Happy Good Friday ✝️

I attended a The Oh Hellos ( @theohfficialhellos )  concert this past Friday, which happened to coincide with Good Friday.  One of there songs, Caesar, describes Christ’s Passion, so I had to make a comic and give it to them (I was able to give it to their merch guy, I hope the rest of band saw it!)

On an aside, that night, the concert, was particularly healing for me, as I’ve been going through some dark valleys lately.  Sometimes Gods love appears in the form of a banjo ya know?

Reblog to hug the person you reblogged this from and tell them that everything's going to be okay

forget Susan and Lucy (don’t) but please don’t tell me Lewis didn’t like female characters when Polly “don’t touch the obviously cursed bell, you absolute walnut” Plummer, Jill “my litigious bestie and I are here to fight the Antichrist” Pole and Aravis “‘I did not do any of these things for the sake of pleasing you’” Tarkheena exist

YOU want to see that man in a fit of despair. I also would like that but I want him in a church about it

The difference between Howl and Gen is that Gen won't try and weasel his way out of the things he really really doesn't want to do.

daisy updating the team on how things are going with sousa:

I’m so interested to know how other people perceive the team and Daisy’s arc in the beginning of season 4. I feel like I’ve seen a lot more of the “I’ll never forgive the team for how they treated her in S4” sentiment recently, which is interesting because I’ve never taken that perception away from that storyline at all.

Did the team say or do hurtful things? Yes, for sure. (I usually see the aforementioned comment on videos on that one scene with Daisy, Mack and Fitz)

But does Daisy also do and say hurtful things? I honestly think so.

That’s what makes that part of the season so phenomenal to watch, story wise. There is not black and white, good or bad, there just is. That is the reality of grief, that is the reality of mental health struggles, that is life.

There are no “right” answers when coping with the impossible, honestly. I think there are healthy and unhealthy ways to handle things, sure, but it’s not really a moral issue, on its face.

I mean, between the team and Daisy there are some rough interactions. Fitz is certainly a little hypocritical when he’s criticizing how Daisy handles things, given that he wouldn’t have reacted well if it had been Jemma. But He has been there for Daisy, up until this point at least, with Ward, her powers, they’ve been through a tremendous amount together. He feels abandoned and, yeah, he’s expressing it in a less than ideal way. But he cares. You know he cares about her. He and Mack wouldn’t be so angry if they didn’t care.

Mack is upset when he finds out Yo-Yo’s stealing the bone pills for her because 1) he’s been lied to for months, and 2) more importantly, it makes it seem that Daisy doesn’t trust him enough to directly come to him for help. That’s the thing. He would’ve helped her, probably given her anything she needed medically. She never needed to get Yo-Yo to steal any of it. It’s frustrating, it hurts. Mack is genuinely a deeply loving person, you know it’s killing him to not be able to get through to her.

Everyone on that team wants to help her, more than anything. They are begging her to let them in. I mean, lest we forget Coulson gave up his fucking job, in part, to keep chasing any lead he has on her.

When blaming the team for the rockiness at the beginning of season 4, you’re completely ignoring the fact that Daisy is actively running from them the entire time. She doesn’t want them to find her, and I really get it, honestly I do. I deal with things the way she does, radio silence, isolation, running away, being avoidant, self destruction, etc, etc.

Who could blame her, honestly? The anger and the self hatred and the guilt and the grief. Lord knows I’d take off, shut myself out. How do you even begin to manage that kind of pain, especially when it’s still fresh?

Well, you manage it any way that you can. For Daisy that means trying to atone for all of the pain she caused, which, are also things that caused her pain. Especially at the beginning of the season, it doesn’t matter how much she’s told that she is forgiven. Lincoln was at peace with his decision to sacrifice himself, Mack forgave her for hurting him while she was under the influence of Hive. Nobody is directly blaming her, except for herself. To try to heal from the pain she is in, would mean being able to extend herself grace, mercy. The only person who needs to forgive her, is herself. And she just- can’t.

She believes that all she does is hurt the people around her, which is what she is grasping onto to justify hurting herself. The hard truth of living that way is that when you’re stuck in your own, self harm, self hatred, shame-spiral is that you are the only person who can break out of it.

That’s a huge part about what I love about the storytelling of this arc. It’s genuinely some of the best mental health representation I’ve seen in a show like this.

Obviously, mental illness is not your fault. Being stuck in a bad place is not your fault. Daisy is not at fault for her grief. Her descent into isolation and a self-hatred, suicidal, shame-spiral does not in any way mean that she is a bad person. But there’s only so much another person can do when it comes to a battle that is completely contained within your own brain.

The team never stopped caring about her. Coulson, May, and Yo-Yo, specifically, never gave up on her. That’s important. She would’ve most likely been dead if they had stopped giving a shit about her. That’s significant.

But they’re not mind readers.

To go back to the scene with Mack and Fitz too. I think that scene is really important because it’s Daisy being confronted with the reality that her actions, her running away, isolating herself, really is hurting the people that love and care about her. She runs away to protect them from that very reality, of course, but how could they know that?

She doesn’t want them to care, and she hopes that if she just pushes them hard enough, if she bares her metaphorical fangs, they’ll stop. She’s accepted being alone, she’s accepted her own self destruction, because even if it hurts them at first, even if she’s absolutely miserable, they’ll be safe. Inside, she’s unwilling to admit that she needs them, and she’s acting in a way that allows her to avoid the cognitive dissonance of her actions (i.e. yo-yo stealing the pills they’d willingly give her if she asked).

