#It was puritan beliefs all along!

[grungekitty-77]

Eternal punishment is not a thing, nor should it be. It doesn't make anything better for anybody. If they have stopped hurting people, then this is just about you getting to hurt someone.

Get that Christian dogma out of your head! IT IS NOT YOUR JOB TO BE HELL!!

I actually love hearing about reformed people's stories. I love hearing about people who were in toxic communities or people who used to objectively be dickheads talking about how they got out of that. How they made themselves better.

I hate how most people's initial reaction to stories like that are things like:

"How could you have ever done those things?!" "Oh my god, you believed those things?!" "Well it doesn't un-do the harm you did!"

People incessantly advocate for change but then refuse to allow people who have changed the grace of being acknowledged and given opportunities and chances.

I love hearing about ex-antis talking about how they don't spend their days being angry and sending death threats anymore.

I love hearing about ex-homophobes who realized there's no magic law about what is "natural."

I love reformed bullies talking about how they made amends with their victims and spend their days being considerate of others.

You can't scream about wanting people to change but then expect them to spend the rest of their lives stuck in the past and on who they used to be. You can't expect people to spend the entire rest of their lives grovelling and apologizing and demeaning themselves.

Instead of clinging to who they were, latch onto who they are.

Ask how they got out of it. Commend them on changing. Enjoy that there's one less cause of harm in the world.

[sepublic]

The core to Belos’ character is that he’s everything wrong with the United States of America. Why else is he a Puritan, a group of racist settlers who helped found the U.S. and contributed to the genocide of the Native Americans? Why else does he dress up like a Founding Father when not in papal robes, with a ponytail resembling a powdered wig?

Luz thinking he’s a great explorer, only to find out Philip is just an entitled asshole who takes credit from others to make himself look better, is a play on people IRL finding out that people like Christopher Columbus and Thomas Edison were assholes who stood on the shoulders of others. It’s a play on white mediocrity and how white guys do the bare minimum and expect to be praised.

Belos is a bigot whose entire motive and goals are based on genocide-level bigotry, and he refuses to unlearn any beliefs; Being a historical Puritan he is 100% racist and misogynistic and unlike Caleb, didn’t take the chance to grow out of it. He wants to believe he’s born special and better than everyone else, and that’s why he buys into white supremacy. The modern cop is the descendant of the witch hunter.

There is an explicit connection between the colonial genocide of Native Americans and Belos’ genocide of witches and demons, down to imposing a Christian misunderstanding of the local religion. He feels entitled to their magic but does none of the work to understand, nor does he cultivate a sustainable relationship with the land the way indigenous people do, hence consuming palismen.

He coined the term Savage Ages, with Savage having racist connotations. His fantasy is the Monster Hunter, the idea that it’s okay to dehumanize anything and even anyone that’s different to kill them. He believes in the Evil Races trope which is of course inherently racist. Belos treats Luz like his White Man’s Burden, a brown child who needs a White Savior to civilize (just as the U.S. kidnapped Native American children to assimilate), and then tries to kill Luz when she doesn’t go along instead of just. Leaving Luz alone or dragging her into the human realm with him anyway.

Belos makes exceptions to his religion when convenient, allowing himself to use magic but then demonizing those who do, just as homophobic Christians and Republicans do. Think of all the anti-gay politicians who are caught being gay; They’re not repressed victims, just hypocrites who think they’re entitled to special treatment. Philip didn’t rat on Caleb for hanging out with a witch for the reasons Pro-Lifers let loved ones have abortions; Caleb was important to him, and he’s not one of the witches Philip planned to murder. And even then he still killed Caleb for ‘crossing a line’!

The Puritans and other groups informed the Alt-Right in the U.S., as well as Evangelicals who rage about how something as innocuous as Pokemon is a Satanic influence (Yes this happened; The Conformatorium doesn’t seem so unrealistic after all, and remember that Dana’s father gave her a copy of Pokémon Red before he died that she latched onto). But like the Televangelist, Belos indulges in material wealth and glory via the glamour of Catholicism, because he’s not even consistent to Puritan values either.

He’s Trump, he’s Elon Musk, he’s Ron DeSantis. He’s the incel/mass shooter who fell down the pipeline, who feels cheated out of the promises of a white supremacist society and takes it out on minorities but not other white guys, because he thinks the system’s idea is fine it just isn’t working as it should, at least he’s better than those guys. He calls others NPCs because he wants to believe he’s born special and better and chosen.

Belos’ reaction to Caleb being with Evelyn was undeniably motivated by racial disgust at his brother for committing miscegenation and making Philip related to a savage in the process, it’s why he never brings it up because of the scandalous shame of it all. Belos hates those witches more than he ever loved Caleb, Caleb was never his priority or he’d have changed his mind; It had far less to do with ‘codependency’ and far more to do with white supremacy, perhaps Philip wouldn’t have minded Caleb settling with a human white woman. The issue being not Caleb leaving him but who Caleb left him for.

Belos thinks taming a wilderness and murdering its natives makes him a tough man because he’s insecure. He has a sniveling victim complex that can’t comprehend why minorities would dislike him, except that they’re mean. Belos epitomizes the U.S.’s racial and colonial violence, its white supremacy, and its global police narrative that decides the existence of another, independent world is an inherent threat to his own.

The conflict between Philip and Caleb was over racism, and so it’s black and white because racism is always wrong. Making it ‘nuanced’ would take away from the fact that the motives for real life racism are inherently nonsensical and insincere; Caleb wasn’t selfish for living with another culture on its terms, instead of staying in the racism village (The Gravesfield statues corroborate Philip being an adult when he arrived in the Demon Realm, according to the memory portraits; Caleb waited until Philip was an adult before leaving). Philip was not a weird kid, he was adhering to his social norms with games about how anyone different or actually weird should die, and he wanted to do this, he’s a Conformatorium prude like all the rest and let his fear of Evelyn justify and evolve into violence.

Even if he was weird, Belos isn’t telling other people they should fit in for their sake, he’s telling them they should just die (Unlike himself, because he’s ‘special’); It’s what he admits to the Collector in the finale about not bothering teaching them anything, just wiping them out. Belos uses magic only to kill magic and discards it out of disgust when he’s about to leave, but makes an exception for the life of the non-human he’s become.

And the choice for the villain to be a genuine Puritan makes sense, because this is a show about weirdoes, so who’s designating them as such and why? Luz has a conflict with the IRL system since the first scene and Belos symbolizes the system, his Puritan ideology marked the foundation for it and the U.S. Belos killing Caleb is just the cherry on top of his actual motives and what his character was always about, that’s why his death scene isn’t him lamenting about Caleb or how lonely he is, it’s him being racist and demanding special treatment for his race. A racist white man feels no guilt for the witches and demons he murdered, just his white brother and clones; He still keeps killing them too btw.

Deeming someone a lost cause and killing them instead of working to rehabilitate is un-Christian, because Belos is not secretly bound by his religion, he picks and chooses. His guilt is not Catholic, he is the Protestant belief in his own superiority. Belos isn’t just a Nazi, he’s an American racist, he’s the KKK; He’s a condemnation of American Values and Exceptionalism, and lowkey I think that’s part of the reason why Family-Friendly Disney canned TOH, because Belos is a condemnation of a major consumer base. Disney being more progressive than other companies means jackshit because it’s performative and the bar is in hell.

[fermented-writers-block]

With the revelation of the Collector being just one out of a whole species and the whole “Collector creed” as in the book King read, it really has me thinking on the mural in King’s tower and the name of the Titan Trappers as a group. What if the big battle between the Titan Trapper and Titan was not about slaying the Titan, but rather about the Titan Trapper trying to subdue the Titan long enough for the Collectors to collect and preserve it?

After all, the comet IS headed towards the Titan’s face, and as we saw in this episode, well…

But given the established fact that Titan magic cancels out Collector magic this episode, as well as the mystery of how that battle ended, I feel the story of the Collectors and Titans may have gone in a direction like this:

Countless eons ago, the Collector (who shall be referred to as Cole for ease) came into existence to a group of Collectors. At some point, he was brought along to observe and participate in the collecting of a new planet as part of his training to be a proper Collector...

Amongst the creatures they set out to collect, they came across huge, powerful beings known as the titans whose magic, curiously, made them resistant to the Collectors’ magic. Desiring to collect such powerful creatures, they empowered and created the Titan Trappers, who would ideally trap and pin down the Titans long enough to actually collect them.

Practically though, the Titan’s magic proved too strong of a counter to the attempt to collect them, so while the adult Collectors tried to figure out how to preserve the adult Titans, Cole was sent out with the task of collecting the much weaker - and thus easier to collect - baby Titans.

However, instead of preserving them, Cole wound up playing and having so much fun with his unexpected new friends that he went to the other Collectors to argue for his new friends to stay UNcollected and UNpreserved. Aka going going directly against the “Collector creed.”

But rather than punishing Cole for deviating from their book of conduct and beliefs, the adult Collectors took outrage at the Titans who had “meddled” in their affairs and “corrupted” their poor, innocent, rule-following child.

