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crackspinewornpages · 1 year ago

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Rage 23/35 -Stephen King

Sylvia broke the silence by laughing, when this is all over she wants to get in detective magazine, maybe she’ll get Charlie to write it. More troopers arrive, Charlie turns on the intercom for Mr. Grace he says he’s tried to get him help, this is an antisocial act by society’s standards, (standards change) will he let them help him, only he can save his own soul now. Charlie didn’t like that and asked if Denver told the police what he said, have they figured out how to handle him yet, Mr. Grace doesn’t know but wants to know how Charlie is going to handle himself. They were evaluating him, and he accuses them all of being the same, it would be tougher to strip Mr. Grace, shrinks are mind fuckers, and he doesn’t want to help Mr. Grace do that and warns if he asks another question, he’ll shoot somebody. He’s playing his game now, statements only, does he think he’ll keep his job, Mr. Grace begs Charlie to save himself. Mr. Grace wants to sign off, but Charlie says he’ll do it when he says, or he’ll shoot someone, he can't cop out, does he understand. Outside Denver and Johnson were waiting for Mr. Grace’s return, it was his turn to get it on. (was this a saying in the 70s)

Charlie questions him, his military obligation was fulfilled as a doctor, he’s practiced psychiatry for five years. He refuses to answer if he goes down on his wife, Charlie threatens to shoot, no. Psychiatry fulfills him as a person, his wife never cheated, he’s never cheated on an exam, then how can he say his wife never gave him anal. He completed training at Fort Benning in 56, after military obligation fulfilled in 60, he was in the Guard. His mother’s maiden name was Gavin and he’s thrown off and when asked again says he completed basic training in 57 and Charlie threatens to shoot someone. Father's middle name is John, he’s a Methodist, he went to Sunday school, bible questions and when he did Charlie tricks him into quoting a question. (ok so he pulled a psychology trick to throw someone off rapid fire questions that seem inane but your chipping down their guard to reveal what you want police interrogators use it all the time)

Mr. Grace was crying on the intercom; Denver held the cops back; he used Mr. Grace’s own tools on him. (like I just explained) “I had taken off his witch doctor’s mask and made him human. But I didn’t hold it against him. To err is only human, but it’s divine to forgive. I believe that sincerely.”p.59 Mr. Grace says he’s leaving, Charlie tells him no one’s dead, Charlie has Ted assure him he’s not lying. Mr. Grace cries again for a long time before going outside, he walked like an old man and Charlie liked seeing it.

“I told you about the roulette ball, didn’t I? Sure I did. In some ways-in a lot of ways-it was still in spin. Craziness is only a matter of degree, and there are lots of people besides me who have the urge to roll heads.”p.61 (this is what kinda takes me out of it Charlie is supposed to either be deranged or a kid that just had enough and snapped but he’s weirdly philosophical for a seventeen year old) Irma snaps at Grace Stenner, they should shoot her like Charlie, kill all sluts and their daughters and chants whore’s daughter. (ok the fuck is your problem Irma) Grace is about to claw Irma’s eyes out when Charlie tells her to stop it, Irma continues that Grace’s mother has an open house every night. Charlie has Irma look at him, they have to keep order here. “Without order, what do you have? The jungle. And the best way to keep order is to settle our difficulties in a civilized way.”p.63 (the meaning of civilize is relevant)

He draws a circle on the floor and has the girls stand in it or death, he’ll be the judge, when he drops his bandanna they can go at it. (duke out your problems how my mom raised me and my sister probably not healthy) Ted tells him to stop it, but Sylvia says if someone called her mother a whore, she’d claw their eyes out. Ted shouts they could stop him, but he had no supporters and shut up. Charlie dropped the bandanna, and the girls went at it with smack talk and slaps until Irma cries to be let out. Grace says to take back what she said, Irma insults her more and Grace lets her have it until she breaks down into sobs saying she can't apologize until Grace slaps her again and Irma screams she’s sorry. Grace turns to the class, “My mother fucks,’ she said ‘and I love her.”p.66 (parents what they do to their children and how their children see them is a theme) They all except for Ted and Susan applaud her.

Charlie tells Irma to stand up, she’s always been sorry, that’s why it’s hard to say it, Grace forgives her. Charlie asks Irma if she has anything to say, Tanis tells her she’ll feel better if she does. Irma says what Grace said is true, she’s not pretty, never had a date or friends, Tanis tells her she could clean up and shave, Irma shouts she doesn’t know how. The girls are now sympathetic, Tanis will help her and the girls start talking. The class bell made everyone jump, it was now 9:50, the squirrel, Denver and Underwood were gone and Charlie decided he was gone too.

There are more police cars and a growing crowd, the class looks to see what's in it, a news van pulled up and started unloading and the class turned to the radio reporting Charlie going berserk. Grace called Mr. Grace’s report of being forced to leave at the threat of the students a lie. (how adults in power act is also a theme) The news called Charlie a schizophrenic past rationality, (he’s not I’m not sure what he is he’s not a psychopath either I think he’s just a kid who was chipped away until he exploded like a dam the wrong set of circumstances aligned and this was the opportunity he took) Sylvia calls it a crock of shit and Pig Pen in incensed at being called children. Charlie has the radio turned off and asks him what’s on his mind and he starts complaining about his mother buying cheap pencils and shitty frozen suppers, her thing is to enter contests and drowned his sister’s kitten saying it’s too worthless to drive to the vet’s. (she drowned a kitten to save four bucks that's 20.27 today...oh look at that have needed a nail bat in a while) She’s too cheap to buy him better shirts (he wears cheap dingy shirts is that why everyone calls him Pig Pen) and wouldn't let him get a paper job because of loose women at home. She sucks up to everybody and when his sister got pregnant, (wouldn’t let her keep the baby either) she sold his car so he wouldn’t go get a girl pregnant. She grinds you until you give, he thinks if he had a gun like Charlie, he’d kill her. (and I’d have no sympathy for her)

Ted says they’re all going crazy like Charlie, Carol turned on him, usually she was on Ted’s side like Eisenhower, Ted had followers that liked him. “you had to like him, that style, that grin, that record, these good intentions, but there was something exasperating and a tiny bit slimy about him.”p.72 (is Ted a mirror of Charlie he also has a rough home life) Charlie was fixated on Ted something happened that morning and Ted was the center of it. Ted says they’ll find they’re all nut cases, they’ll drag them off and grind them down, (you’ll see Ted’s not playing along with the game antagonizing Charlie and berating his fellow students we’ll see where this goes) Charlie filled the magazine again, Susan starts to cry and they looked at him. “I had taken a life, I had snuffed her, put a bullet in her head and spilled out algebra.”p.72

A trooper called for Charlie to come out and he felt like dry heaving, he’s always had a weak stomach and once puked on his date’s leg. Charlie yells at the trooper to shut up, they can’t hear him, Ted starts goading Charlie and the others start talking over each other. Charlie fires out the window four times and people scatter, and he aimed it at Ted who was out of his seat and orders him to sit down, he was in control again. The police told the crowd to disperse, Sandra told Charlie to tell something else, (yes distract him so he won’t have a breakdown he wants to use this class as an unwilling group therapy session let him) it was 10:20.

At twelve his father gave up on him, he was his mother's responsibility, his mother tried to force him to wear a corduroy suit (it’s an ugly textured brown fabric) to a birthday party. You don’t cross her, or she’ll dig in her heels and he was crossing her. She won't hear any arguments, to shut up or he won't go anywhere to anything, she held grudges. He had a crush on Carol, and when he saw his friend Joe, he felt stupid in the suit, Joe didn’t mind his weird mannerisms, (no he’s not autistic) Charlie had brains, Joe had friends, since people liked Joe, they had to tolerate him. Nobody else was dressed up at the party and he wanted to leave before she saw him, but her mother spotted him, other kids asked him who died but Carol didn’t notice him.

He didn’t participate in the fun, Joe found him on the porch watching the others play, Carol wants him to come, and not wanting Joe to hate him let him go. “After a while, being somebody’s responsibility makes them hate you, and I was scared that Joe might hate me someday. I didn’t know all that then, not at twelve, but I sensed some of it.”p.80 On his way home Dicky noticed him and feeling ugly, Charlie snapped at him to get out of his way, he felt someone else was in control for the first time. Dicky swung at him, Charlie shoved him and they fought. Dicky rips off his coat and slams his head on the ground until Joe dragged him off, the other children were either staring or looking away. Charlie cried, crawling on the lawn for his scattered buttons, yelled at Carol’s mother and ran away. He hid at an empty house, not caring about his ruined suit or his mother, he could see her complaining to Dicky’s mother and his father asking how the other kid looked and his lie. He planned to hitchhike out of town but went home.

More cops and news crews showed up, Carol remembers that party, she was just a kid, Charlie says she didn’t look it. (dude she was twelve) Her crush on Dicky was worse after that day, (you saw a kid beat the crap out of someone and still had a crush on them I know you were a young teen but come on) she went on a school picnic with him, she let him get fresh. Dick Keene said he’s now in Placerville Cemetery. He got his license and went wild so much almost no one would ride with him, he built up that Pontiac himself, he rode with him once made him pull over and walked home, a few months later he hit a delivery truck. Randy Milliken was with him, Dicky wasn’t impaired, it was the truck driver’s fault he said. Carol was pale and Charlie asks her if her mother was mad he called her an old bag, yes and she thought the fight was his fault too. Carol confesses though, their mothers were friends, but she didn’t care for Charlie’s mother, Charlie bets the suit was her idea of match making and Carol laughed. It almost seemed disrespectful to the dead, but Charlie let it pass, though Underwood wasn’t far from his mind, he was practically standing on her. (remember there’s been a dead body in this room the entire time)

Frank Philbrick, Ted’s father’s friend, went into the school and went on the intercom saying they don’t like the idea of shooting him, Charlie advises not to, Frank asks his price, what price. Anything to let them go, how about a deal, tell him how many out there think he’ll just kill them. Some people think that yes, Charlie tells him to come down unarmed and he’ll let everyone go, Frank refuses to since he’ll just shoot him and keep the hostages, (you’re a shitty negotiator) but he’ll come down to talk. Charlie warns if he signs off and doesn’t leave he’ll kill someone, he won't get out alive, no one thinks they’ll get out alive, not even his old man, he won't come out. Frank asks to talk to Ted, everyone is fine, and Charlie tells Frank his heavy breathing is a gross, shitty habit, fix it, he could save a life.

Twelve seconds later Frank left the school, and they had another conference. Carol asks if he had a bad experience with sex, he’ll share if she does, she refuses since they’ll all tell and Charlie drops it. But Carol will tell something, she’s a virgin and she doesn’t think it’s a bad thing, it’s not about not getting pregnant. “People tear you down, that’s it. They grind you down if you let them, just like Pig Pen said. They all want to pull you down to their level and make you dirty. Look at what they are doing to you, Charlie.”p.89 She was Christmas shopping with Dianne Taylor in Portland, when someone drove by and called her a cunt and her good mood was spoiled. It was like that was all there was to a person like being bright a hole to fill up. (that’s it some stranger called you a cunt and now you’re hung up on sex)

Sandra says she feels funny, either or, not much for anything else, Carol asks, and Sandra says she sometimes feels empty, that everything else seems dull and there aren't many minorities here to fight for, (I know it’s the seventies but find some other hobbies) so she let Ted do it to her. Charlie stared at Ted blankly, like he was glowing in clotted darkness and Sandra said she doesn’t know what all the fuss is about. Charlie aimed at Ted, “I was going to shoot him, but they shot me first.”p.90

#rage #stephen king #books book summaries #horror fiction #psychological thriller

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alwaysahiccupandastrid · 4 years ago

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His Dark Materials - Season 2 Episode 5 (rambles)

I only realized last week, there’s only 7 episodes this series because the eighth would have been the Asriel centric one. So only two left now after tonight! :(

Also I finished the book during the last week so I am so READY

Ahh gotta love that London traffic!

I don’t know why but the Golden Monkey wearing a seatbelt SENT ME

Mrs Coulter is watching the mother and baby :(

Boreal saying that our world is barbaric and our world is corrupt is so accurate tbh I’m not even mad

Will literally just threw the knife into the wall omfg watch it!

Red PAN-da is becoming a permanent fixture in this show apparently

Lyra’s hair was so pretty this episode? Her costume too obviously but her hair had me in awe

The theme music to this show gives me literal chills

Boreal is evil but his house is A-fucking-plus

Okay but how does Ruth Wilson always look so gorgeous and fluid in this show?!?

Her faking nearly dropping one of Boreal’s precious collection pieces and him panicking 😅

Mrs Coulter’s little “hmm” and smile... we love a Queen

“Why are we whispering?” “I don’t know” - LMFAO

“Will, you left the window open” - LMAO and also please don’t do that, that’s like one of the BIG rules about the knife!

“He’s getting good at this” “he is” - we love a supportive feral wild girl and her dæmon

Mrs Coulter looking bored as fuck as Boreal plays his music is such a damn mood

“You’d like it here too” - Umm NO STOP PLEASE SHE DOESNT WANT IT

“Carlo, can you make that stop?” - OMG 🤣

“You’re far too conspicuous like that” - but she’s not??? She just looks like a posh well dressed woman, maybe that’s not common in this world but she looks fine??

Boreal picking out clothes he’s obviously got just for her is... eww. Just ewww.

Her reaction to the jeans/clothes though XD

“Would you mind?” - YEAH BOREAL STOP CREEPING AND FUCK OFF PLEASE

“Maybe it’s time we issue a firm denial of the tear in the sky” BRO IT’S LITERALLY HUGE AND RIGHT THERE YOU CAN’T PRETEND IT AIN’T

Oh shit the Magisterium know about that witches going to the new world + the massacre

MacPhail literally imprisoned Father Graves and for WHAT?! I think the power’s getting to him (which I know it the point but still!)

MRS COULTER SHUT THE DOOR ON HER DÆMON I’M-

Okay so I know it’s been implied/said that Mrs Coulter can go far away from the monkey already, and that they maybe have been through some kind of process that’s made that a thing, but like DAMN.

“I’m sure you’ve encountered witches in your travels” - if I hadn’t already read the books, I would be asking if she IS a witch tbh like omg

This is probably one of the few times I’ll say this but... I feel so sorry for the monkey?? Just him watching her as she leaves from the window... like that’s so sad. I get why she couldn’t exactly walk around with a monkey but urgh

“I apologize if she was a nuisance” “She wasn’t a nuisance!” - Oof you tell her, Mary

“You must be so proud.” “... I am.” - OOF

Mary showing that she’s better fit to be a parent to Lyra than Lyra’s real mother tbh

Damn Marisa disappeared FAST

Mary really googled Mrs Coulter I’m-

“You must play the serpent” “hornbeam” “save the girl and the boy” - IT’S HAPPENING IM GOING TO CRY IM SO EXCITED

The computer turning completely off and the room going dark before going red OH MY GOD

“Oh shut it, Pan” - LMAO

OH NO OH NO ANGELICA FOUND TULLIO AND SHE IS PISSED D:

A+ acting from Bella Ramsay by the way

“We WILL get you” - OH SHIT

The fact that Will feels guilty over fighting and inadvertently getting Tullio attacked by spectres because he has the knife :’(

It’s so sweet to see Lyra and Pan comforting him though

“I’m not judging” - Mary’s sister says while totally judging her for reading the Holy Bible. She probably thinks she’s about to rejoin the convent!

