#‘are you religious’ <- Christian person asking me

[hummingbird-hunter]

To preface this, I don't know much about ancient religions. I don't even know much about modern religion, if I'm being honest. Still, I'd like to add my two cents.

When I used to think about religious human sacrifices, my mistake was that I approached it from an atheist/agnostic point of view: why would you kill a person to appease something you don't even know is real? But that was before, and since then, by talking to modern Christians, Muslims, etc, I realized two things: first, a lot of them, do, for a fact, know their god is real. I say "fact", and "know", and while it seems like an oxymoron to apply those words to something faith-based, it was important for me to realize that that is indeed an objective truth those people live in; and while it is not actually objective, it took me a while to figure that that is the angle I should approach this from: not as a belief that can be doubted or disproved, but as an objective truth. Apply same to ancient religions — Gods are real, and we need to Give to appease them. Well, sounds much less like a cold-blooded murder for no reason, doesn't it?

The second thing that I had to understand, is that even now there are religious people who, if believed to be asked by God, would sacrifice their children. Now, I do believe those people more on the side of being fanatics, but still, there still are people who would do human sacrifice. They just probably wouldn't call it that. And now consider the situation — your God asking you for sacrifice isn't a disembodied voice in your ear telling you so. It's your crops dying, it's the sun being scorching hot, it's the disease among your people, it's the starvation — it's your gods asking you for sacrifice, and there are consequences.

So, idk, maybe everything I've said is pretty obvious to some people, but for me I think it what helped me to understand that some of those were actually pretty reasonable, given the information those people had to work with

Human sacrifice is often treated as this terrible, inexplicable, evil thing and used to dehumanize and villainize ancient cultures that practiced it. I’m not saying it’s good and that we should start doing it again but I once read something that was like “In these societies, members of the community were the most important things they had. People were the most precious things they could offer the gods and that is why the most precious people amongst them, children, warriors and healthy young adults were often chosen as sacrifices.” and it changed my outlook on it. Offering the most precious thing you’ve got to the gods in an act of desperation because there are forces beyond your control. Especially in Neolithic agrarian societies where everyone’s labor was needed. They were sacrifices, not coldblooded mob murders. I know that’s not true for all sacrifices and across all societies that practiced it but it made it make so much more sense.

[swordscleric]

I can't stop thinking about the post from a few days ago about how Critical Role has been great at doing personal faith but didn't put the necessary work in to discuss the religious/god angle of c3 in-depth. Like the fact that Cardinal Respa was linked to both the Dawnfather and the Chained Oblivion is, on a personal level, very interesting (fallen/corrupted priest goes hard) but like does that mean that there's a Papacy somewhere in Exandria dedicated to the Dawnfather? If so, are there more cardinals who ordain the bishops of the Dawnfather? Are there Conclave-level intrigues going on in the Dawnfather's Sistine Chapel? Why is the Dawnfather so Christianity-coded in vibes alone if there's no actual outline of his religious organisations? With Downfall the Dawnchild/Dawnfather thing makes the allusions to Christ as Son of God co-existing with the Father textual - was there a Dawnfather Schism around whether the Dawnchild was a separate mortal? Was there a Reformation about how the Dawnfather's Pope kept selling indulgences? Is that why the priest of the Dawnfather Grog & Pike offer a drink to doesn't partake because of a cultural shift between Protestant-Temperance-League-coded and Catholic-coded Dawnfather congregations? Why do I have so many questions about the religious organisation of one of the most important Prime Deities in Exandria and to Critical Role's 3 campaigns? How on earth were the cast (and us as the viewers!) meant to care about the gods if all they had were "really tall kings" instead of interrogating how religious organisations provide both a place of healing and community to a wide range of people and also a place of horrific harm and abuse for a wide range of people?

