#best christian podcasts for women

[fredwkong]

Virgo Season: Rod

Rod finally closed the door to his hotel room behind him, and took a moment to lean against it, letting out a long sigh.

The first few days at the Astra had already been grueling. Even with the mysterious disappearance of Pastor Blanco’s son the night before the conference had begun, the man had refused to slow the pace of the event. Outside the conference hall, between lectures, discussions, and short sermons, Rod had seen the pastor talking rapidly on the phone, presumably with law enforcement or his family, still trying to find his son.

Rod wasn’t too bothered about whatever drama had played out with Shane Blanco. Bad things happened to people who sinned, and Rod was no sinner, so he was definitely safe. Ever since being invited to Pastor Blanco’s conference, Rod had been thanking God for the opportunity to attend such a prestigious event. It was some of the best affirmation he’d received so far that his weekly podcast about political developments on the right was moving in the Right Direction, just like its title.

However, Rod hadn’t been fully prepared for the punishing pace at which things happened at Adam Blanco’s events. He’d been shocked to see a schedule stretching across two different months, and was grateful in retrospect that he’d only been able to get a week off of his regular job—business administration—to attend the first few days. Clearly, Pastor Blanco had filled every second of the month he was at the Astra.

Still, being around so many powerful people Rod admired was… exciting. Rod had done a whole episode about one of the regional politicians he’d sat next to at breakfast today, and yesterday he’d attended a talk by an influential TV host he’d watched for years. All of these men were powerful, mature, and worthy of Rod’s admiration.

The thought of one day joining the upper echelons of these influential men got Rod hard.

Of course, as a good Christian, Rod was used to pushing down sinful desire. For a red-blooded straight man like him, it had become second nature by thirty to bite back the things he wanted to say to the women around him. He kept those things to his revolving carousel of short-term girlfriends. But something about the Astra Hotel seemed to be bringing it all to the forefront of his mind. It was like there was some energy drifting through the halls, an electricity connecting man to man in some way that brought Rod’s dick to life.

Not that there was anything gay about it! It was just the power, the influence that some of these men had. They could do anything they wanted without consequence. What could be hotter?

To distract himself from the boner slowly growing in his suit pants, Rod started organising his hotel room. He was over halfway through his stay at the Astra, and his stuff had spread from his suitcase throughout the room. He picked up socks off the carpeted floor, found a pair of boxers behind the bedside table, and tidied up his toiletries in the bathroom. Still, he stayed insistently horny.

Finally, Rod ended up on all fours, looking through the pile of dirty business clothes he’d been putting on the floor of the closet. Yeah, some of his girlfriends called him a slob, but what was the point of neatly folding up shit he was gonna get drycleaned anyway? Well, fitting it back in a suitcase, for one. Grumpily, Rod started to sort and fold the dirty clothes.

He picked up a button up shirt and was suddenly assaulted by an overwhelming stench. The smell of stale sweat and body odour filled the air as Rod uncovered… something at the bottom of the closet. It wasn’t his, and he was sure it hadn’t been there when he’d thrown this shirt down on the closet floor.

His first instinct was to recoil and call the front desk. Someone must have snuck into his room and left this… thing here. But just as he was about to stand up and hurry away, he took a second breath. It wasn’t like this was that urgent, he thought. He was perfectly capable of tossing this in the garbage and getting it taken out by housekeeping later. He leaned back into the closet.

The scent became thicker, enough to make Rod’s eyes water. The thing on the floor of his closet was throwing off a scent like a high school locker room, rich, tangy, and masculine. It was enough to make Rod’s eyes water, and brought to mind things he thought he had left behind. Careful to breathe through his mouth, he grabbed it with two fingertips and lifted.

What emerged from the closet was an incomprehensible pile of straps, rings, and buckles, all crisp with male sweat. Looking at it, Rod had the sudden mental image of a man bound up in straps, like some of those queers at their filthy parades. Bare muscles, accented with tight black and red polyester and nothing else.

Why did that thought get him even harder?

It was the masculinity, Rod decided. He’d been thinking about being a powerful, mature, influential man like the others at the conference. That was virtuous power. This was a temptation of its sinful equivalent, a masculinity only of the body, while the mind became feminised by gayness. Rather than do good, masculine things like… like sit in boardrooms and wear suits, the man who’d sweat in this had been doing sinful activities like showing off his body and having athletic, sweaty sex with other masculine, musky men…

Rod’s cock was straining against his fly.

The straps were so close to his face. He had moved them without fully noticing. They were everywhere around him, filling his awareness with the scent of a real man.

With a moan, Rod undid his belt and popped the button on his pants. He would punish himself for this tomorrow, just like he had when he had touched himself as a teenager. Repressed memories of smelling his own armpits after gym class, of imagining the smell of the people around him, rushed to the forefront of Rod’s mind as his cock fell out of his boxers.

Since his sexual awakening, Rod had been fascinated by scents, though he had never admitted it to himself. Now, it was all flooding out as he groaned, collapsing backwards onto the hotel bed with the slutty strappy outfit on his face. He needed to consume more of its unwashed man-smell.

As soon as the fabric touched the skin of his face, it came to life. First, a strap slung itself around the back of Rod’s head, binding the mass to his nose and mouth. Caught up in his imagination of being held down in the unwashed armpit of a real, powerful man, Rod didn’t notice as more straps began to stretch down his neck and across his body.

Wherever the straps touched the fabric of Rod’s shirt, the shirt evaporated with a sizzle, letting off the scent of acrid sweat and leaving Rod’s skin tight, hairless, and slick with sweat as the straps wrapped around his shoulders and down his arms. Slowly at first, and then with greater speed as Rod stroked himself faster, panting, the rest of his shirt also dissolved, revealing his soft torso. In spite of constantly yelling at his podcast's fans to get in the gym and become battle-ready men, Rod hadn’t so much as walked to the grocery store in months.

With each strap that wrapped around his torso, they pulled tighter, drawing a groan from Rod’s throat. As they continued to tighten, fat and muscle redistributed under the pressure, and Rod’s pecs, shoulders, and arms pumped larger and thicker as his waist slimmed down. With less of a mass of straps to hold to his face as they spread across his body, Rod brought his free hand down to feel up his new muscles, tweaking sensitive, pale nipples. Meanwhile, whatever was over his face started to thicken and solidify, covering Rod’s mouth and nose like a mask, making him huff it harder, getting a thicker, richer scent from the sturdier, more porous material.

When the first strap shot around Rod’s ass and between his legs to cup his balls, his only reaction was to obligingly spread his legs. As his ass rounded out beneath him, the straps around his waist joined and thickened, becoming a waistband that pinched his remaining body fat just right, making his ass look juicy and squeezable. O-rings carried the straps down his thighs, dissolving his suit pants with a hiss, and giving Rod thicker thighs than any straight man had a right to.

