#the truth speaks for itself

[another-little-hippie]

POST FOR PENISES!

[rabbits-of-negative-euphoria]

genuinely I think one of the most pressing calls for Christians (namely Protestant Christians) today is to stop underestimating the power of beauty

visual beauty, beauty in word, beauty in sound, beauty in story

we have ceded beauty for the past 70 years to the atheistic world and people of all beliefs are realizing that world has failed to carry that standard. people are realizing their daily lives are starved of beauty--especially natural beauty--so they are turning to the entities which recognize its power. entities like paganism, witchcraft, ancestor worship, the New Age. if they are drawn to Christianity (not necessarily believing it), they are more likely to attend a Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox mass.

humans need beauty because humans need God, and beauty belongs to God. which means the church should be the standard-bearer of beauty in this world.

if a church can afford it, they should prioritize building a beautiful church, even if that means it will be smaller or less trendy.

if a church has skilled musicians in their midst, they should prioritize using those musicians in worship, even if it means the style of the music changes.

the church should always prioritize hymns and spiritual songs which exemplify goodness, truth, and beauty in their composition and lyrics, even if it means newcomers don't understand every line yet.

all these forms of beauty should reflect the beauty of the story of the Gospel.

[faggotstump]

EXCLUSIONISTS FUCKING EXPLODE CHALLENGE! I LOVE AROS AND ACES (ESPECIALLY ALLOAROS AND ALLOACES) AND MSPEC GAYS AND FAGDYKES AND DYKEFAGS AND CONTRADICTORY LABELS AND XENOGENDERS AND NEOPRONOUNS AND WEIRD QUEER PEOPLE!!!!

[laulink]

Something that I don't often see in the "was Edelgard's war necessary" discourse is the interdependence between the Church and the nobility. The question is always framed such as "are Edelgard's reforms worth starting a war over" or "is the net result of the war positive or negative" or "did she need to invade the Kingdom and Alliance to do her thing or was she just a cold-hearted, power-hungry tyrant" and the arguments given for or against either side of the conflict very rarely includes this simple fact :

No reform is possible in Fodlan because the Church and nobility feed off of each other.

It doesn't matter whether or not the specific reforms Edelgard wants to implement deserve thousands of people to die for them (if such a thing is even objectively quantifiable) ; it doesn't matter what the "net result" of the war is (if you can even make an objective measure on that) ; it doesn't matter whether or not having the Kingdom and Alliance under her authority was necessary to make the reforms she wanted ; absolutely no reform, whatsoever, in any territory, could have been achieved and lasted with the Church still standing. Why ?

Because the Church and the nobility enforce each other's "divine right to rule" and neither wants to lose their power.

Rhea wants to keep Fodlan in stasis until she brings Sothis back. She's done that for a thousand years and will keep doing it for as long as she needs to. How did she do it ? By making the powerful (the Crest-bearing descendants of the Ten Elites) dependant on her. She made their strength (their Crest) dependant on properly following and supporting her Church, instilling in Fodlan's societies the belief that a family won't produce Crest-bearing heirs any longer if they oppose the Goddess. The Crests are therefore both a mark of the Goddess' favour, granting nobles their "divine right to rule", and a pair of shackles binding them to the Church. If the Church falls and the commoners don't believe in the Goddess any longer, they also won't believe in the nobles' divine right to rule anymore and will rebel against the caste system. Therefore, the nobles need to enforce belief in the Goddess by showing how devoted they are, as Ferdinand and Lorenz explain is their noble duty to guide the commoners on the path of the faithful, and by giving the Church money to keep its influence and prestige ; otherwise, the nobility itself will be at risk.

But the reverse is, therefore, also true : if the nobility were to fall or stop supporting the Church (the one Rhea leads, mind you), it would lose power, influence and the money necessary to maintain its presence throughout the continent. The Church needs to make sure that the nobility system either stays the same or at least still relies on the belief in the Goddess. Any reform that abolishes the nobility, title inheritance or Crest supremacy is bound to be an absolute nightmare for the Church. Sounds familiar ?

Three Hopes touches onto this by showing us Rhea's attempts at killing the Bishop of the newly restored Southern Church. She doesn't try to get him killed because Edelgard was the one to choose him, she tries to kill him because this Southern Church represents a threat for the Central Church she leads, and she doesn't accept that.

How is the Southern Church a threat ? Two possible, non-exclusive ways :

The Southern Church's teachings are in opposition to the Central Church's teachings : we don't know exactly what those teachings are, but if the Southern Church's teachings imply that the Central Church's ones are fake, it would put their legitimacy into question. Which brings us to the second point :

The Southern Church is trying to become more prominent than the Central one : the Southern Church was dismantled about 200 years before the start of the game for being "dissident" and is now being revived with Edelgard's support. It doesn't even matter what it teaches the people : it fills a gap in the Imperial citizens' lives. By doing so, and by being morally, publicly and financially supported by the new Emperor, it earns the support of the faithful of the Empire and takes it away from the Central Church, in part at least.

