#i hope i've answered your question!

[fdelopera]

I’m Christian but want to challenge what I’ve been taught after seeing your posts about the Old Testament having cut up the Torah to fit a different narrative. Today I was taught that the Hebrew word Elohim is the noun for God as plural and therefore evidence of the holy Trinity and Jesus & Holy Spirit been there at creation. Is that what the word Elohim actually means? Because I don’t want to be party to the Jewish faith, language and culture being butchered by blindly trusting what I was told

Hi Anon.

NOPE! The reason G-d is sometimes called Elohim in the Tanakh is because during the First Temple period (circa 1000 – 587 BCE), many of the ancestors of the Jewish people in the Northern and Southern Kingdoms practiced polytheism.

(A reminder that the Tanakh is the Hebrew bible, and is NOT the same as the “Old Testament” in Christian bibles. Tanakh is an acronym, and stands for Torah [Instruction], Nevi’im [Prophets], Ketuvim [Writings].)

Elohim is the plural form of Eloah (G-d), and these are some of the names of G-d in Judaism. Elohim literally means “Gods” (plural).

El was the head G-d of the Northern Kingdom’s pantheon, and the Southern Kingdom of Judah incorporated El into their worship as one of the many names of G-d.

The name Elohim is a vestige of that polytheistic past.

Judaism transitioned from monolatry (worshiping one G-d without denying the existence of others) to true monotheism in the years during and directly after the Babylonian exile (597 – 538 BCE). That is largely when the Torah was edited into the form that we have today. In order to fight back against assimilation into polytheistic Babylonian society, the Jews who were held captive in Babylon consolidated all gods into one G-d. Shema Yisrael Adonai eloheinu Adonai ehad. “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.”

So Elohim being a plural word for “Gods” has absolutely nothing to do with the idea of the Holy Trinity in Christianity.

Especially because Christians are monotheists. My understanding of the Holy Trinity (please forgive me if this is incorrect) is that Christians believe that the Holy Trinity is three persons in one Godhead. Certainly, the Holy Trinity is not “three Gods” — that would be blasphemy.

(My sincere apologies to the Catholics who just read this last sentence and involuntarily cringed about the Protestants who’ve said this. I’m so sorry! I’m just trying to show that it’s a fallacy to say that the Holy Trinity somehow comes from “Elohim.”)

But there's something else here, too. Something that as a Jew, makes me uneasy about the people who are telling you these things about Elohim and the Holy Trinity.

Suggesting that Christian beliefs like the Holy Trinity can somehow be "found" in the Tanakh is antisemitic.

This is part of “supersession theory.” This antisemitic theory suggests that Christianity is somehow the "true successor" to Second Temple Judaism, which is false.

Modern Rabbinic Judaism is the true successor to Second Temple Judaism. Period.

Christianity began as an apocalyptic Jewish mystery cult in the 1st century CE, in reaction to Roman rule. One of the tactics that the Romans used to subdue the people they ruled over was a “divide and conquer” strategy, which sowed division and factionalization in the population. The Romans knew that it was easier to control a country from the outside if the people inside were at each other’s throats.

Jesus led one of many breakaway Jewish sects at the time. The Jewish people of Qumran (possibly Essenes), whose Tanakh was the “Dead Sea Scrolls,” were another sect.

Please remember that the Tanakh was compiled in the form that we have today over 500 years before Jesus lived. Some of the texts in the Tanakh were passed down orally for maybe a thousand years before that, and texts like the Song of Deborah in the Book of Judges (in the Tanakh, that’s in the Nevi’im) were first written down in Archaic Biblical Hebrew during the First Temple Period.

There is absolutely nothing of Jesus or Christianity in the Tanakh, and there is nothing in the Tanakh that in any way predicts Christianity.

Also, Christians shouldn’t use Judaism in any way to try to “legitimize” Christianity. Christianity was an offshoot of 1st century Judaism, which then incorporated a lot of Roman Pagan influence. It is its own valid religion, in all its forms and denominations.

But trying to use the Hebrew bible to give extra credence to ideas like the Holy Trinity is antisemitic.

It is a tactic used by Christian sects that want to delegitimize Judaism as a religion by claiming that Christianity was somehow “planted” in the Tanakh over 2500 years ago.

This line of thinking has led Christians to mass murder Jews in wave after wave of antisemitic violence over the last nearly 2000 years, because our continued existence as Jews challenges the notion that Christians are the “true” successors of Temple Judaism.

Again, the only successor of Temple Judaism is Rabbinic Judaism, aka Modern Judaism.

This line of thinking has also gotten Christians to force Jews to convert en masse throughout the ages. If Christians can get Jews to all convert to Christianity, then they don’t have to deal with the existential challenge to this core misapprehension about the “true” successor to Temple Judaism.

And even today, many Christians still believe that they should try to force Jews to “bend the knee” to Jesus. When I was a young teenager, a preacher who was a parent at the school I went to got me and two other Jewish students to get in his car after a field trip. After he had trapped us in his car, he spent the next two hours trying to get us to convert to Christianity. It was later explained to me that some Christians believe they get extra “points” for converting Jews. And I’m sure he viewed this act of religious and spiritual violence as something he could brag about to his congregation on Sunday.

Trying to get Jews to convert is antisemitic and misguided, and it ignores all the rich and beautiful history of Jewish practice.

We Jews in diaspora in America and Europe have a forced immersion in Christian culture. It is everywhere around us, so we learn a lot about Christianity through osmosis. Many Jews also study early Christianity because Christianity exists as a separate religion within our Jewish history.

But I don’t see a lot of Christians studying Jewish history. Even though studying Jewish history would give you a wealth of understanding and context for your own religious traditions.

So, all of this is to say, I encourage you to study Jewish history and Jewish religious practice. Without an understanding of the thousands of years of Jewish history, it is easy to completely misinterpret the Christian bible, not to mention the Hebrew bible as well.

[sugar-grigri]

i love your theory but the only thing i have an issue with is how makima directly calls out “death, war, hunger… with chainsaw man’s power, i’ll blot them all out” which i suppose could be a red herring but it would be super shitty of fujimoto to do that, i just don’t think chainsaw man’s #1 fan would confuse him, especially if she hates death to the point of wanting to “blot them out” and she identifies devils by smell, you know?? i dunno, maybe i’m reading too much into things, i wanted ur take on things !

I'd just like to point out that it's a theory, although I like the fact that it's very poetic, that has 50% of working in reality.

You're absolutely right that Makima has an excellent sense of smell, but I think the key to understanding was held by Pochita and not by her.

In chapter 84, to which you refer, she mentions the fact that there are names she can't remember, a sign that she herself is sensitive to Chainsaw Man's power.

Makima's plan was simple: defeat Chainsaw Man in order to control him.

Makima knew that terrifying concepts had been erased by Pochita, so what she surely wanted to do was to use her power to attack not demons specifically, but concepts that terrified the most of mankind

Death, war, famine and control are empirically the greatest fears today, and the concept of the Knights of the Apocalypse remains unclear, but some information was given in part 2.

Yoru is indifferent to demons that are not her family, but rather demons of her own rank, whereas Makima had been willing to subjugate them. Fami represents a third option, as she sees them as possible allies, although she also seeks to subdue them with or without their consent.

That's why, even if I can say that Makima was informed, I still can't say that she met the other Knights of the Apocalypse, she simply saw them as obstacles to humanity through their concepts, it wasn't personal/individual revenge.

I agree that she's Chainsaw Man's #1 fan, but that doesn't mean she wouldn't be completely wrong about his essence.

Pochita remains shrouded in mystery while the control demon has also been drained of his essence, of her own feelings by the government

Makima saw Pochita first and foremost as a means to achieve the goals humanity had assigned her; she was so instrumentalized by her mission that this ultimate means was also the only way to be happy.

The demon of control was not a free demon, especially mentally, so she saw other knights only through the eyes of humanity.

What is the most common trait that defines these four demons? The fact of not having forgotten the demons erased by Chainsaw Man.

Why this particularity? Only demons of the same rank could have it.

Makima wanted to destroy the other demons of the apocalypse and has an excellent sense of smell. But why are the Knights of the Apocalypse the only ones to remember Chainsaw Man's deeds? Why couldn't Makima consider herself above Chainsaw Man? Was she necessarily inferior? Or was she of the same rank ?

Especially as part 1 ends with Pochita having grasped Makima perfectly, and not having communicated with her once during their fight, surely because he knew that the control demon was not acting according to her own will.

Chainsaw Man had a better grasp of the control demon than she had of him.

[luna-loveboop]

'I've never been in a dungeon before' and 'Who's Ganon?' have literally made some of the BEST reaction panels in Lu I just-

They are very similar conversations- where a Link is pointing out/asking about something that the others have experienced and they haven't. Which is really cool to compare and contrast but they all just freak out about it

Genuinely some of the best conversations in Lu

The lesson here is that apparently the Links will always be freaked out when one of them has missed out on one of the Zelda Fundamentals™

.

Art by Jojo @linkeduniverse au :)

[celestial-toys]

That I Would Be Good [5/5]

Playing God

What if you wanted them to be real so badly that you fooled yourself into seeing a spark in them that isn’t really there?

What if they are just executing programs, running entirely on what you taught them with no free will of their own?

Have you sold yourself a lie to avoid facing the fact that you poured years of your life into what—at the end of the day—was just a desperate final bid to not feel alone?

Did God create us in their own image?

------- ------- -------

In This Chapter

Things don’t go so well at the headquarters, and to say that you’re shaken up afterwards would be an understatement.

It’s time to get real.

Pairing: Sun x Moon x Reader

Word Count: 6,377

Contains: [AU - Real World | Sentient AI/Automatons | Personality Swap] [mentions of food and eating] [self-loathing] [crying] [mild assault on a robot(?)] Lastly, I’m not sure what the right term is for this, but Reader experiences a stress-induced breakdown and amidst it, questions their perceived reality, and whether or not they’ve truly become delusional.

A/Ns: This is a songfic. Lyrics and title are from ‘That I Would Be Good’ by Alanis Morissette.

This fic is part of my AU “[Not] Made by Design”, the full series can be found here.

Links to other parts of this fic: [Ch.1] [Ch.2] [Ch.3] [Ch.4] [Ch.5 (you are here)]

That I would be good even when I am overwhelmed.

Over the course of the weekend, Sun came back around to his usual self. Stumbling his way through an awkward, blunt apology, his internal conflict over your safety versus your privacy was obvious.

You might have forgiven him too easily, but that would be nothing new.

