#i know i'm preaching to the choir here

[queenlucythevaliant]

In Narnia's metaphor, Edmund isn't Judas Iscariot. He's us.

Edmund's betrayal isn't eating the Turkish Delight or even liking the Witch. That, and the effects of the Turkish Delight that follow, are his temptation.

His actual betrayal comes when he's seen evidence of the Witch's evil (at Tumnus's house) and heard all about the Witch's tyranny and the goodness of Aslan (from the Beavers) and he still chooses to go over to the Witch alone.

Of course the deck is stacked against Edmund! Of course he's being deceived and manipulated! Of course he's just a child! That's how sin works!!! Haven't you read Screwtape???

Edmund's sin is easy for us to excuse, but it is still inexcusable. That's the whole point. It is petty and small and childish and still wrong. Just like so much of our sin.

[princealigorna]

Since so many on the Right are having such a hard time defining it (because they know their interpretation of the word is ultimately too broad and open to have any real meaning at all), here is what we on the Left mean when we say "woke".

"Woke" or "wokeness" isn't a noun at all. It's a verb. It means to "awaken", or to become aware of, the injustices around you to the extent that you are now prepared to fight against them. There's a reason it's mostly high schoolers and college kids that are "woke". It has nothing to do with indoctrination and everything to do with being at that precious age when you start having enough freedom to explore the world around you and realize that, while we have many more freedoms and opportunities than many other places in the world, some things are still fucked up. We still don't always live up to our ideals and obligations. In a country that claims to be about freedom and equality and social mobility, there's still systems in place that make those things harder for certain people to achieve than others. And you start feeling cheated and pissed off about it. It's that feeling of being cheated and pissed off that's "woke".

There is no such thing as "wokeism". It's not a philosophy. It's a certain mindset that (usually younger people) achieve when they start to experience the real world for the first time with clear eyes.

[solarpunkani]

You know what I feel we need more of?

Community centers.

Specifically, places where people can gather, have fun, host events or even just hang out. Similar to what libraries are, but not quite--a place where kids can be loud and rowdy and hang out, make friends, practice sports. Though they definitely should still have quiet areas, maybe craft rooms too. A nice place to go to and hang out after school before you're ready to head home--or a safe place to stay if you don't want to head home. Community centers could also still be fantastic for adults too--they could be used as a place to host classes on different crafts, or repairs, etc.--and still be a perfectly valid place to hang out and seek refuge.

Places like these do exist in many places in a few different forms, but a lot of them are directly tied to organizations and groups that may make people more hesitant to partake in them (ie churches, Police Athletic Leagues), or they have a cost barrier to taking part of the amenities (YMCA). While these places are definitely suitable and fulfilling for many people, they're often limiting and stifling for others--if not just flat-out inaccessible. Not to mention, they don't all fill the roles I mentioned above.

I think having robust community centers would be great for societies all over. I'll admit, my imagination is a bit grand--community gardens, sports rec rooms, swimming pools, reading and craft rooms, a repair cafe, a food cafe, maybe a dorming area for overnight stays, soup kitchens, showers, mutual aid closets and such.

Though I guess that brings about the question of how this would be funded. With churches, it's tithes and other forms of community fundraising. With police athletic leagues, its... taxes, I guess? Alongside other donations. And with the YMCA, it's memberships that provide the funding for their amenities. My initial instinct is to say a mix of taxes and maybe some community contributions would be what funds a good community center, but then there comes the issue of some places having better or worse community centers depending on the median income of their area... especially when you see how places like libraries already get little funding in favor of larger policing budgets (the libraries in my city are all closed on Sundays, and have shorter hours in general, for example)

I know I'm just rambling at this point. I just think community centers are cool! They're punk! And we should have them--cool, fun community centers!

[golyadkin]

OBVIOUSLY i'm going to draw Axe Pete

[glorious-spoon]

watching that kiss scene for the [redacted] time and yeah i am not immune to buck getting his chin gently tilted up for a kiss for probably the first time in his life

[its-not-a-pen]

holy shit guys i finally watched andor. it's not as good as everyone says it is; it's better. 

this is the kind of star wars i use to dream about but could never imagine happening. it's painful. it's thought-provoking. it's complex. I could not look away even if I wanted to. Andor is not something you comsume passively, it demands your attention, if you're sick of modern cinema with it's superheros, emptiness and cynicism, this is for you. this is not assembly line whimsy that pays lipservice to higher ideals only to uphold the status quo. this is film made with passion and a burning desire to tell a story. 

 i think the thing that made me realise that this was actual, good cinema was how subtle the goodness is. i was on ep 3 and thought to myself; "hmm this show is really interesting but it's kind of annoying that they only made each episode 20 mins long." each episode was 40 mins long.

