Entertainment

My keys to Happiness

/ toseealife / 1 Comment

Hello all,

I decided to do a more lighthearted post today.

As you may know, I’ve used part of this blog to post about my recovery process after living with an abusive father for most of my life.

While I may not have as many horror stories as some people (and I acknowledge that everyone is different) it was definitely enough to poison my happiness and my self confidence for many years.

I still live with some side effects of that, but, by and large, my life has vastly improved in the lats 6 years.

I was dealing with depression and anxiety for a while because of what happened (and because I had reoccurring issues with that growing up), but I’ve gotten much better, and I’ve never needed meds. (Some people might, but I felt it wasn’t for me.)

So I thought I’d blog about some of the changes I’ve made.

Keys to Happiness

A lot of people say happiness is fleeting. That it’s just an emotion.

What I’ve come to see from both my own life, and observing other people’s, as well as reading about it, is that it would be more accurate to say happiness is a continual process, not a point of arrival.

I remember during the period of my recovery where I could barely eat because of anxiety (something my mom and sister also went trhough, and I’ve since learned is a symptom of people who’ve been narcissistically abused) some things like songs and messages would help me get trhough the dark points.

One that caught my attention was “Theseus” by the OH Hellos (one of my favorite bands still).

“At the edges of my fingers, never quite closing around it, that peace like a river always going, never getting.

Seems like maybe it’s not all that much a place, as it is a way, and ways don’t ever seem to want to stay too still, too long.”

[Theseus– The Oh Hellos]

I realized after hearing this song that the Bible describes Peace and love and joy as the paths of righteousness, and it always describes goodness as a “way” you walk.

Many major religions or even small ones, describe peace as a state you arrive at at the end of a journey But the Christian religion suggests that peace and joy are things you “practice.” You do them. You build up spiritual muscles to them. Paul even calls it “spiritual exercise” in his letter to Timothy.

I had a paradigm shift gradually after this point. I heard other people teach on the same subject around that time, I’ve always noticed that when I’m learning about a new concept, God throws other sermons and books and people into my path who echo it.

Happiness, and joy, if you prefer the deeper word, are both things you walk in. You make daily, weekly, monthly choices that make you more likely to feel happy.

1. Food

For me, nutrition was a big part of that. It was hard, but I ahd to choose to eat even when I felt sick or had low appetitet or was stressed out.

I never used to do that, and then I’d feel worse because I have a very fsat metabolism and skping evne one meal is enoght to amke me lightheaded and nasuoous. But when i eat regualra, I tend to feel much better.

I was put on a path of findi out how my body works, after suffering for several months with symspt like gaggin and acid reflux because it got so out of hand.

And over time, I learned to eat as a discipline even when I didn’t feel like it, and avoid the symptoms (for the most part) that not eating was giving me.

The weird part was I realized I had had those symptoms my entire life, since childhood, but had always avoided eating as a way to handle them.

I learned things I could do, like use anti-acids, or tea, or protein, to offset the symptoms when they started so I didn’t get to the point where I felt like throwing up.

And I’ve had problems like that since I was a kid.

I also learned to drink things with electrolytes instead of just water or to eat stuff with high sugar when I most felt like I was dropping, because it replenishes faster. And I suddenly stopped feeling sick all the time with allergies and sinus issues like I always did before. I never realized that dehydration was one of the main reasons I felt sick.

And that led me to find out that cold compresses, heating pads, and using aloe vera to help with inflammation, and using nasal spray and eye drops to help with it in hard to reach areas, could also alleviate a lot of the discomfort I felt when I had allergy attacks (which I do frequently).

My health issues have not disappeared now, and some things I did need to seek more help for, like getting a chiropractor for my spine misalignment (which also caused nausea and poor digestion)–but the point is, the entire process began because of what I experienced form trauma leading me to learn different ways of doing things.

I’m not saying that all health problems can be fixed this way, but almost all of them can be made less difficult to deal with by making lifestyle changes. And some can be cured, it depends on the problem. If I had known as a kid what I know now, I’d have missed out on a lot less activities because I felt sick or weak and didn’t want to do them. I might not have done as poorly at jobs that I felt sluggish at because I didn’t eat, never realizing that that was the reason I felt so sick.

And I wouldn’t have felt as depressed, because I realized that low blood sugar was a huge cause of it.

It’s a cycle. You’re stressed so you don’t eat, but then not eating makes you more stressed. But I had to break that cycle step by step. It was never a thing I arrived at. I’m still learning about what works for me 6 years later, but, I am a lot better now than I was then.

And that was just one physical aspect of it. But as C. S. Lewis pointed out in the Screwtape Letters, our body affects our spirits. If we treat our body poorly, we tend to treat our spirit poorly. If our body is weak, our spirit will be weak to fight off dark thoughts.

Probably 90% of depressed kids now are not getting proper nutrition, and not enough sunlight, which also has vitamins you need for your body.

We medicate them, but that just puts more chemicals into your body that are not even really good for it, because they suppress emotions, they don’t balance them, and often they don’t work very well. Even if you feel less sad, you feel less period.

Again for some people, it might work, but a lot of people don’t find it helpful, and often are not told what would most help them is different food habits and different lifestyle habits.

2. Exercising more

True confession: I really only started this one recently.

I did notice that some dancing and walking made me feel better even years ago when I started this journey, but, to be honest, I didn’t make it a regular thing enough to reap the benefits.

I’m not the best at exercising on a schedule now, with work and other things going on, but I still try to frequently work out and walk and get in the sunlight, most importantly.

Even an 20-30 minute walk can make you feel a lot better and get you some needed Vitamin D.

But even more if you sweat, sweat is a good stress reliever.

I started my exercise program for myself during my break from school/work because I realized that when I had things to accomplish, I felt less down and had more energy. I also set myself chores every week so I would feel like I was doing something worthwhile. But I’d say out of the two, exercise helped improve my mood the most and my energy.

Also I felt more like doing chores after I worked out, strange to say. Because it got the blood and endorphins glowing, which makes you feel more productive. Go figure. And you wonder how house wives and farmers wives used to get so much done in one week. It was because they had to do it every day so they were really fit and that made them more motivated (also because they actually expected their children to help them, but that’s a subject for another time). Also they took Sunday completely off, while most of us cram it with just as many activities as week days because it’s our free time.

That leads to my next point.

3. Taking Earned breaks

I would never tell people that work, work, work is the only cure to being depressed or anxious.

It helps a lot. Tests on rats have shown that a cushy lifestyle makes you more depressed and more anxious and more aggressive, not less so. All that energy you’d normally use to survive has to go somewhere. We’re no different. (The rich people who are the most happy have hobbies that are very active, and always have, it’s a fantasy of TV shows that rich people don’t do anything all day except get waited on.)

There’s nothing wrong with resting and relaxing. I can find it hard to really relax, especially when I have the most high anxiety.

Sometimes doing stuff is the best way to keep your mind off it.

But then you can swing back, like I do sometimes, and try to do too much, creating more things to be anxious about.

I sometimes rush into stuff as a way to feel more important or productive in life. I have to be reminded over and over again that your value is not determined by what you di for people and for the Lord, but by what you are and how you love (more on that later).

I need rest too. But I found it easier to rest when I actually worked first. Just lazing around on the couch all day doesn’t feel like rest because you never worked. Or taking Saturday or Sunday off doesn’t feel like rest, if you didn’t work all week.

But if you’re active, then rest is sweeter.

I’ve told my family since I Started my 35 hour a week job (more than I ever worked before in my life, though less than some people), that I realized I need to either take Saturday or Sunday to do pretty much nothing, and it depends on which week was which. Even if that means skipping Church, because that can be a stressful thing to get ready for and drive to, and it’s still exhausting for me. Especially if I’m serving in a ministry that day.

So sometimes I skip it, and rest. And I choose to stay home if I’m not feeling too good instead of powering through it, unless I have no choice.

And if Saturday is free, then I can go on Sunday, but at least one day needs to be a stay at home, don’t do anything difficult, day. Not that I do absolutely nothing, but I do light stuff that won’t physically or mentally strain me.

And the bible lays this out too. Work 6 days, rest on the 7th. I’ve found it doesn’t really matter which day it is, as long as I have one day per week. And it seems like one is enough. Two is nice, when I can, but one at least helps me have the mental fortitude to go back to work. When I don’t do that, the looming work week just feels so overwhelming, I dread it.

I enjoy work, when it’s challenging and I have things to contribute, but I also enjoy rest. They need to be in balance. I’m not the first to point this out, or the last, I’m just telling you that it really works.

And I’m only 26. I’m still at the age where you can push yourself too far and get away with it, but, I really find I can’t do that, even now. Maybe I’ll be better off for it when I’m older.

4. Doing things for other people and just keeping a kind attitude towards them

Gretchen Rubin, author of the “Happiness Project” (which inspired some of the changes I made to my life that I’m writing about, but also I found some of them before I read it a year and half ago, and she just confirmed I was on the right track) wrote that one of her life mottos is:

“There is only love.”

Meaning, I think, that at the end of the day, you really have nothing else to bring satisfaction except what you love, and choose to invest in. Especially if they are people.

And love isn’t always about doing things, though that is a big part of it.

But Corrie Ten Boom wrote how when her mother, who was a very loving person, could no longer do things for people after having a stroke, she still showed her love for them. Corrie wrote that “love is bigger than the walls that shut it in.”

Love is something we do with our souls, not just our bodies, though we should use them if we can.

Maybe you’ve seen this in a small smile a stranger might give you that still has kindness and good will in it. Or just a gesture that would seem meaningless usually but it’s done to help someone else out. Or the lack of a gesture, which sometimes says more.

A lot of us have no clue where to start with small acts of kindness, or we just don’t priortize it.

Also we have different definitions of kindness.

C. S. Lewis wrote that men think that unselfishness is not making people need to do things for you, and that women think that unselfishness is doing things to help other people.

And the difference of that is often what causes fights.

I think he’s right about men and women but I think there’s more overlap. I know ladies who never ask for help and think that makes them unselfish, but they also never offer to help you. And I know men who offer to help you a lot but then can end up making it more difficult for you by accident. And we need to do some things ourselves to feel competent and capable.

Some men think they need to stay out of the way of men, but do things for women. Which yes, by and large, I agree with. But there are nuances. Same with how women treat men.

And a lot of us never really try to figure this out.

The idea of “do no harm” is a popular way to define unselfishness now. But I don’t think it’s complete.

The bible definitely teaches that doing good is a key part of love, and even that it’s the more important part. Not doing anything is okay at times, but, only at times.

But in general, the more people who help, the easier something will be.

And often learning to accept help is a big struggle of ours. I’ve had to learn to do this too. I do not like asking for help. I actually noticed that it was making things more stiff between me and my co-worker though, that I never shared difficulties or questions about what we were doing with them.

I think people act helpless too often when they really aren’t, so I try to avoid acting that way (never let them see you sweat and all) but it can be a turn off. In this day and age people think that teamwork and being open about struggle is more important that just being able to do something alone. That was more Gen X and before’s mindset.

I find that usually I really can solve the problem myself, but asking for help makes people feel more connected with my contributions, and helps them to see I am doing things, so I’ve started to do it more. I still don’t like it, but, I’ll do it for the sake of morale.

And that’s a big part of love, I think. You don’t always like it but you make allowances for what other people need and like.

Not everything is about you.

The more I’ve put effort into doing things that I think will make others happy, the better I feel about myself and my life.

I’ve always wanted to have an impact on the world.

And while I don’t always feel that I contribute something really big, I try not to live small.

My current job is just coordinating tests for the Special Ed kids at a highschool. Basically, I sit in a room, waiting for them to come in, and hand out the tests and then collect them afterward.

