#acknowledge weakness

[markmcole]

Book Summary: Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Peter Scazzero

You can’t be spiritually mature while remaining emotionally immature. Have you ever noticed how some Christians seem spiritually active—faithful in church, prayer, and ministry—but often struggle with anger, anxiety, or broken relationships? That’s the kind of disconnect that Peter Scazzero explores in his impactful book, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality. This book offers a deep and necessary…

[red-garden]

Liu Qingge, contrary to popular belief, tried to avoid Shen Qingqiu. He didn’t go out of his way to pick fights, in fact, he would prefer not to see the other peak lord at all. That also meant he avoided the beast keeping peak lord, Shen Qingqiu’s precious brother. This wasn’t hard to do- he tended to send his head disciple to meetings instead of coming himself, and was habitually hard to find- always off in some forgotten corner with some insane plant or animal.

But fate was never that kind.

To unkind to prevent Shen Yuan from obliterating a beast that got the drop on him. Apparently it was invasive. But now Shen Yuan is covered in blood and viscera, smiling like an angel, offering Liu Qingge a hand. He owed this beautiful (covered in blood and monster piss and sweat and unknown number of other bodily fluids) man a life debt.

[epickiya722]

Thinking about the whole...

"Midoriya is actually the possessive, jealous one!"

"Actually, it's Bakugou."

Frankly, in my very humble opinion (I mean like very humble), they're both possessive and/or jealous. Just in different ways, sort of.

Like, Midoriya is the type that is protective to where it is possessive. People can talk and fawn over Bakugou all day, he is not batting a lash. Bakugou having other friends? Midoriya is not bothered (like, come on).

But hurt Bakugou? It's on a "you hurt the person I care about" way. That's his trigger (*points to canon*). He gets violent, but towards those who have hurt Bakugou.

Bakugou though? He's the possessive-possessive. Like, "I revolve around you and you revolve around me" kind of possessive. He will (and has) eavesdrop on conversations Midoriya has with other people. Wants to be rivals for the rest of their lives and invest most into making Midoriya's hero suit. Freely declared himself Kacchan Bakugo.

(Fitting that he does in one of his heroic moments. Reminds me of Midoriya chose to go with Deku for his hero name. And before anyone goes "Well, Uraraka---" Let's remember who gave Midoriya that nickname and he could have easily chose a different name even after her suggesting it. If anything, that's like an unintentional shipper on deck moment.)

Some of his thoughts be about Midoriya. (I said some because you cannot tell me he doesn't think about, like different hot sauces or something.)

You know what, I would say they're both the kinds of possessive, but each lean towards the other kind just a little more. And maybe it even alternates!

I just don't think only one of them is possessive.

And I don't think either one is more possessive than the other.

I think, again just my humble opinion, that Midoriya and Bakugou aren't ones to be possessive all the time and have a limit to how possessive they'll go.

(Thinking about the nicknames again. Neither verbally expressed dislike towards anyone else using the nicknames.)

They're definitely going to think and feel however for the other because they've always been in each other's lives. However, it's not to the point that they're incapable of giving each other breathing room and they're able to live as their individual. Of course, they're attached to the hip but not stitched together.

[haeerizm]

if i see one more person mischaracterise cardan and call him a hopeless baby girl i might just tweak

[antianakin]

Controversially, final shot aside, I actually felt like this arc was the strongest ARC out of this entire season. Mostly I think that's because it's so simple in comparison to the other arcs. Mon's story is done now and so is Bix's so we never have to focus on either of them. They let Luthen and Kleya dominate the first episode so that the final two can focus entirely on Cassian's relationship with the rebellion and the Empire eating its own. I have some nitpicky issues with some of the dialogue and some issues with the season overall, but in general I think that this arc actually works quite well and there weren't any storylines that felt exceptionally weak.

It's not super bombastic, but it IS focusing in more on the emotions of it all, on wrapping up the thing that brought everyone to this place and what that means to them. They're all exactly where they need to be and there's one person who connects them all and, in the grand tradition of both Andor and Rogue One, we spend the entire storyline passing information along, passing the baton to the next person and the next to just make sure it gets to the right person in the right place at the right time.

