#and who lives in the same denominational context as me so i feel like a part of the conversation rather than a curious onlooker

[merrymorningofmay]

oh this author is pro-kink too, nice

[gettothestabbing]

Relationship Doubts and Venting

For context, I've never had a long-term relationship before. I was technically 'with' a guy for two years, but after 6 dates our first month, I had to move, and so only saw him twice more in person after that. He insisted on EMAIL communcation only. So we essentially made no progress on actually getting to know each other.

So now, I've been with my current boyfriend for 5 months, and have known him for 6. We met on a dating app. We find each other very attractive, we're both conservative and want multiple children, we're both deadset on no sex before marriage, and we get along quite well. I enjoy being around him, and I've introduced him to my church and my coworkers on different occasions, starting from our first month together.

But on our last date, he started asking me questions about how my denomination handles weddings and what I would like my own wedding to be like. I was honest about what I liked, and finished by saying I wasn't ready to be engaged yet. But from things he's said, I have a feeling he's decided that I'm the one and is only waiting until I say something similar back to make it official.

That's so exciting, and flattering, and yet I know I'm not ready for it.

I still have a lot of concerns and unknowns about him. In no particular order, please enjoy all my concerns:

1: I still haven't met any of his family. We almost went bowling with his sister but she had a last-minute scheduling conflict. He's been living with his brother for several years, but he didn't even tell that brother about me yet. He says this brother is just very quiet and that they aren't close. But they've lived together for over 10 years, and my BF drives an hour EACH WAY to see me for every date. Where does the brother think he's going?

2: We never go to his area, partly because my work schedule is much less forgiving than his. This also means I've never seen his bedroom or home, including pictures. I've asked about this more than once, and he kinda dismisses it, saying it's just nicer to be in my area/house.

3: He's eight years older than me. I'm okay with the age gap in theory. In practice, we definitely grew up in very different eras and families. He's one of five kids, and I'm one of two sisters. I think he was harshly disciplined, and he indicated that he would physically discipline any children he has, though he added caveats restricting that discipline to certain behaviors from boys over the age of 15. But it still concerned me, because it wasn't coming from a place of "last resort" so much as from a place of "I got this so he would too."

Similarly, we don't agree on circumcision. His arguments for it consisted of "I was," "it's ugly otherwise," "he'll be bullied if he doesn't get it," and "there are some slight health benefits I think."

4: He was raised Catholic. I don't have an issue with Catholics generally, but I have known of several Catholic-CS couples who did not work out because of the vast denominational differences. I've also been personally warned by more than one CS woman of marrying a Catholic man, because they were prevented in their marriages from practicing their faith by their own Catholic husbands. TBF to my BF, he doesn't seem like he would be this kind of husband, but I don't know for sure because he doesn't seem to understand how different our beliefs actually are?

While my BF says he is looking for a new denomination, he's fundamentally incurious about other denominations, including my own. It seems like he is only looking to leave Catholicism because of political disaffection with Pope Francis and not because of an actual theological disagreement. He did Lent this year same as he ever did. He even admitted to not knowing the difference between Catholic and Protestant beliefs. He thought Peter wrote one of the Gospels (and he went to Catholic schools all his life).

It's just baffling to me that he isn't really interested in learning about different theologies and practices, while still claiming that he IS interested. It's words with no action following. I keep trying to show him stuff about my Bible study or my church. He's gone to a few services with me, but he never wants to talk about the content after. He just says the people there are nice.

Occasionally he makes jokes about wearing cult robes or bringing a goat to sacrifice to my church. This is because CS is often excluded from mainstream interfaith discussions and derided as a cult. Obviously, it's not a cult by any definition. I'm sensitive about this sort of joke, as not only do I truly hate cults like Scientology (for which we are also mistaken a lot unfortunately) and what they do to good people, but I was teased and bullied for my religion several times as a child and teenager.

5: Really, more than anything else, it's the incurious nature that concerns me. I'm not wealthy or an elite or anything, and never will be at my income level. But I do deeply value education, art, and learning. These are the things my family values too. I don't think I can be with someone permanently who doesn't value those things. I don't want to be overly pushy or self-centered either: it's not as if I want someone who only likes the stuff I like. But I don't want to only have small talk forever.

The few times we've had deeper discussions, he ends them as fast as possible, and his statements are rather vague and disconnected. While I wish we did agree on circumcision as an issue, I was more concerned with how poorly he defended his opinion, as well as how dismissive he was of my thoughts. I mean, I guess since I'm not a guy my opinion doesn't matter as much? But my arguments weren't about personal experience, but about empirical evidence and psychological studies. Idk. I regretted that conversation a lot; I got into lawyer-mode and was too blunt. For a few weeks afterward, he seemed like he was upset, but when I asked, he insisted he wasn't and that he didn't care. He also became more vulgar in our conversations after that. I had to ask him to scale it back.

None of these things individually are "dealbreakers". I'm not afraid of compromise and of us being our own people. But we do need to know some big things about each other and come to some important agreements before I would be ready to get engaged to him.

I'm hoping that when he meets my dad and stepmom next week, that will give me further insight. Good kissing and political agreement alone cannot a good marriage make.

[elminx]

Elminx considers: Graveyard etiquette as a witch or other magical practitioner

Note: I am going to use the term graveyard here to refer to all types of burial places. Yes, there are differences. For this purpose - they don't matter. Note: I am going to try to make this an ongoing series about graveyard etiquette and dealings with the dead in general. If I have done so, I may have made a masterpost which I will try to remember to link, here. If you think that this should be on a masterpost, message me.

It can be a hard thing to wrap your mind around (and I am sure that you are trying to do the Right Thing) but your Graveyard Etiquette isn't worth shit if the spirits of the graveyard don't follow the same etiquette.

That means that it is not one size fits all. Go figure.

A Catholic graveyard will demand different etiquette than a Baptist graveyard that will have different etiquette from a non-denominational graveyard from the 1700s. Fuck it, a French Catholic graveyard will have different etiquette from an Irish Catholic graveyard.

I see a lot of posts floating around with things like: always carry iron, always bring a gift, always wear protection, always cover your head, always pay the gatekeeper with coins, etc.

These are all culturally specific superstitions (nothing wrong with that) but taken out of context they mean absolutely nothing.

The big thing that those of us from Western cultures need to get over is the idea that things are universal. They just aren't. The dead are just people who lived within a certain culture. That culture and their own lives determine what they will view as rude or polite. We actually get no say in the matter.*

They are just people. Dead people. Some were lovely old grandmothers who will dote on every living child they encounter. Some were angry teenagers who died too young. Some were infants who don't really know what it is to live or to die. Each individual in a graveyard has their own story and each graveyard has its own story.

Those are the things that you need to take into consideration when approaching a graveyard.

Spirits should be treated in the same way that you would a loved one. We all know Uncle Jake can't drink so we don't drink around him. Grammy doesn't like apple pie so we make cherry instead. Cousin June can't eat the gluten so we make it a gluten-free pie instead. Spirits are the same way - they have the same likes and dislikes they had in life (for the most part? my dead family does at least).

This is why a random food offering, while well intended, might not work out so well for you. (I don't mean getting haunted not well, it just might just go over like a lead zeppelin, ya know?)

So here I am telling you that nothing is right?

More truthfully what I am trying to confer here is that nothing is AUTOMATICALLY right and that if you want to work with and get to know a graveyard, you need to fucking ask. Just like you would with any other spirit or human being. Something like "Hi, <name on grave>, I would really like to bring you something to eat. Do you like blueberry pie? My grandma just made some." or "Hi, <name on the grave>, I would like to give you some whiskey. Do you like this type of whiskey?"

Sometimes, nothing will happen. You can take that as an assent. It could mean that the spirit of that grave is no longer present in this world, or it could mean that they aren't paying attention to you, or that they just don't care. But if you get a bad feeling or something bad happens immediately afterward, skip it. Sometimes you'll get a good feeling too - that's an obvious yes.

If you are more comfortable as a spirit worker, you can ask the spirit what it would like you to bring it. Please remember to be careful with boundaries and not promise anything because spirits - very occasionally - ask you for some pretty weird stuff. Then, listen. Wait. Be patient. You might smell fresh doughnuts as you are leaving, or have a sudden craving for rose tea. Over the next few days, look for synchronicities that could be the spirit answering you. If you are new to this, divination can be a great tool to help you understand what is and is not spirit communication. I would point out here that there is an inner knowingness that happens for a lot of people during spirit communication - you smell church incense and instinctively know that the spirit misses the smell of frankincense and myrrh, for example.

If there is something that you feel that you need to do before you enter a graveyard - by all means, do it. Magic that is meant for you will resonate WITH you - if you feel the need to cover your head, cover your head. But be wary of doing it because some rando (even big-name Tumblr-wise people because they are still randos, just randos with a following) told you that you "had to".

There is no absolute or right answer. There's only the right answer for you and that graveyard. And that's something that you have to figure out for yourself.

*We get no say in the matter about what a spirit finds to be rude or polite. We obvs get boundaries about what we think is rude and polite, and those are equally important.

[hindahoney]

Hey, I go to a combined Liberal and Reform shul and wanted to debunk some of those misconceptions on your post.

Being Reform/Liberal is not at all, even slightly, about level of observance. We have many, many men in kippot and tzitzit with payot who come to our synagogue to pray every single week. We wear kippot out and about in town, we wear Magen David proudly. We sing our prayers with all of the life and vigour of any Jews. Many of the people who pray with us also attend classes with the rabbi twice per week, in their own free time. I personally study Talmud and biblical Hebrew with my Reform rabbi every week. We have people who keep kosher extremely strictly, more than people who don't. Jewish history is hugely important to us and we honour our ancestors every single day.

Reform Judaism is just about having slightly different values to Orthodox. In shul, we are taught that the difference between us and Orthodox Jews is that Reform Judaism adapts expectations of Jewish people to be reasonable for living in the modern world, whereas Orthodox values tradition and keeping things the exact same way they have been for thousands of years. The rules about electricity use on Shabbat are loosened to allow people with hearing aids to be spoken to, to allow powered wheelchair users to leave their homes, to make sure every Jew has the opportunity to get in touch with their emergency contacts. There is no "better" or "worse" denomination, only ones that fit each individual Jew best, if any.

We still abide by kosher and the teachings of Torah, but we do not place pressure on other Jews to do the same. We do not shun or scold others for not abiding by these laws, and are open-minded to the possibility that they have very good reasons for not doing so.

We adapt some traditional ceremonies, such as holding a B'nei Mitzvah for non-binary children, and adapting conversion ceremonies for trans and non-binary adults. Jewish law is much more de-gendered in a Reform setting, with the same expectations and freedoms afforded to both men and women. Many of us choose to keep to traditional gendered roles and expressions, but queer Jews are celebrated even though they are different.

We are absolutely not Jewish "in name alone". A Jew is a Jew is a Jew. Some of us are very very religious and frum, others are not, but every Jew is always welcome at our shul, because this is a community space that does not ask any Jew to 'prove' they are Jewish enough to join in with our customs, and pray with us during service.

I am disabled and queer, and due to my circumstances I must choose how to live my life Jewishly in a way that suits me. I would not be able to do nearly as many mitzvot if I tried to meet Orthodox standards -- because my needs for care and assistance would break the laws of shabbat, and I could not live up to gendered Orthodox standards very easily as a non-binary person. This is why I choose to pray at a Reform/Liberal synagogue instead of an Orthodox one -- I am more able to do mitzvot in a Reform/Liberal context. While I know there are many Orthodox synagogues that would accept me anyway, it's always a case of trying to work out which congregations I can feasibly become part of, whereas with Reform Judaism I know that I will almost never find any difficulty or judgement.

Being Reform is just another way of practicing Judaism. It isn't lesser, and it isn't less serious, or less religious, or less frum. Really, we are just like you. I think the world would be better with less segregation between denominations. Anti-Orthodox sentiment makes me sad, but I very rarely encounter Orthodox Jews who respect Reform Judaism for what it is. A lot of us don't feel safe in Orthodox synagogues because we are shunned there.

I understand feeling more comfortable in a reform shul because of their gender or sexual identity. Though it has changed pretty drastically in the past few decades and there are many more groups to help gender non conforming and queer people feel more comfortable in orthodox spaces, there are still many who hold strongly to gendered traditions.