I find the relationship between Marisa and the monkey so interesting?? I’m so intrigued by it

“Do they drink in this world?” “That, they do well.” - LMFAO ACCURATE THOUGH

“I found her arrogant, like many women in this world.” - umm, FUCK you, Boreal you misogynistic sexist piece of shit

So Mrs Coulter was denied a doctorate despite being the best in her class because she’s a woman, and they would only have published her papers if they were by a man. I’m starting to see why she got upset when she met Mary, who’s got her own office and a doctorate and is head of the department/project

“Who I could have been in this world” - oh shIT

The way she started talking about how she felt after the whole affair/baby ordeal, followed by “we’re not talking about Asriel, we’re talking about ME” - FUCK. I love Ruth Wilson’s portrayal, I love it

“You’ve spent your time trading trinkets” - lmfao you tell him ma’am

“Were you hoping to add me to your little collection?” “I was hoping this would be a life for you here” - oh god I hate it, fuck right off Carlo

“If you got me, you wouldn’t even begin to know what to do with me” - oh SHIT :O

Lyra turning up to distract them so Will could have the chance to cut a window and steal the Alethiometer had me on the edge of my seat

Let’s be real right now, the whole last 15 minutes? THE MOST TENSE AND INCREDIBLE PIECE OF TELEVISION ASDFGHJKL

Mrs Coulter’s face when she saw Lyra at the door :’(

Also she nearly saw Will and I was sitting there praying she wouldn’t find him, I was so worried even though I’ve literally just reread the book

So um THE FUCKING MONKEY BASTARD JUMPSCARED ME AND I AUDIBLY YELLED SO LOUDLY HOLY HECK

The way that Lyra saw her mum and immediately tried to run away though, she just keeps trying to yeet herself away from her parents and I honestly don’t blame her at all

Boreal was being truly extra in the way he dropped his snake dæmon out of his sleeve like that whilst advancing on Will

“Why would I trust you?” TRUTH

Coulter saying for Lyra to stay away from Will and getting super teary eyed makes me think she’s worried Lyra will suffer like she did? Like she’s worried that Lyra will suffer at the hands of men and be in the same situation she was I think? And that’s so sad but nuanced

“I am NOTHING like you.”

So Lyra did this little head move like Marisa did in 1x02, when she made the monkey attack Pan to subdue Lyra - AND THEN PAN ATTACKED THE MONKEY JUST LIKE THAT, LITERALLY EXACTLY THE SAME, AND MRS COULTER FALLING TO THE FLOOR AND CLUTCHING THE SOFA LIKE LYRA DID?? AND LYRA WATCHING WITH THIS COLD LOOK ON HER FACE?!

SOMEONE PLEASE MAKE A COMPARISON GIFSET BECAUSE IM CRYING

I love Will getting mad at Boreal taunting him over his mum, and immediately starting to punch him

HE SMASHED THAT COLLECTION PIECE ON BOREAL’S HEAD FUCK YEAH WILL 👏🏻

That was a DAMN close escape, holy fuck, but she’s got the Alethiometer back!

“The man who hurt you, I wanted to kill him” - same Lyra

I was so emotional when she was talking about how Marisa used her dæmon to hurt her and Pan, and Will saying that he’s never worried about his mum hurting him... the comparison is so sad

“I hope I’m not like either of my parents” - I mean I don’t blame her tbh

SHE CONSIDERED MA COSTA AND LEE SCORESBY TO BE BETTER PARENT FIGURES TO BE LIKE I’M CRYING

So Mrs Coulter is definitely planning some shit, like she didn’t seem that concerned when Boreal was talking about the Spectres, and like obviously I know what happens but I’ve always been intrigued as to why the Spectres listen to her instead of just attacking her. Also is it something to do with her dæmon? Like if they ARE separated in some way, maybe the Spectres don’t feed on her because it’s Dust or something? (Idk if that makes any sense)

“Deceive the guardian... okay... okay...” honestly same XD

Mary pretending to be Mrs Coulter to get past the guard is such a brilliant idea, like she just ran with it immediately, we have to stan a Queen who keeps a calm head

SHE WENT THROUGH THE WINDOW AND INTO THE CITY AAAAHHHH

The angels said they’d protect her, right? So she doesn’t need to fear the Spectres I’m assuming (I need to assume or I’ll worry)

The promo for next week was literally half what we saw THIS week and half Lee/John Parry footage I’m assuming is next week... ?

The fact there’s only two episodes left makes me so sad :( I have no idea what I’ll do waiting for the final series - and I’m assuming it’ll be delayed maybe because of Covid. Plus I’m hoping we get the extra episode NEXT series, the one that was Asriel-centred and supposed to be in this one but wasn’t filmed because of Coronavirus, so fingers crossed! 🤞

#his dark materials #hdm #lyra belacqua #marisa coulter #will parry #pantalaimon #lord boreal #charles latrom #the golden monkey #golden monkey #philip pullman #the subtle knife #dafne keen #ruth wilson #amir wilson

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queenbirbs · 4 years ago

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the open door | Ethan x MC

Pairing: Ethan Ramsey x MC

Warnings: swearing, some brief mentions of corpses and body horror, spooks and possible spectres

Word count: 7.7k

Premise: Bryce invites Sloane, Sienna, and Aurora on a tour of a haunted estate on the night before Halloween. What could go wrong?

Notes: I’m super bummed that we didn’t get a Halloween-themed chapter for this book, especially since it’s my favorite holiday. Takes place post chapter 11, though I’ve played with the timeline a bit to include Halloween. Re-post because it fell out of the tag, as posts seem to want to do as of late.

Taglist: @maurine07 @caseyvalentineramsey

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“You are aware there’s no such thing as witches, right?”

“Well, yeah,” Bryce scoffs. “Maybe. Besides, I said she was rumored to be a witch. That’s a whole different thing.”

“Oh, right, of course it is.” In the backseat, Aurora rolls her eyes. “Just tell that to all the people killed during the Salem witch trials due to mass hysteria.”

“Hey, now -- it’s not like she was killed for being a witch.”

“Right. She pulled a classic Rose for Emily,” Sloane mutters while Sienna makes a gagging noise.

“What?” Bryce asks.

“It’s a short story by Faulkner.”

“Oh.” There’s a brief pause. Sloane wonders if he even knows who that is. Then: “Is he the dude that had a hard-on for the Civil War?”

“Yeah,” Aurora snorts. “Basically.”

“Yeah, never read any of his stuff. I think I used SparkNotes for one of his books in undergrad.”

“Same,” Sloane admits, to which Bryce shoots her a look of faux-surprise. “Yeah, yeah, we all had to skate by sometimes.”

“Well, well, well,” he crows. “Looks like the ‘next generation of medicine’ isn’t so high and mighty after all, huh?”

“Wait, how did you--”

“Ramsey was four drinks deep at Donahue’s the other day, and one of the interns came up and bothered him about a possible spot on the team. Which meant we all overheard the twenty-minute spiel about what a great doctor you are.” He snickers as she puts a hand over her face and groans. “Yeah, it was real sweet. Real obvious, but sweet.”

She’s saved by the GPS on her phone, cutting through the music playing over the car speakers; Bryce takes the next exit as instructed. The off-ramp spits them out onto a two-lane county road. Posted across from the solitary stop sign, the blue services sign offers nothing but blank, white squares.

“There’s a bathroom, right?” Sienna asks. “Because I’m not seeing a gas station.”

“It’s a house, you guys,” Bryce scoffs, “not a cave.”

“A haunted house,” she clarifies.

“Well, I mean, I don’t think the toilets are haunted.”

For several miles, there’s nothing but sweeping woodlands and the occasional passing car. Long squiggles of tar decorate the asphalt, snaking across the empty, leaf-strewn road. The setting sun casts a golden hue over everything, spears of light cutting through the tree trunks. It would be a nice, evening drive if it weren’t for where they were headed.

Forty minutes north of Boston lies the small, nondescript town of Angler. Even under the cover of dusk, Sloane can tell that it’s one of those towns. Pretty Tudors line the main street, their porches decorated with smiling scarecrows sitting on bales of hay; banners along the telephone poles advertise the annual apple festival. The bank and the post office and the dry cleaners are all tucked together in the refurbished general store. It’s the stereotypical, pleasant, all-American town. Which means that it’s the perfect place to hide a dark stain of history.

Why Bryce signed up for such a thing and how he won the tickets is beyond her. When he asked them all to join him for a haunted house, Sloane expected the typical theme: some dingy warehouse refurbished enough to meet modern building codes, full of tight mazes and masked actors with chainsaws.

“Nah, guys, this is the real deal,” he gloated over lunch the previous afternoon. “Back in the 1800s, this woman -- uhh Margaret, or Maggie, I think, yeah Maggie Angler -- she was one of the Boston Brahmins, owned this estate out in the country, blah blah blah. No one knows a whole lot about her because she was a little weird and she kept to herself. At some point, this dude woos her and they get married. But then, a few years later, he dies. Neighbors drop by to offer casseroles or whatever, but she won’t answer the door, so they give up and leave her alone. A few months go by, and suddenly this dude from town goes missing. Then a year, and another goes missing. This continues for several years and--”

“So, what, she’s some kind of black widow?” Elijah asked.

“No, this isn’t one of those Marvel--” Bryce’s brow furrowed and then lifted, realization striking his handsome face. “--oh, heh, yeah, sorry. But yeah, sort of. It wasn’t until word got around that the latest dude was seen talking to Maggie at the store that people got suspicious of her. So, they gather up some people and storm the house, where they find a Satanic Bible and other spooky shit. But that’s not the only thing they find.”

They all glance around at each other, waiting to see who will encourage Bryce to break his silence and finish the damn story. “They also find... the missing dudes.”

“What, buried in the backyard?” Sloane asked, and frowned when Bryce shook his head.

“No, not buried. She killed them and then kept them in the house. Supposedly, they were posed at the table or sitting on the couch, rotting away.”

Sienna made a show of pushing her plate away. “That’s disgusting.”

“I know there’s a group of people in Indonesia that keep their dead relatives at home,” Aurora said, “but they’re preserved and cared for. This doesn’t sound like that.”

“Nope.” Elijah shook his head. “Definitely not the same thing.”

“What happened to the woman?” Sloane asked.

“No idea -- get this: they never found her.” Bryce lifted his eyebrows for dramatic effect. “But the story goes that she still haunts the place, searching for her lost lovers, and maybe… trying to get some new ones.”

Jackie, who had been busy scrolling away on her phone through the tale, snorted into her salad.

“And you want us to come with you to some evil witch’s house on the night before Halloween to go ghost hunting? I may not believe in any of this shit, but no fucking way.”

“Yeah,” Elijah sighed, cringing at the crestfallen look on Bryce’s face. “Sorry dude, but I’ll pass. My idea of fun is a John Carpenter movie marathon, not a tour around Jane the Ripper’s house.”

“Okay, understood.” With that, Bryce looked to the remaining three and turned on the charm, draping his arm across Sloane’s shoulders. “C’mon, ladies, whaddaya say? Hard to pass up the prospect of touring a bona fide haunted mansion with one of the most handsome men you know -- second only to Elijah here.”

Tapping at her chin, Sienna nodded and grinned. “Sounds fun. I like scary things.”

Aurora, on the other hand, shot him a skeptical look. “Are you going to shout at the air and act like you’re possessed, like I’ve seen that one ghost hunter do on TV? The one with the spiky hair?” she demanded to know.

“Uhhh no to all of those things, but especially to the spiky hair.”

“Okay, then,” she shrugged, “I’ll go.”

Every eye at the table turned to Sloane; Bryce squeezed her shoulder in encouragement.

“Alright,” she agreed. “It’d be fun to get spooked, I guess. I’m down.”

Which is how she comes to be in the passenger seat of Bryce’s car, leaning forward onto the dashboard as they take the final turn onto a hidden lane. A thick tunnel of trees swallows them up as they drive deeper into the woods. After several miles, there’s a break in the pines, and then: sprawled atop a hill, looming above them, is the house. Even if she hadn’t heard the backstory, Sloane feels like the place would still give her the creeps. With its filmy lace curtains and its tall windows glowing yellow in the approaching darkness, the house looks like it’s been pulled from an Edward Hopper painting. Worn pavers lead from the semi-circular driveway and up to the front porch. Framing either side of the steps, thin, brittle blades of tufted hairgrass shift in the wind. Two people turn from the front door and raise a hand in greeting.

Bryce kills the engine and twists around in his seat to grin at his compatriots.

“You guys ready to get scaaaared?”

Sienna wraps her hands around Sloane’s seat and leans forward, her eyes wide as she stares out the windshield.

“Why does it look like The Amityville Horror house?”

“Is this a bad time to mention that the Blair Witch Project’s producers used this place as inspiration?”

“Yeah,” she hisses, “definitely a bad time.”

Shouldering open her door, Sloane lets in the cool October air in an attempt to corral their attention. It works; the rest of them pile out of the car with her and approach the couple.

As the current owners of the property, Jack and Nancy Bell guide them through the main floor of the house, pointing out spots of reported activity. The interior is lovely -- one of those Sloane would see in a Pictagram post of a wedding venue, with all those carved banisters and original wainscoting. Her brother, a successful carpenter in the Twin Cities, would have a field day in here. Most of the furniture is original to the house, as well, and in surprisingly good condition.

The only aspect setting the house apart from any other on the historical registry are the props. In the front hall, a bulletin board hosts an array of newspaper clippings. The earlier articles blame a serial killer, dubbed the ‘Butcher of Angler,’ for the mens’ disappearances. Then, starting on October 28th, 1892, the headlines change to the ‘Wicked Witch of Winthrope County.’ In the drawing room sits an Ouija board, surrounded by melted candles. A cauldron and a Satanic Bible share space on the kitchen counter; corked bottles of what look like cooking spices and herbs clutter the open cabinets. Mannequins lounge at the dining table or on the sofa, dressed in dusty clothes, their jaws slack, their painted eyes still and dull. Beside them, framed in cheap plastic, are the grainy photographs of the corpses as they were found. To Sloane, it all feels hokey, like a regular haunted house with the strobe lights turned off.

There’s something else, though, something underneath the fine layer of dust and the creaking floorboards and the shrouded furniture. It skitters across her neck and down her back, making her shiver, which she discounts as a wayward draft in the old house.

It’s the distinct feeling of being watched.

“Aside from the big house, there’s a carriage house to the left there. We rent it out in the summer and fall for overnight stays.” Jack gestures to the east as they step out onto the back veranda, where, just beyond the slope of lawn, a smaller house sits with a solitary porch light glowing. “And back down the path there will lead you to the lake. When we bought the place, the deed stated that there was a cabin out near the state park line, but we’ve never been able to find evidence of it.”

“Maggie’s been seen down by the lake, too,” Nancy chimes in. “People say they see her there, inside the boathouse, or walking along the shore with her head down, as if she’s searching for something.”

“We’ve got lanterns here if you want to use them as you go about the grounds, though you’re welcome to use your flashlights.” Jack nudges a neat row of antique lanterns with his sneaker. “For the optimal experience, though, we recommend turning off all the inside lights and using secondary light sources instead.” He chuckles when Sienna makes a throaty noise of dissent.

The couple leads them back through the house and into the front hall to finish the tour. While Jack goes over the various rules, Nancy motions for Sloane to follow her out onto the front porch.

“I didn’t want to say anything in front of your friends,” she starts off in a whisper, “but I wanted to talk to you about our son, Ben.”

For a fleeting moment, Sloane thinks that she’s going to get questioned about his bowel movements or a mysterious rash, that Bryce must have told them he was bringing along his doctor friends. “When he was seven, he nearly--” Nancy cuts herself off, pressing a hand to her heart, “--he drowned when we were at the beach in Florida. I did CPR until the EMTs got there, and they were able to resuscitate him, thank God.”

“I’m sorry,” Sloane murmurs, “that must’ve been awful.”

“It was. But I’m -- the reason I’m telling you all this is because, after that, Ben seems to be more… open. More open than the rest of us.”

“I’m sorry,” Sloane says again, though this time out of confusion, “but I don’t--”

With a huff, Nancy shakes her head and waves her hands. “No, no, I apologize. I must sound crazy. I just wanted to warn you that, due to what happened to you, you might see things or experience things that your friends can’t. That’s all, dear.”

Sloane opens her mouth to question her further, but they’re interrupted by the rest of the gang filing out beside them. “We’ll be back at one a.m. to lock up behind you,” Nancy says as she follows her husband down to their car.

With a cheery honk, the little Subaru rumbles down the winding driveway and disappears. The sun having set during the tour, the landscape before them is now draped with the heavy blanket of night. The moon peeks at them from just above the treetops, as if still deciding on whether or not to come out. The only lights are far-off, unmoving: porch lights of the houses back in town; cell towers with their red stars blinking lazily against the dark. A cold wind moves through the trees, rustling the leaves and scattering them across the front walk, the dried edges hissing along the brick.

“Can you believe he said no alcohol?” Bryce breaks the silence with a whine. “I read about this fun séance thing you do with tequila shots and--”

“No séances!” Sienna declares. “And definitely no tequila!”

“Can we argue about this where it’s warmer?” Aurora suggests and steps back into the house.

