#at least in Utah mormon culture

[curtailedwhale]

Asked a neighbor if she had any standing baby swaps and she had no idea what I was talking about. The general idea is that you take turns watching the other party's children while they go out so everyone gets free childcare and a chance to go out. Now I'm curious...

(It's okay if you have a different term for it, answer yes if you had/have standing free babysitting appointments)

[unbidden-yidden-deactivated20240]

Okay so in the same vein as this post, I want to reality check the people who keep asking (yes I've been this person too, don't @ me) why oh why are Jews the only group leftists are willing to categorically deny self-determination to, and the reason is that most of them are tits deep in Christian supercessionism and don't even know it and have absolutely no desire to change that.

The reason they deny self-determination to Jews is the same reason that they would deny any claim to self-determination of, say, Mormons. If the Mormon church tried to claim Utah because it's the epicenter and birthplace of Mormonism [Edit: apparently the birthplace of Mormonism is western New York and not Utah whoops, but the point stands] and therefore they may as well have an indigenous claim to it, people with brains would rightfully lose their shit.

"But it's a culture too, not just a religion!"

So? Have you met any Mormons and spent time with them? They have their own culture.

"Okay but Jews are an ancient people!"

Please look at the batshit Mormon theological view of the Twelve Tribes and their attitudes towards Native Americans.

"Okay but our history is real!" Yep! These people don't know the first thing about Judaism and Jewish history and don't care.

The reality is that most westerners are hellbent on ignoring Jewish history and ethnoreligious identity because literally all of western civilization is built on Christian supercessionism. Even the people who leave Christianity and hate it (and "all religions") with a violent passion still refuse to engage in learning about Jewish cultural and ethnic history because you cannot do it without engaging the history and texts that they blame as the roots of Christianity and therefore they discredit all of it out of hand.

Obviously they're super fucking wrong about this. You, my fellow yid, and I, both know that. But unraveling the supercessionism means understanding their culpability in Jewish suffering and how they benefit from institutionalized antisemitism.

They are extremely unlikely to do that.

Why? Because if they unlearn Judaism as "just a religion" &/or "Christianity without Jesus" and begin to understand it as an indigenous Levantine group, they then have to reckon with the reality of how much Christianity has stolen from Jews and how much of their hatred for Jews is baked into their western goyische psyche by intentional Christian misunderstandings of Judaism.

Am Yisrael cannot to them be a real people with deep tribal roots and a strong culture, because then they would have to separate Judaism from Christianity and question their assumptions about us and our history.

"But Judaism accepts converts!"

Okay, as someone who "converted," I'm going to say no, not really, actually. Conversion is a convenient shorthand, but it's not accurate. Converting to Judaism means a mutually consensual adoption into the Tribe, after thorough vetting, at least a year of study and perseverance but probably more, and the main, primary promise that you make is about choosing to share the collective fate of the Jewish people. Yes, this adoption and naturalization is through the medium of the spiritual/religious aspect of Jewish identity, but it's way more than that. To be a Jew is to know that I might get stabbed on my walk to shul for being visibly Jewish, and to accept that possibility because the idea of not living as a Jew is worse. Gerim have to be ride or die because a serious chunk of Jewish history is on the "die" side of that equation. You have to be just a little bit nuts voluntarily take on that risk (reminder that I say this as a ger who is happily Jewish) and it must come from a place of profound love for and identification with the Jewish people. And once you join the family, that's it. You don't get to ever stop being a member of the family, even if you become estranged from it.

It's a people, with a deep history and culture, and anyone who joins it takes on both. Obviously your genetic makeup and ancestry don't change, but everything else does.

Understanding that major difference in Judaism in a serious way means that they would have to let go of their world view that their religion and culture are separate, that Christianity intentionally divorced faith from culture in order to acquire as many converts as possible, and then begin to understand how Christianity has shaped their understanding of culture, tradition, what religion is, ethics, and values. And they would have to then make an effort to separate their understanding of Judaism and what they think they know about us from Christianity, however they do or don't relate to it.

[burnt-kloverfield]

Just saw Heretic, the one with Hugh Grant and Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East, about the Mormon Missionaries.

It's definitely a scary movie. It tried to be mind bending and twisty, and it was, but not in the way it was trying to be. I'm just jazzed that there's a horror movie with Mormons.

It's definitely not a Mormon Horror Movie, just only slightly closer to a Horror Movie about Mormons. I did really enjoy this movie, but it was clear that it wasn't made by Mormons. Like there's a certain flavor of behavior that mormons have that the missionaries just didn't have.

Like I'm Mormon. I was a sister missionary. I was a dang good sister missionary. These missionary characters only vaguely resembled the sister missionaries I served with. Like, they've got the cardigan down. But otherwise?

I literally leaned over to my brother in the theater and went "these are really bad missionaries." Like they didn't actually even open the Book of Mormon. They didn't read a scripture. They didn't even start with a prayer. These gals had horrible conversation skills and absolutely did not teach anything. They came in totally unprepared.