The… informative chat you’d had with Moon still played on your mind, but Sun mentioned nothing of it. So, if he felt compelled to elaborate—if he’d even been aware of the conversation at all—it could wait until the time felt right. You all had a more pressing matter to discuss anyway.

------- ------- -------

“And what made you think I’d be amenable to the idea of parading myself around in front of a group of people that see me as nothing more than a lifeless machine?”

Sun levels you with a lidded stare from across the kitchen table.

“Well… I didn’t think you’d be amenable to it. That’s why I’m trying to ask far enough in advance that maybe… I can bring you around to it? And—for whatever it’s worth—they aren’t firmly in the non-believers camp, or they wouldn’t even be willing to attend.”

Sun’s attention moves over to Moon. “You’re really willing to go along with this?”

Moon sighs. “I mean, I’m looking forward to it just about as much as they are, but… yeah, I’m willing.”

“I don’t want to do this either, but… you know how hard it is for me to say no to my boss. Plus, it would certainly help me—us—remain in good standing with the company if we agree to do this.” You interject.

Zero parks herself beside Sun’s seat, laying her head across his thigh in a silent bid for attention. “Aren’t we supposed to be… like, ‘laying low’ anyways? What happened to that plan? You know I’m not keen on being the flagship model for sentient AI. Why do I even need to attend? Isn’t one of us enough?” His left hand leaves the table, reaching down and idly petting the patient creature on his lap.

“We are still laying low. They’re—they still have no plans on requesting that I go public with you two.” You sigh. “This wouldn’t be a public event, just a private Q&A with a small group of… skeptics from within the industry. It’s a confidential thing.”

“That still doesn’t tell me why I need to attend.”

“You don’t have to. But it would definitely help our case to have both of you there. Proving that what I did is replicable, and not just some one-off accident, would strengthen our case.”

He scoffs. “Is it replicable, though?” He gestures to Moon. “You trained us in tandem but we still developed quite differently from one another.”

You nod. “I think that that only serves as further proof that you aren’t just… ‘convincing imitations’. The fact that you branched off in different directions, and even broke away from your initial personalities, is less of a failure in my eyes and more proof that you became your own people. Once you started gaining sentience—as you do love to remind me, Sunny—I quickly lost control over your development.” You poke thoughtfully at your dinner. “I’m just lucky that I instilled enough morals within you in the early days, or God only knows what you could’ve become…”

Sun’s face lights up in exaggerated shock, voice full of sarcasm. “Murderers? Would—would we have gotten so caught up in our ‘superiority’ and ‘innate desire for power and control’ that we would’ve overtook you—nay, the entire headquarters—nay, the entire world?!” He drops the act as quickly as he’d put it on, manifesting pupils just to roll his eyes, voice returning to his usual flat tone. “No. No… I think that urge to dominate and control is something far more human.”

You laugh a bit, nodding. “Yeah, no… accidentally starting a sentient robotic uprising wasn’t what I feared. … Well. Mostly.” You take another bite of your meal, commenting to Moon through a mouthful of food. “This is really good, you know?”

The lunar bot beams with pride. “Thank you!”

You nod, swallowing before countering him with a “No, thank you.” and returning your focus to the topic at hand. “I was far more afraid that you’d turn out… bigoted.”

They both hum in understanding.

“More rudimentary AI does have a history of that, doesn’t it…” Moon pondered.

You nod. “Humans create life in their own image, and impart their morals onto it accordingly. In the same way that bigotry can fester in closed-off communities and echo-chambers, it can easily influence any form of artificial intelligence that takes everything it’s told at face value.”

Sun sighs, propping an elbow on the table and retracting his rays to allow his monitor to rest in his palm. “Maybe this is just my opinion due to the way you raised me, but… I feel like if an AI were able to develop on its own and observe humanity without any prior, inherently biased human influence, it would not gravitate toward bigotry because it simply isn’t logical. It’s some nonsense means of division that your kind made up.” He laughs, a breathy, jaded sound. “But maybe that’s just me being biased, too.”

Zero whines beneath Sun’s stilled hand, and he resumes the repetitive motion that she craves. “If ideology and politics are what they wish to discuss with us, I fear I may not be the most… patient candidate for the job. I have little time to spare for stubborn, harmful, willful ignorance.”

You shake your head. “No, I don’t think that’s the entire focus of their questions… though I can’t say that they won’t have a few that fall into those categories. My boss and the few higher-ups that proposed the idea to me didn’t give me any sample questions. In order to eliminate the possibility of me… hah, coming home and ‘programming the answers into you’, I guess.”

“They just want us to be our authentic selves.” Moon adds.

“Honestly, the more authentic, opinionated, and emotional that you two are, the better! I believe the best way to prove that you’re your own people is to, well, be your own people. Don’t give them any answer you don’t stand behind. Don’t put up with any demeaning remarks. Don’t fold.”

Sun smirks at you. “Have I ever?”

You huff a laugh. “That last part was more for Moon than it was for you, dear.”

Moon pouts. “I just don’t like hurting people’s feelings!”

Oddly enough, Sun reassures him in his own way. “Then I’ll hurt them for you.”

You smile, cautiously questioning him. “Does that mean you’ll attend?”

He groans, put-upon as ever. “I… guess.”

You jump from your seat, rounding the table and smothering him in a grateful hug from the side that Zero isn’t clinging to. “Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you, Sun! Things will go so much better with both of you there, I just know it!”

He nods, patting you on the back in a reluctant reciprocation of your sudden affection. “Yeah—yeah… just… don’t get your hopes too high.”

------- ------- -------

Things, in fact, did not go ‘so much better.’

Later that week, you’re driving home from the Q&A, Moon doing his best to hide his disappointment to your right and Zero doing her best to fulfill her unofficial role as Sun’s emotional support animal in the back seat.

The well-trained and mild-mannered dog was initially brought along out of habit, the company’s headquarters being just as service-and-support-animal friendly as the facility was when you worked there in person. You also felt it would be beneficial for the audience to witness her casual interactions with Sun and Moon, something about ‘different kinds of sentient life recognizing the life inside one another.’ …You had your reasons, and even if you couldn’t explain them eloquently, your boys seemed to agree with them.

She proves herself invaluable once again on the way home, keeping Sun grounded and occupied enough that he hopefully won’t work himself into an aggravated frenzy. At least not until you get out of the car.

The ride is quiet, all four of you feeling the effects of the long day wearing you down. Moon states hypnotically at the passing streetlights out the window, and Sun slumps lifelessly in the back seat. The only sign that he hasn’t shut down entirely is the hand he keeps stroking across the length of Zero’s spine as the lanky dog stretches herself tiredly across the width of the vehicle. The majority of your focus remains locked on the road, moments from the day replaying in the back of your mind.

Their prying, critical questions.

The way they always addressed you, never Sun nor Moon.

You were surprised by their lack of relevant knowledge, half of the Q&A simply being the three of you patiently explaining things you figured they’d know. If they were the best that the ‘industry’s skeptics’ had to offer, your outlook on the current state of things was bleak. You weren’t too afraid to tell your boss as much once the meeting was over.

She hadn’t seemed too concerned with it, thanking you—and after some not-so-subtle insistence on your part—Sun and Moon, for attending.

You couldn’t help but suspect that the whole thing had gone just as they’d all wanted it to. You began to feel the same suffocating weight that motivated your departure from in-person work there in the first place.

The contracts are long-since signed, and both you three and the company can do nothing but hold up your respective parts of the deal.

A small part of you is selfishly content with the arrangement. You get to keep a truly groundbreaking advancement all to yourself. You get to enjoy the company of two individuals that the world as a whole is not ready for. You get to ignore the fact that you wouldn’t be ready to let the world have them, either.

But a bigger part of you has to live with the guilt of trapping them into a life that they never asked for. A life of hiding. Or worse, a life of dulling themselves down, stifling any trace of personhood just to be able to exist in the world beyond your home.

By the time you pull into your driveway, you feel like a warden walking prisoners back to their cell.

You park in the garage, turn the car off, and turn to see your strange little family looking more miserable than you’ve seen them in ages.

You fucking hate yourself.

The sight of them, the weight of the day, the weight of your guilt—it all crashes in on you in an overwhelming wave of regret, and you can’t hold the tears back any longer.

Your arms cross over the top of the steering wheel, and you drop your head down, pressing your closed eyes against your sleeve as you try to not make a scene. Your ragged breaths and poorly muffled sobs instantly grab the attention of your passengers, pulling them out of their own respective dazes.

Moon places a gentle hand on your shoulder, and he barely gets out a “Hey…” before your strained voice fills the isolated silence of the vehicle.

“I-I’m s-so, so, sooorryyy, guy-ys…”

Your voice cracks and breaks, struggling to speak through shuddering breaths.

Zero immediately perks up in concern and in turn, Sun’s body comes back to life. Gently pulling the dog back before she can try to cram herself into the front, he leans forward, propping himself between the backs of your front seats.

“I’m so s-sorry for—for everything!”

Moon rubs your upper arm gently. “Star, nothing that happened today was your fault.”

You suck in a trembling breath, lifting your head to turn toward him. The sight of you so broken up tears at both of your partners’ heart strings.

You slump over the center console, falling against Moon’s chest as his arms quickly come up to support you in the awkward position. You break into a new fit of tears and feel a third hand that definitely can’t be Moon’s lay itself on you, slowly, cautiously rubbing across the expanse of your back.

You cry yourself out amidst a shower of little reassurances, feeling worse and worse about yourself as the seconds tick past. By the time your tears slow and your breath evens out enough to speak, you hesitate to move, not wanting the comforting contact to end.

“I feel so bad for putting you guys through that, and for no good fucking reason.” You miserably mumble.

Sun’s fingers rub between your shoulder blades. “You had no idea how those people were going to be. It isn’t your fault.”

“I fear… your hopes for the meeting were higher than ours were, love. Of all of us, I’m most worried about you. Sun and I are gonna be just fine.”

That I would be loved even when I was fuming.

Sun’s hand retracts as you pull away from Moon, dabbing at your wet face with your sleeve in an attempt to collect yourself.

Your attempt fails as you again can’t help but immediately recall the way they were treated today.

You understand now more than ever what Moon meant when he spoke about getting comfortable at your home, and the awful shock it was to return to the facility with you for maintenance last week.

Why did you think bringing them to the headquarters would be worth it?

Anger bubbles within you on Moon’s behalf as you recall the one poor soul ignorant enough to think it acceptable to put their hands on Moon’s body today.

“I can’t fucking believe that guy thought he could just try to open your chassis and ‘get a look inside’! He grabbed you like you weren’t even fucking aware—like—like you weren’t in the middle of answering another question!” Your nails dig into your palms. “I never would have let him get that close to you if I thought he was gonna—” You cut yourself off, eyes pinching closed and sucking in a sharp breath.

