#religious sense

[vicontheinternet]

Having to chant “let them pray” while building a wall around people who are praying is truly terrifying for 2024

[edscuntyeyeshadow]

the way the other angels treat aziraphale reminds me of how people at church would treat obviously queer kids who didn’t know they were queer yet. especially in the flashback scenes and in s1. they all see he’s different and treat him like shit but in that really vague passive aggressive christian way y’know

[jesuistrestriste]

im convinced that art donaldson loves thighfucking— any type of non penetrative sex, really. i think that man would be eager and willing to fuck your thighs, feet, tits, hell even your underarm. its a different type of vulnerability and intimacy…. i hc he picked up the fetish when he started watching porn, figuring it wouldnt be as wrong bc it’s not “real” sex…..

ooooh my god. yes. he does.

when you’re too tired to let him stick it in properly, he’ll ask if he can slip it between your legs or your breasts or against your tummy. all he needs is some skin-on-skin contact and he’s set; plus if he doesn’t come inside you, you two don’t have to worry about birth control. and that’s a win-win, is it not?

art moans into your neck, thrusting himself shallowly between your thighs as you squeeze them together, and his tip strokes your clit every now and then. his strong hand grips your hips and he mewls as he feels himself dribble pre down the inside of your pretty limbs. he fucks himself with your thighs, and lets you do whatever you want.

but—sometimes you’ll lazily scroll on your phone while his hips jolt and his cock kicks against your warm flesh, and it only makes him more hot. more eager.

he wants you to pay attention to him!

just because he’s not actually having sex with you doesn’t mean that he wants you to disengage.

so he’ll fuck your thighs until his balls are slapping your skin and your frame is being shaken up by the force of his movements. he’ll whimper and groan, fingers digging into the softness of your body, while he tries to warn you about the mess he’s gonna make.

as he cries out, his load will squelch and mush stickily between your legs, but he’ll keep himself buried there until he’s too overstimulated to keep his pelvis rocking.

such a little freak.

[justaz]

merlin slipping up early on around arthur and trying to assuage his fears by assuring that the gods would look out for them and arthur pauses before asking “the gods?” and they have a awkward lil conversation where merlin is like “yeah i worship the gods of the old religion” and arthurs like “why?” and merlin goes “well why do you worship the god of the new religion? we just believe in them” and arthur takes in this new information and is eventually like “yeah. sure. i guess its not illegal in escetir is it?” anyways thats it. it doesnt get brought up again until later on

when arthur + the knights and merlin and in that shrine and the knights aren’t taking it seriously and merlin goes “in the time of the old religion, they built shrines like this to appease restless spirits. we shouldn’t be here” and the knights brush it off but arthur knows merlin truly believes in it all so he redirects the knights away and later on its him and merlin at the well and arthur is there to calm merlin after he sees the visions from the raid. merlin’s crying and pleading with arthur to leave, that they shouldn’t be here. arthur agrees and goes to leave when merlin calls out to him. arthur stops but doesn’t turn. merlin wraps his arms around his middle

“you were here”

arthur doesn’t say anything more and walks away

[wolfythewitch]

How do you handle being a part of the lgbtq community (unless I am a little dumb and any pronouns doesn't equate to that) during this time in christianity? I used to be a part of a denomination and am glad to see that some people were never forced out. I may no longer believe in the christian religion but I'm glad to see that some people who have been discriminated against can still hold their beliefs.

Sorry if I'm misinterpreting completely wrong, I really love your drawings!

Hm how I go about it,, there's a sort of difference between spirituality and religion I guess? I dunno. I feel like my religious experience (or anyone else in general) is unique to themselves, and how they experience god (or lack thereof). Maybe worship is a smile, maybe worship is a birdsong. My spirituality is not affected by how other people experience my religion. Maybe god is the universe, maybe god is in the breeze and the grass, maybe god is you and me. I am made in his image and that means all of me. My relationship with religion is at a pretty weird place right now haha but maybe god is kindness, and the idea that everything will be alright

[tawaifeddiediaz]

the intimacy and soul deep love that comes with outright telling someone you’re worried about them…

buck and eddie have been individually and jointly dragged through the coals before this; but never have they explicitly said how they worry about each other or anything to that likeness

and while the whole point of tv is to read between the lines, to pick up expressions in lieu of time-restricted dialogues, there is something absolutely devastating about buck putting those words out there in the quiet of eddie’s kitchen, only to hear them echoed right back

and it’s also in the tone of his voice, something to the stubborn quiet way he sneaks past every single one of eddie’s denials to the heart of the matter that mirrors the way buck buried himself in eddie’s heart so long ago without his knowledge, and now it’s kind of like eddie’s version of confession, his safe space to repent, his safe space to find some direction in a way religion never did for him but buck does?

and there’s something about the expression on buck’s face too, the one we’ve seen so many times when he fears losing eddie, and i just think that for both of them (including eddie himself) to voice concern about eddie’s mental state essentially, something really bad is probably coming up

[pareidolla]

pristine cut broken/damsel content save me... please save me pristine cut...

