#we are beggars. that is all

[queenlucythevaliant]

After his death Luther’s friends found the following words scrawled on a piece of paper lying on the desk beside his bed:

Nobody can understand Vergil in his Bucolics and Georgics unless he has first been a shepherd or a farmer for five years. Nobody understands Cicero in his letters unless he has been engaged in public affairs of some consequence for twenty years. Let nobody suppose that he has tasted the Holy Scriptures sufficiently unless he has ruled over the churches with the prophets for a hundred years. Therefore there is some thing wonderful, first, about John the Baptist; second, about Christ; third, about the apostles. “Lay not your hand on this divine Aeneid, but bow before it, adore its every trace.” We are beggars. That is true.

Half in German, half in Latin: “Wir sein Pettler, Hoc est Verum” (“We are beggars, that is true”). Luther’s whole approach to the Christian life is summed up in these last words. The posture of the human vis à vis God is one of utter receptivity. We have no legs of our own on which to stand. No mystical “ground of the soul” can serve as a basis of our union with the divine. We can earn no merits that will purchase for us a standing before God. We are beggars—needy, vulnerable, totally bereft of resources with which to save ourselves. For Luther the good news of the gospel was that in Jesus Christ God had become a beggar too.

Theology of the Reformers, Timothy George

[fandom-geek]

i think the thing that really gets me about pre-canon durge is their absolute sense of duty, and their utter isolation outside of the cult of bhaal.

most of the cultists seem eager to see durge upon their return, and one even says they were the first to feed him flesh. gortash tells them of an exhibition of a bhaalspawn's corpse and another bhaalspawn's creations and durge immediately plans to attack the hall of wonder to recover them. they then apparently entrust said bhaalspawn's corpse to sceleritas fel to "restore" through taxidermy. they deride orin for her artistry with corpses explicitly because "bhaal will never care" and because orin "[does] not understand lord bhaal".

even their infamous prayer for forgiveness is framed around their absolute submission to bhaal's plans, and the crime that requires forgiveness? admiring his rival's chosen. that's one line, and the next three paragraphs are swearing to carry out his plan exactly as they've been told to, all for his forgiveness.

hell, even their room reinforces this. orin has barely touched the place aside from installing her mother's corpse and her manifesto - and that is some of the only decoration. what was it before orin, an empty room with skulls, a bed, a desk, some chests and a wardrobe?

the durge didn't have any semblance of a life outside of bhaal, aside from gortash. and is it any surprise? the only other hint they ever had a life outside of the cult is the flashback of kid durge murdering their adopted family, all thanks to their father's urging.

bhaal even tries to force them back into isolation after they've been tadpoled by forcing them to kill alfira, and then trying to force a durge who resists him to kill their lover. if they continue resisting, bhaal kills them. bhaal will not allow them to have a life outside of him and, if it weren't for jergal, he would've succeeded.

[palms-upturned]

Seeing Yoav Gallant call 16 dead soldiers “a heavy price” while in the same breath brushing aside 8800 (and counting) dead civilians in Gaza, INCLUDING SOME OF THE ISRAELI HOSTAGES THAT HAMAS IS ACTIVELY TRYING TO RELEASE, is some of the most ghoulish shit I’ve ever fucking seen

[dionysism]

ohhh i am really thinking about penelope and grief. 20 years of it.

10 spent knowing your love is fighting at war and may die at any moment, every sunrise and sunset spent wondering if you're staring at the same sun right now or if he's already gone. and then the war ends, but not for you. it might as well have never ended, because now new grief sets in.

now you wait for him to come home, but he doesn't. and you slowly but surely hear about other great men making it home, and their tales of victory, and maybe you even hear about your husbands great trojan horse, how it won it for them, but you do not hear anything else about him. you listen very closely to the names of fallen greeks at troy, still, you do not hear about him. you wait another year, two turns to three, to four. nothing. no news, no closure at all.

you can't help but spin the worst possible tales in your mind, night after night. is he dead? ship shattered against the rocks in some storm? has he drowned? did he stop somewhere for supplies and get ambushed? cut down? could his men have betrayed him? did he anger some god and bring about his own doom? is there a chance, at all, that he's still out there? will you ever see him again?

