#christianity goes on a lot about how your pain and suffering is meant to help other people. and yeah you shouldn't be reductionist like that | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mercyandmagic · 3 years

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Hi, mercyandmagic thank you for answering my asks... :D

Don't know if you remember, but I've asked before of your top 5 fav mxtx characters, and you've answered yours. If you don't mind me asking, can I ask you, why you like those characters (in a longer asnwer)? Sorry, if I ask you similar question again......

Yessss. This gonna be long. We’ll start from 5th and work our way to #1.

5. Wei Wuxian

First, there’s just something incredibly refreshing about an untamed (ahem) character who says the thing everyone thinks but won’t dare say. It is my second-favorite character trope (We’ll get to the first). Plus, he has a great sense of justice and a self-sacrificing spirit... and yet he is capable of great cruelty, sadism, and hurting others to vent his pain (Nightless City, Wen Chao). Believe it or not, the fact that he has done great evil he cannot undo makes me love him more... because he knows it.

In Chapter 68, when he’s confronted, he doesn’t deny killing Fang Mengchen’s parents, nor taking Yi Weichun’s leg. He doesn’t show anger at their valid pain; he merely points out that nothing he can do now will undo the damage he caused.

He also has a low tolerance for BS and a high level of empathy. The fact that he scoffs at the cultivators gossiping against Jin Guangyao, the fact that he isn’t happy they have a new scapegoat, speaks a lot. Plus, he can easily understand why the Hook Hand’s final victim needs to scream (Ch. 124), why Jin Guangyao spared Sisi (Ch. 111) and made the Guanyin Temple (Ch. 110), why Nie Huaisang doesn’t want to admit what he did (Ch. 110), etc. Wei Wuxian is just great.

4. Qin Su

She deserves far more appreciation than she gets. She was involved in the Sunshot Campaign. When society judged Jin Guangyao and Meng Shi for their status, Qin Su never did. She loved the man who saved her life. She was willful enough to be the pursuer in her relationship with Jin Guangyao (Ch. 47), and was open to sleeping with him to ascertain their marriage (Ch. 106). She’s naive and trusting, despite losing her son. She’s loyal AF even to Bicao, even though Bicao literally sold her out for jewelry (ahem, Ch. 85).

Qin Su. only has a short side role in the larger novel, but she’s a fully developed human. That’s incredible.

3. Lan Wangji

I relate to Lan Wangji more than any of the other characters. Not being able to communicate, or being afraid to – relatable. Plus, having grown up fundamentalist Christian, I find the way in which Lan Wangji’s stubborn rule-following gives way to a willingness to break the rules when it does no harm or helps those he loves... inspiring. Like, he goes from having himself beaten for being pulled outside the Cloud Recesses (something this scrupulosity-sufferer relates to very well) to giving Wei Wuxian the Emperor’s Smile hidden in the Jingshi (Ch. 65).

If I may add, I read MDZS around the same time I watched GOT Season 8. There’s a similarity in how Wei Wuxian and Daenerys Targaryen have murderous breakdowns after losing everything and everyone close to them. And yet instead of putting Wei Wuxian down like a dog (side eyes Jon Snow), Lan Wangji takes him away, tries to save him, still believes he is capable of good. In his own words, he’s “willing to bear all of the consequences with [Wei Wuxian].” Lan Wangji believes in redemption, in chance after chance. He’s refreshing in a world that believes one deed can stain you forever. I love him.

2. Lan Xichen

He’s just... good? Like, really good? He has to balance leading a clan with a society that is very Not Good, and this definitely leads to some gray points (The Wens, saying nothing in support of Mianmian, etc). But he, like Qin Su, refuses to judge people for origins. He always has to see the good in others – as Ch. 105 says, “whenever he heard there might be hidden reasons, he just had to hear it.” Lan Xichen wants to know and sympathize with everyone’s reasons. That’s just... wonderful.

It’s notable that his whereabouts for the First Siege of the Burial Mounds are unknown. Lan Qiren led the Gusu Lan Clan, not Lan Xichen (Ch. 68). Which makes me speculate that while he thought Wei Wuxian was done for, he couldn’t bear to participate in killing the man his brother loved.

He’s a touch avoidant, as seen when he tells Wei Wuxian he does not want to know why his mother killed his father’s teacher (Ch. 64). (I will also defend him agains the charges that he was wrong to try to reconcile Nie Mingjue and Jin Guangyao – they were his friends and Lan Xichen believed in them. Those two made their own choices, and it was Not Lan Xichen’s Fault).

Anyhow, he’s good. And he loves Jin Guangyao. I know MXTX said she did not write a romance with them, and I don’t think they ever would have cheated on Qin Su. But that does not diminish that Lan Xichen’s seclusion at the end of the novel, is described as “exactly reversed” from when Lan Wangji was mourning Wei Wuxian (Ch. 114).

1. Jin Guangyao

My favorite character. trope, the sneaky bastard with daddy issues! What makes Jin Guangyao stand out even among all my favorite sneaky bastards is that... his actions are so very gray that IMO he’s not even really a villain.

For real, what did Jin Guangyao do? Kill his brother who tried to kill him first and was slowly losing his grip on reality and hurting him and Nie Huaisang anyways? (Ch. 49, 50) It was still wrong – and I firmly believe that the motivation was payback for ‘son of a prostitute,’ (as Wei Wuxian suggests, Ch. 104) and not safety – but my point remains. (Plus there’s the implication that Jin Guangshan willed it, too). (Ch. 106).

Married his lover after discovering she was his sister to keep her from being an unwed mother? (Ch. 106) In that situation, I wish he had told Qin Su so she could choose, too, but I fail to find anything condemnable in Jin Guangyao’s actions there.

Furthermore, when writing “Sentiment” and now “Sunlit Jade,” what I’ve been struck by is that most of his misdeeds end with killing Jin Guangshan.

The possible exception is Jin Rusong (and since our main source for the idea of cold-blooded filicide and framing of an innocent clan leader is Clan Leader Yao, I am highly skeptical). And Xue Yang remaining alive, but again, we don’t know if Jin Guangyao chose to let him go with a warning/beating severe enough to disable his leg, or if Jin Guangyao truly meant to kill him (I favor the former position, but it’s open for interpretation).

Now, how Jin Guangyao kills and the fact that he does kill his father is wrong. Burning the brothel? Wrong, though I understand his hatred of that place and the people there. Killing the He Clan? Wrong, but 1) it’s on his father’s orders, and 2) he has a rather intriguing reaction when Xue Yang shuts He Su in alive with the corpses. (Ch. 118).

He looks for something to “comfort” himself.

This is strange, because he’s previously been a torturer (Ch. 47). What is more torture to him?

I don’t know the answer, but it speaks to someone who suffers a lot, who did a lot of terrible things in pursuit of a love from his father that never came. And someone who, once he gains power in the position of Chief Cultivator, implements a program to save more commoners’ lives than ever before (Ch. 42).

That’s not the action of a villain.

[Sidenote, and based off a comment that wryhun on AO3 once left me: What I love the most about Jin Guangyao, and MDZS as a whole, is depending on the perspective you take, anyone can be an antagonist or a protagonist.

Jiang Cheng can be Wei Wuxian’s tsundere shidi (reader perspective), or he can be the serial killer of demonic cultivators who refuses to help commoners with spirits unless people have already died (Innkeeper’s perspective, Ch. 92).

Nie Huaisang can be the avenging didi (often a fan’s perspective), or the person who treated the juniors like fodder, killed cats, and sliced up a woman’s body just for revenge (Wei Wuxian’s perspective in Ch. 110, Jin Guangyao’s perspective in Ch. 108).]

Jin Guangyao is an antagonist because his goals conflict with Wei Wuxian’s. But he’s really no worse than many of the other characters, and in fact, while all have suffered, he’s arguably suffered some of the worst circumstances of all.

He makes poor choices, although he insists he doesn’t have a choice. I believe that he believes he has no choice... but he does. And that is so very, very tragic.

I love him and want the world (or really just Lan Xichen) for him.

#jin guangyao #lan xichen #wei wuxian #qin su #lan wangji #mdzs #mo dao zu shi

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uthseikoashx-inflamedme · 4 years

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Personal favourite HP (&FB) fanfictions (but unfortunately it’s mostly GGAD)

posted: 08-10-2020 edited: 08-24-2020

(really sorry for the mistakes! fanfics are better i swear)

I read several HP and FB fanfics during the last few months, and in order to sum up my favourite ones, here is this post. It’s entirely and obviously personal, and to be honest, it’s more something which is more supposed to help me than recommanding something to you

But I truly think those fanfictions are great, so if you didn’t already read them, you may enjoy them!

I might update it every now and then, by the way!

(most of them are already quite well-known though, sorry)

Put Your Guns Away, it’s Tea Time (52k) and Put Your Curse in Reverse (276k) (from the It’s Tea Time serie), written by ellizablue :

A very lovely, funny and well-written story which follows Albus Severus Potter and Scorpius Malfoy, Harry and Ginny Potter, the rest of the Potter-Weasley family and all of the surrounding people after the events of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

It’s technically canon-compliant - the author created an amazing story based on HPCC - and did it so well! I admit I was a bit disappointed about HPCC when it had been published, but It’s Tea Time “fixed” all of the things I was confused about.

Albus’ and Scorpius’ relationship is adorable, both of them are interesting characters. Harry and Ginny are amiable and attentive parents, they protect people they love. James Sirius and Lily Luna are also great - and to be honest, all of the characters are refreshing, complex, ect. I could talk about it throughout countless of pages. So many themes are brilliantly treated. I still didn’t read the third opus of the series!

(if I should recommand one only series of HP fanfictions, I would recommand this one)

Several fanfictions written by meanwhiletimely :

Illumine (10k) :

In Prague in 1914, Albus Dumbledore goes to a Gellert Grindelwald’s brillant speech. The political discussion between Albus and Henry Potter, how Gellert is able to enthrall a breathless crowed, Gellert’s and Albus’ very special and intense relationship, the wonderful Christian imagery and parallels, the description of the surrounding world and the ambiance, Gellert’s speech... It is quite marvellous, well-written and perfectly bitter-sweet - more bitter than sweet though. Eventual smut, very good, but imo, it cannot be considered as the very heart of the text, even though the sexual tension is omnipresent. I can't help but read it oftenly, and everytime I'm amazed - it might be my favourite GGAD fanfiction in fact. Brilliant.

Extreme Incantations (10k) :

In order to find clues about the Elder Wand story, Albus and Gellert try a “decadent, degenerate, deranged” ritual. A lot of smut, but again, their relationship and their psychology are absolutely central. I loved how they are portrayed, loved to discover Gellert’s thoughts and point of view. Again, it’s brilliantly bitter-sweet - even quite heartbreaking. Like Illumine, I have so much more to say, but I’ll stop here and just say: if you are interested by Summer of 1899 fanfictions, you could be delighted to discover it.

The Seer in the Tower (2k5) and Collateral (3k) are as great as Illumine and Extreme Incantations. In the first one, Tom Riddle meets Gellert Grindelwald after 1945 ; in the second one, Gellert and Ariana talk thanks the Resurection Stone. Light Bringer (10k), which sums up the Summer of 1899, is also amazing - incredibly painful, hopeless and horrendous, and Gellert Grindelwald is definitely not a good person - but still amazing.

Thirty-Five Owls (11k) by Letterblade :

After 1945, Albus and Gellert sent letters to each other - and I will add nothing more about the plot. A quite famous fanfiction - published in 2008 - and rightfully recognised as a brillant one. Beautifully written, the tag "Everything Hurts" is accurate, constantly breathtaking. I loved more than everything else the end - overwhelming, and yet so simple. Even canon-compliant, what more could we ask? In a nutshell, an unmissable work.

White (2k) (M) by Vandrerska :

“The story Gellert Grindelwald would tell if somebody took the trouble to ask.”, or a magnificiently well-written 1st person POV fic with Gellert talking about Albus and 1899. Here is the same vibe we already have in Thirty-Five Owls, but with the benefit of a heart-to-heart conversation between Gellert and the reader directly. Needless to say that both of the hearts involved in the conversation are broken. I love how it is written (but it is no surprise, well-crafted angsty texts like this one own my heart).

nobody else but me (5k) by Roflskate :

After meeting Percival Graves and starting a correspondence with the very head of MACUSA's Department of Law Enforcement in 1926, Albus Dumbledore thinks he's finally ready to move on from Gellert Grindelwald. Well, if you saw Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, you know he's not.

I'm fond of the plot: the way we, as readers, already know how that story is doomed to end, is the very heart of the text - and speaking of the end, I loved it - just like Thirty-Five Owls, simple and heartrending. Again, bitterness is back. Beware of the manipulation and the very questionable consent, it's literally the plot.

(btw, this work inspired this post: GG as Hogwarts teacher/librarian before FBaWtFT: where are the fanfics? (if someone wants to write it please i will be pretty happy))

(In every bloody fanfiction I recommend Albus is suffering, sorry about that) (and it's not going to end with the next fanfic) (suffering is inherent to the character though so)

The Trial of Albus Dumbledore (51k) by Aurora_xx :

In this post-FBCoG AU, Albus Dumbledore is questioned about his relations with Gellert Grindelwald. But before his trial, he unknowingly took Veritaserum. To be honest, I felt it first as a “satisfying” AU: people we don’t like became a bit ridiculous, people we like get through (well, mostly).

