#rat temple

[backpackingspace]

Penelope: odysseus darling....I'm not judging but why are you strapping knives, money, and an emergency pack to your chest? Is something happening? Should I grab one too??

Odysseus, not explaining anything: I'm not taking any fucking chances I've learned my lesson the last time she caught me off gaurd I was 17 it's not fucking happening now when we're married. I know better

Penelope who speaks odysseus: ....lady Athena attacks you in middle of the night?

Odysseus: YES it's so rude of her

Penelope, internally: don't laugh don't laugh don't laugh: should have just been a weaver instead, then lady Athena would just show up demanding woven battle scenes and new capes.

Odysseus: incoherent screaming

Later that night

Athena: Hey hey penelope I'll give you the power to see colors you can't even imagine and the threads to go with it if you get rid of that survival bag.

Penelope, not even hesitating: deal

[abigailspinach]

“I was thinking we might go to the Temple of the White Rat,” she said.

“I do not know of them.”

“They… fix things. I told you, our priest before the current one was of the White Rat? They find solutions.”

“An odd thing for a religion to be good at.”

Halla shrugged. “There’s a saying about it, or maybe a joke—I can’t remember all of it. About how two people disagreed over a cow and brought it to a priest. Priests of the Forge God would take the cow as a tithe for wasting their time, the Dreaming God would kill the cow on suspicion of being possessed by demons, and the Four-Faced God would wait until the cow died and deliver a sermon about how all of us, men and cows, must pass away. But the White Rat’s priests would take the cow, breed her, give a calf to each of the people arguing, and then sell the milk for a profit.”

“That sounds like plain good sense.”

“Perhaps there’s so little of that to go around that they had to make it divine.””

[b-oredzoi]

Books I Read in 2024: Paladin’s Grace by T. Kingfisher

…people didn’t take you seriously as a warrior when you were knitting. He’d never figured out why. Making socks required four or five double-ended bone needles, and while they weren’t very large, you could probably jam one into someone’s eye if you really wanted to... And god forbid the tide rose and he went berserk. You never got the knitting untangled after that…

[noah-luck-easterly]

I’m only two books into T. Kingfisher’s Saint of Steel series and I think the Temple of the White Rat might be my favorite fictional religious order ever.

Their mandate seems to be just “do good,” lowercase g.

Feed the hungry. Tend the sick. House the homeless.

Temple lawyers to help with civil and criminal problems.

[palabarian]

World of the White Rat (collapses and dies) (full image undercut)

[singlecrow]

Bishop Beartongue is destabilising the economy of an entire continent.

And it's not the main plot.

It's just.

[themintman]

I beg of you more mousecraft it’s so freaking cute-

oh dont worry, I will be drawing some Mousecraft Teensy Mode content for y'all after October 😼

in the meantime, have these cutesy rodent Jurm practices (both pre and post cat tree 💥💥💥)

[sunflowertoonz]

“Maybe if ya join back now there'll be a lesser punishment."

"I'd sooner perish than bow to that monster."

I gave in to the PHIGHTING! Brain rot. Heres a Heretic Katana drawing to bullshitted. (Implied to be right after he leaves Lost Temple.)

I pulled the Katana design out if my ass. I’ll make a better one after I finish drawing Biograft

[agenericplaceholdername]

"You will never see the real world" ... "NEVER!!!"

Pro tip: If you make threats like this and don't follow though, no one will respect your villainy.

[adaines-furious-feast]

I think I missed it in the first watch, but the temple of Ankarna's divorce had an execution area where, rather than people's heads getting chopped off, they were pushed face first into a burning briar.

I can't express how horrifying that detail is and it seems to have been unacknowledged. What a truly horrifying way to be executed. It makes being pushed into lava seem merciful.

[backpackingspace]

Do we think odysseus started pranking Athena and her temples at some point? Because I do. He argued that it was good for sneaking and evading training. And you know what Athena couldn't argue that. Her chasing odysseus across the island was good training.

[dragonbadgerbooks]

I got to get my favorite books signed by my favorite author the other day!

[the-monkey-ruler]

Can you tell us something about the white mouse? I was always curious about her poem, where he talked about a bridge and two lovers. Does she really love Sanzang?

Why did he once choose to call himself Half Guanyin? Do you think he was jealous of her?

