#like the OVERARCHING PRINCIPLES. like so!!!

[tyrannuspitch]

been looking at some images today, time for my wildly uninformed opinion. the difference between celtic and nordic knotwork is Like So:

[jinxie-117]

Shin Soukoku: Why BSD cannot be told without Atsushi and Akutagawa

How's everyone feeling after chapter 121.5? Pretty great, right? Pretty SSKK-brained, right? Well, I've got good news for you - Atsushi and Akutagawa are absolutely the emotional core of Bungou Stray Dogs.

That's right chat - whether you ship them or not, these two are absolutely fundamental to the entirety of BSD. Take whatever perspective you want on them - as lovers, as friends, as rivals who despise each other fundamentally but learn to trust one another - these two and their relationship cannot be separated from the overarching themes of their tale.

Naturally, I will be using the mainline manga as reference, as I believe it to be the best source for the overall story of BSD as well as information on Akutagawa and Atsushi's characters (since the light novels and spinoff mangas tend to focus predominantly on characters like Dazai and Chuuya, and BEAST doesn't count). Obviously, spoilers for everything. So, with that in mind, let's begin:

What is BSD about?

Many people would agree that one of the main themes of Bungou Stray Dogs is the value of a human life. Numerous characters struggle with issues surrounding their right to even be alive (Atsushi, Dazai, Akutagawa, Kyouka, Yosano, I mean the list goes on), their status as a human being (Dazai, Chuuya, Akutagawa, Sigma, and arguably Fyodor), or the amount of life required to be taken in order for the 'greater good' (most specifically the conflict between Fukuzawa and Fukuchi, but also Fyodor).

Pretty much every character in Bungou Stray Dogs struggles with some sort of suicidality or has assigned themselves a purpose that they must never stray from (Kunikida and his ideals come to mind - he believes he should not live unless he can follow the exact principles that he has composed for himself), causing them to equate the value of their lives to this one purpose.

It makes sense, then, that three of the most major villains we've had so far - Fitzgerald, Fyodor, and Fukuchi - have their own ways of cheating death: Fitzgerald in his quest to use the Book and resurrect his daughter, Fyodor with his ability, and Fukuchi with Shintou Amenogozen. What's more, all of them aim to cause immense loss of life (Fyodor is willing to kill anyone and everyone in pursuit of purging sin, Fitzgerald didn't mind loss of life in pursuit of money, power, and access to the Book, and although Fukuchi is ultimately on a smaller scale, he still aimed to kill a large number of people in order to achieve his ideal of peace). The value of a human life is the most sacred thing in this world, and so being able to cheat your own death while causing many others is naturally the most evil thing to do by this world's rules.

A final thing to note that, despite every character believing in some divine (especially in Fyodor's case) purpose for themselves that will finally give their life value, this purpose tends to cause more harm to themselves and others than they would care to admit. Kunikida's ideals especially (I keep using him as an example, it's because I recently read Dazai's entrance exam lmao) are emphasised as ridiculous and overdone, and his rigidity frequently causes him harm. This self-destruction brought on by purpose will become especially relevant as we move on to discuss our two beautiful boys:

Atsushi Nakajima: Useless Self-Pity

News to the people of the world - Atsushi is my favourite character in all of Bungou Stray Dogs. He is perfect to me and I love him. Many people I encounter on the internet have some sort of quantum beef with this man, which I can only assume is because they see in him that their own self-hatred and pity can cause harm, and get extremely butthurt about the fact that self-flagellating does nothing for them. I, however, have no such qualms, and thus I can see that he is certified peak.

One of Atsushi's major flaws, despite all his kindnesses, is that he cannot fathom a reason why he should be allowed to live, and constantly searches for that reason in other people. For a long time, he based his entire worth around the orphanage headmaster's opinion of him, as he was his only involved guardian - and thus, as a result of his abuse, believed himself worthless. Upon leaving home (or more accurately, being forcibly removed), he no longer had a purpose to live, but his survival instincts kept him alive for long enough to meet Dazai.

Meeting Dazai and joining the detective agency was only a short solace - because Atsushi, who wanted to live but truly believed that he did not deserve to, was now on the hunt for a new reason to live: protecting others.

It makes sense that in a high-stakes environment that Atsushi sees the only value of his life as protecting other people. This is first demonstrated during his entrance exam, in chapter two, when this freak of nature jumps on top of a bomb in order to protect the people around him. This seems to earn him approval from others (which he believes is his reason to live, for people to give him their approval and thus confirm he is allowed to exist), so he begins to participate in more battles and save more people's lives and generally act in defence of other people in order to earn his right to be alive.

There is more to be said here, but maybe I'll make a post only about Atsushi some other time. Moving on, one of the main drawbacks of Atsushi's desperation to live and his belief that he needs to protect others, is that he suffers from his main weakness in times of stress - dwelling on the past. Despite possessing the capability to protect and fulfil his purpose, Atsushi will freeze up and begin to spiral into self-hatred whenever anything goes wrong for him.

This is most obvious in the latest chapters, when witnessing all of his friends in the ADA die at the hands of Ame No Gozen and Dostoevsky. He seems entirely unable to take any action and fight back, believing his foe to be insurmountable, despite Fyodor's confirmation that this may not be the case:

So, we've established Atsushi's weakness as his inaction, passivity, and self-hatred. It makes him often useless in battle, and prevents him from creating a purpose for himself and interacting with the value of his life in a healthy way. Instead of protecting others and maintaining his own self worth, he fails to protect others, demolishes his self worth, and thus attempts increasingly dangerous and reckless ways to prove that his life has value. Most notably uh....

This suicide is demonstrative of Atsushi's terrible self-image. He foolishly believes that his life will have value if he literally kills himself, despite the fact that his life will no longer have value if he cannot do anything with it. Atsushi's belief that self-sacrifice is noble when he should be aiming to preserve as many lives as possible, including his own, is the culmination of every scrap of self-hatred he's been developing over the course of the entire story.

However, this can also be perceived also a good act - for once, Atsushi takes action instead of protecting mindlessly, and I will get into how this relates back to Akutagawa and how he teaches him how to take action instead of dwelling on the past, but that's for a later section. Either way, this act of self-sacrifice is both Atsushi moving onward in his character arc - learning how to take action in times of stress, instead of standing still, but also remaining stagnant - he refuses to preserve his own life, preferring instead to sacrifice it in the name of his purpose.

So, to move things along...

Ryuunosuke Akutagawa: Mindless Self-Servitude

More news to the world - you're never gonna guess which BSD character I relate to the most. This freak. This section will hopefully be a little shorter because this post is really dragging on, but no promises!

Akutagawa was very dissociated for the first years of his life - but he still had a purpose right up until his friends died. Being the strongest in his group of children in the slums, he was their assigned protector, and believed this to be his only purpose. It is the loss of this purpose that managed to break the haze around his emotions and first experience hatred - before it causes him to realise he has no reason to go on.

Immediately, Akutagawa takes up a new purpose - to prove his strenght to Dazai. Dazai personally tailors this purpose himself, ensuring that Akutagawa's entire sense of self-worth is dependent on him, willing to sacrifice any hope or joy that he might have had a chance at feeling. At the same time, however, Akutagawa despises Dazai for his treatment, being at least partially cognisant of his abuse, and wishes to kill him - thus creating a paradox in which he shall always wish to destroy his reason for live, but never be able to out of fear of losing said reason to live.

It is pretty important to note that I do not think Akutagawa wishes to die, unlike Atsushi who wholly believes that he should. Rather, Akutagawa becomes what he sees as a heartless monster when he is without a purpose, and thinks that he shall rot away on his own without one, as he believed that he did as a child in the slums, one day away from death at all times (now no longer being wholly aware that he was a fierce protector and once saw that as his reason to live). As a result, he adopts a philosophy that Dazai introduces him to - that the weak shall die, and the strong shall live, and that he better hope to be strong.

So, Akutagawa's worst weakness is that he despises the weak and will quickly and recklessly cut them down, refusing to sheath his sword, as he believes those strong enough to be worthy of life shall be able to hold their own against him in battle. Rather, instead of diminishing his own life in pursuit of saving others, Akutagawa diminishes others' lives in pursuit of saving his own. He acts recklessly and impulsively, underestimating his foes, the opposite of how Atsushi acts. He is actively called out on this by Pushkin upon encountering him:

To rub salt in the wound, earlier this chapter Atsushi calls him out on it multiple times, and Dazai calls him out on it for about... two years straight. So we can parse that Akutagawa really doesn't know how to slow down or quit, always dealing with the present and the now, believing that mass destruction will be a proof of his strength that he can then demonstrate to Dazai and earn his right to live.

This purpose, however, actively harms Akutagawa - in particular, it removes from him his humanity. He is repeatedly referred to as some kind of dog (see: the heartless cur, the silent mad dog, the black-fanged hellhound, the list goes on), and treated like his only use is to fight - which he genuinely believes, and so exists only to hurt and fight others. This causes a vicious cycle - Akutagawa hurts others recklessly -> gets called out on hurting others recklessly and denounced as a dog that doesn't know how to do anything else -> he internalises this idea of not knowing how to do anything but kill -> he continues to hurt others recklessly.

So, we have Akutagawa who will kill others to prove he is strong and thus allowed to live, and Atsushi who will kill himself to prove that he can protect and thus allowed to live. What a pair! So let's get onto the main event that shouldn't have taken this long.

Shin Soukoku: To me, you've always had a right to live

This post isn't about it, but the amount of panels these two have together where they are perfectly mirroring each other is wholly unsubtle. I've never seen anything like it. It is totally ridiculous.

To create an effective narrative foil, one must first create as many similarities between two characters as they can. So let's begin:

Both studied under Dazai

Both struggle with a flimsy reason to live

Both have all-devouring beasts that can cut through things most people wouldn't be able to as their ability

Both think themselves worthless save for one thing

Both are haunted by pasts of physical abuse that cause violence to be their accepted norm

Both feel their emotions very strongly

There's more but I've been at this post for two hours

These similarities, especially the one surrounding their reason to live, are very accessibly noticed in another human being. Overall, both of these two need to learn how to dispense of their current reasons to live, which tend to hinge on another person and a set of narrow-minded ideas (in Atsushi's case, protecting everybody, and in Akutagawa's, the strong needing to defeat the weak).

As a result of being able to notice these flaws very easily in another (having only subconsciously noticed it in themselves), these two do not get along, and repeatedly call each other out on foolish behaviour, enabling each other to improve. This looks slightly different on either side, so I'll go one-by-one.

Let's begin with Atsushi's side of the deal, because I talked about him first. As we established earlier, what he needs to learn is to take action, stop dwelling on his past, and view his life as something worth holding onto, as all human life has value.

The one thing Akutagawa absolutely despises about Atsushi is his absolute unwillingness to take any action at all.

Akutagawa, who is so used to moving forward and fighting and acting in the now, hates Atsushi for being able to dwell on his past and still have Dazai's approval. It fills him with complete and utter rage, and so he unwittingly motivates Atsushi to learn how to take proper action.

Another example is on the boat, when Atsushi's resolve is failing, and he comes to assist.

Ah, the famous line. Unironically though, it is perfectly demonstrative of Akutagawa's ability to instil self-confidence in Atsushi and motivate him into taking action - which does work later on when Atsushi saves Akutagawa from an inevitable death at the hands of Fukuchi, allowing them both to escape with their lives (for now):

So, good job Akutagawa! You've managed to teach Atsushi the power of not sitting around being dead miserable, not doing anything about the things that are visibly going wrong all around him. You know, I bet this won't have any other consequences for both you and him!

Oh, hey, Akutagawa. Guess what else you taught him:

So. We've already established why this is kind of an... issue. But as we can visibly see, Atsushi is able to take action. For the first time in several chapters, he is motivated by the prospective death of the man who warned against his passivity, into acting, not sitting by and watching everybody he cares for die, acting. Akutagawa, whose recklessness and impulsivity Atsushi once criticised, seems to be the one thing that enables him to take action after a period of extreme self-doubt and passivity.

This is especially special because Atsushi is motivated into this action by hallucination Dazai, who was once the hallucination of the orphanage director - who is now, at least implicitly, revealed to be Byakko, or Atsushi's tiger (if I am proven wrong on this then it's SO joever but whatever my theory still holds up). Throughout the entire story, Byakko is used as a metaphor for Atsushi's self-image (which I will possibly go into in another post because I'll be here all day if I do it now). So, if hallucination Dazai motivates Atsushi into acting, that means that Akutagawa has pressured him enough that he has literally permanently altered his self-concept. Insane.

Another thing that Akutagawa criticises Atsushi for is his belief that other people need to be protected, and that he can destroy himself for the sake of others, and thus earn a right to live. He demonstrates this particularly in chapter 35:

Akutagawa's main philosophy is that he who is the strongest shall come out on top, and that sacrificing anything for others is useless. So, he's (still in the process of) teaching Atsushi how to live for himself and look out for himself, which he is able to do whenever they fight against each other, and also when they fight with others - the combination of their abilities is incredibly powerful, and also represents Akutagawa giving up his defences and giving them to Atsushi, thus teaching him how to look out for himself.

This absolutely comes to fruition when Akutagawa sacrifices himself for Atsushi on the boat against Fukuchi and tells him to get away while he still can - however you slice it, he is unintentionally teaching Atsushi that he has the right to live and that Akutagawa is willing to die for it - that it doesn't matter if he protects or if he doesn't, that no matter what happens, he deserves to live. And these guys hate each other! What the hell???