I go over rules about it with them, answer questions about it if I can, or contact the teachers if I can’t. I also have to watch for cheating (an ongoing problem) and for kids getting distracted. Basically the person that kids don’t like the most, usually, on staff because they are only there to make sure they don’t do anything bad.

I love kids and hate the public school system so the job was ironic for me in many ways, but it was what I could get and it had a much better salary than my previous job, so I took it as a blessing. And it gives me a lot of time to write (I’m sitting in my “office” classroom right now writing this post, and checking every so often on the kids).

But I resolved that I would do my best to make my job work for me.

I made sure to start learning the kid’s names right off, it took a few weeks but I got most of them down. So I could actually treat them like people and not just people I had to watch.

I made it a point to say “have a good day” every time they left, and “Hello” and “Good morning” when they came in.

I bought extra things like pencil sharpeners, earplugs, and highlighters that I did get provided by the school (they give me some things, but not everything I wanted) so that I could have whatever they needed with me.

Some of them said the room was so bland it was stressing them out (and I had to agree, it was very boring). So I bought a bunch of posters that had nature scenes on them (some that looked like windows so the room looked bigger), and one with a phoenix on it that says “Grades Will rise from the Ashes” under it. (I made that part myself, my family said it was a good idea, and the kids did like it, so I guess they were right.)

I hung up some fake leaves on the back peg board and put fake flowers on my desk/table to brighten it up.

I also memorize the classes the kids are in for the most part so I could get them the tests faster.

I often make jokes or some wry comment to make it seem more like I’m human and not just some scary person. But I am firm when I need to be. When they don’t give me trouble, I don’t give them trouble, that’s my motto.

I’ve made the kids laugh with some of my jokes, so I guess it works out.

Yes, I have problems sometimes with them, but that’s teenagers, and people in general. Communication and attitudes are not always constantly good, but overall, we get along fine and they say they’re pretty comfortable coming to the room and testing here and that I make it more bearable, though they don’t enjoy the testing part much.

But I, at least, am not part of the bad experience, and that was my goal. I can’t make school less boring or annoying maybe, but I can not be part of the soul sucking experience of it. (And hey it’s not a bad school…I just know it’s stressful no matter how good your school is.)

I also try to be nice to my co-workers, and compliment them, and joke, and be cooperative as much as I can be.

This was all basic stuff, stuff anyone should do…and yet, a lot of people don’t do it.

And it helps me, not just them. By treating the kids and adults like people, I feel less bored and less lonely sitting here all day than I would otherwise. We may not be friends, but we’re like neighbors, in a sense. Not close but not hostile, we live in the same vicinity so we get along for the greater good.

Often, school and work can feel like a warzone to people who hate their job. And I could hate my job, if I wanted to focus on the negative parts.

But I don’t. I want to love what I do.

And while I don’t have any passion for testing students or enforcing rules I often think are dumb, I do have it for makinh people’s lives more enjoyable and if I can do that even at school, then, I will.

And in that way, I am living my dream even when it’s not really my dream job. But jobs come and go, really. How you look at them is the only thing you can control about your worklife.

5. Cut back on negativity

Short and simple. I indulged in reading a lot of angsty stories and listen to dark music while I was going through the effects of trauma after my father left.

It felt kind of good, and maybe there is a place for it, but finally I realized that it was encouraging me to dwell on the more dark parts of my life too much. I would get dragged back down to the same discouragement and depression as I felt before.

Especially when I was going through the time when I felt like dying would be better than living, reading about suicidal people just made me feel more hopeless.

I know a lot of people who do this, they gorge themselves on dark media and stories and say they enjoy the angst.

But it’s not good for you.

In moderation, a dark story isn’t unhealthy maybe, but if you read only that–I swear people take pride in it.

One person online told me that they just aren’t interested in a story if the happy character in it isn’t suffering abuse.

. . .

I wanted to ask them if they’d sought counseling for that issue.

Yes, as an author , I enjoy some drama, makes the story more fun to read. And yes, I write some darker stuff, because that’s life.

But I never write a happy character specifically to torture them with abuse and sadness. I have never written anything that was primarily an angst story.

Yes, it’s fun to make a character experience emotions they don’t usually, but it has to be done right, balanced and realistic. People just write with no sense of balance about it sometimes and indulge in it because pity can feel good,in a sick way.

Sometimes it can feel good to hurt people’s feelings, if you’re the type to get comfort out of making others share your own pain. (And all of us are sometimes, aren’t we?)

[Sometimes– Skillet]

But it’s not wise.

It’s also not wise to watch only political stuff that frustrates you about either side. And I have done that too. I had to cut back, it was making me hate the world too much.

Or videos about how stupid one gender is (am I calling you out yet?). Sure, I have problems with men, and with women. But the more I watch of people just complaining about them, either side, the more I think that the real problem is that. No one wants to take accountability for their part in it.

It’s gross. It’s easy to get hooked on, but it’s still gross. And it’s bad for you too.

Soon all you see is negativity.

The irony is, in my real life, plenty of people aren’t like that, and are nice, upstanding people. So if my view of the world is influenced more by people I don’t even know, online, that by people I do know irl…ins’t that a problem?

Sure some of us only know jerks…but you are what you attract, in that case, I say. We all think that we’re not also a jerk, but…if you are surrounded by them, clearly they think you’re one of them.

The point is, don’t put negativity around you if you don’t want to feel that way (preaching to myself here),

7. Get out and try new things

Another simple one, but sometimes motivating myself to go out and do anything when I don’t have to is hard.

But making friends and inviting them to do things I haven’t before, has proven to be a lot of fun. And helped me get closer to people who I’m not used to hanging out with.

I don’t have a expect opinion on the right way to do it, but I find even putting in effort, whether or not it was a success, has changed how I view myself.

I feel like a more confident person after I try stuff a little different than what I usually do.

(I recently tried karaoke for the first time. I’m not the best singer, but it was a blast anyway. The important thing is, it was new and fun).

Learning more about yourself is a good way to feel more at peace with the world, I’ve noticed.

I don’t really believe in all that self actualization stuff, but I do believe that you should find out what you like, and be comfortable with who you are.

Conclusion:

Of course, for me, all of this comes from Above.

I prayed about what to do to help myself feel better, and I believe God directed me to try all those things.

I’m still learning.

I’ve also gained a lot of perspective on my life. I am on better terms with my father, though I doubt we’ll ever be close. I’m even on better terms with the people I got along with before, but we feel closer now. Without all the unspoken tension in our house.

All in all, my life got way better, despite how difficult those dark times were.

And I learned a lot about what makes me the most happy and satisfied.

But maybe the most important part of this is you have to see waht happened as having a purpose.

The author of “Man’s Search for Meaning”, Viktor Frankl, who survived a Nazi prison camp, wrote of doing therapy with people using meaning and purpose. It was very successful, because he found that people can bear suffering more when they think there was a reason for it.

People will make up reasons, if they don’t have one provided.

The Bible has a more nuanced approach. It teaches that not all suffering happens because we deserve it, or even because God wants it to happen to us, but that it just happens, because there is evil in the world.

But, that if we give even the senseless things that happen to us to God, He will give them meaning. He will redeem that suffering.

So even if God didn’t want everything that happened to happen, He will fix it anyway.

And I found that comforting. I can’t quite reconcile the idea of the senseless violence and cruelty in the world with God’s will enough to think that everything was meant to be that way.

But I can reconcile the idea that God will heal it, even if He will not (or cannot, maybe in a sense), prevent all of it.

We can be upset that bad stuff happens period, but, that won’t stop it from happening. And people who use the idea that “nothing we do matters” as comfort, might as well not be alive at all (and many of them soon no longer are because they take that to its natural conclusion.)

The only real way to rise above pain is to accept it’s not always deserved, and it’s not always your fault, and it’s also not always not your fault. You have to take each thing as it comes and decide what to do.

Pain should not change who we are, only sharpen it.

This was not easy for me to practice, but, when I chose to, it was because I felt that the worst pain of all would be if the suffering made me not who I wanted to be. That idea was worse than the idea of more pain, and more suffering.

Because at the end of the day, we are what we have, always, to work with. Everything else changes, except God, I believe.

That was my rock.

Whether everyone will accept that or not, I don’t know, and it’s not really my responsibility if they do, but, for me, that was the motivation for trying to find ways to climb out of the pit.

And I did.

There’s more trouble ahead, no doubt, but I think I know better how to deal with it now.

And Gretchen Rubin said the same. She was learning how to be happy so that she could weather future difficulties more easily and more resiliently, because she built up those habits.

I agree.

I hope you found this post interesting or helpful.

Thanks for reading, and stay honest– Natasha.

The Chosen’s Problem with The Bible

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

I’ve written about the Chosen before (see The Chosen). I started out liking the show but after season 3 I had problems with it, and now, I’ve had to watch season 4 as part of a Church thing (not because I wanted to).

And I think I now have a better idea of what I think about it than before, and I am more sure that season 3 was not just a fluke. Season 4 was already on shaky ground, but after the death of Raymah, and subsequent alterations they made to match that, it has completely derailed from scripture.

Even where the Word says that Jesus lost none of His followers. [See John 16 and 17:6-12 especially vs. 12.]

I think the Chosen has a real problem with certain parts of the Bible, and the Faith of Christianity and I’m going to detail why in 10 points.

So let’s do this thing:

1. Sometimes it’s more risky to show miracles then it is to show tragedy.

    Actually, it’s always more risky.

    It’s a strange truth about human beings, we find it easier to accept bad things happen, then good things.

    The easiest way to prove this is to ask yourself how your expectations are effected by a positive or negative outcome of any situation.

    When something ends badly, and the same situation repeats itself again, is your first thought to expect it to go wrong? Or do you clear the board and have no expectations?

    And conversely, even if it goes well, do you still think it will go badly the third time? Or, at least, are you just as worried about it?

    How many good experiences does it take to cancel out a negative one?

    And how many negative experiences does it take to ruin something for you?

    The problem is that many people treat God like this.

    When I looked at the controversy around Season 4’s killing off of Raymah, (who was not a biblical character to begin with, so I guess they thought they could get away with it) the most common defense fans made of the decision was that it was a good risk to take in storytelling, and that it was good to depict that God does not always answer prayers.

    Which is a rather presumptuous statement. How do we know that God does not always answer prayers? The answer may simply be one we did not understand.

    It is true that we don’t always get what we want.

    Therefore, according to the writers, it’s okay to change the Word of God, as long as it makes a point that is not found in scripture, but is a common teaching of the modern church.

    The Chosen writers claim they are not changing the Word of God, that they are simply depicting the story.

    What I find interesting about this claim is that it’s like they think as long as they are not writing the words into the physical Bible, they are not changing the Word of God.

    Did they forget that the stories of Jesus were originally passed down through oral tradition, just like every other religion’s stories. The Gospels were not written for a few decades after Jesus died. (Probably they were written because many of the first Disciples had died and so there were less people who could tell eye witness accounts of it, and the writers of the Gospels realized they needed a record of it.)

    But for the first 20-4o years, all we knew about Jesus was by word of mouth. And that was enough.

    So it was crucial that they told it accurately.

    And the writers of the Chosen also seem to ignore that most of Jesus’ teachings were in story form: Parables, and that changing the words Jesus used would change the parable’s meaning.

    Not to mention how often both Jesus, and other prophets used visual teaching aids to make their point. Temples, rocks, trees, dust, etc.

    So yeah, the Bible has always been passed down through oral and visual means, not just the written word, and if you change it in spoken or visual depiction, which a TV show would be, you are still changing the word of God.

    Words are spoken before they are written aren’t they? If you change what God said in what you speak, performance or otherwise, you are changing his Word. Like a false prophet would not give accurate prophecies.

    This is not to say nothing the chosen has done has ever not been good. They do show some things as they happened, and that is going to have power, no matter how mutilated the rest of the show is…

    But that does not excuse it.

