#inherent divinity

[compassionmattersmost]

The Divine Within: Jesus’ Teachings on Our True Nature

In many Christian teachings, the concept of sin often overshadows the more empowering messages found within the Scriptures. Yet, Jesus’ words offer profound insights into the divine nature inherent in each of us. By revisiting his teachings, we can uncover a more uplifting understanding of our spiritual identity. John 14:20: “On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in…

[bungledown-chim]

i cannot explain how much kristen needs to change her marketing tactic

she keeps going around and saying that cassandra is the goddess of mystery and doubt and the night, but thats not quite true. cassandra is the goddess of finding safety in the unknown. of not being afraid of doubt.

she is the belief that even if you don't know where you are or what to do, if you are lost and alone in a dark forest, there will be something on the other side, and all you have to do is get there. Cassandra is the goddess of staring into the cold, uncaring void and feeling a warm hand clasp your own, of a whisper in your ear saying youre going to be okay. you aren't alone. it is going to be scary and hard and uncertain, but you will never be on your own because i am here with you. you will never be lost because i know where you are

[goatyuuji]

Honestly, itafushi is just that “I have two wolves inside me” meme but both these wolves fucked up….Also Yuuji being a white wolf and Megumi being a black wolf 🐺

[itsabouttimex2]

(I think I’m gonna drop this and see how it does cause I’ve been thinking on it for a while, and since I’m not exactly satisfied with my wording I’ll probably delete it, but for a day or two I’m gonna let it settle cause my feelings are split on this perspective and I don’t know if I’m blowing these things out of proportion…)

In general I just don’t really think MK is as good of a hero as the series wants him to be, not in that he’s a “bad person” so much as in that the show is so desperate to gas him up as a “true hero” that it actually warps from reasonable praise that fits in line with his actions to a level of shilling that his actual behavior doesn’t match up with at all.

(In short, if you don’t want to read the whole thing: MK is genuinely a good person, and he’s a functional hero, but when the series outright deprecates Wukong to hype MK up and has his villains remark on what a good hero he is, it really feels shallow on account of MK’s actions rarely going above “we fight people who threaten us”)

And for as much as Lego Monkie Kid does hype up MK (and sometimes his friends but especially MK) as “true heroes”, it’s never really willing to engage with him as being a hero outside of a very shallow “we fight whatever guys are trying to kill us”, -which leads to a very strange situation where his “heroism” usually goes only as far as batting a monster out of the city without any insurance to prevent it from coming back and doing more harm later on, or hell, maybe even just ditching Megapolis and going to attack some other city without a hero to protect.

(It’s especially wild given that MK was ENTIRELY willing to smash (and thereby implicitly reseal) DBK beneath a mountain in his first fight against demon and then entirely gives up on ever being proactive with the preventation of harm ever again because what the fuck kid you were literally on track the very first fight you ever had in your life?? Why’d you go and lose the plot when it made you look so much better???)

MK isn’t the person whose home is getting laser-nuked to ashes by Demon Bull King (there were miles of those in his first attack), and he’s not someone whose been stolen by the Spider Queen to serve as a slave (like Syntax), and he doesn’t get a calamitous fire fused with him after Macaque forces a world-threatening ritual to be performed under threat of his death (Mei), so HE can throw “second chances” out like candy, but that’s only because the narrative is never willing to engage with victims of these villains outside of their impacts on either him or the landscape, the second of which is almost always instantly glossed over or outright played for laughs, even for FLOWER FRUIT MOUNTAIN itself, and if it does have an impact on someone else then it’s only to have them be upset for a few seconds/a minute or two before outright pretending they never had experienced negative interactions begin with.

And giving out “redemptions” to the villains without actually really engaging with their victims (even within the main cast!) really feels less like a hero magnanimously giving someone a second chance and more like watching the hero keep doing what he’s been doing from almost the very start- letting dangerous jerks off the hook, even though they keep coming back to hurt people, but this time, after their fourth mass assault charge, they wander off into the sunset and this time instead of leading another assault they decide to become good people.

(With introspection and actual growth occurring offscreen, of course, because it’s not like the actual ARC of redemption arcs is the fun part/s. On, and all those victims they built up, all the damage they caused, the fear they inspired and the trauma they very likely left innocent souls with?? Never addressed, of course! Only MK’s traumas are important to the story, and they’re so important that most of his key character development involves getting punched with more and more of that angst without ever stopping to address that other characters have been suffering right alongside him, at least never for more than a few seconds/a single minute to explore a brief moment of insecurity or anger before that “flaw” gets packed up to be repurposed, ex: Mei is insecure about her heritage? Solved in an episode! But now she’s at Ao Guang’s place and she’s insecure about her heritage again! Oh, wait- solved in one episode- again!)