However, I need to point out that orthodox Jews do still wear hearing aids and use motorized wheelchairs and pacemakers. If it is a medical necessity it is permitted. In any case, I do not forsee anyone judging someone else for using a medical device on Shabbat.

Thank you for sharing. I do feel like this cleared things up for me!

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

Went out to see live comedy last night, for the first time in months. It was also a rare time for me to go to a proper comedy clubs, rather than just to pubs where people work out material. This was a Saturday night at one of our two major dedicated clubs – the height of comedy in the area. The night all the comedians work their way up until they can play that. A club that I yesterday heard John Hasting’s call “Canada’s equivalent of Jongleurs” on the ComCom podcast, which makes me immediately understand exactly what British comedians mean when they use “Jongleurs” as shorthand for “a certain type of comedy club”. I mean I’d worked out what they mean from context anyway, but that comparison makes it clearer to me. A club where I’m not going to write its name, not because I’m avoiding doxing myself (this club is a franchise that’s all over Canada so saying its name wouldn’t tell you where I live, also this post would already let people look up where I live by Googling where John Hastings is now, but I can’t imagine anyone cares enough to bother doing that), but because I’m vaguely paranoid about showing up in Google searches for it. I don’t want to talk too much shit about this level of comedy in a public forum, because this has people I know personally in it and some of them are nice.

However, it was really interesting going to that club after hearing Hastings’ ComCom interviews yesterday, and seeing what he was talking about in action. Saying this club is the equivalent of Jongleurs (a UK club I have never been to and never heard anything recorded there so I can’t actually talk about it, I’m not talking about whatever happens for real there because I don’t know, I’m talking about the thing it represents in the way comedians talk about it), and UK comedians talk about how there’s Jongleurs where they cordon off the “lowest common denominator” comedy and then other places for “proper comedy”, but the difference is that here, our club like that is the main thing and there’s hardly anything else. And I’m pretty sure that’s the case in most places in Canada outside of our couple of biggest cities.

So I won’t go too far into it, but I will say, of the three comedians who went on before a headliner, one is a guy who performed on the same bill as me on two of the seven occasions that I have performed stand-up comedy, both times at open mic nights in a pub. On one of those occasions I did well, and on another I did badly, and then afterward I stood outside with comedians who were all smoking and that guy told me I had good material and just need to be less nervous and shouldn’t feel bad about it not going great. He was very nice. Another one of the guys who was on last night is a teacher who used to be the teacher supervisor for a school team I coached, I knew him fairly well as I saw him at two practices a week for the five-month season and he traveled to a couple of tournament with us, very nice guy, I didn’t even know he was a comedian until the one time I performed at an actual club last year, and he was also on the bill. So technically – technically, on a technicality – I have gigged with two different people who have gigged with John Hastings.

There were three acts on before him, the two people I knew and one person I didn’t, and it was… well, it made me think of the thing I posted yesterday, the ComCom interview from 2014 where John Hastings described himself as “alt” and Stuart Goldsmith basically said “but are you, though?” And I thought, no he isn’t alt compared to Tony Law playing a bassoon (that was the example they used in the 2014 interview, I might now come up with a more recent example that’s gone less right-wing). But he’s alt compared to the local stuff I’ve heard, just because he tells stories that are more than a few sentences, that have a few different layers that you have to remember in order for them to make sense, he employs structure and callbacks to things he said more than like four minutes ago, he touches on a few topics that are slightly outside the incredibly obvious, he occasionally sneaks in just a touch of a genuine message with a bit of thought behind it. And I will say that during the pre-headline acts last night, I repeatedly thought, “Yep, this is proving the point John made ten years ago, that all those things make him alt compared to this.”

In that interview ten years ago, John talked about oscillating between two styles of comedy, going to the Jongleurs places and doing the largely crowd work-based simple stuff that made him feel soulless and shitty, and then getting the confidence to do more involved “alt” material that made him feel better about his own work. This interview would have taken place while he was previewing his 2014 Edinburgh show, which is on his Bandcamp page with the title Adventure, and which I also listened to yesterday and quite liked. It’s a standard Edinburgh hour – stories about his childhood and culture shock when he moved to the UK and getting angry about things that go badly. He had a lot of clever turns of phrase, he was great with using little comparisons to illustrate his points, he did fun things with language, he jumped around between high and low status, it was a funny and really enjoyable hour. I can absolutely see why, when he was working on that show but was used to comedy those first few acts I heard last night, he considered himself as alternative in a way that confused Stuart Goldsmith.

I also heard the ComCom interview he did in 2023, once he’d moved to LA. In that interview, he described the world of curating stand-up for social media, setting up crowd interactions and filming them to feed the algorithms, doing lots of crowd-work based stuff because that’s what works online. He described this with full awareness that it’s a messed up thing, if you treat comedy as an art, but also admitted that he’s employed an expert in SEO and algorithmic stuff to help him optimize his social media, has been playing this game for a while and it’s been working.

The show I saw last night was being filmed on a whole bunch of cameras for another John Hastings special, and his set, like most of what was on that night, had at least as much crowd work as material. He didn’t get deeper into any story than the people who were on before him, with the exception of maybe one story, he played the same game they did of lots of short little things designed for people who weren’t trying to think too hard. It wasn’t “comedian destroys heckler” stuff or anything – the audience was lively but not very rough compared to a lot of local crowds I’ve been in, and they mostly had fun together. To be fair to him, there was a lot of weird stuff going on in that audience. He seemed like he had planned to do slightly more prepared material than that, but he kept hitting different audience members who’d provide something else that he had to get into. He definitely got a lot of stuff that will appeal to crowd-work-heavy social media.

But here’s the thing. I didn’t genuinely laugh once in the three acts who were on before him (though I tried to look like I was laughing for the couple of people I knew, because I was near the front and, you know, nice people), but when John Hastings came out and did similar really simple stuff like that, he absolutely killed me. I laughed so much. I want to clarify that I didn’t laugh at the previous acts just to defend the fact that this hasn’t suddenly become my preferred style of comedy or anything. But apparently it can in fact be very very funny. I mean of course it can. Daniel Kitson has made me nearly cry laughing with crowd work before. The existence of annoying people on Tik-Tok shouldn’t mean that crowd work can never be actually funny.

From when John Hastings came on stage until the end of the night, I had an absolutely fantastic time. He was incredibly fun. He did do some jokes/stories, and I liked them. He did a lot of crowd stuff, and I liked that. Everyone was on board, he got a great response across the room, I’m sure the internet will love it whenever he releases whatever the video is going to be. However, Stuart Goldsmith would definitely have a point if he watched that set and then told John Hastings that it’s inaccurate to call himself “alt”. It was nothing like his Edinburgh shows.

He did a lot of local stuff, which I’d normally also think of as sort of cheap comedy, but it was really funny. I think it helps that he actually grew up here, he didn’t just Google two or three things about a place before performing there on a tour. He was able to be very accurate about all the bits of the city. You’re right, John, that is the highway exit where you’re most likely to get mugged! He also had the fun perspective of being enough of an insider to know the city very well, but because he’s lived in other places for so long, enough of an outsider to be able to point out absurdities that seem normal when you live here. It was fun. I have learned so many intricacies of culture and geography and sociology in Britain just so I can understand all their little local references; it was fun to hear a local reference, automatically do that thing I always do where I start bringing up the stuff I’ve learned so I can understand it, and then realize I don’t have to do any translating because he’s talking about the train I take to work every morning.

Oh, I said in a post yesterday that I think he might have gone to a high school where I used to coach their team. He mentioned the name of his high school on stage last night, and it wasn’t the school I thought it was, but it was a different school where I also used to coach their team. One I coached in the same year – but a different school still – as the school where I coached with that teacher who was on earlier in the night. Small world. Small fucking world. Small world but hopefully I’m fine making this post because it’s a big internet.

Anyway, it was a great time. On the way out I stuck around and chatted to the guy I know who’s a teacher, he’s a ridiculously nice guy whom I like so much and it made me feel bad for being judgemental of his set and that whole style of comedy, a thing I’d already started feeling bad about because I’d spent the first half of the night judging people for doing it and then the last half dying laughing at John Hastings doing the same type of stuff but just doing it very well. I told him I’m going to the Edinburgh Festival and he asked me if I’m seeing Stewart Lee, and I said no I don’t think he’s going there this year, and then I said I’m going to try to come out to local comedy more, and I meant it. And then I got in the truck with my roommate and my roommate asked me if John Hastings was gay, because he seemed very gregarious and flamboyant, and I said no, but there's a reminder, I guess, that a guy who comes across as incredibly mainstream to some people can come across differently to others (not that... I mean lots of gay comics are mainstream, but I think my roommate specifically meant that he had a bit of an outsider vibe that read as gay, which I guess might be true if you're not used to meeting anyone outside the sphere of combat sports).

[sightofsea]

Jumpscare anon! Its a random person asking for advice on a situation without a lot of context and also the situation is tense (hello its me u dont have to answer this I just like how u see people and community and would like some perspective)

Basically fucked love triangle with fucked dynamics because youre all friends like really good friends. Lets say person A is the common denominator that me and person B are into. You (I) love both these people though, and since you (I) dont distinguish between types of love you just kind of love them equally. But you and person A have an amount of chemistry (sexual chemistry btw) that is borderline destructive. Intoxicating. You spent 3 years in a relationship with someone else ignoring it which obviously only made it worse and now you're fresh out of a relationship and everytime you and person A accidently brush arms or whatever its like they are setting you on fire (this is mutual). Problem is person B really likes person A for romance reasons and theyre kinda together kinda not.

The answer is really simple. You know the chemistry is not going away (its been 5 years) and u know eventually youre going to break and even if u dont, its morally sketchy to spend time with someone just so u can sit in the same couch to smell each other or something, so you have to get some distance. But you live together for at least 6 more months. And also. Youve never felt this way with someone and need to know what kissing them would be like. But also. You cant be a dick to your friend B. But also You really really wanna do it.

Should I explode? Would that solve it?

Ok well. I wanna preface this by saying I've never been in a relationship for very long sooooo idk if I'm the person to talk to about this.

the way I see it, there's a few things I wanna discuss/go over here:

Let's talk about A's feelings for a second. The way you write they feel less like a person and more like an idea. You say you've got insane sexual chemistry--what is it that you want out of this? You wanna sleep with them, and that's it? Are they the type of person who sleeps with somebody and doesn't catch feelings? Do you want feelings? I'm all for sleeping with your friends, it's a lot of fun, but you gotta set some ground rules with the other person and consider what their whole deal is. And if it isn't compatible to your wants, then that's another thing to reckon with. Which brings me to my next point:

You say A and B are kinda together, kinda not. That sounds like they are together. And unless they're open/poly, that's going to be an issue here. If they are open/poly, then yeah I think maybe posing the question/sleeping with them is a good idea! Again, sleeping with friends is fun, relieving tension is good. But if they are in a monogamous relationship, or tend towards monogamy, and you feel like you're too turned on by this person to respect that boundary, then it might be good to just talk it out without the expectation of anything happening/grinning bearing and jacking your way through 6 months until you get some distance/find someone else you have chemistry with. They exist in a lot of places! Trust me, I've been in a similar situation to where you are now, and distance does wonders on helping you get over people.

the thing is that even though I've said everything up here, you do seem pretty set on telling them/fucking them. it's pretty obvious where you're leaning, but you feel about it. the thing is, I can't give you absolution over it. the other thing is, I don't actually know you or your friend group all that much. if you think confessing your attraction/fucking it out with this person is going to end up in a net positive, then yeah! go for it! if you're other friend hasn't made their move, then maybe it would be good to instigate something and it'll all work out! that would be amazing. to me, that doesn't sound to be the case, but again: I don't know you.

this is all to say: it looks like you need to talk out/clarify some things with your friends and what their relationship is before you make a move. boring answer, I know, maybe not the one you're looking for. don't explode, just talk it out.

