EVERYONE(!) I’m Blazing This Post Because At This Pace We Might Barely Hit 1,000,000 Signatures—or

helio thoughts//tw religion, christianity

i know this is likely an unpopular opinion since a lot of this fandom has religious trauma, but i would kill for some redemption for helio or some positive helioic representation. it'd be just good, complex worldbuilding if it were solely fiction, but since it's so referential to christianity that ally literally says jesus instead of helio on several occasions i think they either have to really differentiate it or maybe add some complexity to the current 'all 'helioics' are bigots, your faith is evil' angle. because in fiction you can do that, but real religions aren't that simple. im not religious myself, but there have been times where i've been in really bad situations and the most welcoming, caring people are pastors. there is a good side to christianity, and in freshman year kristen wasn't a bad person. she believed in all the good things those pastors did, she helped victims of human trafficking, she fought against her family's racism even before she met her friends. her family was horrible and she was indoctrinated into a cult with the harvestmen, but her faith wasn't bad. religious trauma is not inherent to religion, it's abuse that people use religion to justify.

since s1 i have desperately wanted a good character to be introduced who worships helio like kristen did in freshman year with love and acceptance because that's who they believe helio is, and i don't want them to be proven wrong. tracker didn't give up on galicaea after kristen told her what she was like in the astral plane and worked to change her worship, and i think it would be really interesting to see someone like buddy go tracker's direction with helio instead of just rehashing kristen's character arc.

PALADIN KRISTEN. i will die on this hill.

i don't want kristen to lose her faith entirely. i think back to prompocalypse, talking to the ether the gods get their answers from, and saying into the ether that she cares. she wants a god that cares, not just about her but about all the good people she wishes she could help, because if there's nobody more powerful that cares then it's her responsibility to care for them and she's not a god. she couldn't trust her family to care, couldn't trust her church, couldn't even trust her god, and she had to step up and be the person who cares even though she's just a clumsy kid who got her girlfriend newspaper-copying putty for a joint anniversary/birthday gift.

[and then she makes cassandra, still desperate for that perfect god that she can trust to protect people for her. but cassandra, just like yes, is created and controlled by her and thus entirely dependent on her and her ever-changing ideals. kristen still only trusts herself to do right by people, so the only god she will accept is one that she designs to be just like her and indulge her every phase and that means without her there to decide what the god should be there is no god. there is no morality to a religion that bends to your every will because your actions don't have consequences - cassandra and yes weren't created to be good, just to give power to kristen when she wants it. and that means that all of the responsibility still falls on kristen to be good.]

because the alternative would be being complicit, and kristen cannot rest unless she is doing everything possible that she can to help people. and so she never rests. even doing nothing, she's wandering labyrinths in her head trying to be better and find the answer, and she can't let herself take a break from trying to be better without being plagued by guilt. she can't push let go of the guilt because she's seen first-hand what happens when people don't feel guilt or question themselves.

and in the summer starting junior year she and tracker break up and the guilt becomes unbearable and suddenly she can't remember why she let herself feel it. so she stops feeling guilty. she forgets to heal her friends, she devotes herself to her own body (my faith is mostly physical, tracker had once said, kristen doesn't remember what she meant by that) and she breaks all the promises she made to protect cassandra. she stops caring.

until she sees bucky again. until she sees her parents again. she remembers why she wanted to fight to stop bad things from happening to good people, and more importantly she remembers what happens when you don't question yourself. how mac and donna follow their beliefs blindly and never questioned whether they could be wrong if they could be better. how they promised to love her and left her to suffer, how helio let the people he swore to love suffer, and how she was leaving cassandra to suffer. and she doesn't realise until after that cassandra wanted to help. cassandra was always encouraging kristen to grow the church not just because she couldn't rely on kristen to keep her alive but because she knew kristen couldn't handle the responsibility of keeping her alive on her own.