Nonetheless, it’s more than that: the trial scene is incredibly tense, the consequences are terrible, and we want to see what's going to happen next. Moreover, the character development is suprisingly remarkably well-done - Vinda Rosier has an amazing backstory, for example; Newt and Newt’s friends are also very likeable, complex, etc. We love to hate Travers, Grindelwald is a character we eventually support (for specific reasons, mostly because he’s powerful, self-confident, rather hilarious and badass, but also a bit more human than we could think). And all we want to do is taking care of Albus.

It’s definitely a really pleasant fanfiction - but not an “easy” one, there are a lot of hard themes and very tense scenes, etc. This story is still considered as a WIP, though the five first chapters are already enough.

Three fics of mautadite :

A Metaphor for Change (1k) (M) : I will just rewrite the summary here, so: "Five things Albus could not bring himself to say to Gellert. (One of them is a lie.)”. I really liked it, it is angsty - but the sweetest way, the very sad way.

To Be Great (0.3k) (G) : What Albus and the Sorting Hat said when Albus put the Hat on his head for the first time. Really a relevant and sharp character study. Again, I felt a hint of a sweet kind of angst. I wonder if I am the only one, you tell me.

Love Letters (6k) (E) : Scenes of Gellert’s and Albus’ life from 1995 to 1899 - often conversations, so say hello to well-crafted relationships between mc and other characters. Here comes the angst again (I think the author writes Albus and Gellert that way - or maybe, the characters are meant to be suffused by angsty undertones). The fact that we go back in time hurts a lot, because every smile they have are perverted by our knowledge of what happens next - the happiness won’t last, and really, it hurts. Canon compliant.

GGAD works of verivala (bloodtroth on tumblr)

Many short one-shots, from fluff to angst - sometimes droll, sometimes soft, often painful, quite always (a bit or a lot) bitter-sweet. You might at least find few of them interesting.

Grindeldore one-shots (22 works)

Grindeldore requests (5 works)

Grindeldore prompt fills (38 works)

L’Indiscible (190k) by Neaniver279

This one is a French one! Deux ans après la fin de la guerre, Percy Weasley - profondément meurtri par la mort de Fred, de laquelle il s’estime responsable - est renvoyé par une mystérieuse potion au 25 décembre 1975. Plusieurs élèves de Poudlard attirent son attention et son affection, voire un en particulier, Sirius Black.

Un pairing très inhabituel qui fonctionne bien ; un Percy Weasley passionnant - faillible, perdu dans ses doutes et sa culpabilité, mais avec une répartie, une malice et une sensibilité hors du commun ; des Maraudeurs et des jumeaux Weasley attachants, avec une personnalité définie et nuancée ; une idée originale géniale, car si le voyage dans le temps ouvre des portes à une nouvelle palette de réflexions et d’expériences pour Percy, il permet aussi d’intégrer un mystère et de la tension autour de la potion, l’Indiscible.

Pas d’underage, mais une relation prof-élève tout de même - tout du moins, pendant un segment de l’histoire. Intéressante, touchante, très drôle, amère, complexe et pathétique. WIP.

Thanks for reading, I hope it had helped!

Thanks to all of the authors also! You are brave, tenacious and doing an amazing work. Thanks a lot! :)

(And of course, beware of the tags, if you are triggered by specific content - homophobia, blood, hospital, violence, explicit sex scenes, manipulation, death, etc)

08-24-2020 edit: Thirty-Five Owls, nobody else but me and verivala’s works added. 02-18-2021 edit: White and mautadite’s works added.

(08-24-2020: i’m also currently interested by Kierkegarden’s works, an already quite inevitable GGAD author, I might add some of them later)

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c0ry-c0nvoluted · 4 years

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READ THIS.

First off, everyone who isn’t too lazy to use their brains for something other than doing what they’re told should watch the video attached. But the only way you’ll get any benefit from it is if you’re stable enough to be objective. Remove yourself from yourself and just absorb and consider.

This video is 2 hours long. And you’ll find him (#DavidIcke) repeating his point throughout which can get trying, but it IS a valid point. That point being:

THIS IS WHAT THEY WANT.

They want us afraid and panicking and ready and willing to accept whatever aggressive measures are needed to alleviate our fear. In fact, they’ll have us pleading for these aggressive measure to be taken (that will continue well after the crisis) and then vilifying anyone who calls for our rights to freedom. “Oh, you don’t want to stay indoors? That means you don’t care about my grandma and you should be locked up.” And, “Oh, you don’t accept a mandatory vaccination because you don’t know what’s actually in it? Then you’re the monster who’s putting my children at risk and my family in danger and should be locked up.” We will all line up to shackle ourselves and everyone else around us if we’re panicked and afraid.

At the end of it all he suggests alleviating our fear of death in order to not allow ourselves to be manipulated. This is brilliant. But how do you do that? By changing your perspective on consciousness and realizing that human consciousness is not the only experience. That after we leave our bodies we move onto an entirely new form of infinite existence and consciousness, and that death is nothing but a change in perspective (and likely a fantastic one.) My opinion on this? I’ve always thought that our minds aren’t quite evolved enough to maintain consciousness as a form of energy without a body. But I meant that in the aspect of “I don’t think I will STILL BE ME.” But, considering this further, and seeing the benefits of adjusting my perspective, I realize now that, sure, I might not be me, but how is that a bad thing? I mean, even if there’s no consciousness at all, that’s STILL not a bad thing. And if there IS consciousness, it will be so much more vast and connected to the universe than it is right now trapped inside these fleshy mishaps of evolution, that the next existence may as well be called Heaven, regardless of the fact that I don’t believe in the Christian afterlife or their creation theory (or their God). And yes, it occurs to me that it’s not death we fear so much as the pain of dying. But most of that pain comes from the fear. I’d say that if you were NOT afraid to die, then you’d easily ease your suffering (while dying) by 50%, if not a whole hell of a lot more.

His ending note/concept is a bit difficult to wrap your brain around, and impossible for most (unfortunately), but for those who can grasp it, it’s fucking gold, man. It really helped ease my mind and is worth sticking around the entire interview for.

(This next part of these “Cliff Notes” is gonna get back into the “conspiracy” of it all.)

How often have you been repeatedly told to get your flu shot over the past 10 years? It’s everywhere, right? That repetition is a form of psychological manipulation. It’s gearing you up to get a vaccination that’s mandated. And that’s gearing you up for what will lead to voluntarily being ushered into a world where there are no more jobs so you’re dependent on “government” cheese, which is barely enough to survive so keeps you powerless, and you’re behavior is monitored and your “government credits” are at risk if you “behave improperly”.

THEY ARE ALREADY DOING THIS IN CHINA TODAY USING FACIAL RECOGNITION A.I. TO MONITOR BEHAVIOR AND ADD OR SUBTRACT CREDITS ( which he discusses)

WE WILL BE NEXT.

And it’s all under the guise of “your government wants to help feed you in these terrible times but, for your safety, you will be monitored, and any negative behavior will result in penalties.” And what becomes “negative behavior”? Speaking out against the World Government. This has been written about for decades, if not longer, and has become such a scifi troupe that most believe that it’s just fantasy. But it started as a practical concept recognized by deep thinkers, seeing the inevitable outcome of a monetary society, and then was developed into stories told for entertainment. But ALSO for awareness.

He may go a little too far for rational people when he acknowledges the possibility that #COVID19 might actually have been released purposely, but that’s not relevant because A PANDEMIC WAS INEVITABLE (because of how connected our global society is). And being inevitable, it is very easy to plan for that pandemic and manipulate our reactions to it so to push us all towards EXACTLY what they want:

TOTALITARIANISM

And if this pandemic isn’t bad enough to get us where they want us, the next one will be.

This is probably the point where, if you’ve made it this far, you’re gonna pull the Bullshit card and dismiss the whole rant. But here’s the thing:

The “conspiracy” of it all is IRRELEVANT. The fact remains that when you stand back and look at where we are headed you’ll clearly see (if you can think that far ahead, which, granted, 80% of our society is not intelligent enough to do, which is what makes this possible in the first place) that what he describes and how he describes it is in fact exactly what is happening. So whether it’s all a conspiracy or not doesn’t matter because the end result is the same. No, I’m not saying COVID-19 is a conspiracy. I believe it was just an inevitability, as mentioned above. But our reactions to it and what will happen now because of those reactions is (coincidentally?) pushing us toward the death of democracy AND THE DEATH OF OUR FREEDOM.

He goes on to point out that because this concept is so unfathomably evil we can’t possibly accept it to be true because, as far as we know, no such evil on such a grand scale can actually be real. It baffles the mind. IT MUST BE PARANOIA.

It isn’t. It’s, again, all part the inevitable outcome of a monetary based economy. How many times do we have to say this? The only outcome of a monetary based society is that eventually only one corporation will survive (even if they’re more than one at the end, they’re all working together as a conglomerate). And, in a monetary society, whoever controls all the money CONTROLS EVERYTHING.

David Icke doesn’t even touch on the money thing, which I was surprised by. He simply just puts the spotlight on "The Cult" that’s secretly manipulating our entire civilization toward the One World Government they need in order to control it all. He brings up the point of why are we locking everyone down if only the elderly and people with underlying health concerns are in danger? We should be locking THEM down (humanely) for their protection and letting everyone else go about their lives and get sick and then get over it like we always do and will. Admittedly, I’m not entirely sure about the end fatality rate, because we’re not there yet, but it makes sense that most of us, even if and when we contract it, will be absolutely fine. Granted, Americans are unhealthy as shit, so the mortality rate can end up being a bit rough, but it’s THE FEAR of that rate that allows them to sit back and let us hand over our freedom to them. THE FEAR is what will give #TheCult ultimate control over the world, and we will fucking hand it to them with praises while saying “thank you for saving us from these terrible times.”

As I was watching this, just after he mentioned that the goal is to get everyone on a government “credit-based behavioral-dependent income,” I got a news notification saying the motion was just passed to send out $1000 checks to American citizens.

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

IT’S HAPPENING RIGHT NOW.

What the The Cult want is for all other companies to crash leaving them the only few left that have money/power, which makes it so none of us can challenge them because anytime anyone speaks out they’ll have their "government cheese" reduced and no one else will have enough of their own to lend them. THIS IS WHY MONEY NEEDS TO BE ABOLISHED ENTIRELY. I won’t get into the details of that here but, believe me, it CAN work and WILL make EVERYTHING INSURMOUNTABLY BETTER. But just to touch on HOW it would work:

TECHNOLOGY. Society will need to be automated so people will not HAVE to work for a living. But in order for that to happen all the world's governments would have to work together to create this automated society. This is the only POSITIVE outcome of what The Cult may be pursuing. If we're lucky, when whoever wins it all has decimated the entire world's economy, they may decide to create a new and better one that does in fact abolish money and automates society. But this would be a fucking miracle beyond fathoming because it would mean that the sociopaths who killed the world were actually doing it to save it.(But this discussion goes a little too deep into "not fucking likely, bro.".)

WHAT WE CAN DO NOW TO STOP THIS IS NOT LET FEAR ALLOW THEM TO CONTROL US, ULTIMATELY CAUSING US TO HAND OVER OUR FREEDOMS TO THEM.

And no, this is not the American government’s plan. It’s not the communist party’s plan. It’s not Trump or anyone else you see in the media. They are all pawns, puppets, unknowing means to ends and have no idea what’s really happening (or are possibly part of it, yes. But that’s not likely. It’s more likely they’re just be manipulated like the rest of us.)

Watch the interview attached.

Keep an open mind.

Do not be afraid.

Death is just a change in perspective.

OUR PERCEPTIONS ARE OUR REALITY.

-cm

#lockdown #covid19 #corona virus news #illuminati #The Cult #health tips #immune system #david Icke #London Real #anxiety #totalitarianism #CCP #CCP virus #rant

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dentalrecordsmusic · 4 years

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The Resurrection of My Chemical Romance: MCR’s Dark Catholicism

Words by Cae Rosch

On October 31, 2019, My Chemical Romance rose from the grave.

Resurrection isn’t a new theme for them, whether it’s in the salvation narrative the band was founded on (“We’re here to save kids’ lives”) or the pervasive undead monsters and heroes throughout their body of lyrics. The Return is another step in their decades-long salvation narrative. And that salvation narrative, one in which death is intimate and impending and necessary, one in which we come alive by shouting out our sorrows and sins like a cathartic confession to rock and roll, is deeply intertwined with a darkly Catholic perspective on the world.

It’s not new to talk about MCR as, on some level, a Catholic band - there’s already great writing about this. But the band took it to a whole new level even just with the concept of The Return, and so we have to take talking about it to a whole new level too.

We know the core members of the band come from Catholic backgrounds (specifically, for the most part, Italian-American Catholic, which is uncontestedly the most melodramatic mode of modern Catholicism). And like most people from Catholic backgrounds, there’s a complex and painful relationship there. As Gerard Way has said, “I was raised Catholic, which turned me off from religion because I had a very bad experience.” Yet in the same response, he remarked that he believed in God, even if it wasn’t in quite a Catholic way.

But that’s the thing: for the sake of this discussion, it doesn’t fucking matter if anyone believes. Regardless of the belief system you grow up to have, Catholicism isn’t something you just shake off, because it’s not simply an ideology - it’s a full-body, five-sense aesthetic world. It never fully departs your subconscious. Something, however small, lingers on your soul. That’s just as true of MCR as it is of your average Catholic or former Catholic on the street. And we can see it throughout their whole body of work.

The imagery is obvious. Song titles reference the Virgin Mary revered as Our Lady of Sorrows, lyrics are addressed to nuns and set in churches and graveyards, entire photoshoots center around Gerard Way as a rock and roll priest. The underlying narrative and its accompanying implied worldview, however, are a lot more subtle.

