pros of the Nordic Model vs legalization, realized I didn't know much about it, and did some research. I found a couple blogs here that were incredibly informative, and found radfem bloggers in the links. They were scary TERFs but they were right about porn, so I wanted to see if they were right about anything else. And that was that. I was connecting with radfems here by January 2022.

For gender specifically: I struggled with what I thought was severe gender dysphoria. Like, the hatred I felt for my body and particularly my reproductive organs made me want to carve them out of me. I was that TIF who truly thought her innate identity and rightful state of being was a sparkly mist. (In retrospect, this was profound dissociation stemming from my fear and hate of my disabled body. I can't believe that people thought I was fine when I was incredibly mentally ill.) But nonbinary as a concept never quite made sense to me, even when I wanted to believe it. I went by they/them, changed my style, but it was like a costume. Nothing had changed but the words I used.

Like I said above, I started reading radfem blogs because of their anti-porn posts. They poked holes in gender identity as an ideology, not just being nonbinary, and that + curing my PMDD made me discard gender ideology completely.

🧔‍♂️ If you could kill one man (excluding politicians, billionaires, and those responsible for world tragedies), who would it be?

The 22-year-old male who started dating my friend when she was 16, right after she got out of an abusive relationship, and who we all thought was great bc he was soooooo nice to Jane* and so polite to everyone else, and he bought us alcohol, and she seemed so happy, and of course he was just as abusive as her ex, just better at hiding it. I would like to travel back in time and run him over with his stupid lifted truck

[angeltreasure]

Hello i would like yout opinion, i am catholic and i believe in God, but i feel attracted to tarot, i have not gotten to practice it, but i have gotten to participate in free games and readings sometimes.

I would like to get to practice it because it caught my attention also i know the tarot is based on energy and can be misleading at times.

You cannot serve two masters my brother or sister. You have to either choose God or choose the evil one, Satan. You cannot have both especially as Catholic! Do you know that our Catechism mentions tarot is bad?

III. "YOU SHALL HAVE NO OTHER GODS BEFORE ME" ….

2113 Idolatry not only refers to false pagan worship. It remains a constant temptation to faith. Idolatry consists in divinizing what is not God. Man commits idolatry whenever he honors and reveres a creature in place of God, whether this be gods or demons (for example, satanism), power, pleasure, race, ancestors, the state, money, etc. Jesus says, "You cannot serve God and mammon." Many martyrs died for not adoring "the Beast" refusing even to simulate such worship. Idolatry rejects the unique Lordship of God; it is therefore incompatible with communion with God.

2114 Human life finds its unity in the adoration of the one God. The commandment to worship the Lord alone integrates man and saves him from an endless disintegration. Idolatry is a perversion of man's innate religious sense. An idolater is someone who "transfers his indestructible notion of God to anything other than God."

Divination and Magic

2115 God can reveal the future to his prophets or to other saints. Still, a sound Christian attitude consists in putting oneself confidently into the hands of Providence for whatever concerns the future, and giving up all unhealthy curiosity about it. Improvidence, however, can constitute a lack of responsibility.

2116 All forms of divination are to be rejected: recourse to Satan or demons, conjuring up the dead or other practices falsely supposed to "unveil" the future. Consulting horoscopes, astrology, palm reading, interpretation of omens and lots, the phenomena of clairvoyance, and recourse to mediums all conceal a desire for power over time, history, and, in the last analysis, other human beings, as well as a wish to conciliate hidden powers. They contradict the honor, respect, and loving fear that we owe to God alone.

2117 All practices of magic or sorcery, by which one attempts to tame occult powers, so as to place them at one's service and have a supernatural power over others - even if this were for the sake of restoring their health - are gravely contrary to the virtue of religion. These practices are even more to be condemned when accompanied by the intention of harming someone, or when they have recourse to the intervention of demons. Wearing charms is also reprehensible. Spiritism often implies divination or magical practices; the Church for her part warns the faithful against it. Recourse to so-called traditional cures does not justify either the invocation of evil powers or the exploitation of another's credulity.

….

Turn from away from the occult and its temptations.

