#i could go on for DAYS jesus

[mpathicoracle]

annywayyys thru a long wind of shenans sorta eira moves in with carick thorne and eran (they have 1 home in harper's haven and another at the knee so eran doesn't have to travel far for school), their future bandmate and co-singer, during their last yr of school

raine became eira's mentor when they were 16, crane insisted which eira found absolutely amusing, and both raine and crane insisted "no you can't do this solo, you won't get far blahblah you should make a band, how about carick's boy, he's learning to be a bard too" fdsjkg even tho eran was going to st. epiderm's over down at the Knee. it turned out rly well tho. thru eran eira met dartak, who was eran's closest friend at epiderm's.

eira met belak when they were both about 14, so right after their 9th year started, when eira switched from the construction track to the bard track. belak saw them sitting alone at lunch refusing to talk to anyone, still being hella depresso somewhat and stubborn as shit. so, naturally, belak sat with them. was fine with not talking for a while, just as long as this weirdo had someone to sit with. belak's pretty quiet himself, so it was chill. he also noticed that eira never rly brought a whole lot for lunch so he ended up bringing extra food. they became friends pretty damn quick asgfskjghg

also funfact belak l o v e s to cook and bake as a pasttime. both of his parents cook and bake as well, its a family thing. when eira was invited to his 15th birthday (was legit the only one invited, belak didnt really have friends either), his parents refused to let him even enter the kitchen. it was the first time in a while that eira was actually really happy, she thought it was absolutely hilarious that her only friend couldnt do what he wanted (it was chill with him), esp cuz he was pouting the entire time bc nooo he wanted to see what they were making, etc etc. it was good to get eira out, belak's parents welcomed them really quick, would always ask their son how eira was doing

dartak has a type of synesthesia-magic sorta bard talent! to him, everyone has their own little melody whenever he talks to them, he can hear it pretty much always. if someone is, like, in a shitty mood or whatever the sound of it kinda changes. when he met eira for the first time, their personal melody was actually in the process of changing (since they were still transitioning from being eralynne harbane to eira bane), he was super shocked by it because he hadn't heard that happen to someone so "late" in their life, usually it happened when people were younger, at least in his experience.

eira is a HUGE history nerd. the band got away with so many of their songs because eira knew exactly how to link certain songs (like crownless king) to long-dead emperors and kings and other rulers they read about. you could quiz eira about any sorta ancient history and eira would ramble for hours. they and lilith clawthorne would def get along on that end dsjgdjkghdhjl

on a slightly sadder note, eira does suffer from chronic depression and has indeed had suicidal ideations in their teen years, they have a semicolon tattoo along with a blue ribbon tattoo on their left wrist for that reason. when they were teens, eira made an agreement with the Boys that if they couldn't get out of bed on their days off school and work (corva usually handled those situations), that the boys were more than welcome to physically drag them out of bed. literally. it happened a couple times. dartak insists on just picking them up, but eran and belak would literally yank the blankets off, grab them by the wrists or ankles, and pull eira out of bed. theyve gotten better in their adult years (by W.A.D., pre-credit scene, they're 29 at that point), doesn't really have suicidal thoughts anymore, but every now and then they have their "Bad Days".

related, dartak has severe insomnia and occasionally experiences manic episodes because of it. eran already knew about it, but when he had met eira and belak he was incredibly nervous to tell them about it. but when eira brought up their very obvious depression and that "yeah, ok, i struggle with this every now and then so if you're going to stick around and be friends and my future bandmates, you need to be aware of this" dartak actually found a lot of comfort in that and admitted his insomnia to the two of them. dartak and eira bonded really quick because of it, and both keep each other in check when they see the other is struggling. on a bonus, dartak likes to joke, it makes his poetry incredibly interesting.

which also, yea, dartak loves writing poetry. hes incredibly sheepish about it, always tries to shrug it all off all "yeah it's not that great, i guess" but the other three CONSTANTLY hype him up. he's written a good portion of their songs, esp in their albums: "Ghosts and Premonitions," "What You Left Behind," and "Thunderheart". his best, in eira's opinion are "Land of the Lost," "Relapse," "Ground Zero," and "Manic." (all credits go to the original artists ofc)

iiiii should prolly just have put this in their own posts by character BUT oh well heres this so far

