Holy shit, y'all

The Munsons are Catholic.

A few additional points, inspired by comments in the notes:

@mysticismmess @hymnsofheresy this is us right here, isn’t it?

I only spread minor trinitarian heresies 💅🏻💅🏻💅🏻

I mean…….those plot points aren’t even THAT heretical fjsbsbdhdhxhxj.

This Catholic approves.

If you made a very terrible mistake and asked @joshversus and me to write your Passion Play, something very like this would occur.

Huh. So getting ejected from church groups for making too compelling arguments for various historically heretical interpretations of the Bible is a Jewish thing then? That explains which side of the family I get it from then. 

(Also I have been ejected from every single damn church I’ve ever been inside of and every single time it has been for asking questions in good faith about confusions I genuinely wanted cleared up from church authorities who were literally asking for questions. I’m still salty about that.)

[Image transcript: A series of tweets from Aleksei!!! On Wheels (@ai_valentin). They read:

Strap in, folks, because this is a cautionary tale about letting teenagers too smart for their own good write theology without oversight.

So my grandparents on my mom’s side were Catholic, and at the time, I had a Catholic boyfriend. So I ended up doing lots of random stuff at the parish because, well, boyfriend. I ended up befriending all the artsy, queer Catholic kids who were afraid to come out. Shock.

The youth group leader decided that the Passion Week play they did every year needed a revamp. I had just done a production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat with them and helped do staging and re-writes to make it work for the cast.

So this nice nun asked me.

As relevant backstory, my grandparents had enrolled me in CCD classes when I was in middle school, hoping that maybe I’d turn out Catholic somehow. I got kicked out for asking questions that were too complicated for the teachers.

Apparently, everyone in this parish had forgotten that I was the kid who wanted to debate the Arian heresy at age 12, as the nature of Christ’s divinity seemed a reasonable topic of inquiry to me.

Like I said, first mistake.

So here I am, 16 or so, and I’m told: write a series of monologues from the perspective of different characters present for the Passion of Jesus: Pilate, the Virgin Mary, John the beloved Disciple, Mary Magdalene, Longinus, Peter, the thieves at the crucifixion, and Judas.

Now, mind you, I was really into Jesus Christ Superstar at the time. And I was voraciously reading Gnostic Gospels, Biblical archaeology, all kinds of stuff. This is not going to produce a good Catholic script.

So I ask the nice nun if there’s any guidelines I should adhere to?

Read: how much freedom of interpretation do I have?

She tells me, “Just write something really engaging. Make them feel like people you can understand. You’re a good writer, I’m sure you’ll think of something.

Mistake number two.

Well, I was entirely chuffed. I was 16, I liked having my ego flattered. So I went to work.

I went to the library, I read all kinds of sources and gospels that didn’t make it into the canon. I read all kinds of texts. I read the Gospel of Thomas. I read Josephus.

And then I started writing.

Pilate was a monster who was all too happy to execute a Jewish rebel who represented a threat to Rome because Roman authority had to be absolute in order to repress the zealots to revolt against Caesar.

The Virgin Mary was co-suffering with her son, vicariously experiencing the pain of crucifixion only without the release of death. She was a living martyr, redeeming the world through suffering in it, not leaving it.

John was in love with Jesus. Full-out romantically in love with Jesus. Want to kiss his wounds and let the spirit transcend the flesh that had betrayed them all.

Mary Magdalene was a converted priestess of Ishtar who was the sacred vessel carrying the faith in Christ’s resurrection, unwilling to flee from the cross or the tomb, because she was an embodiment of the Divine Feminine, unafraid of death.

And then there was Judas.

I had to make the greatest traitor in Western literary canon, up there with Cassius and Brutus, into someone human. Relatable. Understandable.

That’s what the nice nun wanted.

Mistake number three.

I wrote Judas chosen by God to betray Christ as a part of the great work of salvation. That Judas, like Mary, had accepted God’s commission to participate in the mission of Jesus. Because without Judas’s betrayal, Christ would not be crucified.