Another thing to note is that now that Atsushi is presumably dead from Akutagawa's POV, he is very visibly devastated, even being able to recall his memories upon seeing the man who he fought so hard to defend take his own life. Should they reunite, I imagine that Akutagawa will be at least slightly angry with Atsushi for sacrificing himself like that - thus moving his arc of self-preservation forward.

Now, let's move onto Akutagawa's side of the deal, after that incredibly long amount of time spent on Atsushi's end.

Akutagawa believes that he does not have the right to go on unless he can prove his strength, specifically to Dazai, and does this via cutting down anything in his path.

Atsushi cannot shut up about how idiotic Akutagawa's impulsivity is. We see this on several occasions, the usually kind Atsushi devolving into downright bitchiness at points:

These are only two examples, because I didn't want to have to go chapter hopping that many times. Sorry chat.

Regardless, Akutagawa needs to be taught how to take things slow and learn how to preserve life instead of absolutely demolishing it. This comes to fruition via the six-month promise that Atsushi forces him to make, playing upon Akutagawa's principles and forcing him to not kill anyone for several months. Akutagawa begrudgingly follows through, and ends up successfully managing it right up until his death at the hands of Fukuchi. In addition, it could be argued that this same impulse-control Atsushi insists on inspiring in Akutagawa is what allows him to be able to stay hidden through most of the terrorist arc. Had the promise not existed, he likely would have killed to get his way, and ended up mistakenly revealed.

So, similar to how Akutagawa unintentionally motivates Atsushi to take action, Atsushi unintentionally motivates Akutagawa to slow things down and avoid impulsively killing. He is able to ensure Akutagawa's sword is sheathed when necessary, a feat that even Dazai couldn't achieve.

In addition, while I'd say the 'Dazai's approval' conflict is still in murky waters with Akutagawa, as he's only just recalled Atsushi and it's unclear if he's recalled anything else, Atsushi unwittingly motivates Akutagawa into reducing his impulsivity by allowing him to realise that Dazai won't be pleased by it:

While this exchange can be interpreted as Akutagawa resigning himself to Dazai's hatred of him, we do see him later postpone the killing of the two guards, both because this mission is literally made to work against him (if the guards die, a signal is sent out) and because Atsushi is constantly pulling him up on his shit.

In addition to this, Atsushi teaches Akutagawa a very important thing - that the lives of the weak matter. This is such an insane breakthrough for Akutagawa's character, also represented by the six-month promise. Despite how he's operated all this time, he learns to see Atsushi - who he has perceived as weak all this time due to his constant self pity - as a valuable ally and a life that matters, even sacrificing himself for him in the end.

Akutagawa sacrificing himself for Atsushi is such an insane move because he has never conceptualised something close to doing anything like that before, not once in his life. Atsushi, through all they have been through together, has reawakened the protective instinct in him that hasn't been active since he was a child. This is directly after Fukuchi attempts to convince him to work for him, too - right after he promises strength and Dazai's approval and everything Akutagawa has ever wanted.

Indeed, his life is that important. It is directly after this exchange that Akutagawa and Atsushi are able to trust each other to launch the surprise attack on Fukuchi, only stopped by the fact that his sword can literally exist outside of space and time. For the life of a weak man, Akutagawa gives up all he ever wanted. He gives up Dazai's approval, which he says that he fears dying without. He gives up a chance to become stronger. He gives up his life, which he so desperately wants to live. All for a weak man. All for somebody who he doesn't believe should live, if he cannot beat another in battle.

This is especially evident in the fact that despite the fact he's lost all of his memories, Akutagawa still adheres to the promise that he made to Atsushi. He has learned to respect the weak enough that he refuses to take a life, even when he is visibly winning in battle. And even though he was inspired by Bram, I would like to point out that Akutagawa has sworn his sword to protect others now, a promise that he will still likely adhere to despite the fact he now retains his memories - after all, we still see him in his knight getup at the end of S5E11, which is at least partially symbolic of his pledge.

In addition, Akutagawa is a character who is likely foreign with grief now that he's basically removed himself from the memories of what happened to him and to his friends in the slums - he never mentions his past, and is very visibly attempting to distance himself from it by engaging with luxury items such as antiques, and enjoying food such as figs, which can be seen as somewhat luxury depending on the context.

However, when Atsushi seemingly dies, he is absolutely devastated, something that I do not think we've seen him be for anything not related to Dazai (correct me if I'm wrong, but this depth of reaction isn't usually present in him). He, who never feels grief, likely because he believes those who die are weak and thus have it coming, is so shocked by Atsushi's death that he regains his memories and feels utter despair at the idea of losing him.

Conclusion

So, Atsushi and Akutagawa, both characters whose reason to live is deeply intertwined in their outlook on life, are able to balance out and improve each other's characteristics tenfold. I imagine as the manga progresses that both of them will teach each other the value of their own lives simply for existing, something that the overarching story of BSD seems to be trying to communicate.

Shin Soukoku is a perfect microcosm of the overall themes of BSD, representing the one question from which the entire story stems. Without these two, this particular theme would mean nothing, considering there would be literally no relatable plane to experience it on. Sure, we can acknowledge that millions of people dying is bad, and accept that human life is valuable through Fukuchi and Fyodor and Fitzgerald, who all attempt to demonstrate the opposite - but without Akutagawa and Atsushi, it wouldn't nearly mean as much.

I am sorry that this post was so long! If you stuck to the end you are an angel sent from the very heavens. Don't be afraid to reblog or comment your thoughts, this is just my opinion and I would love a discussion. If there are any typos I'm also sorry I've been sitting here for three hours trying to collect sources and write. But actually I'm not sorry cos I'm really based

[avelera]

I have seen some discourse going around about how Mel never manipulated jayce. Do you agree? And what are your views considering mel?

I say this because I think that she did kind of manipulate jayce in the beginning but genuinely ended up falling for him in the end. I mean she had to genuinely care and love him if she ended up subconsciously saving him with magic.

I think that a lot of people from what I have seen were pissed at season 2 ep8 when jayce got into the argument with Mel but I thought it was quite understandable that he reacted the way he did especially after what he went through. That being said I still felt bad for mel because she literally lost everything and was ready to open up to him.

Sorry for the ramble

I think a lot of the Mel/Jayce discourse is being done in bad faith right now, mostly by people who are anti-Jayce/Viktor rather than pro Mel/Jayce for whatever reason. I would point out, that canonically Mel and Jayce are not together at the end of the show and they also canonically (in my opinion) break up. So it's fine if you just really like the ship or wish things had gone differently, but it should be acknowledged that any Mel/Jayce fic outside the brief time they're together in the show is as much an AU as any Jayvik fic where they got together earlier.

As for the manipulation, I mean yeah, it canonically happened. There shouldn't be a debate. Jayce calls her out on in it 2.08 and Mel doesn't deny it, she just gives her reasons for why she manipulated him. Ostensibly it was to help him and Hextech too but she absolutely used sex as a tool of persuasion with deliberate intent to use it for those ends, she absolutely flirted with Jayce to ingratiate herself to him, she absolutely called him an investment (though there is a slight plothole on how he knows that, it was never said in his hearing), and even if she poses it to herself as helping him she also used those persuasive power to nudge him towards Hextech weapons which he categorically did not want to make, so her own ends superseded his benefit or preference in canonical instances.

For those who deny manipulation took place, go back and watch the opera house scene in S1. She plays him like a fiddle. Indeed, the expert violinist on stage (playing an actual Stradivarius irl, btw) is symbolically depicted as Mel's counterpart, showing how expertly she is manipulating the situation, and Jayce.

Now, I think you can chart how much Mel was with Jayce for her own ends vs. affection for him by her support for Hextech weaponry. When she's pushing for it, she's using him for her own House's goals. When she drops Hextech weapons as an issue and instead supports Jayce's vision for it (in S2) that's when she's acting out of affection for him. It's tragic that her affection for him grows while his declines so sharply as a result of his ordeal and finally realizing the early manipulations (kinda like that trope where someone dates another person for a bet, then falls for them, and then the other person learns about the bet and breaks up with them, only this one without a happy reunion after).

Their relationship is tragic. It's a tragedy. And it ends tragically with them apart and us left wondering if they could have made it together under other circumstances. "What could have been?" is an overarching theme in Arcane, and it is our own choices, our own ambition and greed that get in the way of getting what we need instead of what we want. Every single character is built around these principles, with the happy endings being those who get what they need instead of what they want, and the tragic ones (like Mel) getting what they want (power, to be an official Medarda as she says in her first scene) and not what she needs, which is anyone around her to share it with. You can feel the loss but you have to also acknowledge how she ended up there and why she narratively can't earn Jayce's love after what she did at the start of the relationship.

[martialartslover7]

Headcanon time: I feel like, during the Blank Period, we should have had the Daimyos as the new major antagonists, backed by Orochimaru and Kabuto, whom they had struck a deal with, as, ever since Naruto and the Shinobi Alliance managed to put an end to Madara's ambitions, and now that Orochimaru is back, now, they fear for their position, and to keep it that way, they "have no choice anymore, but to strike a deal with the enemy". Because we all know, Naruto is no longer uninformed. Most of what happened to him, along with the likes of Sasuke, Hinata, Neji and Gaara, only happened, because these withered, old fools, enjoy playing god, whenever it suits their convenience. Pretending they are above everyone else, even the Kage, yet doing little to nothing to ensure that the villages stay safe. And the worst part, they knew, they KNEW, that what a scumbag like Danzo was doing, was endangering everyone. So even if they weren't proactively supporting him, they still didn't ask questions, meaning, deep down, they really don't care what happens to their own villages, as long as they stay in power.

Kinda reminds me of real-life politicians. They have no principles, no integrity, they just make empty promises, and never act in the name of the people that voted for them, knowing full well, options are limited. Take that piece of knowledge for what you will.

And yes, I know, by this point in time, after the war, someone like Naruto and Sasuke would be way too strong, making these old farts appear like ants going up against dinosaurs, but here is the thing: This arc is less about raw aggression and fighting, and more based on psychological warfare. Naruto wants to become Hokage, right? Like, what is the driving force behind this story arc, the overarching goal? Simple: Naruto will not accept becoming Hokage in a system, that treated people like him, and Gaara, Kakashi, Might Guy (R.I.P.), Anko (don't @ me, she is buffed to hell in my AU, and has way more screen presence, she deserves it, even now making use of the Snake Sage mode, using Wood Style jutsu, and bearing the Kusanagi sword), Tsunade or Sasuke, like dog water. And this said system, is mostly backed by the Daimyos, the same people who never once thought to stop someone like Danzo from going on his insane ego power trip.

And we also know, Naruto is not type of person to be exactly interested in handling politics in a boring and straight-forward way. He will be leading this revolution, overthrowing the feudal rule, by hosting a "tournament" of sorts, a televised event, which, in their time period, will also livestream online (you cannot tell me, they didn't have internet of some kind there, even though, limited, because of the villages being practically militarized dictatorships, because of the Daimyos), to pit specific shinobi against one another, hoping to both entertain the crowd, to get them on his side (this is also a pro-Naruto political campaign, making the acceptance for his role as Hokage way easier in the long run), and publically humiliate the Daimyos by basically showing off to them: Hey. These people. These proud shinobi. They have made it so far, despite all your restrictions and the scrutiny you put them all through. And they made it big, despite you guys laughing in their faces.

But also, this trip to the Daimyos, will be financed by all the Five Kage, meaning, they can all indulge in some luxurious hotel stays, hot springs, good food, in short, their credit cards will be on fire. And Naruto, Sasuke and Shikamaru get to spend some time alone with their ladies, to some champagne and warm bubble baths, with room service (*Ahem* insert 'Careless Whisper' by George Michael *Ahem*).

C'mon. After all the crap they went through, they deserve some peace and quiet, and if they were going to change the system, they might as well make the most of it, if it's all financed by the village leaders.

And note, the following people will be following Naruto on this journey:

Kakashi

Anko (by this point in time, she and Kakashi are married, and she plays the role of Kakashi's advisor, too)

Sakura

Sasuke (he will be joining up with them in the city)

Rock Lee

Tenten (in my AU, remember, like I have shown in my "Tenten's Untold Backstory" one shot, she is a techwiz in that version of the story, meaning, having a technician with you, and a weapon master, all at the same time, invalueable, and well, I love the idea of Naruto and Tenten being the braindead besties, don't @ me)

Hinata

Shikamaru

Gaara

Temari

Kankuro

Ai

Killer Bee

Kurotsuchi (she came by herself, because she is growing a little exhausted with her grandpa, sorry XD)

Mei

Chojuro

Karin (Naruto and Karin will FINALLY meet and get the chance in learning more about one another, two Uzumaki foxes, flocking their tail as one, yay)

Suigetsu

Jugo

And the battles that Naruto has organized for the PPV, are the following:

- Naruto VS Ai (The Orange Flash VS The Raikage)

- Hinata VS Sasuke (Bankakyo VS Mangekyo)

- Rock Lee VS Gaara (Rematch)

- Tenten VS Killer Bee (Weapon Master Duel)

- Temari VS Chojuro (Fan VS Sword)

- Shikamaru VS Kankuro (Protective Brother VS Sister's BF)

- Sakura VS Kurotsuchi (The ladies, whose punches feel like dynamite)

As you can see, as Movie Shadow would say:

But well, again, because of the Daimyos striking a deal with Orochimaru, things will not go as planned, and pure chaos will break out. Essentially, that snake man will suggest to them, a machine, built from the stolen blue prints that Tenten created (yup, she will be that vital in the story, she is the only one who can stop this machine), that shall spread madness all across the globe, until the entire planet is enveloped in a mist, so deep, humanity will be wiped out completely, succumbing to the madness from within. Following up on the trauma and scars that Madara and Obito have left behind. It's not exactly clear, that part, I still need to flesh out in my mind, but the fact remains, it's meant to be this one final hurdle of a story, until Naruto returns home, and can finally start applying for the ranks of Chunin, Jonin, and at last, the Hokage position, in peace. Giving Anko and Ibiki full clearance to do whatever they want with the arrested Daimyos, for having struck a deal with an S-rank criminal.

