#maybe don’t find a Weird Mormon

[funeralpotatoesorbust]

I think it’s funny when the “Mormonism is a cult” crowd finds my blog

Sorry friends, you have stumbled into the Weird Mormon Zone

[boysbeware2]

all the old tptm girl journal entries w the new (if anyone wants to see them again and compare them)

please proceed with caution as many of these could be upsetting to read

disposable girl (jordyn)

(old)

i cant fucking stand this. i try so goddamn hard to make friends, to be attractive to people, to be even somewhat appealing to them etc etc. it never works. i thought it would get better the older i get. thats what i was told. guess what! i was fucking lied to!!! im alwasy left out of EVERYTHING i never get invited to shit and my own friends ignore me all the time. everyone looks at me weird. i cant go in public anymore im so fucking terrified of everyone. nobody fuckinf wants me, man. im so close to doing something stupid i feel so gross and ugly and dumb i should actually just die id be doing everyone a favor LOL

(new)

man, i havent been on here in forever. the internet is kind of dumb. what is there to say? my friend group celebrated our outpatient graduation anniversary the other day, that was pretty nice. we’re all trying to figure out housing stuff, nora’s been helping with that. freyja + mayra + kairi found a place already (how are they so responsible??) and the rest of us are trying to find places near them so we can visit more often. i never expected to have such a big group of friends. if you told me 2 years ago that i’d be living like this, i wouldn’t believe you. it’s still surreal to me. i’m not sure what i did to deserve them. same goes for my girlfriends. i don’t wanna say who just yet, we’re still figuring things out, but i’m just so thankful for them. i feel so lucky to have a second chance at life. i really didn’t believe people when they said it would get better, and then it did. how funny…..

irreverent girl (kairi)

(old)

I do not want God to see me anymore. I do not want anymore eyes on me. This is near unbearable. I have no one to turn to. My mother is in the church. Many of my friends are in the church. They would tell me to find hope through Christ. They would tell me to pray to Him. They would tell me that He will save me. He must not remember He made me, and if He does, He simply does not care. I know this is unbecoming of me, and I don't mean to be dramatic. I am simply depressed, nervous, and I cannot tell what's real and what isn't anymore. I know I'm supposed to hear God speaking to me, but I do not, and I am tired of straining my ears. I just want to see a doctor. I want some kind of tangible solution. I do not want to pray anymore. Praying hurts. I only do it when I am afraid, but I am afraid much of the time. I don't want to be unheard anymore. I do not want to hold out hope for someone who does not act like they're there. I am hurting. I am hurting. I am hurting. Belief is hurting me. The idea of God is hurting me. I need an out. I am hurting.

(new)

When I have a job and money and I can move away from my shitty Mormon parents

splitter girl (tahira)

(old)

theres something so broken in me thats beyond saving. so i dont know why i keep trying to be saved. i meant to kill myself when i was 18. i didnt. all ive wanted to do lately is kill someone or something. i havent. im too much of a pussy to plan anything concrete, no matter how much i hate everyone around me. no matter how much i get off to videos of people dying or how much i love cutting myself i cant actually take action against other people. i am fucking purposeless. i was born from evil and i will always be evil and i cant even live up to that. i hate myself i hate myself i HATE myself and the universe hates me too. i dont know what to fucking do at this point. i talked to one of my friends about wantingto die and they said smthn about hospitalizing myself. maybe. i dunno. i dont know what else there is for me/. my eyes are fucking burning from lookign at my computer for so long adn not getting any goddamn sleep. i am not a good person. i dont think i can be helped but i just dont wanna fucking keep goign to school and being around people and pretending like everything is norma;l. i cant keep doing it. what the fuck is wrong with me whagt happened. why cant i be loved or feel love for other people when did something change in me that switched the aggression and affection parts of my brain. im hyperventilating ill be back. maybe

(new)

getting myself onigiri from this one good boba place 2nite bc im 8 months clean…… its the little things~ ^^

fainéant girl (freyja)

(old)

i know i dont hate being disabled... i just hate being disabled in a society that makes existing difficult... but sometimes i really just dont want to be disabled anymore. i dont want my family to lecture me about how i could be helping out more, or how i should get a job. i dont want teachers to keep asking me whats wrong or the fuckin uni counselor to try to get me hospitalized. i dont want to be in so much pain anymore, to feel so exhausted that i cant even do so much as prepare food for myself, let alone do anything meaningful or fulfilling. its not fair. i shouldnt have to stay inside and sit in the dark all day,. i should be able to have friends. to talk to people and to go out with them and to feel like i am alive. its lonely and traumatic to suffer through this and on top of that no one around me understands, and they never fully will. i am tired of trying to justify my existence to everyone, to explain the pain that i am in and why i shouldnt have to experience it. i know the problem isnt me. i know i live in a world that isnt built for me. but if the world cant change then sometimes i truly feel that i should just stop living in it. my lifespan is already shorter than everyone else's anyways. what difference does it make

(new)

my qpps didnt seem to appreciate me playing Alien Kids Alien Rap for them. Do they even love me

caliber girl (nora)

(old)

唉～It is 3 AM and I should go to sleep but I can’t. I have a work zoom meeting early in the morning and I gotta hit the gym also because I haven’t done leg day in like… weeks. Oh well, it doesn’t even matter. My value is depleting but I don’t think I care anymore. The turnaround date for my code is also in a couple of days and I haven’t made any progress. I keep getting the same error and I’m too tired to figure out what’s wrong. I might get fired at this rate LOL(笑). If that happens, I think I’ll just consider ending it all. Not that anybody will miss me. God I sound so weak and pathetic right now. When did it get like this. How did it get like this. I’m sure I’ll be fine. I’ve been through worse before and this is nothing. Ugh, why is it so hard to breathe? My chest hurts and I feel like something is wrong but I don’t know how to make it go away. Should I call someone about this? No. No one is awake or around to help. I’ll be fine. I’ll just sleep it off. Shake it off… shake it off…

(new)

My Tamagotchi beeped during a meeting fml

chocolate box girl (morgan)

(old)

i thought i was doing better but i cant stop thinking about them. their touch, their interests, their smile, everything. the worst part is that i miss them, after all of what they've done to me. i was 13. i dont even feel justified calling it rape since our relationship was so muddy... they never yelled at me or was angry at me, they just got so sad when i tried to speak my mind, and got all my friends to hate me when we finally broke up. i never said no so i feel like im insulting actual survivors by feeling violated. i wasnt even trying to get into a relationship with them, it just happened... i feel like everyone around me wants me in the same way they did, even though im an adult now and i dont even try to make myself appealing. i wish i could trust people not to take advantage of me, and i feel disgusting and selfish for feeling like everyone has ulterior motives of getting me to fall in love with them, or worse. that's so self centered of me. i dont know how long i can keep doing this

(new)

girl help i cant stop looking at anime figures on japan yahoo auctions !!!!!

taxidermy girl (mayra)

(old)

I don't remember ever not having a sex drive, is that normal ? I was born and then it was all downhill from there, something happened to me sexually i think, I don't know what happened, because I don't remember much, but something happened and I was beaten for it and yelled at and my mother hated me, and now I am an adult and I try to have sex, and I'm not there mentally, even if my body is participating, I feel like I am in the past again, being beaten and yelled at . I want to keep trying, I want to have fun, to feel safe in someone else's arms, to reach the heights of pleasure, but my mind scares me so much, I haven't been able to eat anything today because I feel so horrified by my body . If I was good I would have been born as a nonsexual being, no parts, no desires, no instincts, a blank slate, too empty to be enjoyed . Do you know what it feels like, to have your mother tell you people want to sexually abuse you when you are a child, and then to be made fun of by your peers for being so ugly, to have your middle school and high school classmates joke about how much they don't want to have sex with you ? I am illicit and undesirable at the same time, I am everyone's last option, I am nothing and still too much, rotting deer meat on the side of the road . I wish I had been born as something beautiful and pure, I wish I could start over, that whatever that initial sin was had never been committed .. I want to start over

(new)

Went to a kink event the other night and everyone was so nice … The low lights were fucking with my vision so one of the hosts helped me navigate the place . I ❤️ you random disabled ally with a pup mask on

chemical girl (joy)

(old)

LMAOOOOO im too angry and miserable to be around. i think i just need to give up at this point because theres clearly like. something broken inside me that cant be fixed. that has 2 be it because i try to talk and i just sound cold, i try to make a joke and it comes out overly edgy and unfunny, i try to be like everyone else but its too much. i cant even be a collection of the positive traits i see in others, i try to replicate it and it comes out warped and wrong. im either fucking enraged or in abject misery or way too happy and nobody can keep up with me. the thing is i dont even blame them. i wouldnt want to be around me either. do u know what thats like? being someone you wouldnt want to know? i keep hoping that one day ill wake up and suddenly be normal, the mood swings will be gone and everyone will like me and i wont do stupid shit that pisses them off. but i know that day isnt coming. theres no hope for me and i want to say sorry to everyone who has ever had the misfortune of knowing me but i know it wouldnt do anything. theres nothing i could ever do to make myself right

(new)

i need to convince my gf to take me to Round One again soon

refraction girl (nataana)

(old)

i don't want to do this anymore. i'm going somewhere better

(new)

talked with my psych and i’ll be starting TMS soon, it’s some thing where they put magnets to ur brain and it’s supposed to treat depression.. trying to temper my expectations bc i’ve tried so many treatments that just do nothing for me, but i’d be lying if i said my hopes weren’t riding on this. i want to confidently say i’m glad to be alive. i feel like i’m getting closer to that

nurse parallel/machine girl (xiomara)

(old)

I am so excited... Tomorrow my experimental outpatient treatment plan begins!!! I'm beyond delighted. I have complicated feelings about my DID being in remission, but it's nice to feel stable enough to be in charge of something this big, and to not have terrible gaps in my memory anymore. I still don't remember everything that happened to me, but maybe I don't need to. At this stage of my life, I feel content. I can confidently say everything was worth it. I want to help others feel that way, too. I think I can.

(new)

I’m meeting up with a new friend tomorrow… I feel nervous, but it’s a good nervousness, I think!

[jq37]

The Report Card – Fantasy High Junior Year Ep 6

Post Shrimp Jump Conspiracy Board Special

Hey y’all! Welcome back to Seacaster Manor where the shrimp party is still raging and the Bad Kids are balancing being cooler than ever with some serious sleuthing. We get a lot of new information this episode so I wanted to try out a new format for this week. I often talk in a metaphorical way about putting items up on a Conspiracy Board but I want to actually try that now that we’re a little over a quarter of the way in and have multiple overarching things happening. This is going to be a lot less linear than usual but bear with me. Gotta shake things up a little so I don’t get burnt out! There’s still fourteen more episodes to go! 

The Rat Grinders

The Bad Kids’ de facto rival party got a lot of screen time in this episode, which makes sense: Adaine declared the party their nemeses over Goldenhoard or anyone else they’ve fought, which is saying a lot. Before this point, we knew the following facts about them:

1) They got their name because the only enemies they’re recorded as killing are low level ones (including rats) that they grind in the woods behind the school, showing a willingness to follow the letter but not spirit of the rules but also an impressive amount of dedication. 

