#There's also the issue of religion

[cupcakesmoothie]

Behold

Alexander!

This is probably the most effort I've put into designing a character and I'm not even done with his outfit :')

The scarf might change designs and colours depending on how his outfit goes, I might also add some extra stuff to it.

Alexander is going to be one of the few side characters that don't have a blessing! He might not have a blessing, but he can still defend himself :)

His specialty is swords and knives (Also throwing weapons).

Yes, he is aromantic, but not asexual!

I spent like an hour straight drawing this

Ok edit: His name is actually Alexis now, and he's Spanish

[lovedisiac]

Absolutely dystopian how they're preparing us for a potential war by organizing mock drills all over the country and the way people are celebrating and clapping hands like it's a fucking cricket match just tells me that the average Indian population has a brain as dense as a blackhole because wdym y'all still don't realise that not everything is solved by war which often leads to unnecessary suffering and death of innocent people who have nothing to do with the neo-fascist political agendas at play.

"There are no other options" Boy do I have news for you.

[applepiebuck]

Does. Does eddie still have Bobby's prayer book.....

[sweetestflow3rs]

what if we kissed next to the pixel fleshlight

[serpentface]

Do you have any information on the root scholars that you can share? They’ve always been a cool cult/organization to me

Ok it’s a facet of the Eterhimhamdli religion, which is The most widespread single belief system east of the inner seaway (which isn't saying much in terms of scale but it's still pretty significant) and also one I've barely introduced so I'll go over it a bit here.

Eterhimhamdli has spread past its initial sphere of old (~500 years BP) southern Lowlands Yuroma kingdoms, has many folk practices, and has schismed a few times, so there's a good deal of cultural variation. But its basic tenants/tendencies are:

-Creator deities are wholly rejected, the universe is an interplay between non-personified dualistic forces of Body(evil)/Mind(good). In one schism, the interplay of these two forces is the Dream, in others dreaming is an aspect of Mind.

-Deities in general are not wholly at odds with Eterhimhamdli, but their importance is de-emphasized and worship is usually discouraged in favor of making them objects of contemplation and/or tutelary figures.

-The Mind of the universe exists as a collective soul from which human souls emanate

-every person has two souls: an egoistic soul that animates the body and an ethereal soul that animates the mind. The latter is conceptualized as a single drop from a greater sea of the collective soul.

-belief that true wisdom is derived through access to this collective soul.

-belief that the trappings of the the ego-soul and the body's demands inhibits access to said collective soul.

-belief in the concept of enlightened beings who gain full experiential knowledge of the collective soul while remaining in a body, thus becoming capable of directly communicating aspects of their wisdom to the masses.

the biggest schism in this religion is over whether enlightenment just means experiencing full knowledge of the collective before you die, or whether it means transcending the limits of the body entirely and functionally becoming an immortal, godlike being.

deities of older/other religions absorbed by Eterhimhamdli are often reframed as enlightened mortals.

-most sects believe that only sophont life (or sometimes Only humans) have a etherial-soul along with the ego-soul, while animals exclusively have the ego-soul. Plants and inanimate objects Usually aren't ascribed souls outsides of heavily syncretic folk practices.

-belief in a fundamental good-evil cosmic dualism, though in a fairly complex way (evil is a necessity for life that is to be tempered and grappled with, rather than outright vanquished from the world entirely). The notion of 'evil' here is most associated with bodily desires (this includes all bodily needs like hunger and thirst, necessary to support life but viewed dangerous in excess, and being the root of conflict and pain).

the evil nature of bodily desire is not About sex, but does translate to non-procreative sex being frowned upon to varying extents.

-belief that life is a state of internal warfare between the evil ego-soul and the good ethereal-soul, with the former being more powerful and influential. To lead a good life is to bring the ego-soul into equilibrium with the ethereal soul. To live a wise and venerable life is to fully tip the balance in the latter's favor (this is not an expectation for lay followers, as it is considered profoundly difficult and requires separation from worldly life).

-lay followers practice forms of temperance to bring these forces into equilibrium, priests practice forms of asceticism to subdue the ego-soul and gain experiential wisdom in the process.

-The way you balance your life has consequences for the afterlife. An evil life causes an eternal death (this is usually posited as an underworld), a life in equilibrium causes one to be reborn into a new human body (a neutral fate), and a good life results in full return to the collective soul (this is a state of complete peace and contentedness and access to infinite wisdom).

-A selection of hallucinogenic plants are central to the monastic/priestly aspects of the religion, being seen as the key method through which the body can be transcended and the ego-soul can be quieted in order to tap into the collective. Lay followers do not participate in this facet on a regular basis.