And just this once...

...Naruto will be landing in a very miserable situation, where this madness machine affects him the most, out of everyone, even worse than Sasuke, as Kabuto will be pulling a very nasty trick on him. Yup, Naruto is definitely colder in this story, rightfully so, for many reasons. Usually, that's Sasuke's job, but they switch places here, as soon as Orochimaru starts causing trouble.

Peace.

P.S.: Also, for the shipping freaks among all of you, during this entire trip, Mei is flirting with Shino through her phone. Yup. Shino X Mei. Thank the YouTuber @NCHammer23 for giving me this downright MENTAL, but ingenious idea. Shino is a "granny chaser" in my AU. Don't @ me. For context, here is the video, where he explains it all, and trust me, very rarely, do YouTubers win me over, but this one, made me both laugh, but also smile at the end. Shino also deserves some love.

And again, Neji is alive in my AU, so Tenten will be very lovestruck and make a lot of phone calls with him, who decided to stay back at the village, along with the others from the Konoha 12, just in case the Daimyos decide to stab them in the back and attack the villages, while the leaders are out of town.

Note: The part between Shino and Mei starts at about 17:39.

[nerdygaymormon]

Scriptures for queer people

I like that the scriptures show life is messy and complicated. God works with really flawed people and they learn to measure up and do amazing things. The scriptures are full of contradictions as people try to figure out God’s will and how it applies in their situation. The scriptures show that God’s people are a mess and often get it wrong. These are the chosen people? In that case, I’m doing alright. 

God is an out-of-the-box thinker who wants to be inclusive. The scriptures teach me that God values a relationship with me, will adjust things so the gospel works for me and my situation, and God can help me do amazing things.

I'm not claiming to be an expert or that people should agree with my interpretations. I'm simply sharing how I am thinking of these verses when I apply my viewpoint and experience as a queer Latter-day Saint

Instead of concentrating on all the specific answers & rules, I look for the overarching themes of the scriptures, I can apply those principles in my life and to my life’s situations. Some principles & teachings are more important than others, we can use the more important ones to help us think about the rest. The Bible emphasizes love, equality, & justice, we can use these to filter which messages are important for us and which should remain in the past as part of ancient cultures. For example, the Biblical principles of loving other people as yourself and treating others how you want to be treated should cause us to dismiss slavery even though the Bible allows it. Would forbidding someone from marrying who they love while allowing yourself that opportunity fit with the Biblical principles of love, equality, & justice? No.

I think most people view the Bible as decidedly anti-queer because certain “clobber passages” are regularly used against queer people. A closer inspection of those “clobber passages” shows when put back in context they’re not quite what people think. For example, ‘don’t have gay sex...as part of worshiping a pagan god.’ For the record, straight sex that is done as worship of another god is also condemned, but nobody goes around saying all straight sex is banned.

The verses people like to use to condemn homosexuality, when put back into their cultural context and original language, they are condemnations of sexual exploitation and abuse which was common in the ancient world. They are not condemnations of loving, consensual same-sex relationships. The marriage doesn't define what marriage is, so how can people claim the Bible is against same-sex marriage?

There’s queer-positive scriptures that are usually ignored because they don’t fit the anti-queer narrative people want the Bible to have.  

We’re also taught in Matthew 7 that good principles don’t bring forth bad results (“a good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit”). If teachings are bringing forth bad outcomes for a whole group of people, then we should discard those, they aren’t good.

It's sad to me that so much of modern Christianity identity is about being against LGBTQ people and against abortion when those things are not condemned in the Bible, but the Bible goes on and on about forgiving debt, liberating the poor, healing the sick, and loving others. Where are the sermons and Sunday School lessons on forgiving student debt, guaranteeing health care to every person, loving our LGBTQ+ neighbors, and decrying racism? The Bible has a lot to say about protecting women and children. Do we preach more about queer people and abortions than we do condemning domestic violence, sexual assault, and molestation?

If every Christian church congregation in the United States decided to provide resources to help every child in foster care reconnect with their family or get adopted, each church would need to help only 1 child and there'd be none left in the foster care system. Same for the number of homeless people each church would have to help get into a home for there to be no more homeless people. Christians could transform the nation and the world if they actually applied the lessons taught by Jesus.

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Genesis 1 & 2 - Adam & Eve AND Adam & Steve : The purpose of this story isn’t to discount being gay or trans, in fact queerness fits into this story

Genesis 2 - Tree of the Knowledge of Good & Evil : Humans have been messing up what to do with the concept of good & evil. Gender roles are a result of the Fall

Genesis 3:20; Genesis 17:5 & 15; Genesis 32:28; Numbers 13:16; Matthew 16:17-18 - Changing Names : The Bible has much to teach about our obligation to respect a person’s name

Genesis 4:9-10 - Your Brother’s Blood Cries Out to Me from the Ground : The blood of queer people is crying from the ground

Genesis 6:9 - Noah’s obedience led to destruction : Kindness & inclusion are more important than obedience

Genesis 7:2-3 - Noah and the Ark : Some people point to the animals on the ark as proof God only honors male/female pairings, however for many animals Noah didn’t just bring 2 of them but 14, which offers opportunities for diversity

Genesis 9:13-16 - Rainbow : Queer people carry the promise of the rainbow

Genesis 9:20-27 - Noah & Ham : It’s wrong to use this passage to justify the enslavement of people, or to be against love between consenting gay adults

Genesis 12:1-3 : A blessing to all families - If we choose to harm rather than to bless queer families, then we are not the people of God

Genesis 16 - Hagar : We may still be required to deal with difficult situations, but we have a God who hears us, a God who knows us

Genesis 19:1-11 - Sodom & Gomorrah : It’s ironic THIS story is used against queer people when its message is the opposite

Genesis 19:26 - Lot’s wife turned into a pillar of salt : She became a memorial to the destruction of two cities and likewise we need to witness and bear record of the suffering and marginalization of queer people

Genesis 21 - Hagar, Part 2 : God finds all of us in the wilderness

Genesis 22 - Rejection of Ishmael and Binding of Isaac : We aren’t asked to sacrifice our queer children, doing so may cut us off from God

Genesis 25 - Jacob & Esau : The great blessing didn’t belong to the manly man but to the effeminate one

Genesis 34 - Rape of Dinah & the Response : Diverse viewpoints are needed in positions of power & decision making

Genesis 38 - Tamar : It is a sin to deny people fair treatment & they are justified to find solutions when basic rights are denied

Genesis 37-46 - Joseph Sold by his Brothers into Slavery : Life gets better and there may come a time for forgiveness and reconciliation

Genesis - The Bible teaches that wealth is destructive

Exodus 1 - Pharaoh Seeks to Murder the Hebrew Baby Boys : The right thing is to defy the oppressors in order to protect the innocent and the vulnerable

Exodus 3:14 - I AM THAT I AM : I am who I am

Exodus 3:15 - The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob : Why not say “the God of Abraham, Isaac & Jacob”?

Exodus 10: 7-11, 24-26 - Passover is an annual reminder that we do not negotiate at the expense of others : Civil rights aren’t to be given sparingly, we fight for all.

Leviticus 18:5 & Ezekiel 20:11 - Doing what You Need to Live : Living is more important than obeying commandments

Leviticus 18, 20 - Lie with a Man as with a Woman : These verses forbid Jews from engaging in male-male sex done as part of pagan worship

Numbers 9:1-14 - Second Passover : God finds ways to include people

Numbers 21:6-9 - The Brass Serpent : The people’s tradition of not worshiping idols made them misunderstand what God wanted from them. What traditions do we have that blind us from what God wants for us?

Deuteronomy 22:5 - Cross Dressing : This verse isn’t about performing drag or living as a trans person, it’s meant to avoid harming others

Deuteronomy 23:17 - Whores and Sodomites : The word “sodomite” is used for male prostitutes

Lessons from Moses’ life for Queer Folks

Judges 4-5 - Deborah : A woman prophet? What else is possible?

Judges 19 - Murder of the Levite’s Concubine : Despite this horrific story, we don’t condemn heterosexuals & heterosexuality

Ruth & Naomi : The Bible celebrates this relationship of 2 women

1 Samuel 16:7 - The Lord Looketh on the Heart : Gender & orientation are matters of the heart and God knows us for who we are

Jonathan & David : The possibility this is a same-sex relationship blessed by God is why this story has been a favorite of queer Christians

1 Kings 14:24; 1 Kings 15:12; 1 Kings 22:46; 2 Kings 23:7 - Sodomites : The Hebrew Bible condemns worshiping a different god

Esther : By ‘coming out,’ Esther changed how the king viewed a marginalized group, and gender non-conforming people are the unsung heroes of this story

Book of Job : God had a different path for Job, and queer believers know God has a path for us

Psalms 27 - With the Lord’s Strength, We don’t need to Fear : The Lord won’t abandon us even if our parents do

Psalms 126:5 - Shall Reap in Joy : Life gets better

Psalms 133:1-3 - How Pleasant it is for Brethren to Dwell Together in Unity 

Psalms 139:13-14 - I am Fearfully and Wonderfully Made : Our sexual orientation & gender identity is woven throughout our bodies

Proverbs 6:16-19 - The 7 Things the Lord Hates : Being Queer ain’t on the list

Isaiah 3:9 - Declare their Sin as Sodom : Sodom’s sins are not taking care of the poor or visitors & not feeling guilt for committing sins (notice being gay isn’t one of the sins of Sodom)

Isaiah 43:1 - I have Called Thee by Thy Name; Thou art Mine : God is with us no matter whether our church is

Isaiah 51:1-2 - Abraham and Sarah are Intersex? : A traditional Jewish understanding for why they’re infertile is that they were intersex

Isaiah 54:2 - Enlarge the place of thy tents, and let them stretch forth the curtains : We need to make room for not just more people but for more diversity 

Isaiah 56:3-7 - Eunuchs Welcomed by God : God’s way is radical inclusiveness, God doesn’t marginalize people

Jeremiah 1:5 - Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee : You are not a mistake. God loves you and intentionally made you into who you are

Jeremiah 16:1-2 - God tells the prophet Jeremiah not to marry nor have a family : How does this fit with the Latter-day Saint idea of exaltation where marriage is required? Maybe we need to expand our vision of heaven

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7, 11 - God Plans to Give You Hope and a Future: God’s plan includes blessing & prospering You

Ezekiel 16:49-50 - Two types of forbidden things, To’evah is forbidden for Jews and Zimah is an injustice or a sin : The gay sex acts prohibited in Leviticus 18:22 & Leviticus 20:13 are to’evah, not forbidden for anyone but the Israelites

Daniel - Daniel & Ashpenaz : God supports a loving gay relationship

Hosea 6:6 - God desires mercy, not burnt offerings : True religion isn’t about practicing rituals, it’s about extending love and mercy

Joel 2:28 - Restoration of Gospel Leads to an Increase in Knowledge : Science is providing knowledge about queer people

Amos 5:23-24 - God Wants Justice, Not Our Hymns : Enough with the talk, let’s enact real change to achieve justice

Micah 6:8 - "What does the Lord require of us?" Are we to kill our enemies for a vengeful God? No!!! Micah teaches "To do justice, to do kindness, and to walk humbly with God." That is the whole point for the prophet Micah." : Are we just & kind to our queer siblings?

Malachi 4:6 - The human family is going to be united : if queer people are excluded then the whole is cursed

Socially Queer Jesus & Disciples : Queerness fits naturally with the life and teachings of Jesus Christ

Matthew 1 & Luke 3 - Jesus’ genealogy : Think what this means for chosen family 

Matthew 1 : Joseph chose mercy over the Law - Joseph preserved Mary’s dignity and life

Matthew 2:1-12 : The Magi visit the Christchild : The Magi knew of the Savior’s birth but not those who read the Hebrew Bible. Knowledge, wisdom, and truth come from many sources and those inside a religion may be blind to what is apparent to others 

Matthew 4 - Denying Identity is a Tactic of the Devil : Understanding who we are is an important part of facing the challenges of life

Matthew 5:30 : And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee : if a church continues teaching queerphobic things, it may be necessary to cut it from your life in order to survive and thrive

Matthew 5:21-48 - Ye have heard that it was said...But I say unto you : Jesus is saying this text has been interpreted one way, but He is giving a better way. With all that God taught about loving others and about all being alike unto God, what is a better way to interpret how we treat and love queer people?

Matthew 5:43-48 - Love Your Enemies : These verses refute the idea that the two great commandments to Love God and to Love Our Neighbor are in conflict 

Matthew 6:9-13 - The Lord’s Prayer : We’re meant to build heaven on earth. There’s an idea that queer people will no longer be queer when they die and then can have joy and all the blessings. That’s wrong! We’re to have joy in THIS life. We’re to have justice in THIS life. We’re to have all the blessings in THIS life. We’re to be treated alike in THIS life. 

