#but no for real even my conservative christian parents are like enough is enough leave trans people alone

[glitterdustcyclops]

y'know on the way to work this morning my mom was in the car complaining to me about how all the fox news coverage of the shooting was about how the shooter was allegedly trans

she was like "i kept hoping at least one of them would mention the problem of The Guns, you know, to be Fair and Balanced, but they didn't!!!"

she was so offended

"they're just trying to...eviltize trans people!!"

[carrionhearted]

Im gonna infodump about my ocs because I can’t stop thinking about them. This will be a book… One day. Read on with caution, this is a horror book with very dark subject matter and mild body horror.

There are two mcs, a closeted gay trans man (Eden), and a severely repressed cis gay man (Harlow). Both raised in a hyper-conservative hyper-religious Deep South town IN THE 80S.

Their story is about the deadly consequences of repression, the cycle of abuse, learned hatred and destructive coping mechanisms. Harlow grew up with an INCREDIBLY toxic father who drilled toxic masculinity into him (having feelings is shameful) as well as homophobia. He only ever demonstrated "solving" problems with violence. Harlow was never given the tools or space to unpack any of his feelings ever. So he grew up to become this repressed, horribly frustrated and confused adult who could not understand his attraction towards other men.

Being gay wasn't even a thought in his mind, it wasn't a possibility to him. His father constructed this impenetrable wall of “us” vs “them” in Harlow’s mind- and like a plant deprived of sunlight, he never grew tall enough to see over it.

All he knew was this gut-wrenching hunger, this insatiable craving for other men’s bodies which he couldn't place- something about the flesh, the warmth, he hungered for it in a way which became unbearable. This did not register to him as sexual, again, that wasn't even an option… but he didn’t know what it was. And when you don’t know how to process your own emotions, it all eventually turns into frustration/ rage. So he solved this problem in the only way he was ever taught how- with violence! He killed men, initially choosing those he deemed deserving of death, and he ate them. An attempt to satiate the hunger. This became a habitual thing and he just… kept doing it. Not because it brought him any real satisfaction, it just snowballed into an addiction and he needed his fix. His town caught on to the string of murders, but he was flying completely under everyone’s radar. We’re talking about a 6’ mullet-having yeehaw dude who’s generally reserved and works for his family’s farm, nobody was really looking at him here.

Important backstory tidbit: Harlow was taught how to hunt as a kid. His father took him on outings, which were maybe the only positive memories he had of that man- and they would hunt deer together. He was taught to always use the whole animal, never let anything go to waste- because everything is valuable.

Everything is a gift. “It’s only murder if you waste the animal” (this heavily influenced his later cannibal ways).

One day as a young teen, he found himself alone for a trip. That's when he was approached by this deer- it looked sickly, almost like it was rotting while alive (it had Chronic Wasting Disease). It was clearly suffering, made clear by its complete lack of survival instincts. It walked right up to his gun. It was in pain. He shot it to put it out of its misery, but he did not take the meat. What was he supposed to do? It was useless to him,, he couldn't eat the rotting meat, and despite that he still felt an immense guilt for leaving it behind. Killing, and just abandoning the body. It registered to him as murder. He carried that feeling of guilt with him for the rest of his life. He vowed to never discard a body again.

Eden is a trans man who knows he's trans, but is out to practically nobody during the story. He’s the youngest in his family, with four older brothers. His parents were NOT suited to be parents- they were self centred people who treated their children like accessories. The parents obsessively kept up this “picturesque good Christian family” facade to the world, but that became harder to maintain as they had more kids. They started having to cut corners financially, to the detriment of those kids. That said, every one of their children was planned. The reason they kept having kids despite their situation was because the mother wanted a daughter. Then, Eden was born, assigned female at birth. Since his birth Eden had been treated like a precious doll more so than a child- he was sheltered and only received direct attention from his parents when they needed to dress him up all pretty for Sunday service. There was an incredible amount of pressure on him to be what everyone wanted. He was also raised VERY religiously, all of which MAJORLY contributed to his inner-turmoil abt being trans. He didn’t even have a word for it, to be “trans”. Only this unmistakable discomfort, guilt and shame, feeling like something is wrong with him, feeling like god made a mistake with him. Again, conservative religious south, he has no space to explore these feelings safely. He's pushed it all down and let it fester inside until it started gnawing away at his very being.

A few years prior to the story, this began to manifest physically as a literal rot. This spot of decay on his chest that's been growing and sinking deeper into his body for years. Sloooowly eating away at him, on track to continue until there is nothing left to devour. By the start of the book it’s claimed most of the flesh on his chest- his ribcage is sparsely covered with any skin at all- and the organs beneath are made vulnerable by it. However, he is horrified to seek medical attention. He sees the rot as a marking of his sin, god has stamped his body with this ugly decay to let everyone else know he's defective.

He hides it beneath layers of clothing. Being on his chest, it’s in a place that only an intimate partner would ever see- considering he's perceived by the world as a "woman".

In a… complicated series of events involving ✨societal pressure and coercion✨, an "intimate partner" does end up seeing his chest (Eden is not clear minded when these events are taking place).

This partner reacts with repulsion and violence, to the extreme that Eden fears for his life. He kills the other man in self Defense. (This sequence alludes to the “trans panic” legal defense which is still permitted by many US courts. If you pursue someone intimately, don’t like what you see beneath their clothes, and you KILL THEM- you can claim “I panicked because I didn’t know they were trans” and get a lesser sentence. It’s bullshit and I’m gonna attempt to very delicately write this scene to highlight how bizarre and unwarranted the male partner’s violent response is. The rot in this instance is symbolic of the perceived defect).

In disposing of the body, he runs into Harlow. They find eachother in a (undecided) remote, secretive location.

You’ll never guess what Harlow is doing! Also disposing of remains (bones n guts), at the same place, face hidden while he does so. They have a mutual deer-in-headlights standoff. There IS an open case of serial murders in their small town… Harlow is responsible. Eden realizes this after a short exchange of stunned words, and totally breaks down. Heavy dialogue exchange, Eden feels completely defeated and destroyed by guilt, he just begs Harlow to kill him. Harlow responds by saying he only kills men (Eden is closeted and passes as a woman). This pushes Eden over the edge and he snaps, he shouts that he is a man, this is the first time he’s ever said it out loud. Harlow is… confused, but intrigued. He doesn’t want to kill Eden, but he’s not sure what he does want to do. He decides to knock Eden out… which he does very easily.

Eden wakes up in a different location. Some not so great smelling farmhouse of sorts. Harlow enters the room eventually and explains… “I disposed of that body for you, don’t worry about that right now. I bruised your head pretty bad when I knocked you out, sorry about that, I didn’t mean to use that much force. I made you some soup! It’ll help. The meat is pork. Don’t worry about it. Let’s talk. :3” They’re still both very unsure of each other but neither have much to lose (they also have mutual blackmail) so they start talking. AND BOOM

COMPLICATED SERIES OF EVENTS

ENSUES AND THEY BOND OVER SHARED EXPERIENCES, TEACH EACH OTHER TO UNLEARN THEIR TOXIC AND DESTRUCTIVE WAYS, HAVE A ROMANCE WHICH SERVES AS A VALIDATION ARC FOR EDEN AND A SELF-ACCEPTANCE ARC FOR HARLOW AND YADA YADA. They are both profoundly disturbed individuals who have done terrible things but the whole point is to hold a magnifying glass to their actions and point out HOW and WHY they fucked up. To condemn that path, the mindset behind it, and the people who carried on those abusive cycles before them. I want to thoroughly examine and chip away at the layers of external influence that lead these characters to their lowest life points- and reveal the truth beneath them. These were once children, full of love and openness as we all once were- the problem is larger than the individual, it’s a societal issue of passed down bigotry and stubborn refusal to progress. It’s a toxic cycle of violence with very real, very deadly consequences for all involved. The characters both do BAD things, that’s the POINT.

Important backstory tidbit: In Eden’s childhood, he found a baby bird fallen a long ways from its nest. It was hurt, and he brought it inside to a small cage. He figured the cage would serve as protection for the bird as it grew- it was so delicate, it needed the shelter. But that cage was tiny. He fed the bird, tried to take care of it and gave it all its base survival needs. The bird was offered food, water and a cage. But that is all. That’s all Eden was given in his home, he thought that meant it was enough. He watched it grow into a young dove, but as it aged it only got sicker. This bird was deteriorating before his eyes and he couldn't understand why- he feared it would die in that cage. As soon as it became old enough to fly, Eden made the decision to release the bird. It was sicker than ever, Eden knew it didn't have long. He knew releasing it would practically be a death sentence, but it was going to die soon either way. He did not want the bird to die in the cage.

When released, the dove didn't even know how to flap its wings properly. The cage was too small to stretch them out, it had never even had the chance to learn how to fly. It didn't know how to find food. It didn’t know how to identify danger. And on the next morning, Eden found that bird on the ground outside of his house, dead. It was being picked away at by a vulture.

Eden felt relief.

The bird had died. It didn't make it. But it brought him peace to know it didn't die in that cage. That bird had never known the love of its mother, or siblings, it had never known what it was like to be wanted and cherished. That role was left to the vulture, who had never turned away from the unsightly or damaged. It had swooped in with the unconditional love of an angel, and carried the dove off into the sky above- its stomach, a chariot to heaven. It was gruesome watching the vulture feast- but it had such a tender appreciation in its eyes. It kept the circle of life in motion. In a way, Eden found this ending happy.

Eden’s symbolic bird is a dove, Harlow’s symbolic bird is a vulture.

They both die at the end of the story.

They'd become very close over the span of it though- they resolved their issues together, but in doing that they found themselves further ostracized from the world around them. They backed themselves further and further away from the world, until they finally hit a corner. Their past destructive actions were also catching up to them- the murders that is, they ended up on the run from police. It all came back to bite them.

The rot on Eden’s chest had spread throughout his entire body, and it was past the point of no return. No medical intervention would help at this point. One night, after a close encounter with police left them both wounded- Eden and Harlow both realized that these were Eden’s last few hours.

His body was decayed and rotted, he was sick, he was injured, he was visibly suffering. He would die soon, it was inevitable. Harlow decides to put him out of his misery. But he couldn’t stand the thought of discarding the body. He didn’t want him to die unloved.

Reaching into Eden's exposed ribcage, Harlow removed his heart from his chest. He knew this would be a death sentence, but he was going to die either way. He didn't want him to die in the cage.

He ate the heart, rotting and tainted as it was, he saw every part of his lover as a gift. Nothing goes to waste, for every rotting animal there is a grateful vulture. One which will see your defect and cherish you all the same.

Is now a good time to address the name Eden? I feel like most people are familiar with the gay love = forbidden fruit and/or cannibalism = forbidden fruit metaphor… yk, the embrace of supposed sin, being arbitrarily kept from the sweet, nutritious fruit of the garden. Passing through the gates of Eden (ribcage again) and eating the apple (his heart).

:3 anyways

Harlowstayed with the body until he also died (unrelated wounds from the chase). Decades later they would be found as skeletons in an unmistakable embrace, none of the flesh which made people scorn them during their lives. They were seen as lovers then, and were finally understood.

ALSO ALSO SO SYMBOLISM RIGHT. RELIGIOUS SYMBOLISM??? REMEMBER HOW EDEN WAS RAISED AS HYPER-RELIGIOUS???

So cannibalism as a metaphor for QUEERNESS now. A craving for the forbidden flesh. To partake in another's body in the most intimate and fulfilling way. But living in a world that sees it as repulsive…

Right? You with me?

Ok and then the inherent divinity of transness. To partake in the act of creation alongside God, to resculpt yourself in divine image. Jesus was not simply born of genetic material (yk how transphobes love to say “blah blah blah you can’t change your chromosomes!!” Like… if we use that logic, Jesus is trans. He’d have XX chromosomes because... miraculous conception.

No sperm, which provides the Y chromosome, which creates a male body. BUT OBVIOUSLY THAT DOESNT FUCKING MATTER BECAUSE HES A MAN REGARDLESS!!!! JESUS WAS A DUDE!!!). He was created by WILL.

The will of god, a version of himself, to BE!!! Fully human, fully god, flesh and blood in an image he himself designed. Holy trinity being the same entity and all, Jesus’s body was his own design in a way.

YOU WITH ME???

OK

OKAY AND SO.

GAY CANNIBALISM… TRANS LOVER.

TO

TO PARTAKE IN THE BLOOD AND BODY OF CHRIST. THEOPHAGY.

THE ULTIMATE HOLY COMMUNION.

TO CONSUME YOUR LOVER AS AN ACT OF WORSHIP, CONVEYING YOUR LOVE FOR EVERY PART OF THE BODY THEY'VE GROWN TO DISPISE. TAKING A PHYSICAL PIECE OF THEIR LIFE INTO YOURS AND UNITING YOUR VERY BEINGS. UNCONDITIONAL AND ETERNAL LOVE, DESPITE ONE’S FLAWS.

TO THINK OF YOURSELF AS CARRION AND BE FOUND BY THE MOST GRATEFUL VULTURE.

A DEAD AND ROTTING GOD STILL BRINGS LIFE TO THE MAGGOTS WHICH FEED ON ITS CORPSE!!!

RAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’m unwell I’m unwell I’m unwell I need to actually get to writing this NOW

[angel-lopes2000]

Why do I think is very unfair to see Carrie as villain.

(Ok, this post will be not just as analytical but also as "little vent" for the reason of why do I think is not fair to see Carrie as villain. Here, you'll gonna see arguments, analysis and even evidences to prove my thoughts, so this the last warning: this post is my personal opinion. Don't take it as "Divine's Truth" for your life, especially when Carrie also has differences from many adaptations - so, leaving the warning, here we start..)

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Well, since I had started to study way more about Carrie and join this community for a longer, if there's one argument that most get me nerves is how there's still people that genuinely think about Carrie as villain like Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees. I mean, I know that Carrie as one of main Stephen King's works has many adaptations that can difference from each one duo the time and technology - but I'll focus on 1976's one not just for being my favorite, but for also being such a classic always remind when we think of King's story.

And besides the movie having many things not explored like the book, but yet, the premisse was the same: A story about an outcast and telekinetic girl that suffers bullying at school and domestic abuse from her religious mother when in one night, a bucket drops her pig's blood and then, she becomes furious and turn the prom into a burning nightmare.

And now, I want to show you some evidences that why Carrie was innocent, even after the massacre:

1. Backstory:

The most things we know about Carrie is she grew up raised by her only mother and taught to follow a radical and extreme side from Christianity. Instead to learn the main part as faith, love and goodness, she was way more forced to concern about sin and purity culture - where even having a natural puberty was wrong and "blasphemous". And according to Margaret's lines, she used to be married by Ralph White, but after the "temptation", she got pregnant from her daughter and tried to "give back to God" for thinking as she got birth to an "Antichrist''.

About Ralph, we don't have any more information except that he ran away to another woman (And please, don't make me remember about ''Carrie 2'', because I rather to think as that cash grab as not existent.).

2. Her relation with Margaret White:

From the most scenes that we had their interactions, we can easily agree that they had everything except a real mother n' daughter relation. I mean, I believe that don't matter how conservative Christian you could be, you would never repeat the same fail as Margaret about never tell your daughter about period and how this kind one works. The impression that is obviously seen is Margaret is very unstable and abusive enough to have Carrie's care on her hands - I mean, there's a big difference between being a rough when necessary and other being very oppressive.

(In this scene, after Margaret learned that her daughter had her first period, she've punished by hitting with a book and making her to repeat religious lines like "The first sin was intercourse", while Carrie, poor girl.. first she kept asking about why hadn't Margaret never explained her about or tried to proof her innocence as she didn't sin..It wasn't your fault, dear.)

If your kid has an insane fear to ask for you even if it can have a little cookie from pot, then I'm sorry to say that you failed as parent. And don't let me to remember the times that she locked Carrie to pray for hours, threw her of probably hot tea or intentionally planned to MURDER her own daughter with a knife.

3. Her life as student:

What do I have to say? Always an outcast, bullied both for boys and girls, even when she had never given them a reason for. Most of them, even the adults itself, failed a lot - I mean, just on beginning, before even Miss Collins stopping the girls, we were already showed with all those pests laughing and throwing her pads and others things to a defenseless girl that was genuinely scared and probably not understanding the why it was happening and why were those stupid girls thinking ''so funny'' from that situation.