    The thing is, even if the imitation has some power, the unfiltered word of God always has more power than a paraphrase. The real thing is always better. And this is true of all things.

    You’ve seen copies of great art, or remakes of movies, even when they are good, do they ever hit you quite the same way the first one did? No…there’s a freshness in originality that moves us more than imitating it does, no matter how well we do it.

    Knock off brands are never as good as name brand food, or clothing, or medicine, or anything.

    Iconic things are iconic for a reason.

    2. The Pride of Assuming we can make God’s point better than He can.

    The disturbing thing about people’s justifying changing the Word of God because it’s more ‘realistic” is that it’s very arrogant to assume we just know what God thinks about things.

    Tragedy is real, I’m not the type to ignore that.

    But the whole story of the Bible is about how God will overcome all evil in the world, including the evil of loss.

    So it was important that Jesus overcome all evilest he was faced with, in His time on Earth.

    The only time Jesus ever failed was when it depended on people’s free will to accept him. Which healing and resurrection do not. That is a different matter.

    But when it came stopping to the things that plague our world, Jesus never failed to do that. You won’t find one story incident of Jesus saying no to someone who asked for healing, or failing to resurrect anyone he wanted to.

    In fact, it’s kind of surprising that Jesus never once said no…almost like it wasn’t about worthiness.

    (BTW, Jesus raised at least 3 people from the dead. The Chosen and most other depictions of the Gospels leave out the widow’s son for some reason.)

    What I find odious about what the the writers of the Chosen are doing is that they are using the Word of God, which God meant for His own purpose when He had it recorded and told tho the world, to instead teach a message of their own.

    It really wouldn’t matter in the least if they are right or not about they way God sees loss. I think it’s not really as simple as they made it out to be.

    People like to act as if there is only one reason anyone ever dies, but the Bible actually teaches clearly that there are many reasons someone can die. Sometimes it’s sin, sometimes it’s just their time, sometimes it’s evil on someone’s part, and sometimes it’s so that God can do a miracle (which is the most rare, but happens.)

    Or some may give up their life willingly as an act of sacrifice.

    God seems to see death as a complex issue, and since, to us, it certainly is complicated to experience loss, I’m glad the Bible does not give a generic answer to the problem. That would be kind of silly. And show it was not a true faith.

    That said, the Chosen has no business trying to simplify it either into something so packaged and vague that you can’t ever say for sure if it’s legitimate or not.

    The reason for not raising Raymah from the dead given is that “it’s not her time.”

    But, God no where in the entire Bible, not just the Gospel, says that it’s not someone’s time to be resurrected. That reason never comes up, there’s not that many cases of resurrection in the Bible, but none of them contain that.

    God also, to my knowledge (and I did look it up to be sure), never even says that there is a set time for people to be raised to life, aside from the final ressurrection, which is of a different kind.

    So they are making this up as way to explain to people why they do not get what they want.

    Because, you know, so many of us ask for resurrections on a regular basis…

    Yeah, I’ve never asked for that.

    Making the lesson about resurrection is suck a presumption because it’s a mystery even in the Bible why and how God does it.

    Now the message bout not all prayer being answered (at least right away) could be addressed, but it should have been around something that the Bible addresses itself, not something that we have no authority to speak on. Because, we really don’t. We don’t know the rules. We shouldn’t presume to know God’s reasons for things when He does not outright give them to us.

    Do you think I’m being a snob? But God says in His word: “My ways are Higher than your ways, and my thoughts are higher than your thoughts.” [Isaiah 55:9]

    I’m showing the respect to God that I think He deserves.

    And I don’t set up my own wisdom to be the authority on God’s ways. I only know that by His own Word, which He gave us to judge by, this does not line up.

    And that should really have won the argument right there. That anyone can even still supports this is telling about how little anyone in our cultural respects the Bible anymore.

    There are a few people who agree with me, but, they seem to be in the minority, even out of the Christian audience.

    3. Our own lack of faith is being used to justify this writing decision.

    Because we find it hard to believe in miracles we don’t see everyday, that makes it okay to say Jesus would not have always done them…because that sounds too good to be true.

    Newsflash: Jesus is supposed to sound too good to be true. That’s how we know He was God in the flesh. If he wants limited the way a man is limited, we’d know he was just a prophet, which is what the Muslims believe.

    But we believe He was God, so you cannot limit Him like a man.

    Case in point: When Jesus cast a demon out of a boy his disciples couldn’t cast out, He was able to do it easily, He had more authority that His disciples who He said would need to have prayed more, and fasted, in some versions, to do it.

    Almost like Jesus, the one who gave them authority, inherently has more authority than them. Who is greater? The one who bestows authority? Or the one it’s bestowed on?

    Heck, even Disney’s Aladdin got this right. “The [genie] gave you your power, he can take it away.”

    4. The Chosen plays it safe.

    While it has no problem putting in things that out right contradict scripture, the Chosen also is omitting everything in the Gospel that would actually be difficult for the moderm audience.

    As I said, it’s astonishingly easy for people to accept tragedy. As evidenced by how many people accepted Raymah’s death, and who are showing disgust with those of us who think it was wrong to write it in.

    But strangely, the topics Jesus taught on that would really be a problem for our modern culture, they have been omitted from the entire show.

    I kept expecting them to start including more stories and sermons, but they haven’t.

    Like Jesus’ teaching on marriage, it would not be popular now, so they omitted it.

    They omitted His teaching on any and all political issues, which He didn’t cover a lot, but did a few times.

    They omitted His teaching on hell entirely, which does not surprise me. Most people do when they cover the Gospels.

    The omitted His teaching on many other things, his parables of the talents, the poor stewards, the last days, the servants, the straight and narrow way to life…anything that might make anyone uncomfortable.

    By contrast, teachings about forgiveness and acceptance of differences never really bother that many people. There are some who think it’s too lenient, but in our culture, for the most part, it’s approved of to preach acceptance and forgiveness.

    And those are important, and undoubtedly the best parts of the Chosen, when they do focus on it. But they waste so much time on things that never happened, and they don’t cover many things that did.

    Jesus did so, so much more than what they’ve shown.

    And you may say: “Well they don’t have the budget to show all of those things.”

    I’m aware they don’t. No one could…but it would take less budget to pay for people to just sit and talk, which most of the preaching would be, or to show parables, when they are very simple stories, than it would to pay for all these action scenes that were never real.

    And to me, it’s disrespectful, it’s like saying Jesus didn’t do enough things worth talking about for them to cover, they have to add all this stuff He never did, to make it more interesting…because the Gospel was not interesting enough already.

    And yes, it may not interest everyone…but if people are watching the show to learn about Jesus…then they need to learn about Jesus.

    But the story is supposed to be about his followers!

    The show says it’s about the lives of the people He called…but what were they learning?

    Peter said Jesus had the words of life?

    If we’re going to show the disciple’s lives, it’s imperative that we show what they were really hearing and experiencing, not making up stuff that never happened to them.

    (FYI, they were never stoned either. The attempt was made on Jesus, alone, but, He escaped, and none of the disciples were injured at any point. That was all a flat out lie.)

    And I don’t object to then the how just covers them having fun with each other, or having asides that do world building. There’s nothing wrong with that, but you can stay within the realm of possibility based on the Gospels, without committing heresy and blasphemy by portraying Jesus incorrectly.

    And it is, whatever they say, incorrect. If you cut out all the hard things Jesus taught, like about divorce, and hell, and judgment…then you cut out part of Jesus…and that cuts out some of the power of His message and life.

    And without the full power of it, what are we basing our lives on?

    5. What this twisting of the story is really doing:

    I hope that all this is not intentional on the writers’ part…

    But unfortunately, I kind of think it is.

    I don’t see how it couldn’t be. They are studying the Bible to write this show, they know what they are doing is not biblical. They know it’s changing the events of the Bible to suit a more ‘dramatic narrative.”

    But they are also changing it so that it matches more their image of God.

    Someone who is patient.

    Someone who confronts people who are judgmental, the pharisees, but only for the reasons we are okay with. Like objecting to healing.

    Never for the reason that we don’t like, like think they know God better than Jesus did…

    Wow…something that might actually make us question the writing of the show.

    I mean, clearly, the writers of the Chosen just understand Jesus better than us. They’re doing all this research…you know, with non-Christian scholars (look it up), to really understand what the founder of our faith was all about.

    And they clearly leave out half of what He taught (if not more) because they just understand what we need to see about Jesus, more than we do.

    And heck, they know most people no longer read the Bible or care what it says, so they’ll get away with it.

    And that’s not exploiting the ignorance of the population, and the gullibility of new Christians who don’t know better yet, in order to make money…Since they run this thing on donations.

    And of course, us all subscribing to it on our streaming platforms….

    I mean, there’s no ulterior motive here at all.

    (I notice they also left out Jesus’ teaching about money for the most part….though they do represent greed as a bad thing…I think. But more sympathetically than other sins.)

    6. What this show represents is False Gospel.

    And people being okay with it because they think it’s a better story show two things:

    a. We have fallen very far off track in the Western church and our love of scripture. We don’t love it anymore, we’re embarrassed by it. Because all of it does not fit pop culture. So, changing it is for the best in our eyes.

    b. People do not really understand the beauty and wisdom of the Gospels.

    I’m a simple woman in one way only: If I say I believe the Bible, I mean I believe all of it. Even the parts I don’t like, the parts that confuse me, and the parts that seem hard.

    Because, I accept that I am not all knowing. That God has always seemed difficult to understand to all poeple, in all times…but that is not unusual in life.

    All the most real and beautiful things in life are hard to understand.

    Love is.

    Great art is.

    Wisdom that really works for life is.

    Life itself, with all its complex functions, is hard to understand.

    So is the biological life we experience, and the natural world, they are hard to understand.

    Even the things that are unpleasant have a purpose, and thousands of years ago we did know what many of them were, but we do now.

    Why should God be any different? How could He be? He made the other things.

    So yes, I don’t understand it all…but I don’t need to.

    I accept God’s real because I have seen Him work in my life and the lives other, and I know He is real and true. so I can accept what I don’t know.

    Not being able to do this, either on in a show,or in real life, seems to show a lack of faith to me.

    Also a lack of sincerity.

    If it it’s so hard to believe that Jesus was as powerful as He was, but that in our lives, we don’t get everything that we want…well…

    Tough.

    7: A response to these issues

    See, our loss does not make it okay to scoff at someone else’s blessing. No more in the modern day than it did 2000+ years ago.

    Just as Peter asked if John would die for his faith, as Jesus warned Peter he would, and Jesus said ” What is that to you? You follow me.”

    See, John did not die for his faith, he was the only one who did not.

    Peter picked the right one, I guess.

    John was exiled,but, he died of old age.

    Would it really have made Peter feel better if he knew John would die also?

    Is someone else sharing our suffering necessary for us to bear it?

    I think not. I think that’s selfish.

    And Jesus told Peter He wouldn’t answer that.

    And that the same for us, I think.

    No, we do not all get the same miracles… We all get our own. However many we get.

    And more than we like realize, since we’re not privy to all things that could be trying to harm us in our lives.

    But, that does not mean we should presume to know why.

    Jesus didn’t explain Himself.

    I think that it did not need to be explained.

    God knows the allotment of suffering we all will get.

    Yeah, it’s disproportionate…but, what in life is ever in equal amounts to all people’?

    Never in nature, only humans ever try to give everyone the same amount, and how often does that backfire as we realize that not everyone can have the same amount.

    Two people can eat two different amounts of the same food.

    Some people can’t even eat some foods.

    We’re not all ready for the same thing. We’re not able to do the same things.

    People who lose people in their lives now and feel the need to project that into the Gospel to feel validated…well, they are playing a dangerous game.

    Both the writers, and often the fans.

