#the abuse in my family was never religious tbh

[pengychan]

i like that little kid you went "sounds fake but okay" and just faked faith or something

Listen there are a lot of downsides to child abuse but one unintentional plus is that it will turn kids into the best fucking liars you'll ever meet and you never know when the skill can come in handy.

(My best friend had more permissive parents and when we had to pull off some shit I had to tell her to stfu and let me do the talking, because she'd sweat GUILT from every pore and meanwhile I could look at my mother in the eye and tell the most outrageous bullshit known to man with zero qualms)

[dragynkeep]

I know absolutely nothing about Orphan Black, but what do you like about it?

i love a lot about orphan black but here’s some of my faves

they don’t pull back on their themes. autonomy, misogyny, exploration of patriarchy & the dangers of that intermixed with science without limits, queerness, the human capacity for love & hate, honestly a lot of other things too. orphan black explores these topics with the full force they require but don’t often get.

helena. she’s best girl for so many reasons but her religious & sexual abuse trauma really resonated with me & the fact that her happy ending with her babies, her sestra & her family is not only not demonized by the narrative but something she’s actually given makes me so happy.

sarah is so bpd coded i love her.

the weird & funky exploration of science in the show is so cool & often doesn’t alienate viewers who don’t have this love or interest in these topics either: whatever jargon that cosima blurts out is then put into laymans terms for characters like sarah, felix or alison & by extension, us. the show wants to include us, not make us feel dumb for topics we may never have considered before.

rachel oh my god she is so complex. you hate her & then when she’s taken down at the peak of her prime, when everything seemed to be going her way with nothing to stop her: you almost feel sad for her. the show does a fantastic job in deconstructing just how much rachel is a pawn like the other clones, no matter what she’s been deluded into thinking by the patriarchal figures around her.

the themes of family are also a major part of the show & are just. god. the complexities in all the families we see, even those that’re off screen like cosima’s parents or beth’s, are still so impactful to the situation that the clones & their connected people have found themselves in.

the soundtrack is utterly fantastic. i won’t spoil it but there’s this one scene in 4x06 & the backing music to the scene & the way it plays is just fantastic. there are definitely more throughout the series but that has always just been one that stuck in my head.

honestly there’s a lot more but these are ones that i can think of from the top of my head tbh: orphan black has easily been one of the best shows released in this past decade & will always be in my top five.

[elderberries-and-honey]

💔, 🥩, 🍓 for lawrence and winifred please <33

💔 (broken heart) - Who has your character hurt most? Physically or emotionally? How did it feel? Do they regret it?

Winifred - This may be a shock, but I feel as though this would be her father. He obviously wasn't around for her, and she never met him, and while I despise the term "daddy issues", I do think she suffers from some those stereotypical behaviors (difficulty trusting men, low self-esteem, people pleasing). Of course, through therapy today, we are able to identify that some a father abandoning their child can lead to psychological issues later on in life, but I'm not certain if Winifred would even know that's where some of her issues stem from. So, as for how it felt, it's probably deeply troubling & confusing, especially when she was just a girl. Lawrence - Jeeeeeez, again, probably his father! I have explained it in asks & sort-of alluded to it lightly, but Lawrence's father would have been considered abusive in today's society. Which is why it took him so long to realise he had only taken on caring for the farm to make his father proud, even if it was from beyond the grave!

🥩 (steak) - Does your oc have any coping mechanisms? Healthy or unhealthy?

Winifred - Ooooo she definitely isolates as a means to cope with her problems! I assume she learned this from spending long hours at the workhouse alone and struggling to engage socially both as a girl, and even now as adult. Lawrence - Although it pains me to say it he's a workaholic. Even now being a position where he doesn't necessarily have to work, but still chooses to. In some ways, having a good work ethic can be a good thing, but I also think a lot of people use it as a form of distraction without realising it. Also, probably note the last question as well tbh.

🍓 (strawberry) - Does your oc believe in anything? Are they superstitious? Religious? Atheistic? Has anything in their past made them this way?

Winifred - In this post, I sort-of alluded to Winifred's beliefs a little, which is the Pagan's holiday for the Autumn equinox, however, I wouldn't label her a pagan. I do think she would be very superstitious though, mostly because there a lot of pretty silly superstitions that came from the Victorian era that I feel she might adhere to. Lawrence - Again, I've never explicitly stated Lawrence's religion but I do actually believe him to have been raised Catholic. He was raised in Wales, which is mostly Anglican, however, his Mother's two best friends (Beth & Valerie) are canonically Catholic in the story, and by extension, I just decided Lawrence's parents were too. As for if he's superstitious, this is a complete yes. There are a lot of old superstitions about death & mourning that I hope to include moving forward.

🧣(scarf) - What comforts your oc? Is it an item? An action? A person? Whatever it is, how any why does it comfort them?

Ugh, my chance to gush about my favorite couple ever! Unsuprising, his comfort person is obviously Winifred. When I was more Gameplay focused, his aspiration was to find 'the one', which I took to mean, find someone he loved and begin to build a legacy (a family, a career, etc). For Lawrence, Winifred is just perfect, and he probably idolizes her to an unhealthy degree. But she is totally his person, and making her happy and comfortable is what matters most to him.

Send Me RED Emoji Asks! <3

[mycptsdstory]

Jessi is the niece of Jodie Hildebrandt and how they (Jessi is non binary and please be respectful of their pronouns) has been through hell and back.

The video is more than 3 hours long and I'm currently at 1:43:34. It's an amazing video. Talking about family abuse, how people shut away and "pray" for it to go away. They said how they lost trust in their family because their family chosen the abuser over them. How people rather be uncomfortable because it's "family" and family should stick together. How people would rather follow rules than break them (I feel this. People legit hate me because I never followed the rules. Oh well, cry me a river, bitch.). Jessi goes into so much detail and I'm already half way in through the video.

Please please please watch this, it might help you understand about the family abuse and especially in religious ones.

I just want to say, I NEVER grew up in a Mormon family. HOWEVER, I grew up with Anglicans, Catholic, Methodist, Protestantism, Pentecostalism, Baptist and Presbyterian Christianity. (Tbh all of them are the same).

The way Jessi went "Abusers lose the right to privacy, it's my story to tell now" it's just perfect. PREACH JESSI!!!

I hope they can find peace wherever they are.

I'm sharing their story on my blog because they deserve to be heard.

Jessi, if you do read this. You are heard. There are people out there, who believe you and will never shut up about abuse. Your story deserves to be heard.

[amostimprobabledream]

My quick thoughts on the newest episode:

I know The Deep is an idiot but I'm kind of enjoying these little moments of petty torments he's getting this season. Chase Crawford is just so charismatic he makes The Deep so fun.

I feel really bad for Ashley - I have a feeling A-Train is going to get her killed just like he did Popclaw.

Also...the writers remember Homelander can tell when people are lying, right? Like, I feel like he must have some suspicion that A-Train isn't on board, you'd think that he'd heard his heartbeat going crazy when he mentions finding a traitor. I'm pretty sure Sage knows.

I LOVE the hate-hate dynamic with Butcher and Starlight. Like, they've interacted before but the only thing they can agree on is that Hughie deserves to be protected at all costs. But it's so fun to watch, especially since Butcher needs someone who doesn't lie down and obey him like Hughie, Frenchie and MM do and tbh Starlight needs knocking off her pedestal. (They've really dialled up the self-righteous righteousness from Season 3, haven't they? Her going "You are a MONSTER and I will STOP YOU!" was wild.)

