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kick-a-long · 6 days

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i find it so desperately sad that goyim generally would be so much less antisemitic if jews started physically fighting back with guns or sticks in every country. calling for the murder of muslims all over the world, if the jewish population was big enough to have large scary groups of crazy fringe fundamentalist synagogues all over the world, a billion strong, that preached murder and hate so goyim could look down on jews like some noble savage in need of assistance and western education and protection. so we could be reformed in obvious patronizing ways because there were so many of us that we had militant violent fringe extremists, like christians and muslims have, mixed in with the normal jews.

if jews didn't have such a reputation for success and intelligence maybe conspiracy theories would stop blaming us for controlling the world. if we felt less in danger maybe we wouldn't be so obsessed with long term survival.

is antisemitism some warped form of envy? maybe. what sucks is that jews are no better or worse than anyone else. some jews are brutes and some are the most wonderful people imaginable, just like any other group. what sucks is we don't all live up to the reputation of tactical geniuses and wizards with mind control magic. all of us jews are just tired and abused humans who have lived with 2000+ years of generational trauma and the endless fall out from a popular jewish book written 3000+ years ago describing the best practices of jewish culture. It has some great stories, histories, life advice, diet recommendations, hygiene, and rules about how to treat others.

is that such a crime?

trying to show a path forward? not demanding anyone else follow those rules but wanting to do our best to follow them anyway? how to live a good life that makes the world better and makes you proud to have been on earth for the time you were there? jews fail to do this all the time, just like everyone else. I fail all the time. why are people so obsessed with that? people say shylock is a stereotyped antisemitic character but,

"I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge! The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction."

so why do jews always have to be the better man? why do we have to apologize for being angry and sad and hating the people that attack us? that was written by Shakespeare, a christian in the 1600s who often was in debt to jewish money lenders, the only profession left to jews at that time. even he saw the double standard. it makes a good point.

now, i don't want vengeance, i don't want violence, but i feel vengeful. i feel angry that i am unsafe because of play actors and terrorist supporters who want revenge for jews existing but scream bloody murder when jews refuse to dig their own graves, beg forgiveness for ever being born, and lay down in them to be mocked and pissed on and abused in the worst ways imaginable for the entertainment and conquest of it. i want peace with them. they are as human as i am, full of foibles and anger. i want nothing to do with them. i want them to never come near a jew again for the rest of time.

i am sad. all i want is to feel my feelings and advocate for what is the most ethical and practical work around to a world filled with unending suffering while i am still alive. i want them on thier side to live in the world they want and me on my side to live in the world i want. why don't these children of all ages, lost in delusions of fantastical battles and ultimate good and evil, see that? why can't I be a human first as well as a jew first? why do they ask me to pick? why am i not allowed to pick?

it's been almost a year. we're all so tired.

I'm going to a music festival. I'm trying to decide whether to wear a star. why is it dangerous to wear a star around my neck?

#jumblr #antisemitism #ramble #jewish #jewblr #the sadness hit me like a gust of wind before a storm #i wanted to say something before it hits #whenever it hits #judaism #jewish history #a moment of grief #I'm trying my best

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scleroticstatue · 4 months

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So, a while back, I ran a poll about how people interpret the Bible and I really feel like I should address the elephant in the room about Scientific interpretation. Specifically: none of us are doing it. Some of y'all even think it's heretical to interpret the Bible like that and I gotta say, God is (probably) sad if you feel like that.

See, most of scientific advancement pre-1900s was done by Christians — often Monks — and a lot of it was actually based on things they'd found reading the Bible. For example, wind and water currents were discovered because a guy was sick in bed reading Psalms, which said "the fish in the paths of the sea" and "the birds in the paths in the air." He'd never seen any paths in the sea, so he went looking for them and discovered ocean currents. Likewise, the Big Bang Theory was proposed by a Catholic bishop who figured, since the Bible said the universe had a beginning, the universe must have a beginning. Many of Newton's astronomical calculations were to explain Daniel & Revelation and his Observations on them are the foundation of experimental science.

And there are things there that you probably didn't even know! Circumcision happens on day eight, which is when blood clotting for newborns is most active and most safe. Epigenetics shows that an event can change DNA for 3-4 generations, the same amount of time God gives to generational curses. The air has weight. The Earth is suspended on nothing.

I'm not saying the Bible is a road map for how science has declared the world works, but I am saying that many of us could have our scientific minds opened by the Bible if we took time to read it like that. And I'd even challenge y'all to read it like that just once and see what you can find, both scientific principles that affirm what science knows and things for further research. You might just discover something brand new.

#Christianity #science #thinking about things

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the-amazing-digital-guardians-au · 3 months

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The Amazing Digital Circus: Guardian AU

My TADC AU is now up and running! I will be making a poster, character cards, general art, and possibly comics based around the storyline. Here’s the information!:

Description:

Caine is the ringmaster and ruler of The Amazing Digital Circus, but there are some things that even he can’t control. NPCs go rogue all the time, often acting out and trying to genuinely hurt the circus members as they go on adventures. Because of this, Caine has always appointed two circus members he deems the most worthy to protect him and others from danger. They have been different over the years (mainly due to abstractions), but currently Jax and Ragatha are his Guardians. The two of them are more privileged than the regular circus members: they are allowed to wield weapons, swear, indulge in vices, and the like as long as they do so in private, do their jobs well, and don’t disrupt the "family-friendly" atmosphere of the circus. Caine trusts them…or so he says. And to make matters worse, it looks like NPCs are forming an uprising to overthrow Caine, led by none other than a revived Gummigoo! Travel through the colorful world of TADC, but covered in a grimy layer of violence, corruption, and deception.

Who will the story focus on:

Caine

Abel

Pomni

Jax

Ragatha

Kinger and Queenie

Princess Loo, Gummigoo, and other/more NPCs as the canon Digital Circus web series progresses

Genre:

Religious and psychological horror

Comedy

Action

Philosophical(?)

Content Warning - Anything produced for this AU may have any of the following elements:

Religious themes

Implied/referenced torture

Blood (No gore, but this may change in the future)

Mental health issues

War themes

Gambling

Alcohol and Drugs

Foul Language

This AU is recommended for ages 16+

…Wait, there’s more?!

FAQ:

Can I make fanart?

Yes, fanart is encouraged and always appreciated! Just make sure to credit me as the creator when needed. Do not use my creations if you are hateful/racist/sexist/anti-LGBTQ or just problematic in any other way. I don’t want what I make to be associated with these things. As for NSFW stuff…I would prefer if you didn’t. (Okay, well…now that I think about it, sure, go ahead, go crazy. But please don’t send it to me, I don’t really wanna see it. And tag it appropriately! Be mindful of others!) Ocs are allowed!! Ships (Canon x Canon, Canon x OC, OC x OC, whatever) are allowed! Tag me in anything as long as it’s SFW. Seriously, do whatever you want!

What are the religious themes?

Christianity. I am a Christian myself, but I also really enjoy religious horror and researching different religions. Does Pomni represent Jesus in this story? Not really. But, I will be using themes/images of Christianity (like angels, for example) to enhance the horror. I also like studying Japanese and Chinese mythological figures, purely out of interest. I will never try to push my beliefs onto the audience in any way. People can believe in whatever they want!

Are there any ships?

Bunnydoll (Jax x Ragatha) is the main ship. It is mostly implied/referenced and nothing overly romantic happens. The story focuses on their emotional bond since they are both Caine’s guardians. If you don’t like the ship, please don’t be rude to people who do. And if you do like the ship, don’t be rude to people who don’t! There’s enough hate on the internet already. Just be mindful that we all like different things, and have fun!

How will the story be told?

Through comics, probably. It’s easier for me to write things in a document (as a script) and then draw, so it will take time. I will also make art on the side that may or may not have canon information or events. It depends.

What inspired you?

The 70s (lots of yellow, orange and brown colors), Skinnamarink, religious horror, vintage Las Vegas, vintage snacks, and other random stuff. I have specific inspirations for different characters. But my inspiration to even start this project is definitely @/burrotello and The Amazing Digital Fight Club AU. It’s awesome!

Can I ask questions about characters, the story, etc?

Yes, but if it’s an answer I don’t want to reveal yet…well, we’ll see what happens. Sometimes, I will make drawings where a character reacts or responds!