    I can’t stress this enough: THE GOSPEL IS NOT A VEHICLE FOR YOUR PERSONAL PROBLEMS AND YOUR ATTEMPTS TO RECONCILE THEM WITH YOUR CONCEPT OF GOD.

    You learn from the Gospel, you do not use it to promote your own solutions to things that are not officially in the faith. Not as if they are doctrine, anyway.

    Do we really need something so pathetic as needing to think Jesus let people die who were following him, in order to feel better about our suffering?

    As if we’re the same as those people?

    We’re not in the same time and place they were.

    Some times just have more protection then others.

    (Though, in my life, I’ve heard probably hundreds of stories by now of people being held, and even of being resurrected a few times and either I assume every single person was lying, even ones I know personally to be honest people, or, I assume that God still–shock–does miracles.)

    I don’t see this as an issue.

    And I don’t think they needed to waste our time with lies, just to push some half baked doctrine.

    There are some passage in the Bible about prayers not being answered right away, but they are for more than one reason.

    It can be lack of persistence. It can be the prayer is delayed by evil forces in the world (see Daniel). Or it can be God says no…but that’s rarely the reason given (to David and Paul are two of the only examples I can think of, for different reasons). Usually, it’s just not the right time.

    8. Is everything in the show bad?

    I don’t want to go that far. I might make the error of sinning in the opposite way if I do.

    Being too judgmental and eager to quench any good the show may do, is not a good attitude to have.

    But I must point out some things.

    I rarely hear this taught on (only by John Bevere, actually), but not all good things are necessarily God.

    At least, they may seem good, but that doesn’t mean they are good.

    See, often poeple can start with a good message, or good deed, but do it only to do a worse evil.

    Like how a child predator will use affirmation and rewards to lure a child in…but then do unspeakable;e things to them.

    And if you think that’s painting it too strong, the word says that Jesus compared twisting His word and causing people to stumble, to misleading and sinning against children, and said it would be better to be drowned with a heavy stone, then to do something like that.

    So if Jesus takes false teaching that seriously, then I think we probably should not be so flippant about how media is treating it.

    Media like the Chosen takes some good things from the Bible, and dangles it in front of the Christian audience, who are starved of it, because the World tends to mock us and tear us down in entertainment.

    So we’re desperate already.

    And then they mix in their own twist on it, just when we’re not looking, and start threading it with things that really did happen or are really Biblical, we may not even notice.

    The devil loves to use Scripture out of context, He tempted Jesus that way in the wilderness, so why not us?

    [Another thing the Chosen constantly does is take the stories of Jesus out of the context he spoke them in, rendering the meaning utterly different. Just recently they did this with the story of the final judgement of the Sheep and the Goats. They made it seem like he was teaching this to explain the idea of the coming kingdom, but He told that story as a warning to His followers, not to correct misconceptions about him. He did address those at other times, but that’s not where this teaching fits into the Bible. It had nothing to do with Mary and the oil. It took place a few days before that on the mount of Olives, and there were no pharisees present, just him and His Disciples, which Matthew 24:3 makes a point of making clear. They ruined the moment of Mary’s anointing just for more e’em impact…but I thought it took away the emotional impact to mix it up with the politics.]

    9. What is the Chosen even really about?

    I challenge you all to look very carefully at what the message of the Chosen has really become.

    Consistently, it is only a message from the most flimsy parts of Christianity (by which I mean, they are making it unbalanced), and hardly even Christianity anymore.

    It does focus on the healing and kindness of Jesus to a few people, yes, but, it ignores the main thing He taught.

    That His real purpose was to teach us how to follow God the best way, which has not been covered at all by the show.

    Not how to pray, how to worship, how to fast, none of the things Jesus said about serving God.

    Not even his speech about loving the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength”

    None of His new teachings about being closer to the Father. Like “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father.

    But Jesus’ whole ministry was to reconcile us to the father.

    His healings were part of that. Since physical and demonic ailments often are a hindrance to being close to God. (Also He was compassionate. It can be more than one thing.)

    Since all that is gone, the show is very superficial.

    It centers around what Jesus did for his disciple, and what He didn’t do…that’s it.

    It’s not about God’s glory. It’s not about Jesus’ heart for His father, or His passion for His name.

    They have no had the Temple Cleansing scene yet, I’ve heard that they will in season 5.

    The issue is that, with the way they wrote this, they are going to make it look as if Jesus did these things just to anger the Pharisees. And the temple cleansing is Him adding to that.

    But that was not why Jesus did it, at least, we’re given no hint that it was. It was Him showing zeal for Gods’ house, not to anger the Pharisees.

    They take away huge parts of Jesus’ character, and by existence, His Disciples.

    It’s not okay to ignore that they were real people.

    Jesus is not just an idea you get to use to show whatever side of Him you are comfortable with.

    He is His own person, and you should show Him in His own words and deeds.

    Who can explain God better than Himself? And who can possibly hope to undrstand Him but Him?

    So how can we think changing Jesus, in any way, is acceptable.

    I don’t think they need to show ever sin thing He did, but what they do who’s should be what He did, and what He was like, not what we think He should be like.

    A if we could ever know that, apreit form Him.

    AS C. Lesis wrote, we shold pray to God “not to WAht I think Thou art, but what what Thou knowest Thyself to be.” IF w’re to be really honest about it.

    10. My conclusion about the show

    Boldly, I think no Christian should support what the Chosen is doing.

    The good they have done, I question how good it really can be.

    How can showing people a fake version of Jesus really help them?

    Yes it may get them to read their bible…

    But the thing is, that doesn’t help them, if in doing it, it has taught them to read it looking for the version of Jesus they’re seeing on the screen.

    To read it with a bias, and filter out what they don’t like.

    And if you think a show could not do that…then you don’t understand psychology. Because media does that all the time to us, and we’re lucky if we’re at least aware of it.

    Movies try to make us feel most things are the way they show them, and it’s convincing.

    Bad enough they corrupt sex, family, dreams, and art, but, you stay away from my Lord and Savior, you liars.

    People will always try to twist Jesus to suit them.

    But I must say, I’ve never seen anyone do it so openly, and gt so little flack for it from even Christians.

    Yes, skeptics often praise watering down Jesus because they don’t like Him the way He is, but I expect that. Though it annoys me.

    But those of us who are supposed to love Him, if we don’t really love Him, as He is…What are we even doing?

    Why call yourself a Christian if you don’t like Christ?

    No one seems interested in answering these questions who supports this show…

    But I still have to keep asking them. I can’t afford to let myself be hypnotized by fancy special effects and decent acting to accept things that are not true.

    And no one else should either. You have a responsibility to crack open your bible and find out if this show is right or not.

    And not to just to look for it to confirm what you’re seeing, but really, really look.

    And sorry to the writers , but any real perusal of the Gospel will show clearly that Jesus is not like what they are showing.

    At times, yes, He may be something like it…but never as cut and dried as they want. Never as non-confrontational, or non-controversial.

    It’s His teaching that still offends us to this day that gives us a real taste of what it was like to follow him.

    And they should cover it, or they should shut up about it, because Jesus does not need you to show only part of who He is to the world. The world can do that itself.

    It’s our business to show all of Jesus, as much as we can, since we are entrusted with the spirit and knowledge of Him to do this.

    And throwing that away, frankly, makes me wonder if the chosen writers ever really had it to begin with.

    But that’s not for me to say. I only wonder how much they can love God, if they would not even show God in the most simple way we have, His word is as simple as it gets, every other experience of God is harder to endure than that, so if you can’t even get that right…

    Well, I don’t know. God knows their hearts. Maybe they are sincere.

    But it looks bad.

    And even if they were, it doesn’t make right, only makes them seem more sympethic.

    That said, I urge you all to be careful about this show. Even approving of it partially is still sending a message to the world that we really, honest;y, don’t care that much about our Bible.

    And they may like that…

    That’s exatly why we shouldn’t be doing it.

    Untit next time, stay Honest–Natasha.

    Paragon of Virtue

    / toseealife / Leave a comment
    “For it is in passing that we achieve immortality. Through this, we become a paragon of virtue and glory to rise above all. Infinite in distance and unbound by death, I release your soul, and by my shoulder, protect thee.“
    Pyrrha Nkos

    It’s no secret if you’ve followed me for a while that I was originally a big fan of RWBY.

    And that I’m still a fan of the first 3 volumes, at least. Possibly the 4-5 ones also.

    I’m also a fan of the Justice League Animated show (and recently I watched the Snyder cut of the live action movie, and holy cow was it like watching a different film! One I actually lied. I think we should burn the theatrical cut and pretend it never happened.)

    So I was talking to my sister about both these things and comparing the characters, and she specifically requested I blog about this topic.

    So here we go:

    What is a Paragon?

    Let’s look at the web’s definition, though most weebs already know what it is, sort of:

    “A paragon means someone or something that is the very best. The English noun paragon comes from the Italian word paragone, which is a touchstone, a black stone that is used to tell the quality of gold. You rub the gold on the touchstone and you can find out how good the gold is.” (vocabulary.com)

    Most people acknowledge that the main character of any given kids show or movie is supposed to be the paragon. And if I name names, you’ll see a pattern.

    Anime has a paragon almost as a requirement, with a few exceptions, like the Shield Hero.

    Midoriya (My Hero Academia)

    Naruto (Naruto)

    Tohru (Fruits Basket)

    Natsu (Fairy Tale, Erza would also be one)

    Hiro (Darling in the Franx)

    Not all of these are perfect examples, the first two are the closest. But you know the characters who stand above the rest, who everyone wants to be like, who they trust to lead them, who they think has some moral insight that they don’t.

    Outside of anime, the paragon is less worshiped, but still present.

    Captain America (Avengers)

    Xavier (X-men, often Logan also fulfills this role)

    Mickey Mouse (any Micky Mouse media)

    Aang (Avatar the Last Airbender)

    So you see paragons are everywhere. That’s why it’s considered a trope.

    For a better explanation of how it is used in a story and the pros and cons, I refer you to Overly Sarcastic Productions excellent video:

    Love Red’s videos about tropes

    So, of course, the two paragons I wanted to talk about are Ruby, from the show RWBY, and Superman, from the DC Universe. Particularly his recent shows and movie renditions.

    I’m going to argue that neither of these characters are good paragons, though they are treated like paragons by their writers and fellow characters, and the fans, by and large.

    But my unpopular opinion is that they both suck at fulfilling this role, and that is because people lack understanding of what makes a paragon really work.

    I think it goes back to our culture’s lack of understanding of what makes a righteous person to begin with.

    (I’ve argued that Gaara should be the protagonist of Naruto also, and a protagonist and paragon do not have to be the same thing but they usually are in anime, however I think Gaara fulfills both roles better.)

    It’s easy to see why Superman would be considered the best of the best, who can be better than Superman?

    Yet, it’s interesting that in every version of the Justice League that’s written where they turn to the dark side, Superman is the first to fall.

    I now the premise is that he is the only one holding the league together, so if he falls, they all fall.

    I’m going to argue now that that is actually one of the signs of a bad paragon.

    1. Instead of people being inspired by the paragon, they instead rely on them, both intellectually and physically.

    Ruby is the bigger offender here, but so is Superman.

    Lazy thinking is the bane of every group in real life, but it’s also one of the main things that kills fictional teams.

    The whole team relies on thsi one person to know what’s right and to know what to do.

    Sample:

    Yang from RWBY: “She (Ruby) always knows what to do, so I’m going to follow her.”

    Flash from JL animated series: We don’t do that to our enemies.

    Diana: Speak for yourself.

    Flash: I was trying to speak for Superman.”

    This is just one of many examples from the shows where the other characters rely on the example of the paragon…to a point where it seems they may not actually agree with them.

    I’m against murder, of course, but Diana stopping herself only because Superman would say to, and not out of any mercy of her own, seems like a red flag.