To the adult Collectors, their precious Cole could not have come up with such heretical ideas on his own. Surely he could not have fallen into such a transgression against everything the group is meant to stand for out of his own free will.

No, it must have been the influence of the Titans and their horrific magic, and as decreed in the book of the Collectors, these meddlers in personal affairs MUST be eradicated. Thank goodness they caught this in time and prevented their precious Cole from forsaking their family and everything they believed in.

As for the demons who dared try to “corrupt” their child and by extension the rest of the Collectors, the the stars would descend from the heavens above to strike the world below in fiery judgement - a world which would be immolated as part of the efforts to prevent any swaying away from the truth that they all follow and have been teaching Cole to follow.

In other words, sounds an awful lot like a Puritan colonist getting so swept up in the fervor of burning witches at the stake as their interpretation of the Bible decreed - so swept up that they cannot accept a loved one’s true self could deviate so far from the norms of society and blames such deviancy on witches and demons, amiright?

[aimfor-theheart]

on the death of skirt chasers

a small think piece on how media has been stripped of romance, sex appeal, and charm over the last 20 years using trigun and trigun stampede as an example—specifically looking at this through wolfwood and vash as a tangible way to track this evolution.

it’s interesting and also unsurprising to me that trigun stampede stripped vash and wolfwood of some of their biggest personality traits from the 98 anime, which were their love of women. to be frank— they were both dogs lol

but vash was this sort of forlorn man who, meryl, upon meeting him, adequately describes him by asking, “are you the type of man to fall in love right away and get your heart broken?” or something to that effect. and he says what, no way! and then proceeds to fall in love with the next beautiful woman he sees and gets his heart broken by the end of the episode. and we were seeing this constantly throughout the show, then even in the later movie of the early 2010s badlands rumble.

and the 2000s are notorious for dubious, sexist comments from men who are women-obsessed. our action movies are packed with sexy female characters only existing for romance, etc. etc. we’re sort of at the tail end of it in 2010. so arguably, vash is almost worse here to me? he’s really pushy and borderline inappropriate with how stubborn he is. in a way that, while persistent in the 98 anime, he had a little more boyish charm to him and they never made him so forceful.

and then the middle and later 2010s happen where marvel takes over our action movies and romance and sex and womanizers are all but killed—originally, in reaction to the sexism. it’s important to note that the me too movement picks up in the middle and later 2010s too and becomes well-known by the end of this decade. and in response, i think we nosedive into puritanical ideas and sentiments by the end of the decade.

now we must always remember when a movement (ie feminism in this case) has a critique or reaction that catches on (the me too movement, men being pushy and overly flirtatious in our media, treating women in action movies only as sexy romance options, or showcasing toxic dynamics that subconsciously tell men to keep chasing her, even if she’s not interested) then the oppressive force (patriarchy in this case) will always transform as a way to take control again (bringing puritanical ideals back—we shouldn’t be showing sex or romance in our movies. we should not be consuming any dark content, ever. etc etc.)

i believe we killed romance and sex in the later 2010s because of an over correction of our sex-obsessed media of the 2000s—or rather, the patriarchy over corrected in order to maintain control. there were critiques of the 2000s that were valid, but like i said, the oppressive force will always transform to maintain power, so we hit puritanical beliefs again. “political correctness” if you will.

(capitalism surely has something to do with this too and it’s definitely along the lines of—be more beautiful and even hotter, but your body is not a sexual one, but a visual or capitalistic one. etc. etc. another topic, another time.)

and so here we are and we don’t really have any flirty or womanizing characters like we used to. and we see this very plainly in 2023s trigun stampede, where they have completely stripped vash and wolfwood of any of those traits.

and i sort of miss them? i think a 2023 forlorn vash who loves great and hard and gets his heartbroken would not be a bad thing—one who is effected and charmed by women, maybe rather than nearly stalking them like in the 2010 movie. i think it shows another piece of vash and that is quite literally that he wears his heart on his sleeve. and he gets hurt for it, endlessly. more than that there is a little more whimsy to him? and aching. he’s this lonely man who wants love so, so badly.

now, wolfwood in 98 version was less this forlorn chaser and more this suave womanizer. many jokes are made where vash is chasing a girl that wolfwood sorta already has if he wants her. but he’s this lone wolf who leaves everyone a little high and dry. (of course until the end—with milly —where, in a very classic lone-man way, he dies after leaving a woman with his child. the tragedy being that when he was ready to stop roaming and settle down with her and meryl and vash, he dies, thus still leaving everyone). and i mean even his appearance in the 98 version—big chested with low-buttoned shirt, shaggy hair and stubble. he looks like a 90s rockstar. he looks like your lone cowboy. he’s reminiscent of spike from cowboy bebop who has a similar charming air to him that never leads anywhere because he’s destined to be solo. the unintentional, intentional womanizer.

then the later 2010s hit and we kill the charming womanizer. (tony stark kills the womanizer. another topic, another time.)

and now in 2023, wolfwood is completely stripped of any of his sex appeal and suave personality that the 98 and even 2010 version of him oozed naturally. gone is the cool, tough, lone wolf. replaced with a sort of boy-bandish, squeaky-clean, semi villain, semi hero. he’s crass and he’s snarky and he’s supposed to be rough around the edges. but he doesn’t look it? and he lacks the charm that 98 wolfwood naturally had. which aided him when he talked to kids—he was softer. charming. people liked wolfwood, even when he was being crass. he knew how to talk to people, maybe even how to con them when he wanted.

2023’s wolfwood is tough to get along with. and while fun sometimes, i think it does lose this…romanticism to him? there is a softness in wolfwood that is sorta lost in 2023s version. while we get a fuller and better written backstory, we sort of lose this other aspect of him. we’re supposed to infer from his backstory and his relationship to his brother that he is a good man, just one put in a horrible situation, always had bad luck. whereas the 98 version, we saw that wolfwood was good with kids. gentle. women loved him—he charmed rowdy men, even swindled when he needed to. we saw that there was something good in wolfwood, even if he remained mysterious.

all this to say i do miss the romanticism? i do miss these men being…romantic? flirty? charming? and not even in a fangirl way but in a…humans are romantic creatures way? we are sexual beings? and romance and sex can tell us a lot about characters and their personalities.

and i think looking at vash and wolfwood in particular is a good way to track how we lost this romanticism in our media over the last 20 years—we literally see it in them, in their remaking in 2023, where they are stripped of it.

i think the mid and later 2020s will continue to return to it in some way—we already see this with the resurgence in romance novels (or these dark fantasy romance novels gaining popularity) and even fandom spaces being more “mainstream” on social media. but in late stage capitalism (and thus late stage patriarchy, racism, etc.) it looks a little like a carnival mirror of romance and sex to me.

another topic, another time. etc. etc.

[prettyboykatsuki]

how surprising ur response doesn’t address the issue at all!!!! i would love for u to go off on me because it’s easy for me to win a disagreement when i know i’m right lmao and also i KNOW 100% for a fact that countless people would agree w me but it’s not reaching the correct audience w a sane mindset cuz all ur followers are 🌽 addicts too thinking the same shit as u and pitying and comforting ur ass in ur replies🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️shits cringe to watch but anyway every normal person knows it’s weird and that’s all the matters i suppose cuz post that shit literally anywhere else and your ass WILL get dragged

maybe let’s try a one month no 🌽 challenge and try again! maybe ur mind will detox and you’ll realize ur fucking weird

i didn't respond to your ask with any dignity because the original premise of your ask was not worthy of being dignified with time nor attention.

ive gotten tens of asks of people who also want to hold moral superiority over me by regurgitating opinions they've adopted from their online internet circles without any real nuance and thus i have no reason to take it seriously. you are not the first person to try to peddle this to me and there is nothing about your ask that warrants any of my thoughtful consideration.

i normally wouldn't bother with correcting this one either, but because im already in a deeply irritable mood - sure, i will give you the response you are asking for, starting with the post you are criticizing.

firstly, you're incorrectly reading my post. you intentionally misrepresent my post with your wording and also the sort of joke i was making by implying "memed about waiting for the age of consent" so i can indulge my porn addiction."

im going to disregard your application of harmful real world rhetoric to what is essentially fiction and go along with the idea that fictional characters are in anyway effected by my posting.

the main issue is fundamentally that you are misreading it. i know you are because i am the original poster and the author of this post - which means i can directly tell you that the point of this post is ironic.

it is poking fun at the people who have accused me of pedophilia for aging up a fictional character for years because he is now, in canon, an adult.

the irony of that is that i was doing what horikoshi was when writing my fics. the people who treated my aging up as invalid simply because horikoshi is the author are no longer able to wield it against me. the author has no confirmed his adulthood, which makes that argument moot.

your argument is that i was in some way making a joking about having waited for izuku to reach adulthood in order to sexualize him. this is blantantly incorrect and a misreading of the post in general. that is not something you can counter because if you've spent any time on my blog at all - it would be very clear i was already aging up and sexualizing characters on my own whims.

both posts for better viewing.

the other thing you spout off about is porn addiction. this is the main reason i didn't find any reason to take your points seriously. if you knew, researched, or understood any of the points you've borrowed from your peers on tiktok - you would know why porn addiction is not a term you can apply to erotica.