As she and Sienna wander off into the drawing room, Sloane wraps a hand around Bryce’s arm and pulls him back.

“Did you tell her about me?”

His nose scrunches up to meet his furrowed brows. “Tell who about what?”

“The-- Nancy, did you tell her about what happened to me? With… with the senator, and…” it’s embarrassing how much of a struggle it is to get the words out, even now, even after three weeks and two therapy appointments.

His face falls from confusion to concern. Bryce reaches up and lays his hand over her own.

“Slo, I didn’t tell them, I swear. I would never,” he promises. “Did she say something to you?”

She loosens her hold, frustrated at herself that she even considered he would do such a thing. He’s one of her best friends, the man who handed over the reins to a cutting-edge surgery just to be by her side.

“Yeah, no, listen: it’s fine,” she stumbles through a paltry reassurance. “She was probably trying to scare me, that’s all.”

He gives her a quick once-over, lips twisting into a frown as he debates on whether or not to push. She bites back a breath of relief when he relents, his hand releasing hers.

“Okay,” he says, and nudges her into the house ahead of him. “C’mon. Between the two of us, I think we can convince them to turn off the lights.”

------

Although he puts up a good fight, Bryce loses on the no-lights front.

Which is just as well, because by the time they reach the second floor, Sloane is glad for the light from the antique lamps. To be fair, nothing actually happens: no spooks, no spectres, and no signs from the former resident. Nothing she can point to with any amount of certainty. Whatever it is hovers out of reach, just on the tip of her tongue, but she can’t seem to give it a name. Maybe it lies -- like any good, scary movie -- in the setting. For as grand as the house is, time and dereliction have taken its fine features hostage. Thick, gray dust coats the wooden spindles and curled handrails of the antique staircase. The corridors are tight, the shadows gathering in the space where the lights can’t seem to reach. Small curls of peeling wallpaper look like fingers reaching out from the wall, backlit by the sconces. The cloying scent of wood rot and mold fills the air, like a pile of papers left to curl and yellow with age. The rooms are small, cluttered with furniture and trinkets and artwork.

Sloane stares at such a portrait in the master bedroom, where a couple stares down at her from above the fireplace. The man sits in a chair, the woman standing beside him with her hand on his shoulder. It would be any other family portrait, if it weren’t for the unsettling glaze over the man’s sunken eyes.

“Bryce, please don’t-- aaaand he’s sitting on the bed.”

“You do know that’s where they found her husband, right?” Sienna points out. “That’s why there’s a mannequin on it. And a picture of his dead body on the nightstand.”

“Maybe Maggie will see what a catch I am if I’m laid out for her. I’ve never met a woman over the age of sixty who could resist my charms.” Bryce waggles his eyebrows as he bounces once, then twice on the mattress before stretching out. “What’s up, bro?” he asks the mannequin beside him before doing a double-take. “Hey, it’s Annie!”

He snatches off the ugly wig and fake beard, and lo and behold, an old CPR dummy gapes up at them all. Sloane snorts and shakes her head.

“Looks like the years haven’t been kind to her.”

“Probably saddled with student loans just like the rest of us,” Aurora mutters as she wanders over to inspect the photograph. “Had to get a second job here.”

“Hey, that was a joke!” Bryce commends. “And a pretty good one at that.”

“I do jokes.”

“You so do not.”

A muffled bang from somewhere in the house stops their banter. Everyone glances at each other, verifying that everyone in their group is indeed in the room.

“What was that?” Sienna whispers.

“Probably the pipes,” Aurora says. “It is an old house.”

As if on cue, the lights flicker once, then switch off, sinking them into complete darkness. There’s a flurry of noise as everyone digs out their phones; the bedroom seems even creepier, now, under the white glow of their flashlights.

“What do we do?” Sienna hisses, scurrying from the window to latch onto Aurora.

“We could always search for the breaker,” she suggests.

“Which would be where?”

“In the basement, most likely.”

“Um, no,” Sienna balks. “Hell no.”

“Are you guys serious right now?” Bryce hops down from the bed and pokes his head out the open doorway. “This is so cool! Who wants to go downstairs with me and grab the Ouija board?”

“If you bring that thing near me, I will break it in half.”

He grimaces at Sienna’s threat.

“You’re not really supposed to do that with them. It’ll keep the door open for the spirits to come in.”

“It’s a toy made by Hasbro,” Aurora scoffs. “It’s not going to ‘let in’ anything. And the planchette doesn’t actually move on its own. That’s due to the ideomotor effect.”

Moving over to the window, Sloane presses her temple against the pane’s edge and squints. Just past the eastern wing, she spots a faint halo of yellow light on the lawn.

“Hey,” she raises her voice over their bickering. “It looks like the carriage house still has power.”

“Great!” Sienna squeaks and pulls Aurora with her towards the door. “Let’s check it out. I… love carriage houses.”

They push past Bryce and start back down the hall. Turning from the doorway, a coy smile spreads across his face, a single eyebrow lifting at his wordless request.

“Oh, no.” Sloane shakes her head as she crosses the room. “I’m not staying up here so you can play Twenty Questions with a ghost.”

She ignores his good-natured grumbling and leads him to the staircase, where Aurora and Sienna are waiting on the landing. Aimed at the ground, their flashlights slice at the hand-carved walls; dustmotes dance in the twin beams, kicked up by their feet. The air feels heavier, mustier here, too, like breathing through wet wool. They tromp down the stairs and across the first floor to the kitchen. Being at the back of the group, Sloane can’t help but glance back now and again at the shadowed recesses, searching for the source of her uneasiness. That she finds nothing amiss doesn’t seem to curb her anxiety.

The sensation wanes when she closes the door behind them, sealing up the house once more.

“How is it warmer outside than in there?” Sienna asks as they start cutting across the lawn for the carriage house.

Bryce zips up his coat and shrugs. “I’ve heard that ghosts tend to suck the energy out of a room, creating cold spots when they mani--”

“Please stop talking,” she begs. “At least until we’re somewhere with electricity that actually works.”

“Aw, come on, you’ve got nothing to worry about. You’ve seen enough scary movies in your life to know that we’re safe if we travel together. Besides, everyone knows the funny guy goes first.”

“I think that honor belongs to people of color, now, sorry.” Aurora chuckles when he spins around to wince at her.

“Yeah, fair point.”

Coated in fallen leaves, the ground crunches loud underneath their shoes, blocking out the night sounds as the four of them approach the smaller house. “But for real, I don’t think we have much to worry about from Maggie here. I mean, almost all ghost stories are about little white girls from Victorian times named Sally or Sarah or Kate.”

“That’s because of the spiritualism boom in the late nineteenth century,” Aurora answers.

Bryce sighs and quickly changes the subject, uninterested in a history lesson.

Converted into a proper guest house sometime after the turn of the twentieth century, the carriage house lacks the severe decay of the main house. Though not as grand, the wallpaper here is intact, the dust not as heavy. It might just be the comforts of amenities such as central heating and electricity, but the inside of the house feels much more benign. As they complete a loop around the building, though, Sloane realizes that the feeling of being watched still remains, growing stronger when she passes or glances out one of the windows. With the glare of the lights, though, it’s hard to see much of anything past the panes. None of the others seem to be frightened -- or if they do, they keep quiet. The same can’t be said when Sienna flips the light on in the parlor.

Toddler-size dolls lean against the walls, their porcelain hands cupped around their faces. Each wears a pretty, pastel dress trimmed in white lace, their hair falling down their backs in long, springy ringlets of dark brown, cherry red, and honey gold. Bryce makes a noise of disgust when he spins one around, its face blank: no eyes, no nose, no mouth. Time-out dolls, Sloane tells them, remembering her grandmother’s friend who owned several back in the early nineties -- though hers were all dressed as clowns.

“People actually rent this place out? They pay money to stay here?” Sienna shudders. “I’d rather sleep in the other house, even with all the cobwebs and mannequins.”

“And the ghosts,” Bryce adds.

“Ghosts don’t exist,” Aurora says.

“Okay, Scully, that’s enough out of you.”

------

As the clock ticks closer to ten, Bryce votes to go check out the lake. Aurora and Sienna, however, vote to stay in the warm, well-lit kitchen. The plan is decided to split up and then meet back at the main house in time for midnight.

“You know,” Bryce explains as he and Sloane make their way across the lawn, “because it’s the witching hour.”

“I thought it was three a.m.”

“It is if you’re taking into account REM cycles and all that, but I’m not. All the legends I’ve read say…” he trails off, frowning as he jogs up the main house’s back steps. “Hey, you shut the door when we left, right?”

Her phone’s flashlight sweeps up the French doors; one of them is ajar, standing open several inches. She reaches for the handle and shuts it, listening for the snick of the latch.

“I guess I didn’t pull it closed enough.”

“Or,” he taunts as he grabs two of the lanterns from the porch, “something else opened it.” Ignoring her scoff, he pockets his phone and hands one of the lanterns to her. “These are nice. Do you think they’re original?”

“Bryce, they bought these from a Cracker Barrel. And besides, they’re battery-powered.”

“Oh.”

The back of the estate has been left to run wild. Overgrown swath rolls along the ground like dunes, snagging dead leaves between the dry blades. Thickets of barren shrubs creep out from the distant tree line. The path to the lake is marked by an old fence post, tied with a tattered ribbon. They make their way across the wide expanse of lawn, the trees ahead towering higher and higher the closer they get to the forest. Sloane can’t help but check over her shoulder. The house is just as they left it, though the moonlight is too weak to see if the door is still closed.

Gravel crunches under their feet as they step onto the trail. The quiet night is broken by a ding from her phone.

How goes the ghost hunting?

She hooks the lantern in the crook of her arm and taps out her reply: Fun so far, lights went off by themselves. Very spooky 10/10

Ethan: What do fractions have to do with what you’re doing?

Sloane: Nvm

Ethan: This isn’t 2002. You do have a full keyboard under your fingertips.

Sloane: so?

Ethan: So there’s no excuse for using T9 acronyms.

Sloane: Never thought I’d see the day you reprimand me for texting

Ethan: I’ll spare you the lecture and let you get back to your witch hunt. Text me when you get home, please, so I know you returned safely.

She hits send on the next message. Several seconds later, a red bubble appears beside her will do!, informing her that it refused to send. A quick glance at the top of the screen shows the one measly bar of service her phone is clinging onto. With a sigh, she tucks it away.

“How’s Dr. Ramsey?” Bryce asks.

“Preparing a TEDtalk on prehistoric cell phone etiquette.”

His nose scrunches up. “What?”

“Nothing,” she chuckles, exhaling through her mouth just to see her foggy breath.

The light from the lanterns casts an eerie, yellow glow across the tree trunks and underbrush. Creaks and knocks echo up out of the dark -- branches smacking against each other as a cold wind sweeps through the area. The last vestiges of October skitter along the ground; the leaves almost sound like footsteps, dragging across the dirt behind them. The trail tightens as it winds down a small embankment and into a hollow. Their pace seems to pick up, though neither of them mention it. Sloane burrows into her scarf at the sudden dip in temperature.

“How’s Keiki?” she asks, more so out of need to make conversation than actual curiosity.

“Probably eating her way into a food coma with the pizza money I left for her, and beating all my high scores on Need for Speed.” He’s grinning as he says it, though, which Sloane finds encouraging. “I invited her to go with us, but she said no.”

She doesn’t miss the crestfallen expression that crosses his face for a moment.

“Trust me when I say this, because I speak from the experience of having a younger sibling, but she didn’t say no because she doesn’t like you or anything. It’s because she thinks you and your friends are dorks.”

He sputters at the insult. “I’m not a dork!”

“You so totally are.”

“Am not.”

“Are too!” she argues. “Ethan thinks I’m bad, but you -- you come in on your days off and you like it.”

“That’s called dedication to the craft.”

“That’s called being a dork.”

What little she can see of the path ahead is more winding turns, more endless seas of bark and brushwood. But just when she thinks that they’ll never reach the end, that they’ll wind up stumbling upon Elly Kedward’s house -- there’s a small dot of light and then a break in the trees, where the path spits them out onto a rocky shore. The lake glints under their lanterns, the pearlescent gleam of the moon dancing on its surface.

“Oh, hey, that was nice of them.”

Sloane’s gaze tracks along the shore and over to where he’s gestured. A solitary lantern sits in front of an old boathouse, illuminating the weathered cedar shake.

“Too bad they can’t install lights along the path,” she mutters as they make their way to the structure.

“What part of ‘bona fide haunted mansion’ did you not understand? This is the thrill of it!”

Bryce shoulders open the door to a dim room with a half-sunken rowboat in the center.

“Thrilling,” she drones, side-stepping his attempt to whack her arm. “Right.”

They poke through the dirty raincoats and rusted tackle boxes. The wooden planks under their feet jostle and flex. Everything smells of wet and mold, the walls slick with grime. “I can think of several better places to haunt.”

Bryce hums his agreement as he prods at a stack of old hunting magazines, the pages sealed together. Sloane steps over to look down at the boat, where minnows dart underneath the oars to escape her light.

“Watch where you step,” she tells him as she crosses to the starboard side. “Some of these boards are really falling apa--”

The rest is lost to her shriek as the floor underneath her snaps. Her foot goes through the wood. She drops the lantern and scrambles to stay upright. The soggy planks slip from her grasp as she falls backwards, and then: water, the icy rush of it closing over her head.

She fights back a gasp at the sudden cold. With her knee trapped in the joists, she can’t get her feet under her to kick to the surface. Her hands sweep out, flailing desperately. Something hard slams against her neck. She twists at the waist; the sunken lantern illuminates the long shadow of the boat. She digs her fingers into the wood. The cold saps at what strength she has, her muscles refusing to work as she tries to push herself out of the water. Her lungs ache; her heartbeat thuds inside her skull. Down in the murky depths below, a long shadow reaches towards her. Fingers, then hands seize her waist; her skin hits the cold air. Sloane blinks away the muddy haze that coats her eyes and sucks in a lungful of blessed oxygen.

“Sloane!” Bryce shouts, as if he was expecting to pull out someone else. He ropes an arm around her back and helps her up out of the water. “Jesus, you scared the shit out of--” the rest of his words are lost to an undignified oof as Sloane wraps her arms around his neck.

“Thanks.”

His hands come up to rest along her back, gently rubbing there to warm her frozen skin.

“I would say don’t mention it, but please do. The notoriety of me saving your life needs to make its way back to the hospital, so Rahul will finally go on a date with me.”

She fights the urge to roll her eyes.

“You would be concerned about getting a leg over while mine is still stuck.”

“Oh, whoops. Sorry, here, I’ll...” Sitting back on his heels, he steadies her against him and helps her shimmy out of the hole she’s made. Despite how saturated the planks are, her jeans are torn along her knee, where blood wells across several scratches. “Ouch,” he hisses.

“Nothing a few bandages and a tetanus shot won’t fix,” she assures. Wobbling as she stands, Sloane limps over to the storage chest in the corner. The blanket she finds is tattered and smells of mold, but it’s better than braving the night’s chill in just her soaked sweater. “Alright, I want out of this place like yesterday.”

Bryce picks up his lantern and nods, following her out onto the shore and back onto the path.

------

“And, I don’t know, he’s also distant with me sometimes, ya know? He’s hot, then he’s cold. He’ll flirt with me and agree to a date, but then he bails at the last second.”

“I get you.”

“That’s why I’m coming to you, oh wise one,” Bryce says with a grin. “Teach me your ways of dealing with difficult guys.”

Sloane laughs, the sound echoing through the quiet forest. Tucking the blanket tighter around her shoulders, she shakes her head.

“Trust me, if I knew how to, I wouldn’t have such problems with my own.”

The cell phone in her pocket burns at the reminder of Ethan -- not that she could contact him if she wanted, given that the freezing water had zapped the last of its battery.

“Yeah, but you could at least give me some pointers on how to wear him down.”

“Oh, my god, Bryce--”

“Okay, okay, not… ‘wear him down’... more, like, encouraging than that, I guess....” he trails off with a shrug.

Humming as she thinks over her plan of attack, Sloane slows her pace to drop behind Bryce to skirt around a fallen tree -- until she can see it no more. “Fuck!” Bryce curses from in front of her, rattling the lantern as if abuse will bring it back to life. “Batteries must be dead. Let me…” There’s a rustling of clothes, a brief, hopeful inhale, then: “Fuck. Phone’s dead too. Must be the cold or something.”