[automatismoateo]

I will never be considerate of your religion. via /r/atheism

I will never be considerate of your religion. This is just some thoughts I've had today as my parents listen to the local church on the TV in the other room instead of going into service. ​ As the world has grown and changed over the past several decades it has become more apparent the need to be more understanding that people who have experienced the world differently from me. Something that is clearly a black and white situation for me, a straight white man in the USA, can be vastly different for someone in the Philippines. To be more understanding of these varied experiences and perspectives is to be accepting of another individual's humanity. One of the smallest things I can do is simply adjust my language by removing biased absolutes to accommodate individuals who have varied experiences. For example, the response, "Everyone does that" is far to absolute, bias, and disregards the individual experience and several other factors. For me, this is how I break away from my christian upbringing that reinforced rigid thinking riddled with logical fallacies whose only means was to support the individual. However, I have always had a hard line around religion. Over the years I have heard: "Respect the individual, not the religion." "Religion is the individual right." "Not all christians...bla bla bla" Why should I provide consideration/understanding in my language to accommodate religion/religious people? Let alone different sects of certain religions? Your religious beliefs are consistently used to reinforce discriminating people who are not like, or look like, you? Slavery, xenophobia, LGBTQIA+ politics. Your religion is accepting of all people...so long as they fall in line with what you feel your religion says. Don't even get me started on, "I still accept you" response. I've been there. I was that person. I know exactly what that really means. Accept that I do not believe, but you still accept that I am going to be punished because your religion dictates it. To so casually think yep, you deserve eternal punishment. Especially christinas between denominations. You all "play for the same team" but also actively know the other is going to hell for not believing exactly as you do. Because why else would there be so many sects with different interpretations on the religion if everyone went to heaven? I will give NO accommodations, considerations, or understanding of your experiences. I do not care what your lived experience is. Your lived experience is rooted in this narrow view that you refuse to challenge even when people call you out. The only "challenging" you do is to continue to warp what your religion really means in the context of the modern age by "reinterpreting" the "true" meaning to keep your comfy perspective on the world and keep out the very real horrors going on around us. I have a few friends and family who are religious and a partner who is spiritual. They are the only ones who get special treatment by keeping my mouth shut. That is only because I know them/put up with them. Otherwise, I will not respect or accommodate you in any capacity. Submitted January 07, 2024 at 07:04PM by spammingwhale (From Reddit https://ift.tt/14LFqYj)

[alatabouleau]

So, I don't know if anyone else has ever had this experience (because I do not know how many other people are deeply religious and really into fanfictions and shipping at the same time), but shipping a romantic relationship that isn't canon and believing in a higher deity you have no proof of, can feel pretty similar. Or, at least, it feels pretty similar when said opinions/beliefs are questioned. Like, back in the days, I was really into Adlock. The pairing of Sherlock Holmes with Irene Adler in the BBC version. And I got a bit into a shipping war with Johnlock shippers. (Not my proudest moment.) They called me homophobic, I called them incapable of finding the beauty in platonic relationships, and so on. And the reason for that was, I felt threatened by them. Because there were so many more Johnlock shippers on the Internet than my shipping side. And that made me insecure whether I actually WERE wrong in shipping what I shipped. But most of all, it triggered me. Why? Now, this might need some extra context: I grew up in Eastern Germany in the 2000s. For those of you who don't know, Eastern Germany used to be its own country, the German Democratic Republic, short GDR (or in German DDR), from 1949-1990. Being occupied by Russia at the time, this state was communistic. Therefore, they didn't like religion. Like, ANY religion. You could face pretty heavy repercussions for belonging to one, i.e. why many Protestants in the GDR weren't allowed into post-secondary education. Though I was born ten years after the GDR ceased to exist, there weren't many Christians left in my area. To this day, we are one of the most atheist places in the whole wide world. So there was I, little weird Christian kid from a rather strict micro-denomination in an environment that told me, everything you believe, everything your parents told you, is wrong, it's delusional and if you still believe that after we listed all these reasons you shouldn't believe, well, then you are stupid and denying of reality. Maybe it wouldn't have been that bad if I didn't take the missionary thing in Christianity so super serious. Maybe it would have been different if I hadn't been the fat weirdo kid even outside of my religion, who knows. All I know is that arguing with randos on the internet whether Sherlock would rather be in a romantic/sexual entanglement with John Watson or Irene Adler brought me right back to these elementary-school-memories. And after realizing that, I stopped. Because it is one thing to argue about whether or not there is a higher power in our life and how this would affect us or not and another to argue about the nature of the relationship of two or more fictional characters. It's fiction and you can do with it whatever you want. And it probably has a lot to do with what you need at the moment. But I left in peace, realizing that the need to believe in something seems to be in the human nature, even if said belief can be reduced to "two characters smooching". Ironically, this also stopped me from arguing with atheists about whether God is real or not. Because I realized that my Christian faith fills a need that I have. That other people might not have. That I can list as many proofs in the fabric of reality or in the subtext, in the way characters interact with each other, in the tone they say certain things or in the looks they share. At the end of the day, if the other person doesn't have something that makes them relate to the story, the ship, the religion, they will still not see it. And that's ok. That doesn't make my reasons for shipping this or that, for believing in the Christian God as my saviour any more or less valid. Neither the reasons why other people believe in different things or not at all.

And this is the story of how I learned the valuable lesson of "live and let live." (One day, I might also learn to write short posts, I'm sorry! (Thank you to anyone who made it to the end.))

[kill-4-bill]

clearing up some shit.

i did not just turn 19. idk where she got that info from. i’m turning 20 this month. i deactivated bc she was stalking me, and activated again after a day bc i thought she was done, tried to deactivate again and insta wouldn’t let me. she’s made a 5th account to talk to me. i only know she has 5 accounts bc she’s messaged me from all 5. you can find someone’s PUBLIC profiles using a google search and look at their PUBLIC pics. i don’t have any “old pics”. i did a simple google search. google≠ stalking. i only got on tumblr bc i was told she was posting everything ab me. i don’t care about this tea girl. i don’t know her. vanessa posted about tea and i asked for more context, went to sleep, and woke up to 9+ messages. d is my PARTNER. she messaged him a long ass paragraph after i blocked her 2nd account and he responded. last time i checked defending yourself doesn’t mean texting my partner when you don’t get your way. i did not threaten to k her. saying your dad is coming to my address is threatening me tho. also i don’t live anywhere near LA. wish i did tho🤞🏻

here is more proof of her telling me to brush my hair, calling me ugly etc. this is not defending yourself. i style my hair messy btw. i have naturally wavy hair. and i like the messy look👍🏻also beating the egirl allegations👌🏻i listen to cannibal corpse, whirr, seether, etc. and still wear skinny jeans. i’m not a skirt and leg warmers type girl but do you. i’ve been REAL alt all my life. but it’s wtv. i also don’t think i’m better than her bc i have more followers. followers are followers. i’m not an on the internet 24/7 type of person. i just have followers bc i’ve had the same acc since 2017. not once have i bragged ab more followers. she told me her whole life story months back, including how she herself couldn’t brush her hair and how she’s gained weight. but she wants to tell someone w anorexia to starve. i’m not worried ab her calling me poor either cause i’ll be 20 and i won’t be living off mommy and daddy. so it’s wtv. i don’t want any hate towards her nor did i post with malicious intent. as of last night she was still messaging me. i did not send friends to text her but did give a friend her account when she asked. i don’t have to respect someone who has made 5 accounts to text me on. i’ve had to change my username, delete my pics, etc. just to have peace from her for 5 seconds. idc if she plays victim online. that’s on her. i don’t report her, i block and wait for karma to take its toll. again not saying this to attack her, if she gen thought somewhere in her fucked up head my first message was hate on her and she had to defend herself then cool. not my problem. i’m just saying this to get the truth out there so i can be left alone. idec if she doesn’t take down her shit ab me. just take down the shit ab my partner. he doesn’t deserve that. there’s also more messages of her calling me a crackhead,etc. but i digress. it’s not my problem anymore. a little wisdom tho, if you have problems w everyone in your life, the common denominator is you. wishing this girl healing and maybe one day she will get a therapist🤞🏻i don’t hate her. i feel bad for her. it’s clearly unhealthy and mental health is serious. and yes vanessa, i do have someone to talk to ab my mental health. whatever information you’re putting out is wrong. ik she’s posted my twitter, if you need more info, reach me there. i’ve deleted the entire instagram app from my phone so i could have 5 min of peace. included in this post is the first message i sent, i didn’t think it was rude, i didn’t have rude intentions, but everyone has their own perspective. sending all my love and healing. bye.

[inconveniently-discorporated]

I recently saw someone propose that the scene with the books was not necessarily the moment Aziraphale realized he loved Crowley, but rather the moment he realized Crowley loved him.

And that made no sense to me.

After all, Crowley is so obvious about it, surely he must have already known. Surely? They've been flirting back and forth for six thousand years (well, just shy of, at this point). It's clearly a two-way game, is it not? Crowley loves him, he loves Crowley, they play these little games like "haha help me I'm locked in the Bastille", so on and so forth. He can't not know.

Except, he's an angel who wants so badly to be good and do the "right thing". He's an angel who lives in Gabriel's Heaven, where they praise his spirit while looking down at him with pitying looks that say: you clearly don't fit in. He isn't shown love or affection by the beings who ought to be the definition of love and light and kindness and caring.

How does the saying go? If you smell something bad in the morning, you've smelled something bad. If you smell something bad all day, who's the common denominator? If all of the other angels get along and mesh well with each other, but they don't get along with you, who are you going to think is the problem? You.

You look at life through your own lens. You look at other people through your perspective. He might see the ways Crowley clearly cares about him, but not truly believe himself. He's a demon. Of course he doesn't actually love an angel. That would be ridiculous. Who would think such a thing? Even angels don't care for him this way, why would a demon?

After I considered this, I considered the fight in the 1800s. I considered the way Aziraphale was so reductive about their relationship and how that always seemed kind of odd to me.

Then it occurred to me that this is something I've done as someone who also has anxiety, and was taught not to trust their own thoughts, feelings, and opinions.

Saying out loud, "We have a deep and caring relationship," when you've never actually said you have a deep and caring relationship, is an incredibly vulnerable thing to do for someone who is otherwise not allowed to be vulnerable (which is both of them, to be fair). Believing that you have such a relationship is also an incredibly difficult thing to do for someone who doesn't know if they should trust their feelings.

In this context, when Aziraphale calls their relationship fraternizing, he wouldn't be purposely trying to devalue the actual feelings they have for each other. He would be devaluing himself, because he assumes they can't have these feelings for each other, because he's not worthy of those things. He would also be devaluing his own perspective, and putting Heaven's perspective of demons above his own experience.

Of course they're just fraternizing. How could someone care for him this way, let alone a demon?

Of course Crowley would want it as a suicide pill. What other reason would he have?

Of course Crowley thinks he's an idiot. That's what he is, isn't he? The archangels certainly think so, and how could they be wrong? They're closer to God than he is. After all, he's here fraternizing with (and loving) a demon, which he KNOWS is wrong and he just can't help himself. Tsk.

The saddest thing is that Crowley doesn't see that, making it incredibly hurtful for him.

He has spent the better part of nearly 6000 years showing the angel that he cares about him. He's a demon, for Hell's sake, how much more obvious could he be without getting himself tossed into a pool of holy water? He's so clever, the angel -- he can't not know how Crowley feels. He reciprocates! He knows this, and he's going to boil this down into fraternizing? Ouch.

But they're not on the same side with this issue, they're communicating from two completely different sides. It's like a wink, only instead of a wink it's "fraternizing", and instead of switching the wrong babies they don't speak for 80 years.

That shifts the perspective on "you go too fast for me" as well.

In the context of a mutual romance that spans several millennia, the notion that anything about this relationship is any kind of fast is pretty comedic.

In the context of a romance where at least one side is continually doubting himself and telling himself that what they have couldn't be real, it would make sense. If it took him until 1940 and a demonic miracle around his books of prophecy to finally admit to himself that Crowley actually DOES love him, then perhaps nothing "fast" even happened up to that point.

And speaking of metaphors, the Bentley as a metaphor for a vehicle of change is... extremely fitting, considering the 1940s is the first time it's shown up, and the 1940s would be the first time they'd REALLY on the same page about their relationship.

Then, between either perspective (he either knows Crowley loves him or he doesn't) there's also that high-key level of fear instilled by Heaven. Even if he was wrong (right?) -- even if he did believe that he was loved, he couldn't have it. Heaven says he can't have it. Heaven is a colossus that even Satan himself and his army of angels could not take down; how could he have any hope of fighting against that? More reason to convince yourself that there aren't actually any feelings there, and therefore nothing to worry or feel guilty about.