It’s especially jarring that the story sets up Azure Lion as a false hero for, essentially, being too proactive in his desire to fight evil and protect the mortal realm that he adores, where MK and his crew are “true heroes” for… waiting for threats to personally inconvenience them before dealing with those threats.

The leonine demon wants to go to the root of what he sees as a tree long rotten and rip it out to supplant it with what he believes is a better core (whether himself or Sun Wukong), while MK and his friends are content to ignore threats and let them fester as long as they aren’t currently fighting or being endangered by said threats. There’s never an actual clash between these perspectives and actions- it’s just “Azure is bad now and can’t control himself, so it’s ethical to beat him around,” which especially is absolutely fucking bonkers when it’s revealed Azure, despite being a soldier of the Jade Emperor, didn’t even know about the whole “this guy is holding the world together with his own power” thing and probably wouldn’t have iced the guy if he had known what would happen.

And on the topic of heroes, I’m also going to come in and say that Azure’s “delusional hero” characterization would be FAR more poignant and fitting if he had learned all that business and still went through with his plan with a “fuck it, I can ball” attitude based on his absolute assurance of his abilities and status as a hero… only to utterly spiral out of control anyways, instead of being hazily warned about dubious consequences by the Jade Emperor and Nezha instead of just being outright told that the world is almost guaranteed to end if he goes forward with this.

Along with Azure’s general character, the ecocide scene centered around knocking himself off of the “hero” pedestal he’s on is really just there to reassure MK (and the audience) about the kid’s status as a hero. It’s a nasty, unforeshadowed cop-out so the series can say “MK, don’t feel bad about fighting him! He’s actually not that good of a guy at all! Don’t feel bad about fighting Azure cause he’s done bad stuff and isn’t really a good guy! MK you’re a perfectly justified moral little boy! Azure doesn’t hold a candle to you!” and dashes his supposed ideals as a shallow veneer instead of having the characters engage with them to support the in-universe viewpoint that MK and his friends are just the very most bestest heroes ever.

(Not to mention that this reveal is literally delivered to the audience by Macaque, who just ass-pulls the knowledge of where to take MK and what to tell him about the big guy to change the kid’s mind in spite of never previously sharing so much as a single word or interaction with Azure to connect the two. Every day I believe a little more in my Macaque Replacement Theory)

So basically, the writers ended up tanking that complexity to give MK an easy moral victory when it could’ve been so cool to do something other than that, like MK acknowledging that hey, Azure is trying to prevent tragedy from occurring in the first place and was outright willing to take part in a siege on the heavens to ostensibly use the Jade Emperor’s powers for good where MK happily sits around until the threatening forces present in the world come to him and his home, and how neither of those paths is inherently “correct”, but any potential complexity is torpedoed with “Actually he’s delusional and needs to go down. Also his plan was inherently flawed and realm-threatening. And he committed ecocide. Also he’s toxic and projects onto the people around him. And his actions personally kill him to keep MK’s hands mostly clean.”

So essentially the narrative says:

“Azure, you should’ve known better than to play god by interfering with cosmic forces of the universe to do what you thought was best for it. This is objectively bad of you given information that existed outside of your knowledge and was inherently flawed and led to tragedy! Why couldn’t you just let things be?!”

While also saying:

“Anyways Season 5!MK, you can play god! You interfering with the cosmic forces of the universe to do what you think is best for it will be portrayed as heroic, dramatic, and sympathetic while also turning out to be the objectively correct and morally right decision! It’s good that you didn’t just let things be!”

And the “consequences” of the difference here are that: while MK and Azure Lion both have the chance to either stand complacently by in the face of what they consider a fixable injustice in the world, and all it takes is denying the cosmic authority that stands above them, and for denying it Azure dies, while MK successfully breaks an unfair and harsh cycle, gives the world cool superpowers, and gets to live on with his friends in a now eternal world.

