#1.3.... i love the IDEAS in it but god is it awful looking at it any deeper than that

[gu6chan]

RIGHT branching off of this what i wanted to say about seere is that the staff hating him for being "a goody two-shoes" and not blending in with the rest of the cast is STUPID actually, Seere's placement as "the innocent child" and more importantly the cast's dynamics with him (Caim, Arioch, Leonard, etc.) is SO important in the respect it not only balances the tone of the game by keeping it from being laughably grimdark (which it already teeters on)

but it also serves to both balance the REST of the cast in turn by showing "hey!!!! They're MORE than just *insert problematic thing here*, they're people and human beings and they still have that deep down" like Caim's mercy towards him at the end of Seere's Prayer, Leonard finding the will to live through caring for Seere, and even Arioch's "maternal" affections trying to reach him through her broken mind, as fucked up as the pretext IS (Caim saving Seere for the sake of being able to slaughter more enemies, Leonard being around Seere despite KNOWING he's risking his limits doing so, Arioch,,, well, defining her protection as "wanting to eat him") it all leads back to a genuine human sense of care and protection for a young child you wouldn't otherwise get to see in this cast, and that's important!!! Not only in helping player motivation to be with this cast and see them through to their end, but also generally giving them more depth as characters and PEOPLE beyond just their defining traits

And on the other end of that, it goes without saying that Seere being an innocent, happy-go-lucky kid thinking he's on a ✨grand adventure✨ with his new buddies to save his sister also serves to ENHANCE the darkness of the world and cast by going "Sure, Caim and his crew ARE shown to be human beings still capable of feeling empathy, care, love, etc. but now that you see the stakes, you KNOW what kind of harm they're capable of and how twisted that really looks given that perspective next to an innocent 6 year old boy"

Because SURE, if Seere was an asshole in some capacity (taking his 1.3 self as an example) if something were to happen to him id imagine most players WOULD feel some level of shocked, sad, disgusted, or something among those lines, but when you look at the world someone like DOD1 Seere is in, in all his glee and little hero glory, the thought of something befalling him becomes much more real and potent. You become aware of not only how troubled the cast really is, but how dangerous a world like this is for innocents and THE FACT THEY THINK THAT TAKES AWAY FROM THE GAME?????? AND THEY STILL HATE SEERE FOR THAT?????

im going to commit a hate crime

TL;DR - The entire project dragonsphere staff is WRONG, seere is perfect for a game like Drakengard, and the fact they only saw him as necessary to "explain Manah's story" is MIND-BLOWING i hate it here

TL;DR TL;DR - the attempt to "fix" seeres characterisation in 1.3 by making him a jealous cocksuck entirely removed from the main cast who hates his sister and is gleefully celebrating his mother's death sucks ass and im hunting down everyone involved in that choice with a gun

TL;DR TL;DR TL;DR - actually, BOTH attempts in DOD3 and DOD1.3 to rewrite seere and manahs characters and take the impact of their story out of their hands is bullshit and BOY its a lot more impactful thinking they were literally just some average innocent kids thrown in the dirt and taken advantage of by gods that hate them instead of throwing in all this "they were SPECIAL and FATED TO" bullshit

thinking about what rubs me so wrong about the writing of furiae really felt like "woman who really only has control over her own mind and fantasies, hardly unable to do anything than what's expected as her both as a goddess and a woman" and how the way the staff viewed the writing of furiae as "woman who can't do anything"

I feel like Tadashi really summed it up good in this passage here

[starkeysgrl]

Lost in Translation- Part Three

Synopsis: Peter and you were inseparable since you were kids, until you started hating each other right before you two went to college, but now Peter needs your help to win a bet.

Prologue Part One Part Two

Word Count: 1.3 k

‘’Oh! This is y/n! Y/n, these are my… friends.’’ Peter gestures to the jerks that betted on you.

‘’So these are the ones that you are always talking about, Petey?’’ Peter looks at you, shocked, as you put on your best fake smile and the most annoying voice you could possibly think of. Let’s give these assholes a show.

‘’Awe, really Pete?’’ One of them playfully messes up his hair.

‘’Of course man, you guys are so kind and not manipulative at all!’’ Chad chuckles uncomfortably.

‘’So are you guys on a date?’’ Smooth.

