#i'm sorry my answers are novels!!

[saintmachina]

One million dollar question: is it true that the Bible condems homosexuality? I had a discussion with two conservatives who sent me some verses that seem to confirm that but i don't know much about the context although i know this is important too

Let’s start here: why is this the million dollar question? Why does it matter what the Bible has to say about sex, or love, or human relationships? At the end of the day, it’s just a book, right?

Oceans of ink (and blood) have been spilled over not only what the Bible says, but what it does, how it functions. The course of empires, nations, and families have been shaped by the contents of this book, and from a historical and cultural perspective, it holds a lot of weight. But you didn’t ask about the sociological, you asked about the theological, so let’s explore. 

Different Christian traditions vary in their approach to scripture. For example: some Protestant denominations believe that the Bible is inspired, inerrant, and infallible. In this paradigm, God is the ultimate author of scripture working through human hands, and the resulting text is both without error and in no way deceptive or mistaken. Similarly, The Second Vatican Council decreed that “the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation.” When a member of the clergy is ordained into the Episcopal Church they swear that they “do believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God, and to contain all things necessary to salvation.”

Can you see how many of these points of doctrine overlap yet seek to distinguish themselves from one another? Theologians have spent lifetimes arguing over definitions, and even when they manage to settle on solid teachings, the way that the teaching is interpreted by the clergy and incorporated into the lives of the laity varies WIDELY. As much as systematic theology may try, humans aren’t systematic beings. We’re highly contextual: we only exist in relation to others, to history, to circumstance, and to the divine. We simply cannot call up God to confirm church teaching, and I think a lot of people cling excessively to the Bible as a result of the ache (dare I even say trauma) of being separated from God via space and time in the way we currently are.

God is here, but God is not here. God is within us, God is within the beloved, God is within the sea and sky and land, and yet we cannot grasp God to our bodies in the way we long to. In this earthly lifetime, we are forever enmeshed in God, yet forever distinct, and that is our great joy and our great tragedy.

So barring a direct spiritual experience or the actual second coming, we're left to sort through these things ourselves. And because humans are flawed, our interpretations will always be flawed. Even with the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives guiding us.

When engaging with any sort of Biblical debate, it is essential that you have a strong understanding of what the Bible means to you, an an embodied individual living a brief little awful and wonderful life on Earth. Otherwise it's easy to get pushed around by other people’s convincing-sounding arguments and sound bites.

Here’s where I show my hand. As a confirmed Episcopalian I believe that reason, tradition, and scripture form the “three-legged stool” upon which the church stands, interdependent and interrelational to each other, but I’ve also like, lived a life outside of books. I’ve met God in grimy alleyways and frigid ocean waters and in bed with my lovers. So my stool is actually four-legged, because I think it’s essential to incorporate one’s personal experience of God into the mix as well. (I did not invent this: it’s called the Wesleyan quadrilateral, but the official Wesleyan quadrilateral insists that scripture must trump all other legs of the table in the case of a conflict which...*cynical noises*)

Please do not interpret this answer as me doing a hand-wavey "it's all vibes, man, we're all equally right and equally wrong", but I do absolutely think we have a responsibility as creatures to weigh the suffering and/or flourishing of our fellow creatures against teachings handed down through oral tradition, schisms, imperial takeover of faith, and translation and mistranslation. Do I believe the Bible is sacred, supernatural even, and that it contains all things necessary to find one's way to God, if that is the way God chooses to manifest to an individual in a given lifetime? Absolutely. Do I believe it is a priceless work of art and human achievement that captures ancient truths and the hopes of a people (as well as a record of their atrocities) through symbols, stories, and signs? Unto my death, I do.

However, I am wary of making an object of human creation, God-breathed though it may be, into an idol, and trapping God in its pages like God is some sort of exotic bug we can pin down with a sewing needle.

