#hope series

[youthofpandas]

What’s up with how the dunmeshi fandom just lies about this kind of stuff all the time. It is easily confirmable information that it was a monthly series, something incredibly common in the industry.

A not weekly magazine schedule is literally common !! Especially in the seinen shoujo and josei demographics, sometimes monthly, sometimes biweekly, sometimes every two months, sometimes seasonal! Please stop lying about how Dunmeshi was some special unique creation that defies all standards of manga just to hype it up because it is so clear that every single one of these comparisons is centered around Weekly Shonen Jump (and understand that SJ has many magazines under its brand that are monthly or semimonthly). Not everything is WSJ and it needs to stop being the only point of reference in conversations like this 🤧

[hinamie]

matching eye horror for u and ur back-from-the-dead bestie <333

[storiesplus]

I spent quite a few weeks working on this! This is the elf race from my book, Hope! I’m really proud of this one!

[isjasz]

Stellar death

[dapper-lil-arts]

Last one I swear... Unless?

[mienar]

the wandering painter, part one

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[firstumcschenectady]

“Wailing as a Means to Hope” based on Amos 5:10-15 and Jeremiah 31:15-17

I've committed to a theme of hope in the midst of despair this Lent, because it is a topic I sense we all desperately need. You can be forgiven for thinking that thus far in worship readings we've done the despair part better than the hope part. Our “We Cry Justice” reading came from the section entitled “Struggle and Lament” and an essay entitled, “You Must Let Us Wail” and it was fabulously matched with Amos bemoaning the poor being trampled and Jeremiah offering us the famous words, “Rachel is weeping for her children.”

What excellent summaries of exactly the states of the world that result in a sense of being hopeless and overwhelmed. Dismay, lament, injustice, wailing, and despair.

Amos and Jeremiah are prophets, and that means they're doing something different with the despair than we might expect. Truthfully, they're USING it. They're using it to motivate people, to create change. Amos looks around, sees the messes, points them out, and then calls people to live differently. We hear it within our passage today:

Seek good and not evil,    that you may live; and so the Lord, the God of hosts, will be with you,    just as you have said. Hate evil and love good,    and establish justice in the gate; it may be that the Lord, the God of hosts,    will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.

Those two verses show up in the midst of a looooooooong lament, but they're also THE POINT. “Do life differently, don't keep up this system of things being unjust.” And, indeed, Amos is lamenting the unjust ways society is siphoning wealth from the poor to the rich. Many modern prophet smake similar points in similar ways. But perhaps we're not hearing the point within the lament – the POINT is to create change.

Jeremiah is doing a similar thing but on a larger scale. Jeremiah is the prophet of the exile: he saw where things would land if nothing changed, he saw destruction happening, he saw the depth of despair, and then afterwards he points out that not all hope is lost. His is a tough book, but the hope in it is real. We may also be trained to hear more easily, “Rachel is weeping for her children” than the lines that follow it, “They shall come back, there is hope for your future.” Jeremiah isn't speaking an easy or light hope, he is speaking hope into the darkest of times – and that hope was just as real as his concerns about the exile had been.

In Jeremiah's writing, despair is named, and met with hope, despite it all.

Interestingly, Stephen Pavey seems to be doing a similar thing. He is speaking clearly about the injustices of our day, but he isn't doing it to bring hopelessness. He says, “Callie and Martin, like Amos, are speaking for God using the poetry and prophecy of lament. They are calling for justice to be worked out and lived out in order to build a different world, a beloved community.”1

There is a funny truth here: prophets don't lament things being the way they are to induce hopelessness and lead people to shut down because they're overwhelmed. Prophets name injustice because they believe JUSTICE is possible. Prophets name systemic greed because they believe an equitable distribution of resources is possible. Prophets name their concern about “how things are going” because they have hope it can get turned around.

Why isn't this more obvious? Why does this seem worth mentioning, even?

I think dear ones, because we now live lives saturated in “news” that can sound a little bit like prophecy, but isn't. Headlines lament poisoned water, but “the news” is an industry committed to turning a profit from exposing bad news. There may be plenty of people in the industry who do so hoping it will motivate change, but that isn't the industry's first concern. And, we'd probably be OK if there were just headlines about poisoned water. We can work on that! But there are also headlines about... wars, possible genocides, famines, coups, floods, fires, earthquakes, ELECTIONS, hospital mergers, lack of nursing home staffing, COVID learning declines, long COVID, increasing poverty rates, lack of housing for migrants, use of solitary confinement despite it being banned...

