applesofgold95

[applesofgold95]

[applesofgold95]

My new favorite range of emotions is Seo Jung Hoo eternally reaching new levels of confusion, frustration, and discomfort around Chae Young Shin.

#healer drama #ji chang wook #that first scene in the cafe #and also the bedroom scene #i couldn't stop laughing #healer #korean drama #jcw #he's also a cutie

[applesofgold95]

[applesofgold95]

Stop convincing yourself you’re wasting your life away. The time you’ve spent resting and healing was and is necessary. You’re not a waste of a person if you find yourself struggling right now. Healing, recovering, sitting with your pain is foundational. It’s not a waste. You are still whole.

[applesofgold95]

Bro the tenderness of the first story scenes of princess bride? Westley the farm boy in love with a woman who only ever called him by his job title, yes, harsh and aloof, but beautiful and talented and a hard worker herself. Buttercup, slowly realizing she wanted this farm boy near her and gave any excuse to have him stick around. The intense, smoldering eye contact? “As you wish”? “Farm boy......fetch me that pitcher?” And her voice is so uncertain and he just steps closer and closer and she KNOWS he’ll have to get up all in her business to fetch that pitcher for her and he DOES and he WHISPERS “as you wish” and even if we don’t see it you KNOW their hands brush as he gives her the fetched pitcher??? Modern movies would have that scene lead directly into a passionate and unplanned make out scene, but Princess Bride—wise, talented, sophisticated—doesnt, and the first kiss we see of them is outlined by sunset, tender, longing, familiar, assured in its strength and grounded in reality, not the kiss of two people discovering it for the first time but the kiss of lovers whose love is too strong not to be expressed even though it’s the hundredth kiss they’ve shared......a tearful goodbye...... “I fear I’ll never see you again” “this is true love. Do you think this happens every day?”................did I mention the sunset

[applesofgold95]

Yet another major issue that has been coming to light is child pornography. Everyone knows it’s wrong. That’s where (most) people draw the line, say it’s disgusting and wrong. But then they turn 18. Then they’re ‘of age’. So it must be consensual, they must know what they’re doing, it’s all good, right? 

80% + of porn ‘stars’ are being threatened, blackmailed, or abused. The average age of exposure to pornography in the United States is 11 for a girl and 9 for a boy. 9 years old and they’re having their brains rewritten, their understanding of the role sex has in a healthy relationship warped. All for the sake of the dollar. 

When you try to draw the line of morality within the industry, rather than at the industry itself, it will seep through the cracks and contaminate every last drop of innocence. 

porn is one of the most insidious industries out there. it hides misogyny and violence against women under a thin veil of sexual “liberation”, and worst of all, it’s totally 100% accessible to anyone on the internet, especially young boys, who are now watching porn as early as 12 (on average). that should scare the shit out of you, and if it doesn’t, you’re not paying attention

#don't buy the lie #fight the new drug #porn kills love

[applesofgold95]

Habakkuk 2:14 (NLT) - For as the waters fill the sea,    the earth will be filled with an awareness    of the glory of the LORD.

[applesofgold95]

Psalm 120:1 (NIV) - I call on the LORD in my distress,    and He answers me.

[applesofgold95]

hi psa: the second someone apologizes for being excited about something, that is the moment you start talking about it with 10x the enthusiasm because 100% guaranteed they have, at some point in their life, been shamed or told shut up or calm down about something that brought them joy and learned to apologize for taking up space and expressing themselves - learned to make themselves smaller- and that’s the absolute worst feeling in the whole world so please, the moment they apologize or say “I’ll shut up now”, you start talking about it for them, hype it up, encourage them to talk your ear off and participate in their excitement. We want their passion, we want their excitement, joy and love. We do not want to be stunted and bitter and angry like the ones who tried to stifle us, we want to foster and nurture the glow in their eyes and the sound of their voice speeding up with exhilaration

