#she's not doing it on purpose i'm sorry .

[almea]

[avatar-aaang]

Crystal is such a fantastic character bc shes missing her memories and one of the first things she does is try to be mean to Charles, who is just so delighted by her anyway, and when she realizes that she might have been disliked before, she kinda of just starts over.

and she starts off being by being so kind by demanding they help a girl half way around the world, and they oblige. and then! she wipes the girl's memory of the house so she'll never have to suffer the nightmares the way Crystal does.

she's working through some shit, but every time she comes out the other side having tried to be a better person and trying to help her friends and correct mistakes.

and when she finds out who she is? she is horrified by what she sees and wants nothing more than to get away from that. and she still thinks she's a horrible person bc of what she's done and how her parents react to her calling them. she doesn't realize that you're not your past actions, and just bc she was awful then does not mean she has to continue to be that way.

she wants away from charles and edwin and niko bc she doesn't want them to know her like that. even tho they've never known her like that, and they never will, bc Crystal has changed so much as her time as an amnesiac and she is constantly trying to be a better person.

anyway stan Crystal, she wants to be kind, and her journey from being a bitch to being That Bitch is so fantastic, I can't wait to see what she does next

[spop-romanticizes-abuse]

Can we seen a redraw of she-ra princess carrying a chipped catra from season 5 but instead she’s carrying glimmer?

as you wish!

this would have taken me longer but i was hyperfocused today lol. i hope you like it!

[ineed-to-sleep]

Well you see they're just very good friends

[clfixationstation]

one thing that I will criticize about Mikasa's character is that she doesn't understand Eren's (and Armin's) dream at all. The only insight we're offered into Mikasa's perspective of their dream is that she doesn't understand it and doesn't know what they're going on about. Like?? She doesn't get Eren's basic motivations?? Unless I completely missed something, Mikasa doesn't know that Eren wanted to explore an unoccupied world with Armin or that he desires 'freedom'. Which again, are Eren's base-level motivations. And she just. Isn't allowed to know??

[alivegirlmari]

soooo interesting to me that misty is like. so shameless / guiltfree / nonchalant about the cannibalism & cult & poisoning & murder of it all like she is NOT haunted by those 19 months the way literally every other girl is bc she did what she did and she had fun doing it! and yet she literally also cannot listen to stayin' alive for five seconds bc it reminds her of crystal, who she technically didn't even kill. lol. 🔨

[anastacialy]

y'know, i keep making a habit of swinging my bat at hornets nests, but i have to say i'm getting so, so tired of people complaining about shows not making perfect sense when they aren't even close to done. we're four episodes into this season of doctor who. we're four episodes into this season of bridgerton. and yet in both fandoms i keep seeing people whine that such and such didn't make sense or it wasn't explained all the way and by god you guys i think maybe explanations might come later in the season. this is something most viewers will recognize as being called a 'plot.'

[moe-broey]

*pulls out a crumpled up piece of paper*

My transfemme Fire Emblem Headcanons. Include:

> Rosado, transfemme non-binary, most likely to use neopronouns or multiple sets of pronouns (fae/faer, she/he, never let 'em know your next move)

> Forrest, has been on estrogen for years but still says "I'm a prince" if asked and insists on using he/him pronouns (may be closeted, may be in denial, may do so out of a sense of obligation, may be a case of pronouns being "indicative of but not exclusive to gender identity", may also just have an exceedingly complicated relationship with the gender)

> Loki, a shapeshifter, chooses to look Like That (and she's so based for it)

> Gullveig. Just. Everything Seidr/Heidr/Kvasir and Gullveig have going on. Is so transgender. To me

And on vibes alone

> Triandra

[sarah-cam]

nancy: *is absolutely heartbroken, is being constantly told by everyone including ace that she should try to move on, was forced into a situation of spending time with tristan that was out of her control, received a tiny bit of affection from him after being emotionally destroyed by the curse, is probably feeling rejected and like she is not worth fighting for, has a history of distracting herself with boys when she’s feeling overwhelmed and sad, this has only been not even a year since the trauma of her mom dying and everything that followed including the wraith dreamscape where she literally almost died because she felt like she wasn’t worth anything, and she clearly hasn’t been to therapy, VERY CLEARLY is head over heels in love with ace which is killing her, tristan is obviously sketchy and could very easily be manipulating her somehow*

also nancy: *dances with tristan*

y’all: WHORE!!!

[casketvamps]

working as an arcade attendant i was always like "oh the games aren't rigged, some of them are just hard to win haha" but now working as an arcade technician i can tell you for sure that the games are rigged

people from corporate email us all the time like "hey [game] has been paying out too often, go adjust it" and we have to go like... lower the value of the bonus or the jackpot, change how many points it takes to equal one ticket, adjust the strength on the claw machines so the prizes drop more often, or even straight up put a block in one specific game so it can only physically actually be won after 600 plays

[menstits]

fontaines archon quest is probably the first time in genshin that replaying it gives you a new context of how furina acts like its crazy...watching my oomf play when i finished and seeing furina almost on the verge on a breakdown even on the first acts when most people thought she was just the typical chuniibyou ojousama in charge...crazy.

YEAH like... god it's really crazy especially with furina's initial approach at trying to be the archon like... What could have been her own way of doing it if the crowd hadn't immediately shot down her attempt at being genuine . Like how different that was from the way she had to act for the following 500 years... Man.🧍‍♂️

[pmatga]

recently remembered this post i made like three years ago (jesus. time progression) and i can't believe it's never occurred to me until now how spheria might feel abt it

[littlest-nightingale]

Being compared to your abuser bc of autism is fun 🫠

[queenlucythevaliant]

Why did God harden the Pharaoh’s? I’m in a Bible as Lit class and someone brought up “wouldn’t that be against free will,” and why did God let the Israelites stay it in slavery for so long. Why is God different in the Old Testament to the New Testament? I hope this doesn’t bother you, with all these questions

Okay, so there are several different questions here and I'm going to try to address them all. I'm sure I'll miss something somewhere, so other more knowledgeable friends feel free to add on. Follow-ups are also very much welcome.