[lesbians4armand]

once again i really do think armand’s morality and view of his own morality is summed up by “i tried to be good, am i no good?” because he KNOWS he’s not, but he so desperately wants to be good in any way he can be, so that he can be desired. and this in turn means he is deep in denial about any bad he has done other than the deep seated feeling that he is simply “bad” as a vague concept and not the sum of his actions. anyway who’s up thinking normal thoughts about characters.

[mearchy]

You think THIS site and THIS generation have no media literacy? Guys I read a twitter conversation yesterday between middle aged men where among other things they said the fascist allegory in the Star Wars prequels is the Jedi. That the Jedi having a strict code makes them “arguably fascist.” My god. Award for the least media comprehension on God’s green earth goes to cishet boomer sci-fi fans.

[neurocophany-theyshe]

[sbeana]

got bored on the plane and i drew these mock covers for gtn and my dad made me stop drawing because he was like "thats an awful lot of red. thats a lottttt of red"

[chuuyadelune]

(BSD 113 SPOILERS) the fyodor jesus imagery is driving me insane, so here are a couple of things i noticed from this chapter (all translations from @/nineofscans).

1. fyodor’s position

so the first thing that was most obvious was fyodor’s positioning here. he may not be on a cross, but this is very intentional i would say! he is still in the position of christ on the cross.

2. fyodor’s outfit

i could be reaching, and this is less to do with jesus, but his outfit to me resembles a monk’s habit somewhat—perhaps signifying his position as a man of god.

3. stabbing with spears as the rooster crows

two things are standing out to me here:

first of all, stabbing fyodor with spears as a means of execution is interesting to me considering how jesus also was stabbed by a spears before being taken down from the cross after he gives up his life (following the “my god, my god, why have you forsaken me?” line—which was quoted in the last chapter!)

i cannot remember if jesus is also stabbed before then, but that is the one i remember the most.

the second thing that jumped out to me about this line was the part about the rooster crowing.

in the new testament, when jesus is betrayed by judas, he warns peter that before the cock crows, he (peter) will have betrayed him (jesus) three times.

what are the implications of that? i can’t really say, maybe it has something to do with why bram later gets stabbed with the holy cross sword and why he later works under fukuchi/fyodor. but it felt like an intentional nod to this part of the passion of christ.

4. bram as the devil

this is perhaps another reach, but i’m including it anyways.

before jesus re-enters jerusalem and the events of the passion of christ, he fasts for 40 days in the desert, where he is tempted from the devil (each of the gospels talks about this differently).

but anyway, this does say something. if bram is the devil, and considering all of fyodor’s positioning and religious imagery surrounding him—i feel the jesus references are very intentional. fyodor is deliberately positioned as— if not jesus, then definitely at least a disciple, or a messenger of god, almost supernatural in energy and appearance.

and with all the buddhist references to angels scattered throughout this arc—i think there’s a lot to be unveiled about fyodor yet. we definitely haven’t seen the last of him. but i’m excited to find this all out later!

[loudclan-clangen]

Alright, now I'm curious, what are the rules of StarClan's Oneway Dunktank? Are there cats who can't touch it (mediators for sure but anyone else?) Do healers meet there every half moon? They can sacrifice a life to speak directly to StarClan but what about other times?

(Also you're not gonna believe this, I looked up effects of crude oil exposure and studies indicate it may cause Anemia and low white blood cell count, so maybe she got a bleeding disorder because she can't stay out of the Forbidden Jacuzzi).