That energy you feel attracted to isn’t from God it is from Satan himself. My brother or sister, you must not let Satan temp you into the occult. You might think you can handle. You might think you can control it. These are lies that Satan tells you. He is not misleading you “just sometimes”, Satan has you like a fish who does not realize he has a hook in his own mouth! Our exorcists even tell us tarot’s energy is of Satan. Delete those apps on your phone and devices! Stop associating and visiting those people and places! Block any occult blog and tag on here not just tumblr but all this social media and web searches! Throw away all of your occult objects! I wouldn’t not even be the least bit surprised if you are even suffering nightmares from this! Pray the Examination of Conscience and get to Confession as soon as you can. You must come back to God.

Blessed Bartolo Longo, pray for us.

[reflect-on-this-fully]

One Week Ago, I Asked Reddit What Happens When You Don't Remember Krishna at the Time of Death. Today, I Was in a Major Car Accident.

{Photo courtesy of Tomas Anunziata via Pexels}

Just before the New Year, I was on r/Hinduism and asked community members what happens if we don't remember Krishna at the time of death. If you're not familiar, Krishna tells Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita, "At the end of life, whoever departs the body remembering me attains my nature without fail" (8:5).

And if you're one of my beloved pagan friends and very not familiar with Sanatana Dharma, Krishna can be reflected as the Supreme Person or God, and Arjuna, the warrior with whom he is speaking, can be reflected as the soul. Arjuna is distressed at the prospect of going to war and fighting the other side, consisting of many of his family and friends.

They are not just faceless enemies, but rather fathers and sons and people highly respected in their own right. Krishna counsels him in his chariot, and the Bhagavad Gita is their conversation.

The Gita has touched my soul in a depth that I find it difficult to describe. Sometimes, I try to avoid using the metaphor of awakening, because it's become somewhat diluted in modern culture (and even drawn a sort of stigma, at least in the US). Reading the truths in the Gita for the first time didn't reach me as being awoken to a higher truth. Rather, the truth has lived within me the whole time.

It makes up the indestructible, eternal nature of the self, lying in wait until being discovered again and again, in small moments and in big. And reading the Gita felt like a light shining on my soul, illuminating the profound truths that have always lived within me. (I once read someone describing this phenomenon as simply reading the Gita and going, "Oh yeah! That's what I've always believed, I've never seen it written down somewhere before." Perhaps I'm being melodramatic, but how could one not go on about this beloved text?)

Despite the profound wisdom of Krishna's words, the loving friendship between God and the soul described in truths both simple and complex, I hit the fifth verse of the eighth chapter and came to a standstill.

I don't like talking about it much, but I was raised in a very colonization-oriented, "fire and brimstone" religion. In fact, the term "fire and brimstone" in its modern day usage to describe proselytization and preaching practices originates from the very sect I grew up in.

In other words, there was a large focus on the afterlife and eternal damnation in my childhood spiritual education. Fear of God was something actively encouraged. And I mean that, genuinely-- to be described as "God fearing" is a compliment, indicating a high reverence of God.

I have a lot of religious trauma from these experiences, so I won't bother delving into them too much. I know it's exceptionally common, too. I find people with these experiences in many circles: Pagan, Wiccan, Heathen, and more. I think that those of us that wanted to explore an innate connection with God but were met with these traumas instead feel the pain that much more. But it gladdens my heart to see that these brave souls never gave up and found a connection with the divine in spite of the evils done to them.

Obligatory mention that I don't discriminate against any religion or personal beliefs, just sharing my (and others') personal encounters that continue to impact us moving forward.

But the reason why I mention this is that despite devoting myself to Santana Dharma and completely reorienting my perspective on the nature of the soul and the divine, my brain still went into fight or flight mode when it came to the mention of the afterlife and death. And why shouldn't it? After all, if the soul is eternal, of course it will experience distress at the thought or mention of death.

On Reddit, I was curious to see how people interpreted this passage according to their own beliefs and varying traditions. Did people take it literally, or believe that the only way to reach a heavenly realm is to remember God at the time of death? Or did people take it more fluidly, or believe that a lifetime devoted to God or strong sense of importance placed on God would be enough to reach the realm of Krishna.

My mind was caught up in the "car accident" phenomenon. If you were just driving along one day and in one instant, you died, what would happen? What if you were thinking about something else at the time of death, like where you were going or what you had to do that day?

If we could all choose our manner of death, we'd likely choose to be older and go peacefully, having full lucidity or perhaps being asleep. But accidents do happen, and I wondered what I would do if an accident happened to me.

