#religious nutjobs

[spidermartini]

Meanwhile, there were the regular disposable dime a dozen religious crazies outside of the final KISS concert, megaphones, Jesus brochures, telling us we are all going to burn in hell for liking a fun flashy 70s band etc .....all of the normal crap.....and I said to my husband "Seriously? After ALL OF THESE YEARS, AFTER 50 FUCKING YEARS and they are STILL protesting KISS?!.......right down to the very last show?!"

And he said, "Well remember, this is just as much their last time as it is your last time"......and that hit me like a ton of bricks. That actually made me weepy. Not for those idiots, but at the realization that we have been doing this dance and filling our reapective roles for decades.

So, farewell looney religious KISS protesters. I'm sure I will see you again, outside of some other completely harnless fun that I love. I can't say I will miss you, but we had a thing going for a while there....and remember : GOD GAVE ROCK AND ROLL TO YOU.....PUT IT IN THE SOUL OF EVERYONE.

[drmonkeysetroscans]

Pistol packing prelates.

[therottenkingsreckoning]

Oh joy, people are leaving chick tracts at my gas station again 🙄

[maddaddamwasright]

I've had a few excellent days at pride (plenty of queer sex/flirting/comradery) but also came across some assholes that insisted on using a megaphone to proclaim that Jesus finds gay sex sinful or whatever. I ended up calling them clowns, but what's the strategy here, how do y'all deal with this? In hindsight I've considered the following strategies:

Gay make-out sessions in front of them, preferably involving lots of gays (would need several gays, but this could be managed)

Telling them that every time they call it a sin I'll have gay sex

Setting up a sign of my own, recruiting people to arranging gay sex parties

Playing loud copyrighted music to drown their shit out/DMCA their shit from youtube

Like, my intuition here is just to show that we dgaf, and that we're the ones having a fucking great time, but I'm also very pragmatic in that I don't really give a shit about methods as long as they are effecting in limiting the reach/power of these fucking assholes. The context I'm in is overall queer friendly, and christians don't hold significant power. Doing something feels sensible both because it feels good, but also because there were queer kids there and they shouldn't be the ones having to deal with that bs. Any recommendations here?

[slayer-of-titans]

There is one thing I really wish I could have told my child self, and that if people are proselytizing, it is perfectly fine to tell them "No thank you" and if they persist just say "I respect your beliefs but I do not share them and ask that you please do not force them onto me." My parents were hardly religious at all but I had peers all around me who liked to preach to me that I had to be good with God and Jesus.

[randomnameless]

Genuine question, not trying to start a fight, why do you get so upset about gods and churches being presented in a negative light in fictional works?

No pbs!

I guess it's a mix of being too common, too forced and having, in general, the cast use common tropish arguments to fight /defeat them.

I rant a lot about this game, but take TS where we have three sort of factions opposing each other, and each are supposed to suck. Who is the faction who never receives any "positive traits" or "pet the dog" moment?

The game force fed us a scene where an Aesfroti soldier - when Aesfrost is depicted as a highly militarised nation with a cult of personality towards their current ruler, that invaded the protag's home and slaughtered several civilians and NPCs in the process - say goodbye to his wife and kids before going to "war" to defend his land against, well, the protags who are invading it to kill their warmongering leader.

As force-fed as this scene was, it, I believe at least, tried to tell us that even the Aesfrosti who pillaged villages and killed their inhabitants are humans, and care about their loved ones, sure it's corny, but it's all about not deshumanising any party.

When we attack Hyzante? Niet, zilch, nothing. No similar scene where random soldiers, or NPCs, worry about what is going on and if they're going to die when their wall has been breached. They just, don't exist in this context.

I think the cherry on the cake is the Golden Route scene, where, apparently, nationalists Aesfrosti decide to turn back against their ultra charismatic leader because, uh, he "lied" when he declared the war and used a false pretense, so the soldiers and people who were butchering babies and invading a city where people were preparing a marriage apparently now have morals and rebel.

