i am struggling with faith right now. i am trying my best to navigate it but i am still struggling. if anyone has any words of wisdom i am happy to listen. my dms are open if you have any advice. i'm just lost.

for me, it keeps coming back the now deleted scene in anti-hero where taylor first openly used art about something that directly impacted her mental health. and i get why it would be triggering and uncomfortable to see a thin woman portray herself as "fat" on a scale. i understand the "problematic" edge to it. and yet... i still hate y'all for thinkpiecing her into deleting the scene. it was art about something that directly impacted HER mental health and folks felt entitled to tell her how she could make art about something that impacts HER. that HER MENTAL HEALTH was distressing them, could she pretty please censor it so it would stop triggering them.

like fuck y'all. i hope she never feels the need to censor herself again to cater to you fuck ass bitches. some of you DO need to be told you're being overbearing and entitled, sorry! you don't get to censor art just because you don't like who's making it or feel the person who made it isn't allowed to use art the way they used it.

[ cw: nightmares / trauma / ]

Post-invasion, Mikey sneaks into Leo’s room and when asked by Leo what the problem was, Mikey just smiles and says since he’s awake and knew Leo would be too, he didn’t want either of them alone. Leo laughs and lets Mikey stick around, both of them clumped together on Leo’s bed, watching grainy compilations of old Lou Jitsu commercials on Leo’s phone.

Technically, Mikey didn’t lie. He just didn’t explain everything that led him to Leo’s room. He didn’t explain the nightmare of his arms burning up too bright, too fast, destroyed before Raph and Donnie have a chance to help. He didn’t explain how he woke up with a wail caught in his throat, phantom pain in his arms and chest alike chasing away any semblance of exhaustion. He didn’t explain how his mind made sure he knew, vividly, that if one thing went wrong with his portal, then he would have never seen Leo again.

He didn’t explain, and he didn’t have to. Leo knows his brothers better than he knows himself, and Mikey has always been easy to read. So it’s no trouble to let Mikey know that he’s still with them, that Leo is here and alive with everyone else. And when Mikey finally regains his exhaustion and falls asleep leaning against Leo, Leo simply maneuvers him into a more comfortable position and stays by his side.

He doesn’t move, doesn’t go to sleep - not that he could, anyway. He just mindlessly scrolls on his phone, the soft snores of his little brother filling the room. He stays in place, awake, because he wants to be sure that when Mikey wakes up again it’s to the immediate sight that Leo is alive and well and home.

And, if Leo’s bring honest, that’s a reminder not just for Mikey’s sake.

no because really, i think stede is operating in a way he thinks will win him respect. i think he's operating in a way he thinks is the expectation. i don't think he likes it, and i don't think it's "him," but i think he enjoys the positive reinforcement from everyone around him. he's literally never had that before in his life.

he was bullied as a child for what he enjoyed. he was cast aside by his father for being himself. the crew threatened to mutiny against him or even just flat-out kill him because he was too "weak."

and here he is trying to pull himself up out of maelstrom of mistakes. "he's been a failure his whole life." he's trying to do everything he can to rectify that. he wants to be the lighthouse for his crew. he wants to be a good captain. he wants to be a good pirate. he wants to be a good lover. he wants to be something.

and he was actually getting there himself--he just didn't realize it. listening to his crew more, showing them kindness, leading them when they were lost and had no place to go, putting his own grief on hold and taking back the revenge...

he was getting there! but still, he was surrounded by those haunting expectations, by the fear that it wasn't enough.

the whole conversation between he and ed where ed is encouraging him to command respect/be tougher. the whole conversation between he and izzy where izzy says he's "never met anyone with a total lack of skills." zheng saying that she didn't "conquer china by letting people go on and on about their feelings."

not to mention the goading from ned. "once you kill me, you're a real pirate. you're not an amateur." "see? that's why he likes you. your bumbling amateur status."

it all keeps swimming circles around him, looming above his head like a shadow.

he thinks he has something more to prove. he thinks he has to be more. even though his own methods work, like ned's crew turning on him simply because stede showed kindness and understanding, all these phantoms keep telling him it isn't enough and that the other methods are more effective.

because he kills, and looks visibly shaken by it, but his crew cheers. he grabs ed by the collar despite them wanting to take things slow, and they grow intimate. he walks into jackie'z after it all, a place where he was previously banished from, and is treated like a sort of pirate hero.

it's not him. "we don't just banish people, do we? that's not us."

but it's encouraged. it's celebrated. so he thinks it should be.

REST IS FOUND IN JESUS ALONE! Not in social media, not in a good movie, not in your boyfriend or girlfriend, and definitely not in a bottle. In HIM alone, HE will give you rest.

⚔️🍎

day 1 of drawing at least 1 faith character every day for 21 days

bc I don't have anything better to do and faith day is coming up and artblock I guess. whagever

I’ve mentioned this elsewhere but it feels relevant again in light of the most recent episode. Something that’s really fascinating to me about Orym’s grief in comparison to the rest of the hells’ grief is that his is the youngest/most fresh and because of that tends to be the most volatile when it is triggered (aside from FCG, who was two and obviously The Most volatile when triggered.)

As in: prior to the attack on Zephrah, Orym was leading a normal, happy, casual life! with family who loved him and still do! Grief was something that was inflicted upon him via Ludinus’ machinations, whereas with characters like Imogen or Ashton, grief has been the background tapestry of their entire lives. And I think that shows in how the rest of them are largely able to, if not see past completely (Imogen/Laudna/Chetney) then at least temper/direct their vitriol or grief (Ashton/Fearne/Chetney again) to where it is most effective. (There is a glaring reason, for example, that Imogen scolded Orym for the way he reacted to Liliana and not Ashton. Because Ashton’s anger was directed in a way that was ultimately protective of Imogen—most effective—and Orym’s was founded solely in his personal grief.)

He wants Imogen to have her mom and he wants Lilliana to be salvageable for Imogen because he loves Imogen. But his love for the people in his present actively and consistently tend to conflict with the love he has for the people in his past. They are in a constant battle and Orym—he cannot fathom losing either of them.

(Or, to that point, recognize that allowing empathy to take root in him for the enemy isn't losing one of them.)

It is deeply poignant, then, that Orym’s grief is symbolized by both a sword and shield. It is something he wields as a blade when he feels his philosophy being threatened by certain conversational threads (as he believes it is one of the only things he has left of Will and Derrig, and is therefore desperately clinging onto with both bloody hands even if it makes him, occasionally, a hypocrite), but also something he can use in defense of the people he presently loves—if that provocative, blade-grief side of him does not push them—or himself—away first.

(it won’t—he is as loved by the hells as he loves them. he just needs to—as laudna so beautifully said—say and hear it more often.)

If I ever wrote a Renee fic it'd be that somehow, despite everything, she just never heard the term wingman until she was in college and does not know the actual definition of the word.

Due to this and due to the lens that she views things through she misunderstands it to be a Christian Thing (tm) since she thinks it has to do with Angels. So she believes it is her Christian duty to wingman as hard as humanly possible for Andrew and his big gay crush on the new kid (Neil).

Ouuh this part was cool.

yibo NG moments with li qin @ war of faith

petition for ariel to replace ned in the try guys