#how do nuns work

[unlikely-course]

Anyway since AO3 is down I will tell you all for free that two months ago I had a dream that was just like a weird fully fleshed little yj au in which Lottie is sent to a convent by her parents and meets there Tai, Van, and Jackie who are also postulants (more or less against their wills) and is shown the ropes by “Sister Joan,” (no prizes for guessing that’s Nat) who basically washed up here as a young teenager and ended up taking vows because she didn’t know what else to do and it was pretty chill as far as convents went. Obviously Lottie and Nat have like a connection, and meanwhile Jackie has resigned herself to the whole nun thing in spite of Shauna repeatedly showing up to try to get Jackie to come away with her. Literally there was a “scene” in which they were all out like gardening in a space next to the church and through the gate and across the street you could just see Shauna leaning against a building smoking furiously (in like a really great coat). Everyone was like “so are you gonna go…talk to her?” And Jackie was like absolutely not!!!! and just kept ineffectually going at a raised vegetable bed with a shovel.

[janadoesstuffwrong]

Thinking abt the air nomads:

What if, after the war, once the dust has settled a little, Aang goes back to travelling, hoping that maybe he can find at least some trace of surviving airbenders. As an added bonus, he gets to do more of the exploring and wandering that he had to put on hold.

Toph goes with him ofc. She only just got a taste of real freedom and it was overshadowed by ever-present impending doom. While she's on speaking terms with her parents, she isnt quite ready to be back under their roof on a permanent basis. The rest of the gaang have their individual homes and responsibilities that they get back to, though they join for the odd field trip or adventure when they can.

So anyway, they're touring all over the world and over the years they notice just how displaced so many people have become. EK citizens who barely escaped the blaze but lost everything; FN military now decommissioned with no idea how to carry on; people looking for a new start in the hard-won peace. Maybe it starts with Toph heading back to Earth Rumble, where a group of young runaways scrounge for cheap fights to make a little money.

At each turn they find more and more people with no homes to return to and no family to protect them; runaways escaping the roles the war forced them into. Gradually, Aang and Toph start to see that they aren't so different from themselves. They just want a new start.

So they decide to give them one. They clean up the temples and set up villages in the surrounding areas (helps to be master earthbenders), where people can arrive and stay as long as they need. Travellers and refugees pass through in droves, sometimes choosing to stay and rebuild their lives there, sometimes continuing in their wandering with a guarantee that they'll always have a place to return to should they have the need.

Over time, the lemurs grow in number and even some flying bison calfs (hybrids with a relative species maybe?), can be seen in the skies. Whenever the founders visit, it isn't the same but Aang feels a little more at home.

The first time someone asks Aang to teach him his philosophies, and expresses his desire to become a monk, how can he refuse? Maybe it's a former soldier, somebody who's done terrible things, looking for a path to redemption. So Aang teaches him, and then he teaches others. And though they may not be airbenders, they are as earnest and faithful as any nun or monk Aang knew before. The temples become filled with new faces: Firebenders, Earthbenders, Waterbenders and non-benders all wearing Air nomad orange and yellow.

Aang always feared that it would be his responsibility to have airbender children, and the idea of forcing that on someone he loved terrified him. Maybe that's why he waited so long before acting on his feelings for his best friend, his travelling companion, his fellow-village builder and temple-restorer. How could they have a truly happy relationship with this pressure hanging over them? He wishes he could be content with the new way of things that he and his friends have created. But he knows that he can't be the last airbender forever...

Nobody knows why some children can bend the elements and others can't. Is it blood? Is it blessing? Is it the land in which you're born? Or is it the simple allocation of fates decided by the values and norms you're raised believing in? Is it enough to be surrounded by the culture and beliefs of the Air Nomads? Nobody knows...

All they know is that nobody sees it coming when the six-year-old daughter of two non-bender villagers from the Earth Kingdom and Northern Water Tribe sends herself flying twelve feet into the air with a sneeze.

[notbecauseofvictories]

though, lingering over that last post....I wonder how easily this trips into horror story? I mean, in this world where there are child-producing marriages and then sisterhoods/brotherhoods for the rest, this obviously allows the family to keep a stranglehold on their collective assets and wealth. Therefore, I bet that family is an even more tightly-locked cage for those born into it.

