#closed religion

[louiskechi]

ok, i’m finding that it’s incredibly difficult to get an answer on this that isn’t just “that’s how it is” so i’m going to make a post here. please don’t attack me, i’m genuinely just looking to understand.

why are closed practices/religions closed? and moreover, what happens when a person who believes in a closed religion do?

if a person believes something and believes practicing those beliefs is good, why is other people practicing it bad?

i apologize for my ignorance, but this has been really difficult to find an answer to.

[pinkfey]

i saw a video where a woman’s husband said hello to her best friend (they touched cheeks with a short mwah) and so many people felt that this would be a personal boundary violation for them, so i’m curious what the consensus is!!

keeping it simple, no nuance + if u think ur ethnicity or culture has to do w your answer i would love to know!! 🫂😚💕💕

[spotsupstuff]

Gold is often connected to divinity in rl religions. In Buddhism, it indeed symbolizes enlightenment and such, and it is often kept pure in order to not ruin its brilliance. In Tibetan Buddhism, statues are gilded with it and the 5 tonne Golden Buddha statue in Thailand is composed of 18 karat gold, almost fully pure.

Within this world, I like to think that gold has caught the eye of the Anemons in a religious sense upon the (,,re/")discovery of the Void Sea. The golden waves of it shaped the perception of their world, from explaining the sun as coated in a layer of Void, to giving an idea of what "cleanliness of soul" should look like. Wheel Flowers are also attributed to the Void as sprouts of it, because of their ethereal gold coloration.

The feeling of the divine has however faded when the motivations behind handling of the Void went terribly south, replaced by the extremist corruption and greed of High castes.

In other words, I wanted an excuse to draw Euros as a šarkan/змей.

[shiftythrifting]

Thrifting in DC last month lol

[vaguely-concerned]

the relationship between the chantry and the mortalitasi in nevarra is SO fucking funny. the carefully politic and civil syncretism of it all. the ‘I’ll refrain from scratching your back to bloody shreds if you refrain from scratching mine :)’. left hand politely averting its eyes from whatever the fuck the right hand is doing merrily up to its elbow in entrails because it usually knows what it’s doing I guess. speak softly, and have an army of the restless dead ready to go banapants horrorshow bonkers if you don’t get to tend to them. We Receive: being able to keep doing our goth thing mostly unimpeded. You receive: us not raising the great majority to protest your unwelcome meddling. render unto the chantry what is the chantry's and unto the watchers what is theirs (or, with all possible courtesy you understand, else…)

[totheidiot]

kira worshipper mikami has been done 17377363727 times to the point where it's overdone and so many people just ignores all other aspects of his character. but. i need to get something out. what if mikami prays to kira every day at specific times. like once during sunrise, one when the sun is directly over your head, one during sunset, and the last one in midnight. there is a very specific ritual to it and he follows it everyday, all the exact times without fail. never misses a prayer. what then.

[gossippool]

fuck it 1.5k words of logan exposition that's part of the first chapter of an unpublished fic i won't be done with anytime soon. this backstory is partially inspired by the origin comic. tw mentions of violence, death, child death, self-harm etc. etc.

-----

The first time Logan killed an innocent, he was ten years old. He could name many moments in his life that felt monumental—'canon events', or whatever shit Wade calls it—but if he really had to name a point of no return for him, it would be then. All the way back then. He wonders about fate, often. If it was possible that things could ever be different. Then he remembers. His past comes back to him in flashes still, even after two hundred years. His ribbed, rough bones splintering the skin between his knuckles for the first time, the deafening quiet of the night broken by his howls and his mother’s screams, the gunshot before that, as if all the world had been contained in that one room. Her body underneath his, wounds gaping—maybe her throat, maybe her chest, or her stomach—and guzzling dark, dark wine. His grandfather’s mouth moving, the spit on his tongue. The words made no sound—he couldn’t remember what his grandfather had said, nor what he'd sounded like. But he'd known. So he'd run.

