The Sunday Confessional...

Have you watched Archaeology?

I must confess, I watched this movie mostly because of Shaun. Oh, he looked divine there! However, after watching it, I couldn't stop thinking about this short film for a long time... This movie is really good, multi-dimensional, and thought-provoking... Highly recommend it.

Did I mention that Shaun looked divine? Yes, he did! A bit tousled, with a three-day stubble... and that plaid shirt...

Returning to the movie... hmmm.

I'm curious about your opinions, did you like the film? What do you think: who or what was that stranger?

Shaun definitely looked divine... I think he had his hair dyed...

I've always wanted to be an archaeologist... I could help him... pass him the shovel, wipe the sweat off his forehead, actually, I could do anything with him...

ITS TUESDAY, tierlist time again B)

Tossability Tierlist, ft. The Main Crew and also Anyone Else I Could Find Reasonable Reasoning To Include ! tossability meaning, if you were to pick them up like a cat and actually physically throw them, knowing: A) they would, in fact, be caught, and B) they are not, in fact, in any danger.

split between physical/implied tossability and willingness/Consequences. Because There Will Be Consequences.

goodluck have fun! ✌

Warrior Nun and the cross symbol

It is very interesting to see the symbolism of crosses in Warrior Nun, and how that intersect with circles. Simple shapes, but they hold so much meaning in this show.

We are first presented by the Halo, of course a circle, and a symbol of divinity. The OCS, logically, use the intersection of a cross and a circle as their symbol. Halo and Christianity, united. For all of season 1, Ava wears the Halo on her back, and barely uses the Cruciform Sword. In season 2, her outfit put a cross on her back, superposed with the light of the Halo, and she only fight with her sword. Could that represent her integration into the OCS? Certainly not within Christianity as a whole, because as seen in season 2, she seems uncomfortable with even just the idea of a prayer for her fallen sisters.

So. Circles. The Halo is a perfect circle, same with the Crown of Thorns. So is Jillian’s Ark, and so is Adriel’s new church. A circle, but all the windows in the shape of a cross, which is an interesting design choice.

According to Jillian, Adriel’s power comes from crosses. People pray with them, and he can use that to power the Ark. He put a cross in Camila’s neck so that he could control her. His followers are using his new cross design to pray to him, and he controls them through that. 

In the last analysis i did of this shot, i talked about the cross being used as a sword of Damocles, but i think i missed a very important part. Religion is used as a sword of Damocles. Faith, as a whole, could fail them at any moment. We have seen, with Adriel’s followers, as soon as they stopped believing in him, they suffered consequences. Faith, thereby religion, is used against people, to control them. We all know how much religion was used against Beatrice to control her. Thus, the cross becomes a symbol of control.

If we see the cross as a symbol of control, thats where the meaning of the circle becomes interesting. Circles are usually associated with eternity and life. The Halo is without limit, able to do incredible things, including healing and bringing people back to life. Jilian’s ark is a gateway to eternity, a way to heal her son by saving him from death. Adriel’s church was his way to bring his eternity to Earth. The OCS, charged with killing demons, uses the combination of a cross and a circle as their symbol. They are Humanity’s protector (position of control) against wraiths and other demons (eternal beings).

Now. Arq Tech’s symbol is a the greek letter known as psi, which has an associated meaning of life, soul and mind. Make sense, considering what Jillian was trying to do with her company. What is very interesting is that Adriel’s cross very much look like a cross but with a psi symbol at each end.

I could be wrong about this, but its the most plausible option i could think of. Surely this isnt only a design choice, we know this show (and the creator has said as much with the retweet of the analysis someone posted on Twitter), everything has a meaning. So what could this mean? Was he harnessing people’s soul through his cross? Was it posession, or mind control? Is there a difference, really? 

One of the last shot of the show present us with Adriel’s cross (the mind cross?) on top of the ark. Mind over matter? The power of thoughts and soul over what is material? 

Or, if we go with that control/eternity theory, well that is the best representation of control over eternity you could get. 

..

being a freshman in highschool is so crazy

There always seems to be one kid who just screams like a tornado siren, all day long, at any given opportunity. Like, kid, I love you, you are precious and deserve all the happiness in the world; but please for the love of god shut up. There are people trying to learn here and you’re not helping them or yourself.

boy i love getting tipsy and then drunk and gushing about my special interest to people who cannot possibly care about this even half as much as i do and being deeply annoying and embarrassing myself and wanting to crawl into a hole once the harsh light of sobriety hits

i'm gonna start wearing catholic iconography for real. i'm gonna start being really insane about catholicism in my day to day life. noooooo you don't understand i mean it for Real this time i've been extremely normal about it so far

Hey @horrid-little-pedant I can make you a Boy Scouts/international Scouting movement imperialism/colonialism/not-so-crypto-fascism syllabus if you’d like but for a first tantalizing taste here is:

Fig 1) Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts and the Scouting movement, on the swastika symbol, from his 1917 sequel to the classic manual Scouting For Boys, entitled Young Knights of The Empire. Its companion book, for Girl Guides/Girl Scouts, authored by his sister Agnes, was called How Girls Can Help Build Up the Empire. The Baden-Powell family, prominent British military aristocrats, were instrumental in the British colonial expansion re: South Africa. Baden-Powell’s inspiration for the Boy Scouts was the Mafeking Cadet Corps, a group of child soldiers formed by Lord Edward Cecil shortly before the Siege of Mafeking that secured Robert’s place in annals of imperial military history. His niece Betty later became--I am choking and wheezing and coughing up a hairball getting this phrase out--Scoutmaster for the. Girl Guides of North Rhodesia. Do not even get me STARTED on, uh. The Peace Light of Bethlehem (tl;dr it’s a program inaugurated in Austria circa 1986 nominally to help ~handicapped children, but of course. In 2005. The International Commissioner of Austria symbolically passed the Peace Light to a delegation of Scouts and Guides from the Palestinian National Authority, comma, just after the Oslo Accords. And then in 2007 a delegation of Guides and Scouts from Austria, Germany, France, Jordan, Israel, and the PNA--by the way, all but Jordan and Israel are part of the Catholic international Scouting branch that generally, depending on region, ‘pledges allegiance’ to “[country], God, Church, and Christian Europe”--they symbolically lit the ~*~Peace Light together. In. Bethlehem. Scouting is the most fucked-up Bad Internationalism movement in the world.)