VERY LONG, LOTS OF TEXT, SORRY I GOT EXCITED TO LORE DUMP

The rules/powers of the Black Water Pool and Starclan are intentionally very nebulous. 1. Because I think starclan is more effective as a mysterious force than a clearly designated entity, and 2. Because I would like to have some flexibility going forward in the comic regarding the powers/rules of starclan. Here's what's clearly defined:

Any cat can touch the oil, like physically speaking. They will not just drop dead unless something else is going on that is worsened by the experience. But something may be worsened by the oil, especially if they are deeply exposed to it, like swimming in it or ingesting it the way one might if they weren't specifically trained in how to interact with it safely (like a healer or a leader). This leads to rumors of cats being cursed with terrible visions (hallucinations), disease (coughs caused by respitory damage), or wounds (chemical burns from prolonged exposure) because they touch the Black Water without permission. These could be actual curses from starclan, or they could be biological reactions to the oil, but that doesn't really matter because the cats believe that they are curses. (If that makes sense). For this combination of reasons, (religious belief and biological evidence), cats with open wounds, bad coughs, or who are actively pregnant are absolutely not allowed to touch the oil and are encouraged not to be near it. (Excluding dried oil worn by healers, we've covered in an earlier post that that is a stable form that isn't going to pollute others). This is justified by the healers as being times when one does not want to tempt death, and that being near the pool brings one's spirit closer to the dead, which is good for communing with them or asking them for favors, but bad when you are fighting for/actively creating life.

All of the leaders and their leadership teams have meetings staggered throughout the moon. Leaders and deputies meet on a full-moon, healers meet on a half-moon, and mediators meet on a new moon. (Gatherings also happen on full moons, just later in the day/night. The clans meet the leaders at the gathering place.) Healers might meet at the Black Water Pool but they do not always. Specifically, the Freezingclan healers refuse to meet at the Black Water, so if they want all of the clans' healers to meet they have to pick another place, usually the gathering place for simplicity. Since the healers can only commune with Starclan by sacrificing a life, they don't do it on a monthly basis and not meeting at the Black Water isn't inconvenient for them.

The healers (and leaders) can only speak directly to Starclan by sacrificing a life period. One of my biggest issues with the actual books is that speaking to Starclan is so casual that they constantly have to justify the cats not being able to in order to maintain any form of mystery or miscommunication, or risk making beloved characters look like jerks for not telling the living cats something important/make the entirety of Starclan look less powerful by claiming that they just "didn't know". My very simple solution to this is to put a layer of separation between them. In order to talk to the dead you have to die. This means that characters will only do so if they feel it is VERY important and they are certain that Starclan will give them a helpful answer, which they will not always do. (Why doesn't Wildfirecry ask Starclan how to cure Rosehippaw? Because he knows that there is a very high likely hood that the answer is "you can't" and then he'll lose both his daughter and a life that he could have used to help his clan in a more effective way).

Circling back to how normal cats are meant to contact starclan if they aren't allowed to touch the Black Water Pool by themselves, we finally get to talk about Loudclan burials! (This idea has been rattling around in my brain since the bonus art for Moon 18!) Okay, so: When a cat dies, the ground on the mountain is too hard and shallow for them to really be effectively buried. Due to this, the body is placed into a shallow dip dug into the ground and then covered by a pile of heavy stones in a make-shift cairn. The cairn discourages larger scavengers, like foxes or ravens, who might carry pieces of the deceased away, but allows smaller scavengers like mice and insects to eat away the fleshy bits. After a few moons, (during which family and friends are encouraged to keep their distance and learn to live without the deceased) when the scavengers are finished and all that is left are clean bones, the body is exhumed and repositioned so that the skull is left exposed outside of the cairn that covers the rest of the body. This is meant to allow cats to speak directly to the spirit of specific dead clan mates, though there is, of course, no expectation that the spirit speak back. (This is what we see Fiercestripe do in the Moon 18 Bonus Art). All burials happen in a field of forget-me-nots (small, blue. five petal flowers) as they cover the scent of decay, and therefore the cairns/graves are often decorated with them, along with other flowers or plants that may have been special to the deceased. Less commonly, a family member may ask to take a piece of the deceased from the cairn, such as a small tail bone or claw that they will wear to "carry the deceased with them". This is only allowed if the cats are known to have a close relationship, and is very frowned upon if the requestor is not a close family member or lifelong mate.

The major exception to all of this "Starclan is nebulous and distant" stuff is when I draw ghosts (like Bluepaw talking to Owlstar, which, admittedly, I drew before I had a good grasp of what I wanted to do with spirits and starclan). I know that it sort of negates that distance but... I just think it's fun. I think it's more fun to see what the spirits have to say (on occassion) than strictly sticking to never seeing Starclan outside of the Black Water Pool. So for those instances just remember that you, as the audience are getting sort of a third person omniscient view. You can see the ghosts but the characters in the story cannot (unless it is stated that they can due to like ghost sight or something).