C.S. Lewis, though not a Catholic, was operating within a Catholic context when he wrote in Mere Christianity, “The Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs.” In the salvation narrative that began as soon as the band did, MCR act as little Christs themselves. But they act within one very specific moment in Christ’s own narrative: at the moment Jesus hangs on the cross, the ninth hour, when he cries out, “Ηλει ηλει λεμα σαβαχθανι” - “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabacthani?” My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? MCR’s dark Catholicism hurts.

At the very beginning of MCR, Gerard Way thought of it as a “mission from God” despite his own troubled relationship with Catholicism. He writes, “I even firmly believed in creating MCR… The mission involved helping people and battling the forces of evil, by using word and the purifying flames produced by Marshall Halfstack amplification.” This is a saintly mission, a mission of sacrifice. It shows clearly in their early lyrics.

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On their first album, the two most Catholicly obvious songs are also the two most relevant to the band’s salvation narrative. Here, in “Vampires Will Never Hurt You,” the singer embraces the necessity of sacrifice to the point of death to save a beloved from the threat of a very Catholic monster. Vampires have a relationship with Catholicism nearly as fraught as MCR’s - Catholics make excellent monsters in the Protestant culture of early vampire literature, given their literal blood-drinking, yet Catholic iconography is also the most powerful weapon against vampires. Similarly, when Way sings, “And if they get me and the sun goes down into the ground / And if they get me, take this spike to my heart and… / You put the spike in my heart,” he becomes both savior and villain. He dies to himself and becomes a monster, abandoned by God (“Someone burned the church.”)

The only hope for others’ salvation is for him to die. Yet similar to the forsaken Christ, he still desperately cries out for his own salvation when he sings, “And someone save my soul, tonight / Please save my soul.”

“Our Lady of Sorrows,” unsurprisingly, further emphasizes the band’s drive toward sacrifice in its depiction of sainthood (“the patron saint of switchblade fights”) as an act of defiant death for the sake of salvation (“Oh, how wrong we were to think / That immortality meant never dying.”) The violent juxtaposition of that switchblade imagery with the idea of sainthood shows an intense focus on the agony of salvation - fitting, in a song named for Our Lady of Sorrows, who is depicted weeping, with seven swords that represent the seven great agonies of her life piercing her heart.

Salvation is just as painful on Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge. The album and its associated era are extremely heavy on Catholic imagery in general (see the video for “Helena” and that one priest photoshoot, you know the one).

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The album’s “Interlude” is a literal prayer for the intercession of the saints (“Saints protect her now,”) and it’s immediately followed by a song directly addressed to a nun - “Thank You for the Venom.” As in “Vampires Will Never Hurt You,” the singer accepts that his sacrifice will be painful when he sings, “So give me all your poison / And give me all your pills / And give me all your hopeless hearts / And make me ill.” He takes all this onto himself to the point of violent death - “If this is what you want / Then fire at will.”

But just as the figure of Christ, forsaken on the cross, shocks us with the sudden pain of his sacrifice, the singer once again juxtaposes religious and violent imagery to force us to be aware of the complexity of the saving act - sure, his sacrifice is saving people, but it’s fucking excruciating to die. When he sings “I keep a gun in the book you gave me / Hallelujah, lock and load” in the same song as a command to “fire at will,” we can’t see him as simply accepting his sacrifice like the complacent Jesus it would be simpler to remember. Instead, he is a “little Christ” to the Jesus who calls desperately for his father as he suffers and dies. “Give me a reason to believe,” Way cries, and we feel that same desperation.

This dynamic - MCR as the abandoned, agonized martyr violently saving people - builds up through their first two albums. In the 2006 single release of “Welcome to the Black Parade” and “Heaven Help Us,” it explodes.

It’s fitting that these songs are a single and its b-side because they express the two attitudes whose tension drives MCR’s entire narrative of martyrdom and salvation. “Welcome to the Black Parade” embraces the heroic aspect of the savior, victorious through and beyond death. “Heaven Help Us” is its tortured dark side - the savior’s moment of absolute pain, isolation, and loss of faith before that victory can begin.

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“Welcome to the Black Parade” is the most explicit expression of the idea of salvation, beginning almost immediately with the request: “Would you be the savior of the broken / The beaten and the damned?” With this single release, MCR becomes completely upfront about how the thematic martyrdom in their lyrics matches up with the band’s verbalized desire “to save kids’ lives.” MCR know their fan base. Their fans are the bullied kids, the depressed kids, those struggling with trauma and addiction and anxiety - everyone society calls “broken.” It’s clear who’s stepping up to be those kids’ savior.

Though “Welcome to the Black Parade” doesn’t include the kind of explicit Catholic imagery that MCR’s previous records did, lyrics like “Do or die, you’ll never make me / Because the world will never take my heart / Go and try, you’ll never break me” demonstrate a profoundly Catholic attitude toward saving hearts and souls. No matter how much pain (and there’s clearly a lot) happens in this world, the heart persists. This song is about joyous suffering enabled by a heroic savior, about a defiant march past earthly oppression and into eternal victory. That’s pretty Catholic, my friends.

“Heaven Help Us” is about the actual pain that that savior must experience for “Welcome to the Black Parade” to have its victorious end. It’s the darker side of an already dark song.

It’s no accident that “Heaven Help Us,” while just as thematically Catholic as its A-side, is far more obvious about its Catholic imagery. Catholicism knows how to show us pain in a way that’s both beautiful and shocking. When your relationship with the Church itself is alienated and painful, that imagery comes out even more.

“Heaven Help Us” begins with a melody that eerily parallels the classic Christmas carol “O Holy Night.” But it subverts the idea of a hymn, instead almost luxuriating in sprawling religious abandonment. Its imagery is viscerally bloody - “‘Cause mostly I’ve been sprawled on these cathedral steps / While spitting out the blood and screaming / Someone save us.” The lyrics invite sacrifice (“‘Cause I’ll give you all the nails you need / Cover me in gasoline”) but also call out with the desperation of the abandoned (“And the punchline to the joke is asking / Someone save us.”

“Heaven Help Us” is a cry born from fear and resignation to abandonment. “Would you pray for me / Or make a saint of me?” becomes horrifyingly ironic when we remember how fast the path to sainthood is for martyrs - it’s almost automatic once they’re murdered. This singer isn’t the defiant hero of “Welcome to the Black Parade.” This singer is dying, alone, prayers unanswered.

And the thing about Catholicism is that both of those figures are equally Christ. Seeds of MCR’s dark salvation narrative persist throughout their discography. Even on Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys, “Save Yourself, I’ll Hold Them Back” offers salvation through sacrifice right there in the title. The release of “Welcome to the Black Parade” / “Heaven Help Us” harvests what those seeds all grow up to become - the image of Christ, forsaken. It’s the moment where the pain of fraught relationships with Catholicism crystallizes in support of the band’s mission: going forth into the world to save kids’ lives. But apparently, it wasn’t enough to leave it there.

When MCR formed, the US was a horrific place to live for a whole lot of people. The band started in 2001, and so did the shift of the Bush administration into outright pseudo-fascism. Take it from me, a young teenager of the 2000s - that was not a good time to be a depressed kid, a gay kid, a traumatized kid, any kind of religious or ethnic minority. That was a very specific cultural context, one in which MCR needed to mold themselves into the salvific figure of an alienated rock and roll “little Christ” to save a world of equally alienated kids.

They’re now reemerging in the renewed horror of the Trump administration: the Bush administration on steroids. There’s a whole lot of alienated kids who need saving. And now, at least this one savior is back.

We may not have any new music, but the imagery of MCR’s Return situates them firmly back in their dark Catholic milieu. They announced their return accompanied by a photo of Pasquale Rizzoli’s “Cella Magnani,” a funerary statue in which an angel draws the soul of a dead woman into the celestial blue of its mosaic backdrop. The new logo, in which the letters “MCR” are written in a medieval Protogothic script, situates us back in MCR’s familiar black-and-white color scheme. In combination with “Cella Magnani,” it also places us in the medieval mode of memento mori - an aesthetic practice beginning in medieval Catholicism in which actively remembering your death helps you prepare your soul to die in a state of grace. (Side note: “Welcome to the Black Parade” is included on a popular memento mori-themed playlist curated by a nun.)

A lot of the effectiveness of memento mori comes from the Catholic perspective on the resurrection of the dead - the idea that someday, Christ will rise again and enact ultimate, perfect justice, giving everybody (and every body) exactly what they deserve. So in light of that, MCR’s Return narrative is itself a Catholic salvation narrative. MCR might not literally mean it that way, but in their own small way, this Return lets us hope that someday real justice will come. Someday, someone we trust will come to judge everyone and not even death will stop it.

With their return, MCR’s dark Catholicism helps us remember that this is a band bent on saving lives - our lives. For people like us, MCR has spent 18 years building up the idea of a forsaken-Christ figure that exists specifically to save our lives - and that idea rising from the grave is pretty comforting.

Cae Rosch has been listening to MCR since 2004 and cries about Our Lady of Sorrows (the religious figure and the song) at least 18 times a day. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

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Subscribe to the DRM YouTube channel.

#my chemical romance #mcr #my chem #mcrmy #gerard way #frank iero #mikey way #ray toro #catholicism #catholic #feature #cae rosch

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anjreyes · 3 years

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From Full-time Employee to Freelancing Virtual Assistant

Once was a Freelancing Skeptic

now a Freelance Virtual Assistant

When COVID-19 Pandemic happened it reveals all the uncertainties in life. This is when I realized more that nothing is really sure in this life; even a full-time, safe and secured job could not guarantee to support you forever. Back then when I was still at the hype of my full-time physical set-up job I considered freelancing as an unreliable and undependable source of income. It was 10 years ago when I used to question my friends who chose to work in a virtual set-up thinking that there is no firm future in this endeavor and this is not a “real” career.

Years past and in 2019 I worked with a single-mom who’s a bread winner to her family with a lot of side hustles and one of it is an online job. I was still skeptical about freelancing but silently admiring her determination to earn and to provide for her family. She also invited me but because of my skeptic mind I was not then ready and let the opportunity slide.

One after the other I was exposed to different friends, workmates and even churchmates who work online and hear their experiences.

“Time after time I slowly see the beauty and advantages of working from home. Time after time I was being convinced that freelancing is real. I now understand that this is a growing community that offers real life and freedom which is far way different than a physical work set-up..”

I appreciate the freelancing more and more when I was forced to work from home due to COVID-19. It was those moments that I can somehow relate to the feeling of a real online worker but still I am bound by the 8am-5pm working hours (and beyond) with close monitoring and no overtime pay. Yet, this is when my desire grows to be a freelancing virtual assistant that offers virtual services.

With earnest prayers and after seeking the Lord’s approval, I set my heart and my mind to engage with full dedication to my new found community. Thus, I enrolled myself to a freelancing training course through FVA Academy Business Consultancy to help me equip and grow. Now, I am about to finish the course and by faith I could be able to graduate with the gold certificate, Lord willing.

My 5 WHYs in Switching to

a Freelancing Virtual Assistant

1. To have More Time with the King and His kingdom

Cliché as it may sound but this has been my long desire since I committed my life to the Lord—to have more quality alone time with Him and more time serving His people. Without any cover ups, neither to recruit nor persuade my readers, I confess that I’m a born-again Christian, a firm believer, follower and servant of Christ Jesus. No, this is not to offend other groups of faith or to cause trouble but I just want to share my heart in this particular area.

I am not saying that my 8-5 physical set-up work hinder me to take time with God or to serve His people, but as for me personally I know can do more and better when I can take control of my time and not being pressured by the rush of going to the office day by day, wrestling the feeling of unscheduled overtime without pay; and having my quiet time with the Lord being sacrificed. By God’s grace, I made into practice that as I start my day He should be my first priority before I do anything else. I don’t like it when I start the day without talking to God first and without reading His word just because of my work. I know that God can totally understand whatever time I could spend with Him but this is my commitment to Him and I don’t want to give God my leftovers—leftover time, leftover strength.

In a working from home set up, I am at peace that I don’t need to rush my alone time with God and I can spend more quality time, anytime with God’s people without waiting to end the 8-5 and beyond office hours.

2. To Serve My Family

As a wife, desiring to be a mother and a homemaker, I wanted to fulfill this by having more time at home where I can serve my husband and praying to homeschool our future children while earning a reasonable income. I came from an “almost” broken family and I don’t want my own family to experience the same. Also, with freelancing I know I can have all my time and freedom to visit both of our family sides and have more opportunity to honor and serve them anytime I want; not needing to file an application for leave and wait for approval or wait for holidays to be permitted to travel.

3. To Spare Myself from Office Politics

People-pleaser is tiring and exhausting especially when it goes with terrible work competition with unstable organization policies. It is very painful to experience that one cannot be promoted and can easily be demoted just because of personal issues from one of the known “high-valued” personalities in the office without proper basis. Office gossip and dramas are disturbing which can highly affect work performance and person’s life. Thus, I choose to work from home on my own where I can avoid toxic people who can ruin the day and assassinate people’s character.

4. To be Free from Office Unreasonable Policies

Time is precious especially to those family-oriented people and I’m one of them. It is just so tiring and draining to be repeatedly being stolen by your time that is meant for your family or more valuable meetings just because of unannounced and unpaid overtime. And it is more tiring to hear when you heard somebody would say that it is not counted as overtime because you are being paid by your salary. Back off. In the freelancing world, according to Interaction Design Foundation, “If you’re working, you’re earning. You charge clients for work, and you don’t work unless you’re getting paid.”

Another unjust treatment-- unable to avail bonuses and other perks just because of unreasonable agency ruling and discrimination of job status while others are enjoying their 13th month pay, 14th month pay and other bonuses; and others are suffering in the long wait of their scanty salary.

