#about things themselves and not just heard someone say something and taken it as gospel truth
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She-Ra In He-Man Revelations/Revolution
So it's been a few days and I wanted to put this post out there to basically publicly give my thoughts on some... recent developments concerning He-Man Revolution. Before I go into this, MASSIVE SPOILER WARNING FOR THE SHOW!
And also, and this is probably MORE important than the spoiler warning. Do not, and I repeat, do not take whatever speculation I put in this post as gospel or something that is GOING to happen. I may be a bit more knowledgeable than a lot of people about this stuff, but I don't wanna consider myself an expert. This is just me speculating and giving my thoughts and I don't want to get anyone's hopes up because there's a good chance, that what I'm saying turns out to be completely wrong and I don't wanna be responsible for that, so please, take all of this with the smallest grain of salt possible.
With that out of the way...
So the new season of He-Man ends with the reveal of this lady, Despara. For those who don't know... she is Adora. As in She-Ra Adora. In the DC He-man comics, Despara was the name Adora was known as when she was raised as Hordak's daughter. Her name is often used by Catradora fan artists and fic writers who really wanna just make Adora a hot evil lesbian, usually with a hot butch hairdo. It is likely that if/when another season of this show comes, Despara will be the main focus.
Now this raises the obvious question... how are they going to handle the She-Ra stuff. As I have made posts about before, the She-Ra rights and He-Man rights have been separate for a very long time and apparently, the last thing I heard, Mattel themselves can't use any of the She-Ra characters in animated form due to Dreamworks owning them now.
So naturally, you might be thinking that Despara here is just a placeholder because they can't use She-Ra. Except... there are a LOT of She-Ra references in this season that are way too numerous to be just references.
For example:
They recreate the exact scene from the 80s She-Ra movie where Adora is taken as a baby by Hordak in a flashback scene. They also mention Horde Prime existing as well and they EVEN imply that Shadow Weaver exists in this universe as well and Hordak's new robot second-in-command, Motherboard is a replacement for her.
So yeah, all signs SEEMINGLY point to some sort of She-Ra-inspired adaption being the next part of this show. Now, considering the very complex rights issues... I can see this going one of two ways.
Mattel and Dreamworks did a deal like the one Sony and Marvel did with Spiderman to temporarily get the She-Ra rights back for JUST this next season. Despara is revealed to be Adora and her arc will be her learning her true family AND eventually becoming She-Ra to fight Horde Prime with her brother and possibly all the other She-Ra cast are there too. This I feel like it would be the ideal solution to all of this.
2. Despara is revealed to be someone else OTHER than Adora under her helmet because her face is obviously not seen in her brief scene when she takes her helmet off. Technically, Mattel would own Despara outright and not Dreamworks and they could easily make Despara her own character. This was also how they planned to include her in the second season of CGI He-Man. HOWEVER, considering all the foreshadowing and knowing how many people working on these shows loved SPOP... I feel like it'd be really unsatisfying if it wasn't Adora under the mask, both as a fan and from a creative standpoint.
As for my personal theory of what Despara's whole deal is, I think she's ruling Etheria on the other side of the galaxy with Catra and serving personally under Horde Prime. Basically SPOP but a bad ending. The plot will be He-Man and his friends finding out about Etheria and going there to free the planet and Despara will redeem herself and she and Catra and whoever will join team good guy.
But that's just my personal theory. I really don't know what the hell is going to happen here or even IF more episodes will even be coming and I don't want to get people's hopes up. There's a reason I myself have been working on my own She-Ra and He-Man crossover extended universe stuff for the last while so, at the very least, there'd be a fanfic that would satisfy my hopes. I am prepared to be very wrong here.
But even if none of this speculation pans out, I still highly recommend this show to She-Ra fans. The second season definitely fixed the few issues I had with the first one and I hope more comes out of this version of He-Man... then again, it wouldn't be the first time a He-Man series was cancelled.
Hope you find this post informative!
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some of y’all seem awful sure of things that seem like massive gray areas to me. sounds nice and i envy your conviction but i have to wonder if you’ve thought of some way to resolve these internal contradictions and inconsistencies that i haven’t thought of or if you’ve just never taken your arguments all the way to their logical conclusions.
#joke's on me for expecting to find anything approaching logic on some random social media site#anyway please share if you have resolved those internal contradictions because i would also love to resolve them#i'd love to feel sure about something someday. wouldn't you like to help me get there? lol#like the way people talk about things is like they're already self-evident when they super are not#which i understand! sometimes you're just talking to people who already agree with you and you don't want to have to sell your POV#every time you talk about it#makes sense! i do that too! and i resent the idea that by talking about things in the way that i want to talk about them#without constantly having to craft my message so that it's not super off-putting to people who don't already agree with me#(not necessarily people who definitely disagree but people who are undecided)#is going to end up alienating lots of people and making it less likely for them to be willing to listen in the future#but...that is kind of how it works on the internet unfortunately#like idk i think people forget that this is more or less a public forum? or they just don't care#i don't know. i mean i probably do all this too. it's just more obvious to me when other people do it with things i don't already agree with#part of the problem is that i've lost the ability to give people the benefit of the doubt of believing that they have actually thought#about things themselves and not just heard someone say something and taken it as gospel truth#i've been burned too many times#i mean that's part of the culture of this site#circulating screenshots of headlines without a link to the article#constantly taking things wildly out of context#piss poor reading comprehension lol#just generally never citing/linking anything that could allow people to look into it themselves#i'm vagueing in this post because i'm not actually trying to stir shit up i'm just tired and frustrated#and venting a lil bit#gonna go take a shower and listen to pop music from my childhood until i feel better lol
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Content note for discussions of eternal damnation, and all sorts of other shit that will trigger a lot of folks with religious trauma.
Before I get started I might as well explain where I’m coming from - unlike a lot of She-Ra fans, and a lot of queer people, I don’t have much religious trauma, or any, maybe (okay there were a number of years I was convinced I was going to hell, but that happens to everyone, right?). I was raised a liberal Christian by liberal Christian parents in the Episcopal Church, where most of my memories are overwhelmingly positive. Fuck, growing up in the 90’s, Chuch was probably the only place outside my home I didn’t have homophobia spewed at me. Because it was the 90’s and it was a fucking hellscape of bigotry where 5 year olds knew enough to taunt each other with homophobic slurs and the adults didn’t know enough to realize how fucked up that was. Anyway. This is my experience, but it is an atypical one, and I know it. Quite frankly I know that my experience of Christianity has very little at all to do with what most people experienced, or what people generally mean when they talk about Christianity as a cultural force in America today. So if you were raised Christian and you don’t recognize your theology here, congrats, neither do I, but these ideas and cultural forces are huge and powerful and dominant. And it’s this dominant Christian narrative that I’m referring to in this post. As well as, you know, a children’s cartoon about lesbian rainbow princesses. So here it goes. This is going to get batshit.
"All events whatsoever are governed by the secret counsel of God." - John Calvin
“We’re all just a bunch of wooly guys” - Noelle Stevenson
This is a post triggered by a single scene, and a single line. It’s one of the most fucked-up scenes in She-Ra, toward the end of Save the Cat. Catra, turned into a puppet by Prime, struggles with her chip, desperately trying to gain control of herself, so lost and scared and vulnerable that she flings aside her own death wish and her pride and tearfully begs Adora to rescue her. Adora reaches out , about to grab her, and then Prime takes control back, pronounces ‘disappointing’ and activates the kill switch that pitches Catra off the platform and to her death (and seriously, she dies here, guys - also Adora breaks both her legs in the fall). But before he does, he dismisses Catra with one of his most chilling lines. “Some creatures are meant only for destruction.”
And that’s when everyone watching probably had their heart broken a little bit, but some of the viewers raised in or around Christianity watching the same scene probably whispered ‘holy shit’ to themselves. Because Prime’s line - which works as a chilling and callous dismissal of Catra - is also an allusion to a passage from the Bible. In fact, it’s from one of the most fucked up passages in a book with more than its share of fucked up passages. It’s from Romans 9:22, and I’m going to quote several previous verses to give the context of the passage (if not the entire Epistle, which is more about who needs to abide by Jewish dietary restrictions but was used to construct a systematic theology in the centuries afterwards because people decided it was Eternal Truth).
19 Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will?
20 Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?
21 Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?
22 What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction:
The context of the allusion supports the context in the show. Prime is dismissing Catra - serial betrayer, liar, failed conqueror, former bloody-handed warlord - as worthless, as having always been worthless and fit only to be destroyed. He is speaking from a divine and authoritative perspective (because he really does think he’s God, more of this in my TL/DR Horde Prime thing). Prime is echoing not only his own haughty dismissal of Catra, and Shadow Weaver’s view of her, but also perhaps the viewer’s harshest assessment of her, and her own worst fears about herself. Catra was bad from the start, doomed to destroy and to be destroyed. A malformed pot, cracked in firing, destined to be shattered against a wall and have her shards classified by some future archaeologist 2,000 years later. And all that’s bad enough.
But the full historical and theological context of this passage shows the real depth of Noelle Stevenson’s passion and thought and care when writing this show. Noelle was raised in Evangelical or Fundamentalist Christianity. To my knowledge, he has never specified what sect or denomination, but in interviews and her memoir Noelle has shown a particular concern for questions that this passage raises, and a particular loathing for the strains of Protestant theology that take this passage and run with it - that is to say, Calvinism. So while I’m not sure if Noelle was raised as a conservative, Calvinist Presbyterian, his preoccupation with these questions mean that it’s time to talk about Calvinism.
It would be unfair, perhaps, to say that Calvinism is a systematic theology built entirely upon the Epistles of Romans and Galatians, but only -just- (and here my Catholic readers in particular will chuckle to themselves and lovingly stroke their favorite passage of the Epistle of James). The core of Calvinist Doctrine is often expressed by the very Dutch acronym TULIP:
Total Depravity - people are wholly evil, and incapable of good action or even willing good thoughts or deeds
Unconditional Election - God chooses some people to save because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, not because they did anything to deserve, trigger or accept it
Limited Atonement - Jesus died only to save the people God chose to save, not the rest of us bastards
Irresistible Grace - God chooses some people to be saved - if you didn’t want to be saved, too bad, God said so.
Perseverance of the Saints - People often forget this one and assume it’s ‘predestination’ but it’s actually this - basically, once saved by God, always saved, and if it looks like someone falls out of grace, they were never saved to begin with. Well that’s all sealed up tight I guess.
Reading through these, predestination isn’t a single doctrine in Calvinism but the entire theological underpinnings of it together with humanity’s utter powerlessness before sin. Basically God has all agency, humanity has none. Calvinism (and a lot of early modern Protestantism) is obsessed with questions of how God saves people (grace alone, AKA Sola Fides) and who God saves (the people god elects and only the people God elects, and fuck everyone else).
It’s apparent that Noelle was really taken by these questions, and repelled by the answers he heard. He’s alluded to having a tattoo refuting the Gospel passage about Sheep and Goats being sorted at the end times, affirming instead that ‘we’re all just a bunch of wooly guys’ (you can see this goat tattoo in some of his self-portraits in comics, etc). He’s also mentioned that rejecting and subverting destiny is a huge part of everything he writes as a particular rejection of the idea that some individual people are 'chosen' by God or that God has a plan for any of us. You can see that -so clearly- in Adora’s arc, where Adora embraces and then rejects destiny time and again and finally learns to live life for herself.
But for Catra, we’re much more concerned about the most negative aspect of this - the idea that some people are vessels meant for destruction. And that’s something else that Noelle is preoccupied with. In her memoir in the section about leaving the church and becoming a humanistic atheist, there is a drawing of a pot and the question ‘Am I a vessel prepared for destruction?’ Obviously this was on Noelle’s mind (And this is before he came out to himself as queer!).
To look at how this question plays out in Catra’s entire arc, let’s first talk about how ideas of damnation and salvation actually play out in society. And for that I’m going to plug one of my favorite books, Gin Lun’s Damned Nation: Hell in America from the Revolution to Reconstruction (if you can tell by now, I am a fucking blast at parties). Lun tells the long and very interesting story about, how ideas of hell and who went there changed during the Early American Republic. One of the interesting developments that she talks about is how while at first people who were repelled by Calvinism started moving toward a doctrine of universal salvation (no on goes to hell, at least not forever*), eventually they decided that hell was fine as long as only the right kind of people went there. Mostly The Other - non-Christian foreigners, Catholics, Atheists, people who were sinners in ways that were not just bad but weird and violated Victorian ideas of respectability. Really, Hell became a way of othering people, and arguably that’s how it survives today, especially as a way to other queer people (but expanding this is slated for my Montero rant). Now while a lot of people were consciously rejecting Calvinist predestination, they were still drawing the distinction between the Elect (good, saved, worthwhile) and the everyone else (bad, damned, worthless). I would argue that secularized ideas of this survive to this day even among non-Christian spaces in our society - we like to draw lines between those who Elect, and those who aren’t.
And that’s what brings us back to Catra. Because Catra’s entire arc is a refutation of the idea that some people are worthless and irredeemable, either by nature, nurture or their own actions. Catra’s actions strain the conventions of who is sympathetic in a Kid’s cartoon - I’ve half joked that she’s Walter White as a cat girl, and it’s only half a joke. She’s cruel, self-deluded, she spends 4 seasons refusing to take responsibility for anything she does and until Season 5 she just about always chooses the thing that does the most damage to herself and others. As I mentioned in my Catra rant, the show goes out of its way to demonstrate that Catra is morally culpable in every step of her descent into evil (except maybe her break with reality just before she pulls the lever). The way that Catra personally betrays everyone around her, the way she strips herself of all of her better qualities and most of what makes her human, hell even her costume changes would signal in any other show that she’s irredeemable.
It’s tempting to see this as Noelle’s version of being edgy - pushing the boundaries of what a sympathetic character is, throwing out antiheroics in favor of just making the villain a protagonist. Noelle isn’t quite Alex ‘I am in the business of traumatizing children’ Hirsch, who seems to have viewed his job as pushing the bounds of what you could show on the Disney Channel (I saw Gravity Falls as an adult and a bunch of that shit lives rent free in my nightmares forever), but Noelle has his own dark side, mostly thematically. The show’s willingness to deal with abuse, and messed up religious themes, and volatile, passionate, not particularly healthy relationships feels pretty daring. I’m not joking when I gleefully recommend this show to friends as ‘a couple from a Mountain Goats Song fights for four seasons in a cartoon intended for 9 year olds’. Noelle is in his own way pushing the boundaries of what a kids show can do. If you read Noelle’s other works like Nimona, you see an argument for Noelle being at least a bit edgy. Nimona is also angry, gleefully destructive, violent and spiteful - not unlike Catra. Given that it was a 2010s webcomic and not a kids show, Nimona is a good deal worse than Catra in some ways - Catra doesn’t kill people on screen, while Nimona laughs about it (that was just like, a webcomic thing - one of the fan favorite characters in my personal favorite, Narbonic, was a fucking sociopath, and the heroes were all amoral mad scientists, except for the superintelligent gerbil**). But unlike Nimona, whose fate is left open ended, Catra is redeemed.
And that is weird. We’ve had redemption arcs, but generally not of characters with -so- much vile stuff in their history. Going back to the comparison between her and Azula, many other shows, like Avatar, would have made Catra a semi-sympathetic villain who has a sob-story in their origin but who is beyond redemption, and in so doing would articulate a kind of psychologized Calvinism where some people are too traumatized to ever be fully and truly human. I’d argue this is the problem with Azula as a character - she’s a fun villain, but she doesn’t have moral agency, and the ultimate message of her arc - that she’s a broken person destined only to hurt people - is actually pretty fucked up. And that’s the origin story of so many serial killers and psycopaths that populate so many TV shows and movies. Beyond ‘hurt people hurt people’ they have nothing to teach us except perhaps that trauma makes you a monster and that the only possible response to people doing bad things is to cut them out of your life and out of our society (and that’s why we have prisons, right?)