2) Their leader seems to be rogue, Kipperlily Copperkettle who is type A as hell and has a LOT of free time to kill having found the rogue professor (or at least having the rogue professor find her). She’s running for class president on a platform based around “fairness” which is a theme that’s come up more than once this season. 

3) Also on the team are emo Bard Reuben (who seems to be related to the new Artificing teacher and who shares an agent with Fig) and nonplussed Barbarian Mary Ann (who is buffing herself magically somehow).

4) Kipperlily specifically asked about where Kristen was able to create a new god. Now how, where. An odd question. 

This episode, we learned a lot more, so let's throw them on the board and make some connections!

5) The Rat Grinders have a new cleric named Buddy Dawn (something Kristen’s brother mentioned two episodes ago). He’s from Highcourt and moved with his grandparents. He’s got super Mormon+Southern “Bless Your Heart” energy and Kristen doesn’t like how familiar it feels. His vibes are clocked as well meaning but kinda judgey. 

6) Buddy Dawn was *specifically requested* by the party. Of course, requesting a cleric isn’t weird–why wouldn’t you want one? And Helioism seems a pretty common religion in the region so odds are good that if you get a cleric is would be a Helioic one. But, paired with KP’s question about Kristen, it makes you wonder if the plan is to recruit a Kristen expy and try to get lightning to strike twice.  

7) At the beer pong table, we meet the RG’s archer who is an elf named Ivy Embra. She’s got some flirty, catty energy (which we see when she interacts with Fabian and Mazey respectively).

8) We also meet the party wizard, Oisin Hakinvar, who is a Conjuration specialist with a focus in summoning. He’s a blue dragonborn which means that he has a great great great (etc) blue dragon ancestor he can ping when he needs barrels of diamonds, no problem. He has so many in fact that when Adaine lies badly that she’s also swimming in diamonds, he kindly offers to let her borrow some of his “extras”. But she turns them down, calls him great, and then panics and runs away to commiserate with Fabian who is also panicking about a flirty moment with Ivy. Oisin, for his part, seems driven to distraction and can’t make a single other shot all night. Cute! But–

9) As much as I want to wholeheartedly love Oisin (and honestly do and will until I am given direct evidence to change my mind) I have to point out that KVX, known evil bank, did change its logo from red (Goldenhoard’s color) to blue (Oisin’s Ancestor’s color) and there is a shot in the trailer of the party fighting a blue dragon. Connected? Maybe.

10) From investigating some yearbooks, the party also learns that the Rat Grinders have existed since Freshman Year but, at the time, they were called the High Five Heroes. They all look a lot more smiley and a lot less intense–Rebuen’s not even emo. It was the lineup from above, minus Buddy and plus a frost Genasi cleric named Lucy Frostblade. They learn that she supposedly died in their Sophomore year but specifically during a period near the end of the year where grades are locked and it wouldn’t affect their party comp which is…convenient. 

11) Fig tries to investigate this by disguising herself as Lucy and seeing how Ivy and Oisin react. Only Ivy sees her but she doesn’t seem shocked at all to see her allegedly dead party member She just raises an eyebrow and ditches the game to talk to her. Fig bails (and rolls only a 12 to stealth away) so we don’t get any extra info but just the fact that Ivy reacted that way is pretty juicy info as is.  

12) The other Rat Grinders don’t seem to be at the party but the members are skeptical about that. On the other hand, when Ivy leaves, it’s because Oisin pulls her aside and says, “Kipperlilly’s calling”. So it’s possible there was a Team A and a Team B for whatever the Rat Grinders were doing that night?

13) And speaking of what they're doing, we do have a theory. When Fabian checks some damage in the basement where Max and some other kids were smoking "gorgenfern" he sees that something called a cloud rider engine was smashed up pretty bad and in a suspicious way–gorgenfern doesn’t make you rowdy. Fabian checks the security tapes he obviously has and sees that some ice mephits came in and riled people up to the point of crashing into the engine. Adaine conjured some earlier in the party and as far as her arcana check can tell, they’re here, but there’s suspicion that Oisin–a conjuration wizard–could have done it. It’s certainly within his skillset. A cloud rider engine allows a vehicle to fly on clouds and it’s not clear if it was simply smashed or if something was stolen from it. 

14) Max isn’t a Rat Grinder but he did ask them all if they wanted to smoke with him and Ivy offered Fabian snuff so Riz is suspicious that the RG’s are trying to get them kicked out of school for drug use now that they have a non-Aguefort principal who presumably cares about silly rules like that at the murder school. 

That’s basically what we know about the Rat Grinders! So, to sum it up, I’d say the conspiracy board bullet points are:

Supposedly dead cleric Lucy Frostblade: What actually happened to her and why isn’t Ivy surprised to see “her”?

New cleric Buddy Dawn: Why was he specifically requested? 

The High Five Heroes: What caused them to turn into the Rat Grinders? And, as they seem like they were more gung ho their first year, why did they never pivot to fighting things other than low level monsters?

Do they actually have beef with the Bad Kids specifically or are their vibes just terrible? Were they trying to sabotage them by offering drugs? Did they break the engine on purpose and, if so, why?

Oisin: Is he chill or is he working an angle? That question technically goes to Ivy as well but I’m almost certain she’s fully working an angle, lol. I’m getting straight up Aelwyn vibes from her.

Class President: What is KP’s angle re: running for class president? This seems like something she’d want to do either way with her personality but her policy of fairness dovetails too neatly with Grix’s appearance and Cassandra’s inability to say the phrase, “It’s not fair,” last episode.

How did KP find the rogue professor and is that relevant?

And finally, why did KP want to know about where Kristen created her Freshman year god? Well, that question may be partially answered in our next section. 

God Stuff

There is a lot going on this season with celestial shenanigans between Cassandra and Galicaea and even Yes! So let’s mark out what we know.

1) Cassandra was possessed by some kind of rage entity via crystal shards that were expelled from her body. Her status is kind of up in the air right now as the party was shunted away to safety by Connor Counterspell (RIP) and all Kristen has left of Cass are some glowing, purple shards. 

2) Earlier in the fight, while lucid, Cassandra said, “I thought you were dead” about some unseen entity. Later, Kristen heard from a creepy voice that said, “She is at my side once more”. It then threatened her and slid out the rotting corpse of Yes! as a sick joke. Likely that these are the same person or at least connected. 

3) Gorgug identified that the rage stars are similar to what’s going on with Ragh’s mom, Lydia so it was put on the docket to get in touch with her about that–especially because Kalina specifically told them to track down Ragh with her last lucid words. 

4) Tracker’s Galicaea rebrand is going really well. Her social media is really popping and the endless night probably didn’t hurt. 

5) Kristen on the other hand, hasn’t been doing so hot. Due to a bunch of negligence based in lack of time management and personal uncertainty, she hasn’t been evangelizing much which means only she and Craig stand between Cass and her permanent destruction. 

6) Kristen can’t contact Cass telepathically and says she can’t use her magic which is Not Great if you're as danger prone as the Bad Kids. 

Alright, that’s all the old business so let’s move to the new business. 

7) When Kristen talked to her parents, we learned that Helio doesn’t have a chosen one since she left but we learn that it’s more serious than that. Helio also can’t choose a new chosen one. He only gets one. With Kristen gone, the whole religion is without a chosen one.

8) At a certain point, Tracker finally gets a hold of Kristen and says some harsh but true things about Kristen but, more relevant to the conspiracy board, she talks about her girlfriend Nara and Adaine, as a fellow high elf, clocks her as coming from a family of moon goddess clerics in Falinel. That raises the question: is this run of the mill teenage rebellion a la the theme song, or is she some kind of plant? We’ll hopefully get some more info from Aelwyn since Adaine texted her about it.

9) The real juicy stuff happens when we talk to Ragh’s mom. The fiend in Lydia's gem is called Bakur. Her having him in there doesn't make her rage--she's raging to keep him trapped but that's it. Her personality is the same. 

10) Bakur was a pit fiend and the right hand guy of a dead god whose name we don't know (hmm, another dead and nameless god). Bakur can't even say the god's name. It's like, weird god rules and Lydia explains in a weird vague way: gods not being able to use loopholes and saying names being powerful and rules changing for non-mortals when gods die.

11) The one very concrete info we get is that a god can only come back in a place where they were born or created. The reason Bakur’s plan failed is that he tried to bring back the nameless god in the Red Waste and not where they were created. 

12) Rana (Lydia’s party cleric) is away and Cormyr (the party sorcerer) is dead but Lydia offers to put the party in touch with Rana and Cormyr’s family because they have more stuff related to this and they were the ones who knew more about this than her. 

Following? Good. So let’s distill this down to bullets again:

Holy Helio. The corn god doesn’t have a chosen one anymore because Kristen up and left. What does that mean in a concrete sense? What can a chosen one do that a normal cleric can’t? Is Helio gonna ask Kristen to do anything this season now that we know that this is a special position that only one person can fill? Is it until she dies (or at least dies for real)? Would a fanatical Helioic person try and kill Kristen to open up that slot?

KP specifically asking WHERE Cassandra was created seems clearly tied to the info Lydia gave about only being able to resurrect a god where it was created. But what does that mean exactly? Is she trying to resurrect the same god as Bakur? Did she just assume that wherever Kristen made her god is probably where most gods are made and, thus, her best bet? What’s her angle? Is this an evil plan for just a “this will get me a good grade” plan?

Where in the world is Cassandra right now? She is MIA right now which means Kristen’s powers are too. Though I wonder if she can draw on those shards to cast spells.

We obviously can’t be sure but it seems like the voice Kristen heard and the person that Cass thought was dead is likely that unnamed god. What’s his deal? I’m sure we’ll have more info for this bullet soon. 

Is Tracker’s new girlfriend Nara, much like Ecaf, a turncoat? 

With Helio, Cass, and Galicaea all being in the mix, is there any kind of family angle being played. It doesn’t come up a ton but they are very much related. 

MISC

This is a section for a few points that don’t yet fit under the main two headings of the season but still need to go up on the board. 

Why would Aguefort program a robot that acts like Grix? Is he supposed to be like or is he hacked? If he is hacked, who would be able to do that? The new artificing teacher? The old one?

We learn that Aguefort has made a lot of contradicting proclamations and all of them are canon, so you’re able to pick and choose what you want to cite (I feel like I’m in law school again). Lots of room for loopholes which could be useful later. 

Adaine, while very drunk, had an oracle vision of Kristen at a birthday party, giving a victory speech to a bunch of teens on election night as a crescent moon hangs in the sky. The Crescent moon potentially gives them a time frame if they look into it (and it specifically being mentioned makes me think of Galicaea even though not every moon thing has to be connected to her). And we know Gorgug’s birthday is near the Frosty Folk festival so maybe that’s why the hats.

Speaking of, we know there’s a connection between Riz’s mom defending someone for money crimes re: that Festival and Gorgug’s parents hosting it so that’s something to remember. 

This isn’t something for the pin board per se but this season introduces a stress token system for downtime! I’m sure I’ll talk about it more when we use it for the first time next ep but, for now, gotta say he’s really ramping up the pressure on our kids! And, to that point, let’s do a quick check in with everyone and see what they’re up against!

Character Board

Adaine

-Adaine is still facing major money troubles. After last episode, not only is her job terminated, but she actually owes 2.5 gold for her uniform. 

