#Calvinist gaslighting

[psalm40speakstome]

“I read it” in a Bible translated by Reformed/Calvinist who translates and reads the entire Bible through their worldview lens.

“I read it” but I only used this cherry picked verse that makes my point and don’t consider the rest of the Bible.

“I read it” but other people read it and have different ideas about what it said but instead of honoring that I treat them like idiots.

“I read it” is a gaslighting phrase intended to propagate the assumption that those of us who disagree don’t know or read our bibles.

[artist-issues]

PSA to my Followers Claiming Christ

If you didn't read my Disney-Christianity-Wish reblog don't worry about it.

I mentioned that Glen Keane converted from Catholicism to Christianity. And that's on me; I should've clarified Roman Catholicism, because of the confusion surrounding the word.

But that's a topic for another day. I have two things to say to anyone who claims Christ and felt the need to speak up about that tiny sentence in the reblogs:

The reblog was something that, I like to think, gave glory to God for the artists He wove into Disney over history, and their faithfulness to Him. Then you guys came in and decided to distract from that by being irritated about Calvinism or Catholicism or whatever. My advice is: stop it. If something is genuinely driving non-believers to see that God had a bigger hand in something than they thought, you should not in any way make it about what irritates you. Talk to me about how I'm wrong about Catholicism or how Disney characters aren't Calvinist enough in my inbox, not in front of unbelievers on a post that could've pointed them to God's power and providence.

I did not say "Glen Keane was not a Christian when he was Catholic--" GLEN KEANE said he was not a Christian when he was Catholic. He is a kind man who doesn't intentionally ruffle feathers, but he made a point of broadcasting that part of his testimony to the world. Why don't you go tell him that he's wrong, that he submitted to God's authority and began a relationship with God and had his eternal metaphysical spirit saved before he says he did? Why don't you go gaslight Glen Keane about his own salvation because of your protectiveness of your religion? Instead of jumping on a post that was faith-focused and making it about your offense.

This isn't directed at any one person because a good handful of you have decided to go this route in your responses. But even after I reblogged and said, "what is with Christ-claimers being the only ones distracting from the point of this post" y'all just skipped right over that and kept making it about you. Not the time. Not the place.

[janiedean]

author interview

tagged by @aviss​, @rainhalydia​ and @wynafryd-manderly​ ty!!!

Name: lavinia

Fandoms: asoiaf/got, occasionally dark tower, mcu, iron fist, bastille day, used-to-be spn and whatever else but mainly asoiaf rn

Where You Post: ao3 and on tumblr but I try to repost on ao3 asap

Most Popular One-Shot: unless anything changed overnight... *checks* nah it hasn’t and it’s still I'll be the frosting to your cupcake, wench (jaimebrienne), which still continues to delight me to no end. xD

Most Popular Multi-Chapter Story: based on hits, and give all the love that you have in your soul (jaimebrienne, joncon/r, joncon/omc) and I’m absolutely delighted it’s this one because jonc being in one of my most popular things is always a good thing to me. ;)

Favourite Story You Wrote: thiiis is a loaded question and if I had finished sfbd it might be that, but as I still haven’t... eh, it’s still going to be in the darkness on the edge of town (jaimebrienne + others) aka the infamous Hooker AU Of Doom because idk how the hell this thing happened the way it happened but looking back on it... it’s imvho the best writing I ever put on page for this fandom or maybe it’s me being biased because I just stopped pretending I wasn’t writing an ode to bruce springsteen but whatever. it’s this one xD

Story You Were Nervous to Post: hmmmm I mean I get nervous enough times but probably and all my life, I never had a chance (jb, That Fic Where Jaime Gets Therapy Because We Know Who) because of the subject matter and the fact that it wasn’t exactly a walk in the park to write. also probably take off your skin and dance around your bones because it was like... way darker than my usual but no one hated me for it so xD

How You Choose Your Titles: unless for a miracle I already know, SONG TITLES. SONG TITLES. BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, GASLIGHT ANTHEM AND BOBDYLAN.COM/LYRICS. OCCASIONALLY BON JOVI OR OTHER PEOPLE. BUT SONGS. HAHAHAHA. TITLES. I hate them xD

Do You Outline: no. outlining is the one thing that makes me want to stop writing the thing xD I only do very quick charts if I need to keep the timeline straight  and I write down recasts or smth but I never outline what happens in the fic.

Complete: on ao3? 436

In Progress: on ao3? 2. on my hd/in my head? let’s not even go there.