Hugh Grant is perfect and phenomenal in this, and I have met so many people saying the exact same things he has. Countless people with his talking points. (At least until we get to the legit scary parts of him. That was actually scary.)(no spoilers because holy crap)

The last part of the movie felt rushed, and like something was missing, like they cut out scenes or something, but the ending was nice and a relief. Good ending.

It was a good movie. The thing was that the details that it missed were in the cultural aspect of how Mormon missionaries(and mormons in general) actually act. Like you wouldn't know unless it was your culture or religion, you know? Like, they didn't even have a Book of Mormon in hand to give him. Sister Paxton just had her one she had all marked up and sticky noted in her bag(she didn't even have her quad with her?). And the one elder that came looking for them? Where was his companion? There are few things that a missionary gets sent home for and leaving your companion is a big one.

I do appreciate the direction they took with Sister Barnes, of her being smart and logical and sincere and tragic backstory. Very perfect set up and good foil for Sister Paxton who was born and raised mormon in Ogden Utah with 8 siblings. And honestly, I am glad that she got to be smart, too.

But it was very clear that the actress didn't know how mormon behaved or acted. She didn't pray like a mormon. Any born and raised utah mormon is going to fold her arms over her chest and bow her head and start her prayer with Dear Heavenly Father. But Chloe East instead clasped her hands. I rarely ever see Mormons clasp their hands if they're not on their knees at the side of their bed.

Like, it's not like it's a sin to pray that way, it's just that there's a way people who were born and raised a utah Mormon move and act and speak. And this wasn't it. And I could tell and it was distracting.

Like Hugh Grant spoke more like a Mormon than the sister missionaries did. He got the wording and the phrasing and cadence right for certain things. Especially the little Morony vs Moroni mispronunciation thing.

It's just interesting how clear it is to tell when someone isn't actually a part of the culture just from mannerisms.

Sorry for the long post but dang, this movie was good, and could have been so much better, but how do you convey that there's a certain way that utah mormons hold themselves.

[his-red-right-hand]

What do you think Danny’s childhood was like/took place at? I personally head cannon him as being from PA due to the hunting culture and he seems to gravitate more east coast. It would make sense if his mom was dead/disappeared, but somehow we was able to go through the education system normally.

*slaps Danny on the back* This asshole can fit so much childhood trauma in it. *is visciously stabbed to death*

Moving on, we know that Danny has at least spent some time in Utah as that's where his driving licence is registered. Being a Brit I don't know a huge amount about the individual states beyond stereotypes, but given Danny's utter hatred of "regular everyday folks", Utah makes sense. Being surrounded by that many Mormons will drive anyone to murder.

Our boy has an antisocial personality type, which by itself does not make a murderer. The other two components are Male and Child Abuse.¤ And Danny was raised by a Vietnam War vet with a Mother who was either entirely absent for some reason; or was there but had so little impact or involvement with his life that she is basically a nonentity to him.

We know his father wanted him to join the military, raised him to succeed in it. I already have my issues with military training for adults, but as a way to raise a child? The only surprise we should have in regards to Danny murdering his fagher is that it didn't happen sooner.

I imagine that his father's inability to let go of the military was some sort of attempt at a coping mechanism against PTSD, probably combined with a fair amount of self medication.

I'm certain there would have been hunting trips/"wilderness training" from a young age. How old do you think he was when he made his first kill?

Danny at school, I imagine, would be a loner. He lacked the emotional grounding to be able to make friends, and we know he has explosive temper issues. I can see this turning into a sort of bad boy appeal as he grew older and learnt to charm and manipulate people around him. And like most narcissists, he can be very charming and likeable. If he wants something from you.

Tl;dr: Danny was physically and emotionally abused by his veteran father, who thought it was more important to teach his son to be a Warrior and a "Man" over how not to murder people for drawing a dumb comic making fun of his murdersona.

¤ We don't have enough cases of Female Antisocial Personalities being caught doing crime to do an analysis on them, which either means they do it less or they're good enough to not get caught.

[scaly-freaks]

Kind of going off your post about how brown and black characters in HOTD and GOT are completely wasted or demolished or turned into a crude caricature.

Ummmm the HATE that is thrown towards Elia Martell is absolutely absurd. The way they hate the idea of this character and are honestly happy with how her character was destroyed is so telling and disgusting.

The hatred and discontent is so real and frightening and we saw a glimpse of that with those leaked texts from some random discord. I guess what I’m just trying to say is racism is far from dead and it’s seen in this fandom.

And yes the entirety of Arianne Martell’s character being a seductress is insane.

Also wanted to mention that the only other time I’ve seen brown characters in the show are as brothel workers. Of course nothing wrong with that sort of work. But it’s the sexualization that’s creepy.