#the amazing digital circus #tadc #tadc au #tadc original character #horror #the amazing digital guardians

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pluckyredhead · 6 months

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Can you please say more about the Lanterns' politics?

I am so glad you asked me about this because I've been thinking about it since I reblogged that post but also I'm definitely about to get yelled at lol. ANYWAY THIS IS GOING TO BE LONG.

Tl;dr: John is the only one with a coherent political position or an up-to-date voter registration.

Hal:

So something interesting about Hal is that his stories are often very political but his character is not. With one extremely obvious exception, he rarely talks about politics; rather, he serves as a means through which to tell political stories, usually unintentionally.

What do I mean by that? Well, for example, in the Silver Age, his love interest would occasionally be possessed by a misandrist space jewel that would force her to attack him, but always lose because women are inherently inferior to men and prefer to be subjugated by them anyway. That's the original Star Sapphire concept. It's wildly misogynistic, but it doesn't mean Hal the character is misogynistic. But it's also a very political story, even if I don't think the writer was deliberately trying to make a point so much as...being an average, thoughtlessly sexist guy living in the 60s. (Carol continues to be the subject of mindbogglingly sexist writing and art well into the 2000s. Fucking comics.)

And so you have Hal Jordan, whose love life was ruined by his girlfriend getting promoted above him and who called his best friend by a racist nickname for decades; Hal Jordan, poster boy for chest-thumping post-9/11 kneejerk patriotism; Hal Jordan, lightning rod for a certain kind of regressive bigoted fanboyism. Choosing Hal as the Lantern for a particular story over John or Kyle has come to signify something very specific, but none of that is necessarily reflective of what Hal himself believes.

So what about Hal himself? Well, when we first meet him, he's the epitome of privilege: a white, straight, cis, Christian (I know he's canonically half-Jewish now but that's only as of the past decade or so), ablebodied, upper middle class (Geoff Johns retconned him to have a working class background, but in the Silver Age, he had one uncle who was a millionaire, another who was a judge, and a successful politician brother) man with a flashy job. Privilege tends to lean Republican; even if he is from California, I suspect Hal voted for Eisenhower in 1956.

In GL/GA, the word "Republican" isn't used to my recollection, but Hal is definitely presented as...I'm going to say conservative by I mean lower-case C. He doesn't have deeply held political beliefs, but he's traditional. He doesn't question the system, because he's never had to. He resists things that challenge the way he's always understood the world works, and that's very relatable - most people do! And he will absolutely argue with Ollie, who certainly isn't always right about everything. But he's also willing to listen, and have his mind changed, and certainly reachable via appeals to compassion and fairness.

Once the "relevance" trend of the late 60s-early 70s was over, Hal's stories default back to ostensibly politically neutral, although obviously nothing is actually politically neutral. In the late 80s and early 90s he's the most unpleasant version of himself, and that has political manifestations, like when he allows John to be imprisoned in apartheid South Africa for a ridiculous and unnecessary crime Hal himself committed. It's extremely fucked up, but again, it's less because of Hal's actual opinions and more because Christopher Priest wanted to write about apartheid, even if it does make Hal look incredibly, horrifically racist.

Then jump to the mid-2000s and Green Lantern: Rebirth, and you might imagine that losing his hometown, getting possessed by a giant space bug, becoming a supervillain, dying, and becoming the embodiment of God's vengeance might have some effect on Hal's politics, but that is not what Geoff Johns is here to write. Johns is writing a Hal who teleported in from, like, 1967 - no nuance allowed. He's a summer blockbuster that walks like a man. He's a Baja Blast. He's never had a coherent political thought in his life. In his defense, he has had more and goofier concussions than any superhero I can think of and his brain is smooth like an egg. Still.

Anyway, all of this is to say that I think Hal tends to default to center right positions but can be easily coaxed over to center left. That said, he has never not once in his life had his shit together enough to vote in a single election, not even for his own brother.

Guy:

So Guy's deal is a little bit complicated because his most vocally political era was also in part due to severe and personality-altering brain damage.

When Guy was originally introduced in the 1960s, he had the pleasantly bland personality of all superheroes. Many years later, he suffered a series of major injuries, torture, and a lengthy coma, and he emerged from the coma in 1985 with the aggressive, abrasive personality he's best known for today. Justice League International took that even further, using him to parody the jingoistic, red-blooded American action hero of the 80s.

This version of Guy is a vocal fan of Ronald Reagan and despises the USSR. He's pro-war, proudly xenophobic, and treats women badly enough that it crosses the line into repeated sexual harassment, both physical and verbal. (To be fair...ish, this last also applies to Wally West and arguably a number of other men, and was always played for laughs. It was gross all around.)

Again, this is partially a manifestation of his brain damage. There's also a running gag in JLI where if he gets hit on the head, his personality changes to this cloying, timid, gentle one, sort of halfway between a child and a flamboyant gay stereotype. Hit him again and he goes back to Asshole Guy. I'm not going to pretend I don't find some of the gags funny, but it's obviously all highly problematic, and not just from a medical standpoint.

That said, I don't think we can dismiss Guy's politics or his usual personality as simply a manifestation of brain damage. We see in later flashbacks that he developed the abrasiveness as a defense mechanism from growing up in an abusive home, and as he matures through the 90s, he doesn't actually become a significantly different person, even after his Vuldarian healing factor kicks in and heals his brain. (It's a thing.) I think it's more accurate to say that the brain damage probably affected his impulse control, his filter, and arguably even his paranoia levels.

All of which is to say that as much as I would love to go "Guy's better now, so he's not a Republican!"...that dog won't hunt. I think a really good canon writer could make the case that Guy is pro-union-style working class and also a former teacher so he's at least center left, but as of now canon evidence is pretty firmly on the red side. It doesn't help that the GLC has been written as fetishistically pro-cop and pro-military since Johns got his grubby hands all over it. I will happily ignore the New 52 retcon that Guy was a cop, and you could even try to argue that he dislikes cops because his brother was a corrupt cop who became a supervillain, but I think it's much more likely that he identifies with cops as a Corps member. Although I don't think he would have any patience for killer cops. ("You were afraid for your life even though you were the only one with a weapon? Then fucking quit, coward.")

All of that said, I think Guy is similar to Hal: defaults to center right, can be talked into center left on certain issues but he's more stubborn about it. (They would also both be enraged by Jan 6 and disgusted by the current Republican party - I can't quite argue that Guy Gardner is a Democrat but Green Lanterns don't have any patience for traitors or cowards.) It's also kind of a moot point because he never knows what is happening on Earth and hasn't voted since his pre-coma days.

John:

Oh John Stewart, thank god for you.

John was introduced as an explicitly political character in an explicitly political story. The first time we see him, he's stepping in to defend Black men from a white cop, citing his own knowledge of the law to do so. He shows a much more perceptive and informed perspective on the issue's main plot (a racist senator running for president) than Hal does. Even in the little moment above, we see that he's sensitive to exactly what it means for him, a Black man, to be taking on this role.

None of this is a surprise, since we'll later learn that John's parents were civil rights activists. Not only would he not have had the privilege Hal and Guy did to assume his existence was politically neutral, he was explicitly educated about political realities and progressive advocacy from childhood. He's well-informed, he's passionate, and he's going to tell you when you are being fucking stupid.

John isn't immune from the GL cop/military...thing, although I can't blame Johns for that - it was the cartoon that made him a Marine, and the comics followed suit. But that's never outweighed his origin or his upbringing. Like, he's friends with the DCU's fictional version of Nelson Mandela.

This one is straightforward: John is a staunch progressive. He is, however, in outer space 90% of the time, so he's always at least a little bit out of date. I imagine every time he comes back to Earth he spends the first 24 hours watching the news in abject horror.

Kyle:

Kyle doesn't talk about politics a lot, but when he does, he lands pretty much where you'd expect a young California-born artist living in New York City to land: to the left. My read on Kyle is that he hasn't really thought any of his politics through, which makes sense - he's a character who is led by emotion over reason every time. He doesn't have John's carefully thought-through arguments or knowledge of the law behind him. I feel like when something political upsets him, he's more likely to splutter angrily than make a coherent argument (which: same). When he's given the time to think things through and speak from the heart, though, he can be very eloquent, like in his speech to Terry after Terry accidentally comes out to him.

It's also worth pointing out that his solo appearances were mostly in the 90s, which were prone to avoiding politics or only addressing them in a halfhearted both sides-y way like the story above.