and your son. your beautiful son who you love, who gets older every year, who can only know his father through the fragments of memory you can pass down to him, but it's not the same, not enough. and hero as he may be, what you would prefer is a husband. a father to your son. and his great deeds are somewhat lost now anyway, as he is. you cannot put a man to rest when his fate remains unknown— if he had fallen at troy, or made it home only to succumb to some wound or illness, at least you would know. at least then you could find some small amount of solace in him leaving a name and legacy for your son to inherit, some closure for you, but all you have is wind and words. and telemachus is starting to look like him, and you begin to dread him getting any older, as you remember you promised your husband you would remarry when he comes of age. another joy soured by grief, most women delight in seeing the men their sons grow up to be, but it only marks doom for you. sometimes you tell him to shave. just a little longer. he may still come back. you have to believe he will come back.

then the suitors decend like vultures, eating you out of house and home and every one of their faces is a reminder that he is not here, that he has not been here for a long time now. that you might never see his face again. you remember him perfectly, still, after all these years. can still see clear as day the image of him in your mind the day he set off in his ship, remember to the last detail the clothes you sent him off with. you can't imagine a life with any of these men, nor any other man on earth, but it becomes more clear to you everyday the gods must not care what you want. oh, how you both must be cursed by them, to be served such a fate! but you are not completely without hope, not yet. and so you stall, for as long as you possibly can, with your clever weaving scheme. and for awhile, this is something. you almost allow yourself to smile at the thought of how he would love a scheme like this, thinking about all the tricks and strategies he must have employed at troy, how you would have liked to have heard about them. ("well, here's what i would have done," you would sometimes tell him when he would recount old stories from his past to you. "penelope, you're brilliant! i should take you everywhere i go" he would usually say, and, you really wish he would have.) but he has gone somewhere far away now, somewhere you cannot follow, or even know about, and you are left with more grief than you know how to carry.

at some point, he's gone longer than you were married to him. eventually, he's gone longer than you knew him at all. it may seem silly then, to be so grief-stricken still, to love him so hopelessly, still. but you are only human, so you are, and you do. you've been betrayed and your scheme exposed, there's no denying your son has become a man, and the inevitable can be put off no longer. you falter constantly between a relentless despair that he will never come home, and fickle hope you are just a few more days from seeing his ship on the horizon. still, your nights are spent mostly weeping.

then this strange beggar comes to your house. he tells you he's heard about your husband, tells you he's coming home! and you want to believe it, desperately, more than anything, you want to believe it. but it sounds too good to be true. and yet, faintly, this strange man kind of reminds you of your husband. something about him you can't quite place. maybe you're just going mad, looking for him in everything, finding him where he's not there. but maybe...

and so here is your last stand, your last shred of hope, one final scheme. you'll marry, but first, a contest. a bow, that only your husband can string, an arrow shot through 12 axeheads. a contest conveniently leaving the winner the only armed man in the room. and if not what you ultimately hope, maybe, at least, you can watch these idiots sputter and fail.

[elennemigo]

Because he's worth it...💁‍♀️

Zoolander 2 (2016) || The Book of Clarence (2024) Request by @sobeautifullyobsessed. (Thanks @lichtblickpink for All´s video.🙏)

[atopvisenyashill]

Dany's reaction at Viserys's death and later on her guilt over it is perfectly understandable and is one of more tragic parts of her story. As someone who believes in her show ending, I despise that particular scene is taken as her foreshadowing for madness. She was an abuse victim and anyway she reacted was valid. And I don't even think she will ever truly go mad because I believe targaryen madness is extreme obsession with any particular thing (be it dragons or power or prophecy or supremacy or incest) so that all targaryens (even 'normal' ones like aemon, rhaegar, jaehaerys) have this tendency and it can go on to become full on lunacy if not curbed.