(This in my opinion, the worst scene - because once her mother never told her daughter before, in her mind, she genuinely thought as she was dying or severely hurt. I swear that the first time I saw it, I wanted to slap all those pests and cover Carrie with a towel and hug her to calm down and then, explain to her the blood.)

And before even we learning about Tommy and Sue, we already understood that Carrie was alone by herself, no friends because our poor girl never had anyone genuinely nice to treat her with a bit of respect, then it could even seen that the library was probably the only "safe world" she could seek to stay before return to her usual hell.

4. Her personality and emotions during the story:

Besides Carrie not being too spoken the whole movie, it wasn't too difficult to understand her own essence: she's innocent, sweet, sensitive, a type that she would be the most grateful person if someone even shared her a bit of his/her lunch. However, she lives a story where since her beginning, she had never learned which is love and how good is it to have someone in your side to give you affection. She's lonely, sad and scared.

(This how she looks the whole movie - like a rejected puppy on street.. )

Like, tell me, how it feels to live a life where you don't feel safe anywhere, you don't have anyone and yet, you get scared for not knowing if a person is being genuine or just planning you more one cruel joke? This how Carrie feels. She's just a baby that under good someone's hands, she would be able to heal from her demons, able to have better control on her abilities and able to even share a bit of love and gratitude she could express. I would say easily that Carrie White is like a "little animal" - if you care of this little animal by giving basic cares + affection, attention and a bit of training and you have the most loyal pet in your side that it will always be grateful to have such a loveable owner that showed it that is not every human bad and not every human that would just see the animals as trash or disposable toy.

5. The prom and after the disaster:

This part is which I think as the most evidence from her innocence. First, we have an excited Carrie preparing herself to have such a funny night to remember, once she was on last year from high school. But because a certain bitch like Chris Hangersen, it took many people's lives and this where we arrive to many people that really think Carrie as villain, and I'll gonna tell right now. In first place, all that Carrie wanted was just to have a funny night and nothing more than it. Second one, when Carrie activated her telekinesis, she had visions from everyone laughed and let's be honest, she had her limits. She was completely done to the whole shit she dealt for years and years, so when it happened, it's obvious it wasn't the ''real'' Carrie we know, but a figure from her response to this abuse. Who many of us already hadn't think or act by emotions from that especific moment and then, all of us regretted from how we behave? This which happened to Carrie. She was "blind" by her rage. And after the whole killing, we finally has when Carrie comes home and start to calm down, you can see by her eyes and see how shocked, disturbed and guilty she feels. And what about when she cried during the bathing tub?

Come on, it's pretty obvious that she was completely regretted for which she done. And if she had a help since from beginning, things like that could be worked different, but how she was always alone, this why things happened like we know..

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And now, I'll give you guys a resume about which is a slasher and short study about how it works Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees:

First, "which is a slasher"? It's a genre that works about a teenagers group where the main villain will always kill these teenagers until it finally has a final fight between the main villain vs the final girl. And learning by classic slashers, we understand that sex is nothing allowed (like horror clichés) and the main villain can have a tragic past or not, the matter is he's always a threat for the victims. And here, we'll understand shortly about Michael and Jason.

Michael Myers:

Main villain from ''Halloween" series. By which we learned is as kid, he murdered coldly his older sister and for non-reason, then, he spent 15 years on Sanitarium and hadn't changed anything during these years of captivity and now, he escapes from this Sanitarium to get his sister back, Laurie Strode. Unlike Jason, he has already seen as real psychopatic, like, he murdered many innocents for years and hadn't felt any remorse or regret for all these Haddonfield's lives and as we understood, he doesn't show any signal of abuse or neglect that would justify his killings, which mean that he was already evil by nature and don't matter what, he would never stop being an evil incarnation. In others words, this why he deserves to be called as villain.

Jason Voorhees:

Main villain from "Friday the 13th" series. While Michael was already evil, even as young boy, here, we hava a bit of explanation from Jason's past - He had born with several deformities, both physically and mentally and as kid, he used to be cruelly bullied by others camper kids until he got drowned by "death", now we move to 1979's, when now as adult, he "came back" to life and give revenge by murdering any teens that used to make exactly the teens from late 1950s like smoking or hanging out. Here we have a tragic figure, where even dealing with jerk bullies, Jason's way more motivated by revenge and rage - even if those teenagers hadn't give any reason unlike Jason's bullies, he was so traumatized that lost any logic to understand that those new teens aren't the same ones, he already hates all of them and there's nothing that would save him from this distorted rage.

As we've learned, one had tragic past and other was already evil. But which both has in common? Even if they had reasons or not, they still killed innocent people and were okay with it. They didn't care about nothing except to dirty his hands on blood CONSCIOUSLY - they were evil and this how they'll always be. And do you want more example? Jennifer Check from "Jennifer's Body".

On "Jennifer's Body", besides Jennifer being cruelly sacrificed by those band guys, she still could be seen as "villain" because even now as succubus, she looked pretty comfortable to the fact that now she has demon powers to keep attractive and kill all boys as wishes. She had never felt sorry to the fact that she can kill all of them and then, eat their bodies but instead, she was way more bad for no longer has Needy in her side, which also gives a high fact that even being everything that any outcast would wish to be, she still wanted Needy because not just her high insecurity but for actually, having a real crush for her best friend. There's no way that kiss could also be as just a ''joke".

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And returning to Carrie White, after looking by her backstory and seeing others examples from others horrors, we can conclude that Carrie isn't actually a horror, but a drama thriller, because even her having telekinesis, you don't want to run away from her, you don't feel scared for her and neither want to kill her by protect yourself like you would want for Jason or Michael. Instead, it's Carrie that would feel more scared for you first, because she doesn't know you and unless you have her trusting, you're her threat like the world itself. And this why I believe Carrie's innocent and not a villain. (And she doesn't deserve to be seen as villain.).

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The End

[nerdygaymormon]

My parents are the most anti LGBT people I know. They hate us with a passion. Do you think that I will get poison by my parents if I continue to live with them?

I don't know your parents so I can't really answer that question, but it's horrifying to think a child would even consider this a possibility?

There is a thing about Mormons and many other conservative Christians in which they don't see the existence and identity of queer people as real because they don't fit in with their theology. When their queer family & friends come out, Mormons often feel like they have to choose between their church or their loved one, and that's not a good feeling.

It's a reason that some Mormons can be really aggressive in expressing negative views of queer people, because even our mere existence is threatening to their worldview.

I should clarify, the LDS Church has slowly been shifting its rhetoric about queer people, gay people in particular. I think it leaves some members confused. Many aren't aware that the way church leaders talk about queer people has shifted for the better.

Here's some questions that are hard for many Mormons to answer in a way that anything that doesn't sound rejecting, and yet they claim to love their neighbor?

Is it okay for somene to identify as gay?

Will they still be gay when they die?

Are queer people a mistake?

Is being queer just a challenge or trial of this life?

Are queer people an affront to God?

Are queer people automatically not in the Celestial Kingdom and therefore no longer sealed to their parents, meaning coming out as queer is akin to breaking up an eternal family?

Let me end on a hopeful note. In past decades, many families chose their church over their child. These days most families make a different choice, whether it's trying to hold onto both or choosing their child over their church. Many strongly anti-queer people have had to confront and modify their bigotry when someone they love comes out because the person that sits across the dinner table from them does not match all the horrible beliefs they once held.

And one more positive note, The worst part of coming out is not knowing how things will turn out. It's the unknown and worry that it will be 100% the worst-case scenario is common, but it will not be 100% worst case, nor will it be 100% best case. Most people are surprised to find it's closer to the best case scenario than it is to the worst case scenario they imagined.

I hope your parents' love for you is strong enough to cause them to question the bigoted thoughts that have shaped and defined who they think queer people are.

[samwisethewitch]

Cults? In my life? It’s more likely than you think.

In my last post, I talked about how the Law of Attraction and Christian prosperity gospel both use the same thought control techniques as cults. I’ve received several public and private replies to that post: some expressing contempt for “sheeple” who can be lead astray by cults, and others who say my post made them scared that they might be part of a cult without knowing it.

I want to address both of those types of replies in this post. I want to talk about what a cult really looks like, and how you can know if you’re dealing with one.

If you type the word “cult” into Google Images, it will bring up lots of photos of people with long hair, wearing all white, with their hands raised in an expression of ecstasy.

Most modern cults do not look anything like this.

Modern cultists look a lot like everyone else. One of the primary goals of most cults is recruitment, and it’s hard to get people to join your cause if they think you and your group are all Kool-Aid-drinking weirdos. The cults that last are the ones that manage to convince people that they’re just like everyone else — a little weird maybe, but certainly not dangerous.

In the book The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple, author Jeff Guinn says, “In years to come, Jim Jones would frequently be compared to murderous demagogues such as Adolf Hitler and Charles Manson. These comparisons completely misinterpret, and historically misrepresent, the initial appeal of Jim Jones to members of Peoples Temple. Jones attracted followers by appealing to their better instincts.”

You might not know Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple by name, but you’ve probably heard their story. They’re the Kool-Aid drinkers I mentioned earlier. Jones and over 900 of his followers, including children, committed mass suicide by drinking Flavor Aid mixed with cyanide.

In a way, the cartoonish image of cults in popular media has helped real-life cults to stay under the radar and slip through people’s defenses.

In her book Recovering Agency: Lifting the Veil of Mormon Mind Control, Luna Lindsey says: “These groups use a legion of persuasive techniques in unison, techniques that strip away the personality to build up a new group pseudopersonality. New members know very little about the group’s purpose, and most expectations remain unrevealed. People become deeply involved, sacrificing vast amounts of time and money, and investing emotionally, spiritually, psychologically, and socially.”

Let’s address some more common myths about cults:

Myth #1: All cults are Satanic or occult in nature. This mostly comes from conservative Christians, who may believe that all non-Christian religions are inherently cultish in nature and are in league with the Devil. This is not the case — most non-Christians don’t even believe in the Devil, much less want to sign away their souls to him. Many cults use Christian theology to recruit members, and some of these groups (Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, etc.) have become popular enough to be recognized as legitimate religions. Most cults have nothing to do with magic or the occult.

Myth #2: All cults are religious. This is also false. While some cults do use religion to recruit members or push an agenda, many cults have no religious or spiritual element. Political cults are those founded around a specific political ideology. Author and cult researcher Janja Lalich is a former member of an American political cult founded on the principles of Marxism. There are also “cults of personality” built around political figures and celebrities, such as Adolf Hitler, Chairman Mao, and Donald Trump. In these cases, the cult is built around hero worship of the leader — it doesn’t really matter what the leader believes or does.

Myth #3: All cults are small fringe groups. Cults can be any size. Some cults have only a handful of members — it’s even possible for parents to use thought control techniques on their children, essentially creating a cult that consists of a single family.  There are some cults that have millions of members (see previous note about Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses).

Myth #4: All cults live on isolated compounds away from mainstream society. While it is true that all cults isolate their members from the outside world, very few modern cults use physical isolation. Many cults employ social isolation, which makes members feel separate from mainstream society. Some cults do this by encouraging their followers to be “In the world but not of the world,” or encouraging them to keep themselves “pure.”

Myth #5: Only stupid, gullible, and/or mentally ill people join cults. Actually, according to Luna Lindsey, the average cult member is of above-average intelligence. As cult expert Steven Hassan points out, “Cults intentionally recruit ‘valuable’ people—they go after those who are intelligent, caring, and motivated. Most cults do not want to be burdened by unintelligent people with serious emotional or physical problems.” The idea that only stupid or gullible people fall for thought control is very dangerous, because it reinforces the idea that “it could never happen to me.” This actually prevents intelligent people from thinking critically about the information they’re consuming and the groups they’re associating with, which makes them easier targets for cult recruitment.

So, now that we have a better idea of what a cult actually looks like, how do you know if you or someone you know is in one?

A good rule of thumb is to compare the group’s actions and teachings to Steven Hassan’s BITE Model. Steven Hassan is an expert on cult psychology, and most cult researchers stand by this model. From Hassan’s website, freedomofmind.com: “Based on research and theory by Robert Jay Lifton, Margaret Singer, Edgar Schein, Louis Jolyon West, and others who studied brainwashing in Maoist China as well as cognitive dissonance theory by Leon Festinger, Steven Hassan developed the BITE Model to describe the specific methods that cults use to recruit and maintain control over people. ‘BITE’ stands for Behavior, Information, Thought, and Emotional control.”

Behavior Control may include…

Telling you how to behave, and enforcing behavior with rewards and punishments. (Rewards may be nonphysical concepts like “salvation” or “enlightenment,” or social rewards like group acceptance or an elevated status within the group. Punishments may also be nonphysical, like “damnation,” or may be social punishments like judgement from peers or removal from the group.)

Dictating where and with whom you live. (This includes pressure to move closer to other group members, even if you will be living separately.)

Controlling or restricting your sexuality. (Includes enforcing chastity or abstinence and/or coercion into non-consensual sex acts.)

Controlling your clothing or hairstyle. (Even if no one explicitly tells you, you may feel subtle pressure to look like the rest of the group.)

Restricting leisure time and activities. (This includes both demanding participation in frequent group activities and telling you how you should spend your free time.)

Requiring you to seek permission for major decisions. (Again, even if you don’t “need” permission, you may feel pressure to make decisions that will be accepted by the group.)

And more.

Information Control may include…

Withholding or distorting information. (This may manifest as levels of initiation, with only the “inner circle” or upper initiates being taught certain information.)

Forbidding members from speaking with ex-members or other critics.

Discouraging members from trusting any source of information that isn’t approved by the group’s leadership.

Forbidding members from sharing certain details of the group’s beliefs or practice with outsiders.

Using propaganda. (This includes “feel good” media that exists only to enforce the group’s message.)

Using information gained in confession or private conversation against you.

Gaslighting to make members doubt their own memory. (“I never said that,” “You’re remembering that wrong,” “You’re confused,” etc.)

Requiring you to report your thoughts, feelings, and activities to group leaders or superiors.

Encouraging you to spy on other group members and report their “misconduct.”

And more.

Thought Control may include…

Black and White, Us vs. Them, or Good vs. Evil thinking.

Requiring you to change part of your identity or take on a new name. (This includes only using last names, as well as titles like “Brother,” “Sister,” and “Elder.”)

Using loaded languages and cliches to stop complex thought. (This is the difference between calling someone a “former member” and calling the same person an “apostate” or “covenant breaker.”)

Inducing hypnotic or trance states including prayer, meditation, singing hymns, etc.

Using thought-stopping techniques to prevent critical thinking. (“If you ever find yourself doubting, say a prayer to distract yourself!”)

Allowing only positive thoughts or speech.

Rejecting rational analysis and criticism both from members and from those outside the group.

And more.

Emotional Control may include…

Inducing irrational fears and phobias, especially in connection with leaving the group. (This includes fear of damnation, fear of losing personal value, fear of persecution, etc.)

Labeling some emotions as evil, worldly, sinful, low-vibrational, or wrong.

Teaching techniques to keep yourself from feeling certain emotions like anger or sadness.

Promoting feelings of guilt, shame, and unworthiness. (This is often done by holding group members to impossible standards, such as being spiritually “pure” or being 100% happy all the time.)

Showering members and new recruits with positive attention — this is called “love bombing.” (This can be anything from expensive gifts to sexual favors to simply being really nice to newcomers.)

Shunning members who disobey orders or disbelieve the group’s teachings.

Teaching members that there is no happiness, peace, comfort, etc. outside of the group.

And more.

If a group ticks most or all of the boxes in any one of these categories, you need to do some serious thinking about whether or not that group is good for your mental health. If a group is doing all four of these, you’re definitely dealing with a cult and need to get out as soon as possible.

These techniques can also be used by individual people in one-on-one relationships. A relationship or friendship where someone tries to control your behavior, thoughts, or emotions is not healthy and, again, you need to get out as soon as possible.

Obviously, not all of these things are inherently bad. Meditation and prayer can be helpful on their own, and being nice to new people is common courtesy. The problem is when these acts become part of a bigger pattern, which enforces someone else’s control over your life.

A group that tries to tell you how to think or who to be is bad for your mental health, your personal relationships, and your sense of self. When in doubt, do what you think is best for you — and always be suspicious of people or groups who refuse to be criticized.