I watched an episode of JTTW 2011 and I liked that they tried to explain that her obsession with Tripitaka was because he fed her when she was a mouse. But I know that was fiction.

For me, she is in love. But I would like to hear someone else's opinion.

Personally, I truly 100% believe she didn’t love him she wanted to have sex with him for immortality and tried to make it look like love. It looks like her goal was to be a golden immortal of Grand Monad by taking Sanzang... though her seduction static does say how she proclaimed love for him I highly doubt that she chose him because of his 'personality.' I think any kind of 'love' or 'romance' mention is more for the sake of showing how she is a picture of temptation that anyone would follow her willingly as opposed to the idea that she could rape a man to get her way.

She was able to seduce at least 6 monks in the three days they were resting at the temple and ate them as well so she might not have been too hung up about Sanzang either.

I find one interesting where she was talking more about sex with Sanzang and trying to convince him to 'unify' their 'marriage' that Sanzang gave her a red peach and took a green peach from her. Red often being seen as a form of desire, not just lust but can be, and how Sanzang is letting go of desire itself rather than being consumed by desire himself.

I found the poem you were talking about! (took me a while). I truly believe that this is more of her way of expressing her shock when Sanzang misled her under Wukong's instructions. Wukong just told Sanzang to talk her outside so he can get the upper hand and Sanzang had to play along for his own protection. We have seen this before with other antagonists, such as the Scorpion Demon and the Queen of Women's Country, where they are willing to hold Sanzang hostage but don't seem to be willing to take with without consent and therefore try to seduce him. As such it is framed as 'love' and 'romance' when really they are trying to act as if they aren't keeping him as a tool to be used. Lady Earth Flow thought she succeeded in seducing the monk when he gave her the peach but really it was a way for Wukong to get in her belly and nearly beat her to death.

Before this, she was already calling him 'husband' and thus his 'betrayal' is more of her expressing shock that her tactics didn't work. She is referencing another tragic love story to describe her own despite that there weren't any mutual feelings. It does seem she is GENUINE in that she does want Sanzang to love her but I truly don't think that her love comes from a place of genuineness but more for the sake of her selfish desires.

She is called Half Guanyin not because she is jealous but rather to show how much she wants to be an immortal and on par with the Buddha and Guanyin. She only calls herself that because she stole precious Candles from Vulture Peak showing she wants the same respect and yearning for the status of the Buddha and Guanyin.

I can say in my own opinion that she was absolutely trying to use Sanzang since she has been luring other monks and murdering them as well. I will say that I think she was fond of him, for sure, but I feel that most of the female demons were similarly fond as they did not wish to harm the monk but also didn't give him a choice in saying no. Props to her for at least trying to give him a meal he would like and treating him well that is far better than the Spider Demon or the Scorpion Demon at least.

2011 is a fantastic show because they give their characters depth, and don’t have the yaoguai just as one-dimensional villains. Most of the demons in Xiyouji are flat characters as they make their goals clear from the start and are framed in a more monster-of-the-week format with few exceptions. I think 2011 was very clever in that they took Lady Earth Flow from the novel and saw how she does value loyalty (to her family Nezha and Li Jing) and how she tries to make Sanzang comfortable (vegan food and expressing the importance of love and human desire) and is able to frame her as a more round character with her own wants and desires outside of power. She is a love-sick and slightly obsessive woman who knows that she could never have a chance with Sanzang willingly as he is devoted to his mission but can't live with herself if she doesn't even try. It takes what is already there and expands on it to make her more sympathetic without excluding her actions from the book (though I'm not sure if the show has her killing those 6 monks).

I think she was infatuated with him in the book and maybe wanted to call it love but I don't think there is any real reason to think she fell for him if he didn't have that "become an immortal if you sleep with me" pass. And only trying to get with something for something so transactional doesn't seem to be 'love' in my eyes as more she would have tried this with any monk and just so happens that Sanzang is a handsome and kind man that she also was fond of and tried to be as polite as possible in her kidnapping.

[andrewknightley]

honor run update im about to be killed by a bunch of rats

[palabarian]

Three of Hearts

[sweetcheeksschemmenti]

Abbott Elementary Characters and Their Corresponding Muppets!

I hope this makes sense. 🫡