#''but christians think other religions are weird/bad/creepy''

[skeleton-richard]

Probably unpopular opinion: saying it's weird/creepy that Christians "eat their God" is dumb. First, our God told us to do that in the first place, and second most Christians don't actually believe the substance used in Communion is literally God. Unless you believe in Transubstantion, it's symbolic.

You guys are just jealous of how metal it is to eat God.

[creature-wizard]

The Illuminati Formula Used To Create An Undetectable Total Mind Controlled Slave is reaching new heights in silly.

They're claiming that the Illuminati creates alters with Illuminati sensibilities in Good Christian Citizens, so that said alters can effectively serve as "super spies" to spy on the Christians and tell the Illuminati what the Christians are up to:

The proper training of a person for this role would be long and tedious, but once he was trained, you would have a super spy compared to which any creation in a mystery story is just plain weak. This is what the Illuminati have done. They create good Christian fronts, with Illuminati dark alters who can see what the Christians are doing.

Hmmm... a long and tedious process, you say? Hmm, imagine if there were easier ways to get this information... like reading Christian publications, listening to Christian radio, watching Christian television, visiting Christian websites, or just attending church services... it's not like these people just blast their agendas to anyone who'll listen 24/7 or anything...

The fact that there are people vain enough to think that there are secret conspiratorial cults going to all this work to do all of this unnecessary spying is kinda funny, IMO. Christofascists are some of the most self-absorbed fuckers on the planet.

Later, Cisco Wheeler cites the lyrics from "Music of the Night" from Phantom of the Opera as an example of a "hypnotic script." Yeah, it wasn't like, a song written for a character who was canonically supposed to be creepy or weird or anything.

Seriously though, this is a great example of how conspiracy theorists ruin art. Anything that's a little weird or uncomfortable to them must be some sort of evil programming. God forbid they have to understand things like context and artistic intent and shit like that.

Next is a list of things that supposedly keep a child's mind dissociative. One item on the list is spending fifteen minutes a day writing backwards, an obvious mutation of the old "witches recite the Lord's Prayer" canard. Because writing backwards doesn't cause dissociation. You just learn to write backwards.

And the rest is pretty typical torture stuff; many of which genuinely happen in actual child abuse cases, but in the context of the conspiracy theory are given special significance, because... shitty parents don't just abuse their kids for no reason, I guess.

And the book claims that Billy Graham was a Monarch handler. I really have no idea why conspiracists have singled him out among all the other celebrity preachers of the time, lemme go look at his Wikipedia page...

...Oh well he wasn't a total dick; he refused to glue himself to the Moral Majority or the GOP, pushed for military disarmament and AIDS support; yeah, that might have something to do with it.

Oh hey it's that Saturn worship thing (links to antisemitic conspiracy theories) with extra antisemitism by linking the Anti-Christ to Kabbalah:

The AntiChrist is also known as Black Saturn, and other names. Satan himself is known within a Monarch system often by the name Bilair, Bilar, or Bilid which are his cabalistic names.

Conflation of "the occult" with Wicca:

In the occult world, goddesses are triune: maiden, mother and crone. The one to the left of center is Midnight (the Mother figure), and the other is Morning Star (the maiden). Morning Star (Stella Matutina) may be a very young alter, rather than a teenager.

If you think this is bad, shit's about to get much, much worse.

So first of all, the book claims that The Wizard of Oz is an Illuminati thing, and has something to do with ancient Isis mystery religion:

One of the secrets of the Mystery Religions, especially the Egyptian Isis mystery religion was the ability to use drugs and torture to create multiple personalities. The word Oz is known to have been used by its author as an abbreviation for Osirus.

And then.

And then.

There's THIS fucking whopper:

The Grimm brothers, who were cabalistic jews, gathered the folk occult stories together. Their stories are full of spells, trances, and drugs. Sleeping Beauty is put to sleep, and the trigger to wake her is a kiss on the lips. These are serious hints that the occult world didn't stop programming people with dissociative states and triggers when the ancient Egyptian empires fell. Instead of using modern lingo such as "hypnotize", they would say "cast a spell."

The Grimm Brothers? Jews? Of ANY kind? Holy shit, you'll just pull anything out of your asses, won't you?

By the way, pinning the conspiratorial blame on Kabbalistic Jews specifically is how a lot of the conspiracy theories Nazi Germany believed in were made palatable for American gentiles post-WWII. Most Christians would agree that full-out mass slaughter was a little unfair. Many Christians could agree, though, that everyday Jews were perfectly fine people; they just needed to accept Jesus. And believing that it's just those Kabbalistic Jews who are the problem doesn't feel as hateful as all that Nazi shit. Must be totally different, right?

Nah.

Rehabbed conspiracy crap is still crap.

[rebelrayne]

what my husband thinks of the casa amor boys (plus toby as a bonus)

Under the cut

Andy

His earring looks like a little fucking handsaw. He has a handsaw on his ear. Who told him to stand like that? His 12 year old sister? Looks like one of those awkward guys that says “what do I do with my hands?” The way he holds his feet, he probably has a foot fetish. You could almost miss his nipples cause they’re not a natural color. He’s got a weird bump on his foot. And his left foot is way fatter than his right foot. What the fuck? He has a size 13 one foot and 9 on the other. What the fuck it looks like he’s wearing a ring on his left hand??? He’s a bottom. A sub bottom. Like a very submissive bottom. He looks like he has daddy issues. If you stan Andy, I will laugh at you and not take you seriously. Anything you say is not canon. Between him and Francis, they should be the most hated. I almost hate him as much as I hate Lewie. Probably has tea parties with stuffed animals. They call him “sir short stick”.

Francis

He looks like the fucking guy from ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’ like the one that Sarah Marshall goes to Hawaii with. Does he go to the hair stylist 3 times a week to get his color right? No, that’s not a real beard he drew it on. Did he steal his grandma’s coat and sandals??? AND BRACELET??? Oh my God, JESS! He’s got a small hand like the guy from scary movie- “grab my strong hand!!” Looks like he’s into paranormal shit like he’s a ghost chaser. The AI did a fucking terrible job, it tried to mix scary movie small hand guy, a grandma and Russell Brand. I can’t tell if he had a belly button. Is he an alien??? This guy creeps me out. And his posture- just the way he holds himself. He’s creepy. He’s a version of Joe Goldberg that stole his grandmas sweater that’s his undercover outfit. The sweater is literally his baseball cap. Is that enough? Or should I keep going about his grandmas sandals she got during 1 AD? Those sandals saw Jesus they were there on resurrection day. Practices celibacy as a religion. If he was born in Spartan times, they would throw him to the wolves or over a cliff. I kind of wanna spartan kick him myself. See a special meme made by Jessie’s husband below:

Hamish

That’s fucking Tom 2.0 mixed with Zac Efron. He looks like he came out of fucking Baywatch. Been staring at Pamela Anderson’s tits. Got a knock-off Rolex. Not much to make fun of- this guy seems mostly normal. He doesn’t have any qualities I can laugh at. Even his posture and how he holds his hands is manly. Looks like he’s ready to punch Lewie in his asshole lips. I brought up he has small feet and he defended him. He has an average size dick, probably like 5.5 inches. He’s the guy everyone should want to get (unless he is a closet asshole). But even then, there’s a binary code of how much of an asshole he can be. He looks like he has a Christian Grey mentality. Probably has a red room and it’s hidden. Fuck now there will be fanfics of him doing BDSM… his nickname would be “Lord Ladies Man”. JESSIE’S HUSBAND STAMP OF APPROVAL - first and only one this season.

Marshall

Starts laughing that he has a butterfly on his chest. Why did he get a tramp stamp on his chest?? These tattoos are almost as bad as Will’s. Captain Jack Sparrow if he was a hipster. Most definitely swings both ways. I want to cut off his manbun when he’s sleeping… like half these tattoos don’t make any sense. He probably has shorty tattooed on his dick and it probably still says shorty when it’s erect. At least his chin isn’t square like Ozzy’s. This guy is weird looking and his tattoos give me the heebie jeebies. He’s a fucking dumpster rat. He’d be the king’s jester and wear clown makeup. Tries to juggle three balls- can’t find them. He looks like he enjoys his venti Starbucks drinks: “Can you froth the milk please sir?” Looks homeless, searches the road for pennys or whatever British cheap change is. Probably has OnlyFans for his feet.

BONUS: Toby

He literally looks like the kind of guy that is used as the main character in the game— he looks like a default setting lol he’s a random fucking palette. Looks like Vin Diesel’s baby brother I’m going to call him baby diesel. Why are his arms so short? At least he didn’t skip leg day. If you chopped off his head, he’d look like the perfect speciman of a man. Head looks like it should be on a crackheads. It’s small. Looks like he should be on prison break. Surprised he has no tattoos - looks like he’s been to prison a few times. Kind of sad he’s the last one… I wish Francis was the last one instead. Toby’s skin tone is off… his color is different from his head to feet. The AI said “lol not my fucking problem.” It said “make perfect man body with generic ass head.” Bro is gonna be NPC for life. (“You sound like Elliot” “shut the fuck up”). He’s so bland they gave him white swim shorts.

A/N to my fans: I love you degenerates. I work very hard at this to entertain and give you guys a full insight to what these characters really are. I appreciate your constant gratitude and thank you for allowing me to be your roast king. All other attempts are failures and they can come find me if they have something to say. I hope you all read this and then go back to read it again because it makes you happy. That is all.

PS: the AI really helped with these roasts this season because the character designs sucked. They made it very easy for me. I’d also really like to thank my top supporter, @caitkaminski . She’s been a fan for a long time (Apparently I am not a supporter). Here’s to next season. I will miss doing these til then. In the wise words of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, aka Maui: “You’re welcome.”

[hamliet]

Hello, Hamliet.... is it true that the Bible said homosexuals should be punish in new testament? If I'm not wrong remembered (yes, I'm from christian household) is it not that king david have 'special feelings' for jonathan?

My mother has really strong belief in religion (christianity) and she is an anti-LGBTQ+. But do you believe that her brother (my uncle) who is definitely a queer (wear make up, dresses really feminely, and sometimes called himself as she, never married until he's in sixties), my mother said he is normal ?????

That's why I want to know more about LGBTQ+ (eventhough in my country it is still a taboo topic).

Do you think it's weird Hamliet, if I prefer to read mlm & wlw instead of het romance? I just felt fed up with reading or watching het romance (wlm)....

Thanks to you Hamliet, I know more about myself, eventhough there are still a bit if feeling guilty every time I read or watch LGBTQ+ contents....

No, it doesn't say it should be punished in the New Testament.

It does get mentioned once, arguably three times, but really for certain once, and that context has nothing to do with punishment.

I'm going to give a very bare bones explanation of my understanding of it below! There are also lots of theology papers on it and I'm like, skimming the surface here.

The arguable ones lists a word that is often translated as "homosexuality" in a list of sins that "won't inherit the kingdom of God." However, the two words that get translated as such need more looking at.

One is always translated literally as "softness," but is always used in reference to prostitution. Most likely (given the letters it appears to and the communities they were a part of and the prevalence of temple prostitution there) temple prostitution (which should not be thought of as largely consensual in this context, either). There are also some fair arguments based on the words used and the known history of these cities that it's referring to ritual p*do abuse of children.

The other of the Greek words that gets translated as such is extremely unusual. So unusual that it's never seen elsewhere.

Yeah. It's a made-up word.