[thewatercolours]

Podfic: "Captive Crown" by GerbilofTriumph

A shabby narration of GerbilofTriumph's excellent King's Quest fanfiction, "Captive Crown," complete with outrageous attempts at accents and enough bloopers to start a drinking game (with um, raisin juice. There are too many goofs for the real stuff.) This wonderful fiction, full of courage, nightmares, and healing, is gratefully recorded and shared with permission of the author, @gerbiloftriumph. Go check out her awesome creative blog.

All seven chapters are available at the link above, but if you just feel like listening to the first chapter while you scroll, voila:

Original text here:

[parab0mb]

Just found out that EA rejected the proposed 3rd Mcgee's Alice game, which at this point isn't surprising but still disappointing since I really liked the franchise (call it a comfort series/guilty pleasure/nostalgic, etc.), not to mention the creator seemed genuinely passionate about telling this story about a character that was near and dear to him despite the franchise never being a money-printing powerhouse.

Like, I know I'm not saying anything profound here, but it just reminds how wretched it is that it's still considered the norm for artist/writers/etc. to have to literally sell away the rights to their own stories, a part of them that they've poured their soul and experiences into, to a publisher (that has no passion for the project beyond the monetary returns) just for the POSSIBILITY that the story will maaaaybe reach it's intended audience and have the original vision/message be left intact.

As if it isn't bad enough that an IP that does end up succeeding will most likely be bastardized and milked to creative bankruptcy even after the creator dies, the alternative is that if the IP isn't "marketable" enough the publisher just holds the IP hostage from it's own creator (usually having no intent of doing anything with it).

Like, especially as of late it seems like publishers/studios are all too eager to do the latter, and it deserves to be straight-up illegal.

[foxgirltail]

Oh my god people are still on about how "not cis and not trans" is an actual identity people can meaningfully have

The definitions are opposites. The meaning of cis is "always identifies with your assigned gender at birth" and trans is such an umbrella term that it covers every other alternative

If you want to claim "not cis" and also claim "not trans" that tells me that they don't want to be perceived or labeled as trans, which is an (internalized) transphobia issue. Which is not a solid basis for an identity

[wing-ed-thing]

hey i see that your request are open?

Uh technically!

I've been working on an irl project so my writing has kinda taken a back seat for the past month+

So feel free to submit some it'll just probably take a bit if I decide to take them on!

[scoutpologist]

it REALLY scares me to see a lot of people talking about not voting and citing biden's shit handling of situations as a reason to abstain. abstaining makes it EASIER for trump to win. please please please do not abstain from voting and please please please vote blue. if you thought last time was bad it will be ten times worse this time.

[mylimoji]

people who go 'RCM cops are not real cops, that's why i can defend their actions' are INSANEEEEE sorry i don't think you have even one active brain cell remaining in your head 🤣🤣

[weaverlings]

so i am reading at least some drizzt books. mainly bc things r stressful atm i want something i don't Have to think too hard about but which does have something to think about when i feel like it. even if at least some of that is "what the fuck"

however this is just funny to me like

whiny losers: waaaa no politics in our games >:(

popular forgotten realms protagonist Drizzt Do'urden: rich landowners are threatened by change

[queenlucythevaliant]

Shieldmaiden

i. I must have been made for the long defeat, she thought, for that is all I have ever been given.

ii. There was a corollary to that: the contours of my heart must have been fashioned for courage.

iii. Éomer said that their father hadn’t died quiet. He told Éowyn stories about the battle, though he knew no more what really happened than Éowyn did. Curled beneath her brother’s chin, Éowyn imagined her daddy with his jaw clenched, knuckles white around his pommel, fighting and fighting until at last he fell. “He gave those orcs a hell of a fight,” Éomer would say. “His courage will be remembered in these halls until the ending of the world.”

iv. (Somehow, it never occurred to Éowyn that perhaps her good, strong daddy would not be remembered at Meduseld for a losing battle against a dozen orcs, but because that was where the people who loved him best still dwelt.)

v. When Éowyn’s momma died, no one told stories. Momma’s defeat came like the fading of grass under the summer sun.

vi. As a girl, Éowyn gathered up courage from lines of verse and lyrics of songs: My head is bloody, but unbowed. Though far outnumbered let us show us brave. Let me not then die ingloriously and without a struggle, but let me first do some great thing that shall be told among men hereafter. She chanted those words again and again, a shield against despair.