That said, I don't think he ever actually does anything about his political opinions. He never votes in midterm or primary elections, and probably only voted in a presidential one because Alex dragged him along one time. I feel like Donna tried to do the same when they were dating and that was when Kyle realized he'd forgotten to change his voter registration from California to New York. Jennie wasn't responsible enough to Mom him into doing his civic duty, and he's been in space pretty much nonstop ever since, so...

Simon:

In that other post, I said Simon's experiences should have radicalized him, but instead he was created by Geoff Johns. Simon is a Muslim, Lebanese-American man who came of age in the post-9/11 era, and was wrongfully convicted of terrorism and waterboarded at Guantanamo Bay. His reaction to this was...to put on a ski mask and wave a gun around. Like, it's been a while since I've read these issues, but aside from the "ripped from the headlines!!!" of it all, I feel like Simon's experiences largely don't inform his actions or perspective except that he's super angry (fair enough).

The thing about Simon (and Jessica) is that he hasn't been around very long, and most comics don't have characters directly expressing political opinions. It's not a coincidence that these characters are in chronological order and each write-up is shorter than the last. I can think of about three times where Kyle has ever said anything I can interpret as political, and he's been around for 30 years. Simon only has a third of that history. So while one could certainly extrapolate what Simon's opinions are likely to be, I can't think of any canon where he actually says them.

Jessica:

Jessica has even less to go on in terms of explicitly political comics. You'd think she wouldn't like guns because of what happened to her friends, but she has one of her own and doesn't seem bothered by Simon's. I'd imagine she has opinions on immigration as someone whose family is from Mexico and Honduras, but it never comes up. If I were writing for DC, I'd make both Simon and Jess leftists, but as for actual canon proof? I got nothing.

I will say that she probably avoids political discussions because anxiety, and I bet she got really good at voting by mail during her years not leaving the house. She probably votes by mail from space. Maybe John's not the only one with an up-to-date voter registration.

Kilowog:

#green lantern #hal jordan #guy gardner #john stewart #kyle rayner #simon baz #jessica cruz #meta

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anamericangirl · 10 days

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This is coming out of nowhere but I wanted to ask a Christian blog a question. I am a Christian. I just want to hear someone’s perspective/explanation on something. God created humanity with free will, because He wanted us to choose Him and not just be robots (as the analogy goes). But isn’t it a Hobson’s choice? Die to yourself but receive an eternity in Heaven vs burn in hell for all eternity. No one asked to be born, and yet everyone is given this ultimatum. Right? It’s technically free will and yet…I know as created beings we don’t get to say what’s fair and what isn’t, but this has been such a struggle for me in my mind. I know I sound a bit cynical right now. Maybe I just need some truth and encouragement.

You're definitely not the only one struggling with ideas like this and free will can be a challenging topic at times.

But no I don't think it's a Hobson's choice although I can see where you are coming from. This isn't a case of a choice between something or nothing, it's a choice between following God or not following God.

It's more like coming to a fork in the road and having to choose which way to go. You can go left or right. You only have two options but it's not an option between something or nothing, it's an option between two different paths.

We can't help or change the reality of the world we are born into, but we are still subject to the rules of the world we are born into and choice does exist in that world. We can make whatever choices we want, which is where the free will is, but what we can't choose is the consequences of those choices. And we are very blessed that God has already told us the consequences of choosing not to follow him.

Just because you have to make certain choices to get certain results or to get a certain place doesn't mean the choice doesn't actually exist.

Like, for example, let's say you want to go to the beach but there is only one road you can take that will get you to the beach. But even though you want to go to the beach you don't like to drive that road because it's long, there are speed traps everywhere and the traffic is crazy.

There's another road a short distance away from that road that is much more pleasant because the traffic is light, there are no cops on it and it's an easy drive but there's just one problem: that road will not take you to the beach.

You are still perfectly free to take that second road, but you are just going to have to be ok with not ending up at the beach because that road goes to a completely different location.

And that's more like what the choices are when it comes to free will. There are good choices and bad choices, wrong choices and right choices but still they are all choices you are free to make. At the end of the day, not all your choices will put you at the same destination, which is why it's important to use our gift of free will to follow God because that's not him just trying to give us the illusion of free will, he's literally given us the instruction Manuel that tells us how to use our free will to spend eternity with him. The rules he gives us aren't for his benefit, they are for ours. If we follow God it's going to make us to only be beneficial for us.

So you have the choice to ignore all this and do whatever you want but you just have to understand you are also choosing the destination this way.

You can choose God or you can choose to live your life separate from God and if you choose to live separately from God he will honor that choice and you will have eternity separate from him as well. And that's why hell is so bad. It's complete separation from God.

If you want to go to heaven and spend eternity with God there's only one way. Only one road will get you there. You are free to take other roads but they don't go the same place.

I hope that was helpful I feel like I went a bit all over the place.

#anon #answered

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alpaca-clouds · 16 days

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Worldbuild Differently: Unthink Religion

This week I want to talk a bit about one thing I see in both fantasy and scifi worldbuilding: Certain things about our world that we live in right now are assumed to be natural, and hence just adapted in the fantasy world. With just one tiny problem: They are not natural, and there were more than enough societies historically that avoided those pitfalls.

Tell me, if you have heard this one before: You have this fantasy world with so many differnet gods that are venerated. So what do you do to venerate those gods? Easy! You go into those big temple structures with the stained glass in their windows, that for some reason also use incense in their rituals. DUH!

Or: Please, writers, please just think one moment on why the fuck you always just want to write Christianity. Because literally no other religion than Christianity has buildings like that! And that has to do a lot with medieval and early post-medieval culture. I am not even asking you to look into very distant cultures. Just... Look of mosques and synagogues differ from churches. And then maybe look at Roman and Greek temples. That is all I am asking.

Let's make one thing clear: No matter what kind of world you are building, there is gonna be religion. It does not matter if you are writing medieval fantasy, stoneage fantasy, or some sort of science fiction. I know that a lot of atheists hate the idea that a scifi world has religion, but... Look, human brains are wired to believe in the paranormal. That is simply how we are. And even those atheists, that believe themselves super rational, do believe in some weird stuff that is about as scientific as any religions. (Evolutionary Psychology would be such an example.)

What the people will believe in will differ from their circumstance and the world they life in, but there is gonna be religion of some sort. Because we do need some higher power to blame, we need the rituals of it, and we need the community aspect of it.

Ironically I personally am still very much convinced that IRL even in a world like the Forgotten Realms, people would still make up new gods they would pray to, even with a whole pantheon of very, very real gods that exist. (Which is really sad, that this gets so rarely explored.)

However, how this worship looks like is very different. Yes, the Abrahamitic religions in general do at least have in common that they semi-regularily meet in some sort of big building to pray to their god together. Though how much the people are expected to go into that temple to pray is actually quite different between those religions and the subgroups of those religions.

Other religions do not have this though. Some do not have those really big buildings, and often enough only a select few are even allowed into the big buildings - or those might only be accessible during some holidays.

Instead a lot of polytheistic religions make a big deal of having smaller shrines dedicated to some of the gods. Often folks will have their own little shrine at home where they will pray daily. Alternatively there are some religions where there might be a tiny shrine outside that people will go to to pray to.

Funnily enough that is also something I have realized Americans often don't quite get: Yeah, this was a thing in Christianity, too. In Europe you will still find those tiny shrines to certain saints (because technically speaking Christianity still works as a polytheistic religion, only that we have only one god, but a lot of saints that take over the portfolios of the polytheistic gods). I am disabled, and even in the area I can reach on foot I know of two hidden shrines. One of them is to Mary, and one... I am honestly not sure, as the masonry is too withered to say who was venerated there. Usually those shrines are bieng kept in a somewhat okay condition by old people, but yeah...

Of course, while with historically inspired fantasy settings make this easy (even though people still hate their research), things get a bit harder with science fiction.

Again, the atheist idea is often: "When we develop further scientifically, we will no longer need religion!" But I am sorry, folks. This is not how the human brain works. We see weird coincidences and will go: "What paranormal power was responsible for it?" We can now talk about why the human brain has developed this way. We are evolved to find patterns, and we are evolved (because social animal and such) to try and understand the will others have - so far that we will read will in nature. It is simply how our brains work.