Thus, I prayed to be blessed in this journey where all my efforts and time will be given proper justice.

5. To be Able to Do the Work I love and have the Potential to Grow

Being a freelance virtual assistant, I can have spare time to do the things I love and can make my knowledge about it grow. I love arts, I love plants and handcrafted products. Now I can have time to avail online classes on how to improve my other skills and more time to express myself in an art which can help my mental health as well.

5 Things I Prepare in Transitioning

from 8-5 Employee to a Freelancer

1. Heart and Mind

This is not an overnight process and it definitely requires willingness to do hardwork. Leaving behind a “secure job” is always risky that is why I earnestly prayed this to God and asked His guidance because I won’t go without Him. I set my mind that once I started this journey I must have a full commitment or I only be wasting. I encountered a lot of tiring and discouraging moments but I chose to pursue my dream future with my family and remember my whys. I also watched videos and read articles about freelancing and being a virtual assistant to help me have a full heart and mind in joining this community.

2. Resources: Money for Training and Gadgets

Along with the heart and mind preparation, I face the reality that this entails money and that I have to invest for a training to make me effective. With the help of my supportive husband we find ways to fix my laptop problem. I acknowledged that these resources are necessary things to be able to achieve my goal of offering freelancing virtual assistant services.

3. Enrol in a Reliable Company that Offers Freelancing Online Trainings

I am really thankful to God that I was able to discover the FVA Academy Business Consultancy through an advertisement in social media. One of the things convinced me to enroll in their academy is that they have this commitment to never let go of their students until having its first client. And indeed, the training is worth the pay and I could say that Coach Keren Cajes-Ame is one of their best and hands-on coaches. FVA Academy will surely help you expand your skill set.

4. Peaceful Corner to Work

It is not an immediate need but it is very important especially when having a virtual meeting with the client. Peaceful corner is being specified to be able to help me focus with what I am doing. Noisy and crowded places are usually destructive for me and can affect my work output.

5. Find a Sure and Long-term Clients before Leaving My 8-5 Job

Be prudent in making decisions – a reminder to myself. I cannot gamble my family’s well being just because of my personal dreams without calculating the future result. That is why I enrolled at FVA Academy knowing that they are committed to help their student grow and find its client. But before taking the path of becoming a freelance virtual assistant, I said to myself that I have to secure first a number of sure and long-term clients before handing over my resignation to my 8-5 job.

Quitting my 8-5 job may not sound right as I was thinking before, but considering the thought of having a break free from a toxic workplace and having more time to spend with my family is worth all the time I am taking to pursue this new career.

Recommended Sources to Prepare

If you are planning to pursue any online career path, as I repeatedly mentioned, I highly recommend FVA Academy Business Consultancy. You can be assured that you are not wasting your hard-earned money for nothing.

As a freelance virtual assistant, I am also offering affordable virtual assistant services. You may also check my portfolio to see my outputs. To know me more please see my resume and online profile. Please don't hesitate to contact me for more details or any queries. I am also willing to share the basic skills I learned.

To end this blog, allow me to share a few points I learned from my freelancing online course and related video I watched. Let me quote this line from the YouTube Channel The Girl and The Word that says “We are blessed to live this era where there isn’t a traditional career path in making a living”, therefore take advantage of every opportunity we have. Take your time and get all the foundations you needed. Don’t compare yourself with others because it is unnecessary to compare. Take your journey with the One [God] who knows everything and please only Him. Make the move when you are completely ready and fly high!

#freelancevitualassistant #virtualassistant #virtual assistance services

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nottskyler · 4 years

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Catching up from the weekend I saw a this post: “the media will not acknowledge the presence of gay Christians who have chosen celibacy, or bi Christians who have chosen to renounce same-sex romantic relationships, entirely of their own volition.“

I wanted to give my two cents on it without seeming mean since I strongly disagree with this statement. If I had not been trans, I would have been a lot worse of an advocate against gays because I am bi. For bi individuals it is a choice, like not dating the sexist creep no matter how attractive he looks or not dating a non-member or not dating someone going into a career that you can’t handle the moral implications of what your spouse is going to be doing to provide for the family. It’s a choice that bi people have the luxury of making and it isn’t a big deal. Maybe you missed out by not dating the same-sex, but it would be like the non-member converting while you were on your mission and you could’ve been the one to help them into the Church or like the individual who wanted the morally questionable job could’ve easily been swayed into a different career, but in the end your life isn’t on the line when it comes to who you chose as your spouse.

Some gay Christians may find themselves leaning towards asexuality or are repulsed with the idea of any sex. For them choosing to remain celibate is like an asexual person choosing that path, it doesn’t take a lot of pain and maybe living with a romantic partner would be nice, but they’ll live.

For the rest of the queer community it isn’t a “sacrifice” like not drinking alcohol or not having sex before marriage or limiting marriage options to members. Choosing to not live our eternal gender or as ourselves is choosing to be depressed, anxious, and possibly suicidal for our entire live. While it might not always mean that death comes by suicide, living as a hollow shell trying to present as human to hide the void that you have become is a death of who you are as a child of Gd. The choice is one of life or death.

There is a recurring question about choosing good and evil in the Book of Mormon that equates choosing good as choosing life and choosing evil as choosing death. -“And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil” 2 Nephi 2:27 -“But he that knoweth good and evil, to him it is given according to his desires, whether he desireth good or evil, life or death, joy or remorse of conscience.” Alma 29:5 -“He hath given unto you that ye might choose life or death; “ Helaman 14:30-31

This comparison has meant a lot to me as I have navigated my faith and identity because transitioning is choosing life and choosing Christ. It makes my path as clear as day is from the night. From what I see about gay people who aren’t asexual leaning, the same goes for them. Abstaining from relationships, or worse trying to live in a hetero relationship, kills them just as much as living as a woman did to me.

There is definitely a keenness for suffering-porn with Protestantism where the suffering of others is seen as for their benefit and the belief that suffering causes the suffering person’s exaltation even though most Church goers would never opt to go into those situations even if it was their only path for salvation. There is this belief that life being difficult is what life is about. But it isn’t. Life is about learning and growing and becoming better.

The enabling power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ because it is a tool and not a solution. Seeing the Atonement as something that makes things right instead of a tool to make things right is why so many Christians opt for supporting charity organizations instead of going out and doing their part to stop suffering where they are. It’s why the Church sits back and says that everything will be made right later, so be depressed and suicidal i this life if you are queer and you will be saved. But the whole point of the Atonement of Jesus Christ is to heal us NOW (obviously not like a miracle cure, but it is a treatment to start using now). Jesus Christ suffered to help carry our burdens not so we can carry them to prove we are worthy of eternal life. The enabling power shakes the chains of death and hell that came from living the wrong gender and sexuality so we can learn to live our lives and be happy members of society that can contribute to bettering it. Repentance looks like coming out of the closet and living as who you truly are.

I have nothing against people who try to live as they were taught as long as it isn’t killing them, it would be very hypocritical of me to judge since I lived that way for most of my life. But stop thinking that you aren’t represented. You chose to be another body in the congregation of the Church. That is your representation. Don’t complain because you think you deserve to be more than one in the crowd, that you’ll be different from every other poster child used to tell queer people how to live their lives only to step down and follow everyone else in a few years. Don’t worry, the Church takes care of telling us how to live so we don’t need representation on how not to follow the “queer lifestyle”.

Being a good Christian means being a good person. Being a good Christian frequently means doing good things without being acknowledged or thanked. Being a good Christian means having a relationship with Christ. Stop worrying if other people are seeing your righteousness.

#two cents #rant #personal

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francesderwent · 4 years

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part one: August Rush and JPII’s Original Experiences

The thing you need to know going into August Rush is that it is not a sentimental film. It’s not about fuzzy feelings, unmoored from reality. It’s not telling you to put a happy face on what is essentially an unredeemable situation. It’s not even saying that if you hope long enough that your whole life can be transformed. No, what August Rush is doing is actually much more exceptional than that. August Rush says: your deepest desires, your impossible hopes – they have all been real all along. You don’t have to wait for your desire for love and belonging to be fulfilled sometime in a distant future – you have been loved all along, and any fulfilment or transformation will also be at the same time a return and a recovery.

You do come from love. Love is speaking to you, all the time. And you can become a part of the conversation.

It’s not a sentimental film, because it makes the claim that fuzzy feelings aren’t fuzzy at all – they’re more real than suffering, more real than despair. It’s not trying to give you a merely emotional catharsis – it’s trying to make you glimpse something of reality. It’s no less profound because the reality it’s presenting is beautiful rather than ugly – in fact, I think it’s more profound.

I view the film through the lens of Pope Saint John Paul II’s theology of the body – I don’t know if the writers specifically had that in mind, but they certainly had Christianity in mind. At any rate, I think theology of the body gives us some helpful terminology with which to approach the movie.

Lyla Novacek and Louis Connelly are both musicians. Lyla is a Juilliard-educated classical cellist; Louis is a songwriter, guitarist, and frontman for an Irish punk-rock band. The film shows us Lyla playing with the philharmonic in a pristine white dress, and Louis wailing his lyrics in a crowded, smoky club, but their music intertwines. They’re playing in completely different styles, but the difference is complementary. Before they’ve ever met, the language each of them speaks is capable of being spoken together, to and with one another.

They meet on a roof at a party in New York, both of them having heard the same harmonica tune on the street below. Louis encourages Lyla to come up and sit with him to listen; she does. He tells her when he was a boy, he used to talk to the moon. She laughs and asks him if he’s making it up, and then asks if the moon ever talked back. “It used to,” he says, “but now I end up just talking to myself, like a loon.” There’s a prior relationality to something transcendent before they ever met – Louis wasn’t wholly alone before he met her. His solitude was always reaching out to converse with something beyond him. She is not his first or his primary companion – but something about adulthood has broken his connection with the transcendent, and so he feels alone. Original solitude, our being created in an immediate relationship to God, can feel a lot like loneliness, after the Fall.

Louis asks, “So what’s your story, Lyla?” She falters, answers simply, “I don’t know, I’m just me.” She can’t explain herself or her story; we don’t fully find ourselves except in a gift of self, and she hasn’t had occasion to make one yet, so she’s alone just as he is. So when Louis stares at her and she asks, “What are you looking at?”, and he answers just as simply, “You,” she experiences this as something very profound. She was opaque to herself – but he can see her and know her, her appearance speaks to him. There is nothing frightening, nothing degrading in it –she trusts him implicitly with her self-revelation. There are no walls up, but she’s not ashamed – her being seen in the body is experienced as a means of love and not an obstacle: original nakedness.

And so, caught up in the moment and enraptured by the beautiful glimpse of each other’s true humanity, they try to reach for what they’re feeling and make it into a reality. They’ve seen something in each other, something that’s true and something that they recognize as revealing them to themselves, and so they take that to be the whole. They imagine that having loved the other that they’ve seen, they love the other totally. He thinks he’s seen all of her, and can receive all of her and give her all of himself in return. She thinks she’s the answer to his loneliness, that she can receive his gift and fulfil him with her own gift. In short, they think that their falling in love has already bound them together in the perfect unity that their hearts long for.

They’re wrong. When they wake up the next morning, Louis’s brother is deriding his sentimentality, and Lyla remembers she has to meet her father, and flees. Louis calls after her to meet him at the arch at ten, begs her to say yes, and she smiles at him – “I’ll take that as a yes!” he calls, beaming, and she smiles back. But the language of the body doesn’t, on its own, make a vow. She didn’t say yes, and she hasn’t promised herself to him. And when her father bullies her into the car, she goes, giving only a look of regret to Louis, waving at her from across the street.

“What am I going to do now?” Louis asks his brother in anguish. He’s haunted by the abandoned unity, by the unfulfilled nature of the gift. He writes a song, “This Time”, about how he feels cut off from life because he keeps returning to that moment with her, and how he wonders if he could ever leave the moment behind, get her off his mind forever. But he doesn’t know how – and he stops in the middle of the song at a show, and quits the band. The only way he can find to escape the moment is to close himself off to music altogether, and cut himself off from his brother as well. He takes an office job in San Francisco, gets a girlfriend, and doesn’t stay in touch with anyone from his old life. He turns back to an isolation more complete and more hopeless than it ever was before.

Lyla, on the other hand, isn’t trapped by the single experience of their moment together – because, she discovers, she’s pregnant. Her relationship with Louis is relativized for her, it takes on a new and definitive importance as it relates to her relationship to the child she carries. Clearly she remembers Louis, but their imperfect gift has miraculously found a kind of fulfilment greater than she ever intended or hoped, and so she isn’t haunted, isn’t lost, isn’t tempted by isolation. Her father, however, can only see the child as a threat, and has only derision for the love which brought the child into being. He’s speaking ill of Louis when Lyla walks out on him in frustration, and then she’s hit by a car. When she wakes up, her father tells her that her son is gone – but what she doesn’t know is that her father forged her signature, handing her child over to the state. There was no room in her father’s love for anyone else, or even for Lyla’s own freedom, only what he himself wanted and thought was right. Broken by the loss, Lyla, too, turns away from her music. There was no fulfilment; the love she had was torn from her.

The film is honest, then, about the pain of an unfulfilled gift, a premature love taken to be more than it is. But – and this is important – it doesn’t wholly dismiss the impulse behind it. Louis and Lyla found that vulnerability is a risk, and so they both cut themselves off from the desire, the intent listening that opened them up to each other. And this is a mistake.

