#also religion is weird

[bookmothic-dyke]

I am moderately unhinged (and mentally ill).

But it’s cool.

I’m hot, and can tell you facts about parasitism and the Catholic pornocracy.

[riversaremeanttobefollowed]

We all know that the reason why Bruce Wayne isn't religiously Jewish is because dc are cowards, but also because many of the community itself is cowards. I personally believe it comes from a lack of knowledge about what it even means to be religious because most of the community is Christian or culturally Christian. So as someone that would probably be considered not religious by Christians, but Religious by most other Jewish people, I think that Bruce Wayne fits in this section of being Jewish.

Bruce can't go to the Synagogue often because of the whole being Batman stuff, but he still goes on the high holidays when he can. He celebrates with the Kane family as well! And Kate would obviously understand if he couldn't come because she's Batwoman! Give me a Bruce Wayne says Yiddish curses. Give me a Batman that has a bunch of Chanukkiot that are just so pretty because they are rich and definitely have a ton. Give me Batfamily shabbat dinners when they are able to. Rest days on Saturday for the Jewish members when they are more members in the Batfam to make it work (and it being a mitzvah when he does have to be Batman on Shabbat because its a mitzvah to save a life). Give me Mezuzot on every entryway. Give me a Bruce Wayne who inherited his mother's seder plates and actually uses them. Give me a Bruce Wayne that says stuff like kein ayin hara before giving good news! Give me a confused Dick Grayson when Bruce insults him (its actually a compliment, but to ward against the evil eye you will say the opposite of what you mean) and then Bruce having to explain after he realizes that Dick has no idea why he just insulted him. Give me a Batman that follows Jewish values (more than he canonically does)

Just because someone ins't actively involved within a wider community of that Religion doesn't mean they aren't Religious! Or at least don't give me a culturally Jewish Bruce Wayne that doesn't do any of this. Thats just you stripping away all the Jewish parts of him.

Bruce Wayne is Jewish and you can't just ignore that

[dreamtydraw]

If I see one more hijabi design with arm uncovered, mini skirts or belly button exposed I think I might explode….

Oh also special mention : Sexualizing nuns is weird and very disrespectful regardless of your relationship with Christianity

[luckthebard]

Genuinely confused as to how so much of the fandom watched the first 2 CR campaigns and Calamity and yet still ended up in a “Ludinus is right let’s kill all the gods” position. Like it’s baffling to me how much content/context people have just decided to completely forget? We had 2 full campaigns of very positive interactions with the gods and the moment there’s some hypothetical and interesting musing and speculation about their roles in the world from a more disconnected place we’re just throwing that out the window?*

Tbh the number of people who watched episode 4 of Calamity and still saw Asmodeus as sympathetic or having a legitimate point is unsettling to me, but while that’s a related issue it’s not quite the same conversation.

But like legitimately how did we so quickly make a hard turn from “The Stormlord teaches his barbarians to use the power of friendship, he’s a funny kindergarten teacher” memes to…this.

*(This is not, btw a comment on the characters having philosophical debates in-world because I think those are interesting and on-theme for the campaign and are also nearly always concluding with “our personal relationship to individual gods and feelings about them are irrelevant actually, the people trying to destroy them are doing wider harm and are in the wrong and must be stopped.” I’m actually loving the engagement with this by the characters in-universe but the fandom is exhausting me.)

[strangesmallbard]

one issue i have with cyberpunk 2077 is the issue i have with most sci fi media: Where are the jews. you cannot look me in the eye and tell me that there’s no chabad in night city

[sleep-deprived-luka]

I once mentioned altar boy mafuyu ... and since it's both a sunday and I'm bored yeah sure? Blog motto 1 and 3 or something

[shit-people-probably-didnt-say]

We need to study what causes extremely religious people to talk like that

[cumcov3redangel]

I'm very interested in seeing a nun go from covering her entire body to spreading her asshole

I’ll put the cross in my asshole 4 u :)

[bestworstcase]

How likely is it do you think that there are/have been Grimm-based cults? I can't imagine there's Never been Grimm cults, and I'm particularly interested in the idea of there being Grimm cults or even just organizations who Actually Understand the Grimm and safely live alongside them. I think it's such a fascinating idea, I'm very tempted to come up with a mysterious faction that respects/admires the Grimm (like how people did/do respect forces of nature in religion) and (mostly) safely lives alongside them. Any thoughts?

two obvious paths. whether the second is viable depends on how well you trust my basic reading of the grimm as sapient beings who reflect back what they’re given—dark mirrors—but the first is textually sound without any extrapolation required.