He'd had a decent childhood, before it all. Decent enough that he hadn't thought of life anywhere else, at least, or maybe that spoke of something that was the opposite of decency. Regardless, he'd felt… clean. He hadn't known about his claws then. How could he? His own mutant brother had been cast away, erased from the family legacy, with no explanation as to why. But now his claws resided in him like an itch under his skin, dead weight when he moved. He felt their presence in his fingertips even when they were retracted, and now when he thought back to the before, before he'd had the claws, he thought that maybe he'd felt them then too. He just hadn't known it.

It had been an accident, killing the mother he'd longed to see, the one he'd missed even when she was alive. But it being an accident changed nothing.

He'd been filled with a quiet sort of rage since then, the kind that simmered low in his blood, unnoticable on some days but intrinsically a part of him nonetheless. His anger was its own organ that kept his body running unprompted, and if he let himself accept that he was angry, let himself feel it, it took everything in him to not claw his way through the anger. To not claw at himself until he reached bone, to hear the unnatural, inhuman screech of metal against metal.

He'd released it in increments, chopping wood and lugging wheelbarrows and running with the wolves, and beating up the occasional man who deserved it. That was in the early stages, when every exhale released puffs of anger into the cold air.

On bad days—the bad days were the normal days—he wondered if he had been born defective. Not just in his claws, but born to be full of fear and hatred, to not know where to put any of it. Born to reap the consequences of his brother's failures in the form of neglect and frigid silences, of the bond of family only through blood and nothing more. In unleashing himself, he'd become his brother, maybe. A mantle of generational disappointment passed on for him to bear.

On worse days when he hated himself to the point of self-mutilation, he recognised that it may have been inevitable. A buildup of pressured anger in centuries-long microdoses that eventually forced its way through his fissures and burst out of him, destroying everything in its path.

He sits in this bar now, indistinguishable from all the others, unwanted again, always running. He bears the looks and the whispers like a wooden cross, dragging the weight of it on his back down Gethsemane streets—sacrificing himself for what the people feel it right give him, what he knows he deserves: contempt. The bartender pours him another drink with what looks like anger, but also pity. Pity is kinder than anything he’s been dealt for the past few years.

He holds the shot glass like a communion cup, imagines that in it is his mother’s blood. When he drinks it, he thinks forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me of my sins. But he knows he won’t be forgiven. He doesn’t know anymore if he even wants to be. Because his sins have been building up for two hundred years, clawing at each other to get to the insurmountable top. He is sin. Every inch of his body, from the roots of his hair to the skin under his fingernails, has been stained with blood that he has washed off over and over again but still feels. If he’s forgiven, if all his sins are taken away, he doesn’t know if there would be anything left of him but metal and a hardened heart.

It may absolve him of some guilt, he thinks, if he could say he remembers them all—all the people he’s killed, all the ways he killed them. He doesn’t. They hadn’t been important enough to him then, besides the life that they held in them that he starved to take away. And when his claws pierced through their flesh and muscle and bone, he drank up the lifelessness in their eyes like morphine. The high kept him alive, and rotted his insides. It quenched his thirst, but it didn't make him feel good. Then again, when does addiction ever?

He can't even remember the X-Men. When he had, when they'd crossed his thoughts in passing when they were alive, he could see them clear as day in his mind, vivid in saturation and detail. Now when he tries thinking of them, all he sees is questions written in blood.

He does remember one of them, vaguely, of those he's killed. All of his past is a blur now, memories seen through a fogged-up window or in a yellowing photo album. But this one he sees with slightly more clarity: a girl with dark skin and darker hair, a carbon copy of her mother. He'd killed them both twice over. It was the first time he killed a child.

And he remembers her because he’d liked it when he killed her. The tabooness of it, the special sanctity of a child's life that he had forced away, so easily. Something that people hardly dare to do. Look, he remembers yelling, to dead bricks and corpses in a dead-end alley. I'll fucking show you. They’d thought he couldn’t go lower than he already had. They'd thought they couldn't hate him more. They had no idea what he was capable of.

He remembers her screams, bloodcurdling but still unmistakably a child’s, and then her eternal silence. He remembers her mother's begging, his own mother's begging. He remembers that he had not felt an ounce of guilt in that moment, nor remorse, nor any of the gravity of her life.