It fits in with the continual opportunities and favors Aziraphale asks for -- each one is another affirmation that Crowley does indeed care for him. It's another piece of evidence for someone who is supposed to listen to Heaven over himself, for someone who is taught not to trust his own inner guidance.

It's an interesting perspective for sure, and one that I happen to relate to a lot. There's more I have to say in relation to Aziraphale and Heaven in general, but I'll leave that for another post.

Suffice to say, I'm very eager to see how all of this affects him moving forward on his own side with Crowley. We've already seen a glimpse of happy/confident Aziraphale, and I'm sure there will be more. That's something else I relate to, but again, I'll leave it for a follow up post. 🤍

[vickyvicarious]

Leverage Redemption Pros/Cons List

Okay! Now that I've finally finished watching the first half of Leverage: Redemption, I thought I'd kind of sum up my overall impression. Sort of a pro/con list, except a little more just loosely structured rambles on each bullet point rather than a simple list.

This got way out of hand from what I expected so I'm going to put it all under a cut. If you want the actual bulletpoint list, here it is:

PROS

References

Continuity

Nate

Representation

Themes

New Characters

General Vibe

CONS

'Maker and Fixer'

Episode Twins

Sophie's Stagefright

Thiefsome

You might notice the pros list is longer, and that's because I do love the show! I really like most of what it does, and my gripes are fewer in number and mostly smaller in size. But they do exist and I felt like talking about them as well as the stuff I loved.

PROS

References

There is clearly so much love and respect for the original show here. Quite aside from the general situation, there's a lot of references to individual episodes or character traits from the first show. For example, Parker's comments on disliking clowns, liking puppets, disliking horses, stabbing vs. tasing people. The tasing was an ongoing thing in the original, the stabbing happened once (S1) but was referenced later in the original show, the clown thing only had a few mentions scattered across the entire original show. The puppet thing was mentioned once in S5, and the horses thing in particular was only brought up in S1 once. But they didn't miss the chance to put the nod to it in there; in fact with those alone we see a good mix of common/ongoing jokes and smaller details.

We got "dammit Hardison" and "it's a very distinctive..." but also Eliot and Parker arguing about him catering a mob wedding, and Eliot being delighted by lemon as a secret ingredient in a dish in that same episode (another reference to the mob episode). Hardison and Eliot banter about "plan M", an ongoing joke starting from the very first episode of the original show. We see Sophie bring up Hardison's accent in the Ice Job, Parker also makes reference to an early episode when describing "backlash effect" to Breanna, in an episode that also references her brother slightly if you look for it.

Heck, the last episode of these first eight makes a big deal out of nearly reproducing the iconic opening lines of the original show with Fake Nate's "we provide... an advantage." And I mean, all the "let's go steal a ___" with Harry being confused about how to use them.

Some of the lines are more obviously references to the original show, but they strike a decent balance with smaller or unspoken stuff as well, and also mix in some references between the team to events we the audience have never seen. If someone was coming into this show for the first time, they wouldn't get all the easter egg joy but most of the references would stand on their own as dialogue anyway. In general, I think they struck a good balance of restating needed context for new viewers while still having enough standalone good lines and more-fun-if-you-get-it callbacks.

Continuity

Similar to the last point, but slightly different. The characters' development from the original to now is shown so well. I'm not going to go on about this too long, but the writers clearly didn't want to let the original characters stagnate during the offscreen years. There was a lot of real thought put into how they would change or not.

It's really written well. We can see just how cohesive a team Parker, Hardison, and Eliot became. We get a sense of how they've spent their time, and there's plenty of evidence that they remained incredibly close with Sophie and Nate until this past year. The way everyone defers to Parker is different from the original show and clearly demonstrates how she's been well established as the leader for years now - they show this well even as Parker is stepping back to let Sophie take point in these episodes. Eventually that is actually called out by Sophie in the eighth episode, so we might see more mastermind Parker in the back half of the show, maybe. But even with her leading, it's clear how collaborative the team has become, with everyone bouncing ideas off one another and adding their input freely. Sometimes they even get so caught up they leave the newbies completely in the dust. But for the most part we get a good sense of how the Parker/Hardison/Eliot team worked with her having final say on plans but the others discussing everything together. A little bit more collaborative than it was with Nate at the helm.

Meanwhile Sophie has built a home and is deeply attached to it. She and Nate really did retire, at least for the most part, and she was living her happy ending until he died. She's out of practice but still as skilled as ever, and we're shown how much her grief has changed her and how concerned the others are for her.

There's a lot of emphasis on how they all look after one another and the found family is clearer than ever. Sophie even calls Hardison "his father's son" - clearly referring to Nate.

Nate

Speaking of Nate! They handled his loss so, so well. His story was the most complete at the end of the last show, and just from a narrative point, losing him makes the most sense of all the characters. But the way he dies and his impact on the show and the characters continues. It's very respectful to who he was - who he truly was.

Nate was someone they all loved, but he was a deeply flawed individual. Sophie talks about how he burned too hot, but at least he burned - possibly implying to me that his drinking was related to his death. In any case, there's no mystery to it. We don't know how he died but that's not what's most important about his death. This isn't a quest for revenge or anything... it's just a study of grief and trying to heal.

Back to who he really was real quick - the show doesn't eulogize him as better than he was. They're honest about him. From the first episode's toast they raise in his memory, to the final episode where Sophie and Eliot are deeply confused by Fake Nate singing his praises, the team knows who he was. They don't erase his flaws... but at the same time he was so clearly theirs. He was family, he was the man they trusted and loved and followed into incredibly dangerous situations, and whose loss they all still feel deeply.

That said, the show doesn't harp on this point. They reference him, but they don't overwhelm new viewers with a constant barrage of Nate talk. It always serves a purpose, primarily for Sophie's storyline of moving through her grief. Anyway, @robinasnyder said all of this way better than me here, so go read that as well.

Representation

Or should I say, Jewish Hardison, Autistic Parker, Queer Breanna!

Granted, Hardison's religion isn't quite explicitly stated to be Jewish so much as he mentions that his "Nana runs a multi-denominational household", but nonetheless. He gets the shows big thesis statement moment, he gets a beautiful speech about redemption that is the emotional cornerstone of that episode and probably Harry's entire arc throughout the show. And while I'm not Jewish myself, most of what I've seen from Jewish fans is saying that Hardison's words here were excellent representation of their beliefs. (@featherquillpen does a great job in that meta of contextualizing this with his depiction in the original show as well.)

Autistic Parker, however, is shown pretty dang blatantly. She already was very much coded as autistic in the original show, but the reboot has if anything gone further. She sees a child psychologist because she likes using puppets to represent emotions, she stims, she uses cue cards and pre-written scripts for social interactions, there's mention of possible texture sensitivity and her clothes are generally more loose and comfortable. She's gotten better at performing empathy and understanding how people typically work, but it's specifically described as something she learned how to do and she views her brain as being different from ones that work that way (same link). Again, not autistic myself but from what I've seen autistic fans find a lot to relate to in her portrayal. And best of all, this well-rounded and respectful depiction does not show any of these qualities as a lack on her part. There's no more of those kinda ableist comments or "what's wrong with you" jokes that were in the original show. Parker is the way she is, and that allows her to do things differently. She's loved for who she is, and any effort made to fit in is more just to know how so that she can use it to her advantage when she wants to on the job - for her convenience, not others' comfort.

Speaking of loved for who you are.... okay, again, queer Breanna isn't confirmed onscreen yet, and I don't count Word of God as true canon. But I can definitely believe we're building there. Breanna dresses in a very GNC way, and just her dialogue and, I dunno, vibes seem very queer to me. She has a beautiful speech in the Card Game Job about not belonging or being accepted and specifically mentions "the way they love" as one of those things that made her feel like she didn't belong. And that scene is given so much weight and respect. (Not to mention other hints throughout the episode about how much finding her own space meant to her.) Also, the whole theme of feeling rejected and the key for her to begin really flourishing is acceptance for who she is, not any desire for her to be anyone else, is made into another big moment. Yeah, textually that moment is about her feeling like she has to fill Hardison's shoes and worrying about her past, but the themes are there, man.

Themes

I talked a bit about this yesterday, so I'm mostly just going to link to that post, but... this series so far is doing a really good job in my opinion of giving people arcs and having some good themes. Namely the redemption one, from Hardison's speech (which I'm gonna talk a little more about in the next point), and this overall theme of growing up and looking to the future (from above the linked post).

New Characters

Harry and Breanna are fantastic characters. I was kind of worried about Harry being a replacement Nate, but... he really isn't. Sure, he's the older white guy who has an angsty past but it's in a very different way and his personality and relationships with the rest of the crew are correspondingly different. I think the dynamic of a very friendly, cheerful, kind, but still bad guy (as @soundsfaebutokay points out) is a great one to show, and he's got a really cool arc I think of learning to be a better person, and truly understanding Hardison's point about redemption being a process not a goal. His role on the team also has some interesting applications and drawbacks, as @allegorymetaphor talked about. I've kind of grown to think that the show is gradually building up to an eventual Sophie/Harry romance a ways down the line, and I'm actually here for it. Regardless, his relationships with everyone are really interesting.

As for Breanna, first of all and most importantly I love her. Secondly, I think she's got a really interesting story. She's a link to Hardison's past, and provides a really interesting perspective for us as someone younger who has grown up a) looking up to Leverage and b) in a bleaker and more hopeless world. Breanna's not an optimist, and she's not someone who was self-sufficient and unconcerned with the rest of the world at the start, like everyone else. She believes that the world sucks and she wants it to be better, but she doesn't know how to make that happen. She outright says she's desperate and that's why she's working with Leverage. At the same time, Breanna is pretty down on herself and wants to prove herself but gets easily shaken by mistakes or being scolded, which is a stark contrast to Hardison's general self-confidence. There are several times when she starts to have an idea then hesitates to share it, or expects her emotions to be dismissed, or gets really disheartened when she's corrected or rejected, or dwells on her mistakes, or when she is accepted or praised she usually takes a surprised beat and is shy about it (she almost always looks down and away from the person, and her smile is often small or startled). Breanna looks up to the team so much (Parker especially, then probably Eliot) and she wants to prove herself. It's going to be so good to see her grow.

General Vibe

A brief note, but it seems a fitting one to end on. The show keeps it's overall tone and feeling from the original show. The fun, the competency porn, the bad guys and clever plans and happy endings. It's got differences for sure, but the characters are recognizably themselves and the show as a whole is recognizably still Leverage. For the most part they just got the feeling right, and it's really nice.

CONS (no, not that kind)

'Maker and Fixer'

So when I started writing this meta earlier today, I was actually a lot more annoyed by the lack of unique 'maker' skills being shown by Breanna. Basically the only time she tries to use a drone, the very thing she introduced herself as being good at, it breaks instantly. I was concerned about her being relegated into just doing what Hardison did, instead of bringing her own stuff to the table. But the seventh episode eased some of those fears, and the meta I just wrote for someone else asking about Breanna's 'maker' skills as shown this season made me realize there's more nuance than that. I'd still like to have seen more of that from her, but for now the fact that we don't see a lot of 'maker' from her so far seems more like a character decision based in Breanna's insecurities.

Harry definitely gets more 'inside man' usage. His knowledge as a 'fixer' comes in handy several times. Nonetheless, I'm really curious if there are any bigger ways to use it, aside from him just adding in some exposition/insight from time to time. I'm not even entirely sure how much more they can pull from this premise in terms of relevant skills, but I hope there's more and I'd like to see it. Maybe a con built more around him playing a longer role playing his old self, like they tried in the Tower Job? Maybe it's more a matter of him needed distance from that part of his past, being unable to face it without lashing out - in that case it could be a good character growth moment possibly for him to succeed in being Scummy Lawyer again down the line? I dunno.

Episode Twins

This was something small that kind of bothered me a little earlier in the season. It's kind of the negative side to the references, I guess? And I'm not even sure how much it annoys me really, but I just kinda noticed and felt sort of weird about it.

Rollin' on the River has a lot of references/callbacks to the The Wedding Job.