Finally, we have reached the homosexuality debate. One of my favorite sayings of Jesus is Matthew 5: 15-17: "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit." In other words: look at what religious teachings have wrought in the world. When I look at homophobic interpretations of the Bible, I see destruction, abuse, suffering, neglect, alienation, spiritual decay, and death. When I look at theology that affirms the holiness of LGBTQ+ relationships, I see joy, laughter, community building, thoughtful care, blooming families, creativity, resilience, and compassion. I see the love of Christ at work in the world. I see the hands of a God who chose under no duress to take up residence in a human body, to drink wine with tax collectors and break bread with sex workers and carry urchin children around on his shoulders. That's my limited little pet interpretation, but hey, that's all any of us really have, at the end of the day.

So, I am absolutely happy to do a play-by-play breakdown of why those passages you were given (we queer Christians often call them "clobber passages" or "texts of terror") don't hold water in a theological, historical, and cultural context. We can talk about Jesus blessing the eunuch and the institution of Greek pederasty and Levitical purity laws and Paul because I've done that reading. I've spent my nights crying in self-hatred and leafing through doctrine books and arguing with my pastors and writing long grad school essays on the subjects. Send me the verses, if you can remember them, and I'll take a look. But it's worth noting that out of the entire Bible, I believe there are only six that explicitly condemn homosexuality AND I'm being generous and including Sodom and Gommorah here, which is a willful and ignorant misreading if I've ever seen one.

In the meantime, I recommend books by people smarter than me! Try Outside The Lines: How Embracing Queerness Will Transform Your Faith by Mihee Kim-Kort, or Does Jesus Really Love Me by Jeff Chu, or Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians by Austen Hartke!

And take a breath, dear one. Breathe in God, in the droplets of water in the air and in the wind from the south. Breathe in the gift of life, and know that you are loved, now and unto the end of the age and even beyond then.

[aster-draws]

YOU.

I cant even begin to formulate a sentence to convey how much i adore better halves. I even started writing my very first fic beacuse of it.

On that note: i have no clue what I'm doing. Any tips for writing? I'm thinking specifically when it comes to dialogue, but any and all advice is appreciated!

consider me pinned to the floor like that one cat with the onions (sorry it took so long for me to reply- work school adult responsibilities ect)

Wow I'm so happy to hear you started writing! Genuinely it brings me so much joy and to know I'm inspiring others is like. you know. tear jerking or whatever.

I don't really have many tips apart from like, the fact that it's the same as any other skill, right- you're gonna suck at it a little at first. I wrote so much crap by volume it's insane. If you don't believe me there is evidence way back on my a03 page (and there's a lot more that isn't. hundreds of thousands of words in my google docs). Sometimes I still feel like I'm just writing trash. so you just keep on trucking and then it gets more and more decent. until eventually it's like. good. ish.

As for specific advice with dialogue- I talk through my stuff all the time. i read it out loud to myself and also anyone who will listen. I feel like better halves specifically takes a lot of cues from like early 2000's rom coms, specifically in dialect, most of MY favorites of which are adapted from shakespeare, and so I wouldn't exactly call the way they speak natural, if that makes sense? People don't talk like that. But I think it's fun and genre. But even with that, there's a lot of more of it that is? I just hear them in my head.

So yeah moral of the story is to just write all the time and read it out loud if you're not sure. It's gonna be a lot faster to figure out what's wrong than to figure out the way to fix it. The best advice I have for how to develop an ear about it is to read. A lot. The more you read and the more variety you read the better your ear/eye will get for it. unfortunately this means reading a broader variety of stuff. i read a lot of fanfiction, but also literary fiction, classics, non fiction. don't get stuck by genre and push to read more difficult things because it really can change the way you think and approach your own work

yeah xo you're gonna create amazing things I believe in you.

[manchestereyes]

Your tags about the mortgage and the photo they posted made me realize that was it. The memo he sent out. The one people missed. It was that pic of them in the house they bought together. Homeowning homosexuals.

omg YES!!! looking back on it now, it really does say soooo much. firstly, they're in front of the piano. and we know. we KNOW how important the piano, and music more specifically, is to dan. i bet you anything that even when costs were adding up on the builders and things, dan suggested waiting to get the piano, saying he'd be fine with his keyboard and anyway, if all goes according to plan (with wad), he probably won't be home that much to play anyway. but phil would not hear of it. this is their phouse!!! it's been his dream ever since he and dan first met to walk through their house listening to dan play the most breathtaking songs he's ever heard.