[garetthawke]

do conservative christians just get their beliefs uploaded by whatever they're taught is the authority and have any other thoughts squashed as kids or something? raised to believe compartmentalizing all rational thought and keeping it jailed and ineffective is a virtue or something?

something like that. that's def how i was raised, although it didn't work as well on me bc i had chronic Disrespect Authority disease since i could talk. i never understood the heirarchies that everybody else did as a kid, so i wasn't good at just understanding who i was supposed to unquestioningly believe, and that was a source of discord between me and my parents since i was a toddler.

but most of the other kids, all my siblings included, that's what i watched happen. i watched them grow up without having those questions and thoughts, because if they ever did raise them, they would get the same answers and told faith is more important than doubt and uncertainty.

i think the real issue with conservative christians is the overbearing need for the world to work in incredibly simplistic in-the-box ways. their entire lives, philosophies, and personalities have to be dictated by a single book, and therefore all human complexities, all unanswered questions, all of the nature of the universe has to be explained and understood through that book.

its part of why they cling so desperately to things like the gender binary and heterosexuality, and the toxic masculinity and misogyny that comes out of that. those are all very simple boxes to shove the whole world into that can be supported by their bible, and they NEED the world to be that simple or else they'll have to start asking themselves why it isn't.

the simplest thing they understand is "us vs them." and the simplest way to deal with the gray areas and complicated parts of humanity is to say "if you aren't like us, its sin." and its such a concise brush off so they don't have to think about it any more. be a cookie cutter christian, and if you're different at all, well that's just the devil influencing you, isn't it?

and if the answers are really that simple, that cut and dried, there's no reason to ever question or think about it further. you get told the world is a basic black and white, 2d image, and if you believe that, you never have to do anything difficult at all. you don't have to struggle with the same things as the sinners, you don't have to think about why they're different or do what they do, you can just blame it on demons and be done with it.

there's a source of pride in the christians who brag about being strong in faith even through the hardships they do face. they talk about doubt and backsliding like infectious diseases, and I even lost friends as a kid because their mothers thought since I wasn't a good enough christian, i would be a bad influence on their kids.

you'll hear testimonies of people standing up on stage, telling stories about experiences that for all intents and purposes, should make you question god just hearing it. should make them ask what the point of it all is. and then they will end by saying "but i never lost faith, it's stronger now more than ever," and a whole room of hundreds of people will clap and cheer, leaving you to wonder what the fuck is wrong with all of them.

i think it's why I've never in my life been hurt by my Jewish friends, too, even though christians like to teach that the foundations of the religions are the same. because they're not. its exclusively a christian thing to fear doubt and questioning, to view self reflection and determination as a danger. its a christian thing to want everything to be uniformly the same and simplified, and to live in denial when shown that that's not how the world functions.

[testudoaubrei-blog]

Content note for discussions of eternal damnation, and all sorts of other shit that will trigger a lot of folks with religious trauma.

Before I get started I might as well explain where I’m coming from - unlike a lot of She-Ra fans, and a lot of queer people, I don’t have much religious trauma, or any, maybe (okay there were a number of years I was convinced I was going to hell, but that happens to everyone, right?). I was raised a liberal Christian by liberal Christian parents in the Episcopal Church, where most of my memories are overwhelmingly positive. Fuck, growing up in the 90’s, Chuch was probably the only place outside my home I didn’t have homophobia spewed at me. Because it was the 90’s and it was a fucking hellscape of bigotry where 5 year olds knew enough to taunt each other with homophobic slurs and the adults didn’t know enough to realize how fucked up that was. Anyway. This is my experience, but it is an atypical one, and I know it. Quite frankly I know that my experience of Christianity has very little at all to do with what most people experienced, or what people generally mean when they talk about Christianity as a cultural force in America today. So if you were raised Christian and you don’t recognize your theology here, congrats, neither do I, but these ideas and cultural forces are huge and powerful and dominant. And it’s this dominant Christian narrative that I’m referring to in this post. As well as, you know, a children’s cartoon about lesbian rainbow princesses. So here it goes. This is going to get batshit.

"All events whatsoever are governed by the secret counsel of God." - John Calvin

“We’re all just a bunch of wooly guys” - Noelle Stevenson

This is a post triggered by a single scene, and a single line. It’s one of the most fucked-up scenes in She-Ra, toward the end of Save the Cat. Catra, turned into a puppet by Prime, struggles with her chip, desperately trying to gain control of herself, so lost and scared and vulnerable that she flings aside her own death wish and her pride and tearfully begs Adora to rescue her. Adora reaches out , about to grab her, and then Prime takes control back, pronounces ‘disappointing’ and activates the kill switch that pitches Catra off the platform and to her death (and seriously, she dies here, guys - also Adora breaks both her legs in the fall). But before he does, he dismisses Catra with one of his most chilling lines. “Some creatures are meant only for destruction.”

And that’s when everyone watching probably had their heart broken a little bit, but some of the viewers raised in or around Christianity watching the same scene probably whispered ‘holy shit’ to themselves. Because Prime’s line - which works as a chilling and callous dismissal of Catra - is also an allusion to a passage from the Bible. In fact, it’s from one of the most fucked up passages in a book with more than its share of fucked up passages. It’s from Romans 9:22, and I’m going to quote several previous verses to give the context of the passage (if not the entire Epistle, which is more about who needs to abide by Jewish dietary restrictions but was used to construct a systematic theology in the centuries afterwards because people decided it was Eternal Truth).

19 Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will?

20 Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?

21 Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?

22 What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction:

The context of the allusion supports the context in the show. Prime is dismissing Catra - serial betrayer, liar, failed conqueror, former bloody-handed warlord - as worthless, as having always been worthless and fit only to be destroyed. He is speaking from a divine and authoritative perspective (because he really does think he’s God, more of this in my TL/DR Horde Prime thing). Prime is echoing not only his own haughty dismissal of Catra, and Shadow Weaver’s view of her, but also perhaps the viewer’s harshest assessment of her, and her own worst fears about herself. Catra was bad from the start, doomed to destroy and to be destroyed. A malformed pot, cracked in firing, destined to be shattered against a wall and have her shards classified by some future archaeologist 2,000 years later. And all that’s bad enough.

But the full historical and theological context of this passage shows the real depth of Noelle Stevenson’s passion and thought and care when writing this show. Noelle was raised in Evangelical or Fundamentalist Christianity. To my knowledge, he has never specified what sect or denomination, but in interviews and her memoir Noelle has shown a particular concern for questions that this passage raises, and a particular loathing for the strains of Protestant theology that take this passage and run with it - that is to say, Calvinism. So while I’m not sure if Noelle was raised as a conservative, Calvinist Presbyterian, his preoccupation with these questions mean that it’s time to talk about Calvinism.

It would be unfair, perhaps, to say that Calvinism is a systematic theology built entirely upon the Epistles of Romans and Galatians, but only -just- (and here my Catholic readers in particular will chuckle to themselves and lovingly stroke their favorite passage of the Epistle of James). The core of Calvinist Doctrine is often expressed by the very Dutch acronym TULIP:

Total Depravity - people are wholly evil, and incapable of good action or even willing good thoughts or deeds

Unconditional Election - God chooses some people to save because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, not because they did anything to deserve, trigger or accept it

Limited Atonement - Jesus died only to save the people God chose to save, not the rest of us bastards

Irresistible Grace - God chooses some people to be saved - if you didn’t want to be saved, too bad, God said so.

Perseverance of the Saints - People often forget this one and assume it’s ‘predestination’ but it’s actually this - basically, once saved by God, always saved, and if it looks like someone falls out of grace, they were never saved to begin with. Well that’s all sealed up tight I guess.

Reading through these, predestination isn’t a single doctrine in Calvinism but the entire theological underpinnings of it together with humanity’s utter powerlessness before sin. Basically God has all agency, humanity has none. Calvinism (and a lot of early modern Protestantism) is obsessed with questions of how God saves people (grace alone, AKA Sola Fides) and who God saves (the people god elects and only the people God elects, and fuck everyone else).

It’s apparent that Noelle was really taken by these questions, and repelled by the answers he heard. He’s alluded to having a tattoo refuting the Gospel passage about Sheep and Goats being sorted at the end times, affirming instead that ‘we’re all just a bunch of wooly guys’ (you can see this goat tattoo in some of his self-portraits in comics, etc). He’s also mentioned that rejecting and subverting destiny is a huge part of everything he writes as a particular rejection of the idea that some individual people are 'chosen' by God or that God has a plan for any of us. You can see that -so clearly- in Adora’s arc, where Adora embraces and then rejects destiny time and again and finally learns to live life for herself.

But for Catra, we’re much more concerned about the most negative aspect of this - the idea that some people are vessels meant for destruction. And that’s something else that Noelle is preoccupied with. In her memoir in the section about leaving the church and becoming a humanistic atheist, there is a drawing of a pot and the question ‘Am I a vessel prepared for destruction?’ Obviously this was on Noelle’s mind (And this is before he came out to himself as queer!).

To look at how this question plays out in Catra’s entire arc, let’s first talk about how ideas of damnation and salvation actually play out in society. And for that I’m going to plug one of my favorite books, Gin Lun’s Damned Nation: Hell in America from the Revolution to Reconstruction (if you can tell by now, I am a fucking blast at parties). Lun tells the long and very interesting story about, how ideas of hell and who went there changed during the Early American Republic. One of the interesting developments that she talks about is how while at first people who were repelled by Calvinism started moving toward a doctrine of universal salvation (no on goes to hell, at least not forever*), eventually they decided that hell was fine as long as only the right kind of people went there. Mostly The Other - non-Christian foreigners, Catholics, Atheists, people who were sinners in ways that were not just bad but weird and violated Victorian ideas of respectability. Really, Hell became a way of othering people, and arguably that’s how it survives today, especially as a way to other queer people (but expanding this is slated for my Montero rant). Now while a lot of people were consciously rejecting Calvinist predestination, they were still drawing the distinction between the Elect (good, saved, worthwhile) and the everyone else (bad, damned, worthless). I would argue that secularized ideas of this survive to this day even among non-Christian spaces in our society - we like to draw lines between those who Elect, and those who aren’t.

And that’s what brings us back to Catra. Because Catra’s entire arc is a refutation of the idea that some people are worthless and irredeemable, either by nature, nurture or their own actions. Catra’s actions strain the conventions of who is sympathetic in a Kid’s cartoon - I’ve half joked that she’s Walter White as a cat girl, and it’s only half a joke. She’s cruel, self-deluded, she spends 4 seasons refusing to take responsibility for anything she does and until Season 5 she just about always chooses the thing that does the most damage to herself and others. As I mentioned in my Catra rant, the show goes out of its way to demonstrate that Catra is morally culpable in every step of her descent into evil (except maybe her break with reality just before she pulls the lever). The way that Catra personally betrays everyone around her, the way she strips herself of all of her better qualities and most of what makes her human, hell even her costume changes would signal in any other show that she’s irredeemable.

It’s tempting to see this as Noelle’s version of being edgy - pushing the boundaries of what a sympathetic character is, throwing out antiheroics in favor of just making the villain a protagonist. Noelle isn’t quite Alex ‘I am in the business of traumatizing children’ Hirsch, who seems to have viewed his job as pushing the bounds of what you could show on the Disney Channel (I saw Gravity Falls as an adult and a bunch of that shit lives rent free in my nightmares forever), but Noelle has his own dark side, mostly thematically. The show’s willingness to deal with abuse, and messed up religious themes, and volatile, passionate, not particularly healthy relationships feels pretty daring. I’m not joking when I gleefully recommend this show to friends as ‘a couple from a Mountain Goats Song fights for four seasons in a cartoon intended for 9 year olds’. Noelle is in his own way pushing the boundaries of what a kids show can do. If you read Noelle’s other works like Nimona, you see an argument for Noelle being at least a bit edgy. Nimona is also angry, gleefully destructive, violent and spiteful - not unlike Catra. Given that it was a 2010s webcomic and not a kids show, Nimona is a good deal worse than Catra in some ways - Catra doesn’t kill people on screen, while Nimona laughs about it (that was just like, a webcomic thing - one of the fan favorite characters in my personal favorite, Narbonic, was a fucking sociopath, and the heroes were all amoral mad scientists, except for the superintelligent gerbil**). But unlike Nimona, whose fate is left open ended, Catra is redeemed.

And that is weird. We’ve had redemption arcs, but generally not of characters with -so- much vile stuff in their history. Going back to the comparison between her and Azula, many other shows, like Avatar, would have made Catra a semi-sympathetic villain who has a sob-story in their origin but who is beyond redemption, and in so doing would articulate a kind of psychologized Calvinism where some people are too traumatized to ever be fully and truly human. I’d argue this is the problem with Azula as a character - she’s a fun villain, but she doesn’t have moral agency, and the ultimate message of her arc - that she’s a broken person destined only to hurt people - is actually pretty fucked up. And that’s the origin story of so many serial killers and psycopaths that populate so many TV shows and movies. Beyond ‘hurt people hurt people’ they have nothing to teach us except perhaps that trauma makes you a monster and that the only possible response to people doing bad things is to cut them out of your life and out of our society (and that’s why we have prisons, right?)

And so Catra’s redemption and the depths from which she claws herself back goes back to Noelle’s desire to prove that no person is a vessel ‘fitted for destruction.’ Catra goes about as far down the path of evil as we’ve ever seen a protagonist in a kids show go, and she still has the capacity for good. Importantly, she is not subject to total depravity - she is capable of a good act, if only one at first. Catra is the one who begins her own redemption (unlike in Calvinism, where grace is unearned and even unwelcomed) - because she wants something better than what she has, even if its too late, because she realizes that she never wanted any of this anyway, because she wants to do one good thing once in her life even if it kills her.

The very extremity of Catra’s descent into villainy serves to underline the point that Noelle is trying to make - that no one can be written off completely, that everyone is capable of change, and that no human being is garbage, no matter how twisted they’ve become. Meanwhile her ability to set her own redemption in motion is a powerful statement of human agency, and healing, and a refutation of Calvinism’s idea that we are powerless before sin or pop cultural tropes about us being powerful before the traumas of our upbringing. Catra’s arc, then, is a kind of anti-Calvinist theological statement - about the nature of people and the nature of goodness.

Now, there is a darker side to this that Noelle has only hinted at, but which is suggested by other characters on the show. Because while Catra’s redemption shows that people are capable of change, even when they’ve done horrible things, been fucked up and fucked themselves up, it also illustrates the things people do to themselves that make change hard. As I mentioned in my Catra rant, two of the most sinister parts of her descent into villainy are her self-dehumanization (crushing her own compassion and desire to do good) and her rewriting of her own history in her speech and memory to make her own actions seem justified (which we see with her insistence that Adora left her, eliding Adora’s offers to have Catra join her, or her even more clearly false insistence that Entrapta had betrayed them). In Catra, these processes keep her going down the path of evil, and allow her to nearly destroy herself and everyone else. But we can see the same processes at work in two much darker figures - Shadow Weaver and Horde Prime. These are both rants for another day, but the completeness of Shadow Weaver’s narcissistic self-justification and cultivated callousness and the even more complete narcissism of Prime’s god complex cut both characters off from everyone around them. Perhaps, in a theoretical sense, they are still redeemable, but for narrative purposes they might as well be damned.

This willingness to show a case where someone -isn’t- redeemed actually serves to make Catra’s redemption more believable, especially since Noelle and the writers draw the distinction between how Catra and SW/Prime can relate to reality and other people, not how broken they are by their trauma (unlike Zuko and Azula, who are differentiated by How Fucked Uolp They Are). Redemption is there, it’s an option, we can always do what is right, but someone people will choose not to, in part because doing the right thing involves opening ourselves to the world and others, and thus being vulnerable. Noelle mentions this offhandedly in an interview after Season 1 with the She-Ra Progressive of Power podcast - “I sometimes think that shades of grey, sympathetic villains are part of the escapist fantasy of shows like this.” Because in the real world, some people are just bastards, a point that was particularly clear in 2017. Prime and Shadow Weaver admit this reality, while Catra makes a philosophical point that even the bastards can change their ways (at least in theory).

*An idea first proposed in the second century by Origen, who’s a trip and a fucking half by himself, and an idea that becomes the Catholic doctrine of purgatory, which protestants vehemently denied!

**Speaking of favorite Noelle tropes

[lumini-317]

Hello!

