#religion and fantasy

[360degreesasthecrowflies]

JK Rowling's religion, part 1

This is just a small observation I just had that I may expand into a longer post but,

I've just realized that: we know (or if you didn't, now you do) that JK Rowling is, and has been since writing Potter, if not before, a member of a church that believes in predestination. That is, that every person is born either Good or Bad and that all of their actions through life can't change their eventual fate, but just are predestined to have always been that way.

So that's her core belief religion-wise.

With that in mind... it's actually entirely unsurprising for her to oppose (and likely to have always opposed, or at the very best, tolerated while looking down on) trans people, because she believes that fundamentally ANY person's nature cannot be changed at all in any way - thus any attempt to 'alter' what she believes to be the natural order of things is essentially challenging her god and her fundamental beliefs, or in her eyes, playing at being as good as a god.

On the plus side, this means that her bigotry isn't necessarily specifically directed at trans people (although, every time she does attack trans people it harms the overall cause of trans people's equality and being respected) - they are rather just the most visible targets that she can't resist attacking because she perceives their very existence to be a personal attack on her religion. (which, yknow, obviously isn't true, but we're dealing with a narcissist religious nut here, people)

On the minus side - how many other of her fans does she secretly look down on and believe to be evil people? One of the tenets of her church belief is that only a small percentage of people are truly Good and worthy of Heaven. (naturally she includes herself in this, which is why she believes she can behave as she likes, because her seat to eternity is already booked - talk about twisting the fundamentals of Christianity!) And I mean a miniscule percentage, 1% or thereabouts. The rest of us are essentially NPCs to her mind, which probably isn't helped by the fact she lives in a literal castle and mostly communicates through her Twitter proclamations and spats.

She's been very good at hiding this religious belief (which, for any international readers, is very uncommon within her native UK, over 50% of which is atheist with a further 25% being only culturally religious) when she was younger and more worried about keeping her bag. But now she's older and established within society - and much less likely to follow the advice of her publicist and team - will she still be able to keep it under her witch's hat when she gets asked to start promotional touring the new HBO adaptation?

[ivynightshade]

fatima aamer bilal, excerpt from moony moonless sky’s ‘i am tired of making a religion out of my suffering’.

[text id: i am too little, and too much, and never enough.]

[phosilli]

eye of the vulture king

[notebooks-and-laptops]

"If we use force against our enemies, our allies will remember it": an exploration of the Archon Quest in DAtV.

Not everyone will have gotten this quest, as it's only avaliable if you saved Minrathous over Treviso. So let me start by setting the scene:

Rook has just found a secret list of Venatori plans in a Venatori vault. This includes a list of magisters who have been engaging in 'illegal slavery' and also a list of the backers of said magisters.

Dorian and Mae are arguing over how best to use this information. They have decided that one of them should become the Archon, however, they both have different ways they would go about it:

Dorian wants to 'crush our enemies by any means neccessary' - 'destory them and their networks by any means neccessary'. Maeveas describes this as 'swords and spies and blackmail; the devious means [Dorian] learned in the South'.

Mae wants to 'do this in the open. Show the people of Tevinter that we're here for them'. She wants to make this information public in order to 'inspire'.

Both will support the other, depending on what Rook decides. Both of them want to abolish slavery and get rid of the rule of Altus mages; 'the Soporati deserve a say in their own governance'. They say they have the same aims, but they would go about getting them in different ways.

Except...none of what they say actually makes any sense whatsoever.

Tevinter is Not a Democracy

Tevinter is not a demoracy. People do not 'vote' on who represents them.

Instead, there is a magesterium made up of magisters. These roles are hereditary (although you can have apprentice who take your title instead). You rule, because of your birth, or because you were lucky enough that somebody who rules because of their birth picked you.

There is not an election cycle. The magisters do not have to do anything to remain in power beyond making sure people aren't angry/scared enough to stage a coup.

Political factions exist within the magisterium, but you have to work to gain those who already are in it onto your side, you can't just get people to vote more of your faction in.

So....with this in mind, how is Mae's plan ever going to work.

Mae talks about wanting to do things out in the open. She wants to show Tevinter that politicans can be here for them. But those people...don't have a say. They can't meaningfully change things, or vote, or do anything beyond have a (probably violent) revolution.