so they got the piano. even though it took a chunk out of the dinok budget but it's looking more and more like that's not happening anyway so at least they have this. and they realized it's the perfect space to put small gifts and cards from their loved ones, so when dan needs to let his hurt and anger out on the keys, he'll know he's still loved.

plus... they did it. they finally did it. after years of working with designers and builders and squeezing into a tiny apartment lined with boxes upon boxes and working themselves to the bone long before that--they finally have something to show for all of it. every moment since dan first found phil's channel has led to this. whether together or apart, from the moment they met, they knew they were in this for the long haul.

and now, dan can finally tell that little boy who spent his GCSEs dreaming of finding another emo boy to share his life with, that he did it. and he can rest now. and phil too can tell that uni kid whose heart was growing emptier and emptier at seeing all his friends coupling off that it'll work out for him too. that soon his heart and life will be fuller than he's ever known. because he finally has someone who understands and welcomes the deepest parts of him. someone whose ambition and dreams push phil to explore his own.

they get to exhale now. and it's such a visceral feeling that they have to share it with the world.

[xxplastic-cubexx]

what is your favorite thing about charles and your favorite thing about erik? separately, as in what you like most about their characters :]

a devious question this one is, my friend!!! it's hard enough for me to explain my thoughts cohesively, but having to pick ONE thing i particularly love is difficult. with characters like charles and erik, theres been so much done with their characters over the decades and so they have so many components to them that make them so interesting and fun to observe. BUT I TRY FOR YOU TODAY. under the cut i kinda ramble and the size of this text box makin me anxious

i think if i were to be simple and broad, what i enjoy most about charles is his determination to help others, even if he isn't really thanked and/or if people don't even like him. ofc, this isn't to say he hasn't done wrong- to be honest, the fact he does wrong/questionable things at times is another aspect of him i really enjoy, maybe because- broadly speaking- he's meant to be altruistic (intent vs outcome and all that). i don't know if that's super exciting to most people, but it is for me

as for erik, my reason for liking him is easier to explain tbh. To Be Simple And Broad, his progression from villain to antihero over the decades has been fun to observe (as much as i have so far anyhow) and analyze. i think to be a bit more specific, him using his rage and pain as justifications for his villainous actions is definitely what compels me the most: hurt people hurt and the sort, an idea i've always found interesting (something something vicious cycles and the like). yet now, he recognizes this wasn't really. A Just Thing To Do and is beginning to change that, which i enjoy

[sabrondabrainrot]

🫣🫣🫣

Omigod favorite fandom?!?!!

I can't pick one....

I'm still ride or die for anything CLAMP related or KHR. Katekyo Hitman Reborn my beloved. I still need more ppl to read xxxHolic and Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles.

So far I've really liked the TMNT community, they seem chill but I only glance in from the outside.

The adventure time fandom cooks.

Very cringe answer but I miss early homestuck fandom....

Oh yeah I like the various danmei and korean novel fandoms.

Scum villain self saving system has me for life....

Also ONE PIECE

Lout of the counts family...

Omniscient reader viewpoint....

Also winx club

And most magical girl fandoms

I like a certain few in the tsams fandom

I miss the days of being a fnaf theorizer. I'm a big sb theorist so one day might write my random theories on fnaf sb.

Kingdom hearts fandom is so amazing everyone is so talented.

Persona actually has a fic I've been writing but it did take the back burner. Lots of fanart I've created for persona.

I go through phases a lot too when I hyper-fixate. So it depends if I actually will go deep and interact with fandom.

Pretty much everything I've done fanart for.

[sortanonymous]

So who in the universe is Lulu?

I don't want to sound mean or anything, but after over a year and a half, I'm still wondering what happens in that Kirby Starlight Theater light novel and especially everything about that Lulu woman. Whether she's related to Susie or whatever (I heard she might be, but I'm not sure). I don't even care about the surprise anymore. If anyone has read that book by now (it hasn't been translated on Tumblr yet), then please tell me absolutely everything about Lulu. At this point, it's too late to really affect my own AU or anything, but I'm just desperate to know.

