#‘…and a better god’

[lulu2992]

Based on your last post how do you think the cult would have turned out and what do you think would be different if the seeds had the chance to heal from their trauma?

So, let’s imagine this is a perfect world in which they’ve managed to completely heal and put their traumatic pasts behind them. Let’s also consider the Voice is still real and asked Joseph to save at least 3,000 souls from the Collapse because I want to keep the prophetic and supernatural aspect of the story (and also justify the cult’s existence). But, since the Seeds finally have a chance to get better in this AU, let’s also say the Voice didn’t ask them to do anything violent; I don’t want it to ruin everything!

I’m going to start with Faith because… would she even be in the Project? If she had had access to professional help, she could have overcome her drug addiction and regained a taste for life without joining a cult. Maybe she wouldn’t even have come to Hope County to “detox”, as some NPCs say. I also imagine she would still be best friends with Tracey, who would have healed too. It’s a bit unclear which Faith created the Bliss and the Angels but, in this scenario, I don’t think the cult would need them anyway because they wouldn’t brainwash or torture anyone.

While I can see Jacob still training people in case they need to survive in harsh conditions or defend themselves, he wouldn’t “cull the herd” or experiment on living creatures anymore. No more sacrifices, no more conditioning, no more trials, no more brainwashing, no more Judges; just a group of people getting ready for the apocalypse. I guess he could still teach them how to use weapons because it seems everyone owns and shoots guns in Hope County anyway, at least for hunting. I think the Whitetail Militia existed before Eden’s Gate arrived (but was a bit different), so I guess it wouldn’t be considered abnormal for cultists to have a small army too; its members just wouldn’t terrorize the rest of the county. Actually, since we know Eli helped Jacob design and build bunkers, maybe they would still be “friends” and the Whitetails would be part of the cult.

John could still be The Baptist, people could still need to be Cleansed before joining the Project, and maybe he would hear their Confessions too, but because he wouldn’t have such an unhealthy relationship with sin and pain anymore, he wouldn’t make others suffer, psychologically and physically. No more tattoos, no more cutting people’s skin out, and maybe no more “Power of Yes”, either, since this obsession also came from his adoptive parents’ torture. I hope he also wouldn’t have such a fragile ego and a constant need for validation anymore, so he wouldn’t want to impress Joseph all the time or need his approval to convince himself he’s worth something as a person.

Finally, while Joseph would still hear the Voice in this scenario, he wouldn’t have sacrificed his daughter because “God” wouldn’t have asked him to do it. She would have died in the hospital shortly after her mother’s accident… or she would still be alive, and maybe he would have never created “Faith Seed” for this reason! His family members could still be his Heralds, and the cult would have built bunkers and started stockpiling food and supplies, but they wouldn’t have lost so many potential converts in Jacob’s trials, so they probably would already have enough followers. Because they would also look less “weird” and scary, I suppose more people would have wanted to join them, too. And they would still have John’s money, so they could have used it to buy enough food and supplies instead of brutally stealing everything during the Reaping! Maybe the rules (no alcohol, no drugs, no fornication) would still apply because Eden’s Gate remains a religious group, but I suppose cultists wouldn’t be so aggressively obsessed with “sin”.

Now, I don’t know what the Deputy’s role in the prophecy would be. In this perfect world, they would have no reason to arrest Joseph, so that wouldn’t trigger the Collapse and the Reaping (which, maybe, wouldn’t even be necessary). I suppose they could still join the Project and be saved, though, and so could everyone else in Hope County.

I’m aware this is a very idealized scenario but, if the Voice still existed and the Seeds had totally healed from their traumatic pasts, I think that’s what Eden’s Gate could look like. They would still be preppers and technically a cult, but a surprisingly (and, I suppose, unrealistically) wholesome one.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Expertise can't help you here.

[lesbianralzarek]

"life doesnt get better, you just get stronger" does NOT include ages 11-17. life does in fact just get better from there. those years are dogshit. like, you do get stronger but its mostly just a factor of not being 11-17 anymore. positive thinking helps but it doesnt fix whatevers going on at 15, you have to brute force through that one raw

[edwardbonnets]

how to ask the demon you've been smitten over for 6000 years to dance: an angel's guide

bonus:

[hinamie]

10 years later

[quibbs]

just had SO much fun with the fallout tv show... i love you missus okey dokey

[minionsuncle]

We’re haemorrhaging money on the groundskeeper, Jawbone!

Some of my favourite little bits. This is like the first time i fully color them ^.^ it was fun. Took wayy longer than it shouldve LOLL

[vaultnewt]

NO MATTER WHERE I HIDE MY DONUT FRYER NICK ALWAYS FINDS IT AND USES IT

I'M SO SICK OF HIM

HOW?!!?!?