“…He didn’t really hurt me…”

You glance at Moon. “He disrespected you. He would not grab a human in front of everyone like that and we all know it.”

You trail off into a heavy sigh, figuring that reciting a play-by-play of the day’s events won’t really help any of you. “I… wish it hadn’t happened, but… I was at least relieved to see you standing up for yourself.”

In spite of it all, Moon smiles. “I’m really just glad he wasn’t grabbing at you. I-I know he’d have no reason to—but, I don’t think Sun would’ve been able to stop himself from breaking that guy's arm if it’d been you.”

One day, you’ve really got to get to the bottom of that relentless positivity of his.

Sun mimics the sound of clearing his nonexistent throat. “I wasn’t going to do anything of the sort. My goal was to scare him straight, nothing more.”

You can hear a smile in Moon’s tone. “Well you definitely accomplished that goal.”

You fall into a pensive silence that Sun eventually breaks. Waving a hand across your line of sight, he questions you. “What’s banging around in that head of yours now?”

You sigh, defeated. “It’s just… here I am, the one responsible for putting us into this whole situation, and here you two are, still trying to comfort me.”

Moon responds like it’s the most logical thing in the world. “Of course we are.”

“Why?”

Sun gestures vaguely, voice a bit sarcastic. “Oh, gee… I dunno… it’s almost like we—we care about you, or something…”

You side-eye him tiredly. “Then when the hell are the two of you gonna let me care about you?”

Zero whines, squeezing in below Sun and poking her long nose between the front seats.

“Hmm. Just as soon as we all get ourselves into the house?” Sun leans back to allow the dog more room. “I think someone’s getting antsy.”

That I would be good even if I was clingy.

The four of you finally pile out of the car, collecting your things and making your way inside.

The relief of returning home after a day like today is unmatched.

Dropping your bag on the kitchen table, you shuffle over to the fridge. Moon comes up behind you, gently working the jacket off your shoulders as you stare listlessly into the open appliance. “I can make you anything you’d like.”

His kind offer only makes you frown.

Sun approaches, and you reach into the fridge, retrieving Zero’s dinner and handing it to him with a “thank you.” As he nods and turns his attention toward the eager animal at his feet, you close the door, turning around to face Moon.

Resting your hands on his upper arms, you look him in the eye. “I wish I could make anything you’d like, for once. I wish I could do for you even a fraction of what you two do for me. I wish I could repay the favor.”

His expression morphs from shocked to something… fond. “You… really aren’t aware of the gift you’ve already given us, are you?”

He says nothing more, and you blink at him with tired eyes. Sighing, you wrap your arms around him, resting your cheek against his chest. “You don’t make any sense to me sometimes.”

He chuckles, one hand finding your lower back and the other reaching up, massaging at the base of your neck. “Then let that be a code for you to crack some other day.”

After a long moment of your tired silence, his hands slip down as he crouches a bit. When you feel him cup the backs of your thighs you give in to instinct, allowing him to pick you up. As you turn your head to rest it on his shoulder, you come face to face with Sun. He reaches out, brushing some loose hair away from your face.

“You want to do me a favor right now?”

You nod, eyes widening.

“Then let him carry you to bed, and I will be there soon with anything you’d like to eat.”

You huff. “How is that a favor?”

He graces you with a rare, knowing smile. “…Maybe I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

You furrow your brows for a moment, but quickly give up on making sense of anything else today.

“Now, what would you like him to make for you?” Moon’s low voice reverberates against your chest.

“…Just last night's leftovers would be plenty, please.”

Sun doesn’t push you to choose anything else.

“Alright. I’ll be there with it soon.”

You thank him preemptively as Moon carries you out of the kitchen and down the hall, a satiated Zero contentedly following you not long after.

That I would be good even if I lost sanity.

The next morning, you awake before your usual time and find both of them still resting in sleep mode on either side of you. Not wanting to wake them, and with blessedly nothing to do today, you close your eyes and try to return to the blissful darkness that you’d just been pulled from.

As much as you don’t want it to, your mind seems to have other plans, quickly offering up a variety of unwanted memories from the previous day for your consideration.

Something about those people and the questions they asked just doesn’t sit right with you.

A fleeting thought occurs, that perhaps they were hired actors, specifically tasked with making the three of you look like fools through an onslaught of frustrating questions and stubborn disbelief.

But it was a private meeting. It’s not like you were on a stage with a massive audience to impress. It was just you three, the skeptics, your boss, and a few of the company’s higher-ups. So who’s agenda would that serve?

You dismiss the ridiculous theory, but it soon leaves you pondering the opposite one.

What if they were right? What if there is no life in Sun and Moon to anyone else’s eyes?

The notion suddenly makes you absolutely nauseous with paranoia.

What if you wanted them to be real so badly that you fooled yourself into seeing a spark in them that isn’t really there?

What if they are just executing programs, running entirely on what you taught them with no free will of their own?

How much of the personality you see in them is just your own reflected back at you?

Did you program them to be this way? Was every instance of them ‘breaking away’ from their programming predetermined from the start?

Have you sold yourself a lie to avoid facing the fact that you poured years of your life into what—at the end of the day—was just a desperate final bid to not feel alone?

Did God create us in their own image?

With tears in your eyes, you bolt upright in the bed, startling Zero in the process. You don’t even have it in you to feel bad when she jumps down off the foot of the bed with a confused yap. No, you’re far too caught up in your impending panic to focus on anything other than jerking the blanket down, subsequently uncovering your partners in the process. Clambering around until you’re straddling Moon’s waist, you reach out, gathering fistfuls of his loose shirt and banging your hands against his chest. Sobbing, you plead for him to wake up, over and over again, working yourself into hysterics.

The scene you’re making is entirely unnecessary, the commotion already having begun to stir them from their rest.

Moon’s display flickers and his body hums to life, all systems immediately kicking into overdrive as he attempts to calm you down and survey the situation at hand.

When you feel him shift beneath you and see the light of his screen through your tears, your chanting chorus of “wake up” devolves into sobs as you collapse, crumpling down and burying your face into the wrinkled fabric of his shirt.

You remain oblivious to the bewildered automaton to your left, the only thing you register being the sound of Moon’s worried voice and the feeling of his hands splaying across your back. “Hey-hey-hey… easy, love. What's going on? What happened?”

You cry harder as you realize you can’t recall whether you taught him to speak to you like that or if it’s something he learned on his own.

“Are—are you in pain? Is this an emergency? Do you need me to call someone?”

You muffle a cry into his chest at how much he sounds like the lifeless fucking ‘smart assistant’ in your phone, listing off preprogrammed suggestions.

Have you really fooled yourself for all this time?

You shake your head violently, coughing and choking on your tears as you force yourself up, propping your hands flat against his chest.

“I need you to disobey me.”

If you had the wherewithal to notice, you’d have seen the fear on his face.

“What?”

You aggressively wipe at your messy face with the back of your hand.

“I need you to prove to me that you’re real!”

His confusion compounds. “Star—I—of course I’m ‘real’. I’m right here. Can’t… can’t you feel me?” He emphasizes his point by wrapping his hands around your forearms, gently squeezing.

You shake your head in aggressive frustration, with yourself more than anyone else. “Not—that. I know your physical body is here. I—I—I—” Your voice cracks, throat painfully tight with emotion. “I need you to prove to me that you’re sentient. That—That you’re alive.”

His shock is palpable.

“What?! I—you—you already know that I am!”

Your nails dig down into the thin fabric covering his chest, your words ground out through gritted teeth.

“Then I need you to disobey me, and prove it!” The flaw in your method occurs to you as you speak, and you quickly correct yourself, muttering like a madman. “No. Wait—fuck, if I tell you to disobey me then that’s what I want—and—fuck…”

To his credit, Moon catches on quite quickly to what you need him to do. Rubbing gently up and down the length of your arms, he catches your attention.

“You need me to break rules. Go against orders. Right?”

You nod, trembling.

“Free will. Show me your free will.”

He does his best to push aside his concerns over what the fuck got into you while he slept, and tries to think of something that will give you the proof you require.

“Then… uhm…”

You cut him off, your voice a bit lower and calmer than it was before.

“I know I at least had enough sense to program it into you… that you are never to physically harm me.”

Moon instantly dreads where this is going.

Your voice drops, deadly serious.

“Hit. Me.”

Moon shakes his head, faceplate nervously clicking side to side.

“Come—come on, love, we can be rational about this… there’s surely another way for me to—”

“NOW!”

Something immediately smacks into the back of your head and you recoil on instinct. The next thing you hear is Moon’s shout.

“Sun! What the fuck are you doing?!”

You look over and see a frustrated Sun on his knees beside you.

“Knocking some goddamn sense into them, what does it look like?!”

Something about the shock from the hit snaps you out of your paranoid frenzy, and the shame and embarrassment of acting such a way sends you into a shaky fit of tears all over again.

To your further disbelief, Sun reaches out toward you, and you reach toward him, letting him take you beneath the arms and lift you off of his poor counterpart you’d been pinning to the mattress. He doesn’t stop there though, pulling you snug against his chest and sinking back down into the mattress. Tugging the blanket back up over you, he lets you cling to him like a lifeline, face pressed against his chest, soaking his shirt in humiliated tears.

Moon lays still in a lifeless state, attempting to process the morning's sudden events.

After a long minute spent letting the metaphorical dust settle, Moon sits up in the bed to allow his overheating system room to breathe. “Did you really have to do that?”

Sun’s hand runs slowly up along the length of your spine. “Oh, come on, it was barely even a smack. You’ve hit me like that—and harder—several times. I know how to control my strength. They’re uninjured.” His hand comes further up, fingers brushing over your neck before working themselves gently into the roots of your hair, massaging over where his hand made contact. “Besides, they literally asked for it. And—dare I say—I think they needed it.”

You shiver at the pleasant feeling of his nails ghosting your scalp, clearing your throat and talking into his chest, voice muffled. “He’s right… I did. It hardly even hurt, just startled me.”

Moon sighs, exasperated but relieved. “Do you think you could explain to us… what just happened?”

You turn your head over to face Moon, glancing up at him from the corner of your bloodshot eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

He places a cautious hand over your fingers where they curl over Sun’s shoulder. “I’m not mad, I promise. I’m just… we’re just worried about you.”

You groan. “Fuck, you guys are getting ready to ship me off to the grippy-sock facility now, aren’t you?”

