#protestantism cw

[just-an-enby-lemon]

The upside of having catholic christian trauma instead of protestant christian trauma is that my trauma is waaay more aesthetic.

Like you get all the guilty and the bigotry but you get it at a boring room by a man in a suit and there is no chance of getting playfully bitch slaped by an old man wearing a pointy hat on confirmation.

[thirst2]

[bitchfitch]

I probably won't understand but I'm still open to hearing your thoughts about this it sounds interesting

the rest of the tags for context:

ok, Before i say anything else. I got excommunicated a few years ago and was raised in a Mexican Catholic community so like. Thats the context for a lot of this and i can not stress this enough, Spanish and Roman Catholicism are Very different about a lot of things, and Mexican Catholicism is a distillation of those differences and has a Lot of old school mesoamericana religions making up it's DNA and that is going to Color this discussion.

also it's 1:30 am and i have already taken my sedatives. Running on a clock now.

Ok, So. Basically. All angels are men in this specific branch of catholicism. Women angels are often depicted but they do not exist in actual theology. theres a lot to unpack there but we aren't. that's a can of worms for something else entirely.

But the way maleness is portrayed and depicted is extremely stagnant. it's been the same for absolutely ages. Men are warriors. Men die in battle. A man's worth is in his physical strength. it's all very Flat. There's a reason being Macho is such a Thing and goes back to this cultural ideal of what 'man' is.

what i was Poking at is that Lasha is an angel and was assigned Man. He's a cherub, no not like the babies with wings like the fuckers with flaming swords and biblical bloodlust, he was Made to fit this ideal of 'Man',

and that ideal is just not him. He's a man, he feels a connection with that label, but he's not a man in an angelic way. He's a man in a human way. He's a transman but he's not transitioning from female to male, he's transitioning Angelic male to Human male.

[anewbrainjughead]

just found out Johnny Depp's in Glasgow rn, hope he gets trampled to death by the orange order

[just-antithings]

CW: violent/threatening language, Nazi mention

Honestly even outside of the context of antis hating on us for reasons that do not warrant hate, their behavior is still fucking bizarre???

Like, even if proshippers were genuinely reprehensible people and actually did awful things, or hell, even if antis were pointing their ire at, say, Nazis instead, which are actually awful people who do warrant that level of hatred, their behavior towards proshippers is still batshit. Because I do hate Nazis, very much so. But I'm not out here making *post after post after post* about how Nazis should kill themselves, "jokingly" threatening to beat Nazis' heads in with a shovel, putting "Nazis DNI and also go die in a ditch uwu" in my bio. How on earth would that productively combat Nazism in any way? What the fuck would that even achieve?

It makes a lot more sense when you realize they're not making these posts *for* proshippers. The posts aren't meant to achieve anything at all. They're a form of virtue signaling for their fellow antis, a holier-than-thou proclamation. Much like Mormons proselytizing door to door, it's meant to reinforce loyalty to the in-group, not to actually address the problems they perceive in the world. It's utterly performative morality and it stinks of American Protestantism. Folks, you can't just put a new rainbow hat on your old ideology and say it's totally different and unproblematic now. You have to actually put in the effort to kill the Puritan in your head.

👆👆👆👆👆

[qlala]

i've been watching a lot of bad cw network tv this week and i'm now convinced that, even though i'm not religious, "ignoring" the entire concept of religion while making a tv show to try to avoid alienating any potential audiences almost always makes the show signficantly worse. because 98% of the time the result is just that the characters are all vaguely culturally protestant now, congratulations, because that's american television's idea of being neutral on religion

so you have all these characters getting married at ambiguously protestant weddings and burying their dead at ambiguously protestant funerals, but no one goes to church or talks about sin, because unlike the cultural protestant stuff that the show tries to pass off as just "american," things like church and sin are "religious," and because the characters "aren't religious," the show can't address those things on screen

but the characters on these shows... are human. and humans as a species are overwhelmingly religious. 77% of americans identified as religious in the last census. 45% of americans are protestant, 32% are religious but not protestant, and another 23% don't identify as religious but are likely to have been raised with or around religion, may still consciously or unconsciously think and act in ways that are informed by a specific religion, and either way almost certainly have opinions on religion

and ignoring religion in shows otherwise set in our contemporary american society prevents characters from feeling fully realized because whether or not someone is religious, and if they are, which religion(s) they identify with, informs so much about what people think, do, believe, fear, want, and need. it affects whether they're motivated by internal feelings of guilt or external feelings of shame. it determines how they relate to other people and the world around them. and it makes them different from each other

because there are so many things that make someone who they are that get left out when you pretend religion doesn't exist in your show and apply this blanket of nondenominational cultural protestantism to everyone instead. you get no variation among characters in things that are infinitely variable in real life. like, how does this character feel about non-human animals? do they believe in an afterlife? what about free will? what do they think marriage is, and what do they think it should be? when they're alone and reach the "bargaining" stage of grief, who or what are they bargaining with?