But the fact that she’s hurting them doesn’t push them away. It just makes everything hurt more for everyone. She wants to embody that hurt, she’s cannibalizing her self to try to take on that pain but it doesn’t make anything better.

This storyline is not a case of right and wrong, if anything it’s an antithesis to it. It’s about how the ambiguity of life and grief and mental health are like tangled strings, messy and knotted, it’s about the love and effort and dedication it takes to hang on to/fight your way back to the people that love you, it’s about the strength it takes to carry on and forgive yourself, and, as May tells Daisy once she comes back, it’s about that: “you can’t choose who cares about you”.

Silm Ways to Die

Kill a dragon and then yourself Run afoul of the Kinslaying Elves Be crushed by God with the biggest mountain Break both your arms and then drown in a fountain

Dumb ways to die So many dumb ways to die Dumb ways to die-ie-ie So many dumb ways to die

Set on fire by your dad Make Sauron really mad Be poisoned by a javelin thrust Fight all the Balrogs then spontaneously combust

Dumb ways to die So many dumb ways to die Dumb ways to die-ie-ie So many dumb ways to die

Insult some Dwarves to their face Get crushed by Morgoth's mace Take advice from the guy who's really cursed Stabbed by your best friend; that's just the worst

Dumb ways to die So many dumb ways to die Dumb ways to die-ie-ie So many dumb ways to die

Enrage the father of the Black Sword Fight a suicidal battle with the Dark Lord Believe what Sauron says about your wife is true I wonder … what does this Silmaril do?

Dumb ways to die So many dumb ways to die Dumb ways to die-ie-ie So many dumb ways to die

Have a bunch of kids and then eat yourself alive Have one great kid then refuse to be revived Get thrown off a wall while kidnapping your cousin Jump in a volcano after stealing a Silmaril Have such amazing hair that it kills you They may not rhyme, but they're quite possibly

Dumbest ways to die The dumbest ways to die Dumbest ways to die-ie-ie-ie So many dumb So many dumb ways to die

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Characters referenced as well as explanations are under the cut in case you want to guess:

Túrin Turambar (killed Glaurung and later threw himself on his sword) Unspecified residents of Alqualondë, Doriath, and Sirion Ar-Pharazôn (buried under falling hills in Aman. He was probably not crushed by Taniquetil itself, and is possibly not technically dead, but poetic license.) Ecthelion (in The Fall of Gondolin he's said to have lost the use of both his arms but still managed to kill Gothmog the Balrog by stabbing him with a spike on his helmet and then throwing them both into a fountain)

Amrod (in one version he was asleep on the Swan-ships when Fëanor set them on fire) Celebrimbor (refused to give Sauron the location of the Three Rings, so Sauron tortured him to death, shot him full of arrows, and displayed his corpse as a war banner in front of his relatives) Aredhel (killed by a poisoned javelin thrown by her husband Eöl) Fëanor (fought with several Balrogs almost alone and received mortal wounds, and his body fell to ashes as his spirit left him)

Thingol (insulted the Dwarves who had set the Silmaril in the Nauglamir for him, so they killed him) Finwë (killed by Morgoth while defending Fëanor's house. In some versions his head is said to have been crushed.) Orodreth (listened to Túrin's counsel about the bridge of Nargothrond, which caused it to be discovered and lead to his death) Beleg (tried to free Túrin and was mistaken and killed by him for an Orc)

Mîm (killed by Húrin for his betrayal of Túrin) Fingolfin (rode out to duel Morgoth alone after Dagor Bragollach) Gorlim (betrayed Barahir's outlaws to Sauron in exchange for being set free to be with his wife; Sauron then killed him since his wife was already dead) Dior (refused to give up the Silmaril which led the Fëanorians to attack Doriath)

Ungoliant (had many spider children including Shelob and eventually ate herself when her hunger grew too great) Míriel (spent her spirit in giving birth to Fëanor and then bound herself to stay in Mandos forever) Maeglin (laid hands on Idril during the Fall of Gondolin and was thrown from the walls by Tuor) Maedhros (cast himself into a fiery chasm after he was burned by the Silmaril. I really don't think it can have been any named volcano but "gaping chasm filled with fire" does fit the technical definition of "volcano") Glorfindel (fought a Balrog on a mountain pass who dragged him off the cliff to his death by his hair)

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Thanks for playing! Remember to never 1v1 a Balrog, love not too well the work of your hands, never swear any oaths, and always listen to your wife.

Rewatching the pilot for comfort reasons, and the way Coulson approaches May in the office about wanting her on his team... Tells her it's not a combat op gig, how they'd be the ones picking the ops, making the calls... No red tape... And he quips with his stupid smirk, amused, "This is where they actually make the red tape, isn't it? I always wondered."

She smiles. She misses it. Misses the action. Misses him. She confined herself to a desk bc she couldn't trust herself in the field after Bahrain. She can't get hurt again at a desk (besides a nasty paper cut 💀)... But that doesn't mean she doesn't miss her old life in the field. She just prioritized keeping her emotions securely under lock and key over what she wanted bc it's what she thinks she deserves after what happened. She can't afford to hurt anyone else. It's safer this way for everybody.

Thank goodness one (1) Phillip J. Coulson convinced her to leave the desk and red tape creation behind to "just drive the Bus." 🥹🫶🏻