Matthew 6:27 - Can’t change your height or extend your life just by thinking about it : Queerness is not something we can simply choose to change. Thoughts, prayer, & faith aren’t going to change this part of who we are 

Matthew 7:9-12, 16-20 - If his Son Asks for Bread, Will He Give Him a Stone? : Our Heavenly Father is more liberal in his views, and boundless in his mercies and blessings, than we are ready to believe or receive

Matthew 8:2-3 - Jesus touched the leper : Contact with queer people heals others of their anti-queer bigotry, which leads to the question of who actually needs to be healed? 

Matthew 8:5-13 - The Centurion and his ‘Servant’ : Jesus holds up a gay man as an example of faith for all to follow

Matthew 9:18-26; Mark 5:21-34; Luke 8:41-56 - Woman touched the hem of Jesus’ garment : She persisted in getting what she needed. Queer people have to persist to get what they need

Matthew 10:29-31 - God knows of every sparrow that falls to the grown and has numbered every hair of your head. You are worth more than many sparrows : You can trust that God isn’t squandering souls, isn’t creating queer people while simultaneously condemning them for being queer

Matthew 12:50 - Who does Jesus proclaim as brother, sister, and mother? : Chosen Families

Matthew 13:24-30 - Parable of the Wheat and the Tares : This parable teaches that the wheat and the tares can’t be separated until the very end. That to pull up tares would also uproot the wheat. Whichever one we are, we’re inseparable from each other. We can’t remove them without removing ourselves. Only Christ can tell them apart and will separate them. However, a lot of people think they can tell, and unsurprisingly, they always think they’re the wheat, and often they assume queer people are the tares

Matthew 14:22-23 - Peter Walks on Water : Queer people need to believe in ourselves, that’s when miracles happen

Matthew 15:7-14 - But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men : Some churches are misguided and teach the biases of humans rather than God’s message of love

Matthew 15:10-20 - The things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them : Racist, transphobic, and homophobic words make us unworthy

Matthew 15:21-28 - Yet the Dogs Eat of the Crumbs which Fall from their Master’s Table : God’s love is so expansive it can surprise and stretch even Jesus Christ 

Matthew 17:1-9; Luke 9:28-43 - Jesus Comes Out : Jesus revealed the deepest truth about Himself to His closest friends

Matthew 18:6 - Do not Offend the Little Ones who Believe : Being queer isn’t the problem, it’s the church experience that is broken and defective

Matthew 19:5-12 - Marriage & Eunuchs : Jesus declares men who aren’t attracted to women are exempt from a male+female marriage

Matthew 19:14 - Let the little children come to me, and DO NOT HINDER THEM, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these

Matthew 19:16-23 - Obey the commandments to have eternal life : There is no commandment to live a heteronormative life

Matthew 20:1-16 - Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard : Queer people are relying on the goodness of the Master to bless us the same as others

Matthew 21:18-22; Mark 11:12-25 - Jesus curses the fig tree : The only time Jesus cursed a fig tree was for not being fruity enough, maybe we should contemplate on that as we consider how to love our LGBTQ+ neighbors

Matthew 21:31 - The Publicans and the Harlots go into the Kingdom of God before You : Church leaders are setting themselves up to go from ‘First’ to ‘Last’

Matthew 21-27; Mark 11-15; Luke 19-23; John 12-19 - Final Week of Jesus’ Life : Many lessons from Jesus’ life apply to queer lives

Matthew 22:17 - Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's : Jesus says to follow the law, and the law say that same-sex marriages are legal.

Matthew 22:23-32 - When His disciples asked about marriage and about whose wife someone will be when they reach heaven, this was Jesus’ answer, “You are in error because you do not know the scriptures or the power of God. At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage, they will be like the angels in heaven.” : Sounds like no heterosexuality in heaven. Sorry.

Matthew 22:36-40 - The 2 Great Commandments

Matthew 23:37 - Even as a Hen Gathereth her Chickens under her Wings : Jesus uses feminine pronouns and imagery to illustrate His role

Matthew 25:1-13 - Parable of the 10 Virgins : the foolish bridesmaids listened to those who said they weren’t worthy to meet the groom

Matthew 25:14-30 - Parable of the Talents : telling queer people not to “act” on their queerness is akin to telling us to bury our talent and to go back to the Lord without doing anything with it

Matthew 25:31-46 - Jesus will use how I Treat Others to Determine if I Inherit his Blessings : Mistreating queer people isn’t a qualifier for Christ’s blessings

Matthew 26:36-46 - Garden of Gethsemane : Asking for help & seeking emotional support is Christlike

Easter & Queerness - Jesus' resurrection can be read as a coming-out story : Jesus came out into a changed body and new way of life. Likewise, queer people come out into a new identity

Mark 1:10-11 - God Knows Us, We aren’t a Mistake : Many queer people get messages of love from God

Mark 1:32 - Jesus is teaching that under certain circumstances it’s okay to break the rules about the Sabbath.

Mark 2:1-13 - Friends Lower a Paralyzed Man through the Roof to be Healed by Jesus : Better to break the house than to break the person

Mark 2:15 - Jesus invited sinners & disciples to His house and fed them : We also can invite people to our homes for meals as a way to show we love them and want them in our lives. As Ben Schilaty likes to say, “Love the sinner, invite them to dinner.”

Mark 2:27 - The Sabbath was Made for Man, not Man for the Sabbath : We don’t have to break ourselves against the commandments. They’re for our benefit, not our harm

Mark 9:17-27 - This is a story of demonic possession which causes the individual to act in strange ways, and when the demon(s) is cast out the person is healed : Today we use medicine and counseling because we understand diseases and mental health issues. When we know better, we should do better.

Mark 10:46-52 - Ask People Questions and Listen : “We need to listen to and understand what our LGBT brothers and sisters are feeling and experiencing”

Mark 12:30-31 - Love God and Love People : There’s no greater commandments. How do we love queer people, and do they recognize how we treat them as love?

Mark 12:41-44; Luke 21:1-4 - The Widow’s Mite : Jesus condemns making the widow impoverished and the same applies to queer people who are asked to sacrifice all they are

Mark 13:24-37 - Fig Tree’s Leaves Show Summer is Near : Members are trying to build a church that’s more inclusive of LGBTQ+ people. Maybe summer isn’t near, but perhaps it is Spring as it seems the winter chill is thawing

Luke 1:27 - Mary is a virgin : The Greek term parthenos normally referred to an unmarried woman of marriageable age, because in their society an unmarried female typically hadn’t yet had sex. As a missionary, I learned the Korean language does the same thing, all unmarried women of marriageable age can be referred to as a virgin, even though some unmarried women have had sex. But if we keep with the tradition that Mary was in fact a virgin as we think of that term in English, and she did not conceive through ordinary means but through the Holy Spirit she produced an offspring without a human father, then that raises some interesting questions. For example, the Y chromosome is inherited from the biological father, which calls into question how is Jesus a male? Could this suggest Jesus is trans?

Luke 1:37 - Nothing is impossible with God...except for LGBTQ+ people getting into the Celestial Kingdom, at least that’s what some Christians believe

Luke 1:78-79 - Give Light to Them that Sit in Darkness : Going from the darkness of the closet to the dayspring when we learn our Heavenly Parents love us

Luke 2; Matthew 1:18-25 - Nativity Story : Queer people can see ourselves in this story

Luke 2:52 - Jesus Increased in Wisdom and Stature, and in Favour with God and Man : Jesus didn’t marry, as a church we need to reprioritize what is important 

Luke 3:12-14 - Jesus was able to meet people where they were at. He didn't ask the Roman soldiers to stop being a Roman Soldier. Jesus told him to be just and virtuous in his soldier duties. How does this apply to queer people?

Luke 3:23 - Jesus began His ministry at age 30 : There’s no rush, come out when you’re ready

Luke 4:16-30 - No prophet is accepted in his own country : Jesus understands the hardships & joys of ‘coming out’

Luke 4:17-21 - What did Jesus come to do? : Do we liberate or oppress queer people? Do we share God’s abundance with them or withhold it?

Luke 7:36-50 - Woman who Anoints Jesus’ Feet : Queer people’s tears wash Jesus’ feet 

Luke 10:25-37 - The Good Samaritan : Members of the church avoid the injured man, or perhaps are even the ones who hurt him

Luke 13:24-30 - The First Shall be Last and the Last First : We’re gonna be surprised at who gets into heaven

Luke 14:15 - an ass or an ox fallen into a pit : Under some circumstances it’s okay to break a commandment/covenant

Luke 15:1-7 - The Lost Sheep : The 99 sheep are also sinners but they think it’s just the 1 who is lost

Luke 15:8-10 - The Lost Coin : The woman’s joy at being reunited with her lost coin is like God’s joy at being reunited with a queer person.In this case, the coin didn't ever leave the house, it was hidden, buried under dirt and dust. Only when she cleaned did she find the coin. If we truly make space for queer people, we will find they're here waiting. They will make themselves known.

Luke 15:11-32 - The Prodigal Son : Queer People go on a journey similar to the Prodigal Son

Luke 17:34-35 - One Shall be Taken, and the Other Shall be Left : There shall be two men in one bed; two women shall be ‘grinding’ together, some of them are saved and some aren’t

Luke 22:10 - A Man Carrying a Pitcher of Water : A man not conforming to gender norms is mentioned without any negative connotation

Luke 22:33-34 - Paul will deny Jesus 3 times : What if Jesus tells Paul to deny Him so that he would live to lead the church? Queer people sometimes deny being queer in order to be safe (especially when they’re in the closet)

Luke 22:50-51 - After Peter Slices Off a Man’s Ear, Jesus says “No More of This!” and Heals the Man’s Ear : One day Jesus will say to those who harm queer people, “No more of this!”

John 1:11 - His own received him not : Many queer people experience being rejected by their families and loved ones

John 3:16 - Whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life : Despite what some teach, Jesus didn’t come to earth to condemn us, but to save us. Unfortunately, some Christians add “unless you’re queer, in which case you can’t have eternal life”

John 4 - Jesus meets a woman at a well and points out she has had 5 husbands and now lives with a man to whom she is not married : What’s interesting is Jesus doesn’t call her to repent or command her to stop sinning. Contrast this with purity culture. 

John 6:37-39 - I Shall Lose None of all Those He has Given Me : The Church may cast out, but Jesus does not

John 8:2-11 - Woman Caught in Adultery : Jesus stood with the woman, not the religious leaders

John 9 - Who sinned, the blind man or his parents? : We all have inherent value and should be respected and loved

John 10:10 - I am Come that They Might have Abundant Life : A Harvard Study found Relationships are key to happiness, as are having good health, being educated, having coping skills, and giving back to the community. This is how to have joy, don’t deny this to queer people. 

John 11:43 - Jesus Helps Lazarus to Come Out : Coming out of the closet can feel like going from being dead to coming back to life, or to being fully alive

John 13:23 - John, whom Jesus Loved, is Laying against Jesus’ Breast : Could John & Jesus be in a same-sex relationship?

John 13:26 - Jesus feeds Judas : Jesus never excluded Judas, Judas excludes himself. So why does the church exclude queer people and treat us as enemies?

John 13:35 - By This Shall Men Know Ye are my Disciples if Ye have Love One to Another : To be Christian is to love others, including LGBTQIA+ people

John 14:1-3 - “In my Father's house are many mansions...” : Christ doesn’t tell queer people there’s not a place for us

John 20:15 - Supposing Him to be the Gardner : Jesus is our Gardner

Acts 1:15 - Peter has a dream where God commands him to consume food that his religion considers “unclean.” Peter is reminded that it’s God who gets to declare what is clean and may even contradict the law : This passage shows that God’s promises and beloved community are not defined by our own rules or boundaries, or even by our understanding of God’s law. God is constantly drawing us to love our neighbors

Acts 8:26-39 - Apostle Baptizes Eunuch into the Church : The early Church welcomed queer people. When will the modern Church allow queer people to fully participate?

Acts 10:15 - What God Hath Cleansed, that Call not thou Common : People who were traditionally excluded are welcome

Acts 10:34 - Peter declared “God shows no partiality”

Acts 17:28 - God has a Womb : Do we use the image of God to see the Divine in all of us or do we use God to diminish others?

Romans 1:20 - To Know God, Look at the Things God Created : What does the diversity of different sexual orientations & gender identities tell us about God?

Romans 1:26-27 - Vile Affections : People use this against gays, but it’s really directed at straight people

Romans 8:38-39 - Nothing Separates us from God’s Love : Nothing can separate us from the love of God. Not church leaders, not metaphorical muskets, not the church

Romans 10:12 - There is no distinction between Jew & Greek, the same Lord is the Lord of all, bestowing riches on all who call on Him

Romans 13:10 - Love Does no Wrong to Others : If church is causing harm, then it is not doing the work of Christ and God

1 Corinthians 1:27-28 - God Chose the Lowly Things of this World : Things look different from the margins than they do from the center

1 Corinthians 3:16 - You are the temple of God : The actual temple is our bodies and it's beautiful the way transgender people get to co-create with God in building their temple 

1 Corinthians 4:3-4 - We’re often told not to judge others and not to let others judge us, but it’s easy to forget we shouldn’t shouldn’t judge ourselves. Work hard, do your best, and let yourself be forgiven. When we repent, the Lord forgives and forgets all of our transgressions so we should allow ourselves the same peace of mind. Stop beating yourself up, It’s okay, let it go

1 Corinthians 6:9-10 - The Unrighteous Shall Not Inherit the Kingdom of God : No one believes Paul is condemning sex between heterosexual couples as unrighteous, we shouldn’t assume He’s condemning relationships between people of the same gender

1 Corinthians 7 - We Shouldn’t Force Ourselves to be Celibate if We have Sexual Desires, Instead We Should Channel our Sexual Appetites within Marriage : A great argument for Christians to accept & celebrate gay marriages

1 Corinthians 12:12-13 - All the Members are One Body : The church needs its LGBTQ+ members, without us the body of the church is incomplete

1 Corinthians 14:10-13 - So Many Kinds of Voices in the World : It takes every voice for the choir to sound beautiful, no one is without significance

1 Corinthians 15:41 - Glory of the Sun, Moon and Stars : The sun, moon and stars all appear in the same sky. Could this mean we’ll all be together?

