#respect my beliefs

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

[ovenproofowl]

Why would they speak in whistles? They don't always. They have a phonetic language for day-to-day interactions, but the whistle-speak lets them communicate across great distances. It's not uncommon to find in cultures before communication technology evolves.

STAR TREK DISCOVERY: 5x06 'Whistlespeak'

[faunandfloraas]

Sometimes I think "Should I follow other people's standards?" but if I went on like that, I'd be missing my own standards. For a long time I stayed busy and felt accomplished about the records we set, but when I looked back... Everyone has their own joys in life, but I had come so far from my own joys.

SONG By Seungmin, Episode 02- High and Dry.

[swordoffrivolousthings]

The gods in PJO are not godly enough, in my opinion

I will start this rant by saying that this is only one of my problems with the PJO series. I understand why Riordan has humanized them, I know this is a middle school age book series. But I am older and I want to make them freaky and strange and kind of eldritch. With little to no explanation as for my choices.

ZEUS. He is the Olympian king of the gods, god of the sky, weather, law and order, destiny and fate and kingship. He is the law, as any king is. Every word he says is godly law, every little order will be followed. He is the king. So, he is stone-faced, made of marble, with no expression other than thoughtfulness and severeness (even if he sometimes isn't). His eyes are pure lightning, the hurricanes that ravage the world and the gentlest of summer rains. Most days, when he speaks of future events, they tend to happen that way, if not overruled by a higher power. His very presence is the ozone layer being brought down, heavy, tiring mortals and demigods out quickly. He treads lightly, with steps like gentle patters of rain, but his every breath is thunder.

HERA. The goddess of marriage, women, the sky and the stars of heaven, and the Olympian queen of the gods. Marriage, despite her own being something less than aspiring, is sacred. Couples that marry are under her protection, she still blesses their marriages. She sky shifts with her emotions, getting darker and night starting to fall. Her himation worn over her head, the only garment visible, reflecting the sky above. Her eyes, two bright stars, seeing something more than human perception can begin to understand.

POSEIDON. Olympian god of the sea, earthquakes, floods, drought and horses. His body is not, just from the corner of the eye, made of muscle, bones and tendons. Water, swirling and moving in the shape of a man, the odd strand of algae. Then you turn and he is barely human, but not saltwater. The waves seek and tug at his heels whenever he walks along the beach. His eyes, oceanic tectonic plates crashing, sending tsunamis to devastate the world. The air around him is salty, sea air clinging to his skin. Algae appear in his wake, reeking of the sea.

DEMETER. Olympian goddess of agriculture, grain and bread who sustained mankind with the earth's rich bounty. In her wake, every step makes a grain sprout, growing tall and healthy, and nothing can take it down. The seasons are slowly blooming and booming in her presence, the spring more verdant, the summer hotter, autumn plentiful beyond measure and winter always frigid. From behind her ears sprout oats and barley, always young and vibrant green, crowning her in the coming bounty. Her eyes are the colour of wheat, and when the wind blows the shadows in her eyes move with it.

ARES. Olympian god of war, battlelust, courage and civil order. He is war, bloody and cruel, senseless, personified. His very presence makes fights break out, indignities and betrayals happen. He is an oppressive force that bring the bravery out of the people, along with all the hate. If he stays long enough in one place, even Olympus, war breaks out, be it civil or not. This is why he never stays in one place too long. He is luting for blood, but war had wearied him. He will not do the same mistake twice, even in war. His eyes are the open wounds of soldiers, bleeding, infected, dying skin and rotting meat.

ATHENA. Olympian goddess of wisdom and good counsel, war, the defence of towns, heroic endeavour, weaving, pottery and various other crafts. Every tapestry and pot and garment worked by hand that is not up to her godly standard shrivels and turns to ash in her presence, obliterated by her beyond-human perfectioned craft. Towns are instantly protected when she is there, good grace and godly favour. War, like Ares, follows her. It is not kinder, nor is it bearable. Calculated, cold, some would argue that her wars are crueler, sadistic. Eyes like garment fiber and shattered pots, blood covering them.

