#teddy's rants

[teddyoverthinks]

Theme: Accepting Love; Trusting Joy; Moving Past Pain

Here is a prayer developed from a fanfiction excerpt, presented in three formats and as the original excerpt. Then a short essay on how the prayer might be used. For anyone new to my page, I then include an explanation of sacred reading and why I use fanfiction of all things to do it.

hopeful prayer format

Let me accept love and compassion, when they finally come to me. Let me turn my back on the old pain and loneliness. Let me trust in the new comfort comfort and joy. Let me move on.

self-assuring affirmation format

I can accept love and compassion, when they finally come to me. I can turn my back on the old pain and loneliness. I can trust in the new comfort and joy. I can move on.

willful vow format

I will accept love and compassion, when they finally come to me. I will turn my back on the old pain and loneliness. I will trust in the new comfort and joy. I will move on.

original excerpt

Necessary Context: In this The Hobbit fanfiction, dwarves have a tradition of saying “our friend deserves a song”. This takes the form of a song of comfort, a song to uplift the spirit, a song of solidarity, et cetera. Bilbo thinks this is lovely, and he wants to be included, but he isn’t. 

Passage:

“Thorin’s hard hug and husky whisper of how wrong he was warms him until he thinks his entire body is aflame, but…but—

—there is no song for him after, and now he thinks there never will be.

Is he truly such an abhorrent thing that they begrudge him friendship and the songs that come so easily from their lips for any other companion?

He gave his word and his heart to their quest, but the quiet, softly hurt place inside him hardens, bitter inside like a kernel. Perhaps it would be just as deadly if he prodded it. There will be no songs for me, he vows, and leaves the kernel of pain alone.

---

“I would sing for you here,” Thorin whispers into the back of his neck when they lie cuddled beneath a blanket that night. “Would you like that?”

He should. Bilbo’s chest leaps with surprise and pleasure, but the next moment, his eyes fill with tears. Shocked, he turns his face into his rough pillow (Thorin’s cloak, still smelling of smoke and Dwarf) to hide it. He would sing only here, not in front of everyone. What have I done? Have I even earned friendship from the Company?

---

“Bilbo,” he says, “oh, Bilbo, you should have said something.”

The kernel pierces him from inside at that. Bilbo wipes his face on his sleeve. “I…I didn’t want to have to ask.”

Thorin kisses the tip of his ear. “Then you will not.”

---

It is a clear, cold morning when Thorin emerges from the tent after he has healed enough to walk without buckling at the knees. “My betrothed deserves a song,” he says simply to the gathered Dwarves, Men, and even Elves, and begins a ballad in Khuzdul and Westron about a King and his consort, a song thousands of years old.

The tears in Bilbo’s eyes are tears of joy this time, and he can feel the hidden pain dissolving after so many months of hurt. Yet as the kernel slips from him, it pokes him one last time with a thought that brings a pang. 

What if he only sings before these people because I made him? 

No. 

He shakes his head and holds Thorin’s hand all the tighter, and smiles at his Dwarf when he is done.”

—seashadows, I Never Had a Single Song

prayer in practice

There is so much about this excerpt that I think about. I could write a whole other sermon about Bilbo’s coping mechanisms. There is a lot to think about, earlier on. (He allows himself to believe he is not worthy, rather than ask for the dwarven reasoning for not offering a song, or even try to guess it). I could also write about the importance of these community love languages. But the really, truly outstanding part of this piece is the healing that occurs at the end of the passage.

Bilbo’s decision to ignore that final thought impresses me every time. That kernel of hurt that he’s carried with him for so long is powerful, but he refuses to believe what it tells him. 

Sometimes we carry hurt with us to protect ourselves from more hurt. We desensitize ourselves to it. We think this helps, but it doesn’t. There comes a point when we are surrounded by comfort and we still don’t trust it. It is so important to choose to change that.

I remembered this excerpt because my friend was talking on the discord server about how nice it is that we have silly, fun roles. If you don’t use discord, roles are a practical feature so you can tag everyone with a certain role (like, you can tag all of the writers if you have a writing prompt). We have practical roles, but all active sever members end up with a few that are inside jokes and little descriptors of who we are.