[bittersweetblasphemy]

the problem with writing a fantasy loosely based on a historical culture is you need to decide how "loose" you're willing to go. like yeah i know they didn't have silk but fuck you there's a literal god sitting right the fuck there and of course he would want that shit. but also would the protagonist know what the fuck a book is?

[elegy-if]

how gory is the game going to be?

well... gore isn't my strongest suit, but i don't think i'm awful at it or else i wouldn't be writing a story with such a gory premise (+ i want to get better at it lol). it's not the goriest thing, imo? but i mainly read horror novels so take that with a grain of salt.

[pbstarot]

idk if you know but john was abusing yoko troughout their relationship so choosing that couple for your pac is kinda :/ especially for a pac about a future partner

Hi!

So, I chose John and Yoko, because their relationship was symbiotic. I know that John never physically abused Yoko (which cannot be said about May Pang and Cynthia Lennon, unfortunately, as he used to push May Pang around. He hit Cynthia on her head once only in their relationship which lead to her not speaking to him for 3 months, which was bad, of course, but Cynthia denied any further abuse (and Yoko herself denied he ever laid a hand on her, although I unfortunately couldn't find the source for that (but anywhere you look most people talk about bis 1960s abuse which, yeah, totally fair and completely unwarranted). Now, not to add salt to injury, but Ringo Starr beat his wife Maureen Starkey so much she had to go to the hospital once, but you never see him painted as the wife beater. I always hated that so I am bringing it up cause I personally got beef with Ringo. I personally have beef with all of the Beatles actually but that's neither here nor there).

You could argue that the abuse that John inflicted on Yoko was emotional (co-dependent), BUT you could also argue that the abuse Yoko inflicted on John was likewise emotional, because of the alleged influence she had one him ("She's gone to his head, they look just like two gurus in drag.") Or because of the way she made him stay with her at all times and the way she kept her relationship open towards the end, also alleged (like the legend of how she moved her lover into their place at the Dakota right after John was shot). There's obviously more, like she controlled his diet (she went on record saying she didn't allow John to eat chocolate, but she let him do it on the last week of his life because he wanted it so much. He had to go behind her back to do a lot of things, which is more or less portrayed in Two of Us, the movie (which, even though a fictionalized account, it was written and directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, who was also behind Let It Be, the documentary which the footage from Get Back came from. Paul McCartney himself said it's one of his favorite Beatles biography films cause of accuracy, which I don't have it here but I know for a fact he said it on a podcast). So yeah, complicated. The reason why John and Yoko broke up the first time, which lead up to the Lost Weekend, was because John cheated on her, and then she threw him out. Then she sent May Pang after him and even encouraged her to get into a relationship with him, so Yoko could exercise some control there (although accounts differ on the real reason). So, yeah, I think both John and Yoko were a bit weird when it came to their relationship.

So, idk. I find them really interesting as people. And largely I just saw them as more of a means for people to choose a pile than anything. Even if I don't condone John's actions in the past and definitely don't think Yoko was the saint that revisionism is painting her as (although I love her and she's one of my favorite people because she's just so creative, I always say she's the poster child for the sign of Aquarius. They should just put a picture of her in astrology books for people to go "Oh, I see," and carry on). I just had them on my mind. Sorry if you didn't like my choice, but I love the Beatles and that's what I felt like talking abt.

If you're really uncomfortable, look at another Future Spouse PAC for guidance, I guess.

[azems-familiar]

Revan Adarii meets ""canon"" Revan What happens? :p

"canon" revan's a little bitch and wouldn't be able to withstand her sheer toxic queer swag. he evaporates on the spot

[permanentreverie]

I saw you're looking for Dostoevsky recs!!!! I go here!!!!!!!! If you're looking to start his Great Novels™ Crime and Punishment is the obvious starting place (I wrote my thesis on it! Just a really, really solid and engrossing book). The Brothers Karamazov is his magnum opus and like, my favorite book of all time; the only thing is that it's like if a novel were a christian existentialist treatise in a trenchcoat. The Idiot is a great and weird book - def not his best work technically but the ideas he's trying to articulate are sublime and provide great context for the ones he ends up fleshing out more in Brothers K. Feel free to skip Demons tbh; it's a 700 page polemic against the Russian Leftists of the 1860s and 1870s. And so sorry if you've read any of these already ahshdhfhf i just live here