Yeah. Yep. It's just depressing. Sometimes I find myself accepting it because it's so normal at this point, but then I'm like...no???? I hesitated making Amara Dornish and visibly non-white because my own self doubt made me want to . I thought eh I'll just make her from the Riverlands or something, it's less complicated. But then I make her, and people love her and it's not an issue (it's just stuff I've internalised over the years thanks to how society is set up). Which obviously goes to show the people who create our media are deliberately fucking up representation so that we just stop asking. They can create compelling characters that are centred they just don't want to a lot of the time.

That being said, British TV that specifically isn't popular outside of the UK, represents non-white characters quite well and doesn't turn them into caricatures of their culture/ethnicity (at least most of the time). In this case I am talking about American productions and non-British audiences.

On the note of Elia Martell...a lot of the times she is fancasted as Indian. Stereotypes about Dorne are also stereotypes used against Indians ('she smells Dornish' - no two guesses on what Aerys meant). I've seen Indians be used as punching bags for racism by every other race as if it's a free-for-all, to the point where very horrible and very real issues like misogyny in India are treated frivolously and with 'oh well they're all just like that.'

The mistreatment and racism against Elia has real life parallels because of the otherness of Dorne, and since Dorne brings to mind South and Western Asia so much (the way they hid in caves when the dragons came is very reminiscent of Afghan guerilla tactics and their tough terrain that invaders can't adjust to) that's usually the area of the world I associate it with.

It's all very other other other and now pair that up with snow-white daddy Rhaegar and his lily-white, dark-haired Stark girl (because mind you, I understand white blondes have had issues with how they're represented as slutty caricatures onscreen and brunettes as more clever and by extension more desirable in the long-term).

Elia didn't stand a chance against two white people pairing up, and that is honestly the only time when I'm like "you know what, stop fan casting her as desi." The woman is raped in front of her children and watches those same kids die in front of her, and even that isn't enough to stop the cruel jokes.

And yes, absolutely, there's nothing wrong with being a brothel worker. I adore stories about people in the grassroots, brothel workers especially, just trying to survive and get by in the world. But watch the brown workers be immediately depicted as more "comfortable" with this lifestyle, and just naturally promiscuous as compared to their white counterparts.

Meanwhile irl, if the brown person in question is a Muslim for example, their values in terms of modesty are mocked and derided and deemed an extremist 'other'. And then I guess you can be a Mormon in Utah and be just fine.

I honestly don't know if any of this made sense, or if I articulated without room for misunderstanding. Trust me, I do think about this a lot. I'm Kashmiri, and I've lived in England all my life, and my dating pool has mostly been white because that is what's more available. I've dealt with fetishisation/sexualisation (never for the ethnicity I am which most people couldn't even guess...uhhh hilarious) and it's forefront on my mind despite my active decision to leave it out of my fics as much as I can.

It can be very cathartic to talk about, but sometimes I'm like, you know what Amara, I'll take this extra little bit of suffering away from you bc girl you're already dealing with a lot (Aegon)

[dumb-of-ass-pure-of-heart]

[VERY SERIOUS DISCLAIMER FOR THE FOLLOWING TEXT: I wrote this about three hours ago. It is currently 11:45am CST on 10/7/2023, and about an hour ago news sources started reporting Palestinian liberatory action. This situation concerned me before, and due to the connections the genealogical industrial complex has with the Israeli occupation and the Mormon church, I believe eyes should be on this. I do not believe this is a Palestinian effort, if I know anything about anything of US white supremacist extremist hate crimes, this reeks of it. Anyone saying that it is a Palestinian effort must be approached with extreme caution, especially if they are a Zionist. This is exactly the kind of thing that could be scapegoated. Do not let it. This is also about Chinese Americans and indigenous Americans, who have had a blood quantum measurement also put onto us.] I'm Ashkenazi Jewish + indigenous North American and I have been warning people for almost a decade that this was going to happen. I have had an extremely difficult time with reconnection to my bio family, and I am not the only one. 23andMe and other DNA database sites have capitalized on adoptees and lost indigenous people since their inception. It was a part of their initial business model. I keep my identity close to my chest, largely from white people but I'm also careful about who I share it with IRL - I'm passing as an active adjective. One of the reasons I don't get into it is because of these companies alone. When I have spoken about who I am with people who it was a mistake to talk about it with, their answer to all my woes is to "just take a DNA test if you really want it so bad." When I explain further what these companies do and how this data is collected, with several of them having headquarters and offices in Israeli-occupied Palestine and Utah where the Mormon church is extremely involved (solidifying a very legitimate business connection & alliance between two religious self-claiming "authorities"), I am dismissed. It does not matter to people. There is a staunch belief that if you "really are that thing, you have to prove it with DNA," AS IF THERE IS NO OTHER WAY TO DO THIS.

This data is dangerous. I'm an anthropologist, currently working on digital anthro among other things. It has never been safe for the thing that white supremacists use to determine our humanhood to be collected by a company whose mission is to profit on eugenics and genocide. This was always going to happen. In this instance, it was specifically Jews and Chinese people which this article title does not do justice.