Now, the word arsenokoitēs certainly had meaning to the specific community to which the letter it appears in is addressed, but it's not like a word that can be translated with 100% certainty. What we do know for certain is that parts of the word are taken from words that refer to "men" and "bed/sex." So I see why people translate it that way. The thing is, though, it occurs in two lists, and these lists consist of issues concerning idolatry and slave dealers. Hence, the context strongly indicates that it's condemning some form of exploitation involving men who have sex with males.

The larger historical/cultural context also indicates this. If you read ancient Greek texts, like, say, Plato's Symposium, you'll get a very distinct view of exactly which same-sex relationships were normalized in those days, and you'll also be somewhat horrified. Basically the idea was that mentors (adult men) would mentor teenager boys, and the teen boys would be receptive to the adult man having sex with them. Does it sound creepy and exploitative? Because it is!

Yes, even for the time period. It isn't unique. Julius Caesar--yes, THE Julius Caesar--had to deal with rumors that he was one of those boys to an older mentee (Nicomedes). Because clearly, being on the receiving end of male-male sex means that you're actually a woman, which as everyone knows is the WORST thing you could possibly be (sarcastic). Anyways, this type of exploitative bs was extremely common, and even back in those days, it was known to be somewhat, y'know, f*cked up.

The other time it's talked about in the NT is in Romans 1, during which the main theme of the passage is that giving yourself over to lust is a bad thing. Paul cites women having sex with women and men with men as examples of overabundance of lust. I think most Christians, even sex-positive ones like myself, would agree that being consumed with lust (or with anything) to where it controls you and you start losing control of your life is unhealthy.

Now, that said, you can make an argument that Paul's view seems to be that homosexual tendencies stem from over abundance. But we know that's not true nowadays. And that gets into how you read the Bible as a whole.

I love the Bible. I see it as God's word to humanity, divinely inspired. I also think that to truly see it as God's word, you have to acknowledge what it is.

It's literature.

That doesn't mean it's fiction or whatever. It just means that God chose literature as a means to communicate with human beings, and that means that God knew that the whole point of literature is that people wrestle with the concepts and debate the themes. It enhances my respect of Scripture and my love of God to do precisely this, to dig into the text and its historical context and discover the timeless themes. To call it "inerrant" where every word can be taken out of context and seen as a command does a disservice to the writers God used to craft poetry, histories, stories, measurements, and letters to friends. To view the Bible as God when the Bible itself says that Jesus is the Word of God personified misses the forest for the trees, the spirit of the law for the letter.

The other really cool thing that genuinely excites me about Christianity is that God works with human beings. Individuals, yes, but also communities. He works within cultures, too. Despite modern evangelicals claiming "No Compromise!" Scripture is FULL of God compromising with humans, bargaining with them, accepting that they are flawed and working with us. He worked within human limits so much he became one to save us from death; it's kinda the premise!

So, God working to deliver his very message to us through human writers of literature is kind of amazing to me, awe-inspiring. But that also means human beings are limited by what we know and our own time periods, our own cultures. And, that's okay. Yes, keep working to do better, but it means that we can have grace for ourselves and one another. Even now, when we know a lot more about the world as a whole, we are still very limited by our own experiences, cultures, and time period. There's this attitude that modernity has reached the stage of ultimate enlightenment and boy have we not.

Hence, yeah, Paul's writing in Romans 1 especially might be kinda homophobic by today's standards. The ultimate premise--don't let yourself be under anything else's control--is a good one, but him using homosexuality as an example as if potentially all of it emerges from lust is not exactly woke, but also not necessarily abnormal for his time period and his culture. He's a flawed human being, after all, but God himself still worked with him to do some pretty great stuff, and to write some pretty cool letters that still have beautiful resonance today (the love passage in Corinthians? That's him!)

(Also, funnily enough, people--even the strictest evangelicals--actually do accept this about Paul and culture when he's writing about slavery. Because Paul doesn't endorse slavery and instructs masters to be kind to their slaves and treat them well, but he doesn't outright say "you're sinning by owning slaves" whereas today we'd definitely think that. Funny how that doesn't apply to gay people though.)

Lastly, your mom sounds like my mom. She claims she thinks it's a sin because she believes the Bible says so, but she genuinely is happy for friends who are gay and happily married and wishes them well. It's like she feels she has to believe it, not that she actually does in her core. And of course that's not an excuse, and I would never tell a gay person they should not be upset with her. Even within our modern cultures, it can be hard to unlearn things too especially if you grew up in such environments.

But reading mlm or wlw stories is actually a great tool for helping people empathize with others. Fiction absolutely helped me leave the cult I was raised in. I don't think it's inherently weird at all; curiosity exists, empathy exists, good stories exist, and also there's something to be said about people who exist in cultures that are very non-accepting seeing themselves in stories where a relationship that might often be condemned is accepted. Even if the person is straight and cis, they might have parts of themselves they see as something society would hate, and so they see themselves in the characters.

Oh actually, the real last lastly. Jonathan and David. Er... yeah. I mean, yes, people do have extremely close, extremely intimate, brotherly platonic friendships, even between men. But their relationship is certainly up for interpretation considering they literally refer to each other as having love for them that is "better than that of women." The words and phrasing used mirror those used in like, the Iliad to describe Achilles and Patroclus, and Gilgamesh between Gilgamesh and Enkidu.

David also married Jonathan's sister and didn't treat her very well, but did go out of his way to protect Jonathan's own children. Also, there are several other passages where the ancient Hebrew used could contain sexual nuances, although it doesn't necessarily have to. You can't definitively state either way what it is--the writers clearly wrote in plausible deniability. Still, there's enough to raise eyebrows even within that old ancient context that, whether or not it was ever physical, Jonathan and David were not platonic.

(Personally? David invented the Disaster Bisexual archetype.)

[fierceawakening]

Okay, so speaking as someone who was raised Christian, went full on ex-Christian antitheist, and now practices Christianity in a way that seems relevantly similar to how this person describes their religiosity ("I don't think there is a God, but the rituals connect me to other people and help ground me in my personal values, so I like them anyway")... I've been trying to think of what I dislike about these sorts of post, and I think I finally have hit on it.

People like this are right when they say "people who've abandoned a religion imposed abusively on them can't understand why other people wouldn't do the same thing." I was BAFFLED for a long time by the people at the church I'd left. They were nice! Why would nice people keep doing rituals dedicated to a god that I saw as inherently abusive ("love me or be eternally punished," and they chose "okay then I love you," as I saw it then)? The only way I could make sense of that was to think either they were painfully stupid or they were stuck in the creepy cult I'd narrowly escaped. Either made me feel profoundly uncomfortable.

But the thing that I think people saying that miss is... the people saying that don't seem (to me, anyway, as I read their posts) to understand why someone could have such a violently negative reaction to their culture of origin to want to cast it off entirely.

That's what they're not getting. They're like "but these dietary traditions aren't nearly as confusing as 'is there a God?' so why wouldn't I keep them even if I'm agnostic or atheist? SEE, YOU'RE TRYING TO KILL MY CULTURE."

Where... no, I don't think so. I think the ex-Christian atheist is just so revolted by the thought that they've been part of an abusive relationship ("love me or I'll hurt you forever!") that they want to discard EVERYTHING that reminds them of it, and that because the response that makes you brave enough to leave an abuser is so visceral, "sure but I kept the necklace they gave me, I like it" seems really fucking weird to them.

Ex-Christians are VERY often behaving like survivors who have very recently left abuse. They are not trying to get you to act a little Christian to make themselves feel better. They are not understanding how you can get to "God most likely doesn't exist" without then going "and therefore, I can stop hurting myself, and am free."

They hear you saying your relationship is healthy, but they’re not in a place where they can believe that yet. I wasn’t for a very long time myself! I wouldn’t have tried to demand people deconvert, that would be controlling, but I did Vaguely Worry when they didn’t.

It's not an attack. Give them time, and maybe they can even get to "I do a lot of Christian stuff but don't believe God exists, because some of the cultural bits that aren't toxic as hell are valuable to me.” I got there! I'm weird, but I'm not crazy.

But when you say "It's Christian of you to want to fully reject Christianity," that's baffling. No it's not. It's natural and normal for people to want to jettison anything that remotely reminds them of an abusive relationship they were in.

It's not intentional judgment that makes them not understand why you're not doing the same thing. It’s typical minding.

Which is bad! I’m not saying it isn’t. But it’s not a hidden devotion to a secretly Christian agenda.

[eveningscoolandquiet]

Coming back to this to talk seriously about how much Ghost means to me, this is gonna be a LONG one. Content warning: discussion of religious trauma, kinda venty in parts but it’s all old news I am safe and fine I promise 🫶🏻

I was raised by emotionally abusive parents in a very toxic conservative Christian community. I want to make it clear this was not a cult, my family was Christian and I attended a school that was Christian and we lived in a geographically isolated small town. The combination of these things resulted in an environment for me growing up that I think had a similar impact to me that growing up in cults does to cult survivors but it was NOT a cult and that is an important distinction.

From the time I was born up until I was 12 years old and starting high school (I’m Australian) there was essentially no part of my life that was separate from religion. From Christianity specifically. I did not have a single meaningful conversation with a non-Christian for the first dozen years of my life and as such I considered myself a devout Christian. Not just considered; I was. More often than not I’d be the one getting out of bed Sunday morning telling my parents we had to get ready for church and being upset if we didn’t go. I knew my scripture. I followed the rules. Heck I was even school captain of my extremely religious primary school.

I was also miserable. I cannot recall a single joyful memory from those years of my life. I’m sure they existed somewhere, just too fleeting to make a lasting impression. What I do remember is the constant feelings of guilt, shame and fear that haunted me constantly. Because I was terrified everything I did wouldn’t be enough. That I’d go to hell because I was a smart kid, because I had trouble trusting authority figures, because I couldn’t “trust in the Lord with all my heart and lean not on my own understanding”. I desperately wanted to! But how is a child supposed to have absolute faith in an unknown being in the sky when they’re constantly punished for having faith in the adults they know around them?

So I was a devout Christian, but I was bad at it. How did I compensate for that? By doubling down. I’d parrot whatever weird conservative talking points my relatives spouted so long as they had backed it up with scripture. I started spending my Friday nights at a youth Bible study group that my friends who had much more positive feelings about our shared religion invited me to (spoiler: I hated it, and the people that ran it were creepy). Yet I would avoid ever having to publicly display my faith, when the other school captain and I gave speeches at assemblies I specifically made sure he would read the prayer section, just in case someone somehow heard my words shake and started accusing me of what my brain constantly did: that it wasn’t good enough, that I wasn’t good enough, that I didn’t love God enough.

And when my parents decided that I would change schools for high school rather than going straight on to the senior school at the same campus? I was terrified. I remember crying, hugging my friend and asking if she thought me going to a different school would change my personality or my religious views. She said maybe to personality but definitely not to religion. She got it completely backwards.

So I started at a new school and was pretty much immediately the weird religious kid. There were other Christians in the school, it was still a Christian school, but it was just one aspect of their lives rather than their Entire Life. We sung hymns, we said the Lord’s Prayer in assembly and Grace at meals, we had communion each term but there was no mandatory religion class, you could opt out of taking communion without anyone harassing you for it, no one would snitch on you for not saying a prayer. Atheists and agnostics could openly state their belief without being persecuted for it. It was all so fucking new to me.

Pretty quickly I realized that the picture that had been painted for me of what life without God is like and the way “worldly” people act was completely at odds with reality. When I was 13 I remember asking one of the youth leaders at the Friday Bible study (some poor unpaid 17yo) how there could be good people who aren’t Christian and bad people who are. She was not equipped to answer that question. Shortly after that I stopped going to Bible study.