Omg thank you!!!! I've heard great things about Crime & Punishment, and actually picked it up at a second hand bookstore last year! I've been looking forward to it, and hopefully if things keep going well I may even get around to reading it this year! In my copy I downloaded of White Nights I think it included the Brothers K … I'll have to check that out 👀

[scrawnytreedemon]

How to write Main Character: Make them feel unique,make them feel different but also familiar. Like you can see them everywhere at the same time nowhere

Or we can go the easy road and make one with God complex

I feel like ppl don't really make good main characters anymore. They feel the same these days

Ehhh???

Honestly, people do make good main characters, you just have to look. Usually easier to find in non-YA novels, in my experience. They tend to feel more like fleshed-out *people* with their own life-experience than vessels for the reader to insert themselves into,

Which, ironically enough, makes it easier for me to relate to them, even if we are otherwise very different people. If you make your character a person, then inevitably, some of those experiences line up.

If anything, trying to walk that tightrope of having your character just "unique" enough to be interesting while still "relatable" enough as to appeal to as many people as possible is where things can get muddy and you end up failing either way.

I think it tends to affect some genres more than others, but at the end of the day... It really isn't as bad of an issue as people make it out to be. Like, yeah. Mediocre literature exists. Things tend to be mid more than they are especially good or bad.

And I think that's fine.

Plus, tastes vary. There's no doubt alot of stuff I love that people will look at and say is subpar. There is no objective way of looking at fiction-- We all come in with our own biases.

I'm going offtopic. Hope the first half of this reply made sense. Apologies if I've completely misunderstood your point.

I dunno, I just hear these complaints, and it makes me think of alot of those shitty writing guides that I used to eat up (often made by amateur writers themselves), which were very insistent on finding the "right" way to write and ruthlessly mocking anything "bad."

I don't think that's what you were going for, at all, but I still think it's very generalising, and I'm not sure what to make of it?

[jesncin]

Any thoughts on Shayne, son of J’onn and Kendra Saunders?

Ooh I totally forgot J'onn had a son with a Hawkgirl in one of the comics! He looks like a cute lil guy. I'm personally more attached to K'hym but I think it's neat that in some versions J'onn gets to be a dad again. I'm all for him starting a new family :)

[nedlittle]

Your museum work sounds so lovely!

If it's alright to ask, how did you get into the kind of work you do?

well, the easy answer is that if you're going to work in history, it generally helps to have a degree in it. also a caveat that my museum work is a) not indicative of all museum work and generally a museum studies degree is at the very least helpful b) essentially social media based since i am remote. i was actually supposed to relocate and help with more typically museum stuff (i.e. photographing and cataloguing archives, working the front desk) but due to personal circumstances that was not in the cards and they were gracious enough (and really needed the help) to allow me to alter the position a bit. so instead i get to colour-code spreadsheets and make newsletters and write and research articles with whatever sources they give me. the majority of these articles go on facebook but some of them are direct requests from residents, or occasionally, the local hospital who wanted a blurb about their namesake to put on their website. because this position is so writing-based, i sort of make up for my lack of formal museum education with eng/hist experience instead

if you're in canada and you're currently in school or under 30 and are interested in history and/or museum spaces, check out young canada works and canada summer jobs which is how i got both of my museum jobs

[world-of-fire-and-flight]

Embers of Eternity Blurb....Draft 103

A/N: BLURBS ARE THE BANE OF EXISTENCE😣😭 I can't tell y'all how many times I've revised it and at this point idk if I'm just mad at it and that's why I'm having trouble with it or if it still needs work. Would you mind dropping some feedback for me? This is for Embers of Eterinity/book 2 in my Heirs of Tenebris trilogy (Fire & Flight (book 1) blurb here; Fire & Flight general info masterlist here), so any and all help is totally appreciated so I can get this finalized😄💜

The spirits of the Shadow Forest are waking up.