I do like that Butcher was defending Kimiko to his definitely real friend though. Remember in Season One when he was the most vocally opposed to her joining? Now he considers her one of them.

Oh? What's this? Ryan actually doing something interesting on his own for once? Well, better late than never, I guess.

The flying animals thing was so fucking stupid. I know this show plays fast and loose with physics and the suspension of disbelief but that was like something out of The Little Vampire.

I refuse to believe Stan Edgar actually genuinely loves Victoria and/or Zoe - he just sees them as useful tools so it behoves him to not be overtly abusive like Vogelbaum was to Homelander.

Kind of enjoyed Starlight and Victoria's little catfight too.

The scenes with Hughie and his dad were heartbreaking. Like, Simon Pegg did nothing for like two seasons, then came in and knocked it out of the park.

I want Firecracker to get to do something cool. Or fuck Homelander. Either or.

I hate Hughie's mom.

Where the fuck is this storyline with Frenchie going? I'm glad he and Starlight had a conversation and they touched on both of their religious roots, I feel like Starlight growing up in a religious home kind of got pushed to the side midway through Season 2. I'm also wondering if her mother is going to reappear, they brought back Hughie's family subplot and they made a point of mentioning her after Firecracker aired Starlight's laundry on national TV.

[antiyourwokehomophobia2]

If this is not too personal, how does your family/siblings etc. react to you being a lesbian? Because I was just having fun with my siblings and my brother joked about beating up my boyfriend if I have one and when I slightly hinted that my ‘boyfriend’ could be a girlfriend he said he’d still beat her up and deadass said ‘don’t dirty this family’ as in ‘don’t fucking pull this family into dirt by being into women and giving us a horrible reputation for having a lesbian daughter/sister’… I’m straight up hurt and furious and feeling like weeping now cause even though I could have guessed my brother is homophobic I didn’t expect him to be like that. My brother believes that siblings should stick together but that apparently doesn’t count if I’m not into men. I’m from a Turkish family too and being homosexual in a Turkish family straight up means that you might as well not be a part of this family at all. Turkish people are rather conservative and still thinking in an old way which is frustrating. :( Especially because it’s Muslim households too, and yk Islam and homosexuality does not go well..

I’m very sorry if you don’t accept vents etc. I was just curious about if your family is or thinks like that too or if you had the same experience? Feel free to delete this if this might be triggering or if my question was too personal etc.

I'm very sorry that happened to you. I wish I had advice, but I don't. All I can say is that there are people out there who will love and support you. I hope you can find them.

My family is democratic but I did worry that I'd be met with homophobia (and I was) when I came out. My father was a deeply Christian man. He straight up claimed to get visions from God. He never directly said anything homophobic. The one thing I can remember is being in a shoe store when I was little and asking my father why pink shoes were in the men's section. He made a sort of disgusted face and said it was for men on the "wise side". Why did he use that phrase as a stand in for being gay? I don't know, but I do think it's kind of funny. Apparently gay men are wise!!

Anyway, as you can imagine, I was not particularly stoked to come out to him.

My mother was worse and better. She was not as religious as my father. She had gay friends. She loved Ellen Degeneres. I never heard her say anything homophobic growing up. However, she was worse because she's abusive 💀 When I was a child, I wondered why my father would be with her when she was so fucking mean and awful. I wanted nothing to do with her. I wouldn't leave my room if she was hanging about. Just generally a really awful mom. I had no strong feelings about coming out to her. I didn't think she was homophobic but I didn't wanna tell her things in general.

Like most gay kids, my parents knew before I told them. When I officially told my dad, he didn't care. Didn't say anything about it. He wasn't homophobic towards me or anything.

Honestly, I'm just now realizing how funny it is that my deeply religious father had no qualms about me being gay but my mom did 😭.

My mom wasn't like. Violently homophobic when I came out. Just casually so. She was all like "so you like to dress like a boy??" in a really unpleasant tone of voice. And she asked me to "keep an open mind" and constantly accuses me of actually being bisexual. She says that I "think" I'm gay. It's just very casual homophobia on her part. She clearly doesn't like the fact that I'm only interested in women even though she claims to love me and accept me no matter what. It's very clear that seeing me with a man would make her happy.

Idk. My coming out wasn't awful. My brother is bisexual. I don't have a relationship with anyone else in my family tbh. So, yea, that's my story. Also, I accept all types of asks. My inbox is always open.

[lnights]

Layla, first of all: I LOVE Pt 12 of your Soulmate AU sooooooo much 💞💞💞 I am soooo happy for Eevi that she got support from (at least) some part of her family. And I really like Liisa🫂. I kind of treat the AU like a whole series and each chapter like an episode🙈. So between “episode” 1 & 2 I made up my own version of the series in my head but wanted to wait till the “season” is over to share it because I didn’t want to risk influencing the story as it unfolds. I just love your storytelling too much😅 (also my version is way darker than yours because I am a sucker for Angst).

So, my brainworm is, that for whatever reason Aleksi didn’t tell the guys about Eevi and Liisa and also didn’t meet Eevi again (and therefore also never Lisa. Also Eevi is only 17 and a few months away from turning 18.). The girls go back home and a few weeks pass and somehow Eevis family finds out about her and Liisa before she is ready to tell them and shit hits the fan. They take away her phone and put her in some religious pray-the-g-away-camp. Because she is still a minor there is nothing Liisa can do and she doesn’t have Aleksi’s contact info. Thinking that he won’t believe her when she reaches out in social media, she takes the next train to Helsinki and begs the receptionist at the entrance to the studio to tell Aleksi she is here. The receptionist calls in the studio and whoever takes the call (its not Aleksi) is more than confused and tells the room that a Liisa wants to talk to Aleksi because someone named Eevi got found out by her parents and is now in danger. Aleksi understands and immediately races out of the studio (followed by the guys) to meet her and is shocked when she tells him what happened. The guys are of course not happy he didn’t tell them anything but are ready to help him safe Eevi. After getting Eevi out of the camp doesn’t work (they are threatened with the police if they should trespass) and also not talking sense into the family (they only scream at nonsense at them), Aleksi decides to make his story public. His reel on IV goes viral and the public is outraged that Eevi is held against her will at the camp. Eventually, the pressure on the camp gets too much and they release Eevi. For the last month until she turns 18 Aleksi gets custody of her and then she moves in with Liisa. Not sure what happens after or if her parents get punished for basically locking her up, but I do think she and Aleksi are doing a lot of interviews, maybe a doku about both their stories and are definitely becoming activists for same-sex rights✊🏳️‍🌈.

Hi Gemma!

I'm glad you enjoyed the fic! I absolutely love your idea for it

I do love me some angst too, ngl I did have an idea to make Eevi 17 and the threat of conversion camp being a major factor.

Apparently a couple years ago a motion was brought forward to Finnish Parliament to ban it, but it lapsed. (I think only 26 states here have it banned, plus DC and Puerto Rico. Some municipalities have banned it in other states as well, but then that's simply the matter of crossing from one city to another...)

In that version, which was actually my first draft, was that Eevi was going to run away and track Aleksi down at a BC concert and beg for help. They would help hide her until she turned 18 and her family legally couldn't send her, then she would confront them with Liisa at midsummer, and Aleksi would go with her for support.

