#its like not even the same religion it's a bunch of made up stuff the writer THINKS is islamic

[this-is-a-podcast-fanblog]

Begging writers to read a single book on a religion before they write a character of that religion <3

[angelliicc]

love warning

“la-la-la love warning, warning me so loud

it doesn’t stop, oh its my love”

masterlist

a/n HI GUYSS! this is my first ever fic i’ve wrote so please be nice. (im an editor yall) if yall want requests lmk and ill do it 😛😛 lowkey wanna write about my past crushes. also, the photos are NOTHING about the fic, its just the vibes it gives me the song/album i write about

warnings none

| “remember, you’re picking me up tomorrow”you and ellie have been friends since you can remember. “yes, i know. don’t worry i won’t leave without you.” ellie commented, dropping you off at home. you guys have grown up together, went to the same school, basically anything. you both have seen each other through the good and bad times and seeing your changes. ellie came out to you a few years ago, accepting her with open arms. you’ve been questioning about who you’re attracted to. you know you like girls, but didn’t know what to label yourself. you came out to ellie a few years back, a little after her. she knew immediately before you even told her.

as you walk through the front door, you greeter your family as you’ve been at ellies house. you could’ve been there longer, but your mother wanted you back since it was a school night. you walked to your room, makeup all cakey, clothes slightly dirty, and hair frizzy. immediately, you walked in and plopped on your bed, like you’ve been separated from your room in weeks. night fell, and you dozed off into a deep sleep. forgetting to take off your makeup, shower, or even change.

you woke up the next morning slightly late, rushing to get ready. you realized about your early sleep the previous night by the looks of your face. you showered, put your uniform on, and did your makeup all within a span of 30. you rushed out the door then arrived at school, heading to the café. you opened the door and saw ellie sitting at a table by herself, looking like she has been waiting for you since the minute you got there. “well you’ve had a morning.” she comments seeing you as you sat across from the table. “i woke up late, shut up. what time did you get here?” you asked, since shes been looking bored until you arrived. “around 30 minutes ago, why?” “no reason. what classes do you have today?” you asked her. you and ellie only had 3 out of 7 classes, which was p.e., math, and biology. even tho 3 was a bummer to both of you, it was still better than nothing. “religion, p.e., english and sports med.” even though you played basketball, sports med didn’t really interest you, maybe later it can. you both went your separate ways, off to your classes

the final bell rang and you were the first person out of the building. it was the end of the day and you were looking for ellie. it was hard to notice her, with a bunch of high schoolers running out of a building just to head home, until you saw her auburn hair. “els, im going home with you today.” she rolled her eyes in a sarcastic way. “once again, i remembered.” you both walk together to the student parking lot going to ellies car. “how was class?” you bring up. “ugh, absolute torture. im so tempted to drop out.” she responded miserably. “if you actually drop out i will beat your ass.” “whatever.” you open the back seat, leaving your stuff in the back. before you can even put your hand on the handle, ellie opens the door for you. oh? you think to yourself. it was probably a friendly gesture, dont read into it.

ellie drives you back to her place. god you can never get tired of being with her or going places with her. you both get out the car and head up to your room. “got homework?” she asks curiously, as if she were up to something. “nah, i finished it at school.” “nerd.” “fuck off.” you both laugh and giggle. you go onto her bed, placing your backpack down. you look at ellie, she looks so…so… you can’t even describe it. but the way she looked in that moment. it made your heart flutter. she sat down next to, crossing your legs. “oh, i forgot to ask you this yesterday.” she mentions. “talking to anyone right now?” the question kinda made you felt lonely. you see everyone with their partners doing the lovey dovey shit, feeling like you will never be able to do that. “oh, no.” you commented disappointingly. “you?” you questioned. “no.” she replied without a care. “why so blue?” she notices your change in mood after she asked. “its nothing, trust me.” “hey. look at me.” she cups your chin and brings it up. your eyes lock, never separating. “talk to me.” you were in a gaze, day dreaming. too distracted by the soft touch of her, and the warmth of her hands. her green eyes that she locked yours with.

the small moment felt like an eternity, and you wish you could’ve stayed there forever. you were so lost you couldn’t even form words, until you were slapped back to reality. “oh. um sorry. its just that i feel like i’ll never find love someday, you know?” you rambled. ellie listened to every word you said, not taking her eyes off you. she looked at you, getting closet with every word you said. she looked at your eyes, then to your lips. you looked at her bright reddish-pink lips. you were so close you can feel each and every breath both of you took. your body temperature rose as the tension grew. you both were too lost into the moment, until something overcame ellie. she grabbed your face, and leaned in for a kiss. she was so, sweet. like strawberry kisses. you grabbed her neck, returning the gesture. you felt her body temperature, and your heart was pounding faster and faster. “i don’t think you’ve known how long i wanted to do that for.” she spoke to you. “i’m glad you did. im so deprived of touch.” you shot back. “oh? is that so?” she said, getting even closer than you two were already were.

she pulled you in again, taking her time making sure the kiss was making you feel comfortable, and not so deprived. your hands were at her waist, enjoying every moment of it. “i love you.” she spoke. “i love you too.”

the warning that keeps warning, let it ring.

[thatringboy]

A Body Built for an Undeserving Soul, A Boothill Theory

My definitely sober thoughts while grinding for the eventual Ruan Mei rerun and writing some robinhill have led me to a startling train of thought. I’ll do my best to sound sane as I say this, but the 18 minute discord voice memo I originally made is definitely anything but. Spoilers for Boothill’s backstory, character stories, and other lore, and no I’m not really gonna be citing things because it’s 3 in the morning and I’m high. If at any point I say something that isn’t really supported by canon, please be nice i’m a little silly boy

Anyways

I don’t think Boothill is a Pathstrider.

Let me cook, please. Here’s my reasons why:

The way he talks about Aeons and Paths

The way his body is designed

And 3.

Enjoy the madness below the cut

So, there’s not really a proper way to word any of this without it being an ADHD word vomit. Bear with me. Please.

Penacony has been a fantastic update for those of us waiting for worldbuilding. We’ve learned a LOT about the many factions in the cosmos, the true nature of the IPC, the powers of the Aeons, and that the Paths are tangible things in the universe. The Luofu arc opened up a bit about this, but since it was so focused on The Hunt and The Abundance and The Permanence, we sort of fell back into the same story beats as the Herta Station arc. Either way, Penacony has been amazing for little lore bugs like me.

So what does this have to do with the wild claim that Boothill somehow isn’t a Pathstrider?

Let’s touch some grass for a minute and consider our places in the irl universe. Hi, I’m Perseus, a young transmasculine white adult guy from South Texas who grew up reading too many Rick Riordan books and now has a complicated relationship with both the christian god and the greek gods. It’s an autism special interest of mine to learn about the greek pantheon and while I don’t know everything about it, I’m a silly little guy and can recite fun facts about dozens of gods. I can also recite fun facts about the christian bible and christian mythology because I was forced to study christianity when I was younger. Nice to meet y’all. Now, when I, Perseus, talk to people about the various religions I know a thing or two about, I infodump. A lot. I think I once ranted about Dionysus for 20 minutes before my sister told me to shut up. It happens.

Now focus back in on the important topic: the fictional cyborg with jiggle physics. I’m working purely on memory, but I’m pretty sure when he first meets Dan Heng and Pom-Pom, he does go on a spiel about the Aeons and Paths as he tries to prove his identity as a Galaxy Ranger and Acheron’s identity as Not a Galaxy Ranger. The way he describes The Hunt, The Nihility, Emanators, and Paths, it all just sounded… i don’t know, canned? It came across as very emotionally disconnected, even as he talked about The Hunt, but he was saying all the right words. Like someone who studied a religion but isn’t actually a part of the religion. 

On its own, this means absolutely nothing besides just reminding us of his home planet’s hostile takeover by Qlipoth-worshiping IPC workers. If you haven’t seen the post yet, I really recommend reading the So, Honkai: Star Rail made a cyborg cowboy... an INDIGENOUS cyborg cowboy. post by @ahworm I’ll link it here, please check it out because it recontextualized a lot of how I viewed Boothill’s actions and mannerisms

So the way Boothill talks about the Path he should be a Pathstrider of sounds more like an encyclopedia than a follower. Now, maybe this can be explained by the fact that Galaxy Rangers aren’t the most zealous bunch, especially when standing next to the Xianzhou Alliance who worship Lan as a deity more than The Hunt itself. The Galaxy rangers are the opposite, they are hunters first and last regardless of what Lan in THEIR “greatness” does.

