The Girl Destined to Rise- Brittany Czarnecki Dates: 09/19-09/21 Rating: 4/5
This book has me absolutely shattered in all the best ways. The dedication to building character and the bonds between characters amazing. Immersive and hard to put down? Most definitely. There were quite a few plot events and twists that occurred. I loved the added aspect of a little bit of magic as well. I think the way it was embedded was perfect. The fight scenes are peak. I can literally envision/imagine every single one of them. Also, I found the depictions of trauma to be realistic as well. So much happened and tbh at first I thought when I hit the last 75% I was like oh… maybe it’ll all wrap up? AND I WAS TRICKED! Because sh—hit the fan. There was so much going on and in the best way possible. It’s the way I have an entire page dedicated to this book in my journal. Wanna say more but could be spoiler-y. Also, all the italics. Got me. Also, I cried 45 pages in. Do with that information what you will lol
Some things that came to mind while reading:
“I’m not saying she deserved it, but I’m saying God’s timing is always riiiight”
I forgot the first half of the sound but it ends with “IS THAT THE GRIMM REAPER?!”
“Beat his a**”
Tropes: F2L, Roommates, love triangle… square?
C/W: Trauma/PTSD, blood, bullying, familial death(<is that spoiler-y? I’m sorry)
Last thought- is Piotr pronounced Pee-oh-tur or Peter?
Honestly.... I know y'all didn't get along but homie ughh like I can't even begin ... And also where are your kiddos at?!? Like I wanna believe you wouldn't betray your brother and that you're gonna pull some scheme but it's also been 14+ years and the og cast is missing so I dunno what to think
Okay but if Moroha’s demon power was taken shouldn’t she still have had spiritual power? Was totally expecting her to shoot Kyuki to give Towa an opening, but nope
So here’s what we know after episode 8, first checking my previous theories:
Riku is confirmed to be the client and is collecting the Rainbow Pearls, and given further proof towards him being connected to Kirinmaru as Kyuki knew him, thou we still don’t know whether he is his son or whether he’s a hanyoo
Takechiyo IS connected to Hachi (mentioned to be an elder!!), thou it wasn’t explicitly said that he’s his child,
Hachi is the one who took Moroha away from danger, thou we don’t know whether he raised her or whether he took him elsewhere for caretaking (so Koga is still a possibility) and
Setsuna IS connected to Rin’s forever sleep, as it looks like the Dream Butterfly stole Setsuna’s dreams to keep Rin sleeping inside the Tree of Ages.
What new stuff we learned:
Jyubei has the green Rainbow Pearl in his possession and Riku’s earring IS the blue Rainbow Pearl, if that wasn’t clear already
Riku plans on killing Yashahime group so he can have all the Rainbow Pearls in his possession for, something, and also states he only kills the ones he loves. CREEPY
Towa’s dragon attack IS Sesshoomaru’s Sooryuha
Moroha can use Sankontessoo without turning into Beniyasha as well.
Kagome and Inuyasha chose to give the rouge from Inuyasha’s mom to their daughter if they got one, which is CUTE ;_;
Towa & Moroha both being glad that Setsuna’s okay.
I just love the bonds they have with each other! Legit most consistent thing coming out this series is the adorable & wholesome cousin/sister content. ❤️
what if kyuki was looking into towa’s dreams and just finding images of people flipping plastic bottles upright or eating tide pods ??? or that kid who was like ‘i have the power of God AND anime on my side’ and she’s just like ????? this is the future ???????
—You’re such a good child. This is a keepsake from Inuyasha’s mother. We decided that if we had a girl, we’d give this to her. Mr. Hachi, please take care of her.
Gonna add on to this:
From the other side of the bar, I see this crap all the time. Seriously. I work at a high-density bar, and let me tell you, I have anywhere from 10-20 guys every night come up and tell me to, “serve her a stronger drink, I’m trying to get lucky tonight, know what I mean?” usually accompanied with a wink and a gesture at a girl who, in my experience, is going to go from mildly buzzed to definitively hammered if I keep serving her. Now, I like to think I’m a responsible bartender, so I usually tell guys like that to piss off, and, if I can, try to tell the girl’s more sober friends that they need to keep an eye on her.