This will be my official “introductory” post!

My real name is Erica, but I go by many names. My nickname repertoire includes but is not limited to: Lumi, Lumini, Cricket (I have a habit of rubbing my feet together, lmao), Jinx, Eri, Er, EriJoy, Sunbaeby, and Aceir (my real name but in alphabetical order).

This is my first ever Tumblr blog. I’ve had it for a while but have rarely posted anything, that along with the fact that I’m on mobile is kind of a mess so I apologize for mistakes and all that.

I have 3 older brothers, an older sister, and a younger brother.

I’m an ambivert. Sometimes I love hanging out with bigger groups of people, other times I dread it.

I’ve taken the “16personalities” test 4 times and all 4 put me in the “Diplomat” category, however I got “Advocate” (INFJ) 2 times, and “Protagonist” (ENFJ) and “Mediator” (INFP) 1 time each.

I am LGBTQ+. I’m asexual, aro+panromantic flux, and while I feel like I’m genderfluid, the changes are very subtle and so I sometimes just go with agender, gendervoid, or neutrois. It’s a lot less complicated that way. I’m ambiamorous, and also pronoun apathetic!

I love whump. I’ve loved it for as long as I can remember but only found the whump community maybe 3(?) years ago.

I also love K-Pop, C-Pop, J-Pop, and Asian dramas, mainly K-Pop and K-Dramas, though.

I’m a HUGE multistan. ATEEZ, SKZ, TBZ, EXO, BTS, Red Velvet, SHINee, iKON, MONSTA X, TWICE, TO1, WANNA ONE, SuperM, X1, MIRAE, Ciipher, Golden Child, Purple Kiss, BAE173, SF9, IU, ONEUS, ONEWE, The Rose, PIXY, LUCY, STAYC, WEi (which I pronounced as “way” for an embarrassingly long time), Dreamcatcher, Brave Girls, TXT, ENHYPEN, SNSD, KARD, AKMU, SHAUN, Gaho, NCT, GHOST9, 1team, SE7EN, Cross Gene, D1ce, AB6IX, CRAVITY, BLACKPINK, CIX, VIXX, f(x), 4Minute, CLC, YEZI, B.I, Wonho, (G)I-DLE, EVERGLOW, SEVENTEEN, BROOKLYN, Ha Hyunsang, DAY6, GOT7, Teen Top, BAP, TREASURE, UNIQ, etc! It goes on, far longer than I can list. I am also very much against fanwars, they disgust me.

I’m also a HUGE animal lover, and a big softie. I can’t even squish insects. I don’t care that they can’t feel pain and don’t experience emotions, I just can’t bring myself to. I make it my mission to save any type of animal I come across. I find toads in our koi pond and immediately pick them out and take them to a safe place. I help turtles across the road. I got a mouse out of a puddle and revived it, releasing it when it was healthy enough. I saw a snail on a piece of wood that was going to be thrown on a fire and carefully pulled it off and put it somewhere else. So far I’ve found 5 stray cats (Piper, Toothless, Felix, Kai, and Kit Kat—all were found as skinny, sickly kittens) and took them in, raising them as my own. I rescued a chipmunk from certain death-by-cat. I’ve even saved a few baby raccoons, ducklings, lizards, spiders, and snakes in my time. And I’ll keep doing so for as long as I live.

I love writing, drawing/sketching, and painting, however I’m not confident that I’m good at any of those things, lmao. I mean, I don’t think I’m the worst, but my finished “works” often leave me unsatisfied with my “skills”. But of course, that won’t stop me from trying to improve!

I’m a maladaptive daydreamer. This can cause issues in some places while helping me out in others. On one hand, it makes doing chores and such kind of difficult. Like one time I had to take care of my dad’s pigeons while he was fixing our shed and one time he pointed out how slow I was with the chores. His words were something along the lines of, “I’m already almost done with what I have to do and you’re still working with the pigeons.” Also, it (and maybe ADHD if I do have it?) made school a nightmare for me. But it’s also helpful because then during church it’s really easy to keep myself occupied while the pastors go on about their Magical Sky Daddy™’s son throwing a tantrum and killing a figtree because it didn’t have any figs and how that story should “challenge” us or something.

The characters in my daydreams are weird, though. They merge and separate with each other to make different characters depending on the situation. Most of them don’t have definite genders. Only a handful of them have names because they’re always merging and separating like some kind of Shadow Clone Masters or something. Stuff like that.

One of my characters is for sure a demi-boy, though, and his name is Kyler.

I brought this up because I was watching The Andy Griffith Show and Andy was giving Opie a lecture on how many poor kids there are in the world and used the ratio “one and a half boys per square mile”. Opie then says that he’s “never seen a half a boy before”. Kyler just sort of pops into (fake) existence, jumps off the couch, and throws his arms in the air while saying, “Half a boy, right here!” I burst out laughing. Thankfully it didn’t seem weird, since my parents started laughing at Opie and thought that I was just laughing at it, too.

Any-who.

If I daydream while I’m standing, I’ll often pace and gesture with my arms while moving my lips. Sometimes I’ll even whisper. If I’m sitting down, I usually fidget a lot (such as pick at my shirt and rub my feet together), stare into space, and move my lips or whisper. My family sometimes ask me, “Why are you whispering?” Or, “What are you grinning about?” And I just shrug because I don’t know how to explain it to them without risking them calling someone to pray over me, lmao. I mean, I wasn’t even allowed to have imaginary friends because that was “evil”. When I was about 7, I told my parents about my imaginary unicorn friend and they gave me a lecture and “prayed over me”. It was embarrassing and awkward for me.

I’m suspicious that I might have ADHD, but don’t have the money to actually get a professional diagnosis. I’m also too scared to ask my parents about it.

Speaking of which, my family and I don’t see eye-to-eye. I mean, they don’t know it because I’m good at hiding it, and they think I agree with mostly everything they do but boy, is it a mess.

You see, they’re evangelical conservative Christians. “LGBTQ+ people are going to hell”, “ThE LeFt ARe eViL AnD ARe TrYiNg To BrAiNwAsh OuR ChiLdrEn”, “Trump was sent by God”, “Intersex is fake”, “Women must submit to men”, “You should get married no later than in a year or ‘the temptation’ to have sex might become too much”, the whole bit.

Meanwhile I’m over here with my (imaginary) pride flags, just existing as an agnostic leftist who wants everyone to have equal rights, regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation, and would rather redo my horrifically atrocious kindergarten closing program role than pray to a god who (if they/he/she/it/whatever exists) gives cancer to kids and killed millions of innocent animals and people in the Bible.

But they have no idea that this is how I feel and now expect me to be baptized within the next month to show that I have “accepted Jesus Christ as my savior”. Yeah...that’s gonna be an awkward discussion...

Anyway, that’s just some things about me. Sorry that I got sidetracked a few times, lmao!

I look forward to posting more and maybe even making friends!

Thank you for reading (:

[dredshirtroberts]

no you know what actually I do have shit to say about de-radicalization and how people on the whole (and i do include myself here, i am a people as well) need to be more compassionate towards those deconstructing their worldview and pulling away from radical/harmful ideology.

Cause y'all I don't talk about it much and so you might not know but like...

that was me.

My family is *ultra conservative* and maybe i've said that before, maybe i understood on some level how far down the rabbit hole they've become - but i didn't realize until relatively recently how fucking long it's been like this.

And how close I personally was to being just like them.

The EIB network - y'all might not know of them, but the radio network that hosted Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck? (do people even remember who Glenn Beck even is? he was everywhere when I was younger but i'm starting to realize that some of the people I grew up listening to were not big names outside of their fringe belief groups) - was the sound of summertime as a child. It was so prevalent that when my mother began homeschooling my sister and I, I would hear it and immediately think it was summertime - even in the dead of winter with snow on the ground. For years. To this day I can hear it in my head.

We mainly watched Fox News back in the day - we watched CNN and NBC for a while too. But ultimately it was Fox News where we got the majority of our information about the world at large.

I don't know much about Bill Clinton's presidency other than the Sexy Scandal because we didn't like him and no one talked about him except to say he was terrible (with no information as to why other than that he was a Democrat and all Democrats were the devil and going to steal our rights). We thought George W. Bush was going to save america.

I thought Sarah Palin was a feminist icon - though obviously we didn't need feminism because girls and boys were super equal. Racism ended in the 60s. The Civil War wasn't fought because of Slavery it was for property ownership, *obviously*. You know, like land. Because property meant land. Not *people.*

The government was terrible and should be kept out of everyone's business and if you couldn't shake it on your own, you weren't trying hard enough and the government didn't need to bail you out. Black people were lazy for not doing enough to change their station and everyone who thought racism was still a thing just hadn't listened properly when Martin Luther King Jr talked about dreams. but also that speech wasn't necessary even back then because Racism wasn't real - or if it was real it wasn't bad because stereotypes exist for a reason, you know.

My dad and mom proudly talked about their racial profiling of "'Sp*c Cars." But we never said the N-word (even though if the black people say it they shouldn't expect no one else to be able to say it).

The hardcore christian element didn't super settle in until the homeschooling years. My parents didn't own a gun until a few years ago. But we supported gun rights. The right to bear arms was integral to the constitution, the constitution was correct when the Founding Fathers wrote it and didn't need *changes*.

Trans people were just Ultra Gays and the gays didn't need rights because they were sinners and going to hell because God might love them but we didn't. Men in dresses were a joke and obviously no trans person could *really* become the gender they "claimed" to be.

Unions were useless and we definitely didn't need them anymore because they were never necessary in the first place. If you don't like your job, just leave it, you know? And don't get fussy if your boss fires you out of nowhere for an "injustice" because that just means you're looking for excuses for your bad job performance.

Women were meant to bear children and run the household and I guess you could be a business lady if you *wanted* to but like only if you also planned to have children - or had already had and raised your children. And why on earth would a man do any of the child rearing unless there was a boychild involved?

I met Newt Gingrich and got to shake his hand and that was a *bragging right*.

and all of that has been incredibly difficult to un-learn. You spend 18 years surrounded by that rhetoric, thinking that's the way the world is meant to be. You cannot just drop it and immediately switch to the "correct" way of thinking (there is no "unproblematic" political ideology in today's world right now. but that's a different rant).

I have to work extra hard sometimes to fight through those filters of bias and hatred. Because I thought my parents were *reasonable*. I didn't think they were radical my *whole* life until like...a few months ago. I thought they'd *become* radical. But...no.

No they've always been like this and I sounded like a moron trying to convince other family members that they hadn't always been that bad.

Deconstruction, de-radicalization, re-learning is *hard.* And it's *lonely*. Because when you start pulling at the threads, those who shared the blanket no longer want to talk to you, and those under the other blanket are blinded in their own hatred of your previous beliefs to help you learn.

So you have to make your own blanket by listening to how others' blankets are constructed. And you learn. And you challenge and you *fight* and it's hard.

But I'll share my blanket with you. It's cold and lonely on this journey - but it doesn't have to be. We can un-learn together. We can deconstruct our past belief systems together. We can expand our horizons and become allies with other communities as a community ourselves.

We can grow. Because where you're from might be helpful to know in battling prejudices ingrained in your since childhood, but it's not all you are. You are more than your roots and the dirt you grew up in. You're not alone. You're not the only one going through this journey.

And I'll help you if you need a blanket to rest under for the night. We're in this together. I've got your hand. Come on. <3

[oh-mother-of-darkness]

Hello. I am, as you know, an American. I turned eighteen in 2014, voted in my first presidential election in 2016, and voted in my second presidential election last week via early voting in the state of Texas. 

I’m reflecting right now on the difference between those experiences. This is going to be a very self-indulgent essay. 

The 2016 election was in my third and final year of undergrad at Texas A&M University. At the time, I was living with a roommate who grew up in a town of 2,000, all of them members of her church. I loved her very much, but she was the most sheltered person I’ve ever met. 

I was only a few years ahead of her. My home growing up was deeply liberal about many of the things that counted, but deeply conservative on equally important things. For me, leaving for college was a radicalization speed-run.

I, a good Memphis girl, moved to Texas and encountered for the first time in my life white homogeny and everything that comes with it. I made most of my friends at A&M through a Christian orientation camp that I attended, then worked at. I went to school at a history department that was overwhelmingly male and war-obsessed. 

My second semester, I was randomly sorted into a writing seminar on the American Civil War and Reconstruction. There were eight other students in that class, all of them Texans. By day two I had gotten into a open fight with one of my classmates after he used the phrases “one of the humane parts of slavery” and “the secession declarations are moving and beautiful appeals, if you read them,” and “well I’m not going to criticize my own state.”

We got into at least one yelling match per week from that point forward. It was a formative experience for me-- not just him but the seven other students that took his side every time because they just couldn’t conceptualize anything outside of their own experiences, and frankly, I couldn’t either. 

It rocked my world to be surrounded by people who told me, among other things, that their high schools flew the Confederate battle flag or Lee was their all time role-model (because he actually didn’t want to secede! He didn’t believe in it, but Virginia did, so he put his own qualms aside and served his country, and that’s what we all have to do). I ran a survey once by knocking on every door in a dorm hall and asking the two people inside why the Civil War happened. 

I feel like you can guess the most common answer I got. Only two said slavery. Six didn’t know what the Civil War was. 

The last week of the semester, my class read a collection of recorded oral accounts of freed slaves during Reconstruction. My nemesis told me that he “didn’t realize black people actually had it bad.” At the same time, I was struggling with my sexuality, my relationship to my religion, my relationship with my parents, and a handful of newly-diagnosed but long-existing mental illnesses. I wasn’t having fun. 

Over the next three years, I tried my hardest to humanize the people that said disgusting things about minorities, poverty, and me personally. I barely won on that one, and I’m actually really proud that I did, even if it took me a few years. I can trace the biggest change in me directly to my nemesis from the history department, the kid that made me so mad that I started arguing back. I was too scared to do that before. 

By 2016, I was in full existential spin-out-- a very suddenly liberal kid fighting my whole family, all of my classmates, and most of my friends in an explosive political climate, the first I had ever participated in. 

I voted by Tennessee absentee ballot in 2016. On election night, I ordered takeout for me and my roommate, who I knew had voted red. Confident, like pretty much everybody, that Clinton would win, I was trying to show her that I didn’t hate her. She went to bed after dinner, also so certain that Clinton would win that she didn’t bother to stay up. 

I sat in front of my laptop sewing a birthday present for a friend (Kenza, actually), while the votes came in. I wasn’t super alarmed when the map turned red. I just figured the blue states hadn’t finished counting yet. 

The map didn’t get any bluer. By 1am, I knew what was about to happen. They called it an hour later, while I was sobbing on my floor. I threw up in the bathroom out of pure anxiety. I got two anonymous messages telling me the asker was going to commit suicide. Neither of them responded to my replies. I don’t actually know what happened to them. 

I remember riding the bus to class the next morning and distinctly seeing that most of the racial minorities there had swollen eyes from crying. The girl with the pride stickers all over her laptop didn’t show up that day, and I’m kind of glad she didn’t, considering the way some of our classmates in the back were loudly talking about “the gays.” Hope she’s okay.

My roommate came home completely unaware that Clinton lost. I was crying in my room when that happened. I remember showing her a demographic map of who voted which way. She got visibly upset when she figured out what races how. I think she really did feel guilty. 

That Thanksgiving, one of my cousins tweeted, “I can’t wait to go argue with my liberal cousin today. The wins. Keep. Coming,” an hour before he walked into my house. Inauguration day was January 20, 2017. I decided to go to law school a week later, the day the president signed the Muslim ban. That’s when I figured out for the first time just how much power the courts have. The last three years have only enforced that. 

I got angrier and angrier during law school, egged on by a few friends but more than anything just... finally conscious of exactly how the American system works and exactly who’s behind it. I still live in Texas, farther west now, and I’m working my first legal job. I’m going to be a licensed attorney next week. 

I went back and forth for months about how this election was going to shake out. I knew there wasn’t going to be an overwhelming red majority this time, but my big fear was an election close enough that the Supreme Court could take it. That fear doubled last month, at RBG’s death. 

I was hoping for a blue enough victory on election night that there wouldn’t be a week of uncertainty, but that was unlikely, and it didn’t happen. I obsessively refreshed my election map all of Wednesday and Thursday, aware that at least some states would flip after mail-in ballots came in, but unsure which would. 