But if Boothill is just a normal Galaxy ranger (whatever that means), then how does he recognize the Jade Abacus of Allying Oath instantaneously? Dan Heng’s barely put the damn thing on the table and Boothill’s already jaw on the floor amazed. One could make the argument that, well, Boothill’s a well-traveled guy, of course he’d know the most valuable artifact to his Path. To that, I say: there’s more to it.

Boothill’s main accusation against Acheron in the beginning is, what? “An Emanator that shouldn’t exist.” He talks about The Nihility and Device IX the same way he talks about The Hunt; learned and detached in an agnostic way. He’s aware these are real concepts and beings, he’s crossed paths with an Emanator of Elation before so he can’t deny the existence of literal gods in the universe

We also know that it’s canon in the star rail universe that there are planets who haven’t heard of the Aeons before, like Sigonia - Aventurine’s planet. Instead of Aeons, we know the Avgins worshiped the goddess Giathra Triclops. I’ve seen the argument that Giathra is just another name for Xipe since THEY have three faces, but Aventurine’s flashbacks are very clear in showing that the worship of Giathra was very different from the worship of Aeons. We don’t know much about Aeragan-Epharshel, but from how the IPC described the indigenous people as needing civilization and other disgusting things (not to mention how they forced a synesthesia beacon into boothill when he was maybe like a teenager? And then his brain nearly broke from the influx of information?), I think it’s safe to say that the tribes of Aeragan-Epharshel also didn’t follow any specific Aeon.

But Aventurine is now a Pathstrider of Preservation, so why can’t Boothill be a Hunter Pathstrider too? Well, dear reader, allow me to bash my head against the wall trying to form words. Aventurine doesn’t believe anything about the sovereignty of The Preservation, just like the rest of the Stonehearts. He has his agenda, and if he has to play Preservation to do so, then he will. I think Boothill is the same, which is also why I can’t wait to see what happens in the upcoming quests with the two of them in the same room. That being said, Aventurine’s Preservation powers only come from his Cornerstone, crafted by an Emanator of Preservation. It’s how he and Topaz and Jade can all be such different people but all be classified as Pathstriders of Preservation, the sheer proximity to an Emanator’s powers canonically give them powers equivalent to actual Pathstriders.

So… what about Boothil? This leads me into my next point: Boothill’s cyborg body. By looking at his Character Story Part 3, we learn that Boothill VOLUNTARILY became a cyborg to become stronger. He literally shed the skin and name from an ancient, dead tongue to become a real loaded gun. His voice lines in combat talk about death a lot, his name literally is in reference to a graveyard - this man cannot wait to finally die in some sort of blaze of glory and vengeance. I say that with a little bit of sarcasm, but Boothill designed his body to be a weapon. 

In a lot of parts of the USA, it’s illegal to even insinuate that you have a firearm as that constitutes as the crime of  “armed robbery”, even if you don’t even have a gun. The threat alone is enough to warrant a higher penalty. But Boothill is already a great shot with a gun, why does he also need augmented teeth and crosshair eyes and hips that can fold his body into any sinful shape he needs? Because the threat alone is enough to give him power over his prey. Almost as if he’s compensating for a lack of magic godly powers. He needs to be able to keep up with even the strongest IPC goons, to pierce their Preservation shields with his bullets so that he can get closer and closer to Oswaldo Schneider.

But how can I prove that Boothill doesn’t have any Path magic? Well, let’s take a spin around his character model. What’s that thing sitting snugly against his exposed asscheek? His pistol? But that’s not weird, Perseus, most cowboys hold their guns there!

But what other playable character has their weapon on their actual model like him?

There are so many in-game cutscenes showing that, canonically, the Pathstriders summon their weapon from some sort of unseen storage or hammerspace. I like the term hammerspace, let’s use that. The playable Pathstriders all use hammerspace to easily summon their weapons. None of them actually carry their weapons on their model. Even Welt Yang has scenes of him summoning his herrscher cane (I’ve never played hi3 please forgive me for using incorrect terms) from his hammerspace. But not Boothill. He has his arm gun and he has his trusty 9 millimeter pistol on his little slutty hip. His idle animations involve reloading his weapons and putting them back on his person. No particle effects, no vanishing tricks, just a man sticking his tongue out to catch a bullet for a snack.

So what have we learned?

Boothill doesn’t have an emotional connection to his Path, it most likely is just the Path he figured met his needs and decided the philosophy was good enough

Boothill’s body is designed to perform specifically to kill Pathstriders, especially sturdier Pathstriders of The Preservation

Boothill either can’t or won’t use the same hammerspace the other canonical Pathstriders use

Each point by themself means nothing, or can be chalked up to unique character designs. But together? My intoxicated mind theorizes that Boothill is not a Pathstrider, merely a broken man trying to play the game according to the rules of the oppressors that colonized his planet and bombed his tribe into reservations and the dirt. Thank you for your time.

[cconfusedkat]

Wanted to infodump a bit about mystic pursuit Shamura's character :-Dc

So apart from being not only the eldest sibling of the bishops as well as (or really 'used to') being the most intellectual and rational one, things weren't always like that beforehand

Growing up in silk cradle they had heavy expectations being considered a gifted child and a prodigy. Constant stresses back and forth with juggling different tasks, with the most important one of all: the church (cirice).

Shamura grew up in not only just a family who only 'cared' about ther achievements all at 16 years old, but they were very religious to a point where even silk cradle itself was most likely the most religious domain there was out of the other six (including archangelo and columbidae, with their own religions regarding the archangelic sheep and paloma,,)

One day, shamura snapped against the cirice, that no one to this day knew they were the one that burnt the church down. Their pastor was the only one inside the building as well, and they hated him. They didn't know why or what motivated them to burn the cirice down

But boy was it fun for them to get away with something so insane and unexpected of an angry 16 year old who was sooooo calm and peaceful ???????? Riiiight ????????

It was an 'everyday feels the same' type deal that eventually lead them to realize what they did, thus dissapearing for a week into the caverns out of fear their family would imprison them. Their (biological) family never made a guess about it, so they didn't have much to worry about OTHER than that heavy burden they carried over burning down a sacred building,,, oops

When they fled to the caverns and got stuck there just in the same week, that's where they found the purple crown,, the purple crown latched onto their head immediately after shamura placed their claw onto it.

After they return from the caverns with a bunch of bruises on their body as well as a dirtied outfit, their family caught them and scolded shamura. It wasn't until their family actually started to like,, care about them seriously when shamura began to cry from not being able to take their crown off ,, shamura wasnt allowed to have emotions nor were they allowed to express their thoughts without permission (which lead to 16 years of major stress and lack of proper care about themself ,,, being the smartest child with heavy expectations had lead them to not make the smartest decisions for themself ,,, they were very lanky and often extremely tired where they passed out randomly out of forgetting to eat and doing things to . Yknow . Take care of themself)

But with the purple crown.... of both war AND wisdom..... they began to lack the ability to needing to do anything normal for mortals. Thats when their family grew more concerned for them. They didnt need to eat anymore, they didnt need to sleep anymore—hell, they didnt even need to worry about their mental health AND emotions. What good did that all matter when they were an infant bishop recognized by the gods? Everyone was below them now.

Though unfortunately this lead to like. A religious psychosis? If you dont know what religious psychosis is its mainly the hallucinations and beliefs of being the next chosen one,, stuff like that,, they sorta began to grow a god complex from actually having the power of learning all the wisdom in the world along with the art of war

Sometimes they did still miss their old life. Now they were 18 and on the run from their hometown,, eventually just. Bumping into heket and kallamar who found eachother first.

^ (heket ran away from her hometown because there was a voice telling her to meet "someone" who had a dire urge to meet her, while kallamar swam his way out of his hometown because he was trying to swim his way up to the mainlands. The two siblings were the first ever bishops to find eachother)

But if were gonna talk about after indoctrination shamura? They dont remember ANY of this. Not their twisted childhood, not their genocidal bishop form, and not who they were before. Ever since they were born, they've been dying.

Yeahhhh, so ,long story short, the first time they burned down their cirice/church which was sacred, thats where everything went wrong for them 😭 they lost their sanity even more for the millenia they spent away from narinder from locking him away, and being the one to implement the torture/execution method of beheading people,,,

Its not like they completely forgot everything unfortunately,, they often find themself staring at the scars on allures neck and tracing over them ,, allure finds it ticklish and funny that shamura does that but shamura isnt doing that just to like. Get a reaction out of Allure. Theyre doing that because its subconscious and they claim to feel a guilt that they dont know how to describe

Same for narinders scarring on his body; narinder has stitches on his arms, hands, elbows, legs, knees, thighs, tail split into four sections, literally just about everywhere theres stitching for him ,,,,

because on the day of the betrayal , when narinder fell down to his knees and cried for forgiveness after realizing the injuries hes given to his siblings ,,, shamura grabbed narinders scythe of death and proceeded to not only cut off and behead Narinder but they were so angry and no one stopped them that they literally gave him the most brutal death ??????