And so Catra’s redemption and the depths from which she claws herself back goes back to Noelle’s desire to prove that no person is a vessel ‘fitted for destruction.’ Catra goes about as far down the path of evil as we’ve ever seen a protagonist in a kids show go, and she still has the capacity for good. Importantly, she is not subject to total depravity - she is capable of a good act, if only one at first. Catra is the one who begins her own redemption (unlike in Calvinism, where grace is unearned and even unwelcomed) - because she wants something better than what she has, even if its too late, because she realizes that she never wanted any of this anyway, because she wants to do one good thing once in her life even if it kills her.
The very extremity of Catra’s descent into villainy serves to underline the point that Noelle is trying to make - that no one can be written off completely, that everyone is capable of change, and that no human being is garbage, no matter how twisted they’ve become. Meanwhile her ability to set her own redemption in motion is a powerful statement of human agency, and healing, and a refutation of Calvinism’s idea that we are powerless before sin or pop cultural tropes about us being powerful before the traumas of our upbringing. Catra’s arc, then, is a kind of anti-Calvinist theological statement - about the nature of people and the nature of goodness.
Now, there is a darker side to this that Noelle has only hinted at, but which is suggested by other characters on the show. Because while Catra’s redemption shows that people are capable of change, even when they’ve done horrible things, been fucked up and fucked themselves up, it also illustrates the things people do to themselves that make change hard. As I mentioned in my Catra rant, two of the most sinister parts of her descent into villainy are her self-dehumanization (crushing her own compassion and desire to do good) and her rewriting of her own history in her speech and memory to make her own actions seem justified (which we see with her insistence that Adora left her, eliding Adora’s offers to have Catra join her, or her even more clearly false insistence that Entrapta had betrayed them). In Catra, these processes keep her going down the path of evil, and allow her to nearly destroy herself and everyone else. But we can see the same processes at work in two much darker figures - Shadow Weaver and Horde Prime. These are both rants for another day, but the completeness of Shadow Weaver’s narcissistic self-justification and cultivated callousness and the even more complete narcissism of Prime’s god complex cut both characters off from everyone around them. Perhaps, in a theoretical sense, they are still redeemable, but for narrative purposes they might as well be damned.
This willingness to show a case where someone -isn’t- redeemed actually serves to make Catra’s redemption more believable, especially since Noelle and the writers draw the distinction between how Catra and SW/Prime can relate to reality and other people, not how broken they are by their trauma (unlike Zuko and Azula, who are differentiated by How Fucked Uolp They Are). Redemption is there, it’s an option, we can always do what is right, but someone people will choose not to, in part because doing the right thing involves opening ourselves to the world and others, and thus being vulnerable. Noelle mentions this offhandedly in an interview after Season 1 with the She-Ra Progressive of Power podcast - “I sometimes think that shades of grey, sympathetic villains are part of the escapist fantasy of shows like this.” Because in the real world, some people are just bastards, a point that was particularly clear in 2017. Prime and Shadow Weaver admit this reality, while Catra makes a philosophical point that even the bastards can change their ways (at least in theory).
*An idea first proposed in the second century by Origen, who’s a trip and a fucking half by himself, and an idea that becomes the Catholic doctrine of purgatory, which protestants vehemently denied!
**Speaking of favorite Noelle tropes
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It’s your kaylor historian here who still can’t remember my log in details to my KH account 🤦♀️ (so please make sure this anon just in case it isn’t... I fear them 👀)
Karlie’s tea post before masters heist:
Ok so I can’t remember who posted first and don’t feel like looking, but taylor posted a selfie and captioned it “Friday calmness” and we (kaylor fandom) had been speculating taylor was going to come out as bi on the last day of June / 🌈pride month🌈 since she’d been doing so much stuff that could be seen (and was) as queer coded. We celebrated the “Friday calmness” thinking it was like a ‘calm before the storm’ with the storm being her coming out.
I think Karlie posted after taylor, but am not 100% sure. Karlie posted a selfie with a cup with a caption like “what’s the tea” and the fandom, thinking they were still together, collectively lost our shit. It looked to us like Karlie was playing off Taylor’s post. (I’ll admit, I didn’t think kaylor were still together, but that weekend I was thinking ‘I can’t believe I doubted them!’ Lol)
*there were also rumours that the YNTCD video and single were delayed a couple of times and meant to be released sooner and serve as a soft coming out, but that taylor kept changing her mind about it and is also why she kept the tracklist length under wraps, because she wasn’t sure if she’d go through with it. She was way more vague than ever before. There were also rumours she had a rolling stone cover planned that she was going to come out in but it was scrapped —— I can’t even remember where these “she’s actually coming out” rumours originated anymore and I can’t remember if people had legit sources and gossip or if it was fan fiction planning, but it was mentioned outside the kaylordom too, so take that as you wish.
Then came the masters heist.
Now, to understand the thought process of Kaylors at the time, you have to remember that we thought Karlie & Taylor had a secret romance, Joe was a beard, Josh was a beard - but since he comes from a crime family who have done a lot of bad things (to put it lightly) and are stupidly rich, Josh had Karlie trapped in such a tight contract and has so much blackmail material that Karlie was forced to fake marry him against her will - remember, it was only meant to be a photo shoot for a Vogue wedding spread showing what wedding fashion was available, it wasn’t meant to be a wedding! But josh had his team leak the photos and instead of saying it was all for a photo shoot, Karlie had to say she was now married. <- that was the narrative and thought process within the fandom.
So the fandom thought 🛴 and Josh conspired to announce the purchase of big machine/ taylor’s masters which would derail her coming out plans. The fandom thought Karlie had no idea it was happening. Scooter and Josh were worried Taylor was going to come out, which would ultimately out Karlie since there were so many rumours about Kaylor already, and it would then out Josh and ruin Josh’s image, making it look obvious to everyone that Josh and Karlie were just beards, but kaylor was real. To avoid tarnishing Josh’s hetero card, scooter waited until the end of June to announce he bought taylor’s music for maximum impact.
(Never mind that someone spent $300M to keep a client in the closet) that was how we interpreted the situation (kept writing the fan fiction) and that it was a blow to taylor and a huge betrayal from scooter to Karlie because now they had extra leverage / ways to hurt Karlie.
So yeah. It was a very sad time. This also is why some kaylors think hoax lyrics point to their everlasting love “my best laid plans” = tay ready to come out end of June “your sleight of hand” = scooter tricking Karlie when he bought the masters and any information about taylor that Karlie mentioned innocently was used against them, “my barren land” = taken on a new meaning since Karlie announced her pregnancy, but initially it was seen as the land that was meant to be blooming with love was left barren and empty because of the masters incident delaying her coming out.
It sounds absolutely ludicrous, but the only way to understand how it was easy to rationalise is to understand how adamant the fandom was/ is that Josh and joe are just beards, Karlie is locked in a contract, and taylor is trying to free the both of them. If there were any truth to this at all, it is nothing short of ghastly situation for Karlie and paints taylor as a Nobel warrior trying to save her princess from the tower 🦸🏼♀️👸🏼 ....
Karlie had what I think was a scheduled post cause it was ad content , but otherwise was unusually silent on social media for a week + after the announcement. We thought they were grieving together.
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Now for Emily Poe. Ok so I really didn’t do my research - I thought Emily was only one or two years older than Taylor, so it never even occurred to me that the idea of that relationship would’ve been extremely predatory and badbadbadbad. I regret not doing my due dillihence when I was part of a fandom that consumed this theory. So Emily theories have been around since Taylor first had gay speculation. Part of this was because of some funny photos like that one where taylor is standing next to a truck that says “...gay Texan” and emily and a guy in the band I can’t think of his name were pointing to taylor and smirking. It’s a funny photo. I can see my dumb teenage self making similar jokes long before I knew my sexuality because LOOOOL GAY was a thing back then. There’s the video taylor made for Emily where she held up the “we love you emily” sign and she went to everyone she toured with including brad paisley to hold up the sign and make heart hands and just be extremely cute - platonic or romantic - both seem plausible - and cute as hell! The video was set to the dashboard confessional song ‘stolen’ which is basically just the lyric “you have stolen my heart” over and over again. This video got renewed interest when people went back and looked back at the you belong with me video. The idea of taylor and her make love interest holding these a4 sheets of paper with “I love you” written on them seemed familiar. The story of how YBWM came about was that Taylor heard her guitarist on the phone with his girlfriend and his gf was yelling at him for something seemingly insignificant/ the gf was painted out as high drama and her guitarist seemed miserable every time he spoke to her for a while. So Taylor had the idea of a song about a girl thinking her friends girlfriend is horrible, but turn it into a love story where the two friends get together - classic romantic comedy trope - she took the idea to Liz Rose and it was one of the last songs written for Fearless and specifically made to be upbeat and preppy because taylor thought the album was lacking that vibe. If you take the story Taylor said inspired the song and swap it from her male guitarist (who she also said she had no feelings for), and change it to her female fiddle player, the story behind the song can be the same, just tweaked to be hetwashed. Emily was a cheerleader and had a boyfriend when she toured with taylor, so it’s easy enough to take those things at surface value and think there was some truth to Emily. Also the two biggest gaylor rumours pre swiftgron came from comments on a gossip site/ forum. One was that ‘Emily was fired after she was caught relieving taylor of stress’ and how ‘emily was interested in law, but this incident cemented she had to leave the band but the swift team gave her money so emily wouldn’t sue for being fired on a sexual harassment issue’ (of course, knowing the age difference, we know this would NOT be the case at all) and it is speculated it inspired taylor to write breathe because she was so sorry for how things ended. They were inseparable and then after her birthday, never seen together or mentioned each other on MySpace again.
The other comment was that taylor ‘was a pillow princess in high school’ and that she was happy to receive but not give because she wanted to maintain her virgin status and thought if she reciprocated it would make her gay — the comment was something like that.
Of course it would’ve been incredibly easy for idk, some random on the internet who has never even met taylor to say those things.... but it was taken as gospel by the gaylor truthers.
People who looked further found a girl they believed was Taylor’s high school gf, her name started with L... but I never really believed it so I don’t have the greatest knowledge of that one. It seemed ridiculous to me she had a 3 year gf as a teenager and not a single person from her high school - or anyone who knew her alleged gf - ever spoke about it publicly??? That would be a lot of NDAs and payouts to keep silent, but a lot of other people believed NDAs and hush money was spent, so yeah... 🤷♀️
She also had some fruity MySpace posts which seemed to help the case for gaylor, but imo, it also falls under the ‘teenagers on the internet are dumb especially when social media was brand new and thank god myspace doesn’t exist cause I don’t want to see my old one ever again’ category.
Sorry for the essay, I felt I had been summoned and wanted to give background on the fandom. When I log back in I think I need to change my bio, I’m not really here to talk kaylor , but the fandom. Cause it’s really sad what that narrative within the fandom has become and heartbreaking what that narrative has done to fans, especially queer kids trying to figure themselves out. I couldn’t see how toxic it was for a long time, I’m happy I’m out of there now. but I think it helps to understand how the fandom thought and saw things as to how easy it was for things to spiral to the state it’s in now.
As old T used to sign off, - lovelovelove 💜
Brilliant post thanks KH!
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I’ve talked a little bit about how at least one ~negative aspect~ of white supremacy/racism that impacts white people is that it can be SO DIFFICULT to avoid being Accidentally Racist over something that really shouldn’t have been that deep, and WOULDN’T have been that deep if not for the pervasiveness of white supremacy in america, and this bit about the lil country band Lady Antebellum and the controversy surrounding their name illustrates that pretty well, I think:
The band members have always said that the band's name was chosen arbitrarily, complaining about the difficulty of choosing a name. Inspired by the "country" style nostalgia of a photo shoot at a mansion from the Antebellum South, they said, "one of us said the word and we all kind of stopped and said, man, that could be a name"[40] and "Man that's a beautiful Antebellum house, and that's cool, maybe there's a haunted ghost or something in there like Lady Antebellum."[41] Haywood concluded, "[We] had a lady in the group, obviously, and threw Lady in the front of it for no reason. I wish we had a great resounding story to remember for the name, but it stuck ever since."[40] The name was always controversial, with a critic in Ms. Magazine writing in 2011 that the band's name "seems to me an example of the way we still — nearly 150 years after the end of the Civil War, nearly 50 years after the Civil Rights Act; and in a supposedly post-racial country led by a biracial president — glorify a culture that was based on the violent oppression of people of color".[41][42]
On June 11, 2020, joining widespread commercial response to the George Floyd protests,[41] the band announced it would abbreviate its name to its existing nickname "Lady A"[43] in an attempt to blunt the name's racist connotations.[1] The band members stated on social media that, never having previously sought the dictionary definition of the word "antebellum", they now consulted their "closest black friends and colleagues" so that their "eyes opened wide to the injustices, inequality and biases black women and men have always faced and continue to face every day. Now, blind spots we didn't even know existed have been revealed."[44] Fan response was mixed, with many decrying virtue signaling or even disparaging the protests.[41]American Songwriter said, "Given that the world knows what that A stands for, to many this change does little more than add extra insult to this ongoing injury."[45]
The next day, it was widely reported that the name "Lady A" had already been in use for more than 20 years by Seattle-based African American activist and blues, soul, funk, and gospel singer Anita White. The band again admitted ignorance of any prior use, which White called "pure privilege". Interviewed by Rolling Stone, White described the band's token acknowledgement of racism while blithely appropriating an African American artist's name: "They're using the name because of a Black Lives Matter incident that, for them, is just a moment in time. If it mattered, it would have mattered to them before. It shouldn't have taken George Floyd to die for them to realize that their name had a slave reference to it. It's an opportunity for them to pretend they're not racist". A veteran music industry lawyer observed that such name clashes are uncommon due to the existence of the Internet.[46][47] The band members contacted White the next week to apologize for having inadvertently co-opted and dominated her name,[48] saying that the Black Lives Matter movement had inspired them to a collaborative attitude. They nonetheless required retaining the same name, though she believed dual-naming is inherently impossible.[49]She said "We talked about attempting to co-exist but didn't discuss what that would look like"[48] because the band members would not directly respond to that explicit question three times during the conversation or in two contract drafts. She soon submitted a counteroffer that either the band would be renamed, or that her act would be renamed for a $5 million fee plus a $5 million donation to be split between Seattle charities, a nationwide legal defense fund for independent artists, and Black Lives Matter.[49]
On July 8, 2020, the band filed a lawsuit against White, asking a Nashville court to affirm its longstanding trademark of the name. The press release read: "Today we are sad to share that our sincere hope to join together with Anita White in unity and common purpose has ended. She and her team have demanded a $10 million payment, so reluctantly we have come to the conclusion that we need to ask a court to affirm our right to continue to use the name Lady A, a trademark we have held for many years."[50]
On September 15, 2020, White filed a counter-suit asserting her claim to the Lady A trademark and rejecting the notion that both artists could operate in the same industry under the same brand identity. She is seeking damages for lost sales and a weakened brand, along with royalties from any income the band receives under the Lady A moniker.[51][52]
Like????????? this REALLY didn’t need to be a thing.