[applesofgold95]

the switch from ‘a girl worth fighting for’ to coming upon the decimated village in mulan is THE MOST kick-in-the-teeth mood change IN ALL OF CINEMA

[applesofgold95]

Now that it’s 2021 that means anything that came out in 2001 will be 20 years old so here’s a bunch of movies that will be 20 this year

[applesofgold95]

Cover art for Anne of the Island by Ben Stahl

[applesofgold95]

One of my favourite Untamed moments of NHS so far is the soft smile of "ah, home sweet home" while everybody else are clearly "is the Unclean Realm a supervillain lair?" So, a prompt: 5 times the Nie sect's perfectly ordinary sect things got everybody else freaked out, much to NHS' puzzlement.

1

Even Nie Huaisang would agree with the general consensus that he’s a useless good-for-nothing, which is why he doesn’t understand everyone’s expressions when he helped out in making dinner when they’re all night-hunting. Scorn he’d be used to, but everyone is just goggling as if he’d suddenly summoned lightning.

“Were you not planning on eating the boar or something?” he asked, looking around in confusion.

“You broke down the entire carcass into edible pieces in less than an incense stick’s worth of time,” Jiang Cheng said, voice a bit strangled. “Not just the meat pieces, but the offal, too.”

Nie Huaisang shrugged. “My clan were originally butchers. It’d be weirder if I didn’t know how to do that.”

“Could you do it to a person?” Wei Wuxian asked, eyes alight with mischief.

Jiang Cheng smacked him.

2

During the preparations for the Phoenix Mountain hunt, Wei Wuxian gets a brilliant idea and starts writing furiously on pieces of paper in one of the Jin sect’s sitting room.

“Can someone get me some blood? Human, ideally, but pig will do,” he asked at one point, having already scabbed up all his fingers in making draft talismans, and when a bowl was put next to him, he doesn’t think too much about it, only happy that it didn’t seem to ever empty.

After a while, he looked up and noticed that Baxia was propped up on the table next to him, dripping blood into his bowl. Definitely human, too. There was no apparent source for it.

He stared for a while, then went to find Nie Mingjue.

“Did you just stab someone?” he demanded, and Nie Mingjue shook his head. “Then does your sword just regularly drip blood?”

Nie Mingjue shrugged. “I’ve stabbed a lot of people. Why wouldn’t it?”

3

“I don’t know what the problem is,” Nie Huaisang protested. “You wanted me to watch him, he was tired, he asked for a bedtime story!”

“You told him the story about people getting made into meat pies!” Jiang Cheng hollered, holding a wailing Jin Ling in his arms. “Right after he’d had meat pies at dinner!”

“It’s tradition to tell that story over meat pies. Don’t you remember the first time I told you that story? You and Wei Wuxian both turned green.”

Jiang Cheng glared at him and comforted Jin Ling to no avail.

Nie Huaisang tapped the child’s shoulder with his fan. “Stop crying. You know what happens to little boys that lose their temper.”

Jin Ling stopped crying at once, his face pale.

Jiang Cheng looked at him, then back at a smiling Nie Huaisang, then back again. “What did you tell him now?!”

4

“Today’s not a good day for a visit,” Nie Huaisang said apologetically. “We get ghosts today.”

“You’re a cultivation clan and you allow ghosts?” Jiang Cheng scoffed.

“They come here to be purified. Anyway, they’re really cute ghosts.”

“…what?”

“Mostly animals,” Nie Huaisang said. “Side effect of cultivation by butchering – at first it was mostly livestock, but after a while we started getting all sorts. Drowned kittens, run over puppies, that sort of thing.”

“…there are puppies?” Jiang Cheng said blankly. “Ghost puppies?”

“Mm, yes. Do you want to pet some of them before they go? They’re usually not powerful enough to take more than a very small amount of yang energy, and petting them makes the purification process easier.”

“Right. Show me the way.”