So shamura still often finds themself tracing their claws over narinders stitching ,,,, narinder didn't like anyone touching him because of the fear hes grown over physical touch but after some years hes managed to grow okay with phys touch ,,, unlike allure who doesnt question them , narinder knows why theyre always so levitant towards any presentation of scars or keloid bumps etc ,, because they cant help but feel melancholic over it

Melancholic is a weird word to use, but its genuinely how they feel ,plus physical touch had managed to be a major love language for them anyways because they often feel lost and feel no sense of direction on a daily

Leshys love language also happens to phys touch !! So as much as shamura scolds him ,they often hold his arm or hand ,,, wondering if that was how it felt to hold little leshys hand again ,,, They still look at leshy like hes a baby 😭😭 ...

Anyways this is their song-andddd i also wanted to make an animatic with the first min and 42 seconds with it soon so >:-]

[goodboyaudios]

Is it possible to give us a general resume of the Triad?

Like what's it's social standards? Why does it exist? What's it's purpose in society? When did this whole "doing things in the backgrounds(like sub-delta)" even start? Were they always like this?

Y'know, stuff like that.

Pls?? :3

The Triad's original purpose was to give hope to a world that was facing mass hysteria.

At the time, New Tennessee, the planet, had been split in half by cosmic horrors from Untempora called Leviathans and with it, half the population of the world had been consumed.

People were frightened as the Paladin King had met an untimely demise leading his black crusade into the abyss.

During this time, the women of New Tenessee who had been put in the position of taking care of the sick rather than helping to fight on the front lines, were forced to handle the panicked civilians and soldiers who truly believed this would be their end.

These women were the backbone of sanity for the paladins as they faced the unknown horrors now residing in the mantle of their world. The leading women were the many wives of the now deceased Paladin King. They introduced a religion and the concepts of theism in order to stir the hopes of the people. And thus the Triad of the 3 gods was born.

This might seem farfetched to a lot of you, but to a people that are desperate to stay alive, these ideals sparked and became incredibly popular among the citizens. But it wasn't enough.

The wives of the king recognized that, while their religion had brought hope, it would only be a matter of time before belief faded to anarchy once again. So, they studied and researched the artifacts found on the planet when it was first found. Within them, the found the knowledge of mental sciences. They learned to control the minds of their warriors to keep their minds from slipping into insanity as they fought. They did recognize this inhumane manipulation of the human mind as dark magic, so they disguised it as "the will of the gods coursing through the bodies of their beloved warriors".

One clan in particular willingly submitted their entire family to this "supreme will". This clan was Clan Mirio. This, of course, was not known to Ahlanaas, who was currently in the thick of it, fighting monsters for his countrymen, who he'd assumed were doing just fine. You know how that story goes though, of course.

From then until now, the Triad opted to be the true voice of the Paladins, preaching their holy ideals. But they knew that, to a bunch of punch-happy, battle hymn chanting men, they would need a male figure as their leader. Something for future cannon fodder to look up to and be inspired by. Someone for the word of the gods to enact through, at least to the masses eyes. The Triad elected to stay in the shadows, while a new Paladin King rose among the ranks.

By the way, that someone would've been Athion Blightfinder or Ahlanaas Mirio, but both of them mysteriously disappeared.

While the Paladin King acts as the figure everyone looks up to, the future wives that make up the triad is the real governing force, pulling strings behind the scenes. And whenever they screw up, they pin it on the king, absolving them of all blame.

The Triad's idea to ostracize bastard children, comes from multiple motivations. The first, obviously, is to have a test pool to experiment on without anyone truly caring. The second is to keep men loyal to their wives. For if they dare to step out of line, their "others" will be forcibly removed from the picture.

The incident with Mirio also made them realize that the men should never be allowed to read, lest the anger of mankind be turned on them.

For women its okay, because if a woman ever found out, no man would believe her, but the Triad would believe her...and that's how they'd get them indoctrinated into joining them. By forcing women and men to turn on each other. If a man ever found out...he'd never be able to trust or even look at a woman the same way.

Did I ever mention that Albus is sexist? I thought I made it obvious in the story, but I just wanted to double check lol

Hope that explains everything!

[mask131]

While I'm at it, because I just had a little beef with a fanatical Christian who couldn't believe I was born in a Christian setting because I had a pentagram as an icon (you see the kind of person)... [Edit: For more details they were a clearly antisemitic Orthodox person who, after refusing to believe I was anything else than Jew, atheist or a devil-worshiper, starting lashing out at me when I said I had a Catholic upbringing saying I was the cause of the crusades and the reason Hitler was alive, yada yada, you know the kind of crazy religious person]

So I decided to have a brief Christianity talk. Not much but just this:

If you ask me, yes, there is a Christian mythology, even though people do not like this term - because there is a bunch of Christian legends and Christian myths that form a Christian folklore and a set of Christian tales with distant, weak or inexistant links to ACTUAL Christian teachings, rites and the actual Christian religion.

And I do believe that folk-Christianity is a fascinating thing that deserves to exist alongside official, actual Christianity. Santa Muerte, and the local saint celebrations, and strange Christmas and Epiphany beliefs, and this story about God and Saint Peter getting drunk at a farmer's house, and the fairytale about Jesus and the Virgin Mary throwing the devil and his wife in an oven to save the girls they wanted to eat... Anyway, no matter how much one can try to destroy folk-Christianity it will always survive because it was centuries and centuries of rites and beliefs spread across several continents, and you can't destroy that easily.

The thing that many people do not get is that a lot of what is Christianity today was completely made up. There's not a lot of Christianity today that was originally in the Bible. There's a lot of Christianity as practiced by the first Christians that was lost. The dates and meanings of celebrations like Easter, All Hallows Day or Christmas kept changing all year long. Lots of saints were completely invented. Don't even get me started on the apocryphal Gospels!

This is why studying and understanding the history and evolution of a religion always allow one to be more understanding of what the religion currently is and what is actually an "option" in it. Religions never stayed the same thanks to times changing, scholarly debates, schisms dividing it into various branches, political and economical forces being at play, translations from one country to the next - and that's not just true for Christianity, but also for all other religions. Islam, Judaism, Buddhism... They all had their own evolution, they all are today very different from what they started as, and to better understand them one needs to learn of their past, what they were, what they still are, what they're not anymore. Heck, today there are talks in India of kicking out and banishing all Buddhists when the religion started there! But now, Buddhism's main nations are China and Japan, and its Indian roots almost entirely forgotten...

Fanatics usually fail to do this study of their own religion's history and evolution, because they imagine that the past was just always a carbon-copy of the present, and that their beliefs stayed unmovable monolith coming straight from God (or whatever principle they follow) instead of something that went through centuries of men and women and governments.

Just look at why and how Protestantism came to be. People realized the Church had added a lot of stuff that wasn't there when Christians first appeared, and decided to return to the "original" Christianity, rejecting all the added, invented stuff. Like the celibacy of priests: Christians priests married and had children in the first centuries following the Christ's death. And the only reason Catholic priests took a vow of celibacy and virginity was because of economic concerns with inheritance matters. Jesus never asked those that followed him to never have children or never marry or never have sex.

Or take the existence of Purgatory! Completely invented by the Church around the Middle-Ages, never spoke about by the Christ or part of the original Christian religion, then quickly removed a few centuries later as a non-existent, borderline heretical superstition, and that yet survived in folk-Christianity, and then in popular culture.

In conclusion, I would have to say that there is one book that made me realize a lot of things about religion as a whole, and that convinced me to go from Catholic-Christian to simply deist. Terry Pratchett's book "Small Gods", which exactly put into words my feelings about the world: there is a difference between religion and organized religion. There is a difference between belief and the organizations built around this belief, between faith and the hierarchy created around this faith. The Church is like a shell that was built around the turtle that is the faith/belief/god - and sometimes, when the shell becomes too big and too heavy or too unfit for the creature it hosts, it smothers, hurts and kills the faith/belief/god, until there is only the shell. And people stop referring to the turtle, and only speak and interact with the shell.

This is the perfect explanation of how Jesus only preached peace and love and friendship and forgiveness, and its priests later invented the Inquisition and caused the witch-hunts.