-It looks like she might be developing a bit of a crush on the cute dragonborn (yay) but he’s a Rat Grinder (nooooo). I will say though, cross party romance could be a lot of fun and also my favorite NPC in this show is Aelwyn whose top 2 traits are famously Criminal and Loves Adaine so I am honestly fine with this either way lol. 

-Speaking of Aelwyn, I’ll put the sister stuff together: When Adaine calls her to ask for dirt on Nara she says, “Working, will call in five.” And when Adaine questions the fact that it's 5am on a Saturday, Adaine just gets a winky face emoji back. Suspicious! 

Fabian

-Fabian has to juggle the new 150% course load (bard/fighter) as well as his new party house reputation.

-He has a lack of adult supervision which also means a lack of adult care and it seems to be affecting him more than he’s willing to let on. 

-But honestly his biggest obstacle is probably himself right now, lol. He made himself a new nemesis in Gertie Bladshield and I am not confident he can handle this honey trap mission with Ivy without the tables being turned on him. 

Riz

-Riz is also facing money troubles, but for him that’s kind of business as usual unfortunately.

-He has a TON of extracurriculars to keep track of but he so far seems to be handling it pretty well and is picking up some interesting allies (that double as votes for Kristen’s campaign–campaign manager is also an extracurricular he’s taken up): the aforementioned Gertie Bladeshield (Apiary Club), Sprak LeFevre (Aviation Club), and Molman Holden (Soil Club). Always good to have new allies and Aviation Club seems like it could be really useful later! I can see him making some luck checks to successfully say, “I know a guy” in a tight spot based on how many clubs he’s joined. 

-He also has the Reliable Talent ability now which means he’s incapable of rolling lower than a 21 on things he’s proficient in which includes Investigation. We’re about to be getting some INSANE lore dumps. 

Gorgug

-Gorgug has his insane 400% courseload happening and I didn’t notice this until it was pointed out to me but Zac actually leveled Gorgug DOWN in Barbarian to take an extra level of Artificer! That’s commitment. But I can’t imagine Porter, who already has a problem with him, is gonna like that. 

Fig

-Fig would hate it if I didn’t start this list by saying that she hella misses Ayda and that’s her biggest problem. 

-But she also has her album to worry about and we actually get the bombshell during a conversation with Mazey that she’s not even sure that she still wants to be a bard.

-On top of that, she’s taking Barb and Warlock classes along with the Bard classes she’s finally going to. 

-She has her gnarly Gilear curse happening that’s seemingly connected to whoever the boss who owns the pride armor is. 

-She has beef with Rebuen and is living her double life as Wanda Childa to try and learn whatever she can about him/the Rat Grinders. 

-Both she and Wanda are wanted by the Solace FBI.  

-On a positive note, she really endeared herself to Mazey by sweetly sticking up for her when Ivy was being catty. If Fig wasn’t so devoted to Ayda I could have read their interaction at the end of the ep as flirty. Regardless, nice moment and great ally. 

Kristen

-Welp, her god is, if not dead, MIA which is arguably the biggest deal of anything on any of these lists, especially since it’s tied to her magic AND her grade. 

-Next of course is the potato to her meat on her plate: her campaign. But that’s actually going really well, especially after this party. Her biggest issue is whether or not she can get Fetty Wap to homecoming and, lbr, in a pinch Fig can just disguise herself as him. When has that ever not worked?

-She also has this unnamed god (or whoever it is) taunting her and threatening her specifically which isn’t ideal. 

-But I honestly think she was more fucked up by the conversation which Tracker where her ex basically outlined everything she needs to get together in her life and then posted a pre-written pic with her new girlfriend. That’s gotta sting. 

And that’s it! I wanted to focus on the specific nuggets of info we got this episode and start to connect them with what we knew so far. Different format, I know, but I’m feeling experimental this season and I might switch it up a few more times as Junior Year goes on. I love covering Fantasy High but, like I said at the top, I have to keep it fresh so I don’t burn out. See you next time when Brennan makes the stress we’re all feeling an actual game mechanic! Fun!

[crazyexmormon]

Been getting a weird kinda nostalgia recently. I go on a lot of Wikipedia rabbit holes, and I always seem to wind up on the pages about mormonism. Its such a weird feeling, like simultaneously having such intimate knowledge of a topic and learning something completely new about it. I can’t remember even once being taught that church leaders disagreed on anything, but they did, there’s a thousand different opinions on fucking everything! To be fair, I was 14 when I deconverted, so maybe it would’ve been taught if I’d been around for the more mature stuff. Part of me wishes I had stuck around to learn all that. Nowadays I keep finding that I’m forgetting minor details about mormonism I used to know instinctively. It’s weirdly sad.

And sometimes you learn about alternate interpretations that just. Hit you in such a specific way. Some mormon feminists view Heavenly Mother as the Holy Ghost. Did you know that? I sure didn’t. People were excommunicated for that. Reading about Heavenly Mother in general feels like a god I was robbed of. I don’t believe in any of it, but I wish I’d been able to believe in her, at least. I knew about her growing up, of course, and I know my mom has a lot of thoughts about her, some of which she’s shared — I remember her telling me years ago that she thought god didn’t want her to be as prominent in order to protect her from blasphemy. I don’t know if she still believes that. I wish I’d grown up believing in the Holy Ghost as a Heavenly Mother. I don’t know if it would’ve changed much materially, but it feels so right, I can’t explain it more than that.

Not to mention all the primary songs and Mormon movies and books and phone games. And the magazines, and the file folder games for sacrament meeting. I realized recently I still have the 11th article of faith memorized. I have some other ones partially down, but that one is word for word. I remember how all the primary kids would gather outside the bishop’s office after church waiting to recite the articles of faith in exchange for candy. I always liked the 11th cuz it started with claim instead. I remember when they introduced the song versions of them, how my mom hated them cuz the tune felt so random.

I don’t know. It’s just sad how much of your childhood is bittersweet looking back. It’s sad to be cut off from your culture; no matter how horrible that culture may be, it’s still a foundational part of me. I can’t be Mormon again, but I can’t have never been one either. It’s weird to live in the middle ground.

[alaskan-wallflower]

For the ask game: Butters! I can't decide on which questions so... all of them! (Or how ever many you feel like answering.)

oh this should be fun-

My first interpretation of them

Honestly I just felt bad for him. I basically knew him as the kid who got grounded all the time and he seemed sweet enough, he was actually one of my faves from the beginning haha

2. When I think I started to truly like him

Honestly the Fun With Veal episode. And in the Butters’ Bottom Bitch episode where he just kept going ‘do you know what I am saying?’ I just thought it was funny lol

3. A song that reminds me of them

(Kinda a joint one) but You and Me (But Mostly Me) from Book of Mormon is SO Butters and Cartman. Also The Weight of Us by Sanders Bohlke.

4. How many people I ship them with

I don’t really do ships lol, I liked him and Charlotte tho, they seemed cute.

5. My favorite ship of them

Probably him and Charlotte

6. My least favorite ship of them

Him and Cartman. Absolutely him and Cartman.

7. A quote of them I remember

“I’d rather be a crying little pussy than a faggy goth kid anyway.”

8, My favorite outfit on them

Professor Chaos or his Stick of Truth costume

9. My least favorite outfit on them

The bear suit Paris Hilton made him wear in Stupid Spoiled Whore Video Playset. I felt awful for him

10. Describe the character in one sentence

Sunshine boy with horrible family members

11. What’s the first thing I think fo when I think of this character?

His accent. I dunno, I just have a knack for remembering stuff like that lol-I could honestly just listen to his voice all day, it’s soothing for me

12. Sexuality hdc!

I’m torn between him being pan and being straight lol, but I do think he’s on the ace spectrum.

13. My favorite friendship they have

Him and Kenny. Definitely

14. Best storyline they had

Butters’ Very Own Episode. I felt bad for him but it’s one of my favorite episodes

15. Worst storyline they had

Probably in the earlier seasons when he was just used as Kenny’s counterpart for the shows punching bag. Idk, it just felt like he didn’t really have any character or personality back then

16. A childhood headcanon

He lived on a farm for a little bit when he was a baby. They moved from Hawaii to say Oklahoma, then to South Park when he was three. Hence the accent. He also had a pet chick up until he was 7 or so named Toast. His parents made him give the chick away tho

17. What do you think their first word was?

Probably just mama or something. I do have a headcanon he still calls his mom (or his unofficial mother figure) mama sometimes.

18. How do I think he was as a kid?

He was probably really hyper. He subdued when he got older tho because his parents kept grounding him for accidentally breaking stuff when he would run around

19. The most random ship I’ve seen with this character

Butters x Craig. Like ???? They never interacted in the show lol-

20. A weird headcanon

Butters has a huge sweet tooth and if there’s candy or sweets in his vicinity he’ll devour it in an instant and likely suffer from a bellyache later

21. When do I think they were at his happiest?

Probably when he moved out and went to college tbh. He was just happy to get away from his toxic ass family. Or when his grandma finally dies.

22. When do I think he was at his lowest?

I do headcanon that when he’s in middle school he finally snaps. He becomes angry and kinda becomes a bully because he doesn’t feel like he has anyone who cares about him, it’s probably only for a few days at most but he just snaps at everyone, makes fun of everything everyone does, but after a few days Kenny (and maybe Cartman or Kyle) kinda confronts him and he ends up apologizing and trying to find someone to talk to.

23. Future headcanon

I wanna imagine that he lives on a farm, he has a bunch of chickens and goats (his favs) and some cows, pigs, even ducks. He gets a pet dog (a Border Collie) named Waffles. He kinda owns a petting zoo of sorts where younger kids just stop by and he educated them about animals and stuff. He also owns a bakery. He names it ‘Buttery Bliss’ or something

24. What do you think i’d a secret they’ve never told anyone?

Probably the thing with his sphincter and how he has to wear diapers in school sometimes. He probably only told AWESOM-O because he thought it was just a robot. But after that he didn’t tell anyone because he would definitely get made fun of :(

25. When do I think he’s acted the most ooc

Probably in The Worldwide Privacy Tour. Kyle even said ‘this is really out of character for you, Butters.’ so probably that lol, or in Going Native. I mean he literally wanted to kill a bunch of innocent people

26. When do I think they were being “themselves” the most?

Honestly? Probably when he was singing the Loo Loo Loo song, it kinda just showed his cuter side. Or in Cartman Sucks when his parents sent him to the Pray teh Gay Away camp because he was just so oblivious to where he was but still stood up for himself and his friends in the end

27. If they could meet a certain character from a different show/movie/book, who would be the most fun for them to meet?

Hello kitty. This kid would be in HEAVEN if Hello kitty was real. Either Hello kitty or Tails the Fox. Him and Tails are pretty similar. Plus fluffy fox meets sunshine boy, they’d get along-or just him in the pokémon world. Yes.

28. The most unnecessary thing they ever did?

Probably when he was trying to get the Hawaiian tourists killed in war

29. How do I think they’d be as a parent?

Honestly? He spoils the shit out of his kids. He’s a huge pushover, but not to the point where his kids become spoiled brats. He probably exposes them to animals early so he could get them to know what’s good and what isn’t when on the farm. He supports his children, but he’s probably a very sheltering parent if that makes sense. Has no idea what he’s doing at first but eventually gets the hang of it. He loves playing make believe with them, would totally play dress up and such.