Of course, as I said at the beginning, I'm trying to remain flexible, and I'm sure I'm going to break all of these rules at some point, but if I do my job correctly, then moments when these rules break should be important, and not just because I'm disregarding or forgetting them.

On a completely different note: You're not gonna believe this but I actually did know that! I did a decent amount of research into the effects of oil exposure when i was thinking up the Black Water Pool and yeah! It absolutely has played a part in Eklutna's condition. She's had hemophilia since birth, (which very simply means that her blood doesn't clot very well (for all of you biology nerds out there yes i know that it is rare for a cis female to have full hemophilia but it is possible if both of her parents had it)), but that has 100% been worsened by her love of swimming in "the forbidden jacuzzi". As long as we are sharing fun facts: exposure to crude oil while pregnant, while not always, can occasionally cause birth defects like weak lungs!

[androgynousblackbox]

Lucifer having no real issue with Alastor being a violent monster (he has seen it all anyway, nothing shocks him), but fucking loves him when gets to see his soft side VS Alastor adoring when Lucifer shows his more violent/dominant/terrifing side and doesn't mind the soft moments because it's his king.

There is no real competition, everyone wins.

[pocketramblr]

you know im thinking. im thinking maybe Yoichi wasn't even that into captain hero as an adult, but AfO kept bringing LITERALLY every conversation back to that because he decided to Be The Demon Lord and so Yoichi like, can't get an argument in unless he uses the same material so he's like 'oh my god i haven't even thought about that comic in ten years but even i know the bad guy didn't win. you should not be basing you whole identity, business model, and world destruction plan on your five-second impression of a comic book bad guy who didn't even win! also you shouldn't kill people!'

[fellthemarvelous]

Invisible scars

(TW: religious trauma)

Looking at me, you wouldn't know that I've survived religious trauma. The marks of religious trauma are seldom visible. In fact, I had no idea for the longest time that I had religious trauma (I thought it was a thing that happened to other people). I simply spent decades questioning the reasons I felt like I was so broken on in the inside. I kept trying to figure out what I was doing wrong and why I never felt happy or like I was never able to connect to anyone. I had no idea that my experience with the church as a small child is what shaped me into the anxiety-ridden, majorly depressed disaster creature I am today.

I spent 12 years learning inside of Catholic schools. It has taken me more than 20 years to process and deconstruct, and I am always going to be a work in progress. I was brainwashed into believing the very worst about myself, and I was always just beyond saving because I had the misfortune of being a woman in a church that taught us that women experience pain during childbirth as a natural consequence of Eve eating the apple, which is why they enjoy making us suffer in the first place. They taught us that Adam ate the apple because Eve seduced him, so even though Adam also ate the apple, his sin still wasn't as bad as Eve's because she did it first and used sex to get him to do the same. They placed the blame for Original Sin squarely on Eve and thus onto every single girl who entered the church. If a boy did something to me that I didn't like, it's probably because I did something to provoke him first.

Do you know what I learned to do at a very young age just to be able to cope with that?

I learned to use humor to deflect when I was struggling. I smile when I don't want people to know I'm sad. I laugh at inappropriate times, especially when I'm uncomfortable. I learned to bottle up all of my emotions because expressing anything other than happiness is bad. I learned to compartmentalize. I taught myself how to pull out the right emotion for the right occasion because I was always striving to be who I thought everyone else wanted me to be. It was exhausting.

In the midst of all of this, I'm trying to figure out which parts of me are really me and which parts of me are things that were put into my head. If you've experienced indoctrination, you know what I'm talking about. They pulled us apart as small children and placed us in specific boxes and told us that deviating from the norm was bad.

Crowley is a fallen angel. His change from angel to demon is drastic on the outside.

You know he fell and that his wings turned black and he ended up in a pool of boiling sulfur. It's the reason Crowley is so easy to sympathize with. He suffered unfairly because of arbitrary rules that deemed him unforgivable. He's accepted that part of himself. He's clever and creative and it has helped him find ways to get out of doing his job for centuries. Hell doesn't care how jobs get done just as long as someone does them, and at this point humanity is doing more to damn themselves than the demons are able to keep up with. They're tired and overworked. Hell is overpopulated even though it should be infinite in size. Crowley wants no part of that system because he sees it for what it is, just as he sees Heaven for what it is. He has the marks to prove that he is one of the damned, but that has given him all the perspective he needs to see that both sides are fucked up and toxic and "irredeemable" (just like him). He has yet to fully let go of the hold Heaven has over him because of how badly he got hurt.