‘’Yea we are, this is our second date, actually. Just can’t get enough of this cutie pie!’’ You squeeze Peter’s cheeks as hard as you can while smiling. That’s for the shit you pulled in the past two years, Peter.

‘’Aw aren’t you the sweetest?’’ Peter messes up your hair, knowing full well how much you hate when someone touches it. You shoot daggers at him almost immediately.

‘’That’s all very sweet, but I thought you hated each other. How did this happen?’’

‘’Aw haha that’s really all in the past! Well, Peter showed up at my dorm a few nights ago, and begged me for a chance, turns out all that hate was just him being frustrated for not having me. Isn’t that right, baby?’’ Peter forces a laugh while chugging down his beer before turning to you.

‘’Yea it is lovey, but you forgot to tell them about all the letters you sent me telling how desperately you were in love with me.’’ Oh that’s it.

‘’I felt bad, babe, after you called my mom crying, begging her for my new number.’’ Peter forces another laugh.

‘’Well, that’s how it happened boys.’’

‘’Cool. We’re gonna go now… Have fun on your date.’’ They finally leave you two alone.

‘’Ok, saying that I was begging for you was a little unnecessary, and then I called crying to your mom? They’re not gonna believe that.’’

‘’They already did, and you were the one who said I was desperately in love with you, sending you a bunch of letters like an obsessed stalker?’’

‘’You started!’’ You both look around, noticing that you were acting like kids.

‘’Oh shut up, mine is more believable.’’

‘’Really? Am I just a pathetic loser obsessed with you in this story?’’ You lower your head and look down while looking sideways. ‘’Don’t answer that.’’

‘’Relax man, they are too dumb to overanalyze everything we do with our lives.’’

‘’Hope you are right, we can’t lose all that money.‘’

‘’Yea, but what if we could get more money? Why stop at 1250 when we can make them give it to us a lot more?’’ Damn.

‘’And how would we do that?’’ Peter seems genuinely intrigued by your crazy idea.

‘’Like this.’’ You eat the rest of your fries, getting up. ‘’How could you say that Peter? I’m here, giving you all my love, and all you wanna know is if you are getting laid tonight? Fuck you.’’ Your dramatic exit got everyone’s attention at the restaurant, leaving a wide eyed Peter trying to explain to others that he didn’t say that, but he stops his rambling as soon as one of the guys pokes his shoulder.

‘’Are you good, man? You should’ve waited a little more before asking that.’’ Oh so that’s how you two are gonna get more money.

‘’Yea I’m good. It’s just- everything was going so well, you know? Thought it would happen tonight.’’ Peter fakes a deep sign. ‘’I know I can get her back, but I need more time, you know? And because of that I’d need more money, she has quite an expensive taste.

‘’I don’t know about that, I think we can give you like 500 more-’’

‘’Make it 600. And I’ll record her moans as proof.’’ God that’s pretty pathetic, but he does need this money, May could need it too.

‘’Woah alright, 600 more from each one of us.’’ MORE FROM EACH? HOLY SHIT. Alright, that wasn’t what he meant, but sure.

‘’Ok cool. Gonna try to reach her, bye.’’ Peter hands his tap to one of them and leaves. 2750 for each. Holy shit.

‘’So? Did it work?’’ Peter gets scared by hearing a voice near an alley, turns out it’s just you.

‘’Yea, you could say so.’’ Peter acts coyly.

‘’How much?’’

‘’2750.’’

‘’Alright, that’s like 270 more from what we had-’’

‘’Each. 2750 each.’’ You widen your eyes, and hug Peter, but realizing soon what you are doing, you stop. Peter wishes you didn't.

‘’OH MY GOD THIS IS HUGE!’’

‘’Yea I know, I promised them something as proof…’’

‘’Ew please tell me it’s not a used condom.’’

‘’What? NO! I said that I would record your moans. ‘’

‘’Ok not that bad, do you think we should keep extorting them?’’

‘’Well, they kinda deserve it.’’ Here’s your friendly neighborhood spider-man, everybody

‘’Yea they do, we should wait a while and increase more.’’

‘’Told them you had an expensive taste, that could work since your birthday is near.’’ Peter looks down, realizing what he said.

‘’You remember my birthday?’’ Oh shit.