So, what will scifi cultures believe in? I don't know. Depends on your worldbuilding. Maybe they believe in the ghost in the machine, maybe there si some other religions there. You can actually go very wild with it. But you need to unthink the normativity of Christianity to do that. And that is... what I see too little off.

#worldbuilding #fantasy worldbuilding #science fiction #scifi worldbuilding #religion #fantasy religion #forgotten realms #dungeons & dragons #dnd #writing #fantasy writer

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buriedpentacles · 2 months

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loaded (genuine) question but. If people say the myths are just metaphors/not literal events, then how do we know what the gods are truly like (personality/powers/etc) and why do we treat them as real beings? did they originate from a myth itself or did people know of the gods existence and then create the myth based off of them? how did they find out all of the names and what they stand for without the myths? are the gods physical or metaphysical beings and actual gods, or are they aspects of nature (lightning, rain) that people have given names and personification? or not nature itself but rather the forces of nature being alive and THATS the gods? I’m having a hard time understanding what exactly gods are to majority of people and how *i* should perceive them. when someone says the gods are real, what ARE the gods? is it the same as when Christians believe in their god and say he is real and watching over people? or are these gods a completely different concept

additionally… if the gods are just nature or forces of nature to people then why do we call them gods and give them pronouns, names, personality rather than just referring to it as nature/natural forces?"

That is a loaded question, but a very interesting one!

The most important thing about deities and people's relationships/beliefs surrounding them is this: it is all subjective, because it is all belief.

For your first point about myths being metaphors: some people don't view them as metaphors. There are a few people who are "myth literalists" and believe that the myths of their religion are true and factual (one example would be Christian Creationists, who believe that the World truly was made in 7 days and that The Flood actually happened). Most people you'll interact with in pagan or witchcraft circles will agree that the myths are stories, that they reflect the authors and their societies beliefs more than any factual story of the Gods, but that doesn't mean there is no truth in them! For example, Zeus, from the Hellenic pantheon, is the King of Gods and the God of thunder and the sky - this information is gathered from the myths and stories of Ancient Greece, it is considered "fact" or "canon" within the religion. However, there are also many stories of him 'cheating' on his wife, Hera, and fathering many children (often by nonconsensual means) - many hellenists (and academics) will argue that this was representative of the power of rain and storms (creating fertile ground), and that as King of Kings many Ancient Greeks would have desired a story that put them, or their ancestors, as one of his descendants, these aspects of the myths may be seen as less literal by many hellenic followers, or simply as a product of their time. HOWEVER, the most important part is that it really just depends on the person and their beliefs, which stems from their research, experiences and general world view.

People treat their deities as real for the same reasons that Christians treat their God as real: because they believe He is. That is what faith is. That is how religion works - you believe they are real, even if you cannot prove it.

As for your next part about where they came from: that again depends on the person.

Some people believe that the Gods predate their myths, that myths were stories created about them or dictated/written down by those they deemed worthy of hearing them. Other people believe that deities were created by the myths and belief (this is more similiar to my belief system, which I am happy to expand upon if requested).

Are the gods seperate to their domains? Are they their domains personified? Is Zeus a deity that controls the sky, or is he simply the Sky itself, named by the Ancient Greeks. Does Sol truly travel across the sky on a chariot, or is she just a different name used for the Sun in our sky?

I cannot answer that for you.

Your question: "how i should perceive them" is impossible for anyone but yourself to answer and I am sorry to tell you that, I know that it can be difficult and that sometimes all you want is a concrete answer and a step by step guidebook of "What to Believe in and how to do it Right" but that simply doesn't exist.

In pagan spaces, you will see people disuss or debate whether or not their gods are omniciscient or not (many citing myths as sources or using their own upg - unique personal gnosis), you will see people discuss how their gods appear to them and what they represent or mean. You will see a hundred variations on how to worship them or who they are. None of them are wrong but conversesly none of them are right - they are simply that person's unique faith and belief, and that faith can change over time.

From what I have seen, many people believe their gods to be real and as seperate beings who control their domains (i.e. Zeus is the God of the sky, not the sky itself), and that their myths are partially true, partially metaphorical, all within the context of the society they were written. Many believe that the gods have changed and evolved as times have gone on and that they are beyond our societal rules. But, there is no real "cookie cutter" belief.

If you wish to know, I can tell you my own personal beliefs, what they mean to me, and how I have come to hold them but I will not claim that they are correct and I can't speak for others. I'd definitely reccomend speaking to other pagans and immersing yourself in pagan communities.

You must decide for yourself what the gods are, but I am happy to help you find the tools to discover that.

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dog-rose · 4 months

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Witchcraft isn't Secular

Recently, I started thinking about which ten books I would recommend to someone who wants to research witchcraft as a starting point. I thought about books that have been essential to the history and practice of witchcraft in the last century to the historical spells and views of the past.

I realised very quickly that almost all of them have a religious slant, and by recommending them I would get a lot of replies insisting I was conflating paganism with witchcraft. This led me into a rabbit hole of research and ponderings about the fact that for most of history witchcraft in Europe, and in its many forms of folk magic across the world, has been inseparable from religious belief.

Witchcraft and folk magic has been intangibly touched by the religious ecosystem it was born from. From the earliest of untraceable magical practises, to cunning folk in the UK and saintly prayers melting together with old wives tales, to the druidic and secret society revival of the 30s, to Wicca, Feri and others in the 50s and up until today. Every significant historical voice talking about witchcraft has been tinged with christian, jewish, pagan, even buddhist and multiple other influences.

The concept of witchcraft being a completely secular practice is a modern one. And whilst it's an important concept and one that I agree with and partake in, we have to acknowledge one of the reasons why it has become so prevalent is due to marketing from the nineties onwards.

New age books about finding your inner goddess, mini books of love spells and the saturation of wicca 101 books all rely on the idea of witchcraft being a harmless, secular practice which won’t interfere with your other spiritual values and beliefs.

There are likely thousands upon thousands of Christians and agnostic people in the English speaking world who play with astrology, angel cards and crystals, who are happy to enjoy these practices whilst keeping it separate from their faith or lack thereof. Therefore denying witchcraft's many connections to religion sterilises it and hides its many contrasting facets.

My last thirteen years or so of hanging about witchblr and paganblr don’t make me an all knowing elder god on this topic. I can say the insistence of witchcraft being totally secular can be fierce. Its something I would doggedly insist upon in my early years as a witch, parroting what I had learnt from listening and reading from those more experienced than myself.

Witchcraft isn't a practise divorced from religion. It can be practised without religious elements, but it is not wholly secular.

Seminal texts that have directly guided philosophy and practice of witches all read with the assumption is that witchcraft is its own spirituality. One that clings like a vine to the trees of various other faiths rather than its own practice devoid of devotion or faith. Most British spells from centuries past will make reference to Saints, Jesus or Mary. Contemporary eclectic spells ("insert relevant god here") aren't a modern phenomenon.

I remember hesitating to recommend Hedge Witch by Rae Beth because I believed the religious elements in it would put off anyone who came to witchcraft due to its secularity, when it has some of the most beautiful and profound advice and wisdom on contemporary magic.

So it goes with Starhawk; outside of tumblr she’s still highly regarded and her work was a keystone in my dissertation on witchcraft and paganism. Within tumblr she’s a dirty word and her entire body of work is dismissed due to her mythologising of the past (and of course nine million dead witches and probably a boat load of stuff I have forgotten, which I don’t blame anyone for being put off by.)

Obviously I am not going to die on the hill of Starhawk, she's one of many examples. I think for anyone wanting to research witchcraft you’re putting a huge barrier on your own learning if you avoid spirituality and religion like the plague. Because Witchcraft budded from the rituals and rites of religions.

My point isn’t to say secular witches are doing it wrong, of course not. But ignoring witchcraft’s roots as a practice which thrives alongside and through religious beliefs hurts your understanding and appreciation of its complexities.

anyway, that post of ten books will come out in the near future but I had to get this shit off my chest.