Now whenever he drinks, he drinks enough to kill himself a little, in remembrance of her.

Not that that's the only reason. Because underneath it all, despite it all, through it all, he is nothing but a selfish bastard. And it's fucked up, he knows it is, but when he stopped killing people it had felt like withdrawal. More potent than any withdrawal he could get from drugs like a normal person. It was a withdrawal he's stuck with because he's more tired of kiling people than he is thirsty to sate his urge. Not the urge to kill—just the thought of it now makes him sick, clogs his throat with blood—but the urge to take all his despair and anger out on something. Everything. And oh, he's tried. Not even killing the world and filling oceans with blood was enough.

So he drinks, because nothing can satiate that urge, and the alcohol makes him forget that it even exists. You can't think about anything when you're blackout drunk. You can't see how other people look at you when you're passed out. But even in unconsciousness his body remains wound tight and tense, and he wakes up sore through every muscle.

He doesn’t believe in God, but he’s lived long enough to know enough. And he knows that God wouldn’t differentiate between the good and bad people he's killed. Blood is blood is blood. The blood of the innocent mixes with the blood of the evil, turning the lake a plagued, undrinkable scarlet all the same.

And this isn't a children's book, a bedtime story, a movie where everything gets wrapped up in a nice little bow and they all live happily ever after. He fucking wishes.

All of it remains in the back of his mind like a prowler, laying dormant and ready to pounce, when Wade drags him out of that bar; when he decides to save that asshole's timeline; when Laura tells him he's the wrong guy until he isn't; when Wade says he's the best Wolverine. He looks around him, and all the world is still black and white and bleeding red.

[bottombaron]

you know, i can handle a little bit of fun "Nandor is dumb" talk, but i have a net-zero tolerance for any implication that Nandor is not educated.

Nandor would have been incredibly educated in his lifetime.

even (or especially) as a soldier in the Islamic World. being a soldier was more like getting sent to boarding school that's also a military camp. they weren't just concerned with creating loyal fodder for war. they were building the next government officials, generals, accountants, advisors, etc. it was important that young men knew how to read, write, speak multiple languages, learn philosophy...sometimes even studying art and music was mandatory.

if he was nobility (and its most likely he was), take all that shit and multiply it exponentially. Nandor would have been reading Plato at the same age most people are still potty training. he would have been specifically groomed in such a way to not be just a brilliant strategist and warrior, but also diplomate and ambassador of literally the center of scientific and cultural excellence of the age.

so like yeah, he can be a big dummy sometimes, sure. but that bitch is probably more educated than any of us will ever be.

[godly-rambles]

i need a devotee. someone who prays to me by candlelight at an altar they set up in my name.

i need to be divine and loved.

[crazycatsiren]

I'm blocking all non Jewish "Lilith worshippers" from now on.

Y'all are antisemitic as fuck.

Lilith is Jewish. Anything that says she's from anything/anywhere else is misinformation. Lilith is from Judaism, the end. But of course, expecting y'all to listen to and respect what Jews have to say is just asking too much.

[slyandthefamilybook]

trying to come up with something pithy or incisive but honestly I just got nothing

"I will worship the Christian god if people die" is where we're at now, I guess

[aching-joints]

Zenith is quite shy, considering his extracurricular activities, made for @herzblau's CAS challenge (and in turn also for the weird basement cult/religion (i still don't know what to call it) happening in my save).

Thank you, again, @pepeshiagent for tagging me.