As his cock got even harder and began to leak onto his slutty new outfit, Rod all but welcomed the magic into his mind. He didn’t have much of a choice, as the air he breathed in passed through the magic-infused mask that stank just like Rod wanted. Sweat stood out on his forehead as Rod’s former interests and sexuality dissolved. Audio editing, reading reactionary news sites, trolling on Twitter, picking up church girls, all boiled off by the acrid stench of sweat and musk.

His old self filled his body with heat, expelled through overproductive sweat glands in Rod’s armpits and crotch that spread his growing musk into the air. His sense of “himself,” as an individuated person, began to dissolve. He knew that other people saw a “him,” a “person” with the name “Rod,” but “Rod” felt less and less like “him.” In place of an individual, there was a cock, a hole, an unwashed, sexy body, ready to show off and follow orders. For legal reasons, this cock, hole, body had a name, pronouns, and paperwork, but those were external to its central purpose: pleasure.

All it wanted to do now was indulge in its core desires for sweat and musk, cum as many times as possible, and have a stronger, better man do all the thinking.

At the thought, its cock, now a separate entity not bound to itself, came, shooting so hard that cum got in its eye. With each shot, more of the belongings that had been “Rod’s” transformed. In the place of fancy loafers were a pair of musky sneakers. In the place of suits and shirts, different variations on its straps and mask, or spike-studded leather pants and jackets. No more laptop, just a video camera for shooting scenes where it strapped gross, musky sneakers around its face for online fans.

It immediately passed out.

When it woke up, the sky was dark outside the window. The crotch of its outfit had closed, shielding its straining cock for now. It rolled out of bed and padded to the bathroom, switching on the light.

Pale, beautiful, shining muscles stretched under the polyester straps that lifted and accented every single curve of its body. With its buzzcut combined with the mask covering its face below the eyes, it was impossible to single out defining features of its face, just as things should be. It had no individual identity except as a cock, hole, and a sexy, musky body. Someday, a manlier, hairier, muskier man would probably enslave it and give it a designation, but until then it went by its former designation for convenience.

“Hi, I’m Rod,” it said, muffled through the mask, the name strange on its tongue.

Tonight, it would need to leave the Astra Hotel to find a partner willing to let it smell his superior musk, but it somehow had a feeling that it should come back to the Astra soon. There was a taste of potential in the air, deeper than the musk. After all, it had been transformed into something so much better, so much freer, and all it could wish was for the other attendees at the conference to find the same freedom.

Click here to see all of Virgo Season.

If you feel inspired, write a story set at the Astra Hotel and post it @ me to join in. Help me celebrate my birthday by turning more conference attendees into geared up gay kinksters.

[catholic-academia-aesthetic]

Is it mandatory to take communion to be Catholic? i never took it and i really want to start practicing catholicism

I understand that you're not Catholic and you want to be. That's wonderful! Welcome!

You don't start with Communion though.

Communion is the source and summit of the Christian life, and that's why you need to prepare before you receive it.

You prepare through RCIA, which stands for Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults. It's a process through which non-baptized men and women enter the Catholic Church. If you live in a bigger city there are definitely RCIA programs you can join. If you live in a smaller town you can be the only new person wanting to join the Church, in which case your RCIA can be just you and the local priest talking. That's how it was for my small-town friend.

In any case, the best thing to do now is to go to the closest Catholic church, tell any random priest you want to become Catholic and ask what's the next step. If for some reason he's not helpful, you go to the next priest or church and repeat.

You say you want to start practicing Catholicism. The RCIA people will definitely explain everything and show you the ways to do it as you prepare.

In the meantime you can

1. Go to Mass (just refrain from Communion as you're not prepared for it yet)

2. Go to Eucharistc adoration

3. Pray (Hallow app can help you, its basic version is free)

4. Read the Bible. I'd start with one of the Gospels. You can find it online, just make sure it's Catholic version. You can also go with the 'Bible in a Year' podcast.

4. Learn about the Faith. Word on Fire on youtube is a great place to start. You can also start reading the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

5. [bonus] Take online Catholics (including me) with a grain of salt. You can always message me if you want to talk, but know that catholicblr posts can come with 10 layers of inside jokes and controversial opinions. It's funny for us but can be confusing for a newcomer like you. So by all means stay and have fun with us but only take your information from legitimate sources. The Catechism is a 100% legitimate source. The World on Fire on youtube is run by a real Catholic bishop so that's 100% legitimate too.

I'm very happy you're here! I thank God for bringing you to this point and I pray that you grow closer to Him every day and that you find good people irl who'll welcome you into the Church. God bless you!

[the-paganwitch]

Tips for beginner witches who are in the broom closet.

I have been seeing an increase in posts of beginner witches looking for ways to discreetly practice witchcraft. I have been very active with my witchcraft online, but I have more of a secret, hidden practice in real life. This is primarily due to living in a Christian household. I am here to give some tips for those who want to practice, but may not live in a supportive household.

First off, it is completely valid if your practice doesn't look like those you see online. Especially if you have to practice in private, just take it slow and easy, and you'll be okay. You've got this.

Second, I am a female. Because of this, many of my discreet twitchy tips are a bit more catered to women and female presenting people. Nothing against men and male practitioners, I have been able to adapt my practice in this way because of being a woman. There will be tips that will suit everyone, but some are more geared towards women and female presenting.

The first tip I can offer is to utilize nail polish! Nail polish is a perfect way to use colour magic discreetly. You can even make designs that match your intentions. For example, if you want to bring change, pick a colour that corresponds with that and add a butterfly nail sticker to it. It's beautiful and has a magical intention behind it.

If you are wanting to veil to help protect your energy, use a scrunchie that has been given that intention. Veils don't always have to cover your entire head. Be creative.

If you like to paint, incorporate hidden sigils into your art. If you're drawing a character and you want them to have a tattoo, make it a sigil. If you're painting trees, make it look like it's a carving in the tree.

Look into kitchen witchcraft. Kitchen witchcraft can be done very discreetly, as even the most simple ingredients can be used for spells. For example, tomato soup with cloves, basil, oregano, paprika, and black pepper makes a wonderful protection spell which you can eat (this is one of my personal favourite protection spells). You can add in veggies that also match your intentions to make it even better! Make a lemonade to help bring joy and to cleanse your energy. Add a bit of orange to it and you've not only got a joy bringing spell, but a creativity spell as well.

Use walking as a form of meditation. Nothing beats getting out and breathing in the fresh air to help ground yourself. It's even better when music is involved, so don't forget to bring your headphones! You can even listen to audiobooks or podcasts during this time as well. If you are someone that can't always go on walks, just being outside and getting fresh air is more than enough to help meditate or ground yourself.