    And it’s made more poignant when we consider that both in the Justice Lords episode of this show, and in the video game and movie versions of the Dark Justice League, Diana goes dark once Superman has led the way. Implying she never had any root in herself and her own ideals to resist the pull of power.

    Diana’s weakness is not thinking for herself. Flash, who we learn died before the League went full on power mad in the alternate world, would have been the only person to resist the corruption, and he is the only one to stop Diana in the regular timeline.

    J’onn, the Maritian, also expresses how he wonders if they can still be a league, how many battles did they win just because Superman was there, he asks.

    [I actually think he’s less necessary than they think based on the show at least, but not in the movies.]

    On RWBY, Ruby is followed by her sister, Yang, but also by Ozpin, who insists that victory is in the simpler things. Even the theme song says ‘victory is in a simple soul.’

    The problem is, Ruby is not a simple soul.

    Actually she is full of insecurities, questions, and later on, she resorts to deception and misleading her allies, just because she’s not sure what they will do with the truth, even though she was angry at Ozpin for doing the same thing.

    Whereas Oscar, a much better character, is against ding this, but gets ignored because no one respects him.

    And Superman, despite Flash’s well meaning optimism, is not the paragon of mercy Flash thinks he is.

    Flash didn’t witness the two times Superman tried to kill Darkseid, a villain who humiliated him more than even Lex Luthor, who he just barely holds himself back from killing as it is. But Superman actually had zero hesitation to try to kill Darkseid, and was only stopped, one by Supergirl using reason, and once by Batman, who used brute force (sort of, he got lucky with a boom tube.)

    The issue I have with both Supes and Ruby isn’t that they make these mistakes, while being the leaders, but it’s actually my second point:

    2. The paragon lacks humility.

    A good paragon has flaws, that’s not the problem. The problem is when they pretend that they don’t.

    Ruby makes a crap ton of mistakes, but notably, she never once admits it.

    As far back as volume 1, Weiss goes off on Ruby for being reckless and a show-off, but then admits that she herself can be a little ‘demanding’ and offers to compromise.

    I might be missing something, but I don’t recall Ruby ever owning up to Weiss having a point. She’s just blindly confident that she’ll impress everyone with her skills. Which she does, but that doesn’t make her a good leader.

    Weiss also complains that Ruby is the leader of their team, and offers some valid reasons, which in my mind were proven entirely right by Ruby herself several times, and then some, and while Weiss is hardly perfect, Ruby never tries to amend her actions to give Weiss more confidence in her, or acknowledge Weiss might have a point.

    “I’m not perfect! Not yet, but I’m still a hundred times better than you.” Weiss, volume one. (I may have paraphrased slightly)

    All the way up to Volumes 6-8, which were all horrible train wrecks, including the actual train wreck that happened in volume 6, where Ruby actually says she never needed her uncle’s help, after he saved her butt like 3 times just since his reintroduction in vol 4, and the other times people bailed her out.

    Ruby, much like Naruto and Deku on their shows, doesn’t one off win nay fights on her own after volume 2, and that was a draw. Yet she has the idea that she’s independent somehow…why?

    Let’s look at Superman for a moment.

    In one of the worst episodes of the first JL show (but still far better than the last season of the Unlimited follow up show) Secret Society, Superman pisses off Flash and Hawk Girl by saying:

    “At the end of the day, I’m the invulnerable one. Every hit I take is one someone else doesn’t have to.”

    While they get mad at this, no one makes the pretty obvious come back: “Sure, until someone has Kryptonite or Red Sun Radiation.”

    Something multiple people have had access to, in the show alone, and on his own show.

    Superman may be tough, but everyone knows his weaknesses! He’s not invulnerable or invincible. Plus, even Lois Lane has had to save him, not once, but at least 2 or 3 times on his show, and the others saved him many times on the Justice League show.

    So where does he get off suggesting that he’s somehow less subject to peril than they are? If he was less reckless about his own safety, they’d actually win their fights faster because they might employ this thing called strategy.

    And this leads into point number 3

    3. A paragon that never learns

    Because of people worshiping them, and their big head, often bad paragons never learn anything from their mistakes.

    The entire show of RWBY is proof of that for Ruby, but Superman is a little less obvious.

    However, if we consider what happens in the Justice League show, it’s kind of unnerving.

    One episode, Patriot Act, points out that after the League got called into question for having a weapon that was worse than a bomb would have been in their watchtower, and Cadmus has issues with them, instead of losing power, the League gains a second base on the earth, but doesn’t’ dismantle their watchtower.

    And the only group that was capable of competing with them has been so publicly shamed that they are no longer a threat. Meaning the League is freer from criticism than ever.

    Yet the League is still caught off guard by the villains unifying, and almost loses yet again to Darkseid. Superman, rather than show more caution, seems to be overly confident, and has to be saved, ultimately, by Lex Luthor, the most humiliating choice yet.

    I can’t blame Superman entirely for that, but he didn’t really back off after the Cadmus incident. I don’t see how getting more power is learning his lesson about hubris and controlling things too much.

    What really stands in the way of the League becoming the Justice Lords by the end of the show? Only Flash, anything could still happen to him. How have they learned and become stronger?

    This is a problem with the show overall, but especially with Superman. Everyone else changes and evolves over time at least a little, but he stays the same. The same pride and anger under the surface, and willingness to compromise what he claims he upholds.

    And finally, one last point

    4. A paragon who is only an example when everyone is looking or they have something to prove.

    What I detest about both Ruby and Superman, not because I’d hate them as people if it was true, but because they are hailed as such paragons of virtue, is their lack of consideration for anyone else.

    If no one is looking, Ruby never gives a crap about helping anyboyd but herself, if shes’ not playint he hor.

    Ruby herself is helped both by Blake and Jaune just on her first day at Beacon Academy, but we see her help no one else, nor try to.

    While others stand up to the racism against Faunus, Ruby does nothing.

    And when Oscar gets beat on for unfair reasons later in the show, Ruby only steps in one time, and that’s when it’s someone who she’d not get much flack for calling out, but not when her uncle or sister also abuse Oscar.

    Ruby is nice to Oscar, because she has a crush on him, and once or twice she is nice to Jaune. So she’s not the worst, but she never goes out of her way to help anybody. Nor is she ever more open-minded than anyone else in the team.

    But Superman has to be even worse.

    I was reading someone else’s post about Wonder Woman the other day, and they brought up a scene where Diana teaches a little girl how to fight to help her have confidence about playing with the boys. The author commented that she couldn’t see Superman or Batman doing this.

    I think Batman actually does demonstrate compassion more often, in his own way, when he helps Ace, one of the villains Cadmus created, as well as Baby Doll, one of his sadder villains, and many others. Actually it’s why he and Diana are good together.

    But I agree, I can’t see Superman doing it.

    Superman is the type of guy who’d say he has to focus on the big problems, fly around and help people, and the little things aren’t ones he can afford to spend time on.

    Yet those things are what make us the most human and help us to stay grounded. If you’d take time to help a kid, even if it’s just over something small, then you will remember what’s really important.

    He keeps Lois, the closest relationship he has, at arm’s length. At the end of the show, she still doesn’t know his real identity, that we know of. She knows freaking Batman’s, but not his!

    I’ve never seen Superman help a kid, outside of his old comics, and then it was to prove a point, that he was Superman…he still helped either way, and I’m not saying he wouldn’t have anyhow, but he got invested primarily for that reason.

    Contrast it with Flash, who is a great guy on and off the job, based on how his coworkers treat him. And is a great guy even to the other League members.

    Can you see Superman getting Hawk Girl a coffee and blanket? Or giving an old coot an actual fair chance to explain his magic crystal and have a job later? Or painting someone’s fence?

    Me neither. The fact that I wouldn’t even imagine it says a lot.

    Oh and RWBY has an example of this too. Pyrrha freaking Nikos!

    And that’s the perfect cue for me to launch into why Pyrrha is a way better paragon than Ruby, and why many people would be a better one than Superman.

    Ironically, almost any member of the 7 would be better than Superman, but most of them lack the leadership drive to be so.

    Good Paragon traits

    Basically just turn all the bad ones on thier head.

    Let’s star twith the last one and work backwards.

    Instead of only dong good when it’s beneficial for them also, good Paragons do good when no one thanks them for it.

    On Naruto, Gaara sticks up for the rights of people to have life, and for the ideals of mercy, long before he gets made the leader of the army. He works for years to reform Sand Village, to the point where assassination attempt on him by the elders who think he’s crazy or wrong happen so often that his siblings no longer even react to having to save him and each other’s lives at any given moment.

    On RWBY, Pyrrha sticks up for Faunus though it gets her little thanks from her classmates. She also helps Jaune with his problems, even when it would get her the opposite of what she wants, or when he gets mad at her.

    But what I love is that she’s got bit of a temper too. When Jaune forsakes his team because Cardin blackmails him, instead of coming to them for help, she makes her sentiment clear until he finally apologizes, but she still bails him out of a tight spot.

    Pyrrha helps Jaune for his own sake, even when she’s not getting anyth out of it.

    She also is nice to team RWBY, paying for their meal and is generally kind and caring to everyone.

    Jaune also is a decent paragon, he has more of the traits of pursuing excellence that they have in anime, but he also sticks up for his team and helps people even when he doesn’t have to, as I mentioned above.

    Turning back to Justice League, Wonder Woman is far more compassionate than Superman, and Batman is less arrogant. Flash however is the best example, since he combines both those traits at the same time.

    Often the traits of a good paragon would be better if they rested on two or three character’s instead of just one, since few people are that virtuous, but if we want to find who’d be a better starting point, those are our choices.

    Hawk Girl has the most integrity of everyone in the League, but lacks the confidence to lead, or she might make the better choice.

    Point number 2, all of these other characters learn more than the actual paragon characters do.

    Granted, not that much, in Batman’s case.

    But Batman has a healthy respect for people with different qualities than himself, whereas Superman doesn’t.

    Pyrrha is not given the chance to learn much since she (SPOILER ALERT) dies before she really can. But based on her overall humility, it seems like she would have.

    Jaune we see does learn from his mistakes and improve, becoming more of a peacemaker in the group and a protector.

    And of course, that includes having humility.

    One of my favorite things about Pyrrha’s character, as I got more mature about looking at her, was that she isn’t above improving. She has a power that makes it easy for her to win fights by hardly doing anything, but only uses it to give her a bit of an edge, she still trains like crazy to hone her skills. She still thinks she needs to practice. Shes’ willing to team up with less skilled people like Jaune just because she likes his attitude, and to take orders from him despite his lack of experience, unlike Weiss’s attitude towards Ruby.

    Pyrrha could roll her eyes😒at Jaune, but instead she builds him up. And he becomes the kind of leader she believed in, as he even acknowledges in vole 5 when he said she told him something once, and he believed her.

    Pyrrha and Jaune

    Pyrrha could win more on a different team, or if she asserted herself over Juane, but she doesn’t. Instead she embraces being treated like a normal person by him, and doesn’t see herself as the invincible, untouchable warrior.

    And last bu not least, back to point 1.

    A good paragon is not worshiped, they are imitated and respected.

    Perhaps this is where Pyrrha, Flash, and the others I mentioned shine most clearly beyond their competition of the canon paragons.

    While people talk about imitating Ruby, or Superman, no one actually does it. Or when they do, it’s usually the worst parts of them. Because people always copy your underlying attitude more than your professed one.

    Flash copies Superman’s reckless actions more than his selfless ones, the Flash is selfless on his own, that’s why he can take that out of Superman’s example, but Superman never really has any interaction with Flash about this, nor do we see any one moment where Flash is inspired by him to be selfless when he’s actually there.

    In contrast, Batman is moved by Flash’es compassion towards his foe the Trickster, in the episode about Flash. And tells Orion that he does not understand him.