Sloane closes her eyes and opens them again, hoping that they will have miraculously adjusted to the dark -- but no such luck. With what little moonlight seeps through the canopy and the dusting of fog that’s rolled in, it’s hard to see farther than a few feet ahead. It will make this slow-going trek of theirs even slower. She scans the woods surrounding them and stops when she sees a pinprick of light back down the trail.

“I have an idea,” she says, “but you’re not going to like it.”

He does not, in fact, like her idea. But even he can’t argue against it. Besides, they’d only made it about a half-mile up the path, and the boathouse wasn’t that far back.

Which is how Sloane comes to be sitting on the log, trying her best to ignore the darkness pressing in on her from all sides. If Aurora were here, she would be explaining that being afraid of the dark is just a concept carried over from early hominid days. Then again, if Aurora were here, she wouldn’t have had to send Bryce back for the other lantern, and they’d be back at the house by now. Sloane knows she should keep moving to stay warm, but she’s cold and wet and her knee is throbbing something awful.

She’s uncertain of how much time passes before that silly bundle of nerves in her stomach morphs into the proper weight of worry. Bryce should be back by now. She knows he made it to the boathouse because the light through the trees is gone now. Her eyes have since adjusted to the night, which means it’s been at least thirty minutes. Maybe that lantern died, too, she reasons. Sloane listens for his familiar cursing, or his footsteps on the path -- but there’s nothing. The nighttime noises of the forest are gone: no animals, no birds, no wind. The stillness is nothing short of eerie, especially when she feels that now-familiar sensation of being watched.

“Bryce?” she chances.

From out of the black, she can hear someone walking down the path.

“Bryce!” she shouts, struggling to her feet. “Sienna? Aurora? Is that you?”

Whoever it is doesn’t respond. She starts down the trail towards them, cursing when she nearly trips over a rock. “Seriously, guys, I’m not in the mood--”

An awful sound echoes out of the dark, like a high-pitched whistle played over radio static.

She freezes, pebbles and twigs skidding across the dirt at her sudden halt. Every hair on her body stands on-end, her muscles locked as adrenaline races through her. Sloane swallows and clenches her blanket tighter.

The high-low tone of the whistle sounds again. Whatever’s out there is just beyond the reach of her vision. Sloane wheels around, her gaze darting across the shadows, as if she’ll be able to even see-- a light. It’s several hundred feet out in the forest, back in the direction of the house. It’s too far away to make out who’s holding it. It has to be Bryce, though -- playing a prank on her, as if she’d find this sort of thing funny in the state she’s in.

She bites back a curse and hurries after him as best she can, keeping low to the ground in an effort to hide from whatever animal is out here with them. The trail becomes rougher, more overgrown as she trudges through the leaves and shoves away sticker bushes. Forced to waste precious time watching where she’s going, she glances up only to keep track of the light that grows closer every second.

The whistle comes again -- louder, closer now. Whatever it is, it’s still following her. Sloane pushes through a thicket and stumbles into a clearing. Tucked between a small grove of pines in the center is a cabin. With the caved-in roof, sagging porch, and front steps that form nothing more than a woodpile, it’s obvious the place has long stood abandoned. Sitting on the porch and casting a glow into the open doorway is a lantern -- the same make as the others. Approaching the steps, she slowly leans up and snatches the lantern from the porch.

“No fucking way,” she mutters to herself. “I don’t care if it is a bobcat out here, I’m not hiding in the Evil-Dead-looking-ass cabin.”

The dark silhouettes of the trees rustle under the cold wind that blows through the glade. Carried with it is a different sound: voices, all slurred together, but forming one syllable. She steps away from the cabin and back towards the forest, straining to make it out. Her name, she realizes with relief. They’re calling her name.

She sucks in a breath to yell back when movement catches her eye. Something dark curls away from the tree line, only to dart into the tall grass when she swings the lantern in its direction. Sloane squints at the underbrush it disappeared into, waiting for it to appear again. For a few, blessed moments, she thinks it’s run off, that it’s finally given up.

Until a black shadow crawls out of the underbrush towards her, shrieking, braying like an animal in pain. It’s an ear-splitting cry, echoing across the clearing. Sloane tightens her grip on the lantern and bolts. Ducking back into the trees, she heads in a single direction, knowing that she’ll either hit the lake or the house -- of, if she runs far enough, the town.

Shoving through low-hanging branches, she glances over her shoulder to see the shadow chasing her, peeling itself out of the shadows as it moves between the trees, somehow darker than the black surrounding them. Her foot hits a patch of wet leaves and she slips, skidding down the hillside and tumbling out onto a stretch of asphalt. She grits her teeth against the pain in her leg and crawls forward into the middle of the road. With no time for hesitating, she pushes to her feet and runs, hoping she’s picked the right direction.

It wails again, in the trees to her left, scurrying across the hillside after her.

“Fuck off!” she screams.

Another noise comes roaring out of the dark, drowning out her cry. Lights -- searing, blinding -- swing around the curve. Brakes squeal as the car swerves, narrowly missing her; glass shatters as Sloane staggers to the roadside, her lantern cracking as it hits the pavement and rolls off into the grass. The guard rail is like ice beneath her palm where she clutches it, using it to stay upright as her heart threatens to vacate her body through her throat. The hillside is drenched in red from the car’s tail lights.

“Sloane!”

Ethan -- it’s him, his car, he’s here, but he should be in Boston, shouldn’t he? He was when he texted her and that was only an hour ago so why is he here and how did he-- all of her panicked thoughts cease when he folds her into his arms and hugs her tight. The night around them is still, save for the purr of the engine and the soft dinging of the door ajar warning.

“What the hell were you thinking, standing in the middle of the road like that?” he hisses, pulling her back to pin her down with his glare. “You could’ve-- I could’ve killed you.”

“You’re here,” she whispers.

Her lips are numb from the cold and shock. She reaches up for the blanket, then realizes that she must’ve lost it somewhere along the way.

“Of course I’m here. You really need to stop scaring the hell out of me, you know that.” His brow furrows as he frowns, taking in the state of her. He slips off his own coat and bundles it around her. “Honey, you’re freezing. Let me--”

“We have to go,” she urges, remembering what’s waiting for her, out in the forest. Grabbing hold of his hand, she starts tugging him towards the car. “There’s -- in the woods, there was -- I don’t know, this thing, and it kept screaming, it was horrible--”

Ethan shushes her rambling and guides her into the car, buckling her seatbelt when her hands won’t stop shaking. She tucks her nose into the collar of his coat, breathing in the comforting scent of his cologne. Sliding into the driver’s seat, he backs the car up and turns back towards the estate. With one hand on the wheel, the other finds hers and holds tight.

“Your friends called me when they couldn’t find you, wanted to know if I’d heard from you, in case you’d made it to somewhere with a working phone. I called you-- well, more than I’d care to admit, though it was obvious your phone was dead.”

“How did you get here so fast?” she wonders aloud.

“I got here around twelve-thirty, did a sweep of the woods. Around one I started driving around, hoping that I’d come across you in case you made it to the road.” He gives her a worried glance before returning to the road. “The others have been out with the sheriff’s office and the owners, searching the woods.”

“But I… that doesn’t make any sense,” she tells him with a shake of her head. “It wasn’t even midnight when me and Bryce started back, and he was gone for twenty, maybe thirty minutes. And then I saw him-- well, not him, but at the time I thought it was him being an asshole-- and then that… thing chased after me and I got turned around, sure. But it couldn’t have been more than an hour.”

“Sloane, it’s nearly three in the morning.”

Her immediate reaction is to protest, but the concern in his tone and the clock on his dash render her mute. Which is for the best, she realizes later after pulling up to the house and seeing the driveway choked with cars: Bryce’s, the Bell’s, and several police cruisers. Modern floodlights tucked below the eaves turn the dark house into a bright beacon. Blue and red lights of the cruisers swirl across the lawn. As soon as they pull up, her friends race over to the car and wrap her into a hug. One of the cops takes her statement, ignoring Ethan’s insistence about getting her home and taking it over the phone instead.

“Must’ve been a coyote,” the cop tells her after she’s finished. “We get a lot of reports of them out here, being so close to the state park.”

“A coyote,” Sloane repeats.

“Well, sure,” he says with a shrug. “Unless you think it was something else?”

She doesn’t have an answer for that. Having dealt with her fair share of wildlife coming down from the mountains and into her backyard growing up, she can’t remember ever hearing anything similar. Even her grandfather’s tales about the Wampus cat, her favorite spooky story as a kid, didn’t hold a candle to… to whatever was out there.

After the cops leave and the Bells lock up, her friends pile into Bryce’s car for the ride home. Though not before Bryce shares with her his own experience with the mysterious shadow. However, he’d gotten a good look with the lantern.

“It wasn’t an animal,” he whispers to her. “It was her. It was Maggie, I swear it.”

Sloane didn’t know what to say to that. So she hadn’t said anything, just squeezed his hand and hugged him goodbye. Returning to Ethan’s car, she settled into the passenger seat, thankful for the change of clothes he had in the trunk -- and the first aid kit, of course.

With the classical music floating out of the speakers and the warmth of his hand in hers again, it would’ve been easy for Sloane to close her eyes. She can’t help it, though, when they back out of the drive. She looks up to the long row of windows. It could be a trick of the headlights, but something watches them from around the lace curtains. As they start to pull away, it slinks back into the shadows of the house.

------

Author’s notes and what-have-yous:

The inspiration for the Angler Estate is the abandoned Uplands Mansion in Baltimore, MD. If you like urbex stuff, I highly recommend looking up some videos of it on YouTube. It’s a gorgeous place, despite all the vandalism. The owners’ surname being Bell is a fun nod to the Bell Witch Cave, my state’s claim to supernatural fame. The mention of The Evil Dead cabin is another poke, since the 1981 original was filmed an hour away from where I live.

The “watch where you step” line is pulled directly from Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune.

#open heart #ethan x mc #ethan ramsey x mc #Kaila writes things #f: the open door

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normal-with-adhd-is-a-joke · 1 year ago

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well it's immediately clear at the first hurdle that you don't know what you're talking about. First of all, translations are always imperfect. No, they're not a game of telephone, but they're also not word-for-word. There are entire intellectual professions devoted to interpreting and translating the Bible to the best of our abilities and the people doing that are in constant discourse about Biblical translation and interpretation. For instance, there's a great debate on what "witch" actually means in the Bible, as most instances of "witch" are translated from "ΦΑΡΜΑΚΕΙΑ" which means anything from "poisoner" to "person who delivers medicine", or are in reference specifically to the act of divination. In this case, we would have to use our prior knowledge of God to say "God would not want us to harm others intentionally. He encourages us to forgive and encourage others to forgive as well." Some people take an even more radical, literal approach and use the interchangeability of "doctor" and "witch" to try to "prove" that God doesn't want His people to seek medical treatment at all. While there are cases of people using a practice almost identical to divination to determine God's will (Judges 6:37-39) and God agreeing to show Himself in that way, God also designed us to have free will and revealing His will in an obvious way would remove that free will. For instance, if you ask God a question on an Ouiji board, you're probably not going to get a straight answer because that would be against his desire for us to make our own decisions. Some people take a very literal approach to this and believe that God doesn't speak to modern people at all, and that asking for a word from Him is sinful. Every Christian makes these interpretation choices daily, most just don't realize it.

Second of all, the New Testament was not written entirely by Jesus' disciples. Paul wrote the majority of the New Testament and he, as far as we know, never met Jesus. He certainly wasn't a fan of him if he did meet him before his conversion. That out of the way, I automatically include justice in unity. God's commitment to justice is what led me to doubt and ultimately reject the popular Christian view on homosexuality. I know from my research that being gay is not a choice, nor is it able to be changed. If it was, almost no one would choose to be gay and it would be a non-issue. Being gay also causes no harm to others, and no harm to self. It became clear that a just God would not afflict someone from birth with a condition that has no cure, has no treatment, does not harm self or anyone else, and is not to be followed through on.

I am not in between, nor am I lacking faith in God. I lack faith in Christians. Over the years I have seen Christianity weaponized to justify everything from homophobia to slavery. It became abundantly clear that most interpretations of the Bible stemmed from justifying one's own atrocious actions under the guise of "God's will". Some of the most emphasized points in the Bible are about love and charity, but you'll be pressed to find a Christian who has an abundance of either. The modern church is pure hypocrisy and a lot will have to change before I willingly take any mainstream Christian's interpretations of the Bible.

Questioning someone's faith is a weak argument. Doing research on and rejecting parts of the popular Christian belief system has made me a better Christian and a better person. I grew up in a church that rejected any questioning of the Bible, church leaders, etc. and it deeply harmed my relationship with God. Being able to spend time actually doing research on what I had believed for years without feeling guilt set me free.

I'm going to leave you with this: forcing people who are on the fence to choose a side is a bad idea. A pastor I had as a teenager pulled that "you're in or you're out, it's bad to be unsure or questioning" mentality on a bunch of kids, including brand new guests to the church and it caused a lot of people, myself included, to leave. Lukewarm Christians are not what's killing the modern church. Way-too-into-it Christians forcing themselves on others and driving away people who are shaky in their faith are.

I'm tired of giving long-winded explanations for both of these so I made a meme about both it

[image ID: the shaking hands meme. The hand on the left says "christian witches" and the hand on the right says "christian queer people". Where they meet in the middle it says "the Bible is the word of God but it was written down and translated by flawed and biased humans so it's our right and responsibility to spend time with God and discern what we believe His will to be".]

#if anyone was wondering why I have "dni if you're going to talk to be about Christianity'' in my carrd while being a Christian #this is why #anyway the whole ''you're in or out'' thing is evidently a trigger for me in addition to being a stupid thing to say #the pastor who said it to me last was not a good person #so I think I'm going to not continue this conversation #christianity tw #religion tw

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aloisofmissouri · 3 years ago

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A Journal Entry

July 20th, 2021

11:44pm

Trigger Warning:

Sexual Assault, Self Harm,Mental Health, physical health, and occasional swears.

Dear Reader,

I’m only eighteen but I have experienced a lot, and so have many other teens I know. I know at least four of my classmates have been raped at some point in their life. And who knows what others may have been through and I never knew.

But I’m not writing to share their story, unless they decide that they want their story told. As of now, I am writing to share my story.

So, let's start with my earliest memory.

My earliest memory is watching Elmo and Little Bear from my crib in the living room when I was probably a toddler. I don’t remember much, other than enjoying the cartoons. It was happy and innocent. One of the few childhood memories I can look back on and smile.

I was really young when I was first raped. First raped, you caught that part, right? Yeah, I wasn’t raped just once, but multiple times by one man. The man I had grown up calling my father. The man on my birth certificate. I’m not exactly how old I was when it started, but if I had to guess, I was probably in the first or second grade when it went past the occasional groping and lewd comments.

Near the end of third grade, my mother decided to take me and my sibling to live with our grandmother. But that didn’t last long.

We ended up moving back in with our mother and abusive father when I was in fifth grade. I didn’t want to but my father manipulated me into doing so. He threatened to place a restraining order on my grandmother when I wanted to stay with her.

Things were miserable and the abuse continued. But luckily I was able to go back to my grandmother by sixth grade. But I still had to deal with what happened.

I believe my grandmother meant well, but she use to tell me not to let people know what had happened to me. She said that no one would want to be with someone who was raped because a lot of people view them as used or damaged goods basically.

My grandmother was a bit emotionally damaging, though I know she more than likely didn’t know that she was being so. I have reason to believe that she has dementia and possibly a personality disorder.

I remember her saying that I shouldn’t wear plaid or spotted clothing because it would make me look bigger than the broad side of a barn. She also told me to stay away from bright colors because they would have the same effect. I refused to stay away from plaid though, I kept that jacket from middle school until junior year when I could no longer zip it. But it took me a long time to wear bright colors, and it is still hard. I also have a hard time feeling comfortable in my own skin, and not just because of the occasional comment about my weight from my grandmother, but also because of the abuse I had dealt with from my father. I spent the majority of school always wearing jeans, jackets, and dark clothing. I didn’t feel comfortable wearing shorts. And I’m still getting used to wearing them.