The Tower Job has a lot of references/callbacks to The White Rabbit Job.

The Paranormal Hacktivity Job has a lot of references/callbacks to the Future Job.

I guess I was getting a little concerned that there would be a 'match this episode' situation where almost every new Redemption episode is very reminiscent of an old one. I love the callbacks, but I don't want to see a lack of creativity in this new show, and this worried me for a minute. Especially when it was combined with all three of those episodes dealing with housing issues of some kind. Now, that's a huge concern for a lot of people, and each episode has its own take on a different problem within that huge umbrella, but it still got me worried about a lack of variety in topics/cases.

The rest of the episodes failing to line up so neatly in my head with older episodes helped a lot to ease this one, though. Still, this is my complaining section so I figured I'd express my concerns as they were at the time. Even if I no longer really worry about it much.

Sophie's Stagefright

Yeah, I know this is just a small moment in a single episode, but it annoyed me! Eliot made a bit of a face at Sophie going onstage, but I thought it was just him being annoyed at the general situation. However, they started out with her being awful up there until she realized the poem was relevant to the con - at which point her reading got so much better.

This felt like a complete betrayal of Sophie's beautiful moment at the end of the original show where she got over her trouble with regular acting and played Lady Macbeth beautifully in front of a full theater of audience members. This was part of the con, but only in the sense that it gave her an alibi/place to hide, and I always interpreted it as her genuinely getting over her stagefright problems. It felt like such a beautiful place to end her arc for that show, especially after all her time spent directing.

Now, her difficulty onstage in the Card Game Job was brief and at the very beginning of being up on stage. @rinahale suggested to me that maybe it was a deliberate tactic to draw the guy's attention, and the later skill was simply her shifting focus to make the sonnet easier for Breanna to listen to and interpret, but he seemed more enraptured when she was doing well than otherwise in my opinion and it just doesn't quite sit well with me. My other theory was that maybe she just hasn't been up on stage in a long time, and much like she complaining about being rusty at grifting before the team pushed her into trying, she got nervous for a moment at the very beginning. The problem there is that I think she'd definitely still get involved in theater even when she and Nate were retired. I guess she could've quit after he died, and a year might be long enough to make her doubt herself again, but... still.

I just resent that they even left it ambiguous at all. Sophie's skills should be solid on stage at this point in my opinion.

Thiefsome

...And now we come to my main complaint. This is, by far, the biggest issue I have with the show.

I feel like I should put a disclaimer here that I had my doubts from the beginning about the thiefsome becoming canon onscreen. I thought the famous "the OT3 is safe" tweet could easily just mean that they are all still alive and well, or all still working together, without giving us confirmation of a romantic relationship. Despite this, the general fandom expectations/hopes really got to me, especially with the whole "lock/pick/key" thing. I tried to temper my expectations again when the character descriptions came out and only mentioned Hardison loving Parker, not Eliot, but I still got my hopes up.

The thing is, I was disappointed pretty quickly.

The very first episode told me that in all likelihood we would never see Hardison and Parker and Eliot together in a romantic sense. Oh, there was so much coding. So much hinting. So much in the way of conversations that were about Parker/Hardison's relationship but then Eliot kept getting brought into them. They were portrayed as a unit of three.

But then there was this.

I love all of those scenes of Parker and Hardison being intimate and loving and comfortable with one another and their relationship. I really do. But it didn't escape my notice that there's nothing of the sort with Eliot. If they wanted a canon onscreen thiefsome, it would by far make the most sense to just have it established from the start. But there aren't any scenes where Eliot shares the same kind of physical closeness with either of them like they do each other. Parker and Hardison kiss; he doesn't kiss anyone. They have several clearly romantic conversations when alone; he gets important conversations with both but the sense of it being romantic isn't there.

Establishing Eliot as part of the relationship after Hardison is gone just... doesn't make any sense. It would be more likely to confuse new viewers, to make them wonder if Parker is cheating on Hardison with Eliot, or if they have a Y shaped relationship rather that a triangle. It would be so much clumsier.

Still, up until the Double-Edged-Sword Job I believed the writers might keep it at this level of 'plausible hinting but not quite saying'. There's a lot of great stuff with all of them, and I never expecting making out or whatever anyway; a cheek-kiss was about the height of my hopes to be honest. I mostly just hoped for outright confirmation and, failing that, I was happy enough to have the many hints and implications.

But then Marshal Maria Shipp came along. And I don't really have anything against her as a character - in fact, I think she has interesting story potential and will definitely come back. But the episode framed her fight with Eliot as a sexyfight TM, much like his fight with Mikel back in the day. And then his flirting with her rode the line a little of "he's playing her for the con" and "he's genuinely flirting." The scene where he tells her his real name is particularly iffy, but actually was the one that convinced me he was playing her. Because he seems to be watching her really closely, and to be very concerned about her figuring out who he really is. I am very aware though that I'm doing a lot of work to interpret it the way I want. On surface appearance, Eliot's just flirting with an attractive woman, like he did on the last show. And that's probably the intention, too.

But the real nail in the coffin for me was when Sophie compared herself and Nate to Eliot and Maria. That was a genuine scene, not the continuation of the teasing from before. And Sophie is the one whose insight into people is always, always trustworthy. She is family to the thiefsome. For this to make any sense, either Eliot/Parker/Hardison isn't a thing, or they are and Sophie doesn't know - and I can't imagine why in the hell she wouldn't know.

Any argument to make them still canon leaves me unsatisfied. If she knows and they haven't admitted it to her - why wouldn't they, after all this time? Why would she not have picked up on it even without an outright announcement? Some people suggested they wouldn't admit it because they thought Nate would be weird about it, but that doesn't seem any more in character to me than the other possibilities. In fact, the only option that doesn't go against my understanding of these people and their observational abilities/the close relationship they share.... is that the thiefsome is not a thing.

And furthermore, the implication of this conversation - especially the way it ended, with Eliot stomping off looking embarrassed while Sophie smiled knowingly - is that Eliot will get into another relationship onscreen. Maybe not a full-blown romantic relationship. But the Maria Shipp tension is going to be resolved somehow, and at this point I'm half-expecting a hook-up simply because of Sophie's reaction and how much I trust her judgement of such things. Even if she's letting her grief cloud her usual perceptiveness... it feels iffy.

It just kinda feels like I wasn't even allowed to keep my "interpret these hints/maybe they are" thiefsome that I expected after the first couple episodes convinced me we wouldn't get outright confirmation. (I mean, I will anyway, and I love the hints and allusions regardless.) And while I'm definitely not the kind of fan who is dependent on canon for my ships, and still enjoy all their interactions/will keep right on headcanoning them all in a relationship, it's just.... a bummer.

Feels like a real cop-out. Like the hints of Breanna being queer are enough to meet their quota and they won't try anything 'risky' like a poly relationship. I dunno. It's annoying.

.

That's the end of the list! Again, overall I love the new show a lot and have few complaints.

[hymnsofheresy]

Hi Lydia!! I hope this doesn't bother you. I'm trying to slowly go back to the Church after a time out of faith due to rejection for being LGBT. I can't really change my denomination (I live in a rural area in Spain, so Catholicism is the only option, and it's very conservative here). However, I'm meeting with the same problems, and although I feel very near to God right now, people are making me feel sinful and unclean. Do you have any advice? I don't really want to stray away again. Thanks!

Recognize that those who are making you feel like shit are in the minority. The vast majority of Spanish Catholics support gay acceptance within society and a strong majority support gay marriage according to pew research. You are not alone. There may not be a loud acceptance in your area specifically, but I am sure you might be able find those within the Spanish Church you could reach out to. I recommend looking for gay ministries and LGBT religious organizations. They will probably have resources that probably are beneficial for your specific cultural context.

Also recognize that the Catholic Church is being particularly loud (and honestly contradictory) about all things LGBT lately because it is struggling to adapt to the growing LGBT acceptance from their laypeople (especially in Western and Southern Europe). They risk sabotaging themselves if they continue to be homophobic. At least in Spain, they don't have the upper hand when it comes to sexual ethics. Unfortunately, you are just caught up in a time where the Catholic Church's homophobic doctrine is just being reiterated constantly. My biggest advice is honestly to ignore the voices that wish to hurt you. Recognize that there is a lot of politics happening right now, and that there is nothing that can separate you from God's Love (Romans 8:38)

[prorevenge]

My Grandmother Put Greedy Preachers In Their Places .... Twice .... Even After She Died

TL/DR - My grandmother generously served her "Bible Believing Christian" church for almost 50 years, without asking anything in return. But when she became elderly, disabled and homebound, her church acted like she did not exist - until she was in hospice care and literally on her deathbed, when that church showed a sudden interest in telling Grandma to, "Remember your church in your will". She waited until exactly the right moment, in front of exactly the right audience, to expose these greedy assholes for what they were.....twice.

My grandmother was a member of a large conservative "Bible Believing" church for her entire adult life. This church, which I'll call BigWhiteChurch, was a member of a large Evangelical denomination. BigWhiteChurch was located in a prosperous suburb of a large city in the Bible Belt of the Deep South of the USA.

Grandma was very active in BigWhiteChurch. She worked in the nursery every Sunday morning, helped cook hundreds of church fellowship breakfasts and dinners, accompanied her children and grandchildren on dozens of church retreats and choir tours, taught Youth Bible Study on Sunday nights and was very active in supporting Home Missions, as well as helping with other youth programs. She always tithed, and often gave extra for missions and special offerings.

Grandma's greatest talent was making other people feel important. I've seen this first-hand many times. Although I belonged to a different church, I often visited with Grandma, and when I did, I usually went to BigWhiteChurch functions with her. I've seen her single-handedly cook breakfast for dozens of BigWhiteChurch Youth, a task which took over 2 hours, even in the church's large kitchen. Then, after the meal, she asked the group for a round of applause for the high-school student leader for, "Doing such a great job of organizing the Prayer Breakfast".

I remember that, on a BigWhiteChurch youth retreat at a rural Church Camp, she drove most of the night to go back to the city and retrieve a big box of evangelistic materials, that one of the Assistant Pastors (whom I'll call AssPastor) had forgotten and asked her to get, in time for our morning program the next day. His boss, the Senior Pastor (I'll call him PompousPastor), never found out that AssPastor had screwed up or that Grandma had fixed it for him. AssPastor never even thanked Grandma. Even though I was a child, this bothered me so much that I asked her about it. She said that she didn't mind at all; she told me her reward would be that those materials, "Would help children find Jesus".

Grandma's service to her church ended abruptly at the age of 73, when she broke her back in a car accident. Afterwards, for the last 10 years of her life, she was homebound and could not go to church because of this injury and declining health due to old age. Her mind was just as sharp as ever, and her faith remained sincere, but her body wore out a little more every day.

During those 10 years, she made many efforts to reach out to her church, its leadership and her church friends, inviting them to visit her at her home, etc., without success. Every one of these invitations was declined or simply ignored.

Near the end, when she was in home hospice care, she decided to plan her own funeral. She and my Grandpa called her church and asked for the Senior Pastor, PompousPastor, whom she had known for over 30 years, to visit her so that they could plan her memorial service, which she and Grandpa wanted to be held at the church.

PompousPastor was too busy, but AssPastor stopped by a few days later. According to my Grandpa, here's what happened at that meeting, with my Grandma literally on her deathbed:

Grandma, Grandpa and AssPastor discussed her funeral for a couple of minutes. Then AssPastor started pressuring her to, "Lay up your treasure in Heaven" by, "Remembering your church in your will".

Grandpa told him firmly that, "This is neither the time nor the place to discuss her will."

They went back to discussing the funeral for a few minutes. Then AssPastor steered the conversation back to Grandma's will, with liberal injections of how badly "her" church needed "her support".

Grandpa told him several times that it was inappropriate to talk to Grandma about her will or the church's financial needs, because she was terminally ill and in an enormous amount of physical pain. AssPastor would agree and briefly talk about the funeral, but would then go back to talking about the church's financial needs, heavenly rewards, "Where your treasure is your heart will be also" (Matthew 6:21, Luke 12:34), etc.

My Grandma started crying.