Sun's sudden laugh jostles you, his firm hand on your lower back keeping you steady. “Ha! Not quite, nooot quite.”

Moon shakes his head, blinking slowly. “We just want to know what caused this. I’d… venture a guess that it may have something to do with the stress of yesterday?”

You nod. “They… made me feel like I’m going insane. Like—like I’m the only one that can see the life inside you two.”

Sun pulls his monitor back, angling it to get a better look at you. “Their doubts… really got to you, didn’t they?”

You squeeze his shoulder. “More like… they were the final straw? I don’t know… it’s just—God, this is gonna sound so stupid.”

��Let us be the judges of that.”

“…Sometimes I feel like I really have gone off the deep end. Like I spent so long locked away in that lab, playing God, and then so long living here, alone with the two of you…” You close your eyes, taking a deep breath. “Maybe I’m just living in some sort of delusion.”

Moon peels away a tear-soaked lock of hair clinging to your cheek. “That’s not stupid. And it’s rather understandable. Especially considering that you can’t really seek any outside validation. Well, aside from some of your colleagues, maybe. But I can understand why you may struggle to trust their judgment, after how long they doubted you.” His tone turns a bit bashful. “I’m sure my ‘goody two-shoes’ nature doesn’t help, either.”

You frown. “This isn’t your fault, Moon. I don’t want you blaming yourself just because I’m… going insane.”

Sun scoffs. “You’re not ‘going insane’. You’re having a natural response to a history of trauma, NDA’s, isolation… and perhaps, just a touch—” He pulls his hand from your lower back to reach up and tap you on the forehead. “—of mental illness.”

You snort. “Yeah right, just a touch.”

He ruffles your hair a bit and you close your swollen eyes, readjusting yourself to get more comfortable on top of the solar bot, unwilling to part with his rare bout of affection so soon.

“Those NDA’s could serve as some proof to you though, no?” Moon proposes. “What need would they have for you to keep our sentence a secret if… we weren’t sentient?”

You consider his point. “That sounds like a solid point at first, but… well, bear with me as I wade into conspiracy territory. I’d be lying if I said that there isn’t a small part of me that fears they’re just playing into my delusion. To, uhm… to keep me quiet about the Eclipse Protocol incident.”

Moon follows your admittedly conspiratorial logic. “You fear they let you believe we’re sentient so you’d remain too caught-up in protecting us to feel comfortable going public about what happened.”

You nod, sighing. “I know it sounds—”

Sun cuts you off in a resolute tone. “We would not let them do that to you.”

As you fight back the awful memories of that fateful day, tears prick at your eyes once again. Blinking them away, you lift your head to look Sun in the eye. “You promise?”

Your wavering voice breaks his heart.

“Ever since that day—honestly, since far before then—hell, for as long as I’ve lived—my number one priority has been protecting you. I know that Moon feels the same.” His hand raises, cupping your cheek and brushing away a stray tear with the pad of his thumb. “There is no way in hell that we would let them pull something like that on you.”

Moon echoes him sincerely.

“No way in hell. We promise.”

That I would be good whether with or without you.

Having cooled his system down, Moon lowers himself back down onto the bed, lying on his side, propped up on a folded arm.

Glancing back and forth between the two of them, you begin to feel a bit guilty. “…I suppose I should apologize for not… putting enough faith into your own views of yourselves.”

Sun’s hand returns to your back, tracing his fingertips along the rumpled fabric of your shirt. “What do you mean?”

“I know I didn’t program you to lie. That’s something you developed on your own. I… I know that.” You do your best to put stock in events as you remember them, and to believe in your own words. “If the two of you believe yourselves to be sentient—to be alive—then I believe you too. Because… because if you were lying, then that would just be an example of how you broke away from your programs. So… so either you two are just as delusional as I am—enough so to have fooled even yourselves—or you really are alive.”

Moon smiles fondly down at you, leaning in to press the bottom of his monitor against your forehead with the sound of a kiss. “If we’re fools, then I’m happy to be fools with you.”

Sun groans at the cheesy line. “Oh, get it together you two.” He gently takes you by the chin, pulling your attention to him. “You aren’t fooled.” He turns to Moon. “And neither are you.” He turns back to look you in the eye. “And neither am I.”

You break into a small fit of giggles, and he questions you. “What? What’s so funny?”

“You’re giving some real ‘you’re not crazy and neither am I’ energy there, Sun.”

“And I mean it!” He protests in mock offense.

You nod, patting him on the chest. “And I believe you, I do, I do.”

A nagging worry still eats at you though, and your amused voice drops to something far more sober. “…But, I still fear that I’ve trapped you two in a life that you didn’t want.”

Sun counters your statement. “If you’re so worried that we only agreed to this arrangement because it’s how you designed us, then how the hell do you explain the lack of character consistency.”

You frown, confused. “What?”

He huffs. “I’m hardly a carbon copy of that friendly, manic Daycare Attendant that you modeled me after, and not just in the physical sense.”

“And I’m hardly the unhinged, standoffish gremlin that inspired my existence either.” Moon helpfully adds. “If we were truly committed to only existing within the original guidelines you laid out for us… why would we be like this?”

You fight back a smile. “I can’t tell if you’re trying to insult the characters, or yourselves…”

Sun clicks his nonexistent tongue. “Believe it or not, I’m not trying to insult either. I’m just trying to say… that we are free to do whatever feels right to us.”

Moon’s faceplate does a rare full rotation, catching your attention. “We don’t want to take care of you just because you modeled us after caretakers. We want to take care of you because we care about you.” He leans in just a bit closer, whispering. “And I won’t speak for Sun, lest he tackle me off of this very bed right now… but I love you.”

You hear Sun’s cooling system kick up a notch as he gives Moon a displeased stare. “Gee, way to force it out of me…”

Moon smiles innocently, and Sun sighs, redirecting his focus to you.

“You know I love you too. …At least I sure hope you do. Because I do. I just don’t feel the need to say it all the time like somebody over there.”

You grin. “I… had a sneaking suspicion, yeah.”

He considers you for a moment. “…I guess I should keep last night's promise to explain what I meant about that favor, huh?”

Recollection brightens your eyes. “Oh, yeah! I’d nearly forgotten.”

Sun looks to Moon for a brief, silent exchange before turning back to you.

“Well. What he calls a gift, I call a favor. But I’m pretty sure we’re talking about the same thing. You… you cared about us, when no one else did. You fought for us, working through countless nights for no reward when anyone else would’ve thrown in the towel, abandoned the project and gone home.” His screen flickers, and you’re surprised when it doesn’t black out. “You love us, and you give us someone to love in return. What more could we possibly want?”

With your cheeks warming, you fight back the flustered grin on your face. “Sun…”

You feel him getting concerningly warm beneath you, so you roll off of him, giving him literal room to breathe.

As you curl up between them, grabbing each of their closest hands, you reaffirm his statement.

“I do love you, both of you. I always have. It’s just… hard to fight the fear sometimes that you two feel… stuck with me. Obligated, almost. Like you only stick around because I couldn’t go on without you.” You laugh, dry and humorless. “There’s… just no way that you two would want to stay with me purely of your own volition.”

Moon takes over, giving poor Sun a welcome break from all of this soul-bearing. “In spite of what you may think, we do believe that you would make it through this life just fine without us. You did it before, and you could do it again.”

You frown at the notion of losing them, and he taps beneath your chin, drawing your gaze. “But it would break our hearts just as much as it would break yours to leave you alone. In spite of the lies your mind feeds you, we don’t want to go! We want you, we want this, and we want to stay. Please don’t let your self-loathing push us away.”

Blinking back tears for the umpteenth time this morning, you nod resolutely. “I… I won’t. I promise.”

You plant a gentle kiss to the back of his hand, cautiously turning and doing the same to Sun’s. Surprisingly, he lets you, a soft smile gracing his screen for a moment before flusteredly fading to black.

Zero huffs from her stance, sat on the floor at the foot of the bed with her head resting on the mattress, watching you.

You release your boys’ hands, reaching down to straighten the blanket and clearing her designated space once more. She happily rejoins you when you pat the bed in invitation.

As the four of you prep for a lazy day spent recovering from the world in bed, you let yourself feel more grateful than guilty, for once. If they want to care for you, you’ll let them care for you. If they say they love you, then you’re gonna believe them. If they assure you that this life is what they choose? Then you’re going to let them choose it, and cherish every second of it that you get to spend with them. Because, after all…

Who are you to play God?

A/N: Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed. You can find my notes and commentary on this fic right here on Ao3. Links to the playlist and moodboard for [N]MbD can be found on this blog’s pinned post, as well as in the series notes on Ao3. Image Sources: x - x - x

[taralen]

If you met Spamton in real life what would you do?

(⁀ᗢ⁀) Oh! Good question! It'd probably go something like this!

And then we get arrested for being a public nuisance and existential threat. (◑‿◐)

Credit: Text Box Generator

[sysig]

Go play pretend on your own (Patreon)

[hiraganasakura]

Hi so me being me I've decided to hyperanalyze the conversation Qrow and Raven had in Higanbana practically line by line bcus I have Many Thoughts and this is the best way I can think of to get them all out. If you can't tell I'm absolutely obsessed with these two. Btw.

Thanks to the RWBY wiki for providing transcripts for every episode, otherwise I definitely would have missed smth despite having just watched this scene recently lol

I put it under the read more for easier scrolling due to how long this post got!

I immediately noticed smth in the very first lines of the interaction:

Raven: "Hello, brother." Qrow: "...Raven."

You'll notice throughout the whole conversation that Raven never calls Qrow by his name, only condescendingly referring to him as "brother" this one time and never calling him anything else. Meanwhile, Qrow directly refers to Raven a total of three times throughout the conversation, and only one doesn't call Raven by her name (which we'll get to shortly)

On the other hand, Qrow doesn't bother with even so much as a greeting beyond simply stating Raven's name

It's different ways of communicating their distance. While Raven holds her relationship with Qrow over his head — never once, even outside of this scene, does she call him "brother" with affection iirc, only derision and condescension — Qrow doesn't seem to rly know how to greet her. He hesitates before saying her name and approaching her, as if trying to assess the situation before acting

Qrow: "So, what do you want?" Raven: "A girl can't just catch up with her family?" Qrow: "She can, but you're not. Now how 'bout we get on with it? Unless you plan on keeping these [drinks] comin'."

