mynameiscarat

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Hello <3

Fuschia my darling child my star my absolute nightmare wretch <3

where's all the uh...Gormenghastlies? out there? I am like 100 pages in to this thing and I'm in love, it's like a novel about the world in Victor Hugo paintings

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<3

bc wtf do you mean i had to read the book to find out when benitez announces his papal name lomeli/lawrence sinks to his knees. HIS KNEES

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I'm thrilled about "It: welcome to Derry"

It's not even because of the TV series itself, but because of It fandom.

I loved to watch it thriving, painting, discussing, writing, i loved the love itself. And I was deeply sad to watch it going into indefinite hiatus. Recently I even read a reddit thread about "dead fandoms". And one of frequently noted was "it fandom".

And now it will have a comeback. Yes, it will be mostly about new characters, but still new people will be drawn to original IT movies. And old people will remember them.

Oh what a comeback. What a comeback.

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Wow. We're lucky, so lucky

I love him so much if you guys couldnt tell already

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Attention, conclave hive, I have some info for you

So, there was a French artist Jehan Georges Vibert, who painted Catholic cardinals a lot. I think his paintings are a lot like Berger's Conclave - they depict members of higher priesthood in very human, very warm manner. And they're certainly very attentive to cardinal's outfits.

"Cardinal's friendly chat"

"A difficult choice"

"A fine point"

And believe me, there are many more awesome, detailed paintings for us conclavers to see and appreciate.

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<3

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More Benítez in Kabul.

I think that there is an astonishing lack of fics about Benítez's past in the Congo, Baghdad and Kabul, etc, or even with heavy emphasis on them. Or I just accidentaly scrolled past. So if anyone has any recommendations, I'm all ears lol

Also SHAMELESS self promo, Commissions are open, also support me on Patreon and Ko-fi, info is in pinned post!!

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Conclave guys play boardgames. Just imagine it

I think Vincent Benitez could suggest boardgames as a team-building activity, because they allow to sit around, talk and have fun. Also because boardgames are popular, and pope Innocent keeps up with trends

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WOWWWW

'The Golden Compass', 'The Subtle Knife', The Amber Spyglass' & 'La Belle Sauvage' by Takumi.

Cover art for the Japanese editions of the 'His Dark Materials' trilogy, and book 1 of 'The Book Of Dust' trilogy written by Philip Pullman.

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🔥 Debunking Mazes and Monsters: The Film That Pathologized Imagination

In the thick of the 1980s moral panic, when fear reigned louder than facts, Mazes and Monsters arrived as a made-for-TV movie masquerading as cautionary tale. Based on a “true story” that was already thoroughly distorted by the media, the film did not aim to understand role-playing games, imagination, or escapism—it aimed to criminalize them.

This wasn’t an honest attempt to explore mental health. It was propaganda designed to incite fear.

The premise is simple and incendiary: a group of college students playing a Dungeons & Dragons-style game (thinly veiled as "Mazes and Monsters") spiral into psychological breakdowns, with protagonist Robbie (played by Tom Hanks) descending into delusion and believing he is his character. He abandons reality. He gets lost in fantasy. He loses his mind. The message is clear: indulge in fantasy, and you’ll lose your grip on the real world.

This film didn’t just miss the mark—it aimed at the wrong target.

🎭 Pathologizing the Imaginative Mind

Fantasy, creativity, and roleplay are not dangers—they’re lifelines. They’re coping mechanisms, community builders, storycraft tools, and often forms of safe emotional processing. But Mazes and Monsters cast them as red flags. It portrayed role-playing as a threat to mental stability rather than what it truly is: a powerful extension of it.

As someone with a background in criminal psychology and defense, I see how this kind of narrative does actual harm. It seeds distrust toward neurodivergent individuals, introverts, creatives, and anyone using fantasy as a healthy outlet. It frames creativity as pathology. That is not only incorrect—it’s dangerous.

📜 A Product of Its Panic

We must remember the cultural moment from which this movie was born: the Satanic Panic. Fear-mongering news outlets, religious groups, and self-appointed “experts” were demonizing everything from heavy metal to D&D, claiming they led to occult practices, insanity, or worse. Mazes and Monsters is a cinematic artifact of this delusion—a fever-dream of moral anxiety wrapped in network drama packaging.

But unlike mere fiction, this film has real-world consequences. It contributed to decades of stigma against gamers, fantasy writers, LARPers, and creative youth. It gave worried parents a scapegoat, and anxious institutions a reason to ban, restrict, or shame harmless activities.

🔥 Why I Scorch It

Because this film criminalized fantasy. Because it painted mental illness as melodrama. Because it vilified escape, imagination, and self-expression. Because it added fuel to a cultural fire that burned countless kids at the stake of public opinion.