[the-dye-stained-socialite]

something that really irks me in video games is this certain treatment of religion. specifically: when there is an explicit religion or belief system (explicit here meaning it has a name, describes specific beliefs or practices, or has its Creation Story described) and it's the Only One. no thought given to what other cultures might believe, hell, sometimes there's not even variations in the belief itself. worst though, is when this One Religion is also implied, or directly stated, to be True and Correct. Even whenever the game itself just. treats it to be True and Correct, and often so do fans!

of course, there's often a Singular Exception to this in a token athiest (or anti-theist) characterwho is often grouchy, grumpy, or Troubled in some way shape or form. their story arcs tend to revolve around them seeing the Truth of this particular (and only) religion, in a way that is often Miraculous.

a good example of this would be a certain popular farming sim which i'm not going to name because i'd rather this post Not explode.

in this farming sim we are only introduced to this one religion, something that even the ancient beings and cultures (possibly otherworldly) are shown to believe. some charaters believe more strongly, some believe more passivly, and one activly does not believe and drinks beer, is grumpy and grouchy, and generally a mean character at the start. we get Lore about this belief system, including excerpts from its religious text, items that mean to imply this belief system is True, and there's even a place of worship. as far as i am aware, in the base game we're simply not shown any other beliefs aside from the Lack of Belief (and look how good That character has it (no shame to him of course, i love him, but unfortunatly it is a fact of his character))

The entire thing, quite frankly, strikes me as Incredibly Christian. The lack of consideration of other religions, or what they may or may not believe, and how these religions are tied to different ethnicities and cultures and historie. thestrong beliefe that this One Religion is correct, absolutly so, and furthermore the importance placed upon the fact that it must be correct. The almost Evangalism of these atheist characters being shown to be depressed and miserable without this One True Religion, until their lives are made brighter and happier, usually after witnessing something that cannot be explained in a way Other than the One Religion being True and Correct. This last part doesn't always happen, but it does occur with enough frequency.

It's also incredibly frustrating as well with the homoginization of things, because in real life many many *many* religions are tied to herritage and culture and identity of shared history! It's frankly a touch disturbing seeing such a prominent lack of diversity in a setting, with such a heavy emphasis on all the characters sharing This Religion. No different histories, no different accounts, no different cultures.

i, personally, would just like to see more religions presented in video games, without one of them being Directly Confirmed to be the Good and Correct one that the other characters should be shamed for Not Following

[gxlden-angels]

You know the Bible does go kinda hard when you start to read it like a very rough draft of a Percy Jackson-like novel with too much world-building cause there was absolutely no reason for gayboy Jesus to do all that shit

[not-so-superheroine]

honestly, dangerous cults should be persecuted

what is this even about? i can only think of it as a response to my religious posts? this is so vague i can't even address it properly. feel free to clarify and i will give it another shot. what do you define as dangerous or cult? some atheists use this to mean religions as a whole, or for me specifically, this could mean religion, organized religion, chrisitanity, latter day saintism / mormonism, or community of christ.

i am not addressing all that. and even how the government handled the branch davidians and the FLDS, who i would classify as cults based on the BITE model and dangerous for the people in it, was wrong. mass killings and long-term separation of children from their mothers, who are also victims and love their children, is wrong. i think it was kidnapping and horribly traumatizing for the mothers and children. i do think legally and criminally persecuting cult leaders and other perpetrators of abuse in the cult should be arrested and taken to court. victims need support, resources, and ethical reeducation. but again, idk what sort of persecution you mean. or who you mean. If you think I am in a cult, i disagree. The BITE model doesn't support that view. it ticks a couple of boxes but so do universities and the legal system. organized religion is an organization, and organizations will have flaws that fall into at least one of the categories to a minor extent. not every small in numbers or newer religions are cults. Nor is every religion that has living prophets. which, again, i only write that bc i am not sure if this is about me and my faith that i have posted about on here. i have critiqued actions of my church leaders, including tippy top leadership. i am hesitant to be rude about it to their faces, but i don't want to bc i respect them in general, and that's not really how i roll. especially offline with my irls. i have seen fandoms who tick off BITE model boxes more than some religious organizations. political organizations too. i was in a communist political org that checked off more BITE boxes any church i've been a member of. but i'd call that a high-demand organization, not a political cult. but i'd see a person's point more if they said that about my old politcal org. self-crit is offensive to individualists and d,minant american culture. i am too ill to organize now but i still support them bc they do good work nationwide. i had more voice there, even with top leaders, than i have with the democratic party. this was much longer than intensed. but i was sent an ask.

