#theology is so so so interesting

[enihk-writes]

[alone at the edge of the universe humming a tune]

characters: chung myung

summary: it was hard carrying what seemed like the weight of the world on his still-young shoulders

word count: 0.36k

author's note: trying my hand at an experimental writing style, might be shit,,, very rushed stream-of-consciousness narrative in chung myung's pov and im not going to use personal pronouns and uh.... (checks notes) im not really referring to the source material since i haven't finished reading it hahaha....

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it's weird, isn't it?

feeling as though his arm was loped off, and the numbness spreading from his shoulders up to his neck and down to the tips of his fingers. it takes a few tries before he finally could sleep well for the night.

even then, in the solace of the walls of his mind, he was plagued with memories, distorted through the lens of his own grief he had yet to lay at rest.

he doesn't tell anyone about this heavy heart of his.

what use was a lifetime's worth of supposed wisdom when he never had to face a single loss until the end of his life? what use was the number of years he had spent alive if all he could ever do was act like the coddled child he had been all this time?

he looks at the kids of the new generation, and he wonders if he has the right to look upon them as children. technically, he was one too, wasn't he?

and like a child, he wants to lay his head full of worries in the arms of the only person who came close to loving him unconditionally.

his sa-hyung.

a boy who was barely an adult himself when the responsibility of raising the infant chung myung fell onto his hands.

all things considered, he thinks his sa-hyung did a fantastic job. had it been anyone else from the sect raising him, he wonders if his undying loyalty to mount hua would have even been there.

it probably wouldn't. though, he was now living a reality where everything he had loved or known was now a fragment of the past, history that had been wrongfully and unfairly erased.

he doesn't want that sort of cruel fate to ever befall the new children of the sect. because, despite everything he said he was, chung myung was a kind child.

for mount hua so loved the world that they gave their kindest child.

and

for the world that grieved so at the loss of his life that the heavens let him come back to fulfil his regrets, so his soul could rest easy when it's time inevitably comes.

[canisalbus]

Imagine if Machete was Muslim instead of Catholic. His name would be something like Saif سيف, and Vasco would probably be something like Dhahabi ذَهَبِيّ

.

[la-galaxie-langblr]

today on random languages my brain is going 👀 at is biblical hebrew and biblical greek

[thebirdandhersong]

Would I be happy long term with a boy who isn't as interested in theology as I am? Another question to ponder

[some-vagrant-child]

"He was . . . my brother" I said. "Yes. That is what He was, my brother, and the symbol of all brothers, and that is why He was the Lord, and that is why His core is simply love. You scorn it. You look askance at what I say. But you don't grasp the complexity of what He was. It's easy to feel, perhaps, but not so easy to really see. He was another man like me. And maybe for many of us, millions upon millions, that's all He's ever been! We're all somebody's sons and daughters and He was somebody's son. He was human, whether He was God or not, and He was suffering and He was doing it for things He thought were purely and universally good. And that meant that His blood might as well have been my blood too. Why, it had to be. And maybe that is the very source of His magnificance for thinkers such as me. You said I had no faith. I don't. Not in titles or in legends or in hierarchies made by other beings like ourselves. He didn't make a hierarchy, not really. He was the very thing. I saw in Him magnificence for simple reasons. There was flesh and blood to what He was! And it could be bread and wine to feed the whole Earth. You don't get it. You can't. Too many lies about Him swim in your ken. I saw Him before I heard so much about Him. I saw Him when I looked at the ikons in my house, and when I painted Him long before I even knew all His names. I can't get Him out of my head. I never have. I never will."

Armand to Marius about Jesus, The Vampire Armand

[francesderwent]

so I heard you wanna talk religion in ttpd! let’s talk I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can).

“they shake their heads saying ‘God help her’ when I tell ��em he’s my man.” this isn’t the outright controlling judgment of the saboteurs in But Daddy I Love Him. nobody is trying to tell her what to do or force her to break up. this is a simple admission that the situation she’s in is difficult, that she’s chosen a hard path and needs help. and what is her response? “your good Lord doesn’t need to lift a finger, I can fix him, no really I can.” she admits salvation is needed. but Taylor is casting herself as the savior. she doesn’t need any help, any grace, any divine assistance. in fact, she doubles down: “only I can”. she and she alone has the power to reform this man, because of the love between them. it’s reminiscent of False God, except now the idol isn’t their love, it’s just her. she’s going to save him.

what’s interesting to me is we don’t know how the themes of salvation would have been recapitulated in light of the reversal at the end of the song, “whoa maybe I can’t”, because the song ends there. maybe she can’t fix him because he is ultimately unfixable, irredeemable, worthless. or maybe she can’t fix him because she’s not God. and honestly, I think the song is meant to leave us wondering. she’s waking up to reality, but is the reality his smallness of soul or her power trip?

so what is the blatant Christian language in this song for? is it telling us that Christianity is evil for implanting the idea of redemption into our minds when it doesn’t really exist? or is it a hint that trying to become our own gods, even with the best of intentions, is a pathway that leads only to death?