And one thing I think black folks and other poc need to chill out with is dismissing any white person’s attempt at Being Better in how they move through a white supremacist world in a way that seeks to undo or at least not exacerbate white supremacy. I can TOTALLY believe that, in their white ignorant bliss, this band really did choose their name without realizing for a moment that it might leave a fucked up taste in some people’s mouths. Honestly like... antebellum IS a cool sounding word lmfao and if it wasn’t so heavily associated with slavery-era america, i’d wanna name something antebellum, too!
And like, yes, it’s true that it ~shouldn’t have taken george floyd’s death~ for anyone at all to suddenly decide that they want to go a little bit out of their way to denounce or at least not seem to promote racism in some small way. But it did. And it does. And every fucking time there’s a gross act of violence and injustice acted out on a person of color in front of the world, there’s always going to be a brand new white person out there who Sees The Light for the very first time. That doesn’t mean their new perspective isn’t genuine, and it doesn’t mean it happened All Of A Sudden. If anything, it was something they’d been thinking about for a long time, but didn’t know how to address it, or what to say, or who to say it to, or how to talk about it in their own community. OBVIOUSLY that problem is WAY LESS BAD than, ya know, actually experiencing racism, but it’s still a real thing that some white folks go through, and being mad about it isn’t going to make it NOT a real thing. it shouldn’t have taken george floyd’s death. it shouldn’t have taken trayvon martin’s death. it shouldn’t have taken the instatement of one of the most vile human beings to ever assault the face of the earth for This Person or That Person to finally want to make a positive and public change, BUT IT DID. It always does. That, unfortunately, is How It Works.
And so, this band adjusts it’s name in an effort to not seem hostile. OBVIOUSLY it’s not a grand show of solidarity. OBVIOUSLY it’s not meant to convince anyone that they’re Super Amazing White People Who Will Stop At Nothing For Racial Equality. It was literally just a small, simple gesture. They’re just modifying their image, because they were no longer comfortable with knowing how that word makes a lot of people feel. Bc like... let’s be real: probably a solid ZERO of their fanbase would have given a shit if they’d just left the name as it was. Nobody who’s going to a Lady Antebellum concert was pouting about the name. And if anything, they prolly stood a better chance of LOSING fans for ~being politically correct~ than gaining fans for changing their name to something less annoying.
And it JUST SO HAPPENS that the slight lil adjustment they made to their name steps on the toes of an existing artist, and it JUST SO HAPPENS that this artist is black, and is also an ACTIVIST in social and racial justice.
Oops.
And so, obviously people don’t interpret it as an honest mistake. Instead, it’s a result of white privilege. And I mean like??? ok, maybe it is. But I ALSO had never heard of Anita White until I read this fucking wiki page lmfao. So like... my ignorance isn’t due to no white privilege on my part. Maybe it’s a consequence of a white supremacist culture that wouldn’t glorify her and celebrate her and put her name everywhere... but that’s a different thing from privilege.
So now not only are the bands efforts to adjust to a world that’s becoming more aware of racial injustice being dismissed as disingenuous or too-little-too-late, but now they’re ALSO being accused of Using Their White Privilege to trample all over an artist they’d never heard of.
i DO think that after finding out the name was already taken, and after talking with her about it and determining that she wasn’t interested in sharing - as is her right - they should have just said “ok, sorry, thanks for talking with us about it” and picked something different. i think it’s kinda ridiculous that they think they should sue her and i think she’s HELLA right for suing their asses right back, and I hope she gets her damn money.
But I’m also cognizant of how emotionally/psychologically upsetting it can feel to have to just Change Your Name after so many years of living with it. It makes sense that despite their desire to adapt and choose a new name that doesn’t make people cringe, they still want to try to hold on to the feeling that THEY associated with their own name. “Lady A” seemed like a happy medium: They can remain Who They Are while also showing that Who They Are is someone who’s not trying to glorify a disgusting era of history. But if “Lady A” isn’t an option... what’s left? What else could they call themselves that wouldn’t feel like a totally new, alien identity??
So, I understand how, on an emotional level, they want to fight to keep it.
But uh. They really need to just Be Sad about it and let it go. Just consider it one of the small, upsetting sacrifices that white folks may sometimes have to make as we ALL struggle and stumble through this fuckin long-ass road of Making The World Less Terrible For People Of Color, and move on.
But yeah, like.
It’s fucking ridiculous that this was even an issue, and it was only an issue because of racism!!!!! If white supremacists didn’t manufacture a culture that oppresses people of color and glorifies the pre-civil-war era SPECIFICALLY for the good ol slavery, then perhaps people could wax poetic about the artistic and environmental aesthetic of that era without it being assumed that they Must Be Racist. Bc like??? idk if yall know this lmfao but i LOVE????? colonial american music. like, the kind of stuff with that Ashokan Farewell vibe. I think it sounds beautiful. And i really fuckin love the black spiritual music that was developed in that time. and i think so much of the architecture and fashion was so???? Nice. Just pleasant! But I can’t even get myself to fully enjoy it because of all the fuckin connotations that have been stuck to it.
A band should be able to name theirself a name without it being such a goddamn fucking cultural crisis.
But they can’t! And it is!
Thanks, White Supremacy!
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The Rapture
No, this isn’t one of Those Posts preaching gloom and doom and mark your calendars cause Jesus is coming back next Thursday. I know this teaching has been a point of contention over the years--my own views on the topic have varied wildly and been prone to mistakes, leading me to hold my current view very loosely. However, whatever view you may hold, it is something the Bible talks about, which means it is something God deemed important for us to know and grow from.
I’m not going to hash out that whole debate on this post. There is one point I often here leveled against the pre-trib view that I would like to address, but first I need to say that eschatology, the study of last things, is a secondary issue. It does not affect someone’s salvation if they hold a slightly different view about the order of end times events. I am willing to be wrong about my position because there is a lot I still don’t understand and need to study. If at any point I misrepresent one of my post-trib brother’s/sister’s arguments, please let me know so that we can talk these things over peaceably as the body of Christ.
The Bible clearly states that Jesus is going to return (Matt 16:27), that he has appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness (Acts 17:31), and there is going to be a resurrection of his saints-both living and dead-who will meet him in the air when he calls for them (1 Thess 4:15-17). Christians agree on that much and we all know that no one knows the day or hour these events are supposed to begin (Mark 13:32). Where there seems to be confusion is on the exact order of these events, particularly in regards to events called the Tribulation and the Rapture.
The Tribulation, also known as the Day of the LORD, the time of Jacobs trouble ( Jer 30:7) and Daniel’s seventieth week (Dan 9:20-27), is what most people think of when they think about end times. God sends plagues of fire and pestilence on the entire planet who has completely devoted themselves to a false messiah, a world utterly opposed to their Creator. This is described vividly throughout the book of Revelation and it all culminates with Jesus physically returning with all his saints and destroying the armies mounted against him (Rev 19).
The rapture (discussed in John 14:2-3, 1 Corinthians 15:51-53, 1 Thess 4:15-17, 2 Thess 2:1-12) is that moment when the trumpet sounds and the saints meet Jesus in the sky. There are two major camps among others regarding when this moment is supposed to take place. Some believe that the Church will be taken out of the world before the tribulation begins (called the pre-tribulational or pre-trib view) while some believe that the Church will endure the tribulation and will meet Christ in the air when he comes to judge the world (the post-tribulational or post-trib view).
One argument for the post-trib view I have heard repeatedly is that God never promises believers that we will escape tribulation or persecution. I 100% agree with that statement. Jesus promised that we would have many troubles in this world (John 16:33) that if we want to follow Him, we have to be willing to take up our cross and die for Him (Matt 16:24). But there is a fundamental difference between the tribulations inflicted on the Church in this age and the Tribulation the world will endure in the Day of the LORD.
Christians experience suffering in this age for a number of reasons. We get caught up in tornadoes and earthquakes and fires and diseases because God is sovereign and He is doing good for His people (Rom 8:28). It is part of God’s sanctifying process for His people, making us like His Son, transforming us from glory unto glory (2 Cor 3:18) renewing our inner man (2 Cor 4:16). We experience persecution from the world because they hate Christ and therefore hate us (John 15:18-19). This serves multiple good purposes in that it weeds out stony-hearted false converts (Luke 8:13), offers us a chance to give a defense for the hope that lies with in us, even in the midst of persecution (1 Peter 3:15-17) and stores up wrath, bringing judgment on those who would afflict God’s people (2 Thess 1:5-7).
But what is happening during the Tribulation described in Revelation? Why is God sending the Horsemen of War, Famine, and Death as well as a great and terrible earthquake and stars being cast from heaven (Rev 6)? Why does God burn a third of the vegetation and turn a third of the earth’s water to blood (Rev 7)? Why does God allow the sun to scorch people with fire or plunge this kingdom into darkness (Rev 16)? Are these supposed to be sanctifying experiences for His Church? No, we actually see something different from the people being afflicted by these plagues in Revelation 6:16-17
calling to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?” (emphasis added)
Wrath of the Lamb? God is sending these plagues because He is angry? What is He angry about? Students of the Bible know that God is only ever truly angry about one thing
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. (Romans 1:18)
The Tribulation is the beginning of God’s wrath being poured out on sinners for their rebellion against Him and rejection of His Messiah.
But wait a minute. The Church hasn’t rejected the Messiah. Believers repented of their rebellion and follow Jesus with their whole hearts. Do believers need to endure God’s wrath as well? Paul told the Thessalonians regarding the Day of the LORD,
For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Thess 5:9)
This is why I think the Rapture is so important. It gets right to the heart of the gospel. If the Tribulation is the time of God’s wrath being poured out on the globe, Christians have nothing to fear, because God’s wrath toward us was already poured out on Christ. There is nothing left for God to judge regarding us, so when the time comes for Him to begin His judgment on the world, I believe He is going to call us out of the world to escape His wrath and enjoy the grace of His presence. Just like He promised He would. That’s not wishful thinking, that is our blessed hope (Titus 2:13).
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A STRANGE BAPTISM: SERMON ON THE ETHIOPIAN EUNUCH
Acts of the Apostles 8: 26-40
Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, ‘Get up and go towards the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.’ (This is a wilderness road.) So he got up and went. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. Then the Spirit said to Philip, ‘Go over to this chariot and join it.’ So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’ He replied, ‘How can I, unless someone guides me?’ And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him. Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this:
‘Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter,
and like a lamb silent before its shearer,
so he does not open his mouth.
In his humiliation justice was denied him.
Who can describe his generation?
For his life is taken away from the earth.’
The eunuch asked Philip, ‘About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?’ Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus. As they were going along the road, they came to some water; and the eunuch said, ‘Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?’ He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he was passing through the region, he proclaimed the good news to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.
When approaching a new text I think it’s helpful to start with the question, “What stands out to you? What do you notice?” And so I think it’s fair to start by saying, I notice this is a weird text. First an angel of the Lord appears out of nowhere and commands Philip to go down a wilderness road. Without question Philip goes and finds an Ethiopian Eunuch riding in a chariot who just happens to be reading Isaiah. And then at the end of this whole encounter Philip apparently has the gift of teleportation and finds himself in a new place leaving the newly baptized Ethiopian Eunuch by himself. What do we do with a text like this?
The book of Acts picks up right where the Gospels leave off. Some have even called it the 5th Gospel. Unlike the rest of the Second Testament, which is very much about the theology of the fledgling Christian movement, Acts is very much an action novel. It follows the stories of the nascent Christian community (who were still calling themselves “Followers of the Way”) as they struggle to form a group identity. They were a small community who were being heavily persecuted. The story of the conversion and baptism of the Ethiopian Eunuch comes right after Stephen has been stoned to death for proclaiming Christ. This story begins a series of healing and conversion narratives. Right after this story we read about the conversion of Saul who would become Paul. The book of Acts is trying to explain the expansion of this new movement. It’s a time when old rules about who were in and who were out were being challenged. And so we come to this text. Philip finds an Ethiopian Eunuch, an officer in the court of the queen, reading aloud from the book of Isaiah.
It’s interesting that Phillip asks, “Do you understand what you are reading?” and the Eunuch responds, “How can I unless someone guides me?” There is a reason that we don’t baptize children in private. It’s about more than just allowing the congregation to coo over their adorableness (although that’s nice too!). We baptize as a part of a community because we are making a vow to help guide these children as they grow into their unique faith expressions. The role of faith formation doesn’t just fall to the parents or to the teachers tasked with teaching Sunday School; it falls to the entire community.
How do we as a community understand the Bible? How is it that we approach this text? For some of us, this collection of writings has been used as a weapon against us, and so we either abandon it altogether or we read it so that we can form it into a shield to protect us. For others we have read this text so many times that it has ceased to bring us any new revelation. For some we haven’t approached the text at all; it either holds no relevance to our lives or else we simply have not had the opportunity to engage with it. My hope is that we can all begin to unpack our baggage around this text and begin to engage it with new eyes and open hearts; so that when these children begin to read it on their own, we can guide them and allow them to guide us.
One of the most significant parts of my spiritual journey has been relearning how to read the Bible. I have had to find new ways to let these words speak to me and to move in my heart. I have had to find ways to make the text sing again while also keeping my mind and my intellect engaged. So how do we read this text with new eyes? What about this story still speaks to our lives and our community today?
I wonder what it was that led this Ethiopian Eunuch to Jerusalem to worship at the Temple. Clearly there was something in him that was compelling him to seek out a place of worship. But this person would not have been welcome in the Temple in Jerusalem. His status as a Eunuch, someone who had either been castrated or born with ambiguous genitalia, would have prevented him from being able to even enter into the Temple. We don’t know what compelled him to go to Jerusalem, what he had hoped to find there, or what his experiences were. But I think we can safely assume that he wasn’t allowed to participate. And now he was returning home.
Some of us have had this experience of going to a church and hoping to worship and instead being turned away. Or of being allowed to attend and yet being made to feel uncomfortable; maybe because we weren’t wearing the right clothes, or we didn’t know when to stand or kneel, or because of our gender identity or sexual orientation. And we have left church with a heavy heart, maybe crying on the way home because we had so desired to worship and had been prevented.
I wonder if the Ethiopian Eunuch was experiencing some of those feelings as he traveled toward home? And yet, Philip finds him reading the Scriptures. Maybe he was trying to find out why he had been rejected. Maybe he was looking for solace. I wonder if he had turned to his favorite passage to reassure himself that he was a beloved child of God. A couple of chapters after the passage he’s quoted as reading in our Acts narrative we read these words: “Do not let the foreigner joined to the Lord say “the Lord will surely separate me from his people”; and do not let the eunuch say, “I am just a dry tree.” For thus says the Lord: To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant. I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.” What powerful words! And words that stand in such contradiction to the law in Deuteronomy that says, “No one whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off shall be admitted into the assembly of God.” These are words that would have crushed his spirit. Words that would have been used by others as an excuse to keep him out of the Temple. These words are still in use today to keep transgender people out of the house of God. But in spite of these hurtful words, the Eunuch was also able to find words that affirmed him and gave him hope. Words that he may have been turning to in his time of rejection.
Many us of have favorite passages that we turn to in time of need; For some it might not be a Scripture passage but a favorite poem or novel. Maybe there is a song that speaks to you in the midst of your pain or joy.
Philip enters into the story in the midst of rejection and confusion. He sits beside the Ethiopian Eunuch. He answers his questions and tells the story of Jesus; this person who was recklessly hospitable. A man who ate with sinners and touched lepers. A man who purposefully made himself unclean in order to call attention to arbitrary rules about who was in and who was out. Jesus wanted to challenge ideas about who was acceptable. I imagine these words would have sounded sweet to this Ethiopian Eunuch. Confirmation of what he already knew in his heart.
And then they came upon water and the Eunuch says, “Look! Here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?”