But everyone- just so you know, most of the time, when someone you don’t know is buying you a drink, they’re NOT doing it out of a sense of cordiality, they’re buying you a drink for the sole purpose of making you let your guard down. So:
Tips for getting drinks-
1. ALWAYS GO TO THE BAR TO GET YOUR OWN DRINK, DO NOT LET STRANGERS CARRY YOUR DRINKS. This is an opportune time for dropping something into your cocktail, and you’re none the wiser.
2.IF YOU ORDER SOMETHING NON-ALCOHOLIC, I promise you, the bartender doesn’t give two shits that you’re not drinking cocktails with your friends, and often, totally understands that you don’t want to let your guard down around strangers. Usually, you can just tell the bartender that you’d like something light, and that’s a big clue to us that you’re uncomfortable with whomever you’re standing next to. Again, we see this all the time.
3. If you’re in a position to where you feel uncomfortable not ordering alcohol:
Here’s a list of light liquors, and mixers that won’t get you drunk, and will still look like an actual cocktail:
X-rated + sprite = easy to drink, sweet, and 12% alcoholic content. Not strong at all, usually runs $6-$8, depending on your state.
Amaretto + sour= sweet, not strong, 26%.
Peach Schnapps+ ginger ale= tastes like mellow butterscotch, 24%.
Melon liquor (Midori, in most bars) + soda water = not overly sweet, 21%
Coffee liquor (Kahlua) +soda = not super sweet, 20%.
I wrote this a while ago for FB after someone asked “wait, what is the song really about, I thought it was about an abusive relationship?” Thought I would share here.
“Had the [Republican National Convention] requested another song, “You Want it Darker,’ … we might have considered approval of that song,” e
This is your obligatory PSA that Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen is a DEEPLY and undeniably Jewish song.
Cohen was born, lived, and died as an Orthodox Jew - he also embraced elements of Buddhism, but contrary to what people may assume, that doesn’t mean he stopped being a religious Jew. He himself said so in interviews - that he was content with his religion and identified as Jewish.
A lot of his music is informed by his Judaism and by the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible. For example, Abraham’s famous line of “hineni” or “here I am” being used as the refrain in “You Want it Darker.” Cohen’s “Who By Fire” is a pretty literal interpretation of the Unatoneh Tokef prayer from the Yom Kippur liturgy, about inescapable morality. His work is often very literally and directly informed by his Judaism.
Hallelujah is perhaps the ULTIMATE example of Judaism in Cohen’s work. It uses two famous stories from the Tanakh - the imagry of “bathing on the roof” comes from King David (of secret chords and psalmistry) and his adulterous lust for Batsheva. The lyric about tied down and having ones hair cut is an allusion to Delilah cutting Shimshon/Samson’s hair, betraying him and stealing his strength.
Hallelujah itself is a Hebrew word - “Hallel” means praise, the “u” ending makes it a vocative command, and “Jah” represents the Divine, the object of praise. It means “you should/let us praise the Divine.”
Cohen wrote DOZENS of verses for the song, and most people covering the song use the ones selected by Jeff Buckley for his cover. However, if you look at the original verses Cohen sang, you’ll find even MORE Jewish sentiment.
“They say I took the name in vain, but I don’t even know the name.” Blasphemy or taking G-d’s name in vain has a very different meaning in Judaism - we can’t use G-d’s sacred Name unless we are directly addressing G-d, and even then, only the high priest can use it, and only in the most sacred place in the Temple at the most sacred time of the year. But because the Romans destroyed the Temple and exiled us, the high priest line was broken, the Temple doesn’t exist, and the Name is believed to have been passed down secretly in Babylonia until as late as 600ce, when it vanished entirely.
In a real sense, the original way that we communicated with G-d in Judaism has been destroyed by outsiders, and we’ve had to adapt. Judaism moved on, now a religion of text instead of Temple, but there’s still a GREAT sense of loss and displacement around that issue.
“There’s a blaze of light in every word, it doesn’t matter what you heard, the holy or the broken hallelujah” - not to get too deep into it, but, this is a reflection of Kabbalah, Jewish ontological mysticism. One explanation of creation is that G-d, the Eternal, withdrew in order to make space for the universe to be born. As G-d collapsed inwards, everything in the universe emanated out from G-d’s person like shafts of light. Everything that exists came from one of these 10 eminations of divinity or the 22 letters of the Hebrew language. There’s a blaze of light in every word - a spark that reflects how G-d used light and words to create everything.
