Converts, please do not sell yourself short or underestimate the position that you hold within Jewish communities. Your love for Judaism, the Jewish people, and the Jewish culture is infectious and can make people realize the value of the culture they've simply grown up in. When people ask you, "Why did you want to convert?" don't take it as them really asking "Are your reasons for converting up to my standards, to which I will thereby judge whether you're worthy or not?" Most of the time, what we're really saying is, "Please tell me why you love the thing I just grew up in. Tell me why someone would choose this."
Many Jews grew up facing antisemitism in school. So it's baffling to think that someone would willingly subject themselves to this, and some of us grew up internalizing this shame and rejecting our Jewish identity in order to fit in. But you, as a convert, spark light within these people. You, as a convert, have boldly gone against the grain because you see the value in our way of life, one that is not easy. You've joined a people, many times at the expense of your friends and family, and your safety. You're something to aspire to. You rekindle the love and connection we have to our nation. If you don't already realize the value in this, you will when you notice those around you being moved by your words.
Being a convert is not a mark of shame because you're "different," it's a badge of honor. In many ways, you are lighting the torch for the next generation of Jews you come in contact with.
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i wanna know more about the jerries/jeris
do you want to know the most horrific thing about them?
the lords did nothing to make them the way they are.
yes, the jerry jr was turned into the axeman because of the witchwood, which does what it does because of the lords, but everything leading up to that is just human nature. i see the "girl jeri is nibbly" or "they were influenced by a lord to do the thngs they do" and i need people to understand that that's just. not true. they're just like that. they were taught to be like that by their parents and, more accurately, their church. it's horrifyingly accurate how religion has shaped them into non-functional human beings, who would rather potentially lose their child to the many, many dangers of the literal woods than admit that they had sex outside of marriage.
it's only because it's hatchetfield that jerry jr grew the way he did. there was no lord's intervention in their decision to keep the baby, or to drop out of school to care for him, or to keep him seperated from any other people, or to revolve their lives around the idea that they'd committed a sin and needed to pay by pushing celibacy rather than. i don't know. properly raising their child. it was the way they were taught. the toxic pushing of overexaggerated christian ideals is what molded them. can you imagine being in their place? being a scared teenager and knowing that if you told any of the people you care about most your secret that they would shun you and disown you?
the only people they felt any kind of safe around were each other; of course they're going to be codependent. and even then, they're disgusted by each other for leading them to sin. they're stuck together unwillingly, because without the other, they're alone.
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the more i think about it the more convinced i am that dust is a grimm thing
first: dust predates the moonfall.
in a setting where it’s been very firmly established that a) dust is a naturally-occurring magical crystal that grows on the surface in formations like this, and b) the present-day land of darkness is still very rich in dust, the most plausible explanation for what these luminous crystalline structures in dark’s domain are is dust. it’s identical to the stuff salem used to make monstra fly, too.
second: grimm can and DO use dust.
our most notable example here is the geist in V7, which is a) overtly shown to incorporate dust ore into its armor body, and b) not under salem’s control [ergo this is natural behavior]. and of course there’s monstra, which uses dust to fly—salem’s handiwork, yes, but it means that the magical properties of dust can be activated by grimm.
bearing that in mind, consider the ice-encrusted grimm of solitas. grimm aren’t cold-resistant by nature, but they’ve adapted to the harsh polar conditions… somehow. the mechanism of this adaptation is, in-universe, unknown; we can infer that it is probably not an evolutionary process because grimm do not breed. but: solitas is rich in dust, and—well
when hazel slams raw dust crystals into his body, it sort of—fuses with his flesh in some way; in particular note the pebbles sprouting around his right shoulder. so when the mysteriously cold-hardy grimm of solitas are encrusted with frost… you see what i’m getting at? i think their resistance to the cold derives from dust.
we have several examples of grimm (the feilong, the sphinx, the leviathan) breathing blasts of energy which happen to be identical to the energy blasts fired by cordovin’s mech’s dust canon. which might be a budget-conscious design choice, sure, but it’s also a similarity that can be explained quite simply by concluding that it looks the same because it is the same, that these grimm swallow dust and weaponize it just as people do.
third: you can’t walk ten steps in the land of darkness without hitting a massive formation of natural gravity dust. the lancers in V5 appear to be nesting around the huge gravity dust formations keeping those islands afloat over lake matsu (note the queen lancer seemingly in a dormant state before she’s woken up by the jostling). the mine in V7 is crawling with grimm who, like the queen lancer, appear to have been in a dormant state until they were roused by the geist scuffle.
so there is an apparent correlation between places where the grimm live—not hunting territories, but places where they just are—and the presence of enormous quantities of naturally-occurring dust. and we know, thanks to the lost fable, that dust grew around the pool of grimm in an era when humans did not need dust to perform magic. and of course, dark identifies magic as his gift to humanity.
