#I don't know how I ended up learning these things as well I'm catholic

[ano-po]

I had a weird dream/sudden-morning-thought that I'm an old soul but I haven't escaped Samsara yet because I'm stubborn as hell and I like to take things slow and not have any character-defining life events to push my soul's maturity (so despite being an old soul, I'm still very immature), but the Universe might be getting impatient with me 🥹🥹🥹 Treat me softly please, I'm tired, I don't mind a couple more reincarnations, just don't make me suffer one big time to the point of sudden Nirvana I'm good being slow please Universe have mercy.

[shera-dnd]

I have decided against my better judgement to be weird about the Dawntrail MSQ

and we can't talk about an expansion set in the fantasy americas without talking about

COLONIALISM

oh yeah, we're going there baby

So disclaimer that I may be brazilian, but my ass is white as hell, so take everything I say with a grain of salt. Also if any native americans have made posts on this please let me know so I can boost their analysis as well

Also also I'm more than happy to delete this post if I mess up. I'm genuinely trying to make a thoughtful analysis, so if I fuck up just say the word and this thing is gone from this website

Oh also also also, Dawntrail MSQ spoilers ahead!

So FFXIV has had a... messy relationship with colonialism over the years

The fact that the major antagonists for the first half of A Realm Reborn a literally called "beast man tribes" is absolutely not a good start to this story

Add to that the fact that The Twelve (Eorzea's gods) are shown to be kind all powerful deities, while the Primals (the tribal gods) are evil spirits summoned to bring destruction to the world

and yeah no ARR is not good with that shit. It's EXTREMELY not good. If I hadn't been told it got better later on I would have dropped this shit before I got to Titan

But they have been taking steps to unfuck things. First we're shown that even the "civilized societies" (in this case the catholic elves) can summon Primals, then that Primal summoning isn't an actual native custom but was introduced by foreigners with malicious intent, and that not all "beast man" practice that

Then they changed the names of the "Beast Man Tribe Quests" to "Tribal Quests" and then finally to "Allied Society Quest"

Which would have been an empty gesture had like half of the post-Shadowbringer patches, as well a lot of Endwalker, not been about forming alliances with those people and working together with them, recognizing that they have as much right to the land and to life as any Eorzean, this all culminating on the Primals being summoned with the express purpose of helping you protect the world you all share

I guess they realized that they couldn't have their big bad for most of the game be the evil expansionist empire, if they didn't like actually reflect in their own imperialist fantasies they were propagating

Then the teaser trailer for Dawntrail drops and everyone in the fandom is like "wait... are we gonna do a colonialism?"

And memes were abound of how all those lessons from before don't apply to the "New World" of Tural

THANKFULLY the actual questline leading to Dawntrail helped to settle some of those worries

We're not going to Tural to explore a new uncharted land, but are actually being invited over by the local royalty in order to aid them with their right of succession. We get introduced to the nation of Tuliyollal and how it's a thriving land with its own culture and not just a "terra nil" waiting to be colonized

Still there are some worries that this is gonna turn out poorly and that we're just gonna end up being white saviors

But I think they managed to avoid that pretty well

For starters neither the Scions nor the Warrior of Light are the protagonists of this story. You're all simply supporting character's in Wuk Lamat's story

A story that centers her people, her culture, and her family

And it's not even one culture. They don't portray Tuliyollal as this monolithic mish mash of every single native american culture

No, the lands of Tural are in fact comprised of multiple different people's and nations, each of them with their own customs and traditions which are informed by their history and the lands they live in

In fact learning about their cultures and partaking in their customs is the whole point of the Rite of Succession. It's all set up so that the next Dawnservant would be someone who understands and respects each of the peoples that comprise Tural

(I could, and probably will, write about what Dawntrail has to say about what makes a good ruler)

And our girl, Wuk Lamat, is shown to be the rightful heir because she really goes out of her way to understand each of the nations and show her appreciation for their customs

Putting her well above her Sharlyaboo brother Koana, The King of Unresolved Daddy Issues Zoral Ja, and whatever the fuck is going on with Bakool Ja Ja

(I joke, I love my two headed traumatized dumbass)

Tho I will admit that this does end up giving the tribes a somewhat "planet of the hats" vibe. Like their named NPCs are diverse and interesting, but you can just assume that most random NPCs of any given people are gonna act according to the stereotype

Which is unfortunate, but I have hopes that with the next few patches and the addition of Dawntrail's own Allied Society Quests, we'll get to see more to them

But that... is only up to lvl95 and the end of the Yok'Tural (southern Tural) segment

because then we get to Xak'Tural (northern Tural) and holy shit does it feel like they drop the ball there

Like they really COULDN'T keep themselves from making Shaaloani a fucking Wild West map

Instead of doing anything with the actual cultures and histories of Native North American people, they just do wild fucking west

Because there's ceruleum in them thar hills! And apparently Koana turned most of the region into Sharlyaboos too

So we get a bunch of Wild West frontier towns mixed with native american tribes and mud brick cities. We have trains and guns and a sheriff and a duel at high noon, but now everyone got native american names

At least there's one group off to the northern side of the map who seems to stick to tradition and live in harmony with nature, and that group is shown respect by the other people of the region

so we at the very least avoid the "cowboys vs indians" crap, but my god does that region just feel bad compared to everything else they had done so far

Then we get to the big twist: THE CYBERPUNK PORTION OF THE GAME

because yes, we go full fucking cyberpunk

so turns out that a whole segment of Xak'Tural got colonized by the kingdom of Alexandria, including the lands of the Shetona (Erenville's people)

And I feel like this is the most poignant section of the MSQ when it comes to colonialism

Because here we have Alexandria, an empire that has reached the limit of what it can do sustain itself on its own world, and so has decided to spread out and colonize others in order to gain resources

We see the Shetona and other natives of the region being separated from their families and kept in isolation from the rest of their people

And tho Queen Sphene is shown to be a kind and caring ruler who gives people a choice when it comes to joining the empire, WELL SHE'S STILL THE QUEEN OF A FUCKING EMPIRE

Like her form of kindness and just stagnant peace is put in stark contrast with Wuk Lamat's own love for her people and more proactive pursuit of happiness and harmony

(again with the "what makes a ruler theme")

Also the people that choose to be assimilated into the Alexandrian Empire? Yeah, they're doing so because Alexandria has advanced medical technology and you can only receive their aid if you're a citizen

Not only that, but you have to be a working citizen. We see later on a character being denied medical aid, because he lost his job, thanks to the King's decision and at no fault of his own

yeah this is cyberpunk, not just sci-fi

ALSO can we talk about how the technology used for that medical aid and the little gizmo they give you to signify you're now a citizen, will literally erase the memory of the people you lost

So the Turali who are assimilated into Alexandrian culture not only lose ties to their culture and their loved ones, but are not allowed to grieve their loss, because what they once had is slowly being erased

How their choices add up to survive on their own OR be assimilated

How this all takes place IN NORTH FUCKING AMERICA!

THE CYBERPUNK CITY IS LITERALLY SET IN THIS WORLD'S EQUIVALENT TO THE UNITED STATES

So yeah, I don't think is is accidental. I genuinely thing that they're making a point about the realities of imperialism and colonialism, as well as taking some shots at the US while they're at it

Of course this part is still centered around Wuk Lamat, and instead of having a moment of "the only ones who can stop the evil white europeans are the GOOD white europeans", we have Wuk Lamat be the one to save the day, defeat Sphene, and save her people from the colonizing empire

So I would like to argue that everything that happens from lvl97 onwards is them picking up the ball again and making a real point

buuuut that comes at the cost of us being unable to engage with the native peoples of Xak'Tural outside of the context of colonialism

Which genuinely fucking sucks, and I hope it will be remedied with the post-Dawntrail patches

As well as handling the whole shared land situation they ended up with and how this might end up in a Land Back sort of movement, and oh boy can they mess shit up royally there

So in conclusion FFXIV has had a messy relationship with colonialism and imperialist fantasies and tropes, but the devs seem to be making a concerted effort to undo their mistakes and show respect in their depictions of american natives

They still fuck up

boy do they

but they're at least trying, and I'd say Dawntrail so far has been quite well executed

so yeah, look forward to more insane rambles like this one I guess

[fellthemarvelous]

Aziraphale hate makes my brain hurt.

Like let's be really fuckin' for real here.

Neurodivergent fans have repeatedly said that Aziraphale is autistic coded. I agree with them. I have never been diagnosed but I wonder about myself. If only I could get a doctor to take me seriously enough to test me for it, but alas, I'm a 43-year-old woman living in the good ole US of A.

Those with religious trauma have repeatedly said that they identify with him as well. I'm one of those people. I endured 12 years of Catholic schools and just as much time being taught a very black and white view of things that I've had to spend more than 20 goddamn fucking years working to unlearn.

I find that my views as a survivor of religious abuse are often dismissed because people keep wanting to say "Aziraphale doesn't have religious trauma." Yes, thank you, I get that, but unless you've been indoctrinated and brainwashed into a very black and white view of the world, you probably don't understand the kind of feelings Aziraphale's onscreen experiences evoke in so many of us. Heaven might not be real, but the feelings of "God is always watching" still stick with me today even though I no longer believe in God. I have entirely denounced Christianity because of my own personal experience, and I refuse to allow people to try and guilt me or shame me for trauma that I didn't ask for. I wasn't given a choice.