APOLLO. Olympian god of prophecy and oracles, music, song and poetry, archery, healing, plague and disease, and the protection of the young. The sun, a power passed on, burns under his skin. It is the worst in the summer months, when the sun is more preeminent. His music, lighting every room in shades of enticement, is otherworldly, his voice, be it in song or word, is a mastery of perfection. From his hands, a single touch can be salvation or sickness. His arrows, silver for his twin, always strike true, no matter the target. His presence brings prophecies and fates to light. The power of the sun is in his eyes.

ARTEMIS. Olympian goddess of hunting, the wilderness and wild animals. She was also a goddess of childbirth, and the protectress of the girl child up to the age of marriage. Around her sprout forests, wild and untainted, a world where humans could get lost in and never be found again. Wild animals prowl after her, protectors and friends of her hunters. When the night is darkest, a power inherited, her skin lights up, a moon to shine in the dark of the shadows. Her hunters, her girls, are protected and her wrath is painful and cruel, like her domains, and they are recognisable by their golden arrows.

HEPHAESTUS. Olympian god of fire, smiths, craftsmen, metalworking, stonemasonry and sculpture. Beneath his skin flames are visible, a moving part of him, like tattoos. Every piece of metal he works with, no matter how briefly, turns into beatiful and powerful tools, an art all of their own. His buildings are steady and everlasting, the stone protected by his touch. His eyes, the hammer hitting metal, are coloured in such a way that they resemble statue's eyes.

APHRODITE. Olympian goddess of love, beauty, pleasure and procreation. Born of sea foam and godly blood, the salt clings to her. Curls her hair and makes her glow, the power of the sea just under her perfect skin. Everyone finds something beautiful in the face of beauty. It is enchanting, a spell most can hardly exist. She is everything everyone could ever want, a goddess for everyone's taste. Yet her anger is born of the sea, a cruel and unforgiving sort of death. To make love dislike you is to lose it all in the blink of an eye. To disrespect a goddess means death.

HERMES. Olympian god of herds and flocks, travellers and hospitality, roads and trade, thievery and cunning, heralds and diplomacy, language and writing, athletic contests and gymnasiums, astronomy and astrology. He speaks in languages long lost, and his travel notes are written in queer glyphs and writing systems. Sheep like him, without doubt. The souls of humans clash and itch to follow him when he enters a room, beyond willing to be taken to the underworld. The stars illuminate his path, a road he knows by heart but they don't care. They will guide him, no matter what.

DIONYSUS. Olympian god of wine, vegetation, pleasure, festivity, madness and wild frenzy. Vines grow from his footsteps, water and seawater and nectar and any other drink turn to wine in his hand. Where he is, the frenzied, happy and drunk follow, a retinue of people that enjoy and enjoy and enjoy. There is nothing not to like at first glance, and only at first glance. When one looks closer, the insanity begins. It is like sparks in his eyes, a nonsensical word past his lips. When you look closer at the people, there is no happiness in the thaws of madness.

HESTIA. The virgin goddess of the hearth and the home. It does not make her kind, because the gods rarely are. It makes her steady, the fire in the home that keeps the chill away from making itself at home. The fire that lights the way back home, sacred in temples and to extinguish it is to forsake her favour. Homes she has blessed are cozy, full of love, of safety. It does not make them fireproof.

HADES. The king of the underworld and god of the dead. He, king over bones and lost memories. His wife, unnamable, his presence like the heavy hand of time on mortal shoulders. Bones and skulls and the wispy whisper of the lost are his retinue. Half decomposed corpses his servants and valets and butlers. His name, scorned, is never said but on the eve of the winter solstice, when death is the surest companion. His eyes, dark but brittle as bone, promise something any other god can't understand.