(although i will point out that dust is described as an energy propellant and in modern practice people do magic with it by channeling aura through it; thus while ancient humans had innate magical ability, i don’t think it’s out of the realm of possibility that they might also have used dust, not as a power source but as an amplifier. that ozma topped his staff with some sort of crystal and seems to have done all his magic through the staff in contrast to salem [<- presumably self-taught] slinging magic around with her hands is interesting.)
so…
if dust existed before the moonfall, the questions of where it came from, what it is, and how it came to be are moot; one of the brothers had to have created it and because it’s growing in dark’s domain we can be certain that it’s his thing, especially because he’s also the brother who gave ancient humans innate magic and dust is thus obviously in his wheelhouse.
but: why?
ancient humans didn’t need dust, because he gave them magic.
what happens to the grimm in a world where every single person has magical power akin to the maidens? they die. humans, not grimm, were the dominant form of life on the planet during this era, because humans had magic. “kings and their kingdoms were plentiful.” in a contest between a human with maiden-level magical power and an ordinary grimm, the grimm is going to lose. we’ve seen cinder blast through four layers of reinforced steel with a single fireball effortlessly! you can kill a grimm by hitting it really hard with a stick!!
the grimm were, at least according to myth, dark’s first creations and he cared for them. in ‘the two brothers’ his staunch refusal to eliminate the grimm is the central point of contention that brings him into conflict with his brother, and the history laid out in V9 supports that characterization; he refused to unmake the jabberwalker, too. it follows that dark would have wanted the grimm to have a fighting chance against ancient, magically-powerful humans.
hence, dust.
it wouldn’t give the grimm an overpowering advantage, but it would be enough to balance the scales… and of course any grimm who did survive long enough to grow to massive size, empowered by dust, would pose a serious threat to ancient humans, magic or no. it grows in grimm territory because it was meant for them, originally.
dust is a grimm thing that humans adopted.
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forgive the random idea, but I was thinking about how much I love stories about people with power and in power, able to destroy lives and countries without a thought, being immeasurably strong and deadly... Being so soft and gentle towards their child.
Ingo being a god, a god who's been around for millenia. He's seen nations rise and fall, people come into and out of power. He's been revered and feared and forgotten and renamed. He's lived inthe heavens and on the earth. He's been mortal as an immortal, living a human life before dying and returning to godhood. He is old and tired and powerful. He has caused forest fires and destroyed mountains. He has provided bountiful harvests and life saving rains.
And then one day a child is left on the floor of his temple. A pair of wanderers stayed the night, and with nothing else to their names they left their infant behind. Ingo has no idea who they were, barely noticed that they had lingered, but the disturbance of the child left behind - a taste of innocence that lingers on his tongue, like the breeze over a wheat field and the cleanliness of a newborn - has him going to see what was left.
He's never had a child left as an offering, as payment. Sacrifices? Yes. But this one is still alive. She is so small, her eyes so big, and she looks at him without fear. He can't remember the last time he was looked at without fear, without blind devotion. He hesitates to touch her, not sure how to be gentle, and she reaches out first. She grabs his finger and begins to chew on it.
And Ingo is lost.
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I can’t stop thinking about Loki’s and Thor’s age difference:
Allegedly, Loki was 1047 years old in the first Avengers movie
Thor says he’s 1500 years old in Infinity War
Those two incidents are six years apart, which means that Loki was 1053 years old in Infinity War
Which, in turn, means that Thor and Loki have an age difference of 447 years
But the thing is: in the first Thor movie during the flashback to their childhood, they looked like they had an age gap of two years tops. From looks alone and speaking in human terms, Thor seemed to be about eleven years old and Loki looked like a nine, maybe ten-year-old to me.
And since Asgardians (and probably Jotuns as well) have a lifespan of about 5000 years, according to Loki in TDW, it’s unnecessary to say that they age slower than humans because it’s obvious.
So, what? Are 447 years, say 500, the equivalent to two years in human terms? Was Thor running around like a seemingly two-year-old when Odin came back with baby Loki in his arms?
I’m not even thinking about it on purpose, it just crosses my mind whenever I start writing another draft fic. Most of the time, it’s not even relevant to the plot, I just like to know every little detail to avoid plotholes and in case it does get mentioned.
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