#witchcraft #witchblr #witchery #witch community #pagan #paganism #paganblr #txt

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trans-cuchulainn · 1 year

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you tend to write about irish mythology but at the same time you seem knowledgeable about other myths, so i was wondering if you could answer a question? my question is, would be offensive to create a version of arthurian myths but with most of the christian elements removed? christianity seems heavily baked into each and every arthurian story so i was wondering if it would be wrong, or outright offensive, to remove it?

i don't think it would be OFFENSIVE (christianity being a dominant religion so it's not like erasing a minority culture; the texts being literary rather than for religious purpose themselves means it's not like using canonical religious material – people share a belief system with the stories rather than believing in the stories themselves, barring probably a very few outliers; plus it's definitely been done before, tons of modern retellings don't engage with the christian aspects although frequently this is done in a boring way)

arthurian literature comprises a huge range of stories written over a huge time period for a variety of purposes. some of them are super duper christian. some of them are just kind of culturally christian because they're being written by christians within a christian context and that's what they know. some of them only have a light touch of it and some of them are dripping with it

i think whether it can be done effectively without leaving you with a story that no longer bears any resemblance to the story you started with depends very much on which stories you decide to retell. for example, a lot of the lancelot-grail stuff is extremely bound up in christianity and removing it without patching the holes is probably gonna weaken the story. now, you might want to reimagine them entirely within a new belief system. i would consider that to be patching the holes, as long as it's done carefully and effectively as with all worldbuilding. but just taking the story and excising the christian elements and not doing anything else is probably gonna undermine the story a lot

on the other hand there are other stories, particularly some of the romances (knights getting up to shenanigans in a self-contained story within an arthurian setting) where christianity is just the set dressing, and taking it out isn't going to leave such massive gaps; these would be easier to rework in a new context without needing to develop an entire belief system for the characters to be operating within. although tbh the whole of chivalric literature does rely on some pretty specific assumptions about hierarchies, loyalty, obligations, righteousness etc that are often bound up in, though not synonymous with, medieval christianity, so even there you do need to think about what is going to replace it

i would say if you're trying to keep a medieval western european setting, you can't really take the christianity out (of the setting, and really of the characters too in 90% of cases) without making it completely ahistorical. so it also depends if you're trying to retell it as in "i am reworking this story in a world and context of my choosing" (sure, do whatever you want) versus "I am producing a version of this text to introduce people to this story" (taking the christianity out makes it far less accurate and misrepresents the text, maybe don't do that)

i would also say that medieval christianity is much more exciting and weirder and often very different from modern christianity, and a lot of modern engagement with those aspects overlooks this fact and makes it boring and staid. but actually a lot of it's batshit and adds some fun colour to the stories in a way that can be enjoyable regardless of your personal beliefs about any of it. taking it out as many modern retelling seem to do often just makes the story more boring, so something interesting needs to fill the holes imo

so tl;dr. morally wrong, no, not in my opinion. narratively wrong, depends on the story and your purposes.

#arthurian #answered #anonymous

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saintsenara · 1 year

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12, 14, 16, and 22 for Snape asks please

I am most interested in your view of Lily as a character. To me, she never really seemed to live up to the hype I see? Like, I get the point that she's supposed to be Harry's mother and is supposed to be seen as the one who can't do any harm because of the sacrifice and all that. But I don't know whether JK purposely or intentionally put, like, the worst flashbacks to portray her as angelic(?). If I remember correctly, she wasn't even talked about as much as James by Remus or Sirius, they had to add things about her in the movies.

I can't ever see Lily as a good friend to Severus. To others, maybe, but I feel like it was different with Severus. More like a complicated one that was give-and-take, including Severus. Severus, an abused poor boy from Cokeworth, who knew about the wizarding world and Lily, a girl brought up in a happy family, who knew nothing about the wizarding world. Severus was able to get a friend while Lily gained knowledge of the wizarding world. But the one thing that cements this view of mine is the line where it says that Lily looks as if she was about to smile when Severus was being flipped over. Plus, I don't care if anyone says that she tried to defend him, but girl couldn't even use her wand or take points off as Prefect?? Girl was literally making a show, or whatever you want to call it.

Sorry about the rant, but I'm all for a good friend Lily in fics but when people say she was like that in canon? Maybe at times, but not when it mattered. I'd love to hear your opinion though.

thank you for the ask, @be-at-peace05!

[snape ask game here]

12. if you had to choose a golden trio era student to be snape's friend, who would it be and why?

while i don’t subscribe to the idea that he’s his godson, snape’s affection for draco malfoy does seem to be completely sincere. malfoy is also possessed of the sort of intellectual curiosity which snape obviously values (for example, how he figures out how to repair the vanishing cabinet - it’s genuinely impressive, and the fact that this is what he might be doing is certainly something which doesn’t occur to anyone in the order) and, while there’s no doubt that snape probably has as little interest in hearing him whine about everything as lucius does, i can see them having some genuinely fulfilling chats about potions. after all, malfoy gets an outstanding at owl, he must be good at the subject and he does seem to be interested in it.

14. what do you think is snape's favourite potion to prepare?

veritaserum. you just know he was chuckling to himself the whole time he was whipping that fake batch up for umbridge.

16. were you ever a snater? how and when did you become a snover?

i’m also extremely theatrical and fond of chemistry, so snape was always my boy.

i’m also capable of understanding the genre conventions which govern children’s literature and which require him to act as he does, so even when he was being a cock to various children we were chill.

22. do you think that lily was a good friend to snape?

well… this is the big one.

and the answer is no - but.

i always think it’s worth, before discussing lily, doing some quick acknowledgement of her narrative role in the story, which is a major contributing factor to why she feels a bit of a flop in person compared to the way she’s built up by other characters.

lily’s characterisation in canon is primarily hamstrung by two things. the first, as you note, is that her sacrificial role within the story requires a certain degree of perfection - not least because the harry potter series borrows heavily from the genre conventions of christian literature. lily is the analogy for the virgin mary - as we see when her purity of spirit succeeds in inflicting the first defeat on the satan-coded voldemort which will then be fulfilled by harry-as-the-resurrected-christ in the final stages of deathly hallows. obviously, a marian symbol is denied the complexity of other women - and that’s without even getting into the fact that the series has an extremely limited view of what ‘good’ motherhood is.

the second issue is that the text needs to keep lily’s centrality to the mystery hidden for as long as possible, not least because it needs to obscure snape’s true loyalties - and the role lily played in triggering them - until the very end of the seven-book series. this is the reason why sirius and lupin only speak about her once (after harry sees snape’s worst memory - and, even then, they’re mostly talking about james) and why harry’s self-conception is rooted entirely in his father - or in characters like sirius who are stand-ins for james - until half-blood prince, when the narrative begins to suggest that his mother is much more important than harry has previously given her credit for.

[the best way to illustrate this is to note that harry doesn’t give a shit in order of the phoenix that snape calls his mother a mudblood. his primary concern is that his father was a bully and that sirius aided and abetted him - when he thinks about lily, his concern is only that she doesn’t seem to like james, and his worry that his father forced her into a relationship. he doesn’t raise the fact that snape called lily a mudblood with sirius and lupin, and he doesn’t mention it to anyone else. but he cares - viscerally - about the slur at the end of half-blood prince, once the narrative is explicitly trying to convince the reader that snape is an unambiguous villain.]

these narrative necessities are a heavy burden for the canonical lily - and so i think she deserves some grace when it comes to how we analyse her behaviour in the snapshots of her as a real person we get in canon.

because of course she’s not perfect. why should she be? teenage girls are allowed to be less than flawless people - even towards their best friends.