As a child I was told that God was real and always watching everything you do (just like Santa Claus) and can hear everything you say and knows everything you are thinking. Do you know what I learned to do in order to cope with this overwhelming and anxiety-inducing information as a small child? I learned to censor my thoughts. I never spoke up, and I have always felt like I was putting on a show for people because I had to be who I was told to be or I would get into trouble.

Aziraphale said "poverty is a virtue" during The Resurrectionists, and as someone who grew up in the Bible belt and went to private schools, I was taught this very same shit by the Catholic church. He learned in that very same episode that "poverty is a virtue" is actually a tool of oppression to keep the poor poor and the wealthy wealthy. I know we all watched the episode. He went into that episode believing what he said, but by the end of it he knew it was actually utter bullshit. Aziraphale is not ignorant. He's highly intelligent, and he has never been too proud to admit when he has been wrong. He accepts that the information he learned before is not matching up with reality.

And it's so obvious some of you have zero experience with that type of indoctrination because of how very little empathy you show Aziraphale for his "mistake" of "choosing Heaven over Crowley" and "making Crowley sad" so clearly Aziraphale must somehow be "abusive" and "manipulative" and "selfish" and "self-centered" because he didn't choose to run away with Crowley at the end of season two.

First of all.

FIRST OF ALL...

Aziraphale has a mind of his own.

Aziraphale is always going to try and do what is right.

Aziraphale is an angel. He's a being of love. And the reason he's so "bad" at being an angel is because he actually wants to protect humanity. He has always loved humanity. He repeatedly has to contend with what is "right" versus what is "good" and "wrong" versus "evil". Yeah, he has flaws. He's an angel, not a goddamn fucking saint. He has lived on Earth for more than 6,000 years. He has seen everything. He loves doing human things.

He's obsessed with magic. It makes him so happy. He's not very good at it...well not when he's trying to put on a show for Crowley.

He chose to learn French the hard way, so even though he knows every single language in the world, he chooses to be mediocre at French. Something that annoys and amuses Crowley at the same time.

He loves to dance even though angels aren't supposed to dance, and dancing with Crowley was what he wanted the most.

He owns a bookshop and refuses to sell any of his books because they are books he's had for as long as there have been books. He will chase customers away from his collection, and Crowley understands how much they mean to Aziraphale because he refuses to sell any when Aziraphale leaves him in charge.

He and Crowley have been speaking to each other in coded language for more than 6,000 years. They have to be very careful about what they say because Heaven and Hell are always watching.

Heaven has photographs of Crowley and Aziraphale sitting or standing together throughout history. Hell had one photo of Crowley and Aziraphale actually working together and it was Aziraphale's quick thinking and how good he actually is at sleight of hand tricks that managed to get that photo out of Furfur's hands so he wouldn't be able to turn Crowley over to the Dark Council.

Aziraphale saved Crowley from being taken to Hell again. He wasn't able to save Crowley from Hell in Edinburgh, but he sure as heck managed to save Crowley from Hell during WWII. He took Crowley to his bookshop and showed Crowley that he stole the picture from Furfur. He saved Crowley.

You get that, right?

Aziraphale SAVED Crowley.

People always talk about how it's "always Crowley saving Aziraphale" because apparently heroic acts are only heroic when they are grand gestures. The sleight of hand wasn't heroic at all, am I right? It wasn't sparkly and showy. It wasn't interesting enough, therefore not heroic. At least that's all I'm hearing when people start with their "blah Aziraphale deserves to suffer because I have no imagination or ability to understand the media in front of me blah", and all these reasons he deserves to suffer is because Crowley almost got hurt.

Aziraphale did that without flinching and I watch that part closely every single time. He's not scared for himself. He's scared for Crowley, and he managed to hold onto that photograph. He did not fail Crowley. He protected Crowley.

And so here's another thing that we like to point out. The way that Aziraphale, an angel who is effeminate and male presenting, an angel who is soft and full of love, an angel who is kind and forgiving because he has empathy and compassion, is somehow painted as abusive and manipulative. He's not violent, but he could easily fuck up your world. He doesn't use his powers. We have no idea how powerful he is because we only ever see him do small acts. He's used to hiding. It's the only way he has ever been able to protect Crowley.

And I'm not saying that Aziraphale has actually saved Crowley before means that Crowley hasn't also saved Aziraphale. Like, you get that those are not mutually exclusive and their relationship is not transactional, right? They have spent their entire existence protecting each other but never actually getting to be together because Heaven and Hell are always watching.

Yeah, Crowley fell. We all know this. We are aware of this. He was the serpent of Eden. He gave humanity the knowledge of free will.

But what we don't talk about is what Aziraphale gave humanity.

What did he give them?

We all know what it is!

Let's say it together!

He gave Adam and Eve his flaming sword because it was dangerous outside the garden and Eve was pregnant and she was already having a really bad day. He showed them compassion and gave them his extremely powerful angelic weapon so they would stand a chance on the outside of the garden. He gave humanity the gift of compassion. It's just unfortunate that his flaming sword became a weapon of War.

And then what did he do after that?

Ooooh, yeah, that's right.

God asked him about it and he straight up lied to her and pretended he had no idea where he'd managed to misplace it. She didn't say anything after that. He told Crowley the truth though. He told Crowley the truth even though Crowley fell.

Yeah, we know Aziraphale has done some really fucking questionable things. He and Crowley both suck at passing for human in front of observant people like Nina. They're not human. They are still learning, but they managed to experience human history together despite being on opposite sides and their experiences with humanity are what has shaped them into the compassionate and loving duo they are now. One of them is not better from the other.

This, my friends, is what we call meeting in the middle. It's why shades of gray is so important. Aziraphale constantly breaks the rules. Crowley refused to play by Heaven's rules. It's the reason he fell. He doesn't play by Hell's rules either. These two dorks figured out how to cancel each others' miracles out throughout human history in order to have more time learning about humanity and each other because working all day every day sucks when there are so many new things to learn and experience with the people you love.

We know Crowley and Aziraphale both love each other. Neither of them are good at hiding the hearts stars in their eyes.

But here's what's really fucking annoying about the Aziraphale hate.

Aziraphale was already crying when Crowley grabbed him and kissed him. Aziraphale is trying so very hard to do the right thing. He loves Crowley. He does. But he also has a duty to humanity, and he has taken that job very seriously since the creation of Adam and Eve. He sent them out into the world with a flaming sword so they would have a chance at surviving beyond the walls of the garden.

And he knows that Something Terrible is going to happen and he spent all of second season trying to figure out what that Something Terrible was while trying to have some sort of more honest and open relationship with Crowley, but again, they aren't human, they are a demon and an angel approaching life from opposite sides who met in the middle and fell in love with humanity together.

He wants more than anything to tell Crowley how he feels about him, but he wants to do something grand for Crowley because Crowley has always been grand and dramatic and sexy and a little bit scary.

Crowley is impulsive and has a temper and sometimes says the wrong thing but he has always trusted Aziraphale because Aziraphale gave him a chance even after he fell. Aziraphale chose to shelter him instead of smiting him while they stood on top of that wall. He knew he was supposed to kill Crowley, but oops, he gave his sword away to the humans so he didn't really have anything to kill him with and Crowley is the one who created nebulas. The Pillars of Creation is Crowley's work and Aziraphale was there to witness that, but he watched Crowley more than he watched the nebula. He witnessed the pure joy on Crowley's face when he said "let there be light" as a nebula full of colors exploded before their eyes. He was fascinated by Crowley.

But Aziraphale is going back to Heaven even though he has made it perfectly clear he absolutely has no desire to go back to Heaven. He told the Metatron this during their conversation. He spoke these words out loud. They exist.

But then The Metatron said this....

The Metatron. The very same angel who told Aziraphale in season one "to speak to me is to speak to the Almighty." He's the boss. He's the big guy. He's used to existing as a giant head and he had to give himself a body so he wouldn't stand out on Earth. And he knows that Aziraphale and Crowley have been working together since the beginning. He knows they worked together to prevent Armageddon in season one, and now he's made it clear he knows they were working together long before that. And let's face it, Aziraphale really wants to know what this Something Terrible is that Gabriel is running from so he can try to prevent it from happening.

It makes sense that he would want to take Crowley to Heaven with him because he would be able to keep Hell from getting their hands on him again. Aziraphale hates it in Heaven. He doesn't want to go, but Something Terrible is happening and Metatron isn't taking no for an answer, and maybe Heaven won't be so bad if Crowley is there with him. At least they can fix Heaven together.

But Crowley can't go back. We all get that. We don't blame him for saying no. It doesn't change anything.

Something Terrible is about to happen and Aziraphale has to figure out what it is. He wants to change Heaven.

He is fully aware that Heaven sucks. He still has faith in God. His faith isn't in Heaven. He deserted his platoon in season one and threw himself back to Earth so he could figure out how to make sure the war between Heaven and Hell doesn't happen.