Enchant your jewelry. This is huge for hidden and discreet witchery! You don't need a fancy ritual or any fancy jewelry to do this. It can be whatever you have that you want to enchant. Hold that piece of jewelry in your hands and envision a bright, white engulfing that item. While feeling this energy, set your intentions into the jewelry. It can be anything you wish! Once you feel your intention is in the jewelry, envision the white light fading and the energy calming. Once this happens, gently blow on the jewelry to remove any excess energy that may be lingering. Now you have enchanted your jewelry without needing any other spell ingredients or rituals!

These are the best tips I can think of at the moment. If anyone else has other tips, feel free to add onto this post! I hope this helps!

[breelandwalker]

hi Bree! I am currently doing research on modern paganism as a whole, and have come across a few passages about how some practitioners claim to follow an 'old' or 'the old and true' religion. I know Margot Adler mentions this briefly in "Drawing Down The Moon" (page 77) - but I'm wondering if you've seen any other sources on this? I want to learn more about the origins of this 'old and true' religion, but none of my regular resources are turning up anything of substance.

-gasps in Witchstorian- Is it time? I think it's time. Excuse me while I put on my very best hat.

Today, we're going to have a chat about MARGARET FUCKING MURRAY and her thoroughly discredited theories about a Great White Western Witch-Cult. (I have plans to do a wholeass podcast episode on this nonsense in the coming year, so consider this a warm-up. I should also note that debunking claims of an Ancient Unified Religion of Witchcraft is part of how I first earned my stripes as a fledgling Witchstorian. So this be my wheelhouse and I welcome ye to it.)

In her 1921 book, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, Murray put forth the theory that the ceremonies and rituals detailed in witch trial documents were actually descriptions of practices utilized by a matriarchal pagan fertility cult whose adherents had survived in secret following the Christianization of the British Isles. She pointed to a number of historical personages accused of and/or executed for witchcraft as members of this alleged "Old Religion," presented the idea of "flying on broomsticks" as a ritual activity involving a leaping dance with brooms held between women's thighs (the handles being smeared with a hallucinogenic salve), and claimed that the "Horned God of the witches" was later twisted into modern artistic depictions of Satan as a method of quite literally demonizing these supposed pagan ways. Furthermore, according to Murray, the cult had survived into the present day in the form of a certain secret groups in rural areas of Britain. (It should be noted that while Murray did not invent this theory, she was its' biggest and arguably most legitimizing proponent in her day.)

If any of this is sounding familiar, you get a cookie.

Gerald Gardner was a big fan of these theories and further bolstered the claims when he touted the New Forest coven as a surviving group from the "Old Religion." He incorporated many of Murray's claims into the early framework of his own myth-building. If you read Witchcraft Today (1954), you'll see a lot of Murray's work repeated as a framework for Gardner's own theories on contemporary witchcraft practices, which later became the basis for Wicca.

The issue here is that Murray was working with both a flawed premise and a really terrible use of source material. Repeatedly, she cited superstition, prosecutorial arguments, and confessions from accused witches from 16th-17th century trial records as fact, completely ignoring that none of this had any physical evidence attached to it and that confessions were often made under torture or the threat thereof. She also cited a lack of evidence as alleged evidence of a coverup by the Church and the Crown, or the cult itself covering its' tracks. Even her contemporaries viewed her work as fringe theory and it's largely because she was invited to write the Encyclopedia Britannica article on Witchcraft and the later use of her theories in the creation of Wicca that she's taken seriously by anybody at all.

While Murray's claims are thoroughly discredited, almost literally laughed out of academia during her own lifetime, certain sectors of the modern witchcraft and pagan communities still cling to this idea of a secret surviving pre-Christian goddess cult. I can fully understand why this is tempting, given the romantic notion of clandestine meetings and bonfire dances out in the woods, as well as the need of some modern witches to feel connected to some form of borrowed martyrdom as a mirror for their own feelings of disenfranchisement. No serious scholar of the early modern period or the history of witch trials during that time considers Murray's work credible and modern historians are prone to cringing whenever her name is mentioned.

So yeah, if you see a work on modern paganism or witchcraft referring to "the Old Ways" or "the Old Religion," that's very likely what it's talking about. Margot Adler and Ronald Hutton, both noted and credible authors writing about the modern witchcraft movement, mention Murray's witch-cult hypothesis in their books....but mostly only to say what a crock of shit it was.

For further reading, I recommend Jacqueline Simpson's 1994 article, "Margaret Murray: Who Believed Her And Why?," Ronald Hutton's "Triumph of the Moon," and the Wikipedia article on the witch-cult hypothesis (purely for a condensed version of how the theory came to be and how it has affected modern thought).

I'll leave you with this quote from A New History of Witchcraft: Sorcerers, Heretics and Pagans (Russell and Brooks), regarding Murray's work:

"That this 'old religion' persisted secretly, without leaving any evidence, is, of course, possible, just as it is possible that below the surface of the moon lie extensive deposits of Stilton cheese. Anything is possible. But it is nonsense to assert the existence of something for which no evidence exists. The Murrayites ask us to swallow a most peculiar sandwich: a large piece of the wrong evidence between two thick slices of no evidence at all."

[actualmermaid]

Today's queer saint of the day (originally posted to my ~spicy Christian memepage~) is Dr. James Barry: British Empire army surgeon, public health advocate, transgender man, and physical embodiment of "queer as in fuck you."

Dr. Barry's biography is available elsewhere, so I won't go into it too deeply here. If you want an entertaining look into his life and work, I recommend the Sawbones podcast episode #178. Instead, I'm going to use this post to situate Dr. Barry's life into the broad sweep of the Anglican tradition.

I've posted before about how the Anglican Church of the early 19th century was an insular and socially ineffective arm of the British aristocracy. Nevertheless, its rites and philosophies were an important part of public life, regardless of how individuals felt about God or the Church--especially for agents of the British Crown, which Dr. Barry was. Outright "atheism" was still rare.

In my research I was not able to find much about his personal religiosity, but Dr. Barry would have been familiar with the scriptures and the Book of Common Prayer. Besides this, he embodied the ideals of Enlightenment humanism, which remain inextricably intertwined with Anglicanism both in the past and continuing into the present.

Dr. Barry was ethnically Irish, and his family experienced anti-Irish and anti-Catholic discrimination. It was thanks to liberal-minded family friends that James was first able to become James, enter medical school, and become a commissioned officer in the British Army. Wherever he was posted, public health improved, because Dr. Barry was a tireless advocate for women, the poor, and enslaved people.