30. The funniest scene they ever had?

When he’s Professor Chaos and trying to be all menacing and Dougie has to keep telling him the Simpsons already did his idea and he’s just like ‘aw hamburgers :(‘

Hope this is good!

[fierceawakening]

So that “South Park rots your brain, don’t let yourself watch it” post is on my dash again

Do people feel the same way about the Book of Mormon musical? Same guys, same insanely offensive humor, but the characters are all really… likeable anyway? Or at least that’s how I felt about it and what I thought it was trying to say. “Look how dumb the things humans make up are, and how they use them to hurt each other way too often. Now look at how they need them anyway, and can use them in positive ways if they’re honest about it all.”

I’ll feel bad if people think we don’t get to like that any more.

I mean, I’ll also ignore them! But I’ll feel bad. For a second. Maybe.

(Seriously, what is “you there! I command you to stop liking South Park!” gonna do that “I don’t like South Park, because I didn’t find XYZ funny, just weird and mean” won’t?)

[eowyn-igneelcheshire]

I spent about two hours answering these questions as best I could, so here's my answers:

Picture a wedding. Any wedding even in a fantasy context.

Arwen in a long lilac dress and Aragorn in the exact same clothes he wore at his coronation crown and all standing hand in hand in front of a beautiful overgrown archway.

What does someone mean when they say “The Bible”? 

I usually imagine the Mormon Bible first but I have no idea what’s actually in it. I just picture a black book with “The Bible” in gold letters on the cover.

When is New Year’s? 

Everyone around me celebrates on January 1st but I keep forgetting it exists. I don’t know when New Year’s is for other cultures. When I start living on my own and therefore don’t have people to remind me of holidays I’m probably just gonna go with the first bloom in spring signifying the new year because time and dates don’t entirely register in my brain.

What does a religious service look like? 

I first pictured a mosque, then a Mormon church but specifically one with a low ceiling and weird lighting, then I pictured a group of people around a bonfire.

What do people look like when they’re praying on their own? 

I first pictured someone kneeling with their forehead pressed against the ground, then someone clasping their hands and kneeling, then myself laying on my back in bed with my hands balled in fists and pressing against my forehead in an attempt to get my thoughts to focus so I can figure out what the fuck to say while I’m crying because I’m having a meltdown and desperately trying to ask either Hypnos or Thanatos to help me.

Do you find the concept of being culturally a member of a religion you don’t, as far as you can tell, practice or believe in, weird?

Sort of? Mainly because it’s not a culture I’ve strongly identified with anyways. I wouldn’t really mind celebrating a religious holiday if I was invited by friends or family who are part of that culture, but I’m not going to celebrate something like Easter or Hanukkah on my own.

Is there fundamentally a good-evil dichotomy? 

No.

What does repentance/atonement entail -and what requires it? 

I honestly have no idea.

What does the word “religion” mean to you? 

I don’t know the answer to this either. I guess whatever a person says (genuinely, not as a “____ is my religion” kind of joke) is their religion then that’s their religion.

What is the opposite of religion? 

I don’t even have a solid definition for religion… When a person says they don’t have a religion I guess?

Do you assume that your definition is universal and applicable to others?

Universal? Probably not. Applicable to others? Well it’s incredibly vague so maybe????

Do your ideas and concepts about religion exist in English, or do they only really exist in another language?

I’m honestly not entirely sure what this question is supposed to mean. It’s my idea on religion and English is the only language I speak.

What is the honorable and good way to bury someone who has died, and to mourn their passing? What is the language of death? What makes a death good or bad? How is the body treated? What are the ritual, sacred, cultural, practical, ethical traditions around death?

I mean I personally would preserve the heart and bones (especially the skull), because I think it would help me to have some part of that person I can hold when I miss them, then burn the rest and either throw the ashes into the wind or make something out of them. I’m not entirely sure what they mean by the language of death. I don’t think there’s such a thing as a “good death” or a “bad death,” I think there’s a tragic death, but that’s entirely subjective and depends things like if they were happy when they died, if they had major goals left unfinished, if they were depressed, if they died lonely, if they died doing something they loved, etc.. I’ve already described what I’d do with the body, I haven’t figured out the ritual part yet.

What are the legal particulars that evolved into the marriage ceremony you imagine as the default? How is that marriage celebrated? What IS marriage, and who has authority over it?

Marriage is a mutual bond between two (or more, if people would just let poly couples get married!!!) legal adults. I don’t really have a default ceremony in mind, just whatever the people getting married want to do. Marriage is celebrated however the people involved want to celebrate it. Legally it’s whatever the law says is a marriage, socially if two (or more) people have what they consider to be a wedding and then say they’re married, then they’re married.

How does someone come into this world? How is their coming celebrated, before and after the actual birth? How is their name chosen? What names are off limits? How many names do they get? When are the names used? What do they mean?How do they honor family?How do they become a part of the community?

A person comes into this world by exiting a uterus. I’m sure they meant the religious explanation but I don’t have one so that’s what I’ve got. I don’t know much about how the people around me celebrate births. I know some people have baby showers before the birth, but I have no idea what kind of celebrations happen after aside from the child’s first birthday. The parent(s) usually pick the name as far as I’m aware? I don’t know of any names being off limits, I know numbers aren’t allowed in names (Elon Musk….). They get as many names as the parent’s give them? Usually only the first and last names are used day-to-day unless they go by something else like their middle name, but sometimes people full-name their kids when they’re in trouble. I don’t fully understand the “what do they mean” question. I don’t think people exist to honor anybody except themselves. Children are automatically part of the community until they get old enough to consciously separate themselves from it. 

As someone ages, how will they pass through meaningful, institutionalized rites of passage? When are they responsible? When are they an adult?

I don’t understand the rites of passage part… The only thing I can think of is starting school, moving from elementary to middle school, from middle school to high school, and from high school to either a job or college or both. I don’t fully understand the “when are they responsible” part either. Legally 18 is when you become an adult in America, but personally I think it should be 20 both because being a teenager AND an adult is weird to me and because I am 18 now and I do not feel ready for adulthood.

What is the relationship between humanity and nature? The relationship between humanity and the earth? What is our position in the natural world? What rights do we have or not have, what duties do we have or not have?

Humans are animals, we are and always will be part of nature. The sooner we recognize that the sooner we can get our shit together and stop destroying the one place we can survive. We’re like deer but worse because deer have wolves to keep them in check. I don’t understand the rights part but our duty to the planet is to not fucking destroy the planet.

What is your view about the occult? Your concept of angels, demons, and the devil? What do magic, divination, and astrology look like to you?

I’m a pagan witch. I think all things from all religions (including angels, demons, and the devil) exist just maybe not in the way certain religions think they do, like the Abrahamic God does exist but isn’t the only god. “Magic” is incredibly vague, it doesn’t work the way different movies, games, or book series depict it (you can’t cast fireball irl), but it does exist and it takes many different forms. Divination is something I haven’t explored in my practice yet so I can’t say what it looks like, but astrology is mostly bullshit except as like a basic guide or something. Your zodiac sign doesn’t determine what kind of person you’re going to be, but if you do fit some of the boxes it can help you figure out where to start looking in terms of what people or jobs you’re likely to be compatible with (AGAIN!! DOES NOT DETERMINE ANYTHING ABOUT YOU OR OTHERS!!! IT’S JUST A SORT OF DECENT TOOL!!! LET ME REPEAT THAT. IT IS A TOOL!!!!!).

What ubiquitous symbols exist in your culture? What phrases and idioms do you use to convey meaning beyond the explicit? Do you use these without thinking about their origin?

I don’t understand what any of this means.

How is the year celebrated? What seasons are given special honor, and why? What themes are strong enough to provoke holidays and observances? What ARE those holidays and observances? 

I don’t understand any of this either… I know spring, autumn, and winter are full of holidays here in the US, I’m not entirely sure about spring or winter but autumn is harvest season for a lot of crops so I can understand there being holidays around then. I don’t fully understand the last two questions.

What holidays do you consider “religious,” “secular,” or “national?” How do you observe them? What rights do you feel you have around them - do you have the right not to work on certain days, and why those days? Do you have the right to celebrate them publicly, even in a government supposedly separated from religion, and what gives you that right?

Religious holidays I know of right of the top of my head are Easter, Christmas, Hanukkah, and I think Halloween though I don’t remember what exactly it was for and it seems to have been rejected by many Christians for being a pagan holiday despite the fact that it is in fact Christian, it just shares roots with a Celtic pagan (or wiccan, not entirely sure which, people are still using the two interchangeably) holiday. Samhain, I believe, is what the holiday is called. It’s still celebrated by pagans and/or wiccans today. I think everyone should have the right to publicly celebrate their religious holidays, especially if the government is separate from religion (not sure why the question was worded like that?? Having a government separate from religion just means the government can’t celebrate religious holidays, not that the people can’t). As for having the right to not work on holidays, if it’s a holiday you’re religiously not supposed to work during then fuck yeah you should have the right not to work.

What IS prayer? How does one do it? Does it matter or make a difference? What is it’s intention? 

I personally don’t have a specific definition of prayer or how to do it, though I know plenty of religions do. I’m not sure what the third question means. The intention is dependent on the situation as far as I know.

How much do you know about the culture, beliefs, history, traditions, and oppressions of different religious groups? How much do you know about your own group, or the dominant group in your country? 

I don’t know how much I don’t know about anything until I learn something new, so I can’t say exactly how much I know about other religions. I know I haven’t bothered to learn much about the Mormon religion since I decided to leave it, and I know I still have more to learn about paganism since I’ve only fairly recently adopted those beliefs. An older witch and fellow pagan once told me that we create our own practices and our own mythologies, so I know that even if I come to know my own beliefs perfectly inside and out, that doesn’t mean I know everything about the beliefs of others.

Looking at the entire list, do you expect other people to have similar answers as you? Why?

I know not everyone thinks the same thing as me, but I imagine there’s at least one person in the world who shares some of my answers. Even if my view is one in a million, there’s still far more than a million people in the world.

Here's the blank version of the google doc I typed this up in if anyone's interested in doing this themselves: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZFxylYPIPok37W4RlZrGYRiI01VtKjHBNkPn87nFcQU/pub

the thing folks living in Christian dominant cultures gotta realize is that even if you’re not Christian, your basic understanding of religion and spirituality and morality is still being filtered through a Christian lens. your very concept of what religion is and does is filtered through that lens.

[nottskyler]

Went to Thanksgiving Point’s Luminaria this weekend and got to see the new Tree of Life exhibit. I do appreciate the Christ statues, but I think the idea of the Tree of Life section bit off more than it could chew theologically. Weird things about pregnant women and where they were allowed to be on the path and the fact that only women and children were at the tree of life other than Christ and a neighboring Book of Mormon prophet looking down the hill. Not to mention the great and spacious building women having more masculine features than the women on the trail (and none were implied to be mothers). Though the tree was beautiful, if hard to get to with a stroller (sorry for those in wheelchairs, I almost wanted to ask the next one I saw if they were able to get to the tree).

Anyway, it had me thinking about Lehi’s dream and the narration at one point was talking about how both men and women were in the great and spacious building and I did my immediate correction to people of all genders, but then thought that maybe limiting it to two was a good allegory for now. People of indeterminate gender are not the ones mocking people partaking of the Love of Gd. It’s the ones who are refusing to allow created diversity in the portrayal of gender or for eternal gender to take precedent over mortal flesh.