[atlantis-just-drowned]

IF YOU ARE SLAMMING YOUR RELIGIOUS BELIEFS ONTO ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING AND ANYONE YOU ARE A DICK

IF YOU ANSWER TO LITERALLY ANYONE OPENING UP ABOUT THEIR STRUGGLES BY TRYING TO CONVERT THEM TO YOUR RELIGION YOU ARE A FUCKING BITCH AND I HATE YOU

IF YOU CAN'T HAVE A NORMAL CONVERSATION WITHOUT BRINGING UP THE TOPIC OF HOW WONDERFUL AND SUPERIOR YOUR RELIGION IS YOU ARE A PRICK

IF YOU TELL STRANGERS THAT YOUR RELIGION IS THE ONLY SOLUTION TO ALL OF THEIR PROBLEMS WITHOUT MAKING SURE THEY ARE OKAY WITH THIS SUBJECT YOU ARE AN ASSHOLE

FUCK YOU!!! FUCK YOUR BITCHASS GOD!!! FUCK YOUR MOTHERFUCKING RELIGION!!!

[vulpinesaint]

i'm gonna start wearing catholic iconography for real. i'm gonna start being really insane about catholicism in my day to day life. noooooo you don't understand i mean it for Real this time i've been extremely normal about it so far

[borealing]

i keep "based on your likes" on out of like, morbid curiosity about tumblrs shitass algorithm (i think it goes, i [tumblr user J] like a post by tumblr user A. tumblr user A likes posts by tumblr user B, tumblr user C, tumblr user D. tumblr user J gets shown all of tumblr user As likes. i must have liked a post by someone who only likes posts about religion because i am getting a steady stream of almost harrowingly (derogatory) christian posts.

[the-crafting-gremlin]

I love my coworkers so much. (For many reasons, including that they're all genuinely pretty good people, open and accepting, and funny.)

One of them and her husband are going to a metal concert this weekend, and it turns out that our manager is going with his oldest daughter because they're also fans of this band. The one coworker commented that she wonders what people must think when they hear about the different concerts she's gone to this year since its kind of a weird variety--an old folky-country singer who's mostly only popular with older people (in their mid 50's and up; she and her sister were the youngest there by quite a bit, in their late 20's and early 30's respectively), Taylor Swift, and now a metal band.

Another coworker piped up, "That's why I like you; your music tastes are eclectic. You're poly-jam-orous!"

I about died laughing, y'all. Her pun game is on point, as usual.

[lalaland-e]

So, I know I'm just posting for the fun of it and i really don't care, but to the two people in my "audience", would you guys (or just guy idk) be okay with me posting religious poetry?

You can't stop me from posting Christian content in general, but i feel like poetry specifically tends to be more dramatic and spiritual and stuff so it might be uncomfortable for some people.

[neverendingford]

.

[gxlden-angels]

"Unfortunately for [overcontrolled] clients, being good all the time leads to trouble."

- Thomas R. Lynch, Radically Open Dialectical Behavioral Therapy

[fairuzfan]

This post is for the anon who sent me that video asking me to debunk it's claims so they can be better equipped against accusations of antisemitism.

Sorry, I won't post the video since I refuse to have that man on my blog but I can give you common Zionist talking points and the illogicality behind it.

To preface: most of the questions Zionists will ask you are a trap, and will make you fall into a "rabbit hole" (as I was once told when I was younger), as we try to apply their reasoning. My advice is to ALWAYS center the humanity of Palestinians. For example, when a Zionist says:

"Don't Jews deserve a homeland to be safe?"

It fundamentally ignores the core issue: Palestinians are being raped, murdered, and expelled from their homes so that the establishment of this so called "homeland" may exist. When people ask this to you, I personally advise saying something like:

Why must Palestinians suffer for the establishment of this homeland?

Always recenter to the issue at hand—the inhumane removal and treatment of Palestinians.

"Palestine belongs to the Jews and Not Muslims"

The whole premise of this claim is flawed—there is a weird tendency to equate Arab/Palestinian=Muslim when it just is like. Completely untrue. There are Palestinian Christians, Bethlehem is famously a Christian city, who have been there for centuries. There are Palestinian Jews, who have been there for centuries. There are Palestinian Muslims, who have been there for centuries. My grandpa told me stories of how he would turn on lamps for his Jewish neighbors in Al-Khalil (or Hebron) during Shabbat.

To claim that Palestine is EITHER Islamic or Jewish doesn't make any sense and completely neglects the fact that dissemination of culture has occurred for centuries, as well as the intermingling of people throughout generations. To somehow assert that for some reason, Jews and Muslims did not have ANYTHING to do with each other—did not create together, did not build families together, did not build culture together, all while being PALESTINIAN—is incredibly racist and nonsensical. "Palestinian" is not a religious identity—it's a cultural and ethnic one.

