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queenofthefullmoon · 4 years

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An exhaustive list of Bloodborne bosses I would or would not date

Father Gascoigne

We’re starting this list off with a strong yes. You may be like, but Blue, this is a married man with two daughters! To this I reply: I pretend not to hear it. Also, not to be horrible, but his wife is dead while I’m right there baby, with my blunderbuss and my axe, and I’m ready to risk it all. YES, I know he’s a very stinky man, but you gotta make compromises sometimes. What’s that smell? Ah, the sweet dilf, it sings to me.

Cleric Beast

Let me be clear, I’m not a furry, but the Cleric Beast has stated some facts and made some points! The only reason why I’m not to keen on dating it is that it can’t best me in battle, which is something I’m always looking for in a partner.

Blood Starved Beast

Our first no of the list, I’m not very into skin flaps and poison, which the Blood Starved Beast has plenty of. Moreover, I’d have to get Djura’s approval, and that scares me beyond anything else in Yharnam.

Vicar Amelia

Another Cleric Beast, this time with a bit more flair to it. First of all we just have to admire the way she transforms, very sexy and bloody, which is something you’re gonna want in your relationship if you’re someone who likes fun. (Thiccar) Amelia, cradle me like your golden pendant.

Hemwick witches

Another hard no here. No offense, but I like having eyes, and dating a pair of witches covered in eyes that they’ve been harvesting for years doesn’t seem like a good idea to me!

Shadows of Yharnam

Honestly yeah? You get 3 cool partners in black robes for the price of one. They all wield different weapons, which makes for two excellent things. First of all, you get a very efficient bodyguard team (useful at parties, when a hunter gets drunk on blood, or when you open your front door and a beast is there). Secondly, if you want to have a fun sparring match with your partners, which we all know is a fundamental activity in a couple, you have very varied options!

And a bonus for animal lovers: they can spawn snakes at will for you!! Never a boring day with your 3 hooded partners.

Rom, the vacuous spider

NO. Don’t date Rom. She’s baby! She doesn’t understand what’s going on. Instead, here’s a list of nice activities you can do with Rom:

- Read her stories

- Trims her back growths

- Clean her teeth

- Make her some cute little glasses

- Knit matching socks for her and her children

- Teach her new spells

- Not date her

Darkbeast Paarl

Paarl is a similar situation as Rom. He’s just a little puppy… He doesn’t know what dating is. He knows what going on a walk means, though! So go on, go on a happy little walk with Paarl. He’ll love it, you’ll have fun, everyone will be happy.

Amygdala

Yes. Evidence that it’s a good idea is: lots of arms (good hugs), can grab the shit out of me, CAN and WILL crush me, can sometimes shatter my consciousness with its eldritch powers (very sexy), can send me in other dimensions, will annihilate my enemies with a funky laser beam, and the most amazing feature: can pop it’s eyes out of its skull like a stress ball (fun trick to show your friends at parties). The ideal girlfriend.

The One Reborn

NO!!!!! There’s a lot of freaky stuff I’d date in Bloodborne but the One Reborn is NOT one of them. Firstly, it has 6 nannies. Do I look like the type of person who wants their dates consistently moderated by 6 Pthumerian elders? No!!! I’m a free bitch baby!! And in addition to that, Juan Reborn just has too many limbs. It’s not okay. If we ever got engaged I wouldn’t know where to slip the ring.

Micolash, Host of the Nightmare

Would I..? No, I wouldn’t… Unless? Haha, just kidding. Wait… Actually… Um.

I mean… If you’re into bastardous hysterical little men who howl while running around, sure. BUT beware… You might lose him in a mirror and never find him again, which I find very inconvenient. Imagine going shopping with a guy who compulsively disappears in mirrors. Imagine explaining to the store employees why your dumbass boyfriend broke all their mirrors.

Also, how will we kiss? With the cage on the way?

Oh god, do I have to wear a cage too?

Celestial Emissaries

I’m not against having a multitude of partners but I’m afraid that might be too much for me. Also, they look like little tiny bebes. I know I’ve said before that I wasn’t ready to be a parent, but I might make an exception for the Celestial Emissaries — let them chill in my home, make them pb&j sandwiches, stuff like that.