[whilomm]

oh okay heres one:

"sleepaway camp"= you go there for at least a few days, a week, sometimes several weeks, and sleep there, as opposed to a """camp""" where you go for the day and your parents or whoever picks you up afterward (those arent really camps, but like. idk when i went to "space camp" it was a weeklong but not sleepaway). in the U.S. at least, the typical image of a sleepaway camp involves staying in cabins, dunno how common it is/what it looks like in other countries.

for the first few i just mean like. not necessarily a stealth church camp, just like. idk, a camp where theres also an Assumption Of Christianity and just general vibes without being actually church camp. So, there might not be daily services and jesusy dedicatwd activities, but maybe theres still a prayer said over meals and shit. Which i assume might exist...

(oh and @reblogforsamplesize if u wanna)

[ruporas]

post ep 11

[agapeeternal]

Glen Powell at the Premiere of Netflix's “Hit Man”

[deprivedmusicaljunkie]

“if i was a riptide, i wouldn’t take you out” is fucking brutal. you don’t need me to sit here and explain why that line would hit like a sucker punch to the gut… anything but is a vicious song. rip to the recipient 👆

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Imagine if Jin Zixuan DID yeet his brother from another mother (🥲) down the stairs.

Meng Yao: I'm your brother. Happy birthday! 🥰

Jin Zixuan: There can only be one. YEET

I am truly sad he didn't; think of the 'No Doubles' memes that we could have had...

[yea-baiyi]

YALL. everyone go watch story of kunning palace i swear it’s worth it im still riding an insane high after i finished it last night.

it’s a very good solid drama for 30 episodes kinda slow burn but well written with good characters and decent plots.

and then in the last 8 episodes, the guy’s sidekick tells him “maybe you should show her how you really feel. show her the real you” and he proceeds to go batshit feral insane. which after watching her pine after and then reject the most morally upright guy ever it fucking WORKS ON HER because she is ALSO insane!!

after that it’s just 8 episodes of him being sloppy desperate for her and begging her to give him an answer while she’s just there buffering because she has to readjust her whole worldview with this news that he’s liked her all along?? she went out to meet her former crush and when she got home he sat her down and made her eat a dinner he made. that was drowning in vinegar. because if he had to drink vinegar then SO SHOULD SHE. and after she doesn’t eat much at dinner he plops down a tray of her favourite cake. that he had given her before earlier in the drama. announces that he made it with his own hands. and she’s like :0 “you made it for me even back then?? but back then we were only….” and he’s immediately like “only? only what? what were we back then? what about now? is it different now? what are we?” and she’s just like .

[skunkes]

ok ok i have another way to word my thots about the movies thus far:

i think Art is pretty iconic design wise. Im not against gory slashers I think we should have more of those and I like that a series so "shocking" is doing so well...its more like.

The franchise establishes pretty immediately that it's not Serious...as mentioned the first movie has a naked woman sawed in half from crotch down so idk how you'd even make it to the 3rd one without knowing How It Is. But with how the first one barely has any plot, and the second one has A Bit More but drags on and on...its like... SO FAR (because I haven't seen the 3rd one) these movies aren't Fun to watch ykwim.

I know Saw isn't a good comparison bc its a different genre within horror but the franchise really is like a telenovela... its so stupid (good) and it has lots to complain about and pick at in the FUN way, like poking fun at peepaw and his warehouses and home depot purchases, going "are you kidding me thats so dumb" at that scene where hoffman manages to be snuck into the station in a body bag to start killing people. Varuous moments of stupid ass dialogue writing. Im not saying it cant be boring or unliked but i think it has a good balance of everything (eyerolling moments, plot, "lighthearted" and humorous moments, intentional or not) even if its not a masterpiece in the writing department.