and it's understandable on a corporate level because the extremely personal nature of religion makes it so that literally any portrayal of religiosity (or lack thereof) is going to offend and alienate someone, and shows that are made to get as many viewer's eyes on a screen (and therefore, ads) have to cut out as many potentially alienating things as possible while still being able to have a functioning tv show

and because american shows have all tacitly agreed to pass off the main protestant things that almost every show set in the contemporary u.s. is going to want to include at some point (like weddings, funerals, and christmas) as "american" instead of "protestant," religion as an entire concept that exists is often one of the first things to get blacklisted from the show, and it almost always results in characters that don't and can't feel fully realized and a world that feels like a paper backdrop for the story instead of a living, breathing setting that every character navigates in a different way. and it sucks

[dyke2watchout4]

tbh i think people are just totally blindsided by the very concept that not micromanaging your every desire in favor of just trusting ur animal body to do what to does is okay and better for you

[schwazombie]

Anyone else grow up with extremely conservative prosperity-gospel capitalist parents & get just completely messed up for life because of Proverbs 24:33-34?

“A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the arms to rest -- Then poverty will come upon you like a robber, and want like a brigand.”

That verse still screws me up to this day because it was used to teach me that resting was wrong, that any time I needed a break it was sinful. It was used to teach me that God wants us to work, work, work and any sort of break you take to rest (i.e., anything you do that doesn’t lead to production) is inherently wrong. Logically I know that’s just capitalist propaganda, but being brainwashed as a kid to believe everything your parents tell you, without question or thought of your own, because your parents speak with God’s voice (and if you don’t you’ll get beaten because to question your parents is to question God, and to disobey them is to disobey God)... it does a number on you.

I’m 30y.o., going to be 31 next year, and every time I feel burnt out, overwhelmed, exhausted, every time I’ve worked myself sick, when I think about just taking the rest of the day off (or worse, a whole day) this verse pops into my head.

[aisakalegacy]

CW : relents sexistes du XIXe siècle

Printemps 1875, Hylewood, Canada (2/2)

J’ai été amusé par un certain passage de votre lettre. Vous ne saviez sûrement pas que mon épouse et moi-même sommes athées. J’étais pourtant persuadé de l’avoir mentionné à feu votre frère, qui n’a certainement pas voulu effaroucher notre famille catholique. On m’avait portant dit que l’anticléricalisme se faisait croissant en France, aussi croyais-je que cela était plus répandu. Voyez-vous, ma mère était épiscopalienne. Vous savez peut-être qu’elle nous a quitté suite à ma naissance. Mon père étant déjà fâché avec le Révérend de l’époque, il m’a fait baptiser à Gananoque dans la foi catholique. Mon père était un catholique dilettant, aussi mon éducation religieuse n’a été assurée  qu’approximativement par ma sœur aînée, Joséphine, puis a été interrompue entièrement après son départ. Ma femme, quant à elle, a reçu une éducation on-ne-peut-plus protestante, mais ce sont ses idées et sa philosophie qui l’ont émancipée, et qui ont grandement contribué à forger mes propres positions sur la question.