@beatle411: “When I was a little and in a roleplay amino server, I was always so,,,, like the other 3 people there gifted each other roles all the time and never me. And I felt so left out, eventually I had to ask for roles and that didn't feel nice. So this is very nice, to have friends who just give them. And such funny ones at that.”

Because they’re a fellow Tolkien nerd, I immediately asked to send them this excerpt. I’ve been wanting to post about it for a while, but I was struggling with what to say about it. Our conversation really helped me narrow down what’s so cool about it. So, many thanks to Eddy. Also, a big shoutout to the server buddies for being such a lovely group. 

Anyway, the point is that this prayer applies to situations where we find ourselves healing and we notice that kernel of hurt. Maybe it’s fading, maybe it isn’t yet, but either way it is an opportunity to choose to have faith in something happier.

explanation of what you just read

In her book Praying With Jane Eyre: Reflections on Reading as a Sacred Practice, Vanessa Zoltan explains and demonstrates how she treats literature as sacred text. I highly recommend reading this book, as it’s incredibly interesting, helped me grow as a person, and explains the concept and process more thoroughly than I do here.

In short, the idea is that sacred texts aren’t accessible to everyone—some of us have religious trauma, for example—but there are other ways to find spiritual expression. In Praying With Jane Eyre, Zoltan references scenes from Jane Eyre, Harry Potter, Little Women, and The Great Gatsby where most sermons would reference the preacher’s chosen holy book. I grew up hearing sermons that referenced Christian bible stories, and I’d get caught up in my discomfort with the text. In some ways, that protected me from internalizing the biases of the religious community. Yet it also kept me from taking comfort in the words that genuinely helped others through hard times.  

I feel the need to clarify that Zoltan’s process isn’t about forming religions around books not intended to be religious material. Instead of mentioning a story about how David faced Goliath, she mentions a story of how Jane Eyre faced her abusive aunt. Sometimes, she prays with a quote from the book by adapting the words of the text into a self-affirmation. Zoltan doesn’t assume that everything in the text is good—for example, she doesn't assume that the ending of Jane Eyre is a happy one (which would have troubling implications). She simply assumes that there's a lesson buried within the text.

Zoltan’s process works much better for me than any associated with the organized religion I grew up with, but I’m not as close to the text of Jane Eyre as she is. I also found myself uncomfortable with treating Harry Potter as sacred, so Zoltan’s podcast Harry Potter and the Sacred Text was, unfortunately, not for me. I decided to begin collecting quotes from what I do read—which, okay, I’m an English major, so I could have used folk tales or ancient epic poems or twentieth-century short stories, because I do read plenty of those. It would work fine with any of them. Sacred reading even helps me understand folk tales from the audience’s perspective.

But I also read a lot of fanfiction, and I wanted to think about it in a new way. Fanfiction is a modern method of retelling stories. The act of retelling a story over and over is evidence that it is important to a great deal of people. Fanfiction is, legally speaking, not for profit. In this capitalist society that means people are telling these stories solely because they want to. That, in my opinion, creates an exponentially more spiritually honest work than one edited and sold to a publisher. Fanfiction writers, especially those who use the archive, trust that their target audience will find them.

I don’t mean to put fanfiction on a pedestal. It has its pitfalls, especially when it comes to elements of craft like visual description and reliance on clichéd tropes. Frankly, when I started, I thought I would get no more than a few good quotes, mainly from the really long fics. I didn’t expect my google doc of fic excerpts to grow to 200 pages and counting within a few months. But it did. Fic writers impressed me over and over once I began to look.

I wasn’t really sure what I planned to do with the quotes for a while, but I knew I wanted to share them with the world. Ultimately, I wanted to write sermons which pulled from transformative works as well as personal anecdotes—but this took time and practice. I began by simply sharing quotes that struck me, occasionally adding analysis in the tags.

