#but i just think christian should be set loose on more people

[helennorvilles]

christian really is my special boy

#mum’s watching the new vampire academy ep and i only came in for half time #but now im stuck lmaooo #but omg i love him?? i love all of them #but i just think christian should be set loose on more people #like let him use some flames!! it’s really freaking cool!!! #it also like really shows how much moroi should fucking look after themselves #the class system of the va universe makes me so mad like i get that it’s like…. kinda the point but still! #my post tag

[visualsandvoices]

Ok idk if anyone said this re: Greta gerwig’s narnia on here already I only pop in from time to time…

But it seems like Liam Neeson will return to voice Aslan and Tilda Swinton is set to return as the White Witch?

There was also a comment in an interview saying it won’t change people’s conception of narnia, but just make it bigger (I think that was the phrasing, or close to it).

So I’m cautiously optimistic. That makes it sound like they want to get the audience on familiar territory — hopefully it lands! To use the same actors and then depart to dramatically from the 2005 version would be pretty jarring, so maybe they want to recreate that movie relatively closely as a launchpad for the rest of the series? But they still gotta make it their own which makes me nervous lol

Netflix handled the Shadow and Bone adaptation pretty well so maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised 😬

The only thing is that Greta Gerwig seems emphasize messaging and themes in equal measure as plot. Little Women deals prominently with marriage, expectations of womanhood, wealth/class, etc. Barbie is theme over plot, I’d almost say, given the virality of America Ferrera’s speech, I’m Kenough, and the overall impression of Barbie having an awakening to being a human woman or whatever. I haven’t seen it so maybe there’s plot I’m missing but that seems to be the idea.

This kinda thing doesn’t work for narnia, imo. I don’t want to hear Susan give a speech about womanhood in the war era, or some remark on femininity, firstly because it’s so overdone in movies these days but also bc if you’re going to put any theme/motif/messaging on equal footing to Narnia’s plot it should be faith.

I’m not saying Christianity has to slap you in the face. The Disney adaptations handled it well I think. It was there without the movie overdoing it, and there wasn’t any sort of moral or speech or sound bite to sell to the audience otherwise. It was a fantasy movie.

Susan would make an easy target, and I really hope Gerwig doesn’t fall into the “lipstick and nylons” trap everyone argues about. First of all it should hardly be foregrounded bc it doesn’t really become an issue until after she’s left narnia in which case she’s offscreen. The Last Battle maybe, but again it’s brief. My two cents on it though are that I always took it to be her grief for not being able to return to narnia forced her to try to move on, and maybe the resentment over her loss broke her faith. She’s still a character to sympathize with. People say Lewis couldn’t get past her being female and hence the lipstick and nylons but I think that’s a bad read. She was a queen, an adult woman, and cerebrally mature only to return a boarding school student. Of course she didn’t return to her dolls. I also think that it happened because she’s so logical and calculated and careful (neither good nor bad as a trait on its own) that loosing something she loved only augmented her original doubts and made her stubborn. So again it’s not about womanhood nylons and lipstick, it’s grief and sort of an internal self-defence kinda thing. If Gerwig were to explore anything with Susan as she’s older I would say doubt and logic versus faith and responsibility would both be true to the character and far more original/interesting for audiences.

I would love to see how they handle The Horse and his Boy, the Golden Age and how the kings and queens earn their titles (just, gentle, valiant, magnificent). I would love to see a Jill Pole who is allowed to cry, to be a scared school child, and also brave and stoic and thrust into an underground world on a rescue mission. I will be fascinated to see their concept for The Last Battle, because again it’s very much so a Christian story.

So I really do hope Netflix allows the series to live past the first 3, so we get new material. Caspian and Dawn Treader are gonna be a test for Gerwig’s strengths before she’s allowed into fresh territory with the other books.

I just think that if you’re intending to strip it of the intention behind the story — lost faith, found faith, tested faith, resilience, trust, redemption, all through a Christian lens, then maybe don’t adapt it at all. I’m not saying you have to make Christianity so foregrounded it feels like a sermon, but you cannot have narnia without that being the lens through which the world is understood. They aren’t separable things.

AND going back to the casting hopefully it’s not Timothy chalamet / Saoirse Ronan / Florence Pugh. As much as they’re great actors, I think for narnia as a reboot to land, they need a bunch of unknown, fresh faces and actual kids not people in their twenties/thirties. Even as a background narnia cameo it would honestly be distracting.

#narnia #greta gerwig narnia #netflix narnia #the chronicles of narnia #the problem of susan #c s lewis #greta gerwig #tcon #barbie #barbie movie #little women

[shuttershocky]

I find it hilarious that Narita and Sanda care way more about type-moon lore than Nasu himself does. Nasu will just change his mind willy-nilly and make exceptions whenever whereas the other two spend entire light novel series picking out and referencing the most obscure bits of lore from 20 years ago and double checking with Nasu to make sure everything they add is okayed

I wouldn't say it's not an issue of "caring" more than it is a fundamental difference in creative approaches. I think Nasu cares a lot about his creations, but for him, what is important (what he considers to be the true lore) are the emotional arcs and themes of what characters represent rather than the details of a setting.

Nasu always wrote his lore to act as a Loose Guide for Cool Fantasy Shit rather than as a rigid setting. It's not so important to know the exact details about how every facet of society works over knowing what tools you have at your disposal to make your supernatural look cool or scary: There are mages, there are monsters, and there are Christians.

However, you DO have to keep in mind the ideas your characters and their relationships represent. One of the things to come out with the Tsukihime Remake was Nasu's notes from rereading the original Arcueid route. While most of the notes were basically "haha wow this did not age well" or "I was so inexperienced back then!" there were notes about how important it was to keep the feeling of the mutual danger Arcueid and Shiki posed to each other, how the route was built on the horror foundation of basic predatory instinct vs higher reasoning (Arcueid wants to eat Shiki, Shiki wants to kill Arcueid, and how these subconscious feelings grow as their relationship grows) and how important this was to keep for the Remake even as the characters themselves would be greatly rewritten.

The result was that the general consensus over the Remake Arcueid route was that it was the exact same as the original only with better art and one vampire changed out. But while people's memories of the original Tsukihime are fuzzy, mine is not. There are SO many improvements in the writing, the world, and especially in how Arcueid is given far more agency and competence in just the first vampire fight of the Remake and how even when her raw strength is gone, her experience in hunting monsters is almost unrivaled.

But the thing is, it DOES feel the same. It feels ridiculously faithful, even if the route has been expanded so much that by the time you finish reading the original Arc route, you're only in Day 5 in the Remake and even if there's like 8 new characters that weren't there before. That's because Nasu spent so much time putting into words what the original made you FEEL, and making sure that would be perfectly preserved.

How the audience engaged with his stories, what they took away with them even as the specific details fade from memory, THAT'S the lore Nasu cares a lot about and works so hard to preserve. He's always talking about people's reactions to works or characters in his interviews because those interactions are how he defines his own works. He even has Shirou say exactly this at the end of the Fate route when he and Rin are walking to school, and Rin asks him how he's holding up now that Saber's gone, and Shirou says

Narita and Sanda on the other hand, are the Classic Lore Nerd type that write wikis because nobody is getting the info right and all the talent for rote memorization and recall that probably should have gone to history class went into things they love instead. They're the type of creators that are GREAT for hiring to work on worlds that are not their own, specifically because they can be trusted they'd never irreversibly blow up your setting because they'd rather die than write something that isn't lore-compliant (no matter how hard Nasu tries to encourage them to do so).

These two were single-handedly keeping Tsukihime alive in Type-Moon during the 12 years the series went without a single update and for that alone I'm eternally grateful. You can tell Nasu trusts them with handling any of the original Type-Moon cast too, as Sanda wrote in El Melloi Adventures 2 what an honor it was that he was allowed to use Kokutou Mikiya when he's considered a "sacred cow" within Type-Moon, and both of them are able to use Rin within Strange Fake and El-Melloi Adventures.