[as an aside here, i think we have to be very careful - in our reading and our writing - not to replicate the contempt that jkr has for women who don’t fit her narrow view of ideal female behaviour. jkr loathes bitchy, girly, flighty, butch, rude, vapid, ugly women - just look at anything she’s ever said about pansy parkinson - and she tends to write her heroines - ginny and hermione chief among them - as that perfect not-like-other-girls storm of exactly pretty and clever and popular and brave enough to be worthy, but not so pretty as to be vain or clever as to be haughty or popular as to be slutty or brave as to be villainous. lily gets this treatment - and i think this drives the tendency of readers who dislike the way she behaves in canon to be hyper-critical of her characterisation. but the issue with this is that it’s also confining ‘good’ women to narrow boxes - while, all too often, allowing male characters a complexity their female counterparts are not permitted.]

which is to say: no, lily isn’t a good friend to snape. but he’s not a good friend to her either.

the issue that the two of them have is that they each relate to the other as though the other is the version of them that they’ve constructed in their head. they never take each other as they actually are.

it’s clear in canon that lily never moves beyond seeing snape as the child - devoted only to her - whose role was to teach her about the wonderful world of magic, and who acted primarily as a tool of her own self-actualisation. this is the reason why she can’t understand why snape is so concerned about fitting in at hogwarts - above all, why he wants to be friends with mulciber and avery - or why she never realises that he wants to be reassured of her affection for him versus the marauders, or why she doesn’t take what happens to him at the marauders’ hands seriously until she is made a part of it by james, or why she doesn’t understand snape’s relationship to his own social class and its role within slytherin. she simply doesn’t conceive of him as someone who exists for himself or who has a life of his own - he exists for her.

and snape thinks the same - he sees himself as the person who gave lily the wizarding world and, therefore, as the person who gets to dictate how she understands it. this is the reason why he can’t understand why she pushes back on his defence of mulciber’s use of dark magic (since he - in a very voldemort-ish move - clearly thinks that applying boundaries to what magic can and should be studied is gatekeeping), or why she doesn’t agree with him that the death eaters will help him, or why she’s upset when he’s rude to petunia, or why she leans into the performance of class expected from muggleborns (sucking up to slughorn, taking her pureblood husband’s name) in a time of increasing sectarian tension. she exists for him.

this assessment obviously makes them both sound incredibly cruel, but actually this is the way that childhood friendships often go. it’s very easy to see how the fact of being the only two magical children in cokeworth was validating for both snape and lily, and how this formed a tie between them which was very fierce but very brittle - which was never going to do anything other than shatter as they grew older, especially as they became aware of things like social structure, political affiliation, and sexual desire. it’s cruel of lily to laugh at snape’s poverty - absolutely - but it’s also the way that lots of teenagers who haven’t entirely grappled with their own relationship to society behave, and it’s also true that acting up in front of a boy you fancy is a time-honoured tradition which can also cause you to be quite cruel. lily isn’t nice by any means when snape is being attacked by james and sirius, but she doesn’t have to be. she just has to be human.

there are two final points which i think it’s worth being aware of:

the first is that snape evidently stands out as one of the few visibly working-class students in the castle [so much so that i have a meta in my drafts about whether or not hogwarts is a selective school] and the fact that he is obviously targeted for his poverty is cruel, and i understand why it makes many fans want to defend him - particularly given the fandom’s fondness for glorifying aristocracy and wealth.

but lily is also an other in wizarding society. i think it’s often not taken as seriously as it should be by snape fans just how terrified she must have been for her own safety, particularly from the later 1970s onwards, when all the evidence of canon is that voldemort is about to win. the wizarding world is set up to exclude her just as much as it is snape, and while we can and should be critical how her response to his poverty is unfair, we have to do the same for his outright refusal to acknowledge that she is subjected to discrimination on the basis of her blood status.

the second is that we don’t actually know if lily was a prefect - she was head girl, but james managed to become head boy without having been one. the person we do know was a prefect was remus lupin. if we’re criticising anyone for failing to intervene, it should be him.

#snape ask game #severus snape #lily evans #asks answered

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sophieinwonderland · 9 months

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r/FakeDisorderCringe doesn't know what biblical canon is, atheists are offended by saying God is plural, and other people casually throwing out some blasphemies and ableism!

👎

For uncreative title.

Atheists Pretending To Be Deeply Offended...

So, let me guess, you're not actually Christian are you?

Those guys sure aren't.

So weird how people pretend to be offended over a religion they aren't even a part of.

(Let's be real though, that's most of the tulpa discourse.)

Oh... you considered converting.

That clearly gives you a say in this conversation. /s

Meanwhile, my host actually lived the religion. He was Christian through his teenage years, and as a child helped his mom teach Sunday School and went to sleep every night on a Noah's Ark pillow.

Sorry, I distracted from your point. We're thieves stealing from a religion. 🙄

Okay, let's talk "canon!"

I just... I LOVE this whole conversation! 🤣

THIS is actual cringe.

Does anyone see the issue here?

I'll let u/AdSuccessful3533 spell it out. Possibly the only person with sense in the thread.

It's not just Catholic Canon either, but Biblical Canon! Like, there's a whole Wikipedia article on it!

The sheer self-righteous ignorance of r/Fakerdisordercringe (and r/systemscringe) never ceases to amaze me.

All of these people so bent out of shape over the use of "canon" to describe biblical text as if that's not been in use for hundreds of years!

"Something a middle schooler would say."

The Heresies!

That's correct. This is NOT the modalism heresy.

Modalism suggests God is a single unified being who reveals himself in different forms. God being plural would mean that God is three beings in one. This is completely in-line with the views of Trinitarianism.

An example of the modalism heresy would be more like this...

Comparing God to Optimus Prime, arguing that they're just different forms like Optimus Prime in a truck form vs him in a robot form, is modalism.

But if modalism isn't enough, we've got some tritheism too!

Besides the tritheism... it's really hard to take people who are calling tulpas appropriative seriously when they don't even know basic facts about the most popular religion in the world.

Also, the part about System not being a term for a person with DID is technically correct. System is, rather, the term used for the total collection of all the alters. But it is very much a term used by psychologists and it's accurate to refer to the Trinity as a system in this way.

Also, if the Tritheism bothers you, don't worry! We're going to go right back to modalism.

The H2O metaphor is controversial for the same reason as comparing God to Optimus Prime. It suggests God is simply changing form to become these different things.

Miscellaneous

Can you show me that rabbit hole?

I'm the one who Tweeted that, and have NEVER been on the OSDD sub.

Who do you think I am?

No... it definitely doesn't sound right. Religion shouldn't just be a thing for neurotypicals.

If one believes in God, then surely God made all people, including those of us who have mental illnesses. Why should Christianity and biblical references be kept away from people with mental illness other than ableism?

I mean, if by in peace, you mean without endogenic systems, then no. You can't.

We're here and we aren't going away. Ever.

And we exist in all spaces, including in your churches and your religious communities. And Christian systems shouldn't be expected to hide who they are because our existence bothers bigots like you.

We're going to share this world, and we're going to share spaces. And that includes churches and religious spaces too. Deal with it. 🤷‍♀️

Acknowledgements:

I would like to thank everyone at r/fakedisordercringe for giving me the free material. For a subreddit that's designed to laugh at people for supposed "cringe," you all sure are a goldmine for it! 😜

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rangercorpstherapy · 5 months

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ok weird question, but like, virginity in these books?? it's the medieval period so it was customary and expected (and scandalous if you don't) to save yourself till marriage but like, Commandant Crowley Meratyn gives off major 'guy who fucks' energy so I supposed that it's just irrelevant??

also Halt and Pauline had sexual tension for 15 fuckin years, and Will and Alyss dated for 7 years, and Gilan and Jenny dated for-- my god they're STILL dating.

someone explain

the view on virginity and sexuality differs between the Early Middle Ages and Late Middle Ages, it also depends on if the subject is nobility or not.

At the start of the Middle Ages, there wasn't as much sexual freedom as nowadays but there was certainly much less taboo on the topic. People were still connected with their old traditions and ways even though they were introduced to/and or practising Christianity. There wasn't as much of a pearl-clutching 'oh no an ankle' sex fear in the Middle Ages as people think. Yes, clergy swore oaths of celibacy and nobility were expected to stay chaste (although this expectation rested more on women than on men). For noble families, it was important to be absolutely sure that that was your baby because you couldn't just do a DNA test. Kinda important if you want to keep the family in power and make sure the bloodline continues undisputed.

Back to the pearl-clutching, it was not sex people were afraid of. There was no taboo on nudity (partly because one didn't have much privacy back then) and sex was even a source of public entertainment, for example in plays or on fairs. It was more pregnancy that was the issue. Bastards weren't treated very well along with their mothers (many choosing to leave their children in orphanages), noble bastards were dealt better cards, they could inherit and would often be seen as valuable enough that they could be used in marriage pacts. This period of vague sex is ok just be careful came to a very abrupt end because of reformations in the Church. Remember what I said about clergy having to be celibate...yeah let's just say they were not doing that. To the point of having 'wives' and kids, not even sneakily, they lived with them in a house, like a family. This was an issue from average priest to bishop. One of the many reforms was meant to make sure that calibates were calibating and put stricter measurements in place. Nuns were forced to live more secluded (before they took a very active role in the life around the convent), and convents became closed off for outsiders. Through efforts from the Pope, sex became demonized and women were presented as evil seductresses and the root of all evil evil desire. I don't think it was the same reforms but around the same time all bastards were stripped of any claim to inheritance and even if fathers claimed them they could not be legitimized. Making having bastards/being one even more taboo.

