#convincing me to do sin

[qfzeeph]

FORGIVE ME, FOR I HAVE SIN'D ;A;

[icannotgetoverbirds]

i still find it so darkly and ironically funny that my "mother" who i will be referring to as my former landlord from here on out always talked about how badly she wanted to be a mother growing up, and then proceeded to fumble the bag so badly that I've straight-up full-on disowned her. lmao. how do you fuck it up that badly. genuinely funny to me I'm not even joking

[essektheylyss]

ngl, mentioning one of my hyperfixations does not necessarily activate my trap card. mentioning a book or media that I LOATHED, on the other hand,

[cheerfullycatholic]

Hmm methinks that only telling people "that's a sin, repent and believe in Christ" is the opposite of helpful

I think how it's worded is important too, but that's not the point of the post

[idiiiiiiiiiiidit]

Deltarune AU where everything is normal at first, but then The Devil from Snapcube shows up

[benevolenterrancy]

Ianto in this? And maybe Tosh in a tux to play on Dinner and a Show?

Would love to know what undercover mission requires this get-up and how Ianto drew the short straw

(Owen isn't pictured as he immediately laughed himself sick upon seeing Ianto and had to be sent for a lie down)

[titsthedamnseason]

something just clicked in my brain i have no idea why i can’t stop thinking of them suddenly but ttpd has major blackstairs implications

[lost-signals-countdown]

Shadow the Hedgehog realtime fandub but Alex is Shadow and the Sunken is the Devil/Black Doom

[princess-of-the-corner]

So.

Hypothetically.

If I did write that uh. 'Rekindling' thing.

Would it make sense for it to be just Enji/Rei or should we have Midnight leading/supervising?

[voiddemon]

i wish i could be a succubus but instead i try to convince people to indulge in gluttony instead of lust. yes boy... consumee the 12 pack of iced sugar cookies from publix boy... hey boy i made you cheesecake and icecream... heres how you make some banging good potatoes and carrots in the oven easily boy... put some yummy steak on the grill... drink soda and play minecraft with me boy...

[codecicle]

u r so niceys 2 me. wh y

because you're a cool person who deserves it :-)

[not-poignant]

Looking forward to the new chapter of UtB! Also I learn a lot hearing your thoughts on fandom culture, and I was wondering why you think puritanism is getting stronger? Lately I’ve experienced it a lot both online and irl.

Hi anon,

I could write like a 10,000 word essay on why I think moral puritanism is getting stronger in the world, and how that intersects with increased moral panic, and 'anti' or fancop behaviour among fandom.

But I think there's more than one reason, and that at the centre of it, is the radicalisation of political extremes alongside the disdain for human life and education in the USA specifically. In non English-speaking cultures, antis are often considered a uniquely American phenomenon, for example. (They're not, but I do think some of the problems start there).

And from there it's necessary to look at:

The high presence of evangelist religion and their millions in USA politics in particular, and the influence this has on the news and government systems from the top down, affecting legislation, what we see on the media, what gets censored, who gets impacted (SESTA/FOSTA etc.) and so on. When companies like Paypal or similar say they won't support certain sites because they don't support sex workers or explicit artwork, we see extremist perspectives being normalised into the mainstream. Puritanism becomes baked into the system, and accepted as normal. And it has a domino effect, taking one thing away usually means to another thing being taken away, and by 'one thing' I usually mean like... equality, access to basic human rights, and more.

The presence of certain billionaire TERFs in UK politics actively working to destroy legislation over there gives a platform to hateful, bigoted extremists of all kinds, including Nazis (as seen in Australia recently, during a TERF event where Nazis turned up in open support). Also, I'd like to add that a lot of anti/fancop thinking is generally SWERF, anti-kink and eventually TERF in nature, and often homophobic and transphobic even when it's perpetuated by queer folk.