Also, it does not negate the core issue—Palestinians are being killed, removed, and tortured so that others can live on that land.

"Well what about [something about partitioning land]?"

Honestly like, who cares about the partitioning throughout the 1900 and early 2000s. Sorry, I'm not going to list the whole "partitioning" history nonsense. The whole reason "Israel" exists is because of a Mass Exodus, murder, and rape of Palestinians. Everything after that is rendered obsolete.

"Well, I heard Palestinians allied with Hitler"

I don't know how to tell you this but Palestine was under British Control. No they didn't.

"Israel withdrew from the Gaza and left them to themselves and they put Hammas in charge"

Oh yeah, Israel totally left Gaza, that's why Gazans' water, electricity, internet, and food is completely controlled by Israel (this is sarcasm, Israel still controls basic life in Gaza).

Go back to centering the idea that no human deserves to be shoved into an open-air prison, starved, and controlled. Did you know that the Zionist Entity controls the amount of water Gazans receive, as well as counting their calories to ensure they don't have enough energy on a day to day basis?

"I heard Israel asked Arabs to stay"

Show them these papers and videos when they say this:

If you can't show them these videos, check in the next point what to say.

"Well the Palestinians left of their own will in 1948"

Palestinians in 1948 didn't "leave." They had heard of how the Zionist Entity was slaughtering Palestinians en masse. Women especially heard stories of rape and sexual violence. They fled from *violence*. Again, from an earlier post, that this was a calculated effort on the Zionist Entity's part to try and get them to "leave" on their own and "abandon" their houses so that they can come in and say "hey, they left on their own so, we can come in and take their houses now."

Anyways, the idea that once you leave your house you can't ever come back to it is incredibly odd to me as an argument on Zionists' part. Like if you leave your house right now to go to the grocery store and you come back and see someone in your house and they're like "sorry dude, this is my house now, you left so that means you can't come back," you'd be like, "what the hell!" It would be even weirder if everyone agreed with the guy who took your house, which is what happened to Palestinians.

In Al-Khalil, or Hebron, Palestinians always have to have someone stay in their house or else a Settler will come in and take it from them. So it still goes on today as well.

This is not a point, but when that one person in the video said "Arabs lived under Israeli rule" and showed a clip of a bustling city with mountains, I'm pretty sure that was Amman, Jordan, not Palestine lol. Those buildings in the mountains look like how downtown Amman builds the residential areas. Could be wrong tho.

"There are no Jews living under Palestinian rule in Palestine"

What is this, some sort of gotcha argument? What are they trying to prove, the racist (obviously false) notion that Palestinians hate Jews as a whole? How do they know no Palestinian Jew lives in Gaza? Also, Settlers in Palestinian Territory exist??? I had never heard this claim before, its incredibly stupid lol. You're automatically a citizen of "Israel" if you're Jewish, whether or not you live in or outside of Palestinian Territories. So of course technically they don't live under Palestinian rule, they're granted full rights as an "Israeli" citizen automatically!

Go back to talking about the inhumane treatment of Palestinians, I wouldn't bring up the above counterpoint unless they really won't let it go since the main point is mistreatment.

"Why are Christians supporting Israel then, if it's a secular issue rather than a religious one?"

Well actually for a couple reasons:

Oil interests and regional control of goods (White People Supporting White People).

Weird fundamentalist ideology where they want to enact the second coming of Christ.

And finally because they are racist and don't think Arab Christians deserve to live. They literally bombed a 1500+ year church the other day. Why would (White) Christians cosign that.

Anyways, its a stupid argument again, because it forgets the core issue of Palestinians dying and being displaced.

In summary, always go back to the point of centering the Palestinians being displaced, tortured, and murdered, no matter the argument a Zionist gives you.

[martinsace]

SHE A GOOD GIRL, FOR ME SHE A…

‣‣‣ pairing: uconn paige bueckers x fem! journalist oc

‣‣‣ warnings: cheating (on oc’s lame bf), sexual content with little plot, cursing and sexual language, religious guilt, minors dni

‣‣‣ summary: in front of cameras and her very, very straight boyfriend, lacey is the perfect girl next door type. but when she’s alone with paige? that’s a different story.

‣‣‣ author speaks: this is my first time writing smut eek i hope it lives up to your hopes and dreams

————————————————————————————

“paige, how does it feel to have beat the number one team in the nation?” i ask the blonde in front of me.

paige bueckers’ eyes are piercing into me with an intensity that makes me knees weak, a coy smile playing at her lips. she does those stupid fucking rizz hands and i swear i feel my heart drop down to my ass.