But see, here's the thing. Heaven is at the top. Heaven has all the resources. Heaven is responsible for the creation of Hell. Heaven is empty and Hell is overpopulated. Aziraphale knows this. Crowley knows this. It's obvious every time we see either place. Both sides are desperate to go to war and will not hesitate to destroy humanity in the process. This is the opposite of what Crowley and Aziraphale want for humanity. If anyone can change Heaven, it's Aziraphale. He's the only one up there who gives a shit about humanity as far as we know. No one else is going to speak on humanity's behalf.

Some of us are so busy getting mad at Aziraphale for going back to Heaven and giving Crowley a Big Sad. Newsflash: Crowley is not the main character of Good Omens. Aziraphale and Crowley are equals, yet we wanna hold Aziraphale to higher standards because he's an angel, and when he makes mistakes it's proof that he's the bad guy.

Holy mother of all things that trigger my religious trauma, let me tell you. I spent my entire life hating myself every time I made mistakes. I've had to teach myself that just because I mess up sometimes doesn't mean I'm bad. It means I'm human. I still struggle with it. I probably always will. So when you say that Aziraphale deserves to be punished for breaking Crowley's heart, you not only ignore that Aziraphale's heart is also broken, you're saying he deserves to be punished for doing what he thinks is right.

Wanting to change Heaven for the better is not a bad thing.

And some of y'all wanna see him suffer for going back into the lion's den that is Heaven, knowing that he is already an outcast, that they have already tried to kill him once, knowing that he is a deserter, that he has been lying to Heaven about a lot of things, and you still think he's blinded by Heaven? You think he's just so naive and that's the only reason he's going back. He doesn't show his emotions the same way Crowley does so it means he doesn't care as much. He's expected to consider Crowley's feelings over his own when making choices. Like holy shit if all of that hasn't defined my experience as a woman with religious trauma in this fucking society. He's expected to be subservient to Crowley and if he doesn't do what Crowley wants then he's being unreasonable and illogical.

What the actual fuck, y'all.

Like seriously.

I'm sick of this bullshit. I had to step away from this fandom because of how toxic some people in this fandom are. It's not chasing me away, but the fact that I chose to hang out in a a more toxic fandom that is already notorious for being really toxic over a fandom that claims to be more open-minded and welcoming should probably tell you something.

It gave me a lot of perspective, and yeah, I'm still gonna speak up against the bullshit Aziraphale hate.

People are entitled to their opinions, but the Aziraphale hate isn't an opinion. It's just ableist, misogynistic garbage. At this point we all know y'all say these extreme things about Aziraphale because y'all get more joy out of the harm and alienation it is causing others.

Keep being loudly wrong, but if you think I'm not entitled to challenge shitty-ass, harmful, hateful discourse, bite my ass.

I'm not the one who lost the plot in this fandom.

[sirfrogsworth]

2 new things I learned about Mormonism.

Thing the first…

Joseph Smith once held a sorta Mormon Comic-Con where he invited all of his followers and claimed he was going to perform miracles and talk to God and other nonsense. He set up a faith healing demonstration with an audience plant and they pretended to be suddenly stricken deaf and dumb.

Joseph was all, "By the power of Jesus, alakazam, you can now hear and speak again!"

Everyone clapped.

Joseph did not seem to have the foresight to realize other people might want to have their chronic maladies cured. So he was ready to wrap up his little magic show and move on.

But an old dude in the audience was all, "I've got this fucked up hand. Would you mind unfucking it for me?"

In his head, I'm sure Joseph thought, "Well, shit."

But he decided to give it a go. I mean, when I was young I would try to use force powers "just in case." Like, how do you know you don't have force powers if you never try to use them?

So he did his routine again on the fucked up hand and the old man stretched out his fingers for a second and Joseph probably thought "Oh shit, did that really work?" and then they curled back into their fucked up state. He tried his best to make an excuse and hoped that was the end of the faith healing portion of the show.

But then…

A man walks in carrying his little boy.

Who is super dead.

He's like, "Yeah, I was going to take him to a doctor, but everyone said you were coming and I should just wait. Would you mind un-deading my little boy real quick?"

In his head… "Fuck fuck fuckity fuck fuck..."

Out loud… "Jesus Christ and the almighty Father, restore life to this very dead child!"

And the boy opened his eyes and smiled and everyone clapped…

Would have been a great ending to this story.

But he was still quite dead.

Thing the second…

I knew that when Mormons turned 18 they went on a little mission. I always thought they picked a poverty stricken country somewhere and went to help the poor and build houses and give people food and medicine using the church's immense wealth and resources. That seems like it would humble a young person and give them a valuable life experience.

I suppose I just assumed that considering that's typically how Catholics do missionary work. They do a bunch of good deeds and when people are happy and grateful for their help, they pull out a Bible and start their sales pitch. I always had mixed feelings about this but I thought "at least they were helping people." (Not always the case. Sometimes missionaries do more harm than good. But that is the idea, at least.)

Mormons skip the helping people and just do the sales pitch.

They honestly believe converting them to Mormonism is more valuable than food, shelter, clothing, money.

Being a member should solve all of those things, right?

Well, that is essentially what these young mission kids are told.

And they don't just go to poor countries, they often go to rich areas in the US. One might go to the Congo and the other... Beverly Hills.

These 18 year olds are thrust into an unfamiliar place with a few weeks of language training and are tasked with getting people baptized. They have to pay for this "honor" and are judged by how many people they convert. They are often housed in sketchy places and in order to keep them from going rogue, they are attached to another 18 year old who must stay within sight and sound at all times.

Mormonism relies heavily on tattling to keep people following the rules. Seriously, I think the glue that holds all of it together is "snitches get riches." BYU even has an official snitching office where you can narc on someone for getting coffee.

The point is, no one is helped and these kids are essentially slaves for 2 years. They work 80 hour weeks with no pay just trying to get baptisms.

[demiromanticmickey]

On today's "I am SO not normal about Dead Friend Forever": Discussing Catholicism and Colonization in this gay Thai slasher series

Some background on me: I am from a Latine Catholic family. Raised as a non-practicing Catholic (we didn't go to church or pray). Then my parents enrolled me in a Catholic school that I attended from 5th grade to the end of 7th grade. Today, I am not Catholic and have never really considered myself as such.

Ok, so in the flashback episodes of DFF, I have been noticing a lot of things. My findings under the cut.

Let's start with this crucifix and photo of the Virgin Mary and a baby Jesus.

Screenshot from ep. 5.

The camera lingers here a bit so we're obviously meant to pay attention to the phrase. I put the screenshot through Google translate's image translator and the translation it gave me was, "Think good, do good, be a good person." I didn't think much of it when I first watched the episode other than it was supposed to establish that the boys attend a Christian or Catholic school.

But then there was this image posted on Be On Cloud's Instagram (also from ep. 5): X

Zooming in, we can see there's another picture of Mary in the background. Watching the classroom scenes, it's easy to miss because the series itself is more washed out than the official photos posted. But this emphasis on Mary led me to believe the school is a Catholic one. So out of curiosity, I looked up the schools the writers and directors attended because I felt I was onto something here. And boy, was I!

Source: MDL

Ma-Deaw, if you didn't know, is one of the directors of Dead Friend Forever (he also directed Manner of Death and Inhuman Kiss , and lots of other things).

One Google search later (X) and I learned "Montfort College" is a Catholic school. It started out as a primary school that later added a secondary school as well.

Now let's take a closer look at some of the details of this school:

First, the school's motto "Labor Conquers All Things". This reminded me of the phone conversation Tee had with his uncle:

On my first watch, this sounded familiar to me but I couldn't really place why. It wasn't until I saw this other Tumblr post (X) that pointed out it's similar to a bible quote from the New Testament. The quote varies a bit depending on which version of the bible you're using but it's along the lines of, "He who does not work, neither shall he eat".

This is meant to discourage "laziness". Nevermind the fact that people deserve to eat simply because we get hungry and need food to survive. The idea that we only "deserve" things based on productivity is an extremely colonial one. — Reminder also that Tee is being forced into this "work" in the first place. He's just a high school kid. I don't need to like his character to understand how fucked up his situation is.

Then there's the patron of the school. St. Louis de Montfort was a French Catholic priest most known for his study in Mariology. What is Mariology (X)? The study of Mary, the mother of Jesus. I didn't know that was a thing but it's unsurprising considering how prominent images of Mary were in my own religious upbringing. And she's what started me down this rabbit hole in the first place. Mary is a big deal to the Catholics. I'm going to be paying even more attention now if more Mary imagery pops up.

The Garden of Eden and Original Sin

Now I want to draw attention to these images:

Screenshots from ep. 7

Here we have Non and Phee biting into an apple as they leisure around this lush green field. We know they've visited this location more than once because they're wearing different outfits in the screenshots. And I think it's important to note that it's Phee holding the apple and offering it to Non.