Dr. Barry was constantly getting into fights, and sometimes literal pistol duels, with people who challenged him. (This is a common theme in biographies of historical trans men.) He even got into a fight with Florence Nightingale, who is officially recognized as an Anglican saint for doing a lot of the same work that Dr. Barry did. Dr. Barry is also famous for being the first Westerner to perform a C-section in which the mother and child both survived. This was a procedure that had been successfully practiced in Africa for hundreds of years before colonization, and since Dr. Barry's procedure was performed in colonial South Africa, I don't think it's unlikely that he learned from African traditional medical practitioners as well as Western academic medicine. Coming from a colonized background himself, it may have been easier for him to respect colonized African people than it was for other British imperialists. He embodies what Anglicanism can be at its best: tolerant, curious, courageous, innovative, and orthopraxic. Even during the brutal height of the British Empire, these ideals shone through the darkness, and can be an example for us today.

Dr. Barry's story is also important in an age of resurgent British fascism, particularly the anti-trans sentiment that has earned it the nickname of "TERF Island." He was a trans man, not a "woman who disguised herself as a man in order to become a doctor." He lived as a man, wanted to die as a man, and is remembered as a man on his gravestone. To erase that reality is to erase trans people from the past, present, and future--which is exactly what fascists want. We must not allow that to happen.

[danthropologie]

anything interesting from the podcast? i don't really like dax so i dont wanna listen to it but I still wanna know what dan said😭

it's going under a cut cause it's long as hell and basically just a play-by-play replay of (most) of what was talked about:

it literally begins with daniel offering to turn off supercross, which is on the background, if it's going to be too distracting. i feel like this is important context

dax asks about it was like driving in the australian outback for that rbr promo video a few weeks back. daniel: "i'm gonna break something to you... [it wasn't you?] not all of it." he says it took an extended trip and he couldn't have made it work with scheduling, specifically mentioning the simulator.

he says after that video—cause it WAS real, it just wasn't all him—and being back in the red bull family, he's been reminded of how much cool shit they do. "and even, you have an idea and you just share that idea within the family, and something normally comes through from that idea."

dax asks how he feels about being a passenger in some of that crazy shit, the loop-de-loop helicopters and planes and shit. "the older i get, the less i say yes" but then says he's torn cause the older he gets, the more he wants to push himself to have experiences like that, even if he's scared shitless. says it's easier with things he doesn't understand, like planes, to just close his eyes and put his trust in whoever's controlling it. he knows too much with cars.

dax asks if he ever worries that because he has this crazy job, these people are gonna give him an extra crazy ride, thinking that's the expectation? daniel says he tries to be very honest with people, tells them that they don't have to do too much because he's a bit of a wuss.

they talk about nurburgring, the track daniel's driving this fall. daniel tells a story of driving the track at 18 years old in a rented fiat punto, not long after he'd moved to europe. he ended up cutting through a chicane and putting it in the grass 😭

dax says he hopes they give him more than one day at the track. daniel: "i better hope not, because i'm just gonna want to go quicker and quicker! we'll see...by then i might be a little more sharp."

he tells another story of going there with renault and driving the track in a road car in the rain. slid a few times and then decided to just bring it home the rest of the way, cause he doesn't really know the feel or limits of a road car the way he does an f1 car.

daniel turns it around for a while and asks dax about getting into formula one and what hooked him, what he loves about it, etc. dax brings up drive to survive and "you're gonna hate this but it's YOU!" how he's first person you see on the show and he hooks you in with the jokes, the cockiness, the looks, the personality, etc, and then you want to see him win cause you like him so much, and the love for everything else comes after and because of that.

daniel says he gets more and more people coming up to him now that know him as the guy on drive to survive instead of just as the race car driver. he wonders sometimes if they actually know he races or if he's just that guy from the netflix show

85-90% of people that came up to him pre-dts were guys, now it's more women. "it's definitely more than 50%, especially here in the states."

christian horner gives the best hugs in f1 (amongst drivers and team principals). specifically mentions 2018 mexico, his last pole with the team.

dax brings up how polite daniel is on the radio, asks how he developed that mindset. daniel says a lot of it is down to maturity. he knows for a fact that in his earlier years he was much more reactive. tells a story of back in 2013 where he'd blasted the team over the radio for some car issue, then got back to the garage and was struck by how selfish it was of him. says that now he consciously tries to be calm on the radio because he knows how chaotic the race is for everyone and he doesn't want to add to the chaos. he also says it's a give and take situation, because there are times where he'll fuck up or make a mistake, and "maybe sometimes i'm getting a blast, but not always. like a lot of the time, it's a hand over the shoulder and a little bit of...yeah there's a little bit of, i don't know, they didn't tell me how shit i am."

would be least shocked to find out yuki was eaten by their pet bengal tiger. "i'm only putting it down to physics and the human anatomy."

val "has turned into one of my favorite humans on the grid. he's coming into his own." says they've had a few glasses of wine together, but have never gone out for a proper rager together.

thinks seb is the most likely to have a collection of fine porcelain china."i feel like that's something he could be into, he appreciates fine art."

they talk about seb a bit more. daniel says that he probably didn't show much personality in his early / peak years, was more of a machine, but as he got older he started letting his guard down and showing more of the human side, which is what everyone fell in love with. he and seb got a lot closer over the years that followed their stint at red bull together and he'd definitely count him as a close friend now.

dax asks if you could get rid of one rule what would it be? daniel talks about pierre getting really close to getting a race ban last year over silly little stuff, nothing reckless, and they didn't think that should add up to a race ban. "we talked about that a lot, it wasn't justified."

dax asks how he would feel about getting rid of the speed limit in pit lane. he says that when he started the limit was 100 kpm, and he was glad when they brought it down to 80 kpm because it felt too fast. he couldn't imagine not having a speed limit at all.

dax asks if there's a rule he thinks should exist. daniel at first says he was trying to skip that one, then says that while part of him loves that some teams are better than others and part of the competition is fighting your way to a better team, part of him also wishes the field were a bit closer sometimes. brings up how some american sports will have a systems meant to mitigate that, where the lowest team gets first draft pick or whatever, and maybe f1 could incorporate something like that. dax then brings up indycar and how everything is spec, but doesn't necessarily make for more fun or interesting racing. daniel agrees and reiterates that the biggest thrill and challenge as a driver is fighting your way to the best team on the grid.

they talk about zak brown challenging toto to a boxing match and christian to a kart race. dax asks if daniel thinks he mixed them up by accident 😭

daniel says toto is "a pretty cool cat." also calls him "a specimen" and says "if he's not the coolest, he's definitely one of the coolest." dax also apparently heard from a source close to him that toto is a great dancer too???