[smaeemo]

Someone: Oh you’re autistic, you must have really (a) interesting and smart special interest(s)

Me : Yeah… totally *my SI being Supernatural, Fanfiction, and an OC I made up to scam people*

[rapha-reads]

I finished Memnoch The Devil and now I'm sad. And incredibly confused. What even was AR trying to tell with this story? What was she working through? Why putting Lestat through all of that, why doing away with Armand (and Mael) in such a cavalier, rude and undeserving way? Why the whole treaty of theology (that was actually, in all honesty, quite frankly boring most of the times - except the parts about Evolution and during the Fourth Crusade, that was interesting, the rest was seriously bland)?

I have rarely been so confused by a book that by the end of it I still don't know if I've liked it or hated it. I mean, I finished it, so a part of me was captivated, sure, but another part of me was extremely frustrated and annoyed.

I don't know. I want to carry on with the next book but I think I need a break before I continue. I did just read 5 tomes in less than two weeks, I need to slow down (if you're wondering, yes, that's why I haven't answered your messages yet). I'm gonna go read some fics, as a palate cleanser.

Edit: scratch that, I'm jumping straight into the next one, it's The Vampire Armand, I need to know more about Armand and to stop being consumed by Lestat for a minute. Lestat is. The only word that comes to my mind is invasive, but he's not nefarious, just... He's an immense, huge, all-encompassing presence that drowns everything and anything and I need him to leave me alone for a minute, so let's go find out more about Armand.

[emrys-rusts]

Okay so I'm a non-religious person who attends religion class because my mother signed me up and I dont really care because it's chill and I get to eat snacks, and like

You have to imagine me, local alt person with studs and a shaggy 80s haircut, dark rings under his eyes, drinking energy drinks, dressed in tacky clothes and visibly queer af, just...going on a infodump about moses. Like, I used to have a huge hyperfixation on him as a kid, wether it was from the actual bible (my mother fed me a bunch of religious stuff) or the movie prince of egypt, which I also could NOT shut the fuck up about. I love that movie so much. I never was religious, never will be, but BY GOD that movie a phenomenal artistic masterpiece.

Idk idk moses is kinda..why he kinda...

[fierysword]

Some people are like "wHaT's ThE pOiNt oF rEmAKiNg CaRriE" I, for one, think it's great that the remakes take out all the time De Palma spent hypersexualizing teenage characters & instead used that time to give the main character a personality beyond being a victim from start to finish

[meat-pvppet]

Sigh starts writing a story with demon characters and hell as a setting with worldbuilding based on demonology

[lesamis]

📠

one thing i like about the new job is that public service really drives home how diverse and interesting any random sample of people actually is. you kind of can't keep thinking that there's one single way in which ordinary life typically goes when you're dropped into the middle of other people's lives on a daily basis. like within two weeks at a public service job in the most boring town imaginable someone will come in and be like hi i'm blind, can i have some adjustments for my advanced degree. hi my grandmother died, can i have an extension. hi i moved here from taiwan literally two months ago and misunderstood some instructions, can i repeat this process. hi i'm competing at the olympics, can i put my studies on hold.

there's just this certain kind of rhetoric that wants to make you belive that A Normal Person is this or that and their life goes this or that way, when really there's no limit to the chaos of human experience or to the endlessly new-shuffled variations of Circumstances and i'd defy anyone who believes otherwise to keep believing it after one day in public service

[egobraindeath]

omg i just realized the Mudstone Abyss is an allegory for the Tower of Babel and how the Citizens of Free Will see Kevin as a religious power hungry force in the community, is akin to King Nimrod from myth (and obviously, everyone speaking incomprehensibly as they build the tower/ dig the abyss)

[some-vagrant-child]

He nodded. "Yes, I do wonder. Because I know you. And I know that faith is something which you simply do not have." I was startled. But instantly I knew he was right. I smiled. I felt a sort of tragic thrilling happiness suddenly. "Well, I see what you mean," I said. "And I'll tell you my answer. I saw Christ. A kind of bloody light. A personality, a human, a presence that I felt I knew. And He wasn't the Lord God Father Almighty and He wasn't the maker of the universe and the whole world. And He wasn't the Savior or the Redeemer for sins inscribed on my soul before I was born. He wasn't the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, and He wasn't the Theologian expounding from the Holy Mount. He wasn't those things for me. Maybe for others, but not for me."

Marius and Armand, The Vampire Armand by Anne Rice

[machtwehr]

There's a scene where Alex shared some info about his friend Josh. He said Josh's dad wanted him to become a politician. Now I'm curious about what Alex's dad wanted and what Nigel's parents wanted. Were Nigel's talents and inclinations considered in choosing his career? Similarly, I'm curious about Alex.

[eccleraprisma]

as many varieties of experiencing the divine as there are and that i can appreciate one of them that as trans person makes me stumble is the divine feminine/masculine dichotomy. there are so many conceptions of divinity like the trinity and and pantheons and monotheism and saints and spirits and i try to appreciate them all. but to deify gender essentialist ideas, put everything into masculine or femininity categories, imply that feminism should be about fulfilling strict but "natural" gender roles, purity culture, traditionalism and essentialism is wild to me. the people who love this also hate trans people. im not surprised considering everything else (the tradwife tradcath and divine feminine worshipper venn diagram) but god is it mind boggling