8 days after posting to Reddit, I was driving back home after doing some shopping when a car came out of thin air and T-boned me. One second, I was driving through the quiet intersection, listening to bhajans, just barely dusk. I had a green light and was 3/4 of the way through. The car in the opposite direction was in the left turn lane. He decided to gun it (with no turn signal) and we collided instantly.

My car was near totaled, the engine busted and the hood mangled, but I was completely unscathed (as was the other driver). Before my engine and battery went out, I saw the bhajan that had been playing. It was "Shri Krishna Govinda Hare Murare, Hey Natha Narayana Vasudeva." And in that moment, I felt Krishna and his loving embrace enveloping me.

It struck me: my bond with Krishna is ingrained in my soul. If the soul cannot be touched or destroyed, neither can my friendship be forgotten with the Supreme Person. Everyone is entitled to their beliefs, and as for myself, I firmly believe that Krishna was with me then and would have been with me in the chance I had died and shed this mortal coil. As for my thoughts in the moment, they ranged somewhere between "uh oh" and a number of curse words that I would be quite embarrassed to admit.

My soul remembers his love and he remembers me, and this relieved me of a great anxiety, in which I had worried I wouldn't be good enough or have done enough to earn Krishna's love.

I've done a lot of reflection about this accident and wondered the best way to describe it. "Reflect on this fully" hits home more than ever. It's been a week or so, and posting this on Vaikuntha Ekadashi seemed fitting. I look forward to sharing more thoughts about this pivotal moment in my life in the future.

Wishing you a warm and wonderful Vaikuntha Ekadashi… Pax

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare

[maleexperience-blog]

1

I'm not gay, but I love dick and the masculine spirit. Also, I am not a good writer, but I love to write. I struggle with being "gay." No, I don't hate gay men. No, I don't hate myself. Full stop. Save your projections and presumptions. Just read.

I struggle with the word. I struggle talking to other gay men or associated with the or even having small talk with them. I struggle with diminishing emotional maturity of many gay-identifying men and I struggle with the anti-intellectualism that has become the vapid LGBT 'community.' We live in different worlds. "Gay" anymore means an arrestment of one's masculinity, like it's some evil thing, to be a "man." Shoot, I'm not even sure I know what "being a man" means, but I know I cherish whatever sense of manhood that I have. I want to hone it, too. And not just because of the perks our androphilic society offers manhood either. No, I love what two men can share with one another. It is powerful, if not forbidden. I think our culture has done an excellent job keeping men afraid of each other. It has not, however, done a good job of squelching the innate attraction of men to the masculine spirit. So men, are left with this undefeated, unwielding desire to re-attach to the masculine spirit, while also being told we are to fear it, should we get too close. And the further we separate men from each other, the harder and more haphazardly we seek one another. We as men are starved of touch, and so when we are granted the opportunity--perhaps in female-free spaces or the seclusion of a locked room--we explore each other, quite intensely I might add. And when we exit this free (and yet imprisoned) space, we return to our roles as "men," at least a role that makes females most comfortable. Because if we do not, people can no longer look to us as the "strong ones." Females can no longer place themselves or list their value, outside appropriate proximity to another man. And, so, yes; we must return to our roles.

I'm wholly androphilic. Yes , in a culture that divides its humans into man and woman, that strict binary, and in that culture that further valuates the gender of man much higher than that of the female, I am androphilic. And so are you. We have made masculinity a commodity, to be exchanged, bargained for, accessorized, and coveted. Ever wonder why women in American culture can wear pants but men aren't praised for wearing a dress (unless you're being interviewed on NPR)? A woman "makes it" when she mimics masculine stereotypes, but a man "degrades" himself should he play the opposite role. So, indeed, we are all androphilic. Gay-identifying men are no different. They are walking contradictions, though...no different than their straight-identifying counterparts, they too crave the intimacy of a man and the masculine spirit, and yet are powerless, no, too cowardess to achieve it. You can suck a thousand dicks and never achieve intimacy with a man. You can fuck a thousand butts and smash a thousand more prostates, and never be any closer to becoming the man you think you should be--or perhaps more intimidating, the man you don't believe you could be, outside a hotel suite or dark room. "Gay" becomes a suitable substitute.