Coming Soon/Not Yet Started: UHM HAHAHAHA so let’s presume that we’re going for what I’m planning to do hopefully before february, no titles if I don’t have them but I usually don’t have them before the last ten minutes before posting:

next chapter of sfbd which I had started last year but that one nanowrimo didn’t work out

I might take halloween prompts maybe

au where all three of rhaegar’s kids survive and jon adops all of them which I had started last year but never finished

that post S8 afterlife fixit fic where everyone gives jaime hugs and he ends up in a thing with both ned and catelyn

finishing a brienne/cat thing an anon asked for in august that I had half-started but never got around to finish

possibly either the damned canon jaime/brienne/cat threesome or an au I had planned years ago where cat/ned coach them on the art of figuring out their issues in bed and ends with occasional ot4 but idk

hopefully a canon divergence where c/rsei marries rhaegar and jaime/jonc end up having a revenge affair while trying to split them up that I had planned years ago as well

i kinda wanna do that area 51 raid au thing I had planned last september

I also kiindaaaaa wanted to do the san/san spinoff for in the darkness on the edge of town

also i had planned a grapes of wrath throbb + other starks au ages ago so we’ll see

same for the calvinist soulmates au

same for at least one opera singers sequel

whatever I get assigned for yuletide

that said this all depends on whether this year I bite the bullet and write original stuff for nanowrimo while hopefully not shooting myself for lack of time so we just don’t know but anyway, feel free to vote on what you wanna see first xD

Do You Accept Prompts: when I have the askbox open for them yes, if it’s not stated I’ll accept any ideas but I don’t guarantee anything because I’m swamped already xD

Upcoming Story You Are Most Excited to Write: ngl I’ve wanted to do the grapes of wrath thing for a long time but as it is idk when I’ll get to it so tie between the original stuff even if I’m lowkey terrified bc I haven’t written original in years and the joncon/jaime secret affair thing ;)

Tagging: hmmmm @lordhellebore @randomingoftherandomness @hardlyfatal and @ivory--and--gold if they want to!! :D

[monstrousgourmandizingcats]

Do you support Trump if you're pro-life?

Anon, do you even read my blog? Donald Trump is a sick, sad, pathetic, perverted freak whom a healthy society wouldn’t have let within a hundred miles of any kind of fame or prominence, let alone the presidency. At best, he runs the most anti-worker, anti-voter, and anti-pale blue dot administration in living memory; at worst, he does things that manage to be cartoonishly evil in completely unideological ways, like ripping babies screaming from their mothers’ arms and allowing manufacturers to start pumping everything full of asbestos again, then gaslights his base into denying or even supporting these things by telling them that they can’t trust any outside sources of information. Promises to reduce the supply of abortion, while driving demand for it sky-high, just don’t cut it coming from a specimen like this. I don’t hate the man because there appears to be very little moral agency in there TO hate. Trump is a creature of obscene whims and rapacious hungers, more akin to some sort of unquiet dead beloved of Gothic horror writers than to a normal human being, and for the sake of his nominally-Presbyterian soul I sincerely hope that the Calvinists are right that salvation can come without being merited in any way.

[elfwreck]

Removing the author also makes it harder to spot their themes in similar works, or works they inspired.

I used to love Orson Scott Card’s science fiction, until I saw his posts on same-sex marriage, and then read some essays about the themes in his books... and now I can’t unsee the homophobia, the sex-negativity, the utter denial of guilt by handing ugly tasks to people who don’t understand them, the deliberate child abuse and gaslighting that run through all of his works. Saying “he didn’t write it” because of his homophobia wouldn’t fix the rest of the vile themes in his books.

Rowling’s transphobia is the tip of the iceberg that brought public awareness of so many of the other problems with her stories. Homophobia is very present: sure, there are gay characters... off-screen. No loving romances between people of the same gender. Transphobia’s not directly visible, but strict gender-role assignment is: the married women are Mothers and Homemakers and men have jobs away from the family. The “nuclear family” is glorified; people get married to their high-school sweetheart or not at all.  Child neglect and abuse are both handwaved away, as long as they are “for a good cause.” All of these tie into transphobic ideology. 

Racism in the form of cliche’d stereotypes and erasure are both common. The UK gets a magical school for its 66 million people. Africa, with 1.2 billion people, gets one school. The problems that looked like ordinary white obliviousness during the first several books can be seen as overt promotion of white supremacy as she continues to expand the universe. 

While there’s endless prattle about “it’s our choices that make us who and what we are,” the actual results are much more Calvinist: The “choices” Snape made when he was an underage teenager are what defined his life, not the decades he spent trying to undo their damage. Harry got no choice about whether to fight Voldemort or not. (Sure, he could’ve said no... and be called a coward and a fascist by the only people who’d ever shown him kindness.) At no point does Dumbledore - nor any other adult - say “hey, some kids from Slytherin grow up to be fine honorable people and good neighbors.” And good people are handsome, clever, fun-loving, and likable; bad people are ugly, stupid, klutzy, and snobbish. 

Rowling made a world of Heroes and Sidekicks and Villains and Victims - and it’s definitely telling at who got placed in which categories. Fanfic has brought a lot more nuance to the field; we throw out those categories and make our own. But the mainstream public doesn’t read fanfic, doesn’t think of canon as play-dough to be mixed and reshaped, and we have to acknowledge that the Harry Potter series that’s being shared on TV and given as gifts to young teens and made into costumes for parties and holidays, is fraught with themes nobody should be pushing at children.

Pretending there’s no author won’t fix that. It certainly won’t help us recognize and stop the next one. 

Harry Potter is authorless.