So, because Rhea doesn't accept power being taken away from her, she attacks and tries to kill the "rebellion" in the egg, the same way she did with the "dissidents" of the Western Church in Houses, where she sent her students to execute and capture the priests, then executed the survivors without a trial. Sending an assassin against a bishop is clearly not something she would hesitate to do.

But, in this example, the Church was the one "under attack". You might wonder how Rhea would have reacted if Edelgard hadn't restored the Southern Church or started the war and had simply reformed the Empire without bothering anyone else, right ? Well, the answer is : basically the same thing.

What we know of Edelgard's reforms is that they are meant to end the caste system, let anyone reach a position of power, oust the people who are not competent enough to handle them and deny the very idea that birth determines someone's right to rule over a region or a whole nation. Those are all ideas that the Central Church has spent the last millenia denying and fighting against so the nobles would stay dependant on them ; if Edelgard's reforms were to be implemented, and moreso if they were to be successful, therefore proving that Crests and the ability to rule are not related, the Central Church's teachings would be proved wrong and the people of Fodlan, Kingdom and Alliance included, would rebel and stop supporting the Church and nobility. Rhea would lose her power and Fodlan would evolve, one way or another, outside of her control. She would do anything to avoid that, including sending her knights to support the rebellious nobles (like the ones we see in Hopes) who are bound to fight against Edelgard's tyranny to preserve peace and order in Fodlan, even if it means fighting against the Imperial army until they can march on Enbarr and behead the mad tyrant... which is roughly what happens in SS where the Black Eagles form a rebellion and ally with the Church's forces to fight against Edelgard and ultimately defeat her in order to keep the status quo. Yes, they fought this war because they thought Edelgard was in the wrong and needed to be stopped, but the result is the exact same.

(if you want to get into real world parallels, the Catholic Church was in much the same position of power as the Central Church for a good millenia (the xenophobia and the way it wormed itself into being central in every government by saying the King ruled out of God's will and had to be a good Christian if they wanted to keep their throne is especially similar), but then Martin Luther called it out on its corruption and started the Protestant Church (Southern Church, in Fodlan's case), leading to a long religious and physical conflict where the Catholic Church tried to eradicate the dissidents, with fire among other things)

So, what do we deduce from all this ? Three things :

The Church and nobility feed off of each other to maintain their own power ; if one were to disappear or stop working the way it did in the past, the other would collapse.

Rhea is more than ready to do what it takes to preserve her power and influence over Fodlan because it allows her to keep it in stasis and she believes that is what she should do until her mother comes back from the dead.

Edelgard's reforms would put a dent in Rhea's power, war or no war, which would result in Rhea trying to get her killed so she could put a good, obedient noble on the throne in order to restore the Central Church's power and maintain the nobility's standing in the Empire/Fodlan.

So, in conclusion : no significant change to the system can be made and kept in place for more than a few years, a decade at most, without national level of armed conflict at the very least because the Church and nobility will ally and fight tooth and nail to preserve their power. Taking apart the nobility cannot be done without destroying the Central Church at the same time, for one will always try to save/bring back the other to justify its own power. If Edelgard hadn't started the war, Rhea would have ; if Edelgard hadn't invaded and conquered the Kingdom and Alliance, their nobility would have attacked her in order to avoid her reforms giving ideas to their own population, or the population would have rebelled and started a bloody civil war in order to win their freedom, which would have likely caused more casualties, especially civil ones and children, than a fight between two actual armies.

There would have been war anyway. There would have been thousands of deaths anyway. Edelgard did what she did in order to gain the advantage by attacking first, improve her odds and shape the conflict in a way that would cause the least civilian casualties. We can still debate whether or not she was right or wrong, whether or not there was a better way to achieve her goals and save more lives, but the fact remains that while she did start the war, if she had not, someone else would have in order to stop her reforms. There was no peaceful way to change the whole system. As always, when you want to take power away from a group of people, you have to fight for it, and they will fight back.

[gothicmatter]

what does bones have against life, light, radiance, serenity, splendor, divinity and everything else good in this world (akutagawa's smiles)?

[stoneqoldcrazy]

[notetaeker]

“Mr. Bush, when are you going to apologize for the million Iraqis that are dead because you lied? You lied about weapons of mass destruction! You lied about connections to 9/11! You lied about Iraq being a threat,” Prysner continued. “You sent me to Iraq in 2003! My friends are dead!"

