Sinner for Asrian

The Codex brainrot never leaves

Day 6 @codex-week

I wanna talk about Leigh Bargudo’s handling of religiosity in the Grishaverse, especially within the Crows (Inej and Matthias) and how much it means to me as a religious person

So. So so so so so. I’m not sure how to exactly explain this feeling but I’m in love with the way Leigh wrote the religious aspects of Inej and Matthias’ characters, and how much it spoke to me as a religious person the same age as the characters (16-18-ish)

For both, their religion is something they grow up with, ingrained in them throughout childhood and while it may have wavered within both as they go through life (Matthias meeting Nina and Inej getting kidnapped) they still maintain a connection to their respective higher powers.

And that’s something you don’t really see a lot in books, especially YA books, since it’s either never mentioned or rejected by the characters/society (not that there’s anything wrong with that), but this characterization of young people who are tasked with so much and still choose to believe in something greater than themselves is very personal to me and a big split from the usual narrative.

I dunno, but the little aspects of their faith journeys, like Inej saying a prayer after winning a fight or Matthias staying connected to Djel in Hellgate, that really speaks to me. Because religion doesn’t have to be this huge show, it really can just be a girl thanking her Saints for her life.

And on the topic of Saints, I’m high-key obsessed with Leigh’s decision to make Saints as opposed to a bunch of gods/demigods. Saints are something that are mostly seen in Catholic/Christian doctrine, and seeing her include Saints made me feel more connected to the universe she created, as someone who is a practicing Catholic.

(Also Inej naming her daggers after Saints?? Icon)

Another element I found to be really touching was the fact that both Inej and Matthias are shown struggling with their faith. A lot of times, characters are shown being pretty cemented in their faith if they have ones and we get a glimpse of two kids (cause they are) who are struggling with the things they’ve done and things that have been done to them, and still maintaining their faith.

Especially Inej, grappling with the fact that she’s a whole ass-assassin, and still maintaining her faith for forgiveness. Which, I for one, fully believe that she would be forgiven, cause she has a good heart, and does what she does to survive.

ironically, it costs a lot of money to be skinny and fit lol.

When people get famous, they can afford diets and new ingredients, surgery, gym memberships and personal trainers.

and they can afford the TIME to change their diet and lifestyle. which is the most precious commodity of all. you cant work out or meal prep if you’re working 8-10 hours a day.

the societal pressure is a whole OTHER thing too. ever notice how a lot of fat celebs, especially women, have no double chin/ soft jawline? they get cool sculpted, because society is ready for a soft body but hardly ever loves a soft face.

but generally it’s money. once again everything comes down to class.

stop convincing each other that the queer experience is nothing but strictly defined boxes and labels that can always be condensed into one sentence. lesbians can experience a lack of sexual attraction and a lack of romantic attraction and lesbians can be nonbinary and lesbians can be gnc and when you actually go into what those last two mean you should realize that yes this means sometimes lesbians are men because genderfluid and bigender and trigender and transmasc and whatever gender lesbians exist and when you actually goes into what THAT means you should realize yes actually people combining labels like mspec and lesbian makes perfect sense because of fucking course orientation and gender and whatever else you consider to be apart of your queer experience is all fluid its all up to personal interpretation

its not shit like bi lesbians or mogai or aroace people or gnc people or "trenders" or it/its users or whatever fucking bonafide weirdos that are ruining the community its the people who want to sort everyone into neat little boxes because they cant handle that sometimes you arent going to understand other peoples experiences. its fine if mspec lesbians dont make sense to you. its fine if it doesnt make sense to you how someone could use it/its, if it doesnt make sense how a lesbian could consider himself transmasc, if it doesnt make sense how someone could seriously mean "my gender feels like a star", if whatever queer experience you run into doesnt make sense.

someone's identity does not have to make sense for you to respect them as a person and realize that exclusionary behavior is nothing but a crabs in a bucket type mentality. not only have "weird" queer people existed since fucking forever, but even if they didnt the human experience is diverse and we still dont know everything about the world and why the fuck would you decide that no actually if it cant be understood it must be bad and you need to find out reasons for it to be bad. focus on the people who are actively hurting others, taking advantage of vulnerable people, dont become one of them. dont become one of the people who scorns anything they dont understand and hurts innocent people in the quest of getting rid of anyone who they deem is abnormal. its fucked up and being any type of exclusionist is fucked up.

bi lesbians, as an overall community, is just a bunch of people who decided that a complicated label fits their complicated attraction and thats Fine. it is literally fine. being a lesbian was never about being strictly a woman who strictly loves other women who are strictly women. its about loving women in a gay/queer way, whatever that means for the individual. if an individual person is using it in a transphobic way, then thats a fault of the person, not the label. but at its core, all the identity is about is about recognizing that attraction is complicated and identity is complicated and not everyone is comfortable putting themself in neat boxes for other people to scrutinize until they Get It.

So, on Thursday, 4/20, Elon removed all the "legacy verified" blue checks. That means that if you are, say, Taylor Swift or the Pope, and you have a blue checkmark because you have proven you identity and want to avoid being impersonated, that check mark went away unless you paid the $8 to subscribe to Twitter Blue.

The assumption was clearly that, despite all their blustering, when push came to shove the power users would nut up and pay for it, if only to avoid their fans being scammed using their likeness.

That didn't happen. As of 4/21, only weirdo Elon stans had blue checks. Those stans immediately got mad, because they had intended to purchase access to an exclusive club, and all the cool kids left as soon as they arrived.

To make matters worse for Elon, several influential shitposters began posting about #BlockTheBlue, a movement to block all paid Twitter bluechecks, and some even released scripts that would automatically block all bluecheck accounts for you.

However, some people retained their blue checks who swore they hadn't paid for them -- in particular, Stephen King and LeBron James, who had tweeted that they would refuse to pay.

Elon admitted that he had paid for these users' blue checks out of his own pocket. Is he trolling? Is it a weird simp move? Hard to say.

Now, as of 4/22, a whole mess of famous people have bluechecks who aren't paying for them. This seems to be a move to confound the automated Block The Blue scripts. Lil Nas X is tweeting angrily about how he doesn't want his blue check. People are speculating that a new policy has been silently rolled out to automatically assign a blue check to every user with other 1 million followers. Several people have pointed out that this amounts to false endorsement, i.e. implying falsely that a notable person uses or endorses your product without their permission, which is a crime. Blue checks have been posthumously assigned to Anthony Bourdain and Terry Pratchett, whose estates my money is on to be the ones to actually sue.

*points to Lucio*: my parents never told me they're proud of me

*points to Nadia*: I'm so fucking tired please just let me rest for five minutes

*points to Lucio*: I'm a Material Girl in a Material World

*points to Lucio again*: Please pay attention to me

*points to Asra*: Touch starved