If you have taken one of these tests in your life, there is now not really much you can do except protect yourself in the ways you can. Their ToS and copyright agreement are extremely unethical and always have been. You can request for them to destroy your data, but that doesn't actually guarantee that it's going to happen or that they haven't already sold it/shared it or your other information for research or commercial marketing purposes. Otherwise, I highly recommend a) doing the most you can to protect yourself online, b) locking down your finances and credit if you feel comfortable and confident doing so, c) and familiarizing yourself with the Nuremberg blood quantum chart below to see if you are affected by this given your results because yes, this is their end-game. If you fall on this chart at all, you are at risk. This is about the blood that runs through your veins, not about your social and cultural life as you know it right now.

Given my disclaimer above, please watch out for further news on this. This is not nothing. This is extremist terrorist planning that has the potential to be very far-reaching.

[douxettriste]

One of my graduate school options (the University of Utah) had to close their LGBTQ+ student resource center. This closure coincides with the Utah state government enacting a law that prevents public schools from promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion.

I was actually born in Salt Lake City, Utah (where this school is located). And yes, if you’re wondering, I was raised Mormon. Growing up gay in a Mormon family (especially in the early 2000s) was not a fun time, as you might imagine.

I haven’t lived in Utah in a long time. My mom relocated when I was still a kid (after she remarried). My siblings and I would spend the school year with her, and the summers with my dad (in Utah). Once I became a teenager, and my own life got going, my trips to Utah became less frequent.

As I got older and denounced religion, I never had the impression that I would ever want to move back to Utah (which is, basically, the Mormon capital of the world). It’s a beautiful state, but the energy can feel oppressive due to the prominent LDS culture. However, as I’ve been exploring graduate school programs, the University of Utah seems like a good possible option.

Salt Lake City is progressive (especially in comparison to the rest of the state). The last time I was in Salt Lake (2021), I enjoyed myself. I have family in Utah as well, in case an emergency were to arise. I am also familiar with Salt Lake, whereas other schools I am interested in, they are in towns and states unknown to me.

I have even wondered if it might be healing in a way, to move back - at least for a couple of years while I’m in school. Or who knows, it might be miserable lol. But policies like this have put a sour taste in my mouth, and are making me question my decision on whether to apply or not. Granted, I currently live in another red-state hellscape anyway, so I’m used to the bullshit. It’s just a very strange time, generally speaking and also politically.

I don’t really have a grand message with this post. I just wanted to vent about it a little. I do plan to go out in the fall to tour the campus and have a trial lesson. So, I guess I’ll see how I feel after that.

[mormon-character-tournament]

Group Two Round Three

Character info from submissions under the cut

Elder Calhoun (Canon) Elder Calhoun is a lovable and charming new missionary, fresh from the MTC. Geeky and lacks charisma, but won't let that stop him from doing his job. He is the only member of the church in his family. Started his mission mere months after getting baptized. Has considerably more faith than his companions

Mallory Book (Canon in comics) Mallory Book is a very successful, cut-throat lawyer, and a co-worker (and often rival) of She-Hulk. She is from Utah, has been crowned Ms. Utah, and graduated magna cum laude from Brigham Young University and served as a senior editor of the BYU Law Review. Although the comics my never touch on her personal beliefs, it is safe to assume she is at least culturally Mormon.

[bookish-bi-mormon]

1st week at my new job, as a Utah Mormon born and bred, I've never worked somewhere without at least 5 other mormons, and my last few jobs were AT BYU. I was expecting a culture shift, moving states and environments. Here are my thoughts.

- everyone here already knew I went to BYU. I knew my boss would know, cause it's all over my resume. But my coworkers were all like "so, you went to BYU right?" Like they've all been talking about me before I got there. It's the hot Goss, having a Mormon here I guess. 😅

- a lot of people don't seem to care, and if religion does come up they shy away from it. One guy said his mom went to BYU, but we quickly established our experiences with mormonism were very different, we respect each other but we didn't talk about it anymore.

- one guy described himself as a "recovering evangelical" and he really knew his stuff about the LDS church. I got the feeling he'd been waiting to talk to me about it. To crack jokes and prove how much he knew. It was funny 😅 but also kinda weird. In some ways I felt like I was being interrogated.

- that same guy, when I mentioned I can't go to the temple anymore, for queer reasons, said, in a very jokey voice "that means so celestial kingdom for you either!" Which was ... certainly a thing to say xD idk. I didn't know how to respond.

- people here seem to respect my pronouns less than they did at BYU. Maybe I just haven't been clear yet. I've had to clarify multiple times that I'm glad I went to BYU and I had a good time there. It has a lot of flaws and I'm glad I'm done, but It's mostly fond memories.

[taperwolf]

I'm seeing arguments about the term "culturally Christian" a lot, and I have conflicting feelings, so I'm going to do the inadvisable thing and work them out here.

