#and how much time I've put into developing my beliefs (or 'theology' as a lot of people like to call it)

[eleilinnrallin]

Saw a post ranting about liberal Christians and basically saying we're changing our beliefs to fit in with our secular friends and what not and how that's going to blow up in our faces and

Honestly kind of laughing because I was raised Christian, I'm fairly liberal, and none of my beliefs have been 'changed' to fit my friends?? And most of my friends are Christian or were raised Christian anyways. (And in elementary school where that wasn't the case, no one really cared.)

No, I believe different things because I genuinely believe them, thank you. Because I studied the scriptures, prayed, had thoughtful discussion with people of opposing viewpoints, etc. Not due to social pressure. (If anything, despite social pressure.)

At the end of the day people are going to have different beliefs than you whether you like it or not! Most people that disagree with you aren't misguided or bad! And that's just ✨ how it works ✨

[evelhak]

📚

Time to reflect on one of my books again.

⛰️Rummuttaja🎶

(drummer)

Published: 2023 by Nysalor

Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy

I was so much more nervous about this book than even my debut one, because it's an opening of a series and the world and themes are structurally a lot more ambitious than anything else I've published. Again, this is something I wrote fresh out of university, as a rewrite of a story I started as far back as in high school during my Japan exchange in 2011. Possibly why it deals with earthquakes. The mythology and world-building were further developed during my university years, influenced by my theology studies. I can't describe how happy I am to get to share this series which will be four books. Along my debut novel this is definitely a story I wish to see translated into English, even if I have to do it myself.

It's a story about 15-year-old Lilea, who is a reluctant, passive student at the Academy of Guardians, where musically gifted children learn how to reduce earthquakes by music. Legend says that a mythical being called the Singer saved their small home island from a terrible beast by trapping it inside a mountain, and the frequent earthquakes were caused by the monster tossing and turning in its sleep. The Singer is said to have left 12 holy tunes to the people to protect them and ensure the beast remains trapped. However, these stories are generally not believed around the island anymore and people know the origins of the earthquakes to be volcanic. The job of the Guardians is based on researching sound waves. Lilea's best friend Ennu however, swears by the old stories and prays to the Singer any chance she gets. Ennu is an ambitious vocalist at the Academy, seems to live and breathe music, practically enchanted by her fate as a Guardian, while Lilea is a drummer whose heart is not in the job and she would rather take care of her goats and chickens at home. Ennu's radiant personality and friendship are the only things that keep Lilea afloat in her drag of a daily life. Lilea has never cared about the old stories either, until she stumbles upon a book in the school library, and the Legend of the Singer gets reinterpreted before her eyes. Feeling alone while Ennu's time gets more and more filled with studies, Lilea begins to look for answers to questions about their world she didn't know how to put into words before.

There are so many reasons why I wrote this book I don't know where to begin. I wanted to explore a main character who would hate her magic school. I wanted to have an anti-hero in a setting traditionally built for a hero. I wanted to explore how myths take shape and influence different kind of people. I wanted to contrast different approaches to belief systems. I wanted to draw from my long experience as a music student and reflect upon school systems and the social atmosphere and how it affects different kind of students with different personalities and brains. The shortcomings of the school environment, and people who, despite being labelled gifted, fall through the cracks were of special interest to me.

Like all my books, this is a very character driven story focused on relationships and individual life stories. The larger themes and the world are reflected through them. The complicated friendship between Lilea and Ennu takes centre stage a lot, other important ones include Lilea's other best friend Rooni, a boy from her village who struggles to connect with Lilea while she's far away at school for most of the year and doesn't want to talk about it while she's home. At school Lilea has a slightly annoying couple for roommates: explosive Sisi and snarky Orinna, and spends time with another drummer, Denix, who couldn't care less about the school's unspoken hierarchy, allowing Lilea to remove herself emotionally from it. However, it's Lilea's last school year and this shakes things up, leading her to cross paths with people she previously paid no attention to, which works as a catalyst for a perfect storm.

I really wanted to reflect the atmosphere in the cover: it is not a happy book. It's better to know that going into it. The story deals with depression, chronic stress, overachieving, loneliness and misguided coping mechanisms among other mental health and relationship subjects that can be heavy to read. I don't write hopeless stories, my point is always growth, that's literally why I write, but I don't gloss over the hard and traumatic things.

The aesthetic and atmosphere of the world reflects my personal tastes a lot, possibly more than my other published stories so far: it's rather down to earth, rural and simplistic but has mysticism and some fairytale spark to it. The world resembles ours but doesn't follow a specific time period or sometimes our laws of physics either, and most of these things are not explained because it isn't the point of the story.