There's no similar scene for Hyzante when the cast reveals that the teachings of their Goddess were made up and salt wasn't exclusively given to them by divine intervention, because rock salt exists everywhere. Sure it would be a bit weird and forced that people thinking they're chosen ones and looking down on everyone else suddenly, hm, don't break down when their entire system of belief is shattered, but hey, if the Aesfrostian Gregor can have morals after washing his hands of all this Glenbrookian blood, why shouldn't religious npc #55 not make the same heel face turn?

And then, we have the slavery/human experimentation plot - in general, when TS tries to give nuance, they more or less explain/justify why something that "sucks" is done, it's basically Silvio's character.

Aesfrost' Gustadolph manages to push his "freedom" mentality because his land is a harsh place where people are desperate to survive, salt smuggling is reprehensible, but it's the only way to give some to the ones who cannot afford it. Of course is everyone is free, no one is because, as Gustadolph puts it, they're basically free to die for his ambitions.

Hyzante? Follows a racist creed where Rozellians have to pay for some great sin, and are slaved away in a lake to recover salt until they die. It's, later, justified by Hyzante wanting to keep its salt monopoly else they don't have anything, and wanting to curb down the Rozelle people because they know about the exitence of rock salt (and I guess getting free workers to harvest salt from the lake + having state enemies make his own population docile/not willing to rebel ?).

And then, we have the human experimentations, that are just done for, uhh, Idore's lol. When Hyzante is known for its "advanced medicine" and we could have had the usual dilemna of, idk, having those humans experimentations used to develop this medicine that is reknown in the world (idk, sacrificing a Rozellian to save someone else's life?) - it's not the angle the devs picked. Rozellians are sacrificed to power up an idol, Idore wants to control the world through his idol and soft power (compared to Gustadolph's hard power) and manipulates his people (just like Gustadolph) to do so.

The two are very similar, but who is the final boss? Complete with a transformation in an eldritch monster? The war-mongering imperialist or the jaded old man who is leading de facto a religion?

Hopefully there's the entire "human experimentations for no other purpose than the lols" to settle them apart.

---

I recently watched Dune, and even if I have some issues with the adaptation, the Bene Gesserit isn't portrayed as "comically" evil-er than the Harkonen Empire, I reckon the comparison isn't adequate, because Dune is multi book series when I'm mostly talking about video games.

Symphonia's church of Martel is a font for the Big Bad (tm) to put in motion his nefarious plans, and yet, through the game, we see how random clergymen use their, uh, religious buildings to help people around. Ultimately Martel herself is reincarnated through plot device and tells the big bad to stop being an ass and the story is less about "church and gods evil" but "big bad distorts Martel/church's teachings and role for his plans because he has a tragic backstory"

(but then Symphonia ends with the biggest whitewashing from every Tales I've played for its big bad so I'll stop talking about it because otherwise I'm going to be salty).

Abyss' church is more or less the same thing - the Church is supposed to help people deal with the fact their verse has "predestination stones" where the future is already written, and in the course of the game, we see how it has several factions and one opposes the group (who has the pope as a NPC!) - but it's not a story about "gods bad church BaD".

I remember playing Suikoden Tierkreis a long time ago, and while the game seemed to go through familiar "church bad gods bad" route and we end with defeating a god-like entity... I pretty much loved the twist that, in a game that relied on alternate dimensions/universe, the god-like entity was actually the protag if he made different choices!

In those games, if you fight a religious body and someone pretending to be a God or what not - it's not because people fight against an eldritch creature who wants world domination and to erase puny insects, or is the reason why everything goes wrong, but because, at the end, the conflict/fight is ultimately caused by someone, generally a human or at least a non "god like" entity, wanting to destroy the world.

I don't remember if FE was my first JRPG series or not, but I always liked the idea that if the world is doomed in those games and the heroes must prevent said doom, it's not because a god-like being wants to destroy the world, but because people, humans/randoms are the most shitty ones out there.

---

As for the "tropes" often used to deride fictional churchs and religious people, well, I will again point to TS - which did a splendid job in the Benedict Route where you smash Hyzante after allying with Aesfrost.