Now, this account also has several prayer sheets like this. I always include Zoltan’s self assuring affirmation format, as well as my hopeful ‘let this happen’ prayer format and willful ‘I will work to make this happen’ vow format. Personally, I cycle through all of them, because I think all three versions of the prayer are important to internalize.

I have also written sermons as well as essays with discussions of sacred reading and retold stories. If you like this, you might be interested in the rest of my page!

[teacup-gathering-itself]

Harry raising Teddy is all perfect until you realize they are all that is left of the Marauder’s.

They’re the orphan sons of the Marauders.

They were supposed to be raised in houses overflowing with love and mischief, yet here they are, war orphans with seemingly impossible legacies to follow and live up to.

They are unique in that they are alone without the other.

[keytaryourheart]

slow journal 😵‍💫 w/ stickers from @petite-gloom's patreon

[5-pp-man]

It's probably never addressed in-game seeing as this is a dlc outfit (there might be an interview floating around somewhere that goes more in-depth about the design choices in the sogabe designs, but I haven't found anything so far) but it's pretty obvious that the little bear is meant to be Teddie (if the outfit isn't enough to convince you, it even says マスコット aka mascot in katakana, and well, Teddie is p4's mascot)

But I've been wondering about the other two, at first I dismissed them as just cutesy characters not meant to look like anyone in particular, but well... I looked at some other official art and I'm pretty certain the pink bunny is Nanako and the green frog is Yosuke.

"But Kanji has been shown making bunnies multiple times, why is this one in particular Nanako?" let's compare then, shall we;

On the left, from some p4 the animation art, a pink bunny with purple pants (that doesn't really match anyone besides Kanji himself, since his theme colour is purple), in the middle; Kanji's phone strap in the anime, just a simple pink bunny with no further characteristics. But on the right; a white bunny wearing Nanako's dress with a little pink flower.

"But this bunny is pink, not white! And the flower is white, not pink!"

Behold;

I rest my case.

And now, the frog.

So yeah. mystery-that-nobody-really-cared-about-and-if-they-cared-they-would've-immediately-come-to-the-same-conclusion-as-I-did-without-all-that-extra-research solved!

Though, a new question arises, why these 3?

[mysticfemme]

I still think one of my favourite times with my butch is from last year, he was at my house and I ended up napping wrapped up in his arms (let's be honest, when am I not napping?). he held me for who knows how long, and when I woke up he was gently rubbing the outside of my thigh, dipping lower every so often. I was half asleep still in his arms, and he started gently rubbing my clit over my underwear. he kept shushing me everytime I made a noise, telling me to go back to sleep. it was so cute and he was so gentle and caring and just thinking about it makes me blush 🥹💘

[sir-buddy]

Okay, time for yet another stupid NatM rant post.

So, in the second movie, Jed calls Larry's cell to tell him about what's happening, right? But given Jed's time period, he shouldn't even know what a phone is, let alone how to use one.

So my cracked out 3 AM explanation for this is that Larry was like "okay all of you are idiots I need someone to be responsible if something goes wrong" and so he goes full dad mode and teaches the museum how to use a phone and gives them his number in case something happens (which we all know it does).

(I also like to think that Jed and maybe Teddy were the only ones who listened.)

Jed knowing how to drive in the first movie, however, I have a completely different explanation for. I think it'd be really funny if Jed just somehow inexplicably figured out how to use the car properly (even though it's remote control but we see him actually using the steering wheel and Larry was kind of preoccupied so he couldn't use the remote so I'm just going to say the car can be driven manually.)

Then I thought it'd be even funnier if this was how the conversation went before Jed lost control of the car:

*They're both vibing when Octavius suddenly stops and looks over at Jed*

Oct: Wait a minute how the f*ck do you know how to drive?

Jed: I don't!

*They only then spin out of control.*

Anyway yeah thanks for sitting through my brain rubbish about how Jed knows how to do things he shouldn't.