Oh, you thought that if you could just escape marriage you'd be free, didn't you? You thought you could join the local order and letter manuscripts or tend goats or say prayers over the dying---but no. No, that's for other people's sons and daughters. You have no escape. You will serve your family forever, whether you will or no. You marry who they tell you to and live in your family's third-nicest castle your whole life; you can have as many lovers and bastards as you want, you can earn coin all on your own, if you can, but it will come to naught in the end. You will be cursed with absolute surety of where you fall: res nullius.

As it was and ever shall be, amen.

[averlym]

litany of the martyrs (click for better resolution!)

[froschli96]

you know, i always find it really funny when dudebros complain about syndicate and odyssey being too "jokey" or not "taking its characters seriously" or whatever…

like, did y'all collectively sleep through "it's-a me, mario!", "i meant besides vaginas", ezio inventing the latte, bartolomeo's... just... *gestures vaguely* entire character, etc?

like, it's fine to have preferences of course, i myself prefer a more serious and grounded tone, but these are usually the same people who tout the ezio trilogy as "peak assassin's creed", call ac1 a glorified tech demo and hate on connor for being "too serious and boring", like? make it make sense!

[wildstar25]

G'raha looked so serious while he pleaded his case to venture into the World of Darkness with the Warrior of Light. The sudden conviction in his tone had Arsay at a loss for words. Still, she did not hesitate to meet his request with an accepting nod. He was an important friend and in the passing moons that they'd come to know each other, a strong fondness for him had taken hold of her. The prospect of helping G'raha find the truth behind his mysterious inheritance made Arsay's heart pound. It was the perfect venture for them to embark on. The first of many, she hoped. The two turned towards the impossibly tall spire that dared to pierce the heavens above. Arsay's resolve strengthened in its presence. When they next find themselves gazing at the tower -with their quest completed and the world no longer under threat of total destruction- she'll properly ask G'raha to be a companion in her travels. A grin crept its way onto her face as her gaze shifted to him. If Arsay could find it within herself to bare her heart to others so readily just as he does… perhaps their future adventures will find them together, hand in hand.

[sisterdivinium]

Finding "the meaning" to a show that could have had up to five or seven seasons but was cancelled after the second is somewhat like trying to understand a novel composed of seventy chapters by having read only twenty — there is a whole wealth of information which we do not possess that could alter our reading of any given element or of the entire thing in itself.

Still, there are always patterns that weave a story into a cohesive unit and they can help us to better grope in darkness towards comprehension. One such pattern in Warrior Nun appears to be how the consequences to mistakes, "sins" or evil deeds committed by characters manifest.

Basic storytelling usually requires characters to act on something so that complications or resolutions may arise from their choices and move the plot forwards. In Warrior Nun, many of these actions are quite tragic in nature: Suzanne's arrogance and pride lead to the death of her Mother Superion; Vincent's allegiance to the higher power he believed Adriel to be inspired him to kill Shannon; Ava's flight from the Cat's Cradle ends up damning Lilith as she is mortally wounded and taken away by a tarask... All of these events have negative outcomes and heavy repercussions on all characters directly or indirectly involved. Something changes permanently because of them, be it in the world around them or within the characters themselves.

And yet, it would seem that all of these dark deeds not only move the story forwards but might also have overall positive results. We would have had no protagonist without Ava — and she would arguably never have received the halo to begin with had she not been murdered. What's more, on a personal scale, the horrifying crime she suffers is, in the end, the very thing that allows her a second chance in life, a new life.

An act of outside evil permits Ava to grow and develop, shows her a path she would not otherwise have found. Without her own season in some sort of hell, Lilith would not have been able to advance towards other ways of being and understanding beyond her very strict limitations. Vincent and Suzanne would not have embarked on their own journeys of enlightenment without having caused the pain they are responsible for.