Galatians 2:1-5 - Gentiles are not Required to become Jews : Gentiles are accepted as they are and not forced to lose their identity by becoming Jews. Likewise queer people should be accepted as we are and not required to live as cisgender straight people

Galatians 3:28 - Ye Are All One in Christ Jesus : The scriptures say that all our diversity is welcome by Christ

Galatians 5:22-23 - There is No Law Against Love : The law doesn’t distinguish between gay and straight love

Ephesians 5:22-33 - A marriage between a man and a wife is used to symbolize Christ’s relationship with the church : If the church is made up of its members, we are the bride of Christ, we are in a marriage relationship with Christ. Which is an interesting concept for cis hetero men, they’re in a same-sex marriage with Jesus

Colossians 3:9-11 - There is not Greek & Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, slave & free, we’re all one in Christ : We can continue this metaphor to say there is not difference between cis & trans, or gay and straight, you’re all one in Christ

1 Timothy 1:8-10 - Whoremongers...Them that Defile Themselves with Mankind...Menstealers : Condemnation of men who use boy prostitutes, and the slave dealers who procured the young boys and sold them into prostitution, in other words a condemnation of pedophiles, not as some claim of all homosexuals

1 Timothy 3:2 - Husbands of One Wife : Paul is not trying to address questions about sexual orientation or gay marriage in this verse

2 Timothy 3:1-3 - Without natural affection : Hateful, shaming, rejecting behavior by a parent to a queer child certainly sounds like the opposite of “natural affection” and was prophesied in the New Testament

1 Timothy 4:1-5 - Forbidding to marry : This is about people in the congregation leaving the faith because of what’s taught at the pulpit, teachings which happen to not be in line with God’s will . If you're against people of consenting age getting married, it seems like this is a test to show who's on the wrong side.

James 1:27 - Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is to care for orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained by the world : Pure religion is not about hiding away in an ivory tower and discussing eternal truths--it's about being out in the world and living those truths by caring for people. We can come closest to Christ not by studying and memorizing His words but by loving the way He loved "that when he shall appear we shall be like him" (Moroni 7:48).

1 John 4:7-8 - He that Loveth not, Knoweth not God; for God is Love : Any genuine love comes from God. Unfortunately, Christians have created many laws against love

1 John 4:20 - If you hate others then you don’t love God : Quote this verse to any Christian who is yelling scriptures at you for being queer

Jude 1:7 - Going after Strange Flesh : Some use this to condemn homosexuality, but what would be the word for a married person going after “strange flesh,” aka “another flesh”? Adultery!

Revelation 4:1-4 - There’s a Rainbow Around the Throne of God : Confirmation that queer people make it to heaven

1 Nephi 2:2 - God tells Lehi to leave the land given to his ancestors, leave behind the temple, leave behind extended family, and go on a new path : Many queer people also get this message, to leave behind the church, the temple, and the community which are hurting them

1 Nephi 4:6-19 - Nephi Kills Laban : What does it tell us about God that He is chill with murder but not two men or two women in love? Maybe it’s the believers that are mixing up what is okay and what is not

1 Nephi 8 - When Lehi tastes the fruit of the tree, which symbolizes the pure love of Christ, he wants his family to experience it with him : God’s love isn’t meant to be experienced alone

1 Nephi 16:2 - the guilty take the truth to be hard, for it cutteth them to the very center : The truth about how church hurts queer people can be hard for believers to hear 

1 Nephi 16:10, 26-29 - Liahona : They had the Brass Plates, but that wasn’t enough. 

2 Nephi 2:25 - Adam Fell that Men Might Be; and Men are that They Might have Joy : A Harvard study found relationships are key to happiness, also helpful are good coping skills and giving back to the community. This is how to have joy

2 Nephi 26:33 - All are Alike Unto God : When will the Church embrace all people?

2 Nephi 31:20 - Love of all men : those who try to make sure they don’t love us too much so that it’s clear they don’t condone all our choices, they are breaking the commandments.

Jacob 5 - Allegory of the Olive Tree : Fruitful trees start producing bad fruit and wild olive branches are grafted in : It’s interesting that good fruit comes from margins of the vineyard, which is not the expected place. The Lord operates in places those in the center don’t even know about

Omni - Two Queer Authors? : This book is written by 5 different men, 2 of them have no sons to whom they could hand it down. Could that be it's because they’re queer?

Mosiah 3:19 - Putteth off the natural man : It’s natural to feel uncomfortable around people who are different from you. Try putting off your natural reaction and learn to see as God does.

Mosiah 9 - Zeniff sees beyond the biased teachings : It’s hard to hate people up close

Alma 7:11-12 - That He May Know How to Succor his People : The atonement lets Jesus know how to help us

Alma 17:24-25 - Ammon & King Lamoni : They love each other

Alma 19 - Abish : Abish was closeted, God used her to upend social norms

Alma 32:9-10 - What Shall We Do? For We are Cast Out of Our Synagogues : Queer people can worship God whether we’re allowed at church or the temple

Alma 34:34 - We’re still queer when we’re resurrected

Alma 37:6 - Who are the small and simple? : Queer people who were considered small and simple were the ones strong enough to break the rules of masculinity and femininity which made it safe for the strong and powerful to come out as queer

Alma 41:10 : Wickedness never was happiness : What makes you joyful is not wicked

Alma 53:2 - Captain Moroni and General Lehi : Could Moroni and Lehi love each other as more than just as friends and soldiers, but as family?

Alma 56:16-17 - Helaman and the 2000 young warriors show up and boost the soldiers’ morale : I can easily imagine feeling beat up and defeated by the nonsense of church folk, and then the arrival of a few more queer people would lift me up and feel like those who be with us are brave and fabulous and what we have is worth defending and affirming.

Alma 60:5-10 - Captain Moroni’s opening words could be a cry of marginalized people and a damning indictment of complicity or participation in their oppression

Ether 6 - Jaredite Barges are Driven by the Winds to the Promised Land : All 8 barges made it to the Promised Land and each made a separate journey

Ether 12:4 - Hope for a Better World : What would a better world look like? A place where we’re all treated alike and allowed personal dignity

Ether 12:27 - I Make Weak Things Become Strong Unto Them : To become strong, people must acquire a positive self image

3 Nephi 28 - The 3 Nephites : Could they be queer? It’s a possibility

Doctrine and Covenants 1 - Purpose of revelations to Joseph Smith : How is the church doing in these purposes in regards to queer people? 

Doctrine and Covenants 38:25-27 - If Ye are not One Ye are not mine : Bad news for the homophobes, transphobes, and all those who oppose their queer siblings

Doctrine and Covenants 46:3-6 - Don’t Cast People out of Church Meetings : Don’t cast out queer people but instead provide a place that is safe, welcoming and inclusive

Doctrine and Covenants 49:15-17 - Whoso Forbiddeth to Marry is not ordained of God : This is a rejection of requiring life-long celibacy and affirms that getting married is approved by the Lord

Doctrine and Covenants 74 - Sometimes apostles teach their own opinions as commandments : Sometimes apostles actually are teaching things opposite of the Lord’s will 

Doctrine and Covenants 78:5-6 - If Ye are not Equal in Earthly Things Ye cannot be Equal in Obtaining Heavenly Things : We could seal gay couples today if we wanted to, that would help make things equal on earth.

Doctrine and Covenants 93:33-34 - Fulness of Joy Contingent on Connectedness of Spirit & Body : Transitioning can be part of a person’s journey towards godliness

Doctrine and Covenants 121:41 - Priesthood doesn’t give Authority and Power over Others : It’s how you treat others

Doctrine and Covenants 128:18 - We cannot be pro-family and anti-LGBTQ+ at same time : Everyone talking about being exalted without their LGBTQ+ family members WON’T BE.  If same-gender couples and trans people aren’t exalted, NO ONE will be. 

Doctrine and Covenants 130:2 - And that Same Sociality which Exists among Us Here will Exist among Us in Eternity : Love will prevail

Doctrine and Covenants 131 - Eternal Life : Nothing in this section excludes queer people from obtaining Eternal Life

Doctrine and Covenants 132 - New and Everlasting Covenant : There’s no reason to think queer relationships were meant to be excluded from being sealed

Doctrine and Covenants 137:7-9 - We will be Judged According the Desires of our Heart : Queer people will not be judged for not completing opportunities not open to us

Moses 6:31 - Enoch doesn’t See Himself as God Does : When queer people accept ourselves it opens 1000 doors of possibility

Moses 7:28-40 - What makes God weep? : God weeps when we don’t have love for one another

Joseph Smith--History - God can be found outside church

Articles of Faith 2 - Adam’s Transgression : Elder Oaks classifies gay marriage as a transgression, not a sin. What are the implications of that?

Articles of Faith 8 - Scriptures only as Good as the Translation and Interpretation : Has the Church & Christianity been interpreting scriptures using fear, ignorance, and personal bias in a way that’s harmful to queer people?

Articles of Faith 13 - Doing Good to All Men : Harming queer people and denying them the promises & blessings made to others is the opposite of what this church claims to believe

Proclamation on the Family - It doesn’t say what most people assume it does. Queer people aren’t discussed at all in this document

Criteria by which Christ will Evaluate our Lives

[mariacallous]

It is hard to disagree with the stated maxim behind Elon Musk’s newly established U.S. Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE): to “maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.”

In this fable of “good” vs. “evil,” the “good” forces of efficiency must chainsaw their way through the administrative state and the rules and processes that its “evil” bureaucrats hide behind. Even the political voices opposing Musk’s efficiency drive explicitly accept the goal, arguing that DOGE’s actions (for instance, firing inspectors general) are the wrong way to improve efficiency. On the centrality of “efficiency,” there is bipartisan support, even in these polarized times.

But could it be that the problem lies in our collective acceptance of “efficiency” as the core value proposition of the state, to be unquestioningly maximized at every turn? The state is far more than a public goods cousin of Amazon.com, and the quest for efficiency above all else constitutes a collective forgetting of what government is or can be.

To say that efficiency is not everything is not to suggest that it is undesirable.

From endless paperwork queues to demands for bribes and shoddy quality of basic services, state inefficiency imposes great costs to citizens, with the most vulnerable paying the greatest price. Greater efficiency saves collective time and money. But the singular focus on an “efficient state” is not just potentially counterproductive—it is also a dangerous and slippery slope toward authoritarianism.

To make efficiency the overarching goal of government in fact undermines its performance. For more than two decades, we have studied the administrative state in contexts as diverse as India, Thailand, Liberia, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Our scholarship highlights that when efficiency becomes the primary goal, performance generally falls. The state works best when its actors—the “unelected” bureaucrats that have become DOGE’s primary target—are empowered with discretion and autonomy, and when they are held accountable by a shared sense of mission. Successful delivery of state services requires judgment from humans who are capable of balancing the multiple competing needs of service delivery.

This is not a challenge just in the United States; across the globe, efficiency is often the ruse used to pursue a much deeper project of democratic erosion. Only by allowing ourselves to question the efficacy of efficiency can we possibly have means to interrogate what we are sacrificing on its altar. Perhaps one critical way to defend democracy is to question this assumption and to reframe our debates on the state and its mode of delivery.

The value that we place on efficiency as the goal of the modern administrative state traces its history to at least the 1960s, as documented by sociologist Elizabeth Popp Berman’s 2022 book Thinking Like an Economist: How Efficiency Replaced Equality in U.S. Public Policy.

The policy approach of an “economic style of reasoning,” as Berman terms it, is anchored in market principles: choice, competition, cost effectiveness, incentive compatibility. Under this logic,  efficiency is presented as a politically neutral holy grail that governments ought to pursue.

But governments did so to a fault. Berman traces the evolution of this the economic style of reasoning to the 1960s and show how over the decades, efficiency became fetishized as the only goal of government, often displacing considerations of equity and democracy.

Berman focuses her inquiry on the United States, but this mode of reasoning about and within the state has a much wider resonance. It certainly characterized India’s approach as the policy elite embraced globalization and liberalized from the early 1990s onwards. The policy logic was—as it is in so many countries—that adopting the tools of “scientific management,” or in public administration terms “new public management,” we will control our way to success.

By monitoring and measuring everything that we can, the thinking went, we will improve the state, driving toward key performance indicators (KPIs) and realizing efficiencies. This manifests in different forms, such as the consequences of “teaching to the test” in response to the United States’ 2002 No Child Left Behind Act, or in biometric attendance systems introduced in India designed to ensure public servants show up but which do little to control what happens once they do.

In the contemporary moment, these ideas have converged with the possibilities offered by technology to create a new hypercharged, technology-infused vision of utopia that has shaped the DOGE view of the world. Musk and his ilk seem to imagine that the holy grail of efficiency can be reached even more effectively through the algorithms that automate processes. Just as Google serves search results, the government can deliver to citizens what they want and need, with no troubling humans slowing things down and leaving a trail of fraud and waste. One cannot make the wrong decision if there is no decision at all.

The fable is not without its logic; however, it has two serious problems. First, it is an approach that can very rarely work for government. It doesn’t work because—and this is the second critical problem—efficiency is the wrong goal.