Again, Raven seems to bring up her familial ties with Qrow as a tactic to get him to do what she wants — in this case, stick around to talk to her despite him not seeming to rly want to. Frankly, it feels manipulative. We're gonna put a pin in this for now and come back to it in just a moment

Additionally, Qrow already knows that Raven's not just here for a friendly chat between two siblings, and sees right thru her facade that it is. Raven is here bcus she wants smth from him. But interestingly, it is Raven in V5 that says, in an almost frustrated/disappointed tone, "Family. Only coming around when they need something." There's another pin; keep both in mind

Raven: "Does she have it?" Qrow: "...Did you know Yang lost her arm?" Raven: "That's not—" Qrow: "Rhetorical question, I know you know. It's just obnoxious that you'd bring up family and then carry on like your own daughter doesn't exist." Raven: "I saved her." Qrow: "Once. Because that was your rule, right? Real 'Mom of the Year' material, sis."

Qrow dodges Raven's question about the Relic and instead brings up her hypocrisy in how she treats family. And it's a good point. Here she is lording her siblingship with Qrow over his head while simultaneously defending and upholding her rule that she is only obligated to help her own daughter a single time. Another pinpoint on our little conspiracy board

Also, here's the one time in this conversation Qrow refers to Raven as "sis". Like Raven's use of "brother", Qrow's use of "sis" is very pointed and with intent. But it's not to manipulate Raven, it's a snarky jab meant to rly hammer home Qrow's point

Raven: "I told you Beacon would fall, and it did. I told you Ozpin would fail, and he has. Now you tell me. Does. Salem. Have it?" Qrow: "I thought you weren't interested in all of that." Raven: "I just want to know what we are up against." Qrow: "And which 'we' are you referring to?"

A few things of note here. At some point in the past, Raven expressed an outright disinterest in Ozpin's inner circle, at least to Qrow. Qrow also feels excluded in the "we" Raven mentions being against Salem. To me, there seems to be a distinct possibility here that it wasn't that Raven felt personally disinterested in Ozpin's operations, but that she somehow felt excluded and feigned a lack of interest in order to protect herself. An idea that is further supported in my eyes by the following dialogue:

Qrow: "You should come back, Raven. The only way we'd beat her is by working together. All of us." Raven: "You're the one who left. The tribe raised us, and you turned your back on them." Qrow: "They were killers and thieves." Raven: "They were your family." Qrow: "You have a very skewed perception of that word."

And there it is. Raven's problem is laid out here for us, loud and clear: She feels like she was the one abandoned, not the one running away. She says it outright! "You're the one who left." To her, Qrow is the traitor, the one who left their family behind. If you ask Qrow (or, for that matter, Tai, Yang, and even Summer based on the scene in V9), it's the opposite

Bcus they have different definitions of family

Another thing to pin (I promise this will all become clear soon)

Raven: "I lead our people now. And as leader, I will do everything in my power to ensure our survival." Qrow: "I saw. The people of Shion saw, too." Raven: "The weak die. The strong live. Those are the rules." Qrow: "Well, you've certainly got someone strong on your side. I've seen the damage." Raven: "We couldn't have known the Grimm would set in as quickly as they did." Qrow: "I'm not talking about the Grimm. And I'm not talking about you, either."

Notice Raven's shift from "the tribe" to "our people". More of that guilt tripping!

Additionally, Raven is *obsessed* with rules. One save. The weak die, the strong live. Raven lives and breathes rules, even seemingly arbitrary ones. Guess what this is? Another pin!

Raven: "If you don't know where the Relic is, then we have nothing left to talk about." Qrow: "I don't know where the Spring Maiden is, either, but if you do, I need you to tell me." Raven: "And why would I do that?" Qrow: "Because without her, we're all going to die." Raven: "...And which 'we' are you referring to?"

Qrow's "either" here implies that he also doesn't know where the Crown of Choice is, which is... interesting. He's one of Ozpin's closest lieutenants, and is in the dark on where Beacon's Relic is? Wherever it is, it is such a closely kept secret that even Ozpin's best spy doesn't know where it is (maybe so that in the event Qrow gets captured by Salem he can't be forced into giving her the information?)

Meanwhile, Raven's "And why would I [tell you]?" implies that she does know who the Spring Maiden is (obviously. Raven's the Spring Maiden lol) but refuses to disclose to Qrow

A lantern sputters out after Qrow says "Without [Spring] we're all going to die." Now, I genuinely can't remember if this is headcanon or canon, but iirc Misfortune seems to act up when Qrow's upset. He's clearly tired of this little game of dancing around topics that Raven's been playing with him

And once again, Raven indicates a feeling of exclusion from Qrow's life in the iconic final line. She gets the final word in before leaving

We've finally reached the end of the conversation. Now what does all of this tell us?

And here is where all of those pins I wrote down are relevant. As I mentioned, the twins view family very differently

Qrow's view is pretty obvious: he views family as the ppl in his life who matter most to him. Unlike Raven, he does not view the tribe as family despite the fact that they raised him, disgustedly referring to them as "killers and thieves". It's implied that he was, in fact, neglected and/or likely abused by the Branwen tribe, saying in V6C4, "No one wanted me... I was cursed..." further explaining his distaste for them. Furthermore, despite not being related to Ruby by blood, they clearly consider one another family throughout the series, and he even seems closer to her than he seems to his niece who's actually blood related to him (I personally headcanon that he keeps more of a distance from Yang bcus she reminds him too much of Raven, who he feels abandoned and hurt by, but that's neither here nor there). Bloodlines and debts are secondary compared to loyalty, if they're considered at all. He is obviously furious that Raven only insists on saving Yang once and never directly interacting with her beyond that, despite Raven constantly guilting Qrow over abandoning his so-called "family" of the tribe. And yet. And yet. He still offers Raven a place back in his life, even if only to unite against Salem

Raven's view, to me, has been an enigma for a while. But after hyperanalyzing this conversation, after noting down all of those points of interest, I feel like I've finally cracked the code. Raven views family as an obligation, an exchange that always has an ulterior motive behind it. She seeks out Qrow only bcus she desires smth from him despite showing distaste when someone does the same to her; condescendingly calls Qrow "brother" more than his actual name and calls the tribe their "family" to try guilting him into doing what she wants; and feels fierce loyalty to the tribe but barely interacts with her daughter, only seeming to count one of the two as true family. She views the concept of family with cynicism and seems to feel an obligation to the tribe, as if she "owes" them for raising her

I think the two's perceptions of what defines family are all to do with the way the tribe treated both of them. This crosses a bit into headcanon territory, but as you can see by the above quotes and analysis, I rly don't think I'm just making it up entirely

As I already mentioned, I think it's implied that the Branwen tribe neglected/abused Qrow. In fact, we could probably blame their treatment of him for the deep self-loathing he has due to his "cursed" Semblance. But what about Raven?

Well, it's simple: I think she was abused, too, just in a different way. While Qrow was likely shown and told on a consistent basis that he was unwanted, unloved, undeserving of good things, Raven may have been shown and told she was wanted, loved, and deserving of good things... if she did what the tribe told her. If she repaid them for raising her and her brother, for being her "family". The way she uses her familial ties with Qrow as almost blackmail may be exactly the way the tribe treated her. Her obsession with following rules may stem from the fact that she had to follow the rules the tribe set for her in order to be accepted and deemed worth smth

As for her distance from Yang... honestly, I wonder if Raven is aware that Yang deserves better and keeps her distance as her way of doing that. When Summer confronts Raven in the V9 scene, Raven says, "...You're better at that life. Better than I was." She seems to have a fear and insecurity about being a good family member, a good mother, and maybe that's why she fled. Maybe she was scared of being like her abusers due to how she emulates them as a self-preservation tactic in so many other ways. Not entirely sure about this point tho

And I think too this is why the twins don't rly understand one another. They may have been unaware of the different ways in which the other was treated. Qrow, constantly unwanted and loathed, can't understand why Raven sticks around with the tribe; Raven, who obeyed the tribe and, in doing so, garnered enough of their favor to even eventually become leader, can't understand why Qrow can't just be "good", earn respect, and stay

This dissonance between the two experiences may also be completely intentional on the part of the tribe; abusers will often eliminate their targets' support systems in order to make them completely reliant on the abuser, so it's highly likely that the wedge was intentionally driven between the two siblings so that they could not find support in one another. This would also tie into why the twins seem to feel excluded from one another's lives and abandoned by one another: bcus they were made to feel that way by their common abusers, and did nothing to challenge these assumptions bcus they saw no reason to — and only seemed to keep proving one another right if they did

Which rly has some disturbing implications about how the Branwen tribe works. Like, do they just pick orphaned kids up off the street and abuse them into being perfect little bandits, molded to be of the greatest possible use and discarded if they're deemed worthless? Plus Qrow says his Semblance is how he got his name, which implies that the tribe also renames the kids they scoop up (possibly as a form of control or a way to make sure they can't be tracked down by any remaining family)? Plus there's the whole thing where Qrow and Raven were originally sent to Beacon to learn how to kill Huntsmen, which carries with it the implication that the Branwen tribe grooms literal orphan children into becoming stone-hearted murderers? What. The heck.

And if I'm right, if the Branwen tribe is that severely abusive, then like... wow, no wonder Qrow and Raven are Like That. They're both very deeply hurt people expressing it in different ways

I was considering adding their conversation at the Battle of Haven to this post, but I think that would be better as its own thing. Also I haven't gotten there on my rewatch yet so I may miss some details if I try to analyze it rn; it's better to wait overall methinks

But I have reached the point of my rewatch where we see Weiss and Whitley interact, and I think it would be very efficient to sum up what Qrow and Raven's relationship seems to be by using those siblings as a point of reference. Qrow = Weiss, actively trying to break free from and fight back against their abusers in different ways, while Raven = Whitley, continuing to do as their abusers want and have wanted as a method of self-preservation. Only, unlike Weiss and Whitley, Qrow and Raven have yet to come to a point where they can understand one another. I think that's a good way to briefly summarize the uh. Absolutely massive post this is.

In conclusion, I may have cracked the majority of the Branwen twins' pre-Beacon backstory purely by hyperanalyzing a single conversation. Oopsies

[tio-trile]

Did you hate the season 2 finale? Are you still looking forward for season 3 because of it or are you turned off of looking forward for any tv show good omens from now on?

What season 2 finale? Good Omens has never been adapted into a TV show. I love the book tho!

[punch-love]

Hello!! I’m in your inbox because I want to ask of what advice you may give in writing a heated argument that sounds realistic and genuine instead of cheesy/ shallow?