By the time I was 14 I stopped identifying as Christian (I also realized I was queer which added a whole other dimension to things). And by the time I was 15 I told my parents I no longer wanted to go to church. They threatened to kick me out. So I kept going to church against my will. I was swiftly ostracized by the leaders of said church, told I was being cruel and yelled at for the ‘stress I was causing my mother’. All for having a difference in belief that (at this point) I had not even begun to actually vocalize, I had simply asked to no longer attend church.

I kept attending church until I was 18 when my parents felt they couldn’t ‘reasonably’ force me anymore. I also came out to them around this same time (conversion therapy is legal in my state so I was not willing to take that risk by coming out earlier), which went as well as I could have hoped for, so not very but I wasn’t kicked out.

Context over let’s talk about Ghost. I found Ghost in 2020 in perhaps the most bizarre, niche way possible. A YouTube fanimatic for the graphic novel The Arcana (you can watch it here). I had already done a lot of deconstructing the worldview and belief system I had been indoctrinated into and was fairly comfortable identifying as pagan (which I still do), even if it wasn’t exactly public knowledge. I went through Ghost’s discography and absolutely adored it but remained a pretty casual listener for years until my ritual in October 2023.

Oh boy. My friend and I had run late and arrived literally as Imperium was playing. We were at the very back of the mosh pit and could not see a damn thing. And it was one of the best nights of my life. The first half of the concert went by fairly uneventfully (which is to say extremely eventfully, it was so fucking fantastic) and then it got to He Is and something in my head just clicked.

I had already made the connection before this point that part of my love for Ghost stemmed from emotional catharsis at its similarity yet juxtaposition to the Christian Rock songs I grew up with and now can’t hear without feeling nauseous. But in that moment, in a crowded, sweaty arena lit up by phone lights, I realized that THIS was the feeling of joy in praise and in community that I had missed out on all those years. I might not be a Satanist but goddamn if “He’s the shining and the light without whom I cannot see, and He is insurrection, He is spite, He’s the force that made me be” didn’t feel like something I myself had written.

Ghost/TF manages so powerfully to put into words the thoughts and feelings that I have never been able to eloquently express. Their music gives me so much comfort and solace and makes me feel seen and understood in a way I never have before. Whether it’s their tracks that are pretty overtly critical of organized religion/Christianity (e.g. Cirice, Idolatrine, Spillways, Griftwood) or their more lighthearted songs that subvert Christian rhetoric (e.g. Satan Prayer, “I am the way” in Jigolo Har Megiddo), they all help me process externally what I’ve gotten very used to ruminating over painfully internally. I am endlessly grateful to Ghost/TF for that.

I am ALSO endlessly grateful to the fandom on here. While I’m typically a chronic lurker I am constantly amazed by the compassion and empathy present in this community (as well as the constant high-caliber of art and fanfic here). It feels silly to say but seeing people genuinely love and celebrate these characters with traits I’m used to seeing vilified is actually really therapeutic and reassuring. You’re all wonderful and I’m so glad you’re here.

If anyone actually reads this long-ass spiel: thank you, I love you. And if anyone relates to my experience remember “you will never walk alone”, you’re doing amazing, we’ve got this 💞

I‘m tired of the negativity Ghost fandom. I think you should reblog this post and add something to the tags that you love about Ghost, about the fandom itself or about the works of the person you reblogged it from ♡

[olderthannetfic]

I'm a Chinese, nationally and racially. Racial projection seems to be a common practice in western fandom, doesn't it? I find it a bit... weird to witness the drama ignited upon shipping individuals with different races, or the tendency to separate characters into different "colors" even though the world setting doesn't divide races like that. Such practice isn't a thing here. Mind explaining a bit on this phenomenon?

--

Sure, I can try. But of course, fish aren’t very good at explaining the water they swim in.

Americans aren’t good at detecting our own Americanness, and a lot of what you’re seeing is very much culturally American rather than Western in general. (In much of Europe, “race” is a concept used by racists, or so I’m told, unlike in the US where it’s seen more neutrally.) Majority group members (i.e. me, a white girl) aren’t usually the savviest about minority issues, but I’ll give it a shot.

The big picture is that most US race stuff boils down to our attempts to justify and maintain slavery and that dynamic being applied, awkwardly, to everyone else too, even years after we abolished slavery.

There’s a concept called the “one drop rule” where a person is “black” if they have even one drop of black blood.

We used to outlaw “interracial” marriage until quite recently. (That meant marriage between black people and white people with Asians and Hispanic people and others wedged in awkwardly.) Here’s the Wikipedia article on this, which contains the following map showing when we legalized interracial marriage. The red states are 1967.

That’s within living memory for a ton of people! Yellow is 1948 to 1967. This is just not very long ago at all. (Hell, we only fully banned slavery in 1865, which is also just not that long ago when it comes to human culture.)

Why did we have this bananas-crazy set of laws and this idiotic notion that one remote ancestor defines who you are? It boils down to slavery requiring a constant reaffirming that black people are all the same (and subhuman) while white people are all this completely separate category. The minute you start intermarrying, all of that breaks down. This was particularly important in our history because our system of slavery involved the kids of slaves being slaves and nobody really buying their way out. Globally, historically, there are other systems of slavery where there was more mobility or where enslaved people were debtors with a similar background to owners, and thus the people in power were less threatened by ambiguity in identity.

Post-slavery, this shit hung around because it was in the interests of the people in power to maintain a similar status quo where black people are fundamentally Other.

A lot of our obsession with who counts as what is simply a legacy of our racist past that produced our racist present.

--

The other big factor in American concepts of identity is that we see ourselves as a nation of immigrants (ignoring our indigenous peoples, as usual). A lot of people’s families arrived here relatively recently, and we often don’t have good records of exactly where they were from, even aside from enslaved people who obviously wouldn’t have those records. Plenty of people still identify with a general nationality (”Italian-American” and such), but the nuance the family might once have had (specific region of Italy, specific hometown) is often lost. Yeah, I know every place has immigrants, and lots of people don’t have good records, but the US is one of those countries where families have on average moved around a lot more and a lot more recently than some, and it affects our concepts of identity. I think some of the willingness to buy into the idea of “races” rather than “ethnicities” has to do with this flattening of identity.

New immigrant groups were often seen as Other and lesser, but over time, the ones who could manage it got added to our concept of “whiteness”, which gave them access to those same social and economic privileges.

Skin color is a big part of this. In a system that is founded on there being two categories, white owners and black slaves, skin color is obviously going to be about that rather than being more of a class marker like it is in a lot of the world.

But it’s not all about skin color since we have plenty of Europeans with somewhat darker skin who are seen as generically white here, while very pale Asians are not. I’m not super familiar with all of the history of anti-Asian racism in the US, but I think this persistent Otherness probably boils down to Western powers trying to justify colonial activities in Asia plus a bunch of religious bullshit about predominantly Christian nations vs. ones that are predominantly Buddhist or some other religion.

In fact, a lot of racist archetypes in English can be traced back to England’s earliest colonial efforts in Ireland. Justifying colonizing Those People because they’re subhuman and/or ignorant and in need of paternalistic rulers or religious conversion is at the bottom of a lot of racist notions. Ironic that we now see Irish people as clearly “white”.

--

There are a lot of racist porn tropes and racist cultural baggage here around the idea of black people being animalistic. Racist white people think black men want to rape/steal white women from white men. Black women get seen as hypersexual and aggressive. If this sounds like white people projecting in order to justify murder and rape... well, it is.

Similar tropes get applied to a lot of groups, often including Hispanic and Middle Eastern people, though East Asians come in more for creepy fantasies about endlessly submissive and promiscuous women. This nonsense already existed, but it was certainly not helped by WWII servicemen from here and their experiences in Asia. Again, it’s a projection to justify shitty behavior as what the party with less power was “asking for”.

In porn and even romance novels, this tends to turn up as a white character the audience is supposed to identify with paired with an exotic, mysterious Other or an animalistic sexy rapist Other.

A lot of fandoms are based on US media, so all of our racist bullshit does apply to the casting and writing of those, whether or not the fic is by Americans or replicating our racist porn tropes.

(Obviously, things get pretty hilarious and infuriating once Americans get into c-dramas and try to apply the exact same ideas unchanged to mainstream media about the majority group made by a huge and powerful country.)

--

Politically, within the US, white people have had most of the power most of the time. We also make up a big chunk of the population. (This is starting to change in some areas, which has assholes scared shitless.) This means that other groups tend to band together to accomplish shared political goals. They’re minorities here, so they get lumped together.

A lot of Americans become used to seeing the world in terms of “white people” who are powerful oppressors and “people of color” who are oppressed minorities. They’re trying to be progressive and help people with less power, and that’s good, but it obviously becomes awkward when it’s over-applied to looking at, say, China.

--

Now... fandom...

I find that fandom, in general, has a bad habit of holding things to double standards: queer things must be Good Representation™ even when they’re not being produced for that purpose. Same for ethnic minorities or any other minority. US-influenced parts of fandom (which includes a lot of English-speaking fandom) tend to not be very good at accepting that things are just fantasy. This has gotten worse in recent years.

As fandom has gotten more mainstream here, general media criticism about better representation (both in terms of number of characters and in terms of how they’re portrayed) has turned into fanfic criticism (not enough fics about ship X, too many about ship Y, problematic tropes that should not be applied to ship X, etc.). I find this extremely misguided considering the smaller reach of fandom but, more importantly, the lack of barriers to entry. If you think my AO3 fic sucks, you can make an account and post other fic that will be just as findable. You don’t need money or industry connections or to pass any particular hurdle to get your work out there too.

People also (understandably) tend to be hypersensitive to anything that looks like a racist porn trope. My feeling is that many of these are general porn tropes and people are reaching. There are specific tropes where black guys are given a huge dick as part of showing that they’re animalistic and hypersexual, but big dicks are really common in porn in general. The latter doesn’t automatically mean you’re doing the former unless there are other elements present. A/B/O or dubcon doesn’t mean it’s this racist trope either, not unless certain cliched elements are present. OTOH, it’s not hard for a/b/o tropes to feel close to “animalistic guy is rapey”, so I can see why it often bothers people.

A huge, huge, huge proportion of wank is “all rape fantasies are bad” crap too, which muddies the waters. I think a lot of people use “it’s racist” as an easy way to force others to agree with their incorrect claims that dubcon, noncon, a/b/o, etc. are fundamentally bad. Many fans, especially white fans, feel like they don’t know enough to refute claims of racism, so they cave to such arguments even when they’re transparently disingenuous.

--

Not everyone here thinks this way. I know plenty of people offline, particularly a lot of nonwhite people, who think fandom discourse is idiotic and that the people “protecting” people or characters of color are far more racist than the people writing “bad” fic or shipping the wrong thing.

But in general, I’d say that the stuff above is why a lot of us see the world as white people in power vs. everyone else as oppressed victims, interracial relationships as fraught, and porn about them as suspect. Basically, it’s people trying to be more progressive and aware but sometimes causing more harm than good when those attempts go awry.

[my-twisted-head-space]

I fall in love again

hey readers,

haha, i know probably no one will ever make it to this mini tumblr of mine, but if you do, congratulations! you must be one of the few friends that I have really trust - to a point that I share bout my wild fantasy and sexuality secret to you.

Alright, so - bottom line is I fell in love again. And guess what? it is again a ship that will not sail, a battle that cannot be won, i.e. a love that will never happen. The lucky dude ( or unlucky LOL) that will be receiving showers of love and care from me would be David!