in the first place, there is no universally understood diagnostic criteria for porn addiction. there are other forms of research related to how porn interferes with cis-heterosexual partnerships and the quality of sex life and some affiliation with watching porn as a compulsive behavior - but neither of these things qualify as addiction.

pornography is a highly politicized topic because our society is structured upon old school protestant christian beliefs and puritanism. but pornography and sexually explicit materal is a difficult thing to quantify in usage. it is culturally ubiquitous and has several nuances in relation to its use. it is near impossibly to quantify sexual behavior because it is a normal, human urge like hunger or thirst whether or not you choose to believe that.

here are three articles making points about the claims around porn addiction from reliable sources that you're welcome to point out.

one | two | three

as i keep repeating - addiction is a specific line of behavior and being frank, it's rather insulting you think i suffer from a porn addiction given i used to do actual drugs and suffered from real life addictions lmao.

but if you want to use other addiction diagnostic critera in this argument. my posting on silly erotica tumblr does not

interfere with my daily life or relationships

negatively affect my performance in school or at work

cause me to withdraw from social situations

lose interest in my other hobbies and activies that improve quality of life.

none of the above applies to me. but im guessing you don't have any actual concern.

it's very clear to me and everyone else that your peddling of this term has nothing to do with whether or not i actually have the addiction - and everything to do with you attempting to moralize my behavior to an audience and boost up your own points.

if i really did have a porn addiction, implying i had an addiction - you are implying that this is something i should be ashamed of just as you are implying my fellow porn addicts should also be ashamed.

you see addiction as a point of shame and not a disease and don't show any actual empathy which makes you a morally bankrupt human being in my subjective view. you don't have any actual arguments about how this might effect my behavior or character. only that addiction (a thing people can't control) is bad, that i am bad for watching porn and being addicted to it.

neither of these are provable as you do not know me.

instead your attempt to find fault is to arm yourself with puritan talking points and internet tiktok buzzword language and make your clauses have some kind of ground or validity. it is trite and frankly embarrassing watching you come into my inbox with such confidence that you would be able to argue with me critically and meaningfully.

the last thing i will address is your point about this not being a popular opinion.

you are under the impression im not aware of this and that this is not a choice i've made deliberately so i will be kindly blunt.

i, unlike you, have formed these opinions with my own critical understanding of culture, sociology, psychology, and politics by researching and reading from people who study these things with more expertise than me.

these opinions are formed by my own discretion and worldview. they are unpopular opinions.

unlike you, my peers are not decided by my moral parading. rather, im frank and upfront with those world views and have formed a circle that agrees with them.

i do not need your validation nor the validation of people online to confirm whether or not im a good person. the reason people agree with me is not pity, but because they too have formed their own opinions and ours happen to allign.

you think this is pitying behavior because the people you choose to align with would cast you out for showing even a breadth of disagreement or critique. you have not fostered a space for intelligent conversation because you can't see disagreement without accusing someone of this or that.

you are all the same and you are all equally confident in your hivemind opinions. i applaud your audacity and admire your confidence in your own ability to argue something you've barely formed your own conscious thought about.

i dont need to detox anything and i dont care about being weird. i also, really don't care about you or your opinions.

you are unoriginal and boring, a pest of the highest pedigree and i don't find you intimidating. your inability to receive validation from your own moral character will doom you to shame and guilt for as long as you allow and thats much more punishment than i could ever dole out to you

have a good day pookie 🫂🫂

[theweeklydiscourse]

Why is nuance dieing?

The younger generation seems to be so much more obsessed with moral puritanism in fiction and irdk why. Could it be because kids these days don't interact with real people and are just chronically online so they repeat what they see on the internet?

Actually saw someone saying people who like fictional bad boys are the reason why men get away with sa & rape irl and countries are criminalizing abortion...

It's just so depressing to see that. This line of thinking is scary actually.

I don't remember people going this mad over morals when shows and movies like Vampire Diaries and Twilight saga were huge. It's like people have regressed.

The media we consume is becoming more and more didactic as we enter an age where it seems like every piece of popular media is obsessed with delivering their messages and themes like an after school PSAs. Media is becoming increasingly more sanitized and “family friendly” to appeal to the broadest possible audience to create more and more profits for corporations. This obsession with sanitized fiction has become commonplace with many younger people who parrot what they see online and on the media they consume and proceed to deliver underdeveloped takes on subjects they don’t fully understand yet.

It becomes even more interesting when people point to fictional narratives as the cause for societal problems when there are already larger institutions that have historically been responsible for what they claim fiction causes. They displace the blame for societal ills like SA, abuse, patriarchal violence and misogynistic legislation onto fiction, fan fiction and media that explores taboo subject matter. While I don’t deny that fiction has power, 90% of the time these people have no idea of the ways literary works influence our culture and default to a 1:1 “monkey see, monkey do” explanation for why people must consume the “correct media”.

Another factor is the way that people have become accustomed to moralizing their content consumption. They have convinced themselves that they need a concrete and righteous justification for their likes and dislikes and this has ruined the way fandom interacts with literature, film and other art forms. With this in mind, they can no longer dislike or even hate something without creating some moral justifications for why “hating this thing is actually progressive and righteous!” and in the process, conflate consumerism with activism.

The comparison to Puritanism is quite fitting in this case. After all, the principles of that religion were based in purity, obedience and censorious beliefs for self-indulgences and we can draw comparisons with the way people online discuss certain subjects. There’s a phenomenon where people will say something along the lines of: “It’s alright to like (insert problematic character here)! But you need to acknowledge that they are a bad person.” To them, it seems like a gesture at fairness and magnanimity when in reality, it is an attempt at exerting unearned moral authority over the tastes of others. It is a demand that a person proves their moral innocence to them in a performative manner that validates their need to feel superior. But it’s all performative purity because even if a person did explain/justify their fictional tastes, these people wouldn’t care and would continue to demand purity from others.

People can’t even discuss certain characters anymore without running into people accusing them of being terrible people who would approve of real-life violence and abuse. And I can’t shake the feeling that it wasn’t always like this, when did it change?

[lizbethborden]

Interested in how you feel the witch misinterprets the folklore/beliefs surrounding witches

Hi anon. I started writing you an answer last night while squorked to high heaven on edibles and cold medication. Needless to say, it was gibberish. Here is my second attempt.

I'll start by talking about the function of the witch figure in Eggers' film.

The Vvitch is basically a reframing of the classic "man vs nature" conflict, which is not uncommon for movies taking place in the colonial period or along a frontier, such as New England was in the 1600s. In a way, it shares common ground with movies like Revenant (the one where a bear tries to eat Leo DiCaprio) or Ravenous 1999 (the one where soldiers in the old west eat each other in various ways), or even the series The Terror, where the wilderness is both the material, actual wilderness that deprives and starves the sailors, as well as the supernatural Tuunbaq which pursues them. Like The Terror, nature in The Vvitch is both the material reality of isolation, poor harvests, and lack of resources AND the supernatural being, the witch, who lives in the woods and hunts the family.

The threat of nature in all these stories is to dissolve and ultimately prove false all the rules, roles, and ethics of civilization, which the characters value and depend on for their identities. You can see why this trope works hand in hand with the colonial and frontier periods, when white people underwent a lot of stress and had to invent whole new racisms as a result. In the case of the characters in The Vvitch, they have self-consciously struck out into what they see as a Biblical wilderness, after being cast out of their settlement, and they see their fight against nature in those terms, framing the dissolution of their morals and roles in terms of sin. This is where the witch figure comes in. The material dangers of the wilderness are evident: their rotten corn, their lack of food, their isolation from help and medicine. The function of the witch in their story is to literalize the moral and personal dangers of the wilderness: sin and sexuality.

Each character in the story feels like a failure, and that they are not fulfilling their assigned and appropriate roles in the Christian household they keep. Thomasin resents being scapegoated and forced to work harder than her siblings. Katherine is afraid to keep following her husband and struggles to love him in their deprived condition. William feels helpless to protect and guide his family the way a patriarch should. Caleb is confused and questioning their whole way of life after the loss of Samuel. Probably the only characters with no moral struggles are those rotten little twins. As the witch's attacks on their family progress and their resources dwindle, these tensions grow in intensity until they erupt. Ultimately, the last vestiges of civilization are lost in the form of Thomasin's clothes as she walks naked to join the witches' sabbath. She has been reduced or degraded or uplifted, depending on your interpretation, to a state of raw nature, civilization's opposing and eroding force.

This is not the role of the witch in the early modern colonial period. Where The Vvitch imagines her as coming from outside the community, from nature and the wilderness, arguably the witch was in fact an INTRA-community figure to the Puritans--someone from within their society, feeding off of it like a parasite.