“it feels great. i definitely had some extra motivation today, so i still feel pretty fired up.” she smiles innocently, pretending what she just said has absolutely nothing to do with the person who was holding the microphone to her face in front of a camera projecting to the gamecast. this bitch.

i fight back every urge in my body trying to get me to smile and keep a straight face. “that’s awesome, should we be expecting more of this energy in the future?” loaded question, but that’s my job. screw this, with the way she’s looking at me i wish i could take off this media badge now.

she shrugged her shoulders. “hopefully.” oh my god.

“that’s all we have time for, thanks so much paige.”

she jogs away, not before subtly winking. i swear to god im going to kill her. after i fuck her.

paige had a great game, leading the game in both points in assists and filling out the stat sheet all around. not only did they beat south carolina, but she got a career high with 36 points.

needless to say, she was motivated.

3 hours before the game

“fuck, paige, don’t fucking stop-”

lacey cut herself off with a moan as her acrylics dug into paige’s shoulders. she rocked her hips feverishly against the blondes fingers, grinding her hips down into her lap over and over again. paige curled into her, watching the brunette borderline ride her fingers with an open mouthed smile as her tits bounced in paige’s face.

truth be told, the reason lacey had come over was to pick up her hoodie. it was an innocent visit, but they never ended up that way. not with paige. she was intoxicating.

“i know ma, i got you. here, lay back”

paige tenderly moved the girl from her lap and laid her so her back was on the bed and her head on a pillow so her whole body was on display. paige positioned herself between her legs and threw one over her shoulder, sliding two of her fingers back in sloppily. lacey let out another moan, arching her back off the bed. paige’s name ripped through her throat and fell from her lips like a prayer, though she wasn’t sure what she was praying for.

she had always been the most christian, by the book straight girl you could conjure in your imagination. until she met paige, drunk at her first frat party. she caught the basketball players attention, and the affair began. lacey almost didn’t even remember it the next day. yet then she did, and she couldn’t forget it. she couldn’t forget paige. she could hardly remember her boyfriend at this point.

paige’s fingers fit inside her like lacey was made as a mold for the blonde. she plunged in and out of her messily, but with ease and grace. lacey was gripping the sheets, ministrations and guttural moans spilling from her lips without a second thought. paige just had that effect on her.

“fuck— fuck p, i’m close, you’re so fucking good, baby—“

paige put a hand on her stomach, pressing down with every thrust into her. “yeah? i’m good? you close ma?” every word fueled her confidence, drinking in the praise like an elixir. her thumb came up to press circles onto the brunettes clit, forcing another moan out of her. “shit, yes, fuck yes you’re so good—“ she was cut off by a loud moan as paige used the hand on her stomach to circle under her hips and prop her hips up.

“FUCK, aw shit paige fuck, i’m gonna fucking cum-“

paige leaned over, peppering hot kisses to the thigh of the leg that was thrown over her shoulder and muttering against it, “i got you baby. cum for me ma, make a mess on my hand, you got that.”

it was like that flipped a switch, that was all she needed. her orgasm practically ripped through her body, leaving her limp. paige kept fucking her through it, huskily praising her. when lacey’s breathing became heavy and her leg began to get limp, she slowed her pace and pulled her fingers out. she let the brunettes leg down and pulled her arm out from under her and, after examining her fingers for a moment, looked at the fucked out girl under her. “open your mouth.”

without a second thought, she did. she would do anything paige said, and she didn’t even know why. she shouldn’t even know paige. but here she was, about to suck cum off her fingers.

she took paige’s fingers into her mouth slowly, making eye contact with paige’s ocean blue eyes as she swirled her tongue around the digits and released them with a pop. “aw shit” paige muttered. she reexamined her fingers and, once satisfied, grabbed her shirt from the end of the bed and pulled it over her head. she gave lacey her discarded clothes as well before laying down next to her, beginning to doomscroll on instagram.

they laid like that for a short while, both looking at their respective phones before lacey spoke. “anthony’s probably coming to the game tonight.”

this piqued paige’s interest. she looked at lacey almost curiously, somewhat skeptically, still holding her phone. “your boyfriend anthony?”

“yeah. that one.”

paige didn’t really know what to make of this. she knew lacey had a boyfriend. she didn’t really care. she didn’t ever plan on meeting him, so she wasn’t sure why lacey was bringing him to one of the most defining games in her career.

