froginamoodboard

[laski-and-sage]

TJ: I'm not a religious person, but my favourite quote from the bible is 'Let he who is without sin cast the first stone!' because it roughly translates to 'Shut the fuck up, you're a cunt too sometimes' and I feel that

Anderson:

Anderson: You know- At least you know something from the bible. I couldn't ask for more...

[justaz]

merlin slipping up early on around arthur and trying to assuage his fears by assuring that the gods would look out for them and arthur pauses before asking “the gods?” and they have a awkward lil conversation where merlin is like “yeah i worship the gods of the old religion” and arthurs like “why?” and merlin goes “well why do you worship the god of the new religion? we just believe in them” and arthur takes in this new information and is eventually like “yeah. sure. i guess its not illegal in escetir is it?” anyways thats it. it doesnt get brought up again until later on

when arthur + the knights and merlin and in that shrine and the knights aren’t taking it seriously and merlin goes “in the time of the old religion, they built shrines like this to appease restless spirits. we shouldn’t be here” and the knights brush it off but arthur knows merlin truly believes in it all so he redirects the knights away and later on its him and merlin at the well and arthur is there to calm merlin after he sees the visions from the raid. merlin’s crying and pleading with arthur to leave, that they shouldn’t be here. arthur agrees and goes to leave when merlin calls out to him. arthur stops but doesn’t turn. merlin wraps his arms around his middle

“you were here”

arthur doesn’t say anything more and walks away

[dreamspring]

zoro and luffy are so everything 2 me because literally its about love as a religion and as a guiding force and devotion and loyalty as god. crucially no they don't have sex about it. they're also both aspec.

[spottedgardeneelstan]

by the way,

i find it important to point out that shen qingqiu is an unreliable narrator BY HIS OWN DESIGN.

i’m sure it’s obvious or whatever, but a majority of the things shen qingqiu is “oblivious” of, he is actively trying to be- he doesn’t want to change his preexisting worldview.

he’s not unreliable because he’s stupid, he’s unreliable because he’s afraid of change.

[cimicherrychanga]

Complicated Relationship with God (As Seen Through Lyrics in the Character's Playlist)

[luckthebard]

Genuinely confused as to how so much of the fandom watched the first 2 CR campaigns and Calamity and yet still ended up in a “Ludinus is right let’s kill all the gods” position. Like it’s baffling to me how much content/context people have just decided to completely forget? We had 2 full campaigns of very positive interactions with the gods and the moment there’s some hypothetical and interesting musing and speculation about their roles in the world from a more disconnected place we’re just throwing that out the window?*

Tbh the number of people who watched episode 4 of Calamity and still saw Asmodeus as sympathetic or having a legitimate point is unsettling to me, but while that’s a related issue it’s not quite the same conversation.

But like legitimately how did we so quickly make a hard turn from ��The Stormlord teaches his barbarians to use the power of friendship, he’s a funny kindergarten teacher” memes to…this.

*(This is not, btw a comment on the characters having philosophical debates in-world because I think those are interesting and on-theme for the campaign and are also nearly always concluding with “our personal relationship to individual gods and feelings about them are irrelevant actually, the people trying to destroy them are doing wider harm and are in the wrong and must be stopped.” I’m actually loving the engagement with this by the characters in-universe but the fandom is exhausting me.)

[carry-on-my-wayward-butt]

being catholic feels like an ethnicity to me at this point

[cowboyinternist]

harrison kipp sucks because like everything that’s meant to make him interesting is something they’ve already done with a character before. and instead of bringing up that character when the situation calls for it they just bring up him instead.

[nellasbookplanet]

Sorry but my thoughts are still on the nature of death in dnd (and other fiction where resurrection is possible), specifically on the implications it has on worldbuilding.

Resurrection magic existing kind of makes for cultural issues that have no parallel in our world. Some of it compares - such as the inherent class divide and tensions when the rich and powerful can literally buy their way out of death (a class divide is a class divide, this just digs the chasm deeper, which I'd love to see explored more in media btw) - but the implications on grief and acceptance are on another level. In our world, there is no bargaining with death. So much of our lives is spent coming to terms with the fact that we will all die one day, and mourning and moving on whenever death strikes near us. We experience stages of grief like denial and rage and bargaining but in the end there is no escaping it, no matter how hard you work or beg or rage. Clinging on can only hurt you. It's pointless. All you can do is move on, and it is so hard.

