#luha

[wyllaztopia]

she’s answering asks while the power is out

[thegentlemancollects]

[nubibusincaelo]

takipsilim, buwan, at tala.

hindi naman talaga takipsilim ang siyang dahilan kung bakit ako’y pumupunta sa lilim at nagdarasal nang taimtim na alisin itong dilim.

hindi naman talaga ang buwan ang sanhi ng aking kapighatian.

hindi naman talaga ang mga tala ang siyang sumisimbolo ng bawat luha.

hindi naman talaga sila ang may sala, kundi’y mga saksi. ang aking piping mga saksi.

sila ang saksi ng taimtim kong pagdusa.

saksi sa aking pagkukulang, minsa’y sa pagkasobra.

saksi sa kung paanong nagsimula sa isang walang laman na bote sa gilid ng kuwarto na ngayo’y kuwebang walang apoy sa gitna ng puso.

nakita ang pagbabago—kasiguraduhang dahang-dahang nagpaalam na pinalitan ng pagdududa’t mga agam-agam.

sila rin ay naging saksi sa pagkupas ng litrato ng isang bayaning sa utak ay naging mala-demonyong walang sungay, walang buntot, at walang pulang mga mata—ngunit mayroong maituturing na titulo sa buhay ng munting bata.

sila ang mga saksing pinipiling hindi magsalita, magmasid lamang at damhin din ang aking nadarama.

ilang taon ko ring inakalang sila ang may sala ng aking paghagulhol,

ngunit hindi ba’t hindi naman nila kasalanang wala silang magawa kundi’y ako ay pagmasdan at hindi na dumada.

hindi naman nila kasalanang ang kanilang pagkinang simbolismo ng pag-asa ay iba sa aking pag-akalang ito ay sa aki’y tumatawa.

takipsilim, buwan, at tala.

ang aking mga saksi sa t'wing hinahamon ako ng Dakila.

[gerilya]

LA Chalk art by Gerilya Colored chalk on Blackboard Dimension variable Abakada art exhibit at J Studio HQ, Las Pinas 2023

[kwaderno84]

ang luha'y simbolo rin ng katapangan

dahil ang kirot at pait ng iyong nararanasan

hayag mong inilalabas at pilit na nilalampasan

hanggang maubos na ang pagpatak, handa ka na muling lumaban

[kaeyachi]

new mond event involving the knights of favonius means that i am going feral looking for kaeya crumbs and so far he unfortunately DOESNT SEEM TO BE HOME STILL

[princington]

naliligaw, nauuhaw

kailangan ko ikaw

[grvntld]

yung notes app ko here sa phone ko puro kalungkutan tots and feels laman kasi tbfh sobrang lungkot ko lately. i know it's important that i go through tough times and not run from them, but damn it, im just so tired of going through it. im so tired. im exhausted. i feel depleted. i just feel so weak and defeated all over.

[turtlejen]

been making tiny things~

[bulol]

BITCHHHH kakatapos ko lang manood ng how to make millions before grandma dies tas eto ako ngayon maga mata hahahahuhu may soft spot talaga ako pagdating sa grandparents at syempre parents

[thegreatdeprussian]

what's philippines' relationship with faith?

Yup, I have hwspirilovebot for seatalia but that's alright! I can answer asks here too

And this news right here sums up Filipino faith:

Okay but jokes aside, Piri is definitely religious and superstitious. Spiritual? Hmmm. He will get there one day. Besides, how Piri's relationship with faith is viewed depends on his age. Here's an oversimplified timeline of what religions dominated the PH archipelago through the centuries:

Ancient: Animism

800s: Buddhism and Hinduism

1300s: Islam

1500s: Christianity

Modern: Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism from Chinese and Indian immigrants, Judaism from Jewish refugees, more Christian denominations, etc.

Some headcanon that Piri is a representation of a precolonial chiefdom, for example, if he was Sugbu (modern day Cebu), he would be practicing a combination of Animism, Hinduism, and Buddhism, before being baptised as a Roman Catholic in the 1500s. If he was Maynila, then it would be the aforementioned 3 with Islam (but he still ate pork in that era, lmao). Some also headcanon that Piri was born in 1521 when Magellan gifted Rajah Humabon with the Santo Niño upon the latter's baptism, and in that case, his relationship with faith will also be different (@sweaty-clouds can expound on this better than I do 🤧)

I view that Piri was born due to the intramarriages and intramigration within the archipelago that came to be known as the Philippines. I have no specific date yet, but it's sometime in the 1300s or earlier.