#Type-Moon

[alpaca-clouds]

The possibilities of Sandalpunk

It's punk-o-clock again and today I wanna speak about that punkpunk genre, that might well be one of the most loosely defined: Sandalpunk. Really, trying to find something about this genre, I found that people do not agree about...

... if the genre at all is scifi, retrofuturist and/or fantasy and in how far

... what consistent themes of it should be

... what even the aesthetic is past "Ancient Rome/Greece"

... what kind of stories should be told in this genre

To put it differently: Sandalpunk right now is very much a title, but not a genre. Because there is absolutely no consistent anything within this "genre". But... I am gonna argue now, that it is kinda a waste, because there is a lot of potential there.

For those dipping into this blog for the fist time, let me quick go into the definition from Wikipedia on punk ideology, that I am going to use to assume that at least some of this should be present within a genre for it to be worthy of the punk-moniker:

[Punk Ideology] is primarily concerned with concepts such as mutual aid, against selling out, hierarchy, white supremacy, authoritarianism, anti-consumerism, anti-corporatism, anti-war, imperialism, conservatism, anti-globalization, gentrification, anti-racism, anti-sexism, class and classism, gender equality, racial equality, eugenics, animal rights, free-thought and non-conformity.

So, if I was trying to define Sandalpunk somehow, I would want to somehow bring that into it.

The other aspect the -punk genre have is, that they are somehow going into the scifi or fantasy genre, often doing a somewhat retrofuturist spin on things.

So, based on that we now have the three following ideas:

Based on the cultures of Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece

Anti-Hierarchical and Anti-Imperialist ideas

Retrofuturism, possibly with some fantasy elements

And I think we can actually get a working concept from this.

Because of course especially ancient Rome and to a lesser degree Ancient Greece were expansionist empires. Both cultures (though this is your scheduled reminder that due to the length of time these empires lasted the culture shifted) were very hierarchical, very classist and were very much about conformaty.

We still very much live in a Roman world, even though we usually do not think about it that way. But because of how Rome had colonized most of Europe before the Empire fell - and because of how it was Rome who went out and propagized Christianity, with the religion now inextricably linked with Roman culture to this day, being used to propagate Roman ideals to this day.

So, imagining a retrofuturist setting with Roman influence could actually mirror some real developments we see these days - just with less Christianity. And an added bonus is: The Romans already knew about steam power - they only in the real world had never figured out how to productively use it. (Mostly because slave labour was cheaper.)

And this could actually make for a super interesting set up for a genre.

Let me paint that picture for you:

It is 1300 AD, the Roman Empire has never fallen and has by now colonized all of Europe, with the exceptions of some parts in the far north, as well as most of North Africa and West Asia. The Roman Empire has since advanced their technology considerably, outmatching most of the rest of the world in technology. They have stern rules about the way people can and cannot live, their world being divided between the classes. However... There are some that do not want to accept the Roman rule, being willing to fight against it. Groups of people trying to keep alive their indigenous cultures, offering each other mutual aid, trying to survive under the thumb of the Empire.

I think there is a lot of potential there. Playing around with how the Roman Empire had influenced our world, making it more visible than it usually is. With a world that is familiar and yet isn't. The possibilities are endless. And of course we can have people rebelling against it.

And hey, maybe the Roman gods play a role in this world as well?

Right now Sandalpunk is not much more than a word. But that could be done with it. So... Maybe someone just gotta start writing this genre? For real, I mean. Rather than people just looking random things featuring mildly anarchronistic Roman things and go: "Oh! Sandalpunk!"

#cyberpunk #steampunk #sandalpunk #ancient rome #ancient greece #retrofuturism #science fiction #scifi #fantasy #alternate history

[eldritch-flower]

WIP INTRO: "SMILE"

and to sadness he was drawn like rot and decay. he would sow his legacy amongst the bones of the dead and become witness to the new world. a world void of all fear and hurt and hatred. and all they would ever do is 𝘴𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘦.

SYNOPSIS:

Everyone knew the stories. The tales of the desiccated corpses he left behind, drained and dry - nothing more than a husk - and of the sadistic moniker that emblazoned them. Smiley, they called him, apt and fitting but forever more than the murderer would deserve. He brought with him shadows of a darker age of humanity wherever he went: A shadow of evil, authoritarian darkness that swept through every town with a ferocity unparalleled by any natural means. His presence was like a dust cloud, grinding the hopes and beliefs of whatever sorry town he made his prize - crumbling them to piles of ash and soot and pain.

And everyone knew the old myths that followed him, whispers of Ones of obsidian and midnight, of brilliant sun and gold. How they wreaked havoc for centuries before their disappearance. Gone, without a trace. Or so it was told in the scripture, written for hope and betterment to prevail when there was none to be seen. It is known that a People can forget the darkness of their past, see around the night sky to the dawn ever-coming. But there are some things that should not be forgotten. And Smiley knew; this was their first mistake.

Humans have grown weak in His absence, fighting petty wars through every fault of their own. They slaughter one another without means to sacrifice, with no avid reason, and have come to disbelieve all the fruitful truths once known. And deep down beneath the Bone-Yard, beneath all the stagnant rot and mold and maggots burying their way through their own flesh, He makes his way through the piles of decay. Smiley knows it won't be long now. The crescendo of frothing-white crashing against the cliffs were all that were keeping Him at bay. But now, it seems, He has finally learned how to swim.

or, alternatively...

When the notorious serial killer known only by the alias 'Smiley' makes his presence in Perthlochry apparent, the small Welsh town's lacklusterpolice department do all they can to prevent the spree of the seven deaths that he is renowned for. But it's not enough - it never was going to be. Matters aren't helped when the first victim is the Deputy's very own sister, found torn and drained behind her apartment with a crimson grin decorating her pale face.

Detective Tempest understands why he's being distanced from the crimes. Personal bias is a dangerous game to play in the land of law enforcement. But with nothing but loose ends and a handful of curious witnesses, the entire town plummets to chaos. That's when it becomes clear:

There are worse things out there than Smiley. And they, too, are on their way to Perthlochry.

BASICS:

Genre(s) - Supernatural-horror, thriller, crime

Length - novel, ~90,000 words

Setting - A fictional town in Western Wales, UK, called 'Perthlochry'... present day, I think (could be late 90s/early 2000s, though, we'll see)

POV- Third Person (limited)

Including - LGBTQ+ characters (on the down-low), exes to lovers, buddy-cop dynamics, women in STEM, Evil vs slightly less-Evil, Antagonist turned Ally, (kind of) the Chosen One

This is not a romance novel. There is a romantic pairing between 2 main characters, but it's just kinda... there.

VICTIMS:

Connor Tempest: Perthlochry's Deputy Chief of Police & lead homicide detective

Amos Christian Bancroft: English horror author

Alani Fisher: PhD student of Forensic Psychology & intern

Violet Llewellyn: Highschool student

Alder Llewellyn: Highschool student

Others:

Cooper Miller

Chelsea Wynne

Daniella Reeves

William Cadwaldr

Rose Miller-Llewellyn

WARNINGS:

"SMILE" is a supernatural thriller aimed towards mature readers - so, basically, it's (new) adult.

It's... it's probably the goriest thing I've ever planned out, and it's definitely the darkest. That being said, here be the content warnings, so ya'll beware:

Strong Language

Child Abuse, Endangerment and Death

(Very) Graphic Violence

Death & Murder

Misogyny

Mental Illness

Police Brutality

Abusive Relationships

Religious Connotations

Cults & the Occult

Dubious/Lack of Consent

Welsh People Great British Humour

PLAYLIST:

Shame on The Night - Dio

Killer - The Hoosiers

Night Prowler - AC/DC

Alone + Easy Target - Foo Fighters

One Of My Turns - Pink Floyd

Life Goes On - The Damned

Voices - Alice In Chains

Hunted Down - Soundgarden

Children of the Damned - Iron Maiden

My Iron Lung - Radiohead

#wip #wip introduction #creative writing #writeblr #wip intro #writers of tumblr #writing community #writers #horror #supernatural horror #serial murder #thriller #be gay do crimes #horror books #wip : SMILE

[just-late-roman-republic-things]

Hi! I absolutely love love love your blog!! For the historical ask thing: 6, 7, 9, 14. I hope it's not too many

Not at all, what's this blog for if not for rambling?