It just felt very poignant at that moment. I have partaken from the tree when I transitioned and was still allowed in Church and in the Temple. I felt so full of the love of Gd for myself and all those around me. I had so much hope and joy and happiness. I don’t have it so much now because I’m being dragged away by leaders of the Church and drowned in an unaccepting congregation and hate stirred by people in the great and spacious building.

I don’t know where to go from here, especially at the cusp of an anti-Christ taking over the leadership of the Church. I don’t know how to get back to the tree, but I do know what I had and where I want to return. Is it better to fight or find a different route? Is it better to stay in Utah or move before the laws are too toxic? How do you keep your faith when poison is being sprayed on it by those who should be nurturing it?

2025 is going to be a year of going through the obstacles of what is doctrine and what is manmade in my mental structure of belief. I’m unsure how much I will share here as I will be going back and forth on things.

[wandaluvstacos]

Chapter 42 of Good Investment is now up on my Patreon!

Good Investment is available at the $5/month tier. People who pledge $5 a month have access to not only Good Investment but The Sponsors series (ongoing), Pretty Things (complete), May the Blood Run Pure (complete), and Kept Man (complete), along with the $1/month tier books, the Reflections trilogy (ongoing) and The Halfwife (ongoing).

Adri Schvaneveldt has always felt split between two worlds. In one world, they are the adopted child of a large and conservative Mormon family. In another, she is the CEO of a burgeoning fashion empire that pushes boundaries. But in order to be the latter, Adri first has to find the funding. After gaining a hefty following as a social media influencer/model, Adri has the potential customers– if they can get a reliable production model pounded out. And that means a bit of groveling at the feet of investors, most of who have never even heard the term “non-binary”.

But Adri lucks out with Gideon Snow, whose youth and open mind bring much needed funds to make Adri’s dream of diverse, accessible fashion a reality. Of course, lifting a newborn company to its feet is no small task, and late nights drive Adri to occasional stays at Gideon’s nearby house, where their relationship begins stretching beyond business. Adri knows they can’t put an entire business venture at risk for the turbulent whims of their heart. But reason doesn’t always win out.

Excerpt:

Anthony snorted. “Fine, you know what? I’ll tell you the truth. The person who posted that picture reached out to me and asked me some questions before they posted it. I thought it was weird or whatever, but I also thought it was very funny.”

“What’s funny about this to you?”

“That you’re gay now or whatever, but, like, gay light? Christ, between you and Tiffany, there’s gotta be something in the water.”

Gideon wished he wasn’t high when having this conversation. It made sorting his thoughts and responses difficult. Was it even worth arguing with Anthony? He was going to believe what he wanted to believe. Who cares if he thought Gideon was gay? And yet, Gideon’s brain wasn’t at full capacity. “I’m not gay.”

“Kissing a man dressed like a woman is still gay.”

“You’re a fucking piece of shit.”

Anthony laughed. “What’s it like sucking dick?”

“What’s it like being a fucking…” Gideon brain shorted out, his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. While he stumbled to conjure words, Anthony laughed again.

“You coulda had your choice of hot 20-somethings, dude. Hell, maybe even 18 or 19-year-olds. You could have been drowningin pussy if you weren’t such a fucking cuck. Instead you’re sucking crossdresser dick. It’s sad. I don’t think you deserve death threats or any of that, but you can’t do degenerate shit without getting any pushback.”

“What’s wrong with you?” Gideon said, at a loss for what else to say.

“I’m alpha now. I’m on top of my shit.”

Gideon’s rage suddenly dropped off a cliff, and what followed was laughter—starting with a snort before descending into uncontrollable giggling.

“What the fuck?” Anthony said amidst Gideon’s onslaught.

“Alpha,” Gideon snickered, then started laughing again, this time louder. Oh yeah, he was still definitely high. He struggled to keep his grip on his phone as he wheezed for breath. He tried to say something but got caught by hysteria again.

“Fuck you,” Anthony snarled. “Fuck you and your soy boy bullshit.”

“Are you 13?” Gideon giggled. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

“At least I’m not gay.”

“Grow up.”

“Whatever, I actually don’t care about any of this, especially since you never helped me out with that loan I asked for. I don’t owe you shit. If my fans are being dickheads, that’s on them.”

[dungeons-and-dictions]

General Conference is a great way to get back! I often listen to podcasts at work, while doing chores, even playing games. You don’t have to be formal and sit in the living room and take notes.

Idk where I learned this, but it’s stuck throughout my life since:

Sometimes it’s our turn to catch people when they fall, and sometimes it’s our turn to be caught.

I always reminded my Grumpy Friend in YSA that maybe, they were coming to the church thing today because someone would need them. It just so happened that often they befriended the person in your similar situation.

If you go back, and keep going, you’ll find your people. It may take a few months to wade through and find each other. But even in the suckiest Mormon Bubble ward where the RS President waged war against me (idk why btw), I still found a small group of friends.

Heck, one church acquaintance became my bestie after six years of just being Facebook friends, when I helped her avoid homelessness. I felt so silly after we became friends, that we hadn’t sooner. Catching her at that moment was the catalyst.

And another church friend happened when I begged to be let into an apartment hot tub because I hadn’t gotten my key yet and went on a 10-mile hike that day that was supposed to be 2 miles. She caught me that time!

Anyway.

And even if you don’t find someone? You already have Christ ready to catch you. He knows your desires, and fears about it. Taking the plunge to restart something is hard, but keep your eyes on the Gospel, and the nice social parts should come with time.

I don’t know if any of this will help you, but you’re not alone in this struggle. Not enough active members think about the invisible apprehensions to coming back even if you yearn for it. It’s similar to my issues with going back to soccer after I had to give it up in high school.

(except, church is nice and doesn’t give you weird meniscus issues)

I haven't been able to follow general conference in April for a couple of years now

I haven't even been able to go to church really

I accidentally became less active when I didn't want to. It was something I never wanted to happen and it was unavoidable.

I haven't been to the temple in 4 years and my temple recommend expired around that time too. Never renewed it.

I miss it. I miss the temple and refusing to go to 90% of the activities organized by the ward but still being asked every single time. I miss groaning whenever the too-talkative elderly member stopped me for a chat when I was in a hurry only for them to always end up telling me a funny story.

The ward has grown so much these past 4 years and I know nobody in there. Aside from the 10 people I talked to most often, I don't remember anyone's name and I don't know the face of any of the new members, let alone their names.

I miss it all and I don't know how to go back

[carol-effing-danvers]

The Hollow Man

(Ao3 Version here)

He has become something of a local legend. A terrifying reminder that something is not quite normal in the little town of Hawkins. You can see him lurking around town with a hooded sweatshirt pulled up over the tangle of his hair and if you're really unlucky, catch a fast glimpse of his feverishly blue eyes beneath that hoodie.

Junior grade girls who used to throw themselves at his feet pretend not to know his name. Instead, they whisper to each other when he passes by, spooked and theatrical. “It’s the Hollow Man.”

Or as Eleven calmly tells Max: "Billy will be different now."

"Different how?" she'd asked, skeptical. She wasn't foolish enough to believe you could be stabbed through the chest cavity by a three-story monster and come back right as rain.

"Different…sort of like me," El had, looking a bit sad at the idea. "Only…not."

She still has absolutely no fucking idea what that means but he does seem calmer now, especially after Neil left the house.

Well, 'left' implies that he planned out his departure and packed his bags one day.

Neil actually got up in the middle of the night, packed their car with a haphazard collection of his shit, and drove away from the house - by himself after a bewildered Susan and half-asleep Max refused to go with him. "Fine - stay here with that fucking demon!"

Max assumes that Neil meant Billy but she doesn't understand - he's certainly quieter than he used to be (and maybe stronger, she isn't so sure) but calling him a demon is a little overdramatic, in her opinion.

At first, Billy thinks she's fucking with him, and then he assumes she's just being polite because she doesn't want to hurt his feelings. But Max really, truly does not notice anything different. In fairness, Eleven and even Susan don’t usually seem to find anything amiss - maybe they’re a little more uneasy about him now and then, but for the most part, they’re pretty alright.

That’s when Billy realizes that there’s a trick to it. Not everyone sees what he can see when he looks in the mirror now. Most of them, from what he can tell - from what El confirms for him - see a much tamer version. Neil must have seen something much, much worse.

But in his most secret self, Billy has to admit that he loves Max - so she really can’t see any difference.

Anyway, the people in the town don’t bother him and so he doesn’t bother them and that’s the way he likes it.

Or that’s the way it is until that squeaky little church boy decides to put his fucking hands on Maxine.

Max is already impatient when she answers the door. She’s supposed to be meeting El at the movie theater in twenty minutes and she’s looked up and down but can’t find her own fucking shoes - Pretty in Pink is still playing in the tiny theater and it isn’t really Max’s bag, but she knows El will love it and Max is the only one who’ll go with her.

So she’s already over this conversation before she even opens the door to the person knocking. It doesn’t really help that Max first thinks he’s like, an actual Mormon or a Jehovah’s Witness or something.

He looks very…clean. Maybe it’s spending too much time with boys like Billy or that guy Eddie who the boys are always hanging around but Max finds something very weird about boys who are that clean. It’s like seeing a green sky and blue grass - there’s something not quite right about it to her.

Although Max doesn’t know it, Jason has been hunting for each boy in the party for the entire weekend - mostly because they hang out with Eddie Munson. Eddie Munson, who lately has been spending a large amount of time with Jason’s girlfriend.

Well…as of Friday, she’s now his ex-girlfriend.

Max does know that there’s something about the way he smiles. It reminds her of the way Billy used to smile - the fake one. “Hi, are you Maxine?”

“Max,” she says shortly, creeped out that he apparently already knows her name.

“Lucas’ girlfriend?”

“Uh…yes?” This is making even less sense by the minute - and where the hell are her fucking shoes?! “Do you mind getting to the point any time soon?”

His smile - fake, her mind still notes - dims away. “He hangs out with that Eddie freak, right? Do you happen to know where he is?”

Irritated behind belief at being treated as Lucas’ fucking secretary, of all things, Max snaps “No! I’m his girlfriend, not his fucking keeper! If you’re so keen on finding him, I don’t know - call him, maybe?”

And then Max slams the door in his face, because she is going to be fucking LATE, and Eleven gets anxious when any of them are late, and-

Jason’s entire arm blocks the door, face stormy. No longer quite so saccharine-polite. “Do you normally talk to strangers this way?” Glances at the empty hall behind her. “Your parents didn’t teach you any manners, Maxine?”

“Max,” she corrects again with a sneer. Although a prickle goes over the back of her neck, Max Mayfield has dealt with the Upside Down and her stepbrother is Billy Hargrove. This…how would Billy put it? This squeaky little shitbag doesn’t scare her. “And yeah, they did - I just don’t need to use them on arrogant assholes who try to interrogate me at my own house.”

“You-” He doesn’t finish the sentence, just grabs at Max’s arm and squeezes, squeezes like Billy used to when he was really pissed - except that Billy never ever grabbed her this hard and Max’s mouth opens - to scream, or to yell at him, she doesn’t even know, but Jason’s other hand reaches toward her face to cover her mouth.