And Philip, who would have known the rules preventing eunuchs from worshipping, who would have know that this person he had been talking with was considered to be unacceptable says nothing. Philip just gets into the water and baptizes him. This evangelist baptizes a gender non-conforming person who had been excluded from worshipping life of the community. But after this moment he was allowed to go on his way rejoicing. This is a passage that speaks to the power that happens when we let down our walls and allow the Spirit to move. She will lead us deeper into communion with God and with one another.
There is something beautiful in what we do when we baptize children. We welcome them into the family of God first thing. We tell them that they are acceptable and pure and a part of the larger body. And we commit to walking with them on their journey. But it’s also an easy thing to baptize a beautiful infant. It’s easy to welcome a beautiful child into our family.
It can be a lot harder to welcome flawed and fragile adults. Or surly teenagers. It can be a lot harder to live into our baptismal vows when we were too young to remember that they happened. What does it mean for us to walk through the world as people who have been baptized? What does this symbol of water mean in our daily lives? Do you remember your baptism?
I grew up in a tradition that practiced adult baptism and so I do remember my baptism. However I have walked a long way since being submerged in those waters. Many of us have walked a long way since our baptisms; through different religious traditions and denominations, through crises of faith, through death and through transformation. Our baptismal memory fades.
What is the big deal about baptism? In Colossians 2:12 it says, “When you were buried with Jesus in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God who raised him from the dead.” It seems shocking to talk about death in our rite of baptism, especially in the context of baptizing a child. It doesn’t make sense to talk about baptism being a death to an old way of life. But baptism isn’t just about what happens here with children.
Some of us are finding our way back to the church after years of being away. For some it takes courage just to walk inside these doors on a Sunday morning because of the years of abuse that have happened within church walls. For some of us we have become complacent in our faith and need to feel the breath of the spirit moving in us once again. For others we have remained in the church but maybe we are feeling tired and need to be renewed. Can you remember your baptism?
Jesus had a pretty remarkable baptism story. When he came up out of the waters of the Jordan the heavens opened and God’s voice said, “This is my son, my beloved, in whom I am well pleased.” I wonder if he thought back on that moment in the trials that were to come; when the religious leaders were hating him, when the Romans were bearing down on him. He must have struggled with his faith, wondered if he was doing the right thing. But he could always look back to that moment of baptism and say, “yes. I am God’s beloved.”
Can you remember the waters pouring over you? The voice of God claiming you as God’s own beloved child with whom God is well-pleased? Does that sentiment ring in your heart? If not, why not?
This is why we baptize in community: So that we can remind one another of our baptisms. When these children grow and struggle with their faith we can say to them, I remember your baptism. This is why we exist in community so we can turn to one another and say, I remember your baptism and God is well pleased with you. This is what allows us to approach the Scripture with new eyes and with open hearts, allows us to engage with these ancient words again and feel the Spirit breathing new life into us and recharging us for our work in the world.
“Look, here is water! What is to prevent you from being baptized?” The institutional church cannot keep you out, the law of the land cannot diminish you. It is only what is inside you that can keep you from these waters. Can you let go of the pain an approach the water? Can you lay down your shame and approach the water? What is preventing you from being baptized? Today if you are having trouble remembering your baptism; if you are grappling with doubt; if you cannot hear the voice of God saying to you that you are beloved, I say, “Look, here is water! What is to prevent you from being baptized?”
For more articles like this, check out QueerTheology.com
#queer theology#faithfully LGBT#FaithfullyLGBT#gay christian#transgender christian#Christian#transgender#Christianity
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19th May >> Fr. Martin’s Gospel Reflections / Homilies on John 16:5-11 for Tuesday, Sixth Week of Easter: ‘It is for your own good that I am going’.
Tuesday, Sixth Week of Easter
Gospel (Europe, Africa, New Zealand, Australia & Canada)
John 16:5-11
Unless I go, the Advocate will not come to you
Jesus said to his disciples:
‘Now I am going to the one who sent me.
Not one of you has asked, “Where are you going?”
Yet you are sad at heart because I have told you this.
Still, I must tell you the truth:
it is for your own good that I am going
because unless I go,
the Advocate will not come to you;
but if I do go,
I will send him to you.
And when he comes,
he will show the world how wrong it was,
about sin,
and about who was in the right,
and about judgement:
about sin: proved by their refusal to believe in me;
about who was in the right: proved by my going to the Father and your seeing me no more;
about judgement: proved by the prince of this world being already condemned.’
Gospel (USA)
John 16:5-11
For if I do not go, the Advocate will not come to you.
Jesus said to his disciples: “Now I am going to the one who sent me, and not one of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ But because I told you this, grief has filled your hearts. But I tell you the truth, it is better for you that I go. For if I do not go, the Advocate will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes he will convict the world in regard to sin and righteousness and condemnation: sin, because they do not believe in me; righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will no longer see me; condemnation, because the ruler of this world has been condemned.”
Reflections (7)
(i) Tuesday, Sixth Week of Easter
In critical situations, such as the one we are presently experiencing, we can be very conscious of what we are losing. We sense the loss of a great deal that means so much to us. As a result, we can find ourselves, ‘sad at heart’ in the words of today’s gospel reading. There Jesus is speaking in a critical moment for himself and his disciples. It is the evening of the last supper, and the disciples are ‘sad at heart’ because they sense that they are losing Jesus. He is going from them and will not return. However, whereas Jesus does not deny the reality of their loss, he tries to show them that something worthwhile is coming out of this loss that wouldn’t otherwise happen. He says to them, ‘it is for your own good that I am going because unless I go, the Advocate will not come to you’. Jesus’ departure to his heavenly Father will make possible the sending of the Holy Spirit who will make Jesus present in a new and more wonderful way, not just to these disciples, but to disciples of every generation. Moreover, Jesus says, when the Advocate comes, he will go on the offensive against the opponents of Jesus and his disciples, proving these opponents wrong in their assessment of Jesus and his followers as sinners, and of themselves as being in the right, and, also, in their assessment that Jesus was been judged or condemned by God on the cross. In other words, when the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, comes, he will be a wonderful resource to the disciples, to the church. Yet, because the Advocate is the Spirit of the risen Lord, he cannot come unless Jesus returns to his Father through his death and resurrection. Jesus is assuring his disciples that great good will come out of the tragedy that is unfolding. That is the perspective we need to have on what is unfolding around us today. There is great tragedy in what is happening, and, yet, we can be confident that the risen Lord is working to bring some good out of this affliction. In today’s first reading, the affliction of Paul’s imprisonment led to the baptism of the jailer and his family. The Lord can work powerfully in situations where we feel powerless and helpless, if we give him the space to do so.
And/Or
(ii) Tuesday, Sixth Week of Easter
In this morning’s gospel reading, Jesus, on the night before he died, addresses himself to the sadness of the disciples. They are sad because they have heard him talk about going away. On this evening, full of foreboding, they sense that he is referring to his imminent death. We always experience sadness when someone who has been significant for us, someone we have loved and valued, is taken from us in death. We need to grieve the loss of our loved ones. Yet, Jesus wants to bring some light into the sadness, the darkness of spirit, of his disciples. He does so by assuring them that, in going from them, he will be able to do something for them that he would not otherwise be able to do. In returning to the Father, he will be able to send them the Advocate, the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit. In and through this Spirit, Jesus will be present to his disciples in a new and very intimate way, and he will be present in this manner not just to his disciples gathered with him that evening but to all future disciples, including ourselves gathered here this morning. Jesus’ death and his resurrection from the dead leads to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon us all, and, in and through the Spirit, Jesus is within us and among us. That same Spirit is with us in all our dark and difficult times, in all our times of painful loss. The Spirit assures us of the Lord’s loving presence at such moments, so that even in our sadness we can experience something of that joy which is the fruit of the Spirit.
And/Or
(iii) Tuesday, Sixth Week of Easter
In the gospel reading this morning, Jesus tells the disciples that when the Advocate, the Holy Spirit comes, he will show the world how wrong it was about sin, about who was in the right and about judgement. Those who were responsible for the death of Jesus concluded that Jesus must have been a sinner to have died in the way he did; his ignominious death showed that God had judged him. Therefore, those responsible for Jesus’ death thought that they were right to put this sinner to death. Jesus declares that the Holy Spirit will demonstrate that this unbelieving world is totally wrong in these assessments. Jesus was not a sinner; he was not judged by God; those who put him to death were not in the right. We see here the enormous disparity between God’s perception and human perception. The one whom God looked upon as a beloved Son, others looked upon as a sinner. The one whom vindicated was considered judged or condemned by God. Those who saw themselves as in the right were judged by God to be completely in the wrong. Our perspective can be very wide of the mark. We need to keep growing into God’s perspective, to see as God sees, to judge as God judges. It is the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, who gives us God’s perspective. It is the Holy Spirit who enables us to see as God sees, to know as God knows, to understand as God understands, to be wise in the way God is wise. That is why we desperately need the Holy Spirit to keep filling our hearts and our minds afresh.
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(iv) Tuesday, Sixth Week of Easter
In the gospel reading this morning, Jesus describes his disciples as ‘sad at heart’ because he had told them that he was going back to the one who sent him, God the Father. There are times in all our lives when we are ‘sad at heart’ for various reasons. Like the sadness of the disciples, our sadness too can be related to some experience of loss, the loss of someone who has been significant for us. Jesus understood the sadness of his disciples, yet, he wanted to show them that his leaving them had a value; it would open up his coming to them in a new and different way. He would come back to them in and through the coming of the Advocate, the Holy Spirit. In many respects, this second coming of Jesus would be more life-giving than his first coming. In and through the Spirit, the Lord would come to believers of every generation in every part of the world, to us here in Clontarf this morning. The disciples were experiencing a necessary loss, a loss that was in the service of a greater blessing. Many of our losses have the potential to be in the service of a greater blessing if we work through them with the help of the Holy Spirit whom the risen Lord sends to us.
And/Or
(v) Tuesday of Sixth Week of Easter
In the gospel reading Jesus declares that when the Advocate comes he will prove the world wrong about sin, about who was in the right, and about judgement. Those responsible for having Jesus crucified presumed that he was the sinner, the breaker of God’s law, and that they, the defenders of God’s law,were in the right; they also presumed that Jesus’ crucifixion demonstrated God had judged him, condemned him. The Holy Spirit at work among the disciples would demonstrate, however, that Jesus was in the right, having been vindicated by God beyond death, and those who crucified him were the sinners, having rejected God’s only Son. Human estimations as to who is in tune with God and who is a sinner can be wide of the mark. Left to our own devices, we can so easily get things wrong. We need the Holy Spirit to enlighten us, to teach us, to help us see things from God’s perspective and not just our own. Sometimes what the Spirit tries to show us is something we don’t really want to see. We make our judgements, and we tend to hold on to them. Yet, we need to listen to what the Spirit may be saying to us. We need the deeper picture that only the Holy Spirit can give us.
And/Or
(vi) Tuesday, Sixth Week of Easter
In this morning’s gospel reading, Jesus explains to his disciples that his leaving them will ultimately be to their advantage. Although they will experience a great loss at no longer being able to see Jesus’ bodily presence, this loss will make possible a greater good. In going back to the Father, Jesus will send the Holy Spirit and through the Spirit he will be present in a new way to his disciples and to disciples of every generation. The experience of loss will be life-giving because Jesus’ going away will result in a new coming. Jesus’ departure is a necessary loss if God’s purposes are to be realized. It is often the way in life that we find ourselves having to deal with certain necessary losses, losses that are unavoidable and that are somehow part of God’s purpose for our lives. At the time, such losses can be very painful, but over time we can begin to see some new life emerging out of the loss. The going away that the loss entails can often give way to a new coming, a new birth, new life. The gospel reading this morning invites us to trust that the Lord can and will bring good out of the losses we have to suffer in the course of our lives.
And/Or
(vii) Tuesday, Sixth Week of Easter
Departures can be sad affairs. Many are the tears that are shed at airports. The most difficult of all departures is the death of a loved one and that particular experience of departure brings its own very particular form of sadness. In the gospel reading this morning Jesus acknowledges the sadness of his disciples because of his imminent departure. ‘You are sad at heart’, Jesus said to them. They are sad because Jesus had been saying, ‘I am going to the one who sent me’. On the evening before Jesus was crucified, the disciples were aware that Jesus was taking his leave of them and sadness filled their hearts. Yet, Jesus wants his disciples to see that his departure is not the tragedy it appears to be; it contains within it the seeds of new life. It is only his departure that makes it possible for him to send the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, to his disciples, and it is in and through the Spirit that Jesus can be present to them in a new way. To that extent, as Jesus says to them, ‘it is for your own good that I am going’. In our own day to day experience the pain of letting go can be the birth pangs of a new and fuller life. As we face into our own necessary losses, we will experience the Lord’s coming in new ways.
Fr. Martin Hogan, Saint John the Baptist Parish, Clontarf, Dublin, D03 AO62, Ireland.
Email: [email protected] or [email protected]
Parish Website: www.stjohnsclontarf.ie Please join us via our webcam.
Twitter: @SJtBClontarfRC.
Facebook: St John the Baptist RC Parish, Clontarf.
Tumblr: Saint John the Baptist Parish, Clontarf, Dublin.
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Reveling in Richonne
#148: The Defender (9x07-9x12)
So before 9x14, there were more little notable tidbits here and there. Michonne had to defend her stance a lot and go through it. And even though she didn’t seem to have a whole lot of people behind her, I was on her side completely. I could see her perspective loud and clear so you know...
As for 9x07, I like that Siddiq seems to be one of Michonne’s closest confidants because he’s a really good person and because Carl’s the one who brought him to her. Grimes looking out for each other even after they depart.
Michonne has a moment in 9x07 where she tells Yumiko, “I know what it’s like. To worry about your family. To carry the burden of protecting them. To feel guilt when they suffer.” Everything Michonne is doing and has done is for her family, and not just her immediate family but for the larger community family they’ve built. She wants to do what’s best for all of them.
Yumiko says they’ll all be fine. And Michonne says, “Because you have to be. I would know.” And she reassures them they’ll find a home. That’s also something Michonne would know since she went from being a lone wolf type to truly finding her home and the family she was meant for.
We also learn that Maggie left without even saying anything to Michonne which is tough and strange. For some reason the two had a falling out that doesn’t ever quite get explicitly addressed .
Michonne tells Siddiq she kept her promise to Judith by getting that new group to Hilltop and so now she’s going to go home. And it’s sweet how all of this really was because she heard Judith out and wanted to honor her daughter’s wish.
Siddiq asks what about her promise to Carl and she says it’s not that simple. And it’s true, after everything she’s been through sometimes the rules change. Just like if Carl or Rick would’ve gone through that Jocelyn stuff they would’ve adjusted too.
Y’all, I don’t even want to address the uncalled for hostility Michonne’s met with when she pulls up to Hilltops gates in 9x08. 🙄 But I will say that Tara needed to turn that attitude all the way down cuz she had me watching like...
Michonne and Carol have a little exchange and get to talk about the kids which is nice. I’m glad someone acknowledged Michonne as a mother and not just the Head of Security like we’d been seeing. And it makes sense that Carol would be the one to do that.
I’ve alway wanted Carol and Michonne to have more scenes together since they’re both strong women who have gone through a lot of the same things. So I appreciate that in this moment they at least acknowledge the similarities in their journeys when Carol says, “You and me, we both lost children and we kept going.”
It’s deep cuz losing a child is the toughest thing to go through and they two of them have seen it happen many times and been personally affected from it. And yet years later these two are still standing cuz they have an immense strength within them.