6. HF I never expected to like as much as I do

Publius Rutilius Rufus! He was a colleague of Gaius Marius and great-uncle to Julius Caesar. Rutilius protected the inhabitants of Asia from extortionate tax companies, and for that reason the tax companies' allies prosecuted him for extortion in revenge. He was condemned, falsely, and exiled...whereupon he settled down in Asia, where he was welcomed back by the same people he'd been accused of oppressing.

Rufus was a genuinely good man, and deserves more love.

7. HF I never expected to dislike as much as I do

Hmm, tough question. There are plenty of Romans I strongly disagree with, but I rarely dislike them on a personal level. I think the only ones I'd really dislike would be whoever it was that banned pagan religions in late antiquity. (And the resulting loss of historical records that were considered not worth preserving.) I am not of fan of religious persecution, either against Christians, Jews, pagans or anybody else, and I think there's a lot that different traditions can teach each other.

9. Favorite history-based movie

Anon, I should thank you, because you just made me remember A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, a musical comedy from 1966. Is it accurate to ancient Rome? Nope! Is it hilarious? Absolutely.

My favorite history-based movie ever, though, is Red Cliff, which is set during the Three Kingdoms period of ancient China. It's about one of the most important battles that halted Cao Cao's invasion of his neighboring states. Fantastic writing, acting, music, and battle scenes, and it's (loosely) based on a real battle.

14. Favorite fictional depiction of an HF

I really love Colleen McCullough's depictions of Marius and Sulla in Masters of Rome. She does a wonderful job of making them sympathetic yet deeply flawed. Marius is practically the hero of the first book, and first half of the second, and then you go "Oh no...oh NO" as he goes off the deep end. Sulla is horrible in so many ways, yet delightfully entertaining, often very funny, and his romantic relationship with Metrobius is actually the most humanizing thing about him. I think she really captured the tragedy and moral grayness of the time period, and it's fun to see their legacies resound through the later books, too.

#just roman asks #ask meme #about jlrrt

[marabarl-and-marlbara]

hi mara, i just wanted to say i love your art, your work, and i would be really excited to playing a vn by you - though there's no pressure. i hope you dont mind me asking, how many scientology works have you read? im currently reading a history of man. have a great day.

good morning, anonymous -- thank you very much for the kind words; i likely won:t ever make/finish a VN so let that excitement drain away, it was one of my "before-doomsday" goals, but @ some point it felt like the only reason i was creating a VN (to begin with) was to impress someone i had a crush on.

That:s not so simple, though! Because deep-down I really love the medium, and last night I spent the day day-dreaming about opening scenes + graphics I:d use to direct it; the day-prior was spent reflecting on my own failures to finish/publish my "blueprint for basic beliefs and practices" for others to follow, to form a fledgling sickly insect of introducing chiral faith (a sort-of 'anti-christianity' -- not-so-much anti as in "satan rules" and more-so "chiral objects should not overlap") coinciding with the production of the 8th-day calendar I:ve been following, for this year (this ties in-to the VN because the setting/script segregates the handedness of followers along several cultural lines, one of the major ones is separating the calendars with the introduction of an 8th-day for the left-handed (based on quaternal patternings) sabbath) -- because it dawned on me that I could probably affect more people by a) withdrawing wholly, as I freak-out easily from being exposed to connectivity due to contamination, & b) the VN script I had written already served as a 'pungent blueprint' for the insemination of my faith -- it made me think of that story about mundum, wherein there were two 'vehicles of mundum' b1) the fiction author, & b2) the academic, who both channeled utilitarian mechanical grind/erosion in their own outputs (ie, even if the method was different, the cause was the same); I might be more of an artist than a priest, basically, so I was (and am) struggling with a crisis of my own utility. Do I try to don the garb of religion, and affect people with well-written (lol) and concise (lolx2) blueprints that provide clear glossary/instructions for a future flock, when I die? Or: do I just map-out my internal world with characters that are being mechanically eroded (unaware) by the bacteria of my faith, in hope that it can reach-out and affect the environments of readers -- the phylactery that I wrote about in the "I am not a person of integrity" substack post.

I don:t know ^^ the person behind any of those possibilities struggles to do anything except obsessively follow a tight daily routine of over-exercising and cleaning.

To your Scientology question: I read this message before I went to bed & had a nightmare loosely related to it, ie: nightmare scenario: "I received odd messages from a person accusing me of causing the suicides of two people I knew, and that I could have stopped it if I just acted human with them and were willing to eat a rotting sandwich (context: there was this baked-bun that was filled with maggots)." Loosely: the idea of other people getting into Scientology due to me stresses me out, but at the same time: if I really cared about that: I wouldn:t make art about Scientology. Connectivity is always contamination, and ultimately under every excuse of "why I let this leave a 'clean' (untrue due to outside inputs) environment of my thoughts is always because temptation of connectivity (ie: the output companion of that prior-mentioned-input)." I:ve partially read Dianetics (original thesis), Dianetics (the volcano one -- I own this one physically!), and Self Analysis (I own this one physically, too).

Take care, chief.

[nicklloydnow]

“Anhedönia has been getting more acquainted with Ethel Cain, the character whose story she’s been tracing across multiple projects since 2018, and whose background she plans to explore further on an EP planned for later this year. Listeners first got to know the full, tragic arc she had in mind on her 2022 debut album, Preacher’s Daughter — a stunning release that showed Anhedönia’s atmospheric production and her knack for Southern Gothic imagery and intense themes, like religious indoctrination, sexual violence, isolation, and family trauma.

Ethel Cain is a work of fiction, one that first came to Anhedönia on “A House in Nebraska,” a spine-tingling song she wrote at age 19. Ethel and her creator share a lot in common. Both are women who took off on their own, leaving their oppressive Christian communities: Ethel grew up in Alabama, while Anhedönia herself came from a rural town in Florida called Perry, where she was home-schooled and brought up Baptist. But Anhedönia takes Ethel into much darker terrain from there on Preacher’s Daughter, having the character grapple with abuse at the hands of her father as she treks out west, where she encounters drugs, sex work, and dangerous men — until eventually she’s kidnapped, killed, and cannibalized.

It’s a violent, fatalist plot told over dazed pianos and dramatic blasts of distortion, Anhedönia’s voice often steady and dreamlike even at cruel turns. She’d long looked up to artists like Lana Del Rey, Marina, and Florence + the Machine, and her debut album feels like a twisted collage of those references playing over a feverish Donald Ray Pollock novel — he’s one of her favorite writers, along with others in the Southern Gothic canon. The EP she’s working on now covers Ethel’s high school years. Anhedönia says she envisions it as another chapter to a longer story she’s been telling: “I feel like this is truly laying Ethel Cain to rest.”

(…)

There was one part of secular culture that Anhedönia recalls being allowed to explore: horror movies, which she watched at her grandparents’ house. “I was really anxious and scared of everything. And so my pop, in all his wisdom, decided I should come spend the night and watch every R-rated horror movie that he had.” They’d go to Walmart and buy a Betty Crocker cake with strawberry icing to eat while they watched The Blair Witch Project, The Ring, or the Final Destination series. “He was like, ‘Watch this, you won’t be scared anymore,’ ” Anhedönia says.