There's one battle where out protags diss Hyzantese because they worship a goddess and have no free will, listening to Her teachings and Her says (the traditional "religious people have no free will and listen to their churches who tell them how to think!") - which is immediately countered by one of those Hyzantese characters asking Serenor if he's not the same, but instead of blindly listening to a Goddess, blindly follows Benedict. And it ends with the final chapter title referencing automatons/puppets : who is that title talking about ? The fake "idol" Idore created, or the fake "king" Benedict created?

Anyways, the usual "religions people have no free will because their church/religion tells them how to think" trope reeks of r/atheism and the double standard - bar in this route of TS, but I guess, in TS itself in the Roland route! - is never called out, blindly following a charismatic leader is okay, as long as charismatic leader isn't religious?

Regardless of my IRL thoughts about religion, usually those tropes are presented as a "gotcha!" when they are... not at all, but the games/books leave it at that and we're supposed to roll with it.

I'd say it's lazy writing or, as we saw in Naruto, a quick way to end a story without having to dwelve in characters and their motivations : "you're a god/alien/other being and you're bad, so let us do what we want!" - end of the story.

Hopefully some fillers and to an extent, Boruto gave her more meat bar being the 11 hour villain we had to defeat quick and who manipulated the previous sad'n'lonely antagonists - but it still felt rich from Naruto, known for his famous "talk no jutsu" and trying to understand people he's fighting against, to drop the ball with Kaguya, calling her pure malice and ending with some "let us live the way we want" to wrap up the plot so he can wrestle with his boyfriend later on.

In the end, we often end up with "religion bad bcs the big bad manipulates people through it", as if those mangas/animes/vg never have other examples of charismatic people not using religion to manipulate their randoms/people or "gods bad they should let humans do what they want" when we've read/seen/played through various, uh, really fucked-up shit humans did - but on their own! and ultimately, but it's more in fandom spaces, with have Projection 101.

TLDR : church/religion/gods are too often used in those works as the ultimate scapegoat to either wrap up a story in a rushed ending or to pretend to have "nuance" but still have a common enemy where all the "nuanced" characters can grow/be whitewashed and side together against that "common enemy".

Just like in all things I guess, I prefer when something isn't painted as purely negative and all of the positive traits are erased because there is a need for a perfect scapegoat - sure, bring out too much "nuance" and writing/designing a game/manga/anime becomes harder because there's no "clear cut" antagonist, and yet, the one who always gets fucked in this scenario is the religious/church side.

Want a generic stock villain who will destroy the world so the heroes have to fight against them? Just create a "religion" in your setting, and have the big bad either hell bent on resurrecting Chtullu to destroy the world because Chtullu BaD, or have them be the most corrupt piece of shit who manipulate everything in the shadows, so the rest of the world, even the ones who slaughter others bcs they feel like they must start a war, can be whitewashed at the end.

I mean, there's a saying about diverting attention from a fire by starting a bigger one near, or a trope of "aliens made them do it" : who cares if Madara started a continental war and targeted a village full of random civilians he swore to protect because he lost the elections? Did y'know he was manipulated by a woman, I mean, an eldritch thing created by a woman, regarded as a God, who ultimately wanted to get out of her fridge to kill everyone?

Roland must get over his hatred for Aesfrost for barging in his kindgom and killing hundred of his people while they were preparing for a wedding, because hey, Idore is evil and plans on ruling the world through his sham religion!

I'll forever be salty at TS for not giving Kamsell the occasion to rise against Idore, or not even have minor NPCs get the same treatment as Sycras suddenly going all "u lied to me gustadolph so i won't listen to u anymore + sad goodbyes to my wife'n'kids".

Extremism of all kinds can lead to wars/tragedy/fucked up shit - Sure I don't want to get my History lessons in video game medium when I play lol, but what I really don't like is how it feels like depicting "they're extremists because they're religious" feels like the default/easy answer : want a bunch of brainwashed people the heroes must fight against and can't talk no justu their way out of this fight/will fight without looking too BaD? Depict those people as "misguided" members of a corrupt church/believers of a religion, no one will givea fig. If they are instead supporters of a charismatic leader who throws them through the meatgrinder to further their goals? Well, there's no automatic loyalty so either you have to show/depict it on screen, else it can be challenged at key points to demonstrate how those people - who follow the charismatic leader - aren't completely "mindlessly listening to their leader" or how their leader "isn't that bad after all".