As I understand the debate, the difficulty seems to be that certain atheists — who were either raised Christian or, at the least, in a Christian culture without being of a minority religion — object to still being referred to as culturally Christian. Many of them were deeply hurt by Christianity, and all are frustrated at being identified with a religion that they do not participate in, that they vehemently reject.

People on the other side of the argument are mostly pointing out that acculturation — and the network of unexamined beliefs and privileges arising from it — doesn't go away because you reject the religious part of that culture, or by becoming a minority part of that culture. An analogy raised is that you don't get to opt out of whiteness by declaring you're against white supremacy.

To make my starting position clear, I am an atheist. I was raised as a Mormon. Mormon culture is mostly overlapping with the religious end of US Protestant culture, and participates in Christian culture more broadly, though probably 75% of people calling themselves Christian would deny that Mormons are Christians at all. (This is either over the Mormon view of the Trinity clashing with the Nicene Creed, or a conviction that no matter what they say, Mormons really just worship Joseph Smith, depending on the theological sophistication of the denier.)

I spent most of my time while growing up in Mormon-dominated areas — the Mormon Corridor of Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming — but I did spend several years as a member in places where it's a minority denomination, if not a minority religion. But culturally, I was not substantially an outsider. Holiday observances were largely the same, I wasn't under any pressure to conform my behaviour or appearance to local mores, and if other kids didn't have 6:30am religious instruction classes or dramatized Book of Mormon tapes in the car stereo, they had analogous things like vacation Bible study and whatever the thing was before they had Veggitales.

And I mean, I went through some serious shit from Mormonism and the Mormon church, and I went through some shit from Christianity writ large; I reject Mormonism and consider it a cult, and I don't have a lot better opinion of Christianity in any of its flavors. I've studied, both formally and informally, various religions, to varying degrees of depth, and I don't have a high opinion of the class of human institutions that fall under that umbrella.

But I can still be fairly described as culturally Christian. This is despite my rejection of the religion, and despite the Christians who would have denied me the label Christian to start with.

But I do get the antipathy to having that label applied to you. To someone who the Christian faith and its practitioners have treated horribly, it feels like an accusation that you, by exact virtue of having been abused, are still participating in that abuse to others. And sometimes that's exactly the point that people using the term are making. That being oppressed on one axis doesn't mean you're not participating in oppression on another.

But it can still feel like you recently had a spinal injury, that you're now in a wheelchair, and you're being turned away from a support group because you're culturally abled.

[luckylolabug]

What made you decide to have Seb's family be Mormon???? Just curious lol

Oooh, boy, time for me to stand on my Newsies box and shout from the rooftops. My time has come.

Longer explanation under the cut, but TL;DR it's a lot of context clues based on the very minimal we see in the show, compared to my own personal experience growing up in Utah where a HUGE chunk of my school and also my best friends were from LDS families. Take it with a grain of salt of course, everyone's allowed to headcanon their own thing!

Long answer:

Partially, because he comes from a homesteading farming family, and my personal ideal is that puts him out near Farmington which as far as religions go, is 78% LDS by population. That's a HUGE chunk, and there's too many kids in drama club for at least ONE of them to not come from a predominantly mormon upbringing, honestly likely more than one. But if I'm picking someone out of their group that is most likely to lean into it, it's Seb. Sorry not sorry.

Mormons have traditionally large families, I say this with love. We don't know his family PERSONALLY but we know they bought out three entire rows of bleachers to come see his performance. I had moments before then in Season 1 (which I'll touch on in a second) where I started slowly leaning towards my personal thought process that he might come from an LDS upbringing, but it was the moment he pointed his giant family out that really sealed the deal for me. Also, sorry, but it's a giant family of blondes with blue eyes in Utah? The theory writes itself.

A lot of the happy-go-lucky and almost naive at times energy he has is SO surrounded in that culture to me that it's really hard for me unsee it. I went to school with at least six guys that looked and spoke exactly like Seb did as far as his wording goes, and every single one of those was either a deacon or had some leadership role in their church in high school.

This one's a bit more personal, because I went through my own similar experience (though my family is Jewish and not LDS) as well as physically watching one of my best friends in high school go through the exact same plotline. But the smidge we get in season 4 about not being out to his dad yet and being nervous about it really hit my religious trauma like a TRUCK, and my friend who went through it when we were in HS (her dad was a bishop, so it was REALLY hard for her to admit her sexuality for a long time) has said the same thing. Coming out experiences in general can be extremely scary before they're freeing, and when you're growing up as a queer person in Utah, you're not only worried about your family, but also the fact that a seriously good chunk of the state population is religious and conservative. I never personally came to terms with my own sexuality until I moved out of the state after I graduated, but my entire upbringing there was pretttttty pressurized and I felt like I had to follow a lot of social standards that didn't apply to me at all. Hiding a big part of yourself from the people you love sucks!