‘’Yea of course, I really loved the cakes your mom used to make.’’

‘’Yea me too… So I have to go now-’’ You point to behind.

‘’Oh me too.. I have homework and… stuff.’’

‘’Alright, see you tomorrow.’’ Oh shit, you close your eyes thinking about what you said. At least you have the frat party as an excuse.

The next day

‘’I still can’t believe you’re fucking Peter. Didn’t you hate him?’’ Your friend says with a mouth full of donut.

‘’For the last time, we’re not fucking. And I still hate him. The only thing that’s happening is a deal between us.’’

‘’Let’s see how long that’s gonna last…’’

‘’Wtf do you mean by that?’’ Your friend giggles, after wiggling her eyebrows.

‘’NO’’ You stand up, repulsed by the idea of sleeping with Peter.

‘’Why not? C’mon you’re telling you don’t think he’s hot?’’ Your silence means that you agree with that, so she goes on. ‘’And I know for a fact he thinks you’re hot too.’

‘’Please, who doesn’t? And the fact that I think he’s not super hideus doesn’t mean we’re gonna fuck!! I still hate him, and all the things he said.’’ You sit back on your bed, having second thoughts about your little deal and what will happen to you two if you keep this up. Can’t be that bad, right? He still hates you as well, nothing changed. Just enemies splitting a ton of money by fake dating. God, that’s straight out of wattpad.

‘’Whatever you say, baby. I’m here to kick him really hard if he hurts you again.’’ You giggle and hug your friend.

‘’Thank you, but who knows, he might be the one getting hurt this time.’’

‘’Nice, heartbreaker vibes. But please, just be careful, ok?’’

‘’I will, I promise. The only shitty part is that I’m gonna have to fake date him.’’

‘’SHUT UP. Omg enemies to lovers, like Lizzie and Mr Darcy, BUT ALSO THE FAKE DATING TROPE?’’

‘’Hey!! Never insult Mr Darcy like that again.’’ You point your finger at your friend’s face.

‘’Shit sorry, my bad. Wanna go to a party today? One of the frats is having one later and-’’ You interrupt her.

‘’Yea I’m already going to that one… With Peter.’’ You mumble the last part, hoping your friend didn’t pick up on that.

‘’God, I’m so glad I’m gonna get to see that.’’ You hit your friend with the pillow in your bed.

Taglist: @kidney9-9 @selfcarecap @hollandlover19 @potayaa @wildxwidow @namoreno @badass-yn (couldn't tag you)

[sometimeswritingsometimesdying]

he who is showered in gold

alternate title: my love is like that you have of the world

A/N: @james-isnt-here sent me an ask with just logicality and stargazing and i was thinking about the (first) 1800s au and this happened. also: i really need a beta reader for these but its like 1:15 am again and i don’t really care at this point

taglist sorta: @pheonix-inside @unicornofdarknessstuff @soul-of-a-vixen @toiowo-v707 

warnings: mentions of insects, lots of cuddling and nothing else i think? this is really just fluff (let me know if i miss something tho)

wc: 1.3 k

summary: Patton loves Logan as Logan loves the world. And as Logan loves the stars.

ao3

Something is startling, mesmerizing, of stargazing with someone.

Perhaps it's the quiet, the silence that takes over the wonder-filled moment, or hours. Perhaps its the sounds of crickets, the quiet rustling of a bush, the soft breathing of the person next to you.

Perhaps its the person itself that makes the moment so magical.

Not that Logan believed in magic. Or at least before he met Patton, that was.

There was something that Logan couldn’t name about the freckled young (soon to be not-so-young) man. Trust him, he had tried many times to give it a name, to identify a reason for whatever it was that made Patton stand out against other people.

He’d spent days in his study, observing as Patton danced and sang around their estate instead of writing his scripts. Patton would catch him staring and laugh, and it sounded like bells. He’d smile and cock his head in a curious manner, the golden sunlight making him look angelic even when he was just standing there, and he’d tease him, granting a small smile to blossom on Logan’s face. He’d turn back to his scripts, but he wouldn't be able to concentrate.

That’s when he was truly more beautiful than on stage, where he was clad in makeup and carefully crafted vests. No, in the familiarity of his home, their home, he was simply himself. Him who was showered in gold.