Fig 2) The Rodlo symbol was designed by a woman who was part of the Polish minority population in Germany, she went to a Sokol (also Scouting!!!) gymnasium, she got a scholarship to study with Wladyslaw Skyoczylas and other modernist naive folk-revival painters at the school of fine arts in Warsaw, she survived the war, she got into this bizarre movement of neo-pagan anti-clerical pan-Slavist ‘nationalism’ that confirms every single thing I said in my undergrad thesis, she wants to take these symbols back from Hitler and stress the uniqueness of the Polish-German border regions that are neither like, fashy Catholic nationalist Poland nor fashy-flavor Germany, unfortunately that’s not how history or visual semantics work. She says it’s ‘rod’ plus ‘godlo’ (pretend it’s a liquid l) but it’s rodnoverie, we know what you’re about, Joasia--or rather, if you have to give a paragraph-long disclaimer every time you present your lovingly-rendered symbol, you gotta just let it go once it reaches critical mass and recognize that that your defensive disclaimers come across as “my t-shirt is raising a lot of questions that are answered by the shirt.” Anyway. This Harcerstwo troupe named after...the Harcerstwo movement that became a WWII paramilitary and subsequently Catholic anticommunist movement adopted it as their symbol. They’re from a small town in the Katowice region and they are. Well. If you don’t want everyone to think you’re fascists then maybe don’t be a paramilitary organization with a Hitler Youth lite flag (if you put the Rodlo on the Polish flag...it’s...it scans as the swastika on the...they know! They’re not oblivious, they do 500 WWII memorial actions per year!). And don’t have your scouts swear fealty in military fatigues while doing the seig heil to the Slavic Hitlerjugend flag in the woods. Ya dig. Their website is like “why are our enrollments declining :(” 

idk man maybe your town’s teens want to smoke weed under the bridge and not be put through boot camp after school 

Vent ig

Fandoms will always be more willing to humanize and excuse the male antagonists but will take any chance to further demonize female antagonists (or just female characters in general lets be honest) and turn them into cartoonishly evil ppl.

I hate making everything about RQ but Elara is what sparked this from me, or at least something I remembered pushed me to want to vent about this. It kills me that ppl in this fandom will sit and make excuses day in and day out about how Maven actually isn't to blame for any of it and how it actually isn't that bad that Maven killed thousands of ppl and physically and mentally abused Mare and Iris (and hell maybe even Evangeline who knows at this point) but will then turn around and exaggerate what Elara did to the absolute extreme. I am NOT saying that Elara didn't do anything wrong or should be excused cause I don't think that! What I am saying is, I loathe when ppl will talk about her and erase parts of her character in order to turn her into a cartoonishly evil stepmother. You don't have to like her, you don't have to think she had anything but bad intent, but don't talk about her if ur just gonna ignore or change part of her character because for some reason u can't fathom her not being 100% rubbing her hands together maniacally laughing evil. (Especially considering Elara barely has any character so like how r u just missing shit that easily?) And it doesn't just stop with her. It happens with characters in every media! Alicent Hightower gets half her character IGNORED because god forbid she not be 100% evil and u feel anything but hatred for her! Sansa gets demonized for shit she did at like 11 like come on. I mean hell, even characters from children's media get demonized for existing (like I'll never forget hearing that ppl HATED Mable Pines for being what? an annoying 12 year old?)

Ppl also love to claim they stan or love female characters but in reality they only love that character in relation to their male love interest. If she ever goes against her male love interest then it turns into "she's such a bitch" or "she's so selfish" like I mean thats literally what happened to Mikasa the moment she "turned" on Eren.

Idk im so tired of ppl stanning and loving evil male characters and finding every which way to justify their actions but then going out of their way to make female characters WORSE than they actually are.

i have one brain cell at all times devoted to steer me clear of starting a youtube channel

Source

Imaginary Books Recs: Congratulations! You've been granted further ILL access to the Coregean Library. Shall we start with Ardour and Introspection? An early nineteenth-century romance that was a favorite of, of all people, Delclis.

Ardour and Introspection by Giora Shorr

Emina Verden has a passion for plants that her loving father is more than willing to let her pursue, but after his death and her mother's remarriage to a fashionable baronet, Emina is thrown into a high-society world where she is expected to attend balls and concerts and dinner parties while enduring the company of Vivana, her over-exuberant stepsister. As Emina struggles to find a place in this new family--and a moment of peace--a friendship with a young scholar unexpectedly blossoms into something that makes this new world worth exploring. But Vivana is the one who catches his eye--and, perhaps, his heart. Will Vivana keep Emina from her one chance at happiness? Is it possible for the stepsisters to overcome this rivalry, or will it tear them apart forever?

hi! hi hello

Oh look. I spent almost three days reading up on gender in the Middle Ages, seems like this was already too much academia for my brain, so I just got treated to a nice school-related nightmare.

*eyepins at you* (Patreon)