[waywardted]

One last round of field notes 📝

[padfootastic]

Ahaha thank you for the nice comments in tags <3 i love Remus but he seems bit like a spineless people pleaser and after dating somebody who would rather lie about their feelings than have people be mildly upset with them..... I chose violence 🗡

no but ur so right because!!! i’ve been sleeping on this for a while but let’s talk about remus’ personality traits and how they have the potential to make him a bad/absent partner, at best, and an abusive one, at worst. everyone wants to turn him into this image of perfection just bc he’s such an ‘uwu victim’ figure in fanon but that’s SO far from the truth omg

(i am…just gonna put this remus character analysis under a cut bc it got unnecessarily long and i wouldn’t want u to read it if u didn’t want to lol)

so, for one, he’s manipulative. he has no combinations in twisting the truth or dodging it entirely for his own benefit. like, the man could stand in front of his dead best friend’s orphaned son & not even allude to the fact that he knew his dad. he had no problem bringing james & lily up in the most twisted ways possible to guilt/emotionally influence harry. so remus in a relationship would have the capacity to either knowingly or unknowingly manipulate his partner. the definition of gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss except more sinister.

next, his spinelessness. either as a defensive measure to deal w anti-werewolf hostility or as an innate personality trait, remus has the habit of just—not standing up for things. he looks away when his friends act like assholes, even when he’s in a position of authority (which yes, u can argue that he’s afraid of losing them but atp they’ve literally risked life & magic & azkaban for him so either way, he comes off badly—either he doesn’t mind himself, or he doesn’t fully trust their friendship, or it’s just easier to look away). in a relationship, this can manifest as bottling everything inside u until it makes u bitter or u violently unload on the other person in an entirely disproportionate manner. the dynamic would also be a bit skewed. the people pleasing u mentioned is also such a big thing that people usually overlook. when ur constantly trying to make the other person happy and don’t want to rock the boat, that is a cocktail for miscommunication and breakdown of relationships. ur also constantly putting the emotional burden of constructively dealing w issues on ur partner instead of doing it urself.

connected to his cowardice is his habit of running away when things get tough. remus is conflict avoidant; he does not like to put himself in a position where he has to take a decisive stance, especially if it’s against what others around him believe in. he runs away when things get tough, and tbh, for me, this comes from a constant spiral of self hatred & self victimisation, both of which stem from his experience as a werewolf. in every difficult situation, he centres himself & his discomfort and instead of dealing with it and moving forward for a constructive solution, he decides that stepping back from it altogether is better. which, yeah, works well for him bc he can temporarily put a pin in it but it’s kinda terrible for everyone’s who’s left behind. so i also think that remus is a profoundly selfish character who doesn’t look beyond the end of his own nose. u can imagine how those traits might manifest themselves in a relationship.

and his people pleasing!! so this might be verging on fanon but his gratitude and/or devotion to dumbledore sets an…interesting tone. it’s also another example of how he cannot conceive himself in any other term except as a victimised werewolf. the marauders did a lot for him, arguably even more than dumbledore’s token representation formula, but he never felt indebted to them the way he did for D. dumbledore also kind of makes him feel needed? validates his feelings? and that just speaks to a very twisted sense of self for me. which, again, won’t bode well for his other interpersonal relations.

also, on a very hc note, i also feel like remus just…does not have any significant capacity to love. he takes and takes and takes but doesn’t give much in return. this doesn’t even have to be an actively malicious decision, tbh, just a very self-centred one. he doesn’t realise how much he’s taking bc he’s only thinking about his own circumstances.

all of these are also just why i can’t see r/s working out in any healthy manner. remus is exactly antithetical to everything sirius is/believes in, and not even in the fun ‘opposites attract’ way. but that’s another rant no one asked for lmao

[homoeroticvillain]

love drawing random ocs that i dont talk about on here

[mommybard]

Whats it called if I just want to listen to people go off?

...Do...do people tend to NOT enjoy listening to people rant and rave about things that they think are important/care about/have a special interest in? Is that anything other than normal???

[twoshotsoffandom]

@paper-lilypie

OKAY! OKAY!! I AM DONE! ALL OF THE IDEAS ARE GONE!

Brainrot temporarily over I did not think it would take this long, take it, take it so I may rest.