-Priests also participate in self-flagellation, as the struggle with physical pain is a key microcosm of the broader internal war with the ego-soul, and can be a source of wisdom and contemplation. They are extensively tattooed for partly related purposes. Laymen are not expected to flagellate as a practice but rather to apply teachings to/learn from struggles with everyday pain.

-Very complicated relations with violence as a concept. Some strains of Eterhimhamdli philosophy see violence as an exclusive result of evil to be avoided whenever possible (usually more completely by priesthoods than the wider societies they live in), others see it as a neutral tool in of itself that Can be a force for good when used wisely. (Large scale 'wise usages of violence for the sake of good', shockingly, tend to favor the in-group's position in preexisting ethnic/religious/territorial conflicts).

-Most sects are proselytizing and see conversion as a necessity to create a better world, and have broadly unfavorable views of other religious practices.

This does not extend to seeing all societies that practice Eterhimhamdli or even The Same Schism Of Eterhimhamdli in a positive light (the birthplace of this religion is currently about 60 semi independent city-states organized into leagues that are frequently at war with each other)

-Highly favors education, literacy, rhetoric, debate, and the acquisition of material knowledge along with deeper spiritual wisdom. Knowledge and wisdom are venerable traits and societies should be led by the learned, or at least by people under their guidance.

---

The Scholarly Order of the Root is one order of Lowlands Eterhimhamdli monastics, functioning as a closed cult/mystery religion. They’re based out of Suurota (one of the biggest Yuroma city-states and dominant member of its league). They're at the top of the league's hierarchy of monastics, very wealthy, and have some involvement in governance (being an advisory body to the magistrate).

The Scholars primarily interact with the general public by hosting many of the league's institutions of scholarship and philosophy, and some of the biggest libraries in this part of the world. Their institutions are used by laymen Suurota citizens and members of government for study, and they host monks and priests (uninitiated to the inner cult) in their halls.

Actual membership to the Scholars cult is limited, they neither expect nor want associates to participate in their rituals. Rather, they position themselves as teachers- revealing small aspects of their secret knowledge to laymen and the lesser monastics as a form of guidance, while keeping dangerous knowledge for only the trusted inner circle.

Their baseline belief system aligns with the general schema of Lowlands Eterhimhamdli (one of three major schisms of this belief system), but their closed cult practices revolve around fairly unique interpretations, understood to be the ultimate underlying truths of this worldview.

The Scholars focus on an extention the Mind-Body model of the universe where their synthesis is the Dream (this itself is not unique to this cult, but the depths of their focus is). Under this model, the world is the dream of the collective consciousness, and achieving enlightenment or even temporary lucidity can allow the dream to be shaped to one's will.

One of their most secretive practices is god-building, in which they utilize altered mental states to shape the fabric of the dream into entities they can use as personal teachers of secret knowledge (also as a type of magic in general, they use it to 'build' guardians and curses and the like).

The process involves using mild doses of Ur-Root brew (mostly derived from roots of the clonal Ur-Wood colony, whose bark has notable concentrations of dimethyltryptamine and also hosts milder fungal hallucinogens) while maintaining an object and concept as a focal point of concentration. The altered state provided by the Root allows the user some access to the wisdom of the collective soul, and they will experience secret knowledge and revelations about this object, how it can best be used (this will be supplemented by material knowledge about the subject). This process is repeated until the user experiences a sense of Presence in the object, which must be interacted with, given a name and a face. Through more repetition, the object is believed to be shaped into a sort of thoughtform god which has come into material existence via manipulation of the dream.

This is considered to take immense time and effort to come to completion, god-building projects can last for years and be the combined effort of multiple Scholars. In the end, you have shaped an entity to your will that can operate independently of you.

The Ur-Wood itself is the center of Scholar cult practice, as it is both the purveyor of their most important hallucinogen and believed to have been the first god ever shaped by this form of lucid dreaming (it's a pilgrimage site for Eterhimhamdli where thousands of followers have undergone Ur-Root trips over the past four centuries, using the woods as an object of contemplation). To them the Ur-Tree is the ultimate teacher of their cult, an extremely powerful built-god that has been involved in almost every journey to enlightenment and contains all these journeys within its substance.

They believe that communing with the tree via Ur-Root can grant access to all enlightened mortals- full trips (with a DMT breakthrough type experience) will often involve sensations of encountering entities, which they interpret to be these historical figures. Within their religious framework, they're kind of speedrunning enlightenment. Under most conventional frameworks, the teachings of wise and/or enlightened people are conveyed in writing or speech as things to Contemplate on one's own journey- you might be able to understand them Conceptually but true understanding is Experiential, a process that can take a lifetime. In their framework, they're both receiving these teachings directly AND embodying states in which they can experientially comprehend them.