It would be wonderful if we could monitor and measure all the important things that states do, turning all services into garbage collection or vaccine administration—relatively rare cases where what can be observed and KPI’d is, in fact, a pretty good summary of what we want the workers to do. Perhaps in these cases, we do need fewer supervisors, and data systems may be able to substitute for traditional levels of hierarchy. Perhaps there are other functions of the state—for instance, tax administration—where technology can drive automation.

Unfortunately, much of what the administrative state does falls outside these two categories, and it requires empowered humans exercising judgment to do well.

DOGE-catalyzed cuts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Nuclear Security Administration, Federal Emergency Management Agency, and Department of Veterans’ Affairs are penny-wise and pound-foolish.

Like the European reliance on natural gas from Russia in the 2010s, these supposed “efficiencies” in fact mask deepening vulnerability via decreased ability to exercise informed judgment in responding to the unexpected—be it a nuclear disaster or simply the needs of a veteran whose issues do not fit neatly into an online form. (Jennifer Pahlka documents cases of this sort under the purview of the Department Veterans’ Affairs in her book Recoding America: Why Government is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better.)

In addition to being ineffective at improving performance, the singular reification of “efficiency” also fundamentally misrepresents what the state is and how it relates to the citizenry.

The state is not a private firm. Citizens engage the state not as transactional “clients,” but in emotive, affective terms. No one would volunteer to fight in Amazon.com’s army. Firms deliver. States do more than that. In other words, the state is an identity, not just a service provider.

“The state” is all of us—all of its citizens and residents. Society delegates significant coercive power to the state so that the state can regulate societal demands via an autonomous bureaucracy. In a democracy, institutions of checks and balances, laws, rules, and processes are built in to enable the state to negotiate competing claims as it navigates the citizenry.

The administrative state’s tasks are an outcome of a political bargain that may necessitate “inefficiency” in some situations as the state makes trade-offs: between redistribution and growth, environmental protection and business, or tax cuts and expenditures on welfare.

These are outcomes of democratic bargaining, which is necessary to preserve freedoms and a stable society. When we seek efficiency, we fail to engage this fundamental reason for the state’s existence. We also run the risk of short-term efficiency gains at the cost of social instability and disaffection.

Inevitably, efficiency also becomes the ruse for a much deeper centralization and personalization of politics. While efficiency framings have accompanied a creep toward authoritarianism in many countries, in the United States we are seeing not a creep but rather a veritable sprint.  Musk links efficiency with the strategy of making everything “subject to the will of the President,” as he put it in a post on X in late February. Dictatorship is efficient in comparison to processes that give power to many people, and thus force the slow work of consensus-building and accommodation. However, without the prerequisites of decision-making, it leads to bad, efficient decisions.

Moreover, it is this very work of democracy that ensures that the decisions of government serve the interests of the many, and that encourages diverse groups in society to feel like part of the collective. As Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, democracy’s strength is not to “give the people the most skillful” (or efficient) government, but rather to produce “an all-pervading and restless activity, a superabundant force, and an energy which never exists without” democracy.

Efficiency as a totalizing framing allows would-be authoritarians to argue that it is not the system of government—but rather they personally—who have provided services to citizens. In the United States, this returns us to the age of machine politics and personalistic rule; more generally, this is what political scientists term “patrimonialism,” a style of governing in which all state functions flow from the personal authority of the leader.

In India, patrimonialism has been effected by using technology for welfare services and branding them as gifts and “guarantees” from the ruling party leader. Technology removes traditional intermediation by local politicians and bureaucrats, enabling in its place a direct, emotive connection with the national political party leaders who can present themselves as the benefactor.

Implicit in this process is a subtle shift in the social contract that positions welfare as the largesse of the benevolent leader rather than a moral obligation of the state to rights-bearing citizens. Democracy is practiced when citizens seek accountability and claim their rights through local state actors. Centralization of power within party leaders upends this. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and today all political leaders from across party lines have adopted this basic playbook.

As Berman reminds us, efficiency itself is a choice—one that sometimes competes with democracy. Many societies are rightly frustrated with the status quo at present. But efficiency as a singular focus is not the solution to this frustration; it is, rather, a big part of the problem. We have come to the inevitable dead end of trying to deliver state services using a mindset and technology that is well suited to packages, and poorly suited to the state—whose primary purpose is to bind society together.

Rather than destroy the administrative state, we need to nurture connections between state and citizens. Rather than tighten oversight and compliance for state officials, we need to build a system that allows them to pursue the goals that bring so many to public service: serving the public.

The state is not a Silicon Valley start-up; its demise is not a cost of doing business or a failure to be learned from in the next funding round. We must interrogate the value propositions that brought us here; we must develop alternative pathways to renew and rejuvenate state institutions by forming relationships of trust with citizens that restores citizen faith in the democratic project.

There is much to learn from democracies around the world on how to improve the state through democracy-enabling instruments: Taiwan’s experiments in digital democracy, the United Kingdom’s “mission-led” government, Brazil’s participatory budgeting, and even in India, the use of social audits and right to grievance redressal laws are all examples of improving state performance without compromising democracy for efficiency.

Efficiency is a good thing, but it is not the only good thing. The first step toward better answers is asking what else we care about (such as values of equity, responsiveness, and accountability), and how we can build a state that serves those goals, too.

[corvus-frugilegus]

WIP Wedsthursday

Thanks for the tag @larkinna !!!

I'm gonna get weird with this again and share some of my notes from my Ventine Architecting Rabbit Hole. Eventually this will probably be a weirdly deep headcanon meta post???

I have a standing hc that because of the scale of Tevinter different parts of it have different cultures in a way very similar to how The Byzantine Empire was so sprawling and not a cultural monolith (which is iirc a place the da team took some influence from for Minrathous). Thinking about Ventus's proximity to Antiva, i feel like it's maybe got some Levantine influence and that's what I've been rolling with when thinking about Cusine & Architecture and how that all collides with Thedas. So right now I'm rabbit holing really hard on Historical Lebanese Architecture (Beirut specifically has some history that fits My Thoughts On Ventus). This is of course inexorably linked to culture when it comes to social structure and life style! Because Architecture is purposeful. Anyway. Without further preamble, behold, my notes app notes:

Furst Principle: "architecture reveals ways of life and expresses them through symbols of practical, social and cultural value" < it says a lot about the lives people live. In Lebanon, building a house has been an overarching idea of the family-oriented culture. < Your whole neighbourhood is cousins in Ventus i will not be changing my mind on this. Family and community oriented housing structures really supports this. ^ connection to the land is evident in structure of homes too. "The underlying concept of the Lebanese residential architecture is its organic integration with the landscape and its response to the natural aesthetics. In most cases, this interaction happens through a particular architectural element that links the interior and the exterior of a house. With this in mind, there are four types of residential houses distinguished across Lebanon: the closed court house (described above), the gallery house, liwan house, and the central hall house." live stock in proximity! 2-3 story homes, rooms are a later addition. Family usually lives on the upper levels. (early homes have phoenician influence, this feels like it tracks well with tevinter having a sprawling influence too) Phoenicians preferred to live in close and shared neighbourhoods: clusters of their residential units would be connected by a common courtyard (closed courtyard houses). urban settlements were always built in places w/ access to water, mineral resources and allow dev of agriculture. cultural shift towards trade orientation: merchants converted the ground level of their houses from storage into points of sale and workshops. Souks began to develop and attract people, for trade, triggering a dense growth of courtyard compounds that could support trade "Cities in the ancient Middle East appear to have contained commercial districts. Later, in the historic Islamic world, bazaars typically shared in common certain institutions, such as the position of the muḥtasib, and certain architectural forms, such as roofed streets and courtyard buildings known in English as caravanserais. The exact details of their evolution and organization varied from region to region." < wiki on souks Lebanon - sun-drenched humid climate and the mountains covered with greenery in summer and snow, in winter < based on the snowy mountains we see in Treviso I suspect this is a good read on Ventine Climate. How do some of these concepts fit Tevinter? What makes sense in the lore? Culture & Class, Altus influence vs the Soporati after generations of Tevene Colonization. Almost all of Tevinter was something else before it became Tevene - Based on Ventus Geography, the treatment of the north as Mediterranean-ish, the Byzantine influence on Tevinter and Ventus's proximity to Treviso is giving Levant. - What are some Ventine cultural staples that have outlasted Colonization? - How does proximity to Antiva over Minrathous have an Impact? - What about Arlathan? buikdings to look up: the Temple of Jupiter in Baalbek, Chamaa Castle south-east of Tyre, and the khans of Tripoli

Directions to push:

- Ventus likely has phonecian style homes, In Sporati homes it would probably be normal for the ground floor to be used for commerce or storage

- Ventine homes likely reflect a connection to the land, it's a hot and humid climate. Coastal. Nearby Mountainous areas may still experience Snowy Winter. Building materials would reflect this and may look different from forever rainy Minrathous

- Grape vines and Olive Trees are probably quite normal! Comics have suggested Ventus is quite Verdant. This requires lots of bright light. Open air markets and common spaces may help w/ increased plant pop.

- Open air or Covered markets are both possible. I suspect Ventus is large enough for both.

- What is the visual language of the Nerominean tribes? How has Tevinter Erased it? Where does it shine through anyway?

- How has frequent conflict with the Antaam impacted the city structure (literally) and culture?

- Where does Ventus align with the rest of Tevinter and where does it chafe?

I have also appended so many photos, really looking at shape and flow and considering how Ventus might have some aesthetic echoes of minrathous while having a unique visual identity.

All of this to say, Ventine architecture will say a lot about Ventine culture, and looking at historical architecture and culture in a similar biome is a really interesting place to start building ideas. Ventus has so much room to play and grounding it in its own identity is a really fun expercise. Also Lebanese Architecture is incredibly cool and a very interesting read. Also also cool to pick up on where the shapes and colours we do see in Minrathous have likely taken inspiration from.

Right now this is just in the learning about architecture and word salading out loose thoughts and questions stage. Eventually, i hope to have a set of notes on a Ventus that reflects a similar but different Tevinter to what we see in Minrathous? Starting with the real world is always a handy way to generate a lot of the questions you need to answer around world building.

Yeeesss this was all triggered by a Rook mood board tag game.

Because I've already yapped at them a tiny but about this, gonna tag: @ofcrowsanddragons @biowaredisasterbisexual

[cavegirlpoems]

Hey I found your blog through the animation post, and I've been having a lot of fun reading through your thoughts on ttrpgs. I played 3.5e in high school but I am admittedly very ignorant about the medium as a whole so it's really cool to see someone's much more knowledgeable takes. I've wanted to get into it more, but life seems to get it the way.

I will say I think there's one benefit of actual plays getting big that's worth taking about: the comparison to video games. Game breaking and exploiting design quirks is a major part of modern video games, see speedrunning or basically all of Minecraft, where the entire point is pushing the game past what it was meant for. Good (video) game design requires that to be accounted for, embraced or tactfully hidden, but regardless it's axiomatic that in a game involving free movement you *supposed* to dig through all the nooks and crannies, that's the point

Listening to some DND podcasts was what made me realize you're not actually supposed to play ttrpgs like that, that there's a fundamental principle of collaboration that exists within the medium that doesn't in video games. After all, you can have a successful tabletop session with the whole party trying to break the rules or find corners of the map that didn't get fill it. At a certain point they all have to buy in or the game doesn't work.

Or maybe I'm wrong, idk you're the expert. Anyway, I like your writing, keep it up

I think you're pretty spot on. A lot of toxic (or just sub-optimal) behaviours you see come from fundamentally forgetting that you're here to collaborate, or not buying into the basic premise of the game. Of course, the thing about ttrpgs are that there are a lot of different ways to have fun with them, and different players come to them for different reasons. Some people want an overarching story. Others like inhabiting a character in a more unstructured way. Others like exploring a setting. Others like the feeling of accomplishment from overcoming in-fiction challenges. Others want to be rewarded for using the game mechanics skillfully. Somebody who's here for a big epic story and somebody who's here to explore every space on a wilderness map are going to but heads every time "should we take a detour" comes up; this is why it's important to get that buy in for the game. And, I will say, I've played some games where mastering the game mechanics and playing tactically was the point! And had a lot of fun doing it, even. (I remain a big fan of D&D 4e). If everybody rocks up to a 4e table wanting to get into the minutiea of team synergies and character builds so they can beat really fucking hard encounters (and the GM enjoys running that sort of challenge game), you can have an absolute blast! But, the point is that even here everybody is collaborating for a particular experience, and a player who kept banging on about character arcs and refused to support their team-mates in combat because "it's what my character would do" is playing disruptively, and makes the game less fun for everybody else. It's a very varied medium, is the thing.

[corellianhounds]

I think we all had a pretty good idea going into the sequel trilogy that the writers were going to kill at least one of the principle characters from the original trilogy, but you could also definitely tell Han Solo was gonna bite it in the first movie for sure. Han Solo walks out into a black, cavernous room onto a long bridge with no railings to try to talk to his genocidal kid dressed in all black and everything including aforementioned son’s lightsaber is or is lit with red. We know how this is going to end.

Movie and tv show playwrights loooove shock value twist endings and in the past 20 years or so it’s almost gotten to be THE thing they bank on getting audiences in for (which is why I think the idea of ‘spoiler culture’ has been taken to the extreme it has) even when they don’t help/actively hinder the story, and it’s why so many writers have changed the trajectories of stories midway through because the audience, in between movies or episodes or seasons of shows, figures out where the story headed, and they didn’t want the audience to have figured it out sooner than its reveal, so they throw a wrench into what might have been carefully structured and successfully foreshadowed stories, just so they can still get a surprise or twist or reveal in. It’s why a lot of “plot twists” nowadays don’t make thematic or emotional sense in the story, or they’re inconsistent with tone or pacing, and we end up with disjointed and disappointing movies and shows as a whole.