A long-term attack (we're talking over several decades now) on education (especially the humanities and any area that teaches critical thinking) including gutting the funding to libraries, colleges, high schools, primary schools and not increasing the pay of teachers, decreasing the general intelligence of US citizens in IQ tests across multiple metrics (except spatial reasoning). This, combined with the lack of emphasis on teaching nuance and critical thinking, means you get people primed to make didactic, black-or-white decisions and often are prone to radicalisation and black-or-white thinking. There's an increasing lack of ability to understand complex or even reasonably moderately complex thinking tasks. A great example of this was re: anti-vaxxers who said 'if masking works so well, why do you need vaccines' because there was a complete inability to understand that just because something works well, doesn't mean it works 100% of the time. There was a consistent inability too, to grok things like the swiss cheese model. That's not the only reason people are anti-vaxxers and there are some extremely smart people who are anti-vaxxers, but among broader populations, a lack of basic appreciation of nuance and risk mitigation in health was a huge issue. (And it's fairly easy to see this happening in many fandom discussions when we discuss how racism in fiction is generally not great, but that rape in fiction does not cause rape in reality.)

I know the above paragraph is long and unwieldy but it doesn't actually come close to capturing a lot of my thoughts on this so slafkjdsa it'll have to do though. The tl;dr is 'the government said philosophy and critical thinking isn't worth money, so a lot of people don't know how to do it, and anyone who can do it is often attacked or viewed with suspicion' (see also: The increasing suspicion and hostility towards experts in their field x.x). (Oh see also: A lot of people thinking YouTube videos count as 'valid research' for their viewpoints, and a lot of folks just...not ever learning how to research in general).

Something something social media privileging inflammatory and provocative takes as well as clickbait etc. encouraging people to often say things in the worst or least nuanced way possible.

The systemic attacks on democratic processes in the USA (and the UK and Australia and many other places).

The loudest and most obnoxious voices are often the people saying the stupidest shit. As in: It will feel like puritans are everywhere (and there's definitely more of them), but they're also just louder and getting more attention than they used to. It's misleading. Anti-vaxxers are actually a tiny minority for example, and antis are a minority in fandom, they're just...the loudest and the most willing to try and murder real people to defend the rights of fictional characters.

Er so. That's some of it anyway. There's more, absolutely, because I could talk about the presence of puritanism in a lot of levels of our experience/s, whether you're religious or not.

It's frustrating writing about this because I fall into the same trap of knowing that I can't talk about this in as nuanced a way as I want to, even if I get to do it in 1000 words instead of like, a miserable amount of characters on Twitter. Anyone thinking 'but it's not always like that!' or 'but not in every situation!' like trust me, I know. But if I sat here caveating everything that deserves a good caveat this post would blow out even more.

Basically if you try to stop educating your people as much, don't teach them how to research, debate or learn (yes, you have to learn how to learn), and don't give them access to basic needs, and gut your democracy/s, and the people at the top believe a fictional being cares if they're virgins or not or have abortions or not, and you don't care if people commit genocide against the children of your nation because that's not as important as the right to kill them in a moment of anger..., and you create a world where the children of your nation are primed to develop PTSD due to the fear of being gunned down while learning, you create a really great environment for radicalisation, extremism, the safety and comfort of puritanism (i.e. following very strict rules in the hope of fixing what's wrong with the world) while people look for a solution to why they feel so empty and hopeless in their lives.

[touchlikethesun]

— leviticus 20:13 on ao3

[featherymainffins]

I know that a lot of people are helped by someone saying something like "All humans deserve to make mistakes." or idk "You have a right to live, all humans do." but for me it just triggers my knee-jerk cult upbringing response and I go "Oh I'm not a human."

[red-dyed-sarumane]

i like to think apoptosis tries to lie to tenshi but tenshi cares too much & has figured her out pretty well & can see through most of it. i dont have much to support this beyond the fact theyre clearly heavily tied together across their songs.

[pineapple-lover-boy]

Gabriel was present at the first birth.

I’ve always felt bad for Eve as I’ve felt she was given the low end of the stick but come on.

Talk about a real punishment. Agonizing pain literally no one has ever felt before and some pompous dumbass comes around to ogle, degrade, and probably heave at you because the next thing in Earth’s history that would be as bloody as this would be your own son killing your other son.

Like shit, give our girl a break.