I had to go to court in middle school. Someone had apparently turned my father in for what he had done to me (I was living with my grandmother again by then) and we still do not know who reported them. I wish I could thank whoever turned him in.

Sadly, they only gave him three years despite the evidence. And he was only going to have to serve one and a half years because of the amount of time spent in a jail cell waiting for court that kept getting rescheduled. He died of stage four lung cancer though before he was half way through his time.

My freshman year I finally realised I had anxiety and that there was something definitely wrong with me mentally. By my sophomore year, I was self harming and in counselling and diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, PTSD, OCD, and Anxiety. By junior year I was on a lot of medication thanks to a pill happy psychiatrist. And I was miserable. But thankfully, I found a new psychiatrist who quickly helped me get cut down to just one pill. Near the end of junior year, I quit self harming. And I also finally started to get a bit of control over my mania and my depression.

I have a Google Doc somewhere that has over 150 pages of poetry, and the majority of it is about depression, trauma, and anger. And they were all written during middle school and highschool. Writing poetry helped me then. Now, I don’t really write poetry anymore. I have only written a handful of poems within the last year. And they were mostly in Shakespearean English because I thought it would be fun.

I believe I might have religious anxiety. I don’t remember the technical term though. I grew up going to Baptist Churches and had a heavy christian influence. But sadly, Christians aren’t quite as christian as they are supposed to be.

Due to being constantly worried about sinning and about being too filthy and being damned to hell, my depression and anxiety got to me from a different angle. I kept breaking up with everyone I dated if I feared we were getting too close. I would either feel like I wasn’t good enough or I would fear that we would have sex and I would be damned. I also hated myself for my sexuality, though it took me a long time to figure that out. I supported my LGBTA+ friends but when it came to myself, I couldn’t accept myself.

When I self harmed, I would do it because I felt filthy and had this urge to scratch my skin off my body because I never felt clean. I never hurt myself too severely, just scratches and shallow cuts on my wrist and my thigh. But I still found it hard to quit. It became far too easy to always turn to the blade, regardless of if I was feeling filthy or if I was dissociating or if I was having a panic attack.

Despite what had happened to me, I’m finally starting to become me. Even though I am still discovering who I am. I quite self harming, I don’t have quite as many panic attacks or nightmares, I lost my virginity, learned I am demisexual (leaning a bit towards asexuality though) Panromantic and Nonbinary. I also discovered I have some other health issues outside of my mental health. I am apparently allergic to alphagall, peanuts, and wheat. Thankfully I just get slightly sick if I eat those things though, but it is still a bit annoying when those things are basically in everything you like to eat.

I also found out that the reason my menstrual cycle has always been so irregular is because I have cysts. Originally I thought I had PCOS but now after some ultrasounds, it is looking like Endometriosis. I have cysts on my uterus and my ovaries. The doctor told me that my insurance should cover the surgery if I were to get a total hysterectomy.

I never really wanted to give birth so that part of this doesn’t bother me, my fear is that there will be issues from the surgery. And it has also spurred some identity issues. But so far, I am sticking to they/them pronouns. Even though my family still calls me she/her. But I haven’t really come out to them. They know I’m not 100% straight, but who wants to sit down and explain to their grandmother (who dropped out of school in eight grade to care for her grandma, has a flip phone, and just a few years ago decided to accept the lgbt+ part of her family) that I’m nonbinary? I barely manage to explain to my mother (highschool dropout because of pregnancy, has a touch screen phone and understand some things of the current century) that there is more than just straight, gay, and bisexual. I explained to my mother the other day what omnigender and nonbinary is. Had to explain transgender to my mother when I was a junior and introduced her to a friend of mine who was afab but went by he/him pronouns.

I suppose that despite all the shit I’ve been through, at least my mother doesn’t give two flying fucks who I like. When I told her that I thought I was pansexual in middle school, all she did was ask me what that meant. Then she just nodded her head and went with it. Same thing when I decided I was Wiccan in middle school. She even bought me a pentacle necklace and every book (mostly fantasy) that mentioned witches. I no longer identify as Wiccan, I mostly just stick to animist. But my point being, my mother didn’t throw a fit when two of her nine kids came out as gay. Even if she does identify as a Saturday Adventist, she supports us. She even listens to me ramble about mistranslated things in the Bible and my views on theology. And my rants about Supernatural. Though she did laugh when I spent about an hour crying after the Supernatural second to last episode of season 15. She did listen to me rant about Castiel and the plot lines and everything. Though I had to keep explaining some of the characters to her.

Despite the things I’ve been through, I managed to graduate high school, survive my severe depression and anxiety, and now I am thinking about possibly applying for Law school and going to college. And I now also have the confidence to do what I want and wear what I want. Though I still feel all nervous about asking out a girl I’ve been friends with for about three or more years. I’ve now made the excuse to wait and see if she mentions not being completely straight. Oh, and she now has a boyfriend too so yeah, gonna have to wait a bit.

Until next time,

Alois 🐧

#mentalhealth #metoo #abuse #journal #lgbtq #i swear #trauma #my life #moving forward #heath #depression

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awkenorslumped · 3 years ago

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who lied to you ?

Importance of the Spiritual Journey, universal signs and the unexpected!

As Summer Walker once said The spiritual journey isn’t about the astethic of crystals or the ideal that people have created to make it a fetish on social media. The true meaning of the spiritual journey as Summer Walker said its about the ability to take accountability for the choices one makes that affect their lives . Its about accepting who you truly are inside to show on the outside, Literally living in your true form not caring for the validation of others.

Many think the Spirituality is about the crystals or the “witching”, the burning of sage and manifestation. Take in mind that manifestation does play a part into it but there is much more depth. On your journey the importance is acknowledging that its about connecting deep to your inner self. The path is for you to really get to know yourself the true depth of who you are. Connecting to yourself through meditation means having a place where you feel safe and serene to focus your mind on yourself to analyze stuff within you that you can’t make a connection to why things happen to you in life. Connecting the subconscious to the conscious to make yourself whole.

I believe that before we’re born into the human realm we live in our spiritual homes before we’re meant to save those who we feel need help remembering who they truly are. I feel when we dream we are actually transporting back to our TRUE homes and forms. Scientist and the government are aware but they fear that when we realize it they can’t control it. They do research to figure out how to weaponize the ability and for complete control. Starseeds, Ascendants , Reiki Masters, The spiritually attuned etc are the people who are reincarnated to help break the cycle of control. The attuned don’t live for materialistic things they admire it but its never a true need, they don’t hold true value to the soul.

The journey is complex because you have to really really focus on yourself the past, the trauma , the fear and self doubt. Once you’ve overcome or can accept those your eyes will be open to the propaganda and the actual things happening in the world. Nothing will surprise you.

All those horror movies , sci fy movies where do you think the ideas come from ? Its not a coincidence its stuff that has happened before. They are signs and information in plain sight its for you to see the true info over what they put into distract you. The government has the goal to control the world for greed and power, while possibly some higher beings want to test us or sort us out from the true of heart to the wicked of heart. There is no good without a little bad, no light without dark and that goes for ourselves , the government and the higher beings some of us haven’t met yet.

We’re able to tell when we encounter others like us , we connect with them instantly they match our full energy potential without of dimming it. The goosebumps you get when you feel an eerie presence or feel your in the wrong place. That gut feeling that something is wrong is your subconscious telling you that a higher being that is most likely malicious or want to control you for a pet for their own amusement. The higher beings that observe us as entertainment are the ones who are in contact and work with the government for their desire of entertainment. The higher beings have been around longer than we have and seen many things also are more advance, they could give us the tools for world peace but they don’t instead they feed us info for world domination and destruction for pure laughter. The reptilians enjoy destruction because they feel they are superior to the pure of heart . To be fair there is a balance so what makes people think the universe wouldn’t have a balance between alien races ?

Lets bring you back to earth for a second, we humans HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA OF ALL THE CREATURES THAT LIVE HERE ! We’ve barely made a dent in prehistoric creatures. But lets take a dive down this bunny whole, If the earth we live on has been around for billions of years and has all these layers why the fuck would we assume we would know all the creatures and beings that have lived here before us ? Mythical creatures were & are real. Sea beings and creatures are real. Why is it hard to accept that there are legitimate things we know nothing us. But instead we humans want to prove we’re smarter beings? The joke is on everyone that believes that with their entire being. Honestly you have to be narcissitic to find that to be a true statement. How can we humans know everything about something that’s been around longer than us just because we dug through a small layer and found some bones. WE CAN’T EVEN GO TO THE TRUE DEPTH OF THE OCEAN SO HOW WOULD WE KNOW ALL THE SPECIES AND HUMANOIDS THAT CALL THE OCEAN HOME?? MAKE THAT MAKE SENSE! Scientist believe because they have a phd or doctorate that they are geniuses and make minor discoveries ? Its not a major discovery when most people are like we knew that already because we know there are other beings and species out there. You can’t fool the awaken ok, we have woken up because we were meant to. Shifts are happening and whatever deal was made could be coming to and end soon because the government is fucking up. Or hear me out the true form of the deal is coming where the humans who aren’t awake will never awake and will be under the control of the reptilians and the people in the government who work with them . But little do they know that the reptilians will in fact double cross them. Why, you ask? Simply the reptilians are smart, mischievous and clever but not too smart that they can’t be overcame. Typing this up I feel goosebumps why cause im aware im being watched I’ve acknowledged things im not meant to be aware of . Also because im writing this with all intentions of exposing what needs to be brought to light. Religion is a TOOL USED TO HAVE ALL OUR MINDS FOCUS ON ONE BEING THEY TOLD US WAS ALL MIGHTY BUT IN REALITY ITS THE REPTILIANS WHO CAME WITH THAT PLOT. BY BELIEVING IN ONE MIGHTY BEING YOU WILL BELIEVE EVERYTHING THAT POWER SAYS AND WILL NOT SECOND GUESS THEM. HELLO THE CONSTITUTION HAS THE SAME STRUCTURE HAS THE 10 COMMANDMENTS IN THE BIBLE. WHY??!? WHY HAVE LAWS THAT YOU HAVE TO FOLLOW UNQUESTIONED JUST LIKE THE 10 COMMANDMENTS YOUR EXPECTED TO FOLLOW IF YOU WANT TO LIVE WITH JESUS IN HEAVEN. Riddle me this why would Jesus who is suppose to be forgiving and loving turn his back on you for not following rules he made? He gave us free will so why would he forsake us if we don’t follow his rules. ALSO WHY WOULD HE ASK A FOLLOWER TO KILL HIS ONLY SON?!?! That there gave it away that religion as made as a secondary form of government to make people obedient and further help the reptilians plot for control of humans. Have the humans do your dirty work while you give them information or false information to complete your task while you sit back relax watch and wait until its almost completed and they come to take reign .ONCE you realize what done and try to rebel you get wiped out and they try again. Many planets many chances to complete a goal. ALSO all those people who’ve exposed the truth were killed because the people who don’t want the revolution are instructed to keep the secret by any means necessary. How come the Egyptians, the mayan , aztecs, Atlantans had contact with humanoids that helped them advance their ENTIRE civilizations, yet the government has know about “aliens” been in contact with them yet our civilization hasn’t advance . Shouldn’t that there tell you the humanoids they are in contact with aren’t here to actually help us. The world needs to open their eyes and see the truth.

If you think I’m crazy then explain why they haven’t found a single bone from the mayan civilization of the people who lived there, why can’t we explain atlantis, why is it that all these advance civilizations just go missing , not as though their city was rampaged but left in tact in one piece but the people left. NO THEY WERE SAVED BY THEIR ANCESTORS OF THE TRUE OF HEART BEFORE THE REPTILIANS TRIED TO DESTROY THEM.

WAKE UP, OPEN YOUR EYES, CONNECT YOUR MIND AND SOUL. SAVE YOURSELF BEFORE YOU MISS THE SAVING SHIP.

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script-a-world · 5 years ago

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hello. i want to write a story set in a very religious place. like fanatic level of religious. in my mind, this place is ruled by what the church says but has a "cover" figure to "connect" with the people. the people of this place are devoted to their religion, meaning they know passages, go to mass, and shun those who don't support it. here is my question: how does one go about creating a religion that feels real? what do i need to take into consideration (i'm not religious myself).

Mod Miri Note: At the same time this came in we also received from the google form the question “How do I world build a religion?” I can’t confirm they’re the same anon, but we’re combining them for the answer.

Brainstormed: You seem to have a very… narrow perception of religion? If you aren’t religious yourself and you’re (presumably) from a Western culture, it makes sense that the Christian church and more specifically Catholicism are your go-to images of hyperreligion. Saying “mass” and “church” and “passages” kind of gives away the fact that you’re trying to base your religion off of at least your idea of an Abrahamic religion, but I’d ask you to reconsider. Right now it sounds like you’re trying to create a negative critique of these religions, and even if that is what you’re going for, you need to do a lot of research on their theology, history, and practices before you can do so with any competence.

I’d suggest doing some basic research on types of religions, like animism, pantheism, polytheism, general superstition, etc. There are plenty of spiritual worldviews that you might consider way over the top, but whose believers find it more bizarre when people don’t follow their teachings. Fanatics are never fanatics in their own mind, and especially among their own people, but also… fanatic might be a relative term. If you’re approaching this from a nonreligious background, then you might consider X-amount of religion in one’s lifestyle to be fanatic-level. Whereas a person who actively practices religion would consider X-amount to be perfectly normal, and only folks who take it to XX-amount plus some shadier practices are the true fanatics.

Remember, religions start because people want to make sense of the world. There is a deeper feeling of wonder and personhood and power, both within a human being and in the whole world around us, that drives spirituality and generates superstition. Religion, at least to start, is beneficial to people, otherwise no one but sadists would follow its teachings. Now, like anything else, religion can devolve into a means of power hoarding and control of a populace, but only because of the people in charge getting greedy. The vast majority of religions I’ve studied have had radical, freeing, empowering teachings applicable to everybody when they first sprang up, and only later did adherents twist those teachings into societal oppression. If there is no satisfaction or benefit in your religion, there won’t exactly be any incentive for people to follow it so closely, aside from whatever negative consequences occur for those who fall away. And negative consequences aren’t often enough to keep people in a religion. If following religion is more painful than the consequences of leaving it, plenty of people will jump ship.

Religion can also show up in every single part of life. According to Wikipedia:

A religious experience (sometimes known as a spiritual experience, sacred experience, or mystical experience) is a subjective experience which is interpreted within a religious framework. The concept originated in the 19th century, as a defense against the growing rationalism of Western society. William James popularised the concept.

You look up and see a cloud, a spiritual person sees a portent, or a spirit, or a castle where the gods live. You take a break from work for a minute, a spiritual person now has time to mutter a prayer, or observe the mood of the world, or dedicate their work to their god. A person doesn’t have to be anywhere near a fanatic to have their religion be in every part of their life. Especially if they adhere to a more lax spirituality or superstitious worldview instead of an organized religion, the central spiritual experience of religious belief alters the perception of self and surroundings. It isn’t only a set of rules to follow.

It can even help areas of society that modern Western society considers nonreligious! Historically, medicine has always come under religion. Witch doctors, medicine men, witchcraft, even the hygiene laws laid out in the Christian Bible. Physical health has often been considered a reflection of spiritual health, which, in a way, is true! The placebo effect means tending to one’s mental and emotional health with the reassurance of religion will improve one’s physical health as well. Not only that, but the power of a “spiritual experience”, regardless of if you believe the supernatural is real, can cause religious ecstacy, something you might perceive as a serious psychological problem but those who experience it consider to be a deep form of spiritual expression to be treasured and sought after. The spread and preservation of information is also often aided by religion, even though that can change should those in power want to change history or obscure truth for their own reasons. Just look at the history of the printing press and how that was driven by the need for Bibles. Many cultures, most famously Australian Aboriginal peoples, have oral histories thousands of years long that tie in closely to their spirituality.

You also might be confusing religion with cults. If you think all religion is predatory, playing on people’s weaknesses and fears in order to coerce them into a miserable lifestyle of following strict laws and living under control of those in power, you definitely have conflated “religion” and “cult”. If you’d like to worldbuild a cult, go ahead! It’s likely to be smaller and less acceptable than an established organized religion, not very transparent to the outside world nor its members, and have a spirituality that is in fact just a veneer over gaining power, instead of genuine belief and devotion, and may in fact require people to murder or commit suicide. Just look at Scientology, or these, or even Jared Leto, and a more in-depth look from this organization covering many different kinds of cults.