But slowly, real-world uncertainties began to set in. Anhedönia says she’d always understood, somewhere deep inside of her, that she felt an attraction to both sexes. “I had crushes on girls, I had crushes on boys,” she says. “And I didn’t even really know what that meant.” Her neighborhood was small and full of old ladies, as she describes it, and she’d noticed that people treated one of her neighbors, a gay man who lived in town, differently. “I started to get this inkling in my head at some point as I was approaching adolescence, like, ‘Is that not allowed?’ ” So when she was about 11 years old, she turned to her parents with an innocent query. “I thought I was just going to be like, ‘Hey … I have a question.’ ” This is often painted as Anhedönia’s coming-out story, but the truth is, she was just a kid asking about something she didn’t fully understand. “I was like, ‘I think I like boys.’ ”

In a community obsessed with upholding puritanical ideals they believed would keep the devil at bay, all hell broke loose, she says. Families from her church would tell her mom that Anhedönia couldn’t play with their kids. Her parents sent her to therapy. Her life grew even lonelier and darker, cascading into several years that she now says she hardly remembers — in between home-school lessons, she spent most of her time in bed with the curtains drawn. “Living in that environment, you just want to get out of it,” she says. “I remember just kind of locking away parts of myself and thinking, ‘You’re going to wake up, you’re going to eat, you’re going to deal with whatever happens today, you’re going to go to sleep, and then you’re going to keep doing that until this is over.’ ”

(…)

At 16, she started taking classes at a community college, then went to school to become a nail technician at 18. By then, she’d flown out the door and started living on her own in Tallahassee, indulging in her new freedom. She experimented with acid, opioids, Xanax, meth once. “When you come from such an oppressive upbringing, you tend to spiral for a moment,” she admits. It was right around then that the idea of Ethel Cain began blossoming in her mind.

She found other answers, too. “It wasn’t until I was nearing adulthood when I discovered what being trans was, through Tumblr of all places,” she recalls. “I didn’t even know you could do that. I didn’t know that was a thing.” Up until then, her church had told her she was gay. The actual identity she came to understand for herself “wasn’t even in the conversation in any way,” she continues. “Wrong letter.”

Anhedönia is careful when she talks about being trans, emphasizing that her gender identity is only one fact in a complex personality. “When you are trans, you are living a very specific experience that not many other people in the world have,” she says. “I wanted to not be known as a trans artist, I think, not because I didn’t want people to know I was trans, or because I didn’t want to be proud of that fact, but.… It has shaped the way that I am in certain ways, but it’s not everything.”

(…)

There’s a sense in which it’s hard to imagine Anhedönia being contained by any music-business paperwork, because of just how expansive her imagination is, and just how much she wants to do. Before Ethel Cain came to her, she’d been sketching out three characters: Teddy, an androgynous altar boy with a vigilante streak; Salem, a woodsy witch with long white hair; and Carter, a time-traveler with a portal in his basement. Then Ethel Cain came along. “I knew it was going to be music, but I was like, ‘Can I write a story? Can I make a film? I want to draw this,’ ” she says. “I’m so obsessed with this story. I want to tell it in a million different ways.”

Later this year, she plans to leave Pittsburgh. She’s chasing brutal winters to match the tone of her next full-length album, which she describes as dark and cold. It’ll focus on the story behind Ethel’s mother, and see her grappling with her daughter’s death. The one after that will dive into Ethel’s grandmother.

There are other characters lurking in her head, waiting to come out — but she still thinks she has a lot of time to spend with the Cain women, and a long time before she reaches the end of the story. “This is going to be 15, 20 years from now,” she says. “I work very slow. That’s how I like it.””

#ethel cain #anhedonia

[alephskoteinos]

Disgorging foliate heads as medieval symbols of Christianity

Here's something of a pagan PSA: The Green Man is probably not a pagan symbol or deity.

I probably should have dug into this when that coronation invite was doing the rounds last month, but I reckon now's as good a time as any, as long as it's on my mind.

Don't let the grass horns on that coronation Green Man or decades of modern pop cultural mythology fool you: there's not really anything "pagan" about the Green Man. The idea of the Green Man as a pagan deity or mythological figure has been prevalent in the popular imagination for almost a century now, first proposed by a woman named Lady Ragland in 1939, but while people have made all sorts of connections to various pre-Christian gods, there has never been any evidence of the Green Man as an actual figure of some pre-Christian religion. Instead, the Green Man as we know him was probably actually a figure of medieval Christianity. But even that's only scratching the surface, because even the name "Green Man" itself is just a modern name for a series of faces that appear on medieval churches all over England as well in other parts of Britain and Europe.

Historian Stephen Miller suggests that the more accurate name for this motif is the "disgorging foliate head motif". It's not as catchy or pleasant as "Green Man", I admit, but several church icons do literally look like that.

According to Miller, these heads became part of medieval British Christian iconography after having imported by occupying Normans who came from France. So, in a way, you can probably think of the Green Man as a relic of Norman occuption, originally a French motif brought in by the Normans who invaded and colonized England and Wales before eventually becoming part of British iconography.

As to its religious significance, Miller tells us that it represents a motif from the Quest of Seth (or Legend of the Rood), a set of medieval Christian legends about Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve. The basic legend goes that Adam, on his deathbed, sends Seth out to Paradise to find an elixir of immortality. There Seth meets an angel who refuses to give him the elixir, but the angel does instead give Seth a seed (or perhaps more than one seed) from the forbidden tree where Adam and Eve first ate the apple. When Seth returned, Adam had already died, and then Seth planted the seed(s) in Adam's mouth or beneath his tongue, and then buried him in the soil of Golgotha, the place where Jesus was crucified. Then a tree grows from Adam's corpse, which is then cut down and turned into the cross on which Jesus was crucified. In some versions of the legend it's not a tree, but rather a bunch of twigs and shoots, which would explain some of the motifs.

I suppose you can loosely derive the theme of rebirth in some context, but it would not be a pagan context. The "Green Man" was not meant to be understood as a pagan god. Instead, if anything the "Green Man" was probably a medieval representation of Adam, who in the Quest of Seth dies and is reborn into what becomes the cross at Golgotha. So the "rebirth" of the Green Man is a strictly Christian "rebirth": the resurrection of Jesus, which in the Quest of Seth is prefigured by "rebirth" of Adam. That is what Miller refers to as "new life to humankind" - the "new life" promised by Jesus.

So, although the "Green Man" has sort of become a fixture of British popular folk myth and culture, it was originally a Norman icon, a fixture of the Norman occupation of Britain, that also represented medieval legends about Seth and Adam. The disgorging foliate head, which we now call "Green Man", was never really a "pagan" symbol, though it does sort of resemble many similar symbols from various ancient cultures (such as the Kirtimukha in India). The motif we know today and call "Green Man" was probably always a Christian symbol, not a pagan one. I suppose if you want to keep brandishing it, that's your business, but don't refer to it as a pagan symbol or the image of a pagan god, because it just isn't.

#green man #paganism #christianity #medieval literature #british mythology #disgorging foliate heads #medieval legends #the quest of seth

[allaroundnerd]

Yet another rambling post from me. This is a bit heavier though.

I am a Christian. I will start out with that, but recently, my life here in the USA has shown me sides to this faith that I honestly should not be surprised by. Laws and straight up attacks on LGBT people, leaving people swinging from trees, some real Jim Crow adjacent crap...all of it spearheaded by people who claim to stand by the Bible as their justification. What am I, a black man, to do in this situation.

I've always been pretty liberal/leftist in my beliefs. This is something that clashes with my faith more often than not, but as I sit here and think about where it clashes vs where it agrees, maybe there's something to this: I've never really understood much about the sexual ethics that are enforced, at least in a modern lens. Let's be honest, orgasms feel good and they can be enjoyed alone, or with a partner(s) regardless of sex/gender in a way that doesn't leave anyone worse for wear, but as I'm sure most would agree, that view doesn't mesh with Christianity well at all. Between that and an underlying thread of women being placed in a subservient role to men just by merit of them being women, that's where my disagreements mostly lie. As for where I agree, the messages of caring for your fellow man, even to your own detriment at times, and selfless charity really resonate with me. Even within my friend group I have been told that I give too many chances, am a bit too loose with my money/time, and have "the patience of Job." I take their comments to mean I should be a bit better about taking care of myself and they mean well, but I couldn't leave someone hanging like that. So between those two points within my being, there is contention, but here's where it gets more complicated.