NOW Max is sorta panicking - this motherfucker has actually lost his mind - but before she can freak out too badly, something happens.

And by ‘something’, she means Billy.

A rough bronzed hand suddenly yanked on the back collar of Jason’s jacket, pulling him up and then off of the front porch, and sending him careening down the front stairs. The action forced him to let go of Max, naturally, who was dumped onto the floor in the front hallway, directly on her ass. Ow.

She struggles to her feet just in time to see Billy, in his ratty fucking sweatpants and holey workout tank, standing with his back to her on the porch steps - right behind where Jason used to be standing.

“Oh, dude!” she cries, as she realizes what Jason is doing right on their fucking front lawn. “Seriously?!”

He’s pissed himself. Well, he’s pissed himself, AND he looks like he’s seen a fucking ghost - but as far as Max can tell, it’s just Billy.

Jason’s mouth opens and closes, a strained weak sound emerging that Max realizes is actually a scream. Or it would be a scream but Jason is apparently so terrified that he can’t properly work his lungs to make the sound.

Again, it’s just Billy. She doesn’t know what’s got him so worked up. Except that it’s just Billy to Max.  

Billy feels a grin stretch across his face and the little blond maggot looks like he might actually faint. It must be worse than what he can see when he looks in the mirror - and what he sees in the mirror looks pretty fucking bad.

Jason doesn’t see Billy, Jason sees The Hollow Man.

Dark empty pits where the eyes should be - not missing its eyeballs but the sockets are bloody, scraped clean of them, the face gaunt and skeletal and graying and semi-translucent. Like something decayed, and Jason can sort of see its teeth through the skin. They look…sharp. Very sharp.

He tries to crawl away on weak, rubbery limbs as it comes closer but the thing grabs him by the front of the shirt, fingers long and spidery and clawed. Reaches for his face, covering his mouth the way Jason had tried to do with Max.

His tongue, when the creature speaks, is slick and black. Oily. Jason feels bile rise in his throat and whimpers, tears flowing freely down his face.

“Go on home now, little boy,” It purrs, and grins at him with all of those teeth. “I’ll see you again tonight in your dreams.”

And then Billy throws Jason back to the ground, and while he doesn’t use all of his strength to do it, his shoulder still makes a divot in the grass when he hits it.

Max watches dumbfounded as Jason, now covered in dirt and grass and piss, screams his head off like an absolute ninny and runs away from their house like someone has lit his hair on fire.

“Man,” she says, rubbing her sore butt. “People in this town have a fucking screw loose.”

“Mm,” Billy agrees, and lights himself a cigarette.

[stardewsnail]

Could you do sfw and nsfw headcanons for Harvey with a partner who’s a vampire?? (Maybe not the type that burns in the sun, I don’t know if a vampire like that would be a very good farmer lol)

Tysm!

This request is a DELIGHT

Okay we’re gonna go with an adventure time style vampire where the farmer wears gloves and a big hat when they’re outside. This farmer has a collection of parasols. They’re always in long sleeves, gardening gloves, overalls, boots, and a big sun hat.

Sfw

Harvey is going to intensely study his partner. Not in a creepy government lab way but in a “holy shit medical school never prepared me for this” kind of way

Will help figure out a way to keep his partner fed sans murder. The murder is a hard line though, being pro murder would be a deal breaker. Something about a Hippocratic Oath

Harvey being so stressed out about his partner getting hurt in the mines only to find out that they are in fact one of the monsters down there

That’s a relief for him, honestly.

Of course the big question here would be if he also wanted to be a vampire…I think he would. I think he’d be totally fine with it as long as there was a murderless path. A little like Carlisle Cullen, he’d want to keep being a doctor. (None of the weird Mormonism or forever high school or weird cult stuff though)

He will do research into the best possible sunscreen and spf clothing.

This vampire can fly, and will carry Harvey through the air. It’s really helped his fear of heights knowing he’ll never fall when he’s with his partner.

NSFW

Okay if nobody is going to say it then I will YOU WOULDN’T DATE A VAMPIRE UNLESS YOU HAD A VAMPIRE KINK

Harvey was very, very into classic monster movies and vampire flicks during some very impressionable teen years, alright?

He already loves having his neck kissed or nipped—having an actual vampire romancing him and pressing their lips to his throat would drive him insane.

whimpering and needy, he’d throw back his head so they would have full access

If it was medically safe to do (or at least not completely medically risky) he would let his partner feed on him and he would find it a little sexy. Like he would never have any kind of blood kink except in this scenario (pathogens! Yikes!) but the pain and eroticism of his partner kissing only to bite and suck or gently lap at the wound. To know that he is the one nurturing his partner’s body in this most intimate of ways? He’s into it. Let the man live.

He’s more submissive as it is—and having a partner who is stronger and faster and magical to take care of him or dominate him means his sex life just improved exponentially. He’s a big, tall guy who’s wants to be manhandled and thrown around.

Want his partner to please pin him against the wall and hoist him up by his thighs so he can wrap his legs around their hips.

There’s also an element of bringing pleasure to such a beautiful and supernatural creature—that in their entire immortal life he gets to have his face between their thighs making them feel so good. And I don’t care how long the vampire has been alive—Harvey is the best head they’ve ever had.

[fierceawakening]

I think Tumblr is thankfully a little over its “people with NPD are smol beans uwu” phase (or maybe it’s just that I’ve finally filtered that cadre of people out and those left are a bit more friendly to “demonizing people is bad! Obvi! but there’s also a reason many people find people with those traits difficult to be in close relationships with,” which is pretty much where I am) but I am Thinking about something

Some of you know that I’ve been following the Ruby Franke child abuse case. Franke was a Mormon influencer and mommy vlogger who was popular but who many people worried was overly harsh with her kids to the point of abuse. She had a close associate named Jodi Hildebrandt who at the time was a licensed therapist.

One of her kids fled Jodi’s home and had been severely physically abused (tied up in such a way it left deep wounds which were then “treated” with cayenne pepper paste), blowing the whole thing wide open. Ruby and Jodi both were charged with aggravated child abuse and both pled guilty to four of six counts and are awaiting sentencing.

Anyway people have been following the story, and one thing that’s become very clear is that Jodi was a profoundly unethical therapist and has a history both of abusing kids and of ruining adult clients’ marriages. It’s a mess and a train wreck and very obvious when you look into Jodi that she had a kind of cult leader personality. (People suspected she wouldn’t plead guilty just because she’s SO rigid about her beliefs in the videos.) I know the one true way to help kids grow, society disapproves but I’m right, etc.

And there’s one video of her that people watch for the shock of it. She is sitting with Ruby in the basement they used as a video studio, and she goes off on a rant that gets more and more unhinged as she goes on. She’s upset that she’s getting bad reviews on her videos and people saying her techniques are abusive, and she says something to the effect of “I’ve made it really easy to give us a five star review, but you guys aren’t doing it! Why aren’t you doing it? You need to go do it right now. We’re getting all these one stars and we need you to help us fix it.”

It’s fascinating for the complete lack of acknowledgement that anyone might just not like the content, or give one star because they disagree with the techniques. Especially when viewers were mentioning repeatedly that they were concerned the techniques were too harsh and could even be abusive. If someone thinks that about what you’re teaching, yeah, they’ll give one star. Should be obvious? But she’s just like “I don’t know why you all aren’t doing this. Go do it.”

Anyway I bring this up because I’ve watched a LOT of videos on this, and that’s included several mental health professionals watching the videos and debunking the supposedly revolutionary new techniques of Jodi’s as abusive discipline with a weird half new age half religious conservative polish on it.

And EVERY ONE of the reactions I can remember from trained professionals says “this behavior is a clear indicator of narcissism. I would absolutely be looking out for more things like this to make a diagnosis if I were asked to do so.”

What intrigues me here is the clear consensus, and how little it resembles what I’ve seen people here on Tumblr say being narcissistic is like, which as they describe it seems to be destructive perfectionism plus struggles to empathize with people they’re not deeply close to.

Which I dunno. I think this discourse has kind of faded anyway at least off my own dash, but… I dunno. I think tumblr can sometimes get very echo chamber y about what a particular illness looks like, and everyone can sometimes all jump on a less central symptom because some posts are going viral.

Anyway I found it very interesting to see the professionals focusing very much on someone literally demanding praise, an unusual behavior that most would find striking, when the talk of tumblr was all “oh I’m a perfectionist, just to a degree where I do myself harm,” which sounds a lot more like understandably shitty coping and not “wow that’s pretty out of touch yeah.”

I dunno. I guess my point is… we love the idea of personal stories and experiential knowledge because it fits our broader politics, but it’s worthwhile to check what the scholars have to say to make sure we’re not taking one person’s compelling account as the truth of the thing.

[making-mormonism]

I think I get where you’re coming from, but I also think this is a misreading of the situation, especially as it exists today.

To start with statues and the like, Mormons are actually rather aniconic. While artistic depictions of religious scenes are certainly not banned (and indeed films and paintings have always been important instructional tools in the Church in lieu of anything like an official catechism), not only do images and objects play virtually no role in Mormon worship, but Mormons even avoid devotional items like crosses and prayer beads, which even many Protestants would feel goes a bit too far. Church meetinghouses are almost all, in a word, austere: sure there are various paintings scattered around the hallways and offices (the works of John Scott, Harry Anderson, and Del Parson are especially popular), but the walls are all whitewashed and the wood panelling plain, and the chapels themselves are required to be devoid of almost any decoration whatsoever, save maybe an American flag in the corner.

Only in temples does art play an actually important role in ritual, and even then, the murals painted onto the walls of ordinance rooms and the films shown in them are far more atmospheric, symbolic, and instructional than anything particularly akin to the iconodulia of Catholic and Orthodox traditions. Same with the bull statues that hold up the Brazen Sea fonts (where Mormons perform baptisms by proxy for the dead), and the sun-, moon-, and starstones that decorate temple doors and pilasters. The only other statue that plays a key role in the Church is the Angel Moroni blowing his trumpet, which in lieu of the cross has long been the main symbol of the Church on steeples and gravestones, but even then I think conceptualizing the Angel Moroni as an icon is misunderstanding its role. (I guess there’s also beehives? Choose the Right rings? Nothing particularly iconophilic though, I don’t think, at least no more so than Stars of David or WWJD bracelets are. Though I will come back to this.)

The Christus statue was only adopted in the early 1960s, at a time when the Church was desperately attempting to leave behind its associations with weirdness and paganism and join the American Protestant milieu of the Fourth Great Awakening, and was chosen specifically and explicitly as an outward-facing symbol—in order to project an image of Christianity towards non-Members (again, in lieu of the cross, which Mormons don’t use)—not an inward-facing one for Mormon devotion. In turn, the Christus has always only ever been erected in places intended for non-Members to learn about the Church, like temple Visitors Centers and the occasional Mormon Pavilion at a World’s Fair (most notably in 1964), and is never (so far as I have ever heard) present in temples or meetinghouses themselves.

The Christus was actually only adopted as the symbol of the wider Church in 2020, as part of President Nelson’s efforts to roll back Monson-era “I’m a Mormon” pride and again emphasize the Church’s fundamentally Christian nature to outsiders (this is the same reason the Church’s website is now churchofjesuschrist.org instead of the much more useful lds.org). I think there is something to be said about “Mormon leaders were drawn to Protestant art made in a Neoclassical style”, but I think that something is less “Mormons are drawn to Catholic imagery in particular” and is instead more “American conservatives like the aesthetics of Ancient Rome”.