Quant à nos enfants… Disons que mon beau-frère, évêque épiscopalien, nous a quelque peu forcé la main. Nos deux aînées sont anglicanes, en ce qu’elles ont été baptisées dans cette foi. Ce n’est pas le cas de nos cadets, dont nous avons volontairement négligé l’éducation religieuse, ou que nous avons en tout cas restreinte à ce que nous estimions nécessaire à leur culture générale et à leur conversation. Cela est très mal vu sur l’île : on nous rétorque que nos enfants ne sauront pas distinguer le bien du mal. Or c’est notre entendement qui permet cette distinction, pas l’application aveugle d’une morale rétrograde qui empêche l’histoire d’avancer dans le sens du progrès. Lisez Rousseau : naturellement l’homme est bon, et c’est la société qui pervertit sa nature. Il suffit de regarder mes enfants pour le voir : mon jeune Virgile, qui n’est élevé dans aucune foi, est un enfant bon et amical. A l’inverse, Françoise est celle de mes enfants dont la foi est la plus rigoureuse. C’est une jeune fille intelligente, pourtant il me faut avouer qu’elle est dotée d’un caractère mesquin que je juge inquiétant, et qui s’exprime particulièrement contre ses cadets… Nous avons même reçu des lettres de plaintes écrites par des parents de quelques jeunes filles scolarisées à l’Abricoterie, où elle étudie depuis l’an dernier… Nous ne savons plus quoi faire, et nous n’expliquons pas d’où vient son méchant tempérament. Elle est reprise dès que nous la surprenons, Señora Garcia a pour ordre de nous rapporter ses agissements. Mais les punitions ont peu d’effet, et elle n’en devient que plus sournoise.

La dernière partie de votre lettre m’a laissé à songer. Je suis plutôt favorable au vote des femmes, en ce qu’elles sont déjà éditrices, docteures, artistes et médecins. Si votre intellect est suffisamment affuté pour s’acquitter de toutes ces tâches et que le plus ignare des paysans mâles a le droit de voter, les femmes devraient l’avoir aussi. Cependant, vous semblez confondre droit de vote et éligibilité, c’est à dire celui d’être élue, les deux n’allant pas forcément de paire. Je suis moins favorable à ce dernier. Je pense qu’accorder le droit d’éligibilité dans une société qui ne considère pas l’élection d’une femme comme légitime ne servirait à rien, vous en en rendez compte vous-même : quel poids aurait la parole d’une sénatrice discréditée par la moitié de la population qui détient le pouvoir et les ressources ? Avant de changer les lois, il faut changer les mentalités. D’ici là, instruisez-vous et cultivez votre raison : le manque d’intellect des femmes est le premier argument qu’avance l’opposition, et il faut lui donner tort en permettant aux femmes de s’instruire autant que leurs congénères du sexe fort, car c’est dans le manque d’instruction que réside leur véritable désavantage.

Votre très humble serviteur,

Auguste Le Bris

[Transcription]

Jeanne Le Bris : C’est cela que tu veux ?

Virgile Le Bris : Oui !!

Jeanne Le Bris : C’est bien dommage. C’est à moi. Un petit crasseux comme toi ne saurait pas l’apprécier de toute façon.

Virgile Le Bris : Méchante ! Méchante !

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Why have most polytheistic religions either died out so to speak and/or become very unpopular when compared to more monotheistic religions, over the centuries of human history? Does it have something to do with how that a religion only having a single, centralized, monotheistic god would make controlling peoples and their actions an easier thing to do than a religion having multiple, polytheistic gods, or something along those lines?

I would say so. In a polytheistic belief system, you'd have people with favorites, there'd be politics and agendas and disagreements between the gods, as well as their naturally conflicting natures. Gods of mischief and gods of justice. Gods of war and gods of peace. Look at the Hellenic pantheon (Greek gods) for the godly drama that unfolded that had little if anything to do with the human population, other than as pawns in their games. It would actually make a good CW show.

As far as surviving polytheistic religions, obviously Hinduism is one exception in this, but then they also claim that the central figures - Vishnu, Brahma and Shiva, the Trimurti - are basically "one and the same," and represent the Preserver, Creator and Destroyer aspects of the One. Like the Xtian Trinity being separate but the same.

But I also think humans are sufficiently curious that we seek unified, coherent answers. Newtonian physics breaks down at certain scales, and while we can work with this for now, there's a desire for a more consistent, unified explanation. We're able to recognize that what we've figured out may be a subset of a more all-encompassing explanation, and human curiosity seeks to uncover the truth. So I think we also see this in gods and religions. How and why and when does Aethon, the Greek god of famine win out against Demeter, the Greek goddess of farming? How can humans count on Demeter, when it's not really up to her?

In principle, one would expect a monotheistic religion to be more unified and provide more clarity. There's a single consistent message. Except it doesn't turn out that way. Partly because how these gods are manufactured is so fractured that the belief system itself fractures. Catholicism, Protestantism, and all the thousands of sects that can’t figure out what this single god wants.

But also, not only are they not more unified or consistent, but they're also not really monotheistic. In Xtianity, you have the dual gods of Yahweh and Satan, the latter functioning at least as a demigod. Xtians are concerned about "Satan worshippers," who are, necessarily, Xtians because they must believe in both entities. They've just chosen to worship the other one.