PERSEPHONE. Goddess queen of the underworld, wife of the god Hades. She was also the goddess of spring growth. Her presence brings with it the smell of the first flowers of spring, little by little making the world greener. But her steps are always silent, always just a little far from the ground. She is a queen, death is her and her husband's domain. Of course she is ghostly, terrifying. Her perfume is of freshly dug earth and autumnal rain, the weeps of widows and widowers, the death of the young and elderly. Her name is unspoken, a curse when invoked. You will not hear her name on Olympus, in mortal mouths. Kore, Despoena, her titles are safe. Her eye is not benevolent, when it's attention is captured.

[poorlittleyaoyao]

I am so unwell forever about the fact that Jin Guangyao never tells a single person besides Su Minshan what was supposed to be in the coffin. He doesn't even try to say "my mother's remains are buried here and I just want to keep them safe," even when they think the worst of him already and he'd have nothing to lose if they didn't believe him, because his most-feared outcome probably isn't that they wouldn't believe him. It's that they would believe him and would at best not care and at worst seek to do Meng Shi harm because of it. And he's not wrong. 🫠

[queerprayers]

i want to say first of all that i fully respect a community's/denomination's/culture's right to have closed practices. i am not entitled to other people's traditions, and when i am a guest in a space i understand that everything is not automatically for me. and i know i do not have to understand to respect.

and also! when i go to a catholic church and can't receive communion i want to fall on the floor weeping. what do you mean i can't have him he's right there. sorry my baptism was the wrong kind of baptism. i'm hungry and you want me to become someone else before being fed.

[vigilskept]

gnashing my teeth thinking about how veilguard talks about the gods only as a joke when they could've gone somewhere truly crazy.... you're so right.

Yeah... you get it. It's just such a missed opportunity!

I don't even mind the jokey tone they use a lot of the time, because we all joke about things we struggle to understand/cope with.

Except Veilguard refuses to let you even try to broach the subject beyond that surface level. In fact, when it does let you engage with it at all, it manages to make things even less nuanced!

I'm just going to talk about Bellara's quest here since it's the most directly linked with the elven gods, and it's already a lot. Fundamentally, her companion quest is asking us two things:

Should elves be blamed for the actions of the Evanuris?

Should they preserve any of their past at all?

The first one is absurd to even begin with. It's not even a good or interesting take on the (very christian!) question: "Are we responsible for the sins of our ancestors?"

The Evanuris are not the ancestors of modern elves. Dalish religion implies that modern elves descend from those who the rebels never freed from slavery to the Evanuris.

This setup is already awful without looking at any of the parallels Bioware has (intentionally) drawn between the elves of Thedas and Jewish/Indigenous people. I have to put the rest of this under the cut because I genuinely don't think it can be shortened without making it sound flippant. In the context of the coding of the elves, the theological/social implications of all of this are so much worse.

TLDR: the indigenous/jewish coding of the elves makes bioware's treatment of elven religion in veilguard thoughtless at best, cruel at worst. they did not have to write themselves into this corner. there was a way of handling this lore reveal without the implication of elven religion (again, jewish/indigenous coded) being obsolete

So, the religion of the Dalish was part of their enslavement. It's the belief they were forced into by the cruel gods they are still devoted to. That's already pretty bad. How could it get worse, you might wonder?

Whether Bioware deviated from their initial inspirations for the elves or not, the implications for these lore reveals in light of those parallels are particularly cruel. Those two core questions in Bellara's quest? Yeah. Those have both been levied against the oppressed groups that Bioware chose to draw inspiration from. Both historically and presently. To justify atrocities against them.

And to be clear, Bioware does not deviate from or subvert the usual indigeous and jewish-coding of the elves in their writing here. If anything, they end up actively endorsing a very significant element of antisemitic and anti-indigenous sentiment.

Indigenous-Coding

Advocates of colonisation have always justified it by arguing they were 'saving' groups of people who were stuck in the past. They had been ‘left in the dark’ through ignorance of Christianity. In the more secular sense, this was framed as Europeans having journeyed through history to reach enlightenment, while the rest of the world was still in an ‘uncivilized’ state.

Christianity and progress had to be brought to these people to save their souls and bring them into the future with everyone else. Their Gods? There were only two possible ways to frame those. Either they were not real at all, or they were evil. Either way, they were obsolete.