I digress. My point is that even though we kind of had an idea that they would kill off a/some beloved character/s in the sequel movies, there are ways it could have been done better and ACTUALLY shocked the audience, while maintaining a cohesive story. In the movie it looks like Han’s death was there to say to the protagonists and the audience that this villain is willing to kill his own father in cold blood, so there’s nothing he won’t do or sacrifice to achieve his goals (despite the fact we as the audience already saw him blow up multiple planets so like. we weren’t under the impression he had all that much internal conflict in doing so). I don’t remember Han being brought up in the next movie, so it doesn’t appear like his death had much of an impact on the characters’ choices moving forward. (If there was, oh well, it’s not relevant to this post)

The overarching storyline for the sequels (and I do admit I’ve still only seen the first two, I know several pieces of the third through Tumblr osmosis but I just didn’t like or care about the other two enough to watch the third) is centered around Kylo Ren as a villain. Great, we have our bad guy. Problem is, none of the main trio have any significant tie to the main bad guy with the exception of Finn, a stormtrooper who defects when he sees what it is he’s fighting for. With that setup, Finn should have been the main character. (Everyone knows this, it’s been debated and argued to death, that isn’t the point of this post)

The problems came in when the writers ALSO wanted to include the original main cast as principle characters, because those characters had STRONGER ties to Kylo Ren than Finn or the others. You can’t always have two sets of protagonists and tell a meaningful story with all of them when attention is being drawn so many different ways and you’re trying to cram so many characters arcs and dynamics into just three movies. Unless you’ve established a framed narrative, or an ensemble cast from the beginning à la Ocean’s Eleven style, it’s usually not going to work out.

There are already a trillion and one different takes on the Finn-Poe-Rey trio and Kylo Ren’s story. They’re irrelevant to this post BECAUSE

If they really wanted to shock the audience with an established, beloved character’s death, they should have nixed the new trio entirely and kept the focus on the older trio like it appeared they wanted to and they could have explored the story and connections they had to this new antagonist. Then you can really get into some meaningful character dynamics based on history and set up the audience’s nostalgia for the movies and characters they loved as a kid, but still have new circumstances for them to operate under. (Again, this is if you’re wanting to tell a story with the old characters anyway instead of trying something new.)

Ignore the whole First Order and whatever bigger plot was happening in the movies and set it up to be a different story entirely; I don’t care what it is, it’ll exist as the result or extension of the new emotional plot. Kylo Ren is still the villain but this time Han Solo is the main character.

In this universe Han and Leia didn’t split because of his wandering ways or whatever, Han stayed with her because the whole culmination of his character in the first trilogy was becoming the guy who sticks around, and who does so not just for himself or the individuals he cares about but for the greater good, even when the going gets tough. Han Solo was not a good guy— He became the good guy. In this universe that extended to staying with Leia and raising a family because he did choose to settle down.

We follow Han as he tries to track down and redeem his son, bring him back to the light (and how interesting could it have been to see a non-Force-sensitive person redeem a Sith? For it to be the inverse of the first trilogy, with a father trying to appeal to his son?), and the whole movie focuses on the strained relationship Leia, Han, and Luke have with Kylo Ren, in addition to the now-strained relationships between the three of them.

Kylo Ren doesn’t want to be redeemed. He wants to make people hurt, and he especially wants the people he believes failed him or are trying to appeal to him to hurt.

To that end we come to the catalyst for the final showdown. This time, however, Kylo Ren doesn’t kill Han.

He kills Chewbacca.

That is the kind of plot twist audiences wouldn’t have seen coming, the kind that would unite all of them and inspire outrage against the villain (and make it more compelling if he truly does get a better character arc in coming back to the light) because the villain has done something unthinkable, and it leaves the story and characters open to evolve in more meaningful ways because of all the people the villain could have killed it was the one they (and audiences) weren’t expecting to be a target. The injustice of it all.

The original trio were older, and they’re human. The audience knew they at some point in the Star Wars universe were going to die, but Chewie? Chewie’s over two-hundred years old. Chewie’s always been there. Han is almost never separated from Chewie, the one we know has been through thick and thin with him for longer than Han’s kid has been alive.

Han has to reckon with the fact his son has killed his best friend, and that his son did it specifically to hurt Han as much as he possibly could in that moment. Han Solo reached out knowing he could be hurt in the process, but Kylo Ren wanted his father to suffer, and with killing Chewie— someone who was almost certainly present nearly the entirety of Ben Solo’s upbringing— Han Solo is forced to live with and experience the grief as a result, and he now has to figure out what he actually wants in the next movie.

Does he still love his son enough to forgive him for this? Is his son still worth saving? Is he even the same person? Does Han even want to save him at this point? What will Luke and Leia think if he doesn’t? Was Ben only trying to hurt him, or did he do it as a means of challenging Han by saying “Who have you prioritized in your life?” Did he somehow neglect his son to the point this could all be his fault, or was Ben Solo always going to make the choices he did despite the good upbringing he had? Is there anybody who can appeal to this Sith, knowing his purpose is to hurt people by making them suffer the loss of those closest to them? You as the hero may be willing to sacrifice your own life, but are you prepared to sacrifice the lives of others on the gamble that you might redeem one truly evil person, in the hope that doing so will prevent the deaths of trillions of others?

How far are any of them willing to go to try to save Ben Solo from the Dark side, and at what point would they admit or consider him a lost cause?

If you want a true plot twist, make it the death of a character the people within the story aren’t expecting either. Force your main characters to develop based on that twist, and the ripple effects it has will have a stronger impact.

[jerk-bitch-idjit-assbutt]

How to Fix Ilvermorny

Issue: 

One School for ALL of America??

Fix:

A seperate school for each state. (more detail under the cut, i've put too much thought into this)

Ilvermorny STARTED OUT as a single school is Massachusetts, founded by Morigan and her family. At the time (1620) this was perfectly fine. “America” was still just the 13 colonies. Which is still pretty large and could have likely used a few more schools to manage well, I imagine a witch from Ireland wouldn't have really thought of that. Especially since she canonically didn't intend to found a wizarding school from the get-go. She was just trying to teach her sons. Other little wizards and witches slowly made their way there, and she decided to try her hand at teaching them too, and the school grew from there. 

Now, as America grew in size and population… One school ain’t gonna cut it for long. I’m sure we’ve all seen the maps that compare the size of the UK to the size of the US. (If you haven't, look it up, its pretty funny. Texas alone is bigger than the whole country.) The expansion didn’t happen overnight, but i imagine at some point the Ilvermorny staff would have had an “oh fuck” moment, having way too many students and way too little space, and they needed a solution FAST.

My solution? Ilvermorny School of Magic is one school, technically. One curriculum, one main campus, one overarching school leadership. However, every state (other than Massechusets, which is where the main campus is located) has it’s own satellite school or branch campus. Idk which term is more accurate. Essentially, every american wizard goes to Ilvermorny. It’s just “Ilvermorny of Pennsylvania,” “Ilvermorny of Texas,” “Ilvermorny of Washington,” etc etc. All of these schools function basically the same with only a few minor differences based on the cultures of where their from. They all have the same four houses, mostly the same structure, the same general curriculum and content. 

This solution also allows for worldbuilding that would further differentiate American wizarding society from British wizarding society (because i’ve always felt a little iffy on how it kinda seemed like the US corner of the wizarding world was just a british author being like “haha look at the americans trying to copy us cause we’re cooler,” yknow?) 

FOR EXAMPLE

Quidditch is still a big thing here, yeah? I think thats a pretty agreed upon fandom thing. (I’m also playing around with maybe we gave it a different name, to mirror the “soccer/football” divide lol, but for now lets call it Quidditch for ease.) Every state school has it’s own Quidditch team, and rather than playing against the other houses, you play against the other schools. Which means… y’all know how the South treats college football? 

Yeah. When Quidditch season starts, we are invested. We are locked in. Oh, your kid made the school Quidditch team? You’re bragging about that shit. You’re traveling to all the games. I don't care if their playing in Alaska, you’re going. Your kid didn't make the team? Doesn't matter! You’re still so fucking invested. Signs in the front yard, foam fingers, jerseys, posters, bitching about how the ref must have been blind because how in the world did Ilvermorny Illinois beat Ilvermorny Georgia? There are rivalries, too, and they are INTENSE. And they 100% mirror the state rivalries that already exist in muggle US culture. (And yes, i’m using muggle instead of no-maj. Cause no-maj sounds dumb as hell.)

ALSO

The size and prestige of each Ilvermorny campus depends solely on the population (and general wealth) of the state that they are in. California has a gigantic school that is practically it’s own fucking town at this point. Rhode Island, on the other hand? They pretty much only have their own school for principles sake, they could probably have been looped into Ilvermorny Connecticut or Ilvermory Massechusettes without causing too much of a problem. But if every other state gets their own, Rhode Island kind of has to as well. This also means theres totally conversations that happen when you meet someone from another Ilvermorny that’s just comparing campuses. Like you’re telling me you had Three whole quidditch pitches?! And how many students per graduating class?? Jesus. (Think the conversation you have between small town kids and big city kids.)

(There was also definitely some fucked-up complications when segregation and “separate but equal” happened, but i dont want to get into the politics of it all, that’s a whole different post that someone with more knowledge can make.)

Anyways, that’s my two cents. I have more ideas, more issues with Ilvermorny that i want to find ways to fix and flesh out, but this post in long enough already.

[tinfoilhatsss]

Naomi is actually an antagonist

Most people have different theories about Naomi from BSD, so I thought I'd put my opinion in.

First off, Naomi is NOT an author like the rest of the BSD cast. Her namesake comes from Jun'ichirō Tanizaki's novel 'Naomi'. I'm going to be speculating about the connection between the novel and the BSD character, but I actually haven't read the novel myself. I'm taking my information from the summary.

The two members of the Armed Detective Agency without an author's namesake are Naomi and Haruno. (As seen down below)

Both are characters from the novel 'Naomi'. I'm just going to be focusing on Naomi for now, as she plays a bigger role in the novel and in the BSD plot, so I have a better understanding of the character.

Anyways. Naomi and Tanizaki's relationship has never really made sense to me. Asagiri is known for humanising his characters and making sure that all of them have motives, even some antagonists. For example...

Mori, although as asshole of a character, has an overarching need for the greater good. Although he has made some pretty hurtful decisions to get there, it's with a 'good' cause in mind

Fitzgerald wanted the book to revive his daughter to try and piece back together his family by improving his sick wive's mental state

I know this doesn't really apply to Fyodor and Fukuchi, but I have no doubt that by the end of the arc, their actions will have some sort of reasoning to them.

So WHY did he write Naomi and Tanizaki into some sort of seemingly incestuous relationship? Either or both of the scenarios below could explain their actions:

They're faking their romantic intentions

They're fake siblings

It still doesn't answer the question of what their relationship adds to the plot. It could be written with the intention of humour in the end, but Asagiri has stated in an interview that he's a fan of Chekhov’s Gun (the principle that all elements of a story are essential), which means he most likely wrote their relationship with a specific intention.

If Naomi holds a similar characterisation to the novel she is from, then her relationship with Tanizaki might not be as caring as it is made out to be.

In the novel, the character Naomi is actually the antagonist. The protagonist is an older man who becomes obsessed with Naomi and her Westernised personality. (Note: the book is set in post ww2 when America took part in the colonisation of Japan and thus became a large part of the culture there.)

The protagonist, a salaryman named Jōji, plans to gradually groom 15-year-old Naomi when they meet at a cafe. Her true nature is revealed to be incredibly manipulative. She eventually reverses the power imbalance and Jōji ends up completely submitting to her every whim.

This makes me question her role in the plot of BSD. Especially now that we actually haven't seen her in a long time (the entire Decay of Angels arc). Most BSD characters are based on the protagonists of their novels (Oba Yozo and Dazai), if not the author themselves.

Naomi being represented by the Antagonist makes me wonder if she is in fact a threat to Tanizaki. I would say that she is an ability, but Dazai has touched her before, so it's been confirmed she isn't. Could she be made by the book? Is she controlling Tanizaki, a mastermind in disguise? I think there must be more to her character than we see, or else Asagiri wouldn't have written her in.

she looks kind of sinister in the manga yknowww...

[katarh-mest]

the real overarching theme of Apothecary Diaries

It's anti-primogeniture: The first son isn't necessarily the one that should inherit everything.

(Spoilers for the novels released into English up to volume 10-ish, with some speculation beyond that, so I'm putting this all behind a cut to keep those who are anime only or manga only safe unless they wanna read it.)

The idea that the "first son should inherit it all" in some cultures (although ironically, more often in Western than Eastern cultures) fails to take into account a lot of different variables.

Sometimes the first son (or only son) isn't suited to the job and there is no one else who can do it. (See: the former Emperor.) That's why his mom ended up becoming Empress Regent and ruling in his name, and doing the unspeakable in the hopes that one of the young girls might still bear her a grandson. (In any other clan, she could have just adopted a branch family member, but doing so with distant relatives in the Ka clan would have probably caused a civil war, since they were all in other named families.)

Sometimes the second son is far more suitable to the job, and the first son has talents that would be better placed elsewhere (Lahan vs Lahan's Older Brother.) The oldest brother might be in denial about it, but it's clear to everyone around them that that boy belongs on a farm, not trying to arrange family members like pieces on a shogi board like Lakan or Lahan are capable of doing.