Beatrice might have been paying for someone else's mistakes, but she, too, is given the chance to grow into herself through it. The afflictions that torment these characters advance the overall plot, but they also advance them, as individuals, as long as they are willing to learn and keep going despite the calamities large and small that they are faced with. Beatrice keeps going after parental rejection, Mary keeps going after losing Shannon, Jillian keeps going after losing her son (in part through her own actions, adding insult to injury)... Trouble and the adaptation that follows it, if one is open enough to learn from the experience, motivates the characters, propels them forward, teaches them.

The problem of evil has occupied the minds of many a thinker throughout the ages, given how the very existence of it, evil, might call into question that of God (a good, omniscient, omnipotent one, anyway). A common way of justifying suffering (and also God), then, is by claiming, as Saint Augustine, that "God judged it better to bring good out of evil than not to permit any evil to exist".

Now, it would be rather ridiculous to say of Warrior Nun that it follows in Leibniz's footsteps, also because this philosopher, expanding on the augustinian concept, attempted to defend the goodness of a real God with his "best of all possible worlds" while all we have is... Well, whatever/whoever Reya is.

But there seems to be an inclination towards some sort of optimism as a worldview nonetheless.

Betrayals reveal truth and grant knowledge (Vincent's culminates with the coming of Adriel, which allows us to know of the threat of a "Holy War" and thus prepare for it; Kristian's gives Jillian much needed insight, William's lights up the fuse for the fight to be taken more seriously...), crimes committed willingly or not open the way for Ava (Suzanne's killing of her Mother Superion causes the loss of the halo, which is transferred to Shannon, whose death opens the gates for Ava to walk through after being herself murdered by sister Frances)... The magnitude of these positive outcomes is perhaps not "balanced" when compared to the evil that brings them about, but there is still something to take out of the catastrophe.

However tragic the tones of a given event, the show itself appears to shun the predetermination that makes tragedy as a genre; if everything is connected, here it at least appears to not necessarily drag everyone into their horrible dooms.

What's more is that this lurking "optimism" matches really well with our own protagonist's personality.

And it makes perfect sense that Ava would do the best she could with whatever she is given.

Life for her, in the conditions she experienced after the accident, would have been unbearable without some sort of positive outlook on life. However deadpan, the joking and the "obscene gestures" and whatever other forms of goofing around beside Diego are a way of turning a portion of the situation in her own favour. Proverbial eggs have, after all, already been broken right and left — might as well make an omelette of whatever remains.

Humour is just another way of looking at the bright side of something, or, at the every least, of mitigating the utter horror it might bring. If the show allows for moments of lightness, if it lets us laugh, if it takes us through a perilous voyage which still bears ripe, succulent fruit instead of the rot of pessimism and its necessary contempt for humanity, it is because Ava herself sees things in this way. It isn't gratuitous or naïve in this case, but a true survival strategy, especially as it is confronted with the morbidity of Catholicism.

Here is a religion that soothes its faithful with the promise of reward in the afterlife — how else does one charge into battle against the unknown, risking one's own death along with that of one's sisters, without the balm of believing that we shall all meet again eventually, "in this life or the next"? How else does one come to terms with the ugliness and the pain of this existence if not by looking forward to a paradise perfect enough to make all trials and tribulations here worth it?

True nihilism would have annihilated Ava. Her present perspective is what avoided the abyss.

And there is nothing Panglossian to her attitude or what the show might imply by giving us her view on things. This isn't about "the best of all possible worlds", but of making the best of whatever situation we're in, of taking what we have and doing something with it, something good, something of ourselves. It isn't God making good out of evil, but our choices.

Killing innocent people and feeling no remorse will never be the best someone can aspire to do. Sister Frances, cardinal William, Adriel all learn this the hard way.

Those who do their best find that, somehow, they can move on from whatever it was that paralysed them. Ava, most of all, knows what it is to be stuck, frozen in place; she can never be the character who refuses to grow, even through pain, lest she condemns her spirit to the same fate her body is all too familiarised with. Those around her wise enough to let themselves be touched by her, by the dynamic power she carries, walk forth with her and live.

It says very little about "God" that Warrior Nun should adopt its heroine's views and seem "optimistic" as it progresses — but it speaks volumes about the values it presents for pondering, of the inspiration its protagonists provide, and of the multiple reasons why this is a story unlike most others.