This gets very very interesting when you get to the idea of “the holy or the broken.” Kabbalah conceives of those eminations as vessels that hold the divine light of G-d, but that the reason evil exists in the world is that long ago, the vesseks cracked and the sparks all fell out. Now, each positive aspect like love, strength, harmony, has a negative aspect, like death, sadness, corruption. Tikkun olam, or repairing the world, is the job of doing more and more good deeds in the earthly realm so that we can gather up all that light and positivity and repair what’s been broken in the world, on a personal level but also a cosmological one. So, while there’s a holy hallelujah - joy, thanksgiving, gratitude, praise - there’s also brokenness, sorrow, despair. But even that is part of the world, an empty shadow of the good aspects of existence, and you have to take the bad with the good and just try to make the world better.
“And even though it all went wrong, I’ll stand before the Lord of Song, With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah.” In Judaism, we don’t need an external source for salvation. You do the best you can, you apologize when you do wrong and try to do better, and if you still suck, you go to the equivalent of purgatory for 11 months max. Thats it. No hell, and no Jesus required.. Many Jewish people don’t believe in an afterlife at all, or believe in other options like reincarnation. But anyone who does believe in a positive afterlife (analogous to heaven or paradise) believes it’s available to anyone who simply tries to be a good person.
Now, one of the biggest problems actually comes from people adapting Jeff’s version. The verse “Maybe there’s a God above” was written by Cohen, but he didn’t sing it. Jeff Buckley chose to include it in his rendition. “Maybe” theres a G-d is a VERY Jewish sentiment. We are a religion, NOT a faith. Belief in G-d is more or less optional. No one, even in Orthodox circles, will ever ask you about your personal belief in G-d. That’s none of their business, it’s quite rude, like asking about money or something. Everyone sorts out their spiritual journey on their own, and Judaism makes a LOT of space for questioning, doubt, multiple conflicting viewpoints, even downright disbelief. As a result, there are many agnostic and atheist Jews who are still deeply religious and fully observant. However, in an ire inducing brand of Christian hubris, most Christian artists choose to change this to “I know that there’s a God above,” TOTALLY stripping the Jewish context from that line because doubt is not culturally acceptable in their faith-centric system.
Unfortunately, Christians often go even farther than inserting a forced and obligatory belief in G-d - I have heard renditions of Hallelujah with the lyrics totally changed, so that it becomes an Evangelical worship song about the love of Jesus, a Christmas song about the birth of Jesus, or even (horrifyingly) a Passion narrative song for Easter about the death of Jesus. There are THOUSANDS of songs on those topics already. Stealing a Jewish song for a Christian purpose is ironically just like the story of the rich man with many sheep who stole the poor man’s only sheep. Which is a metaphor for David stealing Batsheva from Uriah. WHICH IS LITERALLY IN THE SONG. It’s the biggest religion on earth stealing something from one of the smallest. To make matters worst, juxtaposing it with the crucifixion is BEYOND tone deaf, considering one of the origins of antisemitism is the accusation that Jews killed Jesus. No one in history has mistreated, exiled, exterminated, and abused the Jewish people to the extent that Christians have - and still, they have the nerve to take a fundamentally Jewish song and appropriate it for their purposes.
Hallelujah is a beautiful song, and many people of all backgrounds relate to it. That’s because, though it is a deeply Jewish song, its fundamentally about the tension between beauty and brokenness - in love, life, humanity, the divine, and the universe. Everyone relates to that. But thats THE central and foundational message of the song, onto which other messages are applied.
To make it about Christmas, Jesus, or the crucifixion STRIPS that message and replaces it with (what Judaism essentially considers) idolatry.
To use this song at the RNC in support of the Trump campaign does the same thing. Though the lyrics were unchanged, the true message was stripped away, leaving behind an undeniable message - praise Trump. This is idolatry, this is blasphemy, this is appropriation, this is theft, this is defilement and violation and assult.
And, since the internet is awash in bad, uninformed, goyische takes about the meaning of the song, here are some articles from Jewish people:
Leonard Cohen’s Five Most Jewish Songs
Leonard Cohen’s Jewish-infused poetry, songs inspired generations
Just finished the most recent Yashahime episode and bro I’m a lol confused... so it is Rin in the tree?? And the moment I saw his lil feet I was like do you hear your children roasting you cause buuurrrnnn. Like that forest you left them in 🙈🙈 but idk what’s going on especially cause setsuna was obviously raised by someone and later on kaede but has no recollection of who? Like I thought sesh would’ve raised her? And also like just what is going on ?!?!?!