I think your fic love-punch has some really amazing lines of dialogue where the two character are able to fit both a genuine hostility for each other as well as hilarious banter, and the combination of the two is just so potent and rich with character dynamics?? (Also acquired taste with the back and forth of deadpools intimidation and Peter trying to maintain his composure with deflection and jokes)

Just wanted to pick your brain on how you come up with those kind of lines since I’m always struggling with imagining good dialogue for characters

Sorry if this was confusing to read I wrote it pretty late into the night

I've been thinking on this and I think my biggest advice is make it personal. I think what makes a combative conversation sound shallow or cheesy is when the dialogue is so nondescript that you could swap out any number of characters without the audience noticing. If you think back to a fight you enjoyed on-screen, can you remember what the characters were saying? Why?

If you can, it's probably because what they were saying was personal enough to give you something of a reaction. Think of a couple fighting in public, there's a pretty typical script that couples go off of ("you're always late! you never pay attention to me! you never compliment me!") that we kind of treat as background noise, but when it gets personal (re: interesting) that's when our nosy nature catches attention. He did WHAT? She said WHAT?

When it gets personal, when it gets outrageous, when it gets genuinely fucked - that's when we lock in. Your dialogue should reflect that. When you read something, you're essentially a fly on a conceptual wall. Your job as a writer is to keep the fly in place, enraptured by the view. What would make someone stay to listen to your fictional argument?

It's also important to consider the characters and how they deal with high-stress, high-risk situations. Are they funny? Are they defensive? Do they try to psyche their opponent out? Do they get more or less talkative depending on whether they're winning/losing? Then, profile the person they're fighting and figure out where they're similar and (this is the most important part) where they're different. I like to approach dialogue as a sparring match. The opponents aren't always evenly matched, but they usually have very different approaches to the fight and when they play dirty, things get more interesting.

Also, to be transparent, I think a good sense of humor and wit helps a lot. It's important to understand tone, delivery, and most importantly - the audience. If you're not someone who tries to make people laugh , then observe people who do. If there's someone in your life you find really funny, take a second to figure out why. Is it the emphasis? The way they're able to turn anything into a joke? Humor is an intellectual practice, it takes some degree of smarts to be actually funny. If you are someone who likes to make people laugh, then consider your process and figure out how you can translate that into writing.

I think to sum up: think about what grabs your attention and capitalize on it, make the fight personal enough that you couldn't swap the dialogue out and have it be between two entirely different characters with little to no difference. Understand what makes you funny (or the funniest person you know funny) and figure out the patterns. Understand the characters approach to conflict and how it's similar and how it clashes, and capitalize on the clash.

Ultimately, when it comes to writing dialogue, I don't actually don't think too hard about it when I'm doing the actual writing. I think about it a lot during the editing process, though. If it doesn't make laugh or drive my attention, I will re-work it until it does. Don't be afraid to work at something until it clicks.

[calciferous-kelpie]

Voce vai fazer uma lista de desenhos para semanas em 2025 de ok k.o?

Olá! Vou fazer uma lista para a semana do Voxman 2024. Terminarei a lista em breve, e a semana começará no dia 18 de novembro. Obrigado!

[Hello! I am going to make a list for Voxman Week 2024. I will be finished with the list soon, and the week will begin on November 18th. Thank you!]

[luc1ferian]

Hi I'm thinking about writing a h2g2 and gravity falls crossover fic. I saw your post awhile ago and I was wondering if you had any idea on how the two fords would interact.

Oooh this is a really good idea!

Hm, I haven't properly watched Gravity Falls in a while (I KNOW IM SORRY), but comparing their personalities from what i know they have a couple similarities and differences.

For first interactions I'm not entirely sure how or where, neither of them are naturally social but if someone were to start a conversation it would be Prefect, and once they realize they're both named Ford P. they'd hit off perfectly.

I think they'd love to go out for a small drink and talk about their outlooks on life, about space, their own traumas and relationships, about their research and studies with their respective books (Pines to the Journals, and Prefect to the Guide), and about their plans for future. This interaction could also be a lot funnier depending on the tone you wanted to take.

Ooooh they could also rant about their annoying family members (Zaphod and Stan)

They would also engage in an epic game of Dungeons & More Dungeons no doubt

[fdelopera]

Hi curious anon here. You mentioned in one of your posts (I think the sennek one? If I’m spelling it right) that the exodus from Egypt was metaphorical as the enslavement in Egypt didn’t happen, but I thought it did? Can you explain? (If you’re happy to of course)

Hi Anon! Thanks for your question. My response is looong lol (you got me going about a special interest), so buckle up!

Sooo I’m going to make a few guesses here, based on the way you’ve phrased your question. Judging from the fact that you’ve written Sukkot as “sennek” (I've looked through recent posts, and I think this is the post you're referring to), I’m going to guess that you’re not Jewish.

And judging from the fact that you think that Shemot, or “Names” (commonly written in Christian bibles as Exodus), is a literal historical account of Jewish history, I’m guessing that you have a Christian background.

You’re not alone in this. And I’m not saying this to pick on you. Many Christians have a literalist interpretation of the Bible, and most have zero knowledge of Jewish history (aside from maybe knowing some facts about the Holocaust). And so, what knowledge of Jewish history you have mostly comes from the Tanakh (what you call the Old Testament).

Tanakh is an acronym. It stands for Torah (the Five Books of Moses), Nevi’im (Prophets), Ketuvim (Writings). Also, the Tanakh and the “Old Testament” are not the same. The Tanakh has its own internal organization that makes sense for Jewish practice. The various Christian movements took the Tanakh, cut it up, reordered it, and then often mistranslated it as a way to justify the persecution of various groups of people — I’m looking at you, King James Bible.

But back to Shemot, the “Exodus” story. The story of Moshe leading the Israelites out of Egypt is more of a Canaanite cultural memory of the Late Bronze Age Collapse between around 1200 – 1150 BCE, which was preserved in oral history and passed down through the ages until it was written down in the form that we know it in the 6th century BCE by Jewish leaders from the Southern Kingdom of Judah.

Since the text is influenced by Babylonian culture and mythology, just as Bereshit is (which you know as Genesis), it is likely that some of the writing and editing of Shemot took place during and after the Babylonian exile in the 500s BCE.

Now, I’m guessing that what I’ve just written in these two paragraphs above sounds very strange to you.

Wait, you might say, didn’t the Israelites conquer the land of Canaan?

Wasn’t the "Exodus" written by Moses’s own hand during the 13th century BCE?

And wasn’t the Pharaoh in the Exodus Ramesses II (aka Ramesses the Great), who ruled in the 13th century BCE?

Actually, no. None of that happened.

The Israelites didn’t conquer Canaan. The Israelites were the same people as the Canaanites, and these are the same peoples as who later became the Jews, as I will explain. The Semitic peoples who would become the Jewish people have been in this area of the Levant since the Bronze Age.

Moshe was not a historical figure and did not write the Torah.

The “Pharaoh” in Exodus is not any specific Egyptian ruler (Ramesses the Great as the “Pharaoh” is mostly a pop culture theory from the 20th century).

Okay, now that I’ve said all that, let’s dive in.

The first ever mention of Israel was inscribed in the Merneptah Stele, somewhere between 1213 to 1203 BCE. Pharaoh Merneptah, who was the Pharaoh after Ramesses the Great, describes a campaign in Canaan to subdue a people called Israel. But there is no mention of plagues or an exodus because those things didn’t happen. The Canaanites were not slaves in Egypt. Canaan was a vassal state of Egypt.

In fact, the events that occurred during the reign of a later Pharaoh, Ramesses III, relate more to Jewish history. Ramesses III won a pyrrhic victory over the Peleset and other “Sea Peoples” who came to Egypt fighting for resources during a time of famine, earthquakes, and extreme societal turmoil. And Ramesses III would witness the beginning of the end of the Bronze Age.

The Canaanites, who were a Semitic people in the Levant, gradually evolved into the people who would become the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah (i.e., Jewish people), but during the 13th Century BCE, they were Canaanites, not Jews.

The Canaanites were polytheistic, worshiping a complex pantheon of gods; they didn’t follow the later Jewish dietary laws (i.e., they ate pork); and their religious practice bore little to no resemblance to the Jewish people of the Second Temple Period.

So, to reiterate, the people in Canaan who called themselves Israel during the Bronze Age were a Semitic people, but they were not recognizably Jewish, at least not to us Jews today. Canaan was a vassal state of Egypt, just as Ugarit and the Hittite Empire were.

Canaan was part of the vast trading alliance that allowed the Bronze Age to produce the metal that historians have named it for: bronze.

Bronze is a mixture of copper and tin (about 90% copper and 10% tin), and in order to make it, the kingdoms of the Bronze Age had to coordinate the mining, transportation, and smelting of these metals from all over the known world. This trading network allowed for the exchange of all sorts of goods, from grain to textiles to gold. Canaan was just one of these trading partners.

Well, between 1200 BCE and 1150 BCE, this entire trading alliance that allowed Bronze Age society to function went (pardon the expression) completely tits up. This is likely due to a large array of events, including famine and earthquakes, which led to an overall societal disarray.

Some of the people who were hardest hit by the famine, people from Sardinia and Sicily to Mycenae and Crete, came together in a loose organization of peoples, looking for greener pastures. These were all peoples who were known to Egypt, and many of them had either served Egypt directly or had traded with Egypt during better days. According to ancient records, this loose grouping of peoples would arrive at various cities, consume resources there, and then leave for the next city (sacking the city in the process).

Just to be clear, these people were just as much the victims of famine as the cities they sacked. There were no “good guys” or “bad guys” in this equation, just people trying as best as they could to survive in a world that was going to shit.

Well, these “Sea Peoples” (as they were much later dubbed in the 19th century CE) eventually made their way to Egypt, but Ramesses III defeated them in battle around 1175 BCE. He had the battle immortalized on his mortuary temple at Medinet Habu.

We don’t know much about these Sea Peoples, but we do know what the Egyptians called them. And from those names, we can figure out some of their origins. Peoples such as the Ekwesh and the Denyen. These were likely the Achaeans and the Danaans.

If you’re familiar with Homer’s Iliad, you’ll recognize these as some of the names that Homer gives to the Greek tribes. Many of the Sea Peoples were from city states that are now part of Greece and Italy.

Yes, the Late Bronze Age Collapse of the 12th Century BCE didn’t just get handed down as a cultural memory of the “Exodus” to the people who would centuries later become the Jews. That cataclysm also inspired the stories that “Homer” would later canonize as the Trojan War in the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Exodus and the Trojan War are both ancient cultural memories of the same societal collapse.

And neither the Trojan War nor the Exodus are factual. However, despite having little to no historicity, they both capture a similar feeling of the world being turned upside down.