[electro-scorpion-moving]

i think there needs to be more of ava & lilith getting to have a fucked up sibling relationship in which they demonstrate the saying that hate and love are opposite sides of the same coin. lilith being the “no one else gets to hurt my sibling except for me.” ava being a cruel reminder to lilith of how she’s strived so long and hard, following all the arduous rules, for acceptance, and family, purpose and belonging. and yet ava suddenly comes in and gets all of that and more dropped into her lap, and she doesn’t even want it.

tl;dr: ava & lilith being wholesome siblings in aus is undeniably cute, but let ava and lilith be siblings with a very complicated and/or bad relationship more too

[redeyye]

i could be the guy who makes up seinfeld episodes but for the golden girls

[cry-ptidd]

Definitely think she killed that innocent nun because she choose god over Laura

Wrong, actually! It's way sadder than that

[reflectionsofgalaxies]

Okay so it turns out the brilliant Tangelene Bolton (creator of Warrior Nun’s stunning soundtrack, including Beatrice and Ava’s beautiful theme) has read Avatrice fanfiction.

Every time I think I can’t love this cast and crew more- 💖

[msadmiral]

Forgive me for the fucking phone shadow-

“Their relationship is complicated…”

Cw: Mentions of religion and underage drinking

Supposedly takes place in contrast to this post by @clownsuu

Dialogue (in case you can’t read my small ass blurry handwriting):

Mob!Cherie: “Another ‘one too many nightcaps’ with Mr. Howdy, I presume?”

Mob!Wally: “Mmh… Very observant.”

Mob!Cherie: “Not observance. Simply stating the obvious, Brother Wallace.”

Mob!Wally: “If you would be so… ‘kind’, sister Cherilyn, and assist me to my quarters?”

Mob!Cherie: “Cherilyn is not my name, Brother.”

Mob!Wally: “Neither is Wallace…”

Mob!Cherie: “Touché…”

Mob!Wally: “You should consider joining us, dear Sister… You were always a lot better at- hic- holding your liquor than Mr. Howdy…”

Mob!Cherie: “And you were always a bit too fond of him, your ‘butler’…”

Mob!Wally: “You aren’t entirely void of those feelings yourself, Sister.”

Mob!Cherie: “Perhaps. But for reasons other than nepotism and manipulation.”

Mob!Wally: “Nonsense… There is no room for bias in a family…”

Mob!Cherie: “Mm-hm. Whatever you say, brother Wally…”

Needless to say, they both favor Howdy in some way…

NOT A SHIP!!! CHERIE IS 14 IN THIS AU!!

Closeup photos below cut👇

[piratekane]

title: let's begin (kissing the old year out, kissing the new year in) fandom, pairing: Warrior Nun, Ava/Beatrice summary: Ava slaps the flyer down on the bar and immediately winces at the shock that ricochets up into her arm. “They’re having a New Years Eve carnival.”

Bea looks up from her clipboard and smoothly slides her pen behind her ear. A single strand of hair drops across her face. She doesn’t bother pushing it back. “Hans mentioned it.”

Her eyes go wide. “You knew? And you didn’t say anything?” Ava sighs dramatically and the paper crinkles under her palm. “We have to go.”

notes: I blame the people. I blame KTY's face. I blame Ava having her oh moment. But mostly I blame @tumblnonymous because she just won't let me rest. You've been warned: this is teeth-rotting, NYE fluff. This is nothing else but that. Fluff without plot. It also follows i don't want a lot for christmas (there is just one thing i need) because why put that down?

(read on ao3)

[ice-devourer]

i’m not too fond of tkd anymore however, the queer kids confiding in me at the training center makes it so damn difficult to leave can i just adopt them T — T

[charlie-os]

I’ve seen a lot of people trying to figure out the time dilation math in warrior nun and all getting wildly different answers so here’s my contribution as someone who’s in college for math

We know that for every 7.8 seconds that passes 107 minutes pass in the other realm so

107*60 = 6420 seconds

6410/7.8 = 823.077 seconds (per every second that passes on earth 823.077 seconds pass in the other realm)

So using the conversion 1 = 823.077 we can find pretty much any time difference

For 1 day on earth we know that 1 day = 86400 seconds so

86400*823.077 = 71113846.15 seconds or 2.25 years

My theory is that since there was so much jesus symbolism this season ava is going to spend three days in the other realm which for her would be 6.75 years

[sisterdivinium]

She broke off the kiss when she felt the top button of her shirt be undone.