And when soft summer breeze would wander into the room, he’d breath in the fresh air. It gave him a very specific feeling, one he only got from calm, still evenings with golden light and swell wind. And from kissing Patton.

Kissing him was a full-on experience, Logan could say. It was almost like a symphony, or like the perfect pacing of a good book. It made music surge in his heart and a steady beating in his blood increase.

And he loved it.

Often they’d head out on evening walks, just to bask in the fast disappearing sunlight. They’d follow the path down the river, or the one through the forest behind the estate, which extended on and on and on. They’d walk until the sun disappeared over the horizon, leaving them to find a nice clearing to sit down and marvel at the stars.

That evening happened to be one of these escapades.

They had been walking down the path down the forest, holding onto one another’s arm, with Logan occasionally pointing out different types of plants while Patton awed at the few animals they encountered. Soon enough, they came across a pretty big clearing with a star-filled sky over-head.

“Oh,” Patton said, a soft smile gracing his features. “It’s so beautiful.”

“You say that every time, dear.” They stopped walking and Patton giggled.

“It’s true every time, love.” They smiled at each other and ventured farther into the clearing. Eventually, they found a nice enough spot where Patton laid down a blanket he had brought, and they sat down, Patton leaning on Logan’s chest, eyes already fixed upwards.

Every few nights, when Logan knew that it would be clear enough to faintly see galaxies, he’d bring along his most prized astrology book to correctly identify the lesser-known stars, the ones he didn’t know by heart, the ones he still had to learn about. That night was, thankfully, one of these nights, so he took the book from under his arm and opened it.

The words were barely visible in the dim moonlight, but he had a considerable amount of experience with reading in the dark, so he found no problem with it.

He started reading aloud from the book, bringing Patton’s attention back to him.

“Castor and Pollux, most notably known as The Twins, is a constellation found in the northern hemisphere that can be observed in the warm months of the summer.” Patton leaned closer to have a better look at the book, his hair brushing Logan’s face and making a small smile appear on his face.

Before he met Patton, Logan was never known for being a man that was particularly prone to affection. Now, in the comfort of each other's touches, being it kisses, hugs, holding each other's hands or leaning into one another when they were arm to arm, it was routine. All in an effort to be closer to his lover.

He observed the map that was drawn on the book for a while before pointing up at the night sky, in the general direction that the constellation should be. Patton followed Logan gaze back to the stars. They reflected off his glasses, Logan noticed.

He noticed a lot about Patton, after all.

“Look, Patton,” he indicated a specific star. It looked the same as all the rest, yet different. Perhaps a different hue, a different size, but still a single shining dot light years away from them. “That’s Pollux,” He said, gesticulating to the object of his fascination.

Patton smiled softly, hearing the excitement in Logan’s voice. “One of the twins?”

Logan nodded and went on. “There’s a myth about the two, actually. Castor was a mortal, while Pollux was immortal. Knowing his brother would die one day, Pollux begged the gods to let the two live and die together.”

Patton reached over to Logan’s lap and intertwined his fingers with Logan’s, as his lover's arms came up around his waist.

“The gods granted him his wish, making him mortal just as Castor. The two lived and died by each other's side,” Logan played with Patton’s fingers, running his thumb over his palm. “The myth says they became stars, constellations, and they now cause havoc around the world, just as small kids do, creating storms over the seas and turning over sailor’s boats.”

As Logan’s gaze remained enthralled by the star-scattered dark sky, Patton’s gaze wandered over to him, and he observed the man he loved most in the world.

He was made of rigid and hard edges, with soft details here and there. Details no one else noticed, like the sweet note in his voice when he began singing along with Patton around their estate. Or the sparkle in his eyes when he had a new idea for a story, the angelic ringing of his laugh when Patton did a particularly humorous skit.

He loved it. He loved it all. And, most importantly, he loved Logan.

He loved Logan like the author loved the stars. He loved him like he loved sunsets. He loved him like he loved the theater and the cheers and the claps of the audience after a performance. He loved him like he loved singing. He loved him like the author loved every bit and piece of the universe. He loved him like how he loved finding meaning and wonder in every single thing, every ant, every blade of grass, every whip of the wind, every twinkle of the stars.

Patton loved Logan like he loved the world.