[boochanz]

Like what?? Regarding your last post.

i am going to add tws to the tags but i want to warn in advance that some of this stuff is particularly graphic and difficult to read !!!

like the ‘international day of jihad’ that an angry ex-muslim who promised to take the religion down days prior decided was going to happen, based on his translations of a video that was private shortly after (so … take his word for it!). he told a bunch of gun-toting maniacs who follow him because they hate muslims that the muslims were going to blow everything up, so be ready! you know what happened? protests across the united states. that was the big scary ‘day of jihad’.

you know how they responded to people standing around with signs and saying ‘palestine will be free?’ with rage. by publicly stating that they should all be deported or killed. that it’s a mockery of 9/11. that you don’t come to their country (being the US — plenty of them were born here?) and disrespect them. that they have guns and they’re not afraid to use them. oh, and i’m forgetting the countless palestinians ICE visited that day, and the countless mosques conducting their friday sermons & prayers like they do every week that were of particular interest for the FBI.

none of the people threatening to shoot muslims on sight were of any interest, of course.

also, the amount of videos i’ve seen of anything remotely threatening captioned ‘day of jihad’ and you guessed it — there’s a context label right underneath it stating that the video is years old and completely unrelated to the situation at hand. but people don’t care because it’s another way to completely demonize muslims and bring into question the ‘true motive’ of islam & muslim’s beliefs

nobody calls into question why on the ‘day of jihad’ alongside our peaceful protests, muslim children were stabbed to death for existing. or had their lives threatened for daring to be visible to angry and vile people. it makes you wonder — whose day to cause death and destruction was this really?

or the way it is so easy for anyone to hear that muslims or an organization that is even remotely muslim-affiliated killed babies, or raped and tortured a tourist before parading her corpse around, or or or … and they IMMEDIATELY go with it even despite the claim being completely unsubstantiated. israel themselves have admitted that they have no knowledge of hamas ‘beheading babies’. the woman everyone is still talking about — she’s alive. turns out they weren’t parading her around, they were taking her to a hospital. a complete stranger made the effort to get into contact with her mother to let her know she was safe. israelis themselves have spoken out saying that palestinian fighters promised not to hurt them, made sure they were protected and left them alone. yet we are still talking about the same fucking beheaded babies and the same dead people who either never existed or have strongly fabricated stories

and what’s really fucking insane to me is that some of the most vile stories we’ve heard about what palestine has done are old stories from palestinians about what israelis did to THEM. those stories got no attention. you change the skin tones around, flip the narrative, retell the story unsubstantiated with an arab as the criminal, as the one committing atrocities, and everyone spreads it.

exhibit a:

it’s the same deal when you say hamas kept israeli children in cages and everyone believes it. the proof, of course, is a picture of palestinian children being kept in cages. or how in the media, israelis are referred to as being ‘killed’ and palestinians simply ‘die’ or how jamie lee curtis took to instagram posting a photo of how tragically afraid israelis were and you guessed it, it’s a picture of palestinians! one worth tens of thousands of likes. one can’t even scrape its way to 700. guess which is which?

my point overall is that anyone can take the plight and the tragedies that the palestinian people have endured for far too long, and they can document it and post it for all to see and it will be ignored. however, if you take the same proof of what they have been going through, and you flip the narrative… you call the palestinians ‘israelis’, and you condemn palestine for what they are doing to them… immediately, it receives attention and criticism. but it was so easy to turn a blind eye when people were under the impression that the other party was suffering.

which is why i say that a lot of this is a poorly masked excuse to be islamophobic & to hate arabs. because it’s not acceptable to hate people for no reason anymore! but, if we have sad sad little photos of all the bad bad things they’re doing, then we can hate them and we can justify the brutal killing of them. even if the things we use to hate them are actually proving why we should fight for them because it is literally their plight just with a different caption on it… we can turn a blind eye toward that part and pretend. right? right! 😇 the second you turn the oppressed into the oppressor, because the oppressed is brown… everyone buys into it without question. it’s the propaganda machine at its finest.

i don’t have the mental energy to delve further into this unfortunately — there’s more. a lot more. there will always be more. but a friend of mine @jeonwonwoo has posted a bit on the matter including some great insight into just how far the shameless propaganda goes (hiii zaynab). it’s worth a look imo

hope this helps

[lycanlovingvampyre]

MAG 175 Relisten

Activity on my first listen: cutting the French tamarisk in my garden.

Ahh, love the sirens, they sound very similar to the typical nuclear alarm sirens. I really like that tone, it's relaxing I think... which is absolutely not what these were made for, lol... It also reminds be a bit of 28 Days/Weeks Later, because that song, In a House in a Heartbeat, is often mashed up with those sirens.

I think the idea of mainly describing what items or animals would look like in an post-apocalyptic wasteland is cool!

That warped sound of a croaking bird during the book section is really cool!

"Item: A laughable umbrella." This has to be the absolute best statement section there is xD That poor umbrella! What's it done to deserve this S1 prick!Jon treatment?

"A human bone, that much is clear; too big to be a child’s, at least. Can a bone seem familiar? The shape of it echoing through your mind, like a face seen only in dreams? It may be followed up to a ribcage." Oh, actually, that reminds me... What happened to Jon's rib when he exploded Jared? Did it just vanish with him? Probably, since it doesn’t come up again. Any funny headcanons?

[A STEP, SOME GROANING, THE JANGLE OF BAGS, AND CREAKING OF WHAT IS PRESUMABLY A COUCH AS MARTIN SITS.] JON: "How is it?" MARTIN: "Great! (creak from the couch) It’s great. Lovely couch." There is also liquid to be heard whenever Martin moves on the couch, though I don't know if there's just a puddle supposed to be at Martin's feet or if the couch itself protrudes some sort of liquid... Either way, there is so much regret in Martin's voice and he is just too stubborn to admit it XD

JON: "Right. Well, rest up, I suppose!" MARTIN: "It’s two-seater!" JON: (you are not getting me on that thing) "Yes it is!" [BRIEF PAUSE, IN WHICH THERE IS A SLIGHT AMUSED EXHALE AND ANOTHER CREAK OF THE COUCH.] JON (CONT’D): "Hard pass, thank you." Martin be like "Pls, share this regret with me!!!" xD Or maybe he genuinely wanted a bit of cuddle time with Jon... just maybe... xD

MARTIN: (creak as he shifts) "So it was real then, the Extinction?" JON: "Of course it was real – A-At least in the sense that – it was a thing people feared. Whether it was strong enough in its own right to be considered at a level with Smirke’s Fourteen, or – whether it was on its way to getting there, I – maybe. This sort of thing is always muddy." Still hung up on Smirke's categorization. I've heard theories/headcanons before, that it didn't even had to be 14 marks on Jon, and that just a bunch of them would have sufficed, since dividing the fears is really muddled anyway. So it wouldn't have mattered, if the Extinction had emerged in a bigger way, not for the mass ritual. I generally like that idea.

JON: "But – mostly he was just like anyone else who tried to take the scope of human terror and – (small inhale) package it neatly into little theories." Yeah, that.

MARTIN: "D’you know if – like – gods, religion, the afterlife, all that stuff. Do you know if any of that was real?" JON: (exhale, a bit amused) "Really rolling out the big questions today." MARTIN: "Sorry, it’s just – this place just brings it out in me, I guess." [SLIGHT STATIC KICKS IN AGAIN.] JON: "If there is a god, or gods, or an existence beyond this world, the Eye can’t see it. It sees the fear of it, but – nothing of its truth." Super cool, that this was acknowledged and got really good, believable dodge!

MARTIN: (cutting him off) "I, I know what you meant! I can still be keen to see our friends!" Friends, plural! So Martin does consider Daisy a friend? He did spend some time with her post coffin, so he definitely noticed she had changed, but still Jon spend a lot more time with her. Still nice to see, that it actually was the Lonely talking, when he pushed Daisy away, telling her none of them are actually friends... Also! Jon does prepare Martin here for what’s to come. I think if he already suspected Trevor to also arrive at the same time, he would have told Martin in time. Since that is something that Jon gets criticized for. I think it was actually just bad luck in timing. But yeah, we’ll get to that part in a bit. 

@a-mag-a-day

[solradguy]

I'm kinda scared of saying I kin anything because I'm not sure how that works. if it's not too much trouble, could you explain it to me, please?

Ah man... It's complicated and the identity itself is massively decentralized so I'll do my best to kind of explain what I've been able to dig up and what it means to me. Most of this information was gathered from essays written by therians or animal/mythological beasts kin. There is not much information about or written by fictionkin, which is... a complex source of frustration for me.