To put this into context, Grandma was more than a "Steel Magnolia". She was "Titanium Coated With Diamond Wrapped In Kevlar". She rarely ever cried, and never EVER cried about herself. Not one tear when the doctor told her that her back was broken so badly that she would never walk again, nor during the following 6 months in futile rehab. She would shed sincere but well-managed tears at funerals and while visiting family members in the hospital when they received bad news. She would cry to console others, "Weep with those who weep". But nobody - not Grandpa, not her daughter (my mom), nor any of my uncles or Grandma's siblings - ever remembered her crying for herself.

My Grandma was sobbing uncontrollably.

Grandpa, a retired steelworker, ex-Marine Sergeant and Korean War combat veteran, physically grabbed AssPastor and "escorted" him out of their house, not too gently.

Contrary to everyone's expectations, Grandma lived another 6 months, mostly because of sheer force of will. Eventually, though, Grandma passed away and we held her memorial service at the funeral home, not BigWhiteChurch. PompousPastor and AssPastor were conspicuously absent. In fact, there were no "Professional Christians", from BigWhiteChurch, at the service at all, not even in the audience.

To start the service, Grandpa stood up at the podium in front of the crowd and said, "Some of you may have heard that I dis-invited PompousPastor and AssPastor from this funeral service. This service is not an appropriate place for me to give you my reasons for doing this, although you all know me and so you know that my reasons are good ones. Also, my wife asked me to exclude them."

"This funeral service may be different from other funerals that you have attended. It is going to be an "open microphone" funeral. Everyone who wants to say something is invited to come up here and describe your friendship with my wife, tell a story about her that is worth remembering, or anything else that you want to say that will honor her memory and bring comfort to everyone here today. I have asked several family members to prepare statements, but you don't have to have anything prepared. Please, if you want to say something, come up here and do so."

There were about a hundred people at the funeral service; at least a third of them eventually stepped up to the microphone. The service, which we had planned to last about 30 minutes, lasted for over two hours and, as best I can tell, not one person left early. There was laughing, crying and hugging, three of her grandchildren played some of her favorite songs on the piano and guitar, we all joined hands and sang her favorite hymns.

Afterwards, dozens of people told my Grandpa that it was one of the most comforting and uplifting funerals they had ever attended. More than a few remarked that, "Funerals are better without preachers anyway", or something similar.

REMEMBERING HER PASTORS AND HER CHURCH IN HER WILL: THE ONE-TWO PUNCH

A couple of weeks later, it was time to start distributing the bequests in Grandma's will. Although Grandma and Grandpa dearly loved each other, they had separate wills because, she told my Mom, "That makes it easier for us to respect each other's turf", and because their lawyer had recommended it. Nobody thought that my grandparents were wealthy. They had lived in the same small but charming house in a prosperous, well-maintained suburban neighborhood for the past 50+ years, and had worked hard and lived modestly. But it was rumored that they had a very nice nest egg.

Of course, there is no legal requirement for anyone to attend "The Reading Of The Will", or to even have a "Reading". Modern telecommunications and near-universal literacy have made this quaint custom practically extinct.

But "The Reading Of The Will" was a tradition in our family because it was one of those events that gave our close-knit, extended family an excuse to get together. We never had "Family Reunions". They were too difficult to schedule for our large family. But we got together at birthdays, holidays, funerals, baptisms, etc., so that if you attended several of these, you would see just about every one of your cousins, aunts, uncles, and even great aunts & uncles who were Grandma's and Grandpa's siblings and in-laws.

With this family tradition in mind, many of our family members' wills often contained very personal bequests of items that had little cash value, but were the departed family member's way of telling their loved ones that they wanted to share a cherished memory with them one last time.

As an added incentive to attend, the family rumor mill had been buzzing with speculation, encouraged by Grandpa, that Grandma's will contained some "surprises".

The "Reading" was held in a conference room at a lawyer's office. Unsurprisingly, the attendees included my mom, as well as aunts, uncles, great aunts, great uncles and many of the grandchildren.

We were all surprised, however, to see PompousPastor and AssPastor from BigWhiteChurch. They informed us that Grandma's lawyer had told them that Grandma's will had bequests not only for BigWhiteChurch, but also for them personally.

Maybe it was just our imagination; but my siblings, cousins and I couldn't help noticing that these Preachers appeared to be actively salivating over their good fortune at Grandma's generosity.

Grandma had a large family, so a sizeable number of beneficiaries were named in her will. The lawyer's conference room was a bit smaller than an average middle-class living room. Extra chairs had been brought in, every seat was filled and people were standing in every remaining space.

There was barely space for all of us. Grandma's lawyer suggested that PompousPastor and AssPastor sit in chairs which were in the front of the room, next to himself. Since there was a large table in the room, this meant that the lawyer and these two Preachers were the only ones who were directly facing everyone else. Although the Preachers were gratified to be physically next to the center of attention, they did not notice, as all of the rest of us quickly noticed, that these seats made it easy for everyone else in the room to watch them closely, and practically impossible for them to leave the packed-to-more-than-overflowing room before the entire meeting was over, because they were farthest from the room's single door, and there were almost two dozen people standing or sitting between them and their only path to escape.

The bequests were quite generous, but pretty much what we had expected. Grandpa kept their house, its contents, their retirement accounts and everything that remained after all of the bequests had been satisfied. Children, grandchildren and several local charities received nice, but not extravagant, amounts of money. Several sentimental items were named and given to various friends and relatives.

Grandpa was first beneficiary listed in the will. But, after him, all of the other bequests were arranged in order of increasing worth. They started with sentimental items, which had very small cash value. Then each grandchild received several thousand dollars, then each son, daughter, brother, sister, niece and nephew received a little more, then several local non-profits received very nice amounts, etc.

Bequests to BigWhiteChurch, PompousPastor and AssPastor were (almost) the last ones listed in the will. They listened politely to the other bequests, but with steadily growing anticipation, as they noticed the exponential upward trend in Grandma's largess.

When Grandma's lawyer got to the BigWhiteChurch and Preachers' part of the will, he said, "This is a bit unusual, but before I announce these bequests to BigWhiteChurch, PompousPastor and AssPastor, Ms [Grandma's name] requested that I read the following statement to everyone present."

He opened a letter that was written in Grandma's own handwriting...

"For the past 10 years, NOT ONE person from BigWhiteChurch has ever called me, come to visit me or sent me a note to tell me that they cared about me. Not one minister, not one deacon, not one of the church women, not one of the church members who I worked with for all of those years, loved dearly and thought were my friends. I worked very hard for you when you needed me, for many, many years. But when I needed you and your church, you all pretended that I didn't exist."

"I only got one visit. When I was dying and I invited PompousPastor to come to my house and help me plan my funeral."

"This was my last attempt, after many attempts that I had made over the past 10 years, to reach out to my church and Pastor, whom I still loved dearly even though they had made it clear that they did not love me. If only I could have my funeral at my church, maybe some of my church friends, whom I had not seen in a decade, would come to the service to see me one last time. And I know they loved to hear PompousPastor preach, so if he preached at my funeral, maybe they would come to my funeral to hear him, even if they would not have come to see me.

But PompousPastor couldn't find the time to visit me, or even call me to tell me whether or not he was willing to preach at my funeral. AssPastor came by my house, but he didn't want to talk about my funeral. He just wanted me to, 'Remember his church in my will'. That's all. Just, 'Remember his church in my will'".

"It was then that I realized that I had allowed my church to break my heart for one last time. But that was the last time. The VERY last time."

"AssPastor did not know it when he visited me, but Grandpa and I had already prepared my will, long before his visit, which did include a double tithe - TWENTY PERCENT - of my ENTIRE ESTATE, for what was now my former ... FORMER ... church ... BigWhiteChurch.

This amount was [named the amount - an enormous shitload of money - generating muffled "wows" from many of her heirs, including me].

"But I got to feeling badly that we had not personally remembered such nice people as PompousPastor and AssPastor. So I changed my will to include them by name. While I was at it, I changed the amount of money that I left to BigWhiteChurch to match all of the love that they have showed to me during the last 10 years of my life, when I was suffering and lonely, and no longer able to work my ass off for them, for free, like I had done for almost half a century."

"That is her entire written statement", the lawyer said. "Now let's get back to the bequests in the will."

"Bequest to AssPastor: One Cent".

"Bequest to PompousPastor: One Cent".

"Bequest to BigWhiteChurch: One Cent".

The PompousPastor and AssPastor sat there looking like someone had just injected a gallon of novacaine into their jaws.

Every one of Grandma's family and friends felt an overwhelming urge to laugh out loud. But we kept quiet because we knew Grandma. We knew she wasn't finished yet. Grandma was simply setting them up for a one-two punch. The best was yet to come, and we didn't want to miss it.

"There is one last bequest," the lawyer continued, "For a charity called ...", which he named and I'll call "BlackCharity", then he paused before naming the amount....

Most of us had no idea what BlackCharity was. But, by the looks on their faces, we could tell that PompousPastor and AssPastor knew BlackCharity very well. Their faces displayed the same expressions of shock, dread and horror that they would have if the lawyer had said, "This bequest goes to The Demonic Baby Eaters to buy extra large rotisserie barbecue grills and tons of charcoal".

Every eye in the room was now fixated on PompousPastor and AssPastor.

The lawyer, who happened to be my uncle, one of Grandma's and Grandpa's sons, let the silence continue a few seconds more....

If we had been able to read PompousPastor's and AssPastor's minds, we would have known the history behind the looks on their faces. BlackCharity was sponsored by a large Black church just a few miles from BigWhiteChurch. They ran a free food/clothing bank, assistance programs for foster children, home delivery of pre-cooked meals for homebound seniors, legal aid, and other social services.

A long time ago, BigWhiteChurch, which was (and still is) 100% Caucasian, had provided a few years of financial and other support to BlackCharity. Then there was a very bitter, acrimonious breakup, allegedly because BlackCharity was practicing "The Social Gospel", while BigWhiteChurch was preaching "The True Gospel". BigWhiteChurch even sued to try to get some of their money back, although the suit was eventually settled and very little money actually changed hands.

But, this being The Deep South, everyone knew the real reason why BigWhiteChurch, or any white church, would stop supporting a Black charity: "Those n****** were getting uppity and not staying in their place". Grandma and Grandpa had seriously considered leaving BigWhiteChurch at that time. But they had reasoned that it was better to stay there and teach tolerance by their words and example. They knew they would never persuade everyone, but maybe they could reach some of the youth at their white church and break the generational cycle of racism. Grandma used to tell us, "My church is my Mission Field". We did not learn the true depth of her statement until after she died.

Since then, Grandma and Grandpa had secretly sent a portion of their "Tithe" to BlackCharity every month.

Most of Grandma's family, including me, didn't find out about any of this until after the meeting had ended.

But PompousPastor and AssPastor obviously understood what Grandma, by her actions which are more powerful than words, was saying to them. If you had grown up as a white person in the Deep South, as Grandma, Grandpa, PompousPastor and AssPastor had, you would understand.

To many white Southerners, this was one of the most personally insulting things you could do to them. It simultaneously labeled them as racists, condemned their bigotry and crushed their delusions of white superiority by saying, "These Black human beings, whom you hate, disrespect and have mistreated, are better people than you are. So they deserve my money more than you do".

Having allowed time for everyone to observe PompousPastor and AssPastor while they thought about how their white church had treated this Black charity, and how they AND their church had treated our Grandma...

The lawyer said, "The amount is...."

Then he named the EXACT SAME AMOUNT that Grandma had named in her handwritten letter, the huge amount of money that would have gone to BigWhiteChurch if she had not changed her will.

(source) story by (/u/BamaFan4Jesus)

[sapphireorison]

This is a vent about an aspect of current US Christianity (the noisy, conservative parts) that has been bothering me increasingly over the years. Feel free to skip. It's a lot of unlocked backstory that nobody asked for.

But. So.

What ever happened to "There but for the grace of God go I?"

When I was bitty, I sporadically wandered between Catholic and Baptist and...whatever church out past the edge of town was (I honestly have no idea what denomination it was). But we sang a lot, and "there but by the grace" was one of the sentiments in the hymns that always resonated with me. Back then, I'd been learning of other concepts like the Tower in tarot and the Wheel of Fortune in Shakespeare and it fit right in.

Sometimes—sometimes shit just happens and you have to start again.