I had the idea for assault tbh, Aleksi was going to get punched in the face by his dad and Tommi was going to retaliate. The family was going to call the police but Joel would point out that they have all the messages they sent Eevi telling her she was going to be sent to conversion therapy, as well as confirmation of their past abuse to Aleksi, and a recording of the fact Aleksi was hit first and Tommi was defending him (Joel was recording everything just in case something happened)

I almost kept that part in the current fic 😅

Niko pointing out their career would bounce back, even if they took a little hit or had to take a break for a year or two, but their family name would forever be tarnished with child abuse allegations. So they dropped it.

Liisa and Eevi would still have their happy ending and so would the BC boys.

[ramayantika]

Reflections

If you all read my previous post about loneliness, FOMO, feeling lost and alone as young teens and questioning if it's all gonna be worth it in the end or if you are actually in the right place now especially while preparing for entrances or just navigating through life as a high schooler and getting overwhelmed about life and the sudden changes it's throwing at you, this post is not going to be any gyan dena moment rather my own reflection over certain things.

I stay less online nowadays or even when I am using social media, it's to watch classical dance related posts or things related to women scientists, pharmacy and other bioscience subjects that I have interest in. No more random scrolling or reading two people debate in the comments be it on any xyz topic.

I began meditating again. I wish I would have actually done it before in my drop year. Perhaps I would have produced a better result due to a calm state of mind. Anyway, at least I started now. Each time I have meditated, I have found many answers to different things, be it about spirituality or questions related to my future. I have found the answers in those small moments of silence. I am no master at meditation, but somehow I have had many intense experiences which I don't post much often about because I myself doubt over it, but I can never forget those visions.

Let's talk about simple plain hate. I remember feeling rage over watching people hating on each other because the other person is from a different sex, religion, country, race and caste. Online or offline it happens everywhere.

Men hate women, women hate on other women, men hate other men and all of it pits one against the other. Hindus hate Muslims and Muslims hate hindus. The upper caste still looks at the lower with disdain especially some of our elders. Straights hate lgbtq and really want them to not exist. A colleague hates another one who got a promotion and inside the family someone hates the hater and literally prays for their downfall.

So?

This was from one of my early morning meditations. My mind drifted to news articles, podcasts by men saying demeaning things about women, and religious hate about both Hindus and Muslims where I saw some Muslims making fun of Hindus and Hindus taking pride in not having a single Muslim friend putting a jai shri ram status. It then moved to how people living in a single country, eating the produce of the farmers and being protected by the army still wrote things like what has been really given to us? Why to be proud of the Indian scientists (the chandrayan fiasco here on tumblr) and then to foreigners hating on India etc.

I remember the disturbance in my body, the blinding rage over how we humans have a problem with any person being different from us, and sometimes that problem leads to such anger and such hatred in us that we want them to remove them from existence or worse have them die a very bad painful death.

Some blogs write about oh how Indian culture sucks and how bad everything all is etc etc. I am not going to delve deeper into it and tbh I am not even worried if this falls into the feed of those same types of blogs. While meditating I found out how they themselves hated simple people who just had fun with their gods goddesses and spirituality. They were right to put awareness but wrong to make a assumption about oh yes they are too the same, they will hate and abuse other religions and stuff like that.

I have received hate anons which I always deleted but somewhere it used to be in the back of the mind making me fear about am I really wrong why would they write that for me?

And when i meditated that day it all became clear. Everyone, all of us, as we grow up, we are conditioned by the society, our family, school and media. Sometimes the influence is good and sometimes bad. Hate has existed in humanity since the start.

It only takes one single difference, be it ideology, caste, sex, and religion to trigger the hate button. And there you go we hate and hurt our own fellow beings.

We all have had various prejudices about various things. Maybe yes some weren't as vile as wanting tje other person off from earth but yes we all have had confused looks and questions thinking that what we believe and we say is right. The other person is always wrong in front of me.

And then vishnu gave me the answer. Detachment. Haan bhai ab kya moh maya se durr hone vala concept idhar bhi?

One has to know what is going on around the world. You will encounter articles, dramatic debates, blogs and people having their varied viewpoints. You can argue as long as you want and all those seemingly civil debates turn to abusive words, and hate messages.

The people online, those articles etc are just a fraction of people. Shit exists, bad things happen and ALL OF US ARE WRONG in many ways for many things. The simple lone knowledge of our dark thoughts for another person being different than us is enough to actually pull the reigns of the mind and to not give in to hate and ill will.

Now I still read news about how one community fought the other, look at the Twitter hashtags and just let it be. And for online apps, i scroll away from posts that talk about their own thoughts about the happenings in the country because it will be tempting to know what others think and ofc I will have problem in my head with another person if they go against than my belief. It literally happens to everyone sabko sabse dikkat hoti hai bas tum uspe kaam na karke usko buri baatein na suna dena na. Na uska soch badlega na tumhara.

And then at one point, the rage cooled down with a simple thought: I can't change anything. I am not perfect in thoughts and so does the other person.

Discrimination, war, poverty exists and we can never completely remove it. The least we can do is not hurt the other person if we don't like them.

I haven't seen a lot of life. I am still young but from my experience living in cities and amongst different sections of the society, this is what I learnt and the lesson got deeply engraved into me.

None of us are perfect. Let's try to learn to listen to one another and not go into blind anger. All those twitter tags, hate filled posts and articles are worthless.

100 baat ki ek baat. Sab badme marrne vale hai aur tum jisko hate karte ho agle janam usi community ya religion mein paida hoge just so you learn especially the damn soul to love everyone.

[magnoliamyrrh]

What drove you to convert to islam?

well, thats a long story now

i was born and raised orthodox - ive always had a complicated relationship with religion, because on the one hand there is a lot of beauty, peace, and wisdom i found in it, on the other hand theres plenty of shit that either just didnt make sense to me, theologically speaking, and also a bunch of mostly sexist shit which really pissed off me since i was a kid. i do have a lot of religious trauma - mostly from my fathers side of the family who is much more orthodox, conservative, traditional, and who very much shoved religion (and a bunch of sexist shit) down my throath, got the idea of being inherently sinful in my head as a kid, whole bunch of shit. my father is also.... psychotic and he is what we call a habotnic, a religious extremist who, well, has bordderrrline essentially more or less joined a cult-like section of the orthodox church made up mostly of men whod been kicked out of the church (many who also happen to be pedos lmao rip) and i grew up with religion being used to justify a whole bunch of horrible shit - shit he did to me, how he treats and abuses his wife, etc

so, when i got older, 11-12 ish, i very much had a backlash against it. nevermind being an atheist, nevermind an edgy atheist faze, i outright hated it and found it to be wholly dangerous. and i did indeed have valid complaints mostly abt sexism, homophobia, hypocrisy, etc. at the same time, i had a fascination with dissecting religion and trying to understand it and studying it, something i had even before then. this went on for some years, and i continued to have an interest in theology; eventually, when i was idk 14ish, i started to have some softer and more malluable views on religion and orthodoxy - also coincided w understanding that religion wasnt what made my father an insane piece of shit, it was simply a tool he used to justify things and a path he went down on - but he could have gone insane down whatever other line

so, for a time i tried to get back into orthodoxy. this was partially from a spiritual perspective, but tbh moreso bc i was trying to keep onto something which reminded me of home in this damn empty and cold country. this is when i started to veil too, before i had anything at all to do w islam, i started praying, i started keeping onto certain traditions more. also when i got into traditional romanian magic moreso. still, i may have been trying to take the best of orthodoxy, but i felt like it never really... fit. there is a lot of beauty i still find in it to this day, and occasionally i still go to a monestary or church, i still hold onto certain traditions but no matter how hard i tried i never quite... felt it? .... and either way, after you have gone through a certain amount of horror in life, it tends to get harder to believe in things like the divinity of everything or that theres any possible sense at all to all the horrid cruelty on this planet etc etc.... i do still struggle w this to this day lol. but. also, i knew christianity so well, had already turned it on every which side, i found that even if i tried, i still had a long series of theological issues with it (many of which i dont remember after all these years, but i do remember that the trinity was one of them)