Again, my great fear was a blue victory held down by only one state. Given (I would say “any” chance here, but I don’t mean “any” chance because genuinely jurisdiction or facts or legal merit don’t matter to the Supreme Court) an opportunity to make one (1) decision that hands over a red election, please know that a conservative supermajority would take it. I cannot emphasize enough how true that is and how important it is for all of us to grasp that. 

Watching Georgia flip was one of the best experiences of my life, and it’s a little hard for me to articulate why, but I’m going to give it a shot here. I’m southern. I’m from the South, and for this conversation it’s really important that I’m from Memphis, a black city and a center of black music and culture. 

When people think about the South, they think of the white South, and on some level, they should. It is absolutely essential to understand the white South in order to understand American history. Let me be 100% clear here. That is not a good thing. American majority history is not good. We are not a good country. 

It’s near-impossible to understand why that’s true without knowing exactly what happened in the white South and exactly what is still happening there now. With that, however, is another truth that most folks don’t get. 

The SouthTM is white and needs to die. The South as it actually exists is partially white yes, but it is also everyone else that lives here, particularly black folks. Southern culture is black, not white. Georgia flipped because the people that have always, always been there finally got to crack apart the conservative machine holding the South hostage. 

That’s amazing. It’s fucking mind-blowing. I watched it happen at 3:30 in the morning days after Election Day, and holy shit holy shit, Georgia flipped. Atlanta won. Holy fucking shit. 

I would be terrified right now if only Georgia flipped, because SCOTUS would have found a way to throw out a few thousand votes. Inevitable. Absolutely certain on that one. 

With a few states of buffer, I don’t think that’s going to happen. I really do think it’s over. 

I came home after work on Friday and immediately went to sleep because I hadn’t really done that since Tuesday. I woke up at noon today, checked the map, checked my messages, and saw what happened while I was gone. After that, I went back to bed until 5:30pm. I’m really just getting up now, after most of 24 hours asleep. 

I don’t know if I would say that I’m happy right now, but I am overwhelmingly relieved. I’m under no illusions that a Biden victory will solve everything, but I also do think this is a real thing to celebrate. I’ll take suggestions on how to celebrate right now, actually, since I’m finally awake. 

I’ll be angry forever, I think, but this is a good thing, and I’d like to enjoy it. If you’re happy right now, hey, tell me about it. I’ll be thrilled with you. I want to hear it. Congrats to all of us. Love y’all. 

[one-abuse-survivor]

Ice Anon - I often wish I was never born or died before the age of 9 (which was when all of my mental issues started/got bad), I have suicidal thoughts and even made an attempt once. I feel almost like there’s nothing left on this earth for me. Like I have no reason to be here, I think my sister is starting to realize my suicide jokes have some seriousness to them. (1/?)

Ice Anon - I wish that I could be a little kid again so I can have the joy I don’t experience often anymore, but I also want to be an adult to get away from this life I hate. I love my friends and my cats and I’ve mostly been here for their sake, but I’m starting to worry it won’t be enough to keep my alive anymore. Focusing on my special interests helps me keep the bad thoughts away, which is one reason I like being obsessed with fiction. (2/?)

Ice Anon - But we had no wifi for a whole week (said week ended today 2/26) and I was left alone with my thoughts more than usual cause I didn’t have much to distract myself with. I could feel my anxiety, my sadness, and my self-hatred a lot more clearly than I usually do. I know I need help, and I’m trying to get it, but I haven’t been able to see my therapist or my psychiatrist since early December. (3/?)

Ice Anon - I probably need to go on medication, medication that my psychiatrist was hesitant to give cause she wasn’t sure if I was depressed. She said cause I don’t have friends (all of my friends are online and my parents don’t know about them so I’m scared to tell anyone about them) and never go outside, I might find the cure by getting friends and going outside more. (4/?)

Ice Anon - What she didn’t ask was how long I’d felt like this, cause if she did, I probably would be diagnosed with depression cause I’ve been feeling this was since I was 9, which was when I went outside pretty much everyday and when I had plenty of friends. I don’t self harm as much as I used to, but I have been really itching to do it very recently. (5/?)

Ice Anon - My family has been talking about travelling again, but I’m so sick of it. I don’t want to see all of my toxic family members, I don’t want to see the people I have to pretend to be friends with, I don’t want to lose time I could be spending on the internet, I don’t want to leave my cats here with someone else. School is not helping me either, and since my mother is my teacher, I can’t talk to any staff members. (6/?)

Ice Anon - School is supposed to be fun, supposed to teach me, but all it does is fuel my suicidal thoughts and makes me have breakdowns every time I try to work on it. I want to learn things, I really do and I love learning, but school makes me hate it whenever it tries to make me learn. I want to be more active, learn how to ride a horse, try archery, roller skate, start taekwondo, but my depression and autism work together to make me not want to go outside. (7/?)

Ice Anon - Most of my relatives are very conservative Christian, and while I’m still kinda Christian I’m nothing like them. They believe being gay and/or trans is a sin meanwhile I am both and I believe it’s not a sin, they think non-believers are going to hell and I don’t believe in hell, among more things. I never express these beliefs cause I know my dad would lecture me about the ‘truth’ and try to make it so my beliefs are the same as his. (8/?)

Ice Anon - One of my biggest fears is the end of the world, and that’s mainstream Christianity’s fault, whenever someone talks about the end of the real world I start to shake, my anxiety flares and my breathing picks up. The first and only time I mentioned this to my dad I was around 11 years old and he immediately said something along the lines of, “God did not give us a spirit of fear, and He will come back one day soon. There’s nothing to be scared of, for he will take us up with him.” (9/?)

Ice Anon - Then kept going on about the end of the world. It’s not as bad of a trigger as it used to be, but it's still bad. For some reason whenever I mention something scares me, or anxiety or anything like that he will say, “God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of peace.” And I know God didn’t give us a spirit of fear, but the world is fucked up and fear is a natural thing. Hell, fear will often keep you alive. (10/?)

Ice Anon - Hell, fear will often keep you alive. One time my sister was having a panic attack cause of dad, and me, mom, and my sister were all telling dad to leave yet he refused to and just kept making the panic attack worse. He didn’t even really believe in being medicated, saying enough prayer will make it go away and he believes the same is for being LGBT+. I know from experience that praying does not make you straight or cisgender. (11/?)

Ice Anon - When I first discovered that part of me, I’d pray twice a day every day to God, asking Them to make me normal, not sinful, to make me complete and begged Them to not send me to hell for being myself. It never worked. I’d wake up and was still attracted to multiple genders, and I still didn’t feel like my assigned gender. I also prayed for my mental illnesses to go away and they did not. (12/?)

Ice Anon - Sometimes praying away mental issues works, but most of the time it does not. I also have a lot of pressure on me outside of my family, I’m the missionary’s kid so I have to be perfect. I represent God and my parents at all times when we’re not at home. Barely anyone seems to actually want to be around me for me. I’m always the foreigner, the new person, the missionary kid. (13/?)

Ice Anon - I can only think of maybe 4 people in real life that seem to want to be around me for me instead of where I’m from or who I’m related to. All of them are childhood friends, but I’m no longer extremely close to them cause of language barriers and not hanging around much anymore. 2 of them are brother and sister, but the sister likes my sister more, and the brother is shy so he doesn’t really talk much. I haven’t seen either of them in years. (14/?)

Ice Anon - The other is my childhood best friend, we met in church, but eventually instead of staying in that one church my family started going to a new church pretty much every Sunday, meanwhile when I was 12 or 13, she stopped regularly coming to church. Last time I saw her was on my 13th birthday. (15/?)

Ice Anon - The last one is my former neighbor, I still live in the house I met her in but her family had to move cause the landlord kept raising their rent. We would play together often and I really cared about her. One time we had her over at our house so her mom could set up her surprise birthday party. We lost contact when they moved. But recently we ran into her and her mother at the store and we’ve been keeping in contact since. (16/?)

Ice Anon - She comes over sometimes and we hang out, play video games, watch something on TV. We still have a language barrier but she’s learning English and I’m learning Spanish so we get each other better without help than we did when we were kids. Everyone else doesn’t really seem to like me for me. Well, except my online friends, they didn’t even know where I was from for the longest time, and they’ve never met my family so I know they like me for who I am. (17/?)

Ice Anon - Though I am always wondering when they will realize I’m a pathetic person and leave me. I don’t know what they see in me, would they even care all that much if I was gone? I know they would for a little while, but after that time is up what would they do? Would they finally see I wasn’t worth anything and forget about me? Or would they still stick by me and remember me every single day? (18/?)

Ice Anon - Why on earth do they even care about me, they’re all such amazing people and I’m nothing like them. I don’t deserve them at all so why do I keep going back to them? I should just disappear and save them all the trouble. I can’t even learn Spanish when I’ve lived in a Spanish speaking country for my entire fucking life, I must be some special type of failure to be able to accomplish that. (19/?)

Ice Anon - At this point I’m not even sure if my parents love me or if they love the idea of me. I’m the first born, I was the miracle child cause they were told they’d never have kids yet I somehow still happened. Yet, they don’t act like I’m a miracle, they obviously don’t favor me. Sister got the medical help she needed while I still haven’t gotten anything, she also got therapy first when I had been asking and she wasn’t, I was always allowed to do stuff later. (20/?)

Ice Anon - They do buy me things I want sometimes, but I feel like mom does that cause she feels bad for me, not cause she loves me. One time dad said I was the experiment, when I was always told I was a miracle. Mom said they wanted at least 1 more kid so I wouldn’t be lonely, but it feels more like they wanted to replace me. They’re helping my sister recover but are taking their sweet time with helping me. (21/?)

Ice Anon - Mom took sister to get a cane and stuff she will need, yet she still hasn’t taken me to get my back checked like she promised to last year. My father, well, he wants my sister to be just like him. Wanted to help my sister get into a good college. Yet he never even offered to help me for college, he never acts like he wants me to be like him. My sister has an eating disorder and they’re helping her recover, yet I mentioned I might have one and they both ignored me. (22/?)

Ice Anon - I get less leeway when making a mistake or when I do something wrong. They don’t seem to listen to me as often. My father used to jokingly said that he’d ‘sell me off in a marriage like the old days’. He hasn’t done it in a while but he used to a lot. Sometimes I wonder if he was serious and covered it up with a joke. But why would you ever say that to someone, especially a child? (23/?)

Ice Anon - Sometimes when I do him favors he says he will repay me by dancing with me at my wedding... a wedding that I don’t want and even if I did I wouldn’t invite him to. But c’mon, dancing with your kid at their wedding isn’t a repayment for a favor, never mind multiple favors. I also recently realized I hate the idea of being legally married cause I don’t like the idea that I could be trapped by it. (24/?)

Ice Anon - I’ve been trapped my whole life, but being in a legally binding relationship where if we split they could get some of my things and money scares me. And divorces can be messy too, so I’d rather only be in a relationship without the legally binding part. That also might be part of the reason I’m unhappy with my parents for not letting me have a quinceañera, which is a milestone for the culture I was born into. (25/?)

Ice Anon - They said they’d rather pay for my wedding and I act like I don’t care that I didn’t get one, but deep down inside my heart I’m still very upset and angry. It’s not like I missed anything after all, just a milestone that only happens when you turn 15, a milestone that was very important to me. All for the wedding I will never have. (26/?)

Ice Anon - My dad also used to threaten to starve me, like if mom made something and I couldn’t eat it (either cause I didn’t like the taste or texture... or both) he would say something like, “You will eat it, or you will starve.” Thankfully mother always fed me, even if I didn’t eat it. But then my dad turns around and says shit like, “You don’t know what it’s like to be hungry” and “I don’t want you guys to ever experience hunger”. (27/?)

Ice Anon - Like sir, you can’t threaten to starve your eldest if they don’t eat then turn around and say you hope none of your kids ever have to experience going hungry.I’m also too scared to leave my electronics alone for too long, even when there’s nothing on them that could get me into trouble. I’m not allowed to do so many things and having socials is one of them, my parents are unaware that I have an email and all of my accounts and I’d love to keep it that way. (28/?)

Ice Anon - But the reason I’m so paranoid besides the obvious is cause one time when I was younger my mom offhandedly said, “Yeah, sometimes your father and I look through your stuff to make sure you’re not getting into anything bad. ”Now I religiously keep my history clear and everything off of my computer out of fear they will find something and punish me. Mom even told me that both she and father would have the right to look through my texts when I got a phone number. (29/?)

Ice Anon - That happened years ago but since they are giving me one in a few weeks it’s a scary thought, definitely another reason to keep a password on my phone. Both my sister and I hate our dad but love our mom, mom tries to be a better person and really only wants to protect us. I do acknowledge that she has hurt me deeply, and I do wonder if she actually loves me or just feels bad, but I do care about her. Dad doesn’t even try, he half-heartedly apologizes then doesn’t try to change. (30/?)

Ice Anon - When I was younger I’d pray for a new family, or that I’d be given up/abandoned or that my family would die. I think I subconsciously knew that I was being hurt by them, even if I hadn’t consciously realized it at the time. (31/?)

Ice Anon - I know you probably won’t get to these for a while, and that’s ok, but I needed to vent. I’m open to any advice you want to give, Lord knows I need it. Sorry it’s so long, I was having a really hard day when I wrote all of this yesterday and no one noticed. I was getting the urge to just kill myself so I started typing this into a word document to save it for when the wifi came back, and it just kept going. I appreciate you and your blog a lot, and I wish you the best in life (32/32)

Hi there, nonnie ❤ I’m going to try my best to reply to most of what you said, but above anything else I just want to send you a big, big hug and all my support, because what you’re going through sounds extremely traumatic.

I’m really sorry you’ve been struggling with suicidal thoughts for so long :( when you go through trauma, it’s not unusual to feel like there’s nothing left in the world for you, and I hope you know I’m really proud of you for surviving, and I see how hard it’s been to get to today. I don’t know if it helps to hear, but it can get better. Just because life feels this way right now, it doesn’t mean that’s how you’ll always feel. I know it can feel like there’s no turning point once you’ve hit intense suicidal ideation and even attempts, but there is. That I can promise. 

It’s okay if all you can do right now is survive one more hour or one more minute. I’m glad there are things in your life you can use to hang on a little bit longer, and I’m really proud of you for looking for help. Sorry you had to go a week without Wi-Fi; I can’t even imagine how hard it must’ve been to be in that mental headspace and have all your distractions taken away :( 

I really hope you’ve been able to talk to your psychiatrist about feeling this way since 9 since you sent this ask, because I agree it’s important for her to know how long this has been going on for. Of course it’s important to have friends and leave the house, but sometimes we need a lot more help before we can get to the point where that kind of advice is helpful. 

We’ve already talked about school, but I just want to reiterate it’s absolutely not normal for it to make you feel suicidal. I’m really sorry you can’t talk to anyone about it :(

I hope you didn’t have to travel in the end and see your toxic family members, they sound absolutely horrible. You deserve so much better than to be around people who believe your existence is a sin and your beliefs should be the exact same as theirs.

I can’t even begin to express how condescending, unhelpful and rude it was of your dad to reply with those words when you opened up about your fear. Fear is a completely natural and important emotion, and telling you you shouldn’t feel it is not only extremely invalidating but also wrong. As you said, fear is there to keep us alive. It also helps strengthen human relationships, which could’ve happened between you and him if he’d taken you seriously instead of using your struggle as an opportunity to preach to you. 

I’m really sorry that you know from experience praying doesn’t make you straight or cis and that you’ve gone through so much internalised homophobia and transphobia :( I hope it’s a little bit easier now to be at peace with who you are and with your gender and sexuality. They’re an intrinsic part of you, and a beautiful part of you, and no one who says you need fixing is worth your time or energy. And if you’re still struggling with internalised self-hatred, I just want you to know it gets easier with time ❤ 

The pressure to be perfect sounds awful too :( I hope you know the only person you represent is yourself, nonnie. Your parents represent themselves, not you. It’s not your responsibility to be an extension of them, and I can’t begin to imagine how damaging it must be to feel so constantly pressured to represent them and to be perfect. It sounds like a control tactic on their part, and even though I don't know a lot about religious abuse, it sounds to me like a red flag of it. 