And that's just within the series, I usually avoid bringing up fandom bc that's obviously a different beast I rarely even touch but its more about how its fandom actually has that foundation to go off of. Like you know enough about peepaw's backstory and such to springboard off of, regardless of it being good or not

Here it's like man there's a hot cool clown, lots of gore, really corny and cornily acted out writing, and its not even FUN? 😭 2 movies (again I haven't made it to the 3rd) and I wouldn't watch them again, not because of the gore but because despite not being serious, reinforced by that very drawn out over the top kill in the second one, it's not even fun... you cant even attach to the silly dialogue because the whole rest of the movie is a drag. Does this make sense? It's like. Everything combined to make it Not Fun. Whereas at least with Saw you can start joking about how someone just wasn't trying hard enough to win peepaw's foundationally silly ass "you tried to kill yourself now you're in the try not to kill yourself" trap.

It's at odds with itself. I've seen like one Halloween movie and can barely even remember it but I know all the jokes about outrunning Michael Myers (and that cat and mouse is also Fun)...theres also like 50 of those movies I KNOW theyre probably also fun to watch and complain about the absurdity... I think the issue here might also be the straightforwardness and point A point B of it all. There's not really much anyone can do against Art, which is fine, some saw traps are literally unwinnable after all. But Terrifier doesn't even give you the chance to, like, boast about how you definitely could have survived the Silence Circle trap because you're not an idiot... it's just not Fun. To me.

I think Art himself is fun and the corny dialogue are fun. I'll even go ahead and say the gore is fun because again like come on the clown literally rips a guys cock off its Absurd... but they seem to be trapped in movie(s) that so far aren't fun

[blahajsupremacy]

how much money for hakita to make the p-3 prison a mobius strip

[dawnthefluffyduck]

New game interest unlocked

(crow in bottom right belongs to @patchwork-crow-writes)

[necrotic-nephilim]

Hey there, are you ok?

hey! thank you for checking up on me, this was really sweet!

i SWEAR i did not die. i just got a bit busy doing SladeRobin Week (which i will finish so help me god-) as well as things in my real life. i'm still trying to find the balance of like. fandom creation and working. i am very lucky to have the living situation that i do rn, but it is the sort of schedule where i do have to be ready to watch a baby at really any given point so. it's a tricky balance right now, but i'm going to be active here again! maybe not as many asks answered a day as before, but i want to try to answer like, a few a day and whatnot.

i also think i got briefly overwhelmed, in that i got more asks faster than i answered them. which is the opposite of a problem and something i'm very lucky for! but it did make it difficult for me to keep up and know what to answer next. (this is *not* a discouragement to sending asks! i love them all and pls send as many as you want! i just am a little slow sometimes so i appreciate the patience! <3)

so! i'm back and i'm good, ty for asking! we are back to the regularly scheduled programming <3

[alasse-earfalas]

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is not a cult.

@christian-zelda, @screwtornadowarningsimsouthern

Someone sent me a link not too long ago to this article that supposedly lists all the ways in which the restored church of Jesus Christ is a cult. Having grown up in the church myself, I took a look at that article and essentially went,

"What the heck? We don't do that. We don't do any of that. Who the heck is saying we do this crap‽"

So, without further ado, let’s go over that BITE model and tick off all the lies, shall we?

I don’t even know what “regulating someone’s physical reality” means, so I’m going to skip this one.

No one’s ever told me who I can live with or associate with, and no one’s ever encouraged me to isolate. The closest it ever got to this was, “Hey, make sure you have good friends who respect your values.” And we’re encouraged to go out and be active in our communities, so there’s no “isolating” going on.

My sex life is between me and my husband. And no one told me to marry him, I was free to marry whoever I wanted. Abstinence until marriage wasn’t just encouraged at church, it was encouraged at my public high school, too (and, no, I didn’t grow up in Utah or somewhere with a high LDS population) because it’s just a good idea in general. That’s not “controlling”, that’s just teaching good values.

Guidelines are given, sure, but no one forces you to wear anything. School uniforms are more “controlling” in this sense than the church is.

Except for addictive substances such as alcohol and tobacco, members are free to eat and drink whatever they want. We teach that our bodies are gifts from God and are to be taken care of. As for fasting, that's typically done once a month, it's completely voluntary (nobody ever asks if you've been fasting or not), and if you can't fast from food for health reasons, you're completely free to fast from something else (a friend of mine will fast from certain types of media for a week, for example). Fasting is entirely between you and the Lord.