Judas created salvation with a kiss.

I took a little bit from Jesus Christ Superstar – it ended with Judas unable to cope with what God had asked of him and thus killing himself, trusting that God would redeem him into Heaven for doing the terrible thing God had asked out of him.

And inadvertently, I wrote a Passion Play that culminated with the death of Judas making salvation possible through sacred betrayal.

Whoops?

I’d read something like this somewhere in my research and it had stuck with me.

What I’d read was a 3rd century heresy that saw Judas as a sacred agent of God, destined to make Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross possible.

And nobody noticed.

Well, the nice nun was DELIGHTED. It was the most engaging Passion Play she’d ever read! It was so original!

We went right into rehearsal. Nobody mentioned the changes to the parish priest.

The guy playing Judas was amazing. He was holy madness and despair onstage. We orchestrated it so well, used lighting and music to make it dramatic – we put John 19:41 from JCS behind his monologue.

You know. The music behind Jesus’ crucifixion.

There were three performances. One on the Saturday before Holy Week, one on Good Friday, and one on Holy Saturday. They were PACKED.

People were raving about it. Nobody had ever seen such a good Passion Play!

People from other churches showed up. Another church asked me to write a Passion Play for them, just a little less Catholic, please?

Nobody mentioned the Gnostic heresy of Judas being the ultimate saviour by offering up Christ to the cross.

I wrote another one! I was getting good at this!

Mary Magdelene was the first Evangelist! She understood Judas’ mission and stood watch at his suicide and at the cross alike!

Another church wanted that version! People wanted to have Passion Plays outside of Easter Week!

I was spreading Gnostic heresies across the entire county and nobody seemed to notice.

Whoops?

Well, it got a little too popular.

The nice nun got a letter from the archbishop asking why she was allowing the youth group to perform heresy for the entire parish and did she know another parish wanted to do it?

My grandparents and the parish priest called me into his office and asked me to explain how I’d written this play.

In other words: did I know I was spreading heresy?

"I just wanted to make it make sense why someone would betray someone they live and think is God. If God has to die to save humanity, and that death had to be the crucifixion, then why wasn’t making that happen a holy act?

Sister said to make it understandable!”

This was when I was told, very firmly, that my Passion Play needed to be re-written for next year.

They had someone from the archdiocese send me a list of heresies I’d written and had to correct.

Whoops?

I said that I stood by my work and that other churches liked it. And I had sources!

That was when I was told, very firmly, not to come back to youth group.

When the Passion Play was staged next year at the parish, it FLOPPED.

Everyone was calling the pastor wanting to know what happened to the Good Version From Last Year?

A bunch of people went to the Methodist church that staged my Protestant version.

The priest had to send out a letter telling people not to go to any of my Passion Plays because they were heresy and would endanger their immortal souls.

That was when my grandparents stopped hoping I’d become a Catholic.

Honestly, I think they were relieved when I formally converted to Judaism. I couldn’t infect any more parishes with artistically compelling Gnostic heresies.

So the moral of the story:

Don’t ask a mostly Jewish kid more fluent in Biblical studies than you at age 16 to write a compelling, relatable Passion Play.

You will end up with Gnostics in your parish and Catholic authorities really don’t like that, surprisingly.]

In the past I've shared other people's musings about the different interpretations of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Namely, why Orpheus looks back at Eurydice, even though he knows it means he'll lose her forever. So many people seem to think they've found the one true explanation of the myth. But to me, the beauty of myths is that they have many possible meanings.

So I thought I would share a list of every interpretation I know, from every serious adaptation of the story and every analysis I've ever heard or read, of why Orpheus looks back.

One interpretation – advocated by Monteverdi's opera, for example – is that the backward glance represents excessive passion and a fatal lack of self-control. Orpheus loves Eurydice to such excess that he tries to defy the laws of nature by bringing her back from the dead, yet that very same passion dooms his quest fo fail, because he can't resist the temptation to look back at her.