“you’re bringing him?” she asked, testing the waters.

lacey scrunched up her nose at the sheer thought of 2 and a half hours with her boyfriend. “god, no. he’s going with his frat brothers or whatever.”

this relaxed paige. it wasn’t like they were together, or that she wanted to be, but she didn’t really want to meet the boyfriend of the girl she’s fucking.

but it definitely made her want to put on a show.

tags: @dennyluvsblog @averyisnotpresent

[alllgator-blood]

'FOGGY STREETS AND CHRISTMAS LIGHTS'

(part 3/3)

I'm gonna infodump about the backstory of this comic, don't feel obligated to read it because it's not cotl related it's just personal stuff, I just want to be able to write about it somewhere cause I can't really talk to anyone about it.

As always, thanks for reading this far, sorry my stuff has been such a bummer so consistently. This comic goes out to all my "christmas induced depression" homies, I left my house maybe like ~5 times all month and it was NOT pleasant hearing "IT'S THE MOST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR!!" on the radio when I'm so ready for it to be over. Gonna take it reaaaaal easy til the year ends, you guys take it easy too!! Got some asks I have to respond to when I'm more stable but probably no new comic pages til january

Alright uhhh so this part of the comic is pretty much taken directly from the last time I saw my great-grandma alive, a few days before christmas. She didn't remember me, but at the nursing home there was a piano, and I sat down and played some stuff because I didn't know what to say. I was really into lisa the painful rpg at the time, and I played that "I've got the joy" song that the villain sings without realizing it was an old christian campfire song. She didn't really say much or move that whole night, just kind of gave me a polite blank smile, but started singing the words when I played the notes to that song.

I kinda stopped in shock, my dad frantically asked me to keep playing, so I did. While the comic I made is way more sappy than the actual moment was, I wish I'd cherished the moment longer. I didn't know it was the last time I'd see her alive. Every family christmas was held at her house when she was around, so it's been weird the past few years. I actually lost another dementia-addled grandma to cancer on christmas eve in 2009, so the holiday was already kind of weird for me on top of everything else that makes me sad this time of year. That's what part 2 was about, I'll spare the details but I wrote leshy to act out how I felt back then. Why are we all sad? This is supposed to be a happy time, all the decorations are up and we're almost all here, so why is everyone smiling yet everything feels so wrong? I feel like since leshy's canonically the most ignorant one to things lurking below the surface, he'd be the one to try and make everyone feel better but not quite understand why everyone is so miserable. My first memory of having self injurious behavior came from then, hence why I had leshy pull his leaves off in the last comic. It was confusing and frustrating and I was just old enough to comprehend something was wrong, but not old enough to understand the depth of it, it DEFINITELY didn't help that nobody helped me back then so I made leshy's siblings actually come in clutch instead of grabbing him/yelling at him.

That night with the piano was something that's stuck with me the few years she's been gone, but I felt kind of strange when I asked my dad and my sister about it and neither of them remembered it. The room we were in was completely empty so nobody else witnessed it but us three. I myself have a history of head trauma and memory loss (plus, native americans are disproportionately more likely to develop dementia... lucky us) so if I ever forgot about that moment, there'd be nobody left to remember it. Sometimes when I do comics, it's my way of going "this happened at some point, and the only evidence it ever happened was me witnessing it, so if something happens to me I want the memory to stay alive in some form."

Anyway. The autistic urge to overshare, am I right? Idk what my religious ass great-grandma would think of me drawing demonic comics about my last memory of her, she'd probably think it's funny though cause she raised my dad whose interests have always been "death metal and devil worship". I'm not sure if anyone read this far, I just hope my dumb comics can convey the things I can't say with my voice and struggle to say through text. None of this was supposed to be "feel bad for me!! Woe is me!!", it was supposed to me more like...cathartic? Healing? I almost didn't post this comic because it felt kinda weird, but seeing people connect with it made it worth it imo. Thank you

[alexistalkscomics]

Why Is The Jewish “Representation” In Agatha All Along So Problematic???

When it was first confirmed that Joe Locke was going to have a role in Agatha All Along, most fans quickly came to the conclusion that he would be portraying Billy Kaplan AKA Wiccan which unfortunately ended up being correct.

The problem with that casting you ask?