Which brings us to our main character: Evan Taylor, named by the state, having spent the last eleven years of his life in a group home. Evan hears music, all around him. He says he likes to believe that it came from his parents, that maybe it was what they heard the night they met – and that maybe, if he can learn to play the music, they’ll hear it, and they’ll find him. We, the audience, know that it was music which brought his parents together – and yet, we can’t help but doubt that Evan’s participation in it will draw them all back together again. Their brief union was too imperfect from the start, and they have strayed too far since. But Evan is not shaken by the world’s doubt – the music is real to him, the things it speaks to him more true than the taunts his peers throw at him. He feels in his very existence that his parents loved each other and that they love him. He knows that his abandonment, his loneliness is not the way things were meant to be. His parents were disillusioned, cast out of the proverbial garden – but Evan still has access, through the music, to the original impulse that brought them together.

/ part two here /

#august rush #meta whine and rant #theology of the body #but cate! you say #didn't you write a whole paper about this for your masters?#couldn't you post that?#NO I MUST WRITE IT AGAIN BUT BETTER #DON'T QUESTION ME

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bettpbrumfield-blog · 4 years

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Manifestation Magic Learn This, and Your Life Will Change Forever!

I 'd like you to visualize a yard. In this yard, the soil is constantly abundant with nutrients as well as what you plant, it will expand.

There is rainfall and also sun so you do not have to stress about anything.

You can grow anything. There are no restrictions. You can plant roses or you can grow toxin ivy. You can plant tomatoes or you can grow nightshade, a dangerous poison. What you place

in, as a seed, will ultimately become something a lot bigger. This garden is your mind as well as the seeds you can plant are your thoughts. Your mind is a fertile location where the thoughts you plant, will grow and make up for what your life is. Or as the old passage from the Bible goes, from guide of proverbs, phase 23, verse 7:"As a male thinketh in his heart, so is he, ".< p design =" box-sizing: border-box; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">

Your ideas, your sentences, manifest the bordering truth. Manifestation magic.

Your life, excellent or negative, is nothing greater than a representation of the thoughts you've grown in your mind and also nourished. These ideas came to be habits. Behaviors came to be results.< p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"> You are where you are right currently due to the fact that deep down in your heart, this is where you wanted to be, no matter exactly how unfortunate or unfair this might seem. This principle is just one of the oldest spiritual regulations out there. It's also among the finest known. You may know it under a different term. This is"you become what you

consider".

As well as you can find this in all of globe's religions. Some variant of this exists in Hinduism, in Christianity as well as in essentially every various other significant religion. It's found in all belief systems, as the one utilized by the Chinese. It's as much of a doctrine as gravity. Long prior to books existed, sensible people comprehended that our ideas materialize our reality.

It functions on two levels.

First, your ideas are connected to deep space on a quantum degree

. We manifest what we actually think.

Allow me make this clear though. You do not materialize what you believe you believe.

You manifest what's in your heart. If

you believe you deserve distress and pain, then regardless of what you state, this you'll get. A large amount of people think they have favorable thoughts when their inner guide is constantly negative and also damaging.

That voice will always win. Maybe this is why LoA fails for numerous individuals- they're trying to grow trees of success and success while growing seeds of uncertainty as well as pain and suffering.

It does not function in this manner. You obtain what remains in your heart. The world will manifest it. However what remains in your heart is the reality and we may not always understand of this fact. Life does not provide you what you meant. Life gives you what you ask. And also while lots of people mean for riches as well as delight and also health, their thoughts are of hardship and also sadness and also misery. Since this is what they're planting, this is what the cosmos appears.

2nd, your thoughts result in beliefs. Your ideas result in activities.

Your actions result in end results. Your end results brings about your destiny.

The ideas you plant in your mind will certainly identify just how you act, on a level that's so subtle that you can not also regard it. Who you are, is the repercussion of the ideas you've adopted. It's tough to understand this.

It gets on the same degree of breathing. You realize your breath just if you focus. You recognize your actions and also where it originates from just if you evaluate it. But every little thing you are originates from the ideas you've once grown in your mind as well as then allow them become a component of you.

So when you plant positive ideas, you obtain favorable results. When you plant love as well as happiness, your behavior will mirror love as well as it will certainly produce joy for yourself and also for others. When you plant ideas of prosperity and also wealth, your actions will develop wealth and also prosperity in the globe.

Consider this like the captain of an airplane.

A plane is substantial, lugs hundreds of guests and also weighs 10s of heaps. Yet, you will find just a couple of pilots in the cabin, controlling this big device. So is with your life. Also if your actions is definitely intricate, there are simply a few ideas that control every one of

it and also if you change those thoughts, whatever will alter for you too.

The thoughts you plant in it will certainly both show up truth as

in developing reality itself and also form your habits to develop the results you desire.

Both are essential. This world is a 50-50 place. The cosmos can manifest the opportunities you need at this minute yet you should act to take advantage. If good luck knocks at your door, you still require to unlock.

It's like in this old joke. An angler is caught up in a storm. His watercraft is sinking. Hopeless, he prays to God. "God, please save me, I'll be excellent, I'll repent, just save me " A few minutes later on, a boat appears."Hello there, do you need any assistance? ", the do-gooder asks him.

"No, no, God will conserve me", the fisherman solutions. Perplexed, the hero leaves. Ten mins later, the same things happen. An additional boat appears. They supply to help him. The fisherman rejects stating that God will assist him. At some point, the boat sinks, he passes away and goes to heaven. There, face to face with God, he asks ... "God, why did you left me to die? I hoped to you as well as I assured I'll repent for my wrongs".

God checks out him and claims "What are you discussing? I've sent you two boats". This is a joke, but this is exactly how life works also.

We manifest opportunities yet you have to take advantage of these chances. If you are a property agent and you intend to shut a big offer, your ideas will materialize this possibility. The universe will line up individuals, locations and also conditions for this to happen.

Yet these people, locations as well as conditions won't come to you in your living room. You need to still act and also do something. Or possibly you want to locate the love of your life.

Thoughts of love as well as recognition will manifest your perfect partner but your partner will not knock at the door and also ask you for a date. Deep space resembles a tree that supplies you the fruits you need, in boundless abundance, however you still should get hold of those fruits from the tree.

And also it all starts with your ideas, with your beliefs. Make a commitment currently to fill your mind with favorable thoughts. Make a commitment to assume just ideas of love as well as happiness and also wealth.

At first, it will be difficult. If you're used to plant only poisonous substance in your mind, it will certainly take a while until you take it all out. Once you do, you'll see something extraordinary happening. You'll see just how you'll stroll right into the best circumstances. You'll locate on your own in the ideal places, at the correct time, to get what you want.

Exactly how can I aid you do this?

Manifestation Magic consists of covert NLP commands which work as seeds to plant in your subconscious mind. NLP is an effective modern technology built around the very best schools of psychotherapy as well as hypnosis. It allows you to "program" your subconscious mind - planting seeds right into the productive ground of your mind as well as heart.

This implies you can listen to these tracks prior to going to rest and also change what you think, placing no initiative in any way.

Manifestation Magic constantly includes the best of brainwave entrainment, which educates the brain to operate at a higher frequency and also is constructed around the Solfeggio scales, tones that will certainly heal you and also assist you materialize miracles in your life.

Click below to uncover exactly how Manifestation Magic can assist you grow far better ideas into your mind and materialize the life you are entitled to.

>>Click Here To Manifest Magic Into Your Life<<

#manifestationmagic #2020manifestationmagic #manifestationmagicmusic

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acaseforpencils · 5 years

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The Ink Well Foundation.

The Ink Well Foundation is a non-profit that helps bring smiles to the faces of children facing adversity such as illness, neglect, and abuse. I cannot begin to express how big of an honor it is to have Elizabeth Winter on Case—this interview brought me to tears, and it means a lot to share her message on here, so that you all can help more children in need to be able to connect with this incredible foundation.

Bio: I am the Founder and Executive Director of the Ink Well Foundation. Growing up, I had cancer my entire childhood—it was a rare cancer that kept getting misdiagnosed, which meant a fair amount of biopsies and days in the hospital, and finally major surgery where I was told I might wake up without a leg. I am very fortunate in that the doctors were able to remove all the cancer without amputating, and I have been cancer-free since I was about 20 years old.

That experience gave me a lot of empathy and compassion for kids facing long, isolating hospital stays. There were also other issues during my childhood: I experienced a lot of abandonment with a mother who just could not play the role of mother, and who eventually died when I was fifteen. In general, I just had a pretty severe lack of affection and emotional support growing up. All that made me very tough, in some ways too tough and it wound up creating only further isolation and pain.

As an adult, I saw that pain mirrored in other children's eyes and I began to seek out a way to connect with them, to help them and myself learn to nurture and heal together. I strongly feel that genuine human bonding can fuel both physical and emotional healing. I also think getting out into nature and carrying that same respect to all wildlife helps us to become humble and connected in a very powerful way, so we stress those ideas in our work often.

In 2005, I was working in animation in New York City, and I stood up in a meeting at work one day, and asked if any of the other artists would like to come along with me to draw with kids facing illness and hardship. A couple people raised their hands, and we went together to Gilda's Club out in Brooklyn (that club house has since closed, but we still go to the one in Manhattan). The artists who came along in those early years, like Rami Efal and Ray Alma, Pedro Delgado and Sergei Aniskov—those people are all still volunteers today! That says so much to me about the kind of people this work attracts. We've all become like family over the years and I love those guys so much.

It all began at Gilda's Club, but then I reached out to places like the Ronald McDonald House, St. Mary's Hospital and Bellevue Hospitals, and we slowly but surely became accepted and welcomed at healthcare and at-risk support centers all across New York, because the kids loved what we did, and at then end of every event they were begging us to come back. So we always did! That is the true mark of success for me every time, when the kids are yelling at us to get back there as soon as we can.

A few years ago, I learned about the great organization on the Upper East Side, The Society of Illustrators. Their Executive Director, Anelle Miller, connected me with all these other great artists like Stefano Imbert, Bil Donovan, Abby Merrill, and Elana Amity (who is now our Event Director at Mount Sinai Hospital, where she hosts a monthly live drawing call-in show that beams to all the kids' hospital rooms at once). They draw along with us and call or text in with questions and comments. It's hilarious and adorable. We also connected with the great people of the National Cartoonists Society, and wonderful artists like Ed Steckley, Adrian Sinnott, Howard Beckerman, Tim Savage, Marty Macaluso, Joe Vissichelli and so many more.

After MTV Animation New York shut down, pretty much all my colleagues and I from great shows like Beavis and Butthead, Daria, The Head, and Celebrity Death Match all moved out west. So I had this great group of talented friends still living there, and based on the Ink Well's popularity in NYC, I thought, let's give it a shot there too! I reached out to my former colleague from Rugrats and Wild Thornberrys, Joseph Scott, and asked if he'd be interested in running things there. He is now heading up all our operations in L.A. and he is just the most phenomenally kind and talented person on earth. With his art skills he could do whatever he wanted but he devotes a huge amount of time to the kids we work with and I'm so moved by his giving spirit and boundless good energy. And Michael Daedalus Kenny is also stepping up in a leadership role as our newest Event Director, we've got amazing artists like Marla Frazee of Boss Baby genius, Monica Tomova from SpongeBob, Jeanette Moreno, king of The Simpsons, Chris Harmon from Futurama, Ashley Simpson from Phineas and Ferb, Christian Lignan of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, graphic novelist, Jeremy Arambulo and so many others so we're in great hands there. I just wish the traffic weren't such a problem! It really is tough to get around that city, unlike NYC where there's a decently functioning subway that goes to all our locations, so getting around is no real trouble comparatively.

Tools of choice: Our events are usually very handmade by design so that the kids can feel like they could do all of this easily by themselves. So we come up with themes like, “Who is your Superhero?,” and we ask the kids to focus on their strengths and what superpowers they wish they would have, and we draw their portraits as such. We are not art therapists, but we feel these event themes help to make the kids focus on positivity and their potential, and therefore help them to bond and heal.

We do sometimes get more elaborate, like when we teach stop motion, claymation, and we once even taught them how to build homemade rockets on the roof of Bellevue Hospital! One of our Event Directors at the time, Nathan Schreiber, used to come up with the most fantastic science-focused events. He now runs a company called Science Ninjas, that helps kids learn about science with fun card games. But usually it's simple by design.

We are extremely fortunate to have Blick Arts as a sponsor. Their support enables us to provide each child with their own art kit after each event so that they can keep creating on their own after they learn new skills with us so thanks to them we have a lot of the arts tools we need.

Tool I wish existed: I think we do great working with anything we've got lying around- we emphasize the potential of just about anything to become art: we often create characters out of inanimate objects, make flip books, sculptures and puppets— using everything from card stock to socks to toothpicks and gum drops. We keep it accessible and inventive.

How can we support The Ink Well Foundation? Because our volunteers are by definition "the artists behind the kids' favorite books, films, comics, and TV shows," we don't solicit volunteers from the general public. We do have an online application on our site, so other professionals that meet our criteria in the illustration, animation, and cartooning industries are welcome to apply there.

What the general public can do is to help us spread the word so that more children can see that others are going through what they're going through, and also so that they see examples of adults believing in them and encouraging them. We try to promote the idea of art as self-expression and a way to get through trying times, ideally together. Connectivity and encouragement are critical to healing, and honestly, to just building a better world. So we talk about that a lot on our social media and at the events themselves. We also honor the kids' intelligence by talking about art in general there— we highlight classic and new artists and ideas and encourage them to learn from those masters as they develop their own skills.

Because we are a very small 100% volunteer-run organization, we focus on giving the kids the greatest events possible, and sometimes that means we don't have a lot of time for social media, self-promotion, and fund-raising. So spreading the word is huge and we are always extremely grateful for, and in need of, any financial donations.