There are tons of belief systems in the country, different set of Deities and Anitos for every ethnolinguistic group and indigenous group. Some are remembered, many are forgotten. Not all are worshipped as the dominant religions are monotheistic.

The Philippines is a Roman Catholic-dominant (but under the constitution, the church and the state are separate, and you are free to practice your religion), and my Piri practiced it under Spanish colonization until today. Discrimination against indigenous people and Muslims are rampant, and Christian denominations fight each other on who worships God better and who goes to Heaven (spoilers: none of you)

Now, faith.

Faith in Tagalog has many words but the one I hear the most in churches is "sampalataya" which came from the Sanskrit word, sampratyaya (सम्प्रत्यय). We often use Diyos but when reading folklores, you will regularly come across the word Bathala which also came from Sanskrit: Batthara (भट्टार). Our fairies, Diwata, came from Sanskrit as well: Devata (देवता). Despite the dominance of Catholic faith, the Hindu-Buddhist roots are still present. Other precolonial anitist beliefs such as dancing the Obando Fertility Rites are also still practiced. We politely say excuse me (tabi-tabi po) when hiking in forests in the belief that it is the realm of spiritual entities or that the environment itself has spirits.

My version of Piri grew up practicing many belief systems, depending on which personification was his assigned guardian, but if you want to survive, you have to assimilate to the dominant culture. He was definitely a sacristan, until he became a revolutionary. He still prays, attends the mass, volunteers in the church, and participates in holy days and feasts for almost every saint today.

He doesn't sweep the floor at night as it sweeps away luck, and maybe it's just a coincidence that the Goddess Lakshmi will walk out of your house if you sweep your place after sunset. He wears an agimat or anting-anting (amulet) and despite having a medical degree, he still carries a lana (a concoction of oil and herbs to ward off evil entities). He can exorcise demons and drive away tiktik (that baby-eating monster targetting pregnant women) too. Perhaps he has an altar in his house that has both the crucifix and a Buddha statue. Oh, and he still gives babies that red and black beaded bracelet and the red pouch for protection. Pwera Usog or Pwera Buyag! (Fuera Curse, to repel a hex)

Piri's not agnostic, but he sure rolls his eyes during homilies when the priests shuns people who believes in precolonial or pagan beliefs, and he definitely cringes at fuccboys who have John 3:16 in their bio.

What else did I miss? Piri's Catholic guilt? The way my dad did the sign of the cross in front of a giant Buddha statue when we went to Thailand? or one of my friends visiting my other friend's condo and saying "Yup. This is bad Fung Shui", but there's a rosary on his doorknob so it balances out

There are tons of mythological creatures too, and the babaylan who was demonized and now referred to as a mangkukulam, but my brain is just not braining at the moment and I feel like I answered more about religion rather than faith but I still hope this still answers your question, anon.

TLDR: Folk Christianity, but this needs more thoughts from Filipinos of other religions

[wyllaztopia]

final ref! all i really changed were her eye color and hair

her name is luha - in her au, she's a replica of one of the sorcerers that sealed the monsters in a dream instead of underground. her sibling, the papyrus of her world, sometimes calls her strawberry oreo for her headphones choice

she is true to her word and will stop at nothing to keep a promise.

[windupnamazu]

i bet you play soccer 'cause you're a keeper!

ffxivwrite2023 #17: tease (free day) make fun of or attempt to provoke in a playful way.

Some pre-relationship Lunya/G'raha and @fistsoflightning's Zaya/Thancred. Random high school AU????????? Don't ask me. 782wc. ⮞ Two sets of teenagers, both alike in teenage cringefaility, On fair soccer field, where we lay our scene,

"Soooooo, Lu," Nyneve drawled, elbows on her knees and chin in her hands as she leaned forward to see Lunya past Majj's giant GO, GO, VARLIN-OH! poster. "Are you really just interested in Zaya's games or are you gonna admit you've been eyeing Raha like he's a prime cut of Hingan wagyu since he hit the field?"