#1: the grimm as gods of war

these are the salient facts:

the grimm follow groups of bandits around to scavenge in the wake of their raids

criminals in mistral sometimes use captive grimm to execute members of rival gangs

grimm are more strongly drawn by violent anger and hatred than by sadness, fear, or other negative emotions.

it’s possible (per ‘before the dawn’) for one side of a conflict to "ally" with the grimm in battle if the other side is, er, tastier

ok. imagine you have a region where most of the people live in small nomadic groups—perhaps a steppe or a desert, their subsistence base is herding—with smatterings of fortified towns and villages around the edges of the region where there’s arable land enough to support a larger sedentary population. the nomadic groups can’t produce their own weapons/armor (mines, smelters, and forges aren’t portable), so they’ll need to either raid or trade with the towns for that. and conflicts between these nomadic groups over territory and other resources are inevitable.

how do the grimm figure in this region?

well a) the grimm are going to be following the nomadic groups around, with more warlike groups attracting more grimm, and b) grimm will fight alongside people against a common enemy if their "allies" are calmer or otherwise less appealing.

this is like… a perfect storm for the nomadic groups to start venerating "their" grimm as war-gods, in tandem with fostering warrior-cultures that prize tranquility or joy and mercy in battle; there is no honor in hatred or rage or taking pleasure in killing (our grimm turn against those warriors who lose themselves to bloodlust), so a good warrior must be calm, decisive, and swift, and never prolong a fight unnecessarily. but it’s also beneficial to make one’s enemies fearful and angry, or provoke them into hatred.

all it takes is one or two warriors who kept a cool head in battle noticing that the grimm ignored them to go after another warrior who went berserk and then interpreting this as a moral judgment. historically, we know grimm were thought to be the vengeful or corrupted spirits of animals, or animals possessed by demons; both are understandings that encourage this sort of thinking. these are animal spirits that cannot rest because someone killed them without giving due respect, and now they seek to punish those who commit such wrongs… so we’d better take care to treat our adversaries in battle and the animals we hunt with honor and mercy.

and oh, we should pay our respects to the grimm, too. perhaps make some offerings. they eat the corpses of the slain after a battle, so… a) we mustn’t be wasteful when we hunt, it isn’t respectful, and b) we should consider the grimm in our funeral customs.

this is a very basic. BASIC human impulse. humans will try to propitiate the fucking sky because we’re so good at pattern recognition and also anthropomorphizing things that we’ll find patterns and read meaning into the most random coincidences. take that and add it to the fact that it legitimately is possible to form alliances with grimm… fgrhjsv

under these conditions grimm-worship probably tends to look something like:

warrior cultures that prize moderation, calmness, efficiency, and clever mockery or intimidation of the enemy in battle,

funeral customs that ritualize feeding the dead to grimm, and/or ritual sacrifice of captured enemies,

grimm viewed as battlefield psychopomps and/or patron spirits of warriors, whether as a class or as individuals or both, and

incorporation of grimm-like designs or motifs into armor and clothing of warriors, to intimidate enemies.

with wide variation in the details and elaborations. the reason for this common set of foundational practices is that religion is practical. it’s not arbitrary. it isn’t pretend. prayer and ritual are things people do because it works, or it’s believed to work, and the right methods are figured out through trial and error long before they coagulate into tradition. so with something like grimm, whose behavior really can be meaningfully influenced, similar patterns will emerge across different cultures because whether a given practice does or doesn’t work is a) more than random chance or coincidence, and b) extremely easy to identify because if it doesn’t work the grimm will attack you.

& #2, the grimm as nature gods

these are my presuppositions, based on extrapolation from the text:

the grimm have a physiological need for aura, which they can get by siphoning; they eat their prey in order to extract aura from the remains.

grimm attraction to emotions is akin to our attraction to the aroma and taste of food; strong emotions herald deep auras or excite aura so it’s more "nutritious" for the grimm, so they hunt by following emotion.

because aura/soul separates from the body at death, siphoning aura from a living person is much more efficient than killing and eating; grimm will prefer to be fed aura by someone alive over hunting if possible.

because aura can be channeled outward through tools, clothing, etc, it can also be channeled into a repository and stored for a while; this seems to be how the grimm lures in arrowfell work.

grimm are intelligent, emotional, social creatures who can learn to recognize certain groups of people as 'safe' or as friends/allies, without salem.

grimm reflect back the emotional energy they’re given; they’re not "attracted" to anger or pain per se, they just mirror it. bristle and draw your weapon at a grimm, and the grimm will charge at you. remain calm and retreat slowly, and the grimm will keep its distance too.