The use of the word "bait" in the bts of ep. 7 is quite interesting too. (X)

The Garden of Eden was the paradise in which Adam and Eve resided. In this garden, there were many trees to eat from. The one tree Adam and Eve were forbidden by God to eat from was the Tree of Knowledge. A serpent (Satan), first tempted Eve into taking from the tree to eat it's fruit. And then Eve gave the fruit to Adam. That is Original Sin. And because Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge, all humans thereafter are born sinful and bad, and can only find salvation through God.

Of course in the scene between Phee and Non, the sin the apple represents is being gay. And it's after this, and after the bracelet scene, that Non becomes involved with Por's film and his tragedy begins.

Zoomed in screenshot from ep. 5

And I wonder if the bracelet scene is the last time Phee and Non visit this forest location. It would parallel how Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden once they sinned.

Final Thoughts

You give me a story that criticizes Western religion and how it's used as a tool for oppression and colonization, and I'm gonna eat that shit up. I am gonna eat it up. Every. Single. Time.

I really wasn't expecting anything like this from Dead Friend Forever. This level in attention to detail is unmatched. I don't think I've watched a more well planned out show. And no matter where DFF goes from here, these seven episodes will always hold a special place in my heart. 💗

[cairavende]

My wonderful girlfriend got me Gideon the Ninth for Christmas and I realized why should I just give Worm recaps? Let's read some Locked Tomb! (We'll see how this format works, maybe I'll adjust it. Specifically might break stuff down into smaller segments instead of full acts, but I didn't think of doing this until after I had read all of act 1.)

Gideon the Ninth Act 1 (chapter 1 through 8) thoughts:

This book is so gay oh my god

Like, it's gay in ways I can't even explain. I love it.

Harrow beats the shit out of Gideon in chapter 2 and I don't know if I've ever seen someone get beat up in a more gay way.

"Oh Griddle! But I don't even remember about you most of the time." ROLL A FUCKING DECEPTION CHECK HARROW! You are saying this standing in the middle of the field you spent all night burying bones in just to foil her escape in the most dramatic way. You can't stop remembering her.

Gideon is the most herbo of herbos. I fucking love her. I love reading her PoV. She just knows punch and stab with sword and if those don't work than she'll just do them harder.

Also Gideon is SO fucking gay. Dear god. Dulcinea faints and Gideon turns off all though. HELP PRETTY GIRL. Nothing else.

Ok I could just make this whole thing "EVERYTHING IS GAY" but there is technically more than that.

I love how weird everything is and how little explanation is given. I don't want pages of exposition, I want to learn the world as it comes at me! This is perfect.

And just the very nature of things that seem weird not being given more than a passing thought in the book is information. Something may seem wild to the reader but it's so normalized to the characters that they wouldn't even think about the idea of it being different.

Lack of explanation also helps really show how much of a meathead Gideon is. Do the readers get to learn details about this thing? Only if it is a weapon, has tits, or Gideon is forced to listen while Harrow explains it. Otherwise no, why the fuck would Gideon spend her precious few brain cells on thinking?

And even if Gideon is forced to listen as Harrow explains it, the readers might not learn much cause Gideon might stop listening. I love her.

Aiglamene is wonderful. Crux is fine but I like her more.

Poor Gideon just wants a big sword that she can swing hard. It's not like she can't use a rapier. But why when she can go big sword?

SO MUCH CATHOLICISM

As someone who once was Catholic and then realized I was actually not a straight man, but instead a lesbian, I am in deep.

And the fucking slang used! Or whatever would be the right term. The shit they say! I love it. Just the weird sci-fi far future space necromancer universe and then suddenly "Are you asking me to . . . throw her a bone?", "Gideon had always known that this would be how she went: gangbanged to death by skeletons.", "Don’t hypothetically shove stuff up my butt again, it never does any good.", "Lo! A destructed ass.", "Well we were developing common sense, she studied the blade.", "Double Bones with Doctor Skelebone."

House of the First appears to be Earth. I kinda assume the House of the Ninth is Pluto, even though things obviously aren't in order given that the Seventh and Sixth are closer to the sun. Of course, I'm kinda expecting this to not technically be this solar system at all.

Undying Emperor, King of Resurrection, I Have Ten-Thousand Titles, Boss First, etc etc hasn't been on "Earth" in over nine thousand years. I wanna know MORE.

And the fucking Ninth House has their own prayer! Everyone else has one that the Ninth didn't know and then the Ninth had one that no one else knows! GIMME MORE!!!!

Also again, so many Catholicism metaphors or comparisons or whatever!

I could go on forever but gonna end this one with OH MY GOD SHE FOUND SUNGLASSES I LOVE HER. Fucking "I came prepared, my sweet." and "But then you couldn't have admired . . . these!" as she whips on the sunglasses. God. I nearly died.

[crossbowkiller]

HI!!

I was wondering if there was a there a particular moment (comic book, particular panel, line, event) where you ‘fell in love’ with Helena B as a character? Like a moment where you really became a fan of her or that kicked off a greater appreciation for her.

No pressure if not, just wondering! (Also hope the exam goes well ^^)

HELLO MY FAVOURITE STEPH CEO 🩵🩵🩵🩵

thank you so much for your wishes and for this ask!!!

i don't want to revise history too much and i hope this is a satisfactory answer, but honestly, i know i was in a certain sort of emotional state during that period of 2024 and i'm sure my emotions were heightened a lot, but i'll still try to recap it as closely as possible: ( some personal stuff below )

some quick backstory: i was on a long flight in december 2023, randomly watched the birds of prey movie, enjoyed the hell out of that movie, in april 2023 i randomly thought of the helena character - mainly because of that one scene, where the kid was scared, but helena, this emo goth socially awkward edgelord, stopped to comfort that kid and gave her a toy car to hold onto. i googled her, and was really, really surprised by how different comics huntress looked; like, her suit design? PHENOMENAL. i make graphic edits, and i knew i wanted to do my next on huntress, and doing so, i ended up researching her a little so that i can get her vibes right...

this might be controversial, but this is entirely my personal experience and in no way a commentary on the religion as a whole: i was raised muslim, and in 2023, i became an atheist, ironically enough, a few months before my first umrah (a sort of pilgrimage). i was at a very low point of my life, and i was hanging onto a few loose threads of my faith, but i was losing hope rapidly, and people around me being misogynistic, controlling shits weren't helping much. in the end, the threads snapped, and once i considered that i was totally alone in the whole world, i couldn't return back. i couldn't reaccept my faith no matter what. right now, i don't mind being an atheist, and i thoroughly respect people's religion and faith. i know i have tried to be a good person when i was a theist, and i know i am trying to be a good person as an atheist. i think we're all trying as people, and i think most of us are innately good.

but for many months since i first became an atheist, i was deeply hurt, grieving, resentful, conflicted. i felt trapped because i live in a very religious family, very religious country. talks of religion hurt me personally. and at the same time, i was coming to terms with the fact that i'm genuinely alone and i don't have a safety net. i really felt lost.

to keep things from being too long, another quick context: before helena bertinelli, i got into a marvel comics character, theresa cassidy. she's a catholic, and at first, i tried to just read and write for this character without looking at her faith, but... terry, like helena, is devoutly catholic, and it felt wrong for me to ignore an integral part of terry. so, terry gave me the first bit of courage to re-engage with religion in an impartial light, i was only just reading up catholicism to understand terry's relationship with her faith better.

when i learned that helena bertinelli is a devout catholic, i didn't really know how to feel. i was already somewhat familiar with researching catholicism for terry anyway, so i didn't feel uncomfortable engaging with helena's stories. then i read huntress: year one and i think i just was a different woman.

that was exactly the kind of story i needed, and helena was exactly the kind of character i needed. someone so strong, so powerful, yet so scared, so angry, so uncertain, so lost, so human. she was religious, she knew what she was talking about, yet she was also upset with the kind of people that utilised religion. this story of huntress wasn't just her beating up bad guys and calling it a day, she barely emerged victorious.

because this was systematic. she was born into it, and she barely could escape it, getting almost killed and losing her entire family weren't enough to protect her. she couldn't uproot her problems, she couldn't convince people to share her views in a day, she was alone often times. but she also fought, she had support when it mattered, she survived, she outlasted them all, she didn't give up, she didn't stop believing.

religion may not have been relevant to me anymore, but seeing what it means to helena? for her to carry all those years of pain, to overcome her fear, and reclaim her cross from that bastard who doesn't deserve to be named?

yeah, just. wow! i don't know just how often we see women-centric stories we see like this in mainstream media: messy, unfiltered, realistically harsh. huntress is constantly fighting uphill battles, putting herself through heartbreak, losing and losing, seldom getting her flowers, but she's a woman of ardent faith and hope. not in a "god will save me" way but "i will save myself; god don't give up on me" way.

and circling back to what caught my eye about bop movie's helena: i think i had fallen in love with huntress a bit harder when i learned she was a schoolteacher, the kind that had a soft spot for her kids and would break hell and bend heaven for them. being a teacher ties back to her being hopeful too; helena isn't a nihilistic cynic, isn't a naive idealist, she doesn't know things will change for better, but she's someone who steps out to fight the good fight as huntress and continues to inspire her students as a teacher; if this wasn't a woman who believed in a better tomorrow and worked towards that with honest diligence, would she have outlived them all?