    Batman actually never talks Flash down, notably, and hes’ shown to be a closet fan of the Flash even in other renditions of the League.

    So Flash inspires respect from people it’s worthwhile to earn the respect of, and he is looked up to by kids and regular citizens also just for being so good hearted.

    Even if not everyone imitates Flash, they respect his heart.

    Pyrrha on the other hand has admiration from her peers and superiors alike, but it’s interesting that in her closet ring of friends, she doesn’t inspire the hero worship that Ruby does.

    People don’t look up to Pyrrha to lead them, they want to be like her, because she follows the right thing not just in her words, but in her actions.

    Ruby and Superman tell people what the right thing is, Pyrrha and Flash show them what it is.

    This doesn’t even mean that I’m arguing for Pyrrha and Flash to be the leader of their teams, I don’t think either of them are suited to that, in fact I thin paragons often don’t make good leaders because of their lack of putting themselves first. A leader ha to have some self confidence.

    But like Jaune, and like Batman, the best leaders are the ones who are following the example of a paragon who isn’t the leader, but isn’t a blind follower either, who makes their own choices, but i willing to work with others also.

    Pyrrha never turns down help, and Flash is the first to ask for it again after the League breaks up.

    Every leader I know of who is also a paragon is the most boring and frustrating kind of protagonist, the most engaging leaders are the ones who learn from paragons as they go.

    Like the show My Little Pony’s MC Twilight, who has to learn from all her friends in order to become the Princess of Friendship.

    Pyrrha’s influence is felt in volume 4 and 6 especially when we see that Juane, as well as her other teammates, all want to be more like her, they do not say that about Ruby.

    Ruby can lead, but she can not exemplify. That’s the problem.

    Like Obi Wan Kenobi in Star Wars, Luke might be the leader, but he’s following Obi Wan’s example.

    Once in a great while, a paragon may make a good protagonist, Twilight Sparkle sort of grows into being a paragon by the end of MLP, usually it’s done best when it’s like that, one character growing into being one over time.

    Which is where Pyrrha having struggles and an arc in volume 3 made her much more like a protagonist than Ruby has ever been, fight me.

    A paragon can also become a protagonist over time, it’s usually very satisfying to see that actually.

    But the starting point has to be them working together, or it just doesn’t feel right, at least to me, it feels fake.

    We are all protagonists in our own lives, but we all should want to be paragons, and if we find people looking up to us like ones, we should never forget to be protagonists also, always able to learn from others.

    But when you divorce these two characters from helping each other, your story falls apart, because that’s not real life.

    And with that, I think I’ll end this post, until next time–Natasha.

    Leave Will Smith Alone, gosh!

    / toseealife / Leave a comment

    Look, I think this whole thing around Will is none of my business, so I’m not going to bother talking about what he did and how he did it.

    In fact, I don’t want to dedicate a lot of time to this at all. I just have a few things to point out:

    However he did it, the fact that a man defended his wife is being made into a public spectacle.

    Can you imagine this happening 100 years ago? I can’t. Probably no one would have thought twice about it. And if there was a little hot temper involved, oh well, people knew you didn’t say things about other people’s wives in front of them. In fact, you didn’t make personal remarks at all, you know why? Because even if it seems like a joke, some people are going to use it to mock them, and it’s not funny then. IT was just a rule of polite society not to open people up to public mockery, and I frankly miss that rule. I have never seen it end well when it’s discarded at churches, schools, or anywhere else.

    2. Whatever happened, how is it any of our business?

    Think about it, are we going to make Will Smith regret his actions? Probably not. Are we making what the guy on stage said okay? No one’s talking about that?

    What exactly are we getting so worked up about anyway? That our peer pressure can’t micromanage every actor in the world into the small little bubble of acceptable behavior that one of us can agree on anyway?

    Yeah, so much for freedom of expression. I guess not if you’re a celebrity.

    I mean, no one’s asking if the dude who said the thing should have the freedom to make such jokes about people just because he’s a comedian. I’ve never found it funny anyway. Maybe because I got made fun of for things I couldn’t help about my appearance when I was younger. Or maybe because…it’s just not funny. What exactly is so funny about people’s looks, unless they are deliberately trying to look silly? Think about it.

    3. Are we all qualified to pass judgement?

    How many of us are going to be in Will’s position, where our SO is being humiliated in front of other people and we have to make a judgment call about it?

    Would we have the guts to defend them in any way, let alone the right way?And how many men would have kept it chill at that point?

    Is Will Smith above being human, now? Is he somehow not subject to anger or embarrassment or guilt?

    I’m not saying it was good or bad, again, just asking why we all think we should just say this?

    Because, slapping someone is not a crime. Sorry. Maybe it’s not good…but there’s not exactly a rule book for it, is there?

    4. People think it was unprofessional.

    I totally agree, it’s better to be real classy and ignore your wife’s feelings being hurt so that the dude talking about it has the green light to do it again.

    Again, maybe there’s another way to handle things, but we can’t always pick and choose our spotlight. Would it be right if it was in private?

    And maybe the comedian just shouldn’t be allowed to say things like that, again. Isn’t that inappropriate also?

    So yeah, I guess that sums up my thoughts on it.

    It’s true, maybe no one cares about my opinion either. But then why should any of us care about theirs? And why should Will Smith?

    I’m making a better case for leaving it alone than anyone is making for gossiping about it, which, by the way, if you are a Christian, gossiping is unbibilical. And so is publicly harming people in this manner.

    I’m not standing up for Will Smith so much as decrying the whole cultural concept that thinks this is okay, it’s disgusting. And he’s just one instance of it. It bothers me in politics as well as with other public figures. Ew.

    Of course I open myself up to the same treatment by putting myself on line, but that’s kind of lie the argument that women open themselves up to being assaulted by stepping outside their doors without a man.

    They both have to do this to do their jobs, usually, and, just because we have to take the risk doesn’t make the jerks who take advantage of it not guilty. That sounds like something guilty people would say.

    So yeah, anyone who uses the excuse that Will is a celebrity and so has opened himself up to public scrutiny as an excuse to publicly flog him for this…you’re basically using the same loci as those jerks who say women’s clothes make it okay to harass them. Hope you’re proud of yourselves.

    And if that offends you…

    Uh…why should I care? I’m not a celebrity.

    And that’s about all I have to say about it. My biggest hope from this post is just that I got someone to think twice about why we do this, and if it’s really okay, I’m not expecting to get a whole movement going here.

    After all, I’m not ABC news.

    Signing off, and stay honest– Natasha Queen.

    So I watched Encanto…

    / toseealife / Leave a comment

    One of the unsung perks of babysitting in this country is that you get to use people’s streaming accounts even if you don’t have them. I’ve watched a crap ton of Netflix and Disney Plus because of babysitting.

    That’s how I watched Vivo…which is a better movie than Encanto, bite me.

    Funny because Lin Manuel Miranda worked on both, I just think Vivo’s plot and themes suited his talents better than a Disney Girl musical (since now we aren’t even pretending they’re princesses…although this movie might as well have been about a princess.)

    I’m not going to hate on Encanto, it was an enjoyable ride, but after watching it, I do think it is inferior to its predecessors.

    I’m sure all of you are too nice to hate on me for saying that, but if I went on a different platform, I think I’d start a riot. Everyone seems to love this movie.

    Well, it’s mediocre, sorry, not sorry.

    I won’t deny the animation was gorgeous, a joy to watch. The songs were…predictable. The only one I thought really stood out as creative lyrically was the “Pressure” one. Then, Imperfect was okay, and “WE Don’t talk about Bruno” was impressive editing-wise, but lyrics were a little weird, I thought.

    But I’m not much for modern musical movies, to be fair. I like old ones better.

    i have before unashamedly said that I like Disney movies–some of them–and that Frozen is actually my favorite movie, for personal reasons. See: Why a DP movie is my favorite. Why a DP movie is my favorite part 2. I don’t think it’s the most amazing movie ever made, but it stands out form other Disney films, I’m not the only one who thought it has a different vibe, wrapped up in a Disney package, it still somehow felt unique. Thought he haters will never admit it.

    Encanto is a beautiful mess, that is my honest opinion. I was interested in the plot while watching it, and the 3 year old I was watching it with loved the music. But I kept waiting for the movie to make its point…and by the end I was just…non plussed.

    Encanto basically has two or three over arching themes, and it tries to bring all of them together at the end, but it doesn’t finish any of them. The ending was one of the most rushed I’ve seen in a Disney film, and the characters were not well flushed out. We only get depth on Luisa and Isabel, and it’s dropped after one song.

    Abuela’s character being the cause of the magic disappearing was predictable, I called it form the beginning. But that wouldn’t have been bad. I thought it actually added to the idea that families often miss the obvious when it comes to their problems. It’s true in my family, for sure.

    I actually thought they were going to do a Brave thing, and make it both the older and younger women had pride and selfishness, and that was the cause of the rift. And the magic of the family was tied to their unity.

    The movie implies this, but doesn’t say it.

    I could put that down to a wish for subtlety, except every other theme in this movie is blatant and shoved in your face, as with most kids’ movies, so why they would hesitated to spell it out for us, if they actually intended it, I don’t know.

    I don’t necessarily mind blatant messages, I think kids need things to be spelled out for them, and adults who watch kid content should be prepared for that. But I think you can do it tastefully and creatively. Just singing it to save time is not tasteful.

    The imagery in this movie is probably its best feature. The lights, the candle, the sand, the cracks.

    I kind of thought Bruno’s character was less impressive than he could have been, he was exactly what I expected, and the goofy, kooky character seeing the future and then hiding…well, it’s a little old. But it’s not bad, so it’s more of a personal wish than a criticism.

    What actually made me mad about this movie was the ending. The first half was quite good, but it was like they ran out of run time. Isabel and Mirabel get over 20 years of disagreeing, (or 18, or whatever it was) and it takes 2 minute of one song for them to suddenly understand each other?

    I was the scapegoat and my sister was the golden child, it took us months of disagreeing, and years of tension before that, to work out our differences. Especially when our dad poured gasoline on the fire.

    And another thing, I found it stupid that only Mirabel was yelling at Abuela at the end. If Luisa and Isabel were really that miserable, seeing Mirabel do that should have just burst the dam. Especially for Isabel.

    Also the magic was so poorly explained.

    I know that magic does not always need to be explained in a story, I actually don’t like it when it is, like, We didn’t need an explanation for Elsa’s magic–and the one we got made no sense.

    But in this movie, the magic disappearing is the whole point, so that is the time to explain how it works, the entire point of most of the film is Mirabel trying to understand the magic, so explaining it was totally necessary.

    And what is explained…nothing!

    I mean, I guess the magic relies on the family’s…bond? But then why doesn’t it crack every time one of them fights? The one lady with the weather powers should be having cracks every 10 minutes. Isabel and Mirabel should have been causing issues all along. Then Abuela’s obsession with perfection might actually make more sense.

    Or how about this, make the fact that Abuela herself actually has no gift, and just guards the candle and house the reason she doesn’t like Mirabel. Mirabel reminds her of her own mortality, and humanness, and we tend to project our insecurities onto other people. So when she’s yelling at Mirabel, she’s really upset at herself. And Mirabel annoys her by not being as stressed about it as she is. I’ve known that to happen to many people in real life, myself included. Misery loves company.

    This is almost implied in the movie…but never enough to be sure it’s actually what it’s saying.

    Also, the conflict of this movie is set up poorly.

    We’re supposed to be wonder why Mirabel has no gift, right? Well that question is never answered. Ever.

    Then we’re supposed to wonder if the gift is becoming a curse…

    But the thing is, Mirabel’s mom is a really nice lady, and supportive of all her daughters, and so is their father. Isabel is so driven to be perfect…why?