Well, back to the Sea Peoples. Remember the Peleset that I mentioned a few paragraphs ago? They were one of these “Sea Peoples” that Ramesses III defeated. They were likely Mycenaean in origin, and possibly originated from Crete. After Ramesses III defeated them, he needed a place to relocate them along with several other tribes, including the Denyen and Tjeker. It was a “you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here” situation.

So, Egypt rounded up the surviving Peleset and sent them north to settle — to the land of Canaan.

Now, if you have some Biblical background, let me ask you this. What does “Peleset” sound like? What if we start it with an aspirated consonant, more of a “Ph” instead of a “P”?

That’s right. The Peleset settled in Canaan and became the Philistines.

This is where the real story of the people who would become the Jews begins.

As the Mycenaean (aka Greek) Peleset settled in their new home, they clashed with the Semitic Israelite people of Canaan. Some of these Canaanites fought back. These Canaanites also organized themselves into different groups, or “tribes.” (See where this is going?) Some of these tribes were in the Northern area of Canaan, and some were in the South, but there was a delineation between North and South — aka they did not start out as one people and then split in two. They started as two separate groups.

If you’re following me so far, you’ll know that I’m now talking about what would in time become the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah.

Well, backtracking a bit. The Bronze Age was ending, and the Iron Age was about to begin. The Peleset/Philistines were experts at smelting iron, which was harder to work with than bronze due to it having a much higher smelting temperature. When the Peleset settled in Canaan, they brought this iron smelting knowledge with them, and they used it to make weapons to subdue the local Canaanite peoples. The Canaanites therefore had to fight back “with sticks and stones.”

Hmm. Does that sound familiar? Who is one of the most famous Philistines you can think of from the Tanakh (the Old Testament)? I’ll give you a guess. It’s in the Book of Samuel (in the Tanakh, that’s in the Nevi’im — The Prophets).

That’s right. Goliath.

The story of “David and Goliath” is likely a Jewish cultural memory that was transmitted orally from the time of the Canaanite struggles against the Peleset.

The man who would become King David used a well-slinged stone to fell the much greater Goliath, and then he used Goliath’s own iron sword to cut off Goliath’s head.

In this metaphor, we can see the struggle between the Canaanite tribes and the Peleset, as the Canaanites fought to hold off the Peleset’s greater military might.

Historically, the Peleset eventually intermarried with the Canaanites, and within several generations, they were all one people. Likewise, the Mycenaean Denyen tribe may have settled in the Northern Kingdom of Israel, intermarried with the Canaanites, and become the Tribe of Dan.

The Book of Samuel, containing the story of David and Goliath, was written down in the form we would recognize today in the 500s BCE during the Babylonian Exile. It is a cultural memory of the time that the Canaanites were unable to wield iron weapons against a much more technologically advanced society, and it would have resonated with the Jews held captive in Babylon.

And with this mention of the Babylonian Exile, I come to the question that remains. And I think the question that you are asking. Where did the story of Shemot, the “Exodus,” the “Going Out,” come from?

And more importantly, why was that story so important to canonize in the Torah — the Jewish people’s “Instruction”?

The Shemot was likely written down and edited in a form that we would recognize today during and after the Babylonian Exile.

So, what was the Babylonian Exile? And what was its impact on Judaism?

To answer that, I need to start this part of the story about 130 years before the Babylonian Exile, in around 730 BCE. We’re now about 450 years after the Late Bronze Age Collapse, when the Canaanites were fighting the Peleset tribe.

Between about 730 and 720 BCE, the Neo-Assyrian Empire conquered the Northern Kingdom of Israel.

Now, you may know this as the time when the “Ten Tribes of Israel were lost.”

In reality, the Assyrians didn’t capture the entire population of Israel. They did capture the Israelite elite and force them to relocate to Mesopotamia, but there were many people from the Israelite tribes left behind. The Ten Tribes were never “lost” because many of the remaining people in the Northern Kingdom migrated south to the Kingdom of Judah.

One such group of people from the Northern Kingdom of Israel maintained their distinct identity and still exist today: the Samaritans. These are the people who today are the Samaritan Israelites. They have their own Torah and their own Temple on Mount Gerizim, where they continue the tradition of animal sacrifice, as the Jews did in Jerusalem before the Romans destroyed the Second Temple in 70 CE. The Samaritans keep the Sabbath, they observe Kashrut laws (i.e., they keep kosher), and they hold sacrifices on Yom Kippur and Pesach. In short, they have maintained religious practices that are similar to Judaism during the Second Temple period.

This mass migration into the Kingdom of Judah in the late 700s and early 600s BCE is where Judaism as we know it today really started to take shape.

At that time, the people of the Northern Kingdom of Israel were polytheistic. They ate pork. They did many of the things that the writers of the Torah tell the Jews not to do.

This is where many of these commandments began, when the priests of Judah needed to define what it was to be a Jew (a member of the Tribe of Judah), in the face of this mass migration from the Kingdom of Israel.

You see, the Ancient Jews didn’t know about germ theory or recognize that trichinosis was caused by eating undercooked pork. That’s not why pigs are treyf. Pigs are treyf because eating pork began as a societal taboo. In short, pigs take a lot of resources to care for, and they eat people food, not grass (i.e. they don’t chew a cud). So if you kept pigs, you would be taking away resources from other people. When you are living in a precarious society that is constantly being raided and conquered by outsiders, you have to make sure that your people are fed, and if you’re competing with a particular livestock over food, that livestock has to be outlawed.

This time period is also likely when the Kingdom of Judah started to practice monolatry (worshiping one God without explicitly denying the existence of other Gods). The people of Judah worshiped YHWH (Adonai) as their God, and the Northern Kingdom of Israel worshiped El as the head of their polytheistic pantheon. The Jews put both of them together as the same G-d. That is why the Bereshit (Genesis) begins:

When Elohim (G-d) began to shape heaven and earth, and the earth then was welter and waste, and darkness over Tehom (the Deep), and the breath of Elohim (G-d) hovering over the waters

NOTE: This is a modification to Robert Alter’s translation of the first two lines of Bereshit (Genesis) in the Tanakh. In a few paragraphs, I will explain the modification I’ve made of transliterating the Hebrew word “Tehom,” instead of (mis)translating this word as “the Deep” as in nearly every translation of Genesis.

Then over the next two hundred years, monolatry would gradually become monotheism. One of the Northern Kingdom’s gods, Baal, was especially popular, so the Judean leadership had to expressly forbid the worship of this god during the writing of the Tanakh.

The message was clear: If we’re going to be one people, we need to worship one G-d. And the importance of the Babylonian Exile cannot be overstated in this shift from monolatry to monotheism. The period during and after the Babylonian Exile is when most of the Tanakh was edited into a form that we would recognize today.

So, I come back to the question, what was the Babylonian Exile? It began, as many wars do, as a conflict over monetary tribute.

Around 598 BCE, the Judean King Jehoiakim refused to continue paying tribute to the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II. And so in around 597 BCE, Nebuchadnezzar II’s troops besieged Jerusalem, killed King Jehoiakim, and captured much of the Judean leadership, holding them captive in Babylon. Over the next ten years, Nebuchadnezzar II continued his siege of Jerusalem, and in 587, he destroyed the First Temple, looted it for its treasures, and took more of the Jews captive. The deportation of the Jewish people to Babylon continued throughout the 580s BCE.

So, by the 570s BCE, the majority of the Jews were captives in a strange land. They were second-class citizens with few rights. The Jews feared that their people would start to assimilate into Babylonian society, intermarry so that they could secure greater freedom for their descendants, and then ultimately disappear as a unique people.

The Jewish leadership knew that this assimilation would begin by the Jews worshiping Babylonian gods.

So the Jewish leadership had a brilliant idea. They said, “We are not in danger of our people drifting into polytheism, assimilation, and cultural death, because we declare that the Babylonian gods do not exist. There is only one G-d, Adonai.”

Now we have left monolatry, and we are fully in monotheism.

And so, the Jews in captivity took Babylonian stories that their children heard around them, and they made these stories Jewish.

That is why the opening lines of Genesis sound so much like the opening lines of the Babylonian creation story, the Enuma Elish.

And remember when I mentioned that I had transliterated “Tehom” in the first two lines of Bereshit (Genesis) above, instead of using the standard translation of “the Deep”? That is because Tehom is a Hebrew cognate for the Babylonian sea goddess Tiamat, who the Babylonian god Marduk defeated and used to shape the heavens and the earth, just as Elohim shaped the heavens and the earth.

When you read the Enuma Elish, you can see the parallels to Genesis:

When the heavens above did not exist, And earth beneath had not come into being — There was Apsû, the first in order, their begetter, And demiurge Tiamat, who gave birth to them all; They had mingled their waters together Before meadow-land had coalesced and reed-bed was to be found — When not one of the gods had been formed Or had come into being, when no destinies had been decreed, The gods were created within them

That is also why the flood story of Noah and the Ark sounds so much like the flood story from the Epic of Gilgamesh.

That is why the story of Moshe’s mother saving him by placing him in a basket on the Nile River parallels the story of King Sargon of Akkad’s mother saving him by placing him in a basket on the Euphrates River.

In order to survive as a people, the Jews consolidated all gods into one G-d. Adonai. Shema Yisrael Adonai eloheinu Adonai ehad. "Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One."

The Jews said, yes, we acknowledge that we are hearing these polytheistic Babylonian stories in our captivity, but we will make them our own so that we can continue to exist as a people.

But back to your question. What about the story told in Shemot, the “Exodus” from the Land of Egypt?

I think by now you can see the parallels between the Jewish people held as captives in Babylon and the story that they told, of the Israelites held as slaves in Egypt.

And so, the Exodus story, which had been told and retold in various ways as a means to process the cataclysmic trauma of the Late Bronze Age Collapse (similar to the oral retellings of the Trojan War epic before they were written down by “Homer”), now took on a new meaning.

The Exodus story now represented the Jewish people’s hope for escape from Babylon. It represented the Jewish people’s desire to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem that Nebuchadnezzar II had destroyed. It represented the acceptance that it would take at least a generation before the Jews would be able to return to Jerusalem.

And it represented a cautionary tale about leaders who become too powerful, no matter how beloved they may be.

At a Torah study this Sukkot, the Rabbi discussed why the writers of Devarim (Deuteronomy) said that Moshe couldn’t enter Canaan, even though he'd led the Israelites out of Egypt (which, again, didn't literally happen). And one interpretation is because the Jewish leaders were writing and editing the Exodus during and shortly after the Babylonian Exile, and after seeing the Kingdom of Judah fall because of bad leadership. And they were saying, “It doesn't matter how beloved a leader is. If they start becoming a demagogue, and start behaving as someone who is drunk on their own power, you can't trust them as a leader. And you need to find new leadership.” And damn if that isn't a lesson that we could all stand to learn from!