thinks either charles or carlos would be the best on dancing with the stars. he does NOT think fernando would be a good dancer, because "he's put all his eggs in the racing basket."

they talk about how fun it's been to watch nando racing this year. daniel: "i've loved seeing it. even like, sure, it makes me think 'shit i can still do it at an older age if i really want it.' so there's that, but even just for the sport." and talks about how the average age of the athletes in so many sports keep getting younger and younger, so it's fun to see someone older still succeeding. says it's "encouraging"

says he still watches races. he thought this year he'd be more distant and wouldn't go out of his way to watch it as much, but no. he hasn't missed a single session from a single race so far, including practices. says he's "heavily invested." also says he thinks it's good for him, cause this year is about getting a lot of answers about how badly he wants to come back and all that, so the fact that he's still so interested and invested tells him he's not done yet, cause he thinks that if he was truly done, he wouldn't care as much as he still does. dax reinforces that by sharing his own anecdote about his acting career and knowing he’s done with it because he's not interested in what's going on in the industry anymore.

they talk about baku. dax asks what he loves and what he hates about it. daniel says there's not much he hates about it. talks about the first time he drove a street circuit, how the adrenaline was so much higher and everything was just better. baku is all of that with high speeds. "a wicked track" and probably one of the most nuts tracks on the schedule.

dax asks if they're able to see the castle from the car as they're driving. daniel: "yeah, but you don't want to!" says that at most tracks they go to—specifically mentioning monaco—of course it's beautiful, but they're so tunnel vision focused that they don't really see any of it.

says that last year in singapore, during one of the practices, he was able to see some of the skyscrapers from the car as he was driving "and i was like, 'shit, i don't think i've ever seen them before.'" dax brings up the fact that that was late in the year, when he already knew it was gonna be his last year with the team, and asks if maybe it was his subconscious telling him to look around and enjoy it cause who knows if this is the last time. daniel agrees that it probably was "but right now, i'm happy because i'm happy with where i'm at, but i'm also happy with the like 'ehhhh i'm not sure it's over' so. that's cool. but i can't guarantee it cause obviously i don't have a racing contract next year, but personally at least, i feel like there's still a fire there."

dax wraps up by telling daniel "you're gonna be uncomfortable with this but i find it so comical that you're still the most popular driver in formula one and you're not driving" and then literally goes on for like two minutes about how fucking hilarious it is to him that there are more pictures of daniel, more articles about daniel, more conversation in general about daniel than even the driver that might have won the race that week and how much we all fucking LOOOOOVE him and would love to see him driving again. truly One Of Us 🤝

daniel tells dax he appreciates that and "look, i certainly play out scenarios in my head and i, like, visualize things and, yeah, i would love...." cuts himself off to say he doesn't want to come back just to drive, he wants to come back to try to win, but if that opportunity with a team, that could be the right fit. "i just want to win basically. just cutting to it." and "i think this year i'm understanding that you just want to get back to basics. it's like i'm trying to get all those feelings back. and i'm not forcing anything, it's like 'why did i start this?' like, 'where's that core love for it?'" dax: "is it fair to say you're opening yourself up to the hunger to return and captivate you and make you singularly focused?" daniel: "absolutely. yeah."

[strawberryblondebutch]

bestie i hate to break it to you but dansby is an alt-right maga freak 😭😭

So I let this sit in my inbox until I was no longer trying to tipsily record a podcast, because I think there's a lesson here in classifying different types of conservative athletes.

Dansby is, as far as I can tell, a God-freak. (Obligatory disclaimer that I am a practicing Catholic and my use of this term is not an indictment on religion.) The God-freak is overrepresented in baseball and in football, because those sports are played outside, so most pros grew up in the Bible Belt, where it's warm enough to practice year-round. Jonah Heim, fun fact, spent the better part of a decade in the minors, because he grew up in Buffalo and only played a handful of varsity games a season.

The God-freak is an evangelical Christian for whom faith is the basis of their personality. Because evangelicalism is tied so deeply to modern conservative politics, they tend to have some right-wing beliefs stemming from this. Many of them did not take the Covid vaccine because they were told it's made from aborted fetuses, and abortion is a grave evil, so they can't put that in their bodies.

You can tell the God-freak in a few ways. The first is that they are genuine in their beliefs, and they will bring these beliefs up in non-political contexts. They share Bible verses on Instagram, give glory to God after good games. The God-freak also usually takes a hard spiritual turn in response to some major life upheaval. For Dansby it was his anxiety disorder. Aaron Nola on the Phillies grew up Catholic and went full evangelical in 2019, when he struggled for the first time as a pitcher. (It's interesting to note that he admits to having OCD in this article and ties some of his compulsions back to a rosary he used to carry.)

This "God saved me from personal strife" narrative is central in differentiating the God-freak from a conservative who happens to be religious, because they believe that, if God saved them, He can save everyone else. They are genuinely motivated by love. Their definition of love just happens to be influenced by right-wing Christianity. This is probably the best example of how the right-wing God-freak isn't totally gone. They approach the world from the base idea that all people are inherently good, and although their attempts to get everyone to recognize that goodness are flawed (think of the pastor who genuinely claims to love a queer person and save them from hell... which in their definition means saving them from the homosexual lifestyle). The God-freak is the most easily redeemed conservative because you can still talk to them on a human level. That's how you get many old Irish church ladies who have started to come around on the gay rights thing because "the [REDACTED FAMILY NAME] kid might fancy girls, but she still goes to church every week, and that's better than my grandson."

As an aside, it's also possible to be a liberal God-freak. Dawn Staley is the perfect example of that: she's very publicly Christian but also chewed out a transphobic reporter. It helps that Dawn is a Black woman who grew up in the most liberal Congressional district in the country, and who plays a sport with such a queer presence.

The God-freak is fundamentally different from the bigot, whose politics are motivated by hate and by power. Britta Curl (God I wish I could stop talking about her) is your textbook bigot. The bigot looks for constant opportunities to shit on the marginalized and blame them for their personal failures. The bigot gives into trans panic because they're insecure, and they're worried that they can't stand on their own merits. Dawn Staley isn't worried about trans women in basketball, because she has the power of God on her side and her team will continue to kick ass. Britta might be ostensibly Catholic (again, unlike the God-freak, the bigot only brings up their faith as a shield), but she doesn't trust that God's glory will stop the Imaginary Scary Trans Hockey Player from taking her job.

When dealing with the bigot, you have got to make them look silly. You have to defang their arguments in real world context. They rely on hypotheticals: the hypothetical Scary Trans Woman who's going to bowl over the cis women at the rink. The hypothetical Scary Black Guy who's going to scare white people from the sport of baseball. The hypothetical dies when confronted by reality: that Lia Thomas is still pretty mediocre at swimming (her words, not mine, I know her personally) and that Black players on the Cardinals helped Anheuser-Busch beer break into new markets (which is why Gussie Busch wanted to trade for Black stars - check out this book).