He can also be seen as succumbing to that classic "tragic flaw" of hubris, excessive pride. Because his music and his love conquer the Underworld, it might be that he makes the mistake of thinking he's entirely above divine law, and fatally allows himself to break the one rule that Hades and Persephone set for him.

Then there are the versions where his flaw is his lack of faith, because he looks back out of doubt that Eurydice is really there. I think there are three possible interpretations of this scenario, which can each work alone or else co-exist with each other. From what I've read about Hadestown, it sounds as if it combines all three.

In one interpretation, he doubts Hades and Persephone's promise. Will they really give Eurydice back to him, or is it all a cruel trick? In this case, the message seems to be a warning to trust in the gods; if you doubt their blessings, you might lose them.

Another perspective is that he doubts Eurydice. Does she love him enough to follow him? In this case, the warning is that romantic love can't survive unless the lovers trust each other. I'm thinking of Moulin Rouge!, which is ostensibly based on the Orpheus myth, and which uses Christian's jealousy as its equivalent of Orpheus's fatal doubt and explicitly states "Where there is no trust, there is no love."

The third variation is that he doubts himself. Could his music really have the power to sway the Underworld? The message in this version would be that self-doubt can sabotage all our best efforts.

But all of the above interpretations revolve around the concept that Orpheus looks back because of a tragic flaw, which wasn't necessarily the view of Virgil, the earliest known recorder of the myth. Virgil wrote that Orpheus's backward glance was "A pardonable offense, if the spirits knew how to pardon."

In some versions, when the upper world comes into Orpheus's view, he thinks his journey is over. In this moment, he's so ecstatic and so eager to finally see Eurydice that he unthinkingly turns around an instant too soon, either just before he reaches the threshold or when he's already crossed it but Eurydice is still a few steps behind him. In this scenario, it isn't a personal flaw that makes him look back, but just a moment of passion-fueled carelessness, and the fact that it costs him Eurydice shows the pitilessness of the Underworld.

In other versions, concern for Eurydice makes him look back. Sometimes he looks back because the upward path is steep and rocky, and Eurydice is still limping from her snakebite, so he knows she must be struggling, in some versions he even hears her stumble, and he finally can't resist turning around to help her. Or more cruelly, in other versions – for example, in Gluck's opera – Eurydice doesn't know that Orpheus is forbidden to look back at her, and Orpheus is also forbidden to tell her. So she's distraught that her husband seems to be coldly ignoring her and begs him to look at her until he can't bear her anguish anymore.

These versions highlight the harshness of the Underworld's law, and Orpheus's failure to comply with it seems natural and even inevitable. The message here seems to be that death is pitiless and irreversible: a demigod hero might come close to conquering it, but through little or no fault of his own, he's bound to fail in the end.

Another interpretation I've read is that Orpheus's backward glance represents the nature of grief. We can't help but look back on our memories of our dead loved ones, even though it means feeling the pain of loss all over again.

Then there's the interpretation that Orpheus chooses his memory of Eurydice, represented by the backward glance, rather than a future with a living Eurydice. "The poet's choice," as Portrait of a Lady on Fire puts it. In this reading, Orpheus looks back because he realizes he would rather preserve his memory of their youthful, blissful love, just as it was when she died, than face a future of growing older, the difficulties of married life, and the possibility that their love will fade. That's the slightly more sympathetic version. In the version that makes Orpheus more egotistical, he prefers the idealized memory to the real woman because the memory is entirely his possession, in a way that a living wife with her own will could never be, and will never distract him from his music, but can only inspire it.