    I can’t recall her ever actually being told she was doing something wrong. Maybe she just wanted to avoid it ever happening, but most people aren’t afraid to fail until they have failed in a painful way, and we never see her do that. Perfectionism comes from not being able to control things when you were a kid, but we get no such story with Isabel.

    We never see Luisa told it would be selfish to take a break. She just assumes it.

    We’re meant to think Abuela made them think this way just by her example…but even if that is true, no one ever questioned it before? And why do none of the men feel this way? They seem carefree, and happy-go-lucky. No pressure there.

    And while the townspeople take advantage of the family’s gifts, they aren’t ever pushy about it.

    So why are these two girls so driven? Isabel says she was going to marry the guy for the family…but they never push her to do it, they just assume she wants to marry him. If she’d ever spoken up about it, I’m sure they’d have been happy to push Dolores forward instead. Why does it need to be Isabel?

    And by the way, Dolores character had the potential to be so much more compelling. Imagine if you could hear everything? Everything anyone ever said about you? That sounds like a curse to me. Maybe that’s why she tries to be invisible, so people won’t talk bad about her.

    Would make relationships difficult, and relaxing. She’s shown to be jumpy, but she doesn’t get her own song, and she doesn’t ever get a moment to explain it. A total waste of potential. I’d say her life is way harder than Isabel’s.

    I mean, when the main conflict of your story is your MC just isn’t special enough….what the heck movie? Is that what counts as drama these days? Her family loves her, and the one person who actually is hostile to her, Isabel, is not even in most of the movie, and resolves the conflict in 3 minutes…yay!

    Mirabel is all like “I can’t embrace Isabel!” and then 5 minutes later “Oh my gosh, I was so wrong about her!”

    Uh…you weren’t really, you just didn’t know why she acted that way, she still acted like a b-word. And perfectionism is no excuse to bully your sister, Isabel. How about an apology?

    Nope…nothing.

    I mean Isabel could have said she envied Mirabel her freedom to do whatever she wants. Built on the trapped by your gift thing…but nope.

    And another thing, if Isabel is so stuck…why doesn’t she want to try something other than growing flowers? Her whole rebellion is spraying herself with colors and growing cacti…who in the heck said she couldn’t grow cacti? Cacti are useful, heck her mom could use aloe to cure people, everyone would be all over that. And she has a whole room to experience with crazy flowers in, and no one else seems to care…what exactly is holding her back?

    I mean, Abuela only cares when it becomes convenient for the plot, she never reprimands Isabel before then.

    Movie, stop expecting me to assume domestic abuse, actually show it if you want to use it, you coward!

    You now that just ticks me off about this film, and every other kids’ media I watch these days. Domestic problems are assumed. No on’es family is actually good, no one is actually happy, it all hast o be fake. You can bet if I see a nice character, I’m going to find out they have skeletons in their closet later in the story.

    And while no human is perfect, not all of us are as royally fricked up as the movies imply. Sometimes we just get frustrated once in a while, and guess what, we move on! Some of us actually deal with it in a healthy way. Geez! What is the problem Hollywood?

    I think it’s on purpose, the idea of contentment just doesn’t sell, so every character has to have a dark side.

    Frozen kicked off this trend–but you know how Frozen made it work?

    Because we actually see Elsa’s powers backfire, we see her parents tell her bad advice, we see her fear of herself grow–the movie accomplishes this in 10 minutes. We all perfectly understand why Elsa is afraid, how it affects her, and that Anna is unaware of it.

    Then when Elsa goes berserk, we know why. It’s not random, we see the causes.

    And her problems instead of being over in 5 minutes, take a whole movie to work through. And are revisited in the shorts and the sequel–which are not great, but at least they aren’t delusional enough to say Elsa is never going to doubt again. Of course she will, but she now lets herself be helped, that was the difference.

    Where is this in Encanto? Or should I say Donde esta en la cinema Encanto? (Pretty sure I said that wrong, but my Spanish is not great, and the constant switch in the movie was not as charming as they thought it was. I was just left feeling like the whole thing should have been in Spanish, or English, pick one.)

    Nada! Nunca! It’s not there. You won’t find any deepening, or further introspection of any of these characters. One song, that’s it.

    That’s one of my problems with the movie.

    The other one is the Magic itself, and the Miracle. It’s never explained.

    And why Mirabel does not have a gift. She wanted to know.

    I think the movie’s biggest mistake here was that when Mirabel went to get her gift, the door began to form…but then it stopped.

    If she was truly just not meant to have one, fine. But then why did she start to get it and then it stopped? The candle changed its mind? Hmm?

    Sure seems like something went wrong, not looking at Bruno’s excommunication or anything.

    And if the family splitting is what lead to the magic cracking, than it would have made perfect sense that Mirabel’s lack of gift was because it weakened after they sent Bruno packing. Like, it literally seems like that’s what they are implying.

    Mirabel even sees the same cracks as Bruno. Which could have been taken as maybe she was going to have the same gift as him, because he wasn’t around, but because he still is, she couldn’t get it, and it broke.

    Then restoring Bruno the family, and fixing the house should have fixed her problem. But she still has no gift at the end…even though she restore the magic, so she has magic, but no gift….because logic….

    You have all the set up to make this make sense…but no pay off? Nothing.

    Because oh she’s just special enough without a gift…

    (How can not being special be what makes you special? It’s a logical fallacy.)

    Well if that’s true, why restore the gifts at all. If it really had become a burden, then just let it go, accept change.

    Wasn’t that the message? If you hold onto the past too tightly it crushes the very people you were trying to protect…I thought that’s what they were saying.

    But I mean, i’s Disney, so of course the Magic shouldn’t have disappeared at the end…but Mirabel still can’t have a gift because reasons.

    Even though it clearly show she didn’t get a gift because something went wrong, setting it right doesn’t give her one…why? She doesn’t want one anymore?

    I fail to understand you movie.

    I thought they all should have either lost their gifts for good, or never lost them at all. Maybe they just could have corrupted, been twisted, like in Frozen. Because they were used wrong. That’s more true to real life anyway. We don’t lose our talents because of stress, but they do become less pure.

    So in the end, this movie has two messages. Or three really. 1. You don’t need a gift to be special, because not being special is what makes you special. (Cure the Incredibles rant about celebrating mediocrity) 2. If you put yourself into one box, it will crush your spirit, it’s okay to have more than one interest and to take a break. 3. Holding onto the past is bad. Embrace the future. (As long as you do it by not forgetting what made your family special in the past and reigniting that flame….get it? Because it’s a candle, we’re so clever).

    How did anyone like this movie’s ending? I get liking the songs and story, but the ending? It makes no sense. None few these three messages is finished. Nothing is explained, and there is no truth. Everything goes back to being exactly how it was, except that Isabel goes disco tech, Luisa takes naps, and Dolores gets with the guy who’s about as deep as a kiddie pool.

    Mirabel is not a different person than before. And the town is the same…so yeah…

    I really thought there could have been something really good there. Heck, even all three of those message together would have been okay, if they were finished. But they aren’t. There is no point of resolution.

    An apology is not a resolution if the problem is that complex. That worked in Brave because the mother -daughter conflict is present in the whole movie, shown to be the core of its problems, and is explained as the way to resolve them. Merida humbling herself makes sense, because Pride was her problem.

    But the whole family conflict in this movie is so shaky. Not everyone is unhappy. The problem are so minor that literally two conversations fixed them, and Bruno comes back with no fanfare whatsoever, and Mirabel isn’t even the reason.

    Mirabel was actually mostly useless, she spends most of the movie making the problem worse, and in the end is the reason the magic goes out…so way to defy negative expectations there, movie.

    Guess she really was the bug in the system…and maybe it deserved to crash and burn…so show that. Don’t just make it all go away because apologies!

    Ugh…

    Perhaps I am oversimplifying. But it was still poorly done.

    Encanto is, in my opinion, a product of our culture.

    Fewer and fewer movies and show have any definite meaning now. And fewer and fewer people seem to notice it. We are becoming incapable of discerning structure and payoff in a story.

    As long as the label diversity is stamped on something, we swallow any amount of lazy writing, and Hollywood knows we will.

    Encanto is a badly written movie that would not have stacked up to a 90s Disney Movie, and they have very weak conflicts usually, but at least hey are clear. Ariel may be kind of a bratty teen, but at least I know why. I know why Aladdin wants to be a prince, even if he’s a liar. I know why Mulan is going to war ( and that is one of the best Disney movies there is).

    I don’t know that with Encanto. It would have taken like 1 extra song, and 5 minutes to explain, but it’s not there. They could have cut the unnecessary songs and put in actual story, they could have not rehashed the begging like 3 times for padding. It was fixable. How did someone not say “Uh guys, we didn’t answer any of our own questions in this script…can we like…fix that?”

    But no one cars, becuase diversity!

    I can’t say I see what a magic house really has to do with Columbian culture. Or how themes that are so clearly modern are really representing what makes it special. Kind of the running joke of representation in Disney is that it’s…you know, based in fictional countries, so you can’t really represent real ethnic groups…

    I mean, people complain about how all the old movies had white characters…but they were stories form Europe, of course they could have white characters. Whenever the movie were set in other countries, they changed the ethnicity…I never really saw the issue. People just like to complain.

    And I don’t mind if a movie is set in a Mexican, or Colombian culture, if it’s good. I enjoy movies like that.

    But I won’t approve bad writing just because it was packaged in a nice look, and fun songs.

    I’m sure it would be fun to watch Encanto, but it has no meaning. It is gutless, it doesn’t commit to any one message, because it doesn’t have to to be liked, and the creators knew that.

    But I think this in underminding our chilrend’s abilty to tell when there even is a emssage in osmeitng.

    Implied messages that are not stated are usually called propaganda. Subtle, but propaganda. When a message is boldly stated, it opens itself up to criticism.

    But if it’s vague, you can’t really criticize it. So it is gutless, but the implicates are enough to squeeze it by the virtue signalling SJWS, so they think it has meaning.

    If you still think I’m being too harsh, I challenge you to take Encanto, Raya and the Last Dragon, and Moana, take a pen, and write down each main element of those movies. each character’s conflict…and then how the movie resolved it.

    I defy you to find a way it really was fleshed out. It’s implied, that’s all. Implications don’t help us in real life. People need actual ideas if they will change.

    But if you can feed yourself with colorful, but empty visions of meaning, you can fool yourself into thinking you’re being cultured, but you are really being conditioned.

    Encanto is not evil or bad in of itself, so much as it is just lazy, but what scare me is it never would have been praise so much a few decades ago, and now it’s haled as top tier.

    A Goofy Movie did family conflict better, sue me.

    Well, I think I have ranted enough, this movie is not horrible to watch, but I can’t endorse anything it says, as it says nothing whatsoever. That’s my verdict. Watch it for a good time, but don’t expect any substance, and you’ll be fine.

    Try Brave or Frozen if you want the exact same message but with an actual message. Or any of the renaissance era movies.

    Until next time, stay honest–Natasha.

    Why I hate YA novels…but still read them.

    / toseealife / Leave a comment

    Okay, this isn’t the most serious topic, but sometimes you just gotta blow off steam.

    I don’t know if the people who read this blog are really the type to read Young Adult or Teen novels, but some of you watch anime, and that’s kind of the same crowd, so…

    When I was younger, I didn’t really read these books, I actually hardly read any teen novels till I was already almost an adult. My mother wouldn’t have let me, to be honest.

    I barely got to read Christian Romance novels. And those were mostly horrid.

    I couldn’t even tell you the first teen novel I read now, that’s how little it stuck with me, they are more my sister’s thing anyway.

    For those of you who aren’t familiar with the genre, it’s usually some type of romance, coupled wither with fantasy, action, or horror like plots, but they are more vanilla than the adult counterparts…but usually still pretty bad.

    For whatever reasons, Twilight made vampires and werewolves a popular part of teen fiction, and so are witches, and fantasy things.