I'm tagging @kagumiya, @zynoox, @notasimblr and @hymless! <3

No pressure to do it, just love seeing your sims!! I'm always feeling too shy to tag people, so if you want to do it, please do it anyway!!! There's more people I want to tag, but see above. 👉👈

[swordscleric]

I can't stop thinking about the post from a few days ago about how Critical Role has been great at doing personal faith but didn't put the necessary work in to discuss the religious/god angle of c3 in-depth. Like the fact that Cardinal Respa was linked to both the Dawnfather and the Chained Oblivion is, on a personal level, very interesting (fallen/corrupted priest goes hard) but like does that mean that there's a Papacy somewhere in Exandria dedicated to the Dawnfather? If so, are there more cardinals who ordain the bishops of the Dawnfather? Are there Conclave-level intrigues going on in the Dawnfather's Sistine Chapel? Why is the Dawnfather so Christianity-coded in vibes alone if there's no actual outline of his religious organisations? With Downfall the Dawnchild/Dawnfather thing makes the allusions to Christ as Son of God co-existing with the Father textual - was there a Dawnfather Schism around whether the Dawnchild was a separate mortal? Was there a Reformation about how the Dawnfather's Pope kept selling indulgences? Is that why the priest of the Dawnfather Grog & Pike offer a drink to doesn't partake because of a cultural shift between Protestant-Temperance-League-coded and Catholic-coded Dawnfather congregations? Why do I have so many questions about the religious organisation of one of the most important Prime Deities in Exandria and to Critical Role's 3 campaigns? How on earth were the cast (and us as the viewers!) meant to care about the gods if all they had were "really tall kings" instead of interrogating how religious organisations provide both a place of healing and community to a wide range of people and also a place of horrific harm and abuse for a wide range of people?

[canisalbus]

I just wanna say that your gay dogs have singlehandedly rekindled my obsession with the Renaissance, help

.

[hephaestiions]

receive

St Peter’s Basilica— Harry succumbs to design, tilts up, up, past the altar, the baldacchino, the soaring, ornate curve of the dome, to its glowing eye. Thirty-three years and the thrall of a watching father still holds: grand, benevolent, unresponsive. Passers-by amble past, chatting, bumping, apologising, Harry’s dead to them until the gasp cuts through the crowd, startling— Draco, Draco, Draco? 

Through the press of stopping-starting bodies, flesh yielding, irritated, to hurried elbows— there, ahead— behind?— stock still and arched in captivation, surreptitious glances brushing up against the line of him and cutting away. There: Draco, transfixed, at the foot of the Pieta. 

He jerks when touched, wide-eyed, strangely rumpled, then turns back to Mary’s stone-serene sorrow. Long minutes congeal with the unspoken.

“He looks heavy,” Draco murmurs, eventually. “To carry— like that.” 

“He is heavy,” Harry says. “He's made of marble.” 

Draco slants him a look, caustic, exasperated. It dissolves within seconds into the cliff’s edge of a smile. 

“The effect’s quite undercut when she’s a sobbing, ten-foot, bearded giant, you know. No—" he waves a hand at the scene, “— tranquillity to that production. Even Michelangelo couldn't save that one.” 

“Jesus Christ."

A beat of resigned silence. Mary maintains her calm. Draco says, “I’m not touching that one in a church.”

–

Later, wine-flushed, clawing at each other, palming through denim and corduroy, Harry moves for the bed, but Draco won’t let him. 

“Stay here,” Draco says, and Harry stills, standing. Draco drops, and the thud of his knees on the wooden floor is loud, louder than the clink of unbuckling, unzipping, a bell in Harry’s mind rung in unceasing echo.

He stays kneeling once it’s over, chest heaving, eyes downcast and trained on the toes of Harry’s boots. Harry grasps at the cool metal doorknob with one hand to struggle himself upright, other tilting Draco’s chin up, up, pushing his thumb into the slack, swollen bud of his mouth, resting it on his still-pulsing tongue. Draco’s eyes spasm shut, and his lips move, soundless, around the space Harry takes up inside. 

Harry pulls his thumb out, runs it, spit-slick, down the ruin of Draco’s jaw. “What did you say?” 

Draco stretches locked fingers above his head, brings them to rest between his spread thighs, knuckles sparse and white where they poke through his grip. The awful reverence in his open eyes spills into Harry's body, blood, soul, mangles the mocking drawl and lazy smile into something real: “Grace.” 

[cinnamon-flame]

Statues

Kinda ironic that you would bring someone to life just to take it away

aka When your soul gets so damaged that you turn your only friend into an ice sculpture (when she started her life as a statue to begin with)