Panting, Jillian took a step back, eyeing Suzanne’s black veil, her vows. A pair of concerned eyes stared back at her while a pair of hands still at Jillian’s shirt trembled slightly. She caught them with her own and kept them in place.

“Are you sure?” Jillian breathed out, before raising one and then the other of Suzanne’s hands to her lips, bestowing delicate blessings upon hardened knuckles.

A tender smile lit up the face a scar had once darkened. Suzanne leaned into her again and pressed a soft promise upon Jillian’s mouth.

“Are you?”

The candlelight flickered. Silence reigned gracefully over the convent and the city below it while their breath mingled hot and nervous, alive amid stillness.

This was nothing new; they were both aware of what lovers did, of course — only the memory was so distant, the idea so foreign… Suzanne had married heaven, Jillian knowledge; fleshless spouses such as these could never adore them back. Years, lifetimes of neglect suddenly made new what was old as time as they stood together at the precipice of this unfamiliar intimacy.

Love had simply happened; circumstance allowed a word, a gesture, a touch — this rarest of benedictions, this uncanny discovery science would never fully explain, faith never fully accept. Touches were made bolder, hands dared to clasp one another, pull, hold tight, invite the inevitable kiss to seal the contract and tear down the veil…

The veil.

Jillian touched it solemnly, waiting. With tremulous fingers, she began to undo it as soon as another button on her shirt was tentatively pushed out of its place; they spoke in their own mute language, echoing the question and the questioning answer with every timid move: “Are you sure? Are you?”

In this languid ritual, no inch of skin was taken for granted. Every revelation was adored, slowly, slowly, ever searching for certainty — a kiss at the base of the neck, another at a shoulder, hair coming lose, are you sure, are you sure, are you sure...? There was something blasphemous, there was something sacred in each curve, each joint, each scar; Jillian needed not envy Suzanne’s repertoire of hymns, for they would both compose their own with every kiss. Divine rhymes in the tongue of quietness littered the warmth they so carefully exposed.

Hesitation darkened the shadows around them — how pathetic, how ridiculous, how adulterous, for who would now worship god or numbers, the invisible deities who had hitherto kept their beds so cold and spacious? How audacious to display a birthmark, a crease, a patch of unkempt hair, mortality itself, when the holiness of prayer or genius had so long carried the privilege of guarding them…

A total embrace, two hearts reaching out to one another madly, terrified of beating so near, so alike — but more frightened still to avoid this, to part.

Night time is god’s asylum for sin, for shame; so they remained where the orange flame could yet paint them out from shadow, where they could quickly notice whether the answer had or had not changed — are you sure?

A gasp, a moan — quiet, slow, pure, unlike any of the songs of devotion or the groans of dying enemies Suzanne was so used to, unlike the inhuman humming of machines Jillian herself had hallucinated into being.

Fumbling thumbs, accompanied by giggles only the girls they had once been had any right to utter, travelled uncertain, insecure, knowing their desired destination but losing themselves in the infinite invisible roads that led everywhere. An awkward angle elicited embarrassment, but what was there to be embarrassed of? Theirs were other sorts of experience. Killing, healing, creating, inspiring… The nun and the immaculate mother would have time to learn together what worship was, with less questions at every touch, less fear at every breath…

But never without wonder.

And as Suzanne sighed and Jillian heaved and neither deigned to contemplate the cross on the wall when religion lay down right beside them, entangled with their very limbs, they kissed once more.

The first few rays of daylight lazily coloured the trail of smoke which the melted candle had left in the room.

“We’ll have to get up soon enough… Morning service.”

An incredulous guffaw of laughter shook bare, radiant skin, catching in the folds of discarded clothes mixed in a heap of black and white upon the stone floor.

“Are you very sure...?”