I love Jesus, and some other things too. This is the place where I delight in those things. ❤️ Seeking Him in all my hyperfixations.
Art Blog: rachelwhiteartist.tumblr.com
Live Life Abundantly (John 10:10)
The trailer for Hexed looks cute and all, but like… it’s a movie about a magical girl. A cool, goth magical girl, who wears a cloak and combat boots. A cool, goth magical girl who runs around doing cool, goth magical things while a cinematic version of “Edge of Seventeen” by Stevie Nicks plays in the background.
Meanwhile, a Sylvie Laufydottir movie still has yet to become a twinkle in anybody at Marvel’s eye.
I’m not bitter. Just mildly bummed out for a very niche reason that only like twelve other people on tumblr will understand.
trust in the Lord is like trust in a beloved author. I picked up this book because I know the kind of stories you’ve told before. I know your stories are told with love for the characters and love for the reader. and even though you sometimes take things in directions that scare me, that I don’t understand and that I wouldn’t have chosen myself, I know you’re a better author than I could ever be, you’ve proved it over and over. so I trust that in the end, all the hurt will be part of something beautiful. I trust that failure and despair will not get the final say. I trust that you know what you’re doing.
He wrote the Incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus. He wrote every miracle and grace in my life. what reason do I have to fear?
This made me think of this bit from one of @granny-griffin's posts:
And this bit from an old journal entry of mine.
"I've been thinking a lot about eucatastrophes lately.
If every story smacks of Reality in some way or another, because the human mind is incapable of thinking up a story that doesn't borrow from the True Story at some point, I think it's really telling that the grand, sweeping, heart-stopping moments that we tend to remember are often eucatastrophes-- that is, they're moments of unforeseen victory that save our heroes from certain demise.
You know the sort of moments I'm talking about-- Gandalf cresting the hill at Helm's Deep.
The Stone Table cracking in two at Aslan's resurrection.
The prince waking Sleeping Beauty from her death-sleep of a hundred years.
Lucie Manette and her family escaping France alive.
The Blipped returning, alive and ready to fight.
The great horns of the North wildly blowing, hailing Rohan's arrival at Gondor's gates.
The fever breaks.
The flower blooms.
Reinforcements arrive.
A name is spoken.
And we cheer and laugh and cry and shout and applaud, whether we've seen the story a thousand times before or not at all. We never get tired of watching the tide turn, watching a final, quavering spark of hope be suddenly fanned into a bright, gloriously blazing inferno.
Why?
Perhaps we know stories ought to climax that way because the greatest one did.
Perhaps-- perhaps-- it's because the deepest Reality there is to copy is that of Christ's birth-- and death-- and resurrection.
Perhaps it's because our souls long for redemption from the disarray and decay of a fallen world.
Perhaps it's because those stories give us a taste-- a tiny, tiny glimpse-- of what sort of rejoicing is yet to come, when evil is defeated forever and Christ returns to call forth his own.
It's like getting a static shock and, from that, trying to understand what it must feel like to be struck by lightning.
If these small eucatastrophes fill us with such exultation-- how great must be the rapturous joy of heaven!
If these shadows of the Truth, left for us by someone who didn't even know us, bear such beauty and goodness-- how much greater is The True Story that's woven around us (that we are woven into!) by He who made our hearts and knows them most deeply!"
Thoughts on The Amazing Digital Circus, Episode 9 (SPOILERS)
At long last, here's the official bullet-point brain-dump of thoughts on the TADC finale. I’m still reeling from it, so there's definitely going to be more where this came from. But it’s a start.
Spoilers below the cut!
Sooooooo... the brain scan theory turned out to be true. And within the first five minutes, too. 😬 I've hated this theory ever since I first heard about it, mostly because it makes my skin crawl. The thought of having my consciousness copied without my consent, being disembodied and uploaded to a computer, forced to exist in a digital world, cut off from nature and the physical world forever… yeah, nope. Don’t like it at all. I was kind of holding out for this story to be an escapist parable in the end; one of those “We don’t belong here; we owe it to ourselves to believe that there is more and find a way out” kind of stories. But that’s not the route the story took… and surprisingly, I was totally ok with it. I’m actually really impressed by how sensitively they approached the concept of them all being digital copies of themselves. They treated the moment the characters found with a lot of gravitas. There was no attempt to romanticize the situation or make a joke out of it; it was a dark, heavy, grief-filled realization. These characters really are stuck here forever, and that sucks. But it’s a reality that they have to accept, and they lean on each other to make the most of it.
Everything about Jax's abstraction had me in shambles. I don’t think I can fully convey the depth of the emotional reaction I had to this part of the story. Suicide stories tend to unearth a lot of complicated emotions in me, and this one felt particularly personal. At first, it bugged me that we didn’t actually get to see him abstract. The fact that it happened offscreen was really jarring. But that’s also what losing someone to suicide feels like in real life. One minute, you think they’re fine. Then you turn your back for five seconds and poof, they’re gone. It was raw and real and heartbreaking.
