#Predestination

[horygory]

Knowing (2009)

[junkfoodcinemas]

Predestination (2014) dir. The Spierig Brothers

[in-love-with-movies]

Predestination (2013)

[haveyouseenthismovie-poll]

[eternal-gardens]

[angelaness]

The Dance of Fate and Free Will

Do we really have free will, or is everything already mapped out for us?

It's the kind of question that's kept philosophers, poets, and theologians up at night for ages. Just asking it feels like standing on a beach, staring out at this massive ocean where what's logical and what's just plain mysterious kind of blend together. If it's all predetermined, then are our choices just an act? Are we just going through the motions in a play we didn't even write? But if we do have free will, then what's setting the limits on what we want, what we can do, and those invisible walls that pop up in our lives?

This push and pull – this back-and-forth between fate and our own choices – it's really what being human is all about, isn't it?

The Illusion of Choice

We like to think we're in the driver's seat, right? Every day, we get up and decide what to wear, what to eat, who to love, who to say goodbye to, and the kind of person we want to become. The world tells us if we just try hard enough, if we're disciplined and really want it, we can create any future we can imagine. "You can be anything," they say. But, can we, really?

Think about how life actually plays out. The family we're born into, the country we call home, the body we're in, those moments of pure luck or just plain bad luck that shape us – we didn't pick any of that. Someone born into a wealthy family in a rich country will never know what it's like for a kid born into war somewhere else. Someone who bumps into their soulmate on a train – are they really more deserving of love than someone who just happened to be on a different train that day? So much of who we become, it's just not in our hands, no matter how much we wish it was.

Even neuroscientists are saying our brains make decisions before we even realize it. If a machine can guess which button you're gonna press before you even "choose" it, what does that tell us about free will? Are we just following a script, but we're tricked into thinking we're the ones writing it?

The Beauty of Predestination

And yet, there's something strangely comforting about the idea that it's all already decided. If fate is a real thing, then nothing is truly wasted. The heartbreaks, the screw-ups, the chances we missed – they all had to happen exactly like they did. You were never meant to end up with that person, never meant to get that job, never meant to be anywhere else but right here, right now. In a way, it takes this huge, exhausting weight of regret right off our shoulders.

Some of the most peaceful people I've ever met are the ones who truly believe in destiny. They just trust that what's meant for them will find them, and what's not will just fade away. They move through life with this quiet confidence, like they're not even bothered by problems. There's a kind of beauty in just letting go and going with the flow, seeing life as something that just unfolds, instead of something we have to fight and control all the time.

But Then Again, What If?

But even if it's all predetermined, does that mean we should just give up and do nothing? If a river already knows it's going to end up in the ocean, does it just stop flowing?

Maybe free will isn't about controlling everything, the whole grand plan, but about how we feel it. Maybe the whole point is just the joy of making choices, of having dreams, of just acting on whatever we feel like doing in the moment. Even if your future is set in stone, isn't there something exciting about not knowing what's around the corner? If fate is real, then so is the amazing thing of being clueless about it. You still get to feel things, to move, to chase after whatever calls to you. And isn't that a kind of freedom in itself?

Think about this: Say your fate is to become a painter. But the second you pick up a brush for the first time, it just clicks. It feels like your choice, like you discovered something amazing. That feeling of joy, it was always going to happen, but that doesn't make it any less real, does it? Maybe you were always meant to read this, to think about this, to feel that little spark of "aha!" Maybe even the feeling of free will is part of the plan, and isn't that actually kind of a relief?

So, whether you're team fate or team free will, live like your choices actually matter. Love like it wasn't already written in the stars. Create like it wasn't a done deal. Because, when you think about it, if destiny does exist, it's probably already figured in your rebellious side anyway.

With thoughts of G♡

[sslimbo]

[360degreesasthecrowflies]

JK Rowling's religion, part 1

This is just a small observation I just had that I may expand into a longer post but,

I've just realized that: we know (or if you didn't, now you do) that JK Rowling is, and has been since writing Potter, if not before, a member of a church that believes in predestination. That is, that every person is born either Good or Bad and that all of their actions through life can't change their eventual fate, but just are predestined to have always been that way.

So that's her core belief religion-wise.

With that in mind... it's actually entirely unsurprising for her to oppose (and likely to have always opposed, or at the very best, tolerated while looking down on) trans people, because she believes that fundamentally ANY person's nature cannot be changed at all in any way - thus any attempt to 'alter' what she believes to be the natural order of things is essentially challenging her god and her fundamental beliefs, or in her eyes, playing at being as good as a god.

On the plus side, this means that her bigotry isn't necessarily specifically directed at trans people (although, every time she does attack trans people it harms the overall cause of trans people's equality and being respected) - they are rather just the most visible targets that she can't resist attacking because she perceives their very existence to be a personal attack on her religion. (which, yknow, obviously isn't true, but we're dealing with a narcissist religious nut here, people)

On the minus side - how many other of her fans does she secretly look down on and believe to be evil people? One of the tenets of her church belief is that only a small percentage of people are truly Good and worthy of Heaven. (naturally she includes herself in this, which is why she believes she can behave as she likes, because her seat to eternity is already booked - talk about twisting the fundamentals of Christianity!) And I mean a miniscule percentage, 1% or thereabouts. The rest of us are essentially NPCs to her mind, which probably isn't helped by the fact she lives in a literal castle and mostly communicates through her Twitter proclamations and spats.