More troublingly though, is that, at least in Abrahamic monotheism, believers themselves describe different gods. Perfect and needing worship, just and merciful, known and unknowable, omniscient with a plan and granting free will -- these would have to be different gods, if they existed, because a single god with these properties would refute itself out of existence.

It isn't too hard to figure out why any of this is the case: the universe is inconsistent. Primitive superstitions about divine intent don't actually explain anything. Bad things happen to good people. Good things happen to bad people. So a god that explains everything is an incoherent god.

If you agree that someone got the punishment they deserve, then god is just. If you agree that someone deserved to be let off, then god is merciful. What if you don't agree? It was Satan! So, Satan is powerful enough to stop god's justness or mercy? Well, god works in mysterious ways! in this case, the believer is agreeing with the non-believer that gods don't provide explanatory power. A "mysterious ways" god we can't know can't be used to explain anything.

What we're possibly seeing with the decline of religion is that we've come to the end of how far we can consolidate our gods - we're now heading towards zero.

[youngadultmachine]

would you like to read the “teaser”/vibes feeling out for acadiana gothic?  cos i just finished writing it >:3

cws mostly just for religion, both catholicism and protestantism, descriptions of a church service, that kind of thing.  a main character is a preacher.  but i promise i’m not proselytizing, y’all should know better than that by now.

--

Julienne shuddered for a long, searing moment, then the sound of a chair dragging across concrete filled the buzzing air as someone stood to their feet, head low.  He was wearing dirty jeans and a threadbare shirt, but Steve’s face was one of desperation.  He cried freely like no man ever would in any other circumstance, walking solemnly down the middle aisle to kneel at the preacher’s feet, to bow his head to him and whisper that he’s ready.  He’s ready to change his life.  John crouched down next to him, his words too quiet to hear as he speaks to Steve with a soft, understanding look on his face.  And Steve nodded, seemed to sink further into the concrete, hands in fists.

John laid a hand on Steve’s head, closed his eyes, and prayed.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QmLqebn9jv_AFotAnvvOpmMXrFqYEqA0zGGDVGuQ16w/edit?usp=sharing

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Are you Christian? You usually seem very negative about it with Jake but Nat talks Bible stories and you own a Bible?

There are a few things to unpack in this ask, and I’ll try to touch on them all. 

CW for frank talk about religion/Christianity, child abuse, domestic violence

1. I was raised in a very conservative rural Christian community in which the closest I came to knowing an open atheist before I was in high school was that my best friend’s family didn’t go to church. It was the kind of conservative Protestantism where my friend in high school being Catholic was cause for commentary by my extended family, who were concerned that if I attended church with her I might get into “idol worship.”

I wanted Card Captor Sakura tarot cards once because I thought the art was beautiful and had a family member threaten to burn them.

I took Christianity for granted as the foundation of the world until I watched it used as a cudgel against the people I knew who in some way did not fit a mold that made no sense, and I became aware that the strictures I was living in were subjecting some of the people I loved to utter misery, hatred, and violence. This is before I was able to even conceive of my bisexuality. 

The older I get, the more I see how the American Christianity I grew up with is merely a weapon, twisted and corrupted from the very words that its adherents claim to most believe in, used to excuse and justify bigotry, selfishness, and cruelty. Learning about the history of Christianity used as a weapon during colonization did a lot, too, to make me see that what I read, and learned, in the Bible was not Christianity as most of its adherents understood it.

Would I identify that way now? I don’t know. There is such a weight of negativity, when we have watched those great and pious Christians support tearing children from their families, executing prisoners, justifying all those things they once taught us were unforgivable sins unless you repented, and selling the soul of the national Christian to gain a little power and a justification for their own bigotry.

If you shall know them by their fruits, there are a lot of rotten fruits.

There is a lot of good in Christianity, but it has lost so much ground by catering to the worst and refusing to stand up for those who need love most. The very people we are called to hold our arms out to are turned away for the tiniest, flimsiest, most ridiculous reasons.

The person I have known in my life who most embodies Jesus is an atheist and she is working herself to the bone trying to serve undocumented communities along the border in Texas, despite a consistent risk to her own health from the violence she is routinely threatened with.

2. I don’t really think the comparison of Nat to Jake is a fair one. Jake grew up in an abusive environment, and his experience with church was a congregation that turned away from the obvious signs that he and his mother were being abused. 