vii. Somewhere along the line, Éowyn learned to wield a sword. This was more incidental than one might think.

viii. Théodred dead. Théoden scarcely himself. Éomer riding afar. Defeat was coming for Rohan, but to Éowyn, this was a familiar feeling.

ix. Aragorn came like a king out of a story or a song. His was the voice that cried “Bloody, but unbowed!” in her mind when she was almost despairing, high and glorious even in the face of defeat. Now, Éowyn dreamed of queenship, if only so that her voice could be like his.

x. She did not mean to tell Aragorn her deepest fear: that if she was left in Edoras as ruin fell, she would die quiet, caught in a cage and gasping smoke as the house burned down around her.

xi. “You have a sword,” Merry observed. He was right.

xii. Éowyn went to battle because she wanted them to call her brave. She went to battle because momma had faded like the grass, but daddy had given those orcs a hell of a fight. Because if defeat was coming, she did not want to wait in a failing kingdom for ruin to come and find her. No, she wanted to die like a great queen in a song, brave until the bitter end.

xiii. The grass of the fields crunched beneath her feet as she turned to face the Witch King. When she smote him with her sword, she did not feel like a queen in a song. She was only Théoden’s niece, a girl who loved her uncle and would let no evil thing touch him.

xiv. When Éowyn woke in the Houses of Healing, a fresh web of scar tissue round her wrist, victory seemed an insubstantial, fading thing.

xv. But then Faramir looked out to darkness inescapable and dared to say, “I do not believe that any darkness will endure.” He was not like a king in a song, but his words stirred up the same deep places in Éowyn’s soul where all those words of courage lived. They echoed there, louder and louder. Éowyn smiled.

xvi. When he kissed her, she felt brave as growing things are brave: like the crocuses that bloom from the snowy spring ground.

xvii. “You have desired to have nothing, unless a brave death in battle. Look at me, Éowyn!”

xviii. Éowyn looked at him long and steadily. I was made for the long defeat, she thought. All I ever wanted was to be brave.

xix. But if the darkness was passing, what courage was there in death?

xx. You were made for life, she heard a voice say, for sunlight and dancing and growing things. Your heart was fashioned for love and for joy. And yes—for courage.

[gloom-metal]

the modern web 2.0 experience is constantly installing add ons to firefox to make the websites you frequent bearable again

[spurgie-cousin]

I want to post the to Reddit so bad but am holding back lol sorry Spurgie. Everyone there thinks Jana is a miserable spinster but I really think Jana lives a good life and has no reason to get married. You know she runs the show at Duggar HQ, she is in charge and can do what she wants. She has a disposable income and no bills, can travel where ever, when ever. And most crucially, she has the companionship of a best friend, something no other Duggar, except maybe Joy with Carlin or one of the younger boys has ever had. The companionship her siblings get from their partners she gets without the hassle of someone controlling her life/money/child bearing. Quite frankly she is living an ideal life while she tries to become Jana Gaines or feed NWA from her garden. Why would anyone want to get off a free ride like that? I wish people would stop looking at her as this massive failure when she is literally the Paris Hilton of fundietown, living it up until the time is right.

Lol no worries, Jana vents are always welcome here.

I tend to agree with most of this, I really don't agree with the idea that Jana is being forcibly kept at home by her parents for any reason. I don't really believe she's in the same situation as say Sarah Maxwell, who I believe was strongly being "encouraged" not to leave home until she found a husband. While that is their 'culture', and I'm sure her parents believe that's what she should do, the Duggars are much more public and Jana has had soooooo much more scrutiny regarding hee life choices, I'm pretty sure that even dumbass JB realizes it would eventually come back to bite him in the ass.

I don't know if I believe she's "in charge" at the Duggar house though, or that her life is all care free with no responsibilities or financial issues. Her family has leaned heavily on her in the past for things like child care, home projects, event planning, etc and I think it's likely that she still responsible for a lot of those kinds of things, especially with Anna relying on them with Josh in prison.

I also think it's impossible to know what her money sitch is like, at the very least I don't really see Jim Bob just giving her unlimited access to the family's bank accounts, she's likely in a fixed stipend which could be frustrating as a 30 something just depending (I know people think JB just throws money at his kids but I totally believe he's still a cheapskate at heart). I also think it's likely that she might have some private side hustles bc she's just always seemed like a really industrious gal.

But yea for the most part I agree with you, I think reddit is generally overdramatic when it comes to Jana.