Another projection, but it tracks, is finding who you really are as a theater kid. (Think the brief "Im home" scene when he's in Sharpay's costume for the first time) I had *multiple* LDS friends (plus me as the group's Jewish gal) who fell into theater and discovered how to be themselves because of it, and it was almost like a second person entirely. A place and group of people that you could finally be who you were supposed to be around. That's sort of the vibe I'm going with as far as Seb's character development in my re-write series, because it's incredibly important to me.

Anyways. Thank you for asking because clearly I have SO many thoughts on this subject.

[follower-of-odin]

24, nearly 25. Cis white guy. Bi, but you wouldn't know it from looking at me. Mostly into women. Taken; sorry, but not sorry, as my partner is lovely, and I cherish them. New Uncle. I'm still living with family... there's a long story behind that .

I have been Heathen for... almost 10 years. That amazes even me. Some of those years, I was still officially a member of the Mormon church, only because, as the son of a living mormon returned missionary, and a dead pioneer mormon mom, I was sure I wouldn't be allowed to officially leave. My ex-mormon background is a little more complex than that, but I figured it's worth mentioning.

I'm very depressed, and, though a believing Heathen, I have not been a practicing one for a while. This is in large part due to still being dependent, and, therefore, unable to provide the offerings to them that I wish I could. Depression is also a contributing factor, as well as the settler colonial situation I live in... as a settler... on land where these gods were not previously worshiped. The gods, at least whichever gods from whichever pantheon were responsible for this corner of the world, made what is available here, and therefore, whatever grows here is already theirs. Just as I can't give my neighbor the house he already owns, I feel I can't give an offering of, say, strawberries, to the beings who created and own the strawberries. And if it doesn't belong to the gods, it rightfully belongs to the native inhabitants. Yes, I was born here, and it's all that I know, to whatever extent I know it, but that isn't what I mean, and anybody reading this already knew that. An offering is a sacrifice, and it isn't a sacrifice if it isn't something which you personally owned, had the right to, and gave up. Besides, how much dominion do they have here? The land spirits are totally different, and my ancestors most likely owned slaves, Indigenous and maybe even Black, so I'm not worshiping my ancestors, at least not the biological ones. Maybe my mother, rest her soul, but that's it. Can't believe I used to think the Mormons didn't own slaves. "They were racist, yeah, but they fucked off from the US, so I guess they must have been so racist, they didn't even want to own slaves, because then they'd have to be around non-white people." Nope. Not the case. They brought slaves into Utah, and bought Paiute slaves in there, many of whom were children. Horrifying shit.

Perhaps I'm hard on myself; I've often heard that. On the other hand...well, really, I don't know if there's a way out of that. It's largely, though not exclusively, other white people, and/or white settlers, who have told me I'm too hard on myself when it comes to the intersection of colonialism and modern Heathenry. Some people of color have also told me this, but, though people of color, they aren't Indigenous to this land. On the other hand, I don't expect, don't have the right, to seek absolution from an Indigenous person. They're working hard just to survive after centuries of Hell, the last thing any of them need or want is to coddle some white guy who thinks he's so different from the others just because, though culturally Christian, he seeks to de-Christianize himself, by adopting yet another European* tradition. Yeah, real special there, dude, you're so different and non-hegemonic, hanging around in a basement like a recluse, waiting for your family to stabilize so you can finally live your life and maybe make a small difference someday, or so you keep telling yourself. Although I suppose the guilt is, paradoxically, to help me feel better. I'm not helping anyone, but I feel guilty and angry at myself over that, and I figure that at least someone who is guilty by inaction is going through mental and emotional pain, so some small measure of justice is satisfied. Nobody is helped, but a bad person hurts. If that is justice, that's some poor justice.

I was going to make this a short pinned introduction post, to explain why I sound this way, but this isn't short, is more than an introduction, and I won't pin it. Against my better judgment, I'll still post this.

*Yes, I'm fully aware that Judaea, the homeland of Yeshua, is in Western Asia. Let's be real, though - it isn't Assyrian Christianity, or Coptic Christianity, or Armenian Christianity, or other forms of Christianity that have reigned in Europe for almost 2 millennia, which gave birth to religions such as Roman Christianity, Lutheranism, or Mormonism. Those last 3 derive from the European Christian traditions, which are dominant in the US. This is why I described Christianity as European; the totality of Christianity isn't European, Christianity isn't inherently European, but the dominant forms of Christianity in my country are European.

[weedstoner]

the biggest culture shock I ever got in america, as an american, was driving through southern utah and all the mormon communities. all the houses are huge and have two main entrances and two garages at least because multiple wives/families live in the same home. literally nothing happens on sundays except church, not even fast food places are open. it's crazy

[bitstitchbitch]

if you’ve been to SLC and you thought it was very Mormon, you haven’t seen anything yet. It’s got to be the least Mormon county in the state. Go to Provo if you want to be immersed in Mormonism, lol.