So I've always seen "there but by the grace" as an outsider's PoV statement on people who got fucked by fate that says: that's me. That could happen to me at any time. I'm explicitly acknowledging the privilege granted by my faith. And that because that's me, holy shit, then I have responsibility to help.

My interpretation is objectively correct, of course. :) Because never in a million years would I have thought that the logical follow up to looking at someone else and going 'dude, you poor, sad fuck' would be to ignore them or make their lives worse (wtf) when my faith granted me the privilege to help.

Partially because around this time the 'Good Samaritan' parable hit me and I was like 'okay, so don't be an asshole who doesn't help when they have the means to, gotcha.' (Since, iirc, part of the point of that story is that being a Christian doesn't mean you get a pass about being dick to people in need and that people who aren't Christian can also be flat-out good people so don't fuckin' assume good-person superiority where your actions don't back you up. It's a Good Samaritan and that's actually kind of an important part of the parable, in context, even if we use the term to mean something more like charitable benefactor now.)((I have not touched on the story since I was a teen and am only drawing from my own recollections, so I very well could be wrong, but if I'm wrong that's interesting too, you know?))

Anyway. I was very small and the concepts seemed very simple.

I'm older now, and very tired, and agnostic (more or less, insert several thousand words of essays here), and a witch (hah), and everything is more complex somehow, but enough of this stuff is hardcoded into my morals-and-values system that it legitimately makes me just...incandescently angry that 'acknowledging that you believe your faith grants you privilege by design and so don't be a dick about it' seems to have been full on missed by so many people.

It's like. Basic shit. Literally baby Christian 101.

I know that grappling with theological concepts without losing your entire shit is passé, but I don't fuckin' understand how you can be that wrong about a thing that I learned as part of the same faith when I was, like, tiny. I can't be the only one who was taught this concept. Why is 'that could easily be me' and meeting that with compassion no longer even remotely a thing?

[rotationalsymmetry]

A brief history of Unitarian Universalism (casual, with swears, have not fact checked as such but I think it’s correct): In New England back before US independence, there was Calvinism -- you know, that predestination thing, you’re already going to go to heaven or hell, but you should be good anyways so people will think you’re going to heaven, or something like that. Then there wasn’t. Then there was Congregationalism. Which was a lot more chill, but still very “fuck Catholicism”. And around this time, deism was on the rise: the idea that maybe God created the universe, then fucked off, and hasn’t been actively involved with anything since. Then, some people who were actually reading the Bible, because you can’t look down on Catholicism unless you actually read the Bible, were like... wait, maybe Jesus isn’t all that. You know -- the Savior, the Son of God, one third of the Trinity, all that. Maybe he was just, like... a prophet, or some guy who said some interesting things. A teacher. And other congregationalists were like: uh, what, no, Jesus has to be all that. If you don’t think Jesus is all that, how can you even call yourself a Christian? And they decided they couldn’t really be around each other any more. So the first group, which was mostly in Boston, started calling themselves Unitarians (because they rejected the doctrine of the Trinity and instead believed in a one part God), and incidentally at some point also stopped calling themselves Christians because the other guys had a point, and the others called themselves the United Church of Christ (UCC.) Emerson and Thorough -- sorry, Thoreau -- were both Unitarians, as were John Adams, John Quincy Adams, and pretty much everyone else from Boston in early US history. (We like to claim Jefferson, because his beliefs were kindasorta similar to Unitarian beliefs at the time, but as I understand it he was never actually part of a Unitarian congregation.) (Btw: if you’re lgbtq+ and Christian, they’re a pretty friendly denomination. If you’re lgbtq+ and Christian and you think the UCC is too liberal (in the religious sense) or you want a majority-lgbtq+ congregation, consider MCC, which is otherwise unconnected to all this. If you’re not Christian and are lgbtq+ -- atheist/agnostic, or maybe something else if you’re down with worshipping with people that aren’t specifically your thing -- Unitarian Universalism tends to be pretty good. As in: we have a bunch of gay/lesbian ministers and other religious leaders, and a few transgender ones. (Knowledge of less mainstream lgbtq+ identities can vary a lot between congregations and generations -- the younger generations tend to be more aware than the gen x’ers.) I’ve been involved with Church of the Larger Fellowship for most of the past year, which did zoom worship before it got cool and serves people around the world, and people like me who live a mile from a UU brick and mortar congregation but still can’t get their disabled ass over there anyways. Anyways, CLF has more POC on the worship team than most UU congregations (the denomination does tend to run pretty white), is very social justice oriented even by UU standards, and is somewhat more cool about general weirdness than most congregations, which again for UU congregations is saying something.) Then, at some point (sadly, I’m significantly more familiar with the history of the first U than the second) there was this other protestant denomination in the South (as in, the US South) where people decided that God was too nice to send people to hell for all eternity, so they started calling themselves the Universalists, as in Universal Salvation. All dogs go to heaven. Well, time passed, each denomination evolved in its own way. (In particular, Unitarianism caught humanism pretty hard -- the joke was the Unitarians believe in one God at most.) In the -- ok, I’ll look this one up -- in 1961, there was a big old merger, creating Unitarian Universalism, and in the process, everyone got together and was all...wait, so what are our official beliefs about God and stuff? Should we even have official beliefs about God? Maybe we can unify around some ideas around how people should treat each other instead. So they did: they drafted a set of Principles (broad-strokes guidelines on how people should act -- peace is good, truth is good, people have value, stuff like that) and a set of Sources (where UU’s get their ideas about God and morality and so on from, starting with direct experience) and left everything else up to the individual. And then a little while later, the tree-huggers got a seventh Principle and a sixth Source added in -- respect for the environment and Earth-centered religions, respectively -- so now the joke is that UU’s believe in one God, more or less. Currently there’s a movement on to add an 8th Principal that explicitly names racial equality and fighting oppression as something we value, since while the current Principles mention justice and equality, they don’t specifically name race, and the people of color who have stuck with the predominantly white denomination figure Unitarian Universalism can and should be doing better on that front. Unitarian Universalism runs religiously liberal (ie, decentralized, individualistic, non-authoritarian, non-dogmatic, inclined to believe science over the Bible) and politically progressive. Unitarian Universalist congregations tend to be very politically active and concerned with social justice, mostly in a well-educated middle class kind of way: committees, Robert’s Rules of Order, donating to non-profits, Get Out the Vote, inviting in speakers and asking “questions” that aren’t really questions, forming partnerships with other congregations and community organizations, etc. Many UU congregations have put a Black Lives Matter sign out (and when necessary keep putting it out when it gets torn down or vandalized), shown up for the protests, opposed the weird immigration BS that’s been going on in the US recently, etc. In addition to more charity style work, like food pantries and homeless shelters.

Point is: yeah it’s got flaws (don’t even get me started on Unitarian Universalism’s flaws) but if you’re a social justice person and want to meet other social justice people who are doing things, Unitarian Universalism can be a good place to look for that. You get more done in groups.

You’re less likely to burn out, too. With marginalization, it’s complicated, right? Again, for LGBTQ+ people, it’s going to be better than most religious organizations. For people a little bit on the autism spectrum, you probably won’t be the only one. (If you’re unmistakeably autistic, people might be weird/ableist; it might depend on the congregation.) If you’re from a working class background or are currently kinda broke, you might run into some frustrations or feel like you don’t fit in; if you’re a poc or if you’re disabled (or your kid is) or you want a lot of personal support, you might struggle more -- this really might vary a lot, but at least the congregations I’m used to tend to assume congregants can mostly stand on their own feet, metaphorically speaking, and have some extra time/money/skills/whatever that can be directed out into the wider world. It can be a good place for pagans and Buddhists and other people who don’t want a church but are having trouble finding a church-like religious community where you can hang out with people on the same spiritual path. (Uh, for a while UU congregations were emphatically not churches and some officially still aren’t; others gave up and were all “eh, it looks like a church, whatever, we’re just a weird church.) Some congregations are more atheist-dominated than others -- many avoid Jesus language most of the time, some avoid God language most of the time (UU’s who believe in God tend to believe in God in a relatively abstract/metaphorical way), some I hear are pagan-heavy, others do use Christian language a lot more. In all honesty you don’t have to go to Sunday worship if you don’t want to, and really a lot of UU’s don’t; if you want to be heavily involved in the congregation but don’t want to go to Sunday worship and don’t want to deal with pressure to, one way out is to teach RE (religious education -- basically “Sunday school”) the RE curricula are amazing, just absolutely astounding, and if you’re teaching it you get a ton of leeway with adjusting anything you don’t like. (Which could happen -- a lot of this stuff was developed before the idea that cultural appropriation is a big problem became mainstream in social justice circles.) What adult worship is like has basically zero correlation (perhaps negative correlation) to what RE is like. (Which sucks for young adults coming of age in a UU congregation, like I said don’t get me started on UU’s flaws.) Finally: for people who care about sex positivity and sex ed, Unitarian Universalists (in partnership with UCC) developed Our Whole Lives, a sex ed curriculum that, well, it’s not abstinence based education. You wouldn’t expect sex ed coming from a religious org to be better than the sex ed in schools, would you? And yet. Comprehensive sex ed that acknowledges gay bi and trans people and that disabled people have sex too and teaches about birth control and masturbation and abuse and consent and boundaries and bullying and internet safety and abortion. It’s good stuff. The course aimed at teens is most popular of course, but there’s actually (age-appropriate) OWL curricula for all stages of life: young kids, adults, older adults, everyone. And it’s versatile enough to be taught in secular contexts (after school programs etc). Given the direction that unfortunately a lot of school districts in the US have been going in in terms of sex ed, it’s a really important program.

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

Religious Trauma Syndrome: How Some Organized Religion Leads to Mental Health Problems

By Valerie Tarico

Marlene Winell interviewed March 25, 2013

At age sixteen I began what would be a four year struggle with bulimia. When the symptoms started, I turned in desperation to adults who knew more than I did about how to stop shameful behavior—my Bible study leader and a visiting youth minister.  “If you ask anything in faith, believing,” they said. “It will be done.” I knew they were quoting [3] the Word of God. We prayed together, and I went home confident that God had heard my prayers. But my horrible compulsions didn’t go away. By the fall of my sophomore year in college, I was desperate and depressed enough that I made a suicide attempt. The problem wasn’t just the bulimia. I was convinced by then that I was a complete spiritual failure. My college counseling department had offered to get me real help (which they later did). But to my mind, at that point, such help couldn’t fix the core problem: I was a failure in the eyes of God. It would be years before I understood that my inability to heal bulimia through the mechanisms offered by biblical Christianity was not a function of my own spiritual deficiency but deficiencies in Evangelical religion itself.  

Dr. Marlene Winell is a human development consultant in the San Francisco Area. She is also the daughter of Pentecostal missionaries. This combination has given her work an unusual focus. For the past twenty years she has counseled men and women in recovery from various forms of fundamentalist religion including the Assemblies of God denomination in which she was raised. Winell is the author of Leaving the Fold – A Guide for Former Fundamentalists and Others Leaving their Religion [4], written during her years of private practice in psychology. Over the years, Winell has provided assistance to clients whose religious experiences were even more damaging than mine. Some of them are people whose psychological symptoms weren’t just exacerbated by their religion, but actually caused by it.  

Two years ago, Winell made waves by formally labeling what she calls “Religious Trauma Syndrome” (RTS) and beginning to write and speak on the subject for professional audiences. When the British Association of Behavioral and Cognitive Psychologists published a series of articles on the topic, members of a Christian counseling association protested what they called excessive attention to a “relatively niche topic.” One commenter said, “A religion, faith or book cannot be abuse but the people interpreting can make anything abusive.”

Is toxic religion simply misinterpretation? What is religious trauma? Why does Winell believe religious trauma merits its own diagnostic label?

Let’s start this interview with the basics. What exactly is religious trauma syndrome?

Winell: Religious trauma syndrome (RTS) is a set of symptoms and characteristics that tend to go together and which are related to harmful experiences with religion. They are the result of two things: immersion in a controlling religion and the secondary impact of leaving a religious group. The RTS label provides a name and description that affected people often recognize immediately. Many other people are surprised by the idea of RTS, because in our culture it is generally assumed that religion is benign or good for you. Just like telling kids about Santa Claus and letting them work out their beliefs later, people see no harm in teaching religion to children.