You mean the voluntary donations that are entirely on the honor system known as tithing? No one looks in our bank accounts to see whether or not we’ve paid tithing, heck bishops don’t even look at our donation history anymore. We just say whether or not we’ve paid a full tithe once a year and that’s it. It’s entirely on the honor system. Not even the other members know how much we have or haven’t donated.

Again, guidelines are given, but no one has ever restricted me in these areas. What is and isn’t “appropriate leisure or entertainment” varies wildly from person to person; my fellow LDSs and I all have different ideas on this.

Major time spent? You mean, once a week at church? Where we’re actively involved in a discussion for half the time we’re there, and the other half is the members teaching each other from the pulpit based on what they’ve learned from their own personal study? Where we’re encouraged to ask honest questions of the Lord in our own study? Uh-huh.

I never needed permission from anyone when making any decisions, be they “major” or not.

No they’re not. This just straight-up isn’t true. I don’t know where they even got this. Confession? That’s voluntary, and only applies to very serious sins. And even then, the bishop’s job is to help you on your journey back to the Savior. It’s a cry for help, not a punishment.

?????? The heck??? I don’t know where they got this either! No one’s “rewarded” or ”punished” me for anything in the church!

I was always taught to test out the truth of what was being taught for myself, to develop my own personal testimony rather than relying solely on the testimonies of others.

Guidelines. They’re called, guidelines. Nothing is enforced or imposed.

Dependency on and obedience to the Savior, sure. But not to anyone in the church.

What “information” are they referring to here? I’ve been a member of the church my whole life, I’ve gone through the temple, and I have yet to encounter any “hidden” or “distorted” or “withheld” information. Any attempt to “reveal the secret Mormon teachings” that I’ve seen has been either disingenuously taken out of context or is outright heresy, and not what we believe at all.

Sources outside of the church are discouraged because there are so many blatant lies (like this entire list) and misunderstandings out there. A lot of these “ex-mormon” and “anti-mormon” places are designed to create a faith crisis and then profit off of “helping” the person through the faith crisis. This letter explains their tactics, and why we’re cautioned to avoid them, far better than I could.

No one in the church controls what information I have access to. If I want to go look up anti-mormon stuff, I’m free to do that with no repercussions from anyone. I don’t know what the heck they’re on about the phone tracking nonsense, that just plain doesn’t happen.

Again, what the heck??? This doesn’t happen. None of this happens. Where are they getting this???? We have entire websites that are full of articles and documents and scriptures and sermons and everything! All of it, all of our doctrines and policies and history and everything is free for anyone, in or outside of the church, to comb through. It’s not “hidden” from anyone.

None. Of. This. Happens. This is a blatant lie.

Idk about the misquoting thing, but we do have lots of freely available church media for anyone to take a gander at.

As I mentioned before, confession is meant to be a cry for help, not a punishment. Any bishop or other church leader who treats it like a punishment is a bad bishop. I know these bad bishops exist (I've seen one mishandle a situation so poorly that it lead to the suicide of a family member), but by and large, the bishops I’ve dealt with have at least tried to be compassionate and understanding. The best ones always focus on, “How can you improve your relationship with the Savior?” And that is how it’s supposed to be.

The key word here is “require”. That implies some kind of punishment or consequence for not doing the thing required, and that is not the case. As I mentioned before, we are encouraged to gain our own testimony of the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but there’s no punishment if we’re still questioning or unsure, or heck even against!

Also, there’s no “us vs them” mentality taught in our doctrine. We preach that all human beings are brothers and sisters in spirit and invite all to come unto Christ.

I. Wha. Huh???? Where are they getting this?? This doesn’t happen, at all! The church doesn’t change your name or your identity. Another lie.

[points to the volumes of incredibly diverse and verbose conference talks over the decades] Uh. Huh.

I’m not sure what they mean by “good and proper”. As far as “encouraging only” certain types of thoughts, good ol’ CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) is more demanding in that regard than what we preach. I will also note that mental health awareness has increased a great deal in the church over the past decade or so.

Well praying is how we commune with God, and singing a hymn can be like a prayer, but we don’t teach people to do these things in order to “shut down reality testing”. If I can get a little bit personal here, I’ve used prayers to test God before, and He came through for me. So if anything, prayer absolutely can be used as a way to test the reality and truth of the gospel, not to shut down such questions.