In the Americas, these arguments were still used when corralling indigenous children into residential schools or tearing them from communities through the adoption system. Governments pushed the idea that they had to be forced to assimilate because they were 'backward' in their practices and beliefs.

In the settler-colonial state Canada, where Bioware is based, it's still common enough to hear people justify all of this as having been done "for their own good." Even those who admit that the ways colonization was perpetuated were cruel will still try to defend it by telling you, "it was bad, but their ancestors weren't saints either."

Sounding painfully familiar yet? A little uncomfortable in the context of Bellara's questline?

Jewish-Coding

Since the dawn of Christian Church, Jewish people have had a very fraught place in Christian theology. Christianity claims that that the coming of the messiah in the person of Jesus Christ makes the religion of Judaism obsolete. Christians believed the obvious answer to this problem was that Jewish people should convert.

When many did not, they were labeled as ignorant, obstinate, stuck in the past. They were so focused on their history that they couldn't see the truth which had been revealed in the present. There’s a significant legacy of this idea in Christian artwork with depictions of Synagoga blindfolded next to the clear eyed Ecclesia. You still hear echoes of this sentiment in antisemitic language today.

As for the nature of the Jewish God... there is some deviation here. For some Christians, He is God the Father, and He is good. For others — and this idea has been around from early Christianity till now — He is the Creator of the material world, but He is evil.

There are innumerable variations of Christian gnosticism that probably wouldn't be productive to get into on a Dragon Age Blog. What I need to underline here though, is that the idea of the Old Testament God as the devil/the demiurge/fundamentally evil, has been used to justify atrocity towards Jewish people for over a thousand years.

Should elves be blamed then? For the sundering of the Titans? For the Veil? For the Blight? For the evils of this world, created by their Gods?

Implications for Veilguard

Not only is religion in Dragon Age: The Veilguard often devoid of nuance or ignored outright, when the game does engage with it at all, it does so in a way that quite literally draws on these incredibly harmful antisemitic and anti-indigenous sentiments that have been (and still are) used to perpetuate real harm.

To be clear, I don't think the writing here intends to endorse the idea that elves should be blamed for any of what's going on. Bellara's anxieties are being projected onto her people as a whole while she grapples with what this all means for her, I get that. In fact, you could be generous and read some of this as a critique of this particular kind of anti-indigenous/jewish bigotry.

However, I don't think that absolves the writers of any of the implications they've created by confirming that the elven pantheon did exist and was canonically evil.

Elements of Dalish/elven culture might be preserved after all this, but the conclusion the game railroads you into is that their religion is obsolete. Just like Judaism. Just like the many Indigenous religions around the world. Except in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, it’s no longer just the bigotry of outsiders claiming that to be the case. It’s now the objective truth of the setting.

Going forward, the elves of Thedas can keep their culture, but they can’t practice their religion. If they continued to practice, they would be framed the way the Venatori are: evil and stuck in the past. This really can’t be overstated: this is the exact rhetoric that has justified centuries of violence and oppression of Jewish and Indigenous people. This rhetoric is still around and still weaponized.

It’s so cruel to create an in world ‘lineage’ that draws so heavily from their cultures and histories, then validate the rhetoric that has been used to hurt them. At best, it’s thoughtless. But as a company based in a settler-colonial state, this is something they should’ve put thought into, given that they chose to code their elves and Jewish and Indigenous. That was their responsibility, actually.

What gets me about all this is that they actually didn't need to force that conclusion at all. They could have kept the Evanuris as cruel tyrants without demonising the Creators and their worship at the same time.

The Evanuris weren't always Gods. They weren't even always rulers.

In Trespasser, when asked how they became Gods, Solas tells Lavellan that they did so slowly. That it started with a war. That fear bred a desire for simplicity. For right and wrong. For chains of command. That generals became respected elders, then kings, and finally gods.

Veilguard confirms all of this. The addition it makes is that before all this, the first elves were spirits who made their bodies out of the Titans. This all occurred over the course of thousands of years.