But even with all that were the Middle Ages not the most anti sex period in western history. The idea of "having sex before marriage is the end of the world and God will strike you down and dance upon your remains we are scared to hold hands with the opposite sex" came during the 16th century with the rise of STDS and would continue well into the Victorian era.

Back to the question.

It's hard to say when RA takes place, having some more modern technology but still having many characteristics of the High Middle Ages (lack of agricultural reforms, strong feudal system and a lack of cities). I am guessing that when RA took place it was around the same time the reforms were spreading (give or take a few decades maybe).

So to finally answer the question:

Crowley is saving himself for nobody, fucked till his heart gave out that's why he died with a smile on his face. Front-row seats to those sex plays at fairs. Always complaining about the good ol' days when you could get laid without some guy in robes and a hat having an opinion about it. Also, he's gay so it's not like he has to worry about populating Araluen with many handsome redhead babies (although he is a bit disappointed he can't be of service in that aspect of course).

Alyss and Will (all the ward kids for that matter) are sooo bastards to me. Bullied by the other kids you say??? Needing special protection or else they would have no one in the world you say??? People knowing they fornicated in the vineyard would not make their reps worse. Those bitches did NOT care, they fucked around day and night and would just get shotgun married if it was necessary. What is anyone going to do? How dare you and your scary wizard boyfriend part of an elite scary people group whom we are all collectively deeply afraid of have sex!

Halt was heir to the throne and probably had some speeches about how not to waste his royal seed on just anyone, to be careful and was so culture-shocked meeting Crowley and Pauline that he needed 15 years to recover.

#“therapist how do you know all thi-”#shhh don't ask #im had to stop myself from saying more because it was getting to long #hope this answers the question (probably doesn't)#rangercorpstherapy #ranger’s apprentice #rangers apprentice

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malicious-fisheeves · 3 months

Text

Thoughts and Issues with the DLC

So I've made no secret I've issues with the DLC but in an effort to stop whinging and be less upset I've written up something a little more formal. To state first: if you enjoyed the DLC, by all means, I am glad. I'd much rather have people be happy than feel the way I do/did after beating the final DLC boss. And in talking w some people who did like the DLC story, I was softened a little bit in some regards.

However. Below the cut is ~3k words on my thoughts. I attempted some formatting but it might be a little disorganized. Needless to say, big dlc spoilers.

Marika:

I simultaneously appreciate Marika getting some much needed nuance back. Marika is complicated for a number of reasons. Her regime is oppressive and unrelentingly cruel, the Erdtree and its wars were incredibly brutal, and yet the DLC calls to mind that this is the outcome of her own people’s oppression, eg in that Marika was incapable of growing beyond the limited worldview transferred to her by living in a world wherein failed saints and ‘criminals’ were turned into meat goo. Cycle of violence and so on, but therein also lies some critique. Generally speaking, irl, such a thing is… basically impossible example wise, to think of off the top of my head. I suppose broadly one could perhaps liken it to the original Roman persecution of early Christians but that’s a fraught comparison for a number of reasons – wildly overblown for theological reasons, for one, and also makes an exemplar vs Roman generally crushing and enslaving ‘savages’. Also the current and historical violence committed via christian can by no means be rooted to mistreatment by Romans. So. It’s something I find interesting while also not jiving with 100%. Especially relating to what she’d end up doing to the Omen.

I think one can possibly point to a general corruption of goals, for Marika, by virtue of her godhood—once granted absolute power, she lost sight of her original goals of building a better world than the one she was born into. An empire of ruin built on top of a pile of corpses. Marika herself seems to come to this understanding and so sets in motion the events of the game—sending the Tarnished off, and shattering the ring—possibly incentivized by the death of Godwyn, or at least the understand of that her dominion was faulty.

Miquella:

Oh Miquella. Here’s the thing; I am by no means shocked or surprised that the question of Miquella’s charm/compulsion abilities would come into play for the DLC. I had a feeling that the NPC crew would be under Miq’s influence and that would be a source of conflict. I was not someone who thought ‘yay miq’s going to become god and fix everything.’ But the way in which this was accomplished felt not only like a dropping of the ball but a deliberate spiking of it at the ground.

In the base game, though we only rarely get information about Miquella, we have an understanding that he very much wants to do good. To create a new order not revolving around the oppression and subjugation of the masses. Miquella’s plans were already doomed in the sense his grand plans involved ‘what if I made my own Erdtree, but cooler’ and the fact the implications of certain items (the haligtree soldier ashes, the bewitching branches) indicate he has some ability to influence/control others, but this ability remained nebulous. St. Trina and sleep, the other half of his, again spoke to some interesting if troubling aspects, but also again spoke to a sort of attempted lighter touch in his approach. Someone confined to sleep forever can’t hurt you anymore, even if you basically doom them without killing them. When the DLC began with him shedding his flesh, his strength, his Great Rune and therefore ability to charm, I was very interested in how this all related. Except then he…. Becomes a God anyway? I’m still confused by this. Narratively, the game points towards him shedding these things to become a Perfect God, uninfluenced by things like love (which again, confuses me when he says that the new age will be guided by compassion, but I think the point here was to make the confusion The Point eg Miquella you can’t do both those things, sir) that might blind him or bias him. But Ranni also cast aside her Empyrean flesh… specifically so she could not become a God.

This wouldn’t bother me as much were it not for other issues, I think.

Miquella in the base game is defined by his compassion, outright bordering on naivety (hand in hand with his curse). He waters his new tree with his own blood rather than the blood of others. Elphael and the haligtree are specifically home to the unwanted and oppressed (namely misbegotten and alibnaurics)--he literally builds a secret treehouse. He forges the unalloyed Gold needle to save Malenia’s life. Of course there is a paradox here. To build his new order based on compassion, he has to betray the old. In the base game, originally I viewed this as a sort of corruption of his own goals ala Marika’s, by sending Malenia out to do this for him. She takes her army and conquers most of the continent save Leyndell and the Academy before getting defeat-by-tie’d with Radahn. Miquella does not want to do this but feels he has to, one might surmise. Given Malenia’s apparently reverence for him, we are led to believe that she did so because she really, really, believed in him, even if in doing so was at great personal cost.

And so the compulsion comes back into play in the DLC—just bend everyone else’s wills to your own as a God, is at least what I believe we’re supposed to take away. But this bothers me thematically in that why did Miquella not do this earlier? We kill Radahn and Mohg and suddenly game over, because Miquella brain-beams us into submission and we all prance around in perfect unending submissive euphoria. Why are we not only around long enough to stop it, but even able to? We (the Tarnished) have no influence on whether or not Miquella achieves godhood, unlike with the other ending options wherein we have quests to have NPCs fail or achieve their means by which they either create a mending ring or, in Ranni’s case, finally kill Marika for good and thereby have No Gods in the Lands Between. Even getting his great rune is just optional—if you don’t get grabbed twice, you don’t need to worry about the instant kill. So it all just feels a bit like a wet fart, especially given what happens after you kill him and Radahn. Which is a memory of when Miquella, pre godhood, asking Radahn to be his consort so that Miquella can achieve godhood and make the world better. You can’t even get ontop of the divine gate. It just feels so…. Nothing, in the end. We kill Miquella, and then that’s it, nothing. Nothing changes, no means by which to maybe try to make the world better. Annsbach tells us to be a lord of men and not gods but there’s no means by which to do so. Ranni’s ending takes us to the stars, the other endings have us become Lord Consort in various flavors, or we burn everything down. Elden Ring, to me, defined itself in some ways from Dark Souls and Bloodborne by having a certain hope where the others could be rather bleak. The DLC, giving you no means by which to make the world better, in any way, mostly going around just killing everyone and thing, and then returning to the sliding scale of ambiguously-good-ambiguously-bad-extremely-bad base-game endings. It’s just… it is something.