"Hmph," Lunya sniffed with a haughty flip of her hair to hide the slightest flush of red to her cheeks. "I can do both. Multitasking is the key to success, Nyneve."

And boy, could Lunya multitask. Just because Zaya invited her out specifically to watch the coed soccer matches and relay race didn't mean Lunya couldn't enjoy everything else Sports Day had to offer. Especially not if 'everything else' included that cute Miqo'te boy from her history classes with Professor Rurusha. She overheard him infodumping to his friends about Allagan waterways at the beginning of the school year and she was doomed. Doomed.

"Y'know I could just introduce you, right? You don't have to wait for Rurusha to maybe assign you as project partners one day," Nyneve reminded her, only for Athanasia to sock her shoulder on her other side.

"Stop interfering in your friends' love lives," the other Midlander teen scolded. It might have been out of genuine concern or a desperate attempt to keep yet another man out of her best-friend-slash-crush's field of view. Nyneve turned around to whine and with a roll of her eyes, Lunya tuned them out to look for Zaya.

Their sibling was hard to miss even in the sea of blue jerseys scattered across the field; their azure face paint—(their "war paint", they eagerly signed to Lunya that morning on their way to school, which Lunya thought was ridiculous but adorable)—was stark against their skin and dark scales and they were talking to Thancred Waters, whose fanclub was hovering at the edge of the field as close as they could without Coach Hagane yelling at them to back off.

Thancred, who was leaning towards Zaya to—

Lunya reached over and gripped Majj's arm.

"Did he just—" Majj wolf whistled in confirmation, drawing every head on the field to their direction, and then Lunya was on her feet, shouting: "YEAAAAAAH, QESTIR!"

Zaya sprung back from Thancred, eyes wide like she had caught them swiping up the last khuushuur. Both of them had very distinct splotches of red on their faces despite his kiss on their forehead being rather innocent.

"TOUCH HIS BUTT," Zaya's horrible, terrible little sister hollered anyway, shaking the whole set of bleachers as she bounced up and down in some twisted imitation of a hyperactive circus monkey.

Mentally, Zaya debated if it would be faster to run up the bleachers to pick Lunya up and carry her to the river to drop her in it or to simply kill everyone staring at them.

As some of the teachers wandered over to figure out what in Thaliak's name the kids in the stands were yelling about, G'raha Tia came up from behind Zaya and Thancred with a nervous clearing of his throat.

"You guys know her?" the sophomore asked, tilting his head in the direction of Lunya and Majj doing an excited little dance. Lunya's dyed-white hair was practically glowing in the late-spring sun and Thancred decided to remind her later that she needed to touch up her roots.

"Lunya? Yeah," Thancred confirmed. "She's my neighbour; known her since she was, uh, smaller than she is now."

G'raha couldn't quite make eye contact with either of them. "We've never talked before but she's in some of my classes..." Oh, no. Thancred knew what that nervous, yearning edge to G'raha's voice meant. The boy was halfway in love with her already. Between them, Zaya was furiously gesturing. "Um. Sorry, Zaya, but I still don't know most of those signs."

"They more or less said that if you so much as look at their sister like you do your history books they'll turn you into shorlog," Thancred translated.

G'raha gulped but didn't deny any of the looking. "Got it."

It didn't stop him from casting another gaze of the longing kind back at the bleachers, which he only managed to get away with because Coach Hagane called everyone back over and Thancred drew Zaya under his arm before they could swing around and sock their goalie in the jaw, pulling them close and determinedly not looking back at the little party being thrown in the stands. That wasn't a real move anyway, so they were celebrating for nothing, but Thancred made a private note to rub Zaya's impulsiveness off him before something like this could happen again.

[holyfacehead]

I just noticed how jackie taylor coded this song is

[romances-not-tragedies]

Ilaglag mo ang panyo mong may pabango

Papahiran ko ang luha ng puso ko...

[anyonghalimaw]

tagalog speaking edgy kinnies in 2018 looking for the right dasu lyric to use in their title+desc with one highlighted word that leads to the links