So, at its core, otherkin is a spiritual identity. Nearly every essay I've read on it has very clearly stated in the opening paragraph that the author is fully aware that they are not physically the thing they are kin with. But there's this deep connection to the thing they kin ("resonance") that goes beyond it just being a way to say that character/animal/concept/etc is their absolute favorite. One essay I read ("We are spirits of another sort") that did touch on fictionkin a little described it as being an archetypal or metaphorical identity alongside being a spiritual one.

For example, with my relation to Sol, obviously I'm not actually physically him, he isn't real, and I wouldn't want to ever go through the things he's been through. But still it's uncanny how relatable he is and it's easy to sort of filter or explore myself through him, I guess. This is something I didn't realize I did with characters throughout my whole life until recently with Sol. It started as a bunch of jokes my friends made at my expense (lovingly, I promise) which made me look into otherkin stuff more and, yeah, that's apparently what this is.

To some people this identity can feel extremely real though. A sense that maybe in a past life they were the animal they have a connection to now as a human is a common one. Recurring themes in dreams too. Some others even get phantom limb sensations to varying degrees for limbs humans don't generally have (wings, tails, absent horns or antlers, etc). Not everyone gets these and those that do don't always experience them the same way. I get some of these but I'm not going to elaborate on them on this blog. This part of the identity specifically makes me wish there was a real scientific study done on it since there's definitely something neurological going on here.

I suppose if you see a lot of yourself in a character/animal/whatever then you might also be a type of otherkin too. I highly recommend looking for information on this identity outside of Tumblr though. Its meaning has been distorted a bit on here and there's a lot of weird drama around it with very little actual conversation. Making a private sideblog or journal to try to sort out your feelings and thoughts towards what you think you might be kin of has helped me a lot too.

There are essays on otherkin.net that I found useful in my initial dive into this in their featured articles tab:

For something slightly less anecdotal, "We are spirits of another sort" by Joseph P. Laycock was also informative. It's on JSTOR and you'll have to sign in to an institution to read/download it but I can upload a PDF of it somewhere tomorrow if you don't have a method of reading it for free.

A couple otherkin/therians have Neocities sites with essays on their experiences too. Doing a search for "otherkin" should bring them up. I'm replying to this on mobile or I'd link some, sorry...

Even if you read a lot about it or try applying the identity label to yourself for a bit and it doesn't work out, just remember that that's alright. It's good to test out and explore things and with something "open source" like otherkinity, there truly is no "wrong" way to identify with it. Just do what feels right or most comfortable to you.

Some briefer definitions:

Otherkin: This is a blanket term for all these kinds of identities but most often means someone kin with an animal, mythological beast (dragons, unicorns, demons, etc), or concept (weather patterns, inanimate objects). Conceptkin seem especially fringe.

Fictionkin: Otherkin with a fictional character or species. Formerly called "mediakin".

Therian: An exclusively animal-based identity. Almost shamanistic? The reincarnation aspect seems strongest with therians, with a feeling of an animal soul displaced in a human body.

[tetsunabouquet]

I am reading articles before going to bed but the comment section of one is keeping me awake.

Its an article about the decline of America, and cue the stupid Americans defending their country. There was literally one comment about 'how great the US is', listing all the great things that they have bestowed the world, like Facebook, Instagram and FRENCH fries.

How stupid can you be to see the term 'French' and be like, 'yeah that is American'. Technically there are a few countries claiming they were the first but none of them is the US

It's especially epic cringe levels every time they are trying to discuss and compare themselves to other countries. There are not one, but two comments from people saying stuff about Japan's 'lack of cultural influence' when Japan's comic and animation industries have been beating the Americans for the past few years.

Don't even get me started on them comparing the US to historical European empires. There is one in particular that is talking about the fall of the Roman empire, but its not what happened at all, they literally mention nothing of Germanic tribes and the dawn of the Frankish empire which is what primarily caused their fall. I mention before I was raised and have roots in the Dutch south, where the tribe who initiated the start of the Germanic rebellion lived. 2000 years later and we are still proud of being their descendants. You do not talk about the fall of the Roman empire without mentioning my ancestors as their cry for all tribes to gather and beat the Romans oppressing them was instrumental to their downfall.

Their downfall was a plan orchestrated by an oppressed tribe who wanted to be free, pretending anything different is a lie.

But then again, with people like Candace Owens making educational videos about slavery where she literally denies that Romans even had slaves, its no wonder Americans don't know what actually happened to the Roman Empire and that it was slavery that actually caused their downfall due to the aforementioned rebellion literally being the tribal chief becoming enslaved under some kind of false suspisions. That the Romans sent him back after they realized they made a mistake and that he was wrongfully enslaved didn't matter, it was all the proof the tribe needed to have that the Romans would enslave them at any given opportunity. So they rebelled.

I could continue on, but I fear I will be ranting endlessly because of how stupid Americans are.

EDIT: Thank the angels for that American apologizing. As there actually is an American apologizing that they are usually exporting their worst products instead of their best ones and how they haven't been this ashamed of their nation since the Iraq invasion. I want to agree but at the same time I'd like to give them a hug for having to bear the shame for stuff like gun export and their recent flopping pop culture.

EDIT 2: Alright this might keep me up all night but oh my, an American just unknowingly roasted themselves by saying in an argument how culture is the better dressed sibling of religion. Now I understand why Americans whose country on an average is more religious then a bunch of European nations combined, have such poor fashion sense.

[dumpsterfireofsubtext]

what kind of science fiction does emo beatrice/1930s au beatrice tend to write? is it “oh no! aliens!/oh no! creatures!” ala war war the of worlds and like, godzilla

dystopias like 1984 & episodes of black mirror, humans doing fucked up stuff that comes to bite them in the ass aka frankenstein and like every 1960s sci fi film about some giant creature that came about because of nuke bombs (which were pratically all the films then it seems), Weird Shit Happens ala the twilight zone, Exploring Them Oceans, Exploring Them Earth, or Exploring the depths of the earth ala journey to the center of the earth

Woag, space, ala more star trek esque stuff (spef tos), boom bam in space ala more star wars esque stuff? Normal people with normal problems but in sci fi settings! Among Us? (Side note that gave me the mental image of jonty in an among us costume thx to ava who convinced beatrice to let her dress him up via them puppy dog eyes and now i’m laughing my ass off.

semi related do you think beatrice would be the type to have a bunch of random & obscure dog merch? feel like she isn’t, that’s more ava’s thing, and ava’s thing is more on weird ass clothes for the dog that she deems cute, but i feel like beatrice probably has the occasional impulse buy or something that in hindsight was either stupid and/or the dog didn’t like collecting dust in her attic or something

((pls tell me beatrice has had the often universal pet owner experience of buying something more expensive than usual only for that money to just go to waste as the pet is near apathetic and likes something cheaper. i’m in hysterics imagining beatrice being Extra MopeyTM because she got some new relatively expensive dog food that was highly recommended by dog owners & vets w a bunch of Nutritional Benefits and she was excited to gift it to jonty, only for jonty to just sniff at the food, not touch a morsel of it and then whine that he didn’t get his usual birthday bone))

but i feel like beatrice might have like, a bunch of pictures of her dog and/or her & the dog, maybe even a whole album for them, and beatrice might have like a bunch of silly and/or matching pictures, like taking a picture in one of these type things, etc etc

Great questions.

I think (unsurprisingly) Beatrice would be suuuuper influenced by H.G. Wells and definitely Shelley. The sci-fi she writes would be along the lines of what if the world was the same as it is now except for this one fucked up thing or like The protagonist meets this one character or thing that changes them and flips their world on its head.

Her novels were probably verging on social satire and were inspired heavily by the war. She retaliated against her upbringing through her books. her father was absolutely Oxbridge educated and had a lot of books/subscribed to literary journals so Beatrice had a lot of material as a kid.

(The more... ahem frowned upon books she had to source herself. she definitely read Flowers of Evil and Carmilla etc and was left feeling very 123?!!13XZSDVFGH4????!!!1f?? by them. Also definitely read The Well of Loneliness and hated it a little bit.)

Short stories like The Croquet Player and A Dream of Armageddon were a reference point for her early writing probably. (she definitely had a wild time reading the time machine, as did I) Themes around Duty vs Love etc are just very very Avatrice so A Dream of Armageddon felt very them. It was sort of like what if Avatrice chose to leave together instead of fight etc and rejected their responsibilities in favour of being together and unbothered and in love and ran away back to Switzerland (but in the story it's Capri) idk it just made me think of that a little bit.