- Iraq War veteran Mike Prysner in 2022:

US President Joe Biden in 2023:

[theshadowrealmitself]

I don’t care about masturbation fics that only have masturbation, I only care about the fics where they masturbate before eventually getting with the person they fantasized about. it’s about the yearning that,,, gets satisfied

[imjustavenuxwithaboomerang]

my hsmtmts hot takes:

i did not care about rina in the slightest until season 4

seblos (as a ship/couple) is just sort of...there for me. i have no big feelings towards or against them. they're definitely cute, they just don't stay on my mind

though i loved the fashion upgrade that came with it, i hated the way kourtney was written in season 4

i don't care about madlyn that much (i also don't like call it what you want all that much)

season 4's hsm3 songs were not done well (save for can i have this dance, high school musical (the finale), dani's high school musical, and now or never (auditions)) the mixing was bad, they had dara sing too high for i want it all and the singing itself just wasn't that good

^i loved most of the original songs tho

they should've never brought in any of the original hsm actors (save for kaycee and lucas in s1) they made a corbin a twisted version of himself in s3 and the rest of the actors in s4 were so overhyped just for them to barely be there

i actually liked portwell together. they both seemed so happy and i will never forgive the writers for building them up just to ruin them in s3

^speaking of s3 portwell, i will also never forgive this fandom for treating ej like he was some old man preying on a child and treating him like the villain (this is a rant by itself so we'll tackle that some other time)

i've never liked nini (or rini)

the rina hat only works because they got together in the end. imagine if a friend put a secret love confession in a gift for you and you find it after both of you get with someone else. i just find it weird to do that sort of thing when you don't even know if there's mutual feelings

i was on ricky's side during most of the rini discourse (save for him going behind nini's back and getting her a part when she didn't want one and deleting the insta comment)

while i love both jennzzara and jetney, both of them were quickly thrown together at the end with hints that there were crushes in the air for both of them

i will forever hate that they chose frozen as s3's musical. the only songs i liked were what do you know about love and love is an open door

for a show about students putting on a musical, they really just did not show a lot of the musicals

^for s2, i've been giving them a pass because it was during the first year of covid so they were probably limiting how long people could be dancing around without masks (but i was still robbed of belle's yellow dress on ashlyn and ej and biggie playing gaston and lefou)

and finally, this show pairs people up so fast with no real development for either the people or the couple itself. the show really could've benefited from growing their characters without a relationship being the driving force and then worked on building romantic relationships once they figured out what to do with each character

[laugtherhyena]

While Nikei is the character i dislike the most out of anyone in the another series Kokoro is the one that physically hurts me whenever i think too much about her

[seasononesam]

I understand all the meta surrounding sam being a stand in for a female character narratively but idk...it sometimes just feels weird considering how the show treats its women characters???

[a-very-sparkly-nerd]

So I have not yet finished cycling through the stages of grief, but I HAVE accepted the fact that in Moonless Night, spoiler alert, something is almost definitely going to happen to Rayla.

So imma PLAN for it because ✨anxiety✨

When something happens to her, Callum needs to lose it. I'm talking going completely, utterly, BATCRAP. Off the rails, seeing nonstop red, RAMPAGING like there's no tomorrow. (And if he does Dark Magic, well, that's just a nice little cherry on top specially curated for moi)

[vehemourn]

nausea forever

[lovetogether]

We think the obsession with making mental illness appear to be something one suffers from and / or changes (or ruins) their entire life causes a lot of this paranoia one is faking their illness. Self diagnosis is something we advocate for as we’d rather someone look into recovery for something they may or may not have then never know. That and, most just cannot afford to get a diagnosis (+ for some an official diagnosis would mean putting their livelihood at risk). However the act of show casing mental illness as wholly damaging can create an idea of idealized mental illness. This idea that one must be in constant suffering to justify their diagnosis. Mental illness though is muted, it’s a subtle thing we find, even the most severe cases. Dissociation detaches you from yourself but you still exist as an entity, which can be mistaken as “healthy”. Hallucinations are not often grandiose but rather small intrusions on your life, things which make living an inconvenience but nothing to the level of a horror film. Intrusive thoughts and violent outbursts are real and something which should be discussed but this idea it is otherworldly or obscene helps no one. Most if not all mental illness symptoms can appear quietly. If it were understood just how “normal” it may feel to be mentally ill then perhaps people wouldn’t be so scared to accept themselves. People often think “I relate but it’s not as extreme” when the truth is it’s never entirely that extreme to begin with. Episodes are momentary, mental illness can be debilitating but even in that state it is never full force every moment. Understanding that the mentally ill are closer to you than you realize is an important step to understanding and welcoming the mentally ill into our communities . And accepting ourselves.

[goldensea-muses]

❛ If you mean to harm me, I must warn you whatever you’re hiding, it won’t be enough. ❜

@constable

Wow, that quick? Lyta snorts, backing up a little. Is he a telepath? He must be, if he's that wary of her already. How could he tell, otherwise? "I'm not gonna harm you," she says, raising her hands in mock surrender, before carefully reaching out to see just who, and what, he is.

[bmpmp3]

literally such a tragedy what channel zero did to search and rescue woods youre telling me the author lost the publishing rights for THAT like im still so mad. we could have had a book. we could have had a book