Every day, now more than ever, I see people, other Christians (mostly white) calling for laws that are meant to pretty much make an LGBT person's life harder and harder. Restricting marriage rights, the right to raise kids, the right to live their gender identity, etc. They cite biblical law as their precedent and the battle within grows fiercer, not because I think they are right mind you, but because I wonder if by being in opposition to doing such things, I make myself an enemy of God. These same politicians though, they also seek the banning of the Boogeyman that they've created called "CRT" or "woke" culture. A whitewashing of history that glosses over the crap my ancestors went through since they set foot on this country's soil and a peeling back of the civil protections we have to match. I see some people celebrating this "return to traditional norms" or to a time when "America was great" but as a black man, turning the clock back is a threat to my life.

So with these things in mind, what should I do? Cheer on the suppression of the LGBT community as a blow against "degeneracy" and take solace in the fact that by doing so, I am following God's will even if it all it'll get me in this life is a spot to watch them go to the gallows while being next in line? Even that sentence feels blasphemous to say, to even indicate that God would want me to follow a path that could lead back to my people in chains or worse, but what recourse do I have? While I'm on the topic, it's not as if I don't have any worry for my own soul in all this. Yes, I am in what people would consider a "standard" marriage, but given that we've played with the concept of being open, have no intention of having kids, and that she is not a Christian (I kinda started taking this seriously after the fact), I would be doing a disservice by pretending that I am anywhere near an ideal Christian. It's a bit jarring to think that these things I mentioned, which only really affect my wife and I, could be worthy of damnation, and yet my other actions and beliefs would be cast into the flame all the same. Of course, disbelief is not an option either, as if I were to go that route, would I not be putting myself at risk of damnation? Life is hard right now, and I have no intent of giving up, but maybe airing this out in some way will help me find some path forward.

If anyone else still professes to be Christian and can even remotely identify with this long rant, know that you aren't alone.

#homophobia #racism #sexism #lgbtqia #misogynoir #rant #black people #feminism #christianity #religion

[eternal-echoes]

Hi; is it alright if you can give any advice on how to properly convey one’s feelings without bottling them inside that will eventually lead into outbursting uncontrollably?

You see, I’m struggling terribly in this area because I cannot at this present moment process and express these feelings in a Christian-like manner without offending God. Instead, I conceal them in fear that I’m too sensitive and exaggerating the scale of things. But then, there comes a moment that just provokes me and all things set loose that make me go full rage.

I think the best illustration I can share is that whenever I’m insulted. I try to think that, since God was insulted many times, I should endure this as well for His sake and who am I, a sinner, to complain, right? That’s what I’ve read from the saints. But at times, it just really hurts as a person when I’m giving my all like in helping my family. And when I’m not “spiritually in good standing”, just one more small crack is enough to break me.

So, now I feel like I always have to be in good standing (e.g. state of grace) so that the spiritual warfare going on in my family won’t get too bad and if I mess up in not praying regularly or well, it’s my fault for any mishap that goes on in the family. And this thought haunts and just makes me very sad.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I’m just really lost at this point.

Hello Anon, I saw this last night and prayed for you. I’m posting it now in case anyone wants to add more advice.

I struggle with the similar case as you so it’s something I haven’t fully overcome. But here are some of my suggestions:

- Write down what you’re feeling. Be sincerely honest about what you’re feeling and write it down on a diary. Speculate why you feel that (you felt offended, disrespected, it recalled past trauma, etc.). This is a good way to release the anger. Idk what you prefer but I find that writing it on paper than on a Notes app really lets the anger flow out of me. Or if you can’t bring your diary with you everywhere write it down on your Notes app first then when you get home write it down in your diary. Something about actively writing it down and seeing it written in ink makes that much difference to me. And that way, when you’re diary is full, you can just rip it apart and throw it away so no one will ever know.

- Pray the Jesus prayer whenever you’re angry. Under your breath say: “Jesus, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me a sinner.” Focus on the rhythm of that when you say that prayer over and over again. It helps get rid of the evil anger inside you.

- Say 3 Hail Mary’s whenever an evil thought (towards someone) crosses your mind. Unless it’s deliberate it’s not intrinsically sinful but demons always like to tempt us to sin by putting sinful stuff in our minds (i.e. lustful thoughts) which includes anger hoping we would indulge in it. But with the help of the Blessed Virgin Mary, praying the Hail Mary can help make it go away.

- Pray for the people that have hurt you. You don’t have to be around them, but pray for their repentance. Don’t hold a grudge against them because that will also hurt you in the long run. Don’t seek revenge and stay away from them. Forgiveness does not have to include reconciliation especially if there’s a chance that they’ll do it again. You need to protect yourself, too.

Lastly, it’s important to remember that other people’s insults and how they treat you isn’t the true reflection of your worth. God loves you, even if other people don’t respect you. People’s opinion are marred by their own flaws and errors so they can never give an accurate account of you, only God knows you for who you really are and being loved by the Greatest Absolute Being is the best thing there is. I know that this is easier said than done but try not to focus on the injustice people have done towards you but focus more on how you can serve God (whether it’s adding a little bit more in your prayer routine and/or reading more spiritual books).

I hope that helps. If anyone would like to add anything please add them.

#Catholic #Christianity #asks

[markwatkinsscans]

IMMENSE PEACEBY PETER HITCHENS

In a handsome street in the French Concession in Shanghai I once saw a stallholder kick and stamp a mouse to death. The action was pointless and could only have been done for pleasure. The creature, a mouse of the picturesque sort, clean, with large ears and visible whiskers, had just been passing by. The man put a lot of energy into it, as if he hoped that by doing so he could make the mouse even more dead than it was already. I know from my Bolshevik days that I am capable of cruelty and perhaps that is why I was angrier and more shocked than a gentle person could possibly have been. We do not like other people displaying things we hate in ourselves. I suspect a lot of us try harder to be kind once we have found out that we are capable of unkindness.

In any case, a sentimental view of animals is a deep part of the upbringing of the English middle class, at least in my own time. I think French children are much more matter-of-fact on the subject, perhaps because they are closer to the land. I must confess that I once enjoyed an afternoon spent ratting in the undergrowth with a farmer friend, many years ago, as the terriers massacred about a hundred of those widely unloved rodents in less than five minutes. But rats are rats, and even Beatrix Potter, while she makes her rats quite engaging, does not try to make them loveable. But the idea that animals are in a way our equals is a view I cannot escape. For me, it was Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in The Willows which instilled it above all things, especially the version illustrated by Edward (E.H.) Shepard. There is a world of imagination here. Shepard’s drawings link the book with the works of A.A. Milne, for whom he also brilliantly pictured one of the greatest characters in English literature, the wittily pessimistic donkey Eeyore. I was astonished to find that Shepard, a master of small-scale wit, associated forever in my mind with woodland peace and furry animals, was an artillery officer in the Great War, decorated for his courage in battle.

The setting of The Wind in the Willows, clearly the banks of the Thames near Pangbourne, connects it with Oxford and Alice in Wonderland, likewise filled with animals—from the scurrying White Rabbit to the sensitive Dormouse who cannot abide talk of cats, and the angry pigeon who mistakes Alice for a serpent. And all inevitably bring to mind Beatrix Potter’s astonishing little books. Let me confess here that as a literal-minded four-year old I was reduced to hopeless weeping when I read the words “His eye fell on a pig,” in The Tale of Pigling Bland. I thought the poor man’s eye had actually become loose, tumbled from its socket and landed on a pig, and I had to be calmed down with much soothing.

But when it came to The Wind in the Willows, I had no such problems. I knew nothing, when I first read the book, of Kenneth Grahame’s unsatisfactory life and the long tragedy involving his son (both now lie in one of Oxford’s picturesque graveyards, another connection between that city and the canon of English children’s stories). I think in those days we did not seek to know too much about authors, or to try to analyze them.

Nor did I mind about the way his animals were human at one moment, and inhuman the next. In fact I did not notice the problem until a modern author tried to write a sequel, in which he struggled to decide whether his characters should eat and drink the food of humans or the things which real moles and water rats consume. It is perfectly obvious from the vast Edwardian waterside picnic which Mole and the Water Rat consume (and from Toad’s glorious breakfast the day after he escapes from prison) that their appetites are adult and human, while their characters are at least partly wild. In the same way, they slip from observing Christmas, welcoming the field mice to Mole End to sing plainly Christian carols, to entering into the presence of that terrifying pagan deity, Pan.  From the very start I identified with Mr. Badger’s dislike of too much company, and envied him his vast subterranean house in the midst of the Wild Wood where he could avoid invitations to parties and such things, all the year round if necessary. I have no idea if badgers are like this, but I am very sure that some humans are, and I wish more people realized it.