anyhow, i did keep trying for awhile. and in this whole process, i kept coming across things abt islam. this was also the years when islam was always in the news, usually in a negative light or something abt terrorism, so, it was quite frequently part of mainstream discussions. and i was curious, bc of that, bc i was curious abt theology in general, and bc partially growing up in dobrogea, i knew a very gentle and soft, beautiful islam which was the one of the turks and tatars, who were our neighbors w good food and good music and gentle, soft spoken voices like honey who were always nice to me. and i knew of islam from story books and such, one of my favourite childhood books to this day is a beautifully drawn romanian version of one thousand and one nights. so, idk, i kept coming across things, and i was curious so i looked into it

and... hm. i dont remember quite what first got me. but i did find it interesting, and i found that it solved some of the theological issues and gaps that i had with christianity, answered quesions to which the orthodox seemed to have no answer, made things click into place here and there, annuled some of the illogical loops and hypocricy which bothered me.. i found the analysis and discussion around it fascinating, so much more lively than ones i had seen in orthodoxy. i found the way hadith and quran functioned together to be fascinating, and the entire system behind it - even if today i hold different views of hadith.... i found sharia to be fascinating - and how things would fit into place and work together, shifting parts of a whole legal system and way of life intertwined. sharia always carries such a scary connotation to so many people, and yet, i dont think its a system bound neither to failure neither to opression - the question here is moreso whose sharia interpreted by who and implemented by who. i didnt have any plan to convert to it lol, and yet, it intrigued me enough that i felt a drive to keep digging and digging into it, to keep turning over in my head this and that about it, like some string or force was pulling me

most of all i think i found the qur'an itself to be.. captivating, once curiousity got to me and i started reading it. like sharia, it clearly had to be understood as a whole, and reading it for the first time and seeings its progression and how it builds upon itself was an experience in and of itself. i genuinely enjoyed spending hours reading and listening abt what this means what that meant etc. and it is so direct and personal, moreso than many other religious texts. i did find many parts of it stricking, moving, piercing. its prose and flow are beautiful. it feels alive, as if it is speaking to you, looking back into your eyes and right through your soul. i fell in love with it. and yet, it also feels like this capsule in time - while i no longer hold the commonly held idea that the qur'an is unchanged and there is only one, it can be said that as far as studies can tell from the oldest quranic manuscripts found, it is indeed remarkably well preserved - as if reading the pages you can hear and see them echo throughout time, back to when the words were first spoken..... quran recitation is very beatiful too, and i found there to be something... very meditative, tranquil, calm, soothing in it. something else that felt like it echoed through time. it also reminded me of the way orthodox priests give sermons, which i always found very beautiful and entrancing as well

i appreciated its call for reason, that i do remember particularly drew me in. that it would repetedly, repetedly call for one to question and think and it would give examples of the existence of divinity and explanations and even ask one to try to disprove things- it felt less like blind faith, more like this book was holding an active dialogue with you, and i really liked that. many of them are so beatiful too, many of them call upon nature and its wonders, and i supoose, even when my belief in a god was on very shaky ground, in nature i always saw divinity anyhow. i did find it interesting too how many of the verses did show an understanding of natural phenomenon, could be interpreted in a way which was less science-breaking than the bible, and called upon these phenomenon as signs of divinity.... and i appreciated its call to justice as well, its striving for a just system, society, and way of life. i appreciated its call to struggle for the sake of allah - jihad, which doesnt only mean wartime fighting (which is supoosed to be a very last resort).... its call for the end of opression, and the responsability of each person to do something about ending said opression and injustice

i found its understanding of god to be beautiful, and to make sense - my understanding of this developed more later when i came across sufism, and when i started doing shrooms too lol, but. i always felt the heart of it. which is the oneness of god, pure monotheism; because god is one, and god is indeed all that exists; indeed, everything is one. this is the same thing psychedelics teach you - ego death as its often called - and what many religious rituals of plenty of religions around this world seek to understand, achieve, feel, live by. it could be said that since there are high chances human conciousness developed along w psychedelic use, and since our african ancestors certainly did psychedelics, we are indeed genetially and biologically programmed as a part of our evolution and history to experience and understand ego death - to see and feel and become the connection and thread which runs through everything, the oneness of everything, the singularity of everything, unbound by time. this is what islam seeks as well.... hm. i liked that islam understood allah, unlike in christianity in which god is reffered to almost exclusively as a father sort of figure, to be not like any other thing, and most certainly not male. unbound, unconstrained, never fully knowable to us as humans..the 99 names of allah are beatiful, and i was drawn in by how many times the qur'an proclaimed allah to be all merciful, all forgiving, all loving, etc

.... there was something about it all, the more i looked into it, which brought me a sense of peace, calmness, ease... i found the way of life it promoted to be one of peace - i liked that you were supposed to pray five times a day, i liked that there were certain ways of doing things, i liked that muslims lived like the older romanian people did, always mentioning the name of allah and always aware of divinity. the idea of freedom not being getting to do whatever you may please, but rather living by a series of constraints, to make much sense - and i was drawn to it a lot more than this modern western do what you want individual freedom reigns supreme mindset... i liked that sharia was concerned with the common good and community before it was concerned with the individual.. i liked that islam promoted a middle path, i liked that it called for moderation and reason (things which my father never had), and showed a way of life which was almost monk-like, without leading to monastic seclusion.... i had always wanted to be a nun, you see, and parts of islam drew me in because of that. there were certainly many muslims, mainly sisters, who impressed me in their faith and way of life, the energy and aura that would clearly radiate off of them - women who lead by example, and by only doing so, would make one curious as to how they have come to be this way

i had an interest in other religions as well. i knew some of my ancestors were jewish, and yet judaism is a hard religion to convert to, and harder to be accepted into - and while i have read the old testament several times, i never quite felt a strong connection to it. i was fond of other christian denominations like the quakers for example, i found some of the theological points of protestants to be intriguing, but i still had many of the same issues with it. i find hinduism, buddhism, and sikhism to be beautiful religions with much wisdom - and to an extent being fond of certain kinds of sufism is to adopt a hindu or south east asian influence or to reach similar understandings at least; they are sister religions - but while i look into them, they never really felt like something id follow; not on their own

islam brought me a sense of home, it all did. so much of it simply made sense to me and clicked into place, it felt like learning something i had already known, discovering something that had always been within myself - i supoose, this is why we use the word revert rather than covert, because it feels more like coming back into the fold of islam..... and hm. both arab and turkish cultures felt... very much like home to me, never like something foreign. they made sense, i instantly understood them, both the good and bad parts - so many things were so similar to our own, and to me, they felt, and still do feel, like a second home. later after some years of converting when id go to masjids and eid and such, i again very much found that among the arabs i felt so much more at home than i ever did among the americans. and islam itself, there are many things which i saw which were so similar to orthodoxy, and this brought me a sense of comfort and home as well. and i always associated islam too with the turks and tatars in dobrogea, and so, islam never felt like a foreign thing to me - as converting to another religion may have - rather the religion and culture of our neighbors whom we had so much in common with