Joe Locke isn’t Jewish and he is playing one of Marvel’s most prominent Jewish characters. Whilst many goyim (non-Jewish people) often inaccurately perceive Jewishness to solely be a religious identity which is a massive oversimplification of what it means to be a Jew, Jewish people are actually an ethnoreligious community which means that we’re our own distinct ethnic group and culture that have a traditional religion that is intrinsically tied to our identity and culture regardless of individual Jewish people’s levels of observance.

And because we are an ethnoreligious group, that makes the casting of Joe Locke, who is not ethnically or religiously Jewish, inherently problematic to say the least, especially when placed into the wider context of Jewish representation in the MCU.

Marvel Studios has previously been criticised for the way that it’s approached adaptations of Jewish characters for the MCU with the two main examples being casting Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda Maximoff, who is Romani and Jewish in the comics, and Oscar Isaac as the Ashkenazi Jewish Marc Spector in the Moon Knight streaming series and in both cases, the heritage of the characters were either downplayed or just outright erased. So for anyone who understands the issue, it should be clear that the MCU has a poor track record when it comes to representing Jewish characters and that Agatha All Along’s adaptation of Billy Maximoff/Kaplan is just another addition to the list of disrespectful adaptations of Jewish characters.

What is the specific problem with how Billy has been adapted in the MCU?

Well, in order to answer that question, the answer has to effectively be split into two parts:

In the most recent episode of Agatha All Along, we finally learn the backstory of Billy (who had previously only been referred as “Teen” due to a spell that prevented his identity from being found out) and as part of that, we are shown a flashback to the day of Billy KAPLAN’s (the capitalisation will make sense in a bit), Bar Mitzvah, a sacred Jewish ritual that marks the transition into adulthood and the responsibilities that comes with being a Jewish adult. In this flashback, Billy (who if you’ve payed attention, is being played by a non-Jew) is shown wearing traditional religious garments and handling what is potentially an actual Torah scroll.

Within Judaism and Jewish culture in general, handling a Torah and then reading from it is seen as both a great honour and responsibility for any Jew who is called for an Aliyah so seeing a non-Jewish actor who has no experience as a Jewish person and in interviews, has mocked fans who criticised his role in the show, wearing my culture and religion as a costume to advance his career just felt wrong to me. I love Marvel and I take great pride in superhero comics being an art form that was created by Jewish immigrants so seeing one of the biggest franchises in history cast a non-Jewish actor to appropriate Jewish culture just felt disgusting to me. At least with Moon Knight, all we got was the smallest references to his Jewish heritage rather than being subjected to seeing the christian Oscar Isaac partake in sacred closed rituals.

And now, moving onto the second part of the answer to the above question, after we see Billy reading from the Torah and are then shown the party following the ceremony, we learn that the flashback takes place concurrently with the final episode of WandaVision. Because of that, the party has to end early so that guest can evacuate and soon, Billy and his parents are in a car accident where Billy dies…

…until his body is quickly revived after the soul of Wanda and Vision’s artificially constructed son, Billy MAXIMOFF possesses and takes control of Billy Kaplan’s body whilst erasing everything that made Billy Kaplan who he was. The reason why this is especially problematic is because of the great importance of the soul within Judiaism. According to Jewish laws, one of the most important things that distinguishes Jewish people from goyim is a Jewish soul and in Agatha All Along, one of the main protagonist who is an adaption of a Jewish character who was created by a Jewish writer is reimagined as a non-Jewish soul that hijacks the corpse of a Jewish teenager to use as a meat puppet. It becomes even worse when later on in the episode, “Billy” is shown rejecting his identity as Billy Kaplan which effectively takes the undertones of ethnic erasure and cultural appropriation of Joe Locke’s casting and makes it an essential part of the characterisation for this incarnation of Billy.

In Conclusion?

In the Marvel Comics, Billy Kaplan is a proud queer Jewish man who was partially based on the lived experiences of his creator who is also a gay Jewish man. Becuase of that, he holds a special place in the hearts of many fans who see a piece of ourselves in him and we deserved to see the really Billy Kaplan be brought to life in a way that would honour the source material that we love and introduce mainstream audiences to a really cool and fascinating Jewish superhero who can open up so many possibilities for the more supernatural side of the Marvel Universe to be explored in further MCU instalments.

But instead, we got the bare minimum of Jewish representation followed by the complete erasure of that “representation” with the ultimate end product being a show riddled with the underlying rot of antisemitism.