[laughs in how backwards this is] Uh-huh, from the people who constantly lie about us rather than engaging with us in fair conversation.

[sighs] It really depends on the circle. I’ve watched members online get really divided over this and it irritates me every time. Our leaders are not infallible and the scriptures constantly invite us to “ask, seek, knock”. Honest questions from a sincere desire to know and follow the truth are good.

We believe that truth can be found in many places, and there are many instances of our church working with other faiths to accomplish good things.

The heck is a “map of reality”? I’m skipping this one.

I want to make a note here of how completely and utterly done I am with these lies by now. So far, almost none of these claims have been even remotely true. I’ve even stepped away from working on this post for about a week, and I just opened it again and immediately felt drained.

Imagine if someone started spreading lies about your friends or family (assuming you have a good relationship with them) secretly being cannibals, or drug lords, or human traffickers. And watching as people believe those lies and plead with you to get out of that “awful situation”, and then refuse to believe you when you try to tell them that what they’ve heard are lies. That’s what this feels like.

Anyway, let’s see if I can’t finish going through this list.

None that Jesus Himself didn’t caution against. We’re taught to be mindful of our thoughts and emotions because of what they can become, not because they’re “sinful” in and of themselves. Again, similar concepts are taught in good ol’ therapeutic CBT.

I’ve certainly never been taught any.

I’ve seen this attitude in shades, and it’s really frustrating ‘cause it’s not founded in scripture. I recently had a really good vent session with a fellow LDS friend about this. Sadly, members of our faith will often try to “help” by trying to figure out what you’re doing wrong. (I don’t think this is a uniquely LDS thing, to be clear; I think it’s a human nature thing.) The reality is, no one can fully understand or comprehend the full wisdom of God. Job didn’t know why such terrible things were happening to him, and Abraham didn’t know why God would ask him to do something so barbaric and pagan as sacrificing his own son. We don’t know why God seems to answer the prayers of some and not others. But a lot of people forget that and end up making things worse when they’re trying to help.

I’ve heard of certain congregations having attitudes like this, and even a bishop (same bad one I mentioned earlier), but by and large this is not the attitude I’ve seen from members or leaders. Even when discussing serious sins, the response I most often see is one of compassion, encouragement, and hope.

There was an entire General Conference talk about this recently (April 2024). Of note:

“The intent of the Father’s great plan of happiness is your happiness, right here, right now, and in the eternities. It is not to prevent your happiness and cause you instead worry and fear. The intent of the Father’s plan of redemption is in fact your redemption, your being rescued through the sufferings and death of Jesus Christ, freed from the captivity of sin and death. It is not to leave you as you are.” - Elder Patrick Kearon, of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles

I have seen neither of these extremes from the church. (I have, however, seen both from my abusive mother, so I know what this looks like and what it doesn’t look like.) Congregations can vary wildly on how friendly and helpful they are to each other, but the nicest ones typically stay nice, genuinely kind and charitable, none of this “declaring you a horrible sinner” nonsense.

Confession has already been addressed. It is neither ritualistic, nor public. You sit down with your bishop in his office and have a private chat about drawing closer to Christ. That’s it.

We beckon people to “come and see”, and to stay, but there’s no “you’re going to hell if you leave!!” or anything of the sort. We’re taught to love everyone as the Savior commanded, whether they’re members of our church or not.

Aaaand we’re ending with another blatant lie.

So there you have it, the knee-jerk reaction of a lifelong member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to the false and slanderous claims about the church somehow being a cult.

If you want something that’s more in-depth and thoughtful (sorry I couldn’t provide that here; I tried to initially, but my brain revolted, so I did this instead), please check out the Light and Truth Letter. It goes over a vast range of topics from someone who grew up in the church, left for about a decade, and eventually found his way back. It’s a beautiful and insightful read.

[nero-neptune]

front/back of a bookmark i made for my program's bookmark design competition

[phagodyke]

the masculine urge to take a saucepan off thr draining board and bash myself repeatedly over the head with it until I pass out and no longer have to experience feeling Bad 😍

[ghostzzy]

random kind strangers at the vet covered $400 of chinchilla healthcare today. 🙏😭

[lieut-dundy-le-vesconte]

IM COLD. IM TIRED. IM FUCKING COLD