Maybe the problem with Christian fiction is that it's non-denominational. People are just "Christian", with no effort put into showing what practicing that religion looks like for them specifically. No indication that there are other Christians who could have different beliefs. No wrestling with differing ideas and the struggle of how one should live out their Christian faith. And that makes it unrealistic and unrelatable.
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Lloyd’s the kind of person to be completely silent while everyone is horribly singing Bohemian Rhapsody only to belt out the line “I sometimes wish I’d never been born at all” in perfect pitch and then fall dead silent again as he went back to like, reading a book or something. send post
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me: idk being raised protestant didn't really impact me in any way I think? Like... that was just a moment in my life
also me: *writes the following bit*
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What was garak like as castellan? (ps your art is 💞💕❤️❤️💕💞💕❤️💕💞💕)
OOHOHO GARAK AS CASTELLAN....
I think his time in the Federation has, despite his best efforts, affected his outlook on politics. He's a wary centrist now, as if Cardassia has the luxury of political discourse not related to basic sustenance.... trying to delicately excise the most distasteful parts of the prior totalitarian regime while still supporting the structures that keep people alive.
I don't think there's a way to be a well-liked leader after an annihilative disaster, honestly. Garak's not an exception. He's NOT a popular Castellan, but he WAS the least bad choice immediately on hand, and he's adept at securing badly needed aid from Federated interests. He can be very persuasive and diplomatic, and he circumvents or cuts through the bureaucratic and political obstacles that would've trapped less canny men. He's in power during the setting of the foundation of the Cardassian economic miracle and he stalwartly weathers years of vicious criticism and assassination attempts (that he easily evades). As soon as he retires his approval rating goes from like 15% to 80%. He's the Grandfather of Cardassia, their mercurial constant, their deviously bitchy figurehead who can hold his own against any rival leader. The wily old regnar who raised a generation of hungry utopian statesmen. A Castellan to be privately eviscerated and publicly saluted.
Mostly he's just trying to go home at some point during the night to quietly whisper 'good-night' to his kids and husband, though
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Hey I don't want to make a big deal out of this because it is decidedly not the principle problem right now but I would be extremely wary of posts that sound the alarms over specifically Ashkenazi Jews. Please think it over: how does pinning the blame for an atrocity on a specific minority group help the Palestinian cause in any way? It doesn't. Not only is it reductive but there are millions of Ashkenazis many other countries, yours and mine, who overwhelmingly have no ties to Israel, no family there, no history there, who rightfully despise it and all it stands for, and who are regularly harassed and attacked for being Jewish BY WHITE SUPREMACISTS....I would suggest reblogging literally any other post about Palestinian causes, aid, protests, culture, updates etc. They are suffering beyond IMAGINATION and we're not going to use their pain to legitimize bog standard easily identifiable antisemitic canards. Zionists crying antisemitism over condemnation of Israel are full of shit. But this IS crystal clear antisemitism. Please be wary of that and focus on Palestinian aid.
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listen. I don't just love father brown because I first saw it while ill with the flu or because it's consistently kind to the outcast in a way that has reviewers calling it Too Woke, obviously a vote in its favour. or because the recurring thief character is very pretty to watch. though those are significant parts of it.
I love it because after eight seasons father brown sits down with the village drunk (a munitions expert in the war, has a soft spot for the parish secretary, name of harold or blind harry) to find out why he gave a murder suspect a false alibi and harry explains to him, calm as you like, that seeing the life leave someone's eyes changes a person, that it's what he reckons brought father brown to his faith, that it's what drove him to drink, and he didn't see that shadow in the guy the police are chasing this time. and father brown, rather than justifying or correcting or dodging or doubting him, says he knows how unjust the situation is. that he got something good out of the horrors of the war. that harry really didn't.
it is not a perfect show and yes I have problems with it but gosh, this is a character who's largely used for comedic beats, albeit kindly, and a scene like this isn't out of place at all but it still takes my breath away. we could've been left with this as subtext, y'know? I hadn't even put together that his alcoholism must have been trauma. but instead harry tells us this directly, tells us it's about guilt, that that's something he shares with father brown, who is competent and so often cheerful and I can't even imagine when he was younger, and it's a moment of such unexpected humanity and respect. and it's such a strange thing to see these characters side by side like that.
the scene ends with father brown calling harry a good man, and harry denying it ("they was only young lads" "so were we, harold. so were we.") and the two them sharing a drink as father brown gets a bit watery-eyed and I'm crying too over my nice cosy 'this is a concerning number of murders for a sleepy english village' show and just. hi. what. ow.
I also haven't recovered from the episode that turned into a heist halfway through but frankly I'm only mentioning that because I don't know how to wrap up a post like this. (it was good though. there were two separate honeypots, three if you count the impromptu replacement, one character terrible at grifting and one unexpectedly great at it, and, somehow, a con within a con. it was really very fun. get a show that can do both, I guess?)