David is truly a really nice good christian boy. He takes care of me (at least I view it this way) despite him being a pragmatic introvert who wants nothing but peace for he and himself. He even went all the way to ask if I wanted to get help from him to clarify stuff that I wanted to, despite him saying in a very bad way I guess. Perhaps, it is just his way to tell me that he had enough of me and he would never want to get in between of my dramatic unnecessary conflict.

I am sad that throughout this process, I hurt him. I chat him, I wanted to seek comfort from him, but I really need to understand that not all people gives the comfort you need, so I really should consider who to confide with. Some people are just gonna smash the bitter reality to you, and that might not be ideal for you. Throughout, I did not get the comfort that I had expected to receive from him. Again, it is a problem between me and my own expectations, and I have failed again. I am truly sorry, David. I really wish you to know that I truly am... :") I really hope we can be as close as we have been last semester, next semester, though :-).

Anyway, he is a very cute boy, kind, and spiritually filled. He is what you would call a boy that grows in the right way, as the Christians would want to. He is slightly childish too, which makes him even cuter :-). He plays with plushies, he 'talks' to them, and can be a tad sluggish HAHA, but it's just David being David, I would say. He smells very nice, because of his deodorant that he is very proud of apparently... HAHA (which also makes everything about him smells like that). Well, it smells good so, no issues here. Also, from the previous quarantine, I can't help but smell his true him without Deo HAHA ok sorry if this sounds creepy to you but I am just a man of smell, and I am extremely sensitive to it. I couldn't help but notice the distinctive smell, but yah it was not a very much pleasant smell but still reasonable. His smell was not unique as well I would say, as it belongs to one of the few classes of people's smell that I have identified previously. His smile is so bright and warm, that when you see he smiles, you would want to smile too :-). He is a picky eater, which is cute as well, and he has been trying his best to be in shape, although he is a tad plump-ish now, which makes him more cute. But when he takes off his glasses, damn, he is hot (Not in his sleep tho, LMAO). I think it is the vibes that he gives off when he is not wearing his glasses, and his glare/stare. His eyes made him much more hotter without glasses. It was a very sharp stare, and I can't help but be captivated by him. There are many other things about him that I can talk about, but let's just stop there for now HAHA.

Well, not sure whether he is exploring his sexuality, but I do have mixed signals about him. I think he might be bi or gay, but he is trying to suppress it because of his religion and the asian values that he bears, as well as the community that, I would say, are not very supportive of this. AND even if he is, I would think he would want to date his friend, let's just call him AW, HAHA instead of me... which is fair and expected I guess, as they have been friends for so long and his friend is hot and cute, not gonna lie. When I first saw him, I got the same vibes as Todoroki Shoto from BNHA LMAOOO, and would really love to get to know him, although David would not, because it is damn weird HAHA. It feels like I am invading his personal spaces..

But anyway, I am just happy that I keep finding new people that I can shower my love to, and I hope he does not mind it. I hope you are happy all the time David. I truly find happiness when you share the good things that happen to you or is about to happen to you. Take care and hope our fate intertwines for quite some time from now till the long future ahead!

[strangeandforlornbooks]

best books with morally ambiguous narrators!

all y’all’s problematic faves and villains! :) also included are third person narrators but in books with morally ambiguous leads/themes 

Sci-fi

Scythe by Neal Shusterman: in a future free from pain, disease, and war, people can live forever. ‘scythes’ are given the power to decide who lives and who dies to preserve the balance. sad and kinda gives of hunger games vibes, if you like that.

Neuromancer by William Gibson: basically invented the cyberpunk genre. strange and removed protagonists. (a team of computer hackers have to face off against an evil AI). you kind of dislike everyone and suddenly you’re crying over them. one of those trippy sci-fi classics.

The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut: very beautiful and very very sad (same author as slaughterhouse five). the richest man in america has to face a martian invasion. more about free will and bad people doing good things than a plot that makes any kind of sense.

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick: set in an alternate universe where the germans and japanese won world war two. not really like the tv show at all- it’s not an action story, and there’s not really the hope to somehow fix the world that drives a lot of dystopia stories. instead its about how people survive and connect to one another in a hopeless society.

The Scorpion Rules by Erin Bow: a supercomputer convinces the leaders of the world to keep the peace for hundreds of years by taking their children hostage and obliterating any city that disobeys. what happens to the hostage protagonists when war seems inevitable? lots of morally fraught decisions and characters slowly losing their identity. (plus a fun lesbian romance)

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson: a brilliant mathematician and a dedicated marine fight to keep the ultra secret in world war two. fifty years later,  a tech company discovers what remains of their story. one of the most memorable sequences in the book is a japanese soldier slowly becoming disillusioned with his nation and horrified by the war even as he continues to fight.

Blade Runner by Philip K. Dick: another one of those sci-fi classics that’s not at all like the movie. there is a bounty hunter for robots, though, as well as a weird religion that probably is referencing catholicism and a decaying society with a shortage of pets. kind of a trip.

Wilder Girls by Rory Power: girls trapped in a boarding school on an isolated island must face a creeping rot that affects the animals and plants on the island as well as their own bodies. the protagonists will do anything to survive and keep each other safe. very tense (and bonus lesbian romance whoo)

The Fifth Season by N K Jemisin: three women are gifted with the ability to control the earth’s energy in a world where those who can do so are forced into hiding or slavery. some veryyyy dark choices here but lots of strong female characters.

Historical Fiction

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters: two victorian lesbians fall in love as they plot to betray each other in horrific ways. lots of plot twists, plucky thieves, gothic settings, and a great romance.

Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiwicz: a powerful roman soldier in the time of Nero plots to kidnap a young woman after he falls in love with her, only to learn more about the mysterious christian religion she follows. very melodramatic but some terrific prose. 

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr: a blind girl in France and a brilliant German boy recruited by the military struggle through the chaos of the second world war. ends with a bang (iykyk.) very sad, reads like poetry.

Boxers by Gene Luen Yang: graphic novel reveals the story of a young boy fighting in the boxer rebellion in early twentieth century china. the sequel, saints, is also excellent. beautifully and sympathetically shows the protagonist’s descent into evil- the reader really understands each step along the way.

Fantasy

Three Dark Crowns by Kendare Blake: three triplets separated at birth, each with their own magical powers, have to fight to the death to gain the throne. lots of fun honestly

Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo: everyone in these books is highly problematic but you love them all anyway. a ragtag game of criminals plan a heist on a magical fortress. some terrific tragic back stories, repressed feelings, and revenge schemes.

The Dark Tower series by Stephen King: idk how to describe these frankly but if you can put up with King’s appalling writing of female characters they’re pretty interesting. fantasy epic about saving the world/universe, sort of. cowboys and prophecies and overlapping dimensions and drug addicts galore.

The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud: lots of fun! a twelve year old decides to summon a demon for his cute lil revenge scheme. sarcastic demon narrator. lighthearted until s*** gets real suddenly.

Elegy and Swansong by Vale Aida: fantasy epic with machiavellian lesbians and enemies to lovers to enemies to ??? to lovers. charming and exciting and lovely characters.

The False Prince by Jennifer Nielsen: an orphan boy must compete with a few others for the chance to impersonate a dead prince. really dark but very tense and exciting and good twists.

The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu: fantasy epic. heroes overthrow an evil empire and then struggle as the revolution dissolves into warring factions. interesting world building and three dimensional characters, even if they only have a small part.

Circe by Madeline Miller: the story behind the witch who turns men into pigs in the odyssey. madeline miller really said, i just used my classics degree to write a beautiful gay love story and now im going to write a powerful feminist retelling because i can. queen. an amazing and satisfying book that kills me a lil bit because of the two lines referencing the song of achilles.

Heartless by Marissa Meyer: the tragic backstory for the queen of hearts in alice in wonderland. a little predictable but very fun with a compelling protagonist

A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) by George RR Martin: ok I know we all hate GRRM and rightfully so but admittedly these books do have some great characters and great scenes. they deserve better than GRRM though. also he will probably never finish the books anyway....

A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket: not really fantasy but not really anything else either. plucky, intelligent, and kind children fight off evil plots for thirteen books until suddenly you realize the world is not nearly as black and white as you thought. 

Classics

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier: gothic romance!! a new wife is curious about the mysterious death of her predecessor in a creepy old house in the British countryside...good twists and lovely prose.

A Separate Peace by John Knowles: not really morally ambiguous but one awful decision suddenly has awful consequences and certain people are haunted by guilt forever.... really really really beautiful and really really really sad. boys in a boarding school grow up together under the shadow of world war two.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: while imperial russia slowly decays a beautiful young woman begins a destructive affair. a long book. very russian. the ending is incredibly tense and well written.

Lord of the Flies by William Golding: I think you know the plot to this one. the prose is better than you remember and the last scene is always exciting.

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie: one by one, the guests on an island are slowly picked off. one of Christie’s darkest mysteries- no happy ending here! very tense and great twists.

Contemporary

The Secret History by Donna Tartt: inspired the whole dark academia aesthetic. college students get a little too into ancient greece and it does not end very well. lovely prose but I found the characters unlikable.

Honorable Mentions

The Dublin Saga by Edward Rutherford: has literally a billion protagonists, but some of them are morally ambiguous ig? follows a few families stories’ from the 400s ad to irish independence in the 20s. beautifully captures the weight and movement of irish history.

Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer: how morally ambiguous can you be if you’re, like, eleven? a lot if you’re a criminal genius who wants to kidnap a fairy for your evil-ish plan apparently!

Redemption by Leon Uris: literally my favorite novel ever. the sequel to Trinity but can stand alone. various irish families struggle through the horrors of world war one. the hero isn’t really morally ambiguous, but the main theme of the novel is extremely bad people suddenly questioning their choices and eventually redeeming themselves. sweeping themes of love, screwed up families, redemption, and patriotism.

The Lymond Chronicles and House of Niccolo by Dorothy Dunnett: heroes redeem themselves/try to get rich/try to save their country in early renaissance Europe. if I actually knew what happened in these books I'm sure it would be morally ambiguous but its too confusing for me. in each book you spend at least a third convinced the protagonist is evil, though. lots of exciting sword fights, tragic romances, plot twists, and kicking english butt.

Bonus: Protagonist is less morally ambiguous and more very screwed up and sad all the time

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt: you know this one bc its quoted in all those quote compilations. basically the story of how one horrible event traumatizes a young man and how he develops a connection to a painting. really really really good.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro: hard to describe but strange... not an action novel or a dystopia really but sort of along those lines. very hopeless.

[littleapocalypsekitten]

The weird thing about this is that... wasn't Nightow Catholic? Or a partial one? I finally got caught up (episode 7). Legato is very awesome, although I am disappointed that he no longer wears a real skull. The Eye of Micheal elements from the manga are interesting and they do seem to have more of an open presence (actual radio program). In the original (anime and manga), it seemed like some form of Actual Christianity was still around, and the Eye of Michael was just a plant-cult. In the new series, I am somewhat reminded of the Children of Atom from Fallout. Lots of borrowed imagery and concept from Christianity, without entirely being the same thing - and a very believable sect in a setting that has suffered the apocalypse already (the sense of welcoming death is very creepy, and very on point, much like how the Children of Atom in Fallout have this each person "becoming billions of universes" via nuclear destruction). In other words, it all makes sense with human psychology and things we have actually seen.