The third type of conservative is, of course, the grifter. The grifter doesn't believe in any of this shit. They want to make money off the people who do believe it. Most conservative athletes are God-freaks or bigots, but Curt Schilling? Grifter. Old man yells at clouds on Breitbart for attention to avoid declaring bankruptcy. Tommy Pham's comments on being a Black Republican use grifter language - he's pandering to the trans-panic anti-welfare crowd in the replies of a tweet.

Just don't give the grifters any attention. They thrive on it. Ignore. Block. Move on.

I didn't need to write a diatribe on this. I know the Swansons are anti-vax. AFAIK they don't speak publicly about their politics outside of the Facebook post linked above. Even when Twitter likes were public, it all came through a very evangelical lens. Aaron Nola is one of my favorite pitchers, and he's the same way. A lot of God-freaks vote Republican because it's the God party, unlike those pro-abortion Democratic heathens, but they see it as a necessary evil, just like the leftists who plan to grit their teeth and vote for Biden because at least it's not Trump. Most of baseball's conservatives are God-freaks. Hockey's conservatives tend to be bigots. You have to approach them differently and understand where their beliefs are coming from.

And again: don't engage with the grifters at all. You're wasting your breath trying to change someone's insincere beliefs.

I talked in my Britta Curl post about degrees of harm, and how the conservative who keeps their dumbass beliefs to themselves is inherently less harmful than one who preaches to the media about it, and that's a distinction that's important in men's pro sports, which is massively conservative. I respect someone like Aaron Nola - who uses his very closely held beliefs to cope with his OCD, even if he and I definitely disagree on politics - a hell of a lot more than Tony DeAngelo, who likes to hurl slurs around just... for fun, I guess?

[bookclub4m]

35 Non-fiction Graphic Novels by BIPOC Authors

Every month Book Club for Masochists: A Readers’ Advisory Podcasts chooses a genre at random and we read and discuss books from that genre. We also put together book lists for each episode/genre that feature works by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) authors. All of the lists can be found here.

This Place: 150 Years Retold

Zodiac: A Graphic Memoir by Ai Weiwei with Elettra Stamboulis & Gianluca Costantini

Nat Turner by Kyle Baker

The Talk by Darrin Bell

The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui

I’m a Wild Seed by Sharon Lee De la Cruz

Messy Roots: A Graphic Memoir of a Wuhanese American by Laura Gao

Stamped from the Beginning: A Graphic History of Racist Ideas in America by Joel Christian Gill and Ibram X. Kendi

Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts by Rebecca Hall and Hugo Martinez

The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book by Gord Hill

Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations by Mira Jacob

The American Dream? A Journey on Route 66 Discovering Dinosaur Statues, Muffler Man, and the Perfect Breakfast Burrito: a Graphic Memoir by Shing Yin Khor

Banned Book Club by Kim Hyun Sook, Ryan Estrada, and Ko Hyung-Ju

In Limbo by Deb J.J. Lee

This Country: Searching for Home in (Very) Rural America by Navied Mahdavian

Mexikid: A Graphic Memoir by Pedro Martín

Monstrous: A Transracial Adoption Story by Sarah Myer

Steady Rollin': Preacher Kid, Black Punk and Pedaling Papa by Fred Noland

Citizen 13660 by Mine Okubo

Your Black Friend and Other Strangers by Ben Passmore

Kwändǖr by Cole Pauls

Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey by Edel Rodriguez

Power Born of Dreams: My Story is Palestine by Mohammad Sabaaneh

A First Time for Everything by Dan Santat

Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi

Grandmothers, Our Grandmothers: Remembering the "Comfort Women" of World War II by Han Seong-Won

Death Threat by Vivek Shraya and Ness Lee

Palimpsest: Documents From A Korean Adoption by Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom

Big Black: Stand at Attica by Frank "Big Black" Smith, Jared Reinmuth, and Améziane

Victory. Stand!: Raising My Fist for Justice by Tommie Smith, Dawud Anyabwile, and Derrick Barnes

The High Desert by James Spooner

They Called Us Enemy by George Takei, Justin Eisinger, Steven Scott, and Harmony Becker

Feelings by Manjit Thapp

The Black Panther Party: A Graphic Novel History by David F. Walker and Marcus Kwame Anderson

Now Let Me Fly: A Portrait of Eugene Bullard by Ronald Wimberly and Braham Revel

[theunveilingpodcast]

Listen to Our EPISODES, BLOGS. In our Site

[hanna-water]

Host: (...) We talked about your new TV programme which will be broadcasted next year, which is called...

Bård: Ylvis mot Ylvis. I apologize for the name but it´s decribing in a way. The TV-channels like it very much if the programme titles contain our name. (...) To be fully honest: I am ashamed of that. But I always was, regarding all the programmes that were named after us. Which are all. I think that is difficult.

Host: why do you think that´s difficult? Bård: I don´t want to publish the brand... or shout out my name. That´s not who I am.

Host: are you tired of the name "Ylvis"? Bård: yes absolutely. I think it´s... Host: but what would you like instead? Ylvisåker? Would your whole name be better?

Bård: no there is nothing that would be better but I would prefer if it was named after the concept. But I understand that it would be more secret that way. So I understand the market value in it. But personally I am not a fan.

Host: are you tired of being a product? Are you tired of being a brand? I rarely had guests which are a brand but Ylvis are a brand, in fact.

Bård: I think for a long time I was very embarressed of that. I remember that during the first 10 years of our career we performed in front of elderly women in Tønsberg and did revue and things that no one at our own age had any relation to. I was very embarressed and felt a bit ashamed about that. Host: you did? Bård: yes absolutely When we called P3 as a first step towards reaching our own target audience, I thought when they heard the word "Ylvis" they kind of... they said that they didn´t think... Host: because you were the revue-princes?