What else have you read THIS WEEK?

The news can sound like a prophet, but it isn't one.

Because a prophet shares concerns about injustice to motivate changes towards God's visions of justice. NOT to make money.

Now, I'm really not trying to pick on the news industry (it is having a hard enough time), nor discourage you from seeking to be informed (which sometimes can feel like a form of power in an otherwise powerless existence). Rather, I'm wanting to remind us all that a constant intake of bad news isn't something we're OBLIGATED to engage in, and knowing doesn't ACTUALLY create change. Especially if we're already overwhelmed, especially if we're worried about our own lives of that of one of our loved ones. The world is vast and complicated and none of us are ever going to know everything, and it is definitely OK to fast from the news when it leads you to hopelessness. (Lenten Spiritual practice I'd recommend, even.)

Because the news isn't doing the work of the prophets. It isn't rooted in hope.

The prophets do that work and God still calls them to do it. Interestingly, the prophets sometimes get overwhelmed by despair too, but somehow they find their way through Somehow the urging of God to call for something BETTER than what is, motivates them to move beyond what's wrong and into what could be. When we seek out information, maybe it matters a little bit why the story is being told – and why it is being listened to. None of us can respond to the hundreds of concerns we can read about every day, so it is worth paying attention to if in-taking them is live-giving or life-draining. I do not believe God needs us to know about one more justice issue we can't tackle if knowing it drains us from hope.

There is, however, something fundamentally GOOD about injustice being named – by prophets and even by the news. The piece of hope is that people will respond “this isn't as it should be.” Now, again, if that's just a way to make some money, meh. But STILL, just naming that things being broken isn't as God wants them to be MATTERS.

The act of lament is the act of seeing what is broken and wishing for it to be healed.

Sometimes, dear ones, when we feel hopeless, I think we're really engaging in the sacred act of lament. And we need not berate ourselves for engaging in sacred actions, even if they're hard.

What we may need to guard against though, is being so overwhelmed that we move into helplessness. And that, beloveds of God, I sometimes fear is one of the impacts of the 24 hour news cycle compounded by social media. They move us into learned helplessness. Because we hear about wars fought far away, and children being made into orphans, and we can't actually DO anything about it – and we hear about … and we can't do anything about it, and we hear about... and we can't do anything about it, and we start to learn that we can't do ANYTHING.

Which is simply not true.

We can't create peace in the Middle East, but we can reach out to our neighbors in the Capital Region who are Muslim and Jewish and remind them with our words and actions they are seen and loved. That matters in the face of the hatred being slung around, and it matters in simply planting the seeds of peace and love in the world. We can't eliminate hunger within the world or even our community, but we've learned we can serve one hot meal with a healthy dose of respect and that it can matter a whole lot. We can't eliminate single use plastics, but we've learned to grocery shop with reusable bags, and carry reusable water bottles and those actions add up.

There is plenty we can do, actually, there is so much we can do we struggle to decide which ways to share our love in the world, right? GOOD!!

Dear ones, a yearning for the world to be different, a lament at how things are, a longing for more justice, even fear that things might continue without change – these are beautiful expressions of HOPE. Because something in you believes this brokenness isn't enough, and shouldn't be enough. It meant to motivate change.

Not despair, not being overwhelmed, not learned helplessness. Change.

Hate evil and love good,    and establish justice in the gate.

It is possible. With God all things are possible. Love good dear ones, it isn't time to give up yet. Amen

1 Stephen Pavey“12: You Must Let Us Wail” in We Cry Justice, ed. Liz Theoharis (Minneapolis: Broadleaf Books, 2021) p. 57 used with permission.

Rev. Sara E. Baron  First United Methodist Church of Schenectady  603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305  Pronouns: she/her/hers  http://fumcschenectady.org/  https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

February 18, 2024

[readerconfused]

Mr D insisting that Percy's name is Peter and immediately afterwards yelling at the demigods to get the hell out of the camp I LOVE THIS GOD

[pokimoko]

Asexual bird? Please

How about two asexual birds?

[mydairpercabeth]

HAPPY PERCY DAY TO ALL WHO CELEBRATE

[elizaisdunn]

how I imagine Grian telling the gang it’s time for a new season

[hinamie]

I don't want to regret the way I lived

[verrixstudios]

Last Tribe A Day run cycle was today so I decided to combine them all to show the differences!