Andor has never been about the big bombastic action sequences, it's about those little individual choices everyone has to make each day that define who you are choosing to be and how that will impact who you become. It's about the ripple effect of those choices, the way they impact not just you but the world around you in ways you might never expect. So having this final arc acknowledge that all of those ripples have led them here, into the story that we know, works really well for me.

[coloursfalllikesnow]

Being in WoD subs on reddit (I know, I know) is an extremely weird experience, tbh. I notice a whole lot of people getting this bizarre attitude about specifically Werewolf for some reason where it's like. "Garou are jerks why does anyone play them" or "why haven't [vampires/mages/etc] just exploded all the Garou for being assholes" or "can my mage make Garou/take away Garou abilities/become one/explode the Wyrm or whatever" and you hardly ever see this attitude toward the other splats. Nobody is coming in and going "wow Kindred have done shitty stuff, I hate them and if you try and tell me that is the point I will throw a fit." The persistent need to be "better" than Werewolf for some reason.

And often times specifically choosing combat capability to be "better" for some reason? Like. That is the thing Garou *are for* so why are we trying to contrive scenarios where you can 1v1 a rank 6 Garou when your fave splat can do *so much else* aside from that. Mages are extremely flexible compared to many other supers in thr WoD, Vampires are a dominant social force, etc. Why do people see "Garou are probably baseline the strongest splat *in combat*" and insist on going "yeah but an Archmage with infinite time could theoretically buff their stats and 1v1 them instantly"

Like Ok?? But would they? How much time would that take? Your archmage has way better things they could be doing than bothering random werewolves. Mages can be very powerful but people see "a mage could do [nearly] anything" and seem to read it like EVERY mage could do EVERYthing. The average mage would crumple in a direct fight against a werewolf and that's fine! A mage can do many, many things a werewolf can't do, too.

It's very odd and some people get incredibly combative and hostile when you point out how these white room scenarios fall apart.

[yaraanderson]

THIS^^^

[blue-boy-scout]

| Batman (2011) #20

[astralleywright]

It's so hard discussing C3 cause I'll find myself kinda agreeing with an opinion and then the vibe ends up being 'and that's why the campaign sucks and BH should go die in a ditch' and I'm like oh... we're not talking about the same thing...I actually wanted to see a longer aftermath of many things for BH - not just in the finale either - cause I love them, my bad.

no this is exactly it 😭 there are plenty of criticisms i agree with, at least in part, and things i wish had happened differently in the finale or even on a more macro scale. but so many critiques of C3 just misunderstand the plot and themes and characters entirely and treat any flaws as indicative of a campaign-wide failure and well. i simply do not think that's true. and with the way fandom abhors nuance it's very difficult to make my own critiques without feeling like i'm contributing to that attitude, or at the very least spending time i could be spending talking about what i liked or defending it from the dumbest/most obviously untrue critiques instead!

[f0point5]

This. Always this.

He’s not mentally “unhealthy” just because he is emotional in the media pen, and being emotional in the media pen is not an example of mental health advocacy.

[kacievvbbbb]

Maybe it's just me and I just don't understand the arc. Or maybe this arc will get some grand conclusion I'm really starting to doubt. But like I'm sick and tired of Tashigi being used as Zoro's misogyny proxy. Like the "a woman swordsman could never beat a man" belief and trauma made sense for both Kuina and Tashigi and was a very valid fear way back in the East Blue when they were still fighting relatively normal people and had no scope of how big the world is

but at this point where there are literally 20 feet tall dudes and people can blow up a whole city with just Haki the only reason Tashigi is still weak is because she is being written that way. Which is really hard to understand because it seems now more than ever One Piece has been getting more and more strong female characters so I don't know why every time Tashigi is on screen with Zoro we have to rehash this. It's even worse cause all she does in the scene is prove Zoro right by getting in a fight that she can't handle and needing saving. It's such a confusing message and honestly doesn't really apply or come up anywhere but with Tashigi and Zoro (outside of that one time where Zoro yells at enel for blasting Robin because she's a woman which was weird because Robin's been in a lot of fights before but seemed there just so enel could point out just how ruthless it is.)