Where are Ink Well Foundation events held? We operate in New York City and Los Angeles because that's where the top artists in our fields are concentrated. We go to hospitals and at-risk support centers like Ronald McDonald House, Gilda's Club, Bellevue, St. Mary's, Mount Sinai, Childhelp, Covenant House and more. You can see the full list here.

How can children who don't live near Ink Well Foundation events benefit from your Pen Pals Program? This is another reason we want people to spread the word. Loved ones of a child experiencing serious illness or hardship, who is physically or geographically unable to attend our events, can apply to have a special artwork sent straight to them. We ask the kids what their favorite animated films, TV shows, or illustrated books are, and then we have an artist who actually worked on that production make something tailored to that child. We then frame it up, and send it off to them by mail.

We've done this with artists from SpongeBob, Captain Underpants, and just a week ago, we delivered a beautiful drawing of Curious George that our Event Directors, Franz Palomares and Lisa LaBracio (both of whom worked on Curious George) lovingly made. This was for a girl named, Maryanne who lives in Florida. She suffers from a rare disease called, vein of galen malformation that has led to brain damage and vision loss. She is unable to talk or walk or eat through her mouth and she suffers seizures but she understands everything around her, and she can feel texture. So Franz and Lisa made her Curious George playing in a sand box, and they glued real sand into the picture, so that Maryanne could feel that, and enjoy the art on multiple levels. Maryanne's mother, Sandra, said that she was thrilled, and that she loves to hold it.

Our hearts are full being able to share these works with kids who need that moment of light, and that knowledge that an adult they admire, someone who doesn't even know them well, can care enough about them to take the time to create careful, tailor-made artworks just for them. We hope that helps to bring a smile in the moment, and build self-worth long term.

Misc. I'd like to mention that everything we do is 100% free of charge. No one gets paid, no money ever changes hands for the art. We have brilliant artists like Peter de Séve who is on our board and attends many events, while also creating characters for Ice Age, The Little Prince, and all his New Yorker covers. He could get a mint for his works, but he comes down and does this for free, and that's a testament to the power of that loving connection we all feel when we are just selflessly helping one another.

I feel this most acutely when I'm working with youth who have suffered abuse and neglect. We have an Event Director, Jane Archer, who leads our work at Bellevue Hospital. Many of those kids are there because they have been through unendurable trauma, and Jane connects with them beautifully. She begins with a meditation where we all envision our strengths together, we talk about our talents, and hopes for a brighter day, we imagine embodying those gifts and then we gently, patiently, ask the kids to help us draw characters step by step. Many kids start out very suspicious and resistant, even angry. But by the end of the events they are almost always laughing and teasing us, and they don't want to stop creating. It is my greatest joy to experience that transition and I hope we may continue to spread this support and faith in one another for many years to come.

Website, Etc:

We are @inkwellkids on every platform:

Website

Facebook

Instagram

Twitter

Find more posts about art supplies on Case’s Instagram! There is a Twitter as well. If you enjoy this blog, and would like to contribute to labor and maintenance costs, there is also a Patreon!

#ink well foundation #elizabeth winter #ink well foundation kids

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stuartette · 5 years

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Hello

It’s not very common (in the media I’ve seen). What I’m talking about is my parents are atheists, and I’m a Christian. I’ve recently come to the realization of my faith but I’ve always prayed throughout certain times in my life, like when my tooth was in so much pain and it was just hanging on a thread. I prayed to God, it helped clear my mind, I felt less claustrophobic, and less than 30 minutes later (after pulling on it for an hour in the school bathroom) my tooth popped out. I can’t claim what he did and didn’t do but that’s probably the earliest I remember praying. This was in 4th grade.

My dad, who grew up in a church environment, who he and his brother were both alter boys (I think). My grandfather was divorced from my grandma, and he was only off on sundays (he was a cop). So my pre teen dad, spent the day with his dad. So did my uncle, my uncle kept his faith but my father did not. This comes into play because my dad knows firsthand what religion means to people. He knows it’s important to me, he knows it’s saved me a few times. And he knows that he shouldn’t disrespect someone else’s beliefs based on their own. My mother though, a bit of a different story.

Despite my grandpa being Greek Orthodox and my nana being Irish Catholic, my mom and her sisters had nothing to do with religion. My Nani (great grandmother) was very religious, so I’m not really sure how my mom came to grow thinking that it’s okay to call the Bible a fairy tale to people she knows it’s important to.

My mom has always been a wee hostile in her words, she has mellowed down a bit but I remember it all. Nothing abusive or bad, she just was learning how to shut her mouth (or lack there of). I’m not mad at her whatsoever (despite those words hurting, I’m not upset at her, it’s the past, it happened and I can’t hold onto that). But one thing she’s stuck with is “it’s [Bible] just a fairy tale”. I remember being in the car a few weeks ago, I was trying to start bible study on my own, summarizing each verse and chapter into my own words so I can remember it and to learn. She asked me if I was writing a letter or something and so I showed her the cover of the book (being the Bible). She said “ah fairy tales”. That hurt. I know she has her beliefs and she’s allowed to but I know she knows how important this is to me. (Again, learning how to shut the mouth (I can’t be too judgy because I blabber a lot too, and my attitude towards Christianity was the same as my mom’s, which made me an ass to my religious friend, which I cringe and I pray to God that it didn’t affect her too much)).

Today, we went to target, and I decided I would do bible journaling, so I got some good pens, sticky notes and a nice notebook. We ended up getting onto the topic of religion, she called the Bible a fairy tale again, so (I don’t know why I even argue with my mom at this point it doesn’t go anywhere), I said (along the lines of) “I understand that you have your beliefs and you’re allowed to have them but it disrespects mine”. It didn’t go anywhere productive and was just “I’m allowed to have these beliefs and to voice them” (there’s a difference between saying you don’t believe vs saying that what you believe is just fiction because that’s what I believe) so I just dropped the convo.

She’s supportive one minute but then goes and does this stuff, and I may sound spoiled or coddled but I’m just venting right now and wondering if anyone else may have any advice to share.

I think I should go into how my faith has saved my life a few times. I suffer from major depressive disorder, and while I have it under control it still slips sometimes (which I get back but it’s a pain to grasp, like a bar of soap). My faith has helped me to tell me, if this is truly what you want, then you can wait. You can pray to God and ask him for advice (or however you pray) and I’ve always realized, I just need to ride it out. And religion has been my rock. It’s what’s helped me make decisions, how to behave, it’s a big part of my life, whether it’s just in the background like a cross, or if it’s bible study, it’s important to me.

TW TRIGGER WARNING TW FOR SUICIDE

I’ve attempted suicide one time, and that was enough to make me realize that it’s not what I want. There was the woman who visited me a few times, (this was named St. Peter’s hospital) mentioned that she would keep me in her prayers, and it meant a lot. God has been very important to me in growing as a person. I didn’t jump in blind faith, I walked in, and now I’m swimming.

God is just so important to me and for my mother to disrespect something that has been vital to who I am, and is vital as to why I can even write this right now, it upsets me a lot.

But at the end of all of this, I want to thank God for everything he has given me and the others around me, and everything he will continue to give to me and the people around me. God bless you all, goodnight.

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scholar-for-christ · 5 years

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Eloi, Eloi, lama sabathanei

(aka, Holy Smokes Research pt 2!)

Since we’re headed into Lent I thought I’d share another Bible insight with everybody.

On Palm Sunday, we’ll hear the story of the crucifixion and Jesus’s death, and there is a TON to unpack along the way, but I want to focus on one line.

“My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”

Jesus says these words from the cross soon before His death and for the longest time, I thought it was a cry of despair. He’s in agony, dying, and feels like God has abandoned Him to this terrible fate. He didn’t, God was there with Him the whole time, and there’s an important lesson to be learned here about how we will sometimes feel so bad that it SEEMS like God has left us, though He never does/will.

But that’s not what Jesus meant.

It wasn’t a cry of despair.

It was a message: “I am the Messiah.”

In those times, learning and memorizing scripture was very important in a young Jew’s life. From the age of 4-5 they would learn scripture and since many didn’t have access to scrolls or books, memorizing verses was a standard part of their education. This mainly focused on the Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament), but also extended to writings by the prophets and others.

This likely included Psalms which would either have been learned as scripture or potentially as the songs they were written to be.

So imagine you’re a Jewish guy (sorry, gals but the guys were more likely to be educated at a higher level at that point. Blame society, the gals probably got this too, though, since psalms may well have been songs at that point) and you’re watching the crucifixion.

Who’s getting nailed up there today? That guy the rabbis say is a terrible blasphemer, claims to be the Son of God, the Messiah and stuff. Thinks he’s fulfilling the prophesies. Crazy.

Now my fellow Christians on Tumblr have probably seen that post going around that details just how terrible crucifixion is. How it suffocates you and that in order to speak, you’d have to push yourself up on the nails through your feet/hands to get a proper breath in. So ANYTHING Jesus says on the cross is gonna be MAJORLY important or He wouldn’t have said it at all

So, you’re watching the crucifixion and suddenly Jesus takes a breath and “cries out in a loud voice”:

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (forsaken or abandoned, the translation varies)

You hear those words and your Jewish mind automatically goes, “Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning….” And you recognize these lines not as a dying cry of despair but as a quote.

Jesus is quoting the first line of Psalm 22 (often thought to have been written by King David or Queen Esther).

The Psalm is a “Plea for deliverance from suffering and hostility.” But the psalm, which starts out like any other, becomes strangely specific in the middle… Here is the psalm in its entirety:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? 2 O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest.

3 Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel. 4 In you our ancestors trusted; they trusted, and you delivered them. 5 To you they cried, and were saved; in you they trusted, and were not put to shame.

6 But I am a worm, and not human; scorned by others, and despised by the people. 7 All who see me mock at me; they make mouths at me, they shake their heads; 8 “Commit your cause to the Lord; let him deliver— let him rescue the one in whom he delights!”

9 Yet it was you who took me from the womb; you kept me safe on my mother’s breast. 10 On you I was cast from my birth, and since my mother bore me you have been my God. 11 Do not be far from me, for trouble is near and there is no one to help.

12 Many bulls encircle me, strong bulls of Bashan surround me; 13 they open wide their mouths at me, like a ravening and roaring lion.

14 I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted within my breast; 15 my mouth[a] is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws; you lay me in the dust of death.

16 For dogs are all around me; a company of evildoers encircles me. My hands and feet have shriveled;[b] 17 I can count all my bones. They stare and gloat over me; 18 they divide my clothes among themselves, and for my clothing they cast lots.

19 But you, O Lord, do not be far away! O my help, come quickly to my aid! 20 Deliver my soul from the sword, my life[c] from the power of the dog! 21 Save me from the mouth of the lion!

From the horns of the wild oxen you have rescued[d] me. 22 I will tell of your name to my brothers and sisters;[e] in the midst of the congregation I will praise you: 23 You who fear the Lord, praise him! All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him; stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel! 24 For he did not despise or abhor the affliction of the afflicted; he did not hide his face from me,[f] but heard when I[g] cried to him.

25 From you comes my praise in the great congregation; my vows I will pay before those who fear him. 26 The poor[h] shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him shall praise the Lord. May your hearts live forever!

27 All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord; and all the families of the nations shall worship before him.[i] 28 For dominion belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations.

29 To him,[j] indeed, shall all who sleep in[k] the earth bow down; before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, and I shall live for him.[l] 30 Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord, 31 and[m] proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that he has done it.

Important Parts to Note

1. Lines 7-8 describe the victim being mocked. In Matthew, 27:40, the Jews mock Jesus saying “Save yourself if you are God’s son and come down from the cross!”

2. Lines 12-17 describe more of the same mocking. Bulls of Bashan were known for being well fed as well as for the “proud, fierce, and sullen manner in which they exercise their great strength” (https://www.biblestudytools.com/commentaries/treasury-of-david/psalms-22-12.html). And it also describes the pain endured during crucifixion.

3. Line 18 matches with Matthew’s 27:35-36 in which the guards cast lots for Jesus’s clothing

4. I find it intriguing that the final line of the Psalm includes the phrase “he has done it” and Jesus’ last words were “It is finished.”

This wasn’t a cry of despair.

It was a message to every Jewish citizen present that this prophecy, the prophecy of the Messiah was being fulfilled right there in front of them.

Jesus knew God never left Him. It might’ve felt like it but even then He had the strength to point out to His children the truth.

So don’t be discouraged and think that God left Jesus in that terrible moment. Even at the moment of His death, Jesus was reaching out to the lost sheep and pointing them to the truth.

“Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthanei”

“I am the Messiah. The Prophecy is fulfilled. It is finished.”

#@catholiccupcake #more fancy insights I've gathered #Tags?#Personal stuff #tags #taggy tag #tags? tags.

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15hont1c · 5 years

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Week 5: The End

Our reflective essay should:

Discuss set text and how your screenplay was inspired by it.

Draw specific links between screenplay + source text.

Show familiarity with relevant aspects of book (period, themes, genre, location, etc)

Discuss writing process and the creative decisions you made.

Reflect on your journey from first idea to finished script.

Use quotes/evidence from screenwriting texts to explain and support your decisions.

Refer to any other books, films, images, etc that influenced your writing process.

Discuss how film would be like?

Discuss animation style, aesthetics, material, color palette, lighting, soundtrack.

Think about intended audience for film.

The tone and style of the reflective essay should follow the appropriate academic tone with citations and bibliography. The reflective essay can also use first person as it is meant to be discussing and analysing our own experiences.