But in reality, religious teachings and practices sometimes cause serious mental health damage. The public is somewhat familiar with sexual and physical abuse in a religious context. As Journalist Janet Heimlich has documented in, Breaking Their Will, Bible-based religious groups that emphasize patriarchal authority in family structure and use harsh parenting methods can be destructive.

But the problem isn’t just physical and sexual abuse. Emotional and mental treatment in authoritarian religious groups also can be damaging because of 1) toxic teachings like eternal damnation or original sin 2) religious practices or mindset, such as punishment, black and white thinking, or sexual guilt, and 3) neglect that prevents a person from having the information or opportunities to develop normally.

Can you give me an example of RTS from your consulting practice?

Winell: I can give you many. One of the symptom clusters is around fear and anxiety. People indoctrinated into fundamentalist Christianity as small children sometimes have memories of being terrified by images of hell and apocalypse before their brains could begin to make sense of such ideas. Some survivors, who I prefer to call “reclaimers,” [8] have flashbacks, panic attacks, or nightmares in adulthood even when they intellectually no longer believe the theology. One client of mine, who during the day functioned well as a professional, struggled with intense fear many nights. She said,

“I was afraid I was going to hell. I was afraid I was doing something really wrong. I was completely out of control. I sometimes would wake up in the night and start screaming, thrashing my arms, trying to rid myself of what I was feeling. I’d walk around the house trying to think and calm myself down, in the middle of the night, trying to do some self-talk, but I felt like it was just something that – the fear and anxiety was taking over my life.” Or consider this comment, which refers to a film [9] used by evangelicals to warn about the horrors of the “end times” for nonbelievers.

“I was taken to see the film “A Thief In The Night”. WOW.  I am in shock to learn that many other people suffered the same traumas I lived with because of this film. A few days or weeks after the film viewing, I came into the house and mom wasn’t there. I stood there screaming in terror. When I stopped screaming, I began making my plan: Who my Christian neighbors were, who’s house to break into to get money and food. I was 12 years old and was preparing for Armageddon alone.”

In addition to anxiety, RTS can include depression, cognitive difficulties, and problems with social functioning. In fundamentalist Christianity, the individual is considered depraved and in need of salvation. A core message is “You are bad and wrong and deserve to die.” (The wages of sin is death [10].) This gets taught to millions of children through organizations like Child Evangelism Fellowship [11] and there is a group organized [12]  to oppose their incursion into public schools.  I’ve had clients who remember being distraught when given a vivid bloody image of Jesus paying the ultimate price for their sins. Decades later they sit telling me that they can’t manage to find any self-worth.

“After twenty-seven years of trying to live a perfect life, I failed. . . I was ashamed of myself all day long. My mind battling with itself with no relief. . . I always believed everything that I was taught but I thought that I was not approved by God. I thought that basically I, too, would die at Armageddon.

“I’ve spent literally years injuring myself, cutting and burning my arms, taking overdoses and starving myself, to punish myself so that God doesn’t have to punish me. It’s taken me years to feel deserving of anything good.”

Born-again Christianity and devout Catholicism [13] tell people they are weak and dependent, calling on phrases like “lean not unto your own understanding [14]” or “trust and obey [11].” People who internalize these messages can suffer from learned helplessness. I’ll give you an example from a client who had little decision-making ability after living his entire life devoted to following the “will of God.” The words here don’t convey the depth of his despair.

“I have an awful time making decisions in general. Like I can’t, you know, wake up in the morning, “What am I going to do today?” Like I don’t even know where to start. You know all the things I thought I might be doing are gone and I’m not sure I should even try to have a career; essentially I babysit my four-year-old all day.”

Authoritarian religious groups are subcultures where conformity is required in order to belong. Thus if you dare to leave the religion, you risk losing your entire support system as well.

“I lost all my friends. I lost my close ties to family. Now I’m losing my country. I’ve lost so much because of this malignant religion and I am angry and sad to my very core. . . I have tried hard to make new friends, but I have failed miserably. . . I am very lonely.”

Leaving a religion, after total immersion, can cause a complete upheaval of a person’s construction of reality, including the self, other people, life, and the future. People unfamiliar with this situation, including therapists, have trouble appreciating the sheer terror it can create.

“My form of religion was very strongly entrenched and anchored deeply in my heart. It is hard to describe how fully my religion informed, infused, and influenced my entire worldview. My first steps out of fundamentalism were profoundly frightening and I had frequent thoughts of suicide. Now I’m way past that but I still haven’t quite found “my place in the universe.”

Even for a person who was not so entrenched, leaving one’s religion can be a stressful and significant transition.

Many people seem to walk away from their religion easily, without really looking back. What is different about the clientele you work with?

Winell: Religious groups that are highly controlling, teach fear about the world, and keep members sheltered and ill-equipped to function in society are harder to leave easily. The difficulty seems to be greater if the person was born and raised in the religion rather than joining as an adult convert. This is because they have no frame of reference – no other “self” or way of “being in the world.” A common personality type is a person who is deeply emotional and thoughtful and who tends to throw themselves wholeheartedly into their endeavors. “True believers” who then lose their faith feel more anger and depression and grief than those who simply went to church on Sunday.

Aren’t these just people who would be depressed, anxious, or obsessive anyways?

Winell: Not at all. If my observation is correct, these are people who are intense and involved and caring. They hang on to the religion longer than those who simply “walk away” because they try to make it work even when they have doubts. Sometimes this is out of fear, but often it is out of devotion. These are people for whom ethics, integrity and compassion matter a great deal. I find that when they get better and rebuild their lives, they are wonderfully creative and energetic about new things.

In your mind, how is RTS different from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder?

Winell: RTS is a specific set of symptoms and characteristics that are connected with harmful religious experience, not just any trauma. This is crucial to understanding the condition and any kind of self-help or treatment. (More details about this can be found on my Journey Free [15] website and discussed in my talk [16] at the Texas Freethought Convention.)

Another difference is the social context, which is extremely different from other traumas or forms of abuse. When someone is recovering from domestic abuse, for example, other people understand and support the need to leave and recover. They don’t question it as a matter of interpretation, and they don’t send the person back for more. But this is exactly what happens to many former believers who seek counseling. If a provider doesn’t understand the source of the symptoms, he or she may send a client for pastoral counseling, or to AA, or even to another church. One reclaimer expressed her frustration this way:

“Include physically-abusive parents who quote “Spare the rod and spoil the child” as literally as you can imagine and you have one fucked-up soul: an unloved, rejected, traumatized toddler in the body of an adult. I’m simply a broken spirit in an empty shell. But wait...That’s not enough!? There’s also the expectation by everyone in society that we victims should celebrate this with our perpetrators every Christmas and Easter!!”

Just like disorders such as autism or bulimia, giving RTS a real name has important advantages. People who are suffering find that having a label for their experience helps them feel less alone and guilty. Some have written to me to express their relief:

“There’s actually a name for it! I was brainwashed from birth and wasted 25 years of my life serving Him! I’ve since been out of my religion for several years now, but I cannot shake the haunting fear of hell and feel absolutely doomed. I’m now socially inept, unemployable, and the only way I can have sex is to pay for it.”

Labeling RTS encourages professionals to study it more carefully, develop treatments, and offer training. Hopefully, we can even work on prevention.

What do you see as the difference between religion that causes trauma and religion that doesn’t?

Winell: Religion causes trauma when it is highly controlling and prevents people from thinking for themselves and trusting their own feelings. Groups that demand obedience and conformity produce fear, not love and growth. With constant judgment of self and others, people become alienated from themselves, each other, and the world. Religion in its worst forms causes separation.

Conversely, groups that connect people and promote self-knowledge and personal growth can be said to be healthy. The book, Healthy Religion [17], describes these traits. Such groups put high value on respecting differences, and members feel empowered as individuals.  They provide social support, a place for events and rites of passage, exchange of ideas, inspiration, opportunities for service, and connection to social causes. They encourage spiritual practices that promote health like meditation or principles for living like the golden rule. More and more, non-theists are asking [18] how they can create similar spiritual communities without the supernaturalism. An atheist congregation [19] in London launched this year and has received over 200 inquiries from people wanting to replicate their model.

Some people say that terms like “recovery from religion” and “religious trauma syndrome” are just atheist attempts to pathologize religious belief.

Winell: Mental health professionals have enough to do without going out looking for new pathology. I never set out looking for a “niche topic,” and certainly not religious trauma syndrome. I originally wrote a paper for a conference of the American Psychological Association and thought that would be the end of it. Since then, I have tried to move on to other things several times, but this work has simply grown.

In my opinion, we are simply, as a culture, becoming aware of religious trauma. More and more people are leaving religion, as seen by polls [20] showing that the “religiously unaffiliated” have increased in the last five years from just over 15% to just under 20% of all U.S. adults. It’s no wonder the internet is exploding with websites for former believers from all religions, providing forums [21] for people to support each other. The huge population of people “leaving the fold” includes a subset at risk for RTS, and more people are talking about it and seeking help.  For example, there are thousands of former Mormons [22], and I was asked to speak about RTS at an Exmormon Foundation conference.  I facilitate an international support group online called Release and Reclaim [23]  which has monthly conference calls. An organization called Recovery from Religion, [24] helps people start self-help meet-up groups

Saying that someone is trying to pathologize authoritarian religion is like saying someone pathologized eating disorders by naming them. Before that, they were healthy? No, before that we weren’t noticing. People were suffering, thought they were alone, and blamed themselves.  Professionals had no awareness or training. This is the situation of RTS today. Authoritarian religion is already pathological, and leaving a high-control group can be traumatic. People are already suffering. They need to be recognized and helped. _______________________________

Statistics update:

Numbers of American ‘nones’ continues to rise

October 18, 2019

By David Crary – Associated Press

The portion of Americans with no religious affiliation is rising significantly, in tandem with a sharp drop in the percentage that identifies as Christians, according to new data from the Pew Research Center. …

Pew says all categories of the religiously unaffiliated population – often referred to as the “nones” grew in magnitude. Self-described atheists now account for 4% of U.S. adults, up from 2% in 2009; agnostics account for 5%, up from 3% a decade ago; and 17% of Americans now describe their religion as “nothing in particular,” up from 12% in 2009.

https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2019/1018/Numbers-of-American-nones-continues-to-rise

_______________________________

Marlene Winell interviewed by Valerie Tarico on recovering from religious trauma Uploaded on January 31, 2011

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIfABmbqSMA

24:12

On Moral Politics, a TV program with host Dr. Valerie Tarico, Marlene Winell describes the trauma that can result from harmful experiences with religious indoctrination. Dr. Winell explains that mental health issues are widespread and need to be understood just as we understand PTSD. There are steps to recovery, treatment modalities, and resources available as well. She now refers to this as RTS or Religious Trauma Syndrome. _______________________________

Links:
 
[3] https://www.biblestudyonjesuschrist.com/pog/ask1.htm 
[4] https://marlenewinell.net/leaving-fold-former 
[8] https://journeyfree.org/article/reclaimers/ 
[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Thief_in_the_Night_%28film%29 
[10] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans+6%3A23&version=KJV 
[11] https://valerietarico.com/2011/02/04/our-public-schools-their-mission-field/ 
[12] http://www.intrinsicdignity.com/ 
[13] https://www.maryjohnson.co/an-unquenchable-thirst/ 
[14] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Proverbs+3%3A5-6&version=KJV [15] https://journeyfree.org/category/uncategorized/ [16] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qrE4pMBlis 
[17] https://www.amazon.com/Healthy-Religion-Psychological-Guide-Mature/dp/1425924166 [18] https://www.humanistchaplaincy.org/ [19] https://www.christianpost.com/news/london-atheist-church-model-looking-to-expand-worldwide-91516 [20] https://www.pewforum.org/2012/10/09/nones-on-the-rise/ 
[21] https://new.exchristian.net/ 
[22] https://www.exmormon.org/ 
[23] https://journeyfree.org/group-forum/ [24] https://www.recoveringfromreligion.org/

_____________________________________

Get God’s Self-Appointed Messengers Out of Your Head

Valerie Tarico Which buzz phrases from your past are stuck in your brain? “God’s messengers” were all real complicated people with biases, blind spots, favorite foods and morning breath. They were not gods and they are not you. So how can you get them out of your head or at least reduce them to muffled background noise?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElfyYA420F0