I’m sorry it’s been so hard to keep friends irl. Having online friends can be really helpful, but I understand why it’s still sometimes hard to believe anyone would care if you were gone. I felt very similarly as a teen; I too talked mostly to online friends, and I also often felt like I was a burden and not worth their affection. What I didn’t know then was that when we’re growing up, especially when we’re growing up abused, we need way more love and support than people behind a screen can provide. We need to form healthy attachments with the people around us. So I really want you to know that your feelings of worthlessness are very understandable considering everything you’re going through right now. That doesn’t mean they’re true, though. You’re not pathetic, or worthless, or a failure, or undeserving of love, nonnie, and you definitely shouldn’t disappear. You’re just a kid who is going through mental illness, trauma, abuse and neglect and who needs help and love and protection. Take this from someone who was also that kid once, okay?

Buying you stuff and calling you a miracle aren’t the same thing as love. Parents can do nice things from you from time to time and still be abusive and neglectful. They’re abusing and neglecting you, nonnie. Whether they genuinely feel love toward you or not does not negate everything they’ve put you through and all the help they’ve denied you when you needed it. It also doesn’t negate the fact that they clearly favour your sister over you and treat you like a burden. Nonnie, it’s no wonder you feel worthless if your dad has been saying things like he’d sell you off in a marriage. That’s absolutely horrible of him. No kid should ever have to hear their parents talk about wanting to get rid of them. I’m really sorry he did that to you. 

I understand why you don’t like the idea of being legally bound to someone, and I hope the people in your life can respect that. Marriage is not a necessary part of life or of a relationship, and just because they think it is it doesn't mean you have to ever do it. Really sorry you didn’t get your quinceañera :( it was important for you, and I really hope you’re not invalidating your own emotions about this, because you have every right to be upset and angry about it. 

Also, wtf kind of reaction to your kid not eating is threatening to starve them? That’s not okay. I’m so sorry you had to hear those things. And it’s also not okay for them to be so controlling of your electronic devices. It’s no wonder you’re so scared of leaving them around your parents! Your mom is wrong: they have no right to go through your devices or messages. You are deserving of privacy and trust, and their attitude is incredibly toxic and damaging. 

I agree that wishing for a new family and wishing your family would die are some of the ways kids process being hurt by their family. At those ages, it’s really hard (if not downright impossible) to process that the people meant to take care of us are hurting us, and wishing for a way out that’s completely outside of our control (like them dying) can be a powerful coping mechanism at that age.

I wish you the best in life too, nonnie, and I’m glad my blog could provide you with a space to share all these feelings. I’m really sorry no one realised you were struggling the day you typed all this. I hope you know I see your pain, and I see how hard it is to get through every single day. I see so much of my younger self in your words, and I know I’m just one more online person, but I care about you, and I believe better days will come. You won’t always be bound to your parents, and things will be so much better when you're not. I wish I could explain just how much better things get when you put space between you and the family members who hurt you. 

I’m always here if you need to reach out again. Sending a huge virtual hug ❤

[normal-thoughts-official]

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMeHHDBpb/

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMeHHCTwq/

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMeHHUxHb/

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMeHHDxww/

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMeHHCtVm/

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMeHHCvo3/

She's hilarious but there's two videos where she starts to speak more mumblingly

ok first of all these are brilliant and i'm losing my mind and i love you, thank you for curating these to me.

i will transcribe them in a bit but i just felt the need to leave this "little" (it's long sorry) note:

as someone who's been raised catholic i just want to say that she is pretty wrong about almost everything she said about catholics, and i say that as someone who hates catholicism with my whole mind body and soul and who's been traumatized by this stupid fucking faith to the point where i can't get into a church without breaking into sobs dauihdasiuh. the catholic guilt is real but catholics are absolutely allowed to divorce and use contraceptives, and also have sex before marriage. the first one is met with some guilt esp from women altho honestly i think it's more due to mysoginist reasons than religious reasons, and the second and third ones are commonpractice and if you say that it's wrong and bad everyone will think you're a fucking weirdo

and even with the divorce thing, while the guilt is there (im pretty sure half the reason my mom doesn't divorce is because she would feel guilty about it, although again, i feel like that's got very little to do with religion and way more with internalized mysoginy), i cannot stress enough that divorce is allowed, almost everyone i know has divorced parents and they're all catholics. the church's official position is kinda weird (as of now pope francis basically said that it's "morally necessary" in some cases but he also referred to ppl who divorced and remarried as "imperfect", but like, it hasn't been forbidden for years, so much so that people get second marriages at catholic churches literally all the time, and i kinda feel like ppl overestimate how much ppl care about what the pope says. at least here in latam, cuz we've always kind of freestyled religion since it was imposed on us anyway, but like... in my experience the average catholic practitioner is INCREDIBLY less conservative than the vatican and i feel like most people don't even know what the pope says or doesn't say. and i'm saying that as someone whose grandfather almost became a priest and only gave that up because he fell in love with my grandmother, and he's been a ferverent catholic his entire life. also two of his kids divorced, one married a divorced woman, one is gay and living together without marriage with his divorced boyfriend, one never married, and one had two kids before marriage which necessarily means that they fucked, and none of that was ever a problem to him. oh, also, my dad had divorced AND he was a buddhist when him and my mom married. currently he is a spiritist)

i think it might be possible that u technically have to ask for "permission" to the church to remarry in church, but in practice i think it's more of a ritualistic thing than actually asking for permission, cuz i've never met a single person who had them say no. it was pretty much "hey local bishop guy so my husband sucked and we divorced can i marry again" "sure lol". obviously it sucks that you even have to ask, but it's nowhere near as strict as people seem to think

the contraceptive thing is also absurd. like i cannot stress enough that my family would absolutely flip if they found out i DIDN'T use contraception. that was always something that my family reinforced very strongly, ESPECIALLY my grandpa. i've never met a single catholic who does not teach their kids to use contraceptives. my high school was catholic (literally named the Holy Cross, fun times, although they didn't impose the faith or anything. in fact almost half of the students in that school are jewish, but like, still, there was a priest in the school board) and we were taught to use contraceptives, put the condom in a banana and the whole pizzazz during biology class

like yeah the bible says not to but it also says not to mix different fabrics and that doesn't mean it's actually a thing that's reinforced in most catholic communities doaihdaj at least not here in latam. in here non-catholic christians are actually way more hardcore about the puritanism rules than catholics are, particularly evangelicals, which are kind of overtaken the catholics' traditional role of being colonialist fuckers as they are mostly from the US so they come to further US imperialism through religion here. watch out catholic church they're coming for ur crown

and even outside of puritanism, "non practicing catholics" are absolutely a thing like ppl who are catholic but don't even pray or go to church, much less care about that shit douahdsaohj so like the stereotype that all catholics are like the very small minority of hardcore catholics is like the stereotype that every muslim lives by the ultra-conservative muslim rules. it's not true and it's stereotypical and taking the minority ultra conservatives to be the rule when they are not

there's also the fact that there are many different currents of thought inside the catholic church (a little bit like with judaism although way less flexible than judaism is), some of which are very conservative, some of which are progressive. here in latam in particular the teology of liberation is extremely popular (it's the one my family subscribes to, and i'm pretty sure it was actually born here in latam) and it's pretty progressive. for catholics, that is

and like mandatory disclaimer that i am coming from my own experiences with latam catholicism, which i feel is different from other catholic countries - my polish friends for example have experiences with catholicism that are a lot closer to those stereotypes than mine ever were - but since most of the catholic population in the world is brazilian (like me), and second place goes to mexicans, i feel pretty comfortable taking it as a ruler to measure general catholic practices

with that being said, however, the catholic church can choke and die in a fire as it is a symbol of colonialism first and foremost, its proselitism is one of the worst things ever, and even the progressive currents are still way too damn conservative for my tastes. i just don't feel comfortable transcribing something that i know is incorrect and stereotypical (and that in some cases is used to further oppression like with the Irish in the UK or armenian catholics, and i've even had some US-diaspora latinos hear some incredible things from gringos who assumed they were catholic, or, in their beautiful words, "had latino religion". but obviously in most cases catholics are the oppressors, especially here in the third world)

also, her assessment in the third video is absolutely correct. A/B/O IS just conservative gender roles born of christian and catholic imposition transposed to a fictional world where the genders have slightly different names, which is why i, as a rule, hate it dauhdsaiuhdauhda and even though the assessment that catholicism is thaaat much more conservative than other christian religions (it's absolutely not, it's Exactly As Conservative) isn't true, catholicism is still where most if not all of western conservative rethoric is born of, and ugh, it's so refreshing to see someone understand this and put it into words so well

so yeah keep that note in mind but anyway, transcriptions:

[Video transcription #1: in reply to a tiktok question, which says, "now i'm thinking about the catholic guilt that would come with it oh my god". user @Omarsbigsister is saying, "good morning", she then covers her mouth as she starts to laugh, before continuing, "I guess I'm the religious omegaverse tiktoker now. I did not know catholic guilt was more than just sex, I thought it was just about sex, but nO. people who are catholic, if you don't know, they get guilt over every little thing, they get guilty when they eat, they have guilt when, like... [dismissive gesture] they have fun... it's messed up *cut* [mumbling i don't understand, sorry] in which you HAVE to be bonded before... *sticks tongue out* *cut* and catholics, from what i know, uhm, cannot get divorced, so you can't be unbonded, you're stuck for life with that alpha or omega, and then you can't use contraceptives so if you have a heat or rut, good luck, you cannot escape it, and on top of that, they preach abstinence, right, so if you're having a heat or rut in your teen years you just gotta deal with it alone like you are not allowed to be bonded, so, that would be really intense."

#2: in response to a question, which said, "follow up question: if in the real world hijabis are women, in ABO universe would hijabis be omegas of all genders?". the user is shown stroking her chin in contemplative silence for a long time, before she says, "actually, both men and women have to wear a hijab, it's just more visible on women, but men also have to cover from like, the neck all the way down... so like when you see them [mumbling i don't understand, sorry] that's their hijab. *cut* Islam is actually treating men and women, like, fairly somewhat equally, so, I feel like in omegaverse alphas, betas, and omegas would all be held to the same standards, and alphas and omegas would also be held by the same standards but then culture would ruin it, just like western culture has ruined it. for your other question. 'would muslim families prefer betas more, and would betas be spiritual leaders', i feel like everyone prefers betas more, but then also Islam came to like, uplift women [a written note then shows up, which says, "like girls are seen as a blessing to have as kids"], so like omegas would be seen as like, a blessing to have as a child.

#3: in response to another tiktok question, which says, "fun fact bestie you cannot get divorced in the catholic religion even if your spouse is abusive and horrible to you so in omegaverse how would that work?". she replies, "the reason that Abrahamic religions seemingly fit so well into the omegaverse universe is because catholicism specifically and christianity, uhm, all the gender norms and all the cultural norms especially in the west came from catholicism and christianity, they were forced on people, and then you know, people might not be religious, but the norms stay. but now you have omegaverse which is basically just a bunch of like youth exploring the youth through this, like, werewolf fanfiction trope, using all these gender roles that you have in society on their head, so, really, what i'm saying, is that... omegaverse is just catholicism fanfiction"

#4: she looks at the camera and says, "getting islamophobic comments is one thing, but getting islamophobic comments that say that muslims cannot be in the omegaverse".... she then breaks into laughter for a solid 30 seconds

#5: she is shown reading out loud, in a mock-outraged face, a tweet that says, "about to murder tiktok they try to make Ramadan a 'quirky' trend. it's a religious holiday. stop it, get some help. /srsly /g.", then a follow-up tweet, which says, "saw a tweet saying on tiktok they are asking questions about how ramadan would work in omegaverse. i'm done with y'all, just say you disrespect muslims and go". then another tweet by a different user, which says, "i tried to read, i got secondhand embarrassment-" they then break out of character and say, "oh, that's fair," before going back, "if it wasn't ramadan i'd be boxing those people right now. those people should be ashamed to even think that way wtf". then another, which replies, "well i'm not celebrating it, so as a non-muslim, i'll happily box them". then, back to her normal voice, she says, "i really was just making a silly little tiktok and seeing that stuff really hurts... i'm just kidding, i can't keep a straight face. you like minecraft youtubers, what are you gonna do to me? what are you gonna do to me?"

#6: in reply to a tiktok ask, which said, "prince philip was an omega". she slowly films herself as she takes a walk, finds the nearest trash bin, and tosses the phone there, before putting the lid over the box. end ID]

[thegreatobsesso]

OC Intro: Digvastra Akash

“Aha, but the Bible was written by men,” Dig countered. “Flawed creatures as they are, and even if you remove any bias from the equation, even if you assume they heard the actual word of God, you have to understand even they were translating. Even if they did their best there would’ve still been interpretation involved, and then the Bible got translated from one language of men to the next to the next.”

“Well, if you don’t believe anything the Bible says what’s the point of even being a Christian?”

Dig looked at her with a distinct twinkle in his eye that reminded her he was actually twenty years older than her, or something close. It was easy to forget that, with his weird-colored hair and the way he always smelled like pot.

“I love that question,” he said. “I don’t know the answer and I’m not about to try and pagansplain Christianity to you. All I know is, my husband’s God loves him, despite all his flaws. And He loves me too.”

“And you believe in Him?” she asked, stunned. “In God?”

“Oh, sweetheart,” Dig said, swooping up his cards with a tinkly jingle of his sleeve, “I believe in all the gods.” He winked. “They don’t give me much of a choice in the matter."

Name: Digvastra Akash (But he prefers you call him Dig.)

Age: Like 55 ?

Magic: Focused Divine. 

(Which, some people say, isn’t a real thing. Dig used to get fired up about it when he was younger, but now, he finds himself pretty dang untroubled by it. He knows his own reality and that’s good enough for him.)

Dig’s Story:

Dig’s very conservative, successful parents were not so much concerned about Dig being gay as they were the magic business. A gay son could still find a loving partner, get married, and go on to be a blazing success in the field of his choice, hopefully medicine like his father or academia like this mother.

It was when he announced his intention to leave home and go on a vision quest that things got... well, uncomfortable.

Dig can see Spirit’s intention for him like a shining gold thread, weaving and winding into the horizon in the direction he’s supposed to go.

Sometimes.

And when it happens, it doesn’t always make the most sense. It took him his whole childhood to learn to trust it. 

Regardless, the shining gold thread took him a lot of kooky places. He actually did end up in academia, albeit a sort of academia his mother never quite imagined. He taught at Nazindah for a decade plus, one of the six main magic schools. 

(Nazindah is [for me, The Great Obsesso] a utopia and an unabashed exercise in wish fulfillment. It’s a magic school rooted in a single principle: that magic comes from a higher power. It doesn’t get one iota more specific about which higher power that is, exactly, and magicians of ALL faiths exist harmoniously within its walls, practicing their faiths in peace and a mutual understanding in and appreciation of each other.)

While there, he met his husband. A non-magician, Jake was just coming to visit his sister, also a teacher there. A golden thread unfurled at the sight of him, swirled around Jake and sunk into his chest. It bound him and Dig, and Dig knew in that moment what their future would be.

But then he had to play it cool, you know. You can’t just walk up to someone and tell them they’ve just entered into an arranged marriage organized by Spirit. He let it unfold exactly the way it was supposed to.

(Except that one night, four or five years in, where he kinda spilled the beans when he was very, very high. He doesn’t remember doing this, Jake only told him about it the next day, and he’ll deny it to anyone else but his husband.)

Dig and Jake came to Delaney together because of pure geography - Delaney is closer to Jake’s family but Dig and his highly specialized skillset can still get a job there. Years into his tenure at Delaney School for Magicians, Dig is granted a mentee - a young man, and powerful telepath, in the middle of a crisis Dig can hardly begin to fathom.

Dig meets Simon under these circumstances - Simon’s just lost his best friend, and the current headmaster, Dorian Page, thinks it best to keep him close.

Simon’s got a million paths of light coming off him, the likes of which Dig’s never seen, and so does the alleged murderer who’s vanished without a trace. The two of them are practically bound together, and based on nothing else, Dig knows this guy’s gonna need someone in his corner for what’s to come.

Personality:

Dig’s the kind of dude who’ll throw down some runes and clarify your deepest issues but then forget it’s the weekend and show up to work. He is perpetually barefoot despite the terrain, uses magic to infuse his dark hair with different colors, and will occasionally spout prophecies in the middle of department head meetings.