The Last Night - Strictures of Victorian Society

Utterson is annoyed at the servants who are “huddled together like a flock of sheep.”

Upkeep of the Victorian calm and self-contained attitude.

The housemaid breaks into “hysterical whimpering.” -> Mass Hysteria

“A rather wild tale.”

Utterson stands for the audience as he expresses the same doubt/questions the readers ask.

“This drug is wanted bitter bad, sir.”

Depiction of drug addictions.

Victorians can buy over-the-counter heroin; frequented to opium dens and even babies who were born drug-addicts.

Stevenson himself is also a drug addict who was reliant on hallucinogens.

Poole seeing the masked man who was much smaller than his ‘master.’

Referral as a symbol of something hidden/concealed (like door).

Description is evocative and deepens the mystery.

Upon breaking the door, there was no big reveal; no dramatic scene.

Instead, they found a mirror with their own reflection reflected instead, showing the “evil” duality of themselves.

The scene also utilises the uncanny -> we expect the extraordinary, but is actually overwhelmingly ordinary in the scene, even though things are not ‘quite right.’

There is a duality/juxtaposition in the description of the scene: The twitching corpse and a defaced book as opposed to the boiling kettle.

Prompts the idea of “To what extent did Utterson cause the death of Hyde/Jekyll.”

The final two chapters were written in first person narrative:

Dr Lanyon revealing the core of the mystery.

Jekyll telling the chronological story that happened over the course of the novella through his perspective.

First Letter (Lanyon):

Lanyon receives a strange message, begging to carry out a series of specific and peculiar requests.

Jekyll/Hyde begs Lanyon for help.

He goes to fetch a drawer containing powders and a test tube from his lab and goes to wait for the mystery man.

Hyde’s too desperate for the drugs, and gives him the option to leave to watch him ingest it.

Dr Lanyon is bound to secrecy - bound by the Hippocratic oath.

He is unable to reveal what he knows.

Even in a vulnerable state, Hyde presents himself as more superior than Lanyon.

The format of an ‘objective’ third person narrative + ‘subjective’ first person accounts was a trope of Victorian fiction, but was also similar to the medical literature of that period. Anne Stiles (2006) observes that the book’s structure reflects the medical case studies of that period, but also subverts them. Jekyll’s character is both the physician and patient in the story.

Jekyll’s observation states that “man is not truly one, but truly two.” This reflects a Victorian theory that ‘each brain hemisphere might house a separate personality or a separate soul.’ It can be imagined that when a Victorian reads this, they may become afraid of their inner “Hyde” taking over.

An example of this could be the case study of an injured French soldier called Sergeant F which was discussed in the medical Cornhill magazine. According to Stiles in her book Popular Fiction and Brain Science in the Late Nineteenth Century on page 43, Sergeant F developed “two distinct personalities upon a gunshot injury in the left brain hemisphere.” His first state is known as intelligent and kindly, while his second state displayed “animalistic and automatic qualities along with impaired sensory impressions.” He is also resilient to pain in this second state.

Even though Sergeant F was male and his condition was caused by an external factor (gunshot), the ‘multiplex personality’ was almost overwhelmingly a female condition. Felida X was an example of a female patient that was also discussed in the Cornhill magazine. Felida’s condition was natural occurring, exhibited hysteria and has another ‘peculiar secondary state of mind.’ She felt pain when transitioning between the two states. While she felt better in this second state, it had “unfortunate moral consequences,” such as when she got herself pregnant with a man whom she had no romantic interest in the first mind state. Her subconscious base instincts made her chase after the man and impregnated herself due to it.

Applying to Jekyll and Hyde, we can see that Hyde was wrestling against the approaches of hysteria. Hysteria is a centuries old illness that no one really understood at the time. It was usually diagnosed when no other cause could be found for its exaggerated symptoms. Examples include:

Salem Witch Trials

Occurred in 1692, over 200 people were accused of practicing witchcraft.

20 people were hung upon accusations from mass hysteria.

Neighbours and friends turn against one another.

Started because a group of girls exhibited convulsions and weird spastic behaviour -> epilepsy.

Most of them were girls and women.

Anneliese Michel

A German woman who was supposedly ‘possessed’ by a demon after a complicated series of illnesses early in her life.

Suffered a seizure and diagnosed with psychosis of temporal lobe epilepsy.

Took a lot of medication, but her condition worsened (as well as her mental health.)

Began to hear voices and became intolerant to sacred Christian sacred places and objects.

Stiles (2006) theorised that the small, puny, right-brained Hyde has something of the Victorian femininity about him; emotionally unstable, physically chaotic and somehow ‘lesser’ than his male counterparts. In the novella, Poole describes Hyde as “weeping like a woman.”

The nocturnal setting, theme of monstrosity and embedded narratives (i.e fragments, manuscripts and letters.

Key Features of the Gothic

Wild landscapes vs imprisonment

Hyde was constantly ‘imprisoned’ by the duality in Jekyll’s personality.

Other characters were also imprisoned by the Victorian society’s rules.

The re-emergence of the past within the present (often represented by ghosts - the thing you thought was dead.)

Exploring the limits of what it is to be human.

Internal desires or forces outside our control.

Perverse, weird and dangerous kinds of sexuality - incest, abduction, violence.

The vulnerable of women in 19th century - the ‘triumph’ of young women over seemingly impossible force.

The Uncanny

Figures that are not quite ‘human’ (dolls, was works, automata)

May feature ‘evil’ doubles.

“Somebody who seems unfamiliar and strange in fact has an identity you already know.”

No one in the novella could really describe what Hyde looked like; an uncanny physical description.

We can harness the power of the uncanny to enhance the story in our writing.

Less is More

Planting the seeds and letting the readers’ imagination flow.

Stay Close

Use all senses when writing, stay close to the protagonist and allow the audience to feel their fear.

Make it personal

Use your own fears/phobias to make the scene more realistic.

Give the reader time to feel the fear

Place hints that something disturbing is going to happen.

Create a mood of tension/horror before it actually happens.

Provide something uncanny that is both familiar and unfamiliar.

Allow the sense of underlying unease to intensify over time.

E.g A radio turns on by itself, a child toy changes position.

The Birth of Urban Gothic Horror

Jekyll and Hyde is usually considered as the first ‘urban gothic’ novel. Gothic revivalists of the 19th century believe the threat is no longer an external force, but rather an evil that is curled inside the very heart of the respectable middle class person. This scared the readers at the time even more, as to some extent, the evil was inescapable. The progressive society with the advancement of the Industrial Revolution caused the dark progress of social and psychological effects. Moral decay was an obsession of the Victorians. By identifying and analysing that fear, they seek to control and contain it.

How to Write Dialogue

Unnatural is natural

Not real speech, but a representation of it.

Aim to capture the flavour of speech (without the boring stale bits)

“Natural speech is full of hesitation, repetitions, omissions... when we’re listening to it in real life, our brains filter this out and extract the essential parts (Pierre, 2011).

The S.A.D method

Dialogue is a function of character. Know the character well so their dialogue flows easily.

Status - Who was the upper hand?

Agenda: What is the purpose of the conversation?What do they hope to gain from it.

Desire: What do they want? (What is their ultimate goal/super objective.)

Inhabit their physical space

Listen to how differently different people talk.

Our physical bodies affect our voice. Spend time imagining yourself as the character.

E.g. Timid & trembling? Broad & bold?

Silence is gold

What people don’t say is just as important as what they do.

What are they avoiding to talk about?

Actions speak louder than words.

Explanation kills drama

Characters should talk to each other, not the audience.

“Good dialogue is a manifestation of behaviour, not an explanation” (Yorke, 2013, p150).

Dialogue is not just a Q & A

Good dialogue is surprising and unpredictable.

Promises excitement, but keeps us waiting for it.

Drip-feeds information but withholds answers.

Be ruthless

Dialogue should either move the story forward or reveal something about the character.

If it does not, take that out!

Always read the dialogue aloud.

Make sure the dialogue can actually be spoken/performed realistically.

Reference:

Stiles (2006) - https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=KyFrjbezjSgC&pg=PA43&lpg=PA43&dq=sergeant+F+brain+study&source=bl&ots=XgsrEFdmxR&sig=ACfU3U0cTzmOzIkZPnboQKh4FeOQA41Zzg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiC5dm7t4LgAhVho3EKHTYRAJcQ6AEwA3oECAUQAQ#v=onepage&q=sergeant%20F%20brain%20study&f=false

#story adaptation #year 2

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amieravenson · 6 years

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Magickal Month- October

Magickal Month- October October is the 10th month of the year, though it’s named after ‘octo’ meaning 8 in the old Roman calendar. Another one of those, right? It was moved into the 10th place with the establishment of January and February as the first and second months in the Julian and Gregorian calendars. It was also known as Wynterfylleth to the Anglo Saxons, because it was thought that Winter begins at the full moon in October. Don’t we all just love October? I don’t know many people who don’t get a little thrill when the weather starts getting chillier, when the wind starts blowing the leaves off trees, and when the pumpkin spice starts flowing. There’s just something in the air that makes you simultaneously want to be outside to see the beautiful leaves, and also go inside and prepare your nest for the long hibernation of the winter. The weather is finally breaking a little here in Georgia, we’re seeing low 80s instead of the 90s that just didn’t want to give up the ghost. I’m seeing a lot of house wrens lately, particularly a pair that have set up a nest just below the window in front of my sink where I wash dishes. We also saw a big Eastern Kingsnake a few weeks ago, and it was lovely. I hope it stays away from the hawks and owls in the neighborhood and continues to eat any poisonous snakes or obnoxious rodents that are around. I also saw a committee of black-headed vultures hanging out on a cell tower yesterday. The leaves aren’t really changing yet, but they ARE falling from trees that don’t really carry a lot of color, like the 3 trunked ash tree in my back yard that I call The Three Sisters. Lunations: New Moon in Libra October 8th at 11:46pm EDT Full Moon in Taurus October 24th at 12:45pm EDT Astronomy: October 5- Venus goes retrograde at 3:07pm in Scorpio Orionids meteor shower peaks October 21st-22nd. Southern Taurids meteor shower peaks October 28th-29th. Celtic Tree Month: Ivy (Sept 30- October 27): End of the harvest, looking back at our successes and losses, strengthening our resolve to face the future, taking the long-term view, fidelity and fertility, protection, healing, good luck for women and brides, guards against negativity and disaster, reaches around and through obstacles to find light and nourishment, reaching out, expansion. Reed (October 28- November 24): Introverting, withdrawing, connecting with the past and with spirit, ancestors, messages from the spirit world, culling that which doesn’t serve us, dreaming- but not planning. Seeking basic truth, finding direction, giving meaning and purpose to your journey, skill and direction, secret strength and secret motivations, seeing beneath the surface. Holidays (non-Pagan): October 1- Shmini Atzeret (Jewish) October 2- Simchat Torah (Jewish) October 4- Feast of St Francis of Assisi (Christian) October 8- Columbus Day and Indigenous Peoples’ Day (I prefer the latter) October 9- Navaratri (Hindu) October 9- Leif Erikson Day October 16- Boss’s Day October 18- Dussehra (Hindu) Holidays (Pagan): October 6- Greek festival honoring Gaia and the Nymphs October 8- Old European feast of the Triple Goddess, as mother transforms into crone October 8- Festival of Greek Hekate, who guides followers through crises and transitions October 9- Pyanepsion Noumenia- Greek festival honoring all Gods and Goddesses October 11- Feast of the Charities to honor Goddesses of beneficence October 12- Feast of Aphrodite, honoring peace and compassion October 14- Proerosia- Greek festival where fruits of the harvest were offered to Demeter October 14- October 28- Old Norse Winter Nights Feast, honoring ancestors and deities with toasts and offerings October 19- Thesmophoria- Greek festival honoring Kore’s transition into Persephone (Goddess of the Underworld) October 27- Apatura- Festival welcoming new children and newcomers into the community October 28- November 2- Roman/Egyptian festival remembering Set’s murder of Osiris and Isis’s healing him October 31- Day of mourning witches persecuted for their religion or women who were persecuted as witches October 31- November 2- Samhain- Celtic/Welsh New Year and feast of Cerridwen October 31- November 7- Hallowmas/Day of the Dead/Mid-Autumn- marks the end of the agricultural year and last harvest as well as the transition from focusing on life and growth to death and rest, also a day to honor ancestors Themes for the month: The last harvest- bringing in the things you can use over the Winter and culling the things that you don’t intend to take forward with you. Sacrifice- giving up your crutches. The Ancestors, Spirit Guides, deepening your relationship to Deity. Speaking with spirits and the fae while the veil is thin. Introverting. Pumpkin spice and anything warm and cozy. General activities for the month: Apple picking, cider-making, making and dressing in costumes, carving pumpkins, making and eating candy, trick-or-treating, watching horror movies, visiting haunted houses, knitting for the upcoming Winter, communicating with spirits and ancestors (carefully!), divination, cutting away anything you don’t want to take into the long winter. Herbs I’m using: Pumpkin spice- come on, it’s everywhere. Coffee beans- this is when I start to up my coffee game because it’s cool enough that I can drink it without sweating. The scent just brings me into Autumn and Winter. Sandalwood- I burn incense a lot around this time of year too. It seems too overpowering in the Summer, but it feels cozy and warm as the temps start dropping. Stones I’m using: Petrified Wood- not only is it a tie to the past, and hence the ancestors, but I had a particular piece kind of jump at me recently and say it wanted to be used. Who am I to argue? Lepidolite- I got a really beautiful piece at a rock show recently, and I can’t leave it alone. As much as I love Autumn, it does bring some darker moods as the sun spends less and less time in the sky. Lepidolite is really good for depression, and will help see me through, emotionally speaking, until next Spring. Chrysanthemum Stone- good for cutting away all that doesn’t serve you. This is a great theme for this time of year. Goddess of the Month: The Norns and The Fates. These are similar groups of 3 deities who rule over the destiny and fate of each of us. I feel really drawn to fate this time of year, and they’re great to connect with for tarot readings, which I feel especially drawn to right now. I’ll be working on deepening my connection with them, and asking them to help me in my tarot/divination practices for the coming year.