Believe it or not, I didn't get the beast under the mountain idea from The Hobbit, since I actually read that for the first time only after writing the first version of this book. So, it's not a homage to Tolkien, though it seems like such an obvious one. The first spark for this story was actually a Yoko Tsuno comic where a group of people play flutes to a beast to make it go away, and I think they had three holy chords or something. I read it in elementary school, it was a small element in that comic, and I always wanted to elaborate on that idea. The other clear influence I can name for this story is Ursula Le Guin, but not a particular work, it was more about her vibe, which may or may not be detectable since I was reading her books a lot when I first came up with this story but it has gone through many versions since then.

This is also the first book I drew maps for, not super detailed ones, but that was still really hard. It's a difficult task to combine the artistic and informational aspects of maps, at least when you've never really drawn a publishable one before. It was hard to find the balance and the right style.

A fun little feature I came up with was to use rest symbols as dinkus. These are not be the literal symbols the characters would use in their world but for a reader who can read music, they open new layers of interpretation to the story (beyond just the passage of time).

In general this is what I aim for in all of my work: the story should be interesting enough to work on the surface level well enough even if the reader is not interested in or misses all of the other layers of the story. But for a reader who likes to analyse deeper there are multiple intentional layers to explore and contemplate. This book is possibly the most elaborate example of that from me yet. This is a hard balance to maintain of course, and so far it has been evident that the more plot driven readers don't enjoy my books as much: although the plot is there and a lot of them love it, they have time to get bored because it doesn't move fast enough since there has to be room to create that web of other things, and sacrificing that space for the plot to move faster would reduce the complexity of the book (at least for now, because I'm not that good yet!). Yes, I know it's impossible to please everyone, but this isn't so much about that anyway. Yes, it's in part an attempt to balance aspects that sell, with artistic aspects, but it's also because I just inherently enjoy combining my favourite elements from genre fiction and literary fiction and I don't want to attempt to fit into either box. A good number of my favourite books don't fit into those boxes either. It's difficult, for sure. But I want my books to be accessible without extensive background in reading, while I also want them to provide enough meat to analyse for those that do.

That's literally my dream. I want my stories to speak to readers with different levels of experience and reading skills. I wish for them to be simultaneously easy and challenging, in a way that can encourage people towards the latter if they want to, because the needs of the former are being met first. I am by no means perfect at this, but I'm sure that getting through writing this fantasy series will improve me a lot. I do hope that it will already accomplish this task better than my other books have.

[blessedarethebinarybreakers]

idk if this is urgent or not, so just take your time in replying to this!!! i know y'all have a bunch of things going on w/ this blog! anywhomst, i've been hesitant to ask for prayers from anyone but especially on here bc i was worried that would seem like too much of a 'im asking in public and making a big deal of my problems', but im at a point where i need to ask for some help/advice/something??? i've gone from being christian to athiest to agnostic to pagan to christopagan to christian (#1)

(#2) to being somewhere in agnostic again, the last like 5 within the span of 8 months. it’s spiritual and emotionally draining. i thought i was definitely christian recently after coming back to the church. im still going on sundays now and going to choir practice bc it’s good for me and it’s made me feel much happier than i’ve felt previously.but something just sort of happened within the last like 2 weeks. i went from trying to read the bible every week and listening to christian music and

(#3) getting important and helpful things out of my pastor’s sermons to not feeling like god’s there at all. it feels like there’s nothing out there anymore. i guess the only good thing is that i was once terrified of the possibility of nothingness after we die and now im not really scared of that any longer. but i’ve always been a very spiritual person and it’s something that shapes who i am and gives me comfort in my darkest times. but now i feel like i have nothing and no one, no god(s) or

(#4) or divine/heavenly comfort or guidance or reassurance. i know that im still struggling w/ depression (and i have self diag. autism) & i have some anxiety and probably some other mental stuff going on & it’s likely that’s affecting my beliefs and feelings. i guess i just want some prayer. that if god’s out there, or anyone really, that they could find me and see my pain and see how lost i am and help me, guide me to something better and happier. bc im so tired and sad and empty & it’s really

Hi there! It looks like your ask got cut off so if there was a part five that I still need to answer, send that part again.

First off, it’s not bad to share your problems with a community – we are called to lean on one another! Faith doesn’t happen in a vacuum. So thanks for reaching out. 

I really feel for you in your struggle. I also have depression, and that and other things took a major toll on my faith life a few years back. In high school I hardly ever even doubted God’s existence or living presence in my life, I felt Them nearly every time I prayed or went to church, and so the sudden shift to feeling…nothing a lot of the time was so upsetting and confusing. Like you, I’m a spiritual person, so that these times when I feel nothing are almost physically painful.

It kind of sucks and it’s not a very satisfying answer, but, for whatever reason, this is just how faith works. Sometimes you have incredibly high points, sometimes you reach points so low you feel completely untethered from the divine. 