He’s chill as hell and capable of diffusing almost any tension with sarcasm or silliness. He’s calm and wise, even when he’s not channeling. He’s fond of reminding people he’s merely a vessel and he doesn’t own any crystal balls, thank you very much, but someday he plans to, purely for Dat Aesthetic™.

♫ Dig Playlist: Spotify ♫

Veridia - Mystery of the Invisible

MC Yogi - Heaven is Here

Imogen Heap - Minds Without Fear

Wendy Rule - From Great Above to Great Below

Loreena McKennitt - The Mystic’s Dream

Abbi Spinner McBride - Behold

S.J. Tucker - In the Name of the Dance

Omnia - Alive Until We Die

MC Yogi - Shanti (Peace Out)

[cardinaldaughter]

Good Omens Changed My Life. Twice.

Bear with me. This is super long, and super personal. But I figured, on the 30th anniversary of the book, I’d share with you all just how important Good Omens is to me, even if I didn’t fully understand how much until recently.

A thirty-year-long tale under the cut.

(mentions of death, homophobia, religion and politics)

I was born 30 years ago in the American South. While not exactly actively political, my parents were conservative, as was basically everyone I knew. And so I grew up exposed to Fox News and Glenn Beck and the NRA and conservative view points. I remember telling my father I couldn’t wait to grow up so I could be in the NRA with him. I remember thinking how I was going to vote for a republican when I was old enough to vote. What little I understood about the world, I understood from a conservative perspective, and because I was a child, I trusted the adults around me and believed what they said was sincere and trusted that their beliefs and intentions were honest.

During my childhood, I spent a great deal of time with one of my aunts. She was like a second mother to me, and I think, in some ways, I was probably her “second chance” at motherhood, considering she didn’t have a great relationship with her son. I spent most of my Saturday’s with my aunt. We went on all kinds of adventures together, and I loved her probably more than anyone in the world, my parents included.

When I was 10, she lost her battle to cancer. It was the second major death I’d experienced as a child, but this one struck harder and hurt much deeper. If it weren’t for the fact that this post is about Good Omens (I’m getting there, I promise) I would spend the rest of my time trying to express to you how much I loved this woman, and how deeply her death impacted me. But that’s another story for another time.

My aunt, during her last few years of life, started going to a church. And when she died, those people showed up to the funeral. And by showed up, I mean physically and emotionally. They sang songs. They helped my mom with arrangements (she was in charge). They brought us food. They loved on me, even though I didn’t know them. They clearly loved my aunt, and that love carried over to her family. And my parents- who weren’t exactly Christians and didn’t attend church- were extremely moved. So my mom decided to go to that church the following Sunday to thank them for their kindness. We never left.

That church became home. I met people there who changed my life. These people became brothers, sisters, mentors, friends. They helped fill the gap my aunt’s death had left, and though I was struggling and unable to properly mourn (which I wouldn’t understand for another decade or more) I felt better. I felt loved. I felt accepted. As I grew up there, attending the academy run through the church and getting more involved in ministry, I began paying more and more attention to what the adults around me were saying. And like most conservatives, they lamented over the evils of abortion and homosexuality and liberal ideology. And because I loved these adults, trusted them, respected them, believed them, I adopted the same beliefs. I was a child; they were adults. They couldn’t be wrong, right? I attended a community college for two years, then transferred to a close by university that was far enough away that I needed to move to an apartment in another city, but close enough that I could still come home frequently. But it meant leaving the church. I promised my friends I’d be back every Sunday I could make it. I didn’t want to leave, because all my friends were at that church, and it was home. But I wanted to get my bachelor’s, so I packed my things and I moved with the determination that I would come running home as soon as I was able. Before I left, I was told by a couple people in the church: “Now when you get to college, don’t open your mind so much that your brain falls out!” I thought that was an incredibly stupid thing to say, because it was in itself ridiculous- having an open mind was not a bad thing- but also because I was secure in my beliefs. I wasn’t going to change. Once at university- despite being incredibly shy and introverted, I managed to make a few friends. One was a Jewish atheist, and another was a girl from India who practiced Hinduism. Both were so far out of my understanding of life that I was fascinated, but rather than trying to “save them” (something I’d NEVER been comfortable with, so I just used my shyness as an excuse not to “witness” to people) I listened. Their stories were fascinating. And I am so grateful they were willing to share their experiences with me, and for a time I was very close to them both.

Okay. Now for the part you’ve been waiting for.

During this time at college, I, through a roundabout way, discovered Good Omens. After some major difficulty in hunting down the book, I got my hands on a copy- where an angel and demon reject everything they’ve been told they should be in order to help save the world. I didn’t understand why at the time, but I identified with Crowley. I felt a kinship with him I wasn’t qualified to fully appreciate, but I absolutely loved him. This demon who deep down didn’t want to be evil; who’s only real crime had been asking questions- something about that resonated with me.

“Why would asking questions be considered a bad thing?” I wondered.

It was during this time that, thanks to friends who were so different than me, and professors who had a much broader sense of the world, and thanks to some inspiration from a wily serpent, I found myself doing something I’d never done before:

I started questioning everything I’d ever been told.

Because, if I was honest with myself, I genuinely didn’t understand why two men or two women couldn’t get married. I didn’t understand why a woman was forced to have a baby she didn’t want or couldn’t care for. I didn’t actually want to join the NRA because I didn’t actually like guns. They made me uncomfortable, and I thought there should be more regulations on them. I read about and agreed with the tenants of feminism. I began learning about the LGBT community and realized that once I stopped being told over and over again that these people were evil sinners bound for hell, I realized that they were just normal people like me trying to find their place in the world and love with dignity and freedom. What was evil about that? “Oh god,” I said my senior year of college, when I realized the devastating truth I had been reluctant to face. “I can’t be liberal! I can’t be a feminist! I’m a Christian!” - I said this to myself numerous times, because I had been taught that to be a Democrat or a feminist was fundamentally non-Christian. And I had a years-long identity crisis over this. I struggled with this inner turmoil that I felt- how can I be a liberal feminist AND a Christian? Surely I can’t... 

But I was. This realization caused me to have a full-on identity crisis. I cried. I panicked. I prayed for God to correct my thinking if I was wrong. I only grew more convinced of my convictions.

Finally, I graduated and moved back home. I got married to the love of my life. I resumed going to church. I figured maybe if I just stop asking questions, things will go back to normal, and I won’t go to hell for my spiritual misstep. But everything felt different, somehow. My husband didn’t seem really political, so I never asked his opinions on things. I kept my thoughts to myself, having a completely hidden existential crisis while I sat in the church I’d grown up in with the people I’d once loved and trusted and believed implicitly, and realized I no longer trusted or believed them. Finally, a couple years into our marriage, I broke down and confessed to my husband (who I met at church, by the way) how I was feeling about...well,  everything. In a truly relieving turn of events, he felt the same way I did. I was so relieved to finally speak out about my feelings, about how I wasn’t conservative but was so afraid of that fact. How I was a feminist. How I wanted to vote third party in the 2012 election (because I was too afraid to commit to the sin of voting democrat, which to some people in my church, it would have been.) Political discussions with my husband increased in volume, length, passion, and frustration. We started keeping up with politics more, especially as we realized we were adults now and these things mattered. We talked a lot about our opinions, and how those opinions didn’t exactly line up with the church. I was so conflicted I honestly felt like I was being ripped in half. Finally my husband said he wanted to leave the church. I was a part of a couple ministries within the church, one of which I was very attached to as it allowed me a lot of creative freedom and I had made some very close friendships through. I couldn’t do it. I wanted to leave, I really did, but I literally felt chained to my place. I wouldn’t have phrased it that way then, but I know that’s what it was now. So we kept our mouths shut and stayed at church like good little obedient Christians. He still wanted to leave, and ultimately began going less. Because of my commitments, I needed to be there every week, even though some days, getting up to go to church made me feel like I was suffocating. But surely God would change my heart if I was in the wrong. I begged him to. I tried to adopt old beliefs, but they felt dirty and wrong in a way that made me physically ill. So I began to quietly try to accept I was a Christian who was also a Democrat. The internal war within me raged on. I had so many questions, but I knew better than to ask them. And then 2016 happened. Donald Trump was elected president. And I watched that man espouse racist, harmful, evil things, and I watched as the people I grew up believing and trusting support him. Defend him. Proclaim he was chosen by God. And I felt sick. If that man is what Christians view as a godly man, I wanted no part in Christianity. And I said as much. In an angry post on Facebook the morning after he won the election, I said Trump was not godly. I repeated things he had said. I said you can’t call yourself a Christian and support this man. I got reprimanded by leaders in my church. “You represent the church. You have to be careful what you say,” I was told. “God will take care of us, don’t worry,” others tried to mitigate. I had a family member, someone I trusted and admired with my whole heart- someone I’d gone to for advice countless times- tell me my words were vile. My words. The words challenging a wicked man who made fun of disabled people, and who was sexist and racist and awful... who people falsely believed represented the so-called loving God we were called to follow. Devastated and confused, I took down the post, stayed silent, and continued going to church. But I felt so sick. And that sickness ate at me for the next three years. I wanted to leave, I really did, but I couldn’t. I didn’t know how. It wasn’t like I was being forced to stay, but I felt glued to my spot, paralyzed and helpless. I’d been in church for 20 years. This place had been so helpful, and hopeful.... but it wasn’t that place to me anymore.

How does one turn their back on their home?

During all that, I turned to fiction for comfort. My existential crisis of faith was making me miserable, so I buried myself in stories, art, video games, shows, movies, fanfiction, to help ease the ache. And then, after months of eager anticipation, May 2019 rolled around, and Good Omens was released on Amazon Prime. I still loved the book. Loved Crowley. I couldn’t wait to watch the show. As before, I adored Crowley, but the more the show went on, the more my heart and soul latched onto Aziraphale. Everything he said and did made me want to hug the poor dear, though it wasn’t until episode four that I realized exactly why I felt such strong kinship to the TV version of the angel. Aziraphale and I were both trapped. He was bound by the rules of Heaven and his angelic duties. I was bound by my connection to the church and the ministry I was now in charge of. “If I could just reach the right people...” Aziraphale said desperately to Crowley, who replied: “That won’t happen!” And then, stubbornly, desperately, Aziraphale reaches out the Metatron, and I watched as the hope in an angel’s eyes died as he was told heaven wasn’t going to change, they wanted their war, and he needed to get up there and do his part. That scene resonated so much with me, because in that moment I wasn’t watching a fictional show- I was reliving my own life. The moment I was told my words saying Trump was not a godly man didn’t represent the church. That look on Aziraphale’s face expressed the despair I felt when I realized the church was fundamentally wrong. I was stuck in an institution I didn’t exactly support, but felt bound to stick with even as I grappled with the fact that perhaps they weren’t quite as good as I’d once believed them to be. I’d been questioning for some time, like Crowley had, but like Aziraphale, I was afraid to really do anything about it. I kept hoping that I’d just... come across the right person and they could alleviate my concerns, but... that never happened. I kept believing, like Aziraphale, that Heaven (the church) were the good guys, and this was all just a massive misunderstanding and surely they’d see reason. I mean, they had too. Right?

What encouraged me the most though, was at end of the story, is that Aziraphale eventually does reject heaven for Crowley/earth/humans, and is still an angel. Is still seen as good. His choice is seen as the right one, and he isn’t punished for standing up to his “good” superiors and saying, “No I will not do what you want”. It meant so much to me, to see him walk away from heaven and end up much happier than he’d ever been. It made me hope that I could achieve that same happy ending. It took a few more months of coming to terms with my feelings on everything. But I finally felt that metaphorical bond to the church snap after one Sunday where our pastor mocked a liberal politician and said some other things that made me so upset I stood up and walked out of church. I got home to my husband- my Crowley, who’d been ready to officially leave for years but was too fast for me- and told him I was ready. He asked if I was sure. I said yes. I wanted to leave. The last Sunday of February was my last Sunday at that church. I don’t think I would have had the courage to do it if not for watching Aziraphale’s struggle, his uncertainty, and his ultimate triumph. Knowing how his story ended gave me the hope that once I walked out of that place for the last time, I’ll be able to heal, and I’ll be able to actually do the good I so long to do and be in this world.

I find it funny, looking back. Reading Good Omens gave me the courage to actually question what I’d always been taught. Ten years later, the show gave me the courage to act on those questions. To know that having them isn’t enough. I need to ask them. And then I need to take a stand when the answers aren’t satisfactory.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the show came out during an extremely important time in my life- when I was trying and failing to find the courage to leave. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that when I needed Aziraphale and Crowley the most, they were there, showing me the way and telling me that it will be alright. I don’t think it’s a coincidence, but I do think it’s a little bit ineffable.

Thank you, Neil and Terry, for creating such amazing characters. Thank you David, for being a brilliant Crowley, and thank you Michael, for being able to convey in a single look how hopeless I’d been feeling for years, essentially snapping me out of my emotional stasis, and giving me the courage to do what needed to be done.

Thank you to the GO fandom, whose stories and art and memes have provided me with a great deal of comfort as I adjust to my new reality.

I love you all. To the world.

[prorevenge]

Racist mom tries to bribe son to dump me, I gain power over everything she cares about.

This is gonna be a LONG post lol, may have gotten exact timing sequences out of order.

Met a guy that we had mutual friends with and invited him to hang out with my friends and do fun stuff. Later learned he was not even allowed to hang out with my crowd cuz his mother was the very strict and hypocritical sort who thought everyone else was inferior to her precious kids. Guy was telling them he was doing work or something. Eventually he told them he wanted to date me and they flipped. The dad doesn’t have much say in the house and the mom (EM) was livid.

You know how Amish people don’t like rock and “sinful” music? Or females that wear shorts and tanks? Yuuup basically her. She went through my social medias and literally compiled and printed out giant lists of every country song I’d ever posted or concert I’d been to or clothing she thought was too provocative along and gave it to the pastors at both of our churches. EP called MY mom at 2am a couple times to rant and rave about “how could she let her daughter do such sinful things and flirt with boys yada yada yada”. She made racist remarks to Guy (I’m a super cute half Asian half messican, and all of his family is pale white golden haired angels) and even asked him if I’d molested him (I’m 5’ 2” and he’s literally a foot taller than me) and if that’s why he wanted to date and marry me. He was still at home and they went on a family trip to Colorado. Or as it turned out to be an exorcism style prayer meeting over Guy because EM just knows there must be a demon or something wrong with him. Oh and this was only within a span of a few months while he saved up to move the hell out.

Nope not over yet. EM then was harassing his work, his new church pastors (mine), his friends, got one of his business partners to leave him with lies that Guy is “bipolar” and “Schizophrenic”, thankfully most of the people had our back and we had some good laughs over what outrageous things they told us. Even driving an hour and a half to his apartment (I know dumb move to let them know where he moved to), in the middle of the night a couple times to harass and berate him and blubber about how everyone would judge her and how her reputation was going to suffer and church standing, she even dragged his two younger siblings into it all and told him they were heartbroken that he moved out and all the reasons he needed to move back home. Cue even more fun, one night he was just done so when they showed up to again try and bully him into moving back home or at least dumping me, he just up and left. Got in his mini and drove away. AND THEY FOLLOWED HIM. Unbelievable right? He used to race his mini so he lost them pretty quickly and booked it over to where I lived and spent the night there. I know, why not call the cops right? Well there was no physical damage or threats thereof. Yes she’s been verbally and borderline physically abusive to him growing up, think patriarchy super conservatives but it’s a matriarchy. At one point EM asked Guy what it would take for him to dump me, what amount of money could she pay him (Guys dad makes buttloads of moola, yeah those kind of people) to get me out of his life and for him to move back home. SHE TRIED TO BRIBE HIM TO LEAVE ME. She’d threatened to disown him and all the typical rich EP stuff before and knew he didn’t care. EM even called all his guy friends and asked if Guy has ever had any “homosexual” tendencies etc. Next month Guy proposed, and EM was SO MAD that she heard about it for the first time from a mutual friend congratulating her on the upcoming wedding! So of course she calls all the pastors and REEEEs about how we’ve been living in sin (kicker, we hadn’t even done the dirty dance but she didn’t bother asking) and telling everyone that they shouldn’t attend the wedding etc. Yea call us prudes :p EM also printed out all the reasons why I wasn’t good enough for her son and handed those out like candy to church leaders. Then when that had no effect she switched tactics and did the same thing with all her reasons why he was immature and shouldn’t get married and should move back home and be parented. Still no effect, except my dad at a huge meeting where she tried to distribute those, gathered them all back up and handed them to her and told her to stop slandering us and said how ungodly that was. And she stood there baffled and all the other people present agreed with my dad and told her to put those papers away. EMs exact words “but but I thought the very reason everyone is here is to show Guy why he needs to leave that girl and move back home!” I couldn’t help a giggle and a few other people couldn’t either. That meeting is a whole nother story, it was hilarious.

