u/JuliaX1984

Had Tom not racked up so much debt, Sir Thomas wouldn't have had to sell the Mansfield living after Dr. Norris died, meaning Dr. Grant never would have bought it, meaning the Grants never would have moved into the neighborhood, meaning the Crawfords never would have come to stay with them, meaning Maria, Julia, and Edmund never would have had their hearts broken, Fanny would never have had to deal with a proposal she never wanted and all the fallout from her rejection, and no affair between Maria and Henry.

So, yeah, Tom, even though Maria and Henry already slept together in Sotherton woods long before that stupid home theater scheme, this whole mess was indeed your fault. Wonder if Tom ever realized the role his debts played in so many of his family's problems...

No clips.

I have extra wide feet. I can't risk buying a new brand and style of shoe online for the first time. I always have to be able to feel them and try them on first. And if they don't come in Wide width, I'll have to buy men's. I just don't know what store to go to to find a wide selection of shoes that are actually good.

So what's the best store to shop for cycling shoes without clips?

I just looked up and read an English translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, specifically the story of Echo and Narcissus. I just wanted to make sure I remembered it right.

Seeing how different a classical work is from the kid-friendly version you once found in a middle school library is supposed to be funny. For me, it hurt.

The original story makes it clear Narcissus had both male and female suitors. He spurned both maidens AND youths! It was a rejected guy who prayed he would be cursed to feel the same unrequited love he put everyone else through. He fell in love with his own reflection knowing it was a guy (knowing it was himself, in fact, albeit with a dose of crazy lol). And there's nothing special or unusual or unexpected about this. Both girls and boys are treated as potential partners for him because, why wouldn't they be?

The ancient world didn't have sexualities as we think of them because same sex attraction just was. Christianity treats anything it doesn't like as something modern people made up to tempt modern Christians away from their only virtuous path of eternal worship of their god. It calls any acknowledgment that non-Christian values exist indoctrination and calls non-Christian values woke, whereas its beliefs and teachings are old and original and natural and how things used to be and are supposed to be but were only changed by the evil worldly world.

I'm constantly laughing at how history was nothing like modern conservatives portray it, from male and female characters constantly being alone together in Jane Austen novels to I Love Lucy's live studio audience applauding for the openly gay Don Loper as he walked onstage playing himself. But something about reading this story and remembering how the kid version I read in middle school made all the attraction heterosexual (only mentioning girls falling for Narcissus and saying he thought his reflection, because of the way it was distorted in the water, was a girl) just feels... infuriating.

The world did not start Christian. Christianity is not the first or the oldest anything or the original anything. It was just another civilization, just another religion, that happened to be more successful at conning people into becoming members. The ancient world saw nothing unusual about feeling sexual or romantic feelings for someone of the same sex or for people of all sexes. That was the natural, original state of things. It was Christianity that brought the corruption, leaving its curse on every facet of society, digging its hooks in so deeply that it was eventually deemed okay for middle schoolers to be shown a story with 2 passive suicides but not with boys falling for other boys.

The world was originally woke. It was Christianity that indoctrinated people into believing pointless bullshirt without question, like boys are only supposed to like girls. Things like being attracted to more than the opposite sex are not a modern lie made up by New Age hippies. They're as old as time itself. If Christians had a time machine, there is no point in human civilization they could go back to and find the alleged traditional values they worship to be the dominant values. No matter how far back you go, people were what conservative Christians call woke.

This is why ex-Christians are more woke than liberals and other left-wingers who weren't raised under the curse of Christianity. Everything reminds us of what Christianity stole from us, of how thoroughly it's corrupted society, of the lies we were told about how the world works and "traditional" values. Christians see themselves as the original defending against silly new notions. We're actually not introducing anything new; we're trying to make people remember their natural feelings and instincts.

How fitting that it was a story about the origins of narcissism that got me thinking about this lol.

Lucy Gray and Echo: Known for their beautiful voices. Fell for narcissists. Echo protected the nymphs from Hera by distracting her; Lucy Gray protected the Covey from being suspected of a double-murder by distracting everyone with the concert. Disappeared but their voices live on (Lucy Gray's in the Hanging Tree song and other lyrics still remembered in District 12 65 years later). Echo was cursed to repeat only the last words spoken to her, like the jabberjays were programmed to repeat words they heard, but like Echo, the released jabberjays died off (they didn't produce baby jabberjays, only mockingjays).

Snow and Narcissus: Self-explanatory. Ovid's original poem at least dwells on Narcissus' "snowy white" skin, hence why he became a white flower (sounds familiar). He spurned Echo and every other girl and boy who fell for him, until a boy he spurned prayed he would be cursed to be tormented by the same unrequited love (so Sejanus has a counterpart in the myth, too!). So he left Echo in the woods only to turn around and start worshipping himself, but he could hear Echo's voice repeating his words as he wasted away obsessing over himself on the riverbank, like the jabberjays repeating Sejanus' last words, the mockingjays driving him crazy by repeating Lucy Gray's melody, and Lucy Gray disappearing and her Hanging Tree song continuing to repeat for 65 years.

Fitting for the setting and the Theseus and the Minotaur motif of every Games.