Ebrietas, Daughter of the Cosmos

Dear Ebrietas… I have a lot of fondness for her but she looks way too much like mac’n’cheese for comfort. She’s invited for sleepovers and all, no doubt about that, but I see our future together as platonic.

Martyr Logarius

Now Listen… Logarius is an Enemy of women. The proof of his crimes still remains in Cainhurst castle. Do I want to date the genocidal Yharnam Santa? Are you really asking me that? Do you take me for Executioner Alfred? I am not crazy. I will not date Martyr Logarius and his red skulls spamming ass (however miss Annalise queen of the Vilebloods, call me).

Mergo’s Wet Nurse

Um yes of course? Tall dark eldritch wife? I feel like Mergo’s Wet Nurse is the Dancer of Bloodborne, where I’m in a situation where I’m presented with the ideal girlfriend and people expect me to say no because she’s an enormous eldritch entity who could kill me in one hit or whatever. Do you think me a coward? Do you believe that I am not willing to risk it all for invisible girls? Think again.

Gehrman, the First Hunter

Ew no! Gross! He’s gonna make a doll designed after me and I will have to call the police!

Moon Presence

On one hand yes (see Mergo’s Wet Nurse) but on the other hand… I feel like the Moon Presence would be too possessive and easily jealous. I just need some freedom, yknow? The liberty to go out and make friends with other Great Ones. And I know she would NOT like that. She’d ask me if I’m the only Great One I’m talking to and I’d have to nervously hide my phone and say Yes Babe Always Babe, lest she would shackle me to an unending dream. I’m not about that life.

Ludwig the Accursed/the Holy Blade

I genuinely don’t know what to say. The screaming horse man? Am I— the horse boy? Him? No. I… I’m not gonna. I love his sword. Lots of class. Very good theme song, could be cool to have him as a friend (maybe I could ride him around to different locations?) but to date? Kiss his horse mouth? KISS HIS EYE MOUTH? You could say that… Neigh.

Laurence, the First Vicar

NOW WE’RE TALKING BABEY… All the class of the Cleric Beast with FIRE included! Picture this: it’s the winter, it’s snowing, and you’re cold… NOT! You are dating a FLAMING BEAST, you are never cold. Laurence has one proper arm to hold you and one arm that’s a constant flaming inferno, which means he’s great for the summer and the winter, depending on which temperature you want to be at. Your enormous flaming boyfriend will always be at your side.

Living Failures

First of all mood, second of all, this is kind of a Celestial Emissaries situation where I’m not against having many partners but I don’t want a whole congregation of them. There’s just too many Living Failures. I also like dating people with faces? And that aren’t, like, blue. So it’s a no from me, but I’ll befriend them. I’ll go garden with them and all. We can have a girls’ night, it’s all good.

Lady Maria of the Astral Clocktower

I’m gonna have to be predictable and say yes here, but fair warning, Lady Maria isn’t for everyone! I know she looks like the perfect wife, but get this; this lady is a hunter. She’s only a lady because she’s related to royals. She has nothing ladylike in her. You think she takes baths? You think she knows what self-care IS????? I laugh at your ignorance, at how you misunderstand her. Maria is a stinky girl; but she is MY stinky girl.

Orphan of Kos

I don’t want to date the Orphan of Kos because he was literally just born and still has his placenta attached to him. I don’t care for infants, and I don’t care for violent infants. I wouldn’t even want to invite him over to play with the Celestial Emissaries or something. He’s like that asshole child in kindergarten who hurts the other kids for fun. Am I being harsh to a literal baby and an orphan at that? Maybe. But Kos herself couldn’t tell me I’m wrong.