(Side note: So the wigs…can we talk about it for a sec? 😬 For Michonne’s wig, I get the idea and I like the idea. But all I gotta say is they are lucky Danai can pull off anything cuz the execution of this wig was not always on point to say the least. Like the taping of the edges to start. 🤦🏽♀️ They are in Atlanta! Black hair capital. To have a wig like that...they could have done better. I’m just saying. But again, Danai makes it work cuz she just got it like that.👌 And for Carol’s wig, again the idea and the significance of the longer hair isn’t bad, but still that execution was not the move.🏽)
Later in this episode, Michonne says how she knows she didn’t make easy choices but, “at least they’re alive so they can hate me for it.” I’m still unclear as to what would make the others behave this way towards Michonne.
Even if she did cut places off, no one ever stopped and said hey I know Michonne used to have the most sound head on her shoulders of us all so maybe if she’s making a drastic decision there’s a valid reason for it.
People seem to know what Michonne went through, or at least the gist, but still gave no understanding. Michonne’s mantra now is that there’s a whole lot of broken world between the communities so they’ve gotta focus on taking care of their own. And yes would it be nice if they could all just be united? Definitely. That’s what she’d really want. But also right now Michonne’s at a point where she has to do what she has to do for her family, the same way Rick did.
Rick straight up kicked Carol out of their community in season four to protect his own, so drastic measures have been taken before for the sake of protecting your family.
Michonne really does feel like she’s looking out for the best interests of everyone if they stop traveling so much cuz it would keep everybody a bit safer. Not just Alexandria, everybody. When she tells Siddiq at least their alive to hate me it’s because she genuinely sees her decisions as having kept everybody alive. She didn’t cut things off to punish, dismiss, or divide. It was to protect and save.
So next, it’s interesting cuz my favorite part of 9x09 was in the “previously on” part lol.
Michonne’s voiceover does a briefing on the past and mentions everything that went down. And she says “We lost friends we loved…my true love.” And y’all, that alone took me out. 😭🙌🏽
I really loved hearing Michonne refer to Rick as her true love, even if it wasn’t within the show. Rick is her true love. It’s just the gospel truth. 💯
And then she says, “But even now, six years later, his hopes for the future live on.” And it’s so sweet cuz she says that over clips of Judith and RJ. They’re Richonne’s legacy. 😊👌🏽
So listen, during 9x09 Negan got out of his cell and if the goal is to redeem him, then having him immediately go into Michonne’s home at night and walk right into Judith’s room ain’t a great start. That’s so creepy and violating. 😖
But I do adore the precious drawing Judith has above her bed. It’s Rick, Michonne, Carl, RJ, and Judith. The royal family. And it says the truest statement ever on the top, “My family is always with me.” Amen, Judith. 😊🙌🏽
As Negan’s about to hop the gate, Judith stops him with a gun cuz she’s about that life. (Although whoever was supposed to be watching her, while Michonne was away, was def slacking.)
Then Negan and Judith have this whole little exchange and Judith is quite fearless.
Negan tells Judith, “You know when your mom and dad - when they locked me up, they told me that I was gonna be good for something.” And I just appreciate hearing Rick and Michonne be referred to as “mom and dad”.
And I like that he acknowledges the wonderland that Alexandria’s become. Despite Judith’s knack for making her own decisions she does at least know who’s boss when she tells him, “Rules are rules. My mom decides not me.” Which is nice to hear, even if she does let him go afterwards.
Michonne and Daryl also have their first convo post time jump and it’s nice to see them together.
(Side note: I knew they wouldn’t address it or show it but I was very curious as to how the conversation would go when Daryl explains to Michonne why Rick was even in that bridge situation in the first place. Cuz if it was up to Rick…he would’ve been at home with her that day. But Daryl, Maggie, and a fake friend horse unfortunately had other plans.😒)
Michonne tells Daryl that Judith found the new people and vouched for them so she does too and Daryl’s with it. In regards to Paul dying and them bringing him back to Hilltop for closure, Michonne then says, “It’s gonna mean a lot to them. Bringing him back. Burying him.” You know this speaks to her because she didn’t get that closure with getting to bury Rick.😔
Daryl knows too and sincerely says, “Sorry I couldn’t do that for you.” I appreciate him saying for her specifically, cuz of course he wanted to find Rick for him and everyone else too but he knows that it would have especially meant a lot to Michonne, cuz in losing Rick she lost her soul mate.
And Michonne looks at him and says, “I’m sorry I couldn’t do that for both of us.” Cuz it’s true these two are the closest people to Rick. It’s his wife and brother and so it is sweet to see them have this moment of understanding more than anyone, what not finding Rick has felt like.
It’s nice that now Rick has a wife and best friend who still feel the weight of his loss six years later and keep his memory alive.
Michonne also thanks Daryl for trying to find Rick and “for after” cuz those two went through it big time in between this time jump.
When they’re confronted by Whisperers at the bridge, I love the shot of Michonne walking with two walkers behind her like her OG days in season three.
But what’s cooler is that, while the image is reflective of the past, this isn’t the same s3 Michonne. This Michonne has a whole family now and doesn’t just get her strength from the dead, she lives for the living. And slays for the living too.👌🏽
I’m glad Aaron is a real one for at least starting to understand where Michonne is coming from with why she feels these communities need to stay in their own lanes. There’s some sadistic people out there, with Alpha being top of the list, and they know that now.
I’m also here for Judith being a woman of her word. She said she’d shoot next time she sees Negan and that’s what she does. On site.👏🏽
Next time we see Michonne is in 9x12 and she’s confronting these deceptive Alexandrians about the radio stuff. She has to give them a dose of reality when she lets them know this sneaky stuff not only could get people killed, it already is getting people killed.
She tells them that putting themselves out there when they don’t have to is dangerous but Father G feels like cutting themselves off from their friends is dangerous too.
Aaron steps up and defends Michonne’s point of view because there are literally masked enemies out there now that confirm exactly what Michonne has been saying.
And Aaron speaks nothing but facts when he says, “We put Michonne in charge of security for a reason. Her judgement has saved us time and time again.” Thank you Aaron for that dose of solid truth. Louder for the people in the back. Michonne’s judgement stay saving lives. 👌
🏽Siddiq brings up the fair and that Michonne turned it down which upsets the people. But, after seeing how the fair went down, I’ll be honest, the petty in me was like…do 👏🏽y’all 👏 🏽see now 👏🏽that 👏🏽Michonne’s 👏🏽insctinct👏🏽 is 👏🏽always👏🏽 right!?
They’re lucky she’s not the “told you so” type because she knew the fair could be dangerous and leave them all vulnerable and well, exactly that happened. Yes Michonne is leading with an iron fist and I’m not saying she’s perfect, but they gotta at least understand that sis has a point. A lot of valid points, if you ask me.
It’s good Michonne is so levelheaded and mature too because a lesser person might’ve been like; you Alexandrians better listen to me...
In Michonne’s first exchange with Negan since the time jump, she shows up to his cell and wants answers as to how he got out and why he came back and what he was planning.
Negan really is still trying to talk all big like he’s in control and tells her how he was in her house and could’ve killed her and a lot of people but Michonne calls him right out and knows he came back cuz he knew there was nothing out there for him. It’s a read. 💯 This whole scene is a read from Michonne and I’m here for it. 😌
Negan again gets too personal when he tells her, “You’re keeping me in here to remind everyone how merciful the great Rick Grimes was.” Keep that name out your mouth, Negan. 😤
And then Negan really tries to offer to be some kind of sounding board for her which is low key insane lol.
I was a little shook that he’d even think Michonne would even consider an offer like that. Sounding board!? Ain’t nothing sound about that man. Being in that cell so long clearly has him not thinking straight.
When he refers to Michonne as the leader, she says she’s not but both Negan and I were like come on girl, you’s the leader. 😂
He mentions he knows she wrote up some constitution, and it was cuter when Rick referred to it as that. Just saying. And then Michonne sees Judith by the window and is surprised and I was like yes girl, your daughter is buddy-buddy with Negan and we need to nip that in the bud asap.
Michonne then confronts Judith at home. But first she watches as Rick and Michonne’s peaceful prince, RJ, sleeps. Precious. ☺️
Literally everytime they show RJ I just feel like we’ve won the best award. Whenever he’s on screen I’m just like...
Michonne asks why Judith was spying on her and Judith says she wasn’t, she went there to see Negan. Michonne is surprised to learn she’s been talking to him and so she asks why. Judith says she feels sorry for him and Michonne is adamant when she says, “He is not your friend, sweetheart.” It’s the truth.
And then Judith has the tween response of, “Well obviously.” Michonne asks, “So if he’s not your friend then why are you talking to him?” and Judith says, “He listens to me. Not everybody does.”
It’s interesting cuz so much of what a parent does can go unnoticed. Michonne listened to Judith with Connie and Co and personally escorted them to Hilltop to keep her promise to Judith. But sometimes when you’re a kid you don’t see that.
This moment between Michonne and Judith reminds me a bit of Rick and Carl’s exchanges in the past. And in both situations, even when they don’t see eye-to-eye, the love and care they have for each other is always so evident. It’s why they so fiercely protect each other.
Michonne tells her, “I don’t want you to ever go near him again.” And Judith asks why not so Michonne explains, “There’s a reason that he’s in a cage, Judith. He is a monster.” And I was like...
And then Judith gets passionate when she says, “No he’s not. He’s a human being.” Girl, if you were in that lineup you’d feel different. 😬 Pretty sure that’s a direct quote from Michonne’s mind. 😂
Michonne clarifies saying, “But he has done monstrous things. He’s killed people. People I cared about. People your dad cared about. And if we ever let him out it would start all over again.”
Judith counters with, “But mom, he did get out. He’s not like that anymore.” And Michonne says, “I get why you want to believe that. But people don’t really change.”
And then Judith responds with the deep statement, “You did.” This really resonates with Michonne. And I think this moment resonates with her for a lot of reasons.
Michonne has changed and evolved a lot over the seasons. Especially from a lone wolf to a valued family member. She also changed leadership styles after going through trauma. So she knows Judith has a point that she changed. And I think it hits her that Judith has noticed these changes within her.
You can tell it stirs up a lot in her so she pauses and tells Judith to go to her room. And Judith again has the tween response of, “Why?” and Michonne is just honest and says, “Cuz I need a minute.” It’s the healthiest approach to be honest like that and take some time to process all this.
Again, it’s tough cuz Michonne is expected to balance so much. She’s expected to be hands on as both the Head of Security/Leader and as a mother of two. It makes it difficult to have moments to breathe. So as weighted as she clearly feels in this moment, I’m glad she at least takes a moment to herself to process.
Michonne has a good heart and a balanced character, so she’s open to hearing people out. And we see that when she has a sweet moment with Aaron where she thanks him and Aaron again reiterates his understanding of where she’s coming from.
Because she’s willing to be a team player, she tells Aaron that she won’t veto the councils desire to go to the fair. She admits she thinks it’s a terrible idea (and she’s right) but she also cares to value their rights, plus it’s for the Kingdom, which she cares for.
Aaron says he hopes they don’t regret this and Michonne agrees and unfortunately they all will.
But at least this moment shows that Michonne is willing to do what the best leaders do which is take a step back every now and then and let people lead themselves.
As people pack up for the fair they stay on this shot of Michonne alone and sitting very contemplatively. And it’s tough seeing how much she has to endure alone when normally Rick would be right by her side.
It’s also tough cuz Michonne’s gut feelings are so right so often, so it can’t be easy to know that her people are willingly putting themselves at risk for something she knows will be a mess. But they lived and they learned…well most of them. 🙃
And that’s everything that goes down with Michonne and her family in the events leading up to the meaty Michonne episode we get in 9x14. It’s a tough one but also really significant so you know I’ll break it down. 👌🏽😭
gifs source: @michonnegrimes
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Harry Styles: Behind the Album
The talking bits in Harry Styles: Behind the Album, enjoy :)
Let’s start with just today in general, just being here, Abbey Road…
I grew up listening to The Beatles. I think if you don’t know the studio, you know the album cover of them walking across the street. And I think when you first come to London, that’s like one of the first things that you go and do is walk across the street and have your picture kind of taken. I live close so I drive past it all the time and you know the fact that there’s always people outside, and the graffiti on the walls, there’s like an aura about the place. The first time coming in and being around the studio to do this, and play the album for the first time, has been quite overwhelming.
I’ve never had the process of making a full album in the way that I did with this one, so playing here I remember where it started. We were in Jamaica for two months. It felt like a little secret. It’s fun to feel like no one knows where you are. It made such a difference from being in a busy city. It created this like total 360 writing experience that I’ve never had before. It was the only thing that was in our lives at the time.
Anytime you’re doing anything different, it’s quite scary. I didn’t know what I wanted it to sound like. I didn’t know what I wanted it to look like. When we got there I think we wrote six songs from the final ten in the first week to ten days of Jamaica. Just a lot happened.
Jamaica was the happiest time I’ve had in a while. It just felt like there was no pressure, at all. And I think coming from, you know, five years of pressure... that was good, it was good, but it felt like pressure. It was amazing to just go polar opposite and have absolutely none.
I just, I really enjoy being private more. Starting the way that everything started, I get to kind of claw a little bit of that back. I don’t feel like people know everything about me now. And there was definitely a time where I felt like people knew everything about me and I realized I didn’t like that. Kind of also wanted to let the work do the talking a little bit. I mean definitely part of my ego wanted to see if I could write something that people liked without knowing everything about me.
When you leave a band or boy-band, you feel like you have to go the complete other direction and kind of say “Don’t worry everyone! I hated it! It wasn’t me!” I loved it. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for that band. And I don’t feel like I have to apologize for that. I never felt like I was faking it. The thing with the band was that it went so well, from the start, that it always felt like everything had to get a little bigger each time. And I think at some point, it’s quite stressful. There’s only so high you can go. At some point you’re not gonna make that expectation. Going out on a high and now feeling like I’m starting a fresh, came to terms with the fact that, that was so great and if I never get to do that on that level again, that’s okay.
So after One Direction, I kind of forced myself to take some time off and do absolutely nothing. I kind of spent a lot of time at home with my family and some friends and kind of made myself get bored. Which was nice, but also made me realize very quickly that I wanted to start writing. I felt like I had so much in my head that I wanted to say and wanted to write down. I was dying to be in the studio doing some music.
I was like, the one with the long hair. I’d had it for like so much of One Direction. And cutting it off just felt very much like starting afresh. Yeah… I was about to personify my hair then I decided not to.
I wrote most of the album with Mitch and he now plays guitar in the band. There was a guitarist who was supposed to come in and couldn’t make it. Mitch was Ryan’s roommate, so Ryan who’s engineering in the studio said “I can see if Mitch will come down”. And the second day he couldn’t come cause he had a shift at the pizza shop. And he came in and he just he was just a monster. The thing with Mitch is that in something that felt so new to me to do it this way, he was someone else who’d never done it before. He was working in a pizza shop and had never been in a studio. It felt like we kind of had each other to work out together and that helped it have someone who had no preconceived notions about me or who I was or anything, he’s a legend.
Jeff Bhasker is a producer. I think the thing that I loved about Jeff is that listening to things that he’s worked on and it all being so different made it so exciting for me cause I didn’t feel like “Okay, if I go and work with him, it’s all gonna sound like this.”. He’s not really interested in the trends or following that. He’s always been the one that kind of makes something sound new and interesting. He also pushed me a lot and I think it was really important for me to have someone be like “This isn’t good enough for what you should be doing.”. I think being around someone so creative is really infectious. It’s amazing to see someone who ‘s absolutely themselves. And I think if you have any reservations about ever doing that, being around someone constantly who is just themselves no matter what, that is infectious and it spreads. I just think he made this environment where I’ve never felt judged by him, ever. And I think it’s important to be able to… you know I wrote a lot of bad songs before I wrong any good ones, and he’s really good at like finding the good bits in things.