I also have more meta-textual critiques, which leads me to…

Mohg, Malenia, Radahn, or Incest et al.,

Mohg in the base game is defined by his evil. He bears on-its-face evil satanic imagery, growling and gurgling at you during his fight. He kidnaps and tortures war surgeons, the only one of which who survives relatively in-tact, Varre, is cast aside. Varre dies, begging for Mohg’s help, and Mohg could not care less, because Mohg is the self styled leader of a cult. He kidnaps Miquella with the hopes of raising him to godhood so he can establish his own dynasty. Albinaurics who come to him seeking assistance/shelter are also tortured. It speaks to a great evil. However, we also come to understand that Mohg is the opposite side of the coin as Morgott. Both were omen children of Marika, given the relative ‘mercy’ of not having their horns cut off and abandoned to their fate in the sewers beneath Leyndell. Morgott spends his whole life desperately wishing to be loved by the Erdtree and gets jack shit. Mohg abandons it, rightfully, but is violated by the Formless Mother and has his blood set on fire. Mohg’s tragedy actually serves better to illustrate how suffering makes no one a good person than Marika’s story in the DLC, in some ways, given that Mohg literally replaces the austere and thinly veiled cruelty of Marika and her Order with just outright violence and terror. And then the DLC goes ‘actually, Mohg was manipulated into being evil by Miquella for his elaborate plans for godhood!’

When I read this, I almost felt insulted.

Not only does it strip Mohg of his agency, making his evil the fault of someone else, it also completely demeans the original tragedy of the kidnapping. Miquella, trapped in a state of suspended animation, forever sleeping and therefore failing Everything he set out to do, because he was kidnapped by someone who he would’ve wanted to help? Mohg, kidnapping and abusing a person who abhors what was done to him and his people? This tragedy again spoke to the themes of Elden Ring. Having it so that someone who, while flawed, is shot in the foot by someone warped and corrupted by a life time of abuse suffered first by their mother and then by a greater cosmic deity? That the violence put upon by Mohg resulted in yet more needless suffering? Heart breaking.

Instead, the DLC makes it so Mohg is abused yet again, and this time it is far less meaningful.

Radahn’s story also frustrated me greatly. I am biased, as someone who went insane trying to piece together his motivations for the past 2 yrs and writing nearly 200,000 words about it, but during that time I came to the conclusion that the explicit point of his lack of motivation spoke to a sort of glory seeking that is why, while he had some apparently good personal qualities, also made him a war lord. In the base game, Radahn’s established as someone who cares about having a ‘good death’, who stopped the stars for Reasons, and learned gravity magic in-part to ride his favorite horse forever. However he also is the General of a large army, who at the very least in his absence have taken to stringing up corpses and setting people on fire. Grant it, it might be due to the Super Plague, but it’s just vague and unsaid enough it is entirely probably it was not Just That (nor makes it less horrific, burning plague victims caused by the Stupidest Fight Ever). He admires Godfrey, who served Marika in her genocidal wars. He tries to take Leyndell for reasons not known to the player, but one can surmise either A. he was trying to help Rykard (Rykard, who’s war in the Shattering was considered one of if not the Worst) B. he was just doing it for a laff (eg conquering for conquering sake, morally vacant and also abhorrent, but speaks to a glory hunting that says Something) and/or something to do with Godfrey. It speaks to, if nothing else, a Giant Ego.

So it felt really weird and out of left field to go. Yeah he and Miquella made a vow that Radahn would become his consort so he could ascend to godhood and establish the kindness brigade. Like, huh? Nowhere in the base game does Radahn, at any point, seem to especially care about being kind or helping the oppressed. There are certain elements that indicate he might not have sucked As Much, but by no means does that make him a good person (especially since he seems to hold some relationship with Rykard and Rykard is Extremely Awful to the albinaurics). Not only that, but again if we are to believe Mohg was not at fault for any of the evils he committed because Miquella forced him to be evil, then we cannot believe that anything about Radahn and Miquella’s relationship was consensual (not that any incestuous relationship can be but it adds another layer of coercion).

So they make this vow and Radahn later reneges. Maybe he realizes he’s been charmed and breaks it, somehow, but we don’t actually know. And so Miquella sic’s Malenia on him like a dog, dooming Caelid. Firstly, overall it just makes Radahn less compelling as someone who could’ve potentially been better but decided he loved war too much, doomed by the world he was born into to want something that destroyed him and everything he loved. Secondly, it just really hurts the construction of Miquella’s character as someone perhaps jaded and optimism crushed by a shitty world built by his mom (and also Malenia’s). But thirdly, and most importantly to me, it completely decimates one of the most powerful narratives themes to me in Elden ring.

The deliberate obfuscation of Why Radahn and Malenia fought in the first place was one of the most important pieces of the narrative to me. It spoke greatly to Elden Ring’s themes about war and violence. That there are no real winners, that it leads only to death and destruction. That whatever reason why they fought was not important enough to result in all the devastation. The point was that it was pointless. It spoke to both Malenia and Radahn’s weaknesses and showed how even great people (even people with good qualities) have those qualities ruined by war. The fight dooms both of them; Radahn becomes a zombie, Caelid is turned into a rotten hell hole. Malenia has to be dragged back to the Haligtree and without her brother, she basically just Waits To Die, now aimless. It is, again, tragic.

And again, in comes the DLC. It is now just a punishment for not wanting to marry your half brother. It turns Miquella into a childish abuser, and Malenia into basically just a dog Miquella can send out on other people, his original enforcer/tool to be discarded once she was at her usefulness's end before he even stripped himself of his love for godhood. It also becomes Extremely dark if you consider that Malenia knew of Miquella and Radahn’s vow and decided to go and kill Radahn anyway, but there’s also no way to say for certain. Speaking to Malenia and Miquella’s relationship, there is a part of me that wonders if she was originally supposed to be in Radahn’s shoes. It would still create issues, but others would at least be partly remedied. It would be bad and fucked up, but it'd feel way more cogent and meaningful. Their toxic and codependent relationship resulting in them both being at their worst would actually fucking say something. Giving Malenia and non-rot afflicted body, even if it means doing something incredibly fucked up to someone he already victimized? the sort of ruthless goal seeking that better speaks to how Miquella is flawed even as a god, because it’s impossible to be a Perfect or Good God?

Meta-textually it’s also just troubling to, yet again, only depict mlm relationships through coercion and incest. Fromsoft does not traffic in good or healthy relationships but the unhealthy heterosexual relationships are given much more depth and apparent care to its members at least somewhat. Marika and Radagon have a Whole Thing going on but its clear they’re equal players in their one million year psychic battle against one another. Radagon and Rennala had a loving relationship (though there are misogynistic elements of Rennala being So Crushed after Radagon left her, she at least was powerful and active at one time). Marika and Godfrey’s relationship is somewhat vague, but we do know Godfrey believed in her vision enough to give up many aspects of himself. Not healthy, but again Godfrey and Marika are both active agents in their relationship (and he does come back for her, even if either by feeling because he Has To or for other reasons it still says something about His character). Tanith and Rykard are on some Insane Shit but they are insane for each other in a mutual sense. Even the incestuous elements in both Miquella and Malenia’s relationship, and Lorian and Lothric’s in ds3, correctly points to incest arising from unhealthy family dynamics/life situations. Now we’ve re-contextualized Miquella’s kidnapping so that it edges dangerous close on 'victim of incest lying, actually, was manipulating everyone, should die.’ Like What Are We Doing Here, man.

By comparison, Mohg is completely stripped of almost all the elements of his narrative that made him interesting and compelling and Radahn is weirdly pigeon holed into being the victim of Miquella’s violence and coercion. Radahn is dragged back from the dead after an end to his suffering, and turned into Miquella’s new enforcer. Freyja says something to the effect that it’s ‘what Radahn would have wanted’ but given how the rest of Fromosft’s entire library of work operates I do not take the word of a single NPC as gospel. And then we kill him, and Miquella. Mohg’s body gets desecrated, the end.

To some points, one might say that Miquella viewed all these evils as a means to an end, and I can’t say you’d be wrong. To me, though, it feels like many of these actions needlessly muddle the narrative, speak to the worst impulses society has around coercion/abuse, and ruin a lot of the interesting character narratives of the base game. Cards on the table, I felt utterly crushed by the DLC, and am still feeling really raw. Partly because the flaws of the demigods being products of Marika and co., were fascinating and impactful. The changes made, to me, cheapen a lot and feel somewhat like Fromsoft was sort of spitting in my face for attempting to piece together all the item descriptions, dialog snippets, and environmental storytelling elements to make a hazy image of a group of people we don’t exactly get to know, or rather only get to know by their actions and the outcomes of such. I’m less upset than I was, but ultimately I still feel so sour.

#elden ring #elden ring dlc #elden ring sote #shadow of the erdtree #fishes rambles

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