5

Nie Mingjue was unconscious, having put himself between his sworn brothers and their enemies as they tried desperately to escape the trap they’d been lured into; he’d been stabbed, cut or whipped a number of times before they finally managed to break their way into the cave and escape. Lan Xichen had put him on his back, while Jin Guangyao carried Baxia, his fingers dipping down to caress the blade every few minutes.

“As much as I appreciate dage’s sacrifice, he’s probably the only one who knows his way around this maze,” Jin Guangyao said after they’d been wandering for nearly a shichen without finding anything but more cave, but he settles down a bit after Lan Xichen gives him a look. “I didn’t mean anything by it, erge, you know that. I just meant that it would be nice if we had a guide – ah!”

“What happened?”

“Dage’s saber – it bit me!”

Lan Xichen blinked. “…I’m sorry?”

“The beast head on the hilt! It bit me!” Jin Guangyao took another step, yelped again, and retreated.

Lan Xichen frowned thoughtfully and looked ahead, then turned to go down another fork. “Anything now?”

“No, it’s quiet. Why do you – no. Erge. We’re not following the directions given by a saber! Who would do that?”

“It’s not a saber, it’s Baxia,” Lan Xichen said calmly. “It’s fine. Nie Mingjue always did say Baxia had a better sense of direction than he did.”

“I thought he just meant that he didn’t have any,” Jin Guangyao said. “I didn’t think he meant…”

He trailed off, a strange look coming into his eyes.

“Do you think Baxia took it personally, back in the Sun Scorching Palace, when I said – ow!”

“Maybe you should consider apologizing,” Lan Xichen suggested, doing his best to hide a smile.

[applesofgold95]

#things to make you smile

[applesofgold95]

[applesofgold95]

One thing I always got stuck on with Narnia as a kid, actually, and increasingly with time was…where were the Calormenes…from?

Because like, back in Wardrobe we’re given the impression with the sons of Adam and daughters of Eve drama that the Pevensies are the only humans in the setting. But they’re not; as it turns out the Narnia world is positively chock-a-block with humans. Humans all over the place, although not in quite all of the places.

(I have no idea why Aslan had to resort to targeting schoolchildren with portals when King Lune was sitting right on the other side of a mountain pass with an entire populace. Maybe all the Archenlanders have just enough nonhuman ancestry they don’t count? Frank and Helen’s kids have to have married someone to get that dynasty rolling, did Lewis specifically state it was like. Naiads? I feel like he did.)

But none of the humans are native to that plane. They’re all incomers; Aslan explains when he’s setting up the door back to pirate island for the Telmarines who can’t get on board with Caspian’s partial decolonization policies. He didn’t make any humans in this world. They just. Come in sometimes. Via random portals. And set up shop.

So what is the backstory of Calormene supposed to be? Narnia is on a really compressed timeline, it’s only existed since like. Circa 1900. And Calormene inasmuch as it resembles anything real is derived from medieval Persia. Via the One Thousand and One Nights and associated imagery.

Did Lewis seriously intend to suggest that a bunch of 20th century Persians (or Turks or Arabs idk I’m willing to accept a lot here) went through a magic portal and just. Picked up some horrible bird-god to worship but held onto lots of other elements of their cultural heritage in such a way as to roughly approximate the like 11th century in many respects??? 20th goddamn century.

Or are they meant to be from one of the many other pool-worlds alluded to in Magician’s Nephew? And if they’re not from Earth (the world consistently referred to in the text as ‘England’ lol) are they to be read as human?

Jadis of Charn is part giant, and not a daughter of Eve, but sort of human for all that, before she starts eating cursed apples of immortality and so on.

Like I realize he probably just didn’t think about it because the Orientalism here was so thick he frequently handled the Calormenes as a type of creature like the Harfang Giants while in other places using them clearly as humans, usually for moralizing bits. But the ambiguity of it.

Where did Tash even come from. Did Aslan make him. Why.

#find me later #narnia #wow

[applesofgold95]

Favourite work of the week, amazing food photography with a space narrative twist!

Endless Books: 8 Weeks - Dina Belenko