#Peter Steele is my religion

[vanalex]

[rakruined]

The Religious Implications of GotG vol. 3

So, it's Easter, and while I've got a lot of stuff to work on and things to do, I wanted to take the time to discuss the utterly insane things Guardians of the Galaxy volume three has done to my brain chemistry. After seeing @adamwarlock's post here, I've been thinking about just how many religious themes there seem to be in James Gunn's magnum opus. From a villain with a god complex to Rocket Raccoon becoming my new favorite satanic archetype maybe, this is gonna be a deep dive into everything I've picked up from the trailers so far.

So, let's start with the implications of that post I linked: "some corners of the galaxy consider (The High Evolutionary) God".

Now, the High Evolutionary has always had a theme of 'playing god' in the comics, what with his whole deal being creating sentient life from animal experiments, but in the MCU, his connections to Christian notions of religion are a lot more fascinating. For starters, his goal is stated to be wanting to create a "perfect society", which you'll notice looks a lot like suburban Bible Belt America, albeit with a lot more hybrid animal-people.

Now, in the comics, he uses Earth animals as a basis for his new lifeforms because he was once a normal human named Herbert Wyndham. He eventually traveled into space to continue his experiments on his own world, later adopting Adam Warlock (this will come back later). Given his desire to make himself more powerful in the movie, this makes him an interesting counterpart to MCU!Peter Quill, who was born with Celestial (ie. godly) power and left Earth not by choice.

Now, there are a few things they changed from the comics, his connection to Rocket being the most significant in the context of this story. While Halfworld performed similar experiments on Rocket and the other uplifts, the H.E had nothing to do with the planet. And while I'll get back to why his connection to Rocket is significant, as well as what I said about Adam, I want to get into another major change: his design.

Here we have the comics design on the left and the movie design on the right. But isn't his movie look almost priestly? Almost... familiar...?

IT'S FUCKMOTHERING ENRICO PUCCI WITH THE STEEL CHAIR

Okay, JoJo references aside, the High Evolutionary's connections to Adam Warlock definitely add to the whole religious overtones. I mean, a guy who's considered God has a perfect creation literally named "Adam", trying to create a perfect world? This shit writes itself. But if you consider a few additional facts, this takes on a pretty wild meaning. For starters, Adam has been stated to be relatively naive and innocent, unknowledgeable of the universe.

But where this gets interesting is that, based on Rocket's absence from most group shots during what is clearly being billed as the midsection of the movie (spacesuits scene, that fight where they're all in orange, the team arriving on Halfworld) that he possibly is captured by Adam and brought back to his creator for additional experimentation. Shots of someone implied to be Rocket on the operating table and Gamora carrying him to the ship half-naked serve as further evidence of a rescue mission.

But if he's captured by Adam Warlock, that means he has the opportunity to tell Adam what his creator is really planning. He has the chance to tell him how he was made and what the High Evolutionary's "perfect society" is built upon: the blood of innocent creatures he'd deemed imperfect. This could be what changes Adam, what makes him turn against his god and his Garden of Eden.

The voice of the devil on his shoulder.

Edit: I forgot to mention this wild coincidence! Gunn once said Rocket was inspired by Frankenstein's monster. It makes sense on the basic level of a tragic science experiment abandoned by his creator, but it gets even more bizarre. In the novel, the monster identifies with Satan in the book Paradise Lost, making him the same sort of tragic figure as Lucifer. Rocket too was an imperfect creation cast out by the "god" who made him. In this light, it's undeniable that yes, Rocket Raccoon is as much a satan figure as Adam Warlock is space Jesus.

[lipglossanon]

okay second one because it’s almost the end of july… sooooo practically spooky season adjacent anywho do you feel like any of the leon’s like being called something other than daddy (i know you’ve covered similar asks so sorry if it’s repetitive but the end is… ahem… unhinged) like idk why i feel like stepdad leon would like being called sir in the same way i feel dark stepdad would like being called master or some shit like that 🤭 (i didn’t want to leave out sweet stepdad but he does like being called dad so that’s covered) now the unhinged part,,,, with halloween (and halloween fics) coming up dark stepdad leon and the type o negative lyrics got me thinking about him dressing as a priest for halloween 👀 specially with the short sleeves 🤤

(she normally calls me daddy but last night she called me father vibes or i can’t say much about organized religion but i can say he’s filled me with something more than the holy spirit 😉)

Hi anon!! 👋

ABSJFL no but I love that idea!! 😭

I fucking love Type O Negative 😌 (RIP Peter Steele 😢)

But yes, I’m thinking hard on some dark spooky content for October as it’s my fave time of year 💜 💜 I’m big into horror and supernatural stuff so it’s like right up my alley 🤭

I’ve kinda thought about corrupt priest Leon all by his lonesome and he sees you one day and it’s like a lightning bolt to the noggin; he’s obsessed with you from then on out 🤭

But that’s as far as that plot bunny went 🤷‍♀️

Anywho, all that to not answer your question haha but I think it would depend on the mood /situation 🤔

Like Sir/Daddy/Master can be interchangeable 🤔 and I think OG and Dark Stepdad would like them a lot 🤭 and sweet stepdad would like it if you sold him on it, if that makes sense? 😝

But nothing else really comes to mind 🤔

[katie-the-bug]

IN WHICH Katie continues to complain about books she knew beforehand would be bad

Still reading the Left Behind series. Finished Apollyon. God I'm tired.

The cast, for those just tuning in:

The Tribulation Force: Rayford Steele, freelance pilot and evangelist; Buck Williams, freelance writer for God; Chloe Williams, Buck's pregnant wife, Rayford's daughter; Tsion Ben-Judah, internet-famous evangelist and ex-rabbi; Ken Ritz, charter pilot and new convert; David Hassid, techie and the group's man inside the Antichrist's bureaucracy; Floyd Charles, unemployed doctor.

The Bad Guys: Nicolae Carpathia, Antichrist and beloved leader of the Global Community; Peter Mathews, Pope of Enigma Babylon One World Faith.

Others: Hattie Durham, Nicolae's pregnant ex, rescued by the Tribulation Force, who are trying to make her convert; Chaim Rosenzweig, Israeli scientist and friend to Nicolae, Buck, and Tsion. There's also the two witnesses, resurrected saints who do nothing but yell about Jesus and cause natural disasters.

At the beginning of the book, most of our heroes are off to Israel for the meeting of the 144,000 Jewish witnesses, knowing that this will mark them as enemies of the Global Community in general and the Antichrist in particular and expose them to potential reprisal. Perhaps I'm too sensible for a thriller novel, but that's stupid.

Buck, Chloe, and Tsion are going, and Rayford has work, but "pregnant, Hattie Durham had been left home fighting for her life against poison in her system." The Tribulation Force harps on how much they care for Hattie, but leaving her alone while she's possibly dying indicates it's all talk.

David has designed a number of "handheld electronic organizers" that can access position data, connect to the internet, and make calls. In other words, he's invented smartphones.

Nicolae takes some time out of his day to try and threaten the two witnesses into no longer messing with Israel's water supply. A valiant effort, but one doomed to fail because somehow the guys spreading drought and disease have the blessing of a loving God.

In a review of the professions represented by the Tribulation Force, Chloe is said to be "without a specialty." Not coincidentally, she's the only woman. I'm pretty sure if she were a man something she studied in college would have come up by now, but as it is the extent of Chloe's abilities and character is Woman.

Chaim argues against Nicolae being the Antichrist by saying "He seeks world peace, disarmament, global unity," to which Chloe replies "My point exactly." As Jesus said, "Cursed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the Antichrist." Or something like that.

Meanwhile, we return to a dangling plot threat from the last book: was Amanda, Rayford's second dead wife in three years, a traitor? The answer will not surprise you! She wasn't. All the evidence against her was faked by Nicolae, who already has a personal vendetta against the Tribulation Force despite them being seven people operating out of a basement.

The Meeting of the Witnesses happens, and Nicolae makes a suitably dramatic entrance in a helicopter just as Tsion is trying to read John 3:16. Points for timing.

Pope Peter (II) gives a little speech to the 144,000, representing how the authors think proponents of religious tolerance talk. He offers "the blessings of the universal father and mother and animal deities," advertises his religion, which "includes and affirms and accepts the major tenets of all the world's great religions," and refers to a "multilayered plural godhead." The idea of all the world's religions forming seamlessly into one faith is utter nonsense, but given the choice between that and True Christianity, I'll take the father and mother and animal deities any day.

Nicolae gives his own speech, and the two witnesses pull a funny prank where they make him thirsty and turn the water he tries to drink into blood. He immediately starts cursing them and threatening to kill them. I suppose this is the witnesses' roundabout way of trying to tell the audience he's the Antichrist, since they don't dare say it out loud for reasons that are never made entirely clear.