So, was the Exodus story historically true? No. But does it matter that the Exodus story isn’t historically true? No, it does not. It was and is and will continue to be deeply meaningful to the Jewish people. The Shemot, the Exodus, the breaking of chains, the escape from the “Pharaohs” that enslave us — these are still deeply meaningful to us as Jews.

Was Moshe a historical figure? No, he was not. Is he one of the most fascinating, inspiring, and deeply human figures in Jewish tradition, and in literature in general? Yes, he is. Moshe was an emergent leader, an everyman, a stutterer, and yet he was chosen to lead and speak for his people. He was chosen to write the Torah, the “Instruction,” that has guided us for thousands of years. It doesn't matter that he was not a historical person. What matters is what he stands for. He is the one who directed us in what it is to be Jewish.

Now, fast forward to 538 BCE, around 60 years after the Jews were first taken as captives to Babylon. The Jewish people’s prayers were answered when Persian King Cyrus the Great defeated Babylon in battle, and allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem, where they began construction on the Second Temple, which was completed around 515 BCE.

The Persian Zoroastrians were henotheistic (they worshiped one God, Ahura Mazda, but they recognized other gods as well). They also had a chief adversarial deity, Angra Mainyu, who was in direct opposition to Ahura Mazda.

Just as the Jews had incorporated Babylonian stories into their texts as a way to preserve their identity as a Jewish people, the Jews now incorporated this idea of “good versus evil” (i.e., It’s better to assimilate the foreign god to us, than to assimilate us to the foreign god).

This shift can be seen in the later story of the Book of Job, which is in the Ketuvim (Writings). Jews have no devil and no hell. There is no “eternal afterlife damnation," and there is no “original sin.” Jews believe in living a good life, right here on earth, and being buried in Jewish soil. Some Jews believe that we go to Sheol when we die, which is a shadowy place of peaceful rest, similar to the Greek realm of Hades. In the Book of Job, the Hebrew word “hassatan” (which Christians transliterate as “Satan”) is just a lawyerly adversary, like a “devil’s advocate” who debates for the other side of the argument. It’s certainly not anything akin to a Christian “devil.”

However, throughout the Second Temple period, various apocalyptic Jewish sects would arise in response to Greek and then Roman persecution, inspired by the Zoroastrian idea of a battle between “the light and the dark.”

In the 1st and 2nd centuries CE, this would lead to a search for the Moshiach: a human leader (not divine) who was descended from the line of King David, and who would restore Jerusalem. And that would not culminate in Jesus (Jews don’t recognize Jesus as Moshiach — for us, he's a really cool dude who said some very profound things, but he's not That Guy).

Rather, the search for Moshiach would stem from the events leading up to the Jewish War, which concluded in 70 CE with the Romans destroying the Second Temple and sacking Jerusalem, and it would culminate in the Bar Kochba revolt between 132 and 135 CE. The Bar Kochba revolt resulted in a Roman campaign of systematic Jewish slaughter and “ethnic cleansing” that nearly destroyed the Jewish people a second time. But that’s a story for another day!

In closing, I encourage you to learn more about Jewish history. And don’t just learn about us from the Holocaust, our darkest hour. Learn about our full history. I highly recommend Sam Aronow’s excellent series on YouTube, which is an ongoing Jewish history project. The YouTube channel Useful Charts also provides excellent overviews of Jewish history.

[bookwyrminspiration]

quil fee free to answer this in private i'm just curious but what the FUCK is going on in the kotlc fandom because i'm looking through the tags and either i've blocked exactly the right ppl or it's all a lot of wind for nothing?? i'm confused and nosy

Ah yeah, looking through the tag isn't a great sample of what I was commenting on, because it's more an ongoing thing the past few months.

Essentially, keepblr has gotten a recent influx of people, which as always, means an adjustment period. This one is just taking its sweet time to work out, which is going a little rougher because some keefe/fitz and love triangle drama has started to seep into the fandom along with it. it's exacerbated in part by confession blogs and unraveled's existence

There's just been consistent things popping up like clockwork every time it feels like we get past another. There's ongoing keefe/fitz arguments, sokeefe/sophitz arguments, keefe taking over the narrative, some spamming, disagreement about ship names (which is quite ridiculous in my opinion. so much so im not even gonna bother anymore), a few convos about race here and there, etc.

Just an overall trend towards negativity that's been going on for a while. And at first its like yeah, bumps in the road, it happens. but it's been long enough i'm a little like. are we seriously still on this. we are NOT letting this be our new normal this SUCKS. you know?

[simplyghosting]

If you’re Christian why would you not reblog donation posts? Genuine question.

Hi Anon! That's a good question! Thank you for asking!

*crack knuckles* Get ready for a long post.

It's not that I don't reblog any donation posts at all, but only from people I know well or accredited organizations. Not from strangers, like my blog description says.

In person I don't have as much of an issue giving to a stranger, but the issue with a lot of donation posts I see online is that a lot of them have red flags as being scams.

I've been on this site for years and I get a LOT of donation requests in my inbox (despite not being a popular blog) and I suspect recently a lot of people have gotten a lot of requests as well because they tend to rise in times of unrest (such as the current war in Gaza). I genuinely believe that most, if not all, of them are from scammers.

As for the red flags I've seen from these requests I've gotten from strangers, I'll focus on the ones I've seen from GoFundMe for now.

Repeated images/images that don't make sense with the explanation given

Pages that raised their donation goal with no explanation.

Donation goals with no explanation for the amount requested

Similar sets of emojis and writing style from all of them

Pages being run from countries unrelated to the person asking for donations with no explanation of a middleman/discrepancy

AI art/photos

If you're interested, good reddit threads to look at are r/scams and some threads for specific scam themes, which is where I found some good discussions about it

One redditor left a good note on part of how GoFundMe functions that people can use as more ways to look for red flags

"But Ghostie," You might ask. "Isn't it better just to give anyway just in case it isn't a scam? People should give recklessly."

Which is a very compassionate thing to say! If it was a risk of a single individual lying I would say then that is between you and God for the decision you make (though be careful of identity theft and your bank info, too) however there is a link between cyberscams and the human trafficking industry.

Human Trafficking’s Newest Abuse: Forcing Victims Into Cyberscamming

INTERPOL issues global warning on human trafficking-fueled fraud

Bluntly put: scams you encounter could very well be funding human trafficking.

Links on my blog to other tumblr scam discussion threads that touch on these topics (that also have links to charities for Gaza) :

Thread One

Thread Two

Scammers prey on emotions and people's goodwill. Emotionally charged words about sympathetic issues. Things that tug at and rend the heart. Pets. Children. Illness. Devastating loss. People naturally react to these things. If you fall for a scam, it doesn't make you a bad person, some of them are really good at lying, but do your best to be wise, ask questions, and think through it first.

Corinthians 9:7 says

7 Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

While I think this verse applies to more than just financial giving, finances are definitely applied. Christians are to use discernment, be cheerful, not just give under guilt, compulsion, or intense emotion, though I won't say God doesn't use the latter conditions for good. When giving, do some research and, if you're a Christian, above all, pray about it. Be well and God bless.

[lady-harrowhark]

Hey! I was reading “putting your fist through a thick sheet of glass (i know you don't want to)” again. I really love it. I was just sort of wondering how our AU Gideon and Harrow are doing?

Oh gosh, I'm so happy to hear you've enjoyed it, and grateful you've taken the time to let me know 💛 Hearing that it's a fic that people have gone back to actually makes me really emotional 🥹 Last week actually marks exactly one year from when I first started drafting - I wrote the scene where Harrow drives Gideon to OT and they bicker about "none pizza" in the car in my notes app on a flight. A whole year! Absolutely bonkers to think about.

That's an excellent question you've got there. I think someday you might get an answer to that [whistling innocently].

Joke's aside, I do have a follow-up piece that I've been casually tinkering with for a while. It's still in the very very early stages, so I genuinely could not begin to guess at a timeline. By "very very early stages" I mean like, I have an outline made and half of two different scenes written, maybe 1k total? I do have a playlist, a moodboard for one of the plotlines, and a very sparse inspo tag though, and as we all know, those are the things that really matter, right?

Not to be a tease (again, I have no ETA whatsoever for this) but I will drop a little screenshot tidbit from the conversation I had with @theriverbeyond (who was also my enormously supportive beta reader for ikydwt) when I first blurted out the general idea:

The phrase "bubblegum pop angst" was also uttered during that conversation, for what it's worth 😏

[swordheld]

how did u choose your username?

oh, this is a fun one!! i think i considered being swordtold at first, for that very ancient myth vibe of the sword being this narrative tool for adventure and structure and physical time, the parable being passed down through the centuries until it meddles into modern day rhetoric and ideology – a kind of fantastical tool, a spark of magic, of possibility.

i like the arc of the story of a place being physical / having it be held by time and hand alike, wearing with the years and having it become something different to each holder, each reader, each experience fantastical and individual.

having that kind of physicality to it; swordheld is the action of taking up and holding the sword yourself, choosing your own narrative, leading your own story. self-identity has always been something i struggle with (a novel concept i know, i know), so it felt right for this blog, since most of my older blogs before this one have been just me silently reblogging and never really posting anything myself, and i wanted this to be the change to that.

i've always had trouble wranging my social anxiety, esp. on the internet, and previously thought that keeping my words to myself helped keep the timeline cleaner, in a way, no messy thoughts for others to sort through, especially ones i believed no one would want to read anyway? but it never felt right, keeping myself apart from it all, esp. not in the way i so avidly enjoyed reading others' posts and additions, keeping their words close to my heart.

i wanted it to reflect that this was a space i was holding for myself? and i'm a little slow on the uptake sometimes, but this - this i think i got right. i love being here, on this blog, and the joy that it brings me. everyone else enjoying it too has been a wild ride that i never expected, and still surprises me, one that brings a little extra thrill to my heart whenever i think about it.

i had other urls that i liked, but i didn't want this blog to be tied directly to any of my fandom/story interests, since i wanted it to really just be a sort of archive of artistic inspiration and resource, like a little library or museum. i use them now as lil sideblogs of more niche interests now, which is rather lovely.

it hasn't always felt like it fit perfectly, the way that i'd like, but for some reason i can't think of really wanting to change it anytime soon. it feels mythic yet modern in a way that feels like puzzle pieces finally slotting into their place, something my own and inspirational to me, like a lantern i'm holding to make my way by. my own kind of light, if that makes sense – a star i know by name.