I imagine one of her more popular novels would be something about the intersection between religion and Science and some sort of reconciliation and/or divide between the two. Like maybe a new theory/invention/revelation that seemingly disproves a major theological belief, a la Ted Chiang's 'Omphalos' except in 1930 lol. Idk I'm not about to write an entire novel inside of this fan fic. Or am I... probably not,,, but who knows??? (not me).

I don't think Bea would hem herself in too much though. So there'd totally be weirder more experimental books the older she got (and the more comfortable she got in being a bit weird). Overall she'd lean more towards speculative/dystopian fiction rather than full-blown Star Trek-type sci-fi. Like, imagine how fucked up we can be as opposed to how fucked up things from outer space can be.

In regards to the pet tangent:

Beatrice has a million comfy dog beds for Jonty but (a lot like my own dog) he sleeps on none of them, much preferring cardboard boxes, people's shoes, or the windowsill. The Cardinal (Beatrice's cat) appreciates the beds though.

Jonty is far too wriggly to be still enough to have his picture taken/be put in clothes. The Cardinal on the other hand is perpetually :| and chill with everything so Ava would probably convince Bea to spend money on buying a camera or paying for professional pictures of him like these:

Beatrice would scoff but then, a few days later, would have them framed and put up.

This hc spiralled a bit but god was it fun. Thanks as always for the great question/thoughts.

[foxbullfrog]

oh the post is up now! it kinda turned into pointing out how a bunch of the assumptions of the “inherent” motives of beatrice’s parents could be false, and/or not cut & dry, i.e people taking beatrice’s parents being stated to care about appearances as being inherently negative and that they must only care about beatrice only for how she reflects on their appearance

https://www.tumblr.com/ftm-viktor-hargreeves/712137453619838976/i-feel-like-a-lot-of-how-beatrices-parents-are

and like yeah!!! anytime anyone makes any of the ocs american i’m just like 😭😭😭 what on earth did they ever do to deserve this insult

and w ava, silva is literally the most common Portuguese surname and alba is portugese, (also iirc simon said he hced ava as being from canada) so why on earth. english is the “universal language” for better or for worse, american dominates everywhere, and we know ava watched a lot of tv in the orphanage, which there was probably a lot of american media on, so it makes sense that she has an american accent while not being an american,

and yeah!! people, do not account for familial and/or cultural religion enough, especially cultural religion, and white americans are particularly guilty of this (which is ironic given they’re one of the biggest ones who spread that stuff everywhere but i digress) and the american centrism reeks when like, reading a wn fic set in spain and for some reason so many times all of the characters are atheists for some reason??? regardless of if they’re one of the more gen devout believers in the show or if it makes sense for them or whatnot, when spain is like one of the most culturally catholic places ever 😭

like i’m from the philippines which was colonized by spain, and it’s very culturally catholic, like everyone and their mom will do the sign of the cross and pray and go through a lot of the motions, ir regardless of how much they actually believe in it, and from what i’ve heard and learned, spain is very similar in this aspect so, yeah, why all the atheists in these fics lmao

and if the reason is “because they’re queer”.. well hate to break it to you but queer people of all religions exist and being like “religion & queerness can’t co exist” is kinda lowkey culturally western too, just take a look at many cultures had what we’d consider trans & genderqueer people as spiritual leaders or special in some way spiritually or something

apologies for going on a bit of a tangent in your inbox, whoops, i just see a lot of potential in warrior nun for interesting & nuanced explorations of race, nationality, religion & disability and how they can overlap and/or impact someone’s life esp given how canonically (relatively) diverse the wn characters are so it’s :/ when so much stuff just seems to be entirely blacj & white, western pov of stuff

don't apologise I love your pov!!

I really like the point you made about queerness and religion and the way queer people in certain nations interact with religion because I honestly feel like it's overlooked how ingrained culturally religion can be for queer individuals even if they're no longer religious. especially for a nation like Spain where its heavily homogenously a particular religion. like I dont engage with the church anymore but the traditions don't just go away i still celebrate the feast days and wear my st christopher and use the sign on the cross/religious language in my everyday life bc its culturally and socially ingrained, it doesn't mean I agree with the church's teachings or even that I'm a believer.

its funny. despite sharing the same language i feel like america and the uk are such stark opposities on this point. the US has genuine separation of church and state but a very high percentage of the population identify as religious. whereas britain is one of the most atheistic nations in europe but our head of state is also the head of the church and state run schools have kids singing hymns and our national anthem references God. I can still casually call myself Catholic (even if I often qualify it with 'non practicing') because people here likely won't even assume it means I'm religious. its a cultural marker. so I can't believe there's that many people walking around Spain flat-out calling themselves athiests when catholicism defines so much of the cultural make-up of the nation. but I could be wrong! I've spent a very limited amount of time there.

anyway your last paragraph is just *chefs kiss* and it sums my own thoughts on the matter up perfectly so ty

[signalwatch]

Musical Watch: Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954)

the movie that posits: women love being abducted and held against their will

Watched:  02/07/2022

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  First (and possibly last)

Director:  Stanley Donen

Holy cats, y'all.

I...  I don't even know where to start.  There's so, so many angles to this thing, so I'll try and capture my thoughts as best I can.  

I want to be very clear - Until this film, I (perhaps wrongly) believed I'm *pretty good* at contextualizing the cultural differences between our social norms and mores and those of yesteryear.  I may even be able to do period-piece stuff made in prior decades, trying to grok what the people of 1954 found charming about frontier life.  

In general, I can see a film and say "yes, I understand that there were ways that we viewed gender/ race/ manners/ religion/ etc..  that no longer reflect how we'd likely feel now" and I can go on with my life.

But.  Y'all.  I am adrift.  

My take-away is that the current interest in this film by classic film buffs is rubber-necking, ironic appreciation, or just outright hate-watching.  Or not!  Classic film buffs are an unruly bunch.  In its release year, this movie was very successful, financially and critically.  So I don't know anything about mankind anymore.

I've now seen the movie, and will only watch it again if it's my opportunity to bring the madness to the people.  

Some thoughts:

This is a movie which endorses kidnapping at best and possibly abduction and rape, depending on your reading of both the film's text and the much referred/ basis of the film to Abduction/ Rape of the Sabine Women - a well known bit of Roman mythology/ history that this movie turns into a jaunty tune to set up all the events of the second half of the film

It's clearly also somewhere between a movie about the powers of Stockholm Syndrome and the successful establishment of a cult

This movie is the future incels want.  It's a movie about men minus women who feel they *deserve* women and take radical action

Every single character in this movie is an absolute moron

This movie needed to end in a body count - there's no other believable finish

The movie is a musical with zero memorable songs except for the one where you're like "Are they.... singing about mass rape?" Johnny Mercer, I believe was responsible, and that seems insane

The main character (Howard Keel) is maybe the greatest asshole to ever grace the screen.  It's breathtaking.  Just a real shitbag from his first line to his last. When he's not insisting himself upon women, he's treating his new wife as domestic help.  And he's the one who thinks "hey, let's just go raid a town and collect its women for our own personal gratification."  He's an absolute psychopath.

The movie has this same lead state "all women are basically the same" and therefore fungible.  The movie never puts the lie to this idea.  So, good news, ladyfolk.  One of you is swappable for the other, really.  It's just a matter of hair color preference. 

There's a dance number that's really pretty rock solid in the middle

Someone tell me what the brothers are farming up there on the sides of mountains.  Somebody.  Anybody.  Rocks?  branches?  

Julie Newmar is in this movie, she's a head taller than all the other women and she clearly complicates every shot she's in.  But she's Julie @#$%ing Newmar, so you keep her in the @#$%ing movie

I cannot imagine the smells in the house of the brothers.  Like - simply can't wrap my head around it

Russ Tamblyn's career is fucking wild, man

Up until watching this movie, I thought it was about the mail-order-bride shenanigans of the 19th century, where, 160 years before 90 Day Fiancee, lonely-hearts on the frontier would correspond to women in the East, and those women would (sometimes) come out and marry them.*  This isn't the plot at all.

Instead, Howard Keel is a mountain man/ rock farmer in 19th Century Oregon (which was semi-settled as an all-White colony at one point, and this movie does not challenge that idea).  He comes down to town once a year to buy goods for his farm, and this time he also wants a wife.  And, after 5 minutes of looking, he finds one in Jane Powell.  Without mentioning he's bringing her to live by herself with his six brothers and basically be the maid.  Who he will pork, I guess.  It's very sophisticated.

Because she has an American can-do spirit, she actually goes along with this instead of getting right back in the wagon and going back.  