We’d had about a week where we were in a total hole and couldn’t do anything and we all started doubting the album. And then, you know for the first time in a long time, I’d actually been out and done something and then came back to the studio and decided to write about that. Carolina had the exact little piece that had been missing. It was the little bit of fun that we wanted and the little bit of fun that we didn’t have.
Have you seen the girl since?
I have.
Does she know a songs been written about her?
She does not. But her names in it so I’m a bit fucked with that one.
Do you like it when people have written songs about you?
I don’t know if I’ve seen any. I wouldn’t be able to confirm nor deny. In the same way that I think they will hear it for the first time and think “Absolutely, no doubt, that happened. This is about me.” I’ve done that as well.
To have been part of a moment that means something to someone enough for them to write a song about it, is a huge compliment.
But if that song wasn’t complimentary?
Let’s move on.
The song that kind of made the album feel like it was starting to actually be an album, of a group of songs, was Sign of the Times. I finished lunch early and went and sat at the piano for like five minutes. It was the quickest song writing on the album. I think we’d finished it in, minus the choir, about three hours. It became like a bridge into trying a bunch of different stuff. Adding the choir on, it’s weird cause you don’t expect to feel emotional about seeing stuff like that until it happens. Having a song that I’d written and having these twenty-six gospel singers, with a conductor, and me sitting there… it just felt like it was growing into like its own thing. It was pretty amazing.
I first heard the idea for the video on an email and they told me I’d be going 20ft above ground from a helicopter. As we were kind of counting down to doing the video, each phone call with them became 20ft became 50ft and 50ft became 100ft and suddenly I’m hanging 1500ft in the air thinking, “They told me this was gonna be 20ft and I can’t wait to get down.”. It was crazy. There was so many moment during the video where I just thought, “How is this a music video and how’ve my manager and anyone let me be attached to a helicopter in the middle of the sky?”. It was insane, like walking on the floor felt different after the first time I’d been up.
Today was a good day. It felt really good.
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I love this chapter as long as I can completely ignore the real world implications behind Gabi and Kaya’s talk. The Jewish parallels were one thing, because at least the Marley Eldians were clearly the victims, but Gabi listing off imperial japan’s worst war crimes and the narrative framing her as being wrong for feeling bad about them left a really bad taste in my mouth. In the story context, she’s wrong. If you look at what isayama is saying about the real world through her... yikes.
So, I have never once taken a world history class in my life, and that’s where I’m left approaching this kind of thing. It makes it easier to let fiction be fiction, but obviously that leaves gaps. I’m not very knowledgeable about a lot of stuff I should be.
Starting with the fictional side, I will say that I don’t think Gabi is presented as being wrong for being upset over all the horrors of the Eldian Empire. Her target is wrong, but if there’s one thing the story has always been upfront about, it’s that genocide and war crimes are wrong.
That’s why you have the Restorationists clinging to the idea that their people never did such things. They invent their own history where the Eldians were the good guys and the rest of the world couldn’t handle it.
Again, that’s something that is vividly depicted as misguided, and it’s deeply connected to Grisha’s own ruin. The man who’s claiming Eldia could do no wrong is the man who abuses his son into becoming a fanatic capable of turning his parents in for the cause.
Paradis is not the Eldian Empire. Characters wanting it to be are painted as dangerous, and they are. Paradis, very specifically, is an island built by someone who wanted the Eldian Empire to be overthrown. Karl Fritz sought peace. He locks himself and his people away, and hands over the fate of the remnants to Marley to do with as they will, since they are the primary victims.
As part of this, Karl rewrites the memories of everyone he takes to his island, and murders the rest.
Comparing Paradis to the current Marley, you’ve got easily defined good guys and bad guys.
Paradis in a vacuum is fucking horrifying. It’s built on one ruler making executive decisions for thousands of people. He enforces those decisions by stealing their memories of the world and murdering anyone he might not be able to control. His closest associates are aware of this, and continue the program. For a hundred years, the people with the greatest chance to change things are forced to follow a dead man’s will.
After Wall Maria falls, twenty percent of their population is thrown to the wolves so that everyone else can live. They don’t call it a culling. They call it a mission to retake the wall.
Twelve-year-olds join the military because that’s when they are eligible, and it’s a mark of shame not to. During their training, it is a common occurrence for recruits to end up dead.
Before Uprising, the government is still fine telling its people lies to get rid of what they perceive as threats to their power. They frame an entire military branch to maintain the status quo. They express willingness to let even more of their own people die to keep themselves alive.
The new government is established with the hopes of doing better, but as we see in this very chapter, things are sliding. A regime that starts out with the intent of being honest with the people is putting soldiers in jail for telling those people the truth. They have offered their verbal consent to use their monarch as a breeding tool so that her children will be weapons of war.
Paradis is not all that great. Parts of it actively suck. The reason they’re generally cast as the heroes is because they are working to undo the cycles that created Paradis. The reason the story is so dark at the moment is that it looks like they’ve failed.
Then we take a look at Marley, and… oy.
Marley uses up Eldian bodies like gunpowder. From a very young age, every little Eldian is taught that they’re making up for the sins of their former Empire, and the roots of that Empire still exist on the devils’ island. In order to prove that they are not like them, they’re actively encouraged to become Warriors. Weapons of mass destruction that will expire in thirteen years.
For Eldian children in Marley, one of the greatest things you can wish for ends with being eaten alive. That is the grand dream. Laying down your life for the lie that your people will be recognized as good Eldians, not like the bad Eldians.
Very straightforward, very fucked up.
The initial snag in it is that Marley itself has taken over from the Eldian Empire. They do not have the range the Empire is said to, but they use the same tools. They don’t force people to have children, but Eldians in internment camps know that if their child becomes a Warrior they receive special treatment. They go to war with child soldiers as their primary weapons, and terrorize their enemies. They rob Eldians of their sentience and throw them to a battlefield they have no choice in entering.
For the majority of the story on Paradis, titans are a force of nature. They’re mindless eating machines. Much of the terror they inspire is linked to that. There is nothing there to negotiate with. There is nothing you can do to bargain or beg. When you come against a titan, you will die, and it will not care. It is an inhuman, indifferent monster.
The walls live in fear of them. Not actively until the fall of Wall Maria, but every part of their lives, as far as they’re aware, has been designed to hide them away from the titans.
Titans are a weapon of mass destruction by virtue of their size, but their greatest use is as a weapon of fear.
Marley utilizes that fear against their enemies and their own recruits. They have no qualms setting the monsters loose. They have no problem creating more of the monsters that symbolize the terror of the Eldian Empire. They have no compunctions about drilling the fear of becoming those monsters into every Eldian child so they won’t dare disobey an order or question their lives.
“Eldians spent thousands of years using the power of the titans to rule and oppress the world! They stole away the cultures of other peoples! They forced them to have children they didn’t want! They killed countless human beings!”
Those are the crimes of the Eldian Empire, for which Paradis is blamed.
Every single point is something that Marley is actively, presently, complicit in.
Marley has created a boogeyman in Paradis for their Eldian prisoners, and they’re attempting to translate that to the world at large. All these evil things? All this awfulness? The only cause of it is a dead Empire. Their sins were so great that it is just to continue punishing every bloodline connected to it.
Pay no attention to the present day. All that matters is what they did.
From a real world context, Paradis is… possibly a dodgy bit of wish fulfillment. It isn’t simply that a hundred years with no contact with the rest of the world has gone by; every person on the island is forcibly enslaved by their King’s revisionist history. Except for key figures in a corrupt cabinet, the citizens of Paradis have been supernaturally removed from the actions of the Eldian Empire.
The extensiveness of that removal means that Paradis is as close to a blameless victim as you can make out of a country. Even though the Empire Paradis is initially part of is definitely not.
In the real world, no, people do not have magical brainwashing powers. They still have corrupt officials invested in denying the truth of their nations’ past crimes and teaching that denial to citizens as gospel. There are atrocities that have been committed that countries would rather deny entirely than admit to being an agent of.
As I understand it (which is an understanding that is severely limited), the specific language Gabi uses is a red flag, because those are all the things Japan insists did not happen, and for very obvious reasons, that rightfully pisses off a lot of people.
Putting that justified outrage in the mouth of a child who has been abused and brainwashed into believing that the evil she is fighting for is really the good guys’ squad… I can see why that would be a concern to audience members. Especially the ones who remember the tweet from a few years back. There are some topics that are best received with caution.
The problem I have with drawing a direct line to the real world is that you have to cut the context almost clean off to get there.
No one except for the Restorationist cult thinks the Eldian Empire was a good thing (and the framing cuts them to pieces for it). Everything we’ve heard about it suggests that it’s better off not existing. Karl Fritz, who is perfectly fine committing mass brainwashing and genocide against his allies, designs the Eldian Empire’s downfall because it is just that awful. He is the highest moral standard of that era.
He’s a dick, in case I haven’t made that clear enough.
What the Eldian Empire is said to have done is probably accurate enough, but Paradis is another victim of its crimes, not a perpetrator denying its involvement. Again with the conceivably dodgy wish fulfillment, but as far as the story is concerned, Paradis has had nothing to do with the rest of the world for a hundred years.
Marley is claiming that crimes that took place a hundred years ago–crimes that Marley itself adopted, crimes that no living person (except maybe the Founding Titan) remembers–is reason enough to justify slaughtering all of them.
That’s the rhetoric Gabi has been indoctrinated with her entire life.
My world history is nonexistent, but I do know a thing or two about American history. The crimes Gabi shouts that Eldians are guilty of are crimes that every perpetrator of genocide in the world has been guilty of. It is not a particularly creative endeavor. The United States slaughtered Native Americans, poisoned them, raped them… honestly, it’d be faster to come up with human rights violations they didn’t check off.
The world Isayama has concocted is one where the people who are loudest about the evils of genocide are the ones currently committing it.
I do not know how loaded it is for a Japanese man to be using that language in such a way. The real world context is lost on me. However, the fictional context is on the up and up:
It is wrong that these things happen. Marley has weaponized that morality in its Eldian citizens. They believe in that wrongness so thoroughly that they’ve become blind to their participation in it.
The monsters aren’t titans. The machinations of evil don’t belong to a single bloodline. The monsters are humans.
I don’t think Isayama is always the most subtle of authors. Especially when it comes to darkness. Several people I know stopped watching the anime when its second season opened with Mike’s death. They felt it was gratuitous and unnecessary. Most of my complaints about the series follow that line. When he wants to make something obvious, he hammers it in.
Marleyan Eldians don’t just wear identifying markers in their internment camp, it’s a damn star.
Isayama borrowing from the real world to enhance the reality of his fiction is a tried practice, but when you’re writing a story about the evils of genocide, and your borrowings include some of the language discussions of real world genocide has brought about…
You have to work to keep the fiction as the primary consideration when someone is overly familiar with the reality it comes from. Otherwise that reality imposes itself on the fiction.
When the reality you’re borrowing from is at odds with its use in the fictional story… Congratulations, you have formed a mess, you should have maybe not done that. Most of the people upset about genocide nowadays are not perpetrating it or hysterically brainwashed. That role tends to go to the deniers.
The story is blunt enough about what it thinks of genocide that one of its common criticisms is that the antagonists are cartoonishly evil. Its morals and themes are not remotely subtle.
That doesn’t mean its application of language can’t be really stupid.
I don’t think there’s anything suspect about Kaya and Gabi’s conversation from a fictional perspective, and even from a meta perspective, it’s still being very clear about what it thinks of the harms done to children by evil, and what’s defined as evil unquestionably is.
Gabi isn’t wrong to hate the evil in the world. She’s been lied to about where it is. She has a stronger connection to the Eldian Empire than the people of Paradis, but she doesn’t hate herself or her fellow Marleyan Eldians. Just Paradis.
All present day Eldians are victims of the Eldian Empire and Marley. Paradis comes to be from the last Eldian Empire King ripping away their agency, and Marley makes sure every Eldian under their watch knows to hate themselves, and that the world never forgets to hate their abilities.
The story is very anti-genocide. It’s very supportive of the victims. The conversation might have shades of a reality that doesn’t belong to those messages, but the overwhelming feel is that these are children, and because some people thought genocide was a gr9 strategic aim, they’re all horrifically traumatized.
So they help each other.
Falco offers Kaya closure. Kaya offers them a way to make it back home. They’ve been too hurt to want anything but healing, so when they see someone in need of it, they reach out a hand.
I don’t know much about the real world, but… the victories in this series are achieved when people embrace their idealism, and try to be better than what came before them. That isn’t a story I have a problem with.
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1st March >> Daily Reflection/Commentary on Today’s Gospel Reading for Roman Catholics on Friday, Seventh Week in Ordinary Time – Gospel (Mark 10:1-12).
Jesus is approached by some Pharisees and they ask him if it is lawful for a man to divorce his wife. We are told they asked him this question in order to put him to the test. It is another example of their efforts to find Jesus on the wrong side of the Mosaic law.
As frequently happens, Jesus answers with another question: “What did Moses command you?” They reply that Moses allowed a man to make out a writ of dismissal and so divorce his wife. They are quoting from the Book of Deuteronomy which says:
Supposing a man has taken a wife and consummated the marriage; but she has not pleased him and he has found some impropriety of which to accuse her; so he has made out a writ of divorce for her and handed it to her and then dismissed her from his house; she leaves his home and goes away to become the wife of another man. If this other man takes a dislike to her and makes out a writ of divorce for her and hands it to her and dismisses her from his house (or if this other man who took her as his wife happens to die), her first husband, who has repudiated her, may not take her back as his wife now that she has been defiled in this way” (Deut 24:1-4).
Jesus clearly is not happy with this teaching and says Moses allowed divorce to accommodate the moral weakness of the people (that is, primarily the men!). He challenges this stand with words from the creation story in Genesis: “God made them male and female… This is why a man must leave father and mother and the two become one body” (Gen 1:27; 2:24). After marriage, then, he says that there are not two separate people but one body. And from that Jesus concludes: “What God has united, humans must not divide.”
When they were back in the ‘house’ (that house again, the place where Jesus’ disciples are gathered about him – the church), Jesus’ disciples expressed their misgivings about what they had just heard. But Jesus went even further: a man who divorces his wife and marries another is guilty of adultery and a woman who divorces her husband and marries another is also guilty of adultery. He does not recognise divorce. One gets the impression that this teaching of Jesus came as something of a shock to them.
In a sound and enduring marriage the words of Jesus are realised. One meets people who have been married for decades and are as deeply in love with each other, in fact more so, than on the day of their wedding. One has only to see bereaved spouses to realise the terrible void that is left when a partner of many years dies. They feel as if a part of themselves had been torn from them. It can take years for life to come back to some kind of normalcy.
However, in our own day divorce has become a very common phenomenon. In some societies, the divorce rate is almost half of all marriages and in most societies all over the world it is increasing. Marriages between Catholics are also seriously affected. Obviously it is a very complex question and cannot be dealt with here.
Perhaps two comments could be made:
Jesus is attacking a situation where men, when they got tired of their spouse and found someone more interesting, simply wrote a piece of paper and unilaterally dumped the first wife, leaving her high and dry. Jesus rightly deplores such a situation. His final remark indicates something new for his time (and often not yet accepted in our own): equal rights and equal responsibilities for both partners. Women are not commodities to be picked up and dropped off at will.
