Sientir's Blog

A while back, my sister pointed out something that is quite odd: when the seven deadly sins—greed, sloth, lust, envy, pride, wrath, and gluttony—get anthropomorphized, there tends to be a subtle inconsistency that becomes glaring once you notice it. Consider for a moment Fullmetal Alchemist, an excellent manga and anime series that does this. In it, Gluttony wants to eat everything, Wrath is vengeful, Greed wants to possess everything, and so on. There is, however, a notable exception: Lust. In Fullmetal Alchemist, Lust is not lustful. Instead, she's a beautiful woman, the stereotypical object of lustful desires. Fullmetal Alchemist is not unique in this dichotomy, where six of the sins are portrayed as someone consumed by that sin, but lust is portrayed as the object of that sin. To highlight just how stark of a contrast this is, imagine if some of the other seven deadly sins were portrayed like lust is. As some easy examples, greed could be represented by a bunch of gold, sloth b

 This post accompanies this Ocarina of Time playthrough video I made with my sister. I've put the higher resolution images here so people can follow along with what we talk about more easily!

Any conversations we have about mental health need to also involve money. This isn't about whether or not money can buy happiness, or how it feels to receive money, or really anything about money itself. No, this is about survival. In the modern world, money is how we survive. We use it to pay for the necessities of life. This includes the traditional basics of food, water, clothing, and shelter, but also requirements of modern living, such as Internet access, phone service, electricity, and transportation. Simply put, in order to function and survive in this modern world, people need money. So what happens if you don't have enough money to cover these needs? What if you struggle to make ends meet? What this really means is that you are struggling to survive. And if no one helps, if you feel unable to rise to these challenges? Then it feels like the universe doesn't want you to survive. Like people don't want you to survive. This takes a mental toll, as you begin to fee