None of this needs to be retconned in order to allow for a respectful yet nuanced portrayal of religion!

TLDR pt2: bioware, u could’ve avoided literally ALL of this by making the evanuris part of a priestly class who seized power after the war with the titans. it wouldn’t even have undermined ur lore! u could’ve kept dalish religion alive! u could’ve implied complex political dynamics for your ancient elves without even having to write it! why didn’t you even try?

Trying to Fix This Mess

Say the elves took their bodies from the Titans and settled the lands of Thedas. Say the Titans even allowed this for a time. The dwarves were made from their own bodies after all.

Yet the elves didn't have the same connection with the Titans as the dwarves did. They had no stone-sense, so they couldn't understand the Titans' song.

Generations down the line, some of them took too much from the Titans. More than they were willing to give. That was when the Titans lashed out, making the earth tremble so that all the elves had built crumbled beneath them.

And what if the firstborn among the elves had taken up priesthood to guide the younger ones. They were closer to spirits than the elves that were born into this world, and so the younger ones looked to them for guidance. Maybe they were the ones who were trusted to reach out to the more powerful of the spirits who chosen stay in the Fade, their old kin who preferred to keep their distance from the physical world to preserve the essence of what they were. The spirits of Justice, of Benevolence, of Craft. Those who the elven people paid homage to, and trusted to preserve them in turn.

So when everything seemed to fall apart, the elves turned to their Keepers, their priests, and asked of them what they ought to do. How could they make the earth stop shaking? What would they have to do to be at peace again?

Whatever the spirits themselves may have responded, many of the Keepers (among them the Evanuris) took up arms and chose war. They saw it could be won so they fought, sundering Titans from their dreams and stilling the land.

And yet there was no peace.

Some Keepers sought to hold on to their power as generals, and wanted to wage war on new shores to keep it. Some Keepers thought they had already gone too far, claiming they had acted without the guidance of the spirits who hadn't wanted war.

These Keepers could've caused chaos and endless bloodshed, so the Evanuris formed their alliance to suppress the others. Likely, they thought they were doing so for the benefit of all the elven people. More war meant more death, and it was needless now that the land was still. And even if what they did to the Titans was wrong, it was done and they could not fix it. Better to silence those who meant to stir up fear among the people.

The Evanuris fought until they were the last faction left, naming the few holdouts the Forgotten Ones. They were praised for bringing peace to Elvhenan, and trusting in their guidance their people crowned them as rulers.

Yet some dissent always remained. None of them were infallible. They were no longer spirits, they hadn't been for thousands of years. They were now more accustomed to command than to priesthood after all that war. They had drawn on the power they had stolen from the Titans to gain the advantage over their enemies, and the corruption of the Blight was starting creep in, ever-so-slowly.

Maybe some of the people, unhappy with their rule, started to voice the thought that was expressed by their rival Keepers once more: that the Evanuris had grown distant from the spirits. That Elgar'nan didn't serve Justice anymore. That Mythal had strayed from Benevolence.

So Evanuris took the mantle of godhood for themselves. It was only for peace and stability.

It would be too dangerous if anyone could claim they were deviating from the will of the spirits, so they would claim they were those great spirits. Elgar'nan was Justice, Mythal was Benevolence. They would use their rule only for the benefit of the people, not abuse their power.

And there you go. None of what I've written above can't be neatly incorporated into the existing lore of Veilguard. It leaves the elves of Thedas precisely where they started in Dragon Age: Origins. Distant from their ancient Gods, trying to pick up the pieces of their forgotten past.