if all of these presuppositions are true, you can propitiate grimm by saturating an object with aura and leaving that out for the grimm on the regular. i imagine that organic/living things that naturally have aura would work best for this purpose; sacrificing an animal or a portion of your harvest is intuitive, and if fervent religious belief alone isn’t enough to infuse something with aura, then priests or religious officials whose auras have been unlocked and trained will do the trick.

if aura-saturated offerings aren’t possible, then you’d need someone with aura training to channel aura to the grimm through, like, a stick, or bare-handed if they were brave enough or confident enough. this is a more uncomfortable option (like physically) but we have a canonical example of a character doing it: she found it disconcerting, but not painful, and it’s implied that the grimm didn’t attack her at any point during. so a) it probably doesn’t do any more harm than having one’s defensive aura break, and b) stopping the flow of aura to the grimm by moving away won’t provoke the grimm to attack.

as unpleasant the prospect might seem, if it clearly worked to reduce or eliminate grimm attacks on the community, people would do this. people would absolutely do this. the big hurdle lies in discovering that this is possible—like you’d need someone to willingly approach a grimm, lay a hand on it, and channel aura into it without knowing what will happen, and the kind of person who would even think to TRY that is very rare—but once it was known? religious belief motivates people do all sorts of unpleasant, uncomfortable, or even outright painful and harmful things to themselves. fasting. self-flagellation. hermitage.

like… waves hands. if it’s a known thing in a community that grimm won’t attack anyone if a few people go into the wilderness every morning to stand there and pour aura into grimm who pass by until they’re tapped out for the day, lots of people will be fully willing and able to do that. far more than are willing and able to become huntsmen: it’s not dangerous or difficult, it’s just going to tire you out on your assigned days. and if you have say, a village of a hundred people of whom ten are able to do it, you can rotate so no individual has to do it more often than thrice a month. NBD.

and if nothing else except the emotional mirroring thing is true, then you can… more or less propitiate grimm by doing whatever, because in this case what makes propitiation effective is community belief that it works: if you and everyone else around you believes that wearing pendants carved in the likeness of grimm and pouring a libation of wine outside the village gates to entreat the grimm for safe passage through the wilds is effective in making the grimm leave you alone, then no one’s going to panic or raise the alarm upon seeing a grimm wandering around in the barley field, and the grimm won’t freak out either.

if you believe that a grimm is a being that can be appeased and you cross paths with one in the woods, you’re going to do what you believe will keep you safe; for a huntsman, that’s "draw a weapon and attack," but for you that might be "hold up your grimm pendant and recite a prayer to politely wish it well and ask for its blessing in return," which—if the grimm just reflect your emotional energy back at you—will probably make the grimm pause and look at you for a moment before continuing on, which confirms and reinforces your belief that this is the correct way to deal with grimm. This Is How Religion Works.

so all that to say, as long as i’m correct about at least one of these presuppositions—the one with the strongest textual evidence, no less—then propitiating the grimm will reduce their aggression dramatically if not stop it altogether. and if that’s the case then i’d imagine grimm-worship is quite common and also varied in more remote regions where human-grimm encounters are frequent.

the shape of that worship will evolve out of how people in a given community figured out that you can do this with grimm. if one person tries a certain thing and it works, and then more people try the same thing and it works for them to, then that is going to become known as the Thing That Works and it will be gradually refined and elaborated on from generation to generation. and on the other side of the mountains they might be doing the same process but with a completely different thing that also worked the first time.

so you might have a village making huge ritual productions of preparing a feast for the grimm with a portion of the harvest, orchestrated by a coterie of priests who fill the offerings with aura… and in the hinterlands a few hundred miles away you might have a group of nomadic herders who leave the bones of every sheep they eat for the grimm and also have elaborate coming-of-age rituals where you go into the wilderness to prove yourself to the grimm by baring your soul… and up north on the coast you might have a whaling town where sailors pray to something like the leviathan or the feilong as a sea-god because their ancestors happened to stumble into a symbiotic relationship with a giant grimm that preys on whales and realized these little guys in boats make better hunting partners than they do snacks. etc.

basically if you accept a presupposition that the grimm aren’t "soulless evil monsters whose sole purpose is to kill humans" and consider them as beings that have some rhyme or reason as to when they’re aggressive and when they’re not, and the rhyme or reason is something humans/faunus could plausibly figure out how to accommodate and/or influence, there are a lot of ways to build a grimm cult. ’cause religion is at its core humans trying to understand the world so we can keep ourselves safe, healthy, and comfortable; worshipping grimm is just a cultural framework for a threat management program.

think about it in those terms, and take however you think grimm work and ask "what could people Do to lower the risk of grimm attacking them?" and "what might people Do that doesn’t really have an effect but seems like it maybe does?" and then start to elaborate from there with "okay, what stories do people tell to explain why they do these things and how they learned to do these things? how do they conceive of the grimm and their relationship to grimm? how does this shape the social and moral values of this religion?" etc.

praxis comes first, belief second. and the praxis develops through trial and error with the basic goal of "how can we make the grimm leave us alone?" so things that clearly don’t work will be discarded. (with ‘clearly don’t work’ meaning "we did this and grimm immediately attacked us"; people will tend to take "we did this and grimm didn’t attack us for two months" to mean "it worked! we should do it every other month!")