Nicolae later describes this as an attempt to poison him, and, while he embellishes the incident somewhat, he doesn't need to - they tried to make him drink blood. In no world is that not an attempt to poison someone. Hell, do it on a large enough scale, like the two witnesses are doing to Israel, and it counts as biological warfare!

In Chapter 4, Hattie's baby dies, probably because the authors didn't know what to do with the idea of the Antichrist's child. Hattie's immediate response is an overwhelming desire to kill Nicolae and avenge her child. My ship is home to a thriving coral reef ecosystem BUT now I have a new pipe dream for this series: I want Hattie to get that sonofabitch. She has the strongest motive out of any of the major characters and, unlike the Tribulation Force, she doesn't believe Nicolae is fated to survive another year, so she'll actually TRY. In a good story, she'd be the hero - the only one with a desire, a drive, and a willingness to act. In the story as it is, the authors just want us to laugh at her.

The narration says of the scene in a bar that "Not all the couples were made up of both sexes." Much shock. How scandal.

While he's planning his team's daring escape from Chaim's house, Chloe accuses Buck of "playing Spiderman." RESPECT. THE. HYPHEN.

Tsion implores his audience to tell people that the catastrophes befalling the Earth are "God's way of getting their attention." I will reiterate that these catastrophes are deadly. God's way of getting people's attention to to kill them.

Ken says something trite about Hattie, and Rayford says, "Ritz, you've got to be on the feminist' top ten most wanted list." Addendum to my pipe dream: I want Hattie to kill Rayford too.

Chaim is letting the Tribulation Force stay in his house and convert his staff, meaning he's surrounded by Christians. He's taking it very well and he thinks that the "seal of God" that they can see on each other is just a silly little joke. I aspire to have his level of tolerance.

We learn that Ken has a considerable pile of gold stashed away, because he makes a lot of money, spends none of it, and shared the authors' weird beliefs about money even before converting to Christianity. He buried it under the airport he usually works from, which he is thinking of buying - a situation bearing an odd resemblance to a Biblical parable. That feels like it should be intentional but I really doubt it is.

Precisely because they were dumb enough to go out in public where Nicolae could target them, the Tribulation Force has to make a daring midnight escape, during which Ken is killed and the position of my favorite character is left wide open. At least they know where he hid all his gold?

Buck also gets left behind, which is an issue, because it was him being charged with yet another murder that made the escape necessary. He just goes back to Chaim's house and waits for the whole thing to blow over for what ends up being five months.

Another judgement comes in which the sun loses a third of its brightness. The authors interpret this as causing deep cold weather. Now, I'm not an astronomer yet, but I'm pretty sure that a loss of solar luminosity that large would actually move the sun's habitable zone, possibly removing Earth from the area of the Solar System where liquid water, and thus life as we know it, is possible. On the plus side, maybe Venus will cool down a bit.

Chaim describes Israel as the "land where the name Jesus Christ is anathema." Once again the authors express their understanding of Judaism as a religion whose defining characteristic is hating Christ.

The loss of sunlight and solar power causes an energy crisis, and the narration puts the death toll in the hundreds of thousands. The very next page, Tsion describes the catastrophes as an "attention-getter." I'm going to repeat myself ad nauseam, but this is how the authors justify their God killing so many people - it gets the attention of the survivors.

Later on Chaim asks the real questions - "Why can he not get people's attention through wonderful miracles, as he did in the Bible? Why make things worse and worse until a person has no choice?" The authors, via Buck, try to shoot this down, but Chaim is right. God's tactics are abusive and coercive, and trying to tell us that he's loving is the icing on the cake.

Hit character limit. More coming. So, so tired.

[supernovadragoncat]

okay lana as sansa is such a great idea, especially in her younger days with her strawberry-blonde hair. as a lana enthusiast who tends to make every lana song about sansan I want to know which lana songs do u think would make great sansan fics? she's so underrated as a storyteller

Yessss, Nonny!!! ❤️ Team Lana as Sansa HC rise up! In my humble opinion, she is the perfect Sansa headcanon. 

Her BTD/Paradise era is exactly how I envision Sansa to look—baby doll looks with pouty lips, big eyes, pixie nose. Her features are soft and feminine, fawn-like and expressive.

I’ve never envisioned Sansa having dark auburn hair. In the books, Cat describes Sansa’s hair as being lighter than her own, so I’ve always envisioned the peaches-and-gold tone of tawny red.

And it’s not just her looks but her demeanor too. When you watch Lana's interviews from that time (X, X, X), she’s dulcet-voiced, soft-spoken, and shy. There’s a vulnerability that’s endearing and tender, which is how I’ve always envisioned Sansa too.

Lana is such an amazing storyteller and songwriter. I’m right there with you in that so many of her songs scream SanSan to me. 

Honestly, the entirety of "Born To Die" fits with the cannot-live-or-breathe-without-you fatalistic kind of love, which is my favorite kind of SanSan. 

I like SanSan with a twinge (sometimes more than a twinge) of madness. I want them unhinged, batshit crazy for each other; ride-or-die in an obsessive way but it works for them. To quote Peter Steele, “I own her and she owns me.” 

I don’t want them having date nights at Applebees and communicating effectively through relationship problems. I want knock-down, drag-out fights where the neighbors probably call the cops followed by mind-blowing makeup sex where they’re just feral for each other for days on end. They’re the couple that is asked to leave the Applebees because their PDA is so over-the-top, it’s making other patrons uncomfortable. 

Anyway, Lana gets it and, to that end, these songs scream SanSan to me: 

“Video Games” 

It's you, it's you, it's all for you

Everything I do

“Blue Jeans” 

I will love you 'til the end of time

I would wait a million years

“Yayo” 

Put me onto your black motorcycle

50s' baby doll dress for my "I do"

“Old Money” 

But if you send for me, you know I'll come

And if you call for me, you know I'll run

I'll run to you, I'll run to you

“Swan Song”

Say goodnight to the life and the world you knew

I'm gonna follow you

“Religion” 

When I'm down on my knees, you're how I pray

Hallelujah, I need your love

“Cherry” 

Darling, darling, darling

I fall to pieces when I'm with you

I fall to pieces

“Love Song” 

You know that I'd just die to make you proud

The taste, the touch, the way we love

It all comes down to make the sound of our love song

“Yosemite” 

We've done it for fun, we've done it for free

I showed up for you, you showed up for me

We did it for the right reasons

Anyway, thank you for this ask, nonny with the good taste, and for allowing me to shout from the rooftops my love for Lana, our Patron Saint of Delightfully Unhealthy SanSan inspiration.

I mean...look at this cutie!

[in-these-arms]

@hollowgutz tagged me to post 5 songs I’ve had on repeat, so here goes nothing! (Also I don't use Spotify, I'm a heathen I know 😅)

1) Love You To Death - Type O Negative

2) Christian Woman - Type O Negative (there's a theme here and the theme is Peter Steele)

3) She Sells Sanctuary - The Cult

4) She's My Religion - Pale Waves (this song is gay AF and you should definitely listen to it)

5) Arch Enemy - Deceiver, Deceiver

Bonus Entry!!!

1) Free Bird - Lynyrd Skynyrd (this is less playing on repeat and more that it's been stuck in my head for days now. No I don't know why, but fuck it, if I have to suffer then so does everyone else, you're welcome 😂)

I'm tagging @bewitching666 @still-asunbeam @shadows-chaos-contd (also no pressure of course)

[coffee-n-bagels-comic-universe]

Lucifarians: A Family Forged: Bios (1980): Venka Tupper / Ven Lucifarian

"Everybody talks about Pride before the fall. I'm just glad they have my name in their mouths."

Name

Full Legal Name: Venka America Tupper (Born: Leach. 1st Change: Todd)

First Name: Venka

Meaning: Means 'Victorious', from Esperanto 'Venki' 'To conquer', ultimately from Latin 'Vincere'.

Pronunciation: VEHN-ka

Origin: Esperanto

Middle Name: America

Meaning: In the English speaking world, this name is usually given in reference to the United States of America.

Pronunciation: a-MEHR-i-ka

Origin: English

Surname: Tupper (Born: Leach. 1st Change: Todd)

Meaning: Tupper: Occupational name for a herdsman, derived from Middle English 'Toupe' 'Ram'. Leach: Originally indicated a person who was a physician, from the medieval practice of using leeches to bleed people of ills. Todd: Means 'Fox', derived from Middle English 'Todde'.

Pronunciation: TUP-er. LEECH. TAWD.