Bonus chalice boss: Yharnam, Pthumerian Queen

Now listen here… Yharnam is a queen, tall and kinda eldritch, absolutely rabid, which we’ve established is my type. Shall I step on the toes of Oedon and declare her mine? Perhaps. She has a very powerful scream, which worries me in case of a domestic fight, but overall I get to marry a kind of eldritch queen, which is alright in my book. I know she has an equally eldritch baby, but it’s formless, so it doesn’t bother me that much. Dark Souls 1 ll Dark Souls 2 SOTFS ll Dark Souls 3

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woodworkingpastor · 6 years

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Living Generously 2 Corinthians 8:1-15 September 2, 2018

Call to Worship

To abide in you; to find strength in you; to worship you in these moments,

we gather, O God.

To challenge the evil around us; to bring healing to the hurt; to offer hope to the vulnerable,

we follow, Jesus our Brother.

To learn how to live; to put away our old gods; to stick with God in every moment,

we listen, Holy Spirit.

2 Corinthians has been an interesting and challenging letter, in part because it deals with some very difficult topics with a congregation experiencing significant conflict, and in part because it deals with these topics directly. It’s one thing to say “love your neighbor as yourself” in a general way. It’s when you start naming specific neighbors and the various things they do that make your life difficult that the conversation becomes tricky.

The church has a long tradition of engaging in spiritual practices to help us increase our awareness of the Spirit of God around us as we encounter things like difficult neighbors and angry social media posts and too much month at the end of our money and a whole host of other challenges. The church believes that the living of our faith is strengthened by regular things like prayer, study, fellowship, and footwashing.

At breakfast this morning you had the opportunity to name one or two spiritual disciplines you have found important. Here’s what you said: List on Power Point.

Because 2 Corinthians has been so challenging at times, it seems good that in this last look we’ll take it easy, and just talk about money. What could be the harm in that?!?! Giving is a spiritual discipline that we practice every week. Its regularity is both a strength and a weakness: we have the routine of thinking about how Jesus is Lord of our wallet each week in worship, but the danger in doing anything in a regular fashion is that it becomes routine. The idea that we would make offerings to God is a dominant part of the Scripture from all the way back in Genesis 3. We allow it to become routine at the peril of our soul.

How does sharing our money with others strengthen us in our walk with Christ?

One of the fascinating tidbits of the New Testament is that tucked in amongst all the theological discussion, historical reflection, controversial debates, and the waiting for Jesus to return, is mention of an offering Paul is collecting on behalf of the poor in Jerusalem. It is mentioned here in 2 Corinthians 8 and perhaps in three or four other places.

The offering has its origins in the Jerusalem Conference of Acts 15. There we read about the significant theological controversy of the New Testament era concerning who could be Christian and what you had to do to become a Christian. That’s more than we want to get into today; the point that I want to raise is that as the church leaders who gathered in Jerusalem to settle that issue wrote their report, they sent Paul and Barnabas on their way to meet people and share the grace of Jesus Christ, and plant churches, and call leadership to serve those churches, they also gave them the instruction to “remember the poor.” It’s not that difficult a thing to wrap our minds around; the significance is that hardwired into the fundamental DNA of any local congregation is the instruction to care for the poor folks in our midst. It’s simply part of Gospel ministry.

Think about what this looked like: as Paul went throughout Asia and Macedonia planting churches, not only was he instructing them to care for the poor who might be members of their own congregations, he was also introducing them to some Christians back in Jerusalem, persons with whom they shared a spiritual connection, because Paul’s conversion came from their experience. He is essentially doing one of those ancestry.com family trees—helping them understand that their faith doesn’t just appear out of thin air; we are all connected to one another.

So you have people coming to faith in Christ, leaving their old ways behind, and also learning that Jesus was Lord of their income as well. Those of you who are new to the church have a somewhat similar experience; we talk about some of this in the new members class; being part of a church isn’t just about a private experience between you and Jesus; there are other relationships that our congregation deeply values and is informed by.

Paul has already spoken to them about this at the end of 1 Corinthians: they were to set aside a bit each week when they gathered for worship; the next time he was by, he’d see that it got to Jerusalem.