The Puritans inherited their conceptions of witchcraft from the general European model in the early modern period. The English version of the witch figure had quirks compared to the continental form, which I won't get into because I can't remember the details and I'm at work without my books rn so I'd just be bullshitting you. English law also did not call for the death penalty for witches except in extreme cases, so England had comparably fewer executions than the continent. The tl;dr of the witch is that she is functionally the inverse of a Christian; by "inverse" I mean like an inverted photograph--the Christian has holy sacraments, she has Blasmphemous Evil Sacraments (kissing Satan's anus), the Christian has the holy meal of Christ's blood and body, she has the Blasphemous Evil Meal (eating garbage and offal at the witches' sabbath), etc. Did you ever watch Chilling Adventures of Sabrina on Netflix? A joke going around at the time was that the dialogue for the witches went something like, "Sabrina, pass the UNHOLY butter for my SATANIC toast"--well, that's kind of how people actually thought of witches at this time.

From an academic and theological standpoint, this "inverted Christian" idea was useful to reify the beliefs of the Church. On an interpersonal level, the witch had a different function, which was to expurgate unchristian conflicts and emotions from the community. There is a popular myth that witchcraft accusations were used by authorities etc to get rid of lay practitioners of folk medicine and "white" magic--midwives, cunning folk, etc--but this is not accurate and it was uncommon for cunning folk, at least in England, to be swept up in the net of witch trials. For the ordinary person, witch accusations were more about interpersonal conflict, about arguments and fights between ordinary people in their day to day, than they were about theological differences or the practice of folk magic (which was incredibly common and even practiced in Salem at the time of the trials there).

This was a society that was highly interdependent. Especially for the Puritans living on a frontier in a foreign country, across an ocean from their homeland, the reliability of a neighbor with a tool, a meal, or some other charitable loan could be the difference between security and hardship. Hospitality was the baseline expectation and it was considered rude not to do a favor if you were asked--to spare food or money for a person begging at your door, give beer to a traveler, or help your neighbor bring the hay in from their meadow. And because well-being was so tenuous--poverty was always a bad harvest, wave of sickness, or shipwreck away--it was an environment that bred marginalization (people being pushed into poverty and dependence by outside forces) and resentment (those in need had to be taken care of by the community, and were a living reminder of the fragility of material success).

The figure of the witch gave the community a way to express and expel its fears and resentments. Your oxen getting sick and dying wasn't a fluke, it was because that beggar woman yelled at you when you wouldn't give her something to eat. Your baby dying in childbirth wasn't just a sad happenstance, the neighbor who attended you at the birth and was always jealous of your husband's money put a curse on the infant. Etc and so forth. These were dangers from inside the community, from neighbors and people who were known, not from malefic outsiders--that particular fear, of outsiders, wilderness, etc. was neatly symbolized for the Puritan colonists along ethnic lines (the Native Americans, to some extent the French). Rather than symbolizing an external force unraveling Christian livelihood and goodwill, witches were the force from within, the people closest to you, and thus the most likely people to really piss you off. Especially in large witch trials like in Salem, there was a conspiratorial "shadow society" element to it all that really emphasized that witches and their community were a mirror inverse of the Christian community, worshipping Satan instead of God.

For whatever reason, Eggers did what he did in The Vvitch, which was fine. But it really brought down the verisimilitude of the work. He was very accurate in a million other ways, particularly in the idea of predestination that scares Caleb so badly (the belief that some people are destined to go to heaven and some to hell and there is no way of knowing which; some are just saved by divine grace and some aren't). But he wanted to make a modern horror movie in the end with the result being what you see, and his witch conforms to the contours of what the modern mind thinks she should be. The truth is that in some ways, The Crucible captures the mood if not the reality of Puritan witch beliefs better, in that witchcraft accusations exploded from interpersonal conflicts within communities, rather than being incited by the darkness outside them.

[historia-vitae-magistras]

Alright, I would love more head canons or a story, but if you would please humour me. You have mentioned several times that either Alfred just straight up doesn't see mythical creatures by either sleeping through it in his tent with his bro or avoiding them just in general when he can. You also mentioned Mathew also saw them and just thought himself crazy. An imagery penny for your thoughts of the young boys and their Wendigos and other things that go bump in the night. Also if they believe in their local gods/guardian spirits and stuff.

I'll have to do Matt at another time because this got long but Alfred has a sense of things, and I think he's much more afraid of things he can't shoot than Matt because Alfred came into the world, and everything is noticed. In the more fanciful parts of my universe, Alfred raised the dead; he disturbed the spirits; he pulled the fae from their realms just by coming into being. This is a large part, besides the literary invention of America, of why I have him born at the end of the 16th century when, under the Reign of Elizabeth I, there was something of a renaissance of folk belief before the witchhunt of the mid-17th. Wraiths and revenants woke at the sound of his cries and dragged themselves from their graves at the call of his screams. Will-o'-the-wisp danced at the end of the property along the corpse road. Iron had to be woven through his cradle and into the foundations. And when he was small, he didn't see a difference in the fantastical and the mundane. Uncle Rhys has a dragon, and Papa has fox hounds. It's not weird when he's little. And these sorts of things existed in the British colonies in North America. You have pre-Christian symbols carved into Virginian houses. They were obsessed with astrology, and witchcraft was punished. He inherited and continued this in his earliest days.

And then came the Puritans. As much as any culture could in the 17th century, they removed themselves from any natural cycles. It was the only place in the 17th-century Western world where birthrates stayed consistent throughout the year. And here, Puritanical Protestants believed mankind was so thoroughly depraved that only a select few could atone and join the elect. Superstition and evil were all purposeful. There was no such thing as a coincidence. But it was also a very prosperous society with twice the literacy rate of England itself. So they could absolve themselves of all natural ties and push themselves as far from anything natural (i.e. demonic) as possible. And this is where it ended. He's cut off from Arthur several times by war in the mid-17th century, and Puritan child rearing was called 'breaking the will,' so he just bent and did what he was told for extended periods because the one time he didn't; he got strung up for it.

And that permanently changed how he saw the world. His playful childhood more or less disappeared, and he lost interest in anything supernatural until adulthood. He's obsessed with science and tech partially because it's a way to explain the world that doesn't trigger his sense of trauma. He believed in things, but in a cryptozoological way, not a spiritual way. He doesn't sense anything but the very worst and he's the worst kind of skeptic who searches out

[mdhwrites]

Continuing with your thoughts on Belos and the non-characters of the protagonists, as I was watching WaD I realized I was rooting for Belos rather than the main character and I wanted your thoughts on that.

Although Belos' character needs the improvements you mentioned, he at least still has agency, in that he is moving the plot along through action rather than reaction.

He has a definable goal (genociding all witches) backed by clear motivations (puritanical belief system; a witch caused him to accidentally kill his brother). He has a plan to accomplish this (rising to imperial power; creating grimwalkers to bring his brother back to life) and yet still experiences setbacks (day of unity foiled; grimwalkers always betray him). He is no less determined, and suffers for his beliefs (rotting body; traumatic hallucinations) while he aims to recoup his losses and finally accomplish his ultimate goal (first attempting to possess the Collector and failing, then attempting to possess the Titan and succeeding)

In short, Belos is a more compelling protagonist than Luz, who has things happen to her without her input (her palisman hatching, Amity telling her how to get out of the Collector's dreamworld, the Titan explaining how she can win still, etc). Also, as you said, by the end of S3 she is at her most unlikable, making us less sympathetic to her. She has no personal goals of her own that connect to her as a character beyond desperately wishing to be accepted by others, which makes her out to be more of a people-pleaser than anything (read: a flaw).

I love Luz, I really do. But she could have been more than what she became. She wasn't allowed to have an impact on the plot, and I regret that. Literally any other main character could take her place and the outcome of the finale wouldn't budge a nudge. It ended up making me root for the villain over the actual protagonist, and that seems like a pretty big problem for a show.

Okay, I try to mostly do my asks mostly in order so this has been long overdue. Let's fix that. *cracks neck* Though... Really for that big statement... This isn't one I have a great into. I've made it clear that while I dislike Luz, I actually find her easier to talk about than Belos. That I personally could never root for him because I find anything good about him to be posturing that the show not only doesn't back up but actively undermines. That a good performance and some good lines don't make up for the fact that nothing he does really has a proper impact on anything or anyone. Worse yet, I've already talked about how people really need to stop asking for 'proactive' protagonists because they're not really a thing and commonly DEEPLY detrimental to your story. So... What am I supposed to say here? Simple: Let's talk about payoff. Because at the point where you're rooting for the villain, it's because you know that they can provide a bigger, more shocking payoff than the characters and that what they have been doing, the enjoyment they have been providing, hasn't been working. Because, especially with a racist fuck like Belos, you aren't rooting for him to win. You're rooting for him to genuinely come one second from the brink of winning. This is where sheer entertainment is actually kind of a big deal. 'The Rule of Cool' exists for a reason. If it looks badass enough, has enough production value and has you screaming at the top of your lungs, SOMETHING is going right. In my opinion, this is actually why I like Michael Bae's first Turtles Movie (I saw it in the break room while working at Walmart) because yes, they destroy physics. They survive shit they shouldn't. It has some really dumb shit in it but it is ALL fun. It couldn't pump the breaks even if wanted to because they ripped them out five years ago because YOLO MOTHERFUCKERS! This is a level of entertainment that TOH understood in S1 and seemed to lose until the finale of S3. It's part of why the magic being so boring matters because I'd overlook plotholes more if the magic inciting the plotholes was more fun. It's actually maybe the ONE kindness I'll give Eslewhere Elsewhen because the time portals get some good gags when they're first introduced and I'm not going to deny that. But how about Looking Glass Ruins? It's actually a perfect showcase of when this principle works and when it doesn't. Gus' retcon on illusion is dog shit. It is one of the worst, blatant choices with the magic system. But MAN that ending sequence with Gus! Does it make sense? Not really with just how ludicrously, stupidly powerful it does paint Gus. Does it make you actively question why he spent all of S1 doing jack and shit? Yes. Is it one of the best sequences in The Owl House and genuinely lives up to how terrifying the reality of Illusion magic is? ABSOLUTELY. It's why while I hate the glyph stuff in that side of the episode, I can't hate his plotline entirely because it's just a great fantasy sequence with some good use of horror elements.