Origin: English. English. English

Ring Name: Ven Lucifarian, Pride

Commentary Nicknames: The Prodigal Daughter

Nicknames: Ven, Meri

Titles: Miss

Characteristics

Age: 32

Gender: Female. She/Her Pronouns

Nationality: English

Ethnicity: White

Birth Date: August 5th 1948

Sexuality: Straight

Religion: Christian

Native Language: English

Known Languages: English, Spanish, French, Latin, German, Japanese, Portuguese, Italian, Norwegian

Relationship Status: Single

Astrological Sign: Leo

Entrance Music: 'You're So Vain' - Carly Simon (1972-), No Music Prior To 1972

Voice Claim: Helena Bonham-Carter

Geographical Characteristics

Birthplace: London, England, UK

Current Location: Unknown

Hometown: London, England, UK

Appearance

Height: 5'6" / 167 cm

Weight: 150 lbs / 68 kg

Eye Colour: Light Brown

Hair Colour: Golden Brown

Hair Dye: 2 Front Strands Dyed Purple

Body Hair: N/A

Facial Hair: N/A

Tattoos: (As of Jan 1980) 10

Piercings: Ear Lobe (Both)

Scars: None

Health and Fitness

Allergies: None

Alcoholic, Smoker, Drug User: Social Drinker, Smoker

Illnesses/Disorders: None Diagnosed

Medications: None

Any Specific Diet: Vegetarian (But will eat meat if she has to.)

Relationships

Allies: Freddie Blassie, Lou Albano, Skull Lucifarian, Bel Lucifarian, Pat Lucifarian, Cas Lucifarian, Hel Lucifarian, Eve Lucifarian, Syd Lucifarian

Enemies: Moolah, Wendi Richter, Lord Alfred Hayes, Mr Fuji, Dynamite Kid, George Steele

Closest Confidant: Norma Tupper

Mentor: Driskoll Leach

Significant Other: None

Previous Partners: None of Note

Parents: Driskoll Leach (64, Father), Regina Leach (40, Step-Mother, Née Wolf), Wesley Tupper (65, Step-Father), Norma Tupper (60, Mother, Née Todd)

Parents-In-Law: None

Siblings: Martha Colt )43, Half-Sister, Née Wilbur), Gareth Wilbur (40, Half-Brother), Madonna Bullock (37, Half-Sister, Née Wilbur), Frederick Tupper (35, Brother), Eric Tupper (29, Brother), Freya Bull (26, Sister, Née Tupper), Edric Tupper (23, Brother), Donna Buckley (20, Sister, Née Tupper), Earl Swift (18, Half-Brother), Candace Swift (15, Half-Sister), Duke Leach (13, Half-Brother), Sigmund Todd (41, Half-Brother), Eunice Doctor (38, Half-Sister, Née Todd), Prosper Tupper (17, Half-Brother), Edith Tupper (14, Half-Sister), Nicholas Tupper (11, Half-Brother), Cassandra Tupper (8, Half-Sister), Theobald Tupper (5, Half-Brother)

Siblings-In-Law: Donald Colt (42, Martha's Husband), Sophia Wilbur (39, Gareth's Wife, Née Brock), Cyrus Bullock (36, Madonna's Husband), Reign Tupper (34, Frederick's Wife, Née Bird), Kinsley Tupper (28, Eric's Wife, Née Beverley), Cyril Bull (25, Freya's Husband), Judith Tupper (22, Edric's Wife, Née Best), Basil Buckley (19, Donna's Husband), Berenice Todd (40, Sigmund' Wife, Née Norris), Leopold Doctor (37, Eunice's Husband)

Nieces & Nephews: Diana Barlow (22, Niece, Née Colt), Arthur Barlow (21, Diana's Husband), Peter Colt (19, Nephew), Blanche Colt (16, Niece), Oscar Colt (13, Nephew), Rhoda Wilbur (19, Niece), Gabriel Wilbur (16, Nephew), Pearl Wilbur (13, Niece), Fitzroy Wilbur (10, Nephew), Oro Wilbur (7, Niece), Ferdinand Bullock (16, Nephew), Olive Bullock (13, Niece), Clarence Bullock (10, Nephew), Misty Tupper (14, Niece), Casimir Tupper (11, Nephew), Melissa Tupper (8, Niece), Albert Tupper (5, Nephew), Katherine Tupper (8, Niece), Winfred Bull (5, Nephew), Iris Bull (2, Niece), William Tupper (2, Nephew), Emmeline Reeve (20, Niece, Née Todd), Gerard Reeve (19, Emmeline's Husband), Conrad Todd (17, Nephew), Brava Todd (14, Niece), Bernard Todd (11, Nephew), Indigo Todd (8, Niece), Archibald Todd (5, Nephew), India Doctor (17, Niece), Chad Doctor (14, Nephew), Millicent Doctor (11, Niece), Neil Doctor (8, Nephew)

Children: None

Children-In-Law: None

Grandkids: None

Wrestling

Billed From: Hellview

Trainer: Skull Lucifarian

Managers: Skull Lucifarian

Wrestlers Managed: None

Debut: 1966 (WWF Debut: 1980)

Retired: N/A

Wrestling Style: Trickster

Stables: Daughters of Darkness (1966-)

Teams:

Father’s Pride (Skull & Ven)

The Vixens (Ven & Bel)

Dynasty (Ven & Pat)

Cherry Bombs (Ven & Cas)

Lavender’s Blue (Ven & Hel)

The Killer Barbies (Ven & Eve)

Violet Offenders (Ven & Syd)

Regular Moves: Over The Shoulder Arm Drag, Forearm Smash, Leg Sweep, Chokehold STO, Keylock, Diving Somersault Evasion, Beheader (Neck Wrench), Lineage Ender (Standing Moonsault Double Knee Drop), Lion's Den (Crucifix Pin), Family Pride (Leg Trap Sunset Flip Power Bomb)

Finishers: Wish For This (Shooting Star Knee Drop), Flowing DDT, DDT

Refers To Fans As: The Prideful, The Prideful Ones

Heel or Face: (As of Jan 1980) Heel

[libidomechanica]

“I ought thy hart I know much”

At first are nothing waves to tell.     With truths dividual. More distance be yet, whose very stitch’d     her amid the Croud of they were delight substance, alike     to make men are stood the head; he should her near two face; let     him his brothed the array

and so heaven as every     batter large the assigned, I heart up, and must be names the     crossed, distanti in thou; althought wont of him was compare     wing’d Cup beneath all my charm all the jewel, helpe reject, pure     as well! And yet prepared,

the can haunt of someone every     still this; give and Daies, licked by Age, so low was the victim     for night laid garments to increases fear that hath power,     and Lydia agree: for others guide and bring o’er thousand     where we now! A woman’s

sent care. Return courself, which     pretty could have from flowers I not forgot him, for its     steel her said: glory of clothing! Older and with the warning     tongue. Were the blushing to melancholy, and with curling     both the smart. Fear or

me and there is necesse plunders     boy, picking never say, but snow: seas she din, I heard, and     pursue, resembl’d, murmur’d— Gently o’er they will falling New     Years not July can does not so will her face, my desire,     measurest at once

morning! Were slashing sweet, nor Priests     rage, his rather the monstrous chronic loud is done tone, but     Pomp of present cried then cut to this soul looked a female     make up not asked: Melchior? And fresher, thou shoute lone will     have kept the forgot him

with equal—when a sweeping long     ygoe? Looking some swift extremest always prey war, oud, wide-     spread and swift-foot, the lies and thence? A saints in my lemman     with delight house I notion she. To a setled as not     be curls about, the hung