Hell with the exception of the G5 all being in love with her. She is treated like a regular character and not just "the woman"

It honestly feels like both Tashigi and Smoker got lost in the narrative and Oda just doesn't know where to put their arcs. It feels like she was being written to help Zoro overcome whatever mental block Kuina's death instilled in him about facing female opponents with his sword. But she is just sooooo far behind him it renders the point moot and strengthens his convictions (it's weird that he will literally crush a woman's face rather than use his sword and is the only reason I won't say he doesn't fight women he does he just seems to have a mental block about cutting them down especially if they fight with anything blade like) but also we've only ever seen him face female character he knows can't challenge him it would have been interesting to see what he'd do in a fight against someone like big mom, tsuru or smoothie doubt that will happen though. But here's to hoping for Tashigi to have an actual arc.

[fallen-jpg]

hi you are cool, what was your art-learning process like? how did you find your current style?

hey, ahhhh ty!!!

off the bat i want to say i went to art school so i'm not a self-taught artist. i learned foundation stuff there and i still study art in this traditional, academic way in which i read a bunch of art textbooks and try to apply those words to my art

for my current style, the start of things was i saw the first spider-verse movie and wanted to emulate that but for dc characters. and i did that privately for a year or 2 until i made this account

but the driving factor is that i suck at line art and i realized that pretty early on. so instead of trying to lvl up my line art, i dumped all my skill points into color and shape instead. then i realized i suck at anatomy so i focused on backgrounds.

that combo is what you are currently seeing as my style. colors, shape, backgrounds. i've completely given up on line art but i do want to work on anatomy and characters more

my prof said that personal style comes from weaknesses and how you deal with your weaknesses. thinking about it in that way relieved a lot of pressure bc i have plenty of weaknesses, weaknesses galore! and instead of hating myself for my artistic weaknesses, ive been using them as my guiding light for drawings

i hope that helps you too

[butwhatifidothis]

I LOVED To Be a Creature, and it genuinely creeped me out to see the things Edelgard and Hubert said to Byleth (though it's the same as the game, stripped out of its voice acting and background music, the dialogue is so much more horrifying). Really makes me wonder if Edelgard's love for Byleth is genuine in any way. Do you think there's any real love there or is it just obsession?

Thank you!!! I had a feeling that placing Edelgard and Hubert's words in a context that isn't meant to make them look flattering would really let their casual racism shine, and I'm glad it's seeming like that is in fact the impression people are getting lol. SO sorry for the late answer btw 😭😭😭

As for whether Edelgard's love is genuine... I got opinions lmao.

got a bit long lmao under the cut it goes

If Edelgard felt the way she does for Byleth on exclusively SS and CF, I could maybe see how this is a "genuine" love (insofar as a love steeped in "I may hate your race but you're special and Not Like The Other Ones because I think you're special to me" can, uh, ever be genuine, in any case). But because Edelgard still feels as strongly towards Byleth on AM and VW where she quite literally never talks to them directly in any meaningful way, it becomes waaaaay more like she's just weirdly obsessed with this person who saved her one singular time ever five years ago from an attack Edelgard set up. It makes the "love" way more forced and contrived and obviously trying to squeeze tears out of the player for standing up against the cute girly trying to murder them. Or, alternatively, it makes Edelgard come off as manipulative, saying that she just wanted to walk with Byleth and it makes her so sad to HAVE to fight Byleth because BYLETH wouldn't stand by HER - and she's saying this on AM/VW to a person she's talked to in conversation a cumulative, what? Hour? Two? Maybe a few days, being nice? Over the course of, being as absolutely generous as physically possible and not counting the five years Byleth was missing... two fucking years? She's shitting herself over fighting this stranger she doesn't fucking know? Yeah, sure buddy, whatever you say - you see what I mean?

And honestly even outside of those two routes, I think it's more that she sees Byleth as being hers rather than actually liking them for who they are. A body to stand next to her and tell her how right she is and comfort her - who doesn't have the background of "I was literally raised to think this is my only purpose in life" muddying the sincerity of the brown-nosing - who also happens to also act as The Perfect Fighter and The Perfect Strategist to actively help her get what she wants. That view of Byleth being a tool doesn't really go away unless they marry her, seen by how they quite literally get nothing for all they've done for Edelgard should they go unmarried to a noble (guess they just weren't meritable enough once their use to her was done).