Pomni and Ragatha’s friendship really shines in this episode in a way that I didn't expect. That 360 shot of their hug destroyed me, not just because they finally acknowledged each other as friends, but because they were both grieving Jax in that moment. They had just lost their closest mutual friend, and all they could do was hold each other and cry together. There was also something really lovely and full-circle about Ragatha touching Pomni’s shoulder at the end while she’s glitching. It mirrored the first episode, when Pomni was so freaked out by Ragatha’s glitching that she didn’t even want to go near her. It’s giving “bear one another’s burdens” and I love it. ❤️
Gangle's response to Jax's abstraction was really complex and well-written. "Why can't I cry for him?" was just so heartbreaking, especially coming from Gangle, who's whole character-shtick is the fact that she's always crying. Because how do you even respond emotionally to the death of someone who's bullied you for years? That moment where the emotions finally catch up to her and she lets herself grieve him despite it all really highlighted the strength of her character for me. 😭 Gangle is the sweetest soul ever and she deserves the world.
I genuinely don't think Pomni had a plan when she went off on her own to try and help Jax. She just needed to do something because she couldn't bear to write him off as dead yet, and she was 100% willing to risk abstracting with him if it meant there was any hope of bringing him back. I got weirdly emotional over the way she used the gun to shoot out the lights, since the scene where he teaches her how to shoot is such an important moment in their friendship.
Honestly I was laughing so hard during that poker room scene (laughing through my tears, because I’d been crying for a solid fifteen minutes prior - any piece of media that can make me cry and laugh simultaneously like that is a winner in my book). Jax canonically being a piano player is the best gift the finale could have given me. And the song he was playing in the poker room was DAISY BELL. 🌼 MY HEART.
I loved getting to see Ribbit (she was super cool) but the character that really stuck out to me during the whole flashback sequence was Kaufmo. He seemed like such a chill, genuine, good dude. He and Ribbit were both such good friends to Jax and they both deserved so much better.
I wish I had the words to express how beautiful that last scene between Jax and Pomni was. I have a growing list of movie/TV moments that I’ve watched and immediately thought to myself: “Yep. That’s it. That’s the Gospel. That’s what it’s like to love and be loved by Jesus.” This scene is on that list now. The visual of Jax with his back turned to Pomni, his face hidden as the tears start to fall. The way he monologues about how unlovable he is, replaying all his worst mistakes in his mind, begging to just be left alone to die. And all the while, he can’t see that Pomni is running at full speed to embrace him. The way she throws her arms around him and he just starts sobbing… someone please give Michael Kovach multiple awards for that performance. “You should have just talked to me, man.” Jax was a deeply hurting person who made terrible choices. He dug his own grave, and yet Pomni still did everything she could to save him, even though he was already too far gone. She held him close and didn’t let him go until she physically couldn’t hold on any longer. If that’s not true, unconditional love, then I don’t know what is. Anyway, this scene is seared into my heart now, and I will be crying about it for the rest of my life. 😭
I wasn’t expecting Caine to come back. Honestly, I didn’t need or want him back after episode 8, but I really liked the direction they took his character in the end. His little dialogue with himself about what the humans are worth to him was surprisingly moving. “Is not their free will what made them alluring in the first place?” Insert some profound saying about freedom of choice being the only thing that makes love/connection possible here. I love the way his demeanor changes when he returns to the circus. He’s calm, gentle, and receptive, and it’s clear that he’s finally ready to care for these people he brought to life in the way that he should. Props to Glitch for finally making me a Caine stan in the end!!!
That final slideshow where they learn about their IRL selves really brought the whole series into perspective for me. This was a show about feeling stuck, navigating a life that feels perpetually meaningless, and finding a way forward even when everything around you feels stagnant. I find it really encouraging that the characters are able to stay connected to their human selves through social media. They needed that closure more than anything to fully accept the nature of their existence.
Being the sucker for redemption/resurrection stories that I am, I totally believe that a cure for abstraction exists, and that eventually the characters will find a way to bring their abstracted friends back. But I’m glad that we don’t get to see what that looks like. That way we’re free to imagine it for ourselves. Really looking forward to reading all of the “Jax Gets Unabstracted” fics that are going to come out of this. 😁
All in all, I was really satisfied with this ending. It was far more hopeful than I expected it to be, and I came away from it feeling relieved, encouraged, and emotionally renewed. Man, what a show. What an absolute masterpiece. 10/10!
Please pray for the young men who have lost their sons, their brothers, their friends, and their fathers to suicide;
Pray for those men who are in addiction, in poverty, in hospice, who go through bullying and isolation and domestic abuse, who have been raped and are sexually abused, who are self-harming and contemplating suicide. Who are struggling in their homes, marriages, families; with their health, and their safety. Please pray for all the young men who have lost their lives due to PTSD and insufficient support and trauma and accidents. Please pray for the surviving families, and their male members, whose sons, fathers, and brothers were targeted and taken away from them too soon because of crime and violence and injustice.
Please pray for our young boys and men, for we need them as much as they need us.
No joke, I think one of my favorite parts of Project Hail Mary was that random shot of the security guards eating skittles. Like, in that moment I knew exactly what kind of movie this was going to be and I just 100% locked in.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. What? What's happening? A hug. It's, uh, usually not something one does by themselves. Oh, I— wait, I do the same? Would you just get in here?
PROJECT HAIL MARY (2026) dir. Phil Lord & Chris Miller