That said, I wouldn't call it Christianity-proper. And this is coming from an ex-evangelical. My old church? Wasn't that bad. (You can see my other reblogs of this post, I do have a sad, creepy story, but it's more like... I pity my old pastor, he wasn't evil). There are good things at base, it's just that a lot of the followers have forgotten that base or don't bother with it. (What I mean by this is that I see the Trump-worship that seems to have sprung up as a whole-cloth new religion of people who still call themselves "Christian" and I just have all of these inner klaxons sounding off of how utterly BLASPHEMOUS that is. As in, I think that it's proposed by con-artists and followed by people who haven't actually read any of the Bible because they are anti-intellectual Americans who "trust the pastor" and think reading is for nerds). - That is, the people who've screeched at me for being "anti-Christian" for quoting Scripture (Jesus-attributed Scripture) at them. I am probably a disappointing person to talk to about both religion and Trigun, though. I left evangelicism, but I did not become an atheist like people are "supposed" to. I'm sort of a mish-mash non-churchgoing Progressive Christian (Universalist) / agnostic / slight animist. And as far as Trigun goes, Trigun Stampede is impressive with an interesting new story, slick animation and incorporation of some of the best manga-elements, but I still prefer the original Trigun anime. But, ho, damn, Legato just is awesome in all incarnations.

[bathtubjohnny]

Chapter 1: Rough draft (Edited once for spelling/grammar)

TW: Bloody noses, descriptions of a corpse, mild gore and swearing, spooky zombie lady, bad formatting, rushed writing

Note: Please give me your sweet sweet feedback. Oh how I crave honest and good-hearted criticism.

*Thanks to a handful of members from a group chat for convincing me to post this*

The forest was dense enough to blot out the sun, almost completely plunging the path in darkness. It didn’t bother Sydney though; he was too focused on the building at the end of it. It was a church, and he stood in front of it, staring up at the grey steeple protruding from what was left of the roof. It was a miracle that it was still standing. The walls had been scorched by fire, and the once-beautiful stained glass windows had melted into colourful, wax-like puddles. He could still smell smoke even though the church burned an impossibly long time ago. It never occurred to Sydney that the surrounding woods were completely untouched by the fire, as if it had never happened in the first place.

The inside was different as Sydney pushed the double doors open. He didn’t recognize the inside. It was more spacious than what he remembered, but like the forest, untouched by the blaze. Instead of red carpeting there was a wooden floor; instead of oil paintings depicting the trial of Jesus, tapestries with horrific, indescribable images decorated the walls. The interior had an ancient feel to it, making Sydney feel insignificant as he stood before the rows of pews. He could tell that it wasn’t a Catholic church anymore. It was a haven for a religion that existed long before the concept of Christianity.

Across from Sydney and past the pews was a stone table where the altar should have been. There was a white sheet covering something laying across it. As he padded down the aisle towards it, he could see symbols etched into the stone, characters he couldn’t recognize. The closer he got the louder his ears rang, his sinuses becoming so congested that soon fluid began leaking down his chin. It wasn’t until he reached the table and saw the bright red droplets fall onto the stark white sheet covering it that he realized his nose was bleeding.

Ignoring his instinct to wipe away the blood, Sydney reached for the edge of the sheet and pulled it back. Underneath was a girl, or at least the body of one. Her skin was ashen and waxy, a greenish-blue in colour. Small blisters had begun to form on her cheeks and forehead, as if she had been sunburnt recently. Even though they were closed, Sydney could tell that her eyes were sunken into her skull.

“Syd?”

Pulling the sheet down further, Sydney saw that the girl’s arms had been placed palms facing up, leaving the undersides of her forearms exposed. On both of them were deep gashes, starting from her wrists and ending in the crooks of her elbows. The rest of her had begun to decay, but her wounds appeared recent, oozing thicker, darker blood than what was dripping from Sydney’s nose.

“Syd, are you awake?”

The sound of her inhaling made Sydney’s attention turn sharply back to her face as her jaw creaked open, sucking in air. He stumbled away as her eyes, covered in a watery blue film, flew open. Her head turned towards him with a snap, sending him falling backwards in shock. He hit the floor hard as she sat up, bones creaking and popping as she threw the sheet off her bloated body-

“Mr.Patrick!”

Sydney bolted up from his desk as the shout tore through his dream, nearly sending him toppling to the floor. Mrs. Bray was sitting on her desk glaring directly at Sydney, arms folded. A snort of laughter to his left made him blush as he realized he’d dozed off...again. “Uh, sorry.” He mumbled, slowly sitting back down and trying to ignore the eyes on him. Although Mrs. Bray had a stern look in her eyes, Syd was somewhat comforted by the fact that she was obviously trying not to smile.

“I get that there’s ten minutes left, but let’s try to stay awake, alright?” She sighed. “To those of you who may have dozed off, I’m not repeating myself about the assignment. You can ask your group. Now,” She side-eyed the room. ‘Is there anyone who isn’t in a group of three yet?”

Syd sneaked a quick glance across the room over at his close friend Lizzie Abrams. She caught his eye and shrugged apologetically, motioning to two other girls sitting near her. Feeling his cheeks heat up, Syd averted his eyes, staring down at his desk in embarrassment.

“We don’t have a third person in our group.” The voice to Syd’s left spoke up, making him turn. It was a girl in a worn, blue and white baseball cap, someone who Sydney unfortunately recognized. Her name was Morette Woodward, better known as Mo, and Syd knew her as being the one who broke his nose during dodgeball back in fifth grade.

She had one elbow propped up on her desk and was leaning her head against her hand while picking at her braces with the other. When she caught Sydney’s eye, she flashed him a toothy smirk.

Mrs. Bray glanced between the two and shrugged. “Perfect, evens out the groups. Now,” she turned to address the rest of the class. “I’m giving the last couple minutes of class to organize your chapters, so use your time wisely. Remember your book and your portfolio should be in at least six sections!”

Portfolio? Sydney rubbed his eyes and groaned, wondering what else he’d missed. Falling asleep at random times wasn’t a problem before, but lately he'd been feeling lethargic and finding himself unable to keep his eyes open for long periods of time.

“Hey, scooch your butt over next to us so we can talk better.” Mo nodded at a tall boy sitting beside her. Sydney didn’t know who it was, but thought he looked familiar. “Yeah hold on,” he turned his chair to face them before leaning forward. “So… what’re we doing exactly?”

“Man, you were really out, huh?” The tall boy said, giving Sydney a sympathetic grin. “You were pretty twitchy too. Were you dreaming or something?”

Syd blinked. “‘Twitchy’? What do you mean?”

“Like...mumbling and tensing up a lot,” He clenched his fists in emphasis. “It was kinda creepy. What were you dreaming about?” He was already talking again before Syd could reply. “Oh shit, you don’t know me. Sorry, I’m Henry Kaminer.”

Kaminer. Sydney didn’t know Henry, but definitely recognized the last name. He remembered reading about the Kaminers in the newspaper, and made a mental note not to bring it up.

“Oh. I’m Sydney. I don’t really remember what I dreamed of.” Sydney lied. Henry laughed. “Yeah, I heard. Isn't Sydney a girl's...? Whatever, nice to meet you Sydney."

Morette handed Sydney a sheet of paper. “I had an uncle Sid so no, it's not 'a girl's name'. Anyway, literally all we have to do is split the book up to read for a week, then do some fun little questions and activities at the end of each week." She flipped through her copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. "It's like the same stuff we did in grade 5, but with racism."

So she does remember. Sydney looked over his sheet of paper. "Oh."

"Yeah, it'll be easy." Morette leaned back in her chair and scrunched her nose up. "There's 31 chapters, but they're not too long. Let's just do five chapters each week and read whatever's left when we get to the last week." She tossed a stack of pink sticky notes at Sydney. "Use those as a bookmark."

Sydney looked down at the sticky notes. “...Thanks.”

___

“Hey Syd!”

Sydney paused at the front doors of the school just as he was about to walk through them. Henry hurried over to him, lime green beanie clutched in one hand, messenger bag in the other. The tall boy stopped beside him, huffing. “Man, I jumped down the stairs to catch up to you. Sorry, anyway. Walking home?”

Sydney pushed open the doors, nodding. “Yep. What about you?”

“Same here, but uh...which way are you going?”

“To the left.”

“Sweet! Mind if I tag along?”

“Sure,” As they made their way past groups of students waiting for their buses, they started walking down the sidewalk towards the nearby neighbourhoods. Syd, who barely made it to Henry’s elbows, couldn’t help but feel self-conscious with the giant beside him. “Do you live close to the school?” He asked. Henry shrugged. “Well, not really. To be honest I’m just tagging along to avoid my older brother, Marvin.” He chuckled a bit, but it sounded forced. “He’s got his driver’s licence and all, but…”

“But what?” Syd asked. Henry sighed. “He’s an asshole. I don’t feel like dealing with his anger issues today. So I’m here with you instead, little man. If that’s cool with you,”

“I’m not that little! But yeah, it’s cool.”

“Yeah you are, shortstack!!” Henry guffawed and rubbed the top of Sydney’s head with one hand. Syd swatted at his arm, but joined in the laughter. The two boys continued talking and joking around as they continued trekking down the street towards a crosswalk. The weather was warm for being early September, the sun beaming down on them helping to keep Sydney in high spirits.

The first week of school had been rough for him; being as timid as he was, making friends was hard enough in elementary school, never mind being in a new environment. For the longest time he’d considered Lizzie to be his closest friend, but they’d drifted apart over the summer, making him feel even more isolated than ever. As he listened to Henry telling him about his pet cat, Bowie, he felt a ray of hope that maybe he wouldn’t have to be so lonely after all.

“...he’s a really sweet boy, but he’s pretty ugly,” Henry was telling Syd. “He’s got this weird skin condition though so there’s like almost no hair on his body. I think it’s kinda hilarious, but every time he sits down his butthole sticks to our table.”

Syd snorted. “Gross.” He stopped at the edge of the crosswalk as the traffic light turned red, Henry following suit. “I don’t have any pets. My mom’s allergic to animal hair. It makes her sneeze.”

“Damn. No siblings either? Sounds quiet.” Henry leaned against a pole covered in colourful flyers and shielded his eyes from the sun with his hand. Sydney took a couple steps back so he was standing in Henry’s shadow and decided that tall people weren’t that bad. “Hey,” he said. “My house is just up ahead, what about you?”

Henry shrugged and shoved his hands in his hoodie pockets. “Not me little man, I’m heading to the right but maybe I can come over and wreak havoc at your place sometime.” He flashed Sydney a grin and straightened up, a couple flyers sticking to him before fluttering to the ground. “Whoops, those seemed important.”

Syd rolled his eyes and laughed as Henry stooped down to scoop them off the sidewalk. “Nice going there, big guy.” He joked. “Careful you don’t bring the pole down too.” Henry didn’t respond; instead he slowly stood up, clutching a white flyer and staring down at it. Sydney felt his smile fade when he saw the dismayed expression on Henry’s face.

“...What is it?”

Henry swallowed hard before handing Sydney the poster. The white paper was crumpled and soft from being left outside, showing signs that it had been there a while. A photo of a man with a goofy grin and a buzzcut holding a balding cat was in the center. The words were in bright red at the top of the page as he read them.

MISSING PERSON

Jeremiah Lee Kaminer

Also goes by ‘Jerry’

19 years old, blue eyes, blonde, slim build, 6’0”

Last seen November 27th wearing a leather jacket, blue jeans, and brown hiking boots. If you have seen him or have any information of his whereabouts, please contact the Denville City Police.

“Henry,” Sydney glanced up from the page. Henry was fidgeting in place, avoiding making eye contact. “Is he...?”