Not that SLC doesn’t have Mormons - the church’s headquarters are there after all. It just also is a major city with the state’s biggest non-religious university. But SLC has a strong counter culture to the surrounding Mormonism. It’s a very lgbtq friendly place (in terms of attitudes, not laws) and it’s very left leaning. Bernie Sanders is very popular here, more so than mainstream democrats.

If you don’t believe me, look at Utah’s house representative maps. There’s a reason SLC is split into three pieces. They gerrymander the shit out of us so that despite being a very blue and relatively large population center, SLC has no political power.

all of which is to say, I’ve lived in Utah for most my life. SLC is the one place I don’t feel like a complete outsider

[mormon-character-tournament]

Group Two Round Two

info from character submissions under the cut

Danny Jense (Canon) Danny Jensen, brother of Will Jensen, the second lead vocalist of Everclean. His twin passions are religion and Prozac. Hits high notes like a champ. While Danny was raised in the church like his brother, Danny seeks to expand his horizons when it comes to spirituality. We see him wearing rosary beads and sprinkling sage to cleanse his friends. He has a fondness for Buddhism, and genuinely believes that "Mormons can be Buddhists too".

Mallory Book (Canon in comics) Mallory Book is a very successful, cut-throat lawyer, and a co-worker (and often rival) of She-Hulk. She is from Utah, has been crowned Ms. Utah, and graduated magna cum laude from Brigham Young University and served as a senior editor of the BYU Law Review. Although the comics my never touch on her personal beliefs, it is safe to assume she is at least culturally Mormon.

[allaboutmarketing4you]

Why All Brands Should Study Stanley Cup CEO Terence Reilly's Marketing Masterclass

" Every so often, product marketing creates such a frenzy it becomes its own cultural moment - think Adidas Stan Smiths, Old Spice and Pokémon Go. The Stanley Cup phenomenon definitely fits the bill and is a masterclass in the power of well timed marketing and brand hype. This case study centers on one man, Terence Reilly, who was also responsible for turning Crocs into must have footwear. In this video, Forbes spoke with a number of product marketing experts to dissect what made the Stanley Cup a must have. "

Source: Forbes

Additional information:

" In the spring of 2020, Terence Reilly left his position as the chief marketing officer of Crocs, the footwear brand, and became the president of the beverage-container manufacturer Stanley. For Stanley, which had been selling workaday flasks for more than a century, it was an unexpectedly fashionable hire. At Crocs, Reilly had kicked off a kind of miracle. For years, the company’s stock price had hovered around thirteen dollars a share, and its signature shoe—clunky, holey, styrofoam-like—seemed to be beloved by Mario Batali and few others. Then Reilly took over as Crocs C.M.O, in 2015, bringing its marketing operations in-house, launching collaborations with celebrities like Post Malone, and embracing social-media notoriety. In 2018, Crocs stock began careening upward, eventually hitting a peak, in 2021, of a hundred and eighty dollars a share. Its negative reputation had become a kind of asset: the bad kind of recognizability turned into the good.

Reilly has in his short tenure at Stanley followed a similar playbook, and the result is a seemingly overnight ubiquity for the company’s tumblers, the large, steel-lined, two-segmented vessels that fit perfectly in car cup holders. In July of 2023, the brand launched its first celebrity collaboration, with the country musician Lainey Wilson, who produced a pink-and-green Watermelon Moonshine Quencher, named after one of her songs. It sold out in eleven minutes. In November, a woman named Danielle posted a TikTok showing her car after a fire, and a Stanley cup that had survived in the cup holder amid the wreckage. She picked it up and shook it: the telltale tinkle of ice cubes, which had remained frozen despite the flames. The video eventually garnered more than ninety-five million views, and Reilly recognized it as a perfect ad for the product’s durability. He posted his own video, pledging not only to send more Stanleys but to replace Danielle’s car. On New Year’s Eve, Target released new, exclusive Valentine’s Day Stanley tumblers in shades of red and pink ($45). The vessels incited stampedes down store aisles and sold out in minutes. On the online secondary market, they’ve fetched prices in the thousands. Recently, a woman in California allegedly stole sixty-five Stanley cups from a store and stuffed them into her car. The police issued a warning: “While Stanley Quenchers are all the rage, we strongly advise against turning to crime to fulfill your hydration habits.”

Reilly is a clean-cut corporate warrior, with a bald head and a graying goatee. He began his career in New Jersey; held leadership positions at Famous Footwear, Footaction, and Prudential Financial; and has, by his own account, attended at least sixty-five Bruce Springsteen concerts. His effort to cultivate a new customer base for Stanley dates back several years. In 2019, the brand’s now star product, the forty-ounce Quencher, was selling so poorly that the company had stopped restocking or marketing it. A partnership with the Buy Guide, an affiliate-marketing site based in Utah, where the Quenchers were popular among Mormon mothers, saved it. Coached by the Buy Guide, in 2020, Stanley launched a new Web site and an affiliate-marketing system through which fans could make money by driving sales. By May of 2022, a Times headline was observing the cup’s burgeoning popularity among women: “The Sisterhood of the Stanley Tumbler.”