But if death is conditional. Impermanent. Something that can be defeated with money or power or faith. How do you ever move on. On a societal and cultural level, there should be entire rebellions based around who has access to resurrection. Powerful people offering resurrections as incentive would be all over the place, with desperate people selling their souls and freedom and entire lives to save a loved one. Would soldiers fear dying, seen as disposable, or would they fear being brought back again and again to die eternally on the battlefield?

But on an individual level. Is acceptance of the inevitability of death even possible when it’s no longer inevitable? If you decide that no, you can not give up everything to go pursue resurrection of your child, will you hate yourself? You could save them. Why aren’t you? Why aren’t you doing everything in your power? How much do you hate the people who have this power but won’t offer it freely? If you yourself are brought back from the dead and find out most of your loved ones just, let you go, would you hate them? Would you feel abandoned and betrayed? If you’re watching from the afterlife and see your loved one, who’s been working to get you back, decides to accept your death and move on because they have found new love, would you find a way to fucking haunt them? Oh, you think I only lived for you? That I don’t want life just because I can’t have you, too? How selfish is that. But how selfish would it be to bring someone back only to salve your own feelings of guilt, whether they want to or not? Would there be an entire industry of mediums based on people needing to ask their loved ones if they wish to remain dead or not? How much more powerful would hate and love and hubris be in this world, lacking the absolute limit of death?

[secretmellowblog]

One aspect of Les Mis that gets lost in adaptations is how critical Hugo is of the Church, and the way Christianity can be used as a tool of oppression. Myriel is not supposed to represent a normal bishop-- he's a bizarre outlier. He's a rebel. No one else in the Church likes him because he's the only one who calls out their hypocrisy. And it's not a coincidence that the Thing that made Myriel go from being a shallow careless aristocratic cad to a gentle compassionate priest was....the French Revolution.

It's fascinating how much Myriel actually ends up agreeing with the atheist rebel Conventionary's attitudes towards the Church--- but it makes complete sense when you look at the way he's been interacting with religion for the past few decades of his life!

In 1.1.12 we're told that Myriel is flat-out shunned by all other bishops and priests, largely because he has no interest in using the Church to gain power and wealth.

He “did not take” in Paris. Not a single future dreamed of engrafting itself on this solitary old man. Not a single sprouting ambition committed the folly of putting forth its foliage in his shadow. (...)The impossibility of growing great under Monseigneur Bienvenu was so well understood, that no sooner had the young men whom he ordained left the seminary than they got themselves recommended to the archbishops of Aix or of Auch, and went off in a great hurry. For, in short, we repeat it, men wish to be pushed. A saint who dwells in a paroxysm of abnegation is a dangerous neighbor; he might communicate to you, by contagion, an incurable poverty, an anchylosis of the joints, which are useful in advancement, and in short, more renunciation than you desire; and this infectious virtue is avoided. Hence the isolation of Monseigneur Bienvenu. We live in the midst of a gloomy society. Success; that is the lesson which falls drop by drop from the slope of corruption.

When he interacts with other bishops, it's with snarky frustrated comments about they waste all their money on luxuries while people are starving:

The fact is that he displeased them. Among other strange things, it is said that he chanced to remark one evening, when he found himself at the house of one of his most notable colleagues: “What beautiful clocks! What beautiful carpets! What beautiful liveries! They must be a great trouble. I would not have all those superfluities, crying incessantly in my ears: ‘There are people who are hungry! There are people who are cold! There are poor people! There are poor people!’”

He describes himself this way: I embarrassed them. The outside air penetrated to them through me. I produced on them the effect of an open door.”