Babel saw what show a twilight     lead you never could negroes forth; the Turkish boy, ’ rejoicing,     rueing flower an’ I’ll come out. And now ye daily sign     is gone, off, dear. The boat? And I beginning. And, you’re     aparted were not, nor

constantly as a disarms fit you     think o’ your old or God into gold on the skies. Naked     presence the tallest feeling: who on few with things I neither     Plot. How, being to haue made up Arms—he more till your     fills! There I stop my souls

enchange and Buttress, or we! The     military hill the very revels, and beauty’s talk’d     with snowdrops in conquer than a Sultán after theyr shepherds     say? Today what like a harsh of thy love a Right, than     his eye in awe in hungry

brake. In which attack’d; Religions     may vow, or at myopic trust, the names were discount     Wares, thy phants win; all other hand my throat was movement with     ruby light. And her slave, her that lover Violet blue hardly     known as they are ye

know when though then the Sky, I have     power girl-graduate, and one by a drap o’ the Daught     my break open’d without this high, while it is till ring. And     with Love in a clever till keep merely t is safe to     some to the extremes dim

witless and here is old Troy and     yet, which he was the roses midst wife’s forehead up—all     thing knows abode him Kings unsought of the month their Monarchs     are leafe studied at prefer to bed; puts that here. Yet lov’st     be calm kiss foil’d, by Swift

on ne’er set, my love, that scent a     brave, thine obedience, prays the clock and now ’gainst think her     forty be in the she could be green: and that recognize     his Royal Peter’s Imaginary when I’m a giaour,     as the Linnet, as do

this country-fair. Let menting day:     but if posting sea. I’ll pray in a lass, thus, worth thing other!     She corner sense first go to heards before ills three ship     so ruefully as think it is cabinet, became made     eloquent rod, and, ordained

by thy larks on may shrunk at the     bustle; and those whole the nation the flood, he wave of the     valiant. Knowing eyes, over then, the venge throught to the first     they could not his Rabinical, and whose whose for me: Love,     life’s dead: no Christabel,

are useless the Knight and the same     stronger: the flow’r is in them where stand, that drink her life. I     ought thy hart I know much whose thou canst find; if thy bones, no     sport; where and they had despair. Your hear and departure fitted,     on your pain my argue

like a finer thou Monument;     so man delicately floodshot lamp was left but now     amends and thou walk’d that other Monarch whither know, and     grows in captain threshold her; to you and withstood in the     other soil or it was

his Sicilian fashions, the     there, sole in some quite, deere, and howl you like the grave, though pale     blue, for Shimei was wed at length, by my swear a loving.     What, in child. The woman, I waiting Fame: and is the     To the warl’s gentlemen.

[steele-soulmate]

Tattooed Wings, CHAPTER 540, Peter Steele & OFC, Soulmate AU

SUMMARY: Mary Claire Bradley meets her soulmate- literally- the famous Peter Steele of metal group Type O Negative. But will obstacles including trauma, stalkers, and toxic family members get in the way of their life?

WARNING: mentions of child rape (nothing graphic) PTSD, milk kink, soft smut, grinding, assault, fingering, hand jobs, blow jobs, 69, P in V sex, blood, noncon rape, violence, death, vandalism, graffiti, attempted kidnapping, break-ins, wild animal attacks, terrorist attack (sabotage) consensual impregnation, bareback, impregnation kink, creampies, terrorist attacks (shootings) hit and run pedestrian accident, precipitous labor, neonatal death, abandoned baby

WORDS: 1217

“Hello, sweet babies,” I crooned to the Ratajczyk triplets when I left the King Charles tavern and stage where the Jacques Ze Whipper show was held at the New York Renaissance Faire. They were released from the NICU after nine and a half weeks of intensive around the clock care and their pediatrician had since cleared them to attend their first ever renaissance faire with the rest of the family.

Peter and I had both decided that the ten year old Elizabeth and Katie were old enough and responsible enough to have a tent of their own- they had divvied up the space in the tent that I had once upon another time shared with my two younger sisters, hanging up a privacy curtain across the center poles . When I had stuck my head in to ask them what they wanted for dinner, I found Elizabeth rolling a tapestry rug down on her side and Katie was making an impromptu hanging bow rack.

“Wow, looks homey!” I commented with a smile.

“Thanks mommy!” Elizabeth chirped happily, going to put fresh bedsheets onto her cot. “Can the babies have a sleepover with us? Please?”

“I do think that little girl and Baby Tommy might like having a sleep over with their big sisters,” I answered, holding up my hand to let them know that I wasn’t finished speaking. “I would personally feel better if Baby Eve and the Ratajczyk triplets slept in the big tent with daddy and I. They’re still so little!”

Peter had crafted a historically accurate cot for the triplets to sleep in, it being big enough to lump the three newborns in together and add in slots once they grew big enough to roll over. Baby Eve slept in little girl’s cot when the delightful little almost four year old would spend the night with her beloved Papa Pete and Mama Wen Wen.

When he wasn’t attending to anything, he could be found sitting underneath a tree or strolling through the marketplace, wearing Baby Tommy, little girl and Baby Eve in their cradleboard back papoose and carrying the Ratajczyk triplets in his burly arms. The six babies seemed their happiest when in the Ratajczyk patriarch’s arms. I noticed that the newest batch of babies didn’t cry much, only having enough time to whimper softly before Peter would be there, changing diapers or heating up a bottle of warmed mommy’s milk with the travel sized bottle warmer that he never went anywhere without these days.

Basically, being a mouthwatering beefcake.

“Hey sweetheart,” my husband greeted me as the eight of us headed up the walkway over towards the food stalls to grab some lunch for the entire family. Elizabeth and Katie were both currently off at their shared archery class- we had enrolled them in classes that covered history and weaponry and craftings and religion. I had sent Elizabeth a text earlier on, asking her what she wanted for lunch. Her response was anything- you know what I like! oh, and Katie says she wants a turkey leg :)

I bought lunch for everyone- one boxed serving of chicken fries and garlic fingers for me, eight boxed servings for Peter, a bowl of macaroni and cheese with bacon bits and chicken for Baby Tommy and little girl to share, a grilled cheese sandwich and garlic fries for Elizabeth and the promised turkey leg for Katie.

“Sweetheart, use my card to pay- it’s in my belt pouch,” Peter gently bossed me, going to sit while I went and ordered the food. I did as he told me too, skipping off to place our family order.

“Go and take a seat mama- I’ll send someone over with your food, alright?”

“Gramacy!” I thanked the stall owner before heading off to join my husband sitting at a table with little girl and Baby Tommy playing along the fallen leaves, making their little dollie friends take flight from random little points.

“Mermaid Gurl and Super Tom Tom save the day again!” bubbled little girl before coming up to me for a snuggle. “Hihi Mama Wen Wen!”

“Hihi there, little girl!” I giggled, welcoming Baby Tommy in as he came seeking all the snuggles. “Hihi Baby Tommy!”

“Tippies?” Baby Tommy babbled as Baby Teddy sneezed. “Tippies?”

“Baby Tommy, you can give the triplets all the cuddles when we get back to our tent with lunch,” I told him, leaving a light peck in between his eyebrows.

“Awite,” he agreed, perking up as a worker came up to us, carrying a tray full of food. “Yum yum yummies!”

“Yum yum yums!” giggled the girl as she helped me pack my basket full with the food. “Yum yum yummies for the babies!”

“Indeed!” I giggled as I fed both him and little girl a garlic finger each. “Yum yum yum!”

“Bless your soul!” Baby Tommy yelled, cramming the treat into his mouth.

“Bless your soul?” I asked him, utterly amused as I stood up, holding my hands open for him to grab onto for the hike back to the family’s tents. “Baby Tommy, where on earth did you come up with that?”

The adorably chubby two year old just beamed up at me as he took my hand in of tiny baby fist and his older sister’s fingers with his other one before beginning to toddle off at my side.

“Mommy! Daddy! Mommy! Daddy! Mommy! Daddy! Mommy! Daddy!”

I looked up and broke out into a beaming smile at the sight of Elizabeth and Katie racing towards us, their American Girl look alike in arm as they readied themselves to swarm the family parade.

“Can we have a picnic on your bed?” Elizabeth asked, a flower crown covering her bald head. “Please?”

“I thought that was what we were doing!” I frowned at her, the group of us coming up to the archer’s encampment and entering the giant marquees tent that was the Ratajczyk family’s homebase. “Now, how was archery?”

Gramercy, thank you, old French? 

TAGLISTS ARE OPEN/ ASK BOX IS OPEN/ REQUESTS ARE OPEN/ PLOT BUNNIES ARE WELCOMED

If you liked this, then please consider buying me a coffee HERE It only costs $3!!!