Inspired that their brother is now getting laid, the other 6 brothers go to a barn-raising/ hoe-down, dance, and basically harass girls and fight with the locals like the worst hillbillies to ever fall out of a tree.  Convinced they'll not be allowed to court the girls, the brothers then sneak into town, throw the girls in bags and ride off with them (no, really), intentionally blocking themselves into their own farm for winter by causing a deadly avalanche when the parents, siblings and townsfolk try to save the girls.  Who are in bags.

By the way, I have no idea how anyone eats anymore within two months of the girls' arrival, but worrying about "how will people eat if we double the population of our compound?" is not an issue in this movie and because the journey for the girls is to eventually fall in love with their captors is more important, we never learn what the bathroom situation is.  I had a lot of logistical questions.  

After months of assuming their children had been held like a bunch of Kimmy Schmidts for months on end, when the pass clears and the town-folk make their way to the farm, the girls all lie about being pregnant so they can get married to their favorite toothless hillbilly. Because brainwashing or something.  The movie makes no effort to explain that the brothers somehow de-asshole-ify.  We just see them wandering around in colorful shirts.

And, curtain.

People loved this movie.  It has awards.  It did boffo box office.  

I feel like you have to have the mind of a small child who can't conceive of bad things happening to good people to not be mostly horrified by the entire film. 

If anyone can tell me how this isn't a Blumhouse creation, I'd appreciate it.

*it was a profitable scam then and now as women would ask for money and then just stop corresponding when the money quit showing up. 

https://ift.tt/yNJex90

from The Signal Watch https://ift.tt/fSDlPts

[satellite-blossom]

thank you for answering! and for reminding me about Flipnote, I miss that little thing. your OC is lovely btw! any honorable mentions to show?

No problem ! And thank you for the compliment !

Well, as for honorable mentions... I can't really show it because I'm not done with the designs of the characters yet, but I'm pretty proud of my Sonic.exe lore ! Long story short : I used to be obsessed with the Sonic.exe lore made by the writer of the OG Creepypasta, but in retrospect it had a bunch of issues, and when some gross news came out my infatuation broke off and I stopped revering this so-called "canon". Anyway, ever since I've been going hard on rewriting the Sonic.exe lore to use it in Léa's story.

The changes are in the designs, the names and a bunch of things.

First of all, I'm redesigning Exe and his Seven Guardians. I haven't sketched everyone yet, but here's what I have so far :

It was important to me that each guardian get a unique quill style and that Gekido look like a hedgehog this time around (he originally looked like Knuckles and it was weird). The Seven Guardians of X as they're typically called are beings created by Exe/X to assist him, and they all represent a human feeling. Yukubo is desire, Kofuku is happiness, Gekido is anger, Kito is faith/prayer, Aishu is sorrow, Kirai is hatred, and Kyofu is fear. I haven't made a lot of changes when it comes to the stories of the Guardians ; I just had to kinda make up my own personalities for them because the little things the OG creator showed is most likely lost now (it exist only in my memory now I guess).

Where things REALLY got the most changes was with the "Cult of X", as it's called in the OG lore.

In the OG lore and in my Sonic.exe lore, Exe has a cult on Earth which helps to spread his disks, cover up some of his deeds, etc. And that's basically the biggest similarity between those two lores... Mine doesn't even use the same name for the cult ! As an other OG lore rewriter pointed out, cults do not call themselves cults ; on the contrary they tend to call other groups the "real cults". And the rewriter made me admit that yeah, most people wouldn't want anything to do with the religion/cult of a malicious dark matter being so the cult needs a cover. So that's how I've started working on "Far Away GalaXy", my version of the Cult of X ! Its cover is an organization which provides help & support for abuse victims. It was created by Shannon Goldman, who is the leader of the cult, like it used to be in the OG lore before the OG writer brought up "Father". On the surface the group is well-liked, getting shootouts from many people, especially for their queer inclusiveness. The people who ask for help are called "Stars" and the method Far Away GalaXy therapists & staff use is centered over seven "core feelings" they call "Planets" in brochures : fear, sorrow, anger, hatred, desire, faith/hope and happiness... It rings a bell, doesn't it ? Without even bringing up the supernatural stuff in public, the group already starts to ease you into its core beliefs. Anyway, those feelings are seen as "normal parts of life" the abuse victims need to work on, in the order I've listed them. Think of it as something like the seven states of grief but for abuse victims and made by a cult.

Once someone gets very into Far Away GalaXy, they might be encouraged further into the core beliefs of the cult. It starts with hate of the Abrahamic religions, then a lesser opinion of mankind as a whole. Eventually members are invited to send a "special gift" to one of their abusers, and surprise surprise : it's a Sonic.exe disk ! Obviously things go as you'd expect once the person receives the disk ; and now the brainwashed member initially thinks they killed their abuser. But soon they're reassured as they are told about the eternity of souls, and the great love Lord X has for them. At this point, even if you want to leave, the cult has enough material to blackmail you and controls too much of your life anyway ; trying to denounce anything would turn you into Exe's next toy. The religious rhetoric is that Exe is the Sun from a Far Away GalaXy that the humans need to reach with the Spaceship, a tool or being that Exe will use to take over Earth. The Guardians are Planets, Shannon is the Spaceship's Captain and the Satellite of the Yukubo (aka the Planet of Desire ; Satellites are subordinates of a Celestial Body (Planets, Sun) that are higher than regular humans), and the other members of the cult are the Crew. Exe is also called "Lord X" or just "X", and humans are to be his "toys". The Spaceship is eventually found, and it's... Léa, who would have guessed ! In case it wasn't clear, Léa are originally an Earthling ; they look like a hedgehog when they travel to Mobius or Exe's world (sometimes). Here's what they look like as a human (the blue one is their Far Away GalaXy fit) :

Contrary to what Léa expected, being the "key to salvation" of the cult of their boyfriend (yep, they're dating Exe) isn't fun at all. When Exe sends them to the USA under the guise of a year of leisure (Léa are French), right at the core of his cult, Léa thought it couldn't be hell, well probably weird but not horrible. Shannon Goldman seems very friendly to them at first, gifting them a binder and overall being supportive, but things get bad pretty soon. Not wanting Léa to feel important (as Shannon thinks they are just a human who are abusing their position of key to demand things from X since Léa have made Exe sign a contract to post-pone his takeover), Shannon starts to use more and more dehumanizing language when talking to/about Léa in religious situations. In this context she starts to only call them "the Spaceship", use it/its pronouns for them, and eventually always talk to them at the third person instead of saying "you". She says they are no-one, nobody, especially not to the Sun ; they are just a mere tool in her opinion, and once Exe will have taken over they will go "from nobody to nothing". She controls Léa's sleep and anxiety medication, making them more or less tired & upset depending of what she needs, control their internet usage, and even starts to physically abuse them. Léa do not have a license or even a car, they don't know much about living in the USA and have to rely on Far Away GalaXy for their housing and money in the USA, so they're really trapped. But what about Exe, why doesn't he help ? Well Exe has another moment of "I don't know what to do about loving a human", and he wants to keep up his status, so he just tells Léa to trust Shannon to do what's best for everyone. It really breaks Léa's spirit, but don't worry things eventually improve and they get to make Shannon regret her life choices when they get a surge of power after a certain event... And Exe apologizes to them, too.

There are other members of Far Away GalaXy that were in the OG lore but were originally never developed, like Lexi Violet or Lazarus. Lexi is a strange girl who wears dark yet cute fashion and is rarely seen without her big cat plushie. She moves it around pretending to only report the words of the plush if she deems you to not be interesting enough to talk directly to ; she has a tendency to leave conversations if she deems they're "booooriiing". The cat stuff was already in the OG lore... Anyway, she's the main artists of the group ; she designs logos, merch and clothes for Far Away GalaXy. Sometimes she lets Léa assist her a bit. She is aware of the cult stuff, and feels curious about where things will go, not feeling any remorse about it. When Léa are desperate for someone to listen to them, Lexi call them selfish for complaining about what Shannon puts them through ; of course Léa feel even more hopeless after that. Léa's basically only friend in Far Away GalaXy is Alice, Shannon's daughter, who is not even aware of most of the cult stuff. While Shannon is nicknamed "Mother" by a bunch of cult members (she really surrounds herself with people desperate for any kind of attention), Alice is the only person to officially be Shannon's daughter, as she was adopted by her as a child. Alice is no more than a year older than Léa, and very soft-spoken. They're just glad she still sees them as a person, even if they're not allowed to tell her about any of the cult stuff.