I also wouldn’t read too much into the role of the Quorum of the Twelve in selecting the President; that’s more a byproduct of the largest body of the post-Martyrdom Church gaining its legitimacy by uniting around the Quorum and its president Brigham Young than anything particular to JS’s visions for the future of the Church. (Though I can’t seem to find the other post this is referencing where you make the “Americanized remake” argument, so I don’t know if you’re arguing that it’s just an interesting parallel or if it was actively intended.) For what it’s worth, it’s actually more likely that JS had intended for the presidency to be passed down through the male line to his son Joseph Smith III, with the Quorum or his brother Hyrum acting as a regent until JS3’s majority (the practice adopted by the RLDS when they reorganized after the collapse of the Strangite Church), or had otherwise intended for revealed candidates to stand in semi-democratic elections held by the Mormon people (possibly mediated by an electoral college like the successors of the Council of Fifty).

I also think it’s important to note that the Mormon Restoration of prophecy predates the First Vatican Council—where papal ex cathedra declarations were rendered infallible—by some fifty years, and that Mormons have always framed prophecy and revelation in terms of the Old Testament nevi’im, whereas papal infallibility is more like how you can’t appeal a Supreme Court decision. (Check out D&C 28:2-3 (1830), where, after another early Mormon named Hiram Page claimed to have received a revelation about the true location of Zion and the proper organization of the Church, JS sets him straight and establishes himself as the sole prophet of the Church by likening his relationship to God and Oliver Cowdery to that of Moses to God and Aaron.)

I do think there is a useful comparison here though, which I think you’re getting at: where the young Catholic Church adopted the administrative trappings of the Roman State, organizing itself into ecclesiastical dioceses and prefectures parallel to the civil ones and turning its Holy Orders into a kind of progressive cursus honorum justified through popular acclamation and imperial-papal consent, so too did the young Church of Christ look to the United States with its presidents and committees and councils and quorums and appointments confirmed by common consent. It’s no coincidence that the smallest unit of the LDS Church shares its name with the local electoral wards they were once coterminous with in Ohio and Illinois.

That said, I also think most of the organizational parallels between the LDS Church and the Catholic Church are simply down to the Catholic Church being, like, the prototypical hierarchical organization. The Watch Tower Society railed against Catholic organizational hierarchy in its early years, and yet as the Jehovah’s Witnesses movement began to grow and spread across the country, they too started to create bodies that paralleled their Catholic counterparts, with a president selected by a central all-male and infallible Governing Body overseeing branches which oversee local congregations.

Plus, the actual meat on the Mormon hierarchical skeleton is very different from basically any other Christian organization, let alone the Catholic one. Sure there are deacons and elders and priests and bishops, but any Pauline organization would have those, while they most certainly are not liable to organize them into a Levitical Order and a Holy Priesthood after the Order of the Son of God, or to create parallel women’s and youth organizations like the Relief Society and Young Men’s and Young Women’s. And while LDS bishops do provide pastoral care (at least to some degree) to congregants, I think to equivocate them with a Catholic priest or even a Protestant pastor is missing important parts of the Mormon experience. Sure bishops may “preside” over sacrament meetings, but they play virtually no role in the actual rituals: they don’t lead a Mass (a kind of liturgy which doesn’t exist in the LDS tradition), they don’t consecrate or distribute Communion (which is instead done by deacons, teachers, and priests, most of whom have been teenagers since the late 1800s), they don’t even give sermons! (It seems to be relatively unknown outside of the Church that the most part of an LDS Sunday service consists of two or three “talks” given by laymen to the congregation. While the bishopric does choose who gets invited to speak and usually gives them a fairly broad topic to speak about, the bishopric has little to no oversight over their actual contents. The only exception is talks given to the whole Church during General Conference, which are vetted for doctrinal accuracy by the Apostles first.)

Anyways, on to relics.

Basically, in line with what @hybridzizi said, relics in the Catholic sense play no role whatsoever in the LDS Church today, and their role historically has been rather marginal—certainly nothing akin to the well-developed cult of the saints in early Christianity. Mormons don’t make pilgrimages to see relics (or if they do, they do so out of historical curiosity, rather than religious obligation), and they don’t build or consecrate reliquaries, temples, churches, or altars (insofar as altars even exist in the LDS tradition) to house them. And certainly today they don’t believe that relics have any particular miraculous powers to heal or encourage saintly intercession on their behalf, and they wouldn’t give a relic any kind of special devotion outside of its historical and spiritual significance as a symbol of their faith. I can totally imagine a Mormon bringing their pioneer ancestor’s shoe to a sacrament meeting and talking about how, when they look at the shoe, they remember the importance of perseverance and self-sacrifice and think about the faith their ancestor must have had to follow the Church to Utah and how that all strengthens their own Testimony that the Church is True, but they wouldn’t, like, kiss it or use it as a vehicle for prayer. It’s just a shoe. A special one, sure, but not a sacred one.

What you’re seeing instead in Murder Among the Mormons (I haven’t seen this either, but I’m well familiar with Hofmann and the Church politics surrounding his work) is an episode in the Church’s long quest for legitimacy. While it might help strengthen their Testimony in some way, Mormon laymen don’t actually particularly care if the Church gets its hands on some old papyrus or some Smith family heirloom. But for the Brighamite Church in Salt Lake City, every old artefact, every heirloom, every plot of land and historic building site in Independence and Adam-ondi-Ahman and Nauvoo, anything that belongs to the CoC or the Fundamentalists or the Bickertonites and not to them is a chip in their claim to be the One True Heir of Joseph Smith. The Church rarely even displays these items when they get them: they just store them with the Church History Department or the Presiding Bishopric in some vault in SLC, or maybe give them to a Church museum or BYU if they’re particularly interesting—certainly not the kind of behaviour you’d expect in a relic-oriented church.

There is, however, a historical example of this quest for legitimacy that I think is more similar to what you’re thinking of with the relics comparison. JS had a way of making the world around early Mormons feel magical, of making their faith in him and his work come alive, and one of the ways he did this was by regaling Mormons with the tales associated with the artefacts he collected, the accoutrements he carried, and the many places they travelled to.

Sticks, staffs, and stones were conduits for divine revelation, tools for discerning meaning in the mystical world. Those little bits of papyrus touring the US with Michael Chandler in 1835 weren’t just random scrolls, they were written by the very hand of the patriarchs Abraham and Joseph, and revealed hitherto unknown secrets about the nature of God and Creation! Chandler’s mummies weren’t just random mummies, they were the Pharaoh Onitas and his family, they were the daughters who saved baby Moses from the river, they were the royal entourage of Joseph himself! When the Zion’s Camp military expedition set off to reclaim some land that had been taken from some Mormon settlers in Missouri in 1834, that land became a prophesied holy site, the location of one of the future capitals of God’s millennial kingdom on Earth, and JS became like Moses and Joshua, a prophet ready to conquer the Promised Land with outstretched hand. And when on the way they passed by a Hopewell mound in western Illinois, it wasn’t just an ancient Indian burial ground, it was the tomb of the mighty white Lamanite warrior Zelph, who bravely served under the prophet Onondagus and fought a great battle against the infidels, against all odds, to defend what he knew to be True.

Stories like these abound in early Mormonism, and while again I feel that the comparison with Catholic saints’ relics is missing some important differences (as well as some important context about the role of ritual objects and folk magic across early American Protestantism), the objects they were attached to were certainly highly significant to early Mormons. It’s no coincidence that one of the first things James Strang did, in a bid to bolster his legitimacy in the post-Martyrdom Church, was to discover a set of brass plates containing the veritable Record of Rajah Manchou of Vorito. And when recent Mormon converts Wilbur Fugate and Robert Wiley wanted to play a prank on their local congregation in Kinderhook, to “prove the prophecy by way of a joke,” the proof they turned to was, fittingly, “discovering” and exhibiting in the town hall a collection of small copper plates, only to find that they were of interest to none other than JS himself.

Probably the most properly relic-like of these early objects were the coffin canes, a set of walking sticks made from the bloodstained oak coffins that were used to move JS and Hyrum from the Carthage Jail to their first burial plots and distributed among several early Mormon leaders and Smith family and friends. Some accounts even have their ivory knobs filled with locks of JS’s hair, or their handles made from the refashioned glass of the clear coffins JS and Hyrum were stored in until they were buried permanently. Brigham Young used his coffin cane for the rest of his life, and likened it to JS’s own serpent staff and the rod of Aaron as a symbol of his rightful authority and succession as leader of the Church. Many Mormons even believed, beyond their role as symbols of the Martyrdom and conduits for revelation (and in classic reliquary fashion), that the canes had the ability to heal ailments at a touch, and they remained in use as thaumaturgical instruments until as late the presidency of Wilford Woodruff (r. 1889–1898).

While likely few were converted by encountering these relics and artefacts alone, as holy objects they made Mormonism feel real. They were the faith made physical. They connected Mormons and their Scriptures to the land they lived on, made prophecy and history visible in their everyday lives, made them feel the blood of Abraham and Manasseh flowing through their veins.

And they also just kind of stopped happening?

Brigham Young, for all he modelled himself after JS, never found any plates or notable artefacts in Utah (in fact, he believed himself to not be a “natural seer”, and didn’t believe he was capable of using seer stones and translating as Smith had), and despite his cane he never took any great pains to work Mormon reverence towards JS and himself into a material cult. Because while the Martyrdom may have given Mormons the impetus and the materials to make relics of JS, the Exodus changed Mormonism. While Utah Mormons were of course still interested in Egyptians and the ancient history of the Americas (indeed, some Mormons were convinced of the prophecies of the Paiute leader Wovoka as late as 1892), and likewise in the life and works of Joseph Smith, the journey to the Far West had separated them from all but a few of their remains, and the trials of travel and building Zion shifted the spiritual focus of the Saints away from holy relics and seer stones and towards what I think can best be understood as a kind of national commitment to the righteous cause of the Mormon people. (That’s not to say that nationalism, especially of the American variety, isn’t in some way inherently religious, but the distinction I think matters when discussing the ideological and ritual implications of devotional objects like these.)

Even as early as the Mormon Reformation, a religious revival movement in the mid-1850s, you didn’t see an explosion of relics or pilgrimages to holy sites or even visions or speaking in tongues in Mormon communities, as might have been expected just ten or fifteen years earlier. The faith of people was instead evident in their perseverance and frugality, and was displayed not through dulia or the maintenance of the cult of Joseph Smith, but through impassioned personal speeches at Thursday fast meetings, through repeated rebaptism for the remission of the sins of yourself and all your ancestors, and through a with-all-your-heart-soul-mind-and-strength kind of commitment to building up the economic and demographic strength and unity of the people of Zion.