On a more worldbuildy note, are those who practice this religion correct? Does their god(s) exist? Is the supernatural real? If yes, then are they really fanatics if they’ve been right all along? Even if they’re incorrect, the dedication and deep-held beliefs of religious people shouldn’t be mocked wholesale, in my opinion. Make sure to keep some genuine three-dimensional development for characters who are part of this religion, or include other religions with different practices, or the only thing you’ll accomplish is “waaaa religion bad believers dumb”. And if that is the story you want to write, feel free, but I can’t help you there.

Feral: What makes a religion feel real? Sincere faith.

Specifically among the leaders. I mean, sure, those lemming-like peasants who actually believe that superstitious nonsense will have sincere faith, but honestly? There is going to be a higher percentage of people faking it among the masses than among the clergy. Clergy members are generally required to go through rigorous studies and often take vows that can cause great discomfort. I am sure there are those who did it for the power - there are in atheist organizations as well, humans can be crap - but if you actually read the writings of important Church leaders of the past, not to mention rabbis, imams & mullahs, and archakas, you’re going to find that they have sincere faith.

Something you should always keep in mind when developing pre-modern religion in a Western context is that before the advent of modern scholarship, which starts to become a thing in the West during the Renaissance, all the important scholars were clergy. And again, those learned people either had to be really, really dedicated to their power-hungry ambitions or had to have sincere faith.

That does not make religions perfect by any means nor does it mean that the god they have sincere faith in is omnibenevolent (though the qualities of an omnibenevolent god will be strongly dependent on the culture that worships it). And religious leaders are absolutely capable of doing terrible, terrible things even if they profess to worship an omnibenevolent god, and politicians can definitely twist things around to suit their needs (again, this is not exclusive to religiosity). But your ask has this weird given that a major religion (on par with Catholicism/Christianity) in your world is a scam, and while yes, that happens in cults and alternative religions and in splinter groups*, as Brainstormed pointed out that’s just not how, at least, the four major religions of our world got started.

Yes, it’s true that bureaucracies of a certain size and age will inevitably begin to change focus to protecting its own existence. And yes, it’s true that ambitious sociopaths will be drawn to places of authority even if they are difficult to achieve. And yes, it’s true that an individual entering a toxic environment is more likely to be changed by the environment than to change the environment. But guess what! That has nothing to do with whether the organization is religious or not.

Why does a religion exist in the first place? It explains the universe in a pre-modern world; it provides organization and structure for community focus - in other words, many social programs have historically been run through religious organizations and leadership. And it provides hope and comfort in a very scary world.

Some clergy might be able to fake all of that for a little while, but a large bureaucracy with many clerics who are all in on the fake? No. Allow me to rephrase: hell no. People are not dumb. Maybe you believe that of all religious people, but you are wrong and they are not. The people in your world, if they’re anything like the people in our world, are gonna sniff out the bullshit if none of their religious leaders believe what they’re selling. There is a reason Scientology has to keep blackmail files on all its adherents, and I promise you, the Catholic Church does not do that.

*A note on cults, alternative religions, and splinter groups: Cults and alternative religions (their PR friendly name) are “religions” that are scammy and/or actively dangerous to the participants or others: People’s Temple, Branch Davidian, etc. Splinter groups are congregations that start as normal members of a large religion or denomination but its insular culture creates a divide that just takes things a little too far even for the most fanatical of the main sect (think terrorist groups that link themselves to religions). These types of religions might be what you are actually asking about. Groups like these can be highly, highly influential but in a very contained area. What cults often do is the leader settles in an area and buys property and builds a church and maybe a school and then encourages the members to all move either onto the plot of land if it’s large enough or to buy up surrounding land and homes and push out all the non-believers. That area can then be fortified or just have a de facto boundary with the rest of the world. Sometimes a group like this can become large enough to constitute an entire town, but rarely a city - groups that large will more often have centralized compounds but with the members living scattered among non-believers, as Scientology does. Obviously a group concentrated like that will have an impact on local politics, if they are allowed to participate, but it’s not going to go farther than the county line, so to speak. As we all know from the news, splinter groups like ISIS can become very large and globe spanning, but those types of groups have within them splinter groups and factions, and I don’t think that’s what you’re asking about anyway, so I’m just going to leave it there.

But frankly, your ask reads to me as “how do I create a fantasy!Catholic that is secretly evil and will show the audience how evil religion is in the real world? Opiate of the masses!” And my advice is… don’t. Because it lacks compassionate understanding of people of faith (many faiths), it lacks a factual understanding of how world religions differ and function, it totally lacks nuance, and finally, because it is absolutely, monumentally, extremely, really, very cliche.

Maybe the way your ask is coming across to me is totally not how you intended it. Maybe you only used the jargon you used because you assumed we wouldn’t know any other terms and maybe your understanding of world religions is actually quite sophisticated. Maybe you really do have this insanely clever way to spin a tired cliche into some new and original. In these cases, we strongly encourage you to come right back with as jargon-full and specific an ask as you can write, use our submission google form to do it. Otherwise, give our responses some thought and if after you’ve developed your religion, you want to come back with a specific ask other than “how do I world build a religion?” (which is a little too broad), please feel free.

#pylons #religion #Anonymous

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katharkness · 1 year ago

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The Bible says demons exist. I believe that in the present day they are involved in some, but not all mental illnesses. There was an attempt once to treat two women who requested exorcisms but were diagnosed with mental health conditions with a combination of talk therapy and prayer therapy (supervised by doctors, it was all safe), and they actually had a 50% long-term success rate. But as far as I know there’s not been any further research, probably because it’s not exactly accepted by the medical establishment and the priest/mental health professional (he is fully qualified as both, but I forget which exact type of mental health professional) has some rather heretical views on the nature of sin, so the Catholic Church isn’t too keen on him. In addition, I saw this rather interesting documentary by a chap called Gary Bates called Alien Intrusion, which theorised that people who experience “alien abduction” actually suffer a demonic visitation. It was rather well thought-out, had plenty of testimonials, acknowledged that “abductees” do indeed show signs of suffering a traumatic experience, even had a few accounts of people who’d warded off “aliens” with Jesus’ name. The reasoning is, demons appear in a form the victim can rationalise. No-one really believes in demons these days, but aliens? That makes more sense to today’s society.

So I believe demons exist, and most if not all accounts of alien encounters are actually demons.

The Bible recounts how Saul sought out a witch to call up the ghost of Samuel; it worked, but Samuel was right cross with Saul for is. So ghosts exist in some form or other, but we humans should absolutely not be mucking around with them.

Cryptids? I dunno. I believe it’s certainly possible there’s creatures out there that for one reason or another we just haven’t found. I believe it’s entirely plausible the Loch Ness Monster was around until maybe as late as the end of the 1st millennium - there’s an account in the life of Columba (late 6th century) that *may* indicate he was encountered and banished it. I believe the last dinosaurs may have died out in only the last thousand years, and all those legends of people fighting dragons are based on real events. I don’t think there still are dinosaurs - Creation Ministries studied the issue for quite some time and concluded that with how well mapped the Earth is by now it’s very unlikely there’s still dinos waiting to be discovered, and I’d tend to agree with them. But I’m not *sure*. The one line I would draw is that any cryptids - dino or otherwise - would be non-sentient, non-sapient, whichever you prefer. The soul is what makes us the image of God; we are unique in that sense.

Aliens. I don’t believe they’re visiting us - see above about demons. I don’t believe they seeded Earth with life - that’s a direct contradiction of Genesis. I don’t believe they built ancient monuments - that’s a lazy, borderline racist theory for people who don’t want to acknowledge that our ancestors were just as smart and capable as us, just in different ways. In fact, I don’t believe there are any sentient/sapient aliens - as above, we humans are the image-bearers of God. I do, however, believe that it is entirely possible that somewhere out there in the vast universe there may be life, maybe even what we’d recognise as animal life.

To summarise: the Bible says supernatural things happen, and I believe the Bible. The Bible says there are demons, so I believe in demons. The Bible says ghosts can be summoned but we really shouldn’t do it, so I believe that. The Bible does not affirm or exclude cryptids and aliens, so I believe in the possibility of them, within the bounds of what is most rational. However, as the Bible says that we humans are the image bearers of God, I do not believe any cryptid or alien could be sentient/sapient.

Remaking this poll because I accidentally screwed up my results.

Making this because I'm genuinely curious.

Feel free to tag with any elaboration in the tags.

EDIT: I meant to say "more than one of the above" as the fourth option *facepalm* Oh well. I am not remaking it for a third time.

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drunklander · 5 years ago

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Drunj!Der Yells About Outlander

Thoughts on Ep. 505

ADSOOO!!! AND CLAIRE!!! AND ADSOOOOO!!!

My floofer was not amused when I woke her up to show her the cat on the teevee. Bqhatevwr, boo boo, you’re stuck with me. #TeamSocialDistancing

Oh, I guess the voice overs are back in a big way. Super...

And also like, this whole running bit about God and stuff would work so much better if they’d included Jamie and Claire’s faith a bit more throughout the show. *cough Jamie’s prayer cough*

Do we have to pour one out for science!jizz? This is the book bit where the science!jizz happened, but maybe they’ll do it later? Probs not. Le sigh.

Marsali being all excited with Claire and Claire being all fuck yeah I found it gives me the warm fuzzies. I LOVE THE TWO OF THEM A LOT OK.

This montage makes me dizzy. Not a fan, tbh.

Oh hey, the old Hancock building! With a park that looks nothing like Boston, haha. But I appreciate the effort lol, my main office is like a block from the old Hancock building. Not that I’ll be seeing it any time soon. Living that work from home life until the plague times are over.

But for real, social distance. No joke. Stay the fuck home.

I love 60s Claire if only because damn girl, look at dem legsss.

Hi, I’m Der and I’m very shallow sometimes.

But Claire has objectively great legs.

Omfg, Roger, stop being a butthurt whiner. You suck at being a soldier. You know you suck at being a soldier. And instead of being like yeah, let me learn and get better, you just bitch about it.

Sam is gonna kick his horse in the head at some point. Why the fuck does he dismount like that. It’s literally bugged me since season one.

So they’re pardoning everyone. Probs not Murtz though. Cool that instead of doing a continuous ramp up to the inevitable confrontation, they’re going the book route of lol, jk, all this was kind of a waste of time for now...

Really, Knox, you did something excessive? Cool way to say murdered a dude.

Ok well if Knox is getting the Ardsmuir roll, then he’s def gonna die, right?

Jamie’s 100% gonna intentionally miss Murtz’s face.

Boom, called it.

I do not like spiders. Please move this VO along, Claire.

I’m fucking glad we finally get Doctor!Claire. We should have gotten more Doctor!Claire in season three. Jamie got to have all aspects of his 20 years examined but fucking Claire’s side was literally just about Fred and how shitty he is.

Fuck you, season three. Fuck yeah, Doctor!Claire!

“It’s my married name.” Lulz. And not the married name she wants...

GRAHAM SAYS THE THING JAMIE SAID WHEN CLAIRE WAS STITCHING HIM UP IN SEASON ONE AND I HAVE FEELINGS ABOUT IT OK.

Graham makes me miss when the show was in Scotland like whoa. I miss the Squad. There are so many characters now that are like kind of always around but they’re not part of the Squad. And the main Squad is always separated. So like there’s barely any big group adventures anymore where we actually give a shit about everyone involved.

I JUST WANT THE FOLKS I CARE ABOUT TO HANG OUT MORE, OK!

Needle!jizz 2.0 is gonna be the closest we get to science!jizz, isn’t it. Whomps.

Can the show please just be a period procedural with Claire and Marsali being badass doctors? Thx.

Because for real though, Marsali being like “scalpel” is my favorite thing ever.

I feel you, Jemmy, I’d cry if I were stuck hanging out with Roger too.

I DO NOT LIKE SPIDERS, CLAIRE.

“My lass is more concerned wi’ words and deeds.” Which is why it baffles me that she’s still with you, bro, because your words and deeds fucking suck.

How Bonnet doesn’t accidentally swallow the diamond is beyond me.

Ok so if your wife was violently raped and you know she’s had some PTSD about it, because you’ve seen the drawings and stuff, you should maybe act completely the opposite way from how Roger is acting.

“And you kept it? A gift...from Bonnet.” Yes, you giant fuckwit, your traumatized wife went to hang with her rapist for shits and giggles and accepted a present because she really wants a memento to remember him by. They’re on such good terms and all. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?! HOW IS HE SUCH A DOUCHECANOE?!

You do not get to judge or question how someone processes their trauma you raging asshat.

He is such a fucking Fred.

Do I think what Bree did was smart? Or a good decision? Hard no. But it’s what she thought she needed to do to move forward with her life. And so she can do whatever the fuck she wants. Yeah, words have consequences and it was a stupid move, but Roger needs to step all the fucking way off.

“You’ve never said as much to me.” “I didn’t think I needed to.” I HATE ROGER SO MUCH. I HATE HIM WITH THE PASSION OF A THOUSAND FIERY SUNS. HOW DO THE WRITERS NOT REALIZE THAT THEY’RE MAKING THE CHARACTER WHO’S SUPPOSED TO BE THE SECOND ROMANTIC MALE LEAD AN IRREDEEMABLE PIECE OF SHIT. OH WAIT BECAUSE THEY HAVE LOTS OF PRACTICE FROM FRED 1.0 THAT FRED 2.0 IS JUST A NATURAL PROGRESSION.

Lol at this “Boston” priest sounding vaguely southern. Is he one of the pedos the archdioceses just kept shuffling around?

(I’m not a fan of organized religion and being forced to grow up Catholic sucked a lot for me. I did some therapy about it.)

Ok so is Claire’s knife on her belt the hand job antler knife? I mean, Jamie doesn’t give it to her until Echo, but I’m gonna pretend like it’s the hand job antler knife. Also, some witches use a white handled knife called a boline to cut herbs and stuff so it’s fitting that Claire constantly-being-witchy-to-her-own-detriment Beauchamp has a white handled knife for collecting herbs.

“Yeah, Frank and I... no, we had a very complicated marriage.” Well that’s one way to put it. *keeps rage bottled up on the inside*

“Frank and I, we still managed to make it work, for Bree’s sake.” Except it didn’t fucking work. He was terrible to you. You basically put up with 20 years of emotional abuse for the sake of your kid and then he used her as a weapon against you. Because he is garbage. Much like Roger.

Claire is always the bigger person. She was with Fred and now with Roger. Like, I’m still pissed that she never got to let out her side of things. She just keeps framing it through rose colored glasses, never speaking ill of Fred when he didn’t do that for her.

WE DO NOT DESERVE CLAIRE BEAUCHAMP AND NEITHER DO MOST OF THE MEN ON THIS SHOW.

Fergus deserves milady.

They’re really going hard with the Roger, Bree and Jemmy have to go back stuff. Are they gonna bump them going back up to the season finale this year? They bring it up basically every fucking episode. I’d be down with moving that along tbh. Except then we’d have to have just the two of them as their own story line and I hate that part from the books.

“We are but humble servants to the law.” Really, Javert Knox. Would you say your duty’s to the law?

“Those who follow the path of the righteous shall have their reward.” Yes, bible and shit, but also a veRY FAMOUS LINE FROM A VERY FAMOUS SONG FROM A VERY FAMOUS MUSICAL.

“Scotland, eh? I never stopped missing it.” HARD SAME, GRAHAM. HARD SAME.

Pledged their oaths to the militia. Not the governor. Miiiinor detail, haha.

“It is a relief, to finally put down the sword and pistol and pick up the axe and shovel.” So, Jamie, you’re saying you’re gonna walk behind the plough-share, you will put away the sword?

Oh hey, it’s Joe! Another person we should have spent more time with in season three.

“Something about Graham Menzies...” Maybe the fact that he could easily have been part of the OG Squad?

I MISS THE OG SQUAD.

“Principally that men like Fitzgibbons never change.” Really, Knox, men like [him] can never change? A man, such as [him]?

“OUR DUTY IS TO THE LAW. WE WILL SEE JUSTICE DONE.” OK BUT THEY’RE LIKE LITERALLY TRYING TO SHOEHORN IN ALL THE LES MIS LYRICS THEY CAN LIKE THE TIME I DID THAT WITH I’M ON A BOAT IN THAT ONE RECAP...