And yet, we are led to believe that Mae's option will be the path of least resistence. Mae's option is 'working within the system'. What system? Mae won't be able to do anything, even if the public is on her side. It doesn't matter.

The magisters who are Venatori may die by the end of the game, or they may simply step down and give their titles to their children to avoid public disgrace. Maybe, maybe if people are angry enough, the heirs and apprentaces from other houses and magisters will take their place. But I don't see how Mae publishing this list of people and their backers will get her into power.

Especially in a country where slavery is legal. You know the people who would want Dorian and Maevearis's plans to succeed? Slaves. Because they're the only ones unlikely to be culturally indocronated to believe slavery is a good thing. Those a 'rung above slavery' like Krem, may also want their plans to succeed, but they'd likely have to be convinced, or have something happen to them (e.g. like how Krem's family struggled to remain in business because slaves can do their work for free so the products never cost as much) to push them into seeing all this. I highly doubt most people in this society as is would distinquish much between 'legal' and 'illegal' slavery. What even is illegal slavery? Taking people from other nations into slavery without the consent of said nations? That's most of the nations in thedas then. And if slave imports are continuing then surely everyone already knows that this is taking place and that people are arranging it.

AND EVEN IF THEY DID THERE ISN'T A DEMOCRACY FOR THEM TO VOTE MAE IN. To get Mae in, Mae has to convince the magisterium - and that includes convincing them to let her back in ON TOP OF convincing them to elect her as their ruler OR she has to have a violent overthrow backed by the people. That is the only way that 'inspiring' the people can succeed here.

Meanwhile, We have Dorian. Tarquin acts like Dorians plan will mean another Anders style chantry explosion, with things getting worse before they get better. But Dorians plan is vague to say the least. Blackmail? Okay. Working within his place in the magisterium? Now that makes more sense to me; if he can work within his place that might get him to be archon which would in turn allow him to potentially effect meaningful change from the top down with less tape around what he can and can't do.

But Mae implies Dorian is going to start killing people; 'if we use force against our enemies they will remember it'. But....what? Okay maybe Dorian plans to assassinate some people? But if he does, their kids will just get in. Maybe he just plans to threaten to assassinate people (interesting move as that's what got his father, but I think that COULD be an intersting direction for him) and that's what it means by blackmail etc. But if that's the case, is he really going to get to be Archon for long?

Dorians way looks way more like working within the system or...maybe turning the system into some of kind of dictatorship in order to make it a democracy so that Soporati can vote? Do ex-slaves get the vote in this world?

None of this makes any sense, their plans are so so so vague, and what they pitch and what they want means their pitches should be switched.

Who should be the Archon?

Towards the end of this place, Maevaris and Dorian say that a quater of the magisterium are Venatori. This is the implied quater that we have information on, and who needs to be taken out of the magisterium. But...okay, how?

In DAI, three of our companions (Vivienne, Leliana and Cassandra) are up for the role of Divine. But the reason they're up for the role despite all three of them being in some way a break with the past, is that there is nobody else. Everyone else who was up for the position died in the conclave explosion. All three of them have also gained large leaps forward in their reputation based on their actions in the inquistion.

But in DAtV....even if that quater are all killed in the final fight with the Gods, that means 75% are left over. I can see perhaps Dorian - who has maintained his seat in the Magisterium - being able to elbow himself into that power vaccum, win over the 75% and become the Achon. But Mae has been kicked out of the Magisterium already. She's lost her title. How is she going to get herself back in. As detailed above, it won't be by democracy. The Viper talks about her 'triumphent return' but nobody has actually given me a plan to get her to that triumphent return???

Basically; it makes very little sense that these two people are up for archon, even now we know the current one is dead. The archon is usually an inherrited title, either by blood or by being the apprentace of the previous Archon. The Archon can be voted in by only the magisterium if the archon dies without either of these things, however, so that's what they're going for here. But why would any of these 75% of magisters vote for Mae or Dorian?