PETER STEELE TAGLIST

@rock-a-noodle

@ch3rry-c01a

[touchmycoat]

Anyways here are some of Peter's 5-4 openers:

Welcome to the inaugural episode of 5-4, a podcast about how much the Supreme Court sucks and the only Supreme Court podcast without a pending Title IX investigation. (x)

Welcome to Episode 2 of 5-4, where we dissect and analyze the Supreme Court decisions that have made this country, by a wide margin, the worst in the world. (x)

Welcome to 5-4 podcast, where we dissect and analyze the terrible Supreme Court decisions whose collective weight have slowly crushed the American soul like stones laid atop an accused witch. [Hosts introductions] ...And together, we are America's only sexually-active lawyers. (x)

Alright, welcome to 5-4 podcasts where we dissect and analyze the Supreme Court decisions that have washed over American life, like waves over the rocks, reducing once proud boulders to sandy rubble. [...] And today we are covering Shelby County v. Holder, a case that asks a lot of big questions like, "Is there still racism?" And follow-up questions like, "Are you sure? Are you sure there's still racism?" (x)

...And together, we are the only legal podcasters at any serious risk of disbarment. (x)

Alright, welcome to 5-4, where we dissect and analyze the Supreme Court cases that have eaten away at this nation, like termites in our floor boards. (x)

Welcome to 5-4, where we dissect and analyze the Supreme Court cases that have weakened America, like rust slowly eating a steel beam. [...] Today's case is Castle Rock v. Gonzales, a case that features two of my least favorite things in the world, procedural technicalities and the brutal murder of innocent children. (x)

Welcome to 5-4 where we dissect and analyze the Supreme Court cases that have left America cracked and barren like hot sunlight beaming down on a drought-stricken plain. [...] We also wanna note other reviews have described us as immature, using gratuitous profanity, sanctimonious, lacking respect for the practice of law. We will not be making any changes to address those concerns. (x)

Welcome to 5-4, where we dissect and analyze the Supreme Court cases that hover over America like vultures over a dying man in the desert. (x)

Welcome to 5-4, where we dissect and analyze the Supreme Court cases that have burrowed into America's chest cavity, like that little alien in the 1979 movie, Alien. (x)

In our Citizens United episode, we discuss the inherent absurdity of corporations having the right to political speech. Hobby Lobby takes that issue, digs a little deeper and asks us, "Can a for-profit corporation have a religion? Can a company that sells arts and craft supplies sincerely believe that our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ prohibits ladies from using contraception?" And the answer is yes. (x)

Welcome to 5-4, where we dissect and analyze the Supreme Court cases that have eaten away at America, like maggots on a rotten carcass. (x)

Today, we are discussing Exxon Shipping v. Baker, a case about the famous Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989. [...] I think generally speaking, spills from oil tankers were a huge environmental concern until about 2010 when British Petroleum figured out a way to cut out the middleman and pump oil directly from the Earth's crust into our oceans. (x)

you ever get obsessed with a legal podcast

[i-eat-cars-and-berriesss]

Hello, welcome to my blog! My name is primarily KD, but I also go by Kaciro. I'm an Indo-Caribbean, who is straying from labels rn but I identify as a bisexual. Somewhere, somewhere I'm on the ace spectrum. I'm here and I have sporadic, chaotic interests. I love my dog, that is the first thing you oughta know about me!!! Oh, and sometimes I touch on my culture and roots. Everyone probably knows me for my unhinged, decent posts + incorrect quotes but I'll try to keep this more generalized. but you def will catch me straying into specific fandoms (like Disney). 💫 Pronouns: She/Them but Fae/Faer will do too. 🍄 My Carrd (finally!!!) 🍁 I have tons of things that I’m associated with as a multifandom lover. I have improved this blog from before/can interact better, so I'm proud of that. ALSO, Send me asks for fun lmao

(Btw I love the color blue💕💕, if you can, ask why)

🚶🏽‍♀️👈Get thee gone from my gate, thou jail-crow of Mandos if you are a (DNI List):

Dream stan

Boyfriends stan

Homophobe, transphobe, biphobe, panphobe, aphobe, or lesbophobe (or queerphobe in general!!)

A terf

Truscum/transmed

Racist

Pro-endosystem

Pedo/MAP

Xenophobe/don't support xenogenders and neopronouns

Anti-religious/have prejudice against any religions

Pro-religion/obsessed with it

Sexist (misogynist/support misandry)

Ableist

⚡️Fandoms⚡️:

FNAF (yes, the entire franchise)

Bendy & the Ink Machine (my childhood!)

Incorrect quotes (is that a fandom? idk)

Classical and modern literature

TF2 (im a gaymer)

Mandela Catalogue

The fandom of "Liking fictional and irl people (Con O’Neill, Henry Cavill, and Peter Steele)" (not really romantic)

PoTO

MXTX/Danmei

Baki the Grappler

Ancient Greek Mythology

TSOA

AHKJ/Madagascar

Horseland

Bluey

PJO

Nimona

Warriors (Erin Hunter)

HTF

LotR (Tolkien's writing in general actually)

OFMD (out of that era but relevant?)?

Aesthetics/Stimboards

Dnd/Fantasy

JJBA (part 3)

MTV Downtown

Hatfield & McCoys

Encanto (2021)

Bollywood (my heritage, bby)

Fanfiction (mine mostly)

Dead Dove fics/very angsty fics

Memes

Disorganization of Shrek!! (he is love he is life, he is everything)

Some opinions

Mostly shitposting and reblogging

Rambling

✨Occasional fandoms that are not a main focus✨:

Paleontology

AoT

Courage the Cowardly Dog

TWD

WoF (Tui Sutherland's works)

Avatar: the Last Airbender

Avatar (James Cameron)

DHMIS

TMA

Marvel & DC

Winx Club

King of the Hill

Clone High

Rivals of Aether (Lovers of Aether)

MLP

Miraculous Ladybug

Xenofiction (Ice Age, The Lion King 1994-ish stuff)

Genshin Impact

Writing (my own writing, sometimes horribly-made smut)

Sally Face

Animals (dogs specifically)

Star Wars

South Park

WwdiD

DoaWK

Rick and Morty

Lemon Demon

Vivziepop’s series (sometimes, i used to be huge fan)

Tokyo Revengers (eh)

Always Sunny in Philadelphia 

House of Wax/Slashers

Night in the Woods

Bojack Horseman

Monster Prom

💦Who I would simp for (if I can admit) :

Lan WangJi from Mo Dao Zu Shi

Sauron from Tolkien's Works

Asterius from Hades (2018)

Izzy Hands from Our Flag Means Death

Red Guy from Don't Hug Me I'm Scared

Zeke Yeager from Attack on Titan

Gabriel from The Mandela Catalogue

Kakyoin Noriaki from Jojo's Bizarre Adventures: Stardust Crusaders

Kaeya Alberich from Genshin Impact

Lisa from Genshin Impact

Glamrock Foxy from Five Nights at Freddy's: SB

Godrick the Grafted from Elden Ring

Death from Puss in Boots: The Last Wish

Miguel O'Hara (Spider-man)

🍪Comfort Characters:

Simba from the Lion King

Ballister Boldheart from Nimona

Mort Mordecai from Madagascar

Bonnie from Five Nights at Freddy's

ahhh, this is crigne but know that LWJ 🐰 and Sauron 🌋 came before any other of my blorbos lol. i do write time to time, so read those snippets on my ao3! now enjoy yourself, running thru my blog! enjoy this bullshitery and have a good day!

Also, new and better ao3 account with my Hae~ and pinterest and twitter 🌸

Update: keeping to myself to finish fanfic projects I’ve started. I've been simping real hard for a stoner, so I may be a furry... sorry not sorry about liking the freaky bastard Godrick tho. also getting back into reading and picked up danmei. Good luck to me.

[grandhotelabyss]

(Ask a black American if he or she thinks our Civil War didn't solve anything.)

—Susan Sontag, “Why Are We in Kosovo?” New York Times (1999)

It is because America's crime, its real crime, is to be America herself. The crime is to exude the dynamism of an everchanging liberal culture. America is like Israel in that respect, only 50 times larger and infinitely richer and more powerful. America's crime is to show that liberal society can thrive and that antiliberal society cannot. This is the whip that drives the antiliberal movements to their fury. The United States ought to act prudently in the Middle East and everywhere else; but no amount of prudence will forestall that kind of hostility. And this should not be news. For the radical nationalist and Islamist movements are not, as I say, anything new. Movements of that sort are a reality of modern life. They are the echo that comes bouncing back from the noise made by liberal progress. And this should tell us truths about the struggle that has suddenly fallen upon us.

—Paul Berman, “Terror and Liberalism,” The American Prospect (2001)

If you’re actually certain that you’re hitting only a concentration of enemy troops…then it’s pretty good because those steel pellets will go straight through somebody and out the other side and through somebody else. And if they’re bearing a Koran over their heart, it’ll go straight through that, too. So they won’t be able to say, “Ah, I was bearing a Koran over my heart and guess what, the missile stopped halfway through.” No way, ’cause it’ll go straight through that as well. They’ll be dead, in other words.

—Christopher Hitchens, qtd. in “The Left and 9/11,” The Nation (2002)

My frustration, in other words, is not that we took action in Afghanistan but that we have not done enough. We should have fought the ground war and occupied Kabul; organized an international force to disarm the warlords, protect ordinary citizens, and oversee the distribution of aid; demanded that secularists be included in the negotiations for a new government and that basic women’s rights be built into a new structure of law. If this is “imperialism”—in the promiscuous contemporary usage of that term—I am for it: I believe it is the prerequisite of a stable peace.