But uh... What about that Amity and Luz plot? It's an extremely basic forbidden section, it makes no sense once you find out the head librarian is a chill stoner dude and the payoff is just a cheek kiss for Luz who incited the problem in the first place. She gets it for getting Amity's job back in a high stakes, dangerous adventure... That's off screen. If you're a Lumity shipper, you eat well enough to make up for the fact that really all they do is stand around and talk with multiple backgrounds behind them the entire episode, not even entirely making sense during those moments (this is actually pretty much the ONLY episode where Amity acts dumb because of Luz. Amity doesn't make enough mistakes in the series to justify that line, potent as it is. This is also the only time she's faced actual consequences for her closeness to Luz.) Worse yet, you're robbed of the adventure and potential comedy that is theoretically the core of the show for the sake of cute, gay panic. And I like gay panic but I also kind of want to see this book dragon. One of those is creative while the fact that it's a book mouse instead of a book worm is all that's special about "This creature eats documents and then can broadcast them." And you know... That's an episode where all the payoffs still work. THE ENTIRETY OF S3 IS ABOUT PAYOFFS THAT DON'T WORK.

Luz's angst? I've talked at length about how dog shit her character finish is and that dominates SO MUCH TIME? And what do you get for it? Stringbean? A character people rightfully were pissed about being way too special and not making any sense? And still reflects poorly on Luz's character finish by being literally the opposite of what she's talking about? I did a whole blog on this too.

How about Hunter being a Grimmwalker? We get one conversation with Gus and I guess Hunter getting possessed and then getting magic, one moment that is laughably short frankly and does NOT fix the issues with Hunter's 'arc' and I still despise him getting magic through his best friend dying because it meant we'd NEVER get anything interesting out of him not having his own magic and that's without getting into anything about disability allegories. Oh, and yeah, HIS BEST FRIEND DIED AND WE JUST HAVE TO MOVE ON FOR TIME. Belos' backstory? Entirely wasted to the point where people's frustrations with it come up like once a week in my Discord because it seemed to so clearly be building up to something only for Belos to come right back around to being a dumb, boring, racist villain with nothing more interesting to him. How about villains before Belos? Well, the Collector is poorly written, makes no sense and is written like he's actually five instead of five thousand. Kikimora is the only other villain and she should have been gone so long ago and what does she lead to? Another mech fight? Who we don't even get to see beaten but instead the bully character who has been literally nothing but a joke for over a season assures as she finally got put in her place. This is writing that from a viewer standpoint is ETERNALLY infuriating. You're waiting for something to happen and the closest you get for two specials, effectively four-five episodes of the show, is Willow angst about her magic and feelings in a way that hasn't been true to her character in literally two seasons. If ever. For a character who is 90% plot device for other characters.

Honestly, at that point wanting them all dead and to see the villain win, just for the sheer shock and brutality of it all, seems kind of reasonable when you can't expect anything satisfying from the heroes. I'd argue, in my opinion, they even fucked up Belos' death for a really bad jab at fucking Steven Universe. HOW MANY SHOWS DO YOU THINK REDEEM THE FINAL BAD!? It's a lot less than you seem to think Owl House so why don't you shut up, especially after you REDEEMED THE COLLECTOR AND DID NOTHING WITH HIM! That's not even a joke. They come up with a contrivance so he can't do shit and then he fucks off. Why? Don't fucking know. Maybe the writers realized that a childish god is really hard to write around and should have given it more thought. Like... Anyone who just couldn't give a fuck by the time they're fighting Dragon Belos, especially once Luz is just given a super form so it's time for the victory lap after she didn't have to work that hard to beat the Collector (that's the impression I've been given since NO ONE talks about the Collector's redemption. Literally the only scene I've seen from that part of the episode is Luz playing with Amity's face.) so the stakes are rock bottom already. And boy, the jokes of the episode don't help with it. The fact that it's callback after callback is cute and good for a finale but how many of these jokes are robbing any momentum of the moment? Fucking everything to do with the Collector in the finale seems to be this way where it's like "Hahaha. Okay now let's actually back to the point." Even when he's trying to be serious like not understanding death, I'm sitting here going "Okay but you wanted to play with corpses and grind bones. You don't get to do this shit and not piss me off." So wanting to just make everyone shut up through Belos winning? I can get it. I definitely wouldn't but I didn't watch S3 for a reason because I recognized that with how everything was written up to it and ESPECIALLY after the first special, I wouldn't enjoy any of it. Not when its only payoffs are in fanservice and romance instead of its magic, adventure, comedy, narrative, characters... You know: Technically all the things it pitched in its beginning. It pitched by claiming to be a professional, animated, comedy adventure. So why not root for Belos? You'll get just as much rooting for him as any other part of the show. +++++++

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead, If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

And finally a Twitter you can follow too!

[spurgie-cousin]

I'm high and can't elaborate but man fuck the puritans. The high control cult to end all high control cults that made things unnecessarily hard for the majority of North America's population for like 600 yrs.

And then the Catholics come along to enforce the extreme morality aspect and then mass murder everyone like is it any wonder we're this fucked up ~200 yrs out when our country's moral center is founded on the beliefs of the most wild and hateful Christian cults

[kyndaris]

Love, Death and Ghosts

In life, there are two known inevitabilities. Taxes. And death. Yet, although the life we lead is fleeting, it is often opined by the poets that it is this very much ephemeral nature of our existence that makes life worth living. After all, without the threat of death looming over us, how can we appreciate the wider world we find ourselves in? Or the beauty of love that blossoms between two like-minded souls?

We year because we know it will eventually vanish from our grasps.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden puts the players in the shoes of two banishers: Ruaidhrigh "Red" mac Raith and Antea Duarte. As the two set about breaking the curse surrounding the town of New Eden, they are caught up in a tale of despair and retribution. One they slowly piece together piecemeal as they help out the survivors set up in their individual encampments after the initial failure to banish the Nightmare of Deborah Comenius.

Through this medium, the game is able to explore themes of love, grief and justice. All the while delving into, and challenging, the societal beliefs of the late 1600s. More importantly, it tackled the concepts of the occult with rituals used by banishers, demonologists and witches alike - something I've always found fascinating even though in our modern world such things are, more often than not, dismissed out of hand.

Here, in Banishers, magic is real and ghosts exist.

Witches too. Although they aren't agents of the Devil as the Puritan townspeople believe, but people who live with nature and understand the nature of the world around them. Nor do they have animal familiars. A missed opportunity if ever there was one.

The games tarts with our banishers arriving in New England upon the request of their good friend: Charles Davenport. Their first order of business is to find him and gain an understanding of the situation they've been called in to solve. But when they arrive at the inn, Charles is missing. Instead, they are greeted by the Governor, Fairefax Haskell, Captain Pennington and the hunter: Thickskin. It is here that they learn their good friend was killed by the Nightmare. Undaunted, Antea and Red meet with Charles' late wife to learn more. When they do, they realise she is haunted by their friend.

After finding Charles' tie, and talk to him about his reasons for staying, Red chooses to ascend their friend. After all, the banisher's code has always been: death to the dead and life to the living. For Charles to stay, he would need to feed off his wife. And though his desire to remain is to protect his wife, to do so would only only serve to put her in danger.

Once they learn more about the Nightmare and allow Charles to pass over, Antea and Red spend a night at the school house. Red wakes and finds Antea missing. Fearing his lover and fellow Banisher has gone to take on the Nightmare on her lonesome, he heads to the meeting house.

Unfortunately, it turns out to be a trap. Red is overwhelmed by the Nightmare. But before it manages to kill him, Antea comes to the rescue. In so doing, though, Antea is killed and Red is thrown off the cliff.

After he is rescued by a witch called Seeker, Red breaks down. However, his grief is short when Antea's ghost appears before him and two choices are presented to the player: Antea can ascend or she can be resurrected through the use of a dark ritual involving human sacrifice. No matter which choice Red goes with, however, the pair realise they need to return to New Eden and recover Antea's body as it is her tie to the living world.

And so, they journey back across the Dark Woods, the Mire Marshes, Mount Pleasant and the Harrows to return to the town where they lost everything. Along the way, they meet the townspeople of New Eden who had fled and aid them in destroying fragments of the ghost terrorising them for the crimes they committed against her.