.... it just.. it really felt like there was some force pulling me, i had a unending thirst and drive to understand more. id get lost in spending hours reading the quran, id get lost in spending hours trying to understand it. id spend the nights awake reading and contemplating..... i dont know if it makes sense, but i dont mean this in a meme way - it very much felt like islam chose me, not like i chose it. it very much felt like i had become muslim before i had made any such decision, my soul had already made it for me, and i was the one who later realized and accepted it. islam, the word, comes from the word submission, sometimes said to mean peace in submission. i had already felt it in my bones, the submission to its truth and allah, the onesess of everything, before i realized it. it simply was - looking back, it was a very similar feeling to the one you get on psychedelics. you simply.. understand.... i knew my family would likely forsake me. i knew my country outside of dobrogea would forsaken me. i knew many muslims would forsake me for being gay.... but even if i had wished to go back, it was too late, for i had already seen, and felt, and understood, and there was no denial left. alhamdulilah, i do thank allah for guiding me, for it certainly felt like being guided

i have never known as much peace as i knew in those first, hm, months and years, despite the fact that things were hard back then, especially with my family, and my parents were at the peak of being abusive. i never felt such a connection to god and everything, such a suredness, groundedness, and strengh of faith...... it is something i miss, and i regret that these days i do not often pray the five daily prayers, and do not keep fast as often as i did, and do not live with allah in my heart as much. inshallah, i will get back on the path. i did used to be a lot more orthodox back then, islamically orthodox. and as the years passed my relationship with islam and allah changed, and when i came across sufism for the first time, i realized that it was the heart and soul of the religion which i knew, had felt myself, and had been searching for

i believe there is truth in all religions, they are different paths to take, different understandings which seek the same goal. i do not believe in sects, nor do i believe in devision between religions much... we all have our paths; my understandings of islam may have changed over the years, and i may have had, and still have, my struggles, but this will always be the home and refuge of my soul, and the path i walk

[marzowo]

One more post b4 i sleep

Warning that this au is 1:A beast Au x Original Au mix

So its gonna make like no fucking sense

2:Ive never read or watched Bsd or beast bsd

sorry,im hoping someone will help my au makes sense

3: There are probably so many timeline incorrect things with this au,Aka why i got frustrated and gave up :/

Anyway first is the hc that i have,its a small one

But i hc that atsushis hair was originally black,and it turned white during his days in the orphanage and thats how the orphanage knew he was a monster (they didnt know what he was,but child with 'magic' in a toxic church?) probably a demon

They didnt know he was the tiger until later on

The next hc is a huge one :D

and it has to do with religious trauma,Im not going into detail but basically Atsushi has some severe,like some severe religious trauma,not only was he physically abused, The Orphanage's religion was used as a vice of punishment not only for atsushi but all the Orphanage kids,his was just the most severe(like cult typa shit,maybe ot was actually a cult)

Now for the O!bsd x B!bsd au

,l like to imagine for my ver of the au That theres technically 2 headmasters of the orphanage, The original headmaster and his son, when atsushi was a child he was a teenager Atsushi kills the original headmaster and its the son that gets into a car accident later in the bsd series, or you could switch it to atsushi killing the son and after he dies the father repents bcs he knows it was technically his fault.

[This is when shots starts to go downhill and starts to mention timelines]

Atsushi's orphanage bg is exactly like beast au,up to when mori finds him {i think mori might have gone to retrieve him} (this is as someone who nevee read beast tho,so im not sure if shes there but) atsushi escapes the orphanage instead of being kicked out,he roams the streets for awhile mostly sticking to alleys and he eventually finds himself close to ig one of the many bases that the PM has (idk ive never read or watched bsd or beast bsd) and elise is out running an errand(or something IDK WHAT SHE DOES SMH), we all know ellise knows shit she shouldnt,and she recognizes atsushi (idfk maybe she doesnt recognise him,she just finds his hair pretty.) but she takes him to mori and mori takes care of him for some time bcs why not (idk why i made this but,im now realising it makes no sense...) but mori gives him the decision of the port mafia or the ada (this is after a large timeskip btw,atsushi works in rhe shadows and noone,not even dazai knows he works for the pm,everything is essentially like cannon) and he decides he wants to take a break from the mafia for abit {this sounds like a wattpad fanfic,kill me now

and goes to work for the ada,just not in the usual sense, since noone knows who he is and he still works for mori (Queue Cannon) Atsushi basically is a hella good actor. [fuck this idea,all my homies hate this idea. Atsushi is an actor yes but he actually quits the pm instead and goes i to his found family arc.] he decides to join back the pm after the ada goes down Idk but the (current?) arc with dazai and fyodor passes and the pm somehow ends up unscathed but relocated and dazai goes missing [Last i heard he disappeared down an elevator shaft or sumn]

Idfk where this au has gone anymore

Yea :)))

Heres one more HC/AU thingy based off somone elses AU that i saw

The persons Au! - The tiger has the ability to steal abilities when astushi eats the ability owner.

My Additon to the AU: Now i hc that as WR atsushi ate someone who had the ability to change size and appearance (maybe a notorious criminal who didnt pay off his mafia debts) so when life got too interesting or dangerous for him he'd change age and looks and just start all over again (and bcs of his tigers regeneration ability, just like with deadpool he's essentially immortal)

This is a rant,its going on tumblr

UGH

My brain is too full :/

i didnt mean to make it this long tbh

Anyway im hoping somone will like my HC's and AU's and appreciate me pls thank u

GN

[batbluud]

I related so strongly to those tags about prayer tbh. I grew up in a nonreligious household and basically my only exposure to religion growing up was like. Westboro Baptist protestors and televangelists and the Pope and whoever in the news all saying that I was gonna go to hell. so I wouldn't say I have religious trauma per se but I never ever got to experience any positive side to the Church or to religion until I began learning more about other cultures as a young adult, listening to Jewish friends explain their beliefs, reading books about Buddhism and Shinto, and exploring more of the metaphysics side of philosophy in college. but even so I've never felt like I could really pray. sometimes I feel like maybe something bigger than myself is speaking to me, but I don't know whether it's God, some fragment of my own brain brought out by mental illness, or whether I just do edibles too often, so that's neither here nor there - I don't really Know the way so many people seem to do. I don't know what I believe in and I'm not sure whether I'll ever know or not. it's lonely sometimes so it's nice to know others have similar feelings. I want to understand so badly but I don't think I ever will.

yeah. sometimes i worry i yap too much in the tags on this website, but i'm really happy that my 6am ramblings resonated with you. my family was mostly secular, we celebrated christmas and easter and such but mostly just the commercial "easter bunny and santa" versions of those holidays. when i was growing up i had a friend who lived across the street from me that had born-again christian parents and i am 100% convinced those people were evil incarnate in human skin. my parents were abusive but they were nothing compared to the shitbags my friend had to live with. constantly spewing bile and hate in the name of their god and gave their "blood" kid (my friend was a stepchild) preferential treatment. i genuinely think that radicalized me from a very young age. eventually they banned her from seeing me when i came out as trans. word somehow got back to them that she was bi and they blamed me i guess.

i never really recovered from that until i met someone in the 6th grade. she was so kind to me despite everyone else shunning me (i had come out at a very young age, like, twelve or thirteen, and nobody really knew how to react at the time). her family were practicing sikhs (if i am remembering that correctly) and i constantly had to hear other people (mostly girls) at the time talk behind her back about her hair, the way she spoke, or the way she dressed. i grew up in a very upper middle class white area so lots of the people i went to school with were demons. she was an angel among them. she taught me how to write my name in arabic, some other basic words and she also showed me a sikh prayer. it was the first genuinely positive interaction with religion i ever had. i think of her often. she was wonderful. i longed for the type of bond she had not just with her family but with her faith. i knew i could never really have that kind of connection after everything i went through (if you pray to god for your mommy to come home after a bender in the middle of the night enough times, even your little child brain realizes at some point no one is answering). like, i could go to church and do the song and dance, but i know it's not going to do anything for me. and man sometimes i really wish it did.