Same sex dalliances with men are powerful, but fleeting. And how could they not be fleeting? When there are no other spaces for men to express themselves to each other, without someone questioning their intention with another man? Without their manhood, their precious coveted manhood that they've clawed and fought for up until the current day, being called into question? And without all the respectability that comes with it? You ask us men to pay an expensive price should we admit our same sex dalliances; you force us out of a closet we never thought we were in, and with it somehow we are not allowed to be "men" anymore. How sad, because men need one another to build one another, and yet we've driven them apart. Women have been tasked, unfairly, I'll add, with raising men to "be men." But how can this be? And what codependent trap befalls this arrangement? Men strengthen other men. Men replenish other men. Men satisfy and validate and affirm other men, in ways a woman never could, in sexual and non sexual ways, in emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual ways. And why is this not okay? Why are women so threatened by this? Why must we placate women's sensibilities to have our own identity as men? Why is so much control over manhood given to women? The country is not controlled by men, because men's actions are dictated by their placation of females.

I'm not gay. I'm androphilic. And so are you.

[theprayerfulword]

June 15

Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Isaiah 41:10 Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.

Matthew 6:15 But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

2 Thessalonians 3:3 But the Lord is faithful; He will strengthen you and guard you from the evil one.

James 1:21 Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.

John 3:16-17 For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.

May you not seek to know your fortune, but desire that God reveal your fault, that by turning from it in repentance to God you may fulfill your duty as you receive the whole counsel of God. 1 Kings 14

May you keep an account of God's mercies before you, always offering praise to the King Who cares so abundantly for you, that you may walk in thanksgiving toward the Lord and live in the blessings He bestows on those who acknowledge Him as their Source and obey Him as their Master. 1 Kings 14

May you ever exercise care and practice caution regarding your heart, realizing that simply being present when others seek God, and walking in traditions that once held meaning, will not keep you close to God, yet a single, honest, sincere cry to the Savior will never be drowned out or lost, for the King of kings is always alert to your needs and has prepared a way out when you turn to Him in repentance, desiring to know and obey His will. 1 Kings 14

May you do what is right in the eyes of the Lord, cleansing the temple of your heart and rooting out those things which are contrary to the worship of God, that you may trust Him in times of testing and peril, having learned of Him and drawn close by obedience. 1 Kings 15

My child, I have given you gifts, precious gifts, of great value and rare beauty. They are a part of your life, and, in so many cases, you have grown accustomed to them, thinking nothing of them, treating them as common-place, ordinary, and of no account. You ask yourself, “They have always been here, what benefit can they have?” You use your gifts, your talents, your innate skills for amusement to entertain or in a trade to earn a living, but you do not look to Me in acknowledgment as the Giver and in thanksgiving for receiving your gifts. This is a part of your redemption, My valued one, that the functionality which the potter shapes the vessel to have may be realized as it is placed in the part of the house it was made for and used as it was designed. That which is done through your talents is blessed, for I am the Source of what you have, but so often it is squandered on your lusts and given away to satisfy your appetites, bringing no lasting results or eternal changes. Do you think that those who rise to the top of their field do so on their own, My curious one? No, they have turned that which I gave them to the obedience of their own will and gone their own way. The people of the world recognize it as greater than their own ability, and honor it in their own way, but they are not pointed to Me for it was done in the flesh. Quiet yourself, calm yourself, draw near to Me and receive the peace that comes from submission to My Spirit and cease from your efforts. Learn of Me, and know My voice, that you may follow in humility. A pitcher does not pour itself lest the contents go all over the floor and be wasted, My dear one. Instead, it waits until the host pours to offer refreshment to a guest. Let Me fill you, and let Me pour you out, that others may know the true living water that brings cleansing and comfort to their troubled souls, and joy to your heart.

May you be willing to follow the leading of God outside of the boundaries of tradition so that you may discover pure and undefiled devotion where you would least expect it and be enriched by the unity of the Spirit as the prayers and mediation of Jesus brings the Body of Christ together. Acts 10

May your heart be always toward the Father, attentive and listening, always thankful, that you would not miss what He has to say by His Spirit and His Word, giving no room to doubts or prejudices, but in humility, as a servant, accepting His directions and learning His ways that His kingdom may be established and increased. Acts 10

May you dwell together in unity with God's family in the anointing of the Spirit for that is where the Lord bestows His blessing of life forevermore. Psalm 133

May lying lips and false utterances be as inconsistent and unbecoming to you as refined speech and eloquent words are to a godless fool. Proverbs 17:7