#and seeing questions about who can and can't light a menorah.

[viksalos]

realizing i will probably never be normal about religion. every era of my life adds another layer of weirdness in this regard and i’ve been ruminating about it a lot lately, so i tried to list all my weirdnesses chronologically in the hope that it will help somehow. i gloss over a fair amount of related abuse and medical trauma so it’s ideally not *too* much of a bummer, but nonetheless it is still very long so don’t feel obligated to read. would appreciate a like if you do read all the way through though, if for no other reason than it seems like a lot of the time this history makes me feel i don’t quite belong anywhere other than in a random assortment of friends and mutuals lol

maternal family is Pennsylvania Dutch & Lutheran, grandma flees central PA to escape judgement surrounding her shotgun wedding to my grandpa/birth of my mom

mom has me, baptizes me Lutheran, then later has a change of heart and converts to Judaism, completes the process when I am 4 (thus by halacha my Jewish status is sometimes a matter of theological debate--I was born and raised by a Jewish mother, but she wasn’t Jewish *when* I was born)

dad suddenly gets really weird about mom “disrespecting our Christian heritage” despite not really practicing Christianity before, divorces her shortly after her conversion, they get joint custody so 1 week with dad 1 week with mom

antics ensue. on Mom Week we get taken to synagogue, on Dad Week we get taken to random churches including a black church one time (?? we’re white) and Xenos Christian Fellowship for a few months

tangent: look up Xenos Christian Fellowship if you want to head down an awful rabbithole sometime. tl;dr it operated as a megachurch while we were there but its true strength/horror lies in its home church & small group activities. it’s 100% a cult

we weren’t there long enough to get the worst of it but one of my clearest childhood memories is being taken away from the adults’ service in the megachurch to a side room for the kids’ service, where we were told that if every one of us converted 2 people tomorrow, and every one of our converts converted 2 people the next day and so on, the entire world would be Christian in a month. it is/was a factory for turning kids into little missionaries designed to spread the religion like a virus

both parents get mad or upset when I express any amount of belief in the “opposing” religion or nonbelief in theirs. another clear childhood memory of being *really* little in synagogue and deciding not to say aloud the words to a prayer--mom asks why and I said something like “well Daddy said we shouldn’t because we’re not *really* Jewish.” I thought I was doing the right thing and following my parent’s rules, now mom’s crying. felt really bad for that one

especially: no bat mitzvah for either myself or my sister bc it would make my dad mad. this is another theological wrinkle in my Jewish status also I think, especially because mom’s Reform so there’s no debate about whether girls should do bat mitzvot

teenage atheist phase. easier to just believe nothing at all, right? this neatly absolves me of having to deal with any of that previous war-of-the-religions nonsense, and the burgeoning New Atheist movement at the time allows me to have an online escape from my home life as well as encouragement as an aspiring scientist that science will replace religion as humanity’s candle in the dark. unfortunately the New Atheists prove to be dogmatic in their own ways, and bigoted in ways that people in the movement didn’t really seem to have the words to describe until the oncoming social justice movement finally splits them apart.

another memory: confessing to my mom that I didn’t believe in God, saying that all religions are harmful, when what I probably meant was that so far religions have been harmful to *me.* mom’s crying again, felt bad for that one again. but it was part of the unravelling of New Atheism for me and as a whole I think: their critiques of religion were mainly with Christianity, and they posited religion as the sole source of so many complicated sociopolitical ills, such that all other religions were thrown under the bus and rampant antisemitism and islamophobia was the result

(dad starts randomly saying he’s a Buddhist. doesn’t really change how he acts or try to teach us any Buddhist concepts or whatever, it’s just a thing he says. weird)

eventually (late college/early master’s degree?) (re)discover secular Judaism, and Jewish concepts of wrestling with God. decide to tell my mom and sister I want to start participating in some of the holidays and rituals with them again. joke that struggling with Jewish faith under adverse conditions (dad custody weeks) might actually be pretty Jewish. bitter laughter all around, understanding

move to Pittsburgh for my PhD, no longer have access to my home synagogue, don’t have time to join a new one, eventually the pandemic hits so I couldn’t even if I wanted to

get engaged to my now-husband. in-laws are Catholic; his grandpa was a deacon. mother-in-law is upset that we won’t get married in a church. mother-in-law is upset about a lot of things with me, in general. we are now estranged

get into dnd with my new friends in Pittsburgh. all of my characters are heretics or syncretists or outright zealots. surely there’s no reason for this