“Yeah,” he mumbled, staring at the ground. “It’s our oldest brother. He’s been missing for over a year. Went into a bar one night for a drink, and just…. Never came out.” A cold gust of wind sent the remaining flyers drifting down the sidewalk as they caught the breeze. Henry’s hands tightened around the poster, creasing the paper before he folded it into a square. “Whatever. I gotta go.” He turned and started heading down the street, leaving Sydney alone.

Syd watched him walk away, wondering whether he should call out or not. Deciding not to, Sydney went home, ignoring the icy loneliness that had begun to creep back.

[john-dumbear]

The Cult Self-Titled Album Review.

In this tumblog I will be sharing my thoughts on the album The Cult by the band The Cult. It was released in 1994. I heard about one of the songs off this album and decided to listen to it. I loved the song and actually felt like listening to songs I’ve never heard before (which doesn’t happen often) so I decided to listen to the whole album. Each song review will be my first thoughts. This is my first time listening to the album, and the first time really diving into The Cults music. I know nothing about this band except for the fact that they did “She Sells Sanctuary” and that Xana and Andrew were friends with them. Some of this is written as I’m listening to the song for the very first time, and some of them is later when I came back to the song (so it would be my second or third time hearing the song).

Track listing (12 tracks in total):

Gone

Coming Down (Drug Tongue)

Real Grrrl

Black Sun

Naturally High

Joy

Star

Sacred Life

Be Free

Universal You

Emperors New Horse

Saints Are Down

Here’s my thoughts on each song:

As Gone began to play the instrumentation immediately made me think of music that would play in the scene of a movie where they’re either showing a creepy trance, or a sleazy man walking into a sleazy bar. Once the instrumentation really kicked in I wasn’t thinking of that anymore. I love Ian’s vocals on the song. Really pleasant to my ears. I love the way he sings the word “say”. I don’t know why, but something about it is extra cool.  The lyrics talk about someone who gets high all the time and the main character of the song (maybe Ian himself, I don’t know) saying that it’s better to get clean and not do drugs. As a straight edge person, I really do like songs that warn against drugs. This song is really cool. I like it a lot.

Coming Down (Drug Tongue) has some weird sounding lyrics that make me laugh. Like, what the hell does a random fear of horses have to do with drugs and kissing/having sex with a girl? I quite like the instrumentation and the  vocals, the lyrics just gross me out a bit. As a sex repulsed asexual, I’ve never really liked songs with lyrics about sex that much. This song feels very 90s to me (obviously). If I heard this song and didn’t know when it was released I’d say “1990s”. The other songs not so much.

I love the drums in Real Grrrl and the instrumentals in general. I love the “NA NA” part of the song as well. The lyrics seem to be about sex, so of course I don’t like the lyrics. If the song had different lyrics it would probably be one of my favorites off the album.

Black Sun is a song that actually kinda creeps me out when it comes to the instrumentation. I don’t know why, but it reminds me of certain people that creep me out. Definitely a turn off. I like the vocals of the song. The lyrics seem to be talking about a kid being abused and the abusers feeling guilty for what they’ve done. I feel like this topic needs to be talked about more. It’s a serious issue. Overall I do like the song, but it’s probably my least favorite off the album.

Naturally High came on and I instantly fell in love with the instrumentation. I love hand drums and immediately thought of the jungle, tropical rainforests, African safaris, and Tahitian drumming. I love the smooth, easy to dance to, mellow but not mellow vibes from the instrumentation. It makes me want to find a friend who likes this song and dance with them. The lyrics seem to be deep and personal and I always love that in a song. I love the way Ian’s vocals flow with the instruments. It feels like a good “driving alone in your car on a trip” song to me. Once I finally have my license and a job and go on a solo road trip, I’ll definitely be playing this song a lot.

With Joy, the instrumentation gives me a certain vibe that I just can’t describe. I have always been one to see an object or hear a sound and immediately go “this makes me think of the word ___!” That word is my personal name of the item and fits perfectly with the item in my mind. That word may be an actual word, or it may be gibberish. The reason I’m mentioning this is because the instrumentation makes me think of the word “funk”. I’m not sure why, but it does. To me, Funk seems like it would be the perfect title for the song if there were no vocals. The organ part obviously makes me thing of Halloween and goth vibes (like stereotypical goth vibes). I heard the castanets in one little part. I love the castanets. That was fun to hear. Another song that gives me driving/road trip vibes because of the lyric “I rode in that car as far as it would take me, take me.” Some of the lyrics are also in Come Down (Drug Tongue), which leaves me confused. Why would they put some lyrics in both songs off of one album? It kinda reminds me of the song Shotgun Wedding by Malfunkshun. Andrew uses lyrics in that song that he later uses in his song Man Of Golden Words by his other band Mother Love Bone.

The instrumentation to Star is also great. Man this band is really good. I need to listen to their other work. For some reason this instrumentation reminds me of nu metal. I don’t know why it would. This is not a nu metal song, it’s actually kinda close to grunge. I also think of the word “funk” for some reason.

Sacred Life. Oh man this song is sad. This song talks about the early and tragic deaths of young people. He sings about Kurt Cobain, who was the singer of Nirvana, and Andrew Wood, who was the singer for Malfunkshun and Mother Love Bone. These two people are some of my favorite singers at the moment, so that’s how I heard about this song. I’ve always liked songs that talk about death. I don’t know why. I even have a playlist full of them. The instrumentation and vocal melodies/tune has this mellow and relaxing yet somber and melancholic vibes to it. The song feels very “autumn” to me. Especially the instrumental part that comes before Ian mentions Kurt. It feels “Halloween-y” to me. The song also gives me summer vibes. I can picture it being late summer and some one is being sad about a loved one’s death and about the fact the summer is ending. I love the lyrics and how it feels so relatable to many people and still be very personal to Ian.

Be Free is a very bouncy song that is hard not to dance to. This song is playing as I’m typing. I am having a hard time actually typing instead of dancing. The lyrics don’t really seem all that interesting. Over all it seems like Ian is saying “go and have sex if you want to! Do whatever you want.” As a sex repulsed asexual, these lyrics just don’t attract me. Not a bad song. It’s fun, just not my favorite.

Universal You sounds vaguely grungy and like KoЯn. I think there’s a  KoЯn song with a vocal part that sounds similar to a vocal part in this song. I can’t think of that song it is, though. I love everything but the lyrics. I’m not sure what the lyrics are talking about whatsoever. I am a Christian and every time I hear a song mention god or religion, I immediately look up the lyrics. I personally refuse to listen to any song that is anti-Christian. The lyrics don’t seem to be anti-Christian which is good, but I still don’t know what they’re about. The lyrics are just okay, and everything else about the song is awesome.

Emperor's New Horse comes on and Ian randomly shouts at the beginning. That sounds weird and hilarious. I can definitely headbang to the chorus. The lyrics seem to be similar to Sacred Life, however this song doesn't directly mention anyone’s names. The song talks about how people need to get clean and sober. People need to change their life around.

The drums in Saints Are Down sound familiar, but I can’t think of what song sounds similar. Overall the song seem pretty mellow at first, but then it really kicks in and gets less mellow. I like that a lot. The lyrics confuse me. At first I thought he might be talking about drugs, but now I’m thinking he’s talking about a relationship. Not a bad song, but I’m not as into this one.

Overall thoughts on the album and personal rating:

This album is really good. I’d give it a 7 out of 10. Overall I like son songs and can dance to them. I’m sure I’ll eventually be singing along to some of them. Not my favorite album, but I like it enough to put on my front to back albums list. My F2B albums list is any album I like where I won’t be constantly skipping songs. More on this list in another tumblog.

[darklingichor]

Odd Thomas, Forever Odd & Brother Odd by Dean Koontz *MAJOR SPOILERS* Long post

I've written a little bit about these before. My goal was to listen to all seven of the Odd books plus the two short stories... I couldn't make myself do that.

I use to really love those books. I use to really love Dean Koontz, just recently, the writing has started to annoy me. Since I haven't read any of his new stuff since Saint Odd came out, I can't say it's because the writing has changed. I think I have changed, I'm just not sure in what way. So, I'm going to look at the first three books in the series because 1. I like them the most (sort of). 2. Because I honestly feel like the series should have either ended there or jumped to Saint Odd. 3. Because I'm going to see if by writing about them, I can figure out why reading Koontz in my 20's was like a breath of fresh air, but in my 30's it feels like when the air conditioner is some how making everything too cold, yet not cooling things down at all: uncomfortable and bafflingly frustrating.

Odd Thomas is a 20 year old fry cook in the small california desert town of Pico Mundo. He's seen as sweet but strange to all but a few people in town. He grew up with a mostly absent father, a crazy mother and a loving but wild grandmother, the last has already gone to the great beyond, so what family he has, he has found.

He has a girlfriend named Stormy, they've been together since they were sixteen, his boss at the Grill where he works, Terry, who has an encyclopedic knowledge of Elvis Presley, a 300 lb mystery writer named P. Oswald Boone (Little Ozzie), his landlady who is afraid she'll turn invisible, and the cheif of police.

Odd also sees ghosts, or The Lingering Dead as he calls them. He trys to help them crossover. Sometimes it's as simple as talking to them (though they don't speak back, "the dead don't talk")  oftentimes is complicated and dangerous. Hence why his close relationship with the cheif comes in handy and also why it formed. He has other gifts. The occasional prophetic dream that usually only gives him bits and pieces to work off of, he sees these spectors of calamity that tend to show up right before something bad happens (like an earthquake or a shooting) they are black shadow things that Odd calls Bodochs, and psychic magmatism, where  he can find anyone he's looking for by wondering around with a clear picture in mind.

Everyone in his circle knows about his gift other than his landlady who is slightly and gently insane.

There is one other person in his circle, the ghost of Elvis who Odd had been trying to help crossover since he was in highschool.

The first book takes place over the course of three days.

To avoid a blow by blow, I'll summarize. After an eventful morning during which he helped a murdered twelve year old cross over by catching her killer, Odd goes to his shift a the Grill. There, he sees a creepy little man that reminds him if a mold and fungus, followed by a group of Bodochs. He finishes his shift, goes looking for the guy he's dubed Fungus Man.

He eventually finds his way to Fungus Man's house, breaks in and finds it unnaturally cold and silent. He discovers a room that is pitch black except for a small red light. He soon finds that what has made this room so black and the house so cold and quiet is the mob of Bodochs occupying it. After the Bodochs stream out, Odd is able to see that the room is an office and Fungus Man (aka Bob Roberts) is obsessed with serial and mass murderers, he has a file cabinet full of folders on them and posters of famous murders on his wall. Bob seems to be planning something, but Odd doesn't know what, as his only clue is a planner page in a folder from the killer cabinet. The folder is labeled with Bob's name and the date is two days away.

A series of happenings eventually leads to odd trying to stop a horrifying plan

*SPOILERS STOP READING RIGHT HERE IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW THE END*

So, Bob is a satanist in cahoots with a couple of other satanists to shoot up and blow up the Pico Mundo mall, among other places. He is able to stop them from completing their goal, but some people do die, including Stormy who was working at an ice cream shop at the mall.

Forever Odd

It's months later and Odd has moved into Stormy's apartment. He wakes up to find the ghost of one of his best friends's stepdad at his bedside. Strangely, Danny, a guy with brittle bone disease, with whom Odd grew up, was not mentioned in the last book.

So, the ghost of Danny's stepdad convinces Odd to go to his and Danny's house. Once there, Odd finds stepdad's body and discovers that Danny has been kidnapped.

What follows is a slightly weird story.