[monsterblogging]

How Pacific Rim 2013 is about killing the gods, and why we need to accept this

After years of researching the development of Pacific Rim, and learning more about its creators, I've reached a conclusion.

You cannot truly understand the narrative of Pacific Rim until you can wrap your head around the idea the kaiju are divine beings, their creators are functionally gods, and (at least sometimes), gods need to be killed.

This sentiment can be traced all the way back to Travis Beacham's draft script, where the Precursors were explicitly revealed as the creators of our universe, who made it so they could move here from their own dying universe. The script very deliberately codes them as gods, as evidenced in these quotes:

RALEIGH There’s things you just can’t fight. Acts of God or whatever. Like you see a hurricane coming, you just have to get out of the way, you know? But when you’re in a Jaeger, suddenly you can draw a line in the sand. You can fight the hurricane -- and you can win.

CZERNY Because I had to be quarantined. I looked into the abyss. I’d been infected with the truth -- that this is the end of us. We are the vermin of the gods. There’s no point in putting up a fight...

TAKADA I don't have it... We all know it's a siege. What can I say they don't already know? We call the enemy the Precursors... I may as well tellthe world the gods want us dead.

NEWT (CONT’D) I don't care if they are the creators of the universe. I like the universe. She leans her head on the seat and watches him with a pining look in her eyes. He turns to add with a chuckle -- NEWT (CONT’D) And I'm not a creationist.

The draft script is not fucking around. The Precursors are gods, and they must be slain.

The final movie retains the "acts of God" line, but the Precursors are never explicitly called "gods" like this. However - the subtext is still there. For example, Hannibal Chau tells us what the kaiju cultists believe:

HANNIBAL CHAU Look at 'em. They believe the Kaiju are sent from heaven. That the gods are expressing their displeasure with our behavior. The silly bastards.

The film also shows us kaiju sisters, who are very clearly meant to evoke Catholic sisters with their cornettes. And of course, we can't forget the kaiju church building.

And then there's the Precursors themselves, whom we only get a brief, blurry glance at. But their design had intention behind it, as we learn in Pacific Rim: Man, Machines, & Monsters (emphasis mine):

"When I was a kid," says del Toro, "we used to catch these bugs in the pool. They had a translucent, hard shell and you could see their organs. I wanted the design to evoke that. Wayne Barlowe and Keith Thompson worked the final design. We gave the Precursors elements of ecclesiastical royalty, dividing them into cardinals and bishops."

For anyone who doesn't know, del Toro is an ex-Catholic whose grandmother tried to exorcise him over his interest in monsters, and made him wear bottlecaps in the bottoms of his shoes as penance for his perceived sins. And Guillermo del Toro isn't shy about expressing anti-authoritarian sentiments. (Pan's Labyrinth and Pinocchio are very strongly anti-authoritarian films.)

Pacific Rim is using the godkilling trope the exact same way a lot of Japanese media does it: personifying corrupting ideologies and corrupt institutions as malefic gods that humanity must rise up against and destroy. (If you want to learn more about this, Moon Channel's video Why Do You Always Kill Gods In JRPGs? goes into this in detail.)

Where other western media that involves killing gods often aims to avoid controversy by reassuring its audiences that the god or gods being killed are false gods, or by targeting gods largely considered discredited (such as actual pagan gods, or fictional gods modeled on them), Pacific Rim refuses to pander to western Christian sensibilities in this way.

Had Guillermo del Toro had his way, this would have gone on to resemble the Japanese usage of this trope even more, where said divinities often are former humans, or are the product of human activity. He'd planned to reveal that the Precursors were humanity from the future:

And then we found out that the precursors are us thousands of years in the future. They’re trying to terraform, trying to re-harvest the earth to survive. (Source.)

Unfortunately, this didn't happen. The sequel to Pacific Rim was handed off to another director, and the Precursors were re-coded as demonic. All of the socio-political criticism embedded in the first movie were gutted - and I don't think it's any coincidence that the uberconservative weirdos I've been seeing in this fandom focus on it more than the first movie. (And if they aren't focused on Uprising, they're focused on The Black, which is even worse. I will suffice it here to say that The Black was practically tailor-made to attract young chuds. And while not everyone I've met who actually likes it was a chud, every one of them had extremely low media literacy.)

You see, when you remove Beacham and del Toro's careful symbolism and coding, the Precursors become nothing more than a vague enemy that you can project anyone onto. Hyperconservatives are free to compare the Precursors to whatever boogyman they've decided threatens Christianity and/or Western civilization, and engage in fantasies of using militaristic force to destroy them.

Failing to recognize or choosing to ignore how Pacific Rim uses the godkilling trope to criticize authoritarian religious institutions and late-stage capitalism is how a film directed by two anti-fascist creators gets twisted into a fascism-affirming narrative. And that, I think most of us can agree, is a problem.

[mai-love-andthestars]

Hi I was wondering if you had any tips/advice for someone who’s new to worshipping? Thank you!

My words always jumble together so let me try to separate it into key points that I think is important. - Research theoi.com is a great source on mythology, associations and different types of entities and I always recommend it for those starting out in Hellenism. get to know the basics, in terms of mythology as well as culture. while culture and history don't sometimes apply in modern worship, I think understanding the gods mythology is important in knowing why they are worshiped and how certain mythology is important to the worshippers. (this idea doesn't have to apply to just hellenism, I think knowing the history of religion is good for anyone's practice.) -Explore even in the modern sense, different people practice the same religion differently and apply it in a way that works for them. You don't have to go too crazy in your exploration and figuring out what works for you, but you also don't need to follow things word for word. You don't have to pray the same way as everyone else and you can do it in ways that work for you. Traditions are important but so is finding your unique self in this process. You may even change the way that you worship as you grow, I certainly did myself. Just know this isn't black and white, while there are certain "rules" you are also allowed to adjust for what works for you as well. Remember your path is your choice in the end, if you end up loving paganism in general then that is great! but if you feel like paganism or hellenism specifically isn't for you, then that is also fine :) -Forgiveness and growth I came from filipino catholic background, so there was a lot of ideas of religion and worship that I had to unlearn and relearn from a different perspective. I had to break down biases that I did not know I had about religion as a whole. I couldn't approach it the same way as I would with the gods or god that I grew up with, so I made a lot of mistakes in the beginning because I felt like I was trying to start from a different foundation. And at first I was so stressed about that, I didn't want to make them mad or offend them. But I also learned with time that I'm human and mistakes are okay, and learning and growing from those mistakes are part of that human experience. So allow yourself forgiveness in your mistakes as you grow more confident in what you do and learn. Links that I find helpful for beginners: Hellenic Cheat Sheets by Screeching-0wl

This post as a good basic summary about offerings Here is an extensive masterpost of most things that I think are good to cover As mentioned before theoi.com Teawiththegods has always been a helpful page as well

And as always I am also open to any questions and will try to the best of my abilities to help or will direct you to the right place

[womaninwinter]

Thank you for tagging me @paranorahjones I am terminally online today and delighted to be playing tag games :)

1. How did you get into writing fanfiction? Depends on how you define fic I guess. When I was very little, I would "tell myself stories" (literally I would just sit on the floor in my room and pronounce the story aloud) which were essentially self-insert fics about my favourite characters. I guess expansion has always been my automatic response to a story I like. My older sister was active in fandoms first, so I learned about fic from her, and when I ended up in a teeny tiny fandom with practically no content in my teens, writing fic was a very natural next step.

2. How many fandoms have you written in? *counts on my fingers* well, there was [REDACTED], [REDACTED], BTVS, Designated Survivor, and now L&Co. So actually not that many. When I fixate about something, I fixate long and hard and I don't have room for other obsessions.

3. How many years have you been writing fanfiction?

As above, really depends on how you define fic and how you define writing lol. If you're being exacting, uhhh about 15 years or so, but with long gaps in there. Years of actual productivity, probably more like 3 or 4.

4. Do you read or write more fanfiction? Very definitely read lol, I'm a slow writer and a fast reader. Trying to shift the balance however.

5. What is one way you've improved as a writer? I think my ability to plan and execute a large-scale project is increasing, as is my ability to actually dramatise a setting properly.

6. What's the weirdest topic you researched for a writing project? Abdominal trauma recovery (for Gutted, my specialest little guy fic)

7. What's your favorite type of comment to receive on your work?

I love a comment from someone who Gets what I was going for. It doesn't have to be a long one, just something that shows me that yes, I communicated successfully here! (or just when people tell me unhinged things like "I'm chewing on this nomnomnomnom". I love that too)

8. What's the most fringe trope/topic you write about?

Easily the Catholic Lockwood stuff LOL.

9. What is the hardest type of story for you to write? It's not quite a story type, but I hate when you're trying to bring a character to the point of a certain realisation or decision and you have to describe their thought process and it's soooo hard to do cleanly and really I should have made this damn thing a conversation but it's TOO LATE NOW.

10. What is the easiest type? A conversation lol. Again, now specific type of story, but I love writing dialogue.

11. Where do you do your writing? What platform? Usually at my desk, on my computer. G Docs is my medium of choice - accessible anywhere, easily shared, easy to retrieve if you go somewhat crazy and delete everything...