kristen chose to be a cleric of cassandra because she thought cassandra was good and wanted them to have a religion. it was the only way to revive her, but if she can grow the church then kristen would be free to work on herself with cassandra being free to take care of her, not the other way around. as a paladin kristen could take an oath she will always believe in - an oath to care and love her friends, perhaps - and trust that cassandra's church will still be helping people on a large scale even when kristen needs a break. kristen can get swole and learn to fight and know in her heart that what she's fighting for is right. she can trust that cassandra wouldn't bless her if she didn't deserve it, and in that trust she doesn't have to worry so much about being a perfect person because she knows she's good.

listen. listen. as a pastor kid ex-ministry person who left the toxic religious group they were raised in. it’s not about cassandra being rad or not (she is i really think she is). it’s about whether or not kristen can make peace with what being devout means. if she can take that leap of faith. if she can really settle in on a belief system and ask others to do the same.

i think this arc is gonna be about kristen giving up on cleric and reclassing (my guess on barb) because this is about kristen finally FINALLY giving up on how she was raised. she didn’t need to a different god. she needs to reject, wholly, that lifestyle and figure out the best version of herself and what she needs. maybe she doesn’t need to be a cleric. maybe trying to force herself to be one is perpetuating the harm she escaped. maybe she can step back.

i think this will have HUGE complications. but it really feels like ally is interested in explored why kristen has struggled this whole time with this. maybe she doesn’t want to be a cleric at all.

episode 19 of me analysing d&d mechanics for storytelling purposes

enemies in d&d die as soon as they drop to zero hit points even if they have the exact same stats as the pcs. this depends on the dm, but that's how fantasy high works with i think the only exceptions being ragh and daybreak in freshman year. they cannot be healed from unconsciousness unless they are a main character, meaning the rat grinders WERE disadvantaged from the start by the game itself. if the bad kids were held to the same rules then kristen or k2 would have to reach touching distance to cast revivify on one person at a time, and even then as far as we know enemies in fantasy high cannot revive each other.

no matter how powerful they were or how much work they put in, the rat grinders would always be held back because when they die, they die. their only way out was to take the deal - in freshman year all of the bad kids would have died fighting the corn cuties if they had to play by the same set of rules. what would they have done if their only way back was to accept rage?

Being in any fandom:

you are cassandra. in the middle of being possessed by the spirit of your vengeful, undead domain and feeling the world split apart with the festering carcass of your ex-lover being restored to grandeur only so she can be devoured completely, someone familiar approaches from the deck of a flying ship in active battle. your vision is warped, you're barely conscious, you don't know how it's possible that you're still alive, the figure blurs further and splits in two. one calls out to you, the same voice that has been reaching out for you all along, the same voice that called out your name the very first time and brought you to life. you ignore her. the other - clothes a little tighter, some subtle makeup, a pair of bicycle shorts patterned with a flag not known to this world. she opens her mouth - her teeth are horrible. 'blimey', she says, and you feel again. you feel something that crushes against your bones and shocks still your rotten heart. something cuts itself loose from your chest and escapes with a virulent tear of pain through your throat. lightning, bright and sharp, gushes from your screaming maw to its true purpose, and then she's gone. it's over. 'blimey', it whispers into the ethos, a memory as much as a promise to the tragedy of a dying star that may die forever. but you feel something else, you remember something or perhaps you are only now recognising it that nothing can be done. something else that lived in that void of space, you think. nothing more than a collection of cells yet, and still the weight pushes you to your knees. two lines on a stick, you reason, perhaps not even a choice to be made at all. surely not a life to be lived, you tell yourself as the memory of possibility dissolves and the void envelops the very space that baby might have occupied.

'blimey', the whispers consume what's left of your aching heart. 'blimey', you echo.

is the big bad of senior year going to be a baby now??

feeling creative, so inspired, beautiful new day to create a mood board for an idea that i will never come back to

Kind of lazily done lineup of the gang since I finished freshman year earlier this week! :3 Gorgug is my fave

Remember when you used to be a rascal

clinging till i'm getting sentimental

now listen. i have absolutely no basis for this. but i want him to date ragh.

anarchist AND athletic? 👏is👏he👏single👏