Jake experienced being told his father was the ‘head of the household’ and he should be more respectful. He experienced his father’s bullying, violence, and homophobia. He experienced his mother being told that she should try to “steer” his father away from abusing her, or be more faithful, or call on God for help, when the people who could have helped her chose not to.

He saw his father wear the mask of an affable family man, and how everyone chose to believe the mask, because it was easier for them if they did not see a woman and her son who desperately needed a way out.

Jake’s experience was, as a whole, a deeply negative one. And if you think it’s not true to life, I would challenge that you are ignoring a lot of stories of very real people who have experienced and survived this exact thing.

While I have not modeled Jake on a single person, every aspect of his upbringing, right down to being told that if he respected his father as an authority more that the abuse wouldn’t be so bad and being sent back to his mother when he got old enough to fight back and couldn’t be used to control her from afar any longer, is something that happened to someone in real life.

A lot of these things are hidden - but they are still real.

Nat, meanwhile, has a background of some similarity to my own, in that nothing was perfect but the church was not inherently negative in her life, it was simply part of the foundation. She has a lot of joyful memories of her childhood in church.

A lot of us are walking around who may not attend church, at least not regularly, but who were raised on Bible stories that we can still recite word for word even a decade or two later, and who can sing whole songs from Veggie Tales, who could right here and right now burst into “THERE’S A RIVER FLOWING DEEP AND WIDE” at the top of their fucking lungs. You want to hear about Jacob wrestling with God? I can recite parts of it from memory. I can sing “It Is Well With My Soul” right now. How Great Thou Art, all the old hymns, they’re still in my mind and my heart and I still find so many of them beautiful. 

I still think of Bible stories when making comparisons, sometimes, because it’s very much like any memory - your mind pulls on the strongest associations automatically, and our childhoods are foundational. 

So, yeah, Nat thinks about those stories and what is left between the lines, because they’re part of her identity, no matter how she lives, now. She also tells Jake, when following the ambulance to the hospital, “we take the hand that God deals us and we hope for the best”. 

I would argue Nat has retained some faith in God as a force of good, but she has retained a faith that requires her to do the hard work, make the hard choices, and stand up for the ‘least of these’ rather than hoping someone else will, rather than waiting for someone with more power or more authority or more money to do it.

Nat is my view of the ideal Christian - imperfect, prone to mistakes, but her compassion knows no boundaries, and she will stand up for the weak ones, and those who need her, even at the cost of her own freedom and life if necessary - but she doesn’t sit around proclaiming it, she doesn’t need the world to know it, she only needs to show through her actions, be known by her fruits. She fucked up before, sure, but she’ll spend the rest of her life working to undo that failure and how it hurt so many people she could never have understood at the time, with the information she had available to her. If I had to pick a song to define how I see Nat’s view of religion, it would be Dear Me by Nichole Nordeman.

If Jake kept any shred of positivity towards religion, it would be because of living with Natalie Yoder, who actually quietly lives out all the shit that other people just say really loudly while publicly supporting the opposite.

They’re different people, with different life experiences and therefore very different ways of looking at Christianity - and neither one of them is me, not fully. Neither one fully reflects where I am, in my own beliefs. 

I understand them both, but I am not my characters, and I don’t want their mindsets or beliefs to be taken as mirror reflective of my own, because they aren’t.

3. For the record, I own five Bibles. Three were gifts, two I bought myself a long time ago. The archeology Bible I bought myself and I still fucking love it, it’s cool just from a history nerd perspective even. I have never thrown a Bible away in my life, and I don’t get rid of them. 

It’s just a superstition, I guess, but I’ve never been able to. 

When my father died, he had something like seventeen Bibles, many deeply worn and torn. I can’t tell you how we agonized over what to do with them, because throwing away a Bible seemed so deeply wrong. We had to sort of gin each other up to be able to throw any of them out, and we still kept some.

But, yeah. I own a few. 

I think you are likely to discover that a whole lot of us raised very Christian still have Bibles in our houses/apartments, whether we currently practice or not. 

Some of us may only have them for still-religious family members to see, to hold off a series of questions we don’t want to answer. Some of us have them because they’re just part of our lives, like the walls and the kitchen faucet. Some of us still sit down to read them, sometimes, because we still feel moved by the stories that lived in us first.

Some of us keep them for all those reasons and more.

[absolxguardian]

My Characters: The Adrift Vaquero (Light Fingers)

Known as: The Adrift Vaquero | Jack Dominguez | The Cynical Tejano 

Addressed as: Sir.  Pronouns: he/him.