12. What is something that you've been too nervous/intimidated to write, but would love to write one day?

The big "Lockwood reverts to his faith and Lucy converts" fic. Will I ever do it?? Who knows. I like thinking about it though.

13. What made you choose your username?

This is a great question, and the answer is I have NO clue. I didn't want it to be something that was easily identified as me (for anyone who knows me IRL, womaninwinter is quite a giveaway lol). I picked a phrase that came to mind and sounded moderately cool, and for some reason, the phrase was "Savoirfaire". (some unconscious snobbery about my writing abilities going on?? Perhaps!)

tagging: @itripandfallalot, @polithicc, @menina89, @lilaccatholic and @insidethekaleidoscope (I forget who has and hasn't done this already)

[gepgep2]

But I decided to become an anthropologist and I ended up going to Madagascar for one reason or another, and through sheer coincidence kind of, I stumbled into a place where the state had in fact disappeared. I was living in an anarchist society. But the fascinating thing is it took me a while to figure it out. People didn't warn me at first.

So I went off and I was in a small town but, the town was like an hour's drive out of the capital. It's hardly like out in the boonies anywhere and there was government offices, there were people in the government offices typing things, there was a police station, various other state facilities, so it would seem obvious there was a government here. But as time went on I realized there was something kinda weird going on here. Actually I think what gave it away is I heard the story about this guy named Enri, he was this enormous scary guy who was either insane or pretending to be insane. People seemed to have mixed opinions on this one. But all agreed that he was terrible- he's violent, he'd beat people up, sexual assault, steal things. So eventually people thought something needed to be done about this guy, and this is the town of 10,000 people right. And as I learned, there seems to be this basic principle in Madagascar that if you want to lynch someone you have to get their parents permission first. If you think about it, it makes sure it really doesn't happen very often. And if it does, there's probably a very good reason.

Basically it's a way of ensuring that like, your dad or your mom can go up to you and say 'Look, you really need to clean up your act- I don't know how much longer I can front for you here.'

So after about three tries his father said 'To hell with it. You're right, the guy's crazy.' They came at him with agricultural implements, he was injured and immediately ran into the local Catholic Church and demanded sanctuary- said 'Help! Help! I'm being persecuted because I'm mentally ill.' The priest eventually loaded him in the back of a van and took him off to a insane asylum, where they kicked him out three days later for beating up the other patients, but he never came back so it kinda worked out.

Be this as it may, when I was hearing this story I was thinking 'Wait a minute... there's like a police station right over there. Why didn't they do something about it?'

They were like 'Yeah, but have you seen Enri? He's enormous! They don't wanna fight him.'

'They have guns!'

'But they're not gonna shoot him, I mean come on.'

So there was this idea that it really wasn't any of their business. Eventually I figured out the police basically were there to keep the highway open. And they wouldn't go off the paved road. So what this meant is like, unless you're actually in the town itself, first of all nobody was paying any taxes, police would not come. Even in the town they wouldn't do much. But the fascinating thing was they set it up in such a way that you wouldn't know until you've lived there for a while that there was no state operative in this area. Because there are people who seem to work for the government. Later I learned that they weren't really being paid and they even had to buy their own paper to fill out forms because the government was basically providing nothing. But they were keeping up appearances.

There's a sort of traditional mode of resistance, I mean Malagasy are masters of passive resistance. Under the French colonial period for example they were trying this sort of thing. the basic approach is like, if somebody shows up and wants you to do something you really don't want to do, the first line of defense is: be nice to them, give them coffee, agree with everything they say, when they go away pretend the incident never happened. 'What? What guy? No, nobody came through telling us anything.'

And there's layer on layer of defenses these guys have developed. and it didn't work that well under the French, suddenly when the French government went away it was working better and better. The IMF was basically cutting the budget. They just simply cut police to the rural area, they figured people are running their own affairs anyway. They werent getting any taxes out out of them to speak of even before that. What eventually happens is the government effectively dissolved but they were still playing this game: this sort of like, tacit deal- we will never embarrass you, and make you feel like you're an important person who has authority, as long as you don't actually try to exercise it in any way. So everybody was playing along with this illusion of a state that didn't actually exist.

So it was an interesting test case in a lot of ways, in fact I find it a very compelling argument to use for people. Again one of the most common arguments against anarchism is that, well you can't get rid of police because people will just start killing each other. Just considered self-evident. No evidence needs to be produced. Well, actually no. This can be empirically tested and that doesn't happen. There was a case- police went away and nobody killed each other, any more than they did before, which isn't very much. And I think there's many places in the world like this by the way, where states have disappeared but we don't know because sometimes, if you are a rebel, you realize that the stupidest thing you could possibly do would be to put up a flag and say 'Hahaha! I am a rebel! We are autonomous now!'

For every case like Somalia which you hear about because there's violence, there's probably a dozen like Madagascar where nobody even knows.

It makes you think. What is it about living under a state, under someone else's authority, under the constant threat of violence if you break the rules, that actually causes behavior that makes it seem self-evident that people would behave violently if there wasn't such structures? Because in fact, if there aren't such structures, that's not how [people] act.

So there I was in Madagascar. I come back, I get a job teaching at Yale. one day I walk out of class and there's a newspaper box that says martial law declared in Seattle. And soon enough I discovered that the sort of social movement that I'd always kind of wished would exist, but didn't, actually had formed during the time that I wasn't paying attention. My immediate reaction is like great, where do I join?

So I got involved in the direct action network in New York and there are two things that really surprised me and which I've been trying to think about how to deal with ever since.

People were trying to develop this model of consensus-based direct democracy which although we identify it with the anarchist tradition, comes out of feminism just as much or more. Anarchists really adopted it because it's the type of process that could work in a society without coercive enforcement of decisions.

And it was a wonderful thing for me, but I suddenly realized that, that is what people were doing, that's how decisions had traditionally been made in Madagascar for thousand years probably.

And one reason I hadn't been completely able to understand what I was seeing when people did that at the time was, it was so natural to people that nobody really talked about it. It was just the way you do things. Whereas Americans even though we thought we live in a democratic society, how many of us have really had any experience sitting down with a whole bunch of people making a collective decision on an egalitarian basis? Maybe when we're ordering pizza.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=t1Icrh7S9l8

[chronotopes]

2024 creative/personal writing wrapped

and yes i'm proud enough of my escaprils that i'm going to list a lot of them individually. sorry.

(2023) (2022) (2021) (2020) (2019)

FICTION

Aivide the Prequel. You know her you love her I FINISHED HER THIS YEAR!!!!! It's my only completed public facing version all-OC story even if it's not 100% original fiction, and I'm still so proud and fond of it and excited to continue the story one day in whatever form that takes. This year I finished chapters 5 and 6 for a total of 73,000 words.

Vital Light. You know her, you don't know that much about her, Aivide the Prequel's more embarrassing and earnest younger/older sister. For those new: a revision of a novel from 2016 which is in itself a revision of a collaborative story from (shudders) 2012. Yes I'm insane for attempting it but also yes I feel like I've learned a lot and working on it tends to tangibly improve my life. The mess of excessively wordy first draft writing I did this year totals at just over 90,000 words.

NONFICTION

A lot of my essays this year were escapril prompts, which is a challenge meant for poetry that I cheerfully reinterpreted to be about creative nonfiction instead. Wild success!! Really excited to do it next year!! Ok let's list some essays, with the ones I think are strongest/most editable bolded. They are not going to have word counts because I Don't Feel Like It.

"Change of State," an essay about moving to Maryland.

"The Internet," a kind of underdeveloped use of paleontology as metaphor for growing up.

"Eye contact," an essay about my dynamics with my mother and my girlfriend as well as the concept of 'attention.'

"Trip," revisiting a formative camping adventure with my childhood best friends, who perhaps predictably emerged as a reocurring theme in this project.

"Spiral," an essay about my nichely significant great-grandfather and his war stories of dubious veracity.

"A childhood memory (catholic school gymnasiums)," which is the first essay of mine that mentions Jenny's siblings by name! About going to Easter Mass with her family and, relatedly, visiting your loved ones' childhood spaces.

"Portrait," about augustine and i being in gay love with each other in seventh grade art class.

"What's the truth?", about my own renegotiations of my senior year of college social fallouts.

"Bad Habit," about reading strangers' wedding websites.

"Fog," about New Year's Eve 2022 with Jenny.

"Posture," which is me in senior year of high school and the act of posturing, as I had already covered the Reprimands From My Mother in "eye contact" and had nothing to say about the concept of standing up straight.

"Oh, the light!", which I would never title an essay independently but is functionally just a longer expression of that one jesse pinkman image captioned 'how it feels to be in a transitional state'.

"Purr," about one of my friends' cats as metonym for grief.

"A recurring dream," honestly one of the weakest ones, but it's once again about my fall 2022-spring 2023 experience and the weirdness of it all.

"Beach," about visiting Esther in Florida for the first time and about my larger-scale relationship with the ocean.

"So embarrassing..., or (BEING NOTES TO MYSELF AS 2014 TURNED TO 2015)", or exactly what it sounds like.