Bård: yes they were like "you can maybe go to P1 and sing something there"

Host: that was the reaction you got? Bård: yes Host: Did you want to have your own show actually? Bård: yes we had changed our management and they had asked "what would you two like to do?" and back then we had been programmed to think that you can´t just do what you would like to do. You have to do what you get an opportunity for. And he, who still is our manager, was very good at asking "but in the best case scenario: What do you two really, really want the most?". And after a while we figured out that it would be fun to create a radio programme for people at our age. But we can´t do that. P3 would never let us in. He said "ok, then we do that." And we were like "no, no that´s so embarressing" So he called and said "Ylvis is interested in creating a radio show" and P3 answered: "we don´t think that is the right thing". - "yes but let them create a pilot" - "ok, one." and so we created a pilot and they were very excited about it. The content that we were allowed to talk about to the audience did fit very well. (...) I think that the reason why I don´t like the name is that I still feel a bit ashamed since back in the days. I feel like it sounds like a christian revue duo. from Metallista podcast episode 100 time stamp: https://youtu.be/hC5KmyBI8gU?t=3074

This part right here broke my heart a little bit 🥺. It´s not the first time that it was mentioned that they did not like what they were doing in the first few years of their career and that they felt ashamed of it. But knowing that this period affected Bård so much that he still has a negative relation to the name Ylvis til this day, that´s so sad. 😕 I think there is nothing to be ashamed about. They took advantage of a unique opportunity when they were younger and then at some point found their very own style, had the courage to make a big change and became extremely successfull, creating one piece of entertainment gold after another, filling big concert venues ect. Their story is inspiring, encouraging and fascinating. 🌟 An so many of us adore them for who they were and who they did become. I hope that one day Bård might be able to look back at their past and can feel pride about their progress instead of shame. ❤❤❤

me rambling....

[syoish]

Genuine cry for help here:

Does anyone have any advice/resources for someone who has a family member that's getting super pulled towards the right via conservative facebook? I recently found out my mom unironically listens to The Daily Wire and it explained a lot. My mom's always been a more conservative than me (she's also very Christian and I'm not) but in the past we've still gotten along despite it. She never had extremist opinions or opinions that were just... factually incorrect. My older brother said she was denying climate change yesterday when, 5 years ago, this woman was pretty much an environmentalist. I know this all is because of online radicalization that started during covid and I don't know what to do!

I think a lot of it has to do with her desire to be a part of a Christian community and since so many of these right leaning groups are religious, she is drawn to them and then begins surrounding herself with people who are just radicalizing her further.

My mom has always been a pretty reasonable person to talk to so my older brother and I want to basically stage an intervention but... I really want to have some resources for her.

So, does anyone know if any online groups, podcasts, youtubers, etc. that are Christian but aren't super conservative. Or even if they are conservative, maybe just not the type of conservative that's telling people that the chemicals in vaccines are turning frogs gay.

Maybe that's a hard ask.

But, as the only openly queer member of my immediate family, I'm honestly scared that she's going to get so far in that I'm going to lose her.

I love my mom. She's one of my best friends and one of the strongest women I know which is why all of this completely blows my mind. I never thought it would be my parent. I can't stand what I'm seeing happen to her and every time I see her she gets worse.

[snarktheater]

I’d be game. I’ve been waiting for another Snark for a long time (especially for some of the YA series you started). Quick question: what did Brandon Sanderson do?

to grossly summarize and oversimplify: he was invited to guest on a wheel of time fan podcast to watch the season 2 finale of the TV adaptation, and spent the entire time complaining about essentially every choice being made, admitted he hadn't watched the rest of the season (which, I don't know, seems instrumental in understanding those choices) and generally denigrating the work of what, in my humble opinion, is a stellar piece of adaptation.

which I'll freely admit is a very petty thing to be mad about, but considering that he wrote the last wheel of time book (and split it into three, but like, okay that part may have been inevitable based on reports of the size of robert jordan's notes), massacred a good 70% of character arcs in the process, and didn't think the big slavery empire was a plot point worth addressing and in fact painted the characters who did want to address it as unreasonable, well, i think maybe he shouldn't get to throw stones at anyone else doing their own spin in robert jordan's work.

and that's of course building up on a decade of being adjacent to his fandom (mainly through the wheel of time) and having to deal with. for instance. a lot of apologia for his earlier homophobia, a stance which despite various claims from said apologists he has never actually retracted and has only couched in a vague language of "well I still believe the [mormon] church teaches the truth but i have gay friends so haha i guess i'm still struggling to reconcile those things". and other things, many of them, i'll be honest, are at least tangentially related to the mormon faith. because that church is fucked. more than your average conservative christian denomination.

which in turn circles back to the wheel of time amazon show, because it's hard not to look at his comments about it in the context of all that history. the show is faithful to the spirit of the books, and (i would say in accordance to that spirit) presents a fantasy world that is a lot more welcoming and diverse. i know this is a tired talking point to some, but it's true: the show just features a lot more people of color, it features queer people on the actual screen and not just by innuendo, it gives women agency and features their point of view in a way that jordan, for all his good intentions, sometimes failed to or only provided as far as it made them sexy. the show interrogates the narrative of the male hero and the concept of violent masculinity it's built upon in a way that both works with the themes of the books but also sometimes challenges the archetypes that the books, as forerunners in modern fantasy, have helped establish.

and so to have sanderson come in and criticize all that, well, it makes his weak attempts at appealing to his overwhelmingly more progressive than he is fandom come across as very shallow. i'm not saying he's a liar—i'm sure he's earnestly trying he's best—just that he seems to simply not understand the subject at all.

which is why i'm curious to see how it translates into his writing. if i can figure out which book to even look at. and if i can conjure up the willpower to stick through a whole book.

[jechristine]

Love languages’ days are numbered god willing

Some excerpts:

Chapman has never claimed that the love languages are based on any kind of scientifically rigorous process. They have always been an impressionistic tool that comes from the observations he made during his time as a pastor, counseling couples at his Baptist church in North Carolina in the ’80s and ’90s. That’s a specific political and cultural context, and it informs the way the theory of the love languages developed.

In the 1992 edition of The 5 Love Languages, Chapman is explicit about the demographics of the couples he worked with. They are white, heterosexual, conservative Christian couples. The book is structured under the assumption that the wife will stay at home and care for the house and children while the husband goes to work to provide for her. It is a thoroughly heterosexual, monogamous book that chooses not to acknowledge the existence of queer people, to say nothing of poly or trans people.

As the debunking podcast If Books Could Kill laid out in April 2023, most of the couple fights Chapman uses as examples tend to involve wives nagging their husbands to take care of chores. In one case, Chapman explains to a henpecked husband that while he thinks the best way to express love is through sex (physical touch), his wife only experiences love if he helps her with vacuuming (acts of service). If the husband would just help out with vacuuming once in a while, Chapman goes on, the wife will feel just as loved as the husband does when they have sex. The idea that the wife might be interested in sex but can’t focus on it while never-ending housework piles up all around her is not one Chapman engages with.

The most infamous of these examples comes with the case study of Ann, who goes to Chapman for guidance in dealing with her husband’s cruelty. “Is it possible to love someone you hate?” she asks Chapman. In response, he gives her Bible passages about loving one’s enemies and tells her that her husband’s love language is probably physical touch. In order to save the marriage, he advises her, she should stop all complaints about her husband and start initiating sex at least twice a week.