Overall, I have to say I enjoyed the story of Banishers. The horror of what played out to condemn an innocent school teacher still makes my blood boil. But it was the quiet moments that stood out to me such as the fact Deborah was in a same-sex relationship with Kate, the outright despair she felt when nobody would stand up and speak on her behalf, and the fear of death in her final moments. All of this was juxtaposed with Antea and Red's relationship as they tried to find a means to put an end to the curse and deal with the impacts of human choices.

And because of this, they made Deborah a sympathetic antagonist. She was no mustache-twirling villain. Just a woman who was targeted based on prejudice and fear. The strawman effigy needed to alleviate the struggles of a budding town when it was struck down by disease.

Haskell failed in his role of being an impartial mediator, condemning Deborah even though he would have preferred to offer her mercy. Kate was scared about coming out and putting herself in the crosshairs. But Pennington was the one who accused her of being a witch because he simply could not face the fact his daughter, Grace, wanted to dabble in magic (possibly a metaphor for coming out as trans?). And honestly, my greatest contempt is for him and how he tried to oppress his daughter's means of self-expression.

Had he not been so caught up in Puritan beliefs, he would not have denounced Deborah and imprisoned an innocent woman because he couldn't accept the person his daughter was.

Online, I've also seen people question Deborah's desire for retribution and if it matches the crimes committed against her. Though I would say 'no,' I'd also say that the spirit which had latched onto her continued to feed on her anger and she wasn't exactly in her right state of mind. As Antea often said, ghosts who lingered could forget themselves, their memories fading until they were driven solely by a single emotion when attacking the living.

Neither, of course, are good. Or healthy for that matter. Look no further than The Count of Monte Cristo, who spent decades plotting out his revenge against the people who wronged him. But it is also important to realise that Deborah's anger came from both the injustice of her death and the grief of Kate stepping away when she needed her the most.

In fact, the whole game is about letting go.

Whether that's allowing Antea to ascend, to the ghosts who haunt their respective persons for either perceived slights or because of the love they have.

Admittedly, I did enjoy many of the haunting cases as they provided additional context for the world of Banishers. Even if, of course, most of the townsfolk were Puritans wishing to explore the new world.

Although, I do puzzle why so many of the ghosts who ended up haunting their fellow survivors managed to die in the days or week after Red managed to lift the curse in an area. Yes, I know sepsis can kill a person quite quick, but Ann Wings didn't seem very sick before we went down into the mines but as soon as we emerged, she'd somehow died of disease. Then, of course, in the Harrows, you had someone drink themselves to death and another who poisoned himself in quick succession.

From a gameplay perspective Banishers is quite simple. There's a light and heavy attack, which are mapped to the shoulder buttons of the PlayStation 5. Square is for healing, circle is dodge and X allows Red to unleash a powerful Banish attack. Triangle, on the other hand, will allow you to shift into Antea who is able to deal spirit damage through her punches. As the game continues, she unlocks various 'Manifestations' which help unlock parts of the map and also serve as power abilities to unleash in the midst of battle.

Unfortunately, the gameplay loop was fairly simple through the game and I never felt like I had to deviate much from my tried and true formula of dodging away from enemies before counter-attacking them with a flurry of blows.

My main issue was the camera and how Red was trapped with strafing side to side. In the early game, this was difficult to navigate when fighting multiple enemies at the same time but after I'd slowly unlearned the Final Fantasy XVI key bindings and finally was doing what I wanted instead of hitting the wrong button, the game got easier.

Like the game that came before it, Ghost Trick, Banishers sees you trying to solve the mystery. Whereas Ghost Trick was primarily focused on Sissel's journey of self-discovery, Banishers has Red decide the best path forward to resolve each case - whether that be blaming the human, ascending the ghost or banishing them back into the Void. But while Ghost Trick was a game filled with levity and hijinks, Banishers is rooted in the reality of the world we live in and the prejudices inherent of being human. Especially when we only have a limited understanding of the world around us and don't seek to expand our knowledge of how it works, or the history that has led us to where we are now.

It is often said that those who choose to ignore history are doomed to repeat it.

Of course, there are also those who incorrectly put things from the past up onto a pedestal and hope to emulate what they believe was the pinnacle of civilisation. All the while ignoring the inconvenient truths and realities of the time for their own sanitised version of it.

I'm looking at you, Roman Empire.

[racefortheironthrone]

Where other nations like Scandinavia, Germany went to one while Scotland, Switzerland, Holland when towards the other, It kind of seems like England didn't end up in either Lutheranism or Calvinism camps?

Ok, back to comparative Refomations!

I can understand why the English Reformation and/or Church of England confuses Europeans, because it does seem neither fish nor fowl when it comes to which flavor of Protestant to categorize it as. However, as I'm about to explain, there's a good historical reason for this.

The first thing to understand is that a lot of the early "evangelicals," "bible men," or Protestants - men like Cranmer or Cromwell and their generational peers - were broadly Lutheran in their beliefs and sympathies, and as a result the struggle during the Henrician Reformation was between Lutheran and Catholic doctrine.

However, by the time you get to the Edwardian Reformation, you see something of a relative decline of Lutheran doctrine and an increasing popularity of Calvinist doctrine - for example, you see Cranmer shifting to the Calvinist position on the Eucharist and the real presence in the late 1540s. I think a lot of this had to do with the fact that England is geographically closest to Scotland and Holland, and so it was easier to get Calvinist literature than Lutheran literature and so forth. This is why you start to get those rascally Puritans running around complaining about things not being Calvinist enough, and why you get the historical irony of much of the latter English Civil War being a war between two camps of Calvinists, one of whom was Presbyterian and one of whom wasn't.

The second thing to understand is that, even though a lot of the early elements of Anglican doctrine - the Ten Articles of 1536, the Book of Common Prayer of 1549, etc. - were essentially political compromises and seen as such by figures like Cranmer, pretty soon you got English theologians who came to see them as something different. Here, we get the see the concept of via media - the idea that Anglicanism was and must be a reasoned, moderate compromise between Protestantism and Catholicism and between Lutheranism and Calvinism - get promoted as a positive good in its own right and the idea of Anglicanism as an equal (and the only truly English) denomination to Lutheranism and Calvinism. Unsurprinsgly, a lot of your High Church Anglicans and crypto-Catholic Anglicans come out of this intellectual tradition, and there's a reason why they and the Puritans didn't get along.

The third thing to understnad is the role of historical contingency. For example, it is quite possible (and arguably was even likely) that England would have gone full-bore Presbyterian during the English Civil War if it hadn't been for the fact that Oliver Cromwell and the other Puritans and other "Dissenters" in the New Model Army hated the idea of an established church of any kind. (Ironically, there was even an outside chance that, had Charles II managed the Restoration in 1650-1652, all of Britain would have gone Presbyterian at Covenanter gunpoint.) If the Republic had survived Cromwell or the Parliamentary elections of 1660 gone another way, it's quite possible that Anglicanism would have withered on the vine without the Clarendon Code.

In conclusion: England became Anglican because there weren't enough convenient Lutherans and because the Calvinists kept fighting themselves.

[cannoli-reader]

The Importance of the Two Rivers’ Sexual Mores

OThis was a point I touched on in a much larger, to the tune of TL;DR, post concerning adaptational changes from books to show, and I wanted to go into it as a standalone thing, because I really believe it needs to be said.  Under a cut, because I’m probably going to go all Cannoli on this, length-wise..

A lot of people have Opinions on the No Sex Until Married rule that is the de jure standard in the Two Rivers, which (some of) the Emond’s Field kids take with them, to varying degrees, when they go into the world  It should be noted that this is not some hard and fast puritanical standard.  People seem to get married fairly early, if they do, since they are picking from a relatively limited pool of prospects, and the powers that be seem to be fairly understanding about hooking up as long as it is done with respect for the rules.  Furthermore, the only ones who really seem affected by that rule are Rand, and on one occasion each, Nynaeve and Egwene, and in their cases, just to pass judgment on someone else. Perrin gets married fairly quickly and Mat DGAF. And Rand’s citation of the Rules, could just as easily be a rationalization of negative feelings resulting from his own internalized belief that he does not get to be happy.  So I think when a lot of people start complaining about the Two Rivers sexuality, they are projecting their own feelings or experiences with real world institutions with such rules, and especially, the prospect of sexy fun times being curtailed.  

Which is not the most obvious reaction from fans of a series in which Mat, Lan, Morgase and Berelain are subjected to various degrees of sexual abuse and exploitation, and Perrin has more than a few problems for which he bears no blame, through failure of Berelain to understand and respect his sexual boundaries, precisely because she comes from a less restrictive culture (along with the possibility that her  own sexual exploitation was a result of Mayene’s looser rules).  