"Truth," a sequel to "What's the truth?" that is also about Esther and Julia's wedding.

"Suspended in Air," about going to Harper's Ferry and loving my wife so much it's unreal.

"A reminder:", a total nothingburger of an essay. Essay that could have been a diary entry.

"Moth," a vivid little image of summer in Southeast Virginia as written by someone who's about to move out of there for good.

"The problem of death." Escapril prompts are really on the nose sometimes, huh? I like the central metaphor in this essay that is, in fact, about death, which involves Star Trek Two The Wrath of Khan of all things.

"Desire," about seeing myself in the end of Twelfth Night.

"Simulation," about roleplayed love confessions with Augustine.

"Unexpected Transmission," about the night I found out my boss died.

"Dark Secret," about my relationship to romantic love, especially the unrequited kind.

"Modernity," about fall 2020, taking Women and Modernism while developing my own writing fascinations with the contemporary literary micro-movements of beautiful women and theys on the internet

"The absolute limit," double essay about Reconciliation Dreams Involving The Ex-Bestie.

"Surgery," vaguely hermit-crab style set of annotated recent google searches. About budgeting and planning for the future jinxing and to a certain extent literal surgery. By far one of the strongest concepts here.

"How to exist," another Essay That Could Have Been A Diary Entry maybe but has some good prose. These last two are kind of a culmination of Personal Processes i was going through in this set of thirty essays, in which i took an artistic spin to things that had been too fucked up to write about artistically in years past.

"Tomorrow," about the month of May and my history of planning for it / of grand turnarounds occurring at the end of spring.

There were some non-escapril ones too (okay actually most of them were inspired by past escapril prompts but pretty loosely)

"Visions of the Future," about imagining my future self.

"Myopia in seventh-grade notebooks," which takes a classic trick in adapting a poem from the past into an essay.

"Eavesdropping," the product of my biannual process of rereading all of my past messages with my dead friend and wanting to kick my own ass about it all.

"Attention," about the complicated metaphysics of returning to your hometown.

POETRY

"Tampa," which engages with and somewhat ties up the Ancient Katia Tradition of writing poetry on planes titled after the destination.

An uninterestingly titled anniversary poem for jenny :)

"Pine Pollen," about how (elizabeth stokes voice) i can close the door on us but the room still exists and i know you're in it

FINAL THOUGHTS

I usually do goofy superlatives for these, but instead here are some coherent thoughts about what I think I accomplished as a writer this year and what I think I'd like to work on in the coming year. First, some strengths of this year:

I still have a lot of work to continue, but writing from prompts was wildly helpful in my efforts to formulate interesting and stylistically mature shortform creative nonfiction. Writing event-first is horrible for me and writing Spontaneous Connection-first is great when it can happen but can't be forced. Being forced to contemplate how 'so embarrassing' or whatever could most interestingly be applied to cnf kind of helped me break that barrier, which I am very grateful for. I covered a lot of new ground and revisited some old ground in an interesting way, and though the above essay list is a collection of first drafts and experiments, I'm very happy with what I gained from it.

It was wildly satisfying to finish revising Aivide and bring it to a satisfying conclusion. I still have to go back and do some smaller-scale line editing on it, and it would be a much better overall product if it was plotted and rewritten in 2023-2024 from start to finish, but Aivide the prequel also wouldn't exist without me-from-2021, so it would be very dumb to not give them significant credit. In 2024 I wrote some of the parts of this novel that are the most special to me and reflect the things I love about writing fiction most closely. It's not without its flaws, but I'm still wildly proud of it and think you (yes, you!) should read it if you like loosely-homestuck-connected science fiction or toxic homoerotic girl best friends.

It was also very rewarding to return to Vital Light, which was kind of my Shrek last year in the Prince of Egypt/Shrek analogy that I love applying to my own writing, and find that I was capable of writing Characters And Plots That Interest And Compel Me with stories other than Aivide. Vital Light is still categorized as 'the silly one' in my head, but there are at least invididual parts of it that register to me as meaningful and interesting and I think pursuing the whole project is Teaching Me New Things About Being A Writer, which is the key part.

I think for a lot of college I would make resolutions along the lines of 'this is the year I finally get published!' and would scrutinize all my non-fanfiction out-of-class writing as A Journey To Getting Published while doing nothing on the get published front because litmag submissions are the job applications of writing and we all know how much I hate doing either of those things until actively forced to. Both 'somewhat goofy prompts' and 'deep structural revision of The Novel That Owned My Soul In High School' are good exposure therapy for writing to learn, to tell myself a story, to try something and see if it works, rather than to publish.

In this coming year some of the main things I would really like to do are – 

To gather up the strength for confident and well-considered worldbuilding and get comfortable with reading lots of nonfiction to get a comfortable knowledge base in areas relevant to my subject

To write or conceptualize at least one story (it can be shortform, though shortform is its own uphill battle for me lol) starring a character or universe that did not exist before 2025,

To progress my shortform nonfiction into workable longform nonfiction,

To take at least one local writing class, not so much because I think Classes are really missing from my life but because meeting people who write and are local to you is an interesting and productive part of writing and living in a place, even if they are not interested in the same things you are and do not necessarily share an artistic ethos with you

I am not going to resolve to Submit To More Litmags because I know the kind of doomspiral that instills in me and it is also not terribly important to me right now. But I think I do want to critically examine Types Of Making Your Writing Public and explore the ones I'm comfortable with, as well as observing the mechanisms behind that comfort. Pivotally I also want to read more widely and consistently, including shortform stuff (collective BOO from the crowd!) (i'm the crowd.). First and foremost, I want to continue reading and writing from a place of pleasure and curiosity and exploration – with the obvious disclaimer that 'pleasure' does not mean Reading The Easiest Or Most Feel Good Thing, there is pleasure to be found in new and challenging things and good prose and meeting challenges – because I think that is the best way to do interesting things and never kill yourself.

[gingergofastboatsmojito]

THE BEAR S3 Predictions

Just a mental note I'm putting out here to be able to revisit it when the time comes to check its level of accuracy. I have the feeling that S3 is going to be the season of the reconciliations.

The relationship between Richie and Carmy is completely broken after the walk-in incident and Richie walks from The Bear. He happens to get some kinda job offer and accepts it just to prove Carmy wrong. They will later spend a good portion of S3 trying to repair their bond. By the end of S3 (hopefully sooner) there should be a reconciliation of some sort between them and Richie should go back to The Bear.

Nat gives birth to her new "cub" and this brings the family together. There is a reconciliation with Donna, which in some capacity benefits not only the siblings but the entire team, the restaurant as a whole. Not exactly sure how this will play out, but Donna will quit being this negative and toxic influence on everyone. Maybe she gets clean because she takes this baby as a new chance to start over and be a better grandmother than the mother she was. IDK...

Marcus' mother dies and this juxtaposition of new beginnings, births, endings, death, etc is going to be a theme throughout the whole season, that is why I actually think this funeral will be the opener.

There will be some kinda flashback episode, like 7 Fishes or a montage of some memory that has a huge impact on one or more characters. I have my $ put on the Sundays, Mr. Adamu and lil Syd would spend at Mr. Beef's. I strongly disagree with the weak argument that just because the Berzattos are catholic, their restaurant didn't open on Sundays. The gastronomic industry cares very little about those traditions especially if the place is struggling. I bet they were open every Sunday part-time, just for lunch, to get all the demand of those who went to church just because business-wise it makes total sense.

Carmen will apologize to Claire. Not sure what she's gonna make of that apology, whether she's gonna accept it or not, I hope she doesn't. I'm pretty sure there will be no reconciliation here. I don't necessarily oppose Carmy having a romantic partner and as much as I ship SydCarmy like nobody's business, I'm 100% sure they are not gonna happen any time soon. Maybe and this is a HUGE maybe, they could be the perfect cliffhanger for S4. But that would be a stretch. Not that Store & Calo couldn't pull it off, but still. So, basically, I am all for a new love interest being presented to Carmen just to see how he responds to it. After Claire he should go back to his old lone-wolf ways, I need to test that behavioral theory though, so I need a new female character to do it.

Last, but certainly not least, Miss Adamu needs her man and I'm not talking about Bear. I want to know more about Sydney's past and see her letting her hair down, putting her records on, and all that jazz. So, maybe an old flame can re-appear in her life and they can try to "reconcile". This reconciliation shouldn't work either because she's now devoted to making The Bear work and is basically a workaholic and both, Carmy & her get into this synch of type As on Speed and Red Bull, non-stop working machines, well-oiled now that they had already learned from their mistakes and The Bear succeeds but Sydney's relationship with her guy from the past fails, again. The guy feels like a 3rd wheel and lets her know that she's not in a relationship with him but with her job. Sydney understands the subtext, and this break-up is actually a wake-up call for her. She starts seeing what we all shippers are already seeing. It's not just about work for her. Yes, The Bears are too absorbing and demanding, both, the restaurant and the chef, but she doesn't mind. She loves it. Love is the operative word here. This realization should hit her hard by the end of the season.