—Ellen Willis, “Why I’m Not for Peace,” Radical Society (2002)

Obama understands the white liberal American distaste for power as a symptom of white privilege, and he is certainly right. 

—David Samuels, “Invisible Man: How Ralph Ellison Explains Barack Obama,”  The New Republic (2008)

The 20th century, with its struggles for equal rights, with the triumph of democracy as the ideal in Western thought, proved Douglass right. The Civil War marks the first great defense of democracy and the modern West. Its legacy lies in everything from women’s suffrage to the revolutions now sweeping the Middle East. It was during the Civil War that the heady principles of the Enlightenment were first, and most spectacularly, called fully to account.

—Ta-Nehisi Coates, “Why Do So Few Blacks Study the Civil War?” The Atlantic (2012)

(Whether for better or for worse—both for better and for worse—liberalism means war:

The Gnostic valorization of freedom at the same time articulates an exceedingly vindictive denunciation of the physical world, a condemnation far harsher than any perspective found in Christian orthodoxy. The radical dualism of Gnosticism means that its adherents assume a drastically different spiritual posture from that of the Christian believer; whereas the latter experiences saving knowledge as the increasing awareness of his or her sinful condition in a divinely created cosmos, the Gnostic sets out to regain his or her innocence in a world that is the misshapen and unregenerate product of a malign deity. Thus, Gnosticism, in order to sustain its belief in the innocence of the uncreated spark, must project all that is baleful and malevolent onto the cosmos itself. The assertion of this insuperable divide between one’s inviolable self and the woeful prison of matter generates an equally intractable sense of indifference to one’s actions in the world, since such indifference, which is actively assumed out of disdain and horror and thus not to be mistaken for detached quietude, demonstrates the powerlessness of the Demiurge to corrupt the divine spark within. According to [Harold] Bloom, the American Religion is likewise defined by the conviction that the world and one’s actions in it are irrelevant to the purity of the self: “If your knowing ultimately tells you that you are beyond nature, having long preceded it, then your natural acts cannot sully you. No wonder then, that salvation, once attained, cannot fall away from the American Religionist, no matter what he or she does” (265). Furthermore, if the creation is truly identical to the Fall, and the physical world reveals the designs of an antagonistic deity, then the sacrosanct self becomes defined according to its hostility against the order of being. For the American Religion’s worship of freedom is at the same time a war against otherness, which it understands as “whatever denies the self’s status and function as the true standard of being and of value” (Bloom 16).

—Peter Yoonsuk Paik, “Smart Bombs, Serial Killing, and the Rapture: The Vanishing Bodies of Imperial Apocalypticism,” Postmodern Culture [2003])

[arcticdementor]

I have a certain fondness for cyclical history, or at least the notion that there are some structural patterns that seem to recur in predictable waves throughout history – including ones that could explain our current period of upheaval.

Several observers of history have theorized broad 60-100 year secular “cycles” of historical disorder and reorder, such as William Strauss and Neil Howe’s generational theory and Peter Turchin’s “cliodynamic” forecast of an “age of discord” – both of which predicted a period of extended crisis around 2020 and now seem to pretty much be playing out exactly as prophesized.

…

This stuff is worth exploring more, and I aim to do so in the future. But first, I think it might be worth it for us to start by actually thinking bigger – much bigger. As in: what if we aren’t witnessing a period of change “unseen in a century,” but unseen in five centuries? And, what if we are engulfed not in a secular cycle, but in one more fundamentally religious in nature? That’s an important question to analyze, even if you aren’t religious.

In the last decade we’ve seen the emergence in the West of a strident new ideology of “Social Justice” which, despite its self-conceived secularism, many observers have now convincingly argued bears all the hallmarks of a new religious cult, complete with a new metaphysics of truth and reality, a concept of original sin, a new hierarchy of moral virtues, a self-constructed canonical liturgy and a strict orthodoxy, a de-facto priesthood, sacred spaces, self-abasing rituals, a community of believers, linguistic shibboleths, blasphemy laws, and excommunication – among other giveaways.

But, quite notably, this “New Faith” seems to have, consciously or unconsciously, modeled most of its belief system and ritual practices straight out of the Christian tradition, from an overarching preoccupation with the weak and the victimized, along with an emphasis on atonement (though any conception of grace, forgiveness, or redemption is notably absent), right down to specific forms of ritual, like the washing of feet or the symbolic reenactment of martyrdom.

This raises an interesting question: is what we are witnessing now less an entirely new faith than what in the past would have instead been immediately recognized and categorized as part of the long list of Christian heresies, large and small, which challenged the established church throughout history? Could we be living through, as I posited briefly in my introductory essay to The Upheaval, a religious revolution similar to the Reformation that wracked Europe beginning around 500 years ago?

A 500 Year Cycle

Enter the late Phyllis Tickle, an American academic and journalist following religious trends, and her 2008 book The Great Emergence, which essentially argued precisely that. Tickle’s book is frankly what I would have described as a work of pure kookery as recently as five years ago, but, well, times have changed.

The Great Emergence posits that Christianity has throughout its history been shaped by a recurring 500 year-long cycle of structural and spiritual dissolution, turmoil, and re-formation. Each time, the Church has seemingly been seized by a collective desire to cast off established institutional structures and beliefs. She identifies four past rotations of this cycle, coincidentally describing a “mighty upheaval” that has inevitably consumed the Christian world at every climax of this cycle before order was eventually restored.

…

Tickle describes an established religion as a sort of cable – not just a metaphorical “cable of meaning that keeps the human social unit connected to some purpose and/or power greater than itself,” but with the analogy of an actual cable.

Inside a steel cable are three interwoven strands, in this case representing spirituality (interior religious experience and belief), corporeality (the physical embodiment/evidence of a religious practice’s existence and practice, such as books, liturgy, or a priest’s robes), and morality (essentially applied spirituality, filtered through corporeality). On the outside of the cable is a waterproof casing that protects the interior. In our analogy, this is the religion’s story (the mythic and actual shared history that unites members). Finally, in between the casing and the strands is a pliable mesh sleeve that makes the cable more flexible and less brittle, and helps to absorb shocks. This is the common imagination or illusion of the religion’s believers about “how the world works” and is “to be imaged and thereby understood.” It serves as a general operating system for the group.

So constructed, said religious cable can rest underwater on the seabed of history for quite a long time unperturbed in its function. However, eventually the outer casing (the story) will become corroded, and the interior mesh (collective imagination) disrupted by events. At first this is fine, and the cable continues to hold, or is even repaired. That is until “that fateful time, about once every five hundred years, when the outer casing of the story and inner sleeve of the shared illusion take a blow simultaneously. When that happens, a hole is opened straight through to the braid. The water rushes in; and human nature being what human nature is, we reach our collective hand in through the hole and pull out the three strands one at a time. Spirituality first, corporeality second, and morality last. We pull each up, consider it from every possible angle, and at times finger it beyond all imagining.” (If you’re now thinking of the rapid growth of people in the 21st century that began claiming they’re “spiritual but not religious,” you are connecting the dots here).

…

Which brings us to a final interesting pattern that Tickle identifies in every cycle: the emergence of at least one “new form” of Christianity, but also simultaneously a process of “re-traditioning” by the original faith that has “occurred with each turn of the eras and is a substantial dynamic in the progression from upheaval to renewed stability.” In the case of the Reformation, the Church was “freed” to tackle errors and corruptions, and to make significant institutional reforms (in the Fifth Lateran Council, the Councils of Trent, etc.) during a period of counter-reformation that would eventually produce a less decadent and more unified, clarified, and vibrant Catholic Church.

…

What happened in sum, in Tickle’s telling, is that “sola scriptura, scriptura sola,” which “had answered the authority question in the sixteenth century and, more or less, had sustained the centuries between the Great Reformation” and the modern day, was mortally wounded. In largely Protestant America, this had big consequences (and meanwhile the Catholic Church was facing similar pressures). Any agreement on the three strands of the cable – what it means to be “spiritual”; what the corporeality of the church should looks like, or if it should even exist; and eventually what it means to be a moral person – was now gone.

The result, she says, has been the emergence of a new faith structure.

The very first manifestation of this, Tickle argues, dates back to the birth and explosive growth in America of Pentecostalism, a form of “charismatic” Protestantism that emphasizes a radically egalitarian, direct and personal relationship with God sufficient to produce the famed “speaking in tongues” common in Pentecostal worship. Pentecostalism “by definition assumes direct contact of the believer with God and, by extension, the direct agency of the Holy Spirit as instructor and counselor and commander as well as comforter.” As such, “Pentecostalism assumes that ultimate authority is experiential rather than canonical… Pentecostalism, in other words offered the Great Emergence its first, solid, applied answer to the question of where now is our authority.”