But it is the story and the telling of it which always held my imagination. I loved the little green book with its title stamped in gold on the spine, and wore out its dust jacket after many readings. I enjoyed the immense peace of its world. I loved the canary-yellow cart, and I hated the motor car which drove it into the ditch. I adored the unmatched description of a walk through an English village on a winter evening, evoking a frosty delight I have been lucky enough to experience, but which may now have disappeared. The pursuit of Toad along the country railway line is one of the most brilliantly compact and exciting pursuit and escape scenes I have ever read, starting from the moment the engine driver hears faintly the noise of a following train, far behind, where no train ought to be.  It was, for many of my school years, a place of refuge. I put it to one side long ago, always promising myself I would read it again. And the other day I did so, perhaps for the first time in fifty years or more. All the paths were familiar. I knew as I turned each page what was coming next. I remembered Toad’s appalled discovery that he had neither pockets nor money, the significance of the squeaky board in the butler’s pantry at Toad Hall, the terrible conceited songs which Toad sang about his own courage, talent and wit. I recalled the incident of the door-scraper in the snow in the midst of the Wild Wood. I could, I think, answer a lengthy and merciless quiz about the entire story. And I enjoyed it all the more because I could now see with what elegance and lightness Grahame had written his book, and with what kind humor he portrayed Badger’s grand remonstrance about the dreadfulness of motor cars, and Toad’s insincere tears in response. This is a great moment in English story-telling.

And then I turned to the end-papers, adorned with Shepard’s attempt to imagine the small world of the Riverbank, all curving lanes, elm trees, hedges and meadows, boggy soil, unkempt woodland and browsing cattle. I do not think this troubled me much as a child because I knew such places, and the drawing might have been somewhere I had actually experienced. But I stared at it this time, overcome with that breathless drowning sensation which assails me whenever I glimpse the lost and unattainable. For that world, with is profound quiet and deep green shadows, has gone. Well, not gone. It has been actively ravaged and smashed and abolished. The great elm trees died half a century ago, and the gap they left has never been properly filled. The little roads are full of cars, driven by Mr. Toad’s grandchildren, with their unceasing grinding whining engines, their thumping music and their ugly artificial colors. The slow-sliding brown river is full of sewage. Ill-mannered new houses crowd down to the water’s edge where the old rough banks have been tidied into suburban neatness. Toad Hall is a hotel for businessmen, and the squeaky board in the butler’s pantry has been replaced with more durable, more practical flooring—and who could possibly need a secret passage in these safe and contented times? The way back is closed, as it always is. I wonder how many modern children can bear such stuff as Grahame wrote. But for all my days I will never see a badger, a mole, or a water-rat without my heart softening unreasonably, or glimpse a toad without for a moment picturing him at the wheel of a garish Edwardian motor car, intent on speed and danger.      

Peter Hitchens is a columnist for the Mail on Sunday. He writes monthly for the website of The Lamp.

https://thelampmagazine.com/2022/10/12/immense-peace/

© The Lamp Magazine / 2022

[herecomesmary]

I realized I might need to reevaluate my relationship with sex. Wasn't so long ago I had someone telling me I have a "bigger than usual sex drive", whatever that means. I always felt this urge, and not being christian, it was natural and free of guilt, like feeling hungry or thirsty. When I was thirteen I hooked up for the first time, with a girl. Thinking now looks like a fanfic or a lolita book. Sleepover. Sharing the same single bed as usual. She turns to me so close the tip of our noses touch, and keeps coming closer and closer. We kiss slowly. I'll never forget how on fire my whole body was by just kissing her and running my hand over her hips. I felt like burning completely, shaking lips, wet young tongues touching. I remember wanting to keep going, but she didn't let me. She stopped kissing me out of the blue and turned her body to the other side of the bed. We both slept. The next day was like nothing happened, for some reason. I think she was embarrassed. I wasn't. At some point I thought it was kinda funny.

Months later I liked a boy for the first time. Same feeling. But him being older already knew a thing or two. He never made me come, but it was close. His fingers were always soaked cause of me. Teenage hormones are the most insane drugs I've ever tried. As an adult you don't get that type of flames so easily. Took me years to connect with a person that could make me edge by just looking at me. I can never forget how he'd do it like magic. The looks at my face, the dominance, power. He'd hit me the right way, pull me the right way, slap me till i get all red, fuck my holes with zero mercy. The mess of fluids everywhere. Getting high on his scent. Spit in my mouth. Loosing sense of time and space. The voice. The fucking voice calling me all the dirty names, talking to me all the way through it. I was a very good girl for him. And got punished either way. Cause I liked it. And he loved his little succubus, as he'd call me sometimes. He taught me what I like. And it's difficult to move forward after all that.

I don't expect people to know me on the first try, so I lead. It's fine. Ok. But never great. Maybe I have weird standards. I have no ideia if I should try other vanilla stuff and see if it could work for me, if the problem is that I don't open up my mind enough for it to work best. I dont communicate enough. That I've been hiding what I really like afraid they'll find me a slut or a perv, as it aint actually true. And so what? During fucking I don't really think much, I just move how I want, how I feel like doing, I just want to feel so aroused my eyes roll back and my mouth drools. But I said I might need to reevaluate my relationship with sex. Slow it down a bit. Don't fuck on first dates maybe. Set some stupid rules to orientate the crazy whore the lives inside me. Make it more personal. It's definitely not what I want, but we can't always get what we want, can we? Try to focus on something else first, you woe.

#border diaries

[princeofgod-2021]

LIGHT OF LIFE 364

John 1:4

TOO LATE 27 – WHEN HE HAS SAID NO! 1

Isa 14:26-27 This is what I plan to do for this land. I will use my power to punish all those nations." WHEN THE LORD ALL-POWERFUL MAKES A PLAN, NO ONE CAN CHANGE IT. WHEN HE RAISES HIS ARM TO PUNISH, NO ONE CAN STOP HIM. ERV

Here is where you must admit: not all prayers can be answered.

Even though God gives men honour by regarding their cries with Merciful responses, there are those cases and issues that no man can wrest from Him; He has the only and FINAL say!

Act 1:6-7 When the apostles met together with Jesus, they asked him, "LORD, WILL YOU AT THIS TIME GIVE THE KINGDOM BACK TO ISRAEL?" Jesus said to them, "THE TIMES AND OCCASIONS ARE SET BY MY FATHER'S OWN AUTHORITY, AND IT IS NOT FOR YOU TO KNOW WHEN THEY WILL BE. GNB

Israeli Christians, at Jesus’ departure, were hoping that God will deliver them from the Roman empire and dominion on Pentecost day.

Pentecost was going to be epic and they believed it should culminate in a dramatic liberation of Israel from painful sorrows under Rome siege.

The day of Jesus’ resurrection saw many delivered from the Sting of Death.

Mat 27:50-53 Once again Jesus shouted, and THEN HE DIED. At once the curtain in the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, and rocks split apart. GRAVES OPENED, AND MANY OF GOD'S PEOPLE WERE RAISED TO LIFE. Then after Jesus had risen to life, they came out of their graves and went into the holy city, where they were seen by many people. CEV

So why shouldn’t they expect that the day of Pentecost will be associated with the Liberation of Israel from Colonialism?

God always seems dramatic with His wondrous acts, isn’t He?

Act 16:25-26 AROUND MIDNIGHT PAUL AND SILAS WERE PRAYING AND SINGING HYMNS OF PRAISE TO GOD. The other prisoners were listening to them. SUDDENLY, A VIOLENT EARTHQUAKE SHOOK THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE JAIL. ALL THE DOORS IMMEDIATELY FLEW OPEN, AND ALL THE PRISONERS' CHAINS CAME LOOSE. GW

We shouldn’t forget Peter’s experience in Prison, the day before he was to be killed by Herod.