Divorce as we experience it in our society today often involves a genuine breakdown in the marriage relationship which neither partner wishes and which is a cause of deep pain and suffering to both sides. It may be due to some element of immaturity at the time of marriage or the partners growing apart as they develop as persons. Whatever the reason, this situation is quite different from the one Jesus is speaking of. One feels that that Jesus would be most sympathetic to the painful breakdowns of marriage which happen today and, as Christians, we too should try to empathise with people in such a situation.
Most people enter into marriage with good will and with the intention of having an enduring, lifelong relationship. It is a hope sometimes not realised. At the same time, we also have in our society today a pluralistic approach to the concept of marriage from merely seeing it as two people living together “as long as it feels good” to those who believe in marriage as a permanent relationship “in good times and bad”. And everything in between.
We need to remember that the Church accepts that marriages can break down and that for various reasons the couple may need to have their separation made legal by a divorce settlement in court. What the Church forbids is remarriage. However, many Catholics do remarry in a civil ceremony and we need to deal with such people with great sympathy and understanding if they express a sincere desire to remain active members of the Christian community.
The ideal that Jesus proposes remains but a changing society may need a different approach to marriage where the emphasis is more on the relationship and less on the legal contract. A truly pastoral Church will need to help people live the Gospel in such a changing sociological situation. As always, the solution will lie in answering the question: “In this situation, what is the loving thing to do as far as all are concerned?”
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A homophobic ad in 2018? You’re kidding me, right? Lmao
Look, if any of yall are Jehovah’s witnesses or follow their practices, I have nothing against you personally. I’m also aware that many of you might not agree with this commercial either, or homophobia in general. But it’s this type of shit that just makes me beyond frustrated, to the point where I can’t even tell if it’s a joke or if it’s being serious.
God, where do I even begin. First of all, can we talk about the PRODUCTION QUALITY of this shit? It looks like it was ripped straight from a pixar film, which is NOT a good thing. It just shows how big these organisations have become, how they can afford to have their anti-gay PSA’s looking like it could be an animated movie.
It’s even worse when you consider the fact that they’re aiming this at - that’s right- CHILDREN. Now instead of watching finding Nemo and the Incredibles, the children of these religious groups get to watch “Lesson 22, One man, one woman”. What kind of sick parents do you have to be to essentially deprive these children of their childhoods and force them to watch something like this? It’s organised brainwashing, you’re preying on the ones that can’t think for themselves.
Again, I’m not against the religion or its values or anyone in particular, not even the fucktards who made this video. But I’m disgusted and mortified by the fact that this video is aimed at children.
I even had some people question me saying that it wasn’t aimed at children in particular, just Jehovah’s witnesses in general. Um, I’m sorry but if you watched the video, I question your judgement if you really think that this video was anything but a message to kids.
It just so happens to be a well-made animation film, the genre of videos children tend to like. There’s a lot of colors and warmth and easy to understand analogies - perfect for catching the attention of children. The main character that we learn through in this video? A child. Even the gross, condenscending tone they use in the video is the type of voice you would hear kindergarten teachers use, like, it’s not that deep people.
Legit, some of the things they say in this video is just fucking ridiculous. They literally said that following Jehovah’s “standards” (aka not being gay) in order to get to “paradise”, is the “same thing” as going through airport security and making sure you didn’t bring anything that “wasn’t allowed” on the plane. Seriously? Oh right, so when I die, I just need to make sure that I put my homosexuality away to the side before I travel through security, then I could go to paradise! They make it sound like it’s something you can easily change or discard even, when it’s honestly anything but that. I can’t imagine being a child or a teen that’s gay and go on with life knowing that I won’t be able to go to this “paradise” just because of the gender I like.
Also, I know this is basically how religion works and all, but they really be acting like Jehovah and Jesus’s saying are absolute truth. Like the way the mother immediately went off about Jehovah’s standards and sayings once she heard how “Carrie drew two mommies” as opposed to one dad and one mom, (oof, two women, married? wHaT blAspHEmy). I don’t know, it kinda rubs me the wrong way. Especially the part where she says “and Jesus said the SAME thing!” as if it was a revelation, and like its absolute PROOF that Jenovah’s words are final. They just keep having the same people validate each other’s statements, which kinda just reduces their followers to sheep.
Their video is also very problematic cause they try to pretend they’re not actually against gay marriage. Never do they say ‘oh, being gay is wrong’, it’s always super cryptic and tries to act non-discriminatory. Especially in the end when the mom asks what the daughter should say to carrie, and she says something along the line of “I’ll tell her about the paradise, the animals, and the resurrection!”. It just screams positivity and enlightenment, when in reality she basically just told carrie that her parents are going to hell. Their tone doesn’t match their implications.
A child who is only a few years old, deserves to play around and watch cartoons and read books, not listen to gospel that teaches them that being gay is a sin. A child should have the right to be able to think for themselves and not have to be told whats right or wrong based on someone elses standards. A child who is gay or anything but the norm shouldn’t have to feel that they have to hide or change a huge aspect of themselves just to follow “Jehovah’s standards”.
Just to make it clear because I know some of ya’ll might will take this all wrong, I AM NOT AGAINST THE JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES, CHRISTIANITY, OR THEIR VALUES. Even though I disagree with some of their principles, people are allowed to believe in whatever they want as long as they don’t shove it in my face. What I can’t tolerate though is the fact that they’re attempting to target children and teach them that discrimination and changing who you are for someone else is ok.
I just hope that the people who made this video would take some time to reflect on the fact that they’re taking advantage of children’s impressionable minds and stop making these so-called “lessons”. We’re in 2018 already, stop paraphrasing books written 4000 years ago.
I’m done ranting. It seems like youtube has taken the video down, or maybe the channel who posted it took it down, which is a good start. Hopefully they stop using the video altogether, but I sincerely doubt that.
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Jeremy Jones
"There are a lot of good ways that the church can engage the world but they don't. Instead they focus on other things, or worse yet, themselves. You see it a lot in Africa, especially with the prosperity gospel, where the focus is on wealth and health. The world needs a good church now more than ever."
Jeremy is a first-year ThM candidate at the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry. Before coming to Boston, he spent three years pursuing a Master of Divinity degree at Africa International University in Nairobi, Kenya. He participated in the “Theological German” course during the 2018 Summer Language Program at HDS, and is now currently applying to doctoral programs.
Availability of Vast Resources
My experience at the Summer Language Program was really fantastic. It was also a great segue into life here in Boston for me. I chose to come to Boston for programs like this, and also because of the BTI. It's really great that so many students can take advantage of the many resources that are available in the area through cross-registration. And our teacher, Karin Grundler-Whitacre, was just wonderful. Despite the compressed format of the SLP, she made learning German quickly both manageable and rewarding.
My time at the SLP is already paying off in my research and writing. It has also been helpful in applying for PhD programs and ultimately makes me more connected to global scholarship. The chance to connect with other students outside of my school during the summer session was also invaluable. I can't thank Dr. Grundler-Whitacre and HDS enough for opening the doors to this program to non-HDS students. It's a great benefit to the academic community here.
Hearing the Message
I grew up in an Episcopal church (kind of). I don’t think my parents were really strong believers, but we went, because that’s what people do on Christmas and Easter and stuff. So I was involved in the church somewhat but never really understood it or believed what they had to say. Long after my childhood, before I graduated from my undergraduate program, a friend of mine invited me to play bass guitar at a little church plant in Aurora, CO. It was like their first or second service and I went and I heard the message and I felt like I’d never heard anything like it before, even though I had been in church quite a bit. From that day, I believed the message and my life has been different ever since.
Time went on and I was in the church playing music most of the time—guitar, bass, piano, singing sometimes and doing some short-term mission work here and there. Eventually I got to a point where I wanted something deeper. There’s a verse in the Bible that talks about the difference between spiritual “milk” and “solid food.” There’s a point where you get tired of drinking milk and you want something a bit stronger and heartier. I realized I just wasn’t getting what I needed spiritually from the church experience.
I felt there was a big gap between what you learn at church and what a seminary can do for you. This is one thing I would like to help bridge at some point. There are some people in the church who want to learn more and go deeper in their studies but it feels like they can’t do that without getting into a big program. There are many resources available but in many ways there is still a disconnect between the seminary and the church.
For me, the best option was to make that leap. I decided I wanted to go to seminary and learn more about the word of God and about ministry. I was at a point where I was considering the possibility of doing ministerial work full time. It was quite a big transition for me. I hadn’t been in school for a few years and the program I had done previously was in music. Going from a career in music to pursuing a degree heavy in reading and writing was a big change. But I’m really glad I did it—and I’m here now, and I’m going to continue on!
Making the Leap
People in Kenya used to ask me how I found the school, and they always thought it was a weird answer that I found it online, but that’s a whole other story for another time. But really, I was just looking for schools, and I was interested in serving in Africa because I had done some short-term mission work there before. I really wanted to learn more about the people and the culture and what ministry was like there. So I was searching for schools online and I found a Wikipedia page with a list of all the seminaries in Africa. I saw that there was one in Nairobi. I didn’t think much about it at first and thought I’d continue searching for something more realistic, or at least something closer to home. But then I ended up returning to Kenya a few months later and I was able to visit that school and see the campus and talk with the administration.
One of the people I was with said, “You know, you can stay in the U.S., study the books and then come back to Kenya and learn the culture. Or you can just come here now and learn the books and the culture at the same time.” That was a deciding insight for me. It made a lot of sense—we read the same books, and they have good teachers there from all over the world and it is a really cool intercultural environment with people from all over Africa so I thought, “Yeah, let’s do that.”
I was there for three years. I did come back to the States twice during my program, but only briefly. Now that I’m back here to stay indefinitely, America kind of feels like a whole new country again for me in some ways. When I was there in Kenya I was really trying to immerse myself in the culture and with the people as much as I could, probably to a fault, actually. When it came down to it, I would prefer to spend time with the local people rather than engage with other Americans. But ultimately that's why I wanted to be there. I didn’t just go move to Kenya to spend time with other Americans, I moved there to understand African life, from Africans.
I started to get comfortable with the life there, living as an American can live in Nairobi. So when I came back here, it was kind of a big shock, to be honest. I had always experienced some reverse culture shock after leaving Africa on my previous trips, but this time things were a little different because now I am with my wife, who is from Ethiopia. The first time she ever left East Africa was when we came to visit the States with me last year, for only a couple of months. So the permanent move has been a bit tough in some ways. We had a wonderful community in Kenya who we grew together with for the few years we were there. And my wife had lived in Kenya longer than I, a total of seven years, so she really felt like it was home. It’s a whole different world over there, and coming here we had to adapt to a whole other way of life again. But we just rely on God and we pray a lot and we trust that He has a plan for us. We have met some wonderful people here that have been helpful in our transition, and we thank God for that.
At the same time that it's tough, it's also exciting. Especially watching my wife, and seeing America through her perspective has been really neat. She sees things that you and I would take for granted. In a weird way, I almost feel like I’m growing up again, experiencing this transition with her.
The More You Learn
It’s hard to describe how different it is from the States unless you’ve been to Africa. Even though Kenya is probably one of the more Westernized countries, that’s only on the surface level. Everything “Western” you do, you still have to add the African culture to it, especially in seminary, I think. There’s someone who said that Africans are notoriously religious. Before and after just about every class, we would pray. Sometimes we would hear testimonies, or maybe a student had a specific need and the class would talk about it for the first half hour, and finally maybe an offering would be taken in class to help them out. I was there for three years and it seems like the more you learn, the more you realize how much you don’t know and how different some things really are. I can’t really do justice to the culture as a whole, but at least this one example from my experience may shed some light.
It was really interesting because they use the American system of education, with lectures, discussions, the semester system, and everything. But being in courses with others who were so very different from myself, hearing all their stories and their points of view, just left me amazed at how although we were studying the same topics, in the same systems, the underlying processes were very different, and yet we were still able to make lasting connections with one another through our studies.
A lot of the learning happens outside of the classroom. When I first moved there I lived with a pastor from Cameroon. We bonded immediately. He helped me learn how things operated at the school. He was a wonderful guy and I learned a lot from him. He tried to show me how Africans engage in things differently than Westerners do. People there are very hospitable, even to the point of being extreme about it. He was explaining to me once that when people come over to your house randomly and unannounced it’s not that they’re trying to interrupt your day or anything. It’s just that they have something burning in their heart and they need to come and see you and say “Hi,” and be in your house and welcome you, especially if you are new to the area. People are really welcoming and talkative and communal and engaging with one another. That’s what is most important for most people, and that is what comes through in just about everything you do there. Here, I think people tend to be very competitive and individualistic. Of course you see that in Nairobi, too, but in the more traditional cultures the focus is not just on achieving, it is achieving together that matters.
This experience definitely changed my spiritual life. And that's what I wanted but I didn't really know that before I went. My relationship with God has been deepened and strengthened. There were ways that I had to rely on God like I never had before, living in a new place, a new culture, with people I didn’t know, and not having any Western things to grab onto. I dove in headfirst and challenged myself not to hold onto things that were comfortable for me. Finally that became one of the biggest lessons I learned from my experience, to not reach out to things that were easy and comfortable but to make a shift to reaching out to God when times were tough, or even not that tough, but just the day-to-day issues that can get us down. In all of those moments I learned to reach out to God and find comfort. It took going to the extreme to get there, but now my spiritual life has been forever strengthened because of this experience.
My relationship with the church is more thoughtful now, too. I expect more of the church. Before, I think I was just frustrated. But now I expect a lot from it. In some ways I think the church has been lagging behind. There are a lot of good ways that the church can engage the world but they don't. Instead they focus on other things, or worse yet, themselves. You see it a lot in Africa, especially with the prosperity gospel, where the focus is on wealth and health. The world needs a good church now more than ever.
Interview and photos by Anaïs Garvanian
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LIKE EASTER
Original title: Like Easter.
Prompt: Easter holydays, Italy, Holy Week.
Warnings: reflections on my catholic faith.
Genre: comedy, family, romantic, friendship.
Characters: Penelope Garcia, Luke Alvez, (JJ, Spencer), O.C.
Pairing: Garvez.
Note: oneshot.
Legend: 💏😘❗🎈.
Song mentioned: none.
Easter holidays and Luke have a problem to solve: his grandmother waits for him in Rome for the Holy Week and wants that he’s accompanied by a girlfriend; Penelope, on the other hand, feels cast aside as the “painted eggs” festivity.
Like Easter- Masterlist
MY OTHER GARVEZ STORIES
Part 9
Friday night. Day spent doing tourist, but enough distracted. Too lost one in the eyes of other, one on the lips of other, to notice the monuments. They behave like teen-agers. Each phrase, each pretext is good to stay closer, to search the physical contact with the other. The mouth.
Day of fasting. No problem. Who is hungry, when the stomach is full of butterflies? She never understood this way of saying. However, the result is the same. The only thing she needs is him. They kiss, but even talk, a lot. About what they were before, about their past. Luke tells her some episodes of his period with the task-force. He explains the difficult living in war-zones. She feels the necessity to verify, like S. Thomas who put his finger in the holes of Jesus’s body, for feeling in her turn, with her hands, his wounds. She listens him explain his first days in the BAU, like profiler in training, and his lack of understanding why the computer technician, of whom, like it or not, he heard so much about, why she treated so coldly only him. She listens him while he tells her that he gets the right conclusions, but however he had still thinking about her. That he had realized the situation was graved, when he found her in the field, on Bradenton, and, without time to recover, Reid was detained in police custody, he had saw her so fragile, for the first time she hadn’t the force to make fun of him. The final straw was seeing her crying openly.
And after this talk, Luke had patiently listened her saying her version. And above all, they realized to feel the same doubts and fears. They no need any more (if they ever had) to show themselves like a couple.