Sometimes there's only a daughter, and she is perfectly suited to take over the job, if only someone would give her the proper training and the opportunity! (I believe that eventually Maomao will be the head doctor of the Rear Palace, taking over Luomen's original family business, so to speak. Even if she's also forced to become a princess consort in the process. The two positions are not incompatible.)

Sometimes the oldest son is suited to some parts of the family business, but not other parts. (Jinshi would probably be okay as an actual ruler, but as a monogamist to the core, finds the idea of a harem of concubines repulsive.) And so he wants no part of it and wants out of the line of succession.

Sometimes the family business really should be handled by the ENTIRE FAMILY - see the three sons of the metalworker. Only the youngest son had the talent of their father, but the two older sons had their own roles within the family business, and between the three of them, the business will thrive.

It's really an examination of the family version of the Peter Principle - it's entirely possible to force a family into extinction by making people unsuited to govern fail upward.

Speculation time:

The Yi clans and the Shi clans fell because their families got too ambitious. They wanted to rule for the sake of ruling, instead of focusing their talents on their historical strengths, and supporting the family that did currently rule.

Now, when the former emperor and the empress regnant were still in power, it made sense to consider trying to seize the throne - the succession hinged on a lone surviving male (the current Emperor) and it appeared that the Ka clan was in danger of dying out because of the "curse" that kept killing his children (leaded facepaint.) The Yi clan were wipe out by the Empress Regnant (still waiting for the details on that in the next volume or two) and the Shi clan plotted to take out the last surviving threat, the Moon Prince. That plot failed because of Maomao.

Unfortunately for them, the current Emperor is suited for the job of ruling the country, and knew what shogi pieces to send to stop them from their rebellion.

[httpsoftbunni]

The Logos and the Cosmic Christ Understanding Christ as the Eternal Word

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." — John 1:1

What is the Logos?

The term Logos (λόγος) is more than just a poetic flourish. In ancient Greek, it denotes word, reason, principle, or divine logic. For early Christians, particularly those rooted in the Hellenistic world, this concept was a bridge, uniting Jewish monotheism with Greek philosophical tradition.

In Jewish wisdom literature, the Word of God is often portrayed as the active agent of creation. Psalm 33:6 declares, "By the word of the Lord the heavens were made." This Word, this Logos, becomes personified in the prologue of John's Gospel, revealing not only the creative force of God but a divine personhood that existed before time began.

This was not a new idea pulled from thin air, but rather a profound unveiling: that the same Word which spoke creation into existence is the same Christ who walked among us.

Logos as the Blueprint of Creation

The Logos is the divine pattern behind all things. In esoteric thought, it serves as the archetypal structure upon which creation rests. Think of it like sacred geometry: just as Metatron’s Cube maps out universal order in symbolic form, so too the Logos forms the spiritual architecture of the cosmos.

Saint Maximus the Confessor described this beautifully: all created things have their own logoi—individual expressions or ideas within the overarching Logos. When you witness beauty, truth, or harmony in the world, you’re glimpsing a reflection of that Divine Mind.

This is why Christ is called the firstborn of all creation (Colossians 1:15). Not because He was created, but because He is the origin and measure of creation. Everything that exists flows from and finds its meaning in Him.

The Cosmic Christ

To speak of the Cosmic Christ is to acknowledge that Christ's identity transcends time and geography. Before Jesus of Nazareth was born, the Logos already was. He is not confined to one age or culture, He is the Eternal Son, present at the dawn of creation and active even now.

This idea finds resonance in the early church and Eastern Orthodox mysticism. Christ is the Divine Bridge, uniting heaven and earth, spirit and matter. He is both immanent and transcendent. The Logos sustains the universe, yet also desires to dwell within the human soul.

Saint Athanasius wrote, "He became man so that we might become god." This wasn’t meant in a blasphemous sense, but rather points to Theosis, our transformation and union with the divine, made possible only through the eternal Logos.

The Logos Within

We are not separate from this divine story. The Logos is not just a cosmic force; it is alive and seeks to awaken within each of us.

When you pursue truth, beauty, and goodness with a sincere heart, you are walking the path of the Logos. When you quiet your mind and sense a deeper rhythm beneath the noise of the world, that still, eternal presence, that is Christ the Word whispering within.

In Orthodox Christian mysticism, this awareness leads to hesychia, stillness, where the soul communes with God beyond words. The heart becomes the dwelling place of the Logos, and the believer becomes a living temple of divine order.

Christ and the Axis Mundi

In esoteric traditions, the Axis Mundi is the sacred center, the point where heaven and earth connect. Christ is this Axis. He is the ladder Jacob saw in his dream. He is the Tree of Life. The Cross itself becomes a cosmic symbol: its vertical beam uniting heaven and earth, its horizontal beam embracing all of creation.

To understand Christ as Logos is to understand this cosmic centrality, that all things find their meaning in Him, and through Him all things are restored.

Conclusion

The Logos is not just an idea, it is the Person of Christ, eternal, active, and foundational to reality itself. Through Him, we were created. In Him, we are sustained. And by Him, we are invited back into communion with God.

As you continue your inner journey, remember: this is not abstract theology. This is the breath of life, the reason behind the stars, and the Word that became flesh for you.

📚 Sources & Suggested Reading

The Holy Bible, John 1:1-14; Colossians 1:15-20; Proverbs 8; Psalm 33:6 On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ – St. Maximus the Confessor On the Incarnation – St. Athanasius The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church – Vladimir Lossky Jesus Christ: The Bearer of the Water of Life (Pontifical Council for Culture, 2003) The Universal Christ – Richard Rohr (use with discernment; not Orthodox, but helpful for grasping Cosmic Christ ideas) Light from Light: A Theological Reflection on the Nicene Creed – Robert Barron

[columbidaae]

i LOVE the way you title your wips!! also i’m intrigued by the “sharing beds like little kids” one if you don’t mind talking about it!

Aww thank you!!!! I answered about ‘sharing beds like little kids’ here! but you can have an extra snippet from the overarching universe that I probably won’t manage to fit into this fic: here’s Sol coming back from a date with Irving, very early on in their relationship. Ned is really enjoying watching two of his closest friends fall in love <3

“Solomon Tozer,” comes an even voice out of the darkness, and Sol nearly jumps out of his fucking skin, just barely swallowing a cry of alarm. “God, if I had my office chair down here I’d do the ‘spinning around slowly to face you’ thing, like I’m a Bond villain. Do you have any idea what time it is, young man?”

Solomon glares at Edward, smiling mildly at him from the sofa in the soft glow of a single lamp and his laptop. “Jesus bloody Christ, Ned,” he says, very controlled, “give a man a fucking heart attack. You know you didn’t need to wait up.”

“The girls are asleep. I had some work to do.”

“Not at your desk?” Ned just shrugs. He’s still grinning.

“How was it?”

Sol gives him a tired glare, mostly just on principle. It’s rare for Ned to not mind his own business about something, so this is particularly smarmy of him. Bastard. “It was nice,” he says pointedly, “if you must know, you prick. We had a very nice dinner at a very nice restaurant and it was just—it was very nice.”

“I’m glad you had a good time!”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Not spending the night?”

“Get fucked, Little.”

[nudebabitz]

I’ll say something else while I’m here-one of my biggest issues with Bridgerton s2 was the lack of cohesiveness. Jesus Christ no one is upset with characters making unlikable decisions and if you want a wedding for the sake of drama, Shondaland, have a fucking wedding, but make it earned! And on top of that, the wedding episode had the fucking audacity to be boring as shit! Just all trodding on and operating off of the assumption the viewer would be aghast and would sit through nearly an hour of boring yawn snooze because there were “stakes” and it seemed like the main pair might not get together. Like for fuck’s sake have as much drama as you like but at least make it well written! Instead the wedding episode is a dirge and not because it’s a reflection of some character’s mental state or any seemingly deep reason, no; it’s like they decided there would be a wedding and shrugged when it came to getting the character’s there. It doesn’t count as good writing if you’ve spent the past months/years trying to wrap your head around or write fic around the reasons why x decision by y characters make sense to fill in gaps that shouldn’t be there in the first place and that’s all this fandom has done.

People’s issue with side plots taking up too much time isn’t really that they take up too much time-it’s that none of them follow a set of overarching themes of the season and feed into them or a main storyline in a significant way, giving the illusion to the viewer that they’re completely separate from the romance at the core and therefore taking away from it, as opposed to everything being harmonious.

On top of that, the characterizations are so fucking varied and there’s a large tonal shift between s1 and s2 in terms of the way the Bridgersibs interact with one another. Siblings can fight and be rude and whatever to one another but for them to turn into completely different people out of nowhere is so ??

And on the topic of characterizations-WHERE WAS KATE’S??? Anthony gets 28363938 motivations for why he is the way he is and then is honestly left floundering with all of them, until you’re honestly a bit ?? as to why he can’t marry for love, and then you get Kate who is just… There. Why can’t she marry for love? Why is she hellbent against marrying? Why is she prioritizing her family’s finances and Mary/Edwina above herself? What conversations did she have with her father before he died to make her this way or was she always like this? What were their lives like in India? I could keep going! At least in the book you get some half hearted “I’m too ugly and old to get a match” reason but in the show no one is going to fucking believe Simone Ashley is too ugly or old to get whatever lord she wants 😭✋ and THEN???? To top it all off-Kate and Anthony don’t have a single meaningful discussion around an entire eight episodes!!!!! Not one!!!!!!!!! What fucking growth happens between them fucking and the coma and then their fucking dance to have them propose? If the actors themselves had to invent all these so called secret conversations their characters had in between everything to make things make sense, I really don’t think that’s a hallmark of good writing. They rush that happy ending in there at the end and it feels like they forgot they had to end the fucking show with these two characters together and they just said “fuck it let them kiss” and that’s what we got. WHAT CONVERSATION OF SUBSTANCE DID THEY HAVE. And what fucking argument can you make that it’s okay that it didn’t happen on screen??) NONE!!! It’s TV! It’s a VISUAL FORMAT??? Oh my god.

I told myself I wouldn’t rant about this, just redirect people to walle’s thoughts on this, which is (in her own words) how she sat shiva for the fucking wreck of what Bridgerton s2 is. Walle if you don’t know wrote a thousand cuts and s2 was the nail in the coffin for her. It was so so so bad. It went against such basic principles of storytelling. The writing was so abhorrent. It was insane. And to defend it feels more insane it feels like you’ve been taken hostage by this damn show and you’re writing thinkpieces on tumblr and twitter to make it make sense!

What grates me is that it really could’ve been good. The juice was there. The actors are amazing. The production team is clearly so so dedicated and hard working. IT WAS ALL THERE. Honestly the way the show was marketed in the trailer feels completely different from how it came out and I have to think there was some fuckshit going on behind the scenes given the large tonal shift during/after ep 4 and CVD’s hasty and odd departure.

[hexagr]

Lately, I've been reading about Sumer, Egypt, Assyria, Asia, Greece, and various early human civilizations. In the past, the general notion of 'religion' once entwined art, science, and ethics. That is to say that religion has, by and large, been a quasi-unifying way of viewing nature as one dynamic, connected thing.

Modernity seems to have abstractly tried to separate these ideas and isolate them into their own realms, as if they exist independently of one another.

This is kind of ironic. Because today we know from both physics and plain observation that ideas and things are interconnected. Denying this is absurd.

Knowledge itself, like great art and science, is often forged through great adversity. This is counter-intuitively good. One can get an understanding of a culture from how its inhabitants view both its ancestors and the hard-earned knowledge that's been passed down from generation to generation. Or, failing that, inquiring about where, exactly, it gets its knowledge from.

And physical and spiritual traits tend to be entwined, too (medical issues aside). One tends to accompany the other. For example, traits at a spiritual and metaphysical level get reflected at the object level. Thus, we can observe that the morals or values of a culture are sometimes reflected in the outward appearances, behaviors, and artistic creations of the people. Many of these principles are surprisingly generalizable.

A culture is the sum of this and more. Categories of things like these can reveal how a culture organizes itself. How it reproduces itself—not just sexually but memetically. It's customs and practices. How it records itself, thinks of itself, and artistically expresses itself. And what it permits and forbids.

Religion is like culture. And culture is almost indistinguishable from religion.

The main difference, I think, is that religion is encompassing in the sense that it has functionally served as a container for science, art, and itself for much of history.

In this way, religion is like an overarching organic structure that has served various functions in structuring ideas as well as social order.

Furthermore, every culture and subculture is a sort of quasi-religion, even if it doesn't explicitly identify as one.

Some claim that we have transcended religion, that we have eclipsed the past, and that we have left even our primitive shadows behind. But I don't think this is true at all.

It's religion all the way down. We still worship; we still play primal games; and we still play with fire and blood, albeit in different ways. It's just today that we're a primitive culture of Simians with computers. Some might say we are savage robots.

Others assert we are more highly evolved and know more today than ever before. And maybe, in some ways, we do know more. But in some other ways, it seems we have forgotten many of the obvious things that we once knew.

*This post is not a claim that religion is intrinsically good. It's an observation that religion, in the context of antiquity, was organic—and that in the spirit of functionalism, it served a purpose—that it was once (and still is, to some extent) a container for many things. But knowledge, science, ethics, and so on are collectively dynamic and evolving things. And we can all agree that nobody would want to live in a universe where people are put to death for wearing the wrong clothes or some other frivolous triviality. To say that humanity was completely better off at some point in the ancient past is blasphemy against human progress.