Patton took his hand out of Logan’s hold and gently slipped it onto Logan’s cheek, making the author turn to look at him. He ran his thumb over the soft skin, caressing and making Logan shiver.

“Hey,” he was whispering, and he didn’t know why. Perhaps it was because Logan had let his guard down, and he didn’t want to disrupt the moment.

Logan grinned, something that only happened when it was late at night and he was feeling particularly sappy. “Hey, dearest.” Patton smiled too.

They stayed like that for a while, only the sounds of crickets and the rustling of bushes to the breeze interrupting the silence.

They felt calm, both of them. As if they were at home, where they belonged.

Perhaps it was where they belonged. With each other, in each other’s arms, their breaths mingling, their minds enthralled by one another.

Patton leaned up, eventually, and gave him a peck on the cheek, making Logan blush crimson and making him laugh.

A soft breeze ran through his hair, and he felt a feeling dissipate into his heart. A feeling that was light and carefree and happy and that made him feel wonderful.

He loved Logan, he truly, truly did.

[why-this-kolaveri-machi]

i preserved in him what he needed to believe about you.

i wrote yesterday that this episode had a lot riding on it. for the most part, it delivered--mostly in anchoring both dick and slade’s arcs, expanding on the themes introduced in s2, and in firmly establishing jericho as My Favourite Forever And Ever. it was also very flawed, but in (mostly) interesting ways. let’s talk about it!

SPOILERS ahead.

1. jericho has my whole heart and then some. i think it would’ve been very easy to paint him with broad strokes--my fear was they would drag the innocence all the way to the edge of infantilisation, which, good god NO--but while he is enthusiastic and ready to believe the best of both his friends and family, there’s a sharpness to him, a kind of reckless guile, and quite a lot of unresolved and complicated feelings about father figures. 

1.25. he is obviously very proud of his father having served in the military--he’s even tangentially aware that he was experimented on, given his nonchalant attribution of his own powers to “drugs” that his father took while serving. (this awareness has to include the fact that his father definitely took a number of lives as a soldier.) even the awful assault that took away his voice and eventually his father from his life tracks with a single, knowable truth. knowing this helped him ground his own identity--the problem comes when he realises that what he’d used to build himself on was itself built on a lie. 

there is a tension, then, between his loyalty to these friends who used him but ultimately revealed the truth to him, and his desire to have that cornerstone of his life back. his compromise is to talk to his father, but only with dick’s permission; in it, he would know if his father was finally ready to be completely honest with him, and if there was more to dick’s friendship than merely using jericho to get to his father.

1.3. of course, it doesn’t exactly work that way: in the final fight at the church, there are two men who insist on their truth while pushing him to the side. in it, he sees one of them ruthlessly cut down the other, and he sees the other using his own body and life to protect him. jericho makes his choice in the end.

1.45. dick i think was absolutely right and justified in bringing jericho to a safe place where he can explore and learn to control his powers, even if dick was surprisingly blase about the potential ethical tangles of being able to possess other people’s bodies without them being aware of it. it was honestly a bit disturbing to see that hank was chosen to demonstrate jericho’s powers, given his history and the fact that he describes the experience as a “blackout”. i’m just going to assume that he would’ve come around to it eventually.

given the relative paucity of Big Bads and grand superhero battles, i’m kind of taken with the idea of the titans essentially being a support group for young troubled superheroes who need help and training and ways to ground themselves before heading back to their corners of the world. 

1.5. ultimately this episode once again drives home what should be the essential question in a show that revolves around a team of superhero sidekicks: are we destined to be what we were moulded to be? is the point of their existence to perpetuate what their mentors/fathers did? slade and jericho both struggle with this; so do dick and donna in this episode. so do rose, and jason, and rachel, and conner, and kory in the broader context of the series. the answers they find are complicated and at the cost of a great deal of pain, but the process is always interesting.

1.8. obviously jericho isn’t actually dead. i wonder what that initial dreamscape sequence was all about? is it some secret pocket dimension that jericho jumped into at the last minute when slade killed his body? is that where he’s been for the last five years?