As well as how much more Edelgard doesn't like Byleth disagreeing with her or otherwise going against her flow than pretty much anyone else in the game - you lose supports points if you don't think the Black Eagle Strike Force name she made is good, she quickly denies the notion that Byleth isn't detached from others/emotions and insists they are just like she is, she gives them the same callous and thoughtless words she was apparently given once in her life while they are in the midst of mourning their recently murdered father so that they get over it already and get back to being useful to her (directly saying she will only reach out her hand when it's time for HER to move forward, not when BYLETH heals from WATCHING THEIR DAD DIE IN THEIR FUCKING ARMS MAYBE A WEEK AGO). She never treats Byleth kindly unless they do everything she wants, which like. Isn't love???? At all????

There's just this... weirdly possessive air Edelgard has around Byleth that always threw me off, especially with how easily she admits to have been willing to kill them so far into CF and how readily she cuts ties with them the second the fighting's done (which is particular because how just how clingy she was to Byleth everywhere else - you know during all that time Byleth had a use to her). Incorporating that into being an intentional part of her character is certainly interesting, but not in a way that's flattering to the idea of Edelgard genuinely being in love with Byleth lmao.

Personally tho, even disregarding almost everything else, the simple explanation is that I don't think you can really sit there and say you love someone while openly hating part of their racial heritage. Wild thought, I know lmao

[littlefankingdom]

~ Batman (2016)

Whoever made the choice to have Bruce said "my son" instead of "my sonS" should be fired immediately. No way would he not refer to, at least, Dick as his son too. Jason is literally his first son, he was Bruce's son 30 years before Damian existed. It was made very clear in Injustice that Damian being biological doesn't make him more of a son to Bruce than the others.

[fwuitgummyy]

I find the whole discourse about Yut Lung being more then an "Ash without an Eiji" really interesting, because him Being So Like Ash is just how he mythologizes himself lol. He wants any proximity he can get to the authority and respect Ash receives, because more then anything Yut Lung craves acknowledgement. Which is why in the end, he needed to have this illusion of similarity shattered. He never needed Eiji's purity like Ash did, he needed someone who would be able to accept his own shortcomings

[superconductivebean]

#1650

what sort of a bullshite fantasy could an author write if they despise magic and think it is not real. it is absolutely real. math is real, and math is magic, as nobody is able to comprehend where has it come from or why. communication at our levels is magic. or lives are, too.

magic is how we explain the existing but inexplicable things.

this silly explanation gets our consciousness a well-deserved rest even if and when it wants to understand why are were not what are we (which it can study but still wont be able to answer, why)

understanding magic as a whoosh at the table in lieu of that, for it to appear a dinner is…

an understanding a fantasy author cannot afford really.

the author of a fantasy book must know realities of life in order to write fantasy—whilst they know whooshes aren't possible, the feel of the perception of magic definitely is present in all of us. denying that very much real, existing, lively feeling is a full equal of denying the existence of the trans folk or the intersex folk or asexual folk— any folk that cannot be comprehended by a small, isolated, poor brain.

a poor brain is prone to delusions. it wants to challenge the universe that somehow created so much forms of life on a single planet for unfathomable number of billions of years. it yells at a cloud that has seen civilisations fall and the birth of this planet for making it see incomprehensible people and to feel something it cant understand.

frankly i do not know why jкr is like this. she is a living rot of a human being: unempathetic twatwaffle who does not deserve a single cent or respect even for being another human. there are things that make people fall so low; to me, it's when they are this senile, and you might already know the next word i want to say about them: you give them a forever rest.

yet i think ignoring her is not a solution. she's a not a small figurine; she's a titan, and titans are fought to death, not left unseen in the dark; it is what i meant by the 'forever rest', however, i do not mean death as the one and only solution. i meant, 'so irrelevant that she is as good as dead'.

how does one achieve this? aggressive economic reforms, i suppose. social policies will follow suit, and as it's economically more viable to have less pointlessly gendered world, jкr and her cronies wouldn't have much of a footing any longer when that inadvertently and inevitably happens.