I have seen readers who explicitly recognize and denounce what happens to Mat & Lan, nonetheless applaud or approve of the customs of “pretties” in Ebou Dar and the carneira in Malkier, again, projecting real world attitudes onto a practice that only superficially resembles the theoretical ideal in the real world, in this case, the idea of young people receiving practical sexual education, to constructively channel their hormonal urges, to guide them to a healthy embrace of their sexuality, and avoid traumatic experiences or harmful behavior caused by a combination of uncontrollable urges and a lack of knowledge.  When they are not outright admitting to pervy pedo fantasies or adolescent wish fulfilment, these concepts are almost always presented accompanied by a denunciation of puritanical, repressive and obsolete restrictions. And it is really weird for people to apply that theory to what we see in WoT of pretties and carneira, since the only on-page examples of both those customs features the older and more experienced party grossly abusing the spirit and even the letter of the law of the customs for their own agenda or gratification, and still getting away with it, even when their abuse is recognized as such.  But Edeyn Arrell’s treatment of Lan and Tylin’s treatment of Mat are acknowledged by characters in the story to be violations, who do absolutely nothing about it, except for not actively hindering the victim’s attempts to extricate himself from the abusive situation!  

Basically, while the idea of looking up from a coital entanglement with your future spouse, to see Nynaeve glaring at you, with the promise of an uncomfortable encounter with the Women’s Circle in her eyes, seems a lot less appealing than a graduate level course in Sex Ed at the hands of a smoking hot cougar in a palace bedchamber, one of those practices does not lead to, or promote, sexual abuse and one is shown to multiple times.  The Two Rivers way is not as bad as some people make it out to be, is what I am saying.

 But more important than whether or not the Two Rivers thing is good or bad for the characters, is the role it plays in the story itself.  As I noted, it is not a big thing that really has an impact all that much. Perrin or Mat are never shown to be guided or inhibited by the rules.  Egwene has an incongruous and largely subconscious disapproval of Elayne’s incompatible, to her eyes, reproductive situation and marital status, which she does not act on, and Nynaeve’s stream of consciousness phrasing of her observation of the interactions between bonded Aes Sedai and Asha’man includes her suspicion that they are “sharing a bed outside wedlock.”  But here’s the thing.  Nynaeve tends toward hyperbolic expressions that she does not act upon, and she has a more intuitive than analytical way of looking at things, processing observations through an emotional rather than logical framework.  What she is really fuming about is the inexplicably amicable relationships between Asha’man and Aes Sedai.  Nynaeve knows there is something going on beneath the surface there (and the readers already know that the Aes Sedai are making a premeditated effort to ingratiate themselves with their bondholders, while in general thinking with the common stereotype that men are easily controlled, or rendered amenable, by a sexual partner, so she’s not wrong), she doesn’t have enough to know what, and it bothers her, so she expresses her discontent with the situation by focusing on the familiar, namely her reaction for her customary position as the Wisdom in charge of upholding propriety for the Emond’s Field community.  Notice that what we never see her do is denounce, interfere with, or even express an opinion on Rand and Min openly cohabitating in the weeks they have been traveling with her since leaving Caemlyn, just as Egwene does or says nothing about Elayne’s pregnancy. 

And whatever he might think or say, Rand really doesn’t let those Two Rivers inhibitions hold him back.  When Berelain comes on to him, he cites a non-existent commitment to Egwene, which is hardly a value unique to the Two Rivers, whatever Berelain says, while thinking that he does not want a casual encounter with someone who is only interested in him as an object or status symbol instead of as a person. And his repressive Two Rivers upbringing has not remotely impeded his ability to recognize this motivation in a sexual encounter, nor left him vulnerable to exploitation through his lack of hands-on experience.   He brings up the necessity for marrying to rectify the situation after he sleeps with Aviendha, but there are other factors at play there, too. First of all, while he cites the rules, that is not his motivation in his stream of consciousness.

“’... I want to.' He was not sure of that at all, really... But for once he could do what was right because it was right.”

Rand’s impulse behind his proposal is driven by his ongoing need to keep breaking rules and violating his standards, in response to political realities.  He has to execute law breakers, he has to send men into danger or death, he has to overlook wrongdoing because he lacks the capacity to put a stop to it, or because he must prioritize greater evils (Morgase and Rahvin, for example) and he does not excuse his fault in these things because they are necessary.  But at every turn, he sees himself slipping, he sees himself losing a part of who and what he thought he was, or what he thinks he wants to be.  The rules and standards for being a decent person were things he absorbed as he was growing up, and are all the harder to overcome or set aside because of that.  They have very little to do with where and when he uses his genitalia, but about treating people in the right way and upholding your responsibilities. And unlike Elayne, for example, he was never taught that there are times when he might have to do the kinds of moral triage he is forced to all the time now.  It all ties in to his ongoing struggle with the loss of his identity and self-conception, and while he accepts that he has to let some parts of his old self go, it’s not easy, and something inside him rebels against it.  And rightfully so, because that fundamental decency is far more important to defeating the Dark One than any ability to make ruthlessly practical decisions to achieve a theoretical great good based on numbers or power calculations.  So when he comes across a situation where he does not have to act as the Dragon Reborn, and ignore the right thing to do, he is going to push to do that right thing.  That he believes he is doing right by a woman he loves only adds to that impetus.  And that he does not understand the woman he loves enough to recognize what she might actually want or see as important is pure Rand al’Thor.  

It’s the same thing with Min when he says that the Women’s Circle would not be amused by her rationalization of their spontaneous sexual encounter.  It’s not that he actually fears their judgment or even really thinks they are right, it’s just a handy reference point he can latch on to when arguing for his own condemnation.  Because of the trauma and self-recriminations he has undergone since his last sexual encounter (not helped by his own ignorance of what underlay Aviendha’s apparent rejection of him - in that case, the Aiel rules, for all their greater degree of sexual freedom & agency, do a lot more harm to their relationship or coming to a mutual understanding, than Two Rivers repression), he refuses to believe that Min wants to be intimate in any way, emotionally or sexually, with him, because he sees himself as toxic and harmful to others. He thinks the best thing for Min is to have as little as possible to do with him, and so he frames his actions toward her in the worst possible light, and cites the Women’s Circle as an authority who would agree with him.  It’s not the Women’s Circle he cites when Min propositions him later that day, despite her using the same term he says would have them “lining up to peel our hides”, it’s the practical priority of getting the most use out of his ta’veren nature while it is running strong.  Because “me time” is another thing Rand does not believe he deserves.  In subsequent books, his idea of what is good for his partners is the only thing that seems to hold him back at all, certainly never the morals of Emond’s Field or the wrath of the Wisdom. He never once notes any issues about sharing a bedroom with Min while in Nynaeve’s company in Far Madding and Tear. 

And yes, there are people who deride or mock or joke about Rand’s early awkwardness with regard to sex, and attribute it to his virginity and repression and if he and Egwene had just been having a fun old time when they were back in Emond’s Field, he’d have been so much more mature and able to cope with this situations better.  Maybe, but I suspect what is really going on there is vicarious identification with Rand, and a reluctance to see him come off less than spectacularly which I also suspect is at the root of a lot of criticism of Cadsuane’s treatment of him, and mischaracterizing her behavior, because of how it makes Rand feel or look.  They don’t like our boy being embarrassed, even if he deserves it, or it humanizes him. 

But those moments of awkwardness around the opposite sex serve a narrative purpose.  You see, Rand largely does move away from the Two Rivers shepherd we meet in the opening chapter, while remaining the same person.  It’s tricky to see how he has changed when we are in his head (part of the reason, I believe, why he has so little PoV material in The Dragon Reborn, to create a continuity break for the readers in his growth, so when we are presented with him anew in The Shadow Rising, we are no longer seeing the in-over-his-head shepherd who thinks he is only faking being a leader in tGH, but taking him in as a new iteration of the character), and it is important to the story’s purpose to remind us that under all the changes he is still the same Rand.  

That is the reason for the sexual awkwardness. In each case, it comes to undercut a moment of power or apparent change for Rand.  First, we see his reaction to Else Grinwell’s undisguised interest in him.  He and Mat have just stumbled onto a method of facilitating their journey and gaining resources, but his inability to deal with Else’s possible advances, and the danger he might face from being perceived as the one at fault serve reinforce that even with the  financial possibilities of the Emond Field Boy Band, they are still vulnerable in many ways and the ability to acquire food & lodgings they could not afford before this does not alleviate those dangers.

Next, he finds himself in the Royal Palace in Caemlyn, where it is discovered that he carries the weapon of a blademaster, and the most respected military mind in the room believes and argues that it is legitimately his sword.  He responds to the implicit threat of the attention of a Red Ajah Aes Sedai by standing up for himself, by arguing back against her speculations and even denying her knowledge of his housing situation.  This is kind of a high point for Rand at this place in the books, even in spite of the face-palming nature of his current predicament.  And the Queen believes him, rather than suspecting him or refusing to do anything for him, and gives him justice!  Awesome!  Rand is doing good.  So he gets cocky and tries to snark with Elayne, who, after all, was the one most to blame for the peril her mother has just lifted, but he is just not qualified to challenge someone trained to dominate social situations, since she learned to talk, and Elayne yanks the rug back out from under him with a comment that is both flirtatious and pointing out how she could have made it even worse.