[branwinged]

not to gotpost but my god they hated catelyn. like it was quite obvious they were not comfortable adapting a mother character who was emotionally abusive to one of the children in the household, and they either didn't have the time or didn't care enough to talk about the systemic prejudice bastards suffer in westeros and how that intersects with the disenfranchised status of noblewomen and the fundamental inequality of marriage, which obviously doesn't excuse catelyn's behaviour towards jon but gives you context to understand why she is like that. instead they framed it as an exclusively interpersonal conflict wherein catelyn was sort of made to look like the only one in the blasted continent who took issue with bastards and then this was turned into half of her personality which is how we got that incredible monologue about everything bad that has ever happened to the starks is because she 'couldn't love a motherless child'. now the really insidious thing about this is i'm certain the writers thought they were doing her character a favour, making her more likeable by having her expound on her flaws, because to them nothing was more discomfiting than a woman who would go to her grave completely unrepentant about being an inadequate mother, and i think this is also why they made her out to be so passive, constantly wanting to leave robb so she can return home to her youngest, because isn't that what a good, devoted mother would do? having littlefinger trick her into releasing jaime instead of it being a conscious and risky gamble because god forbid she exhibited any agency, even the agency to make mistakes in a tragedy. they turned her into a poor helpless woman who exists largely in the background for some audience sympathy, which is arguably the genre expectation her character is intentionally set up to fly in the face of in the books. because the northern war effort in books 1-3 was never robb's story, it was catelyn's. and they didn't get it. they didn't get it.

[crabsnpersimmons]

question on tumblr etiquette:

if you fall under a user's DNI list, but that user reaches out to you via ask or DM, without knowing you fall under their DNI list, do you still respond?

hypothetical example: user A specifies on their blog "DNI if you're over the age of 18", but then user A reaches out to user B. User B is over the age of 18, but user A does not know this because user B doesn't mention it on their blog. User B does know that user A does not wish to interact with people over the age of 18. does user B respond to user A?

[rainsandrains]

I wish I knew how to handle the wish for the gods for be real. I feel emotional connections to certain figures, but I also know rationally they're not real. I see other pagans talk about the comfort they get from their faith in god/s and I wish I had that. I've tried worshipping a specific pagan god in a sort of symbolic/archetypal sense and in a "I know this is make-believe but I'm doing it anyway" sense and it brought some comfort for a few days at a time and then began to feel wrong and uncomfortable because I knew it wasn't real.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

"Where did this idea come from that all beliefs deserve respect? If your beliefs are ridiculous, they deserve to be ridiculed, as would mine." -- MissaMHx

[mamawasatesttube]

i have a confession. i just dont care about vampires. i wish i did because the aesthetics go hard as hell! but i always get stuck on the fact that blood tastes nasty and i cant figure out how they work when they dont have pulses because shouldnt they all succumb to rigor mortis and [insert way too much overthinking that is not the point and should be handwaved by magic and i know this and yet i still get bogged down in it]. i KNOW it's not the point but i can't get around it in my head. if i had a vampire girlfriend she would first of all not want my blood probably because im anemic and that would just be miserable for the both of us but also i would make her wash her mouth out before i could kiss her and i think that would probably just not be a lasting relationship. this is my ultimate confession as a gay person on the internet. my shame. i am sorry fellow gay people on the internet. i just think blood tastes nasty and i can't figure out how creatures without a pulse work. i start overthinking and then i feel insane and the entire time im like god blood tastes nasty too. i cant do it

[honibumii]

Am I the only one who kinda is w Skully on the whole "banishing bad ghosts stuff" or

[myfairkatiecat]

not my friends being 400x less supportive about me being Christian than I am about them being atheist

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

People who are like "oh yeah my faith in God is growing and I feel so icky when I watch popular movies or listen to secular music" kind of bug me bc like... if that was me I would lose every interest I've ever had? like?? "consecration" doesn't mean you have to be disgusted by anything that's of the world... I prefer a "Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater" approach

[iwieldthesword]

"Oh wow OP sounds like you weren't Their Good Jew™ enough to avoid experiencing antisemitism in antizionist spaces, I guess you'll change your mind about antizionism now!"

Actually this is so crazy, but my political activism isn't actually based on what will personally benefit me or if I'm rewarded for it, but is in fact a reflection of my moral compass and what I think is right. Way to tell on yourself that your political views and activism are 100% based on other people's approval and what you think will personally benefit you best, though! Couldn't be me.