And even if you argue that the Venatori list had the illegal dealings of more than just those 25% so Dorian and Mae could blackmail them for the position; firstly, Mae has already said she's not blackmailing anyone. So that leaves only Dorian. But the Magisters can pass their seats onto their children, instead of giving in to Dorians demands. That way even if Dorian exposes them, they're no longer in the Magisterium. Similarly, it surely is well known that the magisterium are dealing in 'illegal slavery' and surely even if it isn't, there are ways those within the Magisterium can use their money and power to pretend that they weren't involved with that. Polticians in the real world get away with these lies all the time!

Violence and Thedas

I'm not planning on making this point at length, but I do think the quote I opened this with also makes no sense for Dragon Age. 'If we use force against our enemies, our allies will remember it'.

In a game. Which is. About fighting enemies.

Like, this is a fighting game. We fight our enemies in this game. We don't sit down for tea with the Gods. We don't invite the red templars over to discuss politics. We don't ask the darkspawn if there's any way they won't do what they want.

We've been killing venatori for the WHOLE GAME by this point. We've ALREADY been using force.

I guess that the writers are trying to make a distinction between political violence vs. the rest of the game but uhhh. That doesn't really work either, especially in a game series which has had political violence pretty much at its core (we start with a game about CIVIL WAR and then move swiftly into a game where one of your companions commits an act of terrorism to inspire an overthrow of an unjust system) but also like. The implication that all groups who are bad are just 'evil' and have no motivations beyond 'power' and 'being evil' is dumb, and dragon age games used to be better than that. The Venatori, the Antam, the Crows, Butcher, Illario, The Grey Wardens, all of these people are playing with politics. Dragon Age games used to know this, they ahve a whole thing about 'the great game'.

But. Whatever. I said I wouldn't labour this point and I won't, but this quote makes no sense in a game where we've already spent the whole time using force.

(and also...isn't trying to abolish slavery perhaps a good thing to use force against? This quote implies that both the enemies (pro-slavery) and the allies (anti-slavery) have a similar moral standing which uhhhh i wouldn't say is true)

Why did this happen; some closing remarks

DAtV is vague enough about Tevinter politics that I feel you could, without knowledge of the previous games lore/the codexes believe the following points

slavery is a fringe practice in Tevinter

tevinter is a democracy

In this set of circumstances, their plans would make a lot more sense. Mae really could hope to get people on her side to vote out magisters who are engaging in 'illegal slavery' and other unmentioned things. She really could try and get elected on the promise of honesty and doing things differently, but still working within the system and eventually being Archon.

But this isn't the case. What's happening here is 21st century Demoractic (American Centric) politics are being placed onto a system which is essentially ancient Rome with absolutely no effort to try and make either confirm.

These days there are serious questions surrounding democracy, truth and lies we tell the people, whether its better to work 'behind the scenes' for a better world or not etc. These are all questions that have becoming increasingly relevant in the rise of the far right since 2016. And those who think the system need to change have MANY MANY arguments about whether we need to burn down the system, or whether we need to work within the system and with the backing of everyone to achieve our aims.

But that doesn't work in Tevinter. It doesn't mean anything.

I think the writers were trying to short hand some contempary politics into this world, were purposely vague about the parts of tevinter that don't fit that mould, tried to act like slavery was some form of modern discrimination that can be easily brushed to one side, and then just...released the game like that, with this choice.

But thinking about it for more than 5 seconds makes it SO STUPID. I literally spent ALL of that cutscene going 'wait what??? huh???' i watched it back three times before I understood what they were doing and why Mae and Dorians views were supposed to make sense before I wrote this post.

Another example of the writers not taking established lore/politics/culture in this game seriously. Another example of this game not taking its setting into account. I just. Yeah. This one really pushes me.

td;lr this storyline about who is the future archon doesn't work because Tevinter is not a democracy and they don't actually take into account the political implications, nor lay out actual political plans on how they'd achieve their aims.

[airitree]

🩸🩸The Anchoress & A Friendly Visitor🩸🩸

[Art Print available on my store!]

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[Next Post of The Series >>]

[Vampire anchoress who believes her affliction to be a test from God and locks herself away to boil inside mystical thoughts]

[prokopetz]

i've been trying to find a post you made a while ago about like. hearth-spirits for spaceships? and i have failed utterly. if you could provide any assistance, it would be greatly appreciated

I've posted on the topic a few times, but based on relative note counts you're probably thinking of this one.