Hidden in the centuries-old legends of the forest is the history forgotten by the country of Tenebris. But for seventeen-year-old Nyla, the 600-year-old history has become her present. Struggling to break the curse binding her to the Woodlane Manor, she and her companions must race against time to find and defeat the evil sorceress threatening their homeland. With the help of Xander and Shamira, the fierce pumpkie who’d taken up the forbidden quest to investigate the disturbances in magic, Nyla searches for a way to break the curse that won’t require a hefty sacrifice.

But even as their small victories swell their hope, the real battle is only just beginning. With the trio forced to confront their pasts, Nyla and Xander must trust the help offered to them by outside sources and connect the missing links provided by a secret society. But what if Dinora raises her army before Nyla and Xander can gather the forces necessary to defeat her? Will defeating her cost them their dreams of the future?

Return to Tenebris in Embers of Eternity, the stunning sequel to [my] epic young adult fantasy series, the Heirs of Tenebris.

[lunaetis]

@v-iciious asked :

“I am who I am because of you. You are every reason, every hope, and every dream I’ve ever had.” // for violet !!

unprompted. || always accepting

─「ヴァイオレット」─  you're a weapon and weapons don't weep.

                THE BEAST OF BOUGAINVILLIA was exactly that. she was a living weapon and a proof of how far one could be pushed into becoming deadly enough to be called a weapon rather than a person. despite possessing an appearance of a young woman, those azure eyes had shown no emotions ever since she was brought up. she was raised, and taught to be nothing but a killing machine. a living, breathing tool for someone to use, and a BEAST to bring victory to her master. fight and kill. blood and ashes. war and sacrifices. that was all she knew. that was her entire life. one order after another. no question, no emotion, none.

                and here she was, the same beast, the WEAPON whose her collar was cut loose and she latched onto the person who freed her from the officials ready to dispose of her. bright blue eyes were no longer emotionless, however, as they sparkled with silent delight every time they landed upon HIM. perhaps, not unlike a puppy awaiting to be petted, to be praised, to be called.

                " i am who I am because of you. you are every reason, every hope, and every dream i've ever had. "

                and the SOLDIER stared at him, feeling the warmth of his hand against her cheek, feeling the warmth of his words seeping into her heart. each syllable registered itself into her mind, wrapping like vines so tightly and securely around the BEATING ORGAN in her left chest. and she stared at him with her eyes revealing everything words cannot.

                she looked at him like he was light, like he was hope in the darkness, like he was that silver-lining through the endless storm, like he was dawn that broke the dark, like he was EVERYTHING.

                and it was just that. it was truth. to violet, lir was her reason to live.

                shouldn't it be her who said those words to him ? shouldn't it be HER who told him just how much he meant to her, how she would be so willing to break every bones in her body just to keep him safe ? it should be like that, right ? her gloved hand slowly came over his own, gently pressing it closer to her cheek as she leaned into his touch, head turning so that she could nuzzle her lips into that the calloused palm that had been stained with blood countless of time. even so, she treated it like he was HOLY.

                lir ... lir ... lir ...

                " please don't go where i can't follow. " it was a plead, a confession, a pledge, a VOW, all in one. in that single sentence, it was clear how her whole existence was tied to this person, how her VERY sense of self was made up, and around, the man before her. nothing else mattered, no one else could come close. his existence in her life was so massive that she cannot comprehend GOING FORWARD without him.

                " no matter where the path you walk would lead, whether it leads to salvation, eternal paradise, or literal hell, i will follow you. i will follow you anywhere. " LOVE ... she knew this was love in its purest sense, in the sense that she would have loved him regardless of time, circumstances, or any change in the future. she clutched his hand a little tighter, then leaning forward just so she could rest her forehead to his. like a lost puppy, like a lost soul finally finding a home after wandering aimlessly for so long.

                " i never dream, never hope. i never have desire for anything ... except you. "

                " if a weapon, a war tool like myself can become someone's hope and dream, then it's all because of you. i owe it to you. because you taught me what love is, all the love i have in me is for you and you alone. "

                " this body, this heart — it's all yours, lir. "