Where is the revenge you ask? Well all that was just the tip of the iceberg of course, but the revenge has been pretty simple. Spend a few obvious nights (SLEEPING ONLY) at his place, just to trigger her, but ofc our pastors and friends knew we’d committed to abstinence our entire lives up to the wedding (hella yea wedding night was killer) and other things like that to get under her skin but nothing that anyone else thought was bad. Very publicly plan and execute a HUGE wedding (over 500 people) and tell everyone about how our relationship is so beautiful and holy and how Gods destiny brought us together yada yada. She made a couple extra hoops for our pastors but we jumped through them with flying colors and everyone except her thought we were the cutest most Christian kosher thing. So basically to save face she had to fake smile and accept all the congratulations and be secretly embarrassed that we didn’t invite her to the wedding showers (she said she never wanted to see me and wouldn’t go to the wedding) and made excuses as to why she hadn’t gone, EM couldn’t tell her friends that we hadn’t invited her now could she? She went after the best man too and he almost decided against being the best man she was such a hassle and he was a pushover, but I told him the best passive way to deal with her is tell her that he wants to be there for his friend and how could she argue with that? She didn’t. But of course, what’s better than forcing her to attend the wedding but not allowing her to ruin it? Extremely petty I know, but I’m a drama llama and have enjoyed 98% of all this. I of course get ahold of EMs own mom and get to know her and she’s very sweet and loves me to death, along with Guys siblings and his dad, as many of EMs own friends and their families etc. So everyone loves me and when we invite them all to the wedding, they strong arm her into coming. I have my cop friends who have been having a heyday hearing about all this drama coming in for the wedding, one of them I make my MC so if she tried anything, not only would they take care of her swiftly, but she would also deeply embarrass herself because there was no denying that there were 500+ people there who loved Guy and I, including a lot of her friends. The ceremony was great, went off without a hitch, oh wait... I am not a bridezilla so if anything went wrong it was fine and the drama was cracking me up, I was a little disappointed she didn’t try anything drastic, but I could see on her face the entire time that EMs smile was sooo fake, and I got reports that she was seen crying outside later. Watching people congratulate her was priceless. When my own friends congratulated her a few of them later told me that she seemed surprised that I had any “respectable” friends (her literal words) who thought well of me. And no I’d arranged her to be only in one photo so she couldn’t ruin any others.

Oh and our wedding day was only the 3rd time she’d ever set eyes on me. She was against me from the start for almost a year without ever having spoken a word or ever seen me in person. Take that EM. To this day I have no idea what was her real beef with me. Happy ending: now that I provided the first grandkids, to my chagrin they’re like baby Targaryens they’re so white, and of course she’s too “young” to be a grandma so she’s called “nana”, but we laid down ground rules and she knows we will ostracize her at the drop of a hat, and she has kissed butt so hard and to her credit done her best to mend everything without ever really actually mentioning any of it. It’s great. We have holidays and fun visits in between and she showers us with super expensive gifts and will drop everything possible to help if we need anything. I think we’re friends now. One day I think she might bring it all up and try and play the victim, idk, but she’ll be hit with a carefully detailed account of everything that went down, in case her memory “fails” her. I can forgive but I’ll never forget, after all, I got my delicious revenge. Power over everything she holds dear and the evidence to expose whatever she hasn’t already done by her own dumb self and absolutely ruin her reputation and community and church standing. I feel really good right now

TLDR entitles mom wants to be petty about me dating her son so I take petty to another universe levels and crush her with epicc facts and logic and hold all the cards to ruin her life now

(source) story by (/u/cyborgurl)

[kgstoryteller]

LOVE in the time of corona-possible prologue for “killing justice: the taste of knives”

Either you learn to live with paradox and ambiguity or you’ll be six years old for the rest of your life.-Anne Lamott

At 5:55 pm, on 3/30/2020 I do hereby declare, under penalty of perjury, that I am a child of chaos, and that my true name is scared kel. Strike that. May the record reflect that for the past 56 years, since my adoption in the spring of 1964 at the age of eleven months, my true name has been scared kel.

Of course I was scared. I had just been kidnapped from the only home I’d ever known, and taken away by two strangers to their little yellow house in Chilliwack, British Columbia, Canada. I cried, and cried, and cried, from dusk until dawn, but as the sun slowly began to rise, and I had not yet been returned home, I finally stopped crying. I would have to adapt to this strange new world, it seemed.

Paradoxical New First Name

These two strangers kept calling me by this strange new name I’d never heard before: “Kelly”. I resisted this name for the longest time, and kept calling myself Toddy instead. I would later learn that my oldest half-brother, who was born shortly after I was adopted, is named Todd. Go figure.

I would also later learn that my new name, Kelly, means “brave warrior.” But wait, that can’t be right. After all, my true name is Scared Kel. Put the two together, and it would seem that my complete true name must be Scared Brave Warrior. No wonder I was confused. No wonder I am a child of chaos.It seems that I have been wrestling with paradoxes and ambiguities like these my whole life. 

Yet my adoptive parents were conservative Christians, and my mom in particular seemed especially concerned that I learn the difference between good and evil, between right and wrong. And it seemed that a lot of my childhood was spent doing what was evil and wrong, as what I heard mom say more often than anything else to me was “Your will must be broken young man.” In other words, her will must be good. My will must be evil. How else to explain the fact that I’d been given up twice in the first year of my life? I knew that because, at the age of three and a half, on a ferry boat ride to go get my baby sister, I’d asked my mom why we weren’t going to the hospital. She had gently replied, “Because we’re choosing to adopt your baby sister, just like we chose to adopt you from a foster home when you were eleven months old.” Being “chosen” was a double-edged sword, it seemed. I would have to be really, really good if I wanted to make sure that mom #3 wasn’t going to give up on me too.

We moved around a lot in the first few years after I was adopted. Three times during my first six years with them. Every time we’d move, mom would say “Look how much I’ve sacrificed for you.” If my will was evil., then all Mom’s sacrifices must be good. If I was a child of chaos, it was clear that mom’s world was a world of order. And that mom’s God was a God of order. Once again it seemed as if I was just going to have to adapt to this strange new world.

If my true name was Scared Kel, but my new name meant Brave Warrior, I would simply have to bury my chaotic true name, and adapt myself to my orderly new name.

Now as luck would have it, (and with our first of many visits to my mom’s Irish dad, my grampa Bob, and Norwegian mom, my gramma Myrtle, I would learn that my mom was half-Irish), my new mom and pops not only gave me a new first name, they were kind enough to anoint me with a new middle name as well.

Paradoxical New Middle Name

Now what sort of middle name might you expect a young conservative Christian couple to choose for their newly adopted son? Perhaps they would name me after one of the Gospel writers, and I would be Matthew, Mark, Luke or John? Maybe they would aim higher, and I would be Michael, named after the archangel? Going Old Testament was another possible option, as Joseph may have been the name they settled on. Had I been the one to choose a biblical character to be named after, I would have gone for Moses, the tragic hero who was adopted by Egyptian royalty.

Going for the obvious was never Mom and Pops’s style, however. In fact, I have a theory that my practical joker Pops chose both my names, and then convinced mom to go along for the ride. Since I never thought to ask, I grew up believing they’d named me Kelly because it was a good Irish name. Mom was half-Irish, after all. It wasn’t until I was in my mid-twenties that I finally learned that my new name was inspired by them having adopted me from a foster home on Kelly Street. Go figure.

But Pops outdid himself by coming up with Darwin for my middle name. Who knows, maybe he was secretly preparing me for a lifetime of wrestling with paradoxes and ambiguities. God knows how many of their conservative Christian friends they had to patiently explain to that no, they had not abandoned their faith in a Creator God, but instead had chosen the name so that I would challenge Darwin’s theories. At least that’s why mom said they chose it. Pops’ said they chose it because he’d heard that Darwin had converted to Christianity on his deathbed. Even though that story has now been widely dismissed as an urban legend, I still like Pops’ reason for choosing the name better than mom’s. Mom’s was a world where you had to be a brave warrior in the battle for truth in order to survive. Pop’s was a world where even the most hardened materialist like Darwin could be redeemed in the end.

My way of living out this Darwinian paradox was three-fold. First, when I would later become an adopted American, I chose to add Einstein, but keep the Darwin. The cover story I told anyone who happened to ask was that was my way of honoring my parents. The real reason: I just thought the initials K-EDG sounded way cooler than KEG.

Second, rather than challenging Darwin’s theories, I chose instead to defend my namesake against the blatantly false charge that his worldview amounted to nothing more than “survival of the fittest.” Bullshit. That worldview belongs to Thomas Hobbes, a seventeenth century English philosopher. According to Hobbes, the state of nature is a "war of all against all," in which human beings constantly seek to destroy each other in an incessant pursuit for power. Life in the state of nature is "nasty, brutish and short."

The third way I chose to live out this Darwinian paradox was to adapt. For Darwin explicitly rejected the Hobbesian “survival of the fittest” when he declared that “It is not the most intellectual or the strongest species that survives, but the species that survives is the one that is able to adapt to or adjust best to the changing environment in which it finds itself.”

Fear and Love in the Time of Corona

As the coronavirus races madly around the world, in seemingly unstoppable fashion, from the way the mainstream media and the political establishment are chronicling its assault, it would appear that Hobbes was right. For the coronavirus appears to be primarily laying waste to the weakest members of our species, to those whose advanced age or compromised immune systems make them especially susceptible to its deadly rampage.As someone who’s been forced to wrestle with paradoxes and ambiguities his entire life, however, I have learned from painful personal experience, time, and time, and time again, that things are rarely as they seem to be on the surface of things.

My personal paradoxes and adaptations

As a terrified little eleven month old, I learned that crying would not take me back home to my mommy.

One way I adapted was by becoming a scared brave warrior, so my new mommy would see what a brave warrior I was and love me for it.

Another way I adapted was that despite mom’s best efforts to raise me as an anti-Darwinian Christian fundamentalist, after leaving home at the age of seventeen, I adapted and eventually became the Darwinian Christian mystic that I am today.

How my healing journey has helped prepare me for the Time of Corona

One of the most frightening things about the current coronavirus pandemic is that it is forcing our human species to finally begin to humbly acknowledge that WE ARE NOT IN CONTROL.It is a lesson that I have been forced to learn, and re-learn, time and time again, over the course of the past fifty six years, ten months and eight days.

When I was torn away from my birthmother Adele after nine months spent blissfully swimming in her amniotic sea, I WAS NOT IN CONTROL.

When I was torn away from my foster mom Grace, after eleven months of being pushed up and down on swing sets by her and my First Nations/Native Canadian foster sister Diane, I WAS NOT IN CONTROL.

When I told my adoptive mom Pat, when I was sixteen years old, that I’d learned in my careers class that day that I’d be a great hotel manager, and she said that I didn’t need to go to college for that, I WAS NOT IN CONTROL.

When I had a near nervous breakdown in my first semester at Pepperdine Law School at the age of twenty one, after I’d blown my scholarship, and was so driven by despair that I ended up taking three or four sleeping pills a night to get an hour or two of sleep, I WAS NOT IN CONTROL.

When my beloved adoptive dad Pops, who’d saved my life four years earlier after my near nervous breakdown, suffered a traumatic brain injury from a near-fatal car crash and was left with the cognitive capacity of a twelve year old, when I was twenty five years old and halfway around the world in London at the start of the first semester of my last year of law school, and I couldn’t come home that whole semester because I’d taken two years off to recover from my first year from hell, and once you start you must finish law school in five years, I was left with the emotional capacity of a terrified six-year old, better known as scared kel, because I WAS NOT IN CONTROL.

When I trusted a friend of twenty years and he betrayed that trust, and the life I’d tried to create for myself out of the ashes of Pops’ traumatic brain injury for those same two decades came crashing to the ground when I was forty six years old, I was left once again with the emotional capacity of a terrified six year old, whose true name is scared kel, because I WAS NOT IN CONTROL

For the past ten years, five months, and fifteen days, I have been attempting to love and parent scared kel, my terrified six year old self, back to life.And for the last eleven days that Los Angeles has been under lockdown, I’ve been wrestling with the question of why this coronavirus crisis has been so triggering for me.

And then just a few short days ago, my performance poetry instructor Rachel Kann hosted an online poetry crawl in which she performed her poetic masterpiece “Kindness/The Murmuration of Starlings”, in which a single stanza left my weeping and gasping for breath: “Behind every protective wall of defensiveness is a frightened child fearing for their very life.”

And then the masks slipped away, and it became so clear that for all those with eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts that can understand, and turn, and be healed (Matthew 13: 15b-16) that we hold this truth to be self -evident: we are now living in a world made up entirely of terrified six year olds.

The Time of Corona has Revealed a War for the Soul of Humanity

While the fear of God may be the beginning of wisdom, the love of God is the end of wisdom, and the spiritual journey is the journey from fear to love. The coronavirus pandemic has torn away the veneer of civilization to reveal that a war is now raging for the soul of humanity. This war however, is not the war that the mainstream media and the political establishment are trying so desperately to frame it as.

The war is between fear and love, between Hobbes and Darwin, and between chaos and order. But it is not about one defeating and destroying the other. It is about learning to live in the tension of opposites between fear and love, and between chaos and order. For as Solzhenitsyn wisely wrote: “the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

While the mainstream media and political establishment are painting this war in Hobbesian terms, as a winner take all duel to the death between the forces of fear and chaos, that frame is far too small, and an illusion at that, the illusion of power and control.

For in one corner, we have the hypocritical legalists on the right. They are convinced that Trump and the forces of order and goodness must destroy the Deep State, which represents all that is chaotic and evil in our world. Yet the rules the hypocritical legalists insist we all must follow, so that order and goodness might triumph over chaos and evil, they are unable to fully follow themselves. For as Jesus reminds us, there is no one who is truly good but God alone.

In the other corner, we have the amoral rebels on the left. They are equally convinced that only the Deep State can defeat and destroy Trump and his followers, in order that chaos and freedom can finally emerge victorious over order and slavery. Yet the freedom the amoral rebels proclaim as the key to victory is simply a fear of order which is the mirror image of the hypocritical legalists’ fear of chaos.

In other words, both the hypocritical legalists on the right and the amoral rebels on the left are prisoners of fear. They simply cannot see the bars of their prison. As a result, both sides believe that their only option is to engage in a Hobbesian war of all against all. If Hobbes were right, then there would truly be no hope for our survival as a species. Nor, quite frankly, would we deserve to survive.

Spoiler alert: the war has already been won

However, the hope that sustains me, which I have seen embodied by my fellow deep souls time and time again throughout the course of my life, and time and time again over the past eleven days, is that even if two thirds or more of humanity have surrendered already, or will surrender at some point during the time of corona to the forces of fear, there will always be a remnant of deep souls, who will go to our graves knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that LOVE IS STRONGER THAN FEAR.

We are the Principled Rebels, my fellow terrified six year olds of planet earth, and this is the hope that sustains us: we shall never lose our humanity, no matter how much it may look like the forces of fear are going to strip it away from us.

For as I’ve been constantly reminding my own terrified six year old self for the past eleven days in the time of corona:

“Be still, and know, that you are loved.

Be still, and know, that you bring joy.

Be still, and don’t, abandon yourself.

Is the stillness, at the heart, of your chaos.”

So be of good cheer, my fellow terrified six year old principled rebels, for greater is the love that is in you, than the fear that is in the world. So please, please, please know that YOU ARE LOVED, please, please, please FEEL YOUR FEELINGS, and hopefully you won’t have to make all the mistakes I made by so often forgetting that I was loved, and by so often being too afraid to feel my feelings. For the hope that sustains me, and the hope that will enable us to survive as a species in this terrifying time of corona is that WE ARE ALL GOD’S BELOVED CHILDREN, and God does not wish for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.(2 Peter 3:9b)