Aziraphale is still an angel.

He never fell, and he doesn't know why. He has lied to God. He has lied to Gabriel repeatedly. He lies to protect Crowley. He lies to protect humanity.

Remember, Crowley and Aziraphale started off in the same place.

They both started off as angels who were created to do God's bidding. Aziraphale is the one who told Crowley what he'd heard about everything shutting down in 6,000 years. He was simply trying to make conversation. He didn't think it was something Crowley would object to. Angels were just supposed to go along with God's plans, but Crowley had a different opinion and was vocal about it. Where did Aziraphale get his information in the first place? Why does nobody ever ask this question?

Aziraphale knows Heaven is toxic. He's not blind. We need to move past this idea that because he still has love for God that he doesn't know Heaven is fucked up. He never fell, and it's something he still fears because who the hell doesn't fear the thought of eternal torment, especially if you know it's real? God has never cast him out of Heaven though and he doesn't know why. It's probably something that hangs over his head like the Sword of Damocles.

Letting go is not an easy task. Aziraphale has always been an angel. He didn't have his identity ripped from him the same way that Crowley did. Crowley had to adapt to a brand new way of existing because he was cast out of Heaven.

Crowley's trauma is evident on the outside. Aziraphale's trauma is hidden on the inside. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it isn't there.

Crowley was an angel and then he was a demon, but he doesn't want to be labeled as either.

Aziraphale has only ever known how to be an angel. He's only ever known the ways of Heaven.

I'm only in my early 40s. It has taken me 20+ years to undo 12 years of religious abuse. Aziraphale is immortal. He and Crowley have abandoned their jobs, but four years in the space of millions isn't a lot. No one overcomes indoctrination in four years. Especially when you had millions of years of blind obedience indoctrinated into you. It simply does not work that way no matter how much you want to believe it can.

It has taken me more than two decades to learn how to stop hating myself. I still have no idea how to love myself, but it's something I'm trying to learn.

My entire identity was wrapped up in what the church told me it would be. Once I fully denounced it and all organized religion, I found out I had no idea who I was. No one had prepared me for a life outside of this one very specific identity and role that I was expected to fill based on a very specific box I was placed into.

I still struggle with black and white concepts. It's hard to unlearn when you have no other basis for comparison, but that doesn't mean it's impossible. It means that these changes do not and will not ever happen overnight.

The fall didn't just affect the demons though. It affected the angels as well. Look at how tightly wound the angels are. They're always trying to do the good thing, but they have no idea what that actually means, and you realize this when Uriel asks The Metatron if they had done something wrong. They are scared of making mistakes, but none of them know what they are supposed to be doing since Gabriel disrupted the status quo. You can see they are unsure of themselves and of each other. The concept of free will is so foreign to them, but Aziraphale showed all of them that it was in their grasp when he allowed Gabriel and Beelzebub to decide where to go so they could be together.

It takes a lot of audacity (and sheer ignorance) to dismiss Aziraphale as power-hungry and abusive.

Aziraphale did nothing to punish Gabriel and Beelzebub. He allowed them to leave because they were in love with each other, and he knows what that feels like. He thought he was about to get the same fate with Crowley until The Metatron showed up and refused to take no for an answer.

He doesn't want to fix Heaven because he thinks it's perfect. If he thought it was perfect he wouldn't want to fix it.

Aziraphale is going back into the Lion's Den. He knows what he's going up against. He's been humiliated and belittled and abused by Heaven for thousands of years.

His scars are there even though you can't see them, and he hides his pain with humor and silliness.

When I see people advocating for Aziraphale to suffer even more because they don't think he has suffered enough, I find myself sitting back in one of those classrooms in Catholic school being told that I deserve the bad things that happen to me because I somehow failed to measure up to some impossible metric. The cruelty of that mindset aimed at Aziraphale is kinda the reason Crowley hates Heaven in the first place because he's been there too.

And as someone who is processing religious trauma, it's disheartening to see people say that because Aziraphale has yet to fully let go of Heaven that he deserves harsher treatment. Crowley would definitely not agree with that sentiment.