Part of me wishes I could go back to high school with its easy faith, when I sort of took for granted that I’d always feel God in my life. But another part of me is thankful (now that I’ve learned how to navigate the low points better) to be in a time in my life when faith is hard. 

Why would this difficulty ever be a good thing?? The confusion and sense of loss, of being cut off from God?

For one thing, it causes me to long for Them that much more, to appreciate deeply those moments I do feel close to Them again. 

It also makes me feel more connected to other people who go through the same thing throughout history – who have had doubts and fears and wondered where God was, why they felt nothing. Even Jesus felt cut off from God, crying out from the cross: “My God, My God, why have your abandoned me?”

It reminds me that faith is a gift, not a given – it’s a gift I can prepare myself to receive but not something I can obtain for myself. That I can be a “Good Christian” in my lowest moments, when I feel farthest from God, by continuing to pray and hope and love in the midst of my doubts and spiritual loneliness.

And it reminds me that faith is so much more than those “feel-good” moments that a lot of modern Christian movements put so much focus on. Faith isn’t about finding the right song to elicit Big Emotions and tears. Faith isn’t just an emotion at all – it’s a practice, a way of life, a role we grow into.

Those moments of feeling One with God are beautiful and precious and a glimpse of what we’ll have in heaven – but they’re not the foundation of our faith. Jesus is, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. We can keep being faithful even when we feel nothing, or feel bad things. 

Read this post, where I talk about how God is both as near to us as our own hearts blood and as distant to us as the stars: “Recognizing both God’s nearness and God’s distance is important in order to be at peace with the feelings of far-offness that often distress us, while also hoping in the truth that God is all-pervasive too.” 

Part of what made me start to have these dips in faith, I think, is that I started to ask questions – to wrestle with God and with scripture. In high school I had followed the easier path of accepting everything my church said, but while that meant I had what felt like an “direct” connection to God, it also meant my glimpse of God was pretty small. In working to expand my view and also to be more radically inclusive of all God’s people, I’ve developed a lot of doubts and fears and griefs (because God’s grief is deep, even if Their joy is deeper, and to taste it is to feel desolation). But it’s worth it, it’s always worth it. 

So my advice to you is to keep reaching out for help, from God and from people. Keep going to choir and to church, even when you leave feeling empty. Don’t lose hope that sometimes you’ll leave feeling filled – and that even when you feel empty, you really are full of God’s love and life and Spirit.

“Fake it till you make it” is the motto I live by some months – I keep doing my daily prayers even when it feels like I’m talking with no one; I try to get to chapel or church; I talk about God with people and read the Bible and study theology.

And so the resources for faith grow even when I feel most desolate. My heart that feels so empty and hollowed-out is actually becoming a pocket into which God will plant more seeds of faith. Our loneliness becomes a womb in which the Spirit nestles Herself, with us all along even when we don’t feel Her. 

If you trust your pastor or anyone else at church, you can talk to them about your faith troubles. And you are welcome to keep asking questions here, or giving us updates on how you’re doing. I recommend our FAQ page, especially some of the posts in the Faith section. 

Living Spirit, Lavisher of Gifts,This person is in need of your guidance and love. Let them feel your Presence with them, even if only for a little while, so that they may carry the memory of as nourishment for the empty days. When you feel far off, may they learn the hard lesson of loneliness: that sometimes you who are our very Breath feel as intangible as air; that sometimes we climb and climb and don’t realize how high we’ve reached for a long time.May all of us, your communion of saints, your Body and your Beloved, come together in our times of desolation. Give us the courage and wisdom to reach out, to encourage one another, to strive and strive with all our heart, soul, and strength.Faith is the gift we beg of you, God. Give us faith – and understanding to learn just what faith is. Amen. 

[zehypocriticaloath]

((Long time no see, Cuddly!

(Hi! Whoa, long time no see, indeed! How have you been? How were your holidays? Man, five years. Or even more. I’ve lost count myself. A long, long time. I’m not normally asked this so, well, this will be interesting, revealing what, and who, they were inspired by!)

[So, I had a grandfather when I was a little kid. He was sweet. He didn’t live long after I was born. I was three, to be precise. But I have memories of him, and videos to help remind me what a great man he was. A full blooded German, he co-owned a restaurant and was an amazing cook. He was so kind, so loving, and very jolly. The kind of grandpa you’d just love to have. He was incredibly smart, but also very sympathetic. Sound familiar? Abelärd has a good bit taken from my grandpa. His cooking abilities, his kindness, his laughter– it’s all based off of him. Now, obviously, a lot of him doesn’t come from my grandfather. He’s a character all his own. He’s not my grandfather in character form. He just has a few... traits of his, in reference of him, and to honor him. I sometimes wonder if he’d even like knowing any of that, if he were still alive. 