And this wouldn’t be such a big deal to me if the story was willing to explore what the writers consider “true” heroism outside of… ??? What do they consider “true” heroism? When the good you’ve performed far outweighs the bad? When you… succeed? Is Azure castigated by the narrative for not succeeding? Clearly not, because he’s portrayed negatively in terms of his actions even before the consequences of killing the Jade Emperor set in. Is he only a bad guy for using deceit and subterfuge to get what he wants, because that also happens before he murders the Jade Emperor. I mean, the heroes aren’t above scheming and fucking around themselves-

Like breaking into the Celestial Realm, running roughshod, stealing, and then leaving without returning anything or explaining to anyone about what’s going on afterwards!

Is he a bad guy for wanting to upset the status quo? At some point it feels less like the narrative considers MK a “true hero” because they have a definition for what actually counts as that and more because he’s the protagonist and, well, they want to hype him up.

Basically and for the TLDR, the narrative is custom-built to morally reward MK for essentially all of his heroic actions, even if they fall sharply in line with what the “bad guys” were doing just a season earlier or are outright as shallow as giving attempted mass murderers a dozen second chances to try and kill more innocent people, also without ever truly addressing or applying in-universe consequences for the run-off of his actions such as bringing the trigram furnace to earth and leaving it there, concealing his meeting with the Lady Bone Demon, releasing the Ink Curse by fucking around with the scroll for more than a few seconds or a quick remand before moving past it.

And, can we stop right here and think about a role swap for a moment?

If Sun Wukong had done ANY of that, we all fucking know that the story would’ve stopped sharp to rip him a new asshole and have at least one person would stop to shriek at him about what an irresponsible person he was, about how bad of a mentor he is, about how stupid it was for him not to clean up loose ends. But MK receives a bare minimum throwaway scolding from one of his friends + Ink Curse for releasing it, which doesn’t impact how they or the fandom view him at all.

This is especially egregious for the fact that Wukong is treated like a knuckle-dragging lobotomite by the story (and fandom) whose feats are far surpassed by MK when the Monkey King actually managed to crush his foes in varying ways (destroying their kingdoms, imprisoning them, killing them, etc) that ushered in an era of peace that allowed for rapid technological advancement… but now they’re back and he’s getting beaten over the head for everything, which unintentionally makes it clear that showing mercy in Monkie Kid is just a really, really stupid thing to do unless you’re the super special central protagonist and the writers want to hype you up as the very goodest little boy in the whole wide world over who has full moral authority to allow his city and friends and world to be threatened again and again and again… as long as he’s being “nice” about it.

[shisasan]

In every beam of light, a shadow lingers, silent, unseen, yet inseparable. The shadow whispers what the light cannot say, carrying the weight of hidden truths, the depth beneath the surface. Two halves of the same whole, light and dark entwined, one cannot be without the other. For even the brightest star casts a shadow, and every shadow remembers the light.

[cottoncandysprite]

Happy to say that I am back in my "every time I remember the ineffable husbands exist I have to sit down for a second" mindset

[heygangitstheo]

i love research and academia and whatnot. unfortunately my sole writing skill is creating dope ass titles for my papers. and that's it.

[zukosdualdao]

the moon will sing a song for me (i loved you like the sun)

zutara month, day seven: divine intervention, @zutaramonth.

summary: when zuko takes the lightning aimed for katara, it takes a little more than her usual healing to get him back from the brink. feat. yue's words of encouragement and empowering influence on katara, medically necessary bloodbending, and a zuko who is too out of it to understand much of what is going on, but that's okay. katara has him.

content warnings: general references to violence and wounds, nothing more explicit than the show.

notes: title is from "the moon will sing" by the crane wives. yes i do too many lyric titles. no i will not stop <3. idk when sozin's comet officially ended but for fic purposes we are imagining the timing makes sense for the moon to be out after the agni kai. two pieces of dialogue were taken from the show.

Zuko groans as he's being turned over. His bones feel like liquid, his skin set alight, his heart like a crater in his chest.

Katara, he thinks, he tries to say, he doesn't know.

Katara looks at him with a worried expression, her lips turned in a frown, her eyes wide with fear and sadness as she presses a watery hand to his crumpled, prone form.

She is worried but alive. She is alive, and if she is here, then she must have defeated Azula.

Katara is alive. That is what counts. This was his destiny, then. To save her.

It wasn't a bad note to end on.

Zuko closes his eyes. There's a hammering thud in his chest. He is so tired. Normally, he'd associate the feel of it with exertion, or else desperation, and he would feel frantic. But he is so tired. He has been so tired.

"No," he thinks he hears Katara say. It sounds like she's underwater, or perhaps he is. "No, Zuko, don't you dare."

He struggles to open his eyes again because he doesn't want her to sound so angry with him and doesn't want her to be sad. It only feels like a moment has passed, or maybe it has been hours.