Odd eventually finds Danny and his kidnappers. One is a bug-shit woman Danny was talking with on a phone sex line. To impress her he told her about Odd. She's into her own twisted form of the Vudun religion and decides that Odd can show her the lingering dead and wants him become one of her crew. She kidnapped Danny to lure him out.

Danny is rescued, bad guys defeated, and Odd decides he needs to get out of Pico Mundo for a while.

Brother Odd

Odd has spent the last several months at the St. Bartholomew's Abbey, in the California Mountains, as a lay visitor among the monks and nuns. The Abbey is also home to a a community of disabled children. Odd becomes  close with four people in particular The Mother superior, The Priest at the head of the monks, Brother Knuckles, an ex mob guy turned monk, and Brother John, a wealthy guy turned monk. Only the first three know of his gift.

Waiting up to see a snow storm break, Odd finds Brother Timothy unconscious or dead on the grounds. He is then clubbed on the back of the head and knocked out. A search for Brother Tim leads to a strange mix of science and the spiritual that I for one found really cool.

** SECOND SPOILER**

Elvis crosses over in this one and Odd contemplates becoming a monk. Two reasons I think that this should have been the last one. Another reason is that he comes very very close to connecting with Stormy though a conduit to the otherside. Third, this is the last book where Odd is truly Odd.

See, Odd hates guns and will only use one as a last resort. In the first, Odd takes out most of the bad guys with a baseball bat, in the second, bug-shit lady was killed by a cougar, the bad guy in this one was killed by someone else.

Although his ability to see and help the lingering dead is not the main focus of the second or the third, it's still something he does. There is character progression from the first to the third. When we meet Odd he is trying to carve out a life dispite his traumatic childhood and while trying to do right with the gifts he has. After he loses Stormy, the second commitment becomes more intense, because of his conviction that the only way he will meet Stormy on the other side is to live his life in the best way he can, and that means using his gifts to help people. He's sadder, slightly less heedful of danger, but still fully committed to flighting the good flight, in his unconventional way.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, in the fourth through the seventh, the train is derailed, possessed, and also on fire.

Not only does his primary gift take a back seat, but the fight he is flighting isn't between the forces of good and evil, or even between justice and injustice, it's a culture war.

And the side of the war that Odd is on is peopled with climate change deniers, dooms day prepers, anti-government people who supply other "good guys" with guns,  other anti-personnal gear, tech that circumvents federal guidelines. All the "bad guys" are anyone with any sort of power judges, lawyers, cops, corporations, politicians. Their victims are the hard working Americans, the waitresses, the truck drivers... Strike that. The victims are the Christian hardworking Americans who evedently are being "persecuted in their own country" (this might be a different rant for a different blog but I maintain that there is a big difference between Persecution and Denial of Entitlement. Persecution is being in danger of being harassed, hurt, killed or imprisoned for your beliefs, ethnicity or culture. And when that happens justice is less likely to happen for the person or people targeted. Denial of Entitlement is when a person, or people, cry injustice because they either can't dress up their persecution of others in their beliefs, or can't force those beliefs on others, through law, or through being amazingly obnoxious).

Not only are anyone in power corupt, they are satanists, not are they satanists, they are the same sect of satanists who attacked Pico Mundo, not only are they the same satanists that attacked Pico Mundo, they have an actual connection to Satan. Like they can call up demons and monsters.... Yet for some reason they still use bombs, guns and weponized diseases to wreak havoc.

Now, if Koontz wanted to showcase some characterization of how to fight against a corupt system, that's cool, I mean I'm all for calling out people in power. But this vears into government lizard people territory, and if that was the type of book he wanted to write then that's cool too,but he essentially highjacked Odd's story to do it.

I have a hard time believing that when Odd picked up the ghost of Frank Sinatra at the end of Brother, and walked off into the sunset, that the original intent was to end up in the middle of a plot to plant nukes around the country and then, accompanied by pregnant girl who is some how The Virgin Mary's mother, to a house where time travel is possible and mutant pigs fade in from a post apocalyptic future and want to eat people, where they pick up a sort of dead, sort of immortal child, who is neither of those any more. Only to then to leave them to go on a road trip with an old lady, who some how has connections to the metaphysical, and a microchip planted in her ass that makes it to where she doesn't have to sleep, to rescue kids kidnapped by the powerful satanists to be used as human sacrifice. Along the way, they meet up with some fighters in this coming war, who while they do not wear tin foil hats, they have the cheerfully bloodthirsty air of cult members waiting for the end times. (Side note about the roadtrip book: Deeply Odd is the most boring, yet weird book I have read since Breaking Dawn. Say what you will about the crazy pigs and time travel in Odd Apocalypse, it's at least interesting).

And then to end up back in Pico Mundo to fight said satanists. The in increasingly nonsensical plots really just there to deliver commentary on how the world has gone to shit and everyone is to focused on the material.

Again, remember that Odd is pretty apolitical. He's never voted, owns only the clothes on his back, prefers Shakespeare and old movies to tv, which I figure also includes the news. How does this not equal out to a kid being a patsy for this group, which essentially takes over the narritive. I mean, yeah, he's still doing his thing, but he has many of his moves ditcatated by this group. This includes carrying a gun, all the time.

Again, Odd hates guns. Granted, by the last book, he has spent three books killing people with guns while talking about how much he hates killing people with guns, but up till the last two books, his hatered of guns is seen as a virtue, and then suddenly, he's an idiot if he doesn't arm himself to take a piss.

This makes very little sense to me. Odd is a simple guy, he wants to live his life as long as he has to, do right by the dead and make his way back to Stormy, all the while perfecting his pancake recipe. How the fuck did we get from this to "Everything is shit, there are three type of people, those in power who are working for the devil, those on the side of the angels and the idiots who don't see what's going on. And dispite all the supernatural stuff, we still need to busta cap in someone's ass.

I know that Koontz is Catholic, and I speculate that he had a renewal of his faith somewhere, but also somewhere along the line he took a turn into conservative libertarian territory if that is a thing that can exsist.

I feel like originally, the idea was to have Saint Odd follow Brother Odd, at least in some incarnation. It makes sense, the satanist sect want to come back and finish what was started, and take out the town and Odd, who cocked it up to begin with. In the first book Odd describes Roberts and his cohorts as playing satanists but just using it as a delivery system for their sick want to kill people and be famous for it. It follows that others who are also playing at being satanists would come back to town to get revenge for their fallen brethren. This also trucks with Forever Odd where the bug-shit lady was playing at being a Vudun, and with Brother Odd where people played at being faithful.

This is how ai think it should have gone:

Odd goes from the Abbey, where he is shown, yet again, that evil is a human driven force, that those who wallow in pride, in want of adoration and perfection can be the down fall of themselves and others, back to his home town to defeate these sad delusional people once and for all.

Or

Odd goes home for Christmas at the end of Brother, decides he wants to take vows, and goes about the process of becoming a man of the cloth. Maybe he goes back to St. Bart's, and he figures out a way to help the lingering dead from there, or, after he is confirmed in whatever capacity, he goes back to Pico Mundo and works along side Stormy's priest uncle. He sort of Father Dowlings it until he passes.

Instead, suddenly the structured feel of all of the supernatural things, which (implied by the third book) are based in science and the laws and rules of the universe that God laid down, turns into... Magic?

Doesn't matter how or why, what matters is there is a war! And the little fry cook shall lead them!

Seriously. Five years of Christian School has me seeing the turn that Odd's story takes, a couple of ways.

First it is either an overworked Christ story, where Odd is swept up in a war between the oppressed and the opressers, even though his life and mission is mostly one of mercy. In the end being a sacrifice that saves millions (by preventing the spread out f a weponized strain of rabies) but his sacrifice will only be remembered by a handful of people at first. The difference is of course that Odd buys into the culture war even though it make no sense.

Or, it's a Saint's story. Struggle, strife and miracles. See, it use to be that to be canonized, you had to have three miracles. His miracles? Well, first, his helping of the dead to cross over could be one, the preventing of whatever demon the satanists summoned in Deeply Odd, could be another, and finally, somehow managing to send Little Ozzie the manuscript for Saint Odd after Odd himself had already died, could be the last.

Either way, books four, five, and six are completely unnecessary.

So why does knootz's writing annoy me? It's self righteous and condicending. Poking fun a people who watch tv, enjoy unsophisticated things, bemoaning those who don't see just how stupid it is to buy into media, and how people are just marching their own way to misery because they just don't Get It.

It's the same time of people who look down on adults who do kid stuff sometimes "Why would you read John Green when you can read Dickens? Why would you watch Inside Out when you can watch Citizen Cane?"

Why would you eat coco puffs? Adults don't do that!"

I'm sorry, have I outgrown fun? A book is a book, a movie is a movie, breakfast cereal is breakfast cereal and you should be able to watch anything you want on tv without being shamed by a book that has an exploding cow in it.

[lovemesomesurveys]

survey by skiesofsunshine

What would you honestly do if you had a million dollars? I’d have to pay off my debt of course. I’d also pay off my parents’ and brother’s debts. Then I’d buy us a house and furnish it and whatnot. I’d love to be able to travel and stuff, but that would obviously have to wait. There’s also some other personal stuff I’d want to take care of.

Do you pretend to be something you're not to make friends? I mean, I might try to seem like I’m not a complete mess at first but it’ll come out sooner or later (sooner). I’m also not as good at hiding it anymore.

When was the last time someone disappointed you? I’m a constant disappointment to myself.

Are you still in school? No, I graduated university back in 2015.

Where do you see yourself 10 years from now? I gotta take it day by day, man. It terrifies me to think what things might be like in 10 years and I don’t wanna think about it.

Are you more of a shy or outgoing person? I’m a very shy person.

How many hours of sleep per night do you usually get? Maybe like 4-5. 

Would you rather listen to new music or the classics? There’s no reason for me to have a preference as I enjoy a good selection from both. <<< Yeah, my Spotify has a lot of both.

Can you do a cartwheel? Nope.

What does friendship mean to you in your life? Well, currently I don’t have any friends.

What is the closest yellow thing next to you? There’s yellow bulbs on the multicolor string of lights I have strung around my dresser. 

Do you currently feel any sadness? Yes. I’m a sad, sensitive, sleepy gal. That’s who I am.

Are you more of an athlete or artist? I am most definitely neither one. I do like to color, though, so can that put me on the artist side? ha.

Is it hard for you to break the ice with new people? Yes.

What do you think was the stupidest movie ever created? Oh boy. That’s hard to choose.

Who is your hero and why? My mom.

If you could be someone else for a week, who would it be? Perhaps a functioning and responsible adult who’s doing a job they love, they’re happy, in a healthy, loving relationship, and have a social life just to see what it feels like.

What do you want people to remember you for when you die? I don’t want to think about that.

Do you always respond to chain letters? I never responded to chain letters. 

Would you rather text someone or call them? If I need to contact someone I would rather text them, most definitely.

What are you afraid of most? Losing my loved ones, death, getting worse/never getting better, never doing anything with my life...

Do you spend too much time online? What’s too much? I don’t feel like I spend as much time as I used to.

Are you the type to procrastinate? I’m a PROcrastinator. 

What is your biggest annoyance? Where to begin....

Do you use any drugs? I take prescription medication, but that’s it.

Do you believe that you'll always be a kid at heart? Yeah.

Are you currently in a relationship? No.

What do you like to do for fun? I wouldn’t say it’s fun, per se, but my days consist of checking my social medias, watching TikToks and YouTube videos, reading, watching TV, doing surveys, and playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons. I like doing those things; they give me something to do and can serve as a distraction. 