Save a short period in the 1880s and 1890s when the LDS Church happily testifies against the RLDS Church in the Kirtland Temple Suits and the Temple Lot Case (the LDS Church, then being disincorporated by the Federal Government and having its own property put under federal management by the Edmunds–Tucker Act of 1887, was really in no place to claim legal legitimacy for itself), it’s only really after the 1950s, in a period when the LDS Church is finally starting to gain the political and cultural respect as an All-American Christian Institution™ that it had long craved (and a period when the Church finally had the economic resources and nationwide political connections to mobilize towards those ends—Deseret Ranches in Florida, for example, was only founded in 1949), that you see the Church move to collect relics and holy sites again, in a bid to materially delegitimize the other heirs of the Latter Day Saint movement. To some extent this was easy, as a lot of these movements were moribund, had had their property appropriated by the government or bought by private owners, or were going through crises of faith of their own as the Fourth Great Awakening wracked the old religious status quo. LDS businessman Wilford Wood had actually started buying back historic properties for the Church as early as 1937, though his goal of purchasing the Nauvoo temple lot was only completed in 1962, and his propositions to buy the Independence Temple Lot were all rejected out of hand by the RLDS and Hendrickites.

The RLDS Church, for what it’s worth, also sought to secure its legitimacy in this period, finally completing its Temple Lot Auditorium in 1958 and beginning its plans to preserve and rededicate the Kirtland Temple in 1952, not to mention its keen defence of Smith family real and personal property in Nauvoo and its unwillingness to work with Dean Jessee’s LDS-sponsored project to collect and transcribe JS’s personal papers in the 1970s. (This is indeed why the Joseph Smith Papers are only being collected and published now, after a trial run on the JST in 1997 showed that the two Churches could work together in good faith.)

To finish this up, I think there’s also something to be said for this being part of a general postwar trend towards historical preservation and collection, and part of a boom in the entire historical profession. Outside of the battle for material legitimacy, historians, archivists, and other academics throughout the Latter Day Saint movement would spend the period coordinating and organizing with each other to produce some of the earliest proper scholarship on Mormon history and culture (many other American Christian groups had begun to do so in the midst of the Third Great Awakening, the relationship of the Latter Day Saint movement to which is another essay entirely). The Mormon History Association was founded in 1965 and its journal in 1974, the CoC-aligned John Whitmer Historical Association was founded in 1972, the Association for Mormon Letters in 1976. Even the now-defunct FARMS, bastion of Mormon pseudohistorical apologetics, was first organized only in 1979.

It’s no coincidence that Hofmann, with his ready-made media sensations, appears only a year later.

I think that’s enough of that. For those interested in further reading on Mormon visual and material culture and its history, I think two very good starting points are D. Michael Quinn, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View (Revised and Expanded ed., Signature Books, 1998), and especially Terry L. Givens, People of Paradox: A History of Mormon Culture (Oxford UP, 2007).

Can you explain the Mormonism/Catholicism comparison? I think I missed that one, and I never want to miss a chance to shit on the church of LDS

Key part in the post is the “Americanized remake” part but when I watched Murder Among the Mormons I was struck at how Mormons have a culture about relics and finding obscure paraphernalia relating to important figures so they can bring it to the church and this kind of veneration of relics is something you hardly ever see in other post-Reformation sects of Christianity

Plus the whole structured centralized hierarchy with the Americanized part being adding some nods towards republicanism. Like the spiritual head is picked in an election amongst senior clergyman who always elect one of their own and this spiritual head has the ability to say things and claim they came directly from God (granted papal infallibility hasn’t yet been used for a sudden 180 in teachings but it potentially can be used that way). Mormons call their guy “president” rather than using titles which come from the Roman Empire but this reflects the wider political context of the state they emerged in.

Also there’s an old stereotype of Catholics always having large families that is kinda outdated now in the US but that’s def an overlap

[xxarmchairphilosopherxx]

There's this odd trend in anime, have you noticed it yet?

It’s actually been there for a while, hell maybe since some of its early and most beloved days. It's mystic shrines tended to by beautiful maidans, wise elders beseeching the forces beyond on behalf of their people, and those so special moments shared by all who live around them… That’s right baby it’s the Spanish inquisition!!!!

Well technically it's the larger organization from which the surprising Spaniards derived from. Of course I mean the catholic church. That’s right from Trigon to Black lagoon to whatever the hell Black clover thinks nuns are, the Japanese anime industry is in love with the Bishop of Rome’s fan club. And while many enjoy these shoutouts or are just as equally confused by them, few have sought to shed light on this subject. But those who do I got some protestant v catholic beef with yell.

Many posit that the Japanese place so many Catholic imagery, ideas, and design motifs into their shows simply because it’s this interesting foreign thing that just looks neat. Pic related.

Well I say nay nay to that. Before we dive into the REAL reason for why Japan actually loves them Roman Residents, that the feds don’t want you to know. We must first at least cast off this lesser understanding.

                Ok now that clickbait dramatics are out of the way this idea of Japanese fascination with Catholics and Christianity as a whole being purely based of aesthetics and just vague interest is not inherently wrong. But I do find it to be incomplete. I mean come on if they want some weird ass religion to put in their show they got India and Hinduism right across the way. Now this is no slight at my beloved Hindis out there but ya'll got to admit your religion would make the most balls to the walls kickass anime since Gurren Lagan destroyed my eyeballs and left for dead in Cincinnati.

(Cough Cough) Furthermore, I just find that there are other options for Japan that they seem to completely ignore. I mean why not Judaism or Islam, hell why not even other forms of Christianity like Greek Orthodoxy or even Mormonism. NO!

There is something special about Catholicism that these cool cats in Tokyo can’t get enough of and I’m about to blow your mind with it...

It’s not what’s different but what they have in common.

No I’m serious! There are numerous and very shocking similarities that make Catholicism the perfect mix of mysterious and familiar for the Japanese/Shinto palate.

            First and foremost of these is chivalry. When one looks into the history of Bushido one will always find the Buddha specifically the Zen Buddhism mixed in with their own Shinto background. From this fertile soil of respect for nature and stoicism would sprout into the powerful flower of the bushido code. And oh, would you look at that that’s right! After the European horseman of old got sipping that sweet Catholic eucharist wine, what did they end up doing? Giving themselves a rule book called chivalry to keep them in line with that heavenly way. So obviously when a Japanese man would trace the lines, he’d be like "oh, so this is like what Zen and Shinto was like to the samurai? That’s pretty neat let’s throw it in my new anime."

            Another odd one is gonna get a little more esoteric so work with me here. I believe that both the Catholic Church and Shintoism both have this acknowledgement of a similar phenomenon. The inherent mystic power of the feminine touch.

See shrine maidans and nuns. Both are almost synonymous when one thinks of their respective church or shrine. Like ask a western man what he thinks when you say catholic church... and after all the profane shit, he’ll likely say nuns. A similar phenomena would be seen in the Japanese man... minus the profanity. I believe this similarity exists because both Catholicism and Shintoism accounted for that special touch a woman can bring to a place. That grace and delicate nature, that way of mysterious connection to the more stranger aspects of the world. It’s like this meme.

            Now next is another weird one that came to mind. They both have this ritualistic respect of water. For the Catholic this is baptism and the use of holy water to bless one’s self and other objects, a similar concept exists in Japan where one washes their hands before entering a Shrine and then there is the use of ritualistic waterfall bathing, Misogi.

now this is like baptism on steroids so here’s another handshake meme.

           

Alright now we can really get into the anime shit. Demons!!! Not only do they both share a common insane lore of specific demons and all the fucked-up shenanigans that ensue, but they also have equal amounts of exorcisms and exorcists to kick infernal ass. Seriously, I think this is like the main reason why we see so many Catholics in anime fighting demons. It's as old as the Nazarene Himself. So when a Japanese man hears something about Jesus casting out a thousand demon host named Legion you better believed he’s gonna go home and write some kick ass manga featuring some big ass demon named Legion. Said Japanese man pictured here

It's gonna be Jump's next big three slot just you wait.

            And finally, to top this all off Imma end it wholesome 100. So there is this huge aspect in Japanese culture where a large majority will go to shrines get themselves and their children blessed and attend and partake in all the festivals, but not really call themselves Shinto. Is this not the same as all of those who go to Easter and Christmas mass even though they couldn't tell you a cross from a crucifix?

This is the final similarity. That something beyond the theology which binds the community together. And even though these so called 'different' worlds are oceans apart they share this community bond, that little slice of unity in this crazy world and makes it all worth it. And that kid is what we call in the philosophy Bizz an universal concept… and a way to make some kick ass anime.

Anyway that's about it smell you later hoped you learned something.

[pale-fairytales]

hi so i’m still new to transformers (I’ve been binge-watching several of the cartoons and only read part of the 2005 IDW comic—) but i have headcanons made of fresh brain juice and idk if anyone else shares them but they popped into my brain as I was working on my fanfic o3o

The Elite Trine, if they were to ever cook (hypothetically ofc, since they don’t really eat food??), are all terrible at it. Starscream’s the only one w/ potential bc his food is more edible/it can even taste good sometimes. Problem? he’s probably not gonna wanna cook and will probably order someone else to do so. Sometimes when he does cook it gets burned, or he seasons too much, but he’ll know a good brand of engex to pair with it. I feel like he might get upset if someone doesn’t want to eat it, depending on who’s not willing. Most people close to him know to just eat the food, or he’ll be really mad and probably yell at them. If it’s someone not as close to him, he probably wouldn’t cook for them at all imo, but hypothetically I feel he wouldn’t get as offended if he wasn’t close with them. 

Thundercracker’s a close second. Why? bc he gets an A for effort. His food, imo, is midwestern suburban Mormon housewife bland and drier than a desert. This goes for most foods he makes. Even soup. How does soup come out dry? No idea. Is it even possible for soup to taste dry? Maybe not. But Thundercracker seems to find a way, be it intentionally or not. He might be annoyed if someone doesn’t want to eat it but he doesn’t fly off the handle. I feel like he also wouldn’t really cook for anyone not close with him/outside the trine, so he wouldn’t be as upset, but he may be slightly passive-aggressive. 

Skywarp receives an F in all categories; his cooking is always either burned to the pits, undercooked, has chunks of weird things in it, and/or chances are he’s dumped too much of seasoning in it or something. He also more than likely has made a huge mess that Thundercracker will have to clean up. I’m on the fence about Skywarp; I feel like it could go one of two ways if someone doesn’t wanna eat his food. I can’t decide if he lets it go/doesn’t blame them (I lowkey feel like he’s purposely bad at cooking occasionally) or if he gets upset. I feel like he accepts he’s bad at cooking and it becomes a weapon in case anyone he doesn’t like comes to the home he shares with his trinemates. 

I imagine it goes like this; let’s say, idk, in a domestic AU where there wasn’t a war, Starscream has a few domestic hobbies. Like a bookclub or some shit. People decide to come to his place for the club meeting, which is fine, but Soundwave is also in the group and he had to bring Rumble and Frenzy. Skywarp volunteers to look after them while the group discusses the cybertronian equivalent of 50 Shades of Grey. He gives Rumble and Frenzy food. It looks like a soup. They try to eat. It tastes like soap. Skywarp grins. “What’s wrong?? Aren’t you hungry?” they make a rude remark but soundwave told them to behave. they try to eat again. There are legos in the “soup.” “What is this???” they ask. Skywarp grins evilly and does not answer. 

Starscream is forced to put Skywarp in gay baby jail and Soundwave is forced to leave Rumble and Frenzy at home from then on. 

don’t trust them in the kitchen, whatever you do