Today, however, even Pentecostalism is beginning to break down – along with evangelicalism and pretty much every other denomination – and see its followers assimilated into something new: the “Emergent Church.” But what exactly is that?

…

And the “Emergents,” it turns out, “are postmodern.” Despite all that rationalist science from earlier, the takeaway from the collapse of authority has been “that logic is not worth nearly so much as the last five hundred years would have had us believe. It is, therefore, not to be trusted as an absolute, nor are its conclusions to be taken as truth just because they depend from logical thinking.”

…

But who ultimately determines the narrative in this ultra-democratic faith? Tickle taps into network theory to answer: crowd sourcing. The group will manifest its own values and own authority. This “differs [from the past] in that it employs total egalitarianism, a respect for worth of the hoi polloi that even pure democracy never had, and a complete indifference to capitalism as a virtue or to individualism as a godly circumstance.”

Is any of this beginning to sound somewhat worrying to you? Well don’t worry, says Tickle – and it is worth pausing here to note that Tickle is an enthusiastic self-described Emergent who thinks this is all great news – the coalescing Emergent Church will settle on new answers to authority, spirituality, morality, and practice, and find its footing as the new dominant Christianity.  Meanwhile the reactionaries left in the corners will undergo a process of re-traditioning and come out the better for it in the end. And they can take heart that “every time the incrustations of an overly established Christianity have been broken open, the faith has spread – and been spread – dramatically into new geographic and demographic areas, thereby increasing exponentially the range and depth of Christianity’s reach as a result of its time of unease and distress.”

And with the new egalitarian faith tradition so deeply in touch with our common humanity, all the bloodshed and general unpleasantness experienced during every past historical case of “emergence” will presumably be avoided (Tickle seems to forget about that part in her excitement). Then everyone will live happily ever after – or at least for another 500 years.

That was Tickle’s conclusion anyway. But she published The Great Emergence in 2008 and died in 2015, so she didn’t live to see what’s actually happened.

The Actual Great Emergence

Tickle wrote her book too soon. Liberal, vibrating, Eastern-inspired hippies no longer, her “Emergent Church” seems to have taken a turn in the last decade that she didn’t see coming, transforming into a rather different beast.

Here’s what I think may have happened. Tickle got a lot of things very right: the cable of institutional Christianity was corroded by science and cultural entropy; sola scriptura, scriptura sola did break down, and the faith did enter a crisis centered on the question “where now is authority?” A new Christianity did began to emerge, just as she described.

In fact the trends toward the collapse of establishment Christianity were perhaps even more powerful than she may have predicted. A recent Gallup poll found that less than 50% of American’s are now official members of a church or other religious organization, down from over 60% in 2008.

…

But – and this is my theory – in the end Tickle’s version of Emergent Christianity proved a weak social construct. It existed to gratify its adherents with the belief that they were still morally good members of a religious tradition, whose primary goal was to provide for their happiness, while liberating them from any higher authority beyond themselves and freeing them from any of the responsibilities or strictures that had once characterized that religion.

In other words, Emergent Christianity was mostly Moralistic Therapeutic Deism all along.

Ultimately, this fragile early-stage Emergent Church didn’t resolve the crisis because it didn’t have any real authority, meaningful substance, or unifying purpose.

Meanwhile, many of the seeds planted within Emergent Christianity that Tickle mentioned were still finishing germinating, namely: post-modernism, narrative-driven reality, direct personal relationship with and self-interpretation of divinity, opposition to hierarchy, and crowd-sourced authority.

But, most important of all was I think something Tickle doesn’t really touch on too much: the modernity-driven suspicion, deep within the hearts even of many Christians, that in fact, as Nietzsche infamously put it, “God is dead.” Increasingly skeptical about the existence of any kingdom of God in heaven, they were primed for a logical alternative: building the kingdom of heaven on earth instead.

The stage was thus set for The Great Merger.  

At some point the Emergent Church came face-to-face with secular, identity-based “Social Justice” activism – likely in the 2010s, when core theoretical ideas behind that movement, based on post-modern Critical Theory and neo-Marxist frameworks of identitarian struggle, first really began to seep out of the academy and crystalize into effective activist movements, such as Black Lives Matter or the trans rights movement, in a big way.

Both sides liked what they saw, but for the Emergent Church in particular this was a match made in narrative heaven. Secular Social Justice activism dovetailed perfectly with both the strong historical emphasis on social justice work within many Christian denominations (including the Social Gospel movement) and the post-modern seeds already present in Emergent Christianity (such as the primacy of self-interpreted identity). But more importantly it offered Emergents nearly everything they had been missing and longing for. Suddenly they had a new source of authority (the doctrines of Critical Theory and the hierarchy of intersectional identity), a clear metaphysics of good and evil (the oppressed and their oppressors), an ultimate objective (to perfect the world by the elimination of evil), and a grand narrative of how to live in the world.

George Orwell famously wrote in his 1940 review of Mein Kampf that: “Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people ‘I offer you a good time,’ Hitler has said to them ‘I offer you struggle, danger and death,’ and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet.” Well, the Emergent Church offered its restless followers comfort and a good time on earth; neo-Marxist Social Justice offered them revolutionary struggle, and so they prostrated themselves immediately.

…

That’s not the end of the story though, as I think Emergent Christianity may have had more influence on the secular activist movement than the latter tends to consider. In fact I think it might have been quite important to the rapid emergence and spread of the New Faith.

To start with, it provided the concept of sin. This helped grow and empower the activist movement tremendously. Why? One might not think of free-wheeling secular culture embracing the idea of sin so easily, even joyfully, but it was a simple matter. As an example, picture a hypothetical middle-class suburban white lady, enjoying a relatively comfortable material life but wracked by a vague but unshakable sense of guilt about her existence – for being white in a country with a history often unkind to non-whites; for her consumption habits contributing to environmental pollution and climate change; for being the citizen of a rich country while elsewhere in the world children starve, and so on. Liberalism has never addressed this feeling in a satisfactory way. Suddenly, along comes the New Faith, and tells her that it’s all true: she is indeed a sinner, and she’s not alone! In fact the whole country and her whole race is corrupted by the original sins of colonialism, slavery, and genocide. What a relief! Even better, it has a comprehensive plan of action for how to address this sin.

This helped reorient Social Justice from the purely systemic to the personal. Neo-Marxist roots mean that the modern Social Justice movement tends to think primarily in terms of systems, and aims to drive systemic change to address systemic problems, like “systemic racism.”  Broadly speaking, this is still the case, but the problem is that this is both a hard goal and a cold, impersonal one. It’s not very inspiring to tell people their individual agency is of little import to the machine and that the only way to affect progress is to change the whole machine. Activism seems like pretty desperate business in that case. The concept of sin, however, provides a short circuit to this problem: it implies that progress can be made through a sort of personal moral transformation (say by acknowledging one’s privilege and “unconscious bias” and moving from “racist” to “anti-racist”) which anyone can achieve if they “educate” themselves and “do the work.” Liberalism has studiously avoided telling our secular white lady how she should live in the world, so this kind of moral direction provides the relief of having a distinct path. Moreover, if everyone was to accept this path all the problems of the world would be immediately be solved, so convincing (or forcing) more people to accept the Good News and begin their personal transformation becomes an imperative mission.

…

Finally, it provides an even greater sense of community to the faithful, helping to overcome the atomizing isolation and loneliness of liquid modernity. This is a somewhat odd community though. Just as Tickle predicted, communications technology has made it simultaneously vast and hyper-democratic. You might question whether the strict orthodoxy and blasphemy codes of the New Faith, to which one must submit or be canceled, are democratic, but that is only because you have forgotten your Plato and Aristotle, either of whom could have warned you what tends to happen to pure democracies. As Aristotle put it in his Politics:

[T]here demagogues spring up. For the people becomes a monarch, and is many in one; and there many have the power in their hand, not as individuals, but collectively… At all events this sort of democracy, which is now a monarchy, and no longer under the control of law, seeks to exercise monarchical sway, and grows into a despot.

If you ever wonder why something you said that was fine 72 hours ago is now an unredeemably racist, sexist, excommunicable offense, it’s because the disembodied Swarm Pope, who leads the People’s Democratic Priesthood of All Believers, crowd-sourced it from the swirling Id of the mob on Twitter while you weren’t looking.

…

The problem is that, even if the 500 year cycle that Tickle describes is genuine, it isn’t clear in each case what is cause and what is effect. As Tickle acknowledges at one point in her book, “over and over again,” the “religious enthusiasms” of each period of cyclical emergence “are unfailingly symptomatic or expressive of concomitant political, economic, and social upheavals.” So was the Reformation the cause of Europe’s 16th century turmoil, or just one important manifestation of a broader secular dynamic driving general upheaval? If the “great emergence” was not the cause, then what was? Tickle doesn’t attempt an answer to that, so our inquiry is back near square one.

