veryever

[veryever]

In about 24 hours I am going to venture into the Veep tag on AO3. Don't let me down kids.

[veryever]

i watched conclave and now I really want to know more about all the drama with cardinals, how do you find out about that kind of stuff?

Ohhhh boy. Where to even begin?

Well, to start with, a lot of the cardinals in Conclave are based on real people! Bellini is obviously Carlo Maria Martini (right down to having a surname that's a mixed drink), especially in the book, where he's apparently Italian rather than Italian-American (I love that, unlike with Lawrence, who's also Italian in the book,* they didn't change his name; Stanley Tucci is eminently capable of playing an ItAm guy named Aldo Bellini <3). Martini was a "liberal" Archbishop of Milan who for much of the 90s was widely expected to succeed Pope John Paul II but ended up stalling out at the 2005 conclave.** Tedesco has a lot in common with Raymond Burke, an archconservative cardinal who's still alive and very vocal in the media, although Burke, conversely, is American rather than Italian. (America unfortunately has a very conservative local Catholic Church in general these days.) Tedesco and Burke even look similar, right down to the campy, "muffled sounds of 'Good Luck, Babe!' playing in the distance" fashion sense and body language. Tremblay has a similar career trajectory to Marc Ouellet, who, like Tremblay, was widely respected and seen as pretty middle-of-the-road until serious scandals started coming out. Adeyemi doesn't seem to be based on or inspired by any one real person, but the virulent homophobe who isn't that reactionary otherwise is a very common type of sub-Saharan African cardinal, perhaps most prominently represented currently by Fridolin Ambongo Besungu. Like with Adeyemi, I can see Ambongo picking up steam but then imploding over the course of the next IRL conclave, although it would be uncharitable to Ambongo to assume it would be for the same reasons. And so on.

(Benitez is an ideal, rather than someone inspired by a real person or ideological type, but there are cardinals who've had similarly high-stress and altruistic career and life trajectories, like Marco Zenari, Pierbattista Pizzaballa (which is seriously his name),*** and, in fairness to him, also Ambongo, who is Congolese and is regularly physically threatened by political and paramilitary forces within the DRC.)

As to how one learns more about this, you could start by setting news alerts for some of these people's names--Matteo Zuppi, Luis Antonio Tagle, Pietro Parolin, Peter Erdo, and Victor Manuel Fernandez are other names to potentially watch--or reading some books that have been written recently about the current politics of the Church, the Curia, and the Francis papacy. There's one called In the Closet of the Vatican that is incredibly scurrilous, as its title would suggest, but a rip-roaring read if you're not too concerned about forming possibly-unfair negative opinions of some of these guys. There are also writers like Austen Ivereigh and (gag) Edward Pentin who've made whole careers of being Vatican Inside Baseball Understanders, especially since Pope Francis was elected in 2013.****

In general I'd say Conclave is a very good representation of the way these people think and act, especially the constant tension between venal ambition and genuine belief that they are participating in a divine agency in the world. The tendency in non-Catholic and even some Catholic circles is to assume that only the former is present, but people are complicated.

I hope some of this helps, anon!

*I looked it up and in the book he's called Jacopo Lomeli. I've never seen this surname before, but apparently some real people do have it.

**The Catholic Church has its own ideological spectrum and there are ways in which liberal, progressive, conservative, etc. are not very useful terms, but for broad purposes they work here.

***Patriarch of Jerusalem, the only Palestinian cardinal (cardinals are counted as "from" the countries that they lived in when they became cardinals, not necessarily the countries they're from originally; in his case his country of origin is, unsurprisingly, Italy). As you might imagine, he's been in religious news a lot lately.

****Francis, or Jorge Mario Bergoglio as he was then, is widely believed to have been the runner-up at the above-mentioned 2005 conclave, which produced Pope Benedict XVI.

[veryever]

Like, you should be playing Toph like she'll grow up into a short Chinese Betty DeVille from the Rugrats.

[veryever]

You can make the argument Toph could "grow" to stop punching down using concepts of femininity. I think that's a little boring and sterilized but it's actual flaw/place for growth.

But there's zero need for Toph to become more feminine. At that point you're seeing her herself as a flaw. She doesn't need a 2000s style "tomboy secretly wants to be girly" plotline. She's loved because they show *didn't* go there.

[veryever]

Oh great another female character for NATLA to butcher and throw to the side

Sorry…but…um…WHAT ABOUT HER NOT BEING FEMININE MAKES HER LESS “HUMANIZING”??? WHAT???????

If anyone is a Toph fan and is defending this then you’re not a Toph fan. Sorry.

[veryever]

They want to keep his shaggy anime boy hair but also have him have a top knot. Which is why we get what we get now.

His hair is cute but it makes him look like he's 12 so I edited it with some panels showcasing him with different hairstyles

[veryever]

Kiyi wants Maiko to get back together!!

[veryever]

The way the kids at the academy instantly liked her says so much about what a wonderful teacher she is. I love how her character grew so much!!

[veryever]

Mai does love sitting alone and reading books in peace and quiet, just as I suspected.

[veryever]

i cant wait to see my favorite divorced couple get back together for the kids

[veryever]

White cows in Guadalupe, Mexico

(Photos taken by me on fujifilm x-t30)

[veryever]

[veryever]

The woman helping the bat is Kate CJ Murphy, and she runs a bat rescue. Anyone who works with bats gets rabies PrEP (yes, it's not a HIV drug in of itself, just a term for pre-exposure therapies) even in Australia. After you get your initial series, you need to get routine blood work to monitor your antibodies levels to see when you need boosters.

[veryever]

clocked

[veryever]

[veryever]

Deleted scene from "The Chase"

[veryever]

In this essay, I will outline the theory that flying lemurs in the work Avatar the Last Airbender, are an example of fictional monotremes. This is evidenced by the fact that Momo is presumed male, despite not having external testis -