Do you have a job? No.

Can you type without looking at the keyboard? Yeah. I’ve been able to do that for a very long time now. I’ve been using the computer since I was a kid and I’m 31 now, sooo.

What is something you want to improve on this year? Not sure what I could really do with the little time left. Another wasted year for me. I can’t even blame COVID because the past few years have come and gone and I don’t do anything.

Do you have any pets? I have a doggo. She’s a 3 year old German Shepherd/Lab mix named Princess Leia. 

What is your dream car? I don’t have one.

How many times a day do you get angry? I don’t get angry easily, but I do get moody, irritable, and frustrated all the time. :/

If you could, would you want to stay young forever? If I could just stay this age even that would be fine.

Are the books better or worse than the movies? The books are always better, c’mon. But the movie adaptions aren’t always bad. I’ve enjoyed several, even when certain changes are made (depending on what they are of course). Sometimes it really adds to it and it’s cool. It’s fun seeing the characters and story come alive on screen. Of course, there are many that just really miss the mark and are a complete mess as well. 

Are you afraid of the dark? I loved that show as a kid, ha. Anyway, I mean... I sleep with the TV on for sound AND light cause I don’t like it completely quiet or dark. I could sit in my room with the lights off and be fine, but it’d be weird and I’d want to do something haha so I wouldn’t do it for long, but not because I’d be scared. I wouldn’t want to be home alone and have a power outage, though. I most certainly wouldn’t walk around anywhere alone at night. I wouldn’t want to even with someone. Sooo, to answer the question...kind of? *shrug*

If you could eat any food you want right now, what would it be? I kinda want ramen, but I don’t think I’ll make it tonight. Shocking, I know.

Are you a racist person? No.

Do you ever feel like people use you? I’m not of any use to anyone right now, but I’ve felt that way in the past.

Do you keep in contact with your friends during the summer? I don’t have any friends.

What is your favorite month of the year? October and December.

Does bad grammar get on your nerves? Depends.

If you were going to die right now, what would your last words be? Uhh, I have no idea?

Does Jeopardy make you feel dumb? Ha, yeah. But when I answer correctly you bet your ass I own the hell out of it hahah.

What is/was your worst subject in school? Math. 

Are you a sarcastic person? I have my sarcastic moments.

What role does religion play in your life? I am a Christian and have been reading and studying the Bible regularly and joining Bible study groups online and really building my faith and relationship with God for the past few years.

Can you sleep with your eyes open? No. I’ve seen someone do that and it’s quite creepy.

[vitosscaletta]

oh you know... 🤠 x 🤡🔥 for the ask 😏

(hehe... thank u 😌 also @chuckhansen and @queennymeria asked for her too so)

PRE-RELATIONSHIP

How did they first meet?

Oh you know... fun Z*** camping trip gone wrong :)

What was their first impression of each other?

jhsdjhdf NOT good! Technically not a real first impression for her since she already knew who he was pretty much all her life and what he did in the past. If anything, the things she saw (you know. heads on spikes, creepy wall art, etc.) only confirmed what she thought of him. The only thing that surprised her was the talk about religion and all that - needless to say she didn’t buy it 😌 more out of principle rather than it being based on the things she saw so far, she’s too stubborn to really change her opinion!!

I don’t think 🤡 was too impressed with her either - she’s very open about her distrust of him & he’s trying to appear like he changed or whatever (which he hasn’t but probably believes it ) so of course he resents it!!! Also isn’t really convinced that she agreed to help just for other people’s sake, she’s probably just trying to get that map... which is wrong but ya know!

Did any of their friends or family want them to get together?

NO... J***** has no friends and Audrey’s CERTAINLY wouldn’t. Her family even more so than her friends. 

Who felt romantic feelings first? 

hehehe... 🤡🔥 for sure but more in a way that was like.. looks at her being genuinely good, like doing things for other people & being concerned for them without ever asking anything in return & just seeing how she’s getting warm smiles and actual affection from them & feels kinda weird about it, it’s so different from literally almost everyone he’s ever known but in a good way.. conflicting feelings but I’ll talk about that more under the next question teehee

Did either of them try to resist their feelings?

oh god yes both of them but in a completely different way 😌

for J***** it’s conflicting like I said, she’s stupid and annoying as hell but in a weird way he’s impressed (not at first but. event chilly) by how she’s so caring & just genuinely a good person but in a sexy and badass way. But also thinks it’s dumb as hell, he’s too old for that shit so he’s just like... “ugh enough i’m gonna go back to reloading guns 😑” whenever he’s staring at her for too long

Audrey too but it’s more.. her being pissed because he’s a terrible person and even if he has changed, it doesn’t undo the things he did in the past. She’s so embarrassed about the whole thing 😔

If you had told one of them that the other would be their soulmate, what would they think?

omg.. J***** probably doesn’t believe in that kinda stuff and Audrey would be like. “LOL did you hurt your head??”

GENERAL

Who initiated the relationship, and how did it go?

Audrey.. weird ass confession thing on her last day before leaving for the m***** again so it’s mostly just letters from then on. Until she decides it’s time for shitty camping trip... 2! 

Did they have an official first date? If so, what was it like?

no dates for them :●(

What was their first kiss like?

GODDD really awkward... because he didn’t do anything back at first & she feels so embarrassed - she’s not shy when it comes to that kinda stuff, this is weird for her though and she thought she did something wrong & regrets it :/ kiss nr two was still a little weird bc he probably caught her in a bad angle but it wasn’t awkward... she still liked it 😌 freak

Were they each other’s first anything (kiss, relationship, etc.)?

first kiss <3 no im just kidding... imagine. Not really!!

What’s their height difference? Age difference?

I never make up heights for my ocs, she’s a bit smaller than him though :^) but not that much. 

Age difference is cursed.. about 20 years 🤢 She’s in her thirties though so it’s not like. really old man & super young and inexperienced little girl. She’s also definitely not someone who puts up with his bullshit so 😌

What’s their relationship with each other’s families?

ummmm I honestly do not think anyone from her family would be thrilled to see him. at all. I haven’t decided if and how they find out but it would be like.. shrek 2 dinner scene :/ 

Don’t laugh at me but in my cringe hc Josh has an older sister.. they’re not exactly on good terms but she & Audrey would be cool I guess. 😌

Who takes the lead in social situations?

AUDREY DUHHH... maxed out speech skill bitches only

Who gets jealous easier?

I think Josh a little, mostly because there’s not much for Audrey to be jealous of, meanwhile she chats with literally everyone and most people really do like her so when someone gets a little too close he’s like... :| doesn’t say anything about it though

LOVE

Who said “I love you” first?

Audrey does. she has to do all the work :(

What are their primary love languages?

I had to do a quiz for this but uuuhhhhh apparently acts of service bitches

How often do they cuddle/engage in PDA?

Not much  :●( they’re private about it except maybe hand touching or something, also there’s a lot they just can’t do bc that shit hurted 

What are their favorite things to do together?

There’s not really much to do honestly but mostly just.. chilling... late night talks. Or sometimes not talking at all while she puts on some music and hums along. It’s usually Nancy Sinatra or The Mamas & The Papas so he’s like... :////// but she’s having a good time so. Sometimes she’s nice and puts on music that he like.. some obscure shit from the 40s. 

Also I guess she also likes to hear him read weird ass bible passages out loud. She’s not really paying any attention to the content of it but it’s nice 😌

Who’s better at comforting the other?

Audrey.. she’s a bit overbearing sometimes so that’s a little frustrating but I feel like Josh would say really stupid things trying to helpful 🙄

Who’s more protective?

both 😌 Josh more in a “threatens anyone who messes with her at gunpoint or something” way (I’m exaggerating of course. but also.. am i..) while Audrey is more level-headed about it

Do they prefer verbal or physical affection?

Verbal affection, mostly because physical isn’t always possible, but also the acts of service kinda thing. protectiveness and all that shit

What are some songs that apply to their relationship, in-universe or otherwise?

MUSIC YES.... time to plug their playlist. in specifi.. NFWMB by hozier mostly... the vibes.. the lyrics.. the intensity of it all

What kind of nicknames do they call each other?

None. just their names... Audrey will call him Josh sometimes for fun... drake & josh theme playing

DOMESTIC LIFE

If they get married, who proposes?

I actually don’t know if they’d get married tbh. Realistically yes??? But I also can’t really... envision it...

What’s the wedding like? Who attends?

who knows? not me

How many kids do they have, if any? What are they like?

Two 😌 Ben & Rachel... they’re both weird as hell but also have their mother’s overpowered charisma stats which is cute when they’re small but gets a little annoying when they’re older

Do they have any pets?

technically Rex bc she forgot to return him to the king : /

Who’s the stricter parent?

J***** for sure.. he’s weird & doesn’t want to be any negative influence in any way but at the same time he’s probably the one to put up rules that no one really cares for

Who kills the bugs in the house?

Also him probably

How do they celebrate holidays?

Not much.. I feel like Christian holidays aren’t really much of a thing anymore (idk if mormons have like the same holidays.. I don’t wanna google either ❤) but Audrey tries to do something on islamic holidays, she doesn’t really know much about religion but they were a thing when she grew up :/ it’s not much, just. putting up one decorative item or something

Who’s the better cook?

neither :( it’s blamco mac and cheese all year around

[alatismeni-theitsa]

answering anti LO anon asks:

(1) I actually kinda like LO, mostly for the art and the interesting modern reimagining of Olympus & the underworld, but one thing that continues to make me uncomfortable that I feel like we don’t talk about enough as a fandom is that Hades is literally the same age (possibly older?) as Persephone’s mom??? There’s actually a scene where hades was talking to Persephone about women he had considered as possible wives in the past and Persephone gets flustered bc her own MOM is on the list. :/

(2) The inherit sexualization of Gods and how they make Hades seem like an UwU Boi in LO is rather disrespectful in some beliefs, is it not? Like the ‘UwU Boi’ is literally belittling a G O D— Also—  Why is Apollo an asshole in the comic— I work with him and he’s a good dude—

(3) Smythe really cant decide on what is a reson of color of her characters. In one interviev she said its bc of contrast between hades and persephone but in old days before comic get popular she answered on tumblr(i think she deleted her tumblr but im not shure) she said color of character depends on how good they are in bed-purple is the best and less purple are less good. And now fandom says that colors depends of personality and try to pretend that Smythe is some deep genius.

________________________________________________________________

(1) As you probably know, it is like that in the actual mythology. Hades is the uncle of Persephone and is very close to age with Demeter. But it is an ancient religion and an ancient part of the Greek culture, meaning it’s not like what modern Westerners are used to. It’s only weird if you make it weird. And the way Smythe has made the morality of the gods and their values in the comic this is a very weird thing - while for the ancient Greeks it wasn’t. This adds an extra layer of creepy to the story, especially because Hades sought Persephone’s mother!

(2) Even if gods were sexual themselves, I am sure it’s inappropriate when it’s done to such a degree. It’s like sexualizing Christ or the Saints - for those who are Christian. Surely, the Greek gods had a more sexual nature but they weren’t figures for people to lust for. They were revered, feared and asked for help. Apollo is the “bad guy“ in the comic because Smythe, as many other people, apply the Abrahamic logic to the Greek pantheon and think that gods can be judged as humans. Greek gods could be antagonists to the heroes but there is not a “bad god“ in Greek religion. Periodddttt

(3) I had heard that she used those colors for contrast but if she also gave different reasons that confuses me! Can she not decide? xD Idk why would anyone name her a genius when she is not sure about the COLORS of her characters.