Next we get it in Cairhien, where, between Lan’s lessons, Moiraine’s wardrobe upgrade, Ingtar’s notice of his promotion to second in command and Hurin needing him to take command, Rand is starting to do a pretty good job at acting like the man in charge and like someone who knows what he is doing.  He is asserting himself to a solider-lord and an Aes Sedai, and even his friends are starting to recognize he is becoming something more than a shepherd tourist.  Reunited with Verin & Ingtar, both of them validate his performance while alone and nominally in command.  And then he goes to Barthanes’ party, and manages to look like he belongs, or at least no one is kicking him out, and all the stuff he’s been told all book long that he can be a big shot seems like it just might be working.  So of course RJ has an assortment of Cairhienin ladies approach and proposition him in an extremely unsubtle fashion, until he flees to hide behind Thom, until Mat arrives to present the much less daunting prospect of confronting whatever Darkfriends might be on the trail he has just picked up. 

It’s something similar with Berelain sneaking into his bedroom - he made it to Tear in spite of a wide array of threats, he’s killed Forsaken, the High Lords, whose attitudes we got a sample of in Mat’s ill-fated card game, feel compelled to give him the best rooms, and he can create a lightsaber out of thin air, but he has no idea what to do about the sexy chick whose clothes are vanishing as they speak, beyond keeping her away with a force field, and even that doesn’t seem to be working.  As I mentioned above, the Rand to whom we are reintroduced in tSR has grown into his power and the leadership role he had extreme doubts about two books ago.  He even comes across as more physically powerful, with Berelain referencing his appearance in his first PoV chapter and Egwene and Elayne both taking note of his stature and physical presence, before his second. For myself, when I first read tSR, the mental image in my head was of a bigger individual, with a more imposing presence, like seeing Clark Kent in Book 1 & 2 and Superman in Book 4, or from Thomas Anderson in cubical-wear in EotW to Neo in a trench coat in tSR.  But RJ does not let us forget that he is still the same guy who was excited to meet the new visitors to the village on Winternight, by having him flail around helplessly or blushing or avoiding eye contact when Berelain or Elayne is in his bedroom. 

This is also why, from a Doylist perspective, Egwene has the stray thought changing her clothes to Two Rivers garb in bemusement at Elayne’s pregnancy or Nynaeve huffing about unmarried people sleeping together.  It’s just a reminder that the woman about to brief Aviendha on Aes Sedai issues and potential security concerns and the avatar of awesome who is about epically win the saga of Malkier, are still the two people who turned up huffing in disapproval at Mat’s antics, back when that seemed like a significant conflict.  

In short, the sexually conservative ways of the Two Rivers are one of the most effective and efficient ways in which Robert Jordan maintains continuity between the origins of the main characters, and the people they grow into, and serves better than anything to remind us that under all the powers, skills, experiences and burdens, they have not forgotten where they came from. 

[kendrixtermina]

Something I've recently been thinking in the light of a lot of the discourse on here that everyone is distracted left vs right when they should be paying attention to the libertarian vs authoritarian axis as well.

(Of course few authoritarians call themselves that, but it is this belief in strict rules & that people can't be trusted to decide for themselves, that ppl need to be controlled for their own good etc) 

The authoritarian left hasn't been a thing for 20 odd years after communism fell but I suppose it was a matter of time till they would come back in some form - just like, alas, the far right nuts came back after the ppl who personally remember what a bad idea the nazis were gradually died off. 

There was a post on tumblr recently calling the censor crowd "functionally conservative" but they really aren't, they're pro gay, pro environment, pro minority, pro change, pro tax etc. they are leftists, but what they also are is authoritarian.

The authoritarian left is back, & this is what's happened in this last decade with this neo-puritan/paternalist/cancel culture stuff. It just gradually crept into left spaces frogs in a boiling pot situation & was just nodded along with because everyone wants to be pro-justice etc, 

& then in the news/ by critics it is all just often it's just all lumped together as "the left" - When people say "libertarian" they usually mean libertarian right (eg doesn’t care about social control or anyone smooking weed or being gay in private, but pro corporate, against tax, wants to keep social categories somewhat the same etc. )

No one applies the libertarian/authoritarian split to the left any more as if they're all libertarian by default but they aren't. Not the "censor stuff that makes me uncomfy" crowd, for sure. They're just as authoritarian rightist censors, they just want their own team to win. 

But when anyone complains about “leftists censors” they’re usually accused of projecting, decried as immoral etc. even when they’re not being hostile & possibly open to rational dialogue. in other words, there is heavy “for us or against us” logic, treating anyone not 100% on your side as indistinguishable from extremists. Which is authoritarianism: No dialogue, no divergence from orthodoxy not even just for argument’s sake, no thinking bad thoughts

In some situations I may have more in common with a centrist libertarian than an authoritarian of either left or right. I don’t want no puritan crusaders of either paintjob telling me what to do. 

I think this difference needs to be emphasized more, basically. 

[merv606]

God yeah, Seduction!Daniel, Mercy!Daniel and Puritan!Daniel with Puritan!Terry 😈 Cute Puritan!Daniel only wants to be a good little Omega for his Alpha, so he agrees to this if it’ll make him happy!! And his Terry says it’s God’s will so it must be okay!! Seduction!Daniel is shy at first, and wants his own Terry…but on the other hand he knows how to work his boypussy real good, and this IS still “a” Terry after all…so he gets into it. Mercy!Daniel is the hardest to convince, and refuses to go along with this, hmmf! He hates all Terries, especially “his” Terry (so he says) and spends his time trying (very unsuccessfully) to convince the other Daniels to dump their Terry’s. But Puritan!Terry enjoys what a sourpuss he is however, and does his best to convince him to join the fun. And boy, is it a good time when all the Daniels come around ;)

I think, Mercy Daniel would definitely be the one who holds out lol

Seduction Daniel does not want other men touching him (and neither does his Terry) BUT this is not some other man, rather, another version of Terry sooooo he may be all for it. Terry would just like watching another version of himself have Daniel …. His ego and all 😂 like yes, all versions of me know how to satisfy that 🍑 Hell, this way he gets to do a proper DP / he can, after all, only trust Daniel with himself or a version anyway.

Puritan Daniel, well, this is another version of his Terry he reasons as well, and he would also want to just go along with whatever his Terry wants (just so happens he secretly wants it too - but can hold onto his belief he’s still a good and proper omega as he was only giving his husband what he wanted …..) a form of plausible deniability I guess.

[kylo-wrecked]

Is your muse comfortable with, or proud of their body? Are they insecure? FOR . EVERY. VERSE. :)

@shuuhuuu :// { from this vanilla sunday meme }

Will attempt to address all verses and also actually answer the question but no promises:

Pride is not at the hilltop of his sins. Neither is envy, nor lust, in most cases. My interpretations have him ill at ease in his body, distanced, distracted, or disconnected from it somehow. Since I usually write his modern (music; ex-con; killer) and smuggler verses in a close third (kind of like this), and he is often an extremely private person consumed by his own thoughts, locked into his headspace, we (even I) don’t get too much insight into his relationship with his body. He struggles to connect with the world/things outside himself, including his physical appearance.

Ben and Kylo’s body invariably feels extraneous to him, not part of him. I compare his body to objects a lot; I describe parts of his body as buildings, knives, or wood, or, yes, hamburger meat, not just because it’s funny or creates an arresting image or whatever but because this is how he sees and feels. 

Secondly, this man is a puritan and a prude. No, just kidding! 

Anyway. When he does recognize his body, what is it? A tool. For Dark!Ren, who embodies (ha-ha) one of the most extreme examples of this, the body is a temporary, irrelevant vessel, an entirely foreign concept to the self, which he has given to the Ren. Once the mask comes off, he dissociates. The armor and the essence of his belief are more real to him than ‘the man’ inside. Then there’s Shade!Ren, an incorporeal shadow demon who desperately wants a body, but doesn’t really know how they work, and (Dead)God!Ren who has no form at all. 

Right then. Onto the normal ones. I’ve been ~getting to know~ Musicverse!Ben again over the last few months, and I’ve recently discovered that he does not do vocals. He’s a music artist, a guitarist, a son of a gun, an icon. So, the concept of ‘body as a tool’ is true for Music!Ben as well. His body is part of the job. BUT.

*record scratch*

He is confident in his body, he likes to display it artfully. Although this confidence is something he’s had to pick up and build along the way, Music!Ben knows that people find him striking, and like most celebrities, is doing everything in his power to maintain his physique even if he is absolutely wrecking his body with all manner of * Concessions * at the same time. 

Modern!Ben and Ex-con!Ben do not know that people find them striking. I have the least to say here because… there are certain elements I like to reveal slowly over time. 

I will say not all Bens have the same body type. They are not preternaturally ripped. Ex-con!Ben is a craftsman, and just because I use the faceclaim does not mean he has the body of Burberry Commercial Adam Driver. He’s not going to the gym (there isn’t one), he’s dragging sheet metal and logs around all day. Ex!Ben is in his upper thirties, he’s been to prison, he’s a little rough around the edges, a little soft in some places, too, and he’s a fairly tall guy at 6’5” with extremities that often feel clumsy and gargantuan to him. He’s the type who won't touch a moth’s wing for fear of crushing it. 

Modern!Ben is at times obsessed with his health, at times obsessed with food, has dealt with moderate fluctuations in weight and muscle, and finds mirrors excruciating and irresistible. The other guy doesn’t do mirrors.