[kindaorangey]

well i'm comforted by the knowledge that book!armand has some faith in the christian god (and, like, that this faith is vital to his character) because it means theres absolutely no fucking way they'd just do that one-to-one in the show and so we're one step closer to an exploration of show!armand's relationship with islam

[anghraine]

[For context, I'm an agnostic lesbian raised Mormon with some scattered Catholic influences from summers with my bio dad and his family. I have buckets of religious trauma and associations as a very predictable result, though not everything was terrible.]

So I was waiting for my best friend and his girlfriend to get home from dinner with my BFF's mother—this is the first time his girlfriend, who was a close friend of mine before meeting him, had met his family. Ash had gone downstairs to change and wipe off her make-up when someone knocked insistently at our door.

The doorknob is a bit persnickety so I rushed to let in my BFF, only to find myself facing down an unexpected but very familiar sight: young male Mormon missionaries.

me: Oh ... hi. missionaries: Good evening, ma'am. Would you like to hear news about Jesus? me: Um, I'm not—I'm a member, actually. I was raised in the Church. missionaries: Really? me: Yes :) I was the pianist for the primary in our old ward for years :) missionaries: Oh, what ward was that? me: St Helens. I didn't really go when I was in grad school and I just graduated. missionaries: Ahh, I see. Well, if you want to go back, [directions to the local church]. me: Thank you. missionaries, after a very awkward pause: Do you need any help with anything? me: Oh, we're... [*resists the urge to point out that the other household members who just happened to be absent are a Jewish atheist socialist, a devoutly Muslim bisexual post-colonial scholar, and an Exvangelical trans woman still processing her rage, and none of them would have the slightest desire to get help from Mormons*] We're good, really. My parents are the ones who would need help from the Church, I think, and they live over in [town], so their closest ward is actually the one in [other town] and they can reach out to them. Thanks, though :) missionaries: We could just leave our number with you in case you ever needed anything. me [very conscious of the temptation to call on the Church when a crisis strikes and I desperately need help, and how trapped and shitty I feel afterwards]: That's really nice, but I think we're fine. There are several of us here. I hope you have a good night, though! :)

[pjharvey]

i literally don't understand being patriotic what kind of person gives a fuck about their country. but especially if you're american. our was built on chattel slavery dude. most of our country's founders owned other human beings. like let's start with that

[emberwritesinsight]

I know we all kind of assume Anthy and Akio are Indian because of the brown skin and bindis (Google tells me that while it's less common, men do wear bindis sometimes), and I agree, but also. "Dios" is Spanish, "Anthy" is derived from a Greek word, "Himemiya" is Japanese (I would theorize that her name hasn't always been "Himemiya", though she does seem to have had the name "Anthy" as far back as we're allowed to see into her past), and Akio drives an American car and plays jazz (a style of music that developed in America) over the radio in said car. Also, despite bindis being a Hindu, Jain and Buddhist thing, all the religious shit the two of them have going on (the martyrdom, Akio drawing a comparison between himself and Satan, Ohtori looking like a fucked up Cathedral and Dios appearing to Utena in a church) is Pretty Christian.

I know all of this is probably just a product of the writers not having a concrete idea of where they wanted Akio and Anthy to be from other than "not here" but it implies a lot of travel, which does kind of fit with Dios' whole "trying to rescue Every Girl Ever" thing.

Where do their names come from, anyway? "Dios" sounds like it could have been a name given to him by the people he saved. We never hear hide nor hair of their parents, they're fully irrelevant even by the farthest flashback.

[notbecauseofvictories]

I do wish I could get into a fandom that isn't me and the dozen people who also listen to this one audiodrama. However, since I spent the weekend listening to a playlist of global metal music, then accidentally stumbled into a near complete collection of Avon Fantasy Readers and Weird Tales, I suspect very little will change.

[zundely]

Man that one post going around the fandom rn talking about everyone's least fav companions really reminded me that people who hate Sera for such things as "being mean to elves" while giving such characters like Anders or Dorian a pass are in fact real. Crazy.

[outlying-hyppocrate]

i have officially returned. ask me anything.