Wow that turned into a long ramble ! Sorry about that, by the way... But I'm very proud of how I've reworked the OG lore, and made it fit in Léa's story. I'm reclaiming something that made me happy and I think it's cool ! It's not like the OG writer was getting any money from that, and I doubt most people even know who I'm talking about when I say "the OG writer/creator of Sonic.exe", plus he has left all of his social media soooo... I feel like I can reclaim that ! So many things in the OG lore weren't even created by the guy in question ; Lexi, Shannon, Lazarus, and Alice were created by other people... Talking about a "canon" Sonic.exe doesn't make much sense, especially not now, and gives too much credit to this one guy. But I'm getting off-topic...!

Anyway I hope it wasn't too tedious to read ! Thank you for giving me an excuse to ramble again !

[foxingpeculiar]

FF7 R&R:

Okay. So before I go to Shinra HQ there’s a bunch of stuff to do.

So first, there’s that moment that Barrett and Tifa share after the collapse of the pillar. It’s a tender moment between two characters that don’t get a lot of chemistry, generally speaking, so it’s nice to see that.

Sephiroth appears again, but it seems clear from this scene that he’s not actually present, he’s just a vision in Cloud’s head, probably because of the whole Jenova connection that binds them. Which makes me wonder—we’ve seen a couple of Jenova clones so far in the game, but the Whispers have that same kind of vibe: the sort of menacing, hooded quality. Makes me wonder if there’s a connection there, especially since they seem tied to Aerith and Sephiroth. I guess we’ll see.

Elymra’s memories of the war are poignant, and we briefly see Aerith’s birth mom in them (I should remember her name, but I don’t right now). Do we know what the war was about? Someone in Sector 5 comments at some point “Mako reactors—we’ve got em, they want em,” but surely there’s more to it than that. Maybe we’ll learn more when we actually go to Wutai, whenever that happens.

So Tseng, in that flashback, mentions “the scriptures” and I wanna know more about that. What kind of “scriptures?” Who wrote them? What role does religion play in this world? We don’t really get a lot of that.

Wedge isn’t dead! I thought he was. I wonder if he’ll come back into the story at some point.

What was the purpose of the Failed Experiment in the Shinra lab underneath the city? It must have something to do with Jenova, right? But they don’t really go into that, at least not so far.

When Cloud dreams of Aerith, is she really communicating with him? Is that in her power as a Cetra? She says “You can’t fall in love with me,” which doesn’t seem like something his brain would’ve come up with on its own. Because clearly he kind of has, despite still having feelings for Tifa too. Like, damn, my dude, you are in the mess of it, aren’t you?

Kyrie is an interesting character. When she first shows up talking shit about AVALANCHE, it’s like “who’s this bitch?” But then there’s the sidequest where she’s Mirielle’s granddaughter and clearly something of an accomplished thief in her own right. I wonder if we’ll run into her again—she did say something about getting out of Midgar, so it seems possible.

So it’s fuckin’ sidequest city at this point. I don’t know if I did em all last time I played this, but I did this time. A chance to kind of go back through most of the places I’ve been (that haven’t been destroyed). That Behemoth fight was fun. And none of them are that bad—an open world game this is not.

The whole thing with Leslie kind of threw me cos I’m like “am I supposed to know who this is?” But he has kind of a touching quest—Tifa being like “maybe she’s still out there somewhere” kind of made me tear up a little.

Corneo’s so cringe. He even does his whole “a villain only reveals his plans in a certain situation” bit a second time, like that’s a practiced line for him, a routine he does before he kills people. I’m excited to track him down in part 2 (or part 3–not sure how that’s all going to play out, but eventually).

But okay. Now I have the grappling guns, I’ve got my shit sorted. Now it’s really time to make for Shinra HQ.

It’s fascinating playing this again—how it’s familiar, yet so much more… I dunno, zoomed in and detailed than the story I know by heart. And I do—I got the original game when it came out, ran a Geocities page about it, wrote my own walkthrough and everything. This is a game I KNOW and is near and dear to my heart, so it’s interesting seeing how they’re spinning it in a slightly different way. I’m curious if that will expand in Rebirth—if there will be more deviation, or if it’ll follow a similar formula, where it’s kind of the same, at least in the major beats, but filling in so much more detail. But we’ll get there. Got a tower to climb first.

[yokelfelonking]

Not really. The Evangelical Right did experience a massive surge under Reagan, but by the late 90's their power was starting to wane for much the same reason it wound up fading in 2010's: its leaders were a bunch of obviously insufferable hypocrites. Televangelists were huge in the 80's but by 2001 they were a joke and seen as evidence of the blatant hypocrisy of the evangelical right.

When 9/11 happened, though, they saw a huge swing back in their favor and they made a power grab like never before.

Similarly, saying that the upswing in atheism wasn't until folks like Dawkins and Harris is kind of like saying the Civil Rights movement started with Rosa Parks: that's when it made a major organized move in mainstream culture, but it was there long before. The late 90's and early 2000's was the era of Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson and Tool and all sorts of other edgy "your God is a fake lie" acts. Even outside of that, among ordinary folks it may not have been as outright hostile to religion as the New Atheists, but the general sentiment towards religion was increasingly: "you don't really believe all that stuff, do you?"

The downturn in religious sentiment and uptick in atheism (or at least agnosticism) was buried under the massive resurgence of religion post-9/11, and came back hard under folks like Harris and Dawkins and such.

Post 9/11 Trivia

Most folks on this site were either children on September 11, 2001, or weren’t even born yet.  But America went crazy for about a year afterwards.  Here’s some highlights that I remember that might not be in your history books:

There was national discussion on whether or not Halloween should be canceled because…fuck if I know why.  After planes crashed into buildings in NYC it follows that 6-year-olds in Iowa shouldn’t be allowed to dress up like Batman and ask their neighbors for candy, I guess.  (Halloween wasn’t canceled, by the way.)

On a similar note, people asked if comedy - any sort of comedy - was appropriate anymore, ever.

People sold shitty parachutes to suckers “in case your building gets attacked and you have to jump out the window.” There were honest-to-God news reports warning people not to jump out of the window with shitty mail-order parachutes because they wouldn't work.

As a follow-up to the attacks, someone mailed anthrax to some prominent politicians and news anchors - you know, famous people - along with some badly-written notes about “you cannot stop us, death to America, Allah is good” and after that every time some random dumbass found a package in the mail they didn’t recognize they thought that the terrorists were targeting them, too.

Everyone was similarly convinced that their town was going to be the next target, even if they were a little town in the middle of nowhere. "Our town of Bumblefuck, South Dakota (population 690) has the largest styrofoam pig statue west of the Mississippi! Terrorists might fly planes into that too! It's a prime target!"

People started taping up their windows and trying to make their houses or apartments airtight out of fear of chemical and biological attacks. There were news reports warning people that turning your house into an airtight box was a bad idea because, y'know, you need air to breathe.

"[X] supports terrorism!" and “if we do [X], the terrorists win!” were used as arguments for everything.  "Some rich Arab you never heard of donated to his organization that backs Hamas which backs al-Queda, and also owns stock in a holding company that has partial ownership of the Pringles company, so if you eat Pringles you're supporting terrorism!" "The terrorists want to tear down our freedoms and our way of life and rule us through fear! Eating what you want is one of our freedoms as Americans! If you're afraid to eat Pringles, the terrorists win!" (I promise you that this sort of argument is in no way hyperbole.) (This argument is how Halloween was saved, by the way.  “If we cancel Halloween, the terrorists win!”)

People worked 9/11 into everything, and I mean everything, whether it was appropriate or not.  If you went to the grocery store the tortilla chips would remind you to support the troops on the packaging. Used car sales would be dedicated to our brave first responders. You couldn't wipe your ass without the toilet paper rolls reminding you to never forget the fallen of 9/11, and again, this is not hyperbole. My uncle, who lived in Ohio and had never been to New York except to visit once in the 70′s, died of a stroke about 8 months after 9/11, and the priest brought up the attacks at the eulogy.

On a similar local note, on the day of 9/11, after the towers went down, gas stations in my home town immediately jacked up gas prices.  The mayor had the cops go around and force them to take them back down.  I doubt any of that was legal.

Before 9/11, Christianity in America - and religion in general - was on a downward swing, with reddit-tier atheism on the upswing. Religion was outdated superstition from a bygone age. The day after 9/11? Every single church was PACKED.

Besides dumb shit like that…it’s really hard to overstate how completely the national mood and character changed in the span of a day, or how much of the current culture war is a result of the aftermath. (9/11 was the impetus for the sharp rise in power of the Evangelical Right, who made themselves utterly odious and the following backlash helped the rise of the current Progressive Left, for instance.)