2. dick grayson is lost. he is utterly buried under artifice and armour. i mentioned in a previous post (i think the one for 2.07) that he performs quite a bit of emotional labour for the team on top of being their leader in a tactical sense. here, he’s trying to hold it together for the team after a devastating death; he’s spearheading an effort for revenge he thought they all supported. he pulls on batman-goggles, trying to look at what he’s doing from a logical, emotionally-removed perspective, even while burying his bleeding heart as deep as he possibly can. no wonder he’s acting “like a ghost” and “burning at both ends”--it’s a terrible burden to bear. 

then the team turns around--once they’ve already gotten the info they needed, mind!--and tells him to cut jericho out of this operation; that it’s wrong and awful to have involved him at all. when he tries to do just that, he sees that he can actually help jericho as a friend and teammate, and at the urging of dawn, comes clean to him. meanwhile garth’s death and donna’s grief is still an unrelenting pressure on the back of his neck, driving him to find deathstroke at any cost--except when that cost is betraying jericho’s trust. ultimately slade nearly murdering donna is what breaks him--and he decides to follow jericho to slade anyway.

at every point he is so desperately trying to do good by everybody that he loses himself in the process. that his reward for this is being beaten up, a truckload of survivor’s guilt, and being abandoned by his closest friends is just so fucking awful. his friends are so used to his artifice and he is so used to absorbing all the blame that they think nothing of both praising him for being someone that saves people and believing he would sacrifice innocent lives for the sake of a mission in the same day.

(but this makes dick/kory so beautiful and refreshing--she has no time for his artifice and he doesn’t have to Be Someone around her. their relationship is defined by being undefined, and in that sense--at least for now--both of them find peace in the other.)

2.5. slade commenting coldly on dick’s fighting skills and the way he uses dick’s feelings for jericho to distract and defeat him makes me think that slade’s been playing this game with dick for far longer than he was aware: slade used both jericho and donna as bait to lure dick to that church, fought him in a cold, critical way undoubtedly reminiscent of a thousand sparring sessions with batman, and drove him utterly to the ground not just to prove a point to the titans and the superhero community at large but to jericho as well: this man is weak, manipulative, and ultimately a poor substitute for slade. 

2.75. who knows for how long dick wallowed in his failure, still seeing jericho take the blade that was meant for him, utterly alone? did he go back to the batcave, utterly defeated, and did he listen to bruce call him out on his mistakes? how much do you think he internalised all the terrible things he’d been told he was until he believed it all to be true? until he couldn’t live with himself and spiralled and spiralled until his self-hatred lead to outright self-destruction?

like--no wonder he completely fell apart in the present day when deathstroke showed up again. he’d just started to trust--he’d just started to build a family again. and here it is, a reminder of his biggest failure threatening to have him fail spectacularly once again. 

... this boy needs so much therapy. or at least a long nap and a series of hugs.

2.8. (that fight between him and slade tho... goddamn. even my shitty quality stream couldn’t take away from how thrilling it was to watch.)

3. dawn is... well. i know it’s been frustrating to follow dawn this season, as she’s been either non-existent or, uh, flat, but there was something interesting in the way her dynamic with dick moved and shifted in this episode. she thrills to ideals without considering the consequences of actually following those ideals. in the space of a few months, she can implore dick to act like batman, then tell him no, she was wrong to have asked him to do that, then say that she loved him for saving people and then barely days later abandon him for being a reckless sociopath who exploited innocent lives. in the present day, she can support hank in his retirement and rehabilitative process, yet still think it’s perfectly ok to go behind his back and continue being a vigilante. she supported protecting rose in the tower but still piled on dick for going off on his reckless suicide mission to try and save both jason and rose. she endorsed (and once praised) dick taking on troubled young superhero charges, yet turned around and berated him for daring to open up titans tower and “put them in the firing line”. 

i mean, for all that she takes the considerate, sensitive line in conversations, it’s almost always in contradiction to a position she’d taken earlier. it’s too consistent to be a coincidence, and i think it’s fascinating.

4. i didn’t realise amazons could be defeated and killed so easily?? who issued the contract to kill jillian in the first place and what was the “important work” they were doing in san francisco in the first place? a mystery within a mystery...