That summarizes most of their secret practices, and the rest of their practice is pretty standard for devout Lowlands Eterhimhamdlist priests. They live a partly ascetic lifestyle, they bear extensive tattoos as a contemplation of pain and marker of their journeys, they flagellate, they use tutelary hallucinogens, they refine their non-experiential body of knowledge through debate and rhetoric, they work to accumulate both worldly and spiritual knowledge, they work as scribes, etc.

[lucky-clover-gazette]

i love how the four swords manga often inspires a thematically different but emotionally intense reaction for each person who gets into it

[callistocrescent]

have the biggest soft spot for when ppl depict bill cipher praying and/or pleading to the axolotl cus from what we know that is literally just god. and it's so humbling too since the image that we get from bill (and the one he paints himself as) is that he's all powerful, all seeing, all knowing and to see him cower under actual GOD is just unbelievably human and degrading. bcus even the most prideful will be stripped of their ego once faced with the utter truth

[thelien-art]

Tyelkormo, Morifinwe & Curufinwe

Nelyafinwe & Kanafinwe

[dirtytransmasc]

Alicent and Aegon are so Virgin Mary and Jesus coded, in a sick and twisted way that it barely makes sense, but at the same time just... does.

a mother and her child born damned from the start, yet she loved him to her core, accepting her fate, accepting she would lose him and then herself.

she carried him, birthed him, raised him, loved him, devoted her very being to him... she lost him, grieved him, lost her mind in his absence. the gods her only respite, yet, when she needed them most, when she needed them to protect her son, her baby, her reason for being, where were they?

[simptasia]

you know britpicking? like where an american writes a fanfic set in england, or with an english character, and they get an english friend to look through it and check through it to see if the terms and phrases are accurate? (eg. flat instead of apartment)

well i propose there be such a concept for star trek

because people in star trek talk differently than modern humans. they use different words, different slang, phrasings. yes, they can speak casually but mostly it isn't like us. watch any of 90s trek and you'll see These People Do Not Speak Like Us

and, no disrespect, a lot of fic does not reflect this. and it irks me. they just speak like modern day people instead of... star trek characters. i personally think part of the fun of writing trek characters is writing it out to how they speak and how they would think

hell, this isnt even a fanfic problem. modern trek has this issue too. i think outta laziness. they have their people talking (and when in casual wear, dressing) like 2020s people and it pisses me off

its part of why strange new worlds feels like a high budget SNL skit

annnnyways. i propose this idea be called fact trekking

[sisterdivinium]

You know, for a show with so many female characters that so many of us love given how they all get time in the spotlight one way or another and they fill that time up rather wonderfully since they are deeper and more developed than what we're used to seeing in general media, it is peculiar (to say the least) to see so few "alternative" ships to the main one.

I'm not saying the canon ship doesn't deserve its attention -- I'm wondering instead why the canon ship and it alone seem to guide the WN fans who just so happen to enjoy writing/reading fic or fanart or whatever.

You'd think all these cool women would inspire more ships or combinations thereof, but those of us who aren't invested in avatrice just... Float along, around one another, ignored (and, yes, mostly undisturbed too; being unpopular does have its advantages and that includes a lot less weirdos leaving you strange or awkward messages -- it does not, however, shield us from people flooding our goddamn tags on AO3 with fic that has nothing to do with our little ships and I do wish such negligence of the pairing itself meant we didn't have to deal with this spam...)

I am also not saying that fandom activity should be based solely on shipping (and recently someone on Reddit was rather confused by the fact that a lot of it is, which is quite an interesting topic to discuss in itself -- after all, there is more to fan creativity than shippy fic... Or there used to be), merely that, here, it appears that a canon relationship can outshine interest in the other, non-canon ones. It's already there and it was doubtless well-done by the show, so it's natural that it should claim people's attention, sure. It's just that being canon was never the parameter for whether people were interested in these or those two (or more) characters maybe being involved and trying to explore what that could mean through fanwork.

There has always been a complaint haunting fandom spaces concerning the minuscule amounts of f/f fic, art, discussion, w/e based on how few (interesting or sympathetic or relatable) female characters there are in media at large. So what I'm curious about is why fan creations made around WN -- a show that finally gives us a whole cast of female characters that are what we have been craving for decades -- don't also reflect its diversity.

There are alternative ships (I'm here, all happy in my tiny Doctor Superion bubble, and I know there are Camila/Lilith, Ava/Lilith, Mary/Shannon, Mary/Lilith shippers out there, so a warm hello to you if you're reading this), but go on AO3 and compare the numbers of things tagged with these proper pairings to the grand total of WN stories. Better (or worse) still, do so with the "otp: true" trick or simply by excluding avatrice from the search to see how many are left.

It's... A considerable difference. And a mystery, at least to me.