Ann tells Chapman that sex with her husband is difficult for her because she feels so estranged from her husband. When they’re intimate, she says, she feels “used rather than loved.” Lots of women feel this way, Chapman tells her. Her Christian faith will help her through it. Ann does as Chapman tells her to, and the marriage is saved.

…

Still, the research suggests that adhering rigidly to the love language model won’t serve you well over time, in large part because it doesn’t match how human relationships work. We love in many ways, not just one.

“It is very likely that in one situation, someone might need a certain type of love or support,” says Park. “Perhaps after losing out on a promotion, you just need your partner to listen and provide you with words of affirmation. Maybe on an anniversary dinner, affection makes you feel special. Or during a particularly stressful time at work, having a partner take on extra household tasks is the best way to support you.”

[allgirlsareprincesses]

Random musings on violence, theory, and hearing indigenous perspectives:

A few years ago (2018?), I picked up a book on Rene Girard's Mimetic Theory. I only made it a few chapters in because it was dry AF and I typically need some kind of research goal (like a fandom meta or upcoming podcast recording) to actually get through the more intense academic lit. But due to recent events, I decided to pick it back up. If you're not familiar with Rene Girard, he's a 20th-Century Christian philosopher who proposed a mimetic theory of violence, which is to say that he believed human violence to be universally driven by mimetic desire. Mimetic as in "mime" or imitation, so people instinctively desire to be like the other or have what they have, and so this unconscious envy often drives violence. Or at least, that was my understanding from what little I read.

Only a few pages in on my second attempt, and I could not help an overwhelming feeling of disgust. The book argues against common critiques of Girard's work, including that he has an ethnocentric (white eurocentric) view, and that his so-called "universal" theory disregards diverse perspectives. In my opinion, the defenses given were flimsy, even without having read the full critiques themselves, and to that I would add one more: Highly educated cishet white men have no place creating theories of violence when they are so rarely the object of such violence. Reducing the lived reality and trauma of predominantly women, queer, non-Christian, non-white people to an academic theory is patronizing at best and harmful at worst, because it reassures the theorist of their own righteousness without requiring them to actively DO anything to stop the violence or take responsibility for the ways people like them have victimized others throughout history. It's ivory tower bullsh*t at its absolute worst.

Now granted, I know Girard was a young man in occupied France during WWII, so I'm sure he had some firsthand experience with violence, but he spent the rest of his life in relative comfort, protected by his privileged status. And perhaps if his work had focused on more diverse sources, I might be less critical of that status, but as it is, there's a heavy emphasis on European literature. Not even historical accounts! But "great novels" of Europe's past. And these are worth studying, sure, but you can't reasonably call any theory formed from them "universal."

This is also a huge problem with the work of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell. Which again, IS NOT TO SAY THEIR WORK HAS NO MERIT. I personally still find it illuminating and thought-provoking. But eventually, we have GOT to stop considering white men the standard for academic and philosophical thought! It's so limiting!

And historically, given how much violence has been perpetrated by white men upon others, I think it's worth considering that any theories of violence they propose may be incomplete or corrupt, and in any case useless to the victims. Lastly, I'm not particularly impressed by many of Girard's modern proponents, who skew more right-wing and therefore are often aligned with institutionalized violence.

So yeah, I quit the book. At this point, I'm much more interested in seeking out indigenous perspectives in academic discussions. My interest in folktales has led me to many fem scholars of color who collect such sources, so I'm gradually building a reading list that I think will ring true to me more so than authors like Girard. If any of my lovely followers have recommendations or thoughts on what I've shared, I'd appreciate your input!

[lil-space-king]

Name: Deanne Fletcher Pronouns: She/Her Sexuality: Lesbian Height: 4'11'' Age: 25 Bio: Deanne grew up in a small southern town in a very strict Christian family. Her mom and dad had very old-fashioned views on everything from gender to sexuality to the kind of people you should associate with. Deanne and her brother David fell in line. Because of this, Deanne battled with compulsive heterosexuality for the first 22 or so years of her life.

Deanne spent most of her childhood life doing whatever she could to please her overbearing mother. She went to church every Sunday, she got top grades in all her classes, she dated a nice catholic boy through most of high school, and she tried her best to lose the extra belly weight her mother hated.

However, no child is a perfect obedient robot, even Deanne had her moments of rebellion. Her main rebellion was her best friend; Andy. Deanne's mom made her disapproval of Andy very clear from the get-go (mainly because both Andy and her moms are out and proud lesbians). But Deanne didn't care; Andy was the best friend she could have asked for.

The two girls did everything together, they shared classes, homework answers, sleepovers, everything. The only thing they never talked about was Andy's giant crush on Deanne. It was obvious, neither of them needed to point it out. Andy held herself back from pursuing it because she knew Deanne was straight. Deanne tried not to think about it too often because she wanted to be straight.

Eventually, the time for college acceptance comes and Deanne gets a letter from big-name university a few cities away. Her parents try to talk her out of it, but she falls in love with the idea of it and decides to go. Meanwhile, Andy's less than stellar grades get her into a state college in the opposite direction. The two women grow apart, never completely losing contact, but not quite having the same closeness as before.

Finally, away from her childhood home, and the pressures of her conservative parents, Deanne's able to admit to herself what she's been feeling her whole life. She's not straight, she doesn't even really like guys, she's a lesbian. She's a lesbian and was in love with her best friend and it was a missed opportunity.

Deanne does what most freshly out lesbians do in college and enjoys herself. She goes on dates, has some fun, and tries and fails to forget about Andy. Eventually, she graduates from college, and then vet school and when she finds work in the same city that Andy now lives in she sees an opportunity to rekindle... something.

Andy has a girlfriend at this point - Raven, but they're looking for a roommate to join their rent agreement. Deanne is a poor college graduate looking for somewhere to live, it doesn't take the two degree-holding women to add 2+2 to get 4. Deanne moves in.

The two fall back into friendship as if they never took a break. Raven is off at work half the time and the two spend a lot of alone time. Raven and Andy are in a (very healthy) poly relationship so it doesn't take long for Andy to ask Deanne if she'd be interested in dating.

Deanne very quickly agrees and the two have a whirlwind honeymoon romance. Deanne struggles a bit with jealousy (this is her first poly relationship, so sue her), but she doesn't want to jeopardize how happy she is, so she does her best to get to know Raven and get along with her.

The two actually have a lot in common. They both have a soft fondness for Andy and love to talk about all her quirks, teasing her. They both love a good murder podcast and tea in the mornings when it's still a little cold out. They both love cats.

So, it starts as an Andy has two hands situation, but quickly becomes a 'we collectively have six hands' situation instead.