[uselesssubstrate]

Ok so, unfortunately I have to stay with my homophobic/transphobic parents until Monday.

As yall probably know, a lot of targeted ads come from what other people look up on your wifi.

Any suggestions for shit I should search for while I'm here to flood them with targeted ads of stuff they'll be appalled by? I mean obviously sex toys and gay stuff, but any and all unhinged suggestions are welcome

[adelaidedrubman]

jestiny being completely fucking oblivious to the cult in hl&s is so entertaining to me personally i can’t believe i didn’t exploit it sooner. it works so well with the johnjess mutual confidence they’re the one winning the 5D chess game while neither of them has noticed it’s a checker board

[datamodel-of-disaster]

The most insane thing I ever saw:

A webshop that is "closed" -as in, unusable, can't even browse- on Sunday. For religious reasons.

...

Given that this is a Dutch shop, I'm guessing fundie Christians. But like...

THE INSANITY.

[tinypurpleparrot]

Oh you know we're in for a good time, now.

[matriarchsdevotee-archive]

~

[babysgarage]

'how dare you push your ideology onto other people!' screams institution whose only function is to push ideology onto other people

also like, should you even be allowed so outright say 'this goes against the national interest so we shouldn't be teaching children that' quote unquote??? just like that??

[deadvolce-a]

@inkmchine asked ; don't mind him, he's just stepping through the wall and approaching his prophet. and.... promptly dropping something onto them: a small bendy plush. a gift for his devoted follower. (ink bendy for sammy)

𝐒𝐀𝐌𝐌𝐘 𝐁𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊𝐄𝐃 𝐒𝐋𝐎𝐖𝐋𝐘, 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐕𝐈𝐄𝐖 𝐁𝐄𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐄 𝐇𝐈𝐌 𝐉𝐔𝐒𝐓 𝐀𝐁𝐒𝐎𝐋𝐔𝐓𝐄𝐋𝐘 𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐏𝐋𝐄𝐗𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐓𝐎 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐏𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐑. The soft plushie that was just dropped on his hands feeling completely foreign to him for a moment, as he processed what he just saw.

Oh... my... ink. He feels his lower lip quiver slightly as the realization starts to slowly sink in. “ For... for me?! ” He felt like a child in christmas—no, even better, he felt like a child who just found out EVERY day was christmas. His grip on the plushie tightened as he pressed his lips together, trying his damn hardest not to smile. ‘ You have to look PROFESSIONAL, Sammy, you're in front of a god. A god who complimented you. ’

Keep it the fuck together, Lawrence. “ I... I'm speechless, my lord! I... Thank you! My god, thank you! I will cherish this forever, ” There's a small, anxious but excited chuckle that escapes his lips. Aw, man.

[roseband]

now the mom groups are spreading that "if they find out your baby has defects they'll make you abort" crap again and lies lies lies lies

i know most families don't have pictures of their cute little triplet cousins where one was photoshopped in for the newborn photo cuz she was immediately rushed to the high risk NICU after C-section when the other two were mostly fine and then lived in the hospital for over a year after she had her feeding tubes put in at birth (we obviously all visited her constantly lol like she was never without family members)

but jfc my cousin had a major organ defect. she was missing a valve in her esophagus and it wasn't connected to her stomach. they needed to know with ultrasounds in utero so that she didn't immediately die at birth. now she's a fairly normal teenager after three surgeries and unless people either notice her scars in the summer or she tells them (or she downs like a dozen antacids after eating 10x the pineapple she's allowed lol) people can't tell

telling people that doctors will abort their babies if they get ultrasounds is EVIL and will actually kill babies that were wanted and could be alive with modern medicine

[pepsi-maxwell]

i've been out of the uk for half a decade but i am fucking living for this. fuck the tories fuck the tories FUCK THE TORIES

[p2ii]

I'm so glad fictional characters exist because if they didn't I probably would've converted to another religion and have been worse off for it