5. if this season were the draft of a story, i would go right in with a red pen and start moving around all the parts to make it flow better; excise entire passages and rewrite a few others. the pacing has been terrible, and this has meant that the younger titans--and the team we came to know and love through the first season--have gotten almost nothing to do, either plot-wise or emotionally. even if kory and gar and rachel become absolutely vital to the story in the last 4-5 episodes, it would still be a fairly significant failure, storytelling-wise.

that’s a pity because this show is packed with a stellar cast, always looks gorgeous, and is filled with genuinely insightful human relationships that are allowed to unfold in ways you just don’t see in other superhero media. just--*vibrates* a little more love and care from the people making and producing the show please!

[billysigudla]

Through God’s Strength! Philippians 4:12 When people have food, shelter, employment, and money, it’s easy to be content and happy. Isn’t it? Or, is it easy to be poor, hungry, unemployed and homeless? What would the apostle Paul’s answer to that question be? This is our last sermon from Philippians. We are looking again at the apostle Paul, in prison, in a really awful situation. Shackled to a Roman soldier, 24 hours a day, with no privacy, in a cold, dank, drafty stone cell. For the past eight weeks, we have considered Paul and his words to his friends from Philippi. He wrote this thank-you letter to the Philippians congregation, and it was one of the most joy-filled letters we have, included in the New Testament. Do you know how much it means for a friend to send a message, an email, a card or letter, especially when you are downhearted and close to giving up hope? That is what Paul’s former congregation in Philippi did. They showed “a love and concern that led them to help Paul. The most significant gifts often cost us very little—sometimes nothing, except a few moments to say a friendly word or the make a telephone call or send an email, the stamp to post a letter or a card. What matters is that someone has been remembered with affection and concern. Paul says he knows what it’s like to be poor, and he knows what it’s like to have abundance, in verse 12. I know there are many in the United States who may consider themselves to be poor, but I wonder whether you realize quite what Paul was talking about here. We could drill down to find out more about economic, educational and societal poverty worldwide. For example, according to the United Nations latest report on poverty in 2019, 23 percent of the world population – that’s 1.3 billion people – lived in abject poverty worldwide. Just to give you an idea of how little money we are talking about, that is living on approximately $1 a day, or less. Paul did not mean just economic poverty. He also was talking about poverty of spirit, poverty of emotional wherewithal, poverty of humility and ability to persevere. We all know something about that. Who has not felt the pinch of poverty of spirit in the past six month (at Brits Letlhabile) https://www.instagram.com/p/CFbKQLqD2Vo/?igshid=crjyw1ukgpcs

[billysigudla]

Through God’s Strength! Philippians 4:12-20 (4:12-14) When people have food, shelter, employment, and money, it’s easy to be content and happy. Isn’t it? Or, is it easy to be poor, hungry, unemployed and homeless? What would the apostle Paul’s answer to that question be? This is our last sermon from Philippians. We are looking again at the apostle Paul, in prison, in a really awful situation. Shackled to a Roman soldier, 24 hours a day, with no privacy, in a cold, dank, drafty stone cell. For the past eight weeks, we have considered Paul and his words to his friends from Philippi. He wrote this thank-you letter to the Philippians congregation, and it was one of the most joy-filled letters we have, included in the New Testament. Do you know how much it means for a friend to send a message, an email, a card or letter, especially when you are downhearted and close to giving up hope? That is what Paul’s former congregation in Philippi did. They showed “a love and concern that led them to help Paul. The most significant gifts often cost us very little—sometimes nothing, except a few moments to say a friendly word or the make a telephone call or send an email, the stamp to post a letter or a card. What matters is that someone has been remembered with affection and concern.” Paul says he knows what it’s like to be poor, and he knows what it’s like to have abundance, in verse 12. I know there are many in the United States who may consider themselves to be poor, but I wonder whether you realize quite what Paul was talking about here. We could drill down to find out more about economic, educational and societal poverty worldwide. For example, according to the United Nations latest report on poverty in 2019, 23 percent of the world population – that’s 1.3 billion people – lived in abject poverty worldwide. Just to give you an idea of how little money we are talking about, that is living on approximately $1 a day, or less. Paul did not mean just economic poverty. He also was talking about poverty of spirit, poverty of emotional wherewithal, poverty of humility and ability to persevere. We all know something about that. Who has not felt the pinch of poverty of spirit in t (at Brits Letlhabile) https://www.instagram.com/p/CFaLWRjjTnW/?igshid=ojo7ls3hbj3l