John the Beloved is one of the 12 Apostles. John the Baptist is Jesus' cousin.
Dan Brown, a supposed intellectual
<snerk>.
What's precedent ever done for us?
As a Catholic: Yonic imagery is a thing in Christian art but it’s usually also not subtle or even remotely ambiguous if you know what you’re looking for. And I can see nothing yonic about the Last Supper. Is the gap supposed to be what V for Vagina?!? This is a text book example of starting with a conclusion and working backwards to find evidence to support it
HS
A lack of tropes on the characters pages isn\'t necessarily proof that the characters are shallow- it could be proof that there aren\'t many people interested in adding tropes for the series. Since the series is clearly past the peak of its popularity, to say the least, that\'s almost certainly a factor on why the Characters page for this series doesn\'t have many tropes.
Or the characters are indeed shallow, which they are. Interesting book, but very annoying to anyone who knows even slightly more history than what might be called \"the general public\".
Not much point in addressing the review\'s author, they last edited over a decade ago.
Stories don't tell us monsters exist; we knew that already. They show us that monsters can be trademarked and milked for years.Leave a Comment:
Horrid Aftertaste
When I first read Da Vinci Code, I thought I read something inventive and fascinating. Sure it had its Hatedom, but then again everything does to some extent, and I wanted to see what was the cause of its fame and infamy in equal measure. At first I kinda liked that book, and I would read many chapters in one sitting. But in hindsight, I was looking for the cliffhangers in each chapter because the cliffhangers were at the start of the next chapter!
I finished the book thinking it wasn't a classic, but a decent book, all the same. It has decent prose, and the history in the book felt tangible; although I knew there was something fishy the moment I read the part where the Christians made war with the Romans (dude, they were persecuted by them!), and I felt the idea of the Saint Clair family line being descended from Jesus far-fetched. But I dismissed these thoughts thinking "well, National Treasure has a fake conspiracy, but it's not a horrible movie".
Then I decided to actually do my research, and researched the various claims Dan Brown made in his book. Turns out the Dead Sea Scrolls were tattered scraps of paper with holes in them, and Dan Brown decided to stretch the evidence to suit his claims of Jesus marrying Mary. And that the Last Supper painting was supposed to have hidden in it the shape of a vagina when Mary leans away from Jesus. Yes that probably is Mary, not John the Baptist, but the idea of them representing a vagina as symbolism of their "marriage" sounds far fetched. I laughed at the idea of Christians destroying evidence of their marriage, and I'm an Atheist, so faith has nothing to do with it. The idea of Jesus being the Son of God is as old as Jesus himself; Jesus didn't deny it either.
The worst part? Dan Brown, a supposed intellectual, claimed the "history" was all true!
Then there's the cliched, flat murder mystery. And the hollow characterization; just look at the number of Tropes in the Character Page!
I feel ashamed of myself for actually liking Da Vinci Code, especially how I'm normally much more discerning than this. But my discernment seems to fail me when reading that book. Maybe I didn't want to admit that I had wasted my time and money, but the popularity of books as bad as this one says something about the discernment of many readers (including myself).