The background of all the things I just mentioned above will be the BOH, fast-paced, chaotic, and working like a Swiss clock, just like Carmy likes it.

Am I missing something? Probably. Can't wait to find out.

Bonus tracks: I am pretty sure the wedding will either be Teff's or Fak's.

And lastly: When Sydcarmy happens, it will "officially" start with something small and inane like Syd accidentally finding out Carm has been drawing portraits of her all along... CHECK THIS OUT, I think Storer & Calo have something like this in mind or along these lines, and it should come along in S3, minus the sex part.

[nicoleanell]

I would love to hear your meta on the scene from Renfield with the priest and the vampire hunter, if you’d be willing to share!

SURE, THANK GOD YOU ASKED.

My thing with that scene is it was peak Give Renfield A Hug and also the most irredeemable thing he does in the movie short of destroying some kid's ant farm, and that instantly made me fall in love with him.

I like the fact they made Renfield an aggressively sympathetic character and at the same time not wholly innocent. Robert Montague Renfield is neither a good guy or a bad guy but he deserves to be okay. (Also he may come off way more "sane" as movie Renfields go but he's not a well person lol, and the fact he's in an all-gender support group for abuse survivors very rapidly becomes not so much A Joke as it is the Entire Point of the movie.)

In the flashbacks, it's totes played for comedy and riffing on the 1931 movie and there's a little bit of an "unreliable narrator" vibe to it when Renfield's like, it was good we had great times etc. :))) We don't really know how in control of himself he is or how much he's whitewashing. But then we get the church/vampire killer thing and there's like... the first seed of something more real going on. The movie tells us upfront that the last time Dracula was almost defeated he stopped it, willingly, and it wasn't normal vampire enthrallment stuff as much as a very human emotional choice.

There's some heavy-handed manipulation happening and it's *completely* non-supernatural. They'll lock you away. I'll protect you. I care about you. And Nic Hoult's big woobie eyes hold all the sadness and isolation and genuine hope/desire to be loved, and it's unhealthy attention but there's nothing better out there for him. 🥺 <- emoji rendition of Renfield and also me.

Oh and for good measure his "he really means it this time" internal monologue is 100% meant to sound like toxic/abusive boyfriend stuff he's echoing from the support group, which is A Joke in this movie until it's not anymore.

(Side note, I saw you mention this in another post - the mental institution headcanon is Valid. I would've liked for it to be explicitly in there somewhere but as far as I'm concerned nothing *contradicts* it and it's one of like 3 facts people associate with Spiders Georg over here. So I'll take that crumb that the threat of him getting locked up is just as likely to be in an asylum (again) as a jail. And yikes the legitimate fear of that being WORSE than the hell he's currently in.)

And the second he does the thing, some priest *completely proves Dracula right* by immediately throwing more guilt and blame on Renfield and being like YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR EVERYONE ELSE HE KILLS NOW. Which, fair! But also, dude, you're being the opposite of helpful here! Lmao fucking Catholics. He knows this! It's why he can't get out! Of course he chose Dracula and he did it on purpose and he did it because of trauma and it *cemented* him being trapped forever. This is the climax of an entire other movie in which Renfield is probably not the main character but would definitely end up my problematic fave anyway.

SO YEAH. Between that and the reveal he left a whole wife & kid, there's such an interesting theme of guilt/shame on top of self-esteem and learned helplessness issues I was not anticipating in this movie. It's important for him to get to a place of: "I want to blame this legitimately awful monster but I also did SOME of this to myself, and when I can accept that without immediately going into a fetal position, it gives him less power over me."

Does not remove his power completely! 'Cause Renfield 2023 is also not, like, saying that you can just Easily Decide To Leave Your Violent Abuser. But the affirmations about being enough and deserving better and seeking better in spite of having failed or fucked up before are important.

[missjanjie]

Holy shit, that guy is fucking hardheaded with that take. I'm Catholic as well, but guess what? I was taught HFLE (Health and Family Life Education) from class 4 in primary school (so 10 or 11). We were taught about our cycles by female teachers, body changes to expect and about STDs.

I can't really say it did me much harm in the long run. Especially since my mother never had that sort of conversation with me (she's one of those "if you don't talk about it, it doesn't happen" sorts and Catholic as all hell herself) under the assumption that I would learn about it in secondary school biology, so she didn't need to bother. If my school didn't have the foresight to teach us young, I don't know what kind of hot mess I could have ended up in.

Also. Groundbreaking concept. People......don't think about sex at all times. Even when being taught about the subject. If you're feeling this strongly about this sort of topic......mayhaps you should re-evaluate yourself and make sure you're not lowkey repressing something unpleasant.

(Plus, don't we teach kids about consent from inception? "You may not touch me here, you may not touch me there, you may not touch me in my no-no square".)

[the post in question]

On top of that, his justification that he was giving to literal CSA survivors was ‘if you knew what was happening to you it would traumatize you more’ like I will hit you with a brick. As someone that used to work in early childhood education, we’re taught to look for certain signs and by and large, kids understanding their bodies and how people interact with them significantly lessens the chance of prolonged abuse.

Hell, I was in a two year olds class and I was changing one of their diapers with me in a chair and him standing up (another teacher was using the changing table) and he yells across the room to the other kids ‘can you guys see my penis?!’ and turned to face away from them. Once I was done trying not to laugh I realized that this kid knew two things: what that body part was called and that it is a private part not meant for everyone to see. I was overall very happy that his parents had given him that level of age-appropriate education.

What I mean with that anecdote is that in my opinion, there isn’t a ‘too young’ age for kids to start learning about these things, let alone waiting for adolescence. I imagine these sort of classes vary by location. We watched the ‘puberty video’ in fifth grade (so 11-12), but the thing was, I’d already been menstruating for two years. Luckily my mom had been on top of things, but it’s crazy to think how many kids are kept in the dark bcs of outdated puritanical beliefs.

No but yeah, the fact that they seem to think talking about sex/sexuality is somehow predatory and inappropriate or will make kids think about/want sex is… sus at best. In 7th grade we watched a video about birth and there were naked people in a medical context, and I promise no one got horny from it lmao.

[ananke-xiii]

okay so the thing that I personally like about that scene in the confession booth in "Paint In Black" is that, to me, it feels very real? precisely because there is no confession at all.

Like, Dean enters that booth knowing he needs to lie about his sins because he's on a case but then he ends up starting what the priest calls "soul-searching", aka the "examination of conscience". Now, this is cool because, techincally speaking, one should do that before confession, to prepare for it and to actually confess one's sins in a "sincere" way. However, since the first confession in a catholic's life happens before first communion, which in turns happens around age 10-12, it's not infrequent for young people (and not only them, I believe) to just... lie about their sins. I surely did because, truth be told, the church had sent us on a "spiritual retreat" trip to learn how to do this internal examination and do our first confession afterward but I was like: dude, I'm only 11. So I lied because the silence was awkward and I apparently just *had to have found* at least a tiny speck of sin inside myself which I honestly didn't.

So I'm not going as far as to say that lying at confession is a canon event for young catholics but that scene felt 100% absolutely real to me. Of course, fiction being fiction, that scene had to mean something else as well and Dean is neither catholic nor a teenager (and he's also bearing the literal first curse, lol) so his surprise at the "say four or five prayers and you're good as new" feels genuine. SO he starts asking (himself) questions, which is a good first step for some serious soul-searching: "I thought I was ready to die but what if I'm not? As a matter of fact, I'm starting to think that I'm definitely not and I'm scared because I want to live my life because maybe there is more to it than I thought". Woah, this is heavy, existential-level stuff. And, of course, we don't get to hear the real confession and I think it's fair and beautiful because: a. wanting to live life is not a sin to confess; b. how one wants to live their lives is nobody's business; c. confession is indeed confidential so it wasn't for our ears to hear it anyway.

What we do hear is Sister Mathias "confessing" to Dean that that guy was cheating on his girlfriend. She wasn't a priest so she wasn't bound to secrecy but she did bond with Dean and so she spilled the tea. She's presented a little bit like "Gina", aka a smokescreen: yeah she's the hot nun that Dean finds attractive but is she really? I mean, yeah she is hot okay, but Dean's attracted to her because she seems to have gone through something that's similar to that he feels he's going through as well and wants to ask her questions and know about her experience.

There's an unsual sensitivity for a Buckleming episode around Sister Mathias because she's made a very specific choice and she's not judged for it. She understood Isabella because they also happened to share a similar story made of "painful love". Because of that love, Isabella was forced, unlike Sister Mathias, to enter a convent even though she felt like dying when she did so. Isabella committed an awful act but I mjust admit that I feel sympathy for her because her life was undeniably sad and ended horribly. Even as a ghost, first of all she ended up in a foreign land (lol, ghosts language is universal I guess), but she was also eternally tied to that one painting made by the lover who "betrayed" her. She lost everything, she had nothing that belonged to her. Not even her journal was hers, because it had become her father's after her death.

It's interesting that, just like we don't get Dean's "real" confession, Dean didn't want Sam to read Isabella's journal. There’s – there’s things, there’s…people, feelings that must stay secret. Or only told to and shared with the right person.