Yeah, like what Viserys represents is Dany's ability to completely recast her own memories, a way of showing memory is very fallible (i've mentioned that a lot with Ned, Bran, Theon, Sansa, and Dany is a big example of that as well) wherein she really recasts herself as having so much more agency while she's Drogo's wife than she actually had (something we see echoed in a lot of the wives of very domineering husbands see also: alysanne and jaehaerys, or the annoying way barth talks about alyssa velaryon). I think dany (and the audience) really put the blame for this on her when in reality like......genuinely what was she supposed to do here. Viserys violates a very deeply held social and religious custom of the Dothraki by baring steel in Vaes Dothrak, and Dany is one (1) person with not a lot of influence, no martial training, and no dragons. Beyond that, he has physically assaulted her while she's pregnant once already and now he's holding a deadly weapon to her face. Like. What was she supposed to do to stop this even if she wanted. What on earth could she have done, really. "Please kill him in a slightly more humane way" Drogo is not fucking listening to that and like, it's not to say that the way Viserys dies isn't violent as fuck but like...the alternative is like, dragging him out of Vaes Dothrak to cut off his head, which may technically hurt less but is probably much more traumatic on the whole, or just straight beating/strangling him to death which is also like, incredibly violent and will take much longer anyway. So it's sort of like, well even if she wanted to save him she has no ability to do so!

And beyond that, imo, it's the same as Cersei killing Robert or Arya killing the boy in the stables. Do I worry about the way becoming an out and out murderer will affect them psychologically? Yes, because regardless of why you're killing someone, taking another person's life has a massive affect on your mental and emotional state for a reason. But do I blame either one for this action? No not even a little. Arya is panicked, she knows it's likely if she's caught at best she's a hostage, but who even knows what's going to happen if she gets caught because she's not totally sure what's happening right now. She panics, she kills the boy mostly accidentally, she runs off. That's clear cut self defense right there. And as for Cersei, again, what the fuck is she supposed to do. Her husband is beating and raping her and she has no recourse for this because it's not a crime for a husband in general to beat and rape his wife, and it's certainly not a crime for the King to do it. Her father will not help her because he does not care. If she lets Jaime kill Robert, they are completely fucked. Yeah, hell yeah she kills him, she doesn't have another option if she wants his abuse of her to stop.

It's the same here. Yeah, I think Viserys being murdered in Dany's name has a massive and terrible affect on her psychologically because it's another nail in the coffin of "safety and strength = violence and cruelty" conflation in her mind, and this is her last tie to home, it's her last tie to her family, to her house, to her mother, to Westeros, and that "last dragon" sequence that follows I think is her psychologically accepting that like, To Be The Last Dragon, To Be Any Dragon means you must accept violence and cruelty as your first and main tool to protect yourself (and violence and cruelty can certainly be useful tools but they should not be your only ones. but how could she ever know this when every mentor she's ever had has shown her that the only effective tools are to be cruel before someone else can be cruel to you). But Viserys' death is not her fault, it's not anything she could have stopped, and it doesn't inherently doom her because she is purposefully detaching her emotions from this moments and dissociating over the fact that her last known living relative was just brutally murdered by her husband in her name in front of her, and then her husband promises her what she has always wanted which is a home and a protector and an advocate.

The person responsible for Viserys' death is first and foremost Viserys himself for being a complete idiot and secondly Drogo's fault. Dany cannot stop it, she has nothing to do with it, and she shouldn't be blamed for feeling some sort of relief that a man who regularly physically, sexually, and psychologically abuses her is dead. Who gives a shit man, she literally murders her slave several chapter later.

And as for the Targaryen madness, it's like......idk why it's just so hard to grasp for so many people (this isn't a dig at you, specifically anon, obviously) that mental illnesses often run in a family, incest often makes this worse because you're not introducing anything new to the gene pool, and trauma of any sort can set off severe mental illness issues in just about anyone. As I said before, I think Dany's problem (very similar to Rhaenyra which is why I again find it mind boggling that people will be like "nyra is a tyrant but dany is a hero" when these women have the exact same issue) is that she has consistently conflated cruelty with strength in her mind. She has very little control of her temper, and often rationalizes her actions and the actions of the people around her as being necessary despite there being a lot of other, better options available. She doesn't think long term as much as she should. She has access to a "weapon" of sorts that can do an extreme amount of damage in a very small amount of time, with the added problem that she has an emotional and magical link to that weapon. The dragons only seem partially sentient and that "part" that is sentient is like a manifestation of their dragon rider's id.