“What kind of deceitful devil wears the guise of honor and talks of justice and mercy?” Valjean Fraser, at last we see each other plain...

“Believe of me what you will,” there’s a duty that he’s sworn to do. Protect his Murtz.

“As god is my witness, I will do what must be done.” You never shall yield? ‘Til you come face to face?

“Damned if I’ll be in league with a traitor.” Would you rather live in the debt of a thief?

“But I will not stand by and watch my kin hunted like a dog.” Like a dog on the run, Jamie?

Called it! Broski needed to die. You’re not gonna make sure the letters are burned all the way, Jamie? Like didn’t that dude who brought in the letters see you there? This seems like it’s gonna backfire *rull* quick.

Also, speaking of dead bodies, is Rando McWhatshisface still in the basement?

Is Adso Gavroche in this scenario?

Jamie Fraser, murder to kitten snuggles in 0.3 seconds.

IF YOU HURT ONE HAIR ON MY LITTLE BEBE’S HEAD, I WILL END YOU, JAMIE.

Slash finally, I thought this episode was turning into Waiting for Gadsot...

(I made myself chuckle a little too hard at that one, tbh.)

“I found him in an alley, couldn’t leave him behind.” AKA how Jamie Fraser adopts all of his children, haha.

“How would you feel about taking a trip to London with me? Your father wanted to bring you there before he died.” You mean, when he threatened to steal your kid from you? It fucking speaks so highly of Claire that she won’t ruin Bree’s impression of Fred. Even though Bree knows by now that he was a terrible person.

“Thank you for my gift.” YOUR GIFT LOVES YOU TOO, CLAIRE!

(And I’m still a sucker for the Claire calling Jamie “soldier” bit.)

#*#outlander starz #outlander 5x05 #drunj!der yells about outlander #and yes i am still using bqhatevwr #seven year old memes from politicians who elizabeth warren crushed are my fave

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dontbesoevil · 5 years ago

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So you want to improve your French and like to learn about things?

Good news for you, French Youtube has a very large number of really good channels of what we call “vulgarisation” (popularisation in English, but it isn’t used as much as the French word really).

I’ll divide them in broad categories and there are more.

Science:

So you like medicine, but also History? Well I have the perfect channel for you. Asclépios is a real life doctor who also likes to do videos about the history of medicine. You can start by this video on the Radium girls for example. Note that most, but not all of his videos have French subs.

There was a channel called “La statistique expliquée à mon chat”, but following disagreement (like big ones) between the illustrator/animator and the statistician doing them it stopped producing content. The statistician, one of the few Belgians on this list, started his own channel. Some of the old videos have been reuploaded and then he also produces other videos which obviously don’t look as good because he is no artist, but still interesting videos about statistics applied to every day situations and the world around us on Chat sceptique.

One of the big French Youtube channel is Dirty Biology. He does, as the title says, mainly biology-related stuff (he did study it and started and stopped a phD in it). His videos are really well-done and thought provoking and I cannot recommend them enough. The videos used to be 5 to 10 min, now it’s more 10 to 20 minutes. He did a recent video in Svalbard about climate change, but also a video about scientific publishing, or the fact that we all have royal blood. Seriously watch it. Most if not all videos have subs in French and Spanish. Some have subs in English, but it’s a hit and miss.

Asking any French person about their favourite science show as a kid and they will answer C’est pas socier. The US have Bill Nye, we have Fred et Jamy. Fred decided with a team a couple of years ago to start a website (with the associated YT channel) to do an updated version of C’est pas sorcier called l’Esprit Sorcier. You can show this to your kids, show this in class. It is well-made and interesting, and really made to be easy to understand. Each show lasts for 25 min and has a YT version and a website interactive version (with the videos shorter). I have linked their show on quantum computers for example. There are sadly no subs.

So I talk about it below, but my favourite channel ever is Arte and they produce a lot of very good cultural and documentary-style. But more recently, they have started a Youtube channel with French Youtubers to talk about interesting topics, called Le Vortex. They do it by season and in season 1, they have among other Dirty Biology (see above), Scilabus and Passé Sauvage (see below) and Pause Process. They talked on agriculture and its development from an archaeological, anthropological, and scientific point of view, but also internet from a more scientific point of view, and also transhumanism because why not, you know. I highly recommend checking all of their videos and apart from the live, they almost all have French subs. The second season has been filmed, but hasn’t been posted yet.

So as mentioned above, Scilabus is part of le Vortex, but she also has her own channel. She is French, but lives in Canada, in Québec where she is a researcher. She takes questions you might ask yourself like Why is there so much air in your crisps packet? or Why does cardboard have undulations? or Is marathon that hard? and just answers them. Some videos have subs, not all, but all are interesting.

And the final science channel is Zeste de Science, ZdS is a channel powered by the CNRS (Conseil National de Recherche Scientifique), basically the body that funds scientific research in France. It is quite neat and they have a couple of different series. The main one is videos of around 5 min where they present a topic like how to model crowds or how to make a little thing of plastic dance disco. It’s entirely based on research produced by CNRS researchers, but in an easy to understand format. They have recently started a series where they present current research projects as if they were action films and it’s very funny. The videos have subs, but not all of them.

History:

French Youtube has a lot of history channel, the biggest of which is Nota Bene. He does a lot of videos with a preference for stories on the WW, medieval kings and leaders around the world and their stupid or epic deaths, but also more recently partnerships with French regions to promote French heritage. He has a lot of videos and several series you can start by (like recently a series on the historical inspirations in Game of Thrones). Just go and have a look to what interests you, there is a lot. Some have subs in several languages, some only in French, it depends. He has also done a series with Arte (keur keur, i love them) on history and video games which I highly recommend. The series is also available in German and with English, Polish, and Spanish subs because Arte. His wife and him have organised a summer festival with Youtubers (both those doing history, and others doing completely different topics) to come and do presentations about historical topics. They are all filmed and posted on his bonus channel. Note that they don’t have subs and the quality differs with some being really good and some I stopped after a few minutes.

Do you like Goodnight stories for Rebel Girls? Well AudeGG a French comedian has a channel where she presents the life of famous women past and present in Virago. The videos are 2-3 minutes long generally and from all around the globe. You can start by the first one on famous French revolutionary Olympe de Gouges. (She has also recently done a partnership with the French tv archives on the history important laws for the rights of women that is also super interesting.) They all have French subs.

Another one of the big History channel is C’est une autre histoire. Manon started her videos when she was still a phD student, she is now Doctor in History (contemporary and ancient, she looked at the representation of Athena in the 19th century if I remember correctly, super interesting stuff). She has videos where she talks about a mythological character and how we represent them (les relookings mythologiques), where she takes a painting and explains what it represents in mythology (or the Bible for a few of them) so that when you see three ladies with an apple each, you know it’s the Three Graces (Tu vois le tableau), where she visits cities and presents nice less known places (Les villes aux détails most of them with Eng subs as well / inspired by Axolot, see below). She recently started short animated videos. Most of her videos have subs in French and in other languages. She also did a vlog during her last year of phD so if you’re thinking of doing a phD, that’s a good series to watch where she talks about the process and all.

We move to the other side of the Atlantic to visit our cousins, the Québecois with history lecturer, Laurent Turcot and his L’Histoire nous le dira. There are lot of videos about European medieval history as well as more modern Canadian and Quebec history. It’s really interesting. There are also a few videos about sex and gender throughout history (the most recent ones were on witches and vaginal art e.g.). He also has a series of videos on the French Revolution (with subs in Portuguese because why not. Sadly no French subs ). In terms of subs, it varies, some have them, some don’t.

To present the next one, I have to plug another one first. This is the Youtube channel for a tv show by the best tv broadcaster in the world (no I do not take criticisms), Arte. Arte is a French-German public broadcaster that has the best programmes and among those, a show that has made a lot of people including myself want to study politics and international relations, Le Dessous des Cartes. The show are only 12 min long and will present a country or an issue using a map. There are only two shows available on the channel at the moment, but type any geopolitical topic or country or area + Le dessous des cartes and you’ll find a show uploaded on Youtube (like “arctique + dessous des cartes” or “religion + dessous des cartes” or “chine + dessous des cartes”). This is a must see.

Anyway so inspired by this, the small channel, L’Histoire par les cartes was created and it does what it says. There are not a lot of videos, they don’t have subs, they are 5-10 min long, but if you’re like me and enjoy a good map, this is neat little channel.

See Le Vortex above, highly recommend, they have both history and science videos.

I mentioned Passé Sauvage above because she was part of Le Vortex, but she also has a channel where she talks about archaeology (her degrees are in it), anthropology, and history. Her videos are of differing quality technically, but the content is always really interesting. For example, that one on Is democracy the best system? She is developing a new project for 2020 called Odyssée sauvage which I’m really excited about and in which she will travel to Greece to compare archaeological vestiges to Greek mythology. Some vids have subs, the majority don’t sadly.

Social Sciences/Humanities:

Manon Bril (from C’est une autre histoire, see above) has a channel with her former university where she presents, one video per month, the conclusion of a peer-reviewed journal articles in social sciences and humanities in an easy to digest format. It’s more serious than some of the others, but really interesting. It’s on Mondes Sociaux.

Do you like linguistics? I love linguistics personally and this channel is the best. It’s called Linguisticae and Monté explains topics as diverse as what was the first language spoken on Earth, why do we say maman and papa in every language, or why the Académie Française is bad. The videos go from 5 min (the mum/dad one), to 20 min (the first language on earth), to 1h30 for the one l’Académie Française). He also did a really good 50 min documentary on the history and the language of Esperanto which I highly recommend (I linked the part 1 because the doc cut in parts as subs in several languages (except English), but there is also a 50 min version, but it’s only available with subs in Esperanto). Or two long videos on Tolkien’s elf languages and GoT’s languages. He has a lot of videos so I’d advise going through and see what interests you.

That one is about economics because we think we know, but we don’t. In Stupid Economics, they take topics that are in the news and explain how the economics behind it works. They recently did a video on the fine the EU gave to Google and even had a follow-up with someone from the Commission to answer people’s questions. They have videos on the economy of attention, Bitcoin, or CETA. The length varies from 3 to 15 min depending on the type of videos. They are all very well-explained and relevant to the world around us. They tend to have subs, but it depends. The older videos have subs, it depends.

Art/Music:

That first channel is more a “check those two videos” because that’s the only thing posted on this channel, but Louvre Ravioli has posted two interesting videos, each on one painting with detailed explanations on what is represented.

NART is channel on art (chocking I know) where she has several series of videos. The first one is called “3 coups de pinceaux” in which she presents a painter in around 4 min so that you know about their style, story and all and you can recognise them. At the end of each episode she does a quiz where you have to recognise which of the four paintings is by the painter of the day. The latest one was on Schiele for exemple. She has a lot of videos on Art + something. Like Art and Manga or is make-up art. She also has a few videos presenting art exhibitions. She studied contemporary art and started her channel by a 3-part series on contemporary art for those of us who need an explanation which I remember finding really interesting. Some vids have subs (even sometimes Eng subs, but not French), but not all.

There are a few music channels on French vulgarisateurs side. You can find them here on the Mediapason channel. The only one I follow is the very neat channel called Scherzando which talks about medieval music. But also how it still is relevant today. Like the Beatles and the Renaissance or how Georges Brassens was maybe a troubadour. The content of the channel is diverse and it’s all very interesting! Some videos have subs, but not all.

Other:

One of the most famous French Youtuber of that category (although he does other things) is Axolot. Patrick Baud loves the strange and the weird. He has series on people or stories that have a strange atmosphere surrounding them for 6-10 min. He has one of the best voices around. Seriously, you will want to listen to it for hours. He also has a series called “étranges escales” where he goes to a city and shows you a different side to it and other places to visit (15-20 min). He published recently a really interesting video on people who “hunt” for planets and how we discover(ed) exoplanets and it’s just so good, highly recommend (30 min).

That isn’t so much about explaining stuff, but I feel like I should still mention it. Le J-Terre is a monthly news live show and debate about climate issues. It is a group effort by the whole French-speaking European community (so French peeps, but also Swiss and Belgian) to really talk about climate change. There are no subs, but it is really interesting. If those topics interest you, everyone involved in this has their channel plugged so you can find them and their all really interesting (Partager, c’est sympa did a series of videos at the COP24 that I highly recommend with French and English subs).

One of the participants to the J-Terre is Professeur Feuillage, made by married couple Mathieu Duméry (a journalist) and Lénie Cherino (a comedian) where they play a professor and his assistant and present (with a lock of dick jokes, innuendoes, and dildos so careful who you share it with) issues related to climate change like Internet pollution, deforestation, or cute things that are actually destroying the environment. Lénie is actually going to take a bigger part in the channel and it will change a bit, but it’s the very beginning of that, so not sure what it’ll look like. The older videos have subs, not the newest ones sadly.

That one isn’t really popularisation per se, but I want to include it here. Vivre Avec is Margot’s channel where they talk about their life with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. Recently it has turned a bit more to their plants and their rabbits, but the core of the channel is centred around disability. What is EDS?, what are certain things that people say that really they shouldn’t (the latest video is about people being like “Your life is horrible, it really puts things in perspective” :////). They are videos about symptoms, mobility aids, etc. as well as talking to medicine and nursing students about how to treat patients. All of their videos have French subs.

There are obviously more channels, but those are the ones I follow. If you check the “Channels” tab of most of them, they all have other great recommendations if that isn’t enough for you. Please feel free to add more if you want and come and talk to me about them because I love channels where I can learn stuff.

#langblr #french #français #i'm particularly searching for such channels in swedish and german #frenchblr #please come and talk to me #i have to work on my thesis and i have just spent more than 2h doing this #woops #i hope there aren't any typo because i can't be asked to proofread #you: write your thesis me: okay but what if i wrote nearly 3000 words on youtube channels instead

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jamiebluewind · 5 years ago

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A Story On Life and Death and Funerals

Yall ever have the conversation with someone? The one when you admit outloud what you would want done when you die? I did. More than once to a variety of people. The reason I'm bringing it up is that I had a bit of a reminder today as to why it's important.

Today I was in therapy. This was only my second visit with her since I moved here, so we are still covering a lot of the basics. The subject got on my mamaw (southen word for grandmother). The woman who I had thought of as a mother and often introduced me as her youngest daughter or her baby. She live next door to me most of my childhood and I practically lived at her house. I loved her. So very much. The only person who liked me as I was. She put aside time every day to work on spelling and reading with me. In fact, all her hard work and patience with me is part of the reason it took so long for anyone to realize that the girl with some of the highest grades in class had dyslexia and minor dyscalcula (near perfect scores every test and assessment, but flunked pop quizes)! It turned out she had it herself, recognized it in me, and knew that getting frustrated and giving up would only make things harder when what I truly needed was to read every day. She taught me how to bake tea cakes and play with recipes. To always be kind to others, unless they gave you a reason not to and then you give um hell! To be myself (as long as it doesn't hurt you or anybody else), even if other people think it's weird. She was a white Christian woman from the deep south who played basketball with boys back in the 1930s and 1940s, got an education, built bombs during the war, was the first woman in her (very large) family to get a driver's license and own her own car, made more money than her husband (they were far from rich, but they worked hard, managed their money, and used their skills to make their lives better than people with twice as much) and would shut him down when he tried to control the house or what she did, built a picnic table in her own yard to feed the hobos (homeless people who road the trains) when she could afford it, had black friends who she would invite over to share a homecooked meal while segregation was still in full swing, made sure that their dogs always ate and were cared for, sewed simple shorts and tank tops using fabric scraps to give to neighborhood kids to play in, would skip church if someone was sick or just needed her help, ripped her brother-in-law a new one in the late 70s/early 80s when he tried to disown her nephew for coming out as gay (it didn't matter who he loved, he was still his son) and then stormed off to go comfort the boy, sang in a quartet and played piano and guitar, gardened most of her life (a huge vegetable garden with her family and a plot of various flowers, despite people calling them pointless), and on and on. A thousand things big and small that got her called weird (and worse). This woman who taught me so much through words and actions and never forgot my birthday (she made me a strawberry cake every year and when she got to old to bake she bought one and when she couldn't get out to do that, she got me a strawberry snackcake somehow) even when everybody else did... she was the best thing in my life for a long long time.