Then there are the modern feminist interpretations, also alluded to in Portrait of a Lady on Fire but seen in several female-authored adaptations of the myth too, where Eurydice provokes Orpheus into looking back because she wants to stay in the Underworld. The viewpoint kinder to Orpheus is that Eurydice also wants to preserve their love just as it was, youthful, passionate, and blissful, rather than subject it to the ravages of time and the hardships of life. The variation less sympathetic to Orpheus is that Euyridice was at peace in death, in some versions she drank from the river Lethe and doesn't even remember Orpheus, his attempt to take her back is selfish, and she prefers to be her own free woman than be bound to him forever and literally only live for his sake.

With that interpretation in mind, I'm surprised I've never read yet another variation. I can imagine a version where, as Orpheus walks up the path toward the living world, he realizes he's being selfish: Eurydice was happy and at peace in the Elysian Fields, she doesn't even remember him because she drank from Lethe, and she's only following him now because Hades and Persephone have forced her to do so. So he finally looks back out of selfless love, to let her go. Maybe I should write this retelling myself.

Are any of these interpretations – or any others – the "true" or "definitive" reason why Orpheus looks back? I don't think so at all. The fact that they all exist and can all ring true says something valuable about the nature of mythology.

You really have to give the architect a 5 star thumbs up for his vision in building this place …

the town’s name is dixon

the longer you look at it the funnier it gets

Dude, this is the city I was born in. I know exactly which building that is, I HAVE BEEN TO THIS BUILDING, I NEVER THOUGHT ABOUT WHAT IT WOULD LOOK LIKE FROM ABOVE

I had to google if it was real and found an article about the church and

i’m dying

Yeah, that totally doesn’t look phallic at all ….

New sleep style: hitting the snooze button so many times that you sleep two additional hours in ten minute intervals. I call this Horse Sleep

Worse sleep. That was meant to say worse sleep

I Am So Fucking Tired

Literally immediately after reblogging this to correct it I went "wow, it has a reblog already?" And got all the way to checking my notifs before I realized. That it was me.

I actually wasn't that far off you guys

HOLY SHIT THE POST IS SAVED

Anyway horse sleep: sleep, but horse. Worse. Sleep but worse. Definitely one of the two.

We shall have a summer wedding

awesome story. black doctors and nurses are the best.

We need more of this

I'm not a PoC but this is just incredible, *exceptional*, culturally sensitive patient care, period. Absolutely should be shared with every healthcare professional I know.

We should always keep in mind that we are treating an entire person, not simply their condition, and the effects seemingly minor kindnesses can have on them long after they leave our care.

If you want to support black doctors who are just starting out, Farrah-Amoy Fullerton, a fourth-year med student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham just set up a way for people to help black fourth year med students transition to their residencie. This often means moving to a new city where they won't get a paycheck for weeks. Black students are also less likely to have access to generational wealth to keep them afloat during school. So if you have a few bucks and want to buy a graduation gift for a future black doctor, check out this article or search #medgradwishlist on twitter.

We need more black doctors to because doctors are often untrained on how to diagnose conditions in black peoples vs white people and are taught black have a higher pain tolerance and just a whole bunch of other ridiculous things........ black people need black doctors

god gives his coolest girlfriends to his most loser reddit bros

Планы на вечер….

“Plans for the evening”

@markv5 I had to draw him

Left is MY FIC, right is the ACTUAL BOOK QUOTE IT WAS INSPIRED BY

(Mask context: masquerade ball / cinderella au)

It has been doing numbers EVERYWHERE and I only found out from this lovely person who commented on Ao3:

So yeah I guess if anyone wants to read an 8 year old Song of Achilles fanfic written in a fever dream after watching Into The Woods, be my guest

I shit you not, one of my friends got engaged and used this for their caption yesterday 😭😭😭

Should I tell her 🤭

NOOOOOO OH MY GOD LMAO

That is a new level of containment breach

I am in love w the way pre 2000s films have that hazy feel to them. hd honestly kills the vibe

I think that’s one of the reasons why “period” media that’s marketed off the Aesthetic sometimes bothers me.......like they get the music, the clothing, the cars......and yet it always feels like something is missing

like,

vs

or even compare the early x files to the reboot

something is just lost with the crispness

someone in the tags said early spn vs new supernatural and tbh 100% yes !!