get into heavy metal because the blastbeats and mostly unintelligible lyrics help me focus on my work. metal really loves its Satanic imagery as an ostensible “fuck you” to Christianity, which I find compelling but moreso just campy & fun. don’t really think about it too hard for a while

have a really hard winter mental health-wise from late 2020-early 2021. get recommended Lingua Ignota around this time, probably due to the heavy metal and the mental health. here though I think, is someone who struggles with God in a way I can relate to. later in 2021 she releases Sinner Get Ready which uses central Pennsylvanian Christianity as a backdrop, in which my whole family story started, and which seems present even as it creeps into the outskirts of Pittsburgh. for these reasons among others it’s just really unfortunate for my brain worms

get vaccine, get married by my hometown synagogue’s rabbi as he’s the only clergyman myself or my husband are comfortable with. my dad does his part, walks me down the aisle, then sends me a letter during our honeymoon about how being Jewish is disrespecting my husband and it’s why my in-laws don’t like me. one week later on the night of Sinner Get Ready’s release, during my first listen, i burn the letter and mix its ashes with black dye for my first battle jacket

make more Jewish friends and metalhead friends, be mostly accepted by them. get one of my Jewish metalhead friends to take me to a lingy show in his city in exchange for me taking him to an Epica show in mine. joke that headbanging is kinda like bowing in prayer

make friends with a couple local shape note singers, and most recently--inadvertently end up being invited into both a secular Sacred Harp choir and a witch coven by one of them. (that this is the same person is so funny to me. she is also my labmate’s wife and was one of my bridesmaids. she is very dear to me.)

the witches let me light my hanukkiah at their solstice gathering. they think my impromptu battle jacket fire ritual is very cool; they do a lot of fire rituals themselves. (this is relieving because I was sure that telling anybody i’d done it would get me sent to the psych ward.) they lend me a book on Pennsylvanian folk magic.

so that’s where i’m at right now--haven’t even read the book yet.

[princesstillyenna]

On the first day of Chat-mas Tillyenna gave to meeeeeee A fic prompt she filled just for me... wait what?? SO. It's the HOLIDAY SEASON. And I love to celebrate this season by giving, like, genuinely, I do. I also REALLY REALLY enjoyed filling the prompts for kinktober and I thought... huh, how could I combine these two things for GROUP CHAT PROMPT DECEMBER... And here is how it is going to go I am going to fill 12 prompts for the group chat for december, however, these prompts aren't going to come from me, they're going to come FROM YOU.

Basically, send in prompts, either by dming me, if you want to chat about the prompt or want to really explain it, or anon me if you just wanna drop a prompt. And the first 12 prompts I will fill for groupchatmas.

What kind of prompts can you send in? Honestly anything, it could be a line, a peice of dialogue, a picture, a title, it could be more detailed, it could be a group chat specific request, it could be a backstory request... here are some examples e.g. "you had to tell me like that" <- dialogue prompt e.g. demisexual disasters <- word prompt e.g. (actually I think you know what a picture looks like) e.g. "Gabe's Christmas Card List" <- title prompt e.g. "I don't know but I really want more quinn and brady vibing about their sexualities together" <- gc content specific prompt e.g. "You've hint dropped this pairing, please, how did it happen?" <- group chat backstory prompt e.g. "I need some FLUFF, i need drinking hot cocoa and lighting menorahs and warmth and joy for the winter season" <- random ass prompt I WILL TAKE THEM ALL. The only rules are THIS IS HAPPENING IN THE GCU ok, so prompts CANNOT contradict GCU canon. That means you can't just invent a new pairing that isn't already in the GC, and/or like force people to break up (idk actually, I might bite on that one depending on who it is 🤣) FAQs (by which I mean, questions I think you might want the answers to, because since I just came up with this idea, there can't be any frequently asked questions yet)

How do you know the same person isn't going to send in 12 prompts and then nobody else gets to take part? Honestly, I trust you friends - don't do this? Like, I'm not going to know if you send in more than one anonymously, but be fun about it?

What if you get more than 12? I'm not definitely going to be able to do more than 12, but I'll give it a shot with however many come in

What if you get less than 12? I'll leave it a couple of days and then do a shout out, and then if no more come in then I'll just pick some random holiday writing themed prompts

What if you REALLY don't want to do a specific prompt? Honestly, the only way I can see this happening is if someone requests something that's going to be SUPER out of the GC verse like "I wanna see quinn and jack hooking up" because I'd be lke, "Uh fam, that doesn't happen in this universe" but I might still write it as a non gc compliant prompt if I feel like it?? But ideally, I am wanting gc compliant.

OK FRIENDS SEND THEM IN I LOVE YOU ALL