October 3 card reading Our reading this month is interesting, and I feel like it has to do with a lot of what's going on in the news right now. First, we see the Three of Bats, which corresponds to the Three of Swords. So this signifies that we’re going into this month with some suffering. We’re feeling grief and really struggling with our emotions. This could be due to several things. This could be because of things that have happened to us personally, but I think it has something to do with the Kavanaugh hearings and the pain that this has dredged up for a lot of women lately. I’ve been having trouble engaging in social media because of all the #metoo stories, and though I think it’s really important to witness the pain, it can be difficult to feel inundated by it. Next, we have the Five of Pumpkins reversed. The upshot of what’s been happening in the news is that we’re realizing that we’re not alone in sharing our stories. We’re realizing that we have a lot of similiarities, and that the only way to make any sort of change is for us all to stick together and stay strong together. I think that’s a really important lesson. If one of us can help pull someone who’s struggling out of the cold, and show them they’re not alone, then we all can, and we can begin to heal collectively. Lastly, we see The Lovers reversed. I don’t see this as trouble in our relationships on a personal level, but rather a call to re-examine how we deal with each other as men and women. If we’re going to come to a place of mutual respect and healthy relationships, we need to take all the rules we learned about what it means to be a man or a woman and turn them on their heads. It’s time to stop going with the harmful status quo and envision a new way of relating. For our special guidance card, we see Skull of Stars, Infinite Possibilities. This card represents letting go of the daily BS we all deal with and thinking much, much bigger. We’re all a part of this same universe together, and when we realize that, we can find our highest selves in our highest future. It’s time to cast off old beliefs and old ways of thinking and create this universe together. ******************************** Haunting Haunting By Emmanuel George Cefai Haunting haunting down the glooms haunting haunting graves and tombs cemeteries that light in the middle of a night torches that go round cemeteries held and bound by ghosts and shrouds So verse speaks but ah! in dreaming The Sub-Conscious further speaks. My personal tides: A lot of things are still up in the air for me. They’ve been decided, but I just have to wait to hear back about decisions that have been made and determinations for my future. So I’m just trying to be patient and wait it out. In the meantime, I’m working hard on creating tarot classes, which I’ve been wanting to create for over a year. I keep getting the sense that I’m meant to teach in some way, and that feeds into my mission statement, which is to bring magick into the lives of others. My personal goals: Write, record, edit, release all my Tarot 101 classes before Yule. Begin to take steps to ‘find home’. Figure out where we’re wanting to move and start looking at prices for land. Create magick for Samhain! Read the full article

#autumn #crystals #feminism #herbs #MagickalMonth #October #pagan #poetry #tarot #wicca #witchcraft

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sayofchains88 · 3 years

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Chapter two: Christian's destiny by OrangeLetters88~

"Hey he is coming around!" A voice rings out. Christian slowly opens his eyes. Registering his surroundings, his eyes watering up; he is silent as Dr. Carol examines his vitals.

He is hooked up to a heart monitor; his finger is in a Pulse oximetry. "Seems like the shop owner shot you too many times not wondering in his pea brain if it would kill you not. You went into respiratory failure not too long after, but getting home I was able to successfully get you the proper help..."

"You need to relax Christian. You tried your hardest. We at least know where Alex is." Alice says sadly, but happy Christian is okay.

"Get better soon man." Mars fist bumps Christian lightly. "I miss us doing stuff."

"Me too..." Christian whispers.

The doorbell can be heard from the upstairs. Christian tries to get up, however Dr. Carol pushes him back down on the bed. "You need to rest. There is more than one person here to take care of things."

Steel and Clarence shoo everyone away. Behind them is a woman. "We saw her sneak around." Clarence states.

"I wasn't sneaking around, I was weighing if I should've come or not" She replies in her defense.

"Sure looks like you were though..." Steel responds annoyed.

"Wait what happened to you? Why are you uhh...anyways..."

Christian sits up to take a better look at her. "You are that girl from the auction house!" He shouts coughing afterwards.

"Yes I am...I am came to ask you to free me and my sisters. You can free your friend too I assure you."

Christian thinks back how all three auction houses have a pretty witch in each doing a task. He wanted to speak, but all the sudden he feels a burning rising into his throat. Clarence goes to touch Christian. He stops after feels a spark of electricity motion through his body.

Christian shrieks in pain holding his neck before falling forward into Clarence's chest effectively passing out.

"I didn't see a tag on him..." She says to herself out loud dashing over to Christian. Clarence is now able to hold him by the shoulders. She grabs his shoulders falling backwards. "He is connected to that guy. I can see him through this man."

Dr. Carol shouts for everyone to leave except the woman. "My name is Sadie. I assure you I came here with no intention to do harm." She loosens her blouse to show the same slave symbol as the ones put on the vampires.

Clarence is still in the room despite Dr. Carol's disagreements. Christian's breathing is laboring hard now to the point you can hear him wheezing. He somewhat is coming around, he clutches Clarence's tie dragging him down.

"Water please..." He begs. Dr. Carol shoves Clarence away to steady Christian to drink. Clarence laughs. "Be my wife and I will help you...we plenty of time to get to know each other."

"Fine! You got a deal, but you need to be able to win us the star ring events! I don't accept failures."

"You sure are a cheeky guy..." Clarence says looking away embarrassed.

"You will be living with us in the castle walls, we will have a ton of children and I will make you a proud wife!"

She reddens at the thought of his words. "What are my sisters going to think??"

Dr. Carol and Clarence start to giggle. "I should have known you were digging the witch girls, but I was too distracted." Dr. Carol snickers even louder.

"What are these star ring events?" Clarence asks.

"Usually pompous rich people get rid of their old slaves or switch them around, but newbies can win them too. Usually these are old men or vampires that are well endowed can afford to take our lives. There is usually a grand switch witch as well who will as her title states will switch the titles for winners."

"But aren't you concerned about one little detail Christian?" Dr. Carol says worried.

"What are you talking about?"

"You are connected to Alex. This could be very bad for you..."

"But you also must be a title holder..." Sadie explains. "If you are connected then you are not a head."

"Vepar will only come out for Alex, but Christian does get a secondary prize which can allow him to stand haul as a leader." Clarence confirms.

"Why haven't you claimed it then?" Dr. Carol replies with a smirk.

"Because I am more than capable on my own...anyways it is known as the tome of nowhere which is meant for secondary's. It usually is seen as a captain lead book though."

"That's great! Where do you obtain it?" Sadie asks.

"There is an abandoned castle deep into the countryside. Christian has to pledge his eternity to the queen of vampires. I say it is abandoned cause what is in the middle of the church is a coffin with only ashes...she was killed during a greater war than forgotten war, but her presence is still felt with her followers."

"Wait she is dead? Are you making her to be the Mary saint of vampires?" Sadie argues.

"Don't you worship Hecate?" Dr. Carol snaps.

"I mean we do..." She says stopping herself.

"Head vampires do not need her permission. They are equals to her greatness and something of an admin thing, but secondaries are what betrayed her. Why she died so one day according to legend a man of head leaders was killed...he went to the temple to beg forgiveness and handed a guide with a spirit of their own which has become to be known as the tome of nowhere. Your allegiance is burned into your eye as proof, but the eye has its own perks."

"We need to be careful then since Sadie has a seal. Anyone could be lurking here now..." Dr. Carol discloses. "I will the lock the dungeon gates so if anything gets in, then they cannot get upstairs."

"If you are feeling better tomorrow then we will go." Clarence says to Christian. He taps Sadie to come with him. "You are a human so you need a room to sleep. Follow me this way. Christian get some shut eye please."

Clarence shuts off the lights exiting the room. Christian Is left with the hum of the heart monitor. He didn't realize how tired he was till everyone had left the room. He could barely keep his eyes open.

Almost instantly he falls asleep, sometime during the night he feels the burning again in his throat. He pulls the pulse oximetry off getting up to try to make his way to the door withering in pain. He can feel what is almost like a thousand volts tunneling through his body.

He is about to open the door when Dr. Carol comes in catching him. The pain stops causing him to droop in his arms fainting. "Must be the shock treatment again...I was actually about to check on you, but seems you dropped in my arms instead. Hey are you awake?"

He is limp in Dr. Carol's arms. "What are they doing to him?"

"I don't know...I am sorry you suffer his fall out."

"No I feel closer to him by feeling his pain, but it is so painful I am in fear of what is happening to Alex. He has already been captive before...he must be terrified."

"You need to get rest. It's almost sun up and I need to get to my coffin."

"You...have a coffin??"

"Yes I do actually. It's pretty cozy. It's by the dungeons. It's nice and cold, perfect for sleeping. Anyways I will see you later."

Dr. Carol leaves the room when Clarence strolls by. "Good luck later." Dr. Carol says as they cross each other's paths.

"No doubt it will be fine." Clarence responds. The two shake hands. "Have a good deep sleep."

He stretches his arms out yawning. "Hey! Hey Christian!" Dr. Carol makes his way back in the room hearing Clarence.

"He is really trying to fight this seal...I can feel it. I feel so drained."

"Sadie had an attack earlier too..."

"She had an attack? Is she okay?" Christian asks holding his chest.

Yes...Steel is staying with her tonight...I am staying with you It seems till later when we need to leave."

Clarence falls asleep in an adjacent bed. Christian starts to sleep talk. It catches Clarence's attention when he seems to talk like Alex. "I really...miss home...Alice forgive me..." Christian says slowly in his sleep. "Samuel..."

Clarence has to hold Christian down as he wails in his sleep. His movements are erratic. He kicks Clarence in the head. He has to use the medical bed restraints to stop him from hurting himself.

He ends up falling asleep on the chair as Christian thrashes around. Dr. Carol makes it in around seven pm. "I see you had to put him in the restraints...you also have a black eye." He laughs.

"We will go tomorrow to see the church. Today might not a good day to go as I wanted...you know Alex is talking through him?"

"Is that why you are using the neck restraint as well?" Dr. Carol asks.

"He is mildly sedated for now as well. Do you think he is purposely talking through Christian?"

Clarence sits back on the chair. "What are we going to do if this becomes worse? If I remember correctly you spoke before how he was affected by a generational curse before meaning this is nothing."

Christian finds himself covered in complete darkness. Confused he keeps running till he sees the soft yellow light of a lantern. He views his surroundings till he walks straight into Alex. His foot literally knocking into Alex's knee, shocked to see Alex looking his way despite being blindfolded.

His arm right hand chained up, his legs folded with his other hand resting on his arm. "Alex, can you hear me."

"Christian? You aren't physically here...but I have a feeling why you are here." Alex states.

I don't why...Alex please tell me what to do! I don't know what to do..." Christian asks falling to his knees.

Alex looks down forlorn pausing a moment before looking Christians way. He notices his awkwardness. "The witches will guide you Christian...I trust you...you will grow a lot before we next meet. This is your destiny. I see the visions sometimes how you will get there so I must not speak much..."

Christian starts to cry. "Please Alex don't do this to me man. You got to give me more than this, this is painful. Were connected, how I will get further with these vague sentences, don't get be giving me old man vibes now!"

Alex looks away a single tear falls down his cheek. "I know you feel the shock...that's why I see your future. This was meant to happen for both of us. You will be more confident next we meet I assure you...you need to leave till then please!"

"Come on man you not now!" Christian says touching his shoulder.

Christian's whole body trembles awake, he realizes he is bound when the tears continue to fall. "Alex..."

"Clarence shakes Christian all the sudden. "Hey snap out of it. The heart monitor was going nuts."

Dr. Carol un-wraps his straps before he lets him sit up. He quivers in Clarence's arms. "Alex is so different now...much more mature...was becoming this my destiny?"

"Is that you are crying Christian? You saw Alex?"" Dr. Carol asks letting a puff of smoke out.

"He said to trust the witches...I didn't want to leave him, but he insisted."

"Then this is your destiny Christian, you need to do this for Alex."

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#original character #original story #vampire #drama #sadness #eternity

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roominthecastle · 6 years

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There's been much debate about the identity of the Incomplete One but so far not much concrete info to go on, so we are still just speculating. Which is what I am gonna do behind a read more, too, and a lot of it.

I know the "Wendigo view" is a popular one and for good reason. This "Naphil/Bastard Spirit view" is actually quite close to that interpretation and (given the similarities of the two entities involved) could be regarded as a "religious remix" of it.

There are several interpretations concerning the identity of the Nephilim, too, but I am going with the "angel view" here, according to which they are semidivine beings born of the sexual mingling of fallen angels and mortal women.

"Nephilim" can be interpreted as "the Fallen Ones", "the Violent Ones" or "giants". They are stuff of legends, the "warriors of old". They and/or their possible descendants are variously referred to as Elioud, Anakim/Anak, Emim (“Terrors”), Rephaim ("Shades"), Gibborim (“Giant Heroes”), Awwim (“Devastators” and “Serpents”).

They are mentioned and alluded to in various sources including the Old Testament (e.g. Genesis, Numbers, Ezekiel), the New Testament (e.g. Peter, Jude), and the apocryphal Book of Enoch, the content of which is echoed/reinforced in the Biblical books indicated above.