That's just so much cooking in her mind, psychologically, and she's kind of born already screwed because her family has a history of mental illness. And tbc I don't think this means that like, mentally ill people should be shut out and barred from society because um, that means MY ass would not be allowed out but it does mean that in a world where certain people are granted certain massive privileges like access to an army or fantasy nuclear launch codes, and there's no check to that power, and there's no safety net, and everyone is using you and your dysfunction for their own gain, the worst parts of your psyche can be enabled until there's a snowball effect of violence. this isn't even like, something just this series; look at the large amounts of disabled and mentally unstable monarchs we've had in history, ask any millennial on lexapro with divorced parents how they feel about their mom's drinking or their dad's bipolar disorder, and you'll get the idea that without support, in a society that enables our worst behavior, someone with a family history of illness can find themselves in a really fucked up situation and that's just like, the tragedy of being alive.

Dany, Theon, Cersei, Ned, Tyrion, Aerys, Aegon II III and IV, on and on, they are of course responsible for the harm they cause, and they are all really screwed from the start and that's tragic, but it's not inevitable that they fail or lose their minds so much as it's an indictment of the way we treat each other as a species.

[dailykarnage]

Disney+/ DVD quality of Talespin, in comparison to an original cel.

[maegalkarven]

I'm crying over the comedic potential of Gortash having feelings for someone with 8 int.

Like, Levi is an idiot! He is this "because we're smart" meme from Parks &Recs. He is charming and funny and wise, but he is Not Clever.

How humiliating it has to be being attracted to him of all people? Especially when Gortash values intellect a great deal.

Also I just bet the "immune to emotions-altering influence" part of the Cloth of Authority is partly because of Levi.

Because there's no way Gortash actually feels all these emotions for that murder hobo on his own, there's no fucking way-

But then he takes the cloth of authority on and nothing changes.

Oops. How does it feel to be a human being, Lord Gortash?

[tryan-a-bex]

Hello, I hope you are safe, I have been very ill for the past few weeks and have been bedridden with health problems. I found out that I have a tumor and it was already bad. I have Stage 4A Cervical Cancer and I need help ASAP. Please help me with a small donation I will appreciate it. 🙏Thanks & Be Blessed

Goal >> $1800

Hi yeah I’ve also been bedridden lately and I’ve had long covid and unable to work for a year, if you have any extra money from all the people you are asking could you send some my way please?

[pythonessess]

Her name is Fiona I fluffed up. Give Fiona some cheese. As a treat :)

alas it is out of my control... she stole some of the cheese that I had with my lunch today 😔

[mumblelard]

saturday robot sushi with fallie for his twenty-first birthday was fun. i always forget to take pictures when i am hanging out with my kids. warabi mochi for the win

saturday night halloween party with mostly mature married couples was mostly a big old dud. no shade, no lemonade

yesterday was a rainy, foggy, overcast softpants to shower to softpants sunday. ssss

i'm looking forward to tonight. i think there will be lots of beggars; the kids are ready to let loose. i hope they have lots of fun and do a little damage too.

i still haven't decided what my halloween treat is going to be. gas station tall boy or another bag of nerds candy corn?

happy halloween imaginary constructs! see you on the other side

[meowmeowmessi]

the way this man is only willing to consider staying in France or going back to Barcelona is making me scream, my guy my dude wouldn't you like a shot a the premier?? Pep and Juli are there?? Just for a year??? Please???

I live in delusion and I would really like for this to happen

we really are being selfish atp tbh but the frustration is so real sjskdjsk LIKE. i understand he doesn't want to move his family to a completely new country considering how many years of his professional career he has left (said while coughing blood) but holy hell i am so tired of watching him waste his skills away at pissg. every time i see his stats and how he's still dominating in all those "most [insert achievement here] in top 5 european leagues" lists i just stare at my phone in abject misery bc my god, all this for pee es gee??

and his only other option barça is so fucking risky rn 💀 more than anything i want him to get the goodbye he deserves, surrounded by the adoring fans of camp nou, but i don't trust the barça board not to fuck this up somehow, not to mention what may come afterwards if messi, by some miracle, does return (slander from true coolers, him being made the scapegoat for the rest of the team fucking up, and god forbid: the barça induced jinx of him not winning international trophies rearing its ugly head again). i stress about his future so much i should become his agent atp 😭

[the-new-hip-priest]

Gary Numan // Metal The Pleasure Principle [1979]

[navarchus]

tag drop me hearties.

[suedemotion]

girl nite

[stelashe]

Yeah job hunting, job keeping, essential human rights and payment are hell but the classism/ableism is what I hate the most