Each time that she feels wavering, she turns towards him, looking at him and some courage revives her. It’s the time.
Nothing that she had even seen in her life, equals one spectacle like this. The city seems to have drifted out of historical fantasy videogame. All of those monuments, those works created by man, so many time ago. Yet, only this could be enough to shocked her, left breathless, despite she had seen this already during the week. But this time there is something more: the night. A night that seems to come from medieval times, from that period when darkness was something very different to what is in the present-day: because with the possibility to make rise the sun in every moment, we lost that emptiness, that ancestral fear. And then, the people: so many, more than during a concert, at most comparable with Woodstock. So many people, that for a while she feels lost, she is scared to losing herself. She turns to make sure that Luke is still there, and he seems to understand what crosses her mind. He takes her hand and squeezes it strongly.
And suddenly, the murmur dies away and then, a man dressed in white starts to speak. The Pope seems extremely human, one of many. He speaks in Italian and she doesn’t understand, or almost. Luckily, most is written in the book she keeps with one hand. Penelope glances at the woman closer to her. She smiles, with tears in her eyes. He it’s from the end of the world. Very close to the place that her family it’s from.
A chorus starts to sing. Even this is scenography sign that contributes to make her feel like they were in another century. Use of Latin. That language so… inexplicable.
-1st Station. Jesus is condemned to death.- just when the chorus is silenced, a female voice starts to speak, very coached. Then, that of another man seems to find a correspondence with the liturgical books that are read. Penelope realizes that she is keep her breath just when Luke’s grandmother coughs, bringing her out from this kind of trance. It’s a weird thing: she doesn’t comprehend what she hears, just the tone and to understand she must strive to follow it on the book. Yet, even if she can’t understand, something penetrates in her.
-2nd Station: Jesus is denied by Peter.- again, that chant so weird, those voices that seem to come from another dimension. After other explanations, read by persuasive voice that transport her in that universe and, simultaneously backwards in time: and not 1000 years ago, but much closer, just few years ago; after this, everyone around her say the prayer, even Luke and Rosa, is she the only one that didn’t know it? Yet, she recognizes the rhythm and inside, she knows what it’s about. Patern noster. But she doesn’t know these words, she learns it in Italian, but this is… Latin. And she feels in difficulty. For the umpteenth time. Yes, the words are printed there, before her eyes, but she doesn’t have that accent, and… if she would wrong, if someone would notice it?
-3rd Station: Jesus and Pilatus.- reading that part of the Gospel, she remembers what she had feel the first time that she found herself before this: indignation. But finally a way to say had found sense. Wash their hands like Pontius Pilates. It was a horrible thing. Almost as bad as commit a crime. She is deeply agree with who, since the beginning of time, has said that the real problem aren’t the ones who hurt, but those do nothing for stop it, that show themselves indifferent, like this had nothing to do with them.
-4th Station: Jesus king of Glory.- the idea of crown of thorns is so… tragic. No one can imagine what kind of pain He would feel. The soldiers’ mockery, those ignorant, symbol of the whole humanity for which Him had wanted to die, He was willing to sacrifice Himself totally. Everything had re-emerged in Penelope’ memory now. She is used it with different words, but the meaning is the same. Is universal. And this latter is the correct translate of Catholicism.
-5th Station: Jesus carries His cross.- the Cross. That symbol is turned as much absolute, because no only Christians use to say or to consider a pain, a serious suffering, like a Cross. Because in the end, even those who professes themselves atheist or agnostic, that one having fun mocking religion, sending their invectives more towards church leaders, rather than towards Jesus. Because He, like Buddha and Gandhi, was been first of all a good man, a model that transcends geographic, social and human borders.
-6th Station: Jesus and Simon of Cyrene.- one part of Via Crucis that ever puts her on the spot. Because it would’ve been better if this Simon had been happy to take Jesus’ Cross. And instead he behaves like any other man, and after all, even Peter had denies His Lord, on three occasions! And he’s become the first Pope of the World, the rock on which the Church itself was build. But this Simon doesn’t want to be put in the middle of these things, that don’t concern him. He doesn’t want to risk his security of humanity for something far more potentially upper, but uncertain.
-7th Station: Jesus and the Daughters of Jerusalem.- this time the tone of the woman who is reading is more high, or rather more serious, less artificial, more active, and following almost simultaneous translation, the blonde agrees. There is almost bitter irony in her voice. And how she can’t think about all feminicide that are committed each day in the world? Then, with the work that they do… for the first time since the rite started, she look at Luke, who never had problem with Italian and so he follows the procession, without the use of book.
-8th Station: Jesus clothes are taken away.- in his hand there is a light of a lantern, like those of everyone. The other hand is ever held in hers. He not letting go her hand a second. Occasionally some fingers seem to brush her palm, sweetly. But this doesn’t take her mind off things that words, and mood is giving her. Another, one more humiliation. Ever those ignorant soldiers, it got to the point that they playing dice His clothes.
-9th Station: Jesus is nailed to the cross.- she feels angst flowing in her heart, hearing and reading these words. It’s inconceivable. Yet, even in the period when she was convinced that she no longer believes in Him, or that she wanted to feel Him far away, even in those moments she couldn’t help but be impressed, each time she heard someone talk about these things. Rossi was believer. Spencer knew by heart the Bible, but he didn’t believe, like any good scientist. Emily was always showed wary, if not worse, whit everyone those who was wearing white collar. Derek, instead, had an open conflict toward the Church, for what he had suffer; yet, he was in that kind of building, when she was shot in the chest.
-10th Station: Jesus mocked on the cross.- infamy, again and mocking. To the point of wrote an inscription and put it on the top of the Cross. INRI. And then, that thieve, the one “bad”, how dare he find the courage to ask Him why He not came down from the cross and saved them too? How dare that thing claim this? She always was indignant about it. Not just the first time that she had heard it by the priest at the moment, but every other time. And even now, that sentiment re-emerged in her. Like it was stayed away for so long, while she was away. Lost, like the sheep in the parable of the Good Shepherd.
-11th Station: Jesus and His mother.- a tragic moment. Another one. She can’t imagine the pain that woman went through, that ordinary woman and yet, so special, superior to anyone else. Symbol of universal suffering. Pure and yet human, mother first of all: how can someone forget the episode when she and Joseph were worried because little Jesus was disappeared? The one which more suffer, because she cannot claim anything, because she was chosen for a work even bigger than her. The immensity of that thing crushes Penelope, which feels faint for a while. But the hand of the man that led her to be here right now is still held in hers, so he notices her faint and he becomes worried, but she nods that everything is ok.
-12th Station: Jesus dies on the cross.- He is dead. He is really gone. It’s not a thing that human mind can seriously understand. Until that moment everyone didn’t believe that it could happened. Both ones that didn’t believe in Him, which consider Him like an impostor, and those that, instead, like apostles, had seen that light and had understood there was something more. Both categories expected something different. And instead, no. He is dead and in Penelope’ soul there is an ancestral pain, like anyone with a heart.
-13th Station: The body of Jesus is taken down from the cross.- she doesn’t conscious now about what happening. She can’t even follow the words and what is saw. Rosa’ eyes are watery, too, but she seems grave and respectable, like whoever are not ready to cry during a funeral of a person they loved with any inch of their soul. Luke instead seems rapt, focused. She tries to follow again what is happening. It’s almost over.
-14th Station: Jesus in the tomb and the women.- almost there and it’s all over. And just in two days He‘ll be resurrected. But until that moment we can live in hope or in angst, in the pain of people who felt betrayed from His words. And then, those women found empty tomb. And the angel which is there with the difficult task of explaining them that He isn’t there, as He had announced. And everyone had saw (or pretended) to believe it with every inch of their body, and instead wasn’t so: the example of Peter proves it. Faith, yes, but humanity and humanity pushing us to make mistake.
After the classic phrases, to which also she answers, without any hesitation, with -Amen.-, the man dressed in white speaks again. She has to ask Luke to explain what he’s saying. But she doesn’t need someone to clarify the tone and the way he says those things: so much suffered, almost consumed, desperate. Certainly not an aseptic and distant voice. And there a such silent, no one covers in any way those unknow words.
With other brief ritual phrases and the benediction, the celebration is end. It seems incredible. It seems they are come from a millennium trip, and instead it’s been two hours. Not only not she got bored, but she is… shocked, in a good way. It wasn’t that spectacular like she expected, hearing Luke talking about it. Maybe, the Palm Sunday was more scenic, for the presence of liturgical drama. The chorus starts to sing and, although they can proceed to exit, nobody moves, and an ovation starts, like a shower of rain. Only after Pope gets into a car and starts another journey, people begin slowly to leave.
They head towards the parking, where they had left Rosa’ car. The older walks intentionally faster, to give them the chance to stay one more moment alone. Maybe they think that she didn’t notice, instead she knows the way they had look into each other’s eyes first, and the way they look now. It’s so clear that something is changed between them, and if she knows her nephew as she thinks… what he wanted her to think is came true. Good, because if he ever let himself to miss out a girl like Penelope, she would make him regret it for a life. -So?- she turns toward him. -What did you think?- he stops before her. But the blonde hasn’t the right words to describe what she feels. So, she answers him with a hug. Then they have to walk faster, because his grandmother is now a spot just about visible.
TAGS: @theshamelessmanatee @itsdawnashlie @talesoffairies @janiedreams88 @kiki-krakatoa @yessenia993 @teyamarra @c00lhandsluke @gcchic @arses21434 @orangesickle @entireoranges @jarmin @kathy5654 @martinab26 @thisonekid @thenibblets @perfectly-penelope @ambrosiaswhispers @maziikeen92 @lovelukealvez @reidskitty13 @jenf42 @gracieeelizabeth27 @silviajajaja @smalliemichelle99 @charchampagne14 @ichooseno @ megs2219 @rkt3357 @franklintrixie @thinitta @chewwy123 @skisun @maba84 @saisnarry @myhollyhanna23 @thenorthernlytes
Note: it was so difficult to try to translate this part. I do not know how it came out and probably Penelope is OOC, because her thoughts are mine. The next will contain much more garvez and less religious reflections (a little).
#garvez#penelope garcia#luke alvez#penelope x luke#luke x penelope#alvez x garcia#garcia x alvez#criminal minds#cm#holy week#easter
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Jet Wolf Summarizes Act 48
The manga and I kind of hate each other. This is unfortunate, but still, I’m determined to come out of this with something. Rather than spend energy on a liveblog that’s increasingly negative, I’m reading each manga act (mostly) silently, and then writing up summaries at the end. I won’t pull my punches. There’s going to be criticism and snark about the manga, either wholesale or in details. If that isn’t a thing you feel like reading, please skip this post!
I had some measure of hope for the Dream arc. I’d heard a lot of passing thoughts about the manga during my years working on this project, and near universally among them was “The Dream arc is fantastic.” Alongside being told how it was unlike the SuperS season, and yeah, I’d sort of nurtured it in my heart a little, sheltered it, held it close. I didn’t talk about it. It seemed too complicated, too personal, almost. Even when I did finally begin the manga, and came to realize that it was never going to be more than an excruciating test of stubbornness, I still clutched my tiny hope to me. Maybe something good could yet grow from all this.
I am, sometimes, an idiot.
We open with Nehellenia, and what must surely be one of the clunkiest fucking introduction speeches in history. Nehellenia tries to spin the reincarnation of the Senshi as something Queen Serenity specifically did to try and fuck with her. That makes about as much sense as you’d expect of a universe-shifting plot point conceived, at best, two issues before its reveal. Still, is it meant to be taken as gospel, or is it meant to reflect on Nehellenia’s entirely self-centered state of mind? We see in flashback that Nehellenia shows up and literally nobody knows who the fuck she is, and then Serenity imprisons her about six seconds later, not to be seen again for a thousand years or so. Would Serenity have legitimately worried that much about someone who was functionally a magazine salesman who never even got out a pitch before getting the door slammed in her face? On the day of the birth of her first and only child?
BUT THEN WE COME BACK TO HOW THIS IS TAKEUCHI SO IS IT REALISTIC TO EVEN CONSIDER IT’S WORKING ON MULTIPLE LAYERS AND NOT MEANT TO BE TAKEN PRECISELY AT FACE VALUE
PROBABLY NOT (*)
(*) But I do want to take a second to acknowledge how this ABSOLUTELY fits my take on Nehellenia at the end of SuperS, and I’m considering shifting my conclusion on the creators on this from “lucky accident” to “trying to build something worthwhile from the steaming pile of shit we were given”.
Anyway, there’s a lot about child soldiers that’s super fucked up and then Seanan made it even more fucked up because Seanan.
BUT THEY’RE CUTE SO WHO CARES ABOUT CRITICAL THINKING OR MORAL IMPLICATIONS
The Senshi then argue about whether it was a curse that everything went to shit in the SilMil or if it was destiny. I’m really not sure what difference it makes. They don’t seem to either. That philosophical discussion we nearly considered having was enlightening guys, thanks for bringing it up!
Nehellenia kills Usagi, I guess, but only a little. Not to worry! You know those Senshi who have devoted themselves since childhoods past to fighting for their Princess no matter what? THEY’RE ON THIS
OH GOD DAMMIT
The girls scream and cry and do nothing. With his superior penis will, Mamoru fights through his cursed illness. YOU KNOW THE SAME ONE USAGI IS SUCCUMBING TO DESPITE HAVING HAD IT FOR MAYBE A FIFTH AS LONG AS MAMORU. Using the power of his penis love, Mamoru gives Usagi a good dicking the strength and will to also fight back.
Usagi then says what is quite possibly the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard her say.
WHAT THE FUCK KIND OF LOGICAL FALLACY BULLSHIT IS THIS
YOU CAN’T JUST SAY THE WORD “POWER” EIGHTY-SEVEN TIMES IN A SPEECH AND HOPE IT MAKES SENSE USAGI
(Want to enjoy this a thousand percent more? Continue my trend! Replace every instance of “power” in that speech with “penis”. YOU’RE WELCOME.)
Then Usagi powers everyone else up, I think kind of? SHE TAKES THEM DRESS SHOPPING ANYWAY. The manga Senshi have never been more accurately represented as the paper dolls they so clearly are. The cats are also teleported in for no reason other than to be morphed into the human form they all so clearly needed to possess, immediately followed by my doubled over retching. Then tiny Senshi versions appear! They’re “Sailor Power Guardians”! Because reasons! All the Senshi get a power up courtesy of their vacation home timeshares!
WE INTERRUPT THIS MANGA SUMMARY TO REMIND YOU OF THE DREAM ARC SENSHI POWER-UP ORDER OF OPERATIONS:
Mamoru alone powers through a debilitating cursed illness that has been weakening him approximately five times longer than anyone else.
Mamoru gives Usagi the strength and will to fight against Nehellenia’s curse.
Usagi is filled with the penis power of love.
Usagi gives her friends prom dresses.
The Senshi have a group hallucination that involves miniature floating versions of themselves.
These mini-thems tell them they have to beg HOUSES ON OTHER PLANETS for permission to temporarily not suck.
Power which they then must immediately give to Usagi.
IF I EVER HARNESS THE ABILITY TO TRAVEL THROUGH TIME THE VERY FIRST THING I WILL DO IS GO FIND THE JET WOLF WHO DARED HOLD OUT HOPE FOR THIS MANGA ARC AND PUNCH HER
WE NOW RETURN YOU TO YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED MANGA SUMMARY
Usagi becomes Eternal Sailor Moon, and I discover that, regrettably, once again I am neither dead nor done.
#JW reads Sailor Moon#sm manga dream#sm manga act 48#jet wolf versus the manga#jet wolf summarizes the manga#a novel by jet wolf
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