[cloverfieldds]

asking for forgiveness in a confessional almost every day because your priest told you your thoughts of wanting to be a boy are wrong and sinful

coming back every day to pray and apologize to god and crying when you feel like this feeling will never go away. your priest telling you he has another way of fixing you and he takes you to his office and orders you underneath his desk.

it all seems wrong, but you’d do anything to get rid of this feeling. he zips down his pants and lets his cock fall out, telling you to lick it. you hesitantly do and continue as he tells you the importance of being a woman and why god made you one in the first place.

he orders you to feel your tits while you lap at his dick, clearly getting off to the sight as he grows harder in front of you. before you have the chance to ask anything, he shoves his length down your throat and you have no choice but to make room in your throat for him. he grinds his shoe against your boypussy and watches you panic at the feeling.

“did i not tell you to grope your tits? you wanna be saved, don’t you?” and you listen. tears are flowing out of your eyes, but the image of you being excommunicated flashes inside of your head on repeat, causing your hands to reach up and fondle them as he continues rubbing your pussy.

before you know it, hot ropes of cum are being forced down your throat, and you can barely hear a whispered threat of what will happen to you if you don’t swallow it down. his dick is wiped across your tongue and then your tear-stained face before he puts it away and fixes his clothing.

“you still feeling like a boy? real men don’t do what you just did.”

“no, im not..” you choke out a lie.

“great,” he helps you from underneath his desk and wipes a bit of cum from the corner of your mouth, feeding it to you as you mindlessly part your lips. “come back tomorrow and we’ll continue to make sure it sticks.”

- - - -

send me rape threats in my dms and asks and tell me what you wanna do to me please <3

[suicideassistance]

I thought heavily about my perfect victim. Such twisted visions of salvation. I wasn't sure if I was saving you, or myself. Only the necessity of reshaping you. You worshipped me, as though you couldn't see that you were my God. You control me. All I can think about is the widening of your soaked lashes, that obedient tranquility that melts you beneath my fingertips. I want you afraid— and questioning why you aren't running. To scream for me to release you, and pray that I keep you. To give me a reason to hurt you. And permission to heal you. To blur the lines of consent.

[yzegem]

Ogres in the culture of the Sun Empire.

The heartland of the Sun Empire contains the massive delta of the Daus River. This regions houses one of the largest populations of ogres in the whole continent.

Even though ogres are not related to humans, they resemble them and their horrifying appearence and might have been the subject of interest from most cultures of the western coast of the continent, including the Sun Empire.

Ogres are taken as cubs from their mothers when they are small enough to be transported alive safely and kept in captivity for the rest of their lives.

Ogres present extreme sexual dimorfism. Both males and females are born as tadpoles from eggs and grow into a salamander growth stage after than. Only females ogres become terrestrial after that, lose their tail and become large browsing animals while males remain mostly aquatic and resemble an alligator in shape and niche.

Female ogres are usually the ones captured and the fact that the male and female ogres are the same species is not widespread.

Ogres are used in human sacrifices, usually those of prisioners of war.

These sacred ogres are usually decorated with gold and cristal/ceramic beads, wich are each blessed by a priest and after the death of the ogre can be gifted as sacred talismans, as well as the body parts of the ogre.

The sacrifice is usually done by throwing the victim in a pit where the ogre is kept.

Given that being fed to an ogre is the very likely demise of many survivors of defeated armies, ogres are used as a symbol by warriors of the sun Empire as a way of psychological Warfare.

Here is an ogre banner displayed at the side of a war macouse.

And here is a member of the warrior caste in full war gear and face paint performing a war dance. During these dances warriors place their shields, often bearing ogre drawings, in front of themselves so that they look like said beast.

[cosmopoliturtle]

Chalkydri - Bringer of Dawn

Created for @13daysadvent

[oldschoolfrp]

Stone altars and painted statues surround a pentagram within a magic circle on the floor, from which rises a writhing column of smoke (Jon Glentoran, "The Temple of Testing" by A E Arkle, Warlock, The Fighting Fantasy Magazine #7, December 1985/January 1986)

[ivynightshade]

fatima aamer bilal, excerpt from moony moonless sky’s ‘i am tired of making a religion out of my suffering’.

[text id: my bones whimper at the thought of what could have been. / what could have been if i was not born in a grave?]