Aldous is interesting. A lot of people think I based him off of House, from House MD, since I take a lot of inspiration from him. But I didn’t. I didn’t even get into the series until after I made him. Mind you, they may be five years old on here but… I’ve had these twins for a long, long time. I find House to be a great little inspiration boost for when I have to write a piece where his sarcasm or overall prissiness is particularly saturating his dialogue. 

For Aldous, he’s inspired off of…a lot of things, a lot of feelings. He’s the kind of trope character who’s willing to dirty his hands and be a bad guy, and do unorthodox as hell things, just to get things done. 

I like opposites. I love symbolism. My boys are rife with both of those things. A lot of symbolism comes from religion with those two (yes, even with Aldous, currently an atheist!). This comes with my fascination of religions. I study them for fun. All religions. And a lot of that comes from my dad who was thiiiiis close to becoming a priest. He dropped out to marry my mom, but he taught me a lot of stuff that is often… changed, you know? Or messed around with, taught a different way. Hope you know where I’m coming from, what I mean. Anyway, I’m no theology expert, but I find stuff like that fascinating, so I use a lot of that kind of symbolism with them. 

I’m sure you can see a lot of symbolism in them. Different varieties and all of that.

Both of my twins actually came from a project of mine that… had nothing to do with TF2. At all. Surprising, huh? But I took those original characters of mine and I changed them enough to put them in this little RPing universe. 

My goal with them has… changed over the years, in some way or another. But I basically want to show, with them, that one can grow over time, no matter what age you are. You can still find your place in life. You can still find your purpose. You will have challenges, but nothing’s too great. Keep fighting for what YOU believe in and, as in the case of Aldous, that’s a literal fight. He’s so extreme with his beliefs but… he honestly wants to stand up against the vile people of the world, all the while being an anti-hero himself.

I’m rambling, I know. But…yeah.

There’s a lot more to it, but I’m worried this’ll be too much of a read already! ]

[nopeferatu]

OH HO HO YOU CHOSE THE: LET NICKIE RAMBLE OPTION

SO. I have an AU set in the 1950's, where Arthur and his family move from the UK to a small Bible Belt city in the U.S.A. on account of some job promotion or whatever. The Kirklands are heavily religious but Arthur's individual experience with religion has been terrible for his entire life, so he pretty much just doesn't believe. When they arrive and go to the only church in that small town for the first time, he meets the Preacher's son, Alfred, and has these expectations upon meeting him that he's just an ignorant fool like everyone else around him spouting the same really hateful rhetoric that is often seen within mainstream Christianity.

Well, in reality, Alfred is a closeted gay, and while he loves his religion and his God, he has taken to reading the bible and studying it and coming up with conclusions that were very much considered "radical" for the time period. So when Alfred first lays eyes on Arthur, he's absolutely smitten. He falls into this puppy love that he hides by coming across as just really wanting to be his friend, but Arthur keeps pushing and pushing him away until Alfred finally wears him down.

They become friends and while Alfred's crush grows, Arthur begins to see that Al isn't as bad as he first thought him to be. He's actually a really kind, helpful and selfless person and not at all like the kind of people Arthur associates with religion. I didn't mention this before but Arthur is also a Closeted Gay TM, but his feelings are also much more entwined with a self hatred that had been pushed onto him bc of religion (which is why he has such a disdain for it, as well as many other reasons), so with that in mind Arthur starts developing a crush on Al too...but whereas Alfred is accepting of himself and his sexuality, Arthur has been socialized to feel disgust in himself.

After awhile of being friends they start to discuss their religious views, and so Arthur tells Alfred he doesn't believe in anything and Alfred is surprisingly okay with that and accepting of that. Then Alfred starts to talk about his own religious beliefs, and he's like "Yeah, I know a lot of people'd think I'm crazy for what I believe...but I just don't think God'd smite us down for anything. He loves us all no matter who or what we are" and at that its where Arthur first begins to have his eyes opened to Alfred's very different interpretation of God and how he accepts and loves everyone regardless of trivial things.

So they basically spend their time together after that as like really good pals and they often get into religious discussions, but most of the time Arthur just listens really intently to the kind and loving God Alfred depicts bc its very different from what he grew up with. Its...nice, to him. He's still an athiest but he thinks its nice that he doesn't need to worey about potentially doing something wrong, especially having the wrong feelings that he's tried so hard to get rid of to no avail.

That was very long and incoherent and doesnt capture nearly the amount of depth that I want ro put into this universe bc it deals heaviy with theology and philosophy and the very real, very bad effects that conservative Christianity has on LGBT youth, but its just a slice of what I've been developing in my head haha

gah…i still have a really strong desire for that 1950’s preachers son au…someone come world build with me