ID under the cut

[ID: Seven sketchy animated run cycles, all of the original dragon tribes from Wings of Fire. They alternate sides as they go down, starting with the top one on the left and the second on the right, and so on. The background is a blank white. Each dragon has shaded limbs to help see the differences while in movement. The right wing is the darkest shade, followed by the left wing (closest to the screen), the the right legs are the lightest shaded. Descriptions are in order from top to bottom:

Mudwing: Drawn in a dark red. The thickest dragon by far, opening is mouth in a smile as its front legs hit the ground. Its large wings have four toes as if they were a third set of talons, which is used as another set of legs while running. The wings lift off after the back legs. The entire body bobs with its weight while it runs, lunging with its back legs. One of its back legs disappears while it runs (oopsies) and its large tail flicks with the run.

Skywing: Drawn in a darker red. Much skinnier dragon with longer limbs and larger wings. Its large wings remain slight open above its border, slightly bobbing as it moves. The body itself doesn’t move up and down, instead just twisting with movement of its limbs. Its tail is a little stiff, again just moving up and down. As it runs, one foot touches and leaves the ground at a time.

Icewing: Drawn in a dark blue. Its body and shape is ridgid, its head swooping up and down like it lunges with every time its front talons land. Again, its wings are used as a third pair of legs, however they are mostly used after the other limbs are mid-air. Its talons are visibly sharper, as well as its wings. Sharp spines on the back of its neck and end of its tail are visible as well, which bobs with the movement.

Seawing: Drawn in a dark blue. A thicker, long dragon with short but thick limbs and webbed frills along its spine and sternum. It’s thick tail continues the up and down curve it’s body makes with every move, flicking the end of the frills as it does. Its wings are semi open above its body, bobbing with the running movement and tilting up and down as its spine curves.

Sandwing: Drawn in a warm brown. Long limbs but thicker than skywing. All four feet lift of the air when they’re closest during the run, each foot hitting the ground one at a time. It’s barbed scorpion-like tail bobs up and down at the end. Its wings are folded and stuff near its shoulders, tilted diagonally. A solid frill lines its spine, biggest at the back of its neck and above the back legs.

Nightwing: Drawn in a dark purple grey, and by far the stiffest run cycle. Thick body with short but thinner legs than mudwings or seawings. Spikes line the spine all along its body, longest at the back of the neck and back of the body. Its wings are held stiffly and slightly folded over its body. Other than the legs and tail, most of the nightwing barely moves as it runs, and its legs hit the ground in pairs, front legs then back legs. They don’t even cross between each other at the closest part in the run. Its mouth opens and closes as it runs, not in any particular expression, I was just bored.

Rainwing: Drawn in a muted dark green. By far the bounciest run. It has a thin body and a head I accidentally drew a little big. It’s three-toed wings are used as a third pair of legs, used most right before it’s front legs hit the ground. Its front legs hit the ground at different time, however the back legs hit and leave together. Its tail is by far the longest, curled at the end and slightly unraveling as it flicks up and down. Beneath the curved horns is a frill with two connections that slight opens and closes with the movement. It’s grin also opens and closes with the movement.

END ID]

[ruporas]

your love returns in tragedy (ID in alt)

[fonmythenmetz]

That scene from Obi-Wan Kenobi, but with Luke

[the-tired-ish-rat]

Okay, Tumblr.

In the light of the recent Percy Jackson show (and ignoring the fact that I have to read Goethe's Faust for school), I am challenging you all and especially you reading this.

14k notes by the 1st of April and I will read all of the Percy Jackson series' books that my sibling owns.

I think they go up to the Apollo series? So, like. ~20 books.

edit:

1. Sadly, my sibling doesn't have all of the books. They have pjo, hoo and toa. Having counted them, I will admit that there are only 15 books. Sorry for the confusion, guys, my bad. But if they are as good as everyone is telling me, I might order the rest anyways.

2. I'll extend the deadline to May 25th because I have exams and school is seriously kicking my ass. Either way, I would probably start reading around then anyways.

3. The original post said 14k notes. There was an update post, which said 20k and I'll live blog me reading it as well. Twas' me, being stupid. Or sleep deprived. Probably both. Y'all get to 10k and I'll live blog it during summer.

The Riordanverse (?) (is that what you call yourselves?) sounds like a lot of fun :D thank you for actually reading this and introducing me to a new world to explore. Drink some water, get a snack, and good scrolling to the further lands of Tumblr!