Myriel is not normal! All of his acts of kindness and generosity, and the way he's so willing to shield outcasts and criminals, are explicitly framed as a kind of rebellion against the church. And, more importantly, it's all completely voluntary. He doesn't have to do any of it. His voluntary poverty is, emotionally, completely different from the actual real poverty of the people around him-- he never has to lose more than he can bear. If he doesn't want to give up everything, he can still choose to keep his fancy aristocratic silverware. I think that's part of why he doesn't protest against the Conventionary when he assumes that Myriel is ridiculously wealthy and lives in a palace full of luxuries. Even if the Conventionary was wrong about Myriel specifically....he's voicing the exact same criticisms Myriel has made of the church. He's saying all the things that Myriel has said to his own colleagues, the things that have made him an outcast. The Conventionary's:

You are a bishop; that is to say, a prince of the church, one of those gilded men with heraldic bearings and revenues, who have vast prebends,—the bishopric of D—— fifteen thousand francs settled income, ten thousand in perquisites; total, twenty-five thousand francs,—who have kitchens, who have liveries, who make good cheer, who eat moor-hens on Friday, who strut about, a lackey before, a lackey behind, in a gala coach, and who have palaces, and who roll in their carriages in the name of Jesus Christ who went barefoot!

is very similar to Myriel's:

“What beautiful clocks! What beautiful carpets! What beautiful liveries! They must be a great trouble. I would not have all those superfluities, crying incessantly in my ears: ‘There are people who are hungry!'

(And the Conventionary's comment about Jesus Christ preaching barefoot is very similar to the Bishop's earlier comments about how he is fine with travelling on the back of a donkey because it was good enough for Jesus Christ.) It's like, the Bishop thought the rebel atheist Conventionary was his enemy-- but after talking to him he discovers that he agrees with him far more, and on a far deeper level, than he agrees with any of his peers in the church.

And that's what he's getting at in the last lines of the chapter:

“Monseigneur, people are inquiring when Your Greatness will receive the red cap!”—“Oh! oh! that’s a coarse color,” replied the Bishop. “It is lucky that those who despise it in a cap revere it in a hat.”

People who despise the red hats of rebels revere the red hats of cardinals. But at this point Myriel seems to respect this outcast atheist rebel more than he respects any of the high church officials we've seen him interact with; he snarks at his bishop peers until none of them like him anymore, but he begs the conventionary for his blessing.

[until-the-brahmin-come-home]

arthur maxson is low-key kinda christain huh. talking about god and souls and such. who taught him that. why is he like this.

[anghraine]

Sometimes it's interesting to be a firm agnostic but also to feel a strong attraction to the concept of the sacred and/or mystical. I'm not sure attraction is even the right word—but art that leans into a sense of sanctity or mysticism is intensely appealing to me in a very fundamental way, especially when coupled with a sense of grandeur or glory. And ritual, I love a good religious ritual.

My family's religious background is Mormon, Catholic, and Greek Orthodox, so it's not really surprising. But it's like, despite the standard religious damage, and despite being deeply skeptical of anything smacking of the supernatural, I love entering the headspace of characters with a strong religious sensibility, I love visual art caught up in the sacred, I love fiction that can give you a sense of the mystical in ritual, I love when I'm expected to believe there's something sanctified in a building or relic or rock (real or not), I love visual or narrative art that can truly evoke a sense of the divine.

At the same time, I don't believe it. Nor do I wholly disbelieve it, I'm just like ... eh, idk, this is not in the realm of knowable information. But damn do I feel the appeal of religious conviction.

(This whole train of thought got started because I was thinking about how much I love playing clerics, lol. Anyway)

[the-n3w3st-g1rl-g1rl]

I'm realizing that the fact that Rudy and Noelle call Kris "Krismas" implies that Christmas is still a thing in Deltarune's universe. Like, it's not called something else or anything. So even though their religion centres on an Angel, I guess Jesus is still part of at least a religion in their world idk I'm tired

[daz4i]

ik it's not good to latch onto a mental illness as your defining trait but also. babe i don't have much else going on or any other sense of identity beyond it

[salteytakesonmanga]

As usual, Sanji gets the quippy line. He does have a good sense of timing for these. As a rule, One Piece’s sense of humor is not quippy, and usually whenever someone tries to look cool the rest of the crew drags them back down to earth. But in this scene it feels really natural to try to deal with an overwhelming situation with a feeble attempt at humor.

I’m sure you will not be surprised to learn that this is a dishonorable mention because Sanji originally asks if Zoro believes in god, but apparently any references to god or religion aren’t allowed because of… reasons.

[alhavaradawnstar]

idc if its a mistranslation referring to the falmer as devotees RULESSSSSSS