    Or you have your typical high school story about popularity and being yourself.

    A lot of YA novels are set around adult characters, but they still act like teenagers.

    And most romance stories, even for older women, follow the exact same tropes as teen novels…but with more sex.

    The whole hting disgusts me.

    The only ones I generally read are fantasy ones that sound interesting plot wise until you actually read them, and it’s just more tropes and angst.

    When I was still a teenager, I got a good look at how teens write because I joined this online forum called the Young Writer’s Workshop.

    The stories I read there were total garbage for the most part, a few might have had potential.

    What I found disappointing was that they were all exactly the same. I could understand bad writing from inexperienced writers, if it was in every genre, and had some diversity…but all the books had the same style, themes, and ideas in them.

    I was shocked. My own writing had never resembled anything like this at all, even at its worst. I had more originally when I was 8 than these stories usually had.

    And I’m not saying that just to brag. My early attempts at writing were not good, but I was at least trying to come up with my own story.

    I’m aware that these young author probably did come up with the ideas themselves, they just executed them in the same way.

    And I think I know why, most of what teens read now is either fan fiction, romance , or teen novels. They don’t read classics, or philosophy, or non fiction.

    I grew up reading all of that, I was homeschooled. I knew C. S. Lewis’s writing better than I knew J. K. Rollings. And that’s not even a teen novel.

    I have attempted to write some of these tee story plots in the past, I find them kind of interesting as a premise. A lot of the ideas have potential, if you don’t take them too seriously.

    A lot of stories, for example, try to use fairy tale races to explore racial problems in our own world. The Hunger Games famously tried to reflect back our society’s superficial obsession with entertainment, no matter how morally bankrupt it is.

    But the Hunger Games annoyed fans most when it became the most like a teen novel, and focused on a love triangle and teen drama when it could have focused on the more important elements.

    There’s this assumption in teen or YA fiction that teenagers are not going to care about a story unless there’s some drama in it. That they are incapable of higher thought,, and higher aspirations, we just want to date and dress up and play games, and maybe save the world on the side.

    A lot of teens buy into this.

    When I was 12-13, my mom was encouraging me to read books like “Do Hard Things” by Alex and Brett Harris, and “A Thomas Jefferson Education for Teens” by Shannon Brookes. Books that told me that the teen years are a time to prepare for bigger things. That I could still take them seriously.

    That had me trying to start my own ministry and teach people while I was still in high-school.

    I didn’t succeed, but I learned a lot form trying and failing. I learned how hard it is to inspire people, and how hard it is to make them believe in something. And that coordination is difficult, and so is organizing something.

    I also learned that people rarely take teenagers seriously when they say they want to do something serious.

    I’m now in my 20s, and still getting disrespected by older people for being young. My generation is not looked highly upon…but then when are young people ever looked highly upon by older people? You’ll find accounts of older people knocking the younger generation in every part of history books.

    I like what the Bible says “Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young,” I live by that.

    Anyway, to get back to my point, books aimed at people my age or a little younger, are really, really insulting.

    To be fair, a lot of teens I knew in high-school were just about as basic as these books made them out to be, a lot were angry too. And would get mad at me if I said that things should be different.

    I think I wasn’t that good at delivery back then, I was young and immature too. And while I’m not old enough yet to have all the perception of old age, I’m old enough to know better than I used to. I can now present myself much more clearly and politely.

    However, I don’t think my lack of social grace was the real problem back then, teens don’t really notice that as much as adults do. You have to be old enough to expect to be treated with some amount of respect, before you get offended over it (think about that for a second.)

    I think it was just I was raised a different way. And they couldn’t understand me, and I couldn’t understand the pressures of their lives. Now that I’ve been to college and gotten a taste of it…I frankly still don’t see the appeal, but I do understand the social pressure to blend in more. People are vicious when you don’t agree with them, and the younger they are the less they have empathy about it.

    I’m so glad I was homeschooled, to be honest. I see what my public schooled cousins go through and I’m relieved I didn’t have to deal with it till I was an adult.

    But even with those problems, the stories we feed kids are not helping anything.

    I mean if all we give them to think about are superficial, light stories, that is all they will think about.

    You know while I’ve been fasting this month, I’ve been thinking about all the ways we distract ourselves in the West.

    What makes us different from other parts of the world–though not completely different– is how many ways we can distract ourselves.

    We all can afford it, subscriptions, splurges, junk food. all of it. Even the poorest people in our society still have phones, often enough. And TV.

    Despite what critics of our country like to say, we don’t really have it so much better than everyone else. I mean, as a whole we do, but within that framework, a lot of us don’t have easy lives. For personal as well as community reasons. You don’t have to be poor to suffer, and wealth doesn’t get your happiness. Just makes you run out of excuses for being unhappy faster.

    Teens in the West don’t have easy lives, but they do have over-saturated ones. Over saturated with corruption, propaganda and lust, and vanity.

    Every prosperous nation has turned into a corrupted one, in history. People get cocky whey they don’t have to live day by day to survive.

    I know that I’m a part of all this, but at least I’m aware of it.

    And the books we write, and read, and make movies out of, they feed this.

    Our entertainment quality is plunging every year. “Representation” has replaced original, deep plots and the message of personal fulfillment has replaced any other message of meaning in life.

    There are a few gems here and there that defy this, but they are getting fewer all the time. When I find them I want to re-watch and reread them over and over.

    One thing I thought while I was viewing the 90s X-Men show was just how different they wrote heroes back then. It’s only been about 30 years since the first season dropped.

    In 30 years, most of these characters would have just been angsty, morally grey individuals. Who would all question if what they were dong was worth it, and be mildly or heavily depressed. Even the live action movies veered more that way, and most of them weren’t made that much later than the show, until the reboots, which are somehow less depressing than the old ones, but also less well acted, so…

    ( I still like them better, but I like happy stuff.)

    Watching that show was like going back in time, I can just barely remember from when I was a kid, shows and movies that used to try to make character real. They had emotions that weren’t all angst and sadness and anger and doubt. They had diversity of worldview’s, and unlike now, they could explain why they did.

    I’ve written before about the lack of strong ideology in movies now, how good characters can’t defend goodness as well as evil characters defend evil.

    I may be nuts, but I think it’s deliberate, it happens too often to not be on purpose. I think that Hollywood wants us to see goodness and hope as emotional, weak position that people hold just because they refuse to give up. And all of us root for because we prefer it to the alternative.

    But the evil position is what really makes sense, and has factual evidence to back it up, and we just prefer no to face reality.

    Movies and anime tell you that you don’t want reality, you want entertainment. You want sexualized content, and fluffy feelings, and drama. You don’t want something real.

    You’re weird, in fact, if you don’t like that.

    Funny, all the Youtubers I watch express disgust with this very aspect of media when they review movies and shows. They yearn for meaning. Even the ones who make fun of it the most.

    Even Nux Taku, a rather famous anime YouTuber who likes hentai, openly, will get into the deeper themes of something, even when, in my opinion, they aren’t really there.

    We like to find meaning.

    Hollywood knows how to get people to watch things that are garbage just because it checks the right boxes for them, and book novelists know how to get teens and young adults to read their material by luring them in with superficial appeal.

    But I for one get tried of the lack of depth. What’s the point of this stuff?

    I know, someone is going to say “But it’s just for fun, to relax.”

    And, I get it. I want that sometimes too, just a dumb movie or book to read.

    That’s okay once in a whle.

    But I’m talking about all the time, like, kids who never read anything else, or watch anythig else.

    I was surprised entering highschool not only by what people did watch or read, but what they didn’t.

    I had a huge library of books and movies I liked that no one else had ever heard of except other homeschoolers. And I was flabbergasted. Why would you only read one kind of thing?

    But that’s how it was. The brainwashing worked.

    I don’t think it worlds completely though. Some people still want depth, and if introduced to better things, will learn to like them. I have hope.

    My concern is those people are fewer and fewer the more saturated we are in the bad stuff. We don’t foster that trait in people, it makes them harder to please, and for such a commercialized culture, we need people to be convinced to buy things, not think about them.

    Because of how I was raised, I actually avoid products I see advertised. I have an aversion to commercials and ads, they make me not want to buy something. I prefer to read reviews by real people. The few times I’ve broken that streak, I didn’t like the result.

    I won’t say it’s wrong to listen to ads, a few are probably true, I’m saying it’s unwise to be so pliable.

    Once you learn how to see when people are buying and selling you something, you become a lot harder to fool.

    I think I got off topic.

    But all this is really on topic. Teen novels are just a product of what I’m describing. Buying and selling a lifestyle and moral standard to teens that is so much less than what they are capable of.

    Teens have shaped history many times, most important historical figures started what they did in their teens. There are exceptions, but it’s not the rule.

    We are capable of high thought, and high achievements…and yet we soak up this superficiality, like as sponge, and we thing that’s what we re.

    It makes me sad.

    I take every chance I get to introduce people younger than me, or my age, to deeper ideas. Sometimes I think I’m getting somewhere, other times I think I’m not.

    But we have to try, adults. It’s a worse sin not to try, than to try and fail. Some of them are bound to get it, they are still human.

    That one thing to remember too, teens and young adults may be exposed to a lot of crap, and dumbed down by society, but they are still human beings. Humans can change, grow, and adapt, that’s what makes us human.

    You can be brought down to the level of a slug, but the same person can be elevated to a prince or princess. Our state of mind is not set in stone at any point in our lives.

    Some people may just be dumb, but I think most of us are just untrained. I’ve seen little glimpses of depth even in the people I thought were mostly shallow in my social circles.

    I think it’s getting people to believe that about themselves that’s the trick, and to care about it. WE all want meaning, deep down, but most of us hide from that desire and pretend it’s not there.

    I’m not writing this to put down teens or young people, by any means, I still am a young person. I just know I’ve been blessed to have the chance to see all this at an early age. I started this blog for that exact reason, to inspire younger people to look for depth and truth in whatever areas we can.

    You see embracing that is the key to wisdom in life. A wise person learns from everything around them, whatever is available, they can even learn form total trash, if they try. A foolish person avoids learning as much as they can. And they accomplish very little in life.

    I know I am fighting an uphill battle, that people often don’t really want to be wise…but this is what I’ve got. This is what I do. I pray it resonates with someone out there.

    Maybe that’s why I keep reading these books, I’m looking for signs of hope. That other people are trying, and looking, and succeeding.

    One author I could recommend is Megan Morrison. She’s modern, but I have found all her books to have depth that shocks me, considering what I usually see in that genre. They hold up. The best one is “Grounded” which is just a better version of Tangled, if you ask me. (I like Tangled too, but this book is so full of imagination and depth that a short movie just can’t capture.)

    I guess all this sounds a bit sentimental, but I don’t know, why do any of us teach or inspire if not to try to raise people up to a higher level? It’s frustrating, but the most rewarding when you succeed.

    They say being an artist is hard, but being a teacher has to be the hardest job in the world just about for high risks and low rewards. Along with being a pastor, probably.

    So in summary:

    1. I hate these books because they are shallow
    2. I read them to find hidden gems
    3. I think we need to expect more of young people
    4. I think we need to expect more of ourselves

    I guess that wraps it up, until next time, stay honest–Natasha

    Lyrics
    Well I was young
    Well I was young and naive
    Because I was told
    Because I was told, so I believed
    I was told there’s only one road that leads me home
    And the truth was a cave, on the mountain side
    And I’d seek it out ’til the day I die
    I was bound
    I was bound and determined
    To be the child
    To be the child that you wanted
    And I was blind to every sign that you left for me to find
    And the truth became a tool, that I held in my hand
    And I wielded it but did not understand
    I was tired of giving more than you gave to me
    And I desired a truth I wouldn’t have to seek
    But in the silence I heard you calling out to me

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