vs

I never realized how much I missed the grainy undersaturated filing ...... “good lighting” and sharpness strike again

Seasons 1-3 were shot on 35mm film

4-15 were all shot on digital cameras, a change that the network insisted on

Yeah the exact thing that changed is that all the old stuff was recorded on film and all the new stuff was recorded on digital media.

i was going to say the film thing and the someone brought up supernatural and i was like "nah" and then @aphony-cree out here dropping that bomb.... in *2005,* to *2008?* there was a show shooting on film???? god you guys MOST shows went though this transition in the 90s how the fuck was SPN on FILM

In the 2000s dramatic shows had a good shot of convincing networks to let them use film. The network still had film cameras they’d bought and maybe hadn’t gotten enough use out of before the switch to digital. Most dramas can’t be shot entirely in the studio, they need to go on location, so it made sense to let them use the older cameras while the new expensive digital cameras stayed in the studio where they were safer

Supernatural wanted the 35mm film aesthetic and hated when they were forced to switch to digital

They just recently released a 4K version of Lord of the Rings and they’re so Crisp. None of those soft fantasy vibes

one of my least favorite things about these 4k updates to films (especially ones that used actual film) is that they also go and try to do color correction. like there’s a REASON that some scenes are heavily blue saturated. that wasn’t purely an effect of using film, but also a choice during the editing process. color is just as important to a movie as anything else.

it’s the exact reason why the matrix was shot with blue heavily filtered out to give that greenish-gray appearance, which added to the feel for a grungey dystopian machine-ruled future. The 4k version of it still has that there for the most part, but you can tell they did some color correction too and it throws off the entire vibe.

not to mention 4k updates of older movies REALLY makes the CGI stand out in a bad way and often times reveals imperfections in makeup that they knew, at the time, wouldn’t be noticed once everything was edited and it hit the big screens.

There's something a theatrical costumer told me about, the 10 foot rule. As long as the costume can pass muster from 10 feet away, it's good enough. Too sharp attention ruins the illusion.

Zuckerberg is in such better shape than Musk, and is trained in combat sports. This will be humiliating if Elon shows up

I think the rich should engage in bloodsport for the entertainment of the masses more often. Let's get Kissinger and Cheney into a ladder match.

“What News Story Are They Burying?”

Reminder that if a billionaire CEO does something outrageous in the news, this should always be your first question.

Today that news story is that Meta, Zuckerberg’s company, is blocking all news content in Canada for Facebook and Instagram due to a new law requiring compensation to news publishers. Facebook is using its vast resources to apply public pressure to stop the laws of a foreign government and protect its profit margins. And they are getting sued by Malaysia.

Hey can we get more pictures like these, I'm starting a collection.

Ted Lasso Season 3 out of context

They are using Matte paintings in the Barbie Movie like in the early movie days instead of using CGI

And here’s a look at Skipper, she’s living with Midge in Chelsea’s treehouse :-)

I swear, the set design for this film is making me feral.

I’m actually crying over this. I’m a production scenic artist, it’s my job to paint film sets and every time on on location and I see a giant blue/green/led screen getting set up on location my heart breaks a little more. But this??? The heart and soul - dare I say crown jewel of scenic art in film….I honestly never thought I’d see it again in a big budget movie

One of my favorite tropes is character with a nasty toxic personality who tries very hard to do the right thing anyway

I like my protagonists sad, tired, bitter, fully convinced they will never get the recognition they deserve, but they still gotta get up in the morning and be a good person

hating tiktok is not a "back in my day" type thing. tiktok is objectively affecting other social media platforms in detrimental ways. ux elements are being stripped and everything has to have a fucking short video clips function. it's rampant homogenization and it's a problem

. yeah

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ZSÓF! @lighbringer ✨💐🎈💖