Character Masterpost

CW: Mentions of violence against sex workers, period typical low level racism, period typical homophobia, and a coercive human trafficking scheme (although it turns out better than the real world version). Jack’s backstory is very much based in history, and mid-1800s America is exactly the same here as it was in our world. It’s just that these are things excluded from Fallen London, so I feel the need to warn for them.

His backstory also ended up double the lengths of everyone else’s, so it’s under the cut.

On the Surface, Jack Domiguez was a Tejano (the Mexicans living in Texas from before it was annexed) cowboy/vaquero.

His grandfather lived in the part of Texas that was disputed between the Republic of Texas/the United States and Mexico. He was a loyal Mexican, and when the Mexican-American War broke out, he served as a cavalry officer in the Mexican army. He was killed, and his small estate pillaged by the American army. 

Jack’s father grew up an orphan, and took the lesson of his father’s death to heart. The only way to survive was to keep your head down. Dominguez found his way north into Texas proper and began to work as a vaquero, driving and rounding up wild cattle on the behalf of white ranchers. He learned to keep his head down. He halfheartedly converted to Protestantism, but there was only so much he could assimilate to avoid the racism directed towards him.  He was moderately successful, enough to support a wife in town, and soon she gave birth to a son. He gave this son a very anglo name- Jack. Because of his father’s efforts to assimilate, Jack can barely even speak Spanish.

Jack was born in 1868, three years after the end of the American Civil War. While many families were affected by deciding to join the Confederacy, Dominguez learned from his own father’s mistakes and remained neutral. But still, Jack grew up in its shadow, as Texas was flooded with free blacks and white southerners recently stripped of their fortunes. Or as Reconstruction ended and segregation began. But Jack learned from his father the best thing to do was keep his head down, and hope that white racists overlooked him.

Jack learned from his father how to be a vaquero from a young age, and he took. However, when Jack was 15, his father died from Typhoid fever, forcing him to work full time to support his mother, who died a few years later of cholera (again, his backstory is just regular historical fiction).

The increasing industrialization of the west and the invention of barbed wire in the 80s continued to drive Jack west as he sought work wherever he could find it. In 1888, Jack reached California. But by 1890, there simply wasn’t any open range left. He had been increasingly forced to take on more and more stationary ranch hand jobs, and then they were the only ones left.

Jack worked in the San Francisco area, and that was the up and coming town he would go into on his days off. It was there he befriended two twin prostitutes/performers: the women who would become the Fading Music Hall Singer and the Eccentric Opera House Singer, although he was much closer to the former.

It was with them where he first heard tales of the Neath and Fallen London. The sisters were approached by an Italian man who offered them a chance to perform in music halls in London and work as Mister Wines’ ladies. He was tasked with procuring foreign girls and taking them to London. He claimed the sister’s native heritage would allow them to pass as from somewhere more exotic. Of course, this wouldn’t be free, they’d be in debt to him for a good while. But they would be in London, a place where death is more flexible and everyone is too afraid of Mr. Wines to assault a sex-worker.

The Cynical Tejano didn’t want the sisters to agree to the deal. It sounded way too similar to the kind of things men used to lure women to California from China. But after the Eccentric Opera singer was beaten by a client, they realized that the guarantee of protection under the law was too great an opportunity to pass up.

Jack listened to his dad’s advice when it came to political issues. Although, he’s always found a place among the underdogs- free blacks, other Latines, native Americans, and sex workers were more likely to be his short term friends before circumstances separated them. In London, that means he’s found his place among Urchins, Rubbery Men, and the Tomb Colonists. Used to the racial politics of 1800s America, he was pleasantly, but very surprised, that beyond a few side eyes for being American or a newcomer, no one seemed to care that he wasn’t white.

But Jack had trouble listening to his dad’s advice when it came to not getting into trouble. He had a very quick wit, poor impulse control, and a mind for schemes, even if he didn’t have any actual training behind it. It was one of these schemes that began his Worst Year Ever. 

Jack decided to start flirting with the son of a wealthy man in San Francisco who clearly showed mutual interest (he’s also very surprised that London doesn’t have homophobia anymore either). He’d had a few casual relationships before, but mostly with other cowboys out in the frontier. That’s just how things happened out there, with no women for miles. And so there was still less judgement when he showed no interest in prostitutes once they were back in town. His relationship with the heir was the same. They were friends with benefits, and he knew his lover would be able to avoid consequences one way or another if they got found out.