She is looking up. Pale, yellow light shadows her.

Katara is speaking with the moon.

The moon is also a girl.

Someone told him a story like that once.

A spirit, he thinks a little redundantly, with white tresses of hair and a glowy form and a gentle smile. The moon spirit?

Zuko jerks, a spasm of his body as he lights up again with the pain, and Katara looks back to him, alarmed.

"—but you know another way," the moon-girl insists softly to Katara, whom Zuko looks at as her mouth sets in a thin, determined line. Unless he's imagining it all, which is possible. "And I am here with you now."

After a moment's hesitation, Katara nods and sets her left, water-encased hand against his chest again and raises her other in a motion he faintly recognizes.

"This is going to hurt," she says warningly, sadly. "But it will help. I think. It has to." She shakes her head, torn.

Zuko doesn't know what's going on, but if Katara says it will help, that's all that really matters.

"I trust you," he slurs. Is that him? Does he sound like that?

Katara blinks. Zuko watches tears slip from her cheeks.

And then, it starts. She did not lie about it hurting. Despite himself, Zuko feels his body rising from the ground in pain and panic, and Katara has to keep him pressed down. His blood is boiling, his chest swelling. This must be what dying feels like. But then, he's pretty sure he was dying before. He supposes it's a process.

"—sorry, sorry, I'm so sorry—" Zuko makes out the words, faint in his ears, though Katara sobs them out.

Eventually, though, the beat of his heart evens. His blood begins to simmer down. The pain melts.

He watches as Katara pulls back, resting on her knees. The moon-girl smiles down on them before fading back into being just the moon, high in their war-torn sky again.

Nothing that just happened makes any sense, Zuko decides dazedly. But it was Katara who saved him, and that made all the sense in the world.

"Thank you, Katara," he rasps, looking up at her through heavy eyes. Looking at her made everything in the world seem alright again.

She looks down at him with a soft expression and a watery smile.

"I think I'm the one who should be thanking you."

[the-priestess-of-dawn]

Thinking about how when Chrom talks to Robin at the beginning of chapter 6, just after war has broken out, he specifically says "Not everything Gangrel said was a lie." And then his next line is talking about how his father waged war on Plegia, which makes it sound like, oh, okay, Gangrel was telling the truth when he said the former exalt led a crusade against them. But I'm wondering if the line that was truly eating at Chrom was actually "Yours is now a haven of hypocrisy." Because this is when Chrom goes into detail about how Emmeyn suffered ending the war and bringing peace to Ylisse, and he's, y'know, way more bitter about how the Ylissean people acted than anything Plegia did. He talks about how Plegians "rightfully remember" what his father put them through and he does mention that their desire for vengeance was part of the legacy their father left her to deal with, but what he goes into detail about, what he complains about, what he's really upset about is the Ylissean response. They hurt her and she hid the fact that she was suffering from everyone while continuing to work to heal them. And then they "forgave" her—Chrom literally uses scare quotes. Now, he doesn't say "those damn hypocrites" aloud, but the implication is pretty much "how could those damn hypocrites 'forgive' her when she did nothing wrong and they did nothing but attack her? They should have been the ones begging for forgiveness."

And like, this all started when he was 4 years old, you know? He brings up how Emmeryn wasn't even 10 yet when she became exalt, and that means he was only 4! It's been 15 years. He's had these feelings about the situation for most of his life! And then you've got Gangrel over here, mouthing off because he wants to start a war but he needs to be able to paint Ylisse as the aggressor, and he throws out "yours is a haven of hypocrisy"— How horrific and sickening must it feel to hear the enemy who openly claims to want all of your people dead make a statement about them that you agree with.

And perhaps Chrom is thinking about himself, too. This conversation is where he gives his "perhaps I must be death's agent" line. Emmeryn would never order Gangrel killed, and he wouldn't WANT her to do so, but he is fully ready to take the matter into his own hands. He believes in his sister's ideals. But. They're not as important as HER. Virtue isn't his priority and he knows it.

Honestly, the whole Plegia arc is such a dark time for him.

[tritoch]

i've seen posts before drawing parallels between FFXIV paladins and 5e oath of the ancients paladins since the name and principles of the subclass are fitting for the warrior of light

what i've never seen anyone point out before, however, is that this is not the only thing that makes it relevant, because it also has access to FFXIV's most impactful ability: the power to summon the Cutscene Chains

at long last...the power of the ancients, in your hands...