Unfortunately, however, their enthusiasm waned as the controversy with Paul heated up. Like we so often see today; the Corinthians had been withholding their giving in this one area in an attempt to win a theological argument in another area. As much as we wish it weren’t so, theological controversy does detract from mission. It leaves Paul with a problem: He’s been bragging about their generosity, and representatives from the Macedonian congregation are probably sending a delegation to Jerusalem, that will pass through Corinth.

To help get the Corinthians back on track with this important part of congregational ministry, Paul appeals in verse 7 to a traditional list of spiritual disciplines: he tells them how they excel in everything: in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in utmost eagerness. Paul had lived with his congregation for a year and a half and had exchanged numerous letters with them over the next years. He knows that they are a congregation of overachievers: they want to be the best in everything. Sometimes this had led them to places of great faithfulness, as they demonstrate spiritual gifts and growth in so many areas. Other times this had helped them get off track, and the Corinthians have excelled in missing the point.

But this offering matters. Obviously, it matters to those who will receive it; this is normally how we make an appeal for a financial offering: “There is this need that you can meet. Don’t you want to be part of that?” But this isn’t quite the point Paul is making. Paul’s point is that this offering matters for those who will give it. The Corinthians are missing out on the spiritual benefit available to the giver by not being in the regular habit of setting aside some small sum of money to be sent to their sisters and brothers in Jerusalem. The fact that these Christians lived almost 2,000 years ago really doesn’t change the fact that for human beings, being financially invested in something engages other parts of our loyalty and commitment than simply hearing about it from time to time. Other parts of our faith become real in some significant ways that we would otherwise miss.

Paul talks about these, too. He holds up the Macedonian Christians as one example. If you want to excel in your faith, then take a look at these Christians. It might seem that this is a backhanded way of doing this, something like “Why can’t you be like your older brother?” Paul is not above laying it on pretty thick when he thinks something is important; he notes that the Macedonian churches have made a significant contribution to this offering, even in the midst of a “severe ordeal of affliction” and “their extreme poverty.” The Macedonians “begged…for the privilege of sharing in this ministry.” You almost hear Paul saying to the Corinthians, “So what in the world is your problem?”

For those who won’t be motivated by guilt, Paul then appeals to Jesus. Jesus was as rich as you could get with his Father in heaven. But Jesus chose to become poor, leaving everything behind so that we might become rich in Christ. What need is there for us to worry about lacking things when we have Jesus on our side? Our sharing with others comes as an overflow of the grace that we have received and becomes a measure of our faith, something that we can do voluntarily and with great joy.

Finally, Paul points them to themselves. They had made this promise earlier, now is time to follow through on what they’ve already agreed to do.

Instead, Paul writes that the acceptability of the gift is based on what they have, not what they do not have. Paul is interested that they live out their faith by the abundance of some being used to meet the needs of others.

This offering is an important part of their spiritual lives, based on the commitments they made to one another at their baptism.

Mennonite historian Alan Kreider shares a story of the sacrificial giving Christians in his book, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church.

He tells the story of a “notable conversion in the Egyptian city of Thebes. Early in Emperor Constantine’s reign, gangs of troops carrying out forced military conscription abducted peasants in upper Egypt to serve in the Roman legions and shipped them down the Nile. A vessel carrying these unwilling recruits docked in the city of Thebes, where the military authorities clapped them in prison to prevent them from escaping before being transported farther. Christians in Thebes heard about the prisoners’ distress and responded by bringing them the food and drink that were unavailable in prison. One of the prisoners, Pachomius, asked a local person who the people were who were bringing them help. It was the “Christians, he was told, who ‘were merciful to everyone, including strangers.’ Pachomius pressed further, asking what a Christian was. His informant replied: ‘They are people who bear the name of Christ, the only begotten Son of God, and they do good to everyone, putting their hope in Him who made heaven and earth and us people.’ At this, according to the account, Pachomius’s heart was ‘set on fire.’ In the fear of God he prayed and committed himself henceforth to serve God; and, in the tradition of the Christians who had helped him, he promised to ‘love all people and be their servant according to God’s command.’” (Kreider, 116-7).

One way the church has historically been distinctive from the world around it is in our care for others, even when it means doing without. How is your faith reflected in your giving?

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