[tuulikki]

I have a problem with that list of things that make a person 'culturally christian' as the post couples it with the implication that one can cease being culturally christian while still doing some of the things on that list.

I'm probably misunderstanding shit but it bugs me. Several things on that list are unavoidable in daily life, and thus my Jewish friend (and the Jewish poster who made the list) fall into the culturally christian category because they use a christian calendar and buy chocolates on valentine's day. And yet the poster says 'those of us who are not culturally christian' which contradicts their own argument? No? I'm an atheist and I'm absolutely aware of other religions, but the world around me doesn't care, I have to say it's 2022. And it doesn't bother me, tbh. I don't say AD anymore, that's on purpose. But that post...I don't get why it assumed the OP didn't understand that these things come from christianity. The assumption that all victims of religious abuse are living in culturally christian environments, or that they don't know other religions are different from christianity...i really don't like that attitude. It sounds like implying that they haven't found the better religions yet and that's why they're atheist, but not even fully so because their culture remains influenced by christianity. It's condescending. (be gentle, i'm not looking for a fight, and it's ok to not respond if what I'm saying pisses you off because it misses the point.)

Hey, thanks for the ask! I hope I can explain things, and if there’s anything you find frustrating at the end of it, please send another ask and I’ll try to do better—it’ll likely be due to my not being coherent 🥲

The key misunderstanding here is how massive “culture” is.

Using a Christian dating system or observing aspects of Christian holidays doesn’t inherently make any person culturally Christian. Those are byproducts of dominant Christian religion in a culture. But the person who has never felt their own culture subordinated and othered by that culturally Christian default is the cultural Christian. Many culturally Christian people may be deeply alienated or flat-out hate religious Christianity, but the culture we inhabit is culturally Christian and it is our culture. It can be hard to spot how much you’re a product of your culture, but the fact of it remains.

It’s like being raised by a family: it defines what you think “family tradition” means but will also affect little things like what food you want to eat when you’re sick. It’s not that who you are is determined by your family. But you are shaped by the experience of being raised in that family. You can’t erase that history: what you choose to reject or continue from your family legacy is a conscious choice informed by what you’ve experienced. And you can’t assume that the way your family works has any universal applicability, or that that cutting your family out of your life makes you a blank slate, or that your way of rejecting your birth family is universal.

If you are from a culture that is historically Christian, you exist as a part of that culture. People who aren’t culturally Christian can of course be members of a culturally Christian society because participation (and belonging!) in the society is not defined by adherence to the religion. The culture is, however, shaped by centuries of that religion. And people who aren’t culturally Christian are forced to accommodate the majority culture in ways which people who are culturally Christian will not. (The classic example of cultural Christianity is the culturally Christian neopagans/witches who try to argue that the winter solstice is “inclusive” because it’s not Christian. As if “Christian” or “not Christian” are the only ways you could measure exclusivity and inclusivity!)

The OP of that post wrote the phrase “being an atheist is a valid belief system.” That’s some raw cultural Christianity. It presupposes the following:

religion must have a deity (how else atheist?)

atheism is primarily defined as an absence of belief in a deity (rather than omitting a particular act or social practice)

atheism and religion are both defined as being determined by personal belief. The belief in question is in a system of some kind.

adherence to a system of belief determines a specific identity label, which an individual will apply to themselves. This label marks them as a member of an identity group whose members are defined by such individual declarations of belief.

belief systems can be valid or invalid (and it’s worth arguing about)

None of these things are universally believed by all cultures. But a culturally Christian society absolutely assumes those things to be true.

So my point is that atheism in culturally Christian societies is overwhelmingly defined in dialogue with and in reaction to the core tenets of the various Christianities that have dominated those societies. That’s what we’re trying to say when try to tell culturally Christian atheists that they are culturally Christian. I don’t want to be condescending, but the fact that some culturally Christian atheists don’t seem to be aware that they are products of their culture and that they enjoy a baseline level of membership privilege in that culture is… very challenging to me? We’re not accusing them of being crypto-Christians, but since their definition of “religion” is still so Christian, that’s what they hear. They use a narrow, culturally-bound definition of religion when they say “l’m not religious”—and they assume their definition isn’t derived from that culturally Christian experience.

You can’t surgically separate the history of dominant religious traditions from the cultures that practice/d those religions: the culture shapes the religion, the religion shapes the culture. A culturally Christian atheist from England is a different kind of atheist than a culturally Buddhist atheist from Mongolia. You can’t exist in a vacuum.

Deprogramming yourself in this context means acknowledging the fact that you have privilege. This privilege is something you get by default whether you want it or not. It’s not merely knowing that other systems of belief exist or writing “C.E.” at the end of the year. It’s accepting that you are the product of a certain culture that is not universal, even though its dominance can make us feel like it’s a natural default.

Culturally Christian privilege doesn’t invalidate any person’s religious Christian trauma because culturally privileged people can be abused within the social structures they benefit from at the same time. There isn’t a moral binary here. No one is assigned a static moral category. Someone telling you you’re benefiting from cultural Christianity is not them saying “gotcha, you’re irredeemably problematic! #cancelled!!” It’s an invitation to ask yourself if you’re being held back by what you’re trying to reject. To put it in terms we all understand too well: “cultural Christianity” isn’t a sin, there is no shame attached to it, and there is no pressure to be pure and cleansed of it because that would be impossible as that’s not how people and cultures work. And the fact that some of the worst of it still lives in our heads does not mean that we are bad, because there’s no one judging our thoughts, only our actions. The fact that we have a term to describe what lives our heads—which allows us to be aware of it—is a gift, not an accusation.

[sneverussape]

on catholicism and severus & tobias snape

if you're going to expect a very well-thought out essay about this, please let me stop you right there. it likely won't be :)) but this was prompted by comments of people on my hc of catholic!snape and a (long) conversation with @dementedlollipop on discord that just spurred so many Thoughts.

going under a cut coz i don't know how long this will be.

so. i have made several allusions via drawings and stuff that one of my (main) hcs is that snape and tobias are catholic. i don't think i explained properly before why it makes so much sense; i tend to just spazz, but i'll really try to be articulate this time.

first, the background:

i grew up catholic, but the culture i was raised in was also catholic, so it permeated the value system i and everyone else around me knew. people put a high value on respect, filial piety, obedience, family, etc. all the stuff you watched on Derry Girls. that's exactly how it is to grow up in catholic culture, at least where i'm from. american catholic culture is slightly different because it's placed in a very secular context so it has a lot of caveats. it's very different if you grow up culturally catholic, and in a country that still largely runs on religious practices.

how this relates to the snapes:

i always find it interesting to figure out why characters act the way they do, especially if there's very little said in canon about them. tobias was one of the characters i was so interested in, because i found his situation so unique.

he's a muggle, as we know, and it was alluded to that he had neglected and/or abused his son and/or wife. yet, as far as we can tell, he also didn't leave them. it was likely that by the time severus met lily he already knew both eileen and severus were magical. why did he stay with them, if he disliked magic? surely it would have been easier if he had just left and started over elsewhere?