Act 12:7,10 Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared, and a light shone in the prison cell. He struck Peter on the side and woke him up, saying, “Get up quickly!” And the chains fell off Peter’s wrists…After they had passed the first and second guards, THEY CAME TO THE IRON GATE LEADING INTO THE CITY. IT OPENED FOR THEM BY ITSELF, and they went outside and walked down one narrow street, when at once the angel left him. NET

We see God always doing beyond the unexpected, whenever He is ready to Display His Power.

Eph 3:20 Never doubt God’s mighty power to work in you and accomplish all this. HE WILL ACHIEVE INFINITELY MORE THAN YOUR GREATEST REQUEST, YOUR MOST UNBELIEVABLE DREAM, AND EXCEED YOUR WILDEST IMAGINATION! HE WILL OUTDO THEM ALL, for his miraculous power constantly energizes you. TPT

So, if God can do things this exceptional and amazing, we should know, when He won’t do certain things, that is isn't because He can’t do it but that He has chosen not to, and He has perfect reason for His decisions, though He may not share that with you.

Rom 11:34 For WHO HAS DISCOVERED HOW THE LORD THINKS or is wise enough to be the one to advise him in his plans? TPT

The concept for even fully understanding God’s thoughts and deeds is too high for man.

Isa 55:8-9 FOR MY THOUGHTS ARE NOT YOUR THOUGHTS, OR YOUR WAYS MY WAYS, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. BBE

Then God goes further to affirm that it is HIS utterance that is the final say in all situations and for just reasons beyond man’s comprehension.

Isa 55:11 MY WORD, WHICH COMES FROM MY MOUTH, is like the rain and snow. IT WILL NOT COME BACK TO ME WITHOUT RESULTS. IT WILL ACCOMPLISH WHATEVER I WANT AND ACHIEVE WHATEVER I SEND IT TO DO." GW

But we’re rounding off with TOO LATE and JUDGMENT and we’re saying that in the same way, God has final Word and Perfect, Tenable and Unbiased reasons for His choice of whom to destroy or not and it is not subject to deliberations and reactions of Men.

It is however, very Righteous.

Rom 2:4-6 Or perhaps you despise his great kindness, tolerance, and patience. Surely you know that God is kind, because he is trying to lead you to repent. But you have a hard and stubborn heart, and so YOU ARE MAKING YOUR OWN PUNISHMENT EVEN GREATER ON THE DAY WHEN GOD'S ANGER AND RIGHTEOUS JUDGMENTS WILL BE REVEALED. For God will reward each of us according to what we have done. GNB

Next lesson, we inspect quickly how God could indeed be flexible over His Judgment and opportunities to seek Mercy, as we close this long discourse.

God bless you in His Tenderness and Compassion, IN JESUS NAME.

Join us on Monday as we conclude on this thought-provoking Subtopic.

Keep Shinning!

Brother Prince

Friday, June 09, 2023

08055125517; 08023904307

[praphit]

PureAssFlickin.com: I’m sorry. I regret this title...

... but not enough to change it.

I want to talk about "The Case for Christ". 

Allow me to clarify, the FILM "The Case for Christ" (2017).

Another movie night rolled around, and we couldn't find anything worthy to watch. I had seen a promo for TCFC. I had some nostalgia cookin - this was originally a book which I had read and liked a long time ago. The story is kinda in the title:

An investigative journalist sets out... really, in an atheistic manner, to build a case AGAINST Christ, but ends up becoming a Christian. A pretty cool story (real-life). Worthy of a movie, and worthy of Praphit's Movie Night. Problem was... it's only streaming on something called "PureFlix".

What the hell is PureFlix? I looked into it - well, at least I tried to. Most services, you can get a peek inside, before you go all of the way. PureFlix is heavily guarded. I tried to sneak in, but they were like "Getcho ass outta here!"

But, pretty much, it's all about good, solid, Christian, wholesome entertainment. We've all had those moments when we're watching some movie with kids around, and "oops, there's some cursing", or "oops, there's some violence", or "oops, there's a penis". Then, you try to hurry up and fast forward past the penis, but you hit the pause button by accident. Now, you’re panicking, so you accidentally throw the scene into slomo mode. You shout to the kids to shut their eyes (of course they don't), and somehow you press the zoom-in button (which you didn't know even existed), so now there's a giant penis swinging in slomo, in Ultra HD on your  screen, and everyone is screaming. You've ruined movie night! We've all been there. You don't have to worry about that type of thing with PureFlix. No shows like “Euphoria” here. I get it.

I just wanted to know what else is going on with them, and I couldn't find anything. I was angry. I wanted some TCFC.

I looked it up on Rotten Tomatoes - not great, not good, but not a bad rating. I wasn't expecting all that much. I mean, I think "The Passion of the Christ" was ranked poorly by the critics and only ranked something like 80% by the audience. The audience is Christian. We can't do any better than Jesus on the cross, people! I would have expected at least 95%. What were we doing there? Was it the violence? Should the Roman soldiers have toned it down a bit? Or was it Mel Gibson?? It was probably him.

I was even more angry now that I thought about this, cuz why DON'T I expect more from these types of movies?!

I have a joke that I tell among my peeps that Church is where creativity goes to die. And with all jokes, there's some truth there; with this one, it's all truth. But, why? Christians (my people) serve a creative God! Why isn't creativity embraced and cultivated more in the church? We could spend all day hashing that one out, but I'll say this - the enemy of art is aggressive structure. Of course we need certain levels of structure in life, but with art... let it be loose and free! Let art be edgy, if it wants to be. Let art push the limits, or go beyond the limits, if it wants to. It'll learn, it'll evolve, it'll mature, but let it happen organically.

If there are people out there who disagree with me (in the context of creativity in church), simply ask the "creative people" in your church (if you have any). Ask the young people in your church (if you have any). I'm willing to bet that they'll share my sentiments, with some more added, if you'd let them.

Now, let me get off my soapbox, and get back to PureFlix.

Like I said, I couldn't peek inside, BUT I found "PureFlix Insider" to help me figure out what this entertainment platform is all about. 

POSITIVITY: Sweet! Who could be against positive energy?? However, I did see some influence from Fox News up in there. Idk if Fox has a hand in financial support for this or something, but...

  Now, I'm not getting political; I'm simply saying there's an agenda there (like with all mainstream media). Having an agenda is fine, but for PureFlix (Christianity/ "Truth" /positivity)?? Idk. It made me think of a show idea, which I'm willing to host for you, PureFlix.

We could have a show where I read news articles, claiming to be the truth (from all cultures and political points of view), and when I find an agenda that has crept its way into the objectivity of the story, I call it out, and tell that story to get the hell outta here. Maybe we'll call the show "Go to Hell!" Think of me as your John Oliver :) It'll be the most dismissive show that’s streaming...  outside of this guy’s show:

(Ben Shapiro does not like She-Hulk. He needs you to understand that)

I also noticed that PureFlix is all about Prayer & Faith. Or course! Awesome! The pics I saw on there were kinda... white though. Maybe mix in a lil color. Just a note. I'm not insinuating anything. In fact, I’m trying to help you broaden your stroke to make more money. If diversity doesn’t come from the heart, it can at least come out of greed :)

I’m joking... (not really tho). I would hate for this post to be considered “woke garbage”. 

Then, I checked out the Movies/Tv - YES! however (again), kinda white. Where's Madea at? Isn't there a Mexican character on VeggieTales? 

 I think it's time for him to get his own show, don't you?

Don't be offended by me saying it's "kinda white" - I'm actually being kind when I say that :) And of course there's a place for that type of “culture” in Christianity (I mean that) and on PureFlix, but what about everyone else?

I'm here to help you, PF!

We'll  label all that stuff you've got on there as "Kinda White Though". Maybe we'll get a Tyler Perry or a Steve Harvey section of as well.

I'm thinking we could spice-up some of the content. I'll even use the bible for ideas, so some of you aren't triggered too much by my creativity.