But I was "just" a grandkid. Despite all our history. Just a grandkid. Despite the fact that when she had a stroke when I was a teenager (15 or 16 I think?), I was the one who fought to keep her out of a nursing home and stayed with her 24/6 with no help for two months (caring for her, doing physical therapy with her, and crashing and sleeping the whole day somebody took over for me) and 3 to 4 days a week for months after that (she got an aid that came by a few hours in the mornings during the week to help out and two of her kids started taking one to three days a week each) until she recovered enough to live in her own home for years, dying in a retirement home 12 or 13 years later. Despite her and I having a long conversation about what we both wanted to happen after we died. Just. A. Grandkid. She got the funeral they wanted. I wasn't included in the talks or even allowed to tell them what she told to me. They didn't even let me give them her favorite socks (knee high fuzzy striped socks that made her laugh because she thought they made her look like the wicked witch) to put in her casket.

The funeral has lots of cut flowers instead a few simple ones. It lasted nearly 3 hours (Southern Baptist and the time does not count the viewing) with an introduction, a group that sang hymns at multiple intervals (including one longer set), multiple group prayers, a group hymn, two in church sermons, the church presenting a gift to the family, and a graveside sermon (no drive as the grave was beside the church) instead of something that was under an hour (because some people have bad backs, some people are old, kids get figity, and it's already hard enough on the family). They focused heavily on religion and how godly she was (even saying she put god first and family second which would have made her roll over in her grave) and gave the family a Bible with her name on it (as the family suggested despite her skipping church as much as her daugher would let her the last 3 years because it exhausted her too much). Her grandson-in-law gave the second sermon and after more talk of how religious she was and how closely she followed the Bible (the same woman that was proud of me for arguing with the preacher on bible logic when I was little, supported her gay nephew, and said it was fine for a couple who made each other happy to live together because there were more important things in life than a piece of paper), he inserted the only story told about her life which was bits and pieces about when she built the table for the homeless men (a story he heard from me) as an example of what a godly woman she was, with added embelishments, alterations, omitions, and a big part about her being called to do it by god (she did it in part because her husband was a hobo for a short time years before they met, part because nobody else would do it, and part out of pure spit for saying she couldn't). She wanted something that focused on her life and her family with a prayer and a couple songs mixed in and a few words from the preacher to comfort those left and hurting. A big potluck before or after the funeral for people to just talk and laugh and comfort each other.

But the truth is, I don't know everything she would have wanted. I don't know what might have changed in the ~5 years since we had talked about it, how well the memory aged for me, or if my memory was clouded by my own biases. I know she picked out a dress and told her daughter, but not me. I know there is probably more.

Then I started thinking about what I had said to her that night on the couch when we talked about what we would want to happen after we died. That me from just a decade ago is not the me today. Some of the things I wanted are the same. Some have changed. Some are things I would actually NOT want to happen at all! So maybe, just maybe, a version of my mamaw wanted that funeral at some point. Perhaps she told her kids years ago, before her stroke (which took the dexterity in her dominant hand and gave her a strong slur, making it hard for people to understanding her words or have the patience to wait for them). Maybe that's the real reason why it all played out like it did. But they don't know. And I don't know. And everybody has hurt feelings over it.

So, tonight I mentioned what I wanted when I died to my best friend because it was on my mind. I went about my day and my evening, but as I was getting ready for bed, I realized something. I had made the same mistake. I have people who know what past me wanted, know what current me wants, and think they know what current me would want, but none of them are exactly right or completely wrong or even know all the information. It's not all in one place and memories can fade with time.

So think about what you want to happen instead of placing it all on your grieving family and the mourner's version of a used car saleman. Open up a dialogue. And most importantly, create a living will (so family won't have to guess for end of life care) and share copies of it with your doctor and family (updating as needed such as if you move to a different state or your wishes change) and have your wishes (for what you want to happen after you die) in writing on a seperate thing from your will (which is often not located and read until most of the decisions have already been made), share copies with relevant people (or look into services that will give it to them after your death or email copies to a list of people), keep a copy in a folder with other important documents (like your living will, last will and testameny, titles, mortgage papers, and such), and make sure to check it (a reminder can help) every so often (once a year or once ever ten years, as long as you do it) to make sure nothing has changed, needs to be added, or no longer applies. An expression of funeral wishes is not legally binding (like a relative I knew that wanted one that would have left two well stocked small flower shops practically empty), but they are better than having nothing and your grieving family fighting over guesswork.

So... yeah. Don't be afraid to do it or worried about what it means or feel like it's too depressing to think about. Better you than them.

#bluewind talks #death #funerals #storytime #please

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aizenat · 1 year ago

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Like, and I’m not being snarky when I say this (I have to preface this a lot thanks to how volatile the internet is now no one believes I’m asking a question in earnest and it’s annoying), did you watch the original castlevania series? Because Lisa “I went banging on Dracula’s door despite all the skeletons on spikes outside his castle because I want to learn science and medicine so I can help people who don’t have real doctors to help them” Tepes was literally in hell. In season 3, the Prior of the town Trevor and Sypha go to says that Lisa was sent to hell and that Dracula went to join her. Indicating that Lisa was in hell long before Dracula was finally killed and sent there. We literally see her and Dracula embracing in hell.

She was a good person, and yet she was in hell. According to Christian doctrine, being a good person doesn’t save you from hell. Only being saved and living a “good Christian life” will save you. Edouar was likely not a Christian and he consorted with “witches” who do magic. From a Christian perspective of course he’d be in hell.

I’m still making my way through rewatching the original series, so idk if it was confirmed, but I felt it was sort of implied that god doesn’t exist but hell does in this world. I could be wrong, but that seems consistent with the story. The night creature that was able to go into the church to kill the bishop in season 1 says to the bishop when he asks how he was able to enter the house of god that “god is not here.”

Also, and I will admit this is a little snarky, have you read the Bible? According to it, God absolutely is a-okay with slavery and absolutely does hate the gays. There’s a reason I’ve renounced my faith lol. Like I’m trusting the white mans god with my spiritual wellbeing. No ma’am.

But I don’t really think that’s a plot hole. Emmanuel isn’t a forgemaster. Rather he got a machine from hell to do it for him. That makes sense to me why 1) the original souls of the corpses seem to return and eventually even regain the memories of their lives since he’s not a forgemaster so of course things will be off and 2) why he’s also super slow at creating night creatures. I think the show created a very sufficient in universe explanation for everything you’re claiming are plot holes.

Also, like, this was the first season and the crew failed to send the machine back to hell. Meaning we’re going to get more about this machine and how it works and this new breed of night creatures in the future. I just don’t understand this desire to over analyze an obviously unfinished story. Let it play out. A plot hole is what happens when a story is competed but there was something major that was never addressed or never made sense. The plot of the night creatures rebelling is obviously going to be addressed later on, and one of the questions will be why they’re turning against their master (they’re not supposed to be able to do that; they’re supposed to be loyal to who created them). So we’ll get more into that later. This was the first season and so they were establishing things for later seasons to get more into. Let’s let the story play out a bit before the nitpicking.

Alright so last time I checked, to make a night creature in Castlevania, you need to be a forgemaster. Forgmasters can only call fourth souls from hell to reanimate the bodies of the living in any form the forgemaster chooses.

The important thing here is that only souls that went to hell after dying can be called into a corpse by a forgemaster. This, then, raises the question as to why the fuck Edouar is a night creature now on Nocturne?

Either the writers forgot/ignored some key lore because they wanted this character arc, or Edouar actually went to hell, and that was an intentional choice on the writers part. This then raises the question, why did Edouar go to hell!?

Did he go to hell for killing vampires? Did he go to hell for killing human slave masters? Did he go to hell for being gay!? I honestly can't think of any good reason Edouar should be in hell other than:

1. God likes slavery,

2. God hates gays,

3. God as we understand him in our world, doesn't exist, and everyone goes to hell when they die.

4. God as we know him is real, but has a different morality system than what we were taught and ppl can get sent to hell for reasons unknown.

In either case, this is my biggest criticism of the show. One of the major plot threads is only possible due to a major narrative inconsistency and the implications for its reasoning are fucked.

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thetaboochristian · 5 years ago

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Christians And Cannabis... Always At Odds?

I’m a Christian who uses Cannabis, and I’m sure that’s a pretty Taboo statement to make (within the Church community that is), but let me clarify. I’m NOT saying it’s ok to blaze up and get blasted for recreational purposes, and if you are getting super high as a Christian you better have an extreme medical necessity/justification for it. However, for more typical medical uses as well as occasional, responsible recreation, reasonable dosages that DON’T make you a drooling vegetable stuck to the couch or DON’T make you feel like the toaster is an alien spy from outer space plotting to assassinate you, you may be surprised to see what the Bible says that at least implies that it’s ok. Also, I’m talking about using high CBD cannabis with low levels of THC (I believe that is suitable for Christians). I believe that Christians should never use high THC weed or THC extracts unless they have a true medical necessity for it and have a high tolerance and/or have some medical reason why an abundance of CBD will worsen their condition rather than help it.

Yes, there are verses in the Bible that say we should remain sober, and verses that condemn drunkenness, but you really need to look at the specifics, the circumstances and the full meaning in the original Greek and Hebrew in order to fully understand what it really means beyond taking it at face value that “sober means sober, all the time, end of story.”

I will also address the whole issue of pharmakia and “witchcraft” that the Bible mentions, and I’ll explain what that really means as well. Pharmakia being listed as witchcraft doesn’t mean that it’s always witchcraft in God’s eyes when someone takes any drug at any time for any reason, like some Christians try to portray.

The reality is, you need to look at WHY the Bible says what it says and take into account the culture and limited scientific knowledge of the time.

I will address the witchcraft issue first. At the time that the Bible was written, witches used drugs to alter their consciousness in order to connect with the spirit world and perform divination, communing with demons, etc. The most accurate definition for “Pharmakia” is “the use of drugs for magical purposes.” However, some other biblical dictionaries simply say “the use of drugs” or “the use of pharmaceuticals” which is a GROSS and EGREGIOUS error! Using drugs for the purposes of performing witchcraft through the aid of the drug is what is witchcraft, not simply the use of the drug itself.

I will say however that if someone who was not going to be performing any kind of magic/witchcraft took a dosage of any drug that was high enough to connect their consciousness to the spirit world, and if there was no medical necessity for that high of a dosage, then I do believe it would be a sin simply because they’d be exposing themselves to have their minds manipulated by demons and they’d have no medical necessity for it. Any time that someone is in a psychedelic state, they are open to have demons appear to them, talk to them, implant crazy thoughts into their heads, try to deceive them in some way, etc. The demons can appear as they truly look or they can appear masqueraded as some kind, loving, peaceful “entity.”

There is a difference between what I mentioned above and using a light to medium dose of CBD, THC, alcohol or most other drugs for the purpose of relaxing and de-stressing after a long, hard day or doing it just on occasion for the sheer enjoyment of it, even if you are already having a good day with no real problems. There are a few reasons for this, but the first is that low to medium doses of any kind of drug (besides psychedelics and hard stimulants like meth or bath salts, etc) do not open your mind up to encounter demons or be manipulated by them. If it does occur, it’s barely... it’s just a tiny bit of mental noise coming from the other side that’s easily ignored.

This ties in to the definition of “sober” in the original Greek. There are a few places where the consumption of alcohol itself is forbidden, but that was only to the Nazarites like Samson and John the Baptist. Even Jesus drank wine and was accused of being a drunkard, though He really wasn't. The point is, most of the time in the original Greek and Hebrew, the word “sober” actually means “sober-minded” or “able to think clearly and reasonably.” It is true that when you are drunk or significantly high on something you can’t think or speak properly, though the Bible makes a medical exception for allowing non-sobriety when it’s really necessary for extreme medical conditions. The reason why it is so important to remain “sober-minded” is because the devil will almost always try to mess with people’s minds when they take something psychoactive, including alcohol. What most laypeople who are not educated in pharmacology do not understand however, is that there is a certain dosage range for every drug that will give your body a buzz but NOT intoxicate your mind. It is possible with virtually every drug to have physical effects from it but have a sober mind. It is having a sober mind that is most important here so that you can think and speak normally in any circumstance, and so you can withstand attacks from the devil and his minions.

Now, I’m NOT telling people to break the law, I’m simply referring to what is legal to do in your area, or what the morals and ethics of it would be if no drug laws existed at all. I believe that it was NO ACCIDENT that God made psychoactive plants and their psychoactive chemical constituents. Even though the Bible rarely mentions the use of psychoactive or medicinal herbs (psychoactive herbs always have some medicinal uses BTW), what the Bible says about alcohol can transfer over easily to any other natural substance.

While the Bible does condemn the overindulgence of alcohol, it DOES OK larger amounts of alcohol when used to ease suffering in a person who’s on their death bed, in severe pain, or suffering some kind of tragedy. Moderate quantities of alcohol are listed as being ok for “lifting the spirits” of a depressed individual as well as for celebrations like weddings, special occasion feasts, etc. The Bible finally says that light doses of alcohol are acceptable for regular everyday use at meals (at least it was acceptable at that time when wine was usually the only clean thing to drink or clean water was scarce).

I just honestly, 100% firmly believe that when God created high CBD and high THC varieties of Cannabis, He knew exactly what He was doing and designed them that way intentionally. While God certainly did not intend for them to be smoked, He knew how it would affect people when they did inhale it, and He did know that one day people would smoke or vaporize it for medical and recreational purposes, and God knew how the plant would affect the people who used it that way too, not just from eating it or applying it topically.

I believe that God designed Cannabis to be frightening as the dosage gets higher, because that was God’s way of minimizing abuse of the plant, though many people nowadays have figured out how to ignore that built in warning and keep on pushing to outrageous heights anyway. I do not condone that, I think it’s foolish and I do believe that God is not ok with it. However, I do believe that God is ok with medical use of Cannabis (high THC or high CBD kind, depending on the specific needs and conditions), though I believe that God does not want or like people smoking it (though He understands when and why people do choose that method of consumption). I believe that God is NOT opposed to non-e-liquid vaporization as long as it is done in reasonable frequencies that do not cause major lung issues. I believe that God is only ok with e-liquid vaping for people who are trying to transition off of smoking or need some in a pinch and can't bring a dry herb or resin vape with them wherever they need to go. I say this because e-liquid vaping still has a good bit of carcinogens in it while dry herb/resin vaping that is convection (not conduction which is burning on a hot coil) is virtually free of any carcinogens, toxins or harmful byproducts. I believe that people who need constant medical administration of cannabinoids as medicine should use edibles because even the safe type of vaping will cause lung problems if done more than a few times per day.

What I said about God designing psychoactive plants to intentionally be the way they are and contain built in defense mechanisms (AKA scary or uncomfortable side effects as the dose increases) I believe it applies to ALL plants, not just marijuana or hemp. I believe it applies to magic mushrooms (I prefer to call them Psilocybin Mushrooms because magic is evil), datura (AKA Devil’s Trumpet), belladonna, Opium, Calamus, Frankincense, Myrrh, Peyote Cactus, the list goes on and on. I believe that God intended all of them to feel the way they do when ingested (different effects at different dosage levels) and that each of them has their own pros and cons, each having their own medicinal uses and safe dosage limits.

It is the responsibility of each individual person to research any drug they plan to take, learn how it works inside the body, the pros and cons, the medical benefits and risks, etc. I believe that God will hold each person accountable for how they use each substance they ingest (whether natural or man-made) but I believe that God intended for everyone to have the freedom to choose what they put into their body, NOT to have to have the government decide for them what they are allowed to consume, when, where and why... that should be between each individual and God. An individual may know better than their government and/or their doctor what drug is best suited to their needs and they should not have that freedom taken away from them. If they are irresponsible and get hurt or die because of using a drug inappropriately then they also ought to have the freedom to experience the logical and rightful consequences of their actions. Either way, everyone should be free to decide what they take, how much, when and why... then God will be the judge. End of story!

I hope this has given you a pretty clear picture of what I believe about drugs from a health, spiritual and freedom standpoint. I hope that you will consider the truth of what I’ve presented to you today, no matter how Taboo it may appear.

Until next time,

“Luke Davidson” (Pen Name)

Author of The Taboo Christian

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