it's not just tobias, but also severus; how he acted, his thought processes, why he did what he did. it all felt very familiar to me, and it all routed back to traditional catholic values, and the way that i know how you just can't shake them off, no matter how hard you push against the faith itself.

the things that feed the hc (and which also leads to more hcs):

- severus was born in 1960, which means tobias was born in the first half of the 20th century, sometime between the 20s and 40s. (i like to peg it as the late 20s, because i also like to hc him being a ww2 vet, not only because it fits the context but also like father, like son -- severus is also a soldier);

- tobias living through the first half of the 20th century means he would have lived in an england that was still 'religious' in a sense, wherein religion was still a big part of their culture (i mean it technically still is, but i would imagine more people back then were still practicing it actively). he didn't strike me as anglican or protestant tbh because he seemed too traditional, and by that i mean he had a strong sense of duty to his family, strong enough to not break his marriage vows and to stay despite the presence of magic;

- now, magic has always had a weird placement in catholicism. i've never really had issues with religion vs harry potter. we were never banned from it, however i do know that back then, the very concept of magic was something that scared the bejeezus out of the common folk because it was "the devil's work" (and yes, i know this belief is wrong and is rooted in oppression by the church, but this is not what we're discussing rn). the repulsion tobias feels about magic i feel is therefore something that's rooted in religion;

- it was dementedlollipop that pointed this out but severus wearing his mam's blouse can also be read as tobias not even minding this was happening. how could this happen in a hypermasculine society like a lower-class town in 60s england? if tobias had really cared about it (because shame, because what will the neighbors think of you running around looking like that), severus would have worn his da's shirt rather than his mam's, if only to save himself from possible punishment. but he didn't. we know, however, that he was neglected/punished as a child. in this case, the possible reason he would have been was precisely because of magic. now you tell me why an ordinary muggle man in this setting would even care that his child was magical? as poor as they were, he could have exploited their magic and tried to make money from it, but this type of behavior was never mentioned. it just strengthens the hc that tobias was more bothered by something else more fundamental about the magic: that his son was not just different, but different, in all the ways he knew was wrong;

- "he doesn't like anything, much" sounds like a description of a man resigned to his fate, that is, being in a marriage he couldn't get out of (divorce isn't allowed in the catholic church, and annulment is expensive and has many conditions before it can be granted, if it will be granted). the abuse we know that happened could be him retaliating to the situation by lashing out in a horrific manner whenever the final thread snapped;

- catholicism is very big on ethics, and places value in things like fortitude, temperance, piety. this isn't just taught to you via a book; people already behave like it and it's ingrained in your belief systems, so you also learn it by example. suffering is also a big thing in catholic culture. there's virtue in suffering, in subjecting yourself to copious amounts of guilt and making up for it via penance like giving yourself up for a higher cause. i mean, that already is peak severus imo, but it also works for tobias, because where else could severus have learned it? children don't just pick up this stuff on the fly; it's learned from one's parents and backed up by a very solid values system;

- we then have tobias, a born-and-raised catholic, with a wife and child whom he suddenly finds out can do things that have always been taught to him as "satanic", and yet he can't leave them due to his marriage vows, due to his sense of duty that's been drilled into him since time immemorial, and perhaps because he also does love them. it's his family, after all. severus is his only child. a child he had initially thought was blessed, a gift, but is now damned, and it's his fault, as a father. he must have done something in his life to deserve it, but what? why would god even curse him this way? but then god gives his hardest battles to his strongest soldiers, and so he will see it through. this is his burden to bear;

- now we have severus, who's raised on the same values as his father, but tempered by his mother's secret stories of the wizarding world. he would have adored his father, i think, prior to his magic being discovered, because tobias would have doted on him. they would have been avid churchgoers at some point, at least severus and tobias, and he would have been baptized in the local parish. he'd have gone to mass, would have heard it in latin, and would have learned latin enough to know it like a mother tongue. he would have recited prayers and hymns with his father in latin too. this would have given him a leg up in the wizarding world, as far as that language was concerned. it's no wonder he could create spells;

- imagine the heartache that would have occurred the moment tobias realized he was not at all normal. the rejection that would have happened, how tobias would have silently and swiftly cut off all affection, and young severus would have been left to wonder why, until eileen explained to him that his father's world and their world just could not mix, and it's always been the way with muggles (hence the somewhat anti-muggle sentiment he alludes to in canon when with lily). but severus would have also probably secretly thought it was all his fault;

- now this: even if he had rejected his father and the muggle faith he had been raised on just before going to hogwarts in order to make something new of himself, it wouldn't have worked. ironically, the wizarding world has living embodiments of the concepts he had learned at his father's knee and in the church, the same things he would have been trying to avoid and forget: the concept of souls was proven with ghosts, and eventually, horcruxes; voldemort dying and resurrecting proved power over death. the afterlife was also proven by harry's testimony from the graveyard when voldy got resurrected. voldemort himself, with his giant snake, would have also been like the living proof of satan and sin;

- i think severus would have been terrified at the realization that oh shit this stuff could actually true, and it would have pushed him towards religion, not away from it, if only to study it more. i mean i can only imagine him having a ton of theology books in his study just to read up on the subject matter. it would have also made the concept of him losing his soul upon killing dumbledore very very real and all the more terrifying, because then the sayings of him being doomed for all eternity may actually come true;

- (thou shall not kill. thou shall not kill. thou shall not kill)

- like his father before him though, he would have accepted his fate like a good soldier, and would have accepted the suffering that came with it. he also probably felt deep, deep guilt all throughout, because tobias had been right. he was exactly what his father had always been frightened of: damned in this life, and now the next. and it was all his fault.

[nopointic]

I just watched all 41 minutes of this and it was riveting. Such a good informational video. It's actually given me a sense of peace for wondering why I didn't mourn my grandfather who just died a couple of weeks ago.

He beat my grandma for years. One day until she ran out the house naked. My grandma has always been an iron fist in the family, so learning this shook me. But what's more is how the abuse continued in later generations. He even went on to stab his second wife and threaten her with a gun. He was a bastard through and through. My grandfather beat my grandma. She divorced him thank Goddess. But her son would go on to abuse and beat his wife. My uncle. And my uncle's son, my cousin, married his girlfriend, and in turn beat her too.

That's 3 generations of domestic violence. Add in colorism. Add in the drinking. Add in the lack of belief in mental health and saying to just pray to the Lord about it and go to the church. And you get me being told to let it go when I bring it up or don't date. I'm 31 and I've never dated a single person. Sometimes I wonder if it's because I'm afraid of having the cycle continue with me in some way. I've been in therapy over a decade and I just have no interest in dating lol, but again, it's odd to others, and then I bring this up and people are like well duh! That's why! Moving on!

Domestic violence is a HUGE problem in the black community. It's notorious in the religious black community. My grandma would drag me to church and I'd listen to sermons of preachers saying to always forgive the black man for their abuse etc and I smoothly checked out of Christianity as a child tbh.

I love how she touched on the celeb culture. How too many are defending black men who are abusers saying we're trying to keep a brotha down. Nah niggas, you're keeping yourself down with the fucking abuse but I'm sleep.

I will personally forever side eye every nigga that continues to gas up black men in the celeb world who are abusers and shit on black women. "He made/makes such good music/movies/etc" I do not care. I care about the safety of black women more than a fucking song on the radio and I wish you bitches would to.

Sorry for the essay but I was MOVED by this 41 minute video. Thank you @pumpumdemsugah and @gluten-free-pussy for sharing this on my dash!