NICK. NICK STOP MAKING DONUTS PLEASE NICK WE NEED TO BREAK INTO THE INSTITUTE AND GET MY SON NICK PLEA

~~~

UPDATE: he finally got his donuts :]

[cozylittleartblog]

@staff if you [change] the [design] of the fucking [dashboard] i will kill you

edit. i want it on the actual post that i am not actually making a de-th threat against the staff. that's shitty. the caption quotes the fucking costco hot dog meme, which i originally said in the tags. if any staff member sees this please do Not take it personally

[i-bet-you-wish-i]

Inspired by @secretdazedragon lovely "vampires are cats' posts and this iconic gif

[retquits]

see what they don't tell you is that you HAVE to make the most self-indulgent ocs and self inserts to inject into your favorite media and to have the most tender moments with your favorite blorbos and to live out every fantasy and tragedy your heart desires. you just have to

[azuremist]

TME and TMA as intersexist terms: as written by an intersex transfem

I’ve had a few different people in my inbox asking me why I view these terms the way I do. In particular, why I claim it’s intersexist. So, I thought I’d lay out a few examples, so everyone can understand where I’m coming from.

Imagine an intersex woman. She was assigned female at birth by her doctors, and was able to go about her childhood as a woman with no inclination that anything was amiss. Sure, she didn’t experience certain parts of puberty, but puberty was different for everyone, right?

But, later in life, she learns she has Turner syndrome. This is an intersex condition where a woman has only one X chromosome, rather than the usual two.

Soon after she learns this, she finds that laws are being made to attempt to keep trans women out of women’s spaces (often specifically sports) which use chromosomes as a defining factor of womanhood.

Would this intersex person be considered “transmisogyny affected”? She has been raised as a cisgender woman with no problems regarding being ‘clocked’, but she is also a direct target of transmisogynistic laws. She lies in a gray area.

Now, let’s go to another intersex person. Imagine an intersex man with PAIS. AIS is an intersex condition where babies are born with testes and XY chromosomes, but their body is immune to or can’t respond to androgens (which includes testosterone). Intersex people with partial AIS (PAIS) often develop a vulva and clitoris during puberty.

This intersex person identifies as a man, and he was assigned male at birth. However, his body does not produce testosterone, and he went through a feminizing puberty. To the average eye, he appears to be a woman now because of this.

Would this intersex person be considered “transmisogyny affected?” He was assigned male at birth, and now appears to be a woman, much like many transfems. However, if many saw how he looks now, stating that he is a male, they would probably clock him as transmasc. He was raised as a boy until puberty, and then faced astrozcization from his peers when he began a puberty that feminized him. What he was facing was a form of intersexism where transmisogyny was playing a huge part. Does his childhood matter? Can one become TME over time, when they were TMA as a child? Again, he lies in a gray area, where the answer is not quite so simple.

What about the “opposite”, per se — an intersex woman who had a masculinizing puberty? She has aromatase deficiency, which means that many ‘male’ hormones (which would usually be converted to ‘female’ hormones) would remain unconverted. She identifies as a woman, and was identified as a female at birth and was raised, until puberty, as a female. But now, she would be clocked as a trans woman upon looking at her. What does that make her? Is it different from the previous example? How and why? This intersex person also lies in a gray area. How she should be described with these terms is not clear.

And keep in mind, these are all relatively simple examples. All of the examples I listed self-identify as cisgender. But there are intersex people who are trans in any direction you can imagine.

If that last example identified as a trans woman, because she is now clocked as one, would you be able to say she’s wrong for that? What about if she identified as transmasculine, because of her experience with puberty? What if she’s multigender, bigender or genderfluid, and says she’s both transmasc and transfem because of her complicated experiences? Would that make her a TMA transmasculine person? But I thought that transmascs were all TME? That’s how it’s so often framed, anyway.

The reason why these questions are so difficult to answer is because these terms were not made with intersex people in mind. Very real intersex transfems were pushed to the wayside in favor of centering the perisex view of transgenderism. Intersex people are nothing but an inconvenient little afterthought, annoying perisex people with their demand for “inclusion” and “consideration”. (As per usual.)

You cannot simply make a new gender binary and say, “No, really, this time everyone fits into these two categories! Forcing people to confine themselves to these two rigid labels which are shown as opposites, and as never interacting, will definitely include everyone this time!!” No matter what the contents of the new binary is, it’s not going to work, because sex and gender alike are too complicated for that. There will always be people in the gray area.

This isn’t even getting into the fact that these terms, for all intents and purposes, seem to have been popularized by and associated with the Baeddelism movement around 2017, which was essentially “Radical Feminism 2: We’re Trans Women, So It’s Fine!” This movement is known for chronic villainization of trans men and non-binary people who aren’t transfem. (They act like this with cis people too, but noticeably less so than they do with non-transfem trans people. How curious.) Think along the lines of how regular radfems treat all men (and who they deem to be men) as inherently morally disgusting scum who deserve to be attacked.

Methinks that maybe these terms aren’t the neutral, fact-based descriptors of oppression that many people nowadays tout them to be, considering that.

So, yeah. “Transmisogyny exempt” and “transmisogyny affected” as terms: not even once. Listen to intersex people, stop trying to make sex and gender into binaries, and for the love of God, stop drinking the queer seperationist koolaid!

[pachimation]

⚠️hsr 2.2 spoilers⚠️

“The night is still…too short…”

[nonexistent-triangle]

the most important parts of a bed are - pilow - banky - warm girlfriend

[hinamie]

yuuji smiling and sukuna making a face like That did u really think i wouldn't do a panel redraw

[livelovecaliforniadreams]