[ourslutfactory]

Weeping

[descendinight]

🗯️🗯️🗯️…

[alpaca-clouds]

Worldbuild Differently: Unthink Religion

This week I want to talk a bit about one thing I see in both fantasy and scifi worldbuilding: Certain things about our world that we live in right now are assumed to be natural, and hence just adapted in the fantasy world. With just one tiny problem: They are not natural, and there were more than enough societies historically that avoided those pitfalls.

Tell me, if you have heard this one before: You have this fantasy world with so many differnet gods that are venerated. So what do you do to venerate those gods? Easy! You go into those big temple structures with the stained glass in their windows, that for some reason also use incense in their rituals. DUH!

Or: Please, writers, please just think one moment on why the fuck you always just want to write Christianity. Because literally no other religion than Christianity has buildings like that! And that has to do a lot with medieval and early post-medieval culture. I am not even asking you to look into very distant cultures. Just... Look of mosques and synagogues differ from churches. And then maybe look at Roman and Greek temples. That is all I am asking.

Let's make one thing clear: No matter what kind of world you are building, there is gonna be religion. It does not matter if you are writing medieval fantasy, stoneage fantasy, or some sort of science fiction. I know that a lot of atheists hate the idea that a scifi world has religion, but... Look, human brains are wired to believe in the paranormal. That is simply how we are. And even those atheists, that believe themselves super rational, do believe in some weird stuff that is about as scientific as any religions. (Evolutionary Psychology would be such an example.)

What the people will believe in will differ from their circumstance and the world they life in, but there is gonna be religion of some sort. Because we do need some higher power to blame, we need the rituals of it, and we need the community aspect of it.

Ironically I personally am still very much convinced that IRL even in a world like the Forgotten Realms, people would still make up new gods they would pray to, even with a whole pantheon of very, very real gods that exist. (Which is really sad, that this gets so rarely explored.)

However, how this worship looks like is very different. Yes, the Abrahamitic religions in general do at least have in common that they semi-regularily meet in some sort of big building to pray to their god together. Though how much the people are expected to go into that temple to pray is actually quite different between those religions and the subgroups of those religions.

Other religions do not have this though. Some do not have those really big buildings, and often enough only a select few are even allowed into the big buildings - or those might only be accessible during some holidays.

Instead a lot of polytheistic religions make a big deal of having smaller shrines dedicated to some of the gods. Often folks will have their own little shrine at home where they will pray daily. Alternatively there are some religions where there might be a tiny shrine outside that people will go to to pray to.

Funnily enough that is also something I have realized Americans often don't quite get: Yeah, this was a thing in Christianity, too. In Europe you will still find those tiny shrines to certain saints (because technically speaking Christianity still works as a polytheistic religion, only that we have only one god, but a lot of saints that take over the portfolios of the polytheistic gods). I am disabled, and even in the area I can reach on foot I know of two hidden shrines. One of them is to Mary, and one... I am honestly not sure, as the masonry is too withered to say who was venerated there. Usually those shrines are bieng kept in a somewhat okay condition by old people, but yeah...

Of course, while with historically inspired fantasy settings make this easy (even though people still hate their research), things get a bit harder with science fiction.

Again, the atheist idea is often: "When we develop further scientifically, we will no longer need religion!" But I am sorry, folks. This is not how the human brain works. We see weird coincidences and will go: "What paranormal power was responsible for it?" We can now talk about why the human brain has developed this way. We are evolved to find patterns, and we are evolved (because social animal and such) to try and understand the will others have - so far that we will read will in nature. It is simply how our brains work.

So, what will scifi cultures believe in? I don't know. Depends on your worldbuilding. Maybe they believe in the ghost in the machine, maybe there si some other religions there. You can actually go very wild with it. But you need to unthink the normativity of Christianity to do that. And that is... what I see too little off.

[californiannostalgia]

okay my beloved ships aside (Beau shouting to Yasha "Babe. Babe, sex. Babe, sex." INCREDIBLE, SHOWSTOPPING--):

I loved getting to see Caduceus talking to Braius. Sometimes it's not the faith that hurts, it's the people. Different systems of belief may help you get through different hurts.

"Are you ready to leave?" What a question.