One night, instead of doing the usual climbing out of the window trick, Jack tried to take some silverware to make up for the fact he was almost destitute. But that woke up the entire household, forcing him to sprint through the streets of San Francisco and vault onto a ship right as it was leaving port. He still has no idea how his lover fared, but hopefully he was assumed to be a burglar.

And thus began Jack’s Worst Year Ever.

The ship was bound for China. And while the captain took a liking to the Adrift Vaquero, he was unwilling to land somewhere else. So the Adrift Vaquero worked as a deckhand on the ship until they arrived in China.

From there he made his way westward, criss-crossing the East. He could have taken a ship back to California, but all those captains wanted payment. He also risked arrest or immigration problems (he was a naturalized citizen, but non-white and couldn’t prove his citizenship) if he tried to go back to the states right away. So instead he made his way the other direction, alternating stowing away or working as a seaman. In ports, he survived through more theft and schemes, increasing his skills and rapscallioness.

Over the course of most of a year, the Adrift Vaquero finally made it to Egypt. From there, he intended to stowaway on an Italian ship. However, his information was bad, and he didn’t realize that said ship was bound for the Cumean Canal. He was now in the Neath.

The more deserted nature of the Cumean Canal and the Adrift Vaqueco’s bafflement at his new position caused him to be caught by the Admiralty's Port Authority. He was thrown into New Newgate for his crimes and given a do-or-die (but metaphorically) course on London.

Although he wasn’t told, his prison sentence was just a single month, and even that was simply to appease the crew of the ship that brought him down (crews willing to make Neath runs are rare). So even while the Adrift Vaquero was working on his escape plan, he was set loose in London with nothing to do. An outsider to both the Neath and English society in general, he still managed to learn quickly and keep his head down. He became a low level thief, mostly working for the Gracious Widow and simply taking the odd jobs as they come to him.

A few weeks after his release from prison, he received a note from his old friend, the Fading Music Hall Singer. Surprisingly, the man who brought her and her sister to the Neath wasn’t lying about the working conditions, and Mr. Wines made sure that all of his ladies had their food and board taken care of. According to the note, she had recently bought her freedom and retired from sex work, and only preformed in music halls now. There was no mention of her sister. She said that she had received news of a jewel “the size of a cow” and thought that Jack might be able to help her steal it, given his tendency for schemes.

The Adrift Vaquero knew that with such a jewel he could return not just to the Surface, but to the US, and probably even retire with a ranch of his own. (Despite his cynicism and flexibility with work, he also has an honest love of horses). So he sought out the Fading Musical Hall Singer, but he couldn’t find her. Now he’s been drawn into a web of conspiracy involving the Masters themselves. Quickly, a time approaches where keeping his head down will no longer be an option, and he must choose a side.

[simonjadis]

I've always felt divided on shaming others for shipping "problematic ships." Don't get me wrong. I get the icky implications of Reylo but at the same time, well, I don't want to be that "No Fun Allowed" guy to teens and young adults who are just chilling. Sure, plenty of those shippers can be problematic (see how Finn is villainized unlike Kylo) but they don't speak for everyone.

That is super fair!

To be honest, I don’t really see Reylo as falling under the major “problematic” umbrellas. Imo, most Reylo shippers are thirsting after one or both parties, which is fine. My Star Wars OTP is Sheev/Vader. I don’t ship Reylo but it’s not a NOTP for me by any means. (I find Kylo and Snek disappointing as characters and as the only Dark Side representation in the series, but Kylo has nice hair and nicer tatas)

I remember seeing arguments after TFA came out where people equated Kylo’s (attempted!) mind-reading to sexual assault or to abuse. While it’s very fair to not want to ship someone with their abuser, I think that an enemy from the opposing faction is a very different concept, and that fantasy violence between enemies should not be misconstrued (remember the hubub about Mystique vs Apocalypse in 2016? That kind of sentiment is what made female superheroes relegated to having long-range energy powers and then passing out for decades. Let’s not go back to that).

I absolutely agree that it’s horrifying to see Finn, who has literally done nothing wrong, be villainized. It’s always a mistake to pretend that a rival ship is awful so that you can feel more secure about your own, but it’s extra bad when it’s the series’ first leading black character. That said, from my perception, I don’t think that those condemning Finn represent the majority of Reylos.

More generally, I think that what someone ships, in their imagination, only rarely reflects who they are as a person or their real-life values. It’s pretend.