I scorch it because people like me—those who grew up roleplaying, dreaming, storytelling, building rich inner lives—were told for decades that we were sick, unstable, or dangerous. I scorch it because it continues to linger, subtly infecting how fantasy is viewed in public discourse.

This isn’t just about a movie. This is about every teen who was told to throw away their dice or their sketchbook or their fantasy novel. It’s about reclaiming what Mazes and Monsters tried to take: the right to imagine without shame.

🔚 In Closing

Fantasy is not the enemy. Delusion is not caused by dice. And no, a game won’t make you forget who you are— but bad media will try to tell others you have.

Let this be a formal rejection of Mazes and Monsters and every cultural echo of it. Let us tell better stories—about fantasy, about coping, about creativity, about mental health. Stories that honor the power of play, instead of fearing it.

And to Mazes and Monsters? You’re not welcome in my pit.

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Heck, and I though I'd known everything about satanic panic

Perhaps the strangest individual manifestation of the Satanic Panic is Jehovah's Witness' fear of Smurfs.

According to ex-members, in the 80s, the Jehovah's Witnesses had a panic about Smurfs. We're familiar with claims that a pop culture property - or all, in fact - are Satanic in terms of symbolism. But Jehovah's Witnesses claimed they were literally possessed.

Grown adults told stories of a Smurf doll coming to life when it entered a Kingdom Hall, and running around yelling "I LOVE SATAN". They claimed that Smurfs on curtains and blankets would come to life, jump off the object and into reality, and bite people while they were asleep.

JWs have this panic with A Lot of things, but Smurfs are the most famous, and you should google it just to see how common it was and how many people tell this story. This post, meanwhile, ties it into a panic over a famous urban legend about a haunted Toys 'R' Us in California (once told in a TV special directed by Tobe Hooper!)

The Jehovah's Witnesses are a cult, and an especially insular one. Stories about demonic Smurfs walking out of curtains to bite people are silly, until you hear the parts about kids dragged out of bed to see all their toys being burned, and stories about ex-JWs whose acts of resistance after leaving the cult included buying the Smurfs they once had burnt in front of them. "My toy came to life and it was evil" should be a story told by kids; here, it was the kids who saw through the bullshit of adults who 100% believed that a toy came to life and ran around screaming.

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top-notch humour

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look, i love the the concept of house horror as much as everyone else on tumblr. but i can’t help but to think that it’s so… western-centric. what about all the post-soviet people who grew up and lived and died in apartment blocks. these places are haunted as fuck. the amount of trauma is immeasurable and so much can be done with this

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New ship! New ship! New ship! Ya'll it's been three years since I fell down The Terror sinkhole. I have wondered when the next ship and fandom would sneak up and whack me on the head, and it turned out to be Conclave! Who knew? Not me.

Firstly, while I enjoy the fetishistic and artistic aesthetic of Catholicism, I am not in the least bit interested in the pope, the papacy, Catholicism or religion in general. I'm a lifelong atheist, and while I am definitely neutral to positive about religion when it is not being used to murder or enslave people, it's not a subject that draws me in the way say, polar exploration in the mid nineteenth century has.

I saw ads for Conclave on Amazon, and gif sets on Tumblr floating by and thought 'Movie about old people and the pope? Eh, maybe not.' Then, I looked closer and saw that these are some of my very favorite old people. Ralph Fiennes = lifelong crush, Isabela Roselini = smoldering intensity, most beautiful woman to ever walk the earth. Stanley Tucci my beloved. John Lithgow my beloved. I heard that people really liked it from social media and thought 'I'll give it a try'.

Famous last words, lol. The movie is incredible, and I'm 2/3 of the way through the audiobook which is also incredible. I did not see Carlos Diehz coming. I don't think any of us did. Who is this soft, beautiful little man and why do I want to kiss him so badly? Cinnamon Roll Supreme. Lawrence/Lomeli is the perfect pathetic meow meow with a heart of gold, and his canon bond with Benitez is beautiful and moving and soft and sweet and very very easy to ship and write fic about.

I also love the film and the book! The other characters (Adeyemi, Tremblay, Tedesco, Agnes, Bellini) are all incredible and everyone plays their roles perfectly.

As an added bonus, Conclave fandom is incredibly open and chatty and friendly and kind. I pulled up this big rock and ya'll looked up at me and said "join us under the rock", and I did. Thank you.

I will maybe eventually get around to writing Pope - Vatican canon fic, but being that I don't really have the dopamine or focus (same thing) to research what every little Catholic thing is called, I want to steal these two away and put them in other places and times. I will be writing a LOT in the coming months or years.

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Conclave (2024) x text posts I found on pinterest [pt 2]

[pt 1]

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<3

i was watching pride and prejudice (2005) as we all should be doing. and yeah, you know this scene.