First off, Bible as literature class! Yikes. I took a Bible as lit class for my English minor years ago and my experience was pretty much wall-to-wall frustration. It was mostly an exercise in coming up with the most transgressive reads on Scripture possible and that really upset me.

I hope that your experience is better than mine. However, assuming that the class is at a secular university, I'd still encourage you to be intentional about talking the things you cover in class over with knowledgeable Christians in your life. I certainly benefitted a lot from doing so, both in the sense that I got to vent a whole bunch and in that I got help contextualizing the secular perspectives within Christian scholarship.

That out of the way: The God of the Bible is the same in both the Old and New Testaments.

I do understand where you’re coming from. It’s not uncommon for people to find God kind of inscrutable in the OT when they're more used to reading the NT. I actually think that's a failure on the part of the contemporary church in the West; large swaths of the OT tend to be understudied among lay-Christians.

Systematic theology can help a lot here. I'm just going to hit a few really broad highlights, but I really can't recommend Wayne Grudem highly enough if you're interested in more in-depth reading. Lots of people start with Bible Doctrine, but my family happened to have a copy of his enormous Systematic Theology tome in the basement when I was in high school and I got a lot out of just poking through that a little at a time too. A few quick bullets though:

Across all the Biblical texts, God is love. He glories in kindness to his people, whether it's in the covenant with Abraham, the Exodus, the faithful ministry of the prophets, Christ's ministry/death/resurrection, or the promised coming of his kingdom.

God is holy; he gives the Law to the Israelites so that they can approach his holiness without fearing for their lives and he sent Jesus so that we can do the same. Both Isaiah and Peter react with fear and awe in the face of God's holiness.

God is just. By virtue of his holiness, he cannot allow sin to go unpunished. As modern westerners, we often chafe against this but has any of us experienced justice that was actually pure? Justice is a form of faithfulness, and the same God who sent his people into exile poured out his wrath on his own son in our place. He has promised that one day, every evil will face his perfect justice.

God is faithful. He keeps his Covenant with Abraham even unto the cross. In the OT he is faithful husband to an adulterous people. In the NT he tells us that when we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself.

Lots of other characteristics but this answer is going to be long enough as it is. The only way to get a real sense for the continuity within the Bible is to read the whole Bible with an eye towards the continuity.

The reason that God is more approachable in the NT than the Old is that he became human. In the Incarnation, all of that holiness and justice and faithfulness and love that was God came to earth in our perfect likeness so that he could live beside us and die for us. God is certainly easier to approach in light of Christ's work, but he is utterly the same as he ever was. Read the Transfiguration and tell me that isn’t the God of Mount Sinai. Read John 1 and tell me it doesn’t remind you of the end of Job. Read the Gospels, Hebrews, and Revelation and play spot-the-OT-parallel. It's beautiful.

Why did God leave his people in slavery for so long? You could ask the same question about the Babylonian captivity and even about why Jesus waits to return and finally defeat Death. Why does he wait? Why let his people suffer?

Well. God is sovereign and he only permits evil to the extent that it ultimately accomplishes the very opposite of what it intends. Because the Israelites were slaves in Egypt, the Exodus was able to occur. The Exodus glorified God in extraordinary fashion, both among his own people and to the peoples of the ancient world. It was also a necessary type and precursor to Jesus's work on the cross. I don't think it's an overstatement to say that redemptive history rests on God's work in the Exodus, which is itself contingent on a period of slavery in Egypt.

“How long, O Lord” and “Come Lord Jesus” are the same sentiment in different words. We are still in exile, even now. We are chronologically exiled from the place where we belong, the New Jerusalem, and we mourn because we live in a fallen world in which sin and death can still hurt us. We can ask, just as the Prophets once asked, why God waits to vanquish the Enemy, extract suffering from the world, and restore our years that the locusts have eaten. And in each case (the slaves in Egypt, the Babylonian captivity, and the period of waiting for Jesus to return), the answer is that God does not fix it yet because He is doing something bigger!

Regarding Pharaoh's heart: this is basically a question of human nature. The easiest way that I can articulate it off the top of my head is using Augustine's fourfold state of man:

Prior to the fall, man was able either to sin or not to sin (posse peccare, posse non peccare)

The natural state of man after the fall is one in which he is unable not to sin (non posse non peccare). This was Pharaoh's state.

Following the work of Christ, regenerate man is able not to sin (posse non peccare)

In eternity, glorified man will be unable to sin (non posse peccare)

When we talk about man's will, we must acknowledge that our wills are subject to our nature. In other words, Pharaoh was a natural, fallen man. His nature was inherently sinful and his heart inherently hard.

What we've got here is sort of a "Jacob I have loved but Esau I have hated" situation. Pharaoh, in his natural state, had a hard heart and a natural enmity with God. God did not intervene to give him a heart of flesh. My people I have loved, but Pharaoh I have hated.

Not a perfect parallel, but I think it serves its purpose. The point is that God's sovereignty isn't in conflict with man's will, since our wills are a function of our natures. Man behaves however his nature inclines him to behave at any given time. We call this free will; however, God is entirely sovereign over all of it.

This is definitely a long, messy answer, but like I said, feel free to continue the conversation. I've got some biochem to work on, but I'm always happy to talk theology :)

[bat-the-misfit]

i only know two Ni doms irl but they're both driving me crazy

[unnamed-atlas]

Having brain worms. What if uhhhhhh SOS Mianite au