While we’re right to judge books, films, shows, and games on things like representation, those pieces of media are not the same as fanfic, let alone smutfic. Fanworks are distinct in multiple ways.

Gonna get into this: cw for a reference to incest

For example, when Supernatural first launched, I watched the pilot live in 2005 (I am 1000 years old) and immediately shipped the only two actual characters, who both happened to be hot guys: Sam and Dean.

(Note: I don’t actually ship them anymore, but tbh I haven’t watched the show since Season 8 and even before that, I had grown to despise them both – one of the perils of writing a very long-running show with lots of personal drama is that characters do things that cannot be forgiven by some viewers. But that’s irrelevant.)

Only later would I learn that they were largely inspired and even named after Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty, two bisexual main characters from On The Road who were lovers, and who were based upon real men who were also lovers. (Which goes into part of why Supernatural is fucked up – notably, Castiel was also inspired by Constantine; another case of a straight character based upon a bi character, and that’s without getting into the issues with race, gender, and worldbuilding)

At that point, fandom culture (in my experience at the time) only treated incest as a squick – something that some people personally disliked, as one might be turned off by mpreg or watersports, etc.

Why wasn’t it a squick for me? Who knows tbh. I have zero brothers and I’m gay, so I never had to develop a feeling of aversion like that.That’s my best guess. I didn’t exactly fetishize those ships, but if there were only two hot dudes in a story, I didn’t think anything of it.

(Note: I think that incest ships may be specifically appealing to some fans because the bond between the characters is already secure? A similar appeal to the “found family” trope but the opposite thing. That’s just a theory)

However, upon coming to Tumblr, once I got over my culture shock of seeing people treat imaginary pairings as not squicks but moral indictments, I did come to understand where a lot of people are coming from with this!

For some people, it’s not just a personal squick, it’s an extra-strong aversion because they’re leery of incest being fetishized (for example, most real-life twins do not find twincest jokes funny!). More often, it’s people who were abused in real-world incest and cannot fathom why it would be someone’s kink or even factor into someone’s ship.

The solution to any sort of ship that’s going to remind someone of the worst moments of their lives is to do what I did in bold, above: use a content warning. If your fic contains sex abuse or incest or whatever, please tag your work. The same is true with fanart. If you want to share your other media with friends or the fandom at large but worry that your kinks may be off-putting, literally just make a second art/writing account or a separate blog to share those.

Don’t deliberately take people bag to the worst moments of their lives.

HOWEVER

We’ve seen a lot of people write about how they don’t want to see fandom treated like Catholicism (or, alternatively, as Protestantism; the word that they’re looking for is orthodoxy).

People have every right to ship whatever vile things they like. That goes for things that personally horrify or squick me. All that they need to do is be respectful in public spaces and to upload their work/commentary in the appropriate places with the appropriate tags, warnings, and readmores.

I think that people who don’t feel especially powerful or in control in life are the ones who get the biggest kick out of things like gatekeeping, exclusionist rhetoric, and being fandom police. Others are simply well-intentioned but became carried away. Not all antis are bad people, but it’s not a healthy thing about which to frame your personality and your online brand.

Your personal dislike of something doesn’t make you a morally superior person. As someone who hates mushrooms, I know that it’s tempting to believe otherwise, but it’s true.

And wielding social justice language as a cudgel, especially one that just happens to validate your opinions on a piece of fiction, is disingenuous and harmful in so many ways.

Ships (or kinks, etc) don’t equate to someone’s real-life values.

(Side note: anyone else notice that people who wouldn’t bat an eye at someone writing Age-Appropriate Wolf fanfic, when the characters are highschoolers but played by adults, are quick to condemn people who ship cartoon teens together, even though those teens are literally ink on paper and are absolutely voiced by and drawn like adults? I’m not sure what that’s all about, but it needs to stop. It’s literally just pretend!)

(Other side note: I understand that a lot of people are uncomfortable with shipping real people, even though said shipping has been a part of culture for millennia. My thoughts on that is: literally just act like an adult about it! Don’t tweet them fic or fanart, and don’t show it to them at conventions or whatever. The same thing goes for actors who play fictional characters. Talk show hosts should also maybe stop showing fanart for shock value but that’s a whole other conversation)

If you’ve gotten carried away with fandom-policing or something else, hey, that’s part of being a person. I’ve done it too! What matters is to be a better person. Making mistakes and becoming a better person are part of what it means to exist.