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I just realized last night they'd have vastly different tastes in food and drink
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it is 12:43 on a saturday im sorting beads on my floor and coming to the realization that i think i was raised fundamentalist???
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I'm no fan of the Catholic Church but sometimes I see posts on here that make me wonder if some of you have ever actually interacted with a Catholic. Especially Americans blaming things on Catholics that are far more attributable to Evangelical Protestants.
Or saying things about Catholics that basically just sound like protestant anti-Catholic rhetoric repackaged in a "progressive" sounding way. In the US, the Catholic Church is not the dominant religious influence and it doesn't seem super productive to ignore the sources of the actual dominant Christian rhetoric and culture.
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Alright uninformed rant time. It kind of bugs me that, when studying the Middle Ages, specifically in western Europe, it doesn’t seem to be a pre-requisite that you have to take some kind of “Basics of Mediaeval Catholic Doctrine in Everyday Practise” class.
Obviously you can’t cover everything- we don’t necessarily need to understand the ins and outs of obscure theological arguments (just as your average mediaeval churchgoer probably didn’t need to), or the inner workings of the Great Schism(s), nor how apparently simple theological disputes could be influenced by political and social factors, and of course the Official Line From The Vatican has changed over the centuries (which is why I’ve seen even modern Catholics getting mixed up about something that happened eight centuries ago). And naturally there are going to be misconceptions no matter how much you try to clarify things for people, and regional/class/temporal variations on how people’s actual everyday beliefs were influenced by the church’s rules.
But it would help if historians studying the Middle Ages, especially western Christendom, were all given a broadly similar training in a) what the official doctrine was at various points on certain important issues and b) how this might translate to what the average layman believed. Because it feels like you’re supposed to pick that up as you go along and even where there are books on the subject they’re not always entirely reliable either (for example, people citing books about how things worked specifically in England to apply to the whole of Europe) and you can’t ask a book a question if you’re confused about any particular point.
I mean I don’t expect to be spoonfed but somehow I don’t think that I’m supposed to accumulate a half-assed religious education from, say, a 15th century nobleman who was probably more interested in translating chivalric romances and rebelling against the Crown than religion; an angry 16th century Protestant; a 12th century nun from some forgotten valley in the Alps; some footnotes spread out over half a dozen modern political histories of Scotland; and an episode of ‘In Our Time’ from 2009.
But equally if you’re not a specialist in church history or theology, I’m not sure that it’s necessary to probe the murky depths of every minor theological point ever, and once you’ve started where does it end?
Anyway this entirely uninformed rant brought to you by my encounter with a sixteenth century bishop who was supposedly writing a completely orthodox book to re-evangelise his flock and tempt them away from Protestantism, but who described the baptismal rite in a way that sounds decidedly sketchy, if not heretical. And rather than being able to engage with the text properly and get what I needed from it, I was instead left sitting there like:
And frankly I didn’t have the time to go down the rabbit hole that would inevitably open up if I tried to find out
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Learning how to be comfortable with being uncomfortable is important. I'm genuinely not okay when I hear, see, and research more about the genocide happening in Gaza, the history of Israel's founding, and its terroristic actions. It is important for me to know.
Taking short breaks (usually a couple of hours or so) does help when things get too much. Then, I return and continue engaging with reblogs on Palestine.
I really don't know what else to say, but this genocide must end. All genocides must end and must never happen again. Keep talking about Palestine, Armenia, Congo, and Sudan! Keep protesting! Keep fighting!
What is important now is to be as loud as you can be! Raise ruckus! Make your voice unavoidable! Be as annoying as possible! Do not let your representatives ignore this!
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← the world's first protestant to experience debilitating catholic guilt
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I don’t not like it when people make the parish very Formal And Ritualized And Weird in fanworks but part of what feels so real about it to me in canon is the mundanity of it all. Guidance isn’t dressed like a nun, she just looks like a mom. The parish doesn’t have to be visually weird to be a cult.
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taylor said the lord's prayer to try to get the angel to not attack him and said it wrong so I was expecting the angel to attack him bc he said it wrong LOL
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what was bucky calling himself in romania? did he use the romanian variant of James (Iakob) when he talked to people and had to give them a name? how did he even learn romanian? does he have romanian heritage? did he learn it during the war? how did he pay rent? was he working in construction or as a line cook or something? did he have a little old lady as a neighbour who thought he was too skinny and lonely and forced him to eat with her at least once a week? did she make him help with cooking so he could make the food himself? did he go to the orthodox church with her? did the local kids like him? did he cut his hair himself or did he brave going to a barbers to keep it at a length he liked? did he like talking to market sellers about fruit because it was an easy conversation and a way for him to get used to socialising?
i have SO many questions about bucky in romania
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