She's been very good at hiding this religious belief (which, for any international readers, is very uncommon within her native UK, over 50% of which is atheist with a further 25% being only culturally religious) when she was younger and more worried about keeping her bag. But now she's older and established within society - and much less likely to follow the advice of her publicist and team - will she still be able to keep it under her witch's hat when she gets asked to start promotional touring the new HBO adaptation?

[ctmwidower]

"We journey in faith. We must permit all doubt for it is only through doubt that we can find its opposite."

Sister Julienne on the faith journey.

John 15:16 "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you." (KJV)

CtM S14E04

[strangelittlestories]

Pondering predestination and "promised souls" in fiction and I present to you: five flavours of inviolate (or “inviolate”) souls:

1. Incorruptible classic. Vanilla innocence. It doesn't matter what you do, because your soul is a duck and sin is water. You absolutely will do stuff that to other people would be a sin. You may enjoy it. But it just won't stick to you and you keep beatifically smiling beneath the bloodstains. You are John Calvin's favourite princess.

2. Not so much incorruptible, as unprovable. This one is innocence with a twist of lemon. It's much the same as option 1, but you weren't born free of sin or destined for heaven. No, it's just that some aspect of the divine bureaucracy *thinks you're cool* and loses the paperwork, strikes your sins from the record, or tampers with the scales that weigh your heart. To most people, you are just some human. To the angel of judgement, you are the Blorbo from its shows and it watches you with So Many Eyes.

3. A Pure Soul (unwilling). Spicy flavoured. You desperately want to sin. You wanna fudge things up. Get messy. Commit some giga-crimes. But everything you try just … turns out wholesome. Your bullet misses every vital organ and the resulting surgery catches a totally unrelated condition. You try to rob a bank and end up uncovering a major fraud. You are an agent of benevolent chaos, a gremlin of good fortune, a cryptid assigned “blessing” by fate. You will die mad about it, surrounded by those who love you and whose presence you've begrudgingly accepted.

4. You're not exactly predestined, magical or special, but the world just twists itself into the right shape. You'd be perfectly willing to dirty your soul for the right reason (or maybe even just a minor benefit), but things just tend to work out without you needing to. Beneath the surface, some part of reality is screaming with the strain of this and another part is wailing at this injustice. You just kinda half smile and shrug. “It all works out in the end, champ.” This is a Nothing Flavoured Soda. It's not bad, it's just ... absent. I, personally, hate you.

5. You won the lottery no-one wants to enter and you're going to the other place. You know this. You've always known this. “One in every hundred thousand bottles now comes with added brimstone.” You try your best anyway. You won't let a cosmic nat 1 on your destiny roll define you. You bestow mercies on the world and every one is a middle finger to the universe.

[dreamy-conceit]

You think people make choices? No, people think they make choices, they think they’re gonna steer right, or steer left, but they didn’t build the roads. The big choices already got made for them, a long time ago.

— Brennan Lee Mulligan, performing in 'The Unsleeping City'

[maxxxines]

SARAH SNOOK in PREDESTINATION (2014) dir. Michael and Peter Spierig

[crooked-wasteland]

Something I am working on after the live blogs. I came across a very easy to find, but under shared bit of information regarding Medrano that has really recontextualized the show for me. It still isn't a good show, but I missed a crucial component when I said the series had nothing to say. It still doesn't have much to say, but once you realize that Vivienne Medrano was raised Presbyterian, and seems to still adhere to most of those teachings, a lot of decisions make sense. The particular denomination of Christianity is one based on Trinity doctrine, and also strongly adheres to the idea that depicting god is a biblical transgression. So that explains why God and Jesus are not characters within the series and will never be.

Additionally, the Presbyterian Church is one of the few sects that has a relatively strong belief in the Calvinist ideology of Predestination. Specifically that one is born chosen by God or not, which explains pretty much everything in Hazbin. Angels are "winners" because they were born chosen while a random select of unchosen people are damned to hell. Some versions of the Presbyterian Church still hold to the belief that one's lifestyle, be you a good or evil person, is irrelevant. If you are chosen, nothing you do will remove that.

And that is why these characters being in hell doesn't matter. They didn't do anything to get there. They still adhere to Christian beliefs of what sort of people are not chosen (drug addicts, sex workers, mean people), but there is an inherent lack of nuance because the doctrine renders it unnecessary. Adam and Lute are awful and allowed to be in heaven because heaven is forever. Chosen are forever chosen regardless of Sin. It also explains why the LGBT aspect of the show is irrelevant to the plot.

This background knowledge is paramount to understanding Hazbin and Helluva (Hell is like the living world because a mixed bag of people are in Hell in the first place. Hellborn characters are not that different from humans and still exist in a realm of morality because morality isn't the reason they are in Hell).

My issue with trying to get into Hazbin's themes was because I didn't understand this was the origin of the plot. A lot of critiques and proposed rewrites miss the point entirely because Predestination in this sense is not a common belief. The world building requires a relatively intimate understanding of Presbyterian teachings in order to grasp the basic foundation of the story.

[eternal-gardens]

“A servant will never savour the taste of faith until he knows that which afflicts him would never have missed him, and that which has missed him would never have touched him, and that the only One to induce harm or benefit is Allāh, the Mighty and Exalted.” — Ali ibn Abi Talib (رضي الله عنه)

[never-wake-up]

Bo Burnham - all eyes on me // Lemony Snicket - horseradish // quicksilvereyes on tumblr // Philip Larkins - This Be The Verse