Not sure how well it reads but these are not necessarily in order or anything.

[teddyoverthinks]

a society in which grief is associated with accidents

Today I’m thinking about this excerpt.

“How do you grieve your dead?” Thorin asked at length, curious. It was not a subject they had ever discussed. Since making his home in Erebor Bilbo had followed Dwarven customs in such things, for he was considered as good as a Dwarf by everybody under the Mountain, and Bilbo strived to be worthy of such regard.

“We usually don’t,” said Bilbo, and he could feel Thorin’s surprise in the sudden laxness of his arms. Then Bilbo explained – as he would explain to no other, for Thorin alone knew some of the secrets that all Hobbits kept closely guarded. They did not grieve, he explained, because death was simply a return to the earth that nurtured them, and as long as a Hobbit was placed in the ground, they were never truly gone. The earth gave, and the earth took; it was a cycle of growth and death that was as natural as breathing. What need was there for grief in that?

But accidental deaths, he told Thorin, were lives cut short before that cycle could complete. There was the boy, too – young Frodo Baggins, left alone, and Bilbo’s heart ached for him.

—Branches, xxSparksxx

This fic depicts Bilbo’s reaction to the deaths of Drogo Baggins and Primula Brandybuck, Frodo’s parents. Bilbo is upset by it, of course. It was a tragedy, even to Bilbo, who has at this point seen a great deal of death in and after the Battle of Five Armies. (For context, in this fic he has not seen the deaths of any of the heirs of Durin). 

Bilbo still doesn’t really know how to deal with grief. Like most of us, his best method seems to be letting himself feel it and accepting support until he’s well enough to do something with his feelings. I think in this fic he reaches out to Frodo. 

But what I’m really stuck on is the idea of a society in which grief is associated with accidents. I’ve seen the occasional truly untragic death, in which the loved ones of the person gone are sad to see them go but are fully glad that it happened the way and time that it did. But these deaths are the rarity. Most deaths I grieve, even for a moment when I hear about a stranger, are so complex. There are so many more options than a peaceful death in old age and an accident. 

Today, I’m grieving deaths that were on purpose. Deaths that are a result of individual and systemic violence. Deaths that come from a cultural lack of empathy that comes from a capitalist society which does not provide for it. I’m grieving dialysis patients and trans kids and victims of the police.

Right now I’m sitting with the anger and letting myself feel it. I don’t have a Thorin to hug, but reading this brought me some comfort. I’m venting a bit, right here. That’s also a step. And later I’m going to take action—I’m going to exercise my right to vote for the first time. 

But I’m also fantasizing about a society which voting won’t bring quite yet. One where people almost forget about violence. And I’m going to find hope that we can get there.

[teacup-gathering-itself]

Imagine for a second with me Teddy Lupin.

We know how children, no MATTER who raised them and how legendary they are, will ALWAYS think someone else is cooler just because they don’t live with them, yes? Awesome moving on.

So Harry Potter, Savior of the Wizarding World, raises this kid. And who would be the funniest person for Teddy to fan over?

Draco Malfoy.

Imagine the hysterics all of Harry’s friends get into.

“The Malfoy Obsession: Is it nature or nurture?”

Or “like father like son”

Or “wait wait I’ve seen this before, no wayyyyy!!??!”

Or even “Malfoy is UP to something, I just KNOW it”

But yeah Harry trying to be cool in front of his own child and failing miserably to the amusement of everyone alive. Draco included especially.

Add in a precocious crush? Let alone a celebrity crush on Draco? They’d DIE. Die you hear me.

[buggoblin2]

actually start the art?? WRONG! pace around room like a maniac listening to music and thinking of scenarios

[job-ross-the-second]

This low key reminds me of teddy Lupin and I Love that. He is like the best next gen character and yes I'm willing to fight anyone who has a problem with that.I'm not even that much of a next gen fan but this is my child like his parents maybe dead but I'm not.

[ravio-the-cabinet-man]

nooooooooo!!!! my big panda stuffie has a hole in her leg!!!!!! :(((((