The book of Hosea (in the bible). Here, there's the prophet Hosea, who's married to a prostitute named Gomer. That's a RomCom if I've ever seen one!

We could get a reality show about King Solomon and all of his many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, MANY, many, many wives (and side women).

There's "the woman with the ISSUE of blood" - look that one up, kids. In fact, we'll make it for kids; turn it into a cartoon.

Ooo, we''ll rock some Horror:

"Jason goes to Church" 

He's putting down the machete and picking up the bible.

or

Saw: Born-Again - 

This time, the Jigsaw copycats find Jesus, but take compelling people to believe a lil too far:) Don't worry, we'll blur out all of the good stuff - keepin it pure, baby!

Perhaps "Naked with Bathsheba"(I’ll let your imaginations run wild with what that show would entail) - that'll be for late night. Don't worry, PF. We'll have a quick warning on stuff like that - "Must be married and currently watching this with YOUR OWN spouse". Huh?? Yeah! I got your back, PF!

I also have some ideas for a LGBTQ section, but... you know... baby steps.

I'm offering my help for free (though an offering of a few million might better motivate me... just sayin). I'm here for you! And if you make TCFC 2, I'll even star in it (for kinda free/an offering).

Perhaps that investigative reporter is BACK, and finds me (a mad scientist who created time travel). We decide that the church needs some help from past Bible heroes to get things moving in the right direction again.

We bring back to the present -  Samson (for his super strength), King David (for his battle skills), Mary (mother of our Lord), Noah (power to build shit) and Gomer (powers of prostitution - which honestly, sounds like a great title for another show). Can somebody say "Universe"?? YEAH! I am your tool! Use me! Let’s stick it to Marvel and DC! 

Think bigger, PureFlix!

#PureFlix #johnpraphit #praphitproductions.com #Church #TheCaseForChrist #Christianity #Marvel #DC #Horror #moviereviews #Praphit #Tv #streaming #race #VeggieTales #JasonVoorhees #BenShapiro

[reginaofdoctorwho]

if anyone wants to recommend musicals to me I would fucking adore that. Until then, here are some suggestions:

Love in Hate Nation-- LET’S GO LESBIANS! 1960s sapphic love story taking place in a girls’ reformatory. Also, trans girl played by trans actress!!! Some of the amazing songs are “I Hope” and “Oh Well”. Susannah Son wants to be a singer, her performative activist boyfriend is gross and also wants her to marry him so he’ll have better options politically. Sheila Nail is so fucking cool and I love everyone in this. My brain cuts out about this I’m so sorry babes. There is not a cast recording but there IS an original cast bootleg on youtube.

Holy Musical B@man!-- If you liked the goofiness of 1960s Batman and Robin, but think “man, these guys should’ve been able to swear! And also should have had a candy themed villain!” this is the musical for you. Also if you’ve heard of the very queer Harry Potter musical that JK herself tried to sue over, it’s made by the same group <3. As usual with Team Starkid, whole thing is up for free on youtube by the creators.

Firebringer-- Speaking of the same group... Cave people sapphics who I think are bi or pan. I love them and they’re all so dumb. Also, if you’ve seen the “I don’t really wanna do the work today” vine, that comes from this. I do not remember any of the second half other than one of them taking the ring the other is proposing with... to propose. And the “*blows kiss*” “fuck no, Zazz” “duly noted”. Kind of like a shitpost musical. Once again, free by creators. Actually, check out any of their musicals.

The Prom-- In Indiana, Emma just wants to take her girlfriend to the prom, and in response, the PTA cancels it. With some help from some broadway actors looking for good publicity, they manage to pull it off. So, to summarize, teen lesbian gets gay uncle who knows what she’s going through!! This musical makes me cry every goddamn time. There is a movie now, and I’m very happy about that because *high profile gay rep on netflix*, but I personally did not like the direction they took with it. They put a weird amount of emphasis on biological rather than found family in the movie, and were a little too forgiving when it came to trauma from family for being gay. Also, they took away Emma being butch. This was sadly (loosely) based on a recent true story from I think 2012. Also, was the first gay kiss in the Macy’s parade. You know those movie musicals the straight girls in theater like? The music is similar, but gayer, and for some reason that makes me so fuckng happy. I think it’s because non-queer people have had musicals for so long, and those normally have a 60s vibe, and the music in this does too and it feels more classic?? Sapphic promposal song (het at the beginning). “Unruly Heart” and the end of Act 1 will break you. Please ignore the bad wigs.

Spies Are Forever-- GAY SPIES GAY SPIES GAY SPIES!! Curt Mega (played by... Curt Mega) lost his partner Owen during a mission. Now, he’s just trying to get back into spying like Owen would want. I fucking weep every time. Also, a song about comphet (at 6:36)!! And here is a video essay on how it relates to the Lavender Scare. I want you all to know that everyone also headcanons the femme fatale spy in it as either a lesbian or aroace, which uh, makes sense. Also high quality videos put up by creators. They had Jewish people making fun of Nazis while writing this, but “Not so Bad” is... kinda bad. “Torture Tango” has so much goddamn sexual tension and becomes devastating.

Hadestown--  If you know the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, it’s like that, except capitalism part 1. Orpheus is a poor musician, Eurydice dies, just like the myth. Except, the Great Depression post-apocalyptic setting that works better than it probably should. There are actually 3 soundtracks: the concept album, off-Broadway, and Broadway. I personally don’t like the concept album purely based on vibe. Off-Broadway has an absolutely gorgeous sounding Orpheus, and if you’ve heard of the disaster that was Spiderman: Turn Out the Dark, then you’ve heard of surprisingly amazing Broadway Orpheus Reeve Carney. The Fates are gorgeous and I’ve decided they’re queer. Tony’s performance link here. Explores relationships, with Hades and Persephone’s aging relationship mirrored by Orpheus and Eurydice’s relatively new one. Anyway, unionize.

Jasper in Deadland-- If you know the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, it’s like that, except capitalism part 2. Jasper is a teen who’s best friend Agnes is pretty much the one good thing left in his life. His mom left, he got kicked off the swim team (he’s manic pixie dream boy in this, especially for swimming), and Agnes dies at the beginning trying to show Jasper that she’s brave and he should be too. So, he bravely ventures into Deadland to find her, meeting Gretchen the tour guide along the way. He also finds out that since he’s still living, he can bring memories back to the dead. Songs like “Stroke by Stroke” (he’s uh, definitely a teen, guys) and “Living Dead” (I shared a prinxiety animatic of that on here a while ago).They blend Greek, Norse, Egyptian, Christian, and whatever Dante’s Inferno counts as together to create Deadland. Story’s kinda hard to follow from the soundtrack, so if u wanna learn how it all ties together message me.

Death Note Musical-- Okay babes, here’s where it gets tough. It was written originally in English, and there is a spectacular English concept album, but the only productions have been in South Korea, Japan, and I think Taiwan. Listen to it anyways, find a bootleg of it with english subtitles. It has so much gay tension and also a truly ethereal character who seems to be a lesbian who is also either demisexual or demiromantic. If any of y’all saw the anime like me, it kind of cuts out the arc after episode 26. I personally thought it was actually a better story for it.

Alice by Heart-- Okay, this one makes me fucking cry every goddamn time. In WW2, these poor goddamn kids are all alone in the Tube System (is that what y’all call it? genuinely asking here) with none of their parents but still some grownups. Alice’s best friend Alfred is dying of tuberculosis, and to try to have one last thing together they start reading Alice in Wonderland, only for Nurse Hart to rip it apart to try to separate healthy Alice from dying-from-TB Alfred. It doesn’t work, and Alice proclaims she “knows it all by heart”, She tries to linger in the story with Alfred to have more time with him, he keeps trying to move it along because he’s dying and wants to finish it one last time. Themes are growing up and grief I guess.

Last I checked, there is a bootleg for all of these on youtube. Have fun!

#love in hate nation #holy musical b@man #firebringer #the prom #spies are forever #hadestown #jasper in deadland #death note musical #alice by heart #i know more gay ones too if u want that