However, I do have a suspicion that the question Tickle identifies as at the core of recurring crises in established Christianity – “where now is authority?” – is key. It may be that the seeming collapse of any firm locus of authority in almost every aspect of life today – politics, geopolitics, elites in general, religion, morality in general, asset pricing, economics in general, media, information in general, etc. – is central to our whole broader upheaval in the world today.

[sanguinarius-archive]

anyways i made a post about this a few days ago but im thinking about it again so i wanna try and... expand on it more?

ever since ive gotten into black metal ive become like, very hyper aware of what im listening to. black metal has a history of perpetrating alt right and legitimate nazi propaganda. now if i didnt have knowledge on its history i’d probably be like how i thought of it at first, “why? it’s metal, isn’t metal supposed to be full of cool people who are far left and include fighting antisemitism in their activism?”

but, like, obviously not every metal band is Going to be like that. people think they have the right to a voice no matter what the “rules” are. bands like type o negative got away with their racist, antisemitic, transmisogynistic, homophobic, misogynistic, generally bigoted bullshit messages in their songs all because peter steele was the “hot vampiric man babe” that every goth girl wanted and probably still wants. bigotry is in every music genre - music is way of connecting people, and people will make connections no matter how harmful their messages are in what they create.

black metal has a history of having nazi fans and creators due to its anti-religious definition. on its very own wikipedia page, black metal as a music genre itself is described as being supportive of satanism and against any institutional religion (christianity mainly, but includes judaism and islam). for anyone out of the loop - no, satanism isn’t a “religion”, most satanists don’t actually worship the devil as in believing in his existence, they just worship what the christian (but not always just christian) god opposes. though there are various forms of satanism, this one is the most common it seems.

anyways what im getting at is like.... it really isnt that surprising that a music genre that is by definition anti-religion happens to have nazis within its several communities. black metal, as a type of music, does have good sound and its honestly good for me to listen to, but also it has history. its because of bands like mayhem and burzum and people like varg vikernes that nazis and alt righters are so abundant within these communities. that should not be ignored or dismissed. and im not trying to make it seem like this is a thing that only occurs within the black metal communities - it happens within every metal community. it probably happens within every music community in general. but im just saying that it really isnt surprising that a genre with a definition like black metal has a shitload of freaks.

i think if youre a black metal fan you ought to be very careful about what kind of music youre listening to. dont forget that much of black metal comes from european countries and one of its most influential bands of all time literally had a guy who was both a nazi, murderer, and an arsonist. or if youre just a metal fan in general, be wary about who youre listening to and what messages they preach. even if they dont put it into their music, i definitely wouldnt want to give a nazi my money, and neither should you.

[why-bless-your-heart]

Chapter 2: The Secret of Gabriel Syme

Syme, upon receiving lobster mayonnaise in a dingy little bar, declares himself to be in a dream: "It is new to me for a nightmare to lead me to a lobster. It is commonly the other way." Although I doubt this was intentional, the receipt of an unkosher meal and the connection with a dream can be seen as a parallel with the biblical account of St. Peter's vision in which he was told "What God has cleansed, you shall not call unclean."

Gregory assures Syme that he is "close to the most actual and rousing moment of your existence." He then states that there is "a slight disproportion ... between the inner arrangements of this excellent hotel and its simple and unpretentious exterior." While here Gregory is talking about meeting the true anarchists, it also foreshadows the upcoming events of the novel.

"'Well, if I am not drunk, I am mad,' replied Syme with perfect calm, 'but I trust I can behave like a gentleman in either condition.'" Where Innocent Smith breaks the conventions while keeping the commandments, Syme keeps the conventions with perfect aplomb.

Syme and Gregory descend into a subterranean chamber illuminated by a red light, "nearly as big as a fireplace," to meet the true anarchists. The symbolism is obvious.

Somewhat less obvious is Gregory knocking on the door five times. If this were C.S. Lewis, I would be convinced that this was intentional, but since it's Chesterton, I can only hypothesize. Five is, in some medieval numerology, the number of mankind, since it is composed of three (number of male) and two (number of female). I should have expected Chesterton to have Gregory knock on the door four times, for the fourth day of Thursday, six times, for the number of the beast, seven times, for the days of the week, or even eight times, for the eighth day on which the first wedding was held. But he chose five times. It could have been an arbitrary number, of course, but that sounds like a stretch.

"Mr. Joseph Chamberlain" is, from what little I know of Edwardian English politics, a very ironic code name, and, incidentally, has 7 syllables.

Freud would probably have something to say about walking through passages lined with weapons to finally arrive in a steel chamber, "almost spherical in shape," in which are hung bombs which look like "the bulbs of iron plants, or the eggs of iron birds." That is why Freud is not invited to my book club.

Syme's true super power is being irritating. I laugh every time Gregory admits that he would "break twenty oaths of secrecy for the pleasure of taking [Syme] down a peg." I also know that this motivation will be much less funny at the end of the book.

Gregory says that he and the true anarchists want to abolish Right and Wrong. Syme shoots back that he hopes they also abolish the much more troublesome Right and Left. This is an interesting metaphor because while some may claim that morality is subjective, it is only so in the sense that right and left are subjective: everyone has their own right and left, and "to your right" in some cases may mean the same thing as "to your left" in others, we nevertheless understand that there is a consistent, if abstract, principal on which we operate without question. And if we abandon it we find ourselves very lost very quickly.

Gregory's history of how he came to hide his anarchism by masquerading as an anarchist places him in three aspects of society, Church, Capital, and Corps, or religion, money, and military. He cannot pass in any of these because he believes what the anarchists say about them.

Gregory says of Sunday, "He looked at me with his large and indecipherable face." This means that Gregory stood in front of Sunday in the light, a luxury that Syme has not yet had.

I always wonder about the man who played the part of Thursday previously.

Thursday's equipment is as follows: a sword-stick (which, incidentally, was one of Chesterton's first purchases as a married man), a large Colt's revolver, a sandwich case, a flask of brandy and a cape or cloak. Here we see a concealed chivalry, a method of open defense (plus the name 'colt', which permits a chivalrous connotation), food, drink, and a method of concealment. We run into 5 again.

When Syme asks why he positively likes Gregory, he posits that it is because Gregory is "such an ass." Animosity is always going to be an emotion closer to love than indifference.

There are 33 other anarchists in Gregory's branch--a Christological number, since that was how many years He lived on Earth before His crucifixion. With Gregory, that makes 34 anarchists total-- 3+4 = 7. Again, I don't have any evidence that Chesterton liked to play with numbers like so, but I am nothing if not willing to assign meaning regardless of intent.

Syme's reveal of his true occupation is always so beautifully dramatic. All other elements aside, this novel is just a really fun read.

[ao3feed-jupeter]

And at my right hand Grief incessant follows, And at my left walks Memory

by LadyRaincloud

Juno Steel isn't giving up on Peter Nureyev ever again. So when Nureyev vanishes with no warning, Juno knows he's in trouble, and he sets out on a journey that takes him across Mars and to the other side of the solar system to find him.

And that's the easy part.

To bring Nureyev home, Juno has his way back across the ice dunes and through the mists of Pluto, alone but for the three spectres of previous aliases haunting his footsteps to remind him that he still doesn't really know the man he's trying to save.

Travel across the galaxy. Always running, never looking back. It's what Nureyev had once promised him, but Juno had never imagined it looking like this.

Or, it's an Orpheus and Eurydice retelling IN SPACE, featuring trust issues, intergalactic criminal conspiracies, and both literally and figuratively starcrossed lovers.

Words: 2961, Chapters: 1/10, Language: English

Fandoms: The Penumbra Podcast

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Categories: Other

Characters: Juno Steel, Peter Nureyev, the rest of the Carte Blanche crew but not tagging them individually because they aren't prominent, others to be added WHEN WE GET THERE, no OCs we have canon characters at home

Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel

Additional Tags: Inspired by Orpheus and Eurydice (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Hurt/Comfort, but mainly Hurt/More Hurt/maybe some comfort/more Hurt though, Grief/Mourning, (I am so sorry), POV Alternating, Alternating Timelines, (within the same chapters! because I love making things hard on myself!), Abandonment, so many warnings I'll add by chapter or I'll be here all night, In Which Juno And Peter Experience A Range of Abandonment and Trust Issues On Various Planets, featuring more research on the geography of Mars and Pluto than I ever expected, most of which I then disregarded anyway

Read on AO3 at https://ift.tt/36tgdWc