In Honor There Is Hope

Today I must finish the section "In the Vinkus" so that tomorrow I can start on "The Murder and It's Afterlife". Once that is complete I may start on "American Gods" by Neil Gaiman.

Also, I have to admit that this section--

"The children watched the silly indignity of grown-up women tearing stupid Liir's trousers and tunic off. They rubbed him all over with lard. This gave the children a case of the giggles, and made Irji feel very funny in his trousers, for the first time in his life."--

makes me want to write Liir/Irji fanfiction. Because when boys see other boys naked and feel funny in their trousers there is much UST. (Well, okay, probably not really since they're all just about on the cusp of puberty, but it could be an interesting piece of fanfiction to write about a character realizing that as they grow up they don't have "normal" attractions. Especially for a prince.

...What? Why are you looking at me like that? O.o

(And, yes, I realize that 'Irji is gay' probably--okay, more likely--wasn't the intention of the author, but fuck it. *holds ficcy idea close to chest*)

EDIT: Aw, crap. I forgot that Liir and Irji are half-brothers. Fuck. Okay, partial AU it is then.

Wow, importing everything from LJ to DW was surprisingly quick and easy. I didn't expect it to be so painless, to be honest. Of course, now I'm looking over things like my "friends only" post and realize it really needs to be updated and just generally rewritten. But I've never been good with those things so...

I've also come to the conclusion that, whether or not I actually move my basic base of operations here to dreamwidth, I'm letting my paid account on LJ expire. I'm not giving my money to a company that allows it's staff to troll users (more on that later for anyone who wants to hear it). I'm not leaving LJ entirely, because you guys are so awesome and there are a few communities keeping me there as well, but I'm not giving them anymore money. Once my LJ subscription runs out in a couple of months, I'll probably get a paid account here on Dreamwidth.

And now I shall go skedaddle off to play Left 4 Dead and wait for my wonderful girlfriend's class to end. :)

Just got this last night so I figured I should post something in it. I'm going to poke around and see if I can get all my LJ entries transferred over here like I've heard you can.

But, that shall have to wait! For I have classes soon. :( So not awesome...

I'm reading an extensive analysis of the Left Behind series. For those of you who haven't heard of it, the Left Behind series is an End of Days story. It begins with the Rapture and thus with mass disappearances of people all over the planet as God takes the true believes up to heaven. The story follows a band of people who were left behind as they witness the Tribulation and the rising of the Anti-Christ. The series, in my opinion, is horrible, full of bad writing and bad theology, but it provides some great discussion and the comment section is as worth reading as the posts. It contains some of the most thoughtful and respectful theological debates and discussion in the comments (mostly) that I've ever seen. I also love insights like this:

The other option is to read such tirades as wholly directed at Other People. Judgement is never for Us, only for Them. This is one of the main points of LB and indeed of the entire pseudotheological framework of premillennial dispensationalism on which it is based.

This approach -- judgement for Thee but not for Me -- also helps to account for the current antigay mania of American evangelicalism. In a couple of Paul's other rants, he includes "sodomites" in his bestiaries of badness. Even if we accept, for the sake of argument, the dubious assumption that Paul misunderstood the story of Sodom, and therefore used this as a synonym for "homosexuals," it doesn't follow that "homosexuals are bad" is the main lesson that heterosexuals should be gleaning from such passages. But if you read such passages looking for any excuse to exempt yourself from the apostle's condemnation, this offers an ideal escape hatch. Preaching against self-love, ingratitude, love of money or love of pleasure can be a two-edged sword. But if you're heterosexual, and you're preaching against homosexuality, then you're safe. You've found the ideal target for self-exempting, self-justifying self-righteousness.

Judgment is for Other People.

It's really best to read the the post "Other People" to understand the whole context of this passage. Personally, I think it's best to just read the whole thing because of the theological discussions as well as those on how horrible the writing is.

But here are a couple of gems from the comments section:

"But if you're heterosexual, and you're preaching against homosexuality, then you're safe."

I'm so glad to see this pointed out. Attending any of the serious social or spiritual concerns the bible tends to focus on involves, too often, both a conscious acceptance of our own failings as well as admonishments to change our own behavior. The bible's far too likely to tell us that we're too interested in wealth, not doing enough to help other people and overly judgmental, and nobody likes to hear that.

On the other hand, if we scrounge through the bible to find some obscure condemnation of a behavior we've never even wanted to commit, then suddenly our souls are clean, we don't need to change who we are and, best of all, there's someone else distinctly more 'sinful' than us we can point a finger at.

Of course, the bible speaks out far more fervently against this kind of judgmental lambasting than it does homosexuality, reminding us that condemnation and judgment are God's affairs, not ours, which renders this attitude about as 'christian' as whacking strangers for the KaliMa, but all shapes and sizes, right?

Martin: The Bible is quite clear that homosexuality is not the reason the Sodom was destroyed, but rather it was they they didn't feed the poor or clothe the naked:

Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen.

(Ezekiel 16: 49-50 NIV)

Avatar: Legend of Korra [8]
Credit if you take. :)
Original image here.

( icons under cut )

Also, just on the off chance that anyone wants to use these icons as bases, I would appreciate it if you asked first, and if you could be sure to link me to the icons when you're finished. :)

An update on the requested fics from my facebook note a couple months ago.

( list behind cut )

Okay, so I'm all caught up with the current Skins generation, and all I have to say is...damn. I mean, I knew what happened between Naomi and Emily already, but still... Damn. Also, WHAT THE HELL THOMAS? THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR YOUR DOUCHEBAGGERY TOWARDS PANDORA, WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?

Also, I don't understand why Naomi did that. Seriously. I can't really imagine what drove her to do that, seriously. I kind of like the idea that I've read in a few fanfics which is that she got scared because she loves Emily and realized that she can't live without her and she didn't know what to do with that and just freaked out, but still. SERIOUSLY. I really want them to be end game because I love both of them and I love them as a couple, but things aren't looking good for them, unfortunately. :(

Also, Cook does have a heart. :3 I loved the scene with him and Emily talking in the bathroom at the party. It was just cute to see them have that little heart to heart moment, especially since Cook can be a real ass a lot of the time--as he promptly proved the minute they left the bathroom. I didn't really like Cook's episode in season 3 because he was just a jackass, but he grew on me with the season 3 finale, so I'm hoping this next episode will show some real character development.

I'm sad, though, because I learned that Naomi isn't going to have an episode this season. She's my favorite character (aside from Emily but she just had her episode) and her episode was one of my favorites last season. Well, at least JJ is going to have an episode this season so I guess it's not all bad, really. I really liked his episode last season ("Naomi", "Katie and Emily" and "JJ" were my three favorite episodes from season 3).

And lastly, I ADMIT IT, OKAY? I WROTE A SKINS FANFIC! D8 It's really short and probably not the best thing I've ever written, but I'll get better the more fanfics I write for this fandom. It's the general law of fandom writing (if you're any good at writing that is). I've got a couple more quick ideas that I want to start writing down tomorrow or maybe later today or something.

Aaaaaaaaaanndd...that's it. For now, anyway.

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Is there an interesting story? No, not really. I chose Darkauthor26 because, well, I'm an author who likes to write characters and stories that tend to be on the darker side. The 26 comes from the fact that my birthday is the 26 of January.

Five more days until my birthday! 8D

Saw this on a couple different people's journals and decided to see what I got. :)

ANON CRUSH MEME
(You don't necessarily have to confess a crush; you can just tell me what you like about me if you want.)