Everyone please watch!!! I hit a few key points in my mini essay but the video is *chef's kiss*. A wealth of info!

Black Femicide and intimate partner violence

[mikk1n]

Curious in how you HC the characters personalities to be- like for example in my HC's for the general MW campaign

I view price as an aggressive father like figure who gets shit done but cries to himself over casualties before just completely going numb to every emotion for the next few months.

I view makarov as a sadistic and malicious person with paranoia and anxiety [maybe a bit of a personality disorder as well] who sees himself differently everyday and disconnects from reality alot.

I view soap as a complicated ball of PTSD [hope my wording doesnt offend anyone i genuinely couldnt think of another way to describe it] and he doesn't know whether to continue the service or quit and constant battles his own mind on what he wants for himself.

Etc etc.

Oooh this is a topic that I love to get into, I just struggle with articulating myself exactly the way I want. CW for mentions of suicide later in the post but I don't get too into it.

Price is like...to me Price is complicated. He does have almost that fatherly role, and tbh I feel like he has control issues. And anger issues too but that really rears its ugly head after he escapes the gulag and spirals. Honestly I feel like he and Makarov are two sides of the same coin, only Price doesn't have the same kind of ambition as Makarov does; Price doesn't want power, he wants to get the job done, whatever that may be, no matter the cost. And unlike Makarov, he cares when he loses people, especially people close to him, and the grief and anger fuel his downward spiral. I feel like he's chaotic on the inside idk idk

putting the rest of this under a cut bc it gets long

When it comes to Makarov I feel like. Hm. He's interesting to me because I feel like he could've been a good person, if he wanted to be; a lot of his issues and quirks and everything about the way his brain works, from his nullified fear response to his disconnect with other people to his low empathy, etc. etc., don't inherently make him a bad person. He's completely capable of making different life choices and putting his energy into something good and worthwhile for once. He just chooses to be a violent asshole because at the end of the day, he's deeply selfish, and he uses absolutely EVERYTHING to his advantage to achieve his goals.

I feel like he's not sadistic in the sense that he's motivated primarily by the want or need to hurt people for the sake of relishing in their suffering, but he is sadistic in the sense that he's power hungry and people suffering because of him inflates his ego and fuels his craving for power. And he LOVES making people suffer if it's someone he has a grudge against, or perceives as having slighted him.

And also despite (or maybe even because of) his nullified fear response, at least in part, his life is Ruled by fear to some degree. His meticulousness looks like anxiety to outside observers and I feel like Makarov is definitely prone to paranoia. Partially because of the nature of what he does and partially because Makarov twists himself into a pretzel worrying if his atypical experiences with fear will blind him to danger and lead to his downfall. He lives a "me vs the world" life in pretty much every sense lmao.

And then Soap...yeah he's a complicated ball of PTSD to me too, not just from his military service but from his childhood (father died by suicide, mom and stepdad and their side of the family was abusive, all tangled up in racial and religious and queer trauma that his family ALSO had a hand in, etc. etc. etc.). He's good at pretending everything is fine but the man is depressed and anxious and hates himself. He is constantly in a state of making up for himself, like everything he does has to exceed expectations because otherwise he's not worthwhile.

Soap strikes me as someone who's deeply sentimental, likely a hopeless romantic, who feels down to his core and...has never really had room to express that. A majority of himself is locked away somewhere, mainly out of self-preservation, and sometimes he has no idea who he is or what he should've done in life. He's full of regrets and what-ifs and just. He's depressed as fuck basically.

[btssavedmylifeblr]

This is not related to bts or your work but I just want advice.

I feel so lonely and lost in life. I’ve no real friends, just people I know that just tolerate me. With no clear goals or ambitions. I feel a total disappointment because I’m doing nothing with my life and I see all my friends and relatives achieving their goals and aspirations.

This is stupid but I never had a dream. Since I was little I just wanted to be happy, have a lot of friends and enjoy a simple life but when I tell people this is maybe my dream since I don’t have a bigger and a socially acceptable one, they laugh and think it’s stupid to have such shallow view of life. Am I shallow? Maybe I’m.

My cousins told me since I’m already 29, never had a bf or even dated and are not the most beautiful among them... just to go for arranged marriage, they feel like someone like me doesn’t have a chance of having a romantic love story. Tbh I’m contemplating it since arrange marriage sounds realistic in my case but I’m afraid my lack of experience with men will cloud my decisions and I’ll maybe end up with an abusive or a crazy partner. I’m so scared.

Also my family are traditional so they feel I need to hurry up and marry since I’m almost 30 and it will be hard for me to give birth once I’m older than that. I don’t mind not giving birth, and I’d love to adopt but I know they won’t be happy about that.

To you and your readers I’ll sound a dumb 29 yr old but I lived a very sheltered, conservative and religious life and the most simple things for everyone has been the hardest for me. From my views, to my clothing, decision making, critical thinking, having a say in my own affairs... all of these privileges weren’t always allowed for me. But I’m really trying.

Listening to BTS have helped me a lot through the years when I was on my worst. I’ve meet nice ARMYS online but I’ve no one to share my interests with irl. I wish I had army friends in real life too, I get so jealous when I see how a lot of them have met and managed to build real friendships. I never had that.

Anyways I’m lost and Idk what I wanted to ask but I just want to hear your opinion since you’re married. Should I take the same of arrange marriage? Is married life worth it? I’m so scared 😭

I have many thoughts!

1. Whether or not marriage is worth it depends very much on who you are married to and how you feel about them. A supportive, kind and respectful partner who shares your values and goals can make your entire life better. Having someone to share life's burdens with and create something together can be incredibly lovely. My life is much better married than not and that's why I choose to stay married. But a bad marriage can be much worse than just staying single.

2. I don't know what cultural context you are coming from, so I don't know exactly how an arranged marriage would work for you. I know people whose families have set them up with each other and they are very happy now. I don't think an arranged marriage is necessarily incompatible with a romantic love story. Having a partner that shares a background with you and has compatible family values and goals can be a blessing. But obviously families don't always have your best interests at heart and people do end up in abusive relationships, especially if the woman comes into the marriage with a power disparity, like she's now entirely financially dependent on her husband or in a foreign country where she doesn't speak the language.

3. I don't think you sound dumb or shallow. It's perfectly fine to just want a simple life. You deserve a life of peace, happiness, and respect.

4. 29 is not old. Give yourself permission to just explore what you want and need without feeling a ticking clock over your head.

I'll leave you with a quote from the wise Min Yoongi:

We can’t give our dreams too much meaning. Dreams are just dreams. When I say it’s okay to not have a dream, it’s because you don’t really need one. You shouldn’t have to struggle so much in order to live your life. It’s heartbreaking to see people being pushed to pursue one path when there are 7.8 billion people in the world, living out 7.8 billion different lives. People in their 60s and 70s can dream too, of course, but I often think that the world is especially cruel to the young. It’s often suggested that they’ve failed if they don’t start out on a particular path or continue along as expected. But as you live, you realise life doesn’t work that way. It would be good if children and youth didn’t blame themselves too much, because it’s not their fault.

And don’t compare yourself to other people either. There is absolutely no need for you to compare the size of your dream to someone else’s dream. You’d think I live with super grandiose dreams, but I’m not like that at all. I don’t have a dream right now either. Does that make me miserable? No, it doesn’t. Rather, I’m at peace. I’m sure another dream will come to me. My dream could be to become better at basketball, for example. I believe it’s a good, worthwhile life to achieve dreams like this, one by one.

Sending you love and encouragement! 💜