[bli-o]

I dunno i just feel like social justice movements have completely left behind atheists and agnostics and just secular people generally ESPECIALLY apostates

[riiviir]

I WOULD LIKE TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR OC'S

OK so I mostly made that post in reference to Warden but I have now realized that saying too much about her would spoil that comic I'm trying to make so instead let me give details about one of the protagonists from that same comic. except I currently have no way of mentioning these details within the comic and even if I did they wouldn't really be a plot twist like Warden's backstory would be so. Okispe's whole entire backstory infodump time!!

tw for medical trauma and also people die

so basically. he's an anthropomorphic moth. and his home universe is full of anthropomorphic bugs and insects but most important details I can give rn are about moths bc that's what's relevant to him but anyways. the moths still get to be caterpillars when they're young, and instead of puberty they basically just go into a cocoon for a year and then come out with wings and an exoskeleton and such. and when Okispe was a caterpillar, he was, just like most caterpillars, very excited about getting wings, both bc he wanted to fly on his own without having to be carried around by his parents and bc he thought that wings were very pretty and he was looking forward to being just as beautiful as his mom and dad

the bad news is that there is a very rare disease called Post-Chrysalis Necrosis (PCN), in which the wings start rotting away a few days after emerging from the cocoon. so when Okispe was just barely starting to learn how to fly, before he could really do anything at all he started experiencing intense pain, went to the doctor, and found out that he will most likely never be able to fly, and also might die since PCN is deadly if it isn't eradicated before it can spread to the rest of the body.

So holes begin rotting into his wings. The treatment for PCN is to cauterize the infection, so the already-painful rotting cells are then made even more painful by being burned over and over until the infection is cured.

So he was in the hospital from age 13 all the way to when he was 20. To make matters worse, at some point while visiting Okispe, his parents caught a different deadly disease from another patient and both of them died.

Even after Okispe is eventually cured, he has a multitude of other issues to deal with. He's severely lacking in social skills, has an incredibly low self-esteem due to thinking that his hole-filled wings are ugly, has to deal with chronic pain from the burn scars, has to worry about the PCN potentially coming back, and cannot fly. And although stairs are an accessibility requirement in most of the city he lives in, the maintenance and everything is severely lacking, and some places aren't accessible at all. He also has to make up for all the school he missed and graduate late, and struggles to find a job that will actually hire him. He does manage to get a job lighting lanterns (this is a very important job with the worldbuilding I have for his home universe but that's an inforump for another time) but is paid less than those who can fly, and the job is pretty dangerous due to how close he has to get to enemy territory while put in the woods (there's a war going on).

So ableism and medical trauma and dead parents. Idk why I made his backstory so incredibly sad when it didn't need to be but uhhh. I am nothing if not sadistic towards my blorbos.

He does eventually leave his home universe to join Human and Sunrise in a life of multiversal crime but that part if his backstory actually IS spoilers. but anyways yeah that's my moth boi

[egharcourt]

They say there’s no scene that humanizes Jesus more than his prayer at Gethsemane. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all reiterate the same desperate plea: “Take this cup away from me.” Luke goes even further in describing Jesus’ agony, so tangible it manifested as sweat that fell to the ground like drops of blood. It’s almost theatrical, in a way— the composed Christ inconsolable, the faithful Martyr faltering. 

But I know that anguish is not ephemeral. For it festers within you, bursts out from you when you can control it no more, and ends with you. They only see the eruption. We hear about Jesus as a precocious child, questioning his earthly parents, “Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?” Does knowing his Father mean knowing his demise? Did that comprehension come later? Was he as oblivious as Issac then, asking his father on their journey, “Where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” At what point did he realize that he was the lamb that God had provided? When he learned that fate meant him to die did he realize it entailed such cruelty?

It’s perfectly reasonable if he didn’t. The sacrificial lamb is always adored. Without blemish, without broken bones, without fault. They dote upon you like a prince until they pin you to the chopping block. Your father nurturing you with a knife in one hand, saying, I love you so much that I’ll let you bleed out for God. 

And you’ve internalized it. You’ll cry when you see the altar, but you’ve long ago conceded that you can’t escape doom. So you bargain to make it a little more endurable, to meet the end with a bit more poise and dignity. It’s the final resolute “May your will be done.” It’s Issac struggling in his binds until his strength is spent, taking one last glance up at Abraham to whisper, Make it hurt less.

"Elegy for the Messiah by the Sacrificial Child-Lamb on the Altar", E. G. Harcourt

[butterfly-in-progress]

Currently at least half my adult life right now is developing healthy relationships with things that are actually good for me and my life but got fucked up for me because of how I was exposed to it in childhood.

Just had an exercise class instructor yesterday give multiple assurances of "listen to your body" "don't push yourself to the point of pain" and "it's okay to take breaks" and damn if that didn't make me cry.

It's uncomfortable, and annoying, and stressful, and I'd rather not have to do it, but it's worth it, I think.