[uncanny-tranny]

You lose the plot when discussing and fighting for minorities when you buy into the specific brand of (specifically christianity) "suffering is Divine, and the more you Suffer, the More Divine you are."

Suffering is suffering is suffering - when you choose to ignore a marginalized group's suffering because they are not suffering enough or are not "good victims," you have lost the plot.

[sweetlytempests]

i appreciate that the starbreaker fandom (and the jace stans specifically) all looked at the finale and said "well if brennan is gonna let this perfectly good twink go to waste, we'll take him." now he's ours and i think that's beautiful.

[joy-jpg]

favored acolyte

[sicklyseraphnsuch]

contracts, clauses, and causes for action

It seems to me that the ball is entirely in the gods court. Like the only way for Ludinus to become compelling is if the gods leapfrog over the divine gate, rendering their word null and void.

Then there's a cause for action because the mortals will realize "hey, we have no way of keeping you honest, there's no consequence that we can enact when you fail to fulfill your oath". Like a contract is only binding if there's way to enforce it - when you pinky promise to take your kid to disneyland, is that a valid contract or just performative? because if you break a pinky promise, the only consequence is your kid loses faith in you - is that penalty enough?

and the thing is: the divine gate is proof that yeah, the gods do believe that's penalty enough. the one thing that downfall managed to reinforce (which granted we already knew but deeper context only further supports) is that the gods are capable of acknowledging their harm (however unintentional) done to mortals. And not only are they able to acknowledge it, they are able to correct themselves.

and so far, thats holding true. they are demonstrating their discipline and willingness to follow through even if the mortals remain powerless and hold no leverage against them, they can keep themselves beholden to their word because they are in fact Good.

so literally, the only way Ludinus can be proven somewhat compelling is if the gods decide to hop the divine gate. then we'll have some proof that their word is not that ironclad but even then its not to the level of "all gods must die". Thats more on the level of "all gods need to come to the table and renegotiate this contract so theres clauses to allow you exceptions". because absolute contracts tend to force people's hands anyways.

and the only implication that a god hopping the divine gate gives is to reintroduce the idea that the gods are not beholden to mortals in any way and there is no way to keep a god honest - that mortals will have to rely on a god's inherent Goodness to keep themselves honest. but again - what the fuck have the Prime Deities done in this world that has ever pointed in that direction truly? (and no, dont attest the workings of their mortal followers when the gods have banned themselves from interference).

the gods would have to break the contract twice - once to stop predathos, and a second time for less dire purposes - in order to really showcase that they arent trustworthy. thats a Fucking Lot to mess up. and again they dont seem willing to even break the divine gate for Ludinus so what is even the problem here?

the problem, narratively speaking, is that the current world is built by fairly Good gods who really havent done anything of significance to showcase tyranny. none of them is on the level of Marika, from Elden Ring, whose personal history has led to death and discrimination of innocent children - which she actively campaigned for and did to her own children. (No slander on Marika btw)

Matt has not made any of the Prime Deities bad and sure, the Betrayers are bad and sure, maybe the mortals would prefer to have them entirely eliminated. but like mortals live under so many threats with less protections against than they currently do against the Betrayers. That deprioritizes them from the level of "eliminate at all costs". There's nothing dire or urgent that hasnt been manufactured by the Big Bad himself.

the gods are traumatized yes. theyre stuck in a toxic family situation yes. but none of that toxicity has affected their desire to protect mortals. and the only time a mortal became worthy of destruction by divine hand was when those mortals nearly unleashed oblivion? like come on man.

the gods are in their lane and the mortals are thriving and ludinus needs fucking therapy plus a better hobby.

[percabeth4life]

What's the difference between tkc magic and pjo magic in your fic atlop?

An excellent question!

So, PJO magic is fundamentally based in divine power. Sea magic works for those with sea/river/lake/etc based divine power. Underworld magic works via the utilization of spirits, summoned with divine energy (can be with the aid of the divine rather than inherent divine energy tho), and sky magic works via divine connection to the sky but is less taking action and more asking for action to be taken.

TKC magic is inherent human magic. Those with an affinity for the divine sure, but who don't necessarily have divine power. They can do *more* with divine power, by calling upon the Gods and asking for aid or even hosting them, but it's not the core of their power. It uses their own power and life force in worst cases.

So basically, the primary difference is where the power comes from.

[yellllowstar]

slowly I'm recovering the beauty of discovery

(creature by half•alive)

(textless + timelapse below cut)