Last year, in a Harvard Business Review podcast, Reilly discussed his shakeup: “We were the seventy-million-dollar sleepy little brand known for the hammertone green bottle.” As he tells it, a hit like the pink Target bottle is just the beginning of a more ambitious rollout to come. “We firmly believe that we will become one of the leading life-style brands in the world over the next few years,�� Reilly said. Right now, besides some camping cookware, Stanley’s products are confined to the beverage-and-container space. Given the brand’s rising fandom, it’s easy to imagine an expansion into clothing, wine chillers, or kitchenware. In Internet-era capitalism, a brand is rarely content to do one product well; it must scale up to penetrate as many markets as possible. (My request for an interview with Reilly was turned down, though a spokesperson told me that they’d “be in touch in a few months with news from Stanley!”)

The strategy of flipping an established brand into a digital-content machine has been carried off a few times already. In 2016, Rimowa, the stalwart German luggage manufacturer known for its striated metal carry-ons, sold a majority stake to L.V.M.H., the conglomerate of high-fashion luxury brands. Rimowa had a cachet among a small group of international travellers—a kind of if-you-know-you-know status. But under the L.V.M.H. scion Alexandre Arnault it became a widely coveted item. Rimowa added new, bright, Instagram-friendly colors; collaborated with fashion brands like Supreme and Off-White; and released new non-suitcase products like a metallic crossbody bag and a canvas tote. In a similar vein, Blundstone, the maker, since 1870, of rugged Australian desert boots, capitalized on a swell in popularity during the pandemic by adding design twists like rainbow elastic, punched leather, and tighter silhouettes. Yeti, a manufacturer of heavy-duty coolers, launched by Texas fishermen in 2006, also moved into insulated tumblers, and then stemless wine glasses with the help of private-equity investment in 2012. With limited-edition colors and an ever-expanding array of products, the brand became aspirational—“the field and stream equivalent of a Knoll daybed,” the streetwear publication Highsnobiety wrote.

In a way, the rebranding of staid but trusty products is the opposite of the strategy chased by the direct-to-consumer startups that proliferated in the twenty-tens. The D.T.C. brands that gained traction—Casper, Parachute, Great Jones—did so by dressing up unremarkable products with digital-native aesthetics to appeal to a very online demographic of millennials. Yet the products themselves were often disappointing, and many of the startups faltered. The surge of Stanley—whose products are based on an innovative steel-insulation technique by the company’s original founder, William Stanley, Jr., in 1913—suggests that it might be easier to bring a strong core product online than to start with an optimized online presence and then backfill in the product to fit.

To an investor or a new C.E.O., the sleepy heritage brand can work as an advantage. It has not yet saturated the market; there are more potential consumers to reach, more room for growth. (Compare Stanley in that respect to, say, the clothing brand Skims, which, like its co-founder, Kim Kardashian, is already marketed to the hilt.) An added benefit is the kind of ironic consumption that the Internet prizes: it’s amusing to be obsessed with a product that your grandparents might have once owned, or with an ugly sandal that’s suddenly cool. On social media, the Stanley straddles a line between banal and influencer-chic. TikTok creators pose coquettishly with the cup dangling from one hand, or decorate it with third-party charm accessories (not unlike the Crocs’s Jibbitz), or line shelves with rows of Stanleys in different hues, like so many books arranged by the color of their spines. On the Harvard Business Review podcast, Reilly said that he uses an “airport test” to determine if a product has truly entered the Zeitgeist: if people are lugging their Stanleys with them to their gates, he knows the tumblers have arrived. “By the time I left Crocs, you would see hundreds of pairs of Crocs at the airport,” Reilly said. Perhaps TikTok is the airport of the Internet: the Stanley’s prevalence in the digital public space is both a conduit for and evidence of its covetable status.

Amanda Mull, of The Atlantic, recently wrote of the Stanley craze, “Sometimes a cup is just a cup in the right place at the right time.” It’s true enough: the tumbler is yet another shiny object caught in the viewfinder of the Internet’s collective attention; we maniacally consume it for a few weeks or months, until the next trend appears and kicks off a new wave of memes and think pieces. What might appear to be an organic phenomenon, though, is actually an engineered corporate crossover. Companies prepare carefully, and expensively, to cultivate their moments of ubiquity. They leverage our attention, the same way an influencer does, to convert online viewers into fans and customers. The problem, of course, is that there’s no guarantee that a spike in visibility will yield lasting dividends. Before Stanley, there was the popular water-bottle brand Hydro Flask; today, TikTok videos show discounted stacks of them at HomeGoods. Now, as an informed friend and Stanley convert told me, Owala is the up-and-coming tumbler brand to watch. "

Source: newyorker.com by Kyle Chayka is a staff writer for The New Yorker and the author of, most recently, “Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture.”

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